#Steamy Slats

[ffullstopsims1]

Steamy Slats(TS4 to TS1)

I converted them because I tried to demake my house from TS4 to TS1.

Download link: Dropbox Simfileshare

#ts1 build #ts1 wall #sims 1 build #sims 1 wall #TS4 to TS1 wall #TS4toTS1 #Sims 4 to Sims 1 #the sims 1 #ts1 cc #sims 1 cc #sims 1 #ts1 #FFullstop_ts1_build #FFullstop_ts1_wall #Steamy Slats

[kingofthe-egirls]

SOUP: SANJI x Y/N

(a sequel to a sequel, this is based off "between what was and will be" by @thus-spoke-lo and the following "like it's the only thing i'll ever do" written by @zimzalabimmmmm. plz read these first!)

(cw: sanji has a pet hamster, reader had a hamster who recently passed, [same, so...sanji is helping me grieve], food, kissing, dirty talk, consent, safe word selection, slut/whore/daddy used, swallowing, cunnilingus, fingering, blowjob, self-insert, streamer, stars indicate switching narratives)

(a/n: ok so now im desperately in love with sanji so plz enjoy this self indulgent sequel to a sequel)

Songs: "i hope you know what you're doing" by KING MALA,"dirty dishes" by KING MALA, "punchline" by KING MALA

words: 5.6k

Sanji huffs as he gets back home, setting his backpack down by the door. He'd had another late shift, and his feet hurt.

He hums, loosening his tie on his way to the shower. He leaves a trail of discarded clothing in his wake, strewn across the wooden slats of his apartment hallway. Steam fills the bathroom as he starts the shower, raking his hand through sweaty hair.

The shower is slow, as he lazily scrubs his body down of all the latent smells of soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. He shakes his head under the stream of water, pushing his hair back to wash his face.

Someone knocks at the door.

He grunts, shutting the water off a little earlier than he would've liked. He rubs a scratchy towel over his head, throwing another one around his waist as he steps with wet feet back to his front door. What now?

He swings the door open without a second thought.

****

"Oh--!" You say, face filling with heat at the sight of your neighbor's steamy, nearly-naked form. "S-Sanji! Hi," you scratch at the back of your head, shuffling awkwardly now between your feet. Sanji, for his part, stares at you with parted lips.

"H-hey there!" He steps back a little, hiding half his frame behind his front door. "Sorry, love! I was just--showering." He grins a little, crooking a swirly eyebrow up a hitch. His hair is pushed back from his face for once, giving you the rare sight of both his blue eyes at once. You bite your lip.

"I can see that," you start, stepping a tad closer. "Sorry to interrupt."

"No, no! Not at all," he opens the door wider, allowing you to step in after him. He rushes off to the back of his apartment, swiftly escaping back to his bedroom to get dressed. "Make yourself at home, sweetest! There's iced tea and apples in the fridge!" He calls before kicking the door shut behind him.

****

Shit.

She looks familiar, somehow, and Sanji's not sure how to place it. She's lived next door in the apartment building since he's been here, so that's probably it, but...Sanji shakes his head.

She's waiting for him.

Sanji sighs, soap suds sliding down his calves as he casts about his closet for something suitable. She's--so pretty.

Sanji rakes his hands through sopping hair. He decides to just go with the first two articles of clothing he sees: a white t-shirt and dark blue denim jeans. He wonders if she's hungry.

"Sorry about that, sweetheart," he says, making his way back to his living room. She is not where he left her, hopefully helping herself to some iced tea from the fridge, but instead staring silently at his hamster habitat. She's crying.

"Sweetheart?" He asks again, slowly stalking towards her. She's been over once or twice before, sharing drinks or a dessert he'd whipped up, but never really more than that. She's definitely never cried in front of him.

"Sorry," she whispers, fingers ghosting over the shiny aquarium glass. His hamster is trudging through her colorful tubes, slowly making her groggy way to her food bowl. There's freshly sliced carrots and celery already filling up the dish. She traces the hamster's movement with watery eyes. "She's so pretty."

Sanji's heart softens, as he steps up to stand beside her.

"Brie," he introduces his lovely pet to his even lovelier neighbor, "She's about two months old, so she's still adjusting." The hamster in question is now sitting with her tiny hands holding a carrot slice. A soft, strangled sob echoes from her delicate throat. Sanji's hands go to her shoulders, almost as an instinct, "Sweetheart, are you alright?"

She shakes her head.

Fuck.

Sanji grimaces, as he recalls the last time a sad, beautiful woman stood crying in his apartment. He hopes this time won't be as soul-wrenching as that. She sniffles, still staring at his hamster.

"Mine died last night."

Sanji blanches.

"Oh! My love, I'm so sorry," he swiftly guides her away, back to the couch, and she sits gratefully. Her body bounces a bit, on the overstuffed leather seat. Her chest also bounces, but Sanji tries his hardest not to look. Well, not for too long, at least.

He's only human.

She shakes her head, wavy hair falling down her shoulders in soft sheets. She takes the tissues he hands her, and blows snot into the bundle. Her cheeks are dusted with freckles. She looks up at him, smiling for his sake. She's so...alive.

Real.

Sanji swallows.

"S'okay," she says, stuffy, "She was three and a half years old, so..." She trails off, staring at the tissues in her hands. She sort of looks like the hamster behind him, all hunched over with fretting claws.

Sanji raises his eyebrows, surprised. "Hamsters are only supposed to live for two." He regards his neighbor with a newfound reverence. Any friend of rodents is a friend in his book.

She smiles.

****

"Yeah, she was a starlet," you say, shaking a little as you laugh. "She had a nice bin cage, with lots of fresh veggies. I, um...wanted to bake a pumpkin pie for her. Since pumpkin seeds were her favorite--," you cut yourself off, face crumbling as you start to cry again. Sanji sits next to you. He strokes your shoulders, his hand rubbing soothing circles over the fabric of your soft crop top.

"What was her name?"

Your handsome neighbor softens his voice, leaning his head down to catch your salt-streaked gaze. You smile, squishing the wadded up tissues in your hands. "Snegurochka."

Sanji blinks.

You laugh, "It's Slavic. Russian for 'snow maiden.' It was snowing in April when I got her, three years ago. So, that's what I named her!"

Sanji smiles, too. His teeth sparkle in his overhead lighting. It's nice, and florescent. Like some sort of snazzy art gallery. His coffee table is frosted glass, too. His arm chair is deep blue velvet, and the couch you're sitting on is plush, butter-soft brown leather.

"Such a good name," he says, squeezing your shoulder. His arm is heavy around you, and you lean into the welcome weight and warmth. He stiffens, and you step back up to standing, immediately.

"M'sorry!" You say, stuffing the used tissues into your shorts pocket. "I shouldn't have come over here, I-I don't wanna just sob on your couch--,"

Sanji stands too, waving a hand to cut you off.

"Sit," he says, guiding your hand once again to take comfort in his presence. "Have you eaten today?"

You shake your head.

"Let's change that."

****

Sanji pulls out a large, serrated vegetable knife.

"Lucky for you," he says, giving the knife a deft twist, "Pumpkins are in season, and I just so happened to pick up a few from the farmer's market yesterday." He flourishes the knife, pointing to the squashes sitting big and orange on his counter. She smiles.

His chest squeezes, and he does his best to ignore it.

Dark-haired, pretty girls with soothing voices and sparkling eyes are his weakness, but he refuses to be caught in another spiderweb of sob story lovesickness.

"How about an autumn squash soup, hm? I have some stale bread I could toast into croutons--?" He glances up, to suddenly see her right in front of his face. She's leaning across the counter, pleading at him with hungry eyes.

"Squash soup is my favorite."

She's salivating already, silly as can be, at the mention of her favorite food. Sanji grins. Now that is something he can handle.

"Sit down," he instructs, slicing into the pumpkin's orange rind, "And let me serve you some soup."

****

Sanji works swiftly, twirling around his kitchen like some sort of ballet dancer. You watch him, stinging eyes tracking his every movement.

"Sugar!" You say suddenly, eyes popping open wide. Sanji falters for a second, standing at the sink to wash off his knife and cutting board. Everything he uses in this kitchen is top tier, chef grade shit.

"I'm out of sugar. That's why I came here? For the pie. But, um--sorry? I kinda roped you into cooking for me...," you trail off, scrunching your nose. You pick at the frayed end of your cuffed denim shorts. It's autumn, now, but you run hot and can't stand the heat. You're in shorts and sandals until the end of November, at least.

Sanji shakes his head, stirring the simmering squash in a large pot over the stove. He has a long wooden spoon and everything. He looks like some sort of model in a home décor magazine.

"Has anyone ever told you how handsome you are?"

You say it brashly, brazenly, with a tilt of your head. He had opened his mouth to wave away your second apology, but your own stupid mouth had opened itself first. You have ADHD, alright?

Impulsiveness is kinda your thing.

Sanji stutters, his back turned to you. His shoulders are tense through his cotton t-shirt. You tilt your head, chewing on the inside of your cheek. Is he uncomfortable? "S-sorry," you say again, sitting on your hands with your foot in your mouth. You swing your legs.

Sanji shakes his head, shooting you a glance over his shoulder.

"Not, uh--in those exact words," he says, smiling sheepishly from under a crop of straw-colored hair. His eyes are like sapphires. Well, the one that you can see is, anyway. He smiles tightly, before spinning back to stir the soup. It smells delicious.

"Shame," you say, plainly.

"Is that so?" He asks, intrigue scooting beneath his words. His accent is slightly English. You sip your iced tea.

"Mhmm!" You say, swirling the ice cubes around in the glass he gave you. It's heavy, with a thick base and a golden band around the rim. "Someone shoulda said something by now," you stick your fingers in the glass to pop out an ice cube. It's crushed, your favorite, and you happily crunch down on it. The coldness stings your teeth.

Sanji is smiling in earnest now, his shoulders relaxing down in their sockets. The soft fabric of his t-shirt stretches over the muscular planes of his back. You sip another mouthful of tea.

"How tall are you?"

You're no stranger to flirtation (obviously), and Sanji seems fun to praise. His eyes go all steamy and his hands start fidgeting.

"180 centimeters," he says swiftly, sprinkling spices into the simmering pot. You snort.

"What could that possibly mean?"

Sanji laughs, a good belly laugh, and you grin.

"Sorry, love," he winks at you, "That's about 5'11 in American."

****

She's delicious.

She speaks plainly, in stop-and-start sentences. She reminds him of his friend Luffy, sort of. She's as impulsive as he is, at least. Although she hasn't broken anything in his apartment. Yet.

She's as hungry as Luffy is, though, if not more.

She devours the soup he plates and hands to her, with roasted seeds and fresh croutons as a garnish. She has no table manners, opting to slurp the soup right out of the bowl. Honestly, it's kind of refreshing.

He's spent the last few months trying his damndest to get over his best friend. She'd broken his heart, consciously or not, and he's been nursing it ever since. He'd only had one night with her, and they'd never really been dating, but… Heartbreak is heartbreak and it sure as hell still hurts. She's off somewhere, moved back home, doing who knows what with whom.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, does it?

Now, he's the head chef at one of the city's finest artisan cafes, having brought French delicacies to the menu as a former sous chef of the Baratie. His head chef and mentor Zeff had recommended him for the job. It was difficult to leave the place he'd called home, but it felt like the right time to move on. After all, hadn't she?

Sanji clears his head, trying to savor his own spoonful of soup. It's almost perfect. "Here," he says, swiftly snatching the cinnamon from next to the stove. He shakes it a little over his soup, and then reaches over to top the lady's off, too. She smiles sweetly at him, and his heart clenches. He sniffs, spinning around to put the cinnamon away. She's stirring her spoon through the soup, mixing the spice in.

"Sanji," she says, spoon still halfway in her mouth, "This is so good."

Sanji smiles, flattered.

"I'm glad you're enjoying it, mon cherie," he eyes the swiftly disappearing soup, "Let me know if you need seconds."

"Yes please!" She cries, happily handing him her now-empty bowl. There's a streak of orange on her upper lip. Sanji smiles, dancing around the counter's edge to stand in front of her. She's swinging her legs off the side of his leather bar stool.

Sanji pauses, gauging her expression, before swiftly wiping away the stripe of soup. He licks it off his thumb, savoring the spiced taste.

She watches his movements like a hawk.

****

Sanji is delightful.

He's sweet, chivalrous, and an excellent cook. And he's a small pet parent. A dreamboat, really. Like something out of your thirteen-year-old self's diary. So...you're understandably on edge.

"You're not a serial killer, are you?"

You ask it as easily as you asked for his height. Your questions are still not quite normal, though, since Sanji splutters on his soup. It's perfect, by the way. Your sweet, handsome neighbor coughs into a napkin as he recovers. You suck on your spoon.

"Uh--um, not that I'm aware of?"

You grin. "S'good enough for me!" You swing around in your seat, striding confidently around the counter to stand in front of him. He's a few inches taller than you. "Sanji?"

He stares at you.

"Thanks for the soup," you smile, and lean up on your tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He moans--a soft, surprised thing--before you pull away.

Sanji's face is blood-red, and you hope you haven't crossed a line. You scrunch your eyebrows together. "Is...that okay? Sorry, shoulda asked--,"

Sanji has your face cupped in his hands, having swiftly set down his bowl to lace slender fingers through your hair. He plays with it, softly.

"S'alright," he says, eyes half-lidded. "Still need some sugar, love?"

You smile like the sun.

And then Sanji is lowering his face to yours, and you eagerly press up to meet his lips halfway. He tastes like the squash soup you just ate.

"Hmmph!" He moans, as you slide your tongue between his lips. His hands tighten in your hair, gently pulling on the strands. Your own palms trace their way up his muscular chest and around his neck. You lift up on your tiptoes again, trying to deepen the kiss.

Sanji wraps his arms around your waist, and lifts you up to set you back down on the counter. He slides in between your legs, never breaking the kiss once. You suck on his bottom lip, gently.

"Sweetheart," he moans into your mouth, his hands scratching along your scalp. Streaming's nowhere near as fun as this. You hum, pleased, tilting your head to accept the gesture. Sanji's lips quickly find their place at your pulse point, and suck gently. He slides his tongue up and down your neck, as you gasp. A full body shiver runs over your spine. Your toes curl up as your legs instinctually wrap around him. You pull him closer.

Closer.

"Sanji--," you gasp, pulling on his hair to stop him from making you squirt right there. Your neck is sensitive, to say the least. "Is this a date?"

Sanji smiles, running his thumb along your bottom lip. His swirly eyebrow arches delicately. "Only if you want it to be."

You smile, nodding sheepishly.

He stills, half-parted lips two inches from your own. "So...did you really need sugar, or...?"

You stop, blush forming along your cheeks. Sanji laughs, long and loud, before resting his head on your collarbone. He leaves kisses there, sweetly. You snicker, scratching your fingers through his satin hair. "Sorry...," you tease, tracing the line of his t-shirt's collar.

Sanji hums, before pulling back. He tugs on the waistband of your denim shorts. His eye is hooded in lust. "Make it up to me, will you darling?"

You grin, biting your lip as you bounce up and down in your seat.

"Gladly."

****

She is incapable of sitting still.

Once Sanji has her in his bedroom, she is all restless and fidgety and handsy as all shit. She's enamored with his chest, tracing her delicate fingertips over his abs and pressing her thumbs into his stomach.

"Tickles," he says, circling his hands around her wrists. She looks up, sheepish.

"Sorry,” she says, leaning forward to kiss him again. She leaves sloppy kisses all over his chin and cheeks. Sanji shudders out a breathy laugh, letting her trail soft kisses down his throat. "Soup was just--really good, is all."

Sanji laughs, outright.

"So glad you think so," he says, sliding his hands around her waist to bring her onto his lap. She giggles, wrapping her own arms around his neck. She kisses him, again.

"Such a good kisser," she says, sliding her tongue along his bottom lip. Sanji's hard as fuck right now, and his hips buck up involuntarily.

"Sweetheart," he says, squeezing the fat of her hips where she straddles him. "What else can I do for you, hm?”

****

Soup has always been your favorite food. And food has always been the way to your heart. And your heart has always been the way to your bed. Sanji fiddles with the ends of your hair. He’s asking you for service, for what he can provide.

But he tastes so good, pumpkin still left coating his sliding tongue as he kisses you again. You hum.

“Sanji, will you let me thank you? For the soup,” you say, scritching through his hair. It’s flaxen, light gold with shimmery highlights.

He stares at you.

You take his silence for acceptance—at least until he says so—and sit up so you can start pulling your shirt off over your head. It’s a tie dye crop top—purple and blue—and you paired it with a lacy bralette. Sanji traces the edges of the silky fabric, his fingertips brushing over the swell of your breasts. He’s salivating, by now.

“Of course, milady,” he says, smiling at you, “Who am I to deny such a beautiful maiden?” He squeezes your tits in slender hands. You shiver.

“You speak like a dude from a romance novel,” you tease, letting him knead your breasts through the fabric. You shift, rolling your hips onto his hardening cock. Your denim shorts press up against your clit, the seam finding just the right spots.

“Is that a bad thing?”

You shake your head, instead opting to pull your bralette off, too.

Sanji stares at your body, marveling at your soft flesh as he plays with your tits for you. He circles his soft thumbs around your areolas, then flicks at your sensitive nipples. You hiss, drawing in a sharp breath through your teeth. He stares at you, gauging your reactions with the steady confidence of a lover.

“So fucking sweet for me,” he murmurs, before lowering his head to gently suck on one of your nipples. His fingers play with the other one, and you tilt your head back in bliss.

“Sanji—,” you hiccup, hips rolling into his instinctually. “So good—,”

“Sweetheart,” he moans again, his favorite nickname for you, “Service turns me on, darling. Please let me serve you?”

How could you possibly say no to that?

“Sure!” You chirp happily, still straddling his lap. He lifts you up, switching positions so you’re lying against the bed, head cushioned by soft pillows. You snuggle in. “I like being a sub,” you raise your eyebrows suggestively, “Safe word’s ‘scarecrow.’”

Sanji nods, repeating the safe word back to you. “Scarecrow, got it,” he murmurs against your exposed stomach. He hovers over you, supporting himself on his hands as he presses a line of kisses above the waistband of your shorts. He fingers the silver button below your belly. His eyes meet yours, hair softly falling into his face. He looks like an angel. “Anything else I should know?”

“Spanking’s hot,” you say, shifting in place as heat courses through you. Sex is your favorite thing. “But slaps anywhere else are a no go. I like slut and whore as pet names. And princess,” you start to list your kinks off on your fingers, “I like calling you daddy, if that’s okay? Also restraints, and tickling, and ASMR!”

Sanji nods at each fetish, visibly making note of them for later.

“What about you?”

Sanji sits up, still playing with the button of your shorts. He’s achingly hard in his jeans, and you want to touch. So you do.

“S-sex,” he stutters, as you touch him through his jeans. “Sucking on your skin, leaving marks,” his head tilts back as you palm his hard cock.

You’re sitting up on one elbow, sliding your hand up and down the line of his shaft. He’s hard and thick, and sort of longer than you’re sure you can handle. You bite your lip, feeling just how aroused he is. You can’t wait to see him.

“Switching sometimes, between sub and dom. Strap-ons,” he shudders, curving his spine around his center. You draw a line up his shaft with one finger. “Sucking your tits, size difference, hentai shit—,” he sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Restraints are hot as fuck.”

“On you or me?”

“Either.”

Shit.

“Let’s watch porn together sometime,” you suggest, “So we can see what turns each other on.”

Sanji growls, low in his throat. He's leaning back, abs clenching as you play with him. He stares down at you with one, glittering eye. “So fucking sexy…did you know that, sweet girl?"

You hum, “I’ve heard.”

He smirks, and slowly makes his way down to the waistband of your shorts.

“Daddy’s gonna take care of you now, okay?” His stubble tickles your stomach, and you nod. He teeths at the denim, and sparks follow in his wake. He peers up at you through his bangs, blue eyes shadowed in lust. “So be a sweet girl and lie back for me.”

Sheepish, you obey.

Sanji starts licking at the inside of your thigh. He pinches the fat of the upper part, just below the cuff of your shorts. He massages your legs, slowly working his way up and down them again. His lips are heaven.

“Sanji…,” you say, squirming your hips in place, “Stop teasing?”

“Okay, okay,” he amends, lifting up to slide your shorts down your legs. He discards them off to the side, leaving you in your striped underwear. He lies down on his stomach, between your legs. Shivers run down your spine. Sanji stares at you for one moment more, seeing the lust and adoration in your eyes. You squeak, something small and excited, and he smirks. “So needy for me, hm?”

You nod, ferociously.

“Please.”

Sanji hums, and places a single kiss to your clothed clit. He strokes a finger over the wet patch of your panties, pressing into your soaking slit.

He starts slowly, smooching around your pussy to gauge your scent, your expressions, your sounds. He slips two fingers into the side of your undies, sliding along your soaking folds, and you arch your back with a whine. “Sensitive,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your thigh. “May I start, my love?”

“Mhmm!!!”

He giggles at your eagerness, and slides your underwear down and over your legs. He tosses them to the side. “Stunning,” he gasps, eyes widening as he spreads your legs. “Pretty girl, such a slut for Daddy, aren’t you? So needy,” he circles your knee, seeing your pussy flutter at his praise. He makes a mental note of how he’s pleasing you, every twitch and moan as he explores the new, strange and beautiful thing that is another’s body. He’s so glad to have you in his bed. “Spread your legs for me, sweetness.”

****

She obeys.

Sanji lies down on his stomach, spreading her pussy lips with his thumbs. She’s soaking, for him.

“Please, Sanji—,” she gasps for him, straining her hips closer to his face. She’s already flushed and ready, hands balled into fists in the sheets.

“S'alright, love," he says, breath fanning over the soft hairs on her lips. She purrs, staring at him as smug as a jungle cat. He stops, seeing the sudden darkness that flashes in her eyes. Sanji licks his lips.

He slides his tongue across her slit experimentally, the tip of his tongue swirling up and around her clit. She arches, sighing at the sensation. Sanji starts to spell his name. She croons, eyebrows raised as her breathing quickens.

"So soft," she whispers, hand going to tug at his hair, "Faster?"

Sanji serves.

He swipes his tongue, faster but not harsher, in swift circles around her swollen clit. His arms encircle her thighs, hands holding onto the creases of her hips. She has a roll of fat over her belly, which swells every time she curls forward to watch him. Her mouth is open, parted like a peach ring, as she stares down at his movements through darkening eyes.

"Sweet girl," he says against her, voice reverberating through her heat. His fingers stroke at her entrance, slick with arousal, and he pushes delicately inside. She clenches around his finger, swollen and searing against his skin. She whines, his own body answering her with a gasping thrust. His cock has been hard for a few minutes now, and he rubs his hips into the mattress.

"Suck harder," she commands, grasping at his hair. He lets her guide his head to where she wants him, which is apparently with his lips sucking hard around her clit. 

Sanji slides two fingers into her pussy, starting to thrust gently with his hand. She scrunches her eyebrows, squirming side to side. "Slower," she says, so he stills his pace to flutter them inside her, instead. She's squishy and warm, and Sanji's eyes roll back in his head. He's being just as loud as she is, sighing and moaning at every breath.

"Sa-ah-anji!"

She's squeezing around his fingers, as he feels her release and clench over and over again. He slows his movements, tracking her short rasps as he lightens the suction on her clit. 

"So good," she says, voice high-pitched and scratchy. She pushes up to sitting, sweaty and flushed, as she makes grabby hands for his face. "C'mere?"

Sanji obliges.

She smiles, taking his scruffy cheeks in between her palms. She pecks sweet, little kisses all over his face. His own breathing is ragged and heavy, and she grins at him seductively. "Your turn!"

Sanji slides onto his side, letting her straddle his legs. His cock is achingly hard through his jeans, and she finally, finally releases it as she tugs his pants down his muscular thighs.

"So pretty…," she whispers, shiny eyes taking in the sight of his weeping dick. She strokes her thumb over the head, smearing precum along the heated skin. Sanji hisses as she slowly lowers her swollen lips to his cockhead, sucking gently. She stares at him, eyes open wide and curious. So he lets her learn his body, too. She rubs her thumb along the vein on his underside, and he gasps. She grins, lifting off his cock to tongue at the tip in soft, fluttery licks.

"S'okay?" 

She swirls her hand up and down his shaft. Her wrist curves at his base, and then twists deftly as she strokes him up and down. Sanji whimpers, a sound he's embarrassed to make, but she sparkles at it. She bites her lip, turning her attention now to his dick completely.

She lowers down her head, and takes him all the way to the base.

"Holy shit–," he curls his fingers in her hair, holding on for dear life. It's taking everything in him not to start fucking her throat as hard and fast as he fucking can, but–she's delicate, divine, and was crying just forty minutes earlier. Now, however, his heart squeezes as he sees sparkly tears forming at the corners of her lashes. She's smiling, somehow, even as she wraps her lips around his shaft. He groans, heat coursing through him at every lick and suckle.

His abs clench, and he knows he can only stay still for so much longer.

"Sweetheart," he gasps, "Can I fuck your face?"

She moans, long and lewd, as she nods on his cock.

Sanji grips her head tighter, securing her in place, before he starts thrusting gently into her mouth. His head is squeezed by the back of her throat, constricting and releasing as she struggles to breathe. She blows long, shaky breaths through her nose as she takes him.

"So good, baby," he praises her, stroking her cheekbone with a shaky finger. She smiles with her eyes, crinkling up at the edges. Her pupils are blown. She hums, reverberating through his shaft, as she lets him hit it deeper. 

