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sweet cream, cold brew | lmh ( m )

something about mark lee keeps you up at night, and you’re pretty sure that it isn’t the lingering smell of espresso on his shirt.

alternatively: mark is shy until he isn’t.

read the second part here!

pairing: nerd!barista!mark x reader verse: college au rating: r ( minors, do not interact! ) warnings&tags: unprotected sex, oral (f!receiving), fingering, slightly possessive/jealous dialogue, mark has a thing for tummy bulges because why not, implicitly that also means he has a big dick, a slight???? exhibitionism kink (not actually something that happens, only talked about), johnny exists in this simply to trigger something vaguely feral in mark, reader is a little bit assertive and schemes to get mark's attention, jaehyun is a nosy lil eavesdropper, i think that should be it?? word count: 26.4k

a/n: hello so this was a mess and honestly not a fic i would say showcases my best plot-wise but… what can I say apart from booty wurk mark has me in a chokehold and I needed to release some thoughts and feelings !!! please do not expect too much from the development of the story; i fear it’s quite long and choppy because my ideas were all over the place and i was wringing my hands and brain constantly and i was eager to get to the spicy parts !! this is also not beta’d/proofread, it’s currently almost 1am, and i’ve been writing this on and off for a full week with very few breaks so it honestly felt like a fever dream for me LMAO please forgive any oversights and mistakes; i’ll try to go back on them another day and fix them little by little! finally and …most importantly belated happy birthday, my beloved morkly!

p.s. this will probably be flagged as ‘mature’ by tumblr, which means there’s a high likelihood it won’t appear in tags or searches. please consider reblogging to boost the fic, if you feel so inclined!

You’ve heard tell of how caffeine has inherently addictive properties.

The more of it you have in your lifetime, the more likely you are to experience symptoms of withdrawal whenever you try to have orange juice for breakfast in its stead. It sounds bad, actually, considering most addictive substances are, but you suppose that its benefits somehow outweigh its milder drawbacks. You’re not much of a coffee connoisseur the way some people — see: your best friends, Yeji and Jisu — are, trying one cafe after the other in pursuit of being able to nominate the winning beans of 2023 (an annual heated debate they participate in for no better reason than their own slow and useless entertainment during their six-hour long breaks), but you do know you’ve only ever experienced good things from having a cup every so often: better energy, a more focused approach to mental activities, and the ability to drive through fifty percent of a road trip without needing pop punk music blasting out of your speakers to keep yourself alert.

The three of you are generally particular about the coffee you drink, only in different ways. While your friends have a tendency to demand only the best from any establishment — lest the staff hear fiery commentary about the flatness of the brew or the evident coarseness of the grind — you, on the other hand, are a singular individual of rather simple tastes. All you need to survive long days is a glass of vanilla sweet cream cold brew. No modifications to the sugar level or fancy new milk types are necessary; you’ll drink it as it’s served in a grande cup (or a venti, when things prove particularly grueling).

Of course, you’re strict about other things in the experience of consumption — like where it’s served and, more importantly, who serves it to you.

While Yeji and Jisu have rated the Liberal Arts building’s on-campus Starbucks branch as a five with the strict label of POEO — ‘passable on emergencies only’ — branding the menu as “nothing revolutionary” and criticizing most baristas for subpar brewery, you happen to be extremely drawn to the place. Initially, you may have argued that this has to do with the fact that it’s walking distance from most of your classes, confined to the same general compound on campus, so you can always grab a quick recharger whenever needed, no matter how short the timeframe to do so is. Sometime later on, you may have found yourself asserting that the layout of the cafe, albeit small, is very convenient, considering that every table is situated next to an electrical outlet, so you’re never out of battery (important to other students for their laptops and powerpoint presentations, important to you because you have an unhealthy obsession with passing time on TikTok, scrolling past video after video of ASMR girls clicking their twenty-inch long acrylics with their crazy candyland designs), and this makes you feel at ease.

A month ago, you finally came clean to yourself and, soon after, to your friends, and they came to understand, albeit begrudgingly and with no small amount of amusement, what made this Starbucks unbeatable in your eyes; it had one thing no other coffee shop could lay claim to.

What you know of Mark Lee is accrued from two major sources: long, surreptitious glances in the Modern World History class you share, and irritatingly brief interactions when you place your order from the other side of the counter behind which he stands, long fingers always poised to punch in your order at the speed of light. Sometimes, those encounters get cut even shorter when irate upperclassmen start prattling their orders out before you can even say anything past your own, except even this has its own consolation prize — an apologetic smile at you that seems only for you, although you’re not sure how much of this assumption is true. You’ll just believe it as you feel it.

And what you’ve learned about Mark Lee has funneled down into two key points for you: first, he is single, a fact you were clued into when a group of his friends came to the coffee shop and sat around the table next to you. You hadn’t been eavesdropping; they’d just been pretty loud, but you’d also perked your ears the moment the one everyone seemed to call “Hyuck” — you aren’t sure if it’s his full name or a nickname, and you don’t particularly care — had leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper about having a vague master plan to set Mark up with an old high school friend’s younger sister that he was just waiting to spring on said Mark, busy slaving away on their six impossible orders near the espresso machine.

You don’t really know what became of that plan, nor if anyone had telepathically been on your side to outright call it crazy (someone should have had a better reason than you, anyway) since the next moment, Hyuck’s voice becomes significantly louder when it orders the one named Jisung to collect the completed coffee and snacks waiting for them on the counter. However, you feel safe in the assumption that even if it had happened, no repercussions had followed, seeing as Mark still presently comes and goes from his shifts alone and in no clear hurry to meet any cute girls that are sisters of high school friends of his friends. Or, maybe you’re just ignoring what could be truth, but that’s whatever.

Second, you’ve learned that Mark Lee should not actually be your type — at least, in theory.

Saying you’re out of his league would be a bit juvenile, but if you had only so many words to describe the situation, you’d say so under duress. It isn’t so much that he’s beneath you in any way, but your interests and general social circles run different routes. Yours tend to be more classically patterned after constantly changing trends, and the people you interact with all seem to have similar goals; you like to call it ‘vibe networking,’ which, from experience, involves connecting with both groups and individuals that are equally aware that they will benefit in some way from any resulting acquaintanceship — whether it be by climbing the social ladder a couple of rungs or being able to call in a quick, off-the-charts favor for something very important and/or very exclusive down the road. You and your friends spend a significant amount of time in a year watching your style and image, something quite a lot of kids in the first couple of years of college tend to do, which means that while you don’t particularly like to spend your time following your grade trajectory, you do have quite a lot of pseudo-friends that all seem to offer something entertaining or helpful to you.

Mark, on the contrast, prefers to keep his circle very close to his heart, it seems — that which acts as a receptacle for all his interests. You can tell that he likes to be up to date less with trending movies and more with comic books, a separate beast of a world that’s rather unknown to you. More than once, you’ve overheard him chat with his friends about Spider-man Issue Number Whatever-It-Is or engage in somewhat lively (sometimes rowdy, thanks to the Hyuck fellow) discussions about some webtoon you’ve come to understand is called Solo Leveling, which seems to have to do with monsters and hunters — two things you know next to nothing about. You’ve also never seen Mark holding anything remotely close to a magazine; his hands are always filled with either a freshly opened comic or a beat-up textbook. Maybe once or twice, you’ve seen him on his phone, but when you peeked over (surreptitiously, of course) on those occasions, you were met only with brightly colored panels and a singular word: BAM.

In conclusion — you and Mark Lee live very different lives, likely never truly meant to intersect.

And yet, you want him — not even in a way that speaks only to your curiosity, but in a manner that feels slightly delusional. More than once, you’ve found yourself having to shut your jaw close after realizing you’ve been watching him steam milk with your mouth slightly agape. Maybe it’s his side profile, which gives you a great view of the way his jaw tenses every time he puts whipped cream on someone’s frappuccino. Maybe it’s his eyes, which always seem to twinkle like he’s harboring some special secret every time someone in line asks for his recommendation on how to spice their order up. Maybe it’s his hands, steady and agile, with just the right showing of veins through the skin to tell you they’ve probably got significant strength to them too. Or maybe it’s just his mind — that thing he always manages to show off in class, working faster than lightning even when the rest of you are in your natural eight-in-the-morning stupor.

Whatever the reason for your interest, Mark Lee makes sure the Liberal Arts building’s Starbucks has you as a regular customer.

You’re fully aware that this is the twenty-first century, which is why you could, as Yeji and Jisu have so kindly made known, simply ask him out. Under normal circumstances, you would have.

Unfortunately, in this particular area of your life, separate from all others, you’re something of a traditionalist.

Actually, you just want to know what Mark asking you out would look like. Curiosity has fully gotten the better of you — how can it not, with how he breaks eye contact with you the moment it happens by accident in class, or with how pleasantly and shyly he smiles when you say ‘hey’ to him once you’re about to order? You’d like to see, first-hand, as a recipient of the experience itself, what he would look like taking control of a particular situation like that — something someone like him, so mild-mannered and laid-back, never really seemed to do upfront.

You’d like to think you’ve given him clear signs. There’s a reason you always come in during his shift times, and it’s the same reason for why you have the same damn drink from the menu over and over again despite not even caring too much about coffee in the first place (something he admittedly doesn’t know and probably wouldn’t puzzle out, given how often you’re in that Starbucks, anyway). It’s that you want him to remember you.

Selfishly, it’s that you want him to think just a little bit more about you every single day.

But if he does, Mark has never made it very clearly known; apart from taking your order in his genial customer service demeanor or letting a look of brief recognition pass his face over when you cross paths in the hallways, he’s never really shown heightened inquisitiveness about you. For all your differences, only you seem to actually care.

Frankly, that frustrates you, because if you have to think about him unhealthily, it would only be right for him to do that for your sake too. Still, you’ll shrug that hit on your pride off for as long as you can get his attention one way or another.

All you really need is for your plan to pan out as well as you think — and hope — it will.

The thing is, you’re not even that bad at math. You’ve never really excelled at it, of course, but you wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re in dire need of help from anyone — the kind of help that feels like babysitting, at least.

However, Mark Lee doesn’t know that, and you’re not compelled to make that fact known to him when you notice that he’s leaning on the counter with his elbows, shoulders rolled forward and head bent down. He’s twirling his ballpoint in hand, wrist hovering over a worksheet, and you’re briefly distracted by the rapidly moving shadow underneath it.

His head snaps up when you gently knock on the counter, and the rest of his body follows suit, straightening as he shoves the paper away, one edge crumpling in on itself as it meets resistance in the form of the pastry display glass.

“Hey — hi, _________.” He knows your name, says it easily, and while you’d like to believe it’s because of his unprecedented interest in you, you know that it’s just because you’re always here and always having him write your name on the side of your cup. “Can I get you the usual?”

There’s no particular reason you order what you do; maybe it’s just rooted in the fact that when you first asked Mark for a recommendation, he said that the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew was pretty good, and you were inclined to believe him (while pointedly ignoring the fact that it was, at the time, a new item all of the baristas were required to push to indecisive, slightly moony-eyed customers such as yourself). Whatever the case, you found the drink generally palatable, and you were also able to score the first of many smiles that fed into your two-semester-long infatuation with him, so it was basically a win-win scenario for all. He even got to do his job by getting some rube (see: you) into trying a new product.

“Hey, Mark.” You’ve long since given up pretending that you don’t know his name and have to check the tag on his cute green apron (why is it cute? You don’t know. It’s the same, standard, Starbucks green, but Mark makes it look homely and natural, somehow). You’ve been here way too many times over the last academic year for a nonchalant, were you talking to me? approach to work, anyway. “That, plus a lemon loaf, if you don’t mind. What’ve you got there?”

His eyes follow the trail of yours over to his wrinkled worksheet. “Oh — no, sorry. It’s nothing.”

“Is it secret?” Your bottom lip juts out, and you see his Adam’s apple bob dangerously, a small telltale sign of minute nervousness before he lets out a short laugh. “Didn’t know we kept stuff from each other.”

You don’t know what makes you say that so naturally. The both of you don’t do much beyond exchanging pleasantries.

“We — uh, well, it’s just a worksheet. For Park Hyosung’s class. College algebra?”

“I’m in Kim Junghwa’s. Can I have a look? I want to know if you’re suffering just as much as I am.”

He pauses, considering your request for a moment, likely wondering if there’s any harm in it before he smooths the paper out and turns it towards you. His handwriting’s a little messy, but his solutions are extremely neat. You see, like, one erasure, max. You also don’t see anything that interests you — except the name written at the top. Still, you can see at a general glance that more than half of his answers are correct; the logic of his organization is way too elegant and his writing’s too sure to be anything else. You whistle low, and his eyebrows shoot up.

“Something wrong?”

“Pretty much the opposite. How is it that you’re doing this without breaking a sweat?”

“Oh, well — it’s not…” He doesn’t even know how to brag. Yet another item in the perpetually growing list of things you find cute about Mark Lee. “I mean, anyone… can?”

“I must not be anyone then.” You meet his quizzical look with a wry smile. “Either you guys are leaps and bounds ahead, or I’m really not going to make it through this semester.”

Another silence passes, just for a fraction of a second — short enough to be passable to others, but long enough for you to wonder if your humor code isn’t up to par with the rest of the world’s — before Mark’s chuckling lowly. His large palm comes down, covering a majority of his answers in the process.

“You’re kidding. I’m sure you’re doing just fine.”

“Mark, look at this face.” You gesture to your evidently dumbfounded, blank expression. “Does this look like the face of someone that’s doing just fine?”

You’re pleased to hear another laugh from him; you don’t know if he really finds you funny or if he’s just the type to be easily amused. You don’t want to know, anyway; assuming is better than actually finding out.

“That bad, huh?” He slides the worksheet away again, like he’s afraid his correct answers are going to offend you into leaving the cafe. Instead, his hands start working on your order, grabbing a cup and scrawling the shorthand of the drink on one of the little boxes. “Ever think about getting a tutor, maybe? If you really feel like you’re drowning, that is.”

“A tutor? I guess that depends. Are you free on weeknights?”

The marker makes a soft screeching sound as he drags it down with too much force, ruining the penmanship of your name. Mark takes a moment to stare at the mistake on the plastic before he looks at you, pointing the rim of the cup towards himself. “Sorry — am I free—?”

“You said I should get a tutor, right?”

“I thought — no, sorry, I was thinking more like one of those department-assigned tutors you can ask the faculty for, or something.”

“Oh. Are you not one of them?” You sigh, albeit a little over dramatically. Thankfully, he doesn’t really cotton onto your acting, too caught up in befuddlement at the turn of the conversation. “That’s a bummer. I was kinda hoping that if I was going to ask for help, I’d get an actual genius. You know — someone like you?”

You can tell by Mark’s expression that he’s torn between denying your compliment again and responding to your actual question; he looks both relieved and miffed when the student behind you clears her throat.

“Sorry, but— you know that there’s a line, right?”

You both apologize, Mark’s much more sincere than your own, and you step aside. His gaze follows you for a moment before it snaps back to the next customer, his voice abandoning that bemused uncertainty it had taken up with you. You don’t really mind; as far as you’re concerned, any dent in his barista persona when he talks to you is a step in the right direction.

You hang around the pick-up area, receipt in hand, watching Mark clear the line before moving to the actual stations near the kitchen area. There’s a concentration on his face that you find all the more attractive; he has a habit of chewing on his bottom lip when he’s trying to focus on getting the drizzle just right inside the cup’s cylinder.

He tends to try his best at everything, you figure. Not an unattractive quality — not by a long shot.

Mark finishes your drink first; the milk’s still only seeping, cloudy, into the coffee when he brings it over. He doesn’t even have to call your queue number, opting to meet your eye — albeit slightly nervously — instead. You reach out to hold the cup, a calculated move that allows you to brush hands against his without him being able to pull back on instinct. He doesn’t, nor does he really seem to want to, but his jaw tightens as a flush creeps along the curve of his ears.

“You really won’t help me?”

Your question’s abrupt, almost a little demanding, even if your voice is sweet. You’re not above asking this much, anyway, even if you technically want him to make the first move. The redness sinks down to his earlobes.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t really say anything,” you tease. The cup’s on the counter now, so he can easily relinquish it to you at this point, but he still hesitates, only one hand slipping out from under the heat of your palm. He uses it to rub the back of his neck, chuckling softly, and you take this as a green light. “What time does your shift end?”

“Five-thirty. You sure you wouldn’t want someone better?”

You pull your cup slowly to yourself, and his hand, still lightly trapped by your own, follows for a few inches before he’s withdrawing, the counter between the two of you forcing the distance. A smile follows the shaking of your head, and you take a small sip of the drink before you respond simply.

“There’s no one better than you.”

Mark is a prompt kind of person; you learn this when, at five-thirty, he comes over to your table, tugging his apron off over his head. Of course, you might attribute that to his overall personality, but the fact that you spend the remaining two hours of his shift casting him glances from the left side of the coffee shop might have also been a contributing factor. The looks you give him aren’t even furtive; they’re deliberately long, so you never miss whenever he looks over to you from time to time.

He doesn’t hold eye contact for very long (he does it well enough when he’s talking to customers, but it’s not like you’re ordering another cold brew from across the room at that point), but you can read snippets of his thoughts through the fleeting gaze exchanges. He’s curious as to why you’re asking for help, now, of all times, when the semester’s more than halfway over. He’s surprised that you asked him, of all people, because he just can’t conceive of a world that isn’t within a television show where this kind of abrupt, overt request makes sense. He’s flattered that you even asked him out of the blue. He’s equal parts anxious and eager to know what’s meant to happen after his shift, once he starts fulfilling your request.

Most of all, he’s unsure if he’s reading you right — if what it feels like you’re doing is something he’s attaching too deep a meaning to. If he’s right in reading your signs.

You don’t really mind it; you like knowing that Mark somehow wears his heart on his sleeve, even if he tries to remain neutral for the sake of appearances. You also bask quietly in the fact that he’s looking at you twice as much as he ever has in the time you’ve loosely known each other. Still, his bubbling confusion and inquisitiveness seem to be interfering with the rest of his work, especially when you notice that he’s been wiping down the surface of a table two down from where you are for more than seven minutes.

In the hopes of easing whatever tension might be in his heart, you offer him a small smile, but that’s only met with his eyes immediately glazing over and inching a couple of centimeters above your forehead, where the story of Starbucks’ origins is drawn out in a faux-manga style. He pretends to find it interesting, as if he hasn’t seen it a million times from coming into this establishment day after day — you know it well enough, and you don’t even have to, considering you don’t work here — and you can’t do anything but hold back your laughter.

A small part of you says you should just give him the affirmative answer to his biggest question, but every other cell in your body says that it’s no fun if he doesn’t ascertain it for himself.

He has his school bag and textbook in tow when he approaches, taking the seat across from you. There’s a steely resolution on his face, like he’s been emotionally preparing himself for such a daunting task, but it eases up the moment you laugh lightly.

“You don’t have to act like I’m going to eat you.”

“I’m still not sure why you’re suddenly asking me to help you,” he admits. He’s also very honest, you note. Again, not an unattractive trait. “I’m not complaining. I just didn’t think you even had an opinion of me.”

“Why’s that?” You’re genuinely surprised. Mark drums his fingers on the front of his textbook, thoughtful — less for the sake of thinking what to say and more for the sake of considering how to say it. It’s clear he wants to avoid calling attention to the fact that before now, you two have had no reason to run the same track, let alone sit together and talk at a coffee shop, as if you’ve always been the best of friends.

“Genuinely just thought I was the guy who gave you your afternoon coffee every day,” he finally settles. Your eyes widen, and another laugh escapes you — a little louder this time, enough to call the attention of a couple of jumpy freshmen nearby.

“Well — let me put it this way.” You lean over slightly, cupping your chin in your palm. “Was I just the girl you made coffee for every day until now?”

There are clear cogs turning in his head; his eyes unfocus slightly as he thinks of the possibilities. His silence suddenly makes you somewhat nervous; your tone had been confident, and you’d only said that to prove a point, to push him in the right direction, but you realize that you hadn’t previously factored in the possibility that he might simply say yes — or, worse, say no just to avoid hurting your feelings.

You watch his lower lip curl in; he uses his tongue to smooth out the skin that’s slightly dried from work fatigue. You would much rather it peeked out, so you could imagine it against your own. His response is mumbled in a lower register, but you catch some key syllables — didn’t… not … stranger — pretty … you?

“Sorry?” You ask patiently, but the fact that he turns red and laughs again — something you realize is not only a trademark of his personality but also downright delicious of him to be doing — is all the answer you need to let the apprehension seep from your shoulders. “I didn’t catch that.”

Mark clears his throat. “No, I… didn’t think of you that way. I mean… you’re my classmate.”

“Sure,” your tone’s breezy, but the somewhat sloppy confirmation of interest in you makes your heart soar. He just needs more of a push. “And we’re basically friends, right?”

“Yeah.” His voice is unsure at first, like he can’t seem to wrap his head around the concept. You can tell that Mark’s notion of friendship is likely based on shared interests, of which you admittedly have none. Technically, if you were his friend, you’d spend less time just telling him the exact same order every single day and more time sitting around a table trying to learn how to play Magic: The Gathering with him. Still, he takes one long look at your grin and suddenly gains confidence in his next words, as if it somehow convinces him that the briefness of your old conversations had been a mutually agreed-upon thing and not the product of social distance between the two of you. “Yeah. We’re friends.”

“Right. Friends help friends, don’t they? I’d definitely feel more comfortable having a friend teach me than some stuffy upperclassman I don’t know.”

You see Mark’s lips move slightly, in such small movements you could have imagined it as breathing if you didn’t care too much (which you do). He mouths, to himself — friends help friends. For some reason, that boosts his conviction even further, and he nods.

“Makes sense. Well — for as long as you don’t mind me, then.”

“Mind? I asked you, so I should be saying that.”

“I’d never mind — I mean, of course I don’t mind.” He’s quick to correct himself, and you have to stop your own hand from reaching out to try to satisfy your curiosity, the desire to know just how hot his cheeks get when he blushes. “More than happy to help, actually.”

“And I’m more than happy to be here.” You beam at him, and he mirrors your smile. You don’t know what it is about the look on his face — the brightness in his eyes, or the slight lift of his eyebrows, maybe — but it gives you the impression that he might be feeling at least a fraction of what you are: the feeling of your heart lifting off a few inches from your rib cage. “Since we’re on the same page, I hope — should we get to it?”

From the moment that Mark opens his textbook to a chapter on inverted parabolas, he assumes a personality you feel you haven’t seen from him before. You realize that you really do know him in only two limited capacities — his classroom persona that seems to really only view himself and the material, focused on the board and the professor’s words (even up until the useless anecdotes) to absorb as much information as possible, and his more genial customer service form, always happy to assist in the trained, easygoing way you’ve come to meet so often.

Right now, he’s a blend of both, yet somehow neither all at once. He’s quick to catch the parabolas you draw, either wrongly or downright poorly. Despite initial hesitation, he always manages to say something; there’s already a pattern to how he does it, from his slightly awkward, “Ah, sorry, actually —” to the way his finger traces over what you’ve written, outlining the right curve. You find his interruptions so endearing that you start drawing them wrong purposefully — not enough for him to realize your schemes in their entirety, but enough to cast you a few amused glances, like he can’t imagine why you’d map out such an absurd graph. You get the feeling he wants to actually laugh at how ridiculous you’re acting, but he can’t tell if you’re seriously struggling or not, so he settles for a smile he thinks he does well in keeping to himself, but that you catch anyway. He’s patient, even when you have to rip out pages from the back of his notebook because of your ‘mistakes,’ like he’s still catering to your request for an extra pump of syrup for your coffee on sleepy days.

But there’s also that side to him that comes out when he suddenly remembers the distance between you that, before today, had felt unlikely to be closed. It peaks at odd moments, like when you’re borrowing his pen because yours is currently holding your slowly unraveling bun up, and your fingers brush against his. It surfaces abruptly when you lean in to watch what he’s drawing until he realizes how close you are, arm lightly grazing his, and his pen freezes, ink blotting on the paper for a second. It’s in those times that you can almost hear his brain churning out questions — like he’s wondering if you’re just oblivious or if you’re doing something on purpose that he can’t quite believe. Like he wants to ask you what’s on your mind, but he just doesn’t know how.

If he asked, you would reply without missing a beat. The answer, after all, is simple (him). But Mark never raises the question, only does something without fully acknowledging what he’s doing — the adjustment of his glasses on the bridge of his nose, the ruffling of his hair as though to shake off his thoughts, the clearing of his throat to normalize his tone before he explains something you’ve just asked about. There’s always that light tinge of pink to his face that makes him look even more endearing, and it fades and returns every so often for the better part of two hours.

By the time he rubs oncoming fatigue out of his eyes, the sun has already set; there are far fewer people around you at this time, and for as much as you like spending time with him and breathing in the scent of his shirt — always a tinge of Downy, barely cutting through the much more overpowering scent of espresso and sugar — your back has begun hurting from your front-heavy posture and determination to have your face as close as rationally possible to Mark’s. Still, you don’t miss out on the fact that the act of him cracking his neck to relieve tension makes your lips curl inward, trying to stifle an inappropriate noise in reaction to the view.

“I feel like I talked your ear off,” he pipes up, sounding a bit sheepish. “Sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop once you’ve gotten started. I’m just hoping I didn’t bore you to death.”

“Meanwhile, I’m here hoping you aren’t sick of my questions already.” You smile, closing your notebook and hanging the clip of your pen on the spiral. Your arms stretch up first, followed by your back, a light twist to relax your posture into normalcy again. Mark’s breathing falls quiet, like he’d been preparing to say something in response but had let it die in the back of his throat instead. You let your eyes drop, expecting to see him looking at you, as he mostly has been — on and off — since his shift ended, but his eyes are far lower than yours, the telltale redness now growing in evident splotches across his cheeks.

The hem of your shirt has ridden up; while there’s nothing outrageous about it, there’s a short expanse of skin that it reveals, for a brief moment. His eyes are slightly glossy, brow furrowed like he’s trying to find a solution to something he can’t fully understand. You’re not even sure about what he could really be looking at, or if there’s something he’s just thinking of that caught his attention while his eyes focused on a rather unfortunate spot. To test your theory, you suck in your stomach slightly alongside an inhale.

It should be objectively funny to watch Mark blink unevenly, left eye going first before his right tries to catch up, but you manage to stifle your laughter — poorly, though, because you end up coughing a little and breaking him out of his strange trance. You avert your eyes quickly enough for him to look vaguely relieved that you hadn’t caught him looking. So he thinks, at least.

“Anyway.” You feel bad that you have to tear his mind away from whatever faraway land it must be trying to burrow a hole in; the dazed expression on his face dims into hastily hidden embarrassment. You don’t want him to feel awkward, so you just busy yourself with packing up, making an unnecessary show of stuffing your notebook back into your bag as if it isn’t half-empty at this point. “I really appreciate you taking the time to help me.”

“Any time.” His first attempt is a little raspy, maybe from overuse of his voice today, so he clears his throat and tries again. A slow smile builds on your lips. “Any time, really. I’m glad that this is actually helping you; you pick things up surprisingly fast.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. Give it a couple of weeks, and you’ll probably be ready to tackle it on your own again, I’m sure.”

He smiles reassuringly, but all you can think about is how that’s not good. You should pretend to be a little dumber next time, or this will end much too prematurely.

The next five minutes pass in silence; you don’t expect to be knee-deep in conversation anyway since, as much as you try to convince him, you aren’t actually anywhere close to being those kinds of friends yet. There’s an unspoken rule to the give and take of things, where he pauses for you to get an item off the table and push it into your bag before he does the same with his own belongings. Neither of you really intersect paths, save for the moment you both grab your phones and stand at the same time.

His jaw falls open like he’s preparing to say something, then shuts as if he’s better decided against it. You decide to take the initiative to say what you’re assuming he wants to. “Same time, same table?”

“Oh — uh, yeah, for sure.”

You want to ask him to walk out with you. You want to lace your fingers with his, tug him out, and kiss him under the green and white glow of the sign outside. You want to know if kissing his collarbone means you’ll taste a hint of coffee. You think about doing it all somehow, especially since he’s fighting back a slight smile at the promise of tomorrow.

But it just isn’t the right time.

Instead, you place a hand on his shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. The slow movement of his throat — yet another hard swallow — isn’t lost on you, and his eyes land on where the two of you connect. With a grateful smile, you bid him a soft goodbye, taking your leave first.

You don’t look back — at least, not until you’re fully in the cover of the darkness outside. On the gravel path, just out of reach of the lamplight, you chance one last glance back into the store. Mark is still rooted to the same spot, his backpack slung over one shoulder, staring at the table like he’s dissociating from what just happened — like he can’t believe the last couple of hours.

Your smile grows when you see his own, and his hand comes around to the back of his neck, rubbing it lightly like it gives him small comfort to let him know that it was real.

Baby steps, you remind yourself. You’ve already got one foot in the door, after all.

As the days trickle by, you fall into a more comfortable standing with Mark; there’s a routine to your meetings that seems to eliminate the initial and abrupt awkwardness of that first day. You come into that Starbucks at four, greet Mark, who doesn’t ever have to ask for your order, and spend the next hour and a half slowly sipping on it until the ice has thinned and watered down your drink substantially. In that time, you allow yourself to do whatever you want (as if you’ve ever done otherwise anyway), and what you usually want the most is a good view of him. You therefore use most of the minutes you have on hand to regard him from different angles — from the side when he’s frothing milk, upfront when he turns to leave cups on the pick-up counter, from the back when he’s clearing tables — interspersed with moments of checking your TikTok feed, clearing group chat messages, and sometimes re-curling your bangs with a portable iron from the school’s co-op center, a relatively new purchase you tote around these days. You do essentially anything in between to avoid acting too suspicious while he works.

Sometimes, you catch Mark’s eye too; the more your meetings increase in number over the course of a few weeks, the more deliberately he looks over at you, and the longer it lasts. You feel like you’ve made significant progress when your gazes lock and he smiles slightly, albeit a bit unsurely, instead of turning away like he used to. The other day, he’d even passed by while apologizing for how long you always waited for him — not that you ever minded, something you made a point to clarify with him before he walked away, carrying a couple of chairs from the back room with him to replace rickety ones.

