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ktheist · 4 years

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2prettybestfrens | jjk

muses. jeon jeongguk x reader x park jimin ft. kim taehyung

genre. strangers to lovers!au. university!au.

words. 18.2k

drabbles. pjm

feedback.

warnings. mentions of physical insecurities, alcohol use, juul use, mention of adoption, mentions of dysfunctional families, handcuffs - lots of handcuffs, jeongguk crossdressing, too many one-sided pinings lmao

synopsis. you’re in love with kim taehyung who’s in love with jennie kim who’s in love with professor kim namjoon. so park jimin doesn’t exactly fit in all of this, yet he’s always been there in your weakest moments which may or may not be caused by your heartbreak boy - or so jeongguk likes to call him.

oh and jeongguk? you don’t even know jeongguk until that party-gone-awry night where you end up handcuffed together to ponder on what you did.

when you uploaded a snapchat of your darkened room and a single teary-eyed emoji because kim taehyung uploaded one where a beautiful girl was covering her mouth while she giggled, jimin snapped back a ‘why r u awake 😬’ to which you snapped the same darkened room with a slightly different angle and a ‘just cause’. his last snap to you contained a ‘cool wanna call?’ before you dialed him up and ended up talking until 5 in the morning before bidding each other-

“well, good night then,” you’d muttered.

“g’morning,” he’d wished you back in a soft mumble and a hint of sleepiness taking over.

that happened on a friday night. on monday and for the rest of the week, you merely greeted each other in the hallway and went on your days without the inclusion of the other.

when you sat by yourself on the bench on the sidewalk of campus, under the shade of a great old tree a few feet away from your department after being left high and dry when kim taehyung’s friends asked him if he’s joining them to get mcdonald’s which he’d in turn asked if you wanted to tag along and you said you were good only because you never did well in groupies - park jimin sat down next to you, head thrown back as he squinted at the gaps of the leaves where the tiniest of sun rays managed to pass through and dot his face. blonde tresses swaying ever so softly when the wind blew past you.

“so how was finance?” he looked like he was asking the waving branches.

“eh, it was fine, professor kim’s a good teacher,” you shrugged, the sight of jennie suavely smiling and said professor shooting glances at her made you mentally vomit.

“man,” he blew a gust of air from his mouth as he ran a hand through his semi-long tresses, “were we in the same class? because all i remember was dozing off five minutes into class.”

“that’s why you should sit at the front,” you’d suggested.

it was then, did he push himself off the ground and stood up, black and white jacket pushed back as he slipped his hands into the pocket of his jeans. eyes narrowing while his tongue protruded against the inside of his cheek before he went, “you hungry?”

“starving,” you rolled your eyes before collecting your mac and holding it to your chest, bag slung over your shoulders.

the both of you didn’t go to mcdonald’s but the food tasted just as good that day at the cafe in your faculty.

when kim taehyung asked jennie if she was free friday night and the girl turned to you with an endearingly oblivious, “do we have any plans on friday?” and taehyung awkwardly but not so hesitantly corrected, “um, i mean, just you jennie,” the air, without a doubt turned tangibly tense and awkward.

“oh,” jennie’s brows knitted together as she stared at him, as though trying to spot the caption on his forehead as to why he invited only her when everyone knew you and jennie never go anywhere without the other if you didn’t have any prior engagements, “well, ___ and me are going to hang out together so yeah, i’m not free.”

you weren’t sure if she was dumb or playing dumb but you’d found out later that night, that she’d been irritated with kim taehyung’s non-considerate advancements which she’d recently noticed seemed to exclude you ‘i hate people who make plans in front of someone and not invite them’ was her exact word before she followed up with a ‘blockedt’.

but backtrack to when the tension seemed to rise higher than the sky, you were saved by jimin when he came mini-jogging towards you with that adorable boyish smile and crescent eyes, “hey, i was looking for you - you wanna walk to accounting together?”

you’d waved jennie and taehyung goodbye and gladly walked with jimin to class.

and so it goes, with kim taehyung’s eyes lighting like fireworks in the midnight sky when he sees jennie and the girl itching to make a beeline to the opposite side of where he comes from and you shooting her ‘be nice’ looks whilst park jimin pops up now and then in the most convenient time until ‘us’ no longer comprise of you and jennie but also taehyung and jimin.

so much so, some of your casual friends come to you asking for either of the boys when they seem to have something to inform them which you’re not sure why isn’t informable through text. but either way, you’ve become two best friends with additional friends.

maybe said additional friends happen to fall in the top list of cuties in the girls and gays’ books but besides kim taehyung, if you looked, like really really looked at park jimin, you concurred, perhaps he does have the right to be in said list with his unblemished, smooth skin, perfect pink lips and pretty sparkly eyes.

“what?” his lips do the thing where they curl, revealing a pair of perfectly lined white pearls.

“nothing,” you say as you find yourself third-wheeling in taehyung’s bmw with jimin at the back and the first commenting something about his older sister liking to shop at zara as well when jennie asked you if you were free tomorrow to go to the mall near campus.

“i mean i can go with you girls, i have a two-hour gap between classes,” the boy offers.

“oh,” the first laugh trickles out of your mouth without a stop switch, “you’re so cute.”

you can hear jennie snickering in the passenger seat as you turn away from the angle where taehyung could see you in the rear-view mirror, only to come face to face with jimin who seems to get your humor.

“it’s not a big deal,” taehyung shrugs, a tinge of pride in his voice.

“my man,” jimin pats said man on his shoulder, “you don’t know jack shit about women.”

“what?” the older boy asks, perplexed and quite honestly irritated for some reason - but then again, he never seems to like jimin’s quick-to-catch-on nature when it comes to any girls-related topics.

“two hours is not enough to shop, taehyung,” jennie finally decodes the long standing cipher, “we can barely explore one shop.”

by the end of her words, you’re is full out snickering like an unattractive hyena, “i thought you have a sister?”

“i do,” there’s a tinge of confusion in his tone, “she usually goes shopping with her boyfriend.”

“well, how long did it take them to go shopping?” she quizzes, sharing an amused look with jimin.

“uh,” it’s then, do you hear the sound of the screws in taehyung’s brain twisting, “she usually stays over whenever they do.”

“well, whatever you think they did after they went shopping - it’s probably not it,” jimin snickers, shoulderline jolting as he crosses his arms over his chest.

“so cute,” jennie echoes your earlier words, neck craning to look at the two other passengers in the back seat as she gives you a one-eyebrow-lifted look as if to say ‘this is the guy you’re crushing on?’

at that, you shrug, unapologetically mouthing ‘he’s cute’ - in a much different and adoring sense than the first time which jennie must’ve gotten when she shakes her head, a hopeless smile on her lips as she turns to the road again.

you were on your way to the movies then.

“oh my god,” jennie squeals, eyes skimming your specifically-handpicked-by-jennie-kim attire, “you look so cute!”

“only because i agreed to be your live mannequin,” you say rolling your eyes but the curl of a smile on your lips is unstoppable.

“no - because i know what kind of style suits you,” she narrows her eyes in a ‘you know i’m right’ kind of manner, “no offense, your usual style is cute too but it’s more like an... ‘i have a crush, don’t talk to me’ kind of look, you know?”

“am i wrong though?” your eyebrows rise, mimicking her ‘you know i’m right’ look.

she raises a hand, her free one scrolling through her phone as she announces, “i don’t recommend crushing on airheaded guys but you do you sis,” then she looks up, staring at you straight in the eye with the most deadpanned expression, “but if he breaks your heart, i’ll break his leg,” it’s a full, solid moment later, just as you were about to burst out laughing, does she say, “literally.”

and it’s times like these that you fear for another person’s life that isn’t yours - well, taehyung’s life isn’t just anyone’s but - as she turns back to her phone ever so casually.

but before you can fret any further, your phone vibrates, the words ‘chim’ flashing across your screen with a ‘get yo asses down’ and contrasting ‘ur chauffer awaits’ popping a second later.

“get your ass up. they’re here,” you end up saying, pushing your phone into the back pocket of your leather pants that jennie manages to convince you to put on for some unknown reason - that reason going along the lines of ‘kim taehyung’ and ‘jealousy’, but you’re not one to dwell on why one do things they do as you accept jennie’s grabby-motioned hands in request for assistance to be pulled up.

it turns out the shopping plan gets pushed to saturday where taehyung is basically spouting out how he’s a good judge for fashion and that he hasn’t gone to the mall since the semester started which to be fair, was only a month ago.

you’re not sure how jimin ended up tagging along - the two aren’t even the bestest buddies - but someway, somehow, he always manages to get taehyung to pick him up and drop him off whenever the taller man makes plans to go out with you and jennie.

“wow,” jimin is the first to notice, mouth taking on an ‘o’ shape he basically ogles in plain daylight.

“what do you think?” jennie comes up behind you, chin resting on your shoulder as she wraps her arms around your waist then she turns to taehyung who was the last to get out of the car, “doesn’t ___ look pretty, taehyung?”

at the sound of his name rolling off the tongue of the girl he’s been pining for since he laid eyes on her, his gaze lights up - but only to meet jennie’s. one look at you and he turns back to her with the most beautiful smile, “yeah, she looks great - did you help choose the top?”

“actually,” the girl begins with a cheery tone - they’re walking a few steps behind you whilst you and jimin walk together. it’s been like that for as long as you remember, “i picked out the whole fit. it wasn’t easy though because...”

kim jennie walking side-by-side with kim taehyung whilst you with jimin whenever the two boys join you, be it whether to get to a class you all share, to go to the library to study or to get some lunch - has become a familiar view to your mutual friends. so much so, you’ve heard of a rumor going around that you’re a couple of best friends.

like literal couples. you with jimin and jennie with taehyung. thanks to that, no one would have suspected jennie’s relationship with professor kim nor would anyone see through the veil of friendly smiles and amicable conversations to be you pining over your best friend’s alleged boyfriend.

you’ve gotten used to hearing jennie and taehyung’s conversation fade into the background yet never really able to disregard the way taehyung laughs at something your best friend says or the sight of the two walking a few feet ahead with taehyung’s head almost always turned to jennie’s and the girl, oblivious, occasionally cranes her neck to look at him at the beginning of her sentence before directing her gaze to the front where she’s walking.

jennie dislikes taehyung less now, if only because he steers the conversation towards the areas of interest - which he seems to know a lot of. kudos to you for answering his ass-crack o’clock texts of ‘heyyy what kind of movie does jennie like?’s and ‘heyy you girls got any plans tomorrow?’s.

“you look great in those leather pants, by the way,” jimin’s voice makes you turn to the other boy, a boyish smile on his lips, “so let me guess,” his head tilts to the side as the dip between his thumb and index finger hooks itself underneath his chin, eyebrows knitted together in heavy contemplation, “are you going for a good girl gone bad kind of look,” a playful smile tugs on the corners of his lips, “or are you in a secret biker gang and have a biker meeting at 7?”

you lean closer to the man, hand covering your mouth as you whisper, “you didn’t hear this from me but we’re convoying to disney land. i heard it’s more magical during christmas.”

or so you thought your whispering skills were close to perfect but a cat with brown hair pops up from next to you, eyes glinting with excitement, “did someone say christmas?!”

so you end up early-christmas shopping just because of that one word that triggers the warm-hearted-who-ness in her. and that’s how you, taehyung and jimin gets dragged from one store to another. but where your attention gets robbed with material things like-

“oh look, a snow globe with a puppy and a snowman in it!” you shake the see through globe, watching as pseudo snowflakes rain over the unmoving pupper and olaf lookalike before you sigh, “technically the snowman isn’t alive and the doggo is alone by itself in a world where nobody else can enter - and on christmas at that . oh my god, i think i’m gonna cry.”

- but jennie’s interest lies within the holiday-themed clothes. sweaters. costumers. lingerie. you name it and jennie kim tries it on.

“___ - pssst, hey,” there she goes, hiss-whispering your name as if you’re not right in front of the curtain she’s poking her head through, eyes darting around for the two boys who, last you saw, were doing the best to look interested in reindeers and candy printed sweaters.

“what, girl, what?” you whisper back, trying to peek through the gap of the curtain over her head as if you’ve never entered a changing room together.

and as if reading your mind, her bare arm that’s supposed to be wrapped with the floral cotton material of her sleeve - shoots out, hand wrapping around your wrist.

a “wha- ah-!” probably echoed off the walls and turned some heads but you’re no longer in the position to check as you find your back pressed against the wall of the cubicle and red and white lace-wearing jennie posing for you.

“so?” she beams.

“those are so cute, oh my god,” you end up his-whispering whilst trying to keep your voice low, “where did you get them? i only ever saw you checking out - and you have got to admit this - ugly sweaters!”

“girl, the lingerie section is just next to the sweaters,” her eyes seem to disappear behind her crescents as she crinkles her nose, “no but for real, you think i was gonna buy them? i just needed the boys to go away. and. they. finally. did,” she rolls her eyes, “it took awhile but kim taehyung is so persistent.”

“that’s why he’s so... cute,” you hum, eyes shutting close as the picture of the aforementioned man flashes behind your eyes. he’s looking at you with those dark eyes and he’s smiling at you with that magnetic-

“gross! get your ass out of the gutter,” a squeal hits the air as your eyes flutter open to the sight of your best friend’s contorted faces as if-

“um, girl,” you tilt your head just the slightest bit, hand on your hip while your other hand raises in a ‘hold up’ manner, “out of the two of us, you’re the one that’s gotta stop being silly and start wrapping professor kim’s willy.”

a stick of tongue out is all you’ve got as a response before she turns to her phone that’s vibrating at an alarming rate.

that’s when you feign almost-vomit, “did you - ulgh - sent him a - ulgh - nude?”

in any ordinary circumstance, she would have made faces to mimic a much ridiculous series of vomiting in response to your fake almost-vomits but when her smile tugs downwards in a disheartened pout, you practically drop all the ugly sweaters you picked out just for the sake of getting into the christmas spirit and rush over to the girl - which is only one and a half feet away.

“hey, hey, what’s wrong?” you coo as she starts blinking back tears.

“i knew it,” she huffs out a puff of air, hand fanning at her waterline, “i fucking knew it.”

in between the ‘you’re okay’s and ‘everything’s going to be okay’s on your part and jennie’s increasingly growing sobs, you manage to make out the words she blurts out. something along the lines of ‘not spending as much time as we used to’ and ‘because i’m ugly as fuck’. so you hold her tighter, fingers brushing out the potentially forming knots in her hair each time it gets into her tear stained face and gets aggressively pushed out of said face with the back of the hand.

it’s been going on since the start of the third year - the ‘i can’t make it tonight’s and ‘sorry, i’m going to have to rain check’s.

you’ve been a silent spectator of how your best friend’s face lights up whenever she talks about her secret affair with the youngest professor in the business faculty, how he lives up to her private swooning with the smallest ‘miss kim, how was your day’s when he met her in the hallway, ever so casually greeting one of his supposed students like any professor would and treats her to fine-dinings and became the reason why forehead kisses are her favorite kind of kiss now.

he never really tried to hide his fondness for her even at the faculty and though you knew your best friend could get anyone she wanted, you were dubious of whether that anyone actually deserved such a loving, beautiful person. nonetheless, kim namjoon seems to be the exact person who does.

“hey, look at me,” you implore, sitting cross-legged on the floor whilst your knees touch and your fingers twine together in a fingers hug, or so jennie coined the term in your first year, “you’re so beautiful.”

“you don’t mean that,” she mumbles out.

“girl, if i were to be born again and were allowed to choose how i’m going to look - i want your eyes, they like, pull people in - not gonna lie, i started talking to you because you were intimidating but also really alluring. does that make sense?” you hold up a hand when she begins to giggle lightly, head shaking in show of her disagreement.

“but when i did get to know you, you’re the sweetest, squishiest,” a protest falls from her lips as she clasps a palm over the spot on her arm that you just pinched, “person alive. and oh!” you pinch her cheeks next, chuckling at how she crinkles her nose and like the feline she’s always been associated with, “and i want your cute chubs cheeks! and your adorable nose, and your lips,” you pause for the longest moment before retracting, “okay maybe i’d want my lips but your lips are juicy too!”

she makes a sound at the back of her throat, eyes of dried tears rolling, “please, i barely have any lips.”

“i mean, they’re still kissable,” you shoot her a suggestive look, “and i know out of the two of us, one would kiss you if she’s a little bit more fruity.”

“okay, maybe you think i’m kinda pretty,” she gives in.

but that’s not enough for you,“bih, you’re a literal goddess,”

“i’m not but anyway beauty is subjective so maybe namjoon’s perspective’s changed.”

“nope - nu-uh, we can cry and just... let ourselves feel the emotion that’s been bottling up and burst at one single message but what we’re not gonna do is mope around, being sad all day because of our presumptions that someone else thinks we’re not good enough or pretty enough. because you are and i would die for you.”

she hiccups, “i don’t know if i would die for you but i’d sacrifice my first born for you.”

“ew,” you feel your nose crinkling, “no, you’re not gonna trap me with a kid - that’s a trap right there and i’m not falling for it.”

jennie ends up laughing too loudly that one of the store attendants end up kicking you out. jimin and taehyung followed suit a second later, acting like they didn’t know you two but walking towards you anyway. you’re not sure if they noticed jennie’s swollen eyes but neither mentioned anything about it. instead, taehyung suggests- “since we’re already out, you guys wanna go to chanyeol’s party?”

so you end up going to the party. the apartment’s too cramped for your liking but jennie’s found some mutual friends of yours that she’s dancing and laughing with. and maybe that’s why you haven’t bolted right out of the door the moment you stepped in.

jimin found some of his own friends. they’re probably not from the faculty since you don’t remember seeing them around and taehyung-

you’re not quite sure why taehyung is following you around like a lost puppy and trying to make small talks with you. internally, your heart’s doing flips but your head’s been giving out one of those obnoxiously loud sirens with lights as red as the cup you’re holding.

“...and you know, it’s pretty cool how they managed to attract foreign investors within six months of starting up their business,” taehyung is saying, the awkward shrug and eyes glued to the ground telling you that he’s not so into whatever he’s saying either.

“yeah, like, they definitely got lucky or something,” you nod in agreement.

funny how the blare of the music is barely allowing you to have a proper conversation but all you hear is deafening silence as you stand five feet apart - the kind of distance that screams acquaintances but less than friends and most definitely not lovers.

but then he stands on his two feet instead of leaning his weight on just one - and he looks at you right in the eye for the first time that night. and your stupid heart goes fluttering like the petals in a field.

“hey, i don’t wanna be a nosy or anything but,” he pauses for the briefest second, eyes slanting to somewhere on the dance floor where you think you last saw jennie and then he refocuses back to you. but you already know where his mind and soul remains, “what happened today? like, jennie’s acting off, like something’s bothering her and she’s kinda drinking more than she should and it kinda feels like she doesn’t want me around.”

it takes a moment to ponder on how much you should say before your words become affirmation and affirmation will probably lead to more assumptions and - “well, you should ask her.”

“uh, i- she doesn’t- i don’t know how - i don’t wanna annoy her, you know what i mean? and since you’re best friends, i thought maybe you’d-” he’s scratching the back of his head when you cut him off.

“there’s your answer,” you raise the half-empty cup that’s been lying undrunken in your hands, “if you’re not gonna square up and tell her how you feel, then you, my friend,” your stomach drops at the word but you manage to land a solid pat on his arm, “are going to live the rest of your live like this - wondering what the hell is going on because you’re really not sure where you stand. and i get it, confessing to someone is terrifying and depending on jennie’s answer, you might or might not be able to talk to her ever again but it’s better to get it out there. feelings are like farts, you know?” the way his brows come together in a confused what-the-hell moment, is adorable, “hold it in and you’ll feel like something’s not right and it is never going to be until you get all of it out of your system.” and with a nod and a tight-lipped smile, you leave him with a “good luck,” before wandering over to the dance floor, not sure where you’re going because jennie, lisa chaeyoung and jisoo’s not where you thought they were and the only less crowded but still suffocating part of the apartment is the kitchen where you don’t want to risk going back and seeing taehyung there, unmoving in the spot where you left him.

amid all of it, you almost get your shoulder dislocated before a hand shoots out and pulls you back on your two feet whilst you raise your cup higher in hopes to save its contents from spilling.

the man that caught you looks between you and your raised cup for two solid seconds before a grin tugs on his face and he clicks his own cup to yours, “cheers.”

“aha, yeah,” you laugh as you feel his grip on your arm loosening and you pull it back to your side like a robot, taking a sip of your nicely saved drink.

“thanks for not letting me fall,” you say a moment later, after thanking whatever deity is out there that allows you to get your first drink into the right pipe without feeling the need to cough out loud.

“no problem,” even in the poor lighting, you can easily catch the sight of pearly whites lined up perfectly amid an alluring smile, that is, before a pair of brows knit together in what seem like an unresolvable conundrum, “hey, you don’t happen to...” he pauses for the longest moment, eyes slanting to scan the crowd and making you do the same until he commands your attention back with his next words, lips curling back into the breathtakingly attractive smile as words tumble past them, “...see two pretty best friends in here, do you?”

and that’s when your interest, wherever it is, plunges straight down to the ground and into the ether, “oh,” your vision shakes as you nod repeatedly before forcing out a dry “ha ha” which isn’t meant to disguise your displeasure at all - if anything, a wave of satisfaction crashes over you when his smile falters, “yeah, that - that’s really funny,” you say plainly, smile still plastered on your face.

��o-kay,” he drags out the word for half a second, teeth clenched together in growing panic as all traces of humor fade away, “...joke too old?”

“well, let’s see,” you feel your index finger tapping your chin as you throw your gaze up to the ceiling, “i get it, tell the ugly best friend she’s ugly but in a joking way,” you shrug, “you don’t need to rub it in my face cause i know and yes it’s getting old.”

it takes a whole solid moment of blaring music and non-caring half-way-drunken college students continuing to grind against one another and this insanely attractive stranger staring at you with jaws on the ground, for you to wave a dismissive hand.

“you know what? don’t worry, jennie’s not here, thankfully or she would’ve blo-” air fills your throat and cuts you off when he frowns, “who?”, to which you raise your eyebrows, “je-” you almost choked, “jennie?”

he shakes his head the second time, bottom lip jutting out in an additional- “nope” gesture as he continues with “never heard of her,” after your “jennie... kim?”

so you go one, “kinda cute height, long hair, brunette-” he shrugs, “nope- doesn’t ring a bell,” in the middle of your, “-fierce cat-like eyes but adorable as heck personality?”

in the end he wins with a final word of, “no - nope,” after a whole solid moment of your silenced disbelieve and him drawing his pondering session to a close.

“oh,” escapes your lips before you can even register, “so - it was- like-”

“yeap,” he nods, “it was-”

“a joke?”

“a joke.”

you both announce at the same time. the tones may differ but the essence is there, leaving one to stare at the ground in shame for having snapped at a complete stranger and the other staring with unapologetic eyes.

“i’m sorry,” you finally manage to utter, shoulderline falling with your walls of pride, “i thought it was one of those micro aggressive jokes people throw around just because they can’t straight out tell someone they’re ugly-”

but the words seem to enter through one ear and go out the other when his brows begin to knit together for the nth time of the night - and in a matter of less than thirty minutes at that - when he declares before you get to properly end your sentence, “you’re pretty as hell. why did you think i’d randomly try to crack a joke to a stranger and risk pissing pants off on the off chance she took it badly... which you did. i’m sorry for pushing the wrong button.”

“oh,” but just like him, your brain short-circuits and you seem to only truly hear the first part of what he’s saying as just like any girl - you curse yourself as you - shy away from his gaze, hand going up to tuck your hair behind your ear before you slowly peek up through your lashes, “thanks,” you blink once, shrugging, “and it’s fine i get that joke a lot - i don’t usually care, i don’t know what got into me tonight.”

but before he manages to say anything, the loudspeaker starts reverberating with the sound of someone clearing their throat and a “how’s everyone doing?” and a dismissive “alright, alright you might be wondering ‘who the eff is this guy’ right? yea, yea, i know, but-” he stops, eyes scanning the crowd for a suspenseful effect, “-but you’re gonna wanna hear this,” to which a groan erupts from the crowd, so he quickly gets to the point “don’t panic,” most of the time, that’s exactly when you should panic, “so, the police are coming.”

his name is jeon jeongguk and he goes to your university’s rival university. his hair is actually a shade of rich deep brown that forms wavy ends and contrasts glaringly against his sharp jawline under the fluorescent lighting which also highlights his pearly whites that remind you of bunnies when his lips curl over them when he smiles.

to think that he’s doing that now while the police officer, a man in his 40′s and on the shorter side of the spectrum is ten steps from marching up to you with a disapproving gaze on his face.

his hair falls over his face in half ringlets, an excited glint in his eyes, “he’s mad cause we’re clean.”

a guy somewhere a few people away from you is sobbing increasingly loudly with every step the officer takes before he comes to a stop in front of you, eyes skimming each faces one by one until he stops on you.

“you,” he announces before sighing deeply, “you look like a kid who wouldn’t cause trouble, why are you here?”

“uh,” the chain around your wrist feels cold but jeongguk’s pinky that’s touching yours as your thighs brush together - is warm, “i...” you pause, in search for words before settling with a disappointing confession “i don’t know,”

the officer echoes your statement with a critical emphasize on the ‘don’t’.

and because of that, you blink once, “in fact, does anyone know what they’re doing at all? if you think about it we’re just astronomical particles in this vast universe which is called the milky way,” you pause, if only squint at his sparse mustache, “why is it even called milky way? like, there’s absolutely no scientific evidence that milk exists in outer space or do you reckon the guys that named it just feels like drinking some milk while they were-”

by the end of it, a few snickers have escaped from the people you and jeongguk were caught with, the aforementioned man, having turned his head the other way as his shoulders jolt silently and it’s only then does the officer’s increasing confused expression contorts into that of a maddened bore, “keep hanging out with him and you’re gonna find yourself behind bars.”

“that hurts my feelings, detective yoo,” jeongguk confesses, forehead creasing as his uncuffed hand holds the spot on his chest where his heart should be.

the man finally shakes his head, motioning to a younger officer who looks just about your age to start unlocking everyone’s cuffs - there were a few other people you’ve never seen before dragged out of the vicinity and to the station. he speaks a moment later, “you kids are lucky because none of you are associated with the ones down the hallway - we were initially going for them. busted their asses and found over a hundred kilograms of cocaine.”

once your cuffs are off and you get your phone back, you’re fast-scrolling through the messages on the notification window before swiping up and searching for jennie’s contact. it turns out she, taehyung and jimin guessed you were one of the few who didn’t make it and waited for you near the building where the party was busted.

“oh my god,” jennie is the first to dash into your arms as if she hadn’t seen you since forever, “i’m so sorry i left you!”

“well to be fair, i left you,” you mumble, your arms banded around her waist while hers around your neck.

and just when you thought the melodrama would end when she pulls away, you find yourself staring at sparkly-eyed jennie and the most heartbreaking downturned lips, “i will never,” she pauses, “ever let you out of my sight.”

you’re exactly against that idea - after all, you’ve made plans to buy a beach house and move in together in your olden days once you’ve poiso- burried your husbands who died of a totally natural cause.

it’s only after breaking apart from a second hug, do you realize the man standing not-so-awkwardly five feet away.

“don’t mind me,” jeongguk holds up his hands, “i don’t watch much drama but i might after all this.”

“jeongguk,” you can’t help the smile that creeps up your face at his joke, “this is jennie,” then you turn to the girl who still has her arm around your waist, and you her, “jennie, jeongguk.”

“have i seen you before?” her cat-like eyes narrows just the slightest bit, as though if she tried hard enough, she’d see the pieces of moving memories that’ll somehow point out where she claims to have met him - but you don’t doubt it if they have, jennie gets invited to a lot of parties and hookups.

you should’ve known when jeongguk’s eyes sweep over you with a playful glint in them as he begins, “that’s funny because ____ here-” that from this point forward, that you shouldn’t have put your foot forward and prance at him like a predator with a secret, hand clasped against a surprisingly hard chest before your brain can register what you’re doing.

and when it does, you’re left to awkwardly pat his chest in what you hope to be friendly gesture whilst you force out a laugh, “that- that was really funny jeongguk,” you turn to jennie who, having known you all your life easily catches onto your out-of-character laugh but says nothing, so you point at the guy you’re basically and is still groping - to which you’ve finally tear your hand off his body, “he’s a funny guy.”

“and who exactly is this funny guy?” taehyung comes up on your left - you think you catch sight of his sleek bmw parked on the other side of the street where he must’ve strutted up from in his beige jacket with his hands buried in its pockets.

“just...” you trail off before your brain completely fries and you blurt out, “some guy.”

and that’s when jeongguk decides to call you out, “some guy? i helped you through a life lesson.”

you attribute the alcohol in your system that’s slowing down the neurons and disables you from thinking before you act when you roll your eyes, “in case you didn’t realize, you were in there laughing your ass off when i had to have my own back while that officer looked like he was a word away from dragging me to the police station for talking back to a law enforcement.”

“you talked back to an officer?” jennie chirps, her jaw falling to the ground as her cat eyes widen in excitement and astonishment.

“she did,” jeongguk nods at the girl, a displaced proud smile on his lips before he looks back to you, “brought out the boomer in him too.”

“you pissed off an officer?” this time, it’s jimin who pops up from behind taehyung, before casually nodding to jeongguk with a “hey man.”

“i mean, it was probably ___’s sheer guts and rebellious streak alone that helped free us,” jeongguk goes on, eyes glinting with amusement in the briefest moment they slant to meet yours but they’re gone too soon as he redirects your attention to jimin and jennie’s overpouring questions.

and because jennie wanted to hear more about how jeongguk embellished what went down, taehyung ends up agreeing to give the stranger a ride as you get squished between two men with jennie constantly pulling on the strap of the seatbelt to look over to the backseat, her mouth constantly dropping with every word jeongguk utters like he’s some well-known storyteller.

by the time the car rolls to a stop in front of his apartment building, jennie’s shooting you approving, borderline provocative looks your way - you don’t doubt that if she had any power in her hand to put both you and jeongguk in the same room, lock the door and swallow the key, she would in a heartbeat.

“hey,” jeongguk leans over the doorframe, “can i talk to you for a sec?” it’s the way he tilts his head to the side on a 35 degree angle, paired with that dangerous smile he’s been shooting you in the briefest span of moments jennie’s head is turned to the road and jimin’s gave is thrown outside of the window and taehyung isn’t stealing glances from the rear-view mirror - that makes you want to shake your head in rejection to his request and prance out of the car like a predator in heat at the same time.

but instead, you calmly slide over to the side now vacant side and slip out of the car, closing the door behind you so no ears can eavesdrop.

the scent of his cologne wafts stronger into your senses now that you have no police officers to be cautious of nor any embellished stories to correct.

that, or maybe it’s the way he’s got you trapped against the car door and his body, right arm placed perfectly on the roof of the car, next to your head.

