#i just think it could have been executed so much better

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 I LAUGH LIKE ME AGAIN (SHE LAUGHS LIKE YOU)

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: four years apart and the ultimate question is about to be answered: do you and dazai really still know each other, or are you clinging to a fantasy of the past? you decide to put it to the test with a game of wits and questions when dazai gets back to your apartment—but as the game drags on, dazai starts to wonder if maybe he was wrong. worse, if maybe he would prefer to be wrong.

(wordcount: 14.5k; ņsfw; fem!reader; port mafia executive!reader, jealous!dazai, possessive!dazai, smoking & drinking, unprotected sex, switch!dazai, switch!reader, undertones of angst (happy ending). lmk if anything is missing, im rushing to get this out!)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: guys here it IS - sorry it's late, but TRUST it's worth it. i'm so proud of this fic, genuinely one of the things im most proud of writing. this is technically a part 2 to he's my collar but can be read as a standalone

It takes far too long for Dazai to make it out of the Port Mafia headquarters, with both Akutagawa and Chuuya prowling about like the dogs they are. He wonders if you tipped either of them off—Chuuya, in particular—because the slug had been looking around like he was searching for someone. He thinks you’re entirely wretched for it, knowing that if he got caught, he’d be trapped in that damp and filthy torture chamber until he managed to finagle his way out, and he plans to make it known to you just how entirely displeased he is by the situation. 

The path to your apartment is achingly familiar, and the giddiness in his chest is something he hasn’t felt since the day he left. He knows that he should probably be more careful—he’s still in Port Mafia territory, your apartment spans the top floor of the easternmost building of the five towers—but he also knows that you’re the only one with direct access to the cameras in this building so he’s more reckless than he would’ve otherwise been. 

The floors tick up agonizingly slowly, Dazai swears that there must be something wrong with the elevator because it’s never taken this long before to get up to your place. His fingers thrum against his thigh, and his foot taps the ground impatiently. He paces from corner to corner within the small space like a caged animal. He thinks that maybe he should be taking advantage of the time alone, come up with some better excuses as to why he didn’t say anything to you before he left.

“I wouldn’t have left,” isn’t going to cut it. As true as it might be, it’s not the full truth, and Dazai knows you’ll be able to sniff it out in a matter of a few seconds with a clear head. He’s not walking into a cheerful reunion between old lovers, he’s walking into what’s about to be a stressful game of chess against a strategist whom Dazai has always considered a near-equal, a battle of wits against a woman whose whole life has revolved around political warfare. If he wants to keep his dignity intact and his secrets safe, he’s going to have to be incredibly cautious with what he says to you and even with how he reacts to what you say to him.

Still, he can’t help the giddiness. The excitement. He’s missed you. He’s missed you so much that it hurts. He’d thought that over time, the longing for you would go away, but it never did. If anything, it got worse because, over time, the pictures of you started to lack the soothing feeling they used to bring to the aching in his chest. Over time, he started to forget the sound of your voice and the sound of your laugh.

He’d known that you’d been sent away on foreign business not long after his last call to you, but he didn’t think Mori would actually keep you abroad for three whole years. He’d been hoping, maybe, that he could stumble into you one day. Or maybe just watch from afar, get close enough to hear the sound of your voice again. He’s been grossly denied of you for too long, and he knows that it’s of his own doing but that only makes it worse.

When the elevator dings, announcing his arrival on your floor, Dazai is sorely unprepared for the conversation about to take place. He steps into your penthouse, eyes drifting around the familiar vast space.

Like your office, not much has changed since the last time he was here. Your coffee table is still set down a few centimeters too close to the couch in the living room—the same couch he had his first kiss on with you when the two of you were sixteen and drunk on champagne celebrating a successful mission. You still hang your black jacket over a chair instead of properly on a hanger, it’s why it always has a crease on the back—he’d noticed it when you left your office, and he can’t help but smile slightly at the confirmation as his eyes linger on where it’s draped over one of your kitchen chairs. 

You tried to convince him that you’ve changed in the years the two of you have been apart, but Dazai doesn’t think you’ve changed much at all.

You’re leaning against the windows, looking down on the city—he knows you must’ve heard the elevator, but you haven’t bothered to look his way yet. There’s an indecipherable expression on your face and a glass of wine in your hand. You’re still dressed in your suit and Dazai notices there’s a glass of whiskey on the rocks untouched on the kitchen table. He shrugs off his trench coat and drapes it over yours, hoping that the scent of you seeps into it because he’s gone too long without it.

His fingers curl around the glass of whiskey you’d left out for him, and for a moment, he swears that he’s eighteen again. He’s making his way to your penthouse after a long mission with Chuuya, you’re expecting him—you always are—and he can never push away the fondness that squeezes his chest when he finds you lounging back on your couch, flipping through channels to find something to watch, a glass of his favorite whiskey set down on the coffee table next to where your feet are propped up as you wait for him to show up.

He wonders if you even care to remember what his favorite is. He wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.

He makes his way out of the kitchen and back into the living room, and he’s reminded that he’s not eighteen and you’re not waiting for him to show up after a mission because you finally look at him, and his breath catches in his throat.

He thinks you look a bit older now than you did four years ago—to be expected, of course—and there’s a coldness to your eyes that hadn’t been there before. Impossibly, he thinks that you’re somehow even more beautiful than you were when he last saw you, and he realizes again, throat tightening, that even after three years of no contact with you, he’s just as in love with you now as he was the day he left.

He knew it back then before he left, even if he never said it. When he was eighteen and could only feel any inkling of pleasure when he was with you; it wasn’t like he’d never tried to have sex with other people, he’d whore himself out for information at any given chance and slept around frequently after you started dating a civilian to distract himself from the bitter jealousy he felt, but he’d never known how good it was supposed to feel until he slept with you for the first time. When he was seventeen and could only ever feel comfortable in your presence, seeking you out at any given chance when he couldn’t handle being around people anymore; he’d curl up in your office with your orange blanket, napping as you did work, knowing that you’d keep people away from him. He thinks he might’ve even known when he was sixteen when the two of you first met on the streets of the Kanagawa prefecture.

He wonders if you even believed him when he said it earlier—he doubts it, you don’t seem too keen to believe anything he says, and he doesn’t blame you for it. 

But whether you believe it or not, it’s yours—that rotted heart of his, shriveled and shabby, riddled with holes and decay, half-eaten by maggots and worms it might be, but it’s still yours. He thinks that it was meant to be yours since the moment he was born, and it’ll be yours even after the two of you are long dead. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to go without you again—he doesn’t think he can. He knows that despite the tentative ceasefire, the Port Mafia and the Agency are still enemies, but he knows in his heart that he won’t be able to leave you again. Even just the sight of you has condemned him completely. 

Then you speak, and at once, his entire world falls apart.

“I’m leaving again in the morning,” you finally say, tone flat and eyes sharp and shrewd as you look over him. He reminds himself that this is not a reunion, that he needs to get his head on straight if he wants to make it out of your apartment in one piece, but it’s hard. “I was only brought back to smooth things over with the government after the whole fiasco with Fitzgerald and his American cronies. I’ll be leaving for Russia in the morning to meet with Tolstoy and Nabakov. Hopefully, gain some intel on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s plans before the man makes another move on the city.”

He… did not anticipate that you’d be leaving again so soon. Something cold and sharp latches to his heart, like jagged nails ripping it apart. He makes sure it doesn’t show on his face.

“Be careful,” he tells you quietly. “Dostoevsky… he’s not someone to underestimate. Just-Just be careful.”

You raise your eyebrows, unimpressed, “I’ve worked with Dostoevsky before. I don’t need you to warn me about him.” 

Your voice is cool. Sharp. Dazai sighs, knowing that anything he might’ve said to you earlier in the night is lost to you, and he doesn’t know if he’ll have it in him to bare his heart again, only for you to scorn it. He’s not meeting with you as he knows you—as his closest friend, as his lover; he’s meeting with you as the Port Mafia executive. Not the version of you that treats with allies, wining and dining them with glittering eyes and playful smiles as you use your ability to ensure they never turn on the Port Mafia; the version of you that sits at the round table with enemies, with a quick mind and calculating eyes as you decide whether or not they’re worthy of being absorbed into the Port Mafia or if Double Black will be sent out to eradicate them. 

“I told you everything I had to say back at the office,” Dazai tries, and he wonders if you’ll let him get away with it—he doubts it, but it’s worth a shot, and it will at least stall for a few moments as he tries to forcibly turn the cogs in his mind to figure out the best way of appeasing you. “I missed you. I… couldn’t say goodbye to you, not if I was to leave. I…”

I love you.

He doesn’t say it; he thinks he was only able to push it out earlier in the night in the heat of the moment, the orgasm-induced haze fogging his brain enough to let it slip out in desperation to make you give him a chance. And it worked because you gave him a second chance when you invited him back to your apartment, but Dazai doesn’t know how to make the most of the opportunity. He thinks he’s a fool for not preparing for this before getting here.

You click your tongue sharply, lip curling up in something close to disgust, and Dazai is glad he didn’t speak his ‘I love you’ because he thinks he might’ve actually cried if that was your reaction to him saying it.

“The only things you told me earlier in the night were half-truths and sweet talk. I didn’t invite you back to my apartment to hear you beg for another chance, Dazai,” you say coolly, and Dazai desperately misses the sound of his given name on your tongue. The corner of your lip curves up into a half-smirk, eyes suddenly glittering beneath the dim lighting of your penthouse as you add, “Although, I wouldn’t be opposed to it after we talk.”

He thinks the fact that you’re already considering an after might be a good sign. He can feel his cheeks flush a bit at your words, but instead of letting himself get rattled, he takes a step forward, well into your personal space, as he dips his face down so close to yours that his lips nearly brush yours as he speaks.

“I’d beg pretty for you,” he whispers, letting his voice drop an octave as his gaze tracks down to your lips. “I’d even get on my knees.”

Unfortunately, you are entirely unbothered by the proposition. “We’ll see, I suppose,” you say, and then raise your eyebrows, signaling for him to take a step back.

He does, and he feels distinctly put out and rejected by your reaction, but he sighs and asks, “What did you invite me here for then?” 

He very much does not like the way your eyes glitter now—shrewd this time, more amused, dangerous, as if you know the two of you are about to tread down territory that he’s going to be unfamiliar with. You nod for him to follow you into the kitchen, taking a seat at the head of the table and motioning for him to sit opposite you.

He does.

“We can play a game,” you finally concede. Dazai settles back against his chair, fingers still tapping rhythmically against his glass of whiskey, a terrible habit that Dazai has accrued whenever he feels cornered. Not a frequent occurrence, but damning when it is. Your eyes linger on them, and he knows you’ve pinpointed the tell. He forces himself to stop, but from the way your lips curl up, he can tell it doesn’t matter. “Ten questions each. Yes or no answers only.”

Dazai notices that you pointedly leave out any rule about the honesty of each answer—intentional, surely, so he probes.

“How do we determine the winner?” Dazai asks. He finally takes a sip of the fine whiskey you’d poured for him, and his question from earlier is answered. His favorite. There’s a warm feeling in his chest at the realization that you’ve remembered it even after all of these years.

Your lips curve up into a sharper and wider smile, teeth glimmering like knives beneath the soft lighting of your kitchen. The glass of wine in your hands is suddenly more reminiscent of a gun being pointed at him than your choice of alcohol, and he feels as if he’s already made some egregious mistake in your eyes.

“After we give our answer, the other has to decide whether or not it was truthful. In the end, we’ll both see how many the other got right. A test to see how well we still know each other,” is all you say in response. You’re mocking him and his insistence that the two of you are still the same, but Dazai intends to prove himself right. You tilt your head to the side and then say, “The prize is to be determined by the winner. I’ll ask the first question.”

Dazai winks, a lecherous comment already on his tongue about the prize, but the withering look you give him is more than enough to make it die before he can let it loose. He pointedly takes another sip of his drink and sinks in his seat.

He thinks that this should be an easy win. You’re quite the adept liar, but you’ve always had a glaring tell. Well, he amends, it’s glaring to him, at least. Not many others would be observant enough to catch it, and even if they were, only someone with an abundance of experience with you would be able to put it together. His gaze flickers up to meet yours, wondering if your lashes flutter right before you tell a lie. It’s such a simple and subtle tell, so casual that it took Dazai a year and a half to put together, but it was hard to miss once he did.

You hum to yourself as you give off the appearance of thinking about a question, but Dazai knows you better than anyone, and he’s certain that you already have all ten prepared, so he rolls his eyes at the faux show of uncertainty. 

“We both know you know what you want to ask,” he finally says. “Do us both a favor and quit with the theatrics.”

Your lip quirks up in amusement. “And here I was being gracious giving you more time to formulate whatever lies you’ll try to get away with,” you drawl, and Dazai nearly flinches.

“You know me so well,” Dazai sighs to hide how disconcerted he really is. “The question?”

You stare at him for a moment, and your lips curl up into a deceptively soft smile that almost throws Dazai off because, god, he’s missed you. And he knows you’re looking at him like this just for this specific reason because you’re a despicable bitch who knows that he’s always been easily unsettled when people show any semblance of affection toward him, but he can’t help the way he falters.

He tries to brace himself for whatever invasive question you’re about to ask regarding his reasons for leaving. Tries to prepare himself to lie cleanly because he’s sure you’re as aware of his tells as he is of yours. 

Then you ask: 

“Did you defect because of something Oda asked of you?”

Jesus. Right for the throat. You really don’t pull punches. 

Dazai’s throat tightens at the mention of his old friend, but he’s able to keep his expression clear of the sudden pain that your question brings on. You’re watching him carefully for reactions, gaze hawklike as you study his face, and Dazai is not about to let you pinpoint any more of his tells so early in the game.

He figures that this is an easy question; you already know the answer but want to hear the confirmation from his lips, so he decides to tell the truth.

“Yes.”

“The truth,” you say, an indecipherable expression on your face. He wonders if you want to ask what Odasaku asked of him, but that’s not part of the game and Dazai has no intention of answering that.

Be on the side that saves people. If both are the same to you, become a good man.

You might laugh in his face—Dazai Osamu, the Demon Prodigy, a good man? The idea is blasphemous, and he thinks it might actually hurt him if you scoff or laugh in response to hearing that, so he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t give away more than he has to, hoping that you don’t just straight up ask him.

You open your lips to speak, and Dazai braces himself for the prying question, but instead, you only probe, “First question?”

He wonders if your whole first question and the implications of it was just a means of trying to throw him off because now he’s fumbling trying to remember what he wanted to ask you before you hit him with it. He wouldn’t put it past you to play dirty like that—bringing up his dead friend and his last request just to unsettle him to give you the edge.

“Did we meet during my underground years after I defected?” he finally asks, and yeah, he knows the answer to this question. The missing half of his ear and waking up in the old safe house he used to hide out at with you is more than enough evidence for him to come to a definite conclusion, but he wants to hear it from you.

“Yes.”

Dazai inhales sharply and then murmurs, “That’s the truth.” And then, more loudly and far more affronted, he accuses, “I can’t believe you shot half of my ear off.”

He expects you to toss him a wink and a sharp grin, unrepentant and even finding amusement in his offense, but instead, your expression falters for the first time since he’s arrived. Something strange crosses your face; for whatever reason, his words leave you conflicted and Dazai suddenly feels even more nervous than he already was because now he can’t help but wonder what he might’ve said to you in his drunken state. 

He supposes that’ll have to be another question, but first, he’s going to have to figure out how to phrase it to get a yes or no answer first, without being vague enough for it to be a waste of a question or easy for you to misconstrue.

You hum after a few moments, taking a pointed sip of your wine. Dazai watches curiously—you’re bothered still, you’re not even trying to hide it. He knows you have better control over your facial expressions than this, so he thinks maybe it’s a ploy to get him to start spiraling down a path of useless questions. Put off by his sudden inability to discern your schemes, a part of him wonders if maybe you were right because the him of four years ago would’ve seen right through you right now.

“I’m afraid it had to be done,” you sigh with faux regret, but he can tell from the way the smile on your lips doesn’t reach your eyes that you’re not into the banter. “Were you able to fulfill Oda’s request?” 

Fuck. This time Dazai can’t withhold the grimace that spreads across his face. He tries to keep his voice light with a deflecting comment, “My, bella, you’re really hitting with the deep questions tonight, aren’t you?”

You raise your eyebrows, tilting your head to the side as you wait for an answer, not giving him any room to formulate a response to your question. He finally sighs and shakes his head, taking a long sip of his whiskey. He wishes he had a pack of cigarettes on him, suddenly desperately longing for the pleasant burn of the smoke against his throat; he needs the buzz badly right now.

As if you could read his mind, you shift in your seat a bit and stuff your hand into the pocket of your slacks. It takes a few seconds but you fish out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, sliding them across the table over to him. If he wasn’t already so in his head over the question you asked, he’d make a quip over the fact that you still know him so well despite your insistence otherwise, but he only pulls out a cigarette and lights it, looking curiously down at the familiar brand.

“Since when did you start smoking these?” he asks quietly, eyes fluttering shut as he tilts his head back and takes a long drag of it. He exhales slowly and then adds, “Thought you liked the other ones, in the green box.”

“Teal,” you correct, and then frown a bit. “... Switched after you left.”

Dazai’s eyes flutter back open as his gaze focuses on you, wondering if the implication you left up in the air is something he can take at face value or if it’s just another way of trying to get him to lower his guard. But from the way you suddenly don’t meet his eyes, Dazai thinks you might be being honest: you switched because they reminded you of him.

Dazai’s chest suddenly feels heavy again.

“... No,” he finally responds to your second question. “Not yet, at least.”

“... Truth,” you say, and Dazai’s lips curl into a wry smile.

“Unfortunately.” The word slips out before he can stop it.

Your gaze flickers back up to him, curious, but Dazai doesn’t give you the chance to dwell on his comment, asking his next question: “Did I… admit anything to you that night that I wouldn’t have said while sober?”

His fingers tap rhythmically against his glass of whiskey, half-empty now; he’s anxious to hear your response.

“You did,” you confirm.

Dazai grimaces because that’s another truth, and that is not good. But just like how he doesn’t offer any context for his answers, you don’t either. He doesn’t know what he might’ve admitted or how you might’ve taken it—he’s going to have to waste another question on this topic.

“Truth,” he murmurs.

You hum and then ask, “Do you still blame yourself for what happened to him?”

“Come on,” Dazai complains sharply, tossing you a dirty look now. His jaw is tight. He wonders if you keep asking about Oda as some sort of sick revenge for him leaving, ripping open wounds that never properly healed so you can dig your fingers into them and twist around. You don’t look bothered by his outburst, waiting patiently for a response. He lets out an angry sigh, looking away and taking another long drink from his glass and another drag of his cigarette. 

He voices his first lie, “No.”

You let out a puff of air, rising to your feet and making your way over to the opposite counter, you grab the bottle of whiskey and bring it back over to him, topping off his now-empty glass before pointedly holding out your hand. He passes the cigarette over to you, tilting his head back to watch you bring it to your lips—a part of him longs to lean forward, to slide his hand behind your neck and cradle your head as he brings his lips to yours, inhaling the smoke as you exhale it, dizzy off the proximity to you, high off the buzz of the nicotine, just like the two of you would do when before he left.

He refrains, if only barely.

You exhale the smoke, a small cloud billowing around you—Dazai mourns the waste—and then you pass the cigarette back over to him. Your fingers brush his as you do, and a spark shoots through his arm at the touch.

“A lie,” you finally say, looking down at him with a frown. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. There was nothing you could’ve done to save him.”

“You don’t know that,” Dazai says tightly, averting his gaze from you as you make your way back over to your seat across from him. “If I’d been faster-”

“If Mori wants someone dead, then they’ll die,” you interrupt him, a grimace on your face as you look down at your wine glass. “Trust me, Dazai, there was no saving Oda Sakunosuke.”

Dazai pauses instead of snapping again, catching the expression on your face. Haunted, as if you’re speaking from experience. He tilts his head to the side and then asks quietly, “Are you talking about your ex-partner? Itou?”

If Dazai remembers correctly, he died on a mission when you were seventeen. You never told him the circumstances, and he never asked, but it was the first and only time you ever broke down in front of him.

The corner of your lips tightens, “Is that your next question?”

Dazai barely withholds a frustrated sigh. 

“No,” he says quietly, and then asks, “Did I tell you why I couldn’t say goodbye? The real reason?”

He holds his breath now as he waits for your response. One way or another, this question is a double blade: if he did tell you why, then he’s at another disadvantage because he’s going to feel distinctly bare and vulnerable; if he didn’t tell you, he just admitted that he lied back at your office, at least partially. 

After what feels like an eternity, you finally say, “Yes.”

The truth. Dazai wonders when you’re going to utter your first lie, if you will, or if you’re trying to make some sort of point by being honest with him. He voices his answer and then waits impatiently for your next question as his mind races.

He desperately wants to know how you responded to him back then. Would you have come with him had he come to you before he left? Or would you have chosen the Port Mafia? He wonders if he should ask, make it one of his remaining seven questions, but he doesn’t know if he has the guts to hear your answer, so maybe he’ll just change the subject.

“Are you enjoying yourself at the Agency?”

For the life of him, Dazai cannot figure out your angle. First, the prying questions about Oda and now asking about the Agency. He doesn’t know what he expected at the start of the game—you’ve always been unpredictable, but even more so now. He’s never had such a hard time reading you or your intentions before.

He starts to feel even more doubtful, wondering if you were right.

Maybe he doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does anymore.

But this is an easy question, so he says the truth with little hesitation, “I am.”

Dazai swears the corners of your lips curl up into a soft smile, but it’s gone so quickly that he might’ve imagined it.

“Good,” you say quietly. “I’m glad.”

Dazai’s lips part, a warm feeling spreads through his chest at the honesty in your tone. Desperately, he wants to know what’s going on—where’s the rage and the betrayal he expected from you? The hate? Why do you seem… okay with all of this?

Irrationally, he starts to wonder if everything from the office was just a heat-of-the-moment conversation. If now that you’ve had time to sit on your thoughts, you’ve realized… realized what? That you’ve moved on from him? That you don’t care what he does anymore? That you’ve accepted that he’s no longer a part of your life? The warmth in his chest disappears, edged away by a sudden coldness and desperation because he thinks he’d rather die than go back to a life without you.

Even more irrationally, he remembers the comment you made back at the office, the admission that you’ve slept around since he left. Oh god, what if you really have moved on?

He knows his next question.

“The people you slept with—were they all one-night stands?”

He doesn’t want to know the answer unless it’s a yes.

You raise your eyebrows at the abrupt shift in his line of questioning, and then, to his absolute horror, you say, truthfully, “No.”

“What do you mean no?” he asks angrily—he thinks if he was a bird, he’d be puffing his chest out in irritation. He feels antsy suddenly, he needs to move around. He starts tapping his foot against the floor, his fingers against the glass. And again, he thinks you’re a despicable bitch because you only look amused at his question as if he’s not beside himself with righteous fury.

“It’s not your turn,” is all you respond with, and Dazai has a distinct urge to throttle you. Then you ask, “Do you feel like you belong there?”

He halts.

His fingers freeze from where they’re tapping against the glass, his foot freezes mid-motion. His lips part as he’s confronted with the very question that he’s been struggling with for two years now. He wants to yes, if only to maybe be a little spiteful, to rub in your face that he’s somewhere good and he’s somewhere where he belongs, and it’s not somewhere with you. A cruel dig to get back for the aching in his chest at the thought of you being with other people, but he knows that you’ll catch the lie, and more importantly, he doesn’t want to hurt you like that.

Maybe he has grown a bit because the Dazai of four years ago nearly killed your civilian boyfriend when he found out that you were dating someone besides him and then promptly made a show of sleeping around to try to get back at you.

So, instead, he says quite honestly, “I don’t know.”

You tilt your head to the side. “Not a yes or no answer, but I suppose it works. How curious.”

He hates your cryptic comments. Pointedly, he side-eyes you as he takes another long drag of his cigarette. Already, it’s nearly down to the nub, so he puts it out on your table, ignoring the distasteful look you give him, and then reaches for another to light as he asks: “Were you in a relationship with any of them?” 

You roll your eyes at his prying, and he cannot hide the abject horror that crosses his face when you say, “Yes.”

“That better be a lie,” he complains, and when you look at him as if to ask if that’s really his guess, he makes a show of pushing out his bottom lip and looking away as he says: “I cannot believe you dated other people. Cheater.”

“We were never even dating, Daz-”

“Yes, we were,” Dazai protests instantly, entirely aghast at your words. “We absolutely were. What does that even mean? Of course, we were dating. Everybody knew it. Ask anybody. Ane-san knew. Gin-chan knew. Chuuya knew. Even Mori knew. We were so dating, you-”

“You never officially asked me to be your girlfriend, which is, unfortunately, the most fundamental step of dating,” you interrupt him, and Dazai stares at you in disbelief.

“I bought you flowers, we fucked exclusively,” Dazai complains, aggrieved. “We were definitely dating, and you definitely cheated on me because we never broke up.”

“If we were dating,” you emphasize the if very pointedly, and Dazai is distinctly put out by it, “then we broke up the day you left without saying goodbye.”

Dazai withers. He has no witty comment to return fire with, so instead, he just takes another sip of his whiskey, grateful for the combined buzz of the alcohol and the nicotine to distract him from the overwhelming guilt he feels whenever you bring up how he left you.

“Do you feel like you belong more with the Agency than you did with the Port Mafia?” 

Your next question is an amendment to your previous on, and it leaves Dazai just as lost.

He wants to belong with the Agency. He does. Desperately. He wants more than anything to feel as at home and comfortable in the light as he does in the dark. He doesn’t want to question his place among them anymore, he doesn’t want to wonder if he sticks out like a sore thumb. He wants to enter the office and feel like he doesn’t have to pretend to be someone he’s not, just so he can keep his place with them. He doesn’t want to have to fear at every corner that he’s going to revert to old habits, and they’ll see him for the monster that he is: a monster that should have never left the dark crevices that he crawled out from, a monster with blood so black that it strikes fear in even the most terrible mafiosos.

“No,” he admits the insecurity that’s plagued him to the one person he feels comfortable enough with to voice it aloud. He can’t bring himself to look up at you, wondering if the admission will give you some sort of sick satisfaction, if you’ll be happy that he’s not finding a place he can be comfortable in without you. Instead, he decides to rush to ask his next question: “The one you were in a relationship with, did you love him?”

He thinks that the question came across as far more timid than he meant it to be, and his eyes slide shut as he waits for your answer.

“There were multiple I had relationships with—” Dazai scoffs, of course, there were multiple. “—...but no, I did not.”

He lets out a soft puff of air, shoulders slumping a bit in relief. But his fingers are still tense around his glass, waiting for whatever question you’re going to ask next that’s going to dig deep into open wounds, stripping him of all of his masks and armor to force him to lay himself entirely bare in front of you.

“Did you really blow up Chuuya’s car before you left?”

His eyes fly open at the sudden change of pace in your questions, noting the smirk curling at the corner of your lips and the amusement glinting in your eyes. He accepts the olive branch quickly as he gives you a sharp smile and asks: “What do you think?” 

Your hand flies to your mouth to muffle a laugh, and the smile on Dazai’s lips becomes a bit softer as he watches you desperately try to get yourself under control. “You’re insane, you know that?” you finally say, still trying to bite back giggles. “He was so mad. Raged about it for weeks.”

Another question pops into Dazai’s head at the mention of Chuuya, and before he can consider whether or not he actually wants to know the answer to it, he asks: “Speaking of Chuuya, was he one of your trysts while I was gone?”

Suddenly, you are not laughing, and suddenly, Dazai regrets speaking.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Do not tell me-”

“He was,” you confirm.

Dazai’s glass of whiskey is empty. 

He grabs the bottle and drinks right from it, miserable.

