#jaemin drabble

[lucyandthepen]

love on the floor - i. | njm

exactly when does vice president na turn from the company’s worst nightmare into your favorite daydream?

pairing: chaebol!na jaemin x secretary fem!reader rating: vaguely M, but will very quickly escalate into a hard R in coming chapters genre: romance, fluff, (eventual) smut (in later chapters), chaebol!au warnings: jaemin isn’t really a total asshole but he isn’t great at the beginning either and i think that should be a warning, there’s probably some language use that deserves a bit of caution i GUESS, but tbh nothing much here because we want to pretend that this is a fic of chaste circumstances and not a lead-up to raunchy, depraved smut  word count: 16.4k

author’s note: first of all, the development of this fic is absolute SHIT because i love context too much and refuse to shut up at the beginning only to get antsy for the ending so if the pace is a little stop and go … it’s because i’m a Fewl !! and i totally own up to that !! and second of all, this is actually just a set-up for about two more shorter (?? what’s shorter) works that i’ve already been wanting to write but felt like i would be remiss in doing so without some kind of build-up to the relationship so :^) here we are ! heavily unbeta'd and miss lucy is a bit rusty but we carry on for the sake of enjoying oneself (and practicing writing once again) muah enjoy!

At least this job gets you free medical. 

Actually, all things considered, this is an excellent job with limitless benefits. You never have to worry about the three-level insurance, you have monthly paid-for visits to the dentist, and you sometimes get to use the company car for personal errands for as long as you meticulously check everyone else’s schedules and butter up the head secretary, Son Seungwan, just enough so that she feels mollified enough to let you have this favor (but not too much to the point that she catches on and gives you a ten minute lecture on the rising prices of gas post-the-turn-of-the-decade). Your rent’s well paid-for, and the apartment you’re staying at is comfortable, albeit a little smaller than most, although that’s just because you prefer spending your money on once-in-a-lifetime type things, like front row seats to a Paul Kim concert. You get 50% discounts at the company cafeteria, which boasts a pretty nice salad bar with more than just perilla leaves as the greens. The bathrooms even have luxury soap installed into the automatic hand dispensers, so you always come out clean and fancy smelling. 

All in all, the job’s pretty perfect, to the point that you don’t think leaving will ever truly be in the cards — except for the fact that you barely see your boss, which, as nice as it sounds on paper, is actually the most stressful part of the position. 

You’ve always been of the opinion that if Vice President Na Jaemin put his mind to something, he’d actually do it very well, but the running issue is that he hardly ever puts his mind to anything, especially when it comes to work. In fact, the only thing he ever seems to take seriously is having eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep, which you personally think is an extremely hard thing to achieve, leading you to the firm belief that if he channeled that energy into something less dead-to-the-world and a little more productive, things would be amazing. 

And maybe things would also be a little less distressing if his family would just accept him for who he is instead of expecting too much (or, actually, anything) from him, but Vice President Na is the only son of the family that owns the largest telecom company in the country, so his parents have a ton of huge expectations for him. His father, in particular, is clearly trying to prepare him to take over the entire business, something that the Vice President clearly isn’t keen on doing, based on the many arguments you’ve had to sit through alongside Head Secretary Son. The result is a lot of tension that’s only exacerbated by the Vice President’s desire to avoid more conflict, which he does by suddenly disappearing from the office for hours — sometimes days — at a time. 

So for as much medical, dental, and reasonably priced caesar salad as you’re getting from this job, you’re not entirely sure how worth it those things all are if they come with the task of you having to sit through twenty minutes of lecturing in place of Vice President Na Jaemin himself. 

“This is the last time,” President Na roars — not necessarily at you, but at you, in your general direction, while you stand helplessly in front of his desk, your hands folded across your lap and your head hung low. You don’t really feel terrified or hurt — more than knowing that the President isn’t shouting at you for your incompetence, you’ve also gotten used to being on the receiving end of these weird, indirect lectures and have thus come to know the exact standard of ‘sorry’ that you have to look for it to be over as quickly as possible. Still, you’re kind of annoyed that this particular spiel is taking up precious minutes from your afternoon break. Then again, you don’t know what you’d expected to begin with when you’d come back from the cafeteria after lunch and found the Vice President’s chair abandoned, leather cold, indicating that he’d been gone for quite a while. It’s about four o’clock now, and he still hasn’t come back, and all your messages to him have gone unread, as you’ve also grown used to. “You tell my no-good son if he isn’t back within the hour, he can live the rest of his life without my last name.”

You’re not sure if the implications of that will really sink into the Vice President’s heart enough to trigger the guilt it’s clearly trying to elicit, but you know better than to voice your opinion. You nod once, then bow at a perfect ninety-degree angle. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Four years of this, and he hasn’t learned a single thing,” the President continues, completely ignoring your useless and vaguely insincere apology. “Where’d he run off to this time?” 

You don’t know. You never really know. Since he actively tries to avoid all work-related things, he also actively tries to avoid you, something he does by never picking up the phone or telling you the details of his daily schedule anyway. You can only share what you do know, which is very little and, therefore, extremely useless, but you try to say it in a way that appears relatively helpful. “His schedule says he was supposed to have lunch with the foreign investors that are trying to connect Prime Video to the Korean market, but it seems he didn’t show up for that.”

Which essentially translates to: you have no clue. Again, all parties in the room — inclusive of Head Secretary Son, who constantly has to bear witness to the many threats Vice President Na receives via you — know this isn’t your fault, but it doesn’t make the vein that’s about to pop out of the President’s temple any less pronounced, nor does it stop you from bowing and apologizing again when he says “get him back in here before five o’clock or tell him he’ll never be able to step foot in this building again!” even though you know that the threat would probably sound more like a gift than anything else to Vice President Na. 

“And you,” the President points a vaguely accusatory finger at you. Your eyes widen slightly in surprise. “If he isn’t back here at that time, you can kiss your job goodbye too. You go ahead and tell him that. Let’s see if Jaemin will finally get off his ass if he knows someone else is going to have to suffer for his behavior.” 

The only person who sees your jaw fall open is Head Secretary Son, who’s now leading you away from the President’s desk and towards the door; the President has taken to staring at this huge family picture of himself, his wife, and the Vice President that’s hanging just behind his executive’s chair, all looking considerably happier than anyone in this situation feels. You hear him mutter something that sounds like “where did I go wrong with you, you punk?” before the door shuts close behind you.

“I’d say he doesn’t mean that, but we don’t actually know to what lengths he’ll go to get the Vice President on board.” Head Secretary Son admits, lifting two fingers to gently shut your mouth, still agape. “If I were you, I’d figure out how to keep him on a leash. The fact that he’s never around is probably ninety-percent of our current problems.”

“I can barely get him to respond to schedule reminders,” you groan; your fingers pinch the bridge of your nose like this will somehow stop the oncoming migraine. “Let alone get him to stay still. I was just about to put in a down payment for a car of my own, too.” 

You’ve never really been considerably attached to this job, mostly because there isn’t much to actually attach yourself to, but if you think about it now, it really is better than most, and this economy isn’t really kind to people who get fired from their jobs. You feel like puking at the thought of losing the free unlimited coffee in the pantry and trading it in for a life behind a convenience store counter, which is probably where you’ll end up, pessimistically speaking.

You excuse yourself from Head Secretary Son, who has the heart to look a little pitying as you trudge towards the elevator. You don’t even know where you’d start looking for the Vice President, especially since he spends quite a lot of his efforts trying to avoid having to communicate with you. You don’t even know what his habits are, which means you can’t make educated guesses on where he might have run off to, so the only route to go is to look in the immediately surrounding area and widening your search diameter as time passes.

Until five o’clock, of course — a deadline that, if unmet, will likely mean you also won’t be returning to the office either. 

You start off at the nearby bookstore, extremely skeptical that the Vice President would ever willingly go to a place that requires more effort even after you make a purchase. As expected, he isn’t there, but he isn’t in the nextdoor candle shop (also unlikely) either, nor do you find him in the hand-cut noodles shop next to that as well. You walk down the entire street for a good twenty minutes, pressing your face against the windows of stores shamelessly, to the ire of many startled and disgruntled staff, trying to look for a familiar head shape in the small crowds in them, but to no avail. Then, you think about calling him again, but when you pat the pockets of your jacket, you realize your phone is still on your desk, where you’d left it when you’d been summoned to see the President. With a loud groan and an annoyed clip clop of your heels as you stamp your feet on the pavement, you walk back to the office. 

In your frenzy to find the Vice President, you’d gone quite a distance, and your shoes simply aren’t made for long, aggravated walks; they start hurting your feet halfway back, and you’re pretty sure you have a blister behind the strap of the left one. Pride would tell you to tough it out, but you’d thrown that out at the thought of losing your job at the expense of a single man, so you don’t even hesitate to take them off and run back to the building. The big digital clock above the elevators says you have ten minutes left to find your boss, and you start thinking about using that time for better things — like packing your stuff up neatly in a box for when you get sacked. 

With the situation seemingly hopeless, you trudge to the first floor cafe, where the return counter has a pitcher of water and a stack of tiny paper cups. They’re tiny tiny, like the size of your thumb, so you have to keep refilling it just to start feeling a little more human. 

You’re on your third refill when you hear a giggle come from across the space. The barista’s just finished laughing at what must have been an extremely hilarious joke, or she might be flirting with whoever’s leaning over the counter to talk to her. A whoever that seems to be the exact same height and build as the elusive Vice President of this company. 

You accidentally toss the paper cup in the plastics bin in your desperation to get moving, worried that if you’re not fast enough, he’ll disappear into thin air again. Luckily, his attention’s completely focused on the barista, so he can’t go anywhere when you finally reach his side and huff, loud enough to interrupt what seems like an intimate-ish conversation between them. 

“Sorry, I was just — oh, it’s you.” The Vice President’s smile fades when he sees it’s you, someone he can’t charm out of what they’re supposed to be doing. You don’t think you’ve ever seen the Vice President smile at you in any capacity, anyway, except for maybe one or two slightly sarcastic smiles that are probably more fit to be classified as grimaces. “What do you want?” 

“I’ve been looking all over for you, sir,” you say, stiffly and a little quietly because you still don’t want to embarrass him in front of the slightly confused barista. “You haven’t answered my texts.”

You don’t have any way to check, but you’re pretty sure this is a safe enough assumption, which is corroborated by the Vice President bringing his phone out and checking the screen lazily before turning it back off. 

“Sorry. I don’t answer unknown numbers.”

You guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to save your number when he hates hearing about work, which is all you really try to communicate with him about, but it still stings considering it’s been two years and you’ve been using the same number since high school. It’s fine, you think. You really can’t expect much from him. 

“Well, your father’s been looking for you, too. He wants to meet you.”

“I’ll take a rain check, but thank you.”

“Sir,” your voice quivers with poorly quelled exasperation. “This isn’t an optional thing. This is very serious.” 

“I can see that, Briar Rose,” his eyes are trained towards your shoes, still dangling from your grasp, with a level of unabashed amusement. “Did he summon me from deep within the woods, or is this a new casual Friday look I should get in on?”

When his words are met with a stony silence, he sighs, pushing himself off the counter. His half-finished Americano is collecting a small pool of condensation under it, and you offer him the little handful of tissues you had gotten from the return counter and had originally been planning to use to wipe your tears in case you cried after getting fired so that he doesn’t waste time looking for something to hold his cup. He takes them without even a word of thanks, opting to instead say ‘lead the way, miss.’ You don’t miss the fact that he meets the barista’s eye with a considerably more genuine grin, raising a hand in goodbye to her before he strides ahead — before you even get a chance to lead the way at all — towards the elevators with you, hobbling on one foot to slip your shoe back on, not far behind. 

The President’s office must be sort of soundproof for instances like this. For the first time, you’ve been asked to wait outside with Head Secretary Son as the Vice President gets chewed. It doesn’t matter; you don’t really want to be in the middle of yet another round of shouting that has nothing to do with you in the same afternoon, plus you also know how the conversation usually goes: the President making very agitated threats and talking about his heart condition (even though the medical reports from their private doctor say he’s in perfect health) that the Vice President, who just spends the time looking boredly at his nails, will inevitably trigger. When you press your ear to the door for a minute, you actually hear something like ‘... strike you out of the will so that when you kill me, you won’t get a single won!’, and you can imagine Vice President Na’s exasperated sigh punctuating the statement. 

Ten minutes later, the room has gone quiet, and you step aside just in time for the Vice President to open the door and step out. You don’t even understand how he can look so unaffected after being ripped apart, but you suppose he’s also heard the lecture as many times as you have and is pretty much immune to all the insults. He doesn’t really have to make a show out of not caring, though, with his hands in his pockets and his lips pursed to allow him to whistle idly as he strolls down the hall to his barely used office. He’s been in it so few times that after long, inexplicable vacations, he sometimes forgets how to get there. You’ve always had to walk behind him just in case he gets lost or, worse, tries to make a run for it. You’ve never had to tackle him to the ground reciting the Miranda warnings, or anything, but he has faked left a few times just to give you a mild heart attack for the fun of it all. 

This time, he just walks, not bothering to joke you into trying to create a human wall he could just as easily push away. When he gets to his office, he lazily plops down onto his couch, extracting the Rubik’s cube he’d been working on for a few weeks now from underneath himself and spinning the top layer idly. He’s only ever finished the blue side. 

You just stand there, kind of perplexed and unsure of how to start the conversation. He’s still whistling, and you’re not sure if talking over him will count as interrupting him, which isn’t something you’re supposed to do. Thankfully, he stops after about two minutes of fiddling with the yellow side of the cube, looking up at you with a slightly surprised expression that somehow makes you want to cry. 

“Can I help you with something, Secretary ___________?” 

“Well, I…” You stutter for a bit, unsure of how to politely point out that he should be asking you for help with his job instead of the whole other way around. “Because… I just thought…”

“You can always leave a message with my secretary if you need time to figure it out.” He grins. “Oh, wait a minute.”

“Sir, don’t you think you should… I don’t know. Figure out your schedule, or something? Prepare for… anything?” 

“What’s that smell?” He lifts his nose to the air, suddenly curious, and because he looks so serious, you also start sniffing, but you can’t really smell anything out of the ordinary. “Smells… fresh. Very clean. A little like green tea.”

“Oh.” You awkwardly shift your weight from leg to leg. “I think that’s my perfume, but I don’t see w—”

“You smell very expensive, Secretary _____________.” He sounds genuinely surprised that you do, like he’s somehow saying he hadn’t expected you to have good taste. You have no idea where this conversation is coming from, so you chalk it up to him wanting to derail you from talking about work. “I like it. Very classy. Not too strong.”

“Sir, I don’t think now’s the time to be talking about perfume scents.”

“You’re actually quite pretty.” He sounds genuinely surprised again, but this time, it stings a little more. “I never noticed that before. How come?” 

You want to say that it’s because he spends most of his time and energy playing long-term hide-and-seek with you, but there’s also no polite way of putting that into words; even if there were, with the way you’re now bristling under his gaze, you’re not really sure you’d go the courteous route, anyway. You just decide to ignore the comment and question entirely, which you almost get to do.

“Wouldn’t you like to take a look at some of our upcoming projects? For instance, we’re just about to start negotiating the terms of this new partnership with Huawei —”

“You’re pretty, but you’re also pretty tense.” He cuts you off again, now looking a little dejected at this newfound information. You can’t understand why this disappointment in you actually hurts your feelings a little. “I think the cafe downstairs serves some tea, if that kind of stuff helps you.”

“Sir,” the one syllable is laced with weariness, and you knot  your fingers together in front of your lap. It probably looks polite, but it’s mostly so that you can feel like you have some semblance of control over anything, even if it’s just your own body fighting off the urge to grab him by the collar. “Please. If you could just take a look at your schedule — even just for tomorrow —”

“What’s the point?” His shrug is nonchalant, and he’s turning the cube over in his palm now, more interested in looking at it than witnessing your tired expression. “It’s almost six o’clock. I’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow, you know what I mean? If my dad finally loses his marbles, I’ll deal with it all then. In fact, I might actually be okay with losing this department if it finally actually gets him off my back. I’ll also deal with that when it happens, probably.” 

Another long, uncomfortable silence blooms as his words sink in; not for the first time today, President Na has threatened the existence of your job, now alongside a good twenty other people’s, all for the sake of snapping some sense into the Vice President. However, like everything else, it seems to just be backfiring; Vice President Na doesn’t seem to care about anyone else in this department, most likely because he’s barely interacted with anyone else. You’re surprised he even remembers your last name, considering he once called the department accountant ‘Heejin’ even though her nametag clearly spelled out ‘Jinhee.’ 

It makes sense that the threat of abolishment means absolutely nothing to him, but it doesn’t make the knowledge of that any less distressing. He watches you curiously as you tug back at your ponytail, like it’ll once again stop the crawling migraine. 

“Sure a cup of chamomile tea isn’t in the cards today? I think I have the company card in here somewhere, although I can’t be sure that it hasn’t been cut off, based on my dad’s last threat—” 

“I’m fine; thank you.” You mumble, checking the clock. He’s wasted what’s left of the hour anyway, and the lack of change in his position just means he’s not going to change his mind for the rest of the time. “At least let me give you tomorrow’s agenda.” 

“Boring, but okay. Give it to me, then.” He yawns to make a point, and you offer him the tablet you tote around with you everywhere you go, just in case Vice President Na finally decides he wants to do his job. To clarify: that’s two whole years of you carrying that heavy thing around, with the Vice President only having touched it a handful of times. You’re mildly shocked that he actually opens it to check, because he barely does even that, but that all goes away when he yawns again, his expression glassy as he scrolls down aimlessly. “This is a lot. Can’t you just clear my schedules tomorrow? Actually, if I can make demands for real, I’d like to clear out my schedule for the rest of the year.” 

He stretches when he stands, ignoring your slightly agog expression as he pats you on the back, smacking his lips sleepily. “Good day’s work, Secretary _____________. Want to grab a beer? Have ourselves a little intra-department party? I’m pretty sure ‘intra’ stands for ‘us two,’ or am I wrong?”

You sincerely hope he doesn’t mean a goodbye party, but with his attitude right now, that might very well be. You shake your head, and he shrugs, like he wasn’t really expecting you to agree in the first place. “No thank you, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He’s already halfway out the door, waving dismissively with his back turned to you. When you peek out of the space he leaves by opening the door, you can see about half the entire department’s watching, not even bothering to pretend to scurry back to their seats as he saunters out of the office. He calls out to you, his voice ringing clear even though he’s already out of sight. 

“We’ll see about that.” 

You come up with a master plan, but not before you scope potential jobs. 

You actually stayed an hour overtime at your desk looking for positions, but all of them pay lower than average or are about an hour’s commute away from where you live, so none of them seem worth it. The search ends when some people from the department come over to say goodbye and see your computer open to SaramIn, at which point they connect the dots and start to panic about their insurance. You shut your monitor off and spend another useless twenty minutes calming Jinhee, who’d started having a mild panic attack. 

In that time, your resentment builds. Why can’t Vice President Na simply get his act together? You suppose that there’s some indescribable burden to being in his position, but between him, a rich heir who owns two sports cars and lives in a paid-for house, and you, a public-transport-using, pays-by-the-month nine-to-five worker, you can’t really understand why he would be having it worse than everyone else who works under him.  If he worked even just half as hard as everyone else did here, he might scrape by. 

You can’t know if President Na’s anger was only short-lived or if he actually meant to downsize the company by getting rid of your department entirely, but you also know that if he’s serious, then there’s nothing much you can do about it, short of terrorizing the Vice President into stepping into bigger shoes.

So, that becomes your master plan.

It isn’t very refined, mostly because you think about it on the bus home, but the heart and spirit are there, and those are probably the most important things anyway. It’s that heart and spirit that motivate you to get up an hour earlier than you usually do, dressing quickly for the day before taking the company car from your place to downtown Apgujeong. You usually don’t take it on days that Vice President Na doesn’t come into work, which is practically every other day, but this time, you’re determined to see him into the office. The ride with Hyunsung, his official company driver, is quiet, save for the question he asks when you roll up to the Vice President’s driveway. 

“Are you sure about this?” 

“No,” you admit. He’d probably seen you chewing down on your thumb, some of your confidence taking a hit when you belatedly realize you could be shot with a huge privacy lawsuit if this doesn’t go the way you plan. But you do know a lot of secretaries that do the morning calls for their superiors, so this should be fine. Not that you’ve ever heard from those secretaries ever again. 

Vice President Na’s laziness seems to extend to all aspects of his life, including the fact that he doesn’t ever change his door’s passcode; it’s still the same numbers as it had been when he first bought the house a year ago and had you install his lock while he was missing in action from work, yakking it up with some farmers up in the Netherlands. He likes to do that — ‘see the world,’ or whatever, even though his wanderlust makes everyone else’s lives very difficult. At least it makes your life easy now, and you step through the door and walk quietly across his unnecessarily large living room. 

You’ve never been in here exactly, and you only realize very belatedly that this house’s design would be very frustrating for a break-and-enter criminal because nothing seems to be where it’s supposed to be. You learn the owner’s suite is actually on the basement floor, so all the climbing of those slippery stairs was for nothing. 

Vice President Na’s bedroom is bigger than your whole apartment, which also means he has a sizable bed and, thus, is completely out of sight under his gigantic covers. The only indication that he’s even still in there is that they’re rising and falling in a rhythmic pattern. You stand by the edge of the bed, on the side he’s closest to falling off of, clearing your throat at the tuft of hair peeking out from under the comforter. 

“Vice President Na? It’s time to go to work.” 

Your voice has been tempered down by years of this professional work, and this is easily the loudest and most demanding you’ve ever heard it. You’re not even sure you can do it again, but the muffled groan from under the covers is all the motivation you need to try. 

“Sir, you have a ten o’clock meeting with Samsung’s representatives for Apple. President Na also asked that we contact Amazon right away to reschedule the Prime Video deal.” 

“How,” his voice comes out first before he does, squinting up at you, completely disoriented. “The hell did you get in here?” 

“Sir, I’m your secretary.” You sigh, skimming over the fact that you’d walked into his big kitchen twice through two different entryways before coming into his bedroom. “I’m supposed to be able to get in here.”

“Except this is a first.” You think he’s about to get up, but he just shifts his weight, rolling over so he can cocoon himself tighter into his blankets. “Goodnight. There are eggs in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

“I’ve already eaten, like a normal, functioning human being with a very important job that starts precisely at nine o’clock would.” 

“This seems like a very targeted comment, Secretary ____________. I’m not sure I appreciate it.” 

“Since we’re already having this conversation, I’m guessing you’re conscious enough to get dressed.”

To your relief, he actually does throw the covers off of him, leaning up on his elbows. You try not to balk at the fact that he’s shirtless, although you’re also not sure why this should surprise or bother you to begin with. He doesn’t even seem to mind; he just yawns, wide and unashamed, as he looks over at the clock. 

“It’s seven-thirty. This is insanity.”

“No, this is a wake-up call.” You offer him a neatly folded towel that he eyes suspiciously. “We need to get you in the office on time.”

“There’s really no point,” he sighs, scratching his head idly. “It’ll just be another boring day of talking to people I don’t care about. Someone who cares about it should talk to them. You care about it, don’t you?” 

“I won’t talk to them for you, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because, frankly, I don’t get paid enough to be doing that.” 

He once again stares at the towel like he’s trying to will it to evaporate, but in the end, he only sighs louder and takes it from you, kicking his blankets off completely. You look up at the ceiling, not in prayer but to avoid the more embarrassing fact that he’s only in his boxers after all. Well — it’s embarrassing for you. He doesn’t even seem to care. 

“Something’s different.”

“Usually I don’t wake you up,” you offer the painfully obvious. “Or come here. Or talk to you.”

“Yeah, all that stuff,” he says dismissively, halfway through a yawn. “Did you have a life-changing experience recently?”

“Something like that.”

“Couldn’t it have been one where you decided to leave me alone for good instead?” He grumbles, more to himself instead of to you. It doesn’t matter, anyway; you already see he’s up and fishing socks out of his drawer, so you’re marching out of his room to avoid having to hear more of his complaints (and, quite frankly, to avoid looking at his broad back). 

However, the day thereafter doesn’t go as planned. You thought that waking Vice President Na up for an early day of work might shock him into doing something with the knowledge that it was urgent, but you’re not sure why you didn’t anticipate a scenario in which he’d fall asleep in the car on the way to work and you’d have to shake him into waking in the stuffy parking lot. He spends the rest of the morning out of sorts, ignoring you point blank when you try to brief him on the meeting. The meeting in and of itself doesn’t go any better, with him excusing himself fifteen minutes in by saying the pitch doesn’t seem all too exciting and innovative. You didn’t even know he knew the word innovative and, by the shocked faces of the Samsung people, they were of the same mind. 

By lunch time, you’re more exhausted than you’ve ever been, and a part of you is wondering why you wanted Vice President Na in the office in the first place when you’re already used to the much simpler routine of get up, work, eat lunch, get yelled at, work again. Sometimes, on slow days when Vice President Na is completely out of town for the week and President Na is out of things to yell at you about, you even get to just sit back at your desk and play old crossword puzzles. 

Now, you’re basically handholding him, but the weight that keeps him down is so heavy that you’re being dragged down, too. 

“You mean people do this every single day?” He shuts the folder with a contract that requires his signature that you’d given him just now, not even bothering to peruse the first page, much to your rapidly increasing ire. “This is ridiculous. Working makes no sense.”

“All employees come to work to do that, sir. It’s literally what makes up half their lives.”

“Except it shouldn’t,” he sighs, like this is a true global issue and not a problem of his own making. “Everyone needs to be able to do what they want and live life to the fullest.” 

“Not everyone can,” you point out flatly. “Some people don’t have the luxury of time even for that.”

“Then, they should. The more I’m in this situation, the more it feels like it might be better for everyone to have a little work break for — I don’t know. The next year or so.”

Vice President Na has his arm outstretched, handing the folder back to you. You don’t know if it’s what he says that causes your blood pressure to rise, or if its the completely unconcerned look on his face, or if it’s the fact that he’s holding the folder so lazily that the papers are starting to slip out on your end, requiring you to use two hands to keep them all from falling apart and creating a mess you’ll end up having to clean up anyway. Whatever it is, you snatch the folder from him with a little more aggression than necessary (or that you’d even care to admit). Even though it’s out of place, you can’t help but feel a small sense of triumph at the slight surprise in his eyes. 

“Did I say something wrong?” 

“No, sir.” You pause, mostly because you can tell he doesn’t believe you — Vice President Na is nonchalant, not stupid — and you want to give yourself a little bit of time to grapple with your pride before you admit the truth. “Yes, sir. It isn’t fair to your entire department for you to talk that way.”

“I’m saying the entire department doesn’t have to work this hard. It’s senseless. How are you supposed to live a good life if all you’re doing is sitting behind a desk?”

“Like I said, not everyone has the luxury of living your life. If they want even a little bit of that comfort you enjoy, they have to work very hard for it first.” 

“Then they should at least do something they enjoy. If this department goes down the drain —”

“If this department is abolished,” this is your first time interrupting a superior, and it already makes you want to throw up. “Then people will have a very difficult time finding a job in this market. More than that, a lot of people enjoy working for this company — quite genuinely, in fact. I don’t think it’s right to think that they’ll be happy while they’re jobless and floundering in this economy.”

“So you’re happy like this? You really want this job — this whole working under me situation?” 

“Well…” you trail off, your voice taking on a slightly thoughtful tone. It’s been a relatively long time since you’d entered this job, but you do faintly remember the feeling of excitement at getting this position — the desire to want to learn from the best in this industry, the anticipation of being able to meet and network with interesting and important people. Your first few weeks of work had involved wanting to spend as much time in Vice President Na’s shadow, in case you could pick up some important business tidbits from an entrepreneurial master… until, of course, you realized there wasn’t much you could stand in the shadow of to begin with. “These days, it isn’t ideal. But this job is a really good thing for most of the people who work here.”

“Then it sounds like you have more to gain from me working hard than I do.” 

You can’t contain your disapproving frown, and your voice comes out a little sharper than you intend. “Doesn’t it bother you at all, sir? Knowing almost twenty people could lose their jobs in the blink of an eye? Think about all the people who look up to you and rely on you — they’ll have to suffer because of this. They might never find a job that matches their needs, and a lot of them have families to take care of, too. If you can do something to make sure they have these good lives you keep talking about, why not do it? I know you’re capable of that. You’re capable of doing much more than what you’ve been doing thus far.” 

Vice President Na is quiet for a moment before leans over on his desk, lacing his fingers into a loose combined fist and putting his weight on his forearms. One of his forefingers detangles itself from the pile of digits and curls inwards, beckoning you closer. Your grimace is probably obvious, and you lean in a little warily. He lifts himself off his chair slightly so he can whisper in a low voice, as if you two aren’t the only people in this wide office. 

“If you care about it so much, then ask a little more nicely.” 

Your light breakfast almost makes a reappearance, and you draw back in mild shock. He also leans back, significantly more relaxed than you, looking unperturbed as he settles back against his chair. You two engage in a very uneven staring match, until he gestures for you to proceed, looking expectant. 

“You want me to beg for my job?”

“Not what I meant, but I could accept that,” he hums. “I just think you could throw in a please while you’re guilting your boss, at least.”

Gawking probably doesn’t suit you, but you do it anyway, wondering how you managed to find yourself in this position. This morning, you had been strictly guiding him through what to do, and now you’re paralyzed in front of the Vice President, feeling very foolish for saying so much out of turn. You couldn’t even get through a whole work day before seeing your grand master plan slip down the drain.

But there is, at least, some small comfort in what he said — the part about guilting, which, if you squint hard enough, seems to be implying that this conversation has left him with a small amount of guilt. You don’t think it’s that much, but it’s a miracle he feels it at all, so you take the horribly subtle win and inhale deeply.

“Please, sir.” The words are very thick and reluctant, unsticking from your throat. “This department really needs you.” 

He stares, very unnervingly, without saying anything, but there’s something in his gaze that makes you vaguely certain he’s actually thinking about it. In fact, he actually looks a bit serious, which isn’t anything you’d ever think you’d be able to characterize him by. That impression easily falls apart when he claps his hands, once but very loudly, startling you into jumping a little. 

“Ah, how could I turn down such a nice request?” Vice President Na is grinning from ear to ear, something you’ve never seen him do in the context of the office, much less a few feet away from you. His smile is actually kind of nice, if you don’t think about the fact that it seems to be smug at your expense. “Since you asked, I guess I’ll have to try my best, or whatever it is people do in this damn company. I guess that means you owe me now, Secretary ____________. You’re very welcome.” 

The silence that once again blooms as you stand, motionless, in front of Vice President Na is suddenly interrupted by the sound of chairs scraping back all at once. The floor vibrates a little as the entire department troops out to the elevator area so they can go to lunch. You only watch stupidly as he also stands, shrugging off his jacket and flinging it over the back of his chair. “See you, then.”

“Where are you going, sir?” 

He looks a little surprised that you even ask. “To lunch. Do I have to ask for your permission for that, too?” 

“Are you… coming back?”

“You want to come along with me and make sure I don’t run away?” He smiles even wider, which you didn’t even think was possible. It makes you awkwardly uncomfortable to know he’s taking a lot of pleasure in joking around with you, mostly because you were kind of hoping you’d get him to take things seriously in a serious manner, not in a … whatever this is that’s making you feel like you’ve lost a game manner. 

“A little bit.”

“Ask a little more nicely, then.” 

“Never mind,” you mumble. “Have a good lunch, sir.” 

He snaps his fingers a little comically before turning to the door, flinging it open so he can join the now thinning throng of people leaving the floor. “Thought I almost had you there. Well, if you need me, you know where to find me. Or not.” 

In the end, to your utmost relief, Vice President Na does, in fact, stay inside the entire time he has lunch. You’re not sure if this is the product of you sitting two tables away, trying to will an imaginary chain to his wrist so he doesn’t bolt off or because he’s still feeling a little affected by everything you said earlier on, but whatever it is, it works. He just eats his club sandwich in peace, picking off the crust easily and double dipping the fries that come with it in his ketchup. At some point, he looks up and notices you burning holes into his torso, so you quickly have to avert your eyes in shame. You think he laughs at this, but you can only see out of your peripheral vision at this point, so you can’t be sure. 

You’re supposed to have one hour for lunch, but he eats quickly and gets up before the whole hour is over, so you end up throwing your half-eaten wrap and following him. Again, you’re not sure what’s funny, but he’s chuckling to himself as he holds the elevator door open, waiting for you to run in next to him. 

“Relax, miss secretary. I already said I was going to do my best.”

“No offense, sir, but I don’t know what that looks like, so I have to be careful.”

“Fair enough.” He hums, letting the door close on its own. “But you should still take it easy. You’re pretty t—”

“Tense. You said so yesterday, sir.”

“That’s two times you’ve cut me off in a single day.” He doesn’t sound very annoyed about it; in fact, he’s still got that amused, inside joke tone to everything he’s had all morning. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were gunning for an insubordination report.”

You don’t think that’s fair for him to say, especially since you haven’t really had much of an authority figure to be subordinate to for most of your career in this company, but you keep your mouth shut since saying so is exactly what would be on the first line of an insubordination report. 

When you arrive back at his office, you take the time to discuss what you should be doing from now on. It’s an extremely messy exchange, with you two grappling between terms you can’t agree on. For instance, Vice President Na thinks that it seems only fair that he should really only be coming in after one o’clock, but you’re insistent on making sure he gets to work on time, since most important meetings happen within that time period (a fact he already seems to know but chooses to ignore anyway). You end up agreeing on bringing him in for the standard nine-to-six for as long as he never has to work overtime. You also find it necessary to iron out the fact that if he has lunch outside, he has to actually come back, a statement he once again finds very amusing for some reason, as if you’re the weird one in this conversation. 

And to his credit, he tries to stick to his word. It isn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially not during the first couple of weeks, but you suppose that habits are very difficult to break when they’ve been so easy to acquire and nurture over many years. More than once, you’ve arrived late to meetings to the disapproving gazes of Head Secretary Son and President Na. However, the latter finds he has less to say these days because Vice President Na’s presence in said meetings had, before this time, been nothing but a pipe dream for everyone. 

You also notice he starts taking the time to ask about things he doesn’t understand, as opposed to his initially brash or sometimes completely unresponsive approach, which has turned out better results when it comes to business lunches with investors and potential partners. Even the Samsung people, who are extremely wary of him during the callback meeting, come out of their next encounter with the Vice President looking vaguely more satisfied than they did the last time (the bar isn’t that high, considering they’d left shell-shocked previously, but you’ll still take the improvement).

Of course, with all the time you end up spending with, chasing after, and vaguely lecturing (only when the need truly arises) Vice President Na, you also learn some things about him that you hadn’t expected, like how he doesn’t really like milk in anything he drinks (but especially coffee) and that every third Sunday of the month, he meets his old high school friend Lee Jeno, the son of the guy that owns half the residential high rise condominiums on this side of the Han. Apparently, they play badminton together — he had told you that when he’d caught you wondering about the super out of place little kid’s karate trophy among other more adult, official ones in his living area. The trophy goes to whoever wins the match of the month, and according to the Vice President, he’s been ‘wiping the floor with that bastard’s handsome face for half a year straight.’ Although you can’t verify this by anything more than the slight blanket of dust on it, you think it takes nothing out of your pride to applaud him like this is an amazing thing. It also does you no harm to see him swell with misplaced pride about a kid’s karate trophy. 

You also notice that despite how healthily he eats at the office, he has a bad habit of craving deep fried food in the afternoon, which is why, over the last few weeks, you’ve been accompanying him to the corndog street stall two blocks away, a few days a week. He’s even had to borrow loose change from you a few times to because he always forgets that no street vendor likes to receive crisp, fresh-out-of-the-bank fifty-thousand won bills, but you just let him have it; his heart’s in the right place when he orders an extra one for you without even asking. You realize that he has a fairly good memory for as long as he’s concentrating, and that he likes to spend late nights watching the shittiest horror movies ever known to man (his words, much to your bemusement), and that when he listens attentively to you telling him about the day’s agenda, his left ear twitches a little when your voice hits it. 

Somewhere along the way, you realize that Vice President Na is a charming, outgoing, and fairly capable person, and in doing so, you also realize that he seems to be, for lack of a better word, your style. 

You can’t really believe it either, and you’re not even sure when it started. In between sitting with him in the company car and handing him forty-page agreements he has to look over carefully (very carefully, as you’ve taken to reminding him, so often that he starts saying it before you do now, which has only somehow endeared him further to you and not annoyed you the way you were sort of hoping it would), the small non-work related part of your consciousness had decided that it needed a more complicated situation now that things were going relatively well.

To be fair to yourself, liking him isn’t a huge distraction; most of the time, you’re both so engrossed in something you desperately have to finish that you don’t even have time to think about it. Instead, it kind of catches you off-guard, like when he’s double dipping his french fries into his ketchup, or when he smiles at you (politely to him, probably, but overwhelmingly charmingly to you) before he leaves the office, or when his brow’s furrowed in (a total shocker) concentration as he reads. 

Then again, everything about Vice President Na seems to be catching you off-guard these days. This much is proven by the fact that instead of the normal silence that you’ve grown accustomed to being greeted by when you enter his house, there’s a lot of noise coming from one area that can only mean either that someone had broken in to mug him or for some reason, he’s up before you need to wake him. 

It’s nothing you have to call 911 for, but it still paralyzes you to see him, surrounded by opened jars and a particularly dirty bread knife as he stands in front of his fancy toaster, drumming his fingers on the counter impatiently. 

“If you have a minute to spare, could you bring my laptop into the car?” He asks without turning around. His hand, still holding the bread knife, points towards the bar counter on the far end of the kitchen, where the laptop is still whirring away. 

“Of course, sir. Um,” you gingerly shut the monitor, putting the laptop to sleep and tucking it under your arm. “Were you… working this morning?”

“No, I was playing a riveting game of bridge against the computer AI.” He turns to you, grinning. “Of course I was working, miss secretary. What do you think I’d be up this early for?” 

You try to think of an answer, but nothing comes to mind — Vice President Na hasn’t ever woken up early for anything to your knowledge, anyway — so you just nod and bolt, unwilling to bear witness to his smile this early in the day. When you come back, particularly less red in the face, you find him topping one of two sandwiches with the last slice of bread to complete it. He takes one, as you expect he would, and you stand there, trying to look polite as you essentially observe him eat.

