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jnnul · 5 months

Text

ready for love

PAIRING ▸ lee jeno x fem!reader (ft. tbz's juyeon)

GENRES ▸ fluff, non!idol au, college au, slice of life, friends to lovers but also...it’s complicated?

WARNINGS ▸ uhh swearing, drinking (but legally), mentions of infidelity, there was supposed to be so much more but it just turned into a fluff piece sooo..., y/n is indecisive and jeno is stupid, they're a match made in heaven 🫶🏽, jeno is the loverboy of the century towards the end, they make out and a few allusions to sex but no graphics, is it just me or is that header really blurry

SUMMARY ▸ a boy who has never taken a relationship seriously. a girl who is seriously over relationships. when they end up finding each other, will they let their ideas of what a relationship should be like ruin their relationship before it even starts?

PLAYLIST ▸ ready for love - blackpink, lovin’ me - fifty fifty, siren - taeyeon, island - youha, hate that - key & taeyeon

WORD COUNT ▸ 19.5k words

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ oh hey it's that one fic i've been writing since july! which reminds me - if that ending looks familiar, it's because technically, this was supposed to come out right after that timestamp did oops.

as always, feedback, comments, etc. GREATLY encourage writers! if you felt any sort of way (in a good or bad way!) about this fic, pls leave feedback!

far too easy. a couple of lingering stares. a coincidental request on social media. a few well-placed messages. one date later and...done. he was in. hook, line, and sinker.

it was almost getting predictable. at first, lee jeno just wanted to have a little fun. it was never anything serious - and it definitely wasn't always about sex. truly. as distrustful as men had made themselves out to be within the past few thousands of years, jeno truly wasn't thinking with his dick when he got into relationships.

it was just about having fun. he just wanted to get to know people, do sohing romantic just for the experience, and maybe, get to know their body if the relationship felt so inclined.

there was never any delusion about what a relationship with jeno was like. it was two months, if you lasted that long, and every second of it made you feel alive like you never had before. but the honeymoon stage would pass and jeno would lose interest and soon, there would be a heartbroken girl left behind, even though she knew exactly what she was getting herself into.

and it wasn't as though they could really get mad at him. he was a sweetheart through and through and he would continue to say hi if they ever saw each other around and he had definitely saved a couple exes from some ugly encounters. jeno never meant to hurt anyone; it just happened soimes because he was such a good guy.

at least, that’s what you understood of your best friend. from his nights of drunken confessions and the few encounters you’d had with his ‘girlfriends’, you had surmised that jeno lee was just meant to be a serial casual dater.

you, quite frankly, were on the opposite end of the spectrum. after a few too many boyfriends who had turned out to be grade a douchebags, you had effectively sworn off men.

dating was just far too hard. the 'did he notice me?' stage where you dress up a little prettier than normal. and then the internal panic when they request you on instagram. the casual talking stage where you've already accidentally planned out the wedding. the date where you choose to move past all of the blatant red flags you see. and then the relationship, when the red flags become red banners the size of antarctica because goddamnit, how did you miss the fact that this man was a literal freudian case study.

so whenever jeno would introduce his newest girlfriend or go on about his many adventures (including the details about the not-so-family-friendly aspects), you couldn't help but feel a little pang of jealousy because where the hell was jeno finding such amazing relationships? and why the hell isn't he taking them seriously?

you're sure you couldn't even count the number of sweet girls you knew would've been perfect to take home to his mother you had been introduced to before they were gone the next week.

"and that's why i think you're an insufferable brat," you grumble, pointing a stick of celery at him threateningly. jeno snorts slightly, redirecting your celery to the hummus sitting next to where you were perched on his kitchen counter.

"you've been saying that for as long as we've been friends," he says, pouring a spoonful of soy sauce into the rice for the fried rice he was preparing for dinner.

"three years too many," you say, squinting your eyes at him suspiciously. "how have we actually stayed friends for three years when you're so...wishy-washy?"

jeno's roommate, na jaemin, rubs his eyes as he stumbles into the kitchen, saluting you sarcastically as he reaches into the fridge to grab an entire bowl of strawberries.

"what a burn, y/n. wishy-washy. yeah, i'll bet that really did a number on him, didn't it, jeno my boy?" jaemin snorts, pouting when he quite nearly drops the bowl of strawberries on his foot.

he also very nearly escapes decapitation by celery stick, ducking from your brutal aim.

"at least i don't have a mommy kink," you snide, salvaging what was left of your celery snack.

jaemin jabs a strawberry in your general direction with a look of indignant betrayal on his face.

"i thought we agreed to never speak of what was revealed during balkan night," jaemin hissed. "you promised, y/n!"

"i was crossing my fingers," you shrug, placating your best friend with an olive branch of a silly smile when he swears vengence by strawberry assault a second time.

"whatever," jaemin grumbles as he slinks back to the darkness of his room. jeno just shakes his head fondly, tossing in the vegetables the two of you had just chopped up into the fried rice.

"why do you always feel the need to rag on him like that?" jeno says, mixing the vegetables into the rice.

"why do you always feel the need to avoid taking a relationship seriously?" you counter, hopping down from your perch to throw out the now empty hummus container.

"you know, anyone hearing this conversation right now would think that you were the one not taking relationships not seriously instead of me," he says calmly, taking a spoonful of rice. he blows on it before reaching out to you, letting you taste-test the fried rice. you hum, sifting through the ingredients in the fridge as you analyze what the missing ingredient was. your eyes land on a small plastic container with finely chopped garlic inside, the realization clicking in your head.

"just because i'm a little youthful and you have the personality of a grandpa doesn't mean that you have to be the one who takes relationships too seriously," you say, sprinkling the garlic into the fried rice. jeno hands you the wooden spatula and lets you take over the cooking process as he finds three bowls for the three of you.

"whatever helps you sleep at night," jeno says with a soft chuckle.

"speaking of relationships though, i'm not going to be leeching off of you for dinner tonight," you say casually, offering a spoonful to jeno this time to let him taste your shared creation.

he flashes you a happy eye smile, retreating into the hallway to call jaemin out of his room for lunch.

"date?" jeno says, a strange look in his eye as he hands you your spoon (you had a preference for only eating with the singular small spoon in the entire apartment for some reason) with a knowing smile.

"somewhat? it's a double date but i'm only going for jimin because she really really likes the guy and she's afraid she's going to fuck it up if it's just the two of them," you explain, giving him a thumbs up for the successful food collaboration.

"do you know who it's with?" jaemin pipes up, seemingly refreshed after consuming an inhumane amount of strawberries.

you furrow your eyebrows, trying to recollect the name of the guy jimin mentioned that jaehyun was bringing before shaking your head.

"i think his name was jayeon? yeonju? juyeon? i don't know, i don't really remember. all i know is that jaehyun better be head over fucking heels for jimin by the end of the night," you say in between bites.

"juyeon? lee juyeon?" jaemin says suddenly, his spoon clattering as he drops it in his bowl. jeno and jaemin exchange a look that you don't miss and you definitely don't like.

"am i missing sohing here? do you guys know him?" you ask, the worry lines on your forehead having become near permanent. jeno shrugs, pushing his food around in an uncharacteristically hesitant manner.

"i mean i just heard that he was a bit of a heartbreaker when he was in college but i don't really think that it was that big of a deal," jaemin says finally. you roll your eyes, puffing out your chest sarcastically.

"i'm a big girl guys, don't worry. i can handle myself," you say, patting jeno's shoulder comfortingly as you move to wash your bowl. "and besides, i'm not actually going there to find the love of my life; i'm just going there to support jimin."

"just be careful, y/n." jeno gives you a quick little side-hug before disappearing into the living room to turn on some tv. you turn to jaemin but your question dies on your tongue when you see that jaemin is already staring at you with an unreadable expression.

"what's up with him?" you ask, when jaemin sighs, getting up to wash his dishes.

"jeno's worried for you," he says. you huff, watching jaemin put his washed bowl into the dishwasher.

"i get that, dipshit. what i don't get is why!" you exclaim, wincing when you realize that you're much louder than you had intended.

"because juyeon's just like jeno."

it's all jaemin says but it's all he needs to say because now, you finally understand.

+++

"now remember, i'm only coming with you for you, okay? if you ever want to just be with jaehyun by yourself, let me know and i'll be more than happy to head on my way out," you whisper to jimin as you flash a bright smile at jaehyun, who approaches the both of you with a dimpled smile as he tucks his car keys into his pocket.

"y/n! it's so good to see you after so long," jaehyun says, pulling you in for a friendly side hug.

"i know," you say, squeezing quickly before letting go. "can you believe it's already been a month since renjun's party?"

jaehyun furrows his eyebrows, shuffling so that he was standing next to jimin. "no, really? has it already been a month?"

he doesn't wait for you to answer, turning to jimin almost immediately. "it's been a month since i met you? why does it feel like i've known you my entire life?"

it takes all you have to turn to the side before fake gagging, unable to help the cringe that runs through your body from the cheesiness, jimin fighting back a giggle, but you can see that her cheeks are bright red.

"jae, for your sake and the beautiful ladies', i'm gonna have to pretend like you never said that," a deep voice says from behind you. the man steps into the light and you're sure that your eyes are about to fall out of their socket.

juyeon is one of the most attractive men you've ever seen. long, long legs that lead up to broad shoulders, beautiful eyes and lips that would make kylie jenner jealous. his dark hair is slicked back and he holds himself with a humble, quiet confidence that makes you ready to fall to your knees instantly. he turns to you and his cool demeanor is instantly broken when he smiles, his face glowing in the faint lights of the restaurant.

"hi, i'm juyeon," he says, sticking his hand out for you to shake. you stare at it for a moment before taking it.

"y/n. it's nice to meet you," you say dreamily, before coming to your senses and retracting your hand. you were here for jimin and jimin only. juyeon and his beautiful face would have to stay in the friend zone - especially if what jaemin had warned you about was true.

but just because you couldn't purchase doesn't mean you couldn't window shop.

"y/n," juyeon drawls, letting your name roll off of his tongue. "a pretty name for a pretty girl."

jimin can barely stifle a giggle at your dazed expression, elbowing you in the rib cage. you shake your head slightly, composing yourself once more. how in hell were you supposed to confine this man to the friend zone if everything he said threatened your very sanity?

"well, they say that you should never keep a pretty woman waiting," you say with coy smile, gesturing towards the restaurant. "shall we head inside?"

juyeon mock-bows while jaehyun opens the door and says, "ladies first."

you blow juyeon a kiss with a teasing smile, linking arms with jimin and sauntering into the restaurant. juvenile? perhaps. but where was the fun in being adult all the time?

the four of you make your way to where there's a receptionist standing behind a booth, jaehyun stating his name for the reservation.

"right this way, ladies and gentlemen," the receptionist says, gathering a handful of menus and leading you to your table.

"so jaehyun tells me you are a business major," juyeon says, falling in step beside you. you hum, shaking your head slightly.

"i was a business major; i double majored in finance and economics, but i graduated two months ago," you explain, thanking the waiter as you take your seat at the table. juyeon takes the seat next to you and jimin takes the seat on the other side so that you were sat directly across from jaehyun.

you're about to turn to jimin and say something only to find her enraptured by some fascinating conversation that her and jaehyun seemed to be having, turning back with a knowing smile.

"i'm sorry, i was under the impression that you were still in school since it's only march," juyeon says, handing you one of the menus the waiter had left on the table.

"i graduated early because of the overlap between my majors. i was required to keep up my grades for my scholarship anyway so i was able to build up credits fairly quickly," you explain, trying to ignore the spark of electricity that you feel when juyeon's fingers linger on yours.

"oh, so you were quite the academic," he says, running a hand through his hair. you determinedly stare at the menu, forcing down the hot flash that runs through your body when juyeon catches you watching.

"you could say so," you nod, scanning the menu. "how about you? what did you major in when you were in school?"

"i was your direct senior," juyeon begins, smiling when he sees the confusion on your face. "i was a finance major in college."

"no way! that's so interesting. where do you work now?" you ask once you put down the menu to meet his eyes. maybe jaemin and jeno were just being overprotective? it wouldn't be the first time they steered you away from heartbreak but juyeon seemed like such a sweet and genuine guy.

because juyeon's just like jeno.

that statement is enough to bring you back to your senses as you focus on what juyeon is saying, jimin and jaehyun still debating the difference between computer engineering and computer science (their respective majors) and which one was better.

nerds.

"i was at amazon up until last summer but i recently switched to a new company. it's a pretty small company but they specialize in cleaning the ocean of plastic and recycling the plastic for 3D printing. it's very niche but i didn't want to just be another finance bro that just worked for the sake of money, you know? i wanted to work with a good consciousness."

maybe curving juyeon from claiming a place in your already fragile heart would be a little more difficult than you expected. kind, environmentally aware and a chose ethical work? juyeon was already better than approximately 90% of your exes.

"how about you? have you started working yet? the market is pretty brutal for freshly graduated f&e people, from what my friends tell me." you nod, internally composing yourself and steeling yourself a little bit more to keep from falling into juyeon's charms.

just like jeno. the reminder is harsh, but it works like magic as you feel the butterflies in your stomach beginning to dissapate.

"it certainly is a lot more competitive than i think a lot of people anticipated. thankfully, i was able to connect to a sponsor during one of the scholarship banquets and was offered a position for right after school," you explained and juyeon's eyes turn from mild and observing to full of respect as he nods, almost approvingly.

"which company?" he asks, taking a sip of his water.

"i actually am working in the finance department at patagonia..."

+++

the night progresses almost too smoothly. once the food had come out, jaehyun and jimin finally seemed to come out of the bubble they were in and the conversation flowed so well, it was almost as though the four of you had known each other for years.

it was clear that jaehyun and juyeon were close, having met each other at work and instantly clicking. the easy back and forth between them allowed you and jimin relax a little more, allowing the conversation to turn to less formal subjects.

you find out that juyeon has a dog, much to your dismay.

"y/n loves dogs!" jimin exclaims, and you can feel your heart's walls crack a little further. there were many things you could handle - a cute boy with a dog? that was a little out of the realm of control.

"really? oh you'd love ray then - he's a big dog but he's got a lot of love. sort of a gentle giant," juyeon says, his eyes twinkling as he pulls out his phone to show you his wallpaper. it's a picture of him and ray curled up next to each other, sleeping in bed, both of them in the same exact position as they snored away.

"i swear, him and ray are the same soul in two different bodies. i've seen this guy have full on conversations with his dog. which would be weird but it kinda just works for them somehow. i kinda think that ray genuinely does understand juyeon," jaehyun snorts, nodding at juyeon's wallpaper. "that was when ray was still a puppy and he would copy every single thing that juyeon did."

juyeon shrugs, smiling as he tucks his phone back into his pocket. "not much has changed there, if i'm being honest."

you're about to say something about meeting ray when your phone rings abruptly, rudely interrupting the conversation. you frown as you flip your phone open, looking at the contact profile on the screen. jeno?

"hello?" you say as you answer the phone, pointing to the restroom as you excuse yourself from the table. from the corner of your eye, you can see the waiter coming with the bill for your table and you vaguely register the fact that only two cards are being put on the table (jaehyun's and juyeon's) as you make your way somewhere a little more private.

"hellooo? y/nnnn-ie? you stilllll at your, huh, date?" jeno slurs into your phone and you hear someone in the background, presumably jaemin, trying to convince jeno to stop himself from saying or doing something stupid.

"yes, jeno, i'm still at my date. that you interrupted, by the way," you say with a frustrated sigh. you check your watch and realize that it's only 9:30 PM and jeno does not sound like he's been taking it easy on the alcohol. "why are you drinking jen?"

"whattttt, so now i'm a shitty lover and i can't, heh, drink?" jeno grumbles into the phone and it's clear from the sudden silence in the background that jaemin has completely giving up on wrestling jeno's phone out of his hand. you had firsthand experience with drunk jeno - he turned into the hulk.

"jen, if you called me in the middle of my date to go off the rails about how you're a lonely fucker, i'm going to kill you," you hiss, smiling at the lady who comes into the restroom as you weren't threatening your best friend with murder.

"I'M NOT A LONELY FUCKER!"

oh, so this part jeno could say without hiccuping or slurring his words. fantastic. you sigh, switching your phone to the other ear as you wash your hands, getting ready to leave the restroom. there's a pregnant pause where no one says anything but you can hear the top gun theme song in the background so you know jeno's on the line.

"if - if i change, will you not go out with juyeon?" jeno mutters finally, just as you're leaving the restroom. "if i finally start getting serious about relationships, will you not go out with him? will you come home?"

you pause at that. jeno's always been the protective type. for all of his own playboy (even if technically he wasn't trying to be a playboy) charm, jeno genuinely wasn't very happy when you dated people. he wouldn't be rude to them and he certainly would never force you to break up with them but every time he would run into them, regardless of how long you had dated them, he always had something to say.

he looks like he jerks off to weird porn. definitely something about shampoo, a hot girl, and way too much viagra.

he has a small dick.

he makes his girlfriends lose weight even though he has a beer belly.

i'm not even gonna lie to you - i just hate the fact that he's balding.

most of the reasons that jeno gave you were kinda stupid. but ultimately, he was usually right about which people to avoid and even if he said it was because they were ugly and balding, it was usually because he knew that they weren't kind people on the inside.

it was because you just didn't have a great self-image, jeno used to say. if you saw yourself the way the rest of us - the way i see you, you'd never even give some of these assholes a chance, y/n. think of it as playboy experience about how to find the people actually worth your time.

but he had never said anything like this before. for all of the hazy comments and strange strength jeno developed when he was drunk, he had never said anything like this to you before. mostly because jaemin was really good at protecting his roommate from making stupid decisions but it was clear that even jaemin couldn't stop this.

"jen, you sound crazy right now," you say, rubbing your forehead. you step out of the restroom to see juyeon waiting at the table alone, as jimin and jaehyun seemingly already left together. "i don't really know what you're trying to say and quite frankly, i have no clue why you're acting like this. ask jaemin to make sure you're drinking a lot more water and we'll talk about this in the morning, alright?"

jeno doesn't say anything but from the shuffling in the background, you realize that jaemin has finally rose from his slump and was signaling something to jeno. good. maybe jaemin would be able to understand why the fuck jeno was acting like this.

there's an exchange of words, mostly jaemin berating jeno to hand over the phone as you hear a loud thump in the background before jaemin is speaking.

"hey, y/n it's me," jaemin says. it's clear that he's been drinking too but jaemin isn't too much of a drinker so he still sounds pretty levelheaded as he speaks.

"what's up with jeno, jaemin? why is he acting like that?" you ask, making your way over to the table slowly. you realize that juyeon is holding onto your coat and suddenly, you're not really sure about what to do. you don't know what it is about the simple fact that juyeon is holding your coat but the entire thing seems a little domestic. like the two of you actually were on a date.

"y/n, i'm gonna be so honest with you, i think it's best if you have some distance from jeno for a while. i think he's just getting in his head about stuff he shouldn't be and really, i think the only way he's gonna get over it or figure out how to talk to you about it if he has some distance."

how perfect. you sigh, running your hand through your hair as you smile at juyeon, who helps you put your coat over your shoulders, the scent of his cologne filling up your lungs. you decide that if it was distance that jeno wanted, it was distance jeno was going to get. quite frankly, this wasn't the first time jeno had randomly pulled away from you, even if it was the first time he had finally come close to clueing you into why.

it was clear that jeno didn't like you dating people - especially not juyeon. maybe even to the extent of jeno changing his own playboy ways to convince you otherwise of interacting with juyeon.

you had considered the fact that jeno might be interested in you romantically or that maybe he was jealous for your affections. but every time you thought that, jeno would come back from his faraway space with a new girl and a genuine twinkle in his eye and suddenly, everything was back to normal.

jeno simply was an overprotective person, you decided. and he would do whatever he thought was right to make sure that the people around him didn't get hurt.

it really did check out, honestly.

jeno was equally overprotective of everyone in his life because getting that close to him in the first place was a feat within itself. once you made it past that original barrier, however, he would be willing to give his life if he thought it would help even the slightest.

but...even so. this was weird.

either way, juyeon was opening the passenger door to his car and you were aimlessly climbing into it so any and all thoughts about jeno would have to wait until you made it down this slippery slope first. the last thing you needed in the morning was the honest to god gripping panic of doing the walk of shame.

juyeon doesn't seem like the type to expect a lady to put out because he bought her dinner but you can never be too careful. he seems to notice your apprehension because he asks you for your address upfront, raising three fingers in an oath.

"i promise to conduct no funny business and i will take you home safe and sound, y/n," he says solemnly, and the way his eyes sparkle in the light of the moon is enough to make your resolve melt a little bit as you laugh softly.

"alright juyeon. since you promised no funny business," you quip lightly, entering your address on the navigation screen next to the steering wheel.

juyeon squints at your address, which is fifteen minutes away, before looking at you strangely. "are you sure this is the right address? my building is right next door! i would've seen you at some point, and trust me, i'd never forget a face like yours."

"uh, yeah, this is my address. i'm usually never home though, since i'm always either with jimin or my friends jaemin and jeno," you say, watching as juyeon sets the car in reverse to pull out of the parking spot. his arm lifts, as though he were going to put it behind the headrest of your seat to do the classic flirting move to reverse. he sets it back down when he sees you staring at the screen (which had a rearview camera feed on it), realizing that it would be dumb to try and make a move in such a cliché way.

"jeno? jeno lee?" juyeon asks as you guys pull out of the parking spot. you glance at him sideways, wondering if he were going to offer the same cautionary tale that jaemin and jeno had presented to you.

"yeah. he's one of my best friends. do you know him?" you ask, already presuming the answer.

juyeon is silent, as though he's weighing options in his mind. should he be honest with you? should he preserve your feelings?

"i know of him. i don't know him all that well," juyeon says finally, and you know that juyeon has decided to take the third option. neutrality. and while you're tempted on asking him to expand, you really don't know him well enough to do that.

so you just leave the topic aside and wait for him to start a different conversation.

he does soon enough, but you know that his heart isn't in it anymore. you engage in polite smalltalk until he pulls up to your apartment complex. you thank him for driving you and are about to step out of the car when juyeon suddenly touches your wrist gently, afraid to make rude or rough gestures.

you pause, half out of the car as you turn to him with a quizzical smile.

"i had a good time getting to know you today, y/n. and i know that it was just an excuse for those two to go on a date without making it weird but i really did have a good time getting to know you. i hope that i didn't make a bad impression at the end." his eyes are shining under the dim lighting of the few rooms that are still lit up in your apartment complex.

you smile at him gently, shaking your head to assure him. "you didn't make a bad impression. i had a good time getting to know you too."

you're ready to step out of the car once more when juyeon's fingers on your wrist wrap around them, this time a little bit more firm on claiming your attention.

"i - i want to see you again. i've honestly never connected this well with someone before. would you be open to that?" juyeon asks. you pause for a moment before giving in. how could you say no to him when he was looking at you with such big, brown eyes with so much hope hidden in them?

but even as you give juyeon your number, you can practically hear the bright red warning signs in your mind - and for some reason, jeno was the one screaming every single one of those signs.

"good night y/n," juyeon says, his smile every inch as heartbreakingly charming as the moment you knew he'd be bad for you.

you offer a tight, cautious smile in return. "good night juyeon."

+++

for someone who was fiercely overprotective of his friends, jeno had a strange tendency of self-sabotaging his relationships with them. not all of them - mostly just you. he didn't know what it was about you but somehow, he always just seemed to be saying the wrong things at the wrong time.

jaemin seems to think that it's because jeno has feelings for you (which he most definitely does not) (at all) (for real).

it wasn't as though jeno didn't like when you went on dates. in fact, he liked to think that he was rather supportive. it was just that you had a tendency to pick out all of the shittiest men in seoul to date and quite frankly, jeno hated it.

and you knew that. you'd been dealing with jeno's strange tendencies for three years now. he knew that you knew that he'd call you by next week and everything would be back to normal. that's usually how it went when you went on a particularly serious date on any level. strange set of coincidences that jeno only seemed to fuck up the worst right before or after a date you were raving about.

huh.

"i'm telling you jeno, you have got to tell her the way you feel about her," jaemin says, tossing a water bottle at jeno. they're sitting on the floor in front of the tv, watching money heist halfheartedly. terrible show to be their 'let's talk about our feelings' show but jaemin and jeno never could have a conversation like that without some level of violent scheming occurring in the background.

"i don't feel any way about y/n, jaemin. honestly, it's getting really fucking annoying that you keep saying that i do," jeno says, digging his chopsticks into his chinese takeout food. jaemin rolls his eyes, sitting down next to jeno with his own box of takeout.

"i swear to god. why did you call her then? why did you call her on her date last night?" jaemin asks. jeno shrugs, setting his food down before sighing.

"i don't know, okay? i just...you know what happened with juyeon. i just can't imagine her going through something like that," jeno says softly. jaemin looks at him before clearing his throat, forcing jeno to look at him square in the eyes.

"look, i know that you and juyeon don't have the greatest past but you have got to let her find her person. who knows! maybe juyeon's changed in the last three years. you literally don't know him anymore. and besides, this isn't about juyeon and you know it. you did this when she got with daniel, and then sunghoon, and then even doyoung." jaemin shakes his head, trying to get jeno to understand his own feelings. "you're blind to it but every time she actually feels good about someone, you somehow need to take a break from her. why?"

jeno doesn't actually have the answer to that question. why, indeed, is the question of the night.

later that night, when jaemin has turned in (or rather, announced that he was going to sleep, only to sit in bed and occupy their shared netflix account for hours), jeno pulls out his phone and searches up three words.

we need space.

he searches in his messages and cringes when he sees the number of outgoing texts that have space (as in the number of times he's broken up with someone over text) in them. he filters all of the other people out except for you and it pisses him off that jaemin is right.

may 2020. the first time jeno had asked you for some space, when you'd asked daniel to be your boyfriend.

august 2021. the second time you guys had taken some space, when you'd gone on your first date with sunghoon.

september 2022. the third time that you had had to take a break from each other. when jeno had introduced you to doyoung with his own hands.

realistically, jeno knew that jaemin was right. and with the evidence staring at him so incriminatingly, there was no way to refute the accusations.

but as much as jeno had dated around, he still didn't know what or who he was looking for. sure he was attracted to you as a person and your, uh, physicality - but that didn't mean that you were the one for him. and if jeno were to pursue something with you that made him realize that you truly weren't what he was looking for after all, not only would he be losing you as a partner but he'd be losing you as a best friend too.

so he continues in the toxic cycle of taking a break from you every time he feels as though his feelings are getting too high in his chest for him to contain them and never giving you or jaemin an explanation of why.

jeno knew it was wrong. he knew that his life would be so much easier if he just came clean and you fell one way or another on the scale of 'already dated' and 'haven't dated yet' like most of the girls on campus. but it was different with you.

it'd always been different with you.

so jeno rolls over, and goes to bed, dreaming of you and juyeon holding hands on your first date alone. he's never had such a restless night of sleep in his life.

+++

you know that you're being a bad friend to jimin when she's pouting at you swirling your straw in your macchiato instead of listening to her rambles.

