#i used to be good. i used to get so many a's. i used to be able to be creative without effort. i've been in therapy for over a decade.

[robinismywifesworld]

Ms. Manager

Saja boys x Fem! Reader

Summary: The Saja boys can't help but be enamored by their dumb and pretty manager.

Warning: Possessive! Saja boys, tw.death (not reader or any of the saja boys), dumb! reader, oblivious! reader, crybaby? Reader, a bit suggestive I guess?, might be incorrect grammar and spellings, probably more.

Author's note: Bear in mind that this is my first post here on tumblr, pretty new to this because I usually post my stories on Wattpad. I could write how they met or another part of this but I need some ideas, only if you end up liking this one though. I practically wrote this on a whim. I did not proofread this lol

[Last name] [Your name], a name most popular uttered by many people, a name who could turn many heads at the direction with just at a simple mutter, a name that could break a cold person's exterior, and lastly, a name that could easily steal the hearts of the upcoming Korean boy group the Saja boys.

The Saja boys were currently at their own dance rehearsals because they can't exactly steal fans if they don't look great, sing great and dance great, would they?

Jinu lets out an exasperated sigh as he stared at the group of demons, glaring daggers at the other four demons who just can't get the dance right. "We're meant to jump in sinc at this part." He said, crossing his arms as Baby Saja rolls his eyes from behind Abby, thinking their leader wouldn't be able to see. "Why you!-" the dark haired male was about to stomp over when the door opened.

The five males immediately straightened their postures at the sight of her.

[Your name].

Their very own manager.

Standing there with a bright smile plastered on your pretty face as you held the lyrics of their song Soda pop in hand given to you by Jinu.

"Ms. Manager, good to see you." Abby gives out a little wave, shirt riding up to show a bit of his skin and toned body. "You're late. Again."

It wasn't a secret to the five of them that you were admittedly... not that great of a manager, even though they don't have much experience of how a manager actually acts but they just don't want to get rid of you. Not when you looked at them so prettily that they can't help but want more of you, definitely not when you smelled so sweet that they just want to get closer to you just to smell you, and definitely not when you touch them as if they were made of glass (and they weren't, but to them, you clearly are).

Before they met you, you were in need of a job and well... you had a very unforgettable first meeting with them that they just have to keep you to themselves.

"I'm sorry, the landlord upped the expense of the rent." You said, giving them an apologetic look as you handed them each a plastic bottle of cold water. "And he wouldn't exactly leave me alone..." You added, unbeknown of the eyes glowing yellow at the mention of the bastard who wouldn't leave you alone when you turned around to fix the papers.

Romance hums, stepping closer to you. "We did offer that you could stay with us," He voiced, placing a hand on your waist.

You look up at the male who stared down at you, a dreamy look on his face as he tried his hardest not to brush his hand on your soft-looking cheek. "Like I said, there aren't exactly many rooms in the house you reside in that could let me stay there." You pointed out.

It was true, the house they stayed in or more likely, stolen from people before they got their souls, only had five bedrooms, fitting for the five of them.

The heart shaped haired male had his eyes trail over to your plump lips and before he could quip something else, he was suddenly bumped to the side by their muscular member who couldn't help but replace the hand on your waist with his own, pulling you closer to his bigger frame. "Just stay with us." He whispers, voice deep.

You can't help but feel your heart racing at his words but put some distance by leaning back, "Abby, that's not very nice. You just hurt Romance." You frowned as you turn to the other male who immediately changed his glare pointed to Abby to a happy smile as he saw you turn to him.

"He's a big boy, he can handle a little bump." Abby rolls his eyes as Baby snickers.

Before you could tell him to apologize, Jinu walks over to you. "They're right, you know. You wouldn't have to deal with your landlord if you just stayed with us, I can just give you my room and sleep on the living room." He offers, hoping he could change your mind and stay with them instead.

"It's fine, guys really. Thanks for the offer but I really can't, you already appointed me as your manager even when I don't have much experience..." You murmured before feeling Abby's hand on your waist tighten. "It's just some old guy anyway, it's not that big of a deal." You try to reassure, lips turned up in the pretty smile that softened their exteriors.

"Do you want me to take care of him for you?" Everyone turned to Mystery who uttered those words, the rest grumbled, clearly wanting to be the one to say that to you.

You look confused by what he meant but shook your head, "No, it's alright, you don't have to."

"I'd do anything for you," The male mumble as he watched you refuse their offers some more, clearly not having heard what he mumbled.

Baby slumps into your back making you let out a cute little yelp at the added weight, "You can just sleep with me." He said, lips brushing over the back of your neck causing you to shiver.

The others immediately disproved of that.

They watched as their little Ms. Manager gave them a wave goodbye before walking off towards the bus stop.

It was silent for a bit before Baby saja finally says, "We're getting rid of him, right?"

The next day, you slammed the door open, breathing shakily as the Saja boys turned to you in concern. You were trying to catch your breath, practically running here to inform them of the news that had been delivered to you by a fellow neighbour.

"You alright, pretty girl?" Romance was the first to ask as Jinu stopped the music.

Their concern was a facade of course. They know what you were gonna say, practically smelled your scent miles away as you moved to get to them. They held back smirks of their own as they stared down at your form.

"H-he... the landlord- he's dead," You said, eyes wide and clearly still in shock. "One of my neighbours saw dismembered bodies and- oh gosh... it sounded so frightening."

The whimpers you let out highened their growing arousal as they stared at you, eyes darkening as they fought the urge to take you right then and there.

"Wh-what if that happens to me-" You were tearing up now.

Oh, those tears. Those beautiful tears.

Baby licks his lower lip at the sight, the desire to lick them with his tongue growing. He can't help but wonder what you tasted.

Jinu walks up to you immediately, in faux concern, placing a hand on you shoulder to comfort you. "We're very sad to here that..." He said with a frown and furrowed his eyebrows. "But you shouldn't worry about that happening to you, Ms. Manager."

You look up at him and the dark haired male praised himself for not pouncing on you at the sight. Sniffling, you asked. "Wh-what?"

He gave you a small yet reassuring smile, "If you stay with us, you'd never get hurt by that awful killer on the loose."

"We'll be sad without our pretty little manager to tend to our needs..." Abby adds on.

"We need you, I need you." Mystery whispers.

Your body was shaking, overwhelmed by everything that's happening.

However, if this little thing didn't change your mind yet... then they'd just have to take you, with or without your consent. You're theirs after all.

You were just their pretty, dumb manager and they'd eliminate anyone who would stand in the way of their love.

[vampmira]

open up what you got in your mind to me. [pt.2 – saja boys.]

they've never met someone like you — a mortal who almost knew them .. better than they knew themselves. for the boys, it's annoyingly intriguing. for the girls, it's comforting.

paring(s): huntrix & saja boys x demon expert!gn!reader

warning(s:) EVERYTHING IN HERE IS A PART TWO TO THIS !! some movie changes, probably effected lore that makes no sense for the sake of the narrative, a little angst at the beginning

request | tags: @blueberrysquire @akariis4snowball @j0ykill

a/n: this is part 2 !! i had sooo many ideas for huntrix that i had to make another part for the saja boys so that it wasn't so long . this part isn't as good but i liked it so ☆☆☆

that night huntrix defeated gwima was a blur. all you remember was the zombie mob of fans, half of the fight, and the use of your aura vision to raise the saja boys above the honmoon before it glimmered in gold. jinu, who gave his newly found soul for rumi, was practically reincarnated through her sword – standing in front of her post-concert, arms open for her to fall into with tears from the both of them. everyone else? well, they felt lost.

the saja boys weren't sure what to do anymore. jinu was overjoyed, of course, but the boys knew nothing more beyond gwima and their mission. they didn't care much about music, nor their fans – which huntrix still couldn't wrap their minds around – and it's not like they had secret human hobbies. they never had time for that. until now.

post-gwima, they stayed in an apartment near the huntrix penthouse, trying to figure out their new lives. for the most part, they spent most of their time under your watch – to make sure they didn't go cause chaos – but also .. under your study.

you were weird to them

they weren't used to someone other than them.. knowing them

their capabilities, their knowledge, their origins.

actually jinu found your extensive understanding of what he is to be kind of comforting

he noticed how you never really drooled over them

you'd stare, sure, but in the same way an art critic would stare at a painted blue canvas with a smeared red dot in the middle

he felt like that red dot – unexplained but you somehow understood

when he told you about his past, it was a lot for him – talking about his cruel choice

but you.. didn't judge him.

in fact, you wrote it down in your notebook immediately, the one you never let the boys get too close to

he accepted you into his life when he entertained your interest in his history

unlike him, however, the other boys were uninterested

at first anyway

thank jinu for getting them to talk to you btw

it took a little bit of convincing – telling them that you wanted to give them something more than just gwima

even though they didn't want it ...

REGARDLESS they hang out around the penthouse

because they're no longer saja boys (uninterested and unsupported by any demon staff anymore)

they really had nothing to do but mildly annoy your personal space

including being the center of your attention when the girls are out

mira gave you one rule, "living room and bathroom. only." and you've succeeded so far. abby and romance were talking by the large scale windows, mystery was playing some game with baby (and obviously winning), and jinu sat in the middle of the couch, watching whatever movie rumi put on for him. you sat beside him, sketching in your one and only personal researcher book. your pencil drew out what you felt like was the final line in mystery's hair ... before you huffed, erasing it, and trying again.

that was... until the littlest demon startled you.

"mystery, they're drawing you." bored of his game, baby peered over your shoulder, only passively curious and really wanting to mess with you. heads turned at your exposure to the room, especially jinu, who looked over your other shoulder at the sketch you did of him earlier.

"you're.. sketching us?" the direct ask made you a bit nervous, especially being under so many eyes. (kind of. mystery was more just.. generally facing your direction.) "'weakness.. chest?' are you taking notes on us?" you stood up, nearly defensive, turning around to face the couch trio.

"if it weren't for your old friends, i wouldn't have to write it all down again." the boys went quiet, remembering the origin of your knowledge and powers. "i'm just.. tired of keeping it all inside. i need to get it out somewhere."

romance, true to his name, leaned over your shoulder, putting you both in a proximity much closer than you've ever had to experience before.

"then why don't we do something.. a little more fun .. to help you get it all out?"

normally sentences like that from him sound way more suggestive than he means them to be

but this time he came up with an actual solution to release your closed up, ready-to-pop-out-of-your-skin knowledge

they gave you a one way trip to infodump station ! an interview !

they wanted to learn more about you anyways

their fellow demons down below were the ones to wipe out your ancestors

not them

and they make sure you know it too

but they can't help but feel .. a little, tiny bit bad that you're now just a living library

a time capsule, holding onto so much information that you're about to burst 24/7

they had never met a researcher honestly

you intrigued them as much as they did for you

how much did you really know ?? did you know anything or is all this antsy behavior a ploy to make it look like you knew everything when you really knew nothing ??

their disguises were perfectly created to make every little fan fall for their attractiveness the second they looked at the boys

but you never drooled at them or had your eyes pop out of your head

you just always... stared. processing. tracing mindfully.

they didn't know what you were really abut. but they were about to find out. and really test your persona.

romance sat relaced in a chair as you circled him, pencil taking note of everything you noticed. how his markings were sharp, not rounded like rivers, how his skin was cooled, not burning hot. all things you already knew, but you found small comfort in knowing not much changed. you took a deep breath around his hair, nose scrunching up. he smiled, taking your cheek in his hand.

"new cologne." his voice was smooth, gentle. traditionally alluring. "just for you. do you like it?" he turned up his flirtatiousness, pulling you in closely, testing the waters of your focus.. before you turned away to start writing, completely uneffected.

"so many generations and you guys still smell like flames.." you mumbled to yourself.

"would you rather we smell like bubblegum?" baby tried to sass you, but you were too focused on the sharpness of his teeth to care. you stepped towards him, eyes widened.

"can demons still tear apart brick with the force of their canines?" you asked, rather close to his face. for a moment, he almost felt like the flustered one.

"yes..? no? i-i don't know." he crossed his arms, childishly. "i don't go around biting bricks." you jot it down still as you move towards abby. he's deeply relaxed, leaning back on the couch, comfortable shirt riding up to expose his famously toned abs. your eyes trail off of your notebook and they think.. they've got you.

"like what you see?" he teases. "you can touch them, you know." a bold move that brings you closer, nails tracing his skin. they're almost disappointed that abby is the one who stole your attention.. before they realize you're attention isn't stolen at all. you're drawing his markings with careful detail.

"where did yours come from? rumi's started forming on her arm when she was a kid, but they haven't reached her stomach yet. they grow with time, right? how old would that make you then..?" you dissolve into mutters they can barely decipher. "oh!! mystery!" he almost jumps behind the couch when you race over to him, making jinu laugh from the sidelines of their attempts to flirt with you. "i've never seen a demon sparkle! that's new.. is that just you? or is there a whole subspecies of sparkling demons? or is it your human disguise..?" your questions nearly overwhelm him, enough to make him forget how he's supposed to flirt with you, but romance pulls you away, whispering in your ear.

"it's not just him." he smiles, hand on your shoulder. "you're sparkling, too, sweetheart." if anyone could fluster anyone, it'd be him, even if it takes two rounds. his thumb runs against your chin. "you look so cute in this lighting, like a rose."

"speaking of which, what's the flora like down there? are there any? do they eat demons or are they like.. regular flowers? we knew more of demons than of gwima's realm. did they smell? i bet they might have.. would it be nostalgic or torturing?"

the boys share a look, and sigh. you went off into high speed muttering again.

you really were everything you said

uninterested in their flirts and more in knowledge

that almost made them like you more..

in the following times after the interview, they greeted you a bit more casually – sometimes cheerfully, asking if you had any new drawings or trivia you wanted to get off your chest

how did you . tame them !? does the whole hard to get thing actually work !?

it confused the girls wildly

but to see them adjusting to being here through someone who actually understood them instead of lying around, empty and lost, was a pick-me-up in the mornings

one morning, after being delivered a coffee, handsigned by the boys, you felt something click in your head, a sensation you had never felt before, and reached to put it in your notebook immediately

"demons, when properly befriended, like to be understood. they brought me coffee. do demons like coffee??"

