#where I have to suck it up and stay and be exhausted and have tired migraines for a week cuz I get only a couple hours of sleep and then

[onereallygoodlambonastick]

.

#i get that theyre scared but im so tired of family members saying they want more guns n more shooters sent to prison n see how they like it #every time i hear anybody close to me speak up about this i get geniunely so drained. no boundaries to speak of rn. and still i want to #pipe up and mention that maybeee consider not that. but i realize even that one intervention of a 1sided convo will not get them to wake up #it takes a process. it takes slow and long. #and i know i have a responsibility to intervene when possible. but like rn? im exhausted and miserable and not resourced enough to take care #of myself and these other people at the same time. they really are out here hushing each other whenever they talk ''political'' in fear ill #keen over and die from the additional mental strain as if i dont think about these things on the daily #idk the ppl surrounding me are so intolerable to me rn. at least a function of that is how much im intolerable to myself and how shaken i am #mentally spiritually emotionally intellectually. whatever #im so tired of being a women like how they think a woman or a man should be. im so tired that im just sucking it all up and unable to #turn it into direction towards more useful ends. now it just sinks to the pit of me and stays congealed and im stuck. im stuck. im stuck! #i miss being in a place where i could see all this and move forward anyways without getting knocked out of alignment. #it rly feels like rn im crushed into either a fetal position spiritually or on my hands trying to howl toothlessly and w/o clarity #i have so much trouble trying to stay in my body and letting myself talk shit. any kinda shit. im starting debates im getting run down im #getting mired in the pointlessness of being right or being better or being more correct than ever. im starting shit i dont have to in the #name of glory or betterment. and directly tied to this is getting so mired up in the guild and dread and panic of proving and being a talksp #erson #i get threatened much more easily and i get intimidated much more easily. i try to take up as little space as possible. as if doing so will #actually do something to help me breathe. what a joke! #what a default state return to patterned meanness. sorry. im trying to collect myself and step down without hurting myself. #it doesnt feel like im moving at all from where im at but im probably crawling. im probably inching myself along. #keep making room for being watched though. i feel like im being watched. i keep thinking im letting down all the people ive talked to b4 abt #such things. i wonder if they would sneer at me? i keep looking towards how i was few months ago when i had more energy/presence/okayness #and i miss having fun. i miss the knowing that we would be okay we would figure it out as we figure it out #i miss not falling into the trap of proving myself to ppl and if i did to climb back out. #rn if its not flattened and a distant dissociated state im generally embarassed to exist. to speak. to know its never now/never. #i miss knowing and believing concretely that there are people many people doing this work who are thinking hard and doing hard things #and offering contempt to myself is like condemning myself to burn out farther and farther and the best i can do rn to counter that is #acknowledging i have indeed done the bare minimum; which is wise. #acknowledging i have indeed thought ill and i can follow that up w a bringing back to an acknowledgement of my efforts.

[luveline]

Ok what about a lil fic of Remus being snappy with his gf leading up to the full moon? Just some angst and then fluffy ending with them reconciling

thank u for ur request! —remus says something he shouldn't before the full moon, and later campaigns for your forgiveness with affection and a confession. fem!reader, 1.2k

Remus lays on the couch with his forearm pressed to his eyes. It's the day before the full moon, and he feels the hours approaching like a death sentence every time. You hover in the doorway, watching, unsure of how to help. He gets the same every month (or rather, every cycle). 

Irritable. So anxious he can't breathe properly, let alone enter conversation. 

You hate seeing him like this. Your Remus, who spends every moment you're together trying to make sure you're as happy as you can be. 

Cautious, you round the sofa to crouch by his face. You hold out your hand, trailing a gentle fingertip down the length of his arm, tripping over pinched skin ridged by scars. He's beautiful no matter what, but he gets insecure about how he looks every full moon. You know he thinks he's a monster. You've no way to prove it to him beyond this. 

"Hey, handsome," you say softly. "I know you're not hungry, but I made dinner anyway if you feel up to it. And I know," —you drop your voice to a near whisper— "I know you're not in the mood, but I'm here. I can sit here and stroke your hair in silence all night if that's what you want, my love. I'll do whatever you want." 

"Then leave me alone," he says. 

Half snap, half firm defeat. You wince at the ire in his voice. It won't ever be nice to have someone you love speak to you like you're getting on their nerves, but you know what it is he's facing. You know this is hard for him to cope with. You can forgive him for everything if he makes it through this in one piece. 

"Okay. I'm sorry. I love you, Remus." 

He turns his head toward the sofa cushions. 

You leave the room with a heavy heart. In the kitchen, you try to eat, but every mouthful makes you feel sick, your eyes welling with tears as you chew. You're hurt, he's hurting, and this really, really sucks. 

The smell of dinner starts to amplify the nausea. You grab your plate and carry it to the back door, scraping your leftovers straight into the rubbish. You wash your plate and leave it to drip dry on the draining board, your eyes burning. You sniff, wiping your nose in your sleeve. 

You're hoping desperately that Remus will come around before bed, but he stays where he is. Thinking he's finally found sleep and wanting to leave him to that blissful reprieve, you creep through the living room and down the hallway into the bedroom. Tears fall as you change into your pyjamas. You're so tired that you barely have time to cry yourself to sleep. 

You're not sure how much longer it is when you wake. A familiar hand cups your cheek. 

From the warmth of your skin, he's had his hand there for a while. 

"I'm so sorry," Remus says. 

You don't know how he knows you're awake. He must have been watching you long enough to spot the difference. Honestly, you're not sure you want to see him yet, because you love him so much, and it breaks your heart to be at the end of his disdain even when you know the cause. 

You struggle to see him in the dark. 

"I should never have spoken to you like that." 

Your eyes close of their own accord, exhausted and sore from crying. "You didn't mean it." 

"I wish you'd shout at me," he murmurs, sliding his hand over your ear. His thumb draws along the shell of your ear. 

"I'm too tired," you mumble. 

Remus' head shifts closer to yours. Sharing the same pillow, his hand falls to your shoulder, his arm wrapping around you, a firm bicep pressed to your front. 

You let yourself lean into it. His breath warms the space between your brows. 

"It's no excuse, but I… I can't think of anything else but the pain, sometimes. I get so angry about it, because I'm–" He stops short, swallowing audibly in the otherwise silent room. "I'm scared. But I would be a hundred times more terrified if I didn't have you, knowing you're there for me, unflinchingly, before and after it happens, it helps me get through it. It's not fair that you give me so much peace and I just… 

"I'm sorry, dove. I don't mean to take advantage of your… heart." He says heart like he's been winded. He hadn't sounded finished, but everything stops at that word. 

You force your eyes open. He's looking at you with an unspeakable amount of love, kind to keel you over if you were standing. His eyes are pitch black in the lack of light, irises melded with pupils, giving him an even sorrier gaze. You raise a sluggish hand to his where it rests behind your back and pull it back to your face. You miss his touch. 

"I love you," you say. 

"I know," he says, his jaw tensing in an attempt to stage off tears. "I love you, too." You watch them collect in the corners of his eyes, following one as it slides to rest in the dip of his nose bridge while he lies on his side like this. 

"So don't be sorry." 

"But I am sorry. I can't fathom why I think it's okay to treat you that way." 

"You don't think at all, Remus. I'm not being flippant, but you're busy worrying about the worst of it." You shake your head gently. His hand twitches against your cheek. "I don't blame you." 

"I know," he utters. 

You stare up at him as he sits enough to tower over you. His smile is sorry, in love and ashamed. You want to tell him how it doesn't matter, that it's okay, but you're thinking maybe you need him to say it first. 

"I'm sorry." 

