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celestie0 · 2 months

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gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]

kickoff ch.11 i feel so high school

ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is the most popular guy on your college campus. he's tall, funny, hot, not to mention he's the most talented soccer forward the school has seen in years. but he's also a frat dude, which puts him in a world very different from your own, as he spends most of his nights partying & drinking while you spend most of yours working on your annoying film major assignments. but when he reaches out to you for a favor, you realize that helping him out might have something in it for you too.

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem reader, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot, marijuana use, sexism, sexual harassment (verbal only)

ᰔ chapter. 11/x (probably 18)

ᰔ words. 11.1k

a/n. hi friends! omg this chapter took me forever to finish even though i had 90% of it done for sooooo long. i just had a lot of self doubt for it :'') i have said this before n i'll say it again my mind is a prison smhhh. ANYWAYS i had the song "so high school" off of taylor swift's ttpd album (sped up ver.) on BLAST while writing this chap so if you wanna experience what i experienced while i wrote this chapter i highly recommend listening to it too lol it's pretty much this chapter's anthem hahah. hope you enjoy and i'll see you at the bottom!! if there are typos or errors im sorry im just a girl

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☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1 :: ♬.*ﾟplaylist

It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon, sun beating down on your skin from where you walk on sidewalk that's damp from sprinkler spray, although you’re not sure as to why, because the path leading to the host house is adorned with artificial turf all around that glitters with a wetness it didn’t need. The weather is getting hotter these days, and seemed to have flipped suddenly from gloomy overcast into full blown spring-time heat that has a thin layer of sweat sheening over your skin. Thank God for Mina, who convinced you to switch out of the jeans you were planning to wear in favor of something shorter and lighter, otherwise you would’ve been toasted. Although her true desire was for you to just “wear something cuter”, like the thin slip dress you’ve got on right now.

The smell of barbeque smoke fills the air, and you see Mina in your periphery put a hand over her stomach.

“God, I’m so hungry,” she says as you two continue to walk up the sidewalk. Plastic pink flamingos line up on dirt, like arrowheads leading you towards suburban paradise. When there’s loud boombox music playing openly into the air, and sounds of people whoo!!-ing to pair, you know you’re close by.

There’s a guy standing at the white picket fence entrance that leads into the backyard court, and he’s super familiar in the face. You recognize him as that guy you shared a couple shots of tequila with at that SAE party a while back, but his name fails to come to memory. He’s checking people’s phones and letting them in.

“Hey, Mina,” he greets her with familiarity, likely since Mina’s been to more SAE events than you have, given her and Todo are inseparable these days. His eyes flicker to you, widened and he greets you by name too, and now you feel awful that you don’t remember his. But he’s got one of those tacky corporate My name is… stickers plastered across his chest with the name Ryota scribbled across it, along with a drawing of a penis in a different colored marker, which you can only assume someone else drew on there and Ryota was simply Too Lazy To Care.

He scans Mina’s phone first and then moves to scan yours, but not without letting out a huh noise and then you’re asking him what?

“Oh, nothing,” he says, “it’s just, in my four years of pledging for SAE I don’t think I’ve ever seen Satoru actually use one of his plus ones.”

You blink at him, feeling a twinge of heat in your cheeks. You’re dying to know more info about that, but he reaches over behind the fence gate to release the lock and then he opens it, gesturing for the two of you to head inside before he’s helping the people behind you.

The backyard is huge, it’s own concrete jungle with a tile-parameterized pool off to the left equipped with a jacuzzi in the corner, and only a couple of insane people choose to sit in that hot water while most of the rest are relaxing in the pool. Off to the right is the barbeque grill space, with SAE frat brothers distanced at stations as they yell things to one another like Hey, where’s the medium rare steak I asked for a half hour ago?!?!? and it’s fookin’ raw!!! like they’re on an episode of Hell’s Kitchen, but there’s a growing line of people standing eager with paper plates in their hands ready for lunch, so maybe the pressure was indeed on.

Your eyes take in more as you step inside. There’s fake sandy gravel arranged near the pool over plastic tarps, which you’re assuming are stretched across for easy clean-up, and it doesn’t take you long to realize that this was a tropical-themed barbeque event. A makeshift bar is tucked over in the back at the outdoor kitchen counter, some beachside-mimicking establishment with seashells hanging and surfboards leaning as the guy shaking drinks has blackout shades on and is entirely too engrossed in his role. They’ve even got a little corner over where the concrete meets brick seating in a little closed off garden where there’s a projector screen set up and people are screaming, controllers in hand, while making enemies over a game of mario kart.

You and Mina walk by two guys talking, a conversation that goes like—

frat bro 1: imma take your mom’s virginity bro

frat bro 2: she’s not a virgin bro. she gave birth to me

frat bro 1: but bro. you don’t know that.

frat bro 2: …..you’re right bro…..i don’t….bro……..

–and then you hear Mina say “I’m already losing brain cells here.”

“Hey!!” you hear a familiar voice yell, your head turning in the direction of it, and you see Geto storming across the hot concrete towards the pool and he loses one of his flip flops in the process then steps barefoot on painful fake sandy gravel and he cusses under his breath before hopping over to the aqua-colored tile surrounding the water. “NO FOOD IN THE POOL!!! C’mon guys, how many times do I have to say it?!?!”

You take a few cautious steps towards him because he looks like he’s on edge, well, literally, he’s balancing on the pool’s edge, but when he makes eye contact with you he looks pleasantly surprised.

“Oh! Hey, y/n,” he approaches you, “and Mina. It’s nice you guys came.”

You give a little wave and Mina does too.

“I think Satoru’s somewhere out back getting supplies,” he tells you with a point over his shoulder and he deftly ducks his head under when he sees a pool ball flying his way in his periphery before it falls to your feet. You pick it up and throw it back to the outstretched arms in the water.

“Oh, thanks,” you respond. “How’s it going? You look stressed.”

He sighs and you see he’s got a lot more hair falling over his forehead than what usually escapes his tight bun. “It’s going–...fine. Our social chair has been out this past week so I’ve been in charge of making sure things go smoothly today.”

“Ohhh,” you and Mina acknowledge in unison.

You get some weird spidey sense, perhaps it’s your keen way of just knowing, or maybe you and him are cosmically connected by now, but you can just sense that Gojo’s near. You raise yourself a little on your tiptoes to peer past Geto’s shoulder, and sure enough, you see Gojo approaching with boxes of stuff in his arms. Geto becomes aware of your line of sight, and then he’s turning around to face him too.

“Hey,” he says, “why’re you carrying a box of condoms?”

“Huh?” Gojo says with a tilt of his head before he looks down at the stuff he's piled up, “oh, I dunno, Hide said he needed ‘em for something. But it’s Hide, so it’s definitely not for sex.”

There’s another man that lightly jogs up to Gojo, and you notice he’s got barbeque grease stains all over the front of his shirt and on his cheek too, as well as a cafeteria lunch lady hair net over his head. “Oh awesome, thanks man, needed these.” He takes the box of condoms from the top of the pile in Gojo’s arms, “we ran out of gloves.”

“Ohhh,” Geto says, with a few slow nods of understanding, before the realization flashes across his face, “........WAIT, WHAT?”

There’s some absurd conversation that breaks out between Hide and Geto, and then a loud thud startles you when Gojo drops everything he was carrying to approach you. You take in the entirety of his appearance– black shorts that hem at the rounds of his knees, a loose sleeveless shirt that shows off the flexed muscles of his arms a little too fucking much for your sanity’s sake, and he’s got his hair peaking out underneath a snapback he’s pulled on over his head. He looks so insanely fratty and douchey and the way he’s got his arms spread open as he gets into your space with that where my hug at? look on his face before he dips his head down to kiss you has you shoving him away by a palm pushing under his chin until now he’s just staring up at blue sky.

“Um, excuse you,” you say, “why are you greeting me like you’re my man.”

He groans and grabs your wrist to pull your hand away from his chin. “For fucks sake, let me be your man. We’re already dating in my head anyway.”

There’s another guy that approaches the group forming here, and he crouches down to open up the cardboard boxes Gojo abandoned on the floor. “Who the fuck was responsible for defrosting these hot dogs?! They’re solid as rock!!”

Geto sighs, rubbing an exhausted hand across his face. “Oh, uh, Mina, y/n, this is Hide, and this is Sota,” he gestures to the two of them, “our other two housemates.”

The four of you exchange pleasantries and then Todo suddenly comes up behind Gojo, slinging his arm around him, before grabbing Mina’s hand from afar and placing a wet, sloppy kiss to the back of it.

“My lady,” he says, retreating his arm from Gojo to fully step into Mina’s space, “shall we?”

She looks at you in courtesy, and you nod in approval, and then the two skip off together towards the pool. There’s shouting from the barbeque station and Hide and Sota make haste to get over there to put out a grill fire that their neglect was most likely the cause of.

“Um, where’s the restroom?” you ask, turning your head around to look. You just now notice there’s a pool house stretching across most of the courtyard with floor to ceiling sliding glass doors, past the arch that connects the main house to the garage.

“You can try the one downstairs in the house,” Geto says, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

“Uh, I wouldn’t,” Gojo interjects, “unless you wanna be traumatized by the sight of a girl swallowing Choso whole while he’s seated on the toilet.”

Your nose curls up so high you can see it between your eyes. “No thanks,” you say.

Gojo grabs your hand, and he’s tugging you across the concrete. You’re still in sensory overload over all the stimuli around you, but your head is vaguely registering the fact that people are staring at you. Some with curiosity, others with studying eyes, some turned away, some turned towards, yet eyes still watching and you remember Ryota’s words from earlier about the history of Gojo’s never-used invites. The attention is a little nerve-wracking, but Gojo squeezes your hand twice as if he knows what you’re thinking right now, and the gesture puts you at ease. It’s been a week since the embarrassing and frightening intervention you had with Kai last week, and it’s sad to say, but Gojo and the other guys on the soccer team that helped you out that night are pretty much the only men you feel truly comfortable around right now.

Gojo walks you to the pool house, and he points towards the inside to where the restroom is, and you thank him before hurrying in. You didn’t even need to pee, it’s just become some weird ritual for you to check in with yourself in front of a bathroom mirror at social events as you needlessly fix barely smudged mascara and smooth down the fabric of your clothing.

Just have fun, is what you tell yourself in the mirror. There’s a sad sinking feeling underneath your rib cage when you realize you’re graduating in less than two months. Going to classes, doing assignments, having coffee dates with friends, organizing stuff for clubs, going to social events, just being an undergrad student who has all the fear in the world and no care for it, all the little things that have become a part of your life and have given you purpose, it’s all going to be gone soon, and you’ll have to fill the time and space with new things that give you purpose. Things that you want to carry with you into your adult life. Your actual adult life. Out in the “real world”, or whatever. And while the thought is scary, you also remind yourself that you’ve still got time left to just enjoy your college experience for what it is. You take some deep breaths, of which somehow make you a little more nervous than before, but it’s fine. You swallow the feeling.

Gojo’s still standing outside the pool house where you left him, except he’s leaned back against the exterior and talking to a few of his frat brothers.

“Hi,” you approach, sparing a small smile to the people he’s talking to just to be polite, but you’re not interested in any introduction. Your finger pokes Gojo’s elbow, and he leans himself off the wall, says some words of see ya around to the group and then he’s grabbing your hand again to lead you towards a different area of the backyard. The makeshift beachside bar.

He greets the guy behind the bartop with a solid grab of his hand and then he leans over the counter on one elbow, eyes on you. “Want something to drink?” he asks.

Your eyes squint to take in the writing scribbled across the blackboard hung up behind the counter. “Oh, no way,” you say when you realize the drinks are named after the players on the soccer team, albeit with cheeky twists on their names, all in anticipation of tomorrow’s win.

There’s a grin on Gojo’s face, “you should get mine.”

“What is yours?” you ask.

“Uh, I actually have no clue,” he confesses as he scratches his cheek and glances at the bartender, and now you’re both just waiting for an answer.

The guy pushes his blackout shades up his nose, and his skin is tan like he really did just come here from the beach. “Somethin’ like a blue lagoon, sweetheart. Blended,” he says, and you realize he’s most definitely too old to be a college student.

“Oh god,” you say, “is it gonna give me a brain freeze.”

The bartender gives you a nod to humor you but mixes it up for you anyway, then slides the drink across to you. It's chilly in your hand but it’s a welcome feeling under the heat of the sun.

“Hey!! You guys,” Mina approaches with Todo tugged along by the hand, and her hair and clothes are soaking wet. “Can you count which one of us can hold our breath underwater the longest?? Please??”

You see Gojo reach behind the bar counter for a chilled long neck beer that he cracks open with the edge of the counter. “Sure,” he says, “You’d probably win, though. Better lung capacity. Todo’s been vaping since he learned how to spell. So, for, like, three years now.”

You can tell Todo’s already had a few drinks with the way he saunters over to Gojo, then slaps his back so harshly that it has him choking on the gulp of beer he just took.

“What the fuck–” Gojo sputters.

“Satoru here is going to be best man at our wedding someday, babe,” Todo slurs, “since he brought the two of us together.”

Gojo wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes, all me,” he affirms and you roll your eyes, “I’m like that one angel with the love arrows. I forget the name.”

“Anteros,” you joke.

“Yes, that.”

“N-No–...cupid. It’s cupid.”

“Oh?”

“My lady,” Todo slurs as he approaches Mina, “shall we go for another swim?”

You watch as Todo doesn’t even give her time to respond before he’s throwing her back into the pool, and you flinch as droplets of water from the splash threaten to graze you. You turn back to the bar counter and sip your drink through your straw, then look at Gojo who’s just staring at you.

“What?” you ask once you take your lips off the straw.

“Nothing. It looks like they’re having fun,” he says, peering off into the pool.

You glance over your shoulder at the water, “that’s true. I’m gonna be honest, it’s an odd match, but surprisingly it works. Like beauty and the beast.”

“What would we be?” he asks.

“Lady and the tramp.”

“Okay. I would find that insulting…….but I actually really like that movie so it’s fine.”

“Mm,” you smile at him mid sip, already halfway done with your drink with the prospect of brain freeze on the horizon.

He’s grabbing your hand again, and you realize this entire afternoon might just be him taking you wherever he wants you while you essentially turn your brain off. But those eyes are on you again, peering ones that are intrigued by the way Gojo doesn’t seem to want to leave your side all day, like he’s usually everywhere else all at once, and was until you showed up, and now you’ve got all his attention and apparently that was some anomaly.

People seem to want to say hi to him wherever he goes, or catch up with him about something or the other for conversations they’ve seemingly put pins in, you’ve noticed most guys that had no shame in eyeing you when you first walked in are now too scared to even look at you now that you’re in his presence, and perhaps the most jarring observation of yours is how many girls are just shamelessly and borderline seductively staring at him despite the fact that he’s in your presence.

He stops suddenly to turn around and face you, and you almost crash right into him.

“Wanna go inside?” he asks as he holds a hand above his eyes for shade, “the sun’s kinda harsh out here.”

“Oh no,” you comment sarcastically, eyes flicking up to the snapback he was wearing, “if only you had something on your head that could block the sun.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, “if only.” And then he’s grabbing your hand again to lead you back to what you realize is the poolhouse.

But then the two of you are stopped by a group of guys and girls, and suddenly, you realize that there are also a lot of eyes on you that are jealous.

“Hey, do you guys wanna join us? We’re about to play power hour by the pool,” one of the guys says, gaze on Gojo before it drifts slowly to you in inclusion.

There’s a girl standing next to him with her eyes flitting back and forth between you and Gojo before she gives you one look down your form, and then glances off towards the pool with disinterest. You blink at her, not proud of the assumptive what’s her problem? thought that flashes through your head but, seriously, what’s her fucking problem?

She’s twirling her hair and blinking up at Gojo before he finally responds to his frat brother with— “Oh, uh, nah. We’re good.” Like he wouldn’t trade two minutes alone with you on a couch tucked away inside the pool house with minimal decency for any amount of winning-at-public-drinking-game glory.

And that’s exactly where he leads you. A couch, tucked away inside the pool house, with minimal decency. He sets his bottle of beer down on the small table by the arm rest before he slumps down onto the couch, sunk in with hardly any give to the cushions, and he’s manspread to the moon as per usual as he pulls you to him with his hand holding your fingers until you’re standing in between his legs. Your knees bend to press into the sofa, and he lifts your hand into the air, holding it curled like you’re a lady in the mid eighteenth century and he’s about to kiss the back of your hand, except he’s just holding it that way to guide you into your seat. A more suitable action, at least. Modern and sleazy.

Your right knee is first to press into the cushion next to his thigh, and then your left knee follows until you’re hovered above him in a straddle. Then he settles you into the warmth of his lap with an urging hand on the small of your back, and you’re akin to the way he slides you up to above his groin once you’re sat.

“You don’t want to get in the water?” he asks as his hand finds the bare skin of your thigh to caress while the other still lingers low on your back.

You can’t help but smooth your hands down his chest, and you swear he looks like he’s been made light headed by the action. “No. I didn’t know there was a pool here. Didn’t dress for the occasion.”

His eyes flick down to watch his own hand slide up your thigh until the fabric of your dress falls over his knuckles. You look down too, and maybe you’re vain for it but you’re a little obsessed with the way you look sitting in his lap.

He seems to share the sentiment, considering he’s still hooked on the sight when he speaks. “The occasion of getting wet?”

“Mhm.”

Now he looks at you. “Weeeell sometimes you’ve gotta get a little wet to have a good time.”

“What are you getting at?” You place your hands on top of his shoulders and feel the rise of the blades when he shrugs.

“Just some philosophy for ya. General wisdom. Tenets of life.”

“Ooo, big words there, did you learn them yesterday?”

“Don’t be sassy with me. It’ll get you into trouble.”

He brings his bottle of beer to his lips, loosely held in his hand with his head facing off to the side slightly so he can still maintain eye contact with you as he tips it back. Your eyes are immediately on his lips and fixated on the way his jaw is slack almost lazily, barely enough to let the amber liquid enter his mouth.

His brow raises at how attentive you are to the sight, and he tips the bottle your way with a want some? look on his face, and in the beat too long that you take to answer, he’s already settled the cold glass rim on your bottom lip, a drop of bitter coating your tongue. Your chin tips up in silent permission for him to give you a decent swig of it, and the eye contact you give him as you take it is something sultry that makes him swallow hard, which you witness in the roll of the muscles of his neck. A droplet makes its way down your chin, and his thumb swipes it off for you, then he presses his thumb to your lips for you to lick.

Listen, he’s hot enough when you’re sober, but with drink in your veins, you’re worried you might fuck him hard enough not even your birth control could save you from what you’d coax from him. Alcohol is a hell of a drug, but so is his undivided attention.

“What are you thinking about?” you ask with a tremble in your voice when you feel his hands slide to hold your hips and his eyes look cloudy with something you can’t discern.

“You. I’m thinking about you. Duh.”

“But what about me?”

“Whatever the song just said.”

“I don’t even know this song.”

“You’d be a pretty bad stripper, then.”

Your skin feels seared inside out from how his eyes seem to undress you, and it doesn’t help that he’s way too hot blooded underneath you, running warm against your body’s attempts to keep its cool.

He slides you back a little, to where you’re not sitting right over his crotch anymore.

You hold a tiny twist of your hair between your forefinger and your thumb to distract from his intense eye contact, in favor of inspecting for split ends. “Can I ask you something?” you say.

“Anything.”

“What was the bet?”

“Huh?”

Your eyes flicker to his briefly, just for the duration that you speak. “You mentioned that the reason you messaged me those couple of months ago,” you start, “was because you lost some bet with Todo, and you had to help him get with Mina after that. What was the bet?”

“Just some stupid fantasy football thing,” he says. You tilt your head at him and briefly consider feigning interest in fantasy football, but you’re not that down bad. “I’m really glad though,” he continues, “since I got to meet you because of it.” Then he’s drinking from the bottle again. This time, you grab it from him once he’s done to consume some for yourself.

“What did you think of me when you first saw me?” you ask, the questions like an impulse you can’t control, and you swipe a drop of beer from your chin with the back of your hand.

He takes the bottle from your hand once you’re done swapping spit on it then sets it down on the table again, and there’s a moment of surprise on his face when he registers it’s a lot lighter than when you took it from him. And then his thumbs are back to rubbing those dizzying circles on your hips through the taut fabric of your dress, touch grazing up the curve of your waist when he feels like it. “Cute,” he says, first and foremost, “sorta wide-eyed and a little lost. Not the type to put casual sex on the table in the way that I thought you would.”

“That’s a little insulting.”

His brow furrows for a moment before he sighs. “Your head’s a very pretty yet very strange thing.”

“Do I not seem promiscuous?” you ask, not even sure why you’re offended by it, “I can be–” you catch the slurring of your words, “I can be chill, and the type to have casual sex. No strings attached girl. I could be that if I wanted to.”

“Maybe,” he says, a slight tilt to his head as he looks at you with something you’d describe as adoration, “but not for me.” And then suddenly his features turn sharp again. “Oh, and not for any other guy, either.”

You roll your eyes at his latter statement and ignore it. “But wasn’t that what you wanted from the beginning,” you say with a hic and a finger lightly grazing down his chest which he tucks his chin to watch, and you clarify when you realize you’ve lost him, “Casual.”

He senses you’re playing a game now, of cat and mouse, or just-tell-me-what-I-wanna-hear-already.

“At the beginning, sure. But not so much anymore.” And he ends it there.

You raise an eyebrow.

He sighs. “I need you to know that I’m not great with words.”

“Neither am I,” you say, just to feel similar to him somehow.

“I disagree,” he states, like he sees right through it, and he leans away from you to lay back, hands leaving your hips to set his elbows up on the couch, open for proper conversation all of a sudden. “You’re good with words.”

You pinch the fabric of his shirt in a fidget, and raise an eyebrow at him in question.

“I don’t know,” he tries to elaborate, “you just know what you want and you ask for it. I don’t always know what I want from people, so I hardly ask for much.”

You release your grip of his shirt. He sulks about it. “I can recall you asking me to call you daddy once. Weirdo.”

“Wow. I open up to you and then you kink shame me.”

You giggle a little, because he’s funny sometimes, and he’s showing you his appreciation for the sound of your laughter in the air by giving you a playful pinch to the plush of your thigh.

“Sorry,” you drawl, “it was on my mind. Because of–” you point to the ceiling, “because of what the song just said.”

He laughs. “You’re not into it though? The– uh, you know what I mean.” Evading the word like he’s preserving propriety for now.

“I don’t hate it for other people…not really trying to yuck anyone’s yum here, but my, um, my real dad’s not around anymore so it’s just a little,” you pause, feeling awkward, “weird for me I think.”

“Oh,” his brow furrows, like he’s glad he preserved that propriety from earlier, “my bad. If it’s any consolation, I was half joking.”

“Half is good enough for me,” you tell him, in a voice a little higher pitched than your usual, and you hold his face still by the jaw before leaning forward on foreign instinct to kiss him but you stop yourself right before you do. Eyes on your lips now, he leans forward to seal what you teased but you’re only stopping him as well by the heel of your hand pressed to his sternum.

He remains close though, gaze still fixated on the light tuck of your bottom lip under your front teeth, and when his eyes flicker up to yours again, they’re wild and dark.

“I like this weird thing we’re doing,” he exhales, sorta husky, “where you won’t let me kiss you. It’s hot.”

“Ok,” you say, with a small shrug as you push him away until he’s leaned all the way back onto the couch again, “I’ll keep it up forever then.”

He can’t help the groan that leaves him as he tips his head back in agony. “I’d die. I’d literally fucking die.”

You roll your eyes at the drama. “Isn’t this nice though? No kissing means more talking.”

“Yes, because talking is exactly what I wanna be doing with you while you’re sitting in my lap.”

Your shoulders drop in a bit of a sulk, and his eyes soften at the sight.

“I do,” he starts as he leans forward before pressing his lips to the corner of your mouth, dangerously close to breaking rules, but he needed to kiss your pout away somehow, “really love talking to you, though.”

You can’t think of anything clever to retort with, so you wear your heart on your sleeve. “You’re just saying that.”

“I’m pretty sure I could recite everything you’ve ever said to me off the top of my head, and that’s given the fact I’ve got the memory of a goldfish on any good day, so,” he says as he tucks strands of your hair behind your ear. It’s a messy tuck, one you have to fix yourself anyway, and when your fingers brush against his from the redundant movement, he holds your hand, “but yeah, sure, I’m just saying it.”

He pulls your hand from where it’s near your ear, and interlocks his fingers with yours in that intimate way that makes your heart skip a beat. There’s the texture of his callouses against the back of your hand, rough on his fingertips yet soothing over your skin, and it reminds you of when he held your hand in that hotel room. From the look in his eyes, you can tell he’s thinking of it too.

The memory is intense, and it has you shifting your weight a little in his lap, until you accidentally rub your panties right over his crotch and a soft gasp leaves your lips when you realize that he’s hard underneath you.

The motion gets a groan out of him as he tilts his head back and his hands grip tight on your hips to keep you there.

“Hey. No. I didn’t mean to do that. Don’t get aroused,” you squeak out. The ribbed expanse of his neck as he’s leaned back makes you want to kiss him at the taut skin, right near the vein that’s tense down from behind his ear to his collarbone.

He tips his head back down to level his gaze with yours. “It’s way too late for that.”

You struggle a little against his grip, and the sensation of his erection held snug against your clothed heat sends a pleasureful ache to your lower tummy. “Y-You’re just gonna suffer, then.”

“Yes. Which is a pattern with you. But I kinda like it.”

“Mm. Your head’s a very strange thing.”

“My head? Baby, my head hasn’t done any of the thinking since I saw you in this dress.”

You feel like you’re on fire. “You’re such a whore today.”

“Can’t a dude just chill on a couch with the girl he likes. Jesus.”

You know he's said it already, so it's no secret, but him calling you the girl he likes makes your head spin hazy in a way you wish it wouldn't. Because half of your heart is telling you it's the bare minimum you'd want, while the other half is telling you it's all you'll ever need to hear from him for the rest of your life.

He’s bouncing one of his legs up and down in relief of some of the self restraint he’s exercising right now, and it’s making you sway a little in his lap while he admires you.

“You’re so pretty,” he sighs with a shake of his head, like it’s torture for him in the best way possible, and then his nose nuzzles under your jaw, right where you sprayed your perfume. You shiver when he presses a kiss there. “Pretty girl.”

You lightly push his shoulder with the heel of your palm so that he pulls away to look at you, and a few shy flutters of your eyes tell him people might see us, to which his eyes say don’t care as he tilts his hips up towards yours.

Most guys would match the tempo of the music with a slow grind like this, but of course he makes his own. One he settles you into with guiding hands on your hips, the way he wants it. One that makes your hand shoot out to grip his shoulder for purchase when your hips start to move on their own from the feeling of him hard and hot and excited underneath you, until he's got you unsure of whose idea this was in the first place.

“Fuck,” he exhales with a slack jaw, all air and no tone, when you rock your hips forward and he leans back on the couch as he starts to grind up against you as well, firm and flush, and you’re satisfied by the loss of his composure.

You’re sure you’re nothing but sopping, unadulterated wet between your legs, and if the fabric over his crotch was any shade of black lighter, he’d be able to see the mess you’re making on him. It’s a shame. Or maybe you’re glad he’s unaware. Unless—

“I can feel how wet you are,” he tells you, sounding like he’s out of breath from the sensation alone as his finger hooks the hem of your dress up just enough to eye the sight of where you’re sat on him, “if you’re gonna play hard to get, you’ve gotta learn to control your arousal a bit better than this.”

“Oh,” you squeak out, his words having the opposite effect, and you squirm when you say, “y–...you’re one to talk.”

“I’m not trying to hide how much I want you right now,” he says, and he proves it by holding your clothed arousal flush against his heavy erection to where you can feel it twitch with need underneath layers of impossibly taut fabric, and he caves into a harsh jut of his hips upwards, bumping against your clit and when you gasp then lean into his chest with your chin tipping up to the ceiling, he kisses your neck where your hair is stuck to the sweat at your nape.

It's true, if actions could speak, his say I wanna fuck you senseless right now. And the way you can practically feel his cock ache as he’s rolling his hips up into you tells you he's about two seconds of resolve away from fucking you senseless right now. But he also knows that it's a game, and for a moment you forgot how good he is at winning those things.

You halt movement for a second, and his fingers press into the plush of your ass to get you to keep going with it, but you don’t. “What are we doing. Dry humping on a couch like we're high schoolers.”

He makes a point to teasingly poke you under your ribcage, and you flinch then swat his hand away. "Just seeing how far you'll let me take you without letting me kiss you."

"What if all the way?"

"All the way without getting to kiss you? I couldn't even imagine that." He pauses in thought. "No, wait, yes I can." He pauses in thought again. "Holy fuck, can we?"

"Do yourself a favor and stop thinking."

He purses his lips in a pout, his leg that’s been bouncing up and down picking up in vigor, and you’re not sure if it’s because he’s genuinely starting to lose his sanity, or if it’s because he wants to see your tits jiggle with the motion, but maybe the latter since he dips his head down to kiss right above the neckline of your dress, where the softness of your breast starts. It’s a light kiss, more of a brush of his lips, and he breathes in the scent of your skin like it’s a drug. “How do you always smell so nice?” he mumbles against you, “drives me insane.”

His palm smooths up the side of your waist before he tucks his thumb under your breast while his other fingers wrap your ribcage, and his teeth catch the lace of your dress to tug down, revealing more of your soft sweat slicked skin and his gaze flicks up to meet yours in teasing eye contact.

God, just one touch between your thighs would reveal how flush your panties are stuck to your pussy by the embarrassing amount of arousal, entirely disproportionate to the minimal amount of obscenity it took from him to get you there. And the lewd sight of him tugging at the neckline of your dress with his canines makes you wonder if his teeth would be enough to peel the soaked and skin-flush cloth of your panties off of you, or if his hands would have to get involved.

Like he reads your mind, his other hand comes between your thighs and he brushes two of his fingers over your clothed clit, light pressure placed like he’s just playing with you, yet it’s somehow enough to where your hand shoots out to grab his forearm with nails digging into his skin.

His teeth release the lace of your neckline when you writhe in his hold and he moves his lips to your ear. “Too much?” he murmurs.

“Mm,” you hum, hard to think when he’s drawing circles over you now and you can feel the wetness dripping out of you. His middle finger slides to the place where it soaks your panties, prodding slightly, the only thing keeping him from fingering you right now being the flimsy cotton fabric.

There’s a brief silence around you as music abruptly stops, lasting for maybe three seconds before it resumes, like someone was fumbling to change the song out in the courtyard, and it’s barely sobering enough for you to remember that the two of you are still in potential eyesights of other people and your cheeks flush as you pull his hand out from between your thighs.

"Are—” you gasp a little, “are you excited for tomorrow?" you ask in an aim to distract as you guide his hand back to your waist.

"Huh?" he huffs, tearing his eyes away from your cleavage to look at your face, his features twisting into confusion and some sort of frustration too. Sexual, most likely. His leg is bouncing again.

You blink at him, alcohol from earlier starting to get to your head. "The big game tomorrow?"

"Oh, yeah, very," he mindlessly kisses your cheek, "excited."

"You know," you start, arms sliding past his shoulders and loosely locking behind his neck so you can lean off to the side in a dizziness that he keeps you from falling from by both hands holding onto your waist, “I used to–" you can't even finish your sentence without preemptively giggling because you can already imagine how he'll react, "I used to play soccer when I was younger. When I was a young one. In my youth.”

He scoffs in disbelief, and he’s poking his tongue to the inside of his cheek with some boyish interest in his eyes and you can tell he thinks you’re just fucking with him. “Yeaahhh right.”

You, and the alcohol, tell him, “No really, I did!!”

You think you’ve lost balance when you fall more to the side than you intended, but then you realize he’s just shifting you to lay on your back and now he’s hovering over you on the couch. His toned arms frame the sight you’re looking up at as you blink slowly to admire his face, and then your wrists that are still crossed behind his neck are tugging down because you need him a little closer.

He comes down onto one elbow, sunk into the cushion for leverage, and his other forearm slides under your waist. The fabric of your dress has fallen to your hips to expose the skin of your thigh as you press it against the side of his hip.

“Alright. What position did you play then?”

Fuck. In fairness, you would’ve remembered all things better if the ethanol wasn’t metabolizing in your veins.

“I was,” you look past him to the ceiling briefly, “the…fielder.”

“The fielder?”

“Something like that.”

“Uh, like a midfielder?”

“No, no, not mid,” you pout with a shake of your head, “above average.”

He snorts. “I don’t think you’ve played a single day in your life.”

“I did,” it comes off as a bit of a whine, because you’re frustrated he doesn’t believe you, “I remember once in a middle school match I was playing defense and this girl elbowed me in the boob and I called her a bitch and the referee told me I couldn’t play for the rest of the game. So I called him a bitch too.”

His grin is wide like he’s proud of you for it. “Atta girllll,” he drawls, a curl to his tongue to fight the slur of his own words, and he lifts your butt up with one cupped hand underneath it until your hips are pressed against his again, and you loosely wrap your legs around him, too enveloped with delirium to care about anything else anymore. He resists the urge of rutting his hips into yours for the better part of half a second. You stifle your moan with a purse of your lips.

“I’m. A little bit.” You say between a hiccup.

“A little bit what?”

“Little bit tipsy.”

“From what? The beer?”

Another hic. “I think so.”

“You’re so cute it’s honestly killing me.”

You bring your hands up to hold his face, one thumb caressing his cheek, and he lowers his head down to rest his forehead against yours, then you’re both looking into each other's eyes for what feels like forever. Your pinky can feel his pulse thrumming fast under his jaw, his eyes so soft and sweet and serene you didn’t even know it was possible for anyone to look at you with that much adoration. Like you’re the only thing that matters.

Your head tilts up, a few flutters of your lashes as you lick your lips and succeed in drawing his gaze to them when he realizes you’re finally giving him the permission. You tuck your bottom lip under your front teeth, suddenly shy in anticipation, and his thumb pulls it out from under and presses into the softness of it, and both of your chests are rising in slow rhythm with one another when he finally dips his head down to–

“Yo! Satoru,” a loud voice calls out in interruption from the glass sliding doors of the pool house. You turn your head towards the source and feel Gojo’s hand possessively pull the fabric of your dress up your thigh to preserve your modesty. You see one of his frat brothers standing in the frame holding up a pair of metal tongs, clacking them in the air to get his attention. “It’s your turn to grill, man.”

You turn your head from his frat brother back to Gojo and watch as he blinks blankly off into the distance, the two of you clearly pulled out of the feverish trance you were just relishing in, and then you see Gojo wave a dismissive hand in the air as if to say yeah, yeah, okay, gimme a sec which is somehow convincing enough to get his frat brother to head back to the barbecue stand.

Gojo snakes his arm around your waist and lifts you up with him, sitting and sinking back into the cushion of the couch and you wobble a little from the dizziness of suddenly being upright as he pulls you into his lap again. His eyes are darting across the features of your face while he has a small tug of a pout to his lips.

“Okay. Well. It seems I have to feed the masses, so.”

“So?” you prod him to finish.

“I’ve gotta go.”

“Then go.”

“I will,” he says.

You try your best to hide the sulk that weighs on your shoulders, because you don’t want him to go, and when you study his face, you notice his expression relaxes a little and the corner of his mouth twitches upwards slightly into some sort of smirk. Like he’s caught on that you’re still on the edge of what could’ve been a kiss, and he’s satisfied that you’re the one craving it now.

You dislike the loss of power over him, and you roll your hips once over his crotch to find that he’s still hard underneath you and he sucks a harsh breath through his teeth before a low growl leaves his lips, and then he’s softly glaring at you.

“Maybe meditate,” you say to him, “for the boner to go away.”

He snorts, and you blush when you realize it’s because you made it sound more like an infomercial rather than something sexy and minxy and alluring like you were going for, but he still kisses your cheek regardless before he slides you off of him. And you realize you almost like these chaste kisses more than anything else. “It’s fine,” he says, “like I said, I’ve gotten used to it with you.”

His words make you briefly wonder how many boners you’ve given him, and then you realize you’d really rather not know. Although it would probably be strangely endearing to know. But still. For some reason. You’d really rather not know. Or maybe you would?…Now you feel like you’re the one that needs to meditate.

He gets up off the couch with an exhale of a grunt leaving him, the couch adjusting so harshly to his lack of body weight that the springs bounce you up and down once or twice from the motion, and you’re sitting on your heels from where you look up at him, seemingly still as a statue like you’re not going anywhere.

He raises an eyebrow at you. “Come get some food, yeah?”

“Mhm. In a sec.”

He hesitates for a second like he wants to ask a question, or maybe multiple, but he just lightly shrugs, gaze lingering on you for a short second before he turns on his heel to head out of the pool house and out towards the barbecue station. The second he’s far away enough for you, you let out the almost crestfallen sigh you were holding in before plopping down onto your back onto the cushions.

And here you were, laying on a couch staring up at the pool house ceiling, occupying yourself with the study of a dusty cobweb across the wooden pillar high into the structure, so you don't have to think about the way you've been left high and dry. Why do people say high and dry? If anything, you’re high and soaked. Well, you suppose for men it’d be high and dry. But the phrase should be bisexual at the very least. Er– unisex? …gender inclusive?

You realize you’re still a little tipsy.

Gojo's words from earlier linger, "Weeeell sometimes you’ve gotta get a little wet to have a good time." Okay, well, you would’ve chosen pool wet instead of left-here-an-aroused-mess wet if you had any clue what your options were beforehand.

Your head lifts up off the cushions until you're seated straight, tilting your head side to side as you peer off into the courtyard, still a little dizzy from the buzz, and you grab Gojo's now flat abandoned beer to finish the rest of it off in one fell swoop before you stand up and head towards the courtyard.

You stop in the broad door frame of sliding glass doors of the pool house, arms crossing as you take in the sight of people all around you. Holding their breath underwater, sprawled on lawn chairs while eating hot dogs, oaky smoke slightly fogging and burning the clarity of your vision as your eyes settle over at the barbeque station. Plastic tablecloths cling to white fold-out tables with custom print for SAE and UTOKYO's D1 SOCCER publicity arranged in amateur graphic design fashion, and you see Gojo standing at the grill flipping the meat he was making work to cook. There's a line developing, and you realize it's lunch time. Hide's taking special orders at the line, chatting up some girls who you're pretty sure you've seen in sorority Instagram pages, and you watch as Hide throws a pointing thumb behind him towards Gojo, and then a trio of those girls split from the line to make their way over to him at the grill.

You squint your eyes to focus your vision, and you realize one of the girls is the one from earlier that was looking you up and down and sideways before batting her eyelashes at Gojo when you were standing right next to him.

The trio exchange a brief word to one another before that girl taps on Gojo's shoulder. Whatever conversation he was having with one of his frat brothers is interrupted when he turns to look at her. You see that signature clueless "huh?" look on his face, and she's pointing at the grill. Oh, special instructions, you can practically hear the thought that flashes through his head, but you feel uneasy. When there's music this loud, and you want a guy to lean in closer to you, then you talk real quiet, right? It’s a trick as old as time. And that's exactly what happens in front of you, when he leans down because he can't hear her purposefully hushed words, and then the girl wastes no time in wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him down towards her and—

Your heart drops to the ground at the same time your mouth falls open when you see her kiss him, glossy lips sickeningly sweetly pressed against his mouth, and the pure hurt that spreads through you is fully sobering to say the least.

Shock is the only expression you can see on his face from here, and he's quick to pull away, but god, it was still tough as hell to witness. His lips read "what the fuck?" as he confronts the action, before his gaze immediately darts towards the poolhouse and he makes eye contact with you, panicked worry written all over his face, and you roll your eyes before storming off across the courtyard towards the main house. There are eyes on you paired with hushed whispers of gossip but you just can’t bring yourself to care with the way your stomach feels like it’s been flipped upside down like you’re about to straight up puke right now, and you barely register bumping your shoulder into Geto and Nanami before they call out your name behind you with a few words of concern, and then you hear Gojo’s voice calling out to you too, but you continue to hurriedly push on until you disappear into the main house, around the corner, down a slim hallway, and barely make it into a tiny little walk-in coat closet when you feel a warm hand wrap around your wrist.

"Hey– y/n, wait—" you hear Gojo desperately stutter behind you, stopping you. You turn on your heel to face him, and you see he’s breathing heavy, brows tightly furrowed, mouth slightly open from the way he was raggedly exhaling in the clear sheer panic rushing through his veins only proven by the guilty look on his face, but there's only the image of another girl's lips on his still present in your memory. It's not the first time you've seen him kiss someone else, but after all this time and everything that’s happened since then, this felt so much worse. If there was one thing about jealousy, it's that it’s enough to make all feelings you have for someone surface in a way that's so overbearingly powerful, so insanely potent and borderline physically debilitating that it makes you feel sick to the stomach, and that's why there's a prick of tears in your eyes when you make eye contact with him. It's a primal, possessive thing ringing in your head when you look at him that just screams mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. You can be pissed off all you want later, but right now you need to get the sensation of another woman’s lips off of him.

Your fists ball the fabric of his shirt, and you pull him to you so hard the momentum has your back slamming into the surface behind you and you kiss him, hard, it's messy, honestly you could've chipped a tooth if he hadn’t braced his hands on the wall behind you before his lips crash onto yours, and his surprise only lasts a hesitant second before he's hungrily kissing you back.

There's just the sound of the two of you exhaling together in feverish unison with the kiss as his hands are quick to cup under your ass and he lifts you up, pressing your clothed heat flush to the front of his groin as his hips pin yours to the wall. Your arms wrap around his neck, skin tickled by the short hair at his undercut, and the moan that escapes you when you wrap your legs around him and feel his bulge pressed against the thin cotton of your panties is muffled by him in harmony with his groan, pure expressions of all the pent-up arousal felt in the way he kisses you like he’s worried it’s the last chance he’ll ever get.

His teeth nip at your bottom lip, and you gasp before he deepens the kiss, but the prickle of tears in the corners of your eyes when you shut them tight makes you pull away from the kiss completely.

You’re both panting heavily, looking at each other in close proximity under the dark lighting of the closet. You wrap your arms around his neck a little tighter, and you’re not sure if you want his lips on you again or if you don’t want to see him for an entire week. His eyes are dark, low, and set on your lips, which you’re sure are puffed and glossy and look like nothing but pure sex to him right now, and he leans in to kiss you again but you turn your face away from him at the last second and his lips make contact with your cheek instead. He’s confused for a moment, kiss limp as he looks at the side of your face in his periphery before pulling away slightly, and the second kiss he places on your cheek is softer, intentional, an apology, a sorry, a guilt-ridden affection like he knows you’re hurt and it’s killing him. You feel the plush of your cheek squish up to your cheekbone from the gesture, and the feeling has you blinking away tears for some reason.

“Let-...” you say, catching your breath and tucking your chin under when his lips graze your temple, then your hand pushes him away weakly by his shoulder. “Satoru, let me down.”

An expression of hurt flashes across his face before his palms hesitantly slide down the underside of your thighs until you’re gently eased back onto your feet and you tuck your disheveled hair behind your ears, to gain poise, before you blink a few times then look up at him with so much uncertainty.

“I don’t know–” he starts, already sounding flustered with panic, “what the fuck happened back there, I don’t even know who that was. I wasn’t trying to– I didn’t– it wasn’t— “

You could finish his sentences for him in your head, but you just watch him trip over his own words. You suppose the fact he was so desperate to vindicate himself to you right now was the only thing keeping you sane from the realization of a truth you’ve been evading this whole time, which was that if you were to date Gojo, you’d constantly be competing for the right to be by his side. Luckily enough, the two of you were graduating soon from all the fraternity & sorority space, but even then, you realize that no matter where he goes, he will always have pretty women that look at him, and want him, and want to be with him, without any regard for anything besides the pure desire to have him, whether he’s taken or not. He’s going to be a pro soccer player someday, with millions of fans, and although he’s never done anything to make you doubt he’d be loyal to you, there’s just no way you could escape the sinking feeling in your chest that tells you you’ll never be the best thing. There will always be a better best thing, and you’ll only have his attention for so long before he finds it.

“I’m,” you choke out, feeling rawness in your throat that makes it difficult to speak, “I’m not feeling well, I’m just gonna go—”

He wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you to him, harsh, your head thwacking against his chest as he wraps his arms around you and you can physically feel your heart ache at the familiarity of his scent surrounding you.

“I’m sorry. I…I won’t let that happen again. I’ll never talk to another girl ever again. I won’t look at another girl again. Hell, I won’t even exist around other girls ever again, uh, I’ll wear an invisible cloak, a hazmat suit, change my identity, move to a different country, in fact, I don’t even know what other girls are, no clue, seriously. I just—fuck, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say right now, I’m just— I’m just so sorry.”