[suksatoru]

the king of curses was afraid of one thing and one thing only. there's a little pink-haired menace that runs around his home, and this demon incarnate (his daughter) knew very well of sukuna's greatest fear and made sure to use it against him with unshakable determination.

"mwah!"

sukuna rubs at his cheek furiously in an attempt to rub off the little girl's obnoxiously wet kiss as she giggles, chubby hands reaching to grab his face once again as sukuna scowls.

"you disgusting little worm—"

smack!

another adorably fat kiss is planted right onto his cheek, and sukuna can only grumble under his breath and surrender to the flurry of attacks aimed his way. the little girl takes her chance, peppering sukuna's face with as many kisses as she possibly can as he closes his eyes. she's only two—but she has the strongest sorcerer to ever exist bending at her will with remarkable ease.

"i hate babies. so much. just wait till your mother gets home, you brat. i'll make sure she leaves you in that crib of yours for—"

there's a surprisingly gentle kiss planted on sukuna's forehead. soft and sweet, and he recognizes your scent a moment later as his eyes fly open—followed by a chorus of your daughter's happy chirps of mama! alerting him that you had finally returned home.

"you're not very good at handling her alone, are you ryo?" you grin, cooing at your daughter and running a hand through her pink tufts as sukuna huffs, sinking into the couch as you snuggle up beside him, tossing your purse to the side and smiling at the baby on his chest.

"she is insufferable." he grunts, watching the little baby try and stand up on his chest—she wobbles a bit, and sukuna wordlessly places a hand on the small of her back to steady her before turning towards you.

"don't leave me with it again. it's so much easier to take care of when you're here." sukuna says with a heavy sigh, squinting his eyes as you laugh into the crook of his shoulder.

"it? that's no way to refer to my angel. plus, is she the baby here or you?" you question, humor twinkling in your eyes as sukuna's gaze narrows stubbornly.

"she's your angel and my demon," he concludes, and you hum with a satisfied nod. demon wasn't exactly that far off the mark—not as you watch your daughter's eyes gleam with mischief once she notices sukuna's too busy looking at you to notice her approaching lips.

sukuna makes a sound of disgust in the back of his throat when he feels her sudden kiss right on the edge of his jaw. but, he surprisingly makes no move to wipe it off this time. he just (quite aggressively) ruffles the little girl's hair with an angry huff.

"demon is the correct name for her. she's lucky i tolerate her."

"is this your way of telling me you love her?"

"... i said no such thing."

[theglassofmiddleearth]

Imagine Being Isekai'ed into KPOP DEMON HUNTERS. (part 2)

This chapter is mainly Abby (Abel) oriented!) Each member will get a chapter since you guys showed so much support!

Part 1

Y/N awoke, gasping much needed air into her lungs as she sat up. Clasping one hand to her chest, she panted, reliving all her memories, as the flow of thoughts slowly settled into her mind.

‘Hey, hey. It’s okay, you’re safe.’ A familiar voice whispered, gentle and soft. The owner of the voice had meant for it to be reassuring, but Y/N instantly recognised the voice. It was Jinu, the popstar demon.

But he was dead? All the Saja boys were meant to be dead. If they were still alive, this meant she had transmitigated before they debuted. 

She had time to stop the events of the plot. She could make sure none of the boys died. Maybe she could even…

‘Gwi-ma…’ She whispered, eyes still fixated on the crisp white bed sheets she was sitting on. The sheets wrinkled as she grasped onto them, fists trembling in unspoken anger.

She almost forgot about the demon lord, the one who caused all this. He was the reason the men died. He was the reason so many people had died. All the innocent people who had lost their souls, just because Gwi-ma wanted more than he had.

‘She knows about Gwi-ma?’ Another voice, deep and dry mumbled, from her right side.

Y/N lifted her head slowly, eyes meeting Jinu’s hesitantly, concerned gaze. Wow, he was good at masking his emotions. Her gaze danced between all the men who were standing in the room. Each had a slightly different stance. Yet, each seemed to be leaning towards her, eager to hear her voice. To swallow up whatever noise she would make next.

‘Where am I?’ Y/N’s voice came out, a scarily, even tone. The room was unfamiliar, meaning that she was likely at the Saja boy’s own residence. It wasn’t too bad, it was a pent house too. She could tell by the way the room was almost fully covered in glass window.

In fact…

Wait.

This was the penthouse right next to hers. 

SHE COULD SEE HER OWN MINI STUDIO SET UP, THROUGH THE TALL GLASS WINDOWS FROM HERE.

‘I need to invest in curtains.’ She mumbled, staring at the revealing scene of her apartment. Luckily for her, she had cleaned up just days ago, just after she finished up producing Golden. Otherwise, she couldn't imagine the embarrassment that she would be facing if the men saw her… personal belongings.

‘I hope you don’t mind that we’ve taken up residence near your home. It’s just that much easier for us y’know?’ The buff one smirked, sitting down on the bed, leaning towards Y/N’s face.

‘Alright enough with this pretty boy act. I’m not helping you kill thousands upon thousands of people.’ Y/N swung her legs over the side of the bed to stand.

‘What if-’

‘No matter how painful the memories are.’ Y/N snapped, whirling around, her body flush with rage.

She could see it. The shame, the flash of pain and sudden confusion in Jinu’s eyes. She chose to ignore the pang of regret that rippled through her chest. He dug his grave. He could lay in it for all she cared.

‘How do you-’ Jinu stuttered out before Y/N pushed him out of her way. 

Grabbing a random jacket, she used it to cover her shoulders as she walked out of the bedroom, into the spacious living area. It was decorated with a modern feel, suitable for a seemingly new rising pop band. It looked to be fairly new in its decoration. No one had lived here previously. Y/N remembered this since the apartment before was empty of furniture. At least this meant they hadn’t taken the lives of anyone yet. 

How pretentious.

Finding the front door, she stalked out of the apartment and into the elevator, pulling the jacket around her tight. 

Her notebook.

It wasn’t with her, the guys must have taken it from her whilst she was out cold.

Y/N groaned, slapping a hand onto her forehead as the elevator doors opened.

‘You have some serious talent.’ 

Y/N blinked, as she was met with the view of Abby, waiting at the elevator door entrance.

‘How did you-’

‘Demon, remember?’ He chuckled, moving aside, gesturing for Y/N to pass through. ‘Besides, you left your note book so I thought I’d return it.’ 

Y/N gave Abby a once over, pondering his trustworthiness. She relaxed slightly, as she took back the notebook from Abby’s outstretched hand.

‘Y’know, Jinu’s pretty shaken about what you said.’ He kept talking, walking side by side with her as she walked out of the Saja boy’s apartment building and into the doors of her own building.

‘I stand by what I said. I’m not helping you kill people.’ She whipped around, jabbing a finger into the muscular man's chest.

‘Hey, look. I don’t actually care what happens.’ Abs shrugged, gently placing his palm over Y/N’s accusing finger. His face was soft, eyes sincere in a way Y/N simply couldn’t refute.

‘Then why are you here Abby?’ Y/N swiped her key card and punched in the top level into the elevator panel. To her displeasure, Abby had also slid into the elevator with her.

‘Call me Abel.’ He grinned, leaning back against the handrails, arms crossed. ‘I’m here because I wanted to walk you home. We’re here because Jinu wants to forget. You were right.’ He sighed as the elevator rose higher with a soft hum.

‘And you? The rest of the group?’ Y/N turned, mimicking Abel’s pose.

‘I’m here because Jinu’s my friend. Despite what your friends say about us, we do have feelings. Humans and demons are not all unalike. In fact, I’ve seen humans act more like demons than we do.’ His eyes glazed over, as if stuck in a memory of his own.

‘We feel more than just greed and shame, but you’re not ready for that conversation.’ The grip on his arms was tight. Y/N could see the way his fingertips were turning white.

‘I never said you couldn’t feel anything.’ Y/N turned back to face the opening elevator doors as the elevator happily dinged. 

‘All I said was, I wasn’t going to help you kill thousands of people so Jinu can feel better, about his mistakes.’

‘I get that, and you’re right.’ Abel agreed, as Y/N walked into her apartment, gesturing for him to follow her.

‘But for some reason, I can feel that you’ll be the one to change it. All of it.’ Abel’s eyes trailed on Y/N’s form as she took off her shoes before flipping open her notebook. Y/N didn't take it to heart, yet to Y/N's ignorance, Abel was being genuine.

Y/N frowned, sitting on a bar stool at her marbled kitchen island. Pulling out a pen from her pocket she scribbled something down. The original song was already written in her notebook, the title and almost all the words. It seemed as if, she had written all the backbones of the songs in the movie already.

‘The girls are going to know you’re demons. If I can see the patterns, so can they.’ She pointed her pen at the man who sat down across from her.

‘Huh, you have more than one seat. You have friends?’ He chuckled, dodging Y/N’s thrown pen whilst catching it in one swift movement.

‘You want your stupid song or not.’ She snatched the pen back, grumbling. It seemed like these guys were intent on teasing her. What assholes.

‘I couldn’t care less.’ He grinned, before suddenly clutching at his head. The smile on his face was gone in an instant, replaced with one marred by agony.

‘Ah..’

Y/N stood, her stool being pushed back with an ear wrenching screech. 

‘What, what's wrong?’ Y/N rushed over, hands hovering over Abel’s shivering form. ‘Talk to me!’

‘Ugh, just my head. Gwi-ma wasn’t too happy about that comment.’ Abel chuckled spitefully, pushing into his forehead with his index and middle finger.

‘He can hear your thoughts?’ Y/N frowned, leaning forward to observe the man in front of her. He seemed to be in genuine pain. She gently reached forward to touch Abel’s right temple with her fingers.

‘Yeah, he whispers in our minds. It’s how he controls us-’

A flash of gold and white blue. As if the strings she could see at the concert had suddenly erupted from her fingertips and rippled across Abel’s patterns in an instant.

‘What the.’ Y/N jerked her hand back, as if she had been shocked with static electricity.

A warm hand wrapped around her wrist, gentle yet insistent.

‘What did you do?’ Abel looked up in wonder, his eyes filled with slight suspicion.

‘What do you mean what did I do?’ Y/N blinked, looking between her caught hand and Abel’s glittering eyes.

‘I can’t hear him. Gwi-ma. My head, it’s silent… I can hear myself think.’ He sounded just as shocked as Y/N felt. ‘I haven’t been able to think on my own for years.’

‘I just, I touched your temple. I didn’t even-’ 

‘I have to tell the boys. We have to show them!’ He stood quickly, releasing Y/N’s wrist, taking large strides towards the elevator.

‘But, the song?’ Y/N blinked, waving her notebook.

‘Bring it with you!’

‘Okay but wait. Listen for a second.’ Y/N tugged at Abel’s sleeves. The man turned around, eyebrows raised. His heart thumped as his gaze flitted toward Y/N's hand.

‘Jinu wouldn’t be happy about this. He wants Gwi-ma to win.’ Y/N’s reminder, halted Abel’s excitement quickly. 

‘Damn. I didn’t think about that.’ His eyebrows creased into a deep scowl.

‘Okay look. I’ll write you a debut song. But you have to promise me, you won't take souls.’ Y/N’s grip tightened on Abel’s shirt. He softened his stance and turned back to Y/N.

‘I’ll do my best darlin' ’He hummed, placing a reassuring hand over her fist.

‘Alright. I’ll write your song. Get your boys to come over. I’ll set up my studio.’ 

‘Really?!’

'Really.'

'You're serious? You'll write for us?!'

‘Offer ends in five minutes.’

‘OKAY OKAY.’ 

Y/N rubbed her hand over her weary eyes. Writing the song would take minutes. Recording, mastering and mixing would take hours. Maybe she wasn’t going to sleep tonight.

She heaved a sigh, walking over to her set up, spotting Abel waving his arms frantically around in the apartment next to her.

Wow, he was fast.

She continued watching the interaction between the men, smiling slightly at the sight. If she didn’t know, it almost seemed like a real boy band, rejoicing over finding their new producer. The way each was frantically grabbing phones and note books was actually refreshing. As if they were truly excited about debuting.

Y/N shook her head, sitting down in her gaming chair,  booting up her PC. She still had to be careful. Abel was the only one she had actually spoken to. And who knows, he could also be faking it. 

She failed to see Jinu’s figure, looking through the glass, his face bewildered as he peered at Y/N flitting around, testing all her equipment.

Tag list: @ajunoiseee @silverklaus @thesimppotato11 @devilchicc @imlost-sendhelp @tumblblob @arieslucy @maybeethan69 @t4naiis @6demonica9 @suzieq1948374 @katzline @justyourlocalfriendlydinosaur @1950schick @myjerseygirlblog @sky2lar @itsjustkhaos @nevermorekisses @valeriele3 @yoongi-tunes @reibelhearts @satansdaughter123 @iheartyourgrandpa @justanindiangirl12 @uniquecutie-puffs @xyndyn @akiqvq

[jkwrites-m]

Daddy Kookie (2)

Pairing: idol!Jungkook x female reader

Genre: childhood lovers to exes to lovers, parents au, idol au, smut, angst, fluff

Word Count: 6.4k

Summary: After Jungkook dropped all contact, Y/N was left broken - and pregnant. Seven years later, fate brings them back together.

Warnings: MDNI, Explicit, 18+, smut, angst, abandonment, young (teenage) pregnancy, unintentional parental neglect, resentment, fighting, boundaries, guilt, burnout, anxiety, confessions, reunions, slapping, anger, heartbreak, cursing, struggle, explicit: PRAISING, kissing, missionary, tension, pillow talk, unprotected sex

A/N: here’s what was originally the ending of part one but for some reason i can’t post that many blocks 😒 so here’s the “part 2”.

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I found Namjoon in the hotel gym that night.

