#these two are married without even being married | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vad-hander · 11 hours ago

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DIVORCE ME

pairing: NCT Jaehyun x reader

genre: married couple au!, angst, smut, a little bit of fluff, long distance

warnings: mentions of divorce, unprotected v sex, dom Jaehyun, biting, punishment, fingering, praise, protected anal penetration, spit as lube, reverse cowgirl, slight overstimulation etc

words: 16k

"What?" your voice sounded more like a bark over the phone. But it was a good thing, that's exactly how you intended it to be.

"So you did get the envelope?" Jaehyun, though, on the other side of the line was chill, if you were to judge by the tone of his voice. "My lawyer left a sticker so you'd find the right place to sign it this time." Your fingers pinched your nose, thinking how you scribbled over printed letters last time you had the same envelope sent in.

"I don't have a single pen in my house." You sighed and dropped the envelope right next to a pen and a pencil that were always present at the top of the cabinet at the entrance of your apartment.

"I'll send over the courier with a pen, then." you opened your mouth, Jaehyun not letting you chime in. "I'll even make it two in case one's not working."

Your voice was steady, you looked once again at the papers that had your name at the top. "I said no. I won't sign these papers."

"Why?!" Jaehyun cried into the phone. "We've been living separately for a year. Why are you being stubborn? We’re basically strangers at this point.” Your palm rubbed into your chest, trying to calm down the stinging in your heart at that wording.

Your fingers ran over the words written in larger font at the top - Divorce Agreement.

“I don’t want to.”

“You know I can get a divorce from you without your signature? I’m just not going that route yet.”

“If you think you’re threatening me and I’m scared - I’m not.”

“I know for a fact you’re not threatened. I was married to you for five years.”

“Good.” You sighed, ready to hang up the phone. You didn’t want to continue hearing his voice. “So… will you sign those?”

“I gave you my answer already.”

“Please.” A tinge of desperation in his voice cut you deeper than he clearly intended to.

“No, I said no.” That desperate need to cut all ties - it was making you nervous, you had words stuck up in your throat asking what was the urgency.

“I can’t wait another two years for whatever you’re doing there to end. Are you coming back for any of the holidays?” His voice changed in slight annoyance and you snapped out of heartache.

“None of your business.”

“I am your husband, until you sign the agreement, it is all of my business. In fact, it should only be my business, no one else’s.” Whatever he meant with that, really. You weren’t seeing other people, but he won’t know that.

“Bye.”

You let out an exasperated sigh. Every conversation with the man left you tired. And drained. And it used to never be like this before. He used to be your love. Or he is your love?

“Was that your husband?” Kate, who clearly eavesdropped the whole conversation, peeked from behind the living room wall.

“Is the stress too evident on my face?” You turned on the bright smile and crossed the room to elegantly sit on the couch.

“I heard the words papers and sign and remembered your story.” She gave a little sad nod and patted your forearm in comfort. Sipping on her wine right after. “I’m so sad your expatriation has to end early, but I hope your sister appreciates your wish to help her with her babies.”

“I know.” you whined to fit in with the mood of your only friend over here. “It’s been a year, though, and I haven’t had a single break since coming, so maybe I’m a little excited to go back home and take a week off.” You leaned back a little, imagining waking up later than usual, having fancy breakfasts and sharing them with the man that desperately wanted a divorce from you. Good thing Kate was loud and unstoppable with her blabbering, snapping you out of that horrible thought.

“I thought the pleasure of your life was bossing around dumb Americans like me, and having those horrendous cold coffees, instead of all meals.” Your heart hurt on behalf of Iced Americano.

“You aren’t stupid-.” You remembered to protest, though. “I said dumb!”

“Okay, y’all aren’t dumb, just maybe lack a bit of work ethic that make our Korean office thrive. And my coffees are not horrendous!” Your eyebrows furrowed in feign annoyance.

“We tried to get the hype, the line to the bathroom afterwards was so long, we had to run to other floors, girl.” You chuckled into your palm, shocked at the information previously hidden from you.

“Oh my god! And everyone I asked said the drink was fun! The hypocrisy!” Your palm hid your opened mouth.

“Yeah, the lining up to the bathroom was definitely a fun experience.”

“Good thing my flight’s tomorrow, I won’t have to face those people knowing they pooped their pants because of me.” Kate laughed loudly.

“Gi-i-i-i-rl, but I’m going to miss you. If you ever back in the States, just hit me up? Any time and any day.” She sing-songed, her eyes closing a bit, lifting her nose up.

“Yes.” You gave her a straight nod. You weren’t sure you’d ever get back here, you were determined to never move out of the only place you ever were supposed to live in.

“Won’t you invite me too?” She giggled.

“Quit lying, you won’t ever leave Seattle.”

“Wait, that’s so true.” Her palm covered her mouth, a striking sign your friend was tipsy.

“Go, go, go! There’s your auntie!” You heard the voice of your older sister even before you could register her face in the crowd of the Incheon Airport. Two sets of arms sneaked over the luggage trolley and wrapped your legs.

“Oh my god, Nara, Uri, hi! My babies.” Your arms wrapped over the kids that desperately fought to climb up your body, though in the year you were absent they’ve grown too much for you to be able to carry them so freely.

“Hi. Welcome back home.” Your sister extended an arm, giving you a welcoming pat on the back.

“Hyunjoo! Hi.” You exclaimed, excited, sighing tiredly afterwards. “Thanks for making it all the way here to pick me up.”

“These two couldn’t hold back their excitement when I said you were coming back.”

“Oh, really? Really? I brought so much fun stuff for my little angels!” You put on the baby voice, tickling your nephews.

“I want to see!”

“Let’s get in the car and see what auntie got for you at home, okay?” Your sister offered, and the four of you moved to the exit. “You’ve left with two suitcases, right?”

“Yeah, had to bring gifts for you all.” You chuckled, running your eyes over the trolley with four of those. “Now I don’t know where I’m putting all of these in my apartment.” You chuckled to yourself.

“The bigger question is if all of those will fit into my car.” Hyunjoo gave you a look. “Shit-.” You cursed, looking down at the kids. “I mean, damn. That I’ve not thought about.”

“Where’s Jaehyun?” Shit, that you also have not thought about.

“He has work stuff, couldn’t make it.” You brushed Hyunjoo off with an eye roll.

“On a Sunday?” She gave you an accusatory brow. “The lovey-dovey guy that made you breakfasts every Saturday and never let you drive alone for longer than 30 minutes?” You had to busy yourself with the trolley and making a turn, so you won’t burn alive under her stare. “Is he still sour that you left despite his disagreement with that decision? Are you two not together… by any chance?” Wow, that escalated quickly.

“No, no! Of course not. I told him not to come, since he was telling me all the time how busy he was with work. I’m going to see him… at home.” Those words were also hardly believable, given the lovey-dovey image your sister had in her head. He should’ve been here, pressing his mouth into your cheeks, to not go absolutely feral over his lips on yours in the middle of the airport, arms squeezing you in his hold.

You had to shake the thought away. In realms of your current situation, the only realistic reason for him to be at the airport would be to make you sign those papers and finally set him free.

Realisation of what home implied also downed at you at the exact same moment. You had a home that was also his, it also happened to be the only home you had. Same went for him. What a coincidence, right? For two people, that lived in the city together for 8 years.

Jaehyun was obviously still living in that same apartment, giving he expected you to be back in the country approximately in two years and three months. “Do you want to go see our parents first?” You tried to climb out of that corner unhurt.

“Yeah, three hour drive one way at 4pm Sunday? No thank you.” Hyunjoo snorted, helping her kids get into their seats.

“Right, I didn’t realise it was this late through the day.”

“And we all have work and day care tomorrow. When are you back in the office?”

“I took day off’s this whole week, hoping I’ll put all the stuff away, get back to my life here, and-.” Sort out this divorce agreement. “Yeah.”

“I want to play with aunty!” Nara whined as her mom did her seatbelt, while you were putting your suitcases away in the trunk.

“I’ll come over on Tuesday, okay? Pick you up from daycare and we can get bread on the way back home, and then unpack all the gifts I had purchased for you and your parents. Deal?” You asked the kids, but looked at your sister for approval, she gave you one with a nod and the burst of laughter from kids only sealed the deal.

“You know, Jaehyun’s been weird, since you left. I think he’s still hurt.” You dreaded the fact silence led to this conversation. It was pure quietness, twins knocked out in the back seat, you were also half way through slumber after that endless flight. You had a feeling something was on Hyunjoo’s mind, with the way she tapped her finger over the steering wheel, you just had to predict it was your husband in question.

“I’m sure he’s fine.” You waved her off, again.

“He’s not seen us once. Mom invited him over for every holiday and every weekend get together. He would always say he’s sick, he’s busy, over at his parents house. Anything.” You were curious what face he made as he came up with those, especially if those weren’t over messages. He probably had his whole face red, lip tugging between thumb and pointing fingers as he was carefully picking out words to not be taken wrongly.

“And you didn’t stop the invitations?” They should’ve known better than hitting the man that tried to hide with invitations.

“Of course not! He’s family?” Hyunjoo looked at you scandalised.

“He might’ve not been comfortable coming alone.”

“He quite literally spent two weeks at our house, when you were in college and had to leave for that conference in Singapore. He stayed with all of us, like your substitute, just because he had nothing to do during summer break. And now he’s uncomfortable?” You drove down to the traffic light that turned red, giving your sister a perfect opportunity to turn her eyes to you. “Tell me what’s been going on?”

“Nothing.” Like, you weren’t even lying. Nothing’s been happening - he’s been bombarding you with those divorce agreements, you’ve been disposing them into trash - the end. Other than that, it’s been full on radio silence. You didn’t even know what he looked like by now, what if something changed in his appearance and he won’t feel like home anymore? What if anything changed in his heart, or more like what if his heart changed to an extent where it can’t be reversed? What if your only outcome is in fact divorcing immediately? You shrivelled, pressing yourself more into the seat.

“I’m going to tell mom, and she’ll flip out and get the truth out of you both. I’ve been covering for you! Acting like I know he’s busy and stuff. And I have to know the truth, in case I need to continue.” That sounded like both valuable threat and reason. Still, you didn’t want to risk your lives and announce that he’s been wanting a divorce to your sister, while she’s driving through a highway.

“Okay. Okay, he might be a tiny bit upset.”

“Tiny? It’s been a year, more of like a grudge at this point.”

“It’s because we’ve been apart, and now I’m back home and we’ll be good.” At least, that’s the plan.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I quit the expatriation thing early so I could go back to him.” You whispered the truth under your breath. Everyone got different versions of your reason to be back home, but the real one was your wish to return. You needed to go back to the man that held your heart and tried to throw it back at you. You needed to see with your own two eyes, if he really didn’t love you anymore. “I made a mistake, I really missed my family, I missed Jaehyun."

“Really? I thought you said it was about the project cancellation.” “No. The project cancelled because I said I’m leaving, whether they’re letting me go back as the part of the company or not.” You sighed, the truth was not what you wanted people to think, but you were ready to throw this truth at your sister. She was trustworthy to die with that info.

“I expect you two to be all lovey-dovey next Saturday at our parents anniversary thing, or I’m busting you to mom-.” You almost gasped and cursed, this was a good heads up about the event this weekend and you were glad your sister, probably knowingly, gave you that. You had time to come up with a cover up.

“I’m not sure about that. Jaehyun’s been telling me about seeing his parents-.” The eye roll from Hyunjoo made you stop. “No, for real. He’s actually planned this for weeks. I swear!” You would never be able to bring the man that tried to divorce you to your parents house in 5 days. What sort of torture would that be. For either of you. “I’ll come see mom and dad during the week. Alone. Since he works. And on the weekend we were supposed to go to his parents, but since it’s our parents anniversary, he’s going there alone.” Wait, this sounded like a perfect cover up plan. You almost clapped your hands excited. This sounded like THE plan.

“All I hear is excuses. If you’re lying to me right now - you’re dead.” She made sure the thumb slid right against her throat with a threat. You looked away, scared, only to realise you’ve arrived at the destination.

“Thanks for dropping me off!” You chirped, unbuckling.

“Do you need help with your belongings?”

“No, I’ll do it myself. See you Tuesday, right?”

“Right.” Your sister gave you a nod, pressing the button for the trunk to open. As you pulled out all your suitcases onto the ground, you watched the door close back down, walking up to wave her away.

“Tell your husband I said hi!” You waved, as she drove by you.

You punched in the code you last set, praying he hasn’t changed it.

Jaehyun’s birth date, your birth date, the month you’ve become official. 6 digits in and as you heard the approving melody, your heart sunk. Hopefully he still kept it because it meant things for him, not because he was used to typing in those specific six digits.

As you processed your next step, you came with a conclusion there was quite a chance you can be met with a very taken aback with your presence Jaehyun as soon as you opened the door. If the man is at home, he surely heard the little melody too and was walking up to the door right now, confused and probably totally alerted that someone punched in the correct code.

Either of you was about to get startled at this spontaneous reunion. And you weren’t about to give him the opportunity to catch you unprepared. Opening the door wide, before you could notice anyone in there, it struck you - it looked and smelled just like you left it.

Your eyes trailed around the opened to your eyes space - it was all the same, almost like he didn’t live here, though you sure he was - given the stack of papers on the cabinet, the sneakers that he seemed to purchase while you were away and the raincoat over a kitchen chair, drying up from yesterday’s downpour.

And no Jaehyun in sight.

It was a good thing, you had a little time window to drop off your stuff, pack your bags, take your car keys and run away to your parents unnoticed. You had not prepared yourself to see him, you have not even imagined what you would say or how you’d say it. You had a feeling you could get chocked up at the mere sight of him. Before all this, Jaehyun was the love of your life, your husband.

Despite leaving him like he didn’t matter, you’ve missed him every day.

You loved him every awakened day of your life, paying a price of literal money for your dumbness to go back to him. You were still expecting the check for the exact payment, but you knew the fine you had to pay for wrapping everything up early was about to end up with big numbers. And you really didn’t care for that, as long as you could make sure the man will let you back inside his heart.

You quickly pushed all your luggage inside, closing the door and kicking your shoes off. Your eyes trailed to the side of the cabinet where you kept your slippers on autopilot, only to be actually met with the pair standing right where they belonged to. Lined up with Jaehyun’s. Like you’ve never left.

You put them on and trailed to your bedroom, you needed to take a shower first, unpacking right after.

Jaehyun didn’t bother with putting your stuff away, you expected him to maybe throw it away in a rage tantrum. You were expecting anything. And you would’ve honestly understood. You deserved it. You’ve found your shampoo in the bathroom, the clothes you left behind in your shared walk-in wardrobe. You picked up all needed belongings and quickly freshened up in hot water.

Dragging the first suitcase on the floor, you took all your clothes out to safe space for the gifts you had to take back your family in that same suitcase. You felt so emerged in the acton, sorting things out, leaving things you brought for Jaehyun on the side, taking things for the washer to one pile of clothes. Fresh ones you could take to your parents to the other one.

“Who the hell are you!” You jumped in place, turning around and letting the man see you properly, not just the corner of your back peaking out of the closet. You didn’t even see or hear him come in, brain a mush with the jet lag. “Y/n?” Jaehyun dropped the umbrella, that you guessed he grabbed for defence as he heard your movement, and stilled. “What are you doing here?” He gasped, losing his voice by the end of the sentence completely.

The emotions on his face is what really hurt you. Not a single one of his muscles moved in the direction of smile, or relief, or any other emotion that you could describe with any sort of positivity. He frowned, then gasped again, closing his eyes as if checking if he hallucinated you here. Then he set his mouth in such a downward way your eyes almost gave up on you.

“Hi?” You offered a smile, like the situation wasn’t this awkward unexpected reunion of two people despising each other and being half way divorced. You weren’t despising him, but if he was despising you, you liked to make him feel it was the same way on your side.

“What are you doing here?” Your eyes immediately trailed down his arm - his ringer finger was still covered with a wedding band, your finger immediately tugging on the identical one over your finger.

“I’m just packing my stuff, I’m going to leave quickly, I’m sorry.” You dropped the smile or any other ridiculous imagination you had in your head. You felt like a thief under his gaze.

“No-. How did you get here? And you’re leaving back to the US already? Have you always been here?” Jaehyun frowned even deeper.

“No, they sent me back, turns out I’m also very much needed here, so they had to put Korea’s office priorities before Seattle.” You lied the only line you’ve practiced.

“When did you come back? How did you get all this stuff back here on your own?” Jaehyun’s eyes traveled over your suitcases and bags.

“Does it matter?” You snorted. The only thing he cared for is how you got those suitcases in?

“Well, yeah?” He raised a brow.

“Hyunjoo picked me up at The airport and dropped me off here.” You shrugged, folding a shirt into a pile of dirty clothes.

“You should’ve t-.” He cut himself off. “Are you planning… to stay… here?”

“In the country? Seems like a yes. In this apartment? No, I’m packing.” He didn’t have to shush you away, you’ll gladly leave.

“Where will you go?”

“Why exactly does this matter to you, once again?” You gave him what you hoped was a very disgusted look.

“We’re married.” “Yet, right? Now that I’m here you’re surely getting me to sign those stupid papers of yours.” You snorted.

“I-, ugh. I didn’t know you’ll be coming back so soon.”

“That was intended.” You shrugged

“Where are you going? You don’t have another home in Seoul.” Jaehyun pressed and walked in closer.

You folded away from him, not willing to get even a lick of his scent and his presence this close to you.

“I’m going to stay at my parents. Then work it out, doesn’t matter. You can have this place to yourself.”

“Okay-.” He stilled, eyes unfocused.

“Okay?” You looked up scandalised, your Jaehyun would never agree to something like that. You expected him to fight with you over this. You’d gladly fight with him over the division of property, in hopes to get closer somewhere in between. In hopes he’d say I don’t want to divide anything. I want you all to myself. And you’d allow yourself to fold into him and admit that you’ve never wanted this in the first place. “I was expecting you to at least act like you didn’t want that.” You just bit.

“No, I’m just confused to see you here.”

“Why? Got someone already? Are they coming here? That’s why you’re all invested?” You let out the worst leave your mouth. You were scared, so worried, that Jaehyun let someone into his hurt heart to stop the aching you caused.

“What the hell, no. You were supposed to be in another country for two more years. Of course I’m confused. I wasn’t expecting to see you here, on the floor wearing my stuff like you never left.” You looked down at the shirt - it was clearly his, you haven’t looked down on the print once since you picked it up. You should’ve guessed your things weren’t just laying around on top of the shelves here anymore. When you’ve been absent. For months.

“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to give you a heads up, so you’d run to the airport with your divorce agreement.” You shrugged.

“Shut up.” Jaehyun let out. And it wasn’t the mean shut your stupid mouth type of intonation. He grabbed onto his head, like it was about to explode, grunting a little.

“Huh?”

“You’re the reason I even had to send it to you.” His eyes opened and directed at you.

“I know, Jaehyun, I’m well aware of that.”

“What are you even doing here?”

“As I said, they sent me home early, turns out three years was a stretch. I know this is sudden, and I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, or ruin this bachelor life of yours. I’m repacking and going to my parents.” You should’ve not stuck with your pride. You should’ve fallen to his feet and asked for forgiveness. You hated this encounter. And you hated that you made it worse.

“Bachelor life, what the hell-.” Jaehyun mumbled under his breath, grabbing onto his head once again.

“We haven’t had a single conversation in a year, I could’ve never imagined this to happen-, in this way-. This seems to be even worse than I imagined. I should’ve went straight to my parents, just couldn’t tell Hyunjoo about this… us, I mean not us-.” You panicked, moving your arms around and avoiding Jaehyun’s gaze.

“While you’re at your parents’, you might as well tell them we’re getting a divorce, because I’m out of reasons to dodge their invitations.” Jaehyun interrupted your conscious mumbling with a little bite to his tone.

“Don’t worry, since I’m here they won’t even be bothered by your absence.” You weren’t about to let that slip.

“Okay, good, because I just got a text from your mom, hoping to see me on Sunday. I guess you’ll work that out yourself.” He gave you a subtle smirk.

“I will, don’t you worry.” Jaehyun walked out the door of your previously shared bedroom, slamming it and you were sure he was cursing under his breath, because he always did that when he was stressed. At least he used to.

You knew he’d be clearly surprised if he saw you, you didn’t expect him be angry and pent up and so unreachable, even though you were the one who left him. You made him consider filing for a divorce.

You still hoped for a little smile or something along the way of that.

“So we’re just jumping straight to violence?” You trailed the route to the kitchen, not knowing if you should whisper or talk normally with him.

“And you broke up with me, and also expected me to have fanfares and cake prepared for your return? I want a divorce, I thought you had enough time to settle with that idea.” Jaehyun drank a glass of water in one go, filling up another one. “You did this.”

“I didn’t break up with you-.” “Seriously? You left.” The way his voice went an octave higher cut you.

“I told you, I-.”

“You’re asking for my opinion, or just telling me something that’s already settled?” Your body was straddling his thighs. Jaehyun scrolled through the phone after work, waiting for you to come back home so you’d have your dinner together. You ran into the apartment, bubbling with excitement. Jaehyun didn’t even have the time to put his phone away, with the speed you got on top of him and kissed his mouth. The man under immediately adjusted to your mood, fingers pressing into your thighs with pressure. Until you told him the reason for your excitement, or more specifically the timings of it.

Because he was excited for the opportunity, before you let him know the contract was for three years. That’s when his fingers loosened the grip and his mouth turned downwards.

“No, it’s not settled. Obviously, I really want to go, but I would miss you terribly.” You leaned to peck his mouth, not getting any reciprocation out of Jaehyun.

“So you’re not going?” He lit up.

“I don’t know. If my visa application-.” You drew circles on his chest. If your visa is approved, you will have to go, it seems. “You applied for a visa? Without telling me?” Jaehyun caught your fingers in his hold, voice more of a growl at the new piece of information.

“I didn’t, my company literally have all the papers to do that for me. They’ve been considering me and someone else. As soon as I heard about visas - I came to tell you.” You lied there, a little. Another person was considered before, you were the only one they applied a visa for. You also had to give them your passport, but that was also the part you hoped Jaehyun won’t focus on.

“So it is settled.” He sighed and let go of your fingers. “I thought you’d be excited for me?” You pouted leaning in to Jaehyun, who’s been looking away from you this whole conversation. “Baby, we could literally be talking on the phone all the time, in case they want me to go. All the holidays we’ll be together.” you kissed his cheek, expecting for him to soften.

“I was excited, before you told me it’s for three years? And it’s settled, and you have not even considered asking me to come with you.”

“I have, but I don’t want you to lose everything here, this is only temporary. I love you so-so much.” You pressed your mouth into the corner of his.

“Everything wouldn’t even matter if I lost you.” Jaehyun finally looked you dead in the eyes.

“Baby.” You murmured, touched, arms hugging his shoulders, face tucking into his neck. “You wouldn’t.”

- “Can we have this conversation properly? I don’t want you to go.” Jaehyun walked out the bedroom, suit perfectly wrapping his body. “I’ve been thinking about it for the whole night, and I can’t allow you going away. For three years. If it’s 6 months, okay. I’d somehow go with that. Three years - absolutely not. Honey, please hear me out.” Jaehyun’s fingers pulled onto your waist to turn you around and face him.

“Do you want to come with me?”

“No. Not like this, not when it seems to be not even a second thought in your head.”

“It’s not like that, I have thought of you going, and it’s always you struggling because you left the job you loved. And what would you do afterwards? When we have to return? You will be jobless again? Your parents also won’t forgive me for taking their only son away from them.” You ran your thumb over his lower lip.

“Okay, then both you and I - we’re staying here.” Jaehyun kissed the finger tip that’s been teasing him.

“Baby, no, it’s not settled like that either.”

“Why are you lying to me about this?” Jaehyun whispered, getting closer to your face. “If you’re lying, doesn’t it mean you don’t want to go? You want to stay with me and can’t? You can quit. I’ll cover all our expenses while you’re looking for a new job.” His eyes focused on you, trying to see through the shield you’ve put on.

“No, I want to go, but I also don’t want to leave you.” You also moved your face in his direction, expecting a kiss.

“Then don’t. If it’s not settled, then it’s okay to decline.” Jaehyun pecked your mouth.

“You’re right.” You nodded, hearing a relieved sigh come out of Jaehyun’s mouth, kissing your cheek next. “It’s not too late.”

“I love you, have a good day.” Jaehyun gave your side a squeeze, leaving to put his shoes on.

“You too.”

You had no better way to tell Jaehyun what happened at work than literally start packing. You got your visa approved, you were set to leave in two weeks. There was no way for you to jump in and tell them to pick someone else instead. Your boss patted your shoulder proudly and told you how he had always believed in you. And coming up somewhere in between with I can’t do this felt just wrong.

You couldn’t do this.

Despite the absolute itchiness of your entire body this whole day, you were trying to pick out clothes for packing. Agonising over the racks of your clothes for the past forty minutes.

“Bab-. No. No-no-no, what are you doing?” Jaehyun’s fingers pulled the skirt out of your hold. “Where are you going?” He dropped on his knees next to you and held onto your face.

“I came to tell them that I can’t leave for three years, I thought about talking to cut down to six months like you told me you could endure. But I was told I got the paper work approved, tickets purchased and everyone are expecting me in Seattle in two weeks.” You lowered your face into his chest, allowing for Jaehyun to hug you if he had strength to do that.

“Two weeks?” Jaehyun couldn’t even say it without chocking.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I should’ve told you earlier, I didn’t, because I couldn’t decide what mattered more-.” You eased into his hold more.

