#saw this in my dash and knew i had to reblog it

[band--psycho]

Zayne x Reader - Doctor Visits

Please be kind, reblogs are always welcome and greatly appreciated!

Thank you all for the continued support! I hope you all enjoy this! 💛

Requests are open so if you have any ideas/requests, you're more than welcome to send them over.

I do not give permission for any of my works to be copied or translated onto this site or other platforms!

Warnings: Doctors appointments, brief mentions of a blood test, mature themes towards the end

I do intend to write a Part 2 for this

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“Thank you for checking in,” the receptionist at the hospital said with a polite smile, “Dr Zayne will be with you soon”

Your heart dropped at her words. 

Dr Zayne? 

“I think there must be some mistake?” You stated; trying to understand how you’re seeing Zayne for this appointment when 1) you didn’t book this appointment with him and 2) he was meant to be on holiday; at least that’s what he told you a few days ago when you last spoke to him. 

“The doctor you booked to see is unavailable right now,” the receptionist clarified her focus shifting from the screen she’d been staring at for a few moments. 

Obviously your unease must’ve been written all over your face because the receptionist followed her own words up with, “If you wish to wait until the doctor you originally booked in to see is available we can reschedule your appointment.” 

You wanted to reschedule. 

But you knew that you couldn’t. 

The Hunters Association had very strict rules on keeping up to date with doctors appointments so that medical records could be kept accurate. 

And recently you’d been so busy with missions and studying; that booking the appointment had completely slipped your mind, that was until Tara mentioned it a few days ago.

This was the last day you could have an appointment before you would be overdue on it.

Which although it wasn’t the end of the world, wasn’t exactly an ideal situation. 

But neither was having Zayne as your doctor for this. 

“It’s fine,” you reluctantly said, moving away from the receptionist's desk and taking a seat in the waiting area.

Zayne was your usual primary physician, he was the one that kept a vigilant eye on your heart condition and made sure that your blood pressure and everything else was okay. 

And although this was just a routine doctor's appointment, knowing that Zayne was now going to be asking you private questions and listening to your answers, made you want to run out of the hospital eight that second.

It wasn’t that you didn’t trust Zayne, you did.

More so than you trusted anyone really. 

And you knew that he would remain professional regardless of your answers.

But the truth was you were embarrassed; embarrassed to admit things that you hadn’t shared with anyone.

Things that you certainly didn’t ever think you’d have to admit to Zayne. 

“Y/n,” a familiar voice snapped you out of your thoughts, looking up you saw Yvonne standing in front of you, “Dr Zayne will see you now.”

You nodded briefly, giving her a small smile as you rose to your feet. 

It was like your body was on auto-pilot, and you followed Yvonne straight to Zaynes office. 

The nurse gave you a small nod, signaling that you could go in, before walking away down the hall. 

You took a deep breath; your hand gingerly hovering over the door knob, wondering if you could attempt to make a last minute dash to the exit without anyone seeing.

The opportunity to do so was there, you could go now and no questions would really be asked. 

Except Zayne would know that he was meant to see you today…and if you didn’t show up to your appointment, he’d start asking why. 

And it would mean that you’d have to reschedule it for another day without knowing when the original doctor you booked in with would be free. 

‘The sooner I go in, the sooner it’ll be done’ you thought to yourself, placing your hand on the door handle, pushing the door open and walking into Zaynes office. 

“Y/n/n,” Zaynes stoic voice filled your ears, only raising your already heightened anxiety

‘Just breathe,’ you thought to yourself, turning to look at the doctor sitting behind a desk. 

“Please have a seat,” Zayne continued, extending his hand slightly towards the chair on the other side of his desk. 

You let out a shallow breath, attempting to compose yourself as you sat down in the chair opposite him. 

“I apologise about that change to your appointment,” Zayne began; typing away on the keyboard, his eyes fixed on the computer screen. 

“It’s okay,” you answered quietly, absentmindedly fidgeting with your hands as they laid in your lap.

“You seem nervous,” Zayne pointed out, glancing up at you over his glasses briefly, before turning his attention back to the computer.

His words made you aware of what your hands were doing; halting your fidgeting movements.