He was alone, earbuds in, pacing the far side of the room with a water bottle tucked under one arm, muttering rehearsal notes to himself like he always did before a show. I stood in the doorway for a solid minute before I said anything.

He saw me in the mirror first.

Pulled out one earbud.

“You alright?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded once and didn’t press me.

Just set down his bottle and motioned toward the bench press like, sit.

I sat.

And for a while, neither of us said a word.

“I met with her this morning,” I said finally, my voice rough from not speaking since the show.

Namjoon didn’t ask who.

He just waited.

“I asked for an hour. She gave me exactly that.”

I rubbed my hands together. My legs were bouncing, and I couldn’t stop.

“I thought I was ready to see her. But I wasn’t.”

Still, Namjoon said nothing.

“She has a daughter.”

His brows lifted just slightly, but he didn’t interrupt.

“She’s mine,” I added. “Her name is Eun Ae.”

That got him.

Namjoon blinked slowly and sat down on the bench across from me. “You’re a dad?”

I nodded. “I didn’t know. I- God, hyung, I blocked her. She tried to tell me and I just… I disappeared.”

He sighed but didn’t scold me.

I think that made it worse.

“She raised her alone,” I said. “Worked. Went to school. Everything. No help. And I was here, living my dream while she was raising my kid and barely surviving.”

“You didn’t know,” Namjoon said carefully.

“I should’ve.”

“That’s true.”

I buried my face in my hands. “She’s giving me one chance. Tomorrow. At the zoo. I get to meet her - meet my daughter - for the first time and I don’t even know how to breathe around the thought of it.”

He let me sit in the silence for a beat.

Then: “What are you most scared of?”

“That she’ll hate me.”

Namjoon’s gaze softened.

“That she’ll ask me where I’ve been,” I whispered, “and I won’t know how to answer.”

“You don’t have to have all the answers,” he said. “You just have to show up. That’s what matters now.”

“I want to be in her life,” I said. “I want to earn it. I want to be someone she can count on. Not someone she has to recover from.”

Namjoon nodded slowly. “That’s a good place to start.”

“And Y/N…” My voice cracked. “I still love her.”

“I know.”

“I don’t expect her to forgive me. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I want her to see that I’m not the same kid who left.”

“You’re not,” he said.

I looked up at him. “What if I ruin it again?”

“Then you don’t,” Namjoon said. “You show up. You listen. You apologize. You be present. And if they don’t let you in, you keep showing up until they do- or until they tell you to stop. Either way, you stay honest.”

I nodded, swallowing hard.

“Thanks, hyung.”

He gave a tired smile. “Get some sleep. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

I didn’t sleep much.

But I dreamed of a little girl with my eyes.

And Y/N beside her.

═══════

It was her idea to wear her tiger hoodie.

“Because we’re going to the zoo,” she said, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

I tied her shoelaces twice- her feet wouldn’t stop bouncing- then stood up and stared at her for a moment too long.

“Mama?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you nervous?”

A pause.

“No,” I said. “I’m just thinking.”

It wasn’t a lie. I was thinking. About everything.

About how I swore he’d never meet her. About how easily I’d broken that rule yesterday. About how I’d watched his hands tremble when I said the word daughter.

He didn’t cry, not fully.

But he looked like someone who had finally understood what it meant to break something that couldn’t be fixed.

I kept that image close as I buckled her into her booster seat and drove to the zoo.

He was already waiting by the entrance.

Sunglasses. Mask. Hoodie. Head tucked down.

It should’ve made him look anonymous.

It didn’t.

Even behind all that, he looked unmistakably like him.

And when Eun Ae saw him, she didn’t pause.

She ran.

Full-speed. Straight up to him like she’d known him her whole life.

“Hi!” she chirped. “I’m Eun Ae. Are you the friend Mama said we’re meeting?”

He knelt down slowly.

I watched his fingers shake as he pulled the mask down from his face.

“Yeah,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m… I’m Jungkook.”

“That’s a funny name,” she giggled. “Can I call you Mr. Kookie?”

He let out a short, stunned laugh.

“Sure,” he said, clearing his throat. “You can call me that.”

She grabbed his hand like it was nothing. Like it was normal.

Like this hadn’t been six years coming.

I followed a few steps behind them, unsure what to do with my arms, my heart, my breath.

They moved together easily.

Too easily.

He matched her pace. Let her pick which exhibits to visit. Lifted her onto his shoulders to see the giraffes. Bought her a pretzel and wiped the cheese off her face without hesitation. They laughed at the same things. Tilted their heads the same way when they were curious. Chewed the straw of their drinks when they were thinking.

They were mirrors.

And I was the frame- holding it all together, barely.

At the tiger enclosure, Eun Ae pressed her palms to the glass and gasped.

“They’re so cool!” she shouted. “I want one!”

“They’re a little big for a pet,” Jungkook said, crouching next to her.

“I’d teach it tricks.”

“I bet you would.”

There was a pause. Then she asked the question I’d been dreading.

“Did you know my mom when she was my age?”

Jungkook blinked.

I tensed.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I did.”

“Was she weird like me?”

“She was perfect,” he said. “Exactly like you.”

She grinned. “So… super weird?”

He laughed, and I heard something in it that sounded like mourning.

Later, while she climbed a small jungle gym near the café, I sat beside him on the bench.

He didn’t speak at first.

Just watched her, eyes full of things I didn’t want to name.

“She’s incredible,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

“You already said that.”

“I’ll say it again,” he said. “As many times as you need.”

We sat in silence for a long time.

Then I heard my voice say something I hadn’t planned.

“You’re good with her.”

He turned to me, surprised.

“She doesn’t know who you are,” I added. ��But she likes you.”

“I’m glad.”

“She’s never had… that. A male figure. Anyone to play like that with.”

He looked away. “That’s my fault.”

I didn’t correct him.

He reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled something out.

A little stuffed tiger.

“I bought this on the way here,” he said, holding it up. “I didn’t know if I’d get to give it to her.”

She ran back to us just then, sweaty and smiling.

Jungkook knelt again and held out the tiger.

“For you.”

Her eyes lit up.

“Thanks, Mr. Kookie!”

She hugged him. No hesitation.

He closed his eyes like the moment hurt in a way he needed.

═══════

That night, after Eun Ae was tucked into bed, I sat on the couch with a blanket around my shoulders and my phone pressed to my ear.

The apartment was quiet.

Too quiet.

Like the kind of quiet that presses in on your skin and makes your thoughts louder than they should be.

“She hugged him,” I whispered.

My best friend on the other end of the line didn’t speak. She waited. She always did.

“She hugged him like she’d known him her whole life. Like he hadn’t missed anything. Like he hadn’t disappeared.”

I wiped under my eyes with the edge of my sleeve.

“And he was… good with her. Gentle. Patient. Funny. Like he’d been waiting his whole life to meet her. Like he already loved her.”

“You sound surprised,” my friend said.

“I am,” I confessed. “I don’t want to be. But I am.”

There was a pause.

“You still love him,” she said.

I closed my eyes.

“Don’t,” I said softly. “Please.”

“Y/N-”

“I can’t afford to love him,” I whispered. “Not again. Not after what he did.”

The words came out raw and wet and cracked.

“I spent years hating him,” I said. “Years trying to forget the way he looked at me, the way he kissed me, the way he made me believe in things that never came true. And today, I watched him hold our daughter’s hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I…This could’ve been real. This life. This moment. All of it. If he had just… stayed.”

I swallowed the sob that threatened.

“I didn’t feel anger. I didn’t feel hate. I felt… sad. And full. And furious. And terrified. All at once.”

“You’re allowed to feel all of that.”

“I know. But it doesn’t make it easier.”

She didn’t say anything for a while.

Then: “Do you think he still loves you?”

I laughed. Quiet and bitter. “He says he does.”

“And do you believe him?”

I looked out the window. The city lights blinked back like stars caught in a snow globe.

“I believe he thinks he does,” I said. “But I don’t know if he loves me- who I am now. Not the girl he left behind.”

“You don’t have to decide anything now.”

“I don’t want to decide anything,” I said. “I just want to breathe again.”

I hung up after that.

Tucked my phone under the blanket and rested my head on the arm of the couch. My eyes closed. My chest ached. I felt heavy and hollow and full of fire all at the same time.

And then I heard it.

A shuffle.

A creak of the hallway floorboard.

I turned.

Jungkook stood there, just outside the door frame, his hand against the wall like he needed it to hold himself up.

He hadn’t knocked.

He hadn’t said a word.

He just looked at me like he’d walked straight into the center of a storm he hadn’t seen coming.

“You heard all that,” I said, my voice flat.

He didn’t deny it.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t breathe.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said quietly. “I was bringing back the little drawing she made. She left it in my jacket pocket. I was going to knock. I just… heard you.”

I sat up slowly.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know.”

He didn’t budge.

“Y/N,” he said softly, voice shaking. “I love you. Not just the girl I left. Not some idea. You. Right now. All of it.”

And then he crossed the room.

Without another word, he bent down and kissed me.

Soft and sure and shaking all at once.

And for one second - just one - I kissed him back.

It was like breathing again for the first time in years. Like lightning. Like a heartbeat I didn’t know I missed.

But then I pulled back.

And I slapped him.

Hard.

He didn’t even flinch.

“You can’t just do that,” I said, my voice rising. “You don’t get to walk in here, say I love you, and kiss me like it erases what you did.”

“I know,” he said, eyes shining. “I know it doesn’t fix anything. I just needed you to know it’s real.”

A long silence stretched between us.

He finally set the folded piece of paper on the table.

It was a crayon drawing. Stick figures. A tiger. The word “KOOKIE” spelled backwards across the top.

“I’ll go,” he said, stepping back. “But… thank you. For today.”

He turned and walked out before I could say a word.

And I sat there, hands shaking, heart a mess, trying not to chase after him.

Because no matter how much I wanted to…

I didn’t know if I could survive loving him again.

═══════

I didn’t mean to kiss her.

I meant to leave.

I meant to say those words and walk away like a man who’d learned his lesson. Who knew better now.

But when I looked at her- sitting on that couch, eyes full of grief and strength- I forgot what I was supposed to do.

And when her lips touched mine back… for that brief, burning second, I thought maybe I wasn’t too late.

But then she slapped me.

And she was right to.

I walked out shortly after. The drawing Eun Ae made was still on the table. The door shut behind me like punctuation on a sentence I’d rewritten too many times in my head.

I didn’t go to my room.

I went to Namjoon’s.

He was still up, writing in a leather-bound notebook like always. When he opened the door and saw my face, he didn’t ask. Just moved aside to let me in.

I sat on the edge of the bed, my hands gripping the hem of my hoodie.

“She still hates me,” I said.

Namjoon didn’t reply. Just waited.

“I heard her talking to someone. On the phone. After the zoo.” I exhaled shakily. “She said it could’ve been real. The life. The moment. If I had just stayed.”

My voice cracked.

“She’s right,” I said. “It could’ve been. I destroyed everything.”

Namjoon sat in the chair across from me, elbows on his knees. “You didn’t destroy everything.”

“I kissed her,” I admitted.

That got a raised eyebrow.

“She kissed me back. For a second. Then she slapped me.”

Namjoon didn’t flinch. “You probably deserved it.”

“I definitely deserved it.”

I leaned forward, elbows on my thighs, head in my hands.

“She thinks I’m just showing up now because of Eun Ae. But it’s not that. I was going to try before I even knew. I swear. I just… I still love her. That never went away.”

“I know,” Namjoon said. “We all do.”

“She said she doesn’t know if I love who she is now. Not the girl I left behind.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” I said immediately. “She’s stronger. Sharper. She’s everything I wish I’d grown up fast enough to deserve.”

Namjoon nodded slowly.

“Then show her,” he said. “Not with words. You’ve said enough. Do something.”

“Like what?”

“Think,” he said. “What did she love? What mattered to her?”

I blinked.

“Wildflowers,” I said. “She always picked the ugly ones growing out of sidewalk cracks. Said they were survivors.”

Namjoon smiled. “Then that’s where you start.”

I nodded, a lump forming in my throat.

“I’m going to show up,” I said. “Every day. Until she tells me not to. Or until she believes me.”

“Good,” Namjoon said. “And Jungkook?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not a piece of shit. You were a scared kid who made a selfish mistake. Now you’re a man who has to own it.”

I nodded again.

I wasn’t running anymore.

Tomorrow, I’d bring her flowers.

Not roses.

Not something expensive or flashy.

Just wildflowers.

The ones that survive.

═══════

He didn’t text the next morning.

Didn’t call.

Didn’t knock.

But when I opened the door to take out the trash, there was a bouquet of wildflowers on the step.

No note.

No explanation.

Just color.

Simple and honest.

I stared at them for a long time before I brought them inside.

I didn’t put them in a vase.

Not yet.

Eun Ae noticed them instantly.

“Oooh, are those for you?”

“Yeah,” I said, almost under my breath.

“From Mr. Kookie?”

I froze.

She giggled. “He smells like sunshine.”

I blinked. “What?”

“His hoodie. It smelled like sunshine. And gum.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

She took one of the smaller stems from the bouquet and tucked it behind my ear before skipping off to play.

═══════

The next day, he didn’t bring flowers.

He brought her a book.

One of those thick picture books with a glittery cover and a dragon on the front. She shrieked like she’d won the lottery. He handed it to her without a word and let her read to him, even though she kept skipping pages and making up half the story.

He didn’t flinch.

Didn’t correct her.

He just smiled like it was the best thing he’d ever heard.

I watched from the kitchen, trying not to feel anything.

Trying to stay steady.

Trying not to remember the way his hand had felt on my cheek when he kissed me.

And the sting of my own palm after.

═══════

The third day, he showed up with both- flowers for me, a new stuffed animal (a bunny this time) for her, and takeout from my favorite noodle place.

He didn’t ask to stay.

Just handed it over, bowed, and walked away.

I didn’t stop him.

But I didn’t close the door right away either.

