#hyunjin americano

[aesthetic-watermelon]

you know that very old clip of hyunjin (skz) spilling coffee on his white hoodie after singing abt americano~~~ right?

my sister's been clowning him for that for 4 years and just this morning the same exact thing happened to her. She literally ran into the kitchen wailing and looking for baking soda.

i was CACKLING.

ahem;

@perchingominouslysmwh

#dumb #dumb sister #karma #coffee #spilled coffee #ruined hoodie #skz #hyunjin #americano #hyunjin americano

[hyunpic]

hyunjin on bubble

#hyunjin #skz #OWIEIEIEIIEIEWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOII #ORDERED AN ICE AMERICANO FROM THE CAFE AND GOT HIM #🧼 #i let him bejeweled….

[lemobadeskie]

#skz #skz fluff #skz felix #lemonade skie #skz hyunjin #skz smut #skz fanfic #skz imagines #skz stay #skz scenarios #americano #anericano joha #joha joha

[nebulaofbangtan]

This is what's been on loop in my head all day:

AmeRRicano joah~ joah~

joah~

#stray kids #hyunjin #stay #americano joah joah joah~

[kpop-aestheticedits]

🎶 Jo-ah Jo-ah Jo-ah 🎶

#iced americano #kpop #hyunjin #stray kids #han jisung #quokka #lee know #minsung #SoundCloud

[fu-ying]

Felix and coffee ☕

#stray kids #bang chan #changbin #han jisung #hyunjin #jeongin #lee felix #lee know #jyp nation #kim seungmin #coffee #iced americano #racha log

[minsoo-00]

americano~ 좋아 좋아~

#stray kids #hyunjin stray kids #cute #americano

[chernabogsbiggestfan]

just thought about hyunjin in a howl cosplay and i am Un Well

#hyunjin #stray kids #howl pendragon #howls moving castle #hes just so howl yknow #like i can see howl reacting the same way to spilling americano on his shirt

[gimmeurtmi]

kinktober day five — hyunjin

pairing: hwang hyunjin x fem!reader

tags: friends to lovers (kinda), kinktober series, smut!!!🔞

warnings: swearing, nude drawings, fingering, masturbation, use of “pretty”, lmk if i forgot anything!

inspo: uni student hyunjin but make it art

kink: exhibitionism

{ wc: 2522 }

It was a strange thing to be offered, but it was also flattering to be seen as a suitable candidate. The art department had reached out to a number of students to act as models for their sketch class—and you were one of them. It probably helped that your best friend, Hyunjin, was taking that class and you were sure he was the one to mention your name first.

He had asked you a few times to model for him and the only time you said yes was when you found a thrilling show to watch while you modelled; it was easier to stay still with your mind so occupied.

So you said yes.

And only then did the teacher tell you there was a catch.

“Nude?” You all but screamed.

“I know you and Mr. Hwang are close so I can pair you two together—but if you’re more comfortable modelling for a female student that’s fine too. Either way, you won’t be able to participate until you sign the forms.”

You looked at the consent forms in your hand, mulling it over for a few moments still. Modelling for a girl would be more comfortable, but you didn’t know anyone that took Art and being naked in front of a stranger was far more nerve wracking to you.

You called Hyunjin right away. He assured you he’d make sure you’re comfortable and that you didn’t have to agree at all and that he would buy you lunch for a week. He needed a good score on this assignment and he, too, didn’t feel all that comfortable sketching a stranger under those circumstances.

So you signed the forms.

*

You decided to use your room for the assignment, for privacy reasons and to help you feel more at ease. Nothing could be too scary with your supportive plushies in the same room as you.

Hyunjin walked in with his iced Americano (a second one for you, too) and started setting up his station.

He put all his pens and pencils in order, three huge erasers, two sharpeners, and his giant sketchbook. It was so big you guessed the sketch would end up being life sized.

As he set everything up, you fiddled nervously with the string of your robe. It was just your bathrobe, nothing too special, but the whole situation made your heart race and there was sweat gathering on your forehead.

You weren’t so sure if you could do this after all.

“Hyune,” you start, “does it have to be completely nude?”

He looked up at you from where he was straightening his pencils, eyes boring into you. You swallowed.

“Those are the requirements,” he caught his bottom lip between his teeth before he adds, “do you wanna put on some underwear as a warm-up?”

“Do you need sketches of me in my underwear?” You purse your lips.

“Not really,” he says, bashfully, “but if it’ll be an easier start for you?”

You inhale deeply. Untie your bathrobe. Exhale.

You let the fabric fall off your shoulders, pooling at your feet, before you settle on your bed.

Hyunjin nods at you with a small smile, encouraging.

“You got this,” he tries, putting a fist up in the air in solidarity.

“Can I put on a podcast so I don’t get bored?” You say, conscious to not move your legs too far apart.

“Sure, it’ll probably take me a while,” he chuckles, “I need to do like five.”

“Oh, dear god,” you roll your eyes and Hyunjin laughs at you. The nerves you were feeling have all disappeared already—it actually isn’t too weird being naked in front of him.

He’s your closest friend, has seen you being sick after drinking too much, has seen all your embarrassing childhood photos, has seen you with bed head and delirious from no sleep. He’s seen it all—so it shouldn’t be too weird for him to see your tits, too.

Hyunjin directs your poses, the first one casual as you lay on your back. He’s only sketching your upper body, he says, from the neck to your bellybutton, so he lets you cover up your bottom half with a blanket so you aren’t too cold. The first pose is fun since you don’t have to do anything too strenuous.

Once he flips the page on his sketchbook to a new one he changes your pose. This time your profile is facing him, the leg closer to him bent to hide most of your body. You don’t get the privilege of warmth this time, and your butt starts hurting after ten minutes in this position. But you focus on the podcast that’s still playing in the background instead, trying to be a good model for Hyunjin.

For the third pose he gets up and moves the table to the very edge of your bed. You look at him questioningly as he does so, before you let out a small, “why?”

“It’s just that, well, I need a close up,” he whispered the last part, eyes focused on rearranging his pencils neatly.

“Of….?” You think you know the answer.

“Of you,” he says, pointedly, and so you understand.

You can’t help but think he was going too easy on you until now, that this was the real assignment and he didn’t want to scare you away. And perhaps it worked, because the thought of Hyunjin staring at your pussy with that amount of concentration doesn’t scare you as much as it would’ve twenty minutes ago.

It actually… excites you. You feel a tingle all around your stomach, and your heartbeat feels louder all of a sudden.

It was one thing to just be naked in front of Hyunjin, but having him look right at you, with his face frowned in concentration made your core flutter.

You nod timidly at Hyunjin’s questioning look before he smiles. He sits back down on his chair, grabbing his pencil, and getting to the task at hand.

You feel yourself getting wet at the amount of attention he’s giving your body—even if it’s just with his eyes—and you hope he doesn’t notice it. But you do, and with your legs spread the way he asked them to be, you can even smell your own arousal. You hope he isn’t close enough to notice it as well, but you have a feeling that hope is futile. He can definitely tell.

“I read a lot about this once we were given the assignment,” he starts, focusing solely on his sketchbook as he talks, “and sometimes models feel.. you know. So don’t be embarrassed.”

“I’m…” you wanted to defend yourself, because you weren’t even that embarrassed. Just surprisingly turned on. “Okay.”

“It would be more embarrassing for you if you were a guy, guys can’t hide it,” he says, as if to make you feel better.

“I don’t think I can hide anything from you right now,” you scoff at him. Hyunjin giggles in response.

He lets another five minutes or so go by before he takes a look at his drawing. You can’t be too sure because you’ve never seen yourself so close before but it looks like a good sketch. A really good one. You’re flattered at the attention to detail and it doesn’t make you feel shy anymore. You’re almost proud.

“When I was reading,” he coughs, “there was someone who said it’s nicer to sketch those body parts after.. a.. well,”

“You’ve just stared at my vagina for twenty minutes straight, Hyune, surely you can get some words out.”

He looks up at you, eyes round and glossy. His plush bottom lip is slightly red from where he’s been sucking on it as he draws.

“Female genitalia is a beautiful subject to draw after the model has experienced sexual gratification.”

You burst out laughing. “Who talks like that?”

“That’s a direct quote from the article!” He defends.

“So you want me to sexually gratify myself?”

He blushes deeply at that, shaking his hands quickly. “Not if that’s weird! Just if you wanted to. I have enough to probably pass I was just curious if she was right about it and—“

The words die on his tongue when you bring your hand between your legs. Your actions are fuelled by a strange bravery you aren’t familiar with, and the insane amount of arousel that’s coursing through you.

He quickly gets up, turning his eyes away from you.

“Wait, I can leave and you can call me back in when you’re d—“

“—don’t,” you say, running your fingers up and down your wetness, “maybe you can draw the process, too?”

His eyes go wide, so wide he almost looks like a cartoon, before he’s fumbling around to find the chair again. He sits down, quickly grabbing his pencils but they all fall onto the floor in his clumsy urge to get drawing right away.

He recovers them quickly, setting them aside but not at all bothering to arrange them in his neat order like before.

“Yeah, good idea,” he finally says, trying his best to look and draw and breathe at the same time.

He doesn’t have time to draw you teasing yourself before you slip two of your fingers inside you.

The sight is so pretty, so beautiful, and Hyunjin freezes for a moment. He blinks once then twice before he quickly starts putting pencil to paper and sketching out the sight before him.

He knows he won’t be able to do any of it justice but he has to try.

“Can you, move a little less?” He asks after a moment or two.

“I won’t reach sexual gratification if I don’t move,” you explain with a chuckle. If you’re honest, having Hyunjin watching you touch yourself might be enough to get you to cum without much movement at all—but you aren’t sure he should know about all that.

“Yeah, but it’s fucking beautiful and I want to get the details right,” he says.

You exhale lightly at that, trying not to react too much to what he just said. You aren’t sure if he can see you clench around your own fingers or not, but you nod in agreement.

“Pull them out a little bit, just so I can see better,” he directs, so simply, as if he isn’t talking about your fingers deep inside your cunt.

You follow his directions dutifully, as you’ve done all afternoon.

It’s just half of your fingers now, which isn’t much, but you can still feel the stretch. Still, with no friction available to you it makes you needy. So needy.

You want to move your fingers more, you want Hyunjin to watch you do more.

“Hyune,” you say, softly.

“Yeah?” He asks, still concentrating on his task.

“Wanna move now,”

“Just a few final details, okay?” He adds in a whisper, “you’re so beautiful,”

“Hyunjin, please,” you let out, because his compliment isn’t helping your patience at all.

“Would it help if you moved for a bit and then went back to the same pose?” He offers, eyes swimming in sympathy.

“It would, yes,” you nod quickly.

“Go on, then, just for a bit,” he smiles, supportive, before his gaze goes back to his sketch. He takes an eraser, fixing up a few details in an attempt to give you some privacy. But you don’t want that at all.

“Hyunie,” you whine out, and his head snaps up in a second. “It’s no fun if you look away.”

“I, I’m trying not to,” his eyes jump between your face and your exposed pussy, then back to the page. “You should have some privacy.”

“Don’t want it,” you say quickly, fingers moving slowly in and out as he gives you a bit more attention, “want you to see this.”

“I wanna see it too,” he says quietly, “it’s so beautiful.”

“Then look at me,” your fingers move quicker now, your palm resting against your clit and applying just the right amount of pressure, “watch me fuck myself.”

“Fuck,” Hyunjin all but moans, head falling backwards before he quickly zeros in on your cunt.

You let your eyes scan down to his crotch, see the bulge he’s so clearly been trying to hide.

“Come here,” you ask him, patting the space next to you, “want you to really see me.”

Hyunjin almost flips the table over and runs to you, but instead he just trips over one of the legs, letting all the pencils fall again, before he’s climbing onto the bed.

He settles right in front of you, his knee touching your ankle, and lets himself fully gape at the sight in front of him.

“I looked through a lot of portraits you know,” he starts softly, his voice lower than usual, “and I think your pussy is the prettiest one.”

“Maybe it has something to do with the artist,” you smirk at him, mostly to try and hide how much you like him complimenting you.

“Not my sketch,” he’s quick to correct you, “the one here.”

As he says it, he brings his big hand on top of yours, pushing against your hand until your fingers go as deep as they can.

You moan loudly at that, jaw hanging open.

“That’s what you wanted, deep,” he confirmed to himself, looking at your knuckles disappearing into you. “Looks so nice like this, too.”

He grabs your wrist, lifting and pushing your hand in an impossible pace. Your fingers are sore from it after only a few seconds, but Hyunjin’s beautiful face is looking right at you and so you don’t do anything but moan.

“So pretty like this, too,” he says, slightly strained.

You grip his bicep, needing something to ground you as the pleasure starts building and building. It’s much more solid than he lets on, his arms big and strong and his grip on your hand tightening as your whines grow higher and higher until— “I’m gonna…”

“Want me to see it? Should I watch as you cum all over your fingers, pretty?”

And that’s all it takes for it to hit you at full force, your eyes shutting tightly as the pleasure takes over.

Hyunjin giggles at you, small dimples appearing by his cheeks as he averts his gaze away from you. He’s so beautiful even with his head turned away, looking for something.

He quickly finds it and grabs the tissues by your bed to hand you one. You quickly clean off your fingers as you giggle.

“Should you get back to drawing now?” You ask, breathless.

“Yes,” he nods, getting up with a very obvious tent in his pants. He adjusts himself as discreetly as he can, but a sense of pride takes over you knowing you’ve made him hard in the first place.

He gathers the pencils off the floor.

“Next I think I wanna draw your face when you cum, it’s really fucking gorgeous,” he says offhanded as he sketched out the outline of your cunt.

“I’ll have to cum again, no?” You mumble.

“That can be arranged,” he doesn’t even look up.

Your breathe catches in your throat.

#hwang hyunjin x reader #hyunjin x you #hyunjin x reader #hwang hyunjin smut #hyunjin smut #skz smut #skz x reader #skz x you #stray kids x reader #hwang hyunjin fic #hyunjin x y/n #hwang hyunjin x you #stray kids smut #kinktober #kpop x reader #kpop smut #kpop imagines #stray kids kinktober #kinktober23 #all.works

[forlix]

𝐚𝐜𝐞・h.h.

— volleyball superstar and your personal hell hwang hyunjin proposes a trade-off you can't refuse: his matchmaking services for a passing anthropology grade. the plan is foolproof in theory; in practice, it is something else entirely.

words・15.2k

pairing・volleyball player!hyunjin x tutor!reader (gn)

genres・college!au, sports!au, fake enemies to friends to lovers, fluff, humor, hurt/comfort, slice of life, mutual pining, slow burn. two polar opposites sharing one soul. a seungjin fic if u squint. loosely inspired by the manga/anime haikyuu!!

warnings・mentions of anxiety, fear of failure, heartbreak, loneliness, and self-image. course language and callous banter (as always) ft. suggestive flirting and one kms joke. some of the referenced players and coaches are real; this fic is not.

playlist・collision by stray kids・value by ado・waiting for us by stray kids・eternity by bang chan・dreaming by smallpools・fly high!! by burnout syndromes

a/n・writing this felt like returning to my roots tbh. i love volleyball and i love sports aus and i love, love hwang hyunjin. thank u to my sahar for bringing this fic to life with me, as always; i can no longer write for him without also writing for you. i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i adored writing it. happy late birthday, our jinnie, our hyunjin, our forever ace; you are so unbelievably loved ♡

“Not a word out of you,” you say, tossing your backpack onto the floor of the lecture hall with a heavy-handed flick. “I’m serious.”

Hyunjin glances up at you with a frown. “When did people stop saying good morning?”

Your lack of an immediate comeback tells him the situation is dire. He observes you for a moment, his mouth falling open, hanging still, then curving into a slow, serpentine smile.

“Look at me.”

“No.”

“Look at me.”

“No.”

“Please, angel.”

“No! Leave me alone.”

Hyunjin slumps back into his seat, thinking hard. The solution occurs to him with a poke of his tongue into his cheek. “Coffee on me for a week.”

At this, your hands stop rummaging in your bag. You cock your head, your interest piqued. Got you. 