This isn’t something very unusual; ever since the first time you’d done it, you’ve been watching him out of habit. So far, only the motivation’s changed from you wanting to make sure he doesn’t bolt to you simply enjoying the view of his profile when he eats. Of course, he probably doesn’t know this, but he’s also just gotten used to you watching him and probably finds it funny — as suggested by his perpetually amused expression — that you still think, after all this time, that he’s going to make a run for it. You don’t actually mind it; you get to watch him for free, and he has something to laugh about, so everyone kind of wins. 

He’s halfway through the sandwich when his expression turns quizzical. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Eat,” you echo hollowly. “Eat what, sir?”

“A delicious, handmade, gourmet peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich.” When you don’t move, he pushes the plate with the untouched sandwich forward towards you like he thinks you can’t understand anything he’s saying. “What? Are you allergic to something?”

“No, but…”

“But?”

There’s no but; you don’t have a good reason to decline other than the fact that accepting it feels weird, but refusing him when he’s looking at you this expectantly is just as awkward. You rub the back of your neck as you walk over, not missing the look of triumph that crosses his face as you pick up the sandwich and take a bite. It’s good, but you don’t really think that has anything to do with his culinary skills, based on what it is; still, he looks like he’s patting himself on the back for this feat. 

“Thank you, sir.”

“Secretary ____________, I hope you can count this as a momentous occasion for the both of us.” He chuckles. “You get free breakfast made especially for you by your direct superior in the comfort of his own home, and I finally get to learn what all the settings on my toaster are for. Between you and me, I think mine’s the better achievement.” 

You’re still in the middle of eating when you laugh, and you hastily raise a hand to cover it — only Vice President Na catches your wrist halfway through, so quickly you vaguely choke on the bread that’s only partially down your throat.

“I’ve never seen you laugh,” he looks as surprised as you feel, although probably for a different reason. “I don’t even think you’ve ever smiled at me, specifically.”

“Oh.” You need time to respond, mostly so you can swallow but also because you need to collect yourself from your shock. There seems to be a lot of that going around this morning. “Sorry. Should I do that more often?”

“I mean, if you ask like that, it’s kind of disingenuous,” he laughs. “But I like it. I like knowing you’re not just in a constant state of stress because of me. Feels even more momentous than the toaster thing.” 

He loosens his hold, and you manage to take your hand back, now refusing to meet his eye. “I’m not… stressed by you.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” you agree, and he looks particularly delighted when he sees the corners of your lips turn up again. “Not for a while. And not that my opinion matters, but you’ve been performing above expectations, sir.”

“You’re right,” he hums, taking the plate and putting it in the sink — a problem he seems to be saving for later. “It doesn't matter. But I like it, all the same.”

You’re willing to chalk the morning off as a wonderful anomaly, especially since the rest of it passes as it normally does, with a generally quiet car ride (you’ve also learned that Vice President Na likes to listen to rap music on days when he wants to avoid falling asleep in the backseat, which is equal parts amazing and amusing) and a fifteen minute briefing of what he has on his plate today. He disappears for the better part of the morning and even the whole lunch hour, but you expect this because he has a business lunch with the representatives for some Norwegian appliance company that’s looking to break into the Korean market. You can’t imagine many people want a state of the art rice cooker alongside their monthly internet bill, but it’s polite for him to go anyway, and the prospective partner seems very on edge about company secrets. It’s one of those meetings you aren’t allowed to come along to, which means that you’re missing out on a few hours of Vice President Na trying to iron details out with a couple of old guys. 

While you eat, you’re once again struck with the random notion that it feels weird not to be around the Vice President. You’ve been working together regularly and in a very close capacity, which basically means that you’re always in his shadow. It’s the life you were kind of hoping to have at the beginning and were deprived of for a good two years. Now that you have it, it feels weirdly natural — so natural that it’s unnatural to not have his voice ordering you around in that easy tone or his aftershave lingering in the air directly above you. 

You throw the tissue you used to wipe the oil from your egg toast off your mouth onto the table, crumpled and wilted. 

You miss him, which is ridiculous considering you don’t even know what there is to miss. Your relationship, while admittedly lightyears ahead of the starting point it had been at back then (again, not a great standard, considering you didn’t even have a relationship before this period of time), is nothing close to the point of being what it should be for one to miss the other. 

And yet, you look forward to seeing him, watching him do something from afar, helping him whenever he needs you. You like the fact that he still sometimes fakes left when you’re accompanying him back to his office, and you do this thing where you pretend to be annoyed even though it makes you happy to know he won’t go anywhere. You like the little sounds he makes when he eats his super unhealthy corndog as if he’s eating it for the first time every single time (see: very unnerving and slightly disturbing but altogether amusing mmmmmmmmmms). In fact, if you didn’t have a vivid memory of telling him off from way back then, you feel like you could easily convince yourself that things had always been like this — that you two had always been together, happily at work. 

You’re not surprised that he isn’t back from his meeting even when you get back to your desk after lunch, but you do feel a pang of dejectedness that lasts for a few more hours — time which you spend lazily looking over a contract he’d signed yesterday that needs a fair amount of amending and re-signing. It’s hard to pretend to care today, for some reason, especially since your mind keeps going back to peanut butter sandwiches and some ridiculous vision of Vice President Na standing in the middle of your tiny studio apartment’s kitchen area. 

Your reverie’s broken when an envelope falls onto your desk, covering the page of the contract you’d been glassily staring at for the last hour and a half. You’d drawn the same circle about twenty times already, and the paper’s all dented from your efforts. When you look up, Vice President Na is staring down at you, grinning from ear to ear. 

“Miss me?” He drums the envelope, the paper muffling the noise of it all. “Oh? I was joking, but it looks like you actually did. That’s twice in a single day, Secretary ____________. You’re setting a very high record.”

You try to tamp down the smile on your face upon seeing him, clearing your throat so that you have an excuse to press your lips together. You guess it doesn’t work because he just keeps smiling, anyway, or maybe he’s just in a really good mood. “Did your meeting go well, sir?” 

“Is Lotteria the national fastfood chain? Too bad I don’t work for anyone because it kind of feels like I deserve some kind of reward.”

“Could we say that this partnership is its own reward?” 

“It doesn’t have the same ring to it,” he sighs. Once again, his forefinger taps the envelope, calling your attention a little more clearly to it. “I know we’re on a tight schedule for this, and I hate to ask this so late of you, but —”

“Of course, sir; I’ll have it in your hands first thing tomorrow.” 

You’re already gathering it up along with your other (vaguely unfinished) paperwork when his whole palm comes down, trapping the envelope and everything else you’d been intending to carry under it. Your hands go up like you’re being held at gunpoint, your eyes wide. 

“On second thought,” Vice President Na muses, a little too serene for someone who’d just scared the living daylights out of someone else. “How about I take care of the Samsung deal you’re looking over, and you can handle the Norwegian contract?”

“I haven’t… really made a lot of headway with it, if I’m being honest.” You’re hoping he doesn’t ask you why because you’re too embarrassed to come up with a lie on the spot and will inevitably have to confess your random attraction to him under these terrible circumstances if he does. Luckily, he just shrugs.

“All the more reason to split the work, then.”

The still mildly stern part of you is begging to point out that he’s giving you a whole new set of documents to look over anyway, so it’s not even like you’ll have less to do, but the larger, more endeared part of you tells it to shut up and mind its own business. “I thought the crux of our agreement was that you’d never have to work overtime.”

“Because I look like such a stickler for the rules, don’t I?” He snorts, waving you in with the same envelope, and you concede.

Working next to Vice President Na isn’t anything new to you; you’ve been doing it everyday for a while now, especially if he needs you to be quick on call. Ever since you’ve realized his presence makes your heart beat a little faster, you’ve promised yourself not to let that fact show at all when he’s around, something you’ve been quite careful about perfecting. 

Something’s different, though, when it’s after official hours. Maybe it’s because the floor is quieter than it is during the day, so there’s nothing you can listen to but the sound of pen scratching on paper and Vice President Na’s steady breathing. The only real interruption is when Hyunsung knocks on the door to ask if the Vice President is going home; the look on his face is panicked and confused, like a puppy that’s just been dropped off at the mouth of a dumpster site, when he’s told that Vice President Na will drive himself home, so he can just leave the keys. 

Maybe it’s also because it’s pretty dark outside, and while you’ve worked into the night a few times, it’s usually alone or with some other poor sap that has even more backlog than you do — it’s never been just you and the Vice President, who seems supremely unperturbed by the fact that he isn’t at home doing… whatever he does at home after work. You can only guess at it (or wish you knew). 

That makes one of you that’s keeping busy, although you know it should be two. The fact that you’re distracted by his presence all of a sudden is only exacerbated by the mutually exclusive headache that the paperwork you’re looking over gives you. You don’t know why you had expected it to be in Korean, but you and your intermediate level English struggle to keep up with all the little things you have to look through. Sometimes, you can’t tell if the clauses are actually confusing or if you’re just the poor product of your middle school education. It strikes you more than once that Vice President Na had gone through this, somehow, himself — talked to people in a completely different language, probably with ease. You can at least be proud of yourself for being right: for as long as the Vice President puts his mind to something, he’s able to do it — perhaps even well. 

What shocks you after an eternity of silence is the hand that extends towards you, forefinger lightly nudging your chin. You sit up straight like a bolt of lighting had gone through you, meeting Vice President Na’s thoroughly and inexplicably amused expression. Your jaw slackens in shock, but his finger just stays there, like it isn’t invading your personal space. Like it just belongs there.

“What are you doing?”

“What—” you splutter, bemused at the fact that you hadn’t asked the question first. “What are you doing?”

“You keep moving your mouth. What — are you praying or something?”

“No, I —-” You gesture at the contract page you’ve been trying to stumble through for the past twenty minutes. “No, I’m just… I’m reading?”

“You’re…” The start of a laugh escapes him, and you really don’t know what’s so funny. “You’re reading aloud?”

“I wasn’t making any noise, I think,” you grumble, sounding a little more defensive than you’d care to admit. 

“You read silently aloud, then.” His eyes twinkle at this information, although why it should elicit this reaction also completely escapes you. “Why? Because it helps you memorize it or something?”

“My English isn’t that great,” you admit begrudgingly, suddenly feeling a little exposed. “Sometimes I need to mouth the words to understand it.”

And he does the most outrageous, inexplicable thing: he gently cups your chin, making sure you can’t turn your head to look away in embarrassment. Now you have to look at him, red in the face and close to exploding. 

“Don’t you think that’s a little too much, miss secretary?”

You can’t ask what; your voice isn’t working. You just open and close your mouth around the syllable, and after a couple of attempts, he starts copying you, evidently having a better time than you are based on the grin stretched across his face.

“What? What? That you’re doing something this cute in front of me is what I mean. You’re obviously going overboard, and I don’t think it’s very nice.”

He retracts his hand as quickly as he’d used it to close the distance between you, and your hand immediately comes up in its place, almost cupping your jaw like he did. It definitely doesn’t give you the same tingly feeling, so that’s an obvious bust.

You and Vice President Na have a sudden staring contest with amended rules: you blink a hundred times a minute at him while he laughs quietly, leaning back on his chair like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It confuses you and kind of enrages you, but you also find your heart thumping away in your ears like it’s trying very hard to remind you that Na Jaemin makes you feel alive. 

“I— I just—”

“Coffee? I could use some coffee. You look like you could use some too.” He stands, buttoning his blazer with one hand like he has someplace important to go. You’re still so shell-shocked that you don’t even try to stand up to help him, a fact which he notices very clearly. “Oh no, I’ll do you this favor. You sit tight and read your contract. I’ll be back. Keep doing that cute thing with your mouth.” 

Vice President Na finds you exactly as he left you: still wondering if you should be offended at his teasing or enamored by his touch and, more importantly, what the hell his deal is. You have a million questions that need answering, but the only thing you blubber out when he comes back is “Why?” 

“Because you’re amazingly fun to tease,” he responds simply. “And because it’s true. I find it extremely cute. I find you very cute, Secretary _____________, in a kind of good girl, cool girl kind of way. It’s a little confusing to me too, but I think this slightly stern but overall gentle aesthetic of yours is actually growing on me a little.”

“Sir, I—”

“While we’re taking a break,” he interrupts you. You guess it’s probably the right time for a break considering there’s no way you can work in peace now. “Do you constantly have to call me that?” 

“What else would I call you?”

“My name,” he suggests, taking a sip of coffee. You ignore the shit, that’s hot that comes out of him as he puts the paper cup down gingerly on his desk, looking a little bit betrayed by his drink. “Jaemin. Many people call me that.”

“People who are close to you, you mean. Like your family or… your friends.”

“Are you saying you don’t think we’re close? Or that we aren’t friends?”

“Sir, I work for you.” 

“So by that alone, we simply can’t be friends? Et al?I think you really are being too much now, Secretary ____________.” He folds his arms across his chest, tutting disapprovingly as he leans back on the edge of his desk. You try not to think too hard about the fact that he does it very close to you, at an angle optimal for viewing the leanness of his form. “After all those times you broke into my house—”

“To get you ready for work.”

“— walked into my bedroom—”

“Only whenever necessary—”

“— gone through my things while I’m half naked in bed like you’re trying to organize a charity drive—”

“Because you need to get dressed, not because I have some perverted agenda —”

“—eaten the food off my kitchen counter, too—”

“You told me to!” You get to your feet, the contract slipping from your lap in your enthusiasm to defend yourself. “You offered it to me!”

Whatever happens next is completely out of your control, and you know this because the room spins without you moving by your own will. Vice President Na must have been an expert dancer in his past life, or something, because after that one dizzying moment, you find yourself leaning against the edge of the table he had been just a second ago. Warm hands are on your waist, tucked under your cardigan, the heat bleeding through your shirt. 

And the Vice President’s smile is inches away from your face, still mischievous but much gentler than any other time before. 

You’re not sure if you’re paralyzed or if you just don’t want to move, but the reason doesn’t affect the outcome: all you can do is stare up at him, once again dumbfounded after a small outpouring of words that ends in some kind of forced defeat. Except this particular surrender doesn’t feel so sore, for some reason. 

“Even when you’re angry, you’re still pretty, you know that?”

“I wasn’t… angry,” you mumble under your breath, afraid that talking louder will scare him off. You don’t even think he’s listening all that much to you, considering that all he does is tuck your hair behind your left ear and completely change the topic. 

“So, tell me, Secretary ____________. Is this still a situation where we’re not close at all?” He pauses for a moment, probably to let you answer, but you don’t say anything. You’re pretty sure your swallowing nervously is the only true sound you make. He seems to be eager to do a lot of the talking anyway, which is absolutely fine by you. “Or have I completely misread all your cute little signals?”

“Well — no, but I didn’t send any signals.” Obvious ones, at least. You’d been pretty sure you had tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible, but you’re starting to realize it’s a little possible you’re not as great at pretending as you think you are. 

“Not on purpose, probably. Although you really almost got me with the one-man show vibe you have during lunch hour.”

“I… didn’t think you knew, if I’m being honest.” Honesty is the only thing you have right now, anyway, especially since Vice President Na has pretty much confirmed, in his own way, that he knows about how you feel. Now you can only wonder if he’d noticed before you even came to terms with it yourself, and the thought of that being a real possibility urges you to grab the still-steaming cup of coffee and douse yourself with its contents. 

“For a while, I was pretty sure you were messing with me. I would never,” he adds just as you say it too, mimicking your astounded tone up to the lilt. “Which is why I started thinking about why else you might be looking at me so intently. You weren’t sitting there objectifying me, were you, miss secretary?”

“Sir, I would never,” you repeat, and he mouths the same words again in his amusement, although silently this time. 

“I think I would have been okay with it if you were. Or would be, even until now. For the record.” 

“I wasn’t.” 

“You sure? No shame in it. Totally fine. Not sure about anyone else, but I’m totally okay if someone else thinks I’m eye candy in the privacy of their own minds. I am, I think, a fine specimen of a human, if I do say so myself.”

“I really wasn’t, sir.”

“You should have, then. Lost opportunities.”” 

“I could argue that I was just worried you’d leave and not come back.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that to you,” he hums. “Not anymore, anyway.” 

The ‘to you’ is what stumps you into another silent spell, but this time, Vice President Na doesn’t attempt to fill in the void. He just starts running his eyes over your face, like he’s trying to read something there or maybe memorize your features, or something. At some point, you start thinking about how this kind of silence isn’t exactly uncomfortable, contrary to your expectations and with interesting consideration of the fact that he’s still holding your hips. Apart from the idle skimming of his thumb over the curve of your pelvic bone, he doesn’t move — nearer or closer, which is probably for the best since you don’t know which one you really want more at this point.

Again, when you gather some part of your wits, the only thing you still know how to ask is “Why?”

“Because,” he replies immediately, simply, like the answer has always been very clear and you’ve just been too ignorant to figure it out. “You said that I could, not that I had to.” 

It’s hot. Isn’t it hot? You don’t know what he’s talking about, but your body already reacts on principle, and you have to stand-half-lean there with your entire face burning and Vice President Na’s body heat washing over yours like an electric blanket.

“I don’t know what that means, sir.”

“It means I didn’t do this for my dad or just because you told me off in the comfort of my own office.” He bites down on his lower lip to keep himself from laughing (yet again) at you as he witnesses, from the best seat in the house, your face turning almost purple with the effort of keeping down your embarrassment. “Although that played a bit of a factor in it. I couldn’t tell if it was rude of you to say so much or kind of cute that you did despite knowing you were being rude. But that’s besides the point.”

Good, you think. If he manages to hit you with another cute in this timeframe, you may easily cease to exist. 

“You know firsthand, anyway, what my dad always says. You must take on the responsibility you were born with. You have to do your job. You must remember that you owe your life to my achievements.” He mimics his father’s gruff, booming voice amusingly well, to the point that you can’t stop yourself from laughing. His facade breaks easily, and you think you hear him mumble cute under his breath again, although you choose to ignore it so your knees don’t buckle completely (something that you think would be very embarrassing with you so close to him). “I don’t think he’s ever once said an encouraging word to my face. And if there’s anything I can confidently say I won’t do, it’s doing what people only say I need to do. It’s my life, you know what I mean? I’ll do what I want.” 

“You’re saying you suddenly wanted to work because I said you could?” 

“More like I wanted to see if you were right.” He muses. “I was pretty sure I didn’t have the personality for it. Or the attention span. Or the skill, either.”

“I think a couple of those things are still up in the air, sir.”

“One compliment and you’re already gunning for another insubordination report.” Vice President Na’s voice is a low, casual hum, but you notice the grip around your waist tightens for a brief moment. “At first, I figured I’d just show up to get everyone off my back, but I realized along the way that I’m pretty good at this being at the helm business. I’m sure you’ll agree. Hopefully because you want to, not because you also have to.”

“I do agree.” Your reply is wholehearted, and the Vice President’s smile widens. Your chest swells so much that you think you might explode right in front of him. “Because I want to.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, miss secretary. I’m not attributing all my successes to your impulsive words.” He teases, although his eyes stay gentle despite his tone. “The efforts were still all mine. However, I’m not too proud to admit I had a very responsible first mate by my side, for whom I am very grateful. Although I hope this doesn’t mean she’ll pluck up the courage to ask for a raise considering how well I pay her. I think. Does she get paid well? Maybe I should ask Park Jinhee from accounting.” 

“She won’t,” you laugh softly, not missing the fact that he’s finally learned her name. “And she’s not really doing this for the salary, even if it is a nice bonus.” 

“What’s she doing it for, then?” 

As a job, this was really mostly about yourself — or it was, in the beginning. You’d terrorized Vice President Na to some degree because of the innate tendency towards self-preservation, and when that felt a little one-sided, you also considered everyone who might lose their jobs if the department got cut. It had been, for the most part, an act of pure desperation, so strong that you were willing to point fingers and raise your voice (only a few decibels, because you’re not a crazy person) at your boss. Now… that wasn’t really part of the equation. Maybe you had gotten used to the fact that the Vice President wouldn’t be going anywhere, so you’d stopped worrying about your and everyone else’s jobs, which all seem to be on a smooth path alongside the captain of the ship.

But if you had to be honest to yourself, part of the reason you’d grown a bit complacent about thinking about the fate of the department also had to do with the fact that you genuinely enjoyed being next to the Vice President. Mornings spent helping him prepare for work were regular highlights in your week, and the looks of approval you received from him every time you helped him finish a particularly difficult task were second to none. Always being close to him, always being the first and last to see him in the day, simply being able to look at him -– silly as that all sounds, they now play an undeniable factor in your desire to wake up and go to the office every single day. 

“I did it for you.” You answer, and because the answer’s honest, it feels completely natural to say. A pause slowly lengthens between you two, though not nearly as tense or borderline uncomfortable as you thought it might be this time around. A slow smile stretches over the Vice President’s face, but his words don’t easily take the straightforward route this time, either.

“Should I take up with the human resources department the fact that you’re outright breaching the terms of our contractual workplace relationship? How am I?” He speaks over, with you again, your voices overlapping. You can’t help it — you laugh at the absurdity of how well he’s come to know your responses, from the word choice to the lilt in your voice that signals some level of affront. When, exactly, did Vice President Na start committing the things you said and did into memory? “You’re seducing me, miss secretary. Before you say you’re not — you are. You are, without even knowing it. You’re winning me over, telling me all these sweet nothings to tickle my heart — I believe in you, Jaemin. I love working with you, Jaemin. I did it all for you, Jaemin, because you’re obviously the best in the whole world, ho ho ho.”

“I never said it like that.” 

“You might as well have.” 

“Should I stop believing in you so that we can avoid a scene, then, or is the damage to your good standing too far gone?”

“Rather than stopping something already in full motion, I think it might be better to make certain amendments to our current agreement.” Vice President Na reaches for the pen tucked into his breast pocket — the gold clip catches the fluorescent light and momentarily blinds you as he brings it up between you. He brings it to one side, then to another, and your eyes follow it, amused but also admittedly a bit hypnotized.

“What kind of trance are you putting me under, sir?”

“The kind that gets you to stop calling me that,” he chuckles. “Among other, more important things on my agenda.” 

You have an excellent view of Vice President Na’s stellar smile from the back of the meeting room. 

The deal he closes three days later goes even better than expected; not only does he bring Amazon into the fold after weeks of (surprisingly consistent) hard work and no small amount of beguiling charm (owing to the fact that he’d offended said Amazon representatives earlier on in his still relatively short-lived career), but he also manages to snag Samsung Electronics’ participation. As an already existing subscriber to the company-provided phone plan, you’re pleased to find out that you’re entitled to twelve guilt-free months of Prime Video as part of a new promotional deal, which you can now enjoy on nights you aren’t working overtime — something you’ve racked up more of as you’ve found yourself striking more of a work-life balance, thanks in large part to the Vice President’s steadily active involvement in all things on the ‘work’ aspect of the scale. Your first goal is to finally get past the first episode of an animation everyone in the department is raving about (but that you haven’t seen more than five minutes of, in actuality, because the horrible subtitles and sluggish 144px stop motion-esque have, until recently, adamantly deterred you from enjoying anything about the story).

Standing a fair distance away from the executives, you wait for the flurry of handshakes and accompanying congratulatory statements to die down; it takes quite a while, considering the sheer volume of people, and the thickest throng has come to gather around Vice President Na. At one point, all you can see of him is the slightly unruly lick of hair that’s sticking out above the rest of the considerable crowd of balding men around him (the sole crow’s feather a mountain range of gray). All their voices overlap, and you’re only able to catch key phrases — brilliant young mind… knack for business! … just like the President… bright future ahead, you know? 

Fifteen minutes of conversation and bellowing guffaws pass before Vice President Na emerges, adjusting the front of his blazer as a result of too much handshaking. Behind him, still speaking to one of the  marketing executives, is President Na, who shoots his son a surreptitious look you’ve never seen him wear in your considerable number of years in the company’s employ  — one of triumph and pride. The Vice President, however, is intently loosening his tie and scanning the room, stretching himself just a fraction taller above everyone else to get a better view throughout. 

You wait, wondering if he’s looking to speak to someone, lost in that host of black and gray suits — the Amazon media director, perhaps, or the in-house designer that also seems to be trying to catch his eye, for some reason (you sense the needy greed for a sudden promotion that seems highly unlikely in such a setting), but even though his vision passes over them, however briefly, Vice President Na doesn’t seem satisfied.

That is, until his eyes land on the corner of the room you and Secretary Son have backed yourselves into to allow the higher-ups room to mingle. 

One beat later, and the corners of his mouth are pulled up — a soft, knowing smile directed in your general direction. You glance at Secretary Son, maybe out of instinct, maybe somehow out of panic — as though you worry she’ll somehow come to chastise you, but she’s too busy trying to re-buckle her thin coat belt with rapid-fire tsks. She seems acceptably preoccupied, so your eyes flit back to the Vice President, whose eyebrows are now slightly raised, the telltale signs of a growing grin now playing on his lips as the front of his teeth begin to peek out from the seam. Another cock of his eyebrows, lifting them higher, tells you he’s waiting for some kind of message — an indication that you see him too, maybe, or… perhaps, oddly, any sign that you’re as proud of him as everyone else in the room is. 

You can’t help it  — you laugh, louder than you’d have originally liked to, a hand coming up over your mouth as Secretary Son’s head snaps up from her waist, bamboozled at your quick but sudden outburst. She throws you a look that suggests she firmly believes your mind has snapped, quite like a stale breadstick in a derelict Italian restaurant, but it’s worth it; Vice President Na looks satisfied at this — though, why he would be, you haven’t a true clue. 

As the managers and members of the board file out of the room, both you and Secretary Son inch closer to your respective direct superiors; you both stand a few steps away as the last of the executives drag their feet, still hoping to share one last handshake with either of the two, until an elderly Mrs. Kwon’s surprisingly firm grip is finally shaken off by a sheepish President Na. He turns to his son, who’s still hosting the remnants of a genial smile on his lips, clearly poised to say something. For some reason, you expect the senior to berate the former, simply out of sheer habit, but he does nothing of the sort. 

“Jaemin-ah,” his voice is gruff but not at all begrudging; it’s a low rumble of triumph. “Who’d’ve thought? My boy… you brat…”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental now, dad,” the Vice President teases, to which the President chortles heartily. 

“Old men like me have the right, much more than anyone else.” You’ve never seen the President wear an expression even remotely close to softness, but you see it in his gaze now; it strikes you, then, that although you’ve always known the two to be related, this is the first time you can confidently say they resemble each other to the cores of their being — a view of happiness, somewhat mirrored in each of them. “I’m proud of you, son. You did everything I hoped you would — no, no… more than that, even.” 

“I’ll take most of the praise, thanks,” Vice President Na replies with his characteristic cheek. For a moment, so quickly you think you may have missed it, his eyes flicker to you. “But I can’t say I could’ve done it alone.” 

“Punk,” President Na snorts, yanking on his son’s earlobe; you and Secretary Son have to avert your eyes with expert speed to avoid being caught snickering at the slightly juvenile “ow, dammit,” that the Vice President groans out. “One big closed deal, and your head’s this big? I better not catch you floating away to a Las Vegas casino after all this.” 

“Give me some credit; I’d at least visit the desert first.” This time, when the Vice President glances at you, his father’s head turns too, and you stand up straighter at the unprecedented onslaught of attention. “Besides, I’ve got someone here to keep me anchored now.”

“Good work, Secretary ____________,” President Na offers you a rare smile that truly has you feeling like the world has turned upside down: the President in an agreeable (almost ecstatic, though you’d never say that out loud) mood, the Vice President doing his job not just in general but actually commendably well, and not a single strand of baby hair sticking up from out of your ponytail. Inconceivable. 

You bow, murmuring a thank you, and Secretary Son quickly follows suit for the formality of it all before she strides over to the President, who’s leaving his son with one last thunder-like clap on the back before he’s leaving the meeting room, still jovial when he catches up with the suspiciously lagging figure of Mrs. Kwon by the door. 

Vice President Na starts to follow suit, walking towards the other end of the meeting room; you quickly scurry behind him, still clutching your tablet, blinking a low battery warning, to your chest. You’ve come to grow accustomed to the ‘secretary’s pace’ over the last few weeks as well — always close enough to help, never too close enough to step on a superior’s toes.

But in the moment you fumble to silence your device, you end up stepping into someone’s shadow; glancing up at the Vice President, you find yourself looking at not the familiar view of his back but that of his side profile (one you’re actually also familiar with, though you refuse to admit to the level of familiarity). He’s slowed his pace considerably, allowing you to naturally fall into step with him, and even this, he expects a response from you somehow — he asks for it with yet another wiggle of his eyebrows. You laugh again, shaking your head, and yet, inexplicably, it seems to be exactly the reaction he hopes to see.

The department floor erupts into applause when the two of you pass through the glass doors; a flash of mollification crosses the Vice President’s features before he’s back to his signature light humor, raising a palm up in receipt of praise. Park Jinhee is clapping with only her left hand smacking the side of her mug, a few drops of coffee streaming down the handle side on impact. One of the team managers rushes forward, eager to shake Vice President Na’s hand, and, riding his high, also yours, pumping it up and down with so much vigor that you mumble a quiet ow behind a strained smile. Only the Vice President’s hand on your shoulder, steering you away, saves you from what feels like possible dislocation. 

He’s still waving at them like this is a pageant and not his day job, even as he guides you towards his office door; you have to use your elbows to push it open and effectively help you both avoid ramming into frosted glass. The applause dies down as your somewhat conjoined figures disappear through the doorway — you first, albeit convolutedly, your heel still holding strong in the job of keeping the door wide open enough for Vice President Na to saunter through before you let it swing shut to a now relatively silent office floor. 

His hold on your shoulder doesn’t let up, though; it’s still urging you forward, towards his desk, and you open your mouth to say something along the lines of I’m gonna break my hip if we keep going this way, but just as your throat conjures up the first syllable, he turns you around, letting you rest light against the edge of the table. 

In a pattern reminiscent of three days prior, Vice President Na’s hand finds its way to your waist, utterly comfortable in a way that mystifies you; he acts like it belongs there, as natural as the smile that’s still playing on his lips. 

“Sir, you realize it’s the middle of the day?” 

“You realize that we had a deal,” he corrects you, brow furrowing in feigned sternness. “Hold up your end of it, miss secretary.” 

“Only if you stop calling me that.” 

“Now, that absolutely was not part of the contract.” 

When you laugh this time, he chimes in; there’s a harmony in your voices that has your posture softening. You feel airier, your heart much lighter, and when you look up at him, you can’t help but flush at his expectant gaze. 

“You realize it’s the middle of the day,” you repeat, carefully, the words suddenly somewhat unfamiliar on your tongue — the next two syllables, most of all. “Jae… min.” 

Odd as it is, you’re rewarded with the pleased look that takes over his features; he takes a moment to exaggeratedly revel in this new occurrence. 

“Better. Much better. You could still be a bit more comfortable with it, I’d say, but… baby steps?” 

“Please re-prioritize your day, si— Jaemin.” The terse tone you’re going for is brutally marred by your blunder, which has his shoulders shaking from laughter. “Someone could very easily walk in.” 

“Who’s going to fire me?”

“I can think of one person.”

“You heard him. I’m proud of you, Jaemin. You’ve completely exceeded my expectations, Jaemin. You are the light of my life — my favorite son, Jaemin, ho, ho, ho.”

“Sir,” you sigh. “You’re his only son.”

“We had a deal,” he repeats, letting the return to habits slide, and there’s a laughably childish air to his words. “I’ll… file an insubordination report. Breach of contract as well. Tsk, tsk, miss secretary. Not on such a momentous occasion.” 

“Some might classify this as threatening behavior.” Your eyes are soft, though, when they meet his humored gaze. “If you want a reward… ask a little more nicely.”

A soft snort — his fingers dig lightly into your waist, and the next second, he’s lifting you off your feet and settling you lightly atop his desk. his palms never leave you, even after you’ve been placed; they’re increasingly warm beyond the fabric of your top. 

“____________,” he murmurs, saying your name so naturally that you could almost believe he’s referred to you as nothing else for as long as you’ve known him. “Kiss me.” 

Your own hands find their way behind his neck, but he does most of the work in closing the gap anyway; you’re not even sure who, between the two of you, gave that first sigh of longing, of relief. Perhaps it was both of you, all at once. 

Jaemin still tastes like the coffee you’d given him this morning — not a trace of richness, but a bittersweet and earthy twang that’s signature post-Americano. There’s even a hint of mintiness from the nervous handful of Tic Tacs he’d had just before the meeting started; you find that out the moment his tongue swipes against yours, leaving behind the invisible bite of menthol. And then there’s you, a clean taste that settles against his teeth, subtle first but growing stronger until you’re satisfied with the notion that you may linger there for some time — even after you pull away, slightly breathless.

“Congratulations to me,” he breathes out, trademark grin flashing bright again. “So what happens if I close next month’s Disney Plus deal?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer; his hand’s already skimming down, over your hips, following the path of your thigh. Your hand reaches out on instinct to stop him, but he’s oddly more aware of his surroundings than you give him credit for (or maybe, you’re just that predictable to him). He meets your palm, fingers lacing into yours and allowing him to lift your wrist to his lips. There, you feel the warmth of his kiss again, and he uses his hold to bring himself even closer, until he’s able to press his face into your neck. 

“Sir—”

“Jaemin. You call me Jaemin from now on, remember?”

“Sir.” You’re adamant. “It’s work hours.”

“You’re not tense.” 

He doesn’t move his head; in fact, you feel him burying his face further into your shoulder. In this position, there’s no real way for you to pull away — there’s also no real desire for you to do so, anyway. 

“No, I’m not.”

“Good.” Warmth again on your skin — his lips leave an invisible mark just above your collarbone. “I like you best like this.”

“What? Not tense?”

“Happy,” he corrects for accuracy. “Happy that you’re with me.” 

You fall silent, not because you’re not sure of what to say, but because you don’t need to tell him that he’s right. 

Moments later, his fingers find their way into your ponytail; the index hooks into the elastic, bringing your hair down. You feel his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, he’s inhaling your perfume again. 

“Green tea. Something floral. Jasmine? Maybe a little bit of citrus.” He lifts his head but stays close, warm breath washing over you. “It’s so you. Fresh. Pure. Beautiful.” 

The gap between the two of you doesn’t last for too long thereafter; he kisses you again, and your heart lifts to find that your taste still lingers somewhere there. It’s longer because it’s slower — less playful and more exploratory, until he pulls away to a much more breathless you. How he finds the air to talk even after is miraculous to you. 

“Be mine, miss secretary.” 

You blink — once, twice, at his serious expression, wondering if it will break and give way to more humor. But he waits, unwavering, until the last piece of resistance you’ve clung onto is washed away — the last thing that made you, for a second, deny that you were in love with him. 

His smile slowly mirrors yours as it grows. 

“Like you could ever get rid of me, Na Jaemin.” 

[raspberriesoda]

paranoia » njm + ljn

genre | smut (mdni!!) jaemin x afab!reader x jeno

word count | 3k

summary | an innocent game of paranoia with your friends while on a ski trip makes you realize that maybe you never knew you wanted to fuck your boyfriend jaemin’s best friend. and maybe, your boyfriend is okay with that.

warnings | smut, swearing, alcohol consumption, threesome, unprotected sex but he pulls out, established relationship with jaemin, jeno is shy and a little bit of a perv ig?, dom!jaem sub!jen basically, cuckolding, lots of pet names from jaemin he’s a sweetie pie

a.n | this fic was purely self indulgent lmaoo, when i would go on choir ski trips in high school we would always play paranoia in the hot tub at the resort (no nomin threesome though unfortunately ugh unfair) and my bestie and i had major brainrot one day a few years later and uhh this was born!

also if anyone doesn’t know what paranoia is, basically you get a group of friends and sit in a circle, one person whispers a “who in the group is most likely to” type question to the person next to them so the rest of the group doesn’t hear it, and then they answer it out loud. if the person who asked wins rock paper scissors the other person has to reveal what the question was, but if they lose then the question remains a secret (i added the caveat that if you lose and you really don’t want to tell you can take a shot as a safety)

“ooohhh,” haechan muses, his hand scratching at his chin. he glances around the circle of his friends surrounding him in the hot tub, eyeing everyone very intently and contemplating the question ningning had just whispered in his ear.

“probably renjun,” he answers after some thought.

“renjun??” ningning gapes. “my money was totally on mark.”

“shut up! you’ll give it away!” haechan hisses.

the pair turn to each other and present their fists. after three slaps to their hands, ninging lets out a ‘ha!’ when her two fingers snip at haechan’s open palm.

without missing a beat, haechan reaches into the middle of the circle, snatching one of the pre-prepared shots sitting in a slot in a little yellow floaty.

“you loser!” ningning yells. “was it not you who said you’re a pussy if you chicken out when i took a shot?”

“cry about it.” haechan throws the shot back down his throat and tosses the little plastic cup behind him to clatter on the wet tile. suddenly ningning grabs haechan by his shoulders and in one swift motion his head is completely underwater. his arm holds his fruity blue cocktail high in the air so as to not spill it, but it still sloshes around as he flails, frantic bubbles rising up to the surface. jisung reaches forward and grabs the floaty to pull it away from the chaos and keep the shots from dancing across the water.

haechan resurfaces when ningning lets him go, coughing dramatically and wiping the water away from his eyes. “my drink! my drink!” he sputters.

you giggle at the antics of your drunken friends, but its difficult to give them your full attention when jaemin is pressed against your left side. his right hand glides across your thigh under the hot water, dangerously close to the bottom of your white bikini.

he’s paying no mind to the game. his nose is pressed against your neck, his breath feeling cold against your skin in comparison to the hot air around you. you swat at his hand when his thumb brushes against the fabric between your thighs; jaemin has never been one to shy away from public affection, especially when he’s tipsy, so you’re the one tasked with keeping him under control. you find that it's hard to care that much though, considering that even before the game began you were already three shots deep. jaemin just chuckles, lifting his free hand to brush your wet hair from your shoulder and places a hot kiss behind your ear.

you turn to look over at him, your head tilting back and to the side so your lips brush lightly against his own as you move. it's snowing, the night sky completely clouded over, but the heat from the hot tub makes the puffy white flakes dissolve in the air before they can touch the water, and they fizzle away as you watch them land in his hair. jaemin catches his bottom lip between his teeth, a dazed and loving smile matching the way his glossy eyes look at you in the winter air. you lean forward just a bit to meet him in a kiss. he sighs happily, leaning in closer to deepen it.

the game has made its way down the circle and someone grabs your attention by telling jaemin that it’s his turn. he chases your lips when you pull away, your face flushed upon remembering you aren’t alone, all the while he seems unphased.

without looking away from you he hums in thought, watching as the condensation clinging to your skin rolls down your chest. he brings a hand up to cup your ear and whispers his question.