Sanji lets his head hit the pillow, senses clouding over with sweet pleasure. He shallowly thrusts into her face, stealing glances at her flushed cheeks and fucked out expression as he does.

She starts fondling his balls, and Sanji gasps.

His abdomen clenches, and it's not long before he's finishing down her throat.

"Shit–," he groans through a wave of shimmering white sensations, as she swallows as much of his cum as she can. Slipping down her chin, he watches rivulets of his own spunk drip onto the sheets below her face. He groans, an audible break in his voice. 

"S'good," she praises him, popping off him with a smack. She licks her lips. "Sweet, actually, Sanji. Damn," she snickers, shaking her head, "Shit's never actually tasted good for me, hah."

Sanji laughs, breathy and loud.

(She makes him laugh).

Sanji doesn't know what to do with that thought, so instead he sits up and grabs her chin in his fingers. He thumbs at her bottom lip, and she opens her mouth. He inspects her, his own mouth parted at the ecstasy. She sticks her tongue out, eyes crossing upwards in an ahegao.

"Now, where did my little slut learn that?" 

She giggles. "I like hentai, too." She says with an arch in her eyebrows. She's glowing, soft and flushed, with something striking behind her smile. She looks like something he'd see in a rain forest. Smart, with sharp claws and sharper teeth. She drags an acrylic nail down the spasming muscles of his stomach. Sanji swallows.

She traces the line of his hip bones.

She flicks her falcon's eyes back up to his sweaty face. She is naked, but seems stronger for it. Empowered. Sanji, however, feels weak as shit beneath her predator's gaze.

"Sanji," she says, something artemesian in her soft tone, "Sex with you is really sweet." She flicks her eyes up to him, as something else gut punches him in surprise. She likes him. 

Sanji swipes at his nose, already feeling the trickles of blood starting to slip out of his nostrils. She's a huntress, and he her prey.

"S-so glad you think so," he says, sliding out of bed as elegantly as he can. He grabs the tissues off his dresser and stuffs some up his nose. "Sorry," he says, nasally, "Nosebleed."

She snorts.

"Hentai shit, indeed."

Sanji shakes his head.

"So…," she pushes off the bed, naked and alluring. She crosses the distance between them, staring at him like he's something marble and statuesque. She assesses his form, stroking her fingers along his biceps. "Secrets time."

Sanji stops. "Oh?"

She nods, sheepish. "Have you…seen me before?" She tilts her head, something subtle under her words that he can't quite place. She sighs, "Like…on the internet?"

Sanji's eyes widen.

"Oh." 

Something about her is familiar, he realizes. She's been on his phone screen more than once, with a saved ASMR tab on his incognito browser. StarlaStreams. He's been listening to her streams for a few weeks now. She's soothing; helps him relax.

"Starla!" He says, surprised, "I'm surprised I didn't recognize you sooner, actually." He steps aside to dispose of the tissues stuffed up his nose. He sniffs, swiping his forearm under his nostrils.

She sways forward, hands held behind her back. She's flirting with him, sweet and silly as can be. "So...is that a like, cool thing?"

Sanji answers without a second thought.

"Yes."

Sanji stares at her, and she preens beneath his gaze. She lets him trace her features with his eyes, swinging her hips side to side.

StarlaStreams is standing in his bedroom. She's not wearing makeup, and she's shorter in person than he would have thought.

He's used to seeing her all set up for her streams: Sailor Moon style wigs and soft pink blushes across her highlighted nose, false lashes batting sparkly at the camera. But now he can see her features as clear as day, suddenly recognizing her soft voice and sweet smile.

She arches an eyebrow, and Sanji feels something akin to fear shoot through his gut (and his dick).

And then something fiery and dark flashes behind her eyes, and she's pounced on top of him, legs wrapping around his waist as she leaps into his arms. His hands go to catch her, supporting her thighs as she sticks her tongue down his throat. She cackles into his mouth.

"Sweet!"

****

#dumpster dive #my writing #one piece fanfic #sanji fic #sanji fanfic #sanji smut #sanji x you #sanji x reader #sanji x y/n

[wannabemurdock]

you’re in a sauna at the avengers tower, and Thor comes in with no towel on.

I had to search the mechanics of a sauna for this. I go the extra mile for these asks. This didn’t turn out as steamy (wow funny) as I intended but this was fun to write.

“ARE YOU GOOD, CHAMP?” Your voice comes out more shrill than intended but this is the last thing you expected when you decided to take some you time.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ⋆✦⋆ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

You walk into the sauna, towel wrapped around you tightly as you take a seat on the wooden bench that wraps around the walls of the steamy room.

Grabbing the ladle from the bucket, you pour the water onto the hot rocks in the centre before resting back against the wall. Your back uncomfortable against the wood slats of the wall.

Beads of sweat roll down your skin, cooling you slightly as you try to enjoy your time before having to go to yet another strategic meeting. Lost in your thoughts, you don’t hear another person enter the room.

“Ah, Y/n!” A deep voice addresses you. You turn your head to see a completely bare Thor.

“ARE YOU GOOD, CHAMP?” Your voice comes out more shrill than intended but this is the last thing you expected when you decided to take some you time.

Thor’s taken aback by your tone.

“Yes I am... Pal…” He takes a seat much closer than socially accepted in this situation. You keep your eyes closed, but the image of Thor as naked as the day he was born is burnt into the back of your eyelids.

“You know that you’re supposed to wear a towel, right?” You understand that he’s used to different social norms but you can’t help but laugh at what’s just happened.

“As beautiful as you are, Thor, please put on a towel. There’s spares outside the door.” You hear him leave and come back. Assuming it’s safe, you open your eyes. Giving you a twirl, you clap for his now covered figure before he takes his original seat next to you.

You two sit there in comfortable silence, blissed out by a moment of silence compared to the normally hectic atmosphere of the tower. Thors the first to speak up.

“You think I’m beautiful?” You lean over to nudge him.

“Damn right, Pretty Boy.” You turn to see him blush at the new nickname.

#wannabemurdock’s asks #marvel #marvel fandom #marvel imagine #marvel fluff #marvel crack #thor x reader #Thor x reader fluff #Thor x reader crack #Thor fluff #Thor crack #Thor #Thor odinson #Thor odinson x reader #Thor odinson x reader fluff #Thor odinson x reader crack #Thor odinson fluff #Thor odinson crack

[sims4t2bb]

weekly update - part 1

Hello everyone, and happy Sunday! We hope you're sitting down with a nice, warm drink as you're browsing through today's update; it's such a long one, it was split into two parts (find part two here)! 🍵☕

The first part of the updates for this week can be found under the cut, as always! 🍃

— Base Game

Buy Mode

Dizzy Palms Ceiling Fan and Perfect Plumbob Ceiling Fan conversions by ePSYlord has been added.

Build Mode

Dots of Color, Dream within a Dream, Drywall, Dulcet Duet, Eldan Secrets, Electric Sheepskin, Essence of Pastel, EveryShade, Fair & Square, Firehouse Brick, and more conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

— Expansion Packs

Get To Work

Clinical Panels conversion by @lordcrumps has been added.

Get Together

Baa Baa Barn Style, Brickwall, Brickwork, Clutched Stones, Coloring Within the Lines, Dressing Mortar, Elaborate Plastering, Embellished Mucilage, Embroidered Plaster, Get Ruins, and more conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

City Living

Alleyway Bricks, Brickhouse Wall Pattern, Faded Memories, Large Fancy Wall Tiles, “Mold”ed Baseboard, More Mortar Bricks Wall Pattern, Street Walking City Bricks Wall Pattern, and Worn Stripes conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Seasons

Craftsman Stonewall, Woodstone Crafter’s Wall, and Worn Wood Siding conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Get Famous

Faux Wood Shingles Full Panel, Faux Wood Shingles Half Panel, Homemade Brick, Long Large Bricks, Opulent Panelled Brocade, Simply Stucco, Small Long Bricks, Sound Off Fabric Panelling, Sound Stage Panelling, and Veins of Gold Marble Walls conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Island Living

Bamboo Breeze Ceiling Fan conversion by ePSYlord has been added.

Natural Curves, Need for Reed, Seafarer, Tessellated Lava Rock, and Walk the Plank conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Discover University

Accented Stone, Britechester Brick Stone, Dorm Chic, Foxbury Stone, Stones that Groove, and The Gibbs conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Eco Lifestyle

Clean Slate, From the Earth Itself, Plastered Style, Rusted Iron, Smooth Panelling, Upcycled and Upcycled, and Tough conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Snowy Escape

Onsen-style Tile Murals, Peak Design Stone Tile, Summit Cedar, Summit Cedar Support Beam, Tea House Wainscotting, and Winter Warmed Wood Panelling conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Cottage Living

Brick Whisper, Flowered Vines Wainscoting - Left, Flowered Vines Wainscoting - Right, Garden Party Wainscoting, Quite Cobbled, and Sunlit Stone conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

High School Years

Another Brick for the Wall, Bricks of Academia, Honey, Comb On!, Melting Waves, Miles of Tiles, Papyrus in Art Deco, The Hallway Stone, and The Perfect Plaster conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Growing Together

Between the Lines Shingles, Half Stripe, Full Hype Tile, Haughty Herringbone Wall Tile, Hide & Sleek Metal Panels, Slate-ly Tiled, Suburban Dream Siding, and Well Crafted Masonry conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

— Game Packs

Outdoor Retreat

Horizontal Clapboard and Vertical Clapboard conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Spa Day

A Concrete Idea, Matchstick Magic, Minimal Slats, Perfect Horizontal Mosaic, Perfect Vertical Mosaic, Rectangular Flows, Ridiculously Rectangular Runner, Steamy Sideways Slats, Steamy Slats, The Glow that Flows Wall Panel, and more conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Dine Out

Determined Brick, Lofty Brick, and Modern Wood Panelling conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Vampires

Brooding Brick Pattern, Floral Bat Motif, Narrow Victorian Wall Pattern, Neoclassic Wall Panelling, Patterned Bat Column Print, Vertical Bat Motif, and Victorian Wall Pattern conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Parenthood

Misty Forest Wallpaper, Multi-Theme Kids Room Wallpaper, Simple Paint with Wainscot Panelling, Stone Motif with Wainscot Panelling, and Tiled Patterns with Wainscot Panelling conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Jungle Adventure

High Tiled Mosaic, Low Tiled Mosaic, Ornate Stone Blocks, Small Plain Tiles, Smooth Concrete Two-Tone, Smooth Concrete with Stone Bottom, Solid Concrete, Solid Smooth Stone, Solid Stone Blocks, Stucco ‘n Stone, and more conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Strangerville

Corrugated Metal and Metal Enclosure conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Realm of Magic

Enchanting Dainty Daisy, Magnificent Brick, Spellbinding Tile, and Venerable Brick conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Journey to Batuu

Concrete Construct, Ridges and Gravel, Strong Foundation, and Worn But Not Broken conversion by @lordcrumps have been added.

Dream Home Decorator

Trilateral Ornamentations conversion by @lordcrumps has been added.

My Wedding Stories

Sun Faded Paint conversion by @lordcrumps has been added.

Werewolves

All the images have been updated.

Alphabetised all items.

Some items were recategorised.

The page menu has been updated.

The coding has been cleaned up and standardised.

Caution Brick Wall, No Caution Brick Wall, andThrice-Rebuilt Cabin Walls conversions by @lordcrumps have been added.

Rusted Factory Fan conversion by ePSYlord has been added.

— Kits

Industrial Loft

Hot August Nights Fan conversion by ePSYlord has been added.

Desert Luxe

Sandstorm Ceiling Fan conversion by ePSYlord has been added.

#weekly update

[madeliefkrans]

bound by water

posting this again because a six of crows spin-off/shadow and bone third season still hasn't been announced & and i'm still losing my mind over kanej

the context is that inej is part of the dregs (again), after the events of the books or tv series, and she and kaz have grown closer to each other. inej’s pov because i truly adore her & writing from her pov was kind of healing. let me know what you think about it <3

fell in love with @jccatstudios's character design of the crows, so i used that as inspiration for what inej was wearing. you can find jccatstudios on instagram & twitter as well!!

fandom: six of crows series - leigh bardugo & shadow and bone (tv series) type: birthday fic with tiny bit of angst but mostly fluff and some literal & figurative steaminess pairing: inej ghafa x kaz brekker pov: inej’s word count: 3,457 on ao3 as well

summary: it’s inej’s birthday and kaz has a surprise for her.

When Inej returns to the Slat after shadowing a sketchy mercher’s movements that day, she finds Nina and Jesper leaning against one of the walls in the entryway. They glance at her, each other, and back to her, grinning from ear to ear. Or smirking, really.

Inej squints her eyes at them, edging closer. Separately, Jesper or Nina scheming cannot be trusted. Together? The trail of chaos they’d leave behind would reach Fjerda.

“Well?” Inej raises her eyebrows, playing along with their game. “What is it?”

Nina loses the smirking contest first. She breaks out in a short laugh, setting off a warm feeling in Inej’s chest. Nina straightens her face, cheeks rosy from amusement. “Inej,” she speaks authoritatively, as if this is a legal matter. “We have a message for you.”

Jesper nods solemnly, mirroring Nina’s attitude. He crosses his arms before his lime green waistcoat. “A message from Kaz to be precise.”

Inej’s heart skips a beat. Nina’s grin is back, raising her eyebrows knowingly to Jesper. Inej hasn’t seen Kaz yet today. She was planning to meet him in his attic when she arrived at the Slat, as she did most evenings. To report back on the secrets, clues, scandals she collected that day. And, when business had been discussed and she wanted to, which was often, to linger. Kaz let her.

They would play a game of chess, catching glances at each other, which was how Inej discovered that Kaz has a scheming face specifically for chess. Or Inej would feed walnuts to the crows in the large windowsill as Kaz watched. Or they would read; Kaz poetry, Inej the adventures of her heroes, the silence between them only disturbed by the turning of crisp pages. Inej loves this time with him. It’s a ritual they grew into over the last months. A ritual that Inej would love to cultivate today. It’s her birthday, after all.

This morning she stumbled into a kitchen filled with the scent that can calm any storm. Waffles. She found her family cramped around the one dark wooden table that was stashed there. Nina, Jesper, Wylan, Matthias. She could have sworn their faces were framed with halo’s, but maybe that was just the morning light through the hazy window. They shared breakfast and Inej started her day with a belly full of butter, syrup and laughter.

Kaz hadn’t been there, to her disappointment, but she told herself he had his reasons. Maybe the message he gave to Nina and Jesper shed light on that.

If they are ever going to share it with her. These two smirking darlings are enjoying themselves so much. But she knows their secret won’t last much longer. After all, it’s Inej they’re talking to.

“Kaz would be disappointed if you didn’t deliver that message.” Inej shifts her gaze between Nina and Jesper, feeling a grin tuck at her lips. “So shoot, if you want to spare yourself from a piercing gaze. Or worse.”

“Anything for you, birthday girl,” Jesper grins. “He’s waiting for you in his attic.”

“Enjoy the rest of your night,” Inej tells them, already standing, turned to go up the stairs.

 “Not as much as you will!” Nina yells after her. Inej can’t stop the smile spreading on her face.

Her feet are feathers, always, as she travels up the two flights of rickety stairs. Her heart thumps steadily in her chest. There was a time she didn’t let it, a time she railed herself in. Lately she’s trying to welcome the sensation, to invite it to her body and allow it to fill her up. It feels strange, exciting. Like revealing a secret room, the discovery of a vacant space. That you can use it. That you’re allowed to fill that space.

Kaz is sitting behind his desk when Inej enters after knocking, his nose in stacks of documents, linen sleeves rolled up. Through the open window the sun streaks Kaz’s attic in golden, the last rays of the day. His dark leather gloves shine on the side of his desk. Yes, Ketterdam is so moist that it seeps into your skin, but even this city cannot hide from the force of summer and how it stretches the evenings. The turmoil from the city feels far away from here. Instead, Kaz’s attic is filled with something else… a fragrance delicate and fresh.

Kaz looks up from his desk, meets her eye. “Hello, Inej.”

She offers a smile. “Hello, Kaz.”

She walks up to him. Leans on the desk to his left, resting her hands behind her and crossing her ankles. She locks eyes with him. “Nina and Jesper were insufferably mischievous downstairs.”

He shrugs, leaning back in his high-backed chair. Puts down the letter he was reading, resting his hands close to hers. “Nothing new there.”

Inej uncrosses her ankles. Her thigh brushes the hair on his forearm. He holds her gaze.

It’s what they’ve been doing recently: folding the space between them, stretching their touches. Slowly learning, showing what they enjoy. Often, it’s how Inej wants to touch him, reclaiming her relationship with touch, after years of being trained to endure, not initiate. Letting Kaz touch her is more challenging, since she has to catch her body before it slips away, rejecting the habit to dissociate. It’s how Kaz wants to be touched by her, taking pleasure in how her touch can make him feel safe, can be a buoy instead of towering waves. Him touching her, bare skin, is difficult even on good days, but covering his skin before reaching out to her grounds him.

Kaz shoves his chair back and stands up. “I have something for you.”

Inej cannot hide the surprise on her face.

Kaz grabs his cane and crosses the office to open the door to his bedroom. Inej breathes in the honey that reaches her, stronger now. He looks over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”

She’s behind him in an instant. She was only ever able to catch glances at the space they’re entering, never having stepped foot in it before. As a Dreg, she learned to scan any room she enters, instinctively, swiftly. But she’s not taking in the entirety of this private room now. No, her eyes are directly drawn to the white tub in the corner.

Steam rises from the water surface that is not covered by foam or orange and red flower petals, filling the room with a heavenly haze. Candles are lit on top of the small wooden table beside it, Kaz’s drawer, at the back of the tub. A fragrance pure and light fills her senses. She’s speechless.

“Happy birthday, Inej.”

Inej pulls her gaze away from the wonder that is this steamy tub to turn to Kaz. He’s clasping his cane in front of him, resting both hands on the metal crow’s head. He holds her gaze, steadily, but she notices something there that’s rare. She doesn’t want to blink when he’s letting her see it.

“It’s tulip. Nina assisted.”

Inej’s heart swells even more. How beautifully unexpected that he decided to ask for help.

“Kaz, this is wonderful.” She’s full-on grinning now.

His doubt disappears and his face lights up. He’s so pretty. He nods to the chair by the tub. “Nina picked out some clothes from your room to change into when you’re done bathing.”

Inej takes the smallest step closer to him.

“I’ll be in my office. But I won’t disturb you, so please enjoy for as long as you want to.”

She looks up into his eyes as she rests her fingertips, fingers, then palm on his wrist. “Thank you.”

His lips quirk upwards. Then he turns, closes the door behind him. She listens as the thumps of his cane fall silent as he repositions himself behind his desk. And she’s alone.

Inej lets her gaze circle the room. The tub stands under a slanted roof that holds a square window cracked open. The clouds have turned to a shade of lilac and rose. A bed is placed to the only straight wall in the room, accompanied by a side table. His washbasin is next to his dresser, a blurry mirror above it. These are Kaz’s private quarters and he’s trusting her with it.

Who knew Kaz had something like this up his sleeve. She imagines the look on Nina’s face when Kaz asked for help. She must have been intolerably delighted. Inej chuckles.

She breathes in the subtle scent that has filled the room. Inej can’t wait to dip her tired feet into the tub. Let the warmth take her in. Cover herself with velvet petals. Watch as the clouds turn from pastels to dark shades.

Her fingertips slide across the sheaths of her knives, where she releases each one, carefully positioning them on top of Kaz’s drawer. He has allowed himself to be vulnerable to prepare this for her, and gratefulness washes over her. As her fingers reach up to undo the first clasp of her vest, waves swirl low in her belly. Something new emerges, bubbling up to the surface. Her fingers pause in midair. She wants to reciprocate, meet him halfway.

Her knife sheaths already empty, she turns to open the crooked door to Kaz’s office. She keeps one hand on the rough doorframe as she watches how he looks up from his desk, surprised.

She inhales deeply, steadying herself. It’s something she has done before, but suggesting it would be a first. Her wanting to is a first. And this is Kaz she’s talking to. How will he react?

“Do you want to watch as I undress?” she asks, recognizing the nervous rhythm of her heart in her ears.

Inej can see the subtlest rise of his eyebrows, widening of his eyes. She refuses to break eye contact. He needs to know that she doesn’t want this because she believes he wants her to take off her clothes. She wants this because she’s trying to change how her body remembers showing her skin to men. “I want you to.”

She studies his face. His look is stern, it is almost always. She’s trained in his features: the tiniest twitch of his eyebrows, the clenching of his jaw, when and how long he breaks eye contact. But right now, he shows no movements she can decipher. She’s trained in patience as well, but this moment of silence rattles at her foundations.

The chair scrapes the old wooden floor as Kaz stands up. “Yes,” he replies simply.

The voice in her head finishes: the deal is the deal. “Okay,” she nods.

Kaz follows her. For a moment they stand there, in his bedroom. Inej knows it’s Kaz who stands next to her, she has rescued him again and again, he has rescued her again and again. There’s no one she’d rather do this with than him, no one she trusts more. But she has to keep her head straight or she won’t be able to look him in the eye. Let’s take this step by step.

She walks over to the tub, halts next to the chair. “You can sit wherever you want,” she tells him. But there’s not many options besides the chair that’s already used by her clothes and towel. In fact, there’s only one.

The frame creaks softly as Kaz sits down on his bedsheets and rests his cane beside him. Inej could touch his knees in barely three steps. He looks up at her. She recognises this position when she’s perched in his window, leaning or sitting on his desk while he’s working there. She’s used to watching from above as the Wraith as well. It soothes her nerves, just a bit.

Not enough to hold his gaze. But enough to slowly reach her hands to her chest and undo the first clasp of her vest. The muscles in her upper back and shoulders stiffen as she can feel herself slipping into a performance. She sees herself standing there, trembling fingers at the first hook of her clothes. She takes a shaky breath, closing her eyes. Using her senses to return to her body. She wriggles her toes in her dearest slippers. Outside the window she can hear her beloved crows, inside distantly the rickety stairs of the Slat. The floral fragrance is calming. She can stop any moment she wants to, she knows that. But she doesn’t want to.

She’s Inej Ghafa and with the release of a breath, she shakes the skin of a lynx from her body.

Kaz is there when she opens her eyes, the worry between his dark brows fades when he sees her expression. Making way for the tiniest arch of one of his eyebrows. It’s an invitation. She accepts.

Carefully she loosens the clasps on her vest. The violet fabric of her tunic shifts underneath. She lets her vest slide down behind her body, over her upper arms, elbows and catches it in her hand as it falls over her wrists. She hangs it on the back of the chair.

Next are the fingerless gloves that cover her entire forearms. Finger for finger, she slips them off. Perching on the edge of the chair, she takes of her slippers, storing them beneath the chair. The wooden floor is cool under her feet. A welcome sensation, because she’s feeling hot. Hot under Kaz’s gaze, who’s giving her his full attention.

She’s well aware of the flush that must have grown on her cheeks. They’ve stripped in front of each other during jobs countlessly, taking on new identities in the dim alleys of Ketterdam. This is different entirely. No hiding in plain sight, and it’s how she wants it to be. The heat in her body near Kaz is nothing new. She wants to cherish it, instead of trying to push it away. Kaz’s gaze makes the sensation grow only stronger.

She catches the clenching of his jaw. Maybe she’s not the only one growing flustered.

Right below her neck, Inej loosens the ties of her tunic. She crosses her arms over the thin, swift material and slowly stretches her arms on top of her head, taking the fabric with her. She folds the purple blouse in her bare arms. There’s not many walls left now. And she’s beginning to enjoy it. With every layer of clothing, armour, removed, she discovers newfound courage, lightness. Yes, outside this protection, her armour, is what keeps her safe, dangerous. In here, she can feel strong even with her shields lowered.

Her top is next. She stretches out her arms, once again, and feels the evening air against her belly. The chill feels wonderful. Perching on the chair, she slides down the stretchy fabric of her trousers to pull them off. Her hands take the braid behind her back and slide between the strands. Kaz’s gaze is fixated on her fingers gliding up and down, unravelling the coils. She frees her hair completely, and the comforting weight drapes behind her body. Now, facing Kaz once more, she stands before him in nothing but her underwear, hair down, and locks eyes with him, embracing the raw vulnerability of this moment.

His gaze is fixed on her face. His eyes deep and vast, his brows slightly furrowed. She knows this look. She trembles lightly, the waves in her low belly swelling. She wants more of what he’s showing her.

“Kaz,” she asks, voice low, “will you take my bra off?”

His answer is the creaking of the bedframe as he stands up and closes the distance between them. He stands before her, fully clothed, and so close, she can see the pink on his cheeks, his dilated pupils. His breath is high and shallow, just like hers. Her arms are covered in goosebumps.

Slowly, Kaz lifts his fingers. Inej holds her breath. He touches the dark fabric on her ribs, gently lets his hands embrace the sides of her body. She feels the weight of his hands as she lets out her breath. The heat of his touch sets her skin aflame. He’s burning her. Or she’s burning up.

She reaches her fingers upwards, inviting him to take the flexible band and slide it upwards. His cool fingernails brush her skin as he curls them under the fabric and shifts it higher and higher until it catches all her hair, releasing it moments later when Kaz slides the garment from her wrists. Her hair cascades down, enveloping her in a midnight waterfall.

His gaze is unwavering, endless, fixed on her eyes. Inej wants it everywhere.

“You can look,” she breathes. “If you want.”