“You don’t need to be, this is just a routine appointment,” he assured you with a small smile; but his words didn’t do much to ease your anxiety. 

~~~~~~

The questions started off normal, like “How have you felt since your last check up?”, “Have you had any new injuries from any recent missions,” etcetera, etcetera, and then they started to get a bit more private, a bit more personal. 

Starting with, “Any irregularities in your menstrual cycle?” 

“No,” you answered back finitely, making Zaynes eyes fall on you once again; but this time, he held your gaze.

He knew that you were lying. 

And you knew that he knew. 

The way in which you answered the question was an obvious giveaway. 

But even without that, you knew Zayne would probably have sussed out that you were lying, he always knew. 

“Y/n, it is key in these appointments for you to be honest with your doctor,” he reminded you softly, urging you to tell him the truth. 

But you knew what your answer could imply; you were a week late, just one week and you knew that it was probably because of stress and exhaustion; not because of any other reason. 

You knew your answer would open a door to more personal questions; but you also knew that you needed to tell Zayne the truth.

“I’m a week late,”

“I see,” he replied, turning back to his computer screen, for a brief moment you saw something in his eyes, a look of…hurt, you watched how his jaw tightened and he continued typing away on his computer, “and when was the last time you were intimate with someone?” 

And there it was, the very question types of questions you were trying to avoid.

You knew what he was implying with his question.

His question was almost laughable, had you not been so embarrassed about the answer you knew you’d have to give, you probably would have laughed.

In truth, you could barely remember the last time you went on a date with someone, let alone the last times you were intimate with someone; and now you had to admit that to the very man who was part of the reason why. 

You liked Zayne, as more than a friend… in all honesty, to you, no one else compared to him. 

So even if you did have the time to date people, or be intimate with them, you wouldn’t because they weren’t Zayne. 

Sometimes, you thought he held the same feelings for you,even though he’d never said anything to give you such an idea. 

It was more in the way you caught him looking at you sometimes…with a look that not only made your heart skip a beat, but a look that made you wonder. 

A look that made you wonder if he felt the same; or if it was just your hopeful heart messing with your mind.

“A year,” you mumbled, feeling the heat of embarrassment fill your cheeks.

It was a year ago, with someone you met in a bar, one thing led to another and you ended up in their bed. 

It was then that you realised how you truly felt for Zayne…because all you could do whilst you were being intimate with them, was imagine Zayne.

After that, you couldn’t bring yourself to try and meet anyone else. 

You didn’t want to. 

Which is why you kept yourself busy with work; it stopped you from being able to think about your own loneliness too much. 

Zayne said nothing in response to your answer; though you did notice his expression seemed to soften as he typed your answer up on your medical record sheet.

A few more questions and a blood test later and your appointment was over and you were following Zayne to the door to his office. 

“I’m going to sign you off for a few days; so you can get some rest,” he said as he put his hand on the handle of the door. 

“Zayne-” you attempted to argue back but he just shook his head, silencing your words, before you could even finish your counter argument. 

“A few days of rest,” He repeated softly, though you knew by the look in his eyes that there was no use arguing with him.

“Understand?” His voice was just above a whisper but it was loud enough to send a small pleasurable shiver throughout your body. 

You couldn’t help but wonder if he knew how much of an effect he had on you by just whispering to you like this. 

“Y/n,”

You hated your first name, so you always went by Y/n/n. 

Hearing your full first name was unusual, no one called you it anymore; but it was especially unusual hearing it fall from Zayne's lips; though for some reason your name sounded good on his lips.

“Do you understand?” he asked again

You knew you shouldn’t have found his question as erotic as you did; it was a simple question, but the authority in his voice mixed with the way his eyes were burning into yours, made you feel very hot and tingly all of a sudden. 

You were turned on...

You needed to play it cool, act like you perfectly fine, so you nodded in agreement.

Not daring to trust your voice at this very moment; not when you were this close to each other. 

“Good,” was the last thing he said to you before opening the door, allowing you to walk out of his office.

You'd barely take a few steps away from his door before you heard it click shut behind you; it was only then you released a breath you hadn't been aware of holding as you replayed what just happened in your mind.

He was so close to you...so close...

'Stop it,' you mentally scolded yourself as you began walking down the hallway.

You passed the reception and left the hospital quickly, trying to think about what you were going to do with your now free days, instead of how much you wanted Zayne...

Taglist:

@xacatalepsyx @fangirlsfandomsss @book-dragon03 @evilldentists @hao-ming-8 @princess-harvey @deathkat657 @comatosebunny09 @the-slytherin-poet @ladyparamount @ayatoq @cheesemachine44 @popcorn-mochi01 @thegalaxysedge22 @hotdogcookie

[kyeomofhearts]

Back For More | J.WW

+ summary: while adjusting to your new life in college, you couldn't help but attract the attention of wonwoo, someone who you happen to have a history with.

+ pairing: badboy!wonwoo x fem!reader

+ word count: 2.7k

+ content: badboy!wonwoo, college au, mature language, flirting (wonwoo is a menace), jealousy. [pls let me know if i missed anything!]

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

[ᝰ.ᐟ] i hope you guys enjoy this! it's most likely going to be a two-parter so definitely let me know if you want to be added to my taglist! i would greatly appreciate it if you guys reblogged (maybe with comments too ^^) since i thrive on your guys' validation :)

You were tired, very tired.

Granted, this was your own doing. Maybe if you hadn't pushed your responsibilities to the side last night you wouldn't have had to wake up so early to study for an exam, but what's done is done. This whole college thing was not going so well, to say the least. Sure, it's only the beginning of the second semester, but you already feel exhausted by all of your class workloads.

Just ten more minutes of this boring lecture and you could finally go home and crawl into bed. But… that's only if you avoid him today. Which now that you’re thinking about it, you hope he isn’t waiting for you outside, again. That would be the last thing you needed today.

With that being said, things have felt a little weird if you were being honest. Of course, this was your first year of university, so things were bound to feel new and different. But there was something, or rather someone that was making you feel strange.

Around two weeks ago you noticed that Wonwoo, an old classmate of yours, had recently started to become a bit friendly towards you. While that normally wouldn’t be considered weird, you couldn’t help but feel skeptical about his intentions. You knew the kind of people he surrounded himself with, and especially the girls he would go after; which was the exact opposite of you. So what exactly did he want from you?

What also makes this situation more odd is that you’ve basically known Wonwoo for your whole life. Of course, you don’t actually know him, you just happened to go to the same elementary, middle, and high school (which is insane if you think about it). Acquaintance is a perfect word to describe your relationship with him, nothing more nothing less. So yeah… it’s a little weird when the guy you have been around for (almost) your whole life is suddenly trying to befriend you, there definitely had to be something wrong with him.

All you knew about Wonwoo was that he was on the more reserved and quiet side; mainly keeping to himself most of the time. His group of friends was quite the opposite of him, which always made you wonder how he even became friends with them in the first place.

Seeing how the lecture was ending soon, you started to pack your stuff; you were more than ready to dash straight out of the classroom. Having finished all of your assignments for today, you had nothing left to worry about. So once the professor had made her goodbyes, you made a straight beeline to the door, nothing was going to hold you back from your long-awaited nap. Your pace was brisk, attempting to avoid the backed-up main exit, you decided to go to the opposite door. The walk back to your apartment wasn’t too bad either, most of the time you saw it as a way to daydream and listen to music. So while you scrolled through your various playlists, you happened to miss the (very obvious) figure following you.

Wonwoo called out your name a few times until it finally dawned on him that you had your headphones on. He took a few long strides to catch up to you; he was very adamant on getting your attention this morning. With ease, he quickly plucked your headphones off of your head.

“What are we listening to today?” He said while adjusting the headphones on his head. It took you a second to fully process what he was doing. You knew he was doing it to provoke you, but you were determined to not let that happen today. So to his surprise, you simply kept walking. You figured that he would continue with his antics if you gave him the reaction that he wanted so you did the opposite, you ignored him.

What shocked him the most was seeing you pull out an old pair of earbuds and plugging them into your phone. He was dumbfounded to say the least, how were you so prepared and why were you ignoring him?

And again, he quickly caught up with a few simple steps. He took your headphones off of his head and tapped them against your shoulder.

With a tired sigh, you turned around to face him but couldn’t help but admire his face. You really didn't want to lose that ‘expressionless’ look you were going for (to help you ignore him of course), but that small smile of his was enough to crack you down. It's like he knew that it was your one weakness when it came to him. This was the most annoying part of it all. Anytime he smiled or looked at you, a tiny part inside you secretly liked it, making you crave his attention at times.

Objectively speaking, Wonwoo was very handsome. That was something you could never deny, you would even go as far as to say that he was your type but you didn't particularly like the people he called his ‘friends’ so you were stuck in a weird limbo.

“Is there something on my face, birdy?”

You scoffed at the nickname. “I told you not to call me that.”

Wonwoo’s eyes were looking straight into yours, a smirk slowly creeping up to his lips. It didn't help that he was looking really good today either, his messy hair combined with the whole biker fit did wonders for your eyes. He was about to say something before you heard your ringtone go off, evidently cutting him off.

Oh.

It was Hyunwoo. That's odd... you finished your shared project with him rather early, what could he be calling you about? Either way, you answered the random call in front of a rather annoyed Wonwoo.

"Hello?"

"Heyyy yn, I was wondering if you wanted to get lunch later today?" You couldn't help but feel your eyes widen at his sudden question. Since when did he want to hang out with you? Last time you checked he had a plethora of girls that he was talking to... maybe he was interested in you? No, you shouldn't get too ahead of yourself...

"Um... let me check if I have anything to do first. Can I call you back?" You knew that you sounded nervous but how else were you supposed to feel when the cute guy from your physics class was literally asking you to eat lunch with him?

As soon as you ended the call, you felt Wonwoo's arm snake its way down to your waist. You couldn’t help but yelp at the sudden intimate contact. Chuckling at your reaction, he leaned down, closer to your ear. “Who was that?”

"No one." You stated simply, it wasn't his business anyway.

"Hm, okay," Wonwoo rested his head on your shoulder, continuing to speak lowly in your ear. "I'll remember that birdy."

Before you could even come up with something to counter him, he decided to speak up once again.

"Well, I do have something rather important to tell you." His voice was so calm and soothing, you could honestly listen to it for hours on end if you had the chance.

"What is it?" You hoped he couldn't sense your rather, embarrassing, curiosity.

"Heard you used to have a little crush on me," his voice was evidently smug, knowing that this would surely get a rise out of you.

Which it did.

Your face burned at the memories of when you used to have a crush on Wonwoo. But, that had to be in fourth grade… so how could he have known about that? Nonetheless, you scoffed at his statement, not wanting to know that you were a little embarrassed by the sudden reminder.

“Key word, had,” you rolled your eyes at him. This did make you curious though, who could have possibly told him that? So you asked him exactly that.

“How do you even know about that?” His smile never faltered even as you lightly pushed his hand away from your waist. If anything, this made him want to touch you even more.

“I have my ways,” he stated simply. Of course, he does. You hated when he would shrug things off, now this was going to bother you for the entire week!

One thing about Wonwoo was that he has always been curious about you, this interest stemming back all the way to your elementary days. This curiosity eventually intensified in junior year of high school when you began to show your blatant distaste towards him. He just had to get to know you.

He looked down at you, his face was unreadable like always. You never knew what was going on in that mind of his.

"Why are you here? Shouldn't you be hanging out with your actual friends?" Sometimes you couldn't help but blurt out your thoughts to him even if they sounded a bit rude. His face faltered for a split second, probably caught off guard by the random question. Shoot, you really didn’t mean to say that out loud. Although, it looks like Wonwoo didn’t take any offense to your sudden question. If anything, it made him... smile?

“I am hanging out with my friend,” he stopped you to face him, “which is you.” You rolled your eyes at him. That had to be the corniest thing he has ever said to you if you were being honest. You just hated that giddy feeling he would give you any time he said something remotely cheesy.

"Ugh, you're so dumb," you groaned while checking the time on your phone. It was getting close to noon and you hadn't responded to Hyunwoo's question from earlier. Maybe it was best if you didn't go... who knows what he wanted from you. If you were being completely honest, you didn't know if you had it in you to see other people at the moment, aside from Wonwoo of course.

"Have somewhere to be?" Wonwoo asked, a hint of concern peeking through his voice.

"No, thank god, but I do have a scheduled nap to get to so if you don't mind-" you were cut off by the sound of an engine revving, making your body jump at the unexpected noise. You turned to see where the source of the commotion was coming from but then realized it was coming from a group of bikers nearby; most likely Wonwoo's friends.

Or so you thought?

Wonwoo didn't seem too pleased with the group that was getting closer to where the two of you were. On the contrary, Wonwoo looked pissed. His jaw was visibly clenched, the gentle grip he had on your waist tightened, and his eyes lost that playful spark he had earlier. You couldn't help but feel guilty for thinking about how hot Wonwoo looked when he was angry. Of course, you would never want to be on the receiving end of his anger but seeing it on the sidelines was quite... interesting.

Wait. This might actually be serious, so it's best if you leave before anything crazy happens.

"I think I'm going to head out now..." you said quietly as you tried to slip away from Wonwoo's (awfully) strong grasp.

He turned to look at you, his eyes softening once they landed on your figure. Why did they have to come and bother him at this exact moment? He knew that whatever was going to happen was not going to be pretty, but he found himself reluctant to let you go.

Before truly letting you go, he quietly asked, "Are you sure? I can take you home if you want me to." As soft as his voice was, he still managed to sound composed which was comforting considering the situation.

You nodded in response, "I don't live that far from here so it's fine, thank you for the offer though." You managed to flash him a small, awkward smile before turning away from him and heading toward the direction of your apartment. You didn't know what exactly was going on between those guys and Wonwoo but it for sure wasn't friendly. Although it wasn't exactly your issue, you couldn't help but feel worried about Wonwoo, even if he was a pain in the ass sometimes.

Much to your dismay, that scheduled nap never came your way that day.

You blame Wonwoo, how were you supposed to sleep peacefully knowing he was probably getting jumped? Okay, you might be jumping to conclusions but what else were you supposed to think about when he was visibly angry at the mere sight of those guys?

Realistically speaking, it's only been two days since that whole incident happened. Granted, you haven't seen Wonwoo since then but that could mean a lot of things.

[...]

While you were in line to get a smoothie from one of the pop-up shops near the campus, you felt a sudden tap on your shoulder.

"Did my little birdy miss me?" You felt Wonwoo say right next to your ear, his breath fanning across your earlobe. It sent a wave of tingles down your spine, making you shudder in turn. Though you weren't a fan of his spontaneous appearance.

"God, you need to stop doing that! I almost slapped you I swear-" You stopped mid-way once you turned around and saw his face. He had a few cuts on his lips and eyebrows and one big bruise across his cheek. Those guys really did a number on him.

Your eyebrows furrowed in concern, "are you okay?"

He tried to wave it off but you could tell he was bothered by your question, "It's fine, really, don't worry about it." Was he insane? How were you not going to worry when he was visibly injured?

"Were these from the guys on Tuesday?" You couldn't help but ask, where else would he get these cuts and bruises if it didn't come from them?

His demeanor immediately switched and he pushed himself away from you.

"It's none of your business so stay out of it."

"Okay." That was the only thing you said before grabbing your smoothie from the worker and quickly walking away from the shop. If he wanted to be like that then so be it. You most definitely were not going to wait for him to 'open up' by all means, he could throw himself a pity party for all you care.

"Wait-" He tried reaching for your arm but you were too quick for him. Your steps were swift, helping you create a reasonable distance between you and Wonwoo. He called out your name a few times before giving up, he didn't want to gather any unwanted attention from the people nearby. Reaching your pace, Wonwoo was finally close enough to grab your wrist and make you look at him.

"Are you seriously ignoring me?" His voice was a bit jagged, no doubt coming from the unexpected cardio you made him do to catch up to you.

Unfortunately for him, you were petty. "You said it wasn't my business, so please do not talk to me because I really do not care." You brushed past him once again this time making sure he could not grab your arms or wrists.

He exhaled in annoyance, "Look I'm sorry-" Wonwoo was mid-apology before being abruptly cut off by the voice of a guy yelling your name out loud.

Speaking of the devil, what immaculate timing.

"Hey yn! Did you still want to get food after class?" Hyunwoo jogged to where you were standing but saw how Wonwoo was still trying to talk to you.

"Sorry, were you busy with him?"

You instantly responded to Hyunwoo, "No, he was just asking for directions, but yeah I'm down for food." Like before, you made your way towards Hyunwoo, making sure to bump into Wonwoo. He couldn't help but stay frozen in place as he watched you walk to class with some random guy, jealousy slowly invading his mind.

Directions? Did she really...?

As much as Wonwoo wanted to be mad at you, he really had no one to blame but himself. The whole situation with his old group of 'friends' was really getting to him so once you popped that question it just seemed to send him over the edge. He just didn't know how far you would go to express your annoyance towards him. Now all he had to do was find a way to properly apologize to you before that Hyunwoo guy got to you first.

The only thing stopping him? He didn't have your number or any of your socials...

Part Two: II

[bunnys-kisses]

can I pretty please get nanaimo bars,english muffin with the side of milkshake, frozen latte with Charles Leclerc 🥹🫶

bakery menu

the bakery is open and accepting orders! we're cooking up smiles every day! submit your own order! reblogs & comments are appreciated! thank you lovely anon for submitting this, it was something very different to write that i loved. size kink with charles is super interesting given how many people see him. but sometimes i forget he is close to six feet tall and built like someone who does f1. he may look sweet as honey, but there's probably something more sinister (sexually) going on in that brain of his, haha.

nanaimo bars ("who's my pretty girl? c'mon say it.") + english muffins ("aw, is someone crying?") + milkshake (size kink) + frozen latte (dumbification) served by charles leclerc (formula one)!!

cw: smut/pwp, size difference/kink, dumbification, teasing/dirty talk, crying kink, cry baby!reader, oral sex (charles receives), deepthroating, facials & cock slapping, safe words/signals, hair pulling

"mon cœur"

"la douleur dans ma poitrine."

"mon amor..."

"ma salope."

charles liked to make you cry. he loved when his mean words would curl up into your brain and make that waterworks come out. he was the prince of ferrari and of his home country. it's pride and joy. he was seen as effortlessly cool and could entice anyone. that smile, those green eyes. but even with all he had been afforded, nothing turned him on more than seeing his precious girlfriend's bottom lip wobble her eyes grow cloudy with tears.

he was running on high after monza, it was like everything was barking in the back of his head. even out of his driving suit and away from the track for the night, he could still feel the adrenaline. and while many would go for a run or spend the night with a drink in hand. he yearned for something different.

and when he saw you in his lavish hotel room, in one of his shirts and what appeared nothing else underneath. he knew that he was in for a treat tonight. with his bag down and his shoes off, he entered further into the room. he ended up by you on the couch and took you by the chin.

he smiled, "most take off the make up before they get comfortable." his thumb trailed under your left eye.

you replied, "i took everything off earlier and put on the mascara that runs easily." it was from a cheap brand at the pharmacy. perfect for what charles liked.

he chuckled, "you are just full of surprises, my love. you're going to be good for me tonight, right?" it was moments like these that you realized just how much bigger charles was. most painted him as short and frail.

he was just under six foot but built in a way to withstand the strain of racing. with large hands and thighs that could kill. his hand could easily fit around your neck as easily as his cock did to the back of your throat. there was a flicker in the greens of his eyes, the noble prince had stripped away into a hungry animal that yearned for you.

you swallowed, "i always am. always for you."

he tapped your cheek six times and you tapped his wrist once in response. even if these sick games where you cried and grew stupid on his cock, there were limits everyone had. charles didn't want to break your little world apart because he took it too far. he got on the couch next to you and undid his belt. your delicate hands helped him and dropped the leather to the floor.

charles held you face to look at him. he remarked, "you really are pathetic, so eager. i'm surprised you didn't stalk the halls looking for something to fuck your throat while i was out."

you frowned a little bit, "i'd never, honey."

he pinched your cheek a little harder than normal and leaned in, "right, right. because you're a good girl, my pretty girl. who's my pretty girl? c'mon say it." his words were enticing and it made your stomach flip.

"i am."

"you are pretty, my love." he said, "god blessed you with good looks because he knew you'd be stupid. add a dash of being a cock hungry whore and sometimes i get worried. i've never wanted to kill a man, but if another sank his teeth into you." his words were low and they made you curl in your gut.

if you wanted out, as a last resort. tap once then six times in rapid succession. charles liked to make your bottom lip wobble, but he wasn't a monster. he pulled you in for another searing kiss, his hand in between your legs. he felt panties as he rubbed his hand up.

he knew it was going to be a long night tonight. but first, he had his eyes on your pretty throat. after all his marks had faded over the week. while there would be press photos soon, they didn't mean he couldn't mess up the inside of your throat. even if you couldn't talk for the week, he was more than happy to do all the talking for both of you.

"stupid thing." he said, "you know that? i feel sorry for whatever school gave you your diploma." he acted like he wasn't at your graduation, "i bet you paid them off. or worse, sucked them off. little whore on campus, too stupid to actually learn anything except be on her knees and breath through her nose." he made a small noise of disappointment.

and charles got excited at the sight of you. that bottom lip was going, he could see the shudder in your shoulders. that struck a nerve, post-secondary was hard for you. you felt like people called you dumb without actually saying it. and charles' toxic words only added the fuel to the fire of doubt.

"aw, is someone crying? don't cry." he said, faking sympathy, "if you start crying then you won't suck my cock properly." he rubbed the back of your head as he watched the tears come down your cheek. he sighed once more, "silly thing."

soon your head was between his legs. he could feel your hot tears against the base of his cock as they streamed down your face. they weren't a rush of tears, but a slow trickle as charles' words clouded your head.

you started to work his cock and he felt the excitement in his body. it took a good while but eventually you learned how to deep throat him. he hissed and held onto the back of your head. you were both still clothed (or at least partially for you).

charles had a habit of running his mouth when your mouth was on him. and he rocked the blunt end of his cock up against the back of your throat, occasionally making you choke, he started talking. "i should throw you to the rest of ferrari. let them ruin you. then maybe you'll stop being so greedy for cock when you've had enough for a lifetime. i see how they look at you, my logo across your pretty breasts as you look so cute down at the paddock. if i waved my hand and told them to have their way with you, you wouldn't be getting far." he tugged on your hair a little and forced you up and down his cock faster.

you choked a little bit and sputtered, trying to catch your breath through your nose. it all was a deep throb in your head as you tried to cram as much of his cock into your throat.

"i'd say they'd make your ass ferrari red. but i think it would be closer to mercedes black. you wouldn't be able to sit right for months. maybe i'd be generous and let the other drivers have a chance too. crying on their cocks."

you sniffled, tears welled up in your eyes some more. while most despised having 'raccoon eyes', charles found it endearing. the poor little thing can't help but cry because she knows that he's right. you knew in your gut that you were at least a little cock hungry at all times. he watched you squirm in your seat at times while you let your imagination run wild.

he continued to use you to his liking. you were perfect. trained you from the ground up to be perfect on his cock. he caught glimpses of your face and your red eyes. poor thing, crying to much making a big mess.

so dumb, so small, so stupid.

he took his cock out of your mouth and rubbed it up against your cheek roughly. spit and pre-cum caught across your right eyelashes. his cock pushed your top lip up and he groaned at the sight. your tongue licked a bit of pre-cum that was dangerously close to your face.

"so small, i'm surprised you could take all this. i remember when i couldn't put it in without prepping you. then you spent all season training your cunt for when i got home. now you take me in every way perfectly." he licked his lips, "you know where you belong."

his words excited you as you put your mouth back on his cock. you whimpered as you felt it hit the back of your throat once more. he was big in a way that it made you squirm.

you continued up and down his cock, putting all your brain power (what little you had left) into taking him well. you coughed and panted, air felt in short supply as you got him to the base. your nose in his groomed pubic hair.

a picture perfect beauty, all for charles to devour.

he knew he was close. he could feel it in his bones and in the tension of his muscles. he then tensed up further with his hand in your hair and pulled your mouth off his cock (as much as it pained him to do that). with his other hand he stroked himself off quickly to the sight of your quivering, overheated body. you panted heavily and he finished all over your face. he streaked your skin white with cum up to your forehead. it dripped down your face as you coughed a little.

the debauched sight made him get a few more ropes up cum on your face before he settled down. he pulled your head back to look at you, you could barely have your eyes open. he wished he could take a picture. the white of cum and the mascara mixed tears created a sight that made charles run hot.

"now you look like a slut." he said as he got his jeans off. he rubbed his cock up against your soft lips before he slapped his still hard cock against your face, only making the mess on your cheeks more intense.

"charles." your throat felt raw from it. you looked at him and panted heavily, your tongue stuck out a little bit. and charles knew the night was far over. he fucked you stupid without stimulating your poor pussy. he wanted to see how stupid he could make you.

"we're not done yet." he said.

you tilted your head to the side, almost innocently as if your face wasn't a mess. you asked, "what?" your brain not capturing all the words properly.

he held onto you for a moment and said, "ten seconds to clean up your face. then i want you naked on the bed, or i'll fuck you on the bathroom floor." then let go of you and watched you scramble to clean yourself up. those words stuck in your blissed out brain even though you almost tripped over yourself.

charles chuckled and leaned further back onto the couch, his cock at full attention. even though the mascara was going to be gone, it was okay. you still looked just as pretty with just those tears streaming down your face. <3

[asahicore]

kiwi and layla - sjy

pairing. jake x fem!reader synopsis. in which you mistake jake’s backpack for your own, making you each go home with the other’s bag. both of you are too curious for your own good, so you quickly find out that you excel in the subject the other is failing - a mutual tutoring agreement ensues, and it turns into much more than what you had expected. genre. high school au, f2l, lots of fluff and some angst too, f2l, shy reader x outgoing jake warnings. food & swearing, mention of parent death and divorce, kms jokes, jake being stupid but also really cute (lmk if i've missed any!) word count. 26.3k a/n. this is part of the unexpected collab !!! go check out the other fics and caelin thank u for hosting <333 hope u guys like this one, it took me a while but i had so so much fun writing it !!! i love my jakey in here he's a little bit confused but he's got the spirit. @zreamy thanks for being the world's awesomest beta reader and a decent friend ig... 2 baddies wouldnt be the same without you... lifeguard wet body sunghoon coming soon guys dont miss it! as always pls remember how important reblogs and feedback is for us writers!!! it's what keeps us going <3 enjoy!!

listen to the playlist!

This was not your backpack. 

In your defense, it looked so similar to yours - scratch that, it was the exact same as yours - that you couldn’t possibly have been able to tell the difference between the two bags until you’d opened one of them. Just a basic black Eastpak that probably a hundred other kids in your school owned with nothing to tell them apart, because you hadn’t had the mind to add a little something to it and make it recognizable. You hadn’t really needed to - your backpack was always on your back, next to your seat or in your locker. There was no way you might lose it or mistake it with another.

Until today, obviously. Instead of having a chill last class before spring break like every other teacher, your psycho math teacher Mr Choi had decided to give you a major test on this otherwise beautiful Friday afternoon. While other students watched a movie or played Kahoot, you were stuck in a cold classroom with algebra questions in front of you. Mr Choi had argued that this would be better than having a test after the holidays and ruining your time off with studying, but a test was a test, and math was math, so you hated the idea anyway. 

To eliminate all cheating possibilities, Mr Choi made his students only take a pencil and eraser with them, leave their bag at the back of the classroom and put their phone in a box he kept on his desk. Plus, with his hawk eyes watching intently, there was no way to sneak answers on a small sheet of paper or even on your palm. 

When the test was over, your brain was so fried and you were so eager to get the hell out of there that you didn’t even notice the two identical black backpacks next to each other, you just grabbed the first one you saw, not even questioning that it might not be yours.

And indeed, yours it was not. From your snooping around, you quickly found out it belonged to one Jake Sim. 

You knew Jake. Although you’d been attending the same school for the past three years, you could probably count the number of times you’d talked on one hand - but you knew him. Or at least, you knew of him. You knew that he was good at STEM subjects and that he was on the soccer team; you knew he was a really sweet guy and was easy to talk to, even for someone shy like you. 

Most importantly, you knew he was friends with Park Sunghoon. This was important because you had liked Park Sunghoon since the moment you’d laid eyes on him - or rather, your whole friend group had. It might’ve sounded extremely odd to others, but you and your friends had a few random people at school you liked to keep tabs on or create backstories for, and Sunghoon, because of his dashing looks that had struck all four of you in your first week of freshman year, was one of your victims. Well, you liked to think of them as characters on a TV show rather than victims, but to each his own. Your other characters included that popular sophomore who already considered herself a celebrity because of her ten thousand followers on TikTok anyway, the French and Spanish teachers you were sure had a thing going on, and that one guy in Yena’s biology class that only showed up every two weeks but always looked stoned (hat guy, Chaewon liked to call him, even you’d never once seen him with a hat on). It was all harmless, really - none of you ever actually went up and talked to them, just discussed them among yourselves.

Perhaps Sunghoon was different, because each of you had had a class with him at some point, so you’d all had at least shared a word with him. You probably hadn’t talked to him more times than you’d talked to Jake, so the information you knew about him was pretty surface-level - he was an ice skater, but everyone knew that, and he was shy like you, which was immediately noticeable. He also had one of the most handsome faces you’d ever seen. But again, everyone who saw him knew that.

You, Yena and Chaewon had debated whether one of you should just go ahead and make a move (Hyewon didn’t participate because she already had a boyfriend, but she was all for approaching the boy). You guessed you could describe what you felt towards Sunghoon as a sort of crush, even if it was one you shared with your friends - you found him cute, and you got nervous when he was around. But you were more the watch-from-afar-and-pine type, so you were satisfied with liking him from a distance. You didn’t think you actually had the guts to strike a conversation with him - that was more Chaewon’s thing.

However, this didn’t mean you weren’t curious about the contents of his best friend’s backpack. Your being shy didn’t mean you weren’t interested in other people’s lives - if anything, you were quite nosy. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but you were just a regular teenage girl, so this was fine, right? After just a few minutes of snooping, you found out Jake Sim wasn’t hiding any big state secrets in his Eastpak, anyway. Just some textbooks, notebooks, and a lot of single sheets of paper. It was pretty messy in there. 

Your idea of him being good at STEM subjects was correct - he kept all of his graded tests in the sleeve pocket of his math notebook, and there was not a single one that had received a note under 95. He even seemed to be doing some extracurricular exercises - there were formulae that were completely unfamiliar to you and that you were sure you hadn’t done in class. You found it slightly insane, but that might have just been because you despised math and wouldn’t understand why someone would want to do more of it than was required of them. 

His English homework was another story. His essays had more red from the teacher’s pen than his own black ink, and from the grades on his reading comprehension tests, you highly doubted he’d actually read any of the assigned books. You weren’t in the same English class but apparently had the same teacher, Ms Park, so you were studying the same thing. You couldn’t help but cringe as you read his answers on a Pride and Prejudice reading test - he seemingly kept mixing the sisters up, assigning actions and character traits to Lydia that clearly belonged to Jane. At least he somewhat got Darcy right, writing that “he’s probably not as bad as he looks,” with no further explanation. 

As you aimlessly flipped through his English notebook, curious about the way he took his notes - or if he even took any - you noticed some scribbles in the margins. Looking closer, some of them were in his handwriting while others were in an unfamiliar one. It looked like some sort of conversation, so you assumed the other writing belonged to his deskmate. You also did this with your friends in classes where the teacher was very strict about no chatting in class.

dude coach said if I fail any of my classes I would be out of the team, you read Jake’s handwriting.

Wait seriously????

yeah and I suck at english so Im scared it might actually happen

You just need to study more bro

bro I DO but this shit is hard

Then find someone to help you

neither of you guys is that good in that subject either tho

Ok ouch but also just find someone else then

bro who

IDK man 

Y/N maybe ? she’s good at English and she’s nice so she might say yes 

there you go about y/n again dude MAYBE you ask HER to teach you some sonnets

Shut up you’re the one who needs help dumbass

whatever isn’t it weird just asking her randomly though like i dont want her to feel like she has to say yes

Lol if she sees your grades she might do it out of pity

fuck u man

You were surprised to see your own name written there - it felt weird knowing that Jake and his friend were talking about you, for some reason. And what if that friend was Sunghoon? You had a hard time believing he not only knew you existed, but thought of you as good at English and nice. You liked to think both of these things were true. 

He was also spot-on about saying you would agree to helping out Jake in those subjects, but what he got wrong was thinking you’d do it out of pity. Clearly, you and Jake were in very similar positions. You didn’t have any sort of club you’d be kicked out of if you failed a class, but it sure as hell wouldn’t look good on your college applications, so you needed to get your math grades up. 

Jake and you both desperately needed something the other person could help with, so you had a feeling he wouldn’t turn down the offer that was brewing in your head.

—

This was not Jake’s backpack.

He noticed it right away - it was much heavier than his own and the straps were tighter around his shoulders than they should be. He looked inside for some clues about who it might belong to, and luckily, the first thing he found was a journal that had Y/N’S DIARY written on the cover page in big, pink letters. 

Unluckily, however, he’d also noticed that you had practically sprinted out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang, and indeed, you were already far gone when he tried looking for you around school. He had to get to soccer practice anyway, so he put the issue to the side for the time being.

When he got home, he had to shower then have dinner, so it wasn’t until 8 p.m. that he remembered he had your backpack. He had meant to text you straightaway about it, and he knew it was wrong to look into someone’s belongings, but he couldn’t help himself, especially when his best friend Sunghoon had liked you for ages. Maybe this was an opportunity to find out more about you.

Your mind-blowing grades in English don’t come as much of a surprise to him, and after reading through your most recent essay, he thought you definitely deserved them. Your essay was on a Shakespeare play he had never heard of - you apparently also had Ms Park for English, and he didn’t know she was doing Shakespeare in class, so he wondered for a second if you were actually crazy enough to read another book and study it. As if 300 pages of Jane Austen weren’t enough as it was. 

What shocked him were your math grades. It was like looking into a fucked-up mirror: while you excelled at English, you sucked at math; while he excelled at math, he sucked at English. You were just as close to failing your math class as he was at failing English.