“who’s most likely to fuck you better than me?”

even in the steamy air, the blush that rises to your face is unmistakable. your eyes widen, making a devilish smile appear on his lips.

“ohhh look at her face!” karina says coyly. “must have been a spicy question!”

you’re too stunned to speak. you’d never been conscious of it, but apparently you knew the answer to this question before even being presented with it.

your eyes then flicker over to scan your group of friends; everyone’s eyes are on you and all of a sudden you feel like you’re a second from overheating.

“you’ve gotta answer, baby. its part of the game,” jaemin teases, snapping you out of your thoughts. the smirk playing his features is mischievous; his hand slyly finds its way between your legs again, and when his fingers slip under the band of your swimsuit and press roughly against you, you blurt out your answer without being able to stop yourself.

“jeno!”

its clear everyone was under the impression that the question presented to you was intimate, and a series of surprised and boisterous hoots and hollers erupt all around you. jeno laughs nervously from a few spots down the circle, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. you swallow hard. it's too late now to wonder if you should have just kept your mouth shut.

jaemin pulls your attention back to him. your eyes are apprehensive when they meet his; he immediately takes notice of your change in demeanor, and he gives you a sweet, reassuring smile. when you smack your hands down in sync, he waits just a second to see your fist still clenched, and he slips two fingers out of his to let you win.

“that’s cheating!!” haechan whines from across the hot tub. “you saw her play!”

jaemin just presses a soft kiss to your wet cheek and drapes his arm around your shoulders. “cry about it.”

the next morning, you wake up to the sounds and smells of breakfast being made. through the dehydration and dull headache of your small hangover, what you’d said the night prior runs rampant in your head.

you feel a strange sense of guilt gnawing at you. jaemin acted no differently than normal following your confession, but you can't shake the feeling that you’d upset him. it was his best friend's name you’d said after all, so you aren’t quite sure why he hasn't at least brought it up again.

the dream you’d just awoken from involving said best friend didn't help settle your nerves either.

you shuffle out of the sheets and walk into the kitchen of the small condo you and your boyfriend are sharing for the weekend. you take a seat on one of the barstools surrounding the kitchen island, tapping your fingers on the marble countertop as you watch jaemin from behind him. he hums to himself, dropping ingredients into a sizzling pan.

“jaem?” you start. he spins around, and he grins at you.

“good morning, my love,” he greets you, crossing the space and leaning down to kiss you.

“are you mad at me?”

in retrospect, it's a stupid question; he hadn’t given any indication that he was upset with you at all, but your worried conscience outweighs your common sense.

jaemin’s smile falls, a look of confusion replacing it. “of course not, baby, why would i be?”

“because of last night,” you mutter, your shoulders slumped.

jaemin takes a seat on a stool across from you and pauses to think. “i don’t remember you doing anything last night to make me upset, babydoll.”

“i mean, like, what i said in the hot tub.”

he blinks at you. after a second, his face lights up in realization. “what, about jeno?”

you nod, lowering your head in shame. jaemin chuckles, placing a warm hand under your jaw to bring your eyes back up. his thumb brushes against your burning skin.

“baby, why would i be mad about that? i asked you the question in the first place.”

“because he's your best friend.”

“so? as his best friend, i know better than most that he’s attractive,” he jokes. you’re honestly confused as to why he's so casual about it.

“i um- i had a dream about him last night.”

when he lifts a brow and tilts his head, you reach up to tightly squeeze his hand that still lays on your face and scramble to clarify. “but it didn't mean anything jaem, i promise! please don’t be mad, please, i really would never do anything like that-“

“baby, shh, its okay,” he cups your face in his hands, squishing your cheeks together. heavy, anxious breathing fills your chest. “i love you and i trust you, i promise i’m not upset with you, sweetheart.”

a sigh falls, your worries dissolving into the warm air. jaemin presses a kiss to your forehead. an idea seems to pop into his head just then, and he smirks.

“besides, there's no one i'd rather share my girl with than my best friend anyway.”

heat rushes up your neck again. “share?”

“well yeah, if you’re comfortable with that. i’d love to help my pretty baby bring that dream to life for a night.”

there's snow piling on the sill just outside the bedroom window, but jeno’s forehead still glimmers with a light sheen of sweat in the soft glow of the bedside lamp.

as you and the girls were on the slopes earlier in the day, jaemin pulled jeno aside to talk to him once he knew you were on board with his idea. jaemin had always known jeno thought you were pretty, it was in the way he looked at you and spoke a little softer to you than most. but it didn't bother jaemin; after all, who could really blame him? jaemin had fallen in love with you for a reason.

needless to say though, jaemin’s proposal left jeno completely shocked. he really tried to hide his crush on you so as to not upset anyone; losing his best friend over it wasn't worth the risk and he saw how in love you were, he would feel like a monster if he did anything to ruin that. so learning about your little crush on him made his heart flutter in his chest.

he would have to be an insane man to decline this offer.

so now, you kneel in front of him on yours and jaemin’s bed, your bare knees digging into the plush of the mattress. you’d just showered after your long day of skiing, and the lingering scent of vanilla has jeno reeling already.

“are you nervous?” you ask him. your shorts are riding up, disappearing behind the hem of your thin white tshirt. your hair is still damp, and the wetness seeps through the fabric, making the top of your chest slightly more visible.

jeno gives a hesitant nod, a quiet laugh slipping through his shy smile.

“me too,” you admit, matching his timid demeanor.

jaemin catches your eye from his spot by the window, the ice clinking in his frosted glass as he stands between the sheer curtains.

“she's a good girl, jen. she’ll do what you tell her, right baby?”

you turn back towards jeno and give him an innocent nod. jeno feels embarrassed by how hard he already is just from your sweet doe eyes and the way you puff your lips up in a little pout. you lean forward on your knees, your fingers gripping the sheets. your elbows push your chest forward and jeno has to remind himself he doesn't have to force his gaze away this time.

“tell me what you want, nono,” you coo. jeno swallows hard.

“show me what happened in your dream.”

you obey immediately, crawling forward and situating yourself on his lap. your fingers trace ever so delicately up his abdomen and chest; you can feel how his muscles are tense under his shirt, but when you dip down to press warm, feathery kisses to the side of his neck, the strain fades away almost instantly. you grip his shoulders and rock yourself against him. his fingers dig into your hips and he shudders at the soft, slow friction.

jaemin watches you intently, leaning his weight on his arm against the perch of the window, and he lifts his glass to take a sip. this brand new view of you absolutely captivates him; you look so.. so pretty it makes him twitch in his sweat pants.

with your lips still attached to jeno’s neck your hands find their way down his waistband. you tug at the elastic of his basketball shorts, reaching in to palm him over his boxers, eliciting a low groan that vibrates against your lips. his head falls back and his eyes flutter closed.

pulling away you scoot back enough to pull the fabric away from his waist, watching as his cock springs up and out of his shorts. you keep your gaze locked with his as you grab him by the base and drag your hand slowly up the shaft. jeno whimpers as you pump your fist up and down, squeezing every time your fingers reach the tip.

you lift yourself up and stand on your knees that sit on either side of jeno’s lap, your chest almost pressing against his face as you use his shoulders for balance. he has to suppress the moan that rises in this throat when you shove your shorts and panties off your legs and sink down onto him without warning.

your wet hair sways in front of your face as you bounce slowly up and down on him, adjusting to his length. you’re so warm and soft and you grip around him so well that jeno feels delirious; he might not be able to last long.

your lips suddenly mesh with his and he feels like he's on cloud nine. jeno’s tongue flicks into your mouth and he feels you dig your nails into the back of his neck, tugging at his hair. you whimper into his mouth as jeno kisses you like his life depends on it.

suddenly your hair is tangled in jaemin’s grip and your head is yanked back, your lips pulling away from jeno’s with a wet smack and a loud cry is ripped from your throat. your head falls back onto jaemin’s shoulder and an earth shattering whine echoes through the room. jeno feels embarrassed by the heavy groan he can't help but let out, until jaemin looks at him with a knowing smirk.

“you like that, jen? she’s very vocal.” jaemin’s free hand reaches up to squeeze the base of your neck. “isn’t that right, baby girl? you make such pretty noises when you feel good, yeah?” you nod, reaching a shaky arm up and behind you to scratch at jaemin’s shoulder. you let out a trembling whimper.

“you wanna show jen how good i can make you feel, huh?”

your swollen lips press together; a strangled ‘mhm’ is all you can manage.

jaemin then pulls your hips towards him, a sticky wet sound making you blush as jeno slips out of your folds. the empty feeling doesn't linger for long, however. jaemin replaces him immediately, slamming his hips up into you and hitting the spot that makes you crumble every time.

your face looks so beautiful to jeno in this moment, scrunched up in pleasure. jaemin’s hand still grips your hair to tilt your head back as he rams into you, his face buried in your neck leaving messy purple bruises across your skin.

jeno thinks he might just cum untouched from the sight.

one of your hands reaches out to grip jeno’s cock again in an attempt to aid him in just that, but jaemin is fucking into you so mercilessly that you can’t manage to keep up a steady pace. so jeno grips your hand in his, guiding your arm up and down. tears begin to spill through your lashes and you see stars behind your closed eyes. jeno kisses up your jaw on the side opposite jaemin, making his way up to lock his lips with your own once again.

“ah, a-ahh hah.” you begin to babble and whine and your kiss becomes sloppy. jeno knows you’re close. he begins to pump faster to reach the height you’re at, and as you clench around jaemin’s cock and scream out through your orgasm your head falls forward to rest on jeno’s shoulder. with a humiliatingly loud moan jeno cums with you, sticky thick ropes shooting out and painting your thighs a milky white.

jaemin rides you through your orgasm, and when you start to whine from overstimulation, he pulls out and let’s you fall back on his chest. your vision is blurry, your breath is labored. in jaemin’s warm arms you decide that staying completely conscious would be entirely too difficult, so you allow yourself to drift off.

later that night, you lay in bed between both jaemin and jeno, your exhausted body having been cleaned up and taken care of by the pair of boys. jeno is out cold behind you, snuggled up into your back and snoring softly.

jaemin is settled in front of you. your arms wrap around his neck as you kiss him, pressed up against his bare chest. his fingers trace along your side as he hums on your lips, moving slowly and tenderly along with you.

he grabs your chin softly in his fingers, pulling away from the kiss gently. you smile dreamily as his thumb brushes your bottom lip.

“did your dream come true, baby?” he asks, his voice breathy.

you sigh. “it was even better.”

“better?”

“of course, you were there.”

its rare that you fluster jaemin, but his eyes light up at your words and you swear you see him blush in the dim light. he grins at you, leaning down to connect your lips again.

“wait,” you say suddenly, stopping him. though its only been a short while your memory is foggy, and you realize you don't remember jaemin reaching his own high. “jaem, did you not-“

somehow, jaemin reads your mind. “don't worry about that, baby girl. i wanted you to feel good tonight.”

“noo jaem that’s not fair to you,” you whine, beginning to slide your hand down, but he catches it.

“we’ll wake jeno up if you do that, baby,” he whispers. you glace over your shoulder, noticing how jeno is basically spooning you, his face buried in the fabric of your sweatshirt between your shoulders and his arms circling your waist.

you smirk, turning back around.

“why not let him help, then?”

[rrxnjun]

TAKE THE STAIRS ✲ n. jaemin

pairing. na jaemin x fem! reader starring. na jaemin, ning yizhuo genre. college au, strangers to lovers. fluff, comedy, suggestive. warnings. alcohol consumption, throwing up, swearing word count. 18k (18.666) a/n. thank you all so much for 1k followers! consider this fic a small gift of celebration

playlist. candy - baekhyun ; honey - l'arc en ciel ; take the stairs - coin ; cutie - coin ; rose-colored boy - paramore ; don't go yet - camila cabello ; hot crush lover - blu detiger ; teenage dream - 5sos (cover)

after having an unexpected guest witness the neverending quarrels with your roommate, na jaemin starts to practically live at your place— or— where yizhuo's flegmatic project partner starts to put a suspicious amout of effort into their assignment.

✲ PART 2 OF THE SIMPLIFY ROMANCE SERIES ✲

Hot droplets of water wash over you like raindrops during a heavy storm, the mirror fogging up at the hot temperature you always choose to shower your body in, fingers trailing through your hair making you finally relax after a long day at college. You spent the day presenting your project and having a test from Physics, so you only deserve a good shower. You would even consider taking a bath, but your small apartment doesn’t have a bathroom big enough to contain a bathtub, so a good, scorching hot shower will have to suffice. 

Now, you are a hard worker– however, you also like to wait until the last reasonable time to start working on your project. And while you’re best friends with procrastination, stress also decided to visit you for the time being; since, again, there was not much time for you to finish your project, and so in the whole process of working on it and doing extensive research about a topic you weren’t really that interested in in the first place, you forgot to take care of yourself. You wouldn’t even notice at first– not until one day when Yizhuo glared at you with questions in her eyes from the couch, seeing you go to the convenience store at 10pm with your home slippers still on because of your distracted mind– but when you looked at yourself in the mirror after arriving from school today, the image of your sweaty face and hair so oily you could probably fry a schnitzel on the extraction of the liquid from your follicles, you must admit that you’ve been neglecting your appearance for quite some time now, and so a well deserved annual everything-shower is the only thing on your mind right now.

Reaching over to the side of the shower that has various shelves installed, taking your hair conditioner into your palms and opening up the bottle, you get ready for the familiar smell of citrus that always hits your nose and makes you smile in satisfaction; yet, no matter how hard you try, the pleasant scent doesn’t come– and neither does the actual conditioner.

Huffing, even slapping the bottom of the bottle a few times, squeezing the tube as hard as you can– you tried everything, but to no use. Thinking back to the last few weeks, you try to remember when you bought the conditioner– because you swear it hasn’t been that long. There’s no way you already ran out, you think, as your eyes scan over the various bottles of other products in your shower, opting to use something your roommate has in stash– when you notice that there is no other hair conditioner in the shower, which makes the gears in your brain click in realization.

Sighing, you finish showering as you prepare your mental tangent in your brain. Drying off your body and slipping into your underwear, you put on the largest T-shirt you more often than not sleep in, not even bothering to put your hair up as you roughly scrunch it with your towel to get most of the water out, opting to leave the strands lay on your shoulders instead, in their full wet, naked mole rat glory. 

Swinging the door to the bathroom open, you yell out the first sentence that comes to your mind– despite planning your outburst in your head beforehand. 

“Ning Yizhuo! You used up all of my fucking hair conditioner again!” you scream into the apartment, knowing damn well that the walls are thin and she can hear you. “You promised you won’t use it after the last time! That shit is fucking expensive, y’know,” you mutter, voice still raised so your roommate can hear you.

“I’ll buy you a new one, chill out,” Yizhuo finally replies, her voice coming out of your living room. Your head snaps that way, feet dangling closer into the doorway.

“Yeah, well, maybe consider buying your own conditioner so you don’t have to replace mine every other week,” you spit, rolling your eyes in annoyance, “or at least buy a new one when it runs out, so I can actually use– oh.”

Stopping mid-sentence, your sudden outburst of anger is cut short as you notice another presence in the living room. There’s a man sitting on your sofa, his head turned towards you, flashing you an amused grin, and when his eyes scan you from head to toe, you’re suddenly painfully aware of your current state– only in your panties, with your hair wet, appearing as a chicken left outside in the rain, the wetness of your locks most likely dampening the thin fabric of your shirt to the point that it’s basically see through, revealing more to the stranger than you’d like. Crossing your arms at your chest, alert, you feel heat rising to your cheeks as your eyes jump from your roommate to the stranger in your living room, textbooks and an opened laptop scattered across the coffee table, making you believe it must be your roommate’s classmate of some sort. 

“Okay, I’m sorry,” she sighs and rolls her eyes, looking at you with amusement when she notices your distressed state, “this is Jaemin, by the way. We’re doing a project together.”

Humming, you look at the man again, taking a notice of his casual, yet attractive demeanor. Black bangs falling into his eyes and Adidas joggers hugging his legs, you press your lips into a thin line– somewhat resembling an embarrassed smile, before you slowly walk out of the room for the sake of their privacy and also your dignity. “Nice to meet you,” you mumble on your way out, “I’m Y/N.”

And before you’re out of the door, you turn your head towards your roommate again, biting back an ironic smile. “How nice of you to notify me that we’ll have guests over!” 

With that, you’re out.

You guess that embarrassing yourself in front of Na Jaemin is how life is going to go now. Don’t get me wrong– the next time it happened, you were notified of his visit; after screaming at Yizhuo about how she handled it the last time around– and you even put some effort into your appearance, as if to balance the absolute atrocity he had to deal with the first time he laid his eyes on you. Not that you really care about his opinion, or that you want him to think you’re at least a little bit attractive, of course. You’d say this is just the basic human need to look presentable in front of people you don’t even know that well.

While you were notified about the fact that he would come over in the afternoon to work on the project, you still didn’t have it in you to just casually walk over to the living room and hang out with them, though. On top of that, they were doing a project in Neurophysiology together– and no matter how much laughter and noise you heard from the living room, where the two crashed for the time being, you still didn’t think it was okay for you to intrude to say hi to the man, or find enough courage to just hang out in the room with them, enjoying their talks and quarrel. It wasn’t the same as when you were doing a project with Minjeong from your Biology class or when Yizhuo had a few assignments to do with your mutual friend Jimin, the three of you working on your own stuff in your spacious living room, while also talking gossip and laughing about the latest fashion trends on Tiktok together. 

But sitting in your room on a Wednesday evening, completely alone; because your roommate was busy working on a project and none of your other friends– not even the online ones– were there to entertain you with their talks, you had nothing to do. The only thing you could come up with while trying to entertain yourself was to watch the latest season of The Great British Bake Off, your legs swiftly moving you towards your table, where your laptop lay untouched, opening it and turning on the show. 

Everyone knows that feeling of desiring something they see on the screen of the show they’re currently watching, right? The feeling only intensifies when it comes to food– delicious food, on top of that– and suddenly, you’re no stranger to the cravings in your stomach as you watch the contestants cut slices of cakes and taste the sweet, tasty pastries and doughs. Maybe you could look around your room and find something to eat to satisfy those needs, but something is telling you that the secret stash of M&M’s you had hidden in your room, away from the eyes of Ning Yizhuo– the resident M&M lover– was now long empty, the image of the packaging thrown in the trash can now vivid in your brain. 

But the more you keep watching, the more you crave something sweet, and you know that if you don’t stand up from your place at the table and walk over to the snack cupboard in the kitchen, you’ll go insane. And with this knowledge, you take a deep breath in and out, trying to find some courage in you to show your face to your roommate and her new friend; your hand is soon on the door click and you almost watch yourself from the third perspective as your socked feet stumble out of the safety of your own room, bringing you towards the living room where the two of them have been sitting, intending to pass by them and silently take some sweets from the kitchen.

“Hi Y/N!” the man greets you, almost making you jump up and bump into the TV on the right side of the living room. Na Jaemin has a contagious smile on his face, and while you vividly remember greeting him when he arrived, just seconds before closing the door to your room, you still greet him again, trying hard to maintain the same amount of enthusiasm as him.

The conversation doesn’t progress much from that, the two of them too busy reading some article on Yizhuo’s laptop that’s currently sitting on one of each of their thighs, rimmed glasses adoring your roommate’s face, and you allow yourself to complete your mission as you walk over to the kitchen that connects to the room. 

Reaching over to the kitchen cabinet that is designated to hold all sorts of various snacks both you and your roommate love to eat and share on movie nights, you search over the stash and try to find something that fits your cravings perfectly. Eyes scanning over Skittles, some chocolate bars and even a bag of chips, you decide to take all of them– because you never know, sometimes you have the strange desire to chase down the sweetness with some salt– and also look over the room for a drink you could take with you, since you’ve gotten a bit thirsty over the course of the last few hours you spent camping in your room.

Holding all of the items in your arms, looking as if you’ve just done a grocery run and forgot to take a bag with you, you almost don’t see the floor below your feet as you walk– no, scratch that– you literally do not see the ground below your feet at all. 

We mentioned you embarrassing yourself in front of Na Jaemin again at the very beginning of this scene. You may be wondering where that part comes to play– and let me tell you, the moment is now, and it has correlation with the sheer fact that you can’t see where you’re walking and you’re also rushing to get back to your room quickly, hide yourself away from their eyes and finish the episode of bake-off while munching on the party mix of snacks you’re planning on creating.

In your true fashion, considering all the variables of the situation you found yourself in right now, the ground is suddenly swept from beneath your feet as you trip over the door sill that separates the kitchen from the living room, your body falling to the ground with all the snacks in your hands and the bottle of Diet coke secured under your shoulder.

Desperate to keep the snacks intact, you don’t even drop the bag of chips to the floor before you fall to make some room in your palms to try to soften the fall. No, you fall down like a rag doll, face first to the laminated floor, the sound of your body hitting the ground resonating through both your brain and the whole apartment. A few seconds later, the sound of a bottle rolling across the length of the living room fills your ears and you feel a sharp pain in your side, the humiliation and growing stinginess in your knees fully hitting now, when the shock is gone.

A few seconds pass, with your body lying limp on the ground– not even from the pain, just from the sheer embarrassment of the thought of facing Na Jaemin again after this– and a sound of your roommate trying to bite back her laughter fills your ears when you finally wake up and wiggle a little on the floor, trying to get up. At least the bag of chips stayed intact, you think– all of the effort was worth it in the end… or at least you hope.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” the now familiar voice of Na Jaemin fills your ears, and while he does sound a little concerned, laughter fills his voice when the touch of his hand lands on your elbow, trying to help you stand up from your fatal position.

“I’m perfectly fine, yeah,” you nod as you suppress back a scowl, the amused look that meets your eyes once you turn your head to face your visitor that took it upon himself to help you up making you feel all sorts of emotions– humiliation, however, is winning by a mile. 

“Are you hurt?” he giggles out, and the question almost sounds mocking with how his face breaks out into a pained scowl, seemingly trying to hide the clear grin wanting to settle on his handsome face.

“No,” you shake your head vigorously, tears rimming your eyes from the mix of embarrassment and the sharp stinginess in your knees– you’re sure there’s gonna be a big, purple bruise forming on your legs by tomorrow morning. “I’m okay.”

In that very moment, Yizhuo finally breaks out into laughter– as if she was really waiting for you to stand up, in case you fell dead and she would then have to feel guilty for laughing at your falling corpse– and the absurdity of it all makes you join them, the caring man no longer trying to bite back his amusement either as he softly brushes his hand over your arm before he leans down and picks up the bottle of coke that rolled all the way to the corner of the room and the pack of Skittles that managed to fall from your strong grasp. 

“Here you go,” he says, shaking his head at you when he sees you still holding the bag of chips to your chest. “Damn, you guarded those chips with your whole life, didn’t you?”

Nodding, you snicker. “I put my whole life on the line for these.”

Accompanied by their amused giggles, alongside with Yizhuo’s pained sigh as she wipes her cheeks from the stray tears you caused with your comedic fall, you take the snacks Jaemin’s offering you, thanking him for the help as you escape the room with a final bow to end your performance.

“I was glad to be your fun little commercial break, but I’ll get going now,” you say, “good luck with the project!”

And with that, you disappear back into your room, setting your mind to never ever show your face in front of Na Jaemin again.

While you thought your resolution of never ever wanting to see Na Jaemin again out of the embarrassment your first and second encounter cost you, it seems to be that it’s easier said than done when you end up in Liu Yangyang’s basement, the whole place smelling of weed and cheap alcohol, standing right opposite of the man that haunts you in your darkest nightmares only a few days after the initial meeting. 

There is a reflex in you that makes you want to turn on your heel and hide, maybe even bury yourself alive as you recognise the raven-haired boy, his bright grin making your stomach twist uncontrollably as he comes up to you and Yizhuo, a red single cup in his hand and a leather jacket adorning his shoulders. Something inside of you is telling you to get ready for the worst possible outcome of this situation, and you don’t know why your fight or flight instinct is so alert today, but you presume that Na Jaemin just has that effect on people as your roommate hides behind you and tries to get out of her project partner’s sight.

“Hello, ladies!” the man greets you as soon as he reaches you two– with Yizhuo still tugging herself behind your figure. “Didn’t expect to see you two here!”

Smiling, although a little tight-lipped, you turn around to finally reveal your roommate– the only reason why you’re in this disgustingly-smelling basement in the first place. It’s not like you don’t have friends– you do, it’s just that most of them aren’t actually your friends. They are Yizhuo’s friends, who just happen to be your friends, because your roommate decided that because you two are best friends, she needs to drag you everywhere with her– her love language, it seems– and that’s how you always end up in the same social circles. 

Her dragging you around to places also applies to her weird first meetings with guys. And while you agree with the fact that she needs to be careful around new people– men, especially– so she doesn’t get stolen for human trafficking, you’ve been to enough cringey first dates with her to know that you should start saying no to her more often. Maybe tonight was the day you should’ve started, you think– as she asked you if you wanted to go to a party with her, since Jung Sungchan invited her– and while you could argue that a party in Liu Yangyang’s basement isn’t the best place for a first date, or that there’s no use in you being there in the first place, since other people are present, you agreed; because frankly speaking, everything’s better than sitting home alone and watching Netflix. Besides, you promised Yizhuo you wouldn’t watch the new episodes of Blue lock without her, and if you were left unsupervised, you know you’d break that plea– so here you are. Even though at this very moment, you deeply wish you weren’t.

“Yeah, me neither,” you mumble as your roommate, seemingly embarrassed to be caught hanging out with Na Jaemin’s acquaintance, slowly comes up from behind you, scratching the back of her neck in embarrassment. “Yizhuo here has a date with someone, so I was forced to third-wheel,” you muse, earning yourself a slap to your shoulder from the subject of the sentence.

Jaemin’s eyes widen to twice of their original size– a shock very evident in his features– and you wish you didn’t see him so taken aback at the fact that your insanely beautiful roommate was getting invited to dates left and right, because something about it makes your stomach acid boil in a weird way. “A date with who?”

“Whom,” you mumble, nit-picky at the correct grammar. 

“Huh?”

“With whom,” you repeat yourself, seeing as Jaemin shakes his head in disbelief and chuckles.

“Okay, literature major,” he rolls his eyes and averts his attention back to your roommate, the comment making you furrow your brows for two things– one, correct grammar has nothing to do with literature and two, how the fuck does he even know your major in the first place, “you have a date with whom? Because I hope it’s not Beomgyu. He lies about his age.”

Hearing a sigh escape your roommate’s lips, you watch the interaction with uttermost interest. “No,” she mumbles, “it’s Sungchan, actually.”

“You’re having a date… at a frat party?”

You chuckle at the comment. At least someone has common sense here.

“Unfortunately, yeah,” Yizhuo notes, seeing as Jaemin empathetically nods at her and smoothes a hand down her back before he nudges her in the direction of the tall boy. Watching her leave, you mentally pray for her to come back and never leave you alone at a party where Na Jaemin is present– because quite frankly, you are very much okay with looking awkward in front of anyone else; be it strangers or the acquaintances slash distant friends you’ve made along the way on these gatherings– but when it’s Na Jaemin, the idea of him seeing you aimlessly walk around and try to invite yourself to conversations with people you distantly know makes you want to crawl out of your own skin and set it on fire.

Sighing purposelessly, looking around to see if you recognise anyone that you could find a safe harbor in at least for a couple of hours before you look for Yizhuo again and drag her home, you notice the boy not leaving your side. Locking your eyes with him, you hear him clear his throat before speaking up again. 

“It’s actually so good to see you here, because we were about to play beer pong and you’re just the person I need for my team,” he says, offering you his signature grin. 

Finding the last bits of your sanity, you shake your head. “Oh, you don’t want to play beer pong with me.”

“Why?”

“I’m no good,” you admit, scratching the back of your neck, “I’m like, the least athletic person in this room. And I also can’t handle my liquor well.”

Jaemin only rolls his eyes in annoyance at your comments, gently shoving you towards the direction of a large ping-pong table in one of the corners of the spacious basement. The game is already prepared, a pair consisting of a tall, ripped man with an adorable eye-smile and a person that gets introduced to you as his best friend waiting for someone to join them. 

“Come on, I bet you can outdrink me,” Jaemin jokes, basically forcing you to the game as he hosts a ping-pong ball into your hold, looking at you with expecting eyes. 

This evening is the moment where you learn that Na Jaemin is a man of many talents; the first one you find is his irresistible puppy look that makes you comply with everything he says. You don’t know how people have it in them to say no to him, but when he’s ushering you to take the first shoot towards the cups on the other side of the table, you only nod and sigh in the image of what’s gonna be your hangover in the morning.

Leaning back a little, feeling like a true Lebron James about to take his winning score, you aim for the plastic cups and throw the little white ball into space. You haven’t even taken a drink yet, but the ball goes where it wants and not where you want it to go, the small object hitting the floor instead, making your companion shake his head at you and click his tongue.

“I told you I’m bad,” you defend yourself, throwing your hands into the air in a defensive position.

“All good with me,” Jaemin grins, “I’m like, the least competitive person in this room. So as long as neither of us end up throwing up in Liu Yangyang’s backyard, I’m okay with losing this game.”

Rolling your eyes at his nature, refusing to relax even after his roommate Jeno– the boy on the other side of the table– scores and hits two cups in a row, each one of you drinking one, the bitter taste of beer falling down your throat, you find the second of Na Jaemin’s many talents. It’s playing beer pong– and even though he almost never misses, your opponent’s side is much quicker with their game and you end up drinking most of the cups in an apology for being so shitty at the game.

“Come on! You can do it,” you hear Jaemin cheer for you from beside you, your glossy eyes scanning over his figure. You’ve drunk quite a lot now, your distance-assuming abilities thrown out of the window as you reach back to throw the last shoot, body getting out of balance and threatening to meet the ground in the laws of gravity. 

Jaemin’s hands quickly shoot up to steady you, a hesitant hand reaching to your waist as he giggles in your ear, and suddenly, you wonder if it’s been this hot in the room the whole time, when your hand lets go and the ball falls carelessly to the middle of the table.

And when you take at least two shots with Jaemin and his roommate, the game long forgotten as you two lost, you find yourself in Liu Yangyang’s backyard, Na Jaemin’s talent of being an absolute gentleman shining through as he holds your hair back for you when you throw up into the bushes.

“Okay, so… you can’t outdrink me. Noted,” the man hums, a gentle pat to your back sending shivers down your spine.

And with that, you swear you’re never going to show your face in front of Na Jaemin ever again. For the third time, yes. 

At least the third time’s the charm…?

The sun greets you in the morning with an aggressive shine to your eyes, reminding you of the actions of yesterday evening slash very late night. There’s only one reason why your blinds aren’t shut in the morning, since you hate waking up to the hot beams of sunlight in your eyes– they always make you sweat and don’t let you continue in your quiet somber– and the reason is that you must’ve been too drunk yesterday to remember to close them. 

And sure enough, once you open your eyes with a grunt and tumble in your sheets, the memories of yesterday evening flood into your brain the same way water did to your room when your ex-roommate Yeri forgot to turn off the water in the bathtub in your Freshman year. You decided to not live with the girl since, and you also quite loved the idea of not having a bathtub in your new place with Yizhuo; at least it meant that the chance of your roommate forgetting to turn the faucet off and flooding the apartment was significantly lower– you could say this experience gave you some sort of PTSD.

When the sunlight gets too hot on your back that you can’t handle it anymore, you open the window to let some fresh air in and stumble into the kitchen, ready to drink a glass of water and forget about the last night’s party. You don’t usually drink that much– because god knows you don’t need a lot to get tipsy– but getting caught up in a drinking game was definitely your first, and while you found it quite fun at first, you would’ve never allowed yourself to play if it wasn’t for Na Jaemin, your roommate’s project partner, dragging you into this mess. 

At least Yizhuo is a good drinker, for the most part. She gets drunk, but stays responsible. You don’t know how you’d get home safe if it wasn’t for the responsible girl by your side.

The sight that meets your eye in the kitchen is one you would not want to see after a night out. The sink is full of dirty dishes– because your small apartment doesn’t have a dishwasher– and when you open the cupboard for an empty glass to fill with water, you find it empty, all of them used and unwashed in the silver basin.

Heaving out a sigh, you shake your head in disappointment and get mentally prepared to do the dishes. Reminded by the fact that it was you who cooked dinner last night before heading out to the party, it was Yizhuo’s turn to wash up– you two agreed on this arrangement to make sure everyone puts a hand in when it comes to household chores. If one of you is cooking a shared meal, the other one cleans up. It was a good deal, you got used to it fairly quickly, but still, your roommate has her flaws, and sticking to the rules you two made up together is surely one of them. 

“Yizhuo! It was your turn to wash the dishes last night!” you yell out, not really caring that she’s most likely still asleep, as you turn on the faucet and get to work. While it was your roommate’s turn to clean up, you’re also not willing to wait for her until she gets up from bed and decides it’s a good time to complete the task, because truth be told, you really need some coffee right now and you only have two mugs in the whole apartment– both of them sitting at the bottom of the sink, dirty with last night’s tea. 

“I know we were in a rush to get to the party, but for god’s sake, if you had the audacity to be all up in my ear about how I’m taking too long to get ready, you could’ve used up that time to wash the fucking dishes, man!” you continue your small tangent, your slight anger issues getting the best out of you as you scrub the oily pan. “Now the food’s stuck on the plates and it won’t come off! I’ll quit cooking for you if you don’t clean up, I swear to god!” 

Sighing a little, you turn the water on and finally get to washing off the dish soap, shaking your head a little in both disbelief and unpleasant emotions filling your insides. This is not how you imagined your day to go, and soon enough, your stomach is growling with the need of food– you two have slept in until lunchtime– and you still don’t have either the energy to cook something again, or the appliances to do so. Hearing footsteps fill the small room, not bothering to even look at the source of them, you decide to continue your little rant with the premise of your roommate finally listening to it now that she’s present in the room.

“Fancy seeing you here, dear Yizhuo,” you mutter under your nose, irony filling your voice, “good to finally see you in the kitchen, now that I’m done with the dishes,” you grunt, turning the water off and wiping your hands on the kitchen towel that’s been hanging off the counter.

“Man, living with you must really suck, Ning,” you hear a male voice joke, the familiarity of it making you jump in your place as you look at the source of it, a little bit panicked.

His face looks fresh and lively– not a sign of last night’s drinking in his features– and his hands are full with two bags of takeout that he swiftly sits on the table, his figure now awkwardly standing in the corner of the room. Yizhuo is leaning on one of the chairs, eyes a little empty and tired, as if she has just woken up from deep sleep, her hair a mess on the top of her head and her pajamas still on. God knows neither of you look ready for a visitor– a male one, on top of that– and yet, there is still one standing in your kitchen right now, voice sing-songy and body dressed in athleisure, as if he’s just came out of his morning gym session. 

Which he probably has. He seems like the type.

“What are you doing here?” Yizhuo beats you to the question, your eyes jumping from her figure to your morning– well, lunch time– visitor.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? We’re working on our project today, Yizhuo, that’s what I’m doing here,” the man complains with an offended pout, almost a scolding tone to his voice that makes you look at your roommate with shock in her eyes. She knew she’d be hungover today and still chose to work on the project? Is she truly out of her mind?

“I swear we didn’t have it scheduled for today, Jaemin-” she sighs as she straightens her back and looks at the male with irritation and a hint of exhaustion before he jumps in and shakes his head in disapproval.

“We did, I swear to god! You just forgot,” he shakes his head, satisfied when the girl is left speechless in the kitchen, his eyes drifting to you before he smiles and moves closer to the kitchen table, opening up the boxes of takeout and offering you a proud nod. “I knew you two  would be tired today, so I brought some chinese with me! We can have lunch and then get right to working!”

The enthusiasm spreading off his features is almost contagious– you swear it would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that your head was severely aching and you still haven't had a single sip of water since you’ve woken up. Jaemin scrambles through your kitchen, totally uninvited, but also unstopped, until he finds some chopsticks and cutlery in one of the drawers and then puts them all in the middle of the dining table, acting as if he was at his own house, and not in a place he’s been to three times, including this one. 

“Well? What are you waiting for? It’s gonna get cold,” he chirps as he sits at the table and dives in one of the boxes, humming in satisfaction as the food hits his tongue.

Staring at the male, still not quite believing your eyes, but no longer feeling as humiliated in front of him when you realize that you embarrassing yourself in front of him is your habit by now, you only opt to a sigh as you sit at the table and taste the chinese, the noodles falling down your throat finally providing some comfort to your upset stomach. Jaemin smiles at you– the kind of smile where his eyes crinkle up into small moon crescents– with his full cheeks on display when you meet his eye, seemingly satisfied with his mission.

“Fucking hell,” you hear your roommate mutter as she escapes the room, seemingly to put some more presentable clothes on. Jaemin pays it no attention as he brightens up a little, pointing one of his chopsticks your way after he swallows and speaks up again.

“And hey! Thanks to me, you don’t even have to do the dishes now!” he exclaims, his proud face on full display making you stop in your tracks when you go to tell him that’s not true, since you still have to wash the reusable chopsticks you’re both holding in your hands, afraid of bursting his bubble as you only fakely smile at the male, nodding.

“That’s… great, Jaemin. Really nice.”

Walking across the school building, you find your stomach growling once again, the relief only spreading more on your insides when you realize that the last class of the day just ended and you are headed to the cafeteria to grab some lunch. Noting that it’s Tuesday and your schedules match with your best-friend-and-roommate-in-one’s today, you swiftly walk towards the crowded space and get the lunch with your school ID card, the cafeteria lady looking at you with a wobbly side-smile you only recognise to be her customer service demeanor washing off after the long day. Thanking her and scanning the room with your eyes, you quickly find your roommate waving at you from the corner of the room, calling you over with the motion of her hand. You’re actually excited to see her, until you notice another figure sitting right next to her– the figure being none other than the intruder of your home peace for the last few weeks. 