“What mattered more? You couldn’t decide whether I, or a stupid job mattered more?” Jaehyun shook you a little so you’d open your eyes.

“No, no. Of course you matter more. Baby, you obviously all that matters to me.” That’s not even what you meant with mattered more.

“Fuck.” Jaehyun chuckled lowly, clearly affected by the stupid slip of your tongue. “Can’t believe my wife’s a workaholic. Never used to be one.” He stood up, letting go of you and letting the skirt fall into the suitcase.

“I am not. It’s just… Seattle? Have you ever been to Seattle?” You looked up at him.

“I clearly haven’t.” Jaehyun looked away from you, taking the jacket off his shoulders.

“Me neither, so I didn’t know how to say no to that.” Somehow, you had a strong believe that if it’s something you really wanted Jaehyun would give in and feel better about it because he loves you. You were clearly wrong.

“Can’t believe these words are coming out of your mouth.” You held onto Jaehyun’s ankle so he wouldn’t walk away. Pathetic.

“I know.” You stood up, taking Jaehyun’s face into your hands. “We will have to learn how to be long distance.”

“I don’t want to learn any of that.” He grumbled, like a hurt baby. Maybe, because he was one. And it was fair for him to be one, you knew that for sure.

“Baby, I know, I don’t want to too. But life sometimes forces us to do things we don’t want to. Like this here.”

“Like being my wife?”

“Honey, you’re blowing this out of proportion!” You exclaimed.

“Really? I just wouldn’t want to be married to a woman that can’t even voice out her priorities to me. That decided on her own she’s moving to another country for three years, when she has a family to discuss these things with. If you don’t care for me - good, I don’t want to care for you either. Maybe you’ve already planned to get a divorce?” Jaehyun pushed away your hold, looking away, running his fingers with force through his hair, pulling at the little hair on the nape. This… weren't the words you expected out of him. “You’re being dramatic.” You could only gasp out absolutely taken aback at that suggestion. “And jumping to ridiculous conclusions.” The words left his mouth so easily and so firmly. “Suggesting I want a divorce is blowing this out of proportion, no?”

“You’re being insensitive. I love you and I am against you leaving, but it seems like it doesn’t mean a thing to you. You’re still going, like we’re strangers. You didn’t want to talk with me about this. How do you want me to not jump to conclusions? You lay it all out for me. Next step is clearly a divorce.”

“Good, let’s get a divorce then.” You let out with a bite.

“Good.” Jaehyun nodded and walked into the bathroom.

“Seeing this-, honestly, just the idea of you seriously going away - it’s making me dizzy.” Jaehyun spoke to you, finally, as you struggled to close the zipper on your suitcase. Jaehyun given you a cold shoulder for the entirety of two weeks. No talking, beyond questions his life depended on, no physical contact despite sleeping in one bed. He would only tell you in the mornings, how he wished you’d pick him over a job, and he would always run out of the door before you could tell him you would never pick anything over him. He’s number one in your heart despite the decision.

And you could’ve been talking, kissing, and touching, and having sex, for that matter, with your number one for the whole two weeks. To fulfil at least the tiniest bit of your longing, but now you were less than a day away from your flight and itching horribly for his mouth all over your body.

“Honey, it-.”

“I meant it, if you’re seriously flying away - we’re getting a divorce.” He looked you dead in the eye. That was a stare of someone who decided to make their words come true.

“I am flying away, Jaehyun.” You sighed.

“So you want a divorce?”

“No. I want to live through this opportunity and get your support.”

“I don’t want to do that. Three years is a whole fucking lot.” He bursted, expectedly. You just wished he would’ve done that much earlier, you needed to have that fight two weeks ago, not now. If you fought about it earlier - you would’ve already settled with the idea and spent your last hours together in each other’s presence, closer than you could ever get.

“I know, okay, I know. That’s a lot and it’s unfair, but it happened so quickly for me too. I had no information whether or not it’s happening for some time, and as I told you, the next day they say my visa’s approved and I’m expected in Seattle in two weeks.” You closed the distance between you, walking to the couch Jaehyun sat on. “I wish this went a different route.” “Why did you not tell me, when it was just in the talks? That’s something I’m genuinely not understanding. We always talked about the tiniest things? You text me about everything! But not Seattle? Is this some sort of punishment? Did I do something wrong?” You watched him gradually curl each finger into a fist, obvious display of silent rage.

“I didn’t want you to worry, if nothing was gonna happen. You didn’t do a thing, I never punished you. I just knew it’ll be bad, if they want me to go. I wanted to keep it low because I love you! I didn’t know they’ll end up processing everything this quickly.” You wanted to go, but also didn’t. Talking about it with Jaehyun would’ve made that possibility real, and you were hoping it’ll just pass by you, while also praying for them to pick you. You also knew if you told that to him earlier - he would’ve supported you all the way through. He totally would’ve been 180 to him now, because he was always supportive of you. He was clearly raging because he was kept in the dark. He was almost doing exactly what you wanted him to do. Making it so much easier for you to leave.

It’s unexplainable, really. Both your wish to go and not to.You were expecting worse, while hoping for them to pick you. It’s like you were split in two. One wanted Jaehyun to be the centre of your life, the other wanted to try things out of his reach also.

“And now your flight is tomorrow and you think just leaving this as it is is going to do any good to this whole relationship?” You kneeled in front of him, taking in his pained expression.

“You were the one who didn’t want to talk.”

“Yes, because hearing that you’re not sure what matters more - me or the job was not on my bingo list for this year.”

“What do you want me to do?” You tried to be calm, talk to him like he was a baby.

“You know exactly what I want you to do - no doubt.”

“I literally can’t say no right now, we have to go through this.”

“You literally can. Say your husband is not allowing for you to leave the country. I’m okay to be the tyrant in the eyes of your co-workers if that means you’re staying.” Jaehyun moved his knee from under your hold.

“Baby.” You reached for his fingertips, Jaehyun jerked back at the mere touch of you. “I don’t want to fight. I want you to make love to me for the whole night, so it’ll be enough at least for the littlest bit I’m away from you. Can’t you do just that? Can we not fight? I want to be talking to you, seeing you through my phone and waiting for the day we see each other again.” You patted his lower stomach, not knowing where to put your hands. Jaehyun forced you away from him.

“You’re clearly not hearing me, I see.” Jaehyun slammed his laptop, walking out the living room.

You stood at the entrance of your apartment, shifting weight from one foot to the other, not sure if you’ll ever forgive yourself for walking out in full silence.

“Won’t you kiss me goodbye? I feel like we’ll both regret it a lot. You haven’t touched me in two weeks and I can’t believe I’m leaving like this.” You called out to Jaehyun’s back. Despite the silent treatment, he spent the whole morning within your eyesight. The whole time you were packing and running around, Jaehyun kept himself somewhere close. It almost felt like he was walking you out and you were comforted by that.

“I won’t.” He grumbled.

“I will miss you a lot. Despite what you’re thinking, I love you.” You trailed behind him, squeezing his wrist in your hold.

“Yeah, you’ve clearly showed that.” Your husband tried to shake your hold off of him.

“Instead of being a little bitch about it, you could’ve been looking up tickets to see me in June.” You whispered into his back.

“I don’t have the money for that, I’m not the one with a job in the States.”

“You’re still being a little bitch about it and are also lying.” He did have the money, his salary was still above yours even with this US increase you were given.

“You’ll miss your flight, and we can’t allow that to happen. Go.” Jaehyun spared you a glance and walked off to the couch, busying himself with the iPad he didn’t even usually use.

You had to swallow the lump in your throat, be the bigger person, because you were the one at fault. You tip-toed around your luggage, getting closer to the couch he occupied, crashing his shoulders under your weight, as you leaned in and pressed your head against his. “I love you.” Your mouth pressed into his set jaw. “I don’t want a divorce, I want to come back home to you. I will miss waking up every day and seeing your pretty eyes and feeling your fingers on my thigh. Come on, baby. Let me kiss you, if you’re divorcing me, am I not allowed to have my last kiss?” Jaehyun touched your arm that choked his neck, and you hoped he did that so he’d be able to turn around. You let him go and watched him turn around to you.

“We’re not having our last kiss, no. Please, go.” He forced you to stand up.

“Jaehyun, you can’t be serious right now. We’ve been together for 10 years-.” “And those 10 years seem to be nothing to you, right? Since you were able to decide on leaving me with no second thoughts?”

Your mouth opened and closed, like you were a fish. Just air, no words to defend yourself or your actions. Jaehyun walked up to the door, rolled both your suitcases out and looked at you, clearly expecting for you to roll out the apartment in the same way.

“Safe skies.” He rumbled, as you walked up to the elevator, not having a chance to turn around and look at him one last time as Jaehyun closed the door.

You hated how the taxi driver asked if you were okay, because you clearly weren’t - hot tears streaming down your face through the whole ride. You hated the side eyeing of every person at the airport, and then on the plane, judging your red face and puffy eyes.

You cried through the whole 13 hour flight, to the point you could barely see, both from soreness and puffiness of your eyes. They even pulled you for the random check at the airport, probably barely seeing the correlation between the photo and reality. You had to make up a joke about an allergic reaction.

You got in the taxi and barely held back from bursting there too, taking another 3 hours to settle in your booked apartment and finally be left alone. You had two whole days up your sleeve to just soak in your loneliness and cry.

Three months later you received the envelope for the first time. You tore those pages apart, calling Jaehyun despite it being late night back at home and cursing him. With every word you knew. You hated every bit of him for actually making those words come true.

Since then, you would get the papers regularly and would regularly dispose them into trash. Your reaction also became more stoic - simple no’s over the message or on the phone. You were almost convinced he sent them just so you’d talk, and you’d agree getting the papers daily, if that meant you’d hear his voice and his steady breaths through the phone.

“I thought I’ll never see you again.” Jaehyun broke down the dead silence that set in your apartment. You had no good reason to not leave immediately, but somehow you found yourself on the floor, going through make up like you needed to pick each item separately, stretching out time you could spend here.

It did you good, it seemed, Jaehyun finally build up courage to talk to you, or maybe just found words he could tell you.

“Why? It was set for just three years, and I would’ve eventually came back on vacation.” You haven’t used a single day, too scared to come back home and face him. But eventually, maybe, you could’ve done that.

“I thought you’ll sign the agreement and I won’t every see you again. Purposefully avoid you.” Jaehyun sat down on the bed, not far from you, you could move a little to the side and rest the back of your head against his knee, and you felt like it meant something. These words also supposedly meant something, why else would he come to you, when you’ve settled already that you’re leaving.

“Why?” You asked, careful. It was hard to keep your emotions at bay when they were already in your throat.

“I couldn’t look at you, I knew I’d be so overwhelmed, and I’m proven right. I’m overwhelmed.” You turned your head, looking at Jaehyun to make a conclusion on his emotions. He stared into the floor before him, eyes blinking slowly, like his brain is picking out the words carefully to not tell you too much. You wished he didn’t hold back.

“I’m so sorry, that I’ve suddenly been making your life a mess. We were never like this… right?” Jaehyun nodded slightly, zoned-out, it seemed.

“You were right, I really regretted not kissing you goodbye, not taking you to the airport myself. Really regretted not calling you and asking if you were okay, somewhere far away from home, all alone and hurt by me. I regret so much not replying to your message letting me know you arrived safely. I fucking hate myself for never wishing you a good night. And now it’s too late, irreparable. I’ve blamed you, but actually made the worst moves to ruin our marriage.” Every sentence felt like a shot straight to your chest. Every pause and single breaths after each word felt like the rope around your neck was getting tighter. It was never too late to work on your mistakes, as long as he wanted it too. “I just hope, moving forward, we can be acquaintances.” You choked.

“Right, acquaintances.” You could only muster out of your mouth. “I really have to get on the road.” You stood up, wiping the tear off your cheek, before Jaehyun could notice. You should’ve left before you’d head him call you an acquaintance. You were nauseous and probably weren’t save to drive. “I couldn’t see my car key where I left it. Do you know where it is?” You changed the topic, turning around to look at Jaehyun with no trails of emotional trauma.

“Ugh, yeah. It’s in my pocket. I’ve been driving your car lately, I’m sorry, I should’ve asked.” Jaehyun got up, looking around for his jacket, you assumed.

“Why?” You asked, confused. He had his own car, the car he loved dearly, in fact. Always refused to go in yours, and he’s been driving it all of a sudden. What a weird confession to make. “Did something happen to your car?” It was the only logical interpretation of his words.

“No, yours just eating less gas-.”

“Really?” You looked at him confused, maybe he was right, you wouldn’t know.

“Yeah, here are the keys.” He reached out his open palm with the car key. You really refused to touch the skin of his hand. You reached out and then jerked your hand back, looking Jaehyun in the eyes to watch his reaction. He moved his other arm, grabbing onto your hand and pressing the key into your palm, covering it with the other.

This really went out of the no touching route, you hated how you immediately needed his hands all over your body. That’s exactly what you tried to avoid. Longing.

“I’m sorry if I left anything in the car-.”

“Stop, it’s not like your things would bother me.” You huffed, only now realising he’s still holding your palm between his fingers. “I anyway always preferred your stuff over mine, hope it’s something I could use.” You smiled, trying to make him feel better, yourself feel better. And it seemed to work, with the way Jaehyun looked you in the eyes and lit up for the slightest moment, before it felt like reality dawned on him, and he let go of you and dropped the smile.

You grabbed your stuff and walked out the apartment.

“Hey, Jaehyun?” Hyunjoo spoke into the phone in a hushed whisper, trying to keep the call out of everyone’s hearing ability.

“Oh?” She could clearly hear his astonishment in that sound. “Hyunjoo, hi. I thought I had your phone number saved.” Jaehyun scratched his brow. Caught absolutely off guard to hear your family member on the other side of the line. Did something happen to you?

“That’s our aunt’s, mine’s occupied by Nara and Uri.” Hyunjoo was well aware that information didn’t matter to Jaehyun, but still. She felt like sharing.

“Did something happen? Is my wife okay?” Even he himself hated the way he referred to you, unable to imagine how Hyunjoo must’ve cringed at him.

“No, she’s okay.”

“I see.” He sighed, weirded out by the call. That silence only gestured further more for Hyunjoo that something was off. Her hunch was strong, and the vibe coming from Jaehyun - she could tell, it didn’t give off the usual openness and sweetness. She were even more concerned, than before she called.

“I don’t know if my sister is lying that you two are all good, because something tells me you two aren’t on good terms-.” Hyunjoo trailed off, in hopes of Jaehyun catching the bait and telling the truth.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s better you discuss these things with your sister.” Jaehyun sighed into the phone, giving away more than he intended.

“All I know is, if she didn’t lie - you should definitely come, it’s our parents wedding anniversary. Our mom will eat your wife alive, you know how she hates when someone’s missing. Minhyuk is already a fallen victim for not coming in often enough, and it’s not long until she focuses on your absence.”

“I’m really sorry, I won’t make it today. It’s a four hour drive from my parents-.”

“Are you really at your parents?” Hyunjoo furrowed her brows, trying to hear over the loud talking of your family.

“Why?”

“There’s a train, you could hop on to that.”

“The train station is far from your house.” Jaehyun sighed, switching his arms that held the phone.

“I could pick you up.” Jaehyun stilled, not giving Hyunjoo an answer. “Do you love her or not?”

“Why?” Jaehyun sighed once again, and Hyunjoo could really hear the indecisiveness in that sound.

“When I asked you if you loved my sister last time I saw you, your ears turned all red and you said that you’re so in love, you feel your head get dizzy from time to time. It was less than I year ago. We joked around how you two are never coming out of that honeymoon phase. You didn’t throw at me that sad little why. Something really happened between you two.”

Jaehyun raised his voice, Hyunjoo finally could hear him properly. “Your sister left for a year, of course something happened between us.”

“She made a mistake, also quit the job to run back to you and I hope you’ll appreciate that action and find it in you to forgive her for her stupid ways.”

“She did what?” By the way Jaehyun gasped Hyunjoo could tell he was far from knowing the truth.

“What did she tell you about her comeback?” “That Seoul office needs were put before Seattle, so she was transferred back.”

“Unfortunately, despite a job, a marriage and other adult things in her life, she’s still a stubborn child, that can’t admit to things.” Hyunjoo rolled her eyes, looking for you in the crowded living room to scold you as soon as she’s off the phone.

“I’ll text you the time my train will be at the station. Okay?”

“Yes, I’ll be waiting. Guess see you tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Sweetheart, even Minhyuk made it over here after his shift! Where’s our precious Jaehyunie? Hey, Minhyuk, where did your wife disappear?” Your mom moved her attention back at you. “Where did Hyunjoo go?”

“I have no clue? She grabbed my car keys and said she’ll be back in an hour.” You shrugged.

“Where’s mommy, dada?” Nara asked her dad, pressing her little head into his chest.

“Will come back soon, picking things up.” His mouth pressed into her ear, striking you a look you didn’t know how to interpret for the meanwhile.

It all suddenly fell into place, when Jaehyun walked into the living room, Hyunjoo trailing right behind.

Every member of your family, your mom’s closest friends, jumped off their seats to pinch his cheeks, or slap it in a caring manner, comment on how good he’s looking, or how sweet he is for coming despite the distance from Seoul or his parents’.

It was hard for you to process his presence, especially when you didn’t even talk about it with him. You found your sister’s eyes on you with a smirk, not even hiding the fact it was her doing. You wondered how much she was able to work out on her own. About your marriage and the state it was in.

You felt your mouth open in shock, as you watched the encounter between Jaehyun and your dad, only to realise that he’s progressively getting closer to you. Finally closing the gap and wrapping an arm over your waist, mouth latching onto your temple. The touch wasn’t giving off any feelings, it was clearly an act for the public.

“Hi, baby.” He mumbled into your skin, moving away. “My mom told me to greet everyone on her behalf and she’s sorry for stealing me from this gathering.” He smiled sweetly at everyone, mouth pressing once again into your skin. “What is it? Why are you so flabbergasted?” He chuckled, fingers flexing over your waist like the last time he touched you, or kissed you in any way wasn’t almost a year ago.

“You said you can’t make it, I’m just confused.” You finally pulled yourself together, letting a small chuckle out. You finally looked at him up close, plastering a smile onto your face, palm moving onto his chest as your lips landed in the corner of Jaehyun’s mouth. You would’ve kissed his mouth, but were scared he’d tap out of that excessive acting. “Hi.” You whispered, not sure if anyone was locking in on the acting in front of them.

“Jaehyunie, you really made us worry, when my daughter was away and you wouldn’t come see us-.” Your mom pulled everyone’s attention back on you two.

“I just couldn’t imagine coming here, knowing I won’t see my wife for three years. I’m sorry, I should’ve been more cautious of how you’ll feel.” He bowed, making your grandmothers coo at each other.

“No, no. It’s all good. It is such a blessing that project got cancelled and they let you come back. A family should always be together, now you can try for babies-.”

“Mom.” You chocked.

“Yes, we obviously need Uri and Nara to become the wiser older siblings, just like their mom is.” Hyunjoo teased.

“We haven’t thought of that yet, you need to slow down. I just got back-.”

“You two are almost thirty-.” Jaehyun cut off, politely.

“We thought of a baby before everything happened, once my beautiful wife is ready, I’m sure it’ll happen.” You felt a little shiver of anxiety run down your spine.

You watched Jaehyun’s back for a little, comprehending whether or not he’d hate you progressing with the act. He straightened his back a little, and it was hard to hold back any longer. You wrapped your arms over his waist, tucking your face between his shoulder blades.

He stilled at first, wrapping his fingers over your arm a moment later.

“Thanks for coming here, I don’t know why or how Hyunjoo did it, but you saved me.” Your mouth left a kiss on his back, before snuggling your face into the material once again.

He tapped the back of your palm multiple times, before you worked out it was his call for you to let him go. You did so, taking a step back also, so he could turn around.

Jaehyun looked down on you, face not giving much to interpretation, but his arms wrapped around your shoulders and tucked you into his chest. Your arms found their place on his waist. This here, it felt like you were home for the first time since you came back. Despite spending this whole week back here, only now did it feel like you returned where you belonged. You tightened your hold around him, Jaehyun letting his back hit the counter and welcome you between his legs, arms holding you firmer in his hold. It was hard for you to see the truth behind the action. Did he do that to put an impression on your family that you were good? Did he do that because that’s all he wanted to do since you came back? Your fingers caressed his back in little pats, eyes closing and muting all the background noise, focusing on the beating of his heart only.

Jaehyun raised his head from the top of yours, only to bombard a multitude of kisses on top of your head. You felt like you were about to burn alive.

“Aigoo, how did you two live separately for a year, when you’ve seen each other in the morning and already can’t let go of each other.” Your mom let you know the act was seen. Jaehyun pulled back. “In the morning?” Jaehyun smiled politely at your mom, shifting his gaze at you. You smiled innocently, resting your head on his shoulder, until your mom would move her attention elsewhere. “What’s this about?” Jaehyun whispered into your ear.

“Act like we spent the week at home, will you?” You smiled, mouth almost not moving as you spoke.

“And may I know where you spent it?” Jaehyun’s arm wrapped tighter over your waist. The familiar press of his body against yours felt borderline ecstatic.

“Four Seasons…?” You cowardly admitted staying at a hotel for the whole week, instead of facing reality.

“You stayed at a hotel?! Instead of coming back home?” Jaehyun’s arm pushed you even more into his frame, hissing, making it wildly uncomfortable to press into his crotch during a build up for a confrontation. “Why do you hate me? I didn’t leave you.” Instead of a blow up, his shoulders slouched in lack of understanding your motives.

You wished you could answer that yourself.

“I guessed you won’t be comfortable being around me, but you came here. What did my sister tell you?” You hissed back at him.

“That your mom was halfway done with nagging at Minhyuk, and you were next in line for my absence. Said you won’t come out alive out of it, so I had to hop on the train. If you’re dead, who’s signing my divorce agreement?” He chuckled, your palm landed on his chest, asking for a little bit of space between you two. The joke didn’t land where he wanted it to. At least you were hoping, that he’s playful and not about to pop the pen and paper from behind him.

“We haven’t slept in a bed together since April last year.” You stated, eyes glued to your double bed.

“I’m aware.” Jaehyun simply shrugged. He might’ve not cared.

“Do you… not want to?” You still made sure to ask.

“I don’t care, I’m dead tired I’ll be knocked out on the floor, if it matters to you.”

"We should sleep tops to tails." you suggested, scared you'd eventually roll over into him and tuck yourself under his arm, like you knew you always did.

"Sure." Jaehyun gave you the curtest nod and sat down on the bed with his back facing you.

You grabbed the pillow and tossed it into supposed feet area, covering yourself with a duvet, thank God your mom had a spare one and you didn’t have to share it with him. "Turn off the light when you won't need it anymore. Thank you." you whispered and closed your eyes.

Jaehyun was well aware of the fact you couldn't fall asleep with the light on, it was obvious the man also knew how much you hated to have your full body covered, because you were immediately hot all over even in the winter. But you had to intention of letting him see any of you from behind the material.

You focused on the noises that were coming from him - he shuffled on the bed a little, clearly not lying down yet. Then he stilled, making you wonder if he was just staring at his phone, with the full illumination in the room. You were getting a little worked up at the idea of him purposely disturbing your wish to sleep. You wanted to turn around and see him and maybe have a little fight, because it seemed like the only valuable reason to talk to him.

You were feeling too warm under the duvet, all because of those thoughts, you needed him to turn off the lights, so you'd pull it off yourself. When he'd roll to the other side and won't see your bare legs in the darkness. As you made up your mind to fight, you heard him get to his feet and finally turn the lights off. You held in a sigh.

You listened carefully to his feet walking back to the bed and felt him sitting down. Heard and felt the mattress bend as he lowered his body fully and then shuffled with his own duvet. You felt the mattress bend under him as he probably turned away from you, and finally felt free to move the duvet off your body.

Taking a long breath and actually trying to fall asleep this time.

You tried not to picture much how you'd meet at the court's entrance to civilly agree on your divorce. You tried to shush those thoughts away and fall asleep quickly.

You heard a little shuffle behind your back, Jaehyun probably moving his arms around to find a comfortable position.

Until you felt his mouth on your outer ankle bone you were convinced Jaehyun was trying hard to fall asleep. Now you weren't so sure, as he moved his mouth a mere centimetre up. Your legs moved under his touch on reflex, trying to avoid the tickle of his mouth.

Jaehyun's fingers wrapped over your sole, holding your leg in place, as his mouth trailed up your ankle to your calf. "Tell me if you want me to stop." He skipped a few centimetres up your body and pressed his mouth into the middle of your thigh.

"It's okay." you whispered into the pillow, laying on your stomach. Jaehyun's mouth kissed your other thigh and moved away. You heard him shuffle behind you, probably sitting up, felt his fingers wrap around your ankles and pulling your body more to the centre of the bed. You tried to close your legs and felt his body between them.

You were already so damn wet, not knowing what he wanted or intended to do, but you were just hoping Jaehyun won't take long to find out how he made you feel.

His fingers ran up your legs while giving pressure to your skin, pressing his mouth right under your ass, the shorts giving him the perfect opportunity to feel up all the bare skin. You felt his tongue swipe up, while his hand squeezed the other side under its fingers. You perked your ass up, only to be pressed down with force.

Jaehyun's luscious mouth moved up your butt cheek and left wet kisses, when you felt a striking pain of his teeth, digging into the soft skin. As you gave out a whine and shuffled under him, Jaehyun's free palm pressed into your lower back to keep you in place, pressing his teeth into you even harder.