═══════

The fourth day, he didn’t come.

And I hated how I noticed.

How the absence felt like a missing rhythm in my day. A skipped beat.

I told myself it was good. Smart. Necessary.

That space was healthy.

But then he texted.

Jungkook: Didn’t want to crowd you today. Just… wanted you to know I’m here.

I didn’t reply.

But I stared at that message for a long time.

═══════

The fifth day, he came by again. This time he asked if we wanted to go for ice cream.

Eun Ae screamed like he’d asked her to Disneyland.

I tried to say no.

I did.

But my mouth betrayed me.

“Okay,” I said. “Just an hour.”

He didn’t smile like he won.

He smiled like it hurt to be that grateful.

We walked to the corner shop with her bouncing between us. He let her pick his flavor. She made him get bubblegum. He pretended to like it. I knew he didn’t.

He caught me watching him.

And didn’t look away.

That night, after she was in bed, I sat on the same couch, stared at the same wall, and whispered into the dark:

“I don’t know if I’m ready.”

And I meant it.

I wasn’t ready.

Not yet.

But I also wasn’t closing the door anymore.

Not all the way.

═══════

I should’ve known it was too good to last.

The morning started perfect.

Too perfect.

Jungkook showed up with matching zoo t-shirts he found online. One for him, one for Eun Ae. Hers said “Mini Tiger.” His said “Big Tiger.”

She laughed for five straight minutes and made him wear it out in public.

I rolled my eyes and told him he was shameless.

He just grinned and handed me a coffee with two extra espresso shots- exactly the way I liked it.

“Trying to bribe me?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

I didn’t smile.

But my fingers brushed his on accident when I took the cup.

And I didn’t pull away.

We took Eun Ae to the botanical gardens. Let her feed koi fish and run across wooden bridges with her stuffed tiger tucked under one arm. Jungkook stayed close the entire time. Carrying her backpack, tying her shoe when it came undone, wiping ice cream off her face.

It almost looked like a family. 

Almost.

We sat on the grass to rest before lunch, and she ran over to the koi pond like it was a different world.

“She’s so comfortable with you,” I said, trying not to let it sound like an accusation.

“I’m glad,” he said. “I want her to be.”

There was a quiet pause.

Then he looked at me and said something that should’ve been sweet.

But it wasn’t.

“She’s just like you, you know.”

I blinked.

“She’s strong and stubborn and always needs to be right. She even talks with her hands like you do- ”

“Don’t,” I said, sharper than I meant to.

He froze. “What?”

“Don’t compare us like that.”

“I wasn’t- I meant it as a good thing-”

“She’s not a mirror, Jungkook,” I snapped. “She’s a person. Her own person.”

“I know that,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean it like- ”

“You weren’t around. You don’t know what she’s like. You’ve seen her for what? A week? You don’t get to analyze her like you raised her.”

His mouth opened. Then closed.

And I saw something shift in his eyes.

Something small and hurt.

Then a tiny voice interrupted us.

“I’m sorry,” Eun Ae whispered.

We both turned.

She was standing by the fish pond again, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” she sniffled. “I’ll be good.”

“No,” I said quickly, moving toward her. “Baby, no. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She clung to me like her little heart might explode.

I scooped her up and pressed her to my chest.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, voice thick. “I’m not mad at you. I promise. You didn’t do anything.”

She looked over my shoulder at Jungkook. “Are you mad too?”

He shook his head, eyes glassy. “No, sweetheart. Never.”

“I just wanted to have a nice day,” she mumbled.

My throat tightened.

“I know,” I whispered.

We sat on the bench together for a long time after that.

No one said much.

═══════

Eun Ae fell asleep in the car on the way home, and Jungkook carried her inside like muscle memory. He tucked her into bed without needing directions, covered her with her favorite blanket, and kissed the crown of her head before stepping back like it hurt to walk away.

Neither of us said much after that.

He left for the venue early that night to prep for their final concert.

I stood in the hallway after he left, hand pressed against the door, heart aching like it was made of split seams and bad timing.

I didn’t cry.

But I wanted to.

Because I knew this was what I did.

Push away before I could be left again.

═══════

The stadium vibrated under my feet.

Screams rolled like thunder across the roof, and I could feel the beat of the music reverberating through the concrete backstage walls.

It was the final night of BTS’s residency.

Everything was fire.

Everything was electric.

Everything was right- except me.

I stood at the main comms table with a headset snug against my ears, spitting rapid-fire cues to the light techs, the camera ops, and the runners, my voice a metronome of control.

“Camera C, pan stage right. Cue smoke burst. Light rig alpha, wait two seconds on drop- no, two seconds, not four-”

My tone was clipped. My spine straight.

On the outside, I looked like I had it together.

But I could feel it.

The crack behind my ribs. The pulse behind my eyes. The way I flinched every time his voice cut through the speakers.

Every note he sang.

Every lyric he poured his soul into.

It hurt.

I told myself I didn’t care.

I told myself I was over it.

But every time the lights shifted and his silhouette appeared, I remembered the way he’d looked when he kissed me and the way he’d stayed when I slapped him.

I remembered how his voice broke when he said, “I love you. Right now. All of it.”

I remembered the way he meant it.

And I remembered how much that terrified me.

“Y/N?” someone called in my ear. “Spotlight three needs confirmation. We’re doing the slow solo bridge in thirty.”

I blinked, the fog in my head thick.

“Copy that,” I said quickly. “Cue in thirty. Confirm on bridge.”

I watched the monitors as he stepped up to the center of the stage.

Alone.

Golden lights haloed around him. Fans screamed his name from every direction.

And he sang.

Not just to them.

I knew that voice.

I knew when it was for the crowd…

…and when it was for me.

My hands curled into fists at my sides.

Stop it.

Don’t romanticize this.

Don’t soften.

But I did.

I always did.

Every time his voice cracked. Every time he hit a note like it cost him a piece of himself.

He looked straight into the lens during the final chorus- the one that streamed to every screen in the arena.

It was almost too direct.

Too intentional.

And in that moment, I knew.

He wasn’t singing to a sea of strangers.

He was singing to me.

The cue ended. The screen faded to black. Lights cut. Screams exploded.

My heart thudded harder than the bass.

I turned away from the monitor and pulled off my headset.

I needed air.

The crew backstage was already preparing for encore. The guys were offstage hydrating, catching their breath, prepping for the last two songs.

I slipped through a side door and stepped out into the shadowed corridor by the loading dock. It was cold. Quiet. The noise of the crowd muffled by thick walls.

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

I didn’t want this to hurt.

But it did.

I didn’t want to care.

But I did.

And worst of all?

I didn’t want to want him.

But God, I did.

═══════

The cheers were still echoing in my bones.

My shirt clung to my back, soaked through with sweat. My hair was dripping. My lungs were still catching up.

But all I could think about was her.

I didn’t see her once during the show. Not backstage. Not in the wings. Not even in the flashes of tech crew darting through shadows.

But I felt her.

Like gravity.

Like silence.

Like a missing beat in the rhythm I couldn’t get right.

I sat alone in the dressing room while the rest of the guys laughed and recapped their favorite fan chants. Jimin had his feet on the table, Taehyung was dancing shirtless with a can of soda, and Jin was complaining about the confetti in his hair.

But I couldn’t join them.

I couldn’t even smile.

My hands trembled as I unlaced my boots. My knees bounced restlessly. My throat was dry, but I couldn’t drink anything.

Because all I could hear was her voice.

“You don’t know what she’s like.”

“You weren’t around.”

“You don’t get to analyze her like you raised her.”

She was right.

Every word.

I’d tried so hard to connect, I didn’t realize I was stepping on landmines she’d spent years trying to bury.

I messed it up.

Again.

“Yo,” Namjoon said, stepping into the room and tossing me a towel. “You good?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’re lying.”

I sighed. “I know.”

He sat down across from me, cracking open a bottle of water and sliding one my way.

“She didn’t talk to me tonight,” I said.

“You talk to her?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then maybe she’s waiting.”

“Or maybe she’s done.”

Namjoon didn’t say anything to that. He just leaned back and looked at me with those eyes that saw way too much.

“Do you regret it?” he asked.

I blinked. “Regret what?”

“Kissing her.”

I hesitated.

“No,” I said. “Not for a second.”

“She kissed you back.”

“Just for a second.”

“But she did,” he said. “And that means something.”

“Does it?”

He nodded. “It means she hasn’t closed the door. She’s just scared to open it.”

I stared at the floor.

“I don’t want to scare her,” I whispered. “I just want to show her that I’m not that kid anymore. That I’m not running. That I’m here. I’m here.”

Namjoon leaned forward. “Then tell her. Really tell her. Not to fix things. Not to beg. Just to say it. Say what you didn’t back then.”

I nodded slowly.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” I said. 

“Then tonight’s your last chance.”

“I don’t know if she’ll open the door.”

“Then knock anyway.”

I looked up.

“I’m scared,” I admitted. “If she sends me away, I don’t know if I’ll recover.”

“She won’t send you away,” he said. “Not if you’re honest. Not if you’re real.”

I took a deep breath.

I was real.

I was terrified.

But I was real.

═══════

I didn’t ask what he was doing here.

I didn’t ask why he looked like he hadn’t slept in days or why his fingers were twitching at his sides like they didn’t know how to be still.

I just watched as he stepped inside my apartment, slowly, like the floor might vanish beneath him and closed the door behind him with a soft click.

He stood there for a long time.

Like he couldn’t find the words.

Like if he said the wrong thing, I’d vanish.

I leaned against the wall and waited.

He finally looked up.

“I didn’t know how to leave this city without seeing you again.”

I didn’t reply.

“I’m not asking for anything,” he said. “Not your forgiveness. Not a second chance. Not some happy ending I don’t deserve. I just… I need you to know.”

His voice cracked.

“I need you to know that I never stopped loving you.”

My breath caught.

“I didn’t leave because I stopped. I left because I was scared. And young. And stupid. And then I was ashamed. So ashamed I couldn’t even look at myself. So I blocked you. I shut you out. Because every time I thought of you, I remembered what I threw away.”

My throat burned.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known,” he said. “And you raised our daughter without me. You built a life, a home, a future- and I wasn’t there. I missed her first words. Her first steps. Her birthdays. I missed everything.”

Tears welled in his eyes.

“I don’t deserve to be her dad. I don’t deserve to even stand in this hallway. But I’m here. And if there’s even the smallest piece of you that believes I could be more than what I was-”

He stopped.

Swallowed hard.

“-then I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it.”

The silence that followed felt like thunder.

And then I whispered, “You don’t get to walk back in and say the right thing and expect it to fix the past.”

“I know,” he said, hoarse.

“But…”

He looked up.

“But you said the right thing anyway.”

And then I stepped toward him.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t even breathe.

Until I reached for him.

And he broke.

His hands cupped my face like I was something fragile, like I was glass, like he wasn’t sure if I’d let him keep holding me.

And when he kissed me- this time- I didn’t slap him.

I kissed him back.

Hard. Messy. Real.

It wasn’t slow.

It wasn’t soft.

It was years of ache and regret and longing that had nowhere else to go.

His hoodie came off, tossed aside like it was nothing, and mine followed, sliding to the floor in a forgotten heap.

Hands found skin like they were remembering. His fingers traced the curve of my waist, the dip of my spine, like he was mapping me again, reclaiming territory he’d lost. 

My back hit the hallway wall, the cold plaster a stark contrast to the heat of his body pressing against mine. He kissed down my neck, his breath hot and ragged, and whispered, 

“I missed you so much. I missed this. I missed you.”

I moaned into his mouth, my hands tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. We stumbled toward the bedroom, shedding layers like they were shackles, breathless and desperate. 

The bed creaked beneath us as he lowered me onto it, his weight hovering above me, his eyes searching mine like he needed permission.

“This okay?” he asked, barely above a whisper, his voice raw with need and uncertainty. I nodded, my heart pounding in my chest, but he needed more. 

“Say it.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

He didn’t hesitate. His lips found mine again, hungry and demanding, but his hands were gentle, reverent, like he was worshipping me. He kissed his way down my body, pausing at my breasts, his tongue tracing the curve of my nipples, his lips murmuring praises against my skin. 

“God, I missed these. So fucking beautiful.”

I arched into his touch, my breath hitching as his hands slid down my thighs, his fingers brushing the edge of my panties. He hooked them with a single finger, pulling them down slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. 

“You’re so perfect,” he murmured, his voice thick with desire. “Always were.”

He kissed his way back up, his lips brushing mine before trailing down my neck, his hands roaming over my body like he was memorizing every inch. 

“I’ve thought about this every day,” he confessed, his breath hot against my ear. “Every. Fucking. Day.”

I reached for him, my hands tracing the lean muscles of his back, the ink of his tattoo sleeve, the piercings that glinted under the dim light. He was solid and real, and I couldn’t stop touching him, like I needed to prove he was here, that this was real.

He shifted above me, his eyes dark with need, and I felt him, hard and insistent against my thigh. 

“I need you,” he growled, his voice rough, his hands gripping my hips. “Now.”

I nodded, my heart racing, my body aching for him. He didn’t waste another second. He entered me slowly, his eyes locked on mine, his breath catching as he filled me completely. 

“Fuck,” he whispered, his forehead resting against mine. “You feel so good.”

He began to move, slow and deliberate, his hips rocking into mine, his hands gripping my thighs like he was anchoring himself to me. 

“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice low and demanding, and I obeyed, my eyes meeting his, holding his gaze as he thrust deeper, harder.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmured, his lips brushing mine with each movement. “So perfect.”

His words sent shivers down my spine, his praise fueling the fire burning between us. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him closer, meeting his thrusts with my own, our bodies moving in perfect sync. 

“Jungkook,” I gasped, my nails digging into his back, my voice breaking as pleasure coiled tight in my core.

He growled, his pace quickening, his hands gripping my hips tighter, his control slipping. “Cum for me, baby. Let me feel it.”