"come on, y/n. it's been three days. you know that jeno gets like this - it's not like this is new right?" jimin says, covering your hand with both of hers, blinking at you curiously.

you smile and shake your head. "yeah. i'm sorry. this is supposed to be about you and i'm just getting in my head about this shit."

jimin tuts, eyebrows furrowing in mock anger. "that's not what i mean and you know it. i'll talk about jaehyun whether you're listening or not and you and i both know that. i just - i guess i'm not sure why you're always so hung up over jeno doing this when you know that he's gonna do it."

"you're right. it's not new. and i'm sorry that it keeps coming up when i really hate that he does this but i just wish he would talk to me instead of shutting me out every time that something like this happens. it's just him and jaemin cooped up and talking to each other for a week before they go back to being normal. and i get it. they're guys. they need a break and they need to do guy things and take a break from girls or whatever the fuck straight boys do. but this is getting out of hand and ridiculous."

but you catch yourself, shaking your head once more as you focus on jimin. "thank you for letting me get that out of my system. now tell me what you were saying about jaehyun. i feel like i've lost my best friend to some random guy for the past three days!"

jimin eyes you for a moment longer (and you know that she's not going to let this go) but decides to take mercy on you.

"well, jaehyun and i have been doing really well, honestly! we've seen each other every single day for the last three days - which isn't that hard considering that we've been having sex all day in every square inch of his apartment." jimin sees the scandalized look on your face before laughing. "don't worry, he lives alone and we've actually been going on non-sexual dates too. we connect in more ways than one if you get what i mean."

you slap jimin's arm incredulously, looking around the cute little café that you were sitting in to make sure that no one was listening. no one was, of course, given that it was 11:30 am on a monday but that was besides the point.

"oh my god. so are you guys going to make it official or what?" you ask, leaning forward on your steepled fingers. jimin shrugs, leaning back in her chair languidly.

"i don't know. i mean, i really like our chemistry and i like where this is going but i'm not going to label it. i'm definitely not going to be the one to pop the 'what are we' question - that's gotta be him," jimin says. "even though i am so incredibly head over heels for him. so i would like to be his girlfriend. for realsies."

she adds on the last part almost as an afterthought when she sees your unbelieving face.

"i mean it! i really want to be more than just a situationship but i really can't be the one to initiate that. i'm tired of always having to express interest in others. i attract; i don't chase," jimin says with a catty smile and you can't help but grin at that.

maybe jeno was really onto something. girl time was amazing. maybe that's why jeno needed some space from you.

"i agree. and you know what, i don't want to knock it but that honestly doesn't seem all that strange, considering that your location has consistently been showing that you're at jaehyun's place for the past 72 hours," you say, laughing at her mischievously when she returns the favor with a slap to your arm.

"i don't know. yeah. anyway. speaking of jaehyun, or not really him, but his friend - not the point! jaehyun mentioned that you gave juyeon your number? and that you've been kinda talking?" jimin says, and now it's your turn to blush.

"no - i mean, yes. i did give him my number but it's honestly not like that. he seems great and all but jeno and jaemin seemed really spooked when i mentioned him. i trust them when it comes to boys. especially with my shitty taste in them," you say thoughtfully and jimin can't help but agree with that.

she checks her phone and groans, starting to shuffle her things together as she prepares to leave. "this has been so good but i have to get to class and you know how much of a pain in the ass professor joo is."

you also start to gather your belongings, slurping down the leftovers of your macchiato. "yeah. i think that my early lunch break is coming to an end anyway. i've got a meeting at 6 pm but we're still on for dinner and drinks this friday, right?"

jimin nods distractedly as she checks her phone to see if jaehyun had texted her. he hadn't. in the past four hours. she clicks her phone shut and looks at you with a determined look in her eyes.

"yes. for sure. you and i have a date this friday and i don't want you to cancel, you hear me? and do not let those investors keep my baby from me like they did last time," jimin says, wagging her pointer finger at you threateningly. you roll your eyes, pressing a kiss to her cheek as the two of you make your way out of the café.

"i hear you. no more investors past 7 pm on a friday," you say, raising your hands in surrender when jimin squints her eyes at you. she side hugs you before checking the time once more (therefore realizing that professor joo wasn't above calling her out in the middle of class) and scurrying off to snu, a block down from the café you were previously in.

you sigh, shaking your head fondly as you turn in the opposite direction to head to work.

+++

turns out, friday seems to be a very popular night. not only do you have back to back meetings from 4 pm to 7 pm, but juyeon and jimin have texted you multiple times to confirm or (try) to make plans for friday night.

and honestly you didn't really want to go out. in between the radio silence between you, jeno, jaemin (who only really communicated in really stupid tiktoks back and forth), juyeon's suave maneuvering you into agreeing to a raincheck to saturday for the date, and jimin lamenting the fact that jaehyun hadn't brought up the 'what are we' conversation, there was so much going on.

all you needed were your friends, chinese takeout, and a little bit of jane the virgin. or other soapy dramas to take your mind off of everything.

but you had promised jimin and you'd be damned if you were going to bail on your friend when she was already not feeling well.

and besides, you refused to be a corporate slave who canceled on her friends because she was married to her job. that's not why you had chosen this job. and that's definitely why you had decided to reject pre-med as a sophomore in college.

so you find yourself taking shots with jimin in her kitchen and...jaehyun and juyeon.

when you had walked into jimin's apartment with nachos and shooters of pink whitney to pregame, you really weren't expecting to be face to face with juyeon - or jaehyun, honestly, given that jimin had been so heartbroken over the fact that jaehyun hadn't initiated the conversation yet.

not to mention the fact that she had made sure that the two of you were going out in the first place because of the whole jaehyun fiasco. so when you come face to face with the last person on the planet who should be in jimin's apartment, you're more than a little confused.

"oh, hey y/n. long time no see," jaehyun says with an easy smile, dimples showing that he had no clue that you knew that your best friend was waiting on a kind of serious conversation with him. you manage a tight smile before pulling shooters out of your purse, putting all four of them down on the counter in front of you.

"yeah. i thought it'd be a little longer though. jimin, i thought we were having a girls night?" you ask, eyes flashing at her when you turn out of view from jaehyun and juyeon. jimin just shrugs helplessly as juyeon steps in.

"don't blame her. i was the one who asked if we could tag along for the night. i promise we won't cause any trouble," juyeon says, and you turn to look at him, only to see him looking straight at jaehyun. his eyes dart between jaehyun and jimin before finally landing on you and you take the hint.

"oh. no worries. yeah, no worries at all, actually. hey, you know what i actually wanted to confirm something about tomorrow's plans with you if i could steal you for a couple seconds?" you say, leaving no room for denial as you wrap your arm in his and walk the both of you to the balcony, closing the door behind you.

"thank you for understanding - jaehyun wants to talk to jimin today about making things official but he's been so nervous about it that he's been putting it off. i figured that it would be better for me to come with him to make sure he doesn't chicken out. and catch you guys before you leave so that he doesn't sit and ferment in his feelings any longer," juyeon explains slowly, sure to refrain from turning around to see how things were going inside.

you lean over the metal bars of the balcony, the cold sinking into your skin in a refreshing way, the april air finally warming up enough to go out without needing a literal winter jacket.

"ahh. good idea. don't tell her i told you this but she was worried that he really wasn't into her," you say. juyeon snorts, a sound that's almost unbecoming from a man so handsome.

"isn't into her? he's head over heels for her. i don't think it's taken him more than thirty minutes to get into a relationship with someone if he wanted to. the fact that he took over a week to figure out his feelings means that he's serious. more serious than i've ever seen him." juyeon seems thoughtful as he trails off, letting his words sit on his tongue in a way that almost feels like he can truly feel the weight of the words.

"hm. or is just unsure of how he feels," you say, and juyeon looks at you strangely, turning so that he was leaning on the railing, his gaze fixated on you.

"are you really that cynical about men?" he asks chidingly, and you shrug.

"yeah. i mean. i don't know. i'm best friends with two of them so i know first hand how fucked up men can be. trust me, i pray to god every day for more patience before i fuck jeno or jaemin up for good," you say, and you can feel juyeon's presence grow cold at the mention of your best friends.

when you look at him though, he has nothing but warmth in his eyes and he smiles at you. "i will admit that there are a lot of messed up things that guys have done but it's not fair to categorize all men due to the faults of a few."

"uh-huh. and when men turn into heartbreakers after getting fucked over by one girl...it's okay?" you say, raising an eyebrow and you can feel juyeon trying to physically retract his statement.

"no. no. it's definitely not okay to hurt other people because you've been hurt. but give us some credit, okay? some of us are trying our best," juyeon says, and you watch as his eyes fall to your lips before dragging them upwards again.

"some of us are just trying to find our other half."

you're silent for a moment, and the moment is all you need to push off of the railings and turn to juyeon with a sad smile. "look juyeon, you're a great guy and i hate to nip things in the bud - especially with someone i get along so well with. but my friends are the most important people in my life. so i don't know what happened between you, jeno, or jaemin but i know that if it really came down to it, they take precedence."

juyeon nods, like he'd been expecting you to say as much. how, you don't understand, given that your reasoning had come out of pretty much left field. and for no real reason too. but men are predictable, easy to read, and all it takes is one moment to understand their intentions.

"yeah. i know. i figured you'd pick them. not that i'm trying to guilt you for that or that i expect you to pick me or anything but i still tried my best, you know," juyeon says casually, giving you a thinly suppressed heartbroken smile. you melt slightly as you turn to him, giving him a half shrug.

"i'm sorry. i'm sure your other half would be so lucky to have you," you say gently. you look at your phone, where jimin has texted you saying that she's going to have to bail on girls night as her and jaehyun had decided to stay in for the night. juyeon seemingly gets a similar text because when you look back inside to the apartment, jaehyun is holding hands with jimin, who uses her free hand to wave sheepishly at you as they recede backwards where the bedroom was.

"i guess we've overstayed our welcome," juyeon says with a laugh, opening the balcony door as the two of you make your way back inside to grab any personal belongings and leave before you witnessed something that would end up scarring you forever.

you eye the shooters and then exchange a look with juyeon.

“i know we’re not - whatever but honestly, i think that you’re good company and this kind of night doesn’t deserve go wasted,” you say, grabbing the shooters and juyeon’s hand and dragging him out of jimin’s apartment when you hear the very telltale sign of a bedroom door shutting down the hall.

juyeon takes one look at the shooters in your hand and the glint in your eyes before taking the two of the little bottles you offer to him.

“i can’t believe i’m doing this right now,” juyeon mutters under his breath, but his smile is lighthearted.

“what, grown men can’t drink pink whitney?” you ask, throwing a shooter back and immediately regretting the fact that you don’t have chasers with you. you may not be an amateur on the night scene but alcohol still always needed a chaser.

“no,” juyeon says, knocking back both of them a little too smoothly. “i meant taking shots with the girl who rejected me in front of her best friend’s apartment where her best friend and my best friend are fucking.”

you look at him, searching for any sense of genuine discontentedness but the way that juyeon’s eyes curve into teasing crescents convince you otherwise.

it would be so easy to choose him. so incredibly easy. but jeno’s face flashes through your mind and you find yourself taking a step back, shaking your head when juyeon looks at you questioningly.

“to the club!”

+++

there are two things that you learn about juyeon by the time you’re another two shots deep: a) he is an absolute gentleman - not just to you, but to the other people around the two of you as well. b) he is a very flirtatious drunk.

in fact, he manages the very big, very linebacker looking bouncer to let him into the club even though his name wasn’t on the list with nothing but a charming smile and an absolute inability to keep from flirting with everything and anything in sight.

which is funny to watch, especially from the other side of the bouncer, because every time juyeon says something particularly risqué, you can see the bouncer’s ears go bright red before he finally relents and lets juyeon in.

but it’s somehow less funny when he’s using those lines on you. it somehow makes your head dizzy and it makes you forget why you turned him down in the first place. you’re half-convinced that this had been juyeon’s plan all along. to turn on the charm to the max so that when you’re under the lights (that honestly might invoke epilepsy; why the fuck were they flying around the place like that), you forget all about jeno.

it’s a bad decision, you repeat to yourself as you watch juyeon make his way through the crowd to where you’re standing in an isolated, somewhat calmer corner. jeno and jaemin warned you against him for a reason. protect your peace, y/n.

and even while you repeat that to yourself over and over again, when juyeon’s hand holds yours precariously as he pulls you into the growing mess of bodies, you find it harder and harder to convince yourself that that was the truth. god, he looks good.

his hair has fallen messily across his forehead, contrasting the way it had been carefully gelled back before. he’s rolled up the sleeves of his button up to reveal his forearms, and you feel no matter than a man as your eyes trail the depths that planes of his chest promise from where they peek out of his half unbuttoned shirt.

you’re vaguely aware that there are various people waiting for you to either make a move or to push him away once and for all. it felt like every single person in the club was fixated upon the two of you - do you want him or not? because you’re holding up the fucking line. for you and your friend.

and so you take the plunge.

you move his hand from where it was innocently resting on your wrist and place it on the small of your back, smiling when juyeon takes the hint and draws you closer to him so that your chest is pressed against his.

“hey beautiful,” juyeon breathes as he looks down at you, almost in disbelief. “what are you doing here?”

you know, even tipsy, that he’s looking for a real answer. and you don’t want to play him - you don’t want to add to the list of heartbreak.

“i’m looking for someone to keep me company tonight,” you say and look up at him through your lashes, a coy smile playing on your lips when juyeon’s breath falters as you do so. “just for the night though. you know anyone who might interested?”

juyeon pulls you impossibly closer and you register the copious amounts of men (for you) and women (for him) that are turning away from the two of you, more than a little disappointed.

“yeah, i might know someone.”

and with that, he spins you so that your back is pressed against his front, his arms caging you in protectively when he sees that a man is looking at you like he genuinely wants to eat you up.

you can feel your self-control slipping further and further away from you as the two of you just let the music fill you up, forgetting about your inhibitions as long as you had this music and him.

it’s too perfect though, and you realize as much when you make eye contact with jeno fucking lee across the club. right before he dips his head to whisper in some girl’s ear.

jaemin is right next to him, his arm laying casually on another girl and you can see the sheer panic in his eyes when he sees you, and then the confusion when he realizes just who you’re pressed up against. you watch as he leans over to whisper (yell; you’re sure that no one can whisper in an establishment threatening to break the sound barrier) something in jeno’s ear but he’s firmly shut down when jeno waves him off.

you scoff at that, turning around the pair of you around so that juyeon’s back was to the two idiots that you call your friends, now facing the dj booth.

the song switches to a much more upbeat song that you don’t recognize and you take it as your cue to push any and all thoughts of your friends out of your mind. you choose to give no apologies for the way that you spend your time - especially if your friends chose to give you no explanation for their behavior.

if they didn’t need to explain themselves, neither do you.

and it works for a while. for a while, all you can think of is the warmth that fills your body. from the alcohol, the heat of juyeon’s body pressed against yours, or even the excitement of the atmosphere; all if it is just so intoxicating.

you forget all about the fact act jeno and jaemin are just a few feet away, actively avoiding you (and doing a poor job of doing so) until juyeon spins you around, looking deep into your eyes in a way that makes you feel, heat rising to your cheeks as you watch his lips move.

“i know that you don’t want - honestly, whatever it is that you don’t want - but jeno and jaemin are here and you haven’t pushed me off of you. so i’m going to shoot my shot for one last time, y/n. and if you reject me this time, i think that we should go our separate ways,” juyeon says, his voice soft and gentle and yet somehow, you can hear every word he says with perfect clarity.

you honestly don’t know what to say. juyeon had caught you in a bad moment with jeno and jaemin. more specifically, jeno. you didn’t want that to cloud your judgement though. you had known juyeon for a total of maybe a week. you had known jeno and jaemin for years and for those years, their opinions on the men in your life had very rarely been wrong.

and yet, the boy that they had warned you against was pressed up against you and those two were on the other side of the club, arms wrapped around girls you knew they would forget about by the morning.

you sigh, stepping back from juyeon, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation making you sober up more than you want to. you hear the beat drop to ‘kiss me better’ by rihanna in the background building up and it seems like everything in the universe is just pushing you to give juyeon a chance.

but juyeon understand what you mean when you step away from him and he gives you one last, longing look before smiling, gently tugging you forward so that the two of you can make your way to a less crowded area.

“you wanna go home?” juyeon asks. you know that he’s asking for his own sake, almost as though he was asking for permission to get with someone else to nurse him through his rejection if you wouldn’t. but he’s a gentleman and he wouldn’t leave you for the wolves and so he asks you if you want to go home instead.

“yeah. i want to go home.”

juyeon nods, already pulling out his phone. “let me call you an uber. and y/n? i’m not upset. i’m just glad that i know i did everything i could. jeno’s a lucky guy for you to care this much about what he says and thinks.”

you want to disagree with him. he’s my friend. of course his opinions matter. sorry. it’s not personal. i actually liked spending time with you.

but even as these thoughts battle in your mind, you find yourself unable to say any of the words out loud.

jimin was your friend but that stopped you very rarely from doing whatever you wanted to do in the end. jaemin would often yell at you for your terrible affinity for working yourself to the bone and you brushed his concern to the side every time. but it was different with jeno. it had always been different with jeno.

you’re too drunk to think about the implications of any of that though so you just smile once again, leaning up to press a chaste kiss to juyeon’s cheek.

“you’re so good, juyeon. regardless of what anyone says.”

and with that, you step into the uber that has reached the club in record time and head home.

+++

you’re not surprised by the text you get from jimin in the morning. or the one from jaemin. in fact, there are only two texts that surprise you when you manage to finally look at your phone with clear enough eyes.

jiminy cricket: OMG i’m so sorry abt last night love!! heard you went out w juyeon tho ;) we need to debrief fr

jaejaeminna: sorry i didn’t get a chance to say hi before you left

juyeon lee: did you get home safe?

ur mom (jeno): can we talk?

you respond to jimin with a quick for sure, girlie! before stepping into the shower, electing to ignore the rest of the messages in your phone. your roommate, jessica, a girl that you barely interacted with, given that she was usually at her boyfriend’s place or you were at jeno’s or jimin’s had kindly left extra pancakes that she had clearly made before she dashed out of the house.

you munch on them slowly, sending her a message of profound gratitude as you try to digest the events of last night (as well as the delicious pancakes), making sure to tousle your hair every so often to get it to dry faster.

first, jimin and jaehyun had clearly made things somewhat official (or at least were on the same page) which meant that you probably wouldn’t have to try and help jimin decipher what that entire situation was. a win, really. second, you and juyeon had gone clubbing together and had shared more than one or two intimate moments. third, you shot him down once and for all. fourth, he still called you an uber and made sure you made it home safe. fifth, you saw jeno and jaemin at the club and neither of them said anything to you.

this was officially the longest that you had gone without speaking to jeno - or even jaemin.

even the stupid tiktok’s had faded away to nothingness by the end of last week from jaemin, which meant that something was so incredibly wrong, it wasn’t even funny.

also, jeno never said can we talk.

it was usually a much more casual wanna get chinese? or even a bring your stupid ass over here cause jaemin misses you. that was more his speed in his form of apology or trying to make it clear to you that the two of you were back to normal now. he’d never acknowledge the two or three days of radio silence, electing to just pretend that they never happened in the first place.

so going from not talking at all to suddenly such a loaded question was new and kind of surreal for you. not to mention that jaemin’s last text to you was also indicative that something was seriously off between the three of you. the text before that had been a tiktok of a man sitting in a car yelling, “it’s the way you act!” and now it was that he didn’t say hi at the club.

you sigh, debating all of your options carefully.

you were obviously going to have to talk to jeno about the situation at some point. and honestly, you were going to have to have a serious conversation about the fact that he would do this every so often because it’s getting way too much for you to handle. it wasn’t as though you were doing something wrong - jaemin would call you out on your behavior, even if jeno didn’t.

you were left to decipher what exactly it was that had jeno in such a pissy mood and you would have to try and figure out what it is on your own because he’s a grown man that doesn’t know what communication meant. for someone who always warned you against the toxicity of men, he was doing a pretty great job of showing you exactly why to avoid them.

pushing all thoughts of jeno and everything else to the side, you decide to take the day as a self-care day for yourself. lord knows that with everything you had going on, self-care was the one thing you desperately needed. of many things, really, but taking a walk and soul food was going to have to do.

you’re just putting on a face mask (one of the korean ones that you had had to sell your left foot to pay the shipping for) when your doorbell rings and you hate the way that you already know who’s at the door even before you step to the entryway, where the monitor is to see who is buzzing for you.

you’re greeted by jeno’s face, alone, looking worse for the wear as he ruffles his hair, shifting from foot to foot as he waits for you to either let him in or at least press the intercom to speak with him. you’re trying to make a decision and you know that decision, as trivial as it seems, would be what would set up your friendship with him in the future.

were you really going to give him another chance? even as he continued to mess up this hard?

you don’t say anything in the intercom but the faint buzzing noise that echoes in the monitor is response enough as jeno opens the door that has opened once you pressed the button, effectively solidifying your decision.

he was jeno. your jeno. you couldn’t just not listen to what he had to say.

the time that jeno takes to make it to the fourth floor where your apartment was seemed to have stretched on for eternity. you weren’t sure the last time that jeno had been in here (last weekend) but suddenly everything in the apartment was just too messy.

you panic and rush to clean everything in sight before you pause awkwardly. this is just jeno. the same boy who had come over and thrown up on your birthday after drinking too much at your party. the same boy who would be sitting in his room screaming into his headset as he played video games, having no regard for you and jaemin spending quality quiet time together.

and he was also the boy who asked for space when you needed him the most.

so you put down your weapon of choice (a swiffer mop) and wait for the eventual knock at the door that finally comes about a half second later. you take a deep breath before opening the door, coming face to face with your ‘best friend’ of the past three years.

the little monitor had done the damage little justice. the eyeballs under jeno’s eyes were deep and purple, with his cheekbones protruding a little more than you remember them to, and his gaze deep and sorrowful.

but somehow, you could look past all of that because your gaze is caught by something else - the purple and very telling hickey on his neck. he’s clearly made an attempt to cover it up with what you assume is whatever foundation you might have left at their place on the nights that you’re too lazy to come home before work. the attempt isn’t all that successful, given that your foundation is about three hundred shades too dark for his skin (which is as pale as a ghost around this time of year) but you appreciate the effort.

not really.

jeno looks uncharacteristically shy as he stands in the living room, having switched out his shoes for his slippers that he bought specifically for your apartment once him and jaemin started coming over more often. they usually fought over ‘jeno’s’ slippers (they had peaches on them while ‘jaemin’s’ had ducks) but jaemin usually conceded to jeno.

usually, he’d be sprawled out on the sofa with little more than a half-hearted ‘hey’ and bags of chinese takeout on the kitchen counter but you see none of that now. now, he looked like a lost puppy, shuffling awkwardly to stand next to the couch.

it would almost be funny if it weren’t for the fact that the two of you haven’t spoken in a week. or the hickey.

“has it ever occurred to you that we might act like more than friends?”

the question is sudden, breaking your nostalgia and bringing your train of thought to a screeching halt.

“excuse me?” your voice is calmer than you thought it would be in your head as you spin on your heel to look at jeno in the eye. he licks his lips, a nervous habit that he’d picked up from you, but his eyes don’t shift from yours, decidedly steady. he’s thought this for a while, you realize belatedly. it was just a question of how long and what that really meant.

“i mean you leave your foundation at my place and i buy slippers for yours. i can’t stand olives but when we get pizza, i get olives anyway so that you can pick them off of my slices and eat them. you don’t know your left from right but you still drive forty-five minutes down and back to the bakery to get iced lemon poundcake every time i’m upset.

“i can’t stand it when you meet a decent guy for once in your life and i go off the radar but we - i can’t spend more than a few days away from you. so, i’m always showing up at your apartment with chinese food when the last thing i want to do is hear about you raving about your new date who has a job at amazon and wears real rolex watches while i’m still eating instant ramen and trying to get a grip on life.

“the worst part is that i think i’ve always known. even last night, i was falling into my old pattern of using people to get over you, y/n. in between trying to figure out why i couldn’t click with anyone else besides you and trying to figure out why i feel so empty every time i feel like you’re slipping away from me, i think i figured it out. sure, i hate juyeon because of who he is and what he’s done in the past but i hate him even more because he used to be just like me. and now he’s changed so much and become such a good person. the fact that he’s the bigger, better, older, stronger version of me with his life together freaks me out so much because what if you replace me with him? and then i lose the one person i think i’ve ever properly fallen for and one of my best friends all in one go? and it’s all so selfish but when i have ever tried to hide myself from you, y/n?”

your mind is spinning. jeno is heaving by the end of his rambling. you can’t seem to find your grip on reality. everything is just wrong. it’s all wrong. everything is wrong. what?

jeno lee. playboy extraordinaire. mr. couldn’t be tied down. the boy who came home with a new broken heart in his jar of hearts that he hid deep inside his mind so he wouldn’t have to think of the unintentional consequences of having an unavailable pool of love.

and here he was, standing next to the couch in the living room, looking at you with so much anger, confusion, and sheer love in his eyes that you’re almost upset with yourself that you hadn’t seen it sooner. had he always looked at you like that?

you don’t know what to say though. you can’t even tell if he’s still talking, by the way that the blood is rushing in your head like an unforgiving tsunami has broken loose. you can’t hear anything, much too preoccupied with your own thoughts to even think of listening to his.

you vaguely register the fact that you and jeno are somehow sitting on opposite ends of the couch, a good entire seat away from each other. that was good, at least. you’re sure that your legs would’ve given out on you at some point if you had remained standing.

“why do you hate juyeon so much?”

the question doesn’t seem to faze him as much as you wished it would. what was it with men and not being stunned by the most random questions or thoughts you can come up with? it somewhat frustrated you that you couldn’t stun them with the same shock factor that they seemed to utilize on you.

jeno sighs, raking a hand through his messy hair as he struggles to come up with the right words to say. or honestly, any non-stupid words.

“juyeon was actually one of the reasons why i came to snu in the first place. he was kind of like my mentor - a guy that i looked up to a lot in high school. he was one of my older friend’s roommate so when i came to check out snu, he toured me around and showed me his entire lifestyle. i was a senior in high school back then and he was just a sophomore but i swear, i’d never clicked with someone that fast before.

“he’s always been super smart and incredibly charming. and back when i met him, as a stupid senior in high school, i thought that everything that he had was what i wanted. he had a new girl at his apartment any time he wanted and always seemed like he had the entire college wrapped around his finger.” jeno gets up, looking frustrated as he starts pacing back and forth between the walls of the living room of the apartment.

“long story short, i caught him making out with my girlfriend at the time over the summer between high school and college. and it all came crashing down. in hindsight, maybe i shouldn’t have hated him nearly as much as i did but the fact that i couldn’t see that he had no qualms of getting with anyone who wanted to get with him hurt me. everything i had idolized came crashing down when i saw the two of them.”

jeno stops pacing, looking down at his hands, rough and raw from the biting winds outside. “it just - it just hurt y/n. and it made it so incredibly easy to just not believe in love anymore. and then i met you and you came into college looking for the one and it was just so hard not to believe in love. when you said you were going out with juyeon, it took me back to the darkest parts of my past mentally. ridiculous? weak? yeah. i know. but i couldn’t help it.”