That he’s able to transport them easily, as if he’s lugging a bag of apples from the grocery, does not escape your watchful eye.

What you like the most is that you start to learn more about him in a way that isn’t fueled only by your expectations and, therefore, limited by your imagination. You find out that he’s from a close-knit family with a rather cushy background, and this barista job is just for interest funding and experience, in that exact order. Most of his earnings are funneled into the things he collects, which apparently isn’t limited to comic books and special edition blu-rays with director’s cut but also a rather stupendous amount of PopMart blind box figurines. Apparently, he particularly likes the Skullpanda series even if he hasn’t completed it yet; your last session together had adjourned thirty minutes earlier than usual so that he could catch a pre-rush hour inner circle train to Honda, where the flagship store was set to open on that day. He’d promised to show you his pulls (as long as they weren’t embarrassing dupes). You learn that he likes to listen to loud music when he studies to stimulate his mind, and he has a playlist that’s just a jumble of songs from Punk Goes Pop volumes that makes him feel empowered for some absurd reason, like he’s going against the grain. You don’t really get it, but you do like that spiced-up rendition of Ariana Grande’s Problem that he let you listen to once.

Of course, there are things that you find out not through conversation but through continued, closer observation. You notice that he likes to put on chapstick even if his lips aren’t particularly dry, but he does worry on them often, most especially when he’s thinking hard about something. He has a habit of saying honestly… at the start of every other sentence, as if he’s concerned you won’t take his word on anything, even though he’s just talking about how unnaturally hot it was at noon despite it still being spring. He has long eyelashes that you’re equal parts attracted to and jealous of, and he bites the inside of his cheek whenever he wants to pep himself up after grueling shifts. He plays beats you’re not even sure he knows he’s creating against his knee with his fingers, so enthusiastic and consistent in this habit that you want to offer your thigh instead. His shoulders always go first before he laughs, and he does this thing where he raises his hand to cover his mouth at the start of it, which is a shame, because you’d do anything to keep seeing him smile like that — or, better yet, to be the reason for it.

Then there are those things you notice he tries to hide. He always turns his face halfway to the side when he blushes, something he seems to do without fail every time you smile at him. He has to temper the intensity of his grin when you take the time to compliment him on how cool his shirt is, or how nice his hair looks today, or how smart he is, like he doesn’t want you to know how good it makes him feel even if you want him to feel good about it, around you, because of you. Sometimes he denies it for the sake of responding, and his voice always lilts on the first syllable in his refusal to accept what you say, even though he knows you won’t take it for an answer.

And after a couple more careful experiments, you notice that Mark, out of the many things he’s interested in, seems to have a particular thing for your stomach.

You don’t know if it has anything to do with him not really seeing much of it in real life in his own time or if he just has his own kind of fixation on it, but you start to cotton on by the fourth time you meet. An hour of being hunched over a table that’s not at the greatest height in relation to your neck and torso has you stiff, and you’d leaned back in your chair, arms pulling to the air, hoping your spine might feel like realigning if you exerted enough tension pressure that way. Your shirt hadn’t ridden up this time, considering it had been tucked into your jeans, and it was because of this that you’d caught a flicker of something new in his face that you hadn’t seen before.

You could have sworn it looked like disappointment.

Of course, he hides it quickly, as he does with most of his emotional candor, but it’s enough to make you suspicious — enough to make you wonder if Mark is also just keeping something to himself. Or maybe you’re just projecting your own presently secretive nature onto him. Regardless, you think it’s odd that whenever you stand up or stretch, his eyes almost immediately fall to your midriff, like he wants to challenge your clothing into a staring contest before he thinks better of it.

You don’t mind, anyway. He can look as much as he likes. Maybe when the weather’s warmer, you’ll even cater to that interest and wear a crop top. Hopefully, that’ll be the push he needs to act on human instinct and ask you out or, like… bend you over. Maybe.

You’re often plagued with these kinds of thoughts in between the ones you try to keep as family-friendly as possible — now, more so than ever.

Sometimes, it’s easier, especially when you’re caught up in talks with him; despite the fact that he doesn’t seem like much of a conversationalist when it comes to generic matters, when either he or you are enthusiastic about a particular topic, he has a tendency to get carried away. There’s nothing impure about how his eyes light up when you remember to ask him about the movie he saw with his friends over the weekend or the way he hums old Nickelodeon cartoon theme songs under his breath whenever he’s looking for a page in the textbook. It’s more of a situation where you’ll observe something and immediately run with it despite it being an objectively normal action.

Like right now, as you’re watching him turn his pen between his fingers. Now, while he’s shaking his knee in mild impatience, as if he’s trying to will the answer to the worksheets you’ve both been trying to get through for the better part of the day faster. You’d made copies of the problems your professors had assigned and exchanged them under the premise of being able to practice more intensely.

However, whereas Mark is actually focused on solving, you’re just watching him out of the corner of your eye, wondering if he’s ever been told that his fingers are fuck-worthy on a singular, unique level or if it’d feel good for you to ride the thigh he’s currently moving, jeans and all. You consider the feeling of his warm palms on your bare waist as you do it, and you end up wondering if that’s what crosses his mind whenever he sneaks glances at you, too.

You’d know the answer to all those things if he’d fucking ask you out. Maybe you could do it after all. Maybe you should, instead of relying on slowly increasing the probability over such a long period of time. Maybe if you asked nicely, Mark might pull the shades down on the storefront windows and rail you against the glass.

You’re so lost in thought that it genuinely startles you when he plops his textbook over the worksheet, rattling your eraser dangerously close to the edge of the table. You’re still clutching your heart while he rubs his eyes a little too violently.

“Can’t,” he groans, and his neck gives into the weight of his head, allowing it to loll backward. “I feel like the numbers are just melting into each other. I swear, I thought I could read words out of them.”

“Maybe we were a little too ambitious with the double worksheet agenda,” you admit, even though you’ve barely gotten past half of yours and certainly haven’t touched a single item on his. “Should we call it a day for now?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, although he still takes the time to encircle his final answers before clapping his palms to his cheeks (an act that has your mind dangerously close to wandering off inappropriately again) to wake himself up. “Woah. I didn’t even notice how dark it is already. I’d say time flies when you’re having fun, but I’m not too sure about the ‘fun’ part of it…”

You trace his gaze towards the glass; the moon’s already out, surrounded by a smattering of low-light stars. You hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, probably because your mind had been on R-18 mode for most of the afternoon. Also, the days are getting generally shorter, but that fact doesn’t make you feel as embarrassed, at least.

“You got a ride?”

The question once again shocks you out of your small trance, and you turn back to him with wide eyes. “Well — no. Wait, I didn’t know you had a car. Why’d you take the subway, then?”

“Oh — no, sorry, I… don’t.” He looks suddenly sheepish, eyes dropping to the shiny surface of the table for a moment before they snap back up, as if he’s actually actively reminding himself to look at you. “I was wondering if you wanted me to — actually, more than that, are you going home already? Not that you need to stay; it’s not that important, but…”

You try to gloss over the fact that he had just been about to initiate another huge step in the right direction (i.e. offering to walk you home) by beaming at him, maybe a little too widely, if only to mask your disappointment at the sudden shift in conversation. “I have nothing waiting at home for me but a sandwich dinner and Singles Inferno, so hit me with whatever it is.”

“Oh, cool.” His lips turn up, and the corners shake, this show of happiness once again tamped down by his own inexplicable desire to maintain a safe distance. How are you supposed to tell him you’re desperate to bridge that gap without using those exact words? “I came from the flagship store yesterday — the one in Hongdae that I told you about?” He allows the smile to widen slightly when you nod in genuine understanding. “Got the last six boxes of the collection I’ve been trying to finish.”

You whistle appreciatively. “Can I ask you for a loan on my next phone bill? You know, once I’ve upgraded to something pricier.”

“Nah — just itching to complete the set,” he laughs. You wonder if he’s been doing that more often because he knows its crippling effect on you, though you doubt he’s that sly. Again, maybe you’re just projecting too much of your own motivations onto him. “This was probably about two months of saving up combined.”

“No new Iron Man issues to look out for, then?” Your voice is warm even though it takes on a teasing tone; Mark’s hand rubs the back of his neck, and his expression is a little sheepish, but you’re happy that the times he used to go completely quiet, opting only to blush at your attempts to act more familiar with him are pretty much gone now.

“Maybe next month.” You also like that he doesn’t really treat his hobbies as secrets, neither out of shame nor snobbishness. He explains these things to you the same way he does the topics you study — with an air of contentedness, like he’s happy someone listens to him without interrupting. On your end, you have no qualms with listening to his voice for hours, wondering when he’ll stop using it to greet you when you come through the door and when he’ll start saying your name in a way that makes you feel like you’re the only one he sees whenever you’re near. It’s a win-win situation (sort of). “I was actually debating between this collection and a really rare copy of Spi— well, never mind that. I just thought — since you were asking me a bit about blind boxes last time. You know, if you wanted to. With… me.”

As much as he’s become comfortable talking to you about things that don’t involve coffee orders and school, you can’t say that you aren’t doing your fair share of the work in connecting the dots; the demand for your efforts is exponentially higher in moments like this, when you think he’s trying to ask you something but can’t seem to find less-than-eager words to avoid what he thinks might spook you.

Luckily, he augments his fragments with action; reaching into his backpack — which you notice seems to be bulkier than usual — he starts extracting small brown boxes, all with the same design; it seems, for lack of better words, aesthetically gothic, and you reach out to pick one up, turning it over and examining the print on each side with vague interest. Mark starts laying them out on top of each other until there’s a small, somewhat unstable pyramid in front of him, then shifts his attention fully to you, just as you’re putting the box in your hand atop all the rest.

“I’d love to.” You beam as he does, and there’s a wondrous relief in his eyes that tells you he’s glad you manage to catch onto his words — or lack, thereof — surprisingly well. “For as long as you don’t blame me for any bad draws.”

“The contents have already been decided by my own hand — sort of,” he chuckles. “Point is, I would never do that to you. But I won’t lie; I kind of want to rely on your luck a little more.”

“What makes you think I’d have any of that running through my system?”

“Not sure — beginner’s luck, maybe? You just kind of look like one of those kinds of people to me — like… you’re just made of good things.”

You don’t know how to take this compliment; on the one hand, it’s easily one of the sweetest things Mark has ever said to you that doesn’t involve anything with actual sugar content. On the other, you know you’re not as lucky as he makes it sound, considering you’re still striking out on getting past the borderline of friendship with him. All you can do is smile, nodding and making to move closer to him by sliding into the next seat.

It’s hard to ignore the sight of him stiffening; something like surprise mingled with both fear and interest flashes strong across his face, but you don’t do anything to acknowledge the slight change in atmosphere, choosing to settle down comfortably and clap your hands. “So. What are the rules? What can I do, and what can’t I?”

“Uh.” His throat constricts at the right moment, the syllable getting caught and causing him to clear his throat. You know that this is the nearest you’ve ever been to him, the sleeve of your shirt tickling his arm. Upon closer, albeit brief inspection, you note that he’s also rather veiny. That doesn’t do your impurity any favors. “Not… really rules, or anything like that. Just — these are the ones I’ve been looking for. Not that you can really control it, but in case you were curious about that.”

You squint intently at the scaled-down images he points out. There’s one that looks like a penguin caught in an oil spill; another that seems to be in a polar bear costume, dozing; and — “What’s… halo? Halo…bios?”

“It just means marine life,” he answers quickly, like the thought means close to nothing to him to know something that obscure. Whoever said that smart is the new sexy wasn’t joking. “Like… all things that live in the ocean, that kind of thing.”

“And you know this because?”

He pauses, looking thoughtful. “I’m not sure. I guess I must have just learned it when I was curious about what it meant some time ago. Isn’t that how we all learn things?”

You shake your head incredulously, and he smiles a little apologetically. “You never cease to amaze me.” Your nail drums against the silhouette of one with a question mark on it. “What’s this supposed to be? Can you draw your own figurine, or something?”

“No.” He’s clearly amused, but his expression’s still patronizing enough for you to not feel too bad about saying something idiotic. “It’s a secret design — a money drainer, basically. You could buy a full set of this and still not get it. Some people will open hundreds without any luck, so it’s really rare.”

“You don’t want it?”

“I try not to get too caught up in the secret thing,” he admits. “Otherwise…”

“No rare print comic books for the rest of your life, basically?”

He taps his nose, and you both share another laugh. It’s nice, you think, to have come this far — to be someone Mark can share his interests and thoughts with. You may have been stretching the word to its limit when you first punched your way into his social life and called yourself his friend, but it feels more real now, more natural to think about and say. Even if he still sometimes seems to be hyperaware of the gap between the both of you, there’s no denying, at least, that it’s been significantly reduced, and this much is a testament to that.

“Well, leave it up to me. I’ll let all of this beginner’s luck rub off on you,” you announce with overflowing albeit unfounded confidence.

You both decide to open a box each at the same time; Mark suddenly panics and asks you not to unseal the foil bag right away without looking at the card inside first, earning him one slightly alarmed look followed by a burst of laughter at his pained expression when you pretend to rip open the packaging. Comparing pulls, you identify them using the set chart — your luck doesn’t seem to be operating at full capacity yet because you can only offer him the card of one that looks like a floppy pigeon, which he responds to with a slightly apologetic grimace before saying he’s already pulled that thrice in the past. He, on the other hand, is turning the card of the polar bear over in his palm, trying not to make you feel bad for your duplicate pull by slipping it under his textbook when your eyes land on it.

The second round isn’t much better; both of you manage to pull something he’s already added to his collection, and as you’re ripping the seal to your third box, he pauses and watches you. You think it’s because he’s concerned about the obvious shit luck you’ve had thus far and wants to snatch it from you before your negative energy transfigures whatever’s inside into something he doesn’t want, and you’re just about to offer the half-opened package to him before he pushes the one on his end to you.

“No way, Mark.” Your eyes are wide, a palm up to reject it. “If that turns out to be another dupe by my hand, I’m literally going to walk into oncoming traffic.”

He has to control his amusement at your words so that it doesn’t completely shake his voice into incoherence. “I picked all of these while I was there, so if anything, you’re only riding off my bad luck. Besides, this is your first time doing this. I want you to have fun.”

“But,” your voice is pained. “Your money.”

“It’s not a big deal. With how few I need to complete them, I was definitely bound to run into more repeats than new ones.” He taps the front of the textbook — or, at least, the part of it not buried under the figurines and sealing tapes yet. “Probability mathematics.”

“I thought we already ended the study part of the day,” you grumble but concede, putting aside the one you half-opened to tear the top of his. You’re careful when you shake out the foil packaging, making sure to place it upright on the table before extracting the card. Both of your faces fall — yours more than his — when you see it’s a repeat of the polar bear.

“Almost. It would’ve been a pretty lucky pull earlier, so it’s technically not bad,” he tries to reassure you, but you childishly feel like you’ve been the sole source of his disappointment thus far. “Try the last one.”

It’s irrational, but you’re suddenly anxious about it. For some reason, you’re worried that this will topple the carefully constructed ladder you’ve propped up against Mark’s tower of social defense. Even if he’s being genial about your rotten pulls, you don’t know how much of it is just resignation to dismay on his part.

You say a small prayer, then fully rip off the seal; you don’t even take out the packaged figuring anymore. You just shimmy the card out of the box, turning it over when you notice it’s upside down.

For a moment, your shoulders deflate. It’s closest to this pastel purple figurine in the middle of the line-up, its stupid puckered lips almost taunting you. He hadn’t even mentioned it as something he’s looking for, so you almost feel like this has come to a horrible full circle. But then he grabs the box, checks the list, and looks back at your card again. He looks shell-shocked, and you’re not sure if it’s the strong air conditioning directed towards the two of you or if it’s just his hands, but the image he’s holding is shivering slightly.

You look more closely at it, and something just doesn’t feel right. Color palette aside, there are notable differences — different colored lips, a more intricate ear design, and closed eyes. It’s…

“Dream eater,” Mark’s voice is hushed, almost reverent, and very, very close to your ear. “It’s the secret one. You’re… incredible.”

“What are you talking about,” your words are just as raspy; you’re not sure if you’re actually choked up with emotion or something — over a figurine, you have to remind yourself. “You picked all of this. I just ripped open the box.”

The hush that falls over the both of you feels very concrete, weighty on your shoulders. His fingers creep towards the foil packet — the only one he actually opens because there’s no way he’s not keeping it. The shiny purple head gleams under the fluorescent, the glitter around the star and moon designs catching the light as he turns it left to right, like he’s worried it’s a fake. You can tell why people want these things so much; there’s a thrill in you that lingers, makes you feel warm and alert. It’s anticipation, despair, excitement, and triumph all in one sitting.

You’re stroking the smooth curve of the design by the ears lightly when Mark speaks up again and says the most outrageous thing.

“I want you to have it.”

“What?” You actually have to pop your ear canal in front of him with your pinky to make sure he knows how ludicrous he sounds. “This is… you said it was crazy rare.”

“Yeah. And you pulled it, with your magic. That’s like… unimaginable luck. Even more than beginner’s luck.”

“Like I said, I literally just opened the box.”

“No — you have like… the golden touch.”

“Please,” you hiss, a genuine testiness to your voice. “Do not. I was just here for the ride — the experience, and all.”

“Seriously, take it.”

“Absolutely not—”

It’s a chaotic moment of him trying to hand you the figurine and you outright rejecting it, with both your palms working hard to push it back to him. Instead of nudging the plastic back, though, you end up placing the full force of your hands against his fingers.

There’s no actual spark when you touch, but your reactions make it feel like there might as well have been; you even lock eyes in startled unison, like you can’t believe that just happened, before you pull away quickly, Mark drawing the figuring back to his torso while looking away towards the counter, where a lowerclassman is wiping down the stains. You want to scream at your warped reflection in the window. You barely initiate contact with him, but you imagine that if you ever did, you would prefer to not be saying something as abjectly negative as absolutely not while doing so.

Your mind flails in an attempt to mitigate the issue and water down the embarrassment, and clearly he’s struggling to figure it out too, because he pipes up before you can piece your thoughts together.

“No, really.” His tone is a lot milder and, consequently, a lot more persuasive this way. “You should take it. I want you to.”

“It’s not mine. This is your thing — your hobby.”

“That’s why I’m giving it to you. I swear — I want you to keep it.”

“Why?”

He lapses into silence again, but his face is much redder than earlier. His mouth opens in an attempt to say something, but he just manages to uh his way back into a state of quiet, which gives you a chance to speak instead.

“We can… share it,” you suggest. “Shared custody…. ish.”

His eyebrow cocks involuntarily, and his jaw falls again, but all he does in actual response is nod — slowly at first, then with more sureness to the act.

“Yeah. We can share it. I’d… like that.”

You’re glad that the bulk of the awkwardness has fizzled out fairly easily, and when you think about it, this feels like a pretty good course of action; you like that it’s this little link between the two of you now — something you share that no one else can touch.

Mark, you notice, is smiling as well — more to himself than towards you, it seems. His thumb grazes across the face of the figurine, slow across the lips, and you’re once again falling into a pit of nonsense by wondering when he’d do that to you.

“Thanks for staying with me, _________,” he finally says, and your heart jolts and melts all at once. “And for… doing this. For chatting with me. And giving me your luck, and all that. Great way to end the day… with you.”

You say no problem, but you instantly regret it when you realize you could have just said it didn’t have to end just yet.

“__________? Hello? Come back down to Earth?”

“Shut up,” you sigh at the guy seated across you — Seo Youngho, an upperclassman, your Gender Studies classmate, and current project partner, waves in front of your face. You shoo his hand away, which only joins his other one as he throws them in defeat above his head. “Stop moving. Be quiet. Don’t talk.”

“That’s the same thing as shut up and be quiet. What’s up with you?” He demands. “Fifteen minutes ago, you were full of ideas. Now I feel like I’m talking to a wax figure.”

You’d been engrossed in your report for the last hour and a half, and the subject matter is admittedly something you enjoy — the role of gender in Twenty-First Century Korean marketing and advertisement, a title Youngho had taken more than ten minutes to type into the Google Docs header because he was pissed off at how the numbers looked like in the fonts he chose. He’s an enthusiastic classmate and someone you’ve come to be friendly with, not only because he’s genuinely approachable but also because he has fits of nosiness and talkativeness at the strangest moments, so a chunk of your relationship is mostly based on social terrorism on his part. You like him well enough most of the time — save for the last fifteen minutes of this hour.

Because Mark had just come in for his shift fifteen minutes ago, and suddenly Youngho is much too noisy for your taste, and his head is honestly way too big to the point that it gets in the way of your opportunities to see Mark behind the counter. You even resent him for choosing a booth instead of your usual table all of a sudden, because your view of the central barista’s area is much more limited from this angle, especially since the huge espresso machine is in the of your field of vision.

You’re also (currently and abruptly) mad at Youngho because you remember that he’s the reason you’ve had to skip out on a couple of sessions with Mark. Like, it technically isn’t his fault that you have a lot of research to do for the literature review section of the paper, nor is it his fault that this is your final requirement that comprises a whopping forty percent of your grade, but like… you’ll blame him anyway. So you’re much more irritable, and you’ve definitely been missing Mark’s presence. In fact, you kind of just want to shove Youngho’s balloon head away and call Mark over to sit with you, but you’re not that much of an animal to actually do that.

Probably.

There had been inquisitiveness across Mark’s face when he’d come in; his eyes had trailed to the table at which you usually sat, surprised to find two guys hunched over a single phone there instead of the usual you, waiting for him with your eyes bright and your smile wide. You’d like to think it’s because he’s gotten as used to seeing you as you’re used to waiting to see him — like he just expects you to be there.

You hadn’t really known how to call his attention to where you were, especially since Youngho was prattling very matter-of-factly about the academic journal he’d unearthed yesterday and how he thought it would be useful in reshaping the methodology of your paper (whatever). There was a moment in which you briefly considered ordering another cup of coffee just to get in line to talk to him, but your hands were already shaking from the venti you’d had to keep yourself from passing out in front of your partner.

So you’re more than relieved when, half an hour into his shift, Mark finally steps out from behind the huge machine, a mug of water for himself in hand, and turns away from the front of the store to drink it — only for your eyes to lock as he twists his torso in your general direction.

The mug stops just inches from his lips, but you could swear he smiles at you briefly when he recognizes you, so you return the favor. Youngho’s face contorts into abject befuddlement, turning around to see what you’re grinning at.

“Oh, you poor sap,” he snorts, finally letting the puzzle pieces fall into place.

“What?” You’re still distracted even if Mark has taken a gulp of water and is now attending to a gaggle of girls still in the throes of discussing what to order.

“What what? You gonna spend the rest of the day eyefucking Mark Lee from over here? At least let me get a different table.”

“Shut up,” you repeat sullenly, coming back down to his level and finally — albeit reluctantly — meeting his eye (just because Mark isn’t looking your way). “What were you saying about the sample size?”

“That it’s much too large to be feasible, a point we closed twenty fucking minutes ago,” he says pointedly. “Is it a thing for baristas or a thing for smart guys?”

“It’s a thing for Mark Lee,” you sigh, following Youngho’s suit and shutting your laptop close. You’re at least glad he’s not annoyed that you’re delaying work for a crush, or maybe he’s also just equally lazy at this point. “You ever look at someone and think you would give it all up for a chance to hit that?”

“No, because this isn’t a porn movie, and I’m clearly not the main character in whatever’s going on in there.” He jabs at your forehead; you swat his hand away again.

“Well, I would.”

He rolls his eyes. “So do it, dumbass.” He says this so simply, like he can’t imagine why you’d be holding yourself back, which is a valid thing to feel, except it’s not really any of his business.

“Can’t.”

“Because?”

“Because it doesn’t fit into my elegant master plan. Also because I want him to ask me out. I just want that victory.”

“Oh yeah, there it is.” Youngho leans over, wiggling his fingers at your ears like he’s greeting a next-door neighbor. “Hey, delusion. Good to see you. Do you even understand how crazy it is that you’re taking a Gender Studies class while waiting for your dick-in-shining-armor like a damsel in distress?”

“Asshole,” you grumble, violently opening your laptop monitor again. “Get back on Google Drive.”

Thankfully, Youngho complies, and the next two hours pass in relative silence and productivity, with you hammering out a vague references list that he promises to format in your stead so you can ‘spend more time dreaming about Mark Lee between your legs.’ You want to strangle him, but there are far too many people in the cafe for you to get away with it. Also, aforementioned Mark Lee would only be a witness to your criminal record, and while you think there’s something romantic in killing for love, or whatever, you’re not sure it’d make the best impression on him.

“Next week’s my birthday,” Youngho announces as he stands to tug on his jacket.

“Congratulations,” you say wryly, peeking over his bulletin board torso to see Mark tugging off his apron and picking up his school bag. Your heart hammers in your chest as he looks over at you briefly, and something like embarrassment passes over his face before he busies himself with neatly folding the fabric. “Go away.”

“Usually people look uncomfortable for not knowing and then start thinking about what gifts to get the celebrant, but I always felt you were kind of a revolutionary.” He snaps his fingers right in front of your eyes, and you look up at him, a little offended. “I’m having a get-together — and by get-together, I mean it’s gonna be a rager. You should come.”

“When?”

“Next Thursday.”

“Can’t,” you chew on your lip, wondering if Mark is leaving. His movements seem particularly slow, but you wonder if he’s just taking his sweet time because he has nothing better to do. Of course, he would have something better to do if Youngho stopped fucking obscuring you from him and vice versa. “Busy. School… whatever.” Not completely untrue. Most of what you do with Mark has to do with school.

“This moony-eyed thing is just not for you, I fear.”

“Are you going to be here all day?”

“Are you? Why don’t you just fucking ask him out, you lunatic?” You can’t imagine why he sounds so exasperated. It’s not like this is his problem — or his business, for that matter. “Maybe if you did, you could fuck him and move on with your life and be an actual contributor to society’s development.”

“Has anyone ever told you how nosy you are?”

“Constantly.” He brings his palms down on the table, the thud shaking you out of another oncoming stupor. “Think about it. Maybe it’ll make you stop making that stupid face.”

“You’ve got a stupid face,” you mumble, sulking as he pinches your cheek as a goodbye before heading out of the shop.

At least you finally get to see Mark in full, glorious view — and you get to watch him come closer, although his stride is somewhat cautious.

“Hey.” Even his voice sounds unsure — almost like the way he used to sound earlier in your friendship. “I didn’t want to interrupt you and… your friend?”

“Oh. Well, you wouldn’t have been interrupting,” you inform him, completely genuine. “He was spouting a lot of nonsense.”

“You guys seemed pretty close.”

“I guess it’s a proximity thing,” you sigh, and Mark raises his eyebrows slightly in question. “We’re partners.”

“Oh.” The way he draws out the syllable is slow. “That definitely makes sense.”

The silence stretches out between the two of you again, with Mark checking his shoelaces. You almost grab your head; it hadn’t occurred to you until now how damaging missing meetings with him would be to your friendship. You feel like you’re slowly being dragged back to square one, and you want to give him an explanation.

“He’s actually… I haven’t been able to see you because I’ve been working on something with him.” you offer, trying to answer a question he didn’t even ask. “Sorry about that. I swear I’ll be back on track tomorrow.”

“No, no — I completely understand.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Thank you… for telling me, though. I— uh, appreciate that.”

“I’d love to see you tomorrow, though.” You try injecting more pep into your voice. “I’ve really been behind on my algebra. I’ve definitely been drowning without you.”

“Oh, yeah.” A small smile graces his lips, but you can’t tell if the reluctance behind it is from fatigue or something that looks oddly like sadness. “I’m down for tomorrow. Same time, same table, right?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Cool. See you, _________.”

You watch him turn on his heel, walking to the front door, and something like fear mingled with desperation clutches your heart. Fuck the traditional route, you think. You don’t know what it is about how he’s acting now, but it’s making you feel like he’s slipping through your fingers. All that hard work — there’s no way you’re letting him go.

“Mark, wait.”

You’re at his side, fingers curled into the sleeve of his jacket before you can figure out exactly what you want to say. You feel as surprised as he looks at your sudden liveliness in action, and his gaze trails from your clenched fist to your face slowly, like he’s trying to memorize this whole position.

Your exhale’s shaky, but even still, you try not to sound overtly self-conscious when you ask, “Do you like Chinese food?”

Something in the furrowing of his brows tells you he can’t seem to see where this conversation is headed, and that slightly bothers him. “I like it well enough. Why?”

“There’s this really good dim sum buffet near my mom’s office. We tried it before — the Xiaolongbao is awesome.”

“Hey, that sounds pretty cool. I love Xiaolongbao. I’ll definitely have to check it out then.”

You want to tear your hair out. “How about — you know, checking it out with me? Tonight? You know… together. With me.” You already fucking said that.

You’ve never seen Mark blink this rapidly; he looks like he’s trying to crunch large numbers in his head. A small part of you actually worries that he’s malfunctioning, but just when you think he’s going to glitch out completely, he clears his throat. It bothers you how uncomfortable he looks. “Tonight? Oh man… it’s my cousin’s birthday tonight. I can’t… reschedule. Well, obviously. Maybe some other… time?”

Your ‘oh, yeah’ is small, and so is the ghost of Mark’s smile. You can’t help but feel like he’s pitying you a little, although he doesn’t seem like the type, but the thought of it alone makes you want to puke. He makes no motion to move, and you think he’s extending this awkward moment out on purpose until you realize you’re still hanging onto him and he has no way of telling you to let go nicely.

Fingers unfurling from his sleeve, you take a careful step back, but when he walks away, it feels like you’ve gone much, much further away.

The worst part is that you can’t even figure out why.

Luckily, the next few times you see Mark, you manage to rebuild a rather shaky bridge back to where you had been. You even manage to strong-arm him into sharing an apple fritter one afternoon, and you know it’s a bit sad to think about it a particular, untrue way, but you can’t help but pattern what you’re doing into some kind of pseudo-date. Pathetic isn’t a word you normally associate yourself with, but you’ve been borderline desperate for progress where there seems to be none, so you take small victories where you can get them.

Unfortunately, you haven’t been able to revisit your stupid dim sum plan; sometimes, he says he has somewhere important to be, but most of the time, it’s actually your fault. No — it’s Youngho’s fault, because he keeps bothering you to finish the project. You’re aware that he can’t do it himself, but since he’s informed of your current plight, he could at least stand to be more sympathetic.