"Remus, you only told me to leave you alone." 

"I need you to know that any other time, you're all that I want. You're everything. I couldn't ask for more than you. Please don't think I'm cruel," he pleads in a whisper. 

You lift your chin incrementally. "I'd never think that." 

His apology kiss is coddling. Like he's worried he'll hurt you, like he's holding back, he kisses you like you can't handle more than a chaste press of the lips. 

"I love you," he says into it. 

You lift your head to kiss him harder. You love him, and you won't break. You can be exactly as strong as he needs you to be, so long as love waits at the end of the night. 

"I love you." A huff of a laugh escapes him. "Does this mean I'm forgiven?" Caution has his joke falling flat.

You nuzzle your cheek against his, knowing you'd forgiven him just as soon as he'd snapped. "If you let me stroke your hair. Did you eat your dinner?" 

"I'll eat it tomorrow," he says. A white lie, you both know, but he slides down further under the sheets so you can reach his head. 

You card your fingers through his hair until you've both fallen asleep. 

#remus lupin x reader #remus lupin x fem!reader #remus lupin fluff #remus lupin x you #remus lupin x y/n #marauders era #remus x reader #remus x you #marauders #remus lupin drabble #remus lupin blurb #marauders x reader #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin fanfic #remus lupin fanfiction #the marauders

[specshroom]