“it’s not weak or ridiculous, jeno,” you say gently, finding your voice once more. “i’m just hurt that you didn’t tell me before. i mean, i thought i was your best friend!”

jeno laughs drily, a grating sound that tugs at your heart strings. “but he’s gone clean, y/n. he’s everything that i couldn’t be and so much more. he’s near perfect. i couldn’t stop you from finding ‘the one’ that you’ve been dreaming about since i’ve known you. even if that meant that i finally had to let the past go. even if it meant that i had to give up on being able to love you.”

you can’t help the tears that spring to your eyes. “jeno…”

jeno shakes his head, looking at you with watery eyes, dragging his red hands across them roughly. “stop. i don’t need pity. i just…i just wanted clarity. have you always thought of me as a friend? was i making up everything in my head? did - did i imagine that we could’ve had something this whole time?”

you’re at a loss for words. jeno wasn’t wrong. you’d gone to the ends of the earth to make jeno happy. any time he was upset, you’d drop everything to go get that goddamn lemon cake. you couldn’t go more than a week without him. even if the entire world went to shit, you’d always thought that you and jeno would go down together, fighting side by side. if it really came down to choosing between your friends, some part of you knew that you’d always choose jeno before jaemin or jimin.

and some part of you wonders if you’d always had that much affection for him.

“i don’t know,” you say honestly. jeno’s face falls, and an awkward silence falls between the two of you, with his feet pointed to the door and muscles tensed to move. you know that if you don’t come up with the words to say something that’ll convince him to stay, you’ll have given him no reason to. you know he’s going to leave.

no matter what, you cannot lose jeno, you realize. he’s the one part of your life that cannot leave. he’s the person that buys slippers for your house. he’s the boy who can’t stand when he has to compete for your attention. he’s the man who’s shoulder you cry on when your heart suffers even the smallest scratch.

he’s your jeno.

“i don’t know,” you begin, rushing to continue when you see jeno’s crestfallen expression. “but it’s all so sudden, jeno. you’ve been thinking about your feelings for a long while. i’ve honestly never considered the possibility of - of us being more than friends. of being together. maybe i’ve had feelings for you this whole time without knowing. maybe my ‘one’ has been you this whole time. maybe we’re better off as friends! i don’t know anything.”

jeno’s breath catches as he realizes what the hidden implication in your words is.

“but i’m willing to find out if you are.”

+++

after the enlightening conversation that you’d had with jeno that morning, you’d made plans with him to go on a proper date on wednesday, a day that you had nothing but boring meetings and jeno only had two classes. the two of you had decided to first go on the date and then try to figure out how you felt about each other from there.

you’d also taken it upon yourself to curve juyeon once and for all. he was a great guy and you were sure that he’d be a great person to whoever he’s meant to be with but after reminding him that you were distinctly uninterested (and apologizing if you’d insinuated that you wanted to see him as an anything after that night), you’d deleted his number and all thoughts of him from your mind.

jaemin had been equally easy to make up with. you understood - after all, jaemin was jeno’s friend first and foremost. even if he didn’t necessarily agree with jeno and his tendencies, being his friend first meant that he had to prioritize jeno and his feelings. he was relieved to hear that jeno had finally grown the balls (verbatim) to confess the painstaking secret that he had been holding onto for the past three years.

“three years? he’s liked me since he met me? and you never said anything, jaemin?” you say incredulously, thanking the barista with a quick smile before grabbing your coffee, rushing to beat the morning sidewalk traffic as you walk to office.

jaemin’s face on your screen is mostly covered by his covers - a sign that he’s either skipping a class (ancient world history) or avoiding some work that he has to do. it was both, but he would concede neither to you.

“it wasn’t my place to say anything,” jaemin says finally, and you finally look at him properly through the little facetime box, watching him drag his hand over his face. he looks as though he’s aged about ten years in the time that you haven’t seen him - which was only a few days ago, technically.

“and besides, you saw us at the club. did it look like jeno was exercising any type of common sense? clearly not. he wasn’t ready to listen to the truth, no matter who was delivering it. so there was no point in trying to make him to his senses,” jaemin continues, wrapping his blanket around himself a little tighter. “it didn’t help that his coping mechanism thus far has been to just run away from his issues, forget they exist, and then use a distraction to pretend that he was never affected by it in the first place.”

you sigh. this much was obvious to you as well. the day that jeno had come over, that had been one of the first things that you had confronted him about. he had presented a similar explanation then as jaemin was now but even if he didn’t say anything, you knew that was the truth.

“that reminds me - jimin texted me this morning asking if you were okay. have you talked to her since friday night?” jaemin asks and you groan. in all of this mess, you had completely neglected to debrief jimin and fill her in on everything that was happening.

“oh shit, i completely forgot to call her,” you say, swiping into the company building, smiling as you pass a familiar face. “i’ll talk to her tonight.”

“yeah. she seemed kinda worried. apparently juyeon told jaehyun that you two had cut it off for good and told him about you seeing jeno and i at the club. i guess jaehyun went and told jimin,” he says sullenly. you roll your eyes at his dramatics.

“just because you’re the only one getting no action doesn’t mean that you have to be jealous of jimin,” you say.

“no - what? no! it’s not that. i’m single by choice, thank you very much. i could have a hundred girls lining up for me if i wanted,” he says, clearly miffed. you stifle a laugh; it was so easy to rile men up. “but it’s like a violation of bro code. jaehyun knows that jeno doesn’t fuck with juyeon and he also knows that jimin is one of your best friends. like what did he think? that jimin wouldn’t tell jeno and i or that she wouldn’t talk to you about it?”

you blink, completely lost. “i swear to god, i think guys have more complex interpersonal links than girls do. i followed like maybe 20% of what you said.”

jaemin sticks his tongue out at you childishly. “whatever. don’t you have a job to do?”

“don’t you have a class that you’re paying thousands of dollars to take to go to?”

“touché.”

with that, jaemin ends the call but even as you finally sit down in your little glass office, you know that he’s absolutely not going to go to that class. it didn’t help that you’d taken the class last semester and had handed him your notes. at this point, he basically only went to take the tests - after studying your notes for maybe 10 minutes right before.

you’re about to call jaemin again to make sure that he actually gets up to go to class when there’s a knock on the glass of your office.

“y/n? someone’s ordered breakfast for you,” haerin, an underpaid and quite frankly undervalued intern at your office, says. she’s holding a little pastry box and a straw without any coffee. “the person who dropped it off said that he figured you’d already have coffee but you probably forgot the straw.”

you don’t even need to hear the name of your mystery courier boy because you already know who it is.

jeno.

+++

“he brought you breakfast? to your office?” jimin asks incredulously. you had called her soon after haerin had handed you the breakfast (with your favorite pastry inside the box). you seriously needed to hear a girl’s perspective on all of this, even if it was coming from the most romantic person you knew.

“yeah. i mean he’s done it before - like during my first couple of weeks of working, remember how stressed i was? he bought me lunch and dropped it off at the office, back when i was just an intern running around and didn’t have time to go and get it myself.” you blink, looking at jimin worriedly. “that’s not weird, is it?”

jimin ponders for a moment before shaking her head. “i mean you guys were best friends. i’d do it for you. but i don’t know. i feel like guys and girls who are just friends are more like siblings and i feel like girls who are really close are basically like a married couple.”

“why do you and jaemin always say weird shit that confuses me?”

“no - it’s like…like with a truly platonic set of girl and guy friends, they’re always doing sibling-like things. for example, i think i’ve seen you nearly give jaemin a black eye for taking a bite out of your pizza. but if i wanted a bite of your pizza, you’d probably honestly give me the whole slice. i don’t know, but it’s a dynamic that i’ve seen with all of my female friends compared to my guy friends. but you and jeno have never been like that.”

“i have most definitely tried to fight jeno over pizza. i’m sure i’ve fought him over much less, to be honest,” you say and jimin shrugs.

“i’m not here to make you feel one way or another about him. your feelings are yours to figure out. but as an outsider looking in, even if you were to fight him about something stupid like that, it was because that’s how you guys talked to each other. it’s not like you’re actually going to rip that pizza away from him. in the end, if he really wanted it, you’d concede to him. you don’t really do that for siblings. it’s charged in a different way.

“i’d give up my life for my older sister. but if she even looks at me the wrong way, i’m ready to pull out her hair. or my younger brother? he genuinely gets pleasure out of making me have to redo my entire skincare routine because he switched around all of the labels. would he send me breakfast to my office just because? fuck no. would he give me his kidney in a heartbeat? hell yeah.”

jimin looks down before looking up at you once more. “and even if none of that was true, you don’t look at jeno like you look at jaemin.”

this startles you out of your own attempts of running parallels between what jimin was describing and how you and jaemin were or how you and jeno were.

“what do you mean? how do i look at jeno?” you say, your voice coming out shockingly soft and confused.

“you know how you were kicking yourself about not realizing how jeno looks at you? yeah. that’s how i feel looking at you looking at jeno. i didn’t want to say anything to you about it. honestly, mostly because i hated seeing you get down every time he would just disappear from your life. i don’t know that as your friend, i should be encouraging you at all. but he makes you more happy than i’ve seen anyone else make you,” jimin says. “and that’s reason enough for me to be happy for you. to tell you what you don’t realize yourself. even when you dated other people, you always looked at them differently than you looked at jeno.”

“how do i look at jeno, jimin.” it’s not a question and both you and jimin know that you know the answer to what you’re truly asking.

“you look at him like you’re finally ready to love. like you’re realizing again that maybe jeno was the one you’d been waiting for every time.”

+++

your first date with jeno had been a full course of a dumpster fire with a side of natural disaster.

after your (jimin induced) realization that maybe you’d actually had feelings for jeno longer you’d thought, you find yourself going through the day as if you were on autopilot. jeno sends you breakfast on tuesday and wednesday morning as well, although he doesn’t mention a word of it when the two of you are texting.

at least nothing had changed there, thus far. he still sent you those stupid reaction memes that he found on pinterest and never failed to make fun of your typos in the group chat with you, jaemin, jeno, and now jimin.

you hadn’t seen him since friday night but by the time wednesday rolls around, you wish that you had a little bit more time. you’re still reeling from your newfound enlightenment and some childish, hidden romantic side of you wants to bask in the uncertainty and the almost juvenile way that your heart beats a little faster whenever you think of the date tonight.

the two of you had decided that you were going to try and approach it as a truly romantic date, rather than the quick food runs that you were used to with him. which meant you were going to have to clean up and put on a dress - a sight that you’re sure jeno was truly not used to seeing after so long of you lounging around his apartment in sweats all day.

since this was the first proper date you were going on (you insisted that the date with juyeon didn’t count, since you had only gone with the intention of being a good friend to jimin.) in a good while, you’d called in the big guns for reinforcement. the only reinforcements you had, but that was besides the point.

“i still don’t get why you’re curling your hair. it looks so pretty naturally,” jimin laments, setting down the section of hair that she was working as she moves onto the next.

“i know. it’s kinda silly but i wanna feel cute - like i wanna look feminine and feel cute when i see jeno. it’s stupid and i swear it goes against everything feminism has taught me but i just want to feel and look like my inner girly-girl has been begging me to,” you explain, pouting when you catch jimin laughing through the reflection of the vanity mirror where you were sitting.

“baby, that’s not silly at all. and it doesn’t go against feminism to want to dress up and look cute! reminder: feminism is about empowering other women and helping everyone have the freedom to choose what they want for themselves. whether that’s dressing up cute or being a stay-at-home mom or being a working woman or some combination of all of the above and then some,” jimin says and then there’s a wicked glint in her eyes. “it’s also very feminist to get men to do your bidding, i think. and hey, if you have to put on a little black dress to do that, then i’m all for it.”

“you sound absolutely ridiculous,” you scoff, but a little smile tugs at the corner of your lips anyway.

“speaking of little black dresses, you’re wearing a matching set underneath, right?” jimin teases. you swat at her with your free hand that wasn’t applying glitter to your inner eye. “i’m holding a hot iron, you psycho!”

“jimin! i’m not going to have sex on the first date. not that i’m above it but jeno is different,” you say and jimin unfortunately catches the underlying longing tone in your words.

“oh he’s different, is he? girl, where having you been hiding all these feelings for so long?” she says and you find yourself not being able to come up with a rebuttal. honestly, you didn’t know how either of you had been so blind to your feelings for each other. and suddenly, a cold rush of fear runs down your spine.

you twist in your chair, ignoring jimin’s protest that she was almost done with your hair. “wait. you don’t think that this is a mistake, right? like what if he thinks that he has feelings for me but it’s been the chase this whole time. or what if we just don’t click like we think we will? what if i lose my friend and the person that i think i’ve liked for longer than i’d like to admit in one go.”

jimin’s expression turns serious at that. “y/n, you’ve only had a week to figure out your feelings. it’s okay if you want to raincheck and then go on the date when you’re more sure of how you feel, if that’s what you want.”

“that’s not what i want. i think that i actually have liked him for longer than i think. it’s just been so hard to realize that because he’s always been with someone and i’ve always been waiting for the one. it just scares me to think that maybe the one that i’ve been looking for is someone who actually doesn’t think that i’m the one, you know? i don’t know if i could live with losing him.” you blink furiously, willing yourself to not let a single tear fall and ruin all of your hard work for the past couple of hours.

“trust me, y/n, if you’re sure about your feelings and if he really is the one, then everything will work out. have a little faith in the universe.” no sooner does jimin say this, the buzzer rings and you and jimin look at each other in panic.

“it’s still 5:50! he said he was coming at 6:00!” you exclaim and jimin rushes to finish your hair. “you have to distract him! i still have to put my dress on!”

“oh my good lord, i forgot about that. okay, you focus on getting ready, i’m running!” jimin says, cursing when she trips over the cord to the curling iron as she’s running to open the door for jeno.

you shimmy out of your pajamas in hurried movements as you hear jimin say that jeno could come up but that the elevator was broken so he’d have to come up by stairs.

“there’s no sign that says the elevator is broken though,” you hear jeno say as you’re caught in one of the legs of your pajamas, shaking it off wildly as jimin tries to come up with a random explanation on why exactly the elevator had no sign.

“yeah, it actually just broke. like right now. like it was so recent that they didn’t have a chance to put a sign up yet. in fact, i bet that we’re in a space-time pocket and time just moves faster for you and slower for people inside. maybe this building is narnia or something,” jimin says. the room is silent for a moment before you hear the sound of the elevator dinging and you wince, your movements no doubt mirrored by jimin.

you can already see jeno’s amused smirk as jimin says that the elevators must’ve been repaired by the aliens in the space-time pocket. but they were living in a speed that was faster than human senses.

you’d seriously have to buy her a drink when this date was over, you think to yourself as you struggle to zip up the back of the dress. you don’t think that you’ve heard jimin pull out that much utter bullshit in one breath before.

you have heard jaemin say something similar before though, so it made sense that jeno was neither fazed nor taking her seriously. not that anyone could take that seriously, anyway.

you’ve finally managed to contort your body in the right position to zip up the dress when you hear the door open and jeno saying something to jimin.

“i know i’m early. and i know she’s definitely not ready. but i found these earrings in my apartment and i figured that she’d want to wear these. if i know her at all, she’s wearing black and she always says that she loves to wear these earrings with her black outfits.”

you open the door just slightly for jimin to slip into your bedroom and deposit the earrings in your hands.

“how do i look?” you whisper, waiting for jimin’s reaction with bated breath.

jimin smiles at you and wraps you up in a tight hug, careful not to wrinkle the silky fabric of your dress.

“like a dream.”

that works for you and you take a deep breath before opening to door to see jeno. it’s just jeno, you remind yourself. and although it’s not just jeno because you don’t know if he’s ever been just jeno to you, the words serve as a good reminder.

he’s jeno. your jeno. not someone to be afraid of. someone who’s seen every side of you and still wants to see more sides.

you walk into the living room, where jeno is sitting on the couch, scrolling through his phone (tiktok, as you can tell by sounds of football highlights). there’s a bouquet of flowers, gardenias, laying across his lap and he’s clearly cleaned himself well. he’s wearing a black button down and rolled up the sleeves to reveal the tattoo that he’d gotten halfway through freshman year.

it’s a tattoo of jeno’s favorite quote from his favorite movie, chappie. you are made for good.

he introduced you to the movie early into your friendship, and had been thrilled when he realized that you liked as much as he did. in fact, the same quote that he had gotten tattooed on his forearm was the one that you had custom-made for your phone case. huh.

how long had you and jeno been doing things like this? since the very beginning, you balk.

“you look beautiful.” jeno’s voice is low, softer than you remember and your instinct is to counter him and say that you always look beautiful but he looks a little too sweet under the light of skylights for you to find it in yourself to do so.

“thank you.” you lean closer, eyes crinkling into a smile when you recognize the cologne that jeno was wearing. “is that the cologne i got you in sophomore year?”

jeno nods and smiles with you. “jaemin said that my normal one was too…fuckboy.”

“the sauvage one? hell yeah, it is. i think that most girls have a trauma response to that cologne at this point,” you say, and suddenly everything is so simple again. it’s your jeno, after all.

“it’s a good thing i listened to jaemin, then.”

you cock your head and you’re vaguely sure that he means more than just his cologne choices.

“yeah, i guess it was.”

+++

pretty much everything from there went completely wrong. for one, jeno’s car (which was infamous for coming up with the most random issues at the worst times) had decided to blare with just about every warning known to man almost as soon as the two of you sit in the car.

by the time that jaemin arrives to where the two of you had pulled over to take the car to the car dealership, jimin offering her car instead, the two of you were already about thirty minutes late to your reservation.

it had taken a lot of persuasion on jeno’s end to convince the restaurant to let the two of you sit and eat anyway, although you were past half an hour late for your reservation. as if that weren’t enough, the restaurant refused to accommodate for your dietary restrictions (even though they promised that they did on their website!), causing you to only be able to order an overpriced caesar salad with maybe three vegetables and too much vinegar.

then, as you were leaving, you found out that the valet had parked pretty much on the other side of the country. and it was pouring rain. to the extent that your phone had gone off about three times with warnings that there was a flood watch in seoul.

which meant that jeno had had to book it to run to get the car and pull it up to the front of the restaurant, where you were waiting, shivering even with jeno’s jacket around your shoulders. and due to the layout of the restaurant’s front, you were forced to run in the run in the rain anyway to dive into the passenger seat of jimin’s car.

and yet, even with all of this, you couldn’t help but laugh. the date was perfect. every time something occurred, jeno handled it with ease, allowing you to just turn off your brain and let him take care of everything for you. he would always turn to you with a silly smile and another story of how the two of you always seemed to find yourselves in the most unbelievable situations.

through all of this, you finally understand what you had been thinking that you wanted this whole time in your wait for the one. not someone who made sure that everything was perfect and that the date was always planned out to the t.

no, it was someone who made you feel like you were having a good time, even when everything was going to shit.

you look at jeno, recounting some story about how jaemin and him had snuck into a wedding once to eat food after days of cooking instant ramen in their dorm in freshman year, laughing so hard that you could barely hear the pelting rain outside. and seeing him smile like that, feeling yourself smile like that, just because you knew that he was smiling, your heart finally felt at ease.

definitely not a platonic type of love, you decide.

“hey, you okay?” jeno asks, eyes trained on the road in front of him as he navigates to your apartment. “you seem kind of checked out.”

you smile, shaking your head. “yeah. i’m all good. i was…i was just thinking about how stupid i’d been to think that i’d been looking everywhere but right in front of me for ‘the one’ when i didn’t even know what i wanted.”

“yeah? what do you want?” jeno says, his grip on the steering wheel growing tighter as he waits nervously for your answer. you look at him and jeno has to fight himself to keep looking at the road when he wants nothing but to look at you and commit this vision of you to memory.

your glinting earrings and your twinkling eyes under the seoul night sky. your drenched dress and jeno’s jacket across your lap. your wet hair that still somehow looked sexy as you flipped it over your shoulder. your soft smile and seeing you finally look at him the way that he’d been looking at you this whole time. he wants to capture it all within his mind and never forget the way you were looking at him now.

“i want someone to make me feel like that even the stupidest situations were easy to overcome when i’m with them,” you say softly.

jeno pauses at that, heart beating a little too fast to be good for him. a smile tugs at his lips, no matter how stoic he tries to look. “oh? does this mean you think this date was a success?”

“i think this date was an utter flop,” you say drily and jeno rolls his eyes at that. “but i think my date was pretty great. i’m not going to lie, i’m still a little hungry though.”

“i still can’t believe that they gave you a bowl of lettuce and charged like $30 for that,” jeno says, shaking his fist dramatically. “i’m going to write a scathing yelp review.”

“i mean i didn’t have to pay so that yelp review’s all yours,” you say before turning to him with a sly smirk. “aren’t you going to ask what i’m hungry for though?”

“what do you mean? what are you hungry for?” he asks, turning onto your street.

“ramen. wanna eat ramen and go?”

jeno has to use all of his self-will to keep from hydroplaning as he pulls into your apartment complex. “y/n. you want me to eat ramen and go?”

“yeah. i meant that literally though. you wanna eat ramen and then maybe ramen?” you ask, batting your eyelashes innocently at him as he parks jimin’s car in your designated parking spot.

“uh, isn’t jimin at your place?” jeno asks, feeling his heart skip a beat when you shake your head no.

“jaehyun’s apartment is like two complexes down so she just walked over. why? you don’t want to eat ramen with me?” you say, faking a sullen pout. jeno rushes to correct himself, resting his hand on your thigh gently.

“look, y/n, i think that you’re incredibly attractive and i really like you. but that’s - that’s my issue. i like you so much that i don’t want to make you feel like i was trying to get in your pants and then do something that you or i regret. and i know that you’re probably just saying that to get a rise out of me but hear me when i say that i want to take things slow. for your sake, not mine.

“i’ve been thinking about my feelings for so long and i’ve been thinking about how in love with you i am for longer than you might think. to me, sex would kinda just be the next step in taking our relationship to the next level. but i know you. you’ve really only been thinking about this about us for the past week or so. i don’t want to make you feel like you’re obligated to like me if we sleep together. i know that sex isn’t just sex for girls; or maybe it is but isn’t for you, no matter how much you tell me otherwise. and i honestly don’t know where i’m going with any of this but y/n, my feelings for you are true.

“i want to take things slow because if we take that next step, i want it to be when you’re sure. when you’re sure of how you feel for me. maybe i’m not the one for you, y/n. and as much it kills me to say that, it’s a very real possibility. you deserve someone who’d bring down the moon and gift it to you if that’s what you wanted. and i know that i would do that for you. but i need you to believe that too. wholeheartedly. i’ll wait for you for as long as you need. you’re my person, y/n. i’ve waited three years - granted, three very controversial years - for you. i’ll wait three more if that’s what you need.”

you’d said the ramen thing very jokingly, only half-serious about your proposition. but hearing jeno now, you’re happy that you had. you’re not sure that jeno would’ve told you how felt about you and just how deep his feelings ran for you if you hadn’t. he was right, of course. he knew you better than anyone else, after all.

so you kiss him on the cheek good night and open the passenger side door.

you’re about to close the door behind you, ready to bid him goodbye for the night when you lean down to say something to him.

“thank you for waiting for me, jeno.”

+++

turns out, romantic jeno is just like just friends jeno. mostly because you don’t think that you’ve ever truly been just friends. he’s quiet, teases you at any given moment, and listens to you recount even the most boring stories about work.

you went on a couple more dates with all of the formalities before slowly growing more casual with each other once more. neither of you had brought up the topic of physical touch after that night but lately, it was getting harder and harder to find places on jeno’s face to kiss besides his lips.

not to mention that you’d caught jeno’s lingering gaze on your lips (among other things) more and more often. so, just like everything else in your relationship, your first kiss was completely unexpected.

jeno had come over with chinese takeout, since the two of you (honestly, you had made the decision and jeno was just along for the ride) had decided to start the indiana jones franchise together.

you didn’t know what it was. the tousled hair? the way his arm was casually tugging you into to his side, covering your entire side as you cuddled closer into him? the way he was only a breath away from you? the look in eyes when he tears his eyes away from to look at you with the sweetest gaze?

everything. all of the above. you lean up to peck him swiftly on the lips.

jeno freezes, eyes going round as his entire face turns bright red. it was hard to think that just two months ago, jeno had been walking around with a girl on either side of him at a frat party, the promise of a good night hidden in his smile when he looks like a deer caught in headlights at the slightest sign of physical touch.

“did - did you just kiss me?” he stutters, and you shrug playfully, looking back the movie in front of you. he shifts you so that you’re facing him, unable to look away as he turns to face you.

“i thought we’re taking it slow?” he asks and you smile coyly.

“a month and a half of dating wasn’t enough to convince you that i actually like you the way that you like me, jeno?”

that’s all jeno needs to hear because no sooner do you say this does jeno dip his head to press his lips to yours, gentle and undemanding. he’s soft and careful, almost as if he were afraid that you were going to disappear if he chased after you too hard.

but you’d been waiting long enough and this was jeno so you pull away from him, a horde of butterflies settling in your stomach when he chases after your lips, eyes still closed, as if he couldn’t bear to part from them.

“jeno, i’m going to do something and you have got to tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” you whisper against his lips softly and jeno nods, opening his eyes so that you can see the look of absolute love and trust in them.

you get up and hook your leg over both of his so that you were effectively sitting on his lap, poised dangerously so that you could part from him at the slightest sign of discomfort. it never comes, though because as soon as you do this, jeno pulls you in closer so that his chest was pressed flush against yours.

“are you sure?” he says, confirming for the last time as you see the last strings of his resolve snap.

“god, jeno, i love you. now please just kiss me.”

his lips are pressed against yours the second the words leave your mouth, a little rougher and more insistent than last time. his arms are wrapped around your back and waist, eyes closed and you lose yourself in the feeling of being so close to him.

needless to say, that night had been a long night.

+++

“i look like an idiot,” your boyfriend complains, checking himself out in the mirror of your vanity anyway. you giggle, pressing a kiss to his temple so that you don’t mess up his make-up, carefully dodging the stray glare that he offers you.

“you look beautiful, jeno. and besides, this is for a good cause, remember?” you remind him as you make sure that your costume looks good as well.

“i don’t remember what me dressing up as a spandex wearing animated character has to do with changing the world, but alright,” jeno grumbles, shifting uncomfortably as his ‘uniform’ seems to cling to all the wrong places.

“you say that now but you and i both know that the moment you see those kids at the hospital, you’re a sucker. tell me you aren’t going to practice your mr. incredible in the car,” you say cheekily, and jeno is unable to refute that. ever since you and him have been dating, you have often dragged him to events such as these.

at first, they were rather simple things, almost as if you were testing the waters with jeno. for example, when the two of you went on a date to a zoo in the beginning of your relationship, you casually mentioned that many zoos that didn’t treat their animals with love and respect.

then, soon after, you asked him to sign a ‘take down unethical zoo practices!’ petition. and then from there, jeno found himself at a protest to rally for the rights of beluga whales.

not that jeno had anything against whales (he actually came to be quite passionate about the mistreatment of them the more he went to these events), but the fact that you took the world’s issues to be your issues was simultaneously your biggest character flaw and strength.

and he loved you all the more for it.