“I think I would’ve rather been stabbed through the heart,” Dazai says mournfully, and though he keeps a faux-light tone with you, his throat feels like it’s swollen, and he feels a bit sick to his stomach.

He’s always been jealous of the bond you have with Chuuya. Absurdly jealous, even. You clicked with him quickly—you clicked with both of them quickly, and maybe it was a matter of the three of you being the youngest of the Port Mafia’s uppermost echelon, but Dazai doesn’t want to attribute it solely to that—but the way you clicked with Chuuya was different from how you clicked with Dazai. Two people so completely human locked away in the dark, clinging to one another to maintain some sense of normalcy; your and his casual humanity made Dazai’s lack of it irrefutable and glaring.

Regardless of the why, he never liked how close you were with Chuuya. 

Even before you were dating him—because you were dating him—a part of him had always felt sidelined whenever the three of you hung out together. Not because of either of your wrongdoings but just because it was hard for him to keep up with the two of you. He always felt a bit lost trying to, unable to follow along when the two of you would start laughing at jokes that he didn’t understand even when you explained them to him, when you would share glances with one another that spoke whole conversations he wasn’t privy to. The two of you got along in ways that Dazai would never be able to get along with anyone because there’s just something fundamentally wrong with him at his core. Chuuya, for all of his talk and fear regarding the question of his humanity, has always been so unfailingly human in ways that Dazai, to this day, cannot fathom to understand.

After you started dating him—because you were dating him—it only got worse because he’d see you with Chuuya and wonder if you were better off with someone like him instead. Dazai doesn’t know how to treat you right, clearly. He can’t even treat himself right; and Chuuya has always been the epitome of a gentleman, loathe Dazai is to admit it—Ane-san drilled that into the other boy where Mori only taught Dazai how to be cruel and unforgiving. The line between love and obsession has always been a terribly blurry one for him, and you have always wavered on either side of it—and Dazai, unfortunately, does not love healthily and obsesses so entirely that it would have most people running for the hills. 

For better or for worse, you’re not most people.

In his spiral of insecurity, he doesn’t catch the way your brows furrow as you put together some puzzle pieces. “Dazai,” you say suddenly, drawing him from his thoughts abruptly. There’s an accusatory look in your eyes that he really does not like. “Were you the one that booby-trapped my fucking apartment?”

Dazai snorts.

“You bastard,” you snap at him, and Dazai can’t help but bite the palm of his hand as a means of trying to stifle his laughter. “Mori thought it was a goddamn assassination attempt. He kept me under watch for weeks because of you. I couldn’t leave the towers without half of the Black Lizards with me.”

“Sorry,” he coos, not sorry at all. Dazai, because he clearly doesn’t know when to learn his lesson, then he promptly asks, “Am I better fuck than Chuuya?”

“Jesus Christ, Dazai, get off the topic of Chuuya and my sex life, it’s clearly only upsetting you,” you snap at him instead of answering the question. Dazai wants to argue and retain some dignity; he’s not upset, but then his entire world is shattered by your next words: “I am not answering this question.”

Dazai blanches. He can feel the blood drain from his face. He’d thought this was an easy question to make him feel a bit better. What do you mean you won’t answer? Does that mean Chuuya-

No. Dazai refuses to believe it.

 “No way,” he says, shaking his head. “He’s not a better fuck than me. You can’t possibly-”

“He’s not,” you finally say, and Dazai audibly lets out a sigh of relief. “But if you ever mention anything along the likes of that to him, you will never fuck me again, Dazai Osamu. Do you understand?”

Dazai is too relieved to even argue. “Yeah.”

“No more questions about my sex life,” you say firmly, and Dazai doesn’t respond, but he does agree internally because he doesn’t think his heart can handle any more scares like that. Your eyes sharpen again, and Dazai braces himself. “Were you the one to tell Mori I lied about being sick so I could skip out on the ball Mishima hosted when we were seventeen?”

Dazai’s eyes narrow right back at you and rather than answering, he shoots one of his own questions at you: “Were you the one to tell Mori I had his contact in my phone as ‘ignore’?”

You take his lack of an answer as an affirmative, correctly so. Dazai has no regrets about ratting you out to Mori because he was not about to attend Mishima’s event without you on his arm. He’d rather die. 

“You bastard, do you know the lengths I went to fake being sick? I wanted one night to relax without people breathing down my neck.”

“If I had to go, you had to go,” Dazai retorts petulantly. “I was not about to suffer with only Chuuya as company. You had no reason to tell Mori about the contact name besides to be petty. I fought with Chuuya for weeks because I thought he was the one to do it.”

You choke on a laugh. “Chuuya was so mad, he had no idea what you were talking about.”

“He tied me to a pole and swung me around for three hours,” Dazai complains, but there’s a smile on his lips as you burst into laughter, unable to stifle the giggles that spill from your lips.

“I know,” you wheeze, “I got it on video. We watch it sometimes when we’re bored and can’t find a movie.”

Dazai gapes, and you laugh harder, but for the first time in four years, Dazai finally feels… at home, he feels comfortable in his own skin again. He’s back in your penthouse, he’s drinking his favorite whiskey and smoking his favorite brand of cigarettes, you’re sitting at the kitchen table with him and laughing your head off at his expense, and for a moment, Dazai feels as if nothing has changed: he feels like himself again, eighteen and entirely enamored by the sight and sound of you, and you feel like you again, all of the doubt that had begun to rise to his chest as the two of you played the questions game long gone.

He falls in love with you all over again. Harder this time. Faster. He thinks he’ll fall in love with you again and again every day for the rest of your lives, each time more than the last, no matter how impossible it might seem.

He thinks maybe it’s not that he feels like he belongs with the Port Mafia more than the Agency. He thinks that it’s you. You’re the one he feels at home with. You’re the one he’s comfortable enough to be himself with. You’re the one he belongs with, always has, and always will.

After a few moments, you finally manage to get yourself under control, still giggling a bit as you look back up at him. Your smile is softer now, eyes gentle, more genuine than the smile you gave him before asking the first question. Dazai’s breath catches because when was the last time you looked at him like this—the last time anyone has looked at him like this? A warm feeling spreads through his chest; Dazai thinks he would stay in this moment forever if given the opportunity.

“Are you happy?” you ask quietly

Dazai blinks, startled, and an odd feeling spreads through his chest once your question registers. His lips part to answer, but no words leave them; he draws back as if he’s been slapped, a bit flustered and confused because that’s the furthest thing from what he expected you to ask. He wonders if you’d asked the last three questions to lull him into a false sense of security.

“I-” he starts to say but cuts himself off. “What kind of question is that?” 

He tries to deflect instead of properly answering, frowning, but you only raise your eyebrows, pointedly keeping your lips sealed to let him know that you expect an answer. He shakes his head and then sighs, bouncing the question in his head a few times before going for a cop-out: “When I’m with you? Always.”

You’re not pleased by his decision, frowning as you look away from him—he knows that’s not what you asked, not really, but you should have been clearer with your question if you wanted him to give you the answer you expected. But he doesn’t like the sudden disappointment on your face, it leaves his skin itchy and his chest longing for the soft look to return.

So he sits there, ruminating on the question. Is he happy? He should be, right? He’s saving people. He’s on the way to fulfilling Odasaku’s final request. He has a whole group of people whom he can rely on without having to fear being taken advantage of or betrayed at every corner. He’s happy.

But is he trying to convince himself of it? Why is he still trying to kill himself if he’s happy? Why is there a part of him that feels lonely no matter how surrounded he is by people? Why is it that when he’s at his lowest points, the only two people he wishes he could be with are you and Chuuya? Why does he ache for the days he’d spend dragging the two of you around Yokohama, causing trouble for Mori—the closest he’s ever felt to enjoying life?

“I don’t know,” he finally amends his answer, looking down at the bottle in front of him and the cinders of the cigarette dangling between his fingers. He lifts it to his lips again, taking one last drag of it as he tries to figure out what his last question should be.

There’s only one pressing question he has left, but he hesitates, unsure if he really wants to know your answer.

He forces it out anyway.

“Would you… would you have come with me back then?” His voice is quieter than he intended, cracks over ‘me’, and to your credit, you don’t react to the question, expression as eerily still as it was before, as if you’re considering your words.

A yes or no. It shouldn’t take this long for you to answer. Each second that passes feels like an eternity, and Dazai suddenly feels anxious, he doesn’t know why he asked this question because if the answer is no—if it’s no, then…

Finally, you let you a soft sigh, taking a sip of your wine as if to prolong his agony.

Your lashes flutter before you speak.

You lie for the first time that night.

“Yes.”

Dazai’s voice sounds far away as he says, “That’s a lie.”

“I guess you were right,” you say softly, but you sound so distant, like you’re on the opposite side of a long, empty tunnel and not sitting right in front of him. “We do still know each other decently well; you got them all right.”

Dazai doesn’t care. In fact, he would have gladly conceded a loss in this game, and he would’ve gladly admitted that maybe the two of you don’t know each other as well as you used to if it meant that he got the last question wrong because then he would’ve just given you a coy expression and asked if you’d let him get to know this new version of you too. You would’ve said yes, and he would’ve made quite the pleasurable night out of it for the two of you. Instead, he had to insist that nothing has changed, and now he has to come to terms with the fact that he was right and he had known you well enough back then to know not to ask you to leave with him because you would have chosen the Mafia over him. 

He’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t even notice you approaching him until you’re leaning on the table next to him, index and middle finger coming beneath his chin to tilt his face up toward you. He looks up at you through his lashes, eyes searching your face, but he only finds another blank slate that he can’t read. His breath hitches when your hand slides from his chin to cup his cheek, and he can’t help the way that he leans into your touch, eyes fluttering shut.

“I would choose you over so many things, Osamu.” You speak his given name for the first time in years, but he can hardly find any comfort in it because he knows he’s not going to like what you’re about to say. Your fingers card through the tips of his hair, brushing the dark locks behind his ear as your thumb sweeps over his cheekbone. “But not over the Port Mafia. Just like how you didn’t choose to stay for me.”

“It’s not the same,” he says, voice hoarse. “It’s-”

“It is,” you interrupt, voice deceptively gentle, and he thinks you’re entirely unfair because he can hardly focus with your touch distracting him. He’s missed it so much—he’s gone four years without it, without any type of touch that wasn’t him getting his shit kicked in by Kunikida or an enemy. “You didn’t choose to stay for me. I wouldn’t have chosen to leave for you.”

“Why?” Dazai asks tightly, and he hates that when his jaw tenses, you smooth your fingers over it, and he unclenches it immediately.

There’s a sadder look in your eye now as you give him a small smile. “You know why.”

Of course, he knows why. He feels the hatred deep in his gut as his mind draws back to Mori. Because that’s who the issue is. It’s not the Port Mafia. It’s not your friendship with Kouyou. It’s not even your friendship with Chuuya that’s the issue. It’s Mori and your undying loyalty to him. No matter how much you claim to despise him, bashing him every chance you get, sneering at him whenever he tries to treat you like his daughter, Dazai knows that when it comes down to it, you’ll always choose him. You’d throw yourself on a sword if he asked it of you, and not for the first time, Dazai wants to spit in the man’s face for making you feel as if you’re eternally indebted to him for rescuing you from that warzone so many years ago; for making you feel as if you’re nothing without the Mafia, nothing without him.

“You don’t owe him anything,” Dazai says tightly. “You have to know that by now—you don’t owe him anything.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation, Dazai,” you sigh, sounding tired. Your hand drops from his face, and Dazai longs for your touch again instantly. His fingers twitch from where they’re resting on his lap; he only barely stops himself from reaching out for you. You try to smile as you change the subject, but it hardly meets your eyes, “It’s a tie then. No prize for either of us, hm?”

Dazai is not so inclined to switch the subject. He wants to press on this now that he has the chance; he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to rip you out from beneath Mori’s thumb, but he needs to at least try… but you’re leaving again in the morning, and Dazai also does not want to ruin this night with you. He doesn’t know when he’ll get another.

So, instead, he matches your half-assed smile as he looks up at you and says, “I didn’t say you got them all right. You only said that I got them all right.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Did I get any wrong?” you ask, amused.

No.

“Yes.”

“Liar,” you say, but there’s a fond lilt to your tone as you let out another puff of air, the smile on your face finally reaching your eyes as you look down at him. The soft lighting of your kitchen casts a pretty glow over your face, your smile is so entrancing that Dazai thinks he could stare at it forever.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes out, the words slipping from his lips before he can stop them. “I’ve missed you so much.”

He’s sure he must look like a fool right now, entirely enamored by the sight of you, unable to even fathom drawing his gaze away. He wonders if you’ll protest again, call him a liar, and shift away from him.

You don’t.

The smile on your lips falls, and a wrecked expression crosses your face as your eyes search his. Your lips part to speak, and he waits with bated breath for whatever you’re about to say—he thinks that if you deny him again right now, it might completely shatter all of the walls he’d so carefully built to protect himself.

“I’ve missed you too,” you whisper as if you’re scared to speak the words out loud—and how can he blame you when the last time you dared to speak them, he hung up on you, never hearing from him again until tonight.

God, the guilt he feels whenever he thinks of you returns with a vengeance, so intense that Dazai starts to feel sick to his stomach. He can’t handle it, so he does the only thing he knows how to do to distract himself from it.

His movements are clumsy as he pushes himself up to his feet, nearly tripping over the leg of his chair, and his fingers feel clunky as he lifts them up to cup your cheeks. For a second, he fears that you might move away from him, but you don’t, so he leans in to press his lips against yours.

There’s no tenderness to his kiss. Dazai kisses you like he wants to consume you, lips sliding messily against yours, blunt nails indent crescents into your cheeks as he holds you close. Usually, he would be embarrassed by his blatant desperation and lack of finesse—he’s never been a sloppy kisser, when the two of you were younger, you would always let out pleased hums into his mouth, lashes fluttering as he worked his lips carefully against yours, tongue sliding against your own as he traces his name on it. 

All of his finely honed skill is thrown out the window now as he kisses you like a man who has been starved for years. He has been starved for years—the quick fuck in your office did nothing to quell the longing he’s felt for you the past four years. He could kiss you for hours. Days, even, and it still won’t be enough. Nothing short of an eternity with you would be enough to make up for the four years he’s been deprived of you.

He lets out a low groan into your mouth as you nip at his bottom lip, hands sliding from your face down to your hips. He’d take you here. Right now. But he remembers the last time he tried to fuck you on your kitchen table, it ended with him choking on the barrel of your gun as you yelled at him for being gross (“I eat on this table, you heathen!”) and he’s not particularly in the mood to set off your temper now that he finally has you in his arms again, so it’s with much restraint that he grabs you by the hips to walk you back into your bedroom.

He can hardly concentrate as your fingers twist the hair at the nape of his neck, soft moans slipping from his lips, muffled against your mouth. It’s only sheer instinct and muscle memory that has him making his way from the kitchen and down the hall. He can’t bring himself to separate his lips from yours for even a second. And he’s a mess because he’s not coherent enough to force himself to breathe properly through his nose, so his lungs are burning and his head feels a bit light, but he doesn’t care so long as it means he can keep kissing you.

Turn left, turn right, second door from the end of the hall. 

His fingers fumble for the knob of your bedroom door, pushing it open a bit too hard, considering the way he hears it slam against the wall and how you tug his hair hard in retaliation. He doesn’t care, moans a bit louder even when your nails scrape his stinging scalp, and you let out a derisive noise against his lips before biting down hard enough to draw blood.

The taste of iron makes a slow smile curl at his lips, walking you back toward the bed, and it’s only when your knees hit the edge that you finally pull away from him. “If you broke my door, you’re fixing it, Osamu.”

Dazai’s smile is lecherous. “I’m gonna break something alright,” he croons, relishing in the way you immediately roll your eyes at him. It’s all so familiar—he can almost pretend that he never left, that nothing has changed since the two of you were eighteen, dumb, reckless, and in love.

Before he can press you back against the bed, he feels your fingers drop from around his neck to his waistband, curling around his belt loops. In an instant, you’ve twisted the both of you around, and suddenly, it’s the back of Dazai’s knees pressed against the edge of the bed as you push him down onto the mattress. He hits the sheets with an ‘oof’ and a hazy smile, surrounded by the scent of you, drowning in the sight of you. He thinks he might be in heaven. 

You shift on top of him, straddling his waist; Dazai’s hands instantly come to rest on your thighs, sliding up the sides to grab your ass and pull you more firmly onto him. He groans when he feels you grind down against his cock, and god, he’s already hard just from kissing you. He hears you snort above him, but Dazai doesn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed.

His lips part in a silent moan as you lean down to ghost kisses along his jaw, hands sliding up his chest. He feels you wrap your fingers around his bolo tie and tug it, you let out a sharp noise of distaste against his skin before murmuring: “I hate this ugly thing.”

He lets out a huff of laughter that quickly breaks off into a moan when your lips trail to the spot behind his ear that always makes him writhe. His fingers bite into your hips, pushing you down on him as he rocks his hips up into you—shit, he might be able to cum just from this. His cock is straining painfully against his beige pants, twitching as he grinds up against your clothed cunt. He thinks maybe if he fucks his hips upward a few more times, he might be able to push himself over the edge, but as desperate as he is to chase his release, he refuses to cum anywhere but inside of you.

Plus, he thinks he’ll be shamed to hell and back if he finishes in his pants with you hardly touching him. 

“Then strip me out of it,” he gasps, lashes fluttering as your teeth graze his pulse point right above the edge of his bandages. Fuck, he’d give anything for you to bite down—riddle him with marks he can’t cover so he can flaunt them off to everyone who looks at him. Dazai knows that there are countless men and women out there who’d die to be able to be called yours, he wants them to know he’s the only one who can take that honor. “What’re you waiting for?” 

You hum and then sit back on his hips—he bites his bottom lip raw as you unintentionally put even more pressure on his cock. He’s half dazed out, not realizing that your grip tightened on his bolo tie until you straight up yank it off of him, snapping the string around his neck.

“No!” he complains, watching with wide eyes and parted lips as you fling the now-broken bolo tie off to the side of your room. “Noooo, why’d you do that? I’m going to have to order a new one.”

“Boo-hoo,” you say dryly, hardly paying attention to him as your fingers curl around the hem of his vest, pulling it up over his head, snorting when he lets out a puff of irritation as his nose gets caught around the collar. 

“This is so unsexy,” he protests, rubbing his nose. “Shouldn’t you be more gentle?” 

“Stop wearing so many layers of clothes,” you retort, but Dazai is placated when you lean back down to kiss the corner of his lips, lashes fluttering as his eyes slide shut. He lets out a pleased hum as you kiss down his jaw, nimble fingers unbuttoning his final layer of clothing. He wishes he wore an undershirt just to watch you huff in annoyance. His breath catches as you nip at his skin and then murmur, “This better?” 

“Yeah,” he breathes out, voice wavering as you get down to the last button of his shirt, sliding it off of his shoulders and easing him out of it. His body shudders as your hands slide over the bandages wrapped around his abdomen. Fuck, it’s been so long since anyone’s touched him beneath his clothes, even with the bandages still acting as a layer between the two of you, his nerves are on end, sensitive to everywhere your fingers touch.

He wonders if you’ll pull off the bandages—it’s a line that the two of you only crossed once back then, and although the idea of it has him brimming with anxiety, he longs for the feeling of your skin flush to his.

He almost feels a bit embarrassed when you sit back again to admire him as if there’s not a scar-ridden body hidden beneath the bandages. You look at him like he’s beautiful, like he’s not a monster disguised as a man, like he’s human. Dazai has always felt distinctly seen beneath your stare like you can see through all of the masks he wears and see him for him, and that has not changed over the past four years.

He’s missed the comfort of it. He has. It used to unnerve him back then, thinking someone could see him so clearly when he tried so hard and so carefully to hide himself beneath layers of impenetrable masks, but after going four years alone, with no one for him to turn to, no one he could look at and have them just know what he’s thinking… 

Yosano once mentioned offhandedly that to be loved is to be seen, and Dazai thinks the only time he’s ever been seen—truly seen, down to his core, deep in his soul—is when he’s with you.

It was a very lonely four years without you.

“I thought about you every day,” Dazai tells you softly, the grip on your hips easing up as he looks up at you. “Made a list of places I wanted to bring you and then burned it because I never thought I’d get the chance to be with you again. Stared at old pictures of you all the time, couldn’t sleep without thinking about memories with you. Drank your favorite wine just so I could pretend I was tasting it off your lips.”

You bring your hand up to cup his cheek, and Dazai leans into your touch, eyes fluttering shut again. He kisses your palm, humming softly when your thumb runs along his bottom lip.

“There wasn’t a single day I went without you crossing my mind,” you admit quietly and Dazai’s breath hitches as he stares up at you, dark eyes wide and lips parted. He thinks he should say something, anything really, but it’s a lost cause. You don’t seem to mind, luckily, because you only lean down to brush your lips against his again.

This kiss is softer than the last, lips trembling against yours as your tongue dances along his inner lip. He thinks his cheeks might feel wet but he doesn’t dare acknowledge it; you don’t either, only using your thumbs to brush away the tears as they spill over his cheeks.

“Are you really leaving again in the morning?” he finally asks, and he hates that his voice cracks over the words.

You hum in agreement, still hovering over him, still running your thumbs along his cheekbone. His lashes droop shut, but he forces them back open as you speak. “I am. Bright and early. Flight leaves at six.”

His gaze flickers to the left, over to where your alarm clock is set up on your nightstand. 

12:35

He looks back at you, eyes swimming with desperation.

You give him a soft, wry smile. “We should make the most of the night then, hm?”

He doesn’t waste any time on that.

His grip on your hip tightens, and in one swift motion, he flips the two of you around, elbows resting on the mattress on either side of your head as he hovers above you. Your eyes glitter as you give him a coy smile, and again, Dazai falls in love.

Then, he ruins the moment.

“Tell me how you fucked Chuuya.”

Your smile drops. “Osamu, what the fuck?”

“Tell me,” he pouts, nudging his nose against your cheek and peppering soft kisses on your cheek and down your neck. His knees drop to the bed on either side of your hips, holding up his weight as he reaches down to unbutton your slacks, sliding them off your body. A smile flickers onto his lips as his fingers graze your panties—drenched, finally, evidence that he’s not the only one so affected by this. “Tell me. Were you on top? Did he take you from behind? Was he rough? No, it’s Chuuya-”

“If you care so much about how Chuuya fucks, Osamu, how about you go fuck him yourself?” you interrupt him.

Dazai gags.

“Don’t ever say that again,” he says and then returns to his mission, fumbling with his own pants now as he tries to yank them and his briefs off, unable to hold back the relieved sigh when he finally frees his cock, unceremoniously tossing them to the floor. “Tell me.” 

“Why do you care so much, hm?” you ask, reaching up to brush his hair out of his eyes. “I told you that you were better.”

You’re only trying to deflect from the question and he almost lets you succeed, partially placated, but he stays strong, leveling an unrelenting stare onto you as he waits for your answer. You sigh heavily, and he knows he’s won.

“Not rough,” you say as if Dazai hasn’t already come to that conclusion. Chuuya’s had a crush on you since the three of you were sixteen. Dazai assumed he had grown out of it, but evidently, he was wrong, considering he took the opportunity to sleep with Dazai’s girlfriend—because you were his girlfriend—the moment Dazai was out of the picture. What a little snake. Dazai needs to vandalize his apartment again. Maybe set up a few more bombs. He’s only drawn back from his mental spiral when you start talking again: “He took the lead. Wanted to see my face the whole time, make sure I was okay.”

“How gentlemanly of him,” Dazai says—he’s not bitter. He’s not.

“It was,” you agree, too genuinely.

Dazai squints at you hard. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” you say. “You asked.”

“You don’t need to sound so wistful.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Osamu, I’m not wistful.”

“How-”

“Are we going to talk about Nakahara Chuuya all night, or are you going to fuck me?” you interrupt immediately, looking increasingly incensed. Dazai only raises his chin at you pointedly—you’re the one that slept with Chuuya. “Time is dwindling, Osamu.”

Okay. 

Dazai’s gaze flickers back to the clock and then back down to you, withering a bit under your irritated stare. He sighs and leans back over you to kiss the corner of your lips, fingers curling around the hem of your panties to slide them off your legs.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs against your skin, his kisses linger against your skin now as he drags his lips down to your jaw. “The thought of him being with you…”

It makes Dazai want to do terrible things. The part of him that he locked up deep within rattles at the bars of its cage, furious and bloodthirsty. The trigger finger he’s been so careful to tame twitches with a desire he hasn’t felt in four years. The thought of anyone being with you makes Dazai sick to his stomach—Dazai is the only one who should get to see you like this, be with you like this—but the thought of Chuuya being with you is so much worse.

“You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Osamu,” you tell him quietly, fingers intertwining with his hair as he nips at your neck. “No matter how much I slept around, nothing was ever able to fill the hole losing you left. Not even Chuuya.”

Dazai exhales, shaky—the guilt returns, and so does the doubt because what right does he have sitting here being petty about what you did while he was gone when he was the one who left you behind without so much as a word? His eyes flutter shut, he spares a few more chaste kisses across your throat before lifting his face back to yours, kissing you gently.

“Let me make up for lost time then,” he says softly.

He doesn’t hesitate now, one hand dropping down to your thigh, lifting it to wrap around his waist as he presses his hips into you. His breath shudders when his cock slips against your folds, a low moan spilling from his lips. He has to reach down to angle himself properly, tip pressing against your tight hole.

The fingers of his free hands are shaky as he lifts them to cup your cheek. “Look at me,” he says, heat spreading through his abdomen when he realizes you already can hardly hold your eyes open, quick breaths escaping your lips as you try to keep yourself from cumming already. “Look at me, I want to see you.”

Your eyes flutter open, lidded and heavy as you look up at him, and Dazai thinks that maybe he could cum just from the expression on your face alone, inhaling sharply as his thumb drags across your bottom lip. He thinks maybe he should try to get ahold of himself, fearing that if he pushes inside of you now, he might cum on the spot, but his cock is aching so badly that Dazai thinks he might die if he doesn’t feel your heat around him immediately.

It takes all of his strength to keep his eyes from sliding shut as he pushes inside of you, desperate to see the way your face twists and your breath catches. Your lips tremble, chest rising and falling rapidly, he can feel your thighs tightening around his waist, and Dazai groans when your heels dig into his lower back, forcing his hips flush to you, burying his cock deep in your cunt. He chokes, grip on your thigh bruising; his abdomen tightens, and his head feels light.

No way, he thinks, gritting his teeth as he tries to hold back the waves of pleasure threatening to tear through him. He hears you let out a huff of laughter beneath him, and Dazai would shut you up with a sharp thrust of your hips, but he’s still desperately trying to regain control over himself, so he thinks that’s maybe not the best idea.

His forehead drops to rest on the pillow next to your head, lips brushing your ear as he lets out a low moan. He can’t even savor the way you let out a full-body shudder, fingers coming up to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. Fuck, you’re so tight—Dazai can feel your walls tightening around him, spasming, his breath is shaky, and he tries to distract himself by pressing his lips to your skin, mouthing messily at your skin, sucking and nipping and counting to ten as he tries to settle down.

But it’s hard with the soft sighs you’re letting out, the way your fingers catch on his tousled hair, tugging enough to make his scalp sting. His head is so fogged that he can hardly think straight—god, he’s missed this, he hasn’t had the comfort of letting himself go like this in… since he left, really. His mind is always turning, plotting out ten, twenty, thirty steps in advance in fear of making a mistake, slipping up and letting the rest of the Agency see him for what he is, slipping up and their lives being the price just like with Odasaku. It’s only with you that’s ever comfortable enough to finally let the cogs in his brain slow and shatter, lose himself in carnal pleasures, lose himself in you; it’s been four years since he’s last had a reprieve from his own brain.

But he only lets himself slip halfway—tonight isn’t going to be about him, it’s about you. He has four years to make up for and he intends on getting a good start on it tonight.