When you finally humor him and turn around, you’re flinching like you’re in pain, eyes closed and breath held and all. He giggles and leans in for a closer look. Tendrils of your body spray reach him from here, floral and light like a tropical coastline. He could’ve counted your eyelashes if he wasn’t so flummoxed by the state of your forehead.

“What the hell did you do?”

“Tried to cut my own bangs,” you sigh. “It didn’t go very well and now I look like Rock Lee.”

Hyunjin lets out a forceful laugh. “You’ve seen Naruto?”

You open your eyes. Only then does Hyunjin remember how little distance he left between your faces, when he’s staring straight into them and all the strange, starry speckles they hold.

The air between you curdles like sour milk.

Things are awkward between you often, he’s realized recently. What’s more, he didn’t think he was capable of being awkward with anyone anymore until he met you. It was your ill-fated seat that he chose to sit next to on the first day of ANTH 111, your ill-fated lap onto which he chose to spill his Americano, and the rest was history (or, in this case, anthropology). His tongue ends up in sailor’s knots with every smart-aleck comment and pitiful laugh you’ve given him since. Maybe there’s more to it, maybe there isn’t—Hyunjin doesn’t think about it much. He doesn’t like thinking in general.

You pull away from each other in unison. You clear your throat, glancing elsewhere. 

“Of course I’ve seen Naruto,” you quip, and everything is normal again. “Why do you seem surprised?”

“Because you’re so scholarly.”

“I am not scholarly.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You go to a park to play chess with old people on weekends.”

“I need to get my steps in somehow.”

“You didn’t know what Urban Dictionary was until I told you to look up—”

“God, I learned so much about you that day."

“Your favorite social media platform is Quizlet,” he bursts, exasperated. “Quizlet.”

“It is not.” An introspective pause. “Or is it?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Hyunjin throws his feet up on the chair below him, jabs in your direction with a bandaged finger. “There is no way you enjoy watching 2D men beat each other up in your free time. I don’t buy it.”

“Honestly, I thought you’d have more to say about my current appearance than my hobbies.”

He does, though. Matter of fact, he’s been curating a list since this conversation started: Vector from Despicable Me, Dora the Explorer’s hot older sibling, Spock. You face-planted into a lawnmower. You mistook a paper shredder for a hat. It goes on.

But then his head turns. Your eyes meet again. He’s reminded that it’s hard to sustain an inner monologue and look at you at the same time, Vector resemblance and all.

He reaches up, nudges a lock of your hair over a centimeter or so, and gives the patch of forehead a gentle flick.

“Watermelon,” he mumbles with a sickening smile.

You divert your attention to your lecture notes with a disappointed click of your tongue. “You’re getting soft.”

He spends the entire lecture daydreaming about tropical coastlines.

“I only get coffee from that one place on the east side of campus, by the way,” you say as you’re strolling out the building together, “and I get it a very specific way. Can you handle it?”

“Your faith gets me out of bed in the morning,” Hyunjin deadpans. “I’ll handle it, love. Text me your order.”

All of a sudden, you position your hands close to your stomach, the lapels of your jacket casting them in shadow. Your fingers begin to move in a sequence that he’d recognize anywhere.

“Body flicker jutsu,” you whisper, and then you’re scurrying off without another word—but you do glance back at him to gauge his response. Your smile is purely effulgent, your laugh but a faint sigh against the main quad’s busy thrum.

Hyunjin gapes at your retreating figure for so long that phosphenes start prancing around his field of view. Then he heads to the gym. His heart is pounding against his ribs like a battering ram.

“Hwang, I need you in my office.”

Hyunjin stops lacing up his shoes to see Coach Bang standing on the court’s sideline with a grim air about him. He glances at his captain, confused.

“Don’t look at me,” Minho says mid-stretch. “Godspeed.”

“Thanks, cap.” Useless.

Head volleyball coach Christopher Bang’s workspace reminds Hyunjin of a morgue. It’s all fluorescent lights and spotless white walls, the only decorative fixture a picture of his siblings, parents, and dog in front of the Sydney Opera House, framed and facing him atop his desk. Hyunjin once snuck the thing into the bathroom, an innocent plot to satiate his curiosity, and promptly discovered the man’s propensity for violence. He’s packing beneath those dry-cleaned polos, by the way.

Hyunjin closes the door and takes a seat. Bang taps a knuckle against the tempered glass of his monitor. “You can read, right?”

“Yes, coach,” he sighs. Everyone’s expectations for him are subterranean.

From: Park Jinyoung «[email protected]» To: Bang “Christopher” Chan «[email protected]» Subject: Not good See email from Hwang’s antopology professor below . He submitted the complete script of the Trolls movie instead of his mid term paper and now he’s failing the class . Not good . Sort out ASAP JP Sent from my iPad

Bang snatches up his mouse and scrolls, his ears turning scarlet. “Wrong email.”

“Yep.”

From: Kim Kyeyoung «[email protected]» To: Park Jinyoung «[email protected]» Subject: Regarding Hwang Hyunjin To Director of Athletics Park, I am writing to inform you that, as of yesterday, Mr. Hwang Hyunjin has a D- (64.9%) in ANTH 111: Cultural Anthropology, due to his submission of the complete script of a kids’ movie instead of his midterm paper. It is disappointing to see Mr. Hwang trivialize and ridicule my class to such a degree. Please see to it that he reorganizes his priorities lest his Student-Athlete Participation Agreement do so for him. Regards, Kim Kyeyoung Professor of Anthropology

“That’s bullshit!”

“We’re in agreement there.” Bang folds his arms over his chest, throws his foot over his knee. “Do you know what your Student-Athlete Participation Agreement says?”

“Does anyone?” Hyunjin scoffs. Bang whips out a form and brings it to eye level, the thing covered from top to bottom in microscopic Times New Roman. “No way you just had that.”

“I had it delivered ten minutes ago,” Bang confesses, then clears his throat and begins to recite. “All student-athletes must complete the academic term with a C or higher in all courses, should they wish to continue their participation in athletics thereafter.”

Hyunjin stiffens. “What the fuck? I’ve never heard—”

“If any Department of Athletics personnel,” Bang continues, raising his voice, “have reason to believe that a student-athlete will not be able to satisfy this requirement, they are encouraged to utilize resources such as academic advising or peer tutoring in guiding said student-athlete back onto the correct path.”

He shoves the piece of paper across his desk. “Read that name aloud for me.”

Hyunjin stares at the signature at the bottom of the page, scrawled so carelessly that most of it deviates away from its designated line. There is a rare hollowness in his chest that he recognizes as anxiety. With it comes a glimpse of a life without volleyball, the question of what little of him would remain.

“Hwang Hyunjin,” he says under his breath.

The office goes silent. Bang tucks the form back into his drawer. It closes with a gentle click.

Then comes the yelling.

“The Trolls movie? Trolls?! Are you fucking with me, Hwang?”

“It was a cultural reset! The pinnacle of modern media! How’s that for anthropology?”

“BAD!” Bang explodes, gesturing to the email emphatically. “VERY, VERY BAD!”

Hyunjin slumps over, dejected.

“You’ve never had trouble with school before.” He leans over his desk imposingly. “What the hell happened this semester? What changed?”

Nothing is the first answer that comes to mind, but Hyunjin’s pulse spikes like a lie detector. Upon the inside of his eyes replays a scene of a certain someone with watermelon bangs doing teleportation jutsu at him from a few yards away, wearing a smile made of some kind of space dust that astronomists haven’t discovered yet.

He grits his teeth, annoyed. This is what happens when he thinks.

“Beats me,” he fibs. “Typical junior year stress, maybe.”

“Does any of it have to do with Piazza?” 

Hyunjin shudders.

It just might, actually.

Modesty has no place in the career he’s had: high school national champion turned ace hitter in both the South Korean U21 roster and regular rotation for Seoul National University, the best collegiate volleyball team in the country. His name has lived at the top of ranking lists and the center of gold medals since he turned old enough to qualify for them; the press believes him the instigant of South Korea’s imminent volleyball revolution. It’s a mouthful, he knows.

It was never a question that he would go professional; the question was who he should talk to and where he would go.

At the start of the school year, Bang, acting in place of the agent he was advised to find and never bothered to, gave him a list of people to reach out to. On the very top was none other than Roberto Piazza, the chairman and head coach of Allianz Milano, one of the most eminent club teams in the world—and current home to Hyunjin’s personal idol, outside hitter Ishikawa Yuki.

Hyunjin thought his poor coach had finally succumbed to his old age. The thought of stepping onto the same court as Ishikawa felt sacrilegious, let alone donning the red, white, and navy blue of Allianz Milano with him. But Bang slapped him on the back of the neck and reminded him that going professional was equal parts preparation and opportunity; he was never going to know the answers to questions he didn’t ask. Hyunjin was coerced to fire off an introductory email despite his reservations.

Piazza replied within the week.

For the last five months, Hyunjin has been fighting with tooth and nail to manage his expectations. He scrolls past the team’s social media posts like they burn his eyes. He replies to Piazza’s emails right before working out with Changbin under the assumption that whatever the shredded libero does to him will eviscerate his brain. If his world is made of dreams, this is the one at its very core, imbued with destructive potential the second it became attainable.

But that’s the last five months. The last five weeks have been you kicking him in the shin because he’s laughing (or trying to make you laugh) and the professor is staring; you listening to him rant and rave about volleyball when he knows you couldn’t care less about the sport; you relaying the contents of your class readings like hot gossip, your eyes wild and hands flying around because you can’t contain your excitement. You, you, you.

He cards a hand through his air, regaining focus. “You know how I feel about Piazza.”

“Expect the worst, hope for the best.” Bang’s chair skids backwards as he stands up. “I think it’s a good approach.”

Suddenly, he is directly in front of Hyunjin, low enough to meet his eyes. His hands rest upon his shoulders firmly.

“But hope is hungry, and it will consume you if you let it,” he says. “Do not let it, Hyunjin. I’m not asking.”

Even while being squeezed to a pulp and regarded with the cold intensity of a statue, Hyunjin can’t help but feel anchored, somehow, to the floor of this miserable office. Protected.

Bang lets go of him. “I’m not asking you to find a tutor by the end of the week, either.”

Hyunjin groans. “Yeah, yeah. I’m on it.”

A set of bandaged fingers appear in your periphery to place a paper cup onto your laptop. Accompanying the smell of fresh coffee is that of smoky rose, as decidedly douchey as ever.

“I thought you said your order was complicated.”

You look up from your phone to see Hyunjin plop into the adjacent seat. His long, caramel-colored hair is damp and unstyled in the aftermath of a morning shower, droplets of water pearling on the lapels of a navy blue windbreaker, layered over a white long sleeve. You recognize the outfit by now as game gear.

“Was it not?” You ask.

“It was an Americano, love. I walked up to the cashier and placed an order for an Americano.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you could handle that much.” He flips you off as you squint at the cup. “Someone wrote their number on the lid, by the way.”

“What? Really?”

“No.”

He shoves you hard enough for your upper body to drape over the opposite armrest; you’re still cackling by the time you’ve straightened up again.

“Why did you get this, anyway?” Hyunjin grumbles. “I thought you had a sweet tooth.”

“I do, but you don’t.”

Only then does the fool understand that you had no intention of charging him in coffee just for a haircut reveal. He takes back the coffee hesitantly.

“Thanks,” he says at last. “Nice of you.”

“I know, right? Hated it,” you respond, and he almost chokes on his first sip.

You almost choke on nothing when Kim Seungmin materializes in the aisle adjacent. He holds out a hand in Hyunjin’s direction. “Yo.”

Hyunjin dabs it up mid-sip. “I fully forgot you were in this class.”

“Well, I’m due for my weekly appearance.” Seungmin slips into the seat directly below you, glancing at you over his shoulder. “Hey, Y/N.”

“Hi,” you say, somehow managing to stumble over the single syllable the word has. You thank your lucky stars that you fixed your hair yesterday.

You like Kim Seungmin. Not just in the cutesy, crushy way, but in the “I would relinquish all of my rights for you” way where you spend every waking moment cursing out whatever stroke of misfortune placed Hyunjin in the seat next to you instead of him. He’s funny, gorgeous, and talented—a vocal performance major with a student-athlete contract—and you think your infatuation is more than justified. Hyunjin thinks it’s hilarious.

You side-eye your blonde adversary, prepared to see one of three things: a suppressed laugh, a dramatic eye-roll, or a mature kissy face that usually results in the first option. You’re met with something far more worrisome.

He’s thinking.

That can’t be good.

Suddenly, his phone screen lights up with a text that temporarily wipes the conspiratorial gleam from his eye. Hyunjin scans it over and groans. “Can this guy do his fucking job?”

“He wouldn’t have to if you didn’t quit,” Seungmin answers. “I’ll never forget you, Manager Hwang.”

“Shut up.” You peer at Hyunjin, silently requesting an explanation. “Our captain is forcing us to help him look for a new team manager. We need one for playoffs because of some stupid U-League rule—Seung, why do you look morose?”

“I’m mourning.” Seungmin does look morose indeed. “Hyunjin committed larceny last year and our coach punished him by making him our team manager for the rest of the season. It was so funny.”

Hyunjin slides down his seat. “It was the worst experience of my life.”

Neither man seems inclined to elaborate on the mention of larceny. You choose to digress. “Can I ask why?”

“He had to be responsible,” Seungmin whispers. “For other people.”

The top of Hyunjin’s head stops right next to your armrest. You reach over and pat his hair in faux sympathy. “Poor thing.”

“Hardass refused to do it again this year, so now we’re recruiting.” Seungmin props an elbow upon the back of his chair, looks at you contemplatively. “I don’t suppose you have four hours to spare every day.”

Hyunjin scoffs from below you. Loudly. “This one? Team manager?”

“I can see it.”

“I can see killing myself, maybe.”

The next time you reach for him is to hit his forehead. A crisp smack resounds around the barren lecture hall. Hyunjin cusses into his seat cushion.

“Seems like a great candidate to me,” Seungmin muses, and the warm smile he gives you mirrors onto your face before you can think better of it. God, it’s pretty. You wonder how it would feel pressed against your own.

Hyunjin is now completely out of sight and halfway onto the floor. “I miss when you didn’t come to class, Seungmin.”

Eighty minutes later, you’ve just emerged from the classroom when Seungmin calls out to you. You come to such a sudden halt that Hyunjin almost trips over you, but you barely notice him stumble, utterly enraptured by the hand Seungmin brings to the strands of hair by your ear, the fingers that dust your cheek as they pluck a small piece of lint from out of the tresses.

“Sorry.” He flicks it away with a sheepish smile. “I couldn’t unsee it.”

You manage to thank him just before your whole body ceases to function. Hyunjin sidesteps the two of you, yawning.

Seungmin excuses himself not too long after you reach the main quad. You also turn to leave, sparing Hyunjin a curt farewell in the process. He hooks his pointer finger around the handle at the top of your backpack and lugs you backwards with infuriating ease.

“I didn’t like that at all,” you say.

“I don’t care. I have something to tell you.”

“You have a kid, don’t you?”

“Wha—huh? Who do you think I am?”

“The one-night-stand’s poster child. The champion of the contraception industry.”

“Yeah, contraception industry. It’s right there in the name.”

You can’t argue with that. “What do you have to tell me?”

A shadow of hesitation flits across Hyunjin’s face. Your smile falters. Is it possible that you’re about to have a serious conversation with him for the first time? Maybe you should’ve saved the secret son bit for another time.

“I’m failing anthro.”

So much for a serious conversation. 

“Come again?”

He repeats the mystifying statement.

“You’re joking.” The look on his face says otherwise, though, and your eyebrows disappear into your hair. “You’re failing anthro?”

“I just said that, yes.”

“You’re failing anthropology?”

“Mhm.”

“Just so we’re clear—you’re failing Introduction to Cultural Anthropology?”

“Yes. I’m glad you’re having fun.”

This is the best day of your life. “I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“Yeah, well, our professor has no media literacy,” he mutters.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Hyunjin clears his throat. “Anyways, I was thinking—”

“Wow! Congratulations. That’s a big—oomf—”

Hyunjin puts his entire hand over your face. Your mangled noises of protest go unacknowledged.

“I was thinking,” he continues, pushing your head around like a stick shift, “you and I can work out some kind of deal.”

You shove his wrist off you with a revolted groan. “I think I just ate some athletic tape.”

“Happens. You wanna hear the deal or not?”