“you know who you are?” jeno says, swiveling around in the chair to mean mug you. “you’re woo young woo from that one kdrama. and i’m that poor unsuspecting boyfriend who wants to spend time with his girlfriend but ends up at a whale protest anyway. that’s what cute girls like you and her do; you get our attention, make us fall in love, and then ba-bam! you use us as a bodyguard and backpack carrier at protests and rallies!”

you roll your eyes, leaning down so that you were now eye level with jeno, the both of you lovingly aware that the banter between the two of you was not a symbol of actual annoyance but rather, mutual appreciation. you, for having so much empathy. jeno, for being so patient.

your heart swells when jeno looks at you with such loving eyes, trust and admiration swimming behind his façade of annoyance. you lean forward, pressing your lips to his, involuntarily smiling when you feel jeno’s lips curve upwards as well.

he hums softly, pulling you close so that you’re practically sitting on his lap. gentle and strong. a little callous, but only so that the butterflies in your stomach seem to be rebelling against the confines of your stomach, as if they too want to be showered in the love of your kindhearted and wonderful boyfriend.

you want to melt into his embrace, as you usually do whenever you’re near jeno, but your phone buzzes and you sigh, pulling away from your boyfriend reluctantly.

“that’s jaemin. he’s asking, and i quote, ‘what the fuck are you guys doing i’ll whoop your ass if you don’t come soon i hate this fucking gru costume and the kids keep asking where you are’. you think we should get going maybe?” you say, raising your eyebrows at the series (of rather graphic) of emojis that depict you and jeno conveniently being pushed off a cliff.

jeno snorts at his best friend’s antics, his touch lingering on your waist as he leaves to go start the car. he waits for you to finish responding (with a threatening message of your own) before extending his arm without even looking, waiting for the comforting weight of you clinging to his arm as the two of you leave your shared home, walking into the buttery evening.

it truly couldn’t get much better than this.

#jnnul #nct fic #jeno x reader #nct dream fic #nct dream #jeno imagines #nct dream fluff #nct fluff #jeno fluff #nct dream imagines #nct imagines #nct x reader #nct dream x reader

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cheolaholic · 1 month

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ring of love; csc (05)

summary; agreeing to join vernon spectate an underground boxing match wasn't how you'd expect to spend your friday night. you also didn't expect to see seungcheol, someone you've lost contact with for years, become a part of the ring.

modern! au • boxer! au • hhu focused • multiple kinds of tropes • fluff, angst, smut

a/n;; omg, i'm alive????? jkjk, work's been piling up lately and i'm honestly drained by the time I get back home so I couldn't do much writing or even qc the draft before yoinking them into a tumblr draft 💀 but anyways, hope yall enjoy this chapter !! uri boo makes a small little cameo in this chapter :D a part of the angst in this fic has also arrived, pls be prepared (it’s not that heavy tho).

You were 15 when you experienced your first ‘heartbreak’. Though, you call it a ‘heartbreak’ solely because it was a “for the lack of a better word” situation. A week before summer break, your parents had announced that the three of you would be flying off to Jeju to visit your grandparents.

You adore your grandparents, and they adore you just as much. Before you started middle school, you remember constantly flying off to Jeju, or even taking the ferry, to visit them every holiday and school break possible. Even during the initial stage of your move to the small town, your parents had sent you off to your grandparents as they sorted out the heavier parts.

Your grandparents had brought you to the beach, taught you how to make kimchi and even brought you to one of the fireworks shows during your stay. But, when you started middle school and were bombarded by a shit ton of schoolwork, you weren’t able to visit them as often.

So, you were ecstatic when your parents announced the Jeju trip. Both Aki and Seungcheol could see the excitement and happiness in your eyes as you told them about your plans.

Aki asking you questions about Jeju while Seungcheol listens to both of you with a small smile on his face. “how long will you be there, pup?” he asks, cheek leaning against the palm of his hand.

“Uhm… I think maybe for two weeks? I’m not really sure… Dad did ask mom if she wanted me to tag along with them to London afterwards…”

“Oh? What are they gonna be doing in London?”

“They have a business meeting that lasts at least two days. But, they decided to stay back a week for a mini vacation.”

“Do you want to go?” Aki asks as she pops a piece of strawberry into her mouth, stealing a glance at Seungcheol, noticing the way his shoulders are slumped at the mention of you thinking of joining your parents overseas.

Dude looks like a puppy not wanting its owner to leave it alone… she thought to herself, finding the scene in front of her amusing.

“Well, whether or not you want to join your parents, I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself regardless!” she spoke.

“Take good care of yourself, pup,” Seungcheol added as he reached out a hand and patted your head, sending a faint blush spreading across your cheeks and a teasing smile on Aki’s lips, “If you ever need anything, call me, okay?”

“Or me!”

The older male rolled his eyes at Aki’s words, smiling when you nod your head.

“Seungkwannie!” you squealed out in happiness as you ran up to your cousin who was standing out at the gates of your grandparent's house, engulfing him in a big hug. “I can’t believe you’re here! Mom and Dad said that you’d be in Biyangdo!”

“And miss out on the chance to spend time with my favourite cousin? Never!” Seungkwan proclaimed as he pecked your cheek. “I haven’t seen you in years, ___! There’s no way I’d pass off the opportunity to spend time with you while you’re here!”

Seungkwan is your cousin from your mom’s side of the family. Before the age of 5, you don’t remember much about meeting Seungkwan other than the stories both your parents would tell you over family dinners. For example, when you asked them about the scar Seungkwan had on his chest, his dad said you were the one that left it on him. They proceeded to tell the story of how you had scratched Seungkwan because he had refused to let you watch Pocoyo on tv when both of you were just 3.

Or when his mom would ask you if you remembered Seungkwan hiding in the closet to scare you, but you ended up crying because you had thought he went home. So, instead of scaring you, he came out of the closet and both your parents found the two of you cuddled up on the floor the next morning

After Seungkwan helped you and your parents move the luggage into your grandparent’s home, Both of you sat on the porch, drinking the lemonade your grandmother had prepared. “How’re you, aunt and uncle doing?” he asks, “I heard from Uncle Lee that you’re starting high school soon! probably in a few months, right?”

“Things have been the same, besides the whole mom and dad having to go overseas occasionally and I had to stay with either Aki or Seungcheol.”

“Speaking of Seungcheol, how’s that little crush of yours on him going?” Seungkwan asked with a teasing smile, nudging your sides, “Ever thought of telling him before he graduates? There’s a chance he might head off to the big cities or even abroad for college.”

You were silent for a moment.

You have thought about telling Seungcheol your feelings, but you never thought about the timing. Now that his graduation is nearing, you still haven’t told him. As you were still stuck in your thoughts, Seungkwan places a hand on your shoulder, “Well, whatever happens, I wish you happiness.“

“You say that as if I’m leaving you forever.”

“Hey, let me be sentimental!”

Just as you rolled your eyes, you felt your phone vibrate - you had gotten a text from Aki.

aki: did you make it to Jeju safe? ___ bestie <3: yeap! ___ bestie <3: i’m with my cousin rn ___ bestie <3: [sent an attachment] aki: ooh, he’s cute ___ bestie <3: want me to introduce you? aki: gurl aki: don’t try to matchmake me when you’re struggling to tell Seungcheol about how you feel aki: and besides aki: your cousin is cute, but he’s not my type ___ bestie <3: wow ___ bestie <3: you really just did me dirty aki: i’m just saying ___ aki: better tell him before you lose the chance aki: besides your romantic struggles aki: have fun and take lots of pictures! aki: can’t wait to see them when you get back <3 ___ bestie <3: i will!

“Are you gonna stay here with grandma and grandpa while Aunt and Uncle Lee fly out to London?” Seungkwan asks as you set down your phone, refilling his glass of lemonade. You shrugged, still debating on whether or not you wanted to join your parents. “I’m honestly stuck in between… On one hand, I want to see what other countries are like. On the other, I haven’t seen grandma and grandpa in years…”

Your mother who was on her way to give you both a plate of strawberries overheard the conversation and tried her best to help you with your indecisiveness. “___, sweetie,” she began as she set the plate on the wooden porch floor, “you can always travel in the future when you’re all grown up.”

“That sounds like you just want her to stay here in Jeju so you and uncle can enjoy yourselves without her presence,” Seungkwan teased, earning a forehead flick from your mother.

“Well, she’ll be in your care too, Seungkwan. I hope I won’t return to a sassy, diva daughter after leaving her here with you.”

Seungkwan gasps dramatically, placing a hand over his chest at your mother’s statement. “Aunt Lee, I’m hurt and offended.”

“You’re just further proving my point, Seungkwan.”

“Hey, the sass could end up helping her in the future!”

cheollie: hey, pup cheollie: mom said you and your parents made it to Jeju safely cheollie: how are you feeling? cheollie: did you get motion sickness during the flight? cheollie: did you eat dinner yet? sweet pup: ehh, the motion sickness wasn’t that bad sweet pup: grandma made lemonade :D sweet pup: and yes, i ate dinner! sweet pup: grandpa grilled some mackerel sweet pup: [sent an attachment] sweet pup: and look at how fat the strawberries are :0 sweet pup: [sent an attachment] cheollie: wow cheollie: those look good cheollie: hey, do you think it’s alright if we have a call? sweet pup: like, right now? cheollie: yea sweet pup: oh sweet pup: um, let me head out to the porch cheollie: take your time, pup

As you quietly exited the room you were staying in and out onto the porch, you picked up Seungcheol’s incoming call, feeling the butterflies in your stomach intensify when you heard his deep, “Hey, pup.”

“Hi, Cheollie! Have you had your dinner?” you asked, getting a small hum as a response. “Dad got a deal with a big client so he bought steak for us. Mom also cooked calamari.”

“Wow, it must’ve tasted amazing…”

“Yeah, it was. But, tell me about your dinner, ___. I’m sure you had more than just grilled mackerel.” Seungcheol chuckled, a blush spreading across your cheeks as you mentally cussed at how the older male still has an effect on you despite being 2 hours away and talking to you through a phone.

“Well… Mom made raw crabs and seafood soup!”

“Looks like my little puppy is eating well... That’s good.”

“Is there another reason you wanted to call, Cheollie?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end, making you slightly anxious. You hear a faint rustling, thinking he must be lying on his bed as he’s talking to you. A sigh was heard before Seungcheol told you his motive for calling you - and to say it had you on the floor was an understatement.

No, this man had you envisioning a future with him.

“I miss you.”

When you didn't respond, Seungcheol got worried, calling out your name on the other end while you remained stunned at his confession.

“U-uhm, yeah?”

“Did that make you uncomfortable, pup?”

“No, no, it just… It just caught me by surprise…”

You hear Seungcheol chuckle, and more rustling can be heard before he speaks again. “Well, I’m used to having you around me, twenty-four seven, ___. It feels weird when you’re not.”

“I’ll be back in two weeks, Cheollie. You’re being dramatic!”

Maybe he was, the older male thought to himself. But, he pushes that thought to the back of his head as he finally tells you the real reason he’s calling you.

“My parents are thinking of bringing me to Seoul this weekend to check out a few unis… I just thought that I’d let you know since, y’know… I’m graduating soon…”

Your heart sank at the mention of him graduating. You knew it was bound to happen - you even told yourself to not be too sad when he does end up moving out of Daegu for college. But, to hear it coming from Seungcheol himself, the reality hit harder.

“Oh… Well, I’m happy for you!” you tried your best to hide the sadness in your voice, though he still picked it up. “Pup, I’m not going away forever. You’ll still see me when I come back during breaks and when you leave for college, you can come over to Seoul, too!” he assures you, chuckling to himself as he continues, “Maybe our parents might even have us share an apartment so I can watch over you.”

Humming, you stared up into the sky, mesmerised by the stars that were scattered along the blanket of the night sky.

“___?”

“Yea…?”

“Remember what I taught you during our taekwondo sessions?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t forget how to use them, okay? Can’t have my little puppy all defenceless now, can I?”

you bit your lip as Seungcheol went on with his words, how he wished he could stay in Daegu longer so he could spend more time with you. How he wanted to explore the bigger city in Daegu with you (where he implies it being just two of you and without Aki who would often nag at him for having a bad taste in things).

“I’m gonna miss you…” you muttered quietly, not knowing how or what else you were supposed to say. You weren’t going to tell him about your feelings, that’s for sure. but, a part of you wished you could.

Who knows? Maybe you both could end up being something.

“It’s getting late, pup. you must be tired from the flight and settling in. Goodnight, ___.”

“Goodnight, Cheollie…”

When the call ended, you stared at the screen of your phone, a million thoughts racing through your head. You couldn’t put a finger on it, but you had a sinking feeling in your stomach. perhaps you were overthinking the whole situation or something wrong was bound to happen. Whatever it was, you quietly got back into your room and crawled into bed.

Something didn’t feel right.

It was the weekend Seungcheol was due to head to Seoul to have a look at the city and attend a few of the education fairs - and not once, had you gotten a single message from him.

In fact, in the days leading up to that weekend, he had been quiet too. His replies were either short, took too long or there weren’t any replies at all.

It makes you feel uneasy.

“Still no updates from loverboy?” Seungkwan asks, glancing over your shoulder and peeking at your phone, seeing the wall of texts about how the past few days have gone down for you. When you sulkingly shake your head, Seungkwan’s heart aches as he sees his favourite cousin down in the dumps.

“Hey,” he calls out in a gentle tone, throwing an arm around your shoulder and pulling you close. “Maybe he’s just caught up with those college things. Sooner or later he’s bound to update you, right? Besides, you should be busy having fun here in Jeju!”

Looking at your phone one last time, you shoved it back into your pocket and let Seungkwan drag you to a food street, saying how they added more delicious treats since the last time you visited.

By evening, there was still no news about or from Seungcheol. You’ve tried calling him multiple times, but they all end up going to voicemail. It was starting to affect you and your parents began to take notice, but decided to not question it for fear of triggering an episode. After dinner, you decided to call Aki in an attempt to get some form of comfort.

“I just don’t understand, Aki,” you told her, “I texted him, even called him but I got nothing! What if something bad happened to him?”

“Hey now, you’re probably overthinking things. He might just be sorting those uni documents out - you know how lengthy and taxing they can be. Maybe, he’s just tired and needs some rest!”

“You think so?”

“It’s just a guess, ___. whatever it is, I’m sure it isn’t anything serious.”

Oh, how you wished it really wasn’t anything serious.

When the time came to send your parents off at the airport for their trip to London, you had sent a message to Seungcheol and yet again, you got no response. One thing you came to realise in recent years, was how big of an over-thinker you are. It was something you hated and while your family, Seungcheol and Aki have done whatever they can to help you lessen your overthinking, that still doesn’t stop it from creeping up on you from time to time.

Seungkwan does his best to cheer you up. Bringing you to more food streets, a maze field, and even the seaside to take your mind off of Seungcheol but alas, it was as if Seungcheol had taken over your mind just like the virus in ‘The Last of Us’. One evening as you sat on the sand of the beach, staring off into the horizon, Seungkwan came up and sat next to you.

“I know this might not sound nice, but you can’t let something like Seungcheol not responding to you ruin your trip, ___. Sure, it’s upsetting having someone you’ve known for years and care for go ghost on you, but it’s kind of… pathetic, to let it ruin what could be a fun summer vacation.”

As much as those words hurt you, Seungkwan was right.

You hadn’t seen your family that lived in Jeju for years and now that you can, you’re letting something like your crush not responding to you ruin it. “Then, what should I do, Kwannie…?” you asked, wiping the tears that were starting to stream down your face, “I don’t wanna leave Jeju knowing I didn’t get to spend time with you and our grandparents…”

“How about you try calling him only once? If he doesn’t pick up, we’ll forget about it and move on, okay?”

You give it a thought, minutes passing by before you pick up your phone and dial Seungcheol’s number, placing it near your ear.

“We’re sorry, the number you have dialled cannot be reached.”

Seungkwan noticed your body shaking as you redialled the number, your breathing starting to grow shallow.

“We’re sorry, the number you have dialled cannot be reached.”

“___?” Seungkwan calls out, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder. When you began to cry, he pulled you into a hug, rubbing your back as you cried your heart out. “Shhh, it’s okay, ____. it’s okay.”

When you got back to Daegu, your heart dropped at the sight of the empty house next to yours. the entire house looked as if it were fully emptied (which it was) - the potted plants Mrs. Choi had displayed on the gates were nowhere to be seen, the shoes that were neatly arranged on the shoe rack weren’t there anymore, and the Choi’s family car wasn’t parked in its usual place.

“I guess they must’ve moved since Seungcheol is going to start college soon…” your mother tells your father who hums in response as he unloads the luggage from the trunk of the taxi. When she notices the sadness and tears in your eyes, she immediately starts comforting you.”Oh, sweetie… Does it upset you that much?”

“I… I couldn’t even say goodbye to him…” you sobbed out, “I couldn’t even see him one last time before he left…”

“Oh, princess…” your father coos after bidding the taxi driver goodbye, hugging you tight as your mother does the same, “I’m sure he feels sad for not being able to do the same, hmm?”

“Will… Will I… Will I be able to see him again?” you asked through hiccuped sobs, wiping your tears away as more kept spilling. Your mother nods, giving you a pat on the head. “I'm sure you will, honey.”

“He said he’s thinking of joining University of Pledis, right?” your father asked, a small smile on his face when you nod, “Then, you just need to study hard and get in there too! That way, you can finally be reunited with prince charming!”

despite your tears, you still manage to laugh at your dad’s tease. “Dad!”

“Ah-ah, don’t think we didn’t know about your little crush on Seungcheol, ___.” he responded, chuckling as he gave your arm an assuring squeeze.

“Whatever the future has in store, I’m sure the two of you will meet again.”

taglist (unable to tag a few ㅠㅠ)

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venus-haze · 7 months

Text

Watch Honey Drip, Can't Keep Away (Soldier Boy x Reader)

Summary: America’s golden son can't keep his eyes off of you, almost like he wants to devour you whole...or something like that.

Note: Female reader, but no descriptors are used. This is kind of in the same universe as She’s Out To Please, She Pouts Her Best. I know generally men in the ‘40s, let alone Soldier Boy of all people, wouldn’t really consider going down on a woman, but it’s my fic and I get to decide he eats out. Do not interact if you’re under 18 or post thinspo/ED content.

Word count: 2k

Warnings: Period typical misogyny, power imbalance. Explicit sexual content involving masturbation and oral sex (f. receiving). Do not interact if you’re under 18.

“Which city are we going to next?” you asked, finally comfortable in the swanky hotel room in Chicago you were roomed in with three other girls from the troupe. Soldier Boy’s Sparkling Sweethearts. People came from miles around to show their patriotism–and get a look-see at the acts. If it weren’t Soldier Boy, it was you and the other Sweethearts. Something for everyone, really. Even in places like–

“Wichita.”

A collective groan filled the space, littered with makeup and dresses that’d inevitably shoved into suitcases in a hurry the moment of checkout. There were more important things to worry about than being organized.

“Better than wherever the hell we were last week. Couldn’t get enough of us on Saturday, and then nearly ran us out with pitchforks after the preacher was through with them Sunday morning.”

“I’m going down to the bar while we’re still in a hotel that has one,” you said. “I’ll be back later.”

“Not if Soldier Boy’s there.” A giggle tore through the room. “Did you see him earlier? He looked like he could eat you alive.”

You weren’t even supposed to have been up there with Soldier Boy during his act, a routine that showed off his powers and preceded his usual rousing speech to get the American public to open their hearts and wallets to the war bonds drive. But Darla had broken her leg while ice skating on a day off in Milwaukee, and Soldier Boy had specifically asked for you to fill her spot.

Your role involved memorizing a few lines from a script and looking pretty while Soldier Boy understandably took the lead, but your “rehearsal” just hours before was little more than going through your lines once before Soldier Boy poured you a shot to “calm your nerves” and spent the following fifteen minutes fucking your mouth before sending you off to get ready for the show.

Walking up on that stage again after your usual routine with the Sparkling Sweethearts was nerve-wracking. Though you knew what to expect, you still felt like your heart was going to pop out of your chest every time he lifted you above his head or tossed you up in the air and caught you, to the raucous applause and cheers of the Chicagoans and celebrities who’d packed the theater to see him.

“Betty Grable’s in town, so I think she’s the main course,” you said as you left, closing the door behind you and leaving your coworkers to tease you in private.

Among the various hobbies you’d taken up since becoming a Sparkling Sweetheart, people-watching in hotel bars was one of your favorites. He would almost always be there too, an otherworldly presence with an abundance of movers and shakers rotating in his orbit, unable to resist the pull of America’s golden son.

Some of the girls in the troupe didn’t care for him, found him too brash and handsy. You could think of at least one who’d been unceremoniously replaced after loudly complaining one too many times. No one really knew what the extent of his powers were, but after that incident, you suspected enhanced hearing might be among them. Or someone was just a snitch.

When you stepped into the bar, a quick scan of the room revealed Betty Grable to be nowhere in sight. You didn’t see Soldier Boy either, until a deep voice wrapped around you like velvet.

“There’s my girl.”

“Who, me?” you asked teasingly.

“‘Course you are, honey.”

“Because I heard Betty Grable’s in town—“

He scoffed. “That broad? Who needs her?”

Your chest filled with pride at his statement. She was the pin-up girl of choice for every GI in Europe and the Pacific. Well, almost all of them. His arm settled around your waist as he told the bartender to give you whatever you wanted. The overhead lights in the bar were nice and low, you felt warm beneath Soldier Boy’s gaze. Being the object of his attention always carried weight. He was the world’s first superhero, after all. A living legend. Plenty of other women he could be spending his time with besides you.

Pressing your lips to his cheek, you whispered a ‘thank you’ for the drink, taking in the way he licked his lips, his handsome face so close to yours, still under the slight cover of the shadows. Whoever decided a helmet that covered half of his face would be part of his costume needed serious help.

“Y’know, if you hadn’t come down here, I might’ve gone up to your room and dragged you out,” he said, lowering his voice so only you could hear. “It’s like you were shakin’ your ass just for me on that stage.”

“It’s called shimmying, and I’m glad you liked it.”

“I was thinking, how about you replace Darla for my act?”

“Permanently?”

“Sure, we’ve got great chemistry,” he said, squeezing your hip, “on and off stage.”

As the night progressed, your conversations with Soldier Boy were interrupted by the slew of people who recognized him, excitedly introducing themselves and asking for a few minutes of his time. He graciously accepted with a ‘You don’t mind, right honey?’ And you shook your head, watching him humor politicians, business moguls, and socialites.

You smiled when the latest one had made their departure, tilting your head the slightest bit. “Do you even remember what my name is?”

“Honey suits you better,” he said, his tongue darting out between his lips. “Bet you taste like it too.”

“You sure?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“I guess so.”

He pressed a kiss to your temple, passing you his room key. “You go make yourself comfortable while I close out my tab.”

As if he’d even be paying for the drinks himself. It’d probably be billed to the Department of Defense, or that strange company that sponsored the tour. You didn’t pay much attention to who was signing your checks, just that they cashed out when you brought them to the bank.

You balked at his hotel room, far more space than a single man could possibly need. Then again, he rarely spent his nights alone.

Comfortable. Ridding yourself of your clothes, you climbed into the giant bed, pulling the covers just over your breasts. As you laid back on the plush pillows, you recalled earlier that day when he had swatted your ass as you walked off stage after your act with him was finished, playing it off as a joke to the crowd who cheered and whistled. The simple yet slightly painful gesture had gone straight through you, however, and you worried that there’d be a noticeable wet spot on your satin panties when you and the other Sparkling Sweethearts returned for one last routine to close out the show, your high kicks telling on you.

Biting your lip, you glanced at the door and slipped a hand between your legs. He had only said to make yourself comfortable, nothing specifically about waiting. Gently prodding two fingers against your pussy, you weren’t surprised to find that you were wet already. Your eyes fluttered shut as you pushed your fingers inside, thinking about how his hands felt on you earlier. Strong and steady, big hands that could break you so easily but didn’t.

“Couldn’t wait?” He stood at the end of the bed, fully clothed with his arms folded over his broad chest as he pinned you in place with his disapproving glare.

You gasped, pulling your hand from between your legs. “I was just–”

He clicked his tongue at you, though his eyes betrayed his amusement. “My fault for keeping you waiting too long, doll.”

Soldier Boy joined you on the bed, pulling back the covers you’d pulled over your bare body. He pressed his lips against yours, kissing you with an overwhelming fireceness as he groped your breasts, squeezing down your stomach to your hips and finally your thighs. His lips followed that same path, kissing and biting along your skin that suddenly felt feverish beneath his touch. Still, your pussy ached for him, especially since he had walked in while you were pleasuring yourself, but he wasn’t paying any mind to it.

Until he dipped his head down, licking your wet cunt. In your shock, you pushed your thighs together, as if his intrusion were unwelcome.

His strong hands held your legs apart, gently squeezing the tender flesh. “I jerked off thinking about this earlier, but nothin' like the real thing, huh?”

You let out a shaky breath, eyes focused on the ornate ceiling. Gold leafing, a Renaissance-esque painting, surely Soldier Boy didn’t care much about that.

“Eyes on me, honey. You got that?”

Immediately, you looked at him, his blazing green stare burning through you until you nodded. He wasted no time in burying his face between your legs, his tongue flicking against your clit with such force that you realized you had no idea what getting eaten out by a superhero would actually entail.

He lapped at your pussy with an insatiable fervor that made your legs shake beneath his steady grip. Your moan caught in your throat when he plunged his tongue deeper into you, his nose brushing that sensitive bundle of nerves he’d already teased.

A whine tore from your throat when he pulled away for a moment, smugly admiring your glistening sex. His lips appeared coated in your juices, and you nearly came at that sight alone.

“Fuck you’re soaked,” he growled appreciatively. “This all for me?”

Who else? As if any other man could make you feel pleasure so intensely, as if that were yet another superpower of his. For a moment you bemoaned a possible future of unsatisfying sex with some regular old Joe–not America’s hero, its fucking sex symbol. But all you could manage was a weak, “Yes.”

Satisfied with your response, he closed his plush lips over your clit, sucking on it like he was pulling from a cigarette, your arousal burning deep in his lungs. You grabbed at the sheets, digging your hands into them as you grind your pussy against his face. Your eyes fluttered shut for a split second, shooting open when he smacked your thigh. Eyes on me.

“Fuck—Soldier Boy,” you moaned. “‘m close.”

He growled against you, the vibrations from his throat edging you closer to orgasm. His inhuman stamina meant he hadn’t given you much of a break since he lowered his face between your thighs. He’d been content to tease you for a while, but he seemed more focused, intentional with the way he ate you out, his attention especially focused on your clit.

You could feel it, that tightness in your abdomen that was about to snap. Involuntarily, your eyes fluttered shut, and you were on that stage again, in his big arms, bright lights blaring as you stared dreamily at him. Then he threw you in the air, higher and higher until you came back down and–

“Soldier Boy, oh my god–don’t fucking stop,” you pleaded, riding out your orgasm on his face.

His hands held down your bucking hips, your ecstasy overpowered by his determination to bring you over the edge until you were an incoherent mess, muscles aching at the exertion of each orgasm despite him doing all of the work. Light-headed, seeing stars, you reached down, tugging at his hair. That was it. You were tapping out. Mercy.

He granted such, though he pressed sloppy kisses to your inner thighs, nipping at the tender skin. All you could give him was weak moans in return. If you expected to be able to go anywhere else the rest of the night, he’d made damn well sure you couldn’t so much as move from his bed. Maybe that was the idea.