Now that he thought about it, maybe Sunghoon’s idea hadn’t been so dumb - you could help him out, and he had an actual argument as to why you should, rather than just using pity on you.

As he put your stuff back in your bag, he was reminded of something - your diary. For some reason, the pretty floral pattern on the cover made him feel even worse for opening the journal in the first place, but he did it anyway. Either you’d only just picked up the habit of writing in a diary or you had finished your previous one recently, but this one seemed pretty new, as only about ten pages had been filled with your neat handwriting. Judging from the dates at the top of almost every page, you wrote in there everyday, and Jake only felt even worse that you hadn’t been able to write in it that day.

Still, he flicked to the first page and started reading. And he read and read, unable to take his eyes away from your diary. He thought he wouldn’t have cared much and a page would have satisfied his curiosity, but the way you wrote about the people around you and about yourself fascinated him. Basic high school things like friend drama and annoying teachers actually became interesting through your words. You didn’t use particularly complicated sentences or unheard-of words, on the contrary, you used simple language, and that spoke a lot more to Jake than any of the classics he’d attempted to read for class. 

And then, he saw an all too familiar name in an entry dated from just a few days ago. 

I sat next to Sunghoon today. It was during physics and both of our desk partners were absent, so Mrs Kim made me change seats. She always does this, and I used to wonder whether she hated to see an empty seat or to see a student sitting on their own, but whatever the reason, today, I was just happy about it. This isn’t our first time sitting next to each other in class, but I was still nervous, since I wasn’t expecting it. I hope he couldn’t feel the awkwardness practically oozing off of me or the way I very obviously struggled with the exercises (obviously, anything to do with math is not my forte). We shared my textbook because he’d forgotten his, and he showed me his notes when he saw I couldn’t keep up with Mrs Kim as she told us what to write down. We only exchanged a few words but I was satisfied when class was over. It’s odd, because you’d think someone would want to talk to the person they like and get to know them more, but I don’t feel that with Sunghoon. Maybe it’s because we’re both so introverted, and he seems to have just as hard a time as I do starting conversations, so I’ve sort of accepted our silent fate. I’m fine just continuing to steal glances at him from across the cafeteria. 

After that, there were a few more pages of writing up until yesterday's entry, but it was the only mention of Sunghoon. Jake had apparently been wrong to think that a girl’s diary would be full of rantings about her crush and things along the lines of “omg, he looked at me today”. 

But you had very clearly referred to Sunghoon as the person you liked, and Jake wasn’t going to let that go so easily. This was precious information that he held in his hands now, so he had to figure out how to deal with it properly for your sake as well as his friend’s.

Turns out there was more he could help you with than just algebra.

—

Seeing Jake Sim in a setting other than school was slightly odd, if you were being completely honest. 

You had just been about to text him about the backpack mix-up when you’d received a message from the man himself, asking if you could meet up the next day to exchange them. In response, you’d asked where you should meet, thinking he’d offer either his house or yours, or some halfway point between them, but he surprised you by proposing some café in the center of town. They have good hot chocolate there, he’d said, and that had been enough to convince you. 

And also I have something I want to talk to you about. 

Your stomach had turned at this message - what on Earth could Jake Sim need to discuss with you had been your first thought, and then you realized you also had plans you wanted to share with him. So his idea of going to a café was actually good for you, too.

You’d only been waiting for about five minutes when he appeared at the café, red and panting from seemingly sprinting to his destination. 

“Y/N, I’m sooo sorry,” he immediately said when he saw you waiting. “I was planning to be early, but when I got on the bus I realized I literally forgot your bag, so I had to go back but the next bus wasn’t for another twenty minutes so I just ran the whole way here, and now I’m all sweaty, and I’m late, and I’m really sorry.”

He’d rushed through his sentence and was breathing heavily as he looked at you expectantly, waiting for your answer. He seemed so genuinely sorry for such a small thing that after your surprise faded, you started laughing. It was his turn to be surprised, and he immediately stopped talking at the sound of your soft giggles.

“It’s okay, Jake. I haven’t even been waiting five minutes,” you explained, smiling. “Let’s just go in, yeah?”

Jake’s heart did something weird just then, and the feeling was so unfamiliar and confusing that he decided to promptly ignore it. As if in a daze, he stood still for a couple of seconds until the sound of a bell ringing, the one the café had on its doors to signify the entrance or exit of a customer, snapped him out of it. He followed you into the shop, let you order and pay for you both (“I’m the one who took the wrong bag, it’s the least I can do,” you’d said) and sat across from you at a booth in the back.

You gave each other your respective bags back, then started chatting as you sipped on your hot chocolates (Jake had been right - they really were delicious). He was surprisingly easy to talk to, and whether he sensed you were a reserved person or was just naturally talkative, you liked that he both managed to do most of the talking and ask you loads of questions at once. Usually, you wouldn’t have really cared to listen to someone go on and on about their passion for soccer and the recent game that their team had won, but for some reason, you were hooked on Jake’s every word. The way his eyes widened in excitement as he recounted the winning goal he scored, the way the volume of his voice decreased as he filled you in on the team gossip even though no one was listening to your conversation, the way his grin turned into a proud smirk as he mentioned his coach congratulating him - every single one of his actions had you mesmerized. You’d never seen anyone so expressive in their speech, never seen anyone punctuate every sentence with a movement or a facial expression. It was just fun, listening to him.

Even when he didn’t talk, he stayed expressive. He asked you whether you did anything outside of school, and he listened intently as you told him about the theater group you’re in, humming and nodding and laughing at all the right moments. Usually, you wouldn’t have talked about it for more than thirty seconds, afraid to bore others with unnecessary details, but Jake’s reactions and the questions he asked made you actually feel listened to and like what you were talking about was interesting. So you grew more confident and told him what you loved about acting and about theater, about your own gossip (the arrogant actress who got the lead role and thought she was better than everyone else, that one guy who was clearly flirting with three girls at the same time), and you almost couldn’t believe Jake seemed so entertained by your stories. 

“So, you said your group focused on more classic plays, right? Does that mean you’re good at English Lit?”

With his spoon, Jake scooped some whipped cream into his mouth, hoping he was appearing as nonchalant as he was trying to be. He had to make you think he’d deduced that just now and not because he had been snooping through your backpack just the night prior. 

You, however, could not have cared less how he’d figured it out - you were just grateful he had segued into this topic of school and grades, because you’d been wanting to bring it up yourself but had no idea how.

“Um, yeah, actually, it’s my best subject. Math, on the other hand…”

You chuckled as his eyes widened and he leaned in across the table, pointing his spoon at you as he spoke. “See, that’s interesting, because math is my best subject, but I suck at English Lit.”

“Oh, really?” you asked, trying to sound genuinely surprised even though this piece of information was not at all new to you.

“Yeah,” he said, looking back down at his almost-finished drink with a small smile on his face.

“You know-”

“You know-”

You and Jake had spoken at the same time, and your eyes locked for a second before you started laughing. You gestured at him to go on first.

“I actually need pretty urgent help in English. Coach said he’ll put us out of the team if we fail even just one of our courses, and I’m very close to failing that class.” He took a moment to let out a sigh. “So, if you want, we could help each other out. Me with math, and you with English.” 

His eyebrows were slightly furrowed and he bit his lip as he looked at you expectantly. You thought he looked far too nervous for such a simple request, expression more like a boy who’d just asked his crush to the prom rather than offering mutual help you both desperately needed. You couldn’t help the smile that grew on your lips - you had never known Jake Sim to be so… cute. But he was waiting for an answer, so you pushed the thought out of your head.

“That’s a great idea, actually,” you replied, as if you hadn’t had the exact same idea. You were just relieved you hadn’t even had to bring it up yourself. “I also really can’t afford to fail math. It would look terrible on college applications.”

Jake let out a long, loud exhale. “God, yeah, college, I hadn’t even thought of that. Even more motivation to get better grades now,” he said with a chuckle.

You chuckled along, then cleared your throat and sat up straighter. You watched with amusement as Jake mirrored your actions and even the fake serious frown in your brows. You presented your hand for him to shake, which he did without hesitation.

“So it’s a deal then. We’ll tutor each other until we’ve gotten our grades up.”

“Deal,” he replied. As you both withdrew your hands, he dropped his serious facade and burst into giggles, a sound you hadn’t expected from the boy but somehow fit him well. You watched his face closely for a second, noticing the curl of his lips and the crinkle at the corner of his eyes, before breaking into laughter yourself.

You stayed in the café for another half hour, going over details of where and when you’d meet, of what exactly you needed help with (“Everything,” you’d said, to which Jake had replied “Same”), and just talked some more.

“I’m taking the 53 that way,” Jake said when you exited the café, pointing towards the bus stop.

“Oh, so am I!” you exclaimed.

“Seriously?! What’s your stop?”

And that’s how you and Jake figured out you only lived two bus stops away from each other. 

“That’s so cool! It’ll make it easy to meet up then,” he said, and you hummed in agreement. After a pause, he added: “But if we live so close to each other, how come we didn’t go to the same schools earlier? Aren’t you usually supposed to go to the one in your district?”

“I used to live in another part of town,” you explained. “Then my parents divorced when I was in middle school, and I stayed with my dad because he lived closer to the school I was at, but I moved to my mom’s place for high school.”

“‘Cause she lives closer?”

“Yeah, basically.” There was more to it, but you didn’t think Jake would be particularly interested in your parental issues - although you surprised yourself for even considering telling him. If Jake sensed that you weren’t saying everything, he didn’t push, just swiftly changed the topic as you waited for the bus to come.

When you got home some time later, the first thing you did was open your diary and start writing. It had felt wrong not to write in it even just for a day, so it was a relief to feel the pages between your fingers and the familiar scent of the paper and your perfumed pen. You wrote without thinking too much, simply letting all of your musings out into your diary and freely brushing the tip of your pen across the pages. 

You didn’t ever reread your entries right after writing them, but if you had that day, you might have noticed all you could write about was the boy you’d drank a hot chocolate with.

—

Spring break week passed by far too quickly, and it was on the first Monday back at school that you and Jake met again. He had soccer practice on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, while you had theater rehearsals on Thursdays and Saturdays, so you’d agreed to meet up every Monday and Wednesday after school. Since his mother worked as the school nurse, she drove him to and from school everyday - so on Monday, you met Jake in front of the nurse’s station, waiting for his mom to wrap things up before she drove you both to their home.

You had been surprised to learn that the kind nurse that never asked too many questions and always let students take a nap if they didn’t feel well was Jake’s mom, but upon reflection, it made sense. Once you knew, it was almost obvious that she had raised him - they shared the same friendliness, the same comforting smile and the same ability to make conversation. The whole ride home, she asked you about yourself and thanked you for agreeing to tutor “our little Jakey,” because “God knows he needs the help.” 

You couldn’t help but laugh when a blush crept on Jake’s face and he looked out the passenger seat window with an embarrassed frown, muttering something like “Thanks a lot, Mom.”

She noticed his reaction and laughed along with you. “I’m just saying, Jakey-poo. It’s good to know to ask for help when you need it,” she cooed, reaching a hand out to ruffle his hair. This only made Jake groan loudly and hide his face in his hands. You didn’t know Jake very well, but this flustered, red-faced side of him was definitely one you liked seeing.

The first thing that greeted you when you reached Jake’s house was a happy welcome home bark.

“You have a dog?!” you exclaimed, unable to reel your excitement in.

“Yeah! This is Layla,” Jake said, giving energetic rubs to the Border Collie that made her whole body shake side-to-side but that she seemed to thoroughly enjoy. 

“Hi, Layla,” you cooed, crouching down to her level to let her sniff you. She decided you were a person worthy of petting her. “She’s so cute!”

“I think she likes you,” Jake said, a grin on his face, as he watched Layla presenting her belly to you and asking for scratches there. “Do you have a dog?”

“We have a Corgi at home. And a cat, too.”

“That must be fun,” Jake chuckled. “Do they get along?”

“Depends. They have a bit of a love-hate relationship.” You looked up at Jake, and it was uncharacteristically quiet as you locked eyes for a couple of seconds. You both looked away at the same time, surprised by the sudden eye contact.

You gave Layla one last rub and lifted yourself up. “Um, should we get started?” 

Jake paused for a second as if he’d forgotten what you were here for in the first place, then started nodding his head quickly. “Right, yeah. Let’s go to my room. Downstairs is just one big room and my mom will probably watch TV or make dinner or something, so it might be distracting…” he explained, lightly scratching the back of his neck. It seemed like he was embarrassed to be bringing you to his room, which you couldn’t help but find endearing.

“Okay, sounds good,” you said with a smile, hoping it’ll reassure him.

You followed him up to his room, ignoring his complaints as you lingered on the framed photos on the wall next to the stairs and giggled at his baby pictures. 

“Do not look at those,” he said with a warning tone that didn’t scare you in the slightest. When you didn’t listen, he grabbed your hand that had been pointing at a photo of baby Jake in the bathtub and forced you to keep walking.

“Why?” you asked, a slight whine to your voice.

“‘Cause it’s embarrassing! I was an ugly baby.”

“What?! You were so cute!”

“Whatever. I’d rather study English than talk about this, and that’s saying something.”

When you looked at Jake, you were surprised to find that he actually seemed upset about this. You weren’t sure what was so wrong with looking at his baby pictures, but the last thing you wanted to do was make him mad, so you stayed quiet and continued your way to his room. Once there, although you were infinitely curious about all the posters, pictures, figurines, trophies, and other small tokens of Jake’s life, you didn’t ask him about any of them, just sat next to him at his desk and opened The Picture of Dorian Grey, the book you had both been studying in Ms Park’s class.

You’d agreed on spending forty-five minutes on English, have a small break, then spend forty-five minutes on Math. It wasn’t a lot, but you both had other homework and things outside of school you needed to do, so you’d decided to start out that way and see if it worked out.

You were glad to see how seriously Jake was taking this - he listened intently to what you said and asked questions when he didn’t understand something. You quickly figured out that what he didn’t like about English Literature was that the answers weren’t as straightforward or as logical as they were in math, and even worse, that multiple answers were possible depending on the reader’s interpretation. 

“It just all feels like a guessing game,” he said, resting the side of his head on one of his palms. “How am I supposed to know what this dude meant? And if it can be analyzed in different ways, how can Ms Park tell me the way I understand it is wrong?”

“It’s all about the way you justify it,” you explained. “You can’t just say whatever. Ms Park will look out for how you use the text to support your answers.” You then went on to pick out a specific part of the book, asking Jake to analyze Dorian’s mindset in that scene. 

“He sounds like he’s going insane,” Jake said flatly when he was done reading, getting a chuckle out of you.

“Exactly. How do you know that?”

“I don’t know, just the words he uses,” Jake replies, shrugging.

“Okay, underline those words,” you instructed gently. Jake sighed, but he complied.

“There.” 

“Good. What can you say about those words?” When Jake just looked at you like a lost puppy, you reformulated your question. “What do they have in common? What type of words are they? Are they common nouns, verbs…”

Jake looked back at the words he’d underlined on the page. “They’re… adjectives?” he said, tone unsure.

“Exactly!”

Jake paused. “So?”

“So now you can say that the author uses many adjectives to convey the gradual loss of sanity of the main character.”

“Oh.”

When you looked at Jake, he wore an expression like the words on the page were finally starting to make sense to him. “That’s the content. You can also look at the structure. See how many punctuation marks there are? Commas, semi-colons, question marks… It’s like he keeps cutting himself off. His thoughts are all over the place.”

Jake nodded slowly. “So, I just need to look out for things like that?”

“Basically, yeah. And the more you practice, the more these things will stand out to you. It actually becomes somewhat repetitive sometimes.”

Jake let out a shaky breath. “That’s actually relieving to hear,” he said with a chuckle.

Thirty minutes passed by like this as you showed Jake ways to make sense of a literary text. When the timer rang, he leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out wide with a sigh. He put his hands behind his head and let it hang back, and the way your stomach flipped at the sight of his exposed neck and Adam’s apple made you look away immediately. You could barely meet his eyes as he turned his head to look at you, still in that same position, and, with a smirk, asked if you were ready for some snacks. 

You gulped, trying to look as normal as possible. “Uh, yeah, sure!”

Downstairs, Jake presented you with all sorts of snacks - there were so many, you felt like you were in a convenience store. This was worlds away from your ingredient-only household. You opted for some biscuits and a banana while Jake made himself a bowl of cereal. A very distracting ten-minute long argument then ensued about the order of milk and cereal - horrifyingly, Jake poured his milk before his cereal. You thought it was a myth that some people actually did it that way, but Jake very proudly defended his choice. 

“I bet you eat pizza with pineapple on it, too,” you said half-jokingly, only for your joke to punch you right back in the face.

“Duh,” Jake answered.

You could only shake your head in defeat. “Let’s just get back to studying before I murder you.”

“Damn, Y/N,” Jake said, laughing. “That’s harsh.”

“And you’re a freak,” you retorted, a grin blooming on your lips.

“You know, you remind me of my friend Jay,” Jake mused as you walked back up the stairs. “He has so many of these small battles that he just won’t let go of. He got super worked up over an argument about mint chocolate chip ice cream once.”

“Let me guess, you like that ice cream?”

Jake shrugged. “It’s not my favorite, but I’ll have it once in a while.”

“God, Sim, you just get worse and worse.”

You sat back down at his desk and started eating. “I bet you think I’m weird for liking math too, right?”

“That’s the worst offense of them all.” 

Jake’s sudden quietness caught you off guard. When you turned your head to look at him, he was already gazing at you with a smile and a sort of thoughtful glint to his eyes, resting his chin on his palm. It sounded like he was thinking out loud when he spoke next. “Guess we’re perfect opposites of each other. Like two peas in a pod!”

The realization of what he’d said dawned upon him as soon as the words left his mouth. He slowly lifted his head as his eyes widened. “I don’t mean- just, you know, since you’re good at English and I’m good at math, and- you know… I didn’t mean it in a weird way, or anything…”

His eyes kept glancing back and forth between you and his bowl of cereal, as if he was scared of looking directly at you but wanted to check your reaction. 

As a smile grew on your face, you kept your eyes trained on your biscuits so he wouldn’t see your flustered expression. But when you looked at him again, he held your gaze, mouth slightly agape. You didn’t have it in you that he had gotten the idiom completely wrong. “I know, don’t worry.” You chuckled. “We are opposites of each other. You just better be as good at teaching math as I am at teaching English,” you teased.

You watched as a smirk tugged one corner of Jake’s lips up and he raised an eyebrow. “Who said you were good at teaching English?”

You gasped. “You said you understood better now!”

Jake’s smile softened as he giggled. “I’m just teasing. You are a good teacher.”

You sat up straighter at the compliment, a proud smile on your face. “Your turn, Mr Sim. I’m all ears.”

“Right,” he said, mirroring your posture. “Shall we start by going over Mr Choi’s test from last week?” 

Your smile dropped instantly at this. Reluctantly, you fished your graded paper out of your bag. You already knew Mr Choi was a psychopath, but you still didn’t understand where he found the will to grade thirty papers over the weekend. You avoided Jake’s gaze as you handed him your test with a big, red, circled D- at the top.

You cringed as Jake sighed. “At least it’s not an F, right?” he said in what you could tell was an attempt at reassurance but somehow only made you feel worse. He looked over your answers quickly, trying to find what in particular you struggled with. “All right. Let’s start from the beginning, yeah?”

For the next forty-five minutes, Jake went over each test question with you, breaking them down and explaining how to solve them in a way you understood. The words he used were so much clearer than the half-assed explanations you were used to from Mr Choi, and for once, math actually made some sort of sense. Your brain still felt broken after almost an hour of numbers and greek letters, but at least, you felt smarter rather than dumber at the end of it. You had never been more grateful for the sound of a phone alarm than the one signaling tutoring was over. 

“That wasn’t half-bad, right?” Jake asked with a wide grin.

You felt so tired, you could probably pass out right then and there, but Jake looked so proud of himself after you had been able to complete an exercise correctly on your own that you didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. “Right,” you replied, mirroring his grin. “You’re an okay teacher, I guess.”

He jokingly glared and tutted at you, but you both laughed right after. “I need to walk Layla, so I can walk you home, if you want?” he offered as you started packing your things. His words had an uncertain tone to them, as if he wasn’t sure you’d still want to spend time with him after this - but it only took you a second of thinking to realize you’d rather continue hanging out with him than going home on your own.

“Sure! I need to walk Kiwi too, actually.”

“Your dog’s name is Kiwi?!”

“Yes,” you said, chuckling at his fascinated tone.

“That’s an adorable name.”

“Thanks, I chose it.”

“Oh, then I take it back. Worst name I’ve ever heard for a dog.”

“Hey!” you exclaimed, lightly hitting him on the head with your math notebook, making him raise a hand in self-defense as he laughed.

“Sorry, sorry. Does your cat also have a fruit name?” 

A pause. “Mango,” you mumbled, and he immediately burst into laughter again. You side-eyed him as you zipped up your bag.

“Wow, you have amazing taste in pet names, Y/N.”

“Shut up,” you said, laughing along. Then you realized something, and you suddenly stopped laughing, looking up at Jake with wide eyes that made him slightly start to panic. “Oh my God, Jake, are our dogs going to meet?”

“Our dogs are going to meet,” he echoed in a sort of fascinated whisper. You both understood the other - dogs becoming friends was the cutest thing ever.

“Let’s go,” you whispered back excitedly.

When you reached the living room downstairs, you bid Mrs Sim goodbye, then went to the entrance to put your shoes back on. “You two sure get along well,” you heard her say to her son with a suggestive tone. Even though she had dropped the volume of her voice, the door was wide open and there were only a few meters between you, so you’d heard her loud and clear. 

“Geez, Mom,” Jake groaned, seemingly irked by his mom’s insinuation.

“It’s just you’ve never brought a girl home, Jakey-”

“Okay, we’re leaving now! Layla, come!”

You hadn’t even realized how wide you were grinning until Jake saw you tying your shoelaces and grumbled “What are you smiling so hard for.”

“Nothing,” you giggled, and your smile grew as you watched a grin break through his pretend-upset expression.

You sighed contentedly as you stepped outside, letting the crisp early April air hit your face. You tightened your scarf around your neck and buried your hands in your pocket and you and Jake started walking side by side, Layla happily leading the way. The streets were fairly quiet at this time of day, save for the yells of children still playing in their backyards before dinner and a few cars of people coming home late from work.

Only the first five seconds of the walk were silent, until you couldn’t contain yourself anymore. “So, never brought a girl home, huh?” you asked with a teasing smirk.

Jake let out an offended scoff and looked up to the sky as if God could help him out of this one. Sadly, He didn’t, so Jake had to find an answer himself. “I’m not talking about this with you.”

“Why not?”

Pouting, Jake spared you a sideway glance. “Because you’re a girl,” he replied, voice lowered to a mumble.

You chuckled at this. “Very astute observation, Jake.”

“No, I- Ugh,” he groaned before laughing along with you. “I don’t need a girl to know how bad I am with- well, with girls.”

“I can help with that,” you said before you really thought about it. “I mean, I’m not a love expert by any means, but I can maybe give, I don’t know, pointers or something if there’s someone you like-”

“There’s no one I like,” Jake quickly cut in. “Um, not right now, at least.”

“O-okay,” you replied, nodding. “That’s fine.” 

“What about you? Do you like anyone?”

As Jake asked the question, he realized he already knew the answer - you liked Sunghoon. How could he forget?! Half of his plan had been to make you get closer to his friend, but he hadn’t even started thinking about that yet. In his defense, he’d come up with that plan three days ago.

Your answer surprised him. “Um, no, me neither. Not right now, at least,” you said, repeating his words with a smile on your face. You locked eyes for a second before looking away at the same time, chuckling.

“Right,” he said. He knew what he had read in your diary, so maybe you were just too shy to admit you had a crush on his friend of all people.

An unexpected awkwardness settled between the two of you, and you more than anything wanted it to go away. Even though it’d only been a few days since you and Jake had started getting to know each other, you already felt comfortable enough to be yourself around him, and it usually took you weeks before reaching that level with anyone. This hadn’t happened since you met Yena and Hyewon at the beginning of high school - they had been friends since middle school, and so had you and Chaewon, and when the four of you met, you had instant chemistry. But maybe it was slightly too early to start talking about crushes with Jake.

For once, you were the one to break the silence - you asked him whether he knew what he wanted to do after school. Basic question, but you were genuinely curious. 

Looking a little bashful, he confessed his dream had always been to be a math teacher and soccer coach at a middle or high school. You told him he already had the talent for it, and when he blushed at your words, you made sure to tease him for it.  

“I’m not sure yet,” you said when he returned the question. “I know I wanna go to college and continue doing English Lit and theater there, but that’s about it.”

“That’s already good enough,” Jake said with a smile. “Still got time to figure out what comes after, right?”

You naturally mirrored his smile - there was something contagious about Jake’s puppyish grin that made it hard not to smile yourself. “Right.”

The three of you reached your house quickly after that. Your mom still hadn’t come home from work, so Kiwi was even more excited than usual for your arrival home. You and Jake watched fondly as your dogs sniffed each other for a few seconds before starting to run around together. The fact that they got along made you really happy, perhaps unreasonably so, and you started bouncing up and down on the balls of your feet as you watched them play. “Our dogs are friends!” you exclaimed excitedly. 

When you turned to look at Jake, he wasn’t watching the dogs like you had been - he was gazing straight at you, eyes soft with something that made your heart skip a beat. You couldn’t look away, and it was only after a few seconds that he seemed to snap out of the sort of daze he was in. He cleared his throat and you finally tore your eyes away from him.

“Let me just- Kiwi! I need to put his leash around him,” you said, speaking quickly to dissipate the weird atmosphere as best as you could. You led Jake down the path you usually took with Kiwi that led to a park in your neighborhood, and you were relieved when normal conversation started again.

Jake insisted on walking you back to your house even though he had left his earlier. He made a whole show of not going until you’d walked inside and closed the door, so you’d rushed to your window to shout his name and wave goodbye at him, which made him laugh.

You turned back to Kiwi when Jake and Layla had turned a corner and you couldn’t watch them anymore. “Are you happy you made a new friend, Kiwi?”

The Corgi barked happily at you in response - probably more at hearing his name than because he understood your question, but still, you liked to think you could communicate with your dog on such a level. You chuckled and took him in your arms. “Me too.”

—

Apparently, you couldn’t even wave to someone in the hallway without being interrogated about it anymore.

“Y/N, did you just say hi to Jake Sim?” Chaewon asked like you’d just insulted her whole family.

It was 10 a.m. on a simple Tuesday morning, the day after Jake and you had studied together for the first time, and you’d just walked past the boy - so of course, you said hi to him. Maybe, your heart started beating slightly faster when you’d noticed him approaching. Maybe, it was nice to be on the receiving end of his friendly grin.

“Yes?” you replied, sentence coming out more like a question.

“Since when do you say hi to Jake Sim?!” 

“Since today, I guess.”

“But why?!” She’d raised her voice so much, you’d gotten strange looks from other students in the hallway. 

“I told you!”

She shook her head slowly at you as if to say, No you didn’t!

You rolled your eyes and sighed. Chaewon and her early onset short-term memory loss. “The backpack thing? And agreeing to tutoring each other? I wrote to the group chat about this!”

“Oh, that! Of course I remember that,” she said, even though you knew she had forgotten about it and remembered it just now. “So, has that started already?”

You reached the classroom for your next class and sat down in your usual seats next to each other, waiting for the teacher to arrive. Busy hallways like these were the perfect place for gossip, because they were loud and nobody paid attention to others’ conversations. “Yeah, yesterday afternoon.”

Chaewon gasped. “And you didn’t tell us?!”

“Will you quiet down? I was going to see and tell you guys today anyway.”

“Okay, so, tell me about it.”

“But-”

“Tell. Me.”

You wouldn’t see Yena and Hyewon until lunch in two hours, and you knew Chaewon didn’t have the patience to wait until then. So you sighed again and obliged, telling her about your afternoon with Jake in every detail you could remember, because she would ask about insignificant things anyway. 

To your surprise, the first thing she said when you were done talking was this: “Y/N, do you like Jake?”

Your mouth opened slightly in shock at the question, but before you could even retort, you started giggling. “No, I don’t,” you said in a way that sounded like you very much did.

“Oh my God! You so do!” Chaewon said, giggling along with you. “You whore, you’ve only talked to him, like, twice,” she joked.

You gasped fake-dramatically and slapped her arm. “Oh please, look at Hyewon and Jaemin, they started dating after a week of talking.”

“Yes, and they’ve been going one year strong, so clearly, you need to ask Jake out and get this over with. You’ll get a boyfriend and a math tutor all-in-one, it’s a perfect deal!”

“Don’t get too carried away, okay? Jake and I are friends. Like you said, we barely know each other right now.”

You meant this - sure, you had had a really good time with Jake both times you saw him, and you were looking forward to your next tutoring session, but you chalked it up to the excitement of making a new friend. Plus, barely last week you felt some sort of way towards his best friend - wouldn’t it be weird to practically transfer your feelings from Sunghoon to Jake?

“Whatever. Yena and Hyewon are gonna freak when I tell them,” Chaewon said excitedly.

You shook your head at your friend but couldn’t keep down the amused grin on your face. “You guys are insane.”

“Oh please, like you’re not the president of our Park Sunghoon fanclub. I can’t believe you’re leaving us for his best friend!”

“Hey, if anything, less competition for you, right?”

Chaewon opened her mouth to say something, but the teacher arrived, starting the lesson before having even put her bag down - Mrs Lee always arrived late but never wasted a second of class when she was in the room. Your friend resorted to sticking her tongue out at you instead, and you chuckled at her childishness as you opened your History notebook. 

—

Jake was a complete, total, utter idiot. His plan had consisted of two things only, and he’d somehow managed to forget one of them, even after talking about it with you, albeit vaguely. It had taken him two weeks and one Park Sunghoon to even remember it.

Between Jake’s soccer practice, Sunghoon’s ice skating practice and Jay’s being away at boarding school, the three friends only had one night every week on which they were all free - Friday night. So, every Friday, they planned some sort of hang out at one of their houses and gamed or watched movies all night.

Kinda like date night, but for bros.

This was one of those bro nights; namely, the one in the second week of you and Jake tutoring each other. The boys had decided to go to the burger joint they like that night and were in the middle of a french fry fight when Sunghoon mentioned your and Jake’s new friendship.

“So, Jake… what’s up with you and Y/N?”

Jake halted in his motions, redirecting to his mouth the fry he was about to throw at Jay. “Nothing’s up with me and Y/N. What makes you say that?”

“Just, you know, you seem like you’ve become actual friends. Talking in the hallways and walking your dogs together and whatnot.”

“Y/N as in Y/N? Sunghoon’s Y/N?” Jay said, halfway through a bite of his cheeseburger.

“She’s not my Y/N-”

“Yes, Y/N as in Y/N, you idiot,” Jake cut in. “And like you said, we’re friends.”

“Is she the girl you posted some BeReals with?” Jay asked, and Jake nodded. “She’s pretty! No wonder Sunghoon likes her so much.”

Sunghoon sighed as he let his head hang low. “God forbid I find a girl cute, because I’ll mention it once, two years ago and you guys make me out to be in love with her.”

“Sunghoon, you act like girls don’t exist, so of course when you not only mention a girl, but describe her as cute, that means you’re in love with her!”

“But I’m not! We were literally having a whole conversation about girls, I happened to see Y/N and her friends from far away, I said she was cute, and now you guys won’t let me live it down. Jay, you weren’t even there!”

“Yeah, but the way Jake told me about the whole thing, it really sounded like you liked her.”

“Why would you trust Jake to relay something like this correctly?!”

Jay paused and tilted his head. “You have a point there.”

“Hey!”

“So you don’t, like… like her, or something?” Sunghoon asked, looking at his friend as he sipped on his Pepsi.

This made Jake stop. Did he like you? Wasn’t the fact that he was considering it sign enough? Surely, if there was nothing there, he would have answered no right away.

But there was no use thinking about it. You liked Sunghoon. And as much as he liked to deny it, Jake knew Sunghoon liked you, too. After two years, there was finally an opportunity for the two of you to get closer - Jake wasn’t about to get in the middle of that. If anything, he should help his friends out. Then, when you and Sunghoon eventually got married, Jake would have the honor of saying it was all thanks to him in his best man’s speech. 

“No, I don’t. Don’t worry, Hoon, I’m not gonna steal your girl away from you.”

“Again, she’s not my girl-”

“Whatever you say. I’ll introduce you guys.”

Even if Sunghoon didn’t think he liked you yet, Jake knew it was just a matter of time - his friend just needed to spend a few hours with you to realize he did. You were pretty, smart, funny, nice, had the sweetest laugh he’d ever heard, got along with dogs, and even though you sometimes had weird opinions, it was always fun, talking to you. It was easy and comfortable. Anyone with taste would fall for you.

Anyone, except for Jake, of course.

—

For the past three weeks, you and Jake had gotten along perfectly, but today, on this bright Tuesday afternoon, you really wanted to strangle him. 

When he’d invited you to come and watch him at soccer practice, you’d been surprised, but happy - usually, you invited people to watch an actual game, not just practice. But you were just glad for the opportunity to spend more time with him. 

Without realizing it, you were giddy with excitement the whole day, counting down the minutes until classes were over and Jake’s practice started. Jake had told you to just head to the bleachers while the players got ready in the locker room, but when you reached said bleachers, someone was already sitting there, looking at something on their phone. You recognized him immediately as Sunghoon. He didn’t notice you right away, so you had time to wipe the surprise off of your face - you hadn’t thought anyone came to watch practice, but Sunghoon was probably here for Jake, just like you. 

“Hey,” you said quietly as you sat down next to him. Even though you were technically still on school property, this was the first time you saw Sunghoon outside of somewhere like a classroom, a hallway or the cafeteria. You weren’t as nervous as you thought you’d be, seeing him unexpectedly like this. 

You chuckled when Sunghoon started at your sudden arrival. “Oh, hey, Y/N,” he said, chuckling too, albeit somewhat awkwardly. “Sorry, didn’t hear you coming.”

“It’s fine,” you said with a smile as you sat down next to him on the bleachers. You didn’t know what sort of distance was appropriate between you two, if you should sit close or far, but you stopped yourself before you could overthink something as trivial as that. Neither of you said anything for a few seconds and you wished practice had started before you got here, so that you’d have something to look at other than an empty field.

You broke the silence before it became too uncomfortable. “So, do you come watch Jake often?”

You’d been fiddling with your hands as you spoke, only turning your head to look at Sunghoon as you awaited his answer. Your eyes didn’t even meet for a fraction of a second before he whipped his head to look at the field, as if unable to look at you and talk at the same time. At least he had a nice side profile for you to look at.

“Um, just on Tuesdays. I have ice skating practice after this, so I come here first, then he comes with me to the rink,” he replied. He glanced at you, lips pressed into a thin line that somewhat resembled a smile and that pushed dimples into his cheeks. You simply hummed in response. 

“What about you, how come you’re here?”

“Jake asked me,” you replied. Sunghoon let out a long “oh” as he nodded, turning his head back towards the field again. You didn’t think you’d ever had such a slow conversation. It was like you and Sunghoon both repeated your words ten times over in your heads before saying them out loud.

“Are you coming to my practice, too?” he asked after another pause.

The question took you aback slightly as you hadn’t even considered it, but it could be fun, seeing Sunghoon practice ice skating. It’d also be fun to hang out with Jake. “If it’s fine with you, then yeah, why not,” you replied, smiling at Sunghoon. He glanced at you again before looking away with a smile, an actual one this time that showed his teeth and made his eyes crinkle.