He does. She watches the length of his dark eyelashes as he traces his gaze downwards, deliberately, languid. Lips parted, rosy flush on his cheeks growing. She feels the heat radiate from her body, between her thighs, the tips of her ears. Nerves mixed with growing confidence.

Slowly, through lowered lashes, Kaz locks his eyes with hers again. He raises his fingers and slides them under a strand of her hair between her shoulder and the column of her neck. Inej watches closely as he lifts it up, gliding down its length, patiently, until, finally, he gently presses his lips to her hair.

Her breath hitches in her chest.

His lips still hovering above her hair, Kaz meets her eye. “You’re beautiful, Inej,” he whispers.

Oh, Saints.

Inej trembles before him. Her tides rise with every breath, washing over her, building and building. She can’t stop staring at his lips, his fingers, his eyes. His lips, his fingers, his eyes. He called her beautiful, but how can she ever express how he looks to her this moment? He’s boundless.

Inej draws closer. Her hair slips through his fingers. She would never. She takes his hand, dextrous, dependable, weaving her fingers through his, letting them rest at their sides. Closer. Until the blissful press of their bodies together. It makes her dizzy. She feels the rising and fall of his chest, their breathing synching into the same heavy rhythm. His lips tender and flushed. His eyes deep mahogany. She feels a sense of safety and security with him that’s unparalleled.

She reaches her free hand to his face, cupping his rough cheek in her palm. Kaz closes his eyes and offers her the slightest sigh as he presses himself to her touch. The wonderful fan of his eyelashes. She’s so close, she can count them. She wants him so much, she’s barely standing.

“Kaz,” Inej breathes. His eyes open to meet hers, scanning her features. “I want to kiss you.”

She remembers the first time she pressed her lips to his. Softly, exploratory. It was after an evening of celebrating a victory for the Dregs with her family. An evening of her knee to Kaz’s underneath the table, bathing in the warm pressure of his hand on her thigh. Afterwards, she followed him up the stairs. In his attic the air thickened, and they chatted, laughed, as they drew closer. When Inej said she would retreat to her room to rest, Kaz whispered her name, lowering his face. All Inej could do was brush his nose with hers, and fold her lips between his. It had made her feel delirious.

Similar to how she’s feeling right now. Drunk on his gaze, scent, fingertips between hers. The maroon blossoms further on her cheeks. Kaz parts his lips.

“Please.” His voice a low rasp.

Bubbles popping in her belly, she reaches up and captures his sweet lips in a kiss. Kaz releases his hand from hers and presses both to the small curve of her naked back, curling into her hair once again, bringing her even closer. The heat rises to her head, and she sinks into his touch as he deepens the kiss. She slides her fingers over his cheek, into his hair, tangled. He presses his fingers into the strong muscles of her back. She feels him everywhere.

Inej places a hand on his chest when they separate. Close, still so close. His touch lingers on her lips. She can feel his delightfully heavy breath on her cheek. He rests his forehead against hers. Calm waves cradle her ship. An eternity passes.

“Perhaps I should get some more hot water.”

Inej opens her eyes to catch the twinkle in his eyes. She grins back. This devotion could keep her afloat forever. Kaz’s touch stays hot. The bath, inevitably, does not.

“Perhaps,” Inej repeats.

Slowly, she turns to dip her fingers in the floral tub, brushing the velvet petals. She glances over her shoulder, eyebrow raised, as she asks, “You like it hot?”

Kaz grins, his eyes devilish. Inej already knows the answer to that.

#kanej #six of crows #shadow and bone #inej ghafa #kaz brekker #i love them your honor #fanfiction

[dolores-hazy]

Bad Thoughts

Is it bad

How bad I want

You, out of my head

And in bed with sheets

Tied to knots, tongues

Loose shoes under

Creaky slats and clothes

Strewn--makeshift mini rugs

For the floor left cold

After heated exchanges there

Tantalizingly teasing play before

Moving to a spot with more give

As we give and take and make

The most of an intense attraction

A connection in all its steamy

Glory action; you're satisfyingly good

And it feels oh so good

So who gives a damn

About bad? If it is

Then oh well

Too bad

#pardyprompt #stuck in the cycle #poetryportal #smittenbypoetry #twcpoetry #inkstay #creative writing #wnq writers #lit #bad thoughts #spilled ink #poetsanonymous #poetsandwriters #inspired #prompted #books and quotes #original poetry #words words words #poem

[jupiterjawbreaker]

Steamy Sneak Peak to OFMD x Jegulus

This is the point of the story where Regulus has finally joined the crew of the Mauraders and found himself with a crush on his Captain. Pining for Potter while he pined for Lily, she ran off and left his heart bruised so James started drinking and by the time Regulus found him...well...

James hiccuped, cradling the bottle of booze he'd been getting sloshed with close to his chest as he laid his head back in Regulus’ lap, hazel eyes glittering the deep amber of the woodlands enveloping the Black’s ancestral home. The sunset leaking from the slatted window shutters cutting beams of light across the Pirate Captain’s cheek, Regulus had thought love as black and white but seeing James’ eyes, he knew love was golden. 

Through sultry lashes Reg maintained his unreadable expression, never willing to expose his intentions first, always waiting out his opponent to see their first move. Calculated as this move was on his part he could tell James didn’t notice, couldnt notice in his drunken haze not even as Reg had leaned over him. The swaths of curled black locks dripped over them in a canopy hiding their faces from the surrounding barrels that came with the territory of storage rooms and then all James could see was Regulus’ eyes. 

Oh his eyes, the icy gray cut through James skin and burned a heat up his back and to his cheeks, though it could have well been the alcohol taking its effects on him. Either way, the breath sucked through James’ clenched jaw only emphasized his eyes lulled in a trace. So close. Reg’s breath tickled his flushed skin, curiosity eating away at him for a beat before he would succumb, and James lazily dragged his gaze to Regulus’ lips and marveled. The curvature of them, how pink and soft they seemed, James was enamored. 

Clink

 was all the warning James gave from dropping the bottle he'd been nursing to his waist side urgently, reaching up to touch Regulus’ face but when he caught sight of his unreadable expression and cold gaze he stopped himself with the bits of remaining self control the alcohol hadn't taken from him. 

He knew better, casting his guilty eyes to his side. He knew that would cross a line and if he weren't so drunk, if he weren't so heartbroken over Lily, if Reg didn't look so good…he wouldn't have even considered it! 

The thoughts racing in his head stalled when he felt fingers slip around his wrist and guide his hand to soft flesh. James tracked his arm to his hand to find the tips of his fingers brushing against Regulus’ cheek. Reg turned his face into James’ hand affectionately and kept his watch on him, never wavering. Caught off guard, and not too smooth about hiding it, James didn't really seem to mind with his intoxication and new found intrigue. James slowly lifted his head from Regulus’ lap and Regulus followed suit, pushing back until both their spines straightened, staring each other down with James' thumb caressing small circles against Reg’s cheek before brushing across his chin. Dare to let his look slip down again to admire the shifting plumpness in Regulus’ pillowy lip, James infatuated with how it glistened when he pulled at the soft skin slowly.

 Regulus felt fire surge through his body, his veins melting at the touch James so tenderly gave him, he knew he was soft but, to be held, to be cherished, was sending Regulus even further beyond hope, he felt himself falling for those treasuring fingertips. James let out another drunken hiccup and smiled sheepishly, his other hand coming up to rub the back of his neck in embarrassment, like he was fearful he'd killed the mood. James always wanted to keep the tension light, if not existent, and avoided his eyes to do so.

 Regulus furrowed his brow just slightly at James’ distraction and craved his undivided attention once again, tightening his grip on Jame’s wrist just slightly before pressing his lips to the pad of his thumb and watching him carefully. James stilled again and the smile only lingered on his lips as his gaze trailed up from the floor, across Reg’s body, and to his eyes that glared so impatiently. James felt his stomach loop a knot and the heat built in him was far past the alcohol he'd had. 

James pressed his thumb gently against Reg’s kiss, and the smaller man parted his lips to let him exploratorily graze against his bottom canine, thumb sliding back tentatively but Reg kept his lips free from one another and James took the dare to run along Reg’s tongue. A soft sigh of eagerness buzzed against his skin and Reg wrapped his lips around James’ finger and let his tongue glide along it, a play for dominance between the two of them. James felt his breath start to heave, the haze in his sight not only thick from booze but lust as well, and he shifted. 

On his knees, one between the smaller thighs and the other at his hip, James used his free hand to direct Reg’s face up, caressing his jaw as his thumb slowly slid from his lips and down his chin. James looked down at Reg with what he could only find to be hunger. 

They hadn't spoken a word to one another…Reg didn't know what to say, he only knew what he wanted. James might've been the opposite, but that was changing more and more as his restraint fell away. Black noticed this, he knew this would most likely be a fleeting moment of passion for Potter so he got the final words out before he could feel embarrassed about it tomorrow. 

“Just for tonight Captain”.

Oh. How he used his title made James let go from the last tendrils of self control. He panted out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and his hands caressed down Regulus’ neck and slowly worked open his collar, James face skirting dangerously close before their noses bumped and James’ lips ghosted Reg’s. James had been enraptured by his lips, desperate to take them for his own but before he could go any further, only had unlaced the ruffle of Reg’s collar, his gaze locked onto the foggy mire of Reg’s eyes and his voice came out low and husked with desire. 

“Strip”.

(Teehee I couldn't sleep and also couldn't get this out of my head! I def think I wanna make it more POV but this is the best I could do with only one read through and being in the middle of the story even though I haven't even started writing it yet. Open to constructive critism/pointers since I havent received any formal training, thank you hope yall enjoy)

#sunseeker #starchaser #jegulus #mauraderspirateau #harry potter #mauraders fan fic #mauraders #the marauders #james potter #regulus black #james x regulus #enemies to lovers #pirates #pirate au #mauraders smut

[silver-ink-iron-words]

Nope still broken. Must be a phone problem.

That said if you could please continue shifter? It's so good!

Ah man, sorry about that. Hopefully the links in this post work

Also, thanks for the request :)

----

CW - discussion of suicide

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Major Shift, Part 4

The tangerine and crimson leaves fluttered into the gentle creek, as Dara stared at the switchblade in their hands.

It had been easy to accept their death when it was an abstract concept. The inevitable outcome of being turned. When it was something that would happen to them, rather than something they’d have to take care of themself.

They weren’t even surprised when the smoke began to pool and slither around their knees.

“Please, kid,” the Shifter King said, settling down beside them in his human form. “Don’t do that.”

“How’d you find me?”

“This is my forest. I always know what’s happening in it.”

Dara kept their eyes on the knife. Ending things here would mean that they wouldn’t be fulfilling the High Huntsman’s wishes. It would be abandoning everything they’d sworn to protect.

But to live out their days as a shifter, to slowly lose themself piece by piece until there was nothing left but the beast . . .

Maybe if they were quick enough, they could do it before the villain had a chance to stop them.

“I think I’ll hold on to that,” he said, taking the knife from their grip. Dara noticed, passively, how careful he was to not touch the silver metal blade.

They turned their gaze up to the fiery trees. It was beautiful as a painting. “Do you think this is kindness?”

“I do.”

Dara sighed. They probably wouldn’t have had the guts to go through with it anyways.

They held up their wrists to be tied.

The villain looked between Dara’s hands and their face. It seemed to take him a moment to realize what they were doing.

“Come on.” He slapped a hand on their shoulder, rising up. “I want to show you something.”

----

Dara wasn’t surprised that the shifters’ base was a sprawling Victorian mansion in the middle of the woods.

What they hadn’t expected was the chipper yellow paint, the elegant wrap-around porch, and the game of frisbee happening on the front lawn.

“David,” a shifter said, after throwing the bright plastic disc. Most of their skin was covered in lichen. “Is that the murderer?”

Dara stiffened. But before they could even think of running, the villain wrapped an arm around their shoulder. 

“Everyone, meet Dara,” he said, addressing the small crowd of shifters. “Our newest recruit. I want you all to welcome them just like you’d welcome each other.”

“I’m not – ”

“Now let’s get inside,” he continued. “We need to have that planning meeting.”

Inside was, put simply, absolute chaos.

It’s not that things were messy. Quite the opposite – the floors were swept, the shelves dusted, the tabletops cleared of clutter.

It’s that the developers must have been high out of their minds when they designed the place.

The front door led first through somebody’s bedroom, and then through a kitchen with a washing machine where the stove should have been. The hallways changed colors and wallpapers as the group passed through them, the floors switching back and forth between tile and wood. They passed one room where every piece of furniture was cat-themed, one that was a steamy greenhouse, one that was nothing but wall-to-wall doors.

Dara suffered vertigo just trying to keep up.

“Where’s the meeting room today?” the villain asked, dodging under a string of vines hanging down from the ceiling.

“Upstairs, ’round where the ballroom used to be,” said a shifter with enormous ox horns.

They approached a staircase, and Dara could see a girl between the slats. She was carving a jack-o-lantern, the knife digging firmly into one of the pumpkin’s yellowy eyes.

They went swerving up the stairs, which were arranged in some confusing crisscross that reminded Dara of a double helix. 

“What’s with this place?” they hissed.

“Welcome to Witchwood Manor,” the villain said. “The place is cursed. Or blessed? It’s hard to tell sometimes. But I wouldn’t recommend leaving your stuff lying around.”

They finally reached a meeting room with tall windows and a long wooden table. The shifters piled around it, with the villain standing at the head. Dara ended up just beside him.

“Well, good news everyone,” he began. “We’ve uncovered a photo of the book.”

“And here I was hoping that you’d actually found the damn thing,” a shifter said.

“So impatient,” the villain replied with a grin. He pressed a button on a remote, and a projector screen began to lower. “Now that we've found this, the most recent known location is Munich, 1998.”

“So we have to go to Germany?”

The ox shifter rolled her eyes. “There’s no reason to think it’s still there, Benjamin.”

The projector clicked on, and a grainy photo appeared. It was in a stone courtyard, featuring a smiling woman holding an ancient book. It was thick, and the pages were uneven. The image of a gnarled, leafless tree was carved into the withered black leather.

But as strange as the book was, a different detail stood out. The woman had a small tattoo on her forearm – an arrow intercepted with three curved lines. The exact same symbol could be found on Dara’s shoulder blade.

The Hunter’s Sigil.

The shifters continued to discuss the book, reviewing their findings and brainstorming where it could be located. To Dara’s astonishment, none of them mentioned the mark.

“Why do you want it so badly?” they asked after a while.

Every eye in the room fell upon them.

“Ah yes,” the villain said. “Thank you for speaking up, Dara. I nearly forgot to explain.” He gestured to the image. “This spell book was written by Joan Morton. The most renowned witch of her time, and the creator of this very manor.”

Dara blinked. “Witches aren’t real.”

The lichen shifter glanced to them. “You’ve never heard that the first shifters were created by witches?”

“I’ve heard that myth, yes.”

“Well, regardless,” the villain said. “We know the book is real. And we know that it contains a variety of very useful spells. Ones that could keep this pack safe against our rivals.”

Dara looked again to the photo. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to help you find it.”

The villain’s eyes lit up in a way that Dara didn’t like. “You may be interested to know, there’s a rumour that one of the spells contained in this book can turn shifters back into humans.”

Dara straightened in their seat. The room buzzed with whispered conversation.

The villain smiled. He knew he had them.

“What the hell is that homicidal freak doing here?”

Everyone looked to the doorway. There stood Corbin, bitter gaze fixed on Dara.

“Ah, Corbin, perfect timing,” the villain said. “I was just about to tell Dara how I’ll be matching them with a partner, to help ease their transition into the pack.”

Dara and Corbin locked eyes with each other. “You can’t mean . . .”

“Oh, but I do.” The villain’s smile was mischievous. “I just know you two will be the absolute best of friends.”

#shifter #halloween #werewolf #villain x hero #hero x villain #writing snippet #writeblr #writing #snippet #werebear #kidnapping #fantasy #fantasy writing #fuckin benjamin #not a prompt

[themarvelousmoonbean]

Latex Foam Mattresses: A Healthy option to Memory Foam mattresses and Sleep Number Bed

Natural latex mattresses are made from the sap of the steamy rubber tree. Natural latex foam does not burn well and most natural latex mattresses are also quilted with organic cotton and wool which makes them very fire defiant, complying with click here all current fire codes. The Sleep Number Bed also performs well overall in regard to durability. It is not uncommon at all, according to our research, for owners to have their beds for 10 or even 15 years with little or no loss of comfort.

Most mattress purchasers are unaware of the fire danger posed by polyurethane mattresses. Latex mattresses comes a variety of densities for different insistence needs, and, unlike memory foam, it doesn't have to heat up to cradle the body--the effect is immediate. Most people find 100% natural latex mattresses to be incredibly comfortable, relieving pressure points and improving circulation. Another great characteristic of latex is its durability. Latex mattresses have been known to last up to 30 years. Because of their resilience, latex mattresses do not need to be turned like innerspring mattresses.

Because latex mattresses do not have innersprings, they require a firmer foundation than the traditional boxsprings. Latex mattresses can be used with a platform bed, a slat foundation which looks like traditional boxsprings, but has slats on the top, or a solid wood foundation, which also looks like boxsprings but has a plywood top usually covered by fabric.

Retailers of natural latex mattresses include a variety of local mattress stores who carry products from these manufacturers. Organic cotton sheets and duvets that are either not dyed or have been dyed via natural means (vegetable, mineral dyes) are ideal for allergy sufferers or anyone who wants to sleep free of pesticides and harmful chemicals. Moreover, the filling of your duvet or comforter may be playing a role in your discomfort. Treated cotton, down, or synthetic fillers can all make excellent hosts for allergy-provoking dust mites. The ideal filling material is untreated, organic wool. Wool has naturally hypoallergenic properties and resists dust mites better than most materials.

Memory foam is visco-elastic which means that it responds to temperature change by becoming more pliable when it is warm and harder the colder it gets. That means your body warmth softens the immediate area of foam and moulds to your shape. Word of warning - with the cheaper, lower density foams, when the real cold sets in, the foam becomes as hard as a board or it might turn into soft go on hot summer nights! The more expensive brands specifically state their consistent performance through a wide temperature range.

#youtube

[fandomohana]

Tonight's question: Do I try to make sleeping upstairs work, or just call it, and sleep down here? Almost midnight, and this is our current situation, with 99% humidity.

For reference, our house is over 100 years old, and the attic is not fully closed. We have two windows with built in slats, and no glass to put in, so it's steamy up on the bedroom level...and the attic door is next to my room, and the heat pours off it. 😅

#christina talks

[pergola800]

A pergola can be a chic way to entertain and enjoy your outdoor space without sacrificing comfort or budget. In fact, you don’t have to worry about cityscapes or country abodes as there are different pergola designs to suit every space. These numerous pergola ideas aren’t just a designer’s fantasy but tailored according to the individual’s choice. Whether you want a no-frills space to enjoy a cocktail and a moment of peace or an island getaway in your own backyard, the best Pergola designers in Dubai will definitely have something for you.

Let’s explore the best pergola ideas to keep cool this hot and steamy summer:

Corner Cabin Style Pergola with Lantern

This pergola’s rustic design is inspired by the unfinished wood of summer vacation cabins. It creates a sheltered nook with a small wooden pergola for a comfortable conversation area. The woven textures can further add contrast and pattern while keeping the color scheme neutral. Additionally, the large cast-iron lantern provides a striking and appropriate focal point for the room.

Awning Style Garage Pergola

This awning pergola makes a bold statement above your garage door. It does not have support columns reaching the ground, unlike most pergolas. On the other hand, this outdoor aluminum pergola is attached to the garage wall. The presence of the support posts as suggested by the growing of vines on both sides of the door.

Geometric Harmony Freestanding Cubic Pergola

This cube-shaped pergola can create a shaded outdoor room for nature lovers. The covered wooden pergola’s two slatted walls, one with a door-like entrance, define the space. The charcoal grey wicker furniture can further add a contrasting texture and color, while the white pillows and flooring can add a bright note.

Picnic Wooden Pergola Setting

This wooden garden pergola with a roof provides shade for the picnic area while also providing a panoramic view. The style of the porch pergola is reflected in this detached pergola. The natural look of the picnic chairs, tables, and flooring in the picnic area, as well as the seating in the porch area, connects the spaces. The openness encourages picnickers to come and go as they please.

Island Thatching Pergola Cover

If you fantasize about visiting Tahiti or Polynesia, sitting under this pergola will make you feel like you’re already there. The pergola’s arched roof is made of thatch. The open wicker furniture can add to the island vibe, but add tropical plants like potted palms, bird of paradise, orchids, or plumeria to complete the island look.

English Garden Lattice Pergola

With this airy thermowood pergola, you can transplant yourself to an aromatic English garden. The roof slats support the large opening lattice, while vines climb a trellis with smaller openings at the back as a backdrop. Additionally, gather chairs around a coffee table for conversation, tea, or a garden party.

Corner Retreat Pergola with Suspended Lamps

This backyard wooden pergola provides comfortable bench seating for your garden while also supporting your garden by giving vertical space at each end of the bench for staggered planters. The colorful pillows tossed onto the white cushioned seat and back of the bench echo the garden flower’s colors, adding to the nook’s cheerful appearance.

Paradiso Dream Pergola with Daybed

If you want to sleep outside, day or night, this pergola provides the necessary shelter. A thatched roof provides protection, and airy white tiebacks can be removed for privacy. Turn on the sparkling LED lights wrapped around the pergola’s side and cross support at the front for a magical, dreamy space to enjoy the night.

Moonlight Drive Parkside Pergola

This sleek, contemporary black pergola will illuminate the sidewalk from your driveway to your house. Attach lights to the slats and place a clear cover between them to provide rain protection. Lighting fixtures in the planter and on the posts beside the driveway provide additional light as guests enter your home.

Orchard Ambiance Thatched Pergola

A thatched roof shades this pergola’s dining area, but cables rather than slats hold up the thatch. You can extend the cables beyond the thatch to support vines that grow up the front posts of the pergola, transforming it into a trellis. The cheerful orchard theme can also continue with bright lemon and lime-colored accessories.

Charming Decktop Pergola Swing

The relaxing feeling of swinging on a swing is the ideal complement to this airy pergola. The swing’s woven seat can also be tasseled. Heavy ropes can secure the seat to the pergola’s roof, and throw pillows can add texture, pattern, muted color, and a relaxed feel. Additionally, the billowing tiebacks can heighten the sense of lightness, freedom, and flight.

Wrapping Up!

Summer will be here, with warm temperatures, cool nights, outdoor barbecues, and new vegetable gardens. But is your pergola ready for all the excitement? If you enjoy and love spending time outside during the summer but are afraid of sweltering and humid days, now is the time to consider your cooling options. Contact the best Pergola designers in Dubai, i.e., 800 PERGOLA, to keep your pergola cool this summer, ranging from using misters to installing a patio cover.

#aluminium pergola in dubai #wooden pergola developer in dubai #pergola developer in dubai #wooden pergola #pergola supplier in dubai

[readyforthegarden]

Can't Get Enough of You

Based on the prompts from the lovely @screechesincoherently "i can’t get enough of you." / "you could never hurt me." with sam

A/N: This shit hurt, yo. Also I think I'm going to take a brief break from prompts and smut. Just for a bit. I promise I'll be back to keep y'all fed.

Pairing: Sam Kiszka x Reader

Warnings: 18+ ONLY! MINORS DNI! Sensual fluffy smut. If you're a Sam babe, this is gonna wreck ya.

The warmth was what woke you from your deep slumber. A body pressed impossibly close to yours, palms flat your torso to hold you in place. A nose embedded into the hair at the nape of your neck, further warming your bare skin under the duvet. Your tired body stretched to the best of its abilities in this position, and you gently laughed as the arms around you pulled you in even tighter, a small, dissatisfied groan humming from the back of his throat.

“Stay here.” Sam mumbled softly, still half asleep. The bedroom was still dark, just a few patches of moonbeams sneaking through the slats of your blinds. He’d been home from tour for only a week, and you admittedly felt guilty, having had a full schedule the whole time, ending up crashing by 9pm, half your dinner still on your plate. You knew Sam missed you terribly, and you missed him just the same. You’d made sure that last night was the night he wanted since he’d been back. A simple, home-cooked meal, his favorite records on the smart speakers, and deep purple silky, barely there slip dress that always drove him wild with lust and passion.

“I’m not going anywhere, baby.” you whispered, gently placing your hands over his. “I’m right here.” Sam snuggled into your back even more, his soft, plush lips pressing lingering kisses along your shoulder. His hands gripped at your stomach, and you felt the all too familiar prodding against the back of your thigh as his hips softly, lazily rocked against you. “Sam, how are you not exhausted?” he simply rolled you over onto your back, attaching his lips to your in a slow, deep kiss. One of his large hands was cupping your face while he maneuvered his body on top of yours, and you understood what he needed. The hours before had been rough, fast and frenzied. Sloppy and desperate, as the two of you joined together for the first time in a long time.

“I can’t get enough of you.” Sam murmured in your ear, pressing a warm kiss just under your earlobe. “I want all of you, baby.” Humming, you ran your hands down his back, dragging your nails gently, getting the shiver from him you wanted. With a few short movements, Sam was nestled between your thighs, hands pressing them into the mattress and his tongue giving you a long, flat lick. Your head fell back into your pillow, eyes closing at the slow tingles of electricity that coursed through your veins and Sam took his time with you. You felt as if his goal wasn’t just to pleasure you, but to taste as much of you as he could. The little sighs that fell from your mouth were like praises to him, and the soft jolt of your hips as his lips closed around your still sensitive clit filled him with pride.