Your breath caught in your throat when he lifted his head, wiping his glistening lips with the back of his hand, though the evidence of your orgasms was still all over the rest of his face. He kissed you, the foreign taste of yourself filling your mouth, sending a deliciously obscene rush through you. His mouth broke from yours, just for a moment, as he whispered your name against your lips. You realized you didn’t actually know his.

#soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #soldier boy smut #soldier boy the boys #soldier boy imagine #the boys soldier boy #the boys x reader #the boys amazon #the boys tv #gen v #gen v amazon

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raivenantcravings · 25 days

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Round 6 Reaction/Analysis

SDFFSDHFLSDHF ROUND 6 FSDHKFDSH ROUND 6 FSDKFSDHFDS ROUND 6

I woke up to twitter analysis saying that Till never even looked at Ivan until his final moments. And I made pre round 6 fanart titled "look at me." Couldn't manifest it. He never looked at him in the end,,,

broo dont look so happy. oh my god you lovesick fool.

reaction and analysis under the cut

First detail I noticed was that are the mics clear because both Ivan and Till are being vulnerable? They have nothing to hide anymore, so they'll show the world their whole being.

Anyways, to my main point,,

My interpretation of the ending was that Ivan was really trying to "cure" Till.

Till opens up with wanting to feel pain, to feel hurt.

"Please, leave me scars"

"Please, hurt me so that not a single drop of me remains"

Which, I realize he's talking to Mizi, but it's a cry for "help" either way.

Ivan's part goes:

"Notice my pain and mend me right now"

Again, he's talking about himself, but I think it could apply to what he does to Till.

So they kiss.

And, I've seen a lot of other people already say this, but I also do feel the kiss was not only meant to be for Ivan to selfishly show his love for Till.

Like bro don't go nonconsensually kissing your crush, what are you doing!?

When the scores came out, Ivan was much lower than Till than I expected. I thought it'd be a Mizi-Sua situation where the scores were close, but Mizi barely edged it out.

But Till almost had 20 points over Ivan.

And I know it's because Till is a rising star. And his new image change would really garner the attention of everyone. But it's not like Ivan is a nobody either. I didn't expect the scores to be so different.

I do think its because Ivan kissed Till. As a final nail in the coffin that guarantees his loss.

Alien Stage is commentary on the idol industry. One of the most prevalent issues in the idol industry is the romantic lives of the idols. Idols are not supposed to be in relationships, at least not outwardly. Their whole image is for the fans. Nothing they do should ruin that public image as an idol.

Much less in a in a queer relationship.

Now I don't believe the universe of Alien Stage cares about LGBTQ+ issues because there's bigger issues surrounding their human pets. But I think that it is an issue that Vivinos is trying to address because they certainly never shy away from queer issues in their other works.

And I feel the idea that idols/pets should not be swayed by their romantic emotions is still prevalent in their society.

So for the audience to see Ivan kiss Till, in one of the most outrageous and public displays possible, further pushes the votes in Till's favor.

And yeah, I also do believe that he kissed Till for him to finally look at him, but I also feel that it was a self-sacrifice too.

And then Ivan violently chokes Till.

Possibly, as another way to give Till votes. Since when Mizi started punching Luka, the audience was outraged at her actions.

Violence is definitely frowned upon on the stage.

More on the choking scene,,

I also saw some people saying that it's because Ivan wanted Till to die with him, which may be part of it. I don't think everything Ivan did was completely selfless.

But

Till accepts it. Earlier when he is at the bar (party? venue? the private show either way), he fights the alien who tries to punch him.

He did show him Mizi's missing image, so he is enraged in this moment, but he does have fight left in him even then.

He doesn't resist when Ivan chokes him just closes his eyes and awaits death. Perhaps if Mizi was already dead, he can just join her in the afterlife since he had no way of knowing she was still alive.

In this way, Ivan is his savior. The one who is finally freeing him from all this pain he felt after losing Mizi. This is his "cure."

And for Ivan, he sorta wants to be a savior to Till. He has freed him on multiple accounts from his shackles. Even helping him run away with him, so they can experience freedom together.

They both get what they want, but,,

Ivan lets go of Till and Till, with an expression that feels like shock, finally looks at Ivan.

Killing him would not give him the freedom that Till needs

that Ivan wants Till to have.

So, like the countless times Till has been chained around his neck, Ivan gives him his chains:

hurting him like he desires.

A scar around his neck.

(Where the scar from his name is)

And mending him,

by taking away the final chain that Ivan could release from Till.

His "cure."

It felt like his final desire was to get Till to snap out of it, to realize that he needs to find true freedom, to not get apathetic at the situation, to keep on going and to live.

He really, truly loves Till even if Till does and never will understand it.

Also final thoughts, is it not strange that Ivan is able to release Till's bindings so easily?

No one else is shown releasing the bindings, so maybe it is just as easy as a press of the button. Yet, I don't feel like it's just poorly designed if that's the case. Because you literally have a person like Ivan releasing a dangerous human like Till. Shouldn't a cautious society like the world of Alien Stage made sure it wouldn't be super easy to get out of.

If there is more to it, I wonder if that'll be a plot point later on. With Ivan leaving behind the secret to getting out of the bindings for Till. So, when a character maybe Till or even Hyuna or Mizi have been captured, they're able to escape since they know how to remove them.

Maybe, I'm just being delulu

And final final thoughts, the kiss was great and definitely made me almost scream. But the way Ivan nuzzled Till has got me acting up.

Like, it's just so soft and sweet and not a big show of it like when Ivan kisses Till on stage.

It feels so intimate, so personal, so full of love.

I just, I just can't. They'll be the death of me.

#alien stage #alnst #에이스테 #alnst ivan #alnst till #alien stage analysis #alnst analysis #rai's ramblings #ivantill #alien stage round 6 #alien stage cure #thinking about the one person who tagged my last art as they need to make out right now #glad you got your wish :')))))#i want to make fanart so bad #but ill be busy all day today #this is the best i can do for you ivantill #god they make me sick

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comfortless · 2 months

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hi syl! omfg i cannot believe we are mutuals, i love your works so much. but have you heard of the midieval concept called “marriage on the gallows?” basically, a person who was given death penalty can still be saved when someone promises to marry them. all i can think about is könig going to a live hanging/ burning at the stake and using marriage on the gallows to have a wife.

not like she was framed or anything, right(????) but don’t worry, könig promises to make her happy and alive now that he’s her husband. or maybe knight! ghost was the one who was about to be killed but y/n is like “I CAN FIX HIM” and marries him instead.

chanting Torta, Torta, Torta hi!! i am hugging you for this. <3 i have heard of it! but never did i think to apply it to König and now here we are… ^^

content/warnings: forced marriage?, vague religious imagery, injury, threat of public execution, vague smut.

When you sell your soul, really sell it, you’re cutting away from the umbilical cord that tethers you to whatever waits in the darkness of the afterlife. You kneel, you pray, you bathe yourself in sacred water and parrot divine words, but you don’t realize you’ve become obscured in invisibility, a shadow, a husk.

He’s clipped her wings and the only thing left to do is end her flight, let her go tumbling down into a pit of sulfur from the rope lead tied to her neck: to die before a sea of jeering faces, horse shit and fine wine, gilded paintings and the darkened splatter of blood, dried and crisp against a wooden stage.

König knows something about that, because there’s a dense, thorny guilt curling in his chest as he looks up at the little sparrow led up to the rope with her face pushed down by a hand that doesn’t belong there.

She’s done no wrong; smiling sweetly at a man like him shouldn’t have resulted in this. His heart shatters when he hears her begin to cry, her battered face wrenched up to face the crowd by the hangman’s cruel hands.

A little, flightless bird like this could never have done what he did to get her here. Gentle, sweet things knew so little of the very blood that pulses in veins, of what a man’s innards look like spilt out on a thick blade.

But of course they will believe anything— she’s a commoner, no special asset to the village. They needed their farmers, their tailors, and men like him— the blacksmith they all shunned as though he had risen from the fiery pit he worked away at himself. They didn’t need her.

Only he did.

So when he steps through the crowd of vultures to watch as the rope is tightened around her delicate neck, his voice comes in a roar. He propositions the hangman that he will take her as his wife, haul this devil back to his shack at the village’s edge and ensure that she— he will spill no more blood.

She weakly raises her head to eye him, recognizing him immediately as the man who had accused her of murdering that stable boy only two nights prior. Her stare is not judgmental or accusatory: she doesn’t have a clue of the lengths he has went to- would go to- to tether her to him.

A fortnight later, the woman becomes his bride.

She doesn’t know what brought her such a malison, how she came to be the wife of a man who once cast his accusations toward her, but she’s grateful to the man who’s cursed her to suffer him.

There’s no celebration, no flowers or dancing. There’s a kiss she nervously leans into at the chapel, shy, while his heart bursts into flames.

She isn’t blessed with meaningful vows, only a pleading profession whispered into her ear when his kisses reach from her neck to the curve of her jaw.

It’s consummated in that darkened shack, not a candle lit where smoke has painted the walls black with ash and dust; a place where she curls her arms over him sweetly and breathes her thanks against his shoulder, where his fingers commit every curve, dip, and ridge of her to memory. His words are lost in her hair, her shoulder, her chest as he devotes every remnant of himself to her entirely. He isn’t gentle, but he tries when her tight whines and whimpers fill his ears, drowning out even his lamentations.

She tolerates him four times over before he can will himself to pull away from her warmth. The guilt is replaced by a sense of purpose, a certainty that all he’s done has been entirely for her. She tells him that she would never hurt another thing, and he whispers against her skin, “I know.”

His flightless engel does not remain downtrodden.

Each morning she wakes him with giggles, face warmed in memory of the night’s prior rapture. She bakes for him, sweet things that he’s never thought himself worthy of prior while he buries himself against her, yearns to pry apart her ribs and bury himself in her softness for all time.

He kisses at what remains of the scars along her neck when she finds him melding down steel for a new weapon, takes her into his lap just to watch the flames dance in her eyes.

#asks!#könig x reader #sorry this is so short!!

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i-drop-level-one-loot · 2 months

Text

*NSFW* I'm Alive (Yandere!Monster x GN!Reader)

CW: Dead Dove, dub-con, death, gore, inhuman anatomy, sexual non-sexual penetration, mind control, angst, you have been warned

Breathing hurt.

His entire body convulsed as he inhaled, the writhing mass that was his body cracked and groaned as it pulsed. He was once a man, though he no longer remembered much of his previous life. There was a torso emerging from the ball of flesh that was his lower half, and sometimes when he closed his eyes he could recall owning a pair of legs; but now he was just an abomination.

Trapped under the earth in what seemed to be the ruins of a temple or some kind of forgotten catacombs, he spent his days lying in a corner, eating the rats that came and tried to devour his body that reeked of decay.

Sometimes, he dreamt. There is a dream of a building called a "church", where a woman would clasp her hands together and speak to an invisible man. She called it prayer, and told him if he prays then her god will answer, but whenever he awoke and interlocked his red, skinless fingers together, the woman's god never granted him death.

Death never comes, nor does relief.

There was only rot, and pain, and rats.

Each and every day. He didn't know how he knew, because he hadn't seen the sun since becoming a monster, but he knew that there was such thing as a sun, and a sky, and that the day changed to night, which would become weeks, then years. And he knew that he has been down there for a very long time.

Then, one day, there was light.

And God granted him his relief.

.................................

The group of adventurers broke through the sealed entrance to the abandoned tower. It once stretched all the way to the heavens, but had sunk into the dirt centuries ago. Half of the excited group were thrill seeking scholars, willing to put their lives on the line to uncover the secrets of the Inverted Tower, and the other half were monster slaying treasure hunters, investigating the ancient rumors of forgotten relics. Among them was (Reader), a hero unknown.

The dreams began when they were just a child. Dreams of a man begging them not to leave, falling to his knees as the walls crumbled around the two and the familiar stranger's skin peeled off like cracking paint. A nun in the dreams would assure (Reader) that it wasn't their fault. But it hurt. It was too much for a child to see. Seeing themselves, but not themselves, a body foreign yet undeniably their own, reliving the moment when they chained a man to the floor, then locked the door and left him to die.

Now they stood at a hole in the ground: the magnet of fate pulling them into a place they felt would be identical to their dreams.

And they were right.

The halls seemed to be persevered by magic, dirty and dusty, but still fairly untouched by the erosion of time. Landing onto the top floor was like dropping into one of their dreams. Memories from someone else invaded (Reader's) mind, and forced them to recall things they never experienced before.

Adopted by the Tower of God, (Reader) was proud to have been chosen amongst all of the other orphans. Their skills were unmatched, as was their intellect. Only six years old, and the magical talent scouts had determined that they had what it took to learn to be a great warrior for 'The Cause'.

There was another child around (Reader's) age that had been adopted from a different country. He looked like an angel, with gold hair and eyes so clear and blue that they looked like the sky.

The floor shook dangerously as the group worked their way to the stairs. A healer tried to hold (Reader) back, concern filling his face. "You look really pale, do you need to sit down?"

"We literally just entered!" A thug stage whispered, nervous to make any loud noises. No one knew what was in the tower, but there had been many stories about monsters and demons. Some said that the devil himself pulled the tower into the earth out of jealousy towards God.

"I'm fine.." (Reader) wiped the sweat off their forehead with the back of their hand. "I'm just getting a weird sense of deja vu..."

The children entered the tower's chapel hand in hand. It was nearly empty, save for a nun kneeling before a terrifying statue of a cloaked figure. Despite wearing a habit, she was an unusual looking nun, with her eyebrows shaved off and tattoos visible from under her hood.

"Welcome, children." She gave a small smile, one that seemed more tired than welcoming.

"You look weird." The golden boy gripped (Reader's) arm tighter.

A genuine laugh erupted sharply, startling the kids. "I am a clerical nun."

"What's that?"

She revealed her hands to the small orphans before her. Sparkling light rose from her fingers like snowflakes falling backwards.

"The God that I serve gives me power. Power to cleanse the world of evil." The statue looming above the trio felt as though it heard her mention it; it's presence darkening and suffocating (Reader). "You were chosen because your souls glow stronger than most.. God has blessed you both."

"All you have to do is pray.."

An axe slashed through an attacking bat. Only on the 112th floor and the group had already began to run into creatures from the beyond. Lesser evils such as minion bats and living slime charged the group as ferociously as possible, mad with hunger. As they continued on, a growing affection for the young boy bloomed within (Reader's) heart, reliving someone else's journey of friendship and love, with a terrifying sense of anxiety. Each new remembrance of secret handholding and hushed murmurs behind closed doors gave (Reader) a rush of dopamine, but also made them fearful to continue. They knew there was a memory they didn't want to uncover; one that would connect to the dreams they've had since forever, and it scared them.

On the edge of puberty, (Reader) and the Boy could feel that something within them was changing, but being raised by a guild of monster hunters left them without the basic learnings of what was happening to their bodies and minds. The two were surrounded by loving adults who cared for the orphans like family, but continued to isolate themselves as they grew, relying on each other in secret more and more.

The two hid under the blanket, sharing a bed long after it was time for lights out. (Reader) held onto the Boy's slightly clammy hand, repeating a prayer in their head for God to make their heart stop hurting. It was as though they were allergic to their best friend and brother. Whenever he looked into their eyes they felt a tidal wave of emotion so intense it nearly brought them to tears. However, at the same time they couldn't leave his side. They wanted to hug him so tightly that his body would melt into their's.

"I don't like Mother Lillian." The Boy whispered through pouting lips. "She keeps making us take our lessons apart from each other."

"Haha. That's because you refuse to do your work when we sit together." (Reader) knocked their forehead against his lightly.

In the black of their room, they couldn't see the Boy's face blushing, so they assumed that the heat they felt was coming from their own cheeks.

"Schoolwork is boring... I'd rather spend time with you."

The thing on the ground floor could smell his salvation. That prayer he had mumbled in incoherent words for decades was finally heard by his God. A person who's name he hadn't forgotten despite his language skills diminishing to nothing but grunts and groans had finally come for him. He would no longer be alone.

A horrifying sound of flesh ripping echoed throughout the corridor as he tore his body away from the wall he had begun to fuse to. It was agony, dragging his living corpse across the floor, but he knew that it would all be worth it.

Soon.

(Reader's) talent for the arcane accelerated, like a snowball gently tumbling into an avalanche. Praise and recognition were no strangers to the young teen, but as their recognition grew they were kept apart from their best friend for longer and longer intervals. While it hurt to be away from him, the genius had no idea the absolute trauma the separation was inflicting on him.

Mother Lillian held her bleeding forehead, tears falling not for herself, but for the young man she saw as her own son. The Boy stood above her with a candlestick holder raised high above his head, ready to swing again. This was the scene (Reader) interrupted, lashing out on instinct with a holy light, hoisting their best friend off his feet with a frantic wave of their hand. "STOP!"

Blood continued dripping from the tattooed cleric as her aging body was pulled into her other child's arms. It wasn't a deadly strike, but a second surely would have ended her. She was powerful, but took a vow long ago to only use her magic against evil, so even having her brow split open she refused to defend herself, because that would mean that she thought her adopted son was evil.

And even though he didn't believe it, she did love him.

"It's all her fault! She won't let us be together! She's keepING YOU AWAY FROM ME!!"

Moisture sweat from the walls.

The heat was becoming unbearable. Cooling potions were being consumed in fairly consistent dosages as the party descended. But it wasn't the earth's core, nor the presence of hell itself that caused (Reader's) fever.

They could still feel the sting of betrayal when they threw their best friend off of their mother.

"No.. that wasn't me.." the hero wobbled on their feet, fingernails clawing at their scalp.

A clay vase nearly toppled as (Reader) clipped their hip on the corner of the little table it was resting on.

They could see the Boy watching them from behind the ugly vase, and it made their stomach feel strange. His shoulders had grown wide and his chest broad. The Boy no longer looked like a boy, and (Reader) couldn't block out the odd, scary new feelings they had for him.

"STOP!!" (Reader) took off, slamming their face into a wall with a force loud enough to draw the attention of skeletons.

Said monsters hobbled closer to the group of panicking adventurers, drawing the attention of the dizzy and confused hero, who recognized the tatters draping the undeads' bones immediately.

Clerical wizards and holy people smiled at the young adult knowingly as they tried to explain, with all seriousness, the illness plaguing their body whenever their "brother" was near.

"Calm down!" The healer begged, trying to cool the panicking person down.

"No! You should all be in heaven! Why are you here?!"

Why am I here?

Whispers seeped out of the door to the Boy's room, whispers the jealous cleric-in-training on the other side did not recognize. Unable to contain their envy, (Reader) burst into the room, only to see their exhausted blonde friend standing alone in the center.

"[•••••], who were you talking to?" They demanded, eyes narrowed and shaking. At hearing his own name his cloudy eyes widened, accentuating the bags hanging heavy underneath.

"I was just praying.." His arms engulfing his angry "friend" instantly dowsed their fire, almost hypnotizing them with his touch into forgetting that they thought they had heard a second voice. "If I'm.. If I can be as strong as you, then we'll be able to spend more time together, right?"

Your God wasn't listening, so I found a new one.

As (Reader) remembered a life that wasn't their own, so did the abomination from the basement.

Each floor that their bodies drew closer also brought back pieces of their souls; souls that could only exist together.

He came to me, and offered me a deal.

The Man woke his old friend when the sun wasn't close to rising, climbing over their body under their blankets. As soon as their lips parted to question his actions, his tongue was in their mouth.

With no light to guide them the two kissed passionately and without experience. They didn't know what they were doing, just that they needed to feel one another.

(Reader) greedily grabbed the sides of his face to pull him closer, legs shifting to feel his body against their own, instantly stopping at the realization that his face was wet under their palms.

"[•••••]?" They tried to pull back as he leaned in, trapping them against their pillows. What they first thought to be tears was too warm and thick to be water. Roughly pushing him back, (Reader) illuminated the small space with magic, frightened.

Blood leaked down and smeared across his cheeks as [•••••]'s bloated, red eyes were on the verge of popping.

"Shit, we finally got passed them!" The barbarian wheezed out. "Those boney bastards were fucking tough, no thanks to you!" He directed that last part to the nearly comatose hero being supported by the healer.

"no.."

The young magic user barely heard the sick patient whimper. They had been muttering gargles of nonsense for a few levels, so it was worrying seeing them lucid and frightened; eyes round of scared, pointing at the door the barbarian was about to open with all their strength, shaking. "No..."

"Why were they so tough..?"

The door swung open with a loud bang, and a tendril shot through, piercing the barbarian's skull and splattering the scholar behind him in brain matter.

"He had made a pact with a devil."

A man bubbling alive screamed in agony as he attempted to tear off his hands to rid himself of the holy chains keeping him tethered to the floor.

Mother Lillian made an audible sound of pain as she choked back her feelings. Years of meditation and worship, and she could not keep a stoic face despite this being her job. So many exorcisms she performed. So many monsters she'd slain.

But this was her son.

"We can exer-"

"We have already tried that." (Reader) felt their world shatter. "This was a contract, not a possession."

A paladin in golden armor offered a sorrowful expression that seemed genuine. "The only thing we can do is to put him out of his misery."

"No!" They cried out, attempting to launch themselves at the godly man as their grieving mother held them tighter to her chest. "Let me see him, please! I can talk to him! Convince him to give up the name of the devil, so we can hunt it down and save his soul!"

"That's-" The paladin was cut off by Mother Lillian's icy glare. That was a long shot. Not only would it be a reckless waste of human life to hunt down a devil for one man, said man was delirious, borderline demented. There was no reasoning with him.

Bloody holes where eyes once sat welcomed (Reader) as they entered the cellar prison.

Without his sight, he could still see. He saw with scent and sound. The sound of their blood rushing through their veins made their shape, and the natural odor of (Reader's) sweat identified the body. He smiled, another tooth falling out as he did so, joining the wet pile on the floor.

"(Reader)~.."

"Tell me the name of the devil you serve." They kept their voice even and still, despite the quake rattling their spine.

"You came for me~ Just like he said!~" A pop ended his sentence, one of his arms dislocating as he pulled on the chains to get closer.

"Just like who said?" (Reader) fell to one knee, leaning in as closely and as they safely as they could. "Please, tell me the name of the devil you made a contract with."

"And now you'll love me!" He squealed.

"I want to save you!" (Reader) grabbed his shoulders but was instantly repelled, throwing themselves away and back towards the door. His skin had slipped off and stuck to their fingers. "Please, please just tell me!"

"God made me strong so you would love me!"

(Reader) turned to run out.

"Wait. Where are you going?" His voice almost sounded like his own again. It pulled (Reader's) hand away from the handle.

"I need to hunt down the devil that did this to you." Their voice trembled, barely containing their tears.

".. what?" The smile was gone as more skin stripped off the decaying body. "No?"

The pain was beginning to return. It had left when his love entered, but now that they were threatening to leave.

"You can't leave? No! NO!" His face tore as he slammed his skull down onto the floor. "Don't leave me! You need to love me! Please don't go!"

Corpses lay around the detached person slowly coming to terms with their apparent reincarnation. They knew they never returned to that tower in their previous life. They spent their entire life searching for the devil that stole their first love's soul, and died bleeding out on a battlefield, forgotten by history and remembered by no one. Unknown to them, the tower with their forgotten family did not carry on their legacy, for it had sunk while they were searching and they had simply never heard the news.

Perhaps, there were no gods, only devils. Because even the most righteous people to have ever lived were damned to wander the tower as the undead instead of passing over to the afterlife. It wasn't fair.

(Reader) gazed up at the tumorous creature that had massacred their party with glassy eyes. The name they couldn't recall during their entire discovery of their past life rolled off their tongue as they reached out for him-

"Ydenn."

A language no longer spoken by a people that no longer lived; suddenly the language (Reader) had known their entire life was replaced by something much older.

Skinless hands grabbed (Reader) gently and raised them to eye level. "(Reader).."

He called them by their past name, bruising their hips under his fingers. (Reader) briefly worried that they were about to die, that all these years alone Ydenn thought they had abandoned him, and that all he desired for all these years was revenge.. but instead he pulled them close, smashing his face against theirs in a mock kiss.

Without lips his gums rubbed painfully against their lips, but it felt just as hungry and desperate as their first kiss under the covers. (Reader's) body may have felt different in his arms, but he knew it was them.

They parted their lips for his invading tongue, now longer and monstrous, it moved like a writhing worm inside their cheeks before pressing itself down their throat, pulsating and hot. Ydenn's hands tore off their top, effortlessly going through multiple layers to feel their bare skin against his raw muscles. He sat their body on his mound of flesh, unable to think of anything other than becoming one with them.

A bright light filled (Reader's) vision as their pants were removed, suddenly replacing the horrific scene with a pleasant dream. Lying in the bed they owned well over a century ago, Ydenn held them under his naked body, face red and glossy from his crying baby blues. "I finally have you again." With a wide smile he kissed them again, smiling harder when they eagerly reciprocated.

They pulled back just to say "I tried to save your soul, Ydenn! I'm sorry I never came back, I'm sorry for dying!"

Just like the angel (Reader) remembered him to be, his face cracked under the weight of his joy, hearing his love babble underneath him as though they were nervous of his feelings. "You came back for me~"

"I'm sorry it took so long." Now (Reader) was also smiling through tears. "I'm sorry I never told you.. that.. that I already loved you!"

(Reader) could feel his erection press against their thigh and willingly opened their legs, making room for him.

Ydenn's heavy pants hit their ear as he dropped his face into the crook of their neck, caressing his dick with one hand as he rubbed its tip between their legs. "Tell me you want to become one with me."

Shivers pimpled their skin in anticipation as they looked down between their bodies at his swollen cock. "I want to become one with you."

There was a searing pain that pieced (Reader's) core.

With a blink the dream was gone, and (Reader) was back facing the skinless half living corpse; a thick tendril made of gore and once-human meat penetrating their stomach.

Vomit and blood spat out across their chest as the throbbing entity began thrusting in and out of the wound it created. Their eyes gave away their shock at the treachery. The wound was too deep and too sudden; the immediate pain was already gone, and they felt numb from the waist down.

"Yd-Ydenn?" They choked on his name, but the gurgle of blood went unnoticed by him. Just hearing his name spurred him on. His teeth scraped against theirs as he began violently fucking the hole he had created. The tendril raped their abdomen like a prehensile penis while his hands ground their urine soaked groin against the growth that was his lower half. Each slap of their bodies bore the wound deeper, spraying blood and mulched intestine.

Between slaps were images of that dream, almost within (Reader's) grasp. They could almost feel pleasure, as they imagined running their hands through his hair as he pounded them into their bed.

They could hear the bed creaking against the hard wood floor as they reached their orgasm, excitedly moaning as they spasmed under his crushing pelvis. (Reader) could feel something building within them, threatening to pop as his dick slammed into something inside of them perfectly.

Just as it was spilling out, the rush of a climax vibrating their system, a loud thunk brought them back to their bloody reality.

Their glazed eyes lulled to the side to find the source of the loud sound.

(Reader's) severed bottom half lay on the floor, only attached to their torso by the stretched out intestines and leaky organs barely holding on.

The disembowelment of his lover didn't seem to phase the monster, still making love to them as more smaller, wriggling pieces of flesh penetrated (Reader).

They could feel the tendril writhe up into their chest, and wondered how they weren't dead yet. It rubbed itself against their heart, leaking an inhuman precum against their weakly beating organ. Through the black goop they thought they could see blue irises smiling back at them with happy tears.