You purse your lips together, unsure of how you went from being on the verge of tears two seconds ago to trying to stifle laughter from how stupid he sounds, but you wrap your arms around his waist as he continues to spew utter nonsense as he commits to an almost maniacal and impossible level of fidelity to you. Here he was, manwhore of the school, tripping over his words to confess undying loyalty to you like you’re domesticating some wild beast no one’s ever dreamed of conquering from natural habitat.

“I just want—” you hear him rambling, the rumbling of his words felt on your cheek as you press it against his chest. He wraps his arms around you tighter, and you feel him press a kiss to the top of your head. “I just want you.”

Your heart skips a beat in your chest, and you feel a single tear drip from your eyelashes and soak through the cotton of his shirt, tiny enough to where he doesn’t notice, and you shove your face further into his chest so it stays that way. You wonder if one day you’ll be able to truly believe his words. And you curse yourself for not being brave enough to.

You two stand in an embrace for a solid ten seconds before the knot in your throat is loose enough to speak.

“It’s not your fault,” you muffle into his chest, “she kissed you out of nowhere. The bitch.”

You feel him stiffen a little in surprise over your profanity. “Damn. Didn’t believe you when you said you called that girl who elbowed you in the boob at a soccer game a bitch when you were younger, but I kinda believe you now.”

“It’s my favorite cuss word.”

“I can see that. You’re free to call me a bitch any time, by the way.”

You roll your eyes. “You’re stupid.”

He tucks your head under his chin in a nuzzle, and you count every beat of his heart. “Are you mad at me?”

You give serious thought to his question. “Mm. No. I’m mad at the girl who kissed you.”

When he only hums above you, you pull your head away and look up at him.

“Seriously. It’s not right. And you’re allowed to be angry about it too,” you say.

He raises an eyebrow at you and tilts his head.

“She’s a random person who kissed you out of nowhere, like you’re just some piece of meat to toy with. It’s wrong. You’re a human being, not an object to lust over.”

His eyes widen slightly, and your heart sinks a little when you see he’s confused and trying to genuinely process your words, like it’s something no one’s ever told him before. Like it’s happened in the past too, and he was never taught to believe that it was wrong, just because he’s attractive and popular, like that somehow meant he’s just supposed to take all the glory with no complaint or preservation of his own person.

You shift on your feet a little, releasing your hold of him and he releases his embrace of you as well, and from the way he’s darting his eyes across your face and the wall behind you and occasionally towards the ceiling, like you’ve just put some epiphany in his head that’s being processed in the brain behind his rapid blinking, you realize he probably needs a second to process what you’ve just said. You move past him but not without a comforting squeeze of his bicep in the process. There's a sound that leaves his throat, something undecipherable, like he was just filling the air with some response that’s now lost, but for the most part he just watches you leave with those same wide eyes.

You get back out into the courtyard, a slow exhale leaving you as you brace yourself for the eyes of all the onlookers, and though most of them are just curious over the girl that Gojo Satoru just chased after in front of all his frat bros and harem of sorority girls, you can’t help but feel like some of them are judging and hateful and jealous too. But anger beats out all of your emotions of worry or embarrassment, and when you see the girl that kissed him still lingering over at the barbecue station, glaring daggers at you, you match it with a glare of your own.

You walk up to her, and you see she expects you to say something, like she’s prepared for a cat fight as if it’s all she’s ever known, but instead you just calmly look over her towards the barbecue station, push past her with a harsh bump of your shoulder against hers, knocking her off balance as she gasps offendedly at your choice to ignore her, but that’s exactly what burns people like her the most. The feeling of realizing their fuckassery is insignificant and boring and not even worth the energy of reprimanding.

One of the frat bros at the grill cautiously hands you a plate of ribs.

“Um. You didn’t use condoms to serve these, right?” you ask as you take it from him.

“N-No,” he stutters, “…why? I-Is that a request?”

“No, no, no. You’re good.”

[end of chapter 11]

a/n. hiiiii thank u sm for tuning into another chapter of Edging With Plot!! 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼😍😍😍 (haha just kidding. sorta) hope you enjoyed readinggg n apologies for the wait for this chapter. honestly writing the little scene on the poolhouse couch was a lot of fun tbh i got such young puppy love vibes while writing their dialogue pls guys i think they’re fallng in loooovvee :(( sobs. lil kickoff couple sorry if the chapter ends kinda abruptly haha i am sooooo unbelievably jaded rn after four weeks of traveling i couldn’t think of any other way to end it since the last part was the only scene i had left to write lol. on that note, i will be a little mia next couple days as we’re doing the long haul stretch drive home and i’ll be driving for most of it so :’’) i won’t be able to respond to replies or asks for this chapter right away like i usually am able to but i can’t wait to interact w you all once i’m back home very soon <3 so much love from me as always!! hope you’re all taking care and having a nice summer. remember to stay hydrated :) - ellie 💕

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so-many-ocs · 2 months

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practical writing advice part 2

part 1

get used to carrying a notebook around with you. or get used to writing on your phone. you will not always have access to your computer, but it’s much easier to take something compact with you to quickly jot down ideas. also i have chronic illness and sometimes my bones feel like lead and going upstairs to get my laptop is a herculean task, BUT i can write on my phone lying down instead of just scrolling through my camera roll and being miserable. which brings me to my next point:

if you have to choose between writing unconventionally or even unproductively and not writing at all, choose the writing. i’ve said before not to create a habit of writing in bed, but if it comes down to writing in bed or not writing whatsoever, i’ll write in bed. i just try to stretch before and after (which you should also do!!!).

you’re not wasting time or being silly by making playlists or moodboards or memes of your characters and environments. having fun with your stories outside of writing them is a good way to stay motivated.

i like to stop my writing sessions in a place where i know exactly what i want to write next, so when i pick back up i won’t be left hemming and hawing over where to begin. HOWEVER, if you’re absolutely locked in, don’t interrupt that flow state. it’ll be harder to find it again later—instead, wait until you find a natural place to stop where you haven’t run out of ideas.

“why do i have a headache 3 hours into my writing session?” because the last time you had a sip of water was 4 hours ago, you dingus! keep your drinks near your workspace while you write. and i do mean, like, a full bottle of water at least. if you’re like me, things stop existing when they leave your line of sight, so keep these beverages where you can see them and refill during bathroom breaks.

uhhh try not to think negatively about your writing while you’re doing it because when i do that i just get bummed out. “this scene is terrible” -> “oh yeah fuck it up oh yeah fuck it up” (positive reframing)

ok thanks bye

#🌿 writing #writing tips #writing advice #writeblr #writerblr #writers on tumblr #you might be asking yourself: can so many ocs shut the fuck up #and the answer is no

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rafesslxt · 2 months

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𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐏 𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐇 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 | 𝐚.𝐬.

nsfw content | anakin x female bsf!reader | moodboard

aesthetic: 🎞️🍝🫂🫦❤️‍🔥 | words: 3,5k

「 ✦ after just another bad date you seek comfort from your best friend and roommate Anakin which turns into a steamy session ✦ 」

warnings: smut, modern!anakin, best friends to lovers, reader describing her worst date ever to Anakin, making out, hand job, blowjob, teasing, just the tip first, unprotected p in v, pxrn link inserted into the story so don't open in public, fucking the whole night, begging, breeding kink I think

note: the p!link is from twitter, you have to be logged in to twitter to watch it/ be able to see it. English is not my first language.

"Movie night?"

When Anakin read my message, he instantly knew my date didn't went well. It was something like a tradition between us whenever someone seeks comfort.

He replied with a "Of course, when will you be here? Have you already eaten?" He always asked me that. If I have eaten and drunken enough, every day.

"I'll be there in 30 and no not really." I replied before putting my phone away to drive back home.

After college Anakin and me moved in together after being roommates in school, that's how we met each other in first place. It was just always so easy between us. No drama, no arguing, no cleaning after each other. Most of the times.

When I pulled up at our apartment I kind of knew what awaited me already. With a sigh I entered the apartment, smelling food which put a smile on my face. I heard Anakin walking towards me.

"Woah." he says, eyeing me up and down in my new dress. "Thank's.. that's even more than he said." I chuckled and pulled off my heels. "That bad huh?" he asks me, crossing his arms in front of his broad chest.

"Yeah, that bad. I'll just change and come back down yeah?" I say, already up the stairs to change out of my tight dress. When I looked at myself in the mirror I just didn't get it. I looked bomb, why he hell were all these guys I date so.. trashy? It's not like my character didn‘t matched my looks.

With a groan I changed into grey loose sweatpants and a sports bra. Walking back down into the living room I just couldn't hide my smile when I saw the dimmed lights, Harry Potter on our TV and snacks on the little coffee table. The couch was covered with blankets and pillows. I walked further into the kitchen where Anakin stood, putting Pasta on two plates.

I walked up behind him and hugged him from behind so my cheek was pressed against his back. "Thank you Ani." I muttered. "No problem. Come on take your plate and lets watch Harry Potter so you can tell me what it was this time." he had to hide a chuckle, not wanting to make me mad.

I did like he told me and sat down on our couch with my plate in hand, starting to eat as he starts the movie. "Soo..?" he begins, digging into his food now too.

"Ugh it was.. hideous! It started really good you know. He was dressed well, we met in front of this really nice restaurant and talking to him was so easy. Until, we looked for what to order. I told him to just order the lasagna for me because I had to go to the bathroom."

"Oh I have a feeling where this is leading to.." Anakin joked with a smirk on his lips.

"So when I came back everything was fine, he tells me he ordered food so we continue talking until the food comes and that motherfucker just ordered a fucking salad for me. And you know what? That's not even the worst! Without fucking dressing because apparently 'that's what makes you gain weight'."

"What?" Now he was full on laughing and almost chocking on his food. "Oh that has to be the best story of 'em all by now."

"Oh no I'm not finished, the story goes further. So I'm sitting there, the waitress looking at me apologetic, I didn't even knew what to say so I just ate that excuse of a salad and when I asked him why he ordered it, he tells me 'I like em skinny' , like, what the fuck?"

Anakin puts his food away now because he had to laugh so hard he fell on his back. "Ani!" I whined but also laughing a litte. " I-I'm sorry that happened to you but- but It's so funny to me imagining you sitting there like 'What the fuck bro' "

"After that I thought it couldn't get more worse so why not go home with him and at least get a good fuck out of it, right? So we drive home to him, talking, blabla. Then it get's heated and shit and Ani, I swear to god I had to hold back on laughing when he pulled down his pants! I never felt so bad for someone in my life! "

At this point Anakin forgot how to breath properly. Laughing so loud the whole neighborhood had to hear.

"And when he wanted to go down on me and I let him, it was so bad I just had to stop him and tell him I have to go and oh boy he didn't took that well. He got so mad to a point where he told me girls would fight me to be at my place right now.When I opened the door to leave and he asked me what my problem was I just told him 'I like em big' like he told me he likes the skinny in the restaurant."

All you could hear through the apartment was Anakin's laugh. "Stooop it's so bad I'm just thinking about dating girls!" I joke and smile at him as he slowly calms down with tears in his eyes.

"You probably broke him at this point." he laughs, teasing me a litte. " Yeah I hope so to be honest. Maybe he will let women order what they like now."

He giggles and starts eating again.

"I just think I‘ll go for older guys at this point." I huff rolling my eyes and really considering it while digging into my food too.

"Older guys?" Anakin repeats with a full mouth and looks at me with knitted eyebrows. "Yeah, maybe it's the age. Like, all these so called men, just act like little boys."

"Hey! I'm not a boy!" Anakin looks at me with an opened mouth, acting as If he was shocked. I roll my eyes at him playfully before putting my empty plate away. "Oh yeah? What makes you different from all these boys I go out with huh?" I ask him with a teasing smirk on my face.

"Uh - did you ever see one running out that door before ?" He was right, they never run away from him. It's the opposite to be exact. They always try to stay, most of the times giving me dirty looks which I find funny every time.

"No, but thanks for reminding me how I always have to wear headphones." "Not my fault I'm that good." he says with an arrogant smile. I only scoff to this and turn back to the Tv. If I'm being honest, I would give a lot to be with someone like Anakin. They always sound like they are having the time of their lives. Lord help me.

After a while of watching the movie in front of us together I got kind of.. impatient? No that's the wrong word. I just couldn't stay still, always shifting somehow every few minutes.

"Whats wrong?" he whispers with a soft voice, my head on his shoulder. "Uhm, I don't know I feel uneasy." "Uneasy?" "Yeah." I simply reply. I shift again, pressing my thighs together this time.

"You sure you mean uneasy and not horny?" he grins now, licking his lips. "Fuck off." I answer him, rolling my eyes. " No, I'm serious, maybe that's why you're so pent up. When was the last time you actually had an orgasm while having sex?" My eyes go wide and I turn my head back to him, shock on my face. " Anakin! I'm not telling you that!"

"Why not? We always tell each other everything. I'm sure this wouldn't hurt to answer right?" I sigh and look away again. "I don't know." I answer him quietly.

"Come on, tell me. I bet - " "Anakin that was my answer to your question. I don't know. I don't know when the last time was." I repeat.

"What? What do you mean you don't know? You were in a relationship half a year ago with -" I interrupted him again. "He never made me come." I sigh again as this just reminded me at how desperate I was at this point.

"Wow.. " he just breathed out with his eyebrows knitted and a little smug grin on his face.

An idea popped into my head, but I tried to shake it away as fast as I could. "What? What is it?" he asked, seeing my expression. "I - never mind, Anakin. Just – let's watch the movie again, okay?"

But he shook his head and turned my head towards his with his fingers on my chin. "No, tell me what you were thinking. I can see it in your face."

Suddenly my face got all red and I felt the heat rising up my neck. I never felt that way around Anakin, I was always comfortable and easy, calming down my nerves instead of getting them wrecked.

"I uh - I really can‘t tell you Ani." He tilted his head down a little and looked at me with piercing eyes. "Tell me." he commanded and repeated himself.

I swallowed down the clump that had formed in my throat. I knew that look, it was the same one he used on all these girls in clubs and bars before taking them home.

"Please don‘t look at me like that." "Why not?" yes that scene aaahh

"It‘s making me uncomfortable..“ i lied, looking away with my eyes even tho he still holds my chin. "Come on, tell me.."

Here goes nothing huh? "Would you.. I mean.. help me?" "Help you with what?" Oh now he was just teasing me. "Ani.. you know what.." I whined and glared at him, my eyes on his again. He just shook his head and and a deep chuckle rumbled through his throat.

"Maybe.. but I still want you to say it." "I want you to fuck me." I blurted out bluntly. There it is. No way back now.

"You sure you want me to do that? Because there‘s no backing down from it.“ I nod my head as a sign of 'yes' before he crashed his lips into mine.

Both his hands found the sides of my face and placed themselves there, stroking the skin with his thumbs almost in a loving kind of way. When I finally realized what was happening, I pushed him back onto his back and sat down on his lap.

One of his hands ghosted over my bare back since I only wore my sportsbra, down to my ass, grabbing it and pushing me more against his hips.

"Fuck you have no idea how long I‘ve wanted this y/n.." he groaned against my lips, kissing me with passion. "Really?"

He pulled away for a moment and stared at me as If I had three heads. "Are you kidding me? You know how many boners I‘ve had in my life when you walked around in the morning with nothing but my shirt on? Or when you came back from the gym all sweaty and panting in your little shorts?"

I had to chuckle lightly and shook my head. "Well sorry 'bout that then.." " Don‘t worry baby, now‘s your chance to make up for it." he smirked before he started kissing my neck and placing his hand on my thigh, squeezing it through my sweatpants. His soft lips left a wet trail down my skin, sending shivers down my spine. His scent filled my nose and made my head dizzy.

I started grinding against him, already feeling his boner through his pants. My fingers pulled his zipper down eagerly and pushed his pants down. "Shit.." i mumble to myself when I saw the big tent in his boxers. He glared up at me with a proud smirk on his lips. "What?Surprised?" he smirked and put his hands on my hip, grinding me against it again.

"You will be my last try with guys my age. If this ends just like all my other dates then I’m gonna go for older guys." I huff, supporting myself with my hands on his shoulders. I gazed down at him, taking in his angelic face. He always looked so beautiful to me, even more now when he bit his lip and his eyelids were heavy and hooded like he enjoyed this just as much as I did.

"You'll never think about someone else when I'm ready with you, promised." he groans, lifting his hips up against my core. Both his hands found my ass again before he suddenly got up from the couch, carrying me up the stairs. "I'm gonna fuck you into your mattress so every time you sleep in your bed, you smell us."

He kicked my door open and walked towards my bed where he let me down at the edge. My hands immediately found his boxers which I pulled down, met by his hard cock slapping against his stomach. I swallowed the clump in my throat down before looking back up at him. "What? Surprised?" he asked with an arrogant smirk.

I bit my lip and looked back down, slowly taking him into my hand. The tip was already leaking pre-cum over it's red skin. He was thick and a lot bigger than the guys I've had before him. I let a finger slide down a prominent vein that started at the base and ended right before the tip.

With my hand around him, I leaned forward and wrapped my lips around the tip, teasingly sucking on it while my hand slowly moved up and down his shaft.

"Mmhh fuck, I'm gonna go insane If this is just another dream." Dream? He was dreaming about me? Doing stuff like that with him? My ego boosted, so I sunk down a bit further with my mouth before I felt Anakin's hands in my hair, tugging at my scalp.

My second hand steadied against his thigh and pushing him back every time he wants to go deeper. I let go of him and started to just kiss the head, letting my tongue glide over it. "Stop teasing me.." I heard him mumble, his eyes closed and his lips parted slightly.

I let my tongue glide over his cock from the bottom to the top which seemed to be the final straw for his not existing patience. He pushed my back onto the bed so my head met one of my pillows. He tugged my pants and top of, leaving me in just my slip. His eyes slowly wandered over my body with a soft smile on his lips.

"You're beautiful y/n." I don't know what it was but something inside my stomach moved when he said my name like that. He leaned between my legs, one hand stroking the inside of my thigh. "Your skin is so soft.." he started kissing the same spots where his hand just rested a few seconds ago. ".. and you smell even better."

He pushed his thumb right against my clit through my soaked underwear. "Ani.." I moaned, pushing my head back into the pillow.

"What do you want, hm?" he tauntingly asked as If he didn't knew the answer. "Fuck me, please." I saw the surprise in his face when I answered him so bluntly without batting even one lash.

"Oh where's the fun in giving you what you want so soon, huh?" He pushed my underwear to the side, his grip hard around the cotton. "Shit.." he groaned when he saw me exposed, licking his lips hungrily. "I'm gonna wreck your world baby." he more laughed to himself than with me. He pushed his fat tip against my pussy, running it through my soaked folds, over my clit over and over again in a tormenting way.

"Ani.. please. I need you." I started begging at some point, not being able to take his teasing anymore. "Want me to push it in?" he smirked devilish before he only pushed the head inside, already making my eyes roll. God how am I supposed to take all of him? But as soon as he pushed in, he pulled back again. He did the same procedure again and again.

"I can't believe these idiots didn't treat or fuck you right with such a tight little cunt." he breathed out, his chest moving up and down, trying to control himself. "Need you.." I mumbled, my hips shaking slightly.

Then, without a single warning, he pushed in again but this time more than the tip, but all the way to the half of his cock. A loud gasp and moan left my lips, my jaw hanging loose and wide open. "Oh fuck–" "What was that huh? Still need someone older princess?"

His hips moved forward again until his whole length was inside my greedy cunt, my walls pulling him inside. "Fucking hell, you're so damn tight. Already squeezing me empty.." he groaned and started to move his hips back and forth against mine.

I grabbed his back, digging my nails into his skin. "Hold on tight baby." he chuckled before he started to fuck me into the mattress like there was no tomorrow. My eyes widened and my nails dug deeper into his skin, leaving marks all over it and my legs wrapping around his hips to feel him even deeper.

He leaned down and breathed against my lips and touching my forehead with his. "You feel so good.." a moan left his mouth. "Oh fuck Anakin, you're so – fuck yes." I arched my back and pulled on the hair of his neck with one of my hands.

"You keep your hands where they are or I'll tie you up." he taunts right into my ear, sending shivers down my spine.

The night was long, it felt like hours and I heard early birds chirping at some point. I laid on my stomach, pillow under my tummy and ass up in the air while he pounded me from behind. His hands were on my throat and on my nipples, playing with them, making me even wetter than before.

"God Ani.. need to cum.." I mumbled tired into the pillow under my face, a whiney tone to it. my eyes rolling back and my bottom lip tugged between my teeth, probably looking like straight from porn. "Aw what, did I fuck you stupid?" he mocked me with a following grunt, the sound of skin slapping filling the air around us.

A whimper left my mouth as an answer and I moved one of my hands down to my clit, rubbing it in circles, desperate to cum. "Want help with that?" he murmured into my ear from behind, his sweaty chest against my sore back. I nodded helpless and let him push my hand away to replace it with his own.

"Please let me come, please." I cried, pushing my ass with the same rhythm against his hips. he squeezed my throat tighter, letting my mind go fuzzy. "Nhhg fuck yes - come around my cock baby, fucking drip down on me like the little slut you are." he groaned into my ear.

I squeezed my eyes shut when the heat inside my tummy became too much and finally exploded. My mouth hung open and a broken cry erupted from my throat. My legs were shaking like crazy, my walls clenching around his throbbing cock.

"Hm fuck yeah, milk me baby.. want me to come inside that pretty pussy? Wanna feel my cum?" I heard it in his voice how close he was and that he was probably holding back right now. "Yes.." I sighed tired but happy which was enough for him to slap my ass hard and let out a quiet whimper, creating goosebumps on my skin from that needy sound.

"God I'm gonna come, I'm - ohh.." he gasped in a deep breath and held still, shooting his load right inside of me, painting my pulsing walls. A sensitive whimper came out of me and I looked back behind me. Anakin's head hung low and his upper body was shaking slightly from his orgasm.

He slowly and carefully pulled out of me, collapsing next to me. His arms wrapped themselves around me and pulled me closer against his chest. "That was wonderful.. such a high." he sighed against my hair. I nuzzled my head against his chest and took a deep breath, smelling his scent. "I should have asked you way sooner.." I giggled quietly, my eyes still closed since they were heavy and burning, seeking for some sleep.

"Hmm.. don't worry. You'll never have to worry about that ever again." he whispered back, pulling my even closer than before.

thank u for reading, it‘s the first time i wrote something for anakin 💓

taglist: @imabee-oralizard @supernaturaldawning @beautywine @whyamireadingthis @cardi-bre91 @jordynhartley2001 @meneatervv

masterlist

xoxo sarah <3

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yoonia · 8 months

Text

A Christmas Fix — 01 (m) | kth

⟶ Summary | One-night stands are supposed to be nothing more than just. It shouldn’t have involved seeing those two red lines looking back at you weeks later without a name or a contact number linking you back to your mystery man. Nothing more but his face. The unforgettable face that would sometimes appear in your dreams at night. So unforgettable that you immediately recognise him the moment he walks into your family home at Christmas, hand-in-hand with your older stepsister.

With special collab prompt: "the holidays aren't so bad with you around."

⟶ Title | A Christmas Fix

⟶ Pairings | Taehyung x female reader

⟶ Genre | Secret Baby!au, Second Chance!au, Strangers to Lovers!au

⟶ Ratings & Warnings | +18 / M for Mature; including: alcohol consumption, mentions of pregnancy, vomiting/morning sickness, surprise babies, miscommunication, profanities/swearing, minor body insecurities (implied), some family drama; involves multiple explicit sex scenes, including: sexual tension, one night stand, drunk sex (with clear consent), minor dom/sub dynamic, brat!reader, size kink, rough sex, light choking, restraint, hair pulling (M, F), protected & unprotected sex, fingering (F), oral sex (F), clit play, breast play, stripping, biting, minor hand job/groping, grinding, masturbation (M, F), dirty talk, implied pain kink, praise kink, body worship, marking, multiple orgasms (M, F), overstimulation.

⟶ Word count | 25,363 words (of 54,773 words)

⟶ Story Notes | Part of the Jingle All the Way collaboration with @leahsfavefics, @kithtaehyung, @kpopfanfictrash, @cybrsan, and @sugaurora | Written in 2nd person POV (in case you’re new to my writing, I don’t use ‘y/n’ coding as all of my lead characters are considered as OCs) | Moodboard was done by me | Posted in: January 31st, 2024 by @yoonia

⟶ Author Notes | I know that this is so late, but December has always been a rough month for me and this time it continued until January. I hope you can still enjoy this story regardless. Happy belated holidays and happy new year, my loves!

⟶ Jingle All the Way collab masterlist | A Christmas Fix: next chapter ⇢

⟶ Main Masterlist | Taglist | Feedback | Mailbox | Ko-fi

⟶ Read on AO3

One month ago…

You already had everything perfectly planned out when you first thought of this trip some long months ago.

Everything.

From your personal bucket list full of wonderful things that you wanted to experience during your time away and the places that you wanted to see, down to the smallest details that you could possibly think of to be able to enjoy every single moment of your secret getaway.

Just like the red dress that you had chosen to wear tonight. The dress you had meticulously picked and bought to wear on the trip as you went to celebrate your newfound freedom.

In your well-thought-out plan, you were supposed to have landed on the tropical island you were headed to by sundown. The warm tropical breeze should have been embracing you at the start of your trip instead of the cold, chilly wind flowing right outside these walls.

By this evening, you should have already settled in nicely in the comfort of your hotel room right by the beachside. The calming sound of the rushing waves outside your window was the sound that you should have been listening to while resting from your long flight.

You had pictured yourself embracing your freedom in a foreign land. To feel the soft sand slipping between your toes as you were playing chase with the rushing waves, and to find calmness that you could only get far away from the treacherous city where you came from.

The trip was meant to help you mend your soul. Perfectly planned out as an escape from reality and leave all of your past hurt behind before starting a new chapter of your life.

And yet, no matter how thoroughly you had it all planned out, somehow life simply found a way to mess it all up. Just like how it had always been. So perhaps you shouldn’t have been so surprised when it happened to you again, just when you thought that you had everything under control.

You should have seen the signs long before everything started crumbling down.

The sky that kept growing darker ever since you left the city. The constant turbulences happening during your first flight that made the trip feel intense. The unsettling feeling you met the moment you landed in this place for your transit. The constant announcements echoing through the airport about flights that were getting delayed and cancelled while you were getting no news about your transit flight’s departure.

You should have been prepared to face reality, keeping in mind that life hadn’t been so nice to you lately to let you slip away that easily. Yet your stubbornness prevailed. And after your most recent predicament, you needed this trip to happen. You needed to be right.

After all, you have made it all the way here. It would have been impossible for you to return home, wouldn’t it?

So you remained in denial and were so stubbornly holding onto hope that you would soon be taken away from this place towards your dream destination. Even when the world around you seemed to be falling apart.

But after long hours of waiting, you were finally forced to accept your fate, letting go of any hope you had left to escape this place when they officially cancelled the rest of today’s flights due to unresolved weather issues. Including yours.

“I’m sorry, but we really can’t promise you anything at this moment. There will be no flights until the storm passes and our pilots are cleared to fly again. Until then, we have nothing to tell you.”

The staff’s swift response to your inquiries about getting on the first flight available to take you to your destination only left you with a dead end. Even flying back home was no longer an option, only because that would only mean that you were admitting defeat.

And that was how you ended up here tonight, stranded right between the daunting city that you called home and the paradise that you wished to be in until an unforeseeable future. Your dream of enjoying the night in the comfort of the beachside hotel room overlooking the wide, clear ocean, had been replaced with the reality where you had to spend overnight at the airport’s transit hotel that the airline staff helped book for you.

You released a sigh as you leaned back against the elevator wall. Recounting the events again only brought back all the terrible mood you were having. And it didn’t help that the last message that your roommate sent you only reminded you of your setback.

From Skye: Just checking on you on your secret getaway. I hope you’re having a blast right now. I wish you’d tell me where you’re heading so I can have a good reason to be jealous. Be safe!

Another sigh came from your lips as you wondered—

Now how am I supposed to answer her text?

Before you could find an answer, the elevator doors opened as it reached the lobby downstairs. You put away your phone as you stepped out, and immediately got lost in your thoughts. Your mind once again getting too loud as it keeps you company.

At first, you had no intention of hiding this trip from her. Yet all the circumstances leading to this weekend had made it hard for you to share anything to anyone.

You were planning to wait until you were finally there so you could surprise her with pictures from the beautiful beach or your comfortable hotel room. Showing her the pretty nighttime scene from the tropical island would have been a nice way to flaunt your secret getaway rather than boasting it when your fate had been filled with uncertainty.

But instead of having an evening walk down the beach, you were trudging across the lobby inside an airport hotel, accompanied by the sound of your heels clicking on the marble floors instead of having sand soiling your feet.

And the view outside the window that you got to see earlier had been nowhere close to the pretty beach with its white sand and rolling waves. Instead, you had a clear view of the dark night sky, painted with the raging storm and its blaring thunders so strong they almost caused the entire bedroom to shake. Neither showed any sign of calming down any time soon, leaving you with no other choice but to do what you could to enjoy your temporary stay.

And you were going to start doing so by having a quick drink to help you unwind for the night.

The red dress that you were wearing might seem a bit excessive for a nightcap, but for a short while, it helped you forget where you were. It felt almost as if you were walking in a dream as you strolled down the lower lobby in search of the hotel bar.

Entering the hotel bar, however, became another wake-up call.

The bar was quite large for a transit hotel, accommodating the patrons filling the place tonight. You had hoped that you could have a dance or two with a friendly stranger before retreating to your hotel room to rest, yet the closed-off lounge area had more space filled with box seats than the open dance floor. The seating area was the only place in the bar which was dimly lit, allowing the guests some privacy while they settled in with their drinks.

The small chandeliers glittering from the ceiling were far from the hanging lights that you pictured hanging in a beachside bar. Just like the one place you had seen pictures of while planning for your trip. The lights you were seeing here made the entire space beneath seem luxurious, spreading a soft golden glow over the wary faces trying to enjoy the night.

The pulsing bass that came out of the speakers was enough to drown the sound of the violent storm happening on the other side of these walls, further helping to create an illusion that you were in another place. That you were somewhere else instead of being stranded inside an airport hotel, together with all the strangers who seemed to be facing the same fate as you did.

You made your way towards the main bar, suddenly feeling hyperaware of your surroundings. Even without looking, you could feel people’s eyes following your movements. Yet you paid no heed to them. You were only here to quiet down the raging storm happening inside your head, after all.

A strong scent of old wood took over the bar area. Mixed in with the excessive scent of air fresheners and cleaners, it was enough to remind you that you were miles and miles away from the beautiful island where you had been so desperate to be.

Smoothing your palms down your red dress, you took one empty seat at the bar. You caught the bartender’s eyes as he walked past, and within moments, a glass of strawberry daiquiri ended up in your hand.

This feels nice, you wondered to yourself as you sat back and tried to relax.

One sip of the sweet alcoholic drink was all that it took to refresh your mind. As the warmth from your drink ran smoothly through your body, any doubt and wariness you felt began to fade.

The next sip of the drink managed to ease your thoughts down a bit more. It helped push away the reminders of your troubles to the back of your mind. Finding calmness, you took another quick look at your surroundings.

The seating lounge seemed to be filled with guests more than the main bar was. Stranded travellers like yourself. At first glance, the nicely dressed men in suits made it seem like you were in a bar downtown. As if they were nothing more than a group of businessmen seeking leisure on a Friday night with drinks.

It only took you looking a few seats away from them for the illusion to shatter. Your eyes fell on a group of men and women wearing their summer clothing who were making a toast, acting as if they were at the peak of their vacation.

Looking at the scene made you realise that you weren’t the only one feeling miserable tonight. You wondered just how badly these people here needed to forget. How many of them here might be similar to you, stranded in an unexpected situation while trying to escape reality?

You raised your glass to hide your bitter smile. The smooth liquid continued to flow through your body and you slowly began to find some peace of mind. Before you knew it, you had finished your drink, though you weren’t exactly ready to return to your cold bedroom.

“Can I order you another glass of drink?”

A deep voice invaded your senses after a long period of silence, and it was coming from your side. You had been far too deep in your reverie that you didn’t even realise that someone had taken the empty seat right beside you at the bar.

Curious to see this friendly stranger, you slowly turned around to look at him. And what you saw in him nearly took your breath away.

A tall, lean man was sitting there. His slick hair had a few curls at the end of each strands, and he had combed them back, leaving nothing more than a few stands framing his handsome face that looked almost as if it had been sculpted by the fine hands of masters in art. His sharp nose and jawline drew your attention, while his deep and soulful eyes that appeared like pools of rich mahogany drew you in, as if he was hiding a story behind his intense gaze. But it was his plump lips that formed into a smile which caught your eyes the most.

At your silence that stretched out while you were busy being captivated by him, he raised his eyebrows. It made you realise that he was waiting for your answer. An answer to a question that you had so obviously missed.

“I’m sorry?”

He tilted his chin to point at your now empty glass. “You look like you could use another glass, and I’d love to get one for you,” he said with an amused tone of voice.

Once again, his deep, velvety voice hit you deeply. It resonated through your body, and a shudder ran down your spine. You refused to believe that he was able to cause this effect on you solely through his voice or his pretty smile.

But how else would you explain the reaction that was drawn from your body?

I don’t think I’m that drunk already, you wondered.

It was probably the way he spoke to you which affected you so much. The way he was asking a question with pure confidence. As if he already knew your answer, and that it would be impossible for you to refuse his offer.

And he wasn’t completely wrong about it.

What remained from your sullen mood immediately shifted in his presence. And while you have no intention of turning him down, you decided that you were not going to make things easy for him.

“An interesting offer that seems like such a waste for me to refuse,” you sweetly said to him, smiling as your eyes fell on his empty hands. “But how would a woman feel at ease to accept such an offer from a man who isn’t even holding a glass in his hand?”

He squinted his eyes at you, which only made his gaze feel more intense. “Are you afraid that I might be planning to get you drunk?”

You softly laughed. “Not sure if I should be so worried about that. Getting drunk tonight has always been my initial plan all along,” you coyly said, hiding the fact that it was never your intention to get wild tonight. But his appearance intrigued you enough to change your mind about ending the night so soon.

The mysterious man remained oblivious to this as he laughed with you. His wide, almost boxy grin mesmerised you in an instant and you were once again left speechless.

He waved his hand to grab the bartender’s attention. It was nothing more but a simple gesture, yet you were somewhat drawn to it. To him.

While he greeted the bartender, you took the chance to have a better look at this man. You noticed that he was a bit different compared to the other men that you saw around you earlier.

Dressed in a black jacket over his plain white shirt, he didn’t seem as sophisticated as the stranded businessmen in their flashy suits sitting together at the bar’s lounge. Yet he had a different level of confidence which was enough to make your cheeks feel warm.

In your eyes, he was alluring, almost as intensely as the dark storm happening outside. And you couldn’t resist being pulled towards him.

“Another glass of the same drink for the lady and a glass of grasshopper for me,” he smoothly spoke as he ordered the drinks for you.

The bartender nodded and went to work, while you slid closer to him. His fresh-scented cologne immediately hit you, and your confidence nearly wavered that you almost slid back. But then he caught you with his gaze as he turned back to you, giving you the kind of attention which boosted every bit of ego you had.

“So you also prefer something light and sweet. How intriguing,” you teased him, bringing back his alluring grin.

“Why do you think I came here to join you? It was obviously for the fruity drinks and to have someone to drink it together with,” he joked.

You rolled your eyes at him and smiled. Before you got to say something in return, the bartender came back with his order. The man took a sip of his drink first before you took yours. Once again, the sweetness from your drink swirled through your body, chipping away at the tension that had been weighing you down ever since the day’s saga began.

“To be honest, I also thought that you were looking a bit rough.” His remark brought your attention back to him. The tease was gone from his voice. All that was left was a gentle concern that seemed genuine. “And you looked like you needed a friend. That’s why I invited myself to join you.”

It makes you feel uneasy to think that you were being so transparent. So much so that a complete stranger like himself was able to see right through you.

“You think so? Wait until you hear how rough I’m feeling inside as well,” you bitterly said to him, drawing a soft smile to his face.

“That makes the two of us then,” he said to you gently with his eyes on his glass of drink. There was a forlorn look in his eyes as he slowly twirled the glass, causing the liquid to swish around before he took another sip from it.

“Care to share?” you questioned him before you could stop yourself, only to pull yourself back. “Sorry, that sounds creepy. We just met and here I am, prying into someone else’s business,” you nervously laughed.

His gaze softened when he looked at you. Furthermore, he also seemed intrigued.

“No, not at all.” His voice was calm, and it somehow helped to calm your nerves. “I was just about to lend an ear in case you needed someone to vent to. I never expected that you would be a step ahead of me before I could make the offer.”

The comment he gave you made you feel warm inside.

“Mine’s a long story,” you bitterly said to him as you raised your glass, almost giving in to the urge to take a hefty drink and finish it off when everything started coming back to you again.

The reason behind this trip, why you were stranded here on your own, while being far, far away from home, and all the drama that had gotten in the way when you had been so desperate to get away from everything.

Unsurprisingly, the man merely shrugged. “I’ve got time to spare. My flight won’t leave until tomorrow. And that is if they’re allowed to fly out of here at all.”

You smiled at him. “Same here. I guess we’re both stranded here all night, huh?”

He leaned in just then, invading your personal space and filling it with his presence. And you didn’t even mind it as you leaned into him, meeting him halfway to welcome him into your little safety bubble.

“And I was worried that I might get stuck feeling lonely while being stranded in this place,” he gently murmured, drawing a smile to your face.

“I doubt that you would end up alone tonight,” you teased him, simply because there was no possible way that someone as attractive as he was would be returning to his hotel bedroom alone.

His smile grew, yet the deep, dark look in his eyes shifted into something else. Something naughty and sinful. It made you feel a new sensation brewing inside even without him ever having to touch you.

“Is that an invitation?” he asked with his deep voice that came grazing at your skin.

Normally, you wouldn’t know what to say in return. It had been so long since you played this kind of game with someone. With anyone. But his presence and his words were drawing something out of you. A part of you that you never thought existed. And you surprised yourself when you played along, taunting danger head-on as you challenged this handsome stranger before you—

“Would you like it to be?”

Something flashed in his eyes. It was dark and intense, and it was sucking you in. It brought a myriad of sensations that unexpectedly went straight down to your core.

In the deep silence that fell right after, the world around you faded. Even before you got to know his name, before you had the chance to share your story, you already knew the answer that he was about to give you as a response to your question.

And you also knew right then, that the sparks that came rising around you were something that you would never be able to easily forget, even if every bit of memory you had about him would fade over time.

Present…

Why do I keep thinking about that night all over again?

You can only wonder, as you keep being reminded of that eventful night.

Weeks, nearly a month have gone by ever since, yet the memories seem to have been engraved deeply in your thoughts. And today, even though you haven’t really been thinking about it since, you suddenly find yourself having no trouble recounting everything that happened then.

Well, almost everything.

Some parts may seem blurry now. All due to the passing of time and the fact that you were partly inebriated at the time. But you can still recall some parts of the night that had clearly left a strong impression on you—the first encounter and the conversation you shared before alcohol took over, the instant attraction that you felt, but most of all, his entire presence.

And they all have been coming into your thoughts while you are sitting here in the corner of your bathroom. Alone. With your arms wrapped around your folded knees and your eyes closed. As if you are waiting for a miracle to happen.

You scoff at the thought.

Right. Miracles.

Years have long passed since you stopped believing that miracles do exist. Life always has its way of blindsiding you with its twists and turns that miracles no longer seem to matter anymore.

Not for you, at least.

Your past experiences have only caused you to look at it with sceptical eyes, sometimes even with bitterness, knowing that life has never been on your side.

But here you are now, wishing, praying, holding onto hope that there would be a miracle to stop you from getting into a messy situation. One that you know you wouldn’t be able to handle on your own.

After all, the perfect season of miracles is right around the corner. So it wouldn’t be so wrong for you to have some faith in them again now, would it?

Your phone starts blaring with the sound of the alarm, snapping you out of it. Slowly, you rise on your wobbly feet. It feels as if your entire body has grown numb even before you get to face reality as it comes glaring back at you.

Clutching onto the edges of your bathroom counter, you try to hold yourself together, and immediately failing, as you look at the two thin white strips lying on the cold counter and feel your entire world tilting off of its axis.

All because of the two red lines that are clearly visible on each strip.

“Oh, fuck,” you softly groan. Deep down, you had already predicted this. Yet you kept denying it, hoping that you would be wrong.

“No, no, no—” you continue murmuring to yourself while wishing that you could somehow turn back time and change everything before things started going the wrong way.

Back to this morning, when your roommate caught you—once again—throwing up last night’s dinner before handing you the unopened pregnancy test packs that she has been keeping safe in her room with the premise, “Just in case.”

Or maybe you could return to last night when she pointed out your odd cravings—like dipping apples into peanut butter and eating leftover mac and cheese straight from the fridge without warming it in the microwave first—and joked about how you have been acting like a pregnant woman with your mood swings.

Better yet, you wish you could go back to that night, back to that many weeks ago, when you allowed yourself to fall for a stranger’s charm which led you to spend the night with him.

You close your eyes, once again murmuring to yourself, “This has got to be a dream.”

But the moment you open your eyes again, nothing has changed. You are still standing there with your hands holding tightly onto the edges of the bathroom counter. And the two pregnancy test kits that you used are still lying on top of the counter for your eyes to see.

A rapid sound of knocking on the bathroom door sends you jumping back.

“Hey, ______? Is everything okay?” you hear your roommate, Skye, calling out for you. Her voice seems calm, yet when you recall hearing the sound of her footsteps moving back and forth outside of the door while you were taking the test, you know that she has been waiting just as anxiously as you were. “So—? What does it say?”

Still in shock, and quite stuck in denial, you open your mouth only to have no words coming out of you. Your brain feels a bit hazy as you walk up to the door and open it for her.

Skye takes one look at your face and her gaze softens. “What did it—” She shakes her head. “Oh, never mind, I’m dying to know. Let me see it,” she says as she brushes past you before you can say anything.

Hoping that there is a chance that reality can change within the next few seconds, you refuse to turn around and once again close your eyes while she suddenly grows quiet.

Maybe you were just imagining things. Maybe you weren’t even looking at the test properly. Maybe—

“So, uhm—” you can hear Skye’s voice trembling a little as she hesitantly asks you, “Two lines mean it’s positive, is that right?”

And just like that, every bit of hope you have in you flies out the window. “I wish I could say that it’s the other way around,” you softly murmur, feeling defeated.

And the feeling grows stronger when you hear her cursing under her breath,

“Well, fuck.”

“What are you doing?” you ask Skye as you gingerly take a seat on the sofa.

Once you both stepped away from the bathroom, she guided you to the living room while she sauntered away to the kitchen without a word. You can hear the noises she makes as she is busy rummaging through the counters. Yet you are too far away to see what she is up to.

“Hang on a minute. Stay there,” she calls out without even looking.

“Okay.”

It’s not like you have any energy to go anywhere, after all. Your head is still spinning and you can barely feel your legs. It feels as if you are stuck in a bad dream and you just can’t get out of it.

It doesn’t take long before Skye returns to your side, carrying with her two clean tall glasses in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. It was the same bottle that you opened when you celebrated your promotion a couple of weeks ago after coming back from the trip.

Holy shit, you inwardly cry out. Your heartbeat rises as your hands find their way to your stomach.

“Okay, let’s try to calm down,” Skye says to you as she places both glasses on the table before you, although it seems to you more as if she is talking to herself instead of reassuring you while you are panicking inside.

A couple of weeks ago? Wouldn’t I have been already pregnant then?

These thoughts keep running through your head as you watch your roommate pouring wine into both glasses, just like the night she did the same when you first opened that same bottle.

Dear God, how much did I drink that night? You ask yourself with a grimace as you try to remember.

Wait, no. I didn’t drink anything, you remind yourself. Relief washes over you look back at the celebration night where you barely took a sip before Skye took the glass away from your hands.

Because you were already feeling sick that day.

You had been feeling nauseous for days, throwing up once in a while and mostly on the days when you were lacking sleep because of the workload you had to handle for the upcoming promotion. All you ever did was wet your lips with the wine after the celebratory toast. That was the only contact you made with the drink before Skye replaced it with a tall glass of alcohol-free smoothie that she made especially for your ‘upset stomach’.

Of course, how did I not see the signs? You wonder again as you remember the sickly feeling you had after vomiting each morning and feeling powerless for the rest of the day. It even got so bad that you had to skip work for a couple of days at the beginning of your ‘sickness’.

If only you knew then.

Your eyes are still on the wine glasses as Skye places them side by side and puts away the bottle.

“Uh—I believe we both just saw the two lines appearing on the test packs.”

She lets out a light scoff and waves her hand at you. “They're both for me. I’m going to need them while I process this,” she says, shaking her head as she sits down to join you on the sofa. “You get to keep that smoothie.”

You follow her gaze and look down at the glass of smoothie that you left on the table during the whole fiasco with the pregnancy test. While you pick up your drink, Skye takes a hefty drink from one of the glasses of wine and sits back.

