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angelaiswriting · 2 years

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Stage Love | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: (kind of eventual?) Park Joong-gil x fem!reader (mentions of fwb!Lim Ryung-gu x fem!reader, mentions of past Park Joong-gil x Koo Ryeon)

✏️ Summary: it’s supposed to be just work, but what happens when you actually start falling for the Park Joong-gil?

✏️ A/N: this is what happens when @kind-wolf goes on a tangent with some random AU and I dish out The Sex 😂 I also hope this drama actually has a fandom :’) (I also did go on a tangent with this, so it’ll have a part two hopefully soon.)

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff (I guess), slowburn, and smut, so 18+ only. Fwb stuff, fingering f/r, oral m/r and f/r, dry-humping, female masturbation, alcohol, food ? PJG is one sexy mf and everyone falls for him. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 21k

✏️ Extra: I actually saw this on IG a few days ago and thought it’d fit well with this fic. Worth checking out imo 👀

PART ONE >> part two | part three

The surge of post-performance adrenaline is still rushing through your veins when you plop down onto the back seat of Joong-gil’s van. All the dancing on stage, rubbing into him in some parts of the choreography, the flashing lights, the audience – it all has you wired and buzzing, ready to take on anything the rest of the night might throw your way.

What’s even better, your manager has given you the night off to celebrate the foreseen (albeit still unbelievable) success of your new collab stage with one of the most wanted solo singers of Korea’s music scene, and his manager is currently standing outside the car, getting the last recommendations before you’re off for the night.

“You did well tonight,” Park Joong-gil says, sliding in and sitting down next to you.

He’s already making quick work of buckling his seatbelt when you correct, “we did well,” with a grin on your face. Despite the subtle scent of the still-lingering petrichor, you’re still so wired that your body doesn’t even register the chilly air blowing into the van in the few seconds it takes your fellow artist to pull the door closed. “I mean, after all these months I knew tonight’s performance would be awesome, but I wasn’t expecting for the fans to love it so much!” You’re pumped, barely able to put one thought after the other as you grin up at him.

Next to you, he chuckles low under his breath. “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

You don’t even have the chance to see him miraculously half-smile: you’re bowing your head and waving goodbye to your manager, the bracelets on your wrist clinking against each other, and nodding when she gestures a ‘call me when you’re home’. She can’t hear you from inside the van, but she does catch on to you giving her the thumbs up.

“So, do you have any place in mind to go celebrate or can I pick one?” Joong-gil presses on, turning around to pick one of his hoodies from the rack in the back. The adrenaline will wear off sooner rather than later, and he doesn’t want you catching a cold because of the light outfit you wore on stage.

“Your choice, I’m not picky,” you nod, typing a quick I’ll tell you everything tomorrow to let your mother know not to wait up for your call. She’s always been your number one fan, and despite the fact that she would have wanted for you to pick a more traditional career path, she’s always supported you more than anyone else ever did.

“Good, I know a place safe enough.”

You don’t have time to ask what he means by ‘safe’ – guessing wouldn’t be too hard, though, what with that stupid ten-line article assuming this collaboration stems from a secret relationship between the two of you and the few comments it managed to garner before both your and Joong-gil’s agencies had it deleted. You don’t have the time to ask, and that’s because he’s shoving his black hoodie into your lap a second before he impatiently knocks on the side window to catch his manager’s attention.

“I’m good, don’t worry.”

“Take it, Yun-ho won’t come with us. I can only take you back home on my bike, unless you’d rather get a cab.”

It’s then that his manager, Yun-ho, gets into the car and turns back around with a grin on his face.

“Jumadeung?” he simply asks as you’re left sitting there with Joong-gil’s hoodie in your lap.

It’s almost warm against the bare skin of your stomach, and you’re torn between the realization that this is the first time he’s shown some sort of care towards you outside of the studio in the long months of preparation that led to this comeback and the curiosity lying underneath the fact that you have no goddamn clue what a Jumadeung even is.

As it turns out, Jumadeung is the name of a bar located one story below Seoul in what, at first sight, looks very well like an abandoned building. If it wasn’t for Joong-gil being there with you and giving you a semblance of security, you would have run the other way.

The cul-de-sac Yun-ho steers into is a dark and narrow alleyway, and when you get out of the van right after Joong-gil, your boots stomping right into a puddle left behind by the early evening storm, you decide you don’t even want to know what’s at the end of it – rats? Seoul’s lowlife? Death reapers? Yeah, no thanks, you’ll happily pass.

The air really is chilly, however, and you’re suddenly glad you accepted Joong-gil’s offer of wearing his sweatshirt because now, underneath the thick cotton of it, you can feel gooseflesh tug at the hairs on your arms.

“Are you…” You turn around with a surprised gasp when you hear the sound of his van driving away, and you scurry forward until you’re childishly holding onto the back of Joong-gil’s leather jacket. “Are you secretly a serial killer?” you whisper, furtively looking around to mentally check for quick ways out.

Don’t accept candy from strangers and don’t get into strangers’ cars, you hear your mother scold you, twenty or so years ago, after you had just moved for the first time to a new house in Busan. Oh boy, if only she could see you now!

But Joong-gil chuckles, turning to look at you from above his right shoulder before he shakes his head in amusement.

“You know I have money. No need to kidnap me if you want it!” You keep the tone of your voice light and airy, and laugh – after all, you’ve mastered the art of coming off as though you have a hold of the situation – but you still suspiciously eye the closed dry-cleaner you spot as soon as you step foot into the building.

“I also do have money,” he laughs, taking a turn to the left to walk past an empty shop with a big ‘for sale’ sign on the dirty glass door. “Our collab will bring me more than kidnapping you might. So…”

“Of course, I was just kidding,” you shrug, letting go of his jacket and taking a few quick steps so that you can walk side by side with him. That’s not very reassuring is what you were on the verge of saying but you manage to bite your tongue and get a grip on yourself. Nevertheless, there’s still a spark of uneasiness twisting your insides into knots when he starts walking down a dimly lit set of stairs.

You’re almost tempted to just turn around and bolt your way out of there, but you didn’t exactly pay attention to your surroundings on the way here and you wouldn’t know which way to go before he catches up to you. After all, you were too preoccupied with texting back to your closest friends and confirming to your manager that yes, you’re gonna be safe and that yes, you’re gonna stay glued to Joong-gil’s side like a mussel to a rock, so she really has nothing to worry about.

Well, think again.

The man in question looks up at you from the bottom of the staircase when he notices you haven’t been following him and you see the way he tries his damndest not to snicker in your face. “C’mon down, I’m no serial killer.”

“Sounds exactly like something a serial killer would say,” you reply with fake laughter in your voice as you grab the railing with your left hand, just to immediately regret it when you feel how sickeningly sticky it is against your skin.

“Jumadeung’s just a bar,” he sighs, walking up three steps before stretching an arm out in your direction and making you feel like you’re being too dramatic. “Others like us come here for the privacy,” he continues. “Jade’s not exactly… keen on the paps and the whole ‘overstepping boundaries’ part of our job, so we’re good. No risk of other articles like that one.”

That one – he says it in a way that brings you back to when that article came out. The PR team of your agency managed to screencap it before they had it taken down in no time. Still, he was furious, and didn’t show up at meetings for a whole week and a half, leaving you to work in the studio alone. It made you wonder whether being caught up in a dating scandal with you really was that bad, but you managed to overcome that quickly enough. After all, you’re well aware of your worth. Always have been.

“Alright.” If he picks up on the uneasiness in your voice, he doesn’t show it.

Ah, fuck it! He has a cute-enough face, you think, trying to be reasonable and not let the true crime shows you watch in the dead of night on screen-share calls with your best friend in Busan get to you.

You walk down the steps and accept his outstretched hand, allowing him to pull you along with him. A swift turn to the right, and there’s a long corridor lit with what feels like hundreds of colorful fairy lights that lead closer and closer to the source of the faint music you can now hear. It’s like walking towards a portal to another dimension, the atmosphere in this corridor is completely different from that of the rest of the building – warm, peaceful, like there’s no safer place than this in Seoul.

“Okay, the whole bar story seems a lot more believable now,” you chuckle, forcing a smile to stretch on his lips in turn.

“See? Told ya,” he teases as he pulls the door open and the warmth of the bar wafts right into your face.

The music is louder here, but still at a reasonable volume that would allow you to have a comfortable conversation with him but probably not hear what the patrons sitting at other tables are saying.

“I’d go wash my hand if I were you, by the way. The rest of this building isn’t exactly famous for being clean,” he says, quickly letting go of your right hand all of a sudden.

His words don’t leave you the time to look around – not that you would have understood the reason behind that sudden lack of contact anyway – for your gaze shoots down to your left hand almost as though it’s a magnet. The skin of your palm still does feel sticky in the most uncomfortable way.

“Ew!”

You quickly walk down the side corridor he points out to dash into what you hope is a clean bathroom. And it really is. It’s a stark contrast with the rest of the building, or the very little part of it you’ve managed to get a glimpse of when you dramatically thought you were walking the last stretch to the gallows.

The foamy soap smells fruity when you start scrubbing your hands, and there are other fairy lights reflecting in the wall-sized mirror the counter with the sinks is standing against. The stalls behind you are a simple deep burgundy color and from how all doors are pushed open, you can see you’re alone in here. It gives you the time to finally breathe and get a good look at yourself in the mirror.

What was a perfectly clean make-up look at the beginning of the night, before your performance on stage, is now slightly smudged and lighter, but the fairy-dust glitter on your face is still there, glimmering underneath the blinking fairy lights. Joong-gil’s black hoodie perfectly matches with the black cargo pants they gave you for tonight’s stage – definitely not your favorite kind of outfit, but it is still very comfortable to dance in – and the black, vine-like (but unfortunately fake) tattoo slithering its way around your wrists all the way to the pulled-back sleeves around your elbows.

You’re dabbing your hands dry with paper towels when your phone vibrates in the pocket of your pants. When you unlock it, it’s your best friend asking for your whereabouts – and dusting off that crush you’ve always had on Park Joong-gil and that you had to hide ten thousand meters deep.

[11:47 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: i know he’s famous and all, but if he’s a perv, i’m coming all the way to Seoul to kick his sexy sorry ass.

It makes you laugh – she’d probably be late to your death, but at least you know she’d have your back. She’s always had it, ever since you joined her ballet classes when you were a child up until you left Busan to pursue music.

[11:48 PM] you: proof i’m still alive!

You quickly shoot back, and while still chuckling, you attach a mirror selfie.

[11:48 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: cool! but whose hoodie is that?! didn’t know you were into others’ merch.

[11:49 PM] you: yeah he took me to a nice bar in a shady building. i’ll update you when i’m back home! if ever lol

[11:50 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: he? Park Joong-gil?!

Your reply is a quick yep, and you’re still laughing quietly when you sit down in the booth Joong-gil’s picked.

“Something happened back there?” he asks, picking up on your hilarity and leaning to the side to shoot a quick glance in the direction of the bar’s restrooms.

“Just my friend,” you shrug, taking your (his) sweatshirt off when the stuffiness of Jumadeung finally gets to you. “She thinks she’s funny,” you grin. “You’ve met her. Sort of. The one I was on a call with that day in the dance studio.”

He laughs. “Oh, yeah, I remember her. What was she asking? Something about you getting great head, no?”

His words – or probably more the fact that he actually remembers that embarrassing bit of the conversation when your phone accidentally connected back to the bluetooth system of the dance studio – take you so much by surprise that your hand jerks a little and spills some soju on the table by his glass.

You groan, filling your glass and turning your head to the side to bottom it up. “Damn, how the hell do you even remember that?” you manage to ask from behind your hands, currently hiding your burning face from him.