"I love you, (Reader)."

Hot fluid splashed up into their brain as he came inside of their nearly hollowed out cavity, then the world went black.

There was a creature at the bottom of the tower, that no adventurer dared to attack. It never killed unprovoked, but it's kill rate was perfect.

It was a strange creature, a large ball of rotting chunks of human meat, held together by dark magic. Out of the tumor like creature sprouted two torsos, one more decayed than the other, and they were often seen embracing one another, creating ungodly sounds that echoed throughout the entire tower.

Though they forgot how to speak and see, their names never each other's mouths, repeating them over and over to one another without end. They had no need for sleep, nor rest. It was as though they forgot they needed to eat and even breathe.

They only needed each other.

#yandere #yandere monster #yandere monster x reader #gn reader #dead dove #dead dove do not eat #cw: gore #cw blood #cw dubcon #cw mind control #cw death #snsp #yandere x reader #angst #happy ending..?#cw gore #really high while trying to proofread #sorry this took so long

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pedgito · 1 year

Note

Hey! I'm very awkward when it comes to requesting stuff but I'm shooting my idea and if you decide to write it, awesome, if not, I'll still adore you and your work. Anyway, what about a reader that's always been kinda there and around but Eddie never noticed her. Maybe she lives in the trailer park as well and one day Wayne orders Eddie to help out neighbors with something and Eddie gets surprised by her existence or something...

I dunno, I just like the "falling for someone who was already there all the time" trope...

Thanks xx

author’s note: this has full fic potential and i love it, but enjoy what little drabble my brain could handle. <3

cw: sfw, neighbors/meet-cutes, set in 86, reader and eddie run in different circles, wayne is such a dad he can’t help it, this isn’t really fluffy exactly, but it’s very sweet

word count: 2k

Living near the Munson’s had always been, for a better lack of words, eventful. You move in six years prior, the world being ushered into a new era of the 80s, a quaint but rundown neighborhood that looked normal, and a new school to throw yourself into, again—your parents were also never really home.

So, as a result, you’d learn to care for yourself. It wasn’t their fault—things were tough, money needed to be made, and you were at the perfect age to manage keeping yourself alive and fed, regardless if it was done in a justifiable or acceptable manner. And the neighbors were nice—most of them, at least.

You’d learned pretty quickly that it was a place for the older residents of Hawkins, men and women in their late 50s alongside a couple small families—a young woman with a small toddler, another family of four, and right next door; an older gentleman and his son.

You never spoke to him, not once. Wayne, the older man in question, only finally spoke to you when he caught you outside on an early morning taking out the trash, parents having already left for the day.

He worked nights, so he had just come home from a very long shift, a cigarette perched upon his lips. He was nice, polite—but obviously exhausted.

“You alright, kid?” He asks suddenly, though his voice is calm.

He wasn’t oblivious to the fact that you were almost always on your own, driveway empty of cars or even a bike, leaving you chasing down the bus or walking to school most mornings.

You shrug honestly, offering a small smile.

“I’m managing.” You tell him, meaning it. “Thanks for asking.”

After that, it becomes a regular thing. Wayne checks up on you when he can, quick and fleeting conversations in the early mornings when the sun is just starting to come up.

You learn that his son isn’t actually his son, rather his nephew. He’s a couple years older then, trudging his way through the beginnings of a tumultuous freshman year—and you don’t see him often, only by coincidence in the halls where he doesn’t even glance your way.

He’s awkward, tall and lanky, hair in the weird stage of being too long and too short all at once—he’s probably growing it out, you think. It’s a wild next of curls that is nothing a brush couldn’t fix, but it didn’t seem like he owned one. Eddie, that is.

Wayne calls him Edward when he’s mad, coming home too late, being loud when he’s so desperately trying to sleep—you can hear all of it, the walls of your trailer are so thin that nothing is safe.

And life is busy; those six years pass in a breeze, but things are still the same. You’ve never spoken a word to Eddie, your parents are still gone most of the time, if not more now that you’re of age, and Wayne still looks as tired as before, though less buried under the weight of scourging for cash.

Eddie must have some type of job, or something—and he’s extremely loud, always playing with his guitar on the weekends when he’s home, amp placed under the bedroom window adjacent to yours. It’s not like you can really complain, it’s broad daylight, most people are out living their lives, but you’re stuck at home.

He can sing, you’ll give him that. So, it’s not all bad.

He drives too, a clunky piece of junk as Wayne calls it, but to Eddie, it’s his beloved. Wayne almost offers to ask Eddie if he’ll give you lifts to school, but you’re adamant in your refusal.

“I like walking, it’s fine.” You assure him. “I wouldn’t want to bother him.”

“Boy’s like my son, he’ll do it if I ask.” Wayne says, eyes flicking up toward Eddie’s bedroom, his shadow crossing the window. “You two would get along, you know.”

“I dunno,” You disagree, “we don’t exactly run in similar crowds.”

Wayne makes a noise, a small huff of acknowledgment.

“He’s struggling,” Wayne admits, “on his third try at graduating and I’m starting to think it’d be easier to pull him out and help him get his GED.”

You knew that much—Eddie should’ve graduated already, yet he was still stuck at the same lunch table for those following years, preaching to young minds of the susceptible D&D nerds.

“Maybe—“ You agree, but Wayne quickly cuts you off.

“Hey, you’re smart,” Wayne assumes, but he’s seen the textbooks you’ve brought home, levels above the classes Eddie takes, “got good grades?”

“Mostly A’s,” You admit, “m’trying to get into a good college and AP classes look good on paper.”

Wayne thinks for a moment, falling silent as he flicks the ashes away from his cigarette, “Think you can do me a solid?”

And Wayne’s never steered you wrong, even offering you dinner when your parents forget to buy groceries for the week, making sure your belly is just as full as his. He constantly grumbles about how careless you parents were, similar to Eddie’s—you never pried on that matter, feeling like it was none of your business.

“I can try.”

“How do you feel about tutoring Eddie?” He asks curiously, “He’s a good kid, I swear—he just can’t focus for shit.”

“I…don’t know.” You reply wearily, “I don’t think he wants to take that stuff seriously—“

“He does, he does,” Wayne insists, “it’s hard for him to learn in that type of setting, I think he needs the one on one. I understand if you don’t want to, I just think it might be worth tryin’.”

Wayne senses your hesitance.

“I’m sorry for asking, you don’t have to—“

“I will,” You respond quickly, not harping on it any longer, “I mean, I can.”

And maybe this was the biggest mistake you’ve ever made, but you wouldn’t know if you didn’t try.

You knock on the trailer door a couple days later, in the earlier hours on a Saturday morning, a book clutched to your chest and a tired smile on your face—but when the door opens, you’re not met with the same expression.

If anything, it’s surprise that’s riddling his face.

Wayne must not have said anything, which is just as mortifying.

“Who—“ Eddie stops himself, eyeing you carefully, “are you—don’t I have a class with you?”

You nod slowly, “Econ, yeah.”

“How do you know where I live?” Eddie asks, though he doesn’t sound offended, more amused if anything. “Did Dustin put you up to this?”

Henderson was a little shit, you knew that much—but you’d never spoken a word to him either.

“Eddie,” He’s just as shocked you know his name, eyes raking over your carefully, “I live next door.”

Eddie’s brows furrow, door cleaning open to peek at the trailer beside him, gaze quickly flicking back toward you. And suddenly it’s all clicking in his head, though slowly.

“You must be the reason I have to make an extra plate of dinner, right?” Eddie asks with a soft smile.

Whatever earlier assumptions you had about him dissipated into nothing, melted by the grin on his face and the subtle dimple in his cheek.

“It’s not my doing—Wayne worries about me.” You tell him, hoping he’ll understand. “Food’s good though, better than what I could make.”

Eddie widens the door silently, without question really, allowing you to step inside. It’s as barren as it is cluttered, random knick knacks on the shelves, counters, but devoid of trash.

“Wait, holy shit—you’re friend’s with Buckley, aren’t you?”

It’s startling, but you nod. You were—also in band with her, along with a long list of extracurriculars—why that one stood out the most to him, you’d never understand. You weren’t even aware Eddie knew you existed.

“Sort of,” You land on, “We’ve got a lot of classes together.”

And as if you weren’t already taken off-guard, Eddie speaks again.

“You play…trumpet?” He asks, snapping his fingers in celebration when you nod. “And piano?”

“How do you—no one knows that.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, genuinely confused, “I saw you playing a couple months ago—I was on the way to Hellfire and you were by yourself, I thought you were practicing for something—“

“You watched me play?” You ask curiously.

“Yeah, yeah—you’re really fuckin’ good.” Eddie admits, “It’s not really my style but I love music, so—“

And he’s mentally beating himself up over not recognizing you sooner, feeling like a complete ass.

“Well, I don’t know if Wayne told you, but he asked me to help tutor you.” You explain, “I get it you want to kick me out, I’m just trying to do good by your uncle, you know?”

Eddie shrugs carelessly, “We can try, but I’m not promising it’ll help.”

“Are you sure you have the time?” You ask, knowing his weekends were usually occupied by something a lot more distracting and loud. “No guitar practice today?”

Eddie snorts at that, “Shit, yeah—I’m sorry about that.”

“I’ve listened to it for six years, I’m used to it.”

Eddie gawks at that, feeling even worse.

“Hey, it’s fine—I wouldn’t notice me either.”

He smiles slightly, “It’s not that.”

You plead with him silently, following him to the small table tucked in the corner of his trailer, two chairs on either side.

“Kinda thought you were a ghost, honestly—“ Eddie admits, “or just like, figment of my imagination.”

You scrunch your nose in confusion, taking a seat across from him.

“I swear I’ve never seen you around here—that’s mostly my fault, I’m not home often.” Eddie tells you, “but I remembered your face when I’d see you at school, didn’t know your name—I mean, I still don’t but—“

You snort softly, offering him your name with a quiet interjection. He nods knowingly, grin growing wider.

“I feel like an asshole for not realizing you’ve been my neighbor for that long—Wayne always talked about you, kind of in passing, but I never thought anything of it.”

“I’m not offended, Eddie.” You tell him, hoping he’d understand.

And it’s not that Eddie didn’t remember your face, he just couldn’t believe it was real, that you were real. He could’ve sworn you didn’t exist at all, like he’s been making you up in his mind.

“Can we make a deal?” Eddie asks suddenly.

“Depends.” You counter, smile pulling at your face.

“If this works, will you teach me some stuff on the piano?”

Eddie was the definition of never judging someone at first glance, his interesting style contrasting his personality in the best ways. He’s always came off as dark, pensive, similar to his uncle in the way he always had a cigarette between his lips or a scowl on his face.

“If this works—sure.” You agree with ease.

“God, I feel like a total ass.” Eddie admits, slamming his fist against the table softly, “Six years, are you sure?”

“It’s not for lack of trying, Eddie.” You tell him, “If I wanted to be noticed you would’ve known. I’m really good at blending in, unfortunately.”

It still doesn’t change how he feels.

“Besides, you never realize how much people reveal about themselves when they don’t know you’re around.” You add shyly, eyes connecting with him briefly.

Eddie laughs slightly, leaning forward to flip the textbook open.

“We can circle back to that,” Eddie teases, “I won’t forget.”

There’s not a day that passes following where Eddie hasn’t wedged himself into your existence, determined to discover everything that he’s missed out on.

And it’s startling how much you like him, the fact of him being right out of reach for so long—it’s bittersweet.

Please consider a reblog if you enjoyed this fic! It’s makes a huge difference. ♡

#eddie munson headcanons #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson #my writing

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dd122004dd · 5 months

Text

Sweet Melodies and Seafoam Eyes

Request: Fem reader is a tribute in the quarter quell and is in love with Finnick. Instead of Katniss breaking the arena the games go like normal and it gets down to the final 2, her and Finnick. They can’t kill each other and want the capitol to allow both to be victors but after the Katniss and Peeta thing they have to show the capital that they really love each other and that its not a rebellious thing so they have sex in front of the cameras. It works and both are made victors but snow watched them and wants her to sleep with him.

A/N: It didn't 'feel' like old Snow would have sexual feeling at that stage for me personally. And also I felt a little creeped out writing a sexual scene with Snow, so I changed the ending.

Warnings: Voyeurism (suggested), Hunger Games, Bried descriptions of death and bodies, smut

Her labored breaths reverberated around the arena as the pair stared at each other. The other tributes laid dead across the arena, only the two of them were left, the last two. She glanced at him, Finnick Odair, the Capitol’s sweetheart, his once clean and polished face was matted with grime as he stared at her with his green eyes, reminiscent of their home, their district. Lost in his gaze she recalled the sound of the sea as it crashed against the shore, she recalled sleepless nights spent along the sandy shore as they stared at the murky stars, clinging to each other as if the next moment they’d be ripped apart. In those hidden moments she fell for him, with whispered words in the dark, with stolen moments their love grew. Through blurry eyes she approached him, a small dagger in her hand, the same hand he once held, the same wrist he once kissed, promising the world.

“You know what to do,” she said, her voice trembling.

“No!” he exclaimed, tears running down his cheeks as he grasped her wrist, pulling the dagger away from her.

“It has to be me, there can only be one winner, you need to live, to go on,” she said.

“No, please, I can’t lose you. I need you; you can’t leave me. I’ve lost everyone, I won’t lose you,” he said desperately, grasping her arms as he held her against him, as if, if he held her close enough, she’d be safe from the looming sword of fate

“There’s no other option. They won’t trust us, not after Katniss’ farce.”

“There has to be another way- something- we’ll both come out of this alive or not at all.” He said, a determined look in the eye as he glanced at the camera recording the them. He glanced back at her, his beloved’s tear-stricken face as he glanced back at the camera, an idea emerging in his head, “If they won’t believe us, we’ll just have to force them to.”

She tilted her head, looking at him in confusion, “How?”

“Like this,” he said before crashing his lips to hers. Their lips molded together in a familiar dance of passion. His hands gripped her back as he pulled her closer to him, melding their bodies into one. He broke the kiss after a few moments as she stared up at him, a dazed look in her eyes as she slowly realized where they were. She glanced at the camera as his idea finally clicked into place, he wanted to prove that they were one, and there was only one way to do it. She looked at him with wide eyes as he slowly cupped her cheek, whispering, “Look at me, its just me, me and you, no one else, we can do this, we have to.”

His desperate eyes convinced her as she slowly nodded her assent. He slowly lowered her onto the soft grass of the arena, leaves sticking to her back as he kissed her, kneeling over her smaller form. She gasped as she removed his shirt, her hands raking down his golden skin, his warmth penetrating her fingers as she marveled at the man before her. Desperately her hands moved to his trousers, tugging at them till he finally broke from her, pulling his pants down. Gazing into her eyes, he found himself transfixed by her, her courage, her beauty, her, her, her.

Rolling her hips against him, she prompted him to touch her, his large fingers encircled her clit, gently massaging as he felt her slick against his fingers. He slowly inserted his fingers, taking his time to explore her for what could possibly be the last time. Before he could control himself, he pressed his tongue against her, barely able to contain his moan as he tasted her, her familiar tart slick coated his tongue as he lapped at her. Her breathless whimpers and moans drove him further as he lapped at her heat, his fingers pressing deliciously inside her as they moved.

Her body knotted tighter as his fingers quickened, her back arching as he brought her to the edge, her body shuddering under his, her breathless moans reverberated around the arena, as thousands viewed her flushed face.

Soon, her face was once again covered by blonde hair as Finnick kissed her deeply, the taste of her essence smeared across his lips as she tasted herself, moaning at the taste as she ground her hips against his, silently begging him to take her.

He was about to progress when a voice rung out within the arena, “I present to you, our winners of the 75th Hunger Games!”

The pair looked at each other through glassy eyes, they had done it! They’d both made it out alive. They were soon removed from the arena, a barrage of people congratulating them on their victory and cooing at them, telling them they were a gorgeous, if not sensuous pair together. Finnick accepted the compliments through gritted teeth as he pondered on what Snow would possibly say about their audacious display.

They were summoned to Snow after being cleaned and dressed. His office was the same way it had always looked, pristine and grandiose, it reflected the personality of the man who occupied it, it radiated cold, as if the warmth that channeled through their bodies was zapped out of them the moment they set foot into the room, it also reminded one of a doll house, a place where everyone played their roles according to the master that pulled the strings.

Snow sat on his seat across his desk, barely paying any attention to the two. After a few moments he broke the silence, “Quite a show you put on.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said awkwardly.

“It was no show-” Finnick tried to defend.

“Enough. I must admit, it was certainly more believable than Katniss and Peta. A tragedy, what happened to our young friends.”

“Yes, sir,” Finnick said, gritting his teeth as he forced the words from his mouth.

“You are the Capitol’s new sweethearts,” Snow remarked, after a moment of silence.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir, just that I adore this woman,” Finnick replied stonily.

“She has a certain charm about her, doesn’t she? Your precious pearl,” Snow said, looking at the woman, almost as if he was analyzing her worth in a single gaze.

Finnick glared into the cold calculating eyes of the man before him, dreading what he would say next.

“Perhaps her beauty should be shared, after all, a pearl is meant for everyone to admire,” Snow said, rising from his seat and approaching the young woman, “…for everyone to touch,” he said, lightly grazing his fingers over her shoulder as he walked around her as if appraising her worth, “for everyone to taste,” he said, standing in front of her.

A resolute ‘No’ reverberated around the room as Snow snapped his head towards Finnick, tilting his head slightly he repeated mockingly, “No? You forget yourself, Finnick.”

“Would the Capitol not prefer to see their new sweethearts together, married with adorable babies for the Capitol to fawn over, rather than have them in their beds?” she asked, breaking the tension between the two.

Snow looked at her, thinking her suggestion over, “Perhaps.”

“Well then, perhaps we ought to give the Capitol what they want, after all, it would be a true tragedy to deny the citizens, don’t you think so, President Snow?” she asked, furthering her point.

“Your pearl has wit, perhaps I underestimated her,” Snow remarked.

“Perhaps,” Finnick said, looking at her affectionately.

“I look forward to seeing you again,” Snow said, silently dismissing the pair.

As soon as they were in the safety of their transport, she let out a breath, shuddering as she felt fantoms hands touch her as she recalled Snow’s revolting fingers against her skin. She struggled to breathe as she recalled his words. Her body shook against the seat as she wrapped her arms around herself, rocking slightly as she tried to calm down, to no avail.

Slowly she could here the faint sound of someone telling her to breathe, slowly she regained her breath as warm arms enveloped her form and pulled her against a chest.

“Shh, you’re safe here, you’re safe now, we’re going home,” the voice said as he continued to soothe her. He slowly began humming a lullaby that he’d heard her hum on countless sleepless nights.

As the melody filled the air, she found herself slowly relaxing, her body slumped against his as her mind was lost in the sound of crashing waves, sweet melodies and seafoam eyes.

#finnick x you #finnick odair #finnick x reader #finnick imagine #finnick odair x reader #finnick odair x you #tw. voyeurism #hunger games #the hunger games

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justash02 · 1 year

Text

Womanizer; 03

A/n; lemme know if you have feedback! It’s always welcome! So are Requests!

Plot; Everyone who knew who Tom Kaulitz was knew that he was girl crazy, he's very well known for having girls around him all the time.

Pairing; Tom Kaulitz x fem reader.

Previous chapter -> next chapter.

Master list

Taglist<3

*^*^*

"I wanna be yours."

*^*^*

We walked after Bill and soon found the other boys on the table. "Hiya! We're XO my name's clair, this is Ben and that's y/n!" She said pointing us out.

I'm so happy she's so out going.

I smiled as waved at the boys making them repeat it to me. Bill stood next to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his side.

He gently pulled close to my ear, "I think my brother wants to fuck you." My eyes widened as I looked at Tom who was already looking at us.

Before I could react I suddenly felt a hand on my hip pulling me away from Bill.

The familiar scent of Adam filled my nose.

"What's going on here?" He asked looking at Bill, Bill laughed and went over to sit next to his brother.

"Nothing much, just told Y/n that she can sing like an angel." Liar. I couldn't help but be amazed by how easy those words left his lips. Kinda impressive how good he can lie.

Adams hand didn't leave my hip and now it was clear to me that he was either being overprotective or jealous.

Toms eyes ran over my body, he looked like he wanted to eat me alive. Not that I would mind...

Let's sit down, it's gonna be begin soon!" Clair said she grabbed me away from Adam making him frown at her but decided to just not say anything.

Before I noticed where Clair was bringing me I was already sitting next to Tom.

He smirked at me before holding out his hand, "Hey, Tom." I felt myself heat up before grabbing his warm and soft hand.

"Y/n."

Before he could say anything else the host of the award show stepped on stage and started the show.

Clair tapped my leg and as soon as I made eye contact with her she smirked at me. Cheeky bastard.

A few rewards were giving away but none that influenced us, the time went by fast and it was already break time.

"Bro I'm starving." Tom said, he laid back in his chair, pushing his hips up a bit in a thrusting motion to get more comfy.

Oh...

"Go get some food then." Gustav said to the boy who was man spreading. "Yeah but the thing I want to eat isn't very appropriate at this moment." His eyes suddenly looked over at me, his intens eyes made me feel small and weak under his gaze, I hate that feeling.

"Dude." Ben said as he shook his head laughing, Tom just smirked at Ben before looking over at Adam. They had a weird stare off before I decided I couldn't handle this amount of cringe anymore and asked Bill if he wanted to go get some food.

The black haired boy nodded and smiled while getting up, he grabbed my hand and pulled me with him.

"I'm sorry it I made you uncomfortable with what I said, Y/n/n." He said, "Do you actually think so?" He hummed before nodding.

"Oh definitely. He's a womanizer. He's like a rabbit fucking anything that has a hole." He said laughing. "You're pretty and good at what you do." I awed and put my hand over my heart.

"Thank youuu." I said with a :> face making him giggle. I liked hearing him laugh.

"Not gonna lie I've always admired your way of being, I'm just so jealous that you feel so comfortable being yourself." This made him blush a bit, "It took me awhile but I'm there now I'm also really happy I got this far."

I nodded, understanding what he means, I hope someday I'll also be as confident as he is.

"When are the ANTI music videos coming out?", "We are gonna start filming in like three days, wanna come and watch?" I asked feeling more comfy around the boy.

"Oh, yeah sure! Yeah I would love that!" He said smiling softly to himself as he watched you bring a plate over to him, "By the way," he said as I handed him the plate, I looked up at him curious, "Don't let him get to your head, Y/n, he's my brother but you deserve better then that." I didn't know how to respond.

"Anyways! What do you want?" He said quickly changing the subject.

*^*^*

In the end we sadly didn't win the award, I could tell that the band really upset about it. I could notice they Clair was losing the confidence she had a few days ago at the interview.

I sadly smiled as her and rubbed her back as we walked back to the parking lot. "It's ok Clair, we did great! We don't need some stupid rewarded to tell us that." I tried to tell her but she seemed zoned out.

I gazed over at Adam who was already looking at Clair with a neutral expression, "Clair, we did all we could." Clair just nodded, she gently pulled herself away from me and walked to the car.

"What was that back there?" Adam asked once we were alone, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a cig

"Don't know what you're talking about." I said really not wanting to talk about Tom right now.

"Yes, Yes you do. Why did you let him talk about you that way, that guy sees you as nothing but a piece of fucking meat." He started to get angry with me. I sighed and lit the cig.

"Don't reacted us losing out on me, I didn't see the need to stop him because it didn't mean anything to me." I spoke, but deep down I knew that his words triggered something in me.

The way his body moved around me, the way his words sent shivers down my spine. His whole being is dangerous to me.

He scoffed, looking down on me trying to make me feel small, "If you wanna fuck your way to the top you can, I'm not gonna stop you."

Slap

His eyes widened as his face fell to the side from the force of the slap, "Don't you dare ever talk to me like this again asshole." I spat at him turning around on the heels of my shoes.

Clair who was watching the whole thing stood there in awe, "What was that."

"Adam being a cunt."

#cute imagines #x reader #tom kaulitz #Tom Kaulitz x reader #tokio hotel #Tokio hotel x reader #imagine #womanizer

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zahri-melitor · 7 months

Text

Next up time for more intense angst in the Potted Fanon Histories with Robin III, TIM DRAKE:

Tim, newborn: His parents bring him home from the hospital to the family mansion in Bristol, Drake Manor. They are millionaires.

Tim, 3: Was at Haly’s Circus. Saw the Graysons die.

Tim, 8-9: Realises that Dick Grayson is Robin after seeing him do a quadruple flip on the news. Becomes immediately obsessed with Batman & Robin. Starts sneaking out at night with a camera to take photos.

Tim, 8-9: Jack and Janet Drake decide that their child is just so mature and competent that really, they’re too busy with their work running a multimillion dollar medical company as internationally renown archaeologists. Tim is now left at home in Drake Manor, with a housekeeper and/or nanny.

Tim, 10-13: shortly after Tim gets into his new hobby of midnight roof vigilante photography, Jason becomes Robin. Tim is now obsessed with this new younger Robin who cares so much for children.

Tim, 10-13: attends Gotham Academy. His parents return home at irregular intervals for a few days without warning. They repeatedly encourage him to network with other children at school for Business Purposes. At some stage they decide he no longer needs adult supervision at home, as he’s just So Responsible. Mrs Mac now drops in for a couple of hours per week to do the vacuuming and cook.

Tim and his parents: Janet is an Ice Queen and Jack is abusive. Tim is unaware that this is not normal. He is being raised as a Business Baby. He is expected to skip grades at school and be working 2-3 years above his age cohort.

Tim, 11-13 (yes we’re sticking with a wide range here): Tim finds out Jason is dead when Bruce announces it in the paper. During his nights out he notices Bruce is getting more violent. Tim goes to find Dick in Bludhaven to tell him that Bruce is too violent! Dick shrugs him off so Tim is determined – he goes to Bruce and tell him that there must be a Robin and insists it is him.

Tim, 13-14: is a smol sad bean. He is now Robin and Bruce is less violent but he’ll never be a Robin like his hero ~*~Jason Todd~*~. Bruce accidentally calls him Jason and looks at the memorial case all the time. Tim knows he’s not really part of the family but he’s doing his best as Robin.

Tim, 13-14: Tim goes on a trip to Paris where he encounters assassins. No further details.

Tim, 13-14: Dick starts dropping by the Manor and Gotham every second weekend to patrol with Tim as Robin, because he’s so guilty about Not Spending Enough Time With Jason. They become close, like brothers.

Tim, 13-14: Tim encounters Steph as Spoiler when she hits him on the head with a brick. They immediately start dating.

Tim’s Parental Free Square: Janet and Jack are both alive and well and neglect Tim. They have not realised he is Robin as they’ve been home for 6 weeks total in the last 5 years.

Tim’s Alternate Parental Free Square: at an unspecified time Janet died. Jack went into a coma. Since then, Tim has been living at Wayne Manor in a spare room. One day, Jack might wake up, but it’s been months or years now.

Tim, 14: Tim forms Young Justice with his best friends Kon, Bart, Cassie and Cissie. They hang out together and play baseball in space! (the only plot that happens here)

Tim, 14-15: Tim and the rest of Young Justice (minus Cissie) become Teen Titans. No reason why, they’re just old enough now. (The only plot that happens here is Titans of Tomorrow where they meet their evil adult selves)

Alternate Robin Tim plot: Joker Junior! Due to either Reverse Robins or just a desire for whump, Tim is captured by Joker and tortured till insanity. He becomes Joker Junior.