And you hate the way Mark looks every time you splutter out that you have to take a rain check for that reason; it’s not even disappointment, or something, which would be much more understandable. It’s this mysterious kind of faraway look, where his eyes glaze over a bit and he seems suddenly very lost in thought — or completely dissociated. He never strays away from his normal response of “next time, then,” but that ‘next time’ fades into the weekend and into the start of next week, and you have to spend every other evening with an annoying Seo fucking Youngho on a Google Meets call instead of eating soup dumplings loveshot style with Mark Lee.

Thursday night rolls around, and the former performs the most irritating stunt yet: blowing up your phone with so many KakaoTalk messages that it almost buzzes off the table during your session with Mark. Luckily, he seems to have learned a thing or two from his comic books, catching it before it hits the floor.

“You sure you don’t want to answer it?” He asks, gingerly handing the phone to you like he’s afraid it’s going to explode from all the pinging.

“Without the shadow of a doubt,” you sigh, flipping the screen downwards. Buzz.

“It kind of seems important. Or, like… urgent.”

“He’ll live. Unfortunately.”

Mark falls silent, fiddling with the page he’s on. He’s neatly highlighted the formulas on the page with blue ink, and his finger keeps scratching at the slightly wet paper. Buzz.

“Didn’t you say you two were partners?”

“Yes. Also unfortunately.” Youngho is actually a great person, but you kind of hate how Mark’s paying more attention to his texts than to you right now. “What did you get for number ten?” Buzz.

“A hundred and twe— are you really just going to let it keep ringing like that? What if he’s… I don’t know. In trouble? Like, he needs you?”

You smack your phone on its back, hoping that the punishment reaches Youngho because he absolutely is in trouble — only with you. “He’s just making a racket because it’s his birthday and he probably wants a bunch of people to trash his parents’ house, or something.”

“Sounds like fun.” The dubious tone in Mark’s voice indicates that his idea of fun definitely isn’t that. Buzz.

“Not really, but I assume he’ll only pipe down if he manages to get his way.”

“He must really want you there.”

There it is again — that weird, distant expression that makes you feel like he’s trying to free himself from the tethers of the earth. You close your textbook in defeat; it wasn’t even like you got the answer to number ten correct anyway. Buzz.

“He just wants everyone there, I bet. But I probably should show up so he shuts up.”

“Oh — yeah, okay. We’ll call it a day, then?” He’s avoiding your eye as he starts packing his things, which is actually impressive because you have practically nothing but your book to keep in comparison to his pencils and protractor, so you just stare, willing him to look at you.

You want to know what’s going on in his head. You want to know what’s going on in his heart — what he thinks of you, why he seems warm one second then almost like a stranger the next. You want to know if he knows you like him and if him not doing anything even if he knows is a sign that he doesn’t like you back. You want to know if he’d let you kiss him, if he’d kiss you first, if you can meet not because of sweet cream cold brews or algebra but because you just want to be together.

You just don’t know how to ask. For as much as you like him, for as much as you want him, you haven’t figured out the most basic part of this — if you mean anything more than a two hour talk to him at all.

“Mark.” This feels awfully like the dim sum conversation, only somehow ten times more disastrous. “Come with me.”

“Sorry?” The appalled look on his face makes you squirm in your seat.

“I don’t really want to go, but maybe if we go together… we can just hang out a bit and leave once it’s boring… I think it’d be fun,” you explain lamely, deciding at the last second to drop the with you that had originally come with your sentiment.

“I don’t think your… partner will like someone uninvited showing up.”

“I’m inviting you.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

“You’d be, like, my saving grace or something — my excuse to scram. We’ll say we came right from a study session; we only popped in halfway through for the sake of greeting him a happy birthday. Then we can just go. We can say — uh, we’ve got more work to do.” You’re practically begging him at this point, and you don’t even get why. You just don’t want him to leave looking the way he does — confused and a little detached. You want the Mark that had smiled at you while giving you your coffee — the one that had kindly pointed out an arithmetic mistake in the most gentle way possible. You want to open blind boxes with him, whine about your rotten luck, and part ways with his warmth still against your coat sleeve.

You don’t know what comes over you then, but you pluck up the courage and initiative to slip your hand in his. He stiffens a little, but you don’t care; your fingers squeeze his in urging.

Something in his expression breaks — cracks first, then falls away, before he’s nodding, still looking vaguely thoughtful.

“If you think it’ll help you, then… okay.”

The bus ride to Youngho’s neighborhood is uneventful because it’s quiet. You stand close to Mark at all times, but you barely touch, save for the times your knuckles accidentally brush his when you lurch forward slightly as the vehicle comes to a dangerously abrupt stop. He doesn’t ask anything about the party or the company that’ll populate it, which is just as well, because you don’t have a clue.

You know it’s the right house because the door’s wide open and there’s music coming from inside; you can’t make out much more than the deep bass pumping through the concrete, but you’re pretty sure it’s making your heart jump in your chest even more than it already is. There are quite a few people you vaguely recognize on the lawn, and even more that you absolutely don’t; a good number of them glance at you and Mark as you step through the threshold then look away, probably deciding you’re of no real consequence or harm to their moods.

Youngho’s easily spottable because of his massive height; he towers over the rest of his guests, and the red plastic cup in his hand calls even more attention because he’s lifted it over everyone else’s heads. You throw Mark an apologetic glance that he responds to with a short nod before you dive into the crowd alone, trying to weave your way to where you’d last seen Youngho.

“Bro, finally!” Youngho greets you, pretty much shouting over the music. “Where’s the gift? Did you leave it on the table?”

“Happy birthday, Youngho. Do you know how close you were to being blocked?”

“I see you brought mister espresso with you,” he ignores your comment completely, nodding to Mark. When you turn back to see him, you notice he’s squishing his arms closer to his sides, trying to minimize the space he takes up. “So what? Y’all get to hook up already?”

“No. I brought him here because we were in the middle of something and someone,” you stop, offering him a pointed look that’s also ignored. “Wouldn’t stop texting.”

“Cockblock,” the guy next to Youngho, who you now realize has been eavesdropping, singsongs. “Oh, sorry. You looked angry when you stomped through the crowd, so I wanted the juicy details. Name’s Jaehyun.”

You take the hand he offers you briefly, introducing yourself. When you say your name, realization dawns on his face, and he jabs his forefinger at you.

“Oh, dude. You’re that girl — the Starbucks Showstopper.”

“The what?”

“That’s what his friends call you.” He scratches his ear, seemingly racking his brain for more information. “I’m with Mark and a couple of his friends — Lee Donghyuck and Na Jaemin — in College Algebra.”

You completely gloss over the fact that you’ve finally found out the real government identity of the mysterious figure named ‘Hyuck.’ “They… talk about me?”

“From time to time. Not really. Once or twice. Donghyuck only calls you that because Mark apparently keeps blowing them off to hang out with you.”

“How do you know this?”

“I have ears. It’s not hard when they talk like no one’s around.”

You shush Youngho’s exclamation of and you’re saying I’m nosy?, your heart hammering hard in your ears, practically drowning out the music. “What… what else did they talk about?”

“Not sure. Something about not seeing you that often these days. Jaemin teasing Mark about getting dropped now that you don’t need his help anymore. Donghyuck piling on and saying you’ve got a boyfriend.”

“What?”

“Don’t shoot the messenger.” Jaehyun still inches away from you when your voice rises in pitch and decibel. Some people around you start, then move away as well, as if scared you’re going to incinerate them. “They were just teasing him that you probably ditched him after you started dating someone. Your partner in some project, or what.”

“Oh gross.” The realization hits you like a speeding truck. Youngho’s expression is affronted.

“First of all, you bitch. Second of all, as if I would date someone who didn’t even buy me a gift. Or want to come. Or yelled at me after coming. Wow — now that I think about it, you’re terrible, _________.”

“Oh, shit; that someone was you?” The only person that isn’t tense in this conversation is Jaehyun, who laughs point blank at Youngho’s sour face. “I think they were offering to put you into one of their Death Note notebooks. Sucks for you, hotshot.”

“What a smudge on my good name,” Youngho sighs mournfully. “On my special day, too.”

“I desperately need you two to be quiet for one second. I have to — where’s Mark?”

Even when you stand on your tiptoes, you’re not nearly as tall as the two of them; it’s Youngho, with his freakish height, who manages to spot Mark by the bowl of nachos, looking as though he’s trying to decide if they’re safe for consumption. You hardly excuse yourself; actually, all you say is a distracted “later” that dismisses Jaehyun’s cooing that something’s going down and you should clue him into all the mess later as a thank you. Your appreciation of his sudden and somewhat short-lived presence in your life is still up in the air.

Mark’s busy making a sour face at the sip of punch he’d just taken; he only straightens up when you’re right in front of him, putting his cup down next to the nachos. “Hey. Did you get to find… um…”

“That’s not important.” Your hand bunches the fabric of his jacket in a death grip, something he barely has time to register, let alone question, before you’re tugging him through the throng of people. You want somewhere quiet, somewhere private, and you initially consider the lawn, except you know it’s strewn with cups and has stragglers debating whether to go home or not. You can’t risk any of them being expert eavesdroppers like Jaehyun, so you make a beeline for the stairs instead.

“We’re not leaving yet?” He has to shout over the music, but there’s no resistance in his stride; he follows you up and waits patiently, although a little perplexed, as you check the doors on the second floor. Two are locked, one is a bathroom, and the other is a messy, musk aftershave-scented place you can only presume is Youngho’s room. Talking in front of a sink and a toilet doesn’t feel like it’ll be very productive, so you just drag Mark into the bedroom, kicking aside the crumpled shirt on the floor — which you could’ve sworn you’d seen Youngho wear for class yesterday. “_________, what’s going on?”

“Mark Lee,” you burst out, ignoring the fact that his eyes widen slightly at your tone. “What’s your fucking deal?”

You don’t think you’ve ever sworn in front of him before; that much is evident when he continues to gawk silently, unable to find words to respond to your question. Or maybe it’s just the volume and force with which you demand an answer. The problem is that you don’t even know what kind of reply you want. A small part of you nags that this is uncalled for, especially at this level, with you practically caging him into an unknown room. In fact, even now, you’re still embarrassed at your behavior, wondering if you’ve gone too far and stepped over a line between you.

But the source of all your frustrations is, in fact, that line — one so strangely drawn, clear at some points and almost invisible at others. Sometimes, he seems simply content with the barest minimum of friendship: talking to you, helping you, politely laughing at your (terrible) jokes. But there are also times he blushes too hard for it to not mean anything, times that he makes you feel like you could mean a little something more to him too.

Yet, from there, he wavers, stepping back so as not to get entangled in something you don’t understand — like when he grows distant every time you mention Youngho to him. You don’t understand why he would unless he echoed, even just a little, the longing in you. But you also don’t get why he stays and builds more walls around himself, like he’s determined to ignore all the other signs — like he doesn’t want to know if it’s really true and will just accept the assumption that it is. You hate not knowing where you stand with him, and while you could easily ask, you know you don’t want to.

And for a long time, you’ve convinced yourself that it’s because you want to see Mark step out of his comfort zone and initiate something, but the ugly truth is staring at you: it’s simply just that you can’t stand the idea of seeing him come to the conclusion that you can’t be anything more to him than someone he makes a sweet cream cold brew for every so often.

There’s a moment of tense silence between you two, where you’re just staring at each other — him, perplexed, and you, agitated — and the only sound that passes is the faint but unmistakable voice of Youngho going who has the cake cutting knife? from somewhere down below. You try not to get caught up in the fact that Mark still looks cute when he’s dumbfounded.

“Sorry?”

“What,” you repeat pointedly. “Is your deal? Why have you been acting so weirdly around me these days? I thought — I thought we were… getting closer. I thought… we…”

You’ve confirmed it now; you’re the epitome of cowardliness. You can’t even say I thought we liked each other — because you know that you do, but you still can’t honestly, assuredly tell if he does. Maybe you just read too deeply into the smallest things — smiles before he asks for your order, glances at you when he thinks you’re not looking, sharing the dream eater figurine — to fuel your own emotions without really checking the depth of his.

“I thought we were cool,” you reroute your words, and they come out flat and lame. “But just when I think you’re warming up to me, you suddenly pull away. Like… you’re afraid of me. Or you don’t like me. I don’t know.”

“It’s not — I don’t — I’m not afraid of you,” he stumbles over his words, and even in the darkness of this space, you see his face turn bright red, very quickly. His feet shuffle, not because he’s lost his balance but because he seems to want to get rid of a sudden restlessness. “I do like you. We are — we were getting — we’re close. We — we’re friends. You said that, and we are.”

“Is it only because I say we are that you agree?”

“What? No, I—” His hand passes over his face, slowing at the curve of his chin. “I really like being friends with you. I like being around you.”

“Then why do you act so weird these days? Like — you’ll be fine one moment, then you’ll back off, like you suddenly remembered you don’t want to be around me.”

“It’s not like that. I’m — I don’t get…” He takes a deep inhale, recalibrating himself for a moment before his voice comes out again, less strained this time. “I just don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me.”

“How could I?” There’s something more than confusion coloring your voice; there’s hurt, too, and he looks as surprised as you feel at hearing it. “I wanted to be your friend. I was the one that asked you to hang out. I was the one who wanted you to talk to me, to help me, to go to a goddamn dim sum place with me. Why would I feel uncomfortable? Or are you just using this as some roundabout way to say you feel uncomfortable?”

Mark falls silent, and you don’t know why this speaks volumes all of a sudden. His eyes are trained to the tips of his sneakers, which are rising in soft bumps every few seconds; he’s curling his toes inside them. You feel like you’ve gotten the worst answer possible, and something grows cold in your chest.

“You feel uncomfortable around me.” You rehash, but it’s no longer a question. “You don’t know how to get rid of me.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“You think I’m only using you.”

“No.”

“Then what?” Your voice breaks, no longer out of anger, but a desperate sadness. The moment your eyes feel hot and prickly, you decide you want to end the conversation. It’s embarrassing, you think, for someone like Mark Lee — whom you like, who only ever sees you as a friend — to see you get choked up at a fucking birthday party at someone else’s house.

A beat later, you’re mumbling a half-hearted forget it, and you detest overdramatics, but you hate the idea of being in a room with someone who’ll never return your feelings even more right now; you push past him, already on the thought of calling a cab home instead of taking the bus so that no half-drunk businessmen coming from their company dinners see you crying.

But something warm wraps around your wrist, then closes over your hand, and you’re unable to move, Mark’s palm pressed against the back of yours. When you look back, you notice he’s still not looking at you, but his ears are practically on fire with how red they are, and you feel his fingers tighten slightly, tremble slightly against yours.

“It’s not that. I didn’t ever want you to think — I heard about you two. That you were dating someone. Seo Youngho.”

“What does that matter?” Your words come out a little more bitterly than you expect, and you have to remind yourself to reel it in. “That doesn’t explain your discomfort.”

“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he repeats, still evidently careful in choosing his words. “Because you wanted to be friends.”

“I don’t understand,” you state bluntly. In the back of your mind, you note that Mark’s grip keeps tightening and loosening, unsure of whether to keep holding on or let go. But there’s something else, too — the soft graze of skin against yours, his thumb gliding over your knuckles.

“That was all you said you wanted to be, right?” He waits for a response, but when you don’t give him one, he lets out a shaky breath and continues. “You kept saying — we were friends. You wanted us to be close like that. I just wanted to respect it, even if…”

��Respect what?”

“That you didn’t want… anything else.”

The music downstairs is a bit tamer now; you hear the door opening and closing every so often, signaling guests leaving here and there, but there are still enough footsteps downstairs for you to know that there’s a crowd Youngho hasn’t gotten rid of and therefore has to attend to. That much is good; you’d get slapped with a homicide charge if he came up here all of a sudden.

“You were jealous.”

Mark’s fingers pinch the bridge of his nose for a moment. “I tried to stop. I don’t have a lot of practice with — well, I didn’t know how to approach the situation. I thought I was still acting normally; I didn’t think… I didn’t want you to feel weird and stop hanging out with me just because… I couldn’t fix it.”

“Your friends are assholes,” you mumble, and he finally meets your eye, equal parts startled and amused. “We aren’t. Weren’t. We never were dating.”

“Even without that, I thought… it was a bit embarrassing. Liking someone like you — someone as pretty as you, as nice as you — I thought it would make you feel weird. Then you’d start avoiding me too. Or, worse, you’d keep doing it just because… you… felt bad for me.”

You don’t know what you find more ridiculous — that you hadn’t seen figured it out or that you could have avoided all of this if you’d just been a little more honest with him too. Mark’s hand starts loosening around yours, a little too much, and you turn your palm and grip his hand before he can escape. He stiffens again, just like earlier, but you now understand better why he does.

“I just wanted to keep hanging out with you as much as I could. I thought… It’d be fine, just spending time with you, and I’d be able to like you for a while, on my own, then…” He looks a little pained. “Then just let you go. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry you couldn’t let go?” You sigh softly, your palm guiding his until they connect, face to face, and you can finally lace your fingers into his. There’s no resistance, but his hand trembles slightly in yours still. “If there’s anything you should be apologizing for, it’s that you ever thought of doing it.”

Something clears in the air, lightens in his expression, and he chuckles, albeit a little shyly still. “It’s because I never thought someone like you would like someone like me.”

“I like you.” And it feels right to say it now, not at all out of the blue, never in fear of an answer he’s already given. “I like you when you smile at me every time you ask for my order. I like that you never get impatient when I’m getting my answers wrong. I like seeing you excited when you talk about a new series you’re looking forward to — something new you really want to collect. When you blush, when you laugh loudly, when you spin your pen in your hand — I like you in all those times.”

“Even when I’m jealous?”

“Especially when you are.” Your free hand comes up to cup his jaw, and you’re reminded of the fact that you’ve wanted to feel the strength of the angle under your palm for ages now. It’s not at all a disappointment, and your heart flutters irregularly in knowing you could’ve done this a long time ago, but it doesn’t matter because you’re doing it now, and fuck if Mark Lee doesn’t look good this close to you. “So be jealous — because now, you know you can be.”

Kissing him is better than you imagined, and you’ve imagined a little too much to be embarrassed at this point; there’s a heat to his lips that matches the one across his face, an upturn to them that makes you smile too. The setting’s not at all an expected one, but you’ll take it, not because it’s dark or because it’s private but because Mark’s in here with you, and you would have kissed him in a brightly lit football field full of people for as long as he’d let you.

You’d like to think he’s flushed for a reason other than shyness when you pull away, even if his laugh is quiet and breathy. In fact, when you murmur not enough, he’s the one that closes the gap this time, offering freely what you ask for with such little eloquence. The natural trepidation in his mouth relaxes, gives way to a curiosity that keeps you locked for so long that you forget you need to breathe, much more intent on finding out if Mark’s tongue tastes as good as you’ve imagined for so long.

It doesn’t; it tastes even better.

It’s still not enough, not by a long shot, but you have to resurface before you pass out like this, and even he looks a little dazed when you pull away — not in a bad way, with a grin on his face that you can only classify as endearingly goofy: slightly lopsided and a little shy, but with an unmistakable air of satisfaction.

“Months,” he mumbles, his lips still dangerously close to yours. Your eyebrows rise in questioning, and he laughs in that infectious way that makes you want to join in without even knowing what the punchline is. “I’ve been thinking of kissing you for months.”

And you do share the laughter this time, not out of amusement but of a happiness that spills without restraint. “But you’re suddenly holding back now?”

“Just letting myself bask in the moment, I guess. Letting it sink in so I remember everything.”

The two of you stand there quietly, still trying to fully parse the progression of events, and a small part of your mind registers that Mark’s thumb is still drawing circles on your skin. It’s also not enough — this touch, this closeness. You know now that he’s been thinking of you for months, and it reminds you that you spent that time dreaming of him too. And you remember you’ve always wanted to be even more familiar with him, and suddenly the desire is overwhelming; he’s right here, and you don’t ever want him out of your grasp again.

“Where are you going?” He’s only curious for the sake of it; there’s no alarm in the question because you keep your fingers tightly woven in his, tugging him along as you walk past him to the door. He’s still staring in wonder after the lock clicks shut. “What’s… happening now?”

“You waited months to kiss me, right?” He nods in response at your question. “I’ve been waiting just as long to have you too.”

His mouth falls open, but he doesn’t manage to say anything; his jaw tightens just as quickly when he feels your free hand trail down his chest, feather-light and asking for a green light. Your index finger stops just above his navel and draws back slowly, but not before you feel the shiver that runs down his torso.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” you murmur, giving his hand a little squeeze. “But I just want you to know — I want to. I want you.”

A thoughtfulness settles on his face, and his eyes graze over yours, trying to read your seriousness. You don’t know how honest you look, but your words hold enough truth in them. A silence stretches over the next minute, but to you, it feels like an eternity, and you lose the test of patience somewhat, smiling softly at him.

“You don’t want to?”

“I—” His tongue peeks out, running over his bottom lip. “I do. It’s not that I don’t want to, but…”

“You seem worried.”

A hesitant nod. “I’ve never — well, no, I have, but not — with someone like you.”

“What’s someone like me?” You laugh airily.

“Someone pretty like you — I don’t know. Someone who seems to know exactly what they want. Someone who seems like… they could do better than me.”

“Mark.” You can’t keep the incredulity out of your voice. “I do know exactly what I want. I want you. The rest — I don’t care about. As long as it’s you, I want it.”

He cracks a smile, half of relief, half of disbelief. You don’t miss his hand coming up to press, warm, against your waist. “For real?”

Your fingers curl into the front of his shirt — an anchor to bring you closer, until the tips of your noses are brushing. “For real.”

The third time you kiss is slow, almost careful; there’s lingering worry in the line of his mouth that your lips try to ease until his slightly part under the movements of yours. You feel the tension leave his form in waves — first in his shoulders, then in his arms, until you’re able to press yourself closer and feel the slight give of his frame against your smaller one. He’s radiating an immense amount of body heat that’s pricking your skin and keeping you alert, and you’re hyperaware of the smallest things — the weak tremble in his mouth, the slight roughness of his teeth under your tongue, the ridges of his palate above it.

He tastes nothing like what he smells, you learn. Instead of the air of earthy coffee stuck to clean linen, you inhale a combination of spearmint and mild saltiness that’s made slightly sharper by the lingering splash of alcohol from his accidental sip of punch earlier. You decide then and there that this disparity is important to you; it makes you feel like you’re the only one who can have this experience — that everyone else can know his scent, but now, only you can know what Mark Lee tastes like.

You have to keep your wits about you to avoid this addictive stimulation of your senses; you let go of his hand only to lock your fingers around his neck, and there’s a show of trust in how he lets you lead him backwards, until his knees are hitting the edge of the unmade bed. The kiss breaks as he’s forced to settle on the mattress, and he looks up at you in what can only be described as a quiet kind of awe. He doesn’t complain when you place your hands, heavy, on his shoulders, using his sturdy form to keep you stable as you move to straddle his lap.

“I feel like,” his voice is hoarse as he speaks up. “We should have picked a different location. Someone… could walk in.”

“I locked the door,” you remind him, a light reassurance in your voice. He doesn’t say anything immediately, but it’s clear there are cogs turning in his head, and you think it’s unfair that he’s thinking way too hard about something else that isn’t you, right now, in this position. In a bid to rectify this, your face presses into the side of his neck, breathing in that familiar scent and leaving a light kiss on his skin right after. Your lips mark the moment he swallows hard at the contact. “Besides, would you really be that unhappy if someone did?”

His hands tighten against your waist, prompting you to leave another kiss against his collarbone. “What — what do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t like it if someone — say, Youngho — walked in to see me on your lap like this?”

The silence that follows your words is tense, and you can tell that Mark’s breathing has become shallower. Again, you can feel his throat constricting slightly, and you can’t help but laugh breathily as you nip at his skin, just under his Adam’s apple. He’s surprisingly easy to tease, you realize — quick to turn speechless and prone to hanging onto your words.

To say that you wouldn’t want to use that to your advantage would be a downright lie.

“Tell me,” you urge, your tone deceptively gentle. “You wouldn’t want him to see you kissing me like this? To see me wrapped around you, begging for more, saying your name over and over? You don’t want him to watch you take me — so he knows you’re the only one that can?”

A strangled groan punctuates your words, but it comes from him; his fingers dig hard into your side with barely constructed restraint. “What do you want from me, _________?”

“I want to know if kissing me was the only thing you wanted for months.”

You pull your head away, nudging his chin with the tip of your nose. Another groan escapes him, and his head tilts back slightly, almost like he’s praying. But when his gaze comes down to meet yours at your level again, you see a firm resolution in his eyes that stirs your heart — which takes off the moment he shakes his head, slowly but surely.

“Then,” you whisper. “What do you want from me?”

He doesn’t say so much as shows; he takes from you your breath, steals another kiss that’s now firmer and more openly demanding. Suddenly, his mouth can’t seem to stay still, trapping your lower lip in between his, drawing out your taste until it mixes with his against his teeth. You feel your head growing light again, and you’re pleasantly surprised that it’s suddenly become difficult to keep up with his lips, asking more from you without restraint. A hum of need sounds in the back of his throat, vaguely dissatisfied, and he’s telling you wordlessly that it isn’t enough right before he attaches his lips to the base of your neck, just above your collar. You think he’s just about to return the favor, but a laugh leaves you when you realize he’s taken it a step further, his teeth grazing your skin lightly, soft nips signaling how eager he is to sink his teeth in with only his slowly weakening self-control stopping him from doing it. Mark’s breathing is slightly labored when he pulls his lips away, warm breath fanning over your chest.

“It’s crazy — and stupid,” he croaks out, voice slightly raspy. “But I want it, and I don’t.”

“What do you mean?” Your fingers drag into his hair, combing it upward messily from his nape. He leans in for a quick kiss that’s somewhat misplaced, landing on the corner of your mouth instead of squarely atop it.

“I want them — him to see us. To see me with you, kissing you — fucking you, too. I want everyone to know we’re like this.”

You’ve never heard Mark say anything so forwardly before; a sweet, warm flush builds in your face, pleased at how comfortably he manages to say it — pleased that he’s saying it to you. “Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t want him to see you.” There’s a bluntness to his words, but hiding behind them is an undertone of pleading — a serious request. “I don’t want him to see how pretty you look. I don’t want him to see you when you’re bare, or how you look when I’m inside you. I don’t want him to see—”

His voice wavers and dies, and you wonder if he’s embarrassed, but when you read his expression, you see an unyielding longing. A smile tugs at your lips, and your hand comes around to cup his chin, thumb extending upwards to drag his lower lip down.

“You don’t want him to see what’s only yours.”

He swallows hard again, but he doesn’t wait long to nod. Understanding passes between the both of you, silently but completely, and Mark presses his face to your throat, feeling the hum resonate as he places another long, firm kiss there.

“You’re mine,” he whispers, in a way that almost feels like he wants to convince himself of something impossible to believe. He doesn’t even wait for your affirmation, prefers to read it in the way you shiver lightly once his lips travel further down. His kisses trail past the collar of your shirt, and his hands are unabashed in how they seek skin, pushing the fabric upward so he can settle the palms of his hands, warm against your waist. Oddly, they don’t travel upwards; they only brush against the dip, down slightly over the upward rise of your hips, then upwards again, almost soothingly. It’s almost like he wants his mouth to meet them, but he stops halfway, sidetracked by the curve of your breasts.

He barely pulls away, only does for a moment, enough to meet your eyes.

“You’re only mine,” he repeats, his voice softer now. You realize he’s still waiting for some confirmation, and when you do, you’re quick to give it to him — quick to erase any doubt.

“I’m yours,” you affirm in the same tone, in the same careful volume. “Only yours, Mark.”

Whatever else he wanted to ask for, he knows you’ve given assent; that much is clear when he buries his face between your tits, inhaling your scent. You briefly wonder if he might feel just as intoxicated around you as you do around him, if your pleasant dizziness in being this close to him, in tasting and smelling him is something he experiences too, but you don’t get much time to dwell on it the moment you feel his lips part, a slight wetness seeping through the fabric. He’s kissing your chest, teeth grazing just above the cup of your bra, nipping without any real objective other than to feel the pad’s slight resistance to his mouth.

You almost miss what he says as he shifts his head, lips brushing over the curve of your breast — another breathless ‘mine’ that isn’t ever punctuated; his lips still stay parted, mouthing at the cloth, like he’s desperate to feel what’s underneath through it. There’s pressure where his tongue presses flush against the shape of your tit, tightness whenever he chooses to nip, attempting to take the flesh and all that’s between you and him between his teeth.

Not enough, you think, even when a whimper of need bubbles out of you; you want to be closer, your thighs pressing against the sides of his. You’re close in almost every way, but you still inch yourself further forward, enough to feel the taut hardness in his jeans. Your hips settle right there, letting fabric ride against fabric as you center yourself.

No sooner do you press yourself flush against him do you gasp; the light sting sends a jolt up your spine when his teeth close around your nipple through your bra, and when you look down at him, you see the corners of his mouth pulled up in evident satisfaction. He’s quick to atone, his tongue dragging your shirt slightly upwards in his attempt to soothe, and for some reason, the push of fabric and the barely-there feeling of motion leaves you tingling.

“Mark.” Your voice comes out in a whine, but in the haze you’re in, you don’t really have a clear idea of what you’re asking for. All you know is that you want more of him, and for as much as he’s already given you in kisses and words, you aren’t even halfway down the list of everything else you wish you could demand from him. You say the only thing that comes to mind — the only thing that really encompasses what you feel. “Mark, I want you. I want more of you.”

His hands on your waist are replaced by the significant tightness of his arms, locked around your torso; you don’t even have the time to take in your awe at the fact that he can easily carry you, turn you over until you’re on your back, until he’s already eased one knee between your legs.

The way he looks down at you is a mixture of hesitation and desire, but the former’s erased when you reach out for him, murmuring another ‘more’ so you can pull him in. With one palm pressed against the mattress, he lets his free hand graze against your side again, bolder in its movements, and his fingers trace a path up to your breast, squeezing the soft flesh through layers. Your back arches upwards in response, eager for more contact, for touch that’s almost there but not quite, and he smiles when you make a noise of frustration from his fingers tweaking the soft nub of your nipple.