★ I think Choso is obsessed with kissing ★

~~~

At first he thought the concept was a bit weird like alot of human things. You just... put your lips on someone else's...and hold it there????

 Yeah he was confused. But you were patient with him and from the moment you two had your first kiss the man was hooked. (I'm imagining like fireworks and stars in his eyes with a deep red blush like a comedy anime lmao) 

He's a bit clumsy at first, he's just eager and inexperienced. You can only find it cute, honestly. 

Even much later in the relationship, after he's gotten the hang of it and has settled into casual physical touch. Choso still has such an eagerness for kisses. Unlike sex which has a defined begining, climax and end. Kissing can go on forever, it doesn't have to ever end. Even a half curse like him gets tired and overstimulated eventually and while he obviously loves fucking you, he also loves the ease and casualness of kissing. 

The way he sees it, It still riles you up and allows you to express love and passion for eachother while not being as exhausting. 

When he wakes up? Lazy kisses. When you're making breakfast together? Playful kisses. Cuddling on the couch? Cozy steamy make out kisses. Good bye kisses, Hello kisses, Good morning kisses, Good night kisses, kisses in the shower, kisses in the kitchen, Eskimo kisses, butterfly kisses, cheek, forehead, nose kisses. This man is a fool for literally all of it. 

He loves the sweetness of a simple peck and he loves the spit slick mess of french kissing. He loves the feeling of your lips moving perfectly against his. He loves the feeling of your tongues sliding against each other.  

He loves that it could turn into more at any moment or it could just stay the same for as long as you both want. He loves when you run out of air and release from the kiss with breathy pants, your forehead resting against his. He loves when both of you kiss so much it makes your lips hurt but neither of you want to stop so you just end up rubbing your tongues together to keep the sweet friction going. 

He's so normal about your lips in general. He sees you apply lip stick, lip gloss or lip balm? Mans is already chubbed up. You lick your lips while eating? His mind is wandering right into the gutter. God forbid you pout or bite your lip in front of him. 

His eyes unconsciously go to your lips when you talk. He can't help it, he feels embarrassed if you point it out. 

Now because he holds kissing in such high regard, I don't think he likes kissing you in public that much. It's just such a personal thing for him that he feels weird doing it Infront of other people. That being said, you both have been caught mid make out session multiple times by multiple people. Even though he finds it embarrassing he can't deny you if you offer him a big wet kiss on the cheek. 

He absolutely LOVES kissing during sex. He just thinks it makes the already intimate moment even more intimate. When you're using your pretty mouth to suck him off he can't help but pull you off his dick so he can sloppily kiss you for a bit before letting you get back to it. Your lips just look so good around his dick. His love for kisses also extends to your lower lips btw. He looooves making out with your cunt and kissing up your thighs. Once he's already made you cum, he likes to place gentle kisses on your sensitive clit to watch you shake at the soft touch.

He makes sure that every time you two cum your mouths are also joined. That's why he likes positions where you're face to face so he can easily kiss you when you two cum together. Although he will make sure that even in positions like doggy or when your back is to his chest you will still get that intense messy kiss every climax. 

#sorry for not posting in a while it will happen again. #its late and i have work tomorrow but im writing this anywayyyyyyyy #choso jjk #jjk x reader #choso x reader #jjk #choso kamo #choso headcanons #choso smut #choso imagine

[bueckersgirl]

Intertwined*

Paige Bueckers x Fem reader

Summary: Y/n and Paige have been broken up for a month now, and when a party comes around where they both find themselves at, feelings are revealed and its clear that they both can't seem to forget about each other.

WC: 3.2K

Warnings: 18+, smut, minor angst

(sidenote; im so obsessed with this picture UGH.)

➽───────────────❥

God— Y/n could feel her stare from across the room as she tried to keep up a conversation with her friend, Micheal. It was getting harder and harder to avoid Paige and her intense stares all night but y/n refused to give in because she knew that’s exactly what she wanted- for her to acknowledge her. Y/n wasn’t in the mood to speak to Paige, there was no need to really and she truly only came here to celebrate her friend's birthday then leave. 

It has been a good month since the pair had last spoken to each other, and the image of Paige banging on her front door,  begging for another chance was something permanently scarred in her mind. Y/n didn’t let her in, she refused to, and told Paige to go home and forget about everything they ever had. 

Y/n cared for Paige a lot- she truly really did. A part of her still does whether she wants to or not. Paige just screwed up a lot and no amount of apologies she’d give would make a difference. 

If it wasn’t for Micheals birthday tonight, she’d be at home in her bed instead. But, Michael had been her childhood friend for years and she wasn’t just gonna not come just because Paige was friends with him too. 

“You look stunning tonight, Y/n.” Michael spoke, grabbing her hand and giving it a small peck, causing her to smile sheepishly and mumble a quiet, “Thank you.” 

Y/n took a peek down at her glass, noticing it being basically empty as she chewed on her bottom lip, “I’m gonna go get a refill.” 

She slowly moved away from Micheal, making her way to the kitchen, and she felt her expression drop as she did so. Y/n felt exhausted the entire night keeping up the image that she was happy and acting as though Paige being there didn’t bother her but she didn’t want her to know how badly things were affecting her.

Once she was in the kitchen the music from the living room died down a bit while she searched the fridge for a new bottle of champagne. 

“Ma.”

Her eyes shot open once she heard the voice she hadn't heard in weeks, causing her to suck in a deep breath before she continued to pour her drink into her glass. Y/n was positive there was no way she’d be able to handle a conversation with Paige, especially not tonight. This was not the right time or place to try and work things out. 

“Paige, no.” She told her softly as she took a sip from her glass. 

She kept her eyes down at the kitchen floor, noticing Paige’s figure making her way closer to hers. “We’re not doing this tonight, please.”

“I just wanted to see you.”

“You have been seeing me this entire night, Paige.” She was directly in front of her now. She felt as if she was trapped under her frame and was too tired to push herself off. 

Paige sighed, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Properly see you. Like this. Not just from across the room.”  

“It’s been hard though because of you trying to avoid me all night.” 

“Paige, I don’t want to avoid you. I just don’t want to cause anything on Michael's day.” She sighed, placing a hand onto Paige’s chest to move her out of her way. “Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I can’t stay in the kitchen forever.” 

“So that’s just it, huh? You can’t even look at me anymore?”

Y/n shut her eyes while sucking in a deep breath before turning back around as her eyes made her way up towards Paige’s body, scanning her body, seeing she was dressed in one of her red huskies jerseys with a pair of sweats. Once her eyes finally reached her face the urge to look away grew stronger as Paige’s stare felt more intense and intimate with each second that passed by.

“See? I’m looking right at you, now. Was this what you wanted?  Are you pleased?”

Y/n was quick to notice Paige's expression fall at her words and she watched as she put her hair in a messy ponytail. “No, Y/n I’m not pleased or happy. I haven’t been pleased with anything since that day.”

“Paige, don’t start this.” She shook her head as she indulged in the rest of the champagne left in her glass. “You know I did what was best for the both of us whether you like it or not. Our relationship wasn’t healthy, it was bound to end eventually.” 

Paige scoffed, while her eyes trailed over her. “Bound to end eventually, seriously? Look I know I fucked up a lot. Like a whole lot. I'm not proud of it, I know how badly I hurt you and it pains me everyday when I think about how we ended because I know things could’ve been different if I just stopped fucking up.” 

“I tried playing it cool and shit acting like this hadn’t affected me.” She sighed before walking over and looking down at her, “Seeing you tonight, so beautiful, so gorgeous and talking to Michael and the rest of our friends as if  you moved on so much, it’s been killing me horribly. Because I haven’t moved on, y/n. I haven’t at all.” 

Y/n felt her heart pounding at Paige's words. She wasn’t even sure if what she was saying was the truth but a part of her hoped it was. Y/n hadn’t moved on either even though she’d try convincing herself she did, she knew she hadn’t. 

She opened up her mouth to speak but was quickly interrupted by Michael coming into the kitchen. He stopped before looking at the pair and letting out an awkward laugh. 

“Is everything alright?” He asked, and y/n gave him a small smile in response. “Everything’s okay, Mikes. Just came to get a refill and ran into Paige so we catched up a bit. I was actually just leaving to go find you.”

“It was nice talking to you, Paige.” Y/n whispered as she slipped her way past her, feeling Paige’s fingers lightly brush against her shoulder.

She hated how badly her body got goosebumps just from feeling her touch again. 

————————————