Tim, 14-15: there’s a new villain in Gotham haunting the streets, Red Hood. Bruce is now obsessed with him and has no time to pay any attention to Tim. He has told Tim not to patrol. Dick is also worried. Tim, forbidden from going out in Gotham, goes to hang out at Titans Tower (location unspecified). Jason turns up and beats Tim up with his own bo staff and may slit Tim’s throat. Alternately, Tim sneaks out in Gotham anyway and encounters Red Hood on another occasions where he gets his throat slit. This is a major injury that scars badly.

Tim, 16: His parents die. His best friend, Kon, dies. His girlfriend Steph dies. Tim is very distraught by this and refuses to let Bruce adopt him, inventing a Fake Uncle. He tries to clone Kon 99 times in a basement.

Tim, 17: gets adopted. He meets Damian and Damian immediately tries to deliberately murder him. Several times.

Tim, 17: Bruce dies. Tim is convinced he is not dead. If Battle for the Cowl happens, Jason tries to kill him with a batarang. Once Dick is Batman, Tim and Dick fight over whether Bruce is dead. Dick says Tim is crazy and should be in Arkham. He then tells Tim that Damian is now Robin. Tim, furious, drops out of school and runs away and becomes Red Robin.

Tim, 17: Tim is captured by Ra’s Al Ghul. He loses his spleen. He gets away by blowing up ALL the League bases and hundreds of people die. He then returns to Gotham and falls out of a tower due to Ra’s Al Ghul. Dick catches him. The spleen loss is a secret.

Tim, 17: Tim gets emancipated and is no longer legally a family member because that’s how emancipation works. He now runs Wayne Enterprises as CEO. Everyone is impressed how good at it he is and how hard he works.

Tim, 17: Tim is still mad about what Dick said to him. Damian again attempts to murder Tim, this time by dropping a billboard on his head and when that doesn’t work, by cutting his line. Dick takes Damian’s side, and explains Tim can’t be Robin anymore because Damian just needs it so much more and look how well he’s doing!

Tim, 17: Bruce returns due to Tim’s research but he’s now mad at Tim because Tim tried to kill Captain Boomerang (who killed his parents).

Tim, 17: (optional angst) the Daughter of Acheron tries to rape Tim and Cass saves him. This provides angst. Cass is the only person who knows or cares.

Tim, 17: Jason apologises for trying to kill Tim multiple times and blames it on pit rage. Tim accepts this as a good explanation and becomes Best Brothers with Jason as he has apologised.

Tim, 17: Tim’s no longer part of the family and it gives him ANGST. He’s just so sad. Also he just can’t trust Dick any more and their brotherhood is Eternally Destroyed. He’s just a Coworker.

Tim, currently: Tim comes out as bi and starts dating an old classmate, Bernard. They live on a boat. Bernard was in a paincult for a while. Tim is Robin.

Alternate Tim, currently 17: Tim is living in an apartment and running Wayne Enterprises. He does not live at Manor but he has a bedroom there. This is an argument between him and Bruce. There is still tension between Tim and Dick that they are both sad about, but Tim is cool with Jason. Tim has either forgiven Damian or they fight constantly every time they’re near each other. Tim is Red Robin.

Tim, currently: is in a relationship with Bernard, Kon or Steph, pick one. If Tim is in a relationship with Kon, Bruce vaguely disapproves and says “no metas in Gotham” a lot.

#potted bat fanon histories

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vicioux · 11 months

Text

ICHIHIME FIC RECS

i can't believe i've been reading ichihime fanfics for literally 10 years ✌️ my favorite flavor is definitely pining with a touch of angst, but i am also a sucker for just them giggly all over each other! thank you bleach TYBW anime revival for bringing me back to these two cutie patooties and an even bigger thank you to all the writers that have been keeping the fandom alive all these years (especially in the earlier days back in the wild wild west of ff.net and LJ lol) y'all are amazing 💖 happy reading everyone p.s you can find the rest of my fic rec lists here

🍓 alternate universe 🍞

THE BRIDE OF THE DEATH GOD by caledon A plague descended upon the village, and to appease the God of Death they offered him a bride as a sacrifice.

THE DEVIL'S PLAYTHING by marshmallowbirb High-schooler Kurosaki Ichigo discovers that he isn't as human as he once thought - and neither is his classmate, Inoue Orihime.

THE RELUCTANT BRIDEGROOM, DEATH by marshmallowbirb On a sunny summer morning, the young goddess Orihime gathers flowers on a hillside.

STARCROSS'D by child of the ashes In the vampire palace of Los Noches, there is no greater curse than beauty, and no greater crime than love.

NEXT VISIT by aurona x She can see him only with autumn comes, that man of the deep blue tree. And over the years, her love for him grows.

MOTHERHOOD by ashe flyght Orihime's family is financially unstable. So when Japan's most in demand actor, Kurosaki Ichigo offers her an unusual job will she accept it?

FINE LINES by lastlynotleast Ichigo is a tattoo artist and Orihime has skin he could draw on forever.

🍓 multichapter 🍞

THE BOND BETWEEN US by ritsu-san Post Ch. 352: Ichigo and Orihime are left to figure out this strange bond they share.

TIL DEATH DO US PART by marshmallowbirb Deemed too powerful, Ichigo is sequestered in Soul Society after defeating Aizen. Ten years later, one of his human friends dies.

THE CLOCKWORK SWITCH by sesamerolls (1 // 2 // 3) “Kurosaki-kun?” She wanted to bite back her words. This person couldn’t be him. He was a few inches taller, broader, and manlier than the youth who gave her daifuku just minutes before.

🍓 oneshots that will make you feeeeel 🍞

DEMAGNETIZE by ghosty If opposites attract, then what does that mean for us?

TACTILE by mrhooty Orihime has accepted that her boundaries will never be respected, but Ichigo is too good of a friend to allow that.

AFFIRMATION by sesamerolls Ichihime from the beginning to the end.

HOME IS WHERE THE SUN SETS by awkwardspaceturtle Using the word ‘beautiful’ didn’t seem like enough; nothing he could ever say out loud would tell her how she really looked in his eyes.

BUILD A HOUSE IN PARADISE by zabiume Ichigo and Orihime move in together.

PAPER HOUSES by zabiume Mostly, he just wanted to know if she was okay, if she was eating well and passing her courses and if, when she went to bed at night, she had someone to smile about.

PROMPTFILL by zabiume Truth serum induced angst.

PROMPTFILL by captainrukias-husband Ichigo writes a poem for Orihime.

TEMPTARE BEAST by mayelisa As Orihime watched in horror as Ichigo took on that form again, she had a sinking feeling that this day wouldn't turn out at all like she had planned.

MEMORIES IN THE RAIN by garden of magnolias If I were the rain, could I connect with someone's heart, as the rain can unite the eternally separated earth and sky?

ALWAYS SUMMER by folle Orihime is calling, calling, and Ichigo doesn't know how to not answer, except in the most important way.

BECOMING WHOLE by lovelycollision He loves her in various ways, during different stages of his life. It's after the war when he realizes that he's in the third stage, otherwise known as the beginning.

🍓 outside POV looking in 🍞

ELEVATING by sesamerolls “Okay, let’s theoretically agree Ichi-nii has a girlfriend,” said Karin, resting her palm underneath her chin.

SIMPLY BY MEASUREMENT by sesamerolls When it first began, he pretended not to notice.

PROMPTFILL by scribblles Ichigo screwed up his befuddlement into a distinctly grumpy expression. “For your information, I wasn’t daydreaming, I was thinking. Worrying, actually. And it’s about a friend. Who… happens to be a girl.”

🍓 funny fluffy oneshots 🍞

OF MICE AND MEN by garden of magnolias Ichigo realizes that getting rid of a mouse in his and Orihime's apartment is a lot more complicated when it involves his girlfriend.

I REJECT! by scribblles Keigo has a rare moment of inadvertent correctness.

RUMOUR HAS IT by fictionaryplace Ichigo and Orihime have important news, but decide to have a little fun with their friends and family before coming clean.

DELAYED REACTION by crystal dawn Orihime is feeling under the weather. Against his better judgment, Ichigo suggests she visit his father's clinic.

ICED FRAPPUCCINO by hedonysms Ichigo and Orihime get a coffee. Ichigo is simultaneously an emotional sap and a horny, utterly repressed man.

STARTING FRESH by kay sincere Ichigo doesn't have a resolution for the new year himself. But it does come to his attention that his friends could use his help.

NOSEBLEED by deathberryhime Where that little smile would have done more damage than intended to.

OUR BREATHS IN PERFECT HARMONY by iwillhaveamoonbase When Ichigo's friend talks about a cute girl at a bakery, Ichigo agrees to introduce them with no idea that the girl in question is his girlfriend.

WELL WISHERS by adverb_slut It turns out that shinigami are not so great at gift-buying, especially for a four-week-old baby.

THE ART OF SHIPPING by alice hattercandy In which, everyone ships. Even Ichigo.

🍓 anything and everything by these authors 🍞

SESAMEROLLS CAPTAINRUKIAS-HUSBAND ZABIUME (tumblr // ao3) SCRIBBLLES CRYSTALDAWN / MARSHMALLOWBIRB (ffnet // ao3) ORIHIMES RITSU-SAN (more on their LJ sunburnt-wings) TRAGICOMEDY (more on their LJ explicates)

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amethysts-tavern · 7 months

Text

He's doing it again...

OK y'all, be gentle with me. This is the first fanfic I've ever written. And the first time I've shared any of my writing since, well... since longer than I gather many of you have been alive.

I aim to write fanfic that is accessible to all, so this is *VERY* PG. There's one swear, one kiss, and a lot of angst. Likely not my last story exploring this idea of the MC having a secret too.

I hope you enjoy.

_____________________________________________________________ “He’s doing it again,” you hear Karlach’s sing-song voice come up behind you as you’re walking to your camp after a particularly gory fight at the goblin camp.

“Who’s doing what?” you ask the fiery tiefling who has quickly become your ride or die in this misfit adventuring party of yours. Sure Shadowheart and Lae’zel were nice enough some of the time… to be honest, you don’t really like either of them all that much on a personal level, but they are good to have at your side in battle. Karlach, though, she is your tribe. Unapologetically herself at all times, has an unquenching thirst for life, and is blunt as a brick.

“Really? How do you not see it? Did that tadpole make you blind too?”

“Really, darling, it’s more obvious than an ogre in an elf costume,” Astarion joins your gossip sesh. “We all see it. Some of us even think you should go for it. Others of us, like myself, throw up a little in our mouths when we think about it.” He plays it cool like he doesn’t care at all about any of you, but deep down you know he does, even if it’s just for a juicy rumor. You knew a lot of people like him back home, so navigating his sass wasn’t difficult for you.

“What are you both talking about?” you start to get frustrated with all of their vagueness.

“She really has no idea,” Astarion suddenly realizes.

“Gale,” Karlach stage-whispers to you. “He has been eyeing you since we left the grove.”

“What? He has not,” you try to shrug the thought off, but are secretly wishing that what they were saying was true. The moment you met the awkward wizard, something in you was set aflame. You had been hoping that no one had noticed you also stealing glances whenever you could. It didn’t seem right to find any sort of happiness here, amongst all of this. Your days of bloodshed and struggle did not lend themselves to nights of intimacy and love, after all. Try as you might to push your feelings aside, they would creep back up every time he’d say your name or have an excuse to touch you as he brushed past or magic missile any thug who dared take a swipe at you. Knowing of his affliction didn’t quell your feelings any. Everyone has their secrets after all.

“And don’t you think we haven’t noticed you, either,” Karlach says, knowingly.

“You haven’t said anything to him, have you?” you are suddenly terrified that in their mission to get the two of you together they have, in fact, blown any chance you might have.

“I wouldn’t dream of it…” Astarion trails off before suddenly becoming much louder, “Oh Gale, our fearless leader wants to talk to you,” the pale elf smiles wickedly. “Oops,” he waves at you before taking off.

Your eyes grow wide, your feet frozen in place, unsure of what to do next. You turn to beg Karlach to stay, but she’s already up ahead with the others.

“You wanted to speak with me?” Gale is suddenly next to you, his smile soft and welcoming, like a warm hug. What is it about this wizard that turns you to a pile of goo?

“Um, hi,” you say, smiling awkwardly, suddenly very aware that you are covered in goblin guts, sweat and gods know what else. You look back at him, feeling like a timid deer, seen just before it darts back into the forest.

After a beat, Gale starts the conversation back up, “I’m glad our companions called me over. There was something I wanted to discuss with you.”

“Mhm,” you squeak out, wishing that your heart would stop trying to leap out of your ribcage.

“We’ve been traveling together for a while now, fighting alongside each other, trying to rid the world of the Absolute,” his eyes twinkling more than the conversation should allow.

You hope that you’re not giving anything away by biting at your lower lip. Maybe that will hold in the words you are too scared to say.

“Anyway, I was hoping you might join me for a bit after dinner. Away from all of this,” he gestures to our party.

Your heart is about to make a break for it, but you will it back into your chest and tuck it in nice and tight before responding, “That would be lovely, Gale.”

He exhales deeply and his smile widens, his eyes sparkling even more than before. “Oh good. I was nervous you were going to say no. Tonight, after dinner, come to my tent. We’ll find somewhere quiet.”

You start to breathe normally again, your heart calming down to purr like a small kitten rather than a full grown puma. You smile genuinely, “I look forward to it.”

He raises his eyebrows and smiles back before turning to catch up with the others. You are left standing alone, a good way behind your party, wondering what just happened.

~*~

You find a good place to make camp not long after your conversation with Gale. You take the time to clean yourself up in a nearby stream while the others busy themselves setting up their tents and getting out cookware to make the evening’s meal. You’ll never get used to the feel of an enemy’s innards being plastered to your hair. It feels good to wash the day’s trials away in the flow of the water. It’s no warm bath, but you feel mostly clean and refreshed afterward. You pull your linen shirt over your head and make the short walk back to camp. When you return to your tent, Karlach is waiting for you.

“Well?” Karlach playfully punches you in the arm.

“I think we have a date tonight after dinner,” you say, entirely unsure of yourself now that you say it out loud. Did you read the situation correctly? Is that what this was?

“Ah, see! Didn’t I tell you?! You two will make the cutest babies, all pudgy and pink.” It’s your turn to swat at your bestie.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself there, Karlach. I’m not even sure that’s what this is. Maybe he just wants to talk about fighting strategy or how to rid ourselves of these worms.”

Karlach looks at you like you’re out of your mind. “C’mon, soldier. You know what he wants.” She raises her eyebrows in a teasing manner.

You scan the camp to find Gale finishing his tent set up across the fire from yours. He beams at you when he notices you staring.

Karlach shakes her head. “Seriously, soldier, what happened to you? Why don’t you think you deserve to be happy? Why don’t you think you deserve to be loved?” she asks, her voice tinged with concern.

The question hits like a gut punch. This tiefling knows you better than you know yourself. “It’s a long story for another time,” you tell her after a beat, sounding a little more defeated than you mean to.

She doesn’t press the matter, but follows up with, “because whoever made you think that is wrong. You deserve everything in this fuckin’ life that you fuckin’ want.” You know her well enough to know that she’s being completely sincere right now. You thank your lucky stars to have found a friend like Karlach.

“Thank you, friend. Truly, that means the world to me,” you reply, blinking hard to hold back the tears that threaten to fall.

You stand with your confidante for a brief moment, a deafening silence between you when she pipes up again. “Aces! I think the food’s ready,” Karlach exclaims, seeing that you need an out from the conversation. She’s always good like that.

~*~

Dinner is a hearty venison dish, courtesy of Wyll and Shadowheart. After the filling meal, many of your companions conveniently find their way into their tents for an early night’s rest. Karlach gives you a thumbs up before heading into her tent. Watching each companion pull their tents closed, your heart starts to race again thinking about your impending meeting with Gale. You close your eyes and inhale a calming breath before putting one foot in front of the other and making your way over to his tent. He’s sitting outside, face buried deep in a book when you arrive. You clear your throat quietly to announce your arrival. He looks up, slightly startled, but soon relaxes again.

“Welcome, welcome. Let me just…” he trails off searching for something, “Ah!” He picks up a broad leaf and gingerly places it in the book where he left off reading. “For another time,” he says, stowing the book in his tent before turning to you. “Shall we? I found the perfect spot for us,” he extends his arm for you to take, making it easier to guide the way in the pale moonlight. You step closer to take his arm. He smells like a posh library: cedar and paper. The smell is intoxicating. You wrap your hand gently around his proffered arm, the material of his tunic is soft, but the muscle beneath is more defined than you would have expected. Surprisingly, by taking his arm, your nerves are all swept away and you are able to fall in step with him rather easily.

The conversation is light as you walk, the destination not far. You arrive at a clearing with a cliff overlooking the valley below. He was right, the spot is perfect for a quiet conversation. He pats your hand on his arm and motions for you to sit. You mourn the loss of being able to touch him, but do as instructed. The wizard sits next to you, close enough that a shift in weight would brush your legs against each others’. He sits in quiet contemplation for a moment and you look over at him, not sure how to start the conversation. He is so beautiful when he’s deep in thought. He gazes into the horizon, his brown curls catching the starlight as his shoulders rise and fall with his breath.

After a moment, he starts, “I’m glad you agreed to come with me tonight,” he says quietly, just above a whisper. Is he about to tell me bad news? You suddenly feel a stab of nerves again. He continues, in that same soft voice, “I enjoy being in your company. From the moment you grasped my hand to pull me out of that stone, I’ve felt a closeness with you. I can’t explain it; but I would like to explore it, given the opportunity. You make me feel safe and not just in the heat of battle, although that is very much appreciated too. There have been more than a few times… I’m not even sure where you come from or how you know; but there you are, right by my side every time I need you the most.”

His gaze turns to you, his visage softer than you’ve ever seen before. “I feel that together we can accomplish anything. And that is a powerful feeling.” He takes your hand in his; his grasp strong, but his skin soft. His fingers are not calloused from twanging bowstrings all day like yours are. You sit like that for a moment, your hand in his, gazing out over the valley together. “You’re awfully quiet. Please tell me you feel the same and I haven’t just made a fool of myself,” he breaks the silent tension.

“Gale…” you start, turning your body to him to grasp your still held hands with your other.

“Ah, well…” he cuts you off, pulling back his hand, convinced that you’re going to turn down his advances.

“No, no. I do. I do feel the same. Every last bit of it,” your voice urgent, but barely above a whisper. “It’s just…”

Gale turns to take you in, noticing the apparent worry on your face. “Just… what? You can confide in me. You can tell me anything.” You gaze into his eyes and you know he’s right. You could tell him anything and he would continue to be by your side. You break his gaze and stare up into the vastness of the night sky, looking at constellations you don’t recognize.

“...I’m just not sure why you’d want me. I’m certainly no goddess. I’m sort of a walking disaster,” you say. You’re not one to readily admit to being less than perfect at anything. Admitting weakness and self-doubt to the man you yearn to be with terrifies you to no end.

Gale frowns briefly, “You say this to a wizard with a magic-consuming orb encased in his chest.”

You both chuckle, breaking any tension that remained. “OK, you got me there.”

Gale takes your hand once again. “You are right though, you are not a goddess. You are real. And smart. And honest. And kind. And good.” He kisses your hand lightly, punctuating each statement. “You brought our merry band of misfits together in this fight against a powerful evil. You even got Shadowheart and Lae’zel to not be openly hostile with each other. And I find that very admirable.”

He reaches a hand to lightly brush a loose strand of auburn locks from your face, your hand rising to meet his touch. You lean your cheek into his palm. The intimacy and tenderness is almost more than you can bear. In that moment, the entire world stops. Thoughts of your insecurities, your comrades back at camp, the threat of the Absolute, the fear of being killed any moment - it all dissolves from your mind. Right now there is only you and Gale and the starlight.

You sigh lightly, contentedly, and close the gap between you, timidly placing your lips on his. They are soft and warm. He tenderly returns the kiss. Maybe Karlach was right. Maybe, just maybe, you did deserve to be happy just this once.

#gale x reader #bg3 #gale romance #baldur's gate 3

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anonymouschishiyaimaginesandmore · 11 months

Text

The hard kind of Games

Minors, do not read! Contains mentions of smutty behavior!

MASTERLIST (up-to-date)

This is Part 1 !!Here!! is Part 2

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Alice in Borderland/Imawa no Kuni no Alice characters or original stories, only the plot of this fanfic. Alice in Borderland/Imawa no Kuni no Alice characters and original storyline belong to Haro Aso, who made the Manga the Series is based on.

Trigger Warning: Explicit Smut, Toxic Behavior, Drug Use, Gory, Written Madness, Complicated Consensual/Not-Consensual Behavior Summery: Chishiya x female OC that I gave a Name for this Story

A few days after the next stage started, Chishiya was already on his way to a game.

The blimps flying around got fewer and fewer and no one knew what would happen if the last one fell. Will happen. At some point. Chishiya strived to know.

As he entered the games arena, a huge club with different rooms, his attention was immediately on the number of participants. There were already around 60 players and the game hasn’t started yet.

Chishiya asked himself what kind of game would need so many attendees. No matter what it was, he felt that the answer would come soon, whatever he liked it or not. His attention turned to the growing crowd.

So many faces. The blond man scanned the room, looking at first for familiar faces, from the beach or from his time in the real world and then for signals the other participants were sending out. Micro expressions, a nervous tick, or hidden weapons. The people around him seemed to be either on the edge, alarmed or unconcerned. No one really wanted to be here. Playing live and death games. Chishiya did, tho.

Slow steps led him into the next room, locating where everything and everyone was standing and looking out for any hidden clue or hints that could possibly lead to a win. While the one he stepped in first was the entry to all the other rooms, looking like some fancy hotel lobby, this one delivered a different message -> Welcome to pleasure and lust island <- Red velvet chairs were scattered throughout the whole room and a pompous throne at the end with lines of gold and framed by silky curtain.

This was a room for low human activities. Nothing he wanted to participate in when the danger of dying was all too present. The few people in this room had hijacked the bar already and were drinking like they wouldn’t need each of their braincells to get out alive. Whatever, Chishiya thought, stepping into the next room, they all look like dying anyway.

The next rooms interior design was more like the clubs he was used to in the real world. Colorful neon lights everywhere with loud thuds booming from wall to wall, trying to outdo eachother and followed by single syllable music blasted by speakers. Lasers in all kinds of shapes and forms flew around, reflecting on the mirrors left and right, but none of this awakened in him the desire to dance and surrender to the approaching end, like the people around him did.

In this room of around 20 people, Chishiya’s observant eyes catched a familiar sight. The one of a girl he has seen on the beach, walking around from time to time and aside from that, keeping to herself.

The ex-beach member wouldn’t have thought that from all the survivors of the big ten of hearts game, it would be her who made it this far. He has played a few games where this girl participated in and while she made it to the end, it wasn’t like she played any big part or stood out in any way. At least not to him and Chishiya had an eye for interesting people.

She could have been a no one if Chishiya hasn’t seen her lurking around the hotels entrance sometimes. However, after following her around for a while, he had to come to the conclusion that she was, after all, just a boring no one, who tried to understand what happened to the live she once knew and how to adapt to this one.

His lips turned into an innocent smile, while his feet made fast work to approach her and in less than 10 minutes, he had her wrapped in his web and made her his partner in crime in case the game was about forming teams. Everything was possible and Chishiya was ready for whatever the game masters now came up with, no matter.

The girl introduced herself as Ivy, what Chishiya instantly knew was a lie by the long pause she took before answering him and her body language as she said the name, but the girl did good not to trust him from the get-go and tell him her whole life story, in case he planned to trick her and use her as decoy to get out of a deadly situation.

Chishiya didn’t miss the side eye she gave him and how Ivy never let him out of her sight while he was close.

Good girl, the dyed blond thought, smirking as she glanced sheepishly at him before parting to take a look at the other side of the slowly packing room. You are doing good not to trust me.

Chishiya was sure that his reputation had long made its way to her before she even left the beaches not very secure walls, and it was surely not a good one. After all he was known to use people for his advantage and this girl wouldn’t be different.

However, Ivy wasn’t long gone before wiggling her way thru the crowd back to him, telling him to follow her with a worried expression and twitching fingers grabbing the hem of her plain shirt tightly.

Chishiya did, making his way to where she came from, with Ivy in front of him leading the way, before both of them came to a halt in front of high glass doors that led to a different room with varnish and leather hanging from a huge X.

There was a small group that mostly blocked his view of what everyone was staring at, but Ivy grabbed Chishiya’s hand announced and pulled him further, using her small posture to wriggle around the noisy bodies that pressed her from side to side.

When Chishiya’s brown orbs finally got to see what visibly shocked everyone, he let out a long hmm, grabbing his new partner and pulling her back to the spot he stood before.

Ivy tried to protest, but Chishiya gave her no time. Soon, panic would start to break out and people would accuse eachother to be part of the closed rooms gruesome scene.

The bodies, the blood. A massacre. Cut off limbs and ripped out throats everywhere with shattered bottles and glass covering the red soaked carpet but nonetheless, what preoccupied Chishiya’s turning wheels the most, were the written letters on the otherwise completely clean surface that just didn’t want to swing open anymore.

Room clear. Next will follow.

Panic came as Chishiya predicted and people tried to leave the games venue, but the entrance was blocked, and the only way out was an elevator who’s cubic was at least 4 levels above and therefor unreachable.

That didn’t stop everyone tho. In the next 2 hours 4 people died thru stupid and imperfect tries to climb the elevator shaft, falling to their demise eventually.

“Idiots” Chishiya exclaimed taking a quick look down into the dark nothing, where another player just disappeared “If the doors don’t open, it means the game has started and there is no leaving until its cleared.”

Ivy’s own mindless tries stopped as soon as the second locked room was discovered, around 4 hours since Chishiya’s arrival and again, bodies, blood and people’s guts everywhere. To top things off, no sign of how things had happened.

For Chishiya’s watchful eyes, it was clear the people had killed eachother. The fact that most of the cut open corpses still carried glass shards or knives was indication enough, however no matter how long he starred thru the transparent glass, no lettering or hidden notes on the wall indicated the cause of death.

From then on people lost their shit entirely. Some tried to take over the situation as it always happened with people trying to bring good old law and order into a life and death situation. One man who identified himself as a police officer demanded everyone to split as far away apart as possible, so every single participant could be searched thru for bloodstains and weapons and what not, but his reasonable demands only put him on the wrong side of the spotlight and soon he found himself stabbed by two others that were convinced that he had killed everyone. After all, why else who he demands for people to give up guns and weapons if he wasn’t planning to kill more, right?

Chishiya couldn’t agree less with this logic, but the man died anyway trading his spotlight with the murderers. As more and more people started to accuse eachother, even Ivy standing next to him, following the stupid bickering all too overburdened with the situation, spoke up, protesting against the idea to chain every person scattered in different rooms and to some furniture, until it was clear who did what, but Chishiya stopped her mid-sentence, leaving the way too overcrowded room for a less occupied one and telling her to follow him.