It was a late night two months into the two of you working together, after you both agreed to turn your one-song collab deal into a full album after seeing how flawlessly you worked together between songwriting, producing, and dancing. Joong-gil had gone down to the front desk to pick up your food delivery, and you had taken the opportunity to call Bit-na back after the three missed calls she had left on your phone that day.

Everything was going smoothly, with you asking her about her date and her asking you about… well, yours, even though it was more like a friendly hook-up than anything with actual feelings. It was then that Joong-gil had walked in, put the bags down onto the table, and accidentally touched something on the laptop you were using to play the music. His mistake had paired back your phone to the system after you had enabled it that afternoon, and the rest apparently became history when Bit-na’s cheerful, “I can’t believe you’re getting great head with him and I can’t even get a boyfriend” sounded all around the studio and you felt yourself being swallowed up by the floor as you watched Joong-gil’s back tense in the mirror for a moment before he let out a cackle.

After that night, you both silently agreed to never bring that accident up and, to say the truth, you had started to forget all about it. That is, well, until tonight.

“Hey, it’s all right!” Joong-gil chuckles, pulling your hands away from your face and handing you your refilled glass. “Drink up before you combust right in front of me.”

“God, I can’t believe you had to hear that, or that you even remember,” you groan, covering your eyes with one hand and clicking your tongue at the bitterness of your drink. “I hoped you’d have forgotten by now.”

He laughs again, careful not to be too loud, before he downs his soju. “Where did the sensual Y/N that danced and sang on that stage end up?”

You glare at him with mock annoyance before snorting. “I can be both sensual and embarrassed at the same time. One doesn’t necessarily cancel the other.”

He smirks, “fair enough.”

It’s silent for a heartbeat, and then there’s a middle aged woman – Jade, you assume after a while – standing by your table, wearing an apron around her waist that has a marble pattern printed on it in the hues of ivory and gold. “I saw your stage on tv,” she says, first glancing at Joong-gil and then at you from behind her sparkly glasses. “Joong-gil told me how great of a performer you were, but I was still pleasantly impressed,” she grins.

Blood rushes to your cheeks, but you want to brush it down to the warmth of the place, or to the fact that someone is complimenting you without going over the moon in the attempt to. It’d be unhealthy to think you’re flustered because he’s apparently spoken highly of you – or of you in general – to someone he knows, because that would bring back the first sparks of that crush you started to develop on him through all the time you’ve spent together for this new album – and even before that.

“Thank you,” you reply with a bow of your head, quickly glancing up at your friend before you notice the plate of chocolate cake the woman’s putting down on your table.

“He’s also mentioned you thought he was taking you to your death earlier,” she continues.

Her words make your head fall into your hands in the third attempt at hiding yourself tonight. “I’m really sorry. With how the building and the neighborhood look, I really thought-”

“It’s alright.” She’s chuckling, so you figure it’s not that bad, or at least that she hasn’t taken offense to that. “I know how the first impression can be. It’s part of the reason why no one knows about this place. People that need a hide-out find me through word-of-mouth, that’s what matters.”

You nod, not knowing what to say but thankful for her being so understanding, and she leaves.

“You really had to tell her, didn’t you?” you pout, picking up one of the golden spoons and digging into your shared slice of cake. You love a good source of chocolate after a performance that has made you stress out as much as tonight’s stage did: Joong-gil’s known for never doing collaborations, and you’ve been agonizing about the reaction his fans would have when you’d finally perform together live for the first time. You try to suppress the smile this cake brings onto your lips: you suddenly recall telling him of this sort of tradition you have, and you can’t believe he’s actually remembered. He seems to be particularly good at that when that realization starts making you feel dangerously warm inside.

He’s smiling when you look up at him, and for the first time you realize he’s never really smiled at you before. Sure, there have been tight smiles or smirks, or the photograph smiles he always puts on during photoshoots or interviews, but the way he’s smiling at you now makes you feel as though the butterfly you have tattooed on your wrist has moved all the way up your arm and down to your stomach, where it has gathered an army all of a sudden.

God, you think. Now you understand why everyone always swoons for him – the way his fans love him, the way interviewers love him, the way tv or youtube hosts love him. The reason why you started crushing on him. One smile from him and everything’s warm and fuzzy all of a sudden, like the rest of the world slows down to allow him time to shine.

His smile forces you to look at him for the first time since you’ve arrived at Jumadeung – his tousled hair, not as perfect as it was before your performance; the shadows his long lashes cast on his cheekbones; the way the hues of the fairy lights above dance along the bridge of his nose.

“She was simply complimenting your performance tonight, and it just came out. You gotta admit it was funny, the way you thought I’d kidnap you when I’m the one who pushed hard for this collab to happen in the first place,” he grins, shaking his head.

He’s fucking gorgeous. Now you can whole-heartedly agree with Bit-na and allow yourself to admit it. Not that you didn’t know before, of course! The dude is a fucking model; you’re sure he could have anyone or anything he wanted with a simple snap of his fingers. But you’ve always done your best to keep it very… professional – for lack of a better word – between the two of you. No touches out of line during dance practices, during all the time you’ve spent together to fine-tune your choreographies – and you must agree with him that there are a few that are more sensual than others. No lingering gazes in the studio, or during promotional photoshoots. Everything has always been clean and precise, like any other polished interactions you’ve had with fellow artists, stemming from nothing else but the sheer need to not be caught up in some rumor.

Tonight feels different, however. And you know it’s one-sided, but fuck. It’s the stupid atmosphere in this stupid bar, you decide. It’s cozy and private and extremely relaxed, with booths you can hide away in, and the fact that the paparazzi have never once found this place surely is a nice perk. It makes you believe that you’re on a date with him – on a date with fucking Park Joong-gil, of all people. That you’re just some normal girl out with some normal dude.

You shake your head, finding it extremely hilarious that your hormones would decide to go down that path now.

But you’ve been silent for long enough, and you don’t want to give the wrong impression. Like you’re mad, or like you’re starting to actually crush on him. So you level him with an amused stare and, “well, watch out then, Park. Next round’s mine, I’ll be embarrassing you.”

He chuckles at that promise, and you’re left there, grinning up at him like you’re a fangirl at a fan meet of his. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; you just want to be professional – you’ve always been, and there’s no reason why the frenzied hormones of a post-stage night should ruin that for you.

But then, just as you’re both back to digging into your cake, someone calls your name loud enough to be heard from the other end of the room. Your eyes snap up, and you see Joon-woong waving a hand in your direction.

You wave back, noticing the pink-haired woman and the dark-haired man sitting opposite him with their back to you. Ryeon and Ryung-gu – you could recognize them from miles away.

“The RMT guys are here,” you inform Joong-gil. “Looks like Joon-woong is inviting us to their table. Wanna go?”

You’re grinning, and your eyes are sparkling just as much as the light, dust-like glitter on your face, and of course you have no knowledge of any of that, but it strikes something inside him, punches him right in the guts. And fuck, he can’t say no when you look like that, like you’re some dream miraculously materialized in front of him. So, he begrudgingly nods and picks up your plate with the unfinished cake, and trails after you like a puppy.

Ryeon greets you with a smile, putting down her phone for a moment to congratulate you, but you miss the way she looks up at a Joong-gil who’s uncharacteristically standing awkwardly next to you, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. After quick bows of your heads, Joon-woong wraps you in a tight embrace, grinning at the way you’re finally not someone who turns down his hugs, and then sits back down to allow Joong-gil to sit on the chair next to him while you pull one from under the neighboring table.

“Hey,” you whisper as you lean into Ryung-gu, playfully pecking him on the cheek as he wraps an arm around your waist, giving your hip a quick squeeze. Maybe if you think a bit more about the kind of head he gave you on the few times you’ve met up for that, you won’t be acknowledging the weird way Joong-gil’s making you feel tonight.

After the introductions, it’s awkward at first, and you can’t exactly put a finger onto why. The RMT guys and Park Joong-gil have never been caught up in any scandal of any kind, not involving each other at least and not that you know of. And being signed for the same agency as they are, you’ve never heard of any tension or unfriendliness between them.

But then you’re not thinking about that anymore because you’re all talking. Well, you and Joon-woong are – you’ve always been the chatterboxes, after all – with Joong-gil and Ryung-gu chipping in every once in a while, and Ryeon listening more than she’s participating.

Joon-woong talks about your performance, the way both you and Joong-gil fired up both the stage and the audience, and how crazy everyone’s gone over the two of you on social media. From Instagram to Twitter, he’s been keeping an eye on it all. If your mother is your number one fan, then Choi Joon-woong is number two: he’s always been nothing but encouraging and supporting, even more so after you texted him about your collab with his very own idol, Park Joong-gil.

You’re sexy. He’s sexy. This is gonna be fucking bomb! – you remember him texting you that after he accidentally sent a voice message of himself screeching excitedly at the news and all the new career opportunities working in such tight contact with someone like Korea’s ‘it’ boy could bring you.

When Ryeon receives a call, however – you think you recognize their manager’s voice over the phone – they get up and bid their goodbyes. Ryung-gu holds you close this time, whispers something into your ear that Joong-gil doesn’t catch, but then suddenly everything’s as clear as day for him.

“We should go, too,” Joong-gil says after a moment of the two of you being alone, standing up and motioning for you to put his hoodie back on while he goes up to the counter to pay.

His bike stands lonely in one of the empty underground garage boxes and he leads you to it in silence.

You have this nagging suspicion that something’s shifted between the two of you between the moment you entered Jumadeung and the moment you left, but you’re tired, and the stress of the days – months – leading up to this performance and that of all the stages you’ll have to dance from now on when you leave on tour is finally catching up with your body. your legs are heavy and your arms are sore. You really can’t wait to be home, take a quick shower, and then disappear underneath the fluffy blankets you have on your bed.

“We have the first round of interviews tomorrow afternoon, remember?” he asks as he hands you his spare helmet. Maybe now would be the right time to tell him you’ve never been on a motorbike – the prop you used in one of your past music videos doesn’t count – but the words somehow don’t come out.

So you nod with a hum as you let him buckle your helmet. “Make-up at 3. Quick photoshoot at 4. Three interviews starting at 5:30,” you list, your mind providing you with the mental photograph of the schedule your manager jotted down on a post-it note stuck to your fridge. “Then dinner with our teams at 8.”

He makes a face at your detailed response, almost as though he’s surprised by how precise you are. But he’s satisfied with you being well aware of your joint plans, and he straddles the bike without another word, waiting for you to slide in behind him.

You’ve been close to him already – of course you’ve been. What with the dancing, or all the photoshoots you’ve had so far. Even the time spent brainstorming on the couch in his studio, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, going over lyrics and munching on snacks, pretty much breathing the same air. But it’s never felt like this, and when he reaches for your wrists to wrap your arms around his torso, you chastise yourself for feeling this way.

There’s a line you shouldn’t cross, and before tonight the urge to do it had never surfaced. You wonder what has been the source of that change, and all you can come up with is tonight’s – well, last night’s – performance.

“Hold on tight,” he tells you from above his shoulder and before you know it, you’re back into the streets of the capital.

You’d facepalm yourself if you weren’t riding a bike at breakneck speed. Of course it’s the chemicals in your brain all going off at once after performing the first stage of your comeback! By the time you wake up later today – you tell yourself – you’ll be back to normal.

You fall asleep with that thought kept on repeat in your mind and with the lingering feeling of Joong-gil’s leather jacket underneath your fingertips.

You wake up with your feelings all over the place, however, after a restless night’s sleep with dreams of him one after the other. If you didn’t have a busy day ahead, you’d be texting back and forth with Bit-na about the topic, asking for an opinion or simply a wake-up call. Instead, you call your mother to briefly tell her about last night and try to ignore the fact that you seem to have finally started to succumb to a crush you thought you had forgotten everything about.