You’re seeing Na Jaemin quite a lot lately, you realize, and it’s not even your project partner to begin with. Not that you mind, of course; he’s a nice guy, a good-looking one as well, to say the least, but there’s just something about his constant close proximity to your roommate that makes your stomach drop whenever you see him in her presence. This feeling has been there for a while now, and if you recognised it in you, you never paid it much attention, but with him sticking to her like glue even outside of the premises of your apartment, it almost makes you turn on your heel and walk out of the cafeteria to eat your lunch alone– daring to even say it’s the better choice, for you think you could throw up any second at the image of their enthusiastic smiles. You can’t really put your finger on the feeling– you’re not really sure how to name it, or what to think of it. You just know that the strange annoyance bubbling inside of you whenever it comes is one of the most frustrating things you’ve ever dealt with your whole, entire life.

But it’s too late to walk out of the cafeteria now, and so you choose to put up a smile and walk over to the two, sitting at the vacant spot opposite of them and get to eating. 

“Hello,” Jaemin greets you, voice cheerful– does he ever feel down? –when you sit down with your tray and smile at the two. 

“Hi,” you nod, “what’s up?” 

“We were just talking about this thing on Friday,” he jumps in, looking at you from above his finished plate, Yizhuo nodding along to his conversation. She keeps chewing on her lunch as the man continues his speech. “My friend Taeyong’s in a band and they have a gig at the Neo bar, you know, the one in the center of the city…” 

You find yourself humming in interest, nodding along to the new information. You don’t think you’ve heard about Taeyong or his band before, but you only imagine it could be fun. “Are you going?” you ask, eyes jumping from your roommate to your new acquaintance slash friend, anticipating his response.

“Yeah,” he nods, averting his gaze from you for a moment, looking to his feet for a second as he clears his throat, “you should come too,” he adds when his eyes meet yours again, a hopeful glint in his eyes.

Halting a little in your movement, you look at your roommate again. See, Yizhuo is just the perfect girl you’d invite to see your friend’s band. She’s outgoing, loud, the life of the party, and also has an amazing alcohol tolerance– perfect to match the boy in front of you. There’s no reason for Na Jaemin to be inviting you as well, and you presume it’s the way his personality naturally is– considerate and warm– that it doesn’t let him just leave you out of the conversation and let you stay home. He’d probably feel too bad if he didn’t invite you, that’s all.

But the more you stare at the two, noticing the familiar way Jaemin’s body leans into your roommate’s for support, the two of them growing quite close in the process of working on the project– she even trailed into his apartment a few times to work there instead, because you had exams to study for and she wanted to leave the apartment silent for you to focus better– and the more you feel the familiar feeling deep within your chest, bugging you with thoughts resonating through your brain that tell you that you’ll just be a burden if you go and that the two of them will have much more fun together if they’re alone anyways, since Jaemin is clearly interested in your roommate. The voice in your head doesn’t leave, and you get so caught up in listening to it that you zone out, only to be woken up from your state of autopilot with a soft nudge to your shin under the table.

“So? What do you say?” he asks again, raising his eyebrows at you in question, eyes wide with anticipation.

“Oh,” you let out, hesitant as you poke your fork into the slice of meat on your plate, “I’m good, thanks. I wouldn’t wanna… you know… intrude? Or something?” you say, nodding to yourself as you’re afraid to meet his eye, opting to stare into your meal instead.

“What are you talking about? Of course you won’t intrude, I’m the one who invited you,” he mutters under his nose, tone of voice close to a mother’s scolding, insistent on his words. “Come on, it will be fun!”

“Really, I-” you open your mouth to decline again, when the male sulks in his seat and turns to your roommate for help.

“Yizhuo, help me, would you?” he grunts. “Tell your roommate this is the best idea you’ve ever heard, maybe she’ll listen to you, since she clearly doesn’t trust me.”

Snickering at his offended pout, you roll your eyes in mock annoyance when your best friend finally speaks up for the first time since you sat at the table, now finished with her lunch and free to talk to you both. “I think it would be nice, Y/N,” she says casually, nodding, “besides, I bet the band guys will be hot. Maybe Jaem can hook us up with one of them, what do you say?” she says, looking at him with a teasing glint in her eye, dismissed by the male with a scoff and a wave of his hand.

“You wouldn’t want that,” he mumbles, “not saying they’re not hot, but they’re insufferable. And a little bit stupid.”

“You say that about your friends?” you grin, seeing as the male shrugs to himself.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “hanging out with them makes me feel better about myself.” 

Giggling at the remark, you finish your food and stare at him with dumbfoundance in your eyes. “You’re unbelievable, Na Jaemin.” 

“Mhm, whatever,” he hums, grinning, before he looks at the screen of his phone and his face scrunches up in horror. His figure stands up in hurry, slinging his backpack over his shoulder before he looks at the both of you, eyes drifting from your roommate to you in a sharp 0.2 second interval, pointing a finger at your sitting body. “I take it as I’ll see you there. I have a class in literally 5-” he says as he looks at his phone again, “no, 4 minutes, so I better get going. I’ll text the address to Yizhuo in case you two can’t find it, and don’t even think of not showing up, okay?”

Sighing in fake annoyance, you shake your head in disbelief as the man strides off, black hair flowing in the breeze as his figure jogs out of the crowded cafeteria. 

You’re starting to think that Na Jaemin is actually the insufferable one. But as he made it clear that he might get mad at you if you don’t go, even though it might make the annoying voice in your head only scream at you louder if you see him and your roommate sway in the cigarette smoke, dancing together in the local bar, you take a mental note to check your journal and see if you have any plans on Friday, and if you do, to quickly cancel them.

The mental image you had of the concert in your head was mostly right. When you arrive at the local bar at 9 in the evening, the whole place is filled with cigarette smoke and the loud noise of guitars is making your ears ring a little when you try to listen to the lyrics. It’s not really your cup of tea, but the lead singer looks nice– you heard some girls in the front screaming his name; Yuta, if you weren’t wrong– and you find yourself dancing along to the beat of songs you’ve never even heard before. 

Everything’s just like you imagined– smiley, flushed faces in the crowd, sweaty bodies pressed against each other in the small space that the bar provides, everything just perfect to scare a person with claustrophobic tendencies. Everything except from the small voice in your head telling you that you’ll be the third wheel tonight was right, and you find yourself thanking whatever inner motives that lead you to agree with Na Jaemin’s invitation, because when the small break the band had ends and you down the beer he bought for you and Yizhuo, the male is, to your surprise, tugging you to the dance floor. This is not really second female lead of you, you think as you sway under the neon lights of the bar; and you can’t say you hate it.

“Please tell your roommate to not get on with the boy she’s currently dancing with when you two get home,” Jaemin mutters into your ear through the music, and suddenly, the illusion’s over. Of course his eyes would be on your breathtaking, wonderful roommate– there was no way you’d have his full attention while he dances with you, no matter how much effort you put into your appearance tonight. You don’t know what it is that makes you finally admit to yourself that you’re endlessly yearning for male attention and validation– especially Na Jaemin’s, the casual heartthrob’s– but you’re willing to say it’s the effect of alcohol as you furrow your brows at him and lean closer to his face to hear him better as you two talk over the loud set.

“Why?”

“He’s insanely stupid,” he says, snickering, “and I also think he’d love to move into your apartment the first chance he gets. I’m pretty sure his roommate kicked him out last month because he wasn’t paying rent.”

“Well, aren’t you at our apartment all the time as well?” you squint at him, seeing as the male rolls his eyes at you in mock annoyance, the teasing getting to him. 

“That’s because I have to,” he insists, grinning under the blue light shading his features, the hue making him look like he was cut out of a teenage movie.

Shaking your head in disbelief at the gossip, you find yourself yelling over the music again. “How do you even know all of that?” you ask, desperate to know the source of all information there is about the men on your campus.

“His roommate told me himself,” Jaemin says, “I used to play soccer with him in high school.”

“You have too many contacts,” you mutter, seeing as the male shrugs at you, taking your hand in his as he twirls you in your place, the music blending into a slower rhythm, the melody more solemn and relaxed. 

“What can I say,” he grins, “I’m irresistible. Everyone wants to be my friend.”

Not even having a chance to reply a snarky comment back to him, the male suddenly brings you closer to him, taking all air out of your lungs. His strong arms are now pressed around your middle, causing you to almost automatically sneak your arms around his neck– you truly don’t know what brought you to these actions, you think it’s you working on auto-pilot after doing competitive dancing for 5 years when you were little that makes you get into position almost immediately in fear of your instructor screaming at you– and the neon lights now start slowly flashing through various colors, reminding you of disco balls you have at middle school formals. The lead singer sings a romantic song, his raspy, yet unique voice cutting through the speakers right into your poor, fragile heart, and Jaemin steps with you into a loose dance, just two bodies swinging to the music, catching their breath after jumping around to the rhythmic beats for so long. 

In a moment full of embarrassing self-indulgence, you look at the boy with long eyelashes staring down at you, and you wonder if he finds joy in your company. He is that type of guy you’d naturally gravitate towards– charming and nonchalant, extremely charismatic– but you, you are the exact opposite of those qualities. Socially awkward and embarrassing with your antics, thinking too much of words to say before you speak to someone, tense shoulders giving you in as you look nervous with every new person you meet. You’re not the type of person Na Jaemin would voluntarily want to hang out with– your roommate is the one he should be dancing with right now, swaying to the slow beat. 

And maybe he would be, if that other guy wasn’t faster than him at earning her attention.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asks, leaning in closer to your ear, because even though the song is slower, it’s still as loud as the previous ones. Shivers run down your spine when his breath fans your heated skin, and you find yourself nodding in response. 

“It’s fun,” you mumble, seeing him grin.

“See? Told you,” he sighs, “and you didn’t want to go!”

“I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, that’s all,” you say, smiling at his warm eyes. The thing about Na Jaemin is that he looks at everyone with eyes reminding you of pools of warm honey– with such a welcoming gaze it makes your knees buckle from the sweetness. He looks at everyone with such care it makes them think they perhaps mean the whole entire world to him, and that’s why you can’t bring yourself to think something more of the situation when his eyes meet yours and your eye contact is a battle of symphony. Because he looks at everyone like that. He looks at Yizhuo like that, that’s for sure. 

The man gently leads you into another turn, an amused giggle escaping his lips when you clumsily get back to his arms. You open your mouth to talk back to him, but before you manage to find words worthy of a good jab, the tempo of the song gets faster again and the drums once again ring loudly in your ears, the last tune of the set bringing an enthusiastic, energetic atmosphere into the small bar.

The rest of the evening comes by like a blur– you remember Jaemin ordering you a few more beers and introducing you to the band, the lead singer flashing you a grin you can’t quite decipher in your drunken haze. Your roommate hangs from the shoulder of the man Na Jaemin warned you about, and you find yourself despising the male even though you’ve never spoken to him– something inside of you trusts Jaemin’s judgment of men, it seems (he is one of them, after all. He knows what he’s talking about). 

You almost get mad at yourself for letting yourself drink too much again. It’s like once you start, you don’t know when to stop, and after all, who are you to say no when you’re not even the one paying for all the shots of alcohol? That wouldn’t be very smart of you, as a broke college student. You have to take everything that’s free, no matter how harmful to your health it might be.

Well, except from drugs. You wouldn’t take free crack cocaine even if you were offered.

But when you drink, you find Jaemin’s attention more on you– his caring eyes watching your steps when you walk, making sure you don’t trip over your feet and fall. His arms put his jacket around your shoulders when you stand outside of the club with the band, the raven haired lead singer offering you a cigarette your companion denies for you before you even have a chance to open your mouth, and his smiley face beams at you when he holds your face in his palms and asks you if you want to go home. And you can’t lie, you’re enjoying all the attention– even though it might be coming solely from the fact that he has to look after you like you’re a baby, because you pretty much turn into one when you’ve had something to drink, but still, you can’t find it in yourself to compose yourself and tune down the drinks. 

You’ll worry about the guilt when you wake up in the morning. Now is not the time. 

You nod to his question, though, because you must admit that you’re getting a little sleepy in your night adventures. Following him like a lost puppy, you watch him as he gathers your roommate from the bar, the three of you now walking down the street towards your block, Jaemin taking the side of the sidewalk that’s closer to the road, his careful eyes watching over your every step making you even more surprised by the fact that he doesn’t have an older sister in his family that would shape him into such a gentleman.

“Everyone, did you have fun tonight?” he asks like a kindergarten teacher somewhere towards the end of the seemingly never ending walk home.

“Yes!” you chant along with Yizhuo, giggles erupting along the neighborhood.

“And what did we learn tonight?” he asks again, making your roommate frown at the question.

“That soccer guys suck!”

“That I can’t handle my alcohol!” 

You both chime at the same time, making your companion nod, satisfied by both of your answers. Something about his sweet, scolding, yet patient tone makes your cheeks hurt from smiling when you two open up the front door to your apartment, your brain focused on listening to his small pep talk. “I hope you two take this as a learning experience and never make the same mistakes again! Alcohol is bad for your liver and broke soccer guys are bad for your wallet, but don’t you worry, I’m always here to remind you of such things when you forget.” 

“Yes, Mr Na– oh no the lift’s broken again!” Yizhuo whines when she walks up to the elevator, scowling at the button that doesn’t light up when she presses it, the platform stuck somewhere between the second and the third floor. Normally, you wouldn’t mind such inconvenience– you don’t go to the gym often and every time you carry your groceries upstairs, you think of it as a little workout, trying to train your brain into thinking how good your ass would look only if you took the stairs every day, but failing as you go for the lift every time it works– but tonight, drunk, dizzy and a little tired, you’re glad you don’t break into loud cries at the newly found information.

“No!” you yell out, almost falling to your knees when your roommate presses a hand over your mouth to keep you quiet– although tipsy, Yizhuo still shows much care about your neighbors, it seems. Crouching in front of the unresponding device, you shake your head in disapproval at the whole situation, suddenly feeling like the whole world is against you just because you’re drunk and have to walk up to the seventh floor.

“Come on, ladies,” Jaemin says, patiently waiting at the first step of many.

“Oh, I’m not going,” you shake your head, a pout sitting on your lips as you rest your head on the wall, “I’m sleeping here tonight.”

“Y/N, stop being ridiculous,” the man sighs, walking closer to you, but seeing as you don’t budge, he only crouches down to your level and pokes your cheek with his pointer finger, seemingly regretting inviting you to the bar tonight, “want to get on my back, then? I’ll carry you upstairs,” he asks, gentle parenting you in the process of getting you home.

And see, if you were sober and completely in tune with your emotions and thought process, you’d say no and just walk up the stairs by yourself. But that’s not your situation right now, when you’re drunk and kind of falling for your roommate’s project partner, and so you only nod at him with bright eyes and securely jump to his back, nuzzling your face into the crook of his shoulder as he walks up the stairs to the sixth floor with both of you, patient with your drunken stubbornness.

“See, girls, sometimes things don’t go as you plan. But in those situations, you have to make a new solution and try to come up with something that is going to work. Life’s a bitch and there will be many things in your way, but you always gotta find a way around your obstacles,” he mumbles somewhere between the third and the fourth floor, “the bus is late? You run to the class. You get a stain on your shirt? You tell everyone it’s supposed to be there and that it’s a fashion statement. Your friend doesn’t wanna go out with you? You bribe her with sexy band guys.” 

“And sometimes,” he says again, his tone of voice slowly lulling you to sleep, “the route you have to take might be harder than the one that failed. But that’s okay, because the end goal will be worth the trouble. The lift broke? Take the stairs, because at the end, there is a warm bed waiting for you in your apartment.”

You’re not sure where all of this wisdom is coming from, or how the hell his words are still coherent after so much physical exercise and also the amount of beers he had with his friends at the bar. You’re also not sure why he’s waffling so much– you bet it’s to pass time until he walks up to the seventh floor with your body on his back,

but you bet there’s a life lesson hidden somewhere in there.

The ringing of a doorbell is an unusual sound to your ears. You never have anyone use it, because frankly, you don’t even have that many friends in the first place, and the ones that do exist and come to hang out with you in your apartment always text you that they’re in front of the door instead, like everyone in the 21st century does nowadays. You don’t recognise this as the more practical method, but it’s the one that they all use, so you’ve gotten used to the fact over the time. The only people that use the doorbell are your landlord– because he loves to come check up on your apartment from time to time and then passively aggressively mention how there's a mess in your living room– and then Yizhuo’s friend Mark Lee that she met at the bistro she works at. They started hanging out and he’s the only one that actually picks her up at the door– as opposed to all of her other guy friends and dates that wait for her in the car. You think it’s sweet; the boy always wears a shy blush on his cheeks and nervously scratches his neck when you open the front door instead of your roommate and scream at Yizhuo that her date is here– to which she tells you that they’re not dating every single time, but you actually think you’re rooting for the adorable canadian, because after the men she chose to date before, you think she’s finally getting some sense into her head.

And so when the doorbell rings again, you get mentally prepared for either of those two outcomes. You don’t think it’s gonna be Mark Lee, because he always texts Yizhuo before hanging out with her and your temperamental roommate isn’t home yet– so the only reasonable option is your landlord Jinyoung, which makes shivers run down your spine as you pick up the mess scattered all around the floor in the entry hall and throw the stuff into the big closet at the right side of the wall, making sure it’s out of his sight.

Taking a deep breath in to collect yourself before the terror starts, you open the front door and put on your best fake smile, ready to face the wrinkled face of a middle aged man in a weird tracksuit– but to your surprise, there is one more person that can still use the ringbell on the door, and it’s none other than Na Jaemin. 

“Hi!” he smiles, a wide grin sitting at his face. He’s once again in his usual attire that consists of Adidas sweatpants and a mint green hoodie, the clothing acting like his default skin in the game of life, and you can’t help but let out a satisfied sigh at the fact that it’s not your landlord that you have to talk to today; although speaking to Na Jaemin after the last time you met him isn’t much easier than sparking up a conversation about the state of your rented place.

“Hello,” you drag out, humming to yourself as you press your lips into a thin line, “Yizhuo’s not here yet,” you say, trying your hardest to not meet his warm eyes. 

“Oh, I know! She texted me she’ll be late, but I was already on my way, so I figured I’ll just wait for her here,” he explains, naturally walking into your apartment as if he owned the place. And you don’t stop him– because frankly enough, you don’t have it in you to do anything else. And what would you even do? Let him stand outside?

And so, even though you weren’t prepared for a visitor today– because Yizhuo still hasn’t learned how to tell you that she’ll have people over– you walk along with him to the living room and see him invite himself to sit on the couch, body sprawled out all across the soft cushions. He seems like he lives here and not you– with how awkwardly you situate yourself on the other side of the sofa (he took your side– the one you picked the first day you moved in. Neither you nor Yizhuo ever sat on the other side ever since, it was an unwritten rule) and watch as he turns on the TV and scrolls through the channels. If this was anyone else, you’d find it inappropriate, rude even, but come on… it’s Na Jaemin we’re talking about. If he walks inside of your apartment and acts like he owns the place, who are you to tell him he doesn’t?

“You must really enjoy working on the project, if you’re around so often,” you mumble out, burdened by the fact that the silence between the two of you is slowly suffocating you out of the awkwardness of it all. One would say you wouldn’t know what awkwardness and shame is after embarrassing yourself in front of the man so much, but it’s quite the opposite, actually– as if the weight of it all was just packing on to each other, creating a big, heavy mess sitting on your shoulders, not letting you breathe.

“Oh, not really,” he says, turning his whole body and attention to you, eyes perking up at the sound of your voice, “I actually find it quite boring, if I’m being honest.”

Humming in response, you suddenly start to find the whole thing a little weird. Because if Jaemin doesn’t enjoy the project– and Yizhuo absolutely despises it too, or at least she told you she did– who in them has that much enthusiasm to meet up after school so often to work on it? If you were in their place, you’d just do it all in the span of a week. Projects you don’t like get lost somewhere in the back of your brain and you only remember them a few days before the due date, quickly scattering something and putting it on paper just so you don’t fail. Jaemin and Yizhuo, however, have worked on the project multiple times a week for the last two months, which is contradicting to the nature of your roommate in particular, because you know just how much she enjoys the art of procrastination as well.

“You must be really responsible, then,” you say, thinking this is the only possible solution– Na Jaemin doesn’t like the project, but he also doesn’t want to get a bad grade in it. That’s why he’s over at your flat multiple times a month, giggling with your roommate in the living room and working on the Neurophysiology essay that requires thorough research. That’s it– it must be.

“Well, I dunno about that,” Jaemin snickers, “this is my second time taking the class, actually. I failed it last year,” he grins, leaving you to stare at him with an opened mouth out of shock, the thoughts in your brain sprinting around like an itch you can’t really get to, making you shake your head in disbelief. This doesn’t sound like the words of someone who strives to get good grades in a subject– because if you had to retake a class, you’d be glad to just pass. Getting a good grade and putting in a lot of effort would be the last of your interests, especially after failing once– you’d have so much resentment for the subject you’d actually do the bare minimum, just to spite no one in particular but yourself.

You hum at that, at a loss for words. 

“Do you not like having me around?” Jaemin asks, suddenly, catching you off guard. Looking up at him, sharply turning your head, your wide eyes must have betrayed you, since your companion lets out an amused laugh. 

“That’s not it,” you try to save your skin, sighing, “I’m just wondering, that’s all.”

“So you don’t like having me around.”

“That’s not what I said!” you mourn out, suddenly scared of somehow offending the boy sitting in your living room. Being completely alone with him has been an emotional tsunami so far, having you praying and manifesting for your roommate to come back soon so you don’t have to deal with the pressure anymore. One moment, he has you all curious and guessing, the other one, he has you aimlessly trying to maintain an image you already lost the first second he saw you only dressed in a thin shirt with your wet hair staining the fabric, walking out the shower the first day he met you.

“Okay, so you’re saying you do like having me around?” he grins, the teasing glint in his smile driving you crazy, the weird turmoil on your insides almost making you stand up from your place on the sofa and running up against the wall. You bet that would bring you less pain and discomfort than having a conversation with him.

“Na Jaemin, you make me want to kill myself,” you mourn, draging your hands across your face in despair. Who would’ve thought that speaking to him all alone in your apartment could’ve been so much trouble? This is not at all how it went the night of the concert, but you’re willing to say that it was the effect of alcohol that made you get through the night. You can’t drink right now, in broad daylight, though– because that would legally make you an alcoholic.

“It’s okay, don’t worry. I wouldn’t be hanging around at your apartment so much if I didn’t like being around a certain someone that lives here either,” he says, matter-of-factly, as if the information didn’t just take all breath out of your lungs at the suggestion of something you pray your brain isn’t just misinterpreting in this very moment. Opening your mouth and closing it in a second, looking like a fish that’s been thrown out of the ocean and flapping around in the sand, you gape at the boy and furrow your brows, creating an ugly crease on your forehead that Yizhuo screamed at you about (she told you to stop making that face so often, because ‘it’s gonna ruin your skin and you’re gonna look old’. Like you can help it…).

“What do you even mean by tha–” you start, desperate for more explanation, when the door opens with a loud bang and your dear roommate finally marches up to the apartment with bangs sticking to her oily forehead and a frustrated frown on her face– choosing just the right moment to finally arrive, as if you haven’t been praying for this very moment for the last few minutes. 

“I’m never going back to that fucking bistro ever again. Can you believe it? Lee Jeno decided to take a day off and tell everyone twenty minutes before the end of my shift, so I had to work for two more hours before somebody could come to cover him. Who even does that? Is everything okay in his brain?” she screams, throwing her bag to the floor as she walks up into the living room, finding you two there. “Why am I even asking? Fuck, of course he’s not mentally okay. And then a rush hour began and I had to serve the rudest customer I’ve ever encountered, and don’t even let me started on that fucking grandpa that complained about the fries being cold when I just got them out of the frier!” 

Watching her little tantrum, you can’t help but giggle at your roommate. It’s an usual sight to you ever since she started working at the bistro, but Jaemin seems to be surprised at her temperamental outburst as he laughs at her like a maniac, watching her with mouth wide open and eyes twice their usual size, almost bursting out of their sockets.

“Don’t even try to start something today, Na Jaemin, or I’ll literally take a kitchen knife and slice your throat in half. Let’s get to this shit so I can shower,” Yizhuo says as she falls to the sofa with a loud thud, not even greeting neither of you before she kicks her hoodie off her body with an annoyed squeak.

You take this as your cue to leave– because if there is anyone else in the apartment that could be the person she can take it out on, you’re not willingly going to sit there and take her attention from them, sparing yourself for tonight. 

Jaemin’s words resonate in your brain as you stumble into your room. There’s a certain someone he enjoys being around in this apartment, and when you look over your shoulder and see him with Yizhuo’s sweaty hoodie hanging off his head– you don’t dare to ask how it got there or why it was there in the first place, hearing his hearty laugh– you feel a ping close to your heart. 

You don’t think you need an answer to the question anymore. How foolish of you to think it could be you.

When you went to college, you didn’t think you’d become the epitome of an average college student you see in movies and read about in Choi Minho fanfiction. Somewhere along the way, while keeping your assignments to the last possible day, living with a roommate that both gets on your nerves and makes you think you wouldn’t be able to survive without her by your side and going to more parties in a single semester than your whole entire life, you find yourself fitting all the criteria as you hang around your bedroom and get ready for what seems to be the biggest party you’ve ever set your foot in.

Your roommate is long gone now, and while you’d be frustrated by the fact that you were supposed to get to the party on your own, you don’t find yourself filled with rage when you remind yourself of the fact that this party is hosted by her cousin, Zhong Chenle, who took it upon himself to host the biggest birthday party of the century for his childhood best friend Park Jisung. Yizhuo was dragged to the big mansion to help with all the preparations, and while you sat around in class the whole morning, she spent the time with spamming you pictures of the place, coming from half-decorated to a fully, over-the-top, red solo cup crammed and loud music bearing building. The party starts at 8 and you’re set to leave in a bit, but there’s one issue that’s keeping you from hopping into the uber you’ve called for yourself– your dear roommate still hasn’t texted you the address, and with how fast the time is going and how she hasn’t replied to any of your messages since 6:25, you don’t think you’re getting a response any time soon.

And speaking honestly, you’ve made a list of rules for yourself. And you also set yourself to making sure you don’t break any of them. 

Rule number one was to not get home later than 2 in the morning. Every time you do, you hate yourself for it the next morning. Rule number two closely ties with the first one, stating that you’re not allowed to get hammered. With the amount of partying you’ve been getting yourself into, you think it’s better to save your liver before it’s too late. And rule number three– however embarrassing it must sound– is that you’re not allowed to embarrass yourself in front of Na Jaemin again. Not after he had to see you half naked, collect your broken body from the ground and carry you upstairs on his back. 

With how your evening’s going and you’re not not getting replies from the main organizator of the party herself, you don’t think you need the rule list at all, since it seems that you won’t even get to the party itself in the first place.

After many minutes of aimlessly scrolling through social media, dressed in the outfit you picked out yesterday, you are brought out of your dissociative episode with a ring on the doorbell. Cursing under your breath at the unwanted visitor, you open the door without much thought, the adrenaline in your veins caused by the fact that you might miss the party of the century making you not contemplate on the motion too much before you’re standing in front of Na Jaemin, unprepared and shocked to your core.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you ask, the words rolling off your tongue without much thought. 

“Good to see you too!” he chants, words dipped in irony, furrowing his brows in confusion before smiling in hesitance. “Yizhuo sent me to get you to the party.”

Blinking at him a few times, the situation downing on you, a shake of your head is performed to clear your mind. “She did what?”

“Yeah, it got a bit hectic over there and she didn’t have time to text you the address, so she told me to just come pick you up. Don’t worry, I haven’t drunk yet,” he says, the explanation making you huff out at the irresponsible nature of your roommate– because truly, how much time can a simple text take– before you put on your shoes and take the bag prepared on the ground close to the door, following the man out of the building and into his car.

Sliding into the silver Toyota Auris, only a few minutes pass before you’re strangled with the reality of being alone with Na Jaemin again, and even though this is not the first time, it still gives you just the slightest kick of adrenaline. Keeping up with conversation is harder for you than you would’ve imagined, and suddenly you’re regretting the fact that you don’t have at least a tiny bit of alcohol in you to kick some courage into your skull, but as the low melody of the radio hits your ears and your driver starts to singing along with the lyrics, using a silly voice that makes you crack up, you realize that maybe, after embarrassing yourself in front of him so much, you don’t even have to feel tense anymore. Because realistically, it can’t get much worse than this.

“You look really nice, by the way,” Jaemin smiles, making your heart run miles around your ribcage. Admittedly, you did spend a few hours picking out the perfect outfit in hopes of being recognized by someone– maybe even Jaemin himself, okay, you’ll admit that as well– but the accomplishment of actually hearing him compliment you still surprises you with great measures.

“Thanks,” you clear your throat, “you- you do too.”

“Oh, thank god,” he mumbles, sighing dramatically, “I actually had to buy some new clothes, because Jeno said I can’t attend this super fancy party in a tracksuit, but you know how it goes, shit’s expensive nowadays, and this was the only thing on sale, so I grabbed it,” he explains, going on a tangent, this mannerism of his making you break into a smile, “and I can’t lie, I think I kinda rock the style and I was hoping for a compliment of two from the ladies tonight, so I’m glad to hear this from yours truly first.”

Chuckling at his rambling, you shake your head in disbelief. “I think you’d look good in anything, Na Jaemin,” you tsk, “you have that kind of face that everyone likes.”

“Oh really?” he asks, the tone of his voice teasing. “So that means you like my face?”

“I’m not everyone, you know,” you bite back despite feeling heat rising to your cheeks, wanting to take back all the words that have come out of your mouth in the span of the last few seconds. 

“Now that’s hurting my feelings.”

“You care about my opinion that much?” 

“Of course,” he grunts, looking at you for a split second before he parks the car in front of a big house, already popping with people to its seams, loud music overbearing the beat of the music playing in the car. The ride wasn’t even that long– you live 15 minutes away from the wealthy neighborhood, it seems– but it's still good that you got a ride, because you don’t know how long you’re gonna last in those heels you’re wearing. “I can’t trust Yizhuo when it comes to these things. I’m convinced she hates me a little.”

“Why would she hate you?” you ask, amused.

“She always looks annoyed whenever I open my mouth,” he snickers.

“She’s like that with everyone,” you mutter, even though you remember your roommate complaining about the amount of words that Jaemin can spit in a minute just about yesterday, “it’s just her resting bitch face.”

The engine turns off and you turn around in the passenger seat to gather your bag from the back seat, where you carelessly threw it in the rush of getting to the party as soon as possible. Quickly looking through its contains– because your anxiety tells you to, just in case you somehow magically decided to leave your wallet and your keys back home, despite checking and making sure they’re there at least 8 times already– you turn back towards the front, ready to get out of the vehicle when you’re met with the sight of Na Jaemin opening the door for you like a gentleman, waiting for you to walk down the imaginary red carpet, completely ignoring the nature of the party going on just a few meters away from you.

Bashfully escaping his car and thanking him on your way, you watch him lock the car and catch up with you on the sidewalk, leading the both of you to the expensive-looking building. 

The song accompanying your arrival is now Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! by Vengaboys, and although you can’t deny the lyrics may be a little bit relatable to your current state right now, you can’t say the whole scene doesn’t look like a circus in your eyes. It’s Park Jisung’s birthday party, though, so you can’t say it doesn’t have to be a bit comedic, at least– the boy is quite known around these parts of the town. The whole place is filled with people you hardly know, and with the amount of teenagers and college students roaming around, you’re reminded a little of the fair– the only thing missing is a bouncy castle, in which you could clearly imagine Zhong Chenle with his best friend, hollering like the kids they still are, no matter how hard they’re trying to deny it.

Upon walking through the front door, you are met with the realization that Na Jaemin was abducted by a tall man with a puppy-like smile and another one, a little shorter one with brown, longer hair and a leather jacket adorning his figure. His face is screaming in despair, and although you find the expression funny, you let him be with his roommate and who seems to be his friend (you swear you saw the other guy in Yangyang’s basement, rolling a blunt with the boy somewhere in the middle of the night), deciding on finding your dear roommate so you can scream at her for being so irresponsible with your arrival to the party of the century. It takes you no longer than 15 minutes before you’re met with her strawberry blonde locks tied up in her signature bun, low-waisted jeans and a white crop-top adorning her figure that’s currently turned to you with her back, and before you can stop yourself, you approach her from behind, intending to scare her out of spite and also humor.

Shaking her by her shoulders, the girl turns to you with a sudden yelp before she bursts into laughter at seeing your face. “I thought you were that fucker Johnny! I almost threw this drink into your face, you know?”

“Oh, you’d regret that very soon if you did that,” you threaten, pointing a warning finger towards her face.

“Trust me, I know,” she giggles, shaking her head, “anyways, you got here!”

“Yeah, Jaemin picked me up,” you say, showing her a tight-lipped smile. 

“He… he did?” the girl asks, furrowing her eyebrows at you, confusion very clearly written on her face.

“You told him to…?” 

“No, I didn’t,” she shakes her head, snickering to herself. “I just told him to text you the address, because I was busy pouring all the drinks in the kitchen and making the speakers in the living room work…” she explains, the more words come out of her mouth, the more she breaks into a sly grin, the expression making you sigh in terror, knowing the amount of teasing that will come next.

“Why are you grinning like that? Stop it.”

“Na Jaemin likes youuuu,” she sing-songs, pointing a finger towards your forehead and digging into your skin with the sharp edge of her stiletto nail. Wincing away from her touch, you shake your head at her with a huff of frustration, wondering if she’s had enough to drink for it to cause all of this.

“He doesn’t, and we both know it.”

“Yeah, that’s why he picked you up,” she nods, before she takes a deep breath in, preparing herself for the long sentence that’s about to come out of her mouth, “and that’s why he insists on hanging out strictly over at our apartment, why he carried you up the stairs on his motherfucking back, why he bribed me just to get you to go to the concert with him, and why he won’t shut up about you literally every second the two of us are alone–”

“You know the same thing could suggest that he likes you?” you huff, roaming your hand through your hair in an attempt to soothe the weird bundle of nerves growing in your stomach. “He hangs out with you all the time, not me, you know…”

“That’s ‘cause you keep hiding in your room like a raccoon, you know.”

“That’s not true at all–”

“Okay, whatever you say. He’s coming towards us right now– so don’t look around or you’ll be too obvious– and I bet 100 pounds that he’s gonna drag you away from me and suggest you two play beer pong again, or whatever.”

“Yizhuo, I need you to shut the fuck–”

But before you’re able to finish your sentence, you feel a hand land on your shoulder, your whole figure spinning towards the source of the contact, finding a grinning Na Jaemin in your rear point of view– how unexpected, really– his body seemingly full of adrenaline as he jumps in his place, looking like a squirrel high on caffeine, his next sentence making your brain short-circuit as you hear Yizhuo snicker in your right ear, a bump on your shoulder and a shove into the male’s figure encouraging you in your movements out the room.

“Normally, I’d drag you to play beer pong with me again, but if I come back to the events that occurred the last time you got drunk, I have a suggestion that’s more considerate to your liver– wanna sing karaoke with me? You’re not allowed to say no, by the way,” and before you’re able to register what’s going on in this very moment, the conversation you two had with Yizhuo keeps repeating over and over in your brain the whole time you’re by Jaemin’s side.

Curse Ning Yizhuo for making you think he could like you at least a little– because even though he sang a corny love song with you at the karaoke machine and introduced you to his friends, along with taking you off your feet in an enthusiastic hug when you two won against his roommate and his best friend at a make-shift karaoke battle (you two got a 98 point score, just saying…), there’s a simple man called insecurity sitting soundly in the corner of your brain not letting you contemplate the fact and take it seriously, no matter how hard you try.

jaem [10:21]: hi how are you feeling!!! jaem [10:21]: was wondering if u wanted to get lunch :p jaem [10:21]:not that im assuming u have a hangover bc u hardly drank yesterday but yknow would be nice idk jaem [10:22]: theres this new pancake place in town :OO 

“You don’t look as bad as I expected!” Jaemin greets you as you two walk inside of the new bistro that opened not a long time ago– you only knew about it because Yizhuo hoped and prayed that the fact that there’s a new place in town will mean that less customers were going to show up at the one she’s working at, and you can’t say you don’t hate that logic. After hearing her stories about rude customers, you believe your roommate deserves a break. Working with people is hard– and as she said, you only realize just how stupid some of them can be when you truly start working in customer service.

“Ouch!” you utter out, your ego suddenly falling at the backhanded compliment.

“Not that you look bad, like, ever, I just– you usually look way worse after a party, you know,” he explains while opening the door for you and leading you towards one of the booths, the red sofas making the whole place look like a retro motorest you’d find somewhere on your way through the middle of nowhere. The polka dot walls only beg you to order a milkshake with your pancakes, and you do exactly that, feeling unapologetic in your actions. It’s not your fault– and you guess that you deserve to treat yourself to a nice chocolate swirl once in a while. 

“I didn’t drink as much last night, you know,” you snicker, remembering the fact that you actually pretty much managed to stick to your rules the whole time you were enjoying yourself at Park Jisung’s birthday party.

“Should’ve dragged you to one more game of beer pong, then.”

“So you do want me to suffer, huh?” you roll your eyes at him, resting your back at the flashy red booth to get a better look at his shifting expressions.

“It’s fun to see you embarrassed when you recollect your memory, that’s all,” he admits, kicking your leg under the table in a teasing manner.

Snickering at his comment, you hide your face in your hands at the growing embarrassment. Taking a deep breath in to hide your hesitance, you look outside your window for a short moment before you turn back to him, continuing on with the conversation before the moment gets too awkward for you to bear. “Yizhuo’s still asleep, by the way. She drank too much because Chenle got a bet with her and she was sure she could outdrink him and then the Mark guy had to carry her limp body to our house last night,” you explain, “she’s the one with a massive hangover right now, that’s why she’s not joining.”

“I see you two like princess treatment,” Jaemin teases, referring to the time he had to collect you and bring you home on his back, “besides, I invited you, not her. If she was here, she wouldn’t stop complaining about her headache, and I really don’t need that energy in my life right now.”

Laughing, you move your hands away from the table as a server brings you two your plates, filled to the brim with pancakes smothered in syrup and chocolate topping. A shiny cherry is adorning the serving, and you can already feel yourself salivating at the sight, the sweet smell filling your senses as you dig in, feeling hypnotized by the food in front of you. You are a sweets lover, and while you don’t know how Jaemin managed to do that, he hit the right spot with making you join him for a sweet lunch– making you adore the man even more, if that was even possible.