“Mark, please—”

“Would you really let him see you like this?” His thumb’s still idly grazing over your breast, following the rise and fall of its curve. You swallow hard, trying to keep your voice level despite the growing want that threatens to break through it. “Would you really let him watch you… get fucked?”

You shake your head, and his brow furrows.

“I’d let him watch you fuck me,” you correct him, and the confusion in his face gives way to pure satisfaction the moment you make this nuance clear. “It has to be only you.”

His grip tightens briefly against your breast again, and he leans down, pressing a surprisingly chaste and brief kiss to your lips.

“Then I’ll unlock the door next time and give him a show.”

You don’t know if it’s what he says or what he does after — his hands bunching your shirt upward until the hem’s just below your neckline — that makes your breath hitch, but you decide it doesn’t matter when you realize you’d much rather be focusing on the journey his lips take, slick against your stomach as he presses languid kisses down to your navel. His fingers hook into the waistband of your jeans, the weight naturally pulling them down, and you see his muscles tighten for a moment as he stops himself from tugging them off completely.

Mark’s mouth is unparalleled in its attentiveness, seemingly intent on making sure he’s covered every inch of your stomach in warm kisses, but you only realize he’s somehow stalling when he starts the cycle again, his nails digging into the taut elastic of your jeans as though to remind himself to curb his desire.

You take the initiative instead, raising your hips slightly to signal your want, acutely aware of the fact that you brush lightly against his thigh when you do so. His eyes lift first, followed by the rest of his face, and he’s watching you quietly. You might have thought he was unsure of what to do all of a sudden again, but his knee pressing closer, an unmistakable pressure against you, is enough to tell you that he’s only curious to know what else you’ll do.

The second time you grind against his thigh, his hands catch your hips, keeping them aloft just long enough for him to tug the band of your jeans downward; he peels them off you with surprising ease, returning to the same position between your legs, hands still firm on your waist. With that done, he only has the thin garter of your panties left to curl his fingers into, bunching it into his fists when you roll your hips up one more time. You manage a shaky noise when you feel the stark difference — the roughness of the denim against you, the stick and drag of flimsy cloth. Mark lets out a low but unmistakable hiss.

“I can’t believe—” his idea is cut short by the movement of your hips again, and his grip tightens, knuckles pressing into your skin. “Can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“What am I supposed to do,” you breathe out, the sound momentarily getting stuck in your throat. “So that you know it’s real?”

His fingers relax their hold, palms now pressed against your thighs; they travel between your hips and your knees, a soothing and thoughtful motion. “God — I don’t know. I just want — I just want you so badly. Like… I’m going to go crazy if I don’t have you now.”

You lean up, your weight resting on your elbow, and your other hand reaches out; Mark meets you halfway, bending just a little lower to press his cheek against your palm. There’s something intimate, something so giving about the way he turns his face to your fingers, pressing a fluttering kiss just under your thumb. The tips of your fingers trace the shape of his lips, even when they pucker again under your digits.

“Take me,” you murmur quietly. “Right now — from now on, every part of me is all for you.”

His exhale is shaky, but his fingers have a sureness to them; they slip under your thighs, cradling the backs of your knees, and lifting until they’re folded over your chest. You don’t even have the time to wonder if you should feel exposed all of a sudden; his breath warms the inside of your thigh as he presses his lips there — not a kiss, just a touch as he speaks.

“I want to taste you,” he mumbles, partly distracted with the act of inhaling the mild scent off of your skin. “Every inch of you — I want to know just how sweet you are.”

He lets his hold on your thighs relax, letting them fall apart; he busies his hands with your panties instead, hooking a finger into the strip of cloth just covering you. It’s clear you’re both aware that the fabric sticks light to your skin, poorly masking your wetness, and interest mingled with hunger flashes across his face as he pulls it aside.

“You’re so pretty,” he says, sounding like it’s a comment more for himself than anything else. His gaze flickers to you for a moment before it moves back to your pussy. “The prettiest fucking girl in the world.”

The pressure of his thumb between your folds causes you to forget what you wanted to say, and you know Mark had been nervous, but you realize that it doesn’t mean he’s supremely inexperienced by any means; there’s a quiet, understated confidence in the way he rubs slow, thorough circles, moving upward towards your clit. Your face, your neck, your whole torso feels flushed, but you power through the instinct to tilt your head back so that you can keep watching him — the minute changes in his expression, the slowly building strength in his touch.

“I want to taste you,” he repeats, looking up at you. “I want to know what you taste like when you cum against my mouth.”

You’re not sure if you’re gawking because you can hardly believe Mark Lee — your eternally blushing, mild mannered campus crush — had said all those words strung together into such a lewd sentence, but you’re sure as hell not going to deny him. Your hand travels down your torso, and he watches, curious at first, then awestruck when your index and forefinger settle against either side of your folds, pulling them apart in offering.

His eyes end up transfixed on your pussy again, observing how your fingers ease your folds further apart the more he massages his thumb against your slit. His mouth is slightly agape, intent on drinking in the sight, unaware that you’re trying to memorize this view of him too — Mark Lee, touching you, wanting you, eager to take you fully.

“I’ve always wanted to see what it’d look like with your face between my legs,” you say in a hushed tone, but he catches it anyway, briefly looking up at you again. “I’ve always wanted to know what your tongue would feel like against my pussy.”

Your index finger bumps against the tip of his thumb, and he stops its motions, allowing you to move his digit down until the pad of it hovers just in front of your tiny hole. You can see one cheek tucked between his teeth, bitten to muffle the groan you wish you’d heard louder.

“Won’t you show me?”

You think you hear him rasp out a ‘fuck yes’ before he bends down, pressing his half-open mouth against your pussy. The squeal of delight that leaves you is half-strangled as his thumb curls, hooking into your entrance. It starts a shallow, distracted motion, with his attention funneled much more clearly into keeping his tongue working. Flush against your slit, it drags up, and he releases a guttural noise at your taste, lips pursing slightly on the way back down — like he can’t stand not trapping every drop of wetness with his mouth.

The intensity of his tongue, the idle thrusting of his thumb — you’re not sure what you want to focus on more, and the result is you whimpering incoherently at the starkly contrasting combination of the two. Mark moves his mouth like he’s never tasted anything as good in his life; the sounds between your thighs are wet, sloppy — almost embarrassingly so — but you don’t have the presence of mind to dwell on that because Mark Lee is eating you out and that’s really all that you can think of.

The tip of his tongue suddenly flicks upwards; you keen, long and low, when it starts to circle your clit in that same intense, circular movement his thumb had gotten you used to. Your sensitivity skyrockets, and you’re completely unable to control the upward bucking of your hips, but Mark stays supremely unperturbed, his free arm winding under your thigh to keep the both of you steady. Your noises are growing embarrassingly loud, and you realize just how needy you’ve become when you vaguely notice that there’s a pattern in what you’re saying — his name, over and over again.

“Did you do that too?” He asks softly, his words slightly muffled against you. “Say my name, I mean — when you thought of me.”

“God, yes.” Your voice comes out strained, teetering on the edge of slurring. “So many times — every single fucking time.”

“Promise me something.” He lifts his head, and you see a fieriness in his gaze.

You nod — at this rate, whatever he’d ask you to do, you would without question. “Anything.”

His thumb presses in deeper, up to his knuckle and you reflexively tighten around his digit, but he keeps it anchored there, pushing down against your walls. He drinks in your gasp, the widening of your eyes, the way you chew on your lip with a singular kind of contentment on his face.

“Promise me — from now on, you’ll make sure I’m always there to hear it.”

The only kind of assent you’re able to make is a moan as he dives down again, mouth buried in your warmth, his nose pressed tight against your clit. His tongue moves in strong strokes, broad swipes that push your folds apart further, and his thumb, while not moving, increases in pressure to the point that you feel a heaviness adding to the growing pleasure. Your hands fly down, seeking some kind of sense and reason, and you thread your fingers into his hair, grip tightening as your climax builds in stride.

“Mark, I’m—” close, you want to say, embarrassingly so, but the moment he hears his name, his lips attach to your clit, and there’s suddenly so much more pressure as he sucks, almost like he’s desperate to draw out your orgasm. He chooses this of all time to start moving his thumb again, and this time, his movements are anything but slow and idle; they’re filled with the intent to drive you over the edge. “Fuck me, oh my god—”

“I want to,” he murmurs, pausing for just a moment to drag the tip of his tongue around the nub. “God, I want to. Let me see you cum first; let me taste how sweet you are.”

His thumb stops, buries deep into your pussy, and you’re not sure why this, of all things, is what pushes you beyond control; you’re only half-sure you say his name when your orgasm hits, the rest of your consciousness much too clouded by pleasure. He doesn’t stop, revels in the way you squirm under him as he hums low and keeps his tongue working against your clit. His licks become longer, more thorough as you come down from your high, your cries softening into whimpers as his tongue both attempts to clean you up and makes you messier in the process. His arm is still curled around your thigh, keeping you from inching away from him, even if instinct and stimulation are telling you to.

You’re barely lucid when you sit up, and Mark inches back, somewhat startled; you grab the front of his shirt, and the sight of his mouth, slick and glistening from your wetness, only makes you more curious to know what you taste like on him. You find out how tangy it is, how rich the two of you are together on his lips, and you’re able to fully appreciate the skill of the mouth that kisses you deeply, leaving traces of you against your tongue and teeth.

“Please — fuck me.” It’s the only thing you can say at this rate, only half-coherent and still trembling with desire, but Mark doesn’t seem to care that you’re stuttering over such a simple request. His thumb wipes traces of saliva off the corner of your mouth, kisses it clean for good measure, then straightens up, his hands working at his belt. You almost miss the fact that his hands are shaking slightly as he undoes the buckle and tugs it out from the loops.

You want to help — it’s the least you can do, after all, and your fingers push the button of his jeans out through the hole, his hands working in tandem to tug the zipper down. However, your movements falter when you hear a noise from just outside the room — the sound of the doorknob being jangled, the thud of a body gently hitting the door, as though worried it’s stuck. You glance up at Mark, ready to reassure him, but he either hadn’t heard or doesn’t care because he’s too busy stepping out from the pool of denim at his ankles, and you get completely sidetracked by the bulge straining against his boxers.

You almost ignore Youngho’s voice grumbling ‘Jesus Christ, now of all times? from behind the door, but you leverage it instead.

“Should we let him in?” You ask, tone innocent despite the evident deviousness in your words. It pays off, though; Mark’s cock twitches unmistakably under thin fabric, and he actually looks like he’s considering it. “You’re just about to fuck me, after all. Weren’t we going to — what did you say? Put on a show?”

He worries on his bottom lip, like he’s unsure if you’re serious, but in the end, he shakes his head, reaching out to smooth your hair away from your face and ushering you to lay back down. The lips that meet your forehead are gentle, almost apologetic.

“Not now,” he murmurs against your skin. “Right now, you’re all mine.”

You laugh lightly, nodding, and he chuckles too, but the sound of it slowly dies down when your finger hooks into the garter of his boxers. You can feel his breathing hitch as you tug it down, the elastic catching when it meets the shape of his cock, but you don’t make any move to free it just yet — for some reason, you want to see him do it.

“Show me.”

He complies without hesitation, one hand dragging the elastic down over his thighs, the other curling around the base of his length, and your face flushes as satisfaction works through your system at the bare sight of him.

Mark Lee is big — not monstrously so, but enough for you to make a pleased noise as your hand joins his, fingers barely wrapping around his girth. You give his shaft a gentle squeeze, and his exhale stutters, watching you stroke him, long and thorough in your movements. Your palm swipes over the tip, leaking precum, allowing it to slick up your hand enough to keep your movements smooth. You’re fixated on the tension in his lips, the throb of his cock against your palm, and the way his gaze never leaves your face, like a small, amazed part of him still can’t believe what you’re doing, even if you’re both half-naked already.

“I want to suck you off,” you plead, grip tightening slightly. He grits his teeth, stifling another groan, but he shakes his head clearly enough for you to slow your movements in mild surprise.

“Can’t — not now. I need to be in you so badly.” His breathing’s sharp and heavy, like he’s trying to keep himself in check. “You don’t even know — how long I’ve wanted to feel you.”

Your hold relaxes, and you let him maneuver you, his renewed hold on your hips dragging you closer to the edge of the bed. In this position, he can spread your thighs further, and you angle yourself optimally — enough for him to get a full view of your pussy, wet and still aching from your last orgasm.

“You don’t know how badly I’ve wanted to know how tight you are,” he continues, and there’s a faraway look in his eyes that makes you think he might be entrenched in fantasy. “How much I would have killed to see you — have you like this. I’m not gonna be able to wait anymore.”

His fingers dig into your sides, thumbs stroking your stomach in a weak pattern. The underside of his shaft presses against your folds, still half obscured by your panties, in a way that’s heavy enough to make you mewl, your hips reacting before your mind can, and he hisses softly as he feels his length glide along your slit before you relax your stance again.

“I can’t wait,” he reiterates, a breaking in his voice that sounds almost tortured. You don’t want him to either, want to see him buried to the hilt inside you, and you raise your hips again in need. “I want you so much it’s driving me crazy.”

“Then take me.”

And you’re not sure if it’s a demand or a plea, but he no longer stops himself; his hand fists his cock a few times, coating the slick of precum along his length before he lines the tip up with your entrance. His other hand’s flush against the inside of your thigh, a light pressure ensuring he always has enough space to fit himself between your legs — enough space to bottom out completely.

Mark’s considerate in his pace — maybe he knows he’s big, or maybe he’s just naturally careful, but he allows you the time to adjust to the stretch. Your nails almost puncture holes into the sheets, your grip so tight you wonder if it’s just to brace yourself or to hang onto the last threads of your sanity. He’s only halfway in, but you’re pushing fullness already, and he stops when his cock meets slight resistance, looking up at you in concern.

“You’re not—?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” you reassure him softly, and it’s true; the adjustment brings about slight discomfort, but it’s almost nothing to you — not compared to how much more you want. “Give me everything; I want all of you inside me.”

He pauses still, trying to read your expression for any lies, but when he can’t find any, he nods, his jaw tensing as he presses both palms against your thighs, keeping you open as much as possible to accommodate him. He doesn’t even stop when you whimper, feeling a tightening twitch in your pussy that also causes him to groan, until inch by inch, you’ve taken him, his hips flush against yours.

He doesn’t move — not yet, his eyes trained to where you’re connected like he’s once again unable to believe what he’s doing. You hear him mumble something to himself that you want to hear too; you squirm slightly, and he hisses through his teeth, looking up at you and finding the questioning in your face. He offers you a small smile, albeit somewhat strained.

“You’re tighter than I thought.”

“You’re bigger than I thought,” you hum, and neither of you is really to blame; the tight fit, the slight breathlessness it leaves you with, is perfect, you think — just what the both of you need. “Did you often think about fucking me?”

“Probably just as often as you’re making it sound like you thought about having me fuck you, I think.”

“Don’t get cocky,” you warn, but there’s no real heat in your voice.

“I won’t. But it makes me feel good — knowing you wanted me just as bad.”

“I still do.” Your gaze is lazy, a little hazy, even if you’re anticipating so much. Even just the feeling of Mark, throbbing inside you, is already slowly building the pleasure in your stomach again; you wonder if you could cum like this, given enough time, given enough patience. “I’m still waiting for you to fuck me. God, Mark— please.”

He chuckles good-naturedly, but even that’s drowned out by the long moan that leaves you once he draws his hips back; your body’s mildly shocked into a new adjustment, feeling a sudden emptiness that’s quickly mitigated by him filling you back up again. The pace is slow, almost torturous, although you know he isn’t doing it to get a rise out of you. He wants to ease you into speed, careful to help you adjust fully; his restraint in his movements is all the more evident on his face, in the furrowing of his brow and the determination in his gaze. Even with that, he can’t help what he says, so intent on controlling everything else he does that he lets his words spill out over your noises.

“Pretty,” he grunts out, and when your walls twitch around him, he accidentally thrusts sharper — just enough for you to whimper a little more loudly, and he has to reel his strength back again. “God, you’re beautiful. I should’ve told you sooner how much I wanted you. All those times I had to imagine you wrapped around me like this, wondering how much tighter you’d get once you came on my cock. All those times you drove me crazy while I was alone, when I could have been in you— I could have found out how good you felt. How pretty you’d look under me. And you’re still even prettier, even better than I ever dreamed.”

There’s an erratic melody of moans under his words, spilling from your mouth, and the fact that he riles himself up enough to increase his speed slightly doesn’t escape you. He’s a little less careful now, seemingly entranced by the view he gets, watching his shaft disappear into you only to come out glistening, and a part of you hates the idea of snapping out of his reverie, but the majority of your thoughts now lean towards wondering how much more you can get him to break free of his own self-imposed restrictions.

“I wanted to ask you so many times.” His eyes snap up, coming back into focus as he takes in the sight of you, flushed, hair tousled, gaze darkened. “Almost every day — I sat there, thinking about how all I could do was go home and fuck myself, frustrated you weren’t doing it for me. I should have taken you home with me right then and there — should have let you watch me touch myself thinking of you, should have let you touch me into cumming on your fingers.”

His breathing staggers as he leans in, eager to see you clearer, to hear your words, slowly becoming airier as they come out. For a moment, his gaze falls, torn between watching him move into you and meeting your eyes, but he ultimately chooses the latter once you speak up again, your tone even more hushed than before — like it’s meant to be a secret between just you and him.

“But there were times I wanted you even more than that, to the point that I almost felt like I couldn’t wait.” His eyes widen slightly, a few precious seconds of wondering if he understands what you mean, right before you confirm what he thinks. “I thought about making a move right then — I should have kissed you. I should have asked you.”

“Asked me what?” His voice is gruff with the effort to keep himself in check despite the fact that it’s clear to the both of you that it won’t last.

Your lazy smile’s illusionary; it hides the triumph swelling in your chest at knowing that he asked exactly what you hoped him to.

“I should have asked you to fuck me in front of everyone there.”

“God,” his eyes squeeze shut, his grip tightening. “Please. I can’t—”

“I should have bent over for you there, begged you to stretch me out right after our session,” you continue, bordering on merciless. “Mark, you don’t know — how badly I wanted to be on your lap, your cock in me, with everyone watching. How much I wanted you to fold me over that table, have people watch you pound me, have them listen to how good you make me feel. No one would ever even wonder; everyone would know I’m yours.”

You pause, allowing his eyes to fly open once again, and there’s a pleading in them that’s begging for release. Your eyes soften along with your voice, but you’re this far gone; you should at least see it through.

“And everyone would know you’re mine too.”

“Fuck,” he growls, and his hips stutter before new resolve fills him, his hips driving into you with the force of a strength you didn’t even know he had in him; your thighs tremble at the intensity, at the renewed impact, and feeling him drive his cock deeper into you has you crying out somewhere between a moan and a sob. “Fuck, _________. If I had known you’d thought about me like that — God.”

It’s your turn to shut your eyes for a while, allowing yourself to focus on his movements, breaching your tightness even faster now. You feel his hands skim up your sides again, fingers digging into the fabric of your bra and pulling them down until your bare tits are cupped in his hands. You shiver as his thumbs pass over your nipples, toying them into firm nubs.

“One day,” he hums out, his voice giving way to a slight hoarseness again. “I’ll do it. I’ll fuck you in front of him — in front of Youngho, in front of everyone. I’ll let them wonder how tight you are, how fucking warm you are, and I’ll let them leave knowing no one can know but me.”

It’ll never happen, you both know, but something about agreeing to something so absurd is what has your body almost shaking in longing, and it’s what causes him to press in deeper, folding your legs closer to your torso. Your hands do what little they can to help, keeping your thighs apart so as not to obstruct his view. You can tell it’s somehow not enough, not really all of what he wants when his brow furrows, and he shifts his weight, pushing into you at a new angle.

The stark difference has you gasping before you can control it. Immediately, Mark stops, and you’re already shaking your head before you even hear him say anything, presuming he’s paused out of concern. But before you can say you’re fine, his hushed voice cuts through the silence.

“Do that again.”

“What?”

“Do it again,” he mumbles, sounding distant. “Breathe in. Suck in your stomach.”

You’re not one to complain at such a simple request, albeit a little odd, so you comply, inhaling enough to tighten your torso. You’re surprised when you feel his cock twitch inside you, and you blow out the air alongside your question. “Mark, what are you—”

“I can see it,” he says in utter disbelief. “When you’re like this, I can — I can see my cock inside you. Just a bit.”

Your eyes follow his gaze, fixed just below your navel. From this angle, without any movement, you can’t see a thing, but you assume he’s not one to abandon fucking you so intently without good reason, so you press your palm against your stomach, just above your pelvis. Nothing really feels significantly out of place — up until the point when Mark draws his hips back again, and you feel the backward slide of his cock.

Your throat tightens, and you don’t really understand the feeling that spreads in you — a unique kind of arousal, knowing how deep he is inside you and how you’re taking all of him in despite the fit, because of the fit. Your hand falls away, allowing Mark’s to take its place, and he exerts just a little more pressure against your stomach in an attempt to get the most out of the experience when he thrusts back in. He groans, feeling the bulge push back up, and he quickly picks up the same pace, renewed in intensity so he can experience the rapid rise and fall he creates under his palm.

The faster he goes, the harder he presses, and you’re not sure if he knows it, but the onslaught of friction is what’s making you whine and squirm even more; you’re trapped, in the best way possible, in his hold, your hands back to clinging to the backs of your knees like a lifeline. Pressure from the outside builds on the slowly growing pressure inside, a knot in your pelvis that’s coiling so tightly you feel like you can’t breathe. If Mark notices how close you are, he doesn’t make it known; he’s busy feeling the outline of his cock against your stomach, and when he looks up at you again, his eyes are hazy.

“I would fuck you every single day, every single hour if I could feel this every time,” he whispers in a way that’s almost reverent. “Let me — I want to keep seeing you like this. I want to feel how deep I am inside you, too. Let me fuck you all the time.”

You nod, and your first attempt to say something is just another choked sob. When you do manage to get something out, it’s broken in tearful stutters. “M-Mark, I’m s— I’m so close… I’m — fuck—”

“Do it.” It’s not a harsh command but an urging made on short breath; through your misty vision, you see tension in Mark’s face and shoulders, like he’s bracing himself for something too. You barely register the ping in the back of your mind, too focused on the way he’s pressing his palm harder on your stomach, the way his hips quicken their pace — he’s close too. “Let me feel you — want to feel you cum all over my cock.”

You inhale, not to speak but to let out a loud whimper; your teeth dig into your lower lip as you try to stifle the moans that threaten to follow, but in the end, you whine out his name. Your thighs threaten to close, trembling as you finally reach your climax, an impossible explosion of pleasure, and you have to squeeze your eyes shut so that you don’t get dizzy from the stars that burst around your vision.

“Fuck.” Mark’s voice is strained, his one hand still firm against your stomach, the other sliding against the inside of your thigh. “You get even tighter — you feel even better when you cum.”

“Mark,” you hiccup, unable to do anything but flutter around him as he pistons harder into you. You don’t even know what you’re asking for when you say ‘please,’ but he somehow seems to, and you trust that your body’s saying something you can’t fully detect in this state, with your mind floating in the aftermath of ecstasy.

“I know,” his tone is soothing in contrast to the intensity of his thrusts. “I’ve got you. Just a little more — where do you want��?”

You blink slowly, his words sinking in at too leisurely a pace; his hips stutter dangerously before you’re able to respond. You barely even do that, your hand gently brushing over the one against your stomach, but he catches onto the meaning quickly enough.

You’ve never heard your name said in such a beautiful way; hearing him moaning it lowly is enough to make you whine again, and that noise is drawn out when he shifts and slips out of you fully. Your brain’s fuzzy, but your senses are at least sharp enough to drink in the perfect sight of him cumming — the way he leans his head back, jaw taut and eyes shut, as he pumps his cock and the heat of his release against your skin, pooling against your stomach once he finally cums. You see a shiver run through him, and then he’s still for a while in this position, the both of you basking in the afterglow of your highs.

You’re still weak and sensitive when Mark finally comes back down, a lucidity you don’t have right now coming back into his gaze. All you can do is smile when he leans in, catching your lips in another kiss — one that’s surprisingly soft and slow in comparison to everything else, but still leaves you breathless when he pulls away.

“Let me clean you up,” he murmurs, and you hum in agreement, your body limp as you watch him move off the bed and pull a handful of tissues from a box on the desk on the opposite wall. Even his hands are gentle when he scoops you up, shifting you until your head can lean against the pillows. They carry a scent you’re not used to, and your nose scrunches, rejecting the change, but that’s quickly overpowered by Mark’s familiar coffee-and-linen one when he presses next to you, careful as he wipes his cum off your stomach and thoroughly cleans between your thighs. From somewhere down below, you still hear hushed voices, and the front door slams shut again. People are still in the middle of leaving, but you know Youngho will likely run out of guests soon, and this makes you feel like the timing’s suddenly become urgent.

“I want to date you properly,” you start, slightly slurred but unmistakably blunt. Mark’s gaze snaps to yours, slightly amused, as he balls the tissues up in his fist. “You never asked me, so I’m asking you.”

He looks perplexed. “I just never thought you wanted me to, so I didn’t try.”

You reach up, locking your fingers into his hair and using your grip to pull him down. Your kiss is a little demanding, with a tinge of excess frustration, and he pulls away laughing lightly.

“Do you still think I don’t want you to?”

Mark hums thoughtfully. “I think you made a lot of things clear tonight. On my end, I was happy enough to be near you.” He smiles down at you, and in the faint light, you can see the flush slowly return to his cheeks. “Having you like this — dating you… there’s no way I’d say no.”

Your shoulders relax, satisfied with his answer, and you beam up at him — an act he easily returns, breathtaking and endearing all at once.

Moments later, you feel his arm wind around your waist; he allows you to lean into his side, his other hand crossing over his lap to stroke your thigh. His face turns, pressing a kiss to your hair, and you feel his lips move, hear the quick rush of a whisper. You tilt your head, eyes slightly wide in questioning. “What was that?”

He shakes his head at first, trying to pass it off as nothing. But when it’s clear your curiosity won’t abate, he chuckles softly, his hand gently cupping your chin so that you can only look at him. His thumb strokes your bottom lip gently, as if trying to coax the same words out of your mouth before he murmurs them to you one more time — and this time, he sounds fully convinced of them.

“You’re all mine.”

#nct #college au #smut #15k+#coffee shop au

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blankjournal · 7 months

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Check out our member J's new work!

⇢ alley- (OOP?!)

synopsis: the one where you're dating your older brother's best friend but subtlety isn't jeno's forte

pairing: jeno x reader (ft. older bro!jaemin) genre: social media au, brother’s bff au, established relationship au, sports au, college au, fluff, crack warnings: swearing, jokes about murder and one ur mum joke (im sorry) note: ... yes ik it took me a while to get to requests again but here we are SKSKSJ i just had a surge of inspo today after these jeno photos so thank him💀 enjoy!!🥰 (lmao this was meant to be a two parter but i think it’s fine as it is)

permanent taglist: ~ @xxxx-23nct @maeumiluv @produmads @shwizhies @polarisjisung @dearlyminhyung @wooyoung-a @w3bqrl @daincty @deehyuck @ficrecnctskz @rv7hsua @n0hyuck @neosdaisy @baekhyunstruly @barbkh8450t @cupid-yuno @rum-gone-why @mxnhoeuwu @dinonuguaegi @alethea-moon @klovmasworld @haechansbbg @moonchele

#from members #nct #smau #brother's best friend au #sports au #college au #established relationship au #fluff #comedy

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blankjournal · 7 months

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hello! for this week's theme I would love to recommend sweet cream, cold brew by @lucyandthepen

Thank you for recommending for our weekly theme! It is now on our queue list. You may find it through the tags map once we have reblogged it. We will also be adding it to the weekly theme's masterlist by the end of the week.

#anonymous #recommended

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blankjournal · 7 months

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for the coffee shop theme, i'd like to recommend order up by @leejungchans !

https://www.tumblr.com/leejungchans/648181050750713856/order-up-yjh?source=share

#recommended #anonymous

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blankjournal · 7 months

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Check out our member Maria's new work!

song for the dead — kang yeosang

pairing : hecate!yeosang x gn!ghost!reader ➖⟢ genres : angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, fantasy, strangers to lovers ➖⟢ cw : murder & death, drowning, mythological inaccuracies, nightmares ➖⟢ wc : 2.5K ➖⟢ for : the elysium falling collaboration event !

bonus : inspo pinterest board & playlist

about hecate : hecate (often pronounced heh . kah . tee) is the greek goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, the moon, ghosts, necromancy, and is the protector of entryways/crossroads. she is closely associated with dogs, torches, and liminality.

if you were an idiot, you’d think the strikingly handsome man with a doberman at his side could see you. he’s all the way across the street, looking right in your direction, but you know it’s the old stone wall behind you that he’s really seeing. you turn your head to look for anything interesting, maybe a plant growing in the space between the rocks.

there’s nothing, just grey, boring stone, lit by the yellow-tinted street lamps lining the road.

when you turn your head back in his direction, you nearly yelp aloud. he’s staring straight into your eyes.

the thought that he’s like you flashes through your mind, and then a pedestrian who’s distracted by the phone in their hand swerves at the last moment to avoid crashing into him. that means they can see him. people who are seen are alive and people who are alive can’t see ghosts.

but the way his eyes stay trained right to yours sends a shiver crawling up your spine. as if he’s challenging you, telling you that he can see you.

you're convinced he can when his gaze never falters from you as your dead feet carry you to him. the solidifying factor is the way his dog’s eyes follow your figure too.

“you can see me.”

“i can.” the doberman doesn’t move from the man’s side, but its gaze is somehow wary and calculating. you’ve never seen that kind of look in a dog’s eyes before. you turn your attention back to the man in front of you.

“but you’re not a ghost.”

“no, i’m not.” it’s almost disappointing when he says that. you think it would have been nice to have a gorgeous ghost friend to wander the streets and coffee shops with. he would perfectly fulfill the “gorgeous” part of the application.

“so what are you?” you’ve found yourself to be far more brazzen in death now that you reckon there’s nothing else for you to lose.