It had been two weeks since the party and Paige still lived in y/n’s mind. It was hard enough trying to forget about her but not only seeing her but speaking to her as well made y/n’s mind wander more than usual. 

Y/n had been laying down on her couch the last few hours binging a few movies while eating some snacks. She was slowly beginning to fall asleep but a knock to her door woke her up. 

Rubbing her eyes she made her way towards the door and took a peek through her doorbell. 

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Sighing she undid all the locks before opening it. Her breath was quickly stolen from her seeing Paige standing there with a cupcake and a mini bouquet of white roses in her hand, and she could sense the desperation radiating off her.

“I got these for you—I remember how much you loved the cakes from Sweet Mary’s.” Paige mumbled, before handing them over to her. “I’m sorry for just randomly showing up over here. I just had to speak to you.” 

She took them from her and whispered a soft, “Thank you” before moving out of the doorway. “Please, come in.”

Y/n wasn't sure why she didn’t just tell Paige to go home again instead of letting her in. She’d never admit it, but a part of her missed her company. She just hoped that this didn’t end badly. 

Paige stepped inside, taking off her slides and leaving them by the door as Y/n made her way towards her vessel in the kitchen to place the flowers in. “Are you thirsty? I can make some coffee or tea if you’d like. I also have a bit of wine if you’d prefer that instead.”

“No–no, I’m okay. Thank you, y/n.” Paige spoke, before following y/n to her living room where they sat on opposite sides of the couch. “Thank you, also for uh–letting me in this late.” 

Y/n watched as Paige swallowed thickly and turned to her, “I’ve been missing you so badly, Y/n, you truly have no idea. I’m sure at the party it was obvious enough but  I don’t want to play the victim, and make excuses for what I did because that’s stupid. I’m so, so, so sorry, y/n, for everything. For hurting you, for not changing, for letting my career get in the way of us, and making you feel unseen. After I gave myself these two weeks to properly think, it was clear that I need you back in my life. I’m a mess without you, ma. I truly don’t want to keep handling everything without you by my side anymore.” 

Y/n sat quiet for a few seconds not sure how to properly express what she wanted to say. She could tell Paige was miserable and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing. 

“Look.” she began, noticing how Paige dropped her head into her hands, before giving her the chance to finish and letting out shaky breaths. “I know from the outside looking in on things you’ve assumed I’ve been handling things fine. I can tell based on what you said to me at Michaels birthday. But I actually haven’t been dealing with this that well either. I’ve missed you as well, you’re all my mind has been thinking about the past month. And no matter how hard I try to deny my feelings– I really miss you.” 

Paige slowly lifted her head back up as a large grin took over her face, “Can I scoot closer to you, please?” she asked, and y/n was quick to nod in response. 

“God– you have no idea how badly I’ve missed sharing the same space as you. Just getting the chance to be this close to you is so fucking rewarding.” she spoke as she ran her fingers through y/n’s hair while she laid on her lap. Paige’s hand came up to her cheek, it was clear at first she was hesitant but she eventually stroked y/n’s cheek gently and let out a relieving sigh. “I’ve missed touching you.” 

Y/n turned her head and kissed the palm of Paige’s hand. “I’ve missed touching you too.” she spoke, before lifting her head up and running her nose against Paige’s jaw. “Please don’t hurt me again.” 

Paige wrapped her arms around her waist tightly and whispered softly into her ear, “I promise, I’ll never hurt you again my sweet girl.” Before Paige got the chance to say any more, y/n was quick to lean in and press her lips against hers, molding them together as she held onto Paige’s shirt tightly. Paige took the opportunity to roam her hand down y/n’s body again just like she did before. Finally getting the chance to feel her bare skin against hers was something she’d been craving for what felt like years. Her hand slid under y/n’s shirt and cupped her bare breast with her hand, earning a light moan from her against her lips. Her other hand slipped into her shorts, but was quickly taken aback when her hand was met with y/n’s bare ass cheek–instead of the cloth of her panties. 

She pulled back from the kiss and looked at y/n with furrowed brows. “You aren’t wearing underwear?” 

Y/n’s cheeks flushed pink as she shook her head in response and licked on her bottom lip. “I uh–take them off before I go to sleep now. It’s something I’ve been doing recently.” 

She watched as Paige’s pupils dilated, and soon both of her hands were now cupping her ass as she lifted them up from the couch and walked towards her room. “I forget how strong you are sometimes.” y/n muttered, causing Paige to chuckle before dropping her gently onto her twin-sized bed. “That seems like something pretty hard to forget, ma.” 

Paige hovered on top of y/n’s spread out figure and ran her fingers against her bare thigh. “Take off your shirt for me, ma. Wanna see those pretty tits again, been too long.” she asked and y/n was quick to comply, taking off her blouse earning a light grunt from Paige’s lips.

She held them both in her hands as she lightly massaged them, “Fuck, I’ve missed touching these pretty lil’ things so bad, baby.” she whispered before bringing her mouth down and sucking on one of them, and pinching the other one using her thumb and index finger as y/n let out a loud moan. 

“Feels good, hm?” Paige mumbled, removing her mouth from her breast and attaching them to her neck, nibbling onto the skin, making sure to leave a visible mark right underneath her jaw. 

She slid down y/n’s shorts eagerly and moaned at the sight of her bare pussy on display for her. “Ima take care of you tonight, ma. Just like I used to, gonna help you feel real good.” she spoke, taking two of her fingers and shoving them into y/n’s mouth and muttering a low, “Suck.” 

Y/n was quick to suck on her fingers like her life depended on it. She remembered how much Paige loved when she’d take them down her throat–so she was quick to do so. “Fuck, yes. Just like that.” Paige praised, shoving a third finger into her mouth. “Suck my fingers real good, ma. Imagine it was my strap in your mouth again.” Y/n moaned at the thought of having the strap back in her mouth–missing the way Paige would fuck her face with it or the times she’d aggressively fuck her when she’d misbehave, leaving her pussy sore yet throbbing and begging for more. 

“Such a good girl. Sucking my fingers so well.” she said, slowly taking her fingers out of y/n’s mouth as a string of saliva followed, then bringing them down to her dripping pussy. “Always get so wet for me, didn’t even need the spit, could easily slide my fingers right in, just like this.” she spoke as she slid two of her digits nice and slow inside, watching them disappear inside her entrance, before taking them out, licking her wetness clean from her fingers and letting out a moan at the taste.

“God–sweetest pussy I’ve ever had. Could have this taste in my mouth everyday and be satisfied.” 

“Paige.” “Yes, ma?”

“Please lick me.” 

Paige leaned down and gave her a peck on the lips. “Anything you want.” she whispered, grabbing y/n’s thighs and putting them on top of her shoulders. Paige was a sucker for teasing, and on any other occasion she’d make y/n work and beg for it. That was the usual for them. It was rare for Paige to give in this easily and early but fuck–she hadn’t gotten a chance to properly taste her in a month.  

She was quick to attach her mouth to y/n’s needy clit and start licking. She gained so much pleasure just by eating her out, it was like a gift on Christmas day for her. “Been so long since I had this sweet lil’pussy in my mouth.” Paige lifts her mouth up a bit and licks, causing y/n’s mouth to fall open in disbelief at the soft, sucking sound and gently smacking-noise as her lips sucked onto her clit. “God–it’s so fucking good.” she groaned under her breath, and y/n swears she’s on cloud nine. The feeling of Paige’s hot breath combined with her wet tongue was sensational. 

“Come on, ma.” she squeezed her thighs with her long fingers before pleading, “Back and forth yeah? Rock a bit for me, want you to be riding my face a bit.” Y/n was quick to do so, feeling the warm tip of Paige’s tongue press against her. “Fuck, feels so good, I’ve missed your tongue on me so badly.” she moaned, before Paige gave her a warm, long lick, causing her to cry out softly.

“Yes–yes, that’s right baby.” Paige muffled, giving her clit a short, sloppy sounding lick, making y/n buckforward again. “Shit, good fucking girl. Ride my tongue, just like that.” she spoke, having her tongue still buried between her folds, as y/n let out louder moans from the pleasure. Paige began kneading her thighs firmly as she licked deeper and deeper with each sound of y/n’s breathless moans escaping her swollen lips.

Y/n felt her abdomen clench and release, causing her to let out a fluttery sigh. “I’m close, so-so close.” she whispered urgently, as Paige hauls her more tightly against her mouth and presses her tongue more firmly against her needy clit. Y/n inhales sharply and her mouth falls open when her center starts to splinter into pieces, “I’m cummin–fuck.” And before she knew it, she was making a mess on Paige’s face. She pants, caught in place, as Paige rubs her thighs and lifts her face up, revealing her mouth and chin, glistening in her pussy juices. 

Paige then leans down and kisses her, and y/n immediately tasted herself on her tongue. The two just stayed like this for a while before y/n pulled back from the kiss. “Now–my turn.” Y/n climbs her way off the bed and stands in front of Paige’s frame. “Let me make you feel good now.” she spoke, lightly shoving Paige back against the bed into the same position she was just in. Paige took off her sweats, leaving her in just her underwear and y/n was moaning already at the sight in front of her. 