He pants quietly as he lifts his head enough to bite your earlobe, tugging it gently before pressing his lips to your temple. “I’ve missed this,” he admits, voice raspy and clogged thick with emotion. “I’ve-”

He can hardly get the words out, and his breath catches when your hands slide from behind his head to cup his cheeks, forcing him to look at you. He thinks he must look wrecked—he can already feel the sweat beading on his forehead, and he knows his eyes are probably glazed over. You still look stunning, a soft expression on your face as you look up at him as if he’s not buried to the hilt inside of you. 

Unfair, he thinks mournfully. 

“What're you still holding onto, hm?” you ask, and Dazai only barely registers your words, sinking into your touch as you brush matted hair out of his eyes. He can finally bring himself to roll his hips—experimental, slow, trying to make sure he can actually move before trying to fuck you. Then you sigh softly, and he’s too out of it to try to make out the expression on your face as you say: “You work yourself so hard… always have. I’ve got you, you can let go, Dazai. C’mon.”

“No,” he hums, but his voice is strained, evidence of his struggle. “Tonight’s about my favorite girl.”

“Favorite?” you tease, lifting your shoulders off the bed to ghost a kiss against his lips that nearly has his hips stuttering—the conversation so reminiscent of one that the two of you had at seventeen it almost makes him smile.

“Only,” he amends quietly, kissing your nose, then the corner of your lips, and then nipping your jawline.

Just when he thinks he’s good to actually start picking up the pace, intent on fucking the thoughts out of you until you forget about your stupid flight in the morning, he catches a suspicious expression on your face, one that has his eyes narrowing.

“What?” he asks dubiously; your eyes are glittering in a way that he knows from experience is dangerous. 

You don’t say anything, just look pointedly at your thighs, then up to his shoulders. Dazai tilts his head to the side, recognizing what you want, and after a moment’s hesitation, he slides your legs up above his shoulders, folding them to your chest, eyes nearly rolling back at the new angle. Fuck, his hips do stutter this time, breath hitching. He has to readjust again, mentally focus on not cumming on the spot, and then-

And then you say: “He had my legs like this.”

A trick. 

Dazai knows it. 

You’re trying to make him let go of the thin thread of self-control he still has. To give in. To let all of the gears in his brain finally fall apart for the first time in four years.

He knows it.

He falls for it anyway.

Dazai’s jaw tightens, gaze snapping down to you only to catch a goading look in your eyes, a sly smile on your lips that Dazai has every intention of fucking right off your face. He inhales sharply, one hand sliding up your body to grab your chin, blunt nails digging a bit too deeply into your cheeks.

“Yeah?” he says, voice rough. 

Your lashes flutter and lips part as Dazai pointedly jerks his hips up. Your breath catches over a moan, and Dazai knows that this new angle is affecting you just as much as it is him.

“Mhm,” you agree, and just like that, the thin thread snaps.

He snaps his hips into you so hard that your bedframe bangs loudly against the wall behind it, quickly setting a steady pace, nice and deep, quick enough that you can’t even get a breath of air to your lungs before Dazai is fucking it right out of you. Already, he’s so fucked out that his mind is in shambles, one hand settling on your hip to hold you in place as he thrusts his hips into you, hitting that sweet spot with each stroke while his other hand, still cupping your face, slides down to your neck.

He doesn’t squeeze—wouldn’t dare to cut off the pretty noises spilling from your lips, moans of his names, choked gasps and cries between each rock of his hips—but the fact that you trust him, him, enough to have his fingers wrapped around your throat is always a quick way make him topple over the edge.

His eyes dart down to your chest, realizing, very unfortunately, that you haven’t taken off your button-up yet. He nearly bites down on his tongue in frustration as his hand comes down to your chest, careful to keep the pace of his hips as he hooks his fingers around the first button just to yank down, popping off half of the buttons of your expensive dress shirt and haphazardly pulling it off of you to toss it to the side before fumbling with the clip of your bra.

“Osamu,” you hiss, and Dazai revels in the way your voice wavers with each thrust, biting back moans. “That’s the second-”

You don’t get to finish your sentence. Dazai tosses your bra over with your discarded shirt and dips his head down to wrap his lips around your nipple, tongue swirling around the sensitive bud before rolling it between his teeth, and you’re gone—Dazai lets out a muffled groan around you as your back arches up into him, crying out his name, walls tightening around him as you cum on his cock.

“Oh-f-hah-fuck,” Dazai gasps as he rests his head on your collarbone, grip on your waist tightening. 

He has to physically force himself to lift his head, bracing his forearm on the mattress next to your head, desperate to see the way your eyes roll back, he can already feel himself teetering over the edge—the lewd sound of skin-on-skin, the sloppiness of his cock driving in and out of your cunt, he can feel your cum dripping down his cock, smeared on his pelvis.

His hand slides behind your head, lifting it from where you have it pressed against the mattress. Beautiful—the only thought that can run through his hazy brain is of you and how perfect you are, lips swollen and bitten raw, parted as pitched moans escape them, tears spilling from the corner of your eyes as he fucks you through your orgasm and right into a second. He’s the only one that should ever get to see you like this, with your clever brain fucked right and dumb, body writhing against the bed as you cling to him.

He leans down again, trailing sloppy kisses against your neck, gasping as he starts to feel his high approaching.

“No one makes you feel like this,” he says, or maybe he begs, he’s not sure if he’s making a statement or pleading for you to tell him it’s the truth. “Tell me. T-shit-tell me.”

“No one,” you sob over another moan, and Dazai can feel your pussy fluttering around him—he wonders if he’s already fucked you into a third. Usually, it takes longer. “No one, Osamu, you’re the only one.”

And that’s the only thing he needed to hear to give him that final push. His steady pace shifts into a more erratic one, sloppy and desperate, as he chases a high that’s just out of reach. His moans are muffled against your skin, teeth scraping your collarbone, mind a jumbled mess of thoughts of you. He feels your fingers trembling as you lift them to his cheeks, pulling his face up to press your lips against his, and that’s all it takes: he lets out a wanton moan against your mouth, pressing your legs further into your chest as his hips still against your ass, finishing deep inside of you.

Spots dance in his vision, head buzzing and ears ringing; he swears his orgasm lasts an eternity, body shaking and shuddering above you, letting out breathy moans into your mouth. He can feel his cum dribbling out of you, pooling onto the sheets beneath the two of you, so much of it that you can’t even keep it all in you. 

He doesn’t let his lips leave yours once—the kisses are messy and sloppy, devoid of all of the finesse that the two of you usually have, teeth nearly clashing, tongues sliding against each other’s. 

It’s only when his vision finally starts to clear and his head feels less on the verge of passing out does Dazai finally trails kisses from your lips to your jaw and down your neck before he finally collapses on top of you, mind entirely gone, like he’s floating on clouds. He pants as he tries to catch his breath, eyes lidded as he absently trails kisses along your chest and collarbone. He thinks the world could be ending around the two of you, and Dazai wouldn’t even have the capacity to notice. For the first time in four years, he really, truly allows his brain to rest.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, eyes drooping shut as he lets himself be enveloped by your arms, drowning in the comfort of your scent.

He doesn’t want to know. He’s scared to look at the clock and check.

“Tonight was supposed to be about you,” Dazai finally complains, burying his face in your chest as he pouts.

You only let out a soft laugh above him. “We have the rest of our lives for that… You deserved a break, Osamu.”

The rest of our lives.

Dazai’s throat tightens, vision blurring a bit at the thought—he can only barely bring himself to respond, and the words that slip out are not what he means to say: “I never thought I’d get to be with you like this again,” he admits, voice hoarse. “I never thought-”

“I know,” you interrupt, voice quiet, a bit shaky. “... I know.”

Of course, you know.

He can’t bring himself to say anything else, so he doesn’t, sinking into your arms and allowing himself the comfort he’s deprived himself of for so long. He almost starts to drift off—and god, he can’t remember the last time he’s dozed off willingly, only able to sleep after drinking copious amounts of alcohol or taking an even more copious number of sleeping pills. It’s not until you speak again does he stir back awake from the brink of sleep.

“What did he ask of you? Oda, I mean,” you finally ask, fingers brushing through his dark hair, lulling him further to sleep.

Dazai thinks that you’re cruel, asking him while his mind is still fogged from the exhaustion following his high, and he’s still half asleep in your arms, trying to regain his bearings. The words slip out before he can think twice, forgetting his fear of you laughing at the idea of him trying to be a better man.

“He asked me to be on the side that saves people… if both are the same to me, he wanted me to be a good man.”

The words dawn on him too late; he can hardly bring himself to look up at you, scared that he’s going to find an amused expression on your face or a derisive sneer. He wouldn’t blame you, he’s thought the same about himself ever since he left the Port Mafia, doubt and self-loathing riddling him with every step he takes in the light. He waits for the scoff, he waits for the laugh, he waits for-

“... I think he would be proud of who you’ve become, Osamu. I think you’ve fulfilled his request.”

Dazai does look up at you now, feeling particularly vulnerable, still scared that he might find a mocking expression on your face but he doesn’t. Only an uncharacteristically soft expression is painted on your face as you look up at the ceiling, a genuine one—a small smile and a look in your eyes that makes his heart feel warm. You don’t notice him looking until he lets slip out:

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers. 

(I love you, he means)

“I’ve missed you too,” you say back quietly.

(I love you too)

[dailyadventureprompts]

Ok, so if i'm not playing D&D the "right way" then what do you suggest i play? i don't even play 5e much anymore nor am i trying to start an argument, i am honestly curious. why can a game not have multiple ways of engaging with it, or just be a tool to facilitate storytelling why still having mechanics? Especially when the DMG literally says that there are multiple methods of play beyond the very strict definitions that thydungeongal and txttletale love to beat people over the head with?

I think I might be missing the context of what sparked this ask, but I'm going to do my best to answer it all the same.

First: I don't think you're going to get any sort of agreement between me, thydungeongal, or txttletale over what the one "right way" to play d&d is. (Based off my general impressions without talking to them directly) TDG is going to recommend you focus on stories of exploration and dungeon adventure because that's what the system supports, while TT is going to say that you should play something indie because not only are the d&d rules badly designed but WotC's market dominance is bad for the health of the hobby and the IP has some really iffy race politics.

I'm just as opinionated as those two, but my opinions are largely based around my standards for what makes D&D fun to play either as a player or DM: Is the group chemistry right? Is the narration informative/amusing to listen to? Are the game systems being executed well? Are we intentionally trying to avoid bad experiences/slog? For me D&D is a performance as much as it is a game, and a bad performance/gameplay (no matter what side of the screen I'm on) makes my skin CRAWL. I've been chasing the ideal game of d&d for two and a half decades now, and I'm unwilling to settle for an experience that's just passable.

I have no idea how you're playing d&d, or if the version you're playing (not just rules system, but general execution, way of being etc) is in any way to my liking, so I can't make a judgment if I consider it in any way "wrong". Likely if we did play I'd have some notes, and through analyzing the differences in our playstyles I'd come to an understanding of how I could play the game better.

That's the exact reason I reblog/comment on 5e critical voices: It's my favourite system, but the critiques levelled at it are something I (and I hope my readers) can learn from regardless of whether they're true, or just wrong in an interesting way.

If you're having trouble with how other people are saying a game should be played, ask yourself; do you have a point of view that runs counter to theirs? or do you just instinctively not like people telling you that what your doing is (in their opinion) wrong?

[thelovelydoggycatmadi]

A comprehensive thought dump by two idiots about MCD season 1 upon recent rewatch 9 years later.

Aphblr has lied to me.

for years I have been told that Jessica Bravura’s Minecraft diaries is the superior watch to her other main series Mystreet which is just simply untrue as of my rewatch of the series 9 years after watching it for the first time.

true to the art form and writing style popular at the time MCD is a jumbled mess of things just happening with no clear connection and in some cases direction.

so many wasted opportunities because we are put promptly into the perspective of Aphmau. A character with very little substance and is shaped by the characters around her rather than the characters own actions.

the most interesting characters and concepts remaining firmly in the background. Such as Dale and Molly’s struggle with their daughter being turned into a shadow knight.

Brian’s sudden and barely built up betrayal of his family.

Kiki’s daughter being Zane lets be so real that child is literally just Zianna 2.0 (oh but Madi she’s a werewolf! Idc Cope.)

to Logan and Donna’s love story.

Most characters in the for front don’t talk about there own trauma’s or really anything there feeling outside of there love feelings for or about Aphmau.

Even as the production value went up I find the most interesting arc is the pikoro arc. As it showed genuine comradely between our main characters and established a clear dynamic. Only for the Scaleswind war arc to completely ruin that by making Garroth lose all rational thinking and an extreme entitlement to Aphmau. Writing it as if Zane brainwashed it doesn’t make the uncomfortable and frustration go away.

Zane was a good villain, while motives are fairly unclear he had a genuine presence and had fairly smart well executed plans. (Ein is definitely not a better villain.)

Something that stuck out to me; was how much of the plot probably could’ve been solved with the poorly thought out magic system, specifically Kawaii-Chan.

Kawaii-Chan practices forbidden soul magic and is able to give inanimate objects a conscious. So Lion point out something interesting; couldn’t she just trap parts of the main characters soul in a doll and just, save them incase the worst happens? Imagine what she could do with relics.

Every time Lucinda is on screen I fear what comes out of her mouth. Because I’m just going to ask later “why can’t she just do this?”.

anyway here’s a list of our favorite characters in no particular order;

chicken shamen

Brendan

Logan

Yip

Donna

Katelyn

[todayisafridaynight]

ive seen some people justify IW writing issues by saying the other games in the series were like that too and im like ??? first of all do you not think people complained about the problems in the other games too and second of all do you not want them to keep improving?? such a weird justification to me

i love these games though dgmw i just thought IW could've been so much better story wise 😭😭

my beef with the 'the writing was bad in other games too' defense is that First Off. What-Aboutism arguments are just horrendous in general imo since it doesn't argue anything for the point, it's just someone going 'well This Thing is a thing so This Thing should be valid too' like no !! surprise !! it's still lame and you're not doing anything to convince me it's not lame. right now youre just making an excuse for a thing to Be Lame

and Secondly, since 0 the majority of people have had little complaints about the writing of RGG's latest entries (not that i doubt people have them, but i definitely don't hear them as often as i do older titles and their shortcomings dont feel as obivious as IW's or previous entries). what makes IW's writing stick out so much is that right after Y7- hell after GAIDEN the quality is just so stark you cant help but notice

to top it all off, what really shot IW in the foot was just how much hype was built around it. obviously theyre gonna hype up a game theyre gonna drop, but when they promote things like 'dont play this in one sitting' and 'this is rgg's best game yet', the bar's gonna be incredibly high

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[fideidefenswhore]

"The end of Anne Boleyn marks the more sinister transformation in Henry's kingship which underlay his solemn protestations of spiritual headship and godly reform. Nobody could now call him to account in the sacred or secular realm, and although it goes too far to say that his will was law, since some respect was still due to the judicial process, the legal travesty of Anne's trial and execution shows what his unchecked authority could achieve. It also illustrated the forces which Henry had unleashed by breaking with Rome. From this point onwards, political division would be matched by a level of ideological division previously unknown. Anne had been backed by those who supported religious reform and sneered at papal pretension; her fall was hastened by the efforts of those whose loyalties lay with Princess Mary and the Catholic past. Cromwell had slipped adeptly (and temporarily) from the former group to the latter, and such political reinventions were to remain common, but many continued to be fired by strong religious convictions, allowing religious division to exacerbate political tensions to a dangerous extent." (Henry VIII, Lucy Wooding)

+

"For all Henry's protestations of the contrary, the atmosphere at his court in his final years was almost as unsettled and claustrophobic as during the Wars of the Roses. John Husee answered the charge that he no longer sent reports of state affairs to the Lisles by explaining, 'I thereby might put myself in danger of my life...for there is divers here that hath been punished for reading and copying with publishing abroad of news; yea, some of them are at this hour in the Tower.' Civil order was maintained, but only because Henry sold the bulk of the confiscated monastic lands at rock-bottom prices to willing purchasers to create a whole new class of property-owners with a vested interest in the status quo. Spies and informers stalked the country, safe-conducts were needed to travel abroad and the posts were intercepted-- no one felt completely safe." (Hunting the Falcon, Fox&Guy).

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

Duolingo will try and convince you that practicing for a few days when you feel like you can’t take a new lesson yet is a failure, that you aren’t doing as well as you could and “oh no! The ranking”

The owl lies. I have taken three near perfect practice lessons the last three days because I want to make sure I have the stuff I’ve learned seared into my brain better. If i don’t take a week or two for practicing old lessons I’m going to forget how to spell pharmacy in Norwegian and then I’ll fail a future one. You can’t expect me to just learn new words constantly without brushing up on old ones and NOT forget how to spell something or the word for something else, you dumb bitch. This is about me learning how to listen and read, not about how long I can stay in the sapphire league. The notifications about it are super annoying but I can’t shut them off or I’ll forget when I’ve spent the day doing something different than usual and my schedule is thrown off

[zukkaoru]

ik asagiri said that the anime can do things with timing that a manga can't but like. the pacing of bsd is actually so much better in the manga

[lonelywhalien22]

it's giving legend of korra final season.

[sassysnowperson]

When I was a kid - old enough to remember, young enough that I don't know how old I was anymore - I started telling myself a story. It was a good story, full of grand adventure that made me feel clever and strong and surprising and fun as I told it. And at the same time, I remember thinking...I should stop. There are other things I need to be thinking about. There's homework and chores and all the other life things I need to do. The story is getting in the way. And I'm not really telling anyone about it. It's lonely.

I tried to stop. I did, sometimes. But no matter what I was doing, I kept going back to the story. I told it and retold it, in my head, chasing the feeling it gave me. The story shifted, through the months and years, was joined by another few epics. It was interesting and creative, but still it wasn't entirely in my control. I'd feel - frustrated, sometimes. "If I hadn't started telling myself this story...Imagine what I could be, if I didn't keep thinking about this."

There's two important things I think about now, when I think about then. The first comes in 2016. I'm realizing viscerally how fucked and fucked up the world is. I feel like I can't control anything. So, I tell myself a story. And this time I share it. I write a million words of fic over the next four years. It helps me find connection. It helps me survive.

The second thing is that I got diagnosed with ADHD on Monday.

[be-good-to-bugs]

god the heartcatch op goes so hard

[thatbadadvice]

Help! I'm a Perfect Genius, but This Potential Employer Asked Me a Boring Interview Question!

Ask A Manager, 13 Feb 2024:

I was rejected from a role for not answering an interview question. I had all the skills they asked for, and the recruiter and hiring manager loved me. I had a final round of interviews — a peer on the hiring team, a peer from another team that I would work closely with, the director of both teams (so my would-be grandboss, which I thought was weird), and then finally a technical test with the hiring manager I had already spoken to. (I don’t know if it matters but I’m male and everyone I interviewed with was female.) The interviews went great, except the grandboss. I asked why she was interviewing me since it was a technical position and she was clearly some kind of middle manager. She told me she had a technical background (although she had been in management 10 years so it’s not like her experience was even relevant), but that she was interviewing for things like communication, ability to prioritize, and soft skills. I still thought it was weird to interview with my boss’s boss. She asked pretty standard (and boring) questions, which I aced. But then she asked me to tell her about the biggest mistake I’ve made in my career and how I handled it. I told her I’m a professional and I don’t make mistakes, and she argued with me! She said everyone makes mistakes, but what matters is how you handle them and prevent the same mistake from happening in the future. I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. She seemed fine with it and we moved on with the interview. A couple days later, the recruiter emailed me to say they had decided to go with someone else. I asked for feedback on why I wasn’t chosen and she said there were other candidates who were stronger. I wrote back and asked if the grandboss had been the reason I didn’t get the job, and she just told me again that the hiring panel made the decision to hire someone else. I looked the grandboss up on LinkedIn after the rejection and she was a developer at two industry leaders and then an executive at a third. She was also connected to a number of well-known C-level people in our city and industry. I’m thinking of mailing her on LinkedIn to explain why her question was wrong and asking if she’ll consider me for future positions at her company but my wife says it’s a bad idea. What do you think about me mailing her to try to explain?

Sir,

You have been wronged in the most grievous of ways by a coven of retaliatory, self-aggrandizing women who have failed in the extreme to recognize your brilliance, your talent, and above all, your general superiority.

Of course you should mail this mediocre "grandboss" on LinkedIn to inform her of the deep offense she caused you by interviewing you in the first place, let alone doing so using a boring question — indeed, you have a moral and professional obligation to do so in order to preserve your honor and the honor of scores of men like you who have never done a single solitary thing wrong in their lives, ever.

But I beg you to consider doing more. A single, private message to one incompetent bitch may not convey to the necessary parties the depth and breadth of the situation. Many, many people have important lessons to learn from your experience, and I encourage you to share it widely. Consider making a public LinkedIn post, and ensure that it is shareable across platforms. Depending on your financial resources, a billboard with your name, professional headshot, and contact information could go a long way toward ensuring that everyone in your industry who needs to know just how you handled the way these women treated you, does know about it. I hope that in your continuing job search, you are able to connect with potential employers who have a much better grasp of all you bring to the table.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[sushirrrry]

EXECUTIVE a harry styles one-shot smut blurb; 19.3k words cw: oral sex (f receiving), fingering, dom/sub, breath play, dirty talk.

"If they want the fucking numbers, they've got to stop being pussies and give us the fucking reins. I'm not sitting around and waiting for their stock to crash and for their stupid, fucking minions to come back on me to tell me what I already knew and told them from the start—I'm not painted out to be the biggest fucking moron, that's for certain. It's either a deal or it isn't, plain and simple. If they don't want to have that fucking conversation, it's done. Fuck them and their stupid fucking counteroffer. It's a fucking slap in the face, and I'm not even entertaining the idea."

Harry pulled the phone away from his ear, clicking on End Call before he threw his phone over and onto the wooden desk that sat perpendicular to the vicious New York skyline. His heart raced as he shook his head.

An adrenaline junkie like him fed off of the conversations like these.

His sleeves were pushed up his forearms, his eyes navigated towards the contractual wreckage of paperwork that had seemed to be forgone on his desk as he pushed some of it to the side. His elbows leaned on the desk; his hands tied together as he rested his lips again them in a precocious thought.

Running the company came with a sharp tongue and a knack for knowing when it was time to push back. Harry was a mogul in all of the sense of the word—his company had grown to a gargantuan size, which allowed his position within the business to skyrocket to a level that was so without fail that he couldn't believe it sometimes.

His mouth got the better of him; in some ways, it created the effervescence of attack. It was all that he could do to keep himself from picking the phone back up and telling them to shove it all back up their ass—he refrained for the time being, until he was pushed again.

But no one usually poked the bear unless they truly believed they had a chance in slaughtering them. Mr. Styles was far too confident in his work and his business to ever let that happen.

The bear's claws reacted too quickly for the barrel of the rifle to even face him.

"Uh, excuse me, Mr. Styles?"

His eyes raised to the door that he hadn't seen opening before his lips parted just a bit to answer the woman questioning him. She wore a black skirt with tall, black boots that suited the length of her legs. Her top arranged in a bit of a messy manor, but it was almost as if she had styled it that way to add a bit of flare.

Her blazer hung a bit low—practically to the mid-length of the skirt that rode up her thighs, but he wouldn't have been caught dead staring. In public, anyway.

His eyes made their assessment of her quickly before returning to her naturally, raspberry lips that took up much of her lower face. The natural length of her smile was perfectly proportioned, not that he had spent much time thinking of it, of course.

Felicity—his assistant. The one with eyes the color of the ocean that he would vacation on in the Maldives; the most piercing, stunning blue. The quiet one, a bit shy in her reservations, almost like she was the smallest fish in the ocean made entirely of sharks. Her reservations to others seemed to aid in bulldozing over her confidence, but to Harry, it was an enticing spectacle of fantasy.

A fantasy he'd promise to never share with even his closest comrades, if an NDA wasn't in place, that is.

The dark brown locks settled against her back in heaps of loose, voluminous curls as she held tightly to the phone behind her fingers.

"Am I interrupting?" She asked, her question a bit hesitant as she didn't seem to move any further forward into the large space of his office.

"No—no, you're not," He told her, "Come in, Felicity, I need to use your brain for a moment."

"My brain?" She asked him, cocking her head a bit.

That was the thing about Felicity that almost made him foam at the mouth– her way of innocence and contemplation that allowed him to see his viewpoints from her standpoint.

Harry's company was outsourcing most of the global news which meant that he oversaw several departments within. His leadership was only as good as the recommendations and guidance that Felicity was able to provide him; her devil's advocacy, her interpretation of empathy, and being able to see how interactions happened without Harry present versus the other sense.

Felicity was a practical need in his company for various reasons, not one to just make his blood boil and frantically move around his veins every time he caught a whiff of the coconut lime scent that his mind had become familiar with.

She was a calmness to him in many ways, so her presence now settled his heartbeat from the previous conversation.

"That deal we're making this afternoon, I just got off the phone with Sadler and they're folding– they're becoming weak. And it's pissing my off. They're coming to me to help solve their issues, because they know I can do it. They're , but they know we'll do it. Which pisses me off because it makes us look weak if we just say yes."

Felicity blinked a few times as she watched Harry's reaction, her legs crossed at the feeling before she held her hands in front of her and nodded.

Harry sucked his lips into his mouth before he shook his head, a few of loose curls settled on his forehead as he pushed them back and Felicity wished that he hadn't.

"I think you're going to push them to do it without the counter," Felicity nodded. "From what I'm hearing, they're folding, and they can see that what we can provide is significant. Especially in terms of the election. We can do it– you can do it."

His eyes flew to her word change, noticing that her eyes had moved away from him. The subtle blush of pink ate away at her cheeks before Harry nodded in his own satisfaction.

"Enough about me," He shook his head, "What did you need, Felicity?"

Her eyes raised as it seemed she came back to conclusion about what she had been there for to begin with.

"Oh, I just talked with Nava at PLI and they wanted to express their gratitude towards you, because they said that you helped them with understanding the fundamentals of their offer and I thought it sounded like a for-sure deal– I just wanted you to know that Nava is a yes," She nodded and raised her brows again in remembrance, "Oh! And I'm also running to pick up some coffee and snacks before the board meeting. Flat white?"

Harry smirked at the praise from her, watching it leave her lips effortlessly. He nodded a few times at her question before he rose from his chair and grabbed the tie around his neck to loosen just a bit.

Harry grabbed the paperwork off of his desk before he moved towards the door and guided Felicity to follow. "Yes, please. A flat white with cinnamon, maybe a pump of caramel? What do you think?"

The words were like a question as Felicity walked next to him through the natural, brightly lit office. Her fingers tapped away at the device before she noticed the slight edge of the spicy cologne that wafted from his demeanor as he turned his head toward her.

"I'm not a huge fan of caramel," She stated a bit hesitantly as they stopped in front of one of the offices where Harry was about to go into a meeting.

He looked at Felicity as they stopped, his eyes moving up and down as he went from her lips to her eyes as if involved in a game of ping-pong.

"What do you like, then?" His words were soft, fluid.

Felicity swallowed as she shook her head a few times and nibbled on her lip. She hummed for a moment, "Um, I prefer vanilla."

The corner of Harry's lip moved upwards. "Make it a hot flat white with an extra shot of espresso, cinnamon, and a pump of vanilla, please."

Felicity wrote it down in her notes, but her fingers almost shook with adrenaline as she felt his gaze linger on her without her noticing before she nodded. "Great. I'll– uh, I'll leave now so I can be back in time to make sure you have what you need."

Her feet started to move away before she heard the booming sensation of her name. The way that her eyes fluttered back at him made Harry almost take a step backward.

"Uh," He felt speechless at the sudden look of her, "Please get whatever you need, too." He felt the professionalism start to creep its way back in. "Can't have you falling asleep on the job, you have notes to write."