His words were my undoing. My walls clenched around him, my body trembling as my orgasm crashed over me, waves of pleasure washing through me, my breath catching in a sharp cry. “Jungkook!”

He whispered into my neck, his lips brushing my skin, his voice hoarse and desperate. “I love you. I love you so much.”

His words were a balm, a salve to wounds I didn’t realize were still raw. I clung to him, my fingers digging into his back, my body still trembling as he followed me over the edge, his thrusts becoming frantic, his breath ragged against my skin. 

“Fuck, Y/N,” he groaned, his voice breaking as he came, his body shuddering above me, his release a sharp, primal sound.

He collapsed onto me, his weight heavy but comforting, his breath hot against my neck. For a moment, we just lay there, our hearts pounding in unison, our bodies still joined, the silence thick with unspoken emotions.

He brushed my hair back and kissed my forehead.

“I’m not going anywhere this time,” he said, voice trembling.

I didn’t answer.

But I didn’t ask him to leave either.

And that was enough.

For now.

═══════

I woke up to the sound of his breathing.

Slow. Steady.

It filled the room like the soft hum of a song I hadn’t heard in years.

For a moment, I didn’t open my eyes.

I just listened.

Soaked in the weight of him next to me. The warmth of his arm draped around my waist. The rise and fall of his chest behind my back. His hand, large and gentle, resting against my ribs like he was afraid I’d disappear if he let go.

The light was pale through the blinds. Morning had barely begun.

But the ache in my chest already knew it was time.

I turned over slowly.

He was already awake.

Watching me.

Not smiling. Not saying anything.

Just looking.

Like this was the first morning of his life that made sense.

I searched his face for hesitation.

There wasn’t any.

Just quiet awe.

And something softer than I knew what to do with.

“You didn’t sleep,” I whispered.

“Didn’t want to.”

I blinked. “Why not?”

He reached up and brushed a strand of hair from my cheek.

“Didn’t want to miss this.”

My throat tightened.

I looked away.

“You’re leaving today.”

It wasn’t a question.

He nodded. “My flight’s in four hours.”

I swallowed.

“Will you tell her?”

He nodded again. “I want to. When you’re ready.”

“I don’t know when that’ll be.”

“I’ll wait.”

I looked back at him.

He meant it.

“I don’t know what this is,” I said softly.

“Me neither,” he replied. “But I want to find out.”

Silence stretched between us like thread.

“Can I see you before I go?” he asked.

“You’re seeing me now.”

He smiled. Just barely. “After I pack. Before the airport.”

I didn’t say yes.

But I didn’t say no.

He leaned in and kissed me once- just once- like he didn’t want to ask for more than I could give.

Then he pulled back, exhaled, and whispered:

“I’m so in love with you.”

I didn’t say it back.

But I didn’t need to.

Because he pressed his forehead to mine, closed his eyes, and stayed there for a long time.

And when he finally pulled away, when he slipped out of bed and gathered his things, I watched him with something heavy and quiet in my chest.

Not fear.

Not anger.

Something like hope.

And when Eun Ae woke an hour later and asked where Mr. Kookie was, I smiled, just a little, and said:

“He’s not gone. Not really.”

Because for the first time in years…

I believed it.

═══════

Post A/N: dont hate me 😭 there’s still so much to their story

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MASTERPOST ♡ MASTERLIST

♡ requests are welcome ♡ taglist ♡

These characters are fictional and do not represent any real-life individuals. Their likeness is used solely for visual inspiration and does not reflect the actual person or their story.

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Posted: 06/24/2025

Taglist: @mar-lo-pap @lovingkoalaface @whoa-jo @kiliskywalker666 @sucker4jeon @annpeachy-blog @kaiparkerwifes @nikkinikj @elithenium @asyr97 @heyinwluv85s @jjkluver7 @bammbi-jeon127 @kookoo-kachoo @angelsdecalcomania @kayswatanabe @granataepfelchen @kelsyx33 @tatamicc @blubird592 @llallaaa @chromietriestowrite @k1ll1ngcl0wns @jahnaviii @mfsitscho @traumaanatomy @mellyyyyyyx @yu-justme @bangtaniess @xmiaacxio @emmie2308 @magicalnachocreator @suker4angst @dragonflygurl4 @taetaecatboy @somehowukook @iiamnotsure @lavender2ari @busanbby-jjk @prilnextdoor23 @ecomidnight @cuntessaiii @jungshaking @nbjch05 @baechugff @jakiki94 @songbyeonkim

[mrsbarnesblog]

˖˚⊹ old habits

➤ summary: you call Rafe out when he acts disrespectfully

➤ w/c: 1.5k.

➤ warnings: themes of toxic masculinity, emotional confrontation

➤ a/n: really wanted to be a part of @zyafics campaign, and I hope that other writers will consider doing it too <3

masterlist

The thing between you and Rafe was still new and fresh—only a few times going out on dates, lingering touches, and way too many moments that were more than just friendly.

Since the first time you had met him, you thought that he had grown to be a better person. He tried to change some of his old habits to become more mature. And you truly saw that, and it was a reason why you even started to catch feelings. But there were still times when he struggled, when some of the traits of that old toxic Rafe were slipping through, either because it was too hard to control things that he had been taught from a young age or because he truly didn’t see himself being in the wrong. 

That day he invited you to the new cafe near the beach on the mainland, saying that it was the best one. For you, Rafe was a gentleman. He picked you up, helped you to get in and out of his truck, complimented your dress and your hair, and let you hold his upper arm when he was leading you to the entrance.

He opened the door for you, and the place was dimly lit with yellow tones and just radiated warmth. It was a little bit too loud with people sitting everywhere, but if the place was good, you didn’t mind that one bit. You looked back at Rafe, sharing a smile, until the young hostess stepped in front of you. 

“I’m so sorry, but as you may see, we’re full right now. You may sit here until one of the tables is free.” With a polite smile, she gestured to the side. “The waiting time will be around fifteen to twenty minutes, if that’s okay with you.” 

You nodded to her words without hesitation. “That’s totally fine.” 

But beside you, Rafe let out a small breath. Not quite a sigh, more like a scoff. He raised an eyebrow and looked the girl up and down with something colder in his expression than you would’ve preferred.

“You’re telling me you can’t fit two people in? It’s not even full in here.” She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, briefly looking at you to figure out how to react. Rafe’s voice wasn’t loud, but you knew how intimidating and cold he might be, especially to people who were not used to it.

“Rafe.” You said his name sharply, tugging his bicep once in hope that he would let it go. 

He glanced at you, then back at the hostess, not getting the problem that you seemed to have. “We’re literally standing here, dressed nicely, just asking for a table. I’m not trying to be a dick. I'm just saying, you could make it work if you actually wanted to.” You didn’t wait for her to respond. You took a step back, slowly removing your hand from his arm.

“I’ll be outside.” You said. No emotion in your voice, hands already folded across your chest. 

You sat at the bench outside, one leg thrown over another, looking at the ocean and debating just simply going back home. Rafe walked out a few minutes later, with hands buried in the pockets of his pants, looking at you like he genuinely could not understand your behavior. 

“Are you seriously mad at me?”

“I’m not mad. I’m disappointed.” You said calmly, not even sparing him a glance. 

“For what? I didn’t even say anything bad. She was the one who couldn’t do her job properly.”

Your head snapped towards him with eyebrows raised in surprise. “No.” You said sharply, taking him aback. “You were being an asshole because you didn’t get what you wanted. She was doing her job, Rafe.” 

His brows knit. “Jesus, I wasn’t an asshole—I was just calling her out.”

“Calling her out for what, Rafe? For not breaking policy? For not giving you special treatment?” He looked away, jaw clenching. His hand reached his head to rub over his buzzed hair in frustration, while you simply looked at him, seeing the conflict that he had. Part of him clearly knew you were being reasonable, that he might’ve stepped over the line, but the rest of him, the louder part, wanted to be right. Wanted to win.

“I’m not dating someone who thinks talking down to people makes him important.” You said firmly, your voice low and calm but hard to let him know how serious that situation was for you. “That’s not cute. That doesn’t make you look cooler or whatever. That’s not something I tolerate.”

Rafe exhaled hard through his nose, briefly throwing his head back in frustration. “You’re making it sound like I screamed at her or something. I was just—I don’t know—frustrated.”

“Yeah, and she was working. Probably scared of losing her job because of kooks who talk down to her every day. Probably already dealing with a bunch of other men who think that they are better than everyone and that other people owe them something.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t do that.”

You stood up, stepping closer with your heels softly clicking against the wood. You squinted your eyes slightly, tilting your head to the side now that you were almost the same height. “Do what?”

“Make me out to be some kind of monster.”

“I’m not.” You shot back. “But if you don’t like how I make you sound by just talking about your actions, maybe ask yourself why instead of getting defensive.”

The silence that followed stretched long between you. You crossed your arms tighter, mostly to keep yourself from softening, because, God, you wanted to. Because part of you knew that he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but still addressing the problem was important to prove to him that the said problem existed. 

You watched the gears turning behind his eyes, jaw tight, hands buried deep in his pockets. He looked off toward the ocean like maybe the answer was out there, like it could help him to understand how to break the default settings that were engraved in his brain. 

“I didn’t think it was that bad.” Rafe admitted finally, his voice quieter now, and you could hear the edge of hesitation. “I didn’t even notice I was doing it. That I was acting like…” He trailed off, and you knew what he meant. Like Ward.

“That’s the problem, Rafe.” You said softer now, but still steady. “You don’t even notice when you slip. I know that you’re trying to be better. I see it, but I also need you to acknowledge that sometimes you can still be mean, that sometimes you’re in the wrong. Otherwise we won’t work out.”

He looked at you then, as if hurt for a second, because for the part of him, it sounded like a threat or like a challenge that he didn’t want to accept.

“I don’t want to be that guy.” He said after a moment. “I’ve been trying. You know I have.”

“I know. That’s why I’m still standing here and not leaving.” You stepped closer, but you didn’t reach for him.

“But I’m not going to coach you through being a decent person every time you slip. You have to want it for yourself, not just to keep me happy, because I’m telling you right now, Rafe…” You met his eyes, staying your ground. “If that’s the man you choose to be, I will walk away. Even if I don’t want to.”

His throat bobbed in a nervous swallow, his eyes darted away, then back to yours, as if he was trying to measure if you were bluffing. And when a few seconds passed, when you looked at him steadily, waiting for an answer, he turned and walked back toward the café.

You watched him through the front windows when he hesitated near the hostess stand, tugging awkwardly at the expensive watch on his wrist, and then leaned in to speak to the girl. Her face was surprised at first, then softened as he continued to talk, before she nodded a few times, still slightly hesitant, and said something back to him. 

When Rafe returned back to you, the tension in his shoulders seemed to ease a little bit, though his jaw clenched when he rubbed the back of his neck and stopped in front of you like he wasn’t sure where to begin.

“I apologized. Told her I was out of line.”

You gave him a small nod. “Thank you.”

He shifted on his feet, nervous. “She said the table will be ready in ten.” You nodded again, waiting for him to continue. “You still wanna eat with me?” He asked, almost hesitant, like a boy who'd just been scolded.

“I do.” His lips stretched in a small smile, eyes glimmering with something like surprise and maybe a bit of shyness that you caught every once in a while. Rafe stepped closer, offering you his hand, and you playfully rolled your eyes, smiling back and interlacing your fingers. “Now I’m about to order the whole damn menu, Cameron. And it better be good.” 

[batsandbirdbrains]

Ok Dick biting Hal as a kid has got to be one of my favorite headcanons of all time. Like atp it IS canon to me. But now I’m imagining Dick biting all the members of the JL at least once because they’ve done something that’s either pissed him off, or pissed Bruce off. Hal is obviously bitten first and everyone thinks he’s exaggerating or being a big baby about how much it hurts. Then Clark gets bitten because Bruce got hurt on a JL mission where Clark was supposed to be watching his back. And to be fair, Dick growled at him before he bit, which was far more warning than Hal had received. When Dick sinks his teeth - some of which are still baby teeth - into Clark’s meaty, Kryptonian arm, it shouldn’t hurt. But somehow Clark is tearing up as he lets out a pained howl. It takes both Aquaman and the Flash to remove Dick. Clark doesn’t use that arm for two days, wincing every time he jostles it. How and why Dick bites the others is up for interpretation. Eventually, once all of them have been bitten, they call a meeting about it. Not to get him to stop or anything, just to figure out why it hurts so fucking much. They’re all throwing out various theories when someone says “No seriously, what hell does that kid put into his bites?” when Dick emerges from the shadows and says, deadpan, “Vengeance.” before cackling evilly and disappearing. They all shudder before deciding to never piss him off or talk about his biting ever again.

Also now I’m kind of imagining Dick and Slade fighting for the first time when Dick is just a little gremlin and Slade is like “pffft as if this fourth grader could beat me” only to panic when said fourth grader sinks his teeth into him so hard that he still has the scar years later.

I'm imagining Bruce seeing how Dick's go-to attack is to bite people, and he immediately makes a specialized mouth guard for him. It perfectly molds to his teeth, but it's extra sharp and leaves a different imprint than Dick's actual bite. Mostly so no one can compare dental records or anything to the scars that Dick will no doubt leave on many, many people. It has to be updated regularly when Dick is still young because of him losing his baby teeth.

The first time Dick bites Superman is because he brought Batman back to the Batcave in terrible shape. They'd been on a mission together, it was supposed to be quick, easy, no big deal. And now Dr. Leslie and Alfred are working on him in the Batcave medbay, and Dick just turns to Superman with tears and rage in his eyes. And he launches himself at him and attacks.

Clark yelps as soon as he realizes ouch, he can feel that! What the hell!

"Dick! Dick, let go!"

"You promised you'd bring him back home safe!" Dick cries, but his words are muffled, his teeth still sinking into Clark's arm. "He got hurt!"

"I know, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Clark says quickly. "But he's going to be fine, Dickie, it's mostly just a broken arm and a concussion!"