“Sam, baby that feels so good.” you breathed, your hand running through his hair. You made sure to push it back from his face so you could watch him, his eyes flicking up to as his tongue lapped against your skin. The intensity of his lust-blown brown eyes was nearly enough to push you over the edge right there. He knew you were getting close from your squirming and deftly slipped his middle and index fingers inside of you, pumping as your walls clenched around him. “Oh god baby, yeeess..” Sam worked you through your orgasm, lapping up every drop he could before climbing back up your body, engaging you in a steamy kiss. You tasted yourself on his lips and tongue, gasping sharply into his kiss as he glided his cock into your soaked center.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, breaking away from the kiss, staring down at you in concern. You stared up at your love, his eyebrows furrowed, body tensed as he held himself above you. Shaking your head, you reached up a hand and cupped his face, bringing his forehead to rest against yours.

“You could never hurt me.” you assured him softly, bringing your lips to his again. Sam’s body unfroze, his hips beginning to thrust against yours, slowly. He was drawing out his movements as his tongue lapped with yours, as if he was savoring every touch. You hooked your legs around his hips, urging this long thrusts a bit deeper, moaning as his lips sucked at your neck and collarbone. Sam’s hips started to pick up the pace as he rested his weight on you. His arms sliding under you against the sheets and cradling you to him. Your breathing was labored, whether from the weight of your lover on top of you or another impending orgasm, you weren’t quite sure. All you knew was no matter how wild, rough and tumble, or kinky the two of you could get together, Sam making love to you was your best and most favorite of the flavors he offered.

Sam’s soft moans in your ear urged you to lift your hips to meet his, whispering in his ear how good it felt and how close you were. Sam groaned, feeling your walls begin to clench around his cock. His hand slid up your back and cradled the back of your head, kissing you again as his hips stuttered against yours. “Fuck baby, I love you so much.” he sighed against your lips. You gripped onto his shoulders, finding your release again through his shallow pumping.

Sam dragged the tip of his nose across your cheek as he caught his breath and stilled his body. The intimacy that dripped with every touch of his skin against yours was overwhelming in the best way. There are the moments you wished you could drown in, no matter how much you loved the goofy side to him, the genius side of him, or the badass rockstar side of him. Sam’s gentle, sensual soft side was always there, but it was always reserved for just the two of you. You reveled in it selfishly, knowing few, if any others, would get to ever experience him this way.

After a few moments, Sam unwrapped himself from you, laying down closely beside you, stretching out his arms, getting the blood pumping back through them. You rested a hand over your chest, feeling your heart beat against it, counting the beats and trying to regulate your breathing. Once you felt like your legs weren’t completely made of jelly, you got up from the bed, heading to the bathroom to clean yourself up. Once you came back, Sam was on his side, patting your empty spot on the bed. You hurried over and crawled back under the covers, letting him wrap his arms and the duvet around you once more, and finally letting you both drift off to sleep, getting some much deserved rest.

#writing prompt blurb #sam kiszka x reader #sam gvf #sam kiszka #greta van fleet imagine #greta van fleet #screechesincoherently

[lafeeverte-sims]

4t2 (mostly spa day) downloads 🍃

hello! i’m actually extremely new to this - these are my first conversions - but i’ve been thinking about some builds and i needed some items that, as far as i know, haven’t been converted (i might be wrong - i’m using @sims4t2bb as a reference and i might have missed something). I needed them, didn’t have them, decided to try converting them, and then figured i might as well share if anyone else needs these as well. lmk if i should fix some egregious mistakes! (ideally with some tips as, again, i’m new to this)

💚 download: 💚 [MF] 💚 [SFS] 💚

credits: ea

EDIT 08/07/22: improved the bar so it (hopefully) appears in the catalogue and spawns a bartender, repo’d the (still deco) lockers to their open versions and cleaned the files up a bit to save some space, changed the blending mode on the decals to make them look a bit nicer and repo’d the small zen decal to the big one, removed the barstool as it wasn’t animated properly (you can grab another version by Michelle); the links are updated but if you only want the updated files go here: [LINK]

item list under the cut!

Build:

Floors:

Flowing Lines (Spa Day)

Now and Zen (Spa Day)

Polished Marble Tiles (Dine Out)

Walls:

A Concrete Idea (Spa Day)

Matchstick Magic (Spa Day)

Minimal Slats (Spa Day)

Perfect Horizontal Mozaic (Spa Day)

Perfect Vertical Mozaic (Spa Day)

Rectangular Flows (Spa Day)

Steamy Sideways Slats (Spa Day)

Steamy Slats (Spa Day)

Zentastic Tiles (Spa Day)

Columns:

Kyoshei Pillar of Truth (Spa Day)

Buy:

Comfort:

Calm and Collected Chair (armchair // Spa Day)

Happy Hands and Feet Chair (armchair and lounge chair // Spa Day)

The Posterior’s Respite (sofa // Spa Day)

Solitary Stool (armchair // Spa Day)

Why would anyone sit on this? By Zzbrft (bench // Spa Day)

Relax-N-Go Chair by Happy Hands and Feet Co. (armchair and lounge chair // Spa Day)

Relaxo Deluxe Chair by Happy Hands and Feet Co. (armchair and lounge chair // Spa Day)

Surfaces:

Nouveau Riche Niche Table (endtable // Spa Day)

Awesome Cube (endtable // Spa Day)

The Hollow (coffee table // Spa Day)

MoBev Cart (endtable // Vintage Glamour)

Lighting:

Illuminated Lotus (floor lamp // Spa Day)

Electronics:

Good Vibrations/Venue Wall Speaker: New Age (speaker // Spa Day)

Hobby:

Relax and Rewind by AmIZenYet (massage table// Spa Day)

Relax Away by AmIZenYet (massage table // Spa Day)

Decorative:

Juiced Up Wall Display (wall // Spa Day)

Zen Again Wall Decal (two sizes, wall // Spa Day)

Thumb Over Paint Splotch (wall // Spa Day)

Dry Leaf Lattice (wall // Dine Out)

House of the Rising Bun (wall // Dine Out)

Negative Spaces Sign (wall // Dine Out)

Fancy Flourish Sign (wall // Dine Out)

5 Leaves Sign (wall // Dine Out)

A Perfect Swirl (wall // Dine Out)

The Leaf Pile Prints (wall // Dine Out)

A Set Table (wall // Dine Out)

Luminous Sign (wall // Get to Work)

Sign of the Times (wall // Dine Out)

Bold and Beautiful Sign (wall // Dine Out)

Casually Cursive Sign (wall // Dine Out)

Vinoteca Bottle Rack (wall // Basegame)

Luxe Drink Tray (sculpture // Spa Day)

The Precarious (sculpture // Spa Day)

“Glaze and Grace” Glazed Vase (sculpture // Spa Day)

Nail Care Basics (sculpture, in plumbing // Spa Day)

Eww the Toilet (sculpture // Vintage Glamour)

Honeycomb Bottle Holder (sculpture // Basegame)

Cherry Cherry Twigs Vase (plant // Spa Day)

Mini-zen Planter (plant // Spa Day)

Zen Again Tile Treatment (rug // Spa Day)

Fresh Beginnings Faux Fur Rug (rug // Snowy Escape)

Laid Back Towel Rack (wall, in plumbing // Spa Day)

Slat Wall Room Divider (misc // Dine Out)

Arithmetically Challenged Divider (misc // Vintage Glamour)

Swaying Waves Wall Divider (misc // Get to Work)

Etherian Wooden Slatwall (misc // Spa Day)

Colour Block Locker Station (open and closed, deco only, sculpture // Spa Day)

The One with Everything Locker (open and closed, deco only, sculpture // Spa Day)

Onsen Locker (open and closed, deco only, sculpture // Snowy Escape)

Doc Sweet’s Luke-Warm Tonic Dispenser (sculpture, deco only, in misc appliances // Spa Day)

Doc Sweet's Luke-Warm Mini Dispenser (sculpture, deco only, in misc appliances // Spa Day)

General:

Ju-C L200 Liquid Beef Bar (bar // Spa Day)

some known errors include sims passing through the bar - i managed to fix that for a while, but then they couldn’t actually interact with the bar, so i guess i’ll have to learn more about this particular issue. another problem is that the barstools don’t tuck in under the counters/bar, and it’s something i’ve noticed with some other conversions - if anyone knows how i could fix that, i’d be grateful for the help 💚

#4t2 #s2cc #4t2 conversion #ts2 download

[thatslikely]

lined-paper confessions - s.s.

lined-paper confessions - stiles stilinski x gn!reader

warnings: mentions of fighting (scott and jackson predictably), strict teachers

word count: 1.5k

a/n: head full of stiles rn... requests for our favorite sarcastic boy are open right now so send some in!

Why is every teacher at Beacon Hills High the absolute worst?

Mr. Harris had just rapidly climbed your (highly opinionated) mental ranks to number one: your new least favorite educator. Giving you after-school detention, for doing nothing but watching with horror plastered on your face as Scott McCall, Stiles’ best friend, threw punches left and right at a topless, water-drenched Jackson, who reciprocated every strike as if he were nothing but a reflection. Seriously?

Previously, you had simply been sauntering down the locker-lined hall, Stiles on your right, passionately ranting about some unnamed problem that had him on edge for the past few weeks. You two turned down the empty, cinder-block-walled athletics corridor as he continued to agitatedly let off steam; the setting was decidedly unromantic given the unshakeable scent of overly pungent deodorant and mildew that was all too familiar. 

You clung to every word emitted from his mouth with an almost comical frown like it was a mug of steamy hot chocolate on a bone-chilling winter day. To your disgruntlement, however, his ramblings were stopped mid-sentence when Scott and his wealthy rival Jackson tumbled out from the dingy boys’ locker room, hands clenched in fists and eyes flaming with fury.

Stiles bent down in a rush, poorly attempting to conclude the boisterous brawl with furrowed, concerned brows, but he looked not dissimilar to a toothpick compared to the two burly teammates. 

“Detention for all of you!” Mr. Harris spat venomously as he dashed to the scene, his voice ringing above the grunts and slams that came from the fighting co-captains of the lacrosse team. “Detention now, Stilinski, McCall, Whittemore, Argent, and Y/L/N! Come on!”

You were dragged by the ear to the vacant library, a place which you often resided in whenever you studied with Stiles (often about mythical creatures, to your confusion). Posters that looked commonplace in an elementary school lined the walls, vibrantly encouraging students to pick up a book, or pen works for a writing contest of some sort.

Golden strips of fleeting sunlight peeked through the slatted blinds, and three gum wad-dotted tables were beckoning for the group of you to sit for the next two hours, or until Mr. Harris would finally decide that your soul had rotted away enough to release you.

You were sternly directed to the uncomfortably stiff chair opposite Allison’s, whose eyes shot daggers wherever they glanced. You flashed her an almost unregistrable smile, as if to say ‘hello.’ Slinging the loose straps of your backpack over your seat, your gaze flickering through the pin-drop silent room immediately locked on Stiles’ figure.

Boy, was he perfect.

The unbuttoned flannel over his shoulders speckled with mud from some vaguely mentioned adventure, his soft, tousled hair, that always had a lock out of place, his freckled face, that always bore some goofy expression, all of it. You couldn’t get enough; nothing would satiate your innermost desire for your lips to meld with his’, for your hands to intertwine through the hallways before class, after class, whenever, wherever. 

One eyebrow-cocked, knowing look from Scott in your direction sent Stiles’ umber eyes to meet yours’, an almost confused look swimming through them. He opened his mouth curiously, surely to ask a question, most likely something along the lines of, ‘is there a stain on my shirt?’, but before he could, Mr. Harris seethed, “Take your seats, now.”

Stiles whipped around, not wanting to anger Mr. Harris any further, and he took his seat. The room was quickly conquered with suffocating silence, which the snotty chemistry teacher was bent on ensuring.

You unsheathed a doodled notebook from your backpack, eventually indenting its pages with inky black strokes of various weights and thicknesses. Your habit of penning loose sketches, vague outlines, began one day in math when the clock seemed to tick aggravatingly slow, and every word from the teacher became drawled further and further until they dissolved into the hum of the air conditioning and the chewing of gum: the rhythm of the classroom.

The unconscious lines eventually formed to a familiar portrait: Stiles. Some would be tempted to call him your muse, your kindling of an elegant flame of creativity. You’d always nod your head in complicity more than agreement, for the smart, albeit rebellious boy meant eons more than that to you.  

You had just hit your stride, your wrist’s movements thoughtless and easy, when someone- rather something, hit the back of your head lightly with a small crunch. It was a small, scrunched piece of loose-leaf paper, ripped at the edge. 

You turned your head to the direction that the projectile was tossed at, but both Scott and Stiles appeared to be very, very engrossed in a hushed conversation, neither of their postures attempting to suggest anything suspicious.

You smoothed out the paper of the angular fruitwood table in front of you, attempting to read the almost unintelligible handwriting.

Hey :)

(this is from stiles, by the way)

Your mood lightened a smidge, a grin bubbling onto your face. You tore a piece of paper out of your notebook along the perforation.

Before you threw it in an arch in Stiles’ direction, you penned a response to his note.

Hey ;) how’s detention treating you?

(This is from y/n, by the way)

Crunch.

not great, as expected. I think I saw harris pick his nose. do you have any bleach to douse my eyes in by any chance?

You chuckled a little, a small smirk glimmering on your face for the first time this excruciatingly long afternoon.

Sorry, I’m all out. used it all after I saw Jackson shirtless. how do you survive in the locker room every day?

A smile lifted on Stiles’ face, one so inflated with abundant excitement (and hormones), he might have burst at the seams.

“Man, you’re down bad,” Scott simpered, nudging his best friend’s forearm.

“Shut up,” Stiles hissed with an eye roll.

just keep your head down and you should be fine. one time, Greenberg looked at him a little too long and he nearly turned to stone, like jackson’s abs were medusa or something.

“Passing notes, are we?” Mr. Harris queried with a malicious scowl, his knuckles white from asphyxiating a helpless ballpoint pen. He slinked over to the tables you and Stiles rested uncomfortably in, raising his brow in heavy suspicion. 

Stiles’ deep, dark chocolate-colored eyes widened in worry. “No, sir.”

“I’m keeping my eye on you, Stilinski. You too, Y/L/N.” 

As soon as Harris was out of sight, perched back at the desk and typing furiously, another wad of paper tapped your occiput. 

hey, y/n, there’s something i’ve been meaning to ask you for a while.

The note, while its contents wouldn’t usually spark too much concern, was subtly unlike the few ones you had previously received. The lines of each letter were neater, more methodical. The small blots of ink resting at the conclusion of every stroke were larger, deeper, as if the nib of his pen had rested in the liquidly black pool for a second too long.

Your face scrunched with confusion, and upon noticing your shift in emotion, Allison nimbly tapped your wrist and mouthed, ‘Is everything okay?’

You nodded with wrinkled brows while shakily scratching a reply.

what is it?

Your knee bounced up and down reflexively, clicking from your rapidly retracting pen echoed through the idle shelves and arrays of desktops. It felt like years, centuries even, before a reply finally tumbled at your feet.

do you like me?

(circle one)

yes? or yes? 

Your jaw nearly fell to the carpeted floor in shock as if gravity had been multiplied; your speedily thrumming heart was doing flip after flip in the cavity of your chest. Without a second thought, you quickly circled both of the ‘yes’es as if there were no friction under the ink-dispersing tip of your pen. Before cupping the piece of paper, you scribbled out an additional little note.

wanna go out this saturday?

Stiles’ anxious gaze bore into your hunched-over figure as you giddily wrote your reply. What if you rejected him (even though the page lacked a ‘no’ option, meaning that you would have to add one, which was even worse)? Was it possible for him to ask to go to the bathroom and just never return? Are there any secret werewolf abilities that Scott could use to make him disintegrate on the spot? 

But his overthinking was soon alleviated when he received your response, this time neatly folded into a paper heart instead of a crunchy ball. Each crease was crisp and thoughtful; he didn’t have to unfold your expert origami to know which option you circled (or lack thereof).

He grinned goofily like an idiot as his chocolate eyes glazed your response a million times over, taking in every letter, every stroke, the dot in your ‘i’ or the question mark ending your simple but heart-rate-escalating proposal.

Crunch.

stiles stilinski/teen wolf taglist:

it’s a date then. i’ll pick you up at 6? passenger seat’s already reserved for you ;)

@loulouloueh @when-you-wish-upon-a-starrynight @ronbrokemyheart @dylobilysmomg

if your name is crossed out, that means I couldn't take you! check your visibility settings so I can @ you next time!

fill out this form to be added!

#stiles x reader #stiles stilinski x y/n #stiles stilinski #stiles stilinski x reader #stiles stilinski x you #stiles x you #teen wolf fic #stiles stilinski drabble #stiles stilinksi x reader #stiles fanfiction #stiles fic #stiles imagine #stiles oneshot #stiles stilinski fanfiction #stiles stilinski fic #stiles stilinski fluff #stiles stilinski imagine #stiles stilinski one shot #stiles stilinski reader insert #teen wolf fluff #teen wolf #teen wolf fanfiction #tw

[sketchguk]

lover to lean on; pjm

➳ pairing: neighbor!jimin x florist!reader

➳ genre: neighbor AU, flower shop AU, smut, fluff, angst

➳ wc: 20k

➳ synopsis: for months, you can hear your no face neighbor and his ‘girlfriend’ singing and dancing and laughing and falling in love. above all, you can hear their bed banging against your shared wall, and they won’t ever let you sleep. you’d much rather stay up at night worrying about your own problems, like the weight of an unrequited crush, so of course you’re bitterly single. but one day, the apartment is radio silent. and one day slowly turns into one week and then into an immeasurable amount of time since you’ve heard his laugh. so on valentine’s day, when you’re missing it the most, you beg your neighbor to open up to you with cookies in one hand and two broken hearts in the other. 

➳ warnings: explicit language, pining, unrequited love 🤔, accidental voyeurism, unhealthy eating/sleeping habits, praise kink, body worship, nipple play, fingering, oral (f receiving), handjobs, penetration, fluffy sex

➳ a/n: oops, I uploaded this later than I expected because the word count really got me. anyways, this fic is inspired by the song call me by keshi x rainlord. go give it a listen! 

Wake up and smell the roses.

That would be a great philosophy for life if you didn’t have to wake up to the sound of sex at 2 in the goddamn morning. 

Perhaps it’s your fault for not checking on the thickness of the drywall prior to moving in, but it wasn’t exactly the first concern that came to mind when touring the flat. Now, it’s more of a personal problem than anything: you being bitter about not having sex while your neighbor and his girlfriend are going at it like rabbits 5 feet away from you. It’s not a very valid complaint to bring up to your landlord. He’d probably tell you to suck it up and get laid. 

And he’s right. 

Besides, it’s not so bad most days. You hardly even notice the sound of running water through the rusty pipelines every morning or the whizzing of the ancient radiator on cold nights. In fact, you welcome it. It’s become part of the rustic building’s old-school, pre-historic charm. 

That, you can get behind. 

But one thing is for sure. You’re never going to learn to appreciate the strangled garble of a morning blowjob in the steamy showers or the banging of the bedpost against the paper thin walls when you’re in desperate need of some beauty sleep, well deep in a state of REM. 

It’s anything but charming. 

The 3 inch thick divider between you and your not-so-considerate neighbor does absolutely nothing to drown out the soft moans and hard grunts. You can hear them loud and clear through the dead of night as if they’re right beside you. 

“My god,” you sigh, rolling around your bed restlessly. Your hand blindly palms at the sheets in search of the pillow that rests beside you, placing it over your face and sandwiching yourself between the cushions. If you can’t kill your neighbor, you might as well suffocate yourself first to avoid incrimination, shamefully persecuted for third degree murder. 

A frustrated groan falls from your lips, but it’s stifled against the buffer. The banging stops almost immediately. 

“Shit,” you hear from the other side. 

Did he come? Is it over? 

You pray, hold your breath, and lie still as if you’re the one caught red-handed. But you’re not a voyeur. At least not on purpose. 

It isn’t your fault for being a light sleeper because the only thing to blame is the flimsy partition your landlord dare considers a wall. If you could have it any other way, you would. This is far from ideal granted that you didn’t even ask for any of this, but it’s far too late to get a refund. 

Lately, you’ve been spending your nights muting out vulgar dirty talk, the occasional squelches, and the obscene skin slapping on skin. Over time, you’ve come to know your neighbor on a much more intimate level than you would have liked despite never seeing him around. Like the fact that he thrives off of edge play and praise kinks. Yeah, it’s probably for the best that his identity is kept a secret otherwise you wouldn’t ever be able to look him in the eyes again with the knowledge that you have stowed away in the crevasses of your brainー knowledge you would prefer to forget. You don’t even know his name, but you’re long past the point of being acquainted with one another, so it would pretty be awkward to ask for it now. All you know is that he’s stuck in his own bubble, too blinded by love and lust to even consider his poor neighbor. 

Most nights, you even make the effort to stumble through your cluttered, moonlit studio apartment in search of your cheap headphones that usually dangle precariously over the edge of your desk. You’ve made a mental note to invest in some earplugs and a more effective set of headphones too. 

Truly, you’re not the type to invade one’s privacy. You have nothing to be sorry about because you respect your neighbor, his girlfriend, and their sexy time. If anything, they should be the ones apologizing for keeping you awake for three consecutive nights. No less on a Tuesday. 

But perhaps the act is already done and you can let bygones be bygones. Maybe he’s already come, and as unfortunate as that may be for his girlfriend, the chances are he's low on stamina tonight. The vivace metronomic thuds against your shared wall would suggest he was going pretty hard at it too. Not that it’s any of your business. You’re happy that your neighbor is so in love, and that he can have sex all day, all night and fall into the comfort of his lover’s arms, unlike you. You’re not bitter. 

Not at all. 

You don’t mean to get invested in his relationship, but it’s just that tonight, he finished rather early as opposed to the hour it usually takes him to climaxー foreplay and edge play and all. You don’t keep track of the time per se. That’d be a little creepy, but it’s hard not to do so when you’re losing out on a precious hour of sleep each night. Especially when you’re stuck in your own overactive imagination, wondering how good his stroke game is and what type of lingerie he’s intoー

“Sorry!”

Your eyebrows furrow in confusion. Then the realization hits you momentarily. 

He’s talking to you. 

They must have heard you groaning through the stupid, thin walls, and therefore, you’re responsible for this very awkward exchange. 

Your grip on the pillow loosens as you lift it over your head. 

“It’s okay!” Your voice cracks with a heightened tone, “Just make sure you use protection!” The cringe settles into the pit of your stomach as soon as you respond. You squeeze your eyes shut and mentally facepalm yourself. You should have left it alone, but your cursed mouth moves way faster than your thoughts. 

The couple whispers to one another, but it’s hushed and hurried. Faint and hard to decipher. Angry, even. The wall must be really selective on what it chooses to mute out which is absolutely perfect when you actually want to know what’s happening on the other side. 

However, moments after, you can still hear the rustle of sheets and the patter of footstepsー two pairs. Even the harsh close of the door and the soft turning of the deadbolt, a resounding click that could be heard if you were to listen close enough. 

Once again, there’s a shuffle of feet that skid across the hardwoodー one pair. A few creaks echo from the aged floorboards. And then there’s a squeak from the bed slat, a heavy mass pressing on the mattress. 

You sit in silence with eyes wide open as you trap air into your lungs in fear of breathing out. Correction, in fear of your neighbor making comments on your rude interruption. If you could pretend that you’re asleep, maybe the problem will disappear into the night. 

But it doesn’t because it never works that way. 

Moonlight filters through the pane glass windows, right between the cracks of your curtain. It illuminates your face and keeps you awake longer than you need to be. You manage to let out the breath you’ve been holding when something else breaks the silence. 

You can hear it faintly. The soft hum of an unfamiliar tune before the soft outbreak of vocals. The song is bitter, but the voice is sweet.

Your neighbor has gotten into the habit of singing whether it be at dawn or dusk, yet you can never complain given his velvety voice. Sometimes it’s accompanied by the strum of an acoustic guitar or the tap of an electronic keyboard. But one thing that never changes is his love for the same old bubble gum pop music that’s rinsed and repeated on the radio. Nothing but love on the brain. Mushy lyrics that bear no meaning to you, and frankly, to anyone who’s painfully single and/or heartbroken. 

You would have expected nothing less from this man though. His taste in music is a given. Most days, you can physically feel his warmth and kindness based on the dulcet timbre of his voice. Although you’ll never care to admit it to him, it helps you fall asleep on nights when you’re drained from work. They’re comforting songs that warm your heart, especially because he’s singing such sincere lyrics about his girlfriend. 

His love for her is pure, and it’s disgustingly cute. 

No matter how many times you try to convince yourself that you’re happy for the lovely couple while internally cringing during their late night endeavors, you’re wondering if you’re subconsciously longing for a relationship just like theirs. 

But you’d be crazy not to dream about that kind of love story. One in which the guy cooks a meal for you at the end of every night, served alongside a hot cup of peppermint tea to help you sleep better. In which he runs a bath for you, flower petals, candles, soap suds, and the whole shebang, only to hop right in behind you. Someone to keep you company while giving you a back massage, working on the hard-to-reach knots that line your shoulder blade after a hard work day. Of course at his own volition, never having to be asked to do so. 

Perhaps you’re more invested in your neighbor’s picture perfect relationship than you thought, knowing all these little, intimate details no one else should know. But once again, the thin wall is to blame. You’re not an eavesdropper. You’re just a hopelessly hopeless romantic who needs to wake up and smell the damn roses. 