“Does it involve ingesting more sports equipment?”

“Do you want it to?”

“Just tell me the deal, boy.”

“Alright.” He takes a deep breath. “If you help me pass this class, I’ll set you up with Seungmin.”

Your head performs a triple-axel on your neck. You are unable to respond for what feels like multiple hours. Finally: “I’m gonna need you to elaborate.”

“On which part?”

“All of them. Everything.”

Hyunjin sighs, then scans the courtyard. His gaze settles on the student union a little ways off. “Are you hungry?”

You pick up a sandwich and a smoothie in a state of nervous stupor. One would think it’s the prime minister you’re about to have lunch with and not an imbecilic left-side hitter eating from three different entrees at the same time.

He’s chosen a table a few yards away from a planter of flowering cherry blossom trees. You feel jealous eyes on the side of your face as you take a seat across from Hyunjin, but they don’t know that his telephone pole legs still bump against yours even with them drawn as close to your body as anatomically possible. Or that he’s drawing up a literal Ponzi scheme on your sandwich wrapper. You wager you’ve had better company.

“You like anthropology. I like listening to you talk about anthropology.” He traces over the wrapper’s left corner. “And I kinda want you to boss me around. That weird?”

“Yes, definitely,” you mumble around a mouthful of bread. “Go on.”

“Conclusion one: you should be my tutor.” He taps in place as if applying a finishing touch, then swaps to the opposite side. “You also like my teammate, but he’s neck-deep in volleyball and music this semester, which makes him hard to get a hold of—for most people.”

“Let me guess. Not for you.”

“Ten points to Ravenclaw.” His British accent is nightmarish. “Seung and I live in the same building. We get dinner when we go back from practice together. Conclusion two: you should come with us.”

“To dinner or to practice?”

“To both. Which brings us to my third and final conclusion—”

He slams a fist onto the center of the wrapper.

“—you should manage our team.”

“I knew it!” You slam the table as well, your smoothie wobbling upon impact. “You’re trying to swindle me! You can’t pay for my labor with more labor. What do you take me for?”

“It’s not labor, dumbass! Ask our last manager! He didn’t do shit!”

“Yeah? Who was your last manager?”

“Me!”

Oh, right. “But you hated it!”

“I hate everything that isn’t playing volleyball. Try again.”

You fold your arms over your chest. “You said you’d kill yourself if I managed you.”

Hyunjin starts balling up your sandwich wrapper. “It’s true. I thought about you and my coach getting along and promptly got a rash. But it makes so much sense: you do whatever you want during practice, tutor me afterwards, and then you and Seung can eyefuck over ramen or something. My coach hops off my dick, you hop on Seung’s—”

“STOP!” A girl drops her receipt not too far away, startled by your outburst. “Stop right there. I get it. Stop.”

“It’s a good plan.” He slings the paper ball towards the nearest trash can. It drops into the hole without so much as a brush against the rim. “You know it is.”

You’re loath to admit that you do. “When did you even come up with all this?”

He flicks a thumb in the direction of your anthropology class. No fucking wonder he’s failing.

“What is this, mock trial?”

The owner of this voice is the third man you’ve seen today donning that navy windbreaker, white long-sleeve combo. He has a face that reminds you of your neighbor’s cat from back home, sleek and sharp and only slightly sinister. There’s a dash of humor in his expression as he approaches your table like he’s enjoying the company of a court jester.

“Slamming tables like fuckin’ tariff lawyers,” the cat-man hums, lifting a hand in Hyunjin’s direction. “I could see it from all the way inside.”

“Captain!” Hyunjin crows, dabbing him up without missing a beat. They really do that like breathing. “Just the man I was hoping to see.”

“Really? I thought you’d be avoiding me like the rest of our homunculus team.”

“I would never.”

“You did. Yesterday. When you saw me and started running in the opposite direction.” He pauses for emphasis. “As fast as possible.”

“Well, that was yesterday. Today is a new day.” Hyunjin tosses you a proud glance. “And today, I bring you a new team manager.”

You stiffen. “I haven’t—”

“Is that so!” When the stranger smiles at you, you feel the same satisfaction you did every time the cat let you scratch her on the chin. “Music to my ears. What’s your name, cutie?”

You catch Hyunjin’s eye across the table; he nods enthusiastically as if saying go on, then. You briefly picture yourself strangling him with his own athletic tape. You then picture yourself hopping on Seungmin’s—

Rigidly, you throw a hand out to the cat-man, your face aflame.

“Y/N,” you grumble. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

He shakes on it heartily. “Likewise. I’m Minho. Welcome to the team.”

“Yes, welcome to the team,” Hyunjin parrots, looking positively jolly. You gnash your teeth together so hard your jaw throbs.

He’s lucky that his proposal holds so much water. He’s lucky that you don’t plan to strangle him until after you try that eyefucking thing.

You do kick him under the table, though.

The team has five weeks to prepare for the Korean University League, the biggest college-level volleyball tournament in the country. You have five days to learn how the hell athletic tape works. You can’t tell which is the bigger endeavor.

“I’m going to cause him irreversible skeletal damage,” you tell Changbin.

The team’s libero is twice as kind as he is talented, a full-time sweetheart working part-time at the university’s sports medicine clinic. Only your first week on the job and you’ve already decided he’s the only person on Earth you would permit to usher you through the gym at 6:45 A.M., a roll of athletic tape pressed to your back like a pistol.

“You will not,” Changbin answers. “One, because this won’t involve his skeleton, and two, because I wouldn’t ask you to help if it did.”

“You’ve misunderstood me,” you return as the two of you stop in front of an examination room. “I want to cause him irreversible skeletal damage.”

“Oh.” He opens the door with a frown. “Oh dear.”

Inside, Hyunjin is sitting cross-legged on top of a taping table, fitted in a loose gray tee and athletic shorts. He watches in pessimistic silence as you enter the room and beeline straight towards the shelf on the right. You slip a thick binder into your hands and bury your nose inside it without so much as a greeting.

“I am going to get maimed,” Hyunjin tells Changbin.

“Have some faith, both of you,” Changbin replies sternly. You find the pages you’re looking for and begin poring over them like you’re cramming for an exam. “You’ll be fine, Jinnie. Y/N studied.”

“Studied?” He repeats. “For this?”

“I’m pretty sure Quizlets were made.”

“Three, to be exact," you interject, sticking out your hand. “Now tape me.”

Hyunjin mouths the words tape me in baffled silence. The latter obliges your request with a smile. “See? What could go wrong?”

The answer to that, actually, is a lot. Especially after Changbin gets called away to help stretch out a teammate named Felix who allegedly “sprained his ass,” leaving Hyunjin to you and your binder.

You detect no smoky rose in the air around him today, just the subtle smells of cedar and cypress—laundry detergent or shampoo, maybe. Figures he doesn’t wear that insufferable cologne to practice.

“Go easy on me, yeah?”

While Hyunjin’s tone is teasing, yours is downright somber.

“I can’t promise anything.”

With that, you turn your palms face-up in a silent request for his hand.

A few strands of hair fall into your face as you lean in for a better look. It’s the first time you’ve seen his fingers untaped; they’re pretty, long and slender and surprisingly manicured, but also battered in their delicacy, the veins running over the back of his hand and forearm prominent, his bottom knuckles discolored from the healing bruises they bear. His hard work is palpable upon the smooth skin as evidently as if tattooed.

Hyunjin says your name in close proximity. You respond with an absent hum.

“You’re not nervous, are you?”

“No. Maybe a little.” You let his hand fall free and go to rummage for supplies. “Fine, yes. Very.”

“But you made Quizlets. You’re prepared for anything.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” You realize only after spotting the gentle smile on his face that he’s making fun of you. “I hate you.”

“Actually,” he hums, “I think you care about me, love. That’s why you’re nervous.”

“Nonsense—I care about disappointing Changbin. That’s it.”

“And me. And hopping on Seungmin’s dick. All these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

You try to tackle him. Hyunjin catches your hands a few inches away from his face, fingers closing around your wrists with obnoxious agility.

“Have you lost your mind?” You whisper-shout, your face on fire. “Don’t bring that up here. I’ll maim you for real.”

The laugh that explodes out of him throws his entire body backwards, turns his eyes to crescent moons and his mouth into a little rectangle. You hate that you don’t hate when that happens.

“My bad, my bad. It slipped out. I won’t—”

One incremental shift of Hyunjin’s body later, you find that you’re precariously, alarmingly close to one another.

So much so that you notice the mole beneath his left eye for the first time, that you're nearly cross-eyed looking at it. That the tip of your nose actually brushes against his before you pull away with a quiet intake of breath. 

Things are awkward between you often, you’ve realized recently. You’re both professional yappers, always quick to digress, quick to find a new topic to bicker about before the awkwardness marinates. But hours later you’ll look back on the interaction and still remember how the air shifted: like a layer of dust had been blown away and something untouched and unknown was discovered just underneath.

Since you’ve met him, Hyunjin has spent more time on your nerves than on your mind. You’re not exactly losing sleep over such a circumstantial acquaintance; you know that his presence in your life will end the way it began, naturally and anticlimactically and inside the ANTH 111 lecture hall. Still, it doesn’t go unnoticed when your heart and stomach launch into an elaborate gymnastics routine in the wake of something he says or does, just as they’re doing now.

Hyunjin glances into your right eye a moment, then your left. The mole just below his left eye disappears when he smiles, the expression soft, saccharine, and sincere. How anyone casually looks the way he does is beyond your abilities of comprehension.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

Your face continues to burn, now perhaps for different reasons. “What for?”

He lets go of your wrist, sweeps the lock of hair that keeps getting in your eyes behind the cuff of your ear.

“Caring about me.”

Then he flicks your forehead. You recoil with a quiet ow.

“Now stop stalling and tape me, dumbass.”

“Okay,” you mutter, rubbing the injury tenderly. “No need to get violent.”

It turns out the arduous taping procedure described in the instruction manual is for serious hand injuries. Hyunjin splints his fingers together for support, not rehabilitation, so it takes all of five minutes for him to talk you through his process. You finish taping both of his hands with nineteen minutes to spare. So maybe the Quizlets were overkill.

As you’re walking him down to practice, you take his hand and lift it to eye level, scanning your craftsmanship dubiously. “It’s not too tight, is it?”

“It’s perfect.” He swivels the hand around and grabs onto your entire face, the sensation by now eerily familiar. “Want another taste?”

You shove him down the stairs that remain. Unfortunately, there are only two. “You are truly grotesque.”

The gym has come to life since you arrived earlier this morning, now illuminated by shining ceiling lights in addition to the sun spilling through high, narrow windows. Most of the team has yet to step onto the court, still stretching or jogging along the sidelines: Minho and Coach Bang are talking strategy on the bench, the coach taking notes on a handheld whiteboard every now and then; Changbin is leaning over a recumbent Felix below the scoreboard, presumably trying to fix his ass.

The only one already with a ball in hand is Seungmin, setting to himself by the net. Once, twice, thrice straight up in the air, and then he glances in your direction and sends the fourth towards the left side of the court in a buoyant arc.

You only glean bits and pieces of the next few seconds. Hyunjin is at your side one moment, making a break for the net the next. His arms draw backwards in perfect synchrony. Feet hit the floor with laserlike intent. His entire body unravels like a fraying chrysalis as he rises to meet the ball, pounds it over the net and into the ground at an angle so clean that the sound of its landing resounds within your ribcage. It rebounds over the railing of the second floor and barely misses the doorway of the examination room you just emerged from.

Hyunjin drops lightly back onto his feet, following the ball’s tumultuous trajectory with proud eyes. A leftover breeze tosses a strand of hair over the bridge of your nose, and time starts moving again.

“Oi, this isn’t your backyard! Go pick that up!” Their coach booms, though his words lack their usual bitterness after what he just witnessed his ace hitter do.

Hyunjin swivels towards Seungmin first. “Crazy bitch. What the fuck was that?”

“Lower and faster. Further from the net too,” Seungmin returns. “How’d it feel?”

The grin on Hyunjin’s face reminds you of a wildfire, untamed and all-consuming and frightening in its fervor. “Like we just won everything.”

He tousles your hair as he jogs past you and back up the stairs to fetch the volleyball. Seungmin waves at you with one hand and palms another ball into his other. His face is warm and bare, his slim build flattered by his volleyball gear. You’ve witnessed few people so nice to look at and even fewer things as elegant as his setting form. But you are still thinking about Hyunjin—and you can’t move.

It is debilitating, watching somebody do the very thing they were destined for.

A little less than a week later, Hyunjin is approaching hour three of spewing hot garbage into a Word document when he decides to give up and call you. 

“Hello?” He immediately starts laughing. “Where the fuck are you?”

You poke the top of your head into the shot of your ceiling, gesturing to your headband. “My face is preoccupied at the moment.”

“Oh, you have to show me. Please.”

You flip your phone up for no more than half a second. A camera shutter goes off, followed by a shriek so loud that it peaks your mic.

“Motherfucker!”

He basically sprints to his camera roll. His prize: you with your face slathered in cleanser, hair pinned back by a Miffy headband, looking like the abominable snowman if he liked cute merchandise.

“Thank you,” he says earnestly. “I’ll treasure this forever.”

“You’ll be punished, Hwang.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

You brandish your middle finger at him in response. He props his phone up against his computer screen with a chuckle. 

“Aaanyways, I have a thesis statement to run by you.”

The first thing you did as Hyunjin’s tutor was help draft an email to Professor Kim, begging her to let him resubmit the two essays he royally botched. She replied with a lengthy quotation from her syllabus, specifically the section that talked about (and prohibited) resubmissions, but ended up making an exception for Hyunjin on account of the “truly piteous timbre” of his email. You fell out of your chair laughing when he read you her response.

“You should’ve opened with that.”

“I tried, hello? Someone distracted me!”

“Read. It. Before I change my mind.”

You spend a few minutes at most on the thesis itself, advising him to avoid passive voice, answer the prompt, establish a refutable argument, the works. Then he asks you a question about the research topic itself, allusions to the afterlife in Ancient Egyptian artwork, and the tutoring session takes a turn into what feels like a podcast episode.

You talk about the God of Death, Anubis, and his connections to the underworld; the elaborate, lavish funerary rituals intended to ensure the souls of the dead traveled safely; the vibrant murals that flanked their final resting spots as pictorial requests for divine protection. And you talk about them all with such confidence, such eloquence, that it’s as if you’re leading him through a history museum rather than talking to your phone as you do your skincare. He could listen to you for hours. He does, actually.

Around 1 A.M., Hyunjin stops typing mid-sentence when you come into frame for the first time, collapsing into your bed with a sigh of relief. Your eyes are soft and sleepy as they blink at your screen, strands of damp hair clinging to your cheeks. He feels his heart physically shift inside his ribcage when your mouth stretches into a yawn. It is the same sensation as the time you shot him a smile over your shoulder and he couldn’t move for ten minutes.

With that, his attention span has run its course.

“Baby,” he interrupts gently. “Let’s stop here, okay? You seem tired.”

You open your mouth as if to protest, only to yawn again.

“I suppose I am. Will you keep working tonight?”

“I think so. I hit my stride.”

“Text me if you have questions, then. I’ll respond when I wake up.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Your lips curve into the smallest of smiles. It copies onto Hyunjin’s face incurably quickly. 

“I had my doubts about this tutoring thing, you know.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, you told me this class was the closest thing to daily naptime you’d experienced since preschool.”

“It really is.”

“You also told me you would rather slam your tongue in a car door than read more than three sentences in one sitting.”

“I really would.”

“And you once referred to academia as ‘Virgin Village.’”

“Didn’t you come up with that?”

“No, hello? I live in that village.”

He grins. “I know. I just wanted to hear you admit it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ah, don’t threaten me with a good—”

“What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t think you would take this seriously, but I’m happy to be proven wrong.”

Hyunjin leans back. “Well, turns out I might give a fuck about anthropology after all.”

“Really?”

“No.”

You pretend to punch him through the screen. It’s so cute that he forgets to think before he opens his mouth next.

“But I do give a fuck about you.”

There’s nothing crazy about the statement. You’re friends, sort of. You manage his team. It would be strange if he didn’t. But the seconds that follow are terrible, a silent prophecy of something disastrous, like a cloud of rubble before an avalanche, the standstill during a star’s final breath. And Hyunjin’s heartbeat is hounding against his ears like a performance of traditional taiko.