Dick is growling and hanging off Clark's arm, until Alfred comes out and announces that Bruce is ready to for visitors. Dick unlatches quickly, then scampers over to Alfred, still sniffling. As soon as he catches sight of Bruce, he starts whining and crying and cuddles next to him on the bed.

Clark never makes fun of Hal for the ankle guards again. Dick really does have crazy sharp teeth. Clark's arm is bruised for days around the puncture marks, and he's left with a scar on his arm in the shape of Dick's mouth.

A few months later, Dick has started hanging out with Garth a lot. They become pals. Very good friends. Best friends, almost.

And Garth hangs out with him one day and looks so glum and down in the dumps and says how Aquaman was mean to him during training, but it's okay, it was Garth's own fault. That doesn't sit well with Dick. No one makes his friends upset and gets away with it.

The next time Dick accompanies Bruce to the Watchtower, Dick locks in on Aquaman and chomps right on his arm. Like eating a fish stick. Aquaman yelps and tries to pry him off, asking him what happened and what's wrong and why the hell is Robin biting him?

"Don't be mean to my friends!" is all Dick says before he stomps off to go back to Batman's side. Before he reaches Batman fully, he turns and locks eyes with Aquaman, making that creepy I've got my eye on you gesture. It sends a shiver down Aquaman's spine.

He bites pretty much every other JL member for various reasons between the ages of 8-11. When they eventually call a meeting for it, Batman just stares at all of them with an unimpressed look.

"Perhaps you should try not upsetting him," Batman tells them, then turns on his heel and leaves. Dick, who'd been hiding under Batman's cape, grins at all of them and sends a taunting little wave before the cape covers him up again.

Dick first encounters Deathstroke at the ripe age of nine. During said encounter, Dick is terrified. Deathstroke is talking about wanting to make Dick his apprentice, how he's going to steal him from right under the Bat's nose, and Dick panics.

And he resorts to biting the exposed skin he sees when Deathstroke tries to nab him by his cape.

He damn near bites Deathstroke's hand clean off at the wrist. It startles Slade so bad that he shouts, throws Dick off to the side, and is distracted just long enough for Dick to run away and get back to the Batmobile.

Dick is panting and a little freaked out as he relays the story to Bruce from the safety of the Batmobile as Bruce drives them home. Bruce reaches over and pats Dick's head, his own heart beating so hard in his chest.

"Good job, chum," Bruce says softly. "Use every weapon you have. Always."

Dick nods his head, wrapping his cape tight around him.

[lvrclerc]

EVERY SUMMER'S END

summary: loving a writer is a dangerous game, and carlos sainz is reminded of it when the dedication of your new book throws him back to every summer you ever shared, and the bitter end of them all. ✷ IVY'S POETRY DEPARTMENT EVENT: « although i may not be yours, i could never be another's. »

F1 MASTERLIST | CS55 MASTERLIST

pairing: carlos sainz x romance writer!reader wordcount: 7.2K content: summer romance, breakup, takes place from 2016 to 2021, implied smut, loosely inspired by beach read by emily henry, bittersweet, ambiguous relationship status, inacurrate timeline/events, open ending, not proofread. note: requested here! i wasn't kidding when i said i love writing summer romances. carlos sainz you are the epitome of a book mmc. i finished this out of spite and i hate it, which is why it took so long to get out, but thanks @sunsetcupid for sticking with me for the highs and lows of the writing process and reading through it. ‹𝟹

♫ us. - gracie abrams ft taylor swift

THE INTERVIEWER ASKS about what Carlos enjoys doing outside of motorsports, and the answer is rehearsed.

Carlos Sainz is a man of many hobbies. Racing, of course, dominates his life—he had been born in a legacy of burnt asphalt, it only made sense for him to bleed checkered. He’s a man who enjoys sports: padel with friends on week-ends when their hectic calendars allowed it, he could appreciate a boxing match here and there as a spectator, liked surfing when the weather was right and the waves were kind, and, later in life, he would take up golf. Outside of all movements, Carlos found comfort in good music, the kind with low, rumbling rhythm and gravelly guitar chords he would hum under his breath as a kid. He liked old movies too, the ones with seductive charm and grainy black-and-white frames that felt like diving into a memory.

Yet, amidst all the various things he enjoyed, Carlos Sainz had never been much of a reader.

It’s not that he didn’t like reading—he could get around it—but he just never had the time. As a child, karting consumed him too much to think about anything else. There were a few stray books, Percy Jackson maybe, when all of his classmates were raving about them. But he never learned to let himself get lost in pages. He never had the stillness for it—not with the life he grew up in. The erratic rhythm of racing didn’t leave space for leisurely afternoons, thin paper slipping between fingers, and other worlds unfolding in quiet.

Except once a year.

There was a place, tucked away like a whispered secret in the south of Spain, where time didn’t tick the same. There, the sun kissed his skin with soft acknowledgment. The air smelled faintly of vanilla and light florals. And there, he read.

But he doesn’t like to think about it. So when the interviewer asks about books, Carlos only shrugs and says he’s not much of a reader. 

Then he moves on.

—

LA HERRADURA, PROVINCE OF GRANADA, ANDALUSIA, SPAIN. SUMMER BREAK OF 2016.

La Herradura is a small town, as per Carlos’ standards, tucked along Spain’s Costa Tropical. His orange-tiled home set in Madrid, with its silent halls, had started to feel like a weight pressed against his lungs since February of last year. A place too close to memories, but too far from the heart, or something like that—metaphors weren’t really his strong suit. Returning for his second Formula One summer break would’ve swallowed him whole, which is why he chose this town, where nobody would think to look.

Five thousand people at most, strolling in the narrow streets folded between whitewashed buildings, with a beach that always seemed to hum in the distance. Here, he thought, he might be able to breathe again.

And yet, it’s only his second day, and someone spilt coffee all over his shirt.

You hadn’t meant to. You were just reaching for a packet of sugar near the café counter, as your waiter had forgotten to bring any. In no way had you expected the man beside you to whip around, so when he did, it became a mess of startled movement, clumsy apologies, and dark espresso blooming across his white cotton shirt like the birth of a bruise over his heart. You both spoke at once, tripping over sentences. Your voice tangled in the air until, mid-flurry, his hand caught your wrist gently.

“You’re alright, I promise,” the stranger had laughed. It rumbled through his chest and for a second, even the waves lapping outside the beachside café seemed to roar in jealousy.

He was beautiful in the way people rarely are, terribly so, all in sharp edges and sunburnt youth, sculpted by speed itself, with cheekbones etched by the wind, and jaw clenched from habit. Then, as anyone might have thought he could come off as severe, there were his eyes: soft in their curves, chestnut brown, flickering with curiosity and warmth. It was the kind of moment that would’ve made you roll your eyes if you were ever to write it—too convenient. Still, your heart lifted when he smiled, washing over you like carbonation fizzing to the top of a soda bottle you would have turned upside down.

“I’m still really sorry,” you apologized. “I wasn’t paying attention and—”

“Neither was I,” he cuts you off, and the exasperated smile that escaped you made his smile grow. Carlos found it charming.

“Let me at least buy you another one,” you offered. “It’ll make me feel less like a disaster.”

By principle, he should’ve declined. He had more than enough money to buy his own coffee, and his parents hadn’t raised him to let a pretty woman cover the bill. But there was something in the teasing in your voice he couldn’t place, a color twinkling in your eyes he craved to name, a story he didn’t want to end yet. So he said yes.

He ends up back at your table, settling into a wildly uncomfortable straw chair on the terrace, and you talk, voices clashing pleasantly over the aroma of salt and espresso. Carlos comes to the realization you don’t seem to know of him—or his last name, or his face—outside of the little world you built out of spilled coffee when you ask, casually, what he does for a living. He panics. Says he works as a chauffeur, because he likes the way your hand rests naturally on his forearm, unbothered, and he’s not ready to see the awkward change his upbringing might lead to.

To steer the conversation away from the sudden heat blooming under his collar, he nods toward your open laptop and the notebook darkened by messy scrawling next to it. “And… you write?” he asks.

Your cheeks go warm, and Carlos—absurdly—wants to bottle the shade and carry it around with him. “I attempt to,” you mumble, hastily flipping the notebook closed. “Haven’t written anything good in a hot minute.”

A year, two months, and thirty-two days, if we’re being precise. Your debut novel had made quiet waves, gotten a litany of praise. Critics called it raw, authentic, the kind of story that lingers between ribs. One reviewer went as far as to say it felt like the words spilled right from your lips onto theirs. There was irony in it, because you didn’t feel like anything spilled anymore. You had been staring at your blank document and blinking cursor, crafting slowly wilting outlines for months now. All ideas withered the second you touched them.

People called you a romance writer now. But how were you supposed to write about love when your last relationship left you with scars so soft they rotted sweet, like overripe fruit? What good was a writer who couldn’t write?

“Writer’s block?” the beautiful stranger asks, bringing you back from your own mind.

You nod. “Exactly. My agent’s on my ass about getting something new on paper, and I just… can’t. I thought coming here might help. Change of scenery, all that.”

He leans in, half-grin across his lips, almost conspiratorial. His hair brushes your cheek right where the shadow kisses your cheek. There is some poetry to that, and it’s so precise and cinematic that you want to laugh, that you want to lean further in and grasp its intricacies. “What do you write?” he inquires, and his voice is similar to dusk: low and warm. “Maybe I could help.”

That makes you smile, and a chuckle tumbles out of you. “Romance,” you say. “Technically, it’s women’s fiction, but they always shelve it under romance.”

“So you make a living out of people… falling in love?” His eyebrows lift as he says it. You nod, though the motion is braced. You know what people think of the genre, especially men: the subtle scoff and the condescension disguised as charm. You’re already preparing to pull the plug on the conversation, right with the slow building fantasy of it all, before it goes sour. But instead, he says, “I thought it would be easy, writing about love.”

The laugh that bursts out of you is entirely involuntary. You throw your head back from it, startled by the naivety of it, and the sheer audacity that he might really mean it.

“Love is far from being easy, tesoro.”

Sunlight catches your hair as you say it, and Carlos is possessed by the sound of the waves crashing onto shore as he asks, boldly and oddly earnest, if you can visit the town together. “As inspiration for your book, and another payback for the coffee,” he justifies.

Truth be told, he disagreed with you. For Carlos, there was nothing as easy as love: he fell in love with karting before he could spell the word ambition, let the scent of gas and gravel tarnish and scorch his lungs black, until the motion of getting into his seat became automatic. He loved the cockpit, the spare parts, the silence behind the helmet. He loved his country, with its sun-warmed streets, the music folded into each inflection of the language. Tradition etched into gestures that he carries with him when he drives. He had loved multiple women until his heart gave out under the effort.

Carlos loved with a ferocity you could only hold in the wild, boundless beginnings of adulthood, when the world still seemed so wide and endless, beckoning you to seek for its borders, and fell with just as much force.

Love wasn’t something complicated, or a puzzle to figure out. Cars were, so were strategies. But love? Love came as naturally as breathing, so easy to give yourself in.

And when you say yes, a knowing smile tugging at the corner of your lips, just this side of daring, Carlos thinks he might be falling for you just as easily.

You walk through the streets slowly, without a plan or destination, just the rhythm of two people perfectly content to orbit one another. La Herradura doesn’t offer much unless you’ve planned ahead: no grand museum or crowded monuments, instead overflowing in small alleys, bougainvillea spilling down balconies, salt-sticky air curling around your wrists like ribbons.

Neither of you minds. Carlos is more than happy stopping by overpriced ice cream stalls, pointing out absurd flavor just to see you wrinkle your nose. He tells you the worst one-liners he’s ever heard, mostly from his mother’s soap operas she used to watch while folding laundry, and bask in the teenage feeling burgeoning in his chest at the mere idea of them making you laugh.

He pays for dinner without a second thought. It’s the tourist spot next to the café where you first met, and the food is nothing special, but your snarky comment as the waiter brings the wine makes him feel like he’s won something. The sun’s set by the time you finish, but the last of its glow still lingers on the skin of the sea, similar to yours, and Carlos is surprised by how easily the parallel draws in his mind. A bonfire crackles by the beach, a testimony of late June and the traditions he loves, flames and music and voices all blending into a single glowing memory.

Like all good romantics, you’re drawn to it like a moth. Carlos slips your shoes off your feet before you can protest and holds them in one hand, his other brushing lightly against your back to guide you toward the shore. You sink into the sand, slow and aimless.

“Tell me about your first book,” he says. And you tell him how the story came to you all at once, like it had been simmering into a carafe and poured out in the cold glass of a single summer, with no real plans or outline. You say you didn’t think anyone would care for it. Carlos disagrees, this time openly, saying he would’ve read it even if no one else had.

You laugh, because you believe him, and that is such a ridiculous notion to hold for someone you just met.

You stroll along the shore for what could be like hours or mere minutes—time often loses its shape when the moment is right. Somewhere between the fifth song from the beach guitar and the taste of the wine still on your tongue, Carlos brushes a loose strand of hair behind your ear. The look you give him, like the sky is collapsing on itself, you’re sure you could have written about it this time around.

And maybe the sky really is collapsing. Maybe this night doesn’t exist in the real world at all, maybe it’s just a dream stitched together by the help of seafoam. Because when he says, “Come back with me,” as if he’s asking for a secret and not demanding, you don’t even think about it.

You go. Hand in hand, shoes forgotten, sand clinging to your ankles. The streets are in deep slumber, and his rental smells like sea and freshly washed cotton, and the moment the door closes behind you, it’s as if the world exhales and fades out of reality.

Carlos kisses you like he’s known you across lifetimes, like he’s loved you before and lost you, and this is his only chance to get it right. He touches you like he’s never going to see you again, because deep down he’s not sure he will. His hands are rough, his mouth devout. The pads of his fingers leave heat wherever they pass—marks not visible but undeniably there. You welcome them with parted lips, quiet sighs, nails digging crescents into his shoulder blades.