“I’ve missed having you in my mouth.” she says, licking a stripe against her clothed clit, earning a moan from Paige’s lips. “Ima make you feel good too, promise.” Y/n quickly pulls her underwear to the side, revealing her wet and glistening folds, ready for her to dig in. 

Y/n’s quick to start licking as if she hadn’t eaten a proper meal in years. Paige kept a firm grip on her hair, yanking and pulling on it lightly with each feel of her tongue against her. Y/n loved looking up and watching the sight of Paige falling apart above her. Paige’s body grew more desperate with each deep, sloppy lick to her clit as y/n spit down onto her, earning another moan from her lips. Y/n could tell she was close by her pants and breaths, and she was determined to taste her cum on her tongue. After a few more licks and sucks to her clit, her legs shook and she was cumming. 

“Mmmmm” y/n dragged out, as she licked her lips clean and offered Paige a cute smile. “So tasty.” she mumbled as Paige grabbed her hips and dragged her body on top of hers and kissed her lazily.

 “I’ve missed this so badly, y/n.” 

“I’ve missed this too.” she muttered, gently kissing her jaw before pecking her nose. “At least now you don’t have to miss it anymore.”

“And why’s that hm?” she asked.

“Because I’m yours again.”

#paige bueckers #paige bueckers smut #paige bueckers x reader #uconn wbb #uconn huskies #wbb #smut #wlw smut #wlw post #wlw #wlw ns/fw #ns/fw

[bejeweledblondie]

so excited about you having your requests open. I love your page!!

can I please request: Simon Ghost Riley x wife!reader?

Ghost and the rest of tf 141 are on a mission and end up getting detoured by who ever they are taking out (Russians, Hassan, etc). They need a safe house and quick! Well it just so happens simons place is right near by and simon takes them. the reader is home alone and just got out of the shower, she heard a bunch of men downstairs and gets freaked. In just her bathrobe, reader takes one of their safety guns and goes to defend herself against the “intruders” but really it’s just simon and gang

(sorry if this is long I got excited)

please and thanks

Hello! I’m so happy you’re enjoying my blog! I do apologize for the delay I was hospitalized for a lung infection (shit sucks dude I felt like a Victorian child dying of tuberculosis) but I’m all good now! So enjoy!

Simon “Ghost” Riley x F! Reader

Summary: After their mission becomes compromised Task Force 141 has to take up shelter in a safe house or the Riley Family home much to the surprise of Mrs. Simon Riley

Warnings: innuendos

“Come on I know a place.” Ghost grunted through his skull faced mask. The Lieutenant begrudgingly huffed & puffed leading the rest of his teammates through the forest that lead to the cottage where his family resided. After their location had been compromised Laswell ordered them to find a home in order to stay in where they’d go undetected. With them being only ten miles away from the cottage he called home with his wife, he knew it was the only option. Finally, after miles of hearing Gaz & Johnny complain about their feet aching they reached the wisteria ridden cottage.

He started to reach into his pocket & pulled out the key to his front door.

“Take your shoes off,” Ghost demanded. “We don’t want to track mud.” Photos of a very beautiful young woman in a wedding dress graced the walls of hallway leading into the living room. Simon could hear the water running in the upstairs bathroom indicating to him his beloved darling wife was showering.

“Simon, how do you know about this place?” Soap asked after he kicked his boots off. “I’m assuming you know the beautiful lassie in the photos.” Price chuckled to himself, knew about you. Simon had come to him to ask for advice on a lot of different things in regards to a marriage. His most recent was about children. It was just four months ago you had found out you were with child.

“Something like that.” Simon replied, & removed his mask. Gaz & Soap gave each other a glance knowing he must’ve felt very comfortable with his environment. A black & white cat rounded the corner out of the kitchen. He made a beeline for Simon & started to rub up against Simon’s legs. Bending down Simon grabbed the feline & started to pet him.

You had decided to run a shower, needing to wash away the grime of the day. Your current tired pregnant state made you incredibly drowsy. Resting your head against the cold tile you could’ve sworn you heard the door open. Chalking it up to pure exhaustion you ignored it. Then the all familiar sound of boots coming off by the front door made your head snap. You turned off the water, & dried yourself off. Wrapping yourself in your bathrobe & throwing on a pair of panties you grabbed the shot gun that laid next to the bed. If there was one thing Simon taught you was to defend yourself.

Slowly you started to make your way down the staircase shotgun pointed outwards. Once at the bottom you turned the corner into the hallway. Seeing the all familiar broad shoulders of your husband made you lower your shotgun.

“Si?” You asked clearly confused now cradling the shotgun in your arm. He turned around holding, Phantom your beloved tuxedo cat. “I thought you were supposed to be home in a few days.” You stated clearly confused.

“I’m sorry love, we needed somewhere to stay for a few days.” He replied. “Just until the heat dies down.” He gave you a kiss, much to the surprise of his teammates. “How the little one?” He asked placing one of his large hands on your lower abdomen.

“The usual,” You replied. “But overall we’re just fine.” Soap & Gaz stood there with their mouths wide open in shock.

“You have a kid?!” Soap asked.

“Back it up when did you get married?” Gaz asked. Price just stood there pinching the bridge of his nose at his teammates ruining the lovers moment. Simon holding his wife tightly now turned to face them.

“I got married three years ago, & we’re expecting our first child in five months.” Simon replied. “This is Mrs. Simon Riley, Y/N.”

“It’s so lovely to meet all of you.” You replied beaming. “Hi, John it’s nice to see you again.” You said waving at Price. Both Soap & Gaz looked at him shocked.

“What?!” John asked. “It wasn’t my responsibility to tell you.” Noticing your lack of clothing you excused yourself to change, & brought down old pajamas of Simon’s for the boys.

“The shower is open, & let me bake some cookies for you boys. You must be hungry.” You said. Simon took his usual spot on the couch & turned on Netflix. You loved taking care of Simon, he was the love of your life. The two of you depended on each other for everything. His job was a big stressor in his life & you wanted to make his home life as relaxing as you possibly could.

Soap, & Gaz were in seventh heaven in a world of hardened military men, the tender touch of a woman was exactly what they needed. Someone to just take care of them for a little bit to let them escape from the reality of their lives. Once the cookies were done you brought some plates out for them & then took your place right next to Simon on the couch. He pulled you in tightly, your head resting on his chest & his hand resting on your lower abdomen caressing the small bump. After a plate of cookies you both fell asleep on the couch. John himself was already knocked out in the little recliner that sat next to the couch his bucket hat covering his face. Gaz nudged Soap to look at their sleeping Lieutenant & his darling wife. It was so foreign to them to see him in such a soft state. They had seen him snap men’s necks the way you’d snap a Kit-Kat but here he was even in sleep being so gentle. Soon afterwards the two men also let sleep take over, letting the uncertainty of the situation become a problem for tomorrow.

#call of duty #cod imagines #cod masterlist #ghost call of duty #cod modern warfare #ghost x y/n #captain john price #simon riley x female reader #simon riley x y/n #simon riley x you #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley #simon ghost x you #ghost imagines #simon riley x reader #ghost simon riley #simon ghost x reader #simon riley #ghost mw2

[lovebugism]

shy! reader & eddie -  “are you okay? is the heat getting to you?” 

💛💛💛💛💛💛💛

hi angel! thanks so much for your request!! — the one where you have a hard time telling eddie when you feel bad and he nurses you back to health (hurt/comfort, shy!reader, 1.5k)

bug's summer fic fest ♡

You felt a little like the sun was microwaving you.

The golden rays beat down on you most mercilessly, sucking all the energy from your body while simultaneously burning you alive. Once you sprawled out on the quilt Eddie brought for your little trip to Forest Hills Lake, you just laid there — too tired and too sick to do anything else.

The boy stood over you after noticing how uncharacteristically disinterested you were in feeding the ducks. His shadow shielded you from the sun as he poked your thigh with his foot. “Are you dead?” he joked with a lopsided grin you couldn’t see. Your eyes fluttered shut minutes ago, and you didn’t have the strength to open them again.

He knew something was off when you didn’t smile back. He knew something was really wrong when you muttered something vaguely in return that only came out in slurred mumbles. 

Eddie manages to get you up with little help from the you in question. 

Your suddenly exhausted frame leans heavily into his side as he leads you back to the trailer. Though the lake was quite literally in his backyard, the walk home took several minutes longer than usual. Your feet were made of brick and your swimming head had turned the world on its side. It took a world of strength to ascend the three steps of his rickety wooden porch. 

“Here, c’mon,” Eddie hums as he follows you through the squeaking screen door. He walks you the short distance to the couch, putting both hands on your waist to steady you when you start to sway. “Sit down before you give me a heart attack, alright?”