Because apparently, not every relationship is as perfect as it seems. 

“Everything okay?” You don’t know why you open your mouth, but you do, and you can’t take it back. He’s long since stopped singing, but the residual silence is louder than the gentle voice that once filled the space. 

He sighs deeply. The frustration is unmistakable, and you regret ever saying anything. 

“Yeah… Just trouble in paradise.” He chuckles dryly, but there’s a tinge of sadness to it. 

The room is quiet again. You debate with yourself, wondering if you should hash it out with him or go to fucking bed knowing that you have a 7 am shift tomorrow. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” The kindness of your heart outweighs all else, but you cross your fingers and secretly hope that his answer is no just so you can finally get some shut-eye. 

“Uhm… I wouldn’t want to bother you.” His voice wavers. He sounds tired, but maybe it’s the exhaustion from navigating the rocky waters of a relationship. You’ve been there before. 

Everyone’s been there before. 

Your eyes are closed, and just when you think you can go back to bed, your mind and heart betray you. 

“I wouldn’t be bothered,” you tell him, “I’m already awake too.” 

His chest rumbles with a true chuckle this time. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” 

“Don’t even worry about it. I’m probably gonna invest in some ear plugs tomorrow,” you quip, waving it off. 

“You really don’t have to,” he deadpans. There’s a pregnant pause, and you’re left confused. He continues with a shaky breath, “I’m not sure we’ll be back together after this.” 

Now you’re even more confused. Were they not just ravaging one another moments ago? 

“Valentine's Day is coming up next Friday…” you muse. “You could still win her back, you know?” 

The radiator whirs in the background. It’s silent. 

“Do you love her?” You query, thumbing the pilled edges of your blanket. 

“That’s a loaded question.” 

Now it’s your turn to stay silent. 

“I think I do,” he starts. His voice is rough. “Love her— I mean.” He falters in uncertainty. “Sorry, I’ve never admitted it to myself before.” 

“That’s okay.” It’s a weak attempt to comfort him, but the situation is totally out of your hands. You don’t even know the full picture, yet it somehow feels like you’re on the other side of the breakup even though you’re just sitting in the audience, watching, or rather hearing, the drama unfold. 

Your fingers interlock with one another, resting over your chest as you lie flat on your back. The heavy weight of your heart sinks lower into your stomach. Maybe love isn’t real, or maybe it’s not meant for people like you and him. Or is it just some misconstrued concept jumbled up in your brain? Some romanticized notion you’ve only ever dreamed about or seen in movies and read in fanfiction?

You gulp, pondering over how things could possibly go wrong in their seemingly perfect relationship. Well, there are millions of reasons, but maybe you’ve only ever heard the good times roll. Days when they’re frolicking in a meadow of sunshine and nights when they’re singing and dancing and laughing, head over heels in love, and everything is just peachy perfect. Maybe the bad and the dirty have yet to expose itself to you, still hidden behind an extra layer of stucco drywall and eggshell paint coatings. No matter how many times you bitch about them, the innermost part of you is still rooting for the couple you’ve had the displeasure of listening to have sex every night. But it’s always worth it, or so you think, for the sake of them being in a good place. To be undoubtedly quote unquote in love—

“Have you ever been in love?” It surprises you that he’s the one asking instead of the other way around. 

You stare blankly at the ceiling with a racing heart. Biting your lip, you speculate whether or not you should reveal such intimate details about your life to a total stranger.

“Nope,” you shake your head. He can’t see you, but you hope that your response is convincing enough. 

“Would you want to?” 

You can’t help but scoff. “Yeah, what kind of question is that?” 

“You’re right, it was stupid.” He chuckles. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be sorry,” you warn him, “You don’t have to.” 

“Sorr—”

“If you finish that sentence, I’ll personally come over and flick you on the forehead,” you say, reprimanding him. 

His laughter is even sweeter than his voice. “Harsh. But nice? I guess?”

That’s the perfect description for someone who works in the service industry, which unfortunately, you do. 

“It’s for your own good,” you suggest, nodding your head in self indulgent pleasure. Kind of like how avoiding love is for your own good.

The silence quickly settles in, as does the existential dread. Your eyes shift around to the empty apartment before you, and you soon realize that you’re painfully alone.

The radiator goes off again and the clock ticks perpetually. The moment escapes you. 

His voice fills up the room. “Can I ask how you’re doing?” 

The corner of your lips curl up in a fond smile. You exhale a deep sigh, one of contemplation. “I’m okay… Just... learning how to deal with unrequited love.” 

“Harsh,” he echoes back.

“Yeah.” You curl up on your side, sighing and reaching for a pillow to spoon. 

“Want to talk about it?” 

You gnaw on your lip. It’s a bad habit to have. “There’s not much to talk about. It’s just some guy who always walks in at work. We make small talk, flirt a little bit, and then he leaves until the next day.” A highlight reel flashes before you, and you tug on your blanket, nuzzling into the warm fabric that offers you some semblance of comfort against the outside world as you dig your nose into the soft linen. 

“How do you know he doesn’t like you?” 

You shrug to yourself. “It’s just a feeling.”

You think the conversation is over at this point. Moments go by until your ears perk up at the faint sound of his voice. “You should ask him out.”

Your neighbor surely seems to enjoy making a fool out of you. It’s a nice thought to have though. To think that you have the confidence to ask a guy out. The guy you’re crushing on, no less. 

You satiate your neighbor anyways just to entertain the idea a little longer and give him a little push towards his own love story. “Only if you make amends with your girlfriend though.” 

“Girlfriend? Oh— no, she’s not my girlfriend,” he says in defense. 

You’re perplexed. “Wh-? She’s not?”

“No... uh, just friends with benefits,” he confesses with a cough. 

Flashbacks start to go off in your head as you try to connect the dots like some mathematical formula. Is love actually an illusion? Maybe love knows no labels, but a small part of you still wants to believe that they’re wholeheartedly in love and on the verge of marriage or something. But that delusion instantaneously bursts into dust and ashes, confirmed by none other. 

“Hey, I’m kind of tired, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? I’ll make it right with her so long you talk to the guy.” He lets out a huff. “Don’t let him miss out on a good thing because of the what ifs.” 

Comfort washes over you at the sound of his advice. In a way, he’s right. Maybe it’s time that you put yourself out there in spite of the possibilities. Even if it’s utterly terrifying. 

“Goodnight,” you mumble back, wrapping your arms securely around the pillow. 

He hears you loud and clear, “Goodnight. Thanks for the talk.” 

He knocks out soon after that, but it’s hard for you to sleep when you’ve got nothing but love on the brain. 

Waking up is hell, especially when you’re running on nothing but 0 hours of sleep and a single cup of black coffee. The only thing that makes the fatigue worth it is the peaceful lull at sunrise and the absence of your noisy neighbor’s daily blowjob. It’s as if some higher power read your mind and decided that you’re worth the divine intervention just for that one fleeting moment of jubilation. 

But just like the law of gravity, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and your contract with the universe calls for some cosmic karma. It’s like you’re being punished because you can never seem to catch a break. 

Work is unusually hectic, but with Valentine’s Day around the corner, it’s expected. If Black Friday is the worst nightmare for every retail worker, one can imagine a florist’s week leading up to Single’s Awareness Day, or much less commonly referred to as “A Shallow, Capitalistic Attempt to Buy Affection Day.” 

Despite owning a flower shop, you still stand firmly against Valentine’s Day and all that it represents. Maybe you’re spiteful because you’re pitifully single and surrounded by lovey dovey mush at every single corner. But as of right now, it has more to do with the extra workload that lies at your feet. 

Not only do you have to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to open shop and prepare for the deliveries, but you also have to cut and process flowers, organize dozens of overnight orders, and arrange bouquets for the day’s purchases, all before 9am. The to-do list is endless, and not to mention, the number of calls you’ve picked up in the last hour alone has already backed you up on a number of orders. It’s stressful and incredibly time consuming to say the least. 

By 10am, you’re ready to call it quits, but you constantly remind yourself that this job is your only source of income, and therefore, you have to barrel through with a bright and shining customer service smile on your face. 

At this point, you really wish you did smother yourself with your pillow last night. 

But the only thing that keeps your sanity in tact after the morning rush is the chance to make arrangements for the front display. It’s therapeutic to pick and choose foliage, sprucing them into beautiful pieces of art for passersby to enjoy. You’re grateful for the scent of seeded eucalyptus and baby’s breath which is remedial to your burgeoning headache. Even the sight of your favorite carnation is enough to ease the pounding pain against your skull. 

However, making arrangements isn’t all sunshine and flowers despite popular belief. The worst part about it is the heavy lifting. It’s labor intensive to pick up large plants like the full sized leatherleaf fern in the back room, which is now carefully lodged into a concoction of gardening soil, compost, mulch, and active charcoal. But if nobody else is going to do it, you’re going to have to do it alone. 

Lifting the hefty plant isn’t difficult to begin with, but it progressively becomes taxing when you have to carry it to the front of the store. As you emerge from the back door, the bell of the entrance chimes, signifying a customer’s presence.  

You can hear him before you can even see him. 

“Good morning!”

You nearly jolt at the sound of his chipper voice. Of course Jimin had to walk in at the peak moment of you struggling, looking like a disheveled mess with soil accumulated in your hair like a burrowed nest. You just hope and pray that it’s not smeared across your forehead like Simba.

Out of pure embarrassment, you hold the pot higher to hide your burning cheeks behind the plant despite your arms giving out. Would all of your problems disappear if you act like you’re not there? Once again, of course not, because he spots you in an instant, and you’re just not fated to have the good things in life. 

He calls out your name before stopping to place his things down at the table and rushing over to you, “Here, let me help you with that.” 

You have an ironclad grip on that ceramic pot, holding on to it as if it’s life or death. “No, it’s okay, I got it,” you say out of pure, frantic determination. 

“Don’t be silly, let me.” He reaches for the bottom of the earthenware. His hand grazes over yours before you can pull away, shifting the responsibility onto him. 

You offer him a grateful smile that extends your eyes, and he sends one back your way. 

“Where do you want it?” He asks. You can’t even get a word in before he turns on his heels and makes space for you through the narrow aisle. 

Leading the way, you show him the spot you’ve marked for the fern to hopefully reside for the next 24 hours. “Here’s good,” you tell him, pointing to the empty tile. 

Jimin bends down and gently places the plant into its new home. Then he reaches into his messenger bag, pulling out a packet of tissues before gravitating towards the spray bottle.

“I’m a big girl, you know? I could do it myself,” you whine with a slight pout. 

He grips on your right shoulder, and you’re locked in place. “I know, but I want to help,” he says with the utmost care, “And you can ask me for help whenever you need it, you know?” Jimin smiles at you, and his eyes lower into crescent moon shapes, the corners slightly creasing. Before you know it, there’s a cool sensation on your forehead. The tissue in his hand is thoroughly saturated and now damp against your skin. You recoil on contact and reach for Jimin’s wrist, ready to yell at him for the lack of warning. 

“Hey!”

“Stay still, you have soil on you,” he alerts with sharp eyes. 

You let go of his wrist and give in to his kind gesture, murmuring out a “fine”. 

While he concentrates on cleaning you up, you can’t help but look up and lock your eyes on his. You swear you could spontaneously combust and astral project from the intensity of his stare. His close proximity makes you heat up, so you’re forced to avert your eyes elsewhere out of pure intimidation. Your line of sight meets his lips, and you’re stuck in place, staring at them. They’re so pink and plush, and his tongue even pokes out a little like a sleepy kitten with slack jaw. Most of all, they’re right there in front of you, and if you could just lean in a little more, you’d be this closeー

“All clean!” He says with cheer, tapping your shoulder.

He turns around in search of the dustbin, and you shake yourself out of your own daydream before he can catch sight of you. 

You laugh it off and offer him a toothy smile, “If you really want to help, you could have gotten me a cup of coffee.”

“You’re making demands now, huh?” He asks.

“It’s more like a suggestion than anything,” you teasingly yell from the back room, grabbing the remaining flowers for the display. Meanwhile, Jimin lingers behind in the main room, admiring the freshly cut flowers laid out on the counter ready to be made into floral arrangements.

You manage to recompose yourself from that one moment of weakness by taking a glance over at the cute doodles of artwork that line your office wall. They’re little bits of happiness that keep you calm and remind you that there’s light in your life, and he’s standing in the other room waiting for you to pop a very important question. 

Upon grabbing the necessary items, you make your way back into the store. You stop immediately in your tracks, nearly colliding into a solid figure at the sharp turn of the doorway. Your heart almost stops, but you shudder away before you could tip yourself over. 

Jimin stands in front of you with his hand extended out, clenching onto a steaming, white paper cup. 

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of me and coffee now,” he laughs, reaching out once again, “Only one of us bites.” 

“That’s for me?” You ask incredulously. 

He nods his head, “Yeah, of course, silly.” 

You take the drink from his hands, and before you can thank him, he chimes in. “It’s just how you like it. Black and full of caffeine.” 

You press your lips up against the cup, taking a sip and humming in satisfaction at the drops of heaven. “Thanks, but why? And how’d you know my coffee order? Don’t get me wrong, this is really nice, but…” 

“I saw how dead you looked yesterday,” he justifies cutting you off before you can ramble on. Honest, but harsh. 

You put the cup back on the counter and continue with your task at hand, and he trails behind you. 

“Thanks, that’s what every girl wants to hear,” you banter with all the sarcasm you can muster, pulling at the flower stems despite them already being placed exactly where you want them. 

“Girls like it when guys pay attention to the little details, don’t they?” He asks with a gleam in his irises. 

You look up at him briefly before averting his eyes and wiping clean the leaves on a near fiddle leaf tree, spraying food soil at its roots. 

“Love it,” you gulp wryly. 

Jimin takes note of how seemingly busy you are, so he walks around the shop, examining the new inventory of flowers. After making your round through the store, watering all the plants that need to be watered, you return to the disembodied zinnia on the counter, waiting to be arranged. 

The silence is refreshing until it isn’t. 

“Is the coffee good?” He queries. 

“Huh?” You stop what you’re doing to casually glance his way. His back is turned to you, but he seems overly invested in the rose display. 

“The coffee,” he repeats, back still turned.  

You look at the untouched cup at the edge of the table and smile to yourself. You didn’t notice it before, but there’s a red doodle that contrasts against the white paper cup, no doubt customized by Jimin himself. It’s hard to pick out what it is exactly, but you’d recognize the flowers of God any day. The ruffled petals and thin, straight stem are simply unmistakable. 

“Oh, yeah. It’s good,” you answer politely. 

“What’s your favorite kind of flower?” He asks curiously as if he’s playing a game of 21 questions. It’s a question you’ve answered numerous times before, but facts like these can easily slip through someone’s mind. 

“Easy, carnations,” you respond without any hesitation, pointing at the display in the right corner of the store when he turns around to look at you. He makes his way to the stand, eyeing the flowers. 

“They’re pretty,” he comments, pulling out one of the bouquets to examine as if he didn’t already know. 

You hum, and maybe the exhaustion is evident in your voice and your oddly scarce exchange of pleasantries. 

Jimin carries on with the small talk anyways. “You’ve been sleeping okay?” 

You snip away at the hard, green stems, tossing them into the trash beside you. Shrugging, you mindlessly answer. “Yeah, as much as a florist can during Valentine’s week.” You snicker with good spirit. 

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t rest well,” he scolds you all in good faith, eyes now scanning the small assortment of cards. You hum in affirmation. 

If anything, he should be telling that to your noisy neighbor who refuses to let you get a wink of sleep. 

A creak rings through the air as Jimin rotates the card stand, thumbing through the variety. “Do you have plans for Valentine’s Day by the way?” 

You can feel your hands clam up as they stop fiddling with the lemon leaves. Your heartbeat picks up, and you’re left winded by the question. You hide behind the hesitation, nervous as to where this may lead. How could you possibly play it cool when your crush asks you whether or not you’re busy on arguably the most romantic holiday of the year? 

Play it cool because remember, you loathe Valentine’s Day. 

Your hands fumble as you pick up the lemon leaves again, snipping at the branches nonchalantly. “Uh, no, not really, you?” you gulp. Your eyes are distracted, too fixed on the greenery. 

But you look up the moment Jimin approaches the counter with flowers in one hand and a card in another. 

“Oh, who are these for?” you feign innocence in your voice as you reach for the brown kraft paper and the roll of red ribbon. 

Jimin scratches the back of his neck, hesitating. “My girlfriend,” he mumbles, but it’s loud and clear, audible enough for you to apprehend like an echo in you ear.

“I don’t have much planned yet, but we’re probably going to grab dinner on Friday,” he shrugs with hands burrowed in his pockets. He shifts his weight on the balls of his feet, eyes focused on the gray specks of the ceramic tiles beneath him. “Something casual. I’m not really huge on the whole Valentine’s Day thing.” 

It seems like every man in your life paints you like a giant fool destined for humiliation. Of course the hopelessly hopeless romantic within you deluded yourself into believing that some Prince Charming would visit your flower shop in anticipation of seeing you. Of course the flowers that he buys everyday has to go somewhere, you just never expected that each and every morning at the crack of dawn, the flowers you carefully hand-pick and wrap with unconditional love would be sent off to his girlfriend. 

Of course you’re a huge idiot who isn’t destined for love. 

It almost hurts to plaster the tight lipped smile on your face when your heart is prickled with thorns like the roses in your hands. 

You lick your lips and painfully gulp the spit down your dry throat before you open your mouth again.

“Jimin?” 

“Yeah?” 

You pause. “You can’t give these to your girlfriend” 

His eyebrows furrow and his hands run through his hair. “What do you mean?”

“They’re white roses.” 

“So? She likes white flowers.” He doesn’t seem to get the point. 

You almost chuckle in his face, and you would have if your heart didn’t hurt so damn much. So you refrain. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that white flowers are meant for funerals?” 

His cheeks are dusted with a pink blush. He shakes his head no. “Uh, what do you suggest I give her then?” 

You sigh, looking at the hopeless man in front of you. “Do you love her?” Not even a second goes by before you ramble, not very eager to hear the answer. “You could uh- give her that fern you helped me carry earlier.” You walk back to the front display, keeping a safe distance to hide your woe, extending your arms out like a game show host revealing what’s hidden behind door #1. (Hint: it’s your heart). 

“Call it your love fern?” you shrug, laughing it off. 

“I think a bouquet is fine.” Jimin staggers behind you, checking out the other flower displays, opting for door #2. “How about the carnations you mentioned?” He pulls out a bouquet of variegated carnations painted with pink and red tips. “These are nice, don’t you think?” He looks at you curiously with doe eyes in await of your approval. 

Your mouth opens to interject, ready to digress into another lesson on the history of variegated carnations, but you bite your tongue back. 

Jimin spots your reluctance, but quickly puts it to rest. “Look, I don’t think she really cares about the meaning behind the flowers. You said these are your favorite, and you’re the expert right?”

You nod, unable to trust your voice. “Mhmm.” Even your hum cracks. “But uh, maybe the deep red ones would be more appropriate?” You cock your head to the side and quirk your eyebrow. 

“It’s fine, I swear” he reassures you, placing the bouquet on the counter before putting the white roses back in its stand. 

Your feet refuse to move as if they’re cemented to the ground, but Jimin stands there in front of you with rosy eyes, awaiting for you to wrap up the object of his affection in a pretty red bow. So how could you refuse?

You walk past the carnation display on the way to the counter, and pick up another bouquet. Pink and red variegated. “Here, these are a little more fresh. The buds are tighter, so in a few days, you’ll see them nice and big.” You smile, closed lipped. “Just in time for Valentine’s Day.” 

Jimin’s jaw loosens and his lips part. He knits his brow in a frown. “Uh, these aren’t actually meant for Valentine’s Day,” he says, running his hand through his perfectly imperfect raven hair. “She’s kind of mad at me right now,” he gives a mirthless chuckle while playing with his hands, “so I’m hoping I can make it up to her with this.” 

Ah, your favorite flowers are reduced to nothing but a gift of pity.

“She’d be crazy not to accept your apology,” you say in a soft voice, gritting your teeth behind your tense jaw, eyes fixated on the little nursling in your hold. With a soft hand, you unravel the kraft paper and delicately wrap it around the bouquet. The very one you picked up this morning and arranged the hour prior, wondering if you’ll be able to send it off to a loving home. 

Now you know for a fact that it’ll be in good hands. 

“Do you think she’d like it?” Jimin chirps in. 

It feels like your heart is on the threshold of bleeding out as he sends another prickle to the soft organ. Your concentration doesn’t even falter as you snip the ribbon. 

“I know she will.”

You tie the fabric into the prettiest bow you can muster and slide the gift of love across the glass counter. Jimin looks down at the beautifully wrapped flowers with an ear to ear smile on his face. “Thank you so much for the help, I really appreciate it.” 

“Just doing my job,” you remind him with a counterfeit smile, scanning the barcode at the back of the card. It’s a really cute card too. Sometimes I wonder how you put up with me then I remember I put up with you. So we’re even ❤️ 

You hate yourself for the fond smile you almost crack, masked behind the pained one you send his way. 

Jimin passes you a $20 bill and grabs his merchandise from the table. 

“She’s really lucky to have you,” you lament honestly with glistening eyes as he walks out the front door. 

He doesn’t catch a word you say, but he manages to shout back a “thank you!” and a “see you tomorrow!” before speeding out, setting off the bell at the top of the door without ever looking back at your dejected figured. 

You’re left alone to finish the rest of the work day, surrounded by none other than the sickly, sweet scent of seeded eucalyptus and baby’s breath, all while taking in the putrid sight of variegated carnations. 

They say that you are your worst enemy, and they are 110% correct on the matter. You don’t know why you would think that you’d have a good day on the basis of your neighbor having a crummy one. It’s not like there’s some kind of transfer of energy. It’s been proven to you time and time again that divine intervention and karmic justice just aren’t real, and apparently, neither is science. Otherwise, by that logic, you’d have a superb day. 

You would have slept through last night and woken up to a pretty pink sunrise painted across the sky— nothing but peace. To the chirping of birds in the distance and to the passing of cars on an empty street. You would have had enough time to prepare a proper breakfast— pancakes, eggs, bacon, and maybe even a nice cup of hot chocolate. Not a measly cup of black coffee to keep you awake for the rest of the busy day. You would have had a nice chat with Jimin at the flower shop about the capitalistic corruption of Valentine’s Day while he’d try to convince you otherwise. He’d prove you wrong, and you would have walked home with a blooming garden in your heart. 

But science is bullshit and the transfer of energy is a complete lie— photosynthesis being the only exception. The only thing you got out of today was a huge migraine and a withering blossom in your chest. 

So just when you think that the day could not get any worse, it absolutely does. 

You can probably blame the poor mindset you boxed yourself in— having a cynical outlook on love and life because of the dreaded upcoming holiday. Maybe it was because your crush just stomped all over your garden and plucked the flowers to give to some other girl. Or, you can put the blame on past you, the big freaking idiot who previously stripped off her bed sheets at 6:30 in the morning in hopes of being productive by doing weeks of piled up laundry. At this point, all you want to do is curl up in a warm bed, too exhausted by the trials and tribulations of life, but you can’t even give yourself the satisfaction of that because you thought you were some kind of changed woman who could manage her stupid laundry.

Newsflash, you’re not. 

The naked mattress in the corner of your apartment mocks you, so grudgingly, you take your laundry basket down to the laundry room for your most hated chore. With heavy steps, you trudge through the cold, cement basement. It’s dark and dingy down there. A little scary too, given the flickering lightbulb at the end of the hallway. Nevertheless, you march through the doors and into the rumbling alcove. 

What you find in there is startling, yet you can’t say that you’re surprised seeing that this occurrence is far from rare. You almost consider walking back upstairs and knocking on your floormate’s door, asking him if he’d be willing to do your laundry in exchange for $5 just so you don’t have to sit there, listening to some couple make out in the back corner.

Apparently, everyone in the world is foolishly in love except for you. 

You crank up the volume a little louder so your cheap headphones can drown out the sound of them locking lips with one another, but the poor quality does absolutely nothing for your abused ears. The boisterous public display of affection is deafening over the sound of your “Wallowing in Self Pity” playlist. 

You’re only capable of catching a brief glance in their direction before gagging and veering off. She’s sitting atop of the washing machine as he stands between her parted legs. They’re so lost in their own world that they don’t even notice your presence. 

Out of respect for yourself and the horny couple, you choose to occupy a washing machine at the opposite corner of the laundry room. But perhaps you can save yourself the irritation as well as the $5 in your wallet because you can hear their hushed whispers. They’ve separated themselves long enough for the guy to convince her to move to a more private location. Although she still leeches herself onto his neck, he’s attentive enough to know that they aren’t alone. He picks her up and drags her out of the laundry room with her legs wrapped around his waist, unwilling to part from him as if holding his hand simply isn’t enough. 

You roll your eyes, thankful for the quietude and the money you’ve saved yourself, but as you sit alone in the drafty basement, doing the chore you hate the most, you can’t help but think how much better it would be to do it with someone else at your side. 

Somehow you’re convinced that crossing paths with Jeongguk in the hallway is fated after thinking about him moments prior. Because it’s very uncommon for that boy to leave his apartment, cooping up all day long with his video games, only to catch a breath of fresh air for his nightly gym sessions. When you see him locking up his apartment door, you offer him $5 anyways just out of the kindness of your heart. He could probably use the money more than you anyways. 

Although you didn’t have any intention of doing a good deed today, karma still finds a way to punish you. As always, it’s bullshit. 