He says good night in a haste. The call ends. He stares at the wall of his bedroom in a muddled haze for who knows how long.

Then he opens his texts.

Hyunjin: We have team bonding tomorrow btw Hyunjin: Don’t forget Y/N: i forgot. Y/N: pick me up at 6:45? Hyunjin: 🫡

He picks you up at 7:53.

You approach his car with your fists balled and your eyebrows knitted together like a mean old curmudgeon and he’s walking too close to your lawn.

“His fault,” Hyunjin says before you start yelling.

Minho simpers at you through his open window. “Hey, you! So glad you could join us!”

You fix the man with a judgmental glare as you slide into the backseat. “Aren’t you the captain? Why are you this late?”

“Whoa, okay. I would’ve scheduled this for earlier if I knew right now was honesty hour.”

“You did schedule it for earlier,” you say. “You scheduled it for way earlier.”

“Yeah, well, you’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me, Minho.”

“I can too. Tell ‘em, Hwang.”

“I want nothing to do with this.”

When you step through the doors of the arcade, you’re met with a surge of sensory input that you haven’t experienced in years. The air hangs thick with the smells of greasy concessions; everywhere you look are flashing screens and neon signs, stuffed animals and fading posters; clamoring against your ears are the sounds of games being won or lost, of balls being pocketed or launched, and of a horde of fully grown men spectating a match of Dance Dance Revolution so passionately (and loudly) that they’ve scared everyone away from that side of the room. You recognize the current competitors as Changbin and Jeongin.

“I’ll go pay,” Hyunjin says. “How much time do we want?”

“Infinity,” Minho answers. Hyunjin doesn’t move. “Two hours.”

He flashes him a thumbs-up. “And you?”

“I’m okay, I think.”

“No you’re not,” the two men answer in perfect unison.

You glance between them warily. “I don’t mind watching, seriously. I don’t even know how most of these games work—”

“There’s Tetris,” Hyunjin cuts in.

You purchase an hour.

One would imagine the point of the evening is to break the SNU men’s volleyball team, not to bond them. You’ve never seen so many strained blood vessels in your life. Nor have you heard of half the insults they spew at each other as the night goes on. Felix has to pay a fee for lodging an air hockey puck in the side of the MarioKart machine. Changbin loses at skee-ball and has to down an XL slushie like it’s a shot. It’s a scary amount of boyishness expressed in scary ways.

But they’re happy. You’ve picked up on it when they’re on the court, noticed the raw elation they emanate just from playing together. Yet, their closeness has never been more evident to you than tonight. The men are either laughing or making someone else laugh, arms draped over each other at all times, equally happy to celebrate victories as they’re eager to punish losses. It dawns on you at some point that you’re glad to be here with them, grateful to be a part of something so special—especially because there’s Tetris.

“Have you ever considered going pro?” Hyunjin asks over your shoulder.

You waited until most of the team was distracted to slink off to your beloved machine. Hyunjin tagged along, undoubtedly with the intention of making fun of you, only to be rendered speechless by your mastery. He’s been watching in a state of stupor, forearms propped against the back of your chair.

You don’t respond for a while, too focused on a precarious patch to even blink, let alone partake in conversation.

“I already did,” you finally answer.

“Sorry, what? You played professional Tetris?”

“In middle school. Then I got bored and switched to backgammon.” You pause. “Then I got bored again and switched to chess.”

“How do you look like this with these hobbies?”

Your run ends a few minutes later with a somber sound effect. You turn around in your seat with an anguished groan. “I think I’m washed.”

He looks at you like you’ve lost your mind. “You just set a new record by three hundred thousand points.”

“It’s a small pond,” you say, and an idea occurs to you. “Do you wanna try?”

“I get the feeling I don’t have a choice.”

“Then you’re smarter than you look.”

“Well, you look—”

His eyes move between your shoes and your face, and then his voice is an inaudible mutter as he sinks into your seat. You think you hear something along the lines of unfair.

“What was that?”

“Ugly. I said you look ugly.” He cracks his knuckles. “Now let’s break some fuckin' blocks.” 

When Hyunjin learns that the pieces can be rotated (so six or seven attempts later), a man walks into the arcade. 

He has hair the color of dark chocolate, the face of a fairy prince—and he’s with someone. The two of them appear arm in arm, laughing at something he said. He looks at this person the way astronomers do to the sky.

Something shatters inside you like old porcelain.

Your hands loosen around the back of Hyunjin’s chair. You can’t watch. You can’t think. You can only feel a void of disappointment rip open, stretch over you like an elongating shadow.

“Seung!” That’s Jisung, you think. “You made it!”

“Yo, sorry we’re late.” That’s Seungmin. That is undoubtedly Seungmin. “Dinner took longer than I thought.”

“Min, are you sure I’m allowed to be here?” You don’t know who this voice belongs to and you’re not sure you want to. “I feel like I’m intruding—”

“Hwang,” you say suddenly. “I have to go.”

He turns around, confused. An unattended block falls into a terrible spot on the screen behind him. ”Already?”

“I forgot I had an important call to make.” You turn away, training your eyes on the patterned carpet. “Sorry. I’ll see you around.”

You have touched Hyunjin’s hands many times. He’s asked you to tape his fingers every day since the first; he likes the way you cut off his circulation, says it helps him hit harder. But you never hold his hand so much as you examine it, the act stiff and unfeeling, cordoned within the professional pretense of athletic treatment. 

Now, Hyunjin catches your hand like a gardener repotting their favorite flower: delicately, careful of leaving its roots intact and petals untouched, but firmly, securely, so the flower continues to stand tall even when it’s been extracted from the soil, not even a speck of dirt slipping through the cracks between their fingers. That is the image you conjure when he slips his between yours, his metal rings cold where his fingertips are warm.

He says your name. There is a pinch of pain in the word, and you know that he knows.

“Do you want to be alone?”

You have never been asked such a thing—you have never asked to be asked such a thing—but, for some reason, the question brings tears to your eyes. 

“Yes, please,” you whisper, and you pull your hand away.

When you stalk past him, you hear Jisung notice you, call out to you, a note of worry in his question. You also count three pairs of eyes on your back: one concerned, the next confused, and the last you are wholly incapable of meeting. 

Unknown to you is the fourth pair fixed upon the top of the Tetris machine, where you’ve left your phone.

You emerge into the parking lot. The frigid air stills your mind for a fraction of a second, the last moment of mental quietude you will allow yourself that night.

Hyunjin’s right; the team manager doesn’t have to do much.

Coach Bang allows you to come to whichever practices and games you feel like, during which you might at most lug around a ballbag or fill someone’s waterbottle before holing up somewhere to do your own thing. But you like the people you work for too much to do so little for them, so you attend everything  your schedule allows. 

Last week, you could be found helping Minho put up the volleyball nets before practice, your laughter echoing throughout the spacious gym as he complained to you about his biochemistry professor’s distinct “cabbage scent.” Or running to grab materials for Changbin as he treated his teammates’ injuries like you were assisting an orthodontist giving someone a root canal. The dinner invitations you extended to Seungmin were always turned down, but his teammates were more than happy to assist you and Hyunjin in your quest to establish the best kimbap joint in the area once and for all. You even had a heart-to-heart with Coach Bang during one of the team’s water breaks, in which you managed to get half a smile out of the guy; Hyunjin was convinced that was his way of asking you to elope. You spent more time in the gymnasium those ten days than you had your entire college career.

Then came the arcade.

Five days have come and gone. You haven’t attended practice since, but you still see Hyunjin every morning at anthropology. The two of you sit in uncharacteristic silence for most of the lectures. You’ve taken the best notes of your life. He doesn’t mention the previous weekend; he doesn’t mention much of anything. 

In person, that is.

That Friday afternoon, you’re reading on the terrace of the library when you receive a text. It’s from Hyunjin, a two-minute voice note. You hesitate for a moment, stick a pencil into the gutter of your textbook to save your place, and slip your earbuds in. You listen to it.

Then you listen to it again.

And again as you wrap up your study session and go home. Again as you cook yourself dinner and load the dishwasher. Again as you shrug on a jacket and pocket your keys, setting off on the familiar trek to the gym.

As for what you plan to do there on a Friday night, long after the team has finished practice, you haven’t the slightest clue. You continue to move regardless, fueled by the feeling that there is where you need to be.

Coach Bang is leaving the building just as you’re approaching it. He halts in his footsteps and raises his eyebrows when he notices you. The man has always been difficult to read, but his face is exceptionally opaque now. Maybe it’s the shadowy landscape; more likely it’s the uneasiness that began to mount within you once you noticed the lights in the gym were still on.

“It’s been a while,” he greets.

“Coach,” you return, lowering your head. “I want to apologize for—”

“Save it,” he says, not unkindly. “There’s nothing to apologize for, alright? The team is lucky to have you.”

You manage a grateful smile. “I’ll be back starting next week.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He starts to walk away, stops himself, and glances into the illuminated building. “I would give him some space, by the way.”

Your uneasiness morphs into anxiety as you watch his broad back retreat into the shadows. You remain outside the gym for a few minutes more, accompanied by the distant melodies of cricket chorales and the muffled squeaking of shoes against laminated hardwood, the harsh sounds of flesh meeting leather.

Briskly, you walk home, rummage around, and return to the gym ten minutes later with your textbook tucked beneath your arm. This time, you unlock and enter the building without a moment of hesitation. 

Hyunjin is positioned multiple yards behind the service line, rotating a volleyball in his hands. A high toss, two resounding steps, and a collision like the crack of a whip. The previous ball has barely landed in the furthest corner of the court when he’s picking up the next, retreating to the same spot to do it all again. His tank top is the color of charcoal over his sweaty skin, his hair auburn where it’s plastered to his neck. He’s alone.

You only catch sight of Hyunjin’s face when you descend the stairs. His expression is crystalline, hardened with concentration and fortified by courage, but fragile all at once, rendered delicate by fatigue and fear, spilling from his every seam and splintering off his person like a broken vase. You recognize it as clearly as if you were looking at a picture of yourself from the worst years of your life.

“I was told to give you space,” you call out, and Hyunjin drops the volleyball he’s holding.

His lips fall apart. Nothing comes out of them. The only sounds to follow are your footsteps as you make your way towards the bleachers, a vertical wall of plastic now that they’ve been retracted for the night. You fold your legs into a criss-cross as you take a seat at their base.

“Is this enough space?”

More silence. You gesture to the volleyball nervously.

“Don’t make me go further, please. I’m not ready to die.”

Finally, this earns you a smile. It’s not much, but it loosens the nervous coils in your heart, permits your lungs to contract once more, and it remains on his face as he swipes the ball back into his hands. You open your textbook.

The rest of the night elapses in turning pages and soaring volleyballs. You don’t care for minutes or hours; you give him all the time in the world, as he did you.

The only time you glance at the clock on the wall is around midnight, when Hyunjin hobbles to the middle of the court and collapses. You’re worried at first. Then he rolls onto his back and releases a guttural groan into his hands, and your held breath comes out a laugh. You set down your book and stand up.

There’s a lake of perspiration forming around him. You pay it no mind and flop onto the floor, your eyes instantly narrowing beneath the fluorescent lights. 

“How do you see under these things?”

“I don’t,” he returns. “I complained about it to Coach once.”

“And?”

“He made them brighter.” Sounds about right.

Hyunjin spends the next few minutes catching his breath, his chest rising and falling in your peripheral vision. You sift through your mind for phrases of consolation or gestures of support and come up empty. You wish you had Hyunjin’s way with words.

But you think about the way his smile reached his eyes as he thanked you for caring about him, the tenderness with which he caught your hand at the arcade, the I give a fuck about you he blurted before ending the study call. You think about the voice note. It’s not that Hyunjin has a way with words; it’s that he’s brave enough to break the silences that you can’t, like he perceives your anxiety for the aftermath, shouldering the responsibility so you won’t have to.

This cannot be his burden alone.

You inhale. “What’s on your mind?”

Hyunjin doesn’t answer right away. You give up on squinting and close your eyes. The lights are still bright enough to dance around the murky darkness.

“I don’t think I know how to put it into words.”

You nearly laugh; you know how that feels. “Don’t think, just talk. I’m here.”

The same advice you gave yourself seems to work on him as well.

“Do you remember Ishikawa Yuki?”

His role model.

“He’s currently playing for a club team in Italy called Allianz Milano.” He blows out a deep breath. “I’ve been talking to their coach, Roberto Piazza, for the last six months.”

The gears in your head creak in their effort to process the implications of these words. “Holy shit, Hwang.”

“He emailed again, this morning. Said he was coming to the tournament later this month, he’s excited to see me play in person, whatever. And it hit me, finally, that this is all real. Like, this is actually happening to me. I spent all of today freaking out and asked Coach to let me stay back after practice. Usually, it wears out my brain if I tire my body, but it only half-worked today. I couldn’t wrap my head around anything. I still can’t.

“I am who I am because of that man, and now…I have a shot at playing with him. I keep asking myself why I’m not—not happier. I should be bouncing off the fucking walls, no? If I told my past self that this would be happening to him one day, he—he would—”

You open your eyes, confused by the sudden silence.

Hyunjin is sitting up next to you, staring intensely into the bleachers. You first notice the tip of his tongue prodding into his cheek, then his shuddering breath. He lifts a hand to his face, pressing against his eyes.

You stop thinking after that.

You sit up with him. When you settle your fingers around his wrist, he allows you to pull his hand back to his side. But he turns away as if trying to hide from you; he squeezes his eyes shut as if that would obstruct your view of his pain.

You reach to cradle his face, bringing him back to you. The cuff of your sleeves wipe at the saltwater on his cheeks, push the hair off his forehead with gentle sweeps. The two of you are close, close enough that your lips would meet the space between his eyes if you so much as lost your balance. His gaze traverses to your face, but you resolve not to meet it. You know you will traipse into uncharted territory the moment you do.

“Don’t fight it.” You trace over the hill of his cheek. “Healing becomes easier if you let yourself hurt. Trust me, Hyunjin.”

His first name should feel foreign on your tongue, yet you suspect the syllables have accompanied you all your life.

“You don’t have to continue if you can’t.”

“S’okay.” Hyunjin lifts your hand away from his face, presses a kiss to the base of your palm. “I want to.”

You feel yourself stumble ungracefully into the uncharted territory from before; does he do the same?

“I used to play volleyball on this expanse of cracked blacktop, behind my primary school. It was pretty brutal on my feet—I blew through so many different pairs of sneakers my mom almost made me quit.” He smiles at the memory. “But every time I came close to quitting, I’d go home and rewatch the same USA vs. Poland match from the 2008 Summer Olympics I asked my dad to record, and I’d promise myself it would be me on some other kid’s screen someday.

“That kid would tell everyone who’d listen about how cool I am. That I’m a secret superhero. That I’m living proof humans can fly if they really, really try—just like I talked about the volleyball players I grew up watching on my TV.

“The other day, Coach told me that hope would consume me. I thought it was just some senile drivel at the time, but..I think I get what he means now. I would do anything and everything to make that kid proud—even if it meant losing myself.” He lowers his head, auburn strands falling into his eyes. “That’s what’s on my mind.”

Amidst the ensuing pause, a storm approaches. It does not come in the form of rain or snow, sleet or hail, no; it is a gathering of words unsaid and emotions unacknowledged, all emerging from the deepest chambers of your heart in synchrony. The same entities you used to scapegoat for all the times things were awkward between you and Hyunjin when you were the culprit all along. You and your blind cowardice.

The storm tears open the seam of your lips. You do not resist; it’s long overdue.

“Every time Changbin sees you, he turns into a smitten schoolgirl,” you say. “He is physically unable to contain how endearing he finds you. He told me so himself.”

Hyunjin looks at you with widened eyes. You think you can see your own reflection in them, and you are the spitting image of a lighter dropped into gasoline, unstoppable in your vehemence.

“Jeongin comes to you for advice before anyone else,” you continue, “even for things related to school—which I still find hard to believe, I’m not gonna lie. But you have his best interests in mind, and it shows in everything you do for him. Of course your opinion matters more than anything in the world.