“So—you’re pregnant,” she murmurs to herself. Her gaze flickers to your face for a brief moment and nods to herself before taking another drink.

Why does it seem like she is the one panicking?

She releases a sigh. Neither of you says anything for a moment. But you can tell when she grows more anxious by the minute. You don’t understand why, until she carefully asks you, “Are you going to tell Han?”

Confused, you look at her with your brows furrowed and ask, “Why would I tell Han that I’m pregnant?”

Skye looks genuinely confused, almost as much as you are, and you only realise the reason why when she asks you, “Isn’t Hansol the father? You guys have been dating for a long time and I can’t remember ever seeing you with anyone else while you’re on a break.”

You wince, realising too late that you have yet to tell her the truth.

“Actually—we’re not on a break,” you slowly admit with a low voice. Months have gone by, and even though it no longer hurts whenever you start thinking about your failed relationship or to mention your ex’s name, you cannot help but still feel bitter about how it ended and you hate talking about it.

That is the reason why you haven’t said anything about it to anyone. Maybe you were just too embarrassed. After all, it isn’t so easy to admit that you may have been the reason why the four-year relationship fell into pieces.

“I lied,” you say with a burst of deep sigh, “It was over, done, finished—”

“So you already broke up?” she cuts you off with a calm voice.

You bite your bottom lip as you slowly nod your head. “Yeah,” you whisper, suddenly feeling like your throat is tightening up. Not because you feel the sudden urge to cry. But only because this is all becoming too much to take at once.

“And the baby?” she carefully asks you. “It wasn’t Han—”

“The baby isn’t his,” you quickly answer before she even gets to question about it.

It’s hard enough to hear his name being mentioned after a while. It feels harder to think that you might be carrying his baby.

But the moment those words come out of your lips, reality finally sinks in. Grabbing the glass of your drink, you take a hefty drink out of it. You wish there was some alcohol in this thing. Maybe it would have helped you think more clearly.

That’s right. It couldn’t have been his.

Sighing to yourself, you begin to do the math. “We’ve been broken up for months, so if the baby is his, I’m sure I would be showing already by this time around,” you say this while gently rubbing your palm over your stomach.

Now that your suspicions have been confirmed, the gesture feels almost natural to you that your hand simply moves before you realise it, though it helps confirm that nothing much has changed with your body.

It feels odd to think that there is a life existing inside you, yet you cannot really see it with just one look. This convinces you further that the baby couldn’t have been conceived while you were still dating your ex. Looking back to it now, once you remember when exactly the sickness and craving started, it would only make sense that the baby was conceived on that specific night.

“So—if Hansol isn’t the Dad, then who was it?”

Biting your lip, you turn to look at Skye. Of course, if there is anyone in this world that you can talk to about this, it would only be her. Just like how she would come to you first whenever she is in a bind, whether it’s about her relationships, about work, or even the smallest things like having a bad day where you end up sharing a tub of ice cream to feel better.

After all, she isn’t just a roommate, but also someone you have known the longest compared to the other friends you’ve made since moving into this city. You have known each other since college, since back in freshman year when both of you were nothing more but young kids from small towns being thrust into the big city.

Being put together in the same dorm room led you to become fast friends. After years of enduring the same hardship in college, the two of you remained so close that you even moved to this city together and continued to live in the same place to keep each other company.

You have gone through everything with her, and you have always been honest with each other. It should have been easy to tell her everything. If only you could find the right words to begin sharing your story.

“I have no idea where to start.”

“Well,” Skye patiently says while twirling the glass of wine she’s holding. You squint your eyes at her when you find it almost empty. So unfair. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Right. From the beginning,” you say this with a nod. “Do you remember when I went away last month?”

She nods. “Your secret getaway. Still jealous of that, by the way.”

You give her a small smile. “Yeah, well—there’s a reason why I insisted on going alone on that trip. I actually planned it as a surprise vacation for me and Hansol. The original idea was for us to have a romantic getaway for our fourth anniversary.”

Skye raises her eyebrows. “Well, damn,” she mutters. “Let me guess. You broke up before it happened?”

You grimace as you recall what happened. “Close enough,” you answer with a bitter smile. “It was because of the trip that we got a huge fight in the first place.”

Skye tilts her head. “I’m not following.”

Sighing, you drink your smoothie to cool down and swallow the bitter feeling you are suddenly getting. Recounting the break-up isn’t so much fun to do. Not even after this long.

“I planned the entire thing on my own. Booked the flight and the hotel, and rearranged our schedules to fit each other so we could go on that exact date. But I never shared anything with him, except to confirm that it was a place that he also dreamt of going so we could both enjoy it together.” You let out a defeated sigh. “I wanted it to be a surprise. He used to love those in the past, so I figured it could be fun to celebrate our anniversary this way and get away from all the stress both of us had been getting.”

You stop talking for a moment to remember those days. Both you and Hansol had been so busy back then that you could barely spend time with each other.

It was the exact routine every day. Having long hours in the office and since you weren’t living together, you could only keep in contact with each other through texts and calls. By the time the two of you were able to see each other, all the stress had been piling up that you were almost always arguing and fighting instead of making up for all the time you missed while being apart.

“We were talking about moving in together but all of a sudden, we stopped discussing it and I could feel us growing further apart. I thought going away from all the stress for a while would help us get along and make up for all the fighting. Maybe we could have had a chance to talk things out and figure out what to fix.”

You stop with a soft sigh. “We were getting bored. With work, with life, and maybe we did get bored with each other but neither of us could open up about it, much less admit it. Not even to ourselves.”

Skye lets out a groan. “This is why I don’t do relationships,” she mutters before finishing her drink. The first glass. With the second one waiting on the table.

You give her a scoff, but smile at her comment before continuing, “He found out about the trip by chance. I was still logged in on his laptop after I borrowed it to check on my work email while I was staying over on the weekend. He accidentally opened the booking details when he was checking his email, thinking it was his account. He suspected me of planning to go with someone else, but even after I told him that the trip was for both of us, he wasn’t having it.”

Skye leans forward when she hears this. “Wait, he’s pissed about a secret vacation?” she asks, looking unhappy and confused at the same time. You can’t really blame her. Because that is exactly how you feel about your ex’s reaction. “Why would he be? If it had been me, I would’ve been ecstatic about going.”

“I wish I knew,” you groan, feeling just as frustrated as you had been then. “But he wasn’t just refusing to go. He started blaming me. Saying something about me holding him back or something. He said he had no time for a trip when he needed to be there and work for his promotion.”

Thinking back to that day, remembering about the fight and the things you said to each other, you are reminded of the moment the fight left your body. Because you knew then that there was nothing left to fight over.

“He never even brought up the fact that it was the date of our anniversary. I don’t think he even knew or remembered it,” you say with a bitter chuckle. “He broke it off, saying that he wanted to focus on his career and I would be keeping him behind. And I agreed because I knew that we’d wound up hurting each other if we’d stayed.”

“I can understand that,” Skye gently says. The two of you share a sad smile when your eyes meet. “And you still went on that trip,” she guesses, sounding proud. She lifts her glass to you and says, “Good girl.”

You merely shrug. “When I went to cancel the tickets for the trip, I thought it would be such a waste to throw everything away. So I decided that going solo would be a good idea and kept mine. Besides, I needed a moment to heal myself and get away from the city for a short while.”

She laughs, agreeing with you. Then, just as she is about to say something, she suddenly stops. A knowing look comes across her gaze and she slowly gasps. “Don’t tell me—” she says, “You met someone while you were there.”

You nod your head slowly and press your lips together. “Once again, you’re close. But that’s not exactly what happened.” Blowing out a deep breath, you slowly ask her, “Remember when I told you that I got held up for a day in transit?”

“Yeah, I was so jealous of you that I still remember everything you told me about that trip,” she lets out a dreamy sigh, then her gaze snaps back at you. “But, it seems to me that you haven’t told me everything about the trip.”

“No, I didn’t.” You grimace. “Anyway, that’s when I met him—”

The memories return to you again as you share with your roommate about your encounter with the beautiful stranger. You remember vividly the way he spoke, the deep and gentle voice that he spoke to you with, and his captivating smile that made you swoon. Everything about him that made it hard for you to leave and say goodbye to him.

You recount the way you enjoyed each other’s company that even after your terrible mood gradually became much better, and after you finished yet another drink, you simply couldn’t walk away and end the night with him so soon. You stayed longer, losing count of the time you spent with him and the drinks you had.

“And then, one thing led to another, it just happened.”

Skye’s eyes have grown so wide at this point, and her jaw has dropped in her surprise that she looks almost comical. “You hooked up with a stranger during your transit?” she asks you. The moment you nod your head, she switches her empty glass with the other. “I would drink to that.”

You laugh just as she takes a hefty drink as if celebrating on your behalf. “Why do you sound so proud of me?”

“Well,” she slowly starts, “We’ve known each other for so long. You have always been so put together, always followed the rules, and you are always so good at what you do. From school, to work, even the little things you have been doing on the side. But not when it comes to your sex life.”

You know that she is right about everything. But it doesn’t stop you from picking up a cushion and hitting her with it.

“Hey, you know I’m right,” she says while laughing and protecting the precious glass of wine. “Come on, you’ve never had any casual relationships or random hookups, and every chance I could have gotten to hook you up with my guy friends was gone when Hansol came into the picture.”

Pouting, you pull the cushion back and hold it tightly in your arms. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” you admit with a sigh. “How do you get to know me so well?”

“That’s because I love you enough to pay attention,” she smugly says while waving her glass around, sloshing the wine everywhere. “Why do you think I’ve been so protective of you over the years?”

You roll your eyes and hit her with the cushion one last time, making her laugh, even though she is right. For as long as you have been friends with her, she has always been like an older sister to you. Not only for coming hard like a shield against the guys you ever introduced her to but also for the trivial things that not many people would pay much attention to.

Like reminding you to eat properly when you are stressed out or too busy with work and school.

You feel bad for relying on her so much over the years. But you also feel grateful about it. Just like how you’re feeling right now once you notice that you’re no longer feeling as stressed as you had earlier once you’re done dumping everything to her.

Skye’s eyes turn back to you, landing on your covered belly as she curiously asks, “Are you positively sure that Hansol wasn’t the father?”

You slowly nod your head. As much as you wish that you were wrong, you couldn’t have been mistaken about this.

“What are the odds that it was a false positive?” you suddenly question her, while she shrugs.

“It’s possible,” she says. “But we can get some more test kits and redo the test. Just in case. Or you could make an appointment with the doctor straight away to make sure.”

“Right, the doctor—” You let out a soft sigh and close your eyes briefly. It has been a while since you’ve seen your physician. The last time was before—

Oh, shit.

Your eyes snap open right then. How long ago has it been since you’ve gone to see your physician? The last time was when you went to your regular appointment for your birth control. But that felt so long ago.

Long before the trip.

After that appointment, and once the break-up happened, you simply threw yourself into work so much you completely forgot about everything else. And since you were newly single, getting your birth control was the last thing you had in mind at the time.

Fuck me, you inwardly groan without saying a thing to your roommate who is busy chattering about the doctor, making appointments, and offering to take you there herself. You know that she would lecture you about safe sex like a mother hen if you ever share this with her.

But wait…he wore a condom, right? Yes, you are quite sure he did. The details are blurry when you try to remember, but you do remember protection being involved.

Groaning to yourself, you fall back on the sofa. Your head starts spinning again when you start worrying about other things. Once you start thinking of a problem that you may have to face, another one comes to mind.

“What am I supposed to do with this baby?”

Skye once again raises her eyebrows at you. “I think the right question should be what do you want to do?” she asks, while you can only shake your head.

“I don’t know,” you answer with a small voice. The only thing you can think of right now is how you are going to get through this holiday while being pregnant. You are supposed to be home for Christmas in two weeks, and knowing just how crazy your family truly is, you cannot imagine how they would react if they found out you are with a child.

You close your eyes and let out a sigh. “And my family still have no idea that I broke up with Han.”

“For once, I’m not jealous of your life,” Skye says as she sips her wine. But she is ready for it when you fling the cushion back at her and avoid it without spilling her drink. “Don’t worry. I think they’ll catch on about your failed relationship as soon as you walk into your family home without that hunk by your side.”

Huffing, you hug the cushion in your arms and lean back. “I guess if they’re going to find out either way, I might as well just tell them the moment I got home.”

Besides, it might be even harder to hide the fact that you are pregnant. You might not be showing yet, but there is no possible way you could avoid the questions that may come if you are still feeling so sick right in front of your family, or if your cravings suddenly get out of hand.

Especially if Honey is there. Despite the early signs of dementia showing on her lately, your grandmother has always been so perceptive. And there is no telling what random things she may blurt out once she has some rum in her system.

With so many different things to think about, you almost forget one important matter that you should be thinking about when it comes to the baby. And just like always, Skye is there to remind you of it.

“Do you remember his name?”

You turn to Skye with wide eyes, suddenly panicking inside. You can tell that she can see it on your face and is now sharing the same feeling when she suddenly knocks back the rest of her wine and groans, “Fuck, I’m gonna need more.”

You watch her pour more wine into her glass, hastily drinking it right after, before turning to you again. “You didn’t get his name? At least tell me that you got his number before you went separate ways.”

You bite your lips. “It’s Tae.”

“Tae—what?”

You shake your head. “That’s it,” you let out a frustrated sigh. “That was the only name he ever gave me.”

“Seriously?”

Skye is freaking out, you can tell. But you close your eyes and rest your head back, shutting everything down as she starts ranting about how she was supposed to teach you better about hooking up with strangers and keeping yourself safe.

With her voice turning into white noise at the back of your mind, your memories return to you, taking you back to the eventful night.

You can almost feel yourself being back there again—back in the cold hotel bar with the scent of old wood and liquor lingering in the air; the murmuring sounds of people chatting and laughing, accompanied by the sound of glasses clinking together resonating through the space around you; back to his presence that felt so strong and intense you could barely feel anything else other than him as long as you had your attention fully on him.

“What’s your name?” You remember him asking you with his voice that grew more gentle and deeper the more he drank.

You leaned into him and giggled in response as if he just said something funny to you. “Does it really matter?”

His soft chuckle rumbled around you. The voice was so soft, yet you could hear it clearly because of how close you were leaning into him. “I’m sure I remember being taught not to talk to strangers.”

“Are you telling me that you’ve been a good boy for listening to what your Mom taught you?” you teased him. It was obvious how tipsy you were at this point, which may have been the reason why you were growing more confident.

“Oh, I’ve always been a good boy,” he answered you while looking amused. He went silent right after. His gaze seemed far away just for a fleeting moment before he finally said, “My name is Tae.”

“Tae? That’s it?” you asked, “Is that a codename or something?” You feigned a surprise gasp before you leaned into him further to whisper, “Are you secretly a spy?”

You felt his chest rumbling when he softly laughed. “Something like that, yeah,” he said, as he played along with your joke.

But the moment you leaned away from him, you were surprised when you got to see something in him that you couldn’t see before. His guard was down, allowing you to see the vulnerability that was buried deep under his suave and smooth talking.

For a brief moment, he looked broken. Just like you did.

And from the way he was hiding himself, not only under the short nickname but also from the way he was masking his emotions, you could tell that he was looking for an escape from reality. The same way you did that night.

So you simply smiled at him, choosing not to pry further to see beyond the mask and play along. Because at the same time, you wanted to hide your broken heart and become someone else to be able to forget everything. Just for one night.

“Then you can call me Red. It’s my special codename for tonight.”

His grin widened. You could almost see the relief washing over him through his warm gaze when he looked at you.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you tonight,” he said, still with his gentle voice that almost felt like sin licking on your skin when he called you, “Red.”

Two weeks later…

“Here you go,” your mother’s voice snaps you from whatever stupor you have been stuck in. When you open your eyes, a glass of ginger tea has manifested right before you.

“Drink this,” your Mom says as she points at the drink. “It should be good for your stomach.”

Your breath gets caught in your throat. Furrowing your brows, you keep your eyes on the drink instead of reaching for it. Thoughts of those past mornings when you and Skye spent searching through the internet to find a way to get rid of your morning sickness come through your mind.

Does she know? Did she figure it out already? Is it really that obvious?

You clench your hands and resist the urge to rub against your stomach. It has become a habit of yours to rub around your belly as if trying to feel the baby that is hiding inside whenever you feel agitated.

After getting the positive results through the home test kits, you had gone straight to the doctor only days before you left the city to have it checked, confirming that a baby is growing inside you. It still feels unbelievable to think about it, even after you saw it yourself with your own eyes.

“It’s still really early, and we might not be seeing much yet, but that’s your baby,” the doctor’s voice echoes through your mind as you tighten your clenched hands, thinking back to the day you went to have an ultrasound and saw for the first time the growing fetus that was said to be viable to grow fully as a baby.

Just like how the baby inside you has been nothing more than a blob of mass floating inside your stomach in your mind, your belly itself has yet to change shape. Even if your full awareness of the baby’s presence has only been causing you to find small changes in your body that nobody else might be able to see.

But Mom has been pregnant before, so wouldn’t she be able to see it? Will that be possible?

“Ginger tea is good for nausea and will give you some energy boost. Your grandma always made it for me whenever I had a stomach ache. I’m sure it’ll help get rid of your nausea and your upset stomach will turn better in no time.” Your Mom stops talking and sighs. “You should’ve told me that you were sick. I wouldn’t have let you drive all the way home if I had known.”

Ah.

You breathe a sigh of relief. You should be thankful that she believed you when you told her about having an upset stomach from the long drive home from the city. It was the only thing that you could think of as an excuse when your Mom wondered why you hadn’t been eating well since you got back home and why you were feeling sick.

It makes you wonder why you have been feeling unwell since you got home. Just when you had purposely waited until you were well enough and had stopped throwing up when you planned for the drive.

It’s almost as if the baby is deliberately making you sick to let everyone know about your secret.

“Thanks, Mom,” you say to your Mom as you reach for the tea, hiding your relieved sigh as you gingerly drink in small sips.

You have lost count of how many times Skye has made you this drink specifically to stop you from vomiting in the morning before going to work. It has been helping a lot to ease your ‘sickness’, and you are feeling it calming your stomach already as the drink warms your body.

You can feel your mother’s eyes on you, making you feel uneasy to be under her watchful gaze. “I think it might be better if you get some rest and take things easy. But are you sure you’re okay?” your Mom asks again, still worrying about you.

You continue drinking the ginger tea slowly while pressing down your guilt. You hate lying to your Mom the most, and now you are starting to regret driving home on your own. If the baby hadn’t been the one responsible for your current sickness, then perhaps driving the long distance has been the reason why your nausea is now coming back with a vengeance.

So much for trying to not draw any suspicions.

“I’m fine, Mom. Really,” you sigh as you place the glass down. “The tea is helping me already. I’ll feel better soon, I promise.”

Your Mom says nothing for a moment, but the crease you see forming on her forehead says differently. “I’m not just talking about you being sick. Maybe there’s another reason why you’re feeling faint?”

You look up at her just then. The moment you catch the pitiful look she is giving you, you finally understand what she is trying to say.

Just as Skye predicted, it didn’t take long for your family to take notice of your solo arrival. In the past, Hansol would have joined you to visit your family for a day or two during the holidays before he would return to his family on Christmas day. So his absence was quite obvious from the get-go.

And with the big lie that you have to hide from everyone at home, you had to at least give them one honest truth the moment they started asking.

“We ended things a few months ago,” you admitted to your family during the first dinner you had since you got home. By that time, you had already tried to avoid the questions for long enough. Nobody has brought up about it again since then.

Until now.

“If you’re talking about the breakup, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m okay, Mom. It’s been months since it happened. I’ve been trying to move on.”

In fact, you haven’t been thinking about your ex at all for a long time. Not until you brought it up to Skye and then again when your family started questioning. The only thing you have been worrying about lately is the baby growing inside you and finding a way to search for the father of the baby.

It was the one thing that you talked about with Skye before you left. While you are capable enough to raise the baby on your own, you decided it would be the best course of action to contact the father and let him know.

In Skye’s own words, “Just in case.”

Just in case the father would care enough to know that he has a son or a daughter coming into this world and wants to be in their life.

“But if we fail to find him or he wants nothing to do with the baby, then we’ll deal with it on our own. You just got your promotion, I got my good pay. We can raise the baby together. You and me, just like old times.”

Skye’s words put a smile on your face. She always knows how to lift your spirit up whenever you feel like giving up, and those exact words have helped boost your confidence and made you believe that you could get through this.

But first, you just need to get through spending this holiday with your family.

“I know you said that. But as your Mom, I can’t help but worry. I thought you were serious and we’ll be hearing some good news about you getting married this year.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Sorry, Mom,” you tease her with a bitter chuckle. You don’t bother to mention that the two of you had never once talked about marriage throughout your relationship.

Yet another sign that you overlooked. At least you never got to waste anymore time with him.

“Things just didn’t work out between us. It happens when a couple grow into two different people in the course of their relationship. Which was exactly what happened to us. Hansol wanted to focus on his career, in return, I also got the chance to focus on mine.”

Just as you said the words, you realise that this is true for your case.

Hansol has always been career-driven, and it has been growing stronger lately for him with the constant rise he was experiencing in his current company. And breaking up with your long-time boyfriend has allowed you to turn your focus on your job. The recent promotion you gained was a testament to your hard work to show you that there might be a silver lining to everything that has happened.

“I suppose you’re right,” your Mom says with a smile. You are beginning to feel a bit relieved that she seems to understand. You are hoping that she would start talking about something else when she adds, “I just feel sad that it didn’t work out for you. And we were all expecting to have Hansol joining us again this year. I guess it’s too late now to let your sister know about this since she’s supposed to arrive today.”

Stepsister.

You lift your glass and slowly drink your tea to stop yourself from correcting her. For some reason, you feel a bit bitter having your mother mention her all so suddenly.

It isn’t that you hate your stepsister. It’s hard to feel something so extreme when you barely had any relationship with her at all. Back when you were younger, your mother did try to get you two to get along and be friends.

To make her happy, you tried your best to act friendly, or at least to be cordial whenever she was around, even when the only thing she showed you over the years had been nothing but contempt.

But things changed after a drunken fit that she had last holiday season, when she got drunk and tried to make a move and openly flirted with your then-boyfriend. Even if nothing ever came out of it except for her own embarrassment, as Hansol openly rejected her and stayed away from her for the remaining time he was here, the incident still left a bad taste that made you feel bitter.

That was when you finally decided that you would stop trying to be nice.

You put down the glass and try to remain calm. What’s done is done. All you have to do is focus on getting through this holiday before going back to the city and start with your mission to search for the baby’s father.

“What does Alia have to do with my break up?” you ask your mother, hoping that she wouldn’t bring up the drama from last year.

“Oh, it’s nothing serious, really,” your Mom answers with a soft chuckle, “It’s just that Alia called home sometime last week, asking if she could bring someone over this Christmas. She said that she’s been seeing someone new and since she was bringing him to meet her mother, she wondered if it would be okay if she could bring him along to meet us too.”

Your Mom sighs, looking a bit guilty when she adds, “We figured since you might bring Hansol with you, it would be okay if she has her new boyfriend along. Maybe the guys could get along and spend time together while you and Alia catch up.”

You try to imagine you and Alia catching up like old friends or—just like what your Mom has been wishing you to be—as sisters, and you almost shake your head.

Yeah, that seems unlikely, you bitterly wonder to yourself, yet you don’t have the heart to tell your mother that there is not much hope for you and Alia to be good friends.

“I guess it’s a shame that Hansol isn’t here,” you simply say to your mother while you inwardly wonder just what your stepsister is really up to this year.

“Yeah, it’s unfortunate,” your mother says with a sigh. “But I’m glad that at least both of you girls can make it home this year.”

“Me too, Mom,” you force a smile, silently hoping that you can start talking about something else. Something that doesn’t concern your bitter stepsister coming home or bringing up any dark thoughts about your ex. “So, what are we having for dinner? Want my help in the kitchen?”

Your question immediately puts everything into motion, drifting her attention away from your sappy story and the false hope of sisterhood that may never happen between you and your stepsister. Your Mom tries to stop you from helping out in the kitchen at first but finally gives in when you keep insisting.

At least, this way, you can keep your mind busy enough to stop it from thinking about unnecessary thoughts the way it often does when you are alone.

Things seem to be going on well enough at first, until your sickness returns and you have to give up trying.

”See, I told you that you should be resting until you feel better,” your mother complains as she watches you bending over, keeping away from the stove and what is currently cooking on top of it which seems to be making you feel dizzy and sick.

After garlic, lemon-scented air freshener, and coconut milk, seems you are going to have to add raw chicken to the list of things that may trigger your nausea.

“But then I’ll be bored like hell,” you argue, “I’m fine, Mom. Just let me take a quick break for a minute.”

Your mother looks as if she wants to say something, but the sound of a car coming into the driveway interrupts her. Both of you turn to look out towards the living room, just in time to see your stepfather, Cliff, turning in the corner of the hall and rushing towards the front door.

“Honey, they’re here!” he calls out, and you urge your mother to join him.

“Go, Mom. I’ll finish things up and make sure nothing gets burned before I join you guys.”

Once your mother is out of the kitchen, you can no longer resist pressing your palm on your stomach.

“Seriously, baby,” you whisper to the non-existent bump under your sweater, “Please take it easy, will you? I’m really struggling here, and you’re not making things easy for me. Trust me, it would be too soon for everyone to find out about you. At least wait until we can find a clue about your Dad, okay?”

As if the baby inside you is listening, even if it is still barely full-grown at this point, your body grows calmer and the nausea slowly wanes.

“Thank you, baby,” you whisper to your stomach once again before finally focusing on the stove and the oven, deliberately taking your time with what you do just so you can have a reason not to join the dramatic reunion happening right this minute.

From this side of the kitchen, the front door isn’t completely visible. But you can hear everything as the door opens and your stepfather joyfully welcomes his daughter.

Hearing his voice makes you smile. You may have had a tumultuous relationship with your stepsister, but the same cannot be said with your stepfather. Cliff has always been a great role model, and your relationship with him has always been great from the start.

It makes you feel guilty when you think about the previous encounters where you and your stepsister simply gave each other cold shoulders or when you were met with altercations just because of how different the two of you are. But there is no helping it. Nothing has changed over the years no matter how hard you tried. Not even once you have become adults.

You can’t even remember how it first started. And frankly, you no longer care. Last year’s incident was already enough to let you know that the sisterhood that your parents have been forcing you into was beyond saving.

The voices coming from the front door continue for a moment longer. This time, you get to hear your mother’s voice joining in the conversation and Alia’s soft voice answering her questions. You make no effort to listen to what they are saying and tune out their voices, until your mother’s voice calls out to you.

“______, your sister is here. Come and say hi.”

Your mother’s words make you stop. Slowly, you turn down the heat on the stove and turn to make your way towards the front door to join the family reunion.

“It’s stepsister,” you mutter under your breath as you drag your feet, taking your sweet time while you try to compose yourself before having to face the unwanted guests.

As you turn around the corner, merely moments before the front door finally comes into view, you get to hear another voice speaking. The voice that you couldn’t clearly hear from the kitchen while you were tuning their conversation out.

“I’m sorry for intruding. But thank you for having me here.”

That voice.

You immediately come to a halt. An uneasy feeling runs through your body when you realise that you recognise this voice and have grown to know it quite well.

There is no mistaking it. You may not have gotten his full name on the night you met, and his face has somewhat become a faint mirage in your dreams at night whenever you are taken back to the night of your hookup.

But you cannot say the same about his voice.

That deep and gentle voice will always be engraved in your memory. Even now, the only thing you would need to do is close your eyes and listen, and allow the voice to take you back to that specific night once more, where he used this voice to say sinful words that you could feel caressing your fragile heart while he was bringing you to the peak of pleasure.

And now you are hearing that voice here, at your home, idly chatting with your mother by the front door.

“_______, are you coming?” your mother calls again, and you know that there is no avoiding it. You have to face reality, even if that means you must come face to face with the man who is responsible for placing you in this situation.

Tamping down the rush of nerves going through your body, you slowly march ahead. Bracing yourself as you turn around the corner and enter the living room where everyone is currently gathering in.

Your eyes fall on your stepsister first.

Alia has always looked so vibrant and beautiful, drawing all kinds of attention from everyone in the room whenever she is present. Yet when you look at her now, there seems to be a new kind of light emerging from her. Even her smile seems brighter as she chats along with your stepfather.

And you soon realise the reason why she is shining brightly today as you turn your gaze to look at the person standing beside her. To finally see him.

He looks just like how you remember him. Tall and lean, with his arms and chest filling up his sweater. He has his hair falling over a part of his face, just enough of a mess that seems as if he has been running his fingers through the wavy strands. As he converses with your mother, he shows his boxy grin that seems familiar to your eyes.

Too familiar.

Because it looks just the same as the wide grin that was teasing and flirting with you on one eventful night at the transit hotel weeks ago.

No. That can’t be.

The baby’s daddy is here. The man who you were planning to look for once you return to the city.

He is here, today, appearing at the front door of your parents’ home together with your stepsister. His long fingers that had once entangled between the strands of your hair are now entwined with your stepsister’s dainty fingers. And there is no mistaking the matching couple rings that are glowing under the sunlight coming from their entwined hands.

Before you get the chance to process what is happening, you hear him introducing himself to your stepfather, “It’s good to see you, Sir. My name is Taehyung.”

No.

You stifle a gasp. It feels like you have been sucker-punched right in the chest that you can barely breathe.

Taehyung, you wonder. Tae?

All of a sudden, you feel as if the ground beneath your feet is tilting over, slowly taking you down with it. And since you seem to have lost the ability to move your feet, the only thing you can do to stop yourself from falling is to clench your hands tightly by your side. Tight enough to feel pain as your nails are sinking into your palms, convincing you that this is not a dream.

Yet you are still in denial as you watch the interaction happening right before your eyes. Because there is no way this is happening. There is no possible way that it is truly him.

Please. Please don’t let it be him.

It must have been your mind playing tricks on you. Because there is no way that he is here. Not as your stepsister’s new boyfriend.

This must be a mistake. Yes, you are probably confused and all the thoughts of finding your baby daddy are messing up with your head, forcing you to believe that your stepsister’s new boyfriend is your mysterious baby daddy. The fact that they have the same name must have been pure coincidence.

For once in your life, you don’t want to be right. You have to be wrong.

Please tell me that it’s not him.

Just then, as if life was listening to your prayers, as if life has yet to have enough of its games to play around with your heart, the man turns his gaze away from your parents. And those pretty eyes land on you.

As if there is a switch turned, the brightness in his gaze fades. His beautiful eyes are filled with recognition. It is so subtle that you are quite sure that nobody else around you notices it, but it is enough to let you know that your memories have been right all along.

Because those are the same eyes that you saw looking back at you with pure lust and sin while he was bringing you wanton pleasure, when you made love as if both of you had been under a spell, right on the very night that may have changed your fate forever.

Fuck.

Me.

At one glance, this moment would seem like any other pre-holiday family dinner. It may seem picture perfect, even—if you had been a stranger looking in.

There are still a couple of days left until Christmas Day, yet the festive mood has already filled the room. From the living room, all the way to the dining room, Christmas decorations are already plastered across the walls and hung from the ceiling. On the dining table, the delectable meal that your mother worked hard to prepare—with your poor assistance—had been perfectly laid out.

With Alia’s arrival today, the immediate family is now complete. Ever the charming daughter, Alia takes up the attention of everyone around her as she shares her story—about how she has been travelling between different states and some neighbouring countries, changing jobs, finding new hobbies, and even planning to adopt a new pet.

Sitting at the head of the table, your stepfather is soaking it all in, enjoying the time he has with his daughter whom he rarely gets to see throughout the year. Your mother sits on his right, getting the front seat of their merry reunion. She would sometimes chime in, never failing to try to get you into joining their idle chat even when you are not feeling up to it.

Other times, you would have been able to easily play along. From making cordial comments and joining with all the light jokes shared by your family, or feigning interest in anything that Alia might be sharing at the table—even when she rarely would share the same courtesy when you did the same.

Tonight, however, it feels like a struggle for you to focus on the conversation shared at the table, let alone pretend to be interested. Not when you are busy trying your best to calm your nerves.

You can't even embrace the same warm atmosphere that everyone seems to be sharing.

For you, the air around feels stifling and tense. It has been this way ever since you sat down right next to your mother for dinner. Because due to the seating arrangement, the special guest of the night is now sitting right across from you at the table.

Taehyung.

The last person that you had ever expected to see. Not here. Certainly not at your home or sharing the same space with your parents.

It seems surreal to meet him here like this. Even more so when he was introduced to your family as Alia’s new boyfriend.

Judging from the way he reacted when he first saw you, you can tell that he never expected something like this could ever happen. You know that he has questions, perhaps just as much as you do, yet the situation that you found yourself in right now isn’t allowing you to even show any sign that the two of you know each other or to have met before today.

But there is something in the way he is looking at you that doesn’t sit right with you. Aside from the lingering shock you see each time your eyes accidentally meet each other, there is a look that shows a semblance of guilt, despair, and at the same time, filled with wonder.

Was it because he never expected to see you again after that night, much less to find out that you are somehow related to the woman that he is dating? Or was there something else going through his mind?

“This is Alia’s sister, ______,” was what your mother said when she first introduced you to him. At that point, you and Taehyung were stunned to silence, and for a brief moment, neither of you reacted.

Thinking about it now, you can’t even remember how you managed to join your family in the living room. The moment you saw Taehyung standing there, your legs nearly gave out. It was a wonder how you managed to stop yourself from falling or tripping as you walked over to them in a state of distraught.

“Hi, it’s good to see you,” was all that you managed to croak out of once you snapped out of it. You didn’t even give him a chance to respond when you suddenly turned your attention to your stepsister, forcing a smile on your face when you greeted her, “Hey, Alia. It’s good to see you. You seem well.”

You can’t even remember the expression that Alia gave you when she responded to you, “Uh yeah, thanks. You too.”

“Right. Well, I’ll let you guys settle in. I left the stove on, so—”

That was the last thing you said before you turned away and quickly left the room, practically running away from him to hide back in the kitchen. The last thing you heard as you walked away was your mother’s voice saying something about you being her assistant of the day in the kitchen while you were feeling unwell, as if excusing you for your unmannerly attitude.

By the time you got back in the kitchen, your hands were shaking, your heartbeat was racing so fast you could barely breathe. It took a long time for the shock to wane, and you had spent the rest of the day staying away from both of them, avoiding him entirely until you were finally called to join dinner.

And you are still avoiding him even now, keeping your head down as much as you can and resisting the urge to look his way. As if it isn’t hard enough for you to have him sitting right in front of you, you can feel the heat of his gaze constantly following you whenever you are not looking.

He doesn’t make it so obvious, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else has noticed it yet. Perhaps you are just too hyperaware of his presence that you caught on to it so easily.

You sneak a glance at your stepsister, wondering if Alia has taken notice of her boyfriend’s wandering gaze or where he has been directing his eyes. It takes you watching the conversation between her and your parents more closely to see it.

Because it turns out that she also has her own gaze wandering to questionable places at the same time that she isn’t paying much attention to her boyfriend.

Each time Alia turns to regard your mother or speak to her, her gaze flickers away briefly, ever so subtly landing on the seat to your right. At the seat that Hansol would usually occupy whenever he joined you during these holiday visits.

It is easy to catch it when you are seeing it from your angle. And it is easy to guess what is going through her head when she keeps doing it with a curious look written all over her face. An unspoken question seems to linger, while the incident from last year keeps flashing through your head when you picture Hansol being present beside you.

Even if nobody notices her intention, you doubt that anyone would question her about it, seeing that the seat that was supposed to be left empty has been taken by someone else.

While you are busy trying to make sense out of everything, your grandmother makes a disapproval noise with her tongue, grabbing your attention. “Are you still feeling under the weather? You’ve been drinking that boring thing the whole day,” she says, referring to the glass of iced tea that you have just put down after taking a drink from it to cool down.

You turn to look at your dear grandmother, Honey, and smile at her. She probably hasn’t realised what a saving grace she has been for taking the unoccupied seat to your right the minute she came in for dinner.

And she is now helping you again by drawing your attention away from the source of your dismay. Immediately, you feel better the moment you are met with Honey’s smile.

“I’m feeling much better, actually. I’m just being careful not to drink anything that might get me sick,” you answer carefully, hoping to sound reasonable enough without making anyone question your ‘sickness’ any further.

The more you lie to your family about it, the more guilty you feel. You don’t have much choice at the moment but to hide it just a bit longer.

At first, you couldn’t share the news with your parents simply because you were still clueless about how you were going to find the father of the baby with only limited information you had of him. But then things only got even more complicated for you to ever come clean when he walked through the front door of your parents’ home.

What are the odds that the man you hooked up with turns out to be the man your stepsister is currently dating? And here you are now, stuck in the same room with them while hiding a secret which may change the course of everyone’s entire life.

Yeah, miracles don’t exist. Not for me, at least.

Honey taps at your hand on the table as you grow silent, oblivious to the thoughts running through your head. “You know what you need?” she asks, whispering in a conspiring tone that she barely keeps down so that everyone at the table can still hear her voice.

And she does it while looking at you with her wide, expecting eyes, with the barely concealed mischief written all over her face. It makes you smile, knowing where this is going. So you simply play along.

"No, Honey. What would that be?”

Her mischievous smile widens as she leans closer. “A hint of rum. With a few drops into that boring tea of yours, you’ll feel better in no time,” she says, lifting her hand and showing you a pinching gesture with her thumb and forefinger nearly touching each other, “Just a pinch. Or better yet, just trade your whole glass—”

The sound of your Mom’s frustrated sigh cuts her off. “Mom, I already told you, giving her alcohol isn’t going to make her feel better. I’ve already given her some herbal tea, that should be enough until she can get a proper rest.”

“Oh, posh,” Honey says, waving her hand at your mother. “Ignore your Mom,” Honey says just as you are about to respond. “I’m telling you. Alcohol is best to cure your heartbreak,” she adds, and you certainly have no arguments against that. Alcohol might be able to help you forget.

But, alas…

But, wait a minute. You stop and look closely at Honey. What is she talking about?

“What do you mean?” you question her while tilting your head, wondering deep down if she had noticed something. Surely, she wouldn’t be able to tell the high tension rolling between you and Taehyung through dinner.

Nobody else could. But you also know that if there is anyone in your family who might be able to catch on with the tension rolling between the two of you, it would be Honey.

Once again, Honey reaches out and taps her dainty fingers on the back of your hand. “Isn’t that why you’re feeling down, peaches? I know you’re still thinking about that good for nothing—”

Honey stops herself and bites down her smile before you can figure out what she is about to say. But you have heard enough to understand who she is referring to.

Relief washes over you when you realise that she was talking about your ex, Hansol. She must have thought that you have been stressing over the breakup and you have been feeling unwell because of it.

Honey leans in, this time lowering her voice just enough only for you to hear. “You must’ve taken it from me. I also get a stomach bug when I’m stressed out. Just like last summer when I lost a go-stop game against the ladies from the block,” she says, before she continues blabbering about how she had made bets during the game and went all-in only to lose everything.

“You might think that they’re nothing but small pennies used for gambling coins, but I spent a whole week collecting them. How am I supposed to replace all of them before the next game?” she continues to complain, while you laugh at her.

Her story takes away the tension on your shoulders for a brief moment before she adds, “And then you had to come here and watch these two being all lovey-dovey with each other.”

As Honey mentions the pair sitting across the table, waving her hand at them to make a point, your eyes are drawn towards them once more. And your gaze lands right on Alia’s hand which is now resting on top of Taehyung’s.

Seeing this makes you feel tight in the chest. Bitterness fills your mouth which you can barely hide with a tight smile. Honey may not have been entirely correct with her assumptions, yet her comment still hits the mark somehow.

Not about Hansol, obviously, as he is the one to occupy your mind the least. Yet she wasn’t too far off when she talked about the new pair of lovers before you. Seeing them does make you uncomfortable, miserable even, but for entirely different reasons.

Looking away from their joined hands, your gaze meets Alia’s. She is wearing an unreadable expression on her face as she listens in to Honey’s words. And the strange look that she is giving you now is making you feel uneasy.

Just as you start wondering if Alia has noticed something, she instead asks you, “You guys broke up?”

She throws a quick glance at Honey’s seat with a frown. For others, she might seem concerned, yet there is a look in her eyes which tells you that there is something more. “I was wondering why I haven’t seen him around. He was with us last holiday.”

Her comment rubs you in the wrong way. You have no idea why she would care when your relationship has nothing to do with her. But you try to not let it bother you. “Yes, it’s been months now since we broke up. I only told Mom and Dad yesterday when I first got home.”

“I see,” she says. Her voice comes out so softly that it almost comes out as a murmur. She pulls her hand back and places it on her lap. “That’s too bad. I’m sorry,” she adds while offering a small smile. And for some reason, she also seems guilty.

Does she think it has something to do with what happened last year?

Her words remind you of something that she said to you last year, back on the morning you confronted her after her drunken blunder which happened the night before.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t mean anything, I swear. It’s just drunk talking.”

That incident shouldn’t be bothering you today. Yet it still makes you feel bitter when you think about it. The feeling only grows worse when you glance at Taehyung who is showing a sudden interest in this whole thing.

“It’s fine. Sometimes things just don’t work out,” you simply repeat the same thing you said to your mother earlier while biting back the real question that is hanging right at the tip of your tongue.

But what’s in it to you?

No matter how curious you are to know what kind of scheme that is going through her pretty little head, you know it’s not worth all the drama that it might cause. You cannot even possibly imagine the drama that would unfold once this whole baby thing comes out.

God, just thinking about it is already making your stomach churn. Your lower abdomen suddenly feels hard and heavy. As if you have a full-size lead inside instead of a small, growing blob that is about to form into an actual living baby within a few weeks from now.

Thinking about the baby, your eyes find the man who is behind all of this. He has grown oddly quiet while you were conversing with your stepsister and is now staring at his food with a frown on his face.

“So tell me,” you ask calmly while clenching your hands, doing your best to hide the trembles, “How did you two meet?”

This question immediately draws Taehyung’s attention. His eyes snap up, but the moment he looks at you, his face seems to grow pale and he becomes awfully nervous.

“We, uh—we used to work at the same company before Alia left to venture into other things,” he says, almost stuttering. He also keeps stealing glances at Alia, as if begging her to help him out.

Huh, strange.

What is it about answering your simple question which makes him so nervous?

Or perhaps…

Have they been seeing each other when the two of you hooked up?

Fuck.

The moment this thought crosses your mind, you suddenly feel sick. Your stomach grows heavier with anxiety. Meanwhile, Alia’s smile seems to beam brighter.

“We didn’t work in the same division back then, but we would frequently meet during breaks and company hours. Had it been, what, a year after we last met?” Alia turns to Taehyung, who stiffly nods his head. She grabs his hand once again and looks at him lovingly as she continues, “We met again last summer by chance while I was travelling and started talking since then.”

Last summer? But that was before—

Your head starts spinning. You grab your glass and take a couple of small sips of your tea to regain composure, yet the drink suddenly tastes bitter on your tongue.

Honey’s voice barely registers in your brain when she responds with a hum. “Travelling in the summer? That sounds like a charming way to meet a new lover,” she says, lifting her mug to her lips as she continues marvelling at your stepsister’s story. “You must have felt some sparks when you two met. I bet you’re still feeling it now, aren’t you?”

You have no idea what she has inside that ceramic mug, as she had been nursing the same drink since even before dinner started. You can bet money that she had more than a pinch of rum dropped inside that drink of hers, seeing how talkative she is becoming.

Oh, how you wish you could have a taste of it. Just a sip would have been good enough. Maybe it can also help to stop your hands from trembling.

“And the ring?” Honey asks again with a teasing tone as she points at their entwined hands. “I noticed that you two are wearing matching rings. You can’t possibly be engaged already, can you?”

Almost choking on your drink, you slowly set your glass back down and pull your hands onto your lap, hiding them from prying eyes just in time as they begin to shake.

“But it wasn’t that different back in the day,” Honey continues, “I remember that Russ—that’s my dear late husband,” she explains to Taehyung, “he bought me a cheap ring at the beginning of our relationship to show me and my parents that he was serious about courting me.”

On any other times that Honey would speak about your late grandfather, you would always enjoy listening to every word, admiring how she would always share her story with pure love in her voice and wonder glowing in her eyes.

But not this time.

Ever since she pointed out the ring and started talking about your grandfather’s old promises, you start having trouble breathing. The more she speaks, the worse it gets, and now there is a ringing sound echoing in your ear that seems to be coming from different directions.

“I still keep the ring with me, side by side with the wedding ring that doesn’t fit anymore on these wrinkly fingers of mine,” Honey keeps gushing. She raises her hands and starts wiggling her fingers to show them off, while your whole body grows tense.