The infamous article insinuating romance between you and the solo singer is somehow being kept on the backburner of your mind. The way fans reacted at first, or at least those that managed to before the article was taken down. The judging comments, insinuating you were using him for his fame – which, considering also his modeling and acting gigs, is considerably more than yours, there is unfortunately no denying that – despite the fact that he is the one who seeked you out first, but that is something nobody outside your agencies knows.

“Nervous?” Joong-gil asks, looking at your reflection in the mirror while his stylist fixes his hair.

He always looks so perfect, so well put-together, not one single hair out of place. It’d be hard not to fall for his charm. And then he opens his mouth and shows off how well-spoken and knowledgeable he is, and the difficulty triplicates.

You shrug, smiling lightly and closing your eyes to allow your make-up artist to finish the sophisticated look they picked for your eyeshadow. “Every time’s like the second time.”

“Not the first?” you hear the curiosity in his voice.

“I was a mess on my first time,” you chuckle, and then chuckle some more when your make-up artist says, but you held it together like a champ! She’s been with you since the beginning, and you’re glad she’s still here: she’s always been an integral part of keeping you sane and calm. “My second time went a lot better because I knew what to expect, but I was still nervous.”

He’s holding out a hand for you when you open your eyes, and you’re hesitant to take it. You think back to last night, when he stood a few steps below you in that dirty building, when you still thought Jumadeung didn’t exist or that it was some horror-movie room of torture where you’d heave your last breath. It was warm in your hand, his skin smooth aside from the few calluses from gripping the weights he lifts at the gym.

You take a hold of it now, and he wraps his fingers tightly around your hand before he grabs the arm of your chair with his other hand and pulls you closer until your knees are slotted between his spread legs and pressed up against the edge of his seat.

It’s a relief that everyone’s left the changing room because you wouldn’t want to explain the way Joong-gil’s sudden action makes you gasp.

“Hey, it’s gonna be alright,” he smiles. It’s a soft smile that does more harm than good and all you can do is look down at the way he’s still holding onto your hand, like that’s exactly where he belongs. You have no clue how to tell him today’s interviews are not exactly what’s making you nervous or even if you should be telling him in the first place. “We’ve already done this to prepare for yesterday’s show plenty of times. You’re great at this game.”

You nod silently, playing with the hem of the confetti baby pink dress you’re made to wear. You hate this color, and you hate the way the organza of the skirt makes the skin of your thighs itch. “I can’t wait for today’s schedule to be over,” you confess, and that’s not even a lie.

“It’ll be over in a heartbeat.” His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and you don’t know how to feel.

You know how you do feel at the moment – your butterfly has fled your wrist again and is back in your stomach, moving around with the same strength of a herd of elephants, which is considerably more than it was last night.

It’s like being back on that stage, just as everyone cheered your flawless performance and you turned around to briefly glance at him at the end of your show. The droplets of sweat running down the side of his face, the way he was panting, his chest rising and falling underneath his loose shirt, and the grin he sent your way. Then you got off the stage, back behind the scenes, and he pulled on your hand and wrapped you in a hug tighter than Joon-woong’s, all sweaty and scorching hot, laughing like a maniac with the adrenaline pushing through his system.

Part of you is still right there, rooted to the spot.

You wonder whether your brain’s still wired up on the same frequency it latched onto last night – the excitement of having jumped the first hurdle, the way performing on stage always makes you feel, the sheer joy dancing brings upon you and how powerful singing makes you feel. You want to think it’s that, and not that you’re falling for him, because that would simply make the rest of this job harder. There’s a million people like you, but apparently only one like him.

But then last night at Jumadeung crawls its way back to the forefront of your mind. You felt something at the table and caught a look Ryeon sent Joong-gil’s way, a look you couldn’t exactly put into words, even more so because you were distracted talking to Joon-woong and feeling Ryung-gu’s hand on your thigh.

They are your friends, they have been ever since you started training at the agency and even more so after you debuted… You want to be able to invite them to celebrate all together at some point down the line, and if that means the atmosphere isn’t going to be relaxed, then you won’t be able to do it.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, tilting your head back to face him by grabbing your chin between his thumb and forefinger.

The proximity makes your heart jump up into your throat. You want your brain to calm down, and for the butterflies in your stomach to stop flying around.

“Did something happen between you and the members of RMT?” The question is out before you can bite your tongue.

He tilts his head to the side. “Why?”

You shrug, trying to be as nonchalant as you can muster, but deep down fearing you won’t be able to have your friends there with you when it eventually comes to celebrating this collaboration. “Last night felt… I don’t know, tense, in a way, I guess, after we joined their table. I don’t remember reading anything about a fight between you or-”

“Ryeon and I dated for a while.”

Your babbling comes to a screeching halt when he says that. He says it matter-of-factly, like it’s the most random thing and not such a well-kept secret even you, after all the time you’ve spent with her, knew absolutely nothing about. “What? When?”

Fuck. What the fuck are you even doing here with him, allowing yourself to feel the way and the things you feel?

“Three years ago.”

You’re still blinking, barely even processing what he’s saying. There’s only one Park Joong-gil, you’re well aware of that, but there’s also only one Koo Ryeon. Of course, they would have ended up together one way or another at some point. Your imbalanced brain really does see the sense in that. “How long?”

“A few months.” He frowns before adding, “why are you so shocked?”

“Ryeon never mentioned anything about a relationship…”

You’re still gaping when someone knocks on the changing room’s door, warning the both of you that you still have ten minutes before the shoot.

“Yeah well, it’s over now.” He says it in a way that makes you believe he’s still somewhat suffering because of it and you know you shouldn’t overthink or insinuate stuff about others, but now some of his lyrics kind of do make more sense. “Talking about RMT…” He’s smirking, changing the topic, which is never a good thing when it comes to him and how surprisingly teasing he can be. “Lim Ryung-gu…”

Your spine straightens up before you can make yourself hide the surprise his name douses you with. “What about him?”

His hand is still in yours, and you find yourself praying to anything good and holy that he doesn’t feel how clammy it becomes. You know how good an observer he can be; you’ve come to learn a lot of things about him in the time you’ve been working together.

“Just wondering. Is he the one with peak head game?”

Your eyes widen for a moment and you can feel all the blood both drain from your face and rush to your cheeks.

It’s a weird feeling. You never thought you’d get caught. Ryung-gu lives in your same condominium, so sneaking around when one or both of you need a way to release stress has always been easy. No one sees, and no one writes anything. It’s always been a great deal.

You escape Joong-gil’s question by the skin of your teeth when your manager opens the door to announce it’s time for the photoshoot. The sudden wave of relief makes you jump up like a spring and push your chair back in one single movement, and you try to ignore the way Joong-gil chuckles under his breath.

Throughout the whole photoshoot you try not to think about Ryung-gu, or about how close to Joong-gil some poses have you be. With his arms around you, caging you against the prop brick wall, his eyes staring into yours the way the photographer orders him to while you look straight at the camera, it’s somewhat easy to forget the rest of the world. You just hope he doesn’t hear how loud your heart is beating inside your chest, or how deafening the blood flow in your eardrums is.

“Thaaat’s perfect,” you hear the photographer cheer. “A few more like that, and then we’re moving on to the last batch.”

“Relax,” Joong-gil murmurs against your cheek, his nose brushing against your skin with how the next pose has the two of you. “Even I feel like you’re about to go into cardiac arrest,” he chuckles under his breath.

The sound and feel of him so close makes a thrill crawl down your spine, and suddenly your brain’s not focusing anymore on your friend Ryeon dating Park Joong-gil or on Joong-gil (correctly) suspecting about something between you and Ryung-gu. Back in the changing room you almost wanted to tell him it’s just sex, a way to lock the rest of the world out for a moment, but you have no clue what idea he’s going to have about you if you tell him that.

“I’m alright,” you whisper back, peering up at him and immediately regretting doing so. With how close together your faces are, you could count every single one of his lashes if you wanted. His breath fans the top of your lips in such a way that it feels like the ghost of a kiss, and you’re so close to him you can smell his cologne, and probably the faint scent of his foundation cream as well. “Just a bit nervous. It’s really real now.” And then you add, “the collab, I mean.”

His smile feels more blinding than the flashing lights of the camera, and the rest of the day goes by in a blur. The photoshoot, the interviews… You go on autopilot, almost, and only come out of it by the end of the third interview. It’s for a magazine your mother loves to read. No cameras are rolling, only the reporter’s voice recorder is recording on the coffee table between you and Joong-gil on a low leather couch and her on a matching chair.

“Last night’s stage was a huge success,” she says. “Your mv did really well on all platforms, but that performance was bomb. Everyone’s talking about how good you look together!”

You smile, daring a glance at Joong-gil. He’s setting his jaw, but he’s good at masking that with the smile he still has on his lips, unwavering.

“The chemistry between the two of you seems to be off the charts, truly. Your fans have been going crazy ever since you posted the first video.” You’ve seen this particular interviewer on TV a few times, and you know what part of the interview this is. Just because you’re not being recorded on film doesn’t mean she’s changing her M.O. “Has anything sweet bloomed between you?”

Joong-gil chuckles, and if that woman wasn’t already hanging from his every word before, she sure is now, heart eyes and all. But then again, you do understand her: resisting his spell isn’t easy. He’s one fine specimen, always has been. “Y/N’s an amazing person and artist, and I do admit we work really well together, but not everything boils down to a romantic relationship.”

You find yourself nodding. Get out of your head, this is strictly business, you tell yourself, but then voice your agreement with what your colleague’s just said.

A few more pleasantries, and then you’re being dragged back into the changing room and to your van. This time it is your van. You sit in the back and your manager behind the wheel, and then you’re off for some informal dinner in a reserved restaurant where no one will bother you.

You look up from your phone screen only when she calls your name.

“Great job today,” she grins through the rearview mirror when she stops at a red light. “The photoshoot was spectacular and you handled yourself well during the interviews. To someone who knows you, though… is everything alright? You seemed a bit distracted.”

“It’s just…” It’s just me developing a stupid crush on a colleague. And Ryeon apparently was in a relationship with this colleague in the past, and she never mentioned a word about it. And then, oh yeah, it doesn’t happen often, but I’m fucking Ryung-gu when I’m stressed, but now I’ve been so stressed and busy that I haven’t been able to, and my Joong-gil’s apparently found out after spending half an hour with us anyway. We have so much scheduled that I’ll probably have to schedule restroom breaks as well. And I’m always afraid of messing up on stage, no matter how hard I prepare for it. And what if I really do end up falling for Joong-gil? Dude’s been closed off to the world so much that it’s a miracle he and Ryeon even dated. But you confess none of that, opting for a neutral, “I’m a bit nervous about all future performances. We still have like a billion interviews coming up and I really hate being asked about relationships and having to pretend I’m the fairy this industry portrays me as.”

She smiles understandingly and nods her head, her eyes always trained on the road. It’s a good thing that she’s a great driver and that she cares about everyone’s safety so much that she never trails her eyes off the road. She’d probably see right through you if she were to turn around right now. “That’s understandable. I can’t imagine being in your shoes, it would make me freak out six times out five.”

You giggle with her.

“But you’re great at what you do. Leave it to me and the PR team to monitor the comments online and the articles, don’t worry about that. You’re doing great already,” she reassures you. “Also, you’re not doing it alone this time. Mr Park looks like he knows what he’s doing when it comes to prying questions. He’s always very reserved when it comes to his personal life, so I’m sure he’ll help in keeping those questions to a minimum like he did today.”