“Yeah, sure. People usually only come to actual shows, so I like it when someone’s there to watch practice.” Before you could find something to say, the players arrived jogging onto the field, immediately starting their warm-up laps. Some were serious about it and stayed focused as they ran, while others goofed around, running backwards and slapping other players on their butts before sprinting away. Jake, of course, was part of the latter group.

Now that something was actually happening on the field, you and Sunghoon had an excuse not to make conversation anymore. You tried to ignore it, but it was so awkward you wanted to die. You realized now why you were so attracted to people like Jake and Chaewon - without even being aware of it, they brought you out of your shell and made you feel at ease. You wished you could do that on your own, but you were always too scared, so you needed that person who was confident enough showing themselves to you first to make you feel comfortable doing the same. You and Sunghoon, unfortunately, were too similar in that sense to do that for each other. So you just sat there in silence, observing Jake and waving back at him when he caught your gazes.

The ninety minutes of practice didn’t go by in total silence - you asked Sunghoon about some soccer rules you didn’t get, and he shared some anecdotes from his and Jake’s earlier teenage years, including a very entertaining story about a tantrum 9-year-old Jake had thrown when he hadn’t agreed with the red card the referee had given him. You weren’t sure how the topic came up, but at some point, you even shared pictures of your pets. Sunghoon had one of those small crusty white dogs, but you kept your laughter in and cooed over how cute she was. 

But still, most of the time, you were watching Jake. You had never been interested in soccer or any sort of sport that involved balls until now. Somehow, he managed to make flushed cheeks, a heaving chest and hairline beaded with sweat look glorious. In total honesty, you were paying more attention to the player himself than to the sport, to the point that you barely noticed when he scored a goal during their practice match. It was only when Jake started cheering and high-fiving his teammates that you realized what had happened, and you gave him two thumbs up and a wide grin when he looked your and Sunghoon’s way, proudly shouting “Did you see that?!”

The realization hit you like a ton of bricks right there and then. The way your heart swelled as you watched his excited, puppyish grin take over his features was undeniable - you liked Jake. You like liked him. Your gaze continued to follow him as he finished his celebratory lap. If you could’ve seen yourself right then, you’d probably have been embarrassed by your awestruck expression and slightly agape mouth, but you couldn’t help yourself.

Much to your dismay, you realized that Chaewon had seen right through you. You hadn’t wanted to read too much into your feelings, but they had become too obvious to ignore. You hadn’t experienced them yourself since middle school (Choi Soobin had really been a heartbreaker back then), but you’d heard about the telltale signs of a crush too many times not to know about them. It was now clear that the way you felt about Jake and the way you had felt about Sunghoon were worlds apart. Feeling nervous around him and your heart skipping a beat when you made eye contact; wanting to see him smile; laughing at all his jokes, even the bad ones; missing him even though it’d been seconds since you said goodbye, and counting down the days until you saw him again. And, yes, looking at his pictures on social media over and over again. You did all those things, so you knew there was no point in lying to yourself anymore - you liked Jake Sim. 

It didn’t help that he was always kind to you, never making you feel stupid for not understanding something in your tutoring sessions and being patient enough to explain the same thing over and over again. He always paid attention to small things, which never failed to make your heart race, like asking after your aging cat’s condition after you’d told him he had a health check-up over the weekend or stocking up on your favorite snack the week after you’d told him about it. He’d also immediately picked up on your habit of teasing the people you felt comfortable with and you loved how he returned it tenfold. It was as much fun debating with him over nothing and making him shut up with your senseless arguments as it was being rendered speechless when he came up with the perfect retort. 

And of course, there was no denying that Jake was ridiculously attractive. There were times you got so caught up in the way his lips moved as he spoke or the way his fingers looked as he pointed at numbers on the page that your mind completely blanked out and you stopped listening to his words for a few seconds. You didn’t know what to make of his small chuckle and smirk when he noticed your gaze fixated on him, but you knew it wasn’t good for your heart. And let’s not even get started on the fact that sitting so close to him meant you could smell the lingering scent of his cologne every single time.

Even now, with flushed cheeks and hair slicked back with sweat, you want to run onto the field and give him a big smooch on his cheek, telling him you were proud of him for scoring that goal.

But even though you were getting closer and he had offered for you to come watch his practice, you squashed down as best as you could any hope that he might feel the same way about you. Even if he insisted he was bad with girls, Jake was popular at school, and you were sure there were many other girls who had a crush on him - so why would he like you of all people?

Sunghoon’s voice snapped you out of your thoughts. “Every time he scores, he acts like it’s the first time he’s ever done it,” he said, chuckling and shaking his head at his friend’s over-dramatic antics. The coach was trying to get Jake to calm down so that the game could resume.

“He’s so cute,” you said, voice quiet, before you could stop yourself. But as soon as the words were out, you realized what you’d done, and your eyes doubled in size as you turned to look at Sunghoon. He had whipped his head to look at you, too, and his eyes were just as big as yours. Then, he burst into laughter, and you hoped the Earth would suddenly open beneath your feet and swallow you whole. 

When his surprise had subsided, Sunghoon turned to you again, an incredulous but amused glint in his eyes. “Did you just call Jake cute?”

You crossed your arms over your chest, slightly frowning as you avoided Sunghoon’s gaze. “I just meant, you know, it’s cute how excited he got. I didn’t say he was cute,” you mumbled, knowing you were doing a poor job of defending yourself.

“That’s exactly what you said, though. You said, and I quote, He’s so cute.” You glared at Sunghoon. Who knew he would only become talkative once it came to teasing you about Jake? 

His expression softened slightly when he realized you might actually be upset about this, and he turned his attention back towards the field, smile growing when he found his friend. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”

“There’s nothing to be said anyway.”

“Oh? So you don’t mind if I tell Jake that you have the biggest, fattest crush on- hmph!”

You’d cut Sunghoon off by pressing your palm to his mouth, mustering the most menacing look you could to scare him off. “I do not,” you said firmly as you moved your hand away from him.

“Sure, you don’t,” he replied, chuckling. Clearly, your most menacing look wasn’t so menacing.

“I get why Jake’s so annoying now, it’s because he’s friends with you.”

Sunghoon raised an amused eyebrow at this. “He might be annoying, but he’s also cute, right?”

“Shut up!” you shrieked immediately, but you couldn’t stop the grin forcing its way onto your lips.

“Just saying,” Sunghoon said, and you laughed together. Maybe you should’ve been more worried about Jake’s literal best friend finding out you had a crush on him, but you somehow trusted Sunghoon not to blabber about it. Whether because he was nice or because he wanted to watch you struggle with your feelings, you weren’t sure, but at least you felt your secret was safe with him.

You looked back at the field, and just as your eyes found Jake, you saw him turn his head away. Had you seen him just seconds prior, you might have noticed the crease in his eyebrows as he watched you and Sunghoon laugh together. Sunghoon isn’t that funny, he thought, what could you be laughing so hard about?

He didn’t understand the sudden weight in his heart at the sight of you and his friend getting along so well. This was his whole plan after all - force some proximity between you and Sunghoon so that you could talk and hopefully make your feelings clear to each other after some time. Clearly, it was working. So why was it bothering him so much? 

He had to turn his attention back to the game, so he could only ruminate over it for five seconds, but for the remaining thirty minutes, he could barely focus on anything. Whenever he glanced back at you and Sunghoon, you were both looking at him and not talking to each other, and that somehow bothered him even more. 

He used his time in the lockers to get out of the weird mood he was in - whatever was going on between you and Sunghoon, he didn’t want to ruin it by being grumpy. So when he came back out and found the two of you waiting for him at the bus stop, he put on his best smile. 

Having you around made his usual Tuesday afternoon with Sunghoon more fun - after years of friendship, Sunghoon ignored most of his jokes and could tune the sound of his voice out, but you still laughed at everything he said, and his heart swelled with pride every time he made you laugh.

It was only a ten-minute bus ride from the school to the ice rink so you still had twenty minutes to spare before Sunghoon’s lesson started. As always after soccer practice, Jake was famished, so you stopped by a convenience store and got more snacks than you really needed.

You sat next to Sunghoon and across from Jake at a picnic table in front of the ice rink, watching the boy in front of you with fascination as he gorged himself on banana milk and chocolate snacks.

“God, how long has it been since you last ate?” you asked with genuine concern in your voice. Sunghoon followed your gaze towards Jake, only then noticing his friend’s feral behavior as if this was a normal occurrence for them.

“Like three hours,” Jake answered. “I’m starving. So hungry I could eat Sunghoon.”

When he looked up, you were both peering at him with furrowed eyebrows and bewildered expressions on your faces. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you mean that Sunghoon is a horse?” you asked.

Jake mirrored your confused expressions. “What? No, why would I say that?”

“The saying goes, so hungry I could eat a horse, dumbass,” Sunghoon chimed in.

“Why would I eat a horse?” Jake replied, shaking his head and chuckling at you and Sunghoon like you were the ones who had gotten a basic idiom wrong.

“Why would you eat me?” Sunghoon bit back, sounding almost offended.

“It’s just a saying, dude.”

Half-an-hour and two whole packets of biscuits later, you and Jake sat side-by-side on the benches, watching Sunghoon as he did his warm-ups on the ice. This was your first time seeing a professional ice skater and you were transfixed, to say the least. He was just skating across the rink and rolling his arms and neck to get the muscles moving, but it all seemed so effortless and elegant that you couldn’t help but watch with your mouth slightly open, eyes eager to keep up with Sunghoon’s figure.

You were so mesmerized that you had no idea Jake was practically burning holes into the side of your face. Eyes narrowed and nose scrunched in disgust, he couldn’t believe you were enjoying the show in front of you that much. “He’s not even doing anything special right now, you know,” he said, but it only made him realize that when Sunghoon did start doing cool stuff, you’d like it even more.

Your head barely budged in Jake’s direction as you answered him, and your eyes certainly didn’t leave Sunghoon. “Really? It already looks so cool, though.” Jake scoffed, but that still didn’t get your attention, which made him scoff again. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned like a child whose parent wasn’t paying attention to their drawing. 

“Cooler than me?”

Finally, you look at me, Jake thought, and his frown immediately dissipated into a grin when your eyes met. But judging by the teasing way your lips curled up, he already knew he wasn’t going to like your answer.

“Cooler than you,” you replied before turning your attention back to the rink.

Jake leans back with a pout, opting to glare at his friend instead of you. He tried to put himself in your shoes and figure out what it was about Sunghoon you liked so much that Jake didn’t also have. Devastatingly good looks? Check. Charming smile? Check. Cute dog? Check - Jake more so than Sunghoon. Brains? Okay, both of them lacked this. Good personality? Check - however, you needed months before Sunghoon revealed himself to you, whereas Jake was outgoing and was comfortable even with people he’d just met. 

So why was the bearer of your affection Sunghoon and not Jake?

And why did Jake even care that you liked his friend over him in the first place?

It wasn’t like Jake liked you - he couldn’t like a girl that his best friend liked - so why did this at all matter to him? If anything, the fact that you liked Sunghoon back should’ve been something to rejoice over. It had been, up until now, and Jake couldn’t figure out why. He couldn’t figure out this weird sensation that had plagued him in the soccer field and followed him to the ice rink as he watched you watch Sunghoon with amazement.

Jake was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t even notice when you detached your eyes from Sunghoon, who was talking to his coach, and tilted your head at him. “Jake?” 

The boy only let out a low hum, still too upset to look at you.

An amused grin made your lips quirk up. “Are you pouting because I said Sunghoon was cooler than you?”

Jake scoffed, turning his head away from you. “No.”

A pause. “So you don’t mind if I go on and on about how elegant and beautiful ice skating is, while running after a ball and kicking it is the basis of the stupidest sport in the world?”

Jake glared at you, but it only made you smile more. “It’s not stupid.”

Despite himself, his pretend angry facade broke apart at the sound of your airy giggles. Jake didn’t think his ears had ever been graced with such a pretty sound before - he slapped himself mentally as soon as that thought crossed his mind. 

His heart did jumps and spins more impressive than Sunghoon’s when you reached a hand out to ruffle his hair, shaking your head at his behavior. For once, he was glad that you turned back to Sunghoon so that you wouldn’t see the bright blush spreading all over his face.

For the next hour, Jake put his weird feelings to the side and watched his friend practice his routine for his upcoming competition. Even he had to admit that Sunghoon looked pretty cool doing what he loved.

You told him you found it all the more impressive because you’d never skated before, so it looked unachievable to you, and an idea immediately formed in Jake’s mind. As soon as Sunghoon’s practice was over, he rushed over to his friend and asked if the two of you could join him on the ice. Sunghoon turned to his coach, who simply shrugged.

“I trust you to look after them,” she said. “Just make sure to be out when the hockey team gets here.”

Before you knew it, Jake was helping you tie up your ice skates (the sight of which made you faint-hearted) and both boys helped you onto the ice rink, each holding onto one of your hands as you tried not to freak out at the feeling of your knees being so wobbly. Sunghoon demonstrated how to move around the ice, and soon enough, you’d gotten the hang of it - but you still made sure to keep Jake at an arm’s length so you could grab onto him every time you lost your balance. Jake stayed by your side, smiling fondly at how excited you looked and cheering you on every time you took a step of your own. Sunghoon, on the other hand, seemed to find it funny to watch from afar and point and laugh every time you stumbled.

After some time, Sunghoon announced he was feeling hungry and decided to go eat some snacks, leaving you and Jake alone in the rink. The wink Sunghoon threw your way when Jake wasn’t looking let you know what his true intentions were, and you couldn’t believe Jake’s best friend had just become your wingman.

“Feeling ready to skate around the rink?” Jake asked. His boyish grin was contagious, and you found yourself matching it even though you were still nervous about moving around too much.

“If you help me,” you answered tentatively, looking at him worriedly as you held out your hand for him to take. The softness of his gaze as he smiled down at you made you want to melt into a puddle on the floor.

“Of course,” he said, taking your hand in his warm one. Your fingers intertwined as if out of second nature and you thought you finally understood why people said their hands were meant to hold someone else’s.

Being friends with an ice skater for such a long time meant Jake had acquired some skill, too, which is why he could so easily show you how to turn or pick up speed. Whenever you lost your balance, he was always quick enough to make sure you didn’t actually fall, picking you up before your backside could touch the ice. He found your frightened expression every time you thought you would fall absolutely adorable, but your pout and slight frown whenever he teased you were somehow even cuter.

He only let go of your hand after some ten minutes (neither of you had even begun to question Sunghoon’s whereabouts by then) when he came to stand in front of you, a serious expression on his face.

“I think you’re ready, Y/N,” he declared solemnly.

“Ready for…?” you asked, scared of whatever he had in mind.

He leaned in slightly and the sudden proximity took you aback, but he didn’t seem to realize. A mischievous smirk broke through his handsome features. “A race,” he whispered, then skated to one edge of the rink and motioned for you to follow him. Reluctantly, you did.

“First to the other edge has to…” he thought for a second, gazing at the ceiling. You wanted to be mad at him for proposing a race when you’d literally just learned how to skate, but how could you when he looked so cute and giddy, searching for the loser’s penalty? “Buy the other ice cream!”

Your eyes were probably the image of tenderness as you looked at him. “Deal,” you said, wanting to sound as playful as him but voice coming out soft. Since when had you fallen so hard for him?

You held each other’s gazes for a couple more seconds before both turning in front of you, getting ready for your race. Jake counted down from three, and your skating wasn’t so bad at first - until you got too cocky for your own good, trying to go at a pace you clearly couldn’t handle. Before you knew it, your knees betrayed you and you found yourself tripping over, your butt making a loud thump sound as it came into contact with the ice.

On your way down, you’d shrieked Jake’s name, and he was at your side in the blink of an eye, holding your shoulder and looking at you worriedly. The pain was immediate, and for a few seconds, you couldn’t answer him and reassure him that you were fine.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have asked to race, God Y/N I’m so stupid I’m so sorry are you okay I didn’t want you to get hurt-”

“Jake,” you squeaked.

“Yeah?”

“I’m okay, calm down,” you said when the pain subsided, managing a smile. “I’ll just have a sore butt tomorrow.” He chuckled at the word ‘butt,’ but you didn’t have it in you to roll his eyes at his childishness.

“Are you sure you’re okay? There’s an infirmary here-”

“I’m sure, Jakey-poo,” you teased, making him lose the concerned expression as he bore an unimpressed one instead.

“I guess you are fine if you can think to call me that. Come on, up!” he said as he stood up, reaching his hands out for you to take. Just as he helped you up, Sunghoon came sprinting and stood at the entrance to the rink.

“Is everything okay? I heard a yell,” he said, slightly out-of-breath with half a biscuit in his mouth. Guess he really was eating this whole time.

You and Jake laughed and shook your head at him, and you reassured him that everything was fine. 

“Good, ‘cause the hockey team’s here and we have to go anyway.”

There was a bus that took Sunghoon directly from the ice rink to his house, but you and Jake had to go back to the school to catch the one you usually took, which meant you had a forty-minute journey in front of you. And yet, Jake’s company made those forty minutes feel like five, and you found yourself disappointed when the bus neared your stop.

“If you want, we can still go walk Kiwi and Layla,” he offered shyly a few minutes before your stop, as if he’d read your mind. 

“I’d love to.” You watched as his small smile bloomed into a wider one.

“I’m glad,” he chuckled, relieved. “I was scared you’d be tired of me after spending the whole afternoon together,” he admitted, looking down at his lap with a bashful expression on his face. It wasn’t often that Jake looked timid like this, but whenever he did, your heart tripled in size.

“I don’t think I could get tired of you.” You were too shy to look him in the eye while you said this, but in your peripheral, you saw his grin get impossibly wider and his eyebrows raise. He bumped your shoulder with his, making the both of you burst into giggles.

You were still smiling long after you’d come home from your walk.

—

Unfortunately for Jake, forcing you and Sunghoon to sit together for ninety minutes hadn’t resulted in the two of you confessing your undying love for the other and getting together - clearly, his plan hadn’t worked very well. But Jake, instead of coming up with another strategy, decided he should just basically do the same thing again and hope it went better this time. 

Bro night had been a tradition for the past three years that the boys only very rarely broke, in cases of illness, filial obligations or important competitions the following day. This wasn’t any one of those cases, but Jake decided bro night must be slightly sacrificed that night - for your and Sunghoon’s sake. Years down the line, he knew you’d thank him.

This was why he tricked you into thinking you had been invited to bro night (you’d heard a lot about it and considered it an honor to be included) when really, he made Jay promise not to show at the cinema so that you and Sunghoon could be alone. The two of them would make up an excuse about not being able to make it on time and show up later at the diner (“If you want to set them up, shouldn’t we also leave them alone after the movie?” Jay had asked Jake over the phone, and Jake had been unable to explain why he didn’t want you to spend the whole night alone with Sunghoon).

“They ditched us,” Sunghoon had said in lieu of a greeting when you found him at the entrance of the cinema. He turned his phone screen towards you, showing you their group chat - Jay had had some sort of meeting at his school that had run late and Jake had to go to the vet suddenly because Layla kept making weird noises.

“Oh no, I hope she’ll be okay,” you said, voice laced with genuine worry.

Sunghoon just sighed. “I’m sure she will.” He knew what his friends were up to - it almost never happened that one of them was unable to make it to bro night, so two at once? They were clearly lying. He would make sure to tell Jake how worried sick you were about his dog’s fake illness later on just so his friend would feel extra guilty.

You had been looking forward to hanging out with Jake and his friends all day, so you were disappointed to know he wouldn’t make it until later. It wasn’t much comfort that the movie they had picked, some recent Marvel release, was one you were not at all interested in, and you couldn’t even obsess over Jake’s presence next to you instead of the movie because he wasn’t there. You’d have to sit with awkward, quiet Sunghoon for God knows how long - at least the cinema wasn’t much of a talking place. 

You declined his kind offer of sharing a big popcorn tub - you didn’t want to risk a cliché reaching-for-popcorn-at-the-same-time moment with Sunghoon, although you’d daydreamed and giggled about it happening with Jake earlier that day. Instead, you sipped grumpily on your Cherry Coke, watching the trailers for upcoming movies and discussing them with Sunghoon. (“I’m so excited for the Barbie movie,” he’d surprised you by saying. Maybe he wasn’t so bad.)

As the lights dimmed, announcing the imminent start of the movie, Sunghoon whispered something that completely changed your mind about Marvel. “It’s so stupid that Jake isn’t here, seriously. He’s been going on and on about going to see this movie since the trailer came out.” Suddenly, you’d never felt the need to pay attention to something more than this. 

Well, in your humble opinion, the film wasn’t anything to write home about. It was a lot of loud action scenes with some funny one-liners that, okay, you chuckled at. And the actors were hot. You could sort of see why Jake would enjoy Marvel movies, although you yourself liked films with more social commentary, such as Mean Girls or Bee Movie. You’d need to make Jake watch Twilight one of these days - you were sure he’d like the soundtrack, if nothing else.

At least, you and Sunghoon have something to talk about during your short walk to the diner. As you enter the restaurant, a familiar voice calling out your name catches you off-guard.

“Chaewon? I thought you didn’t work on Friday nights!” you exclaimed, letting your friend bring you into a hug. You gave her a once-over - she always looked so pretty in her work uniform, white t-shirt dress draping her body perfectly, apron cinching at her waist, and short pigtails under her 50’s style diner hat. If the blush spreading on Sunghoon’s cheeks at her sudden appearance was anything to go by, his thoughts might not have been too far from yours.

She pouted, taking your hands in hers and swaying them between the two of you. “I usually don’t, but Yunjin asked me to trade shifts and she always says yes when I ask her, so I felt bad saying no.” You nodded and she turned to Sunghoon.

“Hi, Sunghoon!”

“H-hi, Chaewon.”

“Where’s Jay and Jake?” she asked, looking behind the two of you. You’d told the group chat about your evening plans and a lot of freaking out had taken place. 

“Should be here any minute,” you sighed, and when she looked at you questioningly, you told her you’d explain later.

She sat you at a four-person booth by the window and brought you drinks (“On the house,” she’d said with a wink, but you weren’t sure this had been allowed by any of her superiors) for you to sip on while you waited for the others. Every time she was free, she came over to your table and gossiped about the customers. You did not miss the way Sunghoon’s face lit up whenever she approached you.

Jake and Jay see you before you see them. Jay, the only one with a driver’s license out of the three, had picked Jake up, and he was parking his car when Jake gasped loudly, making Jay jump. “I’m trying to park, man, can you be calm?”

“What’s she doing here?” Jake exclaimed, completely ignoring his friend.

Jay followed Jake’s gaze, but he wasn’t sure what his friend was going on about. All he saw was you, whom he recognized from pictures only, Sunghoon, and a waitress that seemed overly-friendly. “Who?” he asked.

“Chaewon,” Jake hissed, like her name was a curse. “She’s ruining our plan!”

Jay sighed. “First of all, this is your plan. Second of all, it was ruined from the beginning. And by that, I mean that your plan sucks, Jake.”

Jake clicked his teeth. “Whatever. Let’s just go,” he said, getting out of the car and heading straight for you. He made sure to give Chaewon a pointed look as he sat next to you in the booth, but she just seemed happy that more people had arrived. 

You bumped your knee into his to get his attention. “Hi,” you said with a smile.

He looked at you dumbly for a few seconds before Jay cleared his throat awkwardly. “Hi. This is Jay,” he said, tilting his head towards the boy but not taking his eyes off of you. You and Jay exchanged hey’s before Chaewon took your order, quickly giving it to the kitchen and scanning the room to make sure every table had what they needed, then headed back to your table. 

“Is Layla okay?” you asked Jake, worry making your brows furrow.

“Huh?” The sudden mention of his dog took him aback. Why wouldn’t she be okay?

“Layla?” you repeated, tilting your head. “Is she okay? You said you had to go to the vet.”

His eyes widened as he remembered his lie from earlier, and he started nodding frantically. “Oh yeah, yeah, she’s fine, we panicked over nothing,” he said with a nervous giggle. Jake was the worst liar Jay and Sunghoon had ever seen, but you were none the wiser.

“What about you, Jay? How was your school thing?” Sunghoon asked, turning to his friend with a glare and making him choke on his Coke.

“Oh, that was fine too, I guess,” Jay mumbled.

As expected, Jake and Chaewon were experts at leading the conversation, and Jay himself was pretty talkative. They all bounced off of each other naturally, and even Sunghoon knew how to throw in witty remarks now and there. You also participated, but you were more than happy just listening to them and laughing along. You tried not to think too much about how your knee would bump into Jake’s once in a while, or how he seemed to look at you every time he made a joke.

At some point, Chaewon had rushed over to your table, looking right at you with wide eyes and beaming. “Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God, Y/N, hat guy is here!” 

You instantly mirrored her expression. “Where where where?” you asked, lifting your body up to scan around the restaurant.

“Over there in the corner, but be discreet!”

You were not at all discreet as your eyes found said hat guy, noting with satisfaction that he was characteristically hatless, and you burst into laughter. “I can’t believe he’s here!”

“Right? Probably has the munchies or something,” Chaewon said, laughing along.

You only noticed then the perplexed looks all three boys were sending your way. “Who the heck is hat guy?” Jake asked, which only made you and Chaewon laugh harder.

“You wouldn’t get it,” she replied airily, waving Jake off as she made her way to a customer who had called for her. 

The boys turned to you and you shrunk in your seat at their attention. “Just a guy the girls and I find funny,” you explained, shrugging and glancing quickly at Sunghoon. If only he knew about all the times you and the girls had gossiped about him, even though he’d done nothing of importance.

When her shift was over, the first thing Chaewon did was take off her apron, then dragged you to the bathroom, where she drilled you for details about your cinema “date” with Sunghoon. 

“It was not a date, it just ended up being the two of us because the others couldn’t make it,” you insisted, but she wasn’t having it. “There’s nothing to say anyway. We got there, talked a bit, watched the movie, walked here, and that’s it.”

Chaewon sighed, shaking her head as she reapplied her lip gloss. A small smile made its way onto your lips. “I think he’s into someone else anyway.” 

You noticed how her hand faltered for a split second. “Oh yeah? Who?” she asked, trying to appear nonchalant, but you knew your friend too well. 

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” 

Unbeknownst to either of you, the discussion between the boys back at the table was not too different from yours.

“Bro, I’m literally going to kill you,” Sunghoon whisper-yelled even though you were way out of earshot already. “Do you know how awkward that was?”

“Just so you know, I had nothing to do with this,” Jay said. “I told him that putting two socially constipated idiots like you wouldn’t end well, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Y/N’s not an idiot!” Jake immediately reacted.

“And I am?!” Sunghoon retorted.

Jay just rolled his eyes.

“You are, because this is the second time you’re alone together with the girl you like and you can barely make conversation with her.”

“For the last time, I don’t like her, I just called her cute once in freshman year-”

“Same thing!”

“Jake, I don’t know how many times I can tell you the same thing before you get it. I’ve been around Y/N enough to know I don’t like her like that, okay? We’ve had two classes where we sat together for a whole semester, and we’ve worked with other people in group projects. Not to mention, you’ve made me sit through one of your practices with her. She’s nice. She sends me the homework when I miss class. She even laughs at my jokes sometimes. And her dog is super cute. I’m sure we’d be better friends if we both didn’t have crippling shyness, but I don’t like her like that. I just don’t.”

“But how?!”

“What do you mean how? This sorta thing doesn’t have any sort of reasonable answer, you just do or you don’t. I don’t. Clearly, you do.”

Jake heard the last part of Sunghoon’s words, and promptly decided to ignore them. He had to understand this first - he’d figure out his feelings later. “This whole time, I thought you were just downplaying your feelings, ‘cause you’re an awkward asshole who doesn’t do emotions,” he said, eyes tightly shut and holding his head, the confusion making his brain hurt.

“Okay, ouch. But no, I wasn’t. I really don’t know what got into your head.”

“I know what got into his head,” Jay said. Both of his friends looked at him questioningly, so he went on. “When Sunghoon mentioned Y/N, you probably thought she was super cute too, Jake. But because of bro code and whatnot, you didn’t wanna show any interest. And then as you saw her around more, you probably liked her more, but you thought Sunghoon liked her, so you sort of gave him your crush on her instead of dealing with it. You lived vicariously through him, basically. Except you’re an idiot because he doesn’t even like her like that, so you could’ve shot your shot a long time ago already. I don’t know why you didn’t just listen to him, to be honest,” Jay finished, shrugging.

“You also thought he liked her!” Jake retorted.

“That’s besides the point. The point is that you’re stupid.”

“But- but, what about all those times you talked about her? I didn’t make those up!” 

Sunghoon rolled his eyes. “The most I ever said about her was something like, Y/N and I both forgot our textbook today, or Y/N brought cookies for the class because it’s her birthday. You were always the one to notice her everywhere and go, There’s your crush, or something.”

Jake sighed, defeated. He could admit Sunghoon was right about something, and he was wrong - but he hated that Jay was also right. Had he really managed to bury his feelings for you all these years just for what he thought was Sunghoon’s sake? Sure, he was a loyal friend, but that felt a little much.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, recoiling from his friends’ expectant gazes and taking a sad bite of his cheeseburger. “It’s not like she likes me back, or anything.” 

He watched in confusion as Sunghoon let out a loud groan, screwing his eyes shut and taking his head in his hands as if it hurt. “This is so frustrating, I’m going to kill myself.”

Jake turned to Jay for some sort of explanation to their friend’s sudden suicidal thoughts, but Jay just looked back at Jake with disgust. “When did you become so dumb? I swear you didn’t use to be like this,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment.

Jake’s eyes flickered between his two friends in utter dismay. “What?”

“Jake,” Jay started. “Do you really, honestly, genuinely think Y/N doesn’t like you?”

The boy leaned back in his seat with a pout. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

Sunghoon’s head whipped up at this. Jake gulped at the intense glare his friend fixed him with - he’d never looked so angry with him, and it made Jake wonder what on Earth he could have said or done that made Sunghoon so upset. “Why?” he asked simply, but the frustration was evident in his voice.

Your diary popped up in Jake’s head. What he had read was clear. Of course, the entry dated from over a month ago now, but why would your feelings have changed since then? Jake sighs deeply, getting ready to reveal to his friends what he’d seen, but then he sees you and Chaewon emerging from the bathroom. “They’re coming back,” he mumbled.

It was Sunghoon and Jay’s turn to sigh. “Just pay attention to her, Jake, okay?” Jay instructed, giving his friend an intent look.

“I already do,” Jake replied, frowning.

“No, really pay attention to her. Then use your pea-sized brain for once in your life, and maybe you’ll realize something.”

A strongly-worded reply was on the tip of Jake’s tongue, but all thoughts of violence and murdering his friend were replaced by images of rainbows and pretty flowers when you smiled at him. He felt like the biggest of idiots for liking you so much and only realizing it now.

“Hi,” he said dumbly as you found your seat next to him again, then stole a french fry from you even though he had many left himself. When you gasped at his audacity, he just giggled.

“Hey!” you exclaimed in protest before stealing a fry back. 

If you hadn’t been so caught up in your little world, you’d have noticed the knowing look your three friends exchanged and their simultaneous eye roll. 

—

The following Monday, you decided to have your tutoring session at your house instead of Jake’s. His mom was away at a convention for the week, so you’d have to take the bus anyway - since your house was two stops earlier, you offered to switch it up for once. Jake had never actually been inside your house and was curious to see what it was like, so he eagerly agreed. 

Kiwi was happy to see him and followed the two of you around the house as you gave Jake a quick tour before going up to your room. When you reached the top landing, you realized that Kiwi was still at the bottom of the stairs and was looking up at you expectantly. “Is she not allowed upstairs?” Jake asked.

“Usually not, but I let her come up when my mom’s not here. Come on Kiwi! It’s okay!”

Kiwi didn’t need to be told twice - she trudged her little body up the stairs, and you couldn’t help but giggle at her adorableness. “She’s so cute,” you cooed, looking at your dog with a huge smile on your face.

“She really is,” Jake agreed, but when you turned your head to face him, he wasn’t looking at Kiwi - he was looking straight at you, a softness in his eyes that made your stomach turn. He snapped out of it when he noticed your round, surprised eyes, and cleared his throat. “So, where’s your room?” he asked, looking around the hallway and avoiding your gaze.

“Over there,” you replied, fighting the smile that tried to make its way to your lips as you headed towards your room, Jake and Kiwi following right behind. 

You told Jake to wait for a second as you went to get a second chair. When you came back, he was standing in front of your shelves, upper body slightly bent forwards to observe all the decorations and framed pictures closer. You placed the chair next to your desk then joined him, answering all the questions he had about the items on your shelves. Who’s this? When was this? Where did you get this? In his defense, you really did have a lot of things - you were trying to get rid of your hoarding habits, but you got attached to every small thing that held some sort of significance. You went to sit at the edge of your bed and just watched him, his eyes glinting with curiosity.

It reminded you of the first time you’d been to his house, how upset he’d seemed when you talked about his baby pictures and how you hadn’t wanted to risk looking at all the stuff in his room. You were also curious about things like that, and you wondered once again what had bothered him so much. The question was burning your tongue - although you were nervous to ask it, not wanting to upset Jake once more, you now knew him well enough to know he wasn’t the type to stay mad for long. 

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Jake replied, fingers toying with your favorite Littlest Pet Shop figurine you had kept from when you were eight.

“Why didn’t you want me to look at your baby photos that one time?”

Jake paused at your words. He stood up straight and set the figurine back on the shelf. He glanced at you before walking over to your bed and taking a seat next to you, leaning back on his palms while you rested your hands underneath your thighs. 

“You probably noticed I don’t mention my dad, right? Or the fact that he’s never home?” 

You nodded in response. You had noticed it, but you’d never brought the topic up in case it might be sensitive. Jake sighed. “He passed away when I was six.”

You turned your head towards him. To your surprise, his face remained expressionless - you couldn’t detect any sort of sadness or anger in his features, as if he was just reciting a fact. His uncharacteristic numbness upset you even more than any tears could have. 

He met your gaze and gave you a small smile. “I was so young that I only have very vague memories of him, like playing soccer together in the backyard or a trip to the beach with my parents and my brother. I only remember his face and his voice from the photos and videos my mom has shown me.” He sighed again, shifting forwards and resting his hands in his lap, fiddling with his fingers. “So when I see these pictures, they sort of just remind me of what I’ve lost? I really don’t like lingering on them. I sort of just ignore them every time I walk up or down the stairs.”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have mentioned them if I’d known-”

Jake is quick to shake his head. “No, no, don’t be sorry. You couldn’t have guessed.” You want to comfort Jake in some way, thank him for telling you something so personal, but you’re not sure what words to use - so, instead, you take one of his hands in yours and bring it to your lap, then cover it with your other one. Your eyes meet for a second - he looks slightly taken aback at first, but then, his eyes drift down to your joined hands, and a small blush spreads on his cheeks.

“I’m- I’m okay, really. Like I said, it happened so long ago that I’m used to not having a dad now. It almost feels like it’s always been that way, which makes it even weirder to think it wasn’t. It’s just… It feels weird to miss someone I barely remember so much, you know?”

You nodded and let out a low hum. “I do know.” Jake tilted his head at you, silently asking you to go on. “It’s different, but I get that feeling of missing something you barely remember. I have these blurry memories of my parents being happy together and the three of us being a happy family, and then all of a sudden it’s hearing arguments from my room and my dad moving out, and they’re asking me, Do you wanna live with mom or dad?”