“a god,” he answers simply, no conceit to the word, just honesty. that’s what convinces you it’s true. a human who thinks they are a god thinks they are better than what they really are. a god is a god, you suppose. he certainly looks like a god, his features sculpted to perfection and dark attire immaculate. the combination of his turtleneck, dress pants, oxford shoes, and long wool coat compliment his dark hair and eyes perfectly.

“not the god?” you question further, both of you easily ignoring the strange glances that people passing by throw at the man, or god, rather. he appears to be having a conversation with the air in front of him.

“not the one you think of.” he’s keen to giving answers that are straightforward, and yet they beg the asking of more questions. “there are many gods.”

“so which god are you?”

“i’m the god of many things. magic, the moon and the night, necromancy. and you, among other things.”

“me? how so?” you can’t lie and say he doesn’t intrigue you. it’s interesting that he can claim to be your god without sounding like he thinks he’s everything better than you.

“you’re a ghost.”

“so you’re the god of ghosts. and what, you’ve come to collect me and bring me to the underworld? seems like quite a menial task for the god of so many grand things.”

when he says your name aloud without ever having asked for it, you begin to wish you could take back the sarcasm you put into your words just moments ago. and yet, the tone of his voice is not threatening, more chiding than anything else. “you are right, it is not my duty to collect lost souls who still roam the earth. but the world is far different now than it once was for gods such as i. in the modern era, most ghosts do not know that i see them. evidently, you can tell. thus, you fall under my protection.”

a sort of warmth is planted in your chest at these words, a warmth you’ve been missing since the moment you realized that you were dead. you’re always, always cold. you’d think physical discomfort would leave you in death, but you can’t escape the chill that’s settled all the way down to your ghostly bones.

“but i’m already dead. what’s there to protect me from?” you keep up the cold front regardless of the way he made you feel just now. his gaze softens.

“your human life is over. your consciousness, clearly, is not. i think you’ve forgotten that you can still feel. ghosts are haunted too.” this time his words make you want to cry. you didn’t forget to feel. you simply choose to ignore it all and now he’s pulling it out of its box and showing it to you. you tear your gaze away from the sincere look on his face.

“can i pet your dog?” you make eye contact with the animal instead. he sighs.

“you may. she doesn’t bite unless i say.” talking about her he doesn’t sound so stern anymore, despite the vaguely threatening nature of the words he says.

a small smile finds its way to your face as you crouch to be more level with her. she’s stunning, her look just as god-like as her companion.

“hello,” you say, voice soft, but full of respect. reaching out, the feel of her fur and the warmth of her very living body sends a shiver through you. you forget you haven’t touched anything alive and breathing since you became a ghost until you feel her move underneath your touch. it’s exhilarating and comforting all at once. a breath you didn’t realize you were holding falls from your lips in a heavy, heavy sigh. as if she knows the way you feel, she steps closer to you and rests her long snout on your shoulder. it’s the closest thing to a hug that you’ve received since the night of the dark new moon and the dark eyes and the dark water and your breath catches in your throat as if it’s been stolen from you.

a hand on your shoulder startles you and breath comes rushing into your lungs in the form of a gasp. suddenly, you’re not dying anymore, like you were just a moment ago. then you realize you were dying over again in your head, that you’re already dead, and the god is calling your name softly.

you look up at him and the hint of melancholy in his eyes. the dog’s comfort is still there.

“you see now? i’m not forcing you to come with me or accept my help, but there are things i can provide you that no one else can. and i’d like to help if you’ll let me.” he’s genuine. who knew a god could be so kind.

when he holds out his hand, you are quick to take it. his flesh is not warm like that of his dog’s, but there’s comfort in his grip notheless. you stand and let your hand fall from his.

“thank you.” your voice is barely audible, but he hears it. you let your eyes meet his and realize you don’t know his name.

“you may call me yeosang.” he gives you the answer to the question you didn’t even ask aloud. then he does it again. “and, no, i can’t read your mind. but i can read enough from your eyes.”

“thank you, yeosang.”

“you’re welcome,” he says with that velvety deep voice of his. “i’d like to take you to a place for you to call home from now on. is that alright?”

it sounds lovely, but you hesitate. you think of the people you loved, the one’s you’ve been searching for. somehow, you can never find them, like they’re the ghosts and not you. you’re almost grateful, barely able to acknowledge how much seeing them would hurt.

your hesitance speaks loud enough for yeosang to know. “you will not ever be able to see them. just as they cannot see you, the people you loved in this life will not appear to you again until they too are dead. i’m sorry.” you sigh at the confirmation of what you already expected.

“then yes. take me there.” anywhere but here.

he nods to you, then to his doberman and she takes the lead, down the cobblestone road.

that night is the first time that you see magic. you see it now everyday. first is the moon, almost full, and following you as you walk. really, it’s following him, forever hanging right over his head no matter which direction you turn. you’re sure no one else can see it, but you can’t stop watching it move through the sky, completely disregarding any laws of science.

then, you get to see the way sparks fly from the palms of his hands and cast flickering shadows on the walls of a darkened alleyway. this time, when he grabs your hand, it’s so searing hot that you shut your eyes tight and almost yank yourself away despite the warning he gave moments ago. then, there’s wind whipping at your hair and a numbing chill in the air that wasn’t there moments ago. you open your eyes and it’s clear that you’re no longer in that alley. of course, he warned you about this too—the fact that you’d be teleporting halfway across the globe to the edge of the human world and walking into the prison turned paradise of the old, forgotten gods such as himself.

that night is the first night that you sleep in his home. you sleep there every night now. he gives you a room in the house that he claims is far smaller than anything he lived in during his prime, but is grander than any building you think you ever set foot in during your life.

slowly, he introduces you to friends of his. some gods, a few other ghosts or servants from the old underworld.

and slowly, he introduces you to feeling again. sometimes, it’s a nightmare. literally. you’ll wake in a cold sweat, the kind you thought you could avoid after departing from your physical body. but still, even in front of his warm hearth, you can’t rid yourself of the cold that soaks you through. those nights are the ones where you forget how to breathe for a moment, the ones where he started with holding your hand to calm you, the ones where, now, he’ll pull you right into his arms and tell you that it’s alright. that it’s over.

other times, feeling isn’t too bad at all. nice, even. because he’s learned how to make you smile, with a joke or a clumsy mistake you didn’t know a god could make. he gives you books and flowers for your room. his dog, basillea will curl up next to you by the fire and fall asleep with her head in your lap. he shyly taught you an oddly comforting lullaby called song for the dead, and he’ll press a kiss to your forehead and hum it when he thinks that you’ve finally fallen back asleep after your nightmare. you’re glad that you can feel all that too.

but every time, you reject his suggestions to find out how it happened. how you died. he thinks it will help you move on. you think you’d rather not know.

you haven’t told him that you remember some of it; you know why you feel soaked in coldness, why you can’t breathe when you wake up. but you don’t want to know how it came to be, because it feels like there’s something horrible lurking in the deep end of your memory, waiting to be uncovered.

but you’re insistent on ignoring that. until it can no longer be ignored.

this time, there’s a scream, so raw and terrified that yeosang uses his magic to be by your side in an instant.

“what’s wrong?” he demands, convinced of an active threat. you’ve never woken from nightmares with a scream. but it takes him less than a moment to see that it’s just you, gasping and clawing at the blankets like you’re drowning in them. soft and careful, his voice calls your name and begins a mantra of “it’s alright” and “i’m right here.” when his hands meet your shoulders to pull you up and into his arms, you bolt upright with a start before melting into his embrace. your tears are already wetting his shirt and he feels his own eyes well up at the sight and sound of you so afraid.

“breathe,” he reminds you, hand rubbing up and down your back to mimic the rhythm of “in” and “out.” when you can finally breathe properly, you’re still crying, clinging to him like he’s your lifeline. in that moment, he is.

he doesn’t speak once you’re still in his arms, save for the rise and fall of your chest. he just holds you close, for so long he thinks you’ve fallen back asleep without saying a word. and like he always does, he presses the gentlest of kisses to the crown of your head and whispers, “goodnight, my love.”

“don’t go,” you whisper back, before he can begin humming your song, voice pleading and broken. there’s a long moment of silence. “i- i drowned. in the lake.” he doesn’t say anything because he knows there’s more. you try to speak again, but the words get caught in your throat. “it…it wasn’t— yeosang, it wasn’t an accident.” your voice is so quiet that he can barely hear it. his heart drops. he feared it before, as the reason why you were trying so hard not to remember it. but he certainly didn’t want it to be true.

he wanted to protect you from the moment he saw you, out of duty and the natural role of protector he’s always been in. but it’s different now that he’s in love with you. it fuels a deep, deep despair and the kind of rage that he’s never been prone to have. for a moment, his heart seeks revenge, before it recenters itself to you.

for once in his immortal life, he’s a god at a loss for words. he’s seen murder and treachery far more brutal than yours, and yet nothing could have prepared him for this. he feels so humbled when he can only hope that his words will be enough.

“you’re safe now. i’m sorry, my love. i am so, so sorry. you did not deserve a death like this, or death at all—” he means it, even though it means you would not be his had you been given a fraction of what you did deserve, “—but i promise, no one will ever hurt you again.”

you nod and bask in his words. while you don’t think you can even begin to process your death all over again with this gruesome detail added, you find comfort that it will be with him by your side.

and with your throat ragged from crying, you begin to sing, still curled up in his arms. he joins you on the second line. and you sing until your voice gives out, and he sings until long after you’ve fallen asleep, the song for the dead.

#from members #ateez #angst #fluff #hurt/comfort #1k-5k

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blankjournal · 7 months

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Here are the stories recommended for our ninth week's theme: SUPERHEROES!

𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗠𝗘: 𝗦𝗨𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗢𝗘𝗦

week nine: 25.09.23 — 01.10.23

anything but normal | han jisung | @hanniiesuckle17

weave your little webs of opacity | hansol vernon chwe | @rubyreduji

i'll save you (again) | jake sim | @jayflrt

let's go home (but you're my home) | ju haknyeon | @viastro

spiderman loves you | nishimura riki | @vizstars

should've known better | lee felix | @loveliestfelix

#bjnet weekly theme

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blankjournal · 7 months

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𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗠𝗘: 𝗖𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗘𝗘 𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣

week ten: 03.10.23 — 09.10.23

Send in your fic recommendations that fit the theme COFFEE SHOP. Fall is already here and so is the cute cafés season! Is your character a barista? A student working at their usual spot in the café? Submit your favourite works of this week's theme in our inbox! Make sure to link the correct work, so we can share it for more people's enjoyment. You may also send the name of the work and the author's username if you aren't able to send the link! All groups are welcome!

By the end of this week, we will be compiling all of the recommended works in this post as a single masterlist. You may also browse through them when you find the athletes tag link on our mobile tags map or through the navigation page on our website!

Any inquiries will be answered by our admins.

#bjnet weekly theme #kpop imagines #kpop fluff #kpop angst #writings

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blankjournal · 7 months

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Check out our member Moni's new work!

familiarity (it’s all sticky) ➵ kim sunwoo

peter parker!kim sunwoo x spiderman!reader

you're not sure why you decide to show up at your ex's place all wounded up from tonight's battle.

genre/warnings ➵ exes (to sort of lovers?), angst, touch of fluff, afab reader (no-gendered terms), hurt/comfort (both physical and emotional), discussions of wounds and depictions of blood, lowercase intended, ghost-spider au (though please don't expect it to be accurate!), reader is obviously spiderman while sunwoo is peter parker i mean HELLO?? i am right, sunwoo is such a slob here, reader's hair is long enough to be tucked behind their ear, i also based everything on google when it comes to patching up wounds omg please don't follow me at all, kissing fingertips, mentions of non-sexual stripping and showering (let him take care of you)

word count ➵ 4k words

taglist ➵ @deoboyznet @kflixnet @blankjournal @winterchimez @miusgirl @jenoscafe @sweet-unicorn-world @vernyangel @mosviqu

playlist ➵ nonviolent communication by metro boomin, james blake, a$ap rocky, & 21 savage // hummingbird by metro boomin & james blake

a/n ➵ i've had this idea for the longest time in my drafts. i'm pretty sure it came to me as i was writing of linked arms and bruised hearts, but i'm glad i took some time to sit down (even in my busy and hell midterms season) to write it :') thank you to my lovely cat @wuahae for beta reading <3 this work is only a fraction of what our friendship truly is, and proof of the care we have for each other. i love you! i also thought it would be in theme to get songs from across the spiderverse ost for the playlist </3 please don't forget to reblog (even if it's in your tbr!)

want to be part of my taglist? send me an ask! want to request? check out my guidelines! masterlist

new york city never falls silent. the bustle of every new yorker can be heard through their footsteps, the wheels that glide against the train tracks along with the beeps of taxis sound throughout the city. the metropolis stays alive in every street, every alleyway, every corner. no matter what hour it may be, each pavement is wide awake.

but the lights seem hazy tonight; the luminescence pours out of every building, the led boards are only blurs of silhouettes and illegible words. normally, you would warn against going out if someone could barely make sense of what these signs say, but you never seem to follow your own advice.

as you swing through the city, web clinging onto every building, blood continues to seep through the white spandex that covers you from head to toe. your body feels heavy, the pain in your lower abdomen continuing to spike with every movement—every swing—you make.

you bite on your lip, holding back the whimpers. your eyes dart through every street sign you pass. with every swing, you realize you’re nowhere close to where you should be. instead…

you don’t allow yourself to think it over. maybe the loss of blood has you moving out of impulse, but for now, you can only think of getting rid of the pain.

you swing around the corner before landing down at the familiar fire escape, paint-chipped and rusted just like you remember. a hiss leaves your mouth as your hand reaches out to the spot where the blood continues to seep through, holding it down to keep pressure on the wound.

you’re face-to-face with the window; the reflection of you all suited up in some persona is a sight you’re accustomed to—but not on the glass of his window. you’re not sure why you came back here, injured in an identity he only knew of through word of mouth.

but the throbbing in your abdomen doesn’t give you enough time to think more about it. pushing the window up, you throw one leg over the edge into the apartment. your eyes quickly scan through the familiar space—a room you once treated as yours.

pillows scattered and bedsheets wrinkled, the walls are littered with the same posters of anime he swears to be the best of all time (though you’d always disagreed), along with his desk, littered with trinkets you haven’t seen since the day you left him—ones that he talked about to you back then with so much joy.

as you attempt to get your other leg over the edge of the window, you yelp at the sharp pain that strikes. “fuck,” you whimper, gasping out a breath. another groan rips out from your throat as you force your leg over, head resting on the frame with closed eyes, bracing yourself through the wave of pain that follows.

as pants continue to leave your mouth, your senses tingle as your ears catch the sound of footsteps on the other side of the room. you attempt to stand up only for another groan to leave your lips, and you realize it’s too late—the door creaks open, revealing the man you haven’t been face-to-face with since you said your farewell months ago.

dressed in an oversized white tee and a pair of black shorts, sunwoo stands with a bag of chips in his hand and disheveled hair, eyes wide and gaping. you can only assume he was fresh from bed.

“s-spiderman?!” he looks around, noticing the mess that you’re being exposed to. before you can register it, he rushes in, dropping the bag of chips somewhere near the doorway, and tries to tidy his bed. “w-what are you doing here? i think you might’ve entered the wrong room,” he stutters as he attempts to fix his pillows and bedsheets (poorly, if you may say).

somehow, the sight of sunwoo all frazzled makes you smile behind your mask. the idea of your—no, you mean, this guy all worried about you seeing how untidy he lives makes you chuckle.

but as you laugh, pain shoots through your lower abdomen once more. you cough out before hissing, pressing onto the wound. it takes everything in you to keep your body upright until you feel a pair of hands rest on your shoulders. you look up only to be met with his worried expression.

and you spot the way his eyes trail down to where your hand rests. you’re thankful that the mask could hide the heat that rises to your cheeks.

“oh god, you need that treated,” sunwoo’s eyes snap back up to you, and your breath hitches. even after all these months, he still holds stars in his eyes.

it’s been a while since you last saw him up close. the bags on his under eyes have turned a few shades darker, and you notice an eyelash that rests on his cheek. you don’t think about what you do next, your free hand reaching out to his face, and his breath hitches. once you pick it out, you flick the strand off of your fingers, and that’s when you realize the mistake you committed.

“s-sorry,” you choke out. although you try to keep your voice as low and gruntled as possible, he frowns. he bites the inside of his cheek as his eyes flicker between your masked face and the wound.

“i-i don’t know how to help. i can call for an ambulan—”

you grab onto his arm before he can leave. as you shake your head, he gulps. “i can’t really help you,” he says, but your grip doesn’t falter. with that, he lets out a sigh before kneeling in front of you. his hands find themselves on the ledge, his arms now caging your frail figure. “do you have someone in mind who can help you?”

sunwoo’s question is innocent. you’re sure the last thing he meant was to mock your situation—showing up in a “stranger’s” room unannounced—but it strikes a chord in you.

you haven’t spoken to him since you broke up a few months back. when you’re outside of your suit, you avoid him like the plague. in the hallways of campus, you take any possible route to not cross his. but when you’re covered in your second skin, you find yourself on top of buildings watching him from far away. with the distance, you allow yourself to learn about what he’s been up to since you two last spoke.

so you don’t know why you sit in front of him all injured and dressed up in white, black, and pink spandex, because you haven’t spoken to him since that day. shame bubbles within you all while reality slowly slips from your fingertips. and the way your body gets heavier with every second that passes has him mumbling profanities.

his hands hold onto you as he makes you lean your weight on the frame of the window. “wait,” he says as he stands up and walks into his bathroom. before you know it, he comes out with a box.

sunwoo finds his spot back in front of you and he opens what he retrieved. as he looks through the supplies of bandages, alcohol, gauze, and more, he says as his eyes flicker up towards you, “i don’t know how much this will help but it’ll do for now.”

and you should be thankful that someone is willing to bandage you up after the rough night you’ve had, but it feels like a lie to have sunwoo be the one to do it, especially when you haven’t told him the truth.

so when he grabs onto the supplies he needs to treat your wound, your free hand reaches for the underside of your mask. his eyes follow where it rests, and he freezes in his tracks. your fingertips curl on the fabric as you take a deep breath.

“you don’t—”

you shake your head, cutting him off, and you close your eyes before pulling off the mask.

you’re afraid to look at the boy kneeling in front of you, for you can only imagine the annoyance—the disgust—that will paint his features. it’s not like you had a choice to show up at his fire escape this one night, but it was your choice to reveal who spiderman really is behind the mask.

a beat passes.

you’re not sure what to do at this moment. what are you supposed to do after a vigilante reveals who they are?

but when you open your eyes, sunwoo looks back at you with an emotion you can’t pinpoint. he averts his eyes, trailing down to your wound. “let me see it,” he whispers.

you gulp, an attempt to clear your throat and thoughts, before letting your hand move away from the puncture. your hand grips the hem of the top of your suit, peeling it upwards to reveal a bloody wound. from the sight, it looks like you were stabbed, but it’s only a deep cut.

he pulls out a piece of cloth, reaching out and pressing it to your wound. you yelp, eyes squeezing shut at the contact. “i’m sorry, but we need to stop the bleeding a bit more.” it takes everything in you to open your eyes. you’re met with the sight of sunwoo whose face holds a thousand emotions—you can’t identify any of them.

“can you keep pressure on it?” you only nod before you remove your gloves, afraid to touch the wound with fabric covered in grime. you dump your mask and gloves on the space beside you before letting your hand reach to where the cloth is held against. your hand brushes against his for a split second—you retract your hand immediately at the contact with his skin.

at the sudden motion, the cloth against your stomach drops with nothing left to hold it. sunwoo curses in a panic, hand shooting out in an attempt to save it, but you react faster. snatching it mid-fall, you grasp it tightly, placing the cloth back onto your wound. his eyes dart between where your hand rests and your face, a twinge of worry cast on his features, but he doesn’t give you an opportunity to say anything as he stands up quickly and walks back to his bathroom.

you hear the water run for a moment. the noises of the street fill your ears. the lights from outside cascade the floor, hues of yellow and purple filling the room. and then thunder rumbles; it shakes the floorboards. the sounds of raindrops follow, and you feel your back start to get wet from the storm that has entered new york city.

you try to push yourself off the ledge, a groan ripping out of your throat once more. and you’re finally on your feet. but at any moment, it feels like you may collapse.

“wait, wait! what are you doing?” sunwoo exclaims as he rushes out of the bathroom. he quickly grabs hold of you in an attempt to keep you steady. “don’t stand up or that wound might get worse.”

“i-it’s just the rain. i don’t want to leave the window open.” as you turn your torso, another spike strikes where your wound is. the yelp that leaves your mouth has sunwoo grip onto your arm tighter.

“no, just sit. i’ll take care of it,” he says as he brings you to his chair, his hand never leaves your arm. you let out a hiss until your bottom meets the cushion. as soon as your back rests on the chair, you close your eyes for a moment from the pain.

his hand leaves you. you hear the window shut; the car horns and barks from stray animals are now muffled.

when your eyes flutter open, sunwoo crouches in front of you with a wet towel in his hand. “i need to clean it.” you only nod before removing the cloth on your wound. he grabs it from you and places it on his lap.

as he raises the wet towel to your wound, you flinch at the contact. he quickly retracts it and asks, “does it hurt?”

“no, it’s just cold,” you mumble back. he only nods before attempting to clean the area around your wound. while he keeps his eyes on the puncture, your eyes remain on his face; hues of yellow cast upon him.

his skin glows under the city lights—did anyone know about the stars you once carved on it?

“is this why we broke up?” his eyes snap toward yours as he asks that question.

you cannot help but bite the inside of your cheek. “y-yeah,” you choke out.

he hums before his eyes go back down to your injury. “i’m guessing this is why you were distant then, right?”

you don’t bother to speak, letting the silence speak for itself.

he removes the wet towel; the white cloth is covered in patches of red. as he crumples it into a ball, you spot that his white shirt holds splotches of blood as well.

sunwoo stands up to drop the pieces of fabric on the table behind you. “your dad obviously doesn’t know,” he mutters to himself.

it’s a rhetorical question. of course, your father has no clue of your late-night rendezvous. you’re sure he could never look at you the same if he found out because to him, he would never understand what you do. he would see you only as a low-life criminal in the same way the nypd does.

sunwoo then dabs a cotton ball soaked in betadine on your abdomen. you bite on your lip as a hiss leaves your mouth. “fuck,” you curse, and he only continues to clean up your wound.

silence takes over you two. as he bandages you up, you allow yourself to close your eyes. you were thankful to find rest in these small moments. but you don’t miss the warmth of his fingertips on your skin; they feel just like last time.

“why did you come here?” his question has your eyes snapping open, and you are met with a frown resting on his face.

you bite the inside of your cheek. “i-i don’t know.” it’s a lie—one you both know. you had every chance to change the route you were taking. instead, you chose to go to his place—even if it may be on the other side of where you live.

he lets out a sigh. it’s clear that he’s disappointed by your words, but all he says is “okay,” as he gets up. “you can stay here for the night.” he stands in front of you in a shirt covered in patches of blood—it’s proof that his heart still holds a spot for you.

despite the venom that was laced in your words the night you cut ties with him, he leaves you a space for you to fill. it’s another choice you can make, but one you’re not sure if you should take.

sunwoo walks to the desk behind you and flips the lamp on. you swivel the chair so that you’re face-to-face with his slouched figure. you would’ve scolded him, but you’re not in the place to do so—not after what you two had.

but a part of you wishes to chide those words—hey, keep slouching and your back will get worse—for old time’s sake. it takes everything in you to hold back from saying the reminder, but it takes nothing to let your hand grip the back of his shirt. his movements halt.

as you sit up, you let your face bury into the arch of his back. the scent of his laundry detergent (it’s still the same smell of lavender) fills your nose, and you let your hands trail around his torso until they find their home on his waist. even after all these months, your hands knew where to rest—your spidey senses knew who to go to.

you feel his hands rest on your arms, his thumb drawing circles on your forearm. you breathe at the same pace as him. whenever his shoulders move up, yours follow. and you allow yourself to cherish just this once the familiar warmth of sunwoo. you let your soul mesh with his once more.

with closed eyes, you whisper, “i still look for you.” his thumb stops moving, and a shaky breath leaves your mouth. “i’m here because all i know is you.”

it’s half of a lie, but still a lie nevertheless. you shake your head against his shirt. “no,” you rescind. “i know i shouldn’t be here, and i had every chance to go back home, but,” you take a deep breath. “would you let me, just this once, be honest with you?”

your question hangs in the air—it’s not for him but for you. all the choices you took led to this moment, from embracing the persona you were handed through a single spider bite all the way to removing the mask in front of him.

sunwoo spins to face you. he stands in front of you with the remnants of you covering him, his shirt coated in hues of red and your blood dried up on his hands. the light behind him causes a shadow to paint his face.

but when he kneels once more in front of you, you get a good look at his features. he still looks like the same boy you first met—the same one you fell in love with—but you wonder if he was still the one you knew?

that is until his hand reaches toward your face. you hold your breath as it finds its spot on your cheek. but as his thumb grazes your cheekbone, a trembling breath leaves you. you gulp everything down—your fears and anxieties—so that you can finally be honest with sunwoo.

“i wanted to tell you who i really am.” a flicker of confusion flashes through his eyes. “and i know i’m not doing it in the best state,” a chuckle leaves your mouth. “but with every day that passes, and every injury i need to endure, i didn’t know when i would be able to tell you what went wrong with us.” a beat passes. “what went wrong with me.”

he shakes his head. “nothing’s wrong with you. what are you talking about?” a frown takes over his face. “i mean, you’re spiderman, for god’s sake.” you weren’t able to hold back the giggle that slipped from your lips.

but it wouldn’t be fair to just accept his words as is, not after the damage you’ve caused.

you let a hand rest on his, the one that rests on your cheek, and you curl your fingers so that you hold it. “i’m sorry that this is me.” the whisper is loud enough to fill the silence of his room. “i’m sorry that i crashed here all injured and left you to deal with the mess,” your eyes flicker to his bed. “especially on a night when you were resting.”

as soon as your eyes go back to sunwoo, you notice that he’s biting the inside of his cheek. “why are you telling me this?” it’s an honest question, one he couldn’t figure out the answer to. “we haven’t seen each other since you broke up with me.”

and he has every right to be confused with your sudden appearance. after all the months spent avoiding him in the halls while still seeking him on top of buildings, sunwoo was left with no clue as to why you come to him first in such a dire situation. why is it that you chose to reveal such an intimate part of yourself months after you two have drifted?

“do i have to say it?” you ask.

and he looks back into your eyes before saying, “it’s the least you can do.”

so you grab onto his hand, moving it so that it rests in yours. the sight of his fingers and palms covered in splotches of you fills your heart with warmth. it’s proof of the time he spent to patch you up. no matter who you may be—spiderman or not—you will forever be at his mercy.

“we can’t be together. it will only be another cycle of pain.” for both of you. as your eyes land back on his face, you spot sorrow coating his features.

“but i still do.” it’s an unfinished thought on his end. despite the frown you show, all he does is flash you a bitter smile. “i always have and always will.”

and it clicks.

“n-no, sunwoo,” you shake your head. “you can’t.”

he brings your hand close to his lips, letting it linger for a moment. “but you do,” he whispers into your fingertips. “right?”

even after revealing who spiderman truly is behind the mask, you expect sunwoo to rethink everything he knows. the months spent away from you should be enough reason to reconsider how much he knows of you now. but even if you two were to spend years apart, he would still read you as well as he does now.

“i can’t,” you choke out. “i can only offer so much, and you deserve so much more.”

he smiles at you—the same one you used to see every day, no matter what time of the day it may be—as his free hand reaches for your hair, tucking it behind your ear.

“i couldn’t care any less.”

you shake your head. it’s clear he doesn’t understand the gravity of it all; to be with you means to remain in constant danger. “no, sunwoo. you don’t understand. i broke up with you because i’m batshit scared of what will happen to you.”

because it seems to always occur—anyone you come close to becomes another target for your enemies. it’s already hard enough to handle the responsibility of being a masked hero, but you don’t think you could handle a possibility where sunwoo’s death would be on your hands.

but all he does is shake his head and says, “i don’t care. i still love you.”

you haven’t heard him say that to you in months. such a simple phrase causes warmth to fill your limbs and heat to rise to your cheeks. he still has the same effect on you after so long.

there are consequences that this conversation bears. you should have stood up and left as soon as he patched you up. it should’ve been obvious that the longer you stayed, the more you would pour out sentiments that you tried to keep under wraps—under the mask—and it seemed that sunwoo knew how to undo them even better than he did then.

and hearing sunwoo say those words has you falling into a perpetual cycle of torment, one that makes every day intolerable for you can only watch him from afar. but aren’t you already living it the more you deny what’s in front of you two?

so you only nod, and bring his hand close so you can feel his fingertips on your lips. with closed eyes, you whisper, “okay.”

it’s a testament to everything—one to his offer to let you sleep in this very room you once treated as yours, one to his confession that tilted your world’s axis, one to the very situation you’re in—and you’re sure he knows it, too.

he smiles as soon as your eyes flutter open. “let’s go to sleep.”

you know that sleep meant to be wrapped in his arms all while he would leave kisses on your temple. you don’t remember the last time you got enough rest, but you remember that the last time you slept in sunwoo’s arms was the last one you were able to fall into slumber at ease.

so you nod, allowing him to help you out of the chair. and he helps you through it all—shedding the suit off of you, cleaning you of all the grime from tonight’s adventure, and getting dressed in fresh clothes—until you two find your place on his bed.

nothing is said for the rest of the night. for once, you drift into slumber without any secrets stashed away.

if you enjoyed reading this, please do reblog!

#from members #the boyz #exes to lovers au #angst #1k-5k

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blankjournal · 7 months

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Hi! I'm the anon that asked about the 'romanticising mental illness' question. I'm sorry, I'm still a little bit confused! I asked my friend about it and he said that even the popular concept of the main character (MC1) having, for example, anxiety or depression and then the other main character (MC2) coming into their lives and help them throughout, he sees it as a hint of 'romanticising mental illness' because it seems like the MC2 is 'fixing' MC1 and that without MC2, MC1 would never 'be normal'. Personally, even though I can see why he interprets it this way, I feel like the whole idea of 'fixing' is just another perspective. Personally this popular concept makes me feel giddy and excited but I understand his perspective too.