“I know you think he can’t stand you, but you are the reason Coach Bang loves this job, why he loves this sport. It’s written all over his face every time he calls you something mean, every time he makes you run another lap, every time he looks at you. You’re like a son to him. Everyone sees it but you.”

“Then there’s me.” You pause to catch your breath. “When I think about what my life used to be, I remember a lot of things. I remember loneliness. Insecurity. I remember my books and my backgammon boards and the way I taught myself to disappear inside them so the world would never find me. I remember avoiding mirrors like a vampire because I didn’t like seeing my own reflection. I remember feeling like I had to put on someone else’s personality every time I left the house because nobody would want to know me for me. All I ever wanted was a place where I could be myself, love myself, without consequence. I have yet to find that place.

“But I found a person. Someone who wouldn’t know time and place if they kicked his dick into his body. Someone who thinks instant ramen is high in nutritional value because it comes with dried vegetables. Someone who sweats the same amount of rain the Sahara Desert receives yearly—your body is not normal, by the way.”

Hyunjin giggles; it is soft and short, a small, tearful huff into the quiet air that makes you feel like you’re flying.

“Don’t get me wrong,” you say. “Your sense of humor sucks and your taste in coffee is so boring and you are the one with no media literacy, not Professor Kim. But I love spending time with you. I love who I am when I’m around you. And none of that has to do with volleyball.”

The next time you blink, you discover that he’s not the only one with tears in his eyes. How long has that been going on?

“There’s so much about you to be proud of, Hyunjin.” You give him a watery smile. “That kid will be spoiled for choice.”

When Hyunjin pulls you into his arms, you fall into each other like going to bed after a long day. Your face burrows into the crook of his neck in your embarrassment; he is laughing and crying at the same time when he mumbles something into your shoulder: “I knew you cared about me.”

You are so happy for the comedic relief you could sob. It helps that you already are.

“How the fuck are you still sweaty?” You choke out, and you think you like his cologne after all.

Six days later, Hyunjin opens the door of his apartment.

A fun-sized flurry of black and white barrages into the hallway outside and almost runs headfirst into the figure waiting there. You fall to your knees like you’ve just been gravely wounded, emitting an ear-piercing wail to match. All it takes is a few good head scratches for Kkami to stop yipping bloody murder and start whining for attention instead. 

Upon minute five of watching you and his dog cuddle in the hallway directly outside his home, Hyunjin sighs.

“Can you come inside, please? My RA will think I’m doing some freaky shit again.”

You side-eye him as you walk into his apartment, Kkami perched happily in your arms. “What, exactly, does freaky shit entail?”

He smirks as the door falls shut. “You want me to tell you or show you?”

You turn to Kkami, disgusted. “Your owner’s a bit of a pervert, my dear.”

Kkami licks you on the chin. Hyunjin’s eyes narrow to slits.

“Traitor.”

Naturally, Hyunjin’s parents chose the eve of his final anthropology exam—and the week before the tournament that will determine the trajectory of his career—to ask him to look after Kkami for a few days. He nearly canceled their plane tickets himself, but his impromptu roommate is currently ransacking your face with kisses on his couch, and he thinks your laugh complements his studio better than any decoration. 

“Do you want anything to drink?” He calls from the kitchen area.

You meander over, Kkami (still) perched happily in your arms. “What do you have?” 

“Alcohol.” He opens his fridge far enough so you can peer over his shoulder. “Americanos.”

He stops speaking.

“Is that all?”

“Yes. Wait—and apple juice.”

“You are about to be a professional athlete.”

“What the Italians don’t know won’t hurt them. You want apple juice, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes.”

“Maybe. Can you open it for me? My hands are full.”

Hyunjin does so with far less reluctance than he feigns. You thank him jubilantly, popping the straw into your mouth.

“Let’s get this over with.”

At 10:32 P.M., all is calm. You are sitting on the floor, your back against the side of his mattress. Hyunjin is where the universe intended: curled up in bed, both him and his laptop lying on their sides. You have studied eight out of ten units in only two and a half hours, and the night is still young. Kkami is but a fluffy, sleepy Oreo by your waist.

At 10:33 P.M., the Oreo begins to retch.

You startle a foot into the air. Hyunjin is out of bed and on his feet in the blink of an eye, the very image of a dog dad on duty. He grabs three different things off the kitchen counter with one hand and scoops up the long-haired chihuahua with the other, and then he’s kicking open the door.

Seungmin appears out of thin air carrying two heaping bags of groceries. Hyunjin nearly knocks him and a month’s worth of fresh produce down four flights of stairs.

“Hyun—Kkami?” Seungmin swivels. “Yo, what the fuck is—”

Hyunjin is already out the door.

A few minutes later, Hyunjin squats off to the side, pouring fresh water into a portable dog bowl. A little ways away, Kkami is throwing up ebulliently; a set of footsteps approaches.

“What is this thing?” Seungmin squats down next to Hyunjin, picking up the piece of patterned fabric lying on the grass. 

“Kkami gets sad after throwing up,” he sighs. “His blanket makes him feel better.”

Seungmin watches the chihuahua for a few moments, a soft flinch crimping his features. “He ate too fast again?”

Hyunjin rakes a hand through his hair. “I don’t get it. Nobody’s gonna take his food from him.”

Seungmin laughs. “I didn’t even know he was on campus.”

“I picked him up last night. My parents are traveling for work—they say hi, by the way.”

“I say hi back. I miss your mom’s cooking.”

“Me too,” Hyunjin says, smiling. “She would love to cook for you again—she’s always saying you’re too skinny.”

“She really is.”

A beat passes; it is then that Hyunjin has an epiphany.

Seungmin was the one who put a volleyball in his hands for the first time. Back then, Hyunjin was the lesser troublemaker between the two of them—a concept that neither of them can wrap their heads around to this day. Seungmin suggested they use the clotheslines in Hyunjin’s backyard as a makeshift net, despite Hyunjin’s dissuading; half of Hyunjin’s father’s wardrobe caught on fire, Seungmin had a black eye for a week, and nobody knows what happened to that volleyball. The two of them have been attached at the hip ever since.

It is a crazy thing, having your best friend as a teammate; a singular flick of the wrist or a point of his shoe and Seungmin will know exactly Hyunjin wants the ball down to the net’s fraying fibers; Hyunjin will be exactly where Seungmin needs him down to the flecks of paint on the volleyball court. Hyunjin has always been Seungmin’s hitter—Seungmin, always Hyunjin’s setter. Nothing will ever change between them so long as that remains the case.

At least, that’s what Hyunjin used to think.

Learning that Seungmin was in a relationship was as much a wake-up call for Hyunjin as it was for you. At first, he was just fucking pissed; how could Seungmin be so stupid as to turn down someone like you, especially when Hyunjin had shot his mouth off about his wingman services? More importantly, how long had his best friend of eighteen years been in love, and why was he the last to know? 

Only now, as they wait for his nine-year-old chihuahua to finish barfing, does Hyunjin realize that he can’t remember the last time he and Seungmin talked. Not “talked” as in a brief exchange inside the locker room or the lecture hall, about a new approach he wants to try or what Seungmin got on number four or if he wants a ride to practice—“talked” as in talked, about Hyunjin, about Seungmin, about the eighteen years they shared, about all the years yet to come.

Hyunjin sees his setter every day; he stopped looking for his friend a long time ago. 

“Yeonwoo, right?”

He senses surprise in Seungmin without having to look at him. But he also senses a smile, a subtle show that Seungmin recognizes what he’s trying to do—and forgives him.

“Yeonwoo,” Seungmin affirms. “We’re in the same songwriting intensive this semester.”

“Also a singer?”

He shakes his head. “Piano player. Performed at the Carnegie Hall in the United States at, like, seven years old. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so talented.”

“Wow, that’s—hi, old man. You done?”

Kkami walks over with his head hung low and tail between his legs, and Hyunjin hurries to drape the pup in his favorite blanket, pulling the bowl of water in front of him in tandem. Seungmin runs a hand over the top of Kkami’s head as he hydrates.

“You’ve suffered,” he tells him solemnly, and Hyunjin snorts.

“As I was saying—that’s crazy to hear, coming from the most talented person I know. You guys looked so good together.”

“Thanks. It’s weird. I’m happy.”

“You deserve it. You really do, Kim.” They exchange smiles, and Hyunjin gives Seungmin a playful nudge. “When are you introducing us?”

“The arcade wasn’t enough?”

“Don’t insult me.”

“Whenever you want, then.”

“Dinner with my mom, dinner with Yeonwoo,” Hyunjin recounts. “I’m holding you to it.”

“Bet.”

They shake on it. If Hyunjin wasn’t already reassured by Seungmin’s smile, he knows by his clasp around his hand that they’ll be okay.

“What about you?” Seungmin asks. “Are you together yet?”

Hyunjin knew this was coming. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Seungmin strings his hands together, letting them dangle in the space between his knees. “Someone you have questions for that you’re too scared to ask. Someone who’s lived in your mind since the day you met. There’s someone like that, isn’t there?”

Hyunjin pokes his tongue into his cheek. 

Ever since that night on the gym floor, Hyunjin’s been having these dreams. By the time his alarm goes off in the morning, every detail of the dream has eluded him, leaving behind only a ghost of emotion, akin to the breeze that grazes your face moments after walking past another person.

But then he’ll get out of bed, and walk to that café on the east side of campus, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. There, he’ll order a vanilla latte with extra sweetener, then turn around to see you standing five feet away, holding an Americano and trying not to laugh. And he’ll just know, with everything in him, that you are where his head goes when he’s not keeping watch.

He still addresses you by the pet names you hate. He still finds any excuse to be close to you; he still pesters you like a child with a crush. But now, he calls you his baby like one wishes on a star; his eyes drift to your lips every time you’re within two feet of each other; he makes fun of your likes and dislikes only because he’s happy to know about them at all. Ever since that night on the gym floor.

It’s impossible for nothing and everything to change at once. Two people teetering on the precipice of something cannot withstand a gust of wind so powerful. He’s already hanging off the ledge, losing his grip; where are you?

Next to him, Seungmin lets out a soft laugh. “There is.”

Hyunjin doesn’t know what to say.

“It might’ve been me, at some point,” he hums, returning his hand to scratch the back of Kkami’s ears. “But it has always been you, Hyun.”

Four floors above them and inside Hyunjin’s place, you are pacing between his fridge and his bed, nervously awaiting his and Kkami’s return.

Something catches your eye, wide and flat and hung on the wall by his bathroom door. You approach it curiously, your lips pulling into a fond smile the moment you realize all that’s in front of you.

Many of the photographs are of Hyunjin: him in his preteens, dead asleep in bed while dressed head to toe in volleyball gear, braces visible because his mouth is open; an action shot taken at what must’ve been a U21 match, the South Korean flag stitched into the shoulder of his jersey; him with half a birthday cake in front of him and the rest smeared all over his face. There are headlines, too: Underdog team earns district’s first high school volleyball state title; Hwang Hyunjin proves himself worthy of “ace spiker” label at South Korea V. Croatia U19 match; Coach Bang “Christopher” Chan leads Seoul National University to second consecutive KUL championship. There’s one—Who is Hwang Hyunjin? Meet the twenty-year-old instigant of South Korea’s imminent volleyball revolution—beside which he’s written the singular word “mouthful.” You laugh; you agree.

But pinned to the corkboard is also a photograph of Minho, surrounded by stray cats in the alleyway outside a K-BBQ restaurant; his parents cradling Kkami in an apple costume; his high school volleyball team silhouetted against a pretty sunset. Him and Seungmin as kids, covered in grime and scrapes but beaming nonetheless; him and Seungmin at age nineteen, stadium lights on their backs, unadulterated elation on their faces as they charge towards each other, beaming still. Changbin piggybacking Felix through the hallways of the gym, neither of them wearing a shirt; Jisung offering Coach Bang a beer while the latter looks direly unamused (you make a mental note to ask about that one later); what looks like a Rock Lee cosplayer grimacing in the middle of your anthropology classroom.

You rush forward as if decreed by gravitational force. Not too far away is another picture of you, in which you boast a Miffy headband and a face full of foaming cleanser. Then another, your eyes narrowed like that of a sniper taking aim as you’re playing Tetris; you with so many volleyballs piled into your arms that you can’t see your own face; your cheeks squished by a bandaged hand after you lost a bet about pandas (they can swim); you clutching your stomach on the library floor, brought to hysterical tears by Professor Kim’s email. You, you, you.

You bring your pointer finger to this last image, tracing it over the curve of your own cheek. You see a dimple on your face you didn’t know you had. You realize it only comes out for him.

It has always been him.

The front door opens. A man with telephone poles for legs and a long-haired chihuahua in his arms appears behind it. You sense in him that something has changed since you last saw each other. The two of you lock eyes. 

It’s not awkward this time.

Multiple yards behind the service line, Hyunjin is rotating a volleyball in his hands. It feels solid and sentient, an extension of himself held in cotton-clad fingers. He knows how this story will end.

He moves his eyes to his best friend’s back. Four fingers flash back at him twice, signaling a high lob set to the left, the very play they’ve practiced tirelessly for the last five weeks. The breath Hyunjin blows out of his cheeks seems to crystallize in the air, almost solid in all its exhilaration. 

He bends low and throws high. His arms drop behind his body like a spread of feathered wings; his feet fall into place below him like a meteor shower, two consecutive strikes against the earth that fissure its mantle. The lights overhead are bright. His palm pulls taut when it slams into leather. He knows how this story will end.

The volleyball tears towards the ground. It trembles as if scared by all that it holds: the guarantee of a flawless denouement, the catalyst of a radiant future. Hyunjin’s heart is beating hard enough to crack his ribs when he lands back on the ground, when the volleyball lands in the furthest corner of the court. He’s not scared at all.

He balls his fingers into fists.

“JUST LIKE LAST YEAR, BACK TO BACK ON AN ACE—”

An arm seizes Hyunjin’s neck; another drags him onto the floor. His head thuds onto the hardwood with a sound he hears over the whole world detonating. His vision fills with the faces of the people he cares for most, some covered in tears and others rivaling the ceiling with their blinding smiles. He can’t feel most of his body; his sweat drips into his mouth. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.

“—DEFENDING THEIR TITLE FOR THE THIRD CONSECUTIVE YEAR—”

His eyes find Seungmin’s among the fray. Their hands clap together with such force that Hyunjin cusses at the impact. Seungmin’s gaze burns into his with a ferocity that Hyunjin plans to take to his grave. His setter. His best friend.

He says something inaudible, but Hyunjin reads the words off his lips, and his eyes fill with tears: we win everything.

“—YOUR NATIONAL CHAMPIONS: SEOUL NATIONAL UNIVERSITY!”

Hyunjin’s post-game interview is a lawless affair. He is allowed at most half an answer before a new teammate is barreling over with an animalistic screech or a new friend is screaming congratulations from out of frame.

The reporter is visibly agitated by her final question, unpursing her lips to ask: “Is there anyone you’d like to thank?”

Hyunjin exhales. “You want the short answer or the long—”

Changbin seizes him by the head. Hyunjin bursts into a peal of high-pitched laughter as the libero litters kisses all over his face, nearly crumpling to the floor in his attempt to escape.

“Love you,” he yells before hurrying off. 

“Love you too, Bin.”

Hyunjin turns a sheepish smile to the reporter.

“The short answer,” she deadpans.

He starts counting off his fingers. He thanks his family—his first and last teammates, his eternal anchors. His other family, his actual teammates, the best boys he’s ever known. His coach, who will let him call him Chris someday. His best friend and setter, Kim Seungmin, who set a clothesline on fire once and changed his life forever.

In the distance, a figure emerges from the locker rooms. There’s a navy blue SNU banner draped over your shoulders, two overflowing duffel bags in your hands. Jisung and Jeongin run over to take them from you, and the smile you give them is wide and flushed, a remnant of the elation you shared from afar. The three of you start walking out of the gym.

Hyunjin thanks you.

You didn’t ask for the position, he tells the reporter, but some idiot roped you into it, and they’re all so grateful that you decided to stick around. You know the team better than they know themselves—it’s hard to believe you’ve been with them for five weeks instead of five years.

What are you like? What aren’t you like, is the better question. You’re caring, smart, strong; you see so much goodness in the people around you, all while unaware that it is your warmth that brings it out of them. Flowers only bloom in the sun’s doting radius, and so did he.