Upon entering your empty apartment, the space is already filled with the sonorous sounds of orchestral music. Violins, violas, cellos, flutes, oboes, and harps all performing in perfect harmony. It’s played through the walls, coming from none other than the speakers of your beloved neighbor. You wouldn’t mind the soothing classical melodies to cure your migraine so long it’s accompanied by white noise. But your neighbor’s laughter rings above the music as you can hear him count “1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3” in a triple metre. 

You know that he’s not alone because there’s also another voice laughing alongside him. The same one you’ve grown accustomed to over the months. Her high pitched squeals are unmistakable as they greatly resemble other sounds you’ve heard come from her mouth on many unfortunate nights. So you can safely assume that your neighbor and his not-girlfriend made up with one another already—

“Look at me, not at your feet!” 

“I don’t know where to put them!” 

“You’re stepping on my toes!”

“Sorry!” 

“Oh yeah, you’ll be sorry!” 

It’s hard to picture what’s happening behind the wall when you don’t have faces to match with the voices. But you don’t really need it when their bed slat creaks beneath their weight and their headboard slams against your shared wall. Not when her yelps erupt as a result of the tickle fest they’re currently immersed in. The sounds are vivid enough for you to know much more than you need to know. It almost feels like you’re intruding on an intimate moment that’s not meant for your eyes, let alone your ears. 

Meanwhile, as you struggle to tuck the fitted sheets beneath the four corners of your mattress, you wonder whether it’s worth it to leave the apartment again after such a hard day. Of course for the sole purpose of avoiding a home made porn video being filmed in the process. 

Maybe it’s not too late, and you can still catch up to Jeongguk. You could head to the gym and snatch back the $5 you generously handed him because the more you think about it, the more you believe that someone owes you for your miserable time spent in this apartment complex. But you can’t take your anger out on the poor boy from down the hall when he doesn’t deserve it. 

The sanctuary of your bed calls your name like a siren, so instead, you do what you’re forced to always do— plug in your cheap headphones, blare out some music, and move on with your day. 

And it works for the most part. 

You’re able to successfully put on your bed sheets after struggling to play a big game of tug of war with your mattress. Despite the internal push and pull, you also will yourself to do adult things like tidying up the studio, making the space somewhat habitable for humans. By 9pm, you can finally sit down and enjoy a nice, hot meal. However, you’re forced to keep your headphones on because your neighbor’s not-girlfriend decided that she couldn’t go a single day without her not-boyfriend’s dick in her mouth. 

You swear you’re going to ask him tonight why he hasn’t made it official because it’s clear as day that they’re in love with one another. You know that you definitely would be if someone offered you oral every single day. Unfortunately, nobody’s offering. Thus, you’re forced to live vicariously. 

So as midnight approaches, and the moon reaches its apex, you settle into bed with a book in hand, ready to suffer through the night. It’s difficult to concentrate on the text when your music is blasting, but you suppose it’s better to listen to lo-fi hip hop beats as opposed to the scream of “daddy” over and over and over… 

Although you applaud her for her shamelessness, you would still prefer if she could keep to herself.

Thankfully, these moments are only temporary. 

With your eyes squeezed shut, you let out a lethargic yawn. Looking over at your nightstand, you spot your ticking alarm clock. It’s nearing 1 in the morning, and you decide that you’re exhausted. Well, you’ve decided that long ago, but going to bed before midnight is admitting defeat against your own body. Nevertheless, no matter how tired you are, you know in the back of your mind that there’s no way you could have dozed off with your neighbors going on a Netflix binge with speakers fully blaring audio from The Office. It’s as if they don’t know what headphones are. 

But after “one more episode” and a disgustingly long makeout session, you can hear the shuffle of feet across the floor boards and the turning of the lock. 

It’s nearly 2 am, and the radiator hisses. It’s quiet. 

But then that’s when you hear it like clockwork. The delicate hum before the pleasant tune. Tonight, it’s not a song you’re familiar with. Something about the universe moving and happiness that’s meant to be. Mentions of penicillium and a calico cat? There’s lots of talk about letting someone love you, and that’s when it really hits you in the gut. You’re not so sure about the song, but as always, it sounds pretty. It’s not typical to call a guy’s voice beautiful, but it is what it is. It’s serene, and it’s the promise of tomorrow. It’s something you wish that would never stop. 

But of course all good things come to an end. 

There’s a purposeful knock against the wall which startles you. “Hey, I know you’re up. How’d your day go?” Your neighbor asks, breaking the silence and dragging your attention towards his voice once again. 

You tug your headphones off and walk to the other side of the apartment to lay your book down on the desk, gracefully avoiding anything in your wake because your apartment is finally clean.

“You know, sometimes I wish you would catch me on my good days so I wouldn’t have to tell you such sad stories.” A wary smile surfaces your lips. 

“Why, what happened today?” He asks with concern laced in every syllable. “Did you take my advice?” 

You climb back into bed, pulling your covers over your torso. Sometimes you feel bad about how many silent complaints you have about your neighbor when he’s actually a really nice guy. He just lacks the proper etiquette knowing that the walls are paper thin.

“IIIIIII tried to.” You drag out the vowel, hesitant to recall the embarrassing story. 

“Yeah, and how’d it go?” 

“He doesn’t like me back,” you say plainly after a moment’s reflection. 

Your neighbor scoffs. “He’s an idiot then.” 

You try to fight back the smile because as untrue as it is, Jimin is anything but an idiot. But it’s comforting to know that someone has your back, defending you in all your honor. 

This time, you genuinely chuckle. “It’s not that.... He uh, actually has a girlfriend.” It hurts to admit it out loud. “And I’m sure she’s lovely if he likes her that much.” 

“Like I said, he’s an idiot for losing out on the best thing in his life.” 

It’s impossible for you to fight back this bashful smile because it makes your heart flutter. This may be the first time you’ve felt good about yourself this whole day. 

“Thanks, but I don’t know about that though—” 

He interrupts you, “Come on, don’t say that. You’re not giving yourself enough credit.” 

You shake your head in disbelief, “You’ve never even met me, and you don’t even know what I look like.” You roll your eyes, but a chuckle unintentionally falls from your lips. 

“It’s not about what’s on the outside, okay? I already know you’re beautiful because that’s what you are on the inside.” 

“Shut up, that’s so cheesy.” You flip over on your bed and dig your face into the pillow, flustered by his kind words. There’s absolutely no way people this nice exist in this world. “I could be a troll or a vampire or something for all you know.” 

“Vampires are kinda hot. Haven��t you seen Twilight?” He banters. “And I’m sure this guy isn’t even all that great. Like, tell me something you hate about him.” 

Your hands cover your mouth, stifling a laugh. “I’m not gonna hate on him because he doesn’t like me back. It’s just the reality of it. Besides, he’s perfect.” You roll your eyes, annoyed by how flawless Jimin is in your eyes. 

Your neighbor prods at you. “I reaaallly doubt that. There has to be something. Not even a pet peeve? Maybe he’s chronically late to everything? Sings out loud in a quiet place? Has a super annoying laugh?” 

“Yes, yes, and no.” You flip your pillow over to the cold side and settle in to lie in a more comfortable position, slipping your hand beneath the cushion. “I can excuse the lateness,” you lick your chapped lips. “He also sings like an angel, and his laugh is really endearing. He does this thing where he laughs with his whole body, and he falls over every time. I like it because I know he’s at his happiest then,” you remember zealously.

“Damn, I guess I’m just projecting my own flaws now, huh?” You can hear him snort from laughter, rolling his neck and cracking the joints in his body, and then the click of his knuckles, 10 of them, one after another. 

“Ugh,” you scrunch your nose, “Don’t do that. He does it too, and I guess that’s the only thing he does that really gets to me.” 

Your neighbor cracks another joint somewhere on his body just to annoy you, and you cringe. “See, now we’re talking.” 

“I was gonna tell you that you sing well too and that I like your laugh, but maybe I’ll have to reconsider,” you taunt. “But still, you shouldn’t put yourself down for the things that show off your happiness.” 

The bed creaks from the other side. He must have switched positions for that to happen. “Thanks,” he offers. His voice is muffled, face most likely pressed up against his own pillow. “How about you tell me about the things you like about him?” 

“What? Are you trying to wound me?” You ask, slightly hurt. 

He scoffs, “No, I’m trying to prove a point here. So, tell me.” He implores like this is some kind of couple’s therapy session. Apparently, without your other half. 

As moonlight filters through your curtains and the cars whiz by on the empty street below you, you consider all the things you love and appreciate about Jimin. 

“I love how selfless he is. He’s caring and attentive... He’ll know when I’m tired and he’ll offer me coffee. He also scolds me for sleeping late and he lifts my burdens for me, even when I don’t ask him to.” You close your eyes in retrospect of Jimin and all the good things in life that he embodies. “It’s not even the things that he does for me that make me like him.” 

Your neighbor hums, letting you continue. 

“I guess it’s the principle that’s important.” You play with the sleeves of your sweatshirt, pulling on the edges to give yourself some comfort. “There are people in this world who aren’t… the nicest? I guess. And… he’s one of the purest people I know. It’s like he goes the extra mile to make sure I’m happy… and healthy.” You take a deep sigh before your mind wanders to the darker parts of your brain. “But I also know he treats everyone else like that too. Because he’s that nice. So... I guess I should have seen it coming that I wasn’t so special anyways,” you recall with tears welling up in the brim of your eyes and a knot tightening in your throat. 

“Don’t say that, you’re one of a kind,” he assures you sternly, “What’s his name? I’ll go beat him up right now.” 

You give a bitter laugh, wiping away at your eyes with the back of your hands. 

“My point is that there are other guys out there who are just as caring. And they should make you feel special because you are, and it’s what you deserve. So if the next guy who comes along doesn’t treat you that way, I will beat his ass, okay?” He says in the most nonthreatening voice ever.

You chortle, “Okay, yeah, sure.” You’re not totally convinced of that. 

“You’re probably right, I don’t want to fight and embarrass myself after promising you that,” he giggles. 

“I appreciate the sentiment though.” Earnestly, you do. You don’t know many guys who are this nice, Jimin being the exception. “How ‘bout you though? It sounds like you made up with your not-girlfriend? I hope that wasn’t you in the laundry room earlier,” you tease, deflecting the attention away from you with a raised voice. 

He gladly takes the bait. “Oh shit, that was you? I’m so sorry.” He rolls around the bed in a fit of sweet laughter, and the slat creaks. “And yeah, we did,” he breathes out with a shallow huff after regaining composure. He sounds nonchalant about it. 

“You don’t sound very happy?” 

“No, I am,” he deadpans. 

You wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t. “Can you tell me what it is that you like about her?” You ask. 

He doesn’t answer immediately like you’d expect, but he’s dwelling on the answer. 

“I love how kind hearted she is,” he thinks out loud. “She’s a natural nurturer.” 

You can hear the smile in his voice, and you can’t help but reciprocate because of how pure that is. 

“Like... she’s always so bright, and…” he stops. “I just don’t know how to explain it. You’d have to meet her to know what I mean.” 

“Yeah you should invite me over so I can meet her.” You both chuckle knowing that you should meet one another before meeting his fuck buddy. 

“I think you’d like her actually. She has this beautiful soul… I- I don’t even know. She just sees the best in everyone. I know that she probably has her own struggles, but I don’t think she’ll ever let anyone know about them,” he mulls over, going on a tangent. 

“Why’s that?” You curl up on your side, hugging your pillow like you do during every conversation with him. It’s as if he’s recalling a bedtime story for you. You let out another yawn, and although you’re on the verge of falling asleep, you stay up a little longer just to hear him talk. 

“I’m not so sure why… I guess I love her and hate her for this...” He reflects. 

You hum, acknowledging him while urging him to continue his train of thought. 

“I don’t know... but she’s the type to suffer in silence for the sake of seeing other people around her smile. And… I don’t think she’ll ever admit when she’s hurt or when she needs help. She puts others before herself. Like, she’s so hellbent on putting on a happy face so that others can be happy too.” 

You nod to yourself, understanding what he means with every word. 

“And It’s not like she fakes her happiness or anything,” he continues as if clarification is needed. “She’s just… such a joy to be around. She makes everyone feel welcomed… and comfortable… And when she’s really happy, like genuinely happy, it feels like everything is right in the world.” 

You can tell he has a big, doting smile on his face. One simply cannot talk about a love like this and not smile. 

“I only wish that she’d be vulnerable with me so I can make her world a little brighter too.” 

“That’s really sweet, and also, I lowkey feel attacked right now,” you let out a dry chuckle. 

“Sorry,” he laughs. “But I think that’s why you two would get along well.” 

“Set up a date, and I’ll come over,” you joke with raised brows. 

“Hmm… I’ll have to think about it,” he teases. “Oh, but uhm... if we’re still on the conversation of what I like about her, physically, I love her smile. I swear to God I stopped in my tracks the first time I saw her… and it still happens every time.” 

“That’s cute,” you smile fondly. 

“When she looks at me, I think the whole world stops for a second because I can actually feel myself get vertigo,” he giggles innocently. “And she’s also got this super adorable snort-laugh that never fails to bring out the best in me. God, it’s beyond cute, you don’t even know.” 

“It sounds like you’re in love,” you suggest, curling up tighter into a ball, squeezing at your pillow. “I don’t see why you haven’t made it official yet.” 

The pause is filled by the whirring of the radiator and the ticking of the clock. 

“Yeah… I don’t know either.” 

Waking up, you find out that going to bed with a broken heart is a little easier than going to bed with a hopeful one. Perhaps it’s the emotional exhaustion that puts you to rest, but it doesn’t mean you’re any less fatigued. All your efforts are put into your work, and in a way, tending to flowers has served as a distraction from the wilting ones that reside in your chest. 

When in reality, you should find a way to revive those instead. 

But as Jimin stands before you, you can’t resist the shriveled petals that land in the pit of your stomach like cherry blossoms in the midst of spring. You really don’t know how you manage to bear discourse about Valentine’s Day when he’s unknowingly sitting there with wide eyes, listening to you talk about unreciprocated love that’s so obviously directed towards him. 

“You mean to tell me that you read romance novels and watch rom-coms, but you hate the most romantic holiday of the year?” 

“Exactly,” you nod as if it’s indisputable. 

He gives you a questioning look with a crease on his forehead and lips pressed together in a straight line. “Make it make sense,” he challenges.

You finish chewing on the forkful of salad you popped into your mouth before answering. “Can I rant about it?” 

Jimin gives you the go ahead and you continue, “I don’t think you understand how much of a die-hard hopeless romantic I am.” 

“Actually, I think I do,” he scoffs and raises his shoulders confidently with eyes closed as if it’s a matter of fact. “That doesn’t prove your point though,” he counters. 

You put your hand up, motioning him to stop interrupting, “Let me finish.” 

Jimin shrugs and grins from across the counter, allowing you to proceed. 

“When I love something, I put my heart and soul into it. I believe in passion, chivalry, and true love.” He hums in agreement as you count down each item with your fingers as if it’s an unofficial list of all the things that encompass a hopeless romantic. “And for me, Valentine’s Day is a poor excuse to spend money and show off all the things you’ve received from your significant other.” 

“That’s valid,” Jimin nods, agreeing while munching on his fries. 

“Like, why spoil someone on this particular day? What happens during the other 364 days?” You spew. 

Jimin mouths “365,” correcting you on the technicalities of a leap year. 

You click your tongue, moving on to the point. “Are they not cherished for the rest of the year? I would hope that my boyfriend makes me feel special for more than a single night.” Your forehead creases, too livid at this point to even realize how sadly single you sound. 

You’re too busy ranting, accidentally speaking over Jimin to hear him reassure you that you are special. “Also there’s just so much pressure to make the night special, as if they have to plan something, otherwise they’re not the ‘perfect couple’ or the ‘perfect man.’” You emphasize with air quotes. 

“I felt that one,” he chuckles, shaking his head. 

“You see my point now?” You acknowledge him sullenly. There’s a tug on your heartstrings at the mention of his girlfriend, but you drive your point forward in hopes of changing the direction of topics. You don’t even want to think about whether or not he’s made plans with his girlfriend yet. 

“And what’s the deal with chocolates?” You yell, completely frustrated, throwing your arms up. “They’re totally overpriced. And cards? Cheesy and terrible. My Instagram feed? Flooded with PDA, and it's a big stab at singles like me.” You enunciate angrily, driving your fork harshly into your salad once again. 

He laughs and nearly falls off the stool he’s sat on top of before swiftly catching himself. You snicker at his unadulterated cuteness. 

“How ‘bout flowers?” He questions with ketchup lingering on the corner of his mouth. 

Picking up a napkin from the edge of the counter, you mindlessly reach across to wipe at his lips, still in the process of ranting. “Don’t get me started on flowers,” you shake your head, folding up the napkin on the table. Jimin smiles at you as your eyes train on the fork that digs through your salad, stabbing into the poor vegetables. “Florists overcharge for them, and I hate it because I didn’t get into this business for the purpose of cheating people out of their money.” At this point, you’re rolling your eyes, seething at the thought of Valentine’s Day. 

“Why’d you get into the business then?” He asks, silently offering his fries to you, the ones you’ve been eyeing ever since he revealed his lunch. 

“Because I love flowers,” you say plain as day, reaching to grab a fry. “Because they make me happy, and when I send them off to someone, I know it’ll make their day a little brighter too.”

You wave the fry around in the air before sticking it in your mouth. Capping off your empty bowl of salad, you don’t seem to notice how Jimin looks at you and the understated beauty you exude. 

“It’s cheesy, I know! You don’t have to look at me like I’m crazy,” you whine, briefly looking up at him with round eyes, turning around to toss your garbage. 

Jimin flashes you a big, toothy smile, “No, you’re not crazy. You’re just... exactly what I thought you were.” His voice is low, almost as if he’s thinking to himself. As if they’re words you’re not meant to hear. 

“Thanks? I think,” you giggle, unsure what he means. “Are you saying I’m predictable?” You inquire.

“I meant refreshing.” The crinkles at the corners of his eyes form as he grins. “I’m just trying to figure out why you don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day.” 

“First of all, I don’t need a date,” you say in defense, teasingly offended. 

“I know that, and you know what I mean. But you deserve to be treated like you’re speー” 

“Second of all, I do have one.” 

“Oh. You do?” He asks, creasing his brows and biting his plush lips. 

“Yeah, with myself,” you jest with a smile, elbows resting on the counter with hands cupping your face. 

Jimin’s chest deflates with an exhale, finally letting out the breath he’s been holding. “What, are you gonna watch The Notebook until you cry?” He pokes at your shoulder like a tease. 

“I’m not that predictable,” you eye him with a gleam in your iris, fully knowing that it is the case. “But maybe,” you affirm with a sly smirk, “after I close up the shop at midnight though.” 

“Knew it,” he scoffs. “But why are you closing so late? You should go home early so you can cry and watch The Notebook.”

“Mmm.” You hum, standing up from your stool and turning to hide the downturn of your lips. Running a rag underneath the faucet, you turn to wipe down the counter free of any crumbs. Jimin lifts his elbow up as you glide the cloth across the glass until it’s squeaky clean. “Let’s not forget that it’s Valentine’s Day, and I run a flower shop, Jimin. People are going to come by for a bouquet until the last second.” You exasperate, shaking your head in disapproval of all the last minute shoppers. 

“You can’t get anyone else to lock up?” He suggests. 

“They’ll hate me forever if I force them to work until midnight,” you reason, “Besides, it’s not like they’re single, so it’s fine. I can do it myself.” 

“I really think you should be resting though. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, right?” He asks with concern in his intonation. 

“I can take care of myself, I promise. I’m gonna treat myself after work anyways.” You do a little dance that consists of shimmying your shoulders and bouncing up and down on the balls of your feet. 

He smiles at you endearingly with wide eyes, “I don’t think crying to The Notebook is a form of treating yourself.” He repeats as if the joke will never die. 

You shake your head and click your tongue exclaiming, “If you must know, I’m gonna bake cookies.” 

“Are you gonna share with me?” He pleads. 

Your tongue pokes at your inner cheek as if you’re thinking about it. “Hmm, I don’t know. I might eat them all in one night.” Your lips purse in a taunt. 

His mouth forms a pout, and you’re forced to give in to him and his bright puppy dog eyes. 

“Ugh, fine, but only because you asked so nicely, I guess I can make some extras,” you groan, pressing your lips together straight like an arrow. You nudge his shoulder with your own despite the squeeze at your heart and the softening of your eyes, “For you and your girlfriend.” 

It’s not like you had to mention it. But it’s been on your mind since yesterday, and you’re sure that the only way to fix a broken heart is to learn to accept it. Even if it means plucking out the thorns that are lodged in your heart until it feels numb. Empty and devoid of life. 

“Girlfrie- oh, right, right. That’d be nice,” he sputters out, body stiffening, “Butー”

“Maybe I can bake them Thursday night?” You offer. “So you can pick them up on Friday if you buy flowers for her?” Your eyes blink in a failed attempt to wink. 

Jimin stifles a laugh at your pitiful endeavor. It’s really pathetic how hard you try, pretending that you’re not hurt right in front of the guy who stormed into your garden. 

But you suppose flowers can’t grow without a little bit of downpour. 

He licks his lips, and his smile falters. “Riiight, but it’s okay, you should enjoy your cookies on Friday night because I’m not sure I’ll be around to buy flowers that day anyways.” 

“What do you mean?” You ask, perplexed, head cocked to the side. 

“Uh, don’t worry about it, okay?” He says, brushing it off before taking a look at his watch. “I have to head back to work though, my break is almost ending.” You watch him carefully with narrowing eyes as he collects his belongings, scrambling to head out the door. With the exit half opened, he turns around to bid you goodbye. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” 

The bell chimes and he’s out of sight. 

You can’t even process his words because you’re too busy staring at the exit trying to figure out what the hell just happened. 

Adulthood is just an endless cycle of sleeping and working, but it seems like you’re lacking in the former activity seeing that all you do is work. In the final stretch of Valentine’s Day, with a few more days to go, you’re just about ready to crash and burn. 

Upon entering your quiet apartment tonight, you fail to do anything productive. You nose dive into bed and curl up into a cocoon at the strike of 10 pm. Somehow, you don’t even care enough to tug off your jeans or remove your smudged makeup. You’re ready to accept the consequences of bad skin and a stained pillowcase because the only thing that matters is that you knock out the moment your head hits the soft linen. There’s no time to replay the events of today or plan for tomorrow when your eyelids weigh you down into a deep slumber. 

There’s not a single thing that can spur you. Not even the shining of the moonlight over your profile or the rhythmic whizzing of cars on the empty street beneath you. Even when there’s a police siren ringing in the distance or a rumble from a descending airplane in the atmosphere above you, you don’t bat an eye. You can’t even hear the hum of the rusty pipelines when your neighbor hops into the shower at the breach of dawn. Even the whirring radiator and the ticking clock blurs into nothing but white noise. 

They’re all there to keep you company as you lie down in a bed of withered roses. To offer you comfort in your barren Renaissance garden. 

You can’t seem to put your finger on it, but you wake up feeling like it’s the best night of rest you’ve gotten in the last week despite it being a short lived slumber. It’s definitely the most consistent night of sleep you’ve had in a while. And even though you went to bed without dinner, it didn’t hinder your sleep whatsoever. It only means that you can eat a full breakfast to power through the day. 

And powering through is what you do best. 

Apparently, the world is up against you because you can’t remember the last time you even got to sit down. You’re constantly on your feet, attending to customers and fulfilling orders. There’s no time to breathe even when you’re literally enclosed in a greenhouse. There’s always something to do, and stopping to take a break means slowing down the process. It’s not an option you want to take. 

At the end of each day, you’re wobbling back home with sore muscles and blurred vision. Your ability to function is beyond your own imagination. Your definition of “functioning” has diminished to standing on your own two feet although that still bears a challenge for you. 

The sustenance in your body is nearly nonexistent, especially because you’ve been neglecting your self-care. Typically, you don’t think about eating on the job. It’s honestly not on your mind because there are only two things that occupy your brain space: (1) Work and (2) Jimin. 

Somehow, Jimin takes better care of you than you do yourself. And without him around, you’re a walking corpse. He’s always providing you with lunch and snacks, leaving you sticky notes with reminders to hydrate yourself. You didn’t realize that you needed him this much to remind you of the simple tasks like drinking or eating or… smiling.

Sometimes he draws cute flowers or scribbles plant puns on the post-it notes, sticking them onto obscure places that are hard for you to find. Your favorite one being the time he wrote “I love it when you call me big poppy.” 

He claims that the notes are designed to make you laugh, even for the few that are not very funny. They definitely do brighten your day, especially when you have the ephemeral chance to glance at them hanging up above your desk in the back office. Smiling at the itty-bitty illustrations has become second nature to you. When you’re going through a rough day, aka everyday, and you’re in need of a breather, you wander into the back room to pace around, only to come face to face with a kaleidoscope of doodled butterflies spanned across a string of rainbow post it notes.

He once drew a sunflower and said something cheesy about how your laughter is the embodiment of sunshine— how it would be a crime against the flora population if you were to go a day without laughter. 

It was corny and far from being right, but it was so perfectly Jimin. 

When he does stupid shit like that, it makes you feel like the biggest lovesick idiot in the world. In your naive past, you thought that the smiles he sent your way were ones reserved for you and only you. You were convinced that the shameless flirting was a silent mechanism used to express his inclination towards you. You assumed that the daily visits to your flower shop were formidable attempts to get to know you better. A little part of you hoped that the songs he shared with you equated to sharing a piece of his heart. 