Alia shares a nervous laugh with Taehyung and waves her hand at Honey. “Oh, no…it’s actually a part of a joke that we—”

You try to tune out the voices, the words that are being said, while clasping your hands tighter together on your lap, but the shaking doesn’t stop. Alia’s voice fades in and out beyond the loud ringing in your head as she continues to tell her story about how they started dating and the ring came to be. With everything that is going on, added with your awareness over Taehyung’s intense gaze that doesn’t seem to waver, it becomes too overwhelming that you feel as if you are slowly being swallowed into the ground beneath you.

With a sharp gasp, you slowly push yourself out of your seat. “Excuse me, I have to—” your voice cracks as you speak. As you stand, you notice that everyone has their eyes on you, all curious to know what is happening with you.

“_______?” you hear your mother calling you.

You can feel the blood draining from your face under all the unwanted attention, making you wish that you could just fade away right at that moment. But then your hand find its way to your stomach, and it almost feels like there is a touch of warmth forming under your palm. It helps you force a smile and gather yourself just enough to say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling well, so I’m going to step out early. I hope that’s alright. You guys enjoy the rest of dinner.”

You don’t wait for anyone’s response as you turn away, finding your escape merely moments before you get into a full-blown meltdown right in front of everyone.

Your legs are wobbly as you walk down the hall, yet you still manage to slip into the guest bathroom downstairs. With trembling hands, you lock the door behind you, shutting yourself from the world outside.

And that is when you fall apart, turning into a heaving mess as everything that you have been bottling up inside comes flooding out of you.

“Breathe,” you command yourself while you fight back against your nausea. Holding onto the bathroom counter, you keep yourself and try your best to focus on controlling your breath.

Take a slow, deep breath. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Little by little, all the tension, the trembling, and the tightness in your chest begin to wane. But once everything is gone, once you begin to find calmness, your emotions seize control of you.

The next thing you know, an unstoppable flow of tears comes running down your face and you start sobbing, crying in defeat.

“Shit. Fuck. What a mess,” you curse between each sob, feeling absolutely helpless and alone. You close your eyes, hoping that you can clear your head by doing so. Yet your mind keeps going to dark places. Constantly wondering and questioning about all of this.

About him.

“Did he ever mention anything that was related to his personal life that night?” you cannot help but wonder out loud.

Only silence answers. Because you hold little to no recollection of the details from the conversation you shared with him that night. Whenever you try to remember, it always feels like there was a part of your memory that had gone missing.

You haven’t had the slightest clue of the things you shared with him at the bar once the drinks started coming more frequently. Which is a wonder, because you are completely sure that neither of you had gotten drunk enough to experience a blackout, much less lose a memory.

At least for you, the alcohol was just enough to burn through your nerves and help build your confidence to take the lead and openly show the attraction you had for him. Even if he did end up taking back control the moment the two of you finally gave in to temptation.

Your head starts pounding, aching the more you try to remember the missing details. Meanwhile, all the questions won’t stop coming, making it harder for you to regain a peaceful mind.

Did he ever mention having a girlfriend, or at least give any hint that he was taken?

Was he wearing that ring on his finger when he was touching your skin under the dim light of his bedroom suite?

You shake your head and close your eyes again when you still remember nothing. The only thing that remains in your memory is the look you saw in his gaze that night. The pitiful look that seemed to mirror yours, making you believe that he was looking for the same thing you did that night.

An escape. A way to forget even if for a moment.

But what if that was all just another lie?

Your stomach churns. A sharp pain comes shooting through your body. It starts from your lower abdomen, causing you to almost double over.

Fuck. Now what?

Your hand instantly comes down to your stomach, pressing and rubbing gently against it until the uncomfortable ache ebbs under your touch.

Right, I’m supposed to avoid any form of stress, you remind yourself as you recall what your doctor told you the last time you went to see her. Something about getting your blood tension rising when you are stressed, and that it wouldn’t be good for both you and the baby in the long run. Closing your eyes, you try to think of happy thoughts, all while keeping your palm pressed on your stomach.

To your surprise, rubbing your palm against the barely-there baby bump on your belly isn’t just helping you to soothe the pain away, but also to calm yourself down.

With a sigh, you gently wipe your tears and look down. “I’m sorry for swearing so much, baby. I promise to stop doing it once you’ve grown big enough to start hearing things so you won’t learn any of it too soon. But fuck, this is too much.”

It feels odd to speak like this to the living being growing inside you that is barely more than a piece of flesh. Yet speaking to your growing baby seems to help ease your anxiety a little.

Better yet, it helps make you feel less alone.

“Let’s not think any bad thoughts. Let’s not assume that your Dad is an asshole, okay? Not until we get to hear the full story,” you whisper to the tiny human growing inside you. The more you speak to it, the more it seems to be helping you to find some ease of mind.

But even if it turns out that he was…

“Then I can deal with it later with my head held high,” you murmur to yourself in a soft, yet reassuring tone of voice. And you repeat it again, and again, almost as if you are chanting a spell which would be able to give you a boost of confidence.

It may not immediately change the way you look at things, yet you can feel it slowly rising within you. It feels like a ray of light, the first spark of hope that you get to feel amid all the uncertainty which surrounds you.

Soon enough, the strong urge to cry no longer overcomes you. Even your hands have stopped shaking. All that you have left is exhaustion. It rolls through your body with a vengeance, and there is nothing that you want more right now other than to curl up like a ball on your bed and sleep it off.

You raise your head to look at yourself in the mirror, and instantly a bitter laugh escapes you at what you are seeing.

Because you look like a complete mess. Your life is slowly turning into shambles, and it seems to be mocking you through your own reflection that is now staring back at you.

“Just exactly what I need,” you whisper with a sigh.

I need to be stronger, if only for the sake of this little one in me, you tell yourself as you splash cold water at your face to wash away all the mess—the drying tears, your swollen eyes, and the skin on your face which has yet to regain its normal colours.

It feels therapeutic to be washing everything off, leaving nothing more but your swollen eyes which you can explain as a part of your sickness. You may not be strong enough to take on the world, but at least now, you are prepared to face the reality that is waiting for you right outside of this door.

No matter how fucking messy it is.

Having this new revelation should be giving you a newfound credence that could push you forward. And yet there is none of that here. The only thing you are feeling now is the new bout of anxiety rolling up through your body, starting from your stomach as it churns painfully.

“Yeah, now I feel sick,” you groan as you rush to the toilet bowl, seconds away before you start dumping the small amount of food you had during dinner into waste.

It takes a bit longer than expected before you finally find the courage to step out of the bathroom.

Soft murmurs filter into the bathroom the moment you open the door. You can tell that the voices are coming from the living room, which means that the family has gathered there after dinner. It allows you to breathe a sigh of relief. At least this way you wouldn’t have to hide or make excuses if you have to bump into someone on your way to your bedroom.

Stepping out of the bathroom, you are relieved that nobody is around. Everyone should be in the living room, so you make haste, hoping to be able to escape before anyone notices.

But as you turn to the next hallway, someone is standing in your way. The light is dim, yet you can easily recognise him before you get any closer. Standing with his back leaning against the wall, he has his hands tucked into his pockets and his eyes looking absently into the distance.

As though he has been waiting for you.

Taehyung turns when he notices you coming. Before you can start to wonder what he is doing here, a smile grows on his face.

“Hey, is everything okay? Everyone was worried,” he asks you, sounding genuinely concerned.

The calm tone of his voice might be a bit deceiving if only you are not looking into his eyes. His gaze keeps wavering as he speaks, as if he is unable to look at you for too long. The same guilt you saw earlier is still present in his eyes. And you hate seeing it there.

It only tells you that he has a secret that he is keeping from you. You have no idea how to feel about it. But if it has to do with his relationship with Alia, then—

“I’m fine, it’s just—”

Your cheeks grow warm the moment you speak, feeling embarrassed at how dry your voice sounds. “It’s nothing. You heard my Mom, I’ll be better in no time.”

You have so many things to say to him. So many questions that you would like to give him. But you are too tired to do anything. Much less to talk. As much as you can convince yourself that you are ready to face anything, now is not the right time to do it.

So you keep your mouth shut and try to walk past him instead. Only that he isn’t letting you go that easily.

“You know, it really is nice to see you again, Red.”

His voice sounds so subdued that you almost miss it. You come to a halt. Your heartbeat starts picking up again. If you ever needed confirmation that the sinful night you shared with him truly happened, and that he remembered any part of it, then this is it.

His comment which instantly brings you back to that fateful night. The nickname that he used to call you then.

You close your eyes, refusing to remember the way he managed to draw out a myriad of sensations with his voice alone. You refuse to be brought back there again. Not now, when your mind isn’t clear enough to be dealing with this. Taking a deep breath, you compose yourself just enough to face him.

Only to be met with his amused smile as he looks at you.

“I was surprised to see you. I never would have thought that you could somehow be related to Alia.” He lets out a chuckle. It sounds empty and a bit bitter, mirroring exactly how you are feeling right now.

Your chest feels tight, hating the way he is saying her name. Nor do you enjoy seeing the way his gaze changes when he does it. Annoyance fills your chest that you can barely speak, while he remains in his blissful ignorance as he continues talking,

“Funny how life works, doesn’t it? I kept thinking about you after we met and wondered if we would ever see each other again. I regretted that I didn’t ask for your number before we parted ways. I didn’t even get to ask for your real name.”

The tightness in your chest grows tenfold.

You never admitted it before—not to yourself, and not even to Skye, when you first talked about him—yet there was some point between that night and the day you found out about the pregnancy that you spent your nights wondering if you would ever see him again.

If there had been one thing that you regretted about that night, it would be the decision you made to leave the next morning without asking for his real name or leaving any means of contact.

A night to escape from reality.

That was all it meant for you at the time. So when the morning came, it was time for you to return to reality. Your reality. Your real life. And you were too busy preparing yourself to face all the hurt, the bad memories, and the stressful life that had nothing to do with the desirable woman that he brought into his bed the night before to even consider exchanging contacts with him.

It didn’t matter if you were still riding the high of that night’s self-gratification and wanton pleasure through the rest of your trip. The moment everything ended, you simply moved on from it. Putting everything about that night to the back of your mind as you returned to your normal life and quickly fell back into your normal routine.

Until weeks later, when life decided to fuck you over and you ended up with a baby growing inside you, and you had no way to find or contact him to inform him about it.

“I guess it can’t be helped, given the circumstances.” Your conviction quickly melts into dread once you are reminded of the current circumstances. “It’s kinda too late now to talk about it and regret what didn’t happen, don’t you think? Seeing that you’re now dating my stepsister.”

Taehyung winces. For a brief moment, you almost believe you can see a glimpse of hurt flickering through his gaze. And for some reason, it only pisses you off.

So he doesn’t like being reminded of the fact that he is here for someone else?

“Look, about Alia. I was hoping that we could talk. Maybe when all of this is done, or maybe after the holidays we can—”

He continues talking, but you aren’t hearing anything. The questions that flooded your brain earlier come flashing back. The ringing that pained you returns. Everything lasts for a few more seconds before your mind clears out, and only one question remains.

“Were the two of you already dating when we slept together?”

He falls silent, taken aback.

“No!” he immediately says, almost shouting. But he quickly reins himself before his voice would reach where everyone is and draw their attention. “Fuck, no. Is that why you’ve been sulking all through dinner?” he asks you with a hiss. He seems offended and hurt at the same time. “I’m not that kind of guy. Trust me.”

“Sulking?” you let out an incredulous laugh. Is that how he saw it? When you were coming close to breaking apart right in front of everyone because of him?

“How am I supposed to trust you when I barely know you? How am I supposed to know that you’re telling the truth?” you snap back at him with a hiss. “Just because we fucked it doesn’t mean that I’d magically know everything about you.”

Again, he winces at your question. As if your words come to him like a slap on his face. He takes a deep breath and speaks more calmly in response, “Look, we should talk. Soon. I can explain everything. But not now, okay?”

As much as you hate to admit it, or to agree with him, you decide that he is right. There are a lot of things that you need to discuss with him, and now is not the right time to do it. Not when your emotions are all over the place and when he has his girlfriend keeping him in close sight most of the time.

“I agree. We do need to talk,” you finally agree, even though you know that both of you have different things in mind.

You have no idea what he intends to discuss with you. The only thing that matters to you is to talk about the baby that you conceived together. And hopefully, decide what will happen next.

“I should go,” you sigh, feeling exhausted and drained. “I need to lie down. This is too much for me to process.”

You try to walk around him so you can continue on your way. Your head is pounding, and you have the dire need to rest in your comfortable bed, where you would be able to feel safe and hide away from all of this.

“Wait,” Taehyung stops you before you can go too far.

“What?” you ask him, feeling exasperated—both from the stress and from the way your body still tingles each time you hear his voice. You really need to get away from him.

“Nothing, it’s just…” he starts, suddenly looking nervous with what he is about to say. The sound of laughter echoes from the living room, making him glance over his shoulder briefly before speaking to you with a lowered voice, “Can you do me a favour?”

You frown at him. “What is it?”

He looks wary, and it makes you feel uneasy in the stomach as you wait for him to speak.

But what he says next makes you feel even worse. “Please don’t tell Alia that we’ve met before, more importantly that we hooked up that night.”

You say nothing at first. Even if you are well aware of the situation and where Alia’s position in all of this, it still doesn’t stop the sharp pain you feel in your chest as he mentions her name, or to express his request.

Taehyung steps closer when you remain quiet. His voice comes as a desperate whisper when he pleads with you, “Please? Can you do this for me?”

You grit your teeth. “Fine, I won’t,” you finally say to him. But you refuse to give in that easily.

Taking a step closer to him, you point at him and demand him, “But you need to tell her.”

He clenches his jaw as he listens to your demands, but you ignore it and continue to talk. “She needs to know—” your voice nearly wavers, because you know what would happen once everything is revealed.

Telling your stepsister that you had slept with her boyfriend would not only be hard, but it would be ugly.

But it would be better than keeping it a secret for much longer. Because secrets don’t always remain hidden, no matter how hard you try to keep them in the shadows. And things would even get messier once the baby comes while she is still being kept in the dark.

It’s better to bite the bullet as soon as possible, rather than waiting and living your life in uncertainty until the day comes.

“If you don’t, and we keep this a secret much longer, things might get messier if she somehow finds out on her own. The last thing I’d ever want is to get into any drama. Not with her,” you try to convince Taehyung, despite him looking like he would rather bolt and have nothing to do with any of this.

After all the drama that happened last year, the last thing you need is to get involved in another.

“I’ll tell her myself if necessary.” There is a bite in your voice when you are telling him all of this. To his credit, Taehyung—despite looking shell-shocked and cornered—seems to respect and understand your request.

He lowers his head and nods. “Give me time. I’ll—”

You are surprised to see him looking defeated. It makes you wonder if there is something more about their relationship that you need to know before going further.

As Taehyung raises his head again, he seems more resolved. He looks straight into your eyes as he promises, “I’ll tell her myself once I get the chance to. I promise. But we’re going to have that talk first, and soon.”

“It’s a promise.” You bite back the ache that suddenly pierces through your heart, seeing how he is so adamant about protecting his relationship with your stepsister. Trying not to look too deep into it and get yourself hurt further, you avoid looking into his gaze and start walking away from him.

“Goodnight then—” you whisper to him as you turn away from him, biting back the sound of your defeat when you call his name, “Tae.”

The moment you are within the safety of your bedroom, your knees buckle. Thankfully, you still manage to close the door and lock it behind you, once again shutting yourself from everyone to give you some moment of peace.

Although it doesn’t stop him from entering your mind in the silence that follows.

As you lie down in your bed, curled up in a fetal position with your arms wrapped around yourself, your mind wanders back to the conversation you just had with Taehyung in the hallway.

You can’t help it. His words keep coming back to you, and you keep finding yourself dissecting everything he said. You close your eyes, and keep telling yourself to stop. The situation that you are dealing with right now already seems absurd enough for you to waste your energy trying to understand him.

You begin to wonder if things would have been better if you hadn’t come across each other again. Things would probably turn out differently. You may have to keep the baby’s existence a secret from him, and the truth about the father a secret from your family.

You may have to deal with everything yourself.

The possibility seems petrifying, but it still sounds a lot better than having to go against your stepsister. Better than causing your frail relationship to become even worse. This time, you know that this would be big enough to ruin any chance for you and your stepsister to have any kind of relationship at all.

He was right. It’s funny how life works. If only it doesn’t have to be this hard to laugh it off.

Stop it.

Keeping your eyes closed, you let out a deep sigh and force yourself to think about something else. Anything. As long as you are not thinking about him. His face, his voice, the scent of his cologne, everything that belongs to him.

Your head starts swimming. No, everything about him now belongs to someone else.

Once again, you force yourself to start thinking of less stressful things. Like Skye’s text message from this afternoon suggesting that you could run away with her to a secluded place somewhere in Europe so that the two of you could raise the baby together. Or the little stories that Honey shared about the cute new gardener now working at her apartment complex—the complex specifically built for elders like herself—that she wanted to introduce to you the next time you come by to visit.

You regret forgetting to pick up the smoothie that your mother made for you while you were throwing up in the bathroom, all due to Taehyung’s distraction. You wonder if having the smoothie would be able to help you feel better. Picturing the drink being left attended in the kitchen, you can picture your grandmother—the sweet little mischievous angel that she is—sneaking in a few drops of rum into the smoothie when your mother isn’t looking.

This thought makes you smile. It replaces every ugly thoughts that keep circling inside your mind and calms you down.

Your heartbeat is no longer beating like crazy. The more you fill your head with wonderful thoughts, the sooner the uneasy feeling in your stomach begins to wane.

And soon enough, you start drifting away to a restless sleep.

But just like how he invaded your home with his sudden appearance, Taehyung invades your sleep once your mind is left unguarded.

Speaking to him, albeit briefly, brings you back to that night. The moment you close your eyes, you start seeing everything from back then that you couldn’t remember in your waking hours. Even the smallest details that your conscious mind has forgotten. Everything comes crashing down on you as you toss and turn in your bed, unable to give in completely to a peaceful slumber as memories continue to flood your dreams.

Six weeks ago…

You opened your eyes and squinted.

The overhead lamp above your head was bright, and it was hurting your eyes. You could barely see a thing through your bleary eyes, until your gaze drifted further, looking into the dimly lit bedroom far across the foyer.

The room looked more spacious than yours, albeit a bit messy. The massive bed looked comfortable, and there were two lounge seats set up near the windows that looked more luxurious than the ones you had in your room.

“Your bedroom seems a lot more cozy than mine.”

The words came out of your lips with a moan. The sound seemed foreign. Barely recognisable through your hazy mind. But there was a familiar sensation slowly rising in your body that hadn’t at all come from the alcoholic drinks you were having tonight.

“Hmmm…You think so?”

A deep, sultry voice spoke as a pair of hot lips made their way down the side of your neck, tracing your skin with delicate kisses that made it even harder for you to think straight.

Shivers ran down your body. Heat rolled through your chest. And it almost seemed to you that your skin was becoming even more sensitive to the touch when even the most subtle caress of his fingers was able to light up your senses.

Right after the voice spoke to you, he suddenly switched and started kissing his way up. You blinked, and his face came into view just as he looked down at you. The beautiful face that captivated you when you first met him at the bar was presented right before your eyes.

So close. So tempting. And his eyes were so intense that you nearly lost your breath. He smiled and leaned down, capturing your lips with a kiss.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he murmured against your lips, drawing another moan out of you which snapped you from your daze.

You sighed as you gave in to the chaste kiss he was giving you. “It’s kind of hard to look around and see anything when you have me pinned to the door.”

He let out a soft chuckle and once again pressed his lips on yours. As if he was both pleased and amused that he got to put you in this position. When he pulled back, the look in his eyes softened.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. It’s all your fault for teasing me all the way here while I couldn’t allow myself to touch you with so many eyes paying attention,” he said without any hint of regret in his voice.

“Well, forgive me because I wasn’t aware,” you taunted him back, knowing fully well what you had done to tease him until he was on the verge of breaking apart even before you reached his hotel suite.

As much as you wanted to hold back, you were quite sure that you hadn’t gotten things wrong. You couldn’t have possibly mistaken the chemistry that kept sparking between you. And the way he kept openly staring at your body was enough to make his intention clear, as his eyes seemed more honest than the words he gave you.

But back at the bar, you had let him be the first one to make the move.

With his sturdy hands, he was the one who pulled your seat closer. By placing his arm on your backrest, it may have seemed as if he was marking his territory for anyone else at the hotel bar to see. Normally, something like this would’ve put you off. But there was something in the way he did it that made you feel otherwise, allowing you to give in and lean more into his warmth instead of pushing him away.

That was when you reciprocated his actions with your own. The light and subtle touches of your fingers on his arm drew soft shudders through his body. The accidental brushes that happened when you moved against his body pushed him into wrapping his arm around you, keeping you close before he finally pulled you out of the bar.

When you leaned close enough to whisper softly against his ear, you could feel goosebumps rising on his skin, his heartbeat escalating under your palm, and he could barely hold himself back from devouring your lips right there at the hotel lobby. Right where everyone could see you falling into pieces under your sinful desire.

By the time you were alone with him in the elevator, the tension between you just kept escalating until he finally snapped.

He nearly dragged you across the hallway leading to his bedroom suite in his rush to get you alone. The moment he pulled you in through the door, every bit of his composure simply left him. He barely gave you a chance to catch a single glance of the suite, as he immediately pushed your body against the door and kept you there.

Until this moment.

His eyes grew dark after listening to your answer. His breath is still ragged after the hot kiss that he gave you once he got you pinned between his hard body and the locked door behind you.

With his broad chest locking you in place, his hips pressing against your lower body, he left you with nowhere else to go. But this didn’t seem to be enough for him. Looking into his eyes, you could tell that he needed to see you become even more vulnerable. Almost as if he wanted to punish you for putting him on the edge.

And he did exactly that as he slipped one hand around your neck and pulled your hair, tilting your head back so that he could continue exploring the column of your throat with his sinful lips. Instead of resisting it, you simply gave in. Arching your back to him further as he trailed kisses on your skin, your hands clutching on his jacket to hold on.

He used his other hand to explore the rest of your body. Starting from your waist, he continued to move further down to your hips. Tracing every curve, every dent along your body with his firm fingers pressing through your thin dress.

Just as he was about to reach the hem of your dress, he suddenly stopped and pulled back.

“Tell me again. Are you sure this is what you want?” His voice was quiet when he asked you this. It sounded as though he was caught between convincing himself that this was happening while giving you an out for one last time before getting too deep.

But you had gone deep.

And you knew then that the moment you let everything happen, there was no going back from it. Everything about this was new to you; hooking up with a complete stranger while you were in the middle of nowhere, and knowing that once the night was over, both of you were going to move on with your lives.

It felt thrilling to think about it, and the liquid courage should help you in letting go of your inhibitions. Yet you couldn’t deny the fact that you are feeling slightly nervous about jumping fully into this.

When you failed to answer him, Tae leaned down, pressing a chaste kiss right below your ear and whispered, “Well? Talk to me. Because there is no going back from this once we begin, and I won’t let you go until you tell me what you want.”

The way his breath tickled your ear and caressed your skin broke you out of the walls you put up. Every flicker of doubt you felt immediately melted. You brushed against him, allowing him to feel every bit of heat coursing through your body before you answered with a whisper, “Yes. I’ve never been so sure in my whole life.”

You could feel the way his breath was caught as you pressed your palm on his chest. Pressing against him, you raised yourself up and nipped his chin with your teeth.

“This is what I want.”

You weren’t completely sure if you ever got to finish your sentence when all of a sudden, his lips came crashing into yours, pressing firmly as he kissed you, barely concealing his desire for more.

The kiss unleashed your own desire. You opened your mouth for him in return, allowing him to devour you, to have a taste of your demands as he thoroughly kissed you until you were left breathless in his arms.

His hand began to move again just then. Tracing down your hips, he pressed the tips of his fingers harder into your flesh. He made it seem as if your dress had melted into your skin with the heat of his touch that you felt completely exposed to him. And he didn’t stop until he finally found the exposed skin of your thigh.

Your body quivered upon contact, and you could tell that he felt it too. He began stroking your skin, moving at a slow, agonising pace just to put you on the edge.

And he easily succeeded. Already, you could barely breathe, even when he was still far from touching any part of your body that needed him the most.

Overcame with need, your body started moving on instinct. As if his touches were controlling you as you lifted your thigh for him. His grip on your thigh tightened, helping you to keep your leg up and open yourself to him while his kiss became sloppy yet gentle as he released his hold on your hair.

He moved his other hand down, brushing against your covered breast with a brief contact and continued trailing down. You felt him pressing at your hips, before pulling the hem of your dress upward until your lower region was completely exposed. His hand continued its travel as it climbed up your inner thigh. So you opened your legs to give him better access. A move which he appreciated with a deep hum, before you felt his thumb brushing up just an inch away from your throbbing core.

“Should we move this someplace else? Somewhere that would be more comfortable for us?” he asked you with his lips hovering close to yours.

It took a moment for his words to sink in. Too lost in the sensation that you were made to feel, you felt as if you were drunk and high, not from the alcohol that was no longer running wildly through your veins, but from his entire presence alone.

All thoughts faded further as his thumb grazed across the front of your panties, finding your folds through the fabric before he pressed down, enough to give pressure on your covered clit. Sparks flew through your half-lidded eyes as pleasure came rushing through you in waves. You couldn’t stop the moan slipping out of your lips, nor the way your hips rocked into his touch to feel more.

“So responsive,” he murmured against your neck before he planted a light kiss on your skin. “I would have loved to watch and enjoy every reaction that you would give me, every sound you make, while I have you lie down on my bed and fuck you senseless.”

Your breath hitched and caught in your chest. Not only because of his words, but also from the way his thumb continued to rub against your covered clit. It felt sinful, yet so delectable the way he kept drawing more and more sparks and shuddering pleasure through your body.

After being deprived of such attention for quite some time, your body became more sensitive to every friction, every treatment he was giving you, and you simply wanted more.

“Then take me there. Take me to your bed.”

As if you had flicked a switch in his brain, his expression changed. His gaze darkened as he captured your lips with unrestrained need, yet he was careful when he picked you up, pressing you against his chest when he turned and moved to take you away from the door.

You wrapped your arms and legs around him for balance, while your lips remained locked in a deep kiss. You could feel his long stride as he began carrying you across the room. His kiss and his firm hold on your bottom cheeks were enough to draw your attention away from his clumsy footsteps, but not enough to deny you from sensing the changes happening around you.

The scent of his cologne grew thicker as he went deeper into the room, and you were getting more and more lost in him. Drowned in his heat, his kiss, and the traces that he had left behind all over his bedroom, you felt him everywhere all at once that you felt like you were being put under a spell.

All so suddenly, you were pulled out of it when he broke away from the kiss. He laid you gently over the cold white sheets of his partly-made bed. Instead of joining you right away, he chose to pull back. His eyes seemed to glint in the dimly lit room as he took this moment to take you in.

“Beautiful,” he murmured softly, drawing heat back to your face.

He kept his eyes on you as he shrugged off his jacket and began peeling his shirt from his chest. Desire pulsed through your body as you watched every move he was making without ever drawing his attention away from you.

The more you watched him, the stronger the pull that you felt towards him. Once the need to touch him took over, you reached up and tugged on his pants, hoping that you could quickly shred them off of his body.

You barely grazed against his covered hard-on when he stopped you by catching your wrists. Like a disappointed teacher, he made a disapproval sound with his tongue.

“Patience, Red,” he teasingly said to you as he grabbed the hem of your dress and pulled it off of you with one swift move. You fell back to the bed with a gasp, shocked to see how easy it was for him to take over until you were left with nothing more but your lacy underthings.

The intensity you felt from his gaze made you want to wrap your arms around yourself and hide. But being half inebriated was making you slow in thoughts and movement that you couldn’t do anything but lay still. At the same time, you enjoyed the way he was looking at you, loving how he was losing himself to you the same way you did to him.

But it was the words that he said next that further brought out your wanton needs.

“Be a good girl and stay still. I want you to stay just like this,” he said with a murmur while his eyes ran down your body, “I want you to lie on your back while you are screaming out my name.”

If only you hadn’t been so lost for words, perhaps you would have challenged him in return. Instead, by the time every piece of his clothing was gone, you felt like you had melted further into the sheets. The raw passion you saw in his gaze and the way he was tracing his fingertips on your skin had locked you completely in place, leaving you with no other option but to surrender as he took control.

He bent down, his lips came down to your neck. Planting his kisses on your skin, he kept your attention away from his hands as he snapped off your bra and went down to pull your panties down your hips. As he dragged your panties down your bare legs, he continued his kisses further down, not stopping until he reached your heaving chest.

You couldn’t even remember what happened to that flimsy piece of fabric that he took from you. Everything else faded as his tongue grazed across your chest, drawing a gasp out of your lips. His firm hands returned to your hips right then, holding you down while he captured your taut nipple between his teeth.

The feeling that coursed through you was heavenly. A shooting pain came with a flare as he bit down, yet it was quickly replaced with an overwhelming feeling of pleasure when he lapped the pain away with his sinful tongue.

“Tae—”

His body quivered against yours at the sound of your voice. He pulled away with a grin, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he watched you arching your chest as if you were chasing him.

He ran his gaze down your body. Perusing you while silently admiring what he was seeing while he licked his lips. As if he was picturing the way you would taste.

“Tell me how badly you want this, Red,” he taunted you with his hand reaching out to the nightstand. You vaguely saw him grabbing a condom while you were struggling to breathe. Your eyes fell on his exposed, throbbing cock, and words simply left you.

Seeing its impressive size and girth, your entire body erupted with a pulse. It started from deep inside your core, right where you wanted to feel him the most. Astonished, you failed to remember that he was still waiting for your answer with his eyes locked on your face.

And he made you struggle further to find words when he reached down, wrapping his long fingers around his cock and started giving himself slow, lazy strokes. You could see the bead of his pre-cum glistening under the dim lighting. It took everything in you to stop yourself from leaning forward and lapping him dry. To have a taste, before you let him devour every drop of your essence.

“Red? Talk to me,” he spoke to you again with a curious tone in his voice.

He knew that he wasn’t getting any attention, as your eyes were locked only at one place that was not his face, and he seemed to be curious to know what was making you so lost in thoughts.

Instead of answering him, you continued to watch, completely transfixed by his actions, as he slowly spread his pre-cum along the length of his cock. You licked your lips, almost as if you could taste him. A barely concealed whimper slipped out of your lips when you watched him slowly roll the condom to cover himself from the tip of his cock and down to the base.

Seeing him covered with protection seemed to snap you back to the present. Even if your pulsing need still refused to tame down.

Resting back against the pillows, you dragged your eyes away from his impressive cock to his beautiful face.

“I want you here. Inside me,” you finally responded to his question. Placing your palms on the underside of your thighs, you parted your legs open, making him see the mess that had been building up right between your legs while you were enjoying the show he was giving you.

Now it was your turn to give him a show.

Reaching between your legs, you moved your fingers to find your folds. You bit back a gasp once the tips of your fingers were met with your wet arousal. It felt slick as you moved your fingers around, parting your nether lips so he could see your swollen clit, before you moved your fingers in circles, pressing at yourself the exact same way you wished he would.

“Please, fuck me, Tae. Fuck me good.”

His pupils dilated at the sound of your voice, at the pleading words you were giving him. You loved the way he was reacting to you just as much as he did with you, yet you decided to push his buttons further by adding, “And then I want to hear you scream my name while you cum inside me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What a little brat,” he said, chuckling. “So you like to play games, hmmm?”

You bit your bottom lip, holding back a moan that was threatening to come out when your touch inadvertently pushed against the source of your heat. “Oh, I do. Games are always fun.”

While he continued stroking his cock at a lazy pace, he used the other hand to grab your neck. His palm fit perfectly as he wrapped it around the column of your throat, putting pressure that was not enough to choke you, yet enough to show you who was in control.

“Then let’s play,” he groaned while he pressed you back down on the bed. “But this time, I make the rules.”

You felt the electrifying pleasure surging through your body as he brushed your hand away and lined himself against your entrance, shutting down the circuits inside your brain for a moment and stopping you from wiggling too much beneath him just to feel more friction.

A sharp moan was drawn from your lips as Tae slammed his full length deep inside you. The sensation that you felt from being filled by his width was so feral and explosive that you were sure you immediately experienced your orgasm right then and there.

Your body must have been shaking, which was a response that you failed to notice as you had your senses filled with the steady pulse of pleasure pressing across the girth of his cock. He must have noticed it when he came to a halt, giving you a chance to process everything and adjust to his presence inside you.

Nothing made sense to you beyond the pulsing pleasure that you felt from your hot pussy. Your senses were filled with the sound of your racing heartbeat, the soothing touch of his fingers on your skin, and the whispers of his voice calling you back to him.

He only managed to bring you back to the present by pressing gentle kisses on your lips, nose, and then on the rest of your face, stopping only after he kissed your lips again to draw your attention back to him.

Your legs were quivering when you opened your eyes to see him, yet you could already tell from the way the pulses that came right where you were joined started to settle, that your body had adjusted perfectly to his size.

But it didn’t mean that you would simply take it without sharing your thoughts.

“You’re—big,” you complained with a soft moan when you felt him growing harder inside you. It didn’t stop you from rocking your hips, trying to feel more friction, while he merely chuckled at your words.

“And it’s perfect for your tight pussy.”

His words drew a gasp from you. But he didn’t pay much attention to it, as he slowly began to move. He started with a slow pace, which was torturous and agonising, forcing you to feel the delectable way his girth was brushing against your pulsing walls.

Back and forth he went, going so deep you could almost feel him pressing up your stomach before pulling out until only the tip was buried inside you. He kept moving at the same pace, until you began to feel more desperate. Even your body was shaking with the need to feel more.

“More—!” you whispered with a strangled moan, “go faster.”

Hearing this, instead of doing what you were begging him to, Tae denied your plea by doing the opposite. With a wicked grin on his face, the fucker slowed down, bringing the pleasure that had been rising back down a notch.

You opened your mouth to protest against it, and he moved his hands down your hips, stopping at your thighs where he gave you a tight grip.

“You want more?” he asked you, his voice almost seemed to grow deeper, and you could feel a tinge of danger when he spoke. The same danger you saw coming through his gaze as he slowly brought your legs up.

You expected him to stop once he got your legs up his shoulders. But he just kept going. And going. Until you were nearly folded with your legs almost pressed to your chest.

“Tae—!”

It made you feel vulnerable, with nothing but your hands to use to hold on while he had full control of your body. He was still buried inside you, and this position allowed you to feel him more. As though you had grown tighter around him and he was growing bigger. His entire length and width made you feel full, as his cock was pressing tightly against your hot walls.

“You wanted more,” he murmured as he began moving, rocking his hips slowly back and forth, going in and out of you, drawing more and more of that shuddering pleasure out of your body as he continued fucking you gently. “I’m giving you more.”

He began increasing his pace. Going faster the more he heard you moaning in pleasure. “Lift your arms, Red. Bring them up and hold the pillows.”

It took a moment for his words to register in your head. Your hands had been clutching tightly on his forearms and it was a struggle to let go. And he waited, tormenting you by keeping his pace much too slow to your liking until you followed his command.

Your hands trembled as you unlatched them from his skin. You could barely feel your fingers as you dragged your hands up, as every part of your body grew more sensitive the more you opened your entire self to him. Keeping your eyes on him, you got lost in his intense gaze.

It was then when you finally came in contact with the soft pillows above your head, and your fingers easily sank into them, latching onto them as you did when you were holding onto his arms.

“That’s it. Good girl,” he murmured gently, and you were pleasantly surprised to realise how much you loved hearing his praise. Warmth bloomed in your chest, and it easily made its way down right to your core. “Now hold on tightly and don’t let go.”

And you did just that. Holding on tightly the way he wanted you to.

Only once he gained complete control of your body, once you fully submitted to him, he finally fulfilled your wish. He held firmly on your thighs to keep them folded and open for him, and he began ramming his cock deep inside you.

He was doing it faster. Harder. Sending you high in pleasure while all you could do was take his constant pounding. The only leverage you had to hold on was the tight hold you had on the pillows and the weight of his body that was pressing you down each time he pushed deeply inside you.

The anomalous sounds coming out of both of your lips kept bouncing off the walls. Followed by the sound of flesh clashing against flesh, the slick sounds that came from right where you were joined, and the creaking sound of the bed beneath you.

He kept going, relentless in his rough thrusts and his need to push you over the edge, until you could feel the rise of your orgasm coming in waves. The wanton pleasure that was hot and intense came rising inside you, growing rapidly with his deep thrusts until you finally succumbed to it, coming into your climax with a scream.

“Tae, I’m coming,” you cried out to him as you fell over the edge, though you weren’t completely sure if the words coming out of your lips were as coherent as you thought they would have been.

The sound of your pounding heartbeat seemed to drown everything away. Except that you could still hear the sound of his breathless grunts as they grew clearer, and the strangled moan that came out of him when he shouted, “That’s it, Red. Fuck, I’m coming!”

With a sharp intake of breath, he came to his climax. You felt every pulse of his release as he came inside you, and the tremble in his chest that surged through him with his deep groan as he relished the pleasure. Even after his release, he kept moving, rocking slowly and steadily until the spasms of your orgasm slowly began to wane down.

He remained buried inside you when he gently released you from his hold. You could barely feel his lips pressing on your quivering thighs before he lowered them back on the mattress, yet his gentle fingers remained hot on your skin when he brushed up against you.

He reached up and gently pried your fingers away from the pillows before slipping his fingers between yours. The way your fingers were entwined together felt so intimate. So unlike anything that you had ever thought about what a one-night stand would entail.

Your body felt hot, and your muscles were lax, but there was a series of small spasms still going strong from deep inside you, coaxed by his incessant rocking. You should have been pushing him off of you, instead of embracing his weight as he lowered himself, covering your body with his own.

“Tae—” you whimpered against his lips as he kissed you. Holding your hands in his, he continued to rock his hips.

How he managed to remain so hard and stiff even after his climax was beyond you. He still felt thick as he moved. His cock brushed against your pulsing walls as he went in and out, awakening all sparks of pleasure that were supposed to have dwindled.

And with how sensitive your body was, it rose and peaked so quickly and you had no power to stop it.

“Too…much…” you cried between the strangled moans coming out of your lips, right before he swallowed them with another kiss.

“One more,” he groaned as he picked up his pace. “Just do it one more time for me, Red.”

You were so sensitive it was beginning to hurt, but the pleasure was also maddening that you didn’t want to stop. This time, he wasn’t holding you down so strongly, allowing you to move beneath him. So you rocked back against him, pushing up each time he was thrusting into you. It only took a couple of more strokes before the coil in your core snapped, and you were sent to another climax.

And he joined you in your release, falling into a smaller climax of his own as you clenched tightly around him.

He came with a deep groan. His whole body quaked against you before he finally fell on top of you. While you were trying to control your breath, his lips came brushing your neck, kissing you gently to help soothe down the shudders running through your body.

“Fuck…so perfect,” he sighed between his kisses, his voice came in and out through your senses, and the sparks you felt rushing through your body started waning as you were slowly drifting away into the night, with his words echoing in your dreams,

“You are perfect.”

Author’s Note 2.0 | Thank you for reading so far. Any likes, kudos, comments, and feedbacks will be appreciated. The story continues in part 2.

⟶ Jingle All the Way collab masterlist | A Christmas Fix: next chapter ⇢

#k-vanity #bangtanwhq #taehyung smut #bts smut #taehyung fanfic #taehyung scenario #taehyung angst #taehyung x reader #bts fanfic #bts scenario #bts angst #bts x reader

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daycourtofficial · 5 months

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Gingerfucker - Eris x Rhys’s Sister!reader Masterlist

Banner by @milswrites | Note: these are in chronological order by content, not by posting date. This is an ongoing series and will be updated.

Summary: no one is more surprised than Eris Vanserra to find that he is capable of much more than just political ambition

Some art of the babies: (Nyx and Atlas) (All the gingersnaps) (Atlas and Leif) (Atlas) (the family)

Moodboard

One single thread of gold tied me to you* - Eris accepts the mating bond and is incredibly touched by the effort you put into cooking him the meal from scratch

All’s well that ends well to end up with you - fears and doubts cause you and Eris to do your first irrational act together: a secret mating bond ceremony

I am ash from your fire - Surprising Eris one evening, you’ve turned up in the dead of night to let him know that your brother had figured out your secret relationship, offering you an ultimatum.

Cold was the steel of my axe to grind - centuries of plotting and scheming come to a head when his mate unexpectedly arrives in Autumn and Eris is desperate to set his plans in motion, least she become a piece for Beron to use against him

Chains around my demons, wool to brave the seasons - Eris leaves his mate alone in the Forest House, telling her to trust no one but his mother. The two women are ill-equipped to provide frontline fighting, but surely they can help Eris in their own way. *companion piece to ‘Cold was the steel of my axe to grind’

Hell was the journey but it brought me Heaven - in the immediate aftermath of Beron’s death and the thrum of power in his veins, Eris’s mate forces him to, at the bare minimum, bathe

Secret exchanges - a few weeks after the aftermath of Rhys’s banishment, your mate, the new High Lord of the Autumn Court, has a secret meeting with someone from your family.

Blood moon in Autumn - fae cycles are no joke, but your mate is always there to provide you comfort in the best way possible: by being your personal heating pad

Have I found you, flightless bird? - a reflection of a life of secrets and expectations and how, despite it all, a flightless bird found home in an unlikely place

Ferocious beasts with soft bellies - Eris’s hounds know you’re pregnant before either of you do, driving the two of you wild with their newfound devotion to you.

Starfall in Autumn - based on the prompt for Starfall week “characters a and b realize they won’t make it to Starfall. They make the most of what they have to celebrate”

Laborious anxieties - Eris is riddled with anxiety leading up to your labor, but what happens when some of his worst fears come to fruition?

Amber eyes, looking into mine - Eris finds something in his study that triggers him into a frozen state of panic. Who better suited to pulling Eris from his past than his future?

We started alone, in the end we’re okay - on a rare night alone, Eris reflects on his long life and the lonely nights that haunted his youth. And how he’s a long way from the person he was and the person he had to be.

Fireling - every father’s dream is to be there the day his son first uses his powers. Luckily for Eris, he gets just that.

How the kingdom lights shine just for me and you - Eris tells his sons a story, letting them know how a strong knight defeated an evil dragon and saved the kingdom.

Loving parents, harmless fun - Modern!Gingerfucker - slice of life where Eris takes his family on a roadtrip and is only slightly annoyed at his son’s choice of car game

* = smut

#gingerfucker #acotar fanfiction #acotar writing #eris vanserra fanfic

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flowerandblood · 3 months

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Play with my heart (1/3)

[ modern actors • Aemond x Strong • female ]

[ warnings: kissing, sexual tension, unprofessional behavior ]

[ description: He gets the main role in a series about a great family and dragons, which could change his career. He is set to play the uncle and love interest of his childhood friend. When he meets the actress who plays her role, he begins to lose track of what is an acting and what is his real feelings. Sexual tension, grumpy, withdrawn, thirsty Aemond. ]

Author’s note: Yeah. I talked about it and I did it. You don't even know how much fun I had doing this. Of course, my characters play in a series whose script is an exact copy of my story The Fall from the Heavens. In this universe, Aemond (playing the One-Eyed Prince) and Rhaenys (playing the Princess) are of course not related – the other characters are also just actors. This three-part series is my gift to all fans of the original series, thank you so much for your support. "Rhaenys" in this story is her artistic pseudonym which she use instead of her real name. In this chapter you will see her Instagram photos without any face reveal, just treat it like some moodboard of her modern look. You can read this as a standalone story.

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Next chapters: Masterlist

_____

Despite his resistance, his grandfather said this series could be his big chance. Because what's the likelihood of a big production looking for a tall actor with a scar over his left eye?

The white line running from his eyebrow to his cheek was a reminder of when his nephew smashed a bottle next to him, the shards of which shot upwards as he leaned over it. He lost the sight in that eye at the time, but got a new artificial one that looked almost identical to the real one.

"The director became interested in you when I described your appearance and character to him. It's a leading role, Aemond." His grandfather continued, clearly excited. He, however, felt only discomfort at his words.

"It's a fantasy series. Dragons, gowns and knights. Romance, on top of that, between an uncle and a niece. I don't know. It's…" He started and didn't finish, running his hand over his face.

It sounded idiotic and he felt he would have made a fool of himself in front of millions of viewers who would forever remember him in the role of the cripple prince in an incestuous relationship.

"At least read the script." His grandfather didn't give up and placed a thick volume of stapled white pages in front of him.

Resigned, he spread himself comfortably on the sofa in his flat in the evening and began to read. He pressed his lips together when he saw that it all started with a flashback – the characters of the prince and his niece were still children at the time and were to be played by younger actors.

There was no cloying or exaggerated sweetness in the story or dialogues that he had expected. What surprised him was the moment when his character lost his eye and the fact that he decided not to speak to his betrothed for eight years.

He thought it was a bit of an overreaction, but perhaps in those days men approached their honour in this way.