You watched as Jake moved his hand slightly, intertwining your fingers together and squeezing your hand. “I was older than you were when they divorced, so I guess I have more memories to hold onto, but they hurt more than anything.” You let out a deep sigh. “My dad cheated, so it’s not like I wished my mom had stayed with him, but I was too young to understand what was happening. I just wanted my parents together again.” 

When you lifted your head to look at him, he met your gaze, and his eyes were so soft yet so intense, like he was seeing right into you. Then he chuckled. “Do you ever get jealous of other people’s parents?” he asks, a shy smile playing on his lips.

“All the time,” you admitted with a chuckle, relieved to find out you weren’t the only one. “Yena has been blessed with these like, practically perfect parents that are still in love after twenty years, never argue and have a healthy relationship with all of their kids. I’m so in awe every time I see them.”

“Sunghoon’s parents are like that. I feel terrible, but every time they come to cheer him on at his competitions, I just get so jealous, wishing I also had three people coming to see my games and not just two. And I always feel so silly for feeling that way.”

“You’re not silly for that, Jake,” you said, and the honesty in your voice seemed to take him aback slightly. A grin spread on your lips. “You may be silly for other things, but not for that,” you teased, making him chuckle. “I can be your third person, if you want,” you said softly, lightly bumping your shoulder against his.

His eyes seemed to light up at your words, and your smile couldn’t help but get wider at his reaction - that was, until he raised an eyebrow, almost defiantly. “Yeah? I thought you found soccer boring,” he said with a playful smirk.

“It’s not boring if you’re the one playing,” you replied. A small noise of surprise escaped his throat before he could help it, not expecting you to be so forward, and you both burst into giggles. 

He cleared his throat when you both calmed down and stood up straighter, trying to put on a cool front. “Of course it isn’t.” He turned his head to look out the window, and the sight of the sunlight perfectly hitting his features and turning his dark brown eyes a hazel color almost took your breath away. “It’s really nice out,” he suddenly said. He turned back to you, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “How about we ditch the tutoring for today and go out?”

His eyes drifted down to your lips, watching as a smile tugged at the corners of your own. “I’m in.”

That was how you found yourselves sitting at a bench in the park close to your house, eating ice cream and watching Kiwi and Layla play together. You tried each other’s ice cream, and you regretted your choice of simple vanilla and strawberry as soon as Jake’s mango ice cream touched your tongue. Your eyes widened at the amazing taste - it felt like you had bit into an actual mango. 

“Good, right?” Jake asked, chuckling at your reaction.

“What the heck, yours is so much better than mine,” you mumbled, pouting at the ice cream in your cup like it had personally hurt you.

Jake thought for a second, looking back and forth between your upset expression and his own cup. “Wanna switch?”

Your heart was screaming yes, but your brain was screaming no. You tried your best to appear genuine when you smiled at him. “No, don’t worry about it. I still like mine.” You looked at him as you scooped another spoonful into your mouth as if to prove to him you were happy with your choice, even going so far as to hum in delight.

Jake just chuckled and shook his head at you, taking your cup and giving you his anyway. You were about to protest until he started eating your ice cream, imitating your previous hum. You quietly accepted the exchange, smiling as you tasted the mango ice cream again and trying to ignore the fact that Jake hadn’t switched the spoons with the cups, so you were using his and he was using yours. 

As you ate in silence, occasionally chuckling at your dogs’ antics, Jake stole some glances at you. He wasn’t sure why you looked so much prettier today than all the times he’d seen you before. Or maybe you were just as pretty as you’d always been, and he was just finally letting himself admit it. 

He may have had many friends, but there weren’t many people Jake was truly himself around. He always felt the need to be this friendly, outgoing guy that made it seem like everything was going well in his life, but with you, he felt like it was okay to stop pretending. He felt like it was okay to ask for help, like it was okay to reveal the darker parts of his life.

Now that Jay and Sunghoon had practically forced him to see the truth, Jake didn’t know what to do about his feelings for you. He finally understood why he always looked forward to your tutoring sessions, why he was so excited whenever he walked past you in the hallways, and why he was so bothered about you and Sunghoon getting along.

Sunghoon. Because even if Jake now knew that he liked you, he also knew that you liked someone else. And what was the point of letting himself fall for you even more when there was no happy ending in sight for him? He’d only get hurt in the end.

Just as the thought hit him, you turned to look at him and meet his gaze, a soft smile on your lips. Every time you smiled at him like that, Jake felt like he was watching a movie. Everything happened in slow-motion, with flowers falling around you and violins playing in the background. Jake almost felt sick, knowing he was only the second lead in your romance movie. He was the stupid werewolf and Sunghoon was the vampire that glistened in the sun and got the girl. (You had convinced him to watch Twilight, saying it was a mandatory watch to understand who you were as a person. Of course, Jake had streamed it that same night. The soundtrack was surprisingly good.)

Your voice snapped him out of his downward-spiraling thoughts. “You know, I almost got scared that Sunghoon would appear out of thin air and start hanging out with us.”

Jake tried not to sneer at the mention of his best-friend-turned-number-one-nemesis. “Why? Wouldn’t you like that?” he mumbled, clearly doing a poor job of seeming unaffected.

You frowned, then lowered your head, focusing your gaze on your almost-finished ice cream. “No, I’d rather if it was just the two of us.” Jake’s eyes widened, unsure if he’d heard that correctly or not. But before he could say anything in response, you spoke again. “It’s just, he was there when I came to watch your practice and when I thought we were all going to see a movie together, it was just him and me. You would’ve liked that movie, by the way,” you said, looking up at Jake with a smile.

Jake’s heart swelled. He wasn’t sure what what you were saying all meant, but unconsciously, his lips mirrored yours and he smiled back at you. Until he remembered you didn’t like him, and his smile fell immediately. Obviously, you had no idea what he was thinking, so his sudden stony expression sent alarms ringing through your head.

“It’s not that I don’t like him, or anything,” you said, panicked, and Jake had to keep himself from scoffing, “it’s just that- you know. It’s nice to hang out with you outside of tutoring sessions,” you finished, mumbling. 

Jake had no idea what you were saying, so he stayed quiet, watching as Kiwi and Layla ran around in circles. You liked Sunghoon, so why would you rather hang out with Jake and not him? You weren’t making any sense. 

You, on the other hand, were not liking Jake’s uncharacteristic silence. In hopes of getting his attention, you crossed one leg over the other, shifting on the bench to face him. “Plus, don’t you think he and Chaewon really hit it off the other night? I think that was the most I’ve ever heard him talk,” you said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. To your dismay, it didn’t work. You didn’t know whether he was sulking or genuinely upset - all you knew was you desperately wanted to see a smile on his pretty face again.

“Jakey?” you called out, and your voice sounded so small it hurt his heart. He hummed in response, only glancing at you for a fraction of a second. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” he replied, scooping the last of the ice cream in his mouth. As he tasted the strawberry and vanilla flavors, he couldn’t believe he had given his precious mango ice cream up all for a girl who didn’t even like him back. What a fool.

“I don’t know, you’re all- weird, all of a sudden, for lack of a better word.” You searched for some sort of an answer in his eyes, but he supplied you with none. 

Jake sighed deeply. He could feel the ugly mix of emotions in his belly turning into anger - anger at what exactly, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to lay it on you. “It’s just the heat, it’s making me tired,” he said. Sure, it was warm for a May afternoon, but it wasn’t that hot. But you didn’t want to push it.

“Should we go home?“ you offered, and the worry in your voice made him feel even worse. He just couldn’t understand why you were being so nice to him. He knew you probably just thought you were looking after a friend, but he'd rather you not care about his well-being and leave him be. He didn’t need one more reason to like you - he already had plenty of those. 

He nodded, mustering as convincing a smile as he could. “Sure.” 

The walk home was much quieter than usual. You could feel that Jake was keeping something to himself, and it was killing you; but whatever it was, you wanted him to tell you when he felt ready and not feel forced to. Your hand was aching, desperate to reach out and grab his as you had done before, but you were afraid that would only push him away even further. So you stayed silent most of the time, only commenting on the things around you or speaking a thought out loud when you thought it might make Jake smile. Every time his lips curled up, even ever so slightly, your heart swelled with relief.

Unbeknownst to you, Jake was making up his mind. He knew he needed time away from you to gather his feelings before he could see you as a friend again. 

When you reached your house, Jake waited outside with the dogs as you grabbed his bag he’d left upstairs. You hugged goodbye as always, but this one was different - it lasted a few seconds longer than usual, and you could swear Jake held you tighter than he normally would. It felt like he was saying goodbye for more than just a couple days.

You didn’t understand why it made your heart ache so much.

—

The next day, when you walked past Jake and Sunghoon in the hallway, Jake barely glanced at you and only tilted his head in your general direction instead of his usual wide grin and wave. You were so shocked by his sudden snubbing that you halted in your steps right away, looking behind you at his retreating figure. You locked eyes with Sunghoon, who seemed just as confused as you felt. He shrugged at you before returning to his friend and nudging his arm.

On Wednesday morning, you got a text from Jake that he couldn’t make it to your tutoring session that afternoon because of an extra soccer practice to prepare for their game that weekend, something he had never mentioned before.

Thursday and Friday weren’t very different, and your heart became heavier with every time you walked past each other and he acted like you weren’t even there. You desperately wanted to know what you’d done wrong, why he’d started to reply in one-word sentences instead of his usual voice messages and tons of emojis, but no matter how much you cogitated, you couldn’t figure it out. Even when you asked him how his game had gone, a dry Good stared back at you from your phone screen.

That Saturday, your girlfriends came over. Yena had brought beads and strings to make accessories out of, and the mere sight of them had brought fond memories back to all four of you - during your first sleepover in freshman year, this was the exact activity that had kept you occupied for hours. 

You got started on them immediately, each finding a comfortable spot in your room as soft music played in the background. You lay on your bed while Chaewon and Yena took over the floor and Hyewon sat at your desk.

“I’m gonna make one of those phone accessories,” Yena said excitedly, reaching for the biggest, most colorful beads.

“I’m gonna make couple bracelets for Jaemin and I,” Hyewon said somewhat shyly but beaming. Yena and Chaewon groaned at her words, but they gave you an idea.

“You guys are vomit-inducing,” Yena replied, and if you didn’t know your friend any better, just going off the tone of her voice, you’d have thought she was being serious. Hyewon just rolled her eyes, used to this daily slander she received simply for being in a relationship.

“I’ll make something for my little sister,” Chaewon butted in, and you and Yena simultaneously ‘aww’ed. 

“So it’s aww when Chaewon does it for her sister, and it’s vomit-inducing when I do it for my boyfriend?” Hyewon exclaimed, appalled.

“Little sisters are cute. Boyfriends are gross,” Yena replied matter-of-factly, making you giggle.

“Whatever. You guys are just jealous that you’re dying alone and I’m not. What are you making, Y/N?” she asked before Yena could retort again. The two exchanged a glare as you thought over your answer.

“I’m not saying,” you replied with a giggle. 

“She’s making one for Jake, that evil wench,” Chaewon immediately said, making your eyes widen. Yena gasped dramatically while Hyewon smiled at you.

“How did you know?” you asked Chaewon.

“Just your face. You’re so obvious,” she snickered. 

“You’re a traitor, Y/N!” Yena exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at you, and you hid your face in your hands, muttering an apology. “Wasting time and energy on a boy.”

“Don’t listen to her, Y/N. Whatever it is you make, he’ll be super happy you thought of him. Then he’ll finally ask you out and you’ll live happily ever after, just like me and Jaemin,” Hyewon said with a serene smile on her face. Chaewon and Yena exchanged a look, then faked a gagging sound. “So bitter,” Hyewon muttered, shaking her head at your friends.

“I’m not sure about that,” you sighed. “I just want to be friends again. He’s been ignoring me all week.”

All three snapped their heads up at you. “He’s been ignoring you?” Yena echoed, and you meekly nodded. “Give me his phone number. No, give me his address. I’m going there right now,” she said, already sitting up.

“Gosh, Yena, it’s fine,” you said, gesturing at her to sit back down, laughing at your friend’s seriousness. “I’ll see him on Monday anyway, I can just see how he behaves then.”

Yena didn’t look convinced, but she yielded anyway. “If he hurts you, I swear I’ll give him a stern talking to. And a broken nose.” You laughed as you thanked your friend. 

Hyewon asked for more details about this Jake situation, so you filled your friends in about his mysterious behavior that week. Chaewon had been the only one to see it firsthand, when you’d walked to a class together and Jake had walked past you without saying anything. You told them about his sparse answers to your texts, his lack of response to the TikToks you sent him. He wasn’t even reacting to your BeReals anymore. It was just such a complete switch-up in attitude that you had no idea what to make of it. They tried to come up with reasons for it, but it really didn’t make much sense. It just felt like he suddenly decided to hate you - or maybe you had been interpreting everything wrong, and the two of you had never been friends in the first place. 

“This is so confusing,” Chaewon suddenly said, seeming lost in thought. “I thought for sure that he liked you.”

“Liked… me?” you echoed.

“Yeah. Just the way he was when we were at the diner. He kept looking at you and was always smiling and blushing whenever you talked to him. Also the way Jay and Sunghoon were behaving. Boys are so obvious when their friend likes someone, it’s like they’re trying to fumble it for him. And I mean, anyone with functioning eyes can see that you like him too, so I don’t know why he’s doing this all of a sudden.”

Yena sighed. “Boys are stupid.”

“That, they are,” you agreed, sighing as well and returning your attention to your craft. Maybe a simple gift like this wouldn’t fix what was going on between you and Jake, but you had to at least try. You couldn’t let go of your friendship so easily.

Even though it seemed as though he could.

Nothing changed the next week. On Monday, you woke up to a text that pulled your heart down into your stomach.

jakey-poo i think we should stop tutoring each other for now

For an hour as you ate breakfast and got ready for school, you ruminated over your answer, only to ask him a simple why? in the end.

jakey-poo i’m to busy w soccer practice and other stuff we can start again when exams are near

you oh okay

You felt pathetic, but you had no idea what to say. You couldn’t force him into this, and you definitely couldn’t show up at his house and demand a better explanation. If you were Yena or Chaewon, maybe you could - but you weren’t. You couldn’t even bring yourself to ask him if the two of you could still hang out outside of that, so scared you were for his inevitable rejection.

During the week, you tried to find a time when you could give him your small handmade gift, but Jake wasn’t even looking you in the eyes anymore. The only time you made eye contact with him over those five days was on Wednesday at lunch - as you walked into the cafeteria, you scanned the whole room, unconsciously searching for him. When you did, he was already looking at you - he was close enough for you to see the slight frown in his eyebrows, the lack of the usual glint in his eyes. But as soon as he’d seen you’d found him, he turned away. You only looked away when Chaewon called out your name.

In the few classes you had together, he always slipped away before you could get to him. Him walking past you like he couldn’t even see you broke your heart a little bit more every time, and by Friday, you had completely given up. Your friendship with Jake was over, and you had no idea why, no idea who or what to blame.

Monday and Wednesday afternoons felt empty now that you had gotten used to spending them with him, and you couldn’t even walk Kiwi without missing him. He seemed to miss Jake and Layla too - he’d sometimes tilt his head at you as if asking where your new friends were, and when you got to the park, he’d gloomily stick to you instead of running around like he usually would, especially when Layla was there.

The worst part was at night, when your thoughts kept you up. You’d reread your and Jake’s text conversations, wondering what went so wrong so quickly, warm tears spilling from your eyes out of sadness and tiredness. On those nights, you’d sneak Kiwi up to your room and let him cuddle up to you in your bed. You’d comfort each other that way.

You had no idea that a couple kilometers away, Jake lay in bed sleepless as well, Layla at the edge of his bed and whining in her sleep. You had no idea that missing you had carved a deep hole in his chest.

—

Enough was enough.

It had been days since Layla had last seen Kiwi, and to a young pup like her, that felt like eternity. Lately, Jake hadn’t seemed happy to go on walks with her like he used to, and he barely had any energy to play with her. She also hadn’t seen you in days, and she wondered if that had anything to do with Jake’s recent despondency. 

But thankfully, Layla was a smart girl, so she knew exactly what to do to fix this dire situation. On Friday, she waited for Jake to come back from soccer practice and take her on a walk. As soon as they reached the sidewalk outside of their house, she pulled on her leash in the opposite direction of their usual route. Jake tried pulling her the other way, but she wouldn’t budge.

“We’re going that way, Layla,” Jake said, amused by his dog’s sudden stubbornness. Layla barked back. “Come on!” 

She was really not moving. “We never go that way,” Jake said, sighing. “That way’s the-”

That’s when he realized. Layla wanted to go to the park you went to with Kiwi. “But what if we ran into them?” Jake asked. 

Layla barked again. She wanted to say, That’s exactly why I want to go there, but of course Jake didn’t understand. He sighed again and obliged, letting Layla lead the way. She had a good feeling that she’d finally see her friends again today. 

Jake’s heart started beating faster with every step he took, knowing that you might be out right now, too. When he’d seen you at school, you’d seemed as sad as he was, and he felt terrible for perhaps being the reason behind it - but he didn’t know what else to do. He could either spare your feelings or his. If this was hurting you, he knew you’d move on quickly enough anyway - and when he came to terms with being just friends with you, he’d come back, and everything would be perfect like it used to be. Foolproof plan.

If there was one thing Jake had learned from the tutoring sessions with you, it was that the weather always reflected the protagonist’s inner thoughts. If they were upset, it would be gray and rainy - if they were happy, it would be warm and sunny. Jake glared at the sun, just another reminder that he wasn’t the main character in this story. If he was, it would be thundering and lightning would be striking.

As if his life was a joke, two minutes after Jake and Layla had walked into the park, he saw you. At least you were facing the other direction, so you couldn’t see him, and he could redirect his route to avoid you. But he let himself indulge in the moment for a few seconds. You had laid out a picnic blanket for you and Kiwi and rested on your stomach with your elbows propping you up, reading a book. Kiwi slept peacefully next to you - this dog was the furthest thing from a guard dog Jake had ever seen. You kicked your feet up in the air, flip flops discarded to the side of the blanket. Jake was happy to see you like this, enjoying the warmth of this sunny May afternoon. 

He was about to walk away, but a sudden movement caught his eye. Two school kids started running to you, and before you could even register their presence, one of them snatched your flip flops and they both sprinted away, shrieking with laughter like two little devils. Where the hell were their parents?!

Without thinking, Jake started running after them, and so did Kiwi and Layla. 

“Hey! Come back here!” Jake yelled, hoping in vain that these kids would listen to someone older than them. Kiwi did his best, but his tiny legs didn’t allow for such a chase - Layla, barking loudly at the thieves, was the first to reach them, and she managed to scare them so much, they tripped over their feet. But unlike them, she was well-behaved, so she sat once her job was done and waited for Jake to arrive. 

“What are you two doing? You can’t just steal other people’s things!” he admonished, holding onto his knees as he tried to catch his breath.

Both kids were already teary-eyed. “We just wanted to play a prank, we’re sorry!” one of them quickly said, voice shaky.

“It’s not to me you should apologize, but to her,” Jake said, turning around to point in your direction. That’s when he noticed you sitting on your knees, hands covering your face as your shoulders trembled. “You made her cry!” Jake exclaimed, tone much angrier than seconds prior. “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing the kids by their shoulders and forcing them to keep up with his quick steps.

You didn’t notice their presence in front of you until Jake prompted them. At the sound of the all too familiar voice, you whipped your head up. Jake swore he heard his heart breaking when he saw your red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. You barely heard the kids’ apology, so amazed you were at suddenly seeing Jake.

“We’re sorry for stealing your flip-flops and making you cry,” the first one said.

“Sorry,” repeated the other one, handing you your shoes.

“Oh, right. Thanks, just don’t do it again,” you replied, sniffing as you took back your shoes.

“We won’t!” they replied in unison before running away once more.

Jake stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, unsure what to say. He watched you stare at your flip flops like you’d never seen them before in your life. “You’re not going to thank me for catching those delinquents?” he asked after a small while, chuckling slightly.

This made you look up at him. He gulped as your eyes met. Then, you burst into sobs again, and Jake started panicking. He crouched down to your level, first holding you by the shoulders then forcing your head out of your hands so he could wipe away your tears with the pads of his thumbs.

“No no no, why are you crying, Y/N?” he asked softly, pulling you into a hug.

You continued crying into his shoulder, ignoring Kiwi and Layla’s confused stares. “You- you- I haven’t seen you in ages!” you exclaimed.

Jake sighed. He didn’t understand why you were crying like this for him, all he knew was that he’d never felt so awful. “I’m sorry, Y/N,” he whispered into your hair, pulling your shaking body closer to him. “I’m sorry.”

You leaned back to glare at Jake, your bottom lip jutting out in discontent. “Do you even know how much I missed you?”

Jake held your head in his hands like it was the most precious thing in the world. Mouth agape in surprise, he looked at you with sad eyes. “You… you did?”

Your eyebrows creased. “Of course I did!” Another sob rippled through your body, and Jake took you back in his arms, wrapping them around your shoulders and resting his cheek against your hair. 

“I missed you too.”

“Then why did you do this?” you asked, voice breaking.

“Because I didn’t want to get hurt,” Jake whispered back. “But I didn’t think I’d hurt you. I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

You leaned back again, but this time, you looked confused rather than angry. His eyes were soft as they scanned your face and as he brushed strands of your hair back behind your ears. “Why would you get hurt?” you asked again, bringing your voice to the same volume as his.

Jake sighed and squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if in pain, before opening them again and boring them into yours. “I like you so, so much Y/N. So much so that I don’t know what to do with myself. But I know that you don’t feel the same way, and I was scared that by staying by your side, I’d just fall in love with you even more and get hurt in the end. So I pushed you away because I didn’t know what else to do, but I’m so sorry I- You’re crying again?”

Your fists grabbed at the front of Jake’s t-shirt as sobs raked through your body once more. It was official - Jake was the stupidest person you’d ever met. And you were in love with him.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I like you too, you idiot!” you yelled back. Your tears were probably staining his t-shirt, but you couldn’t care less. He liked you. Jake liked you.

You were too busy crying to see Jake’s eyes slowly widening in disbelief. “You what?!”

Gently, Jake pushed your shoulders back so he could look at you. Even with puffy eyes and a runny nose, you were the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Pretty like an angel that had graced the Earth with her presence. “You what?” he repeated, just to hear you say it again.

“I like you, Jake. I’m so in love with you it's actually pathetic,” you said with a chuckle, looking down out of shyness. But when you looked back up, Jake’s eyes were going back and forth between yours, the expression on his face like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard but desperately hoped it was true.

As you locked eyes, both of your faces lit up with grins. You burst into laughter together, finding each other’s hands and intertwining your fingers together. Then Jake brought you back into his arms, holding tightly, as if he was scared you might disappear any second. Kiwi and Layla had long walked away to give the two of you some needed privacy.

In each other’s arms, you rocked side to side gently and laughed for no reason other than the incredible fact your feelings were reciprocated. “You stink, you know,” you suddenly said in-between giggles. “You sweat while you ran after those kids.”

“I sweat? You mean I swote, right?” Jake asked a pause.

You leaned back to look at Jake. “Swote?” you echoed, and he nodded. Your umpteenth smile made your cheeks lift. “You have to be kidding-”

“I am,” Jake cut off, mirroring your smile. “I just wanted to make you laugh.”

You gasped and lightly punched his chest before letting your body fall against his again. “You’re so silly,” you said, sighing in bliss at the sound of his giggles.

Then all of a sudden, Jake pulled away and looked at you, almost frightened. “What about Sunghoon?” 

“What about him?” you asked back, confused by Jake’s question.

“I thought you- Didn’t you- you know…”

You tilted your head at Jake, a small grin spreading on your lips again. “I don’t know.”

“I thought you liked him…” Jake mumbled, looking away with a pout.

Before you could stop it, a noise of confusion left your throat. You looked at Jake like he was insane. “I can barely have a conversation with Sunghoon, what made you think I liked him?”

Jake pursed his lips and let a resigned puff of air out of his nose. “I, um- Remember when we mixed our backpacks up?” he asked and you nodded, smiling at the fun memory. “I may have, um, I may have read… your… diary,” he admitted, voice getting quieter with each word. He dared a glance at you - you looked horrified, eyes wide and mouth agape. “And you wrote that you liked Sunghoon,” he finished with a whisper.

It was silent for a few seconds, and Jake was bracing himself for a slap to the face or your screams, until you did the last thing Jake expected you to do - you laughed. You laughed so hard and for so long that he got scared you had gone insane and this was the first part of your mental breakdown before you murdered him in cold blood for having invaded your privacy. He would’ve deserved it, he thought.

“I don’t- oh my God, Jake, I don’t- I don’t like Sunghoon. I never really have, or not in the way you think, I can’t- oh my God,” you explained in between giggles, trying to catch your breath but starting to laugh again every time you managed to compose yourself. Jake tried to laugh along, but he was too confused to do so properly.

“You’re not mad?” Jake asked, eyebrows furrowed with worry.

“No,” you replied, shaking your head and the last giggles out of your throat. “You read it ages ago, and we didn’t even know each other back then, there’s no point in being mad now. It’s just funny - I know exactly why you think I liked Sunghoon, but I didn’t. Not really. And even if I did, those feelings are nothing compared to the ones I have for you now,” you said, beaming. A blush spread on Jake’s cheeks, and you could tell he was trying (and failing) to contain a proud grin.

You explained to Jake the ‘character’ thing you and your friends had going on and that Sunghoon (and hat guy) just happened to be one of them - you watched as Jake narrowed his eyes and slowly nodded, trying to understand this concept that was so foreign to him. 

“You know, it all makes a lot more sense now,” Jake said when you were explaining. “It would’ve been weird for you to like Sunghoon when I was right there.” He smirked down at you as you playfully rolled your eyes. 

“Oh my God!” you suddenly exclaimed, startling Jake in the process. Dramatic as always, he put a hand over his heart and exhaled loudly. “I have something for you. For us, actually.” You reached into your bag and got out the two accessories you’d made for you and Jake. “These are for us to put on our backpacks, so that we don’t confuse them again. They also match.”

Jake’s eyes were fixated on the string of beads as you placed into his palm. “I tried to give it to you over the week, but…” 

A teardrop fell into Jake’s palms, and when you looked at him, you realized he’d started crying. “Jake?” you cooed softly, and he sniffled, wiping away the tears from his eyes.

As a response, he wrapped his arms around your shoulders and buried his face in your hair. “Thank you. And I’m sorry. I promise you’ll never go a second without my undivided attention from now on,” he said, voice shaking with emotion, and you hummed happily.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

He leaned back, and you were relieved to find the familiar puppyish grin on his lips. You gazed into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, and before he could stop himself, he grabbed your head in his hands and pressed a delicate kiss to your forehead. You raised your eyebrows in surprise, but when his face was back in front of yours, your eyes immediately drifted to his lips. They looked soft and plump and pink, and were utterly inviting. Every time you’d started daydreaming about kissing Jake, you’d stopped yourself, not wanting to over-indulge in your fantasies. But was this finally, really happening?

“Y/N?” Jake said quietly. You could swear his face was getting closer.

“Hm?”

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

Your face broke out into a grin. Without warning, you pressed your lips against Jake’s - initially just for a peck, but as soon as you started pulling away, Jake chased after your lips and trapped them into a kiss, a proper one this time. You’d never done this before, so it was naturally somewhat clumsy, but you and Jake were so giddy with excitement that you couldn’t care less. So what if you were smiling so hard, your teeth clashed against his, or you kept bumping noses? You were kissing Jake Sim. 

The second time around, he let you pull away to catch your breath, and you wished you could photograph the sight in front of you - Jake with flushed cheeks, closed eyes and a serene smile on his face. He was so pretty, and now, he was all yours.

When he opens his eyes and finds you looking at him, his smile widens. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

“Yes,” you echoed, laughing. You pressed your lips to his cheek before burying your face in the crook of his neck.

He hugged you to him and the sweet sound of his giggles filled your ears and your heart. “My girl,” he whispered, before leaning his head back, face to the sky, and screaming it loud enough for the whole park to hear. You tried to shush him, but you couldn’t stop laughing yourself out of sheer excitement. Layla and Kiwi came running back to you, barking happily and trying to lick your faces. 

“I cried so much today, my eyes are gonna be puffy tomorrow morning,” you said between giggles. 

Jake pressed his lips to yours in a chaste kiss. “I’ll make sure you never cry again, Y/N,” he said, and he sounded so genuine, you almost wanted to cry again right then and there.

The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur - while you and Jake kissed, laughed, talked, and hugged, hours that felt like minutes passed you by. Jake kept on looking at the accessory you made him, poking fun at you for knowing his favorite color even though he’d never mentioned it.

“It was a lucky guess,” you grumbled. “Your room’s walls are that color,” you said, pointing to a particular dark blue bead.

“I love it,” he replied with a kiss to your forehead.

As always, he walks you home - and this time, you can take his hand without any hesitation. Your mom had come home from work while you and Jake were out, and you found her in the kitchen, prepping some veggies for dinner. 

As soon as Jake introduced himself, a flash of revelation struck her and she shot you a knowing smirk. “So you’re Jake,” she said, and the boy glanced at you with amused confusion. “That one over there has been badgering me about you these past few weeks.”

Apparently, you agreeing to be his girlfriend had already gone to his head, because instead of looking surprised at your mom’s words, he slowly turned to you with an arrogant smirk gracing his lips. “Has she?”

Your mom nodded slowly. “Oh, yes.” Then her expression slowly morphed into something else as she remembered your red, puffy eyes from the other evening when you’d told her about what was going on with Jake. She raised her kitchen knife and pointed it straight to him, eyes narrowed. “If you ever hurt my daughter again, I’m putting you in the lasagna, young man.”

Jake gulped, smirk completely wiped off of his face. You just watched in amusement. “I- I won’t,” he stuttered, eyes fixed on the blade of the knife.

A wide grin reappeared on your mom’s face as she went back to cutting the vegetables. “Good!” 

Jake looked at you for some sort of explanation, but you simply shrugged. He’d just have to get used to your mom’s crazy. 

“You know, you’re just as handsome as she described,” your mom told Jake with a wink.

“Mom, please!” you exclaimed, cheeks burning with heat. You liked it better when she was threatening your boyfriend with a knife, but he was relieved by the new turn this conversation had taken.

“What else has she said?”

“Oh, you know, just your typical he’s so smart, he’s so cute, he’s so funny-”

“Okay, that’s it!” you cut in before your mom could spill more on you. You ignored Jake’s noises of complaint as you grabbed him by the shoulders and led him towards the door. “I think it’s time for you to go home, no?” 

“Y/N, come on!” Jake whined, giggling. 

“Why don’t you stay for dinner, Jake?” your mom offered, making you stop in your tracks. You stared wide-eyed at her but she just looked at Jake, wearing an inviting smile.

“Sure!” Jake beamed. “I just need to call my mom.”

“Oh, invite her along! I always make enough to feed an army, anyway.”

“Really?” Jake asked, incredulous. Since his brother had left for university, it had always been just he and his mom at the dinner table. The thought of sharing a meal with you and your mom filled his heart with warmth. 

“Yeah!”

Jake smiled giddily as he got his phone out. “Thanks, she’ll be stoked.”

Although you both wanted to help your mom, she urged you to stay outside with the dogs and enjoy the last rays of sunshine of the day, insisting she didn’t need any help. So you and Jake spent some time throwing sticks for Kiwi and Layla and giggling at their cuteness. Kiwi quickly got exhausted and came to lie down at your feet, but Layla was tireless. “Your dog, your responsibility,” you said as you sat down next to Kiwi, rubbing his tummy and watching Jake throw the stick over and over again for Layla.

Jake was as relentless as Layla, and every time she ran after the stick, he ran to you and pressed a kiss to another part of your face, making you giggle every time. Once on your forehead, once on your nose, once on your cheek, then the other, and once on your lips.

Then his mom rang the bell, and as your mom opened the door for her, the oddest thing happened - they called out each other’s name and hugged as if they were old friends. You and Jake exchanged a confused look before turning your attention back to them.

“What a coincidence!”

“Right! Such a small world, I can’t believe you’re my daughter’s boyfriend’s mom.”

“Boyfriend? Gosh, has he finally asked her out? I was going crazy seeing him moping around in his room!”

“Mom!” Jake yelled, face already reddening as you burst into laughter.

You joined them inside the house and set the table while your mom finished up dinner. Jake’s mom had brought a bottle of red wine as a gift, so she poured two glasses for her and your mom, but you and Jake stuck to Sprite. 

Apparently, they knew each other from some yoga class they both went to every Sunday - you found out this was the woman your mom often went out for lunch or drinks with. They were so excited to meet each other like this that they talked most of the time, leaving you and Jake to eat your food quietly and giggling every time you made eye contact or your feet touched under the table. 

Just as you were about to take your last bite of lasagna, your phone pinged with a message. Curiously, so did Jake’s. Chaewon had sent a message into the group chat, asking to meet her at work when her shift was done because she was craving an Oreo milkshake.

chae bae y/n u better come ik ur not doing anything better tonight anyway

You scoffed. You were doing something better.

“Shit, today’s Friday! The boys are waiting for me at the diner, I completely forgot,” Jake exclaimed as he read the messages on his phone.

“Language, Jake,” his mom scolded.

“At the diner?” you repeated.

“Yeah, that one we went to last time. Why?” Jake asked when he noticed your surprised expression.

“That’s where Chaewon wants to meet.”

You both turned to your respective moms, silently asking for permission to leave the dinner table.

“Just go,” your mother said with a smile.

“I’ll take Layla home later,” Jake’s mom added.

You thanked them before rushing to get a bag and heading to the bus stop, hoping a bus would come by soon. Twenty minutes later, you were opening the doors of the diner and looking around for your friends, who were nowhere to be found. You were fishing your phone out of your pocket to call Chaewon when a familiar voice caught your and Jake’s attention.

“What are they doing together?” you heard Jay say, followed by loud shushes. You turned your head to find all five of your friends (plus Jaemin) crammed in a booth in the corner that was somewhat hidden from the rest of the restaurant. But they were trying so hard to be discreet that it made their presence even more obvious - they hid their faces with their hands as if that would make them disappear from your view. You and Jake shared a look before chuckling, shaking your head at your friends.

“Whatever, they’ve clearly found us,” Jay sighed and exited the booth, walking towards the two of you.

“Were you guys trying to get us to make up or something?” Jake asked with an amused smile.

“Yeah, we grouped up and planned this whole thing. It was a real team effort.”

“It might’ve worked better if you hadn’t all stayed here, you guys were so obvious,” you chided.

“Tell that to your friends over there! They insisted on watching it unfold,” Jay grumbled, and you looked behind him to see your friends frantically waving at you.

You switched to a bigger booth that could accommodate all seven of you, and as soon as you’d placed your orders, Yena practically pounced on you, demanding an explanation as to how the two of you were already made up.

You turned to look at Jake and smiled at him before answering. “It’s all thanks to Kiwi, really,” you told Yena.

“Kiwi? As in your dog Kiwi?” Chaewon asked with furrowed eyebrows.

“Mh-hm.” In your peripheral, you noticed Jake tilting his head at you.

“You mean Layla, right?”

You imitated his head movement. “No, I mean Kiwi.”

“But Layla made me go to the park today. I wouldn’t have gone there if it wasn’t for her,” Jake insisted, giving you an are you being serious look that you mirrored.

“I wasn’t going to go outside at all but Kiwi kept bugging me to take him on a walk, that’s why I was in the park in the first place. It’s thanks to Kiwi,” you repeated.

“It’s thanks to Layla,” Jake retorted, playfully narrowing his eyes at you.

“Trouble in paradise,” Jaemin whispered, and Hyewon slapped his arm.