Your hand blindly found his head, trying to make him let go. It's not like he didn't know it hurt, he purposely hurt you.

"Baby, it really hurts." You finally whined, feeling his mouth let go of you and fall into your reached out hand, peppering kisses into your palm.

Your butt cheek was on fire.

"I know. That's your punishment for leaving me alone. For a whole fucking year. And staying at that fuck ass hotel for the whole week. Bet it doesn't even sting half badly to what my heart felt."

"I'm so sorry." you tried to turn around and see him, but Jaehyun's arms pressed into your knees. This was clearly another part of his punishment. "My ass is on fire, i need ice."

"I can give the symmetrical one to the other side, it'll for sure stop burning over here."

"No, please, this already hurts a lot. Is there blood?" you whined.

"I wouldn't bite that hard, you're silly. Just a little red mark. It's not that harsh." His fingers slapped the butt cheek and you let out an 'ouch'. It for sure felt like there was blood to you. "I missed you." he whispered in a hushed manner, pressing his mouth against you. “I had to fuck my hand for a year because my wife left me alone. Are you sorry for that also?”

“I am.”

“Good.” Jaehyun pressed flat out palm into your core, your body leaning into his hand to feel the pressure that made your eyes roll backwards. “Tell me if you don’t want to have sex with me.”

“I want to, my only concern would be my entire family sleeping in the same building.” You moved your body against his palm, giving yourself a bit of stimulation.

“Then you have to be extra cautious with your noises.” Jaehyun moved his fingers to the side, teasing the material of your underwear.

“You can silence me with your kisses. Please, let me turn around, I want to kiss you.” You whined, feeling his digits tease your slickness. Jaehyun’s thumb disappeared in your folds, giving you pressure you missed so much. One more swipe of his fingers and all you need is his hips thrusting into you full force. Fucking you stupid, until you can’t stand up the next morning.

“No, I don’t want you to.” His pointing fingers rolled over your clit in circles.

“I missed you so fucking much, baby.”

“I can tell. You’re so wet, so warm, so ready to take me inside of you.” Jaehyun’s fingers rolled down your slit, pressing into your entrance. “But I kind of thought of something else?” His digits penetrated you, curling inside as your ass once again lift up from the mattress, adding on the friction and pressure.

“Baby, anything is good for me. Can you move your hand faster?” Jaehyun pressed his other hand into your clit, drawing small circle while pumping his other hand in and out of you.

“You can’t be cuming this early, no. I’m going to move slowly. You need to relax. Completely.” He let his hand from your clit press into your lower back to lay you back down. “Shh, you need to relax, I need you to be absolutely unwind.” Jaehyun caressed your thigh with that same hand, letting left-over slickness stain your skin.

“Why?” You mumbled into the pillow, arms grabbing onto the material, as Jaehyun pulled back. As the question left your lips, you felt his same digit give pressure to your anus. “Why?” You asked again, meaning why do you want to do anal when my whole family could hear us. Not why the hell do you want that now.

“Are you against it?”

“No, we maybe should’ve taken it home.” You whined as he caressed his fingers against you. “We can’t, not when you tell me you’ve slept in a hotel for a week, when I thought you were here. I could’ve been fucking you for a week, in every way I could think of. I could’ve even calmed down by now and started making love to you instead.” Jaehyun’s mouth trailed kisses down your back through your shirt.

“Do you know…how to do it properly?” He clearly did, you just liked asking stupid questions.

“I had plenty of time to work that out.”

“Don’t tell me it was through other people.” You swallowed a moan, feeling him slip into your wetness.

“You must be fucking insane. I would’ve kept my faithfulness to you even if you signed the papers and I walked into you five years later on accident. You’re the love of my fucking life, baby.” Jaehyun slipped two of his fingers inside of you, giving pressure to your ass with the third one.

“Jaehyun-ah.” You cried into the pillow not able to go with the same slowness of his movement, continue with that mere pressure into your ass, you needed more of him and more firmly, like you knew he was able to give.

“Yes, sweetheart?” He whispered sweetly.

There was no sweetness in your response. When you were horny, you were far from being sweet. “I want you to fuck my ass. And I want you to do it roughly.”

“I hear you.” Jaehyun whispered, pressing his mouth into your shoulder blade. “Let me take your clothes off, stick your ass up.” He let go of you completely, moving back down and watching you get on your knees. You stuck your butt out for him, his fingers immediately hooking onto your shorts and pulling them down your legs, throwing them off the bed with your underwear. You felt his mouth latch onto your heat, swiping the tongue up and down your slick folds, causing you to fold into his touch and chase his mouth with your core blindly. Your head buried deep into the pillow to not let the whimpers coming out of you be heard anywhere beyond your bed.

Jaehyun ran his tongue up and down, extending the trail up to your ass, repeating that same action multiple times. His fingers once again found your entrance, penetrating you full force with no warning. He didn’t really need to, you were so slick, he could get himself inside of you with no issue right the same moment. “We don’t have lube, so we’ll have to stick to your pussy’s slickness and my saliva. If it’s not doing it’s thing and it hurts, just tell me, okay?”

“It won’t hurt.”

“It can, baby. Promise you won’t endure pain to make me happy.”

“I won’t.”

“Good girl.” He moved his fingers from inside of you, pressing into your butt cheeks to spread you wider. You felt stars in your eyes as Jaehyun’s tongue slipped inside of you, it was firm, so wet and warm. You chased him once again, as he tried to move away from you, sticking his tongue into your vagina while his finger pressed into your other hole, taking your mind completely off that foreign but fascinating feeling.

Your arm reached out to your husband between your legs squeezing his thigh barely reaching with your fingers. If he was still your husband, he’d know you weren’t just wanting to hold on to him. And he was, indeed, still your husband, because you could hear the shuffling, and the struggle of him trying to take his sleeping pants off with just one hand. He finally did so, moving his hips forward, until the tip of his cock fell into your open palm and you wrapped around it, pumping his tip. Jaehyun let out the loudest sigh, like he was lifting weights at the gym, trying to hold himself together. You pumped him, until he became too heavy in your hand, pressing him into your slickness just so you could feel his warm leaking head press into your longing pussy. His cock felt so painfully hard and he obviously needed to slip himself inside of you.

You swiped his tip against your slit, making both you moan with the way the swipe felt so full to the both of you, until pressing him into your ass. Letting him know you wanted him get inside of you, just a finger wasn’t enough anymore. You needed the full experience he wanted you to have.

“Wait, baby, I need to find the condom.” Jaehyun pulled back, slipping his length out of your hold.

“I’m still taking birth control?”

“It’s not about that. Didn’t I tell you, had plenty of time to work out how to do it properly. I can’t do both your ass and pussy, because bacteria can cause infections in your vagina, we can’t be doing that, can we?” You nodded, feeling Jaehyun climb back onto the bed. “I can put it on you, like when we just started dating. You liked it so much.” You haven’t put a condom on him in maybe eight years, you wanted to remember the feeling.

“It’s okay.” You heard the foil break under his teeth, “Don’t want you to move out of this position.”

“Please?” You whined, reaching a hand out between your legs once again. Only now did you realise you obediently sat in the same position, when you could’ve turned around and force his mouth onto yours.

Jaehyun slipped his tip into your fingers, the rubber material hiding the tip from your direct touch as he slightly put it on already. You wrapped your finger over him and in one swift motion rolled it all the way up, giving his balls a squeeze before moving your hand back to the base. You guided his hips closer to you, smudging the condom with your slickness, as you worked him against you. He did say you’ll need a ton of lube for that.

Jaehyun moved away, your arm going back to the pillow to give you steadiness. You stuck your butt out more, hoping it’ll make easier for the both of you. You felt a drip of his saliva fall onto your skin, felt him smothering your entrance with his cock and felt the pressure, slipping himself into you.

“Is it…not working?” You asked, confused. You felt pressure, but couldn’t even comprehend the depth of that motion.

“It’s working, just don’t strain yourself, it’ll hurt me. Is it okay?”

“It is.”

“Do you want me to touch your pussy?”

“I want to feel this properly.” You whispered, sure of the fact he slipped past the tip - it felt like more pressure than before applied. “Fuck.” You gasped.

“Want me to move away?”

“No, I might need your fingers.”

“Where?”

“Clit.” Jaehyun urgently pressed his digits into your core, massaging your completely soaking mucous. It gave you that little bit of relaxation you needed to let go and allow Jaehyun to move further, he did just that, slipping himself in.

“Can I move?” Jaehyun sighed.

“Are you deep?” You felt like he was all in, he probably wasn’t.

“Mmh, like halfway?”

“Yeah, do that.” You whimpered as he moved away, pressing himself once again. “Do more spit.” You felt his warm saliva once again drip down your skin.

“Fuck, this feels insanely tight. Like the next thrust I’m not going to be able to move back.” He gasped with each thrust and you couldn’t understand if it somehow was what he expected.

“Do you hate it?” “No, I just have a feeling this won’t last long.” You could feel Jaehyun get deeper inside of you with every thrust of his. “Fuck, baby, you’re taking this so well.” He whined into your spine. “Fuck, fuck.” He cursed under his breath, hips finally pressing against your ass. Your fingers reached out to his balls, giving them a little stimulation while Jaehyun recollected himself. “Can I do it properly?”

“You can try.” Jaehyun angled your ass, moving out of you, only to slap his hips full force into you. It didn’t feel like pain. Pressure - yes, a lot of pressure that you’ve never felt before, stretching that made your core throb. You felt so full of your husband, ready to take thrusts of any power and force. You whined under his hold, every thrust of his hips making your breath hitch, pressure under every finger of his on your waist making your back arch back in want. You physically needed him to fill you up, you couldn’t care at this point in what way, as long as he was holding you in his arms.

His little grunts were getting progressively more expressive, making him mess up the tempo every once in a while. Jaehyun pulled out, and you could tell he moved away from you with the way his palms left your skin.

You tried to switch positions, get up from your now sore arms and turn to see his face. Jaehyun caught your arms with his, looping it around and pushing you towards him. So you’d get on your ass, while being half-way hostage in his hold and have no way to move your arms around. Mid-action Jaehyun put in extra care to make sure his tip lined up with you, sliding himself right into your slickness as you landed on his thighs. Filled to the brim with him. Just him, the condom disposed before the action.

You moaned.

The sound was so raw and sudden, you were convinced every other person that wasn’t asleep in the house heard it.

“Stop clenching around me.” Jaehyun grunted into your ear, mouth pressing into your jaw. “We won’t last five minutes, sweetheart.”

“Let me move.” You whimpered, trying to raise your hips up but struggling while your arms are locked in his hold.

“Okay baby, ride me.” Jaehyun let you go, lowering his back on the mattress, palms resting against the sheets. Your fingers gripped onto his thighs, wrapping around them firmly, using them as a prop for stability, raising your hips up in the slowest motion you could muster and sinking down with that same smooth, fluid motion.

Up and down.

Another one hollowing yourself and filling up, all in that slow, almost teasing pace that helped you keep your composure. You felt your insides grip onto him in an attempt to hold back, you weren’t able to do anything about it. It was either this, or spasming around him in literal five minutes.

And you couldn’t let that happen.

You haven’t felt him like that in a year. You’d like him to fill you up for the entirety of the night.

And you knew he’d do that if you just voiced out the need.

Jaehyun’s fingers rested on your hips, his silent gesture for you to raise up the speed.

You really couldn’t. Not with the way those thrusts made his tip press exactly into your g-spot, making your stomach grow heavier by the second with pleasure.

“Baby, are you good?” Jaehyun patted your side. You were uncharacteristically quiet during the process, just your thighs meeting his, fingers gripping onto his knee. Now, that you bent a little further. Mouth letting out heavy sighs as you were building up your high.

“Good.” You whispered.

“I can help you.” Jaehyun met you half way, forcing a grunt out both you and him.

“I’m doing good.” You cried in protest.

“You are, baby. You are doing so good and it’s getting painfully hard to hold back from cuming. Watching you sink down on me is definitely my favourite show to watch, but my vision’s getting blurry.” Jaehyun’s fingers forced you down onto him roughly as he buckled his hips into yours once again. “Can I help us both? Get on your knees. Please, baby.” You almost sighed, it was probably the first time you haven’t seen his face during sex, not once felt his tongue in your mouth. And he was the man that usually said he couldn’t think of fucking any other way than missionary because he loves to see your face expressions.

Maybe he’s changed his opinion, or what has changed is his feelings.

You did as he asked bending forward, tangling your legs with his thighs and getting Jaehyun lift his hips right into you. Quick-paced thrusts that made your bed’s wood creak under pressure.

Jaehyun moved his hips up, his fingers pushing your core closer to him. The pace he moved with made you absolutely dizzy, you had no thoughts properly forming in your head except for maybe how he was using all of his core strength to chase both his and yours highs.

Your hips met his thrust half way up, helping him to pop that bubble of pressure in your stomach, until you felt yourself pool. Silent gasps and cries escaping through your mouth. Then, like a chain reaction Jaehyun’s thrust lost rhythm as your pussy gripped onto him mercilessly. You sank down feeling him spill, making slow thrusts to ride out his high.

Jaehyun stilled, letting his limbs fall off your lower back and onto the bed. Heavy breathing filling up the room.

You needed to lie down too, attempting to roll over to the side. Jaehyun didn’t let you, his arms wrapping over your waist, forcing you to fall down onto his chest. Keeping himself inside of you. “Can I have your body weight on me for a little while?” Jaehyun mumbled against your skin, mouth pressing into your shoulder.

“You can.” Your voice barely came out of your throat. “It’s the first time we’ve gotten intimate in over a year. And the first time we didn’t even take our clothes off properly.” Only now did you notice and feel, that you both had your shirts still on. You wouldn’t be too surprised if the sleeping trousers he wore weren’t properly off his body either. “First time I haven’t seen your face nor kissed your mouth. And we’ve been together for a decade. Is that supposed to mean something?” You questioned in a whisper. Jaehyun didn’t budge, it’s like he didn’t care about the emotional turmoil you were going through. “Jaehyun?” you called out his name, squeezing his forearm for a reaction.

“I’m so tired.” He let out a loud sigh into your ear, mouth pressing into your jaw. “Sorry, sweetheart, did you say something? I got knocked out under you.” He yawned, you had no emotional capacity to comprehend wether he play pretended or not. You wanted to not feel his arms press into your stomach.

You pulled onto them and freed yourself, sitting up and eventually moving away. Jaehyun let out an ‘ouch’ at your motion.

You just felt hollow, just like your heart did last few months, throwing the shorts on and hiding yourself in the bathroom.

Rebound sex seemed to be a bitch.

You dreaded to open your eyes, but you knew you had to. Your mom had a very strict policy of no sleeping past 9 am, and you weren’t sure Jaehyun got up to shower after what you did and put his underwear on. Or if he put the condom away or it was laying somewhere next to the bed.

Your mom catching up on obvious signs of you having sex last night seemed worse than facing your husband, and you opened your eyes quickly, looking over the room. Your eyes fell onto the chair, surprised to find Jaehyun sitting in it. Feet up on the cushion, eyes trained on the phone while he obviously scrolled.

Good thing he was dressed.

Though he was wearing his jeans and that made you let him know you were awake.

“Are you leaving?” Your voice sounded like you had nightmares of your husband having sex with you and handing you the divorce agreement right as you were cuming. Or did you really dream that? You needed to check your bedside table for pen and paper.

“Hm…no?” Jaehyun looked up from his phone confused. “Good morning to you too, though.”

“Why are you in your jeans at 8 am?” You frowned.

“Can’t I take a walk?”

“I’m sorry for asking.” You folded immediately. You could still feel his fingers on your thighs, you were in no place of mind to fight.

“Do you… feel okay?” He tip-toed over the topic.

“I haven’t moved a limb, don’t know.” Jaehyun dropped his phone on the floor, making you anxious with the speed he crossed the room to get on your side of the bed. “Did you throw the condom away?”

“I did, your mom’s been up since like 5:30 am. I heard her move around the house.” He gave you the weakest smile.

“I see.” You sighed, wildly awkward of Jaehyun standing above you like you were on your deathbed.

“Can you sit up?” He questioned, clearly concerned over your physical state.

“Jae-.” You had to stop a chuckle. “We had sex, it’s not like I’m going to die after that. We had sex before. A lot of times.” You would like to not think of those times to not get yourself worked up.

“Not like that though.” He gave you a brow. You wondered if he meant the physical way he did it, or your emotional state or something else.

“Is that the only thing that bothers you?” Not like, the fact we have not kissed during the process?

“That’s first priority.”

“Okay, I’m going to sit up.” You let him know, pulling yourself together to get up. Despite the tiresome state of your system. Jaehyun watched your face intently, looking for any sign of discomfort that could come.

Okay, he might’ve been right. You didn’t feel perfectly fine, you felt sore, a little pain also followed in your thighs. Nothing you couldn’t endure anyway. Jaehyun read through discomfort that showed on your face for a split second.

“See.” He sighed knowingly, walking off the bed and returning with a bag in his hand. “I got you something.” He admitted quickly, reaching his fingers into the bag. “This is an electrolyte water. Also vitamin c.” He got two bottles out of the bag, expecting you to take them, so you did. “I didn’t know if it’s better with heat or cooling - I got a heat pack and this cooling spray just in case-.”

“At the convenience store?” You asked confused, you’ve never heard of cooling sprays at convenience stores, but then again - you never looked for them.

“Yes.” He let all of the things fall onto your lap. “And this mini croissants salt bread. Thought you might like it. It’s the new product, got on market while you were away.” The baby-blue pack fell onto your lap last. You looked at everything, overwhelmed with the fact Jaehyun cared for you as much as he did before. Despite the signs earlier.

Or maybe he just wanted to be nice, patch up your bruises and get you to sign those papers while you’re touched by him?

“Thank you.” You could only muster, raising your eyes to see his face plastered with cute smile, that made both his dimples pop. He gave you a nod and turned around probably to get rid of the bag.

“Jaehyun…”

“Yes?” At the call of his name he was looking you in the eyes in a second.

“I still don’t want that divorce to happen… I didn’t come back because the project got cancelled. It got cancelled, because I said I’m going back home. I asked for their understanding a long time ago. First, they told me I needed to assimilate, that I was just home sick and thus asked to be dismissed. I agreed, stayed another month, but it wasn’t going away. That sorrow and emptiness weren’t going anywhere. I told them I’m going back, but they pleaded me to stay just another month to find a substitute. Then a month stretched into two and three. I only was able to make it back to you now. I was sick this whole time, when you first actually send me the papers, I cried the whole week. I wanted to go back immediately, and I weren’t allowed to. I really fucked us up, you were right when you said I acted like the 10 years of us didn’t matter to me… because I don’t know what the fuck I was doing. I left and realised that the life I thought I was able to live, actually was unbearable without you. How funny is that? Expected myself to kill this whole thing, return back home to you and slide into our bed like nothing happened, when I clearly hurt you, and myself. I love you so much. I’m so sorry, what’s done cannot be undone, so I guess I am signing those papers. I can’t hold you back forever, just ask your lawyer to send one more copy to our apartment.” You sobbed defeated.

“What?” Jaehyun sounded astonished, you raised your face to see him. Probably jumping in happiness.

“I said I’ll sign those papers.” You repeated to his face.

“You still want to get divorced? I thought we just had reconciliation sex and will move on?” He took multiple steps back to you.

“Huh? I thought this was a goodbye?” “And why would I go to a convenience store at 7 am then?” Jaehyun furrowed his brows even deeper.

“To get me on your good side… so I’d sign the agreement?” You told him what you took this as.

“Are you… crazy? How did I even marry a crazy lady like you.” He chuckled in clear disbelief.

“You didn’t kiss me once last night, didn’t even look me in the eyes once. What was I supposed to take this as?” It was your turn to frown.

“Me fucking you from the back like I said I was gonna to.” He exclaimed louder than intended, having you shush him with your hands immediately.

“I don’t understand, I’m sorry.”

“You’re back for forever? This is not a holiday brake, right?” Jaehyun crossed the room.

“No, I’m back for good.”

“I wanted a divorce not because I didn’t love you. I wanted a divorce because I didn’t want to hold you back here. If you were gonna settle in the US for three years, I didn’t want to be the anchor that pulled you back here. If you’re here, we should reconcile and not do the stupid thing. I love you.” He said in one quick breath.

“You do?” “Of course, sweetheart. I always will.” Jaehyun kneeled in front of your half-sitting body.

“I love you too.” You admitted quickly.

“Good, I guess now that we’re settled I can have my real kiss.” He pulled on your palms, bending your back towards him. Before his mouth could touch yours, you pulled back.

“But why? Why you didn’t kiss me last night? Can’t believe in what you said.”

“I told you when you were leaving. We are not having our last kiss. I weren’t sure, last night, that it won’t be the last time I kissed you, so I refrained. Now that I am sure, I don’t have a good reason to not do that.”

“Your brain is… insane?” You chuckled, but instead of letting him pull you down, forced him up and on top of you, sealing your mouths in the slowest twirl of your tongues.

“Mom! They’re making you more grandkids!” Your sister forced the door wide open, not giving either of you a moment to react, or to let go of each other.

“Close the door!” you growled, hiding Jaehyun’s face in the crook of your neck.

“I heard enough moans last night, can’t be listening to that while I’m having breakfast! Come on you two! Mom said breakfast’s ready. I’m giving you 45 seconds to pull your shit together or mom locks you two up to conceive that baby now!”

“Ew.” You made the loudest sound of disgust, Hyunjoo threw a towel she had in her hands towards you and closed the door. Jaehyun raised his head up looking at you with the wildest grin, face gone red as a tomato.

“She heard everything.” Jaehyun let out a low chuckle out. “I’m not going there.” He rolled over onto his back.

“You are! I’m not facing my family after what she just said on my own!”

hope you enjoyed, any feedback is highly appreciated <3

#jaehyun fanfic #jaehyun smut #jaehyun scenarios #nct smut #nct fluff #nct scenarios #nct x reader #nct jaehyun x reader #nct jaehyun fanfiction #nct jaehyun #nct fanfic #nct jaehyun smut #jeong jaehyun x reader #jaehyun x reader #jaehyun fanfiction #jaehyun #jung jaehyun

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val-of-the-north · 2 days ago

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Most of the "lesser" Nightlords are creatures who think differently from humans, with the clear exception of Fulghor, Libra and Caligo.

Among the three, Fulghor is the odd one out, as he is a warrior and champion of an ancient age who lacks the inquisitiveness of the other two. He is there to fight on behalf of the ancient gods he worshipped, and I am not sure if he is on the side of the Night or if like Adel he has simply found himself in this position due to his sheer power allowing him to claim the title. He did gain a new arm out of it, but he is also not the "Champion of Night" but the "Champion of Nightglow", in stark contrast to everyone else. He even wields a "sacred form of the Night's power", which is interesting since the true Nightlord and Gladius, his personal companion, are both really weak to sacred power... he is also the only Nightlord visibly affected by the Night's power, as his skin features blueish spots all over it. Perhaps he isn't as willing as the others to see the world vanish, but he is too prideful to side with the people who replaced his pantheon. After all, it seems the Nightfarers are drawing from the power of Grace left behind by the dominant culture of the time. Maybe he could have been an ally, but he couldn't forgive the changing of the ages.

This leaves us with Caligo and Libra, who are both very intelligent beings with a wealth of knowledge, acquired for vastly different reasons. Caligo seeks to know and remember, observing history and committing everything to memory, while Libra seeks to reach balance and enlightenment, walking a thin line between blessing and madness. Both also have the ability to pretend to be human, but while we see it for Libra, it is only implied for Caligo, since she is an Ancient Dragon, judging from her appearance, and they could all shape-shift into a more humanoid form if they wanted. However, I believe they are kind of opposites in the way they operate.

Libra, as the Baphomet-inspired creature that he is, gives me the vibe of someone who was there for many points of history, and maybe even interacted with some of the more important people when they meant nothing yet. I can imagine him knocking at Midra's door or meeting a young Marika before she is pulled away by one of her elders who knows the guy is bad news lol. However, he does not seem to be on board with the whole "Lord of Frenzied Flame" thing. He is just as susceptible to madness himself, and something like that would tip the scales on one side rather than the other, which goes against his desire for true balance. Libra's choice to peer into madness is simply a way to reach enlightenment, as it brings you closer to the concept of the One Great.

I think Libra is a force that tips the scales in favor of whatever power is lacking at the moment in an attempt to reach balance. So in an Age where Frenzy is at its lowest, he'd stir up chaos and madness, while in one where Frenzy rules and begins melting the world away, he'd show people the boons of gold and order. He wouldn't necessarily be the one who shapes the course of history, but rather someone who can guess based on his calculations, simply "nudging" others towards the direction he thinks would be best for achieving true equilibrium, which he finally found in the Night that he views as the equalizer of all things. He basically wants a world of unity but without individuality being destroyed, believing balance can exist in the current state of the world without having to renounce it. Quite an insane thing to aim for, but it's respectable in its own right, especially since he did manage to marry order and chaos into his own form of alchemy.

Meanwhile, Caligo is a watchful eye that has probably been around since time immemorial, possibly even being a contemporary to Metyr, or someone born very soon after her arrival on their world. She has observed history and sometimes shows up for its most important events so that she may remember them. In stark contrast to Libra, who feels like he'd be considered a mythological figure, historians would know of Caligo and her importance. And again, unlike him, she would show up when events are already in motion and worth memorizing. She could even show up in her human form to converse with the current world leaders, hear their side and maybe even impart wisdom if they choose to listen to her words. But maybe her years of witnessing cycles upon cycles have made her detached, which just leads her to make either cold or sardonic remarks on certain things she knows for a fact will happen, and they often do just as she predicted. Because she has learned the pattern of history and can correctly identify how things will go.