“You’re right,” you nod absentmindedly, looking out the window at Seoul’s night traffic. But you apparently don’t sound convincing enough.

“Is anything else on your mind?”

You decide to lie. “Nope.”

He is on your mind, however.

Park fucking Joong-gil.

For the first time ever, he’s sitting at your kitchen table after your teams’ dinner, dropping a piece of candy into his soju. You don’t know what got into you when you invited him up to your place, and you want to say the fact that you were all pressed up against his back on his bike for the second time did not cloud your common sense, but that would be a fat lie.

“I’m sorry if I pried this afternoon,” he says after a while, when you finally sit down with a steamy mug of chamomile tea for you and push another one his way. It’s a silly mug, with grinning fluffy white sheep on a green background, but your mother loved it too much not to buy it for you. It’s probably not the best thing to give your guest, you realize at the last minute. “What’s going on between you and Lim Ryung-gu is none of anyone’s business but your own.”

“No, it’s…” You huff, scrunching your forehead with your fingers before smothering your hand down your face. It’s kind of intimidating to sit there bare-faced in front of someone who looks so good even after a long day of work. “I was the one who poked her nose in your business first. Ryung-gu and I are just… friends. It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated?”

The skin of your face burns, and you can’t look him in the eyes. Instead, you let the night skyline outside your window catch your attention. “We… It’s just… It’s hard sometimes, you know? This life.” You look down. Your nerves get the best of you and you start tracing the rim of your mug with your middle finger. “It’s stressful already as it is, and then you go out and there’s suddenly a new rumor about you every step you take. This is dating that. Or X got a nose job. Y has been caught dancing in a club. It follows you everywhere you go even after you clock out for the day.”

He smiles. “Sometimes I feel like we don’t really clock out.”

You groan. “Don’t remind me of that. Fucking yes. So… Ryung-gu lives two floors above me. It’s easy to… let out stress when no one can see.” You’re burning even more than your chamomile tea is.

Why the hell are you telling him that? You don’t owe him anything, least of all an explanation, and yet, you’ve started to realize that a silly part of you kind of does want him – and for him to want you. Park Joong-gil, that is.

He’s nodding, almost as though he’s piecing the pieces together. “Is he who your friend was talking about that day on the phone, correct?” he asks again.

You nod.

“There’s nothing wrong with falling for someone.”

Your eyes shoot up to meet his, but he’s the one looking out the window this time and you only catch his side profile and the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down when he drinks his soju.

“It’s not… like that.” You don’t know where your voice went. It almost makes you feel bad that you don’t have feelings for Ryung-gu and that he doesn’t have any for you. Almost like you fuck on autopilot. Like the connection is only physical and platonic and it doesn’t go deeper than that. Maybe, if you did it more often, then you would start catching feelings, but you’re careful with not fucking around too much.

“You look like your heart’s beating out of your chest again,” he smirks, taking the mug you prepared for him.

“Yeah well, maybe because it is.” You hide behind your hands again, sighing down into your mug.

“You know, you have no explaining to do. It’s just… natural. As long as it helps…,” he shrugs.

He’s so nonchalant about it. It almost makes you wonder whether that’s how things started between him and Ryeon, even though Ryeon never seemed like the one to do things just because she’s horny. She’s level-headed, probably the most level-headed person you know – despite the fact that you had no clue she was seeing someone, so who knows.

“Are you nervous now?” he asks and you hum. There’s a beat of silence and then, “is it because of me?”

“No!” Well yes, but you can’t tell him that last night at Jumadeung gave you the illusion of being on a date, or how months of working in such close proximity are finally starting to catch up on you.

You can feel his gaze on you, but you dare not look up. What if you do and end up blurting out nonsense? Embarrassing yourself and changing the dynamics between you for good?

“I’m nervous, too,” he confesses, and that’s when you find it within yourself to peer at him. “I’ve been working with a crazy talented artist and it’s been making me feel like I should be doing more.”

“A crazy talented ar- me?” you frown. By all means, you’re good at this game, but you know there’s better performers than you out there.

“Have you heard about me collabing with someone else?”

His smile takes your breath away for a moment. You want to think he’s trying to flirt with you, but you really shouldn’t be throwing gasoline onto the fire of your crush. Everything was going so smoothly… Fucking comeback, you think.

“I’ve been a fan since day one, just saying,” he shrugs, sipping on his chamomile tea.

“You…” You gasp at how unexpected this is, and then you’re laughing. You must look like a lunatic, messy hair and loose pajama, trying to keep your cool after confessing to having a fuck buddy to one of the most wanted people in the country. Part of you can’t wait to tell Bit-na about that, and another part of you really doesn’t want to hear what she’d have to say in response.

“Fuck, you really are stressed out of your mind…” He’s amused, it’s clear both in his voice and on his face.

He brings your mug to your lips, leaning across the table towards you, and he steals your breath for the second time tonight. He helps you drink, and it calms you down. Only on the outside, though, you think. You can still feel your heart inside your chest when he stands up to wash the mugs and the glass he used to drink his soju, and your thumb absentmindedly brushes over your tattooed butterfly.

“Don’t let this life stress you out so much,” he murmurs from behind you, leaning over you to speak against your cheek before he kisses it. “If you need a hand with it, you have my number. We’re partners now, after all.”

What’s he suggesting? You torment yourself with that question for what feels like forever before you make up your mind.

Ryung-gu comes over when Joong-gil leaves. You called the wrong number – on purpose, of course. There are some things you can’t talk about with ‘your partner’, but you’ve always been an open book for Lim Ryung-gu.

It’s nothing regular, the thing you two have, but this is the first time in months that one of you calls the other for stress relief. It’s not bad by any means, it just… feels different, in a way. Like your brain is still stuck on a loop of last night at Jumadeung, when you were staring at yourself in the mirror of that fairyland-like restroom, wearing Park Joong-gil’s soft hoodie over your golden top, standing under winking fairy lights.

You see the kitchen table from where you’re half sitting, half reclining on the couch in the living room, with Ryung-gu kneeling between your legs. You can still picture Joong-gil’s back, the gray cardigan he wore after the interviews were over, his perfectly styled hair, straight out of a magazine cover like some sort of walking dream.

A particular brush of Ryung-gu’s fingers inside you makes your toes curl and your back arch, your head falling back against the pillows as your hands tug on his hair. His groan against your pussy makes you tingle all over, and when his lips latch onto your clit you know you’re done for.

“Fuck, just like that,” you manage to whisper, breathing hard, pulling him closer to you by the back of his head.

You can hear how wet you are by the squelching sound his fingers moving in and out of you make. It makes your head spin – and your heart ache as well, maybe, because part of you feels like you’ll never have anything real, not in this department and not in this line of work where you feel controlled twenty-four seven.

But with Ryung-gu it’s easy to pretend: he eats you out like he does that for a living, and in the spur of the moment, with the air scorching in your lungs, you think the world deserves to know his fingers aren’t only great at playing the piano.

Then he curls his fingers, gets to work on that one patch of sensitive skin deep inside you, and you come with a low moan that comes up from deep within you and seems to go on forever as his tongue keeps on lapping up at your juices.

He gives your clit one last suck and that makes you whine, your thighs quiver in overstimulation as you tug on his hair to get him off of you. Then, he’s using your discarded panties to clean you and his hand up.

You come down from your high cuddled up into his side, your head on his shoulder, and the way his fingers trace patterns on your back, through your t-shirt, calms your raging heartbeat and roots you to the present moment.

“I think we should stop doing this,” he whispers against the side of your head, lips brushing against your hair when he speaks.

Your only reply is a hum. It’s not like you’ve been thinking about that, too, but it’s true that in the last few months you’ve come to secretly wish for something more. A deeper connection. Doing this with someone you have actual feelings for – someone that hopefully also has feelings for you, too. Ryung-gu brought everything else to the table – he’s understanding, fun, blurts random bits of knowledge in the middle of the night when you’re lying in bed covered in sweat – but not that one part of the picture.

“I met someone, and I also feel like you’ve been slowly drifting away,” he continues, his voice soft. You can hear his heart beat inside his chest, underneath your cheek, and you move your hand up to brush your thumb over his sternum. “Is it Joong-gil?”

He’s smirking in amusement when you move your head to meet his gaze quicker than the speed of light just to moan the split second later because your neck is sore and all that haste didn’t sit well with it. But there’s no lying to him – you’ve been friends since you left Busan together, so if anything, after Bit-na, he’s the one person you trust the most when it comes to actually opening up.

“I don’t know what’s up with me,” you confess eventually. It’s then, as you wish for any kind of distraction to bless you, that you notice he’s cut his hair and got rid of his toned hair tips. He must have met with his stylist today, you reason distractedly, because yesterday his hair was longer, sporting a look you’ve come to love on him. “Yesterday at Jumadeung… which, by the way,” you deadpan, pushing yourself up onto your elbow. “Wow, that’s so very loyal of you, bestie. Thank you for telling me about that place.”

He snorts. “As if,” he chuckles, pushing your bangs away from your face. He likes this new look on you, and he’s probably the main reason why you’ve let yourself enjoy it, too. “It was my first time there as well. Ryeon wanted to go out yesterday afternoon and she brought us there. Joon-woong knew about it, though, so if you really wanna be mad at someone… be mad at the golden retriever.”

“But he’s so cute,” you playfully pout, making the same face you would if you saw a cute puppy. “He has my approval for anything he wants to do or say.”

He snorts again, trying not to laugh, but eventually failing. “Don’t derail the conversation,” he scolds, playfully smacking your bare thigh. “Was last night a date?”

You shake your head no, but you feel your face grow hotter at the mere idea of it being one. You really don’t know how it happened, and you tell him as much. “I don’t think so. There’s never been anything more than just work. And when I went to bed last night I thought it was just because I was still all over the place after the show and how cozy it was at Jumadeung. But then I woke up at noon today and I was still thinking about him…” you huff, lying back down next to him, and wrap an arm around his waist.

“Do you like him?”

“Who doesn’t?” you scoff, and then hide your face in his chest because fuck. What’s with your hormones and this crush? You stay quiet for a while, enjoying the silence of the night and his fingers still lightly tickling your back from above your blue pajama shirt. “I don’t know what to do, Ryung-gu. Like…” You rub your face with both hands when you can’t keep in the groan. “What if this crush or whatever gets out of hand and ruins everything?”

“With the collab, you mean? Or your… situationship?”

You hum. “Like, he’s always been incredibly attractive, both inside and out, but so are you and a lot of other people I’ve met…”

“Wow, thanks, I guess,” he laughs, only to be met by a flick of your fingers against his forehead.

“You know you’re hot. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen what people comment under your posts on Insta.”

“Oh, I know i’m sex on legs,” he jokes, looking at you like he’s all high and mighty before cracking into an amused grin. “It just hits different when it comes from that mouth of yours.”

You flick him again, this time on his chest, before you’re pushing yourself up again to look down at him. “I just don’t know what to do, and… ugh!” You bite your tongue, and needing a way out of this conversation, you ask, “what about your person, though?” You smirk, wiggling your eyebrows and making him laugh. “Who is it? Do I know them? Is it another singer? A backup dancer? Model? Min-ji from back home?”

He silences you with a hand on your mouth, but it just makes you giggle, and suddenly you’re hyper aware of how he’s looming over you on the couch, and your pussy is still out and wet, and God this feels so wrong. You would’ve never called him had you known he’s met someone. Thinking about him going down on you when he’s considering the idea of pursuing an actual person makes you feel worse than spilling the beans to Joong-gil did, and dirtier than the railing you grabbed yesterday in that building was.