The whole table was silent as you and Jake stared each other down, waiting to see who would cave first. It was like everyone could breathe again when Jake’s face broke out into a grin and he rested his arm behind your shoulders. “Okay, it’s thanks to Kiwi,” he conceded, making you hum in satisfaction. You rested your head on his shoulder and ignored Yena’s groan of disgust at the PDA.

But Jake, as always, wasn’t letting you off the hook so easily. “And Layla.”

—

02.06.202X - 12:18

rodrigo hater y/n i can see you being gross from across the courtyard can u guys not feed each other ur still on school grounds and ur ruining my day have some decency

sweet hyewon you guys are super cute <3  jaemin and i only have the same lunch period once a week i miss him

rodrigo hater ugh wheres chaewon she’d have my back

you hyewon love u yena frigg off you’re not going to like this… i think she’s with sunghoon rodrigo hater WHAT

sweet hyewon omg hahahaha saw it coming cuuuuute

rodrigo hater i hate you all so much you’re all kicked out of my celibacy club

chae bae we weren’t part of it in the first place

rodrigo hater GO AWAY YOU TRAITOR

03.06.202X - 09:15

you jake wake up  wake up wake up please

jake ??? R U okay?

you kiwi keeps whining i think he wants to see layla come over?

jake . did u just wake me up before 10 am on a sunday morning for this

you i made pancakes?

jake i’m going back to sleep

you but i miss you :(

jake running

07.06.202X - 16:39

stink #1 hey

jake no

stink #1 wtf man

jake im busy

stink #1 smooching ur girl?

jake yeah stay mad bro

stink #1 where’s hoon

stink #2 he’s at ice skating practice with me <3 this is chaewon btw

jake AYO????

stink #1 HE GAVE YOU ACCESS TO HIS PHONE???

stink #2 hehehe bye losers

stink #1 oh my god jake this is huge

jake right… our little boy he’s grown so much

stink #1 i’m getting teary eyed anyway i wanted to say i think we should invite the girls to bro night more often it’s always fun with them

jake oh? if u wanna see yena just say so bro

stink #1 fuck u man

jake ur literally so obvious you get 100% more obnoxious when she’s around

stink #1 idc she laughs at my jokes

jake which is proof that there’s something wrong w her anyway i’ll ask my girl about it

stink #1 ew and thx ^^

09.06.202X - 17:03

jakey-poo y/nnnnnn y/n hellloooooo y/n y/n y/n baby :(((( where are u what r u doing i miss you hello y/n my baby darling angel pls answer me layla misses you

you jake sim

jakey-poo HIIIIII

you jay is a genius i’m anime pomodoroing the hell out of this essay it’s working so well i’m almost done with it already

jakey-poo don’t compliment another man ever again i’m going to cry

you but jay’s your friend

jakey-poo i’ll kill him if i have to

you gosh okay jay’s an idiot

jakey-poo hahaha he is ice cream after dinner ???

you duh

31.07.202X - 21:03

jakey-poo i’m waiting for you outside the theater baby we have a lot of talking to do. i can’t believe you kissed someone else in front of me

you jake baby it was just acting <3 you know you’re the only one i really kiss

jakey-poo i know i am so come here and kiss me quick you did so well and you were so pretty on stage and i love you so much  COME QUICK I WANNA KISS YOU

you i’m hurrying i promise but a lot of people are trying to talk to me :(

jakey-poo ofc they are you killed it my baby’s already famous <3

you hehe love you my jakey-poo

jakey-poo STOP IT WITH THAT

permanent taglist: @zreamy @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts @moonlighthoon @4imhry @rikisly @loves0ft @iamliacamila @theboingsuckerasseater9000 @chaechae-23 (ask to be removed/added!)

© asahicore on Tumblr, 2023. please do not repost, translate, or plagiarize my works. feedback and reblogs always appreciated!

[navybrat817]

And Everything Nice

Pairing: Tattoo Artist!Bucky Barnes x Baker!Female Reader Summary: You visit the tattoo parlor when an uninvited guest shows up at the bakery. Word Count: Over 2.8k Warnings: Bad ex, mild (h)arassment, protectiveness, brief moments of insecurity, slight feels (it's me), Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?). Graphics talent and thanks: Banner by @sgt-seabass. Divider by @firefly-graphics . Bucky edit by Nix. Moodboard by yours truly. A/N: More Hottie and Sugar from our Sin on Skin AU. ❤️ Thank you to @rookthorne for listening to me ramble about this part! Beta read by the lovely @whisperlullaby (thank you for spitballing), but any and all mistakes are my own. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!

I am going to ask Bucky Barnes out.

After going through the closing checklist, Tess gave you another quick pep talk and said the only thing that would hurt if he turned you down was your pride. Deep down you knew it would hurt more than your pride if he said no, but you didn't say it out loud. She must have sensed it since she added she was certain he'd jump at the chance to date you.

"You got this," she said, giving you a quick hug. "Sorry to run, but-"

"Like I said, I got this," you said, waving her on. Normally you walked out together when you both closed the bakery, but she had somewhere to be. "Have fun!" you added as she rushed out.

Once you finished up a few minutes later, you strode to the door with your keys in hand and a smile on your face. Tomorrow was going to be a good day. You could feel it. And you would look Bucky in the eye with a smile as you asked him-

"Closing all by yourself?"

You weren't sure how you managed to not drop your keys, or not throw a punch, when you spun around and saw your ex in your personal space. You wanted to wipe the smirk off his face when you took a deep breath. "Thanks for sneaking up on me, Richard. Mind backing up a little?"

"Aww, did I scare you?" he asked as you quickly locked the door. "Not even a 'hello'?"

"We haven't talked since we broke up," you reminded him. "But hi and bye."

Richard charmed you in the beginning when you met him, like he did with so many others. Beyond his good looks, he was a confident man. It didn't take long to see that beneath the surface was a spoiled man child who was used to getting what he wanted, or thought he could buy everything. You included.

Breaking up with him was one of the best decisions you made, even if your mom disagreed.

"Where are you going in such a hurry? You should get a drink with me."

"I have plans," you lied, wondering what the hell he was even doing there.

"So? Break them. I want to talk."

The suggestion sounded more like an order and you weren't in the mood.

"I said I have plans. I'm sorry."

"Then why are you still in your work clothes?" he asked, gesturing to your outfit. "And who do you have plans with? Some new guy?"

"Because I'm changing later," you said, staring across the street as a smile spread on your face. "And not that it's any of your business, but yes. He's a tattoo artist."

You weren't sure why you said that. Maybe because you hoped Bucky really would be your guy. And because the thought of him also made you feel safe.

You half expected Richard to laugh as you walked around him, but he put his hand on your arm instead as his face twisted into a scowl. "You're not hanging out with him. You're getting a drink with me."

You wrenched your arm away before he could tighten his grip. "We aren't together anymore. So you don't get to show up out of nowhere and order me around," you said as you went to the curb.

"Don't act like a fucking brat when I'm trying to give you another chance."

I'm the brat?

"Not interested. Have a good night!" you said before you looked both ways and dashed across the street to Bucky's shop.

The entrance was cozier and more open than you expected, the sound of the needles bringing you a strange sense of comfort as you adjusted your bag on your arm. Pictures of various tattoos in different styles lined the red walls above the front desk and leather couches. You wished you had the time to pick out which works belonged to Bucky.

Another day.

"Hi! Welcome to Sin on Skin!" the man behind the desk cheerfully greeted you as he typed on the keyboard. Even sitting down, you could tell the man was built, his muscular arms covered in a variety of tattoos. He may have been intimidating if not for the glasses and warm smile. "Do you have an appointment?"

You glanced over your shoulder and saw your ex making his way across the street. "Sorry, I don't. Is Bucky here? I really need to talk to him."

"Oh, yeah. Just over there. If you want to take a seat, I can-"

"Thank you. I'll be quick," you smiled, hoping Bucky wasn't in the middle of an appointment.

You glanced around at some of the other artists as you walked over to the chairs and noted how exceedingly gorgeous they were. There was one with short dark hair and a beard that looked like he could kill someone with his tattoo gun if they stared for too long. The girl sitting at his station and the man behind him with shocking pink hair and bright smile both brought a ray of warmth to his almost dark aura.

Is it a prerequisite to work in the shop that you have to be good looking? And either look intimidating as hell or incredibly alluring?

You gripped your bag to keep your hand from shaking as you saw Bucky engaged in a quiet conversation with Steve, recognizing him from earlier. You were almost afraid to interrupt. "Hi?"

Both men turned toward you with smiles on their faces as Bucky pushed himself up from his stool. “Hey, Sugar. Couldn’t wait until tomorrow to see me?”

"Something like that," you said.

"Wait. That's Sugar?" the man with the pink hair asked. "No wonder you keep going to the bakery."

"Don't hit on her, Hal," Bucky warned, earning a chuckle from the other man. "Go bother Andy."

"He already is," a deep voice replied.

You would ask later just how much he spoke about you to the other artists. "I'm sorry if I'm interrupting. My ex was waiting for me outside of my shop and I kind of panicked and said I was meeting you and I rushed over here."

"Your ex?" Bucky asked, immediately moving forward to rub your arms in a soothing gesture. "Are you okay?"

"Hi! Welcome to Sin on Skin!" you heard the guy at the desk call out before you could answer.

Instead, you burrowed yourself against Bucky when you heard Richard shout your name. Rock solid and sturdy, his hold kept your nerves from bubbling to the surface. You had nothing to be afraid of.

So why am I shaking?

“You’re kidding me, right? This fucking asshole?” Richard scoffed as you looked over your shoulder at him. He didn't walk any closer, but his voice carried throughout the entire shop. "Like putting a bumper sticker on a piece of shit car, isn't it?"

“Richard, just leave.”

"Does your mom know you're spreading your legs for some tatted up lowlife? Still a disappointment, aren’t you?”

The jab cut deep as much as you wanted to ignore it. He knew that your mom judged every part of you. No matter what you did, it was never good enough.

You wouldn’t focus on that for the time being. "

You do not come into his shop and insult him. Bucky, I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize for this asshole, Sugar. His opinion of me means less than nothing, trust me," he assured you before he faced your ex. "You, however, are banned from my shop. You can get out now or Jake will call the cops for trespassing. After you apologize to my girl for upsetting her. Your choice, Dick."

Your heart fluttered as you leaned into Bucky more.

His girl. It sounds right.

"Please. I can buy the shop tomorrow just to bulldoze it to the ground," he sneered before he jabbed a finger at you. "And you know what? Keep her. I tried to give her another chance, but she's not worth it. She's a lousy lay anyway."

The insult washed away the momentary good feeling and was the tipping point that brought tears to your eyes. It was humiliating enough that you were the root cause of a scene in Bucky's shop, but the jab in front of his employees and customers brought it to another level. Why did you think hiding in there was a good idea?

Does Bucky think I'm a total loser now?

It was only when you sniffled did you notice the entire shop had gone silent, a dangerous tension in the air when Bucky tightened his arms around you as Steve and Andy slowly got to their feet.

"Hey, why don't you and I go in the back?" the friendly girl at Andy's station suggested. "I think there's some snacks back there, right?"

Andy nodded and gave her the go ahead.

"Bucky," you whispered as you dared to look at him. A tear slid from your eye when you saw the murderous gaze on his handsome face. "I'm-"

Before you could register what was happening, he pulled your face toward his and kissed you. Fierce, yet gentle as he brushed the tear away with his thumb, you let him take the lead. A slow simmer of warmth crept into your cheeks as he parted your lips with his tongue and coaxed yours into his mouth. Your fingers twisted in his shirt as he deepened the kiss and shifted so you were pressed almost completely against him.

If this is how he kisses, he might actually kill me if we ever go further than that.

He breathed into your mouth as he stole the very oxygen from your lungs when he pulled away.

"Go in the back," he told you, his gaze dropping to your lips. Did he want to kiss you again or was it wishful thinking on your part? "I just need to take out the trash, finish up here, and I'll take you home, okay? I won't be long."

It was a feat that you didn't shed more years with how gently he spoke to you.

"Thank you," you whispered, unable to say much more.

"Let's check out that snack collection back there," you heard before you were pulled from Bucky's grasp.

You didn't look back at Richard when the girl tugged you away, but you heard a slight waver in his voice as yelled after you.

That's right. You should be afraid.

"Thank you," you said, wiping your eyes with your hand.

"No need to thank me. One of my good friends just got out of a bad relationship and I'm still a bit in my protective streak," she explained. "Are you okay?"

"I think so."

You tried to remember how Richard acted around other guys when the two of you dated. Had he been the jealous type and you just ignored it? Or did he only cause a scene because you showed him you wanted to move on?

Tess is going to flip when she hears about this.

"Well, whether they just throw him out on his ass or worse, he deserves it for what he said to you," she added before she told you her name. "Everyone calls me Sunny."

"He does," you agreed, introducing yourself as she handed you some water. "Bucky calls me Sugar."

"And you work in the bakery across the street?" she guessed.

"Co-owner," you said, the small talk calming you. "Do you work here or are you a client?" you asked, noticing that she didn't have any tattoos.

"New client. I work in an animal shelter," she smiled. "Grumpy out there is going to give me a sun tattoo."

"That's nice," you smiled back. It seemed fitting with her warm and bright presence. "I really do appreciate you bringing me back here."

It was somehow just as warm and inviting as the entrance, the couch worn and comfortable. You wondered how often Bucky came back here to relax and hang out in-between his appointments. Would he ever bring you back here if you stopped in to see him?

"I figured the amount of testosterone out there could be a bit overwhelming, but are you sure you're okay?"

"Other than being incredibly embarrassed, yeah."

Even though Richard was no longer your boyfriend, he just had to barrel back into your life and leave a mess in his wake.

"He's the one who should be embarrassed," Sunny said, wiggling her eyebrows. "Especially after seeing that kiss."

Your face warmed as you replayed it in your mind. The silver lining for showing up tonight was receiving such a passionate kiss from Bucky. It was difficult not to get swept up in the moment though and you told yourself it was likely just for show. A way for him to stick it to a guy who upset you.

Right?

"It was a really good kiss," you smiled.

"Oh, we all felt the heat. Trust me."

Both of you giggled until there was a soft knock on the door frame.

"Hey, Sugar. Trash is out on the curb," Bucky winked. "You ready to go home?"

Your heart fluttered as you smiled back. "Yeah, I'm ready."

You didn't live far away, but Bucky still insisted on taking you home. He even took you out the back way so you didn't have to see anyone. While he didn't specify exactly what happened with Richard, he assured you he wouldn't poke around either of your shops again. It made the drive home more pleasant knowing he looked out for you.

So much that you almost took his hand when he stopped outside of your place.

Almost.

"Thank you for everything," you said. "I'm really sorry about tonight."

"You have nothing to be sorry for. Not the first time we've dealt with assholes in the shop. Steve and I don't like bullies."

"I still feel bad," you said, wishing the feeling would go away.

"Please, don't," he whispered.

Your fingers twisted in your lap before you took a deep breath. "When you came into the bakery earlier today, I was going to ask you out," you told him, but refused to look at him. "But after that, it's probably a dumb idea. You shouldn't have to deal with that kind of trouble."

Maybe there's a better girl out there for you.

"You think one asshole ex is trouble?" he asked, leaning over to grasp your chin so you'd face him, goosebumps rising on your arms from his touch. "I can handle that."

"But what he said in your shop-"

"He did that to bring you down because he's an asshole. Guys like that don't want to see girls thrive without them."

You scoffed and mumbled, "I wonder what you'd think of my mom.

"I'm not afraid to stand up to anyone who tries to hurt you," he said, keeping a hold of your chin with a tender grip as your chest tightened. "You said you were gonna me ask out. Don't change your mind because of them."

"So, you really want to go on a date with me?" you asked.

"If I say 'yes', do I get to kiss you again?" he replied, running his thumb along your lower lip.

You were torn between sucking his thumb into your mouth or sinking into your seat. "Maybe we should get an actual date under our belts first. You only kissed me to prove a point or something."

Even if it felt like heaven.

"Or maybe I've been wanting to kiss you since I walked into your bakery and I want to kiss you again," he said, sliding his hand around to the back of your neck with ease. "Proving a point was an added bonus."

You looked at him wide eyed and subconsciously touched your lips. "Wait, you want to kiss me just because I asked you on a date?"

"I can give you a whole list of reasons," he said, his gaze flickering between your lips and your eyes. "And I'd love to go out with you. Friday night, Sugar?"

"It's a date, Hottie," you smiled when he leaned in.

But he didn't kiss your lips.

He brushed a kiss to your forehead, which somehow seemed more intimate.

"You had a rough evening. The next time I kiss you, I want it to because it's the right moment, just for the two of us," he explained when you furrowed your brows. "My girl deserves that."

A soft smile played at your lips as something warm welled up in your chest. He could have easily taken advantage of how vulnerable you felt by stealing another kiss, but he didn't. Even though you were into each other.

Going to see Bucky tonight was the right choice.

And you couldn't wait for your date.

Love them. Love the whole gang. Except Richard. Fuck that guy. And where are they going on that date? Check out What Dreams Are Made Of to see how Bucky is feeling. Love and thanks for reading! 💙

Masterlist ⚓ Bucky Barnes Masterlist ⚓ Ko-Fi

[txttletale]

its so incredible how being a trans woman gives people full license to just boldfacedly and confidently lie about you. like look at this:

apparently i was "literally mutuals" with someone who i never followed and who never (as far as i know) followed me, despite the fact that i reblogged his post from someone else who in turn reblogged it from someone else who in turn reblogged it with someone else. 3+ layers of online interaction away from his blog magically turns into "LITERALLY mutuals" as soon as someone is in the mood to call a tranny a pedophile.

also, dipshit, if he was an 'open' pedophile then why did he have a whole private website to talk about being a pedophile? could it be that he was not in fact 'open' and that you in fact only know about it because people put together a lengthy google doc of screenshots from his private website to out him as a child abuser? (months after i reblogged that post btw). guess i should have used my epic oracle vision to simply see into the future on this one, my bad

the post already had hundreds of notes at least when i saw it, by the way -- that's how it got onto my dash via reblog chain of 3+ users! so it's pretty rich to accuse me of 'boosting' it, and even richer to say 'posts' as though there was more than one!

through an incredible rhetorical technique known as 'lying', miss situation has transformed me reblogging a post on my dash by an OP i didn't know and knew nothing about into me being "literal mutuals" and "boosting [his] posts". this is what transmisogyny looks like lol it is happening in real time, trans women don't matter so you can make up whatever shit you like about them that best suits your narrative.

& you know if 'seeing the posts' is so utterly damning for me, miss situation, you'd think you wouldn't have to make a bunch of shit up! if you're soooo obviously right that any request for nuance is clearly in bad faith, you'd think you would't have to lie about it! but i guess maybe then it would be too obvious that your first reaction to some guy being a pedophile is to look for random trans women to unperson, huh.

[krirebr]

More Than This 7

Pairing: Ransom Drysdale x f!reader, Steve Rogers & f!reader

Word Count: ~3.9k

Summary: Arranged marriages have always been used to solidify business deals among the ultra-wealthy. Your stepfather wants to be in business with Harlan Thrombey, so now it's your turn.

Warnings: Angst, age difference, adult themes, institutional sexism, explicit language, fighting, my own rampant abuse of italics and em dashes, non-stop continuous action (not the car chase kind, but like, the no section breaks kind), the slooowest burn - Warnings will be added as needed for subsequent parts. All of my work is 18+ - Minors DNI

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

Series Masterlist

Masterlist

A/N: There's no going back now.

Permanent thanks, as always, to @paperweight91 who lets me talk her ear off about this and always has the best input.

I cannot wait to talk to you all about this one, so please leave me a comment, reblog, or ask to let me know what you think! And if you need to come scream at me, that's even better!

As always, thank you so much for reading! 💜

You woke up to the sun streaming in through the windows. You rolled over and checked the time. It was after nine. You’d slept hard—the exhaustion of everything catching up with you. And yet you still hadn’t woken up feeling rested. You couldn’t remember the last time you did.

You grabbed your phone and groaned when you saw all the notifications. Texts, missed calls, two voicemails. All from Steve. He was freaking out. 

Are you ok?

Did something happen?

Please call me

And a few more just like them. You were too tired to answer. You didn’t know how. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t ignored your messages before. You grimaced at your own pettiness. You would answer him when you knew what to say.

As soon as Lola noticed you were awake, she hopped off your makeshift bed and ran to the door, scratching at it to be let out. You sighed. Of course, the safety of your isolation couldn’t last forever. The good news was that it was late enough that Ransom must be gone. You could put that off at least until the evening.

When you opened the door, Lola at your heels, you heard someone moving around downstairs. You hadn’t thought it was a Carol day, but you must’ve lost track. It wasn’t until you were halfway down the stairs that you saw Ransom puttering around in the kitchen, his back to you. Your stomach dropped. Shit shit shit. Why was he here? You contemplated running back into the gym, but as soon as she saw him, Lola darted out ahead of you and raced down the stairs so she could dance around at his feet. He crouched down to greet her. “Morning, Lola,” he rumbled, his voice still full of sleep. “D’you have a good night?” She hopped up and down, pawing at his leg.

You took a deep breath and gathered all of your courage. “She wants breakfast,” you said from your place on the stairs.

His head whipped up to you. He stood up awkwardly. “Oh, uh, where’s her food?”

You came down the rest of the stairs and passed in front of him into the kitchen. “I’ll do it,” you said as you went straight to the cabinet where you kept Lola’s meal supplies. 

Once you had her fed and briefly let her out the back door, you noticed multiple bags of take-out on the island. “What’s all this?”

“Oh, uh,” Ransom rubbed the back of his neck as he stared at you. “I thought we should probably have breakfast. Together. And I didn’t really know what you like, so…” he shrugged.

You quickly took stock of the food. There were diner waffles, pastries from a bakery, eggs benedict from a fancy brunch place. “Thank you,” you said. “That’s nice.” You grabbed a danish from the pastry bag and sat down at the island. “I, uh–” you started then stopped, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I freaked out last night. I, uh– I don’t know what happened. I– I was scared, I guess, by the–” you gestured to your stomach. “But um, I shouldn’t’ve– It won’t happen again, you know? I’m fine now. Everything’s fine.”

Ransom leaned against the counter, facing you, and closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then looked you straight in the eyes and said, “I’m so fucking tired of that word.”

You set down your pastry and looked at him, confused. “What?”

“You’re always so fucking fine, aren’t you? I ask how your day was, it was fine. I ask how you feel about something, it’s fine. I ask what’s wrong when you’re clearly upset, and you say, ‘Oh nothing, everything’s fine.’ It’s fine! It’s fine! It’s fine! I can’t hear it one more time.”

All you could do was sputter for a moment. “What– What are you talking about?! I’ve just been doing what you wanted!”

“How is this what I wanted?” he asked, his frustration shocking you..

But then, your mind started to catch up a bit and you were suddenly filled with indignation. “You told me to pack light! You– You– You made it clear! I know you don’t want me here so I’m just– I’m just trying to do what you want! I'm staying out of your way!”

He laughed and the hollow sound was so startling. “This is you staying out of my way? You’re just this presence that’s always here! That makes me feel unwelcome in my own home!”

That had you standing up so quickly that it sent the stool you’d been on tumbling to the floor behind you. A frightened Lola scampered up the stairs, her collar tinkling sharply, but neither of you noticed. 

“What?!” you shouted, “How could– I– This is your house! How could you ever feel unwelcome here? I’ve never felt welcome here for even a moment! I’m not even a guest here, I’m just this, this– I don’t know! I’m just this pest that you wish you could exterminate but you can’t. You don’t want me here and I feel it every single day.”

“Well, you’ve never told me that, have you?” He almost growled out. “I’m just supposed to know! I see you making this list in your head of everything I’m doing wrong, all the ways I’m disappointing you but you never say anything about any of it. But then when I don’t know how to fix any of it, because I don’t actually know what’s wrong, you resent me for it!” You started to open your mouth and he slammed a hand down on the island between you. “Don’t deny it. I can see it whenever you look at me. You’ve decided that I’m the villain here, right? I’m the bad guy in this story. And I don’t–” He moved his hands to his hips and looked away from you, shaking his head. “I have no idea who you are,” he said, quieter now but no less forceful. “You don’t want me to. You have me just grasping at straws and– But you’ve just decided, huh? That you know exactly who I am.”

All you could do for a full fifteen seconds was just gape at him. He looked tired suddenly. Sad, as if that made any sense at all with anything that had happened. But then you remembered everything that had happened and your anger came flooding back. “Yes, I know who you are. Of course, I do! Because you showed me! It’s like you’ve completely forgotten how we met. Or our wedding!” A tear fell down your cheek and you knew more were about to follow, ready to tip over your lashes. You wanted to wipe them away, but you also just couldn’t take the time to stop right now. “You were awful! Really fucking awful. Right from the beginning you were so cruel and– and now– No! I– How can you expect me to come to you with anything when you all but told me not to during that first dinner?! When you told me you didn’t want me taking up any space here? Or that you would get rid of Lola?! Of course I don’t talk to you! What am I supposed to talk to you about when you terrify me? When everything I have comes from you and you don’t give me anything? When you hold all of the power?!” 

“What fucking power?” Ransom shouted, throwing his arms wide. “If I had any power at all, neither of us would be in this mess!”

“It’s still more than I have! I have nothing! You’re the heir. You matter to people. I’ve only ever been a bargaining chip. And now that they’ve made the deal, no one gives a shit what happens to me. You could do anything to me, and they wouldn’t care! Even my mom–” You cut yourself off, tears choking your voice.

There was a beat of silence, and then, “Even your mom what?” Ransom asked, his voice rough. He was staring at you like the next words out of your mouth would be the most important ever spoken.

And it was only because you felt it too, everything riding on this, that you managed to say, your voice so small and your eyes downcast, “She only ever asks if I’m making you happy.”

When he didn’t say anything to that, you looked back up to find him staring at you, his eyes incredibly serious. But not angry, something– something else. Finally, he sighed and, putting both elbows on the island, said, “I’m really fucking miserable. How ‘bout you?”

You would try to examine it later, the way your instinct in that moment was to apologize or try to downplay your own feelings, your mom’s voice in your head no matter how much you hated it, but instead you took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, I’m– I’ve been so unhappy.”

He nodded then scrubbed a hand over his face. “I think,” he said slowly. “I think we’ve both been acting like if we just ignore this hard enough we’ll wake up one day and this will be over and our lives will go back to normal. But now with the–,” he gestured to you. “We can’t keep doing that. We gotta– We have to figure out a way to live with this.”

“Yeah,” you said quietly, wrapping one arm around your stomach. You couldn’t help but look at him a little warily. Was this real? Did he mean it? “How do we do that?” 

He chuckled ruefully. “I don’t know.”

You just looked at him for a moment before you were interrupted by your stomach growling loudly. “Sorry,” you said, awkwardly. “I didn’t eat much last night.”

“Right,” he said with a decisive nod, “breakfast.”

You each served yourselves from all the food he’d ordered. He righted the stool you knocked over and you both sat down to eat. You didn’t say anything, neither of you did. You figured he had just as much to think about as you did. 

You couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d said he had no idea who you were. It’d been easy, maybe, to forget that this was something that had happened to both of you, when you were in his house, facing his family, working your way into his life. It’d never occurred to you, after that first meeting, that he might want to get to know you, might want to see past all the walls you’d put up to protect yourself. But you felt like they were fortified now. You weren’t sure how to take them down.

Even though you kept your focus on your food, you could tell he kept glancing at you. You felt his eyes on you every few minutes. Finally, as you both finished up your food, he cleared his throat. “I’m an asshole,” he said quietly. “I just am. I always have been. But uh, you didn’t– You didn’t deserve that at dinner. Or the wedding. Or when I yelled at you last night. It didn’t– I don’t think it occurred to me that you’d take me, what I said, seriously. I’m not used to people listening to me, not like that.”

You stared at your plate for a moment and tried to keep breathing. “I– Of course, I took you seriously. What else would I do? I didn’t know you and I was already so scared and– How was I supposed to know you didn’t mean it?” You could feel yourself starting to cry again and wiped furiously at your eyes.

He sighed heavily. “Yeah, I– I didn’t do a good job of understanding how hard this was for you. And I– I’ll try not to do that again.”

All you could do with that was nod.

“But uh– I need you to talk to me, tell me when something’s wrong. I can’t– I need you to talk to me. I’ll, uh, I won’t be mad or– I feel like the few times you’ve let yourself be upset, those are the only times I felt like I could actually see you. I want to be able to see you.”

You took a deep breath. “I’m uh,” you started, trying to find your words. “I’m used to having to put on a mask. It’s really hard for me to not do that.”

He nodded slowly. “How ‘bout,” he said, “I’ll try to be less of an asshole if you try to let yourself be more of one?”

You laughed. You couldn’t help it, it just bubbled out of you, to your own surprise. “Sure,” you smiled, “yeah. Deal.” You met his eyes and he looked proud of himself. There was something about the way he was looking at you that made you have to look away. You put all your attention into taking a last bite of your food.

“So,” he said, and he sounded serious again. “I think we should talk about last night.”

It took everything in you to not shrink down. You wanted to do anything else, but he was right. You needed to. So you nodded and waited for him to start.

“You said– Well. You said a lot of things. But let’s start with– You said I keep you trapped here.”

Your brow furrowed a little bit. “Well, yeah, you only have one car and you don’t have a driver. How am I supposed to go anywhere?”

The dawning realization on his face would have almost been comical if it had been about something that hadn’t caused you so much pain. “Oh my god,” he said. “I– Why didn’t you– No, right. Yeah.” He took out his phone and started typing. “I’ll figure something out. Do you drive?”

“Steve taught me, a little, when I was a teenager. But I’m not– I’m not super comfortable,” you shrugged.

“Ok,” he said typing a few more words, then put his phone down. He looked at you very seriously and said, “Now I need you to tell me exactly what you meant about siccing my mom on you.”

“Oh, well, just that she came over, you know, the next day after I told you I wanted to find a job.”

Ransom’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Here? She came here?”

“Well, yeah,” you said, not entirely sure what was happening. “She let herself in and said you’d talked to her about how I wanted to work and that you wanted me to focus on giving you a family. That that was my job now.”

Ransom’s face darkened in a way you’d never seen before. “Fucking–” he growled. “Goddamnit.” You watched him warily and when he made eye contact, you saw the way he worked to soften his expression. He shook his head. “I never said that. I just, I brought it up to her because she has connections, you know, in surprising places. I should have known. I was stupid. And when you didn’t bring it up again, I just, I assumed it hadn’t worked out and you didn’t want to talk about it.” He took a deep breath, clearly trying to make himself calm down. “Did she say anything else?”

You looked at him carefully. It was almost like he looked different today, something about him. It really did seem like he was trying. So you took a breath and decided to trust him. “She wasn’t very nice to me. She never is. She’s– She’s only ever been awful to me.”

“Yeah,” he said grimly, “that’s fucking Linda. Alright, she comes here again, I want you to tell me. Don’t even talk to her, just call me right away. She tries to call you, you tell me. She ever says anything to you, you tell me, ok?”

“Yeah,” you said, and you didn’t know how to guard yourself from the warmth that spread through you. “I’ll tell you.”

He nodded. “Good. And if you still want to get a job, I’ll help you, ok? I want to do that.”

“Yeah, I,” you sighed, “I don’t know. Everything’s really overwhelming right now.”

“I get that,” he said, “but if you change your mind, let me know.”

“I will,” you promised. Then, when he didn’t immediately bring up another topic from the night before, you raised one of your own. “Um, you never use your gym.” He looked at you, confused, and you shook your head at yourself. “Sorry, it’s just, you have all those rooms upstairs that you never use, and well, you and I,” you rested a hand on your belly, “we did what we needed to do, right? So, uh, I’m having my bedroom furniture shipped here and if it’s alright, I’d like to, uh, turn that room into my room.” 

There was a long pause, long enough for you to get uncomfortable, start to worry that you’d messed up. His face was blank, you couldn’t find any clues there. Then, finally, he seemed to shake himself and said, “Yeah, sure, of course. I’ll, uh, I’ll have it cleared out for you.”

You breathed a sigh of relief. “Great! Thank you! I’m sure you’ll be happy to have your own space back.”

“Right, yeah,” he said and nodded several times. “Yeah.”   

You both got quiet again after that, but it didn’t feel as oppressive as it often had before. Eventually, you began cleaning up breakfast together. As you moved around him in the kitchen to load the dishwasher, you paused. “Hey, uh, what’d you tell your parents? About last night, dinner?”

“Oh,” he said, turning to you from the fridge. “Just that I was suddenly violently ill and we couldn’t make it.”

That stopped you completely. You’d been bent over as you loaded plates, but now you stood up, giving him all of your attention. “Really? You didn’t– didn’t blame me? Or uh, tell them about–”

He finished what he was doing and closed the fridge, then closed some of the space between you. “What? No, fuck that. Listen, any excuse to not have to deal with Richard and Linda is welcome. I’m serious. Fuck them.”

That was when everything really hit you, just how badly you'd misread so much of what had happened. Of all the pain you’d suffered over the past months, how much of it had been self-inflicted? Would everything have been so much easier, for both of you, if you’d just been willing to talk to him? For what felt like the thousandth time that morning, you felt your eyes beginning to well. You tried to turn your head away, but Ransom noticed before you could.

“Hey,” Ransom said quietly as he approached you cautiously, stopping right in front of you, his hands hovering in the air between you both. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

You shook your head. “I don’t know,” you said, your voice tight. “I don’t know. I just– Everything’s just been so hard.”

Ransom sighed, heavily. “Yeah. I know.”

“Um,” you let out a defeated, embarrassed little laugh as the tears began to fall down your face. “Do you think it’s too early to blame pregnancy hormones?” you asked, as you tried to make yourself stop crying.

Instead of dismissing it as a joke, Ransom looked at you very seriously. “I think that you can do whatever the fuck you want.”

There was something about that, the way it felt like acceptance, that made the tears come even harder.

It was then, of course, that your phone started vibrating on the counter, Steve’s ID flashing on the screen. “Oh,” you said, “um, shit.” You just stared at it, not quite able to pick it up. “I, uh, texted him last night. During everything. I’m sure he’s freaking out now.”

“Right,” Ransom nodded. “Well, I’ll give you some privacy.”

You were suddenly filled with the ridiculous need to not be alone right now. “Uh, yeah, thanks. But, uh, maybe, maybe don’t go far.” Your voice dropped out a little at the end of the sentence, embarrassed.

He looked at you carefully and you couldn’t imagine what he saw. A mess, probably. “Yeah,” he said, “of course. I’ll be just upstairs. Shout if you need me.”

Then he left and you took a deep breath. The call had gone to voicemail while you’d dithered, so you called Steve back, sure he’d try again anyway if you delayed any further.

He picked up immediately. “Oh thank god,” he breathed. “What’s going on? Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I just–” you began, trying to keep your voice strong. But of course, you couldn’t hide from Steve.

“Are you crying?” he asked gruffly. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not, Steve,” you lied.

“Chipmunk,” he said, sadly, knowing how hard the childhood nickname would hit you. “What’s going on? What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

You closed your eyes as tightly as you could. “Nothing. It’s just–” You knew you had to tell him something but you had no idea where to start. You could tell him, you supposed, about– about the baby, but it felt impossible to say out loud. And you had no idea how he’d react. Or, rather you had a very good idea, and it was very, very bad. You didn’t have the energy for that. Or the strength and courage. Not now. Maybe not ever. But you couldn’t talk about what happened the night before and this morning without mentioning that part, so really, you couldn’t talk about anything. And you knew your brother. You knew how that would go over. “I’m tired. And I miss you.”

He was silent for several moments. When he finally spoke, all he said was, “I know something happened.”

“It didn’t Steve. Everything’s fine.”

“I know you’re lying to me. Why are you lying?” He was pleading now and you were too tired and hormonal for this.

“Steve,” you pleaded right back, your voice breaking just a little. “Can you please just believe me? Just this once?”

There was another long pause, and then, “Goddammit, I hate this. I can’t– I worry about you all the time. Every time I see a missed call or text from you, my stomach drops. But now you won’t talk to me. And I can’t help you. I don’t know what to do about any of it.”

“Steve,” you sighed. “I know you think you should always be able to fix everything, but there’s just nothing for you to fix this time, ok? Please?”

He just sighed and you both quietly sat on the phone together. You didn’t know what to say to him but couldn’t hang up. Finally, he broke the silence with “I really fucking miss you.”

You smiled just a little, even as you wiped the tears from your face. “I fucking miss you too. And I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said quietly. He sighed again. “Ok, I should go. But we’ll talk again soon. Take care of yourself.”