“bout time you give me your @, no?” the corner of his lips tilts higher into a cocky smirk.

“um, yea,” you begin, “i think it’s better if we leave into the night like strangers with stories, you know? and if we’re meant to find each other, we will,” you swear on your grandmother’s grave that you will never go to any parties anymore, “makes a good plot for a drama,” eyes going wide and mouth taking on an ‘o’ shape, you continue, “didn’t you say you were gonna start watching those?”

his shoulderline shakes as he chuckles, head dropped it tilts up, eyes capturing yours, “i’m not falling for that,” his announcement is plain and simple and yet you’re forced to put twice the effort in your smile as to not let it falter, “after getting my chest groped and caressed, i deserve at least-”

“it was a friendly pat, mind you,” you correct, smile still glued to your face before rolling your eyes, “but snapchat is as far as i’m willing to go.”

“works for me,” the screen of his phone flashes with a dark mode keypad splayed over it - you’re not sure how he unlocked it without taking those glinted eyes off you but he did. so you swipe the phone off his hand and send yourself a request through his account.

“i’m gonna open your snap and leave you on read!” you announce, and he laughs, “alright, bet!”

and with that, he waves at you using the same phone he told you to put your number in, taking a few steps backward, allowing you room to breathe properly again before he whirls on his heels and walks through the glass double doors.

you don’t wait any longer than you have to, shivering from the cold night air when you slip into the car.

“did you give him your number?!” jennie practically screams.

“no but i gave my snapchat only because he looked like he wouldn’t sleep a wink at night if i didn’t,” you shrug.

and that’s how kim jennie gets it into her head that you’re going to get your first-boyfriend-cherry popped. or so she likes to believe.

but that’s the least of your concern for the greater one comes in a devil with black jeans and matching plain t-shirt and timberlands and a lit up screen at exactly three something in the am, right after you’re done with a hot shower and in a middle of towel drying your hair and putting on your night routine skincare.

you open the text revealing a night view of a cityscape from a window which room is surrounded by darkness and a transparent horizontal strip with a ‘❄️ ’ in the middle from a goldenjks.

so you snap a picture of your skincare products next to a mirror with you and a towel on your head, face blocked by your hand that’s holding your phone, choosing to send ‘🍜’.

and so it goes, the snap war that erupts between you and user goldenjks throughout the night which, after you’d gotten into bed with the lights off, basically includes snaps of your darkened room and his more superior window view.

before long, you started texting on snapchat about how the police officer seems to know him and how-

goldenjks

u were p chill for someone who got arrested for the 1st time

you’re giggling in the darkness at 5:23 am.

you

cs ik i didn’t do anything wrong

duh

and he mentions something about a sobbing kid that was made to wait with you and nobody really did anything to comfort him.

goldenjks

that coulda been u if i wasn’t there probably

you roll your eyes but you can feel your muscles becoming sore from the way your lips are stretching from ear to ear.

then it starts with how taehyung didn’t saying anything throughout the ride up until the car rolled to a stop in front of jeongguk’s place.

goldenjks

r u guys using him for his car???

cs same

i would 2

you

wtf

we’re not 😭😭

and without much thought, you end up spilling a not-so-secret but not-so-well-known truth.

you

welp

he’s using me to get close to jennie so

ig i should use him for his car

oof

goldenjks

ooof

so let me guess

u can’t say no to him cs u have the biggest crush on him

“what the hell?” you mumble to yourself, smile pulled down into a frown, but before you can type out a reply, two more pop up on his side.

goldenjks

and jimin head over heels for u

you

🧢 🧢 🧢

u funny 😂😂😂

goldenjks

fr fr tho 😔😔😔

i would b too

all of a sudden, a boy with the softest blonde hair and crescent eye smiles floods your throughts. you and jimin might have been casual friends for the longest time and only until recently started hanging out together - and he may or may not hold confidential information about the littlest details of the lack of smile on your face and the blank snaps in your stories whenever you’re down.

but to say he’s reacting such way because he’s into you would be a total scam.

so you shake your head, laughing out loud, “nah can’t be.”

you

alright imma 😴😴😴

to which jeongguk tests back a gnight and after one whole solid minute, a text u tmr?

you leave him on read.

“like, who does he think he is?” you huff, burying the plastic spoon into the ice cream before scooping up a chunk of neapolitan flavored goodness and directing it into your mouth, “he literally met us just last night and he’s spouting shit like he knows us for years?”

“i don’t know,” jennie humps, tongue darting out to lick the remnants of strawberry ice cream on her upper lips before she goes on with a smile that screams ‘just get together already’, “it’s kinda hot to me when guys know shits, you know what i mean?”

you’ve managed to avoid jimin and taehyung at all costs and sneak to the ice cream parlor that’s five minutes away from campus where you spilled your guts out about how you got unreasonably irritated by the long running joke, about how jeongguk’s hand wrapped around your wrist and he pulled you out of the way of the chaotic college students who were rushing to get out of the small, cramped apartment and how you stopped him from relaying your disbelief of his lack of knowledge about her.

“like, i flipped out at him because of some stupid joke,” you shrugged, hands fiddling with each other while a coat of smoke wafted over the newly scooped and paid-for ice cream.

your name rolled off her lips before she stared at you with her hands on hear heart, “i- i didn’t know you would go so far as fight a guy for me for calling me ugly,” then she laughed, “but you don’t have to. girl, we been knew i’m ugly as fuck.”

your jaw hit the ground at the word she used to describe herself before you blinked and came back to your senses and aggressive defenses, “oh my god, i’m the ugly one and you’re the literal goddess - like, i shouldn’t even be looking at you. i should be looking at your sole. you should be stepping on me - step on me! now!”

a yelp resonated into the air as you groped around for jenni’s left leg in an attempt to lift her foot to make her step on you to which you both ended up laughing hysterically after realizing that she was wearing a skirt and the way you were sitting may or may have not resulted in an array of possible outcomes.

“oh my god, do you think she saw my panties?” she meant the woman in her late 40′s who were shooting disapproving eyes at the both of you as she scrolled through her phone, seeming to be waiting for someone before placing an order.

“you just flashed a poor old woman who came to have some ice cream,” you were hunched over, hand covering your face as you stole glances her way which didn’t hold long because you ended up giggling with the girl when you caught each other’s eyes.

“you think she likes what she sees?” jennie’s brows rose suggestively and you knew what she was going to say next before the words even leave her mouth, “you think maybe i should tell her about my onlyfans?”

it was a few bursts of giggles later, that you’d finally managed to talk properly. or probably because jennie’s question brought out an unwelcomed emotion that you pushed to the back of your conscience last night and for the most part, managed to forget, “so,” her brows were wiggling like earthworms on her forehead, “did he text you?”

that was what spurred the whole confession and up to the moment where you spilled the contents of the unfairly attractive stranger’s text.

“i don’t know, he kinda went overboard,” you shrug and jennie’s hand reaches over yours, patting it once with what you assume is an understanding manner.

“sweetie, i get it,” she announces, “you feel exposed because he said the absolute truth and only the truth and now you’re projecting your embarrassment on him through disdain.”

silence follows her statement.

and staring.

on your part, that is.

“girl,” you blink once, eyebrows arched, “whatever you’re having - i want some.”

that warrants a bout of giggles from said girl before she scoops her last bite of ice cream and hook arms with you as you walk towards the trashcan to dump your empty paper bowls, “no but for real, i like jeongguk-”

“then you date him,” you announce, nodding in approval.

“i like how he brings this... this... fire out of you, you know?” she quizzes to which you shake your head in a ‘no, i don’t know’ kind of manner as she goes on, “and i already have namjoon so,” she sing songs as she starts to skip in the middle of the mall and since your arms are linked together, you end up taking larger steps to accommodate to hers before deciding that you can’t root your feet down to slow her down into a normal pace. so you join her, skipping to the exit where you wait for your uber.

“you guys made up?” the question comes out in a calm, poised manner once you’ve both slipped into the backseat of the uber - you’d like to believe you’re doing a pretty good job on trying to conceal your spiking disbelief and the need to whoop someone’s ass. that someone being a girl who just pledged an oath to choose herself first instead of some man who-

“i texted him and told him how i felt with him cancelling on our plans and when i didn’t get any reply, i turned off my phone and got into bed because i’m not gonna mope over someone who won’t appreciate me,” at that, you give her an approving nod, “but then he came knocking on my door at like 5 in the morning in yesterday’s suit because apparently he has a deadline to meet and he’s been bending over backward trying to finish it on time and he brought his laptop with him too and managed to submit on time after explaining everything. he said he tried calling multiple times but obviously it went to voice mail so... yeah we made up.”

“that’s...” you trail off, only to stare at your friend’s beaming face like she’s just had one of the best facials on earth, “wow, i... i don’t know what to say now that we know he’s not trash.”

“i know,” you feel her pat the back of your hand sympathetically, “and that’s what a man is,” and when she looks at you with eyes that have one goal in her mind, you know not to start listening because the facts are going to bruise your pride and hit the nail on the head more times than you’d-

“liking a boy has more downs than ups but i’m not too worried because you’re a self-loving bitch and i love that for you but kim taehyung is not it,” she says all that with a straight face.

“yeah,” you mumble, thumbs fiddling together as you turn your attention to them as if it’s the most magnifying thing in the world to find out that identical parts of your body could move on their own with just a thought.

“okay, but i swear, he’s so oblivious all the time-” the girl stops short of her lament, you can see her head tilting to peer at you at a slightly different angle as if to see traces of an impostor on you, “wait, what?”

“we got into a fight last night- i don’t know if it’s even a fight but you know how i go off in a tangent when i get like annoyed, right?” you steal a glance at her for half a second before going back to your thumbs, “so i kind of did that to him before the dude announced the cops were coming and we haven’t really talked to each other since then.”

before any of you could say anything else, the sound of a cough echoes in the air, warranting your attention to turn to the driver, a woman in her mid-thirties. you return her smile through the rear-view mirror, “if you don’t mind me saying this - i know you girls are smart as fuck, but you sound just as dumb as that guy - whoever he is because it’s completely normal to get mad at someone you’re crushing on and still have a crush on them but sounds to me like you’re thinking one fight is the end of the world for you.”

“sis, please, don’t encourage her,” jennie talk-whispers as she leans forward just the slightest bit and covers the side of her mouth with her hand.

“well, we’re not really friends,” you begin and jennie groans - you two went over this and agreed to disagree with each other’s wildly contrasting views about crushing on crushes that could crush you but the lady hasn’t heard it so you’re not going to stop lamenting over it, “and whatever i do, it’s like i’m teetering on a tight rope because one wrong move and he probably won’t talk to me ever again and i’m not like miserably crushing on him - like, whatever we are right now - it lets me see him every day and he has the cutest smile and the prettiest fingers- i just - it’s better than not talking to each other forever, you feel?”

“um, don’t i?” she rolls her eyes, as if coming from a place filled with oblivious boys and hopeless crushes.

her name is solar and she does uber as a part time while working 9 to 5 at a firm that she claims to pay better but still not enough for her to save up for her wedding on the side and she and her fiance knew each other since high school but she’s seen him date two girls and get his heartbroken by both before he actually noticed her, the friend that’s always been there for him through his heartbreaks.

coming from someone who isn’t jennie and her alarming obsession with breaking parts of bodies of people who hurt her loved ones, solar’s view is somewhat a mixture of you and your best friend’s which still bases on one simple fact: whatever you say to and about taehyung comes bouncing back at you like a ping pong ball because-

“you have a crush on him and he has a crush on jennie,” she surmises before looking over at the aforementioned girl, “and people with crushes act like idiots- by the way how do you feel- like how do you handle the guy’s advancements and still aren’t awkward with each other because i have never seen...”

when the car rolls to a stop in the parking lot of your faculty, she finally turns to the two of you, her bleached blonde hair framing her face in waves as the silence - on you and jennie’s part as you both share glances at the indicative joke opening - hangs in the air with a sort of tension you can feel.

might even bite back like you did with jeongguk but you’re more in control now.

“...two pretty best friends who are still best friends when there’s a guy that comes between them.”

“oh thank god,” jennie sighs, laughing and you’re nodding in agreement, “thanks for not-” and your best friend echoes, “yeah,” before you can even finish your sentence, “-saying that cliche joke or like for giving your own twist to it,” waving a dismissive hand, you address her initial worries, “and taehyung doesn’t-”

“he doesn’t-” jennie chimes in.

“-come between us.”

you both say at the same time.

“oh my god, that’s great, you know my best friend tried sleeping with my fiance behind my back once,” solar crinkles her nose, “wasn’t a good experience but anywho, i’m so glad to see two girls having each other’s back like you guys. makes me want to...”

it’s a few moments later that you finally hand her the money and murmur out appreciations for being such a great uber driver along with some ‘give me five stars! thanks!’ and ‘we will! have a nice one!’

you both part ways in the hallway when you’re supposed to go for marketing and she has to go for personnel management. jimin’s already reserved a seat for you, waving at you to catch your attention which he succeeds splendidly. by the start of the second year, you’ve opted to sit together in classes you have in common, though not as close as the front as you’d like, it’s better than sitting at the back where you can hear the buzz of flies - you mean people, talking.

“are you doing anything this friday night?” jimin asks amidst people zooming out of the class as if they don’t want to be there for longer than a minute after being dismissed.

that, or they have another class to get to on the other side of the campus.

“uh, just me or me and jennie ‘you’?” you dumbly question.

that warrants a chuckle from the boy, “you and jennie... unless you wanna come alone?”

a hum vibrates in your chest as you narrow your eyes at him, as though if you looked close enough, you can see through his skull and right into his thoughts.

but you can’t so that’s why you’re spouting out another question, “where exactly are you inviting us again?”

“so, like, you know i dance right?” he drops his gaze for the briefest moment before coming back up to lock it with yours, “it’s very lowkey - just something i do for fun, but we kind of have a dance off with other teams every month and this month’s round is this friday night so i was wondering if you wanna come?” then he quickly adds, “with jennie, of course.”

to be frank your weekends are as boring and dull as it gets - the party-busted incident was a rare exception - but you and jennie are quite content with it. you start having more to do and places to venture out to when taehyung and subsequently jimin join your group of two and made it a group of four but for the most part, if you’re not going anywhere, your weekend is usually spent with watching movies and burying yourself in work for the rest of it.

“bet,” your reply might have come a tad bit delayed judging from how his brows rise to the ceiling and his eyes go round as he chirps, “really?”

“yeah, just text me or jennie the location the day before,” you request as you both walk down the hallway.

“great- yeah, i’ll... i’ll text you the place,” jimin beams even as he bumps into someone behind him, turning around to lower his head and mumble out an oh sorry before turning back to you, “i got another class but i’ll text you- on thursday - not today, of course.”

and you wave back, shouting out an ‘okay bye!’

then he’s gone like the wind.

the days pass by like a breeze.

kim taehyung caught you in the middle of waiting for jennie’s class to end whilst also finishing up some work in the library. he knew your favorite spot and he knew where you’d usually be - but you had an inkling that you weren’t exactly the reason why he memorized these little things. he waved at you in greeting and you waved back. you would’ve pretended he didn’t exist after that and go back to your laptop if he didn’t hold up his phone screen with blank white space and blue and grey bubbles on the side.

so of course you picked up your phone, noticing that there were already three wiggling dots when you tapped on his name.

kth: hey

you met his gaze once, as if to affirm that he meant to send it. when he shota half, almost pleading smile, you typed out a reply.

you: hey what’s good

kth: nothing

kth: just waiting for a friend

seeing as there was not really a conversation going on where jennie wasn’t involved and how the boy’s blatant dismissal in addressing the big, giant elephant in the room, taehyung must’ve had seen the way your lips pursed into an irritated pout before his phone vibrated.

you: cool

and then you were back to your laptop, typing sentences out and backspacing because of its incoherent nature, or lack of quality or whatever reason that stopped you from doing your job before kim taehyung’s arrival.

then he started whispering “hey, uh, ____,” from across the table. upper body leaned to the front as if it’d help enunciate his words.

you took your sweet time taking out your airpods from each individual ear and placing them down next to your mac before finally arching a brow at the boy, “what?”

“hey,” he repeated, this time with a frozen mid-wave, “hi, how you doing?”

“great thanks,” there was a minimal effort on your part to disguise your ‘what even?’ expression on your face as you picked up your right airpod first - only to be stopped by the boy’s-

“i’m sorry.”

it’s clean and short but his face made up for conveying his genuinity.

“why are you saying sorry?” it didn’t mean you were going to let him off the hook easy.

“well, because...” he trailed off for the briefest moment but the unconcealable bop of his adam’s apple isn’t really helping him appear any more convincing, “i was being pushy...” he looked to you for an indication of him being on the right track to which you were not sure if he did get any but he still went on with his wits and his will - it took you everything not to gush over how cute he looks with his panic-blinking and pretty lips moving as if to say something but no words coming out, “...and i was generally being an annoying little shit.”

“and?” you pressed on, blinking once as if to paint a look of unbotheredness.

“...and...” he echoes, eyes darting from your phone to somewhere behind you and then something next to it but only silence fills the space between you and him.

“alright, i’m gonna be real with you,” leaning back, you cross your arms over your chest, “i know you talk to me when you need something and i don’t really care - well i do, but i just bottle it up until it one day burst out, you know what i’m saying? so yea, if you’re wondering if that night was me blowing up on you, it kinda was and it wasn’t because you were making small talks with me just to poke into my best friend’s business - well, it kinda is but like not in that way, you follow? what i mean is.. don’t let me catch you sneaking behind jennie’s back asking personal shits about her that you don’t think she’s going to disclose even if you straight up ask her - that’s sus, taehyung.”

by the end of it, he was staring at you like you had two horns and a tail swaying around behind you. but you concur, that may or may have not been your inner self coming to light - just a hypocrite criticizing someone for doing the things she would have done, if she wasn’t already doing it, if she was in his shoes.

and to be quite frank, taehyung’s shoe size is probably a few inches bigger than yours but if they had laces, you would’ve been able to put them on and tied them up to accommodate your ego.

so taehyung didn’t - couldn’t say anything in response to your second time going off into a tangent and because of what he did, at that. he stopped texting you altogether and only talked to jennie whenever you weren’t around and left before you got to them if he saw you coming his way - jennie’s actually.

either way, jennie wasn’t as elated as you thought she’d be once you told her that you called taehyung out on his bullshit.

“um, i’ve always wanted to tell him about me and namjoon so he’d give up - you were the one who didn’t let me,” she might or might not have said something along the lines of you making her “lead him on all because you wanted to an eye candy to look at every day.”

“what do you mean?” your forehead was creasing a thousand folds.

“not that i’m pointing fingers,” she went on, eyes glued to the pairs of indoor shoes in the corner of the room and anywhere but your eyes, “but i’m like, cool with or without him around but you sort of said ‘okay, then it’s cool if he comes with us right?’ and you were making puppy eyes and i couldn’t no to that-”

and so you were laughing dryly, “aha- wha- what so it’s my fault that he’s being a total wuss and won’t square up?”

“i didn’t say that,” jennie’s reply came a heartbeat later which meant yes, it was.

so now you’re not talking to your best friend and neither are you talking to the boy who’s crushing on her. which leaves you a lot of free time to finish up your work in time to hop into a bullet train and then an uber and get to the building where jimin’s dance off is held.

you’re in the middle of texting the boy a ‘sorry, might b late. i didn’t know there’d be a line 😭’ when a figure comes up to you from the corner of your eye.

fitted in black jeans and matching tucked in t that shows off his slender waist and beanie, the only thing that isn’t black is probably his white-yellow timberlands, “so you weren’t kidding when you said you were gonna leave me on read.”

“you know, it’s so cute that you think you’re worth the reply at all,” you blink, eyes going wide and jaw hanging loose from shock, “this... this... confidence - where do you get it? seriously, tell me because i have never seen someone with such immaculate self-absorbance.”

jeongguk’s head moves as he nods in admittance, hands buried in his pocket before he looks up at you. that familiar glint in his eyes is telling you that whatever he has up his sleeve, you’re not going to be able to refuse.

“you know, eugene over there and i are homies,” he nods towards the burly tall man at the front who’s mainly the reason there’s a line in the first place - one that no one seems to dare cut, “i could get you in faster.”

“oh my god, look what that self-absorbance’s got you believing,” you put one, sympathetic hand on his shoulder as your free hand goes to cover the spot on your chest where your heart is, “i’m so happy for you,” you glance over to the not-declining-anytime-soon line behind you, “but sometimes, even confidence can’t get you into invites-only events.”

to any other person, it must’ve looked like you and jeongguk are friends - friendly acquaintances hitting best buddies at the very least. but something in the way his grin curling sweetly on his lips and the curve of the half ringlet of his hair touching the corners of his onyx eyes, makes your toes curl inwardly and your stomach churn with a sort of emotion you can’t pinpoint.

and because of that, you know there won’t be any sort of friendship forming between you and jeongguk.

he leaves you with an amused smirk and a “see you inside,” and marches up to eugene, the two sharing an uncomplicated handshake before the man steps to the side and lets him in.

well.

it takes you another ten minutes of standing in line and assuring jimin that he doesn’t need to rush out and risk having his team go without him when their turn comes. which according to jimin, ‘isn’t anytime soon - they let the bigger teams go first’.

but then jimin knowing jimin, that probably meant soon enough.

when you’re finally on the front of the line, crumpled up ticket in hand, eugene gives you a once over and nods at his not-as-burly-but-just-as-scary-looking friend.

“follow me,” and with that, she struts in through the door but instead of going down the hallway like the ones before you did before they disappear from eyesight in the corner, she takes a sharp turn to the right until she stops in front of an elevator.

her deep violet hair brushes against her cheekbones as she nods at the empty box with mirrors all around.

yeesh, guess everyone expresses themselves with their bodies here.

the numbers constantly change from ground level to 1 to 2 and finally stops at the 3rd floor where the blare of the music seems to come from. and that’s when you see the black haired boy who has his forearms leaned against the railing as he grins at something on the bottom floor where the shouts and cheers seem to erupt from. but before you can make a sharp 180 to go back down where jimin said you’d only need to follow the hallway and take the turn around the corner like the people before you did, jeongguk looks up as if sensing the heat of your gaze drilling holes inside his head. with one hand raised, he beckons you over.

“your majesty,” you drop into a bow once you reach him, “this humble servant thanks you for bringing her here but,” pointing your thumb over your shoulder at the hallway you just came from you continue, “i think i’m on the wrong floor because all i can see here is flocks of hair - an oh, shiny scalp from that guy - arms flailing around. takes away the magic of dance, you feel?”

“so you’re here for jimin.” it doesn’t sound like a question - so it must not be. a ponderous hum vibrate from his chest as you shoot him an arched brow whilst your insides burst like fireworks at the way his darkened eyes traces down your body and back up after he’s done with what seems to be a scout’s assessment.

“no leather pants and no best friend or heartbreak boy hovering around like a lost puppy - let me guess, he did something that made you mad, the best friend backed him up and now you’re mad at both of them?” he raises his own brow, lips curling into an assured smirk, “oh and jimin here’s probably taking a neutral stance because it ‘doesn’t concern’ him.”

you don’t know if you want to run away or grab the neck of his shirt and smack your lips on his.

so you settle with handguns pointed in his face, “alright, catch you never.”

but before you can even take a step to where you came from, jeongguk’s laying out his card on the table, “you sure bout that? it’s bulleproof boys’ turn - it’s jimin’s teams name, in case you’re wondering and judging by who they’re going against, it might be their first and last performance for the night.”

“i knew that,” respectfully, you had no idea that the teams have specific names besides the alphabetical letters given to them upon registration.

jimin’s only mentioned dance match once and that he’s in team c that’ll go against team d.

so you stick around, watching from all the way on the third floor where the lest people are gathered, cheering out names of teams that are alien to your ears which seem to be the team jimin is going against. but the fact that jimin could dance with such precision and grace is magnifying enough. he’s mostly posed on either sides of the formation, switching from the front left to the furthest back line on the right side as the beat drops.

jimin’s name pours out of your mouth in cheers but it’s swallowed by the other cheers before it can even reach him. in the end, jimin’s team loses. they still go up to their opponent and share handshakes and sidehugs before moving away from the dance floor.

he’s not smiling nor is he frowning as he stands in the crowd after the prelims but his lips curl and eyes disappear into crescents when he sees you.

“hey!” his arms open up into a hug, only to stop halfway in hesitation but by then you’re already wrapping yours around his neck with a “you were so cool!”

and just like that, the awkwardness in the air dissipates.

“i didn’t see you in the crowd.”

“so what? you thought i left?” a light smack lands on his arm, “by the way, you didn’t tell me it was this intense - i can feel the tension from all the way...” you pause for the briefest moment, “...in the audience.”

“everyone here just likes to dance so it gets competitive at some point but at the end of the day, it’s important to have fun,” he shrugs, a shy smile plastered to his face.

“either way you did great,” you bump his elbow with yours, and he shifts his weight to his left foot.

“we lost but it was a fair match the bts people were too good,” a mixture of regret and contentedness crosses his face as he nods to himself, as if admitting the difference in skills.

“let’s get a drink later, i’m buying,” you propose and jimin looks like a kid who just received his favorite candy.

well, that was the plan for the rest of the night up until the winner was announced. then a boy no older than you and jimin came up to the latter, arms slung over his shoulders, “dude, beyond the scene just asked if we wanna join them at the afterparty. can you believe it?”

“dude, you capping - don’t fucking joke with men man, i was about to shit my pants-” jimin attempts to shove the guy away half-heartedly which does nothing as his friend - teammate, cuts him off.

“i’m not fucking joking, man, behind the scenes literally asked if we wanna chill with them!”

the two boys are basically shoving each other back and forth before they start slapping each other on the face once to wake the other up. whoever this behind the scenes guys, they seem like a pretty big deal if two grown adults are fanboying this hard about them.

only after they’re sporting the faintest shade of pink on their right cheeks, do they finally realize that they weren’t squeal-whispering by themselves. he introduces himself as kai - “jimin’s best friend and mentor.”

“he likes to say that because i got into dance because of him,” jimin adds, debunking the mentor myth.

you’re about to wave the two goodbye and call it a night since it’s pretty clear that the behind the scenes guys only invited them and not their friends.

“come with us,” kai announces as the three of you walk down the back entrance where it’s less crowded and meant for the participants to use, “baekhyun can’t make it so we’ll still be five people.”

“i really should go- it’s getting late and my place is in seoul-”

and so begin your war of apologies and ‘no, you’s.

“oh shit, i forgot.” jimin’s usually almond-shaped eyes turn round and wide, “you used the subway-”

“yeah, but i can still catch the last train home-” you try to assure.

“i’ll accompany you back-”

“no, no - you should go with them-”

“no, i made you come to watch-”

and it would have gone on until morning if you and jimin were left to argue on who should do what if kai didn’t clap his hands together and put an end to the long debate, “okay, okay, break it up.”

he looks between the blonde haired best friend and then to you, “jimin came with me so i’m gonna drive him back anyway and i could drop you off too after chilling with bts - it’s nothing you’re not used to, beers and games and shits, you know? plus it’ll be like, less than 20 people there - bts never invites other groups into their circle - who knows, maybe you’ll find your true way like jimin did,” he pats the aforementioned man on his shoulder whilst jimin rolls his eyes at the way best friends who’ve heard their best friend boast about an-untruth for the umpteenth time.

and because you basically made another friend and that means you’ll have at least 2 people to hang out with if the rest turns out not to be your kind of people - so you cave in, “okay, sure, why not?”

'why not’s are subjective - or so you’d like to think.

like when you’re not particularly into americano and prefer latte but wouldn’t say no to having the first if jennie mixed up your order and bought you your not-so-favored but also not-so-hated drink.

but jennie’s known you since she shoved you off the swings at five after you outran her only to get to the swings faster because only one was vacant and the other kid was already in the other one.

so she’d know your preferred drinks.

but in the event she suddenly has amnesia or anything and got you and americano, that’s when you’ll go, “why not?”

but that and finding out that jeongguk used to be part of bts until he hurt his during practice, having to have 2 major surgeries because of it, rendering him no longer able to dance so he’s only going to the dance offs to cheer for his friends which was how he met you at the entrance and now you’re handcuffed together (and yes, again) in the middle of the forest - are two disparate things altogether.

hoseok, the most outgoing and friendliest of the bunch, suggested for the ice breaking to be in a form of 2 beer bottles and a sort of rope or chain tying people from bts and the bulletproof people together to talk for five minutes. they only have 2 pairs of cuffs so the others that lack them have to make do with bandanas and you think a seokjin got harassed into taking off his shirt and using it as him and his designated partner’s pseudo handcuff.

yours and jeongguk’s are - you’re not sure if it’s a fortunate or unfortunate thing - real ones (you’re not sure if you want to know why and how seulgi easily pulls out a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs and a normal-looking one - out of the blue).

but you’re almost sure that you’re leaning on the side of the internal argument of this - this, right here - is why not.

“why didn’t you text me back?” jeongguk is in the middle of asking as you take a big chug of the alcoholic beverage.

"oh my god,” you let a pleased smile tug at your lips as you feel the buzz of the alcohol coursing through your system, “i was just gonna talk to you about that - jennie said i was being a ghosting b because you only said facts and i got like, offended without a reason but i agree that people can be wrong sometimes and that was her time... i just...” you shrug, “i just didn’t want to text you back so i didn’t,” you look at him with a new found familiarity, “anyways, how was your week?”

by the end of it, jeongguk’s nodding and poorly suppressing his smirk.

“well, let me start first,” you begin before he can even say anything, listing down the happenings in a chronological order which may or may have not confirmed his initial assumption on why you’re here alone “...i mean, was it my fault though? between you and me, i think jennie and i need to sit down and actually talk about accountabilities first, you know? but anyway, that’s how my week went! how about you, how was your week?”

to say that your turmoil of a week is anything close to a laugh-worthy joke, would be a lie but for some reason, trickles of laughter are escaping jeongguk’s lips and into the night air as he leans back, holding his stomach. he would’ve hit the ground if you’d poke him.

“wow,” you slowly nod, “that’s... that’s very... flattering that you think my somewhat a quarter life crisis is amusing,” a grin stretches across your face but your eyes drill holes into the boy’s skull, “maybe i should just quit uni altogether. that’d be... exciting, right? just... quit uni and live a life as a comedian because look at how much i’m cracking you up right now!”

and it goes on for another minute of jeongguk’s laughter filling the air as you threaten him to stop in the guise of encouragement besides the cracking of the branches as it gets swallowed up by the fire in the barrel not too far away from where everyone’s scattered.

“god,” when he’s finally reduced to chuckles and wiping invisible tears off the corner of his eyes, you’re about halfway done with your bottle.