“Does it taste good?” Jaemin asks, watching as you nod to him with your mouth filled– as if the sight wasn’t enough of a confirmation to him– a hum of satisfaction slipping out of your vocal cords.

“It’s so good,” you mumble when you swallow, wiping your mouth with the napkin you found at the corner of the table. “Just what I needed right now.”

Jaemin finally digs into his own plate, a bright smile sitting at his face, and as you eat, you find yourself glancing his way from time to time. After all this time, you’re finally starting to realize just how relaxed you’re truly feeling right in this moment, despite having oily hair that’s tugged out of your way with a headband and only wearing your casual clothes, being too lazy to change your sweatpants for jeans and your hoodie for a fancier top. Jaemin just has something about him that once kept you on your toes, nerves tingling all in your insides, the same thing now making you calm and appreciative of his presence. Who would’ve thought that it would only take you two hanging out together the whole time of Park Jisung’s birthday party to finally feel relaxed and natural around each other?

Watching him as he takes a sip of his milkshake, you get surprised at his disgusted face. “What’s up?”

“I forgot I hate strawberries,” he notes, scratching the back of his neck as he battles the face of discomfort spreading over his features.

“And you ordered a strawberry milkshake… because you hate strawberries?” you snicker, laughing at his face.

“Well, I ordered it for the aesthetic, I suppose, but the fact that it’s actually gonna taste like strawberries kind of… escaped my brain for a sec,” he explains, making you shake your head in disbelief at him, offering the boy your own milkshake that you have yet to take a sip of.

“Want mine? It’s a banana one. I don’t mind strawberries,” you say, smiling at him encouragingly when he hesitantly eyes the tall glass.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course,” you say, nudging the milkshake towards him, seeing as he exchanges the straws and sets the pink drink in front of you with a grin full of gratitude. The man takes a sip out of your drink, his eyes instantly growing wide at the taste, nodding his head and closing his eyes in pure bliss.

“Now, this is perfect.”

Giggling at his expression, you finish your plate and sit in a comfortable silence as the boy in front of you does the same. Seeing as he’s done with his serving as well, both of your stomachs full of the delicious meal, you watch him as he clears his throat before speaking up again. “So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?”

“You know, the usual,” you shrug, “check up on my roommate to see if she hasn’t died in her sleep, maybe try to wake her up in a way that doesn’t get me killed… Do the chores she was supposed to do because now she won’t stop complaining about her headache, and then watch the Spiderman movies, because I saw Tom Holland on my TikTok for you page the other day and suddenly got obsessed,” you explain, chuckling to yourself.

“No way!”

“What?” 

“I wanted to watch those too!” Jaemin exclaims, expression full of surprise and excitement, his face lighting up something inside of you that makes you speak before you even get a chance to contemplate your decision.

“Let’s watch it together, then!”

His face falls into disappointment, pursing his lips as he shakes his head, full of disappointment. “I can’t today, I promised Jeno to drive him to his grandma’s in the afternoon.”

“That’s okay, let’s just watch it some other day. I’ll wait with it for you,” you say, finishing the last of your milkshake, seeing as the boy’s eyes light up at your suggestion. 

“But what about your plans?”

“I can watch something else today,” you say, “maybe I’ll watch something with Yizhuo, so she forgets about her grumpy mood, you know.”

And with that, the plans are arranged. It all happens so quickly and spontaneously you can’t even let yourself process your actions, your brain only waking up when Jaemin pays for you at the counter despite your protests, deep voice full of teasing telling you that it’s okay and that it’s for all the snacks he’s eaten and will further eat while he’s over at your place.

“What do you mean it’s not on Netflix?” you hush, scrolling through the app popped up on the TV, clearly not showing any signs of the Spiderman movies. You could’ve sworn you’ve seen the movies on there when you were randomly scrolling through the service one day, not really interested in seeing them, but when it’s the time for you to actually watch the series, it’s nowhere to be seen, vanished from the face of the earth. It happens quite a lot with Netflix, actually– and while google may say the movie is available, when you open up the app yourself, it’s like you’re banned from seeing everything that’s there for the rest of the world to see.

“Well, we can just watch something else, then–”

“I am not watching anything else, Jaemin, we came here to watch Spiderman, so that’s what we’re doing,” you announce, rolling your eyes in annoyance. It’s not his fault– of course it isn’t– but the way he’s willing to give up on the movie so easily is making your blood boil. You’re no quitter when it comes to movies– either you get it on Netflix, or you do some digging (doesn’t matter if it takes you more time than the actual running time of the movie itself) and pirate it online. A few ads about hot singles in your area could never stop you when you’re about to watch something your soul has been searching for the last few weeks.

“We don’t have Disney plus, though,” the man squints, seemingly at the end with his solutions.

“We don’t need those paid streaming services,” you roll your eyes, shutting the TV off and getting your laptop from the bottom shelf of your coffee table, “let’s just find it online.”

Typing in your password and opening up the browser, a few searches of Spiderman online for free later, you’re able to find at least five sites with your desired movie in it. The only thing left for you to do is to check if it has subtitles– because when you watch a movie, all your listening comprehension abilities fly out of the window, no matter how fluent in the language you are– and see which one has the best quality. Settling on an ugly looking site with three ads covering the video window and another five around the corners, you smile to yourself, noticing as your companion only stares at you in awe. The look makes you feel like you just hacked the FBI site, and judging from his eyes, he’s admiring you as if you really did just show him the doings of Anonymous, but you only roll your eyes at him and snicker as you point towards your screen.

“Now we just click through 25 ads and pop-up windows and we’re there,” you nod, motioning towards the laptop, before a sound of the front door opening makes you jump up in surprise and halt in your movements.

Seeing as your roommate gets into the hall, seemingly out of breath and red in her face, carrying her tote bag scrunched up in the palm of her hand like a sack full of dog shit instead of the fashion statement it is, Yizhuo looks at you with furrowed eyebrows and a lost look on her face. “What’s Jaemin doing here?” 

The boy next to you huffs in offense, opening his mouth and chiming in his defense. “And what are you doing here? Did the three meters from the elevator to the front door tire you this much?”

“I live here!” she exclaims, throwing her arms up in the air. “And the lift is broken again, so I had to take the stairs. I don’t think we had a hangout scheduled today?” she asks, pointing towards her project partner with a lost look, seemingly annoyed at herself just in case she forgot about the study session and made other plans instead.

“No,” Jaemin gets out, shaking his head, “we didn’t.”

“Oh,” Yizhuo says, eyes drifting from him back to you and then from you back to him, before realization settles onto her face as she nods. “Oh,” she repeats, more exaggerated now, “I see how it is. Inviting Na Jaemin over when I’m not around…”

Heat rising to your cheeks, you speak up for the first time, completely ready to shield yourself from her slandering words. “Yeah, speaking of that, weren’t you supposed to be on your date with Mark?”

The girl smiles at you in irony, noting the choice of words, before she runs into her room and comes out with a purse instead, dropping her things into the new bag. Before she’s out of the flat again, she pops a head back into the living room, waving at you with one last goodbye. “I just had to take a different bag, since this kept falling off my shoulder. I’ll see you guys in the evening, and please, out of all places, don’t shag at the kitchen counter, at least–”

“Your date is waiting.”

“At least I admit that it’s a date, sweetie, so in your place, I’d shut my mouth,” she recites, tone laced with bitterness, “okay, bye, kiss kiss!” she says before the sound of the door loudly shutting pierces through your ears, leaving the two of you in complete silence.

Clearing your throat, deciding to not go back to the things that have come out of your roommate's mouth, you shift your focus back onto the laptop, awkwardly scratching your neck before speaking up. “Now that’s out of the way…” you mumble, “can you please try to get the movie playing? There will be about 75 ads popping up, you just need to patiently close each and every one of them and not play the porn games, okay?”

“Why would I–”

“I’m gonna make some popcorn in the meantime, since I imagine it’s gonna take a while. Oh and also, you can’t pause the movie, because that makes the whole process repeat and we’ll have to close all of the ads again, so when it’s done, just call me and I’ll be quick,” you finish explaining before disappearing into the kitchen area.

Rummaging through the cupboards, you finally acquire the popcorn you’ve been searching for. Plopping it into the microwave and setting the timer to approximately 3 minutes, you go on a search for more snacks– sweet ones this time, since chasing down the saltiness with a chocolate bar is your favorite activity to do after eating popcorn– and getting out some bowls to put everything into, preparing the things onto the kitchen counter.

Too absorbed in the noise of the corn popping in the microwave, you don’t notice footsteps approaching you in the small room, the voice of Na Jaemin scaring you to death. 

“I love these!” he exclaims, motioning to the M&M’s you just opened and poured into a bowl. His voice makes you turn back to him in surprise, adrenaline in your veins only heightening  when your face almost meets his chest, his body so close to your figure you can almost feel the heat radiating off his figure. Gasping at the close proximity, you react automatically and try to take a step back from him, but your back only meets the counter that somehow does nothing to support your frame as you back up to it, making you lose your balance and almost crash into the hard surface.

Jaemin’s arms shoot up quickly to steady you, one hand landing on your hip and another one gently catching the back of your head into his palm so you don’t meet with the upper drawers of the kitchen counter in a painful thud, the soft gesture making pools of honey gather in your stomach at the action. “Careful,” he snickers at your taken-aback posture, your hands aimlessly clutching the edge of the countertop.

“Well, maybe if you didn’t appear out of nowhere, I wouldn’t almost smash my head open out of surprise,” you mumble, eyes shifting from his face towards his chest instead, the so well-known feeling of curiosity and nerves you thought was long gone whenever you are around Jaemin approaching you again in great measures, keeping you up on your toes.

He only shrugs at your expression, not really offering you any more words, a chuckle escaping past his lips almost driving you to insanity. 

One of his arms– the one cradling the crown of your head– comes down around you and reaches into the sweets bowl, taking a few into his hold and dropping them onto his tongue. Chewing, with an overly-exaggerated hum of satisfaction, the man offers you the sweets and feeds you off his palm, the sugar melting on your tongue somehow reminding you of the man standing in front of you, the tension growing big in your stomach.

“You’re standing very close,” you mutter under your nose when you notice his and your thighs touching, hearing as he hums at your remark.

“Do you not like it?”

“I–” you stutter, cheeks only further heatening at the question, “that’s not what I said.”

“See,”  he snickers, “I’m standing in perfect proximity, then.”

Eyes hesitantly jumping to his face, seeing him looking down at you with warm eyes and a teasing glint in his smile, your heartbeat quickens even more, slowly starting to match the rhythm of the corn popping in the microwave. His hand still on your hip, the contact of it with your clothed skin burning, you’re suddenly finding it really hard to keep your nerves down, swallowing harshly before you open your mouth to speak up or else you’re going to go crazy.

“Jaemin–”

“Can you admit that to yourself?” he cuts you off, suddenly, face curious and a little more hesitant than before. Looking at him with confusion in your eyes, he repeats the question. “That this is a date. Can you… can you admit that to yourself, Y/N?”

Blinking a few times at the strange inquiry, you stutter again, your thoughts running back and forth in your brain too fastly for you to catch up with them. “I– well, I–”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Jaemin snickers again. “I was told that you’re a bit oblivious, and that I should probably be more direct with my actions, because of… obvious reasons…” he chuckles, “so if you needed confirmation, I’d think of this as a date. And the lunch we had together before as well, if that wasn’t clear enough… I originally wanted to play it more subtly, but I realized that I should maybe change my ways for you to get me, so…  if you don’t want this to be a date, just tell me. I just thought I should tell you.”

Gasping at his words, you shake your head in clear disapproval, suddenly too worried about him getting the wrong message. “It’s– I was hoping… this was a date? I– I mean–”

The man in front of you visibly relaxes, giggling at your reaction. His heartfelt laughter makes the mood lighter again– the knot in your stomach loosening a little only for a bit, before the man catches you off guard with another question, his face inching dangerously close to you.

“Do you do kisses on first dates, then?”

Breath shaking, eyes shifting from his deep eyes to the plush skin of his lips, you mumble out a reply. “I mean… by what you just said, this is not really a first date, so…”

“Does that mean I can kiss you?” 

Gaping into his face, you nod– barely visible, but it’s there and it’s enough of a confirmation– before your eyes are shut in expectation and his soft lips land on yours, the sweetness of candy mixing in with the saccharine nature of his personality, gentle presses to your parted mouth making your knees week with bliss. Your hands hesitantly find their place on his neck, bringing him closer when he tries to pull away, earning yourself a smile from the male that you can feel in the kiss, the knot in your stomach fully disappearing and morphing into lightness and gentle fluttering. 

Feeling the man sucking on your bottom lip and gently pinching the skin of your hip that he’s still kneading in between his fingers, you squeal into the contact as he gently hosts you up onto the kitchen counter, lips attacking yours only breaking apart when the microwave goes off and you try to catch your breath in between hungry kisses. 

“Jaemin–”

“Hm?” he hums as his lips occupy themselves with your jaw instead, seeing as you’re meaning to talk right now and he’s a gentleman– he doesn’t want to break your words.

“The popcorn’s done,” you sigh, his lips only reaching further down your neck, not really paying attention to anything you’re saying, only responding with a content hum of acknowledgment. Seeing as he doesn’t really care– and neither do you, honestly, with his lips so magically attached to your skin– you let yourself indulge in the action again, tugging him back towards your face by his chin and connecting your lips once again, firm kisses exchanged between the two of you as his hands stay secure on the curve of your hips.

Fingers threading into the hair on his nape, you chuckle into the kiss when he talks in between, annoying you and amusing you at the same time– since you can’t get enough of his mouth, but still find his words kind of funny. “Oh look, it only took this long for you to realize I have a crush on you…”

Tired of his teasing, you shake your head in disbelief as you decide to move your lips away from his mouth, but rather pressing them along his jaw, just the way he did only a few seconds ago, shyly, yet determinately attaching yourself to his neck, pressing soft kisses steadily in between more hungrier ones, admiring the redness of his skin when you part away from him and see the wet spots you just attacked. “Can’t say it wasn’t worth it, though,” he hums as you seemingly find his soft spot, his whole body reacting as he squirms under you and moves you so you’re back against his lips, the contact more heated and rushed.

His hand slowly teases the edge of your shirt, cold fingertips drumming across your belly, and the further up he moves, the more goosebumps appear all over your back, pressing yourself closer to him on the uncomfortable kitchen counter.

“I know Yizhuo said no shagging on the kitchen counter, but I mean…” he hums as his hand reaches the hem of your bra, “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, am I right?” 

Giggling at his comment, you momentarily contemplate to giving in to the temptation, but a loud noise coming from the living room is enough to wake you up back to your senses, the sound of the movie acting as a wake up call, causing your whole body to jump and shrug Jaemin’s hands off you; his swollen lips and flushed cheeks on your full display when you gape at him.

“The movie’s playing?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he nods, “forgot to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me! I explained that you can’t pause it, now we have to load it again because rewinding it does the same,” you mourn, pushing him a little further away from you so you can jump off the counter and chime into the living room, his footsteps following you.

“I mean, I thought this was much more entertaining than the movie, but okay,” he says, causing you to playfully swat him on the shoulder before you close the tab and reopen it again, shoving him towards the kitchen instead.

“Go and get the popcorn out. I’ll load it back up, since you’re totally useless at the art of pirating,” you chime, rolling his eyes at him, battling back the grin that’s threatening to settle onto your features all while you’re trying to calm down the erratic beating of your heart.

And when the movie finally plays and you let yourself settle against Jaemin’s figure on the sofa, content with his arms around your middle and the occasional comments he lets out at the scenes rolling on the screen, you find yourself wondering how after all of this, this is the way you end up with him– spontaneously and totally unprepared.

A scene of Peter Parker appears on your laptop, the man in the red spider suit shooting webs to the top of the building to get MJ into safety, making a bubbly laugh heave out of Jaemin’s throat. “I wish I had those when I had to carry you drunk to the top floor,” he teases.

“Oh shut up, you did that to yourself,” you roll your eyes, reminding yourself of the day with much despair in your memory.

“And what was I supposed to do, leave you there?” he chuckles. “Besides, I quite liked the journey. Didn’t even mind that it took so long… it made the top floor feel like a big reward, you know,” he says, and when he looks at you from the corner of his eye, his orbs warming up like hot chocolate,

you swear there’s a metaphor– hell, a life lesson– somewhere in there.

[niki-phoria]

I'LL GIVE YOU IT ALL

pairing: jaemin x gn!reader (no pronouns used) genre: fluff word count: 767

includes: brief mentions of drinking/partying, reader has social anxiety

summary: while counting down the start of the new year, jaemin finds himself in love with his best friend

you’ve never seen more people in your life. a seemingly endless crowd of people stand in every part of chenle’s apartment - most holding bottles of liquor or dancing along to the rhythm of the music blasting through the speakers. you stand near the corner, observing the chaos as you nurse your own bottle of foul tasting beer. 

“hey!” jaemin’s voice cuts through the noise, stealing your attention away from your drink. you smile as he slips through the crowd, pushing past body after body until he’s leaning back against the wall beside you. “i’m glad you could make it.”

you do your best to muster up a smile, nodding in acknowledgement. “me too.” 

jaemin furrows his eyebrows slightly, taking a step closer to you. he sets his drink aside leaving all of his attention on you. “are you okay? you look a little anxious.”

“i’m fine. there’s just a lot of people here.”

he frowns slightly, glancing out at the sea of bodies surrounding you. reaching out to take your hand into his own, jaemin reassuringly brushes his thumb against your knuckles. he leans in until his lips are nearly brushing against your ear, unleashing a swarm of butterflies throughout your stomach. “let’s go outside. i could use some fresh air anyways.”

you nod, silently following after him as you slip out of the crowd. cool air chills your bones as you lean against the thin metal railing on chenle’s balcony, staring out at the sea of lights that make up the horizon. even with a thick glass door separating you from the still-ongoing party inside, you can hear the pounding music and feel the bass vibrate the ground beneath your feet. 

you startle slightly when a hand brushes against your side. jaemin stifles a chuckle beneath his breath as he steps closer, wrapping his arms around your waist. despite now being in a much quieter area, jaemin leans down once again. “it’s so much nicer out here,” he murmurs. his breath just barely ghosting against your ear sends shivers down your spine. “are you feeling any better?”

“yeah,” you breathe, doing your best to ignore the nervous feeling in your chest. you turn slightly to face jaemin. even in the dim lighting you can see a faint smirk on his lips. 

10

“i can’t believe it’s time for the countdown already,” he comments. he sighs, looking out towards the city lights in the distance. you hum in agreement, following his gaze towards the sea of blurry colours. 

09

“do you have a resolution?” 

“i don’t know,” jaemin pauses. the silence lingers for a few seconds before he continues. “there is… something i’ve been meaning to do.”

08

“what is it?” 

he reaches up, carelessly brushing a hand through his hair - a nervous habit you had started noticing more in the last few months.

07

jaemin reaches up to cup your cheek with his hand. his touch is almost hesitant as he brushes his thumb against your cheek. your heartbeat pounds in your ears when he takes a step closer, limiting the distance between you once again. 

06

“i love you,” he murmurs. 

in the darkness you nearly miss his words entirely, blinking up at him in surprise. “what?” 

05

jaemin chuckles. his gaze falls down to your lips for a second before his gaze meets your own once again. “i’ve loved you forever. you’re the most incredible person i’ve ever met.”

04

a beat of silence passes. you continue staring into jaemin’s eyes, losing yourself in their darkness. your breath hitches in your throat.

03

“i love you too.” you can nearly see the wave of relief pass through him. he smiles brightly at you; his cheeks flushed and heart pounding in his chest. 

02

your fingers unconsciously curl around the collar of jaemin’s shirt, keeping him in place. pulling him closer.

01

cheers erupt around you in waves. the world around you fades away as you greedily tug jaemin closer until your lips finally meet. his lips are soft as they mold against yours as if your bodies were made for each other.his hand falls to your waist, tugging you even closer to him. your lungs burn from a lack of air when you finally pull away. 

jaemin chuckles when you meet his eyes once again; your flushed cheeks mirror his own. he reaches up to brush a stray strand of hair away from your face, relishing in his newfound confidence from the kiss. despite your lack of words, a silent acknowledgement passes between you - everything has changed.  “happy new year, baby,” jaemin smiles.

notes: happy new year everyone !! i hope 2024 is good for all of you <33

if you enjoyed this fic, please consider leaving a like, comment, feedback, or rebloging !! and if you want to support me, consider checking out my nct dream masterlist <3

[yongislong]

room 119.

genre: jaemin tooth rotting fluff, comfort, established relationship, nonidol!jaemin, suggestive perhaps? college au ofc

note: this is for the anon with the jaemin brainrot hehe... ty for the idea! not proofread but tbh... kinda obsessed with this and yeah it made me incredibly lonely soooo... i hope you enjoy muahaha

you hadn't heard from jaemin all day!

granted, it was still early in the morning, but you trusted him enough to not skip classes again. for the third time. this week.

it's chilly out as you make the short walk to his dorm building across the literature room in which you shared a philosophy class. you assumed he would text you if he was skimping out on lecture, again, but it was radio silence.

you were worried to say the least. it was often that he would skip, but he never, ever was the type of lover to go m.i.a on you.

hiking your backpack tighter on your shoulders, you trudged through the bright orange and yellow leaves. their dull crunching sound under the soles of your shoes are drowned out by the wind blowing past your ears.

finally reaching his dorm room, you roughly knock on the door. sniffling and wiping your nose. annoyed and cheeks red from your 10 minute walk to scold your sleepy boyfriend, you rock back and forth on your feet, a pout evident on your face as you let a couple seconds pass before knocking again.

however your hand never reaches the white wooden door, jaemin swings the door open, bed head on full display as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

your gaze rakes down to his neck and bare torso, following his happy trail all the way to the sweatpants hanging low on his hips, landing your gaze down to his feet clad in cheetah print socks. you look back up at him, letting your eyes linger back on his chest and collarbones.

you both stand at the door way for a while, he's amused at your reaction, no matter how many times you've seen him like this, it never fails to leave you incredibly flustered. and he's so grateful he's the only one who gets to make you feel like this.

"well are you gonna chew me out for skipping or is me being half naked a good enough apology?" he rasps.

too much time passes and he snaps you out of your thoughts with a chuckle, pulling you into his warm apartment by your wrists. his bed was pressed up against the left side of the wall, covered in posters and fairy lights. his room smelled like pumpkin pecan waffles and you couldn't help but let your eyes soften at the framed picture of you on his nightstand.

he has a drawer designated to your chapsticks, lip balms, hair ties, rings, nail polishes and any other trinkets you've left behind any time you visit him.

dragging you over to his bed as he plops on the mattress, tilting his head up to look at you, as you push his bangs back with your palms, he pulls you in from your belt loops, you let your arms hang over his shoulders, pushing his face deeper into your stomach once he rests his forehead on your ribs.

you notice the matching string bracelets you both bought on your first date together, hanging loosely on his wrist, you feel the fraying string as he trails a palm under the back of you shirt.

he feels warmer than the hot packs you had slipped into the pockets of your large jacket.

lifting his head up, he gives you an almost drunk grin. as if though your perfume made him as tipsy as his favorite bottle of peach soju he keeps tucked away in his bright purple mini fridge.

you continue to rake your hands over the hairs at the nape of his neck but stop one he removes your arms from his neck in order to help you slip the coat off your shoulders. standing up for a moment to untie your scarf and tuck his head into the crook of your neck to pepper a few smooches on the exposed skin where your shirt slipped from the friction of your coat being dragged off.

"you okay bunny?" you whisper, worried he skipped class for more than just an extra couple hours of sleep.

"never been better," he says genuinely and you can hear the smile on his face as his breath raises goosebumps near your spine and upper arms.

he sighs as he removes himself, he seems almost annoyed that he has to be apart from you for even a moment, as he helps you slip off your shoes and rests you against his pillows.

once he has you on the mattress he hikes up his sweatpants before tugging you down a bit by your bare ankles. he moves you a bit lower, allowing himself to rest all his weight on your chest, wrapping his buff arms around your hips. immediately closing his eyes and absentmindedly reaching for your arms. once found, he tugs your wrists yet again and not so subtly drapes your left arm over the top of his shoulder blades.

the skin is unbelievably soft and warm, and you can't help but instinctively begin scratching lightly against his thick, broad shoulders, trailing your nails down the middle of his back, reaching towards the band of his boxers.

you trace all the way back up to trace a heart over his left shoulder blade. you sensed how his pulse sped up and a smile take over his face, as the feeling of his cheekbones poking your sternum became more prominent.

right after, you feel him deeply exhale, as though he's needed this more than you know, but was too afraid to use words.

his grip around you tightens and you take this as an opportunity to crane you neck down and return the favor of peppering kisses near the top of his spine.

feeling him relax over your body is better than attending art history class for. sure.

[inspired-by-the-music]

smile: rewritten

pairing: jaemin x reader featuring: jisung as the reader's brother; the other members of nct dream synopsis: before even meeting him, y/n decides that she hates her brother's friend. nobody yells at jisung and gets away with it! as she grows distant from her buzzkill boyfriend, y/n comes to realize that jaemin can't be that bad. nobody who makes people smile like does can be that bad. warning: reader's boyfriend is an awful jerk note: this is a rewrite of a fic that is about three years old. available on: tumblr, wattpad taglist: @niinjo

“I’m so proud of you, Jisung!” You cooed when you learned that your baby brother earned his first part-time job. 

Jisung mumbled, “Ah, cut it out.” He couldn’t fight his smile as he squirmed to escape your efforts to pinch his rosy cheeks. “I don’t act like this when you make the honor roll at your college!”

“That’s because my academic excellence has become expected, almost unimpressive,” you joked confidently. You almost choked on laughter when Jisung groaned at your mock arrogance. ���But you—” you poked his arm— “you’ve always been a precious baby, so it’s weird to watch you step into the adult world.”

Long ago, Jisung accepted that he would always be a baby in your eyes. He didn’t waste his breath arguing that he was kind of, basically, technically an adult. He blinked at you and rested his head against the couch. “I don’t think about it like that. It’s just a job at the cafe, and I’m only doing it because my friends are.”

Spending time with Jisung was refreshing because his simple, youthful outlook challenged your habit of overanalyzing. That aspect of your relationship hadn’t changed since you enrolled in the local university. Jisung was still very much your baby brother. Yet, as he laid back and stretched his legs over your lap and his socked feet dangled off the arm of the couch, you realized that he was growing up. He was growing up, and he didn’t think anything about it. Meanwhile, you mourned every second of lost youth. To Jisung, the next steps in life were an exciting adventure with his friends.

What would it be like, you wondered enviously, to be like Jisung? 

You wouldn’t ask. Even if you did, Jisung wouldn’t have known how to answer. 

He playfully wiggled his toes into your ribs, and you laughed while swatting at his legs. A voice sounded through his headset. The words were unintelligible, but the tone was unmistakably annoyed. They prompted Jisung to sit upright, plant his feet on the carpeted floor, and unpause his video game. Although his gaze was fixed on the flashing screen, he covered only one ear with the headset. 

He heard you ask, “Who is that?”

“Jaemin,” Jisung whispered out of the side of his mouth and covered the microphone so his friend wouldn’t hear. 

Because he was playing with just one hand, Jisung caused his team to lose. The loss was evident from the crimson text— “YOU LOSE”—  filling the black screen, the slackjawed frown on Jisung’s face, and especially from the shrieks breaking through the headset. 

Jisung chanted, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but the shrieks rang on. 

Your face flushed. “Still Jaemin?”

Jisung’s answer with a nod. He didn’t bother to push away the bangs that had fallen into his eyes. 

“What is he even saying?” You hissed. 

“Nothing really,” Jisung shrugged away from your question. 

You were overprotective of Jisung; you wouldn’t deny that. His willingness to defend his buddy despite his flaring temper fuelled your frustration. Maybe, you thought later, you shouldn’t have disliked that Jaemin kid without having met him.

Rolling your eyes, you demanded, “Tell him that it’s just a game. You can play again until you win.”

Jisung shook his head and calmly explained, “That’s the worst thing to say to a raging gamer, Y/N—”

“Are you talking to a girl?” Jaemin roared. “Is that why we lost the tournament? Because you’re flirting with a girl?”

Sensing that you were reaching to snatch the headset to rival Jaemin’s temper, Jisung stood tall on the couch so you couldn’t reach his head no matter how hard you stretched. He huffed at Jaemin, “I’m talking to my sister, not flirting, and I have to go!” He disconnected the headset and turned the game off before you could say anything to threaten his friendship with Jaemin. 

You slumped down on the cushion. “You must have made some really nice friends while I’ve been busy busting my butt at school.”

Jisung swore, “He is nice!” He stepped off the couch. Frowning as you rolled your eyes again, he grumbled, “There’s no point in talking when people are too angry to listen.” He sulked to his bedroom, embarrassed by his scoldings. 

As he walked away, you resolved to comfort him later after tensions died down. 

. . . 

Because you were determined to be a kind person, you surrounded yourself with people who didn’t boil your blood. So, to tolerate Jaemin, which was as close as you could get to liking him the way Jisung wanted, you had to maintain a safe distance. For the sake of peace, Jaemin had to remain a faceless name spoken into Jisung’s headset. You tried not to roll your eyes whenever you heard his name. 

Despite what anyone says, you didn’t walk into the cafe that night with the intention of meeting Jaemin. In fact, had you known that he was the friend Jisung followed into the workforce, you wouldn’t have agreed to pick your brother up after his shift. That was childish. Since you were already in town after your last class, it only made sense that you should be the one to wait for him in the parking lot. 

You were patient at first. Then, minutes passed, and you had to turn the car off to save gas. The almost-summer heat baked the car until you lost all self-control. Had you rushed into the air-conditioned cafe sooner, you might have missed Jaemin’slecture. Your temper wouldn’t have been pushed past its boiling point.

The clock hanging on the cafe wall warned that you had wasted an hour waiting on Jisung. He was still scrubbing tables.

You couldn’t have recognized Jaemin by his neatly combed hair or sparkling smile. You knew him by the frustrated tone he used to scold Jisung. Without looking up from the register, he complained, “You made too many stupid mistakes today, Jisung! I can forgive you for forgetting the day’s special once or twice. But you can’t forget every time you talk to a customer! If you can’t be bothered to memorize something so simple—”

“Ahem.” The boys gawked at you with wide eyes when you cleared your throat. 

“— you can always just look at this chalkboard,” Jaemin concluded softly pointing at an overheard sign that boasted: ‘Today’s Special: Green Tea Latte.’

Jaemin’s bug-eyed stare provoked you to quip, “Is that all you do—for fun and for work? Yell at Jisung?”

“Huh?” Jaemin’s jaw dropped in an innocent schoolboy expression that might have been adorable if he hadn’t already landed on your bad side. 

This was your biggest fault: you put too much weight into first impressions. You were quick to make up your mind about people; you were slow to reconsider. Of course, you could apologize after realizing that you had misjudged somebody. You even had a consistent record of forgiving inexcusable offenses against yourself. What you couldn’t forgive or forget were attacks against Jisung, and you had just witnessed Jaemin’s second strike. 

Jisung resumed wiping the table and acted as the mediator between your wrath and Jaemin’s confusion. He asked you, “What are you doing here?

You didn’t expect Jisung to raise his voice to defend himself from Jaemin’s scolding. He was passive in friendship, and he was subordinate to Jaemin in the workplace hierarchy. You were proud of your brother’s temperament. Proud and, in the cafe in the middle of the night, annoyed.

“Mom and Dad asked me to drive you home after your shift,” you answered. “Your shift was supposed to end over an hour ago.”

Jisung’s lips rounded into a tiny ‘o.’ He turned to Jaemin for confirmation of the time. 

Jaemin didn’t notice, though. He was quietly studying you with narrowed eyes. “You’re Jisung’s sister?”

“Yeah,” you nodded stiffly. “I’m the reason you lost your little video game tournament.”

Your words were intended as a blunt weapon, but Jaemin laughed. His smile was almost blinding as he swept his hair out of his face with slender coffee-stained fingers. “Oh yeah. Well, don’t sweat that. I forgive ya!”

Before you could explain that you weren’t apologizing, that neither you nor Jisung needed to beg for forgiveness, Jaemin winked. “As long as you go on a date with me!”

You imagined your reaction looked a lot like Jisung’s: hanging jaws and wide-eyed blinking. Objectively, it was flattering that someone as attractive as Jaemin—excluding his temper—would flirt with you even as a mindless pastime. Even if Jaemin hadn’t made two terrible first impressions, even if he wasn’t one of Jisung’s buddies, even if your pride would allow you to give in to his charms, one dreadful fact remained: 

“I have a boyfriend.”  

On cue, Jisung rolled his eyes. Grinding his teeth, he dropped his gaze on the table. 

“Oh.” Jaemin’s shoulders fell, but his smile barely faltered. His smile, you realized, wasn’t an expression of happiness. His lips were almost permanently set in a toothy grin, even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

That must be inconvenient, you thought. Does he smile even when he’s sad? Or when he’s angry? 

When Jaemin looked up at Jisung, his eyes crinkled fondly. All traces of past frustration had vanished. “Goodnight, Jisung. I’ll see ya tomorrow!”

Slowing his movements to a near-complete stop, Jisung started, “But I’m not finished—”

Jaemin shot him a pointed look. As quickly as it had calmed, his temper flared. “Don’t keep your sister waiting. I’ll close up.”

As you opened your mouth to thank Jaemin, or apologize for your impatience, or to offer to help clean or at least quietly wait for them to finish, your phone rang. Your mother was calling probably to ask why you and Jisung weren’t home yet.

“Come on,” you urged Jisung gently after silencing your ringer. “We should go. Mom is worried.”

Jisung looked at Jaemin once more for permission. After Jaemin nodded, Jisung untied his apron and folded it on the counter. “Thanks. I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

Had Jisung been less mature, he would have teased you for abandoning your decision to dislike Jaemin after your brief first meeting. Instead, he focused on returning your mother’s call to recount his day. At school, he aced one of his finals. On his first day at work, Jaemin taught him how to make all kinds of coffee and pastries while defending him from fussy customers. 

Silence fell over the car after Jisung ended the call. You drummed your thumbs on the steering wheel, anticipating that he must have saved some exciting story for your ears only, just as he always had. But no sound came from the passenger seat. 

Your heart sank. You couldn’t blame him for being mad or embarrassed by you. Not only had you treated him like a defenseless infant, as always; you were also rude to his friend. 

Yes, you had walked in on Jaemin lecturing Jisung. At least Jaemin had been considerate enough to wait until the cafe was empty to voice his criticisms. All day, while you were too busy at school to do it yourself, Jaemin acted as Jisung’s guardian and protector. And no, you hadn’t forgotten that Jaemin screamed at Jisung and made his face flush because of a stupid video game, but it was clear from watching their interactions and from hearing how proudly Jisung talked about him that they held no grudges. Who were you, then, to hold on to one on Jisung’s behalf? 

“I’m sorry,” you muttered. An apologetic glance over at the passenger seat revealed that Jising had fallen fast asleep. His head rested against the window, and his mouth hung agape. Faint snores filled the silence. 

As you decided to let him sleep, Jisung jolted awake. His face almost crashed into the dashboard. 

“Alright there, partner?” You hummed like you used to in the days when you played Toy Story with him from dusk until dawn. 

“Yeah.” Jisung nodded groggily as he settled back and reclined his seat. “Did you say something while I was sleeping, partner?”

Again, you readied your apology, but you hesitated to deliver it. You sensed Jisung’s smile like gentle sun rays illuminating your skin. He wasn’t upset. He didn’t expect an apology. Yet, you felt you owed him one anyway. 

He asked, “What’s wrong?”

You shook your head. Although you were sorry, you didn’t have to express that with a long-winded speech he wouldn’t understand. You could express it instead through actions. You could express it through jokes. 

“I said Jaemin is a real cutie.” Without glancing away from the road, you winked. 

You expected Jisung to gag. Who wants to hear their sister call their friend cute? Surprisingly, he simply warned, “You have a boyfriend, remember?” Unsurprisingly, he choked around the word ‘boyfriend.’

“Why don’t you like him?” You asked. “My boyfriend, I mean?”

Had you looked over, you would have seen Jisung cross his arms and turn his gaze out the window. He asked, “Why do you like him?”

Jisung rarely disliked anyone. His disapproval of your boyfriend made you wary of the romance—if you could even call it a romance. After months of back and forth, he finally decided that you could call him your boyfriend. Because you spent so much time and energy chasing that ideal, the half-formed thought of being with him, you couldn’t let it go.

You should have been able to answer Jisung’s question. It was a dooming sign, your inability to name one reason why you liked your boyfriend. Rather than heeding the sign, however, you clutched the wool over your eyes and turned the radio on. 

. . . 

“Believe it or not, babe, I’d like to have one date that’s not about babysitting your little brother,” your boyfriend said through a mouthful of rice.

Rejection was an almost daily occurrence, but you reddened nonetheless. “First of all, my brother isn’t that young.” Yes, to you, Jisung was a precious baby, but you had to deny that to defend him from your boyfriend’s criticism. “Second of all, it’s not a date. I told Jisung I would take him and his friends to the arcade if he got good grades on all his exams. I’m inviting you because I thought it would be fun.”

That was a lie. You knew that your boyfriend wouldn’t have fun at the arcade. You invited him because that’s what a good girlfriend would do. Maybe you thought that acting like a better girlfriend would make him act like a better boyfriend. Maybe disappointment was worth the risk because it could be grave enough to sever the delicate relationship.

He had stopped listening, opting instead to scroll through his phone. “Whatever.”

“Yeah,” you mumbled. “Whatever.” 

Although you would be an hour early to class, you packed your bag and raced out of the cafeteria. Had you been thinking more clearly—had you been able to breathe comfortably enough to think around him at all—you would have tried again to break up with him. It wasn’t a mystery why Jisung hated him, you admitted as you dashed through the hallway. He treated everything you said like an inconvenience. He was only momentarily satisfied if your attention was solely fixed on them. You couldn’t share your attention with your friends or even your own brother.

Then, he could ignore you for days, leaving you to wonder what you had done to inflict the latest deafening silence. When you would swallow your dwindling pride to approach him, he would reject your advances because they weren’t intimate enough. They weren’t physical enough. They weren’t enough.