Maybe in endings that aren't the Age of Fracture, Stars or the Lord of Frenzied Flame, the Tarnished protagonist would be visited by her, curious of the new developments. Maybe she even paid a visit during the Shattering, if only to laugh at how predictable the civil war between Demigods was. The Night, however, seems to be something new and worth investigating, which is no doubt a source of great relief for someone who must have been growing weary of the stagnant nature of Marika's reign.

Now I am wondering if Gideon Ofnir looked for either of them in his quest to be all-knowing... he seems smart enough to have found a way to peer into the mind of Marika and discover the truth of the Fingers, so he could have communed with either Caligo, or Libra, or both in an attempt to expand his own knowledge. Cool to think about.

#elden ring nightreign #nightreign #elden ring #libra creature of night #caligo miasma of night #fulghor champion of nightglow #didn't expect to find these guys so interesting lol #now I keep imagining all of these guys in base Elden Ring too #I expect them all to be modded in by crazy modders in the near future ahah. you know it's coming!#but yeah. I love the knowledgable ones among them #val-post

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dnot-look · 1 day ago

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1- Batdad reader x batfamily

Notes; bruh yeah, from dark smut to family, idk I just want to write

Male reader btw, bad English, it's like 00:39 I don't want to think tbh

So, I was thinking on meeting like, young Bruce before all kids and serious batman stuff, you would probably have to famous or at least rich to be in the same places that him, but I don't think Bruce would like, befriend some famous people that have a lot of attention on them, like singers or actors

A good match would be like, maybe a writer or even a actor but more like, those actors that do one movie per year and it's the best movie ever made, you could just be a business man, maybe a Nepo baby, or like, a painter something

Then yeah, some talking, Bruce is totally bisexual you can't argue that, you ended up in his bed and you guys start some relationship, no labels, no talks about that, just a thing

The thing is also kinda serious but neither of you two will admit that, you think maybe is because he is a famous guy and don't want to assume a gay relationship, maybe others reasons, you kinda never find out because one day Bruce is just gone

He leaves you a letter, totally old fashioned way, kinda explaining kinda not explaining nothing

He says he has something very important do to and that things is like, he can't live without doing that and he doesn't know how much longer he will stay away and just say to you continue your life and not wait for him

And you technically don't wait, maybe some little casual sex, maybe no, you don't actually start nothing serious, because in the end your mind always come back to him, to why he leave without saying nothing

Ten years after, you are more off screens no matter what is your job, just chilling getting a little older, I would say you would be in your 30's and then boom, Bruce is back in your door

And he asking you to marry him

And you like, excuse me?

But you actually say yes, then you say no and ask for some answers

And Bruce explains, actually explain, their parents, his sense of justice, the need for some kinda of no blood revenge and the hero not exactly hero thing

And it's a little hard to just accept at all, he says he was training and getting really prepared because he knows he just a normal human but again, he doesn't know if he is capable of living without doing that

So you agree, you ended up marrying Bruce and somehow becoming batman secret helper, you do a lot of research on villain stuff, location, since you can't fight you spend a lot of time in the batcave just getting more and more info for the bat archives

And one day Bruce shows up with a kid... Like a real child that looks a little traumatized and lost

He explains everything and you can't deny you understand why he can't leave Grayson with the cops, not knowing what really happened, there's a lot in all that and you both worried about what that child can become without some proper guardian

Then with some fake news, money and a lot of papers you and Bruce are officially adoptive dad's to Dick, not need to say you guys have no idea of how raising a child

God bless Alfred

A lot of books of child care, you even go to those mom groups, being the only guy btw, you and Bruce actually do some effort

And looks like it works? After some time dick starts being more happy and living like a child, he still doesn't talk about what happened and his parents, but you don't force

Until Bruce says he will have Dick as his Robin and let him fight by his side

You and Bruce have the first fight in your relationship, you are furious, a child fighting against adults?! You both say a lot of things that don't want and can't even look at each other

Then Dick step in and go talk to you

And he says that he doesn't know if he can live without doing something, that urge in his heart wanting to do something, to fight, to help

You see Bruce in his eyes

A little boy that lost his parents and want to help people, so nobody can feel that same pain

You ended up letting him go, but take some time until you and Bruce talk again, a lot of time and patience is need but you guys manage to do it

Things look good enough, Dick never gets serious injuries and both Bruce and him look happy somehow so it's fine

Until Bruce shows again with a new kid

Oh boy

#batman #batfam #batdad #batman x reader #batman x you #batman x male reader #male x male reader #male x reader #male reader #x male reader #dc universe #dc x reader #batfamily

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freeluigihesbae · 2 days ago

Note

Thank you for being so open to hearing outside perspectives. That's really refreshing.

I think you are missing a lot about Wincest. It's been around since season 1 (2005), the founder of AO3 is a shipper and her fics are still up, and there's tons of meta, fics, art, andshippers out there on a variety of things. If Wincest is a lot of sex, it's because it IS incest after all. There's a lot you can do with taboo. But it's also because the show itself feeds into the ship so the only thing missing from the relationship is sex.

Sam and Dean constantly choose each other over everyone, even the world. They're canonically soulmates. In an interview with Eric Kripke (creator of Supernatural) the executive producer called the show "The epic love story of Sam and Dean." At NYCC 2022 Jensen said "It (Supernatural) was the love story of two brothers, to be honest." They're named after their married maternal grandparents, they get likened to a couple every season. Basically, canon feeds us a lot of the things people look for in their favorite ships. The show means it platonically (like a lot of slash ships are meant to be platonic in canon) but we're so well fed that we don't have to change canon. We get our fill from that.

Sex is the only thing missing from the relationship we're given. You can even test this by checking out fics written during seasons where the brothers are largely separated or fighting (like season 8) where you get a lot of non-PWPs because for once we're not being fed what we're used to.

I love Wincest for their relationship. I love that the show ended up with them pressing their foreheads together as Dean told Sam he loved him so much. I love that Dean chose to drive around heaven until Sam showed up. I love that Jensen said it was best that Dean was the one to die because if it had been Sam, Dean wouldn't have been able to live without him. I'm a shipper because how could you NOT ship them you know? Imagine everything in Supernatural is the same except Sam and Dean aren't related. Do you see the vision? That's exactly the same for Wincest shippers, except them being fictional means we don't see a barrier to shipping them.

I hope this helped shed some light!

"But it's also because the show itself feeds into the ship so the only thing missing from the relationship is sex."

That's makes a lot of sense, especially from the last inbox that I responded to (and yes, a few instances I saw) where people think Sam and Dean are together. Perhaps, the casual-ness of assuming they are together is what makes the ship more viable. I can understand that.

"Basically, canon feeds us a lot of the things people look for in their favorite ships. The show means it platonically (like a lot of slash ships are meant to be platonic in canon) but we're so well fed that we don't have to change canon. We get our fill from that."

Are you saying that even though the show means it platonically, the show simultaneously provides you with all of the content for you to believe it be otherwise? Can you clarify this? Either way it sounds like an interesting point.

"Sex is the only thing missing from the relationship we're given. You can even test this by checking out fics written during seasons where the brothers are largely separated or fighting (like season 8) where you get a lot of non-PWPs because for once we're not being fed what we're used to."

So what you're saying is writing wincest or the prior/later fics about them are something that have somewhat (at least) followed the way the brothers have been acting with each other throughout the show, right? Like the works that have been posted are like natural reactions to the current state of their relationship with each other?

"Imagine everything in Supernatural is the same except Sam and Dean aren't related. Do you see the vision?"

Absolutely. Except that's where I feel like deviate and I think that's where my criticism for the ship comes in. Let me be clear that I totally understand everything that you've talked about so far BUT. I think just the fact that they are brothers. No matter how you look at it. The show is built on them being brothers who take on this supernatural world and whatnot so a lot of things they do are just... as brothers. I thought a lot about this ship earlier and I felt like wincest exploits the trauma that they underwent so that people can insert their fantasies (again I am not attacking you, but merely stating what my viewpoint is. no accusations pls!).

To expand on this, a few months ago I had watched and read about the story of the Menendez Brothers. Let me be totally clear that I understand many circumstances are ENTIRELY different, but what I found concerning was that people were writing smutty fics about the brothers because they had developed a very unhealthy codependence on each others -- (Lyle also sexually assaulted his younger brother Erik when they both were young because he didn't really know what was going on) -- which was exploited so that people could insert their smutty fantasies about the brothers. The show that Ryan Murphy made also indulged in this hypothetical scenario that the brothers were sexually satisfying each other which was pretty disgusting.

Again Dean and Sam were emotionally abused more-so than physical so I totally understand the difference, but the main point I'm trying to get across is how their trauma-bond is being (IMO) exploited. It's a vulnerability that seems strange to tap into to write fanfiction.

"...except them being fictional means we don't see a barrier to shipping them."

This absolutely makes sense. That's what lets pretty much anyone and everyone write the most ridiculous and insane stuff ever and get away with it because there are no barriers. This applies to everything, wincest included. So from an objective sense, hell yeah you can write whatever you want.

This was an interesting conversation. I want to thank whoever initially send me a message (and was pissed) and whoever this inbox writer was (if it was someone else) because I appreciated getting to know more about how Sam and Dean's relationship is honestly fucked and how it's the reaction to that which has led to Wincest. With that being said, I still don't support it but I don't think I look at it with such a harsh set of eyes because it's not just people taking two brothers and making them kiss, but there's a genuine screwed "erotic" connection between how they depend on each other.

There is substance to support they have the wrong dependence on each other and I find that psychologically stimulating. However, the fanfiction aspect of it is a bit difficult for me to digest and I don't think I ever will. But I can understand the ship better.

And writer, as you said, you ship Wincest so I'm just going to let you do that. I don't have as much judgement and I think I learned some new stuff from this conversation. Thank you for being so open to telling me all of this information. This doesn't have to be the end! I asked some questions above so just drop another inbox if you want to respond and I'm happy to keep this conversation going.

For non-Wincest shippers or people that regularly visit my page, I'll recommend you try and find my previous inbox responses. I was pretty petty the first time so I think it's helpful to understand that you may not accept an entirety, but there are always pieces that we can learn new.

Thank you.

___________

@alekcarv and @wr3stlingindirtpitz tagging you both to read this, since you commented on my previous reply with your criticisms of my replies to the original writer of my other messages. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to add.

#dean winchester #sam winchester #wincest #supernatural

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lune-moon-nuit · 3 days ago

Text

The Invisible Cage: How 1980s Society Shaped the Psyche of Closeted Gay Teens Like Mike and Will

We have unfortunately already seen, through anti-Byler arguments, the level of ignorance and homophobia they radiate — how deeply they downplay the widespread homophobia that forces gay people to conform, to hide, and to date girls under compulsory heterosexuality. And we constantly have to remind them of the time period in which the story is set, and just how complicated it was to be gay in the 1980s. These young teenagers act as if being gay has always been something easy or accepted, without even realizing that their own refusal to acknowledge a closeted gay boy like Mike (and of course, Will) stems from homophobic bias.

But while watching a documentary about a French comedian who was widely loved by the stage and the public from the 1980s, I couldn't help but think about all of this. In short, Pierre Palmade is a French comedian, playwright, director, and actor, born on March 23, 1968, in Bordeaux. He rose to fame as a comedian in the late 1980s and became a well-known figure on television. In theatre, he wrote, directed, and performed in many plays.

In February 2023, while under the influence of drugs, he caused a serious car accident for which he was later convicted of “aggravated involuntary injuries” and sentenced to five years in prison, two of which were firm. You’re probably wondering why I’m bringing up this fallen man who ended up in prison. Well, it’s because of the reason he fell into drugs in the first place — which sheds a harsh light on how homophobia and heteronormativity can be deeply (self-)destructive, like a tragic butterfly effect.

Of course, losing his father in a car accident when he was a child — a grief he never managed to process or express — laid extremely fragile emotional foundations. But Pierre Palmade himself admitted that his vicious cycle with cocaine began as a way to free himself from the shame he felt about being attracted to men. He started using drugs gradually while attending Parisian high-society parties after his career took off in 1987. And even though some close people around him (whether in show business or in his family) were aware of his sexuality, Pierre had a very hard time accepting it himself.

He even shared that his mother used to tell him: "You can do whatever you want, but you're not gay, so don't go shouting it from the rooftops. Think about your family. Don't shame me." You see the message clearly here, don’t you? This so-called acceptance from his mother was no acceptance at all. The classic “gays can do what they want — just not in public.” The very same mentality we see from anti-Byler people.

Anyway, dear Pierre began to live a daily cycle of work, performances, elite parties, and gay nightclubs — all accompanied by cocaine. He said cocaine gave him the courage and strength to dare to live out his homosexuality. But every time, it remained purely physical — he never allowed himself to fall in love. A part of him still hadn’t accepted his homosexuality and believed he couldn’t love or be loved as a gay man.

Doesn’t that remind you of a certain quote? “I’m not gonna fall in love.”

Society — and most likely his family, at least his mother — made it clear to him throughout his childhood that being gay wasn’t normal, that it was a problem, that he was a mistake. Eventually, Pierre ended up marrying a woman — V��ronique Sanson, a French singer-songwriter and pianist twenty years older than him. He of course invited the entire French press to the wedding so that everyone would talk about it.

They stayed married until 2004. Véronique eventually became aware of Pierre’s homosexuality, but because of a deep platonic love, she accepted for several years to be his “cover,” because they were emotionally in sync, which allowed Pierre not to feel alone. Because despite his affairs with men — including male sex workers — he was clearly suffering from loneliness.

But despite repeated stints in rehab, Véronique eventually left him and filed for divorce, unable to bear his cocaine addiction any longer. His showbiz friends had all tried to talk to him and feared the worst, but nothing worked — he kept relapsing. After Véronique’s departure, while suffering even more from isolation, he sank further into three-day parties, orgies with male prostitutes, cocaine, alcohol, and other substances.

It was a car accident in 2023, caused while under the influence, that left several people gravely injured — including the loss of a baby still in the womb — that finally forced him to detox while awaiting trial. He served two years in prison, and the remainder of his sentence is under house arrest, where I assume he is regularly tested for drugs. He lost everything.

It’s a very sad story I’m telling you here, but I wanted to share it because he’s said more than once that he used drugs as a way to dare to live and accept his homosexuality. And I need people who minimize or don’t understand the devastating psychological toll of internalized homophobia and a homophobic, heteronormative society on queer people to really understand what that damage looks like.

Pierre Palmade’s way of dealing with his homosexuality was, quite literally, self-destruction through drugs. And this — in a world where he was relatively more accepted within his artistic circle in the entertainment industry. The most tragic part is, he had made some progress. He publicly came out in 2008. In 2009, he even created a show where he talked about how his homosexuality had shaped his life.

How many anonymous young gay men across the world have experienced similar patterns, similar behaviors?

And this brings us back to Mike. Obviously, in a far more toned-down and subtle way, he finds himself in a self-sabotaging situation, driven by internalized homophobia and repressed homosexuality — damaging his own relationships in Seasons 3 and 4 and creating that whole complicated dynamic with Will and El.

Psychologically, both Mike and Will live in a world where being gay is not just taboo — it's dangerous, humiliating, and almost unthinkable, especially for boys raised in small-town America. During the 1980s, homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness in the public imagination (despite being declassified by the APA in 1973), and even in more liberal circles, being openly gay came at a heavy cost.

For boys like Mike — who, unlike Will, might not even have consciously admitted his feelings to himself — the pressure to conform, to perform heteronormativity, and to suppress any deviance becomes a matter of psychological survival. This leads to internalized homophobia, where a gay person absorbs society’s hatred and fear of homosexuality and turns it inward — denying their own desires, sabotaging potential intimacy, and often projecting discomfort onto others. Mike’s distance from Will in Season 3, his inability to express genuine affection, and his overcompensating behavior with El are all symptoms of this inner war.

In the 80s, especially in middle-class, white suburban America, conformity was not just encouraged — it was enforced. Any sign of difference, especially in young boys, was policed through bullying, family pressure, and institutional silence. Being a “real man” meant being tough, stoic, straight, and emotionally detached.

Boys who displayed sensitivity, artistic inclinations, or emotional vulnerability were instantly labeled “queer,” “fa***t,” or “sissy” — often long before they themselves had the words or understanding to identify what they were feeling. Will, labeled "queer" by bullies and even by his own father, becomes the emotional scapegoat for this homophobic culture. Even if he had never come out or expressed romantic feelings for a boy, society had already decided who he was — and punished him for it.

This constant scrutiny forces boys like Mike into performance mode: dating girls not out of genuine desire, but out of social obligation; repeating phrases they don’t truly mean (“I love you”) because they believe it’s what’s expected. The sociologist Erving Goffman called this "impression management" — the need to present a socially acceptable version of oneself to avoid rejection.

No discussion of 1980s queerness can avoid the AIDS epidemic, which reinforced the vilification of gay men. In mainstream media, gay men were portrayed as deviant, diseased, or dead. This was not just a health crisis; it was a moral panic. Gayness became synonymous with death, sin, and societal decay.

Even though Mike and Will are too young to be part of the adult gay world, they are not immune to the collective anxietysurrounding it. Messages absorbed from the media, their families, church, and school all contribute to a worldview in which being gay is dangerous, shameful, and unlivable. This fear gets lodged in the psyche before a boy even understands his sexuality, creating trauma responses like avoidance, emotional detachment, or compulsive heterosexual behavior.

The story of French comedian Pierre Palmade echoes these themes with tragic clarity. Growing up in a similarly conservative and heteronormative context, Palmade repressed his homosexuality for years, despite being surrounded by artists and creatives. His drug use began not as a recreational indulgence, but as a means of survival — a way to dull the shame, loosen his defenses, and allow himself to experience queerness in secret.

His mother’s attitude — “Do what you want, but don’t say you’re gay, don’t shame the family” — mirrors the double standards still present today: tolerance without visibility, acceptance without pride. The result was self-destruction. His inability to love or be loved as a gay man — the deep belief that he was inherently unworthy — led him to sabotage every attempt at intimacy, burying himself instead in addiction and denial.

This is the tragic cost of internalized homophobia: it doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers, “You don’t deserve love”, “You can’t be gay — not really”, or “If you are, you’ll ruin everything.”

Will’s line — “I’m not gonna fall in love” — is a subconscious refusal to admit he even can fall in love, especially with his best friend Mike.

What stories like Palmade’s — and fictional ones like Mike’s and Will's — reveal is that even in spaces where queerness is tolerated, it is rarely celebrated. The trauma of being closeted isn’t just about secrecy — it’s about believing your desires make you unworthy, your love less real, your identity a threat.

We must ask: How many young boys have lived this exact same story in silence? How many turned to self-destructive patterns because they were never allowed to see themselves in the light? How many never got a Will or Mike to love them back?

This is why representation like Byler matters — not just as a ship, but as a mirror held up to decades of erased stories. Mike and Will are more than characters: they are reminders of everything that was stolen from queer boys growing up in a world that never wanted them to know love could be theirs, too.

#stranger things #byler #mike wheeler #will byers #byler endgame #stranger things analysis #mike wheeler analysis #byler tumblr #queer pride #internalized homophobia

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seitmai · 2 days ago

Text

Many thoughts

“I’m offended that Baby on Board didn’t ask me to be a groomsman.” “I can only imagine why he didn’t,” she comments sarcastically, finishing up the wing of her eyeliner.

Me pretends to be shocked lol

“How is it fair that I have to watch my girlfriend walk down the aisle with Rooster?” Jake continues to complain as he adjusts his tie in the mirror. “Oh, I asked for that,” she clarifies and the look of genuine betrayal he has on his face in the mirror is worth it. You’d think after six months, he’d have learned better. It wasn’t her idea; she just didn’t argue with it. “I’m just kidding –you’re so easy to rile up. It’s cute.”

Ahaah this is too good

Jake turns and leans against the counter, narrowing his eyes at her. “You’re an asshole.” “And yet you still keep me around,” she counters, standing up straight to look up at him. Then she fixes his tie again, hands trailing down his chest when she finishes. “You look handsome, you know.”

Just two assholes being happy and in love together

“No, no —not until after the ceremony and the pictures. Then you can ruin my makeup. But not before.” “That a promise, darlin’?”

He will make sure of it 😏

Haha their rivalry is just comical

However, something about a wedding and the aisle got to him –especially because her bridesmaid dress is the lightest pink it can be without being white. But it’s close enough, and Jake thinks he’s going to get her down the aisle himself one day.

Oh 👀

As she should be 👏🏻

And somehow, they convinced Maverick to be the officiant.

Hahaha iconic, now that he has the license is he gonna officiate all the weddings of the squadron? 🤔

Everyone turns when the processional starts, but Jake’s watching Bob from the corner of his eye. If anyone asks, it’s because he’s absolutely going to give him shit for his reaction to seeing his bride. But the truth is that he’s a sucker for first looks. Always has been.

That's so sweet 🥹🥰

So when the doors open and the bride steps into clear view, Jake grins ear to ear when Bob covers his mouth and starts to tear up. Because that is how you react when your future wife walks down the aisle –and Jake thinks he’s going to have the same reaction when his girl does the same.

100%

He’s been thinking too much about marrying her –he’s not going to deny it. It’s hard not to think about it, even though they don’t even live together. She’s at his place more often than not anyway, and he doesn’t need to live with her to know that she’s ruined him for anyone else.

He can see a future with her so clearly, there is truly not other option in his mind

“I don’t have some long speech prepared. That’s not really me. But I will say this: you’re not just promising to love each other today. You’re promising to choose each other –every day after this one. That takes guts. That takes commitment. And from where I’m standing, I don’t see two people hoping this works out. I see two people who already know it will."

Very Maverick but it's a good message

She’s the one that nods first, wiping her eyes gently with a small laugh. “I…yeah, I wrote this letter like a week after you deployed,” she explains, taking out a piece of paper that’s been folded one too many times. “I never sent it. But I’m…I’m going to read it to you, because I think it’s the only thing I can say that’s perfect for this moment.” She stops and takes a breath, but for the next few moments, it’s like neither of them know anyone else is in the room with them.

That's so cute 🥹🥰

Jake doesn’t take his attention from the couple, but there’s no way there’s a dry eye in this room. He’s trying to keep his composure, but goddamn it’s hard. But it’s Bob who looks like he’s not going to be able to keep himself steady.

As it should be🥰🥹

“The first time we met, at your school event, one of my first thoughts was that I didn’t see a wedding ring and that I could fix that. It was just an off hand thought, because you were…the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. You still are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

I love the call back to Bob's pov about her not wearing a wedding ring! 👏🏻

“I am not someone who dives headfirst into things —I plan everything. I know every outcome but you…you I never planned for,” he admits, and his hands are trembling as he puts the paper back into his pocket. “But I knew after our lunch that everything I did from that point on, I’d have to plan for you being there too. And I was right.

🥹🥹🥹

From the corner of his eye, Jake can see that his girl is eyeing him. He shoots her a wink, but turns his attention back to Bob and his bride, who are exchanging their rings and watching each other like no one else is in the room. And there might as well not be when Maverick says they can kiss —because the two are on each other without hesitation and the room erupts in applause.

😍😍😍

“I’d like at least one dance with you,” she confesses, wrapping her arms around his neck. The way she’s looking at him –like he’s somehow the only person she sees –makes him want to give her anything and everything she asks for.

And I think that's true worth the both of them 🥰

Doesn’t mean he won’t play hard to get though. It is their favorite pastime, after all.

Of course it is, wouldn't be them if it wasn't🤭

“Would you believe me if I say I got two left feet?” “My god,” she gasps, putting a hand over her heart like she’s scandalized. “Lieutenant Jake Seresin isn’t good at something? Where’s Bradley, he needs to know —,”

😂😂😂

Six months. That’s how long he’s been holding it in –rolling it around in his chest like a stone he’s not sure is smooth enough yet. He’s said a hundred other things; You look beautiful. I miss you. Be safe. Stay the night. But not that. Not the one thing that’s been right there every time he watches her tuck her hair behind her ear or call him out on whatever cocksure thing he does to get her attention. Jake exhales, steadying himself, feeling the words rise again in his throat like they’ve been waiting for permission to be said. “I love you,” he finally confesses, voice soft but sure as he lifts her chin to meet his gaze. It’s that look she gives him –it’s that look she gives him that stops time. Her eyes open slowly, and Jake sees everything all at once: not an ounce of surprise –no, of course she’s not surprised he loves her. The look is something else. It’s something gentle. Like she’s been waiting, too. Like the words settle into place somewhere deep in her, grounding her. Her brows lift just slightly –not in disbelief, but like hearing him finally say it means something more to her.

Ahh it means something much more with his mulling it over like that 🥹🥰

It’s not their first kiss –but it’s the first one that feels like forever.

“I know,” she admits back, and Jake blinks a few times. Waiting for her to say it back. But she doesn’t –not yet, at least. “I’ve known for a while that you love me, Jake.” “Then why haven’t you said anything?” He asks, hand cupping the base of her jaw gently as he does. “Because I wanted you to figure it out yourself,” she explains, but she’s reaching up now, tugging on his tie to pull him closer to her. His hands drop to her waist, holding her close to him. “I love you too, for what it’s worth.”