“If you start giving ideas or keep objecting to others, they will get you on their radar and if things don’t turn out as expected you might die like the police guy” the blond man explained, his head gesturing towards the lifeless body of their past fellow player, while walking into the adjoined room with stuffed animals and rainbow shaped couches.

“So, what should I do? Stand around and do nothing while people die?” Ivy asked slightly enraged. Chishiya’s unmoved expression told her his exact answer without muttering a single word “Of course” a bitter smile creeping on her face and Chishiya straitened his shoulders for the impact that would leave him unharmed as always “That’s what you always do” the girl took a step back from her teammate, putting some much needed space between herself and the psychopathic blond “Letting people die around you until you find the answer and then just leaving the game with everyone dying behind” a normal person would now get angry by the hurtful accusations but Chishiya only smirked knowing what the girl was going to say next. They always did. Pointing fingers and call him heartless and what not and yeah maybe he was, but at least he was alive, unlike some of the more caring idiots that lost theirs due to lightning themselves on fire just to keep others warm “That’s awful. Only a monster would do such things and still feel nothing” Chishiya scoffed. His eyes traveled across the overly cutesy furniture “Then why did you agree to team up with me? A Monster. Kind of stupid don’t you think?”

Ivy shook her head as if she was trying to push and throw away the bad thoughts that implicated she might has made a deal with the devil “I don’t know” she confessed honest “Maybe I thought all the others told me some bullshit of just how selfish you really are or perhaps I thought that because I know you from the beach, it would be smarter to trust you then anyone else” this fact should have indeed told her otherwise. After all the beach has never been the promised Utopia Hatter had loved to paint it and no one, not even naïve young Ivy could have overlooked all the terrible things that happened on its terrain “Trusting anyone is always a bad choice” Chishiya stated and Ivy nodded slowly agreeing and looking the man in front of her up and down “Maybe” she said, turning to the side and Chishiya knew she would leave soon, not that he would stop her “But I would rather trust the wrong people and die then to life such a pathetic empty life as you” and with that she left.

Chishiya chuckled, looking after her as her small posture made its way into another room. She would come back, he knew, eventually. It was easy to say such things but when it comes to the desperate will to live, people would always throw someone else to the round just to be the last one standing. Ivy wouldn’t be different. No one ever was, no matter how high and mighty they liked to talk.

Chishiya went to search each room for signs again, discovering Ivy doing the same, tho he didn’t trust her perception and planned to go thru the rooms she already had searched again. No way he would put his life in the hands of someone who barely made it out of past games.

However, he needed her busy or she would lose her cool and flip her shit like all the other participants. That better not happen, the blond ex doctor thought. Not in case I still need you.

Tho he kept his eyes on her, just in case she was the dealer of the game and was planning to get rid of him or tempt other players to do so. After all, Chishiya didn’t saw Miras place in all the games either and here he was, fooled like everyone else.

When she did approach him after some time, carrying a bottle of some soda that she handed over like a good Samaritan, Ivy had nothing to share, beside some Latin words at the entrance that led to all the clubs’ rooms and just as Chishiya decided to take a look himself, the doors of the next room closed and didn’t open no matter how hard people pushed.

How stupid, Chishiya thought. People have already tried throwing chairs and other stuff in their fruitless attempts to open the doors, but apparently, they were made with great precautions, because not even after someone fired a gun aiming at the glass, did it break, or even showed so much as a crack. Instead, it not only bounced off, but also hit another player in the chest after grazing Ivy’s shoulder, who stood too close to the scene and killed the poor fool that just so happened to walk by, instantly.

Curtains fell over the door and for 30 minutes no one saw anything. No information’s of what was happening inside. Then, the curtains lifted, revealing yet another room full of dead players and people scattered around, sinking down on chairs like a bag of potatoes or bundled over in an embryo position, rocking back and forth.

3 Rooms gone, Chishiya counted, seven to go, including the one he was in right now. Chishiya’s eyes shifted towards his teammate, who swallowed hard. Her hand reached for his, but retracted before it could get to it, reminding herself of what kind of person he was and that there was no comfort to expect from him.

“We could be next” she whispered and Chishiya nodded, eyes scanning over the dead bodies he could see.

A lot of participants grabbed the next bottle and drunk themselves into delirium and to be honest, Chishiya could understand them.

This was supposed to be a game and a game always had a goal to win, but this one was more like the king of spades one. There were to specific rules, no instruction on how to play or what to do to clear it. No time limit either and no one knew who their opponent even was. The blimps huge cards showed the King of hearts, but no face has been shown yet. No one even knew if there was a human being behind this game. Chishiya still thought there had to be someone who pulled the strings.

The way he saw it, every 2 hours a room closed, no matter how many people were inside. Why those rooms? He couldn’t tell. There seemed to be no real reason so far and for now he just took it as a random generated choice until he knew more.

Another 3 rooms closed and Chishiya saw Ivy less and less often. Other players would have thought that she was breeding out some wicked plan or was the one behind all of this, but Chishiya knew human beings good enough.

Desperation was catching up on his teammate, making her pace around, blindly searching for any clues to make it out alive. He kept in mind to look for her every 2 hours so if his room was the unlucky one locking itself, he had her at least with him in case he needed her.

2 more rooms closed up and opened their curtains and the players grew less and less. Without no real rest, it was hard to stay calm all the time. Adrenlin pumping thru veins while eyes shifted nervously from person to person, looking for the one who pushed the buttons. Everyone, beside Chishiya, who always kept his cool no matter what.

He saw people fighting against eachother, trying to push others out of the places they had taken right next to the doors. Everyone hoped that, in case the room closed, they only had to be fast enough, sliding thru the small gap away from the source of fire but that was just another stupid idea. Then more and more players disappeared towards the entrance, only to not be seen ever again.

Chishiya knew where they went. His fellow players got so frightened by the unknown that they rather chose to throw away all hope and take the death they knew. All hope. Chishiya titled his head, standing at one of the red velvet rooms walls.

He read something about hope somewhere since he joined this game but the more he tried to remember it, the harder the thought seemed to fight his grasp.

Strange, the self-called genius proclaimed to himself, slowly realizing that more and more of his thoughts seemed to slip away.

Before Chishiya had the chance to really think about it, he spotted Ivy’s face in the crowed fighting thru the mass in his direction. Her face was red, and she seemed to breath heavily. That got him alarmed immediately and he gave up his leaning statue position to walk slow steps towards her direction.

When she finally reached him, she had a hard time breathing. Her hair was sticking to her sweating cheeks as she looked at him, mouth forming words he couldn’t hear.

“What?” he screamed at her, a hand reaching out to hold her in place as Chishiya leaned his head closer to understand her better.

“We have to get out of here” she said and Chishiya looked at her confused, her lips formed the word “Now” as her voice was swallowed by the crowed.

He didn’t have time to comprehend the meaning of them as Ivy suddenly leaned forward, pressing the same mumbling lips on his, kissing him furiously. Wait, what?

Chishiya was taken aback and for a moment, too long for his own liking, he let her proceed. The blond reached for Ivy’s face with both his hands, trying to push her away from him, but instead he found himself, pulling her closer, kissing her back, his tongue devouring the inside of her mouth eagerly.

Now that was unexpected, he thought.

Her hands left her own sides and reached for his chest, scraping over his black shirt and greedy going lower until he felt them slipping under the fabric, touching, and seizing the sensitive skin down to his V Line and the careful trimmed hair. Her small fingers tugged at the hem of his pants, all impatient and Chishiya’s head screamed to push her away. To grab said hands and pull them off him.

This was no place for this kind of act. Besides, there was nothing on said girl that excited him, even the slightest, to start this kind of play with her. Not at the beach and most definitely not in this kind of venue, but he didn’t stop her.

Chishiya made no move to fight her. Said nothing to put her back in her place or let her know that she was indeed the last person he would consider getting intimate with.

Right here, right now? He thought, as he felt fingers opening the knots of his black joggers’ cords, finding the opening instantly and slipping past his underwear down right to his manhood.

Chishiya gasped at the unexpected feeling of her grabbing him, but he didn’t have much time to think about it as she already started moving her fingers around him, pumping him steady while surrounded by a crowd of strangers and kissing him as if they knew eachother for a long time.

He moaned into her mouth. His right hand grabbing one of her arms and nails dug deep into the soft fat of her skin, but he didn’t stop her movements. Didn’t rip her hand out of the boxers confinement and made to fuss as her thumb rubbed impatiently over the tip of his growing member, spreading the beads of precum and wetting his cock while stroking him to her liking.

“What…what are you…doing?” he asked between kisses and other sounds that escaped his mouth way too quickly and grunting as her hold on him tightened, massaging him ambitiously and, how he had to agree, nicely and with good knowledge. That was one thing he could give her.

“The Air” Ivy answered equally breathing hard and feeling the prominent thick vein under her pads pulsing and pumping more and more blood into the rising tent, but Chishiya didn’t understand “The Vents” she said this time, taking his hand into hers and squeezing absurdly painful, while the other made to attempts to stop her actions on him.

Ivy looked into dark orbs and his brain told him that there was something wrong with the way her eyes starred at him. They seemed glazed, brighter than their usual color and her pupils were strangely dilated. More and more sweat was forming on her cheeks and forehead, running down to her jaw and dripping away. The sight somehow electrified Chishiya and he felt himself arousing at the thought where else she was possibly dripping.

“I need you” husky words whispered towards him “Now” pressing her lips on his anew and opening her mouth to allow Chishiya a tour he hasn’t asked for. “I don’t understand” Chishiya mumbled in between his own grunts, sounding stupid and horny in his own ears. He felt like the air was sucked out of his lungs by Ivy and his brain was no help at all. For some reason his body wasn’t moving the way it was told and he was alarmingly unbothered by that fact.

Chishiya felt a pull that got him out of his worrying thoughts, as Ivy dragged him towards the Bar. As they reached it, he was surprised but not aversed as he watched her lifting her skirt and taking of her panties in a hurry, throwing them somewhere he didn’t see, because his eyes were locked on her clothed cunt, awaiting the possible view he could get. She then set down on a stool and pulled him by his shirt towards her, spreading her legs so he could fit right into the space between them with obvious want and Chishiya gasped mentally.

She wasn’t going to do what he thought she would, would she? WOULD SHE?

Chishiya had a hard time, literally, following his own thoughts, but everything in him screamed that this was wrong. Something was happening, but he couldn’t follow the leads to find the bigger picture. His brain was too much in a daze to concentrate properly on anything else than his urge to fuck Ivy right then and there. To be inside of her and finally feeling the luring heat of her warm walls around him, flexing and hopefully not letting go until he came with all his balls could offer.

And he didn’t have the strength to fight this urge either, as he felt her work on his pants again, pushing them down just enough for his erect member to come free and smack against his stomack. When did he get hard? How did this happen? Chishiya wasn’t the kind of guy who oh so easily got excited by some girl in tight clothes, less if the circumstances didn’t fit his demands like right now.

They were in a game. He could die every minute and Ivy too, but his body didn’t seem to care, pumping blood in his lower region with an impressive speed.

“Can’t…stop” the girl whispered, pulling him flush against herself and harshly planting sloppy open-mouthed kisses one after the other. Her Skirt rode up with every grind Chishiya made against her sex, revealing more and more skin but not offering him one glance at what his cock desired the most now.

“Me neither” Chishiya hissed when the red leaking tip of his length poked the plum flesh of her inner thighs, leaving small droplets of milky white pre-cum and smearing it around as his hips rocked back and forth on a desperate search for friction of any kind “What are you doing with me?” the sultry spoken words were born rather out of confusion from the dyed blond man then out of lust. He positioned himself between her thighs as this was an everyday thing. Fucking her in a Club surrounded by people.

For some unknown but worrisome reason, Chishiya couldn’t care less. He sighed deliciously smiling in the most handsome way Ivy has ever seen someone do in her presence, as Chishiya got the tiniest peak of what could await him. After rocking desperately into nothing, struggling to keep his posture for much longer, his dick found the soaking wet place of her cunt, gliding up and down along her folds and spreading the incredible mess Ivy had created onto him, coating every millimeter of his penis for what was to come. It felt like heaven and Chishiya trembled at the thought of how good her pussy could feel, if what he had gotten yet was already so fueling, it left him gasping for air. Literally.

His hands pushed her skirt up entirely, sparking another smile to his face and revealing the lustful cunt that he craved now more than staying alive. As he reached with one hand for her face guiding it to his mouth, Ivy sobbed, tears spilling at the edges of every eyelid, running down her flushed cheeks and onto his hands while she whimpered his answer “I don’t know, Chishiya.” The other one went to her waist, holding her in position, so she couldn’t back away once he started, and he did. With one swift move, no preparation, no getting used to his size, just one move and he was fully inside her.

Ivy yelped in pain, and he liked it. He liked the way she screamed when he was so deep inside her, he could feel her pulse around his cock, beating at the sound of her heartbeat. It turned him on even more then her body ever could “Chishiya stop” Ivy whispered as he pulled all back, but her body betrayed her words. Legs wrapped around his waist, locking him in place and making sure he too couldn’t leave. His tip fell out of her weeping cunt, dropping heavily a few centimeters and arranging a wet squelching sound as her entrance closed and opened again like a living breathing being.

“I can’t” Chishiya panted, titling his hips upwards so his dick raised back to the hole he oh so desired, plunging all in for a second time and listening vulgar at every brutal scream he coaxed out of her body, only to repeat his actions again and again in an agonizing slow way. Ivy’s eyes were shut with force. More and more tears formed around the lids, running down her face and poisoning the ex-doctors mind with thoughts of how hard her tears would spill if he had gone for her throat instead of her pussy. Just as the salty liquid was about to run down her cheeks, he liked them away.

Disgusting, Chishiya thought, but his inside felt turned on by the taste, giving Ivy a few sadistic ruthless trusts “You look so fucking good…mhmm…so damn good, I want to eat you up” words that could very much be interpreted as thrilling dirty talk, were instead said with a morbid and animalistic want to really bite into her flesh and chew on what he could rip out. It was bizarre and Chishiya felt a small part of him was deeply appalled at his own thought, but the more prominent part, the one that had the upper hand right now, making him fuck a girl he didn’t give the minimum of courtesy and treat her to a drink before screwing her lascivious on a chair and seriously contemplating about how tasty Ivy would be if only he could get a tiny bit of her between his teeth. Just the thought alone was so savory it made his mouth water at the sight of her shoulder. His pelvis smacked against her clit, thrilled her body and transported her closer and closer to the euphoria Chishiya’s actions promised.

The blond himself couldn’t be less and more overjoyed at the same time as possible. His body and mind, usually in sync, were now competing against each other. Pushing him towards the joyous extasy his lower abdomen was craving so much but also wishing for nothing more than that it stops. The want to do absurd things he had never even thought about, less felt kinky on, flooded his brain, swearing up and down that he would feel stimulation of his life if he just gave in and plunge his teeth into Ivy’s poor neck. Aching him to try just one bite. It couldn’t hurt right?

Well fucking yes, it will god damn it hurt like hell for the tormented girl and Chishiya knew it. He knew it like he knew the laws of physics and still. His mind swore again and again how tender she would taste. Just a little. One will be okay right? One bite. Just one.

While Chishiya was against everything happening right now, the display of sexual activities in public was at the top of his list, his body seemed to enjoy every second of it. Even craved it. He felt his right hand moving to her chest massaging one breast, pinching, and squeezing her abused nipple nonstop and way harsher then needed. He couldn’t stop tho. He rolled the small, hardened bud between thumb and index finger, pulling unnecessary at it and what should have brought Ivy pleasure only rose more sobbed pleads and repeating “Chishiya it hurts.”

Ivy was a mess. His bodyweight almost crushed her as he leaned further onto her, bending her back over the cushioned seat. The harsh way he trusted into her, screwing a girl raw for the first time in his life without any kind of protection fucking her so forcefully it obviously pained her audibly. All of that should make him stop. He wasn’t the kind of man for such acts. Wasn’t into forcing himself on anyone. He got no pleasure into seeing people hurt or scream in pain, but then again, Chishiya couldn’t tell a time he was more aroused then right now.

He should be ashamed. This was so not him right not. Not his usual self. The blond could tell the same about Ivy, tho he didn’t know her that well. It was like someone else had taken her body hostage. Someone who didn’t minded getting her brain fucked hard, even enjoyed it and Ivy couldn’t stop it from happening. Not that Chishiya would let her go. Ever.

It hurt so much, the way he was pounding into her and still, she pulled him closer, kissed him deeper, pressed her heels into his back, so he couldn’t get away, wouldn’t get away from fucking her.

Pained whines, one after the other, escaped her mouth, tho as Ivy opened her lips, it wasn’t Stop that came out of it, but the Word “Harder” and Chishiya complied.

He put one hand on the bar to support himself as he leaned further onto his very new teammate, trusting at a higher speed. This felt so wrong.

Ivy threw her head into her neck screaming louder, no moans, just painful screams and he knew, he just knew she didn’t enjoy the way he fucked her. His brain was telling him, the signs were all there. The tears, the screams, the way her fists clenched so hard into his outstretched arm, her knuckles turned completely white. Her inside was practically milking him with the way it was non-stop clenching and pulling him back, begging for more.

The signs were all there, but his body didn’t care and hers didn’t either. “I want you so much” Chishiya whispered, leaning forward and sloppy kissing the shoulder he eyed for so long after grabbing her shirts string and pulling it down the whole length of her arm. She tastes salty, what was only logic after all the liquid her body was sweating out like it was mid-summer heat, however the aroma didn’t rapture his doing. He kissed up and down along every little part of her shoulder, running his tongue along her neck and slurping like he could suck her blood out of her body, if only he could kiss her harder.

However, Chishiya’s intrusive thoughts won over his aversion to pain someone who hasn’t done anything against him nor was standing in his way of survival. He was surprised how brutal he was as he bit the soft part of her shoulder way too hard. Teeth tearing into skin, then flesh, drawing unnecessary blood that he licked and sipped away eagerly, only to dig deeper until he was sure, his whites had grazed a bone and he finally stopped. He gulped the liquid down his throat taking a good look down at the visible mark he created and realizing with definitely not enough shock that he could make out every single one of his teeth perfectly aligned and molded into Ivy forever “I want to ruin you”, he made his nonsense of thoughts space, watching in horror how Ivy laughed at his statement seemingly happy, but sobs broke every single one of her small fits as she pulled him down again, tasting her own flavor on his lips.

“I don’t want to die” she whispered before laughing maniacally again and kissing him so feverously he stopped his hips for a moment, falling completely into the act and forgetting for a moment how wrong this was, until they parted, and she mumbled so quiet against his lips, he almost didn’t hear it “Please don’t kill me Chishiya.”

He heard her, he really did, but the blond man somehow couldn’t care. The bite. He licked a long stripe over the wound, his tongue circling over it, stopping her healing process and drawing further spilling blood. It must have hurt a lot, he thought, because it was bleeding like crazy. He licked the blood away again, kissing the spot, as his eyes wander around. That’s when he caught sight of his surroundings and the sudden view mixed with the meaning of what he saw, shook him to his bones.

People have lost their minds. Everyone was fucking insanely, screwing eachother over broken furniture and it was not in a good way. Some were going at it, punching each other while their bodies smacked loudly against one another. One couple was moving in the same position he and Ivy did, just that the guy was purposely ramming a broken piece of glass into the woman’s throat, not stopping while she cackled maniacally and kissed him wildly, aggressively ripping out parts of his tongue and chewing on it like it was the most delicious thing she ever had.

His eyes moved further along to a guy behind the bar right in front of him. He had a girl down on her knees with her arms loosely hanging around her body, while he trusted into her mouth grunting and growling, holding her in place by the tight grip on her jaw. She was dead. Chishiya knew it by the way her hands swayed back and forth with the man’s movement but he didn’t seem to mind it. Parts of Chishiya even believed he enjoyed it as much as the blond man reveled in the sight.

It weirdly reminded him of a doll. That was crazy. The people around him were killing each other while screwing violently. Everyone was crazy. And to his own shock, Chishiya had to come to the conclusion that he also had gone crazy with his acts and the fact he felt no real remorse beside that tiny shrilling part of his brain that begged him again and again, to please stop his actions. They had already gone so far. Please, his brain pleased with him, but Chishiya was unable to follow, no matter how much he wanted, and he did want to, as he looked down on Ivy, bleeding from her shoulder, screaming while he couldn’t stop himself pounding her harder and harder.

Realization hit him. He was going to kill her.

Chishiya already felt the urge for his hand to grab her throat. As soon as he couldn’t suppress that anymore, he would probably squeeze her so hard, choking her, while still not stopping from filling her cunt with his cock again and again. Maybe, he thought, as his eyes went to the people around him again, maybe he would still be going after he killed her.

Chishiya didn’t feel his release coming. No urge for it. Just an animalistic necessary to fuck her as hard as he could. His eyes went up and landed on the ceiling and then again, realization, as his eyes made out the vent in the corner.

That’s what Ivy tried to tell him. Something was pumped thru the vents into the room, making everyone go crazy on each other. In his head he was going thru all existing gas-like drugs that could cause such a behavior. His body moving meanwhile on autopilot.

He felt bad. The way he was hurting her... It wasn’t on purpose, but they were still his hands grabbing her right leg, pulling it over his shoulder so he could get a better angle and going deeper and harder, while angling her further and kneading her breast while she trashed in front of him, but still pulled him closer, calling out and begging him to stop with the same voice that told him to not do it. His fingers pulling her hair back with so much force he was sure her neck should have snapped. Nails digged so hard into the tender skin of her exposed tights, it started bleeding and still, he didn’t stop it. Couldn’t bring himself to do it, no matter what. He dug harder, caused her so much discomfort, Ivy had a hard time breathing between all the sobs and screams.

Chishiya glimpsed at her chest and the way it was raising in distress. It turned him on and made him want to puke at the same time. How long until she broke under him?

If he kept bending her over that stool the way he did, it wouldn’t be long until he would snap her spine in half. That would be terrible. She wouldn’t die right away but it would rather make her unable to move. Chishiya decided he couldn’t wait any longer, he had to do something, or he would be soon humping a dead corpse.

His mind was reaching for the last thought he had. A part of him remembered that he had discovered something, just before the effect of the drug apparently kicked in and Ivy had found him.

Ivy. He would kill her after screwing her and he didn’t even know her real name. What would have happened if she hadn’t found him? Would someone else already stabbed her to death while impaling her small body on his cock?

Or would she be the one on top, scratching the poor guy’s eyes out while rutting her hips back and forth? Was she going to plug his out? Chishiya imagined her tiny fingers plunging into his eye sockets, ripping every eyeball out separately. Goosebumps formed on his body but the thought of watching her doing this turned him disgustingly on. Chishiya pushed those thoughts away. They were distracting and not helpful at all.

His mind grabbed and reached for the aha moment. What was it again? Something…Somewhere…fucking…shit. Chishiya had to come to the conclusion that his mind was unable to think about anything else then its carnal desire to pump this female body under him with his cock, watching her switch between screams and cries for more and begging him to please not stop, while trashing around helplessly.

Instead, Chishiya ripped his eyes away from this sight. His stomachs insides were circling around, and it didn’t help to constantly remind himself of his upcoming doom if he wasn’t able to come up with something as a plan to restrain himself in any way possible.

His gaze went over the rapidly decreasing number of survivors. Less than 7 people were still standing, at least somehow. 2 pairs were going at eachother in the corner of Chishiya’s eyes. At the other side, two females were murderously making out with a guy. One blew him while the other was chewing on his jaw, ripping parts of skin and flesh out and eating him alive, while all the man was doing nothing else then lying there and smiling in a disturbing bloody way. His lips, at least the parts that were still there, widened as he catched sight of Chishiya looking at him, waving him over and inviting to also have a snack.

No thanks, the blond thought, cannibalism has never been one of his kinks.

Instead, something else catched his attention. A door behind the threesome couple and Chishiya went thru his head where it could be leading. His mind was slow while his hips picked up their pace. And then it hit him. The thought he had before all of this started.

Hope. Chishiya’s face contorted bitterly at the obvious fact. This game was meant for people to lose all hope and kill eachother. The less they fought against the drug and with that against the urge to kill, the less they would have to endure pain and agony at watching people die by their own hands. A true heart game.

He remembered that Ivy had told him that the only note-like thing she found were Latin words at the entrance and at one of Chishiya’s rounds thru the games venue he had seen them. His mind recalled the words, pressing them to the surface with want -> Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate <-

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” Chishiya mumbled the words translated. A sentence that according to Dante was written over the gate that led to hell.

Chishiya pressed his forehead against Ivy’s sweaty one, laughing relieved but also a tad nervous. This was the hint he had been searching for and he overlooked it the whole time. If the phrase was written over the door frame that led to all the clubs, it meant that the clubs were meant to be hell and thus, to escape hells influence, one must get out of it.

The lobby. The only save space, because it was the room before the words welcomed every participant into hell, but how was he supposed to get there now that the room has closed itself up.

Chishiya’s clouded brain reminded him of the couple of 3 murderous players, but he didn’t want to think about them, pushing it aside. However, something in his mind was bugging him to go over it again and as Chishiya finally gave in and looked at the still overly disturbing view his eyes widen at the door behind them. It wasn’t supposed to be there.

It was none of the glass-like ones that led one room to the other and back and Chishiya couldn’t remember seeing it somewhere else. However. There was one of the heavy velvet curtains right next to it, so maybe he hasn’t seen it because it was hidden all the time?

Whatever it was, since there was no other way out, this door had to be the one leading to some, hopefully, safe space away from this literal hell. An idea came to his mind.

Chishiya straightened his posture as good as he could. He reached for the nearest glass, grabbing it and fighting the urge to slay Ivy with it. Instead, he pulled it at himself, crashing at his head so hard it broke and shattered in countless pieces.

The sudden impact made his body stop its movement, tumbling a few steps back.

Ah yes, pain, he thought, trying to control his breathing. He saw changes in the corner of his eyes and when he looked up, his brown orbs catched Ivy sitting up. The right side of her shirt was hanging loosely. Apparently, he had ripped it without realizing it. Her body was shaking with sobs while she looked at him questioning why he had stopped what she probably craved just as much as he did.

3 fast steps, that’s all it took him to get to her, putting his hands around her throat.

There was pressure from his squeezing, but he wasn’t choking her yet. The shock in her eyes was painful. She knew he was going to kill her now, she likely concluded this by herself, but seeing him going at her that way must be a different thing. He leaned his forehead against hers. Her helpless whimper only broken by a soft-spoken Word “Chishiya.”

He kissed her hard, no love, no caring, just lips on lips. Ivy’s mouth opened and his tongue pressed against hers in a lewd and sinful way that he would have enjoyed if his next thought wasn’t to bite it off “Run” Chishiya whispered what catched her attention “Run away from me.”

He grabbed a sharp piece of the glass he had shattered at his head and stabbed himself into his torso “The door” he hissed uncomfortable. His head gestured in the direction of the 3 now almost lifeless bodies. Ivy followed his gaze, landing on the same spot and somehow, she seemed to understand quicker than the blond man himself. Chishiya pressed the sharp piece deeper, eliciting another stinging wave of pain.

It hurt and it bled instantly but he would be okay. After all, the ex-doctor knew exactly were to puncture without harming any vital organs. He groaned and in one swift move threw Ivy off the stool “Run” he screamed again, turning the glass in its wound to increase the pain.

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