Then he got to the scenes where their adult characters appeared and their first scene when they see each other in the courtyard. He imagined what was happening as if he was watching a film, them, throwing glances full of pain at each other, and him, unable to bear it, attacking his opponent in rage.

To his surprise, the next scene, the scene in his chamber turned into a love scene that made him hot – and then, just when he thought the rest of the plot would be a soap opera, his character suddenly became aggressive and cold again, destroying everything they had managed to accomplish.

He thought curiously that he liked how complicated and unpredictable the Prince's character was, how hard he tried to suppress the feelings he felt for this girl, how confident he was at the same time, with so many complexes and hatreds inside him.

He was intrigued.

He decided he would go for an audition and to his surprise, the next day he received a call that the director had decided he was perfect for the part.

He got the lead role in the series.

His grandfather, as his agent, contacted the production and it turned out that they wanted to rehearse scenes between him and the actresses who would play the Princess. He was to appear in the studio in a setting specially prepared for this, which would resemble the Prince's chamber.

They were to portray the scene in which his niece comes to the Prince's chamber on the evening they see each other for the first time in eight years.

There were no wigs or costumes prepared yet, so he was given something of a substitute, a simple leather tunic and boots, and a black eye patch that had been designed specifically for his character earlier and was already finished.

The lights were turned off, leaving only the lamps for illumination and the candles and fire lit all around. He looked towards the fireplace, fiddling with the knife between his fingers, recognising that this would add an air of unease to the scene.

"Action!" The director shouted, and the door opened. He looked to the side and spotted a tall, black-haired girl. Her lips curved in pain at the sight of him, as if she was suffering greatly, but he thought in the back of his mind that her facial expression was exaggerated.

"Did you received my letters?" She asked in a trembling voice, looking at him with her chin raised high.

This was not how he imagined her, but he decided to focus on his role, rolling the knife between his fingers.

"Yes." He replied coldly and dispassionately.

The girl swallowed hard.

"Have you read them?"

"Cut! They see each other for the first time in eight years. They feel anger, fear, disbelief! Give me something more than theatrical indifference and tears." The director called out, making both him and the girl in front of him swallow hard, embarrassed.

"Action!"

It seemed to him that it went on forever. Girls similar to themselves went in and out, and he repeated the same line over and over again, feeling nothing.

He was in character as much as he could, taking his role very seriously, trying to identify with it, but he couldn't bring up the feelings he was supposed to have for this girl who, after all, was supposed to be the love of his life.

He sighed heavily, adjusting the eye patch over his eye when the director said that there was another rehearsal ahead of them. He nodded his head to let him know that he was ready.

"Action!"

The door opened, but the girl who stood in it looked at him for a moment with big eyes, as if she didn't recognise him. There was something endearing in that gaze. She turned behind her, as if she was afraid of being seen, and immediately closed the door, breathing loudly.

At last, real acting.

She turned towards him, as if she was afraid of him, and he pressed his lips together, involuntarily looking at her body hidden only beneath a thin nightgown, her slightly wavy, long dark hair falling freely over her shoulders.

Her face was gentle, warm, her eyes large, her lashes and eyebrows dark, accentuating her charm.

She was silent for a moment, her lips trembling, as if she wanted to say something but couldn't.

"Did you received my letters?"She muttered softly in a hopeful voice, from which he felt goosebumps pass along his back.

"Yes." He whispered, his voice soft and low.

Yes, he thought, give me something I can work with.

She swallowed loudly and clenched her hands into fists, shifting from foot to foot. She shook her head, her eyebrows arched in pain as if asking how he could do this to her.

"Have you read them?" She asked, and he pressed his lips together, tilting his head back and snorted under his breath, turning the blade in his hand. She jumped up, horrified when he slammed it suddenly into the armrest lying beneath his hand.

"Yes, my Lady Strong. I have read them all. Many times, here, in this chair." He murmured mockingly, looking at her with slightly parted lips, lifting his chin in a gesture of superiority.

He was sure the director would interrupt, but he let them continue.

The girl lowered her gaze, her body quivering as if she was about to cry, an expression of humiliation, pain and shame on her face from which he felt heat in his heart.

Her gaze suddenly changed. She swallowed hard, as if she had also swallowed his insult, and moved ahead of him, pretending to walk towards the bookshelf.

He pressed his lips together and looked at her over his shoulder, measuring her with a furious, cold stare.

"Do you often visit men like this?"

She turned to him with a look as if she wanted to kill him, her hand dropping as if she had run out of strength after what she had heard.

"Have you no shame?" She asked coolly, the way she said it, the look in her eyes made him feel a cold sweat on his back.

"Cut! That was fantastic, thank you!" Said the director, and she blinked, the expression on her face turning from cold and disgusted to a wide smile full of joy, her gaze warm and welcoming.

"– you were amazing – I had goosebumps –" She whispered as she walked past him and giggled, waving goodbye to him, disappearing out the door a moment later.

When it turned out a few days later that she had got the role, he breathed a sigh of relief. The director had told him in a phone conversation that he could feel the kind of tension on camera that he expected from their characters and that this was it.

He was ashamed to admit it, but he agreed with him.

She was good and pulled the most subtle, intriguing expressions from her face with ease.

Although he didn't usually do this and resented his grandfather for forcing him to create an official instargam account, which was almost dead anyway, he used it to find her. At first he thought Rhaenys was her name, but then the producent told him it was her stage pseudonym.

He did not know what he thought of this, finding that it was an approach to acting that he was not fond of, but he decided not to judge her hastily, being a very private and withdrawn person himself.

Finding her turned out to be child's play, and he felt like a voyeur, scrolling through all her posts on her wall one by one, wanting to get a sense of who he would be working with, or at least that's how he tried to explain this unnatural curiosity to himself.

He snorted involuntarily in amusement upon seeing her Pikachu shirt, thinking with a kind of admiration that she had a distance to herself that he lacked.

She apparently wasn't afraid of harsh judgement from the outside world, of someone saying she was childish or immature, retaining a kind of innocence he hadn't seen in any actress in a long time.

Usually, like him, they created themselves, how they wanted to be perceived, making from their characters a style under which everything else was adjusted.

He felt a strange kind of satisfaction that he couldn't explain when he didn't see her in any of the photos with any man in an embrace or position that might indicate that she had a boyfriend.

He thought this would make it easier for him to get into character and not feel remorseful – although of course it was only his job – that he was touching someone else's girlfriend.

Although he was not convinced about this project at first, he was now beginning to feel excited at the thought that this really could open the door to his career.

All the way up to the start of shooting, he had been preparing himself to actually get into the character mentally, reading the script again and again, trying to understand Prince's character, unintentionally identifying with him more and more.

With his pain, his shame, his longing, his despair, his unfounded, cold, calculating irony and aggression.

While not everyone applauded the method acting, he felt the need to understand the character he was playing, to get inside his head, to become him in some way, to properly portray his emotions.

He and his grandfather flew to the hotel a few days before shooting to acclimatise, attend rehearsals and costume fittings. He met the actor, Aegon, who would play his brother-king, and Jace, who would play the Princess's older brother, and although he was an aloof man, he quickly found common ground with them.

Looking at the size and number of sets, the scenery created especially for one or two scenes, he felt the grand scale of the whole project and thought with excitement that he would be a fool if he refused.

When the make-up artists and stylists applied the wig on his head, his leather tunic, his breeches and his eye patch they said he was made for this role. When he glanced at himself in the mirror, he found in disbelief that he really did look like a different person and he liked what he saw.

He looked dark, menacing, malicious.

Just as he had imagined.

They met formally for the first time at, much to his liking, a session with a woman who he understood was a psychologist and was supposed to take care of them when it came to approaching intimate scenes and their comfort zone.

They shook hands with polite smiles in a way that was a tad too official, but there was something heartfelt and warm in her expression and her bright eyes that made him feel a pleasant sensation in his chest.

He tried not to grin as he saw her wearing a Pikachu t-shirt, the exact same one she wore in one of her photos on Instagram.

The woman invited them with a hand gesture to sit across from her on the couch as she sat on the other side, in an armchair.

"As I understand it, you have both read the script and your director's suggestions and know that there will be scenes involving you touching your naked bodies or exposing yourself in front of each other." She said calmly and they nodded their heads.

"Okay. I'll start by asking if you have any questions or concerns." She continued, but they were silent.

"I will be with you during every scene of this type, offering you advice and support. You have the right to say if you feel uncomfortable, if you are made to feel bad by a certain type of touch and you don't want to repeat the scene in the same way. The director wants you both to feel safe here." She added, and they nodded their heads.

"Do you have any barriers, things you're sure you don't want the other party to do? Touch in places that you find unacceptable?" She asked, and he remained silent, but looked at his partner out of the corner of his eye, curious.

He saw that she pressed her lips together, as if she wanted to say something but was afraid to. She swallowed quietly at last, fiddling with the material of her black tracksuit shorts.

"– I – let's just say I'm not experienced in this kind of scenes – it's hard to say where my comfort limit is – what should I do if, for example, we're in the middle of filming and I feel unwell? –" She asked uncertainly, looking at her with her big, bright eyes.

The woman nodded.

"– of course, you should then stop the filming – it would be a good idea if you just agreed between you beforehand what you plan to do, where you plan to touch each other – this will help you to prepare in advance for what is going to happen, to say what causes your concerns –" She replied calmly.

The girl smiled and let out a quiet breath, as if something in her answer had reassured her.

He saw her for the second time during a party at the hotel that the series' production organized for them, so they could get to know each other better and relax before the first day of shooting.

Like him, she was dressed plain, in long mid-thigh length, fluffy sweatshirt and woollen cream, overknee socks, while he, as usual, was dressed all in black.

She approached him to greet him for a certain out of sheer courtesy, he however appreciated her professional demeanour. When she asked if she could sit with him and the people from production he involuntarily moved over on the sofa, making room next to himself, which she accepted with a smile.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye while chatting to the set crew all evening, a few drinks were enough for him to loosen his tongue a little and start talking like a normal person.

He furrowed his eyebrows, feeling the whisky already humming heavily in his head when he saw her get up from the table and go to the toilet, leaving her half-finished drink with them.

He figured he'd wait with his assessment of the situation until she returned, but to his dismay, surely enhanced by the alcohol, he acted rather dramatically, pushing the glass away from her as soon as she sat back down next to him and tried to reach for it.

"Never leave your drinks with strangers in this business. Always take them with you." He said as if he were her older brother or father.

She blinked, horrified and ashamed, clearly not even thinking that anyone among the people around her might want to hurt her, but he knew this environment better than she did.

Seeing the look on her face, he pressed his lips together.

"Believe me. I heard this kind of stories. They put pills in your drink, tell you they'll help you back to your hotel room when you start to feel worse, and the next day on set they tell you that if you say anything to anyone, you can go back where you came from."

They stared at each other for a moment in uncomfortable silence and although the people around them were laughing, she seemed to be experiencing some sort of shock.

"Do...do you know such women personally?" She mumbled, and he shook his head, playing with his glass between his fingers.

"No, thank God. But I've heard hundreds of stories like that. I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just trying to warn you. For your safety." He added, feeling for some reason like an idiot who was now lecturing and moralising her.

She nodded quickly, however, her gaze filled with a warmth and understanding that made his chest hot, though he blamed the whisky he'd drunk for his condition.

"Yes, you are right, I should be more careful. I'm glad I'll be working with someone like you." She confessed with a kind of embarrassment that surprised him, playing with the material of her woollen knee-length socks.

He looked at her, spread out comfortably on the leather sofa, realising that there was so little room at the table that their knees were pressed against each other.

When she said she would go to sleep, for some reason he offered to walk her to her room. She smiled broadly at his words and they set off together for the lift, exchanging quiet, non-committal remarks on the way.

There was something about her demeanour that made him feel at ease, her gentleness, openness and the alcohol humming in his head made him more daring when it came to spoken words.

"You made a great impression on me during the auditions." He hummed and she looked up at him, her eyes shining with joy.

"You don't even know how much these words mean to me. You were wonderful, convincing and charismatic. I hope I won't disappoint you." She said.

"Mmm." He hummed and flinched as the elevator doors slid open on the floor where their rooms were located. They walked out into the hall in silence, the warm look in her eyes that she gave him over her shoulder made him feel hot.

"– see you tomorrow –" She said and he nodded.

"– sleep well –"

The first scene they were to play, although it was only in the fifth episode, was when they returned to her chamber after speaking with her stepfather following negotiations about the succession to the throne.

Their dialogue was about what they really thought regarding what had happened in the past – this scene did not contain intimate moments and was meant to help them get into their characters well.

She walked into the room, which was also a large medieval chamber immersed completely in darkness and smiled at the sight of him. He nodded his head in greeting.

She approached him, all beaming with happiness and excitement, a nightgown on her body and a thin robe thrown over her shoulders.

"You look amazing. Wonderful characterisation." She said softly with a sincere cordiality from which he felt warmth in his heart.

"Thank you." He replied calmly, not knowing what more he could answer.

"I am the one who wants to thank you. For what you said yesterday. I guess I needed to hear this." She said, giving him a warm look full of gratitude that made him feel relieved.

"Forgive me if I was too harsh." He whispered.

"You were not." She said calmly.

He nodded and grunted, swallowing heavily, being sober having problems again with putting his thoughts into words.

They looked up at the director who ordered that they were about to go to the first shot where they were lying on the bed, so they took their places next to each other on the sheets.

He felt the stress gripping his body, the tension at the thought that there were dozens of people around them looking at them and judging him.

He had been given this role with ease and now he had to prove himself.

"Action!"

He shuddered as he felt her hand on his and looked up at her – her face was frighteningly close to his, pleasantly smooth and soft, a warmth in her gaze from which he ran out of words.

"Speak to me, uncle. Don’t lock yourself in your mind." She whispered to him, as if these words were meant only for him, as if she really cared about him, missed him, loved him.

He looked at her with his heart pounding fast, thinking with horror that he had forgotten his line.

"– I will –" She whispered.

He swallowed hard and closed his eyelids, trying to turn his fear into an expression of regret and rage on his face.

"I will never understand how could you leave me then." He hissed through clenched teeth, looking at her again, pain in her gaze, as if his words had really surprised and hurt her.

"– that was never my intention –"

"– then why? –"

"My mother then told me to let you rest and calm down. That the guards wouldn’t let me visit you anyway by order of the Queen."

He snorted, looking at her with both disbelief and frustration. He blinked, smelling her pleasant scent, and realised that, just like in the script, she must have rubbed her skin with some vanilla oil.

He looked at her lips, pink, soft and full, and for a moment he forgot again what he should say next.

What was happening to him?

"It doesn’t matter." He muttered finally. "I needed you when it happened."

He saw her furrow her brow, her lips tightened in pain.

"I needed you too." She said in a trembling voice. "When Criston Cole held my cheeks as your mother’s guards poured moon tea down my throat. I wondered at the time if that’s how you felt."

He was impressed to see real emotion in her gaze – pain, grief, shame, fear. He didn't know why he lifted his hand and touched her cheek – he thought it was idiotic, but she followed it up and grasped his fingers in hers, kissing gently the inside of his palm.

He cursed in his head feeling his manhood pulsed softly in his breeches.

He put his arm around her waist and snuggled her into his chest as scripted – her hands embraced him, her face pressed against the hollow of her neck.

He seemed to feel her puffy little nipples through the fabric of his shirt before the director shouted ‘cut!’.

They pulled away from each other, looking up at him, rising on their elbows.

"– I liked it, but I would change the ending – I know it's not in the script, but the moment when he touches her cheek begs for a soft, tender, innocent kiss – can we try it that way? –" He asked, and they nodded and grunted, embarrassed.

She returned to her earlier position, trying again to bring to her face the same sadness, pain and grief he had seen seconds before.

"I needed you too." She said in pain. "When Criston Cole held my cheeks as your mother’s guards poured moon tea down my throat. I wondered at the time if that’s how you felt."

He looked at her for a moment with a gaze full of regret and touched her cheek again, running his thumb over her jaw. She kissed his hand as gently as before, cuddling her face into his rough skin, closing her eyes. She sighed quietly as he drew her closer to his face, her warm breath enveloping his skin before his fingers weaved into her hair, forcing her to lean down.

They clung to each other in a slow, shy kiss with the quiet click of their saliva, her plump, fleshy lips tasted of some sweet strawberry lipstick, deliciously soft, warm and wet, their breaths shaky and excited.

It seemed to him that time stood still; her touch was tender and full of peace but also the certainty of her affection, her soft fingers gently trailing over his jaw and cheek, caressing him as if she wanted to give him a sense of security.

Something about her closeness reassured him, and his broad hand stroked her head as if she were a small child, brushing gently her lower lip with his own, a quiet, shy sigh left her mouth.

He swallowed loudly, terrified as he felt his manhood swell and throb at the sound, at her closeness, at her taste, craving more.

They finally pulled away, her forehead pressed against his temple as his knuckles ran over her warm, soft cheek, something in her gaze he couldn't name.

"Cut! I loved this!" Their director called to them and they let out a loud sigh of relief, as if they had accomplished something very significant. His partner smiled at him.

"Everything's all right?" He asked, somehow condescending towards her, afraid she wouldn't tell him she felt uncomfortable even if she did.

She blinked, surprised by his question, and leaned over him as the crew discussed with each other whether they wanted to change anything in the shot.

"Why are you asking?" She asked lightly, curious, as if she didn't understand what he meant.

There was something intimate about how close her face was, her pleasant scent filling his lungs.

"We didn't talk about this before the scene. You know." He replied, not knowing what else to call what he was thinking about. Her eyes widened as if what he said scared her.

"– oh – no, no – I feel fine – but it's very kind of you to ask –" She whispered warmly, laying her head next to his on the pillow, pressing her forehead to his temple.

"– I feel safe with you –" She said softly into his ear, her words intended only for him.

He swallowed loudly at the thought that this could be a huge mistake on her part.

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uncouth-the-fifth · 2 years

Text

click - Sam Winchester/Reader

read it on ao3.

Pairing: Sam Winchester/Reader (circa season 1) Tags/Warnings: cabin-in-the-woods moment, fluffy bestie banter, virgin reader, first time sex, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, and of course, Sam is a pussy god, as per usual. Word Count: ~20k (shhhh don't talk about it i have a problem) Notes: that's right, i make moodboards now bitches. these photos were collaged by my wonderful commissionee @daffodil-mania, who asked for: ""a reverse (you are a) natural, baby? where sam is the reader’s first time + a smutty cabin in the woods-type situation." Ask to be added to my taglists for future posts!

“Okay, okay,” you thought out loud, thinking hard, “my turn—if you could have anyone as a dinner guest, alive or dead, who’d you pick?”

A few paces ahead of you, Sam hummed in thought. His puffy winter coat made the outline of him against the swirling snow thicker, and if it was possible, taller, a menacing wall of deep blue between you and the woods. Something hiding out here and spying could even mistake Sam for something scary. Luckily, you weren’t that stupid.

Sam, for the millionth time in the last minute, checked that you were where you were supposed to be. (Two immediate steps behind him. Or he’d die). Looking back at you made the wind mess up his hair every time, and every time Sam tucked the same two strands behind his ears again. Like the shy girls in rom-coms did. Truly, monsters trembled at the sight of him.

He geeked at your question, but managed to play it cool: “Gandhi. Feel like he could teach me something. We’d probably like the same food, too, so it’d make for a good dinner.”

“Oh yeah, he was a vegetarian, right? You two could have a nerdy little salad together.”

Under the soft swell of the wind, you thought you heard Sam laugh, but it picked up in loud gusts at times that swirled skirts of untethered snow around your ankles. Well, your knees. The snow was tall enough here to seep into your boots. You’d given up totally on finding your own footing and started walking in Sam’s tracks, which were wider than yours almost all the way around. You told yourself that this was to confuse anyone tracking your prints in the snow, but really it was just fun to compare your shoe size to Sam’s. This set the walk back to the cabin at a snail’s pace. But with the way this conversation was going, you didn’t exactly mind freezing your ass off.

John had left his boys yet another unfinished hunt to distract them. Sam and Dean, tired of being distracted, changed tactics and split up. Dean was following a lead in Montana that could actually take him to John, and you and Sam were tying up John’s loose ends in upper Washington. The two of you had spent the last three days researching bloody disappearances in the area. An area in the thick of its snowiest, blurriest season, mind you, miles from anything but one of the Winchesters’ off-the-grid apocalypse shelters. This wasn’t how you and your mother had operated when you’d hunted together, but. Things changed. Parents disappeared.

Sam seemed to be shoving himself through John’s absence as best he could. You got smiles out of him here and there, but especially today, playing question games to pass the time mapping the woods and putting down traps.

“Gandhi was a fruitarian,” Sam clarified. He shielded his face from the snow by hiding in his collar, so you may have misheard when he added, “So, yeah. Him or my mom.”

Months ago, a mention of Sam’s mom would’ve shocked you into a full-on coma. He kept her memory even closer to his chest than Dean did, in some ways, and either brother even sneezing in the direction of their storied past had been a once-in-a-lifetime event. Before this hunt, that is. Now you couldn’t get Sam to shut up. Either the isolation had made him lonely or something else had pushed him to trust you, because the last two days had been spent this way—trudging through snow and spilling your guts about everything under the sun together. Sam loved to read and watch documentaries, he was fascinated by astronomy and meteorology and organized crime history and Native American folklore, and, hey, big surprise, reading. You’d never heard him talk about anything with so much passion. You hadn’t heard that passion in your own voice since before you’d lost your mom.

Still. As comfortable as you suddenly felt with Sam, you were sure to tread lightly. You risked a glimpse at his broad, snow-dusted back. “Mary would be nice too. Maybe you’d get to try some family recipe she’d make or something.”

“I think I remember my dad tellin’ me once that she hated cooking, actually, but m’ not sure,” Sam said, a bit of humor in his voice.

You thought of the soup Sam had turned to lava over the wood stove that morning, and grinned, “Yeah, I think you got that from her.”

Keeping casual eyes on your feet, you tried to see how fast you could get your boot through each foothold in the snow. Sam would make deep gouges in the powder with his longer strides. Crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch. You’d clear them three in a row, sometimes four, then stop short a step behind Sam and wait for him to make more tracks. Like hopscotch, almost. Every once in a while a huge gust of wind would force Sam to stop, and without a word he’d form a wall between you and the blast. You’d learned pretty much everything there was to know about Sam these last few days, but out of all his best dorky qualities his chivalry was your favorite.

“S’ not that I hate cookin’, I just suck attit.”

And the accent. The accent was gold, when the pretty drawl of it crept through with Sam’s boredom.

A little further and the spindly, snow-heavy trees parted for the lake you and Sam had been using to navigate. On your first day scouting you’d noticed how the icy surface had frozen like a misshapen heart, and since then Sam followed the point of it back to your cabin every night. Southeast of it was the abandoned mining facility that’d swallowed three people whole, and to its far right was where three more had disappeared. Your guess was a couple of territorial tree nymphs or werewolves, and Sam was betting on a Winter Hunger. The loser would take the first shift driving down to Montana.

Seeing the lake, Sam starts to arc your march around the edge, his sharp eyes on the treeline across the ice. The wind was stronger with room to run over the lake, but you reminded yourself that being a little cold was the gentlest way to die out here and forged ahead. Besides, most of your body had gone stark numb miles back. When you remembered how bad your cheeks were stinging, you’d bring your scarf tighter around your face and watch Sam, his long legs cutting easily through the snow.

The wind cooled down to a whisper. You reminded him, “Your turn.”

You’d reached a point where coming up with good questions had become harder than answering them, so Sam took a bit to stew on something good. There’d been a silent agreement on who was responsible for which kinds of asks. You would probe Sam with the deepest, most personal shit you could come up with, and after he explained what his life’s accomplishment was and what friendship means to him, Sam would go, uhhhh, what’s your favorite color? He was definitely the smartest shovel in the Winchester shed.

“How about this,” Sam cleared his throat. “Would you ever wanna be famous?”

You must’ve made a noise that gave away your surprise at the quality of his question, because he made a snooty sound back that had you seriously considering shoving him in the snow. You put your hands on his shoulders and everything, but where there should’ve been normal guy shoulders there were buff guy shoulders, which wouldn’t budge an inch. Sigh. What a lousy, muscly jackass.

Sam planted his feet, whining your name. “C’mon. Answer.”

“I’m thinking!” You laughed, and pushed with your legs until Sam tilted forward into his next step. It took a moment for you to keep your hands to yourself. “Okay. In this hypothetical world, what am I famous for?”

“Supermodel,” Sam answered right away.

You splashed a little snow at his jeans, deciding to save your funny feelings about his answer for later self-reflection. “Dude. Be realistic.”

At this, Sam snickered, and even with him facing forward you could imagine the dry sloping smile pressing into his dimples. “Okay—across the whole entire world, you’re famous for cooking the perfect soup in a can. Like, in ways no one can even imagine, that’s how good. You make millions of dollars off it and become a household name. Would you want that?”

“God, no,” you wuffed out, immediately sending Sam into a fit of giggles. “Are you kidding me? All those strangers knowing me, not giving me any privacy? And don’t even get me started on all those soup-hounds throwing themselves at me for my soup-money.”

“I guess that’s true. You could never marry for love, 'cause everybody would just want your soup,” Sam mourned. Another great Sam quality: he was excellent at going along with a bit. “You’d just have to live with brief soup-flings for the rest of your life.”

You thought about what a soup-fling could entail for all of one second, then burst out laughing, warm clouds of it spiraling into the air through your breath. The shoulders of Sam’s coat shook with glee. It was funny for a few more beats until it warmed into something that was light and airy, something you hadn’t heard from Sam since you’d met him. He had the sweetest laugh. It made your damn teeth rot.

“Y’know, speaking of flings,” you hollered over the hissing wind, “I have no idea how your brother does that shit.”

Dean was safe and familiar territory; he was the centerpiece of everything you had in common with Sam, so your conversation circled back to him plenty. Every conversation you’d had with Dean orbited around Sam some way, too, so you’d come to expect it. You’d never seen two brothers care about each other as much as they did. Which was hilarious, since the moment one of them got you alone all they did was bitch. Dean’s been driving me up the damn wall. Sam keeps stickin’ his nose in my business. Neither of them had ever had a trusted third set of eyes before, or at least one who understood that their complaints were overshadowed with love. John had been someone to look up to, to emulate and impress, but you were a fresh outlet available for family baggage. The boys were your outlet for bitching too, since it was understood that your bitching also came from the heart.

“A girl in every port sounds fun in theory, but I feel like I’d get sick of it fast,” you confessed.

The snow underfoot began to crunch harder with each step, packed down into a firm sheet. Soon Sam’s prints were so shallow that you could see the tips of your boots again. Taking the chance while you had it, you fought against the snow to walk side-by-side with him, then fought again to match him stride-for-stride. Sam’s poor face had been pounded with so much snow that his bangs were soaking wet, but he still managed a half-frozen smile seeing you next to him.

“And, I dunno. I think I care about hurting people’s feelings too much to just…” you gestured stiffly, “head to the next town after sharing a night with someone.”

“Same here,” Sam sighed, then gave a very subtle cough as a sign to shift gears: “But, uh, I think it’s kinda a stress relief thing for him.”

You probably should’ve guessed that Sam wasn’t the fling type, since you’d been there every time he’d shied away from Dean’s plans to pick up girls, but the idea… sat there. Staring at you. It’d be stupid-easy for Sam to live that lifestyle. Dean had his own notions about what girls were most into (bad boys, leather jackets, you know), but you happened to be certified in what girls were into, and you had it on good authority that Sam was a total dreamboat.

You nudged Sam with your shoulder, coaxing him open with a well-placed smile. This was unearthed territory. “Not your thing, huh?”

The snow had pinkened Sam’s face enough as it was, so what he was capable of on his own was downright impressive. Even his ears went red. “Uhh,” he chuckled, too skittish to look you in the eye. “No, not really. I’m. I, uh, I’d rather get to know her first, y’know. Before we’re intimate. And hopping towns doesn’t exactly give you the time to do that.”

Yup. Total dreamboat.

“Oh, so that’s your plan, asking me all these personal questions.”

Sam controlled his sputtering by pressing his lips into a firm, flat line, which refused to indulge your silly flirting. “You’re a jackass,” he said, and the growing smile in his voice betrayed just how little he thought that was true.

When you were done laughing at your own joke, Sam guessed, “So that’s not your thing, either? One night stands?”

You were having fun—pulling Sam’s leg, for one, but also talking to him in general, so the truth glides right out of your mouth.

“Wouldn’t know. I’ve never had sex.”

Sam had left his filter two states behind on the drive up, so he doesn’t even think to cap his disbelief. He scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

His mortification with himself makes contact two beats later, and while you’re smirking and floating unbothered across the snow, Sam nearly goes belly-up falling over himself to apologize.

You soak up his groveling until Sam’s embarrassment hits a breaking point, then, in your humblest and kindest princess voice, you say, “It’s cool, Sam. No worries. I’m not at all offended you think it’s weird I’m a virgin.”

“I don—I-I don’t think it’s weird,” Sam stressed, going a little wild in the eyes. “It’s great! …I mean, not like, great, I just mean. It’s not a bad thing or anything.”

You meet his awkward silence with a smug, pleased one of your own. Sam’s smart enough to realize he’s stumbled into your trap, but not quick enough to find an escape, so he sputters for a long time and falls back on his third option.

“I’m just wondering,” he winces, knowing his question is stupid, “why are you still a virgin?” You’re about to laugh in his face, but the earnestness in Sam’s voice makes you hesitate. His question is a genuine one. “...That sounds awful, m’ sorry. But, c’mon. You’re smart enough to know how pretty you are. Charmin’ enough to use it, too. I mean, I’d…”

He caught himself. “—Anyone, would, uh…”

Sam didn’t finish his thought. He changed his grip on the shotgun swinging from his hand, self-conscious, and cleared his throat.

Well. That wasn’t obvious at all. No way in hell you were leaving that alone.

“You’d what?”

Sam didn’t say anything. He just tucked his hair behind his ears again, too shy to say what he was thinking but bold enough to let it be spoken in his silence instead. And it was a very, very telling silence.

Your brain scrambled to cram as much as possible into the blank Sam had left. There was so much potential in that one little word. I’d…

I’d understand if someone wanted to have sex with you.

I’d have found someone by now, if I were you.

I’d have sex with you.

I’d take that opportunity, ______, if I could.

Hm. Okay. Okay, huh. There weren’t a lot of people in the world capable of making you question your life decisions so quickly, but of course, this was Sam. His silence persevered. Your train of thought became an internal trainwreck.

A few opportunities had cropped up over the course of your life—third dates with guys that hadn’t totally sucked, a few handsome barflies—but nothing had… clicked. Because there was supposed to be a click, right? Before sex? Some compass in your body, moving you in a certain direction? You hoped to drift toward something that fit better than a stranger, but like Sam had said, that level of commitment wouldn’t be waiting for you out on the road. You could hook up with civilians or hunters as you pleased, but just the thought made your chest ache. Real connection wouldn’t be waiting for you in the back of a truck or a sleazy motel. Hunters lived short lives, sure, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t be a hopeless romantic.

You’d held onto that notion for a long time. Someday, something would click, and it’d be worth the damn wait.

Now, Sam was here, blinking coyly at you through his bangs, keeping you close to him, listening when you spoke. Click, goes your brain. Like a gear notching into place. He has those mossy, sensitive eyes that pry right open just for you and the prettiest rasp to his voice. Click click.

“C’mon,” Sam coughs. “Cabin’s just ahead.”

I’d… Sam had said, and left you to fill in the blanks.

The next day, both of you were proven wrong. You found out the hard way that the disappearances weren’t caused by cannibalistic spirits or werewolves. After getting mauled by living hills of snow and almost swallowed by an avalanche, you and Sam got the very subtle and not-at-all-lethal impression that you were dealing with an insane case of cursed ground. (Cur-sed, Sam had said, because he was fancy.) It took some on-the-spot ritual work and a day’s worth of walking to bury hex bags in the right spots, but by dusk you were alive and comfortable back in the cabin.

“I say we stick around for one more night—make sure this place is clean,” Sam suggested, shaking himself out on the welcome mat. When he shucked his coat off, the silky interior and the back of his shirt were dark with melted snow.

You glanced between Sam, who was blue at the edges, and the shifting tides of flakes on the wind outside. If you stared long enough the whole mountainside seemed to come alive in the dark.

“Uh,” you told him, “are you sure? If we got even one of those spells wrong, what’s stopping this thing from burying the whole cabin?”

But Sam had already thought of that, like he’d already thought of everything else. He rose from where he’d been kicking off his boots to give your icy hands a quick, warming squeeze. “I got it covered. Go—get a fire started, and fast.”

Since you were still riding the wave of adrenaline that’d kept you alive against moving, living forces of nature, you were already following Sam’s orders before he’d finished saying them. He didn’t act hardly as hurried. Being soaked and half-frozen was apparently second nature to him, since he navigated uninhibited through the duffle of ingredients you’d unloaded on the cabin’s floor. Your fingers were so numb that it took three tries to scrape some fire out of your matches, and by then Sam was already tying off his millionth hexbag of the day.

You didn’t regain your senses until a few minutes later, which passed as slow as hours did. Somehow in that sliver of time you’d hauled more firewood inside, hurried it into the fireplace, lit it, helped Sam bury the protection spells around the yard, raced back inside, and laid all your wet clothes out in front of the hearth. The second the doors were locked, your high started to tank. Sam was talking.

“—will last us through til’ tomorrow. Then, in the morning, we can use the spell to see if the land is purified. It might even be a good idea to check with the dowsing rods, too. If this ground is as cursed as we think, the hexbags will be just fine, though, so you don’t have to worry. You listenin’?”

Sam was a big, fuzzy-edged shape sitting criss-cross on the ratty rug a few paces from the fire. His silhouette was outlined by it in handsome shades of gold and honey-white, ‘cause of course he was the kind of movie beautiful that suited romantic fire lighting. Like, really romantic. Your brain had been baking in the panicked sludge of fleeing and hunting all day, but even it was capable of looking at that image of Sam and going, Uh, yeah. There’s something going on here.

For the last few days, the two of you had purified the ground of the cabin, too. It was the most telling relic of Sam and Dean’s life with John Winchester: rationed, unglamorous, and harsh. John was usually an out-of-bounds subject for the boys, but Sam had spent the last few days describing him at length. He was paranoid and obsessive—hence the cabin’s military rations, hidden weapons, traps, metric fucktons of salt, and next to nothing else. John hated any music and technology post-1980—hence the cabin’s record player. It was the only source of entertainment on hand, and the same three records only lasted so long. Even as hunter’s hovels went, this one was impressively oppressive.

Sam, plagued by abysmal hunter-kid memories of being stuck out here, had warned you about it ahead of time. You’ll get bored and miserable. He’d said that and you’d thought to yourself how hard it would be to get bored and miserable around Sam, who mystified you just sitting there. Still, you splurged on some big fluffy blankets, the shittiest and cheapest chess set you could find, pillows, and s’mores. Not exactly the John Winchester essentials, but. Just in case.

Stuffing the footwell of Sam’s stolen truck with cozy bullshit had been worth it in the end, purely because you wouldn’t wish the sleeping situation in the cabin on your worst enemy. There was a single, boxspring-less bed crammed in the bedroom’s corner, with a blanket too pitiful to put into words. It only had one pillow. This pillow also happened to be of unknown origin and age, and you were only brave enough to touch it because you’d worn your big girl pants that day. Sam had banked on the two sleeping bags he and Dean had left there as kids, but they were unfortunately still kid-sized. The two of you would’ve been forced to share body heat under one petal-thin blanket. Now, loaded up with massive, fuzzy comforters and heavy quilts, the two of you were happily sharing body heat under enough blankets to drown in.

Sam had insisted on making a bed for himself on the floor the first night. You’d let him, purely because he was pouring on the chivalry by the truckload and you were too grateful to know what to say. Any plans to argue were pinned down by that stern, unguarded stare. S’okay, I’ve been sleepin’ like this since I was little. Just a few minutes sinking into your snug nest made you rot with guilt. Being on the road with the boys put you in a bed with Sam plenty of times, and though the quarters were a bit tighter in the cabin, the cold was sharper too. You confessed your guilt to Sam the next day, and after the usual research marathon that night you felt his weight fill the untouched side of the bed.

Okay, Sam had caved. But—you’re sleeping on the inside, by the wall. I’m a lighter sleeper. That way if somethin’ comes in, I can protect you.

Hearing that, you’d grabbed his wrist and pulled it over your side. You’d kept one hand fisted around the knife under your pillow and the other folded over Sam’s hand, as if to say, I can protect you, too. Sam must’ve understood, because he’d pressed his cheek against your shoulder blade and succumbed to sleep. The rest of the week was spent like that, Sam herding you against one side of the slim bed with his legs and his arms and his sleepy-soft breaths. Though the bed was toasty and the contact was a one-stop sleeping pill, you stayed up with your knife for company. Sam deserved to feel safe while he slept.

You didn’t get that often as a hunter. Especially the touching part. Touching of any kind only really happened when you trusted someone, and trust was earned on the road with all the ease and painlessness of pulling teeth. In Sam’s case, he was an untapped well for little doses of affection. The moment that line was crossed, the second you’d taken a hit in his place for the first time, the second you’d torn your own clothes to wrap his wounds, Sam was open to you. He would never reach for your hand first (not if he was still Sam, who thought he didn’t deserve it), but you could reach for his and he would take it without question. You could pull his arm around you and Sam would wrap it tight, pressing his nose into your back. There was an exchange that occurred. He trusted you to give him something he was too proud to ask for and you trusted him to let you in, the two of you careful not to break the magic.

While he poked at the fire and lit candles, you flitted to the other room to scoop up a blanket to wrap yourself up in. The constant back-and-forth insanity of the day had made you too nauseous to eat, but you knew your stomach needed something. Preferably something sweet to trick you into feeling rewarded. Military rations really weren’t your thing, so you opted for the pomegranate Sam had avoided to keep his research papers clean.

He’d been going through your plan for tomorrow, right. “I’m listening, Sammy.”

When you circled back to join him on the rug, you opened up an arm of your blanket-cape for him. Sam, without comment, ducked under it, and you shuffled around for a minute to give his broader shoulders some fabric to work with. “All we can do for now is wait,” he told you, “so… whaddya wanna do?”

You put a bowl down in front of you and started splitting the pomegranate with your knife. “Chess again?”

Sam’s lip slanted in a frown. All his energy for smart stuff had been spent on the hunt today, so you weren’t all that surprised at his reluctance.

“Cards, then?” You guessed. Beads of rich red fruit started to fill your bowl, which Sam didn’t hesitate to sneak a hand into.

“There’s only so many rounds of Go Fish a guy can handle losing, _____,” Sam teased.

It was true. You’d obliterated him every round so far, the poor bastard.

Sam leaned into your side, filling your peripherals with his know-it-all smirk. “Unless you—”

“We’re done playing poker,” you said, having suffered your fair share playing against him. The emptiness of your wallet must’ve reflected in your voice, since Sam started snickering into his lap—and yeah, maybe the whole cute-shy-guy routine had worked on you, but knowing Sam he’d find a way to sneak the money he’d won out of you back into your bag. He was sweet that way. Evil, but sweet.

“Okay,” Sam wet his lips and wracked his brain. “...I could read my book to you. It’s the one I was telling you about—”

“—with the corrupt cops in L.A,” you filled in. Separating the pomegranate seeds from their core was bloody work with your knife, so when the natural halves of it were happily in the bowl you picked the rest apart with purple-stained fingers.

“Uh-huh. And we’re at a part I think you’d find pretty interesting, all the crazy trial stuff.” Sam shrunk into his shoulders a little bit, then added in a quiet voice, “If you, y’know. If you want.”

Hmm. You swiped the book from Sam’s other hand, the planes of his fingers making brief, electric contact with yours. A sharp flash of heat whipped through your belly, sizzling through your nerves. It took a bit for you to refocus, but the pause made you look like you were some deep scholarly person really inspecting the back cover, which Sam seemed to appreciate. You took care not to get any fruit stains on the pages. When you turned to pass it back to him, Sam was rubbing his bruised knuckles into his sleepier eyes. How he could keep reading after staring at nothing but old newspapers all week, you had no clue.

You reeled the book back toward you. “...How about I read it to you?”

Sam froze, considering this. He considered it so long that you could watch his cheeks color in real-time, the same red they’d been in the snow, until he broke out of his trance and managed a warm, surprised sort of smile.

“Okay,” Sam melted.

“C’mere, lawboy,” you decided on a whim, and pat the top of your thigh. True to form, Sam took his permission and ran with it, twisting shyly to lay on his side and prop his cheek on your leg. “Lemme impress you with all the big words I know how to say.”

Sam chuckled, and it was the kind of laugh that told you just how many weird law words were about to trip you up. It was also the kind of laugh you could feel, rumbly and real through your leg, which was. It was. It was something. He got comfortable, curling a lazy arm around your knee and using you as a proper pillow.

You really should’ve put more thought into having Sam this close. Like, really should’ve, since he’s so big and warm that it has you running on nothing but instinct, and your first impulse having Sam in your lap is to go straight for that gorgeous hair.

You take the lock Sam’s been messing with all day and tuck it behind his ear, just because his head is there and you need a damn place for your hand to rest. Right. A deep and draining sigh airs out of Sam’s nose being touched like that, and you start to wonder if this was something he’d masterminded. He seeps into your lap like he’d been chasing this all day, all week, and something about it makes you feel special in ways no one else could manage.

You open to the page Sam left off on and start to read. Sam doesn’t move an inch, laying statue-still in your lap. He only moves to sneak pinches of pomegranate seeds. Stiff as he is, he’s there, the furnace you’ve relied on for the last few days to keep warm. You get through a few chapters this way, Sam pausing you every ten seconds to explain something or hum or snootily translate some lawyer-speak for you. The whole time you do an excellent job of keeping your hands to yourself. Ever since Sam’s comment from yesterday, the little pieces you’ve gotten of him have made you greedy. Click.

The fire and the candlelight create a perfect bubble of heat on the otherwise icy floor, so it doesn’t take long for Sam to go from resting in your lap to downright oozing across it. From your point of view he’s nothing but a mop of shining hair and a big hand curled around your knee. His presence seeps into you as much as his warmth does, and after so long it’s almost overwhelming to taste someone else’s vulnerability this way. Click click. You’re reminded of how much you care about Sam, and how long it’s been since you’ve been allowed that. There was something about him that would always be worth protecting. Maybe it was how fucking good he smelled.

“Doctor Janen’s contributions to the investigation, especially her knowledge of luminol, were,” you trailed off, “were…”

Sam’s breathing had evened out in your lap. Or, you thought it had, until his posture shifted under the sweater he was wearing. He rolled out of your lap and onto his hands with a reluctant groan. Tired as he was, Sam was always capable of being a smartass. “D’you know what luminol is?”

“Yes, detective,” you scoffed, maybe a teensy bit disappointed that he’d left your lap. The outline of his touch on your thigh burned like a heat beacon. “Should I go back and read the last few paragraphs, or was that you just pretending to sleep?”

Sam rubbed at his face, like it was possible to physically scrub the sleep from it. He sat up next to you, blinking slowly to get his bearings, and for no logical reason your heartbeat built to an ear-ringing throb in your chest. You were completely alone with him. For once, you had Sam all to yourself. Soft shadows kissed his arms and hands and neck. He was made up of nothing but full endless sloping lines, a charcoal sketch come to life.

“I was restin’ my eyes,” he sassed. “We should stay sharp through tonight, though. Stay up. I can take the first shift, since you’ve taken the last three.”

You didn’t miss the little nod to your sleeping habits. Which meant Sam had also laid awake long enough to know you hadn’t fallen asleep until late, which meant he’d laid awake next to you. In bed. Thinking with that big brain of his. It made your own big brain run around in crazy circles, chasing whatever conclusions he might come to.

You stole a glance at the nearest window. The salt lines were laid neatly on its sil, on the off chance boarding up the glass turned out to be useless. “That’s okay. I’m not exactly tired yet.”

Sam popped a few pomegranate seeds into his mouth, humming in thought. “Then it’d probably be smartest to keep each other up.”

“Samuel!” You gasped. He froze mid-chew, confused, and remained confused until you started poking him and laughing. “I’d expect a line like that from your brother, but never from you.”

You were a tease-first-ask-questions-later kind of person, so you understood Sam’s particular brand of banter and how he liked to respond to yours. Typically, you’d annoy him with a playful little taunt and Sam would let you know you were funny by calling you a jackass. You waited for Sam to hear your line and brush you off as an idiot. Instead, he did something much more interesting: he got defensive.

“I meant stay up like, like talking,” he sputtered. “I would never—y’know. I wouldn’t. Do, uh. Do that. Why don’t we keep up our question game from before? It’s, it’s your turn, right?”

“Okay. What was your first time like?”

Well. Shit.