“What, so you can snitch to the tabloids?” he asks, but he’s smiling, so you know there’s no bite behind his words.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out all of a sudden. “For calling you over. You ate me out despite all that and…” He lets you sit up and moves to sit next to you on the couch. “God, I feel like such a bitch,” you groan from behind your hands. They’ve quickly become the wall you hide behind.

“Hey, it’s fine.” Ryung-gu pulls you into his side and leaves a kiss on the crown of your head. “You’re my friend, I would’ve never left you alone in a time of need when I have nothing really going on yet. You would’ve done the same, I’m sure. Unless…”

“Unless?” You don’t dare look up at him, even though you can hear the smile in his voice. He still feels like the same Lim Ryung-gu he’s always been, but then also like you’re miles apart for the first time in forever – or probably ever.

“Unless that Park dude really has a hold on your pussy.”

He doesn’t stop cackling when, indignant, you hit him with a pillow.

“Shut up,” you groan. “I’ve been a mess since last night’s stage, let me be.”

He wipes your pout away with a thumb before pressing a kiss to your cheek. “Just saying… I’m sure it’s hard to stay stoic when he has those hip rolls in your choreo.”

Your face is scorching hot. Ryung-gu is right, Joong-gil has some sexy moves, but so does he in his own solo numbers. They’ve always been one of his distinctive traits and while yes, you’ve always swooned a little every time, you’ve also always been able to stay professional when he danced them with you.

“You know, I actually think this is a great opportunity for the both of us,” Ryung-gu says after a while, when you’re putting on a fresh pair of panties. You snatch your pajama shorts from his hand when he hands them to you, and join him in the kitchen for the leftover pizza he brought over from his apartment. “We both get to find out what we really like with a partner,” he explains when you simply frown in confusion at him.

“Maybe you will. I’ll be trying not to think too much about it. He’s there,” you gesture with your hand held up high above your head, “and I’m here,” you continue, placing your other hand much lower.

“In my book you’re here,” he corrects, raising the hand you used to show him where you stand, “and he’s here.” He lowers the other one. “You’re great. What are you even implying here?”

“Yeah, a crazy talented artist,” you groan, quoting back Joong-gil’s words to your friend with a roll of your eyes. You don’t even know why it stings so much to be just that to him. Well, of course, you do know why, but you don’t want to linger there.

“I was thinking more about a crazy awesome person.” Ryung-gu boops your nose before adding, “but yeah, whatever floats your boat. Just don’t put him on a pedestal. You both have the same job and are equally as talented. Don’t start treating him like a god on Earth, leave that to his fans. Because if anything, he’s lucky to be doing this with you.”

Despite everything, you’ve managed to keep it as professional as possible with Joong-gil thus far. Everything always runs smoothly – interviews, photoshoots, promotional shoots, even performances or radio appearances with your usual banter and jokes, even if shipping comments follow you every step of the way. What’s worse is that when you come off stage, high on adrenaline, one simple look from him is somehow enough to make your panties wet.

You’re really not proud to admit it, and after every show, it’s becoming harder and harder to conceal the effect he has on you. Giving him the wrong impression is the last thing you want to do, and at the same time it’s hard to figure out what’s going on in his mind, behind those dark eyes of his.

Tonight’s not any different, you notice when you’re pushed into your van right behind him after the opening concert to the Japanese leg of your joint tour.

There’s the adrenaline again – all the post-performance feelings, the fact that you managed to sell this venue out in less than three minutes twice when the tour dates were first announced. You’re wired beyond belief, every fiber of your being buzzing underneath your skin, your heart leaping in your chest like that’s some Olympic sport. It’s been a while since the sensations were this intense, so much so that it’s overwhelming and you end up planting a celebratory wet kiss on Joong-gil’s lips without even realizing you’re doing it.

Your brain only catches up with it while you’re standing under the warm jet of the shower, a ballad humming through your phone’s speakers in the background. It should be a quick freshening up, because you know Joong-gil will take a quick shower as well before starting his post-concert VLive stream while he waits for you, but you can’t help but freeze, the loofa stopping on your chest and the trembling fingers of your right hand coming up to your lips.

You still feel his lips against yours, and hear the harsh breath he took and which you never really registered in the moment, buzzing as you were with excitement, the goosebumps tugging at your sweaty skin.

“Fucking fuck,” you mutter under your breath, mouth agape for a moment before you shut it and turn the waterstream off.

Thinking about it will do you more harm than good, you know that, but your heartbeat is every-fucking-where now when you think back to the way he grabbed a hold of your biceps to keep your balance and prevent you from falling fully onto him.

Maybe you can play it off tomorrow morning, pretend like you passed out right after your shower and say you’re deeply sorry for missing out on the quick post-concert catch-up with your fans. You’re about to text Bit-na about your misstep in the van and how fucked up it got you, to the point you almost touched yourself in the shower, when the notification of Joong-gil going live pops up on the screen of your phone.

You stand there for a full minute, naked, dripping water onto the tile floor of your hotel room’s bathroom. There’s no resisting the curiosity, those brain chemicals going hysterical, and your finger taps on the notification before you can stop yourself.

He’s sitting on the couch in his hotel room, pretty much a twin of yours. Tokyo’s lights at night are blinking behind him and while that’s definitely a view, he seems to be an even better one now. White loose t-shirt, wet hair still slightly dripping droplets of water onto his shoulders, bare-faced but still incredibly charming in the way he talks, answers comments, says Y/N will join us shortly before drinking from his water bottle. It all makes you want to kiss him again, but this time on purpose while being fully present in the moment.

“Fuck.”

You’re cooked.

You’ve got it real bad – you facepalm yourself as you close the app, lock your phone, and quickly get dressed into something you can lounge in while still looking presentable. You really do not want to look bad next to him.

It’s now or never, you tell yourself when you force yourself out into the corridor.

Joong-gil’s door is right opposite yours and as you walk the few steps that separate yours from it, you quickly glance out of the window at the end of the hallway. By the looks of it, it’s going to rain tonight.

The livestream goes by quickly: Joong-gil is more entertaining than you thought he’d be, but this time he does a great job at keeping the conversation with the fans flowing despite the fact that you’re, well, beat. You should have known that the moment you’d finally sit down, slumber would start creeping up on you. And, well, he’s better at Japanese than you are – that’s something that should be mentioned.

Nevertheless, you still step in with puns and funny anecdotes about tonight’s show or the time you and Joong-gil have spent working together. In the live chat, someone even swoons about your coordinated outfits on stage, and that’s just another opportunity to flaunt the amazing stylists you have this time around – an excuse not to think about the way you do know you look like when you’re together. Like you’re a match made in fucking heaven, but that could also be your crush speaking on your behalf.

When the stream is finally off and you get the thumbs up of approval from both your managers, you let yourself fall back against the couch with a sigh.

“Tired?” Joong-gil asks, moving around to plug his phone in. He puts it down on the nightstand and grabs a bottle of water from the minifridge for you.

“Exhausted,” you groan, pulling your legs up and resting your head on your knees.

It’s easier to look at him now without thinking about that rather chaste kiss you gave him and the ways he moved on stage earlier on in the night. You don’t feel like you might catch fire with just a look from him, but when he sits back down next to you, some of that anxious tension comes back.

“I’m really enjoying this,” he smiles. When he leans his head back and fully relaxes, however, you notice how tired he looks, too. His eyelids are heavy and all his weight is leaning against the couch like he’s a bag of potatoes.

You hum and nod, taking a long sip from the water bottle he handed you while thinking about Bit-na. During the two weeks between the first stage performance and Jumadeung and tonight’s show, you’ve told her about this whatever-it-is that you started feeling for Joong-gil. Nothing too detail-heavy, but there’s no way in hell you could have survived without her opinion on the matter. You wish she were here now, a tiny celestial being perched on your shoulder, ready to give you counsel.

“I’m enjoying this collab a lot, too,” you say, leaning back and turning your head to the side to look at him. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’s fallen asleep.

But he softly giggles, amused, and you know he’s still awake. “I mean… Yeah, the collab as well. But I was thinking more about… you. The time we’ve been spending together.”

You bite your tongue, a way to prevent the wrong things from leaving your mouth, but also to stop that smile from stretching on your lips.

“What was that kiss about?” he asks without giving you the time to even think. “Back in the van.”

The expression on your face must be the epitome of regret because he looks taken aback in a way you’ve never seen him. The truth is, you have no clue what to tell him. You don’t want to make things weird, but you also fucking do want to kiss those plump lips of his again.

“I… The excitement always gets to my head, I’m really sorry if that made you uncomfortable,” you murmur eventually, finding it difficult to meet his gaze.

“So, do you kiss a lot of people like that?”

“Fuck, no!” It’s the nerves acting on your behalf that make you chuckle and all you can do to try and stop the tremor in your hands is close your eyes and deepen your breaths. “No, I… That was a first, even for me.”

His hum is questioning, and you feel his weight on the couch shift. It’s only when his fingertips touch your lips that you will yourself to open your eyes.

He’s incredibly close, just like that day during the photoshoot and many other photoshoots before that. You can smell the faint minty aftertaste of his toothpaste when he says, “should we make it a tradition?”

It’s like you’re hypnotized, and you’d like to blame your deafening heartbeat for the fact that you can’t stop that meak yeah from tumbling past your lips. He clouds your senses, and you’re suddenly glad that your rooms are so up high because that means no paparazzi will be able to snap a picture and you can finally feel safe enough to-

His lips touch yours. Soft, smooth, and you wonder why the fuck they feel so hot against yours. The kiss cuts your breath short, makes the butterflies in your stomach rouse again, and then some other warm and wet feeling starts rearing its head. He’s staring at you and you can’t help but stare back. Your brain leaves on a tangent and it’s soon wondering how quickly an ambulance will be able to come in case you dramatically go into cardiac arrest, even though neither of you is deepening the kiss. It’s chaste, just his lips pressing against yours as his hand cradles the side of your face.

Is it you being dramatic if you say you want to stay here forever?

When he eventually pulls back, he lets his tongue come out for a split second to brush against your lower lip and that’s when your body decides to betray you, to break your composure to let a shaky breath out.

His eyes fall down to your lips and you’re helpless as you stare at the way that grin of his plasters on his face.

He’s so fucking- ugh!

You feel like you could punch the sky with the way Park Joong-gil makes you feel. You decide then and there that it’s senseless to sit there and ponder how the fuck that bubble of feelings decided to pop only now – well, at Jumadeung – because now you’re stuck with the defeaning certainty that you’re down really bad for him.

“I love new traditions,” he grins, leaning back against the couch without breaking eye contact.

Head empty. There’s not one single thought in there that’s not Park Joong-gil. If Ryeon never said anything about him just so that she could keep him all for herself, well… You can’t really blame her. He’s charming. He pulls you to him like he’s a magnet. And it doesn’t even matter that you don’t even know where you stand anymore with him because your brain starts working a mile a minute until suddenly it’s picturing him between-

No.

No, you can’t go there.

He speaks before you have the chance to. “I think I wanna repeat it after tomorrow’s show if that’s alright with you. But we should probably go to bed now.”

You don’t resist him when he says he’ll accompany you to your door despite the fact that it’s literally less than ten meters from the couch you’ve been sitting on for the best part of the past two hours. If you can have thirty more seconds alone with him, then who the hell are you to say no?

But sleep doesn’t come easily – not with the feeling of his lips against yours, and not with the promise that you’re going to have another fix of that tomorrow night. You’re ready to bet you’ve never ever wanted a whole day to go by at the speed of light the way you desperately need it to now.

You feel guilty as hell when you let your hand slip past the elastic band of your panties to toy with the wetness between your folds. But that’s your best bet at trying to force slumber to come back, and you eventually fall asleep with Joong-gil’s name on your lips.