“Ok,” you said softly. “Bye.” You hung up and set your phone down then put your head in your hands and let yourself cry without trying to stop it. You didn’t notice anything happening around you until you felt a weight settle onto the couch beside you and suddenly your lap was full of Lola. Then a hand gingerly touched your back. When you didn’t move away, it started gently moving up and down. You couldn’t help but lean into it.

The strangest sensation came over you. You couldn’t explain it, but as you sat there on the couch, crying while Ransom rubbed your back, you somehow felt the best you had in months.

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[abbyromanoff]

SPIDER-WOMAN!WANDA HEAD CANNONS:

PAIRINGS: Spider-Woman!Wanda x reader

WORD COUNT: 1,752 (22 dashes)

WARNINGS: fluff, smut, small pervy!Wanda, mentions of public sex, virgin!Wanda, kinda innocence kink, switch!Wanda, breeding, children, mentions of cheating (no one actually cheated), small angst, somnophillia, masturbation, toys, pegging, anal, blowjobs, handjobs, tying down with webs, cunnilingus, sex in a suit, think that’s all :)

NO ONE IS PERMITTED TO STEAL, COPY, OR REBLOG MY WORK AS THEIR OWN!!!

• She doesn’t trust many people, so when you two first met she wasn’t planning on telling you her hidden identity, but once the two of you got closer you accidentally found out when you heard a large bang in your room and found Wanda coming through the window after finally taking her mask off.

• At first, you were shocked, but then it sort of became something you were used to. You were honestly surprised how you didn’t find out sooner seeing as her identity was uncovered nearly five months after you two had started dating.

• I feel like you two met in a bar one night. Wanda isn’t a huge drinker but her friends invited her out, and she went even though she was dreading it. You were bartending there and happened to stumble over to the girl playing with the small straw in her martini and struck up a conversation, getting ready to hear another break-up or cheating story like usual. But she was different, her laugh was so contagious and her smile was glowing.

• That night her friends dragged her away before she could ask for your number so one night after patrol she stopped by, after changing into something more casual of course, and nervously asked for what she came for, and she got it. That night she happily texted you until you both said your goodnights and fell asleep, unaware of the smiles on each other’s faces.

• Wanda wasn’t your first partner, not even your first girlfriend, but you still got butterflies every time she’d stop by your work with flowers during your lunch break or interlace her hand with yours shyly.

• She’s very shy. Some would think she’s innocent, but her thoughts proved that different. Every time she’d see you it would instantly bring a shade of red to her cheeks along with a toothy grin that you adored, even taking to keeping multiple photos of her exactly like this. She saw your lock screen one day and when noticing the embarrassing photo of her smiling larger than ever before, she wanted to crawl into a hole and die. But you loved it, it was the first thing you saw when you woke up and the last thing you’d see before bed.

• After four months together Wanda asked you to move in with her. She did so by innocently asking you to go apartment shopping with her, insisting that she was looking for a new place, leaving out the part where she hoped it would be with you. She had you pick out your favorite one and after a few weeks, she was able to officially ask you while you two were cuddled up watching your show before bed.

• Whenever she was gone for too long or you’d find yourself missing her she’d feel a tremendous guilt at hurting you. She’d come home to see you with dried tears on your face as you finally fell asleep, instantly cuddling you close and reassuring you that she wouldn’t leave you, not in a million years. Before you knew about her secret, your friends insisted that she must be cheating if she was out so late, but you didn’t want to believe it. The night you did find out, however, it all seemed to make sense in your mind, especially as she went on ranting about how she never wanted to leave but she had to keep the city safe.

• Wanda has always wanted kids in the future, it’s always been a dream of hers. And she hoped you’d want the same, and to her luck, you did. The two of you were never allowed in baby stores because you’d truly never leave, having to be forced out once it became too late and the shop was closing.

• If you ever did get pregnant she’d be over the moon but also nervous. She’d cry even more than you when seeing the pregnancy test and would instantly be too scared to go near you in fear of somehow hurting her child, even if there weren’t any signs of your belly growing. And when she found out you were having twin boys? The amount of tears she shed was incredible.

• She’d be the best mom out there, she’d love her children to death. Everything she did was for her family, and often times while she was out on patrol she’d stop to get you three something or take a picture of the sunset from the side of a building, even when you begged her not to bring her phone in fear it would break.

• One year, the boys surprised her by dressing up as Spider-Man for Halloween while their moms were Spider-Woman, she ended up crying once more when seeing them. She then stole a few pieces of their candy once they fell asleep, but they would never need to know that.

• It would take Wanda a while before she’d sleep with you seeing as you were her first. She feared no one would want her or appreciate her body but you proved that worry wrong, spending the entire night worshipping her entirely. After that, she was hooked. She always wanted to be inside you in any way possible, your mouth, your cunt, or even your ass.

• Her hips often tend to have a mind of their own as she thrusts into you, immediately apologizing after she does. She instantly panics when hearing you gag, but you let her wrap her fingertips in your hair to bring you up and down. Her head thrown back, hair sprawled on the pillowcase, mouth wide open with whimpers leaving her and her flexed muscles was a sight to see, you wanted to capture it in your mind forever.

• Is a huge switch. She mostly lets you take control earlier on but once she starts getting the hang of it she loves to make you feel good. You caught her once or twice watching porn, not to masturbate to but instead with a pencil and notebook in hand as she wrote down notes, you created a hobby of knocking before you entered a room after that.

• Whenever she wants to try something new she does it in small little hints, she’s way too nervous to express what it is that she wants. She’d do this by sending you her cart on a sex toy website, telling you that you two should look into trying new things to, in her words, ‘spice it up’. Sometimes she’d even leave her tabs open on purpose so when you one time opened it for a Zoom call with your family you instead found multiple websites with different toys catering to each. She told you it was an accident, but she seemed way too excited when they arrived in the mail a few days later after you placed your order.

• This woman has begged you to peg her and she will continue to do so. She never thought she’d be so interested in it, but one night when your mouth was busy wrapped around her cock and your thumb trailed down to her asshole to test the waters, you swore you’d never seen her cum so hard. She has a few but plugs and will sometimes even tease you while you’re at work with photos of said objects, even taking to going on patrol as her favorite one had been buried inside of her.

• When you first found out about her late-night job as a superhero you couldn’t deny the biting of your lip that occurred when seeing her in her suit. While she was explaining herself anxiously and refusably apologizing for not telling you, you were too busy staring at the way her suit hugged her biceps. Her red hair was messy due to the ridding of her mask and her breasts were hugged perfectly, how could you stop yourself? You threw yourself onto her as she was backed into the wall, your mouth on hers as your knee pressed against her growing bulge. That night your face was painted with her cum as you stroked her off while she was still in her suit, the sight alone caused you to soak through your panties which were later ruined.

• Once Wanda becomes more experienced and used to the act she’d look into more ludicrous things, such as ropes. At first, she thought she’d buy them, but then she pulled you into her one night by her webs and the reaction out of both of you was pornographic. She ate you out while you were pinned against the wall, and when you tried to wiggle away out of overstimulation, she used her webs out of instinct to keep you tied down. Your hands and legs were covered with her substance as she brought you to the edge multiple times.

• Sometimes when she’d come home it would be late at night, much to your dismay. So, on these nights, she’d find herself staring at your half-naked body covered loosely by the blankets. It brought shame when she found her length in her hand, stroking herself to release over your sleeping form. This happened more times than she’d wish to admit, but one night, as her eyes were squeezed shut in pleasure, her body towering over you, you found yourself waking up. She didn’t notice until she felt your cold hands covering her own, helping her up-and-down motions. You teased and tortured her that night, shaming her for doing such a dirty, perverted thing when you were out of consciousness.

• One of her deep fantasies, ones she’d never share with anyone but her own mind, is the thought of fucking you in public while in her suit. Having everyone see Spider-Woman fucking her partner, the guilt and fear in your eyes disappearing when you cum all over her cock, feeling her fill your cunt with her seed.

• She loves breeding you. Like, so much. She discovered this when her condom broke one night and she accidentally came inside of you. You didn’t push her off of you, instead wrapping your legs around her waist to keep her close. And when she pulled out she admired the white substance oozing out of you, not being able to hold herself back as her fingers thrusted into you, restricting her cum from leaking. After that, she’d beg to fill you up and while you were hesitant at first, you eventually gave in, finding yourself pleading for the same as your orgasm came rushing through you.

[natti-ice]

Okay, I saw your recent post and have a writing request 🤣 a kinda sorta forbidden romance kind of story with Benedict Bridgerton. Like what I think of is Love Story by Taylor Swift. They see each other at the ball, talk, dance, fall in love, but x reader’s father is against it because Benedict has a rep around town. But they “sneak out to the gardens” to see each other at the balls and things get smutty 🤣 but then it works out in the end. sorry, was listening to this song and it popped into my head 😅

18+ mdni

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader

warnings: mentions of smut, nothing graphic

oh star-crossed lovers au love it!

reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated<3

⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡ ⟡

The past few weeks since you met Benedict have been a complete whirlwind, you had fallen head over heels for this man- a man with a notorious reputation for being a ladies man- but you couldn’t help it. His charm and dashing good looks won your heart within the first few moments of meeting, when he asked you to dance his smooth voice made you swoon. The two of you danced all night long until it was time for the last dance, as you went to step out to the floor your father caught your arm and pulled you away. He went on muttering things about that “no good Bridgerton boy” as you were being drug from the ballroom your eyes caught his, a confused and saddened expression played across his face before he disappeared from your view.

Days had gone by before you saw him again, this time he was at your bedroom window in the middle of the night, you scald him for being so reckless, you both knew the scandal that would ensue if he was seen. “Their gossip means nothing, you are the only thing that matters to me, my love.” Your heart melted at his words and pulled him into your room. Your mouth moved passionately against his, your hips grind against each other in perfect rhythm, hushed moans and sighs of pleasure filled your room and for the first time you felt complete.

The two of you had to find ways to see each other more often, stolen glances in the park weren’t enough to satisfy that burning need inside of you. You craved each other’s bodies like fire craved oxygen, at the last ball of the season the two of you snuck out to the gardens desperate to get away from the crowds of debutantes who only care about social status and town drama. The labyrinth of flowers became your shelter from your uptight parents, your back pressed against the cool stone of the bench as Benedict cupped your breast through your dress, his lips attached to your neck as he whispered promises against your skin. “I’m going to marry you. You shall be my bride, the mother of my children, the love of my life, i swear it.”

Thoughts of running away flooded your brain, you knew it would break your parents heart but you were too in love to care. The moans that flew from your mouth were absorbed by the shrubbery that surrounded you as he took you right there under the stars.

Tag list:

@Booknerdlife @themadhattersqueen @let-love-bleeds-red @lovelyy-moonlight @hiireadstuff @peachyiiiii

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Pt XIII good omens: The Adventures of Crowley and Aziraquail (Ages 3+)

@innefableidiot Shout out to you for my Good Omens villain arc origin story. I saw your Duck Omens, I reblogged it thinking I had too small of an attention span to watch a whole show, but the Duck Crowley and Aziraphale looked so adorable anyway. But I had flirted with the devil, Good Omens took over my dash, I made a summary, and here we are. This is in honour of you.

Good Omens, as a toddler's book. Yes I wrote an entire toddler's story for this post. If you do like this ridiculous thing, it would be nice if you could reblog it :") That's the only way it can get to more people. And god knows the children of divorce need a good bedtime story. So here you are, to heal the pain.

Crowley the Crow had always been a naughty little bird. Look at him go, flapping over the street... He wanted to steal something! Oh, no, Crowley. Stealing isn't very nice of you.

"I'm not nice," cawed Crowley. "Not nice at all."

Aziraquail the Quail sat near, on a telephone line. He was eating a piece of grain. Munch, munch, much, went Aziraquail. He saw Crowley and waved his wing.

"Crowley!" trilled Aziraquail. "What are you up to?"

"I'm going to steal something," said Crowley. He waved back. Aziraquail was his friend, and it is polite to greet your friends. That's how they know you care! "Look, Aziraquail, that human has a very shiny ring!"

"It is a very shiny ring," Aziraquail said, looking down. Aziraquail wanted to tell the truth. He didn't always succeed, but that's okay! It's very, very important to try. "But Crowley, you can't steal the very shiny ring! It doesn't belong to you."

Crowley was very confused. He landed on the telephone line beside Aziraquail. "But if the very shiny ring belonged to me, how would I steal it?"

Aziraquail sighed. But he decided to explain it to Crowley anyway. Sometimes, people aren't trying to be bad! They just don't know any better. "You shouldn't steal it at all, Crowley. Stealing will make the human sad."

"Oh goodie," said Crowley. "That sounds fun."

"No!" cried Aziraquail. Aziraquail didn't like the sound of that, not one bit. "Crowley, don't make the human sad. Or I shan't be your friend."

Crowley thought over that. He didn't like that. Aziraquail was his very best friend. Friends are very important, and Crowley knew that. But oh! He did so want that very shiny ring.

Crowley looked down at the human again. No, Crowley! Don't do it!

With a flap of his wings, and a flip of his wings, down Crowley flew, to snatch the human's very shiny ring! Oh, dear, Crowley. How very naughty of you.

But what was this? Crowley bumped straight into the human's head! He bounced off and away he went, landing with a huff on the pavement. That's the part next to the street.

The human was very cross. "Come back here, you bad bird!" she shouted. That wasn't polite of her, was it? When you're upset with someone, you shouldn't shout right away. What if it had been an accident?

"It wasn't an accident," said Crowley. He was grumpy. "I wanted to steal her very shiny ring."

Naughty Crowley.

The human ran towards Crowley to scold him. Poor Crowley! But just as the human stepped off the street, along came a very fast bike, and whoosh! Away it went, just missing the human.

Oh my. You mustn't speed on streets like that, very fast bike! You could have hit somebody. Look at that sign over there. This street is for pedestrians, too! Pedestrians is a grown-up way of saying people who aren't on a vehicle. Grown-ups like fancy words.

"Wait a moment," said the human. She stopped and looked at Crowley. "Oh, little crow, you saved me! I could have been hit!"

Crowley blinked. He was very confused. But he'd been trying to be naughty!

"Thank you!" said the human. "Oh, thank you, little bird. What can I do for you?" She looked down at her hand. "Crows like shiny things, don't they? Here, take this very shiny ring. I got it for free with sweets, and I don't even like it."

She gave Crowley the very shiny ring.

"Thank you," said Crowley, because he might be a naughty little crow, but he was a very polite little crow.

The human waved goodbye, and went on her way. Aziraquail landed on the pavement next to Crowley.

"Oh, Crowley," said Aziraquail. "You aren't very good at being naughty, are you?"

"Yes I am!" said Crowley.

Aziraquail smiled. "But you saved the human! And you didn't steal the ring. She gave it to you all by herself, as a reward. Isn't that much nicer?"

"I'm not nice," said Crowley. Oh, Crowley, you silly, silly, crow. "Well, if I'd done it your way, she wouldn't have been saved! So you aren't very good at being nice."

Aziraquail looked sad. Crowley didn't like that. Aziraquail was his friend, and friends don't make each other sad.

"I'm sorry," said Crowley. "But don't you want to know why I wanted the very shiny ring?"

Oh my, Crowley. Why did you want the very shiny ring?

"To be naughty," said Aziraquail. He was still hurt. Sometimes, even when you say sorry, it isn't enough. And that's okay.

"No," said Crowley. He held it out with his little crow beak, and put it on Aziraquail's foot! "It was for you! Because you're my very best friend."

"We're not friends," said Aziraquail. Sometimes, when we're hurt, we say things we don't mean.

Crowley looked sad. "We're not?"

Aziraquail thought and thought. And decided that he had been rather silly. "I'm sorry," he said too. "Of course we're friends. Thank you for the very shiny ring, Crowley!"

Crowley smiled his naughty little smile.

And then, oh my! How cute. Aziraquail leaned over and gave Crowley a kiss on his feathery little cheek. "It's very pretty. I love you, Crowley!"

It is very important to tell your friends that you love them. You don't have to say it with words. Crowley said it with a little kiss back, because he was too shy to speak.

What a very nice crow you are, Crowley.

"I'm not nice!"

"Crowley!"

"Okay, fine, just a little bit."

The End.

[barnesafterglow]

three's a party

summary: you and steve aren't very good at keeping secrets

pairing: stucky x reader

word count: 2.7k

warnings: mmf threesome, fingering, unprotected sex, dvp, surprisingly soft for this kind of content, we support poly relationships in this house

a/n: hiii omg this has been the fic i've been most excited for since i started kinktober and i finally managed to finish it. it's a part two to this fic but can be read as a stand alone as well. i really really hope you all love this as much as i loved writing it, so reblog and comment to let me know!

you can join my kinktober taglist or follow @theafterglowlibrary to stay updated on when i post 🤍

kinktober masterlist ─ main masterlist

read part one here

It was the same routine as usual - Steve’s hands all over you before you even had a chance to get into the apartment.

“Bucky home?” you asked, out of breath from how long he had held you in place to kiss you.

“Nope.” He fumbled behind your back, reaching to open the door.

Neither of you stopped to question the fact that it was already unlocked. Or that the lights were on. You were too wrapped up in each other to notice much of anything until Steve finally picked you up to carry you to his room and saw Bucky in the kitchen.

Steve dropped you immediately, taking a step away, as if that would make things better. As if Bucky hadn’t seen you with your shirt halfway off, your legs wrapped tightly around his waist. His jeans were still unbuttoned, for Christ’s sake.

You expected Bucky to be furious, to yell at the two of you and tell you hated you. Instead, he said nothing, and you took in his posture - casually leaning against the counter, a smirk on his face. Almost like he had been waiting for you.

“Well don’t stop on my account.”

Shit.

You looked over to Steve and met his eye. Then you looked back at Bucky, who was just staring at the two of you intently; you looked down at your shoes to avoid it.

“I’m serious.” Your head snapped up, and suddenly you caught something else in his eyes - dark, pupils blown, and the gleam of cockiness. “Keep going.”

When neither of you moved, he started towards… Steve’s room? He looked back at you, and gestured his head for you to follow. Having no clue what else to do, wanting to appease him so there was a possibility you could maintain your friendship, you followed.

“Sit,” he ordered when the three of you were in the room. You both did as you were told, and your eyes followed his movements as he shut the door.

You stayed silent, still having no idea what to think of the whole situation. You also sat as far away from Steve as was possible for the same reason.

“Touch her like you usually would,” he said to Steve, gesturing to you. Steve stared at him terrified. “Don’t act shy now. Like you haven’t been doing it a wall away for weeks.”

The room was silent, save for the sharp gasps of surprise from you and Steve. You couldn’t believe it - that Bucky even knew in the first place, but also that he wasn’t mad. Instead he just looked… interested.

“What are you doing?” Your voice cracked asking the question, a healthy dose of confusion combined with a dash of fear and a sprinkle of arousal. No, that couldn’t be right. There’s no way you could be getting hot over Bucky telling you he wanted to watch.

“If you don’t do it, Stevie, I will.” The look on his face was absolutely dripping with cockiness - dominance. You’d never heard Bucky talk like that, in the whole time you were dating. Sure, he had liked to throw you around and spank you every once in a while, but nothing like the hold that Steve had over you. And what’s more, Steve listened.

He turned towards you and you hesitantly did the same. Your knees touched, finally truly facing each other for the first time since you had walked into the apartment and seen Bucky.

When he put a hand on your bare knee, he looked at Bucky, who nodded, then back to you. And you nodded too. Wherever this was going - good or bad - you had to find out.

Steve took a deep breath, putting his other hand on your and sliding them up your thighs. Finally, he brought his mouth to yours, kissing you timidly at first, but when you heard a quiet encouragement from Bucky, he deepened it. 

It was easy to get lost in Steve. He was something otherworldly - his mouth, his hands, his everything. The spark you felt for him was something entirely different from the way you felt - had felt, you had to remind yourself - about Bucky.

Except, with his eyes on you like that, it was easy to forget why you even ended things in the first place.

Steve moved his hand towards your core, resting a hand against the wet patch that was apparent in your tight shorts. His thumb found your clit through the fabric and he pressed harshly, pulling a needy moan from you. When you realized what you did, you pulled back, immediately looking at Bucky.

You weren’t sure what to expect anymore. So when you saw he was sporting an impressive bulge in his grey sweatpants, it turned you on more than it surprised you.

He was leaning back against the bedroom door, just watching. You couldn’t help but just stare until Steve took your attention away by tugging on your shirt - a shirt that was Bucky’s, you realized as it hit the floor. You saw the flash of hunger as he realized it too, but your eyes fell closed when Steve pushed you back onto the bed, latching his mouth to your nipple, sucking and biting as he rolled the other one between his fingers.

The most unusual thing about this was how little Steve was talking. Usually, he had the filthiest mouth you had ever heard, but he was relishing in your body. And in the audience he had. Maybe you shouldn’t have been surprised that he was okay putting on a show, considering all the other things he had done to you - and you to him - but the realization that he was enjoying this as much as Bucky clearly was, made you clench around nothing.

He must have felt it, because then he was pulling away and tugging your shorts down your legs. Suddenly, you were naked in front of the two most gorgeous men you had even seen in your life, and they stared at you - fully clothed, no less - like they would worship at your altar.

They glanced at each other, and Steve finally spoke for the first time.

“I’m assuming you’re not going to just stand there and watch?” And that was the only permission needed.

You expected him to put his hands on you, kiss you and touch and give you what you clearly wanted. Instead, he reached for Steve, pressing his lips desperately to the other man’s. If Steve was surprised, he didn’t show it, giving his all into the kiss just as much.

Watching in amazement, a moan slipped from your lips.

“You like that, baby?” There was Steve’s filthy mouth.

“We better let her in on the fun, Stevie.”

Bucky reached for the hem of Steve’s shirt, pulling it from his body. Then, he leaned down to kiss you.

For the first time in over a year, sparks flew between you and Bucky. It was like for a moment, you were the only two people in the world. The only thing that could draw you out of it was Steve’s hands spreading your thighs. 

He placed a light slap to each of them, then manhandled you to the center of the bed. With one hand slowly creeping towards your center, he kissed Bucky again, pulling off his shirt too. When they separated, Bucky tugged his sweatpants down, and you were both bare. The only stitch of clothing left in the room was Steve jeans.

“C’mon Stevie,” you teased. “You can’t be comfortable in those jeans.”

A smirk spread across his face, and he slid his body from the bed. As he stripped down, Bucky took his place between your legs. Content to share, he let a finally naked Steve settle next to him, and they both looked down at you with a glint of pure need in their eyes.

Bucky reached down, running his hands gently along your thighs - everywhere except the spot you needed him. You tried to maneuver your hips so that he was where you wanted, but a large hand pressed down on your stomach, keeping you pinned to the bed.

“Be good,” Steve tsked, and your wide eyes met his as Bucky finally slid two fingers through your folds. Your hips tried to buck up instinctively, but Steve kept you in place while his best friend sunk his fingers into you.

You threw your head back into the pillows, the feeling already overwhelming. Steve was big, but you had always had a weakness for Bucky’s hands. You were so wound up that you thought you may come from just that, then Bucky crooked his fingers just right, and you did.

Steve lifted his hand and let you rock your hips against Bucky to ride out your orgasm. Your eyes finally fluttered open to see Steve sucking on Bucky’s fingers, tasting you.

It was a wonder you didn’t come again, especially when they were both looking at you like you were the only thing they could see.

Bucky leaned forward, kissing you gently, a contrast from how he had just been. He looked into your eyes like he was seeing into you, could see you into your soul and again you wondered how you could have ever let a man like him get away.

The spell was broken by Steve maneuvering you, moving on the bed until he was behind you, his strong thighs caging you in on either side. And Bucky - oh, Bucky - wasted no time in settling in between both of you, taking no time to tease, and sunk into you in one thrust.

The moan you let out was borderline pornographic, not used to the way he stretched you out. It was different than Steve, so much different, and you had missed Bucky more than you let yourself admit.

He grinded against you, not pulling out, just rolling his hips. You knew what he was trying to do, knew he wanted you to beg, and you weren’t too proud to do it.

“Please, Buck,” you whined, high and needy. “Need you to move, please.”

He leaned down and bit harshly on your bottom lip at the same time he pulled out and thrust back into you. An ungodly sound left you, something between a scream and a moan. On top of it all, Steve reached around you, pinching both nipples harshly.

Overstimulated, you came around Bucky’s cock. You’d never come from so little, and despite the fact that both men - separately - had given you many more orgasms in a single night, you were already exhausted.

But not exhaustion could keep Bucky from pounding into you, hard and fast. Steve grabbed your tits, squeezing them as they bounced from the force of Bucky’s thrusts. You threw your head back, resting on his shoulder, and you turned your head to see both of them entranced in each other before finally marrying their lips together.

Seeing them, seeing the love that was clearly there, gave you a funny feeling. It was definitely something you all would have to talk about once your brain was working again.

You whined when Bucky pulled out, but he grabbed your chin and made you look at him before you could beg him to keep fucking you.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, eyes searching yours.

“Of course.”

His eyes flicked to Steve’s for a moment, and you felt the connection they had, somehow always knowing what the other was thinking.

“Turn around, baby.” Steve’s voice was low and heavy in your ear. His and Bucky’s hands both turned you so you were straddling him, and he laid his back down on the bed.

Bucky took hold of your hips lifting you as he allowed one hand to move down and grasp Steve’s cock. He gave it a few pumps before helping you sink down on him.

Yours and Steve’s moans were complementary, twining together and spindling throughout the room. And Bucky’s hot breaths behind you was a perfect chorus.

“Gonna get you open now, sweetheart,” Bucky said, pressing a smattering of kisses to your shoulder before he pushed you down so that your chest was pressed against Steve’s. You didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but you had an idea, and you trusted him completely.

You felt his fingers drawing gentle patterns on the inside of your thighs, Steve still unmoving inside you. Then, he slipped a finger in beside Steve’s cock, drawing a sharp gasp from your lips. You made a move to sit up, but Steve’s hand pressed into your back, keeping you close to him.

Once you relaxed, Bucky added a second finger, then a third. The stretch was amazing and, if it was going where you thought it was going, it would only get better.

“It feel good, baby?” You opened your eyes - you hadn’t even realized you had closed them - and looked at Steve. There was something in his stare that was different, like he was seeing you differently. You were almost tempted to say something about it, but Bucky was moving behind you, and you had to look away. Over your shoulder, Bucky smiled softly at you.

“Do you trust me?” he asked again, and you nodded your head.

He ran his hand down your back, drawing an unknown pattern along your spine, before he pushed into you, his cock sliding against Steve’s to split you open.

It knocked the breath out of you, and you didn’t know if you could take it, but Steve and Bucky both recognized the sliver of panic creeping into you, and they placed sweet kisses and gave you words of encouragement.

You’re doing great, baby.

Look how well you’re taking us, sweetheart.

I love -

You had to stop yourself from saying the words. You didn’t know who you were even saying it to. Or it was to both of them. Yeah, it was definitely both of them. Shit.

It felt like you were losing your mind, in more ways than one. Thoughts and emotions were flying through your head then suddenly they were punched out by the feeling of Steve and Bucky beginning to move.

They were so gentle, letting you get used to the pace, to the stretch, to the intense feeling of everything you had ever felt being magnified by ten. One hundred. One thousand.

Slowly, as your breathing evened out and your whimpers turned to moans, they sped up. 

It was dizzying, the feel of two massive men taking you like that. You didn’t think you would ever feel anything so good again. When they both thrust deep into you at the same time, the orgasm that had been building since Bucky slid inside you snapped, and you came all over their cocks, in tears from the intense pleasure of it all.

The feel of your tightness was enough to set both Steve and Bucky off, both of them spilling into you and you could already feel their releases leaking down your thighs, onto Steve, onto the sheets.

When they both slipped out, you collapsed into Steve’s chest, feeling so fucked out that your limbs wouldn’t cooperate, and you slowly slipped out of consciousness. 

-

When you came to, you were still in Steve’s bed, Bucky on one side of you and Steve on the other. From what you could tell, they had cleaned you up and put you back in the shirt of Bucky’s you had been wearing, then tucked you in between them.

They were talking in hushed voices - nothing you could make out - but stopped once they noticed you were awake.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Bucky said, running a finger across your cheekbone while Steve placed a kiss on your temple. “You feeling okay?”

You nodded, still too groggy to talk. It felt like you were hungover. A sex hangover, that’s what you had.

“You did amazing, baby,” Steve whispered into your hair.

You felt the love radiate between the three of you, and you knew that this wouldn’t be a one time thing, or only a sex thing. 

And it could be figured out in the morning, because right then you were content to be held by your boys, drifting off to sleep again.

kinktober taglist *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

@treatbuckywkisses @sgt-barnesveins @bucky-barmes @opheliastark @sweetascanbee @writing-for-marvel @christywantspizza @hi-sarahh @highlyintelligentblonde @jjbunny14 @buckysfavoritereader 

[still-scribblin]

Please, Please, Please

i just followed where the story took me, it was a few hundred words when i realized there was no smut in the books for this one????? none for now anyway and!! this doesn't seem directly derived from the song the longer i wrote but duhfaiuhdfjnldjfb whatever - also just posting this as soon as i finish so i don't have time to second guess or be shy so there are probably mistakes somewhere here isdbfhs

tags: inspired by a song, rlly mild angst at first but it's all good, reader-centric, 'Reese' is a nickname, if you read the whole thing here you'll get where it came from lmao

written for @stargazingfangirl18 's birthday! 🥳

hey siri! happy birthday! i'm one of your readers and i think it’s so cool that you hosted an event for writing for your birthday. it’s always a treat reading the stories you’ve written (and even the ones you’ve reblogged) when they come up on my dash and you’re one of the first cevans writers i’ve come across that just got me hooked on him and made me appreciate the different characters he’s played in his career! also one of the writers that probably influenced me to try writing for cevans characters too hihi. anyway i hope you have a great birthday here on tumblr and irl with your loved ones and closest friends, and i hope writing keeps you happy and that you share more of those happiness with the community here on tumblr. happy birthday!!! 🎈🎁🎊

i’ve been meaning to write for ransom using this song so i’m glad i got to use this event as a motivator for that. i chose to write for ransom first because he’s usually who i’m reminded of when i look at your blog (probably bc of the icon?) anywayyy yea :)))

wc: 1,269

-------

“Are you ashamed of me?” 

“Wha- no! Never! You know I’m so proud of you, right?” 

“I mean I understand you know,” he said bitterly, ripping your heart to shreds. “I wouldn’t want to be seen with me either.” It took a long time for him to be alright after realizing what he’d done, it took even longer for him to regain his confidence and show his true, lovely, colors after all that. Now it seems like all of that progress will be set back all because you’d lost the ability to speak.

“It’s not that at all Ran, I promise.” 

“Really? Because I heard you threatening to pull your sister’s hair until she went bald when we ran into her at the supermarket if she said anything about us.” you couldn’t breathe. he heard that? “I didn’t even know you were capable of saying violent things. It was a nice change, definitely made you hotter.” somehow you knew he meant it even if he was avoiding your eyes this time around, trying to keep the hurt off of his face. 

“Please believe me when I say I’m not ashamed. Of you, or us, or anything you’ve done and been through. It’s a problem with me, I swear.” your heart hurt at the disbelieving look he gave you. 

“You’re a saint, why would it be a problem with you? Just be honest with me, Reese. I’m a grown man, I can take it.” You hugged his head to your chest, combed his hair with your fingers, and choked on your tears. Words that you couldn’t say tripping over each other, suddenly in a rush to be spoken when they’d been stuck in your throat for days. It wasn’t his fault that this meeting would be doomed to fail, and something inside you would die if you let him go back to the driver’s seat believing that you saw him as anything less than the man he was, the most loving partner you’d ever had. 

You didn’t even realize your position had changed until you inhaled a mouthful of the fibers of his sweater. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you shrugged. The sigh he’d let out at least let you know he’s okay and out of the self-deprecating hole he’d dug himself into while he waited for you to speak. 

“It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe, but I have high hopes. You’ve always spoken so highly of your family, and if you’re right about them then maybe they’d give me a chance, just like you did.” the way he looked straight into your eyes with unshakeable faith stole the breath from your lungs, and that was that. you didn’t know what you did to deserve him. 

Whatever happens, you were content knowing that Ransom knew where you were coming from, and that whatever anyone would say, you didn’t think of him any less. You steeled yourself as you both got back out front, the ride still quiet but definitely more comfortable as you felt the weight of your intertwined hands on your lap. 

“Well that wasn’t so bad. What were you so nervous for?” staring at the ceiling of your childhood bedroom, squeezed against Ransom’s body and the wall beside your twin-sized bed, you’d barely heard what he said, feeling so snug and comfortable at finally being able to relax now that all’s said and done. You didn’t even know you lost sleep over it. 

“Hey.” Ransom poked your cheek. He laughed as you groaned and buried your face in his chest. 

“I don’t even know.” you exhaled, watching his chest rise and fall calmly. 

For once in your life you were happy to be proven wrong. You’d thought that it would be a disaster of an afternoon, but your sister – godbless her blabbering mouth – had already told the whole family about Ransom, and about how she saw you two goofing off in the supermarket that day before approaching you two. The family had already known apparently, and were just happy that you found someone who wouldn’t take you for granted, regardless of their past. 

Tears stung at your eyes at the idea of Ransom staying, not because he needed anything from you, but just because he wanted to. 

“Come on,” you felt him grumble. “get out of that pretty head and come into bed with me. you already left me to fend for myself the whole afternoon.” he complained. 

“Do I have to fuck your soul back into your body?” that got your attention. 

“What?”

“What?” you could only watch, incredulous, as Ransom palmed his growing hard-on and proceeded to position himself between your legs with a mischievous grin. “I’ve been thinking of this since you told me we were visiting.” at your blank look, he sighed.

“Fucking you in your childhood bedroom, of course.” he snorted as you suddenly sat up and began hitting his arm out of embarrasment. seriously, where was the filter on this man’s mouth? 

Apparently having had enough of games, you soon found yourself unable to move, hands pinned by one of his own above your head, your view taken up by Ransom furrowing his brows as he took his pants off with only one hand. 

“Are you serious?” 

“Yep.” he said, insufferable. You could only watch as he made a show of sucking on his particularly placed middle finger — the eyeroll you gave him only widened his stupid grin — and pressed said finger in the middle of your panties, tracing your slit over the cloth and breaking your unimpressed stare that he wasn’t buying. 

“You’re such a worrywart,” Ransom said as he slid a thick finger into you, the gusset of your underwear pushed to the side, his eyes never leaving yours. “but I shouldn’t complain, that is how we finally got to talking, after all.”

The hand holding yours slid down to push your thighs further apart. The mental image of what you must look like, inside your family home, with only the four thin walls of your bedroom to keep your dignity intact sparked a fresh wave of arousal over you. Ransom, who had always been attentive, raised a curious eyebrow at the subtle twitch of your body. “you like this, don’t you?” 

you refused to answer the accusation, refused to watch his infuriating smirk grow, but you should have known that would never fly with him. you squeaked as you felt a firm slap on your clit. 

“answer me.” 

“...yes” you whispered. you closed your eyes as he began chuckling, muttering to himself about how ‘he knew it’. One thing you’d learned about Ransom was that the guy loved to talk. The only time he ever shut up was when you sat on his face, because even asleep he liked to mutter random things, like book quotes or threats to family members that were nowhere near him, thankfully. 