You listen to him, though you don’t exactly hear him. Through your pounding headache and the rushing ocean in your ears, he might as well be talking to you underwater.

“I don’t feel good…” you slur quietly, eyes squeezed shut as you descend slowly onto the couch cushion. Eddie holds onto your elbows as you sit, watching you with attentively wide button eyes.

“I know, doll,” he coos empathetically in return. “I’m gonna go get you some water, okay?”

Your clammy hands grasp his wrist when he lets you go, your grip weak with a barely-there touch. You peer up at him with glassy eyes that swim with unshed tears and leftover sunlight. 

“Don’t go,” you plead in a whisper. Your voice isn’t strong enough to be much louder.

You feel eerily close to passing out. Your head fills with static and you feel dreadfully far away from the world around you. Feeling this sick is scary in itself, but having Eddie so close makes you feel much safer in comparison.

“I’ll be right back. I promise,” he tells you with a soft, pink grin. He slides his palm out of your trembling grip to hold your hand. Your fingers are sweaty and uncharacteristically warm, almost burningly so. “You need some water in your system, babe. That’s probably why you feel so shitty right now.”

You’re too weak to protest any further.

The boy rushes into the kitchen. You vaguely hear his receding footsteps, glasses clattering together, and the hiss of the faucet — but it all sounds so far away. You’re just a countertop over from him, but it feels like lightyears.

Eddie stays gone for exactly four slow blinks. 

Time has become a big ball of nothingness in your nauseous state. It feels like he’s gone for a lifetime and zero seconds flat at the same time. Either way, you’re equally grateful when he returns to you.

“Here you go,” the boy lilts quietly when he’s back in the living room. He ushers the cup of water into your weak hands but keeps a hold of it for a moment or more, just to make sure you’ve got it. “Drink up, doll.”

Your face scrunches in disdain at the thought. You know you’re thirsty, but you feel so queasy that your mouth has started to water. 

“I’m scared I’m gonna puke,” you confess in a nearly inaudible slur. 

“You won’t. I promise,” Eddie assures with a quiet smile. His fingers smooth over your forehead to push away the sweaty tendrils sticking there. You’re hot to the touch — and not even in the way figurative way he always jokes about, like genuinely burning. He singsongs to quell heavy tension, “And even if you do, I’ll clean it up for you, okay?”

The thought of him washing up after you is as heartwarming as it is stomach-churning. 

You sip at the glass just to appease him. The water sloshes gently in the cup along with your trembling hand. It’s not cold, but it’s not warm either — it’s the perfect temperature for someone so fragile suffering from an acute bout of heatstroke. The liquid is soft in your mouth, piercing you somewhere in your soul and making you feel almost instantly better when you swallow it down.

“How’s that?” Eddie coos, still standing over you with a loving sort of concern.

You make an unintelligible noise into your water.

“Do you feel any better? Still feel faint?”

“I don’t know,” you mumble with a feeble shrug. Because you don’t. You still feel weak and burning, but less distant than you had just moments before. You’re not sure what that means, though. “Maybe a little…”

Eddie puts a hand to your forehead, at a loss of what else to do. You’re still hot to the touch, but certainly not as warm as you had been earlier. The whirring A.C. and tap water must be doing the trick, he figures. 

He spreads his palm along your clammy cheek. “You still feel a little sticky…” he tells you.

The words make you feel queasy. You blink up at him with a heavy, glassy gaze. “I feel gross…”

“You’re just sick, babe. It’s okay,” he assures you, laughing softly as he swipes his thumb over the apple of your cheek. His chocolate eyes sparkle when he looks down at you. “I’d hug you if I thought that wasn’t the worst idea in the world.”

The bridge of your nose scrunches at the thought. 

You need Eddie around, but the thought of him touching you any more than this makes you want to be sick. You’ll kiss him absolutely stupid the second you’ve cooled down, though. He won’t be able to peel you off of him, then.

You shake your head in response to his implication, slow and sloppy like a child.

Eddie chuckles. “Exactly. Keep drinking for me, ‘kay?”

He sits down next to you, careful not to jostle you too much. He leaves several inches of agonizing distance between you and finds keeping his hands to himself is a most incorrigible feat. He watches you take ginger sips from the cup and wants so desperately to hold you to his chest until you feel better again. 

He hopes that moment isn’t too far away now.

You feel considerably cooler once the water’s all gone. The leftover sunshine has nearly exited all your pores, allowing the air conditioner to formally pierce your skin. The tap water refreshes you from the inside out.

“Better?” Eddie ponders with raised brows.

You nod lazily.

He exhales in relief through his nose. “Good. You were starting to scare me for a second there.”

You flash him a sheepish glance. “Sorry…”

“It’s not your fault, doll. Don’t apologize,” the boy chuckles. Only you would apologize for feeling so sick — as though it wasn’t something as forced upon you as it was upon him. “I should’ve known better than to take you out today. It was way too hot outside.”

That’s not what he really wants to say. 

If he’d said exactly what he meant, it would’ve gone something like, “I should’ve known better than to take you out today because it was way too hot, and you never tell me when you’re feeling bad.” 

But that isn’t really your fault either. 

Eddie knows how you are. He should’ve checked in on your more. If he hadn’t gotten so distracted, he probably could’ve gotten you inside before the sun almost killed you.

“It’s not your fault, either, Eds,” you tell him rather pointedly, as though you could hear his thoughts.

“No,” Eddie concedes with a shake of his head. “It’s the stupid sun’s fault for making my girl feel so sick.”

And even though he wasn’t exactly trying to make a joke, you laugh at him anyway. It’s just a weak exhale through your nose, but Eddie beams when he sees you finally smiling. 

When his hands start to ache, he finally wonders, “Feel like being touched now?”

You don’t. Not really. Not in the way you’d like him to touch you, anyway. You’d love to be wrapped up in his arms and melt with him in totality, but your swimming head and warm skin disagree with you. 

You reach for the wrist in his lap and put his hand on your thigh — for the sake of feeling him, but not overwhelmingly so.  

It makes Eddie laugh. His palm smoothes over your knee before squeezing you there. “The water did the trick, huh?”

You nod. 

He beams. 

“I love being right,” he lilts, only halfway serious.

“I know you do,” you grumble in response. 

You love him and his smug grin far too much to be genuinely annoyed with him, though. The understanding of this unsaid fact makes his smile widen.

#published by bug #stranger things x reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson #stranger things #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfiction #st drabbles #eddie spaghetti drabble #bug's summer fic fest!

[sohnric]

to. my first – k. sunwoo

pairing: kim sunwoo x fem! reader

genre: 90s au. twenty-five twenty-one au, friends to lovers au, exes to lovers au. fluff, slice of life, coming of age, suggestive. highschool au, football player! sunwoo, baker! sunwoo. cheerleader! reader. first love au. what we call wet cat sunwoo. meeting your ex after years and falling back in love with him kind of thing.

warnings: alcohol, throwing up, swearing, reader has hair long enough for a ponytail, a heated make out session or two that alludes to them having sex but no actual smut happens, finger sucking, the reader moping around a lot, no plot just vibes.

word count: 31k

a/n: inspired by me telling @/csenke that sunwoo is my first love. why am i so soft for this man i truly dont know... thank you best friend for betaing this monster i appreciate it a LOT! also thank you to sana @/heemingyu and izzy @/from-izzy for the help on some parts of the fic and brainstorming the ending w me, as well as beta reading small parts of this.

spin-off to my fic millennium bug because sunwoo deserves love too! the reader from eric's fic is referenced to as MB!Y/N in this. you don't have to read the first fic to understand this one, but there are a lot of references in this and i highly encourage you to do so!

they say you never forget about your first love. you guess that's true. (or– a story about reckless love, first kisses, growing up, ambition, and inevitably, failure.)

August 2007

The laughter all around is electric. The music playing in the background makes you sway and hum to the melody, the familiar tunes making your insides light up with a different sense of nostalgia when you remember the times in which these songs were popular. Your tired limbs make you cut your way through the room and sit down on a vacant chair, not really caring about where your designated seat was anymore, just needing to rest for a second before you either throw up from exhaustion or faint from how tired your legs are from all the dancing. Paying a quick goodbye to Juyeon on the dance floor, you heave out a satisfied sigh when your bottom meets the cushioned seat of the chair, eyes zeroing on the filled dance floor.

Feeling a cramp in your foot, you scowl and lean down, ready to do the thing you’ve been desiring for at least the last three hours– if not the whole day. Hands playing with the strap on your heel, you make the shoe come undone before you slip the uncomfortable footwear off your feet, relaxing when your naked limbs meet with the cold tile on the floor. 