Felicity bit the inside of her cheek before she nodded. "Yes, sir."

With that, Felicity turned her back and started to head down towards the elevators. Harry turned to make his way into the boardroom where he saw the table sitting and waiting for his arrival.

The hush that fell over the crowd made him shutter every time– the power he held echoed through his conscious at every moment it could.

He only smirked as he sat at the head of the table, pulling himself to sit up and lean on the table before he looked up to see the many eyes staring back at him.

"Shall we get to work then?"

__________________

"This coffee is fucking cold."

One of the board members pushed it away after taking a small sip, as Felicity had just sat it down in front of him.

It was an older gentleman– Hank– who had worked with the Styles family for many years and been able to help SCO with their major launches with other shareholders. His entitlement was present in the room, which pressed on her ego just a bit. Her head turned towards him as she shook hers.

A woman at the end of the time made a face as she looked at the side of the cup, "Ordered a fucking latte—they even messed it up and it's cold. The coffee shop is just down the block."

Felicity tucked some hair behind her ears as she shook her head in a bit of disbelief as she tried to find the receipt that the coffeehouse had given her. There wasn't any way that they gave her the wrong order, but she didn't know if there may have been a mix-up in who she gave the coffees to.

"T-That's impossible—I just order—" But she was cut off by the man who licked over his lips and held his hand up to stop her words from even echoing in the room at all.

"Just go get some hot coffee, would you?"

Felicity's eyes blazed around the room as she noticed that the others had practically ignored her efforts of the two full cardboard contents of coffee cups that she had practically run the streets of New York to pick up. Not only were they not even acknowledging her, but they were condescending in her efforts. Yes, she was an assistant—she wasn't their assistant. It wasn't her fault that she was one person, but she knew that she had to try harder to make the best impression that she could.

"Everyone just shut the fuck up and drink your coffees, would you? Our deadline is in six fucking hours. If you can't handle a little lukewarm coffee, get the fuck out of my office. I pay too much of your goddamn salaries for you to cry like a fucking baby."

Harry's eyes moved to the nervous-looking girl who stood by the door, along the edge of the buffet that held the rest of the coffee, donuts, and bagels that had practically been falling out of her arms when she arrived.

He couldn't tell—it may have been the lighting, but her eyes looked glassy as she tried to stand with her shoulders back. Harry caught her attention before she threw herself back together and walked over towards him, leaning down to where he sat at the table.

"I can run to go get something else, I don't think it would take too long, you know. Or I could order it to be delivered?" Felicity asked, a bit cautious, he could tell. But her piercing blue eyes were practically a shade of gray as he looked at them through her thick, tortoiseshell glasses that complimented the brightness of her eyes.

His eyes fell to the way that the chapstick she always applied gave her lips the most subtle peony color—so pink, but so natural. He thought that may be a better place for his eyes to land instead of directly into her eyes, but then he panicked for a moment and turned them back to her eyes.

"That's not necessary." Harry shook his head, answering for the individuals in the room. Even if they pushed their coffee aside, Harry would have never blamed it on Felicity for any failure—it wasn't her fault. He took a sip of his own; to his dismay, it was a bit cold, but he wasn't going to complain about it.

The stature of Felicity at the door made him take in a deep breath before he caught her attention, asking her to come towards him with just a look before she was practically on top of him. Her willingness to do as he said gave him a feeling of endorphins that were unlike any he had before.

Harry looked up at her from his seat, licking over his lips softly.

"Please make a reservation for two at The Malbec tonight at nine—whether or not these jackasses are going to be done working, I sure am, and I'm going to celebrate it. Add that I would like the executive seating and the Pauillac on the table, not chilled."

She nodded a few times at his requests, adding it into her notes on her phone before she looked back at him cautiously.

"Should I be arranging a car to pick someone up for you?" She asked. Her teeth scraping against her bottom lip as she waited for his response.

Harry shook his head back at her before filing through a few papers, "Not necessary today. Just make sure that you're not off the clock yet," He nods, "In case something doesn't go as planned."

Felicity nodded at the feeling of his eyes on hers before he turned to face the table before him.

"Someone get John on the phone," Harry ordered, his eyes going towards, "Hank. I want their numbers for the day and the plan for the fiscal year. I want to hear it from their lips, the spreadsheets don't mean shit if they're just going to lie to my face. Mary, contact PLI to get their rates."

Felicity had started to make her way towards the door, back towards her desk that sat in the main office towards Harry's own private one, before Harry called her back, "Felicity, sit in this meeting, will you? Grab your computer."

Her eyes narrowed at him in a bit of confusion before he stood up and grabbed a chair from the side of the room and pulled it to the spot next to where he was, at the head of the table.

Felicity did as he wished, leaving to grab her laptop and notebook essentials that she used to keep track of his days, his weeks. When she arrived back, she could feel a few eyes on her as they talked through the deal with John. The silence in the room as he spoke over the speaker was deafening before she sat down at the spot next to Harry.

His focus on the conversation made her attention turn towards him.

Working at SCO was one of Felicity's highest honors—she felt that her confidence was gained just by being in the room with some of these people. But, at the same time, she wondered at what point this would all get to her. She wasn't like this—she didn't have the same cutthroat mindset of tearing another down to get herself to another place.

In some respects, that's what was the balance between what Harry was and what he knew that he needed. He needed someone like Felicity to sit next to him—a calming sensation that he didn't ever notice until he would garner a sniff of the coconut shampoo that drifted from her silky chestnut hair.

It was sickening at times—the way he felt about her. When he was sitting next to her now, he watched as she let her fingers grace over the laptop keys, focused in on whatever task she was working on. His eyes moved away when he watched as her teeth loosened on her lower lip, letting the plumpness of it a drawback to a straightened line of her mouth.

He shifted in his seat as he felt himself get a sensation of pressure below the belt.

When he spoke, it was with a confidence that she couldn't seem to place. It was as if he could break and make with just words alone, a skill that he had to have been born with.

As they discussed the offers more in-depth, Felicity found herself distracted from her own work as she let her eyes gently maneuver back to where Harry sat at the end of the table. Her fingers practically stopped typing as she listened to the conversation and watched as his brain work in overtime.

It wasn't just impressive; it was extraordinary.

The narrowing of his brows, the calculated glance at the table as if he could cut through it with just his sight, the determined clench of his jaw.

"Don't fucking low-ball this," Harry practically snarled as he tapped the point of his pen to his notepad. "I know what's best for this company and we don't want people who underestimate the work and quality of our services. Globally, we're ahead of the entire market– we beat out every major network in significance. If you truly want to hand us a shitty number like that, you'll fucking fall. Your company will fail, and we will continue to sit right at the top as you lick the dirt off our shoes. It's not a competition; we've already won. So, do you want to win with us? That's the question here."

There's a slow chuckle on the phone, a bit of silence, too. Felicity looks up from her laptop to watch as a few members whisper to one another before hearing John on the other end.

"Listen, it's– we understand this. SCO is globally leading, but this is an election year– how are we supposed to gain traction when the news sources from SCO are against the current climate? We just don't see the same vision right now and we need to make sure our values are aligning– SCO may not be leading once the election happens."

Harry's eyes don't dim– Felicity watches as he turns different, his focus staying on the notepad under his fingers as he takes a beat before he stares at the phone in the middle of the table.

Her leg crosses under the table, gently caressing his unbeknownst to her. His eyes falter for once, as she retracts her position when she watches him crack for the first time. She noticed that he faltered but only a small huff of his breath before she bit her lip.

"We're a multi-billion-dollar company that focuses on the current political climate at hand since we completely understand the market, unlike someone who needs to be bought out to ensure that they don't sink. If you're just sitting in the open water, we will look the other way when a shark comes by," Harry shrugs, "I don't quite understand your vision of understanding moral compasses when you're sitting on significant lawsuits and company fouls that don't seem to benefit you right now or the lying, cheating words that come from your mouth."

Felicity's eyes flew up from her place at the table, watching as she saw everyone else's down. It was an unmistakable feeling of vigor that suddenly oozed from the place of Harry's seat. His demeanor was powerful, it was penetrable.

The quietness over the phone doesn't seem to faze anyone else, but Harry's eyebrow arches at the seconds that go by before he pops his tongue into the side of his mouth with a cheeky grin that was questioning on mad.

"Looks like they just got eaten by that fucking shark, huh." He says quietly before leaning over to press onto the conference room phone. He ended the call before he watched the room continue in silence.

Another woman, Laura, sitting at one of the sides spoke up as she held her phone in her hands.

"It looks like they're countering again." It was a bit quiet, almost like she didn't want the entire room to hear as she read on her phone before looking up at Harry, who held the emotion of a bear.

"Tell them they can choke on their own spit." He bites before Felicity cleared her throat.

His eyes immediately softened at the way that she interrupted, mostly because he was a bit confused by it.

"Mr. Styles," She pipped, "I—I, um, if I may." She chews on her lip a bit before she takes in a breath. "It sounds like they're needing a bit more leverage. Maybe a bit more face-to-face interaction that will cut and garner the deal. You're going to need more than John's input; he needs more intel from other aspects to understand what their losses look like."

Harry's eyes simply rest on Felicity as he leans back in the office chair, his legs crossed—a pursed pout on his lips as he nods at her words. A trickle of egotistical pride lies beneath his chest as he stares at her for a moment.

"Set the scene for me." He tells her, before watching Felicity take a deep breath. He watches her chest fall and rise and something about it sets him into high gear.

"Your family started this from scratch—this company is bigger than just the cash flow, and it's completely understood that it's worth billions, but they need to understand that there's a larger purpose for the work that they've put into it. They're not on the same business level that SCO is—it's apparent by the way that they throw around their value system. Meet with John outside of the office setting, get him where he can be able to see that you're serious without the psychological barrier of the phone—"

"That's fucking bullshit." Felicity hears from down the table, another man making a comment about her complete train of thought that. "You really think business is about emotion?"

Harry narrowed his brows, Felicity a bit surprised but not completely. Her head turning back towards her computer.

"You need to be thinking internally for what's best for us, not babying them to give us what we want. You know they're going to fall right into our hands, we don't need to get soft on them." Mary, a woman that Felicity generously thought would at least have an understanding of her interests, seemed to shame her more.

Harry pursed out his lips as he stares at the notepad in front of him. He pushed his hands against the table to rise from his seat before he's raised, watching silently as he eyes Felicity quickly before he starts to make his way out of the room. Before he does so, he turns his back and holds onto the door before he looks at Felicity directly.

"Felicity, please meet me in my office."

She swallows down the lump in her throat; cursing herself for even making a peep. She knew she should have kept her mouth shut. Instead, she closed the laptop before she grabs the few belongings and makes her way out of the door.

Harry is steps ahead of her, not looking back, as they make their way to the office that sits in the north side of the larger office space.

When he walks in, he makes his way to his desk before leaning on it. Felicity walks in behind him, hesitating before

Harry notices that she hasn't fully made her way in yet.

"Come in," He tells her, "Take a seat."

Her words practically spilling out of her as soon as they reached the threshold of the door; there was nothing that she could say now that would make him keep her there, but she wanted to at least try.

"I-I know I overstepped my boundaries– I promise, I really do, I promise I will never do that again," She's holding the laptop against her chest, practically begging, "This is extremely unprofessional, but you need to know that I need this–"

"Do you know why you're still here, Felicity?" He asks, "Why you're still at SCO?"

His interrupted words make hers fall short as she stands at the door still. His arms are holding himself practically against the desk as he leans back against it.

Tears threaten her eyes as she tries to think of what she needs to pack from her desk quickly. This feels entirely too personal– he's firing her on the spot.

She shakes her head as she doesn't want to come up with an answer. Harry squints his eyes a bit as he notices the emotion that starts to creep on her face. All the sudden, he feels bad for what he's doing to her.

It feels a bit forward, maybe a bit out of his place. But he needs her to know exactly how he feels about her, and why the last assistants never stuck around.

He needs her to know that's she's different.

"It's because you're fucking smart," He tells her, "What you have, they lack. You have this– well, for lack of a better word, you're emotional. You can see beyond the bullshit and really down to the person." He points towards the area of the conference room that they just left.

"I'm not here to baby your ass or carry you through this job– you don't need this fucking job. You have so much more about you than being an assistant, okay? So, don't take what some fuckers in that office say about you and your ideas as gospel. They aren't getting it done, either– as you can see."

Felicity's demeanor loosens at his words; her knuckles along the laptop at her chest starts to loosen as she breathes in just a bit.

"I'm sorry–"

"Stop apologizing." He orders, "When you do that, all you're doing is making them right about you. They aren't."

There's a silence between them for a moment before Felicity nods a few times and bites at her lip. "You're right."

"Most of the time." He tells her, a smirk has replaced the seriousness of their conversation. "That's why I have this big office and a 300ft. yacht and they don't."

She follows with her own small, sided smirk, watching as he goes to move from his position.

"That sounded very cocky, I'm sorry." He laughed a little bit, lowering his head as he felt a bubble of laughter. Felicity followed behind, laughing a bit as she bit on her lower lip.

The tension had been cut; this overwhelming feeling of comfort had started to come across her, specifically when Harry looked back up at her and she could see the shining level of his green eyes and the deepening dimples crossing his face.

It wasn't an emotion she saw very often; it looked impossibly lovely on him.

"Stop saying sorry, remember?" She reminded him, a sheepish smile laying on her lips.

Harry moved his fists into his pockets as he started to walk a bit towards her.

It was then that Felicity recognized that his pure power and force was enough to knock her down to her knees. The way that he stood up, his suit tailored perfectly around his small hips and shoulders, she couldn't understand the feeling that had come over her suddenly.

Harry approached her, they were standing eye to eye as he searched between them both. He had been searching for something, surely, by the way his eyes moved between her own.

Felicity tipped her chin up a little bit; it was slight enough that they both noticed, but a sudden embarrassment crossed her thought at the way she had possibly invited a completely inappropriate behavior.

"Let's get back in there, yeah?" She clears her throat as she turned her head and body, moving back out towards the conference room.

Harry's fists tightened next to him at the way she moved away, and he couldn't help but shutter at what could have possibly happened moments ago.

He lowered his head before he shook it a few times, "Yes, of course," He confirmed, nodding at her, "I'll follow you back, I'm just going to," He felt himself getting hot which made him feel vulnerable to her stares. "I'll be in there in a moment."

Felicity turned, her hair falling over her shoulders before she nodded. "Yeah, no problem."

Before she was able to move out of the room, Harry caught her attention once again before he narrowed his eyes to her. "Can I—that reservation I asked you to schedule. Please move it to Friday night. Something's come up, actually."

Felicity made a motion to speak, but she didn't end up with any words. Instead, just nodding a few times, her eyes smiling back at him as she agreed to his request. "Sure, no problem."

Her smile had vanished from his view as she turned to walk back to the conference room.

When she noticed that she was out of sight, his eyes had widened just at the breath that he had been holding in. It didn't matter how big or important a meeting could be, Harry never got nervous. He was never worried about anything—he knew what he was getting himself into, and nothing scared him. There wasn't a reason to be.

Standing in front of Felicity was a feeling he had never imagined would give him a doubt; he never felt like he would be pushed away or turned away, and the feeling of dismissal was encapsulating, to say the least.

He pushed his hand into his hair as he went to sit in the chair that was pushed in behind his desk, swallowing the lump in his throat as he shook his head.

Never in a million years did he think that he would feel such a way—never like this.

"Let's get back to work, then."

_______________

It had been a few days since the encounter in his office. Harry had noticed that even the next morning, Felicity seemed to be in much better spirits. Her head was held high; her shoulders were sitting back, like she was prepared to keep her chin up for the day.

He could catch glimpses from his office, watching as she typed away or smiled down at her phone. A piece of him felt only the slightest bit of—he didn't know the feeling very well—jealous. He wanted to know more, wanted to understand what she could have been smiling at.

He knew that his job had been done a few days ago as he watched her spirits rise just at his words. Something about that feeling was missing now—he didn't understand what it was, but his ego may have been getting in the way just a bit.

Harry sat his pen down that he had been using to write out some tasks before he grabbed the pad of paper and started to make his way out of his office. The small desk that sat outside of his was taken by Felicity; a few photos and memorabilia sat to give her space a bit of light and personalization.

It didn't mimic Harry's own office very well, as his was kept more straightforward and narrower. There wasn't any photos or personalized mementos—just plain, really. But the photo of Felicity and another man caught his eye, something he had never really seen before. Something he never felt that he would have had to pay attention to, that is.

"That your boyfriend?" He felt himself saying, but an ultimate feeling of embarrassment rose as he watched Felicity look up at him quickly. It was clear that she hadn't really noticed him sneak up on her, and her hands flew to the phone on the desk before closing the screen promptly.

"Uh," She shook her head, "I—I mean, we've been talking a few months," She referenced to the phone before she looked back at Harry and noticed that there may have been a bit of miscommunication.

"Oh—uh, no, sorry," He shook his head, pointing to the photo that sat on her desk. "I was—that photo, I'd never seen that before."

Felicity turned her eyes towards the photo that sat on her desk in the black frame before letting out a breath of relief. "Oh! No, that's my brother." She laughed a little bit before she watched Harry reach out to grab the picture frame off her desk.

He studied it for a few seconds, letting his smile move up a bit before he sat it back down. "Yeah, you guys look alike. I just—it was new, so I didn't know."

Felicity bit on her lip before tucking her hair behind her ears, "No—yeah, I would make that assumption, too. It's fine, but yeah." She didn't know that he would notice that she set up the photo or not. She knew now that he paid attention; he had an attention to detail, it seemed.

The small moment gave Harry a bit of concern as he felt that there was some unresolved feeling between the two of them. He cleared his throat, holding the paper out before her as she piqued at the small task guide that Harry had been feverishly writing down.

"I have a few things that I need to get done today, if you don't mind." He had handed her the paper before her eyes ran over it a few times. "It's just a few little things, but I need to have a few suits dry-cleaned for our business summit on Monday in England—I'm flying out tomorrow morning on the jet, but we'll need to make sure that everything is taken care of for that. I believe you, myself, Laura, Hank, Daniel, and probably William will be there, so we'll need to make—"

"Excuse me, but," Felicity chuckled before shaking her head a few times. "Did you say me?"

Harry blinks a few times in confusion before he bites the inside of his cheek. Surely, she knew that she would be leaving in the morning– she had to have known that as his assistant, she would be most responsible for being on the trip.

"Uh, well," Harry blinked, "Yes, I mean. of course. You're the most vital person for the trip, really."

Felicity bit into her lip before she turned towards her notes, her eyes flickering over them as she realized she wouldn't need to send him a detailed email of their agenda– she'd be there to tell him in person. So, all this work—it didn't matter now.

"Right– yeah, of course. I'm stupid for not putting that together." She shook her head as she took in a sigh, crossing out a few notes on her pad. She turned her attention back to him before she cleared her throat. "What time should I be at the airport tomorrow, then?"

Harry bit his lip, shrugging as he felt the smile crossing his lips, "I don't know—you tell me. You're my assistant."

Felicity blinked at him a few times before laughing out a little bit, letting her head rest in her hands as she felt a bit ridiculous for feeling so caught off guard. "Right—right. I—yeah."

In the back of his head, there was a delicate feeling of intrigue that bit at the back of him. He squinted his eyes a bit as he settled against the edge of her desk. As he crossed his arms over his chest, he narrowed his attention down to Felicity until she looked up at him and felt the wandering look. All Felicity knew is that she didn't want to look at the way that his forearms protruded against the fabric of his pressed white button-down.

"Is everything alright?" He asked her, the smile on his lips tug briefly before he was letting it fully on display. "You seem a bit... caught up."

She blinked a few times, shaking her head as she looked at her computer screen. "I'm fine—yeah. I'm just—I was a bit caught up, I guess," She chewed on her lip as she realized that getting personal was just that. It was personal. She didn't want to bore him or let know too far in. Their relationship was strictly business; it seemed that she endeared him though.

Her eyes traveled back to him when he didn't seem to leave her alone and she noticed that she'd had another message.

"I'm just... the guy I've been seeing, well, on and off—he just asked me to dinner and he's picking me up from here tonight around five. We haven't seen each other in a while, he's a bit..." She bites her lip again as she tried to find the right word, "I don't hear from him often. But when we're together, everything is fine. So, I guess I just got a bit overwhelmed with it."

Harry pinches the inside of his bicep when she speaks, his smile fading just a bit. He didn't want her to notice that, though. He didn't know why, but it left a sour taste in his mouth to think that she had been excited for someone who was making her wait. Instead, he shifted a bit on the desk as he cleared his own throat before speaking.

"That's—that's great," He tells her, watching as she smiles at his appreciation and acceptance, "Where is he taking you?"

"We're just going to this place off from fifth avenue, some place he said is nice. We're really just meeting for a beer or something." Felicity's eyes light up at the realization before she turns to face him a bit head on now, her chair swiveling around before she crosses her legs and faces him. "What about you, though? That reservation I made for you tonight—who are you meeting with?"

Harry's lip parted as he remembered the reservation.

He remembered the reservation he had moved to tonight, simply so that he could flesh out a few details with Felicity over a dinner with just the two of them. Of course, he hadn't mentioned it to her. It was stupid of him to think that she wouldn't be busy on a Friday evening, of course. He had wanted to talk to her about the upcoming week; maybe get a little more out of her if everything was off the record at a dinner that wasn't going on the company credit card, but his own personal dollar.

Harry shakes his head a bit before he scratches at the back of his head, "Uh, right. I—I might need to cancel that. I don't think that's going to happen anymore."

Felicity watches his expression before she seems to mimic with a bit of somber. "Oh. Sorry. Tough subject?"

When he pushed himself from her desk, he placed his hands in his pockets before he hung his head a little bit. It hadn't occurred to him that the disappointment had been a bit stronger than anticipated-- and it wasn't just because he always got what he wanted.

"Hm, something like that," He tried to explain before he changed the subject to get it off his mind, "But yeah. So, dry-cleaning and all that can be finished before the morning, yeah? If you have any questions about any of that, I'll be in my office. Meeting at one and then I'm going to leave here around five."

Giving him a warm smile, Felicity nodded her head at him, watching as he turned to his office.

Her attention fell back to her phone; falling back to the smile and giddiness that had been so rudely interrupted by a different kind of feeling—one that she wasn't so sure she was supposed to enjoy, in that way, anyways.

_______________

The black Suburban pulled up against the curb; Harry's phone against his ear as he moved towards the vehicle in a fluid motion.

A driver had opened the door before he crawled in the back seat. The call on the other end had been a business call that he was supposed to listen in on; he wasn't going to speak, just listen to the meeting of what was said. He decided it had been enough and clicked it to end before he looked up and out of the window.

His head turned towards the door before he watched Felicity standing at the curb. She looked uncomfortable as she stood and had her eyes searching for whatever it was that she was looking for.

It was a little bit past six then; the rest of the day was filled with a meeting or two before he really started to get more work, letting his head get wrapped up in taking calls and finishing off emails before he would be away from the office for a bit.

This was how they left each other on most days; his car pulled up, and he usually drove away before he could notice if she caught another ride or if she headed towards the subway. Her eyes were searching— almost like she had been waiting for something or someone but didn't want to seem disappointed. Harry could feel it in his chest—he could feel the way that she stood with her arms crossed over her chest in a bit of distress.

It had occurred to him then that Felicity had mentioned that she was supposed to be picked up around five—a full hour ago.

The rain had started just a bit, enough that she quickly looked to the sky for a moment as if to curse it.

He watched as her phone fumbled in her hands. A discerned look on her face made him halt the driver before they could start pulling away. Harry watched her, the knowing look on his face as he rolled down the window to call out towards her.

"Felicity," He stated, opening the door before he stepped out. "Come on, get in."

Her eyes looked to him, practically mortified. Her head started to shake a bit before he moved out of the car just enough that she noticed his offer was serious and that he wasn't moving. The door was open now as he stood outside of it and held it open for her.

"Let's go– it's raining." He said, squinting a bit as the rain started coming down a bit more.

It seriously took Harry a moment before he realized that it may take a bit more for Felicity to listen to him; her contemplation didn't last long as the rain started to hit the cement loudly—her papers and bag held over her head as she made her way towards the open door of the large vehicle.

Felicity's heels clicked against the sidewalk as she hurried into the back of the van, crawling across to the other side and trying to keep her skirt down as she realized he would be coming right behind her.

There was a brief pause of silence when the door shut behind Harry.

Once they were situated in the backseat, Harry looked at her for a moment as she seemed a bit out of sorts. Her eyes were on her phone as she cleared her throat.

Her eyes were narrowed down as she searched through some texts, a bit all over the place it seemed. Harry knew Felicity better than this, and her nerves were starting to overwhelm her hand, almost like she was completely unsure of what was happening right now.

"Do you just—do you mind dropping me off at fifth ave—" She had started, but he was already shaking his head.

"He's not showing up, so no. Peter, drop us at The Malbec."

Her head turned towards him at the bluntness of his tone and the way that he resisted her need. The way that he answered her was unlike he had ever spoken to her; that caught her off guard the most.

Felicity flipped through her texts once again before she scoffed out, "Harry, I have a date tonight. I'll just get a car from there—"

"No, you won't." He told her, before situating himself in the back. The way that her hair had a bit of windswept to it, the length of her lashes, the complete blush of her cheeks—it was all enough for him to generally bust at the seams.

Seeing her like that was a wake-up call as he looked away and tried his best to be a gentleman.

"I'm off the clock, so my duties are relinquished for the night." She told him sharply, giving herself a bit more voice before Harry really glared at her this time. He had never heard her speak to him in such a way, but something about it gave him a mouthful to bite from.

"Don't fucking talk to me like that, I'm your boss." He told her; his eyes seemingly turning a darker color the more she stared at him. It was enough for her to scoff and turn her head out of the window as they had started to drive up towards the restaurant that she refused to go to.

Harry spoke again, this time a bit softer. "It's just dinner. No work."

It takes a moment before Felicity leans into the window and lets her head rest against the glass. The feeling of the coolness takes over before she shuts her eyes for a moment. It doesn't feel like she wants to cry, but maybe there's a bit of emotion that she can't seem to let go of.

The disappointment aspect was never good to her; that was how this always worked. Something always disappointed her. There hadn't been a moment when she felt comfortable or safe—no, really, she just wandered around in this life with so much hope. So much hope and very little pride, now.

She lived for the hope of it all.

When they made their way to the restaurant, it had started to rain a little less. It was merely a sprinkle before Peter pulled off to the curb closest and the two of them were able to get out.

Felicity was instructed that she could leave her work items in the car, bringing only her purse as Harry followed behind her. When they walked into the restaurant, her eyes widened at how fancy it was—the dim lit lights were much brighter than the sky had been at this time of day, especially when the clouds rolled in.

The host was able to take them directly to their seats—the ones that Felicity had made the reservation for. It was an intimate seat; two chair and a small table that were seated close to the window, but enough away from everyone else.

The Paulliac was on the table as instructed; the host pulled the chair out for Felicity before she was able to take a seat. The only reason she would have ever been to a restaurant like this is for a work event. The host sat menus in front of them before giving them some space.

Harry pushed his sleeves up on his forearm; the littering of tattoos on him was endearing to Felicity's eye before she looked away at the attention she was drawing to them.

"Wine?" He asked her softly, taking the bottle from the table and holding it out in a means to offer her some. She had agreed, nodding a few times before looking at the menu and the items on it. Surely, she couldn't pronounce half of them before she looked up to see that Harry had been looking at her already and her cheeks grew rosier.

Felicity felt that there was a tenseness now, like she didn't have too much to say. She didn't want to say too much and bore him, she didn't want to not say a word and feel the awkwardness that seemed to linger as they sat longer.