You have the sort of soul that incurs the scorn of the stars. They are the only ones to deserve you, they'd argue; you’re wasting your potential among humans when you belong to the sky, and they’d be right.

Hyunjin pokes his tongue into his cheek, suddenly annoyed.

“Why the fuck am I still talking to you?” 

“Pardon?” The reporter returns, but Hyunjin is already vaulting over the bleachers, making a mad dash for the exit. She gives her cameraman an affronted glare. He shrugs.

He explodes onto the concrete, looking around in a frantic haze. He finds the blue banner heading toward the team bus and flanked by his teammates with ease.

He calls out to you.

You glance backwards. Your smile is purely effulgent, your laugh but a faint sigh against the area’s busy thrum. His heart is pounding against his ribs like a battering ram again, but he’s used to this feeling by now. Jeongin and Jisung make themselves scarce.

You’re beautiful. God, you’re fucking beautiful. That was the first thought to enter his mind when he spilled an iced Americano on your lap all those months ago and you looked at him like he hailed from another planet. And it is the first thought to enter his mind now, when he runs up to you and cradles your face in his hands, his touch infinitely, impossibly gentle, and you look at him like he’s everything that has ever existed, everything that ever will. 

Tendrils of your body spray reach him from here, floral and light like a tropical coastline. He could’ve counted your eyelashes—if he didn’t have something far better to do.

“Tell me now if you don’t want me to do this,” he whispers.

A stupid smile crosses the face of the smartest person he knows. “My lips are sealed.”

Hyunjin kisses you. He kisses you until the banner around your shoulders is wrinkled under his touch, until your hands are tangled in his hair and aching his scalp, until the breaths you take are breaths you share, passed between your mouths like a puff of smoke before they’re colliding again.

He kisses you until he’s crying, again, until he’s no longer tasting your lips but your grin, and he kisses you only harder when those scornful stars start to dance before him, for you are his, not theirs, and he’s really won everything, now.

“Hwang, I need you in my office.”

Six months later, Hyunjin sees Coach Bang standing a few yards away with a grim air about him. He stops in his footsteps and glances at his captain, confused.

“I know nothing,” Seungmin says, walking away. “Good luck!”

“Thanks, cap.” Hyunjin swears he’s had this exact exchange before.

Head volleyball coach Christopher Bang’s workspace still reminds Hyunjin of a morgue. But there are two picture frames on his desk now: one of his family in front of the Sydney Opera House, the other of a band of boys clad in navy blue, draped over one another in exhausted bliss. The latter lends the room a much-needed sense of vitality. Too bad it still houses a rusty cyborg.

Hyunjin closes the door and takes a seat. Bang taps a knuckle against the tempered glass of his monitor. “Read.”

From: Nicola Daldello «[email protected]» To: Bang “Christopher” Chan «[email protected]» Subject: Re: Allianz Milano V. Pallavolo Perugia practice game Christopher, Allow me to apologize for my delayed response as I shared your request with Chairman Piazza. It is my great pleasure to inform you that we would love for Mr. Hwang Hyunjin to participate in our practice game versus Pallavolo Perugia. The match is scheduled for Monday, October 7th, 5-7 P.M. CET in the Giurati Sports Centre in Milan. Mr. Hwang will be playing for Allianz Milano as an outside hitter alongside Mr. Matey Kaziyski, Mr. Osniel Mergarejo, and Mr. Ishikawa Yuki. Please let me know of your availability to call regarding Mr. Hwang’s travel logistics. His transportation and lodging costs will be paid for by the club. I’m looking forward to speaking with you and welcoming Mr. Hwang to Italy once and for all. Yours, Nicola Daldello Assistant Coach, Allianz Milano

“I told you, some opportunities just present themselves,” Bang says, turning his monitor back around. “As for next steps, I need a holistic calendar view of your entire month of October, including social ev—Hwang, is that foam coming out of your mo—NOT ON MY CARPET! HWANG!”

In a park about a ten minute walk away, a small crowd of elderly people are scattered across a few stone tables, hunched over the fading chess boards painted into the granite surfaces. Mrs. Choi whisks away Mrs. Baek’s king with a triumphant yelp.

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! That opening is unbeatable!” She swivels towards you, shaking a fist threateningly. “You! Get over here. Your reign is over.”

You are sitting cross-legged in the shade of a broad magnolia tree, clearing out your storage. You tried to take a picture of a particularly rotund pigeon to send to Hyunjin earlier and couldn’t even do that. It was then you decided you couldn't live like this anymore.

“As excited as I am to beat you again, Mrs. Choi, I need ten more minutes,” you call back. 

She presents you with an unpleasant hand gesture. You turn your attention back to your phone, grinning. Two new notifications sit at the top of your lock screen.

Hyunjin: Omw now. Sorry had to talk to Chris Hyunjin: Same park? Y/N: yes Hyunjin: Who’s our opponent today Y/N: mrs. choi Hyunjin: Not that bitch again Y/N: ?

He’ll be here in eight minutes.

You return to the task at hand. You’ve already cleared out your apps, your documents, and videos; all that’s left is the audio files. You conduct a quick mental review. Surely you’ll live without your downloaded music and accidental voice memos.

Instead of hitting the “delete” button, you extract a pair of tangled earphones from your jacket pocket.

You go back to your texts with Hyunjin, open the shared attachments tab, and scroll for a long time before you find the voice note he sent you seven months ago.

He finds you a sobbing mess.

“Hey, hey, whoa.” He’s on his knees in an instant, gathering your hands into his, a world of concern in the brown of his eyes. Your earbuds fall out and clatter onto the cement below. “Baby, what’s happening? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” you say in a flustered haste. “Yes, I’m okay. I don’t—I don’t really know what’s happening.”

“Did that hag do this to you?” He asks this question so seriously. “I’ll beat up a senior citizen, I don’t give a fuck—”

“No!” You let out an ugly laugh through your tears. “No, no. Leave Mrs. Choi alone.”

“Then what is it? What’s wrong?”

Eventually, your vision clears enough for you to look at the man kneeling in front of you. His roots grow out longer every day, his hair by now nearly equal parts gold and black. A spot of sunlight infiltrates the magnolia leaves and lands on his left eye, turning it the hue of melted bronze.

Your fingers drift to the sides of his beautiful face as you lean in close; he smells like a combination of smoky rose and tropical coastlines.

“I’ll tell you later,” you murmur, pressing a kiss to his hairline. 

He is dissatisfied with this, hooking a pointer finger beneath your chin, guiding your face back to his. He laves the saltwater from your lips, your tongue, and then you’re smiling again, barely able to remember why you cried in the first place.

You rest your foreheads together. “Have I told you that you look like a bumblebee these days?”

He smiles. “Does that make you my flower, then?”

“Because you’re irresistably drawn to me?”

“No, because I wanna put my pollen in—”

You shove him away. “You are grotesque.”

He returns in a flash. “You love me.”

You kiss him again. And again. And one more time for good measure, during which you mumble I do against his lips, and then you remember something.

“Why did Coach hold you back, by the way?” You pull away, tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. “Are you in trouble again?”

“No, no. The opposite, actually.”

Your brow furrows. “The opposite? What—”

“In this lifetime, please,” Mrs. Choi hollers from the chess tables. You roll your eyes. Hyunjin smiles helplessly.

“Duty calls, my love.”

“Tell me your thing later too?”

“Of course.”

You dust yourself off and stand up, making your way to the battleground. But not before you whisper to Hyunjin, “now watch me beat up a senior citizen.”

He laughs with his whole body, his eyes the shape of crescent moons, his mouth a little rectangle.

“Hypocrite.”

Hyunjin: [1 Audio Message]

This is my seventh take and I’m not recording an eighth. What you get is what you get. I don’t care anymore.

I understand if you don’t wanna talk about what happened at the arcade. I wouldn’t, either. I just wanted to say that you don’t have to do this tutoring thing anymore. I won’t be able to fulfill my end of our deal, so…yeah, it wouldn’t be fair to you. You’ve already done so much for us. For me.

As for team manager, you’ll have to talk to Minho and Coach Bang if you wanna quit. Doesn’t sound like a fun conversation, I know—but if that’s what you decide, I’ll have your back. They don’t scare me. Well, they do. Sometimes.

You’ve been…distant, this week. I’ve known peace and quiet for the first time since we met, and I fucking hate it. I realized I couldn’t care less if you’re my tutor or my team manager or whatever—I just don’t want you to be a stranger. Maybe that’s selfish of me to say, but I’m tired of pretending the idea of losing you doesn’t terrify me. It does. It truly fucking does.

I’m gonna end this here, because I almost just stopped recording on accident and I would’ve committed first degree murder if I had to do this all over again. Sorry that this got so long, and…I’m sorry about everything. You deserve better.

Come back to me whenever you’re ready, okay? I’ll be waiting.

🔖 (send an ask to be added)・@astraystayyh・@like-a-diamondinthesky・@fire-08・@starsandrqindrops・@txtxlz・@laylasbunbunny・@strayghibli・@nuronhe・@seungminsapuppy・@vivisoni・@moon0fthenight・@sweetpickledjins・@svintsandghosts・@nhyunn ・@ur-boyfiend・@liknws・@hotgorloikawa・@randomwimp・@automaticpersonabatpaper・@aceofvernons・@linos-kitten・@newhope8・@weedforthoughtz・@hyunverse

© 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐱 (est. 090323) · liked this work? please consider reblogging, commenting, or sending me an ask to let me know; or, read my other writing here. thanks so much for the support ♡

#hyunjin x reader #stray kids x reader #stray kids imagines #hyunjin imagines #skz x reader #stray kids scenarios #k-labels #skz imagines #stray kids fluff #skz fluff #hyunjin fluff #skz scenarios #hyunjin scenarios #hwang hyunjin #hyunjin #hyunjin x you #hwang hyunjin x reader #stray kids x you #*writing #*oneshot

[lixie-phoria]

BETTER THAN REVENGE !

Yang Jeongin, star player of JYP-U's soccer team needs a tutor to help revive his derailing grades. Y/N L/N, honor roll student at JYP-U needs a way to get back at her ex for cheating on her. What happens when 2 strangers with seemingly unrelated needs cross paths?

[ - ] pairings - soccer player!yang jeongin x fem!reader (+ a little bit of hyunjin x reader)

[ - ] genre - strangers to lovers, university au, social media au, fake dating

[ - ] taglist - open. send an ask or reply to this post to be added !

[ - ] warnings - swearing, kys jokes, angst, (maybe) smut (more will be added as the series progresses)

[ - ] started - 01/12/2023 | ended - ?

[ y/n et all ] | [ the boys ] | [ the antagonists ]

[ 1.0 ] kicked out

[ 2.0 ] the proposal

[ 3.0 ] oh...

[ 4.0 ] do revenge

[ 5.0 ] the spanish love deception life

[ 6.0 ] jackson wang

[ 7.0 ] oops

[ 8.0 ] pneumonia ?!

[ 9.0 ] liar

[ 10.0 ] americano fiasco

[ 11.0 ] karma

[ 12.0 ] mint ice cream

[ 13.0 ] Vincent Han Gogh

[ 14.0 ] sweater weather

[ 15.0 ] last chance

[ 16.0 ] hallucination

[ 17.0 ] just friends

[ 18.0 ] epiphany

[ 19.0 ] "family emergency"

[ 20.0 ] we were never friends

[ 21.0 ] angry birds

. . . more coming soon !

©lixie-phoria, 2023

#kpop x reader #kpop smau #skz fanfic #skz fic #skz texts #skz fake texts #skz x female reader #skz x reader #stray kids texts #stray kids fanfic #stray kids fics #stray kids fic #stray kids fake texts #stray kids x female reader #stray kids x reader #yang jeongin x reader #yang jeongin fanfic #yang jeongin fic #yang jeongin smau #jeongin smau #jeongin x female reader #jeongin x reader #jeongin fic #stray kids smau #skz smau #bangchan smau #lee know smau #changbin smau #hyunjin smau #han smau

[bluejutdae]

• Stray Kids as very specific vibes | OT8

Chan: brushing your teeth side by side, making sure the other sleeps enough, late night city dates, plaids, dimples, racing each other on the street, spraying perfume on pillow cases, trying new stuff, 3 am runs at the grocery store, trust, last minute flights, glass clinking, lightnings, early morning fog.

Minho: reading books to each other, cat cafés, cooking together, the crackling of the fireplace, the first snow of the season, camping and fishing, quiet acts of service, giving each others silly gifts, cats stickers all over the house, warm blankets and cups of tea.

Changbin: vanilla scented candles, gym dates, sharing food, laughing carelessly, meeting the families, kissing on the shoreline, summer days, sea salt on your skin, warm hands, blowing on birthday candles, quality time, feeling safe, warm bathrobes, the smell of fresh laundry.

Hyunjin: paint stains, oversized shirts, matching nail polish, staring into each other's eyes, waking up in the middle of the night, heart wrenching movies, holding hands, whispers at night, talking about true love, soulmates, words of affirmations, sharing a blanket, museum dates.

Jisung: hysteric laughing, iced americanos, playing catch, fixing hair behind the ear, sharing earrings, falling asleep on the floor, neon lights, chapped lips and bitten nails, sharing earbuds, calming tones, shaking hands, goodnight pecks, dreaming of flying, Icarus poems, silver jewelry.

Felix: late night train rides, sitting on a car roof to watch the sun rise, the fresh water of a pool, the relaxing presence of your best friend, videogames, arcades games, golden hour, pretty smiles, silly tattoos, sharing playlists, trying new food, learning to braid hair.

Seungmin: study dates, white and baby blue flowers, coffee stained pages, journals and diaries, house keys, silly key chains, good morning videocalls, matching outfits, the warm wind on a summer night, the smell of oranges in the air, the feeling of belonging, tight hugs.

Jeongin: the glint of the snow, cold hands around warm chocolate, daily outfit pics, playgrounds, pranks, sharing secrets, watching reality shows, watching the full moon, counting stars, no fear of being judged, first love, setting goals, singing out loud into fake microphones.

#skz #skz fanfic #skz x reader #skz imagines #skz scenarios #stray kids smau #skz smau #stray kids fanfic #stray kids x reader #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids fake texts #skz fake texts #bang chan x reader #bang chan x you #lee know x reader #lee know x you #changbin x reader #changbin x you #hyunjin x reader #hyunjin x you #han x reader #han x you #felix x reader #felix x you #seungmin x you #seungmin x reader #jeongin x reader #bluejutdae #yang jeongin

[innieandsungielover]

A/N: This is my first ever fic that I'm posting on this account, or on skz in general, so I hope you guys like it! My inbox is open, so hit me up ig?

Pairing: Bully-ish!Hyunjin x afab!Reader (enemies to lovers)

18+ minors dni!!!

CW: Unprotected sex, oral (fem! receiving), cum eating, fucking in a public area, but no one comes inside!

WC: 3.3k

Love is a fickle thing, it always starts with an infatuation. You constantly think about them, yearn for them, cry for them. Surround yourself with the things they like in hopes of finding something in common.

You never felt you could find this sense of attraction. You watched as people fell in and out of love, but for you, it was just a figment of your imagination. 

There was only one time you were close enough to “love” someone, but instead of the feeling of contentment, it was one of hatred. You were infatuated with him, but not in the way that most would be, you could only see the negative, blinded by hatred for the man in front of you. 

He was in your art class, while you worked with clay pieces, he worked with watercolors. Everyone was in awe of his work, especially your professor. 

There were always subtle tones of love in every one of his paintings. It was his main emotion, his main drive, and it was truly beautiful.

The first time you ever saw one of his paintings was when you accidentally stumbled upon it, it being left in the classroom to dry as he went to go get coffee. 

You were working on one of your structures, an entangled face that showed a range of emotions. It was something that you wanted to achieve to show the complexity of the human mind, of emotions, but you ended up getting distracted by his painting.

You stood in front of it for what felt like hours, looking over each brush stroke, each blend of color, it was beautiful. You hadn’t realized you were crying, a few tears wetting your cheek until Hyunjin was in front of you holding out a tissue. 

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry” you tripped over your words as you took the tissues from his hand, thanking him. “It’s no problem, I’m actually very grateful” 

“And why is that?” you asked, dabbing the tissue at your tear ducts.“My work has never brought someone to tears” he grinned, taking a sip of his iced americano, the condensation of the drink ran down his cup like your tears just moments prior. 