You absolutely were sharing. You just didn’t realize that you’d be sharing with someone else. 

So when Jimin consigns adorable puns that melt your heart, and he stops by with a cup of coffee, just know that they’re acts of friendship. When he spends his lunch breaks at the flower shop and sings songs that remind him of you, he’s coming from a place of kindness, not attraction. 

It is true that Jimin’s your sunshine, but it’s also a fundamental principle to botanists that too much of something is bad enough, and too much of nothing is just as tough. And deceiving yourself into believing that he was all that you needed had scorched up all the flowers in your garden. 

The drought he put you in didn’t prepare you enough for the brewing storm. 

It pains you to say that you need him more than he needs you because even if he isn’t romantically interested in you, you would have hoped that he’d stick around as a friend. His waning presence leads you to believe that he’s simply not interested. 

Maybe you were too invested in what could have been between the two of you, you failed to see what was right there in plain sight. 

Somehow, you still wonder if he thinks about you as much as you think about him. And it’s pathetic granted you’re incredibly busy with work and your own crippling health. Yet thoughts of him still pop up throughout the day more than you would like. No matter how much you want to forget about your infatuation, you simply can’t will him away because of how often his beautiful face flashes before your eyes. You want to push him to the back of your mind, but whether you’re in need of a breather during your hectic schedule, admiring his stupid puns and butterfly mosaics, or you’re in need of some company in your eerily quiet apartment, doing laundry or having a meal all to yourself, you still can’t get the sound of his sweet laughter out of your head. 

You don’t know how it’s possible, but you manage to close up shop long before midnight. It’s a blessing and a curse because you are absolutely wiped out. Not only are you mentally checked out, but ironically, your flower shop is destitute of flowers, completely sold out from the holiday. As you clean up the barren space, you can’t help but feel as if a big weight has been lifted off your shoulders. The stress of Valentine’s Day is over, and you can finally go home, lie in bed with a tray of cookies, and enjoy the beauty that is Ryan Gosling. 

You even consider closing the store all of tomorrow because you need the day off to recharge. So as you print out and paste your notice on the glass door, you’re dumbfounded to come across a sliver of paper that’s already attached on the other side. Opening up the door and letting in a gust of cold air breeze by you, you remove the sticky note that’s been unknowingly attached to your entrance. 

Not a daisy goes by that I don’t think of you.

The smile that tugs on your lips grapples against the ache in your heart. Quickly, the fond smile melts into one of hurt and disappointment. Your left hand balls into a tight fist, marring crescent moon shapes into your palms. Meanwhile, your right hand delicately fiddles with the tiny square between your fingers, debating whether or not you should crumple up the paper and toss it away to be long forgotten. You’ve never been so confused about your feelings until Park Jimin came into your life, but you tuck the little daisy doodle into the pocket of your coat with a sigh. 

With every passing year, Valentine’s Day becomes a little more bearable than the previous. Tonight feels like any other night, but better. You’ve come to accept that if there isn’t someone who can make you feel special, you might as well do it yourself. 

Making a meal for you that doesn’t consist of ramen or 5 minute rice while dimming the lights and sparking up some candles is undeniably part of the healing process. And that’s what tonight mainly consists of. It’s all about love and self-care. 

With your laptop perched on top of your dinner table and your Netflix queue lined up, you mindlessly mix at your wet and dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. Nothing has made you feel more at ease than the comfort of watching your favorite movie on repeat and the sweet taste of raw cookie dough on your tongue. Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that can put a smile on your face. 

As you wait for your cookies to bake, you settle into bed with your legs crossed and back pressed against the headboard. Laughter from the speakers of your laptop fill the space, and you can’t help but laugh along with the characters, disrupting the peaceful ambiance of your apartment complex. The rumble of your laughter subsides, and the movie rolls on from scene to scene. 

Your ears perk up like Pavlov’s dog when the oven goes off. You turn your head so quickly you nearly get whiplash, but it’s all worth it for the love of chocolate chip cookies. The aroma of sugar is enough to will yourself out of bed and conveniently press pause on Ryan Gosling’s charming face. 

Pulling on your oven mitts to retrieve the hot platter, your body begins to sway around to the sudden echo of music. The soft guitar strums reverberate through the walls and against the vacant space of your studio. Your body stops moving to the acoustics when you realize where the noise is coming from. Looking up, your eyes bore into the eggshell walls as if you can see through it. But you soon space out, focusing on the vibrations of the nylon strings instead. 

The song fades out and the quietude breaks you out of your reverie. You blink in confusion, trying to remember the last time you heard from your neighbor. Although you haven’t spent much time in your apartment in the past week, you miss the late night chats with him. Lately, you’ve been knocking out as soon as your head hits the pillow for some much needed rest. You haven’t heard his voice in forever, and especially not his angelic singing voice. Even tonight he refrains from singing in place of just practicing his guitar. 

It’s a bit out of the ordinary. 

His side of the wall is surprisingly quiet tonight. You would have expected him to be out and about with his girlfriend, but at this point of the night, they would have been jumping at each other's bones. Yet the gentle patter of footsteps and the lack of banging would suggest that he’s flying solo tonight. 

Despite your curiosity, you’re not sure whether or not you’d want to bring it up in case it reopens some wounds. You think it’s best to leave it alone for the time being until he’s ready to come to you instead. 

So as you proceed with bingeing your movies, there’s something in the back of your mind that still distracts you. It’s literally a crime that you’ve sat through 2 hours of The Notebook, yet you haven’t shed a single tear because you’re not even focused on the film in front of you. Rather, you’re thinking long and hard about the last time you heard your neighbor laugh in sincerity. 

You really couldn’t care any less about the end credits that roll in front of you. Rather, with your chin propped up in the palm of your hands, you listen intently to what’s happening on the other side of the wall. It’s bizarrely quiet, aside from the sad symphony of string instruments that ring in the background of the ending credits. 

When your screen turns black, you shut off your laptop and stow it away, knowing in your heart that you’re no longer in the mood for a romantic movie marathon. You make your way into your kitchen and reach for the cookies that have cooled off by now. But somehow, it feels wrong to sit here in enjoyment of your own company. Yet at the same time, this batch of cookies was the only thing you were looking forward to all week. 

Nothing seems to satisfy you. 

The only desire that creeps upon you is the desire to spend the night with someone else by your side. Frankly, it’s stupid because you know that you don’t need a man, and even the whole world knows that you don’t need one. Especially not on Valentine’s Day because you’ve made it abundantly clear that you hate February 14th with every fibre of your being.

However, the idea of having a friend at your side doesn’t seem so bad at this point. 

You transfer all the cookies from the tray onto a smaller plate, arranging the delectable morsels into a presentable fashion. 

With your slippers on, you make your way out of your apartment, letting the door close softly behind you. Standing in front of your neighbor’s abode, you nervously shift your weight on the heels of your feet. Midnight is approaching, and you wouldn’t want to disrupt his night like this, but it just feels right to knock on his door and offer your company. Just to check up on him because perhaps he’s in need of some companionship just like you. And who wouldn’t want some chocolate chip cookies? Baked with 80% sugar and 100% love. 

Mustering up all the courage in your body, your hand comes up in a tight fist, knocking at the wooden door. You wait a moment, but to your dismay, there’s no evidence of movement on the other side of the partition. You would have heard his footsteps by now, and perhaps the turning of the deadbolt, but it’s dead silent. 

Perhaps he didn’t hear you, so you knock a little harder this time.

Nothing. 

As you stand outside, lost in naivety, you wonder whether you should try to make a fool of yourself and knock again. It’s been a good 5 minutes of you debating between speaking up to get his attention or giving up and retreating to your studio in embarrassment. Then you mentally facepalm yourself remembering that it’s incredibly rude of you to drop by without any kind of warning. 

But still, you had his best interests in mind. 

You think that the third time’s the charm, so in a last attempt, you knock with full force. 

“Uhh, hey!” Your voice shakes and cracks. Blame it on the nerves. “I made some cookies, and I thought I’d share some!” You semi-yell in hopes of catching his attention. 

“One second!” Oh, thank God. You can hear the bed frame creak on the other side and the skid of footsteps across the floor boards. 

Your heartbeat weirdly picks up because of the fact that this is quite literally the first time you’ve come face to face with your neighbor. The late night chats with him have always made you feel comfortable, but there’s a certain nuance to meeting him that shakes your nerves. 

You brace yourself as you hear the lock turn, eyes casting down towards the plate in front of you. 

“I didn’t know that today’d be the day we meet like thiー” He says as the door swings open. 

You look up expecting to greet him with a smile, but the one you had prepared falters from your lips. 

“What’re youー” 

“Y- You liveー” 

You stutter over one another, lost in confusion. Staring into the very familiar set of brown eyes in front of you, you’re confounded by your new discovery. 

Jimin stands before you, running his hand through his black locks as he opens the door wider, stepping aside to let you through. 

“Hey, neighbor?” He sounds disoriented, untrusting of his voice. 

You’re stood frozen at the foot of the entrance, unsure as to how you could possibly process all of this. 

“I heard you made cookies?” He asks, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Here, come in.” He gently tugs on your sleeve, coddling you because of the state of shock you’re in. 

You nod your head, barely cognizant of what’s being said. But your feet still shuffle through the entryway, and you slide off your slippers at the front door. 

“This is so crazy,” he says, taking the plate of cookies off your hands. You’re both surprised that you have yet to drop them. He places the plate onto his coffee table, and his back is turned to you as you stand to the side, playing with the sleeves of your sweater. 

How much weirder can this situation possibly get? 

“You mean to tell me that we’ve been neighbors all this time and we didn’t even know?” You ask, sucking your lips inward, cocking your head to the side. Your words are a jumbled mess, but Jimin has become a master at deciphering your incoherent words through the thin walls many nights in a row. 

“I’m just as surprised as you! I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots?” He exclaims in dismay, patting the seat beside him on the couch as an invitation to you. 

Your brain feels as if it’s lost all of its cells because you have so many questions, yet you can’t seem to articulate them. As you sit down, you close your eyes and rub at your temples, praying that you’d wake up from this odd dream. 

“There’s no way I could have connected the dots,” you sputter in collection of your thoughts, completely exasperated. “I just don’t understand.” 

You fiddle with your fingers, and Jimin takes your hand in his. His touch is soft, and as much as you want to pull away, you give into him because there’s no way you’d ever deny him, especially not when he looks at you with those big round eyes. 

“I have so many questions,” you admit, rubbing at your eyelids. 

“Shoot.” 

“Uhm,” your head shakes wildly. “I don’t even know where to begin?” Your eyes widen, shocked by how nonchalant he’s acting. As if he didn’t just lead you on and ghost you days on end, pretending that everything’s okay now. 

“Take your time,” he chuckles reassuringly, offering you a calming smile. 

“Uhm… How are you? I guess? Th- that’s kind of the first thing I wanted to ask you before… I- you know.” 

Your heart gallops because he’s looking at you, biting his lip. And you, you are completely weak for the man who holds all of your affection in the palm of his hands, yet you can’t handle his smoldering stare, so you avert your eyes elsewhere. This is downright cruel and unusual punishment. 

You continue, “Because I haven’t spoken to you much lately, you know?” 

“You wanted to check up on me?” 

You blink away, eyes now focused on the vase of wilting flowers on the coffee table. Pink and red variegated carnations. You inhale deeply, trying to calm yourself and regulate your breath. Your body stiffens and your shoulders tense. Even your jaw tightens, but you manage to nod your head. 

“I’ve been better,” he admits sullenly. 

Your hand lets go of his, pulling back to seek comfort at your side. It just doesn’t feel right to hold his hand so intimately when he’s made a mess of your head and your heart. You just can’t do it to yourself, and you can’t do it to him or his girlfriend. Especially not when his heart belongs to her. 

You open your mouth as if you have another question to ask, but none of them are coherent enough to utter. There’s plenty of noise ringing in your head, but it’s all nonsense. 

Jimin gently rests his hand on the ball of your knee, almost like a graze, but his touch is hot, and you brush him off with the recoil of your leg. 

His shoulders slump, and his eyes soften. His hands retract to his lap, respecting your wishes. He gulps, and noticeably the lump in his throat goes down in a swallow. 

“Hey, it’s just me, okay? You don’t need to be scared.” He displays his palms out to you as a peace offering. A symbol of vulnerability. The tension in the air is palpable, but you still manage to keep your guard down in front of him. 

Because this is Jimin. The guy you’ve come to know and unfortunately love. But it’s just that you’ve never seen Jimin like this.

“Yeah and that’s kind of the problem,” you breathe out. Your brows knit into a frown, and he looks at you in bewilderment, with wide eyes, parted lips, and stress tousled hair. “I- I don’t know if you’re Jimin the mysterious neighbor who’s been nothing but nice to me, or Jimin the guy from the flower shop who pretty much made it loud and clear he doesn’t want to see me,” you scoff. 

“B- butー What do you mean? We’re the same person.” His eyes narrow, and he shakes his head subtly trying to convince you. He fiddles with his fingers, cracking his knuckles out of bad habit.  Shifting his body so his knees are pointed towards yours, nearly in contact, he refrains from the much needed skinship. The heat radiating from his body is something you’re familiar with, and although it once brought you comfort, you can only feel resentment. 

“Of course I want to see you? Iー I?” He’s a stuttering mess, shaking his head from side to side as if you’ve got it all wrong, but you interject because you have so much to say, yet you haven’t expressed yourself to your liking just yet. 

“I don’t know about that!” Your hands clench up at your sides until your knuckles turn sharp. “Because neighbor Jimin is telling me he has a fuck buddy he thinks he’s in love with, and flower shop Jimin has a girlfriend he doesn’t want to talk about. So what is it? I’m hearing a lot about mixed feelings for this one person, and… if you’re involved with someone, I don’t want to get in the middle of this,” you spit out more harshly than expected, inching further and further away to the edge of the couch with your arms crossed over your chest. You gulp down a thick glob of spit in hopes of washing down the acidic sting in your throat, but it’s like bile just sits there on your tongue. 

“Let me explain, okay?” He begs of you. 

You sit there in sullen silence, staring at the carnations in your peripherals, ready to have him break your heart all over again. You nod, but you don’t even bother turning to face him, unsure whether or not you’d be able to hear him talk about how he’s in some complicated relationship with someone else. 

“Please, look at me?” he pleads with a sniffle, “I need to know if you’re okay.” His voice cracks, and you finally look his way. You’re far from okay, but seeing him with glossy eyes, you also know that he isn’t either. 

He licks his lips, and his hand comes up in desperate need of tucking the stray strand of hair that’s fallen in front of your face. But he decides against it in fear of rejection, and he rests his hand on the ball of his knee instead. Your line of sight falls to his shaking leg. You hesitantly reach across to close your hand softly around his in comfort. His movement stops instantly as he lets out a huff. 

Licking your lips, your eyes gaze towards your hands, and you can’t help but imagine how they’d slot into one another so perfectlyー 

“_____?” Your eyes shift to lock with his and there are tears that brim at his corners, but they’re kept at bay, refusing to fall. 

“I-” He exhales. 

You squeeze his hand a little tighter, and you don’t know if it’s more for yourself or for him, but it gives him the strength to continue on. 

“Look, that girl and I? We weren’t in a relationship. I promise you. I told you that we were friends with benefits because that’s what we were.” He insists, hoping the message gets across to you, but your heart drops lower into your stomach at his admission. You don’t even want to picture him with some other girl, yet you know way more about their relationship than you would have ever wanted. 

Hell, you were even convinced that they were in love. A highlight reel of the last few months spent in your apartment flashes before your eyes, and your grip on his hand loosens. You think back to the days when Jimin was just some faceless guy, dancing around with his supposed girlfriend, having pillow fights, running warm baths, making out beneath the stars, and fucking around with her like they were in love. 

But he continues in hopes that you’d understand his point of view. “It was easier to tell you the truth because you didn’t know who I was, and you wouldn’t have judged me for it. So I was an idiot, and at the flower shop, I told you she was my girlfriend because it would have been easier to explain this complicated mess.” A single tear cascades down his cheek, and he wipes it away with the crook of his elbow. 

“I mean, she wanted it to be serious, but there was just something pulling me back. And do you know what that was?” 

You shake your head no and pull away, unsure how much more of this you can take. 

He looks you dead in the eyes, but you can’t even look at him for another second because the wilting carnations are sitting there, mocking you. 

“_____, you asked me the other day what I liked about her, and I was wracking my brain trying to come up with an answer... It wasn’t easy because you were the only person I thought about.”

A sudden tear escapes from the corner of your eyes, unbelieving, but you compel yourself to look back at his visage, checking for any tells of a lie. He doesn’t even falter. 

“She and I? We fought so much because she was convinced I had feelings for someone else. And you know?” He shakes his head,  “…It’s true. I couldn’t think about the things I liked about her, but then when I thought of you. My god, it was just so much easier to talk about the things I loved about you because you’re the one I like. I didn’t know how to express that, okay? The songs that I wrote? The ones you hear me sing day and night? Fuck…” He rubs at his eyes, and they’re evidently red from all the tears welled up. “They’re all about you, and you didn’t even know,” he sobs out. The first drop of tears came out steadily, but as you examine his face in total shock, the tears begin to cascade down his face. 

You wrap your arms around his neck, now understanding where he’s coming from. It’s all a little more clear to you, and there’s no need to continue on if he’s in hysteria like this. His arms instinctively squeeze around your waist, holding on tight, too afraid that he’d lose you if he were to let go. 

“I didn’t have my feelings sorted out because I was comfortable with where I was, but it’s not like it made me happy,” he confesses. You hush him, running your fingers through his hair and caressing his slumped back. Sitting in silence, you can only hear the sound of your breathing falling into sync with his. Occasionally, the radiator would go off and a car would drive by on the street beneath you. 

You tell him that it’s all okay and that all is forgiven, but he still continues in justification of himself. “And I was convinced that you’d think I was a horrible person for liking someone else when I’ve got a complicated relationship going on, okay? Because that’s how I felt about myself, and I swear we broke it off, but I was too embarrassed to come to you because I didn’t know how to explain the mess I got myself into. It’s all my fault, and I’m so so so sorry, you have no idea.” 

He’s wracked with sobs, but you hum, listening intently to his every word. They’re coherent enough for you to realize that you’ve both made mistakes because of a huge misunderstanding. 

The Jimin that you know and love is right here in your arms, and there’s nothing you can do but forgive and forget. 

“I’m so, so sorry,��� he cries out with a hiccup. “I promise you that you’re the only person I care about.” 

You whisper sweet nothings into his ear, hoping that he calms down because there’s really nothing to apologize for. “What did I say? You don’t have to be sorry, okay?” You remind him. 

He lets out a breathy exhale, “I messed up,” he hiccups, “I don’t deserve this. You.” 

Your hands rest on his shoulder, gently pulling back from him, but he clings on tighter to your waist. Looking down at the sweet man beneath you, you smile to yourself. 

“Jimin,” you murmur.

“Hm?” 

“You have no idea what you do to me, do you?” You shake your head, and a soft chuckle vibrates through your chest. Still, you keep him in your embrace because although it may seem like Jimin is the one in need of a hug, you need it just as much as he does. 

“Can I tell you a story?” You ask. 

“Yeah,” he breathes out, tickling the skin at your sternum. 

“I think I caught feelings for you the first time we met. Do you remember that?” He hums as you reminisce on the memory. “It was some random Sunday, and you walked in looking for a bouquet for your mom, but you realized you didn’t have enough cash on youー” 

Jimin laughs beneath you, and it’s the way that he laughs that makes you realize you need that in your life. A cheshire grin spreads across your lips, and that’s when you know you can’t go a single day without hearing his laugh again. 

“You didn’t have enough cash, so you pulled out a post it note and scribbled an IOU.” You can barely get the sentence out without chuckling to yourself. Jimin has stopped sobbing at this point, being reduced to a few sniffles here and there. You deem it as the right moment to pull back from his embrace so you can look him in the eyes. 

“You drew a little daisy for me and that’s when I knew you were really something else.” 

You cup his cheeks, and a grin tugs on his lips, matching the one on your face. His eyes shine in the dim light, just like how the sun radiates in the day time. A single tear trickles down his plush cheeks, and you wipe it away with the pad of your thumb. 

“Look, I’ve liked you for as long as I can remember, and I have to admit that it hurt me when you said you had a girlfriend, but it really hurt me when you left without saying anything.” 

His eyes cast downwards as if he’s ashamed, but you place your hand beneath his chin, bringing his attention back up. 

“Know that I’d never judge you for the decisions you make and for the relationships you have, okay? And I don’t think you’re horribleー” 

“You don’t?” He cuts you off with his big pleading eyes. 

“No, far from it,” you beam, “I still think you’re the most selfless person I know.” 

Jimin’s face drops at your confession, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry if I ever made you feel like you’re not special, because to me, you’re the most extraordinary person in this world.” 

He cups your face, noticing that your eyes are starting to well. Drops of tears roll down your face, and Jimin’s quick to dry them away, pressing his lips against your cheeks to collect the drops of salt water. As you smile, another stream of tears pour from your ducts. Soft pecks are trailed against your skin, and you think you’ve successfully washed away all the pain. 

You can feel the flowers in your heart slowly starting to bloom in preparation for spring. 

“Why’d you stop?” You ask, opening up your eyes. He’s merely a few inches away from you, stuck in a daze. 

His eyes can’t decide whether they want to look at the gleam in your irises or at the curvature of your lips, flickering between the two. 

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” Your whimper is hardly loud enough for your own ears, but he hears you loud and clear. 

His hands rest at the sides of your neck as his thumbs run over your cheeks, grazing over the flesh of your lips. “Can I show you how special you are to me?” 

You nod your head, and Jimin is overcome with the urge to kiss you, inching closer with puckered lips. They’re soft against your own, plush and pillowy. You melt into his touch as if he’s the light of your life. You think you could cry again from the sheer amount of euphoria built up in your little heart. Having him in your arms is all you could ever ask for. 

He pulls back slightly in need of a breath, and you take the opportunity to climb into his lap, with knees settled on either side of his taut thighs. 

“Missed you,” you whimper against the column of his neck, nosing at the sensitive skin. 

Jimin’s breath hitches as he bites back a moan, “Missed you more.” 

“Not possible,” you trail gentle kisses against his collarbones, pulling back on the cotton of his t-shirt to expose more of his neck. 

His hands rest on your outer thighs thighs, squeezing tight on the muscles. You reach behind you to grab at his forearms, urging him to move his hands higher onto your body. He takes the hint immediately and experimentally squeezes at your ass. Your lips part from his neck, and Jimin takes the opportunity to latch his mouth back onto yours. 

His lips are gentle in contrast to the firm grip he has on you. But with your weight resting on top of him, core pressed up against his crotch, you can feel how hard he is beneath you. In need of some release, you start to move your hips back and forth, grinding over his hard on. 

Jimin gives you a lingering kiss on your lips, pulling back with a harsh groan. You offer a teasing smile, and he leans forward. He supports your weight at the bottom of your ass as your legs wrap around his waist. You nearly yelp when he stands, holding you up in his arms. 

“I got you,” he reassures, pressing his lips firmly against yours, walking towards his unmade bed space. He lays you down gently on top of the messy covers, climbing between your legs. You whine upon the release of his lips, but his mouth leaves hot kisses down the column of your throat, causing you to gasp.

“Is it okay if we take this off?” He asks, thumbing at the hem of your sweater. 

You nod sitting up, and he tugs the material off for you, tossing it to the edge of the bed. Upon sight of your bare chest, he molds into you, lips suctioning around your pebbled nipple. His other hand massages at your unattended breast, squeezing at the supple flesh.

“You’re beautiful,” he hums against your body.

You’re easily affected by his words as your back arches and your legs hook around his torso. Canting your hips upward, you signal to Jimin with a whine that you’re desperate for his touch. 

“There’s no need to rush, baby, we have the whole night,” he warns you, leaving a kiss between the valley of your breasts. 

You cry out in frustration, but it soon subsides when he satiates your needs. You relax when his hand lowers into your sweatpants, cupping at your heat. His middle finger traces at your entrance, running it up and down your panty clad slit. Your hips lurch once again, but Jimin presses your hips down, flush against the mattress. 

As his tongue circles around your sensitive nipple, his fingers decide to dip into your underwear. The obscene sound of your juices squelching can be heard when he presses his finger into your tight hole. Inserting a finger in, you can feel your walls stretch around him. A cry falls from your lips as he begins to rub at your clit with the pad of his thumb. 

Jimin inserts another finger, and your cunt feels so hot with the amount of friction. Pumping two fingers in and out, there’s a pleasurable burn that ripples throughout your body. Beads of sweat form on your hairline, and you wipe them away with the back of your hand. You can practically feel your heart beating out of your chest. 

“Tell me how it feels, okay?” He asks, switching over to your other breast.

“You feel so good,” you mewl. He hums against your nipple in affirmation, biting lightly at the perky bud. 

“Jimin?” You call out for him. 

He parts from your chest to look into your eyes, fingers still pumping in and out of you with flexing biceps. 

“I think it’d feel better if you’d fuck me,” you admit, no filter needed. 

“Shit,” he groans, slowing down the pace. “I want to eat you out first though.” 

He retracts his hand, and you feel empty without him inside. Your sweatpants and panties are tugged off in one swift motion, casted to the side along with your sweatshirt. Looking up with stars in your eyes, you can see that Jimin is still fully dressed. You open your mouth to tell him about your wishes, but he must have read your mind because he pulls off his t-shirt and throws it with no regard. 