They are truly perfect for each other 🥰

Ahhh I love them and this series 🥰👏🏻

Sources of Strength | j. s. | Finale

Jake Seresin x school counselor!reader

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: SO MUCH DOMESTIC FLUFF

Author’s Note: Once again, thank you for all the love for the Top Gun boys and their ladies in education. I think Rooster needs to meet one next…Also, almost ended this with a shitty joke because it felt in character but I DID NOT so if you're interested in what it is, hmu lmao (ps this gif specifically does something to me fuck)

Masterlist | Talk to Me! | AO3

“I’m offended that Baby on Board didn’t ask me to be a groomsman.”

“I can only imagine why he didn’t,” she comments sarcastically, finishing up the wing of her eyeliner.

“How is it fair that I have to watch my girlfriend walk down the aisle with Rooster?” Jake continues to complain as he adjusts his tie in the mirror.

“Oh, I asked for that,” she clarifies and the look of genuine betrayal he has on his face in the mirror is worth it. You’d think after six months, he’d have learned better. It wasn’t her idea; she just didn’t argue with it. “I’m just kidding –you’re so easy to rile up. It’s cute.”

Jake turns and leans against the counter, narrowing his eyes at her. “You’re an asshole.”

“And yet you still keep me around,” she counters, standing up straight to look up at him. Then she fixes his tie again, hands trailing down his chest when she finishes. “You look handsome, you know.”

His hands are on her hips without question, pulling her against him. When he tries to bunch up the fabric of her bridesmaid dress, though, she swats his hand away. Jake lets out an over dramatic groan, throwing his head back. He mumbles something about her being a tease.

“No, no —not until after the ceremony and the pictures. Then you can ruin my makeup. But not before.”

“That a promise, darlin’?”

Much to Jake’s immediate relief, she is not walking down the aisle with Rooster, but instead with Fanboy. He knows better than to let something petty like that get to him. And usually he doesn’t even clock her interactions with other men; while he’s always got an eye on her, it’s rarely because of jealousy. Though, Rooster might be the damn exception. However, something about a wedding and the aisle got to him –especially because her bridesmaid dress is the lightest pink it can be without being white. But it’s close enough, and Jake thinks he’s going to get her down the aisle himself one day.

When she passes by him, she winks playfully before taking her spot in the lineup of bridesmaids. Phoenix is Bob’s best man, to absolutely no one’s surprise, in her own pink gown with Rooster beside her and another guy that Jake doesn’t know. The maid of honor is a woman he doesn’t know either, but Halo and his girl are lined up behind her with bright smiles on their faces.

And somehow, they convinced Maverick to be the officiant.

No, no –she’s it for him. He knew it after the second date.

“You can all be seated,” Maverick announces, smiling as the bride and groom face each other. “I…I’m honored that I was asked to marry these two. But I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing so it will probably be quick. Though, I don’t think either of you mind being married sooner,” he teases, looking between the two with a smile.

A beat passes, and Maverick seems to pick up the thought he needs to finish.

“I’ve spent most of my life in the sky. High-speed, high-stakes, not exactly the kind of job that lends itself to slow, quiet moments like this. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that when you find something –or someone –that makes you want to stay grounded, that’s rare. That’s real.” For a moment, he glances at Bob, then he looks to the bride with a knowing smile. “You two…you’ve got something solid. Not flashy. Not showy. Just steady. And trust me, that’s the stuff that lasts. Love like that isn’t about grand gestures or perfect conditions. It’s about showing up every single day. Especially when it’s hard. Especially when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you’d rather eject,” he adds, with a faint smirk. “Sorry. Had to get one in.”

The crowd chuckles, and Jake rolls his eyes some –but he’s smiling as he looks at his girl now, who's tearing up already. Maverick continues, softer now.

“So… let’s get to it. You both prepared vows, right?”

“‘Bob, you’ve only been gone a week and it feels like I’ve lost a part of myself,’” she reads, and her hands are shaking as she does. “‘I wish I could explain better that you not being home is like taking all the air out of my lungs and throwing me in the ocean. Which is very dramatic and I’m very aware of that, but it’s the best analogy I could come up with. I’ve been too scared to tell you that I think you’re it for me, though I think you already know that. You always do know these things before I do, what with the mind reading powers you seem to possess.

“‘But the moment you walked away the other day, I think I realized how serious I am: you’re it. I’m going to marry you one day. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how it’ll happen. But I am going to marry you, and I am going to be a military wife which is very weird for me to think about. But anywhere you go, I’ll go. I love you, and I’ll love you every day until I can’t. And even then, I’ll probably try.

“‘Just come home. That’s all I ask. I’ll see you soon. I love you.’”

“Wow, I…,” Bob stammers out, and his hands are shaking as he wipes his eyes. “Wow. Okay. That’s…that definitely puts mine to shame,” he manages to laugh, looking down at his feet as he pulls out his own paper and unfolds it. “I uh, I’m not great at writing —that’s your speciality. I just…,” he takes a deep breath, collecting himself. Then he finally gets to his vows.

“Seeing you when I got back from deployment only confirmed every decision I’d made up to that point —you’re my home. Anywhere you are is where I belong. And I promise that as long as you’ll have me, I’ll do everything in my power to give you the life you deserve.”

The reception is where things get real exciting. Mr. and Mrs. Floyd disappeared after their photos, which took only twenty minutes of the hour-long cocktail hour. They both come back right when it wraps up, and Jake jokes that they were getting their wedding night started early. She elbows him playfully as the couple is introduced for the first time, and share their first dance. Jake wants to tease them; tell them that they managed to choose the cheesiest song. He can’t though, because to be fair, Shania Twain is the best choice, objectively speaking.

“We could take a page outta their book,” he continues, pulling her in by the waist. “You did promise me.”

Doesn’t mean he won’t play hard to get though. It is their favorite pastime, after all.

“Would you believe me if I say I got two left feet?”

“My god,” she gasps, putting a hand over her heart like she’s scandalized. “Lieutenant Jake Seresin isn’t good at something? Where’s Bradley, he needs to know —,”

She’s pulling away, and he’s rolling his eyes as he pulls her flush against him, gripping her hips a little tighter than before. Keeping her from running off and being the menace that she damn well is.

“One dance,” he offers, holding a finger up. “Then you’re mine for the night.”

“I’m yours almost every night,” she reminds him as he leads her out onto the dance floor with the other couples.

“Not every night,” he counters as he takes her hand and takes the lead.

“And whose fault is that?”

He thinks Bob absolutely chose the playlist, with the amount of classic country songs playing, but Jake isn’t complaining. Especially as they start swaying gently under the lights. He can feel the warmth of her hand in his, the easy way she fits against him, like this is just something they’ve always done. The music hums around them, slow and steady, like it’s working up the nerve for something too.

He shifts a little to look down at her, just for a second. Her eyes are closed. She’s just…here. With him. Trusting him. And somehow, that’s the part that almost undoes him.

He’s scared, which is ridiculous. He’s been in dogfights in the sky; actual fights on land. Done some objectively stupid things, and taken even more objectively stupid risks that could have killed him –and yet telling her how he feels is the scariest thing he’s probably ever going to do.

Because if she doesn’t say it back…If she laughs, or she panics, or God forbid –doesn’t believe him –,

Jake exhales, steadying himself, feeling the words rise again in his throat like they’ve been waiting for permission to be said.

“I love you,” he finally confesses, voice soft but sure as he lifts her chin to meet his gaze.

It’s that look she gives him –it’s that look she gives him that stops time. Her eyes open slowly, and Jake sees everything all at once: not an ounce of surprise –no, of course she’s not surprised he loves her. The look is something else. It’s something gentle. Like she’s been waiting, too. Like the words settle into place somewhere deep in her, grounding her. Her brows lift just slightly –not in disbelief, but like hearing him finally say it means something more to her.

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away. She just looks at him like he’s the safest, most reckless thing she’s ever wanted.

“I know,” she admits back, and Jake blinks a few times. Waiting for her to say it back. But she doesn’t –not yet, at least. “I’ve known for a while that you love me, Jake.”

“Then why haven’t you said anything?” He asks, hand cupping the base of her jaw gently as he does.

“Because I wanted you to figure it out yourself,” she explains, but she’s reaching up now, tugging on his tie to pull him closer to her. His hands drop to her waist, holding her close to him. “I love you too, for what it’s worth.”

“Yeah?” He asks, because she knows damn well he needs that validation.

“Since that first date,” she reassures, smiling brightly as she wraps her arms around his neck and presses her lips to his.

It’s warm and familiar, kissing her, but there’s something new –something deeper. It’s not rushed or hungry; it’s steady –promising something that Jake is sure wasn’t there before. His hands settle at her waist like they’ve always belonged there, and hers stay locked behind his neck. There's a quiet exhale between kisses, a shared breath that says everything he needs to know about their future. And when they part just enough to look at each other, their foreheads touch and they’re both grinning like fools.

It’s not their first kiss –but it’s the first one that feels like forever.

-----

Taglist: @theladybiers @jackiehollanderr

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604to647 · 3 days ago

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Breaking Chains

4.5K / Pero Tovar x Chinese fem!OC reader

Summary: After two years of peace following the defeat of the Tao Tei, you return home to fulfill your duty as the eldest daughter – but how can you marry when your heart belongs to Pero?

Warnings: 18+ Content (MDNI). Brief allusion to past smut, historical gender roles, nicknames (Pero calls Reader Xiǎo Huā 小花, 'little flower' in Mandarin). No specifics to avoid spoilers but there is violence, use of weaponry.

A/N: This is a follow-up to Without Chains and was written to satisfy Emily's historical C-drama loving heart. When I was a child, I would watch my grandpa's C-drama 7 p.m. broadcast with him every night; a core memory and I still love watching Asian dramas to this day 🥹 (my fave are the Wǔ xiá 武俠, historical fantasy ones). I hope you will enjoy coming on this fun little self-indulgent journey with me for Part 2 of the Yǒng Yuǎn series; the next part will be set in modern times!

Dividers by @saradika-graphics as usual 😘 / Series Masterlist

Pursing your lips gently, you check that the bright crimson red lipstick remains properly set before assessing your appearance in the mirror for the final time. Your make up is perfect, pristine – face powdered pale, flawless and soft, cheeks dusted with a rosy glow, and lashes tightly lined to match the sharpness of your almond-shaped eyes. The intricately bejewelled headdress that rests not too uncomfortably atop your perfectly coiffed hair jingles as the delicate gold clinks against the countless dangle of adornments. It’s ornate, glamourous, and perfectly befitting for a happy bride.

Bride.

You’re still in mild disbelief that today’s events have even come to fruition. If someone had asked you two years ago after the defeat of the Tao Tei and your final days at the Great Wall, what your future might hold, the last thing you would have said was a wedding.

During those past two years, you and the remaining members of your all-female regiment followed Commander Lin into service at the Imperial Court. Royal duty had proven to be an adjustment for all of you – it felt strange not having the threat of a looming attack hanging over your heads at all times. Even more off-putting was the decorum and adherence to palace social and political hierarchies expected from you as women; years of comradery among ranks as equals had made you forget that away from the Wall, there was still such a thing as “a woman’s place”. But, for all your training and preparedness for the unexpected, the thing that threw your legion off the most was… leisure - or rather, the luxury of being able to think, breathe, live something other than duty. Palace life afforded you and your friends the near forgotten pleasures of pursuing interests and hobbies, indulging in food that didn’t need to be rationed, celebrating moments and not just accomplishments, and forming relationships outside of your assignment.

Some of your sisters welcomed opportunities for affairs of the heart as a means to abate the dullness of palace life. During your royal service tenure, you certainly attracted your fair share of suitors, but considered none. You would cite your dedication to duty or being so far away from your family as reasons for your disinterest in marriage, but in truth, your heart could only ever belong to one scruffy Spaniard.

Since the day Pero and William left the Wall for the West, neither you nor Commander Lin had heard a word about or from the two men; there was no indication that either of them would attempt to return, though both had promised they would. You haven’t a clue as to how Pero has been living in Europe these past few years, but that hasn’t kept you from wondering and worrying for him. Has he remained by the side of his brother in arms? Or perhaps he’s given up William’s companionship along with the life of a mercenary? You muse at the idea of a Pero at peace, settling down without the constant threat of a sword being pointed at his neck - taking up a craft perhaps. It would suit him, you think - he was always so good with his hands. You never allow yourself the possibility that he never made it to the Spanish coast, that he hadn’t once again felt the crisp ocean breeze he so animatedly described to you when the two of you would lay in bed, naked bodies twisted in a tangle of warmed sheets. You don’t think you will ever know where Pero is or what’s become of him, but you simply cannot stop loving him.

Two months ago, some inconsequential political scandal amongst the nobles at court left the young emperor in a state of paranoia, and the entirety of the royal house in upheaval. Your legion was disbanded and you and your comrades sent home to your villages with your honour intact, but the legacy of your deeds and sacrifices at the Wall uncelebrated and known only to a few.

Despite this, you were glad to finally return home. You’ve missed every member of your family terribly: your parents whom you’ve always respected – both so kind, generous, and loving, you’ve strived to honour them with everything you’ve accomplished; your elder brother you remember as always looking out for you and your sisters - you hope to find him less hard on himself, the pressure of living up to your parents’ example and the responsibilities of being the first-born son forever carried admirably on his shoulders; and your younger twin sisters, for whom you would sacrifice everything and nearly did.

When the Imperial decree was handed down all those years ago, your mother and father had been beside themselves; every family with a living male heir was to send their youngest unmarried daughter for a secret national security initiative – but how to choose between your sisters who were barely beyond school age? Which daughter should they sacrifice for their country? Your parents’ anxiety, combined with your sisters’ fear, became too much for your tender heart to bear and you volunteered to go in their stead; despite your family’s protests, your mind had been made up – the safety of your sisters was all that mattered. And if you were honest with yourself, there was a part of you that felt a pull to this mysterious calling.

As the governor’s daughter in a flourishing province, the story of your future had pretty much already been written – you would marry well, run a prosperous household with a firm and kind hand, be a generous patron of the arts, raise dutiful children. It would be a privileged, comfortable life and one many could only dare to dream of… but your heart craved more. It craved… purpose? Honour? Adventure? You had found it all at the Wall. And more.

You found your own strength.

Another sisterhood.

Pride and patriotism in duty.

You found love.

Your return was heralded and celebrated throughout the entirety of your father’s jurisdiction. Even the farmers on the most outskirt borders of the province remembered the governor’s pretty daughter who had selflessly sacrificed herself for her sisters all those years ago. You were greeted as a hero and gifted with flowers and tokens of appreciation as you rode to the centre of your village – your arrival having been joyfully announced far in advance by your grateful family. The fanfare was beyond anything you had been trained at the Wall to ever expect, and you found that it touched you more deeply than you could have imagined.

The reunion with your family brimmed with joy and relief, your household now once again complete with your return. To your immense satisfaction, you found your family to be much unchanged, though perhaps a little older, their happy faces lined with a little more worry. The only exception being your youngest brother who had been only a baby when you departed for the Wall; meeting him for what would essentially be the first time, you delighted to find him now a sweet, precocious boy of nearly ten.

Even having spent the past two years at the emperor’s palace acclimating to life outside the Wall, it still took you a while to reacquaint yourself with the lavishness of your old life. Your overly plush bed was lined with sheets so fine and silky, more than once, you nearly slipped off in the middle of the night. You once again donned attire made with expensive fabrics heavy with hand embroidery, obviously made with glamour instead of ease of function in mind. The meals prepared for you were both rich in flavour and volume, the sheer number of ingredients and variety of dishes almost overwhelming to your now simplified tastes. You bore every stark contrast to your life at the Wall admirably, indulging every extravagance pushed towards you when you saw just how happy it made your family to spoil you. In one particular aspect among all this excess, you would never complain: your mother taking great care in requesting the cooks prepare all your favourite meals, comforts you haven’t tasted in nearly a decade, and your family gathering daily to indulge together. You cherished every moment of these meals, every morsel, every smile – knowing how often you had yearned for such times at the Wall, and just how easily you might have never seen your loved ones again. You savoured every bite and raised every glass, silently toasting your countless sisters in arms who would never again enjoy such a meal, nor the good fortune of sharing it amongst their dearest family.

You suppose you hadn’t given much thought as to what life would be like after returning from service beyond these first few months of adjustment. It didn’t escape your notice that your house hosted an endless stream of visitors, all who wished to pay their respects and welcome you home; though, perhaps you had been too far isolated from civilian life for much too long to notice that many of the families came calling with sons.

Single sons.

By the time you caught on, it was too late - your hand in marriage had become so well sought after that the availability of your heart was never even questioned. Besides, what could you do? Refuse to marry? That would bring such shame to your family, and you could not bear to cause them any heartache or see them lose face. And what reason would you even cite for refusal or postponement of an engagement? The only thing less comprehensible than a woman of your age not wishing for matrimony would be the idea that while you were away defending your nation against unimaginable horrors, you had fallen in love - given your body, heart and soul to a man with no title, no fortune, no standing in Chinese society. A Spaniard. A foreigner.

So, a perfectly fine man from a perfectly fine family was selected for you. He appeared nice and smart and respectable, though you didn’t really know for sure; you hadn’t put much effort in being selective or prolonging the courtship. There was really no point.

You spent exactly one week strategizing and thinking through all the different ways you could avoid marriage to a man you did not love. Your outlandish ideas included writing to the emperor and asking for some royal decree that could prevent you from marrying. Perhaps you could enlist the support of Commander Lin or other esteemed leadership from your time at the Wall to either object under some made-up military purview, or simply draft you back into service. You could run away in the middle of the night like a common criminal. Feign illness. In your wildest fantasies, Pero would show up at your family’s estate and declare his intention to seek your hand. In the most improbable iterations of this daydream, your family accepted him and you married the man you love in front of the people you care for the most in this world. In other iterations, he simply stole you away, rescuing you from of a life of heartache and mundanity.

There was never any real hope for any of these scenarios, especially the ones involving Pero. That he had loved you, you had no doubt, but you had not heard from him in two years – he might never return to the East or even attempt to. He could be married himself. He could be dead. No, Pero would not rescue you. But you’re not some helpless maiden – you’re a warrior, a survivor. You would rescue yourself.

You go through all the motions of the engagement. You attend the teas. You see the fortune teller and abide by all the auspicious warnings. You accept no gifts for yourself, only those that your fiancé and his family can still use or find value in after you’re gone. Your family, having always taught grace and gratitude over greed, never question that you do not ask for jewelry or fine goods for your wedding, save for any required by tradition and ceremony. Quietly, you make your own preparations. You stow away needed supplies in the bridal sedan chair that’s meant to transport you on your wedding day from your father’s house to your soon-to-be husband’s; securing a bag full of clothes and food underneath the cushioned seat, hiding a few weapons in the lining of the carriage. The sedan chair requires four bearers and would be followed by an equal number of escorts for security – nothing you can’t handle. You silently thank the heavens that your family did not insist on musicians to accompany the processional – it means less innocent people that you’ll have to subdue.

The morning of the wedding, your mother and twin sisters, now both happily married and living plentiful lives themselves, come to help you dress. They paint your lips a bright, festive red and dust your face smooth and porcelain. The bridal headdress is opulent and heavy, laden down with garlands of decorative gemstones, but when your family sees you in it, they weep tears of pride and it makes the crick in your neck worth it. Your wedding regalia is similarly luxurious and lavish – you would feel beautiful wearing the vermilion robes if they didn’t weigh you down like chains. After you’re dressed, your father and brothers join for the final draping of the red silk wedding veil, tearfully saying their goodbyes to you as a daughter of their name before leaving ahead of you for your new family’s estate – emotional, your family marvels that the next time they see you, it will be at the ceremony that joins you to your husband.

They don’t know that here and now, in your old room at your childhood home, is actually the last time they will ever see you.

You hug them each extra tight, thanking them for being the most wonderful family a woman could ever ask for. They’ve loved you, looked out for you, done their best for you. You’ve been lucky, luckier probably than they will ever know, and definitely luckier than most - but for a woman in this world, no amount of luck would allow you the life of your choosing. And so, with sincerity, you profess your love until your own unshed tears threaten to spill over all while silently bidding your family farewell. In just a few hours, they will believe you lost to them – though it would be painful, at least no shame will befall their name; they would lose you, but remain unimpeachable and respected among their community.

A short while into the journey to your fiancé’s home, your wedding processional comes upon an uninhabited stretch of forest; lifting your veil, you peek through the curtains of your carriage and determine this to be an appropriate time and place to make your move. Calling out to the attendants, you feign feeling unwell and ask them to stop the carriage so you can get some fresh air. Your plan is simple: as soon as the chair bearers set down the cab, you’ll step out without your veil; upon seeing your uncovered face, the men will avert their eyes out of respect, leaving them at your mercy. The four unarmed attendants will be easy enough to subdue, giving you plenty of time to surprise the security detail that rides a few minutes back.

You’re just gently laying the fourth unconscious, but unharmed, man down in the dirt, when you hear the thundering hooves of a horse galloping up fast. The rider, one of your security detail, waves wildly and shouts “Xiǎo jiě (小姐 Lady)!! Shàng chē (上车 Get in the carriage)!” Behind him, riding close and equally as swift, the remainder of your security escort fight a lone rider, three to one; their swords clash furiously, shouts of exertion nearly drowning out the orders they yell to protect you.

While you don’t know who this mysterious assailant is, you’re oddly grateful for their arrival; whoever they are, they’ve made the next part of your plan infinitely easier - and for that, you’ll be sure to thank them before taking their head off. Retrieving your sword from the walls of the carriage, you lie in wait as all the riders dismount, anticipating the moment when you can take advantage of the chaos to take out your guard. Upon joining the fight, you use the distraction of this new fighter to overcome the good intentioned men who mistakenly think you need their protection. It’s easy enough to take down the first rider from your escort - facing any kind of opposition from the bride taking him, unfortunately, completely by surprise. The second guard puts up more a fight, but his indignity and rage at the turn of today’s events is nothing compared to the skill of your blade. It was always your intention to minimize bloodshed, but for your plan to succeed, you knew it couldn’t be avoided completely – you say a silent apology and thank you to these men who would have given their lives for you, before creeping around the carriage to spy on the continued fighting between the last two remaining guards and the newcomer.

For a moment, you consider using the commotion as cover and making a run for it, but quickly discard the idea. Your plan involves leaving in your bridal clothes and the sheer volume and weight of the fabric isn't conducive to a quick getaway. Besides, you don’t have any idea who this mysterious fighter is or what they want – it would be too risky to leave them alive or hand them an opportunity to give chase. No, you better take care of all the witnesses now.

Sighing, you watch for a few more seconds as the hooded interloper expertly fends off two attackers at the same time; they’re an impressive swordsman, you’ll give them that - too bad for them, you’re better. When the opportune moment arises, you sneak out to disarm one of your guards, bringing down the hilt of your sword hard on the back of his head just as the unknown assailant slays your last man by running his smooth sword through the guard’s torso and letting his limp body drop. Now it’s just you and this… mystery assassin, vagabond, ruffian, would-be kidnapper? Whatever he is, you’re eager to make short work of him - with him out of the way, there will be nothing standing between you and your escape to a new life of anonymity, simplicity, freedom.

Swinging your sword around your wrist, you cock your head in defiance, poised and ready to attack when the other fighter drops their sword in surrender. You lift your eyes in confusion only to be positively shellshocked by the dulcet baritone you never thought you’d hear again saying the words you’ve longed to hear for the past two years:

“Xiǎo Huā 小花”

The fighter removes his hood to reveal the handsome face of the one man you love – his hair and facial scruff is longer and more dishevelled than when you trimmed it last, his face more weathered from the harsh sun of his many journeys, and the line of the fearsome scar that runs over his left eye is somehow more pronounced and menacing than you remember, but his eyes are the same as they always were when he would look at you: soft, full of affection and joy – it couldn’t be anyone but Pero Tovar standing before you.

Sword slipping out of your hand, you run to him, only certain that he’s real when you crash into his hard chest and feel the familiar warmth of his strength pulling you close. You’re crying and murmuring his name in a happy daze, Pero, Pero, Pero, as he peppers soft kisses over your wet eyelids, cheeks, nose, and forehead, reassuring you, “I’m here, I’m here, Xiǎo Huā 小花, I’m here.”

His lips find yours and it’s as if no time has passed. Pero kisses you tender, yet urgent, his tongue beckoning yours home. You comply happily – though too long apart, your mouths join together in a familiar dance that could never be forgotten. The sigh that Pero breathes into your mouth makes you smile against his - he’s here. Although you loathe to part from Pero's perfect lips so soon after being reunited, you have a million questions. You want to check him over to see if he’s hurt. You want to run your fingers through his hair. You want to drown in the richness of his kind eyes.

Pero chases your lips as you pull away, beaming at the melodic sound you chuckle at his eagerness. He feels your delicate fingers tracing the strands of hair that frame his rugged face and he mirrors the affectionate gesture with feather light strokes to the jet-black locks that have fallen from your wedding headdress. The two of you study each other while fondly caressing the other’s face, every second that passes bringing about additional happiness, relief.

“You found me.”

“I will always find you, Xiǎo Huā 小花.”

Your eyes crinkle in elation, joyful tears threatening to fall, “I was so afraid I would never see you again, Pero. Afraid that perhaps you were lost on your journey West. It’s been two years since I heard from you or had any news. I wondered if… you might have forgotten me.”

Pero cups your sweet face in his battle-scarred hands, bringing his forehead to yours, “Never. Every day since we’ve been apart, I’ve only thought of you and how to return to you.”

“And I you,” you breathe.