"I mean, since we're here," Felicity grabbed the phone from her purse as she scrolled through it, pushing her hair out of her face to tame it a bit from the frizz that the rain caused, "So, just to recap some new additions to the calendar, you have a dental appointment next Monday, a meeting with PLI at 10—"

"You said you grew up in DC, didn't you?" Harry cuts her off, his question making her turn to look at him with a solid glance before she starts to nod a few times. It was a bit unwarranted, but she decided that she would settle into it.

Felicity doesn't know why his soft voice seems so foreign from the bitter sound of his usual bite.

"Y-Yes, yeah, I grew up in Northern Virginia, actually." She gives him a solid answer before she licks her lips. Her hand moves to grab the wine glass, taking a solid sip before she places it back into its spot on the white knit tablecloth.

Harry nods at her simple answer, not necessarily looking for anything else. His head was filled with the worked he had been processing through the week, and something about this felt... warranted. He wanted this to be normal; to feel like she could see him from a different perspective, maybe, without less fear in her eyes.

Something about her makes his blood boil with a derailment—it's almost like he can't seem to read her, which makes him angry and animalistic, almost. He doesn't know why but he feels a bit shy in her presence.

Her eyes read over the menu before she clicks her tongue, "Anything on here that you would recommend?"

"You have any food aversions?" He asks, pretending to look over the menu as if he didn't already know what he was going to order.

She shook her head, not really thinking of anything. She knew that there were foods she didn't particularly enjoy, but she knew that if something was going to be expensive, she would put that aside to at least try.

When the waiter came by, Harry took initiate to order for the table– the two of them. He ordered an entrée, three appetizers, and a spring salad. Felicity listened as he did so, knowing that he knew what he wanted and when he wanted it.

She couldn't relate to that; not these days, at least. She didn't know what she wanted, so she pretended not to think about it most days. Instead, she recognized that not putting the pressure on it made it feel like it was enough; she had to understand that she was okay to be a bit unsure at times.

The restaurant has a crowded chatter amongst the guests, but Harry can't help but pay attention to the silence of the table instead.

"So," He pulls at the tie around his neck just a bit as he leans towards her at the table. "I'm thinking of possible meeting with PLI, in person. Like you mentioned this week, at that meeting. Something about looking someone in the eye might be the best approach and making sure everything is clean."

His eyes lifted to meet hers, watching as she took another sip of the wine. Her eyes were placed now on her hands that laid in her lap.

"Thought this wasn't a work dinner." She mumbled out, but suddenly caught herself, "But yeah– yeah, I think that would be good."

Harry pressed his tongue into his cheek, tilting his head a little bit as he heard her questioned statement. His frustration at not being able to read her was posing a threat to his mood before he shrugged a little bit, "It doesn't have to be, but you are kind of quiet, and I feel like I made you uncomfortable in the car. Or something."

"I'm not uncomfortable," She lied, "I'm– I don't know. I'm just a bit thrown by the events of the evening, and I think men are kind of preposterous right now. Please don't take that personally, and really, no offense or anything."

Harry shrugged, his lips turning downwards as he contemplated the truth in her statement, "None taken. I may agree with you, but," He licked his lips, "Can we agree that women are sometimes a bit..."

As he hesitated for a moment, Felicity spoke instead. "I would suggest that you not finish that sentence, probably. It sounds like the beginning of an HR concern."

Harry lifts a brow in curiosity from her argument that seemingly pushed her a bit out of the boundaries, "You can speak, but I can't? Don't believe that's a fair view of how you think women should live in society, is it? You want fair treatment, so I'm going to be honest with you."

"I didn't limit you from speaking, I just suggested that you should not. You can definitely say whatever it is that you'd like to say to me, Mr. Styles." Felicity shook her head a bit, tucking her hair behind her ear. The way that she said his name always made him a bit woozy.

There was a moment when Harry wasn't completely sure that he didn't see the glimmer in her eye—that he didn't see a sparkle that may have been a fleeting moment, just a quick nod to him before it was gone forever, making him look mad for even thinking it in the first place.

"I will say it, then, if you're willing to listen," Harry told her, "I think that men and women aren't usually equal—nor should they be," He paused for a moment before he watched as her facial expression started to contour with a confusion so loud that he was certain the chefs in the back could hear. "I think that we live in a balancing act. For instance, the guy that you were looking to see—sure, he's probably an asshole, but you continued to want to see him. The pendulum works both ways. Maybe you shouldn't have wanted to meet up with him."

Felicity scoffed out a breath before she took a sip of the wine again—she could feel that there was a growing fuzziness that she wasn't able to keep up with. "Oh, you're giving me relationship advice now?"

The way that she bit when she had a bit of alcohol in her made Harry's eyes turn a darker shade of green that was unable to be noticed by the dimness of the restaurant that sat in. It was much more direct than she ever had been with him before; he wondered if this was how she was normally.

"I like to think I have your best interest in mind." He tells her with full honesty, feeling a bit bare with the truth laying flat on the table.

There is a moment that Felicity feels her heartstring tug, wondering if he meant it to hit her as specifically as it did. But she clears her throat when she watches the way that Harry refills the glass of red wi the out her asking for it, noticing that he fingers tremble when he grabs the bottle.

"I— I really do appreciate it, like, what you– I mean, you probably don't remember, but just this week with the whole coffee incident–"

Felicity is cut-off, by him, but she can see that the anger peculates off of him as he recalls the incident, "I hate that they think people are below them like that. It bothers the shit out of me," She can tell that the thought bothers him; his eyes narrow down as he takes a sip of his own wine, "Yes, it's your fucking job, but it's also not worth their time to be shitty to you for something you can't control. And you couldn't be nicer, grateful, kind—"

Harry's cut off by the food coming to the table. He shakes his head at the possible embarrassment he may encounter from the softness of rambling he had started to portray about some of her highest qualities.

The dinner that came out was exceptional— nothing less of what Felicity could have imagined. It was top-tier; the wine that was paired with it made her giggle a few times when Harry would go on rants about the way that he thought some of the companies ran. He would start the conversation with, 'off the record' and she would smile about how he could keep their conversations low.

It wasn't until she had told a soft-spoken jab about how she believed that he needed to stop hiring old, white men that she noticed that his dimples were parallel on either side of his face. They lit up his features, turning his eyes the color of a southern sky.

When they had finished, Harry took the check with ease and signed his name in capital letters, as if he wanted everyone to know that he had spent the amount of money at dinner that she spent in a month of rent.

Harry placed his hand on the small of her back as they maneuvered out to the car. The street was starting to become a bit crowded, especially at the door for the wait. Harry had texted his driver to make sure they could be picked up, which again, he made sure to open the door for her as they flew into the backseat.

Felicity told the driver where she needed to go; back to her apartment that sat on the upper West side of the city. It was close to Central Park; a few blocks away, she'd say.

There's a moment when Harry feels that he doesn't want the night to end. He surely doesn't want to watch her leave— that's for sure. The car ride is spent with him catching her glances as they watch the lights in the city pass by; the honking of the cars and the putter of rain starts to encapsulate the backseat.

"Is this good for drop off?" The driver asks, looking in the rearview mirror at Felicity before she nods, agreeing with a soft yes, and starts to collect her things. The items she had brought from work were still in their place.

Harry watched as she goes to speak, knowing that it was going to be a goodbye. He would surely see her in the morning, but he couldn't bare the idea of flying across the ocean, staring at her across the seat from himself, without any words left unspoken.

"Uh," He shifted a bit in the back of the car, Felicity could see that he was looking up towards the building that she called her own. "Do you actually mind if—uh, I really have to piss."

Her eyes widened a bit before she let her own lips widen into a smirk. "Oh— yeah, please."

It hadn't occurred to her until they were walking up the steps and into the building that she may have had some underwear on the floor and could potentially have a sink filled with dirty dishes— she couldn't quite remember.

But what she did know was that Harry was following in her steps as they climbed a few flights until they reached the third floor.

"Quite a workout, huh?" Harry puffed as they reached the front door to her specific apartment.

"Hm," She hummed, "Imagine having to move all of my furniture up here. I had to ask random men on the street to help me."

Felicity digs into her purse before she's able to find the keys to the front door.

"I don't want to be super nosy," He looked around the small vestibule that they were standing in while Felicity tried to find her keys—even though the purse she held was naturally quite small. "But is there any reason you live in a place that resembles a prison?"

Felicity chuckled out a laugh before she found the small keyring and tried to put it into the lock. Her hands were a bit unsteady—the wine was holding the buzz over her as she steadied her hands to unlock the small door.

"This is what livable looks like in New York," The door swung open; Felicity moved into the tiny apartment before placing her bag on the kitchen counter. "Maybe I need to have a discussion with my boss about a raise."

It wasn't the smallest apartment, but it was exactly what she needed. There was no storage space, but there was a separate room for each need—living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. She had a small working office in the corner by the balcony that she had been lucky enough to score from this specific unit.

Harry looked around the place, his eyes feasting on every detail. "That can probably be arranged if I can be certain that you won't get mugged getting into your front door."

He noticed how lived in it felt—the opposite of the cool, modern, high-end penthouse he would resort to later that evening. Everything was painted a different color of beige, keeping the lightness of the empty place very noticeable.

There were photos on the walls, painting and portraits, there were words that resembled some of her favorite music and books. It was colorful and there were plants that were seemingly a bit out of control.

"The bathroom is right there, by the way." Felicity pointed, before Harry turned towards the small room to his left.

"Thanks." He stated before he moved into it and shut the door behind him.

It was the same reaction he had to the living room and kitchen; his eyes narrowed in on the details of the shower curtain and the small bottles of serum that sat along her sink. The way that her toothbrush was bright pink, matching the towels that hung on the wall.

There were delicate parts of her that he was certain she wouldn't have told him about because she didn't think that it mattered. But in the long run, he liked the bits of color and the pieces of art that hung next to her sink.

It was a detail he hadn't really thought about of her before.

When he had come back, he stared at her position in front of the sink. Her sleeves were rolled up as she washed a few dishes that had been sitting there. Her heels has been removed, but the jacket and the short skirt still hung from her delicate frame as he watched the way that she focused on a task.

She noticed that he was looking at her now before she gave a small smile and felt that he wasn't in a hurry to leave.

"I would offer you something to drink—I mean, I would offer you anything, but I'm not really," She looked around the kitchen. "I have coffee and vodka. And not like," She scrunched her brows together as she looked in her fridge. "Not good vodka. You would look down on me if I served you this, kind of vodka."

Harry let his smile tilt up a bit as he meandered into the small space of the kitchen. If she was offering him anything—

"You really think I'm that much of a snob?" He smirked.

Felicity huffed a little bit as she turned her head towards him, "The wine we drank tonight was $600 a bottle."

He doesn't say anything for a moment before he tilts his head a bit and shrugs off the comment. He wonders if she thinks of him differently—not for being her boss, but for having a high taste. Possibly the earlier of the two, too.

"I grew up that way, I guess. It's hard to decipher what's normal." He tries to explain to her, which makes her look at him with a mockery of a face. Her eyes roll with a smile, and he gives her a look of disdain.

She goes to respond to him, but instead he moves his body practically over top of her back to grab the vodka that sits on the second shelf of the fridge. It's a bottle that cost Felicity about $12.75 just the other week, and it has a good amount still left in it. Harry holds the neck of it in his hands before he looks at it and sets it down on the counter.

"Lemons? Juice? Anything?" He asks; taking the liberty himself to look through one of the cabinets to try and find himself a glass. Felicity stays still for a moment before she's able to grasp the magnitude of the situation.

Her boss—Harry Styles, CEO, is standing in her kitchen and trying to make himself a cocktail with her $12.75 vodka that she had bought at the bodega just a few days prior. He's perusing through the cabinets—the few that she had—before he turns to her.

"Uh, I have a bar cart." She tells him solidly, before she moves her way into the living room where the car sat. Her head is feeling fuzzy, and she wonders if adding the vodka to it will make her completely lose all faith in herself. She has a feeling it will make her say something absolutely ridiculous, to him of all people.

Felicity grabs the shaker, two glasses, a lemon from one of the small bowls that she uses for décor but also for moments like this and makes her way to the kitchen where Harry has already taken the ice trays out. When he looks back up at her, he nods back to where she came from, her eyes following his gaze.

"Go sit on the couch, let me make you a drink." He tells her, "You had a long week."

"I'm going to be completely honest with you," She folds her hands together before he looks at her with a bit of a concerned look, "I don't know if I like the roles reversed like this."

He gives her a smug smile before he turns back to what he had been doing previously; now filling up the shaker with ice before he poured a few seconds worth of vodka into it.

"You think I'm a stuck-up prick," He tells her, "Let me show you that I'm not, will you?"

The statement that he left on his lips settled in the air between them; Felicity blew it away as she breathed outwards and just nodded in place. She suddenly became a bit meek before she made her way back to the sofa where she settled into the cloudy cushions, sitting with her legs underneath of her as she tried not to flash anything from her skirt. She heard Harry mixing the cocktails in the glass shaker, shortly before coming out with two glasses in his hands.

He hands over a glass that looks solemnly... clear. Maybe a bit too clear, but she felt satisfied to know that he was trying his best to make a spot in her world. She didn't have to climb to his level, he was trying to stay at hers.

"To..." He trailed off as he held his glass up to her. The small loveseat that they sat on felt incredibly intimate all the sudden.

"To... London?" Felicity stated, "To having to be up tomorrow at five, but continuing to drink even though we can get to London."

Harry laughed at her words before he clinked his glass against hers, "To London."

The way that his accent wrapped itself around certain words held her attention briefly before she was able to take a sip of the cocktail he prepared. Strong wasn't the word; overkill may have been more like it.

"Holy fuck," She coughed softly before she felt a sting in her eyes, "That's—please never go into bartending."

A subtle look of offense took over his face as he went to take a sip of his own before he widened his eyes at the flavor of it. "Oh, shit. Yeah, wow. That—that'll do some damage."

Felicity started to laugh at his own reaction before she sat the drink down on the coffee table and watched Harry do the same.

"So, to brief then," She stated, "I believe that it's still true that you're just a stuck-up snob who can't do anything on his own, including making a cocktail."

Harry stood up for a moment but took offense to her comment. He started to remove his jacket, which only intrigued her—it meant he was staying a while longer. "Hey, to my defense, your fridge is very, very sad. There was not much I could have done to make this better. If you're going to drink vodka, at least buy a decent brand."

Felicity tucked the hair behind her ear, "I'm here to make vodka Sprite's, okay? Not martinis," She leaned against the back of the sofa, "And there you go again with being the rich snob."

It was annoying to her that he had decided to roll up his sleeve, just enough on his forearm that she was able to see the tattoos that weren't seen very often. Seldom, really. In the office, she would notice that he would be focusing on something in his office, his sleeve rolled up a bit, but that was the extent of it.

It seemed there were many more up his arm than she had initially thought, but she knew that she would never see them all.

When he went to sit down, he went to move the throw pillow behind his arm, but as he did so, he noticed something black against the white couch cushion.

Immediately, his fingers flew to the item before he lifted the lace that held his attention quite mesmerizingly. Felicity gasped at the realization before she grabbed them from his hands, absolutely mortified didn't even cut it.

"I'm so embarrassed," She finally spoke, almost trying to blame the redness of her cheeks on the strong beverage he gave her. She knew that it was the inflammation of her dignity, not the vodka.

There wasn't a word spoken before she watched that his expression changed surprisingly. He took a long sip of the vodka drink before setting it back down.

But the smile that follows from the cocktail is all she needs to see before she can smile back.

"You continue to surprise me," His words were placed with a package of slurring vocab before he swallows back anything else he'd say out of pocket, "I'm going to be very honest that I didn't imagine you as— I mean, I never imagined you in lace."

"You say that like you imagined me in something else." The words that came from Felicity weren't her own—she didn't know why she said them, but his quick rebuttal shut her up completely.

"Silk, probably," He uses his finger to touch the rim of the rocks glass that he's holding, where the condensation made a drip over the dress pants that situation themselves over his thighs, so lucky. "Or—I mean, you could surprise me even more," He went quick after a moment.

Silence. Protruding silence that is viciously capturing them in this haze of only breath that either of them can hear. It's uninterrupted until Harry leans his head back and the creaking on the sofa fills Felicity's head, rather than the idea of what's to come.

She had felt it before; the warranted tension that Harry seemed to have over her. Maybe it was her fault for leaning into it, but sometimes, she just couldn't help it. The way that he found himself taken by her was just unspoken most of the time. She was surprised that he wouldn't have pulled anything at dinner, but she could fill in the blanks as she invited him up to her apartment.

It was inevitable, she thought.

She shouldn't have done that, but should not's were not what she was thinking about as she drowned herself in the alcoholic state of the sour vodka that wafted of lemon juice and baited words.

Instead, Felicity blinked a few times, watching as he stared at the ceiling. The blankness of the pure white ceiling seemed to keep him grounded before she watched his jaw tighten.

"You're full of surprises, a lot of mystery, you know?" Harry breathed out. The tie around his neck was getting tight, but he couldn't loosen it now—if he was being honest, it was adding to the pleasure of the moment. He wouldn't speak that out, but while the tightness caused a bit of discomfort, he thought of it in other instances. "I'm not sure I can keep up with it."

There was an unresolved tension in the words he spoke, maybe even a bit of slur in them before Felicity followed suit; her head resting practically next to his as she stared at the blank white ceiling that had very little to memorize or stare at.

"What fun is a mystery if it's solved?"

He wasn't sure if she saw—he wasn't sure if she saw the way that his eyes fluttered at the thought of uncovering every instance of mystery that she kept hidden away, in this small apartment. The air was starting to become lost on them, feeling like the oxygen was being pulled as he breathed. The shakiness of his breath was caught by her when she turned her head—she wished that she hadn't.

All she could process was the way that his eyes stared upwards, lips parted in an unsure manner before she watched his eyebrows knit in a deep thought that she couldn't seem to interpret. But this pique of interest held her as she kept her eyes on him—he could feel every deep breath that she tried to mask.

"I don't know if you knew this about me," He quietly stated, "But I really can't handle the unknown."

It was then that his head turned towards her; the distance between them was much shorter than he could have thought. He didn't notice until his eyes directly moved towards the way that her lips curved in the small bow, the one that he had known so well from the number of times that he couldn't keep his eyes from her. But this was different; this held much more tension that he couldn't believe.

This time he could smell the liquor that lingered on her lips that mixed so well with the cherry of the chapstick that he knew she applied generously. He would watch the way that it slid over the lips as he sat at his desk and wondered what was on her mind.

"You're very good at getting what you want," Felicity breathed, watching as he shut his eyes for a moment. It was as if with every word she spoke, he was closer and closer to the edge of something great.

Her eyes traveled to the way that his legs sat just open—they were just waiting for someone to notice. Felicity swallowed at the idea of sitting between them, on her knees. Sitting there with her eyes laying on him; he took notice of her tense shoulders and her harbored through before he sat up just a bit. He scooted himself back on the sofa—Felicity blinked at the way that he invited her with just the flicker of his eyes.

No words needed to be spoken when the look could speak for itself, but the way that he speaks breaks the barrier of silence.

"How good am I at getting what I want?"

The heavy eyes that she held were only staring at his lips and the way that he spoke—the flicker of his tongue over the satin maroon of his lips. She couldn't contain herself, because she knew that his aura was a force to be reckoned with. She had seen it up close and personal; she knew that everything that he did was because he was in it one hundred percent.

He didn't half-ass anything—not a report, not a phone call, not a meeting, not a thought.

Everything Harry did was with the full intensive purpose of being the only thing on someone's mind, body, and soul.

Felicity trembled in the spot next to him, but her legs urged to move themselves. Her brain wasn't moving as fast as her decisions; and in an instant, her knees lowered to the spot in front of him. Her hands settling on the thick of his thigh as she allowed her eyes to hold his. For a moment, hesitation crossed his face, but she could have mistaken it for vulnerability.

The way that he breathed outwards was enough to make her gain the strength of a thousand horses—the talk that he talked wasn't as strong now, she felt a sensibility of pure radiance from her actions.

"I'd say you're the best at it, really." She let her hands settle on his thighs, but she took them away so she could drop the blazer down her arms. The tight white t-shirt settled against her frame as he watched the way that she pushed her brunette locks from her shoulders.

But his being felt incredibly taken by the way that she slowly moved—she wanted to savor every moment of this, he could tell that she was being critical, slow, and putting together each piece of herself in front of him.

That's what he thought at least, until he recognized that there was a tremble in her hand when she went to grab at the belt buckle, he barred. His hand flew to hers when she touched it; almost annoyed at himself by the look of terror that he was faced with as he knew that she had felt pushed away at that.

Instead, he pulled at her to stand up in front of him, between his legs. She did so with ease but a bit of confusion laid on her face as she stood with her hands by her side, Harry's eyes dancing along the figure—the divots in her thighs, the way the skirt just held to her so beautifully.

He let out a whimpering sound before he let his hand fall to the tightness of the front of his pants. Instantly, the pleasure trigger was pulled, and he knew what he had gotten himself into now had to be completed. It had to—he never did anything half-assed.

"Go put your heels on," He instructed her, watching as she stared at him willingly.

"A please would be nice." She tutted back, letting her lip fall into the curve of a smile.

Instantly, she knew that this wasn't a game anymore—this wasn't a fun, hushed little game of pleasure with nobody watching. She knew that the way that his eyes changed at the blink of an eye, the way that his jaw tightened at the statement: and the clear smirk on her lips faded.

"I'm not asking you," He sat up a bit, "I'm telling you."

Felicity had been used to being spoken as such; her memory fading into a moment, but her barriers kept up as she understood that her body was reacting only to the way that the words flowed from his mouth. She knew there was safety in his tone, she could see it by the way that he had stared at her with these stolen glances all night.

Instead, she followed his direction, moving back towards the door until she placed the black heels onto her feet again. They hurt just a bit from wearing them all day, she had to admit. But they made her stand taller, firmer against the fake wood flooring of her apartment. She wondered why the downstairs neighbors would think, as it became later at night.

"Come here," He told her, holding her wrist when she got close enough. He pulled her back to the place in front of him. She stood taller now, his nose practically at her bellybutton as she watched the way that he pulled her close.

Now, his hands lay on the outside of her hips, the sides of her thighs. She shuddered at the feeling, knowing that this was the first time she had been touched by him in such a manner. The musky scent of teakwood and spice drifted from the curls that settled against his forehead, she was sure of it. She could feel the heat of his breath just above where she needed him most as she stood close to him, right between his legs as he sat on the sofa.

"Do you know how many times I've thought of you like this?" He practically choked on his words, quiet, "So fucking beautiful."

She breathed out a shaky breath, holding onto every ounce of madness that she had collected over the past few moments.

"How many?" She asked him. Harry stood up, letting her take a step back as she felt the prominence of him now-- how he was a bit taller, even with her heels on. Every part of her ached—so unfamiliar to her, this feeling of need and want. It was a sensation of desperation that she hadn't known before; her inner monologue was flooded with dangerous prose as she felt his fingers cradled onto her jaw.

"More times than I'd ever be able to count." He told her, his voice deep and sharp as he pushed his hips forward. She walked backward a few steps, he followed in her lead like a waltz before he pushed her pelvis into the wall, holding it there with his own.

"You're going to be my good girl tonight, aren't you, Felicity?" His words were practically a whimper as he let his lips slide along her own; the tremble of her quivering lips made him shake in his own anticipation. "You love to listen, hm? That's why you're always taking my orders and assisting me? Getting paid to do what I say?"

It was always obvious by the pink of her cheeks and the timid ways of her soul that Harry could see right through her. From the moment she arrived on the job to the way that she completed everything task with ease; every job, every plan he needed executed, she followed in righteous order.

It made him proud, to say the least. She ran the company better than he did most days, but she didn't get half the recognition.

Until now, surely.

Her eyes nearly roll back into her head at the foul play of his words; the way that his eyes follow down the path of her lips, his thumb mapping the path down her chin before he grabbed it between his thumb and index finger.

The villainous smirk on his lips can't be seen by how close they are now.

"Does saying 'Yes, Mr. Styles' make you wet, Miss Carter?"

The question rolled off his tongue as he watched her minuscule behaviors; the way that she practically shivered against the wall made his eyes move to the way that her knees bent in just a bit.

His mouth turned up to the side as he realized that his was right yet again.

Felicity groaned in the back of her throat as she let it tip against the wall. He was practically on top of her by the way that he stood, his knee was pushing her knees apart before she was able to protest any of it. Not that she would've; she knew that it was about to turn into an evening that she couldn't have truly imagined if you had asked her just hours before.

"You're getting shy on me, again?" He remarked, but this time, it was paired with some loose kisses along her neck as he used his hand to cradle her jaw enough that she was pressing into it with ease. "What happened to that smart mouth, hm?"

Felicity ached as she breathed—her body pressured against the wall was her own doing, practically to keep herself from overwhelming herself. If she leaned into him too much, she wouldn't be able to breathe at all.

"Yes, Mr. Styles." She bit her lip at the words coming off her tongue.

She could feel that the instant gratification that came from him was filtered through the stare that he barred towards her; the way that his nose brushed against the lobe of her ear as he practically fell into her graces with three simple words.

Harry groaned at the feeling of her pressed against him then; her brain sparked a few times, trying to remember how it felt before this. How reality felt. This wasn't reality in the slightest; this was a dream.

"Tell me," He urges her, "What was his name?"

She lets her eyes wash over his face as she notices that his strength and need have put him into a trance of pleasure and further need.

"Who?" She questions.

"The guy," He lets his lip gently caress right between her chin and lip. "The guy you were supposed to see tonight."

Felicity remembered how the evening was supposed to go—her interest completely lost in that game, when this one seemed a bit more daring and fun. It felt that she was seen here; like she had been stared at for quite some time, ogled, maybe.

"Uh, S-Sam." She choked out as she felt the way that his hand pinched at the small of her waist, almost like he was trying to make sure she didn't leave.

He hummed softly before he tipped her head back, the simple press of his nose moving her head against the wall. "Fucking loser."

Her mouth instantly felt his—a righteous moment of complete satisfaction bundled beneath her. It was the first time that his lips had laid into hers, moving gently against one another as they fit perfectly in sync. It wasn't too rough—just enough to know that she was in the hands of someone who knew what she was asking just by the way that his body moved. He could read her body and react to the fact that her chest may have been pressed against the wall a bit too much, so he pulled back to give her room to breathe.

The way that they flew through her bedroom door was just as shocking to her as it was to him; it made a much larger noise than she anticipated as they practically flew over the threshold and into the creamy white sheets of her—thankfully—made bed.

He landed on top of her in the heat of the moment. Their lips stayed attached through it all, almost like they were making up for all the lost time over the years. His tongue gently caressed over her top lip, which elicited quite a whine of surprise from her.

Her hands flew to his necktie, trying to loosen it before Harry grabbed her wrist—hard enough that she barked out a whimper.

"No," He told her sharply, watching as she hesitated underneath him. Now her hair was feathered out against the bedspread, her light eyes were catching every glimpse of her. After a moment, he looked at her softly, knowing that she didn't understand the game that he was about to play.

"We are going to play by my rules tonight," He told her, watching as she pushed herself up towards the headboard. He followed her lead, letting her hands rest on the back of his head as she tried to kiss every inch down her neck. "And I have a few notes you need to take, got it?"

Felicity tried her best to stabilize her breath as she was given a moment away from their lips touching to catch it. She licked over her lips, feeling her heart pounding along her chest before she nodded against the bed and the linen comforter that laid underneath them.

Harry sat up, his hair a bit of a mess, the clothes on his body were practically ripped from the front where they had been neatly tucked. The growing need for her was obvious as he felt the tip of his cock struggling beneath the waistband of his belt. The friction made it quite hard to concentrate on what his plans had been, but he knew that he had to be firm with his requests.

"First," He instructed, "The safe word is poetry."