“and he’s back,” you announce, “welcome back. can’t say i missed you though but glad that you’re back with us.”

but before jeongguk can get a word out about his own week which you’d asked, if only to be polite, hoseok is already summoning everyone to gather around the barrel as he raises a bottle in the air to - “new groupship and friends!”

or so you think he said.

you’re not too sure because you’re too busy demanding jeongguk to - “uncuff me right now, jeon - was that too pushy? let me try again,” you pause, clearing your throat, “can you please, please, please, uncuff me so i can go back to my friends and not have to stay here a minute longer?”

“don’t act like you don’t enjoy my company,” he offers you one of his self-assured smirks before addressing your concern, “i’m trying,” he says simply, free hand patting around the pocket on the side of his jeans before groping his own ass.

“um, maybe try harder?” you suggest, smiling sweetly but it downturns into a frown not even a minute later when he declares, “i can’t find it.”

“you... can’t find it?” you echo his words.

“it’s not on me,” he states.

“well, did seulgi give it to you at all or...” you trail off only to be met by a devious smirk which doesn’t exactly help his case.

“guess you’re stuck with me,” he shrugs ever so easily.

“oh, hell nah,” and that’s when you latch onto to smirking boy’s body - on your hands at least, and since his left hand and your right hand are cuffed together, it doesn’t allow much room for your physical inspection which is how using your only free hand to get to the side of his pocket that’s farthest from you - may appear suspicious to others.

you only notice that you’re fully facing jeongguk and having your back turned to everyone else when hoseok’s voice cuts through the air, “yo hold up, hold up, hold up - this is bonfire and chill, not netflix and chill.”

your jaws hurt from hanging a bit too low as you meet each and everyone’s eyes, their giggling and laughing already telling enough of what the majority thinks - everyone except jimin, that is.

but you’re a bit too preoccupied with trying to clear the supposed air of you and jeongguk getting it on in the middle of the forest with both your friends and his around, “aha,” you force out, “i know this,” free hand waving between the chain linking your wrists and the open air which isn’t helping your case because jeongguk’s poor attempt at subduing his smirk is well, poor, “might look sus to you but it isn’t - jeongguk lost the key and if someone could help us find it, it’d-”

“oh, don’t worry, i have a spare at home,” seulgi chirps up, hand waving her illuminated phone, “i’ll text my girlfriend to bring it here.”

well, that explains the fluffy cuffs.

“sick,” jeongguk nods over to the girl to which she holds up an ‘okay’ sign and a meaningful smile to him which shouldn’t be ominous but is.

so you fix him a stare when hoseok goes to say something along the line of ‘great’ and ‘lifesaver’ to seulgi.

which the boy only asks back with a “what?”

“i have something to say but i’m not gonna so i’m just gonna keep quiet but just know that i’m watching you,” but the warning doesn’t exactly bring out the intimidating aspect that you hoped for.

“watch all you want, i’m yours for tonight,” the velvety sound of his chuckles is awfully distracting because you don’t even notice the chain clinking until his fingers interlock yours before he brings them up in the air - as if to emphasize on the technicality of his titillating claim.

the night goes on with bottles of beers scattering over the ground, faint smoke dissipating into the air as the scent of something sweet and fruity wafts around whilst the juul gets passed around.

once in a while someone’s laugh echoes between the gaps of the trees and into the night, amidst the sound of woodland creatures. you’ve downed one and a half bottle of henny whilst jeongguk doesn’t seem to have gone past even half of his first bottle. but he’s chuckling and laughing at something someone said which, for the most part, is funny or warrant a jaw-dropping, pin-drop-silence kind of reaction just like now as seulgi confesses to-

“never have i ever slept with my mom’s boyfriend at 19.”

“and that’s on mommy issues,” you hold up a beer in a ‘cheers’ manner at her whilst she mimics your action before you both tilt your head up and take a chug out of your individual beers at the same time.

“what about you?” jeongguk asks and for a moment, you forget that there are people around because jeongguk’s eyes look like someone reached up the sky and handpicked two stars each for his irises and trap them in there like a class case.

but you’d like to believe it’s the alcohol doing its rightful work in your system because you’re back on the ground with an unrelenting itch on your ankle where it’s brushing against the blades of grass.

“yea, what’s your never-have-i-ever mommy issues edition?” kai speaks up.

“nah, it’s wack,” you wave a dismissive hand but end up agreeing to spill the beans when a bout of protest spreads across your ever so faithful audience.

“okay, okay, never have i ever fucked my biological mom’s husband who isn’t my dad,” you say which earns a bout of cheers and ‘that’s messed up’s before seokjin claps his hands together.

“never have i ever...” he pauses, grinning as an added suspense before he goes on, “fucked my brother’s boyfriend.”

the game doesn’t last for long when everyone collectively agree to take the atmosphere up a notch and play strip truth or dare. but before your turn came, seulgi announces her girlfriend’s arrival concurrently with her having to leave for the night because she’s her ride home. and because you and jeongguk are both of the same mind that you’re the ones that should be following after her to get yourselves uncuffed, you do just that.

yeri is a sweetheart and matches seulgi’s playful yet reserved nature. they take the cuffs with them and seulgi waves you two goodbye with the same, meaningful smile directed to jeongguk - but if that’s not enough, the ‘good luck’ thumbs up is a screaming red button for you.

but before you can even call him out for his possible hand in convincing his dance friends to invite jimin’s and consequently you to the forest after the match - he beats you to it.

“you okay?” this time, his features are lacking the smirk.

“yea, why wouldn’t i be?” you say, hopping on the rail of the train track that’ll lead to the spot where the others are - so far, you’re doing a good job not falling to your demise.

“i don’t know,” the scraping sound of his soul kicking against the pebbly ground fills the air as he walks next to you, hands in his pocket, “you’ve been pretty quiet after that thing about your mom.”

“you think what i did was messed up?” you inquire, resisting the urge to steal a glance at him to see what kind of emotion he’s making - whether it’s contorted with disgust or whether his nose is crinkling at an attempt to appear unbothered or whether there really isn’t any judgments being passed and he’s just downcasting his eyes because he’s looking out for possible sharp objects protruding from the ground.

“everyone’s a little messed up,” his shoulderline shakes as he shrugs, “it’s the why behind it that counts.”

“nah,” your hair tickles your face as you shake your head in blatant refutation, “i didn’t have a reason.”

and just when you expect a disgusted scoff to erupt from jeongguk’s pink lips... it doesn’t.

“that works too.”

silence follows his words for the longest moment with you trying placing one foot in front of the other, pretending like teetering on that tightrope you’re stuck on with kim taehyung at the end of it, not even waiting for you but just happen to be there.

so you break the silence, “i finally found her last year - flew all the way to jeju because my biological aunt saw my the post i put up on facebook in a last ditch attempt before i hire a private investigator like my dads suggested. she set us up to meet,” the picture of a woman who’s so similar yet dissimilar to you flashes at the back of your head, a biscoff cheesecake slice lying untouched on the table and someone screaming at the top of their lungs right in front of your ears, “my biological mom didn’t know anything about it, flipped out and told me to never bother her again so i looked up where her husband worked and slept with him and sent the video to her.”

jeongguk doesn’t say anything, only nodding in your periphery before a soothing kind of silence lapses between you.

“what’s your story?” you ask a moment later.

“hm?” he glances at you, the moonlight shining over that smirk that you’ve come to miss in the course of the five minutes it went missing, skin painted a creamy white.

“if you don’t wanna tell, that’s fine too but like, you basically tore down my walls and i’m naked as hell - figuratively -” you add as soon as his eyes light up, “right now.”

but then he tries to bargain, “promise you’ll text me back and i’ll tell.”

and you try to teeter in the grey area between words and its meanings, “alright, promise... i won’t leave you on read.”

“nah, you gotta promise to text back,” his half curls sway as he shakes his head - your end of the bargain not sufficiently satisfying.

it’s a few moments after your surrendering, “you know what? keep your skeletons in your closet - i’m good,” that he finally says something.

“i used to do tracks, lucked out with a sports scholarship but by freshman year in college, realized i didn’t even like tracks and dropped out...”

jeongguk’s parents weren’t happy about it - didn’t exactly welcome him when he came back with a suitcase and a letter from his unversity claiming the outstanding balance of his first two semesters. but he wasn’t happy at home either.

so he packed his bags one more time and took the first train to seoul where he worked part time at a restaurant and occasionally at the dance off’s, before he found the beyond the scene people and subsequently found dance. that was amidst of a developer of the game he was playing approaching him through the game’s chat server and offering him a job to test out their games with the condition that he gets a degree in computer science which they paid for on the company’s scholarship fund.

and so it was obvious that jeon jeongguk, wherever he chooses to go and stop at, blooms like a wildflower that strives in any condition thrown in his face whether it be a storm, a hurricane or a sunny weather that barely allows any rain to cover the soil he’s rooted in.

and because he’s true to himself, it isn’t as unbelievable, when almost everyone - from every layer of backgrounds, flock around him like honeybees in spring - allured, magnified and bewitched by jeon jeongguk that makes him... well, him.

to say you understand him a little bit better may be an overstatement but maybe you’re less suspicious of his keen intuition and uncanny prognosis of what happened in your relationships, both with your friend and your not-so-friendly crush.

jeongguk jests that his leg “doesn’t work like it used to but-” - he’s been to places. seen people.

“so why are you obsessed with me?” you question into the night in a light hearted joke, “i mean, i can possibly see why because well, i’m... me and i’m amazing but you know, it’s not healthy to be this obsessed with people.”

his chuckles sounds like wind chimes on a spring day, "besides the fact that i was too busy being a tracks nerd for most of my life so i have zero flirting skills and decided to make all the calls that seem to irritate the one person i want to get to know? it’s because you looked like you were head over heels with the guy you were putting in place but still managed to not make it personal.”

it takes a moment for you to digest what he just said, and even then, you’re nodding in complete disagreement as you blurt out, “pretty sure some parts were personal,” and you turn to him with a smile stretched over your face, “but glad that you don’t think i’m the impostor.”

so you stop twenty steps away from where you can see the fire in the barrel and hoshi, one of the guys from bulletproof boys, standing in boxers and shouting an oath before gulping down a bottle of henny at an alarming rate.

“everyone’s a little sus now and then,” he refutes, nose crinkling as a grin spread across his moon-kissed features as he offers you his hand and you take it, hopping off your tightrope journey and onto grounding earth.

when morning comes, you wake up to the familiar but not-very-welcomed sound of cars honking from outside your window and the light piercing through your eyelids, so much so, you surrender to the start of the day. arms stretched over your head and a guttural sound vibrating within your chest as a sign of protest before your vision finally gets used to the bright sunny rays.

and that’s when you freeze. arms stretched and all.

“after all this, you can’t say no to a date with me,” jeon jeongguk is lying right next to you, in your one-person bed which you could never imagine would fit more than your need-for-maximum-space self when you sleep but there he is, in yesterday’s clothes, hugging your light pink alpaca plushie on his stomach whilst his elbow which you don’t notice before is poking into your rib.

the events of last night untangle in a web of hazed memory coming to high definition as each passing second pass by.

you and jimin live on the opposite ends of the city which made you reluctant in having kai drive you back at all, so jeongguk offered to split the uber bills with you because apparently, “oh, hey, we live in the same area!”

which later turned out you didn’t and it would’ve made more sense for him to hitch a ride with kai and jimin. but you didn’t even need to ask why he did what he did.

because by the time you and jeongguk returned, it’d been a set-in-stones assumption that you were off making out somewhere under a tree and everyone cheered you and him for it upon your return.

well, except jimin.

so you pulled jeongguk to the side once the attention was directed to hoseok whose dare was to lick the grass he was stepping on.

“is that thing about jimin liking me true because he’s been like, avoiding my eyes the whole night and now he’s acting like i don’t exist and i’m pretty concerned because his friend is my ride home,” you whispered underneath your beath.

jeongguk threw one, confirming glance at the aforementioned man before nodding casually, “he’s jealous as fuck because he thinks we did the do - cross my heart and hope to die.”

so you ended up offering jeongguk to sleep in your bed because it was already late and it felt like a waste to spend another thirty bucks to go back to a place where nobody was waiting for him anyway.

you were so beat, you’d fallen asleep as soon as jeongguk pulled your protesting self off the futon-splayed floor and held you captive in your own bed.

“you know what? i might as well,” you say, legs thrown off the bed and stretching some more before looking down at the smiling, plushie-holding, grown ass person in your bed, “now we need to figure out how to sneak you out because this is a girls-only dorm and if they found out i have a guy over, i might get expelled.”

but before you can even start brainstorming the best possible route for jeongguk to sneak out without being detected, an obnoxious rapping reverberates against your door. the look of pure horror settling in as jeongguk’s smile melts into a wide-eyed, panicked face would have been adorable if you’re not in the middle of shoving him into your “quick, in the closest!” which he needs to hunch his shoulders to become as small as possible before you can close it whilst you yelp out a “just a minute!”

by the time you manage to school a smile on your face, jennie’s is already sprinkled with a dust of red as her brows come together, judging your choice of outfit and the events that went down last night.

“hey, girl,” you drag out the first word in idle panic, body leaning against the doorframe a little too defensively, “what’s...” you can’t even find the right words as you tap your fingers against the doorframe before finally saying, “what’s good?”

but one questioning look from her and you’re stepping out of the way, left to stand at attention like a cadet in the presence of the general whilst said general struts into your room and scans it once before turning to you.

“’what’s good?’” jennie echoes and you know from the way her head does the slightest of movements according to her enunciation, “imagine seeing your best friend on some mutual friend’s snapchat story which mind you, said mutual friend isn’t anywhere close to either of you and the time in the snap says a big whooping 4:03 am while you’re here feeling bad for hurting her feelings with your words words. but does she feel bad? well, it doesn’t flipping look like she even gave any thoughts about you, did it?”

and that’s when the closet decides that it’s had enough of storing a full grown human in its belly and slowly, but surely swings the door open with thunderous creak in the midst of the calm before the storm. and lo and behold, a jeon jeongguk, still hugging your alpaca tightly, keeping his eyes closed as if it’ll make him invisible before he gradually screws one eye open to the sight of a raging but confused jennie kim and a mortified you turning to said girl.

so much for keeping skeletons in closets.

“i-i can explain.”

it turns out all it takes for jennie’s anger to subside is for her to find a boy in your room. namely the boy she’s been blatantly shipping you with even though you barely knew each other then.

“i have a wig in my room,” she suggests after you’ve exhausted all options - jeongguk can’t climb through the window and jump down from the second floor.

“well, he can but there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to leave without one of his limbs intact,” you’d added, shrugging.

he’s sitting crossed leg on your bed, alpaca in his lap and looking cute as hell as his eyes go round at the mention of a wig and five minutes prior, crossdressing. the plan is for you and jennie will walk him out once he’s all dresed up like you’re just three - well, one is kind of buffed up but still pretty - best friends who had a girls’ night and crashed in your room.

he whistles lowly, head lulling to the side as he stares at the door before turning to you with a playful smile, “i’ve always wanted to wear a skirt.”

and so it goes, jennie kim’s squealing and making a short trip to her room and returning with a bag full of wig, stretchable sweaters and lycra skirts whilst she scours through your closet for clothes that you have but don’t even remember. the oversized sweater that’s a few more inches too big for you wraps around his body tightly and the skirt is a tad bit too short for him, going down to a few inches above the knee. but the head turner is the way the curly brown wig gracefully frames his face and softens his jawline, giving an illusion of how his half-ringlet would have looked if he grew them out.

you apply the soft pink lipgloss on his already rosy lips as a joke in a guise of a final touch, heart skipping as his lips curl whilst he gazes at you the whole time you’re putting on the glimmering liquid.

“okay, i feel bad,” you confess, shoulder line falling, “i thought you’d hate the lipgloss and i was going say it’s important to make the look work if you said no but you’re not saying no and you’re looking at me like you’d trust me with your life...” a sigh rolls off your lips at the end of it.

“you feel bad?” he echoes, glossed lips looking kissable as hell - it doesn’t even matter that he’s smirking like it was part of his plan all along to manipulate your conscience into confessing your ulterior motive.

so you nod.

“good,” he states simply.

“you saying good like you’re satisfied that you managed to pick on my guilty conscience is making me feel less guilty,” you narrow your eyes, not even bothering to hide the smile creeping on your lips.

“oh my god, my ship is sailing!” jennie’s whispered squeal cuts through the air before she reverts to her deadpanned self, “okay but seriously, if you’re done sprinkling sugar cubes all over the place, i think we should get jeongguk out before miss snitchery sonyeon next door sniffs the man in jeongguk and snitch on us.”

sonyeon has been known for reporting 2 boy-sneaking activities that went on last year which would have been justified if the girls that brought the boys into their room was doing questionable things and loudly at that but the first incident was with a late enrolled newbie that just moved in and didn’t know that boys weren’t allowed inside and though the other girl did sneak her boyfriend in, it was only because he was bleeding profusely and needed first aid treatment which she stored in her room.

you’re just about a few feet away from the double doors when a familiar but disembodied voice drums in your ears.

“you three, stop right there.”

you think your heart stops working for the briefest moment as time freezes and you’re craning your head to look at jennie whose fear-stricken face mimics yours and then jeongguk whom you don’t expect to wear such ceases in his forehead.

so you do the one thing that you think of-

“run.” you whisper.

all of a sudden, the wind is in your face and a few heads turn your way - but you doubt that it has more to do with how unfairly gorgeous jeongguk looks than the fact that the ra is on your tail, her pitched demands for ‘someone stop them!’ whilst. you’re not sure if someone did try to chase after you or if the adrenaline pumping in your system is what helps you sprint faster than a cheetah but when you finally slow down, almost skidding to a stop on the grass somewhere on campus grounds instead of the dormitory area - it’s because jennie is dramatically breathing through her mouth and found herself a bench to put on an act of dying whale.

“you guys... go on... leave me be...” she croaks out in between breaths, hand reaching out to the air.

“dude, tell me if you’re gonna stop so we can stop and get caught together,” you guff, plopping down, your state no better than jennie’s while jeongguk shakes his head at the two of you.

not even a beat of sweat or heaved breathing coming from him - not to mention that-

“how are you the fastest-” you suck in a much needed breath, “-when your leg doesn’t work as good anymore?”

“yea, didn’t say i can’t run,” he grins.

“jen, let’s go,” you say, tapping the dying whale on her shoulder as she starts wailing words of saddened goodbyes.

“forsake me! save yourselves!” she wheezes, staring into nothingness before waving a dismissive hand, “no for real, i don’t think they’re gonna chase us all the way here. you guys go, i have a date anyway, i’ll text kim,” it’s the name you coined for namjoon whenever you talk about him in public, “to pick me up here.”

a year ago, you would have called her a brave fool for having her boyfriend slash professor that’s teaching at the same university - pick her up in plain sight. but once you saw the unfamiliar ferrari roll to a stop in front of the dorms with tinted black windows, you understand why they can be as free and uncaring as they are.

“you sure? what if they saw you here?” you question, needles of doubt still deeply pierced into your racing heart.

but when she looks at you with arched brows and a familiar couldn’t-care-less attitude, you know nothing you say can change her mind which helps ease the knots in your stomach by a lot.

so you cave in, waving her goodbye - but not before the scarring ‘we still need to talk though’ reminder - and going back to the tall, brown haired person who’s holding his left hand midair and wiggling his fingers about in what you think is a parodic depiction of how girls wave at each other while mouthing a nasally, higher-pitched “thank you so much for helping us.”

one minute into the walk, you stop in front of the cafe you’re used to having lunch at with your group of 4 - if there’s even any group left after this, “so this kim guy - he’s way older isn’t he?”

“if you’re all knowing, you wouldn’t end that sentence with a question,” you assert, “so i’m not gonna say anything.”

“that’s a yes then,” he nods.

“i think we lost them,” you say, a tad too late but pretend to look around anyway like you’re not 200% sure of that fact.

to any outsiders, you’ll probably look like two girls standing three feet apart from each other, looking out in a distance.

“nice,” jeongguk nods, joining in your scouting party before he squints his eyes at something in the most casual manner before suggesting, “so... you wanna go on a date?”

“you think we lost them?” you whisper under your breath, worry filling your chest as you throw your gaze over somewhere at the end of the alleyway where flashes of red and blue lights passed by.

but before the black cladded boy can say anything, his lips smack together as he and you both press yourselves flat to the wall as the sound of radio static bounces into the narrow space you’ve found yourselves in. six months after your first date, which involves a crossdressing jeongguk and a day at a park that had you returning to the dorm with a giant teddy bear and a strip of photo you took from the booth comprising the multiple personalities embodied in one person from sassy to stare-into-the camera-intimidating face to him looking down and shyly peeking through his pushed back curls - you’ve gone on multiple other dates.

none of which can be considered normal because you’ll always end up in a sticky situation like you are now.

on your second month, you found out that jeon jeongguk not only has a stable income for literally playing games while trying to balance out his education but he also paints and draws.

on your third month, you go on your first mural-painting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-dressed-as-robbers date to which ended pretty well with the two of you getting hungry and having ramen at a 24 hour convenience store. so the mural painting becomes a monthly routine.

jimin finds out about it somewhere down the line and broke out into the most heartwarming smile while teasing you about how “the singles lost another one,” as he shook his head in dismay. but things went back to normal for the most parts. taehyung talks to you more now. he apologized for having only treated you like someone useful to him when he needed something and found that you have more in common than you think.

like how you’re decently informed about the greatest artists of all time - all because jeongguk was telling you about them whilst you chill at his place on days you don’t feel like going out but still want to spend time together. jeongguk, later found out that his supply of artistic information was what led to you and taehyung’s improving friendship and offers to become your spokesperson by having you invite taehyung to a cafe so he can pour his abundance of knowledge in the fine arts of painting - “since he’s so interested in van gogh, you know what i mean?”

he even finished it with a tilt of his head and an sassy ‘ugh.”

“i think we gotta run,” jeongguk’s declarations doesn’t have you arching your eyebrows and looking at him in an ‘are you for real?’ kind of manner.

it could be because you’re so used to running from law enforcement now.

or maybe because jeongguk showed you the world through his eyes. doesn’t mean it’s any less terrifying - the thought of being caught and shoved behind the bars whilst they included it in your records. but hey, at least, you’re no strangers to handcuffs.

“on one,” you say and he nods, hand squeezing yours as if saying i’ll never let them get you.

“three,” you begin, eyes fixed on the stars in jeongguk’s gaze, “two,” jeongguk breathes in deeply, “one.”

run.

note. i hope you guys enjoyed reading!! and if you want anything similar to this kind of style, i have one more college au. the second part of that one is my pinned post which also has a link to the first part. if you’re curious why i’m not gonna link or name it is because i’m convinced that tumblr literally makes anything that’s linked or mentioned it blocked for some reason idk.

but anyways, thank you for reading!!

940 notes · View notes

shesawriter39049 · 4 years

Text

|PRIVATE SHOW|M|

Pairing: Taehyung X Reader

SMUT/LIGHT ANGST

About-Just a casual lunch outing where Tae’s trying to do his job and your trying to get him off under the table with your shoe...nothing new!

OR- Tae and yourself are grabbing lunch at 71 Above, after checking out the last couple of venues for the company's end of the year Holiday party. While at said restaurant, it becomes a humbling reminder that the most important people in your life are essentially a secret...cute!

WC:5k

WARNINGS: Public sex -ish( A foot-job under the table) dirty talk, teasing, light edging, frontage (kinda), overstimulation, Tae comes in his YSL leather pants, mentions of Oral (Male receiving), Tae is somewhat submissive, whilst also being a little shit. “Baby boy/Good boy” Kink

DNA Era Tae meets 2020 Tae

Tae is her baby and also her Executive Assistant

He just wants to hold her hand tbh

NOTE: This is a stand alone smut drabble within my OT7 poly universe called “7 DEEP”. Short AU SUMMARY: Your husband Namjoon and yourself run a successful Adult Film Entertainment Company called “Onyx” with your 5 best friends from college who you also happen to be in an open relationship with! P.S. If you’re new here Kookie joins the party a little later….

_________________________________________________________

“So” Musing over your cocktail glass “Thoughts on the last place?”

Eyeing the man sitting across from you intently who’s clearly in the holiday spirit. Dressed in a deep red silk button-down, apparently, he’s taken a page out of Jimin’s book considering it’s barely buttoned, to begin with! Honestly, he’d be better off not even wearing one at all at this rate.

Smoky silver locks messily styled out of his face showcasing those bushy yet sculpted brows of his. One of your favorite past times has become watching Tae become more confident as he grows into himself. No longer finding the need to hide behind his long shaggy bangs, though you can’t; lie, you do kinda miss him looking like the puppy he truly is deep down. However this, version of Tae just hits different, your baby boy looks like a whole ass man and you’ll never get over it!

God the things you endlessly wanna do to him…..even after all these years....

You watch Tae sigh almost miserably over a mouthful of lobster mac which seems completely out of place considering the way the dish in question smells…“Honestly?”

Offering a curt nod, encouraging him to continue as you welcome yourself to his plate! The amount of cheese that’s trickling from your fork is actually disrespectful!

“It was cute, I liked how big the lot is, and more importantly how spaced out the spots are! You know how rich people get about people being too close to the damn cars!” Rolling his eyes as if he in he’s excluded from that category and you can’t help but scoff.

“Tae you technically are one of those people at this point. Just like...yesterday actually, you almost ripped Jackson’s balls off for bumping into your rearview mirror but carry on.” Flicking your fork in his direction, ignoring the sharp glare he sent your way in the process.

This time around I think both of his eyes managed to roll in different directions, again, Jimin’s wearing off on him! “Anyway, yeah, I don’t know, I liked the space, the exposed brick beams in the ceiling was cool. Kinda gave it a homey vibe which is fitting….”

You could hear it hanging off his tongue, he sounds very, “meh” about it, so you opt fil in the blank. “Butttt??”

“Butttt, I -It felt like...like I was forcing myself to like it…” Slouching down into his seat, features a little uneasy, as if him not liking the venue was a direct insult to the owner personally! You on the other hand you let out a bated breath that you weren’t even aware was being held, eyes wide shining with relief.

“Oh thank fuck” Hand slamming down absently along the table, “I thought it was just me, and I felt like such an ass too because-”

“They were so sweet” Came in unison, both of you almost cooing as you said it! Hands placed dramatically over your heart as you reclined against your chair.

“So sweet,” Tae parroted in a light pout,”I mean they were literally wearing matching loafers Y/n. Matching” Idly jading a fork into his side salad in a way that’s borderline concerning actually, a tad bit aggressive over there!

” But it just-I don’t know, I guess will always think like those broke college kids at heart” Flashing you a brief glowing smile that you can’t help but return, humming in agreeance.

“Which isn’t a bad thing, per say, the mentality definitely keeps us humbled! But there’s time and place for that attitude and honestly I just wasn’t feelin it! At least not in comparison to the others we’ve seen, it wasn’t fighting the vibe were going for. Regardless of how good the offer is” Shrugging over another mouth full of food and you there’s not much else for you to say because that was your consensus exactly.

Basically, once the two of you showed up, the cute little husband and wife duo offered you a deal which would essentially consist of them renting you the space for next to nothing. In exchange, they’d want you to post a couple of ads via your company and personal social media accounts as promo. Your initial thought outside of just thinking they were utterly adorable was how much money you’d save...but as Tae said, thankfully that’s not really a concern anymore, if you wanted you can get it!

Easily…discounts and barters aside, just a flick of the wrist and it’s yours!

“True, also can we just take a moment to talk about how aesthetically pleasing the Valentine was though?” Tossing your head back with a dramatic groan “I mean fuck you already know the way I feel about industrial spaces, the high, glass ceiling, all the greenery..” Eyes rolling to the back of your head with a slight moan…as you envision the space. Especially how moody and sexy the overall venue would look with thousands of lights cascading from the glass ceilings.

Clearly the venue was doing ....a lot for you right now!

Brow cocked at the blatant...enthusiasm surrounding the location in question “Mmm, well that’s something...interesting to add to the kink list, just when I thought I’d explored every avenue, but apparently not.” Voice low, teasing, head cocked to the side, a shit eating grin plastered along his lips, as he swirls his tongue along the tip of his straw in a way that’s……

“ I guess we’re adding “industrial spaces” to the list. Noted.” Smirking around his drink like the little shit he is!

Right, you may or may not have crossed your legs at the sudden drawl laced within his delivery but not before, kicking his shin with the tip of your heel, “You little shit” Rolling your eyes at the way he dramatically rubs the side of his leg, hitting you with straight puppy dog eyes as he pouts over at you as if you actually caused serious damage!.

Leaning forward a little so you don't have to try as hard to whisper, the notion has your breast essentially sitting on top of the table. Not that they weren’t already on full display in your dress or anything. Hand slipping beneath the table, landing on his kneecap. “What? Suddenly you don’t like a little pain?” Tone blatantly teasing whilst ghosting your nails agonizingly slow up his inner thigh, and his entire body goes rigid at the sensation. Tae’s always been extremely...

“God, your still so sensetive....” You weren’t intending for that to come out in the form of a moan but considering the one that fell from his lips in return...you ain’t mad about it! 100% dialed in to the way his eyes are fluttering, jaw tight, trying his damndest to play it cool, especially once the waitress makes eye contact silently asking if the two of you need anything. “Takes so little Hmm?”’

Flashing him a quick smile, waving her off for the time being, far too focused on another task to entertain anyone else right now! Only stopping your ministrations once your fingers land right beneath his balls.

“This place is very well lit, I like the hue, it’s casting a good soft-light, especially the way it’s bouncing off your complexion...” Eyes cascading against the ceiling, tone casual, until your eyes drop....

“You’d look so fuckin good, coming for me right now...” The words purr off your tongue, flashing him a cheeky little wink, and poor Taehyung chokes on his martini!

“You know how much you love being watched...I could have you making a mess all over yourself and no one would even know. ” Not even trying to hide the smirk playing on your lips when you can already feel the tension in the room rise. “My own little private show...” Eyes wicked as your fingers wander a little higher, gently pressing your palm down around his dick. Rubbing tauntingly, the touch isn't enough through the thick leather, however it does instantly make his length swell in the confines of his pants! We all know this….underwear is nonexistent in Tae’s world! “Kinda brings me back to our college days...” Teeth sinking into your bottom lip at the mere memory...you getting Tae off whilst in the lecture hall full of 300 plus students.

Regardless of the deer in headlights look flashing across his face his legs still spread apart, hips bucking forward because well as we just said...baby boy loves being watched. This however, prompts you to once again change positions, now digging your nails into the back of his thighs before letting the tips of your fingers tickle free. Coly bringing them back above surface to take another languid sip of your drink, tossing a strand of hair over your shoulder.

Ya know, I can’t say you’re surprised by his reaction, baby boy can dish it but sure can’t take it, neck and chest flushing to rival his shirt! Banging on his sternum in an attempt to reroute the liquor burning his lungs.