A teasing laugh escapes as Pero’s mouth curves into a roguish smirk, “Yes, thinking of me so much you were about to marry another man.”

You scoff, indignant, and playfully smack his shoulder with more force than necessary, “You’re the one who interrupted my escape!” Tucking your head beneath his chin, you breathe in Pero’s manly musk, “Even if you never came for me, my heart is too well spoken for to ever marry another, no matter how much my family may desire it. But I never thought it possible… wait, how did you find me?”

Pero peers down to meet your curious face – how he’s missed the expressiveness of your eyes, the playful theatrics of your eyebrows, the dramatic shapes of your pretty mouth.

“William and I have been traveling back East for several months now,” he pauses only for your delightful exclamation of William! “A fortnight ago, we were staying at an inn for a few nights in order to wait out a storm and there, William was finally able to receive correspondence from Mae – her letter spoke of your engagement. I set out that very morning and have been riding nearly non-stop since. Xiǎo Huā 小花, I cannot express how terrified I was that I may not make it in time to prevent your nuptials. There were times on my journey when I imagined losing you forever and the very thought nearly broke me.”

Pero’s normally stoic and gravely countenance falters and cracks, the very real fear he had felt at losing his reason for living, for survival, evident in every pained line on his handsome face. Even now, the memory of his beacon of hope for a life beyond the lonely, harsh one he’s known to now being extinguished, still too fresh. Your gentle hands lace around the back of his neck, pulling your Spaniard in for a tender kiss full of promise, of beginnings, “Wǒ yǒng yuǎn shì nǐ de (我永遠是你的 I will always be yours).”

In the silence of the forest, your two hearts beat loudly and in unison – the reunion filling your chests with a percussive music tempo’d to your joint happiness. The kiss deepens but remains chaste – there will be time for that later, forever even. Gently breaking apart, you and Pero each inhale a much-needed breath before blurting out:

“Before receiving Mae’s letter, what was your and William’s plan?”

“If I hadn’t come along, what was your plan after subduing these guards?”

Laughing at your twin timing, Pero strokes your cheek gently, “It’s a long story, and just one of many I have for you, all of them worth telling as I’m sure yours are as well. We will have time for answers, Xiǎo Huā 小花, but right now, I think we should get off the main road.”

You nod in agreement, threading your hands through his, unable to stop smiling.

As Pero bends to retrieve his sword, you hear it: horses and riders fast approaching. They’re riding so fast, you see them only a few seconds after hearing them: additional security forces from your village - word must have somehow gotten to them that your convoy was under attack. In horror, you realize what the scene must look like: you’re unarmed and still in your wedding regalia, hand grasped by a foreign rogue, your carriage attendants and processional guard all laying subdued or slain around you – Pero will undoubtedly be marked as the aggressor, a bandit with ill intent and you, a helpless bride being stolen away against your will, kidnapped for ransom or worse.

You can see that the misunderstanding is already arming the archers of the oncoming regiment. “Zhù shǒu (住手 Stop)!!” you yell in vain; you’re too far away to be heard, but horrifically, within arrow range. The archers let their arrows fly, targeting the man you love. Without thinking twice, you move before the deadly steel can find their mark, eyes full of apology as they meet Pero's fearful expression, only to screw tight and close from the pain of being shot before collapsing in your lover’s arms.

“Xiǎo Huā 小花!!!” Pero’s cry is full of anguish, anger, fear. How could you have done that? How could you have sacrificed yourself, let yourself get hurt for him? You, so full of beauty and promise, lost for what? For a nobody mercenary whose contributions to this world could never compare to yours, whose life was only worth living as long as it was lived in a world with you in it. He sobs, cradling your limp body in his strong arms – apologizing, begging, demanding over and over for an outcome different from the one you both know is assured. Your breathing is shallow now, a trickle of blood escapes the corner of your mouth as you cough in your struggle to breathe – a viper of crimson that mars the perfection of your face. Pero weeps, body shaking violently, as if trying to shake some life back into yours, chanting your name repeatedly. With what strength remains, your hand weakly lifts to stroke his handsome face one last time and you whisper, “I love you.”

“Wǒ huì yǒng yuǎn ài nǐ (我會永遠愛你 I will love you forever),” defeat and devastation accompany Pero’s vow as your hand falls and you succumb to your injuries. He’s oblivious to the increasing clamour from the approaching riders, unable to let his Xiǎo Huā 小花 go, to accept that this is the end of their love; howling loud and desperate, Pero’s grief overshadows all else - even the swish of a fresh crop of arrows being released.

Then everything goes black.

NP tagging a few who showed interest on the masterlist post - thank you so much! 🥹@lillaydee @aurorawritestoescape @sunnytuliptime @milla-frenchy @din-cognito

@ramenyul-ficrecs @cosmickid-inmotion @harriedandharassed @sawymredfox @heartfluttered

Also: Part 3 is fully outlined and ready for actual words 😂 here is the moodboard and summary:

#pero tovar #pero tovar fic #pero tovar fanfiction #pero tovar x oc!reader #pero tovar x chinese fmc #pero tovar x you #x reader #pedro pascal characters fanfiction #pedro pascal characters

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joshujin · 3 hours ago

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dude, nice try!

◀ part one • series masterlist • part two

joshua hong has had the immense privilege of living 30 whole years without ever feeling so much as an ounce of jealousy. that is, until you come prancing into his picture-perfect life on your dumb burner account with evidence that his long-time girlfriend is cheating on him… with your boyfriend.

as he gets tangled up in your chaotic plan to get back at your adulterous partners, he begins to wonder if this growing discomfort in his chest was ever even heartbreak to begin with, or if it’s something entirely new to him—something that has the ability to eat him alive from the inside out.

♫ get him back! olivia rodrigo ⟡ my kink is karma chappell roan ⟡ see u never niki ⟡ good to me seventeen

pairing: joshua x fem!reader part two: 14.6k words cw: strong language, mentions of/implied sexual activity, kms joke, reader is highly emotional and tbh kind of crazy maybe even toxic but idc bc i support women’s rights and wrongs <3 tags: cheating (not between main ship), strangers to partners-in-crime to partners PERIOD, joshua pov, pining, he fell first AND harder oops, he’s also so incredibly whipped from the jump, a few smau bits but mostly writing, no smut, inspired by get him back! by miss rodrigo a/n: oh nothing, just me getting carried away with the dialogue and my word count like usual :) to the anon that requested this: pls feel free to pop back into my ask and tell me how you think this is going LOL. i'm having fun writing it but i know the jealousy isn't fully fleshed out yet. to everyone else: ENJOY!

dividers by @cafekitsune cover by yours truly!

joshua was being sincere with you when he told you he wasn’t a good bar to set yourself against when it came to breakups.

there was stephanie from when he was still in college in the U.S.; they broke up because he decided to move back to korea. it was amicable for the most part, but he probably could’ve given her a more generous heads up than the two weeks he did give her. it wasn’t until a year or so later that she realized how unfair that had been and made sure joshua knew—with a series of voice memo texts that were nearly 15 minutes each.

then, he dated miyoung. she was nice but she also decided she wanted to get married within the next year only three months in, and as a 23-year-old, joshua was freaked out enough to run almost immediately. his relationship with miyoung ended on a phone call that lasted three hours because she was sobbing so hard, he didn’t have the heart to hang up even though he had no idea how to comfort her. he saw her consistently for weeks after out of pure guilt until jeonghan pointed out that this was just a disguised way of stringing her along.

after that, there was bada, nari, bora, aram, and hana, all girls he casually dated for no longer than a handful of weeks before one of them decided it actually wasn’t a fit for various, mostly dumb reasons. nari told him she didn’t like that he collected cologne and had three times as much perfume as she did. he left aram because she ate so messily, it gave him the ick. though apparently, that might be something he doesn’t mind anymore.

he dated yumi for six months, and to this day, she’s still the only serious girlfriend of his that broke up with him. she told him that she felt like after six months, she still barely knew him, and that he was “too concerned” with upholding an image of himself that “didn’t feel real.” he went straight to therapy for that one.

and when he felt a little better in his own skin and ready to put a “realer” version of himself out there, he met mina. mina, his longest relationship, and up until now, someone he was convinced was his first love. he said as much anyway. he was the first to tell her he loved her, he reminded her he did every day, and he thought they had a nice, long future ahead of them. what he pictured in that future exactly, he had no clue. but after an odd and somewhat unlucky streak in dating, he finally felt like mina was a nice and comfy place to land.

he’s never been more wrong about something in his entire life.

and after the laughable amount of breakups he’s experienced, he’s also never been angrier after the end of a relationship in his entire life.

mina was proving to be a lot of firsts for him—first cheater, first master manipulator and liar, first person who’s ever made him wonder if he could possibly switch over to dating men instead… or simply stop dating at all! sure, he would die alone but he would die in peace.

whatever the case, he's quickly approaching the conclusion that “first love” is not among those firsts, and it probably never was. no amount of teasing from you or jeonghan did it, but in less than a handful of minutes spent breaking up with mina, he is a million percent sure this was not someone he could have loved. or else what did that say about him and his taste?

sixteen minutes earlier

joshua arrives at mina’s apartment exactly two hours after work ends for her—5 p.m. every day because she always scheduled a pilates class at 5:30 p.m. thirty minutes for her to get to her class, one hour for her to finish it, 30 minutes for her to get home, zero minutes for her to get clean because he doesn’t care how presentable she is when he dumps her.

plus, however long it takes joshua to end this—hopefully a lot shorter than his experience with miyoung.

he hadn’t bothered to tell her he was coming over; he didn’t think she really deserved that courtesy. he may be intent on a clean break, but he also wanted this to be as annoying for her as it has been for him.

so at a prompt 7 p.m., joshua finds himself casually leaning against the elevator’s railing, ascending the floors of mina’s apartment and feeling almost excited to be free of this experience.

after he got off the phone with you, he decided he would bite the bullet when work was over. he spent the rest of his day absentmindedly finishing his reports, periodically stopping to scribble an idea for what he would say to his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

he takes the folded piece of paper out of his pocket now and runs over his options again.

his levels of shame and self-pity were sky high when he first pulled out his notepad at the office to write his thoughts out, but after texting you and letting you know what he planned to do, you insisted on meeting at a cafe beforehand to brainstorm together while he waited for mina’s pilates class to end. and once you both workshopped the entire list, his embarrassment diminished almost completely.

it was clear you took this a lot more seriously than he did. he doesn't know what he expected; you probably have a manila folder stuffed full of notes for what you plan to do to siwoo.

as such, you were very helpful. sure, you were also really distracting, with your subtle, spiced perfume he recognized as lola james harper, and your daunting and unrelenting eye contact, and the way your eyes smiled all on their own when they weren’t busy crying over siwoo, and the fact that you graced him with your laugh in person for the first time (every bit as fun as he thought it would be), and everything else that came with just existing in your presence.

all of it was really distracting—almost to the point of it being entirely counterproductive for him. almost, if it weren’t for the fact that you were so determined on his behalf to make this the most unpleasant experience for mina. he was mostly pleased with where you two landed, and if anything, he at least had a better idea of what he wanted to say.

he reads the completely ruined paper, a mess of his black ink and wrinkles where you kept trying to grab it out of his hands. it was already a vulnerable enough occasion talking about this with you; he did not need you seeing his notes on top of it.

TALKING POINTS FOR BREAKING UP WITH EVIL GF i know you’ve been cheating on me, and don’t try to deny it because someone sent me proof! — cannot say this without exposing that y/n knows about siwoo!!! i know you’ve been cheating on me, and don’t try to deny it because i went through your phone and saw your text messages! — better, but am i willing to look crazy just to cover for y/n? yes what am i saying NO this will do ✓ how could you do this to us? i loved you! — seems disingenuous? note: yell at jeonghan and y/n for putting ideas in my head later! i literally gave you everything you could’ve wanted, and that still wasn’t enough? what does any other man have that i don’t? — ok met with y/n for feedback. says this sounds pathetic and that i can't let her think this affected me. but she cheated on me? this LITERALLY affects me. i will come back to this one ok y/n made a different, better point: i am perfect •ᴗ• and i shouldn’t present myself as lacking. so true. she's very good at this! •ᴗ• do you really think anyone with half a fucking brain cell who's willing to homewreck a relationship is really going to give enough of a fuck about you to be capable of putting up with your insufferable ass and treating you as well as i did? — y/n suggested. had to workshop bc she's alarmingly vulgar. plus, maybe toxic to say i "put up" with mina ?? not sure do you even regret hurting me? — y/n says this is silly bc siwoo and mina obviously do not regret anything, but i want mina to feel guilty. y/n now agrees and says i should add: "or are you just so heartless you don't care?" she said this more colorfully, but i will remain respectful why should i remain respectful? mina is literally the most disrespectful person i’ve ever met. i’ll say what y/n suggested ⤵ your commitment to being a heartless asshole has you by your ugly ass neck and i hope it starts squeezing with both hands GET SOME HELP! — more for catharsis. won’t be yelling this at her you're going to regret this and if you think there's a world where i take you back when you do, you're mistaken — wow, no notes from y/n! must be very good •ᴗ• definitely say this one!! please never contact me again — note from y/n: "why are you being so goddamn polite? tell her to fuck off and if you ever see her number on your phone screen, you'll set up an appointment on her behalf to get a lobotomy." ????? note from ME: have a serious discussion with y/n at a later time about why i, a MAN, can't just talk to WOMEN like this!

despite the circumstances that led to having to make the list at all, joshua can't help but grin at it. the time spent with you at the cafe was not only helpful; it was fun. maybe the most fun he’s had with a woman since he started dating mina, who chased off all his female friends within the first two months of being in his life. joshua winces as he pockets the list, wondering how he didn’t see the red flags.

his thoughts are interrupted with the loud and obnoxious ping of the elevator as it arrives on mina’s floor. the doors slide open, and immediately, he hears the obscene sounds of a woman moaning down the hall. his eyes widen as he steps out and turns down the hall in the direction of mina’s apartment.

the walls of her place were always thin; they were constantly getting into wars with the neighbors that involved banging on the floor, ceiling, and shared walls with her broom. still, he had never heard this kind of noise from her neighbors.

“tell me about it.”

joshua looks to his right to find an older woman stepping out of her apartment and locking her door. he must have a look of shock on his face because she snorts and nods in what seems like solidarity as she tucks her empty reusable bags into her armpit.

“that girl doesn’t seem to ever stop,” she informs him. “i’ve complained to the building manager so many times, and still, here she is, screaming like a little banshee and disrupting this entire floor’s peace.”

joshua feels his skin break out into a cold sweat as his mind starts to go a mile a minute. “huh… interesting…”

“i mean,” the woman turns to step into the elevator joshua just walked out of. “what is she even doing? auditioning for a god damn porn? she sounds like my fucking shih tzu’s squeaky toy!”

he forces a laugh, too distracted to even feel uncomfortable over the inappropriate joke. “maybe,” he mutters. “she sure is putting on a performance.”

“oh my god!” the voice shrieks in perfect timing, making him flinch.

“ugh, inconsiderate! all hours of the day! does she even work?!” the woman shakes her head and clicks her tongue in disapproval as she presses a button and the doors close.

joshua stands there for a moment, staring at the elevator, unable to move as he listens to the noises of what could possibly be his girlfriend having sex with siwoo right now. it didn’t even sound remotely like her, and that fact terrifies him even more because if it is her, then she had to be faking it with someone. was she faking it with joshua or with siwoo?

he groans, letting his head fall into his hands.

“who cares?” he grumbles to himself. the last thing he should be worrying about is whether or not an adulterous liar like mina thought he was good in bed. he should definitely not care anymore. “i don’t care.”

joshua can practically hear jeonghan’s voice telling him, sure you don’t. he shakes his head, trying to banish his jeonghan-shaped conscience from his brain.

he doesn’t even know if it’s mina. it could very well be some other female neighbor; it’s not far-fetched for people to be having sex. he could just be paranoid right now since he knows she’s cheating on him.

each floor of mina’s apartment is huge—a maze, really. dozens of units, at least ten near the elevator, several people who could be having sex.

he always counted himself lucky that mina lived so close to the elevator, just down the hall a few units down. today, though, as the wailing reverberates off the walls of the hallway leading to the elevator, he thinks mina’s floor plan is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

his phone is to his ear before he can fully consider what he’s doing.

“did you do it?” you seem to dislike greeting people on the phone properly like a normal human being. you speak a little louder than usual, your surroundings lively and buzzing with the noise of what sounds like several conversations. “that was fast.”

“uh,” joshua elongates the sound for a few seconds while his brain tries to tune out the “porn audition” long enough to comprehend your question. “no… nope. i haven’t done it yet.”

“oh. then what’s up? you need backup after all?” you ask too seriously for him to confidently say you’re joking.

before you both parted ways at the cafe, you offered him company and said you could tag along and jump mina for him. you both laughed and said your goodbyes, but if what joshua fears right now is true, he definitely doesn’t hate the idea of you jumping her.

“i’m a little busy—well, kinda, not really—but i can fake some kind of horrific emergency and get out of here and over to you in…” you trail off, probably checking the time. “twenty minutes… maybe ten if i’m okay with breaking a few laws. which, rest assured, i am!”

he feels the dread over his predicament slipping as you keep talking, his emotions turning into an incredibly confusing mix of panic, amusement, anxiety, relief, and so on and so on. the number of odd emotions you elicit out of him are countless.

joshua glides over what he assumes is a joke and straight to the point; the faster he finds out what he needs to, the faster he can hopefully escape this building.

“do you know where siwoo is?” he asks, taking the first few tentative steps to mina’s door. he walks painstakingly slowly, almost tiptoeing even though there’s no possible way anyone could hear him over the lewd moans.

“he’s at dinner with his vile parents,” you say, sighing like you’d rather talk about anything else.

“are you sure?”

“yes… why?”

“like… how sure?” joshua presses.

“uh, 100 percent.” he can picture the frown on your face that usually matches this tone of yours—confused bordering on annoyed. “i’m literally staring at him as his awful monster of a mother tucks a napkin into his collar like a little fucking devil baby, bro.”

joshua doesn’t know how at a time like this, his brain has the capacity to still take note of how much he loathes when you call him bro. it’s a weird thought to have to process alongside the thousands of other things he’s suddenly feeling.

“i’m at the bar of this pretentious ass restaurant waiting on the bartender to finish their drink orders while they eat all the appetizers without me, like a good, little stay-at-home girlfriend slash maid slash server slash revenge connoisseur!” you inform him, your voice sarcastically cheerful. “i’m going to spit in all their drinks.” that bit comes out in your normal, low—and a little irritated—voice.

“wow” is all he says because his brain doesn’t supply him with anything else.

“like i said, revenge connoisseur,” you say, sounding bored. “so yes, i’m 100 percent sure he’s here. we have to have dinner with these assholes once a week but—” you cut yourself off as you address someone else. “ah, thank you! oh wait, can you actually remove the espresso beans from this one? the abominable woman who gave birth to my boyfriend doesn’t want to have too much caffeine this late in the day.”

joshua realizes his brain has the capacity to do a lot of things in stressful situations as long as he’s talking to you. because he stops walking and immediately starts laughing when he hears the bartender deadpan: “it’s an espresso martini.”

you sigh like you’ve had to explain this a million different times to a million different bartenders.

“joshua? hold on, okay?” you tell him before immediately addressing the bartender without waiting for him to reply. “listen, i get it. you don’t have to tell me. i know! she’s a ridiculous airhead who gets her life force from making little people like me suffer and ask for embarrassing things on her behalf. i don’t even care if you stick your bare fingers in there to pluck them out—in fact, i actually kind of prefer you do that. i just need them gone before she comes poking her snobby, little nose over here and demands you make her an entirely brand new one.”

that seems to do the job because the next thing you say is:

“thank you so much. and please give yourself a 50 percent tip—100 even!” you shout the last part as, joshua assumes, the bartender walks away. “it’s on their card, go crazy!”

the bartender says something that he can’t make out and you laugh. the sound of it—so light and mischievous and charismatic—completely severs the already increasingly weakened grip his panic has on him. he feels like he can breathe a little easier, even among the horrible sounds filling the hallway.

“okay, i’m back, sorry,” you say into the phone, picking up exactly where you left off as if you never stopped talking. “like i was saying, we do this shit every week, so i can definitely get out of this if you need me to. why are you asking about siwoo anyway?”

there’s something comforting about the way you’re ready to drop everything to get to joshua even though you just said bye less than an hour ago and you don’t even know why he’s calling. though, he does realize your eagerness is also probably due to the fact that you just don’t want to be around your cheating boyfriend and his family.

joshua exhales slowly through his nose. “well, it’s not quite your 100, but i am like, at least… 70 percent sure that mina is having sex with someone in her apartment as we speak. i thought it was siwoo, but…” he lets you come to your own conclusions.

the silence on the other end of the phone is so much more threatening than the gasping and yelling he expected. it stretches for so long that at some point, joshua wonders if you even heard him.

“did you—”

“i heard you,” you say, your voice clipped. you pause again for a shorter period and when you speak, you sound a lot less short. “i was trying to ignore it because i couldn’t imagine what the hell it was, but you definitely sound like you’re on the set of a porno.”

joshua grimaces, stepping away from the side of the hallway that mina’s apartment is on as if that will help—it doesn’t, not with the way it echoes off the walls. he cups his hand around the mouthpiece of his phone, hoping that it will keep the shih tzu squeaky toy sound effects from traveling to you. “shit, i’m sorry,” he breathes, scurrying down the hallway and several units past mina’s apartment in a desperate attempt to get away from the moaning. “i didn’t realize you could hear it clearly.”

“are you running away from the noise, joshua hong?” you ask, obviously amused.

“um, maybe.”

“wow, what a gentleman, protecting my innocence like this,” you fake-sigh like you’re swooning on the other end of the line and he blushes furiously. he can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of his lips. “chivalry is not dead.”

“you’re so insufferable!” he whisper-yells at you. the poor residents of this floor already have to deal with ‘round-the-clock sex; they don’t need to add him being obnoxiously loud on the phone too. “i’m having a horrible time right now, and you’re joking around?!”

you giggle. “okay, fine. i’m insufferable. but at least i made you smile.”

“and how on earth could you possibly know that if you can’t even see me?”

you snort. “please. i can hear it in your voice. your smile transcends all obstacles, hong. you could smile on the other side of the world and i’d know it.”

the claim makes joshua’s hands clammy, and he finds he has no idea what to say to that. he can barely breathe, but this time, it feels a little different—not quite so wrought with anxiety like it was when he first exited the elevator.

sensing you may have gone overboard with your compliment this time, you clear your throat and steer the conversation back on track.

“mina is a real piece of work,” you state the obvious before rambling a little. “cheating on you… cheating on siwoo… though, is that called cheating if siwoo is also her sidepiece…? no, right? she’s just cheating on you twice—fuck, sorry, that was so callous and dumb to say.” he hears something that sounds like you hitting your forehead repeatedly.

“yeah… i don’t know…” his mind is not on the logistics of the cheating.

“okay, so here’s what we’re going to do,” you say, voice kicking into high-gear. “i’ve been gone from the table for almost… 10 minutes; these rats get impatient after, like, two.”

joshua leans against the wall, finding your little plotting voice weirdly comforting.

“siwoo is going to stand up any moment now to see what’s taking so long at the insistence of his egg donor.”

he closes his eyes and tries to calm his heartbeat, smiling a little at your refusal to call siwoo’s mom anything but his mom.

“and when he does, i’m—oh my god, i’m amazing.”

joshua opens his eyes and frowns. “what?”

you laugh in disbelief before frantically whispering, “siwoo just got up and is walking over here. he is so predictable. also, i just got the ick so bad. this idiot forgot to take his little napkin bib off. okay, he’s almost here. don’t reply to anything i say, alright?”

“al—”

“oh my god, are you serious?!” you shriek at joshua. he immediately brings his phone away from his ear. “are you okay?” you pause like you’re listening to a nonexistent response. “holy shit, girl—” your next words are an exaggerated whisper. “—it’s soph, she’s on a date, having… explosive diarrhea!”

joshua looks at his phone incredulously. he doesn’t know how you manage to sound so convincing when it’s clear to him everything you say comes to mind the very second before you say it.

“that’s disgusting.” his eyes involuntarily narrow at what can only be siwoo’s voice. he sounds just as dumb as joshua thought he would.

“i have to go!” you exclaim.

“what?! why?”

“did you hear me?! soph is having a crisis! what am i supposed to do, just leave her in the bathroom of some dingy sushi restaurant covered in her own shit while her date thinks she snuck out on her?!” she speaks back into the phone. “hold on, girl.”

he snorts as he passes a hand over his face in embarrassment even though he’s completely alone. he’s truly amazed at how committed you are to your act. he would’ve cracked before he ever even got to utter the word “diarrhea.”

“uh, yes? we’re at dinner with my parents and that sounds like a really gross her problem.”

joshua rolls his eyes. siwoo is an asshole through and through.

you pause and he likes to imagine you’re taking a moment to really process what a fucking dick your boyfriend is. “i’ll be quick, baby,” you say through barely concealed annoyance. his eye twitches at the term of endearment anyway. “tell your parents i said sorry! i’ll text you when i’m on my way home! soph, i’m on my way!”

“y/n!” his voice is further away than he previously sounded. “what about our drinks?!”

“ask the bartender!” you practically bellow at him. “fucking incompetent. ‘what about our drinks?’” your impression of siwoo is simply an exaggerated baby voice, and joshua thinks it sounds exactly the same. “what the fuck kind of question? where else would you get your drinks?” you mutter—to yourself, joshua presumes. “okay, shua, i am free and i am on my way!”

he doesn’t even have the opportunity to be surprised about you coming to mina’s apartment; he’s too caught off-guard by the sudden nickname.