I'm not sure whether you've reblogged any of these types of popular concept in books/fanfiction but when does this concept become a hurt/comfort genre to a 'romanticising mental illness' genre.

I apologise for any inconveniences that I may have caused with this ask.

Hello again, anon! No worries at all and I'm so sorry for delaying your answer for a few days because I have been busy :')

To start off, I can agree with your friend's view as well (to an extent). The hurt/comfort genre, especially ones who put a (often) anxious or depressed reader as their subject, is a tricky place to navigate through. Especially for inexperienced writers who actually want to do good by producing something that can be of help to readers looking for some comfort, but end up writing something that ends up infantilizing and/or portraying them as incapable and crippled to the point where the other character is the only thing that is keeping them together and is their sole lifeline— their saviour.

In real life, there are cases where this rings true and people do genuinely struggle to function without someone's help, but that said person is just that: help. You require professional intervention and medical/psychiatric assistance and not some love interest to heal in the long term. Fics often make MC1 go through hell, but be completely fine again once MC2 is there to get them through it and that's just not realistic at all. They can be of help, but are very often unqualified.

I think for a hurt/comfort fic to not end up as a romanticization is for the hurt character to actually make progress within the story and show how healing comes from within oneself (with the help of others, obviously) and not because some character comes and kisses it away. One big flaw I find with fics like this on this site is that they're usually too short to really dive into the process of healing and wrap it up with just the love interest coming and making it all go away for reader, most popular cases are with panic attacks (in this case, helping someone getting through it is totally valid!!) and depression. In the end, the love interest should (for me, at least) serve as a distraction from the pain in hand, not be the actual solution to the trauma or mental struggle that the reader is going through.

It's really tricky, as I said, because the line for everyone varies. Some say it is, some say it isn't. People want to read hurt/comfort fics for a reason and it's understandable that they crave the comfort it gives (I like them as well!), but it sets unrealistic expectations. Knights in shining armour aren't the solution to crippling depression or anxiety or mania or ocd, etc. They can help only to a certain extent. As long as the story does not make the love interest be this magical cure for reader's problems, then I don't think it's an issue at all.

Then again, one's experience dealing with mental health isn't the same as the millions of others, so maybe some people really do heal just by being with their own love interest, so I don't know. Maybe love is all someone needs, who knows? This is, again, just my opinion and it varies for everyone. People (and I, too) don't immediately read a hurt/comfort story and think "this is a romanticization and it's harmful", instead it's more in the "aw good for them, they have someone to help get them through this".

It's pretty blurry, so as long as the story isn't telling you that you don't need to seek out professional help and your boyfriend is your saviour and will get you through this terrible terrible thing then it's not a problem, I guess. There are great fics in this genre! Plus, they're great to get through lonely times.

— admin vienna

#anonymous #answered

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blankjournal · 7 months

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Check out our member Bar's new work!

sweet like candy – e. sohn

pairing: eric sohn x fem! reader

genre: summer au, strangers to something more ?? fluff, suggestive. very much stargazing by the neighbourgood and fantasize by the boyz capsuled into a fic. eric is a simp and a hopeless romantic because i said so. a girl romanticizes sharing a lollipop (its me im girl)

warnings: alcohol, maybe some minimal swearing, a heated make out session that hints onto a hookup (no smut mentioned!). the use of a cheesy nickname babydoll (dont @ me or i will deactivate), reader has hair long enough for a claw clip

word count: 6.9k

a/n: almost cried while trying to name this fic somebody send help. Also this doesn't feel like my best work its kinda rushed imo but 🤠 yolo

part of the @deoboyznet summer on you event! cant believe i made it on time

a summer tradition of renting out a cabin every year invented by a couple of friends takes a turn for eric when a new addition to the circle brings him to his knees - in other words, he never knew tequila could taste so sweet.

If anyone ever asked Eric Sohn if he believed in love at first sight, he would, without a doubt, say yes.

What was the proof he had? Well, absolutely nothing. All he ever knew about love at first sight was from romance movies he watched during lonely nights with his roommate Juyeon, never having the experience of the whole world stopping and zooming in on one particular person, taking his breath away– but to put it simply, Eric Sohn is a true romantic. Call him cheesy if you want– he wouldn’t like it, but he also wouldn’t disagree.

On one summer afternoon, though, his world tilts in its axis– the moment comes, and he is finally able to test out his theory.

You walk out of the passenger’s side of a red 2008 Toyota Auris, hair put up into a claw clip, jean shorts showing off your long legs and a pearl white button-up opened and lazily thrown over your outfit, and suddenly, Eric Sohn finds his knees buckling and his palms sweating with affection. He was aware that Juyeon’s girlfriend was bringing her best friend to tag along to their little summer retreat (more like a trip to a cabin in the middle of the woods), but he sure as hell didn’t expect the stranger to make him feel this type of way.

Sure, it might just be him being incredibly attracted to you. But with how fast his heart was beating when you smiled at everyone after introducing yourself to the group, he was sure he was slowly, but surely falling for you. And he was falling hard.

He feels like the world is moving in slow motion as he watches the group go and unload the car– you and your best friend Yeri were the last ones to arrive– and what wakes him up from the haze is when he watches you struggle to carry a cooler out of the trunk into the cabin, his legs dragging him closer to the vehicle and near to your body.

Now is his time to shine. “Let me help!” he hurries out, sneakers crunching on the gravel. His hands firmly grab onto the handle of the blue cooler, muscles flexing under the weight (making him wonder why you would willingly want to carry the thing and not ask him or any of the guys for help in the first place), and when your eyes look up at come in contact with his, he presses a smile to his lips. “I’m Eric, by the way.”

“Ah,” you gasp, a grateful expression breezing over your features, “thanks. I’m Y/N, nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Eric hums, watching your every move. Your figure walks over to the front of the car, your head popping in close to the window to look inside, and when a satisfied look overtakes your features, Eric finds himself asking. “Is that everything?”

“Yeah,” you nod, “we can head inside, I think.”

The boy tries hard to keep his cool, he really does. But with how he’s trailing behind you like a lost puppy, attempting to find a topic that would engage him in a conversation with you, he feels like a boy that is just experiencing a crush for the first time in his life. Everything about you is enchanting– and sure, you could say he was just painfully attracted to you and this had nothing to do with love– but he was also convinced that if you asked him to jump off the Empire State Building, he would do it without giving it a second thought (which is kind of worrying, but again– it says a lot).

You open the door to the cabin for him, and he finds himself speechless at the action. Once your eyes meet again and you offer him another subtle smile, he finds himself gasping at the sentence that comes out of your mouth.

“Hey! We’re matching, kinda,” you note, pointing towards his outfit.

And you’re right– Eric didn’t even notice at first, too enchanted with your sheer existence– but you two were indeed wearing the same thing. Jean shorts, and a white button-up– in your case, thrown over a white tank top, in Eric’s, closed (although he did leave it a bit open at the top, revealing his tanned skin). Suddenly, the boy is glad he’s wearing a red cap to cover up his hair, since he foolishly thinks the hat provides him enough shade in the face to not reveal his burning cheeks as he utters out a weak response.

“It looks so much better on you, though.”

With that, he walks into the cabin– escaping the situation, not really paying a single thought to chivalry and letting you go through the door first– and as he reaches the crowd of people in the kitchen, he prays for all high sources to find him, get to him and wipe his brain clean of all thoughts, because

even though you are basically matching (and he does think you look so much better in the outfit than he does), all he can think about is just how much more he’d like your outfit if the white button-up enveloping your body was the one he’s wearing right now instead.

The next time Eric finds courage to talk to you is when it seems like you’re not finding it to talk to anyone else yourself– the big group is currently sitting around a fire, marshmallows and sausages slowly burning in the blazing flames– and while everyone around was either talking to each other or singing along to the songs Jacob was playing on the guitar, you were sitting alone in the middle of two commotions: Chanhee and Changmin arguing about something seemingly important, and Yeri and Juyeon making out right in front of everyone’s eyes.

And Eric was supposed to listen to Sunwoo talk about his latest heartbreak– how the man still gets no girls despite having such an objectively handsome face, Eric truly doesn’t know– but the topic of the conversation was too boring for him to engage with it. That, and he was also painfully aware of your every move– you didn’t even move much– and word– you weren’t talking to anybody– and that was slowly driving him insane.

You looked a little out of place. Eric supposes it was because you didn’t really know anyone here– except from your best friend and her awfully sappy boyfriend– but even though it was logical and a little expected for you to be a bit excluded in such a foreign circle, the man took it as his mission to make you feel as welcome and as included as he physically could.

Completely ignoring Sunwoo’s blabbering (like he was doing for the last few minutes anyway), Eric confidently (and a bit shakily– hands sweating and breath hitching in his throat) walks to the other side of the bonfire, from where he’s been watching your stone expression through the flames, and sits down in the small place between you and Changmin. Changmin wasn’t even facing you, too engrossed in the debate he was having with Chanhee, and so it was Eric’s job to wobble his bottom into the place, efficiently making the older boy move away with a light elbow jab sent into his lower back.

“Hi,” he clears his throat, “are you having fun?” he asks, but mentally curses at himself right as the question escapes his mouth– does she look like she's having fun? Of course she doesn't, you stupid idiot.

You smile at the question, though, nodding. “Yeah,” you hum, “having lots of fun listening to your friends argue and my friends making out next to my ear.”

“You seemed like it too, y’know,” Eric laughs, “they’re always like this, by the way. They’ll forget about the fight in the morning.”

“Oh, that could never be me,” you sigh, shaking your head at the sentiment.

“No?”

“No,” you shrug, “I get too petty. If we have a fight, I’m not speaking to you for at least two weeks.”

Eric finds himself laughing at your comment. “I’ll remember that for future reference.”

Straightening your back and looking at your companion– as if you were going to call him out on his subtle hint of there being any future meeting between the two of you– you suddenly gasp and swiftly turn towards the bonfire, an honest mourn escaping your lips.

“Oh fuck!” you curse under your breath as your hand reaches towards a stick that’s had its end in the flame, the device efficiently resting against a rock in a position where you didn’t have to pay any attention to the snack you were cooking– more like burning– for yourself. With a quick move for the stick, you pull the tip of it out of the scorching red of the bonfire and look at it in an examining way, as if the result would be different and the marshmallow would unburn itself if you stared at it long enough. “I completely forgot about this!”

Eric takes a glance at the burnt piece of fluff, letting out a laugh at the black marshmallow in front of your face. “That’s not how you make a good s’more,” he notes, poking fun at your annoyed face.

“Oh, no shit, Sherlock…” you mutter under your breath, but your face looks a bit sad to see the piece go to waste. “I don’t know why I even tried, I’m bad at this stuff.”

There comes his moment, Eric thinks. “Well, you’re lucky, ‘cause you just met an expert at making s’mores.”

“Does a thing like that even exist?” you chuckle, rolling your eyes at the male in disbelief.

“Of course it does! You’re looking at one now,” he grins, leaning over you to take a brand new marshmallow out of the bag to your right– sandwiched between your thigh and the couple in love– before he reaches over to your hand and takes the roasting stick out of your hand, slides the white fluffy cloud through the sharp tip and hovers it above the flame.

“The key is to hold it above the flame, and not in the flame,” Eric chuckles as he looks at you from the corner of his eye, watching your expression change.

“Oh, but I thought the key is to burn the thing,” you ironically gasp, shaking your head at his teasing. “Where did you even learn all of this?”

“I grew up in the States,” Eric hums, “they would deport me if I didn’t know how to make s’mores.”

The comment gets a giggle out of you– a sound Eric almost folds at and falls into the open fire (thankfully, he held his composure– he doesn’t think 3rd degree burns would suit his look) – and it takes everything in him to not scream like a teenage girl at the thought of making you laugh. Yes, that’s how down bad you managed to get the male.

“Do you have a special recipe?”

“Just the basic one,” he shrugs, turning the skewer in his hand to make the marshmallow equally glazed on each side, “I will make it extra good for you, though.”

“I thought a master always does their best?” you tease, watching as the boy crumbles under your gaze.

“Not always. I don’t like to put effort into things that aren’t worth it,” Eric hums as he takes the marshmallow out of the burning fire, examining it, and after deeming it worthy, taking the skewer and holding it up in between his knees. The male takes a graham cracker and tears it in half, before adding chocolate to one of the sides. After he’s done, he carefully places the golden fluff ball onto the cracker and closes it, offering the sweet sandwich to you with a subtle smile.

“For you,” he winks as he turns back towards the fire, putting another marshmallow onto the stick to make himself a s’more as well (and also mentally kicking himself at the sudden burst of courage). He hears you take a bite out of the snack, his knee bouncing up and down nervously as he awaits the verdict.

“Man,” you hum, “this is so good.”

“Told you,” he says, “if there’s something I’m confident in, it’s making s’mores.”

“That’s a very unuseful skill to have,” you note, but continue to eat. The comment has him chuckle and shrug.

“Well, I used it now, so I’d argue it’s actually very useful.”

A hum cuts out of your throat at this, finishing the s’more he made for you with a satisfied sigh. “Is this how you got girls back in the States?” you ask, making the male choke on his spit.

Eric was too young to get girls when he learned how to make the greatest s’mores. He went camping with his dad and his older sister and he burned a couple before he got it right. He was in middle school and before what the kids call a glow-up these days (back in the days, you just called it overcoming puberty), but still– he decides to test the waters with another lazy, half-assed flirty comment. “Only the pretty ones.”

He hears a chuckle out of you– a reaction he decides to not pay much attention to or overthink, for he doesn’t really remember what a good reaction to flirting is anymore– but then, you sigh and nod. “Well, I give your s’more a 5 star review, so I’d find that believable.”

The comment has Eric press his tongue into the inside of his cheek, battling a victorious smile that wants to oh so desperately appear on his lips. Turning his attention fully to you, he looks at you with confidence coating his insides– it only grows when he notices you staring at the side of his face, the flame of the fire twinkling in your eye and making your features sharper and twice as attractive to the poor boy.

His eyes scan you over for a few seconds before he notices a glimmer of something on the side of your lip– a chocolate stain that has him cautiously lean in and swipe a thumb over the sweetness, not even thinking twice before smoothing his finger over your skin.

“You had a little… something there,” he hums as he licks the chocolate off his thumb. Your eyes still trained on him force him to avert his gaze back to the fire– for it was unbearable, as if sparks were flying and burning his skin, everything about the interaction making goosebumps appear over his body; even though he felt hot in his cheeks and not at all cold– when the sight of his marshmallow in flames suddenly comes to him, startling him awake.

Hurriedly dragging out the burnt snack out of the fire, he hears you chuckle at him from the side– so much for not ruining the moment. (It’s okay, though. As long as you’re entertained.)

“I thought you were a master at s’mores,” you poke fun at him, “got distracted?”

Meeting eyes with you, Eric shrugs, a lazy grin settling to his lips. “I guess you could say that.”

The night progresses quickly– with Sunwoo getting so drunk he borrows Jacob’s guitar and clumsily strums the strings, freestyle rapping about the most random topics with flushed cheeks and eyes dramatically glued to the fire; Hyunjae wanting to have a competition of who can jump over the flames and Sangyeon having to stop his drunk friend with the force of his own body– and Eric finds his eyes lacking the candy he’s been occupying himself with the whole evening. You disappeared somewhere into the house a few minutes ago, and although he didn’t want to be clingy, he walked up to the cabin with a nervous pep in his step– that’s it, he just wanted to make sure you were okay.

Eric walks through the doorway, having his body immediately be met with the joined common room slash kitchen area. The cabin is kind of small (too small for the amount of people currently occupying it) and kind of old, but it’s a tradition to rent it every year during the summer, so no one ever questioned the decision or made the move to rent out a bigger one, no matter the growing friend group.

Your figure finally appears in the dimly lit kitchen area, your back turned to the doorway. Standing at the kitchen sink, it seems like you were doing the dishes– tons of plates used to carry grilled meat and sausages dumped carelessly into the sink, forgotten in a minute and leaving the last remains of food dry up on them and get hard to scrape off, a couple of glasses and mugs with their ears broken off from their age waiting with coffee stains at the bottom– and Eric immediately feels his heart fall down to his stomach, because why would one do the dishes in the middle of the night? Those usually get left there until the morning, when the least hungover person will take mercy on the rest and take care of them. Were you feeling excluded from the conversation? Did you feel bored?

“What are you doing here so alone?” he asks, making you turn your head over your shoulder and smile at him– a stone falling off his heart at the action– before you shrug at him.

“Washing the dishes,” you say, as if it wasn’t clear already.

“I see that,” Eric chuckles, “what I meant to say was, why are you washing the dishes in the first place?”

“Well, somebody’s gotta do it.”

Eric huffs– and he doesn’t even know why he’s so defensive about it. “That someone didn’t have to be you, y’know.”

He’s standing next to you now– your eyes meeting as you stare at the boy for a heartbeat– a smile spreading on your face at his furrowed brows. The action has him visibly relax, watching as you shrug and get back to the dish washing. “I just wanted some alone time for a bit,” you muse, “outside was getting too loud for a second, I’m not used to crowds.”

“Ah… once Sunwoo drinks, he can’t shut up, so I kinda get that it was starting to feel insufferable,” Eric notes, nodding at you in acknowledgement before the realization hits him. “Wait– you said you wanted to be alone, so I should probably-”

You halt him with a soft laugh– the one Eric finds his heart liking a little too much, with how it jumps up and down and makes all of him feel warm inside– a soapy hand reaching out in his direction. “It’s okay, you can stay,” you muse, “I enjoy your company.”

“O-okay,” Eric stutters– so much for the smooth lines he had prepared in his head before coming in here, all of them flying out of his head straight out of the window– and to not seem so silly, he gets his hands occupied and reaches for the clean dishes you started stacking on the counter next to the sink, deciding to dry them and put them away. The kitchen falls into a comfortable silence that only gets broken by an occasional scream landing through the walls from outside, and Eric can’t help but indulge himself in the domesticity of the act.

He can almost imagine you two washing the dishes like this in your shared apartment after you two cook dinner together and eat it in your cozy living room. That scenario sounds almost too good for the boy, having warmth slowly ooze into his cheeks, and that, he finds to be the hint that he should probably stop thinking about you in that way now or else he’ll get too distracted and break the glasses he is currently putting away. (God forbid– there were not enough of them for the entire friend group in the first place.)

“Are you having a good time, though?” Eric finds himself asking through his weird delirium.

You smile– oh god you smile, you should stop doing that if you want him to survive the night– and nod at the boy, calmness overtaking your aura and slipping into his cracks as well. “I am. It’s nice meeting new people and everyone’s very nice,” you say.

“That’s good to hear. How long have you and Yeri been friends?”

“A couple of years,” you note, “we met during high school. We always dreamt of moving away to college and living together at dorms or something, so it’s… it’s nice that it worked out for us,” you say, having Eric nod at your words with a sweet smile.

“That’s great to hear,” he muses, “I met Juyeon and Sunwoo in my freshman year of college, and the rest just… came along after a while.”

“Your friend group is pretty big,” you point out, having the boy shrug.

“I guess so,” Eric mumbles, never really thinking of it this way– in his eyes, this was normal. This was how he operated, how he lived. A lot of people around him, always close– one would think such a large friend group wouldn’t be as close with each other, but it’s quite the opposite in his case, he thinks. Maybe he was just blessed.

“How do you do that?” you sigh, shaking your head in disbelief.

“I dunno,” he snickers, “guess you could say I’m quite the social butterfly.”

“I can see that,” you laugh. Eric watches you, his hands now empty of any dish– he’s been drying them quicker than you manage to clean (and rightfully so, the food is stuck on there) – he starts noticing the details of your sheer presence. How you have a slight smile playing with your lips even when your eyes are glued to the sink, how your hair slightly slips out of the claw clip and frames your face, how close you’re standing– his eyes slip towards your hands, noticing the water running down your forearms and dangerously close to the sleeves of your shirt.

Acting on reflex, mostly, the boy reaches towards your sleeves and gently tugs them up, the contact of your skin that he initiates and should realistically be prepared for making the tips of his fingers tingle, the action having you stop in your movements and glance up at him through your eyelashes– a sight he wishes he could engrave into the back of his eyelids so he could stare at it forever and always.

“Thank you,” you hum, voice barely louder than a whisper when he retracts away from you, taking his previous stance against the kitchen counter.

Eric hangs his head low for a second, clearing his throat to ease his own tension. Now is your turn to start up the conversation, a casual question falling off your lips as you get back to washing the last remains of dishes. “Yeri said you come here often?”

The boy nods enthusiastically to your sentence. “We do. We started in freshman year, because Juyeon was going to this exchange program to Paris for a couple of months, so we threw him a goodbye party. Then he came back, so we threw a welcome back party here. And then we celebrated Younghoon hyung’s birthday here, and it kind of stuck, I guess? We go here at least once a year during summer.”

“That’s a nice tradition to have,” you sigh, turning the faucet off as you finish rinsing off the last dish– a big bowl that Sangyeon used to marinate the meat a few hours ago.

“It is,” Eric nods, smiling fondly at the sentiment. He reaches for the bowl and dries it with the now damp rag (there were a lot of dishes to dry, after all), and moves to put it back to its place under the sink. With your figure still in its previous spot, the boy puts away the towel onto the kitchen counter and gently grabs your waist with his free hand, moving you away a few inches to the left. He crouches and opens the cabinet under the sink and puts the bowl into the pyramid of other ones, straightening his back when he goes back into a standing position, catching you staring at him from above, watching his every move. Your body is leaning against the counter, having Eric mirror your stance only a few inches away from you before speaking up again.

“You’re welcome to join us when we come back next time.”

The time reads 3AM– or at least that’s what his circadian rhythm tells him, because he doesn't bother to check as he twists and turns in the bed, too hot and too alert to fall asleep– when Eric decides to walk down the steep stairs and try to get some fresh air. The cabin is hot inside, but he still takes his lost button-up that he had thrown over one of the kitchen chairs and puts it on before he makes his way outside, knowing that the forest will make his bones get cold with the crisp breeze.

He opens the door and moves to sit on the little patio– the silence of outside is overwhelming even after the cabin has quieted down and everyone has gone to sleep (each one on a different level of tipsy ranging from completely chill Sangyeon to doesn’t know where he is Sunwoo– with Eric somewhere in the middle of the spectrum). His legs drag a little tiredly as he scans his surroundings– god forbid there’s a bear out waiting for him– when the sight of a figure sitting on the floor takes him by surprise, their head already turned to him after hearing the sound of the door opening.

“What are you doing here?” he asks as he walks over to you, noticing your frame dressed in a tank top and sweatpants, hinting that you at least tried to get some sleep before coming out here, just like he has.

“Couldn’t sleep,” you shrug, confirming his suspicions.

“Same here,” the man sighs, “mind if I sit with you?”

“You’re welcome to join me,” you smile at him, patting the floor next to you and watching as Eric crouches down before taking a seat on the wood, ignoring the sunbeds and old rattan chairs situated all over the patio. (If you’re on the floor, he’s on the floor– it’s as simple as that.)

You’re holding a lollipop in between your fingers, your other hand occupied with a half-empty bottle of tequila that was previously passed around the circle at the bonfire. Eric raises his brows at the sight, having you shamefully avert your gaze from him.

“I thought it would be a waste to not finish this,” you say, snickering, “and I also… kind of hoped that it would put me to sleep…”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures?”

“I guess you could say that,” you laugh. Taking a sip from the bottle, you gulp the alcohol down before putting the lollipop inside of your mouth, sucking on it and licking your lips after. This is not the way you’re supposed to drink tequila, but Eric figures that gathering salt and a lime would be too much work anyways.

“Are you really using that lollipop as a chaser?” he giggles, making you hum.

“Yeah,” you stare at him, a grin overtaking your features, “this girl taught me to do that at a party last year. It’s not as good as literally anything else, but it gets the job done. Wanna try?” you ask, offering him the sweetness on the stick and the bottle.

The truth is, you were only a bit tipsy when the group slowly started to scatter into their beds. Eric didn’t drink as much either– only enough to make him laugh at everything that was said and make his staring at you twice as obvious as it was before– so he thinks he can take some more. As you said, it would be a shame if the bottle went to waste– and also, something about the idea of drinking with you alone on the patio was making his hopeless heart hammer against his chest in dangerous measures.

“Sure,” he agrees, taking the bottle first. The boy takes a sip, feeling the alcohol burn down his throat, and when he moves the dark brown glass away from his lips, he is met with the image of you leaning closer to him, offering him the lollipop. His hand instinctively grabs the plastic stick, thinking you’re letting go of it, when he’s met with the feeling of your flesh under his fingertips. You put the lollipop against his lips, making him open up on instinct and suck on the strawberry flavored candy, a million different sensations (all unrelated to the alcohol) swimming through his brain– you’re so close, you smell so good, he’s holding your hand, he’s sucking on the lollipop you previously had in between your lips and it’s driving him crazy– before you take the candy out from between his lips and put it back into your mouth, tongue swirling around the sweet ball.

The lollipop had an aftertaste of tequila on it, but it was enough to chase down the faint bitterness– Eric finds himself wanting to taste more of the sweet strawberry, but foolishly desiring to get the sensation off your lips instead. His eyes stay locked with yours throughout the whole exchange, sparks flying in between the two of you even though the bonfire has long gone out, his fingers lazily dropping from the candy.

“How was it?” you ask, voice barely louder than a whisper– goosebumps appearing all over Eric’s skin when he swears your eyes flicker to his lips for a split second.

“Good,” he admits. It’s silly how he feels so breathless at the action.

The sound of the wind playing with the leaves of the forest is the only thing accompanying you two. It’s as if you two were thinking of the same thing when you pull out the lollipop out of your mouth and offer it back to Eric, watching with utmost interest as the boy leans closer to capture it in between his lips, never breaking eye contact. The action feels a little too electrifying to him, a little too intimate, but he can't stop– can't even imagine wanting to.

Taking a sip of the tequila, but not chasing it down with the candy, you speak up again, lazy eyes practically glued to him. “This would be a perfect moment for a kiss…” you mumble, licking your bottom lip for a split second before biting down on it.

“Are you flirting with me?” Eric foolishly asks, tone of voice a bit weak, a little unsure, the candy still in his mouth, making his words come out a little jambled.

“Mhm,” you nod, grinning to yourself– Eric wonders how much of your behavior and how much of his raging heartbeat is due to the effect of alcohol in both of your veins.

His fingers pull at yours as he takes the candy out of his mouth, voice dropping as he answers you. “Then we probably shouldn’t waste the moment.”

Even though the intentions are clear, the boy can’t bring himself to make the first move– he’s completely enchanted with your presence, staring at you with tension in his shoulders and eyes trained onto your face, watching and examining it for any shift or change. Focused on the way you move, he thinks you must have realized you were going to have to be the one to take the first step– your lazily smile before you lean closer, impossibly close– making Eric’s eyes flutter shut with anticipation, your breath fanning his face making goosebumps appear all over his body.

When your lips finally touch his, he feels like he’s being kissed for the first time again, with the amount of fuzziness in his stomach and buzzing in his ears. He regains his composure quite quickly, though, as he positions his head in a way that makes you two even closer to each other, lips pressing firmer against yours now. His hand instinctively reaches out to hold your jaw, fingertips glazing the soft skin under them, your lips retracting only to go in for more.

Blindly placing the bottle onto the floor next to your bodies, you peck his lips and sigh into the kiss. “Damn, you’re good at this…”

“We’re only getting started,” he muses, making you chuckle.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhm,” he nods, watching as you once again lean in and suck on his upper lip, making his eyes flutter close again. A weight appears over him as you shift in your place and move to straddle his lap, your hand moving to cup his cheek and tilt him upwards, everything about the kisses getting more hurried– less gentle, less hesitant– when you tug on his bottom lip with your teeth and grant your tongue entry into his mouth.

Sweetness mixes in between you, your hands moving around his neck, heavy breaths shared across the patio. Eric feels like he’s levitating, his body having an out of body experience, yet being awfully present– every little shift pushing him to overdrive, the slightest touch making his skin burn and heart drum against his ribcage.

You shift in his lap, making him huff under the pressure, his lips trailing wet kisses down the side of your neck. Teeth glazing the jointure of your shoulder, kitten licking the place and sucking in a bruise that will eventually be visible to everyone when you two wake up in the morning, Eric feels your hands tugging down the sleeves of his shirt, fingers feeling up his biceps. The action makes him chuckle into your neck, but the smile fades quickly as he feels your nails scratching gently at his flaming skin.

“Take this off,” you mutter, and Eric finds it endearing– helping you take him out of the button-up, sitting under you in just a white tank top and black basketball shorts.

“Why?”

“Your arms looked good in this,” you hiss before you hide your face into his neck, leaning down to give him your fair share of kisses and love bites, having the male teasingly joke as his hands run up under your tank top, painfully aware of the fact that you weren’t wearing a bra anymore.

He moves his head to the side to give you more access before speaking out, tone of voice husky and coated in lust. “What if I get cold now?”

“Then I’m more than happy to move this to your room,” you purr into his ear.

Eric sighs, fingers playing with the hem of your top before he lets his palms drift towards your exposed stomach, roaming across naked skin. Goosebumps appear all over your body at the action, making the boy victoriously grin. “It looks like you’re the one that's cold, though, babydoll.”

Rolling your eyes at the male, you shut him up by latching yourself onto his lips before you speak against his mouth. “I’ll take that as an invitation, then?”

“Wake up Eric! The girls are leaving, you should at least go say goodbye!” Sangyeon roars into the boy's room, making the male turn over in the bed and huff out in frustration. He drags his arm up to shield his eyes from the sunlight hitting his face, the intention of just rolling over and sleeping more written very clearly in his face.

“Come on man, we’re leaving in an hour too, so you should go send them off and then pack your shit so we can load the cars,” Sangyeon says when he gets no reaction from the youngest. It’s to no use, apparently, and so as the oldest and most observant out of the group, Sangyeon decides to use physical force– he knows Eric would hate to have you go without saying goodbye. He’s not stupid. Or blind.

A strong hold on his calves drags Eric out of the bed and makes his half-naked body fall to the floor, a yelp coming out of his throat finally making Eric’s body fully alert and awake.