“Jesus-fuc-Y/n!” You have the nerve to hum inquisitively, only this time for his sanity he humors you! “Can you like not go from asulting me to-” Looking over his shoulder before dropping his voice down to a whisper “Stroking my dick, and offering to get me off under the table, all in the span of a nanosecond!?” The plea hissed through clenched teeth but the complaint was half hearted at most! Well aware his dicks already throbbing in his pants at the thought alone! “Fuck me” Sucking in a harsh breath, as he raked his fingers through his scalp.

“Well…” Tonguing at your inner cheek, eyes fluttering away as if you were in deep thought… “In my defense you kinda started it, bringing up my kink list like I don’t own a whole ass porn company!” Propping your chin on your palm, gaze locked and loaded “Like I wasn’t thinking about tainting that sweet innocent couple by letting them watch as I dropped to my knees, letting you fuc-”

“Y/n!” He actually attempts to sound almost applauded, like he doesn’t love how absolutely filthy your mouth is. However there’s a silent little “please” playing on his tongue, no matter how threatening he tried to sound.

You giggled, straight up giggled, reclining in your seat, amused, and somewhat satisfied so you let him be, for the time being anyway. Though you may have eaten your angel hair pasta in a very obscene manner, every now and then you’d sinfully suck the noodles through your overly glossed lips! However, if he dared to clock you on it you’d just simply note that it was your way of not messing up your makeup….

The two of you finish your lunch in comfortable silence, making small talk here and there, a mixture of work and bullshit until Tae’s phone goes off with a couple text notifications.

A low hum rattling in the back of his throat as he eyes the message from Hoseok. Subconsciously Tae reaches across the table, intertwining your fingers before bringing your knuckles up to his lips. Grazing them with his lips casually as he scrolls through his phone.

“Alright baby, so, I have a list ready, we have a couple brands that wanna work with us for the party. Seoks already narrowed it down to the ones that are actually worth discussing however-“

Honestly, it took both of you a minute to even realize what was going on, the skinship was second nature at this point. It wasn’t until his thumb grazed over your wedding band that the notion even resonated! Tae and yourself were a good two drinks in, feelin all warm and fuzzy and got caught up in the moment! Temporarily forgetting that you were in the middle of a restaurant in Downtown LA! Forgetting that the Kim currently caressing your knuckles and calling you baby is not the one you're technically married to! It may seem minor in retrospect, but you’ve always tried to stop yourselves from getting comfortable, with being comfortable in certain locations if that makes sense! You slip up one to many times and the next thing you know it happening in the office or on the red carpet!

Taehyung’s eyes grow almost comically wide, straight panic flashes over those big brown orbs of his and your heart sinks as you watch his head whip around, checking to make sure no one caught the interaction. It was almost painful how quickly he disconnected from you as his entire face dropped and no, just no!

“Hey...hey no it’s fine, it’s like 2 in the afternoon on a Tuesday! Not to mention we’re tucked in a booth in the corner ,we’re good, nobody heard or saw you…” Voice calm and quiet, trying to come off comforting, flashing him a weary smile. Reaching across the table to thumb at his palm, and it would be a lie to say you didn't also check over your shoulder before hand as well’

A dry almost bitter chuckle leaves his throat as he flinches away, tossing the fork down on his plate sliding it halfway across the table indicating he is more than done eating. Flicking the bridge of his nose with his index finger, jaw twitching, “Yeah, lucky me huh? I actually got to hold your hand for all of two seconds before we realized I’m techionally not allowed to do that unless were in fuckin I don’t know Alaska!”

He’s agitated, and with every right to be, even if he is being a little dramatic. Thankfully he’s keeping his voice low, but you can feel how tight his throat is, the amount of grit laced within his tenor has your eyes bugging out of there socket.

“Bab- “ It was a reflex, whenever he’s upset it’s just what falls from your lips, and he gives you a look, almost as if to say “How fucking dare you” ! The level of hurt the pet name just rendered within his eyes is-

Eyes sharp, brows furrowed “Noo, nooo, we literally just went through this. That’s not the way it works for us in this kinda setting” Flailing his arms around to reference the restaurant. “Wrong Kim” Well damn. “So it's Tae in public remember!?” Brow quirked accusingly, he’s abating this entire situation, almost like he wants you to snap, a second away from whisper yelling! “ Or maybe I should say Taehyung, hell just use my full government while your at it. Let’s make it real impersonal, Mr. Kim maybe?” Head cocked to the side as if he’s being genuine and not a total smartass right now.

You-he’s ...hurt, and you get that, hell you respect that, but Lunch at 71 Above is not the time or place for this conversation. You’re trying to approach this on a more rational level, however the condescending delivery is making it hard, and your only human. Eyes rolling to the back of your head before you can even catch yourself and that little gesture seems to be what officially set him off!

You can physically see the tension within his face... “I’m gonna go get some air, I might actually call a Uber or somethin,.” The words trailed off his lips low in mumbled but clear enough to be heard because that’s ultimately what he wanted to begin with.

There was something in his eyes you couldn’t read, a combination of anger/hurt mixed another emotion you can’t quite pinpoint! But whatever it is, you fuckin hated it! Throat running painfully dry as watch him slide his chair out and even though realistically you know at max he’s headed home...Still the gesture alone is gut wrenching because you know this runs deeper than just this situation!

“Tae” His name leaves your throat as more of a warning, reaching up to take an almost possessive grip on his wrist. Fingertips landing on the edge of his Cartier bracelet, the one you're both wearing actually, same arm and all!

A deep labored breath shutters from his chest at the contact, thighs feelin like a newborn fawn, gaze hesitantly meeting yours. “Tae, baby” Daring to use the endearment again regardless of your current surroundings “Sit back down so I can order us dessert and we can discuss whatever you want...just-please” The ending whisked off your tongue so faint your almost wondering if he even heard you!

Taehyung narrows his eyes, teeth clenched, tongue nudging his inner cheek! “I’m not really in the mood for cake right now Y/n. To be honest I just wanna leave” You know he’s aiming for dry but instead he lands somewhere around defeated , which makes it even worse. You’re both well aware this is not truly about cake, it’s about his constant need to run away from shit!

Sliding your fingers down his wrist, interlocking your fingers, giving them a firm squeeze. Eyes locked with his “Then you can get whatever you want, but I need you to just be here right now, I really, really need you to sit here, and just breathe through this with me.”

He’s know what your really asking is for him not to run away for once!

A faint little “Whatever” Leaves his lips and then he’s dead silent, silent as he slides his chair out, remaining as such for what feels like hours, and it has your heart beating painfully hard against your ribcage. It’s almost like he’s not even here, eyes fixated on some random painting on the opposite side of the restaurant, chewing at his inner cheek until....

“I’m sorry…” He admits after a baited breath, stroking your palm with his thumb gently, you can see him working over his thought’s in his head before speaking. ”I can’t - fuck I never know when I’m going to get all in my feels with shit like this, sometimes it just sucks harder than others I guess” The curt little shrug that leaves his shoulders let’s you know how uncomfortable he is, Tae’s overall persona suddenly seems mounds smaller in this moment. Anxiously stroking the back of his own neck “But....I shouldn't have come at you like that! That was fucked on my behalf and for that I’m truly am sorry ! This isn't all on you, or Joon we all-”Gazing over his shoulder before continuing “There’s just- there’s a lot, we have families and it’s just, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that, ...”

Dropping his voice a little lower “I just fuckin love you” There’s a timid smile playing on his lips “and if the offer still stands I would really fuckin like chocolate cake…”

You actually snort, that’s your first instinct because only Tae, but the plus is it lightens the mood immensely! The sudden outburst triggers that full boxy grin to come into play and god your so damn enamored by this man it’s actually sad. Bringing his knuckles up to your mouth, grazing them past your lips like he did yours moments prior. “I love you too, and chocolate cake sounds fuckin amazing, and liquor, we need new drinks, actually we need an entire bottle! ” You laugh and then so does Tae, suddenly your holding hands and laughing together and everything else just seems so miniscule in the moment.

~~~~~

So, here’s the thing...being a CEO of one of the top Adult film entertainment companies is not on the same level as like..I don’t know….

Owning a high-end clothing company, or being a reality star or something. Your field is praised just as highly as it is tabooed, so with that being said, it’s not like your the top topic on E-news, or on Business Digest. You still have a strong sense of normality, point blank you’re not that important. It’s not as common for outsiders to know the high rollers within the porn industry the way it is in other fields!

However there's another avenue to factor in where the 7 of you are concerned, and that’s the world of social media, and that’s a completely different world entirely! One that’s heavily intertwined in your state in particular, living playing, and working in LA….I mean let’s get real, shit not normal here, by any means!

You’re a 26-year-old wealthy CEO, that goes to work in a Ferrari, cute little bodycons, Louboutin's, and Chanel bags! Your executive assistant is Tae for fucks sake, he looks like a model his damn self , on the surface your life is an aesthetically pleasing wet dream. An influencer without even trying for the title, if your 2.7 million followers are at all telling! So in the public eye, especially when out in Downtown LA..you try to be discreet.

Just last week Jimin was hanging all over you while walking through Saks and one of your mutual followers stopped to ask for a picture. Again this isn’t a daily occurrence, you’re not comparing yourself to Rhianna, but it’s why you do move with a slight air of caution when in your city! You literally live in a place where people become famous for running into walls, nevertheless owning their own business!

The world knows you’re married to Namjoon, and to be honest there’s numerous reasons the other aspect of your dynamic stays hidden! More than just the obvious….

However there’s been rumors circulating over the years, or at least now that Hollywood’s decided you hold some relevance! Ones pertaining your your sexuality, typically the tabloids assuming it, insulating your swingers, or that Namjoon’s bi. A Lot of these narratives circle back from your college days though, old classmates trying to slip tea to the media. Stories of when you could go to a party and it didn’t matter if you were sandwiched between Namjoon and Yoongi at the same damn time! Not to mention the dark side of social media where nothing ever truly dies, so yeah there are some questionable photos floating around. Luckily nothing recent enough to truly add fuel to the fire but you know deep down it’s only a matter of time!

One could argue it adds allure to the overall dynamic, especially considering your line of work, and maybe it wouldn’t matter if the boys were just casual thirds...but they’re not! They’re so much more than that and that’s what makes this hard, because well in laymen’s terms...people just fucking suck! So as heartbreaking as it is, where your other boys are concerned, in the public eye at least your “relationship” holds a strong air of mystery!

It’s the little things ya know? Like now for example, the fact that he could've easily gotten a foot job under the table but has to walk on eggshells about holding your hand at times! Shit just sucks sometimes, there’s no other way around it!

~~~~~~~

The two of you don’t really talk much until the dessert comes, more drinks and a bottle is in fact ordered as well! The silence felt a little more bearable this time around, busying yourselves on your phones. A very minor but significant change, is the fact that you still haven’t let go of his hand, even once the waitress returns. The simple notion has his entire dementor shifting! Fingers still tightly bound together and your chest flutters seeing the way he flushes almost bashfully at such minor PDA! Like the two of you didn’t hook up in the back of a club in London two months ago! Like you literally weren’t palming him under the table! Yet here he is blushing at openly holding your hand!

So fuckin cute!

Eventually two pieces of molten chocolate crepe cake gets brought over and holy fuck! Both moaning in unison as the pastry hits the table...

“Oh my goddd, we have to take a piece home for Jin, the like...convince him to learn how to make it!” You watch Tae’s eyes roll to the back of his head as he laces his lips around the fork! Groaning out in agreeance once the mixtures of pure sin hit his tongue.

“K...now back to , these sponsors...” Prompting over a mouth full of cake, not that you wouldn’t love to sit here and chill all day but you do have a 4pm conference call!

You watch as Tae glances down at your intertwined fingers, and his fork....realizing ones gotta go so he can pick up his phone and you physically coo back at him, melting into your set once he opts to drop the fork instead of your hand. Purposely avoiding your glance once he noticed the look on your face, nose scrunched and all!

“Right, so Uber reached out, more specifically Uber Luxxe, looking to send us 4 cars of our choice in exchange for a couple post. Spread out between IG, Twitter and Snap, I’m personally all for this one. The contract doesn’t seem excessive and I like that the post won’t feel forced! I mean realistically we were going to hire a driving service regardless! However something to also consider is our lack of filter when drinking! I mean...”Flailing his phone between the two of you as if to give an example, obviously referencing the little slip up moments prior. At least he can joke about it a little “So realistically, would we feel more comfortable with a private car service where there’s a contract involved as opposed to just some random?”

Tae just went full EA, out of nowhere and honestly ...

You blinked at him, almost dazed, fork halfway to his mouth because, what?! . “You sound so professional right now, it’s so fuckin hot.”

Tae choked on nothing but straight air before blushing profusely. “Baby-I mean-Y-“

You didn’t even flinch, continuing, unperturbed. “Nah, actually I think I’m in the mood to be baby right now!” Eying him wickedly “Your jaw just gets really tight, and your voice gets all low and raspy! It happens during meetings too, it’s really fuckin sexy! Reminds me of the way you sound when your lips are pressed into the side of my neck when we fuck.” It's just the casualness of it all, you sound like your ordering another appetizer and Tae’s about to choke on his dessert.

The grip he has on your hand is almost painful right now, “But don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here writing out my next script in my head, carry on. What rental service did you have in mind? Or did someone already reach out as well?”

It’s the way you just went from talking about Tae, being balls deep to sponsorships all in the span of a comma! In the words of your best friend you are pure chaos.....

Tae groans head hanging in defeat and your lips curl into a smirk, brow quirked in his direction.

“It’s the way I hate it here sometimes...” Snatching his hand away to jab his fork into the neglected pastry.

“Ah huh” You roll your eyes crossing your arms over your chest before leaning back. “Right, again let’s not act like you didin’t start this, both here and at the venue.” Leaning over the table again licking your lips “Don’t act like you weren’t eye fucking me the entire time, or the way you’d accidentally brush against me as we walked through the building. You’ve been practically begging for it all day.”

Tae just stares back at you, mind momentarily blank, stomach shifting into knots, letting the fork drop from those delicate fingers of his! Mouth opening and closing like a fish straight outta water...

“Did you think about it too? The acoustics in that place were fuckin insane, the way it would just echo through as you made me cum would just- fuck” You continued adding that lethal little purr back into your voice! “Or even better the way you’d sound, you don’t even know how bad I wanted to drop-“

“Y/n”

“Baby.” Phrasing the word borderline as a threat “Would you have liked that baby boy?” Cocking your head to the side, tongue teasing your bottom lip “Me on my knees for you looking up at you all pretty, letting you hold my hair and fuck my throat until you came straight into my mouth?”

Speaking of mouths' your just straight fuckin-mayhem ...and it’s making Taehyung’s brain feel like it’s melting through his ears! But god should we be surprised though?

It’s never taken much with you....

You’ve always been just what he needs and a little bit more than he can take all in one! You haven’t even touched him yet and he feels a moan creeping up his throat! Especially as he watches you swirl the tip of your tongue over the whipped cream on the edge of your fork, sucking it between your overly glossed lips in the most obscene manner.

Eyes locked and loaded, a second away from drooling, “Fuck, yeah,” He stutters breath hitching on his lungs, heat coursing through his skin. Tae’s veins literally feel like they’re on fire, subtly trying to shift in his seat to readjust himself! Glancing subconsciously out of his peripheral, the restaurant still chill and half empty. The waitress on the opposite end of the room attending to another couple!

“You always look so damn good with my cock down your throat, and my cum on your tounge. God, especially when I wrap my hand around your throat and I can feel you swallowing down around my-” Your tongue’s swirling all over this damn fork, and he can feel every flick your tongue against his dick, and it’s just...fuck! Not to mention once you accidently spilled some whipped cream on your lips, which you took your time licking off as well. “Jesus-Fuck, Y/n!!” Taehyung’s voice is dripping with arousal, and you already know he’s leaking all over the place.

“Yeah?” Humming around the form before setting it to the side “ You like the way I look when I’m chocking on your cock?” These questions are all rhetorical, your an ass “Or how about when I get a little messy because I can’t fit it all in my mouth?” Your eyes darken, words coming out over low gasps of air, almost as if your just as aroused as he is and that’s because you are!

“Your always such a good boy for me, so helpful too holding my hair back, guiding my mouth until you hit the back of my throat...holding me in place until I gag. You know how much I love when you get rough with me ..” Tae feels the sole of your red buttons tease up his thigh, shifting between his legs. The transition was so damn smooth it catches him off guard, instinctively wanting to push away but instead...

“You’d be loud for me too wouldn’t you? Show them how good you look falling apart for me, how good you look when you come down my throat....The way your eyes roll-”

“Holy-fuck Baby” Aggressively running his palms over his face until it’s matching his shirt “Please don’t do this to me right, now, if your gonna give it to me then fuckin let me have it but I cant-.”

You can’t help but smile back at him, so fond it almost seems out of place in the moment. “I’ll give you whatever you want Tae...you know this. You just gotta promise you’ll be good for me, we can’t draw-”

“I’m always good” He damn near growled at you, eyes daring you to say otherwise and well, who were you to deny Tae of what he wants!?Gently pressing your foot at the base of his cock, a satisfied smirk playing on your lips upon feeling that your boys already fully hard.

It’s the way the two of you are just casually in one of LA’s boujeiest restaurants and your deadass about to give him a foot job in Louboutin’s! Yup, your life had turned into a porno, you’ve officially made it!

“Kay, so back to that list of sponsors, first off I completely agree, as much as I love our contact at Uber I’d prefer an actual car service for something like that.” Here you go again the queen of the switch up, you’re back to discussing work yet there’s still a slight moan in your tenor. Breathy and light and Tae feels like all the airs being sucked from his lungs.

Tae shifts, spreading his thighs even further, shuddering out a bated breath as you point your toe, dragging it up and down! It’s a peep-toe so that alone allows you a little more flexibility! Pressure intentionally light so it’s just enough to have him on the brink of begging! But instead of doing so, he picks up his phone, hands shaky and all and continue doing his job as requested!

“Right..” Clearing his throat not sure why he currently sounds like he’s going through puberty again but K... “I’ll let Hobi know, maybe we can do something we’re we use them while planning this party or something! Since you vetoed a party planner will have a lot more running around to do! Realistically outside of Joon and Jin we all have coupes anyway...so it’s not like we can carry much!”

Mmm, always the innovator, even when all the blood and airs being rushed to his dick! You feel him try and slide forward, chasing after the stimulation.

“Ohhh, I really like that, and like you said it still feels somewhat organic because realistically our cars aren’t efficient for something like that” You press down harder against his cock almost as a reward “Good boy, what’s next?” Nodding towards his phone and it takes every ounce of self control he had to swallow down the moan laying on his tongue.

Eyes struggling to stay ajar as you continuously rub your foot up and down his length. Now applying more prominent pressure with the ball of your feet! Movement stealth from the waist up so you don’t draw attraction to yourself.

“Tae Tae” The nickname falls from your lips singsong like, and far too innocent for the demon seed you are. “Next?”

He doesn't even know what to really do except follow instructions, so he just nods, scrolling through his phone. “There was also a couple brands wanted to oh fuck-“ Gasping as you pick up your pace, damn near dropping his phone into the plate beneath him.

Face splitting into an amused grin, a hint of something wicked playing on your lips. Eyes gleaming with mischief, you watch those long, delicate fingers flex, clearly struggling this time around to bite back the moan like he needs to! Hands shaking as your continue working him at a merciless pace. Rubbing faster, harder, utilizing the rounded point on the head of your heel to press right against what your assuming is Tae’s tip by the way he shudders. Thighs shaking as he grips the edge of the table for dear life!

“Oh my godddd” Tae manages to just mouth the words as opposed to screaming them the way he desperately wants too. Tugging on his own scalp, trying to just do something to get himself busy!

“You fuckin love this....” It’s not even a question, more of a consensus!

Your eyes haven’t left his once, watching intently as you swirl your tongue around the straw before taking a sip. Moaning around it because well ya know, the drinks just that damn good apparently.

God his skin feels like it’s on fire, every stroke of your foot has him feeling like he’s coming undone!

He’s trying to focus, on his surroundings, this damn list everything but he can’t he just fucking can’t! Thankfully it’s you, and he trust you with everything he has, so his subconscious is somewhat at ease with all of this because he knows you got him!

“Yeah,fuck yeah you already know you can do anything to me” He states plainly, the most stable his voice has sounded in god knows when “Whatever you want” Gaze heavy through hooded lashes, looking straight at you with steady sinful eyes.

“Mmm, and always want it don’t you baby? Always...:”

He bites back a moan nodding, and then his phone rings, of course his phone fucking rings and it’s coming from the office because why the fuck not?!

“Answer” The command was simple, clearly no room for debate and hs eyes go wide,

“Baby” Complaining with a hint of a whine in his voice and when you don’t seem to give a damn....

“Yeah?”Jaw tight, nostrils flared as he picks up the phone. Adrenaline flies through his veins, pressure building in his gut as you relentlessly keep your pace intact! Pressing harder and deeper into all the right places until he’s coughing around Moans to try and cover it up!

Dropping his head slightly, propping it on his elbow as he squeezes the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “ Welp, That's where it would be so if you don’t see any were out, email me a list and I’ll make a Amazon-“

Taehyung’s chest heaves painfully tight, breathing becoming more erratic with every stroke and yes clearly there’s a strong voyeurism kink within this man! So as crazy as it may sound , the combination of the restaurant, and this phone call ?!

Yeah, he’s not gonna last!

Slouching down completely against the back of the booth, thighs spreading to full capacity. Fingers tangled in his Smokey locks holding his bangs out of his face. Eyes shut , jaw tight, neck slightly reclined, though to the naked eye he’d just appear to be on a very unpleasant phone call! When in all actually he’s finally just letting himself fall apart beneath your touch!

Eyes fluttering open just enough to glance down at you in a way that had you feeling like you could come right with him. Your gaze is Just as heavy as his, lips darting out to wet your lips though your throats suddenly what’s running dry!

Tae’s lips part slightly, though he’s falling apart he’s giving it right back to you. Hitting you with those sinfully needy fuck me eyes! The same ones you see when your riding and edging him until he’s coming tenfold! His breathing comes stagnate every time your foot moves and Tae finds himself gnawing down on his bottom lip to stifle the moans sliding up his chest! You can tell who's on the other end now, it’s the new secretary Alanna, and she legitimately is still getting her footing! Which is the only reason Tae is even entertaining the call, well one of the reasons!

You notice Tae’s breathing is starting to even out a little almost as if he’s gained some of his self control back and we don’t support that in this household. So you proceed to dig your foot right into the head of his cock and he straight wheezes! Body jerking off the wall and all ...

“No, I’m, fuck-“ There’s a moan that finally falls freely off his tongue that only barley seems acceptable because he in fact just choked! Voice coming out what feels like a octave lower and huskier , poor Alanna! “Yeah i'm good sorry , food just went down the wrong pipe.” He can barely think straight but he knows he needs to close this up “Hey look will be back within the hour and will sort it out then alright?”

I don’t even think he even waited for her to respond before hanging up and literally throwing his phone across the table! Gucci case and all.

“Everything okay? ?” Voice low and teasing, he knows you're technically asking about the office but your timing sucks ass!

“Fuck you” Falls off his lips in a barley audible moan, so consumed as his orgasm builds in the pit of his stomach! Eyes still struggling to stay open mouth, mouth falling slack, if your were in your right mind you’d tell him to pull it together alittle! Now that he’s off the phone, he either looks like he’s getting a foot job, or like he’s high on meth! Neither are appealing to the GP! God, he must look utterly ridiculous right now, thankfully he’s shifted against the booth so he’s facing a wall as opposed to other guest!

“Mm, my pretty baby’s close yeah?” Watching how heavily his throat bobs as he swallows, Tae’s leaking precum all over the damn place, so, close hips gently rocking into your foot as discreetly as possible, growing more desperate by the second. Fuck he needs to come, he needs to!

“Yeah baby please don’t- fuck” God he sounds so good, so needy and pliant and fuck!

“I got you...” At that you actually kick your shoe off, moving back to press down even harder, rubbing and rubbing forcing Tae to attempt to grab his drink in attempts to muzzle himself. However his hands are shaking too hard and he almost knocks it over!

“God baby I’m-“

“Be a good boy for me”

And he is, coming with a shuddering breath, under the steady pressure of your foot as his release tears through his veins. Dropping his to the table as subtly as possible(Hell maybe people will think he’s tipsy or not feeling well), thighs shaking, chest heaving painfully hard. He’s not completely silently but he does a lot better than expected, a low groan manages to slip past his lips.

“Good boy” The praise rolls off your tongue and goes straight to his dick, as if he needed anymore stimulation there. Another faint whimper falls off his lips until he’s drooling all over the table. Not even realizing initially, that his hips were still grinding into you until he’s hissing from oversensitivity! The force of his orgasm has Taehyung drawing straight blanks, hearing nothing but white nose rustling in the background!

Also, I don’t know what that says about Tae as a person but he’s not even remotely humiliated! The only thing that he’s about to regret once his mind's less foggy is how absolutely drenched his YSL leather pants are!

So busy trying to get his breathing back in check as he comes down from his high, he completely missed the way you’d signaled to the server. Calmly asking for her to add 8 more slices of cake to go, and bring the bill over!

His face is flushed, his pants feel gross as hell but above everything else he feels so damn good! Reaching down to still your foot, gently massaging the top as his eyes finally flutter open! Vision still a little hazy as he looks back at you with a dazed smile, and your gazing back at him with so much fondness that the first thing that slurs off his lips in a whisper is....

“I fuckin love you!”

Flashing him a wink in return as you make eye contact with your servers whose letting you know she’ll be over in a moment. Keeping your foot stationary for a moment, enjoying the well deserved foot massage. Occasionally flexing your toes to “accidentally brush against his dick. Giggling around your drink every time he'd hiss and jerk away!

This entire lunch situation was a damn mess, and high key reckless but, the blissed out smile written all over his face is more than worth it. Where just ugh...not gonna tell the boys about this!