This was the fastest question that either one of you had managed to whip out all week, and that fact hung so obviously in the air that you could feel it between you and Sam on the floor. It dropped so hard in the middle of the conversation that it shut you both up, silencing Sam’s sputtering and veering your train of thought to a shrieking, sparking halt. Sam was smart. His big brain would put together—had probably already put together—that you’d thought about asking him this. He might even be smart enough to intuit why you’d been itching to bring this subject back up, and for the first time in your life you prayed that Sam was the dumbest, most thick-headed man to ever hunt with you.

He did a great impression of someone less clever than himself. “Like. The first time I…?”

You chewed a few pomegranate seeds. “Uh-huh.”

“...Right.” Sam registered. He conveniently decided to fixate on the fire instead of you, which should’ve helped your sanity, if that was even possible anymore. The bulb of his nose and the swell of his lip curved just perfectly in profile, made even prettier by the firelight. God.

You panicked. “If that makes you uncomfortable—”

Sam swallowed. “No, no. You’re okay. Just thinking.”

You bit down on your tongue. Oh, awesome. Thinking! Exactly what I want you to be doing right now!

Sam swiped two sweaty, corded hands down each of his thighs. Tucked his hair behind his ears. Made your belly flutter and twist like a huge gust of wind going through a spring-fresh tree.

“I was seventeen,” Sam cleared his throat. “We were in Utah—well, I was in Utah, Dad and Dean were… Whatever. But I was sort of, um, on this rebellious streak at the time.”

You lazed back on your hands. “So, in hunter-kid terms, counting the days til’ you’re eighteen and packing your rucksack?”

An abrupt laugh barked out of Sam. His gaze loitered on your face with renewed comfort, remembering, again, that you’d both hidden your acceptance letters where no parent could see them. This was another Sam-move you knew the steps to.

“Yeah,” his eyes glittered. “Exactly.”

(The day you met Sam, the one reference you’d made to your associate’s degree had him crossing his legs under the table. He’d asked in a husky, tight voice what you’d gone to school for. Just hearing the words folklore and mythology had the guy close to pitching a tent.)

Sam managed to take his eyes off you. “But, uhm. There was this girl at school my Dad had ordered me not to hang around, so… I hung around. After a school dance. In her car.”

You were a very mature adult who was not at all jealous of a teenage Utahn, and thus sculpted your face into something playful. “Dirty,” you snickered. Sam’s light smile was encouraging, so you said as an afterthought, “Sounds like a squeeze, though. Don’t know if I’d want my first time to be in a car.”

“Especially in a tiny, cramped Nissan,” he agreed, chuckling. The smidgen of regret in his voice shouldn’t have made you feel like you’d earned a point against Random Utah Girl, but it did. You scolded yourself for it (your imaginary point gripped in one fist).

It was now Sam’s turn to ask a question, and he asked it fast. Impressively fast. “Okay, so. No car. Where would you want your first time to happen, then?”

Though you were an absolute animal when it came to Go Fish, your empty wallet was proof enough that you were a lousy poker player—due to an even lousier poker face. Hearing Sam’s question, it did you no favors. Even before you’d formed any thoughts about… everything, your body knew its answer, pointing every delicate nerve in your body toward the open doorway to the cabin’s bedroom.

You flicked a glance at the warm, intimate darkness waiting for you there.

It was only a second. But that one look was enough. Your hand was exposed, and Sam, by comparison, was an excellent poker player.

In a rush, you scrambled to put some distance between yourself and your obviousness. You winced. No way out. “Uhh, anywhere cozy. For the first time, I dunno if I’d wanna be cramped in a closet or something, no matter how sexy it may be. Is it lame to say… a bed?”

Sam hummed. As you’d talked, he’d become more and more relaxed in front of the fire, lounging on a propped-up arm and picking out of the fruit bowl. There was a long silence from him that could’ve been the weighted silence before a judge’s verdict.

…You’d never seen a judge draw his hand up to his mouth, suck pomegranate juice from the pads of his fingers, then pull off them with a noisy pop, but. But maybe they took a different approach at Stanford.

“It’s the standard for a reason, right?” Sam shrugged, amused.

He pushed the bowl across the floor with his wrist instead of his spit-slick fingers. It made a hollow scraping sound that brought your head back to the conversation, thank god, since the last seconds of your life post-fingers-to-mouth action had been spent elsewhere. The specific “elsewhere” that entailed Sam’s thick-knuckled fingers and Sam’s pretty pink mouth. You’d had the occasional intrusive thought about men creep up on you before, but the tricky part was that those thoughts pushed their way in. They jolted into your life then jolted back out.

Single-handed, Sam had hooked you, reeled you in, and pulled you “elsewhere.” Keyword: pulled. Not pushed.

…Then… maybe… pulled you again. And pushed you back. And again. Pulled out, then pushed in. Pulllled out slow, only to ssssink back in, deeper than before. Pulling and pushing with rhythm. Pulling, pushing, faster, deeper. Making you gasp and yelp his name, his fingers—Sam’s fingers—digging into your waist, your belly—

Click. Click click click click click click.

“_____?”

You’re so self-conscious you think you could feel the individual atoms of your body clanging against each other. “...Uh-huh?”

It’s your turn to ask a question next. But Sam breaks the rules and speaks first, since he knows exactly what he wants to ask you. He glides up onto one hand, his whole body a twenty-page study of lanky coyness, and tilts in close to you.

“If you could lay it all out—the timing, the place, the person…” Sam’s face glittered with a poker player’s curiosity. “What would your perfect first time be like?”

Or: Give me the manual, and I’ll follow it.

Your mouth was watering. It was one of a million things making it impossible for you to speak right now, including the sudden, nigh-unbearable heat of the room under your collar, and, oh right, the metric fuckton of slick soaking your underwear. The speed at which your arousal hits you is enough to make you dizzy, and in the haze you swear you start to hear something. Click. Click. Click click click click click click click—

Fuck. Sam is waiting for an answer. Fuck.

“I guess I’ve never thought about it before.”

Which was a blatant lie, since you’d spent the last ten minutes thinking of nothing else. Sam either sensed you weren’t telling the truth or was looking for something more, because he let you linger in your own answer, prying the rest out of you with his hanging silence.

Really, you should’ve been tougher, but the first long breath without anything from him shredded your strength. You caved and filled the quiet.

“I mean,” you toyed with your hands in your lap. “No matter what, I’d want it to be special. Bein’ out on the road, marching around, that’s not really a luxury we’re allowed to have. It’s like you said yesterday. I wanna be with someone I’m connected to, and I don’t think that’s gonna be in the back of a bar or—”

“—in a stranger’s bed,” Sam softened with understanding. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.” You echoed. The fire crackled and popped, loud enough that you could use the sound as an excuse to look elsewhere. “And if I happened to find that person, they’d have to be in the life. We can only trust other hunters, nowadays.”

Sam snorted. “If we’re lucky, maybe.”

It disappointed you how much you had to agree with him. There used to be a sense of mutual understanding among the hunters you’d met, but something had shifted since you were little. The world was a much scarier place, and the hunters that’d survived to see it had darkened to meet it. You’d dodged all shades of skeevy, selfish people before you’d landed in the Impala’s backseat. Even Dean and Sam had colored the list of hunters you’d been warned to avoid. Of course, every inch of it had turned out to be triple-hand gossip. Maybe you were quick to judge or the boys were just good seeds in a shitty crop, either way, ending up with them was the kind of good luck that beat the devil.

You’d never had the chance to tell Sam that before.

“I dunno. Not to go all mushy on you, but I do feel pretty lucky.”

Sam indulged you with an inviting tilt of his head, impressed that either one of you had a sliver of luck between you. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. This last year, before I joined up with you n’ Dean, there wasn’t a single living soul out there I thought was worth putting my faith in,” you said, easing your mushy confession onto him under the guise of fact. Sam couldn’t digest it any other way. “I’m really grateful you changed that for me. It feels—it feels good to trust people. To feel like somebody knows you.”

Sigh. The side of your personal bubble filled with nothing but Sam started to seep with quiet, disbelieving fondness, and you could tell because Sam was giving you the eyes. The eyes. The ones that people brought out their wallets for and sent girls like you into romantic psychosis.

You dared to face them head-on, which was a reckless idea (probably brought on by romantic psychosis). Sure enough, his gaze was big and soulful and heart-rending. Sam was sitting so close now that you could almost soak up his body heat. The biting wind wormed its way through the thin walls and the fire was fading with it, but Sam oozed magnetic warmth by comparison. Stuff-your-face-in-his-neck kind of warmth.

“Do you feel like…” Sam rasped. He brushed the flats of his knuckles down your arm, breaking that final touch barrier. “...like I really know you?”

Your entire nervous system implodes with fluttery feelings. It’s just two fingers, brushing soft down your arm through your sweater, but. It’s confirmation. It’s Sam’s yes, I want this, and it puts into perspective how the two of you have spent the last week: alone together. Curled as one shape in bed. Talking just loud enough for only the other to hear, and never an octave higher. Never more than a few feet apart. If you reached for Sam first you knew he’d accept your hand, your boots in his bootprints, but when he coasts his palm down the swell of your shoulder it’s him reaching out for you.

You reach right back. You curl a hand up to cover his hand with yours, those big doe eyes asking that same question on repeat. Do you think I know you? Do you trust me? Do you want this?

“All I’ve got is me, you, and Dean. And it wasn’t him that I told all my deepest hopes and shittiest moments to,” you laughed. “So…”

Every other time you’ve hit this point, you’d been distracted by the logistics and the math of sex—protection, chemistry, the when and how, and the consequences of both. It’s not gonna hit you until two days after this moment, after Sam has you as many times as you want in the plush cabin bed, that there was no math with him. Just want. Just things sliding into place. Click click click.

“So…” Sam’s face tips even closer. Your head fogs with the heat and smell and presence of him, mesmerized.

He puts it all together for the two of you: “Your perfect first time would be with a hunter, somebody in the life that you trust. Somebody who could make you feel special. Somebody who really knows you.”

You smirk before you can stop yourself. “Do I need to drop any more hints, Sam?”

Damn, could that boy put a fireworks show to shame. He lit up. Sam’s shoulders did this really cute boyish swell and his lips parted, telegraphing with every piece of himself, Oh, you really want this, you really want me!

You’d never seen him wear that kind of happiness before, and it made sense why. Thank god the two of you were off the grid out here, because you didn’t doubt that Sam’s smile could pop every lightbulb in the entire country.

Sam aimed a bubbly laugh at his lap, embarrassed. “I don’t think I’m getting the full picture,” he tried to flirt, “a few more, maybe?”

So, getting less and less subtle as you went on, you explained to Sam the hypothetical author of the night of your life. He’d be sweet. Polite. Smart, too, but not the type to rub it in your face. (This made Sam laugh). He’d be gentle and considerate and frankly fucking awesome, but not so shy that he couldn’t give you a wild time.

When he was blushing so hard you stopped needing the fire for warmth, you sprinkled one last handful of flattery on him. “And, jesus,” you whistled, “this guy I’m picturing? Total dreamboat. So pretty it makes me wanna write dumb songs about him.”

Predictably, Sam got so flustered that he went back to futzing with that same strand of hair by his ear. With the touch barrier between you broken, your mind buzzed with a million different ways to reach out and feel him, to draw him in, and all those ideas coalesced seeing Sam’s hand come up to his cheek. Before you lost your resolve, you stroked the messiest portion of his bangs behind his ear for him. Sam melted. He liked to do that around you.

“Now I’d just sound arrogant if I assumed that it’s me,” Sam snorted.

You pressed the flats of your knuckles down Sam’s warm, smooth cheek. “It’s you. It’s been you for a while, actually.”

The easy, loving contact dazed him. Sam’s eyes fluttered closed, and a short, shaky breath puffed out of him in one bracing go. It was clear that he hadn’t been touched this way in a while. He sat there absorbing your touch for a long time, a cat resting his head in the full scope of your palm. You turned your body to face his and Sam’s gaze, which was layer after layer of hazels no artist could mimic, opened for you.

You thought about saying something cheesy like, wow, ain’t I lucky, having the whole world in the palm of my hand, but Sam was much faster (and much, much cheesier).

A leather-tough hand scooped around the back of your neck. The touch was fucking-christ-big and god, so was he, the line of his thumb to his wristbone as long as the length of your neck. You knew this because that’s exactly where Sam placed it, stroking your chin with his thumb. Prickling chills tickled up your legs. He scrutinized you—and you say scrutinize loosely, since the Sam-equivalent was gazing into your face like a fatal decision was held there. Your mental yes, yes, I want you was so loud that Sam could’ve psychically heard it. If he did, it was enough to make his pupils become huge pools of want.

“C’mere,” Sam grinned.

You laughed. “M’ practically nose to nose with you, Sam, I don’t have any further to—”

The rest of your teasing was lost to a louder yelp. Sam scooped his arms around your middle and. And hauled you. Into his lap.

His—lap.

There was no way to survive this landing. You were plopped right on top of his barrel-wide thighs, your every sense instantly stuffed full to bursting with every wonderful thing that made Sam himself. A steam of woody body wash and aftershave put you under his spell. Two massive hands soothing down your back glued you happily in place. Sam’s warm chuckles seeped through his chest and into your hands, because, oh yeah, you were allowed to touch him. And there was so much of him to touch now, too. The entire front of your body was cozily smushed up against his firm, longer frame, filling your hazy vision with the soft shadows on his throat and collarbones and those fucking dimples. What the fuck.

“Is this okay?” Sam asked you.

The only time you’d been permitted in another person’s space like this was to hug them. Overwhelmed with choice—you could kiss him, touch him, run your fingers through his hair this close—you defaulted to what you knew. Sam hesitated, but with a breath, the coil of his body unwound and the two of you slid together with a satisfying smush. (Or maybe a click).

Oh my god that’s good, your senses wailed, but all you could manage with your face muffled in his neck was, “Warm. Sooo warm, Sammy.”

“Is that a yes?” He hoped.

You pulled your face out of his shirt to sigh. “The biggest yes of your life.”

Sam gleamed. Being so close to the source of all happiness on earth (the toothy grin he was biting back for your benefit) should’ve instantly pulverized you and every other hot-blooded being on this side of the planet. It should’ve. But your soul was still ringing around in your feeble body, and sure enough, your calves were still snug around Sam’s thighs like they’d been before. You’d survived being inches away from Sam’s face while he smiled all shy for you, and succeeded in feeling only a teeny bit like a pile of smoking ash because of it. For a second you tricked yourself into thinking you could survive him.

That is not the case.

With impeccable timing, Sam kisses you. Just a brief, firm peck on the mouth. Testing the waters. The waters that are now a fucking ocean in your underwear, thank you very much. It’s only a two-second kiss, but the instant Sam’s lips pop off of yours an embarrassing happy squeal follows him out. Definitely not the suave reaction you were expecting from yourself. Sam just laughs, which translates as a sexy hum under your free hand.

“That was cute,” he whispers, eyes crinkling.

“Shut up, Sam.”

He hums, still brimming with that big spoiled grin. He takes you by your prickling arms and starts to pull his hands down them, again and again, squeezing the anxiety out of you in huge handsy swaths. You feel a bit better about being such a nervous wreck. His hands are trembling too.

The first kiss was good. Really good. Wetter, warmer than you were expecting, but so fucking—good. His mouth was soft and stained by the pomegranate, but, oh no, you’re already forgetting what it was like to taste him. It’s so tempting… to just… lean in…

He’s just as tempted. Sam meets you in the middle for a second kiss that he finds so satisfying, so right that this deep rumbling moan purrs right out of him. The pink swell of his lips are, of course, pressed hot to yours, filling you head to fucking toe with that single bassy note. You gasp through your nose—because nothing is worth breaking his kiss. Not a desperate breath of air, not an uttered word.

Sam kisses you with his hands as much as he dazzles you with his mouth, laying heavy touches down your back, then your waist, then your legs, inspecting and absorbing. You’re hardly as methodical. He is a wonderful beach and it’s your first time seeing the ocean. You take the biggest fistfuls of him that you can, feeling the silky sand of him slip between your greedy fingers.

Sam is apparently into being your metaphorical beach, since after he’s done melting your brain and your underwear in the most intense make-out session of your life, he pulls away to speak.

Sam rasps. “Can I take care of you?”

It takes you a moment to respond, because. Well. A, that’s the sexiest way someone has asked to have sex with you, no contest, and B, you’ve been waiting this whole time for the moment where you don’t want this anymore. With other men, your body had just never found the spark that should’ve been there. Was this time different? Had things click click clicked into place?

You take a step back to put this in perspective for your future self. As vividly as you’re able, you think about having sex with Sam. You visualize Sam’s sharp eyes, his naked back, the cut of his hips, all of it, as he fucks you straight through the shitty mattress in the cabin’s bedroom. All the sweat-twisted blankets shoved to the floor. Sam’s hips canting your thighs apart. The worn-smooth slope of his—of his fucking paws, essentially, squeezing your tits and your tummy and your waist in achy handfuls. You think about it some more. How Sam would moan, how his lashes would screw shut in ecstasy as he filled you. You keep thinking about it. When your mind starts to deviate toward the filthy, thick sound of him… o-of Sam plunging into you over and over again, smushing you under his weight… uhm. Uh.

Yeah. Yeah, this is everything you fuckin’ want.

It takes conscious effort for you to close your gaping mouth, then pry it open again to blurt: “Please, yes.”

A tiny piece of his posture relaxed in relief. Sam smushed a cute, giddy peck into your cheek, reminding your entire tingling nervous system that there was a really sweet guy underneath the deadly-efficient hunter you knew.

“Okay,” he beamed, and shyly tipped his head toward the bedroom. “Shall we?”

You feel like you should be doing more than being demure and nodding a lot, but Sam doesn’t seem to mind. After you climb out of his lap and find your footing on your jellified legs, he unfolds off the floor like bucks do, knowing on instinct how to conduct the body he has so much of. The fire’s sleepy and weak in the hearth, and with it dead, Sam is the new center of heat in the room. He takes your hand and just touching the middle of his palm spurs shivery warmth down your legs. Now, you’re all too aware of Sam’s proportions—how encompassing his hand feels, how easily his shoulders fill the doorway to the little bedroom. Feeling mature, you fill the next room with bright giggles. You see in real-time how Sam melts at the noise.

Like you have the last few nights, you each scoop up a candle and find a place for it amidst the hunter clutter. It takes a beat to find your way through the dark. The space is just big enough for the slim bed pushed snug into the corner, and already you know from experience how you and Sam fit into the nest of blankets and pillows. (Hint: extremely well).

Sam uses his candle to light a few others on the bedside table, keeping a free hand stretched toward you to reserve his spot as your only hand-holder. You drop your candle on the dresser and consider the only thing next to it while you wait for him. The Winchesters had three vinyls total for their ancient record player, and seeing it unused and wasted in front of you, you have a stroke of romantic genius.

The second you drop the needle on the first jazz record and turn back toward the cozy, honey-lit room, Sam’s there, sliding into your open arms to plant a kiss on you. And another. And another. And another, coaxing little happy sighs from you. They’re such deep kisses that you dip back with each one, until the curve of Sam’s towering body is diagonal over you and you have to clutch his shoulders to stay standing. Both of his rough-sawn hands cup the scoop of your back to support you. All your daydreaming about him had convinced you that he’d be a head-to-toe brick wall, but Sam’s teddy-bear soft instead, the gleaming skin you have access to yielding and plush. His lips most of all, puffy pink and shining.

Sam persists, pressing closer, kissing you deeper, panting under his breath. Whatever it is about the happy sounds you make wake up something dark in him. There’s a tight, delicate rhythm he likes to follow, and the more of Sam you get the less of it you see. That straight-arrow persona is there, and then—poof! Sam’s tongue is laving wet and hot and perfect across your parted lips, ruining your underwear in one fell swoop.

He tilts in to start sucking on your tongue—

“Fuck, Sam,” you choke out.

The situation in your panties graduates to unbearable levels. If you have to makeout with Sam fully clothed for even a second longer, you think your core will enter a full reactor meltdown. You try to get the words across, grabbing helplessly at his sweater and whining, but Sam interprets it as something else.

“Everything okay?” He worries.

Dazed, you nod more than you need to. With your eyes open and his face in full view, you’re hit with a spark of self-consciousness. Sam fills the bedroom with easy conviction, owning his desire in a way you’ve never really been capable of. You don’t exactly have the experience to blow his mind or anything. Why would he want this if there was so little in it for him? Sam wasn’t a selfish guy, but… To you, your eagerness starts to feel more like greediness.

You shift from foot to anxious foot, shrinking in place. “...Could you, um? Walk me through it? How we’re gonna…?” You swallowed the frog in your throat. “Sorry, that must seem stupid.”

Leave it to him to make something stupid into something ridiculously, fatally sexy.

“S’okay, don’t be embarrassed. It’d…” Sam wets his lips, looking for the words. A quiet, dirty-minded smile plays across his face. He decides, “It’d be my pleasure.”

His touch moves away from your back, and you’re about to mourn the loss of it until Sam’s hands start to play with yours, twisting them around in his own like a schoolboy. He closes the space you’ve timidly left open between you by pressing your chests together. It’s a small gesture. But this is Sam, so your face is in smolders on that alone. (…And you’d just been french kissed, to be fair).

“Okay. Uhh,” Sam fumbles. He stops to consider his approach. As in, the approach he’ll take to seducing you, as if you aren’t seduced on a level incomprehensible to humankind.

You can’t help but laugh at how much Sam-math must be happening in his head, and Sam laughs too. Sam keeps laughing, until it warms into a handsome, knowing hum, and suddenly he’s laying your hands on his belt and tickling your ear with the hot fan of his breath. You squeak, sensitive, which tempts him into breaking character.

Sam reigns it back in, then whispers.

“When you’re ready… m’ gonna get you out of these clothes.”

The deliciously big set of hands on your waist sidle up under the open strip of skin below your shirt. Just one of his fingers is brave enough to sneak up to draw circles against your tummy. It’s the slightest taste of what it’ll be like to have those hands all over you, sweat-slick skin-to-naked skin, which is just enough to make your appetite for him boil in your gut.

“And I know you’re gonna be freezin’, we both are, but I promise you’ll get real hot real soon. Cause’...”

The bulb of his nose (and the ghost of his smile) brushed your cheek, then down, and the explosive fluttery feeling already lighting up your belly pitches into a whole fireworks show.

“...The minute I see you lying all pretty on your back for me…”

Sam tips in to lay a kiss on your throat. A slow, open-mouthed kiss, suckling soft on your skin.

“...In our bed…”

Our bed, he says. That choice of words alone implies so much. If the two of you sharing it before didn’t count, then Sam was about to make it your bed.

“I’m not stopping til’ you get every single thing you want,” Sam purrs. His kisses become blatant licks, the whole of his capable tongue drawing wet lines on your throat. “Til’ you’re damn spoiled.”

What. The fuck. The universe could dissolve into mist and you would be too turned on to care, tethered to the last atoms of the earth by your hands on Sam’s belt. You gape up at him. Sam, the evil genius, smirks right back. When you’d said you wished your first time could feel special, you hadn’t exactly been planning for Sam to follow that direction to the damn letter. He makes it sound like he’s going to bend to your every whim, and knowing Sam...

You swipe at your face to check that you’re not drooling. “I’m—I-I—you’re—” while you’re sputtering, he swipes a dab of spit off the other corner of your lip. “—Suh-Sam.”

Screw it. You drop both hands on Sam’s chest and twist your fingers in his shirt, forcing the words out in choppy pieces. “I’m not as experienced as you. But I really, really… want this. To be—to be good for us. Wanna give you everything you want, too.”

Sam makes a flattered, yet sympathetic face. “Oh, baby, don’t think about me—”

“—I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Now, it’s Sam’s turn to forget how to speak. Finally.

You wind your fingers into the tuft at the back of his neck, enunciating, “How… do I make this good for you?”

“You’re already here. That’s all I need,” Sam gushes, falling back on his tender chivalrous boyfriend routine. It’s really sexy. Almost sexy enough to work. He tucks back his signature lock of unruly hair, blushing from his ears to his neck.

Well, stream-of-consciousness hasn’t failed you yet.

“Uh-uh. We’ve been alone together in this teeny cabin for a whole week. There’s no way I’m the virgin, but you’re the one without the dirty fantasies.” You take a long squinting look at him to divulge any loose secrets. Thumbing Sam’s hip through his shirt, you press, “Tell me. C’mon. You want me to blow you? Pull your hair? Or do you, I dunno—wanna bite me? Pin me down?”

You can track the second Sam starts breathing harder, but somewhere between then and now his eyes have glazed over with dangerous desire.

Sam clutched fast at his shrinking sliver of self-control. “Okay,” he squeezed his eyes shut. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere. So… if it feels right, and it’s not embarrassing, it would be… I’d, I’d love it if you…”

“Got super noisy?”

After an intensely bashful pause filled with quiet music, Sam nods, hiding behind his bangs. Knew it. He always got so squirrely when you did your oh-I’m-so-cozy moan snuggling into bed at night.

Teasing him any more would definitely be poking the bull. But is it fun to poke that bull? Absolutely. Especially when Sam starts to unbuckle his belt, his whole body crawling with the urge to throw himself at you.

“Alright, I can do that. But how noisy are we talking? Like, normal enjoying myself kind of noisy, or best-sex-of-my-life noisy?”

He gets this nasty, disbelieving smile on his face, and it’s your last warning before—

Snap. Sam’s restraint splits in two. In an instant you’re captured by the underarms and Sam, who’s honest-to-god grinning/snarling about how you need ta’ be taught a lesson on leavin’ well enough alone, flings you onto the end of the bed. You land with a shriek. Then a second, louder squeal, as Sam takes your pantlegs in his fists and whips them clean off.

The next precious moments are filled with all sorts of lessons. For one thing, it takes a lot of force to tear pants off a person. By happenstance, you’re dragged a whole foot further down the bed and right against Sam’s lap. You also learn that pants are connected to underwear, so following that math, it makes sense why your panties are now royally rearranged on your hips. These two factors are too convenient to not be planned on Sam’s part. You’re reminded, again, that Sam is a genius.

You also remember that you’ve never been pantsed before. With and without the sexy context. Keeping that in mind, you, like any other person in your delicate situation, snap your legs closed on instinct. Not because you don’t want Sam there—holy shit, do you want him there—but because he happened to tickle you in the transfer from floor to bed, and you’re not about to let him pounce on you and tickle you to death.

This really works out for you in the long run, since having your legs closed means that it’s inevitable Sam will have to open them.

You’re laughing so hard that your sides have locked up with stitches. Sam pretends he’s not just as amused by kneeling up on the bed as grouchily as possible, ripping his shirt off, and… and, uhm… scooping his huge palms under your knees, and… yeah. He doesn’t have to do any pushing past that. Your legs just fall right open for him, and Sam wiggles in between them where he belongs.

Nothing in this entire world could prepare you to have Sam this close, so the idea that you could even cope with being absolutely towered over by the indecent amount of ab he possesses is fuckin’ laughable. Who the fuck let him have abs? For the health of all people attracted to men on this planet, who taught Sam to work out?

Your giggling trails off into mesmerized, panting silence.

“How noisy?” Sam scoffs, chuckling mean and deep in his chest. “How noisy? I’ll give you a hint how noisy you’re gonna be—”

He falls forward onto his hands, effectively blanketing you in a swath of flushed-smooth, freckly skin. There’s not a thought in your mind about how cold this room is in comparison to the last. Your hands smooth over the planes of his cheeks on instinct, and Sam follows the touch into a soul-shattering, full-body, toe-curling kiss that melts both your bodies into the homey center of the quilts and comforters. His nose squishes into your cheek and a long, satisfied groan bubbles out of him. He barely pulls his lips from yours when he hisses—

“...I’m gonna fuck you til’ you’re hoarse.”

What in the ever-loving fuck.

I cannot put into words how much I want you to do that, you want to say, and it’s true, since you end up making the world’s neediest gasp of glee instead. You’re not pleading up into his face for a full second before Sam gets your message. One can only guess what he’ll do next. (Hint: Sam cannot take in a full breath without kissing you first).

All week you’ve been toiling away to earn tiny pieces of the Sam puzzle. The picture you’ve built so far is, frankly, a touch-starved animal, who will wait at the heels of the first trusted person willing to provide. You kiss Sam once and he’s so damn grateful that he’ll multiply it by five. You get adventurous with your hands, squeezing and appreciating Sam’s flushed-smooth back. Because he’s Sam, returning the favor takes precedence over his beloved activity, and your kiss is forced to break so he can sit up and touch you proper.

Well. If any of this can be considered proper, that is. And if there’s one word to describe what Sam does to you with his hands, it’s improper.

“Still ready, _____?” He asks.

You bite back your inner worries and taunt him, “Been ready.”

He splays his fingers on your belly and is so transfixed by its softness that he stoops to smudge a kiss above your belly button. You do your best to pretend it doesn’t tickle, which is the opposite of what Sam wants. He gives your sides two quick pinches that have you squirming and squeaking under him, too shy to keep your eyes open. You’re embarrassed about the girly sounds he gets out of you until you risk a look at his face—plum red, dizzy, and glazed with fond desire.

Sam wasn’t kidding. He does want you at your noisiest.

This brings your horniness to a whole new level, turning the airy fluttery feeling expanding in your belly into the opposite: an emptiness, a vacuum, and one that desperately needs to be filled. Sam seems to do nothing but fill things. The doorways he stands in, the beds he kneels on, the snuggly center of your embrace. Naturally, this makes you insane. His hands fill up the most—big swaths of your belly, your shirt—your bra.

They push the band of the hunting sportsbra you’re wearing clear over your tits and out of his way. Sam rumbles in approval.

You stop your hands from twitching up around your naked chest, now hyper-aware of how much your breasts rise with your breath. Sam breathes you in. His gaze is soft beyond imagination, which makes the whittled-down shards of fear inside you seem even sillier than before. Either he reads your mind or he’d predicted you’d be mousy (and christ do you hope it’s the latter, since that means he thought about this already), because Sam plucks up your closest hand and presses it flat to his happy trail.

“Don’t be nervous,” he soothes. “Touch me too.”

The thought alone explodes you into steam. But you’re no quitter, so you roll with the invitation, stroking the soft pads of your fingers along the line from Sam’s naval to his ill-fitting jeans. He’s not flexing for you, so you get to feel him as Sam really is: butter-smooth and blanket-soft. Without his belt there’s a precious gap hanging between his hips and his waistband. It’s just big enough for your hand to fit inside.

You’re not brave enough to take that final plunge until Sam twists down to kiss your chest. His mouth burns scorching hot on your breastbone, and as he curls over your body, his hands on your belly slide up to take two needy handfuls of your tits. In the same motion you fit your hand into Sam’s jeans and squeeze and—ohhh fuck, you wind in as one, sharing a perfect bow-taut moment of hissing pleasure.

Sam pressed his face where he was kissing, deflating on top of you with a long, seeping, “Shittt.”

Okay. On top of feeling good, sex could be a fun little puzzle to put together. Sam urging his hips into your hand was one piece, and if you put it in the right place (i.e: touched him like that again), he’d be all yours. You do. You cup him through his boxers and follow what you feel, and what you feel is. Fucking. It’s. I-is it supposed to be that big? And, and holy shit, is he hard.

Sam. Sam’s big, thick dick in your hand. You’re gonna be wet for damn weeks.

Stupified, you blurt out, “Do you always get this hard?”

Sam cracks a wry grin, his eyes lidded. “Mm. It’s definitely you. Bein’ stuck out here with you.”

He drops a kiss on the seam of your ribcage. Then lower. And lower, leaving shiny wet circles along your tummy. “Makin’ me crazy… sticking by me every second, pressing yourself into me in your sleep. Lookin’ at me like—like that.” Just thinking about it made Sam shiver. “You turn me on like nothing else. Just last night, even, right here in this bed—I must’a stopped myself from rolling you over and tasting you a hundred times.”

The urge was so vivid for him that Sam’s mouth must’ve been watering, since he sucks the spit back through his teeth before he starts to kiss your belly in earnest. Just that sound burns with lust. Sam wants it, wants you so bad he’s shaking, his hands trembling under your thighs as he slithers down to lay between them. His kisses grow fiercer, open-mouthed and sucking the closer he gets to your panties. Kitten-soft moans start to sneak into the cycle of your panting.

“Don’t think I’m gonna be able to stop myself this time,” Sam husks.

You let him know just how comfortable you are with that by curling your legs around his back. Then his shoulders. Then Sam’s ears, and at that point he’s singeing spit-damp kisses inside your thighs like the world’s most faithful servant.

Nobody but him had ever touched you there. You choke out his name on short, needy breaths. It’s like you’re filling a meter. With enough please, Sams, you hit his limit, and he stops rubbing his face into your soft under-thighs long enough to hook his fingers around your waistband.

You’re treated to the Sam Winchester specialty. He bats long lashes at you over dark, sensitive eyes, and rasps, “Am I okay to…?”

You’re so horny that you start spurring Sam closer with your heels. “Fucking yes.”

This is the A+ answer. Sam doesn’t even wait to get your underwear all the way down your legs, yanking them out from under you and ducking straight below the bridge they make. Just seeing your pussy makes him swear. You’re so swollen and slick and his mouth is so close, so close, but Sam decides to taunt you, blowing across the spit cooling on your belly instead. Heat oozes in hazy lines from his body. From his hands. By comparison, the night has leeched the warmth from the room and you’re cold enough to get goosebumps.

“Please please please, Sam,” you hiccup, “need it. Need you. Need you t’ warm me up.”

“My poor girl,” Sam coos, brows drawn with playful sympathy. He starts to rub some heat back into your freezing legs, tilting closer, closer. “I know just how to help.”

You let your head flop back as you take his cheesiness in, laughing. That’s not exactly a line you’d expect from him. Before, though, you would’ve never pinned Sam as the kind of guy to clamp your knees against your chest, drop his head between your legs and fit his mouth on you, slurping noisily on your slick like he’s eating the juiciest fruit of his life—

“—f-uuuuckkk Sammy yes yes yes—”

Indescribable pleasure pops and sizzles along your weeping core. It’s so fucking—fucking yes all at once that you clap down both hands to white-knuckle the top quilt and howl. Sam sets to work. He covers your entire pussy with his mouth, swallowing you fucking whole, apparently, since you’re the most delectable thing he’s ever tasted. You have to be, with Sam groaning and cursing all fierce and hot between licks.

“Fuck. That’s it, pretty girl,” Sam coaches. He slurps loud and obscenely on your clit, swallowing down the results with a shiver of ecstasy. “Shit, just like that. You’re so good at this already. So good at taking it, ______. Never should’a made you wait.”

But all that must not count as getting a full taste of you, since Sam deviates, splaying his tongue flat and wide to rake it against you top to bottom. His tongue almost drools with liquid heat. At first you’d been disappointed you couldn’t see him over your legs, and now, you’re grateful for the mercy. Seeing Sam like that…

Sam licks you open until there’s no breath left in him. He goes until his jaw is sore and your slick is rolling off his chin in sticky rivulets, wetting the bedspread. He goes and he keeps going, worshipping your slippery-wet cunt between huffy moans.

You make a pathetic attempt at giving as good as you’re getting, but what should be a sexy zinger actually comes out as, “Sam, I-I—oh, god—Sam—!”

After that, your ability to form words joins your other higher brain functions in the endless sparkling expanse of white in your mind. Sam stirs a single long finger through your sopping folds. The stimulation alone has your hips twisting helplessly up to his face, on top of the rapid flicks of his talented tongue, but it’s the easy pressure of Sam’s thick finger filling you to the knuckle that actually earns a scream.

Not your average horror movie scream—an honest, enthusiastic, belly-deep cry that jerks in your chest like a sob.

You can pinpoint the precise moment that Sam realizes you’re a screamer; he hum-laughs to himself where he thinks you can’t hear.

“Next time,” (oh my fucking god there’s a next time), “‘won’t make you wait a minute, baby. Gonna give you everythin’ you want. I’m real sorry, darlin’, do you forgive me? Forgive me for not fucking you the second we were alone?”

You’re too busy having actual, real tears of desire cake your cheeks to string together a better answer than a moan. Holy shit.

Sam gives your pussy two deep, loving licks, each hot enough to send you into a coma. “Say it,” he utters, teasing, “say you forgive me.”

“I forg’ve you,” you croak.

“Forgive who?” He presses.

“I forgive you, Sammy.”

“That’s my girl,” Sam husks the promise between kisses to your clit, “So good to me. So sweet.”

Somehow, this is just as life-altering for him as it is for you. Long, flowing crests of pleasure seep hot through your system, winding tighter, tighter, tighter, twitching in the muscles of your stomach and almost cramping in your curled toes. The taste of you is so rich that Sam’s back quakes with euphoric shudders, trembling deep under the skin where he’s too far gone to rein back in. Sweaty locks of his bangs flutter as he breathes. It’s the only sign he’s breathing at all, really, what with him eating you out like he’s fuckin’ starved.

Sam gives a few good twists of his finger deep in your pussy (which doesn’t even graze how deep he might be with his cock). When you’re a puddle on the mattress and used to him, Sam withdraws to studiously coach you, “Deep breaths, ______.”

It takes a moment for the words to register. Once they have, you wind down long enough to measure your crazed breathing into even strokes. The ceiling overhead swims with dancing candlelight shadows and floating cartoon stars. Sam lifts his head to see for himself that you’re following his instructions, and after he’s done falling in love with the sight of you, Sam fills you up with two digits instead of one.

“A-ah!”

Just like before, they’re thrust in to the hilt at once. The throbbing, aching, leeching core of your arousal positively explodes, the urge to be filled finally touched. Sam’s responding bassy groan vibrates all the way up your body. The length and thickness of his fingers is put to immediate use, stretching you out with long knuckling gestures. You’re so unimaginably wet that your pussy just pulls him right in.

There’s a pause where you wiggle down onto his hand and brace yourself for the next brain-melting touch, and true to form, Sam sails straight over your grandest expectations. He’s quick to find the silky heart of arousal in your core again. You only know it by reputation, not experience, so when Sam presses into it with two soft fingerpads the pitch of your wailing jumps up ten octaves. Suddenly the pleasure is hot hot hot inside-going-out.

Sam tilts his head to one side and finds the gall to ask you: “How does that feel?”

(He just wants to hear you say it.)

“So good,” you weep. “Please please please gimme more, Sam, please—”

“It’s gonna be okay, _____. I’ll make it all better…”

Only then does Sam’s tongue get back to work, and—and holy fucking shit, he swoops in to steal the gold, demolishing every other name in the pussy-eating game. Sam wins. Sam fucking wins.

If this is just how his fingers feel…

Sam’s grin takes on a confident gleam. By coincidence, it’s around then that you remember that he’s psychic.

Somewhere between licking you into the next dimension and, oh yeah, Sam licking you into the next dimension, he’s pinned your thighs to your chest with a firm hand under your knees. You squeeze that hand for all you’ve got, every feeble atom in your body scrubbed raw with perfect pulsing desire.

To think, you’d spent this whole time getting off with your hand. A fucking hand. A few fingers! Sam crooks his in a way you’d never even hoped for on your own, finding that fluttery, twitchy spot inside you and working it for all it has. You’d asked for more and he gives you more, thrusting two fingers in at a brutal, even pace—again and again and again, til’ you’re thrashing up and off the mattress, wailing, your whole body a fist cramping shut around him. You snap in so tight toward him that you shove your face into your knees and cross your ankles tight behind Sam’s neck, keening, the fire knotted in your body devouring whatever fuel he’ll give.

Sam’s skill with his hands made you feel like an amateur in your own department. But his slick velvet tongue on your slick velvet pussy, taking slow sucks on your clit that turn into big broad licks, licking you up, licking you into his mouth whole, made just the thought of masturbation fucking laughable. I mean, c’mon! What the fuck are you supposed to do after this? Pop into the bathroom to use the showerhead, when Sam and his insatiable appetite for pussy are sitting right in the next room? Why even bother fantasizing about him and dicking around with a vibrator when nothing would ever compare to the real thing, shoving his parched panting mouth between your legs in an addict’s haze?

Still lapping up your dripping core, Sam pries his free hand from your grip. You’re pretty sure you have the right to whine in protest. Without his leverage for support your weak thighs collapse straight open, and for all you know the gates of heaven had parted to reveal god’s most beautiful angel. Sam is the picture of filth. His pretty pink lips are sealed around your cunt, his nose is all cute and smushed into your pubic bone, and you watch in time with every dirty lap as his jaw rolls handsomely under his skin.

The look on his face is unfor-fucking-gettable. In fifty years, sixty years, seventy, you know this memory will still live inside you, since no man has ever looked at you that way before. You weren’t sure it was even possible. Hazy euphoria radiates in unending rays from Sam’s face. He wants you. He trusts you. He is written all over with warm, intent desire, satisfying himself on you.

“Stay still,” Sam asks, politely.

Politely, you slap back against the bed and moan out, “Mhhmm.”

A new kind of mischief flashes across his face. You would’ve never pinned Sam as the type of guy to thrive with an audience, but now that he knows you’re watching, he falls seamlessly into a performance. His act is a three-parter.

While keeping his pace with his fingers, Sam starts by sliding slow off your pussy and spitting on it even slower. Whatever hazel leftover in his eyes has been swallowed totally by glittering, black delight. The muscles is his arm bulge and cramp fucking into you so hard. Pleased with himself, Sam dips down, dark eyes disappearing under his bangs, and makes a show of pointing his tongue to flicker across the raw nerves of your clit.

There’s more after that in the finale of Sam’s act, but the constant, brutal winding toward your release has taken its final toll. You have no fucking clue how you’ve survived this long. The overpowering squeezes of arousal inside you become full-body, wracking pangs. The sweaty trembling scraps of your soul leftover from Sam’s work throb and throb until they’re a blinding star. At the center of it, your core, tight and hot and so loved by Sam’s mouth. The searing pleasure becomes explosive. Apparently, the noisy, pitchy moans waking up the mountainside are coming from you, as you claw to get Sam even a molecule closer—closer, closer, closer—s-so close—!

So…

Close…

And you’re there. In the shimmering, divine realm Sam has made just for you; the realm your meager hands could never bring you to, and the realm you’ll be chasing still for the rest of your life. It becomes blatantly obvious in the next blissful minute that you’ve never cum before. Not for real, at least. This was a real orgasm, flashing through your spirit and flowing hot and beautiful through the numb ends of your body. You wail through it like it’s real, that’s for sure.

Your pussy clamps down around Sam’s fingers in waves of slippery pressure, and he revels in every second of it. You’re fucked through it. Kissed through it. He keeps up his pace and smushes his face in close, and that’s when you realize, oh fuck, Sam is going to drink your glass empty. The soft scooping of his tongue ramps up and up and over, til’ the edges of your vision start to spot and your muscles are too tight to unknot and it’s all too much.

“Sa—Sam—”

Just that word has him off you. You think Sam draws back and away, but that’s just a guess, since the wires between you and the outside world have been fucked stupid. Even the language has been licked and lapped out of you.

“Sam…”

You feel… like soup. Wet all over and hot hot hot. Filling the shape of the bed. You make an honest attempt at communicating this to Sam as your soupy mind’s way of telling him how satisfied you are, but. Your pussy gives a delighted, distracting throb that melts you into the top quilt all over again. Wow.

Just. Wow. You marinate in the aftershocks for what feels like ages, speechless.

Down by your legs (so that’s where he went!), Sam peels his heaving chest off the bedspread. Right. If you couldn’t breathe, he definitely couldn’t either. He gets up on all fours and crawls towards you like a guy in an RnB music video, all sexy moving arms and hips. It really shouldn’t be as appealing as it absolutely is. Starry-eyed, you open lazy arms to him and haul him down the second he’s close enough. He falls on top of you with a happy oomf. He’s long and smooth and wonderful, making you sigh when he snuggles in.

A few sparkling millennia go by laying in bed with him, toying with his hair and giggling dazedly to yourself. Sam hides his blazing face in your neck and murmurs something.

You’re buzzed by the skin-to-skin contact and cum drunk, which puts everything he says into fuzzy empty speech bubbles. The low, shy rasp of his voice tickles your neck. You try again.

“...Uh-huh…?”

“Was, uh, that too intense? Or…?”

The question floats around in your head for a while, bumping into things and spinning in zero gravity. Finally, the lights in your ship start to come on, and you pull what Sam said out from space.

“Look at me a minute.”

Sam does, curious.

“How’d,” you struggled to find your breath, “how the hell’d you learn t’ do that.”

And suddenly, Sam’s high school shyness is on a man’s face, and that man licks your slick off his lip and suppresses an evil grin. “I have, y’know. A thing about it.”

“A thing?” You echo, laughing with him. Maybe if you said it again it wouldn’t blow your mind as much. “A thing. Try an addiction, Sam, holy shit.”

In a few days, you’re gonna have to act normal around him in a room with his brother, while Sam uses the lips he defiled you with to talk, drink, and smile. Fuck. For the rest of your life, you’re gonna have to sit beside him at the dinner table and remember how he told you had a thing for eating pussy. A thing.