“Yo! What the fuck–”

“Put a shirt on and go say goodbye to Y/N before she goes, would you, sleeping beauty?” Sangyeon huffs before rolling his eyes at his younger friend, escaping the room and shutting the door close after himself with a loud thud (to add more effect to the scolding, Eric thinks).

The mention of your name has Eric quickly scrambling out of the bed. His heart hammers at the adrenaline rush, pulling a clean shirt out of his bag and dragging it over his head, the basketball shorts from yesterday’s night found on the floor being pulled over his lower frame in approximately 0.5 seconds. Eric takes the stairs 3 at a time– with how steep they are, he questions how exactly does he not trip and break his spine on his way down– and puts on a pair of slippers he finds at the door (that are not his, or his size, for the matter, making his heels comically stick out from the back).

Without checking his appearance in the mirror anywhere, he swings the door open and walks out of the cabin, watching as the group settles in a half-circle around your car, Yeri loading the trunk with her duffle bag before she closes it shut and smiles at her boyfriend Juyeon on the side. Eric joins the crowd, clearing his throat when his eyes fall onto your figure, the sight in front of him freezing him in his spot.

You’re standing there, in your jean shorts from the day before, an oversized white button-up enveloping your frame. A clueless stranger might not tell the difference, but he does– you put the shirt onto your bare skin and buttoned it just enough to reveal a bit of your cleavage– and it’s so similar to the outfit you had on yesterday, just with one difference.

You’re wearing Eric’s shirt. You’re wearing his shirt and your neck is scattered with red and purple-ish bruises, and no, Eric wasn’t that drunk and he remembers everything, but the events of last night suddenly play out right in front of his eyes like a movie, still nailing him to his spot and wiping out all of his vocabulary.

The boy feels hot in his cheeks as he watches you and your best friend pay your goodbyes to the rest of the boys, the men pulling you into side-hugs and fist bumps, shared ‘It was nice meeting you’s and ‘You should come by next time too’s resonating through the place. Soon enough, you reach the end of the make-shift half circle and lock your eyes with Eric, a playful smile softly appearing on your face.

“It was nice meeting you, Eric,” you hum, “I had fun,” you note, shooting him a knowing look.

“Me too,” he nods, nervously chewing on his bottom lip. He doesn’t know where the confidence of last night went, but he suddenly feels unarmed and lost. What does one do now?

The sight of you in his shirt makes him feel like his biggest (wet) dream has come true– call him cheesy, but it also wakes up a sense of déja vu in him from the day before– you with sunlight in your eyes, hair messed up in a claw clip. He feels like he just fell in love at first sight again. Is that even possible?

It’s good you have a sense in you that makes you take the initiative and be in charge when you see him faltering. A giggle cuts out of your throat as you lean in and hug the boy around his neck, your lips dangerously close to his ear as you speak in a hushed whisper, not wanting to be heard by the men around you.

“I stole your shirt from you, by the way. You should text me if you want it back, so we can meet up, or something,” you mouth, lips gently glazing the sensitive skin of Eric’s ear, and god does he feel like he's going to suffocate from the lack of oxygen this causes in his lungs.

“You look amazing in my clothes, so I won’t ask for it back,” Eric hums, “but I’ll text you just in case you ever wanna bless my eyes with the sight again.”

“Deal. I’ll make Juyeon text me your number,” you say before you pull away from him, shooting him a wink that almost has his knees buckling like a school boy in love for the first time.

You walk backwards and wave at the group, sending Eric one last look before you join the passenger’s side and close the car door behind you, the sound of Yeri starting the engine resonating through the quiet forest. The men wave at you until the Toyota disappears out of sight, only scattering inside when it does to gather their things and load up their cars as well.

Eric is woken up from his trance by a teasing whistle coming out of Sunwoo’s mouth and a father-like slap to his back from Sangyeon.

He wonders if he’s truly being so obvious. (He's unaware of the fact that you two had very visible matching love bites on your necks. It doesn’t take much effort to put two and two together– don't tell him that, though.)

Still, Eric shrugs and goes inside with a different kind of pep to his step.

When he licks his lips, he swears he can still taste the strawberries.

#from members #the boyz #fluff #strangers to lovers au #5k-15k #summer au

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blankjournal · 7 months

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like a dream — kang yeosang

pairing : dryad!yeosang x gn!reader ➖⟢ genres : fluff, angst, fantasy, strangers to lovers ➖⟢ cw : mythological inaccuracies, food mentions, borderline controlling parents, scary encounter with dark fae, kissing, pet names ➖⟢ wc : 13.3K ➖⟢ for : the stuck in summer collab held by @a1sh1teruu ➖⟢ special thanks : to @yuyusuyu for beta reading !! <33

bonus : inspo pinterest board & playlist

about dryads : in this fic, dryads retain their core attribute of being nymphs/spirits of trees, their life force being connected to the tree they reside in. they differ from traditional greek mythology here, in that they can be in the image of any gender (not just women), and are considered to be a type of fae.

it all felt like a dream, like magic. the summer haze that fell over the quiet countryside, the trees rustling softly with the gentle wind as twilight fell. the cool water of the lake in your hair, fresh strawberries from the farm just a short walk away, and more than anything at all, him. his smile, the twinkle in his eyes, and, like a miracle, his hand in yours.

admittedly, it didn’t feel that way in the beginning. to be whisked away to your practically estranged grandmother’s home in the middle of nowhere was never what you imagined for the summer between high school and the start of your college journey. you left the day after graduation, still vividly angry with your parents as they shooed you onto the train.

“i swear i’ll be fine on my own! mingi’s parents offered to help if i need anything while you’re gone,” you protested, trying not to let them hand you your already packed bags.

“your grandmother has already prepared to have you. you are getting on that train. we paid for the ticket, you’re all packed, and we are not letting you stay home alone for two and a half months,” they refuted. you had wanted to argue more, maybe bring up a new point, but by then, you had said it all, and despite your recent entry into legal adulthood, your parents still held far too much sway over you.

the train ride is long, dreadfully so. despite the glory of the city fading and gradually being replaced by tumbling hills, trees, and fields, you cannot help but curse it all in your head, too wrapped up in self-pity to love the sights in the way that you normally would.

a woman that you barely recognize from your childhood greets you at the bus stop as the sun begins to dip low in the sky. she’s sweet to you, but not overbearingly so. during the ride from the station to her home in her small, run down car, you do your best not to act coldy to her, trying to remind yourself it’s not her fault that your parents dumped you into her care for two and a half months.

by the time you arrive, the sun has set, and she has grown on you more than you would like to admit for how adamant you’ve been in hating everything about your current situation. she understands that spending the summer with her is not your ideal by any stretch, and she promises she’ll do her best to make you comfortable in any way she can. the way she says it all is kind and genuine, and you’re grateful to see that she’s far more understanding than your parents have been all month leading up to this.

she allows you to settle in for the first few days, showing you around the need-to-know basics of the sweet cottage she lives in. she’s seemingly unbothered by the way you spend most of your time in your room on your phone, bemoaning your unfortunate state to your friends over text or the phone.

but it only takes her five days to have you falling in love with the place around you. the first two are for your sulking, the third for getting you to come out of the house and take a look at her gardens. the fourth day is for a walk to a nearby farm to purchase fresh produce (the strawberries being your favorite), and the fifth is for the sunset.

it’s glorious, and you have no choice but to admit it. after a freshly cooked meal, eaten on her porch as the heat of the day finally begins to subside, she asks you to stay and watch the sunset with her. you agree, even if the sun won’t set for another hour, now aware that you don’t mind spending time with her at all. you talk as you have been for the past few days, the conversation easy and never forced. when a breeze cool enough to feel like an early manifestation of the night rustles the leaves on the trees and the clothes on your body alike, you wonder why your parents ever distanced you from her at all.

she doesn’t let the conversation die out even as the sun truly begins to set, and you like it that way. it feels natural and gentle to have the colors become brilliant in the sky as you learn to accept and love the place you have been plopped into for the summer.

it’s not half as bad as you imagined. though you still feel bouts of jealousy for the adventures your friends are having without you and bitterness aimed at your parents for not allowing you to experience this summer the way you wanted, you try to heed the silent advice from your grandmother to make the best of your situation. she never says that out loud, of course, knowing you’d hate to hear it, but she gives you ways to do so each time she shows you a new beautiful thing.

in the second week, you muster up the courage to ask her over dinner if you’re allowed to go into the forest behind her house by yourself. the day before you went on a short walk into it together, and you felt as though you’d fallen in love with it. she does nothing to hide her smile at the question.

“of course!” she delights. “it’s very safe, it’s quite hard to get lost so long as you don’t stray too far and stay on the paths. almost all of them lead back here or to the main road. i’ll show you tomorrow.”

she sticks to her word, as always, and takes the whole day to show you around the closest areas of the woods. from that day forward, the forest becomes yours. while your grandmother loves it, some stretches are more difficult for her to navigate in her older age, so most days you explore it on your own.

when you’re in the forest, the adventurous side of you comes out. of course, you’re still full of caution, but you are not immune to the allure of a bit of well-calculated risk taking for the sake of tree climbing and wandering off the path just a little bit.

the things that pull you off the path are simple; flowers, mushrooms, long stretches of moss, and the likes. usually it’s something you’d like to capture with the digital camera your grandma has lent you for the summer.

this time, it’s where the furthest navigable path begins to change direction to lead you back home. right where your grandmother told you it’s best not to stray any further. but it’s not far from the path at all, just a small patch of mushrooms that you’ve missed up until now. you make your way over without a second thought, pulling out your camera and snapping a quick picture.

when you stand back up and look out over the small downward slope just a few feet away from you, something else far more special catches your eye. you hesitate this time, knowing that you won’t be able to see the path if you climb your way below it to examine the white flower that you see on the edge of your vision. but you can’t resist the allure, too curious about the single, out of place bloom. so, taking note of your spot at the top of the slope to make your way back to it easily, you carefully make your way down and across the stretch of your vision to confirm your suspicions about the flower. up close, you take in its appearance, and while you’re not an expert, you know enough to tell that it’s a dahlia.

it’s curious, to say the least, to see the white flower fully blossomed when your grandmother had shown you the short dahlia stems in her garden, telling you that you’d be lucky to see them bloom before you left. in response to the phenomenon, you take your time to snap a few photos to show your grandma the early bloom.

once satisfied, you stand from your bent over position and grin when you see a butterfly fluttering deeper into the forest. you take a few steps towards it, trying to get close enough to identify it, when a deep voice interrupts you.

“i wouldn’t recommend going much further from the trail.” the voice is gentle, but it still startles you into whipping around in surprise. you take in the figure standing a few feet away from you. the first thing you notice is that he’s absolutely gorgeous, features soft and beautiful enough to rival the looks of the fairies in the set of paintings hung up in your grandma’s hallway. but that does nothing to aid your surprise. he is, after all, a stranger in the middle of the forest who has somehow approached you in complete silence.

“who–,” you choke the word out, nervous and not even sure what you want to say.

the soft smile on his face shifts into a look of light regret. “sorry. i didn’t mean to startle you. i live close by,” he explains.

“oh.” this doesn’t explain why you couldn’t hear him approach, but you let it slide by chalking it up to the fact that you weren’t paying much attention to anything but the flower and the butterfly. “my grandmother never mentioned you.”

“was she supposed to have mentioned me?” he asks, the hint of a teasing lilt in his voice.

you clear your throat a bit awkwardly. “well, no? i mean, maybe. she told me about everyone else who lives in the area,” you tell him. you’re a bit offended she never mentioned a boy so strikingly handsome.

he hums in acknowledgment. “i don’t go out much,” is all he offers in information. you look him up and down, growing a little suspicious under his gaze with all of these vague answers. he looks perfectly normal, dark brown, almost black hair that falls down to his cheeks in the front and wearing simple clothes. he sports a mossy green t-shirt and dark wash jeans that make him look like he belongs in the forest. he looks confident and comfortable where he stands, as if he knows every inch of this place. maybe he does, granted his claim that he lives close by.

“i mean it, though,” he interrupts your train of thought. “it can be hard to find your way back to the trail if you go any further than this.”

“ah. right,” you nod. “i was just looking at this flower. i thought dahlia’s didn’t bloom until august.”

his reaction to your words is odd when it looks like an expression of nervousness flashes across his face. but it disappears so fast you take the time to wonder if you’d just imagined it.

“usually,” he confirms, “but sometimes they bloom early here.”

“interesting,” you muse, curious again what could be the difference between the forest and your grandmother’s garden. a moment of silence passes between the two of you, and it seems there’s nothing left to say. plus, you’ve got to get home sooner than later to be in time for dinner.

“i guess i’ll get going then.” you point vaguely in the direction you came from.

“right.” there’s silence only interrupted by the sounds of your foot falls as you begin walking away, already thinking of the many things you’ll have to tell your grandma over dinner. the early blooming flower, the somewhat strange boy. he pulls you right out of your thoughts once again with his melodic voice. “i’m yeosang, by the way.”

you turn around to face him, surprised when you’re met with what you could only describe as a bashful expression on his face.

“oh!” you give him your name, not even having realized the two of you never really introduced yourselves to one another. “i’m staying with my grandma for the summer.”

“well,” he echoes your name, and the way it rolls off his tongue in that deep voice of his has your heart jumping in a way you hadn’t expected at all, “see you around.”

“mhmm,” you agree, suddenly eager to meet this stranger again. “see you!”

with that, you turn and make your way back up to the trail, and when you glance back around to seek out his pretty face one more time, he’s nowhere to be seen.

—

when you arrive back at the cottage, it’s just in time for you to help your grandmother set the table for dinner. the food is aromatic and fresh as always, but even the watering in your mouth at the sight of it isn’t enough to distract you fully from your odd encounter in the woods. it’s hard to hold back from telling her all about it the second you got home.

but, you don’t have to wait for long. once you’re both settled at the table with food served and a few bites eaten she asks you how your outing went today.

“actually,” you begin eagerly, “it was quite eventful. and before i say anything else, i promise i stayed within sight of the trail.” she raises an eyebrow at that, but you can see the smile tugging at her lips that tells you to go on. “i saw a dahlia off the path. it was white and in full bloom. i have pictures to show you after dinner! do you think there’s a difference between your garden and the forest?”

“really? that’s fascinating,” she ponders, “i’m not sure if there’s any difference besides maybe the soil, but that’s still unusually early for wild dahlias.”

“that’s what i thought,” you agree. “but grandma! i met some guy while i was looking at it. do you know someone named yeosang who lives around here? he didn’t seem much older than me.”

“ah!” she claps her hands in recognition. “i’m surprised you met him. i’ve never met him myself. i’ve heard he lives in a small cottage in the forest. according to anyone who’s seen him, he's quite a recluse, but still kind.”

“he was a little bit odd. but nice, he seemed to mean well,” you pause a moment before deciding to go on, “but grandma!” you let out a light laugh, “he was… he was really cute.” you’re downplaying the extent of his beauty, but you’re not really one to call a man you just met “gorgeous” in front of your grandma, no matter how fitting the word truly is.

“well, well, well,” she laughs, “have we found you a summer crush?” she teases.

“that’s not what i’m saying,” you refute. “i’m just saying he’s good-looking. maybe he comes across nice but has a rotten personality!”

“i hope that’s not the case!” she lets out another laugh. “maybe you can get him to get out of his shell and get to know the people he lives around. he’s so young, it must be hard for him to live alone.”

“he’s alone?” suddenly a new wave of curiosity and even concern crashes over you.

“well, as far as we all know. i feel so sorry to say it, but he’s so rarely sighted and even less talked to that i think many of us forget about him. i’m sure he’s a kind boy and could use a friend like you.”

you hum absentmindedly at that, already wondering if you’ll run into him again.

but it’s not until the next morning, once again making your way to the deepest point in the forest you’re allowed, that you realize you’re starting to hope to see him again. you find yourself far too curious about him, wanting to know more, looking for his fairy-like features every corner you round.

you reach the spot where you stepped off the trail yesterday, pausing to wonder if he’s more likely to show up here since it’s where you saw him first. it feels a bit silly when you shuffle to the edge and bring your foot over into the vegetation right off the path.

“you don’t have to leave the path for me to show up.”

you can barely process that the tone of his voice is genuine, not teasing like the words themselves might suggest, as you nearly trip over nothing when you’re startled into spinning around too quickly.

his smile is sheepish and apologetic when you lay your eyes on his face. “sorry.” the boy—yeosang, you remind yourself—doesn’t have to explain what for; you recall his apology last time for surprising you like this.

“how are you so quiet?” you wonder aloud, voice curious and void of any accusatory tones, not bothering to keep the question silent this time. you hope it’s not rude to ask, but he just shrugs.

“i’m just used to moving like that, living out here.”

it’s not a very clear or enlightening explanation, but you brush it off regardless. there’s a moment of silence as the two of you just peer upon the other, a hint of curiosity in his eyes that mirrors your own features.

“so…,” you begin, hoping he doesn’t mind if you ask more questions, “you seem to be quite at home here … how long have you been living here?”

“my whole life,” yeosang must sense your surprise at that answer, so he continues speaking to explain, “my parents were, well, recluses, and since they moved out a few years ago, i seem to be following in their footsteps. that’s why most people around here—like your grandmother—don’t know much about me.”

suddenly, you decide you don’t want this to be a short lived conversation. as you ask a new question, you take just a few short steps to sit on a flat rock at the edge of the trail. he follows in suit, taking his place right on the forest floor, leaning his back against a tree directly across from you.

“do you prefer it that way, then?”

he pauses, as if he doesn’t have an answer prepared for that. “i guess,” he shrugs. “i’m used to it.”

“so you don’t get lonely? yknow, living alone now?” you’re surprised by the questions that spill out of your mouth as if without permission. they’re not the kind of thing you normally ask pretty boys you’ve just met. but, more than that, you’re curious about the way the features of his face reflect the internal debate he must be having as he tries to come up with an answer to your question. it’s either as if no one’s ever asked these sorts of questions, nor has he thought about the subject at hand at all. or maybe there’s an answer he could give, but would rather not. you suppose it’s the former option, if he’s really been so secluded from all the people around him for his whole life.

“sometimes,” is the cryptic, too-simple answer yeosang decides to give. but, as seems normal with him, his voice and the look in his eyes are laden with much more. you feel crazy for thinking it, but it feels like he’s saying, “sometimes i’m lonely, but most of the time i’m alright. either way, it’d certainly be nice to have someone else around. you, maybe.” you hope that’s what his eyes are telling you, but you could just be pushing your own feelings onto him because you don’t want to be the only one who feels that way. you love your grandmother’s company, but these days you’ve been missing in-person interaction with friends your age.

“sometimes,” you nod, mumbling the word under your breath. for a moment, you let the air fill with bird calls and the rustle of leaves in the breeze. “so, mr. yeosang,” you speak louder, weaving a bit of playfulness into your voice, “since you’ve been living here your whole life, is there any chance you’d be able to show me around the forest. you know, off the trails.” you watch as a soft, almost hesitant smile makes its way onto his lips.

“sure,” he replies, his answer short as always and turned into something meaningful by the borderline innocent, and certainly sweet look on his face. yeosang’s glad you asked, he just doesn’t say it out loud.

“cool,” you grin. eyes drifting down to examine the plants beside your feet, you wonder what you’re supposed to say next. but that’s no longer a worry when he speaks up first.

“we can start tomorrow,” he proposes. he rushes to follow up, with a kind, “if that’s alright with you, of course.”

your smile grows at his consideration, the light worry in his voice that he hasn’t been perfectly kind to you. in your eyes, he certainly has.

“that’s perfect,” you assure him, “i’ve got practically nothing to do all summer long, anyways.”

“great.” he sends you a smile that catches you completely off guard. or rather, it’s your own reaction that surprises you. the way the curve of his lips and the sparkle in his eyes sends your heart racing. on second thought, maybe hanging out with the prettiest person you’ve ever laid eyes upon isn’t the best idea you’ve had. of course, that thought is completely wiped from your mind when his melodic voice meets your eager ears again. “you know the giant rock at the fork between painter’s path and luna moth trail?” you nod quickly at his question. “we can meet there, then.”

“sounds good!” you chirp, then glance up to the sky between the treetops to check if the afternoon sun has begun dipping low enough to force you back on the trail homewards. sighing, because you’re just a little bit disappointed your time with him can’t last any longer today, you tell him it’s about time for you to head back and bid him goodbye.

“see you tomorrow,” he calls softly after you. his words send a rush of excitement in the form of flitting butterflies to your stomach, so you rush off, wondering what’s gotten into you. butterflies? already?

—

the next morning, you wake with yeosang already on your mind. the first thing that you realize is that you never set an actual time to meet with him. it was just “tomorrow.” you let that slip up worry you for a measly thirty seconds as you pull the cream colored sheets away from your body. but the way that the morning sunlight sneaks into your room through the white curtains and illuminates the framed artworks above your dresser steals that prick of worry away, replacing it with something akin to whimsy. somehow, you’re sure he’ll know when to meet you. and if not, by some chance, you wouldn’t mind waiting for him one bit.

after a quick breakfast and a hasty goodbye to your grandma, you grab your bag, already packed with your usual supplies of water, lunch, and your camera, and rush out the back door. by now, most paths are familiar, and you easily make your way to your designated meeting spot. that boulder is clear in your memory, as well as the pictures of it captured by your camera. you adore the way that the moss grows on the intimidatingly large stone and the view of the forest floor from the top when you managed to climb it last week.

it’s a delight to find him already there, perched up high at the exact spot you ate your lunch last thursday. it takes up all of your willpower to keep from pulling out your camera and capturing the image of his practically divine figure, soaking up both the sunlight that filters in through the leaves and the dappled shade that the trees provide. once again, you’re struck with just how much he appears to belong in this forest, as if you couldn’t imagine him anywhere else but here.

he’s already looking in your direction when he comes into your line of sight, and you’re reminded of how you don’t have his talent of traveling through the brush in complete silence. the subtle wave and soft smile that he gives you sends a rush through your body. you return the wave, now more eager than ever to explore the forest with him as your guide. he tells you to wait at the path for him, disappearing for only a moment before reemerging from the side of the boulder in mere seconds. you’re not sure you’ll ever be able to look at him without his beauty throwing you off momentarily like a breeze that rustles your clothing out of place just enough that you have to stop a second to collect yourself.

“you ready?” he asks, the tone of his voice not helping you to respond normally. you clear your throat unnecessarily before answering.

“mhmm!” you nod your head enthusiastically. “where to?”

the light smile on his face quirks up so that it’s almost mischievous. “a surprise?” he says the words like a question, both to sound extra teasing but to also leave you room to protest if you really want.

your grin grows. “if you insist.”

he smiles wider too. you get the inclination that his smile will be the death of you someday.

it surprises you just how easy it is to talk with yeosang considering how flustered his presence makes you sometimes. but you don’t complain at all; instead, you soak it all up the same way you do with the new scenery that comes when you part from the path. he’s a wonderful listener, clearly content to hear anything and everything about you with the way he asks actually interesting questions and retains every detail that you provide him. of course, you hate to be the only one talking, and you hate not to hear more of his voice, so you’re sure to engage him to talk about himself. he’s intelligent with his words, reserved with how much he says, but speaking volumes in just a sentence or two. the simple things are nice too. you get to learn the way he pronounces words like lychee, syrup, and caramel and he gets to learn how much you love fresh fruits for dessert and that you hate frosting unless it’s homemade and not too sweet.

you’re about to ask him if he likes rainy weather when he tells you to wait for just a moment. you nod, and he pulls himself up to the top of the shallow ravine you’ve been walking through. it’s taller than the both of you, and the grace in which he climbs to the top is impressive. he crouches at the edge and extends his hand out to you. you flush when you realize you’re supposed to hold his hand. trying not to think too much about it, you reach up to place your hand in his. it’s alright for a split second, but when his deep voice meets your ears as you keep your eyes level with the vegetation in front of you, your heart begins to hammer in your chest. you almost don’t catch what he says.

“if you put your left foot on that rock by your knee, i can pull you the rest of the way up,” he advises. you hope he doesn’t notice the slight buffer in between his words and when you actually follow his instruction. but he’s right, it’s easier that way and you’re standing at the edge of the small cliff seconds later, just far too close to him for your heart to come back to its normal resting rate.

“thanks,” you breathe out, voice quieter than you expected it to be. but he hears you easily with your body pressed against his and only the rustle of leaves sounding through the forest.

“of course.” you feel a bit better knowing that his voice has come out almost as hushed as yours, as if there’s something special about being this close to one another. as if this is something you both would rather not brush off as nothing. instead, being close to him is something, it means something. what it means, you’re not sure, but you do know that despite the nervous fluttering of your heart, being near him is safe and filled with peace.

you try not to hate it when he pulls away because you feel strange that you’re so attracted to him barely three days into having met him. yet, you question the harm of it. who’s to say you can’t have a summer love under the leaves, with a quiet, gorgeous boy who seems to have taken a liking to you too? certainly not you.

when you turn to face the direction he’s looking in, a different type of excitement takes over your mind. there’s still a bit of a ways left, but there’s no doubt that what you see in the distance is the sight of sunlight catching on water.

you spin your head to face him again. “there’s a lake?”

he lets out a light laugh at the clear excitement in your voice. “i think i’d classify it as a pond, but yes. we’re close to my favorite part on the shore.”

“perfect,” you grin. you let him continue to lead the way, reminding yourself not to get ahead of yourself in the case of unexpected landmarks like the kind he’s been steering you clear of the whole way here. he seems to know every little thing about the forest, easily guiding you away from roots, rocks, and the likes that you would probably trip over were you alone. that’s just a small reason you’re so glad to be with him.

when the trees break and you’re met with a small patch of land between the trees and water, you pull in a gasp of awe. the following breath comes out as a contented sigh. he’s right; the body of water isn’t nearly big enough to be classified as a lake. but that doesn’t take away any of its glory. the lily pads are blooming and the trees lining the edge are beautiful in contrast to the water. and you could fall in love with sunlight reflecting off of any water every time you see it, and this time is no exception. it’s just that maybe you’ve fallen in love a bit more than you normally do, knowing that this place is tucked away, almost a secret. knowing that you’re discovering this place with him, and knowing that there’s more. suddenly you’re curious.

“have you ever shown this place to anyone else?”

the question seems to catch him off guard, and you instantly wish you’d bitten your tongue before letting it slip from your mouth. you wish you’d just told him that it’s beautiful, that you love it, that you’re grateful he’s shown it to you regardless if you’re the only one or not. but then there’s a light smile on his face.

“no,” he answers, “there are people that know about it, of course, but i’ve never shown it to someone.”

you nod, thankful he’s not upset that you asked, but instead seemingly glad to answer instead. as if he’d like you to know you’re the only one, but he’s too shy to bring it up himself. as if he’s glad that you’re asking because it means that you want to be the only one.

“well, thank you for showing me. i love it.” you let that hang in the air and hold back the questions that you still have because you want him to know that you mean it.

“i’m glad you love it,” he says, voice sincere as always. and the silence isn’t the kind that you hate, it’s the kind where you both know that the quiet is right because you’re both basking in the beauty of what’s before you, you’re basking in the fact that it feels like the person beside you is willing to understand you and if feels like they’ll continue to do so. you’re basking in the silence because all of it feels right, feels like a fairytale, like a dream. because how the hell do you meet someone twice for so short of a time and then talk for hours when you see them next? how could silence already be comfortable? turns out it just is.

for you, it turns out the quiet boy is always kind, is always willing to listen, and always willing to answer. it turns out that he never tires of showing you new places like the bubbling creek and he doesn’t mind that you love catching frogs and salamanders just to hold them for a moment. he must think it’s cute that you find them cute every single time. he tells you about the types of moss and lichen that cover the boulder over twice the size of the one you meet at nearly every morning. he obliges when you want to go back to the pond to wade in the water and look for tadpoles in the shallows. he knows that you’ll love that one clearing in the middle of the deep trees that always filters in the rays of the sun just right so that it always appears to be straight out of a fantasy movie. and he loves to take you to the willow tree.

the moment you told him it was your favorite spot, yeosang thought he’d kiss you right then and there. but he knew it was too soon. before then, you’d only held hands, first as you ran through the forest to his small, bare cabin to escape the rain, then shyly a few times more just because it felt nice.

you’re holding hands now as you near the willow for the millionth time in the last month since you’d met. it’s a normal occasion by now, as you claim to only be grabbing his hand because it can get cold in the forest, but the two of you know it’s because neither of you can get enough of it. you’re just too shy to admit anything like that.

it doesn’t take long for you to settle at the trunk of the tree; the routine of sitting side by side in the grass with lunch splayed out in front of you is easy and natural now. once the food’s all gone, you’ll sit and talk for hours until you have no choice but to head home. today is no different, the same motions are there, along with the butterflies in your stomach that always come from sitting so close to him, his voice practically right in your ear as he goes on about something that you love to hear. but today he seems quiet, pensive. it’s almost as if you can feel the way that thoughts swirl around in his mind, like you can see it in his eyes as he silently eats the sandwich in his hand. he’s a bit far away, in a way that’s not quite bad, but not good either. you wish he’d tell you what’s on his mind.

you let it sit for a while, understanding of the want to just be. to let oneself be quiet without the pressure to hold a conversation. but you also want to help. you don’t want him to feel like he has to hold in whatever he’s thinking of if he doesn’t want to.

“what’s up?” you ask, voice light and airy as if to show him that you’re giving him space to do as he wishes.

“do you believe in magic?” the question slips out of his mouth as if he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. yeosang’s gaze avoids yours, staring straight forward as you peer at him. you take in his features the same you that you always love to. the lines of his profile perfectly catch the light of the sun that streams through the delicate leaves of the willow. your gaze drifts from his ridiculously dainty eyelashes to the unique curve of his nose and finally to the lips you haven’t been able to get out of your mind since the time you named this place as your favorite.

when you said that two weeks ago, you’d been sitting like you were now, shoulders and thighs brushing together. he didn’t say a word, but he turned his head to meet your eyes and suddenly he was leaning close, closer than he’d ever been. but a far away look flashed through his eyes, one that mirrored his gaze now, and he let his lips curve into a sad smile that you still don’t understand. then he moved away, and said, “i’m glad,” and you knew he meant it.

suddenly, you realize you’ve let his question hang in the air for too long, lost like always in thoughts of him. you pause a moment longer, wanting to answer truthfully and thoughtfully.