You don’t really know who in their right mind would have a wedding in the middle of the summer heat, but you guess there are people that are out of their mind like that– and those people are your friends from high school. 

Everything about coming back to your hometown has made you feel unpleasantly nostalgic so far– the streets haven’t changed a bit, your childhood home still looks just the same, furniture unmoved, and the air is still as crisp, yet humid as it always was during late August. It’s only tonight that finally makes the weird bittersweetness turn into joy. You’re back home with everyone you’ve ever known, with everyone who’s made you into who you are today. You’re seeing all their faces for the first time in ages– and frankly, it does feel good. 

The satisfaction in your veins stays for a bit until a figure dressed in a suit comes into your point of view. It’s not like you’re seeing him for the first time tonight– he’s a big character, even when it comes to this wedding, so it’s hard to not notice him– but as his legs take him towards you in a wobbly nature, it dawns on you that now is maybe finally the time you get to talk to him. Don’t get me wrong– there are no hard feelings between the two of you (or at least you don’t have any, you’re not so sure about his side of the story). It’s just that seeing him dressed in a tux, tie now a little loose around his neck, the twinkle in his eye still present as back when you were both a lot younger, there’s still a strong aftertaste of your feelings towards him somewhere on the tip of your tongue. 

His walk is a little lopsided as he grins at you and takes a seat on the vacant chair next to yours, a huff of air escaping his lungs as his body relaxes, limbs falling freely down the sides of his chair. His cheeks are a little red and his hair a little messy– there’s only so much to explain his composure apart from all the dancing he’s done.

“So I see that you still can’t handle your liquor well even after all those years?” you joke, making the boy turn his head to face you, an amused twinkle appearing in his smile. 

His eyes are still the same chocolate orbs you know, still the same soft look adorning them whenever he feels particularly ecstatic. He shrugs, jolting his bottom lip out before he sighs to himself. “Well, it’s not every day you are the best man at your best friend’s and your sister’s wedding,” he muses, shrugging. 

Laughing at his remark, once again taking in the state of the room– Juyeon, Hyunjae and Haknyeon each dancing somewhere in the middle of the dance floor, MB!Y/N’s friends from university twirling her around in the right corner, Eric staring at the bride with a warm gaze in his eyes, sipping on a drink while resting against one of the tables, clearly taking a mental image to look at every time he feels the need to– it all feels kind of surreal. Who would’ve thought all those years ago that it would end like this?

Well, Eric Sohn, for starters. He confessed to everyone in his wedding speech that he knew he wanted to marry MB!Y/N the moment she kissed him on New Year’s Eve of 1999– him being this cheesy was only acceptable because it was his own wedding. In any other circumstance, Sunwoo wouldn’t be able to let his best friend live this down.

It’s not like you ever expected those two to break up– it just makes you a little in awe at how fast time is passing. “It’s kinda crazy, isn’t it?” you hum, squinting at the flood of people on the dance floor.

“It is,” Sunwoo hums, tonguing the inside of his cheek, “still can’t believe they’re dating. Hell, they’re getting married right now…” 

“You can’t believe your sister is dating your best friend?” you laugh, wiping the sweat that’s accumulated off your forehead, the mist appearing there both because of your reckless dancing and because of the unbearable heat of the August night.

“That, and also the other way around,” he hisses, “but I guess they’re both so insufferable that they go well together, so I don’t know why I’m still so surprised.”

Chuckling at his comment– you guess the bond he has with his sister is never to be changed, no matter how many years have passed– you watch as he shrugs off his suit jacket and throws it over the back of his chair, starting to roll up his sleeves to expose his forearms. Eyes following his motions, you clear your throat and force yourself to look back into his eyes when he asks you a question. “What about you, though? Are you enjoying yourself?”

“I am,” you nod, no hesitation, “it’s really nice to see all of you after so long. Plus, I’m having a lot of fun, so that’s a nice bonus." 

“I can see that,” he grins, “by the way you sat on my seat just now, and all–” 

“Oh god– I’m sorry,” you gasp, suddenly feeling a little silly. And here you thought he went up to you because he wanted to catch up… “I’ll move, if–”

The sound of Sunwoo’s hearty laugh lands into your ear– it’s just the same as it was back when you were both high schoolers, making your heart soar– before he shakes his head and urges you to stay with a motion of his hand, putting his large palm on your thigh to keep you from moving. “No, no, don’t be stupid,” he says, “I don’t mind. I was looking for you anyway, so you just made it easier for me by sitting here, actually.”

He was looking for you, resonates in your head, the familiar buzzing in your fingertips alerting you of the effect he has on you even tonight. God, maybe you were the one that had too much to drink…

“You were?” you ask, tone of voice light– not at all suspicious. 

Sunwoo nods, shrugging. “Well, I guess we have a lot of catching up to do,” he smiles, “don’t we?” 

Eyes meeting his, the contact feels electrifying to the point it makes your head spin when you look at him, taking in his glossy eyes and the flush of his cheeks. They’re less round than when you two were young, but his eyes still stay the same– big, round and tender.

He reminds you a lot of the time when you saw him drunk for the first time.

to. my first time getting drunk

April 1999

Havoc rings in his ears like jingle bells, the world around him spinning like he’s on a rollercoaster. His head feels like someone is installing a nail to the middle of his skull and when he looks around, Lee Donghyuck is staring at him with a glass bottle of soju in his hand, urging him to drink more.

Sunwoo doesn’t have it in him to do much else other than shake his head. It feels like he forgot all his vocabulary, not a single word coming out of his mouth or to the awake parts of his brain, watery eyes begging his classmate to not make him drink any more. 

What seemed like a good idea just a few moments ago– see, it’s prohibited to drink on school trips, but Kim Sunwoo is infamous for loving to break the rules– now seems like the worst idea of his whole entire life. He feels so sick he thinks he’s going to die of alcohol poisoning, but the laughter around keeps painfully reminding him that he hasn’t even had that much to drink in the first place. The amount of times he’s been called a lightweight this night is making his pride severely hurt, and even graciously intoxicated, he can’t bear the sting this is putting on his already hurt ego. 

“Come on, birthday boy! I’m sure you can handle one more,” Donghyuck urges, uncurling Sunwoo’s fist and placing the bottle into his grasp, making the poor boy wince and battle back tears. 

He knows he’s being embarrassing. The choice between not dying and not humiliating himself is rather a difficult one, but the moment he finally finishes the crossword puzzle in his brain and puts the glass opening against his lips, the bottle is thankfully taken out of his grasp and discarded somewhere where his eyes can’t reach.

“You’re done for the night, Kim Sunwoo,” you haul at him, shaking your head at the poor boy, “you’re done.”

Sunwoo wants to open his mouth and protest, maybe ask you what you mean, but the moment his lips unseal, he gets a sniff of the alcohol in the air and suddenly, he feels like throwing up. Your eyes lock with his, a pleading– maybe a warning– mirrors in Sunwoo’s gaze, and even though he’s so drunk he feels like he crossed dimensions, he applauds your ability to know just what he means by a single look into his eyes.

“Oh, Christ–” you curse, hurried steps moving to the corner of the room, swiftly grabbing the trash can and running back towards your friend sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor. 

You make it just in time to catch the contains of Sunwoo’s stomach into the trash can, making the boy insanely grateful– he’s wearing the new shoes his mum got him for his birthday, and god knows he’d hate it if he ruined them the very first day he can show them off to his football friends.

The whole world disappears into the background as he throws up while making a mental promise to himself to never drink again. The only thing keeping him from losing it all is the feeling of your hand on his back, comforting rubs grounding him back to earth. Giggles fill his ears and he’s sure everyone’s laughing at him– even in his drunken state, he can recognise the shame filling his veins– but before he can open his mouth to argue with his classmates, the sound of your angry voice makes him seal his lips close and listen to the scolding you offer to his teammates for making him drink so much.

“You know he has a weak stomach, Donghyuck!” you huff and puff, your hand still drawing comforting circles to Sunwoo’s back as his head stays stuck in the bucket, not having enough energy to even straighten his spine. 

“It’s his birthday! Come on, don’t be so tight-arsed.”

“Well, do you want him to die on his day of birth? That’s not very cool of you,” you growl, the shuffle of your clothing and a pained “ow” escaping his friend’s lips hinting to Sunwoo that you just kicked the right wing to his shin. 

Deserved, Sunwoo thinks.

“Can somebody get Eric? I’m pretty sure he’s in Daehwi’s room with MB!Y/N, Minjeong and Jihoon,” you hum, waiting for anyone to follow your orders. 