“Love you too Tae”

~~~~~~~~~

Everything from that moment on kind of feels like a blur honestly, up until the two of you sliding into your car and before you can even get yourself settled he’s on you! Yanking you out of your seat and into his lap before you can even put your seatbelt on which obviously is not ideal this is a sports car after all but you don’t dare complain! Taehyung’s far from shy with his wants, griping the back of your neck, sliding his fingers through your hair as he presses your lips together! He doesn’t try to ease you into it either It’s hard, hungry, desperate and overtly needy! Forcing both of you to huff out a staggered breath through your nose to even keep up! You breathe him in, and he breathes you out, it’s all open mouthed, and heady, an obscene amount of moans rolling off your tongues. Reclining your jaw, giving him free reign to explore your mouth. Tongue rolling against your slick and languid with years of finesse between the two of you. No matter how hard he’s kissing you it still doesn’t feel rushed, its deep, borderline sensual actually!

Tae pulls back just enough to nip at your bottom lip, dragging his across your jaw and down the side of your neck! Licking sucking and biting, along your skin, moaning at the way you arch and grind your hips into every touch! The two of you carry on like that until there’s suddenly something thumbing in the back of your throat!

“Hey..” There's a slight sternness within your voice that has him instantly trying to snap out of his postcoital haze. Stroking the hinge of his jaw “You know, how much I love you right? And if, we need to all sit down a re-”

Cutting you off with the smooth glide of his lips pulling you into a kiss that’s a slower, less needy, there’s no ulterior motive, Tae just wants to feel you “Nah, I don't wanna change anything sometimes- I just want-”

“I know...” Because you do, pressing your forehead to his, not even kissing just letting your breaths melt as one. Massaging his scalp gently, he already looks like he’s a second away from passing out! Pondering if maybe the two of you should switch places...

“Promise you’ll let me take care of you later” Tae nuzzles against the side of your face like a puppy wanting his ears scratched! Believe it or not he wasn’t always such a selfless lover, not until he found you guys! Now it’s almost like his orgasms feel incomplete if he’s the only one coming once it’s all said and done!

“You can do whatever you want to me Tae, you know this.” Placing a couple lingering kisses on those pouty lips of his before hesitantly shuffling into the passengers seat. Transfixed on the way he slips back into his lane, fixing his hair, pulling out his oversized cat eye frames to rest on the bridge of his nose. One hand on the wheel the other finding there home on your thigh. Noting the slight discomfort as he shifts in his seat, no doubt due to the fact that well, he just came in his pants.

“How about..” Leaning over to place a open mouth kiss right beneath is ear, digging your nails into his thigh until he moans. “ I clean you up a little on the drive, and we pit stop at mine, and we drop you off first so you can shower and chill. Then me and Joon will come back and crawl into bed with you after were done for the day..”

“Am I being given the rest of the day off Mrs. Kim?” You can already hear the smirk in his voice without even looking...

“Yes Mr. Kim that would be correct....” Already working the zipper before he can even respond because you already know how this is about to pan out...

___________________

Hi my babies, first off IDK where this came from, I also wouldn’t consider it my best, but it was the first thing I’ve written in like 6 months which felt good. This was supposed to be up back in December I had a couple holiday prompts for the series that I never got around to completing ! But If you enjoyed show this some love and come talk to me!

Love always,

Rocki

#taehyung #taehyung smut #taehyung x reader #kim taehung #kim taehyung smut #bts #bts smut #bts x reader #kim taehyung x reader #kpop #kpop smut

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13uswntimagines · 4 years

Text

Terrible plans paved with good intentions (Mal x Reader)

Request: R and mal are secretly dating so one of the other youngins hits on R all the time and we get to see a jealous mal?

Authors note: This one was like uber fun to write, so i really hope you enjoy it. Also, Reader is used to lots of physical contact and affection from the youngins. Anyway, Enjoy! hit me up with requests, questions or if you just wanna say hi!

The youngins were concerned. Very concerned. You and Mal were acting strangely. The two of you were always together, and the young forward seemed to be the only person in the team with the ability to get you to crack a smile. It was obvious from the way that the two of you interacted that you liked each other. The problem was that both of you seemed to be too chicken to do anything about it.

Hell, Emily had even asked you point blank if you were dating Mal, to which you had snorted and walked away. They just wanted you guys to be happy, and the one thing that would make you and Mal the happiest would be if you were dating. So it seemed that the only option was for them to meddle to get the two of you together.

“Y/n and Mal are either blind or oblivious”

“Or both,” Emily snorted, as she watched you chase Mal around the field, trying to steal back the ball you had been messing around with.

“She lets her borrow her snapbacks and everything,” Lindsey smirked as you tackled Mal to the ground, and she grabbed your signature hat off your head. You just smiled down at the girl, placing a kiss on her forehead before standing and going back to juggling the soccer ball.

“Are you three thinking what I’m thinking?” Emily smiled at Lindsey, Sam, and Rose wiggling her eyebrows. This was the perfect opportunity to meddle. The perfect opportunity to both prank the two of you and get you to finally admit your feelings.

“Whatever you’re thinking, I want nothing to do with it. Last time we messed with Y/n she almost ripped our heads off,” Sam said raising her hands. She wanted nothing to do with whatever scheme Emily’s diabolical mind thought up, she still had mental scars from how scary you were when you were angry. How you had taken every opportunity you could to make practice the next day horrible for all of them.

“That’s because we ruined her favorite shirt,” Lindsey rolled her eyes. This wouldn’t end up like that, as you would be extremely happy about your newfound relationship.

“So now you just wanna ruin her friendship with Mal,” Rose laughed, quirking an eye up at team blond. She was pretty sure you would rather have Mal as a friend than nothing at all, and she knew Mal felt the same. You were both terrified of losing your friend, and getting over that wasn’t something that could (or should) be rushed.

“No, we wanna make them more than friends,” Emily wined, waving her arms wildly. You both felt the same so why should you have to wait?

“I’m out,” Sam said firmly, seconded by Rose’s “Me too!”. They would rather watch you dance around your feelings than suffer the wrath of a pissed off you and Mal.

“Losers,” Lindsey called after them as they jogged away. She and Em didn’t need their help anyway. So, the plan to get the star forwards together began. What they didn’t know was that you and Mal were much more than friends...

****

You panted on the field, walking as a cool down from the intense scrimmage you had just participated in. You had been against Emily, Kelley, and Becky, and it was a fucking nightmare. And with JJ in their midfield, you had spent a lot of time trying to out-maneuver the women.

In ninth-two degree heat, trying to score had taken a lot out of you. It also had sweat dripping down your forehead, which you were dabbing with the bottom of your tank top.

“Hey hot stuff, you look like a fucking rockstar today,” Emily jogged up beside you, winking and swatting at your exposed abs. You instantly dropped your tank top.

“Thanks, Em, you looked pretty good too,” You laughed at the defender, patting her head, before returning your gaze to the forward that had stolen your heart.

You made to jog off but were stopped by Emily’s hand in your arm, subtly squeezing your bicep.

“It’s kinda warm out here isn’t it?” She asked, fluttering her eyelashes at you.

You glanced down at were her fingers were testing your muscles, a light sheen of red covering your cheeks from being blatantly hit on. Your mind raced for a way to let her down easy, and hopefully not ruin your friendship or the team dynamic.

“Um, I guess,” You started, your tongue feeling like lead in your mouth. You carefully pulled your arm away to rub the back of your neck, sending help me eyes to your girlfriend from across the field.

When you turned back around, Emily had managed to pull her tank top clean off and wrap it like a towel around her neck. Your eyes widened and your mouth went dry and you purposefully stared at her in the eyes. “whoa, why are you taking your shirt off,” you covered your face with your hands, much like a two-year-old playing hide and seek.

“Cause I’m hot, don’t you agree?” Emily smirked at you, nearly giggling at how adorable you were (and not missing the glare that Mal was sending her way). It was also kinda cute how you refused to look anywhere but towards Mal, the ground, or her eyes.

“That-, um-, I-, uh,” you stuttered, turning completely away from the woman. Yes, you were in love with Mal, but you also had eyes, and the women on the national team were very attractive. You felt like you were in high school talking to a pretty cheerleader and not one of your best friends.

“Relax Y/n,” She murmured, her eyebrows furrowing at how flustered you were. She didn’t think that something this simple would turn you into a stuttering, blushing mess. You had a reputation as a flirt, so she was surprised by your reaction.

“I’m gonna go,” you muttered softly, nearly sprinting towards where Lindsey was standing with Mal, wrapping the smaller girl up in your arms.

It was interesting the way that Mal’s fingers ran through your hair, and you just melted into her. How the fuck could you not realize that you were in love with her.

****

After your very strange encounter with Emily on the pitch, you had hoped that the weight session would be uneventful. You had gotten to cuddle with Mal on the bus ride and you were supposed to be paired with her for the workout. What you didn’t know was that it’s was Lindsey’s turn to try out Emily’s plan.

Sure, Mal had glared at them, and you two had been a little too touchy-feely in the ride over, but you still hadn’t confessed your feelings for one another. At least that’s what team blond thought.

So here you were, standing in front of the squat rack, sending confused eyes to Mal in the mirror, your tongue lolling out the side to get her to giggle. You were so busy making faces at Mal that you didn’t notice Lindsey approach you.

“Hey sexy, need a spot?” She whispered into your ear, her lips caressing the shell as she wrapped her arms around your waist.

You jumped at the feeling, an unpleasant shiver running down your back. “Shit,”

“Whoa there,” She murmured, kissing your cheek as she steadied the two of you. Your cheeks flushed when you realized just how close to you she was, and you immediately pulled away.

“Umm, I, thought you were paired with Emily,” You mumbled, scratching the back of your neck.

“I switched with Mal,” Lindsey smirked at you, not missing how you looked longingly over her shoulder at the said woman.

“So, need a spot?” Lindsey asked, gesturing towards the squat rack.

“Yeah, I guess,” You sighed, wincing slightly at Mal’s glare. You were in trouble with her and you knew it. But it really wasn’t your fault that people were hitting on you, you weren’t the one who didn’t wanna tell all your friends you were dating.

You grabbed the bar, positioning it on your shoulders, and Lindsey stepped into position behind you. Except instead of the normal spot, she wrapped her hands around your waist, her fingers playing with the hem at the front of your workout shirt.

“Hey Lindsey, you don’t have to grab my waist, I got it,” You stuttered our, your pink cheeks turning an even deeper shade of red.

“I know, but I like being close to you,” She hummed into your ear, placing a kiss on the back of your neck. You thanked God that she was standing there because you dropped the bar at the action. You scrubbed your hands over your eyes, barely able to get the “I-, um-, I-I think I’m done,” out of your mouth before you escaped.

Across the gym, Mal watched the interaction with disdain. Her grip on the dumbbell tightening incremental with every move Lindsey made. How could you stand there and blush while Lindsey was making a move on you?

Mal knew that you held no romantic feelings for Lindsey or Emily, but it didn’t make her feel any less jealous when they were practically throwing themselves at you.

“If you grip that bar any harder Mal Pal, you’re going to pull a muscle,” Emily snickered, shivering slightly at Mal’s deadly glare.

“Shut up Sonnett,” She snapped.

“Whoa there, careful or someone might think you’re jealous,” The blond smirked, eyeing the way Mal was sharing glances with your very wide eyes in the mirror. She never knew that you were so easy to fluster.

“Whatever,” Mal scoffed, dropping the weight and heading towards the locker room, and Sonnett wasn’t even surprised when you followed mere seconds after.

*****

Emily and Lindsey waited exactly 10 minutes before heading to the locker room, hoping that maybe you had pulled your head out of your ass and asked out Mal.

They carefully crept into the locker room, but instead of being met with the preferable sight of You mad Mal cuddled up together, they were met with you sitting on the bench with your head in your hands and Mal pacing like there was no tomorrow. If the scowl on her face meant anything, you two weren’t having a good conversation.

“That’s not my fault Mal,” You said far too calmly, scrubbing your eyes with your hands in frustration.

“Well you sure as hell didn’t try and stop them,” Mal growled back, running her hands through her hair and pulling angrily at the strands. Who gave Lindsey and Emily the right to hit on you? To touch you?

“Yeah, because my repeated attempts to get your attention weren’t a sign that I needed help,” You nearly yelled one exasperation, standing and blocking her path, hands placed firmly in your hips.

“Well maybe if you weren’t such a gay mess around our teammates everything would have been fine. You practically let them grope you,” She grumbled, waving her hands in dramatically. Yes, your red cheeks and stuttering were adorable, but only when it was happening with her. Sonnett and Lindsey shouldn’t get to experience that.

You sighed. It wasn’t like you could tell the women to hit the road without telling them that you were dating. And you didn’t want to be rude to them, they were your friends.

“What do you exp-..” You started softly, only to be cut off by her soft lips claiming your own. You melted into her, letting her tongue explore your mouth with ease.

She pulled away suddenly, keeping her forehead on your own. “You’re mine Y/n Y/m/n Y/l/n got it,”

“Mm yes ma’am,” You mumbled, connecting your lips again. They were like your drug, you just couldn’t get enough.

“When the fuck did this happen?” Lindsey exclaimed, and you and Mal jumped apart, a bright red blush coloring your cheeks.

“Like 6 months ago,” Mal stated fondly, grabbing your hand and pulling you back into her embrace. You immediately relaxed against her.

“Holy shit,” Lindsey said breathlessly, staring at you with wide eyes.

“See, my plan worked,” Emily smirked, nudging her bond counterpart with her shoulder. Lindsey rolled her eyes at the woman. You had clearly not appreciated their advances on you.

“No your plan made them fight, they were already together,” Lindsey snarked back, glaring at the other woman, and sending you a sorry smile.

“So that’s why you guys were turning my baby into a gay mess?” Mal asked, crossing her arms and staring at Lindsey and Emily expectantly, while you shrunk behind her. You loved Mal and no one hitting on you was gonna change that, plus she was hot when she was agitated (as long as it wasn’t with you).

#uswnt x reader #uswnt imagine #uswnt imagines #mal pugh x reader #mal pugh imagine

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eventid1ngs · 4 years

Text

[ F e v e r . ]

A Post-Calamity Zelink Oneshot

Rating: T

Word count: 2500

Zelda blew out a breath that puffed her cheeks. She felt flushed and uncomfortable, and frankly, quite over the whole situation if she was being honest with herself. It hadn’t taken her long to decide that the Eldin Region, in its entirety, was her least favorite amongst the whole kingdom. At least the Gerudo’s persistent hot weather was of a drier character; the climate closer to Death Mountain was dreadfully humid and the princess was not enjoying it at all.

Quickly, she changed out of her travelling clothes and into more comfortable clothing suitable for sleeping. She did not have the energy to walk to the bathhouses to change, and Link had gone not too long ago to bathe, so Zelda took the liberty to change within the current privacy of their room at the Foothill Stable Inn.

Afterwards she lay on her side of the bed (Following a week or two of debilitating nightmares, Link had agreed to sleep nearer to her, for both her protection and her comfort. She hadn’t had a nightmare since), focusing on doing as little as possible so as to avoid using the energy she felt she didn’t have due to the heat. Rather idly, she scrolled through the Hyrule Compendium on the Sheikah slate, making mental notes of the missing entries.

Even breathing felt like a chore. Zelda missed the comforts of more temperate climates and looked forward to leaving the next morning now that her and the knight’s work there with the Gorons was complete.

A half hour or so passed before Link returned. Zelda jumped when the door opened, having been so absorbed in her reading material. Her eyes met the knight’s as he entered. He nodded to her and offered a small smile before closing the door behind him and motioning towards the mirror by the dresser. He wore a clean white shirt and short pants. His wild hair was wet from his bath.

Zelda continued to read as Link brushed his hair into a duly ponytail. He approached the bed.

“Will you be up for a while longer?” he asked.

“Yes, I would like to finish this book. I am almost at the end. It is quite fascinating! Did you know that…” But Link had stopped listening, not out of any disrespect but because of sheer exhaustion; that fight with the hinox brute earlier had left him more tired than he realized. As Zelda discussed the contents of her book, Link moved the candle from the nightstand on his side of the bed to the one on Zelda’s.

“...Amazing. There are so many things to learn about this Goddess-forsaken region.” The princess finally took a break from talking.

Her knight chuckled. “Goddess-forsaken?”

“I must admit to you, Link, that I have been most uncomfortable since our arrival here.” she explained, sitting up and leaning against the headboard. “Tease me if you must, but I am not at all accustomed to this climate and it does not suit me in the slightest.”

The other refrained from the teasing. “Can I do anything to make you more comfortable, princess? I could fetch you a cooling elixir.”

Zelda wanted to accept the offer, but shook her head. “No, I will be alright. You need your rest. I will be quiet now.”

“Being of service to you is not a bother--”

“Thank you.”

“...Do you need anything else, princess?”

“No. Thank you, Link.”

He nodded and proceeded to lie down, on top of the covers. His left hand rested on his stomach and the other above his head on the pillow. His typical sleeping position.

“Goodnight, princess.” he muttered, his eyes already closed.

“Goodnight, Link.”

Sometime later, after Zelda had finished her book, she sat it down on the nightstand and lay down on her side, facing the candle. She watched the flickering flame for a long, long while.

It was too hot. Too humid. And for the life of her, the princess was unable to fall asleep. She turned over, facing her knight. A weird sense of desperation came over her that she would not sleep at all that night and that have a terrible day tomorrow, and she wanted to wake Link so he could go and acquire a sleep tonic for her. But she couldn’t. She wouldn't.

So she just stared at Link, half comforted by the sight of him sleeping so soundly, half incredibly envious of the fact that he had already been sleeping for two or three hours and she hadn’t slept a wink.

Then she felt awkward, watching him like that.

Was it proper that she and Link shared a bed, if only to sleep? It hadn’t even crossed her mind before. She had been so immensely relieved to be cured of her nightmares that she hadn’t considered anything else. Besides, most evenings, both Link and Zelda were too exhausted from the various activities of the day to let their minds wander where they, perhaps, should not be. Everything was mechanical. And if otherwise, the two merely went over the next day’s plan on the Sheikah slate until they were too tired to continue.

The princess shuddered at the thought of her father finding out about the bedsharing, although, surely he knew somehow, from his place in the afterlife. It was a somewhat harrowing thought that Zelda pushed from her mind immediately.

But tonight, on account of her sleeplessness, her thoughts went somewhere it had only dared to graze over before.

She watched the slow rise and fall of the knight’s chest as he breathed. He snored softly, which was followed by a sort of contented moan that caused something in Zelda’s insides to stir. She had no explanation for that strange feeling, at the time.

She sighed. He is enjoying his sleep. Blessed be the Goddesses.

Suddenly, Link woke, and stared at Zelda with a confused expression and sleep-smeared eyes.

“...Princess? Are you alright?”

Zelda hesitated.

“What is wrong?”

“The mere fact that I bathed just a few hours ago and I already feel that I need to bathe again.”

Link scratched at his hair. His cheeks were visibly flushed. “It is hot in here.” he agreed, “I’ll open a window. Maybe some air flow will help.” He got up and did so. Before returning he acquired a looser, short sleeve shirt from his pack to replace the one he was wearing. He quickly switched the shirts with his back facing Zelda. She hadn’t been looking until one of his shoulder blades glinted in the candlelight and she glanced over a mere second too late to see anything else.

Did she want to see anything else? The sudden notion puzzled her.

When he turned, the two locked eyes.

“I’m sorry that you’re so uncomfortable, princess.” he said, approaching again. “Are you sure there isn't anything else that I can do to help?” He couldn’t stop the yawn that followed his offer.

“I just can’t sleep. Perhaps I will just try again tomorrow night when we’re back in Necluda.” She meant for this to be a joke but it came out more bitter than she had intended.

Link stared at her for a moment, thinking, before sitting crossed-legged on the bed and reaching for the Sheikah slate. It had been resting against the footboard. The bed dipped as the knight sat down and the princess had to readjust her own sitting position.

“...What are you doing?” she asked, curiously.

“Making note of something I just thought of.” was his answer. Zelda didn’t feel like prodding him to tell her what that something was, so she laid back down instead, feeling no less irritated. Link typed on the slate for less than a minute before setting it back down where had been and then lying down. He finally noticed Zelda glaring at him.

“What?”

“...Nothing.”

He wasn’t convinced, and they didn’t break eye contact. Finally, the princess’ expression softened.

“I was just thinking, Link…” she said quietly. “...and, please, be honest with me--”

“I’m always honest with you, princess.”

She paused, taken aback that he had interrupted her. He had never done that before. “...Just for the sake of my curiosity… Have you ever thought about… I mean… Have you ever wondered what we… If we…”

“Yes.”

“I...what?”

“Of course I have, princess. I’m not dense.”

“I… I was not at all suggesting that you were! I’m just genuinely curious…” Zelda pressed her lips together. She hardly understood these words that were, frivolously, escaping her lips with her voice. And yet, somehow, Link understood? It couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Our questions will find their answers in due time, princess.”

“I know that. I have always been rather impatient, though, and I can’t help but wonder... But I apologize for this silly conversation. Please, go back to sleep. I have said too much.”

The moment of silence that followed, without any sort of closure from either party, proved to be far more uncomfortable than the hot weather.

The princess shut her eyes, feeling as if she had done something awful, and it took considerable effort on her part not to start crying. A line had been crossed and she wished that she could erase the past five minutes.

But Link moved beside her and before she had a chance to look at him and assess the situation, she felt his lips on hers.

It was soft.

Gentle.

Earnest.

Still, Zelda gasped from surprise. In doing so she opened her mouth slightly, which her knight took as an invitation.

Something was being set free. It was raw, unadulterated...wild. Something, perhaps, that had been waiting over a hundred years to come to the surface, having lay dormant all that time.

“Link, wait-- I-- There is so much more-- that I need to say--” But he was stealing away her breaths, and the words stopped materializing in her brain.

“Later.” he said. His lower lip dragged up her chin and briefly cupped hers before resuming the kiss.

“Oh-- I--”

He paused and they stared at each other for a few seconds. “...Do you want me to stop?”

“I… No--”

So he didn’t. Zelda sighed out the last bit of her resolve and allowed her mind to drift away amongst the sea of her inner consciousness.

His hands were on her; one on her hip and the other supporting her behind her back. She put her hands on either side of his face, daring to touch him for the first time. Their kisses became less tableau and more mindless; a feverish tangle of swollen lips and forceful breaths. They fell to the bed eventually and his mouth travelled from hers to along her jaw and then her ear.

She felt his warmth--impassionate and searing--seeping out from him, through his clothes and then through hers before entering her through the very pores of her skin.

...If she had been hot before, she was on fire now, having become one with the very pools of flame that flowed under the Great Eldin Bridge.

Link nuzzled against her neck, somehow finding new places to plant more kisses. Zelda felt that if this continued for much longer, she would surely implode.

“...We should stop…..” he said, his voice low near her ear. His breathing had syncopated with hers.

“Then stop...” was her response. It sounded like a dare.

“...Do you want me to stop, princess?”

The word princess made Zelda open her eyes. She stared at the textured beige ceiling above them as she tried to catch her breath. “...I’m afraid, Sir Link...that I simply don’t have the courage...to answer that question...as we are, now...”

At that, he retreated, removing his limbs from hers carefully. Zelda’s skin mourned the loss of his touch. She searched for his face but he refused to meet her eyes. She watched him swallow, hard. Her brain rebooted and had begun to replay what had just occurred over again in her mind like a slideshow. What...was happening? The princess tried to make logical sense of this new onset of feelings and emotions, but her body betrayed her with exhaustion and a yearning ache for more of his kisses.

“I’m sorry. That should not have happened.” Link said, finally, swallowing his breaths in vain attempt to calm himself down. “It is not my place to initiate such things. I’m ashamed of my behavior."

“But, Link--”

“I can’t share a bed with you anymore, princess. Please understand me. I… can’t.”

Zelda panicked, remembering the nightmares. “You can, and you must. Please! I need you to. You know this.”

He made no response. Instead, he got up with a vague gesture of distress.

“Wait--”

“I just need a few minutes to myself, princess. Please excuse me.”

Zelda nodded her permission and Link put on his cloak and boots before heading out into the night alone.

“It’s fine.” she reassured, a bit later, after he had returned.

“No. You barely opened a door and I shoved myself across the threshold. That is not fine, princess.”

“Maybe I wanted--” Zelda began, but she stilled her tongue.

Link stared, not realizing that he was holding his breath.

The princess swallowed her previous sentence. “...It’s my fault, then. For opening the door.” she said instead, feeling her heart sink, meanwhile.

That was not what her knight wanted to hear, either, and it was obvious in his expression.

“At any rate, I’m sorry...” he said, too late.

The princess was exasperated. The lack of sleep was making her eye sockets hurt. “Please don’t apologize for--”

“..For disturbing the peace between us.”

“--something that I started.” They had both spoken at the same time. There was a long, pregnant pause. It was then that they both realized that neither would be the same from that night on. Later that became a terrifying though exciting prospect; a new adventure to embark upon and a new world to explore but in that moment, it felt like both of them had lost something very precious and they felt its sudden absence very, very keenly, in their own ways.

“Link, let’s forget about this for right now. I am so very tired and I know that you are, too.” She patted his vacant spot on the bed. “Come and sleep.”

“I shouldn’t--”

“Come and sleep.” she repeated. It wasn’t a request.

He swallowed again. “Yes, princess.” He rejoined her on the bed, maintaining distance. They both lay down on their backs, both staring at the ceiling.

Zelda reached out and took Link’s hand. “I trust you, you understand that, right?” she said quietly. Her eyes were closed. “It is myself whom I do not trust just yet.”

“I understand.”

“Goodnight, Link.”

“Goodnight, princess.”

The night finally consumed the two--the Princess of Hyrule and her appointed knight--and they slept peacefully, long into the morning.

END.

#zelink #botw #fanfic #postcalamity #oneshot #for those of you who prefer to read on tumblr #i gotchu fam

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imaginesandinserts · 4 years

Text

Irreverent Pt. 19 - Interrogation

Title: Irreverent Pt. 19 - Interrogation Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Reader Rating: R Words: 4732

Irreverent Series Masterlist

While you all waited to figure out a plan to apprehend Doyle and bring down whatever nefarious plot your father was concocting, the team still had regular cases to attend to.

This time you'd found yourself getting called out to San Diego where there had been a rash of missing men in their late thirties to early forties and so far only one body had turned up.

"So, we're thinking female Unsub, right?" Derek asked, as the team was settling into the jet.

"Given the sexual assault evidence on the body found and the age of the victims, along with the fact that the eyes were gouged out, it would appear so, yes," Rossi affirmed, sitting down across from Hotch, leaving the seat across from you blissfully empty. You quickly shot him a grateful smile and stretched your legs to reach the other seat.

"Eye gouging is preferential to female Unsubs, with odds of a female Unsub being involved in the event of eye gouging to be 5:1," Reid piped in as he took a seat across from Morgan at the other end of the aisle.

Emily had rushed to occupy the large couch and you knew she was about to pass out as soon as the plane took off. The two of you had had a night of drinking wine at your place and had not been expecting the call to come in at 7am. You'd thanked your lucky stars that you'd thought to drink enough water and that you were still young enough to avoid the worst of hangovers as long as you took that precaution.

JJ was rummaging through the snack cabinets for Cheetos and you asked her to toss you a bag of chips to help settle your stomach.

"Here you go," JJ said, lobbing the bag of Lays at you while you were distracted with your seatbelt. You looked up to see the bag hurling towards your face and it would've reached its destination had Hotch's reflexes not helped his hand to leap out right in front of your face, preventing you from taking a hit. He gently placed it in your lap.

"Thanks, Hotch. Just for that, you can have some," you joked, opening the bag and offering him the first chip. He smiled at you and took two, causing you to giggle and roll your eyes. He'd been more lighthearted lately, something that was unexpected for you all. You'd think with Doyle hanging over your heads that Hotch would be even more grim than usual, but he had maintained a somewhat positive attitude - for him at least. Even Emily had brought it up the night prior as the two of you sipped flutes of expensive champagne that Cedric had sent you in hopes to reconcile. It hadn't worked but it would be a crime not to drink it. "I wonder if Hotch is dating someone?" Emily had mused, suggestively raising her brows. You'd shot that down - you couldn't quite see him dating anyone yet.

The plane ride continued on with the team talking about the case and then everyone splitting off to do their own thing. You looked over to see Emily passed out on the couch as predicted. Seeing as you would be landing in a couple of hours and would be expected to push on full steam ahead, getting some sleep didn't seem like the worst idea. You turned towards the window and closed your eyes with Hotch still looking over the case files beside you.

As you slowly woke up while the plane was making its descent, you felt the warmth of a body next to you, before realizing you were holding onto someone's arm and burrowed into the side of the body that arm was attached to. Rossi noticed your eyes opening first and he shot you a smirk as the realization that you basically held Hotch hostage in your slumber caught up to you. The blood immediately rushed to your face as you moved away from Hotch and released your grip on his arm. How long had you been asleep like that? Why hadn't he just pushed you away back towards the window?

"Sorry," you mumbled to Hotch as he was now aware that you were awake.

He looked amused by your embarrassment. "Oh it's okay. Anytime." You could tell he hadn't meant to say the last bit because he quickly looked away, busying himself with gathering his stuff. Rossi looked suspiciously smug. You made a mental note to ask Hotch about that later.

Hotch had been the bearer of Rossi's smugness while you slept. The Italian man hadn't stopped throwing him looks the second you'd moved away from the window and grabbed his arm like it was a pillow.

"Stop that," he'd muttered, not meeting Rossi's eyes, instead choosing to look at you as you slept, tucked into him, looking smaller and more innocent than ever before.

"I didn't say anything." The mirth in his voice was infuriating.

"You didn't have to."

Hotch just shook his head in disapproval. Rossi had asked him about you before. Out of everyone on the team, he was perhaps the only one who had caught on to Hotch's true feelings towards you, which he stifled on a daily basis. Hotch had denied it of course. It wasn't appropriate - your positions, your age difference - no matter how cute you looked as you clutched his arm tight to your body.

*------------*

It had been a rough case as you worked against the clock to identify the Unsub. The latest victim, Justin Chambers, a single father to a little girl, had been taken from his home. Based on what you knew of the disappearance of the only victim whose body you had found, the Unsub kept the victims for 48 hours before disposing of them. You were already into hour 24.

You knew the Unsub was female, in her thirties, and based on the evidence of assault, you had a working profile that she was single or recently divorced. Reid had built a geographic profile based on the location of where the one body had been found and where the other men had gone missing from.

You looked over the details of all the missing victims again and you were all getting frustrated. Morgan and Prentiss were canvassing the neighborhood where the last man had gone missing while the rest of the team was trying to figure out anything else about the Unsub that could narrow down the search.

You stood up to grab another cup of coffee - you had to be stealthy because JJ was ready to cut you off after your last one. As you walked to the break room, you saw Hotch there, getting a refill as well.

"Any luck?" he asked, as he saw you walk in purposefully to the coffee pot.

"Nope"

But, as you reached for the pot, he suddenly moved it out of reach.

"What're you doing?" you asked, annoyed at being denied your caffeine fix despite the little twitch you'd started to develop in your left eyelid.

"JJ said you're cut off," he smirked at you, relishing the game of deprive-Y/N-of-coffee.

"JJ isn't the boss of me!" you said, narrowing your eyes, trying to swipe the pot from him but he moved it further than you could reach without tackling him. And that would be taking it too far. Right? Tackling your boss for coffee was frowned upon in most professional settings, you were sure. Then again, most professional bosses wouldn't deprive a good worker of their caffeine fix.

"Ugh, whatever. Be that way."

He merely raised his eyebrows looking amused at you giving up so quickly.

But as you looked at Hotch, you had a thought. Hotch could tell you had had a realization as you wordlessly walked back to the conference room where the team had been set up.