“I don’t know how it hasn’t, the way you depict love is truly extraordinary, I’ve yet to see anything like it before. It isn’t even your form of painting, nor the medium, but the way you can feel the emotion pouring through the artist into their art is magnificent” 

“Such high praise from the teacher’s pet, what did I do to deserve this?” he chuckled, sitting back at his easel, playing with the brushes in the palm of his hand. 

“I’m not the teacher's pet” you glared at him, hating the way your voice stuttered as you spoke out against his accusations. “You most definitely are” he rolled his eyes, causing your eyebrows to furrow, “how else are you affording all your materials while others have much crappier ones? T-E-A-C-H-E-R’S P-E-T” he stated, enunciating every note at the end of his sentence.  

You glared at him, not feeling the need to prove yourself against his harmful words. No longer wanting to be belittled, you turned around, the clay that was previously stuck to your hands cracking. 

You tried to ignore him, truly, but every time you thought you were no longer going to see his face, there he appeared. 

At first, it was at your job, he would come at least three times a day, getting his daily Iced Americano fix. 

“Isn’t it unhealthy to drink more than one of these a day?” you asked, it was slower today so you had time to talk to him as he paid. 

“Wow, she speaks!” he exclaimed, slowly pulling out his card. “I thought you were taking a vow of silence seeing as every time you don’t even ask me what I want. I thought customer service helps you keep your job?” he joked, tilting his head to the side. 

“Well, my manager said it was okay to ignore dicks, so I think that’s what I’m doing!” you grinned, using your ‘customer service voice’ as he just rolled his eyes at you. 

“You would love to see my dick” he whispered, coming closer to the register so only you could hear him. 

Through a smile, you muttered, “If it’s anything like your personality, I bet it’s disgusting and nothing special!” 

He just tsked at you, walking away as someone had finally entered the little coffee place, coming up to the register to place their order. 

The next place was in your own apartment. You had no idea that your roommate, Felix, was close friends with the devil incarnate. 

“Why does he have to come over?” you whined, your body clad in overalls and a tank top as you took a bite of the warm brownie that he had made to help bring you to the “dark side”. 

As you took another bite, you didn’t realize the chocolate that was oozing out of the fudgy dessert, getting on the corner of your mouth. 

“He’s my best friend, plus I don’t know why you don’t like him. He’s like so nice to everyone, not to mention isn’t he your type? I do remember you loooove tall guys, people who are into are, and love reading. He checks all of your boxes babe” he giggled, watching as you glared at him, cheeks filled with the brownies he made you. 

“That doesn’t forgo him being one of the worst people I’ve ever met like he’s such a fucking asshole” you groaned, taking a sip of milk. 

“Hey! That “asshole” happens to be my best friend, so don’t talk about him like that or I’m cutting you off!” 

For such a small and kind dude, he sure had a fiery side to him. You simply nodded your head, lowering it in defeat, allowing him to pet it. 

He began to coo at you as he stroked your hair back. “Look at you being such a good roommate” he giggled, feeding you more of the brownie, which you happily accepted. 

“Now I have to go shower, so if he comes, please open the door for him and make him feel a bit welcome?” Lixie grinned at you, bopping your nose as you nodded your head, not wanting to be a nuisance to your friend. 

You scrolled on your phone, your legs hitting the cabinets underneath the counter you were currently situated on before you heard the jingle of the door knob. Before you could even jump down, the door opened itself, Hyunjin in front of it key in hand. 

“Felix, I can’t wait to tell you about this–” he cut himself off as he saw you, legs jangling off of the kitchen counter, phone in one hand, brownie in the other. 

“What the fuck are you doing here? Are you a stalker or something?” he groaned, placing his stuff on the couch, only for his hands to cross over his body, trying to prove a point. 

“I live here, Felix is my roommate and I’m going back to my room,” you said as kindly as you possibly could, not wanting to upset Lix after he politely asked you not to be a dick. 

“I don’t believe it, you want me that bad you made up an entire scheme to try and sleep with me, I mean I know I’m irresistible, but still that’s a new low.” 

Before he could continue spewing nonsense, you took his hand dragging it to your room. You opened the door allowing him to look inside. Your bra on the floor, your bed made but a bit crumpled from sitting on it earlier, and pictures of you and your friends littering the walls. 

“Is this enough proof for you?” you asked, tilting your head to the side waiting for his response. 

Instead, he took your face in the palm of his hand, his thumb first stroking your chin then slowly shifting down to the corner of your lip. He pulled you a bit closer, your eyes roaming his face, and your breath was caught in your throat. You thought he was going to kiss you, he pulled away with a laugh. 

“What a loser, you had chocolate all over your face while trying to talk to me. Aren’t you the least bit embarrassed?” he grinned, placing the thumb that was just rubbing at the corner of your lip into his mouth, savoring the taste. 

“You mean nothing to me, so why would I care?” you shrugged, taking your wallet in your hand before slowly moving away from your dorm frame to the entrance of your apartment. 

“Tell Felix I’m not going to be back for dinner” With that you left, leaving Hyunjin dumbfounded in the middle of your apartment. 

He was just trying to play hard to get, but you were still not getting it. Did you not notice that he went out of his way to go to the coffee shop that was out of his way, only on days you were working? How he spent hours in the classroom with you just to hear what song you were obsessed with that week, it was like you were oblivious to his infatuation with you. You couldn’t be that dumb, could you?

The last and most hated place to see him was the studio. It was your sanctuary, sure your room meant a lot to you, your own private space, but while working on your art, everything was basically white noise.

From the moment you put on your headphones, you are lost in a trance. The only thing on your mind is the piece in front of you and how you could make it better from the last. 

You were so immersed in your work, that you didn’t realize that Hyunjin had entered the room, working on his own piece.  

Almost an hour had passed as the two of you sat working on your respective pieces. What you didn’t notice was that he was on the phone. You could see his lips moving, but you didn’t think much of it, partly because you didn’t care enough, and the other half was because your favorite song was playing and you had forgotten about him.

It wasn’t until your headphones died that you finally heard the words leaving his mouth. 

“She’s so fucking cute, but I don’t know how she hasn’t noticed that I like her yet. Like why else would I go to her coffee shop 3 times a day Felix? And don’t say it’s because I have a coffee addiction, I know that, but I only go there to see her. And fuck, did you see her at Bin’s party, that short skirt I thought I was going to cum right there and then. How difficult is it for her to see that I like her?” he groaned, covering his face with his hands.

You didn’t even realize that you dropped your bowl of water until he looked up at you, your eyes meeting his. Before you could properly react, he quickly hung up the phone, walking towards you. 

You didn’t even realize, but you had started to run away, but you had nowhere to hide. You squatted down, trying to shield your body from him, but it only allowed him to come closer to you. 

“You heard what I said, didn’t you?” he asked as he crouched down to meet your height.

You didn’t respond, instead just nodding your head, which caused him to groan. He slowly pulled your hands away from your face, his hand on your chin. 

“I like you” he whispered, his face coming closer to yours. “Okay?” you responded, your voice quieter than his. 

“Let me show you” and with that, he captured your lips with his, pulling your body closer to him. Your lips were working in tandem as he wrapped your legs around his torso, your hands flying to the back of his neck, allowing him to pick you up. 

He pulled both of your bodies up, leading you to the closest desk, not allowing the two of you to break your kiss. His tongue licking at the seam of your mouth, begging for an entrance. 

You allowed it, your breaths getting heavier as he pushed his cock into the seam of your leggings, the room filled with your whimpers as he pressed deeper into you, allowing you to feel the hardness of him through his jeans. 

He slowly pulled away, a trail of spit connecting the two of you. “Fuck” you whined as he slowly pulled down your leggings, the cool air causing goosebumps to riddle your legs and arms. 

“Look at this pretty little cunt” he whispered, admiring the way your lips pushed against the cotton of your underwear. “Can’t wait to eat it” he grinned, tearing off your underwear causing you to shout. 

“Hyunjin what the fuck, I never said you could do that?” but you were cut off by the feeling of his plush lips against your clit, lapping away. Your hands instantaneously grasped his hair, pushing him deeper into you, allowing the only thought on his mind to be your pussy. 

You moaned as he continued lapping at it, learning every curve, where you loved being touched. He wanted to understand you, know what made you tick, he wanted to make you his. 

He slowly brought his hand up to your cunt, his finger teasing your hole before slowly pushing it inside of you. “Do you like that baby?” he whispered into your cunt, the vibration on your clit causing your eyes to roll back. 

“Feels so good” you whimpered as you lowered yourself, your back hitting the table. 

He didn’t want to stop until he made you cum in his mouth, he needed to taste you after chasing you for months. He slowly added another finger, thrusting it inside of your soaking hole, his other hand grabbing your thighs, pulling you closer to him. 

“Gonna cum Jinnie” you whimpered, your high being near. As soon as the word Jinnie left your lips, he felt like he was going to cum, the sound of you moaning his name was ringing in his ears and he needed to hear it again and again. 

“Fuck baby, gonna cum, gonna cum on my fingers like a good girl?” 

“Yes, gonna cum for Jinnie” you whimpered, your orgasm taking control of your body, it twitching under the feeling of his fingers continuously thrusting into you, hitting that spongey spot in your repeatedly. 

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on” he whispered, kissing your lips once again. 

You could feel his cock pressing onto your thigh, it protruding through his jeans and all you could think about was making him feel good.  

“Want to make you feel good Jinnie” you whined, pulling away from his lips as your hands frantically went to his jeans, pulling them down to try and get access to his cock. There was a slight wet patch on his boxers, which made you whimper. 

“Please, need it” you whined, your hands trailing to your cunt, spreading your lips apart to show him how wet you were for him. 

“You are going to kill me baby” he grinned, pulling his boxers down, allowing his cock to hit his stomach. Your eyes looked at him in fear when you saw his size. He was long and thick, bigger than everyone you’ve ever been with. 

“Don’t tell me you are scared” he chuckled, running the tip of his cock along your folds, capturing your wetness along his tip. You shook your head, trying to prove to him that you weren’t. 

“It’s okay baby, I’ll go slow, let me get a condom” But before he could even reach into his jeans to get his wallet, you stopped him. “It’s okay, I’m on the pill, please need to feel all of you Jinnie” 

Who was he to say no to your cute pleading face, so he slowly pushed the tip of his cock into you, causing the two of you to moan. You at the feeling of your cunt being stretched out, and him at the feeling of your cunt squeezing his cock. 

His cock was so deep inside of you, you felt like you could cum from just his cock resting inside of you. 

“Fuck baby, your pussy is taking me so well, wish we did this before instead of all this bickering, it’s like you were made for me.” he moaned while slowly beginning to thrusting into you, making sure he wasn’t going to fast.

To ensure your comfort, and to get you closer to your high because he knew he wasn’t going to last long, he began playing with your clit. “Jinnie feels so good, you are so deep inside of me” you whimpered.

He took it as a sign to start thrusting into you deeper. Each thrush hits your g-spot perfectly. With the stimulation of his finger on your clit, you couldn’t do it anymore. You started clenching down on him harder and harder. 

Your cunt was locking him in and all he could do was groan. The final push was when he moaned directly into your ear. You came all over his cock letting your moans hit his ear. He pulled out of you stroking his cock “Where do you want me to cum baby?” he whined, feeling close.

“I want it in my mouth” you begged and that was all he needed. He slowly lifted your body from the table as you fell to your knees in front of him, allowing him to push his cock into your mouth. 

He shoved it deep inside, causing you to deep-throat it, and came straight down your throat. “Fuck, I can’t believe we didn’t do that sooner.” he grinned. 

“It’s all your fault, you were the bully” you whined, trying to find your leggings to pull over your body since the room had gotten significantly cooler. 

“We should get dressed though, we don’t need anyone else to know what we just did” he looked around frantically, a worried look on his face, causing you to laugh.

“You just fucked me on a desk, and now you are scared?” 

“Yes, because I had this whole plan of taking you out to dinner, and buying you this really pretty dress I saw that I thought looked perfect for you and everything” he pouted. 

He looked adorable like this, and you couldn’t believe it was the same man that made your life a living hell, that was now in front of you causing you to coo at his jutted lip. 

“You are so cute” you mumbled, grabbing his face and pulling him into a kiss. Maybe love starts off different for everyone. 

_____

You walked into your apartment, hand in hand. A grin splayed on his face as you fought with him about how drinking iced americanos more than twice a day was crazy, and how his heart was going to stop. 

The two of you didn’t even realize that Felix was in your living room until the two of you heard an “I fucking knew it!” 

He was whooping and hollering around your apartment. “I knew it was going to start with this enemies-to-lover type shit and then boom y’all are going to fuck” 

Before the two of you could even utter a single word, he stopped you by continuing. “Please tell me it wasn’t on our shared couch though, it doesn’t need to be fucked on a second time” 

“You what!” you looked at him with fury in your eyes, Hyunjin just laughed at the spectacle playing out in front of him, damn he loved you. 

#gia writes! #skz smut #skz #skz x reader #stray kids #stray kids x reader #stray kids smut #straykids smut #straykids x reader #hyunjin #hwang hyunjin #hwang hyunjin smut #hyunjin smut #hyunjin x reader

[j-onedrabbles]

What do you think about Stray Kids and partner privileges, what do they let their partner get away with the other members can't? This keeps me up at night I won't lie to you

Hmmmmm good question lovely. Here are my thoughts;

wc: 0.7k

Chan ♡ chan definitely let's you get away with distracting him from work. He knows you’re really just trying to get him to take a break and take care of himself, but he rarely listens to anyone else when they do that. You could walk over to him when he’s busy working on a track and just pull the headphones off him, don't forget to kiss his cheek too! “Break time baby.”

He’ll immediately pull you down into his lap and cuddle up with you. He may try and keep working but the way you're giving him little kisses when you see him go for the computer mouse has him stopping and just loving on you until he moves you guys over to the bed.

Lee Know ♡ partner privileges with Lee Know are pretty much the same as Han privileges with him. Just a lot more kisses and cuddle than Han gets.

literally whatever you want from this man, at anytime, it’s yours. there's times where he will quite literally drop everything for you too, even if he's working. He will figure out a way to get you want you want or be where you need him to be

Changbin ♡ you could get away with getting him not to go to the gym. But even then, he'll opt to just take you with him and you just watch until he's done with his work out— he will smother you in sweaty kiss and hugs after though.

But if you're staying over and he plans to go to the gym, just through some puppy dog eyes and pouty lips his way and he'll do it later. His baby is more important than some weights, same thing if he's staying over at yours. Cuddle > gym when he's with you

Hyunjin ♡ jewelry sharing. He has so much omg. But he thinks it's cute when you ask if you can barrow a necklace just because you think it would good with you're outfit that day.

At some point would offer a piece of jewelry when you felt like your outfit was missing something. He'd take one look and just now he has a piece that would be perfect. Also just finds it a little funny when you guys are out and someone compliments his jewelry on you.

Han ♡ drink sharing. Man loves his americano's. My lord. I don't think he would share his coffee with anyone but if you asked for a sip, he could never say no. As long as you give him a kiss after!

It would be any drink too, especially if it was something you didn't drink often and just wanted to try that he had, he doesn't mind. Just random every day things when you're just parched enough for one sip of something and he just happens to have a drink. He'll share a little.

Felix ♡ video games! man's possessive of his computer probably—i mean, he did build it himself. It would probably start with just sitting on his lap while he plays then him asking you if you want a turn.

Even if you aren't good at whatever he's playing, he'll teach you. Always will offer you to go a round when you're hanging out and he was playing before you showed up. Find's games you could play together too! Might even offer to build you your own pc if you want

Seungmin ♡ clothes! I don't him really sharing his clothes with any one but his s/o. But he loves when you ask to borrow a shirt or a sweater from him. He will help you style it too.

He will sit there for hours with you planning out outfits for you. Maybe he'll even base it around a piece of jewelry you had. He's always offering a shirt, sweater, jacket, or whatever of his. Has so much fun with it

I.N ♡ You are the only person he willingly cuddle with. Rejects the guys all the time but you? He's just as clingy as the rest of the guys. Always wanting to hold onto you somehow.