It’s silly, the way your heart somersaults inside your chest every time Park Joong-gil honors the silly tradition you accidentally started during your first night in Tokyo.

He kisses you after your second concert in the Japanese capital.

He kisses you after the concert in Nagoya.

In Osaka, you kiss before and after you hop onto the stage.

And every time, that celebratory kiss deepens a little more. By the time you land in Los Angeles to embark on your seven US American dates, you’re not thinking I should be keeping this professional between the two of us anymore, but instead I need more of him.

You’re on a video call with Bit-na after the concert in the SoFi stadium – between the crazy demanding show you put on and the jetlag, both you and Joong-gil are way too beat for a livestream.

“How’s your predicament going?” she asks as she continues doing her make-up.

“It’s hard,” you groan, falling back onto the hard mattress and shuffling around until you’re all cocooned into the blankets, only the top half of your head peeking out from the fluffy material.

“You mean his dick is?” She’s bold, always has been, and you’re glad you opted to put your earbuds in. The last thing you need is a late night visit from Park Joong-gil in which he hears your friend talk about this kind of shit again, with the only difference that this time it’s not Ryung-gu she’s talking about.

“That… too, yeah.” The temperature of your face could rival that of the sun. All you can do is fully hide your head underneath the blankets and hope your body will cool down quickly, but it feels like an impossible task when you can still feel his erection pressed against you when you kissed in the powder room after the concert.

Bit-na’s laughter is loud and hysterical. It deafens you for a moment but you figure that’s a good thing: it prevents you from replaying in your head the way you moaned into the kiss when you did your best not to roll your hips into his. “Did you really give him a boner?!”

“I’m sure it was just the excitement after the concert,” you mumble, finally re-emerging from your hiding place.

She clicks her tongue. “And I am sure it was aaaaall you,” she chuckles, putting her lipstick back down and picking up her mascara. “Sucking face with someone sure can lead to that.”

“We were not sucking faces.”

“Who do you think you’re fooling? I can see how swollen your lips are from all the way across the Pacific.”

You groan, covering your face with one hand. “I knew I should’ve called Ryung-gu.”

“He’d tell you to just sleep with him already.”

“Oh, shut up. It was different with him. Things just happened and it was his idea,” you remind her. “But now that he’s trying this relationship thing with this new person, it made me realize I want the same. I don’t want to just fuck. I want the whole experience. What if Joong-gil’s not into me like that?”

“The dude made up a making-out tradition just because you kissed him by accident once. I think the chances that he did it because he’s into you are higher than those of him just wanting to make out with someone.” She shrugs her shoulders and disappears for a moment to get dressed. “Stop holding back, Y/N. Just let things happen without trying to stop them.”

And ‘let them happen’ is exactly what you do.

One week after your call with Bit-na, you find yourself kissing Joong-gil in your hotel room in Atlanta, after an English post-concert livestream for your international fans.

It started off innocently enough, with the both of you sitting on the floor, your backs to the foot of your bed and your phone propped up on the coffee table you decided to use as a stand. Then it got less innocent soon after you turned the stream off, when his hand slipped underneath your t-shirt and dragged up your spine, pulling gooseflesh wherever he touched.

That’s how you find yourself being dragged into his lap now, how you find yourself now almost kissing down his throat.

His kisses are something else entirely, and the way his tongue brushes against yours makes you moan into his mouth. They’re intoxicating, his touches on you – the way he cradles your head in both hands, keeping you as close as possible without letting you go for a single second, or the way he suckles on your lower lip when he pulls back just enough to allow the both of you to catch your breath.

“It’s hard,” he says, his eyes roaming your face before being inevitably drawn back to your parted lips.

You have no clue where you find the strength or even the presence of mind to keep your lower half elevated just enough to avoid sitting down on him.

“What is?” you whisper back, suddenly being brought back to what you talked about with your best friend – you said it was hard, and she brought up the erection you had felt in Joong-gil’s pants while kissing. There’s no telling what would happen if you allowed yourself the time necessary to think about that now, or to even sit down comfortably in his lap and feel it, if that’s tonight’s case as well.

“Holding back.” His lips brush against the line of your jaw when he replies, his hands sliding down your sides and over your ass.

He is hard – that’s the first thing you can think about when he pulls you down flush against him. Your breath is caught in your throat when the tip of his nose brushes just right under your ear.

“Acting like I don’t want to fucking worship you.” His voice is deep, probably deeper than you’ve ever heard it in the time you’ve worked together but also before that, even though it’s hard to even think straight right now. “God, I’ve been thinking about you for weeks now.”

It’s like you’re not in control of your body: you hear yourself whimper, and then your hips roll down against his of their own accord.

Just let things happen, you hear Bit-na say again.

Joong-gil’s head falls back against the mattress and he gazes up at you from underneath. It does something to your brain, the sight of him underneath you, his eyelids heavy and his lips kiss-swollen. Because of you, you feel the need to remind yourself. He is like this because of you.

Fuck, it really does mess with your brain. Like thunder strikes and incinerates your ability to keep a grip on yourself.

And then he’s gripping your buttcheeks in both hands and moving you against him. His breathing is heavy, but so is yours. You can feel how hard he is against you even through your layer of clothings – in the spur of the moment you wish neither of you was wearing any. Every last one of your synapses is alight and all you can do is lean down into his lips again for another kiss.

Who would fall for the whole ‘new celebratory kiss tradition’ if anyone were to catch the two of you right now? Maybe Bit-na was right; maybe Joong-gil really did start this because he sees something in you that you yourself don’t see. As he kisses you back, pushes his tongue past your teeth to brush against yours, you find yourself hoping for your friend to really be right.

The buzzing of his phone by his head, on your bed, goes unnoticed when he starts bucking his hips up into yours. He swallows your whimpers, and when he moans in return, you’re suddenly aware of the pleasure starting to coil tighter deep in your stomach.

If he manages to make you come by simply dry-humping you, you can consider that a first.

But then someone knocks on your door, and the quick rapping on the wood breaks the spell. You find yourself looking into his open eyes and realize one of his hands has moved to the back of your head during the heat of your make-out session, the other one is under your t-shirt in the middle of your back.

“Alright, bedtime! We’re catching a flight at seven tomorrow!” You recognize Yun-ho’s voice, but it takes your brain two more seconds to finally give a meaning to the words you’ve just heard.

You jump back up on your feet before you can stop yourself, but Joong-gil doesn’t move immediately. He keeps his eyes trained on you, on the way you’re almost panting, trying to avoid looking down at his groin, and he doesn’t know how hard you’re throbbing right now or how drenched your panties feel even if you’re this close to telling him.

God, if anyone finds out while you’re overseas, you’re fucked. Both of you are.

“See you tomorrow?” he asks when he eventually stands up, movements all fluid when he does – a stark contrast to yours, to how sharp-cornered you felt when you jumped up from his lap and to how sharp-cornered you still do feel when you pick up your phone from the coffee table, unable to meet his eye and knowing that if you do, there’ll be no sleep for you tonight.

You nod and hum in response, but it’s apparently not enough for him. He steps forward, closes the distance between the two of you, and grabs your chin between his thumb and forefinger. He’s done that already once in the past, but right now you’re barely able to remember your own name. This motherfucker really does have that effect on you – brain and body alike.

“I asked, see you tomorrow?” he repeats, but all you can focus on is the way his lips move when you speak.

Part of your brain wants to bite back a of course, where the hell else would i be?, but another part of it is simply paralized. You wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s decided to make your body take the reins, for once.

He plants a chaste kiss to your lips when your reply is a simple, breathless yes. It’s like the kiss you accidentally gave him after your first concert in Tokyo, but this time it makes you tingle all over.

Would it really be so wrong to tell him now how fucking wet he’s made you?

To your displeasure, however, things don’t go further than that for the rest of your American stay, or even during the one concert you have in Toronto, although Joong-gil somehow ended up hearing you push yourself over the edge in the shower in Boston and fingering you in your dressing room in Chicago before your performance. (Which, by the way, sort of made it hard to fully focus once you were on stage, but whatever.)

Your days simply get busier, what with the concerts and the extra American interviews both of your agencies agreed upon at the last minute. Some of them were chill, but most had those sneaky so are you two dating? kind of questions hidden among much better ones. Joong-gil did a great job at deflecting them, but deep down all you can say is that they made you want to scream. You’re definitely not dating but fuck, if he doesn’t give you those fingers of his one more time I swear to God I’ll go insane!

“What are you thinking about?” Joong-gil asks, looking up from the magazine he’s been reading (there’s a double-page picture of the two of you on the pages he has open right now, one of those you posed for during your last photoshoot in Korea) and turns to glance at you.

You don’t think that ‘your fingers in my pussy’ is an appropriate enough reply, so you babble the next best thing that pops up in your mind when you look out of the plane window to your right. “Can’t wait to have a few days off before our concerts back home.”

Maybe if you focus hard enough on the fluffy clouds outside, you’ll stop overthinking about the implications of everything the two of you have started doing together. Like spending time in either of your hotel rooms after livestreams to simply relax. Or like kissing before and after concerts. Or the way he moaned straight into your mouth when you were making out in your room in Atlanta.

Fuck, that sound has been stalking you even in your dreams ever since.

“What’s your plan for that?” He turns slightly towards you to give you his undivided attention and you don’t know why, really, but that small gesture makes you sort of warm and fuzzy inside.

Your gaze swipes past him to the next row in first class and then over the few seats you can see from yours, but no one’s paying attention to anything but their own business. “I’m going back home, gonna spend a few days with my mother. It’s been almost a year since I last saw her in person,” you reply. And then, before you can even ponder your words or even just realize what trajectory your brain’s following, you find yourself proposing, “you’re invited, if you’d like. If you have nothing else to do.”

He looks surprised for a moment, and you want to slap yourself on the mouth for being so stupid. You’re aware your proposal might have come off as a ‘we’ve been doing things together, so it’s time to meet the parents’, but he’s smiling before you’re done biting your tongue. “Sure, why not? I’ll book a hotel room as soon as we land.”

There’s a surge of courage bubbling up from within you, something you’ve never really had around him because at first you were too excited to even be offered a collaboration deal with the Park Joong-gil, then you were trying to always be professional, and then you were a bit too busy trying not to think about the way he makes you feel.

So, you end up saying, “you could… stay with us. My mother hasn’t had guests over in ages and I’m sure she’d love the company.”

Am I being too straightforward? Is it too early? Is this something like what Ryung-gu and I used to do, or is he really into me?

That’s how you end up brushing your teeth next to Joong-gil in your childhood home.

That’s also how you end up trying to convince your mother she won’t be having grand-children or attending your wedding all that soon.

We’re just friends – you say ‘friends’, not ‘colleagues’, and that somehow surprises you. Like that’s something you’ve never even considered – the possibility of you and Park Joong-gil becoming friends, and maybe going out for drinks together a few years down the line and reminiscing about this collab album you’re doing together now.

He doesn’t really look at you like you’re just a friend is her reply, one that haunts you during your concert back home in Busan and during the two you hold in Seoul.

You also end up going down on him in his Seoul penthouse apartment after your tour has been wrapped up, and that’s when your mother’s insinuation comes back. It confuses you, this thing you have with Joong-gil, but you barely have the time to think because he’s keeping you close to his pelvis with a hand on the back of your head, and all you can do is swallow around him.

The moan he lets out when he feels your throat constrict around his dick is loud and it goes straight to your core. It makes you moan in return and that’s when he warns you he’s close and pulls you off.

“Come in my mouth,” you plead, breathless – almost as breathless as he is. He looks so good staring down at you with hooded eyes, a light flush powdered over his cheeks and the upper part of his torso. Somehow, it makes you want to ruin him.