You were trapped in a cycle with no clear beginning or end. As you sat with your back pressed against the wall and your knees drawn up to your chest, you couldn’t ignore this fact: you were miserable. Rather than finding the strength to end the relationship, instead of embracing the uncertainty of freedom, you prayed that he would let you go. If he was so uninterested in you, why couldn’t he just walk away?

The answer was obvious. Nobody ever liked him before you did. By clinging to you, even if it meant breaking you, he could build an illusion of self-worth. By putting you down, making you beg for acknowledgment, he could stand over somebody. Because you walked into this situation by pining after somebody who never wanted you, you started to believe that you deserved to be unhappy. 

As students flooded out of the classroom and into the hall, you wiped at your eyes with ice-cold hands. You weren’t crying; you were trying to wipe the tired dark circles from your face. 

On their way out of a classroom, someone called your name.

It was Jaemin. Beaming, he waved both hands excitedly like he was greeting an old friend—like you hadn’t loathed him before meeting him.

The dread your boyfriend caused and the guilt of initially disliking Jaemin faded when Jaemin sat next to you. He slung his yellow backpack onto the floor. He stretched his arm along the back of the bench. When his fingers brushed against your shoulder, you raised your eyebrows. He said, “I gotta leave room for others!”

“Right.” You nodded dubiously. “What are you doing here, Jaemin?”

“Ouch, icy.” He winced, grinning. “Just give me a chance, and I’ll prove that I’m worthy of sitting with you!”

“I don’t doubt it.” He blushed at your honest attempt at flattery, and you continued, “But that’s not what I meant. Why are you doing here at my school?”

Jaemin shrugged. “It’s not just your school.”

Your eyes widened. “You go to school here?” He nodded. “Really? I could have sworn you went to school with Jisung.”

“Nope.” Jaemin popped the ‘p’ proudly. “I hope you didn’t reject me just because you thought I was too young!” You laughed, and he winked. “It’s okay if you did. I’ll give you another chance to date me.” 

You shook your head, almost in a futile attempt to convince yourself that Jaemin’s smile didn’t make your heart flutter.

“Just playing.” He dropped the arm resting behind your shoulders to act as a barrier between your bodies. “Jisung said you really have a boyfriend, so I probably shouldn’t flirt with you.” 

You blurted, “He probably wouldn’t mind.” You regretted the words as soon as they left your mouth, but you couldn’t pull them out of the air.

“Who?” Curious, Jaemin tilted his head. “Jisung or your boyfriend?” You didn’t answer, so he tried another question: “Would you mind?”

Eager to escape, you flinched off of the bench. “Sorry, Jaemin. I have to get to class.” 

As much as you loathed your boyfriend, as much as you were starting to like Jaemin, outright flirting wasn’t right. You didn’t need to add anything else to your list of things to overanalyze.

You couldn’t control what Jaemin did. He dove to reach your hand. He didn’t seem to care that you had a boyfriend. He probably didn’t have to care. The only heart he was responsible for was his own.

His touch was undeterred by your gasp. Because you didn’t yank your hand from his grasp, Jaemin smiled as he asked, “You’re going to the arcade with us this weekend, right?”

Touching somebody’s hand shouldn’t have been a big deal, but Jaemin’s touch took your breath away. “Oh, are you going too?” Jaemin nodded. He maintained eye contact, and your thoughts were clouded. “I’ll be there. Who do you think is paying for all the tokens and pizza?”

“Huh?” Surprised, Jaemin dropped your hand. You could breathe again. His eyes narrowed. “Not you. I’ll pay.”

You shook your head. “Jisung is my brother, and I promised to take him and his friends—”

“Do you know  how many people he invited?” When you shook your head, Jaemin counted on his hand, “Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Chenle, and me. Excluding me because I’m not letting you pay my way—and including Jisung, that’s five boys you’re promising to pay for. Five boys—” he wiggled his fingers menacingly—“who live on pizza and games.”

Forcing your arms through the straps of your backpack, you chuckled at his dramatic delivery. You asked, “If they’re so expensive, why are you so determined to pay for them yourself?”

He started, “Because—”

Your alarm sounded to signal that your class would start soon. “I have to go to class, Jaemin, so we’ll have to bicker about this later.”

As you dismissed the alarm, Jaemin yanked your phone away. “Here. I’ll give you my number.” His eyes twinkled when they met yours. A corner of his lips formed a half-smile as he clarified, “Just so we can discuss this payment business. Don’t get any funny ideas.”

. . . 

Although you promised Jisung that you wouldn’t waste the night by waiting for you boyfriend, you didn’t keep your word. You sat alone at a table in the food court and stared at the door for about half an hour after Jisung ran into the arcade with his friends. Were you hoping that your boyfriend would show up? Not really. You didn’t want to play skeeball with him or anything. You just wanted, needed, for somebody to break the silence. After you last left him in the cafeteria, he left your texts unanswered. There was no reason to think he had changed his mind about coming to the arcade. 

He’s not coming, you told yourself. Again, always, you were caught between relief and anxiety. Your sweaty palms clutched the edges of your seat. I’ll give him ten more minutes. After that, I’m having fun with or without him. 

But you knew it was impossible to have fun with him. That truth was more blatant when Jaemin plopped into the chair next to you. 

“I gave the children money to buy pizza,” he boasted in a raspy voice to emulate old age, “per our agreement.”

That was the compromise reached via texts: Jaemin would pay for food, and you would pay for arcade access. 

Jaemin’s sparkling smile dimmed as he noticed how you nervously eyed the door and your phone. “Are you expecting someone?” You hesitated to respond, and he warned, “The kids will be here any minute. If you tell me what’s bothering you, we can work through it while we still have some privacy.”

His earnest stare prompted you to blurt, “My boyfriend.” Noting Jaemin’s frown, you squirmed through your stresses. “I invited him— who knows why?— and he said that he wanted to have a date without my brother tagging along. So, obviously, I stormed off. And we haven’t talked in two days, which isn’t that long, but I don’t know what to say to fix things. And he isn’t even here, and—”

Jaemin blinked like Jisung always did when your worries bubbled out of your mouth, so you cut yourself off. Jaemin’s mouth fell open, and it stayed open as he struggled to form a response. 

“I’m sorry.” You said while shrinking in your seat. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

Aside from feeling guilty for dumping your feelings on someone, you hated yourself for spilling them all over Jaemin of all people. Jaemin, who always smiled and didn’t deserve to be burdened with your self-inflicted troubles. Jaemin, who flirted with you, and somehow liked you, and didn’t want to hear about your boyfriend. 

“I don’t think you have to apologize. To me or to him.” Jaemin’s smile slowly returned, and guilt eased its clutch around you. “No offense, but anyone who doesn’t want to hang out with you and Jisung is a loser. And I’m not just saying that because I like—”

Your soaring heart came crashing down when Haechan cheered, “We come bearing pizza!” The other boys followed behind him, each carrying two boxes of pizza. 

Renjun returned Jaemin’s debit card and the bows sat around the table. Jisung sat at your side and smiled brightly even as Jaemin glared.

“Do you think you got enough to eat?” Jaemin furrowed his brow. “Seriously, guys, ten pizzas are excessive! You can’t just take advantage of my generosity and—”

“Jaemin,” you interrupted calmly, fighting the urge to giggle with the other boys. “It’s okay. If it matters so much, I’ll pay you back.”

“What?” He gasped. “No, don’t! Besides, money isn’t the point!”

“Generosity!” Chenle cackled and flicked a piece of pepperoni at Jaemin; he dodged the attack. “You just bought us dinner to impress Jisung’s sister!”

The others, excluding Jisung, chorused, “Ooooh.” All, except the laughing Mark, partook in flinging pizza toppings at Jaemin. 

Burning a faint shade of pink from his neck up, Jaemin screeched, “Hey! Cut it out! I dressed nicely and—”

Jeno wiggled his eyebrows before sinking his teeth into a slice of cheese pizza. “Jaemin dressed nicely to impress Jisung’s sister!”

And the boys—minus Jisung, who sat quietly, cheeks stuffed full—again sang “Ooooh,” until you and Jaemin were both colored crimson. 

In what must have been an attempt to defend you from his friends’ teasing, Jisung swallowed his mouthful and chirped, “She has a name!”

Jisung’s attempt backfired. 

The boys sang, “Ooooh! Jaemin and Y/N, sitting in a tree. . .”

As you laughed out loud for the first time all night, Jaemin’s annoyance or embarrassment vanished. Grinning, he flew out of his seat, grabbed you by the hand, and pulled you toward the arcade. He said, “I hope you got all the pizza you wanted!”

Although you couldn’t care less about eating more pizza, you yelled over laughter and games, “You don’t think they’ll leave me any?”

Jaemin said, “Jisung might try to save you some, but it’ll get cold if one of the guys doesn’t steal it. You and I are gonna be here for a while.” He dropped your hand to point up at a shelf of plush prizes. “Which one do you want?”

The giant mint green llama instantly caught your eye. You fumbled with an answer because, “Jaemin, those cost, like, 5,000 tickets!”

He retrieved a neon green play card from his back pocket, twirled it between his fingers, and winked. “4,902 electronic tickets, baby! Pick your prize, and we’ll get the other 98 tickets!”

“How—why?” You stuttered, flustered by Jaemin’s unromantic use of the word ‘baby.’

“I come here a lot,” Jaemin shrugged, “and I already have a bunch of those plushes. It’s a little childish, but they always make me feel better when I’m feeling down.” 

Oh. So this was his response to your rambling about your boyfriend. He wouldn’t tell you to break up with him as your girlfriends did before moving on to the next topic of idle gossip. He wouldn’t sulk with you like Jisung. Jaemin would go out of his way to teach you to have fun. 

“Pick one!” Jaemin urged again, brushing his elbow against your ribs until you went weak with laughter. Before you could trip over your own feet, he secured you around the waist. His gaze followed where you pointed. “Ah, the llama. Cute. Let’s go!” He grabbed your hand and sped to the wall of skeeball machines because, he explained, that game was the quickest—and most fun!— way to earn tickets.   

“We don’t have to run everywhere,” you wheezed, doubling over. 

As he knelt to swipe his play card, Jaemin looked up and stole your little remaining breath with his smile. “Come on, breathlessness is part of the fun!” After watching you scramble to pull your card out of your pocket, Jaemin swiped his through your machine.

“Jaemin!” You swatted at him gently when he stood upright, and he spun away from the contact. “I’m supposed to pay for the games! That’s what we agreed on!”

Your scolding elicited a burst of laughter. Shaking his card at you, Jaemin defended himself. “The points are on my card.” You wrinkled your forehead, and he continued, “If you want that adorable llama, you gotta let me pay.”

Because he turned his attention to his game and started launching ball after ball into the center target, he didn’t see your small smile. You mirrored his posture as you started your game and said, “Under that cute exterior, you’re really quite cunning.”

Rather than fixating on the insult, Jaemin noticed the compliment. “Cute,” he mimicked your high pitch. “You think I’m cute?” He glanced at you and snorted as your ball sank into the gutter. “Oops! Am I too cute? Am I distracting you?”

Your blush was washed out by the blinking arcade lights. “You’re not distracting me because you’re cute.” You balanced the lie with a partial truth: “You’re distracting because you’re annoying.”

“Ouch,” He whistled. His game announced, ‘New High Score!’ and he celebrated by pumping a fist into the air. He turned to you and said, “Every time I think you’re starting to like me back just a little, you cut me right back down.”

Well aware of how flirtatiously Jaemin would interpret your words, you decided to say, ‘I do like you.’ The words were dancing on the tip of your tongue, but you swallowed them back when Jisung and his friends approached.

“Found ‘em!” Haechan declared like you had been playing hide-and-seek. 

This is a good thing, you told yourself as your game ended without all the fanfare Jaemin’s high score earned. I would have regretted confusing Jaemin’s feelings. Some true things are better left unsaid. 

“These kids are ruining the experience,” Jaemin grumbled. Shoving his hands into the pockets of light blue acid-washed jeans, he asked the boys, “What do you need now?”

“We just wanted to check in on our favorite budding romance.” Renjun’s jest received laughter from the other boys and a dramatic eyeroll from Jaemin. 

“Find your own romances and stop following us like a bunch of weirdos,” Jaemin suggested.

Jisung stepped up to your side. “Want these?” His hands cupped a rainbow assortment of hard candies. “I won them!” Your brother beamed at his accomplishment when you popped a candy into your mouth.

Stuffing a wrapper and a couple of pieces into your pockets, you smiled at him. “Thank you, Jisung!” The cherry-flavored jawbreaker muffled your voice. You nearly choked on your laughter when Jisung bent to let you pat his head. 

Chenle said, “Now that the adorable sibling bonding is out of the way, we’re gonna play laser tag. We know you two—” his eyes flickered from you to Jaemin—“would rather make out by the skeeball machines—”

You gasped, and Jisung shouted, “Hey!” He stomped to Chenle and towered over him. Jisung’s height alone would have been daunting if he didn’t have the face of a baby even when glowering. “Don’t say stuff like that! She’s my sister!” 

Chenle’s hands rose in mock surrender. “I’m not the one making out with—”

“Anyway—” Jeno intervened by stepping between Chenle and Jisung—“We’re gonna play laser tag if you wanna tag along!” Jeno laughed at his pun.

Jaemin shook his head, and his bangs fell into his eyes. “We’re not gonna play. Thanks for asking.”

“We’re not?” You wrinkled your forehead. 

You weren’t offended by Jaemin’s eagerness to speak on your behalf. You were just surprised that he didn’t run at the opportunity to explore the arcade with his friends. That was why he showed up, right? To spend time with Jisung. 

Chenle hummed, “Ooooh, trouble in paradise!” 

Jaemin ignored him. He explained through a nervous grin, “We can’t get tickets from playing laser tag. If we want that llama, we gotta stay focused!”

“What llama?” Mark asked. He received no answer.

Jisung’s eyes widened as he sucked on a piece of candy. “You’re not gonna pay tag?”

You didn’t withstand your brother’s disappointed stare because you wanted to win a silly stuffed animal. This was wrong. Now, you thought, you actually deserved your boyfriend’s disapproval. You enjoyed having Jaemin’s attention to yourself. 

That’s why you grinned and cheered, “We gotta win that llama!” You earned a high five from Jaemin.

Teasing you must have lost its appeal. Wordlessly nodding, the boys set off to play laser tag. Jisung lingered, still staring at you. Realizing that Jisung would otherwise be left behind, Renjun ushered him away, muttering, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Neither of you spoke for a few minutes after Jaemin started another round of skeeball.

The silence ended when Jaemin said, “You don’t have to look so guilty.” His voice, softer than usual, was almost lost amid booming sound effects, laughter, and screams of triumph and despair. “Jisung won’t stay hung up on us for long. He’s pretty adaptable.”

You couldn’t explain that the twisting in your gut had little to do with the look you put on Jisung’s face. You couldn’t explain that spending this time with Jaemin was inappropriate. Then, you would have to stop out of respect for your never-present boyfriend.  

And you didn’t want to stop. And you didn’t want to ruin the playful atmosphere. And you didn’t want to overwhelm Jaemin’s crush on you if it were as shallow as you imagined. 

We’re just having fun, you argued to the nagging voice in the back of your mind. 

The voice in your mind sounded a lot like the one booming in your ears, the voice of your boyfriend, the voice that stunned you stiff. 

Those defensive thoughts weren’t just thoughts. They were stuttered excuses you forced through trembling lips as he glared down at you. His fingers dug into your arms so roughly that it would have hurt if you weren’t embarrassed—numb. Numb except for the agonizing thundering of your heart. 

People were staring. People were listening to him scold you. “I wouldn’t have bothered coming to this stupid place if I’d known you were here to hook up with some stupid jerk you found at the claw machine.” 

He cut his eyes at Jaemin, and you with the realization that you were not trapped in a dream turned nightmare. He wouldn’t disappear with the opening of your eyes. Yet, you blinked once, twice, thrice, in the hope that he would. 

Jaemin was as stunned as you were. Dark maroon splotches formed on every visible inch of his skin. His chest rapidly rose and fell under his white t-shirt. His hands were clenched in tight fists pressed to his side. His jaw was forced shut, lips pressed into a thin line. 

“He is not a stupid jerk.” Emboldened by the instinct to stand up for Jaemin, you didn’t shrink under your boyfriend’s cold, piercing stare. “And we aren’t even hooking up!” You liked Jaemin, and that perversion of your relationship made your hair stand on end. “He’s my friend.”

“Your friend.” Your boyfriend’s laugh was hollow. Again, he was going to remind you that nobody was interested in you. Jabbing a finger at Jaemin without breaking your eye contact, he accused, “He is no more interested in ‘friendship’ with you than I am.”

At some point, you would have believed it. At some point, those words would have hurt you. But they had been spoken so often that they lost their sting. He had always been like this— cruel— even when you tried to will yourself oblivious. Until now, you forced yourself to say whatever might guarantee temporary peace. 

What was so different now? 

Maybe now that you realized there were people like Jaemin who would enjoy your company without the promise of anything in return, you couldn’t subject yourself to mistreatment. Maybe Jaemin’s smile broke through the darkness your boyfriend insisted encompassed the entire world. Maybe Jaemin’s smile exposed your relationship’s emptiness. Maybe you finally understood that there was nothing there worth saving with forced silence. 

“Let go of me.” You met your boyfriend’s eyes. Your voice wavered slightly because the words were unfamiliar in your mouth. “Go away. You don’t want anything to do with me, and I don’t want anything to do with you either. So just— just—”

The tears that pooled in his eyes were inauthentic. Although you recognized his deliberate attempt at manipulation, you couldn’t say the final word. You continued to tread that dangerous line between freedom and captivity, between apology and honesty, until he pushed you away.

You couldn’t even be relieved. He turned and towered over Jaemin, who was not intimidated by his size. Jaemin, who stood proudly when faced with the force that had been strangling you, extinguishing you for months. 

“Ease up, dude,” your boyfriend growled.“I’m not gonna hit you.”

Jaemin did not change his posture, and your boyfriend clicked his tongue in annoyance. You flinched at the sound, and Jaemin didn’t bat an eyelash. 

“Whatever,” your boyfriend spat. “You want her so badly?” Jaemin nodded, but your boyfriend didn’t notice. He turned to watch you crumble as he said, “Take her, then. I only went out with her because she begged me.”

You weren’t winded so much by what he said. You decided just moments ago that he could not determine your worth. But how could cruelty come so easily to anybody? How could he easily turn away from his latest attempt to break you when you could never work up the nerve to peacefully walk away from him? You couldn’t understand. 

You couldn’t quite process the public breakup until you noticed that the once bustling arcade had gone silent. There were a few scattered whispers—all about you. The breakup was not quite real until you felt the eyes of strangers prying into you. The humiliation didn’t quite dawn on you until you met Jaemin’s gaze—overwhelmed, frightened, saddened. 

Jaemin’s stare. That’s what drove you to seek solace on a bench under the moonlight sky. 

The unseasonably cool blowing breeze reminded you that you never deserved to hold Jaemin’s attention. What had he even seen in you that day you stormed into the cafe to retrieve Jisung? You had been sweaty, irritable, and dismissive of his friendship with Jisung and his inexplicable interest in you. You were undesirable in appearance and in deed; yet Jaemin could smile at you. You couldn’t understand. 

After that confrontation, he would never smile at you the same way. How weak must you have sounded, stuttering like a fool? How foolish must you have seemed for allowing someone so careless and cruel to stand close to your heart? 

Weak. Foolish. Undesirable. Unworthy. 

The words you thought of yourself were unfair and untrue, but you could not stop thinking them. In an effort to ignore the thoughts you couldn’t control, you pulled your phone out of your pocket. Gifsets were always guaranteed to brighten your mood. 

Your phone only sowed your mood, though. After dismissing a wall of texts from your boyfriend—well, ex-boyfriend—you read a text from your friend. She sent you a screenshot of your ex’s Instagram account. He posted a picture of himself kissing another girl with the caption: ‘Guess I don’t have to keep the love of my life secret anymore. Guess we were both seeing other people.’

The screen went black, and you slammed the phone down at your side. After publicly accusing you of cheating with Jaemin, your ex revealed the reason why he never wanted you, why he preferred to go days without talking, and why he never wanted to spend any time with you. There was somebody else. The problem was never you. The problem was always him. 

Somehow—deep down, or right at the surface—you had always known. Rather than feeling relieved or vindicated, you hated yourself for ignoring your parents and Jisung and the careful voice in your head that said, ‘let go, run.’ That careful voice started warning you long before you met Jaemin, long before you started falling for his smile slowly and then all at once. Why hadn’t you listened?

Footsteps slapped on the pavement from afar, and you sucked a breath in. Nobody could see you, not until you had worked through your storm of emotions. You tugged your legs, bare below your striped shorts, onto the bench and contorted to conceal yourself in the building’s shadow. 

Jaemin found you with little effort. He wasted no time in running to you and sitting beside you as closely as he had at school days ago. His eyes were different now. They were wide with concern, no longer sparkling with mischief. 

Unable to stand how he looked at you—like you were breaking—you crossed your arms over your knees and buried your face in the bend of your elbow. You begged, “Stop looking at me like that, Jaemin.”

Although he had done nothing wrong, Jaemin apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened, and I’m sorry I caused it—”

“You didn’t cause it.” Your urge to console Jaemin overwhelmed your urge to hide. You lowered your feet onto the concret. To comfort him, you rested your arm on the back of the bench, just behind his shoulders. “That guy—he’s always been a big—”

You wouldn’t have known how to describe your ex-boyfriend if your phone hadn’t interrupted you with a sharp buzz. Jaemin grabbed your phone, and the screen lit up in his hand. 

Jaemin’s mouth fell open. “He—he had the nerve to scream at you in front of all those people when he’s been kissing—” Rage tightened around Jaemin’s vocal cords, and he shoved the phone back into the narrow space between your bodies. “I don’t get it. People like that—how do they get anyone to like them? And how can they just treat people—why do they— I—” He raked his fingers through his hair, drawing a deep ragged breath. 

Staring up at the moon and willing your voice to stay even, you mumbled, “I don’t get it either. I guess—you know—I read once that we accept the love we think we deserve.” 

Did you believe that line you found in a book? Is that why you could never break things off? Is that why you could never demand better for yourself?

Jaemin pulled his legs onto the bench and crossed them so he could face you fully. “Hey.” He reached for your hand. This time there was no playful grin when you didn’t flinch from his touch. Once you mirrored his posture to face him, he said, “You deserve better. A lot better. And by that, I don’t mean that you deserve me, even though I’d like—”

As if you weren’t leaning into his every word, Jaemin caught his tongue and stared down at his hand holding yours. 

When words failed, you returned his small act of affection by curling your fingers around his hand. “I really want to deserve you, Jaemin. Someday soon.” 

Had you given in to the desire to look at him, you would have seen his eyebrows knitting together as he said, “I don’t know what you mean. If it has anything to do with what that jerk said—”

“It doesn’t,” you said despite your failed efforts to silence his nagging voice in the corner of your mind. “You’re just so bright and beautiful, and I was quick to judge you for yelling at Jisung, and—”

He asked, “Wait, when did I—oh. Are you talking about when I got onto him that time after work?”

You nodded slowly, tracing over his knuckles. “And when you yelled at him over that video game.”

“You heard that?” At his feeble tone, you finally looked up at Jaemin. In the pale moonlight, his blush was a glowing pink. He scratched at the back of his neck with his free hand. “I’m sorry. I apologized to Jisung, too. I guess it’s not an excuse, but my temper isn’t all that great when I lose games. And that time after work—”

“I know you weren’t trying to bully him,” you said. “You were trying to help him improve. Now I know that you just like to nag—”

Jaemin huffed, “I do not nag!” You bit back laughter.

“— and I’m sorry that I misunderstood you. It’s not an excuse, but I’m protective of Jisung because he’s the most precious person in the world. I didn’t know that you knew that too. I’m sorry.” 

Jaemin blinked, unsure of what to do with your apologies. He said, “I like that you’re protective of Jisung. I like that when some big jerk is yelling at you, you think to defend me from his stupid insults. That’s who you are, and it’s nothing to apologize for—especially because I like you.”

He liked you. After all of that chaos, Jaemin still liked you. Such a small word— like— meant so much. You couldn’t remember the last time someone who wasn’t Jisung said it to you and meant it. You didn’t try to fight the smile tugging at your lips. 

If you were defined by your protectiveness of Jisung and Jaemin, then Jaemin was defined by buying pizza for his friends (and nagging about it), offering a hard-earned collection of 4,902 tickets to brighten your day with a cute stuffed animal, and holding your hand in the aftermath of utter humiliation. 

You couldn’t keep the fact to yourself, and you didn’t want to: “I like you too, Jaemin.” 

He looked at you. Silence hung in the air as you stood together on the edge of something new. Should you say something to define it? Would taking that dive dampen the chemistry that formed despite old oppressive labels? 

You didn’t agonize long before Jaemin leaped off the bench and extended his hand to you. “Come on,” he implored, wearing that broad smile that gave your heart wings to soar from its broken restraints. “We gotta go win that llama!”

You didn’t hesitate to take his hand. You didn’t hesitate to seize the moment with him, wherever it led.

. . . 

Had you expected there to be so many college-aged students sitting around and sipping down lattes and munching through muffins, you wouldn’t have rushed into the cafe from the chilly Autumn breeze. You would have held onto the sunshine yellow gift bag longer and sought Jaemin at school. You had been standing in line far too long to walk away without achieving your goal, so you stood in line until Jeno noticed you. 

From behind the register, he called your name. He motioned you to the front, deaf to the groan of customers who resented your special treatment. He yelled into the kitchen, “Jaemin, it’s time for your break!” Jeno shot you a soothing thumbs-up and returned to serving customers. 

“Huh?” Jaemin filled the doorway. His brow was furrowed and lips were pursed as he argued, “I’m not scheduled—” 

He gasped at the sight of you. He removed his chocolate-stained cream apron and rounded the counter. Combing his fingers through his hair, he said, “Jisung isn’t here, you know.” 

“I know.” You nodded. “I’m not here for Jisung.”

He asked, “Then why—”

Jaemin’s eyes fell on the gift bag, and he flashed his signature breath-taking smile. “Oh, I see!” He wagged a finger as he crossed the dark-tiled floor. He grabbed your hand and led you out into the golden afternoon. 

You sat together on the bench outside of the cafe. Hugging you to his side, he beamed, “You couldn’t resist seeing me on my birthday!”

You teased, “For once, your delusions are spot on.” You clutched the gift bag and glanced around at the browning treeline. “Is this our thing, Nana? Sitting on benches and holding hands?”

A blush colored his face whenever you called him by his nickname. His blush never failed to tickle your heart. “Yep,” he hummed and laced his fingers (warm) through yours (cold). “I’m not gonna have to let go when I open that present, am I?”

His free hand reached out for the gift, and you couldn’t cling to it any longer. Sucking in a breath, you watched as he yanked out the white tissue paper. You released the breath only when his eyes sparkled while he freed the pink plush llama from the bag. 

“Did you win this from the arcade?” Jaemin’s smile, already too big for this dull world, grew with the nod of your head. 

“I can’t take all the credit.” You giggled when Jaemin touched the llama’s muzzle to your face again and again in time with the puckering of his lips. “The idea was all mine, but Jisung helped me earn the tickets. Obviously, we’re not as good at games as you are—” Jaemin winked at the flattery—“so that’s why the prize isn’t as big as the one you won for me once upon a time.”

Jaemin didn’t seem to think less of the gift because of its size. “This is the best birthday!” he yelled into the cloudy autumn sky. He released your hand only so he could hug the llama to his chest. “Thank you so much!”

Your heart softened. “You’re welcome!” Looking into the bag, you added, “I think there’s a card too.” 

You didn’t think. You knew there was a card without having to look into the bag for the thousandth time that day. The card—more specifically, the note inside—was what made your nerves tremble. 

Although you wanted some relief from the pounding of your heart, you couldn’t keep your eyes from admiring Jaemin’s face as he laughed at the silly googly-eyed puppy on the card’s front. You couldn’t keep your gaze focused on the llama lying face up in his lap. You had to watch the lines deepen around his smile when his eyes darted up after studying your handwriting. 

“Ooooh,” Jaemin whistled at having caught you studying him. “You have a crush on me!”

You started, “I—” 

“And you can’t deny it!” He flipped the card, and you were faced with your curly pink lettering. Finally, too embarrassed, you looked away. He boasted, “Here it is in writing!”

Were Jaemin anyone else in the world, he would have been cruel. He cleared his throat and prepared to read your confession aloud. He pressed his cloud-soft palm to yours as he recited, “‘Nana, I never thought you would become my best friend’— after Jisung, I’m assuming— ‘And I never imagined that someone so bright and beautiful could exist in my life and steal my heart, but you have. You have, and I love you, and I’m ready to tell you.’”

Jaemin looked at you again, this time without any trace of playfulness. This time, he waited for you to catch your breath. 

He was good at waiting for you. He had been from the day you stomped into the cafe. He proved his patience over the last few months by giving you all the pleasures of friendship—all the joys of having an adorable boy to text at any hour, to laugh with too loudly at lunch, to sit with on two-person benches until seconds turned into minutes that turned into hours. He didn’t seem tired of waiting for your romance to start because, really, it had already started. 

But you were tired of waiting to call him yours. You admitted, “It’s not a crush, Jaemin. I’m in love with you.” 

He must not have been surprised. He didn’t gasp, his eyes didn’t widen, and he didn’t miss a beat before responding, “I really want to be your boyfriend. I don’t need the title to love you too, obviously, but I want it as soon as you’re ready. Please.” 

You had been ready for a while, but you forced yourself to wait for Jaemin. While Jaemin probably thought that you were testing his devotion, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Contrary to Jisung’s assumption (that you were waiting for certainty of your feelings), you did not once doubt the butterflies that had not stopped fluttering in your belly since you started cuddling with the mint-green llama to fall asleep. 

Maybe nobody else could understand that you were waiting for the wounds inflicted by your ex-boyfriend to heal. You never again wanted to bleed on Jaemin. You were waiting for the day that you could be as bright as the sun too. 

That day had finally come, so you wasted no time in promising, “Okay, Nana. I’m ready.” 

Jaemin didn’t as for any clarification or justification of your feelings. Maybe he was afraid that you would change your mind if you were asked to repeat yourself. Maybe he sensed your confidence. After pumping a celebratory fist in the air, he wore a victorious grin. You couldn’t resist capturing his smile in a long-awaited whisper of a kiss. 

BONUS SCENE:

“You’re almost as dangerous in the kitchen as Jisung is,” Jaemin fussed. He knocked you away from the oven by bumping your hips with his own. He made a spectacle of pulling canary yellow oven mitts over his hands. “These keep you from getting burned by 350° cookie sheets, silly!” 

You rolled your eyes at the reprimand while Jaemin pulled the chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and gingerly set them on the counter. “Yeah, yeah,” you huffed. You were accustomed to his eagerness to show you up anywhere and everywhere, especially in the kitchen, where years of experience at the cafe gave him a clear advantage. 

After turning the oven off and closing its door, Jaemin pointed and giggled at your pout. “Aw, don’t be sulky, baby!” He dropped the oven mitts into their drawer. Crossing the distance between you in two steps, he pressed his palms flat on the countertop at your sides. He lowered his face to be level with yours. “You’re kinda cute when you pout, though.” 

Butterflies fluttered in your stomach as Jaemin’s breath ghosted your lips. It wasn’t fair that you were always the breathless one. Quickly, before he could act first, you stretched to brush your lips against his. 

His chocolate-flavored gasp was a short-lived reward. Always ready to adapt, always searching for a way to tease you, Jaemin was quick to turn your sweet, playful kiss into something that made your skin burn scarlet and your legs turn to jelly. 

“Ah!” Jisung screamed, and you pushed Jaemin away with all of your strength. Jisung never failed to slap a hand over his eyes after catching you deep in a kiss with Jaemin. His discoveries were growing in frequency, and his tolerance was wearing thin. He groaned, “No place is safe! Not the cafe— not even during work hours. Not the car when you two pick me up after school—” 

Jaemin suggested, “You could take the bus!” 

Jisung continued, “Not the arcade. Definitely not the movie theater after last time. Now, not the kitchen! Now, I can’t even walk around my own home without getting jumpscared!”

Because Jisung rarely raised his voice, you were stunned silent. Jaemin, meanwhile, encouraged him, “You can walk around. Maybe just knock on doors first.”

“There isn’t a door!” Jisung pressed his back against a wall and gestured to the empty archway connecting the living room to the kitchen. “And you’re missing the point!”

“What is the point?” You hoped to make Jisung the target of Jaemin’s teasing. When Jisung dropped the hand covering his eyes to gawk at you, you wrapped your arms around Jaemin’s waist and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I thought you wanted me to like Jaemin.” 

“Not like this!” Jisung’s whine struck a devilish spark in Jaemin’s eyes. Your mission was a success: Jaemin’s eyes fixed on your little brother. 

Frowning, Jaemin leaned into your embrace. “That’s not what you said when you gave me permission to ask her out!”

Jisung cried, “I thought she would reject you again!” 

When Jaemin gasped and pretended to faint in your arms, you laughed. You asked, “Well, Jisung, will any of my boyfriends meet your standards?”

“I don’t care that you’re dating.” Jisung tore his eyes away from Jaemin’s theatrics to root through the cabinets in search of a snack. The tips of his ears were blistered pink. “It’s just—the PDA—”

“Here.” Jaemin offered him a cookie. “It’s not PDA if we’re not in public.” 

“Not this time,” Jisung grumbled through his mouthful of sugar. He asked you, “When do you think you’ll get tired of kissing Jaemin? I need to know when I can start walking around with my eyes open again.” 

Jaemin climbed onto the granite countertop and poked out his bottom lip. “Yeah! When are you gonna get tired of me?”

There was only one way to answer. 

“Never, of course!” You cheered before pecking at Jaemin’s smiling lips.

“Shameless!” Jisung shrieked, running out of the kitchen with a handful of cookies. “Absolutely shameless!” 

You and Jaemin shared in the golden laughter that colored your every day together.

[seren1tyhaze]

Jaemin Cat Dad Drabble

~~

You’ve been thinking about adopting a cat for so long and visit the local shelter frequently to play with the kittens who quickly get adopted and spend some time with the older dogs who you see week after week. The staff is always friendly and happy to have you around, knowing it’s a big decision to bring an animal into your home and appreciate your caution.

One afternoon you are signing in at the desk and a startlingly handsome young man with pastel pink hair struggles with the door while balancing two soft cat carriers and a large iced coffee. He has kind eyes and broad shoulders, accentuated by the thin tank top he’s wearing. When the staff greets him, his smile is blinding and covers most of his face. You feel your heartbeat pick up in your chest as you watch him hand the carriers over and sign some forms on the counter next to you.

“Vaccines for all three of them, I hope they are ready for chaos back there!” he chuckles out, signing his name, Na Jaemin, with a flourish.

“Three? Three kittens?” you ask, having heard high pitched mewls coming from the carrier when he had first walked up.

“Yes, my three little demon cotton balls. They are quite a handful but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he replies, turning to face you and pulling a strong arm up to lean on the counter.

You get to talking and realize your apartment buildings are on the same street, in a trendy part of town not too far from the shelter. He adopted the kittens a few months ago and hadn’t had it in him to separate the siblings who had already been through a rough journey in their short life. He cared for them alone, with a lot of support from his best friend Jeno and family members who stopped by often.

“Why don’t you stop by sometime to see how it is having a kitten at home,” he offers, holding out his phone to get your number. You blush at this but nod, never saying no to some quality kitten time and finding the charming man in front of you irresistible.

A few days later, you’re laying on his couch with the cats crawling all over you, tails tickling your noses as they purr loudly. You can’t help but giggle as Jaemin shrieks at Luna, who has just pounced on his socked feet that are curled up near his muscular thighs. He’s been trying his best to protect you from their little love bites and in the middle of laughing both of you pause, locking eyes and he gently leans over to you. He draws your face closer to his for a soft kiss until he feels a clawed paw sink into the top of his hand, causing him to yelp and pull back.

Lucy didn’t like the sudden lack of attention and was retaliating with adorable violence. Jaemin leans over to grab her gently and dangles her in front of his face making pouty and kissy faces at her.

“No no Lucy, we don’t do that,” he sings sweetly, dotting kisses to her pink nose set between bright blue eyes.

Your breathing falters watching him with them, tugging your legs up further into the pillow between you on the couch. Luke is tangled up in your ponytail and scratching at the hood of your sweatshirt while Luna has returned to attacking the dangerous socks, this time yours.

You suddenly feel a hand on yours and look up to see Jaemin standing, pulling you lightly by the wrist.

“Why don’t we give them some time to play together,” he smirks as you let him guide you up from the couch.

You’re both breathless as he pushes the door shut to his bedroom having almost slid down the hall in a jog with three fluffy white balls chasing after you. A couple paws are visible under the door, accompanied by small chirping noises as you laugh and collapse against Jaemin’s strong chest. He pushes his hand up the back of your sweatshirt and draws you close to him for another kiss, deeper this time and feeling so much more intimate with your bodies pressed together.

“I think they like you,” he says against your lips, unable to stop a huge grin from breaking out on his own.

“Yeah I think I kinda like them too,” you reply, pushing firmly on his chest to move to his bed as his hands reach for the waistband of your shorts.

~~

first drabble ever?! let me know your thoughts 😅

[bearseulgs]

spa days at home with Jaemin

gn!reader x Jaemin

genre: fluff

wc: 264

warnings: nakey nakey in the bath [NOT GRAPHIC literally just me saying "yeah you're in a bath], food ment, alcohol ment

at least once a month you and Jaemin have a self care day together

first things first y'all spend 10 minutes trying to find a good playlist and end up using the one you always listen to

there are AT LEAST 4 candles lit for lighting because one of you wanted it to be extra fancy and spa like

y'all put clay masks on each other, and once those are washed off you put on matching sheet and lip masks

a warm bubble bath with epsom salts is drawn and y'all just chill in there for like half an hour while your masks sit

you cannot tell me he wouldn't make bubble beards, even if it ruins his mask

there may be some light reading, there may be some wine, there is DEFINITELY some snacking

y'all bring out the boujee chocolate for these days (only the best for your best selves)

when y'all eventually get out you of course wear your matching fluffy robes reserved specifically for spa day 🤗

doing skin care for each other omg :(

he'd be so gentle when cleansing, applying moisturizer, etc only for you to splash him with water

but it's okay cuz he loves pampering you ^3^

if you still have some daylight left you rope him into doing yoga out on the porch together so your bodies and minds can both relax

in return he begs to take a nap after (which you obvi agree to)

y'all finish with a lovely home cooked dinner using a new recipe and watching an episode of y'all's favourite show in matching pajamas

a/n: sorry this is so short, i'm tryna get back into writing ☹️ also this was inspired by my own spa days so it's like legit the real deal the bestest

©️ bearseulgs 2023

[cu1tsmark]

"Racing Hearts"

Racer Jaemin revved his motorcycle, its engine growling with anticipation, as he eyed his opponent, a mysterious challenger who had recently joined the racing scene. The prize for this high-stakes race was you, Y/N, the object of their competitive desire, though you hadn't agreed to be part of this reckless wager. Your irritation was evident as you stood off to the side, arms crossed and a scowl on your face.