"Hey Garcia, all the victims, they had girlfriends or wives right?" you asked, directed at the screen Garcia had occupied since you all had setup.

"Yes, they did."

"Can you pull them up?"

"One second." The screen was quickly populated by driver's license pictures of women in their mid twenties. You knew what the trigger was.

"They're all young, y/h/c, and petite. Garcia, that list of suspects, narrow it down to just the ones who've been divorced before, what does that give you?"

"We go down from 250 to 100. Still not narrow enough."

"Narrow it further by women whose previous partners are now remarried."

"40"

"Remove any of the ones whose exes married a woman above the age of thirty."

"Leaves 5."

"Dammit, okay. Can you pull up pictures of all the new wives?"

"Yeah, here you go."

As you looked at the five new pictures, your eye was caught by the third woman, whose face most closely matched the victims' girlfriends.

"The third one, is she pregnant?"

"Yes! Omg how did you know?"

"Who's the ex-wife of that girl's husband?"

"Carol Conway."

"That's her, that's the Unsub."

Hotch and Reid had followed your train of thought, agreeing that the marriage of the ex to a new, younger wife, with whom he was now expecting the child the Unsub never got, was the secondary trigger.

Hotch called in the address to the others as you all quickly put on vests and headed towards the Unsub's rental property, which was the most likely location. "That was quick thinking in there," Hotch praised as you adjusted the radio to dial into the police frequency. "Thanks." You wanted to avoid telling him what made you think of it. You didn't want to tell him that it had been inspired by the thought of him - an older man - with you - and the reactions that would garner from people. Something told you Hotch wouldn't like hearing that you'd thought of the two of you in that light.

Due to traffic, by the time you guys made it there, Morgan and Prentiss had already gone in and subdued the Unsub. As you and Hotch walked towards the house, Morgan was walking a handcuffed Carol Conway to a squad car. You happened to make eye contact with her, and then watched as her gaze moved to Hotch. The look in her eyes made you felt a roll of disgust go through you, and you were happy to see her being put into the back of the cop car.

After the team was back at the police station, Reid and Rossi were going to take the interrogation, with the aim of discovering the location of the other bodies.

You, Hotch, Morgan, and Prentiss stood on the other side of the mirror as Rossi and Reid tried to get her to spill by taunting her with her jealousy, but it didn't appear to be working. She kept looking straight ahead, entirely disengaged.

As Reid and Rossi exited unsuccessfully, you all turned back to the drawing board, knowing that finding the bodies of the victims was crucial. You began to think of a way to break her.

While everyone else was talking, your thoughts went back to how you'd initially identified her.

"Uh oh, you got thinky face on." Derek's voice drew you out of your thoughts, and you saw the others still arguing over the best course of action. Derek must've sensed your hesitation in voicing your idea, so he quickly got everyone to quiet down. All eyes were on you.

You cleared your throat, "When Morgan was walking Carol to the squad car, I noticed that she looked at Hotch." You turned to look directly at him - apology painted on your face. "I think we stand a chance by using you. Dangling what she can't have in front of her face again - showing it be stolen by someone else."

Hotch looked a little embarrassed but nodded along in understanding. "You'll have to come in with me. You look the most like the girlfriends and you're the right age."

"Yeah, okay. Let's do this."

As you got to the door to the interrogation room, you took a deep breath. "Hey, Hotch, when we get in there, pull out my chair, okay?"

"You have a plan, I'm guessing?"

"Oh yeah, I definitely have a plan."

"Alright, then I'll follow your lead."

As he opened the door and allowed you in first, you got to see Carol's eyes widen as she got a glimpse of Hotch entering the room. You could've sworn her pupils dilated.

Hotch got to the chair to the left and pulled it out for you. You were about to put on a show. You did your best to flounce into the chair, and smiled sweetly at Hotch. "Thanks honey."

You immediately caught Carol's face turning towards you. Gotcha

Hotch began to interrogate her again, trying to plead to her humanity. He reminded her of the children and families left behind of the victims - those who deserved closure.

You made sure to channel your inner mean girl and kept a permanent smirk on your face, staring down Carol.

After much talking from Hotch, you decided enough was enough. Lights, camera, action.

"You've never had a man that was yours before, have you Carol?" That earned you an angry glare from the Unsub.

You stood up and walked past Hotch, trailing a hand across his shoulders as you came to stand behind Carol. You leaned in close to her ear, knowing that would be your best option at getting a reaction, and then made direct eye contact with Hotch. She noticed.

"Carol, have you ever had a man look at you like he wants you? Like you're the only thing he wants?" Your voice was low and soft. "I don't think you have. If you had you wouldn't be able to settle for a man you have to coerce."

"I didn't -" she began to deny again, but you weren't about to let her.

"But you did Carol. And I get it. It must be hard, it must've been hard when you were discarded by Ted because he thought the sex wasn't good. You felt old, used up, especially when he traded you in for a younger model."

You noted the tension in her shoulders and her controlled shallow breathing. She was hanging onto your every word. You made eye contact with Hotch again, knowing you were reflected in the mirror for Carol to see.

"Have you ever had a man press you up against a wall because he had to have you right then and there, Carol?" You adjusted your hair, careful to wet your lips casually, before continuing, "You see, I don't think you have, because if you'd seen the way he looks right before he enters you - if you'd ever seen the way his face looks when he's lost in you, like you're the only thing that matters - if you'd ever seen the way his voice gets deeper and harsher as he fucks into you and the face he makes when he comes inside you knowing that's the only thing he ever wants to do - if you'd seen all that from a man, there's no way you'd have forced them Carol." You slowly moved to stand upright and walk back to the other side, coming to stand right behind Hotch. Placing a hand on his shoulder, you look right at Carol before finishing, "Because nothing else compares."

She broke then and began to cry.

"Where are the other bodies Carol? Tell us," you asked, ignoring her tears. Hotch was tense beneath your touch, waiting for an answer.

Her voice came out choked and breathy. "By the riverbed, in front of the old warehouse."

You knew the team heard and would now be organizing a search for the bodies. Your hand was still on Hotch's shoulder, so you quickly removed it, and walked out of the room, eager to put as much distance as possible between the two of you. That had been crossing a line, of some sort, you just weren't sure which one.

Hotch couldn't believe that had just happened. When you'd gotten up and started talking to Carol, he hadn't been sure of the approach. But then she hung on to every word. Hotch found himself hanging onto every word too. When you made eye contact with him, he felt a jolt of need shoot through him. As you described sex - really good sex - to Carol, all his mind did was picture pushing you against a wall, fucking you, coming inside you. And then you'd come back around and touched him and it was a miracle he hadn't groaned out loud. In an interrogation room. With an Unsub as witness.

Hotch slowly got up and walked out of the room just to see you walking away. He made the unfortunate mistake of making eye contact with Rossi, who was just outright laughing at him now.

He was screwed.

*------------*

You hadn't talked to Hotch directly since the interrogation of Carol Conway. You'd walked away feeling incredibly embarrassed at how you'd coerced a confession. While it had been a good idea and had worked, you feared you'd gone too far in the heat of the moment. You hadn't been able to resist looking right at him and describing scenes you'd only dreamt of. You were a bit of a hypocrite for having taunted Carol that way. Sex like that - it only existed when you were by yourself and imagining it.

Unfortunately, your interesting technique had opened the floodgates for Derek and Emily to start playing Dirty Truth or Truth on the plane ride back. The two of them together were a lethal combination of impulsivity and lack of boundaries. Derek had dialed in Penelope so she could also join in, knowing she'd be upset at having missed this.

You listened to Emily describe her sexual encounter with a couple back in her college days, in response to JJ's question on threesomes. You could feel yourself getting embarrassed but knew that you were the reason this was even the topic at hand. Hotch had quickly and smartly excused himself from the conversation, citing the need to make a dent in his unending pile of paperwork. As you had no such excuse, you were not able to make as easy of an escape.

You were dreading a question landing on you that you couldn't just give a quick no to. While you were okay flirting and teasing and talking about sex in a general sense, talking about your own sexual exploits was a whole different thing. You knew that the team expected you to be the wild child when it came to all this, and so far your response to the questions around threesomes and public sex had been received with some amount of disappointment.

Hotch was trying to focus on the casework but he couldn't help himself from tuning in to the raucous conversation the rest of you were engaged in, especially anytime you answered a question. Rossi had sat down across from him, a shit-eating grin permanently stuck on his face.

As everyone settled down after Emily's story, it was Penelope's turn to ask. "Hmmm," she twirled a lock of her hair and gave Derek bedroom eyes. "How many knotches has everyone got on their bedpost?" That question was definitely geared at Derek as she'd voiced being curious about it a while back, but you'd all be answering it.

Spencer elected to get it out of the way and quickly said, "Three, and no Morgan, I'm not telling you who they were."

Derek laughed, before motioning towards JJ and Emily to go next.

"Honestly, I have no idea. My lost year was more of a lost decade," she said, laughing and shooting you a quick teasing wink.

"Seven," JJ said while popping a cheeto into her mouth. You looked to gauge Spencer's reaction and you could see his face fall just a bit.

All eyes were turned to you, as whatever Derek's answer would be was the one Penelope would focus on and drag out.

You sighed, but knew you didn't want to lie. "Two," you quickly mumbled, hoping if you said it fast enough you'd all just move on to Derek and it would be over.

But of course you don't have that kind of luck.

"Wait, what? No no, that doesn't make sense. You were New York's top party girl," Emily asked, looking shocked and disbelieving.

"Yeah, well," you trailed off shrugging.

"You're telling me Reid's banged more people than you, Y/N? Come on!" Derek groaned, knowing that Spencer would be ecstatic at not being the lowest anymore.

"Wait, who were they? Please tell me you didn't pass up the chance to sleep with that Cedric boy - he was fine!" Garcia's voice crackled loudly through the tablet speakers.

"My ex-fiancé, Matthew, and then just one other guy - a friend - during my time in New York who I see on occasion," you explained, your cheeks aflame.

"Wait, New York was over four years ago, so you're telling me you haven't met anyone new since…," Emily's voice trailed off as they all looked at you.

You decided to try and laugh it off. "What can I say Em, I'm a bit of a prude when it comes to actually sleeping with someone."

"Huh." You could feel her judging you. You knew Emily had felt closer to you when you'd both been grouped under the Wild Child Exploits label.

"Alright, well my turn then," Derek began, sensing your discomfort and drawing everyone's attention towards him. He was good like that.

You decided to get up and grab a drink instead of listen to Derek regale everyone with tales of the multiple women he'd taken home with him. As you rummaged through the mini fridge at the back, you felt someone's presence behind you. Turning, you saw Hotch standing in the aisle, looking a bit concerned.

"You okay?" He moved to grab something from the snack cabinets to disguise your conversation from the others.

"You heard that, did you? I thought you were too mature for such games with colleagues," you teased. He just looked at you expectantly, still waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, I just, yeah, it's fine, don't worry about it." You fidgeted with the sparkling water bottle you'd grabbed. You just wanted to get back to your seat and sleep the rest of the plane ride home.

"You can ask, you know. I don't mind playing if its just us" He smiled at you gently, giving you permission. The double entendre of his words also wasn't lost on you. It sent butterflies through your stomach.

"I don't have to," you replied, a sad smile making its way onto your face. You knew it was just Haley for him.

"It's okay to be picky about that kind of stuff. Save it for people who are special."

You looked up into his eyes and there was something there. Something deeper. Something darker, secret. Maybe Emily was right and he was dating someone.

You swallowed, before simply nodding and making your way back to your seat, feeling his eyes on you. His look didn't make you feel uncomfortable though. As you settled down back into your seat and met his eyes again across the way, you realized that you didn't mind his gaze at all - on the contrary, it made you feel achingly desired.

You found yourself really hoping Emily was wrong.

*------------*

Hotch was burning the midnight oil once again as Jack was with Jess and he hadn't wanted to wake either of them late. With JJ poached by the CIA, his paperwork had doubled easily. It was nearly 11pm by the time he noticed how quiet the building had gotten. The bullpen was empty and his eyes wandered to your desk - neat and tidy with your chair pushed in. Compared to yours, Prentiss's looked like a paper bomb had exploded over it.

"You got time for a drink?" Rossi had popped in with a bottle of scotch and two glasses.

Hotch smiled and beckoned him in, meeting him at the couch. "What're you still doing here?"

"I thought I'd see how long you like to stay, but I think I've hit my limit for waiting," he said, handing Hotch a glass.

They clinked their glasses and then sat down on Hotch's couch. The quiet in the office at night was something Hotch always relished and it was nice to share that with someone. But he had a feeling that Dave wasn't there just to have a drink together, so he waited, allowing him to speak.

"Aaron, have you dated since Haley?"

Hotch's eyes focused on the same point on the opposite end that you usually looked at when he asked you difficult questions. "You know I haven't."

"Do you feel ready to?" Dave observed him over the rim of his glass, the amber liquid casting a glow around his hand.

Hotch contemplated that. It had been a while since Haley's death and even longer since their divorce. In the final days of their marriage, he'd known Haley was seeing another man. Out of guilt at having forced her into an affair, he'd never asked her the nature of the relationship. Truth be told, he'd been ready not too long after the divorce, but dating required time - something Hotch never seemed to have enough of to give. Haley's death hadn't felt like the death of his ex-wife. It had felt like the death of his life partner - he'd always thought that no matter what they were, at least he'd always have her because of Jack. Jack was doing better though and had been for a while. Hotch himself had grieved and taken time and he didn't dream about her every night anymore.

He looked up to see Dave observing him carefully. Hotch knew he was being profiled right now, but it was Dave so he chose not to mind so much. He matched Dave's gaze then and with a slight uplift of his mouth, he revealed, "Yes, I think I am."

"That's good Aaron." Rossi seemed pleased by the admission. "So why aren't you asking Y/N out?"

And there it was. Hotch shook his head at Rossi's question. "Dave, come on, you know why."

"No, can't say I do. She's smart, attractive, accomplished. She has fire - I know you know that. Jack loves her and she's great with him. She has the same job as you, so she'd understand the time constraints and the emotional toll the job can have. I can't think of a single reason why you shouldn't ask her. Especially since you've been in love with her for quite some time now."

"I'm not in -" Hotch started to say but stopped as Dave rose his eyebrows.

"Don't do that Aaron. Don't lie to me even if you're lying to yourself and everyone else."

Hotch's voice took on a tortured quality as he spoke next, the glass of scotch in his hand long forgotten. "She's so young, Dave. She's got her whole life ahead of her - she would have no problem getting a guy her own age - a guy that's better. She deserves that."

"But what if she doesn't want them?"

"You heard her father, Dave - men who go after women that young - lecherous old men - that's what he called them. That's what he called me."

Dave sighed, feeling sorry for the man in front of him. "And how would she feel knowing that those words - words that she spoke up against immediately, words that forced her to finally cut her father out of her life - what if she knew that those were the words holding you back from her. How would she feel knowing her father was able to have that control over you - over her?"

Hotch felt the burden of shame that Dave's words had bestowed upon him. He was right. You would be furious that he had let your father get to him.

"Think about it Aaron. Don't deny yourself happiness because you're worried what other people might think. Pretty sure its up to her to decide what she deserves."

#criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds reader insert #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner x y/n #hotch x reader #hotch x you #hotch x y/n #hotchner x reader #hotchner x you #hotchner x y/n #aaron hotchner imagine #irreverentseries

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atinytokki · 3 years

Text

H O R I Z O N

Chapter 10: Liftoff

There’s an odd sort of quiet over the changing room as both teams strip out of their wetsuits and change into more comfortable clothes. The deliberation time of the PCC can take anywhere from minutes to days, and no one is expecting their leader to be announced any time soon.

“I feel so bad, he may have cost himself the captain title and we just helped him,” Mingi whispers to the rest of Team Z when Seonghwa steps away from them and Yeosang watches the older boy go into the showers, listening for the water to turn on before speaking.

“It would have reflected worse on him if we’d defied his orders.”

“True,” Yunho agrees from where he’s depositing his uniform in the appropriate vacuum chute. “It’s his loss, not ours.”

As with every year, each member will be scored cumulatively on their combined Dome battles, a grade that will go towards their final examination to determine readiness for full Horizon team status. Only the prospective leaders had something else on the line in that rollercoaster ride of a final simulation.

Yeosang is shaken out of his musings by a hand clamping down on his shoulder.

“Hey, you want to rustle up some dessert in the cafeteria? Junyoung and Youngseok offered to make a distraction for the cameras,” Wooyoung offers, San draping over his shoulder and letting out a devious giggle. “And Jongho, Mingi, and Yunho, you guys are welcome too. We don’t have to fight each other anymore after tonight.”

Yeosang smiles at everyone’s excited acceptance of that fact but politely declines. “I think I’ll hang back with Seonghwa. Make sure he’s... alright.”

The three of them acquiesce and follow Team A out to the trams while Yeosang finally takes a deep breath and sits on the locker room bench, letting his head fall back against the wall.

Only one obstacle remains.

As Yeosang traces little characters in the steam on the mirrors with his finger, he prepares his mental checklist. The daydreaming he did during some of his afternoons at medical tutoring could still come back to haunt him unless he buckles down and studies obsessively.

When finally the water shuts off and a half dressed Seonghwa emerges to fix his hair in the mirror, Yeosang clears his throat to make his presence known.

“The Seonghwa I met a few months ago would never have given up a flag like that.”

He sets his jaw like he’s preparing to defend himself before pulling on a shirt and wiping his face clean of expressions. “The result of the final battle does not always indicate who the leader will be, you know that,” he answers deadpan.

“So you mean to tell me that was a calculated risk and not a spur of the moment decision?” Yeosang scoffs, following the older boy as he throws on his jacket and heads to the tram tunnel.

“Why?” Seonghwa shoots back immediately. “Are you afraid your score will be lowered because of it?”

“No, hyung,” his voice softens earnestly. “I’m looking out for you. You always joke about Hongjoong being absent from his own team but you’ve been a bit of a lone wolf yourself… emotionally at least. I just want to make sure you’re thinking straight.”

Seonghwa stops and turns towards him, honestly in his eyes as he searches his face and asks in a low voice, “If Hongjoong was chosen as leader, would you follow him?”

“Yes,” Yeosang answers without hesitation. Seonghwa gives him another once over and then nods, boarding the tram as it pulls up.

“Then that’s all I need to know.”

Yeosang sighs at the cryptic answer but hurries onto the tram before it leaves him there and stays quiet while Seonghwa mutters to himself, something about not being a lone wolf.

When the tram reaches the main office building and Seonghwa stands up to exit, Yeosang becomes suspicious.

“The cafeteria is that way, you know,” he points out, following behind just the same as they step into an elevator. Seonghwa doesn’t answer, but Yeosang has a feeling where they’re going when they step out at the 200th floor and beeline for the PCC meeting room.

“Seonghwa…” Yeosang whines when he tries and fails to open the door. “What are you, crazy? You don’t have access and they’ll never let you in.”

“Sorry to interrupt but I need to say something before you decide,” Seonghwa states directly at the camera pointed down from above the doorway.

There’s only silence for a second as the voices inside the room die down before the door opens and Soojin pokes her head out with a frown.

“If you’ve come to plead your case—”

“I haven’t,” Seonghwa cuts her off. “I’ve come to forfeit.”

Yeosang audibly gasps but Soojin remains perfectly composed. From inside the conference room, several other pairs of eyes are directed at the pair and Yeosang wants to shrink away from them and abandon Seonghwa to his fate.

But he stays firm.

Wordlessly, Soojin steps to the side to allow them to enter, Yeosang still hanging behind and ready to speak up if Seonghwa needs him but completely in the blind about where this conversation is going.

The space is properly ornate for some of the most powerful people in the IPF to occupy, decorative chandeliers curving down in odd shapes from the high ceiling and sleek furniture sparsely distributed to give just the right amount of seating without overcrowding the room.

The Council is seated around the long table in the middle of the space, and three hologram transmissions are projected onto it from the Citadel. IPF’s directors, joining the discussion from space.

Seonghwa clears his throat and delivers his resolution unwaveringly.

“I’d formally like to request that I no longer be considered for the leadership position of Team ATZ.”

Yeosang shakes his head imperceptibly. Whatever the PCC thought of him before, barging in and trying to forfeit will definitely ruin Seonghwa’s chances.

As far as he knows, no potential leader has ever forfeit before and certainly none of them have interrupted a PCC meeting before. Seonghwa is an idiot for this but Yeosang is there to support him, so he doesn’t intervene.

One of the men seated opposite Soojin leans forward and strokes his chin. “May I ask why?”

“I’ve realised…” Seonghwa’s voice goes quiet for a beat before he clears his throat and continues. “I’ve realised the responsibility is not for me. I believe I’d accomplish what’s expected of me much better from the background.”

The way everyone begins looking at each other makes Yeosang want to tear his hair out. The directors have a muted conversation off camera while an older woman addresses Seonghwa again.

“But your actions were sacrificial, they were heroic. That type of attitude is beneficial to a Horizon team, not detrimental.”

“Nonetheless,” Seonghwa sighs. “I’m not ready for the position. Hongjoong is the only sensible choice.”

“Seonghwa,” Soojin interrupts. “If you’re worried about the attention of the press—”

“That’s not it,” he shoots back impatiently and Yeosang tenses at the sight of eyebrows raised around the table. “The directors have seen my file, I think they’ll agree.”

“Alright,” the first man acknowledges when the directors’ holograms give him the signal after a nail-biting pause. “We’ve heard you and your opinion will be considered. Please see yourself out.”

Yeosang had never moved so fast in his life. Leaving the conference hall with Seonghwa in tow makes him feel like he can breathe again, though his curiosity is stronger now than before.

A stressed Soojin follows them out with a hand rubbing her temples before turning to Seonghwa and hissing under her breath, “You realise you’re not even supposed to know who’s on the Council and you just looked them all in the eye and told them how to do their job, right?”

“It was a bit too urgent to deal with all the bureaucracy,” Seonghwa insists in return. “I can’t wait around for you to schedule me a hearing or whatever, the meeting was happening so I did what I had to.”

Yeosang pinches his nose from behind, knowing there’s nothing he can do while Soojin scans the pair of them up and down, as if noticing something new.

“You’re lucky they seem to like you,” she finally scoffs in defeat. “You kids will be the death of me.”

With that, she straightens her blouse and returns to the meeting, leaving Seonghwa and Yeosang to the awkward elevator ride back down.

“So—”

“I’d really rather not talk about it,” Seonghwa interrupts before Yeosang can even get started, and the younger boy simply crosses his arms and levels him with a glare.

“I wasn’t going to ask. I was going to tell you dessert is being purloined at the moment and by now we should be meeting the others at the dorms.”

Seonghwa straightens and a slow smile spreads across his face.

“Actually, I like the sound of that.”

___

It takes until Mingi accidentally knocks over the entire jug of juice for Seonghwa to get a chance to pull Yunho to the side.

“Do you happen to know where Hongjoong went?” He asks the other, whose hands are full of paper towels. “I haven’t seen him since Yeosang and I came in.”

“Oh, he didn’t stick around for long,” Yunho responds, quiet and more sober than he had been mere minutes ago when it was his turn at karaoke. “He said he was going to Observatory A. I saved him a slice though.”

With that, he hands over a plate of cake and returns to help mop up the mess. No one is the wiser as Seonghwa slips out and back to the trams.

The observatory facilities are desolate at night. The entire complex is desolate in a way, with more and more teams blasting off to the Citadel and leaving Earth behind, but the eerie glass staircases and tube like halls with their stark white light give Seonghwa the shivers as he makes his way to Observatory A.

Hongjoong is there, sitting in the dark and peering into the massive telescope that points up through the retractable roof.

The sleeves of his sweater are too long for him, so he repeatedly pushes them back every time he goes to write down an observation until the sound of the door decompressing makes him jump and glance in Seonghwa’s direction.

“Yunho said I’d find you here,” he says by way of explanation, putting on his mask and watching Hongjoong tilt his head and shuffle uncomfortably.

“Oh, did he?” The white haired boy hums before turning to his notes again. “Yeah, I still have some studying to do...”

Seonghwa feels awkward standing there, so he places the plate on Hongjoong’s table and shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Did you end up telling him about, you know, the thing with your dad—”

“Yes,” Hongjoong cuts him off swiftly, and Seonghwa doesn’t bring up the topic again. “Did you need something?”

Seonghwa chuckles and motions to the table. “You forgot your ‘I survived the Dome’ cake slice.”

Hongjoong looks at it and sighs. There’s a beat before his eyes meet Seonghwa’s, suddenly full of disappointment. “Why did you do it? We could have taken those drones.”

Seonghwa bites his lip to keep from groaning. This was the last thing he wanted to talk about, yet here they were again.

“Trust me, you couldn’t have,” he answers, hoping to drop the issue quickly. “You didn’t see what I saw.”

Hongjoong scoffs and becomes tense. “That’s a pretty poor excuse to break the rules for another team, you don’t even know what the consequences for both of us will be—”

“Why are you of all people upset that I saved you?” Seonghwa snaps at him, and Hongjoong doesn’t back down, standing to face him fully and jabbing his chest with an accusing finger.

“This is exactly why! Because you’ve gone soft and it’ll look like you forfeit or something, like I just took a pity win!”

As soon as the words leave Hongjoong’s mouth, Seonghwa understands. All the fire goes out of him and he takes a step back from the confrontation.

“Hongjoong, I don’t want to fight you—”

“Yeah? Well, for once I wish you would have!” And with that, Hongjoong deflates and stabs his cake slice with the provided fork, sneaking a bite into his mouth under the mask.

Seonghwa lets him brood over dessert and instead moves over to the telescope, taking a peek at whatever it was Hongjoong was studying.

“Mars? Hey, you know Mars was always my—”

“Nickname, I know,” Hongjoong answers softly. “I overheard you talking to San that time.”

“It’s a shame Mars couldn’t have been our new home,” Seonghwa jokes, pulling back with a grin. “I’d expect VIP status if it was.”

Hongjoong stands and joins him, tilting the telescope just a nudge to the left. “I was actually looking past Mars, past the solar system, past the Milky Way. In the Sigi Cluster... there could be our new home planet.”

It was rumoured to be the next area of interest for the IPF, after the previous Horizon generation continued to struggle with alien populations in the surrounding systems.

Seonghwa takes another look when Hongjoong steps out of the way for him, but his vision is obscured by something white gathering on the telescope.

“It’s snow!” Hongjoong laughs from where he’s watching the silent flurries drift down from the sky, blinking sporadically as they land on his eyelashes. “I haven’t seen snow in ages. It moved in so fast just now...”

They close the roof and spend a few minutes admiring it while Hongjoong finishes his cake.

“We’re okay, right?” He asks after a moment, breaking Seonghwa out of his daze.

He nods quickly and collects the plate, noticing the time on the wall clock.

“You should come back with me and get some sleep.”

Hongjoong shakes his head and picks up his pencil again. “Not done yet.”

“The dorm is a lot more fun now. Everyone’s excited to work together, no matter what the results are,” Seonghwa tries to bribe him.

“Seonghwa...” Hongjoong tries to complain but he has to smile at the excuses the older boy is coming up with.

“San and Yeosang are probably cuddling right now! You really want to miss a chance to blackmail them forever?”

Hongjoong gives him a dubious frown but quickly packs his things.

“I guess I can’t say no to that.”

___

The sound of an important message popping up on his wristband sends Wooyoung catapulting off the couch and onto Jongho, who groans tiredly and pushes him to the floor.

The living area isn’t meant for ten people to sleep there, but the festivities ran late last night and Team ATZ could do little more than curl up with some blankets and pass out on the couches and the floor.

Examination order has been confirmed, the notification reads, and the name at the top of the list is Yeosang. Apparently he’s being tested in a couple of hours.

Inhaling sharply, Wooyoung steps over Yunho’s long limbs to reach the other couch and shakes Yeosang awake, untangling him from San and shoving a pillow into the sleeping boy’s arms.

“Why, what is it?” Yeosang mumbles as soon as he’s been dragged back to their room, catching the clothes that Wooyoung throws at him.

“You’re being tested at noon!” He answers, grabbing Yeosang’s arm and turning his wristband on for him. “Hurry up and get dressed!”

“What?” Yeosang nearly shrieks before clamping his own hand over his mouth and trying to calm down. “I thought final exams were next week, not today!”

“Accelerated schedule, remember?” Wooyoung whispers back, pulling his own clothes on. “They’re not done throwing challenges at us.”

“But I’m the least ready person to be examined first,” Yeosang whines, stressed tears already gathering as he tangles his hands in his hair. “I can’t go in three hours! Why didn’t they tell us last night? I could’ve studied!”

He drops into his chair and frantically starts assembling his materials while Wooyoung settles onto his bed and offers to be of service. “I can quiz you if you want, but if you need a cadaver to practice surgery on or something, I’m afraid I can’t help.”

What comes next is two full hours of quizzing Yeosang on diagrams Wooyoung can’t decipher and terms he can’t pronounce. Yeosang does well but snatches back his wristband and continues to study anyway, afraid his applied knowledge is somehow lacking in comparison to the technical side.

When the time comes, Wooyoung wrestles the materials away and puts Yeosang’s jacket on for him. “You always say it’s cold in the medical wing. And don’t forget your water bottle.”

Yeosang grips his hand and offers a nod. There’s no time for anything else, and he leaves without another word. Wooyoung knows he’ll do fine.

San takes it as his cue to enter, hair still a wreck despite having dressed and eaten, and sets up his own studying materials on the floor, motioning to the display on Wooyoung’s wristband.

“We’re second to last, but I woke up everyone else in case they need to study too.”

Wooyoung nods in acknowledgement and collapses on his bed. He’s not all that worried about his own examination, but he lets San study with him anyway, reviewing everything they’ve learned over the course of their time and envisioning scenarios to apply it.

He turns on a holographic television screen and lets it hover near the window for white noise, but a familiar voice grabs his attention and makes him look up from his closed cycle life support system diagrams.

A woman, skin and hair impeccable and dressed in only the finest attire, was being filmed entering her house— a house Wooyoung knows well.

“Who is that?” San asks when he notices Wooyoung distracted by the broadcast.

“Yeosang’s mother,” he sighs, listening in as the anchor explains what the news related to her is.

“Mrs. Kang, well known businesswoman and an influential shareholder in IPF, claims to have insider information on the Horizon Team ATZ, of which her son Yeosang is a member. She made a controversial statement earlier this morning that she believes the accelerated training time of the team will enable her and her husband to migrate to the Citadel early next year before choosing to offer no further comment.”

The screen flicks to footage of her standing right there in the IPF headquarters lobby offering a statement, looking much younger than she is as always. “Training is going very well, and Team ATZ is sure to rise in the ranks,” she says confidently. “My Yeosang has head knowledge and field experience now that he’s working directly with IPF staff, and I can promise you I’ll soon be launching new products from space!”

The press instantly bombards her with questions, and she shrinks away from them as her bodyguards usher her out.

“Mrs, Kang, is it true no one was injured in the test plane crash?”

“Can you confirm who the leader is of Team ATZ?”

“Why have you been given permission to break IPF’s no-contact rule during the trainee period?”

“Is it true something is wrong with the Citadel?”

“Would you be able to set up an interview with Yeosang—”

Wooyoung shuts it off before it grates on his ears any longer.

San is looking at him with a muted panic on his face, cheeks flushed and studying forgotten. “I thought Yeosang cut her off.”

“He did,” Wooyoung insists, returning to his diagrams. “I’m sure she’s just causing a scene for the press. Yeosang doesn’t need to know about this right now, it’ll only worry him.”

San drops his shoulders and gives him a nod. There’s no use troubling Yeosang with it, and when he returns from his exam he goes straight to sleep again.

As everyone leaves and returns, the tense atmosphere doesn’t change. There’s no instant confirmation they passed, and there’s nothing to do but wait around and try to rest.

When Wooyoung and San go to their testing room, they go hand in hand. For the joint assessment portion of the test, they fly through their activities with ease, and when they’re separated for individual assessment, Wooyoung can only hope San’s nerves don’t get the best of him.