Comes home to you and lays his head on your chest and hugs your waist. The first time it happened, the guys were really confused but gradually got used to it, thinking their maknae was starting to actually like kinship. After an attempt of trying to kiss his cheek and him shoving them away, they figured it was just because it was you

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[stayconnecteed]

❪⠀🪐.⠀𓏔⠀i wanna be yours · masterlist⠀❫

☆ㅤif you like your coffee hot, let me be your coffee pot !!

synopsis: eight stories that take place at the 5-STAR café, known on campus as the best place to study for your exams. the owner, bangchan, recently finished his degree, and decided to turn the place into a shelter for students who are trying to get the best coffee as cheaply as possible. stay and discover the love stories that hid between the walls of the place, in which employees and customers are the protagonists.

content info: stories non-related one shots, there is no specific order, although i will post them in the classic skz order (first the older, the maknae as the last one). specified warnings on each chapter.

( hii, happy sunday!! ♡ )

01. ╱ HOT CHOCOLATE (bangchan).

Every time you tell someone that you don't like coffee, the reaction is total incomprehension, even indignation. But when your university classmates leave you standing at the café where your crush works, you decide to order a coffee to try to avoid looking bad and end up making a fool of yourself.

02. ╱ CAPPUCCINO (lee minho).

After a bad run you are forced to look for a second job, and you end up covering the first shift at the campus café. Every morning you find the same guy waiting for you to open, leaning on the wall, looking flawless, and it gets on your nerves. Until one day you see him leaving the dance academy where you teach, getting on the same bus as you.

03. ╱ FLAT-WHITE COFFEE (seo changbin).

The boy on the train you met the other day invited you on a date at his favorite cafe, and although he seemed like the perfect guy, he is turning out to be a disappointment. Luckily, the cute barista serving you has noticed, and is trying to make you have a good time, despite everything, which makes you think that you wish the date had been with him.

04. ╱ ICED AMERICANO (hwang hyunjin).

When arguments at home get too loud to ignore, you always end up grabbing your laptop to go study at the café next door, but it's not the first time you've run out of battery. Unfortunately, the tables with plugs are usually occupied, even the one next to you, where the annoying boy in your class who doesn't want to let you plug in the charger is sitting...

05. ╱ ICED CARAMEL LATTE (han jisung).

You have been working in the hostelry industry for a long time, and for a few months now at the 5STAR café, but recently your boss has changed everyone's schedule, and now the person who has the shift before you leaves you post-its stuck everywhere. It always makes you smile, until one day you decide to find out who it is.

06. ╱ MATCHA TEA (lee felix).

You haven't been in Korea for at least two years, but when you return to do a trip and show Seoul to your sister, you end up back on the campus with the excuse that you can't leave without your sister trying 5STAR's coffee. To your surprise, the freckled barista still remembers your order perfectly. It can no longer be a coincidence when your sister starts talking about him in your mother tongue and the boy seems to recognize the language.

07. ╱ ESPRESSO (kim seungmin).

With how much effort your grandmother had put into spending entire afternoons trying to teach you how to play chess, no one could have guessed that you would like it so much, or that you would be that good at it. And you had no idea that when you had accompanied your friend to the place where he works and moved that piece on the board, you were going to start a game of anonymous chess that you were more than willing to win.

08. ╱ FRAPPUCCINO (yang jeongin).

Whenever Changbin asks you for a favor, you end up regretting agreeing to help him. This time it is to be in charge of training the new barista hired, who seems to be seeing a coffee maker for the first time in his life. Even so, you take pity on him and try to teach him everything you know, even if that means listening to your colleagues' jokes and customers' comments, even discovering that maybe he didn't know so little.

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#☆ㅤ🪐 writings!! #lee know imagines #lee minho imagines #lee know x reader #lee minho x reader #changbin imagines #changbin x reader #hyunjin imagines #hyunjin x reader #han jisung imagines #han jisung x reader #felix imagines #felix x reader #seungmin imagines #seungmin x reader #jeongin imagines #jeongin x reader #stray kids #☆ㅤskz ot8 recs!! #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #bangchan imagines

[jae-bummer]

Only If The Cats Approve

Request: I have a request for a Lee Know fic where when you first find your soulmate you have to be near them 24/7 for a certain amount of time. Also, the reader has been waiting for their soulmate their whole life and is super excited while Lino isn’t super into the idea. The rest is up to you.

Pairing: Stray Kids Lee Know x Reader

Genre: Grumpy x Sunshine (some fluff, a smidge of angst)

.

"Are you going to pick that up?"

Lee Know stared blankly in Hyunjin's direction before sending the call to voice mail.

"Well, that was rude," Hyunjin muttered, looking back down to his sketchbook.

"Hyung," Han sighed, plopping next to his older member. "You know how this works."

"I don't need a soulmate," Lee Know muttered, focusing in on the television. He had flipped on a drama to keep his mind busy but hadn't been watching it at all. No matter how much he resisted the idea, his thoughts kept turning back to you.

"I didn't say you did," Han treaded carefully. "I just think it might-"

"I have the members," Lee Know cut in, still refusing to look anywhere but the television. "That's enough."

"But someday-"

"I said that's enough."

Han sighed, knowing this argument was futile. He was there the day that Lee Know had bumped into you on the streets of Gangnam. Even though he had witnessed literal hearts erupt from his member's eyes, he also saw how quickly the older man was able to shut it down. He knew he would never admit it, but he was scared. It was hard enough for him to trust the seven of them on a daily basis, let alone someone the "universe" had picked for him.

Buzz

Buzz Buzz

Glancing up from his drawing, Hyunjin arched a brow. "Now you can't ignore that."

"Watch me," Lee Know muttered, settling back into the couch.

Groaning as he pulled himself to his feet, Han shuffled toward the door. Pressing the button to their intercom he tried to hide the sigh in his voice. "Hi, Y/N."

"Hey, Hannie!" you smiled. "Lee Know up there?"

"No," Lee Know called from the living room.

"You know he is," Han grimaced.

"I'll be up in a sec then!" you called, mounting the stairs two at a time.

The moment you had realized you found your soulmate was something you'd remember for the rest of your life. You were meeting a friend for lunch when you came across a group of rowdy men, pushing and shoving at each other as they attempted to enter the same restaurant as you. In the scuffle, you had somehow gotten wrapped up in their group, nearly falling to the ground as one of the men accidentally shoved your shoulder.

He had looked at you in shock, stumbling over himself to apologize until you had made eye contact. Not to sound too cartoonish, but it was like a bell had gone off in your mind. Something clicked and you both knew.

Luckily, the group of men were seated in the booth beside your friends, so you could start diving into the man who would be your inevitable future. It was common when someone met their soulmate to spend nearly every waking moment with them as you seemed to sync up. If you neglected each other during this time period, the flip that had been switched on when you had met could gradually switch off. You knew your teachers in high school biology had attempted to explain the phenomenon, but you couldn't remember the first thing about it now. All you knew was that you weren't going to have this love match go to waste.

Letting yourself into the Stray Kids dorm, you popped off your shoes and were immediately met by Han.

"I got you a caramel latte," you said cheerfully, handing him a drink. "I picked an Americano with just a little bit of cream for Lee Know. I wasn't sure how he took his coffee."

Han nodded, taking a long pull from his straw. "That's pretty much exactly how he takes it."

"I don't like coffee," Lee Know grunted from his spot on the couch.

"Now that's a damn lie," Hyunjin muttered. Just as Lee Know began to shoot him a dirty look, he sprung up from his seat, and tossed his sketchbook aside. Going full grabby fingers, he reached toward the coffee carrier. "Is the Iced Americano for me?"

"You already know," you grinned, plucking your own drink out, as well as Lee Know's. Sidling over to him, you plopped on a cushion, setting his coffee on the table in front of the couch. "What are we watching?"

"Something boring," Lee Know grumbled, crossing his arms. "You would hate it."

"Then why are you watching it?" you laughed.

"Because I like boring things," he muttered. "I am very boring. You probably shouldn't spend time with me."

"Yeah right," you laughed. "What do you mean? You're a blast."

"I don't know if they're being sarcastic or not," Hyunjin whispered to Han.

"What?" you gasped. "I love hanging out with you guys."

"Oh, "guys" being plural," Hyunjin nodded. "We are fun."

"But especially Lee Know," you nodded. "He always knows how to make me laugh."

In response, your soulmate curled his lip, causing you to grin.

"He likes playing hard to get," you teased, elbowing him as you looked to Han and Hyunjin.

You weren't stupid. You knew he was playing more than hard to get. It was obvious that he didn't want much to do with you on a good day. In any normal circumstance, you would cut your losses and just leave him be, but this was meant to be your life partner. Just when you thought he was a lost cause, you would catch his eyes for a split second and your knees would go weak. His face would immediately soften, his lips forming a small "o" as he allowed himself to stare back. It would only take a moment for him to completely shut you out again, but he had to force himself to do so. You would worm your way into his heart eventually, it just took patience.

"I don't play anything," Lee Know spat, finally addressing you for the first time since you had entered the apartment. "I don't understand why you keep trying when I'm not interested."

"You don't honestly think I believe-"

"I don't care what you believe!" he gasped. "I don't care about you! At all!"

Well, that hurt. Trying your hardest not to cry, you sucked in your lower lip. Glancing from Lee Know to the two other men in the room, their expressions were also shocked. Looking on with wide eyes, they both slowly began to back out of the room and into the kitchen.

"Lee Know, I-" you began, the words thick in your throat.

"Look," he sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I don't want to be a jerk, but I don't want you here. I don't want to hang out. I don't want to get to know you."

"I-I," you whimpered. How could he say that out loud when you both knew it wasn't true? Barring anything he may personally think, it was biologically impossible. He was predisposed to care about you.

"Leave," he sighed. "Please."

His brows were furrowed as he turned away, refusing to speak any further. Slowly rising to your feet, you felt helpless.

"I'm," you said quietly, grabbing the two coffees on the table. "I'm taking back your coffee!"

Turning on your heel, you stomped toward the front door.

"We can keep ours, right?" Han winced, causing Hyunjin to slap his chest lightly.

"Y/N," the taller boy sighed. "You have to understand, this really isn't like him. He just needs some time-"

"This is me!" Lee Know yelled from the living area. "I'm a monster and they shouldn't be swayed to think otherwise."

Rolling his eyes, Han leaned in toward you. "Don't get too far. Let us talk to him, okay?"

Nodding pitifully, you sniffed into your sleeve. "Okay."

.

"Maaan," Han groaned, turning on Lee Know. "What the fuck?"

"That's what I'm thinking," Lee Know nodded. "I thought they would never leave."

"No," Han said, pointing an accusatory finger at the older man. "That was directed at you. Who acts like that towards someone who is supposed to be their soulmate?"

"I told you, I don't want-"

"Cut the shit," Hyunjin spoke up, immediately wilting as Lee Know turned a death glare his way. "Or don't. Please continue."

"You want love just as badly as the rest of us," Han sighed, sitting on the couch to speak on the same level as his member. "Our friendship is a type love that isn't even remotely the same. We're all partners in a different way. That can't ever be enough for you."

"Who says?"

"The universe," Hyunjin piped in. "Literally, biology."

Rolling his eyes, Lee Know let his head fall back to the cushion behind him. "It's just easier this way."

"Easy doesn't mean fulfilling," Han sighed. "Easy doesn't mean right."

"Why can't it?" Lee Know argued. "Feelings are so difficult...and messy."

"But so worth it," Han supplemented. "Remember when you first met all of us? You didn't want to open up back then either. But once you did, wasn't it all worth it?"

Leaning forward again, Lee Know eyed Hyunjin, who had put on his best smile.

"The jury is still out on that one."

This time, it was Hyunjin's turn to roll his eyes. "Just admit that you're scared."

"Admit that you cried watching The Spongebob Movie."

"I was traumatized when Patrick and Spongebob dried up under the heat lamp," Hyunjin snapped. "It was heartbreaking."

"If he can admit to that," Han said slowly. "Then you can admit..."

"Maybe I'm a little scared," Lee Know said almost too quickly for either boy to catch.

"I'm going to need you to repeat that," Hyunjin said, lifting his brows.

"Maybe I'm scared!" Lee Know gasped. "Maybe I think I'm unlovable! Maybe I don't trust easily!"

"There we go," Han smiled. "Now was that so hard?"

"I am in excruciating physical and mental pain," Lee Know pouted.

"Now," Han nodded. "March down stairs and tell Y/N all of this."

"You can't just expect me to go pour my heart out to a stranger," Lee Know scoffed.

"I can and you will," Han insisted. "I refuse to see you miserable and regret this moment for the rest of your life."

"Regrets are for the weak."

"Hyung," Han groaned, rubbing his temples. "Please, just do it for us. We'll never shut up about it if you don't."

Eying both of his younger members cautiously, Lee Know puckered his lips. "Do you mean Hyunjin will be even more of a nuisance to me?"

"In new and creative ways," Hyunjin nodded with a smile.

"Well, fuck me," Lee Know murmured, shaking his head. "Time to swallow my pride I guess."

"Rip it off like a band aid," Han nodded. "Word vomit it all out. That's how I operate."

"Such sage advice from someone with so much wisdom," Lee Know muttered, standing with a frustrated stomp. "Where did they go?"

"Downstairs," Han smiled. "I told them you'd be having a change of heart so they should stick around."

.

"Can I have my coffee back?"

Glancing up from your shoes, you were greeted by the tormented face of Lee Know. You wordlessly lifted his cup toward him, allowing him to take it from your fingers.

"Thanks," he whispered, clutching the cup for dear life. You could see a battle play across his face before he seemed to decide something. Easing down to sit on the bench beside you, he heaved a sigh. "Y/N, I-"

"Don't like me?" you squeaked. "Don't want me around? Hope my cat gets hit by a car?"

This caused him to you to sharply inhale, drawing your eyes from the ground to him.

"I would never want anyone's cat to get hit by a car," he urged, his voice passionate. "Not even my worst enemy."

"Why are you here, Lee Know?" you groaned. "Be honest."

"So," he began slowly. "I may or may not have been projecting my abandonment issues on you earlier."

You raised your brows, surprised out how direct he was being. "Yeah?"

"I recognize that I tend to push away the ones I love when they haven't seen my flaws," he continued in a monotone. "And when they do, I'm terrified they'll turn away from them, and in turn, me."

"Lee Know," you breathed, hardly believing he was finally breaking down this barrier. "Why are you telling me this?"

"For fear that Han or Hyunjin will make my life significantly more difficult than they already do," he said blandly. "I was threatened, and frankly, am not all of the way sure that I want to be sitting down here right now, but here I am."

"Here you are," you chuckled, shaking your head.

"I guess I'm really not that bad," he sighed. "If you get to know me."

"Quite the salesman," you grinned.

"I'm sorry I made you cry," he muttered with an eye twitch. "That really sucked."

"It did," you murmured. "But you have to know, I don't want this if someone else has to convince you to be here."

Lifting his brows, Lee Know tilted his head in thought. "That's fair."

"Could you just, could you look at me?" you pleaded.

Taking a deep breath, he began to nod. Slowly but surely he pivoted to face you, his focus wandering up your body before finally settling on your eyes.

His own grew wider as they took you in, his breathing more stifled and coming in quick bursts.

"I'm scared if I make direct eye contact for any prolonged period that you will see me, Y/N," he said quietly, not breaking contact despite the admission. "Really see me."

"Would that be so bad?"

"The literal worst," he smirked.

"Then why are you still looking at me?" you grinned.

"Because when I look into your eyes, I see us retired, owning a cat sanctuary on the countryside. I'll take up a niche hobby like making my own paper and you'll read books to me by the fire while I wait for the sheets to dry before I bind them," he said in a whispered stream of consciousness. "Soonie, Doongie, and Dori will be at least sixty years old by then, outliving all other cats in Korea and proving themselves to be immortal."

"I'm sorry," you said slowly, trying to keep up. "Are Soonie, Doongie, and Dori your cats?"

"And also my children," he nodded, hardly even blinking now. "Do you want to go meet them?"

"I would love to."

"Excellent," he grinned. "Maybe this will work out after all."

#lee know #lee minho #lino #stray kids #skz #lee know fluff #lee know angst #lee know fanfic #lee know grumpy sunshine #lee know x reader #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #stray kids x reader