Jaemin flashed his trademark smirk at you, "What's the matter, Y/N? Afraid you'll end up with someone other than me?"

You shot him a venomous glare, "Don't flatter yourself, Jaemin."

The challenger, whose name is leo, stepped forward confidently, his voice cool and collected. "Don't worry, Y/N. If I win, you can decide for yourself."

The race began with a deafening roar, both racers rocketing down the winding street. The thrill of the chase gripped them as they weaved through traffic, a wild dance of speed and skill. Dust and exhaust filled the air as they jockeyed for position.

Jaemin's voice crackled through the helmet's comm, "You're going down, leo!"

Leo replied with equal determination, "We'll see about that!"

The starting signal blared, and the two racers sped off, leaving a cloud of dust behind them. The tension in the air was palpable, and the spectators' cheers filled the street.

As the racers approached the finish line, it was Jaemin who surged ahead, taking the lead. He crossed the finish line first, skidding to a stop triumphantly. The crowd erupted in cheers, and Jaemin sauntered over to you, grinning from ear to ear.

"I told you I'd win," he said, his voice oozing confidence.

You rolled your eyes but couldn't deny the impressed flutter in your heart. However, your annoyance overruled that feeling. "Don't get too cocky," you replied, crossing your arms.

Jaemin leaned in, his eyes locking onto yours. "I think I deserve a reward," he purred, capturing your lips in a surprising kiss.

You pushed him away, flustered and furious. "Don't get carried away," you hissed, though your racing heart betrayed your true emotions.

Jaemin just chuckled and leaned against his motorcycle. "You can't deny that I'm the best," he said with a wink.

Leo then approached and removing his helmet to reveal a handsome face. "You may have won today, Jaemin, but I'll be back for a rematch," he declared. As he walked away after saying that statement to jaemin

You watched the exchange, still fuming but secretly intrigued by the world of racers and the enigmatic men who dominated it.

[guanana]

wants n’ kneads (teaser) ♡ njm x reader 

— part of the neo therapy collection (18+)

teaser word count: 1.9k+

pairing: masseuse!jaemin x reader

genre: f x m, smut, crack

summary: the stress of the office has caught up to you once again. in fact, it came back so strong your back has given out ten times worse than before.

as if things couldn't get any worse, jeno’s out of town. with your trusty chiropractor missing in action, circumstance leads you to the front door of neo therapy’s late night masseuse.

jaemin's not the friendliest nor the most talkative, so your utter confusion makes complete sense when his fingers find themselves knuckle-deep in your pussy halfway through the massage.

teaser warnings/content: no smut but mc gets naked + the touching gets very suggestive, mean & cold jaemin, black hair nana superiority, features of characters/references to prior to this part, as always poor mc bites off more than she can chew </3

author’s note: back to the grind! our taglist is very much open, and it’d mean the world if you’d be interested in being tagged in this fic along with future installments by both monnie and i :)  those who have already joined will be tagged once the full fic is uploaded

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You’ve never been to a massage parlor before, much less a private practice in of itself. It’s jarring, the single spa table smack dab in the middle of the poorly lit room. Under a different circumstance, you’d laugh at the obvious similarity it has to Jeno’s ‘spinal stabilizer table,’ but you’re still a bit bitter at him for how he spoke to you during your call with him.

Everything else is barely illuminated by the two white candles that rest atop the decorative stands at either side of the bed. The source of the sound of flowing water can be appointed to the office-sized bamboo fountain, plopping up and down with each round. A wall-drilled shelf that carries a whole array of oils, perfume bottles, and house plants alike– Na Jaemin seems to be as put together as he looks. There’s even a well-loved money tree at the corner of the room.

God, this was so last minute. Looking down at your breasts, you had completely run out of the house with your blandest bra. But did that even matter? How much were you even supposed to take off when getting a massage? The guy didn’t even specify, and it’s not like you could ask him anyway– he was unapproachable as all hell, what with that stinky glare of his.

God, this was so last minute. Looking down at your breasts, you had completely run out of the house with your blandest bra. But did that even matter? How much were you even supposed to take off when getting a massage? The guy didn’t even specify, and it’s not like you could ask him anyway– he was unapproachable as all hell, what with that stinky glare of his.

God, this was so last minute. Looking down at your breasts, you had completely run out of the house with your blandest bra. But did that even matter? How much were you even supposed to take off when getting a massage? The guy didn’t even specify, and it’s not like you could ask him anyway– he was unapproachable as all hell, what with that stinky glare of his.

You decide to go with your gut and keep on your camisole that you’ve worn underneath, and shortly your pencil skirt follows with a flick of the buckle and an unzip. Stepping out from the fabric that’s pooled around your feet, you dispose of your signature heels right after. Catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you feel just a bit self conscious. You aren’t naked, but you feel way too bare for someone you barely know. At least Yangyang had gone out of his way to make you feel welcome in his salon, no matter how overzealous or eager he was. 

Now you were really overthinking things. It’s just business, Jaemin is probably more than used to this by now. 

Tap, tap, tap. 

“Ready?” Jaemin calls from behind the oak wood door, and you’re now scrambling to sloppily fold your clothes and toss them onto the closest elevated surface. 

“Ah, yeah! Hold on just a second!” Flopping under the thin sheet that has been provided on top of the massage table, you topple over face down and dig your face into the hole that’s left for you to breathe out of. Shimmying and securing your bottom to make sure that your ass cheeks wouldn’t be outright in his face, you deem yourself as physically ready as you can for your massage. Mentally though? That was another story. “Okay! You can come in now!”

The screech of the door is blaring as it invades your ears, and the padding of footsteps has you biting your cheek in something akin to apprehension. You can’t see, but in seconds you can feel his presence next to you. He has an unwelcoming and cold aura that is tacit even without looking at him. 

You don’t know what you were expecting. A run down of what entails in this luxury package, maybe? But instead you feel a finger hook against the protective sheet that covers your body, pulling it down just past your shoulders. The unanticipated action makes you jolt slightly, especially when you feel the surface of his knuckle just barely caress the top of your spine.

“I thought you said that you were ready?” Is all he says, and the confusion has you pushing yourself up from the bed and twisting yourself to look at him.

That same bored expression is present on his face, and it kind of bothers you. “I… am?” 

He groans, glaring at you like you’ve failed to follow some basic instructions that even the most simple minded person could. The hand that was at your back earlier travels around your front where you’re bent to face him, and it’s now looping around the spaghetti strap of your undershirt. “You’re still wearing clothes.” He deadpans. Pulling the strap along with his knuckle, he carelessly lets it snap against your skin, causing you to recoil in shock. You’re spared not even a second when he grabs at the sheet to reveal yourself and your modesty to his gaze. “You did get the deluxe package, yes?”

The minimal source of light makes him appear all the more threatening, his eyes shadowed and voided under the black strands that fall just a little over his brows. Absurdly broad shoulders and a thick neck that support a strikingly gorgeous face, quirked to the side with lowered lids. You weren’t able to pinpoint it then, but you can now: Jaemin intimidates the fuck out of you.

“I did.” You confirm.

“Then take the rest of these off,” He huffs, discarding the sheet onto you once again, and you’re flailing against it when it catches against your limbs awkwardly. “You took so long I thought you’d be done by now, but you’ve already cut into five minutes of your session already.”

“Five?” You stammer, completely appalled by how ridiculously picky he’s being. “But you haven’t even started yet!”

“Time is money, and I don’t have a second to waste,” He retorts, tapping his foot impatiently with every beat of inaction you commit to. “Now if you don’t want to cut any further into either of our time and want me to get started, I suggest you do things properly.”

Now he’s just being an asshole. “Fine,” You say, crossing your arms under the hem of your undershirt before ripping it off and tossing it at his shoes pettishly. “Let’s just get this over with. I’d hate to waste your oh so precious time,” The action makes the skin of his cheek hollow, and he’s kicking the article of clothing to the side as if it’s tainted his precious YSL’s. You tut at his blatant rudeness. Pretentious prick. 

The intimidation is replaced with so much fury that you can’t stop yourself from keeping your mouth shut– “Even if I’m the only one who’s actually giving you business tonight. Your schedule was looking quite empty.”

“Excuse me?” He begs your pardon as you turn away from him, missing the way he licks his lips when you turn away to unclasp your bra. 

“Stole a look at your planner when you let me in,” You mutter as the beige piece falls steadily from your shoulders, covering your breasts with your forearm so you don’t flash him a nipple. “Looks like I was your only appointment this whole day? I’m guessing Jeno wanted me to come here to help you keep the lights on.”

“You’re awfully cheeky,” He growls, his growing irritation is more than apparent, and it brings you some satisfaction that you’re able to get a rise out of him. “Service providers like us have slow days, too. I have plenty of clients, so don’t act like a know-it-all.”

“With the ‘service’ you provide,” You say with air quotes, giving his stance a quick once over up and down. “It’s hard to imagine you get any customers at all. Not with this attitude, at least.” 

It seems that the cat’s gotten his tongue when he doesn’t respond, and you take great pride in your small victory. You allow a smirk to take over your features before you go to lay flat down onto the bed. “I don’t think I’ve done anything to warrant such behavior, but maybe that’s why you have three stars on Yelp.” But just as your nipples graze the cool black leather of the surface, a large hand grips at the nape of your neck to stop you. “Wha–”

“What’d I say about keeping conversation to a minimum?” He quirks a brow at you, the thumb of his hand digging deeply into the side of your neck, but instead of pain you feel an odd sense of relief when he draws rough circles into the spot. You involuntarily curl into the touch, a hitch of breath betraying your urge to bite at him. “See? All this talking has kept you from getting what you need.”

Dropping your head onto the cushion lazily, you let both of his hands travel down the expanse of your back. His touch is adhered by the clothed boundary, a benign yet teasing reminder of your blissful ignorance to what’s expected in a massage. Pressure is applied onto the tightest knots of your back, and as they unwind you find that Jaemin is assessing your reactions with every movement. A glide of the bottom of his palm here, a knead of the flat of his knuckles along your shoulder blade there. Lower and lower he travels, and your eyelashes fall over like a curtain coming to a close, sleep threatening to overtaking your senses–

“You forgot one more.” He lilts with a handful of your ass, giving an experimental squeeze that has you instinctively grabbing at his forearm. Your jaw drops at not only the audacity but the strained vein that trails up the bare skin, completely missing him rolling his sleeves on before getting to work on you. 

“What are you talking about?” You splutter, making eye contact where your bottom and his grasp meet, and you’d be a fool to deny that the contact has a bout of heat traveling from where it begins to your ears. 

Completely disregarding your pitiful state, that blank stare now morphed to an amused face that reeks of complacency. Jiggling and palming at the flesh as if to add onto your embarrassment, he answers as if it was clear as day. Sneaking around the white cloth that served to protect you, he tugs at the hem of your panties, specifically at the crotch.

“I told you to take the rest off,” He shakes his head, tugging upward so that it scrunches up against your folds. “You ordered the deluxe package, which requires you to be completely naked. I can’t work with this.”

“But I thought–”

“You want to feel better, right?” He croons, lips puckering into a pout as he watches you squirm against him. “Don’t you?” 

After the horrible week you’ve had, the shit that your supervisor put you through, and now the way Jeno treated you– Jaemin is right. You just want to drown out everything that’s happened and fall into utter relaxation. 

“Let me take these off?” He asks, tracing the curve of your cheek. When you give him a terse nod, you receive your very first smile from him. Though it’s a bit disingenuous, something in your gut telling you that he may or may not have your best intentions in mind. It somehow exhilarates you though, his unpredictability keeping you on your toes for what he’ll do next. 

“That was just a glimpse of the session,” His voice lulls you in like a pied piper when he slides the fabric down your legs, beckoning you to follow him into the deepest depths of pleasure. You grant him room to let it slide past your ankles, and you’re now laid completely bare for him to see. “I guess I can be generous and add an extra few minutes to your session.”

A pleased hum sounds behind you, and you peek over your shoulder to catch his bottom lip caught between his teeth, ogling your now visible folds. It’s as if he wishes to show you that luxury doesn’t need to stop at relief, that there’s something beyond the fixture. He was going to show you pure delight. 

“Let me show you why every second counts.”

[2jaeh]

accidentally in love | jaemin

while packing up his things to move out of his house, jaemin comes across some nostalgic items that conjure up some unspoken feeling about his best friend

genre: fluff

content: gender neutral!reader, friends to lovers

word count: 2k

author lin

sorry we keep disappearing !! life gets so busy lmao

Just one more box, Jaemin thought to himself as he lugged the last cardboard box out of his attic and dropped it onto the wooden floorboards. He winced when he heard the clank of glass as the contents of the box knocked against each other. He had no idea what was inside, but he knew if he broke anything his mother would actually kill him. And the last thing he needed when he was finally moving to his own place was one last scolding from his mother. He carefully climbed down the stairs and let the attic door swing shut behind him. He crouched down and opened up the box. It seemed to be filled with an array of items, ranging from photo albums and picture frames to sixth grade art projects and birthday cards. It didn’t really seem like anything he would need to take to his new place, but he took a seat on the floor and sifted through the box anyways. For the nostalgia.

Jaemin pulled out different objects and chuckled to himself when he noticed a picture frame of him and you, his best friend. You two were around six years old, standing side by side and smiling brightly with both of you missing a few front teeth. He recalled that both of you were so amazed that you had lost the same teeth at the same time and you had practically begged Jaemin mother to take the picture. Jaemin knew you would actually die - to put it in your own words - if you saw that photograph. Jaemin, on the other hand, thought you looked adorable with your little pigtails, short, small and bright as ever. It baffled him how you hadn’t changed all that much over the years.

He noticed a thick photo album at the bottom of the box, Y/n and Jaemin scribbled on the front cover in crayons and faded stickers scattered all over the frail plastic. He pulled out the album and rested it on his lap, using his hand to wipe away the dust it had collected over the many years it had been stuck in the attic, untouched. He peeled open the book and began turning the sticky pages, various pictures of him and you pasted haphazardly over each page, decorated with old stickers, misspelt and poorly written words and random crayon drawings. The photographs showed your time together as kids, relaxing by the pool at your house, eating ice cream at the beach and playing with your bikes in Jaemin’s backyard. Jaemin’s personal favourite was the one where you were seated on the grass, a sad pout on your face as Jaemin placed a plaster over your knee. You two were at the park and, while running, you had fallen and scraped your knee. Despite it being the tiniest wound, you cried and cried until Jaemin insisted once he put the plaster on your knee you would feel better. And the placebo worked. You immediately stopped crying as soon as the Hello Kitty plaster touched your knee and you insisted Jaemin needed to become a doctor.

He wound up at the last page that showed your primary school graduation, standing in your best outfits and smiling with your certificates. Both of you felt you had grown too old for scrapbooks at that time so Jaemin's mother had taken over. It really showed since the photographs weren't so crooked anymore and the cute captions were actually legible and comprehensive. Jaemin tucked the book back into the box and began scanning over the other items he had picked out from the box. There were more stray pictures that didn't make it into the album, showing the two of you much older, still attached at the hip during high school and your early college days.

Jaemin grinned when he saw a small stack of polaroids from a very impromptu trip you and him took after your high school graduation. Jaemin had convinced his father to let him use his car and then he had picked you up for a drive; no plans, no destination but neither of you cared. Jaemin just loved that he could spend some time with you. Come to think of it, he always wished he could spend more time with you, even though they were together for the majority of their lives.

Jaemin shook his head at the intrusive thought. Why did he come to that conclusion? Perhaps it was because you became busy after college. Perhaps it was because, with your office job, he couldn't really be around you as much as he would like. He couldn't always be there to look out for you…

The first polaroid showed you guys in the car, smiling awkwardly as you struggled to work the camera. Your mother had gotten it as a graduation gift and you hadn't had time to master using it before this random trip. Luckily, Jaemin was quite the photographer. The next polaroid was of you two on the boardwalk, you on Jaemin’s back as you both laughed uncontrollably. Jaemin remembered how he had propped up the camera on the sand and did a small prayer that it wouldn't sink - spoiler alert, it did. The last polaroid showed the camera lens half sunken in the beach sand and Jaemin running over to save it.

Jaemin couldn't hold back the grin as he looked at you, hair messed from the wind, bright eyes widened and an amused smile on your face. You were beautiful, even when you weren't putting any effort. All the things you were so insecure about, your wild hair, your little blemishes, the way you sometimes laughed a bit too loud, were all the things Jaemin thought were your best qualities. You were perfect to him… Maybe, just maybe, he might actually-

Jaemin practically dropped the polaroids back into the box, his gaze fixated straight ahead as he came to a great realisation; something he never thought he'd discover on a random Tuesday afternoon when he was packing away his things to move out.

He loved you. Not as his best friend. Not as someone he'd known his whole life. He loved you, like you were someone he wanted to hug and kiss and spend all of his time with. He thought you were beautiful and smart and funny and every little insecurity made you even better. He needed to tell you all of this. You needed to know how much you meant to him.

…..

Jaemin practically raced out of his house, leaving behind a mess of boxes and scattered items that he knew his mother would complain about later. But he didn’t care about that right now. The only thing on his mind was you. It was like his body was moving faster than his mind as he stumbled into his car and shut the door behind him. He started the car and quickly backed out of the driveway. It was late afternoon so you wouldn’t be home yet. If he was lucky, Jaemin would be able to catch you leaving the office building after day at work. He cruised through the busy town square, his eyes impatiently darting all over the corner shops and skyscrapers whenever he got caught up in the usual weekday traffic. He eventually arrived at the street where your office building was located.

That was when he started to doubt his decision. Up until now he was just running on adrenaline; caught up in his feelings and he didn’t really have a plan as to how he was going to tell you how he felt. He also had no idea how you were going to react to his sudden confession. Would you feel the same way? Would you be completely revolted by the idea of being romantically involved with him? He had no reason to believe you would turn him down, but he also had no reason to believe you reciprocated his feelings. There had never been a time where you had hinted at liking him as more than your best friend. Maybe this was a terrible idea, Jaemin thought to himself as he pulled over near the sleek, expensive building, watching the well dressed office workers spew out of the front door. 

Was he even your type? A tall, lanky dude that took birthday pictures for a living and sometimes worked at the animal shelter when they were short on staff? Jaemin imagined you with one of your rich, handsome colleagues, some CEO's son with his life together. If that was your other option, why on earth would you settle for your loser best friend?

Jaemin’s mind went blank when he noticed you walking out of the building, looking dishevelled and tired from a long day at work but that beautiful smile still on your face. He felt his heart doing somersaults, watching you wave goodbye to your work friends, your hair dancing behind you in the wind. Again Jaemin’s body acted faster than his brain could stop him as he hopped out of the car and stood next to it. He halted there, much too afraid to make any further steps. But you were too quick for him. You immediately locked eyes with him and your smile grew bigger. You began jogging over to him and Jaemin froze, his hands balled into fists at his sides and his lips pursed together into a nervous smile.

"Jaemin? What are you doing here?" You were definitely shocked to see him, but excited nonetheless.

"Well… Just thought I might treat you to some dinner," Jaemin blurted out the first lie that came to his head, "I'm not working at the shelter today because I was moving out my stuff and-"

"Oh sorry Jae," you cut him off with an apologetic grimace, "We're having a company dinner today, but we can do this another time? Maybe cook me some dinner in your new place!"

"Oh.. Y-yeah sure!" Jaemin attempted to laugh off his embarrassment, "you should go on then.. I'll see you around!"

"Yeah, I'll see you!" You grinned and gave Jaemin a quick hug before spinning on your heels and jogging in the other direction.

Jaemin began to panic. He'd already psyched himself up for this moment; was he really going to let it go to waste? When would the other opportunity arrive? Knowing Jaemin, after this he'd fill himself up with so much doubt that eventually he just won't ever tell you his true feelings. It was now or never…

"Y/n, wait!" Jaemin's own voice startled him.

You halted your movements and turned around to face him again, adorably tilting your head to the side as you stared at him in confusion. It's now or never, Jaemin repeated like a mantra in his head as he made a beeline towards you, only stopping when you two were just inches apart.

"Y/n… There's something I need to tell you." Jaemin started, taking a deep breath in and out.

"What is it, Jaemin?"

"Y/n… I know this is so random and you're probably not even gonna take me seriously but…" Jaemin took a step forward, lacing his hand with your much smaller one, "I came to this conclusion today and… I feel like I need to get this off my chest right away."

"Sure, what's up?" You pondered nervously, her eyes watching over your intertwined fingers.

"I came to realize that… I like you Y/n… as way more than a friend," Jaemin admitted, his heart racing with your eyes widened in surprise, "I want to be with you… and I know you might be freaked out right now and I understand so I probably should-"

You stopped his rambling by placing your hands on his shoulders and stepping up onto your tiptoes, pressing your lips against his into a sweet kiss. Jaemin was taken aback at first, but he quickly melted into the warm feeling, butterflies dancing around his belly as he closed his eyes and kissed you back. The kiss felt like it lasted for an eternity and Jaemin just never wanted it to end. You eventually pulled away, a sheepish smile on your face as Jaemin unconsciously followed your lips, looking for more.

"That was…" Jaemin trailed off, looking down at you with stars in his eyes.

"Amazing." You finished his sentence, your face beaming.

"I take that as you're not completely revolted by the idea of me liking you." Jaemin chuckled.

"Jaemin," you hummed, wrapping your arms around his waist and pulling him into a hug, "I've been waiting forever for you to tell me that you like me too."

[lucyandthepen]

a lesson on style - vi . [ ljn | njm ]

pt. i, pt. ii, pt. iii, pt. iv., pt. v, pt. vi

you’ve always been content with being associated with one word and one word only: average. average in looks, academics and social skills, you’re just looking to graduate high school without causing disasters you’ll have to live with until you kick the bucket. when you’re paired with school king lee jeno for the semester-long physics thesis, you can’t help but think the entire situation has pretty much set itself up for failure. that is, until you strike a deal with your partner. 

alternatively: an au tale involving lessons in popularity, eleven consecutive B­ minuses, a secretly sensitive, chess­-loving jock, and an amateur sex tape.

pairing: jeno x fem!reader, jaemin x fem!reader verse: high school au { jocks!nomin ft. a super cute whiny ap physics genius renjun } rating: M chapter warnings: none word count: 8.1k

author’s note: this was actually supposed to go on for a lot longer but... it might've reached a solid 13-15k and i just thought it would be better to split it into half-ish, so nothing major happens, although i definitely enjoyed yet another mc/jaemin real talk session that i also hope you enjoy! :^)

tagging: @justalildumpling, @spiderrenjunfics (no longer available, please give me your new url if you're still interested!)

You think now is as good a time as any for you to say something that’ll easily impact the trajectory of your life forever; after all, Jeno’s essentially given you the floor after such a strange and honestly shocking turn of events. You’re aware of the fact that his thumb is still traveling across your cheek, more idle as an action than anything else, but you seem to be experiencing the feeling as something closer to an out-of-body experience than an actual first-hand one; the tingles they send to your heart are weird and blurry, like your body can’t process his touch well enough to understand it fully. You suppose it’s because of your confusion at what he’s saying, which leads to your second option: asking him what he means. 

There’s little to interpret at face value, but what his words do is essentially unlock a torrent of other weird questions in your head. For instance: how long had he known that you liked him? Had he known this entire time? Did something you did make it painfully obvious? If he wants you to like him — and, as he says, only him — does that mean he’s essentially accepting your feelings? Does this mean… he likes you back? 

You assume this is one of those moments where, because your mind is going a million miles a minute, a lot of time feels like it’s passed even though it’s just been a small handful of seconds. This assumption is quickly broken by Jeno’s expression of concern. 

“_______________? Say… something.”

“Um,” you start before you can even figure out what you want to say. The easiest answer comes to mind: It’s always only been you. But that’s weird, and this isn’t a 90’s Western movie, and if it were, you certainly wouldn’t be the eloquent main romance interest, even if Jeno’s gaze could easily fool you into thinking that. You think about making a joke, but you’re befuddled and also fresh from tears that — if Jeno’s abrupt story is actually true — were totally useless and unfounded in nature. 

Also, you’re really not that funny to begin with.  

“I just…” you try again, and his eyebrows raise slightly in anticipation for your next words. Nothing else comes out after a few seconds, though, and he realizes this is just another false start, his hand falling onto your shoulder (maybe he’s tired of trying to coax it out of you with the thumb-on-cheek method, which admittedly had you clamping up more than anything else). 

“You can just tell me how you really f—”

“I think I have to go.” 

No. No. Why would you say that? The surprise on his face quickly morphs into something that looks almost crestfallen, an expression you’d never imagine seeing on bright, confident Lee Jeno, let alone ever be the cause of. His hand slips from your shoulder quickly, like he’s now worried touching you will electrocute him. 

“Oh. I’m sorry — I didn’t… mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m… I’m not.” You’re not, are you? “Maybe a little, but it isn’t really you —”

“Something I said, then—?”

“No, I…” Your fingernail digs into the pad of your thumb, with you trying to use the sting of the pain to jolt you out of this nervous, inarticulate state. “I just don’t think… I have anything of value to say right now.”

“What makes you think that?” 

“Because…” Grappling for words is like trying to break through the surface of water; you’re almost there, but somehow you’re still floundering, and that only seems to be making it much worse. “Because I never really thought about what I’d do… if you really found out I liked you.” 

When you say it, it suddenly makes sense. For some reason, you’d always lived your life shuttling between point A (liking Jeno quietly in the comfort of your own mind palace) and point Z (fantasizing about your life with him where you live in a quaint townhouse with a cute mailbox and three kids), but you’d never really given much thought to all the points in between, especially not one that contains a scenario in which he’d find out and seemingly be okay with it, which, based on the current conversation, somehow seems like a reasonable thing to assume about him. 

You’ve always wanted it — him knowing, him accepting it, maybe even him liking you back —  but it kind of felt like, deep down, you hadn’t really believed it would ever happen. 

And you were kind of content with that, because you wouldn’t ever really have to deal with the complications of it. Right now, you’re feeling unprepared and a little exposed, weirdly vulnerable to his gaze. It once again, for the hundredth time tonight, it seems, triggers some kind of flight instinct in you that has you looking anywhere but at him all of a sudden. 

“You can think about it… now,” he suggests carefully. Being put on the spot doesn’t really ever bring out the best in you — a fact that might be known to people who were actually paying attention to your failed impromptu speech about whale hunting in your sixth grade English class — so you just pretend that the silhouette of Jaemin’s front yard tree is supremely interesting to you all of a sudden, never mind the fact that it’s about a few inches from Jeno’s ear from your vantage point. You don’t really want to see his expression right now, especially if that means it’ll only fluster you back into speechlessness. 

“I don’t really know if I can,” you admit. From your peripheral vision, you see what seems like a flash of discomfort pass across Jeno’s face; you’re sure you just imagined it, considering you’ve never imagined cool, aloof, king of your heart Lee Jeno as exuding anything other than utmost confidence. Still, his next words do make you question that notion twice over. 

“Did I… misunderstand something? Is it that you don’t have feelings for me?” 

“No, I… you know. I… yeah, I do, but I just —”

“You’re seeing someone else?” 

“No,” you say more fiercely, and for a brief moment, you’re so appalled at the thought that your eyes flicker to his, which ends up being a terrible mistake because the confusion in his gaze is so profound that the guilt in you swells tenfold. 

“Because I thought… maybe the reason Renjun and you —”

“He’s — honest to God — he’s just my friend.” 

“And Jaemin is…?”

“My… next door neighbor?” You blink rapidly at the lights still coming from his house, wondering now what Jaemin has to do with all of this in the first place. For someone who seems like he would be extremely uninvolved in this general progress of events, he seems to crop up time and again, weirdly always around when you need someone. Maybe it’s a neighbor thing, or maybe he’s a little nosier than you thought. But thinking about another element in this situation is starting to give you a headache, and you’re way past the time you’re usually already in bed avoiding homework and watching shitty dating reality shows instead. “I don’t really understand what he has to do with this either. I just don’t think I’m prepared to have this conversation at all.”

“But you like me, don’t you?” 

It’s weird, actually, now that you think about it — why does he have to confirm the fact time and time again? It’s almost like he’s worried, although you can’t imagine why he would be. More than anything, you’d kind of assumed that he would find that information pretty repellent, but with the way he’s asking in earnest, it almost seems like he wants to keep the knowledge of that like a talisman. 

“I do,” you admit, mostly because it’s out in the open, but also partially because you’ve made the mistake of looking at him again, and you start wondering how he could even wonder when everyone seems to like him (you, perhaps, to a somewhat unhealthy degree). 

“More than them?” 

“I—” Your brow furrows, another wave of confusion washing over you. But his eyes are much too honest in their questioning, and you speak before anything else can come to mind. “More than anyone, Jeno.”

What looks oddly like relief settles on his face, and you notice only then that his shoulders have been tensed up because he seems to relax them all of a sudden. “Oh. Good. Great. So listen, now that we’re on the same page, I—”

Jeno’s interrupted by one of the guys in a university sweater calling out to him from across the two lawns, voice booming to a degree that sets off a few annoyed dogs in your area. Jeno raises a hand to signal him to wait, his mouth still open on whatever words he wanted to complete his sentence with, but the sounds he was trying to make quickly die into silence anyway, drowned out by a huge crash inside Jaemin’s house. 

You’re not entirely certain of what he wants to say — on the bright side, he could have been ramping up to a point that could easily make all your dreams from middle school to now a perfect reality, but he also could have been setting you up for some kind of grand, embarrassing failure — not by his design or by malice but just by the pointing out of the fact that you two lead different lives and things would likely never work out, anyway, but it’d be cool that you liked him in your own time, and he’d allow it as long as you didn’t get drool all over his notebook in class. 

Either way, you don’t think now, with a bunch of inebriated college people shouting profanities on Jaemin’s lawn and a gaggle of high school kids panicking about what sounds to be a broken table and a whole bunch of pizza on the floor, is the best time to be processing those things.

“I actually,” Jeno turns his gaze to you again, strangely alert, like you’d just whistled for a dog’s attention. You’ve never seen him like this, and it’s weird to think that, at this awkward moment, you can still find him painfully endearing. You have to shake yourself out of the grip of the already beckoning force that tells you to sigh dreamily about how adorable he is. “Think I should really be heading inside. Looks like they also need you for some kind of damage control, anyway.”

The same college kid calls for Jeno again, dragging out the vowels of his name kind of annoyingly. Jeno sighs, nodding slowly enough for you to know he’s caught on — this probably isn’t the right time to have such a weirdly heavy conversation.

“Yeah. I probably need to help clean up, anyway. No one’s going to want to do it, and Jaemin’s already chewed me out for bailing on mop duty a few times.”

“Why’d you bail?” 

“Just… got busy, personally.” He looks sheepish, and it doesn’t take a bunch of lightbulbs going off for you to cotton on as well. Now, you’re just wishing you hadn’t asked, so you didn’t ever have to imagine it. Still, what’s done is done. You have to focus on keeping the discomfort out of your face this time. “Um… that’s not important, though. Anyway —I’ll talk to you soon, okay, ________________? Like… maybe we can catch up at school? You know, talk about our thing — the project, I mean — and like… et cetera?”

“Yeah, for sure.” Your smile’s weak, and so is your joke, but you should at least try to hold up casual pretenses as much as he does, even though he’s obviously much better at it. “I’ll tell on you to Hwang if you don’t, you know.” 

His laugh is soft, but it at least sounds genuine; his smile still reaches his eyes, which already makes your heart feel a little lighter. But instead of trekking off immediately, he lingers, strangely, until his grin winnows down into just the ghost of a smile on his lips. Even weirder are his hands, slightly outstretched towards your waist, like he’s trying to cross the gap between you (even if it’s admittedly very minimal) but suddenly decides not to. The result is him looking strangely stiff and uncharacteristically hesitant, but you chalk it up to him simply not knowing how to end such a weirdly situated conversation. You know you’d have an even worse time doing it if it were up to you, so you can’t really blame him. 

In the end, he closes the dialogue with ‘see you around, ________________,’ and a quick pat on the shoulder, which, if you think about it, seems a little disappointingly different from when he’d had his hand against your cheek a few minutes ago. Then again, you’re not sure you could handle something like that again, anyway. 

You watch him walk off back towards Jaemin’s house, and some pitiful, pathetic part of you is expecting him to look back, say one last goodbye to you, or something, but the university guy that had belted his name out so vigilantly just swings an arm around Jeno’s neck and drags him to a corner where a bunch of other similarly dressed people, to whom Jeno starts talking to almost immediately. 

Cutting this conversation short was probably for the best, anyway; you have no idea what he would have said, but you’re very sure you wouldn’t have been prepared for it either way. You trudge into your house and up into your room, already mentally prepared to spend the rest of the night obsessively mulling over what it all meant and what he had really been planning to say at the end. The process starts some time in the shower, while you’re shampooing your hair and you embarrassingly remember the feeling of Jeno’s hand tangled in it. The moony expression that the thought of it leaves on your face is present up until you see how stupid it looks in the fogged up bathroom mirror. 

Renjun still hasn’t texted you, which is honestly starting to be a source of mild anxiety because you can’t be sure if he’s dead in a ditch somewhere or just ignoring you for some unknown reason. Whatever it is, you leave like three messages wondering where he’s at and asking him to call you. You’re on your fourth message, which is asking to confirm about tomorrow’s movie (something you’d almost forgotten about save for the fact that you’d remembered this would be a point of argument for you both once again if you spaced on it) when a notification pops up that once again gives you a heart attack. 

Lee Jeno: u looked pretty tonight, btw :) 

You: oh!! thank you…!

You: you looked great tonight too…! :) 

Lee Jeno: haha… cute :) 

Lee Jeno: goodnight, ____________ :) 

This is the most emojis you’ve ever seen used in a single brief conversation, and you can’t help but feel like it might be a little juvenile, but it doesn’t even matter because Lee freaking Jeno called you pretty and cute in the span of five minutes. Your thumbs are shaking as you type back a typo-laden goodnight that takes you a full other minute just to edit before waiting a little more, but nothing else comes. Maybe he’s driving home, or something. You toss your phone onto your bed, away from easy reach, before you can start overthinking what this silence means again. 

Your reflection in your window mirrors the same scene you’d encountered in the bathroom: you, hair bundled up in a wet towel, bare-faced with a stupid grin across it. You’re so caught up in the act of reeling from Jeno’s three texts that you belatedly notice a square of light beyond your bedroom window. You almost duck out of sight when you see a shadow there, thinking about crying bloody murder, until you realize it’s Jaemin, who’s watching the ridiculous expression on your face with a curious gaze from a distance. He’s still in the same clothes he’d worn to the party, but you can see, even from this far away, that there’s this dark patch on it that looks suspiciously close to the way your shirt had on the day his coke had emptied itself out on your back. That must’ve been from the crash earlier, you deduce. 

You think he’s just zoning out facing in your direction, and you find there’s no need to meet his gaze, but there’s still something a little unsettling about having someone spacing out in your general direction, so you reach up to pull your blinds down. Your hand almost reaches the string, but Jaemin’s hand suddenly starts going up too, like it’s trying to follow you, and you freeze in your movements. His keeps going, though, up until it’s close to his face, and suddenly, he’s moving it side to side, in some weird regular pattern.

He’s waving, your tired, overworked brain tells you belatedly. The string of your blinds tickles the tip of your fingers. 

Unsure and a little self-conscious, you wave back, hoping he doesn’t notice that you were about two strong pulls away from drawing yourself out of sight. This is clearly the right response, because even from this distance, you can see the brilliant white of his teeth as he smiles, fully and unabashedly, at you. 

The first thing you do when you wake up the following morning is check your phone. You’re not even really sure what you’re looking for — maybe a text from Jeno, who, if you think about it now, probably has nothing to say in response to your boring ‘goodnight’ anyway (but you can still dream), or maybe a missed call or two from Renjun, who should at least be offering you some explanation as to why he was completely out of sight after parting ways with you and Mark Lee last night. 

Unfortunately, there’s nothing on your screen, apart from the stupid 번장 notification that tells you the pocket punch board you’ve been wanting for no good reason has been discounted by the seller to a price you still can’t reasonably afford anyway. 

You certainly can’t do anything about Jeno’s lack of contact, and to be completely honest with yourself, you’re not even really that sure if you want to. Something about yesterday’s conversation, while not exactly a train wreck, makes you very nervous to have a full conversation with him, and you’d much rather it stick to very basic, kindergarten-level things, like ‘you look cute’ and ‘haha’ and ‘:)’, but since that isn’t completely in your control, you decide you simply don’t want to do anything about it.

Renjun, however, is a completely different matter. You don’t understand why he’s ignoring you if he is, considering you had spent the better part of the night (at least, the parts during which you weren’t crying on your lawn) looking for him, so this silence, if deliberate, doesn’t seem fair or even reasonable. You decide that it’s much too early to be getting an earful from you in the end, so you just send a very emphatic ‘WRU?????????????????’ through both text message, KakaoTalk, and Facebook Messenger to him, hoping the repetition of both sentiment and punctuation mark through multiple platforms is enough to faux-yell to him what you’d otherwise be real-yelling to him over the line. You can’t tell if it gives you any sense of comfort to see he hasn’t been online and active for the last 15 hours. 

All the tossing and turning of last night, courtesy of the endless loop replay of “I want you to like me — just me” Lee Jeno edition, had consequently left you worse for wear; you’d gotten up at the rising of the sun (something you’d sworn never to do during the weekend) and had opted to just stay in bed for another hour, trying so hard to get over the feeling of his fingers against your skin that you end up committing it to long-term memory. The sunlight peeking through your blinds is what gets you to throw off your covers and admit defeat to the fact that sleep would never come back at this rate, and you decide to just head down, rubbing the lethargy out of your eyes before you make a poor man’s breakfast. You’re halfway through the jelly slice of your sandwich when your sister comes through the doorway, yawning loud to announce her presence. 