It’s different, testing with a clear goal in mind. It was always about survival, but this time he’s more prepared.

When Junyoung and Youngseok return, the last two to be examined, Soojin rewards them with delivered dinner and a movie on the big living room holoscreen. No one says much, but no one needs to.

They made it together this far.

___

For the second day in a row, Yunho wakes to San shaking him. “Why? What is it?” He mutters, trying to burrow back under the blankets and escape the recycled winter air.

“Medical testing starts in an hour,” his roommate responds tiredly, wandering away to the bathroom and leaving Yunho to wrap himself up in blankets and follow him.

“We only finished exams yesterday, can’t they just let us sleep?” He whines through the toothpaste while he brushes his teeth.

“They have to run all the diagnostic tests one after the other so they can deliberate for the rest of the week,” San explains, wiping off his mouth and cleaning out his toothbrush. “That way if someone gets removed from the team, no one knows which test they failed.”

It makes sense, but still it means Yunho is rushing to his retractable closet and dressing quickly, bitter over losing an extra hour or two of sleep after yesterday’s exhaustion.

“At least you don’t have to deal with Professor Pyo anymore,” San points out from where he’s pulling on a loose T shirt. “I know you hated his guts.”

Yunho chuckles at the memories of frustrating classes and moving targets and zips his jacket all the way up to his chin. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” He asks, following again as San calls the elevator and quickly shakes his head.

“I don’t want to risk losing it all over Nurse Bae’s uniform.”

They board the tram and Yunho blinks. San had mentioned a few times how he gets sick with nerves, recounting the story of how he met Jongho on the day of the first exam.

“But this test is easy!” He laughs reassuringly. “You don’t even have to do anything.”

San flashes a fake smile that disappears the second he turns away, worrying Yunho.

For some reason, he’s acting strange.

“You don’t think they’ll fail us for not sticking to our diets, do you?” San changes the subject smoothly.

“I doubt it,” Yunho answers lightly as they step out into the medical wing. “Besides, Soojin authorised the junk food last night.”

The conversation fizzled out at the sight of all the nurses lined up to welcome them at the doorway with stern faces and lifeless eyes, and Nurse Bae escorts them over to a scanning pad.

“Go ahead and step up for assessment,” she deadpans, motioning to San who sighs and does as he’s told.

The light circling the bottom of the pad rotates and spirals up, spewing basic holographic statistics, such as height and weight, as it scans him.

“Arm, please,” Bae asks without even glancing at the patient, holding out her hand until San obliges, and sticking one of his veins unapologetically when he does.

After a moment, blood begins to travel to a second machine through the tube she’s inserted and San tenses as it displays results.

Bae looks up from the pre-existing documentation for San on her wristband and compares it to the new information from the scan. Her face gives nothing away, but San is visibly sweating from where he stands rigid on the pad.

The rotating light changes colours a few times as it switches the type of scan and inputs data to the hologram before turning off.

“That’s it?” Yunho asks from the seat he’s waiting in, surprised.

The nurse nods and allows San to step down, but continues to stare at his results, as if waiting for something to happen.

After a moment, she minimises them and pulls up Yunho’s file.

“Alright, next. Choi San, you may go inform the next room that we’re ready for them.”

San breathes a shaky exhale and hurries out of the medical wing, leaving Yunho to stand awkwardly on the scanner and wonder what’s going on with him.

That might’ve been the longest he’s gone without talking outside of scheduled work and rest times, and even more strangely, he was extremely concerned with his results.

Surely he knows his own medical history… so what could he be worried about?

San checks the schedule on his wristband and pokes his head into Hongjoong and Seonghwa’s room to let them know they’re being summoned before collapsing on his bed.

Yunho is definitely suspicious of him.

San saw the way he was looking at him and he tried so hard to be calm and collected, but the machine paused for a moment and reviewed the information twice because it detected something in its algorithm that San had thought he’d accounted for earlier…

But it didn’t flash a warning, and that’s a good sign at least.

If all goes well, his tests will come back clean like everyone else’s and they’ll head to the Citadel together as planned.

Yunho returns and doesn’t say anything more about the situation, whether he has questions or not, simply switching on a game and playing solo for a while before San joins.

Soon Yunho, the source of San’s worries, has somehow melted those worries away with his cheery disposition and the excitement with which he engages the competition.

“I’ll invite Jongho, Wooyoung, and Yeosang!” He announces when their round is finished, and soon it’s a small party all yelling and furiously attacking with their holo controllers, having so much fun even Seonghwa can’t find the heart to tell them to quiet down.

Junyoung and Youngseok drop by when their testing is finished, and San is strategising a way to coax Mingi and Hongjoong out to at least watch them play their ultimate championship battle when an alert for a Horizon team launch appears in unison on all their wristbands. This time, it’s for two teams; BPT and TBZ both.

Which means the ten of them will be the only trainees left in the complex.

The game is shut off and the members file out in the direction of the hangars, but Yunho drops by Seonghwa and Hongjoong’s room as a detour.

“You think you can come?” San hears him say, and there’s a quiet answer from Hongjoong before he appears, eyes downcast, and grips Yunho’s hand as the three of them move towards the elevator.

Come to think of it, Hongjoong is rarely seen during a launch, and Yunho, being both extremely considerate and acutely aware of everything going on, appears to know something about it.

San’s relieved to know he and Seonghwa aren’t the only ones keeping secrets.

Yunho stays by Hongjoong’s side the entire launch viewing and San has to consider confiding in him.

He seems trustworthy, and San very much wants the comfort he sees being given to Hongjoong for himself.

But some secrets are best left unspoken, so he turns back to the window and watches the rocket disappear above the clouds.

___

It’s a few days before they hear anything from the PCC. Mingi enjoys the rest, but goes back to the gym after two days of it.

He quite appreciates his virtual pilates class, and the AI instructor has an amusing sense of humour.

Jongho is out of the dorms more and more lately, and Mingi doesn’t really mind. It gives him time to think and to lay stretched out on the rug they cover the metal floor with, projecting those old sappy romance films on the ceiling’s smooth surface and giggling at them in secret.

It feels like a vacation, only Mingi doesn’t really remember having those back in school, except for the ones he and Yunho took without permission, sneaking into abandoned apartment complexes and freerunning with extra air canisters strapped to them.

News finally arrives just after Jongho one night when Mingi and Seonghwa are relaxing together, the quiet hiss of the door closing and the younger boy’s muted sigh rousing Mingi from bed. Seonghwa sits up next to him, confused, and realises it’s his cue to exit.

“What is it?” Mingi asks, peeling off his skin mask and giving it to Seonghwa to take with him, because he feels silly keeping it on while Jongho has such a straight face.

“The archives are a dead end,” the younger boy explains after the door shuts and they’re alone, kicking off his shoes and sitting next to Mingi on the bed. “The only place she comes up is under some file called the Utopia Project, and it’s not just encrypted, the data is almost completely stored on the Citadel.”

There’s no need to ask who the woman in question is— or was. Mingi leans forward out of his warm blanket cocoon and tries to connect this information to what he already knows.

“She was an esteemed member of the Horizon Project by the time she disappeared. Do you think she was recruited for an extra top secret mission?”

“It would explain why you found other team members on Citadel footage with other aliases,” Jongho agrees. “Maybe she had to go undercover?”

“But surely at least your grandfather would know?” Mingi mentions, shifting so Jongho can display his timeline in the space in front of them.

“I’m not sure,” Jongho admits, adding the words ‘Project Utopia’ to the list of unexplained variables. “He wouldn’t talk about it either way.”

There’s a pause as Mingi thinks back to the first time Jongho showed him this research.

“You said at the beginning that the Horizon Project was just a means to an end for you, that you never intended to get in just so you could reach Rank 3 for your family and move to the Citadel.”

Jongho nods, remembering, but doesn’t interrupt to correct him.

“So what will you do now? The intel you need is up there, on the Citadel.”

Jongho cracks a smile and glances over at him. “Even if it wasn’t… I think I’ve become invested in this team. I’ll go to space, and I’ll make this work. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Mingi laughs and squeezes him in a hug, weight lifted from him now that he doesn’t have to worry about saying goodbye and then claiming to know nothing when the authorities ask why Jongho disappeared in the middle of the night.

“I wish we could’ve made it home in the fall on that test plane,” Jongho sighs reluctantly, switching off the hologram. “I might’ve asked Grandfather if there was more he wasn’t telling me.”

Before Mingi can answer, an alert pops up on their wristbands simultaneously.

PCC Announcement, it reads. Kim Hongjoong has been chosen as the leader of Team ATZ. All members of Horizon Team ATZ have passed and will proceed to the Citadel. Congratulations.

Mingi and Jongho gasp and run out of the room without even looking at each other, nearly colliding with Junyoung and Youngseok as they exit their own room in the direction of Hongjoong and Seonghwa’s.

There he is, sitting on the floor where he was painting a pair of old shoes, but the brush has fallen from his fingers and landed on the metal surface in a splash of colour.

Hongjoong looks up at them with tears in his eyes and laughs before his voice is muffled in the immediate hug enveloping him.

Wooyoung and Seonghwa appear in the doorway next with drinks and congratulations, and then the rest of the team— Yunho, San, and Yeosang— sweaty from an afternoon at the gym.

Hongjoong tries to turn and hide his tears from them, but San pulls him back into the joyful huddle and Mingi is so happy that he’s crying tears of his own, basking in the joy of a ten-person group hug crammed into a tiny metal bunker that barely fits half of them and not even noticing it. This is what he’s been missing, and it feels like the last chance to enjoy it before duty calls from the Citadel.

All ten wristbands chime again with a follow up message, and everyone pulls back to read it.

Please report at 1300 tomorrow for a press conference fitting. The launch is scheduled for Christmas Day.

“Interesting,” Youngseok hums, looking around at their casual attire. “I guess we aren’t well dressed enough with our own clothes.”

A timely beeping from the kitchen startles them all and Wooyoung stiffens in horror before bolting out in a streak of panic.

“The food is burning!”

Soon the smoke clears and he and Seonghwa manage to save the meal, dedicating it to the official end of the rivalry, and a blushing Hongjoong lets them fill his cup and pat him on the back until curfew.

“Your mother will be proud,” Mingi whispers gleefully as they separate for bed.

“Yours, too,” Hongjoong answers with a smile, and Mingi goes to sleep dreaming about his mother.

She’s a busy woman, sensible and traditional but very warm and loving, and over the course of staying at the IPF headquarters, Mingi has found himself missing her calming presence.

She will be proud and sad, he realises as he drifts off into dreams. Because I’ll have to leave her and Father for a while longer.

Jongho thought the fitting would be fun but so far it’s been little more than a pair of stylists throwing ideas and fabrics at them as the challenge of melding personal styles into a single group image presents itself.

Wooyoung is busy arguing with one of them about the number of shirt buttons he’s permitted to leave undone, and Jongho is so distracted by it that it takes a couple tries for the other stylist to get his attention.

“How do you like this shade of green? See, Kang Yeosang is wearing it too so you won’t stand out too much,” the man says, and Jongho sighs and allows it.

“I can do it myself,” he informs the man, taking the tie from him and demonstrating with a perfect knot.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to breathe in that thing?” Mingi chuckles from next to him, clearly having a mental battle with himself over how many buttons on his deep blue shirt to leave open.

“Some of us prefer to dress modestly,” Jongho fires back with a smirk. Apparently, he’s the odd one out, with the exception of Seonghwa who’s having an extra frilly collar shoved at him to ‘accentuate his long neck’ or whatever.

The stylist approves and moves on to discuss Hongjoong’s hair with him, and Jongho is ready to take his leave when Soojin sticks her head in the doorway with an armload of packages.

“Delivery from your parents!” She calls and places the packages in their laps, not bothering to answer the flood of questions until everyone has theirs. “It’s standard for the Horizon team to receive an item as a token of remembrance before leaving, since you aren’t allowed contact with your families.”

Hurriedly, Jongho unwraps his and pries the little box open, fingers closing around something made of porcelain.

He’s surprised to see that it’s a little painted bird, one of the decorative ones his grandparents used to display in their china cabinet. Jongho searches the box, turning it upside down and shaking it, but nothing else falls out.

He had been hoping for a message or an answer, and instead he’d gotten this strange little bird that he hadn’t even seen more than once or twice before in his life.

Sighing, he places it back and looks over at Mingi, who’s pulling plate after plate of home cooked food out of his box, the largest package of all of them. There’s a bittersweet sparkle in his eye and he reads the message that comes with it aloud so Jongho can hear, “Because I don’t trust them to feed you well up there, at least not any better than me. Love, Mom.”

His voice shakes on the last line, and Jongho squeezes his hand reassuringly. It would’ve been nice to get an explanation for his own gift at least, but clearly Mingi is very touched by what he’s received and that’s enough to make Jongho happy.

“We can bring food to the Citadel, right?” He asks Soojin, just to be sure. She approaches from where she’s collecting wrapping paper and rolls her red lips before deciding, “Yes, we’ll allow it.”

It’s a victory that tides them over the jittery and nerve wracking wait to the press conference itself, when they know they’ll be broadcast for all to see, including the parents they wish to thank.

Hongjoong is every bit the charming and capable leader the PCC knew he could be when they chose him, leading their introduction and directing the questions instead of simply leaving it to Soojin, hair newly dyed white again to cover up his roots.

The press is very interested in Yunho and Mingi’s story as childhood friends and they offer some small tidbits without ever letting loose the fact that Yeosang and Wooyoung also knew each other prior. Mingi nervously bounces his leg under the table the entire time, and Jongho is thankful when the reporters move on, knowing how anxious he is.

Jongho recounts meeting San in the library bathroom and earns some relatability points happily, pleased to have at least one potential positive headline before they move on to the difficult questions.

“Yeosang,” one woman begins eagerly. “Your mother has been claiming in the news for some time now that as a major IPF shareholder, she deserves to be granted Citadel access sooner than your already accelerated schedule will allow, can you comment on that?”

His eyes widen slightly before he composes himself, barely a blip in his stately features as he explains, “I’d rather not. We haven’t spoken lately but I would assume the normal procedures apply.” Clearly, he didn’t know about it.

Soojin offers an encouraging nod from the front row and Hongjoong asks for the next question, removing the pressure from a tangibly downcast Yeosang.

A man near the back is chosen and tries to pick an interesting segue. “Speaking of Citadel access! San, your sister Haneul was on the Horizon Team a few years back, giving your family the chance to move to the Citadel sooner, since she’ll reach Rank 3 and grant them citizenship before your teammates do so for their families. Is there any tension within the team over this fact?”

Jongho is affronted and ready to give the man a piece of his mind on San’s behalf, but Wooyoung steps in before any of them can open their mouths. “Actually I don’t think any of us even considered this before your question,” he answers swiftly with a dry laugh. “As a Horizon Team, we want a better life for everyone, there’s no bad blood over opportunity here. San’s family is our family too.”

Reluctantly, the man sits while someone else cooks up the next question.

“Citizens of Earth have for some time now begun questioning the efficiency of the Horizon Project after so many years and so few habitable planets. How will the progress of your team be different than in previous years?” It’s an older man, clearly experienced in the business of getting public figures to slip up in interviews, but luckily this question is one IPF is prepared for, so to fill his speaking quota for the day, Jongho answers it according to the already waiting wristband prompt.

“The survival of humanity is a very complex issue. Even as we blast off this afternoon, we don’t know yet what’s in store. Every Horizon team has contributed different things and brought us a step closer. Whether we find new worlds or make progress cohabitating alien ones, our team will make its mark like all the others.”

Hongjoong looks very impressed and shoots him a smile before the next reporter decides to pick on him.

“Hongjoong, rumour has it you were selected to lead by forfeit, is that true?”

The smile instantly falls and their leader tilts his head in disbelief. “You opened your question with ‘rumour has it’,” he scoffs. “I think you can assume the correct answer. It’s false, the process was the same for me as any other Horizon leader.”

Even as he sits back, problem assuaged, a follow-up question flies at the group from the same person. “But you have to admit, your training time was accelerated due to the vaguely described ‘situation on the Citadel.’ You don’t feel unprepared to be debuting so soon?”

“Our whole lives, we’ve done nothing but prepare,” Seonghwa speaks up, voice quiet but intense. “We’ll serve where we’re ordered to— a couple extra months won’t matter years from now.”

Sensing they’ll get nothing else out of him, the press direct some tamer questions at the younger members before a woman in the front row offers a strange closing query that none of them are ready for.

“You don’t find it at all ironic? The fact that there are no horizons in space?”

It leaves a bad feeling behind, with everyone unsure whether the reporter is serious or joking around, and Jongho is glancing at the other end of the table in the hopes someone else will answer it. Mingi bounces his knee again, so Jongho places a calming hand on it.

Soojin stands and interrupts. “That’s time, I’m sorry. The shuttle awaits and we are on a tight schedule.”

Bodyguards escort the team offstage and onto the tram, heading for the changing rooms while Soojin insists “No more questions!”

There’s just a moment for them to catch their breath while they suit up, but Jongho continues to think about the final question, wondering what prompted it and what the implication is.

“Are you ready to go to space?” Mingi asks deviously, sticking his head over the top of the changing stall and dodging when Jongho throws a dress shirt at him. He seems more at ease now that the cameras are no longer directed at him.

“I was born ready,” Jongho answers, putting on his uniform and stepping out to meet Mingi face to face.

“Let’s do this.”

___

Hongjoong runs his fingers along the red detail of his new uniform’s sleeve. He’ll have to get used to wearing it, moving in it, living up to what it represents.

All he can do for the time being is run over the liftoff procedures in his head over and over while they wait for ground control. He knows them inside and out, and he’s spent almost ten years preparing for this moment.

He can’t fail now.

Wooyoung sighs from next to him and runs a hand through his hair again. It’s a habit of his, Hongjoong has noticed, but he’s doing it more frequently now that he’s nervous.

“What did your dad send you?” Hongjoong asks to distract him. He was paying attention during their fitting when the care packages came in, and knowing Wooyoung’s home life, it must’ve been a mix of emotions receiving something sentimental and reminiscent of that difficult time.

“More glow stars to stick to the ceiling of wherever I move next,” Wooyoung answers with a smile before dropping his head to hide his embarrassment. “And a long letter sort of... apologising. How about you?”

Hongjoong’s hand flies to his neck, where the cool metal is hidden beneath his uniform but still there in secret.

“My mother sent me her butterfly necklace,” he explains. “I wish she wouldn’t have, I know it’s precious to her. She wants to work in the butterfly nursery houses on the Citadel when she gets there, because there aren’t any on Earth anymore.”

There’s an amiable silence with only the noise of the hangars providing an ambiance.

“Sorry for being hard on you before,” Wooyoung mutters. “I didn’t know about your dad.”

“No, but I guess everyone does by now,” Hongjoong sighs, fiddling with the straps on his uniform. “It’s just hard talking about it, so maybe it’s better this way.”

“If it makes you feel any better, nothing in the past could change the way I— we— see you. If anything, it shows how strong you are, to have come here and been a pilot in spite of that,” Wooyoung insists gently, and Hongjoong wonders how he can be so encouraging at a time when he could with good reason be focused on himself. “I can relate to only having one parent around, although I guess it’s not the same.”

“No, if anything, you had it harder Wooyoung,” Hongjoong answers quietly. “You only had Yeosang to really support you. But now you have all of us.”

Wooyoung looks up and smiles, a few fond tears brimming in his eye. “Yeah, I guess we all have each other now.”

No more secrets.

The past can stay there, Hongjoong has decided. It’s the future they need to care about.

“Team ATZ to the shuttle,” a voice comes over the PA at long last before repeating itself. “Team ATZ to the shuttle for liftoff.”

With confident steps they make their way up the ramp and onto the spacecraft where all the luggage is packed and ready to go— their entire lives boarding with them in farewell of everything they’ve ever known— before finding their seats and running final checks.

Each procedure has been tested to perfection, but this launch is for the world to see, which means it’s the only one that counts.

“Will you miss it?” Wooyoung asks from the seat behind Hongjoong, nodding out the side window to the city visible below them.

It’s a dusky, dirty place full of sad people trampling over each other in a race to survive.

“The grass has been fake as long as I’ve been alive,” Hongjoong answers with a sigh. “This planet is nothing but plastic and wrought glass and holograms. I won’t miss leaving it behind.”

Soojin makes her way into the cockpit and addresses the team before buckling up.

“Alright, boys. Well... you’re not boys anymore, not after today. I’m your only passenger and you can pretend I’m not here if you want, but make sure you land in Hanger B10 where I’ll be presenting you to the Citadel personnel.”

They all answer affirmatively as the countdown begins.

“Say your goodbyes,” Soojin prompts them from the back. “Unless you plan on returning to teach future teams, this is the last time you’ll set foot on Earth.”

Hongjoong can see Wooyoung bite his lip and glance out the window again in the reflection on the glass. It’s hard for him to go through with leaving when he apparently just made peace with his father, the reason he swore he’d escape in the first place.

“We’re going to save them, not abandon them,” Hongjoong reminds him, hearing a few other agreeing murmurs as the countdown finishes and he places his hands on the controls.

There’s no fiery flashback, no paralysing fear. He’s ready for this.

“We have liftoff!”

___

Taglist: (Let me know if you would like to be added): @mooneylooney1 @hwashinestar @delphinium3000 @kpop-choco

Recommended listening: Dazzling Light by ATEEZ

A/N: Volume One is complete!!!!!!!! That's right, another installment is on the way where our heroes' journeys will continue on the Citadel. Any predictions about what's coming? Go ahead and leave a comment, I'd much appreciate it <3 (I know I’m speaking into the void but someone is reading this)

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simptasia · 4 years

Text

lost characters based solely on how i portray them in my text post memes

jack: constantly crying and/or screaming. no emotional stability. no social skills. terrible bedside manner. endearingly bland. into powerful women. loves the red sox... a lot. daddy issues. doesn’t believe in himself. has shitty tattoos. being crushed under the weight of everybody’s expectations. more or less hot. he is not cool at all. repressed attraction to guys. chronic hero syndrome. adorably embarrassing as a dad. passionately and violently overreacts to the mere concept of people believing in things. mansplains but in a non malicious way because he is literally that oblivious. gets into fights a lot. dissociates in mirrors. gets injured a lot but doesn’t wanna make a fuss. thinking about caves

kate: desperate need to protect women. bi. is frustrated by jack and sawyer’s personalities but wants to fuck them oh so much. rowdy. feminist. biceps. will call you out. is love with claire and jack and sun and- she has a lot of love to give. she can be ur angel or ur devil. exasperated. doesn’t understand astrology but she’s trying. she’s the slytherin friend every hufflepuff needs. uses guns. doesn’t know how to cook. go to relationship advice is “dump him” or “suck his dick”. just because you put things in her vagina doesn’t mean you know her. gemini

hurley: sad clown. haha laughter! hiding real pain! has debilitating mental illness. he’s doing his best to stay positive. virgin. genuinely kind soul. overwhelmed by food. awkward around girls he likes. much smarter and wiser than anybody thinks, including himself. a special boy who we all love. says dude a lot. the only valid rich person ever. doesn’t like himself. sees dead people. kinda silly. also he’s fat (but i don’t joke about it in a cruel way)

sawyer: compulsive need to nickname people. from the south. bewildered by charlie’s english slang. covering up vulnerability with jokes and being mean. loves juliet. is an asshole but a loveable asshole (this varies, mostly he’s an asshole). conventionally attractive to the point of boring. got a Thing going on with miles. can’t stand daniel being smart around him. babies freak him out. treats animals poorly

locke: very supportive and new agey type. i’ve made two jokes about him encouraging people to jack off, that wasn’t on purpose but Okay. he doesn’t know what its like to have friends. he says Deep Sounding but odd things. he’s super duper into nature. he suffers. he’s very forgiving of ben to the point of absurdity and he desperately wants ben to love and fuck him. or maybe they are fucking. Who Knows. he loves knifes

sayid: sexy, suffering shannon fucker. he doesn’t respect boone. his life is an endless parade of misery culminating in going on autopilot. respects women

jin: he has no idea what’s going on and his life revolves around sun

sun: beautiful. perfect. very passionate about gardening

claire: bi. frequently ignored. cutesy and sweet. super into astrology and new age stuff. her cheery demeanour can only hold on so long before she loses it. kinda dumb. has baby. vanilla, at least for now. loves charlie but is kinda frustrated by him. goes feral and “kitten thinks of murder all day” sums it up

charlie: that he needs attention and validation to survive would be a gross understatement. bi. trans. punk. stupid. english. really horny and slutty. adores music more than anything. drug addict (again, i refuse to be cruel). severe jealousy issues. inferiority superiority complex. hates himself but will get offended if you hate him. can’t take any form of criticism. is bewildered by sawyer’s american-isms. bit of a madonna whore complex. smol but will go the fuck off like a terrier nipping at ya heels. catholic and riddled with catholic guilt. goofy and obnoxious and he knows it. passive aggressive. terrified of bees. nice ass. mood swings. did i mention he’s short? anyway here’s wonderwall

ben: ugly. just plain terrible. beaten and bruised. seething with rage and pain on the inside. virgin. liar. just causes problems on purpose. resembles a lemur or rat, rodents in general. loves bunnies. doesn’t think sex is real. just a really bad idea for him to be around juliet. has no friends. doesn’t care about other people. says creepy shit just because. he knows he’s a terrible person. killed people. the friend nobody likes and a general nuisance to the other characters

(also my literal first text post meme about ben was a joke about him eating his parents??? 2014 sapphire, i wanna talk...)

juliet: mom friend. seems very calm but she’s screaming on the inside. basically she’s the This Is Fine meme. depressed. has big tits. low-key kinky. feminist in a very gentle way. has no ill will towards kate and will only fight her for fun. concerned for daniel’s well being. has no chemistry with jack. loves sawyer. flat measured calm way of speaking. she’s breaking apart at the seams but will offer you a nice glass of water :)))

michael: has a son..... uh...... enjoys minecraft?

(i’m sorry)

desmond: scottish. drinks. easily and constantly confused. magic psychic time powers, like visions and electromagnetic dimensional stuff. easily angered. fucked off by the concept of time and destiny in general. hhhhhhhot

smokey: Hello Fellow Humans I Promise This Is My Own Skin Haha

miles: bi. aro. loves money (trying to fill the hole in his heart with money and things). emo/punk. pretends not to care but he really does care. thinks emotions and romance are dumb but of course is emotional... and kinda wants love. but not that he LIKES you or anything. exasperated. thinks everybody else is weird. kinda slutty or at least trying to be. masochist and into BDSM. mean to daniel for no reason. daddy issues. resting bitch face. jaded, bitter and salty. responds to romantic things dan or char say with vulgar or mocking comments. grew up poor. can hear dead people. trying too hard to be edgy. deadpan snarker. Fuck Off I’m Not Sad Don’t Look At Me [cries only around the audience and his mom]

walt: becoming older than 10 was when things went downhill for him

shannon: seems vapid but is more than that. deeply insecure. feels she can’t do anything right. constantly put down as worthless by other people. yeah she’s sad but she Looks Great. wants sayid to pound her (mood)

(gee, that was dark)

richard: very old and ageless. sees ben as a son figure. really not holding it together. seems smart but he has no fucking idea whats going on. cult mindset. quips curtly back at miles’ vulgar jokes. in love with miles based on very little interaction. misses his dead wife. has a cute giggle. is also hot. overwhelmed and just wants to go into the jungle and scream

frank: doesn’t understand what anybody is talking about. the only normal person here. doesn’t understand these kids today with their weird kinks. just wants to sleep. pilot. bit of a conspiracy theorist

boone: bi. stupid. soaked in blood a lot. (L I T E R A L L Y all of my boone jokes are about him being dumb and bi and horribly injured and combos of those. i haven’t even made any incest jokes! what the actual fuck)

ana lucia: “[with tears in her eyes] DO U WANNA FIGHT??”. highly volatile. lesbian. bros with jack but will roast him. angery, sad and underloved

daniel: bi, agender, neurodivergent, just, just especially brain weird. The Scientist trope but kind of a shitty scientist. smart. in love with charlotte. in love with desmond. likes rats a lot. talks weird and soft spoken. withdrawn and polite but with bursts of bitterness. his mom won’t let him live the live he wants to live. time travel weirdness. loves music. gifted kid burn out. has a mental and emotional collapse. thinks a hydrogen bomb will solve all his problems. skinny. touches people a lot. he’s not okay. romantic. overwhelmed. memory problems. his lack of life experience and softness is used to contrast miles. takes some statements literally. pretty vanilla (for now) and doesn’t know what certain kinks are. likes that charlotte is Tough & Rowdy. doesn’t swear much. bad hair. was unhinged in college. has radiation poisoning

libby: neurodivergent and in love with hurley

eko: yeah... i’ve legit only used him for jokes where charlie says something EXTREMELY vulgar and eko says “go to church”

charlotte: bi, loud, passionate, beautiful, angery, knows All The Languages, huge nerd, loves daniel and thinks he’s a Snack, outspoken feminist, archaeologist/anthropologist and wants to explore some fucking ruins, The Lost Lenore trope, loves chocolate, exasperated, great smile, subtly insecure, doesn’t get that she could just tell daniel how she feels, has had many indiana jones like adventures (off screen, of course), for example: crashing her dirtbike into all 7 wonders of the world

danielle: french and unhinged, has seen some shit

alex: just a young lady with no chill

jacob: suffers from terminal apathy. has little understand of human behaviour. doesn’t care about people. he just plain sucks. has no endearing qualities. causes many problems. beats the shit outta richard. doesn’t like technology. so removed from humanity that he’s a touch uncanny valley

christian, eloise, charles and anthony jokes each have their own kind of flavours but fuck it, i’ll sum them all up as: contemptuous cunts who deserve to die

aaron: just a baby boy. does baby things. has like 5 parents

vincent: a dog. a good boy. does he know more than he lets on? is he mysterious? no, he is just a dog

#and as you can see this is 98% accurate #this is mostly just a summary of these people pfffttt #interjected with memes and orientation headcanons #i haven't made many jokes about sayid or sun or jin or michael #i haven't found them very dunkable #it's not like im avoiding them either #i just work with whatever joke sparks with me #anyways holy SHIT i make so many different kinds of jokes about charlie #you can tell the ones i favour making jokes about from this huh

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vultury · 4 years

Text

@brainsnbeauty // interstellar sentence meme // cont. from Here

|| Liz || Gumdrop !!

for a brief moment there’s silence on her part. it’s DEAFENING , & her ears are pounding – or maybe that’s her heart ? both , maybe. no – definitely both. all bodily sensations are starting to blend into one & she has to take a breath so unfathomably deep to steady herself. fight or flight is kicking in big time , but in her heart she knows it’s not him she wishes to flee but instead the plethora of feelings that have arisen. it’s complex , & despite being a smart girl like herself , not even liz can untangle the mental web her mind has so intricately woven. that said , the girl’d be lying if she said her father’s dedication to the return of his lost love came as a surprise. in some part she’s certain this could be chalked up to the stubborn & steadfast nature with which she’d been bestowed as a mere result of being raised by the man standing before her. on the other hand , the two had always had some sort of telepathy. not the kind prominent within reality of some who’d born with such a gift ( or curse , perhaps , depending upon how one looked at it ) , but the kind that breeds as a result of knowing another so intimately. she’d always find her way back to him. liz had tried so desperately for so long to cast this truth aside. clearly , she’s failed. it’s inevitable , her being here. perhaps it’s the sudden disappearance of her mother just years prior , & the subsequent adoption of he belief that life truly is precious & often taken for granted. she knew things could change in the blink of an eye - courtesy of mr. toomes himself - but the loss of doris , the seemingly permanent loss , truly drove the message home. the thing is , liz was so certain for so long that she was free of her past … onto better things. but she’s gone backwards , & it feels most satisfying to be here than it does to be elsewhere. it’s conflicting , to find comfort in the one who’d made a mess of her life. she’ll shift her weight then , hands clasping before her. there’s a lot she’d like to say in this moment. maybe a simple … “ sorry “ ? seems lackluster , but there must be something to quell this guilt that resides within her gut. something that she means. lips quirk , eyes averted until words tumble forth.