the sound of footsteps nearing your bedroom had you looking back at him, panicked. Ransom on the other hand, seemed excited, going by the way his eyes lit up. 

“hey!” your sister knocked. “movie starts in 10 minutes so if you two aren’t down by that time I’m busting this door open even if I have to do it blindfolded!” 

“kinky!” Ransom replied. The loud thump of your fist against his shoulder was drowned out by your sister’s laughter. 

“fuck you!” you whispered, unbelievably embarrased. 

“that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.” Ransom says matter-of-factly, his face speaking of the herculean challenges you’re no doubt going to have to endure for the next 9 and a half minutes.

[otomiyaa]

Re: Catching Up

Finally reading the reblogs and mentions of my tag game (my main reason for starting that was to read about what y'all are up to while I neglected tha dashboard lolol) and dumping some replies here to some peeps I follow^^

General note to all: so happy to see the multiple excited reactions to Inside Out 2 hehehe, I loved it so much T0T

@crazy-as-a-jaybird THE SIMS 4 LOVESTRUCK!!!!! I didn't know that was coming! I haven't played the sims in a long time, but gee that's exciting news, thnx! ..... I wonder if there will be some nice loveydovey tickle animations in there....

@italeean "You guys probably already know what I'll say" (about Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie), actually I don't know 👀 it's been a while since I saw that movie when it was released in the cinema here, but you made me curious to your reaction. What did you think? :3

@giggly-squiggily omg Blue Lock & Haikyuu hypehype and did you also love to see these lazy gamer guys Kenma and Nagi dominate the big screens as heroes to their respective movies, so shortly after each other, what a time to be alive 🤩

@fantasizes-tickles-daily My Adventures with Superman ng;dngifdgjdhljfni;oji I still need to start the new season but omfg I'm so glad finally someone else is into this hehehe, I love that! I'm also not a big DC fan, I didn't even see most movies, but I LOVE THIS ONE. Clark is the cutest isn't he?

@eliankrios YOU PLAY THE SIMS 4????? 👀 also thank you for those banger song recs. I only knew 'save my life' from xandria but not valentine or others :3

@wertzunge Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, I saw that one on the plane a while ago, I enjoyed that too!!! I wonder if they will do more :3 I never played the game though....

@tiklart SHARK MOVIE SUFFERERS WE ARE HAHA, also good luck on your exams!🫶 sending good luck vibes~

@gladdygirl18 ❤️❤️❤️ sending good love life prayers, hope all will go well! and yay for fellow minecraft enjoyer :D

@sunstone-smiles I LOVE ESPRESSO odjs;dgjhih ih but I didn't like it at first either :') it had to grow on me too.

@kusuguricafe seeing you talk about your genshin abyss teams makes me go 💀💀💀 it's been so long since I played genshin, especially abyss. Are you managing the 3 stars each chamber f12 cuz I've only succeeded like once at it or smth. oh and I hope you'll have fun writing again soon! Don't push yourself too much for tickletober, as long as it stays fun*w*

@blobbirobbi wow I knew all 3 of those artists but not those songs, thnx for the recs :D especially the Måneskin hohoho

@sleepysheepytea feels indeed like ages since I saw your activity on my dash, wishing you the best of luck with work and stuff^^

@hypahticklish that was literally my reaction too to the movie The Fall Guy, I loved that so much and you described it so well 😍 I thought it would be a "Haha funny" movie but it really moved me and I also didn't expect the first part to be so emotional. p.s. thnx for the blank copy paste, sorry for forgetting 🥲🥲

@a-fluffer-nutter wow good luck on the move to the UK and congrats on 8 years tumblr, I still remember you being one of the first tk blogs i encountered 😌

@lovelymessybubbly wooow it feels like AGES, sorry to hear about the low mental energy but hope you're doing well ^^!

[navybrat817]

Ladies and Gentlemen

Pairing: Tattoo Artist!Bucky Barnes x Baker!Female Reader Summary: Bucky reflects on you and your date the morning after. Word Count: Over 1.9k Warnings: Tension, flirting, brief moments of insecurity, implied sexy times, slight feels (it's me), Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?). Graphics talent and thanks: Banner by @sgt-seabass. Divider by @firefly-graphics. Bucky edit by Nix. Moodboard by yours truly. Previous Part of AU: Technically Innocent and Sinful, but posted part is Sundresses and Leather A/N: A bit more Hottie and Sugar from our Sin on Skin AU and you voted to go to his place! ❤️ I realize that I've skipped over Innocent and Sinful for now, but I really wanted to showcase Bucky and his feelings regarding the date and you. Beta read by the lovely @whisperlullaby (thank you for spitballing), but any and all mistakes are my own. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!

Bucky hummed to himself as he made breakfast, doing his best to move quietly around the kitchen. He normally only hummed along to the radio in his car, which you discovered during your date the night before, but he couldn’t help himself today. He was happy. He had a spring in his step he hadn’t realized was missing.

Turns out, the thing he was missing was you.

“So. My place or yours?”

Tiptoeing back to his bedroom, Bucky saw you asleep peacefully in his bed. It was a sight he could get used to. Your gentle breathing and serene expression brought a small smile to his face as he leaned against the doorframe. When he woke up earlier with you in his arms he feared for a moment that he was dreaming again, like he had in his shop. But when he placed a kiss on your forehead and received a sleepy moan in response, he knew it was real.

So was the night before.

Bucky held back a groan as some of the images of the two of you together replayed in his mind, his eyes closing and only serving to enhance what he was already thinking about. He wanted to be a gentleman to you. He tried. After your last prick of a boyfriend, you sure as hell deserved that. Which was one of the reasons he was making you breakfast, as tempted as he was to climb back in bed and wake you.

Told you I’d take care of you, Sugar.

You opened up to and for him so beautifully. You were nothing short of an angel. His angel. His Sugar. It was crazy to think like that after one date, but there was something there and that was before he took you out. And you already planned what the next two dates would be, which he was looking forward to.

Even if our first date didn’t go as planned.

It turned out for the best. Even better than he could’ve imagined. He refrained from leaving a negative review online at that restaurant for mixing up his reservation, which was a blessing in disguise. The place was far from his style, but he saw it as a chance to impress you when his other plans fell through. He should’ve known better and gone with his instinct to take you to a place like Antonia’s from the start.

The smile slipped from his face as he remembered you talking about your mom, his fists lightly clenching. If he ever had the chance to meet her, he’d have a hard time staying silent about how she treated you. As if you sensed the sudden tension rise within him, you shifted closer to his side of the bed and rubbed the spot with your hand. The sight soothed him. For you to tell him something so vulnerable, to trust him, gave him a glimpse of how strong you truly were. Because it took strength to open up and stay kind when others tried to knock you down.

I’ll catch you.

Silently dashing back to the kitchen so he didn’t burn anything on the stove, he pushed the thought of your mom out of his mind as he finished up. He wasn’t going to focus on the negatives today. Not when he had you at his place. Maybe he could convince you to stick around for a bit after breakfast if you didn’t have plans.

Before he had a chance to wake you, someone knocked three times on the front door.

Steve.

He wondered if the noise woke you as he glanced down the hall, but he didn’t hear any movement as he headed toward the door and yanked it open before Steve could knock again. Sure enough, his best friend had his fist closed and ready. “Not dressed?” he asked as he lowered his arm.

With a shrug, Bucky glanced down at himself. “I’m wearing sweatpants,” he said, which he only put on to cook for you. “What are you doing here? It’s my day off.”

“Is that how you greet your best friend, jerk? After I came all the way over here?” He asked, looking back and forth as he pushed his way inside. “You weren’t answering your phone and you usually don’t sleep this late.”

“Come on in, punk. And don’t act like you drove across town to see me. We live in the same building,” Bucky said sarcastically as he shut the door. “So because I didn’t answer my phone on my day off, you decided to come over? Really? You’re spying, which you’re terrible at because you’re a terrible liar.”

The blonde pushed his hair back as his gaze swept the apartment. “I’m not spying, but come on. You have to tell me something. Jake and Hal won’t shut up in the group chat. Even Andy asked about your date and you’ve ignored everyone,” he argued, following Bucky to the kitchen.

Bucky couldn’t find it in himself to feel annoyed at Steve showing up or at the rest of the guys for wanting to know how the night went. They looked out for and supported each other. The fact that they all liked you made them root for the two of you more. “I wasn’t trying to ignore you guys,” he said, not saying he didn’t answer anyone since he was preoccupied with you.

“So, how did it go?” Steve asked, a hopeful look in his eyes.

Perfect because it was with Sugar.

“Minus getting rained on and the restaurant screwing up the reservation, just fine,” he said, giving a quick rundown of some of the details. He left out the heart-to-heart conversation in your bakery. Steve was his best friend, but that wasn’t any of his business.

“It didn’t go the way you wanted to, but it was ‘just fine’? Judging by that smile on your face, I take it the date went well,” Steve said.

Very well.

Bucky managed not to smirk as he set out two coffee mugs. “A gentleman never tells. Now do me a favor and get the hell out of my apartment. My breakfast is getting cold.”

“I know you have an appetite, but this much food?” Steve said, nodding to the two plates. “Considering I showed up unannounced and you already had two plates out, I’m guessing you weren’t planning on feeding me.”

“Mmm. Something smells delicious. Oh! Hi, Steve.”

Bucky sucked in a breath when he turned his head and drank in the sight of you. You had a sleepy expression on your face, which was adorable, but it was the fact that you were wearing one of his shirts that made his heart stop in his chest. You toyed with the hem as you smiled, your gaze on him and not on Steve. He wondered if it would be too much to ask you to wear one of his shirts while you worked in the bakery.

I can have a dress made out of one of my shirts, right?

“Good to see you.” Steve smirked before he looked at his friend. “A gentleman never tells, huh?”

Bucky allowed himself to smirk this time. “I didn’t say a word.”

“Oh, he’s very much a gentleman,” you said as you joined Bucky and slid an arm around his waist. His arm instinctively went around your back, his fingers gently touching you through the fabric. “He’s also a sorcerer. Or maybe a magician. I’m not sure which.”

Steve’s brows furrowed as he glanced at Bucky. “You’re a what?”

“Well,” you said slowly, biting your lip before you looked at Bucky. “There’s this magical thing he does with his tongue where-”

The blonde held a hand up to stop you. “And that’s my cue to leave.”

Yeah, because my cue of telling you to leave wasn’t enough, Punk. Now go so I can do that thing with my tongue again.

“Told you a gentleman never tells,” Bucky stated, pulling you closer by the waist. It amazed him how perfectly you two fit together. “I never said anything about my girl speaking.”

Your eyes lit up at the small endearment, making his heart race. “Should I tell him about your massive-”

“Text me later!” Steve said, giving you a small smile before he quickly showed himself out.

Bucky chuckled when the door shut. “Don’t let his modest act fool you. He’s far from innocent,” he joked. Steve respected women though.

“I think he was trying to act like a gentleman for my sake,” you teased. “And if Tess knew where you lived, she probably would’ve shown up, too.”

With a chuckle, he nodded in agreement. “How’d you sleep? I would’ve stayed in bed with you, but I wanted to make you breakfast.”

Are you sore? Do I need to take care of you?

“I slept very well, thank you. And breakfast in bed sounds like the perfect way to start the day,” you said, touching his cheek. He could stay wrapped up in bed with you all day if you'd let him. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Best night of sleep I’ve had since I can remember,” he answered honestly, his eyes soft as a full blown smile spread across your face.

You leaned in to brush your lips against his before you stopped yourself, some of the light fading from your eyes. “Sorry. I haven’t brushed my teeth and my breath probably stinks-”

Bucky closed the gap to kiss your lips. He didn’t care if you brushed your teeth or not. “Taste sweet to me, Sugar,” he whispered, taking possession of your mouth again to leave you breathless. He wanted to taste every part of you and sweep away any insecurities or doubts that tried to take over.

You pulled away to take a breath. “Keep kissing me like that and I won’t eat this breakfast you worked so hard on.”

“Did you purposely say ‘hard on’?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at you. “And I don’t mind feeding you my-”

You covered his mouth with your hand, giggling. “Don’t you dare say what I think you’re going to say.”

He licked his lips when you moved your hand away. “I was going to say I don’t mind feeding you my food,” he told you with a blank expression since he couldn’t feign innocence. “You’re a dirty girl for jumping to conclusions.”

“I’m not a dirty girl. I’m a lady,” you protested, inhaling sharply as he began to back you up against the counter.

“You look good in my shirt. Really good,” he said, his voice gravelly and low as he flexed his fingers on your hips. “Tell me to stop, Sugar. I already wore you out once and you need to eat so you have your strength.”

Because I want to ruin you all over again.

“So I have my strength? You sure I didn’t wear you out, Hottie?” You questioned.

He found himself laughing as you tilted your chin up. Not at you. Never at you. No, it was that happiness creeping back in at how the two of you fell in sync. The banter, the ease. He wished you could see yourself through his eyes and feel what he did.

He’d continue to find ways to show you how special you were.

“How about we agree that we wore each other out? I think that’s what happened.”

You gave him a single nod. “Looking forward to us wearing each other out again.”

Me, too, Sugar. Me, too.

He's a dream, isn't he? Love and thanks for reading! 💙

Masterlist ⚓ Bucky Barnes Masterlist ⚓ Ko-Fi

[goldenbuckyyy]

HOLD ON

Summary: The aftermath of Harry finding you.

Pairings: Harry Styles x fem!Reader (cheating together) Main characters x original characters.

Word Count: 4.1kish

Warnings: Cheating (Harry and Reader together), mentions of DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST PARTNER, mentions of blood, bruising, and cuts.

A/N: IM BACK!! I am so so sorry it’s take me over a month to post this part! I can’t even believe it’s been that long. I got into a bad writing funk after my last post and spend the last two weeks just reading and not even writing truthfully. But, thank you everyone for your patience. I hope you all enjoy. REMEMBER TO READ THE FIRST TWO PARTS!! Song inspo: “Hold On” by Chord Overstreet. 

Um, I’ve also reached 1.2k of you lovely people following me. 🥹 ily all. Thank you!!

All my mistakes are my own. Please do not repost or translate my fics on any other site nor this one.

I appreciate any likes, reblogs, messages, and interactions. Please message me your thoughts!!! It fuels me!

Series Masterlist || Masterlist

Harry doesn’t think he’s ever felt more afraid. 

He’s been afraid plenty of times in his life. More than he can count. He’s not ashamed to admit it. 

He’s not ashamed to admit he’s felt fear before. 

Off the top of his head, he was afraid for his judges response on the x factor stage, he was afraid for what was going to happen after they had lost, he was afraid when they went on hiatus, he was afraid when he went solo, he was afraid before he put out his first album, his second album, and most recently his third. He was afraid of many things. 

But you were there for every single one. 

And you calmed him down. You were his rock. His grounding statue when he most needed it. 

Every single time he had been afraid in the past, you were his voice of reason, and it didn’t matter who was his partner at the time. 

He knew you were going to be his wife one day. 

He just knew it. 

He was just too stupid to think you guys could ever be with anybody else. But you were happy with Asher and he was happy with Vivian. 

Or he let himself believe he was happy with her. 

Because you were happy. 

But at the end of the day, when he laid in bed and held her. Smelling her expensive shampoo in her hair when they cuddled…

It always reminded him she wasn’t you. 

But he toughed it out. Because you were happy. He loved seeing you happy. He could handle settling for second best if he still had you in his life and thankfully that was never an issue between you two. 

Now, Harry feels like a complete fucking idiot. 

Because if he had only made you his wife like he had wanted too, you wouldn’t be in this situation right now. 

He wouldn’t be going over the speed limit in the London streets if he had. He wouldn’t be holding back his tears as he thinks of what you had just told him on the phone. 

But who’s he kidding? 

His eyes were full of tears, threatening to fall down his cheeks, swerving through cars, not caring if he got stopped right now, knowing he wouldn’t pull over, and his entire body was shaking. 

His hands were gripping onto the steering wheel. So hard that it was almost painful, one hand was maneuvering the steering wheel, while his other hand was gripping onto his cross necklace on his chest. The same necklace that you had gifted him years ago. 

You had told him you saw it at a jewelers shop one day and decided to get a matching pair. He’s worn it ever since. 

His eyes dash to his cell phone that’s on the console, your name taunting him on the screen, and he keeps the call connected. Just in case you woke up. 

Once Harry turned into your secluded street, his tires screeching at his fast movement, but he stepped on the gas pedal to go faster. 

His heart was racing as he pulled into your stone driveway. He quickly parked his SUV, taking notice that only your car was in the driveway, and he felt his body fill with nerves as to what was going to await him inside. 

With shaky hands and stumbling feet, he ran towards your front door. He instantly stilled at the front door, gulping down the lump in his throat as he reached for the handle, and pushed the door wide open. It was unlocked. 

The house was earily quiet and it made his skin break out into goosebumps. Harry’s body was shaking in fear of seeing you, he quickened his pace, running down your long entrance hallway, and not knowing entirely where you were, he shouted your name. 

Peering into the open rooms, trying to see if you were in the first opening of the living room, and he was getting anxious when he didn’t see you. 

He ran down towards the second opening of the hallway which was your kitchen and instantly his feet skidded to a halt. His feet screeching against your marbled floor. 

Harry gasped loudly at the scene in front of him, a wrenching surprising sob wrecked through his body as his eyes scanned the kitchen layout, and he felt pale. 

It looked like a bloody crime scene here. 

Bright red liquid splattered over the white marble floors and cabinets. He could see it all over on the countertops, against the wall, and on the kitchen stove. Glass was everywhere that his eyes could see. 

And then he saw you. 

Another loud uncontrollable sob wrecked through his body as he ran towards you, falling down to the floor next to your unconscious body, not caring about the glass breaking his skin, his hands immediately reaching for you, pulling you into his body, and he tried to shake you awake. 

Rapid tears fall down his cheeks immediately, his entire body is shaking with his sobs, his vision is cloudy, and he pulls you into his lap. He wraps one of his arms around your body and uses his free hand to move your hair away from your face. 

He keeps repeating sun and baby over and over again. Hoping you’d hear him somehow. Hoping you’d open your pretty eyes for him. 

His eyes take in your bloody nose, busted lip, your favorite lavender sweater is coated with blood in different spots, and same as your apron. He notices your limp hands have glass in different places, your leggings are black but he can see different areas with small shards of glass on them. And your feet. Your poor blue fuzzy socks are drenched in red. He’s not sure if it’s wine or blood. 

His eyes move back to your face and he stills when he sees the hand marks on your neck. The fresh ugly bruises that are showing up. He looks up into the air, releasing a shaky breath, gritting his teeth as tears flow down his face, and he curses underneath his breath. 

Harry is physically shaking with anger and guilt. He’s so upset at what Asher did to you. He feels like he can kill him, but he shoves that feeling away and focuses on you. 

He doesn’t care that he’s getting himself covered in wine and blood right now. His free hand has specs of your blood on it now, but he keeps wiping away the hair and blood from your face. 

Repeating “baby” to your face and kissing your face to wake you up. The metallic taste on his tongue makes him whimper. 

“Hold on, baby. Just hold on.”

His voice is shaky, weak, and desperate.

So fucking desperate. 

He doesn’t know what to do. You’re not reacting to anything he does, but thankfully you’re breathing. He has no idea what Asher did to you, but whatever he did. He’s going to pay for what he did. 

Harry notices your phone next to you. He takes a shaky breath in and wraps his arms around you to pick you up. He reaches for your phone as he lifts you, tucks your limp body into his arms, sniffs hard to try and hold in the rest of his tears, and hastily makes his way towards his SUV. 

He manages to open his back door and gently sets you down on the seats. He kisses your forehead with shaky lips and whispers, “It’s going to be okay. I-I’m here, sun.” 

He drives towards the nearest hospital and prays to god that he hasn’t been followed by paps. 

The entire drive to the hospital is rapid with his eyes constantly moving to the rear view mirror to look at you. To make sure you’re still there. To make sure you’re breathing. 

Harry doesn’t hesitate to park in the “no parking” zone at the emergency entrance, he immediately starts honking to try and catch someone’s attention from inside. He sees a security guard immediately come toward him and Harry knows he must look crazy. 

He jumps out of his driver seat, reaching for the back door to pull it open. 

“I need you to get me some help!” The security officer is trying to flag someone from the inside to come and help him. 

The officer looks at him in confusion, “Are you hurt, sir?” The office raises his eyebrows at his appearance. 

Harry shakes his head, quickly pulling you into him once more, he hitches you up in his arms, and starts walking towards the entrance. 

“It’s for her,” he says as he continues to walk into the ER entrance and immediately he can feel all eyes on him. 

He ignores the stares, yells at the officer to help him, and starts feeling anxious. And he follows the officer when he opens a back door that leads him to where he assumes all the nurses and doctors are. 

He can see different people running around, helping patients, and it’s incredibly loud. Loud beeping noises and chatter fills his ears. His mouth feels dry and he feels sick. 

He looks at you in his arms, a soft whimper escapes his lips, and the officer brings him towards a ground of huddles nurses that are chatting about something. 

One of them is smiling at another nurse and when her blue eyes met Harry’s, she instantly stops, mouth drops, and Harry can see her lips whisper his name in shock. 

But then she suddenly reacts and rushes towards him. 

“Are you okay? What happened?” She asks, her hands immediately reaching out to touch you, and Harry’s reflex is to curl you into his arms. Away from her touch. He’s terrified to let anybody touch you, but he knows you need it. 

“I…” Harry starts, throat raspy, and he holds eye contact with the nurse, “I need your utmost discretion,” he states in a plea, but tries to keep his voice steady. 

Harry sees from the corner of his eyes more nurses rushing towards him and one of them is holding a stretcher. 

A male nurse tries to reach for you as well, but the nurse in front of you- Harry quickly reads her name tag- Lily. 

Lily holds her hand up to stop the male nurse and she then sets her hand on Harry’s forearm, giving him a squeeze, her eyes not leaving his, and she says, “I promise you. We will be discreet.” 

Harry nods, tears welling up in his eyes, and his hands are gripping onto your skin. 

“But… you need to put her down on the stretcher.. so we can help her. Okay? Can you do that, sir?“ 

Lily moves her body to angle the stretcher and Harry quickly nods. He walks towards the stretcher, he gently sets you down, and squeezes your hands in his quickly. His shaking fingers move the sticky hair out of your face as you fall limp into the stretcher. He steps back. 

Harry stands there, frozen in his spot, and watches them rush you away to an empty room. 

“I’ll take you to a private room where you can wait for the doctor. Or myself for an update, okay?” 

Harry nods as he follows her down a hallway, he starts messing with the skin around his fingernails, and Lily opens the door to a private room. 

“You can wait here. Somebody will come speak to you soon about what happened, okay? Do you need any medical attention yourself?” Her voice is steady and calm. It’s what Harry needs right now. Her eyes look him up and down for any injuries. 

“I’m okay, maybe… maybe just a wet rag, please.” Harry says, dry tears on his cheeks making his face feel stiff, and he keeps eye contact with Lily. 

“Okay,” she says. She’s standing by the door, gives him a small smile, and then reaches out for Harry’s arm. She squeezes him.

“It's going to be okay, Mr. Styles. We got her now.” Her eyes are sincere and Harry’s face crumbles in anguish. 

“Thank you,” he croaks out, covering his face, and turning away from her view. 

He hears the door shut behind him and the only thing he can hear in the room is his soft cries. 

•••

Harry must have fallen asleep after he had gotten himself cleaned up because he almost jumps out of the chair he was slumped into when he feels someone touch his shoulder. 

“Sir! I’m so sorry!” He hears someone exclaim above him. He adjusts himself into the chair, uncrossing his arms, and is confused about his surroundings for just a second before he sees your face in his mind. 

He stands quickly, “How is she?” He quickly runs his hands over his eyes to wake himself up. 

He recognizes the same nurse as earlier, Lily, and she gives him an easy smile. 

“She’s okay right now. A slight brain bleed, but nothing major. Don’t panic. It’ll heal on its own, but we’re going to keep her overnight to monitor it. Thankfully no broken bones. She does have a couple fractured ribs, but…” she trails off, her eyes looking to the side, and she looks nervous. 

“What’s going on?” His body fills with worry instantly. 

“She woke up, Mr. Styles.” 

Relief washes throughout his body and he silently says a thank you. 

“Oh, thank god. That’s good… that’s good, right?” Eyebrows furr when Lily nods, but doesn’t follow Harry’s breath of happiness. For a split second, he feels happy that she's awake and okay. But then Lily is rolling her lips in and biting the bottom one. 

“What’s going on?” Harry asks. His voice shakes. The anticipation of what she’s about to say fills him with dread once more. 

“Mr. Styles, we asked her what happened and she doesn’t remember. She might have a concussion or she might be blocking out the memory because of the trauma. She simply might not want to remember. It’s a way trauma victims protect themselves in these types of scenarios. It’s not uncommon.” 

“O-okay?” 

Lily puts her hand on Harry’s shoulder as if to comfort him for what she’s about to say. Harry feels confused as the comforting touch. He fumbles with the skin around his fingers in anticipation. 

“She states that her boyfriend would never have done this.” 

“W-what? She— wait— she said that?” Harry feels even more confused. He wasn’t imagining the phone call. He distinctly remembers what you had said. 

Lily nods as he continues, “S-she told me. She told me that he hit her. That he—-“ he stops himself from continuing. Gulping down the forming lump in his throat. He bites his tongue because he doesn’t need anybody knowing about his personal business. 

Harry slightly looks up to keep his tears at bay, sniffling slightly, and his eyes start to burn. He looks back down at Lily. 

“He found out about something… something she didn’t want him knowing and that’s when he did that to her. I-I swear.” 

“Mr. Styles, I’m sorry. But… If the patient says that’s not what happened.. then we have to believe the patient.” She almost looks guilty. 

“Even if she doesn’t remember it happening?” Harry asks in desperation, not believing what she’s saying. 

Lily nods with a small frown on her lips. 

“I can take you to see her, if you’d like.” 

Harry immediately nods and follows her down to your room. Lily knocks when they stand in front of the room and when Harry walks in, his lips quiver and his heart feels heavy. 

“Oh, baby.” He whimpers out as he takes in your appearance. He manages to grasp onto the door to ground himself from the way his knees buckle at the sight of you. They’ve cleaned you up, but all the bruising from your face and neck makes him wish it was him in the bed instead of you. 

You're laying down against the hospital bed, covered in a white blanket, with your head tilted back, but it only showcased the ugly, raw, and red marks on your neck. It made Harry internally weep at the sight. You have a machine on your right side connected to your IV and Harry can only imagine its fluids. Or maybe pain medication. He doesn’t dwell on it too long. 

Your arms are laying over the blankets and resting on your stomach. Your hands are delicately covered in white gauze, but only your palms. And he knows it’s because of all the tiny glass cuts you had. 

When his eyes land in your face, he wishes he could erase this picture from his brain. He pleads to the gods above that this is the last time he will ever see you hurt. He doesn’t think he can survive seeing you like this again. 

Your bottom lip has a big cut on it which is making your lip a little swollen. Your entire right cheek is bright red with undertones of purples and you have one big bruise forming on your left cheekbone. Your nose has a small splint on it, but he can see the swelling underneath and the bruising on the sides. 

Harry doesn’t even want to think about what you went through. 

It’s almost as if you felt his presence because you slowly tilt your head down and your eyes search the room. When you meet his gaze, your entire body relaxes with relief and his name falls out of your lips like butter. 

Harry is immediately at your side, wanting to hold you and touch you, but he stops himself.  He hesitates in front of you and your covered hand reaches for him. His hand immediately covers yours, warm with gauze but cold fingers, and he starts crying. 

“I-I,” Harry tries to form words, but his voice is muffled because of his sobs. He falls into the chair next to you and covers his face with his arms on top of the bed. 

Your hand is immediately intertwined with his curls and you're rubbing his scalp to try to calm him down. 

“They told me you found me?” You question and he cries harder at your voice. It’s raspy and hoarse. You don’t sound like yourself, you sound like you’re in pain, and he knows you are. It makes him cry even harder. 

Harry can only nod at your question. He lifts his head to look at you and you try to give him a small smile. He’s looking into your eyes, your beautiful eyes, and he sniffles. 

He ghosts one of his hands over your face and you almost want to melt into it, but you don’t. Because you know how bad you look and how every single part of your body hurts right now. 

Instead, you grab his hand in yours once again. 

“I’m okay,” you whisper with tears in your own eyes as you watch his red eyes. His green eyes are bright against the red, his nose is red too, cheeks are flushed, lips bright pink, and he looks beautiful. 

“Do you remember anything?” Harry asks between his sniffles. 

You roll your lips inside your mouth for a second and bite down on your unaffected side, eyebrows furred down, and you shake your head. 

“I… I don’t. I’m… I’m assuming someone broke in? Maybe someone tried to steal from me and did this?” Your voice sounds as if you’re trying to convince yourself this is what happened. Instead of the reality that Harry knows about. 

“Baby,” Harry whimpers out. “You called me… and told me Asher had found out about us.” 

“Asher?” You question in a low tone, feeling confused once again. 

“You… you said he hit you.” Harry gulps down the lump in his throat after he speaks those words and takes in your reaction. 

Your eyes almost bulge out of your head. Frowning, you exclaim, “Hit me?! Asher would never, Harry.” 

Suddenly, you’re pulling your hand out of his hold and Harry feels like you’re retracting from him. 

“Baby, I wouldn’t lie—-“ 

“Stop it!” You cut him off, crossing your arms over your chest, ignoring the sharp pain that runs through your body as you touch your aching ribs. 

His eyes dart to your stomach and back to you. 

“Are you—“ 

“Stop.” You spat at him, feeling furious at him for even suggesting that Asher would do this to you. Asher would never do this. Never. 

“Asher would never do this to me, Harry. Are you—- what are you— are you lying to me? Is this a joke? Is this some sick fucking joke? Maybe I did this to myself!! I’m fucking clumsy. I’m sure I just fell on my own. Maybe I dropped the wine bottle myself and tripped and hurt myself!” You cry out to him as fast tears start running down your cheeks. Your mouth speaks faster than your own brain. Spilling anything that would make more sense than what Harry is telling you. 

“Baby. Baby. Baby.. what are you.. what are you saying? Baby, stop. He caused your head to bleed. He caused you a brain bleed, baby. You.. you didn’t do this to yourself. How could.. how could you have done this to yourself?” Harry cries as he stumbles over his words quickly at you. 

“Asher didn’t do this to me,” you state confidently even though you feel confused about the whole thing. “Why would he do this to me, H?” More tears filling your eyes at Harry’s accusations. 

Asher didn’t do this to you. He couldn’t have. Could he? 

“He did this to you! He hit you!” His voice goes higher as his frustrations rise, his lips in a frown. 

“You’re lying!! Stop lying to me. Why would Asher do this to me, Harry?! He loves me. And I know you love me. You’re my best fucking friend, but you’re crossing a line. He would never do this to me. You need to leave. You’re lying to me. I don’t want you here.” 

“W-what?” Harry’s gaping at you, mouth dropped in shock, and a sob escapes his lips once more. 

“Go. Now! I don’t want to look at you!” You turn away from him, sniffling, and wiping your tears away. 

“You can’t be serious, Y/N. Listen to yourself,” he tries to plead with you as he tries to reach for your hand, but you turn your body to move. Ignoring the pain it causes you. You don’t look at him. 

“Leave,” you demand once more. Ignoring his cries and his words. 

“O-okay, baby. I’m going to leave. But… but… please. Please try to remember my love. Please,” he begs you. 

You don’t say anything. You just stare out the window until you hear him get up and leave. You sit in silence for a couple minutes. Trying to think about everything he said. You wipe away your tears and reach for the call light to call for your nurse. 

You press the red button and adjust yourself to relax against the mattress, trying to inhale a deep breath, and Lily comes into the room. 

“Hi, love. Did you call? Need some help?” 

“Yes, Lily. I did. Harry gave you my phone, right?” 

“He did.”

“Okay,” you make eye contact with her. “Can you please call the person under the name of Asher? Can you let him know what’s happened and where I am? The code is 0509.”

A look of uncertainty flashes over Lily’s face, but she quickly controls her reaction. You don’t question it because she nods quickly right after. 

“Of course, Mrs. Y/L/N.” She smiles at you, “I’ll be right back.” 

Lily leaves the room and you close your eyes for a second. 

You try to unclear your mind, trying to remember what happened, and flashes of what happened play out. 

You see the wine bottle falling down onto the floor loudly.

You see yourself crawling into the corner and the feeling of true terror fills your body at the memory. 

You can see yourself begging the person to stop, but you can’t see their face. 

Your face crumbles in frustration at not being able to remember the one most important detail. 

You sigh, opening your eyes, and you decide to wait for Asher to walk through the door. 

Maybe he can help you remember. Maybe he’s spoken to the police and maybe they’ve already found the person who did this. 

But there’s also a part of you wondering why he isn’t here right now. Wouldn’t he have found you after coming home from work? Maybe he had to work late. 

You shake your head at the intrusive thoughts. 

You try to relax once again, trying not to feel bad for kicking Harry out, but you know Asher would have never done this to you. 

He would have never. 

[kairiscorner]

ok, but imagine noir falling for a florist.

(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <;:D)

i'd like to imagine noir would have visited your florist shop before, but never really stepped inside. he might've come across it multiple times, walked by it so often he never realized it was right there all along.

the moment he stepped in, he was entranced by how lively and colorful the place looked to him. since noir is probably colorblind or is just generally unaware which colors are which, he's so giddy when stepping inside your florist shop one day when he remembered it was aunt may's birthday.

he'd probably be staring at a bunch of marigolds and he'd inspect them closer and mutter to himself, "really outdid themselves with the purple". he might sneeze a lot around the flowers, but he didn't care, he was too entranced with how pretty the flowers were.

it wasn't until you came up to him, asking him if you could help him, that he was entranced with something, or rather, someone else--you. you weren't a flower, but all noir could be reminded of when he saw you for the first time was that you were a red rose bud, blooming in the shade.

how could he have missed you, such a beauty was hidden from his sight for... so, so long. the first thing he'd tell you when he saw you would probably have been, "...am i dead?" because the only time he'd ever witness someone with such ethereal beauty, in a haven of colors and sweet scents that, even if they tickle him to the point of allergies, he's feeling the happiest he's ever been in his whole damn life so far.

when you ask him if he's okay, he finally snaps out of his daze and, all fumbling and mumbling, he blurts out an, "i'm pretty, and you're really okay."

damn it.

he cringes a little at himself for that first, more than three word introduction. he purses his lips, and sighs to himself, with a small sneeze as he inhales the pollen again. you giggled, and when you giggled... he smiled, he smiled widely. he knew he was being a fool, a complete bumbling fool, right then and there--but you made him a happy, giddy, mushy mess of a bumbling fool.

he introduced himself to you as you helped him pick out a bouquet for aunt may. "you know, i'm really glad someone like you's helping me with this." he told you as he watched you pick all sorts of roses, carnations, and dahlias.

"how come?" you asked, turning to look at him in the eyes. he turned pink when you looked at him with your big, bright eyes--those eyes that any rational man would become a bumbling fool over. "well... i'm sure a pretty, lovely, and patient woman like you gets bouquets from guys that... don't lose themselves over your beauty in front of you." he confessed.

you giggled. "mr. parker, i hate to break it to you, but... i've never once had anyone gift me a bouquet." you admitted, looking down at the colorful array of flowers in front of you. "oh..." noir said as he looked at you, still picking flowers for aunt may's bouquet.

"wait right here." he said as he dashed off around the store. you were a little confused as to where he might've gone, but he was a grown man, and this was a small store, you didn't need to worry. not long after, noir came back with a sloppily made bouquet; the ribbon was the color of your hair, the flowers... they were all the color of your eyes.

"mr. parker..." you began, but noir handed them to you still, his gaze pointed away from you, because he was so incredibly flustered to be even doing this. "i believe that... a pretty, lovely, and patient woman such as you shouldn't have to... go without knowing she's absolutely stunning, perfect, even. you're perfect." he confessed, trying to keep his voice leveled, but his embarrassment got the best of him, and he mumbled the last bit out.

you smiled as you took the bouquet from him, admiring how some loose flowers that clashed with most of what he got you poked out a little. you chuckled as you looked up at the sweet man. "now, i can't really take any of these home, but..." you trailed off as you picked one of the flowers and tucked it behind his ear, getting on the tips of your toes to reach him.

"i'm very grateful for that, mr. parker." you said with a smile, a tinge of red on your cheeks. "no... problem." he said as he was getting redder and redder by the minute.

as you rung him up, noir couldn't stop staring and smiling at you. you smiled back at him. "hoping your aunt loves the bouquet." you tell him. "and i'm hoping i'll always see you everyday after this." he said with a small chuckle and a blush on his cheeks as he ran his fingers gently over the flower you tucked behind his ear.