The sound he lets out is halfway between a moan and a groan, and he lets go of your hair in favor of wrapping his hand around his erection. You allow him a couple of strokes before you’re wrapping your lips around him again, and a swipe of your tongue on his frenulum is what pushes him over the edge and right down your throat when you take him all the way into your mouth.

Your hands caress up and down his thighs when he lets himself fall back onto his bed, and as he catches his breath, you pepper light kisses over his hips and abdomen. He looks and sounds so good that you can feel how uncomfortable the wetness in your panties is, but still don’t dare speak up.

“Fuck,” he pants, chuckling when he stretches a hand out for you to take. You intertwine your fingers with his and move to lie down next to him. “Let me see,” he pleads.

It takes you a couple of seconds to realize what he means, but then you show him you’ve swallowed every last drop by opening your mouth and pushing your tongue out.

“That was fucking sexy,” he groans before pulling you over onto him and kissing your breath away, licking into your mouth and making your heart almost give out in your chest.

Your phone rings.

“I gotta go now.”

He’s sitting up on his bed when you speak, after he’s tried – uselessly – to pay back the favor. His eyes follow your every move – the way you pick up your phone (almost a mirrored repetition of what happened in Atlanta), the way you check yourself out in the mirror of his dresser, how you hesitate for a second when you pick up your handbag from the floor.

“My manager’s asking for my whereabouts and I can’t exactly tell her what we’ve been doing here,” you chuckle, looking back at him just to find him two steps away, standing only in his boxers behind you.

He hums his agreement, but then surprises you by grabbing you by the hips and pulling you into his chest. Resisting the urge to wrap your arms around his neck or to press a kiss onto his skin takes everything you’ve got.

“I want to keep seeing you,” he confesses matter-of-factly, looking straight into your eyes. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips before he leans his head forward to peck your cheek. “I want to keep seeing you after this collab is wrapped up,” he repeats, this time whispering in your ear and making the baby hairs at the back of your neck stand up in gooseflesh.

“You do?” Somehow, you’re breathless. You barely even register it, with how wildly your heart is pounding in your chest and in your throat and – bonjour, finesse! – between your legs.

“Yep,” he chuckles. He pulls your pelvis right into his, and you feel how he’s getting hard again. If you don’t leave his house soon, you know you’ll be in trouble with your team, but at the moment you can barely even remember all the rules you have to follow. “I want to keep seeing you.” It’s the third time he says it, and you’re starting to believe his words. “I want to get to know all of you. I want to see what you look like naked, too.”

You can’t stop the giggle.

“I think it’s unfair you got to see me,” he whispers, rolling his hips into you, “and I couldn’t even take your panties off in that changing room. And then,” he continues, kissing down the side of your neck like you have all the time in the world, “I want to know how you feel around me. Wanna be so deep inside you that all you can remember is my name. Because that’s how I felt not even five minutes ago.”

A shiver runs up your whole body, from toes to head, and it pulls a low moan from your lips before you can even swallow it back. The way you’re throbbing makes you feel like you’re definitely going to lose your mind.

Forty-five minutes later you’re lying naked on your bed – after having managed to send your manager back home and after the coldest shower of your life. But Joong-gil is still on loop in your mind: his moans, the way he cradled your face when you knew he wanted to let go and fuck your throat but held back, and then the way he confessed his desire to keep on seeing you outside of work. It works you up like crazy and it’s delusional of you to think you’d ever be able to stop your hands from wandering down your body – your breasts, your belly, and then finally between your legs.

You’re so wet you almost shoot him a text, but then you start burning in embarrassment and the only thing you can think of to distract yourself is to tease your entrance before pushing two fingers in.

This time is different from that one in a hotel shower, when you had to be quick to stop yourself from drowning in your sense of guilt. This time you have all the time in the world, and working yourself up with the memory of Joong-gil in your mouth so fresh in your mind is extremely easy. Your toes curl, and your back arches, and your breathing is labored, scorching hot and loud, although not as loud as the squelching of your juices.

You’re not even aware of the way you’re dripping onto the fresh bedspread, nor can you really control the volume of your moans when you bring back the memory of him fingering you. You’ve never appreciated the soundproof system of your apartment as much as you do now, as you have three fingers massaging that one spot deep inside you while your other hand plays with your breasts.

The pleasure builds up and up, like it doesn’t ever want to stop, and you’re burning and doing your best to keep that moan of Joong-gil’s name trapped inside your chest. But then your hand brushes your clit and you’re coming, your orgasm crashing down on you as though it wants to pull you down under and never let you back up.

It does take you forever to come down from it. You put the ceiling of your bedroom into focus before you actually realize how erratic your heartbeat still is or how the tenderness of your pussy makes your thighs tremble when you trail your hand upward to rest it on your lower belly.

The ring of a notification comes at the same time your brain has the lucidity to think I need another shower.

It takes you a good five minutes to fully get back to your senses and stop thinking about Joong-gil’s lips on you, and at first you think about ignoring your phone. It’s late and you’re tired and overstimulated, and despite having a whole day for yourself tomorrow, you feel like you should take tonight off as well. But then a million and one thoughts start wracking you, and with a groan, you pick up your phone from the nightstand.

To your surprise, you read Joong-gil’s name on the screen and faster than you’d ever thought you would, you find yourself clicking on his text message.

[9:07 PM] Park Joong-gil: was thinking about you. what are you doing?

You feel your face grow hotter and you can’t help but giggle excitedly, slightly kicking your feet in the air before quickly venting to Bit-na. It’s been a while since the last time you felt this childish, but it’s not in a bad way this time, and it feels really good.

Still, you have no clue where you find the courage to text Joong-gil back:

[9:13 PM] you: wishing my fingers were yours

Another squeal rushes past your lips as you lock your phone and throw it at the foot of the bed. God, you feel like you’re sixteen all over again, when you were still crushing on that classmate of yours, Min-ho, who used to be a math genius and a Prince Charming.

Instead of a text reply, however, your phone starts ringing with an incoming call that makes your heart skip a beat inside your chest. Panic flashes past your thoughts for a split second, but then you convince yourself to grab your phone and lie back down while you answer, part of you expecting for it to be Bit-na.

It’s Joong-gil, of course. Bit-na is out on a date and you know it well, but hope is always the last spark to go out.

“So, you were saying…?” You see the smugness in his smirk, but it’s hard to focus when he has one arm bent behind his head as he sits in bed with his back against the headboard. The faint hickey you left on his collarbone is right there, staring right back at you, and you have to press your thighs together because all you can think of is the afternoon you spent making out and then sucking him off.

“You read it right the first time,” you stagger, trying to keep your phone angled in such a way that only your face and neck are visible.

“Are you naked?” He moves closer to the screen for a second before he sits back again. His smirk turns into an actual grin, and the spark in his eyes makes you want to gush out about him to Bit-na for the rest of the fucking month.

“Yeah,” you breathe out.

“Show me?”

You don’t know where you find it in yourself to counter-attack until you hear yourself speak. “You first.”

You really thought you could have a smart moment, but when he tilts his phone to show you he’s only topless but still wearing a pair of navy blue pajama pants, you realize you’ve simply tricked yourself.

“That’s not fair.”

Your pout only makes him chuckle, but you’re still teasing enough to show yourself only up till the top of your breasts.

“Where’s the rest?”

“You’ll have to come see it in person.” This time you know you have the upper hand. He might be the country’s crush, but you’re still sensual enough to play your game.

He looks genuinely sad when he says, “my schedule is full till the end of the month and I want to spend more than just five minutes with you.”

He’s told you countless times today that he’s seriously interested in getting to know you, but it’s still surprising yet heartwarming to find confirmation of that yet again in his words.

“So you were serious? This afternoon.”

“That I wanna pursue you?” When you nod, he continues, “never been more serious.”

You end up talking about the tour you’ve just wrapped up, about a song he’d love to collab with you on once again, maybe next year, and about how fun it was to work together. When you go to bed that night, after a late night snack and a quick shower, you realize you’ve been on the phone for almost three hours and that you’ve never felt this comfortable with him ever.

Park Joong-gil is the last thought on your mind when you eventually fall asleep.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. However, you find yourself realizing how slowly the seconds can tick by and it’s a never-ending surprise to find out how much pent-up frustration your body can bottle up while you wait until the end of the month for your date. You still don’t have the details; you don’t even have a date, Joong-gil hasn’t set it yet, but that’s still your one and only thought.

Lim Ryung-gu reads you much better than Bit-na ever could, what with the distance or the fact that while you finally have more free time now that your comeback is behind your back, your best friend’s work life has slowly turned into a nightmare, preventing you from video calling. And, truly, maybe that’s a blessing in disguise because you hate the fact that Joong-gil is capable of affecting you this much without even trying, but at the same time it’s nice to have something other than work or anxiety making your heartrate pick up.

You’re in the studio with Ryung-gu one chilly afternoon towards the end of September. The RMT guys are going through a chill stretch of time before their end-of-year performance, and while Ryeon and Joon-woong are taking advantage of this time to get some more sleep in, Ryung-gu is still busy producing. You technically shouldn’t be allowed previews of their music, but the four of you are pretty much your agency’s money-makers, so there’s really no one stopping you.

“How’s it going with Park Joong-gil?” Ryung-gu absentmindedly asks, eyes fixed on the music software he’s been playing with all day.

You’ve been keeping him up-to-date with the most important things, unable to take your mind off of Joong-gil. It’s almost as though he’s one of your most recurrent thoughts nowadays; the situation wasn’t this bad even when you were spending all your time together during your tour or during the whole album-creation process.

“It’s… I don’t really know,” you shrug your shoulders, sucking pomegranate juice through the straw. “He’s busy now and I feel like I’m all of a sudden losing my mind for him.”

Ryung-gu clicks around on the screen, switching between pieces of software and tweaking his lyrics around, but then he turns towards you and gives you his full attention. “Too busy to even text?”

You feel how your face starts burning and when you avert your gaze from him, he must take it the wrong way, for he says,

“That’s a lame excuse.”

“No, I mean, we’ve been… texting,” you admit eventually, your exhale quivering at the thought of the kind of texts that have been going back and forth between the two of you on your burner phone.

“Why that pause?” But then, a second later, it must hit him. “Sexting? You’ve been sexting with the Park Joong-gil?” Surprise is as clear as day both in his voice and on his face, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.

You hide behind your can of juice, but it’s hard to wipe that wide grin off your lips. Joong-gil’s groggy morning voice last week still affects you to this day when you replay it in your head – can’t wait to have my hands on you is part of what he left in your voicemail before heading out for his day a few hours before you even had the chance to wake up.

“Damn, I didn’t picture him to be the sexting type. He seems… intimidating, sometimes.”

You have to agree with him. Your collab brought along one surprise after the other, and it’s almost hard to believe people are still talking about it weeks after it ended.

“I think I really want to try this thing with him,” you say – to Ryung-gu or to yourself, you really don’t know as you look out the narrow window to your side. You see the top of a tree from there, its branches moving in the wind, and the clouds run by fast in the sunny sky. “I think I want to have with him what you have with your person, but at the same time I’m afraid this is too much too fast.”

Ryung-gu doesn’t say anything for what feels like the longest time, looking out the window, too, lost in thought. Maybe he’s thinking about his person, you assume, and for a moment you wonder how fast things moved between them before they started being an item. You wish he would tell you more about them, but at the same time you appreciate the privacy he allows his relationship.

“I think you should go for it, then,” he says eventually, moving his gaze from the view outside to your face. He’s smiling, and in that split second you realize why nothing’s ever felt rushed between the two of you. He puts you at ease; there’s probably no one else in Seoul you’re this comfortable around. It’s not just because of the sexual sort-of relationship you agreed upon, with its sporadic encounters you’ve had when either or both of you were too stressed to even breathe. It’s him, and his aura, that unperturbed calm that follows him around wherever he goes. “One step at a time. There’s no too fast or too slow. And if it doesn’t work out…” he shrugs, “at least you can say you tried.”