Felicity's eyes stared at him with quiet focus as she nodded a few times to try and understand that. She hadn't ever been with someone who needed to use a safe word in any sexual act, so she struggled to wrap her brain around what that could have possibly meant. But her actions continued to nod as she wrapped her arms around his biceps to try to bring him back to earth. The idea that he had to bring it up intrigued her.

"Second," He pulled at the necktie around his own before he loosened it enough to grab and throw off of his own neck. His hands moved to place it around her own, helping to move the hair from her neck so that it could rest comfortably around her own. "I like to use props. Are you okay with that?"

Felicity felt her heart beating steadily in her chest for a few seconds before she nodded her head. He watched the innocence completely take over her face as he smirked at the all-knowing tale of it.

"Third," He bit on his lip as he moved down to let their foreheads rest along each other, "I need to hear you—no nodding or shaking your head. Consent makes me feel good. And when I feel good," He kissed her once again, a quick one this time, before his voice quieted so that it was just between them. "You'll feel even better. Okay?"

Felicity breathed in a deep breath before she tried to use the voice that had been drifting away from her. She didn't feel in her body like an echo of a voice had started to take over instead of her words. But she let out a rasp of a word, "Okay."

Harry nodded a few times, knowing that with her eyes, he would be able to continue, but only if he was able to talk her through every part of it. He didn't know her experience level or what she was comfortable with, but he knew how to make pleasure the only thing that would be on her mind for weeks. Hopefully, it wouldn't be the last time he got the opportunity.

"This is—uh," She looked at the ceiling, feeling like an idiot for starting to speak before she shook her head, and watched Harry give her a look of confusion. "No, sorry. Nevermind."

"What is it?" He questioned, hoping that something he had said hadn't scared her away. She took in a breath as she thought about how the wording could anger him—maybe it would stop whatever was happening, which she didn't want to happen now that they were in the midst of it all.

"I—uh, I mean, like, are you okay with this?" She asked quietly before pushing up on her elbows. "I—do I have like, sign something?"

Harry raised in brows in a bit of a humorous way that only made her cheeks grow red with shame at her silly question—in all honesty, it wasn't silly, but Harry was giving her a hard time about it, anyway. He bit on his lip as he felt the smile that was threatening to overcome his entire face.

"Am I supposed to be worried that you're going to tell the Daily Mail that I have a huge cock?"

"Harry!" She covered her eyes, floating back onto the comforter, "Nevermind—maybe I'll tell them it's small, though, if you don't stop being mean. I'm just trying to protect you."

"Aw," He tutted, putting his thumb over her bottom lip, but his eyes had grown a bit darker—the way that they had been a bit earlier. It was almost an illicit reaction; the way that he spoke to her, was so filthy with each word spoken that made her melt into the bed. "Dare you to say that to my face when you're choking on it," He pressed his hips into hers then, knowing that she would react to it. Hers moved upwards into him, just as he had intended, "I'm not worried about an NDA in the slightest bit."

In a teasing manner, she scrunched her nose and playfully spat back, "What if I tried to steal all of your money?"

He pressed his hands next to her head on the bed, letting her eyes look directly into his as he spoke, hoping his voice didn't falter: "You can have it all. Take it."

Something about it should have made Felicity giggle—almost like they were joking around. But there was a way that his sincerity felt more like a proposition than a source to cut the tension of their achingly needing bodies against one another.

Her body seemed to enjoy the way that he stated the smooth words, as she let her hands fall into the brunette curls that settled on the back of his neck. It didn't take long for her to pull him closer, letting her lips graze over him in such a frustrating manner. She was completely built up, her could feel the way that her thighs trembled against him.

Pushing her legs open, Harry pushed the hem of her skirt up her hips so that he could find a home between them. In doing so, flashing the baby pink of her lace panties only let his blood flow faster and faster.

"I bet you've soaked those, hm?" He tuts, pressing his nose into her cheek ask he lets his hand knowingly move to the place he speaks of, knowing that he's right. Again. "Sam doesn't know what he's missing, does he?"

The teasing was becoming a bit too much for her—waiting for his fingers to move faster, she moved her hips a bit to try and get herself the pleasure she was trying to search so desperately for from him.

Harry notices the way that she tries to squirm, and he smirks at the reaction he's giving her; knowing that within every inch of her is building up a tension that will release. It will be like a dam that overflows—a satisfaction that will be so worthy of the cost of admission. He can't help but notice, can't help but watch her need.

He can't help but know that he's going to fuck her into an oblivion so dark, the stars will be lost in space. She doesn't know that yet.

Instead of being mean, he decides it might be better for him to give her what she needs—what she's been so kindly asking him for with her pretty hips and her pretty lips.

"On your knees," He tells her, watching as she moves underneath him. She wiggles around until she's on her stomach; the necktie gets him harder as he watches it dangle from her neck like the apple in Eden. Every part of him wants to take the bite—not yet, oh, not yet.

When she does this, her back arches upwards, and Harry's knees settle on the bed as he hovers above her and watches the way that she submits to him. Every word he says she listens—he can barely handle it anymore.

In an instant, his hands reached the bottom of her skirt, pushing it up to fully show the outline of her ass in the cheeky pink lace. It's always been known to him that she would wear something so pitifully scandalous under those black skirts, but he couldn't have imagined it would be like this.

Her pretty face has been folded into the creamy duvet, waiting for the touch of him to send her into an implosion.

All he wanted was to taste her—to make all of the thoughts he had prior feel like they were significant and they were able to be adhered to. He wanted to make her feel like she was the most special person on the planet; like she could feel every inch of him, and she would be thriving in that thought for the end of time.

This may be a one-time occurrence, and he wanted to marvel in it. He wanted her to enjoy what she didn't know could be.

Harry's hands pulled at the pink lace, wondering how lucky he was to be able to enjoy this sight—and what a sight. The wetness of her folds only made him salivate; made his hungry eye a darker shade of green before he dove his tongue directly into her, licking up the mess he had already made of her.

The soft whimpers turned into moans as she practically lurched forward—the initiation hardly bearable as she scrunched her eyes at the feeling of pleasure. The warmth and invite of his tongue pressed against her, lapping her up and into a pitiful puddle. When she felt the nudge of his finger, she gasped at the feeling of him; the duo of his tongue and finger sang together in harmony like a choir of angels.

"Oh, fuck," She quietly moaned out, holding herself on her elbows as she grabbed at her pillow for a bit of leverage. She felt him hum into her, his nose gently brushing against her as he pushed her ass up to get further towards her clit which hungered for his touch, as did his tongue.

The taste of her replenished him, making his heartbeat faster as he felt the stringent feeling of tightness along the dress pants that held him in. Without letting his tongue go without, he used his hand to swiftly throw the belt from the loops of his pants, unbuttoning them quickly and without another thought.

"Fuck, you taste like I thought you would. So fucking sweet." He stated, pushing her ass out of the way when he pulled back. He threw her down onto the bed so that she would be looking up at him. The girl was fully dressed still, just with her skirt pushed up—underwear a bit haphazardly thrown to the side. The rose-colored cheeks threw him as he used his hands to pull the skirt down her thighs.

"Get naked." He ordered, watching as Felicity's hands moved to throw the t-shirt from her body as he requested, leaving her in her panties and bra. Harry threw the white button-down of his from his chest; Felicity got a bit distracted by the way that the tattoos generously scattered over his body. She swallowed back her intimidation as she held herself up on her elbows.

In a swift motion, her panties and bra were thrown onto the ground, leaving her in just the necktie like Harry had ordered for her. She hadn't even quite noticed that he had been rid of his own clothes, her eyes wandering down but not wanting to stare as she noticed that the smirk on his face was ever present.

"Think it's still small?" He asked, with a chuckle as he pulled at her knees, moving her down towards him.

"Maybe smaller than I'm used to." She played back, biting her lip at the intrigue of how he'd react. His arms grabbed at her waist before he threw himself down onto the bed.

"Ride me, then. If you think you can take it as good as you say." His words spit out before Felicity could think too much. It had been a while she had been in this situation, with a guy in her place, at least. Her hand reached over to the nightstand to grab a condom, Harry nodding in appreciation for the gesture.

Her hunger and desire for this became a bit more active as she was now in the driver's seat, moving and manipulating her body to sit across his lap. If she would lie, she would say that it was smaller than average. But unfortunately, she was taught to always tell the truth.

It was much bigger—especially as he rubbed his hand down himself, a gasp of air baiting out of his lips before he looked up at her in a state that could only resemble pleasure.

Harry rolled the condom down his length, watching as she settled into his lap. Her legs settle on either side of him before he looks up at her. The blazing fuzziness of his mind from the liquor has started to cease and is replaced with a hunger of desire for the brunette instead.

"Pretty, pretty." He tells her, watching as she looks antsy enough to move, but he pulls her down to kiss her, anyways. It's a moment that he knows he's taking away from her, but he needs some form of interaction from her. A small detail of need that overcomes him.

His hands steady her hips above him, holding his cock up to her entrance before he watches her hips move down to encapsulate him all—her movements are slow as she throws her head back in an unsurmountable pleasure that she quite practically leans forward against him to catch herself from falling.

"Fuck," He grunts, shutting his eyes just at the way that the blood moves directly to his cock at the feeling of her wetness. She's completely drenched and open and ready which makes her so sensitive and barely capable of words at this point.

Her hands steady herself, holding onto his chest as he allows her to take the lead on what she needs. But he can tell from the look on her face that she's having quite a hard time collecting herself—almost like she's quite unsure of what to do with the power that he's given her to be on top. It's not him pitying her, but him wanting her to enjoy the experience.

So, maybe, in another life, this can happen again.

"Baby," He choked out, shaking his head at the way that he knew it was the wrong choice of words, "Felicity—let me," He grabbed the small of her waist as he sat up quickly. His arms pivoted them so that he could throw them back around on the bed. It wasn't to take anything away from her, but to give to her more than she was giving to herself.

"Let me do this, yeah?" He joked with her, letting his lips kiss along hers, biting and nipping and finding small ways of showing her that the softness of him was still there even in the darkened eyes and furious gasps.

His body readjusted, his hips pushing into her in a more fluid motion. This got her to gasp, a breathy one that he liked hearing—those were the ones that were out of pure pleasure and satisfaction; ones that he felt drunk on.

In a way, this felt a lot different than before. The overhead light of her bedroom was soft; there was a significant dimness to it. He wasn't sure if it was because the room was small, but it felt like there was a intimacy that he had been missing before. His eyes tilted upwards to the paintings and lines of movie quotes that lined along her bedroom wall. There were framed simply and held color and brightness to the space, which distracted him for only a moment before he was able to lay against her.

The necktie around her took his focus back.

"I'm going to play with you a bit, is that alright?" He asked her softly, biting at his lip before he found himself pressing into her hips. His hands grabbed at the necktie before letting them start to tighten it around her neck. " 'Member you words, hm?"

Felicity whimpered out at the coax; nodding her head, "Please—please."

Harry sat up at the request, happy that she was using her words in this sense. He readied himself; thinking of what he needed to think about to try to get himself to a different place. He didn't want to cum too quickly; his cock was barely holding on as it was. The friction of her sweet wetness was enough to make him fold again and again and again.

His fist moved to grip at the knot of the tie, pushing it upwards until it hit at her chin. She raised her head, almost to give way to the pressure that it held against her. She was only briefly capable of speaking a few words, but she was taken with pleasure at the way that her breathing was manipulated.

"Breath play," Harry practically reads her mind as his hip's diver deeper into her. The feeling of her legs at his ribs, practically around his body as he feels the back of her ankle into his back. "Your words, baby."

Felicity took a deep breath; Harry moved his hand so that she could take it in more. He wanted her to feel the wooziness, the daydream-like feeling of the high that it could bring her. He wanted this moment to be special, for her to remember that she was in the most requitting love affair. That she was taken care of, adored, seen.

At the end of the day, Harry wanted to make sure that her jaw was cradled, her lips were kissed, her eyes were stared into, and her breath was taken away.

His hips snapped further, her moan sounded like a small mew before he sat up a bit straighter, loosening his hand on the tie before he grabbed at both of her hips. His hand moved to maneuver over her clit, thumb drawing a star over top of it to which she squirmed in sensitivity. He smirked at the way that she held softly against him before he let a dribble of spit land directly on her, smearing the wetness to coat her.

"Jesus fucking Christ." He stated, the blown-out pupils of them both had them reeling—he noticed he had really neglected parts of her that he had wanted to remember, but he also knew that there was a significant need that they were both needing to fill. He knew that this was just inevitable fucking from weeks—months, really—of built-up tension that they both needed to get out of their system.

"I—I want more," She nodded, her voice quiet and barely above a mumble before their eyes made contact.

He felt that she was a bit, for lack of a better word, fucked. Her eyes were a bit droopy, she may have been trying to cover up how much she really drank, but her effervescent neediness was going to haunt him forever.

"I can give you more," He nodded, "I can give you so much fucking more." His hips snapped forward, again and again and again—her headboard hitting the wall every time he did so. Their breath heavy and their eyes connected as he did so.

"Such a pretty little fuck," He lifted her leg up from around his waist before he gave her knee a gentle kiss. "I'm so hard, fuck."

The fully natured nudity of their bodies was new for him—it was usually very quick, especially when they would come to his. But this was significantly more intimate; he wanted to spend this time with her. He liked that they decided to do it this way.

She could feel the tightening of the rubber band that was about to snap. It had been building with every swipe of his thumb, the way that his tongue had gently nudged at her clit; the way he had plunged forward with every deep thrust. She was impressed with the way that he moved her body to be able to hit at her spot every single time. He had studied her, watched what she did—how she reacted.

"I'm—fuck," He pulled himself forward, letting his head drop as he fell into her touch. This was new; her hands on his shoulders, the way that they moved into his hair and down his neck. "Poetry, okay?" He reminded her softly before he kissed her lips.

What happened after that could have been a blur—to Felicity, she wasn't entirely sure if she could remember it all. His hand gripped around the tie of her neck, pulling softly so she felt a dizzy sensation.

"Fuck—fuck, Harry, I'm cumming—fuck." Her teeth bit so sharply on her lip that she was afraid it might rupture the skin; the taste of blood would come soon afterwards, but her reality was set in the pleasure kingdom that Harry's hips created for her.

It was dizzying how he snapped his hips upwards, hitting her every single time. The pressure of his thumb over her clit sent her into an overdrive; letting her walls completely break, the dam overflowed, flooding. The orgasm over taking her sent him into a state of pure shock and adrenaline, snapping his hips a few more times before he felt the absolute relief.

Her eyes shut; Harry lurched forward as he fell into the grip of her hands. It was a feeling of falling that he genuinely believed were cloud-like.

For a moment, he wondered if they would ever slow their breathing down. He wondered if the sound of her heart beating against his was real-life or just a fantasy. It may have been an orgasmic-induced dream.

The puzzle piece form of the two of them let him settle nicely into her; his nose poked at the skin of her neck, which he may or may not have left a mark or two on.

In the solemness of the air, his breathing finally evened out.

___________

"Are we cleared for take-off, Mr. Styles?"

The noise jolts him a bit, he wouldn't lie.

Harry clears his throat as he opens his eyes which have been hidden by the sunglasses that have settled on his face. He readjusts in the seat before he looks around the small jet plane that had been chartered for their adventure.

It was early, approaching on seven in the morning. His sleep had been nonexistent until that small nap that he had gotten himself before being woken up by the pilot.

"Uh," He swallows, trying to make it seem that he was more awake than he was.

"I believe that we're all here." Laura states to the pilot before she gives him a tight smile. She returns to looking at her cellphone, lowering her hands into her lap as she continues to scroll through what's possibly an email.

Harry looks around the small jet, watching, searching... wondering.

He blinks a few times to try to imagine if there's a reality where what had occurred last night was working against him—he had hoped that she hadn't been scared off, that she hadn't run away at the idea of what this weekend could possibly hold.

Not that it was going to happen all the time, certainly not. But he wondered if there could be a next time—he wondered if she would have liked that. It turns out, with the no show to the work trip that she had been informed on that—

"I'm sorry."

The sweet tone of the voice carries through the plane before he turns his body in the single chair to look at where it had been coming from. Coming up the steps, being greeted by the stewardess, a smiling face that had her sunglasses pushed into her hair—a pair of black yoga pants and a t-shirt with a cardigan sweater overtop.

He watches as she takes her bag, feeling uncomfortable by the stewardess taking it from her before she gives her a tight smile and settles into walking towards the back. The plane isn't large, but it feels incredible big when he is waiting for her to approach him.

Their eyes meet and she gives him a tight smile before greeting the others on the plane. The seat directly in front of Harry isn't taken. Go figure. Her hands are full—holding her purse, a bag that most likely has something to eat for a breakfast, a coffee, and—

"Your dry-cleaning," Felicity handed the back to him before she took her seat that sat directly across from him in the small private jet that had seemingly felt much smaller as she took in how close he was to her now, "Mr. Styles."

The flicker of her eyes to his—the way that her hair had been blown dry, bouncing with curls, the freshness of her toned-down makeup to allow the texture of her skin to show with the subtlety of the glow.

Even in the early morning hours, even though he had just left her a few hours prior, even though they had both had less than a few good hours of sleep—she still looked like she was greeting him at heaven's pearly gates.

When the bag was unzipped to check that everything had been added, his eyes fell along the purple necktie that he had unnervingly left at the edge of her bed the night prior; he must had run out of the door of her apartment without it. His eyes glanced at the way that the small item drifted over the white button-down.

It was familiar, of course, because it had been the one that he was wearing yesterday when he had entered her apartment but left without it in his hands or around his neck. He cleared his throat at the sight, knowing that it was a nod to him and only him. When he sat them down across his lap, his eyes landed on her again—the casualty of her smirk was harrowing now.

"Mr. Styles, are we waiting on anyone else?" The pilot had come back towards the rows now, to ensure that everything would have been cleared for the take-off. Harry looked back at him, and shook his head without another doubt, but a solidly aching feeling in his chest as he barred the words back at him.

"No, I—I'm not waiting for anyone else, at least." He looked up at the girl in front of him, "I'm good."

The pilot got the plane ready for departure; Felicity stared at the window as she tried to take in the experience, knowing that the exhaustion that was starting to overcome her would be able to be given a final rest when she leaned against the window.

But, for the time being, she liked being able to rest in the light of Harry's stare as he couldn't take his eyes from her.

The plane, the job, the clothes, the dinner—none of it mattered when the view in front of him was something that money would never be able to buy.

____________________

hiiiii!!

happy tortured poets department day, here's a one-shot <3

just a little fun one hehe, almost 20k words is so much for me, so thank you for reading this!

love u as always

- emily

[lovelyhan]

— melting point ⟢

rumor has it that icy department head of pledis insurance has something going on with her loyal secretary, wonwoo. well, she does—it's just not the kind of behind-closed-doors business one would expect for them to partake in.

★ FEATURING; secretary!wonwoo x afab!oc

★ WORD COUNT; 12.3k words

★ TAGS; coworkers to lovers, revenge fic, angst, smut

★ WARNINGS; blackmailing, manipulation, mentions of past bullying, graphic sexual content (MINORS DNI)

★ NOTES; hi... it's been forever, hasn't it? i missed tumblr a lot, and have decided to grace the tags with this fic after months of radio silence heheh ! this was a commissioned piece on twt which i tweaked to fit my tumblr audience better! cheers to 5k followers even in my absence t__t you guys are the best!

★ PS; i'm sorry i can't be bothered to dig up my taglist and tag those who filled it up T T

There’s a saying in PLEDIS Insurance that goes: enjoy your coffee early because once the Ice Queen is in, it’ll turn just as cold as she is. 

Of course, the words were merely thrown around in jest. Something that bored employees come up with in the break room whenever they’re careless enough to think their little jokes won’t reach said ice queen’s ears. But still—they’re just jokes. As long as they worked enough to satisfy their salaries’ worth, Emma the Ice Queen would always turn a blind eye. She might be cold, but she isn’t completely heartless.

Most of the time.

“Good morning, ma’am,” her secretary, Wonwoo, greeted with a curt nod as she entered her office. 

Emma scoffed before setting her things down on her work desk, the frown on her face only worsening when she sees the elegantly wrapped gift box in front of her. “What's this?” 

Wonwoo swallowed thickly, like he was nervous. Wonwoo never gets nervous.

“We have an...unforeseen circumstance,” he prefaced before tapping away on the iPad in his arms. “Sir Leo from the Choi group wants to pursue you.”

“Unforeseen?” Emma repeated. “Wonwoo, this is completely foreseen. Isn't it our from the start is to make them fall in love, only for us to expose their dirty secrets in the end?”

He looked as if he wanted to agree. But after turning the screen of his iPad so Emma could see the article written on some shoddy newsletter, her brows furrowed together in confusion.

A Race for the Inheritance: How the Choi Group’s Next Generation of Ambitious Youngbloods Will Do Everything to Get Their Fill of Old Money. 

The title itself didn’t give Emma much context of what exactly was making Wonwoo—her ever-composed secretary—lose his composure. It’s natural to see the sons and daughters of a powerful business conglomerate fight each other for their rights to the family inheritance. But after reading through what the rest of the article had to offer, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly started to fit.

“They're seeing who gets to get married first?” Emma laughed incredulously before handing the iPad back to Wonwoo. “Does Leo really think he can get me to become his lover—even more so his wife—after everything he did to me in high school?”

Wonwoo breathed in deeply. “Miss Emma, we both know the answer to that. If it were all up to you, you could easily put him to shame and reject him. But his interests somewhat align with the director’s interests as well…”

Ah. Her father’s interests.

“No,” she answered sharply. “Even if he kicks me out of my position, I’m not going to be wed to that prick.”

“Are you sure about that?” Wonwoo sighed before adjusting his glasses. “Miss Emma, we both know you love your work more than anything. And you're chronically attached to this company even if you despise the executives. Sir Leo has good leverage over you, sad to say.”

There was something irritating about hearing Wonwoo call his ex-best friend Sir, as if he was underneath some scumbag of a human being like Leo. But then again, years have passed since then. Lots of things have changed. 

But Emma’s grudges hold steadfast, still.

“Hmph, whatever.” She dismissed the matter with a nonchalant wave before unwrapping the gift box in front of her. “Was this from Leo, too? Is he on a deadline or something?”

“Hmm, first one that gets married before December gets the rights to the inheritance,” Wonwoo informed her as he picked the clutter of ribbons off Emma’s desk and pocketed them in his coat for later disposal. “Do you want me to look up the progress of his siblings and cousins? We can sabotage him while it's still early.”

Emma didn’t respond right away—preoccupied with unwrapping Leo's so-called gift. But when she sees a red velvet box with an engagement ring and a folded letter inside, she begrudgingly realized that Leo wouldn’t be as easy a target as her other high school bullies.

No, this man really was rotten to the core.

By the time you’re reading this, I’m sure you already heard the news. You know what to do, right, Emma?

Or should I say, wifey? ;)

“Send this back to him. Now.”

Wonwoo nodded obediently as Emma pushed Leo's cursed gift box away from her. “Alright. Anything else I can do for you? Like…have someone plant a snake in his bedroom or something?”

Despite the sour mood that Leo undoubtedly put her in this morning, Wonwoo's little idea of a joke made the corners of her mouth turn up into a small smile. The offer was tempting, but in the end, she shook her head and booted up the PC on her desk instead.

“As much as I want his death by a snake bite to headline the news, Leo doesn’t deserve to get out of this the easy way.” Emma muttered as she started browsing through the hard-drive she’d hooked up onto the computer. “And lucky for us, I finally got the evidence to send his suspiciously prosperous career down into a spiral.”

Wonwoo raised an eyebrow before taking a peek behind her. “What's that? Money laundering records? Tax fraud?” 

No. It was really something as simple as—

“Footage of a mass orgy he participated in,” Emma casually told her secretary as she clicked on the only video on the hard drive. “Might not look like a big deal compared to what we had to go through with Ezra, but Leo belongs to a family of devout Catholics. Good thing your contact from Leo's favorite bar had some use. All I did was ask around and he quickly spilled all the details with the right amount of money.”

Wonwoo chuckled as he flashed her an impressed look. “As far as I know, I’m the one who’s supposed to do the dirty work for you. Why are you directly involving yourself in matters you can leave to me?” 

The lewd video continued to play on her screen—muted, of course—and one could easily make out Leo Choi's face amongst the crowd of sex-depraved freaks. Once they sent this over anonymously to each and every person who might think that scumbag deserved to inherit his family’s wealth, it would be all over for him.

“‘Cause we’re a team, Wonwoo,” she chuckled. “You’ve done your fair share of work when we took down Gavin and Ezra. But admittedly…I've got more bones to pick with Leo. I think it’s only fair for me to orchestrate his downfall with my own two hands.”

“Right…” Wonwoo agreed with a hint of fondness in his tone that completely went over Emma’s head—far too triumphant with her newfound ammunition. 

“We’re a team.”

But it wasn’t always that way.

Wonwoo was actually more deeply involved in Emma’s mission to exact revenge on the people who’ve wronged her years ago than one would otherwise expect. He’d been best friends with Leo since they were kids, and when they eventually met Gavin and Ezra in their high school basketball team, the four of them were quite inseparable. 

But despite being his best friend, Wonwoo knew that Leo could be quite…off-putting with his behavior sometimes.

“Hey, look at that,” Sixteen year-old Leo scoffed before gesturing towards the loud girl earning amused stares in the cafeteria. “She's so fucking loud. Is she the new transfer student?”

Gavin snickered as he took a bite out of his lunch. “How'd she even get in here? Our tuition isn't a joke, and she doesn't really look like she can afford it. The kid of a maid, maybe?”

“Or she could be one of those financial scholarship kids,” Ezra pitched in with a shrug. “Though she doesn't look very bright if we're being honest.”

Wonwoo didn’t offer anything to the conversation, merely eating his food quietly as his friends talked smack about the new transfer student in their class. Emma Rodriguez was like a piece of meat thrown into a pit of vipers. Some might like her—like the classmates who were howling with laughter because of her antics—but others looked at her with disdain. 

She didn’t belong to any wealthy well-known families like every other kid in their grade. The girl simply popped out of nowhere like an eyesore, according to Leo. Wonwoo didn’t really mind her presence though. She made the boring monotone of his school days a bit more bearable with her energy.

But what Wonwoo thought was just his friends’ surface-level dislike for a girl who behaved differently from the others in their grade turned out to be something else.

Something worse.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew what bullying was, and was well-aware that what his friends constantly did to Emma wasn’t something that normal high schoolers did. Leo was the most vicious about it, and Wonwoo never really got to know his reasons for doing all those horrible things. 

But whenever they spotted Emma horsing around in the hallways, Leo would always be the first one to come up to her—calling her names like fraud, gold digger, and the like. Gavin and Ezra followed each and every time, and they were usually the ones who pushed her around for no real reason.

And Wonwoo? Wonwoo was the one who always stood a few feet away every time his friends decided they were in the mood to pick on the transfer student. The one who always stayed quiet and pretended nothing unsightly was happening in front of him.

The one whose gaze Emma always tried to silently catch, hoping he’d be the one to stop his friends from harassing her. 

But he never did.

That cycle of three boys bullying a once bright and bubbly transfer student became commonplace. Before their third year in high school came to a close, Emma suddenly vanished off the radar. She didn’t attend their classes, nor was she there in the completion ceremonies at the end of every school year. 

Most of the kids around Wonwoo didn’t really give two shits about her sudden disappearance. Word around the street was that she transferred out because of the heavy harassment she was getting, not just from his friends, but also the rest of the students from their grade. They didn’t think Emma was funny because of her silly antics and loud jokes anymore.

Everyone started to collectively think of her as a nuisance, and the fact that she had no familial connections to protect herself with only fed into the senseless yet oh-so popular trend of crushing Emma Rodriguez’s hopes and dreams into the ground.

It was almost like Wonwoo was the only person in their entire grade who felt the tiniest bit of pity for her. But he told himself long ago that someone like him had no right to feel sorry for someone he never bothered trying to help. 