“hello?” you call, suddenly sounding like you’re, at the very least, brisk-walking if not fully running. “you can talk now! i am not in the restaurant anym—oop, excuse me, sorry!”

“shua?” joshua repeats mindlessly.

“aw, don’t like it? we can workshop that too,” you huff, excusing yourself as you navigate whatever street you’re on. “i think it’s cute, though. no? shua... shua!”

you repeat it a few more times like that will get him to agree. most of the instances of “shua” are breathed out in a quick exhale as you move, and joshua is almost completely convinced you’re running.

“okay, i’m kind of losing the meaning of ‘shua’ now. i swear it’s cute, though.”

he smiles. “uh, yeah, it’s… cute. different but cute.”

“right? josh is tired,” you claim. “shua feels more fitting for you. anyway, give me… 12 minutes and i will be there.”

“why are you coming here again?’ he asks, remembering to feel confused about your plans.

“for moral support, hello?” you answer like it’s obvious. “ah! sorry!” you shout at someone who curses. “you have me now, dude.” dude is better than bro, he supposes. “we don’t have to go through these traumatic events alone anymore! i’ll be there and if you want me to blow my cover and this entire plan so i can slap mina across the face, i will!”

his mouth twitches to keep from smirking. the thought is tempting. “you really don’t have to—”

“shut up, i just told siwoo my best friend is having explosive diarrhea for you,” you point out, practically panting now. “we cannot walk this back! now go break up with that horrid bitch, and if she really is fucking someone in there, you tell me and i’ll march up there and win my very first fistfight… uh, what floor is her apartment, by the way?”

joshua shakes his head, trying his hardest not to grin. “no, you stay downstairs. there will be no fistfights tonight. i’ll see you in a bit.”

“got it, boss.”

“and stop running,” he orders. “you’re just going to hurt yourself.”

“mmm, agree to disagree,” you heave. “see you soon!” you hang up in a hurry, giving him no time to say bye.

as he stands in the hallway, he realizes that in the time he spent with you on the phone, the moans subsided. between the absence of your mayhem and the vulgarity of maybe-mina’s maybe-cheating, it’s almost eerie how suddenly quiet the floor is.

he drags his feet as he makes his way back to mina’s door. when he gets there, he tentatively presses an ear to the wood, and when he can’t hear anything, he raises his fist and knocks before he can change his mind. several seconds pass and he doesn’t hear anyone coming to the door or even speaking. his discomfort eases a little as he starts to think maybe she’s not even home.

mina isn’t one to deviate from her plans; she gets irritable when she has to, so joshua knows that pilates definitely had to be on the agenda today. and if she’s not home yet, then she should be arriving any moment now. he punches in the code for her apartment, determined to wait it out and get this over with because he has no plans to spend another day tied down to a cheater.

“mina?” he calls out as soon as he steps in. he almost bends down to take his shoes off, thinks twice about it, and leaves them on. what did you call it again? taking your small joys wherever you can. tracking dirt into mina’s apartment felt like a small joy right now.

with no response, he heads into the kitchen to grab himself a water bottle before sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar. he’s about to take his notes out again when he hears a door click. he frowns.

“hello?” mina’s voice tentatively calls out from the hallway.

“it’s me,” joshua says, leaving his notes where they are in his pocket. “i knocked but i guess you didn’t hear.”

“josh?” mina rounds the corner, in her bathrobe. she smiles brightly when she confirms it’s him. “hey, baby. what are you doing here?”

she walks up to him with the ease of a loyal girlfriend. he’s astounded by it, actually; how she can act so sweet and kind and cute when she’s sleeping with siwoo every chance she gets. if he thinks about it too hard, it actually scares him.

she loops her arms around his waist and hugs him from behind, hooking her chin on his shoulder. he tenses and immediately slips off the stool and out of her grip.

“i wanted to talk to you, remember?” he says, stepping away when she tries to reach for him again. she frowns like she’s finally understanding there’s a problem. “yesterday. but you said you were busy.” busy fucking siwoo.

even with a direct reference to her infidelity, mina doesn’t bat an eye. he thinks she could probably thrive in a career in acting. “yeah, i had to clock some overtime yesterday,” she lies. “it was such a drag,” she complains as she gets her own water bottle from the fridge. “i paid for my pilates class and everything and had to pay the fee for missing it.”

the lies roll of her tongue so effortlessly, joshua knows he would’ve easily believed them if he didn’t have cold, hard proof. even with the cold, hard proof, he wonders if there’s any way you could have still gotten it wrong. he knows you didn’t. maybe he is gullible because after two days, he already trusts you more than he does mina.

“pilates,” he repeats in a daze.

she raises an eyebrow as she takes a sip. she caps her bottle again and nods slowly. “yes, baby, pilates… is everything okay?”

“mina, have you ever cheated on me?”

joshua sees it then—the crack in her facade. her eyes widen, not with surprise or disbelief the way an innocent person’s probably would, but fear. to her credit, it passes quickly as she schools her expression into one of bewilderment. if joshua hadn’t known to look for it, he knows he would have missed it. he would have missed it along with all the other red flags he’s missed.

“why are you asking me that?” she asks, her voice sharp with the vexation of someone who’s been offended. joshua doesn’t let it faze him.

he shrugs, clenching his jaw briefly before speaking again. “just answer the question, mina.”

mina seems to realize joshua isn’t in the mood for games because her shoulders deflate the tiniest bit, her eyes flicking from one side of the room to the other as she tries to think of what to say. he knows it’s because in the year they’ve been together, joshua has never—not once—lost his temper or expressed any kind of annoyance with her.

it’s always “joshua is so sweet,” “joshua is such a gentleman,” “joshua is so kind,” “joshua is so mild mannered,” “joshua is so fucking gullible.”

joshua is done.

“mina.”

he doesn’t mean for his voice to come out sharp and raised the way it does, but when she flinches, he realizes his patience is slipping faster than jeonghan could ever dream of making it.

“wh—?” she squeezes her eyes shut like she’s trying to understand how they got here. “what?” she suddenly shrieks, eyes opening wide with disbelief and what he’s sure she thinks is translating as devastation. “what are you even saying, joshua?!”

the sheer amount of willpower it takes to keep from rolling his eyes is staggering. “it should be an easy question to answer,” he sighs, running a hand over his face tiredly. “so i think the fact that you refuse to is an answer in itself.”

he sets his bottle on the counter and moves to step around her so he can leave and just let it be over with—going out, not with a bang, but with a pathetic little sigh—but she steps the same direction, palms out like she’ll shove him if he gets any closer to the door.

“what the fuck are you on right now?” she asks, eyes narrowed and mouth twisted into an ugly, displeased sneer like a switch just flipped.

joshua feels the hair on the back of his neck stand as he frowns down at her. she doesn’t try to wrestle her face into playing along with her placating, innocent girl act. instead, she wears her scowl proudly, crossing her arms across her chest in defiance as she blocks his way from his emergency exit.

“you’re not leaving until you tell me why you’re asking me that,” she states.

he finds her rage as discomforting as yours but in wildly different ways. your anger makes him freeze up and almost panic; it renders him unable to speak or even think, and he’s still not even sure why. but mina’s makes him physically cringe away. it… annoys him.

just like she wasn’t used to his impatience, he wasn’t used to her being angry—at least not at him. all mina’s ever been angry about have been baristas who used 2% instead of fat free milk in her lattes (and yes, she insists she can tell), long wait times, and her boss demanding she work overtime. though joshua realizes that was probably just an excuse to see siwoo.

“mina, why are you doing this?” he asks, exasperated.

“why am i doing this?!” she repeats, scoffing so obnoxiously hard in his face, spit lands on his cheek.

he closes his eyes for a brief moment as he wipes it away, willing his patience to hold out long enough to get him out of this building.

“why are you doing this?! why are you as—”

“because i know!” he shouts over her increasingly high-pitched whining. “i’m asking because i know all about how awful you’ve been, mina! and i wanted to see if after a year together, you’d at least have the decency to be honest with me!”

mina’s attitude drops, her hands immediately combing through her hair frantically, a nervous tic she always had.

“i know you were faking business trips, i know you were sleeping around, i know you were fucking him last night when i told you i needed to talk to you—when your boyfriend of a year wanted to see you!”

she stares at him helplessly, mouth hung open and her eyes quickly filling with tears. he realizes as he stares back, feeling nothing but resentment and disdain for her, that your wildly fluctuating emotions unnerve him because he wants to find a way to get you back to your baseline, if not all the way to the other end to happy.

as he watches mina begin to weep, he feels none of that. for the first time in his life, joshua yearns to be cruel. he wants to make her cry harder, and it makes him resent her even more—for making him think and feel something so reprehensible.

he suddenly sees why you’re so open to letting your fury flow through every part of you before unapologetically releasing it right out into the world the way you do. after a lifetime of insisting on being the calm one, the collected one, the unbothered one, the unfeeling one, he realizes that being angry like this is addicting—freeing.

“baby, i…”

“don’t, mina, i’m not your fucking baby,” he says. even he can hear how tired he sounds.

“i’m so sorry,” she whispers, voice cracking. “i am, i really am. i don’t know why i did it. i—i don’t know—i’m so—i…”

“save it,” he puts her out of her misery of trying to find the right words to manipulate him into thinking she’s anything other than the deceitful cheater she is. “i know you don’t regret hurting me like this. i—”

“no, i do!” she wails, throwing herself at him now.

he immediately starts untangling himself from her hold but she makes it impossible, her grabby hands all over him as she tries to get him to stop attempting to escape her.

“mina, let go o—”

“i regret it, joshua, i swear to god i regret it!” she weeps so loudly now, he starts to feel dread gathering in the pit of his stomach the way it did when he broke up with miyoung. “i never wanted to hurt you, i love you!”

“holy shit,” he grumbles, shoving her hands off him and stepping away from her even though it meant being farther from the only exit. “how can you even say that to my face right now?”

“it’s true!” she screams, grating his nerves. “i love you! i want to spend the rest of my life with you! it was all a mistake! minhyuk was just a temptation i gave into at a weak moment, and i swear it didn’t mean—”

“who the hell is minhyuk?” he asks, frowning when her words finally catch up to him.

mina freezes, and it’s like her tears get the memo because they stop too. it’s the only reason joshua knows that no matter how convincing, this was also just an act.

he glares now.

“who. is. minhyuk. mina?” he staggers his words like it’ll help her few remaining brain cells unite long enough to understand and answer his question.

“i… what do you mean? you said… you said you knew that i… you said—”

“i know about siwoo,” he clarifies, his temper at its breaking point. he’s a moment away from calling you to come up here and make sure he doesn’t land himself in jail, wrecking mina’s entire apartment in an attempt to claw his way out of it. “who the fuck is minhyuk?”

joshua doesn’t think he’s ever cussed this much in his life.

“i—”

“who the fuck is siwoo?”

joshua’s head whips around toward the voice, coming from the hallway that leads to mina’s room. the laugh that immediately escapes his mouth is instinctive and hysterical. he doesn’t know any other way to react than to start laughing; if he doesn’t, he’s positive he’ll somehow spontaneously combust.

because standing in mina’s hallway is one of the many reasons her neighbors despise her. a very half naked reason, dressed only in boxers.

“are you for fucking real?” mina hisses, shutting her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose as if joshua isn’t even in the room. “i told you to wait in the room and be fucking quiet, you moron. are you—”

“who is siwoo?!” the man shouts now.

joshua’s laughs peter out, and with them goes his anger. he sighs, shaking his head and remembering how drained he feels.

“i take it you’re minhyuk.” the man glares at him but doesn’t respond, so he nods. “well, mina, i guess you were truthful about one thing: you really were busy last night, weren’t you?”

“how did you even know siwoo stopped by here?!” she yells. joshua hopes building management kicks her out after the noise complaints she’s bound to get from today alone.

“i can’t believe you’re fucking cheating on me!” minhyuk disappears back into mina’s room, shouting nonsense as he gathers his things.

“you’re definitely not the one who was cheated on!” joshua calls after him, rolling his eyes. he turns back to mina, mustering up the very last of his energy to finally end it. “mina. you’re disgusting. i will move on from this remembering you as nothing other than a nasty stain on my otherwise amazing life.”

a squeak of protest erupts from her mouth, but he doesn’t let her get a word in.

“but you... you’ll continue to do whatever sleazy shit you’ve been up to for who knows how long, and one day, you’ll wake up and realize how empty and tragic and ugly you and your life both are—” she has the audacity to look offended at the word ugly. “—and you won’t be able to do anything to change that because no one worth having around will have cared enough to stick by you.”

her tears start again and this time, they feel real—they don’t come with screaming or begging or lying. they steadily stream down her face and it makes joshua feel like he’s high.

“your commitment to being a selfish asshole really has you by the neck and i pray to god it starts squeezing with both hands,” he says, delivering your line with a tight-lipped smile.

he finally steps around her, making his way to the door. he opens it and just before he leaves, he thinks, what the hell? and turns back.

“mina,” he calls softly. she turns back to him, face red and splotchy. “don’t contact me. if i ever see your phone number on my screen, i’ll personally call every single cafe on this fucking continent and make sure they only serve you whole fat milk for the rest of your life.”

she gasps like he just made a legitimate threat, and he gets the immature and overwhelming urge to ridicule and laugh at her.

“oh, and get some fucking help,” he adds before turning away and leaving without waiting for her reaction.

fortunately, he gets the elevator immediately.

unfortunately, none other than minhyuk comes barreling in before the doors close. he has the sense to at least look ashamed, throwing joshua a pitiful smile, but it isn’t enough, so he steps forward and presses a finger to the button that keeps the doors open.

he doesn’t say anything, blankly staring at the man who apparently had sex with his girlfriend either before or after siwoo did last night. minhyuk gets the clue and sighs.

“bro, we’re on the 13th floor,” he protests.

he still doesn’t respond. finally, when several seconds of minhyuk fidgeting have passed, the man groans dramatically—not unlike mina herself—and he stomps out of the elevator and toward the stairwell.

joshua smiles to himself, releasing the button and letting the elevator doors close and take him down to the lobby—down to you.

when joshua exits mina’s building, you’re waiting exactly where you had accosted the two of them the night before, sweaty and disheveled from your run over, but somehow still looking so incredibly pretty.

you take one look at his face and know exactly how the entire conversation went down without even having to ask. then, an interesting thing happens: you do something joshua thinks is akin to exploding, and he has to hold you back from storming the building. you don’t even know where mina lives, but he knows if he lets you go, you’ll knock on every single door of all 25 floors until you find her and sock her in the face.

and even as he tries to calm you down now, something warms his heart knowing you care enough to do something as ridiculous as that.

“you’re causing a scene,” he grunts, stepping in your way again when you try to dodge him.

“if you think this is a scene, you’re gonna hate what i’m about to cause on whatever goddamn floor that bitch lives on!” you inform him.

“i’m not telling you and the front desk won’t either. he’d probably call security on you before you even get to the elevators.”

“i don’t care! i’ll punch the man at the front desk too! my fists are rated E for everyone!” you shriek wildly, darting back and forth as you try to get around him. against his will, an amused snort escapes him.

when it’s clear to you that joshua’s height and long legs are going to make it impossible for you to fake him out, you give up on going around and decide to go through.

joshua shouts in surprise when you barrel right into him, opting for pushing him backwards to get a few steps forward. he catches on quickly and digs his heels in, gripping your shoulders and holding you at arm’s length.

“she’s not worth this time or energy,” he tells you.

“oh, i disagree, i think she’s worth a lot of my time and energy!” you refute. “i think she’s worth as much of my time and energy as it takes for me to rock her shit!”

you groan as you struggle against his hold, and he almost laughs at how hard you seem to be trying because it’s relatively easy to keep you where you are. you shrug his hands off and slap him away, charging forward again, but before you can, he plants his palm on your forehead, stopping you in your tracks.

“yah! joshua hong!” you shove his arm away from your forehead, and he can’t help when the laughs finally break free. “how are you laughing right now? i could kill her!”

he shrugs, his laughter suddenly snowballing until his hands are on his knees and he’s trying to catch his breath.

he can’t do anything other than laugh. he has to laugh at the year he’s wasted with mina, or he’ll drive himself crazy asking himself what’s wrong with him that his taste led him so astray (something to unpack when he inevitably returns to his therapist). he has to laugh at the memory of walking in while minhyuk was still there or he’ll fixate on the fact that he has no idea how many men mina’s cheated on him with—and the fact that he needs to go get tested for STDs immediately. there is no other option but to laugh because he has no idea how someone’s life can change this fast because of an instagram DM.

when he finally stops, he sighs, straightening up to find you looking at him with a blank expression.

“oh, you’re so not okay,” you mutter.

“i’m fine,” he insists, shaking his head. he rests his hands back on your shoulders, this time gently, and he nods once. “this has just been the most ridiculous 24 hours of my life, and i’m tired and i’m starving. can we please escape this hellhole and eat? i’ll even pay.”

your eyes narrow at that, studying his face like you’re trying to see if he’s lying to you about being okay. he isn’t—at least he doesn’t think he is—but he also doesn’t think you’d be able to tell if he were anyway.

“i know a ramen spot near here?” you offer hesitantly.

it irks him that you not only have a go-to fried chicken spot in the area but a ramen spot too, and only because you’ve followed siwoo here enough times to have favorites. he thinks you deserve to find favorites in more meaningful ways.

he doesn’t say that, though, of course. instead, joshua looks you up and down before he scans himself, pointedly staring at how sweaty the two of you are in this sticky summer heat.

“ramen is good for the soul,” you say, reading his mind. “the best comfort food. plus, you’ll sweat out all your heartache.”

“i have no heartache to sweat out.”

“right,” you agree, nodding easily and in a way that makes him question if you’re being sarcastic or not. “maybe we should invite jeonghan.”

he tilts his head. he’s not opposed because he needs to fill his best friend in, but he’s also not enjoying you being the one to suggest it. “why…?”

you shrug. “my offers to dole out violence on your behalf can only go so far. your best friend will probably be better equipped to handle… whatever that was that just happened right now.”

he snickers and rolls his eyes. “okay, i’ll text him.”

“no need, i already did!” you say as you loop your arm through his and begin to pull him away from the building.

he scoffs, a little too aware of the scowl that erupts on his face. “how do you have jeonghan’s number?”

you look up at him and snort. “we all exchanged information last night, remember?”

no, you and joshua exchanged information last night after he insisted on it so he knew when you got home safe. his eye twitches when he thinks about jeonghan sneaking you his number too—and maybe even texting or calling you as much as he was today.

“he’s waiting for us at the ramen shop.”

he clenches his jaw before forcing a smile. “you really are such a well-prepared individual, aren’t you.”

“gotta be if i’m going to ruin siwoo and mina’s lives.”

“mina? i thought—”

“oh baby,” you say it with fake pity like he’s actually a child, but he finds he likes it a hell of a lot more than dude. infinitely more than bro. “she doesn’t get a pass anymore. that ship sailed when she decided to do my shua like that.” oh, he likes that one a lot. “she’s officially back in the plan.”

joshua grins genuinely now, nodding without arguing. even if he didn’t want you to wrap your metaphorical revenge hands around mina’s ugly neck and shake violently (he does), he knows arguing with you is futile.

“okay.” he feels the exhaustion from earlier slowly leave his body, already feeling lighter as he walks with you, arms looped together like you’ve been best friends for years. “let’s ruin some lives then.”

you look up at him and squeeze his arm, jumping a little as you squeal, “let’s!”

“bye, y/n.”

joshua tries not to glare as jeonghan pulls you into a hug, one arm snaking around your waist as he grins over your shoulder at him. he flashes his eyebrows at him and all his efforts go to waste. he gives him the nastiest glower he can. his best friend’s smirk just widens.

he doesn’t know what’s going on—with jeonghan, with you, with the both of you, with himself. for the first 40 minutes sitting in the restaurant, joshua retold the hellish afternoon he experienced and took all of his best friend’s many i-told-you-so, what-a-bitch, and i-knew-she-was-a-snake comments with grace. but as soon as that was over, jeonghan flipped a switch.

all night, the man has been acting so weird with you, laughing too hard at everything you say, touching you any chance he gets, saying things just because he knows you’ll agree. and all night, for a reason he can’t quite put his finger on, it’s been driving joshua up the wall. it’s probably because you’re literally still in a relationship. his best friend could at least wait until you’re properly single before he starts doing whatever jeonghan-styled mating call this is.

nope. that’s not it. that thought drives him even further up this insufferable, metaphorical wall.

“later,” you say as you step back. “don’t forget to send me that brand of hair remover you were looking at.” you turn over your shoulder and joshua immediately drops his glare and smiles. if you saw the look he was giving jeonghan, you don’t show it. instead, you wink at him. “we’re going to need that for mina’s shampoo now, huh, shua?”

“shua,” jeonghan repeats, obviously delighted, eyebrows rising and grin quickly entering shit-eating levels. “cute!”

you turn back to him excitedly. “right?! i think so too!”

“you’re such a genius, y/n,” he says, sounding nauseatingly lovesick. joshua silently scoffs at him behind your back. he should know better, though, because that just eggs him on. “i’ll text you the link as soon as i get home. or—” he meets his eyes again. “—i’ll just call you!”

“sure, whatever,” you shrug, as indifferent as ever. it makes joshua happy. maybe a direct rejection would make him even happier, though. “get home safe!”

“yeah, get home safe,” joshua echoes as jeonghan steps around you to hug him as well. “don’t fall into a manhole or get run over by a massive truck or anything,” he mutters too quietly for anyone else but him to hear.

“i love you too, man,” jeonghan laughs, rubbing his back and squeezing his shoulder as he steps away. “call me if you need to drink your sorrows away. see you two!”

he finally walks off toward his car as you step up to joshua’s side, looping your arm through his again. his heart immediately slows, recovering from the irritation of dealing with a menace.

“jeonghan knows i have zero interest in dating him, right?”

joshua can’t help the bark of laughter that all but rips its way out of him.

“no, like,” you laugh a little, “he comes on so strong? i don’t think i’ve ever met someone as bold as he is.”

that’s ironic, seeing as joshua has never met anyone as bold as you.

“i don’t know if he knows that,” he says honestly. “but either way, he wouldn’t make a move until you were single.”

he gets brief flashes of jeonghan’s fingers brushing up against yours, jeonghan delivering wings onto your plate, jeonghan hugging you a beat too long, jeonghan existing around you.

“i think,” he adds, frowning.

you make a sound of disbelief as you both watch jeonghan pull out of his spot and drive away. you both stay rooted to the spot, watching nothing in particular.

“i am single. for all intents and purposes, i am absolutely single.”

joshua is alarmed at how horrible the chill that runs up his spine feels—like an omen of how unbearable his life will become if two crazy people like you and jeonghan join forces to become one.

“i just happen to be a single woman pretending to still love her ex so she can obliterate his entire existence from the inside out.”

“right,” he says, nodding. “of course. i just mean that… i—uh… i have no idea what i mean. but i’ll tell jeonghan to fuck off.”

you whistle, laughing after you do. “i think that’s the first time i heard you cuss,” you inform him. “my shua cussing…”

you don’t finish your thought because you giggle, and he thinks the sound triggers his fight or flight. he lets you laugh and when it fades, you shake your head.

“don’t tell jeonghan to fuck off,” you tell him. “it’s fun. flattering.”

“flattering?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow.

you shrug. “i’ve been with that idiot, siwoo, for two years. i guess it’s nice to know that someone thinks i’m cute enough to flirt with. at least i know i’m still an eligible bachelorette.”

joshua huffs out a laugh of disbelief. “are you serious?”

you yank your arm out of his, startling him. “what?! you don’t think i’m cute enough to flirt with?!” you ask, half offended but obviously thoroughly amused.

“quite the opposite, actually,” he says before he can convince himself not to. he’s about to start sputtering about how he means it in the most platonic and objective way possible, but since you’re you, he doesn’t need to.

“good, that’s what i thought,” you say, grinning and weaving your arm through the ditch of his elbow again. “i’m very cute.”

joshua is glad you’re so comfortable to be around. he knows if he agreed with you now, you’d happily accept the compliment, but if the roles were reversed, he would be flustered for the next week.

you two enjoy a comfortable silence before he sighs contentedly and looks down at you to ask if you’re ready to leave. he forgets what he’s about to say when he meets your eyes, though.

you’re already looking up at him and smiling softly. “did you like the ramen? do you feel better?” you ask, tilting your head.

he thinks you would look nice resting it against his shoulder. “i feel much better,” he confirms. “thanks again—for coming so fast and so last minute without me even asking you to.” he pauses to think, frowning when he confronts how ride-or-die you’ve been for him today. “and even before that. thanks for workshopping all those horrible lines with me.”

you grin. “don’t mention it, dude.” he’s too content right now to make a face at that. at least it’s not bro. “it was a lot of fun, actually.”

“i still don’t think i have any heartache to sweat out into any other bowls of ramen—” you snicker. “—but it’s nice to know i have two people to cry to if i ever do.”

you nod enthusiastically. “exactly! you have jeonghan, and you have me now.”

he hums, feeling an intense desire to say you have him too—because you do, and you unfortunately already have jeonghan as well—but he stops himself. he’s only known you one day, and he’s just not as courageous as you are with your words.