You nod in agreement. “You don’t think he’s into me just for the sex, do you?”

His gaze is stern for just a moment before he starts cackling. “I’ve seen your interviews together,” he replies when his laughter subsides, “and the interviews he’s given on his own. I think he’s genuinely into you as a person, I don’t know why you don’t see that, too.”

You decide to believe your friend, even when his question – are you into Joong-gil just for the sex? – starts eating away at the back of your mind with the only purpose of trying to make you doubt everything you know about him. It was a rhetorical question, of course, not Ryung-gu implying you’re into Joong-gil just for his dick or the way he still teases you about that one time you confessed to fingering yourself to the thought of him, but it’s still enough to leave you frustrated.

Some more days pass, and there’s an actual attempt of getting to know the little things about the both of you in-between the teasing texts you send each other. You find out he’s into martial arts and that he actually used to compete at national level, when he was younger. He learns you make origami when you’re sad, after he’s seen the collection you have in your living room on a video call, and that you have this one scar on the back of your left thigh from that one time you slipped on a rock at the beach, when you were eight and your mother on a business trip, and your father had panicked so much that you had had to calm him down.

Eventually, Joong-gil sets the date on his first day off – saturday night. I’m taking you to eat the best food in Seoul, he promised, and there’s no muffling the excitement that grows and grows inside you with each day that passes.

The anticipation is much better than the absence, that’s for sure, and when saturday night comes around, you get ready by doing your make-up and putting on that nice black dress you modeled for during that one fashion campaign last year. It’s a pity that you never got to wear it before, but it’s also exciting to know you’re wearing it for the first time on a date with someone so charming.

Yun-ho rings at your door at six on the dot, and then he leads you down to the underground garage of your condominium. For a moment you worry it’s just going to be you and him in the car, but when he opens the back door of a dark SUV with tinted windows, you find Joong-gil already sitting there on the back seat waiting for you.

You panic when you take in his outfit – light jeans and a maroon turtleneck that make you wonder whether he has given you the details after all and you simply didn’t notice in the excitement of the moment. “Am I overdressed?” you fret, buckling yourself in when his manager starts the car.

“On the contrary.” Joong-gil looks you up and down. He eyes the slit in the long skirt of your dress, the way the jewel shoulder straps twinkle in the light of the streetlamps, and then back down over the swell of your breasts and to the high-heeled sandals you wore. “You’re breathtaking.”

You want to tell him that he is breathtaking with the way he’s staring at you, almost like you hung the stars in the night sky and lit every single light in Seoul yourself. “Well, if anything, I’m not underdressed for wherever we’re going,” you say as a way to calm your nerves – you don’t even remember when the last time you went out on an actual date was.

“Oh, I know the owner,” Joong-gil grins, taking your hand in his and interlacing his fingers with yours. His hand is warm; it reminds you of the things he’s used it on you for – tuck your hair behind your ear but also finger you on a make-up desk. “He’ll have nothing to complain about.”

As it turns out, he is the owner. After a detour to not let you guess exactly where he was taking you, you find yourself stepping out of the car and into the underground garage of his apartment building, and then up the twenty-four floors to his apartment.

It hits you as soon as you step through his door, the fact that the last time you were here things could have gone much further than they actually did. You still feel the way he kissed you when he walked you backward into his apartment and the way his hands roamed your body before you eventually ended up on your knees for him.

Catching yourself red-handed, you force your train of thoughts to take another direction. After swapping your heels for the pair of house slippers Joong-gil gives you, you follow him into the open living area. It’s there, on the dining table, that you see all that food and your jaw drops.

“Where did you get all this?” you gawk, all kinds of delicious aromas tickling your nostrils and making your mouth salivate.

He’s smug when he looks at you before being the gentleman he is and pushing your chair closer to the table once you sit down. “I should’ve mentioned I’m a fairly decent cook,” he grins, moving to sit opposite you.

It’s then that you notice your favorite side dish, the one you told him about at your mother’s house and how you’ve never eaten it again after your father passed away. There’s another one, closer to him, that you suddenly remember praising a couple of times when you were still in the songwriting process of your collab album and used to spend entire nights in the studio.

It touches something inside you, the way he seems to have actually paid attention to your likes and dislikes, even though you just mentioned them or they never felt like they were truly that important. But you’re either good at hiding the pleasant surprise, or he simply doesn’t point it out when you start eating.

It’s quiet at first – you just feel his eyes on you as you bring food to your mouth and enjoy your dinner in silence. It doesn’t last long, however: he really is great at cooking – and not simply ‘fairly decent’ as he said – and compliments after compliments start spilling out of your mouth. This is so tasty, or I remember my grandma used to make it just like this!, or I can’t believe you cooked this yourself. It flusters him, and he’s such an endearing sight. This tall, dark, intimidating man when it comes to the heights of your industry really did go out of his way after a booked-out month just to cook your favorite things.

You could smooch his whole face right here and now.

By the time all the plates have been emptied, you’re full as an egg.

“Was it good?” he asks, a satisfied smirk on his lips, leaning back into his chair, one arm stretched out on the table and the other hooked on the back of his chair. Sitting like that, with that turtleneck fitting him like a glove, he feels like a whole course of desserts.

“It was incredible,” you gush out again, beaming, lightly massaging your stomach with one hand.

It hits you then, that you could play dirty and tease him the way he’s been teasing you all this time. You don’t even know what you’re talking about, just that you’re somehow keeping up with him, when you decide to strike. You remove a slipper under the table and stretch your leg out to play with his ankle.

He jolts slightly, and there’s an automatic “What are you doing?” slipping past his lips that just tugs at yours.

“What do you mean?” You lean forward, and you’ve acted in your fair share of dramas at the beginning of your career to be able to effortlessly pull off the most innocent of expressions. “I’m just playing a little game.”

Your foot trails up his shin and you have to control the impulse to laugh at what you’re doing.

“You’ve been teasing me all this time after that evening… It’s only fair that I have my payback,” you grin.

“Is that why you went braless?”

Your grin widens. So he has noticed, you think. You want to keep just for yourself how gentlemanly he is, however – not pointing it out, and not staring at your chest, either. Not that him being everyone’s heartthrob is surprising, but you keep on noticing the little things now and it’s those little things that make you fall for him a little more each day. How considerate he is. How attentive to the little things he is.

Or even how fucking sexy he looks right now, as he rounds the dining table to come pull you to your feet.

His hands trail up your arms, and you do your best to hold his eye contact despite the fact that you feel yourself melting in front of him into a puddle of hormones.

“Fuck,” he groans, letting his hands come up to your shoulders. He plays with the straps of your dress almost as though he’s considering pushing them down your arms, but he doesn’t. What he does, however, is move his hands down your body to grab your hips. “You make staying away so fucking hard.”

It’s like there’s just the two of you – which is technically correct since no one else is in his apartment, but at the same time it’s like there’s nothing outside the walls of his home, just the two of you inside.

There’s a tiny voice at the back of your mind that whimpers at how desperately you want him inside of you, but that’s a story for another time.

“Then don’t.”

You pull in him for a kiss, and it doesn’t take long for one of his hands to creep up your chest and grab a boob through your dress.

“I still want to play a game, though,” you smirk when you pull back, just in time to see that look of suspicion flash across his gaze.

“I already know I’m going to regret playing along with this.” He lightly pinches one of your nipples before his hands are back on the crystal straps of your dress. When you nod your consent, he pushes them down your shoulders and takes a step back to take in how it reveals your body as it glides to the floor. Your breasts, and your stomach, and your legs. Fuck, no one’s looked at you the way he is right now.

You sure hope no one in the skyscraper opposite his apartment complex will see you through his windows.

“My busy weeks are about to start,” you say, stepping out of your dress and moving closer to him. His hands guide yours to the waistband of his jeans and you don’t hesitate when it comes to unbuttoning and unzipping them.

“What about that?” He’s trying his best to keep his breathing even, but you see how it’s not really working when your hand sneaks into his pants, your palm pressing right against his hardening cock through his underwear.

“I think we should wait,” you whisper against the side of his neck before licking a stripe against his skin. He shudders, and you’re loving your upper hand for once.

“Fuck that.” He removes your hand from his pants and picks you up. He walks up to the couch and sits down with you in his lap, and this time it’s not like in Atlanta. This time he pulls you down flush against him from the get go so that you can feel exactly what you do to him. “Why wait when we’re both here now?” You swallow his groan when you roll your hips against him just once.

“You can touch me,” you murmur, taking both of his hands in yours before guiding them onto your breasts. “And I will touch you,” you reassure him when he shoots you a burning gaze.

You’re pulling his pullover out of the waistband of his jeans when he asks, “but?”

He hisses and then shudders when you graze the skin of his abdomen with your nails. His reaction makes you smirk and the only way to hide your satisfied expression is by leaning in closer to him so that you can mock-bite the skin of his neck. You remember that part of his body to be sensitive from the one time you ended up giving him a blowjob, and he doesn’t disappoint you – he bucks his hips up and pulls your head back so that he can crash his lips into yours.

It’s distracting, the way he kisses you. All-consuming, like he can’t get enough of you and this is the next best thing he’s thought of to be as humanly close as possible to you when he’s still fully dressed. One of his hands trails down your back and slips into the back of your panties before he’s grabbing tight onto your buttcheek and kneading it. You’re pretty sure that if he moved his hand a little more down, those long fingers of his would be able to feel how absolutely drenched you are.

But then you remember what you were trying to say, that stupid little game that suddenly popped up in your mind when you realized how fucking bad you wanted his dick – but with feelings. You pull away, gasping for hair, and when you meet his eye he’s already staring at you with that heated gaze of his. If your panties weren’t soaked before, they sure as hell are now.

“No fucking,” you pant, sliding your right hand up along his chest and brushing your thumb across his nipple. You don’t really know what he feels for you aside from the lust that always drips from his racy texts, but you still want him to crumble for you just as much as you do him. “No sex until I’m free again.”

“When’s that gonna be?” He’s already regretting doing this, but there’s also a curious spark behind the lust in his eyes, and you absolutely love the way he pulls you closer by your ass on his dick, even though the fly of his jeans grazes your inner thighs. “Hm? How long’s that gonna be?”

You shrug your shoulders. “Mid-November, most likely.”

He gapes, speechless, but he still lets you take his turtleneck off. “You’re crazy. You can’t be for real.”

You don’t even hide that amused smirk this time. You simply lean into him fully, chest-to-chest, and press a wet kiss right underneath his jaw. The throbbing in your pussy picks up when you feel the light twitch of his dick in his briefs. “Don’t you think it’s gonna be worth it?”

“I think you’re gonna make me lose my mind,” he flat out whines, wrapping his arms around you tight enough to make you stop teasing him. “Fuck, can’t you feel me twitch?”

You can, and you’re doing your best to ignore that.

“It’s gonna be fun,” you murmur, gently sucking a hickey into his neck – probably against your better judgment, but your tits pressing into his chest and his clothed cock pressing against your core.

“It’s gonna be torture,” he retorts, kissing your shoulder. He’s so gentle that gooseflesh breaks out all over your body, and you’re forced to pull back and rest your forearms on his shoulders to stop yourself from giving in to him.

“You will survive,” you chuckle. “And then you’ll be able to have me however you like.”

“Can I at least eat you out now?”

You peck his lips, and he’s quick at opening his mouth to deepen the kiss for a moment before pulling back. “I don’t know,” you pant. “Can you?”

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