The years passed by in a flash. After Emma’s disappearance, Wonwoo quit the basketball team and  completely cut off his friends and everyone else who actively hurt her. He didn’t really know why either—all he knew was that he couldn’t stomach the idea of keeping those connections despite what they drove Emma to do. 

Of course, he knew he wasn’t completely innocent either. But it wasn’t too late to be a decent person, right?

Wonwoo simply went through the motions of graduating high school, then college, before pursuing a career in the vicious world of the corporate hierarchy. But instead of gunning for executive positions like his fellow fresh grads dared to dream, he worked his way up without using his family’s prestige to his own advantage. 

In fact, Wonwoo realized he liked working closely with his bosses. That’s why he became the designated secretary to all the finance department heads who walked through the doors of PLEDIS Insurance. He was content with being a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy who’s at the beck and call of someone else—a tool who worked on the sidelines. He never really wanted to be the face of any company anyway.

But then, in his fifth year on the job, he was told that there were a couple of changes in PLEDIS’ executive board. The boss he’d been working under was set to retire and he’d be replaced with a new one—someone younger and full of promise, as the head of human resources dramatically explained to him. 

It wasn’t really a deal breaker or anything. As long as Wonwoo got paid, he’d gladly work for even the most terrible of people in this industry.

But on the day his new boss was set to start, he was haunted by a ghost from the past instead.

Wonwoo hasn’t spared a single thought for Emma Rodriguez in God knows how long. Yet the moment she stepped into the office, he recognized her almost immediately. There was no trace of that girl people called gold digger and other derogatory names because of her appearance. This was a woman with her head held high—someone who oozed confidence in every stride with a gaze sharper than her winged eyeliner. 

Yet Wonwoo couldn’t be mistaken. This really was Emma Rodriguez.

He wondered if she remembered him, too. The boy who kept quiet about those who bullied her in those few crucial years of her life. Wonwoo even considered apologizing for not doing anything to help her when he should have. 

“Ah, Wonwoo Jeon?” Emma repeated his name with a dismissive air, almost like she was wholly uninterested in him. “The one who just watched when Gavin Kim pushed me in the muddy courtyard at school? The one who pretended not to see when Leo Choi splashed paint all over my uniform? Of course I remember you.”

God. Was this her exacting retribution?

For the next few days since she came into the office, Wonwoo helped Emma get used to the feel of things in the Finance Department. At least, that was his intention. 

From the looks of it, Emma already knew the ins-and-outs of managing a company’s cash inflow and outflow, as well as the other gritty, more technical details that came with accounting for each and every cent. She managed to prepare and present several sets of data that his previous boss had trouble organizing to the current board of directors within two days’ time. 

Her work ethic was admirable—she got the job done quickly and efficiently, and that made her earn the respect of her subordinates faster than Wonwoo had seen them warm up to their previous bosses. It would have been the perfect relationship between the new department head and her employees, if it weren’t for Emma’s stone cold behavior towards other people. 

Not only did she look different from the Emma he knew in high school, but she acted differently too. Wonwoo couldn’t picture this Emma purposely making a fool out of herself just to make the people around her laugh. This Emma wanted the entire team to get the work handed to them done as soon as possible, and if they did, the most they’d receive in return is a mere nod in approval and nothing else.

It was for that reason that employees would start calling her the Ice Queen. Though she wasn’t some tyrant that gave people an unreasonable workload—she was actually very lenient and fair about the division of tasks—her people skills needed a little work. 

That or Emma was purposely shutting everyone out with her chilly attitude. 

Wonwoo had a few clues as to why she’d want to do that, but he’s a secretary, not a therapist. The only thing he could do about it was to keep his silence.

But then came a day when Emma asked him to come into her office to do something he completely expected from her but didn’t at the same time.

“Are you still in touch with Leo, Gavin, and Ezra?” she asked him, not even bothering to look up from the report she’s reading off her PC.

The question caught Wonwoo off-guard and it was obvious Emma caught on to his reaction if the tiny smirk that curved across her lips was anything to go by. Still, he took it in stride—breathing in through his nose as he thought about his answer.

He hasn’t been in touch with any of them since his high school graduation. All their attempts at reaching out to Wonwoo to invite him for a quick game of ball or a round of drinks somewhere in the city were all ignored. Not even turned down—ignored. 

Leo was the most persistent about it. After all, they were best friends. But after several years of Wonwoo not even bothering to give their invites a single glance, Leo stopped reaching out altogether. Wonwoo's life became a lot more peaceful since he cut ties with them, and he never really regretted the decision to do so. 

But perhaps the universe really was telling him to pay the price for his past inaction now that Emma was bringing up the past on a regular Wednesday afternoon. 

“No, ma’am,” he told her honestly. “Do you want me to reach out to them? Their contact details are pretty easy to get our hands on.”

Emma sighed quietly before meeting his gaze, an unreadable look hovering across her face. “Mmm. Yeah, I’d like that. But aren't you going to ask why I want to contact them again?”

He wanted to, but Wonwoo learned that in his line of work, the last thing he should do was ask questions. It made him wonder if Emma was purposely setting him up on some sort of conversational bear trap, but seeing as he didn’t really have anything to lose by giving, he chose to relent. 

“...Why?”

The silence of her office rang in his ears as Emma typed away on her keyboard. It was a mechanical one with tactile switches that matched the color of her desktop wallpaper. He didn’t take her to be someone who cared enough about aesthetics to that degree, but then again, Wonwoo never really got a chance to get to know her back then. 

He was too much of a coward to do so.

Once she was done, Emma got up from her ergonomic chair (which also matched her desktop setup), leveling her gaze with Wonwoo's even if the latter was easily a head taller than she was. Something about the glint in her eyes made him swallow the lump in his throat. Not to mention that sweet yet chilly smile that graced her bright red lips.

“It’s really simple, Wonwoo,” she told him with a laugh. 

“I want revenge.” 

And that’s how their little team was formed.

It was a two-person job. Emma entrusted Wonwoo with digging up the information she needed about the three men she wanted to bring down, all while she was in charge of putting their plans into motion by heading over to the front lines. 

Gavin was an easy target. Unlike the other two, he’s the only one who pursued professional basketball and for a while, he amassed quite the number of fans and admirers because of his outstanding plays. What’s more was that he managed to wife up a beauty queen who’s already conquered the international stage a few years back. Now with their first baby on the way, one would think that Gavin Kim has a picture perfect life.

But further down the road, talk about how he’s actually a womanizing wife beater started to seep out of the cracks and crevices of the athletic industry. The allegations were serious, but no one really bothered batting an eye. It’s normal. Lots of athletes are like that. We can't do anything about it.

It was easy to get a hold of which gym Gavin frequents to maintain his physique. He preferred working out in public facilities instead of the one provided for his team because it gave him all the freedom to ogle and flirt with other women who just happened to be hitting the gym on days he was on the prowl. 

Wonwoo even added a little footnote in the file he prepared that said likes to engage in post-workout coitus in the shower rooms. Emma rolled her eyes in disgust when she read it, but made sure to keep it in mind.

The day finally came when she’d collect enough evidence to ruin Gavin’s career. Emma hasn’t dropped by the gym in a while—work having sapped her energy too much to let her psych herself back into working out. But she realized she didn’t have to act out too much because the moment she started operating the treadmill right next to Gavin’s, he was already checking her out.

He didn’t seem to recognize who she was, unlike Wonwoo. But then again Gavin was easily the stupidest out of her trio of high school bullies. This man was all brawn and no brains, which was why it was all too easy for Emma to seduce him in the showers of this shoddy gym not thirty minutes since she’d arrived.

It wasn’t the most pleasant experience. The last thing Emma wanted was to have this idiotic man inside of her so she offered to go on her knees and blow him instead—something that Gavin was all too happy to relent to. 

He didn’t even boast a cock of considerable size. It probably wasn’t any longer than her middle finger, and for a split second, she wondered why his beauty queen wife stayed with him despite having a cock that didn’t back up his cocky attitude. It was probably the money.

Emma didn’t waste much time though. Wonwoo visited this gym only a few hours prior to plant a bug somewhere inside the specific shower stall they were currently occupying. She just had to hope she and Gavin were positioned well enough so the camera would get a full view of what they were doing. 

It was the longest twenty minutes of Emma’s life, and she had to go home right away to disinfect her mouth about ten times, but hey. All in the name of vengeance, right?

At around eight in the evening on that same Saturday, her phone lit up with an email notification from Wonwoo. 

From: Wonwoo Jeon  Subject: CLASSIFIED Good evening, Miss Emma. I hope this message finds you well. I retrieved our bug from the gym earlier today and extracted the videos taken before properly disposing of it. Attached to this email is the MP4 file of our evidence against Mr. Gavin Kim. Around the time this message arrives to you, I have simultaneously sent said evidence to Mr. Kim’s managers, sponsors, teammates, other colleagues, and of course, his wife.  The only difference between their emails and yours is that this is a self-destructing message. Once you’ve closed this window, it will be deleted from your inbox without a trace. So if you are interested in watching the video below, best save it to your device of choice for better perusal. If you have any further questions and concerns, I am merely a text message away.  Regards,  Wonwoo Jeon Secretary, Finance and Logistics Department PLEDIS Insurance 

Like hell she was going to watch it.

The moment Emma finished reading through Wonwoo's overly formal email, she quickly exited the window and, true to his word, the message itself had disappeared. Despite being a fairly new player to the game, she had to commend all the precautions Wonwoo was setting to make sure her plans were a success. 

It made her wonder if his previous bosses have also asked him to do shady things under the company’s nose in the past. Whether or not that's true, she was reaping the benefits of his expertise, so she had no room for complaints. 

As long as she had Wonwoo, she’d get to punish everyone who wronged her without fail.

Gavin’s downfall followed soon after. 

Tabloids were their best friend in that scenario. The thumbnail of the video that Wonwoo spread around like some virus that wouldn’t stop replicating headlined every single paper, talking about how one of the most promising basketball stars of their generation had fallen prey to his own vices.

It was a good thing that not only was Wonwoo careful enough to not leave digital footprints as he sent out those emails, but he also edited the video to keep Emma’s identity a secret. As Gavin’s world started to crumble before his eyes—him being kicked off the starting roster of the team, his wife leaving him behind, and the public execution of his reputation—Emma simply shared a bottle of aged wine from Tuscany with the man who helped her pull off a wonderful performance.

“You’re not too bad,” she mused as she took a small sip, crossing her legs from where she’s seated unceremoniously on the edge of her desk. “You're surprisingly more on-board with this plan than I thought. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were never friends with Gavin in the first place.” 

Wonwoo retained his stoic demeanor, not having touched the glass Emma offered him simply because it was against company regulations to intoxicate himself on the job. “If my boss tells me to ruin someone's life, I'm mandated to do it. I’m just doing what’s written on my job description, ma’am.”

Emma’s lips stretched into a grin as she threw her head back with a laugh. She leaned in closer to Wonwoo, who seemed wholly unfazed by the fact that the gesture granted him an ample view of her cleavage through her blouse. 

“Does your job description cover watching and editing your boss' sex scandal so you can mass send it to hundreds of people?” She giggled before leaning back to take another sip of her drink. “You’re in the green for now, Wonwoo. Keep it up and I might just have a pay raise arranged for you with HR if our next escapade is a success.”

He hummed in understanding. “Who’s next?”

In usual Emma fashion, she didn’t give him a straight answer right away. Instead, she hopped back to the carpeted floor of her office—not even wobbling in those thin heels she’s wearing—before rounding her desk to access her computer. 

“Have you been watching TV lately? Primetime soap operas?” she asked him as she clicked away on her screen. 

Wonwoo shook his head. “They don’t really interest me, ma’am.”

“I figured they wouldn’t. But this might.”

Emma gestured for him to peer at her monitor and Wonwoo wordlessly followed suit, getting up from his seat and standing behind her. Flashed on the screen was an article from a more reputable news outlet that featured two co-stars who played the main couple in a popular network’s newest drama. 

“Ezra Lee and Alaina Park…” Wonwoo muttered under his breath before his eyes flickered to Emma. “You have any leads I can work with?”

His boss chuckled before looking up at him with an expectant smile. “Someone's determined. I never thought I’d get to see someone so eager to do the dirty work for me.”

Wonwoo shrugged. “Miss Emma, I'm not sure if you're aware but desk work gets boring sometimes. You’re right. This is a lot more interesting.”

“Alright, then,” Emma chuckled before retrieving both of their wine glasses and handing Wonwoo's back to him. “Unlike Gavin, I don't have a lot of surface-level leads with Ezra. He’s a celebrity—their reputation needs to be squeaky clean, so it makes sense why I can’t dig up anything about him through regular means. But this should be a piece of cake for you, right?”

Wonwoo stared at the bright red liquor inside the expensive glass, gaze darting to the wicked smile playing on Emma’s lips. If he looked a little closer, he would be able to tell that the shade of her lipstick matches the color of the liquor in her hands. 

He took it from her grasp with a sigh, clinking the edges of their glasses together before downing the entire thing in one fell swoop. The wine was aged well, and had somewhat of a sweet aftertaste, but despite the appealing flavor, Wonwoo reminded himself to never drink on the job ever again. 

“I’ll get back to you once I have the information you need.”

Wonwoo swiftly left Emma’s office after that little victory party. Even with his new sideline of being his boss’s lead henchman, he still had a lot of work to do for PLEDIS Insurance. And that included telling the other employees to quit horsing around in the break room when their designated lunch break ended hours ago.

“Sir Wonwoo,” one of said employees, Soonyoung, snickered before throwing an arm over Wonwoo's shoulders. “You've been hanging out in Miss Emma's office pretty frequently. Is there something going on? You became close real quickly.”

“Yeah” said one Seokmin, who’s still snacking on a wafer despite Wonwoo's scolding. “Boss, we know you're not the fuck-your-way-up kind of guy, but who knows, right? But with your position right now, do you really need it?”

Seungkwan, the last member of their unruly trio, slapped Seokmin’s arm with a scowl. “Hey! Do you really have to say it to his face? Oh, boss, if you make a report about these two, please know I have nothing to do with whatever they're saying.”

Soonyoung snickered. “Are you sure about that? Weren't you the one who first noticed that Sir Wonwoo was stepping inside Miss Emma's office more frequently—”

“Hey! Boss told us to scram, didn't he?! Let's go.”

Seungkwan quickly ushered his two friends out of the break room, scolding them in a hushed tone before they all went back to their respective cubicles. Wonwoo shook his head with a sigh, muttering something about inevitable rumors as he made himself a cup of coffee.

Was that how they perceived Wonwoo’s sudden closeness with the department head? That he was fucking Emma in the solitude of her office? Well, the idea of a boss having illicit relations with their secretary wasn’t too far-fetched. He’s heard about how the head of the Advertising Department gets frisky with his secretary through the corporate grapevine. But just because it was a popular trope among the employees’ strange fantasies, it didn’t mean it applied to himself and Emma as well.

They were strictly professional: he did the dirty work and she paid him in full. That was all there was to it.

(But what people don’t know was that editing Gavin’s scandal wasn’t exactly the walk in the park Emma thought it was.

Despite being one of the most indifferent people in the company, Wonwoo was still a man. Seeing his boss, whose body would be coveted by anyone who dared to want her, in such a compromising position excited an…unexpected physiological reaction out of him.

His resolve was as sturdy as steel, however. Instead of taking care of the obvious problem in his pants as he edited the scandalous video, Wonwoo dealt with it by taking a long, cold shower until all the blood that rushed down south started circulating properly again.

He told himself not to think about it come morning.)

“A drug den?”

Even Emma was baffled by the news that Wonwoo brought her the following week—a scowl of disbelief permanently etched on her face as she scanned the file her secretary prepared for her. Wonwoo merely stood at her side, waiting for her to finish going through the data he’s gathered. 

And he sure hoped she understood every single word printed on it. He practically risked his life trying to investigate Ezra’s secret business. No wonder it was so hard to dig up any dirt on him—dead men tell no tales after all.

“This is…” Emma swallowed thickly before continuing, “way above my expectations. If he was just getting faded on his own with a private dealer, I'd understand. Lots of celebrities do recreational drugs. But for him to head an entire operation? Where'd he find the time on top of his taping schedules?” 

Wonwoo sighed. “I would’ve been able to investigate further if his men weren't so meticulous. They're fiercely loyal to Ezra. Couldn’t bribe him like we did with Gavin’s gym coach.” 

“And you made sure to keep your identity under lockdown?”

“Positive.”

Emma drummed her fingers across the smooth surface of her work desk—brows furrowed as she stared into nothingness. Though they’ve only been working together for roughly six months at most, Wonwoo knew her well enough to realize she hit a wall.

It made him wonder if this was where she would draw the line. Their success with Gavin gave them both an unexpected high, sure, but Wonwoo recognized that this game they were playing was a dangerous one. The people they were trying to take down had more money and connections than the two of them could ever hope to get their hands on. 

But one thing that he failed to recognize right away about Emma was that she’s always been grossly ambitious. 

“The file you gave me also mentioned na he was hoping to insure his new house in Incheon,” she pointed out. “Care to tell me why you decided to include that?”

“I know you told me not to involve the company in this as much as we can, but I couldn’t think of any other way to penetrate into his circle.” Wonwoo adjusted his necktie, suddenly feeling like he’s being watched by the hawk that was his boss. “I’ve been told that he’s wary of people. Side effects of the cocaine, probably. Though the info broker sounded like he was joking, it’s best to be wary of him. If he can hide behind the protection of his management and his family, we need to play our cards right and protect ourselves, too.”

Emma took a moment to process what her secretary just told her, nodding slowly before closing the folder containing Ezra’s file and locking it inside a hidden drawer beneath her desk. 

“Oh, Wonwoo. If only all men were as intelligent as you are,” she sighed, getting up from her seat before pinching his face. “Good work. Let's go out for drinks later. My treat.”

Wonwoo's face twisted with confusion. “For what? Doing my job?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “For going above and beyond every single time. You think you're only good at doing dirty work? At being my errand boy? You never fall behind your quotas here in the office either, you know. I think that in itself is a cause for celebration.”

Now that she’s reasoned it out, Wonwoo was even more weirded out by this strange turn of events. In the six months that Emma Rodriguez has spent as the head of PLEDIS Insurance’s Finance head, she never failed to uphold that arctic cold façade. She treated both executives and regular employees with the same degree of cut-throat harshness. 

And that’s when Wonwoo realized that she didn’t really treat him the way she treated them.

Huh. Did the Ice Queen have a melting point after all?

Despite his extensive protests, however, Wonwoo let Emma rope him into grabbing dinner and drinks at a food hub several districts away from their office. The fewer people who could recognize them outside, the better. Of course, he pleaded and reminded her several times that she was his boss and she really didn’t have to—

“Hey! Keep drinking!” Emma slurred with a huff, face red from the alcohol as she pushed another pint of beer into Wonwoo's face. “Why aren't you drunk yet, huh, Wonwoo Jeon? Are you God? Maybe that's why you're so good at obtaining information for me. Ah! No! Maybe you're the devil! Right, what we're doing isn't exactly good nor is it legal…”

Wonwoo exhaled long and hard as his boss continued blabbering nonsense across from him at their shared table. One glance at the smartwatch on his wrist told him that it was near midnight and that he should probably bring Emma home before she could make a scene. 

But…maybe they could stay for a few minutes more.

“Miss Emma? Are you sleepy?”

“Hm? Why would I be sleepy? We're drinking, aren't we?” 

“You're half-asleep on the table, so.”

At the prospect of being called out, Emma quickly shot into an upright position—looking around to see if anyone caught her drooling. When she realized she was in the clear, she narrowed her eyes at Wonwoo.

“Not a word about this in the office,” she warned, using one of the finished barbecue sticks on their empty plates to threaten him. “But...yeah. Alcohol makes me sleepy. Drive me home.”

Not even a please. This woman was really shameless even when drunk.

Not a peep of complaint was heard from Wonwoo when he drove Emma all the way to her condo unit in uptown Poblacion. Though he had to practically carry her inside and even help her out of her clothes and into her pajamas (at her request, not his own initiative), he simply told himself this was all part of his job. 

When his boss was safely tucked in bed, he was ready to bid her farewell and head back to his own place to catch up on some sleep. But for someone who was intoxicated beyond belief, Emma was still quite aware of her surroundings. The moment Wonwoo took a step away from her bed, her hand shot out to grab ahold of his wrist, making Wonwoo look back at her with an eyebrow raised.

“Wonwoo,” she murmured, face still smothered in her pillows despite her tight grip. “Can you stay?” 

“There's nowhere for me to sleep,” he chuckled. “I should go.”

“Then sleep next to me.”

The furrow on his brow merely deepened. He’d ask her to repeat what she said, but Wonwoo could recognize that Emma wasn’t really in the headspace to be reasonable right now. So instead of refuting her wish, Wonwoo carefully pried her fingers off his wrist so he could take off his work coat and fold it neatly on top of her vanity table.

This is all part of the job, he told himself.

Wonwoo laid on his boss’ duvet perfectly still. He didn’t want to make the mistake of touching her when he didn’t have explicit permission to do so. He was merely told to sleep next to her after all—nothing else.

But about fifteen minutes after he lied next to her, Emma shifted on her side of the bed—turning to him with a sleepy look in her eyes.

“You know,” she whispered, so softly, he would’ve missed it if he wasn’t as observant as he was. “I hoped...so hard back then that you would help me when I needed it. But you never did.”

Emma probably won’t remember what she mumbled in her drunken stupor in the morning. But the sadness and honesty that underlined her words sent him back about ten years into the past. To a time when he was a much greater evil than those who directly wronged her.

An apology sizzled across the tip of his tongue—something that’s a decade overdue. But before Wonwoo could hope to let her hear his piece, Emma’s breathing had become even and shallow. 

She was already fast asleep.

He sighed, staring up at the dainty ceiling of her bedroom as he chuckled helplessly to himself.

“That’s why I’m making up for it now.”

If Gavin’s case was a walk in the park, Ezra’s was an Olympic-level marathon.

Wonwoo didn’t want to dwell on the details anymore. To cut it short: he was going to cross out ‘exposing a notorious drug lord’ off his bucket list without thinking of doing it again ever. While he managed to get out unscathed during his investigation, it just so happened that their final altercation with Ezra ended up putting Wonwoo in the hospital. 

But so what if he fractured a couple of ribs trying to save Emma from being killed by that drug-addicted lunatic? As long as their goal to bring Emma’s enemies down was achieved, he’d gladly sustain any life-threatening injuries.

Which was, admittedly…strange. 

Long before Emma came into the picture as his boss, Wonwoo never would’ve pictured himself risking his neck for the benefit of someone else. Though he had an entire arsenal of skills and knowledge at his disposal, it would take more than just his generous salary to get him to put them to good use.

But with Emma, he found himself utilizing whatever means to help her exact her revenge—on people he once called his friends, much less.

He must be going insane. 

“Wonwoo…?”

Funnily enough, he ended up recalling everything that happened over the past two weeks first before recognizing that he was just regaining consciousness in the intensive care unit. Wonwoo's eyes hurt because of how bright the fluorescent lights were overhead, but for some reason, he didn’t flinch away from her relieved smile when it was a million watts brighter than the hospital’s indoor lighting.

“Good…day, ma’am,” he croaked out awkwardly, belatedly realizing that he didn’t know what time it was. “What day is it? Did someone fix your schedule for today? Did someone go over your meal plans in my stead? Were you—”

His endless stream of questions was interrupted by hacking fit—making Emma scramble for a glass of water on the table by his hospital bed, a concerned look lining her gaze.

“Don't talk too much,” she scolded him as he finished his drink. “You’ve been out for two days, idiot.”

Two days? 

Needless to say, he couldn’t do a thing about it once his boss started fussing over him. She called over doctors she personally knew and handpicked only the most competent of nurses to look after Wonwoo. How Emma could be the judge of that, Wonwoo wasn’t very sure, but he gladly let her take care of him for a change. 

After all, they successfully concluded another chapter in Emma’s little revenge story.

“When are we going to start with Leo?”

Wonwoo brought the matter up about three days after he woke up, right in the middle of eating the stale hospital food served to him for dinner. Emma, who was snacking on some takeout fast food, hummed before tossing a french fry into her mouth.

“You're not even healed yet, and you're thinking about work?” she sighed before pointing a fry in his direction. “I’m still paying you your regular wage even if you're stuck here. You don’t have to worry about making ends meet so much, Wonwoo. You just need to rest—”

“But I don’t want to rest, I want to be useful to you,” he interrupted her gruffly, which was strange of him because he never interrupted his employers. 

For a moment, Wonwoo thought he’d be on the receiving end of a verbal lashing even if he was still recovering. Emma never let other people talk back to her without consequences. But instead, his boss threw her head back with a laugh that bordered on a snort. It’s a look that Wonwoo had seen on her time and time again—a look that he noticed Emma only showed to him. 

Back then, he didn’t really think of her smile all that much. But now…

“You’re being useful enough just by being alive, Jeon,” she reassured him, that grin of hers unwavering. “Enough questions about Leo. I'm not even thinking about him yet because compared to the previous two? He’s a lot easier to track down.”

Wonwoo shot her a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”

“Same approach lang with Ezra.” She flashed him a toothy smile. “We’re going to get him to insure some of his properties under PLEDIS. But instead of us going to him, he'll be going to us instead.”

“I…? Sorry, ma’am. I don’t follow.”

Emma stifled a soft laugh behind her palm, unwrapping the burger included in her takeout meal before taking a bite of considerable size. “The Choi Corporation is expanding a chain of shopping malls somewhere in Jeju. Leo Choi personally contacted our CEO and there we have it: another big shot client.”

Another person to drag down to hell.

“Is that good enough for you?” 

Wonwoo was still processing the news as they both finished up their respective meals. He should probably be glad that Emma didn’t decide to put their secret operation on hold just because he was out of commission. But something about how smoothly they’re progressing into the next phase of Emma’s big revenge plan that made him wary of treading any further. 

He felt like he was being paranoid—probably the aftermath of almost crossing to the other side because of what happened with the Ezra incident. Wonwoo couldn’t help but be wary of any and all threats to both his life and Emma’s, and it was for a good reason.

“Okay,” Wonwoo breathed, wincing a little when he felt the spot where his ribs broke ache at how fast he inhaled. “What do you want me to do for now? Investigate? Trace his whereabouts?”

Emma’s smile suddenly turned ice cold. “I want you to rest, Wonwoo. Do I have to keep repeating myself?”

“But—”

“No buts. Boss’ orders—I'm your boss, right?” 

Ah, there’s the Ice Queen they all knew and loved. 

Fine. Maybe he could use a break from all that quote-unquote field work he just did. But one thing about his entire hospitalization still remained unanswered.

“What did you tell HR? About…this?” Wonwoo gestured towards his battered but healing body. “You’ve got the charisma, but I’m pretty sure it’s difficult even for you to go into cahoots with the other employees of PLEDIS. Much more, our human resources head.”

Emma waved away his concerns with a shake of her head. “You're so persistent, aren't you? Don’t think about HR. Or Leo. Or the rest of our plans. Can’t you be a normal salaryman and be happy that you have a break from all the things I make you do?”

“I told you, Miss Emma. I just want to make myself useful.”

“And I told you that you're the least useful in your current state. So give. It. A. Rest,” she threatened, putting emphasis on every syllable. 

But behind her intimidating façade was someone who actually cared for him. The details were still a bit muddled in Wonwoo's head, but he remembered being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Remembered how Emma never let go of his hand as they made the trip all the way. And how he heard her pray for him to make it out alive despite being a well-known agnostic.

Once their conversation had mellowed down, he laid back against the steady elevation of his bed, watching the scenic city lights glimmer outside the window of his hospital room—just behind the woman who made his life a lot more interesting.

He couldn’t wait to be useful to her again.