❛ —— of course i would , dad. i love you. ❜

☆——» Even after being told the traumatic news that his love, that his wife && the doting mother of his most cherished daughter had been culled away from this unforgiving world, Toomes held steadfast an unyielding refusal to believe it was the ultimate end. All evidence of such a glaring truth had been painfully visible to his own two eyes prior to Liz’s final visit when fellow inmates && security guards had been snapped away into a curiously familiar cloud of ash && dust all around the prison. It was pure pandemonium to behold, to be sure. But pure spite && bullheadedness prevailed, with Adrian ignoring the fact that Doris was truly gone. He just couldn’t allow for such a poisoned reality to seep into his mind. It would absolutely break him.

This was just another play of deception, a lie -- the universe, the Avengers, the gods above && below toying with mortal lives for nothing but cruel SPORT. There was no way, no way in H E L L Doris could be dead. Robbed from him && his daughter, forever. He wouldn’t give into that logic, no matter how many years had stumbled past him that cruelly spoke, spat in his face that ‘this is it, this is permanent, YOU can’t change this.’

He had built an entire profitable, if blood-stained empire upon cunning lies, misrepresentations of still being that legitimate blue-collar demolition && salvage worker. Perhaps it was because he had learned how to so easily lie to his family in order to protect them, that lying to himself with what could only be described as delusional hope came all the more naturally. If he didn’t have this hope to cling to, like a lifeline made of barbed-wire which dug, ripped, clawed into every inch of his being, what little humanity he had left might all but disappear. He won’t give up to save what little was left of his family.

Even if it meant more visitations behind bullet-proof glass, it would be worth it, right? Just to see Doris again. To know mother && daughter could be united once more on the same plane of existence...

He is surprised, elated to find Liz standing here upon her own accord. A numbed heart abruptly pumping with adrenaline jolt, not because of a flight-test or robbery, but birthed of pure warmth from a father’s love. Separation did in fact make the heart grow fonder, at least so was the case for Adrian. Liz wasn’t arriving on his doorstep due to sheepish requests made over phone calls to meet over a bite to eat or offerings of presents on her birthday, or any holiday her father can find to try && see, talk to his Gumdrop for more than a few fleeting minutes. Much as it kills him inside knowing their relationship might be damaged beyond a permanent, less painful repair, Adrian knew he just had to weather the storm instead of fighting against the tides of change.

He wasn’t a bad father, not by Adrian’s own biased opinion. He loved Liz more than life itself. He’d do anything for her ;; for her happiness, safety, health, even if it meant destroying himself in the process. Whatever it would take, Adrian was more than willing to go or keep a distance. Liz knew this. && he knew, believed that his Gumdrop, even if she had grown up faster than she should have, tried to put him in her rear-view mirror, well, she must to still love him, even if it wasn’t as much as before. Love was still there. Had to be...

But hearing those words, sheepish as they may be, certainly helped not only brighten Adrian’s mood, but bring a smile to light that pulled at muscles that hadn’t been used in a very long time. Weights lifted off his chest of which he hadn’t been aware were piled on high, like he could breathe after slowly drowning. So many lies he told himself to get through each day, it was relieving to know Liz wasn’t just another delusional fantasy.

This time, Toomes won’t keep himself at arms length. Instead, stepping forward to embrace Liz in what could only be described as a bearhug. Holding onto her as if at any moment, she might just slip between his fingers like in one too many nightmares of being left alone in a world made entirely of mountains of ash && embers.

❝ I love you too, Gumdrop... always. ❞

That was one thing of which would never change in this world, no matter how hard it tried to tear them apart. He squeezes her one more time before breaking away just enough to look at her directly. Tears are held behind the dam, but there are cracks forming beyond just the years that lined his face.

❝ It’s so good to see you again. -- Waitaminute, did you get taller? ❞ He’s teasing, making small talk in an effort to keep from becoming utterly overwhelmed by emotion, but is as genuine with her as ever. Huffing that gruff chuckle as he ruffles her hair, then passes a hand up to his forehead to discern height. But his other hand seems to refuse to let go of hers, lightly squeezing, reminding himself that this could be very well the last time he’d see her again, just like every other time since his days in prison.

❝ You’re a real sight for sore eyes, kiddo. I’ve missed the hell outta you. How’ve you been? Hey- c’mon inside, if you want... I’ve still got plenty of coffee brewin’. We can talk over a cup’a Joe? ❞

With that, Adrian relents in his physical contact, stepping aside && back into the less extravagant house he now occupied. It’s far smaller, but still cozy && well maintained -- aside from the pile of blueprints && textbooks sprawled across the kitchen counter. That organized chaos was enough to mimic a college students study space right before midterm exams, with the addition of specialty calibrated tools, tablets, && random looking assortments of small mechanical parts. He only spares that pile a glance, but is more worried that Liz was only stopping by for a brief moment to tell him that she’s moving to another country, or off into SPACE itself.

#brainsnbeauty #gumdrop! ;; Liz #;; Long Thread #V ;; I'm not a Hero || Just a Guy in an Unfortunate Circumstance #\\ -inhales-#\\ -screams-#\\ i love these two so friggen much yall don't understand ashsdfskdfjsfb #\\ I cry every time i write something abt these two interacting #\\ FEEEEELLLSSS

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aurltas · 5 years

Text

here, then, begins the mending

tags: Jasmine/Lief (Deltora Quest), lots of good ol communication and reassurance hahaha, Love Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, but trust me less hurt more comfort !!, ugh i love them THE OG OTP!!!!, Fluff

summary: Perhaps some things are better done than said; others, in turn, are better said than done. Together, they learn to speak through both.

IT’S HERE!! the fic i spent 2 years working on!! ..............and then it only turned out to be around 5k l m a o

in other words, jaslief FINALLY talks it out! aka the jaslief confession i’ve been dying for my entire life, enjoy my screaming! AKA aka several thousand words of Them Being R e a l Awkward because you BET they gonna drag this thing on as long as possible..... buckle up! it’s essentially a 5k mini slow burn bc They Communicate!! A Lot!! Albeit Very Awkwardly!! you’re all so welcome

(also available here on ao3 if that butters ur eggroll more)

The gardens are a temporary escape from the stifling regalities of the palace, and that is precisely what makes Lief worry.

He did keep his promise: so many wings and spires of the Del palace had been left in horrific neglect over the years of the Shadow Lord’s tyranny, and now they are reborn from the soil as a dazzling array of flora and fauna. It is a breath of the neighboring woods into the city, a long-overdue nod towards the Forests that stand so silent in their shared territory. If he is to be honest, Lief himself is quite proud of it.

But —

Jasmine should be here, he thinks anxiously as he gently pushes the garden gate open. She would.

Carefully, Lief shuts the gate behind himself before turning to the dew-green garden: itself huge, yet tiny. A vast beginning, plants only starting to push their way up towards the skies; an orderly chaos of buds and shoots. Truly the spirit of the newly revived land.

The one exception is the tiny neat grove of gnarled underground-grown trees. Gifts from the Raladin, these twisted lovely things are Lief’s personal favorites — testaments to the darkness they have all endured, yet striving for the sunlight still, and thriving in spite of it all. A mirror in more ways than one. The grove suggests escape more than any other area in the garden, tucked away at the farthest edge from the palace with breathtaking views of the Del and the Forests alike. And the trees themselves — Lief found it so easy to stroll beneath their writhing, steady branches whenever he needed an escape from the mundanities of rulership, because they understood him, wordlessly and without question, in a way no human could.

Well, save for...

Lief pauses beneath the grove’s edge and looks up, squinting against the brightness of the late afternoon sun.

“Jasmine?” he calls out.

“I am here,” comes her faint answer, from somewhere above. As he had expected. Leaves rustle from that same direction, as though to emphasize her words; it is more than likely that Filli, or Kree, or both, are among the leaves as well.

Lief smiles despite himself.

He cranes his neck, straining to catch a glimpse of a shadow perched among the greenery. The moment he does, Lief walks over to the chosen tree and presses his palm to the roiling bark, smiling again at the memories it brings: the steadiness of his companions beside him, the openness of the roads and skies. A chapter in the past, painted for once in shades of green-dappled gold.

Lief reaches up with that hand and begins scaling the tree slowly.

“So hindered by a common tree, King Lief?” Jasmine laughs, closer now. He finally reaches her perch and grins wryly in reply, settling himself between her spot on the branch and the trunk, relishing the free swing of his legs. “I merely value my life, O most revered master of tree-climbing,” he says, grinning, drawing his cloak closer against a wind previously unfelt from the ground. The sky seems to glow from here, he notices distantly. “Are you to tell me that I should throw my hard-earned breath away? After all those long, perilous journeys — through dangers so much worse than those offered by a mere garden tree?”

Jasmine laughs again and hits his arm, not lightly. “No, what I am telling you, O most revered king of our land, is that even after all my remarkably thorough instruction in the art of tree climbing you are still about as skilled as the Wennbar at it!”

Though he laughs just as heartily as Jasmine does at this, the quip makes him remember: that the Forests are Jasmine’s home first and foremost, have been and always will be.

(And the palace decidedly is not.)

The smile slips from his face, and he also remembers: there was a reason he had come, and sought out Jasmine.

And again I am hoping against hope, Lief thinks wearily. As ever.

“Lief?” Jasmine asks, caution treading her voice. He meets her eyes, and instantly his heart aches to see the unmasked concern there. “Is there something on your mind?”

How well we see through each other, he thinks, half bitterness, half warmth. How well we understand one another.

“There is,” Lief says quietly. He looks back towards the palace towers. “And it is something... that I must speak to you about, and you alone.”

Jasmine is watching him closely, and the weight of her anxious scrutiny is enough to make him want to escape the gardens and retreat into the tower he is so fixated upon. He tries to breathe, to calm his traitor heart.

She waits. Then, “Well?”

“I wanted to ask you about the Forests. And this garden, and the palace,” Lief says in a rush, desperately avoiding her gaze. “Is this— Is this enough? Is life in the palace enough for you, Jasmine? Tell me the truth. Please.”

He almost says, Is life in this prison, somehow enough? If it is with me?

“Enough?” she repeats, bewildered. “‘Enough,’ Lief? What do you mean by that?”

“Compared to the Forests,” he says faintly, and for the first time fear enters his voice in a clamoring haze. “Is this, being in the palace and the garden and surrounded by the trivialities of royal affairs... Is this place, Del— Does this life give you enough freedom? As the Forests clearly do?”

Jasmine stares at him, wide-eyed. Lief stares back, and silence seeps into the space between them as fear’s claws strangle at his throat.

“Lief,” Jasmine sighs at last, closing her eyes briefly, “Lief. You think too much, I think.”

“That is not an answer, Jasmine,” he whispers.

“It is not,” she agrees. “It is not, but it should tell you what you need to hear.”

Lief tears his eyes away from the towers — those prisons that could, could one day be prisons no longer — and meets Jasmine’s gaze.

“And what is it that you think I need to hear?”

(He does not dare breathe: he fears it might make him miss her answer.)

“That I will stay,” Jasmine replies, a rueful smile flickering across her face. “That I will not leave the Forests and leave you here — here, alone. ...That is what you were thinking, am I right?”

At Jasmine’s amused expression, Lief smiles bashfully and inclines his head in her direction. “You are. But...” He falls silent, eyes straying towards the palace turrets once more.

Jasmine senses his hesitation and sighs, but not impatiently. “But what, Lief?”

“But you never told me why.”

At this she smiles again, broader this time, and looks from Lief to the palace at which he gazes. “Is it wrong— No, is it intrusive of me to ask?” Lief says cautiously, the frost of the question treading through his very heartbeat.

He hears Jasmine breathe in. Then:

“By all rights, yes.”

Lief’s breath shudders to a halt.

“But.”

He remembers to breathe: he does.

“But. I also think... we need to overcome this fear too.”

Lief blinks, risking a glance at Jasmine’s face; its forced blankness holds no answers. “Fear?”

“I think we have circled around this question far too long,” she says. She does not move when Lief turns his head away completely from the palace to face her.

“Question?” he repeats numbly.

“This is exactly what I mean,” Jasmine says, smiling again. “No wonder Doom laughs at me so often.”

“Jasmine,” Lief pleads, mentally setting aside a few questions for the Resistance leader. “Tell me, what question have we circled around?”

At this Jasmine’s expression falls once more, and finally she faces him. “One thing first,” she says.

“What can it possibly be?” Lief asks, exasperated.

“Swear you will not tell anyone what I say next,” Jasmine says. “Not Barda, not Sharn, no one.”

Lief stares at her, lost for words. “Why would I...?”

“Marilen has been driving me mad with this, and she insisted,” Jasmine mutters instead, a complete non-answer. She looks down briefly, taking a breath before meeting Lief’s eyes once more. “And I thought it would be an — interesting endeavor, but quite frankly —”

“Jasmine, please!”

“Very well very well, you seem to be asking for it anyway,” Jasmine snaps good-humoredly, but her voice wavers.

“Lief.” She glances away, back. Away, again; feigning indifference as ever. But —

“...What exactly are we?”

For a moment Lief thinks the words are conjured by the wind that rises suddenly, carried from some other, unrelated conversation to the madness of theirs. For a moment he stills and mulls over the words, his mind a storm. For a moment he wonders what answer Jasmine wants to hear, and what answer he wants to give.

(And for a moment he trembles at the answer he longs to be true.)

“Is this what Marilen torments you with?” he finally says, faintly. Jasmine gives him a pointed look, but color rises to her face. “Either way,” she says stubbornly, “it is the answer to the question you keep asking me. Why I want to stay.”

Lief stares blankly at her, the words completely flying over his head. “You are saying — you want to stay because... because of what ‘we’ are? But — we are...”

And there he cuts himself off, because he does not know.

“Lief,” Jasmine repeats. She reaches out and grasps his wrist firmly. “You of all people should know that I am... not exactly well versed in the mess of — well, feelings, and... and understanding that of others, and between people, and. Well.” She breathes in, the air shuddering through her in a different breed of cold.

(He is overwhelmed, suddenly, by the urge to throw his cloak over the two of them and press close to banish these wintry demons in her heart in a way that would leave no room for doubt, all his own fear be damned; but he resists, he resists, because Lief of Del is a coward.)

“I have my reasons for wanting to remain, and I know this. But I want to know why you even want me to stay, when I am — when I am nothing but a lost wild girl who is closer to the trees and the birds more than other humans, and has no place at all in a palace of royalty and nobility and I... want to know if the reason you want me to stay is the same reason I want to stay, and if I do somehow — if I will even be worth the space I take and the air I breathe staying here, where I do not belong and where I am worth little more than nothing!”

Something cracks and splinters inside Lief: everything shattering, and scattering, and ready to be blown away at a moment’s gale. Something is broken; something is utterly, utterly wrong.

(Something is in desperate need of mending.)

Her words, like the weighty pestilence that they are, seem to hang hazily in the air. But now that they have been delivered from her body, Jasmine is left limp and shivering in the rising evening wind. Her head hangs now, facing the roots of the twisted garden tree, and something about the way her eyes are lowered is all so terribly wrong to Lief.

Belatedly, she loosens her grip on his wrist and starts to withdraw her hand. Lief catches it; she looks up, and her eyes, her eyes — Lief’s heart cries out at the wrongness of it all.

“Jasmine,” he breathes, and at her name she closes her eyes and lets out a choked breath that sounds closer to a muffled sob. He pulls the hand he holds closer to him, wrapping it with both his own. “Jasmine, Jasmine, Jasmine, please — look at me, please, listen to me,” Lief whispers. He watches, anxious and intent, as her eyes open and turn upwards to the darkening skies, rapidly blinking away what Lief knows are tears (and how it pains him to see her drowning so) before shakily meeting his gaze.

(Here, then, begins the mending.)

Lief glances down at their hands and gives in.

Cautiously, he drags himself closer to Jasmine and releases her hand to undo his cloak, adjusting it so that it wraps around both of them. Lief sighs, deeply, a slow and steeling thing: then he takes up her hand again and squeezes it softly, his eyes caught on the press of his own fingers against hers.

(And he hesitates. How to mend something he’d been so sure would never crack?)

Carefully, he looks up to meet Jasmine’s wavering gaze.

“Jasmine,” he says quietly, “Are you sure you are in your right mind?”

That old incredulous expression of outrage Lief is so familiar with flares up again, as scathing and dismissive as always — and he smiles. This is Jasmine.

“Excuse me?” she demands.

“You seem to have forgotten,” Lief adds, “that I... told you, not too long ago, when we were in the Shadowlands, that — that I, too, will marry for love. And that I think my queen is a worthy one for Deltora, as well.”

Jasmine stares at him, wordless. Lief forces his gaze away from the way pink has spread over her cheeks, a mirror to her lips, now slightly parted; he breathes in, willing the chill of the air to fill him with determination to finally overcome this shaking fear that so shackles his heart.

“And so I... well, I asked you. If you were willing. And you seemed to say yes, and so — that is why I want you to stay, Jasmine. At my side. Because you, well...”

(The sun is approaching the horizon, and the palace burns gold.)

Lief realizes he is clutching Jasmine’s hand, tight, and he loosens his grip hastily; but to his immense relief, and even greater surprise, Jasmine mimics his earlier action and squeezes his hand.

Lief looks back at her, his turn to be rendered wordless. At his stunned expression, the corner of Jasmine’s mouth lifts ever so slightly — a tiny small thing, but she is smiling.

(His chest aches. He wonders, half-distantly, how warm, how soft it would feel it against his own —)

He cuts that thought short. No; now is for Jasmine.

“Jasmine. You are... worth so much more than what you said, earlier,” he starts quietly. “There is no one in this entire land that I would rather have traveled with, and defeated the Shadow Lord with, and learned the ways of the Forests with, than you. Because we never would have made it beyond the very beginning without you, or lived to this day without you, and, and— Jasmine, it doesn’t matter whether or not you are of royal blood, or — or unfamiliar with the ways of people, because you can always learn, because you are the reason we still stand today, and stand here. It is you, and...”

Lief breathes in, breathes out. The cold of the air, the touch of the diamond against his skin: these he tries to bring to the forefront of his mind, rather than the burning he feels on his face and the familiar callouses he can feel on Jasmine’s fingers and the overwhelming urge he has to press them to his mouth. He fears, and fears, and hopes.

Jasmine watches, fixed, silent.

Waiting.

“You are... irreplaceable, Jasmine. To Deltora, and — and to my heart. And so that was why I asked you to stay, and, ah, as for what we are, well...” Lief smiles slightly, bright and careful, the heat in his cheeks heightening impossibly further. “I hope that we are — more than mere companions who went on a quest and survived, and more than friends who seek each other’s company day after day. And so... I think —”

Jasmine starts laughing.

Lief can only stare as she almost tips into him, watches in embarrassed horror as she doubles over, the hand still held in his loosening for the moment. It is only thanks to years of experience that she remains on the branch, and not below it.

“Lief,” she finally wheezes, “look at you! No, no no no, look at us. No wonder we are the joke of all the palace servants, and Marilen never stops her pestering, and Ranesh gives me those looks, and — and Doom my own father for Adin’s sake keeps asking if we are still sane, ahhh —” She finally controls her laughter enough to sit up and inhale deeply, an attempt to return to normal breathing.

Half bemused, half relieved, Lief readjusts the cloak for the sake of having something to do. He does not know if he can trust himself to speak words that make sense.

Eventually, Jasmine calms herself and sighs, long and deep. She looks Lief in the eyes, and the mirth lingering there paints the green a gentler cousin of their usual fiery sharpness. “Lief, you words are— I mean, what you said then...”

And here she bites her lip, struggling, worrying over her words: fearing, as ever, that she would say the wrong thing, or sound as such. Lief sees, and the wrongness pummels him again. He tightens his hold on her hand, wills her to summon that strength he knows she holds — to mend herself, to accept his lended strength.

Jasmine breathes in; accepts. And she smiles.

It softens Lief’s eyes.

“Your words — they mean a great deal to me,” she murmurs at last. “But Lief, it is me you are speaking to. Me. I have —” She shakes her head, her voice gaining strength. “I have seen you in every form you may take, for better or for worse. Do you think I will mock you or, or insult you or hurt you for something you want to say from your heart?”

Her smile widens before she schools it into solemn fondness and says:

“Tell me what you keep dancing around, Lief!”

Lief stares at her in astonishment, and amazement and wonder, marveling at the miracle of this incredible soul he so admires, and treasures, and —

She deserves to know.

“I ask you to stay,” Lief says delicately, firmly, his heart trembling at the possibility of it all, hoping, hoping, “I ask you to stay, because I am terrified of losing you. And that is because — because —” he breathes in: cold, steeling — “because I love you.”

He glances away — hoping, fearing, hoping — and glances back.

(He remembers to breathe.)

Jasmine is watching him carefully, through eyes wide and shining with something as namelessly bright as the surging wild joy that flares to Lief’s chest. Slowly a smile creeps across her face and helplessly he mirrors it, laughing, soft and embarrassed. Dimly he realizes he is clutching her fingers more tightly than ever; abashedly he loosens it, and it startles a choked laugh out of him when Jasmine’s immediate response is to pull it back to her and tug, using the leverage to press close. She laughs too, briefly dipping her face into his shoulder to hide her face before lifting it again to watch him.

(He hopes, he hopes —)

“I am afraid,” Jasmine murmurs, still smiling, “that I am not as... good, or — articulate, with words than — than with, well...” Her voice trails off and she lifts a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug, a trace of that old mock carelessness that, to Lief, speaks volumes more to her own nervousness than anything else.

But the smile stays on her face. “I take it you trust me?”

“With my life,” Lief replies instantly, and grins like a fool when she rolls her eyes despite the flush that rises in her cheeks.

Carefully she lifts their joined hands to rest by her sternum, over her heart; that smile still lingers on her features, now hesitant, and her eyes cast downwards to their hands. At the sight an ache begins in Lief’s chest, deep and whirling, seeping through his limbs like rain. He watches, and feels, and aches, and is silent. He feels content to watch the world turn. He feels as though this is as close to bliss as he will ever get.

He feels the tripping pulse of Jasmine’s heart through his palm, the rise and fall of her uneven breaths, the hesitant softness in her eyes as soon as they lift to meet his.

Jasmine’s eyes flit down to their hands and back up to him. Wordlessly she leans their foreheads together, and Lief watches in his own trembling silence as her eyes flutter shut and her breaths mingle with his. He follows her and closes his eyes too, just breathing, feeling and feeling and feeling, her heartbeat still galloping beneath his hand, a rhythm to match his own.

(Lief hopes: this is on the path to mending the broken.)

“I will — stay,” Jasmine whispers haltingly, and Lief can feel her shaking everywhere. “And your words. What you said earlier. I just... I never thought I would be. Enough. For anything, for the kingdom, for — well.” She huffs, disbelieving still, after all this time. “For you.”

“I will say it,” Lief replies quietly, “as many times as you need to hear it, to believe it.” Lief opens his eyes and lifts his other hand up to tuck that wild hair back behind her ear against the wind, searches her face. She is too close; he can make nothing out, so he says, “Tell me again? ...Will you stay?”

Jasmine lets out a tiny understated laugh, leans closer. He can feel the petal touch of her exhales against his mouth; there is nothing in the world but the two of them. “I will stay, Lief. As long as you... For as long as you want.”

Her voice falls so, so warm on Lief’s lips.

“Jasmine,” he says, and it comes out far more strained than he intends, but he doesn’t care to be embarrassed, not now, not with her, not when this is more important than anything. He pulls back a breath to tilt his head ever so slightly, a silent question, hovering. “Jasmine, can I— Is this —” Is this also what you want?

“Wait, Lief,” she says suddenly, and he stops breathing. “Wait. Before we... Let me say something.”

Lief breathes again. He pulls back a bit, and he waits, as she asked; because he would tear down the stars if she so desired, and because there is a breathlessness in her voice that wrenches his attention away from everything else. Her face is so red; he knows he is no better.

Jasmine swallows before she meets his eyes again, and it is all Lief can do to stare back, captivated by the way her fluster worries her mouth. She lets out a breath, a small muted thing, before adding just as quietly: “You said you trust me, so just, this... This is without the words.”

She lifts her chin ever so slightly, carefully presses her lips to his. The gasp slips from his mouth before he can stop it, and immediately Jasmine leans away. Lief opens his eyes (when did they close? — did they? — he is so lost and yet so found) to her nervous startled stare.

She’s shocked, Lief realizes, startled and astonished. She can barely believe I would...

(Another point of mending, but perhaps —)

“Is this— Did I— Do you still want this?” Jasmine asks, eyes still so wide, her breaths as shallow as his.

And Lief hears: Do you still want me?

(— perhaps this is easier done than said.)

“Yes,” he whispers, pressing back in, closer this time, shivering when she sighs his name at the proximity. He lets his eyes fall shut. Blindly, he lifts his hand to thread it into her wild hair, and Jasmine makes a sound of surprise against his lips in response, her hands fumbling to loop around his neck. Lief’s mind stills, settles; everything becomes this, the gentle insistent push and pull, their sharp stuttering inhales, the clumsy careful honesty of their motions.

He pulls away eventually and leans their heads together, desperately trying to catch his breath. When his eyes open, Jasmine is watching him, and her smile blinds.

“Again?” she asks quietly, and Lief’s mouth dries. All he sees is her smile, her bright-eyed joy. “Yes,” he breathes, a repeat of his own words, before he feels Jasmine’s hands skim up from the back of his neck to cradle his jaw as she pulls him impossibly closer, ever a quick learner in this language without words, teaching him too how to speak it more fluently.

When he finally pulls back, Lief distantly registers that the sun has almost completely set. But the realization comes only after he registers Jasmine’s expression; her eyes still closed, her lips parted, the way everything about her is soft-edged and open. Vulnerable. A Jasmine only he has been blessed enough to see.

It robs him of words, so he simply tips his forehead into hers and murmurs, “Jasmine.”

He feels more than hears her questioning hum in response.

“Thank you,” Lief says quietly. “Not for — this, specifically, but for telling me. And for staying. I know you love the Forests, and I will not chain you here, but... Thank you for choosing me.”

She scoffs, but it is kind and endeared. “I thought you would hear this without my saying, but I suppose I should use words for the sake of clarity.” Jasmine turns to tuck her face into the side of his neck, and Lief closes his eyes.

“The Forests will always be there,” she murmurs against his skin. “But you... Well, if I were to leave, then who would be here to keep you from falling off a tree? Or from going mad in your kingly duties? Or even just to reminisce with about the old days of the quest? Barda might be able to achieve two of those, but absolutely not all three, I think.”

Lief opens his eyes to gaze at the darkening sky, something wordless and roaring rising in him. He leans away, looks down to meet Jasmine’s steady gaze; he feels full to overflowing, and it is all he can do to curl his fingers under her chin and bring her mouth to his again. “Jasmine,” he mumbles, his mind a haze. “Jasmine, I —”

“It was never about choosing one or the other,” she whispers, pulling just far away enough for Lief to feel every other word against his lips. “I can have the Forests, and my freedom. And I can have you too. Are we clear?”

Lief’s resounding grin is so wide he almost fears he will somehow hurt Jasmine with his teeth, but then he feels her own smile against him. “Giving me a taste of my own medicine, are we?” he asks, and she laughs when he leans back to watch her eyes flutter open, tugs on her hair gently as he carefully frees his hand to lace their fingers together. “But yes. We are clear.”

It is like this that they stay, quite alone, watching as the sky begins to glow with the promise of another kind of light. And although the sun has taken the warmth of day with it, Lief finds himself content to bask in the summer that is his place next to Jasmine, his cloak around their shoulders.

(It is like this that they stay: the quiet of his rioting heart, the slow slip of dusk to evening; and this: the weight of Jasmine’s body against his, steady and warm and here, with him.)

(Quite alone indeed.)

When the first three stars appear, Lief says quietly, “Shall we leave before the cold becomes too much for my one cloak?”

“So sensible,” Jasmine replies, her smile audible. “Let us do so, then.” And then, to Lief’s silent astonishment, she presses closer briefly before pulling away, without hesitation and so utterly at ease that it stings his eyes. He watches, still astounded, as she peels his cloak from her shoulders and swiftly begins to climb down from their perch.

The wind rises to batter them once more, but Lief hardly feels it — because now, now the world can turn as it pleases: he has finally heard what he had longed to hear, for longer than he knew.

“Lief? Lief!”

He blinks, looks down towards the sound. Jasmine stands below him, arms crossed but a grin on her face, tilted up towards him. “Are you coming down from that tree or not?”

And for the second time that day, Lief finds himself in awe of this incredible wild girl — so doubted and wounded and scorned by the world so determined to break her, but still, still, bearing and baring it all with the courage of her vulnerable pride.

He laughs, loud and bright, clumsily climbing down to her side.

Jasmine grins up at him when he lands at last, and there is a light in her eyes that rivals the stars overhead. “Ah my king, you have made it alive!”

A rush of fondness washes over him, stronger than any wind, and Lief abruptly pulls her close, bundling the edges of his cloak in his fists and wrapping her up in it. It makes her laugh in startled delight as she falls into him, and he revels in the joyful sound of it.

“In all honesty, I am only alive thanks to my wonderful teacher,” Lief murmurs into her hair. She wraps her arms around his waist, makes a soft inquisitive noise that reminds him of the Forest birds. He can feel her fluttering heartbeat against his chest, knows his own is also a bird of the same rhythm, and something in him warms. “She taught me well.”

“And who exactly is this esteemed teacher you regard so highly? A princess, perhaps, or a noble lady?” Jasmine asks, playful despite the careful hesitance in her voice.

Lief pulls back slightly, dropping the edges of his cloak from his hands to hold her by her forearms, looks into her eyes. They roam, searching his face.

He laughs, quiet and small, but for some inexplicable reason he also wants to cry.

“Oh, but have you not heard?” Lief says. “She is far from any princess or lady; she is Deltora’s queen, more than worthy of her crown. And she is, more importantly —” he breathes in, no longer needing hope — “my love.”

A slow smile, bright and open and real, spreads across Jasmine’s face before she buries it in his shoulder. “Lief,” she mumbles, “when I said I want to stay... I also meant to say. That — that I. I love you too.”

He closes his eyes, presses his own smile to her temple. “I know,” he says. She hums quietly, a question. How? Lief laughs quietly and wraps his arms around her.

“You already told me. Without words.”

(And now there are two on the path to mending, instead of one.)

bonus coda:

leaf: “wait. Wait. then... who did you think i was referring to when i said i would marry for love back then after the shadowlands?” jas: “idk i’m just too used to you just saying stupid Grand shit all the time ok lil king, don’t blame this on me”

marilen and doom, straight up faceplanting: “oh for the love of aDIN”

how much does jas r e a l l y understand about Feelings(TM) and Certain Specific Gestures? idk man that’s a whole other fic, i can’t possibly add the lief-explaining-relationships-to-jasmine brand of jaslief in here it’s already too full of all the other tropes i wanna read HAHAHA

MORE FUN NOTES!

this monster started as a casual take on the “jaslief clears the air between them” and became a 5k+ Absolute Unit

like. i wrote the first draft of this on my phone in fuckign 2017 while in china in desperate attempts to mentally escape Pestering Relatives and then promptly forgot it existed for a year and a half and THEN i decided to completely rewrite some parts and add completely new ones...............pffffttttt, i can’t believe i’m still alive

The Biggest Shoutout to the greatest showman ost (especially rewrite the stars! a BOP!) for giving me some gr9 background music / motivation while i stumble around in writing a subject i have -0 experience in ooPS

(“but you’re here in my heart / so who can stop me if I decide you’re my destiny” + “it’s up to you and it’s up to me / no one can say what we get to be”)

also! a Cursed Thing that occurred to me while writing their names as leaf and jas was: leafyboy and jasgirl. like... fireboy and watergirl? ..........no? no one? (i’m so sorry i have no excuse)

this is also essentially me projecting my huge crush on both characters in this ship L M A O

I MEANT TO HAVE THIS DONE BY 5/20 FOR “CONFESSION DAY” BUT WHOOPS

finally, another shoutout to my slow slide into the kpop chasm !! i can’t believe im saying this, BUT: stream mikrokosmos by bts, bc god i looped the hell out of this song while doing the final stages of editing and rewriting

HOPE YALL ENJOYED!! if you wanna scream at me, to me, with me, p l e a s e do it i love yelling and i wanna make friends please please please

#deltora #deltora quest #jaslief #roddaverse #my writing #QUEST FAM PLS ACCEPT MY OFFERING

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