Glowing with innocent humility, Sam pawed up onto his hands, rolled onto his side, and positioned himself like a pin-up girl inviting you to bed. When he was done broadcasting with his entire body how much he wanted you, Sam shrugged. “I dunno… I just love to do it.”

(Being stunned silent by Sam tally: one million and three.)

He’s not real. There’s no way he’s real. You grab around for some part of him to pinch, and though Sam’s indignant yelp sounds authentic, you’re unconvinced. They had to have cooked him up in a lab somewhere.

This earns you a deep, fond Sam laugh. He gives your closest hip a playful pinch too, and after a brief tickle-fight that you miserably lose, Sam tilts his lips toward yours and husks, “Roll over that way and c’mere.”

With nothing else to do but submit happily to Sam’s will, you follow his hand and tilt in toward the wall. “You are something else.”

You’re joking, but you can also kind of feel it. Sam slings his arm over your ribs to pull your back flush to his chest, and already you melt into each other, settling back into the hollows you made in the blankets the night before. This close you can feel the magic in him. Sam oozes with cozy bonfire heat, his body laying sure and protective against your body, the last dregs of hunt anxiety in him gone. You feel the worn-soft denim of his open jeans as Sam’s lap wiggles down to scoop under you. A map of what’s ahead.

He teases a hand down your ribcage, thumbing sweetly at your belly. Sam tilts his head forward for a kiss, and unable to resist him, you meet him in the middle for one that turns into two, then three, then a swath of obsessed pecks. He must have a thing about kissing, too.

Sam pulls back to study you. With less confidence than you’d expect, he asks, “You wanna keep going?”

Just the teeniest motion of your head has Sam swooping for the chance to kiss you again, but you stop him short and twist to get a better look at him. In a high, maidenly voice, you play at being confused. Your poker face is still awful, so you have to hide your massive grin behind the invisible handkerchief you’re clutching.

“Keep going? My, a gentleman like you… an unmarried woman like me… what else is there to do, Samuel?”

His week being teased by you at all angles has forced him to evolve. Sam forgets altogether about indulging your bit and upgrades straight to more wonderful, ticklish manhandling, wiggling an arm between your vulnerable side and the bed to practically throw you back where you belong. You squeak and sputter between laughs, pretending your skin doesn’t explode with goosebumps at his touch.

When his massive palm is spread over your breastbone, Sam hoists you back against him, rolls in to threaten squishing you with more plush muscle and manly weight, and snarls in a way that ruins your metaphorical panties all over again.

“Uh-uh. Don’t play. You know exactly what m’ gonna do to you. Do y—?”

Sam stirs up his hips as he talks. All the snooty teasing left in your tank evaporates in one fell swoop, feeling the delicious outline of his dick swelling against you. Okay. You’re woman enough to admit that does it for you, and you really, really don’t want to wait anymore. Sam is an unbearable tease who will drag this out forever. You take matters into your own hands. Or, really, you put them into his.

…You prop open your closest leg for him, bent at the knee.

“Aw,” Sam rumbles, “didn’t even have’ta ask.”

You don’t hide your mean little grin. Sam, of course, kisses you into oblivion just seeing it, sliding a coarse hand under the silky, sensitive flesh behind your knee to keep you open for him. The ashes of your last climax are still simmering with heat, but it’s Sam’s kiss and his touch that reignites you totally.

It’s a bit of a twist to lean back and kiss him, but Sam’s height is made for this: his bulge swells right under your pussy, and he has the room to lean in close to your ear and purr—

“Take it out.”

Sam is asking you to take out his dick. You know that, yet you imagine yourself a month from now, unsure of which weapon the boys are comfortable letting you borrow from the Impala’s trunk. Dean’ll tell you, oh, the machete’s fine. Then Sam, with glittering eyes and full knowledge of how he’s torturing you, will nudge his chin toward the trunk and utter that phrase. Go on. Take it out. Knowing exactly what you’re thinking, and when, and how. And how deep and how hard.

It takes some shuffling and some curling, but you manage to work Sam’s jeans and boxers down his thighs. Just the sound of his zipper makes your mouth water. He hisses soft by your ear at the chill of the room, but in your hand Sam’s dick is body-hot by comparison. And. And so… s-so…

You scoop your palm around the shaft, squeezing him, feeling him. Through your back you feel Sam curl in and shiver, rumbling in approval. Your cheeks feel like they’re cooking by the candlelight just going for it, but your curiosity wins out—or, more accurately, your fucking awe. Because. What the fuck. You’ve never exactly seen a dick in person before, but you’re not naive. Sam is big enough to split you in half, and—and it just kind of pisses you off, because not only is he big, his dick is pretty, too. He has a pretty dick. Just cause’ being smart and empathetic and all that other bullshit didn’t make him sexy enough. God.

You nuzzle your cheek into Sam’s and he drops his lazy temple against yours. The two of you lounge there, heaving like peeping toms, as you both take in how sexy his cock looks leaking against your belly. Laying between your legs. It’s goddamn photo-worthy. Then, the angle your hand is taking slow, experimental pumps of him… accidentally… grinds Sam’s shaft between your abuse-swollen folds. He’s already twisting to moan into your mouth when you start to rock along him in earnest. You take a fistful of Sam’s hair and ride him for all he’s worth, dragging your sopping wet cunt across his dick until he glistens.

For three blissful seconds Sam locks you against his chest and grinds with you, making it instantly clear why people always use the word friction with sex. The push and pull of it has you whimpering loud and high against Sam’s mouth. And, thank god for him, because when your head starts to fog with visions of being filled raw, Sam pulls away from your kiss and recollects his control.

“Condom,” he gasps for breath, “we should. Probably. Yeah.”

“...Right,” you cursed. Your high school sex-ed teachers would not be proud of your lack of forethought, but it’s impossible to have any kind of thought in this situation, period.

For example: Sam tilts away to fish around in his duffle bag beside the bed, and, unfiltered, your mind taps its fingertips together and cheerily hopes, maybe Sam will be so rough the condom breaks.

Woah there, girlfriend, your reason butts in. But it doesn’t have anything else to say, since you start picturing how Sam’s cum would look oozing out of you, and. Um.

“You almost sound disappointed,” Sam jokes, digging for his wallet.

You snuggle down into the blankets and pretend you’re not hiding your face. “A little bit,” you confess, chanting the word responsible over and over in your head for good measure. “How much am I gonna feel you?”

Sam finds the condom and rolls back into your bubble. He turns in to kiss your shoulder, and you can feel his smile when he tells you, “You’re gonna feel every bit of me. Every inch… every stroke… I promise.”

He is so determined to assuage your worries that he holds the condom where you can see it, turning it over (between those long, long fingers) to make sure it’s punctureless and new. The little foil packet has XL printed on one side, which both adds to your sexy thoughts and pulls you out of them. Sam really is that big. He knows it, too, which is probably how he reads your nervousness.

“We’ll take it slow,” Sam promises, voice honey-sweet and quick to reassure you. “S’ big, yeah, but I’m gonna do everything to make you comfortable, kay? And if you wanna stop—”

He cares so much, you realize.

“Sam?”

He looks into your eyes like he loves you, and utters, “Yeah?”

“Thank you for making this good for me,” you say.

Sam melts. He doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, and you let him know it’s okay with a softer, warmer kiss than the others you’ve shared. You take in the shape of his face, the subtle freckles on his cheeks and nose, how the candlelight shadows sweeten Sam’s gaze. It slams on top of you how there’s nobody in the whole world you’d rather be doing this with, and in one puff your anxiety is in the wind.

You wrap your fingers around Sam’s wrist and flirt, “...Can I put it on you?”

Sam nods, eyes lidded. You’ve never exactly had to open a condom before, so you’re careful to pry the foil open with your fingers. For whatever reason you hadn’t figured it’d be lubed, but it makes fitting the ring of it around Sam’s tip and sliding it down his shaft a bit easier. A soft happy groan escapes him. They keep escaping him as you pump his cock in languid twists of your hand.

Sam nuzzles his face between your shoulder blades, whisper-rasping, “Would you like to…? It’ll be less scary that way.”

You really, really would. Before you make your move, Sam adds, “But, uh, before you put it in—want you to look at me.” He wets his lips with his tongue. “Wanna see the look on your face when I fill you up.”

Well, fuck. You tilt your face against Sam’s, nose to nose with him and warmed by his breath, and feel the slow ripples of heat in your belly roll into long, growing waves. Sam slides a hand back to the silky underside of your thigh and props you open for him. When you line Sam up, you start with the tip, not pressing, just stroking, feeling him against you. A satisfied purr drizzles out of your mouth to Sam’s. So far, your chosen pace has been “just go for it,” and since it hasn’t failed you yet—

—you go for it.

Sam’s bulbous cockhead dips between your folds to find your hole. A desperate, keening yes squeals out of you. You’re spit-wet and absolutely caked in slick, so there’s no hitch when you pull Sam in, just a hot, sudden fullness that seems to go endlessly deeper and deeper. The fit is so fucking snug. Snug like he’s made for you. Snug and perfect and stinging, made easier by Sam’s soft huffing coos. Look at you go. Makin’ this look easy. You looked so pretty when I ate you out, baby, but I knew you’d look even prettier taking my dick. So eager, Sam says, and he’s right. Your wetness is just begging to swallow him whole. Just being stuffed with half of Sam’s cock has you sucking down air, so the final surge to bring him to the hilt pries a genuine, hoarse cry from your belly. Sam shoves his face in your hair and groans, the sound catching on the snarl between his teeth.

Together, you orbit around the throbbing core of pleasure between you, suspended in the moment.

Sam is a wind-up toy, springs tightening with every vicious squeeze of your pussy. His mouth has made you soft, slippery, and swollen, so the firmness of his cock is different but stellar. This close, in such an intimate position, you can feel his heartbeat in more ways than one, and it surrounds you and fills you so effortlessly that you can only assume it’s your own. He touches your body like it’s one he just stepped into, feeling you from a new perspective for the first time. Sam fixates on your tummy, too, and you find out why when he presses down under your belly button—feeling the thick swell of him under your skin, deeper than anyone else could ever go. He gives you a turn too, pressing your hand down in the same place. It sends electric blackouts of lust through your system that demand to be fucked brainless.

You start to wiggle in his grasp for more, stirring your hips down onto him and choking out his name. Sam is already responding: your open leg is scooped into the crook of his arm and drawn tight to his chest, spreading you open as wide as you’ll go. His hold cants up your hips in a way that lets his cock hit just that much deeper, and that’s all you need to dash your head against the pillows and mewl for your life. Two rough fingerpads slip back into the sopping wet home of your clit and stir against it at a pace brutal enough to cramp. Between Sam’s fingers and the thick drag of his cock against your soft walls, you’re desperate for something to hold onto. You latch onto Sam’s wrist for dear life. Then starts Sam’s pulling and pushing in brief, filling strokes, rocking, driving you fucking crazy, making you need him to fuck you like you need air. He was deep to a point that you swear you could feel him in the back of your throat.

“You want more?” Sam asks, and if it weren’t for the breathy rattle in his voice he could’ve sounded innocent.

You nod until your head is close to rolling off. “Yes, yes Sammy please.”

Sam grins. You feel it for an instant, then his cheek pulls away from your back and all you have left to read him by is the needy, carnal noises he’s making. All at once he’s drawing out further than he had before. You’re almost empty for a whole sob-worthy breath, which Sam makes up for with every ounce of his being.

For what has to be three glorious hours, Sam leans back to fuck you in powerful, even strokes, filling you to the brim every time, and filling the room with the thick, wet sound of his cock pounding into you. You repay him the only way you can, and—get—noisy.

You moan. You wail. You mewl, pretty much every time Sam’s hips snap up into your ass. You pant hard through it all, begging him in soft whines to f-fuck me, fuck me, p-please, Sam and to go deeper, baby—uhnn, more more more…! From there you’re on autopilot, letting loose even the most primal noises that Sam gets out of you. He is very, very good at his task, so you color the room with every erotic syllable under the sun. A porn studio would hire the two of you without even entering the room. Sam especially, but you might be biased since every time you sigh his name he drives in a little harder.

Indescribable pleasure follows even his tiniest movements. You absorb every pump with nothing but desperate enthusiasm, spreading your legs further, curling your back, and digging your fingers into the cushions for any sort of leverage at all. Just a few minutes pass until your limit is a trembling boulder of knots in your gut, but still Sam’s nowhere near finished yet. Slick coats your thighs and Sam's cock, you cry at every thrust, your body twitches and shudders all over, but he's still not there.

He slows. The brush of his lips against your ear and the wisp of his breath set your nerves on fire. “You’re gonna finish first, but tha’—that’s okay, baby,” Sam reassures, and works your poor swollen clit even harder, choking a string of thready moans from you. “Wanna feel your pretty pussy cum all over my dick.”

“Oh fuck,” you whine.

(Tomorrow, you’re going to wake up and wonder where the hell he got that dirty mouth from. Somebody needs to clean it out with soap.)

It’s as Sam’s laying sloppy kisses on your throat that his prediction comes true. The tissue in your body pulls taut, winding tight, tighter, curling around the epicenter of pleasure, toward him. You expect Sam’s thrusts to take a fierce turn. Instead, you’re treated to the same thorough, determined pace that got you here in the first place—the same pace that is currently jellifying your insides and reducing you to tears on this teeny bed. If the percussive slapping of skin on skin wasn’t enough to wake up the entire planet, then the vicious slam of the bedframe putting a new dent in the wall would certainly do the job. Somehow you hear it all past your pulse thundering in your ears. The arm hooked behind you to rake a hand through Sam’s hair bobs with each thrust, and your leg trapped in Sam’s hold bounces on beat. All you can do is scrape out broken gasps, until the tossing waves of heat and lust and power twisted in your belly have built too high—and all things that go up must inevitably come crashing down.

“That’s my girl,” Sam slurs, squeezing your tits in both hands. He rolls his hips into you and coos, “Just like that… take what you need, baby, it’s okay…”

Like last time, Sam fucks you through it. You’re scooped up in his arms and squeezed tight, tight enough to be drawn into Sam’s body and absorbed. The hot, gorgeous drags of friction against the sensitive walls of your cunt slow, but Sam never draws out, burying himself deep and soaking up every wild clamp of your pussy. There’s something fucking spectacular about having something to clench down on. Sam is that perfect something, vieny and thick and still fucking hard.

You cum on him in long rippling rushes of wet heat that feel downright unrealistic, otherworldly—exaggerated, maybe, by the fact that you fucking—black—out!

It must only be a few beats later that you come out of it, but the fact remains that Sam Winchester made you cum so hard you passed out, and you’re going to have to live with that for the rest of your life. You’re already starting to realize that Sam is the best lay you’re ever going to have, period, and the dull happy throb of your orgasm hasn’t even left your body yet. Sam hasn’t even left your body yet.

Wait, fuck. He’s still hard.

…This could be. This could be very good.

Fueled by hormones, sweat, and adrenaline, you pull off him and roll the rest of the way onto your belly. During all the crazed fucking, you and Sam had migrated halfway down the bed. You crawl to the top as sexily as you’re able, stuff your cheek against the closest pillow, and wiggle your cum-soaked ass in the air just for him, open for his taking. Your face could start the whole bed on fire, but you feel more alluring than embarrassed.

“C’mon, Sammy,” you taunt, and throw him a mean grin, “gimme the big finish.”

Sam sucked in a deep breath from his nose, probably preying for strength. A dirty smile touched his face. “You’re… you’re amazing, _____.”

Feeling like it, you turned your face over onto the other side of the pillow and tempted him with another mesmerizing ass wiggle. Sam was up on his knees in an instant. You should’ve known that Sam, the addict, would instantly take the chance to shove his face between your legs. The only warning you get is his massive hands clamping down on your calves to hold you still, then a hot, silky tongue swipes once through your folds for a taste. You haven’t finished squealing when Sam’s weight saddles up behind you, and the heavy shape of his cock starts to rut between your legs.

“Sorry,” Sam hums, not sorry at all, “Needed a taste of you.”

Stars above, he doesn’t hesitate to get handsy with you, too, taking two broad handfuls of your ass-cheeks. Your ass sits so nicely against his hips that you start to wonder if soulmates are real. Because Sam must be yours, fitting into you like a key and teasing you open like a master lockpicker. Once you’re where Sam wants you, he bobs your ass back until his tip has room to part your folds, and after that you’re both brought home into sparkling, slippery, blinding pleasure. He digs his fingers into your ass and pulls you right on him, filling your pussy to the hilt, like always. Key. Lock. Click click click.

“Yes,” you and Sam hiss together.

“Fuck,” Sam adds. “You should see yourself like this. You look so stuffed, baby, squeezing down on me.”

“Feel so stuffed,” you flirt back, wiggling into him.

This angle is different than the last, exaggerating, as Sam immediately starts in on his pace from before, how thick his cock is. He curls his fingers around your waist and beats in hard, pulling on your still-sparking overstimulated wires from last time. Every joint in your body locks ramrod straight, overwhelmed with brief flashes of too much too much. Your pussy clenches helplessly around him, but Sam brings you over it with a few well-placed stirs of his hips. In no time you’re mewling for him like you were before, emboldened by your first round.

You get your nails into Sam’s sculpted ass and drag him deeper, faster, urging him on the end of a moan, “Fuckin’ take it, Sammy—mhhnn, take what—what you need, Sam, yes, so good—”

This is exactly what Sam needs to hear. You’re scooped up around the middle, just like before, and Sam crushes his face into your back, spooning you close as he brings himself closer and closer to where he needs to be. Your hands can’t get enough of him, smoothing down his vieny arms and squeezing his hand against your belly. The picture the two of you must make is obscene on unimaginable levels. Sam, latched onto you like a parasite and reaming you for his release. You, smushed under him and loving it, digging your ass up into him for more. All the sweat-twisted blankets shoved to the floor. Sam’s hips canting your thighs apart. The worn-smooth slope of his palms, squeezing your tits and your tummy and your waist in achy handfuls.

Finally, Sam’s hoarse choked panting cuts off with a sharp breath. His hips putter into you for the last time, then still. Sam spills into the condom, shuddering against you from head to toe, and slowly… the two of you collapse into each other… panting and panting until your breathing syncs up. Sam’s chest goes up. You suck in a breath. His chest goes out, and you deflate right with him.

He doesn’t get up and you don’t ask him to. As the haze of sex starts to clear from the room (as much as it can, anyway), the chill of the mountainside creeps in behind it, and the hottest thing around for miles is easily the giant, naked Sam Winchester in your bed. Wrapped up in him and as warm as can be, you wonder if he’s as close to passing out (again) as you are.

But no. Suddenly, Sam’s up on his hands, and there’s only two possible reasons why.

“Didn’t get to kiss you as I finished,” he complained.

Smushed into your pillow, you tell him, “I think you have two addictions.”

Regardless, you roll onto your back so Sam can lay one on you. Since your soul is officially back in your body, you’re more aware than ever of the aches and bruises you’ve earned, not to mention a few sets of pomegranate-purple fingerprints. After a few stunning kisses from Sam, you’re still not sure that all of that actually happened. You touch his face and pinch his cheeks plenty of times, but all he does is look at you extra dreamily. Still doesn’t seem real.

Of course, being a gentleman, he decides to prove it to you.

“Speaking of my other addiction…” Sam lays a playful hand on your belly, “I know I wound you up a bit back there. Can I take care of you one more time? Please?”

“Hmm…” You pretend to think, grinning to yourself. “Man. I just can’t say no to you, Sammy…”

Two weeks later, you’re crammed in a teeny car instead of a teeny cabin, riding down a back road in rural Texas the Dean way—blowing by road signs at sixty miles an hour, windows down and music up. Sam’s shotgun. You’re content to sit behind him, catching his eye in the side-mirror as he pretends to hunt around newspapers for a new case. His hair flutters in the wind, outlining his face in the most enchanting way.

“I don’t know how the hell the two of you stayed up there the whole week!” Dean hollers over his Lynyrd Skynyrd tape, which he could turn down whenever he wants to. He throws you an unenvious look from the driver’s seat, “You must’a been bored out of your fuckin’ gourds!”

You’re honestly surprised that Dean didn’t automatically assume sexy shenanigans occurred at the cabin. Sam doesn’t move to answer, deeply engrossed in his reading. Where Dean can’t see, you curl your fingers into the hair at the back of Sam’s neck and caress his scalp, which earns you a look that promises that sexy shenanigans can happen anywhere. They can happen in motel rooms. Click. Even Impalas, when Dean’s gone. Click click click.

You shrug at Sam’s brother, shouting over the music with an unsubtle grin. “We entertained ourselves!”

Tags: @samssluttybangs @cookiemumster1 @lacilou @cevans-winchester @leigh70 @seraphimluxe @emily-roberts @emme-looou @aloneatpeace @williamstop @ornella0910 @chaoticshepardplaid @dakota-dream @lcvecstiel @goghkiss @spnexploration

READ PART TWO.

#sam winchester #spn #supernatural #uncouthspn #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester x you #sam winchester x reader headcanons #sam winchester imagine #sam winchester smut #user uncouth

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tightjeansjavi · 12 days

Text

And They Were Roommates | drabble

“hazy shades of you” aka: weed…idk

A/N: when I tell you that these three have been living in my head rent fucking free…💀 there are so many fun and smutty scenarios that I can do for them and it’s so much fun! Big kisses for @syd-djarin for another BEAUTIFUL moodboard, and @sinsofsummers for betaing 💗

word count: 1.1k

Summary: Joel and Logan take care of you on the couch after they ✨beat✨ your pussy 🫶🏻

Pairing | Joel Miller x Logan Howlett x f!reader

Warnings: smut, pussy pronouns, m/m, mmf, language, throuple, dubious consent given the use of marijuana, +18 minors dni!

series masterlist

The wet sound of lips meeting in a chaste kiss echo behind you. The couch pillows have found their way to the floor in a smashed down heap, and you’re unsure where your discarded panties ended up…but your hunch leads you to believe that Logan secretly stashed them away in the back pocket of his jeans (for safekeeping, obviously).

Your thighs feel sticky, glued together with perspiration, and the remnants of Joel and Logan painting your skin in ropes of their seed, marking you, as always.

“Think she’s up for round five?” Logan murmurs against Joel’s lips, nipping playfully at the lower one, catching the soft skin and tugging—gently, earning an appreciative growl from the other man.

“Mmm…ain’t too sure about that, Howlett. Think she’s pretty fuckin’ beat.” He cards his fingers through Logan’s hair, twisting them through the endearing cowlicks that resemble cat ears, and tugs him in further—always yearning for more.

“You guys beat my pussy like it was your personal fucking mission. I can still feel her pulsing, and I’m not even sure if I have a clit attached to my body anymore.” You hoarsely joke, leaning forward from your spot between the two men on the couch to grab your jar of weed and rolling papers.

“Don’t be so dramatic, sweetheart.” Logan says teasingly, and curves his hand around Joel’s hip, pulling him into his lap with ease. “S’fine by us if you need a break. I think we can keep ourselves occupied.”

“Lemme roll this real quick, and then by the time I’m done, I’ll be ready for another poundin.’” You glance over your shoulder briefly at your men, a smile playing on your lips at the sight of them indulging in pleasure freely; it warms your heart and sends a spark shooting from the top of your spine, settling deep between your thighs.

“Mmm…” The Wolverine hums in appreciation, lulling his head to the side to give Joel easier access to his neck, and so that he could watch you with a lazy grin plastered on his flushed face. “Take your time, babygirl. Miller here is just gonna keep acting like a cock thirsty slut, anyway. And who could blame—”

“Yeah? That’s what I am?” Joel said with a snort under his breath, nudging Logan’s pulse point with the tip of his prominent nose before he pulled back slowly so he could look at his face.

“That’s right, bub.” He chuckles and diverts his gaze back to his lover straddling his hips, leaking cocks pressed together in this position, “ya heard me the first time, didn’t ya?” His brows rose suggestively, and his eyes drifted southwards.

“As if you don’t want me to shove my cock down that pretty throat of yours again, baby.” Joel rasped, closing the small gap between him and Logan with a searing kiss and trailed his fingers from his hair down to the bristle on his jaw, tilting his head upwards with the back of his knuckles. He rolled his hips forwards, easing the building tension between them.

“Fuck.” Logan sighs into the kiss, tightening his grip around Joel’s hip, nails bruising the skin there. “Thas’ it. Keep doing that.”

“Like this?” Joel rolls his hips again, experimenting with this new position freely, and he feels his ego swell from Logan’s unconditional praise falling from his lips between kisses.

“Yeah, bub. That’s perfect. Fucking—perfect. Gonna make me cum…again.” He growls.

“Goddamn. Y’all are fuckin’ nasty.” You chide playfully, squeezing your thighs together to try and relieve the building tension—those motherfuckers.

Your fingers were trembling by the time you finished rolling your joint, and just as you were reaching for the lighter along the coffee table, two pairs of hands were caressing you and easing your back against the couch.

“Boys, please.” You pleaded, “let me relax for five minutes, okay?”

Your lips pucker around the joint tucked there safely, but it dips down when you feel Joel’s lips brush against your neck on one side, and Logan’s following suit on the other.

“Babygirl, you are relaxing, see?” Logan says with a warm chuckle. “Let us take care of ya for a little, okay? We’ll be nice and gentle with her.” His eyes flick down to your pussy fondly, his fingers flexing in low-energy restraint.

Simultaneously, Joel’s lips trail down the expanse of your throat, kissing along your collarbone until you feel the hot press of his tongue lathing against your bare nipple, and one hand drifting down between your thighs, gently prying them apart at his leisure. His hand wraps around the meat of your thigh, gently draping it across his lap. “Baby, Logan and I jus’ can’t help it. We always wanna play with you.”

“Fuck me.” You let out a sigh through your nose, feeling your back melt further into the couch when Logan drapes your other thigh across his lap, exposing you completely to their wandering hands. “Just not too much, okay? She really did take a serious beating by you both.”

“Oh, honey…we know.” Logan chuckles, pressing a kiss to the side of your head when you naturally lean into him. “Just some gentle pets is what we’re gonna give her. Ain’t that right, bub?”

“Mhm. Nothing but the best for our girl and her pretty, bruised pussy. We’re gonna take extra good care of her.”

“God, I don’t know what I did to deserve you both, but I love you, seriously. Mind grabbing the light for me while you’re at it?” You gestured to the forgotten lighter on the table, and Logan was already reaching for it with his free hand. He pressed down on the spark wheel to ignite the flame, bringing it to the unlit end of your joint with ease.

The gesture was inherently intimate;your eyes met and you shifted closer towards him just as Joel’s fingers brush through the tuft of curls, playing with them endearingly.

You took a sharp inhale of smoke, holding it in your mouth as Logan leaned in and kissed you deeply, inhaling the smoke at the same time while his fingers dip down, spreading your inner lips open slowly.

“She’s so pretty, ain’t she?” Joel murmurs in awe when his eyes focus intently at the way that your pussy pulsed from even the lightest touches. His fingers had barely touched your sensitive clit, and you were already lurching forward, whimpering pathetically into Logan’s lips.

“The prettiest.” Logan hummed in agreement.

And for the next hour, and well after the joint that was pursed prettily between your lips had been enjoyed between the three of you, your boyfriends continued to gently tend to you, and your pussy. Coaxing orgasm after orgasm washing over you with just their fingers alone, and creating an even bigger mess between your thighs. And well, good dogs always lick their bowl clean, ain’t that right, bub?

banners by the lovely @saradika-graphics

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#joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #joel miller smut #joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x you #logan howlett #logan howlett x reader #logan howlett smut #logan howlett x you #wolverine x reader #wolverine x you #wolverine smut #cw dubious consent

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juletheghoul · 25 days

Text

Unbroken

AN: I have been toying around with this idea for a couple of years at this point-the idea of being Elia's lady in waiting, and being aggressively pursued by her brother, Oberyn. I imagine him to be younger, wilder, but just as passionate. There is no Ellaria yet, there is no betrayal, just two people who cannot get enough of each other and Oberyn using his position for nothing but mischief. This is quite obviously before the nastiness that we all know befalls House Martell, lets live in it a while! I have a whole drama planned out for them in my head so I might actually write it all out - lets see if I can find the time lol. (in the moodboard above, the face you see is how I imagine Elia to be, reader is still completely nondescript!) This is unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine- hope you enjoy! 🧡

Oberyn Martell x F!Reader

Pairing: Oberyn x F!Reader

Word Count: 1.7K

Warnings: (18+ NO MINORS) , language, Smut 18+, PIV sex (wrap it up), dirty talk **pregnancy**

Let me know if I missed anything!

reblogs are appreciated

Masterlist

Her skirts swirl in the wind, whipping around her legs like sand. They were the colour of dusk, burnt oranges and yellows, favouring her golden skin, and her dark eyes. Elia Martell–all the Martells–looked best in these colours. You smile at her as you pour her a cup of wine, indulging her despite her delicate constitution.

“This is the last of it my Princess,” you fill the cup halfway, “You know it does not sit well.”

“Yes, yes,” she rolled her eyes, sipping at the wine, “you are worse than Doran.”

You sigh, goodnaturedly, until one of the guards of Sunspear comes, interrupting the Princess enjoying the non-existent breeze.

“My princess, my lady,” He speaks, addressing you respectively, “The Prince, Oberyn requests your company-”

“Oh what could my brother possibly want from me right now?” She huffs out a breath, her winecup getting the brunt of her annoyance.

“My apologies Princess, it is not your company he asks for.” He bows his head in deference, his gaze then moving to you. “My lady, Prince Oberyn awaits.”

Your heart races to hear him calling for you, despite it not being the first time. Elia laughs, and dismisses you graciously. “Go then, my lady. You cannot keep The Red Viper waiting for long, he is prone to sulk, or fight.” Her tinkling laugh follows you where the guard leads, ringing out as you make your way towards his chambers.

You smile to yourself as you walk the halls of Sunspear, the sound of your soft steps ringing out, bouncing off the tiles and the high, arched ceilings. Your heart feels like a bird in the cage of your ribs, fluttering wildly as you finally make it to the giant door leading to him.

You meet the solid wall of his back when the guard opens his chamber door, he is sitting at his desk by the window, head down and quill scratching across a piece of parchment. His head turns at the sound of the door, and the quill is discarded. His eyes are lively when they meet yours, full of mischief and devilment.

“You called for me, my Prince?” You try, genuinely, try to keep the smile off your face. “Is there something you desire of me?” He narrows his eyes, rising and slinking over like some big, predatory cat. He is so tall, his shoulders so broad and the cut of his robes only serves to highlight his best features. The breadth of him, the trim waist, the enchanting vision of his throat and chest on display. All of it conspiring to make you ache to touch him. He laughs low, the sound hardening your nipples.

“Just you, my flower.” He doesn’t so much reach for you, as strike, like his namesake. His arms wrapping around your waist quick enough to pull a gasp from you. His lips descend quickly, pressing against your neck, his tongue following closely behind and all you can do for a moment is gasp in delight, gathered up in his arms with your hands pressed against his chest.

“This is why you pull me away from the Princess? Because you cannot contain your passion for a few hours my Prince?” His hands travel, landing heavy on your backside, while his mouth travels from your shoulder, up to capture your mouth in a searing kiss, a kiss that pushes everything but him from your mind.

“Yes, my love, I cannot contain my passion for you for even a heartbeat.” He speaks the words, turning your heart, and your cunt to liquid for him, before his deft hands pull at the laces and fastenings of your dress.

“My Prince, I am to serve-” He pulls the dress up and off, leaving you in your small clothes, “Your sister, I am to serve–” He cuts off the words with another kiss and this time you moan into his mouth, heart pounding between your legs, knowing even now as you protest that you will let him do whatever he wants, that you need him to.

“My sister is too greedy with you, too selfish.” He undoes his robe, slipping it off to fall at his feet as he herds you towards his bed.

“She keeps you to herself, when she knows of my desire for you.” you tumble into his linens, the smell of him surrounding you, spicy and sweet, like desert heat, fiery peppers, sweet and fragrant oranges.

He slots his hips between your legs, and his cock is so hard it makes you gasp, the fabric of his breeches dampening when he grinds against the small clothes that cover your sex.

“You are insatiable–Oberyn!” You gasp his name when he tears the small clothes from your body, his impatience to have you naked and open to him making him ravenous. He laughs, eyes like black diamonds as he practically kicks his breeches off in his haste to get his cock out.

“I am unwell, my love, truly and deeply sick with want.” He moans the last word when he finally fits himself at the mouth of your cunt, slipping in with one brutal thrust.

“Gods, yes my love, this is what I needed, to be buried up to my balls in this sweet little cunt.” He moans, his tone obscene as he rocks himself inside you.

Your arousal is something as fierce as he, the fullness of him only further inflaming your passion. It is always like this with him, never dull, never calm, always an inferno in your veins and in your lungs. He passes it on to you, his fire catching on your skin and soon, you are clutching to him, begging him, your arousal coating him and dripping onto his bed.

“Yes, yes–” You chant, in tune with every roll of his hips. The sun shining through the window paints everything in his colours.

“Did you miss me, my love? Miss me here?” He punctuates the word with a hard snap of his hips, it makes your breasts bounce, makes you let out a whine.

“Yes my Prince, yes, always miss you–” You open your legs wider, giving him more room to get deeper, to fuck you harder, “Oberyn, you’re splitting me open.” You pull him forward, the temptation of his neck is too great, you suck a mark into it, relishing the way he groans. His hand pulls yours up and over your head, making your chest jut out for his tongue. He teases at your sensitive nipples as his cock strokes, and strokes, and strokes until you are on the precipice, on the dagger's edge of pleasure.

“I can feel it, ready to burst for me–” He smiles, drunk on the pleasure and when he lets go of your hands and presses his thumb to your clit you unravel, clenching and soaking him in your release. “There it is, that’s it-” He speeds up, burying his face into your neck while you take what he gives, his chest pressed up against yours, sweat slicked and warm.

His pace falters and you feel the hot jet of his seed inside, he groans, changing to a dirty grind as he comes deep.

He collapses once he’s milked himself dry, his comforting weight pressing you to his feather bed. Your legs settle around his waist, ankles locking on the swell of his ass and your arms wind around his neck to play with his sweat-soaked hair. He hums as you trail your nails down, tickling at the smooth skin of his back. Your lips press kisses against his shoulder where it rests under your chin. This is your favourite part, being full of him, surrounded by him, loved by him, and pouring all of your affection and love back into him in return.

“Are you quite comfortable, my Prince?” You scratch at his scalp as he takes deep breaths, his softening cock still buried deep.

“Oh yes,” He huffs the words into your neck, his tongue licking a stripe up to your ear, “I could spend the rest of my life here, cock inside you, my body on yours.”

You laugh, full throated.

“Oh I bet you could, rutting away until I’m raw.” You bring your hands to his face, making him face you and you are once again struck by his beauty, no matter how many times you find yourself in his bed, he still makes your heart race. You swipe your thumb across his plump lower lip, and fix the unruly state of his hair. “I could stay here too, Oberyn. I could be here, under you, with you, beside you always. I love you.” You press your mouth to his, and he deepens the kiss, his ardour burning just as brightly.

“I love you, my flower, and what we’ve created. I cannot wait to meet my son.” He brings his hand down, to the little swell of your belly, the one that's barely showing yet. You laugh again, and he smiles, his hand warm against your womb.

“A boy is it? How would you divine that? I am barely showing–”

“I know it is a boy, I can feel it. He will be my little viper, a menace to his instructors, he will have the sweet face of his mother, and the fierce hunger of his father.” He removes himself with a hiss, pulling out and lowering himself until he presses kiss after kiss to the little bump. “Won’t you my boy? You will be the terror and delight of my life.”

He smiles up at you, bright eyed, with all of the love you feel for him shining back at you.

“You, my love, will give birth to princes and princesses, the most beautiful children in all of the world.” He always got like this after, sentimental and romantic and it always made you happy enough to cry.

“Yes my love, he will be all that and more.” You pull him up, wrapping his arms around you to lay your head on his chest. “You know I must go soon, I cannot stay in bed with you, despite my wish to.” He sighs, resigned.

“Yes, Elia awaits, just another moment, and I will let you go.” You laugh, and bury your face into his neck.

- Tag list: @frannyzooey @greeneyedblondie44 @lola4pedro @221bshrlocked @artsymaddie @supernaturalgirl20 @sleep-tight1 @sherala007 @cannedsoupsucks @thirstworldproblemss @ilikechocolatemilkh @freeshavocadoooo @hrk-fic-recs @maxwell--lord @the-feckless-wonder @kirsteng42 @thisshipwillsail316 @feministfanboi @stevie75 @readsalot73 @pedrostories @tobealostwanderer @mandocrasis @elegantduckturtle @diogodxlot @alczysz17 @evyiione @absurdthirst @beskarboobs @andruxx @littlemissoblivious @1800-fight-me @maievdenoir @gracie7209 @omlwhatamidoinghere @magikfanatic @frankiecatfish @pedritoispunk @studythoreauly @missswriter @pintsizemama @mswarriorbabe80 @a-trial-run-on-paper @la-le-lu @chickadee-djarin @dobbyjen @rosiefridayrogersunday @ajeff855 @johnsrevelation @the-witty-pen-name @zombiesnips-blog @sarahjkl82-blog @fan-of-encouragement @queenofthecloudss @deadhumourist @felicisimor @toomanystoriessolittletime @what-iwish-you-knew @pedrostories @athalien @bi-thewayy @literallydontlook @pedrosbrat @gamingaquarius @luxmundee @iamafadedmoon @nakhudanyx @littlemisspascal @grogusmum @recklessworry @heyitmelexie @killyspinacoladas @gothicxbarbie @evildxad @dragonslarimar @spideysimpossiblegirl @chemtrail-mix @breezythesimp @altarsw @artooies-scream @staygolddindjarin @softsweetedbeauty @littlemisspascal @yuiopiklmn @squidwell @just-blogging-around @bbyanarchist @girlofchaos @maddiedrmr @frasmotic @acourtofsnakes @buckybarneshairpullingkink @astoryisaloveaffair @harriedandharassed @shirks-all-responsibilities @androah @alwaysachorusgirl @dindjarinsmut @captain-jebi @gallowsjoker @tusk89 @dadbodfanatic-x @naiomiwinchester @blazedprince @avidreader73 @mr-underhills-things @avengersfan25 @tastygoldentaters @nyotamalfoy @mymindfuckery @its-nebuleuse @missladym1981 @inept-the-magnificent @yesjazzywazzylove-blog @ladyofmidlo72 @greenvita @honey-on-your-tongue

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #oberyn #prince oberyn #oberyn martell #oberyn x reader #oberyn nymeros martell #oberyn x you #gots fanfic #game of thrones au #game of thrones #game of thrones fanfiction #oberyn x female reader

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katelynnwrites · 3 months

Text

I'll Love You ('Til The Day That I Die) | Laura Freigang

warnings: not proofread in the slightest

word count: 1430

summary: oranges play a very special part in your relationship with laura

a/n: struggled to complete this so badly so i apologise if this isn't as good as it could be...also here's a moodboard

There’s a little tattoo on your arm, of an orange slice.

Really, it is such a curious thing that everyone you meet seems to ask you about it. You’ve lost count of the number of times you glance at it and smile before answering, ‘It’s for Laura.’

Laura who is your girlfriend and has been since she initially shared an orange with you. It was why she even shared the fruit with you in the first place.

The blonde had been your best friend long before the both of you made the decision to see where your mutual feelings of wanting more than friendship would lead.

Oranges are her favourite fruit and as she lays with her head in your lap, she peels the one she had been carrying in her bag.

Very carefully, she sections it perfectly in half and holds it out.

‘For you. I hope that you’ll always be the person I share my orange with.’

You take it gently, the look on your face being nothing short of complete adoration and whisper, ‘Danke.’

Then you kiss her for the first time and she tastes like oranges.

It’s how it goes for a while, Laura giving you half of her favourite fruit and you thanking her with a kiss.

Between all that, you go on dates together, learn that the feel of the striker’s hand in yours is quickly becoming one of your favourite things and fall quicker and harder for your girlfriend than you ever thought possible.

The latter is particularly on your mind as Laura once again peels an orange and holds it out to you.

Your heart skips a beat just as it does every time she does so and you softly say, ‘Thank you schatz.’

Leaning in, you press a kiss onto your girlfriend’s cheek and then her lips, leaving her blushing a pretty shade of pink when you pull back.

She looks so cute and you just have so many emotions for her.

The strongest of which is what compels you to take a piece of orange peel that the blonde has discarded.

‘What are you doing?’ Laura murmurs.

You simply give her another kiss that means be patient and she gives an adorable huff as she does so.

The forward’s Penn State dorm room has a desk and you go over to it and take the pair of scissors she has there and cut away at it until you’re satisfied.

Turning back to your girlfriend, you carefully hold it out to her, ‘For you. In return for all the oranges you have shared with me.’

Laura takes the tiny orange peel heart you have made and she knows immediately that the smile her brother teases her so often about, is on her face. The one that she apparently only reserves for you.

‘Thank you.’ She starts but you add something else that has her breath hitching.

‘And for everything else. I love you Lau.’

Your girlfriend exhales slowly, carefully tucking your orange peel heart into the pocket of her sweatpants before she gently cradles your face in her hands.

‘I love you too. So much.’ She whispers and doesn’t let you react at all before letting her lips meet yours in the sweetest kiss of your life.

The blonde takes her time, savouring the way this kiss means so much more than all the other kisses you have ever shared together.

It tastes of oranges and promises of a future together.

Oranges are a constant in your relationship, with your favourite person peeling them and sharing it with you, even when the two of you move to Frankfurt.

No one else is allowed this privilege and once the rest of your Eintracht Frankfurt teammates get wind of it, tease Laura relentlessly by asking her to share her orange whenever they see her peeling one.

‘Not even one slice?’ Gery often says.

Each time, the blonde does not deign to answer, choosing to pass you your half and shoot the Swiss woman a dirty look instead.

Sometimes you grin mischievously at the German woman and pretend to share your half.

‘No. No. That’s for you. Just you.’ Laura would insist.

Soft giggles would escape you as you look at how wide and pleading your girlfriend’s pretty eyes would get.

‘Don’t worry schatz. I’m only kidding.’ You’d murmur against her lips.

It’s easy after that for your girlfriend to blush and huff, ‘I knew that.’

Despite how easy it is to rile the blonde up, she’s completely sure in the knowledge that you love her more than anything.

You had never let her doubt it, especially once you got your orange slice tattoo.

Laura had worried over it far more than you had. All you were thinking about was where you would want it done while your girlfriend had agonised over everything else.

‘What if you decide you hate it?’ She anxiously asks.

‘I won’t.’ You promise.

‘What if it gets infected?’ The striker even more anxiously asks.

You glance at the various tattoos she’s sporting on her own arms and raise an eyebrow.

Laura relents at that but to make her feel better all the same, you tell her, ‘I’ll take good care of it and follow all the aftercare steps. You can help me if you’d like?’

The German woman bites her lip and quietly murmurs, ‘What if we break up? Not that I want to but what if you do and you have an orange slice tattoo on your body forever?’

‘Schatz…’

You take her hands in yours and ask, ‘Do you think you and I will stop loving each other tomorrow?’

Your girlfriend gasps, ‘Not a chance!’

‘Okay good, do you think that we will stop loving each other next week?’

The blonde tries but fails not to look horrified and you take that as her answer, with a faint chuckle.

‘Do you think we will stop loving each other next month?’

Laura’s expression only grows more alarmed and it is unmistakable in her voice, ‘No. There is no possible way that I will stop loving you then.’

With a gentle squeeze to your favourite forward’s hand, you say, ‘Okay. What about in a year’s time? Will we stop loving each other then?’

The German woman shakes her head, her previous emotions changing to determination.

‘Not if I have anything to say about it. I love you. I will love you tomorrow and next week and next month and next year and even for years after that. I’m going to love you forever because you’re the love of my life.’

Laura’s completely out of breath by the end of it, her cheeks have turned an adorable shade of red.

You kiss her as ardently as you can before murmuring, ‘And that’s exactly how I feel about you schatz so I know I won’t regret it.’

The blonde wraps her arms around you tightly, burying her face into your hair so her voice is muffled when she says, ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too. That’s why I’m going to get a permanent reminder of it on my arm. So that everyone can see it.’

Laura makes a little touched noise, squeezing you against her harder.

Warmth bubbles up in your chest as she does so, the same kind of warmth that continues to form weeks and even years after your tattoo has healed.

It comes whenever you get to talk about your tattoo.

And one night, after Laura’s finally proposed to you, you reveal another reason why you got the tattoo when you happen to glance at her bedside table.

There is a small glass jar that sits there, containing all the orange peel hearts you have ever given her.

Since the first time you told her you love her, you have always given her one in return, whenever she shares half of an orange with you.

Years have passed since that night and the blonde’s collection of dried orange peel hearts has grown. She has kept each and every one of them, enough so that her jar is almost full.