Beneath his clothing, he reveals to you his robust body. You’re dripping with lust, and it must be so obvious from the way you stare at his abdominals. Everything about him is so well-built, and you curse the talented dancer in front of you. 

“Like what you see?” He teases, winking at you as he descends down your body. 

“Love it,” you moan. 

His breath is hot against your wet pussy. With juices dripping down your ass, you ruin the linen sheets beneath you. His fingers play with your core, spreading your swollen lips to reveal your flower, admiring how pretty your cunt is. 

Sitting up with elbows propped, you look down in frustration between your bent legs to see Jimin licking his lips, staring at your heat like he’s ready to devour you. He kisses at the long, dark lines of stretch marks that reside on your inner thighs before his tongue presses softly against your wet clit, kitten licking at the bud. Reaching out, your hand balls around the white comforter to anchor yourself down. As you spread your legs wider, Jimin’s hands hook around your limbs to rest at your thighs. He presses them down, restricting your movement. 

His tongue laps at your heat with no mercy, licking a stripe up your sex and tracing letters onto your clit, sending your nerves aflame. Your breaths are shallow as you pant, melding yourself to the mattress. He flicks his tongue, prodding it against your hole and delving in and out. He massages your tight walls as it clenches around his tongue. 

There’s a knot in your stomach that forms embarrassingly fast, but you can’t help it when his plush lips give your cunt so much attention, sucking harshly on your clitoris. He looks over at your features, taking notice of your reactions, licking over and over the parts that make you squirm the most. 

Your face scrunches in pleasure, nearly toppling over the edge. But you’re not ready to come. Not yet at least. Not without having Jimin’s hard cock inside of you. 

Jimin is relentless against your pussy, but he doesn’t even let up when you call his name out. Your grip around the comforter loosens in favor of digging your fingers into Jimin’s luscious black locks. 

“Jimiiiin,” you whine, tugging lightly at his roots. “I need you, please, please,” you beg. 

He leaves a kiss at your bud, and you shudder in response. Jimin climbs up your body, and you shiver at the loss of contact. 

“You need me, huh?” He teases, “You want to come?” You nod your head ardently when he presses his red, swollen lips against yours. He grapples with your mouth in a bruising, passionate kiss. With clicking teeth and suckling tongues, you can taste yourself off of his plush lips, completely drenched in your arousal. 

Trailing your hand down Jimin’s sturdy body, you can’t resist running your hands over his perfectly sculpted abs. But on your descent, you pull on the strings of his heather gray sweatpants, loosening the elastic around his waist. 

Your palm slides beneath the band, tucking beneath his boxer briefs. His eyebrows scrunch, and he gasps against your mouth when you wrap your hand around his hot, veiny cock, stroking at his erection. His cheeks flush as you swipe your thumb over the head, collecting beads of precum on your fingers. 

He shudders at your touch. “Oh my God, I might die if you keep doing that,” he nearly cries. 

You smile against the skin of his neck, sucking at his pulse point. Meanwhile, Jimin reaches over to his nightstand, pulling out a condom. He nearly falls off the bed, losing balance on his knee when you stroke his cock a little faster. 

As Jimin sits up, trying to open up the packaging, you careen forward to pull off his sweats. You can hardly pull it down below his thick ass given the position he’s sitting in. But it’s enough for you to pull his dick out and wrap your hand around his girth in all its glory. 

While waiting for Jimin to take out the condom, you decide to tease him like he deserves. Switching positions, you lie down on your stomach in front of him. With a glob of saliva built up in your mouth, you spit onto the head of his cock, watching it drip down the shaft and onto his balls. You glide your hand up and down to spread the saliva, making sure he’s nice and wet. His balls tighten the moment you suckle your lips around his slit. 

You look up at Jimin with wide eyes in hope of some praise. 

His eyes stare into yours, but he quickly throws his head back. “Fuck, fuck, fuck I’m not gonna last, please, I know your mouth is like heaven, but I want to be inside you,” he rambles. 

He tucks your hair behind your ears and rests his hand beneath your chin, tilting it upwards. His lips meet your forehead in a sweet kiss before you lie back down on the bed, spreading your legs wide open as an invitation. 

Jimin ungracefully pulls off his pants down the rest of his legs. He pumps his thick cock in his hands before sliding on the condom and lining himself up at your entrance. You groan, reaching out for his wrists as he glides his length up and down your folds, making sure you're nice and wet for him, fully prepped. 

The callous on his thumb is rough against your clit as he rubs down on it, easing the discomfort of penetration. Your velvety walls stretch around his member as he sinks into you inch by inch. 

You’re gasping for air as he sheaths himself inside you, but you remain calm because Jimin peppers kisses all across your face. 

“Are you okay?” He asks, concerned. 

��Mhmm,” you hum, “Might need a second.” 

His nose nudges at your cheek, “Take all the time you need, baby.” 

Moments go by until you’re comfortable with the stretch. You don’t know how Jimin has so much patience with you when you can literally feel his dick twitch inside your pussy, impossibly harder than he was moments prior. But like the angel he is, he still waits for your go-ahead. 

“Jimin, you can move,” you whisper, cupping his cheek and offering a butterfly kiss. 

His mouth finds his way to yours, and he kisses you with so much fervor. You’re too distracted by the kiss to notice him slide out of you. 

But your lips part slightly, letting out a gasp when he drives his dick back into you, setting a moderate pace. Your hands reach for the skin of his back, latching your nails onto the smooth surface. The slap of skin on skin is obscene as his hips meet yours, pumping himself inside of you. The delicious burn has you digging your nails into his shoulder blades, scratching at his taut muscles. 

You weren’t wrong to say that you can’t go another day without hearing Jimin’s laughter, but at the time, you were not privileged enough to hear his moans against the shell of your ear. That is the one thing you don’t want to ever live without, too spoiled by the sensual man above you. 

Jimin fucks into you deeply, changing his angle as he shifts his weight onto his knees. His calculated thrusts to your g-spot sends you closer and closer to the edge. His eyes focus on your pussy, watching his dick disappear inside of you like an addiction. With a firm grasp on your hips, he lifts you higher to help you reach your orgasm. 

“Jimin, I’m gonna come,” you gasp, gripping your walls tightly around his length. 

“I know, baby, you can come.” He lowers himself onto his elbows so he can come face to face with you. His hands reach down between your bodies, and he rubs harsh figure eights on your swollen clit. You lean forward, pressing your lips to his as waves of pleasure crash over you. Your body trembles beneath him, moaning his name like a vice. 

Jimin rides out your high, pumping into your tight hole until your legs nearly give out. He doesn’t dare pull away, continuing to circle your clit until you’ve nearly reached your limits. Your walls pulse around his cock, squeezing around his shaft until he’s nearly at his edge. His hair is matted to his forehead, slicked by sweat. You brush away the loose strands with the tips of your fingers. 

“Are you close?” You breathe out, hush and quiet, cupping his jaw with the palm of your hands. 

“Mhmm,” he gulps, rutting into you, pumping your cum in and out as it sheaths his shaft. 

His pace falters as he approaches his orgasm, hips stuttering against yours. Jimin nearly collapses on top of you as he spills himself into the condom, moaning into the cusp of your ear. His chest presses up against yours as he attempts to catch his breath.

You trace soothing circles onto his back as he basks in the afterglow of post orgasmic sex. 

His breathing soon evens out, and it’s comfortably quiet, that is with the exception of the radiator hissing in the corner of the studio. 

“Wow.” He kisses your temple before pulling out, letting the remains of your cum flow out of you. He rolls over onto his back, pulling you into his warm embrace.

“So on a scale of 1-10, how special would you say you feel right about now?” A smug smirk tugs on his lips, and you playfully smack his pecks. 

“Does this answer your question?” You ask, peppering 10 kisses onto his lips. 

“Mmm, no, I didn’t quite hear your answer” he says, leaning in for another kiss, “Tell me one more time?” 

And as Jimin kisses you goodnight, you know in your heart that the heartache and the loss of $5 are all worth it in the end if it means you get to wake up and smell the roses with Jimin at your bedside. 

#bts smut #bts fluff #jimin smut #jimin fluff #jimin #park jimin #bts angst #jimin angst #bangtan #bts #fic: lover to lean on #fanfic #fan fic #fanfiction #fan fiction #flower shop au #jimin x reader #bts fanfic #bts fan fic #bts fanfiction #bts fan fiction #bts x reader #jimin scenario #jimin imagine #bts scenario #bts imagine

[madeliefkrans]

bound by water

i've been imagining this fic for a month each night before i fell asleep & figured it was time to write it down........ the context is that inej is part of the dregs (again), after the events of the books or tv series, and she and kaz have grown closer to each other. inej’s pov because i truly adore her & writing this from her pov was kind of healing.

fandom: six of crows series - leigh bardugo & shadow and bone (tv series) type: birthday fic with tiny bit of angst but mostly fluff and some literal & figurative steaminess pairing: inej ghafa x kaz brekker pov: inej's word count: 3,457 on ao3 as well

summary: it’s inej's birthday and kaz has a surprise for her.

When Inej returns to the Slat after shadowing a sketchy mercher’s movements that day, she finds Nina and Jesper leaning against one of the walls in the entryway. They glance at her, each other, and back to her, grinning from ear to ear. Or smirking, really.

Inej squints her eyes at them, edging closer. Separately, Jesper or Nina scheming cannot be trusted. Together? The trail of chaos they’d leave behind would reach Fjerda.

“Well?” Inej raises her eyebrows, playing along with their game. “What is it?”

Nina loses the smirking contest first. She breaks out in a short laugh, setting off a warm feeling in Inej’s chest. Nina straightens her face, cheeks rosy from amusement. “Inej,” she speaks authoritatively, as if this is a legal matter. “We have a message for you.”

Jesper nods solemnly, mirroring Nina’s attitude. He crosses his arms before his lime green waistcoat. “A message from Kaz to be precise.”

Inej’s heart skips a beat. Nina’s grin is back, raising her eyebrows knowingly to Jesper. Inej hasn’t seen Kaz yet today. She was planning to meet him in his attic when she arrived at the Slat, as she did most evenings. To report back on the secrets, clues, scandals she collected that day. And, when business had been discussed and she wanted to, which was often, to linger. Kaz let her.

They would play a game of chess, catching glances at each other, which was how Inej discovered that Kaz has a scheming face specifically for chess. Or Inej would feed walnuts to the crows in the large windowsill as Kaz watched. Or they would read; Kaz poetry, Inej the adventures of her heroes, the silence between them only disturbed by the turning of crisp pages. Inej loves this time with him. It’s a ritual they grew into over the last months. A ritual that Inej would love to cultivate today. It’s her birthday, after all.

This morning she stumbled into a kitchen filled with the scent that can calm any storm. Waffles. She found her family cramped around the one dark wooden table that was stashed there. Nina, Jesper, Wylan, Matthias. She could have sworn their faces were framed with halo’s, but maybe that was just the morning light through the hazy window. They shared breakfast and Inej started her day with a belly full of butter, syrup and laughter.

Kaz hadn’t been there, to her disappointment, but she told herself he had his reasons. Maybe the message he gave to Nina and Jesper shed light on that.

If they are ever going to share it with her. These two smirking darlings are enjoying themselves so much. But she knows their secret won’t last much longer. After all, it’s Inej they’re talking to.

“Kaz would be disappointed if you didn’t deliver that message.” Inej shifts her gaze between Nina and Jesper, feeling a grin tuck at her lips. “So shoot, if you want to spare yourself from a piercing gaze. Or worse.”

“Anything for you, birthday girl,” Jesper grins. “He’s waiting for you in his attic.”

“Enjoy the rest of your night,” Inej tells them, already standing, turned to go up the stairs.

 “Not as much as you will!” Nina yells after her. Inej can’t stop the smile spreading on her face.

Her feet are feathers, always, as she travels up the two flights of rickety stairs. Her heart thumps steadily in her chest. There was a time she didn’t let it, a time she railed herself in. Lately she’s trying to welcome the sensation, to invite it to her body and allow it to fill her up. It feels strange, exciting. Like revealing a secret room, the discovery of a vacant space. That you can use it. That you’re allowed to fill that space.

Kaz is sitting behind his desk when Inej enters after knocking, his nose in stacks of documents, linen sleeves rolled up. Through the open window the sun streaks Kaz’s attic in golden, the last rays of the day. His dark leather gloves shine on the side of his desk. Yes, Ketterdam is so moist that it seeps into your skin, but even this city cannot hide from the force of summer and how it stretches the evenings. The turmoil from the city feels far away from here. Instead, Kaz’s attic is filled with something else… a fragrance delicate and fresh.

Kaz looks up from his desk, meets her eye. “Hello, Inej.”

She offers a smile. “Hello, Kaz.”

She walks up to him. Leans on the desk to his left, resting her hands behind her and crossing her ankles. She locks eyes with him. “Nina and Jesper were insufferably mischievous downstairs.”

He shrugs, leaning back in his high-backed chair. Puts down the letter he was reading, resting his hands close to hers. “Nothing new there.”

Inej uncrosses her ankles. Her thigh brushes the hair on his forearm. He holds her gaze.

It’s what they’ve been doing recently: folding the space between them, stretching their touches. Slowly learning, showing what they enjoy. Often, it’s how Inej wants to touch him, reclaiming her relationship with touch, after years of being trained to endure, not initiate. Letting Kaz touch her is more challenging, since she has to catch her body before it slips away, rejecting the habit to dissociate. It’s how Kaz wants to be touched by her, taking pleasure in how her touch can make him feel safe, can be a buoy instead of towering waves. Him touching her, bare skin, is difficult even on good days, but covering his skin before reaching out to her grounds him.

Kaz shoves his chair back and stands up. “I have something for you.”

Inej cannot hide the surprise on her face.

Kaz grabs his cane and crosses the office to open the door to his bedroom. Inej breathes in the honey that reaches her, stronger now. He looks over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”

She’s behind him in an instant. She was only ever able to catch glances at the space they’re entering, never having stepped foot in it before. As a Dreg, she learned to scan any room she enters, instinctively, swiftly. But she’s not taking in the entirety of this private room now. No, her eyes are directly drawn to the white tub in the corner.

Steam rises from the water surface that is not covered by foam or orange and red flower petals, filling the room with a heavenly haze. Candles are lit on top of the small wooden table beside it, Kaz’s drawer, at the back of the tub. A fragrance pure and light fills her senses. She’s speechless.

“Happy birthday, Inej.”

Inej pulls her gaze away from the wonder that is this steamy tub to turn to Kaz. He’s clasping his cane in front of him, resting both hands on the metal crow’s head. He holds her gaze, steadily, but she notices something there that’s rare. She doesn’t want to blink when he’s letting her see it.

“It’s tulip. Nina assisted.”

Inej’s heart swells even more. How beautifully unexpected that he decided to ask for help.

“Kaz, this is wonderful.” She’s full-on grinning now.

His doubt disappears and his face lights up. He’s so pretty. He nods to the chair by the tub. “Nina picked out some clothes from your room to change into when you’re done bathing.”

Inej takes the smallest step closer to him.

“I’ll be in my office. But I won’t disturb you, so please enjoy for as long as you want to.”

She looks up into his eyes as she rests her fingertips, fingers, then palm on his wrist. “Thank you.”

His lips quirk upwards. Then he turns, closes the door behind him. She listens as the thumps of his cane fall silent as he repositions himself behind his desk. And she’s alone.

Inej lets her gaze circle the room. The tub stands under a slanted roof that holds a square window cracked open. The clouds have turned to a shade of lilac and rose. A bed is placed to the only straight wall in the room, accompanied by a side table. His washbasin is next to his dresser, a blurry mirror above it. These are Kaz’s private quarters and he’s trusting her with it.

Who knew Kaz had something like this up his sleeve. She imagines the look on Nina’s face when Kaz asked for help. She must have been intolerably delighted. Inej chuckles.

She breathes in the subtle scent that has filled the room. Inej can’t wait to dip her tired feet into the tub. Let the warmth take her in. Cover herself with velvet petals. Watch as the clouds turn from pastels to dark shades.

Her fingertips slide across the sheaths of her knives, where she releases each one, carefully positioning them on top of Kaz’s drawer. He has allowed himself to be vulnerable to prepare this for her, and gratefulness washes over her. As her fingers reach up to undo the first clasp of her vest, waves swirl low in her belly. Something new emerges, bubbling up to the surface. Her fingers pause in midair. She wants to reciprocate, meet him halfway.

Her knife sheaths already empty, she turns to open the crooked door to Kaz’s office. She keeps one hand on the rough doorframe as she watches how he looks up from his desk, surprised.

She inhales deeply, steadying herself. It’s something she has done before, but suggesting it would be a first. Her wanting to is a first. And this is Kaz she’s talking to. How will he react?

“Do you want to watch as I undress?” she asks, recognizing the nervous rhythm of her heart in her ears.

Inej can see the subtlest rise of his eyebrows, widening of his eyes. She refuses to break eye contact. He needs to know that she doesn’t want this because she believes he wants her to take off her clothes. She wants this because she’s trying to change how her body remembers showing her skin to men. “I want you to.”

She studies his face. His look is stern, it is almost always. She’s trained in his features: the tiniest twitch of his eyebrows, the clenching of his jaw, when and how long he breaks eye contact. But right now, he shows no movements she can decipher. She’s trained in patience as well, but this moment of silence rattles at her foundations.

The chair scrapes the old wooden floor as Kaz stands up. “Yes,” he replies simply.

The voice in her head finishes: the deal is the deal. “Okay,” she nods.

Kaz follows her. For a moment they stand there, in his bedroom. Inej knows it’s Kaz who stands next to her, she has rescued him again and again, he has rescued her again and again. There’s no one she’d rather do this with than him, no one she trusts more. But she has to keep her head straight or she won’t be able to look him in the eye. Let’s take this step by step.

She walks over to the tub, halts next to the chair. “You can sit wherever you want,” she tells him. But there’s not many options besides the chair that’s already used by her clothes and towel. In fact, there’s only one.

The frame creaks softly as Kaz sits down on his bedsheets and rests his cane beside him. Inej could touch his knees in barely three steps. He looks up at her. She recognises this position when she’s perched in his window, leaning or sitting on his desk while he’s working there. She’s used to watching from above as the Wraith as well. It soothes her nerves, just a bit.

Not enough to hold his gaze. But enough to slowly reach her hands to her chest and undo the first clasp of her vest. The muscles in her upper back and shoulders stiffen as she can feel herself slipping into a performance. She sees herself standing there, trembling fingers at the first hook of her clothes. She takes a shaky breath, closing her eyes. Using her senses to return to her body. She wriggles her toes in her dearest slippers. Outside the window she can hear her beloved crows, inside distantly the rickety stairs of the Slat. The floral fragrance is calming. She can stop any moment she wants to, she knows that. But she doesn’t want to.

She’s Inej Ghafa and with the release of a breath, she shakes the skin of a lynx from her body.

Kaz is there when she opens her eyes, the worry between his dark brows fades when he sees her expression. Making way for the tiniest arch of one of his eyebrows. It’s an invitation. She accepts.

Carefully she loosens the clasps on her vest. The violet fabric of her tunic shifts underneath. She lets her vest slide down behind her body, over her upper arms, elbows and catches it in her hand as it falls over her wrists. She hangs it on the back of the chair.

Next are the fingerless gloves that cover her entire forearms. Finger for finger, she slips them off. Perching on the edge of the chair, she takes of her slippers, storing them beneath the chair. The wooden floor is cool under her feet. A welcome sensation, because she’s feeling hot. Hot under Kaz’s gaze, who’s giving her his full attention.

She’s well aware of the flush that must have grown on her cheeks. They’ve stripped in front of each other during jobs countlessly, taking on new identities in the dim alleys of Ketterdam. This is different entirely. No hiding in plain sight, and it’s how she wants it to be. The heat in her body near Kaz is nothing new. She wants to cherish it, instead of trying to push it away. Kaz’s gaze makes the sensation grow only stronger.

She catches the clenching of his jaw. Maybe she’s not the only one growing flustered.

Right below her neck, Inej loosens the ties of her tunic. She crosses her arms over the thin, swift material and slowly stretches her arms on top of her head, taking the fabric with her. She folds the purple blouse in her bare arms. There’s not many walls left now. And she’s beginning to enjoy it. With every layer of clothing, armour, removed, she discovers newfound courage, lightness. Yes, outside this protection, her armour, is what keeps her safe, dangerous. In here, she can feel strong even with her shields lowered.

Her top is next. She stretches out her arms, once again, and feels the evening air against her belly. The chill feels wonderful. Perching on the chair, she slides down the stretchy fabric of her trousers to pull them off. Her hands take the braid behind her back and slide between the strands. Kaz’s gaze is fixated on her fingers gliding up and down, unravelling the coils. She frees her hair completely, and the comforting weight drapes behind her body. Now, facing Kaz once more, she stands before him in nothing but her underwear, hair down, and locks eyes with him, embracing the raw vulnerability of this moment.

His gaze is fixed on her face. His eyes deep and vast, his brows slightly furrowed. She knows this look. She trembles lightly, the waves in her low belly swelling. She wants more of what he’s showing her.

“Kaz,” she asks, voice low, “will you take my bra off?”

His answer is the creaking of the bedframe as he stands up and closes the distance between them. He stands before her, fully clothed, and so close, she can see the pink on his cheeks, his dilated pupils. His breath is high and shallow, just like hers. Her arms are covered in goosebumps.

Slowly, Kaz lifts his fingers. Inej holds her breath. He touches the dark fabric on her ribs, gently lets his hands embrace the sides of her body. She feels the weight of his hands as she lets out her breath. The heat of his touch sets her skin aflame. He’s burning her. Or she’s burning up.

She reaches her fingers upwards, inviting him to take the flexible band and slide it upwards. His cool fingernails brush her skin as he curls them under the fabric and shifts it higher and higher until it catches all her hair, releasing it moments later when Kaz slides the garment from her wrists. Her hair cascades down, enveloping her in a midnight waterfall.

His gaze is unwavering, endless, fixed on her eyes. Inej wants it everywhere.

“You can look,” she breathes. “If you want.”

He does. She watches the length of his dark eyelashes as he traces his gaze downwards, deliberately, languid. Lips parted, rosy flush on his cheeks growing. She feels the heat radiate from her body, between her thighs, the tips of her ears. Nerves mixed with growing confidence.

Slowly, through lowered lashes, Kaz locks his eyes with hers again. He raises his fingers and slides them under a strand of her hair between her shoulder and the column of her neck. Inej watches closely as he lifts it up, gliding down its length, patiently, until, finally, he gently presses his lips to her hair.

Her breath hitches in her chest.

His lips still hovering above her hair, Kaz meets her eye. “You’re beautiful, Inej,” he whispers.

Oh, Saints.

Inej trembles before him. Her tides rise with every breath, washing over her, building and building. She can’t stop staring at his lips, his fingers, his eyes. His lips, his fingers, his eyes. He called her beautiful, but how can she ever express how he looks to her this moment? He’s boundless.

Inej draws closer. Her hair slips through his fingers. She would never. She takes his hand, dextrous, dependable, weaving her fingers through his, letting them rest at their sides. Closer. Until the blissful press of their bodies together. It makes her dizzy. She feels the rising and fall of his chest, their breathing synching into the same heavy rhythm. His lips tender and flushed. His eyes deep mahogany. She feels a sense of safety and security with him that’s unparalleled.

She reaches her free hand to his face, cupping his rough cheek in her palm. Kaz closes his eyes and offers her the slightest sigh as he presses himself to her touch. The wonderful fan of his eyelashes. She’s so close, she can count them. She wants him so much, she’s barely standing.

“Kaz,” Inej breathes. His eyes open to meet hers, scanning her features. “I want to kiss you.”

She remembers the first time she pressed her lips to his. Softly, exploratory. It was after an evening of celebrating a victory for the Dregs with her family. An evening of her knee to Kaz’s underneath the table, bathing in the warm pressure of his hand on her thigh. Afterwards, she followed him up the stairs. In his attic the air thickened, and they chatted, laughed, as they drew closer. When Inej said she would retreat to her room to rest, Kaz whispered her name, lowering his face. All Inej could do was brush his nose with hers, and fold her lips between his. It had made her feel delirious.  

Similar to how she’s feeling right now. Drunk on his gaze, scent, fingertips between hers. The maroon blossoms further on her cheeks. Kaz parts his lips.

“Please.” His voice a low rasp.

Bubbles popping in her belly, she reaches up and captures his sweet lips in a kiss. Kaz releases his hand from hers and presses both to the small curve of her naked back, curling into her hair once again, bringing her even closer. The heat rises to her head, and she sinks into his touch as he deepens the kiss. She slides her fingers over his cheek, into his hair, tangled. He presses his fingers into the strong muscles of her back. She feels him everywhere.

Inej places a hand on his chest when they separate. Close, still so close. His touch lingers on her lips. She can feel his delightfully heavy breath on her cheek. He rests his forehead against hers. Calm waves cradle her ship. An eternity passes.

“Perhaps I should get some more hot water.”

Inej opens her eyes to catch the twinkle in his eyes. She grins back. This devotion could keep her afloat forever. Kaz’s touch stays hot. The bath, inevitably, does not.

“Perhaps,” Inej repeats.

Slowly, she turns to dip her fingers in the floral tub, brushing the velvet petals. She glances over her shoulder, eyebrow raised, as she asks, “You like it hot?”

Kaz grins, his eyes devilish. Inej already knows the answer to that.

#six of crows #shadow and bone #kanej #inej ghafa #kaz brekker #obsessed with them really #they give me butterflies