He doesn’t let you breathe for too long. Every exhale is an invitation he answers with his lips, his hips, his hands. It’s all consuming and fierce, because Carlos doesn’t know how to be anything else but hungry. Burning at the edges but still asking for more, dangerously close to spinning out but never losing control. He gives you everything because he doesn’t know how to love halfway. Because that’s Carlos: he only knows how to take, and take, and take, but only in exchange of all of himself.

You lie tangled in the sheets afterwards, skin kissed warm and hearts pounding in synchrony. A breeze floats through the open window, carrying with it the fresh air of a summer night. In the mellow silence, he studies you.

The flush of your cheeks could be called rose, but that’s too cliché. It’s something deeper, warmer—carnelian, maybe? He wasn’t the best with words. Or was it the color of joy? Or the exact hue of summer slipping beneath the ocean, the kind that never really leaves the sky? He commits it all to memory as sleep takes you both, you pressed to his chest no matter the heat.

And when he wakes up, you’re gone. In your place is a note, scribbled in your messy handwriting. “I have a plane to catch, didn’t want to wake you so early in the morning. Thank you for everything.” And beneath that, almost like an afterthought, a softer, neater line: “You’re nothing like I expected.”

He traces the paper with his hand for too long, heart thrumming somewhere in his throat. Yet, Carlos still gets up. He showers, and dresses, and for the first time in years, he walks into a bookstore. 

The woman at the register smiles when she sees the title he picked. “It’s a good one,” she says, and Carlos nods with pride as if the compliment was directed to him.

He reads it in pieces over the rest of the summer break, trying not to read it too fast in order to ration memories. To let your ghost linger a little while longer.

And somewhere in the sky, a few hours before your layover, you finally open your laptop. For the first time in forever, your fingers don’t stall on the keyboard. The words come gently, naturally, and you type them out with the same carefulness. 

They’re not about him, not yet, but Carlos lingers in every line, like the unmistakable smell of sun once it has set.

—

“You don’t read?” his new girlfriend asks, somewhere over the Mediterranean. 

The plane ride home to Monaco is a long one when you’re flying from Abu Dhabi, and Carlos had barely said a word since the takeoff. It’s December, and even at cruising altitude, Carlos can feel the temperature shift. He hates the cold—it bites instead of kisses. Give him heat, always. Give him sticky skin, the faint hum of the fan overhead and someone's breath mixing with his in the dark.

His mind travels to his personal Eden, where summer seemed to loop for years on end. The sound of cicadas, the coast so washed it looked half-dreamt. It’s only when his girlfriend calls his name again that he blinks, startled back to the present.

Right, reading. She’s referring to the interview. 

“I never have the time,” Carlos answers mechanically, punctuated with a tense chuckle.

She hums, unconvinced, and starts rummaging through her bag. “I could lend you one of mine, just to try. This one’s a beach read,” she says, oblivious to how his chest seems to tighten at her words. “My favorite author. I’ve read everything she’s written. Her stories are always kind of… sad, but really beautiful.”

Carlos wants to protest, say that he’s too tired and beach reads aren’t his thing. If he were to read, he’d want something heavier: a brick of historical nonfiction, or a complex murder mystery. He opens his mouth with an excuse at the ready, but the words die in his throat the second he sees the cover.

It’s a painted memory of soft edges and impressionist strokes, displaying a warm-toned terrace café with straw chairs, dappled in afternoon light. Carlos knows this place, not because of the building or how the awning folds over itself, but because of you.

You’re sitting at one of the tables. Well, it’s not exactly you, more someone like you. A woman rendered in delicate brushstrokes, a sundress flowing to her knees, holding a book just high enough to shadow her face. Still, her likeness is uncanny. And where the café’s name should be, in looping white script, is the title: Every Summer’s End. Beneath it, your name.

Carlos forgets how to breathe.

“You said you vacationed there, right?” his girlfriend inquires, unaware of the rupture. She flips the book around to show him the back. “La Herradura? That’s where it’s set. So funny, it made me think about you when I bought it.”

He takes the book when she offers it, thumb grazing the glossy spine. It’s heavy, like truth, and he forces a slow nod of acknowledgement.

Funny.

—

LA HERRADURA, PROVINCE OF GRANADA, ANDALUSIA, SPAIN. SUMMER BREAK OF 2017.

Carlos doesn’t believe in fate. He never has, not in the grand scheme of things. He’s not enough of a romantic, in the historical sense, too much of his father’s son, to do so. What he believed in was repetition, in giving until there’s nothing left and your body breaks before your mind. Fate had never helped him score points, efforts did. And licking open wounds caused by those efforts like an injured dog in hope of miracle recovery is what led him to La Herradura for a second time.

He couldn’t admit out loud that it wasn’t the town he came back for. It was the feeling.

The café hasn’t changed much. The layout is different from last year, the chairs rearranged and the menus reprinted in a more minimalist aesthetic. The cushions are a new shade of sun-bleached coral, he notices, but the air still carries the same warm hum of sea salt and citrus.

Carlos doesn’t look when he turns after ordering. A sharp movement, and his cup tips forward in a graceless arc, splashing a deep brown bloom across your pale beach cover-up. “Joder— shit, I’m so sorry—” he stammers and grabs a napkin with the frantic energy of someone half-present in his own body.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, tesoro.”

It’s not immediate. It crawls leisurely over his skin, laps at the snowglobe of his memories. Your mouth curves into a smirk he’s sure he’s shaken a few times in his mind. You laugh, his nickname on your tongue, and it clicks all at once. You were the feeling he missed.

You, on the contrary, don’t believe in coincidences. You believe in the invisible threads that tie together with quiet purpose. That everything, no matter how painful or messy, is part of some intricate, meaningful design in a bigger story. You’d be lying if you even thought that some hidden fragments of you hadn’t been hoping, all along, to see him again, wondering if the right set of conditions would pull him back where you left off.

No screams leave your lips, or curses at the temperature of the drink. You were never one for dramatics. You beam at him, damp fabric clinging to your swimsuit. “I think you owe me a clean shirt, this time around,” you say, and Carlos huffs out a disbelieving laugh.

He insists on buying you another coffee, and puts the sugar in it before you can think about telling him to. This time, you sit on the opposite side of the terrace, shaded by a new umbrella but caught in the same orbit.

The rest of the day folds over itself like a well-read book, the ones with the crack in the spine and the wavy pages from hair dripping of pool water. You walk again: down the coast, over the pebbled sidewalk, past shuttered shops and sleepy balconies. When you pass by the same tourist restaurant where you had dinner last year, you both decide to dine somewhere else.

Later, when the sun sinks and the bonfire sparks to life again, a feeling of continuation sneaks upon you both. You walk barefoot in the sand, again, letting your fingers thread through his, again. Unlike last time, Carlos asks about your new book with a carefulness similar to the one of a child. You admit that it’s finished, that people loved it, but you don’t tell him he inspired you. Not yet.

When you get back to his place, again, Carlos kisses you the exact same way, the brush of his mouth against yours too familiar for something that happened just once because he still remembers every second of it. He touches you like he’s still memorizing you, like you’re something he’s still trying to make sense of.

You fall asleep with your limbs tangled in linen and this time, when he wakes up, you don’t disappear. You’re still here when he wakes up, curled into his side with sunlight slipping through your hair. There were no planes to catch this time, you had made sure of it. However, Carlos is a man of habit, a creature of rhythm and ritual. So he gets up. Dresses.

The bookstore is only a short walk from his place. It’s barely open when he arrives, and yet, he finds it immediately: on the middle shelf, front-facing, your name bold and bright against the soft watercolors of the cover.

By the time he returns, the apartment smells of quiet mornings and coffee. You’re sitting on a stool at his kitchen island, legs folded up, his white cotton shirt swallowing your body. The seagulls heard through the windows are alive and singing but your hair is still mussed with sleep and bleary-eyed. Still, Carlos had the sensation to have walked upon something sacred.

Until you froze as your gaze dropped. “Wait,” you say, voice hoarse, “You— You bought it?”

Carlos turns the book around, displaying the familiar name stamped across the bottom with boyish pride. “First thing in the morning,” he grins.

You groan, tucking your face in your hands, even as your cheeks grow blotchy and warm with color. He’d spent half the night thinking of words to name it: he liked carnelian, but coral was as gorgeous. Cardinal stuck. Cardinal, bright, bleeding. It reveled on his tongue like you did.

It looked like the morning sun was in love with you.

Carlos smiles again, slower this time, fondness finger painting his features like a Monet’s. “I really liked your first book. I thought I’d check out the new one after yesterday.”

“You read my debut?” you gaped.

He hums. “Last summer, after you left.”

You just stare at him with wide eyes in wonder, adoration sprinkled like stars in the sky of your pupils. Your heart is louder than your thoughts, skipping similar to a stone over water. You feel seen. In that quiet, piercing way only readers could ever make you feel. And of all people, for it to be him.

Your voice falters as you admit, finally out loud, “Okay, well. In this one, I mean—just a little—some parts might’ve been…” You gesture vaguely, tugging at the hem of the shirt you borrowed. “Inspired by what happened last year.”

Carlos’ smile softens into a molten thing. If your emotions transpired through your eyes, his overcame you in the soft curve of his mouth, seemingly waiting for each one of your words to trigger something in him. He crosses the space to you in the beating of a heart and, as if it was an everyday thing, presses a kiss to your forehead. “I’m honored to be your muse, preciosa.”

You laugh, and it bubbles out of your chest bright and alive. Carlos could compare it to the shaking of a cold soda bottle on a hot day, but he’d be afraid of sounding somewhat ridiculous. You wrap your arms around him without thinking, face tucked in his shoulder. He still smells like the beach, like intimacy.

“Well,” you murmur, “you’ll probably end up inspiring another one this summer.”

He pulls back just enough to look at you, thumb brushing under your skin. “Then I’ll help you through the process again,” Carlos assures, his voice laced with poetry. “I’ll give you a thousand stories worth writing about.”

And it’s such a you and him thing to say that you feel your chest bloom open.

Outside, the world is just beginning to stir. The sunlight is thickening, birds singing as if to beckon the beginnings of July closer and closer. Inside, in this little kitchen scented with espresso and sunscreen, you know in your bones that won’t be the last time you wake up here.

This isn’t fate. This isn’t coincidence. It’s what’s left of the sand after it trickled down the hourglass, somehow, the two of you begin again.

—

The book was shelved under Romance.

Carlos hesitated in front of the section. His gaze trailed over the display of cartoon covers and pastel spines until his eyes settled on it.

Turquoise and dark sienna, a palette so at odds with its neighbors that it looked like it was meant to misfit. The title curled across the spine in delicate letters tangling into one another with the intimacy of intertwined lovers. Carlos felt like he intruded on something that he had no right to look at. Maybe that was the case.

He handed back the copy his girlfriend had so kindly lended him. Her copy, with loopy, highlighter-bright annotations and neatly color-coded tabs with tiny hearts next to her favorite quotes. It didn’t feel like you at all. Not when you were all in cracked spines and sand-stuck pages, yellowed out by the sun. Your notes, when your mind raced slow enough to make them, were scrawled hastily in the corners of receipts and napkins tucked before the backcover, legible only in candlelight, sometimes not even to yourself.

When they landed in Monaco, Carlos didn’t go home. He went to the airport bookstore, the scent of sterile bleach and teary goodbyes clinging to the air. He needed a clean slate: something that didn’t belong to her, but not something that belonged to you either. Just something that let him read the book like it was a book, and not a wound he’s been carrying around like a splinter.

As he takes the novel in his hands, the rough pads of his fingers shake around the paperback. A book could never be a person, Carlos reminds himself. Still, disappointment swelled in his chest like rising tide when the cover didn’t give under his touch the way your skin used to. It held firm, cold.

He glanced around instinctively. The bookstore was mostly empty, and he waited for the clerk to turn her back on him before tucking one, two, three, four under his arm. He was absurdly careful. As if they could bruise, he mocks himself.

With the carefulness of a lover, Carlos placed them at the very front of the shelf titled Women’s Fiction.

—

LA HERRADURA, PROVINCE OF GRANADA, ANDALUSIA, SPAIN. SUMMER BREAK OF 2018-19

You found each other again, summers after summers, until it became another beloved tradition, a ritual engraved in the gravelly skin of La Herradura, like initials in driftwood, softened by sun and salt but never erased.

Every late June, you’d return to your meeting place: the beachfront café that had once been the backdrop to spilled coffee and first laughter. Same time, same order— there was comfort in that, in repetition, the predictability of you and him.

As the sun dipped low below the sea, you’d slip back into his hunchback rental, skin warm with the fingerprints of daylight and your limbs heavy with knowing exactly where the night was going. You wore his shirt like silk and let him read you like scripture under the low hum of the fan.

Mornings belonged to books and windows cracked open. Carlos always woke before you, force of habit, and he’d pad down to the tiny bookstore with sand still crusted to his ankles and pick up the novel you’d published the summer before. Always one summer behind, and always eager to catch up in the only place he actually could.

He had learned to notice the parallels, to draw the metaphors by himself, no matter how clumsy. A sunset that had once dripped like marmalade over your bare shoulders found itself in Chapter Twelve. The stray kitten that had curled up in his lap one morning during breakfast became a symbol of grief in your prose. He watched your stories unfold and realized he was there: tucked between allegories and half-truths, tucked in the margins.

The days melted into each other with the same syrupy pace as the tide. For someone whose life was clipped in interviews and lap times, Carlos learned what it was like to breathe again, to fill his lungs until they stretched open without ache. His fingers, used to clenching around the wheel or curling into fists from tension, learned to soften. To touch with intention, not urgency.

He slept through the night, and he let silence settle without needing to break it.

In your shared Eden, nothing touched you. Not the headlines, not the passing of time. Even the reality that loomed past the end of those three weeks seemed to be kept at bay. There was only the breeze, the sea, and the soft, looping miracle of finding each other again.

—

LA HERRADURA, PROVINCE OF GRANADA, ANDALUSIA, SPAIN. SUMMER BREAK OF 2020.