“i want to believe in magic,” you admit. “though i guess it could depend on how you define magic. like actual fairies and spells and storybook tales that aren’t real—or that we don’t know if they’re real—or things like this. to me, this is magic. the sun lighting up the leaves and the side of your face, and the beauty of this tree. to me, magic can be the way someone makes you feel. but if we’re talking about the other kind … i want to believe in it. i wish it were real but it’s kind of hard to believe in it when i’ve never seen that kind of magic. i’m a hopeless romantic in some ways. i’ll still imagine that fairytales could be real, that if i hope hard enough i’d see a fairy living in a toadstool fairyhouse. but i still like proof, so i settle with that hope.” once you let out your long-winded answer, you realize you’d probably never say that to anyone else. that happens a lot when he asks you questions.

something in yeosang’s gaze changes and he’s not so far away anymore. if anything, there’s that last word you spoke reflected in his expression. hope. like that’s the perfect answer for you to have given him.

“i like that way of thinking,” he says, voice soft and honest. you want to ask him if he believes in magic, but for once the question stays stuck in the back of your throat. it doesn’t feel like he’s ready to give his answer and you’re a bit bewildered as to why, but you let him be. you always let him be when that far away look interrupts his smile.

exhaling lightly, you let your head tilt to the side until it’s fallen onto yeosang’s broad shoulder.

“it’s nice to hope,” you say, wondering if his heart could be beating as fast as yours is.

“it is.” then his head is resting on yours and you wish that summer would never end. you don’t know it, but he wishes the same in a far more desperate and bittersweet way.

—

today, you’re meeting him at the willow rather than the normal spot at the boulder. you readily agreed when he asked if that would be alright with you, confident in finding the way on your own. the confidence was warranted, as you’ve walked there many times and the journey has been smooth from the beginning. you know you’re almost there when you pass the bend in the creek with the young maple tree hanging its branches over the water. it’s only a few steps later that something catches your eye.

instantly you’re reminded of the first time that you met yeosang, a fully bloomed dahlia coming into view. this time it’s dark in color, the deep red-ish undertones of the petals visible even from your vantage point. without a second thought, you pull out your camera and clamber your way over to the regal flower, surprised you’ve never noticed it before. now that august is right around the corner, it’s far less odd to see a dahlia bloom, but now that they remind you of yeosang you can’t help but want to capture the pretty sight in your camera.

as you focus your gaze into the viewing piece of the camera, you frown at the dark lighting that you can tell will be reflected into the image. there was plenty of sunlight filtering through the leaves just moments ago. you pull the camera away from your face to reevaluate your surroundings, confused.

without warning, everything begins to grow dark, like the once artful shadows of the forest are multiplying and expanding right in front of your eyes. it’s like when a storm approaches and the sun is swallowed up by thick clouds, but it’s not a darkening of the sky that swallows you up, but rather the shadows themselves.

fear hits you like a truck, and your heart hammers in your chest because you know instinctively that none of this is right. i need to get to the willow, is all you can think, and yet the moment you resolve to run, it’s as if you can’t tear your eyes away from the flower in front you.

you wonder if this is what it feels like to be under a spell, a real one, a dark one. nothing like the spell of falling in love, nothing like the feeling of being stunned into silence from one glance at those glorious eyes of his.

“you’re a lovely little creature, aren’t you?” a horrified chill runs up your spine when the dark, thin voice permeates through the air just like the unnatural shadows. you dare not look up to where the voice came from, though you’re not even sure you could look away from the dahlia. sharp, shallow breaths escape your mouth as you panic. it feels like you’ve been thrown straight into a nightmare. you shut your eyes tight and beg in your head to please wake up, please wake up, i have to wake up.

your eyes almost snap open when the voice speaks again, sinister and demanding. “don’t be so afraid. look at me.” but you realize that with your eyes closed, you’re no longer being pulled towards the flower by your transfixed gaze.

so you turn and run.

opening your eyes doesn’t do much to help you, the darkness that’s wrapped around the trees is not too different from the dead of night. you trip over roots and get whacked in the face by low hanging branches, stumbling along in the direction you can only pray is back to the safety of the willow. you’re not even sure why you’re so convinced that the tree can save you, but you have to run somewhere.

it feels like a miracle when you see the shadows begin to thin in the near distance. the promise of daylight prompts you to push yourself to run faster. and you think it’s working because you haven’t heard anything but your own rapid footfalls and heavy breathing. the light is getting closer.

but something as firm as metal shackles latches itself around your upper arm and you can’t control the scream that rips from your throat as you’re yanked into darkness again. this time the darkness is solid, wrapped around you like spindly, immovable arms. then the darkness speaks and you realize you really are being held by something.

“you’ve wandered too far for me to just let you go like that. humans.” the last word is spit out like something disgusting and covetable all at once. then you realize the last word makes it sound like whatever freakishly tall and strong thing holding you captive is not human. that would make sense if there were other things in this world that could talk but aren’t human. but that’s not real and this has to be a horrifyingly realistic nightmare.

you struggle in the grip he has you in, desperate to get away. “let me go!” you scream. he just clicks his tongue.

but then he does. his arms release you and you almost crumple to the ground with how weak your knees are with fear. you try to run, but suddenly he has his hand on your chin, forcing you to look up at him and you can no longer move of your own free will.

his face is striking, beautiful even. his black eyes are so empty it feels like they’re burning holes straight through your soul. he looks human. almost. but he's at least 7 feet tall and his face is framed with shadows rather than locks of hair. his robes seem to be shifting and swirling like black smoke. he himself seems to be shadow. and those eyes are certainly not human. just like he’s the black dahlia, you can’t look away.

“that little dryad thought he'd scored himself a sweet prize, didn’t he?” he tilts his head as he asks the rhetorical question, one that makes absolutely no sense to you. “a shame you wandered too far from his tree. i can’t believe he let you walk alone so close to the border. getting you to cross it was far too easy,” he croons. the first tree that comes to your mind is the willow and you have to shut out the wild thought that this monster is talking about yeosang. yeosang who loves the willow tree, yeosang who asked you to meet him there, leaving you to walk the whole way on your own. yeosang who you first met at a white dahlia bloom.

thoughts of him crowd your mind, pushing out the darkness bit by bit. so you concentrate on everything here that’s felt opposite to this nightmare; everything dreamlike. in your mind there are rainstorms watched from the safety of your grandmother’s porch, frogs from the creek in your hand, and sunlight dappling the forest floor. there’s the shining pond, fresh strawberries, and priceless sunsets. there’s his hand in yours, his breath on your cheek, and the branches of the willow tree swaying in the breeze. and then there’s nothing tying you to the darkness, so in desperation, you bolt, praying that this time you’ll be fast enough.

the light approaches faster and there are tears on your cheeks. letting out a cry, you see a figure running towards you, backlit from the sunlight that was always supposed to be there, and you know it signals safety before you can see his face.

yeosang gets closer and closer, and suddenly his hand is wrapped around your wrist and he’s tugging you along behind him, towards the light. you hear nothing behind you, but you know the shadowy figure is there, his dark smoke nipping at your feet, trying and succeeding in catching up.

but yeosang runs far faster than you thought he could and at any other time you’d question how you’re able to keep up at all. now you can see it. the blurry border where you can somehow see the light and dark balance perfectly. and you know you need to get past it where the light overpowers dark, where it is natural and shadows only exist because there is sun.

you let out a cry of surprise when you feel a sting at your lower calves and look down to see the smoky shadows climb higher, biting at the back of your legs and climbing up to your knees and lower thighs as your captor comes closer to keeping you in his cold grasp.

“keep going,” yeosang urges, and you resist the urge to let out a loud sob at the sound of his voice. you want to scream at him and ask what the hell is going on. instead, you follow his lead and push yourself even harder than you thought possible, and suddenly you’re sprawling forward, straight into the ground as your hand slips out of yeosang’s grip.

the fear clenching your heart squeezes hard, but nothing else snatches you up, no shadowy, steel-like hands, no cold voice in your ear. just him at your side in milliseconds, voice asking if you’re okay and hands pulling you up from the ground. you don’t say a word as he hoists you to your feet, telling you that you’re safe for now, but should get farther from the border as fast as possible. you just let him hold you close as he guides your tired and wobbly legs away until you’re under the leaves of the most familiar tree in the whole forest. only then do you let your knees buckle and a fresh wave of tears escape from your eyes. he keeps you steady so you don’t fall, gently lowering you to the ground and into his arms.

he holds you like that for god knows how long, rubbing your back in an attempt to sooth your shaking, and whispering a mix of broken apologies and comforting words to calm your crying.

“i’m so, so sorry, sweetheart. i’m sorry,” he calls you by a mix of sweet things and your name said like something holy. “i never meant for anything like this to happen, i’m sorry. please, please tell me you’re alright,” he begs. you hate how sad and guilty he sounds, but you can’t say a word, completely unable to process anything that’s happened. you just lay in his hold like it’ll keep any threat in the world away from you.

eventually you’re still and quiet in his arms save for your shaky breathing. his shirt is wet under your head. he’s mostly quiet now, still whispering out apologies here and there. it takes a moment for you to speak.

“is this a dream?” you whisper, tilting your head up to look at his very real, heartbroken face.

“i’m sorry,” he answers, voice guilt-ridden. that means no. your head drops back down to his shoulder and you sigh.

“i’m… i’m scared to ask, yeosang,” you begin, voice soft and still a little shaky, “i’m scared to ask what the hell that was and why the hell you seem to know exactly what’s going on.” your tone isn’t accusing, just tired and confused. once you start talking, it’s hard for you to stop, even when the words make little sense. “that– that can’t have been real, i swear. how the hell could that be real? he was– there’s no way that he was… human. he didn’t look, well, possible. and it was like i couldn’t move sometimes and god! i must have been hallucinating.” your voice drops off into silence with a thud. he doesn’t say a word. there’s a stretch of silence, and it feels like the only moving thing is his hand on your back, still rubbing back and forth in comfort. your voice is even smaller than before when you speak again. “and he… he said things and i think he was talking about you. why was he talking about you? why… why aren’t you telling me none of this is real?”

the pain in his voice is enough to tell you without looking that his lips are drawn tight in a frown and his eyebrows are furrowed with something almost as intense as sorrow.

“i’m sorry,” when he speaks his voice is small too. “i wish i could tell you it wasn’t real. and i’m sorry because i never meant for anything like this to happen, i never meant for you to find out like this, and i never should have let you walk out here alone. i wanted to tell you that the magic you let yourself hope for is real, it almost slipped out of my mouth a million times… but i didn’t know how. i didn’t know if there was a right time, or if i’d scare you away, and that’s the last thing i could ever want. i didn’t want anything to change. so i’m sorry i kept you in the dark like this and i’m sorry this happened. please, please, please tell me how i can fix it.” the words tumble out of his mouth like a waterfall, unfiltered and uncontrolled and so clearly true. it’s so different from the way he normally talks. he’s always truthful, but he picks and chooses his words both precisely and scarcely. here, it’s clear that he’s let it all come falling out, too guilty and upset for your sake to filter through the mess of his mind right now.

“and that’s why you asked me if i believed in magic a few days ago?” as you say this, you try to understand, finally pushing yourself up. you stay in his hold, still tucked into his wide frame, but now more level with him to better engage in a real conversation. it hurts a little to see the pain on his face, but it’s hard not to look at him either way.

he nods at your question, not even caring for now that you haven’t directly addressed his previous plea. “and so i decided to tell you. for a while i wondered if it would be better if you never knew at all. but i didn’t want to hide things from you and your answer was… it was… i was going to tell you today. i was going to surprise you with something small, right here.” his hand reluctantly leaves you to dig into his pocket. when he opens his fist to show you, it’s a tiny set of clothes, like the kind you’d find for small dolls. “these are my friend’s. he’s a pixie.” your silence makes him realize you must still be completely overwhelmed. quickly, he shoves the clothes back away and looks at you apologetically. “i’m sorry. this is too much, isn’t it?”

“i– so,” you struggle to find your words, “you’re telling me that magic is real? like the storybook kind? and you’re friends with pixies and there are horrifying shadow-men that try to capture you if you stray too far in the forest?” he cringes at that, and you want to apologize because you didn’t mean it like that. it’s just that you can’t seem to wrap your mind around this at all.

“well… yes.”

“oh.” you blink, once, twice, three times over. you try to let it sink in and he doesn’t say a word because he’s afraid of scaring you further. there’s silence for a long moment. “and… you. you’re magic too?”

he lets out a sharp exhale. “yes. i’m a dryad, a type of fae. a light fae. the shadowy man is a dark fae.”

you surprise yourself when you start to feel a hesitant smile try to find a way to your face. “and this is your tree?” you look up at the grand branches of the rustling willow.

he can’t hide the small smile of pride when he answers. “this is my tree.”

“it’s beautiful,” you marvel, as if you haven’t said so a million times before. but this time, the meaning is new, and once again, yeosang is dying to kiss you.

“thank you,” he breathes out, hopeful you’ll be alright, and hopeful that you won’t shut him out for hiding a whole entire world from you. there’s another pause for silence as you take in the tree with a new set of eyes, and he knows he’s in love with you when he sees the sparkle in your eyes. he feels like he’s ruined any chance with you after putting you in so much danger and throwing you into a world of the unknown and utter confusion. and here you are, staring at his tree with a wonder so pure in your eyes, as if he’s shown you the most beautiful thing in the world.

to you, that’s what it feels like, though. your brain may be running a million miles an hour and your heart may still be beating in fear, but magic is real. for you magic is real in so many ways, because to you, his dreamlike smile is a magic of it’s own, and now he’s really, actually magic. he is one with nature, in a way you can only begin to understand now, and even more deeply, he is one with the most majestic tree you have ever laid your eyes upon. everything about him is beautiful in ways you didn’t even know, but that you feel blessed to have been shown now.

and you struggle to even think that he’s to blame for not telling you yet. it’s true, you’d much rather not have found out the way you did, but how could anyone dismiss his hesitance? no one, when you belong to a species so destructive, especially to mother nature. not when it was because he was afraid of scaring you away. not when he didn’t know until just days ago if you would even be willing to believe in anything near fantastical. you’re honored to know he did intend on telling you, because you believe him wholeheartedly in everything he’s told you.

but a sudden series of doubts cross your mind. what if he’s been playing me this entire time? what if he’s not who he claims to be? what if he’s using magic to make me trust him… to love him, even?

but he interrupts those thoughts with his soft, careful voice. “you broke his spells, you know? those moments when you couldn’t move, you were under the influence of his magic. his kind is far stronger than mine. my magic is connected only to nature. i’d have a completely hellish time trying to break that kind of spell with my magic,” he admits before continuing, “and without any magic? well, it’s nearly impossible. but you did it. your mind is incredibly strong and full of light. of course, i’ve known that for a long time now, but you’ve just proven it to one of the strongest faeries in this forest. you’re practically magical too,” he muses, and every doubt is wiped from your mind.

“i thought of you,” you admit quietly, “and other things that i love.” the confession is subtle, but yeosang doesn’t miss it.

his voice is begging and oh so gentle when he asks. “can i kiss you?”

“please,” you breathe out. then he’s tilting his head closer and closer to yours, just like before, but this time he doesn’t get the faraway look, and this time his lips finally meet yours.

—

you thought that the faraway look would be gone forever once you found out about the world of magic. but it’s come back now that your days with him dwindle. it’s not that you’ve even addressed the end of the summer approaching, and therefore, your time with him too. but it isn’t hard to guess that he’s thinking about the fact that you’re leaving, and he’s not. what you can’t understand is the extra layer of sadness and regret. you can’t figure out what it means because somehow you know it’s not just the fact that you’ll be apart—though that part is plenty distressing to you.

you already knew that the end of the summer would bring a difficult goodbye, but now that he tucks his head into your neck when he’s shy and makes white dahlias bloom for you in seconds, you’re not sure how the hell you’ll be able to part with him. now that you see the way he glows when he channels magic from his tree and shows you fairy houses built into toadstools that are no longer lived in, you can’t fathom that you’ll have to go back to a life where he and his magic are practically a entire world away. now that he kisses your knuckles when he thinks you’ve fallen asleep under the willow with your head on his shoulder, you know that you’ll miss him in a way you’ve never missed anyone before. and now that there’s no doubt in your mind that you love him, you wish he’d tell you the things he keeps hidden behind that unreadable look on his face.

you interrupt the sound of the breeze dancing through the leaves. “it’ll be alright,” you say, voice almost hushed since you’re still a bit afraid to talk about it. but the way you catch him looking at you sometimes has you desperate to comfort him.

“i know.” but his smile is anything but convincing.

“i mean it,” your voice comes out strong this time. “i’ll come back during all my school breaks and i’ll get you a phone so that we can talk while we’re apart. we’ll be alright, we’ll make it work.” you believe in your own words wholeheartedly, but you’re begging for him to do the same.

your voice comes out of his mouth almost at a whisper. “i– that’s what i want. i wish you’d never have go at all, but–”

“but what? there doesn’t have to be a ‘but,’ yeosang,” you argue without even hearing what he has to say. he sighs in defeat.

“you shouldn’t limit yourself.”

“sangie,” you plead, “don’t say that. i’d be limiting myself if i didn’t let myself have you. i’m coming back to you. just because i’m going to meet new people and have new experiences doesn’t mean i’m going to forget about you. yeosang, you’re unforgettable.”

“i–,” suddenly he looks away, avoiding your earnest gaze. the moment of silence that follows stretches out like an eternity, and you begin to fear if he really means it when he wishes you’d never go. “i’ll be waiting for you.” he says it like it’s a wish placed on a shooting star that you can’t see, like there’s still something being left unsaid. but the look in his eyes tells you that he means it, so you lace your fingers through his and bring his hand up to press a kiss to it like a promise.

you curse the early setting sun of the winter. by the time your parent’s car pulls into your grandmother’s driveway, the sky is as dark as it’ll get. you know that, realistically, you wouldn’t have been able to see him today, regardless of the color of the sky. but you can’t hold back just a bit of disappointment.

you let the feeling fall away, though, when your grandma welcomes you back to her home for winter break with open arms and a hug that’s probably warmer than the fire raging in her hearth. even now, you’re still struggling to understand why your parents never let the two of you get close until this past summer.

settling back into your summer room is easy and satisfying, pine cones and fairy clothes you couldn’t take back, gifted by him, still decorating the dresser. of course, this time it’s colder than you’re used to, but the extra blankets and knowledge that yeosang and his willow are right there lull you to sleep quickly.

when the morning sun chases you awake, you’re up with a grin, more glad than ever to get ready for the day and disappear into the forest. you can’t escape breakfast, but you can’t complain about it either, more than happy to taste your grandmother’s food and speak with her more again. and of course, your parents implore you to stick around to spend some time with family. you slip out the back door within minutes of that suggestion.

the snow coated trees are like a foreign home, undeniably familiar, yet different in a way you’ve never seen before. it excites you to realize that you’ll be able to learn about this version of the forest. the branches hang heavier, adorned with the snow that glitters in the cold winter sun. it seems that no matter what season, the forest sparkles in the light of the sun—and magic—to make it feel more like a dream than anything else.

you’re impressed by yourself when you’re able to still find the way to your summer meeting place, the boulder newly majestic with it’s blanket of whiteness. the whole journey is almost as wondrous as discovering magic; experiencing the forest in its snowy glory distracts you for a moment from the fact that the boulder stands tall … and alone. you’ve never seen the boulder this way. empty. there’s not a single time where he wasn’t there, waiting for you.

you try not to let your heart sink heavily into the pit in your stomach, but you can’t shake the way that it feels all wrong. it’s easy to tell yourself that there’s no way he would know you were here to look for. but you then remember what he told you, sitting up on that rock together, soaking up what sun you could. that he’s always there, waiting for you because he can feel it. he can feel you when you enter the forest. so why isn’t he here now? he promised he’d be waiting for you.

maybe it’s the snow, you consider. somehow even that feels like a silly excuse. but you don’t turn around, back in the direction of home. you search the paths that you can see in the midst of the snow, softly calling his name in hopes that it will be carried to him somehow. through the wind, the leaves, or the word of a fairy that you can’t see. you trudge along until you grow too cold and the hot chocolate in your thermos runs out.

—

two more days of searching through the snow, and your parents are beginning to question your daily outings into the forest that only result in a few pictures on your digital camera and a moody quiet from you.

your grandmother comes to your aid, serving you more soup for dinner and telling your parents about how much you adored the forest all summer long. this is the part where you think she’ll out you, tell them that you fell in love with a boy in the forest even when you made her promise not to say a word about it.

but she says nothing. even worse, does nothing. there’s no teasing smile or subtle wink from your end like you would have expected from her, the kind of reaction she always gave you when you talked to her about him. you tread forward with caution, as if testing new waters.

“so grandma, have you seen yeosang lately at all? how’s he doing?”

her response is strange enough to scare you.

“yeosang? you mean the young man who lives in the forest?” she relays this information back at you as if he’s some distant figure, someone you’ve rarely talked about at all.

“yeah,” you confirm, trying to hide any bewildered questions from rising hot into your throat and out of your mouth.

“why, i haven’t heard about him in a long while. i’d forgotten you met him over the summer. it seems i’m really getting old, aren’t i?” she chuckles, as if this is the most normal thing to say regarding the boy her grandchild gushed to her about for months. “but i do hope he’s holding up alright in this cold. we’ve gotten quite a bit of snow this year!” and with that, she starts going on to tell your parents about the snow from this year and last, and probably the year before that too.

you spend the rest of the meal in silence, quick to disappear to your room once your dishes are cleared from the table and washed. you find it difficult to wrap your mind around what happened at dinner tonight, wondering and wondering why the hell your grandma could seem to remember close to nothing about the boy you told her you love. for a minute you’re afraid that she’s getting sick, and that her age truly is what’s affecting her memory. but you think back to the first time you mentioned him to her and can’t help but feel an unsettling sense of deja vu.

missing him worse by the minute and growing increasingly worried for him and maybe even yourself—because what if you’ve made everything up in your head, what if it really was all the dream that it felt like it was—you resolve to finally attempt to make your way to his willow. the past three days, you’ve avoided the journey, afraid of traveling in that direction alone once again after what happened last time. but you know that if you’re to find him anywhere, it’ll be his home.

—

“sweetheart, you probably should stay inside today,” your grandmother advises over a hot breakfast. “there’s supposed to be a snow storm today, i’d hate for you to get caught up in it!”

“thanks, grandma.” you smile softly, trying to make her feel like you’ll heed her directions to lessen the worried crease of her brow. it makes you feel a little bit guilty when you know that you have no intent whatsoever to skip your outing in the forest today.

the moment you’re given the chance, you slip out the back door like you’ve done every other day, this time leaving a note in the living room for your grandma not to worry too much.

the forest is less glittery today, with the grey clouds stretching out to cover the vastness of the unseen blue sky. you set out in the direction that your heart knows better than your mind, trying to drown out the fear hanging in the back of your mind and the ache in your joints that comes from the hard work of trudging through thick snow.

when the snow begins to fall, you pay it no mind, solely intent on finding yeosang and unworried by the slow drifting down of the tiny flakes. but with each passing minute, the snow in the sky grows thicker and falls with determination rather than passivity. then, when you can barely see a few feet in front of you and it feels like your toes, fingers, and nose will fall off from the cold, you finally begin to wish that you had listened to your grandma.

what scares you even more is that, with the landscape so obscured, you’re not quite sure where you are anymore. a moment of panic overtakes you, and without thinking, you cry out his name into the silent air. it feels almost like that’s the only thing that could save you from the storm; if he finds you.

but that panic subsides into a more manageable pit of anxiety in your stomach when you try to push yourself back to rationality. you seek out your own footprints before they’re completely covered by the new snow and follow their faint outlines until they fade away. you don’t get too far, but you pray it’s enough to point you in the right direction. yet, your hope wanes as your exhaustion grows along with the hot pit in your stomach that you wish could warm your shaking limbs.

“yeosang?” you call out, quieter this time. “why can’t i find you?” you choke out, and suddenly you feel a lump in your throat and a burn in your eyes. but the last thing you want to do out here is cry and have your own tears freeze to your lashes and cheeks. “you said you’d wait for me…”

you hang your head as a feeling of defeat washes over you. you curse under your breath and force yourself to lift your head and keep going, intent on saving yourself. but as your gaze goes back to the white streaked landscape, the image of the dark trees and bright snow is interrupted with something moving towards you, quickly and silently. for a moment, you’re scared, but in the next you’re heaving a sigh of relief that comes out sounding much more like a sob.

you’ve barely taken a step forward before his arms are wrapped around you. his heavy breathing is loud in your ear and the brush of his cheek against yours as he pulls you into him is like a piece of heaven.

“yeosang,” you gasp out as your gloved hands clench the plush of his thick coat. he doesn’t speak for a long moment, just holds you as if he thought he’d never see you again.

“you’re shaking,” he whispers, pulling away from you to properly look at you.

you nod. “it’s cold,” you offer as a lame explanation while taking in the image that you’ve missed so much. “you’re so beautiful.” whether the flush in his cheeks is from the cold or your words, you’re not sure, but god are you happy to see it again.

his face becomes serious in a split second when he remembers that you’re shivering. your face had him distracted for a moment. “it’s far too cold for you to be out here right now, lovely.”

“i just wanted to find you,” you let your reason slip. now he’ll feel sorry about it.

and as you knew it would, his face falls even further, but the love in his eyes still grows. but he doesn’t scold you softly in the way you thought he would. he doesn’t tell you that you shouldn’t have been that reckless for him. not because he doesn’t care, just because he’s so relieved to see you. at least you’re safe now.

“let’s get you warm,” is all he says, pulling you into his side and guiding you to the closest shelter he knows of. he’s glad you wandered in this direction, easily taking you to the cabin he told you he lived in before telling you the truth about his magic. you lean into him heavily, letting him do most of the work in getting you there.

“thank god,” he mumbles to himself when he finds the cabin stocked with wood and matches. he sits you down in a chair by the fireplace and wraps you in the few blankets he can find before starting a fire. he tries to keep you talking as he removes your boots and damp socks, redressing your feet with his own pair. then there’s a pot full of water hanging above the fire that’s already starting to bubble with heat. he’s sitting at your feet on the rug, hands holding yours through a blanket to try and transfer some of his body heat to you.

“i missed you,” you mumble as you finally settle down, comforted by the heat of the fire that burns so bright in the hearth that it’s almost raging.

“i missed you, too.” his voice is hushed. it’s earnest, but he says it like it’s something he’s never supposed to be able to tell you. like he can’t believe he’s got you again.

“i meant it when i promised i’d come back for you,” you whisper, fighting the urge to fall asleep.

“i know,” he assures, “and i meant it when i promised i’d wait. i have waited and there’s not a day that went by where i wasn’t thinking of you.”

“so why didn’t you come to me when i first started looking for you?” you beg for him to answer in truth.

“my love,” he starts, cautious and afraid to say it out loud, as if he’ll jinx himself and unravel it all by admitting it, “you weren’t supposed to be looking for me. you weren’t supposed to remember me, at least not the way that we were. you weren’t supposed to remember loving me.”

you squeeze his hand and furrow your eyebrows in confusion. “what do you mean? how could i ever forget loving you?”

“magic,” he says simply, dropping the word heavily. “it makes humans forget, at least for the most part, about meeting creatures from our world to protect us. sometimes they’ll remember those of us like me, the ones that look like humans, but never more than a vague idea. it’s like a dream. so vivid when it happens, but quick to disappear from your mind once you’re awake and out of that world. so…you’re not supposed to remember anything much about…us.”

it all feels like a tall wave of stinging water, salty like the tears threatening to spill, surging over you and knocking you right off of your feet.

“why–,” your voice cracks, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“i didn’t want to hurt you,” he says, voice pleading. “if you knew, it would have been looming over your head like a ticking clock. i wanted you to be able to just be happy while we were together, i didn’t want you to worry about it. about me.”

“but it was looming over your head,” you cry, “you were hurting all alone, convinced i’d forget that i love you, and what? you’d have to love without me to love you back?”

he nods, and a tear slips down his cheek. “i loved you– still love you so much that i couldn’t push you away. as long as i could love you while you remembered me, i was alright with loving you when you forgot. i’m sorry for hiding more from you, i swear i am, but it was worth it to me. to let you leave me with hope rather than a final goodbye… i wasn’t ready to say goodbye.” the last sentence is whispered, as if it’s something he’s realized just now, that he didn’t say a word just as much for you as for himself. it breaks your heart to see tears flow from his apologetic eyes so freely.

“but i do remember you. and god, do i remember loving you. i’ve remembered you and the way you make me feel every day since i told you that you were unforgettable.” he looks up at you like you’re the most heavenly thing he’s ever set his eyes upon.

“thank you,” yeosang whispers through his tears, voice thick with emotion, “thank you for remembering. i don’t even know how it’s possible, but i thought i’d go crazy without you. i thought it would be fine, but it took everything in me not to go right to you when you got here. i knew i wouldn’t be able to act as if i didn’t love you more than anything else. i’m sorry i’m late.”

“quit apologizing and just kiss me, will you?”

his expression is relieved as he scrambles to his knees and leans in close to you. you lean forward, letting the blankets fall from your hands in favor of placing them on his cheeks and pressing your lips to his. you almost break the kiss when you feel a fresh wave of tears fall from his eyes, but you wipe them away gently with your thumbs, kissing him harder to prove to him that you’re really there. then his hands are on your waist, holding you tight and pulling you closer. the movement of his lips is practically desperate, and he wants to kiss you with all the gentleness that he can muster, but he just can’t help it when you’re right here in front of him.

“i love you,” he mumbles against your lips and cuts off your reply as he goes back to kissing you hard. he’s trying to get so close that he pulls you right off the chair and onto the floor, into his lap. “i need you,” he whispers with the softness he wants you to feel from him. your arms wrap around his neck and you think his kisses must have magic in them too when his lips are on yours again. it’s safe to say that you’ve warmed up by now. to catch your breath, you pull back and brush your nose against his with all the affection in the world. “yeosang, you are like a dream. just the kind that’s so beautiful and loved that i could never, never forget you.”

#from members #ateez #5k-15k #fluff #angst #strangers to lovers au #fantasy au

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