“I hate this. I fucking hate this so much.”

Wonwoo spared his employer a quick glance as she practically glared at her reflection in the full-length mirror. He’d been browsing through a sports car catalog tucked underneath the hotel’s coffee table, but watching Emma have a furious meltdown about her wedding was more worth his time. 

“You're the one who said that there'll more benefits if you accepted the marriage proposal,” her secretary reminded, crossing his legs as he leaned back on the couch he was sitting on. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Of course I was just…gaslighting myself about this entire fucked up situation!” Emma growled as she stomped over to him with a scowl. “Can’t fucking believe my dad agreed to marry me off just like that, too. After all his talk that I needed to love whoever I'm supposed to marry...”

Wonwoo shrugged. “Anyone can be blinded by money—especially if it's from the Chois.”

“Even you?”

It’s a question that sunk into the room with a rhetorical implication. Emma was quick to exchange the earrings her stylist chose for her with something more suited to her taste—a pair that didn’t sparkle all that much but was worth more than six months of Wonwoo's salary. In her reflection on the vanity mirror, he could clearly see the way her red lips parted in concentration as she clipped the earrings in place. 

“No,” Wonwoo responded even if he knew she wasn’t looking for an answer. “I’m more easily blinded by other things, ma’am.”

Emma glanced behind her with a puzzled look, not getting his drift. “Like what?” 

Wonwoo didn’t dare think twice. 

He got up from his once comfortable position on the couch, closing the distance that sat between him and Emma in long, calculated strides. She didn’t seem fazed by his sudden need to walk over, but the moment Wonwoo was behind her, she stiffened when he reached a hand in front of her face. Then, with a firm yet featherlight touch, her secretary wiped off the lipstick that stained past her lip line with his fingers—not once breaking eye contact with her in the mirror. 

“It wouldn’t be fun if I told you, now would it?” He smiled before pulling his hand back. “I need to keep you on your toes sometimes, too, Miss Emma.”

He half-expected her to scoff and brush off his attempt at being smart with her. Emma was a no-nonsense kind of person, and with the wedding happening soon, Wonwoo understood why she’d be more high-strung than usual. 

But instead of acting the way she always did with him, Emma took Wonwoo by surprise when she fisted his silken necktie in her manicured nails, tugging him down so that their eyes were leveled with each other. Normally, that wouldn’t be enough to wrestle Wonwoo into complete submission, but this was his boss they were talking about.

There’s a glint in those sharp eyes of hers that had his heart beating off the charts. This wasn’t the gaze of someone entitled the Ice Queen of their office. No, there’s something warm in there—borderline sensual. And before Wonwoo could even hope to figure out what it was, Emma was already closing her eyes and sealing their lips together like some unspoken pact. 

It’s an inconsequential kiss. Wonwoo has made out with both men and women alike—all desperate gasps and lust-fueled passion—but somehow, none of those experiences could hold a candle to the way Emma Rodriguez pecked his lips for a fraction of a second before pulling away. 

“You're getting more and more insufferable,” she muttered, resting her forehead against his. “You were never this cheeky before. What happened?”

You, he wanted to tell her. You happened.

At that point, Wonwoo's brain was merely operating on carnal instinct alone. He lunged forward to capture her lips again, making her gasp in surprise as he snaked a strong arm around her waist. Thank fucking god Emma’s wedding dress had a simple design—no pretentious frills to obstruct his movements. 

Despite the fact that this woman—his boss—was getting married in less than two hours, Wonwoo couldn’t even give a damn. He swiped all the makeup boxes and accessories off the vanity table, propping Emma up on the horizontal surface as he kissed her until she saw stars. 

“Wonwoo,” she sighed against his lips, thighs inching apart as he bunched the long hem of her gown up to her waist. He wondered distantly if Emma was going to ask him to stop—to see reason. But the glazed look in her eyes told him otherwise.

“More.”

Wonwoo wanted nothing more than to give her more. He’d do everything she could ever dream of asking him. Never mind the fact that it was more than a little messed up for him to consider fucking his boss right before she’s married off to the man who tormented her endlessly at sixteen. 

Nobody else mattered—not Leo, not the director, not even Emma’s intricate revenge plot that was years in the making. At that moment, only the two of them existed, only separated by a few layers of clothing before they could finally become one. 

But Wonwoo was abruptly reminded why he always chose reason before ambition long before he met Emma. Dreams and delusions were bound to end when you least expected them to. Reality, on the other hand, would always remind you of life’s harshest truths.

“Miss Emma?” They both could hear the voice of Leo's personal assistant outside the door to the hotel room, preceded by a few short knocks. “It’s time for your prenup shoot. Director Rodriguez is also looking for Sir Wonwoo. Is he in there with you?”

Whatever dream the two of them have fabricated only minutes ago had been erased from existence—all that was left was a bride-to-be with her dress ruffled in all the wrong places, and a pitiful secretary with red lipstick stains adorning his face.

“Yeah, he’s here with me,” Emma yelled over to the doorway, eyes refusing to part from Wonwoo's. “We’ll be down soon. Thanks, Christina.”

“Okay, ma’am. I'll just wait for you in the lobby.”

Wonwoo counted to ten before peeling himself away from Emma, quickly striding towards the bathroom to get some tissues both for himself and his employer. But while he was wiping off the lipstick on the corners of his mouth, Wonwoo immediately noticed the shift in the atmosphere.

Emma was already busy straightening herself out—smoothing down the creases in her gown and retouching her makeup as best as she could without her stylists. Wonwoo wouldn’t have minded the silence, it’s exactly the kind of setting he preferred working in. 

But just when he thought he’d managed to melt the Ice Queen’s heart over the past year, she turned arctic cold all over again. 

“After the wedding, tell my driver to accompany me to Leo's penthouse. Though I despise the idea, we have to go home together to keep up the act for everyone to see.” She gave her orders the same way she used to tell Wonwoo to sort the company’s financial reports—straight to business with little room for playing around. “Other than that, I don't have any more orders. You can rest easy for the day, Wonwoo.”

He felt like he should say something to address what just happened between them five minutes ago. To ask why she was pretending as if they weren’t breathing each other in like all the oxygen on the planet had gone in a flash. But Wonwoo wasn’t some desperate fool that overestimated his place in Emma’s life. 

“Duly noted, ma’am,” he muttered with the same degree of aloofness she’d just given him before tossing the soiled tissues in the trash. “I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

Emma didn’t even break face as Wonwoo's footsteps resounded on the carpeted floor. She didn’t even spare him a second glance. But then again…

He was her secretary, and she was his employer. 

That was all there was to it.

Much to Wonwoo's surprise, Leo's case was closed much sooner than he thought it would be.

Before Emma could even make it to the cathedral, the commotion had already started. Wonwoo had arrived earlier in the venue with Emma’s father, the director of PLEDIS Insurance, and were just about to take their seats among the other principal sponsors when the television screens mounted all over the church suddenly started playing a video.

A video that Wonwoo has already seen before.

He didn’t have to glance at Leo to know that he was sporting the most horrified look he could muster upon seeing one of your many sex scandals having an impromptu screening at the cathedral. Collective gasps and disgusted remarks were heard in a chorus of murmurs that reached all the way up to the high ceilings. 

Wonwoo could hear Leo's assistant, Christina—who turned out to be part of the sex parties her boss secretly indulged in—barking orders for the church staff to cut the feed. But it was too late. Those who needed to see the truth have already gotten their fill.

Recognizing that his daughter couldn’t possibly be wed to a man with a reputation that’s been tarnished in a church, of all places, Director Rodriguez ordered Wonwoo to contact the bridal car driver and tell him to send Emma straight home instead. It’s a job that Wonwoo got done fairly quickly, and despite the numerous text messages that Emma sent him demanding answers about what happened, he didn’t respond to any of them right away. 

After a few hours of digging around, Wonwoo eventually found out that one of Leo's cousins was behind the public exposé. Apparently, said cousin was able to obtain the same footage that Emma acquired and was able to sabotage Leo's attempt at seizing their family riches before Emma could even put her plans into motion. 

Well, at least someone else already did the dirty work for them.

As usual, Wonwoo collated all the information he’s gathered in a concise email. This was how he kept Emma up to speed about their progress—through self-destructing emails. He informed her about the involvement of Leo's cousin and how the trash had taken itself out, ensuring that Leo Choi had fallen from the false pedestal he’s clung onto for years.  

Their behind-the-scenes mission has been fulfilled.

While he didn’t expect Emma to respond enthusiastically, receiving radio silence in return wasn’t something Wonwoo had anticipated either. But he opted not to read into it much. She must’ve been royally pissed that Leo's demise wasn’t brought about by her own hand, and Wonwoo respected that.

The following Monday after the canceled wedding, however, he ended up finding out the reason behind her silence. 

“Boss,” sobbed Seokmin when Wonwoo timed in at the office. “Please don't leave!”

Immediately backing him up was Soonyoung, who didn’t hesitate to hug Wonwoo, even giving him a few pats on the shoulder as if they were old drinking buddies. “It's okay, Sir Wonwoo. You've been here long enough. Maybe it's about time you found your path elsewhere.”

…Huh?

“What are you talking about?” Wonwoo voiced out his confusion. “You’re speaking like I got fired.”

As if on cue, the third member of their trio walked in on the conversation as he sipped on his usual iced americano. Seungkwan stared at Wonwoo with a puzzled expression before saying:

“But weren't you fired, sir? Miss Emma announced it this morning, but I think she left right away after, too.”

Not privy to the way the pieces started to click in his head, Seokmin and Soonyoung kept consoling Wonwoo as he made his way to his (old) cubicle. Emma had been one step ahead too—someone already having packed away most of his belongings in storage boxes. Not to mention the notice of contract termination sitting on his desk. Effective immediately, it says.

“I really don't get it though” Seungkwan droned behind him. “You? The best secretary in the city? Fired just like that?”

Seokmin nodded. “I don't understand it either. You two were business-as-usual after the wedding. Miss Emma must've been so pissed that she didn't get married that she laid off the boss here.”

“True,” Soonyoung agreed with a snicker. “Boss, maybe Miss Emma's just being unreasonable. I bet she'll be begging for you to come back in a few days' time.”

Yeah. That’s what the situation would seem like to an outsider. But Wonwoo knew perfectly well that Emma wasn’t bluffing about this. She fired him for a reason that’s been stewing for more than a decade. Even if Gavin, Ezra, and Leo have had their taste of justice, Emma’s revenge plot wasn’t finished like Wonwoo thought it was.

Because Wonwoo was one of her targets all along, too.

I hoped...so hard back then that you would help me when I needed it. But you never did.

“Where is she?” 

Seungkwan perked up. “Uh, maybe she went home? She told us something about feeling a bit under the weather?”

Seokmin nodded. “She's probably in her penthouse or something. If i were you, I'd start making it up to her.”

“Hey, you're talking like they're actually dating,” Soonyoung scolded with a laugh.

Not even bothering to thank them, Wonwoo turned on his heel and made a beeline for the office entrance—dead set on doing exactly what Seokmin jokingly suggested.

This is why I'm making it up to you, he mused with an exasperated air as he buckled up in his car. 

Can’t you just let me in?

Emma spent her first Monday after the entire wedding disaster with Leo holed up in her unit—stuffing herself full of ice cream. The only reason she bothered going to the office today was to formally announce that her secretary Wonwoo Jeon was fired—just like she’d been planning since the moment she met him again as her secretary after all these goddamn years.

Her high school bullies have been put in their place. Her fifteen-year revenge plot was finally over.

But why did she feel so fucking depressed about it?

She sighed pitifully when she realized she’d already emptied her tub of double dutch ice cream, finally deigning to get up from the couch to deposit it in the kitchen for later disposal. But just when she was about to continue moping in her living room, the doorbell to her unit buzzed from the entrance, making her glance that way curiously.

It could be her next-door neighbor. A kind, elderly woman who lived with her daughter. She borrowed Emma’s rosemary spices yesterday—something that she barely used because she often opted to go for food deliveries instead of whipping up her own meals. 

With that reasoning in mind, she didn’t bother checking who was at the door through the peephole. She simply undid the locks before opening the door—only to come face-to-face with—

“Hey,” Wonwoo sighed as he jammed his foot between the door and the doorframe. “Ma’am, please talk to me first. Did you think I wouldn't catch onto what you were trying to do?”

“Why do I have to explain myself to you? You’re fired, right?” Emma growled as she pushed the door with her back, but sadly, Wonwoo easily overpowered her. At least he was decent enough to not let himself in—he simply lingered out in the hallway with a placid look on his face. “What?”

“Emma,” her ex-secretary addressed her for the first time without any formalities. “If you fired me as vengeance for not helping you all those years ago, I get it. I deserve it, even. But after what happened sa hotel…

“You can’t convince me there’s nothing between us anymore.”

Her breath hitched, face growing warm at the reminder of that intimate moment they shared hours before she was supposed to get married. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could still feel Wonwoo's mouth on hers. But that wasn’t a thought that was healthy to entertain at the moment.

“What are you saying? That was all part of the plan, you know?” She bluffed with a mirthless laugh, fully turning to face him as she crossed her arms. “Make you smitten enough with me to let your guard down. Look, you didn't expect me to fire you, did you?”

“No, but you can’t fool me, Emma,” Wonwoo chuckled with a self-satisfied smirk. “You wanted me too—that was real. If I’m mistaken, then make me leave. Call security on me. If I’m the nuisance you so desperately want me to be, then get rid of me here and now.”

The silence was thick between them. Emma was practically shaking with frustration as Wonwoo stared down at her with that overconfident look on his face. She wanted nothing but to punch him, hit him, slap him—

Kiss him.

Maybe Wonwoo was right. Maybe Emma did want him more than she led herself to believe. 

Because why the hell did she fist the front of Wonwoo's work shirt before pulling him inside her penthouse? Why did she slam him against the door, earning a sexy groan from him as she crushed their lips together?

Was this a healthy way to deal with your current predicament? No—definitely not. But it felt too fucking good to pass up on.

Wonwoo, however, was all too quick to regain control—hooking one of Emma’s thighs around his waist as she gasped into his mouth. She could practically feel him smirk against her lips, and though she’s loath to admit, it only made her want him even more.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” he chuckled before peppering her neck with love bites. “You might need to kill me first before I stop pursuing you.”

Emma spared him a breathless laugh that quickly melted into a moan when Wonwoo's hand found itself inside her oversized sleep shirt. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were obsessed with me, Jeon.”

His fingers were warm against her skin, and Emma couldn’t help the full-on shudder that racked her body when Wonwoo grazed her bare nipples. The smile on his face was wicked—dangerous, even. 

“Maybe I am,” he chuckled, his breath fanning against her flushed face.

“What would you do if I was obsessed with you, Ma’am?”

Emma was well aware that Wonwoo knew the answer to his own question. It was obvious in the way he quickly picked her up from the floor, fully wrapping both her legs around his waist as he carried her towards her bedroom. But despite the carnal urgency in his grip, Wonwoo was awfully gentle as he laid her down on the mattress.

“Last chance to kick me out,” he murmured against her ear as he started unbuttoning his shirt. “You could exact your revenge on me even better, ‘no? I’m giving you the leeway to frame me for forced entry…among other things.”

God. She knew Wonwoo was a little crazy when he accepted Emma’s orders to help her make his old best friends suffer. But the way he looked at her with such crazed desire further confirmed her suspicions.

And she didn’t want her men any other way.

“Fuck me, Wonwoo,” she told him clearly before stripping her own clothes and laying herself bare for him to feast on—eyes lidded, desiring him just as much as he did her. “That’s an order.”

He shook his head with a chuckle, and Emma had to force herself not to drool over his perfectly built torso. If she had more patience, she would’ve taken her time worshiping every inch of Wonwoo's body, but he’d already set a fire in the pit of her stomach. One that she fully expected him to deal with sooner than later.

“So wet for me,” he observed with a lopsided smirk, pressing their foreheads together as he lathered his fingers with her slick. “Have you always wanted me this way? Do you touch yourself to the thought of me, Miss Emma?”

Yes. Fuck, yes. 

“That’s none of your business, Jeon,” Emma stubbornly insisted, keeping herself from moaning when his lips descended onto one of her hardened nipples. 

Wonwoo made good on the opportunity, using the fingers he’d used to feel up her slick cunt to rub her essence across the other bud he wasn’t suckling on. The effect was near immediate—Emma throwing her head back with a pretty little whimper as Wonwoo started to massage her breasts. 

Fuck. He’d always dreamed of getting to smother his face between them.

“Wonwoo,” she gasped out loud, hips bucking desperately when he bit down on her sensitive flesh. “F-Fuck me. Now.” 

“Demanding.” He pulled away from her sensitive nipples with a pop, staring up at her with a lustful gaze. “You enjoy ordering me around too much, you know?”

“You enjoy being ordered around, too,” Emma pointed out with a scoff, trying her best not to moan too loudly when Wonwoo's fingers started to toy with her leaking cunt again. “Just—I need you. Please.”

Ah, he never thought the day would come when he’d hear Emma Rodriguez begging for his cock.

“Okay, Ice Queen,” he relented with a playful laugh, kicking his underwear and trousers off as he pumped his already hard length. “Since you're so eager for me to fuck you, I’m not going to prep you anymore. You better not cry when my cock splits you open, okay?”

Hearing him talk so lewdly to her made her pussy gush with excitement. What’s more was that, not only was her secretary blessed with a face and body that gods would covet, but his cock was something she was afraid she’d keep looking for even when he was done with her.

He was awfully careful when he first pushed inside of her, sharp eyes riveted on her face as it twisted with both pain and pleasure alike. His size was something that one needed getting used to, and he wasn’t about to make his first time with Emma uncomfortable for her.

No, he wanted her to keep thinking about him even after they’ve had their fill of each other.

“Squeezing me so fucking tight,” he rasped against her neck, licking a long stripe along the column of her throat to make her shiver. “Too bad you already fired me. I always wondered what it would feel like to bend you over and fuck you in your office.” 

He could feel her pussy squeeze his cock even tighter at the shameless image she put in her head, making Wonwoo smirk with pride as he started to move. Emma mewled his name, grabbing his face as he chased his lips. He was all too willing to give her what she wanted, meeting her with an open-mouthed kiss as their tongues clashed together in time with his thrusts.

“W-Wonwoo,” she moaned into his mouth, hips eagerly meeting his. “Deeper. Fuck me deeper.”

And fuck her deeper, he did—Emma’s got him wrapped around her pretty manicured fingers, after all. 

Wonwoo was relentless with the way he pounded her into the bed, the sound of skin slapping against skin ringing much too loudly in his ears. But he didn’t fucking care. The feel of Emma’s velvet pussy walls pulsing around his cock sent his mind into a frenzy—fucking her until the bedframe creaked, until Emma was begging him to give her more, more, more—

All of a sudden, she gasped, “Coming, coming—!” 

If being inside her was life-changing, feeling her cum around his cock sent Wonwoo straight to heaven. Her cunt spasmed deliciously as Wonwoo helped her ride out her high—lips locked together as they breathed each other in. 

“Cum inside me,” she murmured deliriously into his mouth, practically rubbing her breasts—sensitive and littered with all the marks Wonwoo left on them—against his toned chest. “Make me yours, Jeon.”

He didn’t have to be told twice.

“God, I love you,” he sighed a little mindlessly, and those carelessly uttered words made Emma’s eyes widen with surprise before losing herself to the feeling of delirium. 

Wonwoo spilled his load inside her quivering cunt with a long-winded moan, feeling like he’d been shot through the head and was experiencing a level of euphoria that bordered on illegal. Emma moaned at the feel of his warm cum filling her to the brim, bringing him down for another sloppy kiss as the heat of the moment started to dissipate in the quiet atmosphere of their bedroom.

As their breaths started to settle, Emma was the first to glance at him—to meet his eyes. Wonwoo couldn’t find any trace of the arctic cold Ice Queen that practically told him to scram the other day at the hotel.

No, it was just Emma. 

His Emma.

“Can I still take back my verdict?” she muttered softly, inching closer to bury her face in his chest. Wonwoo instinctively pulled her in for a tender embrace, kissing the crown of her head with a smile.

“You mean the contract termination?” Wonwoo chuckled. “Take it up to HR, Miss Emma. I’m just a lowly secretary.”

All of a sudden, Emma rolled over so that she was seated upright on the bed. Wonwoo had to keep himself from groaning at the sight of her—hair disheveled and body sporting all his marks. Seeing her freshly fucked by him was doing things to his libido. 

“You’re not just my secretary, Wonwoo,” she sighed, twiddling with her fingers awkwardly. “I…I wasn’t going to fire you anymore. I got used to your company. I…

“I fell in love with you.” 

The words floated between them like a cloud that couldn’t easily be swept up by the wind. Wonwoo offered her a comforting smile before pulling her into a firm kiss.

“Yet you fired me anyway,” he pointed out with a laugh. “Why? You couldn’t deal with the fact that you fell in love with one of your high school bullies?”

That earned him a punch in the shoulder. “You’re not one of them. You’re different.”

“And you’re in love with me too, no? You said it yourself. Since when?”

Shaking his head, Wonwoo then pressed a soft, featherlight kiss on her nose—one that had Emma’s heart fluttering like she was a schoolgirl.

Gosh, this man. He’s fifteen years too late.

“Maybe I’ve always been a little in love with you. Who knows?” Wonwoo spared her a Cheshire cat smile. “There’s more where that came from though.”

Emma punched him in the chest this time—a bit too close to the spot where he broke a few ribs months prior. But he didn’t care.

She could send him to hell and back and he’d do it for her in a heartbeat.

From: Wonwoo Jeon 

Subject: NOT-SO CLASSIFIED

Good evening, Miss Emma. I hope this message finds you well.

I heard that you dealt with quite a stressful client today. I’m very sorry that I wasn’t here to help you with the matter as I was given tasks to do elsewhere. In order to make up for this lapse on my part, I am cordially inviting you to dinner at 7PM tonight after work. 

Rest assured, the expenses shall be shouldered by me and your only job is to sit and look gorgeous as I wine and dine you for the evening. Sincerely hoping for your most favorable response.

Regards, 

Wonwoo Jeon

Secretary, Finance and Logistics Department

PLEDIS Insurance 

Your boyfriend :)

end notes: this wasnt thoroughly proofread so if you spot some strange errors (aka sentences in a different language bc this fic was partly in filipino) here and there, pretend you didn't see em! as always, ur feedback means everything to me so scream in the tags or my ask as much as you want ^__^

[whaddayadothatfor]

Ctenizidae

Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x Fem!Reader

Summary: You’re an anomaly from another universe. You’re not dangerous though, so Miguel’s made the executive decision to keep you around until more dangerous criminals are caught and sent home first. Unless that’s not the only reason he’s decided to keep you around…

Content warnings: dub-con, voyeurism, masturbation, obsessive!Miguel

WC: ~1k

AN: Y’all this is so unedited but I wanted to write smut for this man so I did! If y’all like it I can post a second, smuttier part.

MDNI

“Here.” You drop a small plastic bin of chocolate chip cookies in front of Miguel. As a peace offering. No, really.

Miguel raises his right eyebrow in question. He doesn’t even answer you anymore. The other Spider-people go about their day in the cafeteria, having seen this scene time and time again.

Every day for the past two weeks since you were suddenly teleported to Nueva York and promptly labeled an anomaly, you’ve been practically begging Miguel to send you home. He’s declined every time.

This is pretty much how the conversation goes each time:

“Miguel, I think I should—“

“No. We have to send the most dangerous anomalies back to their universe first—“

“I’m dangerous! I’m plenty dangerous.”

“The only thing you’ve maimed, tortured, and killed in the past month is a flippin’ houseplant. You’re staying.”

You see how frustrating this man is?

So you’ve decided that maybe bribery— sorry, a peace offering— will work better. Hence, the cookies.

“Maybe if you eat something sweet you’ll stop being so bitter and stubborn all the time,” you smile tightly. “Then you’ll find it in your heart— the one that shrunk three sizes— to let me go home.”

“I appreciate the offering— though you could use some more creativity in your approach— but just know that these won’t get you home.” He pries open the container and lifts one to his mouth before moaning in delight. “These are delicious. Thank you,” he said, sucking the melted chocolate off of his thumb. His overly enthusiastic groans were clearly a tactic to piss you off, and it worked.

You simmer in anger as he smirks while chewing his cookie. You try to snatch the bin back, but he moves it out of your way.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he says, pushing up from the small table he was sitting at and leaning down to whisper near your ear. “No take-backsies.”

He flustered you, and he knew it. He laughed as he walked away. You stuttered a retort in embarrassment, but he didn’t even have the decency to turn around.

“Ugh, I hate that guy,” you stomped in anger. You muttered several curses before you turned around to leave, only to see several wide-eyed Spideys staring at you in concern. This is why you wait until after you’re alone to throw a tantrum— it scares the locals. Whoops. “Uhh, carry on. My bad. Enjoy your lunch!”

You quickly walk away, feeling defeated. But it doesn’t matter, you’ve got nothing but time. You’ll catch him when he’s sleeping. He’s gotta be more amenable then.

Later

“You know, just for the record, I think you going to his room this late at night is a terrible idea,” Lyla warned as she flitted between standing and reclining with her arms crossed behind her neck.

“Well I think him keeping me here is a terrible idea. I guess we’re all full of them.”

“Seriously—“

“Lyla I don’t care! I’ve got a family to get back to. Friends, a life. I don’t care how fine that man is, I’m going back home. Tonight, preferably.”

“Whatever, it’s your funeral.” She acquiesced before disappearing into the ether, just as you arrived at his door.

“Wait, Lyla! Open the door.” Without a response, the door opened. “Thanks, Lyla.”

You walked in to the large room to see Miguel sitting up in a chair near the center of the room.

“Miguel, you need to listen to me—“

The sight that met you was so shocking you had to take it in one part at a time.

First, You see Miguel’s side profile as he faces the wall to the left of you. He’s breathing heavy, chest heaving as his hand vigorously moves up and down his— oh. Maybe you came at the wrong time.

With the sudden awkwardness that’s overtaken you, you look somewhere else, anywhere else, only to find the source of what he’s staring at— a video, no, porn. The second piece of the puzzle, you take in the video’s content. First, you just see flashes of skin and hear soft grunts and moans emanating from the screen. But then you realize, the voices sound familiar, really familiar. Then it hits you.

It is you.

And him. The both of you together. And that realization connects all the pieces of the puzzle together. He’s keeping you here, on purpose.

Your eyes dart back to Miguel, who has now abandoned his video in favor of the live view he has right in front of him. He’s shirtless but he still has some grey sweats on, pushed down just enough that he can jerk off. His hands move desperately over his cock, aborted grunts and breathy moans coming out sporadically.

He turned his head to the side, his cheeks flushed and his eyes narrowed with desire. You were frozen, stuck in time. Miguel kept stroking his cock while staring into your eyes. He did this right up until his orgasm overtook him, throwing his head back and jerking his hips upward as he called out your name.

His cum spurted out in waves, once, twice, three times. It was thick and opaque and made a mess all over his lower stomach. He sighed and sank back into his chair.

“Did you enjoy the show?” His voice is low and heady as he calls out to you. It takes you a moment to respond, because admittedly you’re still staring at his— well, his everything, dick included. Still It was a very, very nice, thick, veiny d—“Am I interrupting?”

His teasing knocks you out of your reverie.

“I-I should go.” You said. You’re starting to realize that Lyla might have been right. Maybe you should’ve waited until the morning. You start backing up to leave but Miguel shakes his head and the door shuts behind him.

“No, no, no. See, that’s your problem. You’re always trying to leave,” he chastises.

He stalks towards you, like you’re prey. You move backwards until your back hits the door. He reaches over you, placing an arm over your head and his index finger under your chin, lifting it upwards. He bends down, close enough that you can see even minute details of his face.

He narrows his eyes as he bares his fangs.

“You’re not going anywhere.”