“it’s nice,” you mutter, “to have people to go through these things with.”

joshua doesn’t voice his curiosity about your own friendships. were there no other people you were able to expect this kind of support from? where was this soph you used to excuse yourself from dinner? any other friends? family?

he lets his curiosity simmer. you’ve already subjected each other to incredibly intimate parts of your life; the rest can come another day.

“hopefully, it’s the first and last time we go through this,” he remarks, chuckling.

“one can hope,” you agree. “and the ramen?” you prod. “was it good?”

“i loved it,” he says honestly, “but—”

“‘but’?!” you practically shriek. “but what?! the ramen here is really good! what could you possibly have to say about the ramen here?”

he laughs, looking away from you and rolling his eyes at how fast you are to pounce. “i love the ramen, but,” he continues, “we need to find you some favorites that don’t involve roaming around the area that siwoo and mina happen to be in. i’ll show you some of my favorites. away from here. and if you want your own favorites, then we’ll go to a place you’ve never been and we’ll find you new favorites. but i hate to inform you… this will be the last time we eat in this godforsaken area so i hope you enjoyed that.”

when joshua looks back down at you, you’re no longer smiling. he tenses when he realizes you look a little sad, your mouth turned down at the corners so slightly, he probably wouldn’t notice if he weren’t so close to your face.

“oh,” he breathes, “y/n, i’m sorry, i didn’t—”

you shake your head quickly and he clamps his mouth shut.

“y’know,” you say quietly, like any louder and you’ll start crying. he doesn’t doubt that you would. it’s been a whole 24 hours since you did—at least in front of him. “it really fucking sucks… finding out your boyfriend is cheating on you, and on top of that, having to continue relying on him.”

your hold on his forearm tightens for a moment, and before he can think about it, he removes his right hand from his pocket and closes it over yours.

“and i know that we’ve only known each other for like… a day,” you say, laughing even though your voice is getting dangerously watery, “but every time we talk… i stop to think i’m really lucky that of all the people i could’ve been suffering through this with, it turned out to be you.”

joshua’s mouth parts to say something, but nothing comes out because nothing even comes to mind. there you go again—so honest and forthcoming and bold and you. there you go again, making his brain the most useless organ in his body without even trying.

“you’re really nice,” you sigh. “thank you.” you turn away and wipe at your eyes quickly before taking your hand back from his and releasing his arm altogether. he immediately feels a little colder. he returns his hand to his pocket. “for my last dinner in this stupid fucking neighborhood.”

he clears his throat. “you’re welcome.”

“i’ll hold you to it, y’know,” you warn him, bumping his shoulder. “don’t think you can say nice things like that and then have no follow-through.”

from the way you say it, he knows you’re thinking of siwoo. he wonders what sort of tiny things siwoo promised you that he never delivered on if he couldn’t even do something as simple as stay true to you. joshua thinks it will be easy for him to show you how nice people can be when they aren’t taking you for granted.

“good, hold me to it.”

“i will! you owe me a favorite chicken shop, a favorite ramen shop, a favorite boba shop, a favorite ice c—”

“jesus christ, how often were you here?”

you laugh loudly. “you owe me so many favorites.”

joshua smiles. “come on,” he says. “we’ll get you all those favorites. but for now, let’s get you home.”

“goodbye forever, ramen shop,” you bid the establishment farewell happily. “and goodbye, stupid fucking neighborhood!”

he grins. “good riddance, stupid fucking neighborhood!”

you’re consumed by giggles hearing him curse again.

acting normal while texting you proves to be the hardest thing joshua has done every single time he does it. it’s either you’re being incredibly funny and he’s smiling at his phone like an idiot, or you’re saying a bold inside thought and he’s smiling at his phone like an idiot. either way, even if he thinks he does a good job at appearing normal via text, he knows he looks crazy in person.

“you’re cheesing real hard, bro.”

joshua immediately locks his phone and shoves it into his pocket as he forces his face into a blank stare.

“smooth,” jeonghan says, snickering from where he’s sprawled across the other side of joshua’s couch, no longer paying attention to the movie he begged to put on. “texting y/n?”

“no.” the lie comes out before he can even think about it. “watched a funny video.”

he hums, a soft smile on his lips. joshua knows he doesn’t believe him. “well, speaking of her, what’s going on with the two of you anyway?”

“what?”

“what’s going on with—”

“no, i heard you,” he laughs. “i just meant, like… what do you mean? i’m helping her with siwoo. you know that.”

he narrows his eyes almost imperceptibly, but being his best friend, joshua is educated on all the nuances jeonghan’s face comes with.

“what?” he asks again.

“do you like her?”

“yeah, she’s cool. kind of intense but cool. don’t you?”

jeonghan rolls his lips between his teeth like he’s trying not to smile too widely. he cocks an eyebrow at him. “i mean, do you like like her? do you fancy her?”

joshua scoffs. “what?”

it’s such a ridiculous question to ask someone who broke up with his girlfriend not even a full week ago. he thinks he was mostly telling the truth when he told you he had no heartache for him to expel from his body because both his heart and brain have been fairly quiet since that afternoon, but even then, he’s still too disoriented from how fast his life changed to think about liking anyone.

“it’s been days since mina and i broke up,” he reminds his best friend. “how could i already be interested in someone else?”

“well, mina didn’t wait to break up before she bec—”

“okay,” joshua holds a hand up to stop him from pointing out mina’s infidelity for the thousandth time since they found out. “mina and i aren’t the same. i can’t just jump into something else so quickly after. and it’s not even about mina.”

“oooh,” jeonghan sits up properly and crosses his legs, folding his hands over his knee. “explain.”

he shrugs. “i don’t really feel all that torn up about her as much as i am about how bad my instincts are.”

he frowns. “your instincts?”

“yeah, like… the signs were glaringly obvious,” joshua explains. “you knew she was a snake before all of this; you just didn’t know why. how come i didn’t see any of that? and,” he practically yells as he resituates himself on the couch so that he’s fully facing jeonghan, “how could i have thought i was going to possibly marry someone like that? i can’t even think about looking at another person until i wrap my mind around how i could have ever thought i was in love. what if i don’t even know what love is?”

“whoa, okay—”

“what if i end up with another mina?”

“—slow down,” jeonghan raises his hands like he’s trying to calm a bull. he mirrors his position, fully turning to him on the sofa now. “first of all, you know what love is. your judgment was just clouded for a little bit! you were lost in the joy of having a girlfriend that lasted a lot longer than the others. or you were being a weirdo and getting swallowed up by the plight of being in your 30s with no prospects for marriage, so you deluded yourself into thinking mina was it.”

joshua’s mouth pops open in shock a little at that. “i mean… that’s… plausible.”

“whatever it is—even if it is that she fooled you and you were blind to all the red flags, that doesn’t mean you don’t know what love is. how could you not know what love is when i’m your best friend? i love the shit out of you.”

he does crack a smile at this. he lets the reminder sink in and marinate in his brain. jeonghan could very much be right on the money with this one; after all, mina came at a time when joshua was starting to question if his love life was cursed. he was fresh out of therapy he sought out because his ex broke up with him for essentially being a robot, and he was eager to share more of himself with the next one—to love the next one harder than he had the rest. maybe he really was just forcing something to be that wasn’t meant to be.

“say it back.”

he laughs. “i love you too.” he sighs. “what else?”

“huh?”

“you said ‘first of all.’ i assume you have a second of all?”

jeonghan frowns for a moment before a light bulb goes off in his head. “yes! second of all, y/n is not mina.”

“wait, what?”

“you said, ‘what if i end up with another mina?’ y/n is not mina.”

“of course she’s not mina,” joshua says. that much is obvious; if mina is one end of the spectrum, you’re so far on the other end, it went all the way back around to mina. “but why are we even talking about y/n?”

“because it’s clear you like her,” he informs him, amused.

“i don’t like her like that,” he disagrees confidently and somewhat exasperatedly. whenever jeonghan got ideas like this in his head, it became an inarguable truth to him regardless of what anyone else said. he knows if he doesn’t nip it in the bud, he’ll run with it for the rest of their lives. “she’s funny and nice and cool to hang out with, but she’s just a friend.”

“is that why you’re texting and calling her 24/7 when the rest of us feel like we’re pulling teeth trying to get you to respond to us?” jeonghan points out. joshua opens his mouth to refute his point, but he steamrolls right over his words. “is that why you’re extra mean to me whenever the three of us hang out?”

“we’ve only hung out all three of us twice. and what do you mean i’m mean to you?”

his best friend laughs openly in his face. “you’re really going to tell me you don’t notice the way you kick me or interrupt me or glare at me whenever so much as an ounce of y/n’s attention is on me instead of you?”

is that what his odd behavior at the ramen shop was about? he was trying to get on joshua’s nerves as some kind of experiment?

joshua narrows his eyes at him. “i do those things because you’re annoying me.”

“i’ve annoyed you our whole lives,” he shoots right back. “you’ve only started abusing me recently.”

“you’re so dramatic and wrong.”

“okay!” jeonghan agrees too easily. he stands up.

“where are you going?” joshua leans back to look up at him. “aren’t we getting dinner later?”

he hums in thought before quickly saying no. “rain check! i think i’m going to ask y/n if she wants to go out instead. i’ve been thinking about asking her out.”

joshua is not dumb. joshua is actually very smart. he graduated top of his class from an ivy league in the U.S., he has an MBA, and he—much like you were supposed to be before siwoo upended your life—became a director at his company before 30, still on track to become the youngest senior director.

joshua is smart and he knows what jeonghan is trying to do, but his dumb face frustratingly doesn’t get the memo. before he can even fully process the words, his eyebrows are pulling down, eyes sharpening into a glare, and jaw clenching so hard, he knows jeonghan can hear his teeth grinding.

“oh, really,” he deadpans.

“yup!” he has the audacity to grin at joshua, eyes so full of mischief and mirth, he wants to kick him again and give him something to really complain about. “i’ll see myself out, don’t worry about getting up. bye joshuji! i’ll tell y/n you said hi!”

joshua scoffs as he watches him actually leave his apartment. and again, because various parts of his body seem to be missing signals from his brain that he doesn’t care, once the door clicks closed behind jeonghan, he throws himself back onto the couch mindlessly and hastily, struggling to retrieve his phone from his pocket.

“why are these jeans so fucking tight,” he mumbles as his hand gets a little stuck. when he finally rips the phone out of his pocket, he briefly considers texting you but lands on calling you instead. what he’s going to say, he has no idea.

“i was just about to call you,” you once again answer without greeting him first.

“oh. hi,” he says, a little thankful for the non-greeting for once because it gives him some time to come up with an excuse for calling you other than he wanted to beat jeonghan to it. “why were you going to call?”

“because you were taking a long ass time to reply again,” you say simply. he snickers at your streak of impatience. “why are you calling?”

that wasn’t a lot of time to come up with an excuse at all, but joshua thinks “so we can make plans. i don’t feel like texting” is more than good enough.

“oh yay,” you accept the fib easily. “well, as an unemployed idiot, i am free… let me see… oh yes, all day every day, but extra free on whatever day siwoo’s parents decide to hold me hostage at dinner with them.”

joshua laughs, slowly relaxing against the couch once more. “well, how about tonight?”

“ugh, unfortunately, they do not want to have dinner tonight, but yes, i am free.”

“how about we meet to discuss your top secret plan tonight and then hang again whenever your dinner with that nightmare family is?” he suggests.

“joshua hong, my knight in shining armor,” you joke. his cheeks warm at the words. “sounds like a plan. can we meet at yours, though? i don’t want to reveal how crazy i am in a public setting. that seems too vulnerable. and i’d invite you over here but it’s probably best we don’t discuss these plans in the home of the man whose life i’d like to destroy.” joshua truly admires your way with sarcasm.

“yeah, i’ll text you my address,” he agrees. and because he’s extra irate with jeonghan for thinking he can manipulate him into becoming some kind of jealous monster, he adds: “you can come over whenever—even now if you want. i’m free all day” just in case his best friend calls you too after you hang up.

“oh great!” you say. “siwoo is out all day doing lord knows who or what and i’m done brushing the toilet with everything he owns, so i can be on my way once you send it.”

joshua smiles. “perfect.”

he knows he literally just played right into jeonghan’s game, but somehow, he still feels like he won.

it doesn’t take you long at all to get to his apartment, and when you do, he’s a little stunned to open the door and find your arms completely empty—no files full of information only the CIA would have or fat manila envelopes stuffed with plans to eviscerate your exes like he expected. instead, you stand there, hands clasped in front of you with nothing but your purse hanging on your shoulder.

“nice place,” you comment as you look around his apartment, unabashedly looking at the books on his shelves, art on the walls, even running your fingers across the strings of his guitar in the corner. “you play?”

he hums as he plops back down on his couch. “yeah, since i was young. do you?”

you laugh like he told a joke. “no. i’m not creatively gifted. it doesn’t really surprise me that you are, though.”

he’s about to ask you what makes you say that but you turn to him and clap your hands together once.

“okay! let’s do this! we have a lot of material to get through tonight.”

you throw your purse on the counter of the breakfast bar, make your way to the coffee table in front of him, take your phone out of your pocket, and sink to the floor.

“let’s start with mina; i think she’ll be much easier since she doesn’t have a family-owned empire for us to topple.”

joshua’s eyes widen. “a family-owned what for us to what?”

you wave your hand like it’s an irrelevant detail. “we’ll get into it later,” you assure him as you get to wherever you were swiping to on your phone. you read a few lines and then nod, looking up at him. “so mina is a grade A gold-digger.”

joshua huffs, leaning his elbows on his knees and shaking his head. “i’m not saying i disagree because you have very solid evidence—good job, by the way—”

“thank you!” you chirp happily, smiling widely.

“—but i am not rich enough for anyone to try digging for gold around here.”

your smile disappears, expression flattening into a glare as you pointedly look around his apartment. he follows your gaze, and yes, he sees what you see: a very spacious apartment, all of the interests and hobbies he can afford to indulge in, and furniture he hired an interior designer to curate for him. he’ll give it to you—he’s definitely a little more than just comfortable, but he’s not gold-digging material. he never even gave mina much money; he just paid for dates, and he tells you as much.

“well, i did some digging, and that’s all she would’ve really needed you to pay for. little miss busy body had multiple streams of income,” you tell him, swiping on your phone until you’re showing him screenshots of instagram profiles. the first is siwoo’s.

joshua would never admit it, but his curiosity got the best of him after overhearing your conversation with siwoo over the phone, and he found his profile after combing through the accounts you follow. the man’s face was tolerable enough, though not anything special to look at, in joshua’s opinion. he definitely thinks you can do a lot better. but for mina, though, he’s perfect. they’d make monstrous, ugly, little children.

“so here are my theories,” you announce. “correct me if you think i’m wrong with any of this since you know mina better.” he nods in agreement. “i think siwoo was target number one. she thought because he’s the heir to a sizable company, that he would be a good sugar daddy to land, but he was already taken by a smart, beautiful, kind, and insanely funny woman that turned out to be way too good for him.” he grins at you. “and because too many people have eyes on his finances—mommy, daddy… and me but only because i started snooping—”

joshua snorts, looking down at his lap when he thinks of the things you’re pushed to do when a man is making you feel insecure. it’s not fitting for you and he hates it.

“—he probably couldn’t give mina as much money as she was expecting. but she thought she’d keep him around in case there was ever an opportunity to go full-time with him,” you theorize. you turn your phone back to you, swiping to the next account. “minhyuk.”

joshua looks up and rolls his eyes when he sees an account full of shirtless photos of the man he met in mina’s apartment. “yeah. minhyuk.”

“he lives about 30 minutes from mina’s apartment in the opposite direction of siwoo, putting them about an hour away from each other,” you inform him.

“how the hell do you know that?”

you smile slyly. “i have my ways.” when he keeps staring at you, you roll your eyes. “his full name is on his instagram so i looked him up on linkedin and facebook, and the latter had photos of him moving into his apartment, okay? kids nowadays don’t care about internet safety; it’s not rocket science, shua. anyway,” you point back to the screenshot of his account, trying to redirect his attention, “that’s a healthy enough distance that she probably felt safe dating these two. on top of that, minhyuk is a pilot for korean airlines—did you know they can make up to 300 million won a year? absolutely rich enough to warrant mina’s attention.”

joshua has to admit that maybe he should reconsider what he thinks is rich versus what is comfortable if 300 million won was impressive to you.

“so mina snatches him up, knowing it won’t be much of a time commitment since he’ll constantly be flying all over the place,” you explain. “then, we have…” you swipe and sigh, shaking your head. “this guy.”

joshua narrows his eyes at the screen where he’s met with the account of a man he’s never seen before. he’s very tatted, with a kind face and a nice smile, and if his photos are any indication, he works out just as hard as minhyuk apparently does.

“and who is this?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

“boyfriend number three,” you say a little uncomfortably. “jeon jungkook.”

joshua grunts but says nothing, so you continue.

“before you ask how i found him, i went through all of the people mina follows on instagram, and—”

“her profile is private,” joshua points out.

“that’s what burner accounts are for,” you respond.

“she approved aggretsuko’s request to follow her…?”

you smile. “no, silly, i followed her from my believable burner. aggretsuko is more just for being able to blindly like and follow whatever and whoever i want to. i have a fake account featuring a fake person with a fake life and fake followers. she let that one follow her.”

“i should really stop questioning you. you’re obviously very capable at this whole revenge thing.”

“yeah, the sooner you do that, the faster our conversations will be. so i went through all the accounts she follows, which thankfully aren’t many because the bitch likes having a skinny mini following to follower ratio.”

joshua shakes his head at your name-calling but fights off a smile anyway.

“i picked out every man—again, not many because she was probably mindful of them being able to see each other’s accounts—and i looked up their occupations on linkedin and if they made a good salary, they made the cut. from there, i just heavily cyberstalked them until i had no choice but to rule them out, or in jungkook’s case, until i found something incriminating.”

he doesn’t bother asking because he can see you get a kick out of explaining this to him.

“a photo of him and mina at a romantic dinner, dated a year and a half ago.”

“before me.”

you nod. “yup. jungkook is an investment banker, aka basically a bank, period, to mina. and seeing as the korean stock exchange is based in busan, he’s constantly flying between there and here for work—”

“making him another good candidate for a boyfriend since he wouldn’t demand a lot of her time.”

you nod and point at him. “exactly! which brings us to boyfriend #4.” you put your phone on the table and gesture at him. “you.”

he nods. “me.”

you tilt your head at him. “honestly, i couldn’t figure out what it was that made mina choose you.”

he scoffs. “wow.”

“no, don’t get me wrong,” you say, shaking your head calmly. “you’re a fucking catch—leagues better than any of these guys as far as i can tell.” he feels his cheeks get hot. “but that’s why i couldn’t figure it out. mina digs her claws into these rich, kinda vain, kinda power-hungry men, and then she found you, and you’re yes, rich, but also kind, sweet, caring, and all of the other good words in the dictionary.”

the heat spreading across his face grows exponentially warmer.

“therefore, i concluded that mina chose you to be her real boyfriend.”

joshua frowns.

“doesn’t it make sense? she chooses guys who are either romantically unavailable or physically unavailable, so she still has all this time on her hands. the girl is evil but she’s also human so she craved an actual partner. she chose you.”

it sounds like it should be a compliment, but joshua feels even more repulsed by the idea that three just wasn’t enough for her. she really went out of her way to find him and torment him when she had more than enough to go around.

“this is the kind of greed the bible warned us about,” joshua mutters under his breath, mostly to himself. you hear it though, and the sound of your laugh immediately makes him smile back at you.

“yeah, mina is definitely a warning sign from god.”

“wish i listened.”

you give him a smile. “eh, where’s the fun in that?”

he knows you’re just trying to make him feel better but that you probably don’t believe that. he hasn’t forgotten what you were like the first night you met—how you cried and drank so miserably. still, you somehow found it in yourself to joke around like this. it makes him stop moping.

“okay,” he says, nodding and leaning forward with renewed vigor. “so she’s really good at time management. now what?”

you laugh. “she doesn’t need to be good at time management because i learned that mina doesn’t even fucking work, bro.”

the information is jarring enough that he doesn’t fully register what you call him. “what?”

“i called the company you mentioned her working for and pretended to be a recruiter calling for a reference, and they said no one by that name has ever worked there,” you report. “i think she’s making her living off her boyfriends. which is why i said that she only needed you to pay for dates. the others are funding her whole life.”

“oh my god, i hate her,” he says plainly as he thinks of all the “overtime” she had to clock in and the “business trips” she went on and the never-ending complaints about a boss that didn’t even exist. “what kind of fucking sociopath…”

you nod solemnly. “it at least makes our job easier; all we have to do is cut her from her money source.”

“the boyfriends.”

you hum affirmatively. “you and minhyuk are already done, so we just need to get siwoo and jungkook to cut her off. but now that she’s suddenly out two streams of income, i’m sure she’ll be really laying it on thick with those two to make up for it. we’ll have to be a bit creative.”

the craziest, most intrusive thought enters joshua’s head and in the next second, it’s exiting his mouth. “mingyu returns this weekend.”

you raise an eyebrow at the sudden change of topic but you don’t comment on it. “mingyu, the man you kept accusing me of being when i first messaged you?” you ask, sneering at the mere mention of his name. “that mingyu?”

he nods. “yup. there’s always been three of us: me, jeonghan, mingyu. he’s been traveling and he comes back in a few days.”

“okay�� and what exactly does that have to do with ruining mina’s life?”

joshua grins, feeling excitement bubbling in his stomach. “kim mingyu, y/n, is rich. and not just comfortable—actually rich. as in rich enough for mina to drop all her boyfriends and quit scouting rich guys for the rest of her life if she had reason to think he was willing to fully support her.”

“does she not know what one of your best friends looks like…?” you question, making the most judgmental face joshua thinks he’s ever seen. he snickers.

“nope,” he says, popping the p. “mingyu’s been gone for the entirety of our relationship, traveling all over the place, so she never met him and his social media presence is equivalent to your aggretsuko account—for looking, not posting. all he does online is try to prank me.” he laughs more fully now, shaking his head at how perfect it is. “he’s a bored trust fund baby who knows how to act. he’s going to love doing this.”

your mouth drops open in awe, staying there for several seconds before you realize you haven’t said anything. “well,” you mutter, a smile very slowly beginning to spread across your face, “if you say he’s rich, then he must be absolutely rolling in it. and if he’s rolling in it—”

“then mina’s going to take the bait.”

you grin widely now, leaning forward onto the coffee table and shaking your head. “you, joshua hong, are so much more diabolical than you let on.”

he smirks. “learning from the best.”

“oh, she is so over.”

a/n: thanks for your patience! i'm afraid i will require more of it as i continue getting used to my new schedule LOL (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

if you’d like to be added to the tag list, comment here or send me an ask! if you requested to be on the list but weren’t tagged in this post or the reblog, it’s bc you don’t have an age indicator on your page. pls add that (and lmk that you did) if you want to be tagged next time.

part three teaser

"i really lost myself in this, y'know?" you whisper, head tilting up at the sky like maybe you'll find whatever it is you think you lost up there in the never-ending black.

joshua follows your gaze. “i don’t think you lost anything. i think it’s all still there.”

“how would you know? you didn’t know who i was before siwoo changed every aspect of me and my life,” you remind him like he needs to be reminded at all. every day, he found himself thinking about what life would be like if he had met you before siwoo had. he doesn’t need the reminder.

“i know because there’s no way any part of you that’s here with me right now is because of siwoo,” he tells you confidently. “you’re so… funny and smart and confident and reliable and cool. and you want me to believe any of that is because of siwoo?”

that gets him a small smile. “careful or i’ll start to think you have a favorable opinion of me.”

he snorts. “if you don’t already think that, i’m probably not being a good enough friend.”

joshua looks down when you press your shoulder against his. the breeze blows strands of hair into your face, and he suppresses the desire to tuck them behind your ear. “you’re a great friend. probably the greatest i’ve made in my adult life.”

he nods. “you too. all of you—every version of you before, during, and after siwoo. i like them all. even the ones i never got to meet."

"you're so..." you start but never finish.

"hmm?"

"nothing," you say. "thanks."

"for?"

"saying all of those nice things."

"pfft, don't get too big-headed about it," he says, trying to play it cool. you smile. "i just can't stand the idea that you think any part of who you are today is due to an idiot like siwoo."

you sigh and rest your head against his shoulder. he has to actively try to keep his body relaxed when you do. “did you know that the name siwoo means divine intervention?”

joshua shakes his head. “i didn’t.”

“divine intervention,” you repeat, scoffing this time. “like, yeah. he definitely intervened and derailed my whole life, that’s for sure. i have no idea where the fuck ‘divine’ comes from, though.”

“are you sure you didn’t misread it and it’s actually disturbing intervention?”

you laugh and slap his arm softly. “what does joshua mean?” you ask after a few moments of silence.

“uh,” he squints as he tries to remember what his mom told him, “salvation, i think.”

you suddenly lift your head up off his shoulder and look at him, eyes narrowing a little as you very closely and openly study his face. he feels self-conscious, a feeling he seems to have gotten used to around you.

“salvation…” it sounds like you’re testing the word on your tongue. you scan his face for something he doesn’t have the composure to ask about right now. no, his composure is nowhere to be found as your gaze rakes every centimeter of every feature of his face, taking your time like you're simultaneously trying to understand him and committing him to memory. “huh" is all you say when you're done.

“what?” he asks quietly, resisting the urge to pass a hand over his face in case there’s something on it.

“nothing,” you say, face relaxing one again. you smile a little, and even with the lessened intensity, your stare is starting to feel like it’s burning a hole right through him. “it’s just… fitting. joshua. salvation.”

and why exactly would that be fitting?

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