“G’morning, bedhead baby,” she greets, and you use the non-knife-holding hand you have free to rake through your hair. “Big rager last night, huh?” 

“Yeah — wait, how’d you know?” 

“We live a door down from Jaemin oppa’s house? Na Jaemin? Our next door neighbor and his whole family? We can see out the window into his lawn? Sometimes we get our sidewalk trash cans mixed up with theirs? Hello?” Sooyeon smirks, albeit a little sluggishly, as you wave her grating words away. “I saw you out there with him, you know.”

“With who? Where? Who?” You demand, your jelly-laden knife freezing in mid-air, the grape blobs slipping dangerously off the edge onto the middle of your bread.

“You. And Jaemin oppa,” she says each syllable slowly. “In front of our house.” 

“Oh.” 

“So usually how these conversations go is: I bring up a juicy piece of information pertaining to you, and because you experienced it first hand, you have to then expound on the piece of information, thereby making it juicier. ‘Oh’ doesn’t cut it. Not by a long shot.” 

“There’s not much to tell.” You wonder, briefly, if you’re now obligated to bring up the Jeno aspect of the night — which, for all intents and purposes, honestly felt like more of a big deal than anything else — but you quickly decide against it, chickening out when she approaches you at the counter and starts unscrewing the lid of the peanut butter jar. That might be giving too much away, considering she didn’t even seem to notice that you’d been bawling when you’d crossed the property line. “He just walked me back here.”

“Oh, yeah, because that’s what people who live next to each other in a not-so-close-knit community do: walk each other two steps home, to keep the baddies away.” 

“He’s just a naturally nice person, I think. Most people are, aren’t they?”

“I thought you guys were close. Didn’t he give you his varsity jacket? That sounds like a closeness thing.” She knots her index and middle finger together, and you slap it away. 

“We’re close only in the same way as you are.” When she gives you a quizzical look, you sigh. “Proximity-wise.” 

“Still doesn’t explain why he was out there, caressing your hair lovingly.”

You freeze, as opposed to Sooyeon’s comically relaxed posture as she scrapes the peanut butter across your other slice of bread. “He… was not. Caressing me. My hair. Lovingly.”

“I have eyes for the sake of seeing.”

“There was just something in it. In my hair. A leaf.” 

You’re not sure why you lie; the largest part of the reason is that you don’t want to have to go into the horrifyingly awkward details of your emotional state last night, but there’s something oddly nagging at you that you can’t quite place. It takes a minute of staring at your sister spreading the peanut butter evenly across the bread and humming to herself while closing the sandwich up that you realize that you don’t want her getting the wrong impression about anything.

Which is weird, because there’s nothing to misunderstand. 

Jaemin, albeit the fact that he’s been chattier to you as of late, more so than any other time in your life, is still just your neighbor. Maybe he’s graduated from being your sort-of acquaintance to something that vaguely resembles an arm-distance-ish friend, but the notion that you’re anything closer than that makes you feel a bit strange — almost like it… scares you, which is extra weird to think about, because there’s actually nothing inherently harmful about being casual buddies with some guy who lives close enough to wave at you from his window. 

Maybe it’s because it’s Jaemin, and that’s what might be tripping you up the most. He’s not just Jeno’s friend; he’s practically some kind of counterpart to him, and it feels weirdly like a line you can’t cross. Or maybe it’s because… Jeno had asked you about him last night, which had made you feel even stranger. Like he’d been worried about something — like Jaemin was a no-go zone for him, specifically. 

As you dully watch your sister take a bite off of your breakfast, it dawns on you: maybe you just don’t want people to think you like anyone other than Jeno. 

“Okay, well, you know better than I do,” she singsongs in a tone that tells you that you actually don’t. Sooyeon doesn’t press, but she also doesn’t make you feel like the conversation is over — even if she trills I’m going back up; thanks for the sandwich in that same voice before leaving you alone in the kitchen with half of it on the plate. 

Because the truth is that you don’t really know; you don’t know what’s so unsettling about being associated with Jaemin. Your sister’s not aware of the intricate ins and outs of your (delusional) relationship with Jeno, apart from your (apparently evident to everyone) crush on him, but you also know she’s not really deeply invested in where your heart lies; all she does is make conversation, as is her personality, as a form of bonding you’ve never really quite been able to navigate well. 

You just don’t get why the mention of Jaemin, now, makes you feel… something. What that is, you’d rather not dwell on. So you just won’t. 

You’re walking out of the kitchen, cheeks filled with peanut butter and jelly, when you see block letters on cloth, spelling out a familiar last name: Na. 

You still haven’t given back Jaemin’s stupid jacket. 

Today is the day, you decide. This seems to have started the whole conversation to begin with: the jacket that somehow brought Jaemin two steps closer into your life, the article of clothing that had opened the door to what shouldn’t even be a talking point between you and anyone else. 

This should be the proverbial swan song for this whole topic; you snatch up his jacket (and immediately regret doing so in such a brutish manner, noticing you’ve got a few specks of breadcrumbs on the lettering) and head out of your house, your bedroom slippers absorbing morning dew as you march yourself over to your neighbor’s. You should’ve done this earlier, really; there was no reason for you to hold on to it. 

Honestly, you’d just forgotten, given that you were more preoccupied with things that started with L and ended with ee Jeno, but you’d rather not extend any more misunderstandings. 

And even if Jeno isn’t here to see this grand closing gesture, maybe, just maybe, this will help you stop feeling so cagey about everything he’d asked last night. 

I want you to like me — just me. 

Because why would he even think you liked Jaemin at all? Or make it sound like he thought you did? Ridiculous. Unfounded. Kind of alarming. 

There’s noise in the air the closer you get to the Na household porch; it sounds a bit muffled, like it’s fighting the breeze, but you realize thereafter that it’s music coming from a tiny speaker sitting on the hand railing. It’s playing Dongbangshinki’s Here I Am, and something about that song stirs your stomach into swooping ten miles down as you approach. 

Your initial plan was to ring the doorbell and pray that Jaemin was still knocked out cold on a Saturday morning so you could pass the jacket off to one of his parents and be done with it, but you’ve no such luck; it seems like he’s an early riser, considering how he’s seated right there, on a wicker chair by his door, hunched over a half-played chess board. There’s no one across him to block his view of you coming up the steps, and he looks up the moment he hears the creaks of the wood under your feet. 

“Hey, ______________,” he doesn’t look surprised; in fact, he looks a bit relieved, for some inexplicable reason. “Didn’t think you’d be up so early.”

“Could say the same for you.” You have no idea what causes heat to flush across your cheeks; has Na Jaemin’s gaze always been this intense? “Um. Good morning?”

“Morning.” His laugh is an easy one; it always has been, and it kind of suits him, you note, before you realize how weird it is to think that. “What’ve you got there? Gift for me?” 

“Wha — oh, yeah, I mean — no, but it is for you.” You hold up his jacket, hooked on your forefinger, to reveal it to him. “Sorry it took so long to give it back.”

This time, he actually looks a bit taken aback. “Did you stop needing it?” 

“Um… I haven’t really used it, if I’m being honest.”

“Oh. Well, there wasn’t any rush. You could’ve kept it for as long as you needed. No pressure, or anything. I’ve got others.”

“You don’t need it at practice, or anything like that?”

“No; most guys don’t even keep theirs. They give them away, for… you know. So it’s no big deal.”

You fall silent; for some reason, his tone makes it seem like he wants you to keep it, which is just preposterous. You instead hang the jacket onto the back of the wicker chair opposite him and step back, like you’ve just set up a land mine you’re afraid of detonating. 

“Well, thank you all the same. I really… appreciate your help. That day. You know.” You’re not sure why you can’t form any sentences long enough to signify you do actually belong in the same year level as him, but he at least doesn’t comment on your ineloquence.

Instead, he just stares for a bit, at the jacket and your retreating hand, before piping up over his music. 

“You wanna play a round?” 

“What? Oh, I’m…” You wave your hands aimlessly. “I’m not good at chess. Actually, I barely know the rules. Plus, you seem kind of busy playing against… your imaginary friend?”

He chuckles again. “Just playing myself.”

“Trying to outfox the old fox?”

“Sometimes it helps to know how you’d get out of a sticky situation you made by your own doing. Helps you see what your opponent sees when it all boils down to it.” He gestures again at the chair across him. “Humor me a little. It’s not as fun just talking to yourself.”

You hesitate for a second; you came here to return the jacket, and that much was done easily, albeit a little more awkwardly than you ever wanted to. Jaemin’s aura is laid back and friendly, but you’re not sure why you’re teetering on the edge of panic again. Jeno’s words seem to be echoing in your head.

And Jaemin is…?

Jaemin is your next-door neighbor, it’s true, but you can’t say that’s really your only point of connection; if it were, he wouldn’t be expectantly waiting for you to take the seat across from him. And when you look at his hand now, idle against the chessboard, you can’t say you aren’t thinking of the way it patted your hair soothingly the night before. All that does is make you wonder the exact same thing Jeno asked you. 

What is Jaemin to you? A friend, perhaps, and definitely a nice person — nice enough to help you out, keep you company during a few low points. He’s a person willing to listen to you, funny enough to lift your spirits, and genial enough to not break your fingers for returning his things way too late (a low bar, but a good one nonetheless). Na Jaemin is a good individual, with pretty good music taste (based on the fact that his playlist, trudging on next to him, is now playing H.O.T.’s Happiness), and a good disposition about him that seems to make no small amount of people gravitate towards him. 

But you don’t really want to dwell on what Jaemin is to you; more than that, you can only really be reminded of what he isn’t. 

He isn’t Jeno. 

And Jeno knows you like him; he’s not only noticed it but confirmed it multiple times in a single conversation. Surely, then, nothing else should matter to him — or, for that matter, to you. 

You swallow down the refusal and nod, trying not to read into the fact that Jaemin’s face lights up when you pull the chair back and settle down on it. 

“So let me get this straight; you don’t know how to play chess?”

“I know a couple of pieces go in weird directions,” you admit. “That’s about it.” 

“Perfect.” His long fingers drum against the wood of the table. “I’m going to whip you into competitive chess-playing shape, my young pupil.” 

What starts off as a casual, humor-filled lesson on the roles of each chess piece suddenly becomes an actual lecture; you’re not sure if Jaemin is getting a kick out of instructing a rookie like you on the different plays — which are infinite, a fact he’s drilled into you several times — or if he’s really just enthusiastic about the game (no, sorry, sport, since he’s chastised you about three times on this terminology already), but whatever the reason is, you have chess pounded into your brain for the better part of an hour. By the time he asks you to actually start playing against him, the sun’s fully up in the air and you’ve had to tie your hair up to keep it from sticking to your neck. 

“I’m glad you got home safe last night,” he hums, pushing his black pawn to meet yours in the middle of the board. The Italian Game, he called it — not to be confused with serenading someone over pasta, a different kind of Italian game. That had gotten a long laugh out of you. Your hands flit over the white pieces, unsure of your memory. You only respond when you’ve moved your bishop to the same row. 

“Well, it was a very long and tumultuous journey, but I managed, with some help.” 

His knight comes out next, smoothly and quickly; you pause, rubbing the back of your neck. Surely, there was something else he’d taught you? 

“What a chivalrous, ah, knight, that person must’ve been.” He raps a knuckle onto the table, starting you out of the act of racking your brain. “Perfect joke. Well-timed. Excellent chess pun. I think I deserve an award.”

“Does whooping my ass two moves into the game count as a prize?”

“I don’t want to rob you of the feeling of hope this early in the match. Take your time,” he chuckles, leaning back against the throw cushion behind him. He fiddles with the speaker, and the songs skip one by one, until he lands on a song you don’t know — some Japanese track that sounds suspiciously like an animation opening. It’s lively and admittedly a bit loud, and Jaemin hums to the guitar riffs with surprising accuracy. “Anything interesting happen when I left?”

You freeze for a moment, your fingers still hovering over your own knight in hesitation. You know what he’s asking, and for some reason, you’re tempted to tell him — then you remember that it actually isn’t really his business, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself. 

“Not really.” You feign casual disinterest as you move your knight above your pawn line; from here on out, you have no clue what to do. Jaemin, on the other hand, is so sure-footed about his own skills (which are infinitely more advanced than yours) that he doesn’t even take his eyes off you to look at the board as he moves his next piece. You’re stuck thinking about what to do again — in the game, that is. Not about his gaze, which you try to avoid. “Just, you know. Talked with Jeno for a bit. Nothing major.”

Nothing major to him, you remind yourself. To you, your entire world had just been flipped over onto its belly.

Jaemin hums again, this time in understanding, but you notice (from your very surreptitious glances of him) that this time, it seems like he’s choosing what to do. You think it’s for the game, but when he counteracts your own (poorly planned) move with a swift response from his own pieces, you get the odd feeling he’s trying to choose his words carefully. 

“Was it a conversation where you all got along?”

You hadn’t argued, but you’d never really thought about the whole stint long enough to classify it as good or bad. You supposed it wasn’t anything horrible in the end, although the fact that it had robbed you of precious hours of sleep wasn’t exactly the best outcome. But Jaemin’s not watching your expression now; he’s intently looking at the board, even if he’s not the one about to make the next move. 

You get the feeling he’s suddenly avoiding eye contact too, which is weird, because he’s never been one to shy away from looking you straight in the eye. For some reason, that makes you feel like he doesn’t want to hear an answer. 

“It was fine. Nothing… bad happened.” You know that’s true, but somehow you feel like it’s still not truth. “He explained… stuff. Who she was. Why it happened. Totally understandable stuff, I think.” 

You choose not to mention anything apart from that — that he’d asked you to like him, nor that he’d asked you about your relationship with Jaemin. More than deciding it wasn’t going to be anything contributive to the conversation at hand, you also just didn’t want to. 

Jaemin stays silent for a while; he moves his piece, then taps his queen — for some reason, he’s letting you know something about his next move. What it is, you haven’t puzzled out; it’s not like you know which direction he’d be taking, and even if you did, you’d surely not know how to respond to it, anyway. You guess he’s just throwing you a bone, but why he would, you also just don’t see the reason for. 

You’re pushing your pawn hesitantly diagonal to capture one of his when he speaks up again. 

“Did he tell you how it ended? With the two of them, I mean.”

He says it so calmly, capturing your bishop with his queen in the process, that you feel like you’re just talking about the weather and who won yesterday’s league basketball match. You shift uncomfortably in your seat, clearing your throat, but you only actually manage to shake your head. 

“She cheated on him. Some college guy that she met during her orientation; you know she’s older than him, right? He’s never dated seriously since then. I think he was really hung up on her for a while — until recently, that is. I think. He hasn’t been that close to many girls.” 

“That’s… that’s awful.” You’re not sure why Jaemin’s telling you this; it honestly feels illegal to know. “I didn’t think… anyone would. Cheat on him, I mean.” 

“Even good-looking bastards like him can have rotten luck.” Jaemin’s smile borders on wry. “I don’t know why she showed up, honestly. Word probably got around… but she probably just wanted to know what would happen if she stirred something up with him one last time. He likely didn’t see it coming.” 

You stare at the board, unsure of what to say. It makes sense, but something doesn’t really sit right with you either — why Jeno would let her come close to him at all, let alone allow her to completely eliminate the distance between his mouth and hers for longer than a second. Even thinking about it makes you want to throw up all over again. 

“But deep down, I don’t know if Jeno completely got over her.” Jaemin continues, snapping you out of your short trance. “For a while after, they kept in touch. I think they even tried to work it out, but… obviously, it wasn’t easy. Until now… I’m not really sure.” 

“Why,” you swallow hard. “Why… are you… why should I…”

“It’s not easy to be a player when you don’t know much about the game, is it?” He’s still staring at the board, but you get the sense that he isn’t just talking about chess. “Like I said, Jeno’s a pretty complicated guy. It’s not really my place to say anything, but…” Jaemin’s eyes flit upward for a second, and he offers you a small, almost pitying smile. “I think you need to know anyway.” 

“But it has nothing to do with me. His life… I mean, his ex, and stuff.”

“I’m not too sure about that. If you like him that much… doesn’t that just mean you want to be part of his life?” He topples a pawn of yours, but you barely register the clattering noise or the fact that he drags it unceremoniously off the board. “I think you should at least know what you’re getting into. Jeno hasn’t liked someone seriously for a while, but you seem… to be the opposite. How much do you actually know about what he’s like?”

You don’t know why that kind of hurts your feelings; maybe it’s just because you have to face some kind of truth about how you don’t know much about Jeno’s private life, as badly as you want to. You even have to hear about it from someone else — someone easily kicking your ass in a dumb chess match. 

“I think everyone has baggage,” you say slowly, pushing your rook forward. You realize it’s trapped behind two different pawns, so you’ve essentially backed the piece into its own corner. Jaemin doesn’t seem to care; he’s too busy executing what clearly is a ten-stage strategic win on the other side of the board. You don’t really care.

“That’s true,” he concedes, toppling your knight. “But some more than others, I think.” 

“If he wanted me to know, he would’ve told me, right? Yesterday, I mean.”

“That’s may also be true, although I can’t say that with absolute certainty.” He looks thoughtful, and the pause gives you a bit of reprieve — enough to make a bad move that you instantly regret the moment you put your one remaining bishop on a square. Something like amusement flickers across Jaemin’s face, but he doesn’t make a move immediately. “Do you know what makes chess such a great game? In my opinion, anyway.” 

“No?” The uncertainty in your voice is from a lack of understanding at the sudden shift in topic. 

“Whenever you play someone, you get to see what they’re like — what their priorities are, you know?” His finger lands on a rook, inching it back and forth with idle intent. “You see how their mind works, what they’re like when they’re winning or losing, and what they think of you. Check, by the way.” 

You’re silent as his rook captures your bishop, and he picks your fallen piece up and sets it aside with his growing pile of white. 

“I’ve actually asked Jeno to play with me a few times, just for the fun of it. Sore loser,” he laughs lightly, one hand reaching out to lower the volume of his music. You notice the opening bars of Winner’s Really Really come through moments before it’s toned down. “Doesn’t really know or care about the rules, but he really likes to win. That’s kind of what makes him the star player on the team, actually. He really hates being backed into a corner, but all that focus on winning kind of tunnels his vision sometimes. Leaves him open to some attacks from another angle. He really hates that — which is probably why we barely play chess together in the first place. Apart from the fact that he thinks it’s boring.” 

You’re staring at your pieces, now very pitifully winnowed down in number, and you feel stuck. You’re not sure what to do, but you’re pretty sure any move is going to make you look dumb in front of Jaemin, who’s clearly a pro — so much so that he seems to know what you’re going to do before you even decide yourself. 

“You know what I like about your playing style, though?” He interrupts your train of thought again. You look up from the board, bemused; you’ve just been struggling to humor him since your first move, and it obviously isn’t working, since he seems more invested in the conversation than in the game. “You’re just trying your best, even if you’re new at this — even if you think you’re going to lose.” 

“I just don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten everything you just said,” you respond, smiling weakly. 

“You can’t always predict what’s going to happen in a game, even if you know the pattern anyway. Isn’t that just natural about anything in life?”

“You seem to know, though,” you grumble, tugging on your ponytail. You throw in the only option you have left: pushing your queen in front of your king as a last line of defense. “You’re barely paying attention to the board.”

“It’s just constant practice — a lot of hard work on my part. I don’t mind the grind of it, if it gets me somewhere good in the end.” 

“So is that the kind of player you are? Just… a hard worker?” 

“Maybe. I like to look at things from every possible angle. I guess that’s why I like chess when most people find it a headache.” He picks up his queen, rolling it in his palm. “Although, I guess Jeno and I have one thing in common — as players, that is.”

“What’s that?”

“I also really hate to lose.” 

His queen knocks over your own with a pitiful clatter, taking its place on the board. When he picks up your piece, instead of adding it to his knockout count, he offers it to you. You take it gingerly, opting to focus more on it than on the soft smile that’s now playing on Jaemin’s lips. 

“Checkmate,” he announces lightly. “Good game, _____________. You’ve got the makings of a star player.” 

“You’re patronizing me, aren’t you?” You sigh as the two of you start resetting the board; you have to watch Jaemin’s pieces get rearranged to position your own. 

“Only a little bit. I see a lot of quiet drive in you.” 

You place the last of your pawns in a neat row; the board looks like it hadn’t even been touched. “Jaemin, how did you and Jeno become this close? You seem… I don’t know.”

“Yeah, we’ve definitely got our unique quirks,” he chuckles softly. “But Jeno and I… we just go way back, I think. When you’re friends with someone from a young age, you tend to grow with them. He’s a good dude, really, even if our personalities are different, and it’s always a fun event so long as he’s around. Well — mostly. I’d say a good ninety-nine percent of the time.” 

You pointedly ignore the sheepish smile he throws your way. 

“You said before that you’re not the type to… you know, share your feelings, and all that. Then how do you… like what do you guys even talk about?”

“What do you and Renjun usually talk about?” Jaemin grins. “Anything and everything, really. Movies, games, why the jerk from Yongsan International gets on our nerves when he chews his gum. We just… have a tendency to be interested in the same things, no matter if our perspectives are different.” 

While talking to Jaemin is fun, you can’t help but feel like he has a tendency to speak in riddles. You still don’t really see any strong similarities in their approaches to their interests, similar as they may be, but what do you know, anyway? It isn’t like you and Renjun are exactly peas in a pod on paper.

His eyes lose focus for a second, hitting somewhere behind your ear before they quickly turn back to you. You have no idea why this makes you feel a little put on the spot. 

“Hey, you want to have brunch here? My mom makes a mean soybean paste stew.”

“Oh,” you press your hand against your stomach, wondering if the swooping feeling in it is from hunger or something unrelated. “No, I actually just ha—”

“_____________?” 

You swivel around in the chair, and your heart stops; you're not the least bit prepared to see Lee Jeno standing at the foot of Jaemin’s porch steps, a quizzical look very clearly etched on his sharp features.

[enjennie]

[12:38 pm]

"So, who are you taking to the party this Friday?"

Your ears couldn't help but perk up at Jaemin's question directed at Jeno who sat between the two of you. The boy was in deep thought though, missing what his best friend had said completely before Jaemin started snapping his fingers in front of him to get his attention.

"Huh? Oh– Actually, I'm not really sure yet," Jeno snaps out of his trance and shrugs, relaxing against the chair. He peers over at what you're doing; math homework.

"We know it's just gonna be Y/N," Jaemin teases, getting back to his own textbook.

"What? Well, yeah. We always go to parties together," Jeno says nonchalantly.

At this point, you had already lost yourself in the equation and have to redo the whole thing. You cross everything off and flip to a new page. Maybe you were a little frustrated with how Jeno responded. But you had no right, not even a little bit.

Because you were best friends. And you have been since you were in diapers.

It sucked, because you also had the biggest crush on your supposed best friend, and everybody knew except him.

"What if I want to take her this time?" Jaemin asks, and you finally turn your head to the two boys.

"No, because–" Jeno starts.

"I think that would be nice. I'll see you at 8, Jaemin?" you interrupt Jeno. He looks at you in surprise as Jaemin grins widely.

"It's a date," the grinning boy winks.

"But Y/N, we always go together," pouts Jeno, but you don't spare him a second glance.

"Get a date, loser," you mutter.

Ask me out next time maybe, you thought. Seriously, you don't know how you maintained this crush for so long when he's never even probably thought of you in that light.

"But Y/N," Jeno surprises you when his hand lays on top of yours, dodging the pencil out of your grip and then giving your hand a squeeze. "You've always been my date to the parties,"

Date? More like pal. Dude, buddy, mate, sidekick.

"Hey! That's my date," Jaemin interferes dramatically, slapping Jeno's hand away from yours.

"And that's my best friend. Back off," Jeno growls, and for one moment you thought he was really mad. You don't care, though. Your heart was beating a thousand beats per second now and all the blood is rushing to your ears and face. This was Jeno's effect on you. Oh, your stupid heart.

"Sure it's not more than that?" Jaemin taunts, smirking.

Jeno pulls his hand back from yours and starts collecting his stuff. "Don't be stupid. That's Y/N, I'd never," He then walks out of the cafeteria without another word.

Just like that, your heart smashes to the floor and you go deaf, there's a ringing in your ear.

It's silent between you and Jaemin for a few minutes, the boy knowing he'd messed up and got you hurt. It wasn't his intention. But boy, his best friend was stupid. If only, he thought. If only you'd fallen for me instead. You wouldn't be bearing this pain right now.

"Sorry–" he starts quietly.

"Don't worry about it. You would know better than anyone, Jaemin. You're his best friend, after all. He'd never date me," you repeat Jeno's words before doing the same as him and taking your leave after gathering your things.

Jaemin watches you leave with wistful eyes, dejected and torn. He wanted you for himself, but he knew your heart wouldn't be as happy than if you were with his best friend.

If only you'd fallen for him instead.

hi! omg okay so i wrote this just to dip my feet a little in the water of writing again. also this may or may not be what i feel sometimes with jeno jdhfjsjd BOY i am falling for jaemin slowly but surely pls do something abt it /j. hope u liked it! see u :>

[strxbrymochi]

random when you're sick jaemin drabble

pairing: jaemin x reader (i tried to make it gen neutral djsjsjs)

words: like less than 1k ish??

warnings: mentions of sickness, illness, id say it be too close to home fr

synopsis: basically you're sick and jaemin's here to comfort you as much as he can long distance style.

note: a random ass drabble i came up w as im lying in bed sick for the 4th day and after a conversation i had with my mom bc i needed an outlet lol (its like 99% based on real life events other than the fact that i unfortunately do not have a jaemin with me 💔)

you absolutely despised being sick. okay, maybe sometimes you would be okay with it because it served as a formidable excuse to get out of work or your responsibilities for a couple days but that was when "sick" constituted to simply a cold or a fever that passes over the next day, not when you're tied down to the bed and the toilet every second of every day.

you wake up one day to shivers, brushing it off, you continue on with your day, heading over to work. on your way to work, you start feeling dizzy, nausea hitting you. you take a pill to calm down and make your way to your shift. today, you were working at a small fast food chain restaurant and if things couldn't get any worse, you were assigned to deal with the blowtorch. the heat from the fire and small space rushing all the way to your head but you push through, making it to the very end of your 3 hour shift.

making your way to your next appointment, you scavenge for food to hopefully give you back your appetite. you haven't eaten a proper decent meal all day; only crackers before you drank your pill. oh, and did i forget to mention, you headed into work with a 38 degree fever; claiming "to be fine" because you needed the hours to sustain your living expenses in a foreign country all alone.

at your meeting, you're met with fatigue. a wave of exhaustion rushes over you and coughing fits take over. your brain barely processing what was being discussed, only speaking when directly being asked a question. but still, you push through, ensuring everyone around you that you were going to be okay. that it will all brush away soon and that you really are just tired. your fever has reached close to 40 degrees.

you sigh, throwing your phone on your bed. on any other day you would have loved to talk to jaemin, especially now that you two were oceans apart. it killed you to know that if only you hadn't moved he would be right there and you could see him in person. that alone would've been all the medicine you need to get better. but alas, life had other plans.

the next couple days consisted of sleep, wake up, repeat. occassional trips to the toilet and visits from coughing fits disrupting your sleep that make you sound like you're entering into an entirely different dimension. you had absolutely no energy-- to eat, to move, to do anything really. when you said you needed a break, this wasn't what you meant.

jaemin would call you, or attempt to call you and you would pick up, if you were awake and if you were in the mood to speak. he would send you daily messages to drink your medicine, eat meals, get some rest. you knew he was worried and it killed you not to be able to ensure some type of reassurance everything was going to be fine. you knew if he found out what you had been actually doing, you would never hear the end of it.

one night you had awoken from your nap struggling to find something to eat, let alone the energy to consume anything. at this point, your stomach is practically bounded to an electrical heating compress to temporarily soothe your pains. you weren't sure if you were getting any better. your fever was relatively gone sure, but the coughs, stomach pains and diarrhea remained. let alone, that morning you almost passed out in the toilet, hearing muffled, ears ringing, vision blurred. all you could do is pray.

well, at least your sense of humor was back.

---

LOL such an abrupt ending idk i just needed an outlet to express how im currently feeling and whats been going on these past few days so if theres a delay with mtt or my other stuff i apologize once again 😭😭 need all the prayers and support i can get fr; being sick is one thing, being sick in a foreign country alone is another story. for anyone else who has gone thru or is currently going thru same thing, i hope yalls feel better soon and that know things will get better! bc i know thats what i need rn 🫡

[mint-yooxgi]

Can you do yandere hybrid bunny Jaemin

Jaemin swears he's going crazy.

With a nose as sensitive as his, he's used to different smells assaulting him throughout the day. Though, he has to say, living with you has been both a blessing and a curse. At the time, the idea of moving in with his best friend was a fantastic one, especially since he's so desperately in love with you that he'd do anything for you. Only, now, he realizes how horrible that idea truly was.

Your scent is like a drug, intoxicating his every nerve, surrounding him at all times of the day. It's never bothered him this much before, not that is ever could bother him, really. Only, he's never been this affected by it before.

While you were out the other day, Jaemin had snuck into your room to steal one of your sweaters. He does this often enough that you wouldn't question him when you got home to see him wearing your clothes, only this time, when he put it on, his whole body had shuddered.

Nose twitching, he had brought the fabric up to his face and inhaled. The deep, guttural moan he had let out had his cheeks heating and his ears turning red.

He couldn't help it. Rushing to his room, he had quickly shut and locked his door, practically stripping himself down so that he was only wearing your sweater. After all, how else is he supposed to get covered in your scent while you're not around?

Later that day, once you had come back, Jaemin had come out of his room looking quite skittish. When you had asked him is he was okay, he had jumped at the sound of your voice, his nose twitching as he turned to look at you.

"Yeah," he cleared his throat, "just great."

Of course, he wasn't going to tell you that he got off quite a few times while wearing your sweater earlier. And of course he's not going to be wearing it for the moment, not with the stains now covering the material.

In the back of his mind, he derived a twisted pleasure from having something of yours now covered in his scent. Only, he wanted more.

That should be you covered in his scent. Not just your sweater.

The next day, when Jaemin woke up drenched in sweat and practically twitching for everything you, he realized what was happening. He's in heat.

Well, fuck. Jaemin will have to traverse the next few days carefully, lest he wants to scare you off for good. Never has he experienced such an intense feeling like this before. Normally, his heats last a few days, and he aches a bit, but he manages. Cold showers are his best friend during this time, so he starts with one now.

As soon as he steps into the living room, he sees you sitting on the couch, and he is struck by the overwhelming urge to claim you. To indulge in his desires and finally make you his. To show you exactly what you're missing every time you've touched yourself in the middle of the night with Jaemin listening closely and practically salivating at the sweet scent of you permeating the air. So many times has he wanted to go over and help you, in any way he can, but he had to hold himself back. The only problem now is, he doesn't know how much longer he can.

"Morning," you greet looking up from your phone, only, when you meet his gaze, worry immediately takes over your features. "Holy fuck, Jaemin, are you feeling okay?"

Simply hearing you say his name nearly sends him to his knees and he curses himself. Since when have you made him feel like he was a teenager again who had no control over his hormones?

"Yeah," he clears his throat as he sees you get up from the couch and approach him, "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? You don't look okay." By now, you're right in front of him, your hand coming up to his face to check if he's running a fever. "You're burning up!"

The only thing burning in him is his desire for you.

Jaemin practically melts into your touch, especially when your hand moves to cup his cheek. Shifting his head slightly, he angles himself so that your hand is practically holding the side of his jaw, rubbing as much of his chin onto your hand as he can.

One thought continuously flits through his mind. Scenting you.

Curiously, you withdraw your hand, shooting him a concerned look in the process. "I'll go make you some soup."

No, what you should be making is a nest for the two of you to spend the next three days in while he completely ravishes you like he's always desired. Besides, he's got energy to burn, and if he doesn't do something about it soon, he might just combust.

So he whines, wrapping his arms around your figure and burying his face into the side of your neck. "Can you just hold me for a while?"

You blink, a little caught off guard again by his actions as your arms carefully wrap around his back, gently stroking along his spine. He shivers. "Of course."

A minute passes, and all you can hear is his deep breathing in your ear. Each exhale is shaky, and you swear he might just start wheezing if you don't do something to help him soon.

What you don't expect, however, is for Jaemin to pull himself away of his own accord. It's difficult, but he does it, and already he looks a lot better.

Instantly, it's like a switch has flipped in him, and he's back to his usual, chipper self.

"So, what's the plan for today?" He asks, smile on his face as he begins to pace around you.

You chuckle as you watch him circling you, a literal spring to his step as his contagious smile spreads across his lips.

"Well, I don't have anything planned, so how about we just relax and watch some movies?" You offer, and you swear he perks up even more.

"I'd love that!"

"I also want to keep an eye on you, mister." You shoot him a playfully stern look. "I'm worried. So, if you start feeling worse again, let me know, and I really will make you that soup."

"Okay," he hums, beginning to lead you over to the couch.

Five minutes later and Jaemin has you wrapped in his arms on the couch while the beginning of his favourite movie plays on screen. His chin rests on your shoulder and despite the heat searing through his body, he could not be happier. Finally, he has you right where he wants you, where you've always belonged.

About halfway through the movie, you begin to feel Jaemin nuzzling against you. It's subtle at first, a slight shift here and there, until he's full on rubbing his chin all over your neck and shoulder. He breaths come in uneven pants and his grip tightens around you, pulling you even closer to him. Before you know it, he's got you pinned beneath him.

"Jaemin?" Your eyes are wide as he practically moans when you say his name. "Jaemin, is everything alright?"

His voice trembles, "never better."

Your brow furrows, "you're burning up again."

"I need-" his face is buried right in the hollow of your neck, his body pressing into yours as he struggles to get the words out, "I need-"

"What is it?" You begin to stroke his back once more comfortingly, unknowingly making his desire for you grow even more. "What can I get you? What do you need?"

"You." Jaemin manages to pull away just enough to stare deeply into your eyes, and what you see swirling behind his dark gaze causes your breath to hitch. "I need you."

[yongislong]

holidate.

genre: fluff with nonidol!jaemin

note: happy holidays! love you all, not proofread! i kinda hate this im sorry, ty for requesting though anon :"(

"so what do you say... wanna be my holi-date?!"

you peer up at jaemin with hopeful eyes as you attempt not to cringe at your poor joke. waving your jazz hands cutely in an effort to convince him to meet your parents for the first time this winter season.

he grimaces. you know how worried he's been about meeting your parents. you both haven't been dating that long but he was completely taken with you. he couldn't bare messing up in front of your family, not when he finally had you.

you pout and whine and coo until he gives in.

"if you weren't an absolute angel i would not be going... you're trouble, you know that? fuck... "

you haven't seen jaemin this nervous since he confessed.

"oh god, oh god... do i look okay... is this dumb... oh my GOD jaemin brown and orange what are you thinking??"

jaemin shuffles and paces around your shared apartment, frantically searching for an outfit for the event ahead. his voice was pitched up a couple octaves due to his worries.

sure he's been to a couple of holiday parties with you in college, but this was a big deal.

"babe relax- c'mere just-just sit, c'mon, here..." patting the space next to you, he shuffles over. head low in embarrassment, the mattress dipping under his weight. you graze your fingers over his wrist once he settles to look towards you.

giving him your best doe eyes. you see his gaze visibly soften. he lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

"its going to be okay, okay? hm? i love you and that's all that matters! i've bragged to them a thousand times about you! they're dying to meet you. there's no reason to be worried. you're na jaemin!!! the na jaemin!" he breaks out into laughs, "see! don't try and hide your blush from me now... you look great. put on the cute knitted sweater you love and let's go, okay?"

kissing his forehead you let him slip away to the closet, playfully smacking his butt as he cut in front of you.

you could still feel his hand shaking as he gripped your thigh to ground himself. you'd been comforting him since you both left. spritzing a bit of your perfume on his sweater, holding his bicep, putting on his favorite playlist and now lightly scraping your fingernails up and down his forearm.

"this it?"

"mhhmm, park just right there..."

his arms flex as he pulls up to the curb in front of your childhood home.

he turns the engine off and stills. his lashes flutter as he closes his eyes, letting in a big breath and exhaling slowly. he clearly needed a minute and you were more than willing to give it to him.

"okay, hmph, lets go," he says with a peck to your lips, smiling as he pulls away. it's as if this kiss alone gave him the strength to get over his fears.

he races over to your side of the car to let you out, holding your hand to make sure you didn't trip over the uneven pavement.

you snake your arm around his right bicep and make the short walk to the red front door a couple feet away.

ringing the doorbell, jaemin exhales and shakes his head. muttering mantras under his breath about being polite and that everything is okay.

your parents swing the door open.

"OH MY GOD YOU'RE GORGEOUS," your mother says excitedly, pulling him inside by the wrist.

you all laugh loudly as you step into the warmth of the house. jaemin immediately takes off his shoes, your mother shoots you a look of approval and you nod and mouth excitedly "i know!"

throughout the duration of the night, jaemin has put on his charm to 100. talking to your family about his education, his swimming scholarship and how lucky he is to have you. he even admits how nervous he was which has everyone in a fit of giggles again. he helped set the table, complimented your mom on her skin, played with the kittens that waltzed around his legs yet, never failed to check up to see how you were doing.

he'd caught you staring in awe a couple times, the smile on your face growing as he grins back at you in accomplishment, nodding towards your mother with wide eyes, like a little boy in kindergarten who made a new friend.

your family wasn't keen on letting the both of you leave once it got too late.

"i know im sorry mr. and ms. y/l/n, they hate me driving late at night so we really should go..." that doesn't fail to leave your mom cooing.

as soon as the door shuts behind you both, jaemin squeals and regains composure, "see y/n, i don't know why you were so worried, i told you they'd love me... im the na jaemin!" he screams that last bit.

you lightly punch him in the chest, "yeah yeah you nailed it tiger, just get in the car..." he laughs loudly, the arm draped over your shoulders pulls you in tighter and forces you to grab on to his waist to avoid toppling over.

"i can't believe my own mother ignored me for a pretty face... tsk"

the last thing you heard before jaemin shut your car door was a loud cackle.