Someone had to bite the apple first, and this time the sinner had brown hair.

This time, Carlos landed in La Herradura with red flashing in his mind, tensing the deepest parts of his bone, flashing behind his eyes when he tried to sleep. The familiar rumble of the engine still echoed inside of him as he crossed the beachfront café, the one where it always begins. This time, his body didn’t relax.

The switch hadn’t been sudden, not really. The idea of Ferrari had haunted him long before the contract had been signed. The discussions, the promises, and the restructuring of his future in motorsports; it had consumed him in the months separating one summer from the next, had bent his life in directions he’d sworn to never take for granted.

When he found you again, sitting below the striped awning with your sunglasses pushed up into your hair, your drink sweating under the Andalusian sun, he smiled. Yet, it didn’t fully reach his eyes.

You noticed it. Of course, you did.

Carlos remembers what you said, in a faraway place in which cradled the beginnings of the two of you. You said that love is far from being easy, and back then he’d disagreed without a second thought. There was nothing as easy as love. He was twenty-two then: all heart and bleeding devotion, untouched by the weight of what it meant to choose. But today he was twenty-six: it felt older, he had traded cotton shirts for linen button-ups, and learned to appreciate the taste of stronger alcohol.

And no matter how soft the sand, the hourglass kept running.

This time, Carlos planned things. Planned. The word itself was foreign to your time together. He made reservations at upscale local restaurants with white linens and dizzyingly long wine lists. He drove winding cliffs to bring you to coastal vineyards, places with photo ops and curated beauty. He booked you both scuba diving lessons with a man who introduced himself as Diego and called you lovebirds. He filled the time until it overflowed, as if silence was a sin he couldn’t afford anymore.

This wasn’t how La Herradura worked. You never planned here. You lived here.

Now, he drove too fast, kissed you like the end was always lurking around the corner. The only time he’d breathe and settle down was at night, when he held your body flush against him. His hands tugged you impossibly closer, like he was made of marble and trying to carve you out of him.

Still, you didn’t ask. The problem didn’t reside here, in your sacred, familiar garden. It lived in whatever came before and after, so you didn’t think you had a right to. You didn’t belong there.

Next year, things would have to change. Carlos would have to change. His body, his name, his entire presence all had to be shaped into one thing, focused and sharp. The Carlos you had couldn’t split himself between two places, love and legacy.

Hard-working. Focused. Determined. That’s what Carlos is, down to his core. He’d never been a romantic.

And yet, you curled into him that night, limbs loose from wine and heat, hair spilling over his bare chest like ribbons. The fan circled overhead. Outside, the waves licked the sand in soft intervals, time dissolving once again in white noise. Carlos stared at the ceiling, his hand draped low on your spine, fingers memorizing.

He keeps telling himself that it was always meant to be temporary. Time stopping for anyone or anything was a silly notion enfolded in the delusions of early adulthood. You were a substance he had to get out of his system, and those summer breaks spent in this secluded paradise had him indulging more than he felt the need to.

You were always meant to be temporary, he tries to convince himself as he holds your sleeping figure close to his chest. 

For the very first time, and in a desperate attempt to grasp the last seconds you could ever share, he whispers in your ear for the very first time, “I love you, preciosa.”

He would hold on to his name on the back of the vermilion suit, on his ivory number somewhere on the bar of his cerise car. It wasn’t the cardinal flush of your cheeks, but it was as close as he was going to get in a long time— if not forever.

Carlos would hold onto that too. Until he could draw another parallel, find another adjective.

Love is far from being easy, he finally agrees.

—

Nostalgia is a traitorous substance, an opiate of the heart: indulge in it too much and you become addicted. Carlos had learned, early one, to stray away from it. There was no room for looking back when you lived life ten seconds at a time. However, melancholy— melancholy he never quite managed to unlearn. And nostalgia, no matter how hard he tried to keep it at bay, always found a way back in.

Both brewed now, unbearably sweet, in the pages of Every Summer’s End.

Carlos sat crooked on his bed, spine aching and sheet twisted at his hips. The only sound was the rustle of paper and the quiet shift of his breath whenever a sentence carved too deeply.

When his girlfriend told him it was set in La Herradura, Carlos’ heart had dropped straight to the floor. He was scared of what he’d find between the lines. Terrified of you, not in flesh and skin but in ink and metaphors. More precisely, Carlos was afraid of finding out if you had grown to hate the memory of him, if you had walked the same streets, swam under the same starry sky, but the landscape curled into you like spoiled wine, if you had spat on his name while he held yours tenderly behind his teeth. It was a selfish fear, but real nonetheless.

Then he started reading. That’s when he realized the truth: the book wasn’t about him, like it had been so many times before.

This time, the novel was about you.

The lines blend together until they form black-and-white frames in Carlos’ mind. Adriana—your heroine—had lost the love of her life. The how was ambiguous— sometimes, you hint at the cruel but tender hands of death. Sometimes, you allude to another woman, on another coast, somewhere colder. Carlos read and reread each implication like scripture, combed through context like scripture.

But the novel was never about the man. No matter what you may imply, it all comes down to the same thing: the mourning of what was. Grief, in its purest shade, and the rebuilding that came.

He recognized every place Adriana visited, and Carlos felt it like bruising under his skin to the point of nausea. The worst wasn’t even the familiarity, but knowing you had been there too: walked those same steps without him, cried without him, healed without him. And survived.

Because that’s what the story was really about: surviving through the healing process. Life isn’t restricted to loss. It might shape and change what you are, but it doesn’t erase you. It doesn’t vanish, but simply loosens its grips. The places you once loved don’t reject you; they remember you and help you puzzle yourself back together. In the library near your rental, in the San Juan bonfire on the beach. You are still there, somewhere, no matter what happened.

Eventually, you learn to love again.

Adriana meets someone at a beachfront café. A stranger, simple and warm. He doesn’t spill his coffee on her. He tells her he’s a local, works in a bar not far from here. He’s different from her past lover, and that’s good, because he reminds her that love isn’t always followed by silence.

The tear that hung on Carlos’ eyelashes finally fell down. Gravity had decided to be merciful, just this once.

—

LA HERRADURA, PROVINCE OF GRANADA, ANDALUSIA, SPAIN. SUMMER BREAK OF 2021.

Carlos wouldn’t know what happened at that time or place. He wasn’t there.

However, you would. But you didn’t like to recall it, so you wrote about it instead.

Then, you moved on.

—

By the time Carlos had turned the last page, the sun had started its gentle ascent, spilling gold through the half-closed curtains of his bedroom. The warmth of the light filled the emptiness that came after savoring a book, heavy with everything that had been lived on the page.

The sleepless night had passed in an ever present ache. He deciphered your every allegory, holding your tone close to his chest. He had read you in every line with your rhythm, the sentences that curved like the lines of your body. Your prose was yielding, bruised. It felt like another night beside you, your hands toying with his hair, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. When the final word passed under his gaze, it felt like he was leaving you all over again.

But now he was done reading, and you were almost gone.

Almost. Because there it was, not in capitalized letters or bolded words, but on the final page, similar to the unearthing of a secret.

Although I may not be yours this time around, I could never be another’s.

He could recall a conversation you once had on the balcony of his rental. “I hate dedications at the beginning of books,” you’d muttered with a sigh. Carlos was sunbathing next to you, opening an eye to look at your figure hunched over your keyboard. “It doesn’t make sense to me. The person you dedicate it to doesn’t know what you’re giving them yet.” He’d hummed with a laugh, and you had continued. “Maybe it’s ridiculous, but I would much prefer it to be at the end, so that they understand the meaning of all of it.”

“Would you ever dedicate it to me?” Carlos had asked teasingly.

You’d arched a brow at him, rolling your eyes to the sky with nothing but tenderness. “If I did, I wouldn’t say your name, tesoro. Much too obvious.”

He hadn't thought much of it at the time, only amused when he looked for the dedications in your books and found them right before the backcover.

Except that now, the last of your presence hung on the last page and the two lines that made it, and Carlos knew in the deepest, most egoistic parts of himself, that it was meant for him to understand. That was probably the cruelest part: the story had ended, so had the numerous summers, and he wasn’t sure either of you were still the people who loved and burned under the Andalusian sun. Time passed, it was something Carlos had made peace with.

Yet, the dedication said maybe.

The most rational part of him told him to let it go. He should protect what little healing you and him may have found, to not dig up something that already fed the soil. But the thing about Carlos Sainz is that he had never been at letting go of the things that made him feel alive. Because you had a part of him in you, just like every car he had ever stepped foot in possessed a part of his soul, just like every race track could beat to the rhythm of his heart. Because Carlos Sainz doesn’t know how to give halfway.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s done, but a ticket to La Herradura for the end of the next month of June is blinking at him on his phone screen.

He had no plans, no speeches, and didn't mean to prepare any. The only desire inhabiting him was the one to be there, in that place, basking in the possibility of it.

Maybe Carlos won’t see you, maybe he will. If he does, you’d talk. He’d offer you your usual coffee, if you still took it that way, and he’d tell the entire truth. He’d see where it leads, if he’d take back that part of him you held or he’d let it stay with you.

Some summers, just like love stories, never end. 

They just get rewritten, again and again and again.

©LVRCLERC 2025 ━ do not copy, steal, post somewhere else or translate my work without my permission.

[kensatou]

MONKEY MAN (2024)

[fatfemmefreaquency]

also the doors you’d get from door guy would be a much better quality than whatever comes from a big box store—and while about 10-30 years ago the big box store prices were much more affordable, now that they have a captive audience they’re charging more than many of the few small remaining local shops I still visit

(or charging high prices for low quality goods even if they’re not quite at the price point for higher quality goods)

I live in a small-ish town with a local key cutter and locksmith who has been in business for 45 years (and who’s father owned the business before him)

you can get a key cut at the local shop where the guy is just truly a genius about locks and keys—he has more options for keys than I’ve seen anywhere else, ever—and it costs about $5 for a regular house key (more for the specialty ones)

he also is scrupulously honest about not copying keys that say “do not copy” and he uses his engraving machine to do a variety of stuff (want your house key labeled “house” and the storage key labeled “storage”? he’ll do that for you. but he’ll also engrave any bit of metal you bring in that’s suitable)

if the key doesn’t work due to poor standardization of the blanks you can bring it back and this guy will work with you to file it down or recut it until it fits—no charge unless a new key needs to be cut or he has to go see the lock in person to get the key cut just right

getting a key cut (done by a machine, not a person) at the local hardware stores starts at $6 for the blanks with an extra $2.95 charge or more for the machine’s operation

these keys are almost never a good match to the original, with lots of errors in the cutting—so they might just…not work. there’s no option to adjust this or request a refund. they cost more and they’re worse

unfortunately the local guy says that when he retires his shop will likely have to close—he has employees, he’s one of the best (and only) locksmiths in town and his apprentices are great at their jobs too

but if he’s no longer the leaseholder on the shop front, the landlord isn’t bound by commercial rent control laws any more, and can increase the rent to whatever price they choose

unfortunately rent rates are ridiculous now, and most small businesses can’t afford it. anyone who might want to take over key guy’s business could never afford the rent

One sad side effect of big box stores is that you just don’t get lifelong hyper fixation guy access like you used to.

Like yeah I can go to Menards and buy a door.

But it used to be I could go to the door store, and speak to a man whose sole passion in life was doors and who would talk about the history of door insulation patterns over the last 50 years without stopping to breathe.

That man is gonna find me the BEST door option for me.

Seriously my neighborhood had one of these. They were across the street from the lighting shop owned by the guy who could tell you the exact date, off the top of his head, that your property got electrical wiring based on your address.

Now these guys rarely get to own a shop, make a good living, and sell the very finest doors for decades. They’re relegated to Reddit posts which are informative but ultimately do not replace door guy having a door shop.

I don’t want to talk to some miserable, underpaid 20 year old who was in plumbing last week and in doors this week and doesn’t know a hammer from a hanger.

I want my door guy back.

[sergle]

"tiktok is so toxic yall are on that evil app but I'm built different 💅" to you!! TO YOU!! YOUR TIKTOK ALGORITHYM MAY BE EVIL

Mine is FIRE

[sophiebaybey]

Not to preach to the choir but I wonder if people generally realize that AI models like ChatGPT aren't, like, sifting through documented information when you ask it particular questions. If you ask it a question, it's not sifting through relevant documentation to find your answer, it is using an intensely inefficient method of guesswork that has just gone through so many repeated cycles that it usually, sometimes, can say the right thing when prompted. It is effectively a program that simulates monkeys on a typewriter at a mass scale until it finds sets of words that the user says "yes, that's right" to enough times. I feel like if it was explained in this less flattering way to investors it wouldn't be nearly as funded as it is lmao. It is objectively an extremely impressive technology given what it has managed to accomplish with such a roundabout and brain-dead method of getting there, but it's also a roundabout, brain-dead method of getting there. It is inefficient, pure and simple.

[star-scroll]

Dannymay Day 6: Transformation

Background Reference: S1Ep18 Life Lessons, 11:07

[steel-valiant]

... I'm actually serious.😅 I used to hate TikTok on principle alone, thinking it had nothing to offer for me... But after realizing how much control you actually have over the kind of videos The Algorithm Gods deliver to you, (the trick is that, whenever a video you aren't interested in appears on your FYP, you do a long-press over it and then click the 💔 icon; repeat that step as many times as necessary, as often as necessary, and your FYP will start getting curated according to your tastes/needs) I started finding a lot of great stuff you don't see anywhere else.

The Infinity Nikki's community over there is actually pretty good, and I've made a lot of wonderful new friends because of our mutual love for the game... And that's just one of many good things I've found there.

So yeah, I could never leave Tumblr, and no other social media is going to ever replace it... But I also enjoy browsing TikTok, and I genuinely believe the flak it gets it's mostly overblown.

Tumblr my beloved

[taimanzano]

One of one. One, alone, one.

[kokodrawings]

It's ok, Minato asked for permission first