Looking back at the German striker, you snuggle closer to her and admit that you got your tattoo on a prominent place on your arm, just so that people would ask and you would be able to talk about it.

Talk about why you got it, how much you love Laura and how much she loves you.

Your love story is your favourite thing to talk about and your little orange slice tattoo gives you a reason to.

German Translations:

danke - thank you

schatz - sweetheart

#laura freigang #laura freigang x reader #laura freigang imagine #woso #woso community #woso x reader #woso imagine #katelynnwrites

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celestie0 · 8 months

Text

gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]

kickoff ch.5 these feelings are hard to find

ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem reader, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, mentions of weed, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot

ᰔ chapter. 5/x (probably 12)

ᰔ words. 10.4k

a/n. aaaa this chapter took me a while because i was having some pretty bad writer's block. i seriously can't believe it crossed over 10k words, i very poorly planned how much i wanted to get done by this chapter, but i didn't feel like splitting it into two so oh wellll. hope you enjoy! pls excuse any typos we all live on a floating rock.

nav. masterlist

☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1

♬.*ﾟplaylist

“I really don’t understand why I’m here…” you’re grumbling as you, Mina and Todo make your way up the pavement of the driveway leading to the house party. You glance to your right where Mina and Todo are holding hands, arms swinging as they keep pace together.

It was finally Friday after a particularly long and stressful week, so you were extremely excited to just spend the rest of the night relaxing at home. You had already poured yourself a glass of wine when you returned from your evening class and were sitting on the couch with a blanket on, scrolling through Netflix, when Mina approached you while she was talking to Todo on the phone. She mentioned something about an SAE party tonight that she wanted you to come along for and Todo said he’d extend his other invite to you. When you politely declined, Mina slumped down on the couch and told Todo she had no interest in going unless you also came. And then Todo was bribing you with a hundred bucks. Easiest hundred bucks you’ve ever made.

“Don’t be a downer. You’re here because I think you’ve been working hard and you need to relax a bit,” Mina chirps, now clinging onto Todo’s arm, “and there’s no better way to relax than getting drunk.”

“I could be getting drunk at home,” you mumble to yourself, the night you were imagining for yourself all day being very different from where you find yourself now.

The guy that was bouncing for tonight’s party was scanning people’s phones and engaging in some small talk before allowing people inside. He was pretty handsome and you wondered if there was some sort of requirement written in the rules to the SAE fraternity that they must be good-looking to join.

“Hello, my brother,” Todo says as he approaches, smacking him so hard on the back in greeting that the man stumbles over slightly and sends an irritated glare Todo’s way before he regains his balance.

“Hey, big guy, are these your invites?” He gestures towards you and Mina, his eyes landing on yours and lingering for a moment. You blink at him.

“Yes, this here’s my lovely lady, and this here’s my lovely lady’s friend,” Todo says with a faux suave that only makes you narrow your eyes at him. The man at the entrance sighs and nods before stepping out of the way and motioning the three of you towards the entrance.

The minute you enter, you immediately realize that this party felt very different from the one you were at last week. It was slightly less crowded, but there were still plenty of people bustling around the large expanse of the ground floor with loud rap music that practically shook the walls. It was dark, much more edgy, with the only source of light being the sporadic flashing of lights over by the DJ’s booth. You felt disoriented from the atmosphere, and the smell of weed and alcohol only further dazed you.

“This is insane,” you barely hear Mina say beside you over the music as she looks around the expansive interior of the house. In between the brief flickering lights that lit up people’s faces, you register that Todo is grinning at her as though he was entirely satisfied by her reaction.

You only make it a few steps inside, trailing behind Mina and Todo, before feeling the need to excuse yourself to get away from the intense environment for a second. “Hey, I think I’m going to use the restroom real quick. Todo, do you have any idea where it is?” You feel like you’re shouting just to be heard.

He looks over his shoulder at you. “There are some downstairs but they probably have lines. You could try upstairs.”

You give him an appreciative nod and head over to the base of the staircase at the right, glancing up before making your ascent. There didn’t seem to be anyone else upstairs, which surprised you, but you figured you were just in luck and began to walk up step by step until reaching the top. The music downstairs begins to sound muffled as you turn around the railing post and make your way to the left into the narrow hallway likely leading towards the bedrooms. There's a white door somewhere in the middle of the hallway that could only be either a closet or a bathroom. You wrap your hand around the cold metal door handle and twist, satisfied that it wasn’t locked.

The mumbling noises of people inside doesn’t register in your mind until you’ve already cracked the door open half-way, and your entire body recoils in the immediate rush of embarrassment washing over you as you take in the sight of two people, a man and a woman, getting handsy with one another in the bathroom.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” is all you manage to squeak out, blinking dumbly at the scene.

You’re quick to avert your gaze and about to close the door, incredibly mortified by what’s just happened, when the familiar silhouette in front of you causes you to freeze. You slowly lift your line of sight from the bathroom floor until Gojo Satoru is looking you straight in the eye from where he has a girl on the bathroom counter clinging to his shirt.

“I…” you stutter, face feeling immediately hot as you let go of the door handle and look away from his shocked face. “Sorry,” you say again, this time barely above a whisper, before turning on your heel and making your way down the hallway in such a hurry that you don’t even realize you’re going the wrong way. You hear a feminine voice echo something in the bathroom like what the fuck are you doing?, and then there’s footsteps following after you that sound faster than your own. Ignoring the call of your name, you practically storm into one of the bedrooms, entirely relieved that it was empty, and can only take a couple of steps inside before a hand grabs at your wrist. A chill runs down your spine from the contact.

“Wait, y/n,” Gojo says behind you from where he’s followed you inside, sounding like he’s out of breath. His hand is still holding onto you, keeping you still and you can feel the roughness of his calluses against your skin. When you turn around to face him, he’s close to you and you see his chest is heaving, his hair is disheveled, his shirt is wrinkled at the front and there’s a crease in his brow.

Your eyes don’t stay on his for long before you’re looking away from him again. “I’m…I’m really sorry, that was really awkward,” you say with a forced laugh and an attempt to wiggle yourself free of his grip but he’s unrelenting. The image of his fingers sliding up that girl’s top was still burned in your vision and no amount of excessive blinking at the carpet beneath your feet seemed to make it disappear.

“No, I’m sorry, I was supposed to lock…” his trails off and you notice there’s a rough quality to his voice, “that was just-, we were just-”

You finally brave yourself to look up at him and he somehow seems closer than before, his face just inches away from yours and his eyes briefly flickering to your lips before he meets your gaze with a tense expression on his face. You haven’t seen him look so flustered before, and you’ve certainly never heard him struggle this much to find his words either.

His other hand rubs the back of his neck as he closes his eyes in what looks like frustration, then takes a deep breath to seemingly calm himself down before speaking again. “She’s…We’re just friends,” is all he manages to say.

There’s a silence between the two of you as you blink at him and he stares at you, his thumb pressing into the skin of where his hand was still wrapped around your wrist. You try really hard to bite back the words you’re about to say, but no amount of willpower could’ve helped you. Your chin tips up, looking at him more decisively, and his gaze is flickering to your mouth again. “Just friends…can’t say I’ve ever tried to get my friends naked in the bathroom at a party before.” You didn’t understand why your tone came off so hostile, but it felt good to criticize his choice of words for some reason.

His lips press together, gaze narrowing slightly and eyebrows furrowing further at your words. He leans in closer to the point where your senses were entirely occupied by him and it was impossible to think of anything else. “Well, you weren’t supposed to see that.” His eyes are contrite but his tone is vexed.

You relax your body language and use your other hand to forcefully slide his hand off of your wrist, encountering some resistance from him before he acquiesces. Your skin tingles from the absence of his touch and you take a step backwards away from him. His posture straightens slightly, eyes continuing to dart across the features of your face and wide in anticipation as though he was patiently waiting for you to say something that would put him at ease.

“It’s fine,” you say, trying your best to keep your voice as level as possible, “I accidentally walked in on something I shouldn’t have. You don’t owe me any sort of explanation for it.” Gojo seems to tense up even further at your words, his expression briefly contorting into one of confusion before it reverts to concern again.

You walk around him towards the bedroom door and see him in your periphery watching every step you take until you eventually exit the room. This time, you don’t hear his footsteps pursuing you from behind. It’s only when you make it past the bathroom, not even daring to take a look inside of it, and about halfway down the hallway that you unsteadily let out the breath you were holding in. Your hand takes its place over your chest in a flimsy attempt to calm your heart down as you quickly make your way down the stairs. There was a sinking feeling in your stomach and you knew you just had to get as far away from here as possible.

You’re barely able to spot Mina from where she stood with Todo in a corner near the backyard screen door, and briefly notice that Nanami, Geto, as well as a few of their other teammates were clustered there too. You politely acknowledge their pleasant greetings to you as you approach Mina, pulling her to the side.

“Woah, hey, what’s going on?” She asks, stumbling a little bit and you let go of her sleeve.

“I’m going to go home, not feeling well, I think I just got my period,” you easily come up with a lie, “Nobara says she’ll pick me up.” In truth, you were planning on just calling an Uber for home, but you knew that Mina wouldn’t let you go home by yourself. You didn’t want your confusing and heightened emotions ruining her night.

“Wait, are you sure? I’ll come with you,” she’s quick to say, taking a step towards you but you shake your head.

“No, it’s fine, stay here with Todo,” you demand, “and call me if you need me to pick you up. I’ll let you know when I’m home.” You give her a little hug and she’s standing there confused before hesitantly nodding, and then you make your way to the door. The loud music, flashing lights, and blurred faces around you were so intensely stimulating that when the cold air from outside finally hit your skin, you felt like you were human again.

The Uber comes by in less than ten minutes as you wait for it on the sidewalk. The driver drops you off at the entrance of your apartment complex and the biting chill of the air has you wrapping your arms around yourself as you wait for the elevator to take you upstairs. Glancing down at your phone to check the time, you see a message from Mina asking if you were home yet. You also see that it’s nearly one in the morning.

Finally making your way inside your apartment, you lock the door behind you and text Mina that you’re home, then slide down with your back against the front door until you’re sitting on the floor. The heat inside was so comforting that you just spent a moment to warm yourself up and just breathe.

Memories of your conversation with Gojo from just half an hour ago instantly come to the forefront of your mind and you’re shutting your eyes to try and repel the thoughts away. Still so embarrassed that you walked in on him making out with someone, your brain decides to mortify you even further by asking what if you had walked in a few moments later instead? What would you have seen then?

You squish your cheeks between your hands defeatedly before letting out a sigh and drawing your legs in towards you, hugging your knees to your chest. You didn’t understand why you were so affected by what you saw. You’ve only met Gojo twice, and you knew even before you met him that he was that kind of person. He had a reputation of being involved with a lot of women, so his rather eager desire to explain himself to you just puzzled you even further.

Standing up, you head over to your bed and flop down on it. Your wrist still burns with the memory of the heat of his hand, and all you can see behind the lids of your eyes when you close them is the sight of him so close to you, stealing glances at your lips.

Somewhere along the night as you drifted in and out of sleep, Mina called to let you know that she was on her way home. When you hear her open the bedroom door and set her purse down on the nightstand near her bed, your body finally convinces you that it’s okay to rest, and that’s exactly what you do.

---

The weekend is over in the blink of an eye, simply not enough time to mope around in bed, and you’re walking out of your last class of the day on Monday. You check your phone pretty much every other minute to see if Gojo has sent you any messages regarding their new practice schedule for the week, which you’re sure he’s received by now, but there’s nothing. The last messages sent between the two of you were before the party on Friday, and an uneasy feeling has been settling in. You spent most of last week appreciating how helpful he was being so far, but you didn’t even consider the possibility that he could rescind his help at any time too.

You head over to the Department of Communication & Journalism building, making your way up the stairs until you reach the graduate division floor and walk down the hallway to Room 212. As you make your entry, a toasty and rich scent overtakes your senses.

“Ah, y/n, hello! So good to see you, thanks for coming by. I missed seeing you last week,” you hear Utahime say as she sets down a cup of coffee for you on the conference table in the middle of the room.

“Sorry, I was just…very mentally occupied last week,” you admit to her, setting your tote bag down on one of the chairs before taking the seat where the cup of coffee was placed, the fragrance instantly waking you up as you take a sip. “Thank you. How have you been?”

“I’ve been well, thank you, just working through my thesis,” she says with a sigh and takes the seat next to you. “Just a few more months…just a few more months, and I’m free!”

You smile at her and watch as she pulls out her laptop, the start-up noise chiming before she starts clicking away at the million tabs that were open. “Did you receive the email I sent you for the newsletter shots?” You ask.

Utahime was a 4th-year graduate student in journalism and was also the head of the school’s newsletter. She has so graciously allowed for Film Club photography shout-outs in every monthly issue for the past couple of years.

She nods. “I did,” she says, resting her elbow on the table and tapping her index finger to her chin, “how come I didn’t see any of your photos in there, though?”

You sigh, sulking your shoulders slightly as you peer down into the brown liquid of your cup and watch the steam evaporate. “I didn’t really take great pictures this month.”

“Aw, well are you working on anything right now?” She returns to clicking away at tabs.

“Yeah, I’ll be taking film photos out on the field of the soccer team’s game against Osaka Uni next week. It’s for an assignment,” you tell her and watch as her face lights up.

“That’s wonderful! That’s a pretty big gig, they usually only let professionals out on the field. How were you able to secure that?” Utahime asks you as she tips her head to the side.

“Ah…let’s just say I have some sort of deal with one of their players?” You say. Your heart drops a little when you remember the lack of communication from Gojo as of recently, wondering if he was able to get that referee permission for you.

“Which one?” Utahime asks with a teasing smile, leaning over to nudge you with her elbow.

“Gojo Satoru,” you say and then she’s pulling away from you and rolling her eyes, an annoyed look making its way onto her face. You let out a small laugh at her behavior. “Okay, well now I’m curious.”

She lets out an exasperated sigh as she peers beyond the window of the room. “I was his TA when he was just a wee-little freshman. He was always showing up late to class and trying to flirt his way out of completing assignments,” she grumbles, “is he still a little brat?”

You worry your bottom lip between your teeth, thinking way harder about her question than she had probably intended. “I don’t know…I don’t really know him all that well.” You look down at your hands. Despite the fact that you’ve only known Gojo for a short while, for some reason you felt like you did know him well. You knew the kinds of things that made him smile, you knew the look in his eyes when he was deep in thought about something. You knew what the heat from his body felt like, what the fragrance of his clothes smelled like.

Utahime is silent for a moment as she studies you. “Hmm,” she’s humming next to you, “well, tell you what, send me your photos when you’re done with them. If they’re good, I’ll use your photos for the sports recap in the newsletter instead of the professional ones we get sent from the school. I can compensate you for them as well.”

Your eyes widen as you look at her, jaw dropping a bit as you blink in disbelief. “Utahime…you would do that for me?”

She gives you a smile and a wink. “Of course, talent helps talent. And it’s my newsletter, I can do whatever I want with it. Besides, you want to get into the school’s film graduate program, right? I’m sure it would look great on your application that you’ve had some of your portfolio published to the school’s official reports. The photos have to be good, though.” She points a finger at you and gives you a strict look.

You feel tears prickle in your eyes from her words, so overwhelmingly grateful for her support, and can barely whisper out a thank you before she’s rushing over to the other table to grab a tissue box and set it in front of you.

“Gosh, why do all my undergrads cry in my presence?” she complains as she pulls out a tissue and hands it to you.

You dab it to your eye. “Because you have such wholesome mom energy.”

You say goodbye to Utahime after discussing a few more things and then leave the room. You check your phone and your heart skips a beat when you see Gojo’s name in your notifications.

|| 1:43PM Gojo Satoru: Hey, just wanted to let you know I was able to get that referee permission for you for next week

You let out a tiny gasp when you read his words then clutch your phone to your chest in relief. Utahime’s offer of the prospect of getting published in the school’s newsletter gave you a large sense of purpose, and you felt like it was time to take this assignment of yours extremely seriously to secure the opportunity. And Gojo was the one with the power to help you do that.

|| 1:52PM You: thank you so much, i really don’t know how to repay you

You sigh as you make your way to the stairs, grateful that you were getting some communication from him. The big game on the 28th was next Thursday, and you really needed to practice taking photos with your film camera. You open Instagram again to ask him for his practice schedule, but you see that he had sent you another message.

|| 1:54PM Gojo Satoru: No need to repay me, consider us even. Also sorry for the late notice, but we’re having a formal practice match in about an hour with one of the teams we played against earlier in the season. Do you want to come by?

After reading his message, you quickly shuffle your tote bag open and peer inside to see that you did indeed bring your film camera with you to campus today. Excited, you type out a response.

|| 1:55PM You: yes! i’ll hesd over right now

|| 1:55PM You: *head over

|| 1:55PM You: lol

You see little bubbles indicating typing in the left side corner.

|| 1:55PM Gojo Satoru: Meet me by the art sculpture, I’ll walk you over

You blink at the message for a few seconds, starting to type out a message before deleting it, and doing that a couple more times over. When someone tries to shuffle around you from behind, you notice you were standing awkwardly at the top of the stairs so you step away and lean against the wall. You press your lips together in consideration as you realize that today would be the first time you’re going to see Gojo again after that awkward interaction that you had with him at the party last Friday, and you were really not sure how you were going to feel having to be alone with him again.

|| 1:57PM You: that’s okay, i don’t want to trouble you

His response is instant.

|| 1:57PM Gojo Satoru: Just meet me there

Once you’ve made your way across campus, you spot Gojo sitting on the concrete barrier surrounding the art sculpture by the fields practically right in front of the please do not sit on the concrete barrier sign. His head is turned away from the direction you were approaching from, arms crossed at his chest and one of his legs impatiently bouncing up and down. You notice he’s wearing the school’s colors, a teal blue shirt and gray shorts that had some highlights of a sunset yellow, as well as gray athletic soccer shin socks and cleats. He looks so ridiculously sports boyfriend that you have to shake your head to try and physically fight the effect of how attracted you were to him.

He must’ve heard you approaching as you crossed the street towards him since he turned his head in your direction. He’s wearing a black sports headband across his forehead that’s pushing the hair up out of his face and you’re startled by the intensity of his blue eyes on you. When he stands up, his arms fall to his side, making you sad that you could no longer shamelessly stare at the way his biceps flexed when he had his arms crossed.

“Hey,” he says simply, staying perfectly still where he stood.

There was only one way to dissolve an awkward situation, and that was to pretend like it never happened in the first place. You tip your head to the side, giving him a curious look before skipping right on up to him. “Hello, there,” you cheerfully say. He looks at you with a borderline annoyed expression.

“You’re in a good mood today,” he comments, his voice sounding deeper than usual. Almost tired.

“Yes, very good mood,” you chirp as you walk past him, “I just got a very good offer.”

The sound of the bottom of his cleats on the sidewalk follow after you as you head in the direction of the softball batting cages. It's not long before he emerges at your side in your periphery. “What kind of offer?” You can tell from his tone that he was trying to restrain his curiosity.

“Oh, you’ll see,” you say as you look up at him and smile. He gives you an irritated expression due to your lack of transparency but you continue to skip forward until you’ve made it to stairs that lead up to the grassy hills.

Gojo’s about a step’s distance behind you as you lightly frolic across the land, your heavy tote bag bumping against your hip with every jump. You feel something fly out of it which halts you in your gleeful stride and look behind to where your bluetooth laptop mouse has fallen onto the grass right in front of Gojo. He’s sighing before crouching down to pick it up, then takes a step towards you and extends it out to you. When you glance up at him, he’s not looking at you and his face is hard to read.

You grab the mouse from him, fingertips brushing against the skin of his palm, and he ever-so-slightly shivers at the touch. His gaze finally meets yours.

With a sigh, you toss your computer mouse back into your bag. “I’m trying really hard to not feel awkward around you right now, but you’re making it pretty difficult.” You were so used to feeling like he has the upper edge of conversation when you’re with him, but now you felt like you were the one with the power.

He raises an eyebrow at you and when you look at his hands, you notice he was apprehensively cracking his knuckles with his thumbs. “Maybe you wouldn’t feel awkward if you actually stayed to talk last Friday.”

You cross your arms across your chest, disliking his tone. “Stayed to talk? About what? How not close you are with your ‘friends’?”

He tips his head up to the sky and closes his eyes, his brow furrowing like he was entirely frustrated by you, before he looks back down at you again. “If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine, but what’s with you always running away whenever I try to talk to you?”

“I wasn’t feeling well that night,” you mumble to him as you turn away and continue to walk towards the practice field. It was the truth, you weren’t feeling well that night, and it was because seeing him kissing another girl made your stomach drop to the core of the Earth. But that wasn’t something you were going to admit to him. It wasn’t even something you were ready to admit to yourself. “Also, it’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s that I don’t care to believe you.”

“But why don’t you care?” he’s asking you, his voice sounding desperate now as he makes his way to your side again. He’s looking at you but you’re looking straight ahead.

You roll your eyes, continuing to march forwards. “Not everyone cares about your love life, Satoru. Contrary to what you might think.”

He jogs ahead a few steps, now walking backwards in front of you and you narrow your eyes at him. His tongue is poking at the inside of his cheek and then there’s a boyish grin on his face. “Say that again.”

“Say what again?” you ask.

“My name,” he says.

You almost roll your eyes out of your head when you see his amused expression. “I seriously can’t believe this right now,” you’re muttering under your breath and walk past him down the large hill leading to the practice field, his gaze on you burning through your skin until you’re rubbing at your cheek with the back of your hand in a feeble attempt to physically wipe the blush away.

The practice field was much more crowded and busy than it was during the first practice you went to last week. Looking across to the other side, you see a group of men huddled near one of the benches, all of them wearing maroon-colored shirts with black shorts that have gold stripes running down the side of them. None of them were wearing jerseys, but you assumed they were wearing their school colors as some sort of distinguishing clothing that would help them during the practice match.

“Satoru! Where the hell have you been?” You flinch upon hearing Coach Yaga’s stern voice nearby and you look over to where he had his arms crossed and glaring at Gojo through his thick sunglasses.

Gojo walks past you towards the benches and gives Coach Yaga a salute. “Sorry, sir, personal business.” He then makes his way over to the rest of his teammates that were huddled on this side of the field. There were a few tables located on the sidelines that had refillable water stations, bottles of Gatorade, towels and all sorts of other athletic gear. You walk up to one of the tables and fix the settings on your film camera before taking a snapshot of the items laid out on it.

The atmosphere is light since this wasn’t an official match and so you spend some time fidgeting with your camera before they get started. You can only imagine how tense it must be during a proper tournament game at the actual stadium off-campus, the thought of thousands of people spectating from stands sending a shiver down your spine. Athletes were of a whole different breed, despite how wholesome and down-to-earth most of the UTokyo soccer players you’ve met so far were.

Eventually, Coach Yaga and the other coach from the opposing school blow their whistles, both acting as referees for the match, and the players scatter themselves across the field. You notice Gojo is at the center of the circle in the middle, his foot on top of the ball as he scans his eyes across the field to each of the players with a focused look in his eyes. He draws his foot back, and just when you think he’s about to kick it forwards to where he was looking, the back of his heel makes contact with the ball instead and it’s sent swiftly behind him towards Geto. Instantly, all the players begin to move across the field, some of the offensive opposing side charging towards Geto as he shuffles the ball between his feet before kicking it way ahead of him to another one of their teammates. You bring your camera up to your face and take a snapshot when one of the opposing team’s defenders makes an attempt to steal the ball.

The play continues further, both teams playing a push-and-pull with the ball. Gojo makes an attempt at a goal before the opposing team’s goalie lunges for the ball that was flying in the air straight towards the net, catching it in his arms and then crashing down onto the ground. Somewhere along the intense match, the coaches call half-time and you’re shocked by how fast the first half went by.

Some of the players retreat to the benches to quench their thirst and wipe the perspiration off their faces with their towels, while others remain on the green expanse to pace around while catching their breath. Your attention is drawn to Gojo who stood at the center with his hands on his hips and breathing visibly heavily. He leisurely shuffles the ball between his feet with an innate rhythm before passing it off towards Geto who stood a few feet away from him. Gojo pulled his headband off of his face, his hair falling over his forehead onto the sheen layer of sweat above his eyes. With each breath, his chest rises and falls, lips parted in a display of exertion, and then he grabs at the hem of his shirt to lift it to his face, exposing his toned torso, as he wipes away the sweat at his temples. Your eyes widen at the sight, almost entranced as a wave of arousal suddenly consumes you, before he releases his grip on the fabric and it falls back down. He pushes his hair back up out of his face with one of his hands, the other securing the headband back onto his forehead with a snap, and the muscles of his arms tense fluidly with every motion.

You quickly look away from him, afraid he'll catch you staring, and blink at the grass as you notice the fast beating of your heart. Coach Yaga's whistle blows, causing you to look back up again. Players were making their way back onto the field and Gojo found his position at the center again. His eyes darted across the field, making their way onto the faces of each player, and then they eventually landed on you. There’s a glimmer in his eyes, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards slightly into a small smile before he's looking back down at the ball by his feet. And then they start the kickoff.

UTokyo ends up winning 3-1, and by the end of the match the sun is starting to set, painting the sky beautiful hues of purple and orange. You lean over to pick your things up off the grass as the players make their final retreat to the benches, and you gently place your film camera back into its case when Gojo’s voice next to you makes you jump.

“Hey. Please don’t run off,” he says. When you turned to look at him, he was still breathing a bit fast and he had a flushed, almost serene, look across his face. “Give me your phone.” He extends his open palm out to you.

“My phone?” You ask him, reaching for where it was located in your back pocket and pulling it out. He nods without any further explanation. You place it in his palm and he’s tapping away at it before handing it back to you. When you look down, you notice he gave a random number a call.

“That’s my number. Save it,” he says. You blink at him. His expression is soft for a moment and then he’s turning around and away from you, heading over to where his teammates were crowded around one of the tables and giving each other pats on the back.

You tip your head to the side to watch him as a couple of his teammates sling their arm around his neck and smack his chest, masculine laughter and jokes filling the air. You can’t help but smile before you pick up your things and start making your way up the hill away from the field, back towards the heart of campus.

---

The following days of the week where you don’t see Gojo play soccer seems like a waste, because why weren’t you spending every single day of your life watching him play soccer? You sigh to yourself at the question as you use clothing pins to hang up the film photos you took up onto a wall in your school’s photo lab. You finished developing the photos from Monday’s practice match, only to realize that you accidentally took them on one of your black-and-white rolls instead of full-color. You step back to take a look at all the images you had clipped onto the string pinned to the walls, snapping a shot of the collage with your phone, before pulling them all back down and stuffing them into a Manila folder.

The only time the photo lab wasn’t bustling with other film & photography majors was usually after sunset, but by the time you finished having dinner with one of your friends on campus, you had made it there around 7PM. By the time you leave and make it to your parked car, it’s pitch black outside. As you step inside your car and turn the key to ignite the engine, the windshield wipers automatically swiping as the control lights inside come to life, the clock on your dashboard reads 10:37PM.

The GPS for some reason prompts you to take an alternative route back to your apartment that avoids the freeway in an attempt to save you from twenty minutes of traffic, and you consider what to do for a moment before the exhaustion in your bones convinces you to take the allegedly faster way home.

As you begin to head in the unfamiliar direction, the excitement you had to make it home as soon as possible slowly starts to dwindle more and more as the streets morph from well-lit and bustling with people to dark and surrounded by trees instead. What used to be a three-lane street turned into one, and you count the seconds between every passing car you see coming by in the opposite direction. You’re worried when your counting makes it past sixty seconds.

You turn your music up in your car to distract yourself from the fear of driving down the secluded and dark road. There was a slight fog settling up ahead in front of you to where you could only see clearly about thirty feet ahead. You spot something on the road, blinking rapidly to focus your vision, and then your eyes widen when you realize what it was. Rocks.

You’re instantly swerving your car to the side, attempting to deftly avoid the scattered rocks but unfortunately you drive over a few of them, causing your tire to pop and you let out a scream when you lose handle on your car. One of the rocks flies up and hits your windshield, cracking the glass, and suddenly you’re driving up over the curb to the right before you finally regain control of your car and swerve back onto the road, slamming on the brakes.

Your heart is beating fast in your chest, adrenaline rushing through your body, and you grip onto the steering wheel while you try to regain your breath. Your windshield had a large crack in it, large enough to where the cold air from outside was whistling its way inside your car, and you were slanted in your seat due to the punctured tire at the front. As you took deep breaths, you noticed how alone you were on a dimly lit street where you hadn’t seen a single car in more than five minutes, fear and anxiety surging through your body. Your hands reach for your phone, shakily turning it on and exhaling in relief when you see that you have reception, then call the emergency telephone line.

“Hello, how can we help you?” a feminine voice on the other end of the line says.

“Hi, um,” you say, voice sounding shaky, “I just got a flat tire on Musashi road, about five miles from the Main Street intersection. I don’t have a spare on me, and my windshield is cracked too…could you send roadside assistance?”

“Yes, absolutely,” the woman says kindly and begins to take down some information from you. “Thank you, ma’am. Unfortunately, there has been a big accident on the freeway, so many of the tow-trucks and officers have been dispatched to that area. It may take about an hour for help to arrive. Are you able to call someone to come stay with you as you wait?”

“Oh…” You press your lips together in thought. “Yes, I should be able to.” After working out a bit more logistics with the woman on the other line, you hang up and then you’re scrolling through your contacts. You first call Mina’s line, which goes straight to voicemail, and then you remember that she was out of town for tonight and half of tomorrow visiting her family. You call Nobara, who also doesn’t pick up, and then a couple of your other friends who go straight to voicemail as well. You start to panic slightly before calling your friend Maki who lives two hours away.

“Hello?” You hear her voice say when she picks up.

“Maki! Oh my gosh, thank you for picking up,” you say to her through the phone, your hand on your chest as you sigh. You explain your situation to her and she’s instantly providing you with soothing words.

“Is there no one that can come stay with you? I feel awful that I’m so far away,” she says.

“It’s okay, they said that help will be here in maybe fifty minutes now…I just really wanted to talk to someone,” you say, peering out into the darkness of the night. You’re still shocked you haven’t seen a single car drive by in the past ten minutes. You pull your phone from your face to check the time and see a notification on your phone that says 5% battery remaining. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Maki asks worriedly.

“My phone is running out of battery…” you say with a defeated tone. Your anxiety starts to rise in your chest again. “I don’t know if I can stay on the line.” You scroll through your contacts again, finger halting the screen when your eyes land on another name. “I…I think I have someone else I can try calling.”

“Good, try that. I don’t want you to be stuck out there with a dead phone and a flat tire. Let me know if this person doesn’t pick up, okay?” She’s saying to you and you send her your location before hanging up.

You’re breathing heavily from fear when a particularly harsh gust of wind pushes more cold air through the crack of your windshield. Pulling your phone from your face, you click on the name in your contacts and bring your phone to your ear. It rings once, twice, almost a third time before you hear a click and then a voice.

“Y/n?” Gojo’s voice calls out, sounding surprised.

Hearing his voice immediately causes a wave of relief to wash over you and you lay back in your seat, having to muffle the abrupt sob that threatens to erupt from the tightness in your throat. “Hi,” you whisper.

“Hey, is everything okay?” he asks.

“Mm…no,” you admit to him, sniffling slightly and swiping at the stray tear that rolls down your cheek with the sleeve of your shirt. “I’m just a bit scared right now.” Your voice cracks towards the end of your sentence and you silently berate yourself for not mustering enough emotional strength at the moment.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says, his voice starting to sound uneasy.

“I was driving down this road, it was dark, I couldn’t really see much…but I ended up driving over these rocks and my tire punctured. I called for roadside assistance and they said it would take about an hour for help to arrive,” you ramble, ��I tried calling Mina, and some of my other friends to come and wait with me, but-” You run out of breath to finish your sentence and you’re sniffling again.

“Send me your location, I’m heading over right now,” he says and you hear what sounds like keys jingling in the background along with some other shuffling noises, “can you stay on the line?”

You pull your phone from your ear and see that you’re at 3% now before sending him your location. “No…my phone is running out of battery.”

He’s silent for a second on the other end. “It says I’ll be there in twelve minutes. Just…hang tight, okay? Make sure your doors are locked.”

You nod before remembering that he can’t see you, so you say I will. He’s hesitant to hang up on you but when your phone flashes from 3% to 2%, you tell him you don’t have much of a choice and then he’s giving you another word of caution before reluctantly hanging up. You’re all alone to your thoughts in your car again, shaking from the anxiety and blinking tears away.

The twelve-minute wait felt so long, and eventually Gojo texts you that he’s one minute away when your phone is at 1% battery. You see headlights approaching behind your car in your rearview mirror, the first sight of another human being you’ve seen in probably the past thirty minutes stepping out of the driver’s seat and you immediately recognize his silhouette. He walks up to the passenger side door and tips his head down so he’s visible through the window. At the sight of him, you finally release the breath you were holding in before opening your car door and stepping outside. You both look at each other across the top of your car and you notice him letting out a deep breath of his own as his shoulders relax at the sight of you.

He makes his way wordlessly around the front of your car to you and he’s studying your face intently. You look away from him when you realize he could probably tell that your eyes were puffy and that you had been crying. From your periphery, you see the back of his hand reach out when he’s right in front of you, hesitating slightly before it briefly brushes against your cheek, dabbing at a tear that you must’ve missed. His hand is warm against your skin and the sudden desire to hug him consumes every single fiber of your being, but when you look up at him, the soft expression on his face renders you still.

“Thank you for coming,” you’re whispering to him.

He lets out a short comical exhale through his nose. “I wasn’t going to not come. What kind of person do you think I am?”

You shiver as another gust of wind passes through, crossing your arms across yourself. Gojo slips the jacket he was wearing off, revealing a beige sweater underneath, and then he’s circling around you to place it over your back. It’s cozy and it smells like him.

You’re about to voice your concern for him but his voice behind you cuts you off. “I run warm, don’t worry.”

He walks around to the front of your car, bending over to the side to assess the flat tire at the front, his hands shoved into his pockets. You pull his jacket around you tighter. “Damn, the tread on your tires is horrendous. No wonder. You should really check on them more often.” He straightens himself up and peers at the crack across your windshield. “And that’s definitely not gonna be cheap to fix.”

You sigh in annoyance, his casual tone causing your eye to twitch slightly, but when you noticed your heart was calm and your breathing was normal again, you looked at him with the realization that him just being here managed to soothe you.

He looks back over at you with a considerate expression. “Do you want to sit in my car? It’s chilly out here.”

You press your lips together before shaking your head. “I feel like I need the fresh air.”

Gojo’s walking over to the patch of grass on the pavement at the side of the road and sits down on the curb. He pats the spot next to him with an awaiting look on his face and you make your way to him, sitting to his left. He looks down at the distance you’ve put between the two of you, almost three feet, and he’s sighing before scootching closer to you. “Don’t be greedy with your body heat. I said I run warm, not that I’m a furnace.”

His shoulder brushes against yours and his knee bumps against your thigh as he gets comfortable. You bring your legs closer to you and wrap your arms around them, resting your chin on top of your knee. Gojo was leaning back onto his outstretched arms behind him, legs extended in front as he tipped his head back up to look at the sky. You look over at him. His gaze slowly shifts from one point in the sky to the other, and you wonder what he’s mapping with his eyes.

“Thank you for getting the referee permission for me,” you say, realizing you never thanked him in person. “I’m excited to take photos out on the field next week.”

“Sure thing, my freaky little photographer. I’m sure you are,” he chimes.

You stick your bottom lip out in an annoyed pout. “So, we’re even now.”

He looks over at you and smiles. His blue eyes were a bit darker underneath the starry sky with less light to reflect off of them, and the quality made them look gentle. “No, you’ve gotta make sure Mina stays interested in Todo.”

You can tell he’s just joking, but you respond as if he’s serious anyways. “That was never part of the agreement,” you say, “besides, I don’t really think that’s necessary. She seems to be pretty taken with him already.”

He laughs. “And you’re not worried about that?”

“What’s there to worry about?” You ask.

“I don’t know, the fact they hit it off so fast?” He shrugs and you feel the friction of the movement against your shoulder.

“Hmm, no. Mina’s a smart girl, she’s good at sniffing out those red flags,” you say assuredly before lifting a suspicious eyebrow at him, “should I be worried? He's your friend. Enlighten me.”

Gojo shakes his head musingly at your concern. “Todo’s a good guy,” he says in a soft voice.

“He’s not on the soccer team, right? I didn’t see him the past couple of times I was on the field,” you say with realization.

“Nah, he’s just a mad lad I met in my freshman year econ class. We’ve been friends ever since,” he says, swaying his knee from side to side. “He’s the one that got me to join the frat.”

You two are silent for a moment, listening to the noise of the wind through the trees and crickets chirping in the distance. The previous anxiety you had from the night completely dissipated into peacefulness instead, and the man beside you was responsible for that shift.

“Can you tell me what that offer was that you were so excited about earlier this week?” he asks.

You look up to the sky briefly, trying to remember what he was talking about. “Oh. I might be able to publish the photos I take of the game next week to the sports recap in the school newsletter,” you say.

He turns his head to look at you, eyes widened. “Woah, seriously? That’s so cool. Can you make sure I look hot?”

You roll your eyes and go back to resting your chin on your knees. “Sure.”

A comfortable silence settles before he’s speaking again. “What inspired you to be a film photographer?” He’s turning his body so he’s facing you a bit more directly.

“Well, the end goal is film movie making…but my professor says that it’s important to understand the art of film photography before that,” you say, twiddling with the zipper of his jacket. “He says that ‘if a filmmaker cannot master the single frame shot, then how can they possibly put together a film composed of a million of them’?”

Gojo is humming beside you and nodding in agreement. He turns away from you to face forward again and he starts tapping his foot on the pavement of the road. “Huh. That’s kind of similar to something coach says during drills.”

You glance over at him, a little surprised. He continues to stare forward with a somewhat innocent expression on his face, and then you can practically see the moment another question pops up into his head.

“Why don’t you make your Instagram public? Your photos would probably get a lot more views or likes that way,” he says in an excited tone, like he’s cracked some code.

You let out a small laugh and bury your face into your knees, your voice sounding muffled when you speak. “I did have it public for a while. Until a troll spammed a bunch of hate comments on my posts and I quickly switched it to private after that.” Saying it out loud, you felt a bit silly. You’re apprehensive as you say the next few words. “I guess I’m scared that I’m not good enough to be acknowledged or successful, and that somehow other people will see that truth before I can.”

“Oh come on, y/n,” he’s saying beside you, gently nudging your arm with his elbow. The contact causes your breath to catch in your throat. “You just have to go for it. You can’t accomplish anything if you don’t face your fears.” When you watch those words leave his mouth, you notice he now has a thoughtful expression as he stares ahead to the other side of the road.

Another beat of silence goes by. “Why did you start playing soccer?” you ask.

He’s quiet for a long time as he blinks, to the point where you’re unsure if he even heard your question, but then he finally answers. “My dad used to play in college. He introduced me to the sport when I was younger and I fell in love with it.” Your perk up slightly and tip your head to the side in curiosity. He’s looking down at his lap now.

“That’s really wonderful, Satoru. Was he also center forward in college?” When you ask him this, you don’t miss the way his eyebrows pinch together for a split second before his expression relaxes again.

“Yeah, he was,” he responds, “he got injured in his last year, though. Never got to play after that.” There’s an inflection at the end of his sentence that makes you think he’s about to say more but he doesn’t.

Your face softens when you see him stare down at the curb with a slightly troubled expression. In a moment of tenacity, you place your hand on his thigh and his eyes widen when he sees the movement before he’s looking over at you.

“I’m sure he’s really proud of you,” you say softly, your hand reaching up to brush a few strands of his hair away from his eyes. Both of you are shocked at the intimate gesture and you’re quick to withdraw your hand.

Your faces are close, his side still pressed against yours, and neither of you break eye contact. You take a moment to study the handsome features of his face and your heart aches a little. The cold air has you licking your lips and Gojo’s eyes dart to them, gaze lingering, and you blink slowly when he leans forward slightly. Blue eyes find yours again and he stills himself, searching your face for something, and when he doesn’t see it he continues to lean forward and you lean towards him too. And then his lips press against yours, so chaste and so light that it’s possible you could have imagined it, but just when you feel his warm hand cup your face and he’s about to deepen the kiss, a loud honking noise startles the two of you and you both jump, pulling away from one another. You see Gojo’s face illuminated with bright golden lighting as he winces and holds up one of his hands in front of his face to shield himself from being blinded by it.

You turn your head to the left towards the source of the light and see a tow truck approaching. “Hey! Is this the flat and windshield crack?” you hear the driver shout out from where his head was stuck out the window.

You’re speechless, cheeks feeling flushed from the realization that Gojo had just kissed you, and you turn to look at him. He silently stands up with a weary exhale and a calm expression on his face and then shoves his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, it is.” He makes his way over to the tow truck and you hear him make conversation with the driver as well as the man in the passenger seat. You’re still sitting stunned on the curb, bringing your fingers up to gently touch your lips that were still searing from earlier. Gojo’s suddenly standing in front of you and you’re staring at his legs before you tip your head back up to look at him.

“Do you have any valuables in your car?” he asks, jerking his head in the direction of your car.

“Ah…my phone and my tote bag,” you say. He crouches down in front of you, earnest eyes level with yours, and his hand reaches into the pocket of his jacket where you had stashed your keys. He removes only your car key from the ring, handing the set of other keys back to you, and then he’s unlocking your car to get your stuff out of it.

You remain on the curb, watching as Gojo handles the entire interaction with the tow truck helpers. When they’ve successfully anchored your car to the tow truck and one of the men comes around to shake Gojo’s hand, you see him reach into his pocket, pulling out his wallet and handing the man some cash. You stand up in a bit of a panic and head over.

The tow truck is already pulling away with your car from the curb when you make it in front of Gojo. He hands you a business card with the towing company information on it and then looks down at you with a mild demeanor, letting out a long exhale. “Ready to go home? You’ve had a long night.”

Exhaustion suddenly consumes your entire being and you hesitantly nod.

The interior of Gojo’s car is nice. It’s clean, smells like him and pine, with nice leather seats that have warmers. You’re still wearing his jacket, clenching it tightly around you, as he inputs your apartment address into his GPS and starts to drive you home.

Neither of you say a word to one another during the ride. You watch his hand tighten its grip at the top of the steering wheel occasionally as he drives. He turns his car into the entrance of your apartment complex and parks in the loading zone. You watch as he makes his way out of the car to the passenger side door, opening it for you. You step outside and thank him.

“It’s okay, I’ll head inside from here,” you say, already feeling like you’ve caused him enough trouble. You abruptly remember that Mina isn’t home and the realization that you’ll be all alone tonight creates a hollow feeling in your chest.

He raises an eyebrow at you. “Come on,” he says, walking past you to make his way to the elevator and pressing the up button. It dings before immediately opening and he walks inside like he’s the one that lives here. He places a hand out to hold the door sensors when he sees that you don’t follow him inside. You jump out of the mild trance you were in and quickly rush in before he withdraws his hand and the elevator door shuts.

“Which floor?” He asks, finger hovering over the control pad. You tell him three.

Once you reach the third floor, you step out into the hallway and he follows suit. Your apartment was just seven units down towards the right and the two of you eventually made it to the door. You turn around to look up at him. His expression becomes slightly distressed and when you don’t say anything to him, he shoves his hands further into his pockets and sways back and forth slightly.

“Alright, mission accomplished, I got you home,” he says with a forced jovial tone, a hand rubbing the back of his neck. You notice he does that when he seems nervous about something.

Your mind recalls the kiss from earlier, the feeling of Gojo’s lips on yours, the heat of his body pressed up against you in the cold, the tender way his hand held your face still so he could have more of you, only for it to be cut short. Your heart is beating fast in your chest and your cheeks flush with warmth. He’s looking down at you intently and you’re looking up at him pensively.

You didn’t want to admit it to yourself. Not yet.

Your hands reach into your tote bag to pull out the keys to your apartment. “Yes, home.” He watches you jingle the metal in your hands. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he says and he takes a step back. Turning around, you push your key into the keyhole with shaking hands, turning it, and open the door to your apartment, letting yourself inside. You look at him from the entryway with the door still ajar.

“Good night, take it easy,” he says to you.

“Thanks, you too.” And then he’s out of your sight as you shut the door.

You lean back against the front door, letting out a sigh and biting down on your lip, the thumping of your heart pertinent throughout your entire body. There was a lingering truth to all of the emotions that you’ve been having recently. It followed you in the early hours of the morning, it followed you as you tried to fall asleep at night, it was present in the silence, lurking in the dark, and it was there with you tonight for every second that he was by your side.

You had feelings for Gojo Satoru.

a/n. thanks sooo much for reading and i hope you enjoyed aaa idk this week felt off for my writing for some reason but i heavily edited it so i hope it came out okay in the end.

➸ take me to chapter six!

tag list: @who-can-touch-my-boob @getitsatoru

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