Sunwoo blinks in and out of it, his consciousness giving up on him with the incredible pain in his temples. He feels incredibly grateful to have someone like you by his side not only now, but all the time. The two of you have gotten incredibly closer ever since he joined the football team– and with you being one of the cheerleaders, you’re always somehow around. Not that he’s complaining, of course. It seems like you are one of the more responsible ones in this room right now, and god knows Sunwoo needs a bit of guidance on his day to day ventures.

“Do you think you’ll be sick again?” you ask, voice soft in his ear. “Or can I take the trash can off you now?”

Sunwoo thinks for a bit, then he nods and lets go of the plastic bucket. He doesn’t know what happens to it after and nor does he care– it seems like the alcohol in his veins took away all his sense of object permanence. He can barely see anything in the yellow lights of the room (which makes him believe he is going blind from all the alcohol he’s had– don’t tell him it’s just his eyes getting hazy and confused with how much his head is spinning), but he’s sure he can feel you wiping his tear-stained cheeks (he wasn’t crying– his eyes were just watering) and pulling him closer to you when he threatens to fall over even in his seated position. Your hand comes up to play with his hair when you let him rest his head against your shoulder, your actions making him sleepy, eyes closing on themselves like a threat for him to fall asleep any second.

Something about the care, the loyal protectiveness you take over the boy makes his heart soften. He breaths in your scent, trying his hardest to focus on your presence and not the weird feeling in his stomach– although it’s settled a bit since he threw up, it’s still a little uneasy– and before he knows it, there’s a tap on his shoulder waking him up from the haze.

Sunwoo mourns, not really wanting to move from his position, too comfortable with your fingers threading through his hair– but much to his dismay, your soft voice appears in his ear, telling him he has to get up. “Can you walk on your own? We’re gonna get you back to your room,” you hum, your lips accidentally brushing against the shell of his ear, making everything in him light on fire. He’s not really sure if this is the effect alcohol has on you, but if it is, he’s certain he never wants to drink again.

“Sunwoo?” you call, the way you say his name suddenly all too angelic in his ears– but still not enough for him to answer. “Alright,” you sigh after the dreadful silence, taking charge of the situation, moving away from the boy and offering him your hands to hold on to as you try to get him on his feet, “I guess we’re gonna find out.”

His fingers intertwine with yours as he stares up at you, his vision blurry, but still sharp enough to make out your tired face. The sight is enough to make Sunwoo worry– is he being too much? Are you mad at him? Do you not want to be his friend anymore? – but before he has a chance to address any of those concerns, he’s being tugged up to his feet. Not ready for the weight of his own body, his knees buckle and refuse to work. There is a pair of hands clutching his arm automatically– yours– as another pair holds him up from behind by his waist. 

He’s not really sure who was his other savior, but by the silent curse heard from behind, he thinks he recognises Eric’s voice. 

“I know I shouldn’t have left him alone,” he hears his best friend say, voice full of frustration.

“You really shouldn’t have,” he hears you sigh, making the poor boy scowl.

It still feels like he can’t really speak, exhaustion taking a toll on him, but he follows the orders as you tell him to get on his best friend’s back– Eric’s crouching figure ready for the impact, waiting for the taller one to clutch onto him so he can carry him into the safety of their shared room. The operation has to be quick if they don’t want to be caught by their teachers while walking through the hall, and somehow, in the distant crevices of his brain, Sunwoo recognises that and he makes no battle to resist, doing exactly as he’s told.

“Man, you’re heavy,” he hears Eric huff under him as the poor boy carries him through the hall. “You’re gonna have a killer hangover tomorrow, dude…”

Sunwoo’s head rests against his friend’s shoulder, hands carelessly hanging around Eric’s neck. He tries to blink away the sleep, desiring to stay awake, when your concerned face appears in his vision and suddenly, he feels insanely guilty.

“I’m sorry,” the two words escape his mouth with no trouble– the first words to appear in his vocabulary after the few minutes of him being surprisingly mute– only to hear his friend chuckle.

“Well, you’re going to be dying from a headache tomorrow, not us,” Eric hums, “so I think you have to apologize to future you first.”

Sunwoo pouts, bangs falling into his eyes making him blink in a desperate try to get the stray hairs away, attempting to make eye contact with your side profile. “Are you mad at me?” he asks, voice a little groggy from all the screaming and drinking.

“What?” you ask, genuinely surprised to hear his question. Your face morphs into a confused expression, the one where a wrinkle appears in between your brows– and it takes everything in Sunwoo not to poke the little line with his pointer finger in utter endearance.

“Are you… mad…?” he asks again, watching as your face morphs into amusement.

“No,” you shake your head, a hint of a laugh in your tone. “Why?”

“You look grumpy.”

“I’m just worried,” you note.

“About?” Sunwoo asks, his intelligence morphing into a one of a 10-year old with the influence the alcohol has on him. 

“You,” you say, sighing and shaking your head as you move two steps in front of Eric and open the door to their room, closing it swiftly behind you and following the duo towards Sunwoo’s bed. 

The younger one drops the boy into the cushions of his bed with an exaggerated sigh (that might as well be real, for all we know– god knows you wouldn’t be able to carry Sunwoo on your own), and the comfort of the pillow around his head is enough to make Sunwoo’s eyes start closing again, sleep threatening to take over his consciousness.

There’s some noise interrupting his sleep, though, making the boy tear his tired eyes open to notice you walking through the room. Sunwoo finds Eric putting a glass of water onto his bedside table and watches as you put a trash can beside his bed, hushed whispers sent Eric’s way resonating in the quiet room. “Make sure that he sleeps on his side so if he throws up again, he doesn’t choke–”

“Y/N?” he calls your name, watching as you look at him with careful eyes.

“Hm?”

“Are you leaving?” he asks, maybe a little foolishly.

“Yes.”

The boy nods at your reaction, showing his acknowledgement. In the drunken state of his mind, he knows he doesn’t particularly want you to leave, but he’s also fairly certain, finding the rational thought in the sober part of his brain, that you have to leave, and so he lets it go. The drunken state of his mind wins, though, when the next sentence foolishly escapes his lips.

“Please don’t stop liking me after this,” he mumbles, words slurring.

“What?” you ask– confused because you either don’t fully comprehend what he’s trying to say, or because you truly just couldn’t hear what words escaped his mouth– but when you don’t get a clarification, you just nod at the boy, seemingly desperate to keep him happy tonight. “Okay, I won’t.”

“You won’t stop liking me?” he asks, a big pout playing with his features.

“No.”

“Okay.”

That seems to put his mind at ease– enough to make his brain finally turn off and lead him to sleep. He doesn’t really remember what he dreamt of that night, but the last memory he has of the night of his 18th birthday is that you promised to not stop liking him after seeing him a drunken mess, and how he so deeply wished you’ll continue to like him forever.

It hits him only a few months later that the thing he so desperately hoped for that night was that you’ll keep liking him even at his worst– that he didn’t drive you away and one day, maybe, you’ll like him more than just a friend.

to. my first detention

September 1999

Sunwoo was never the one to break the rules. 

Well, if you don’t count that one time he skipped class just because he got too bored of it in the middle of the lecture. And it wasn’t even that hard either– he just asked if he could go to the bathroom, and when he got the approval, he stood up and left, never returning. 

Or if you don’t count that one time he climbed up the ladder on the side of the school building with his friend Juyeon and had his lunch there. Or that one time he cheated on an exam and made a scene about it when accused of the act, leading the professor into letting him off just that one time. 

Sunwoo is usually too lazy to break the rules. Some days, paradoxically, his laziness is what leads him to break the rules. He can’t really help it, even if he tried.

The one time he does break the rules, expecting to be punished by his teacher for coming late to class, it’s not even his fault in the first place. Morning football practice ran late and he didn’t feel like rushing to change out of his practice clothing– see, the laziness is playing a part in this as well– so when he arrived into his Physics lecture, the clock was already 15 minutes after the bell rang for the first period.

Much to his surprise, his teacher didn’t even punish him. “Well, you’re an athlete, so it’s understandable,” he heard, making his lips stretch out into a subtle smile. If he knew that joining the football club would lead him to have such privileges, he would’ve done it a long time ago. 

How did he still end up in detention, you may ask? Well, that’s a funny question.

Your flushed face appears in the doorway of the classroom exactly 2 minutes after Sunwoo does, breathing heavily and wiping the sweat off your forehead with the back of your hand. Your hair tied up in a ponytail is loose now, stray hairs falling out to frame your face, your school uniform wrinkly, shirt not tucked in properly, as you spit out endless apologies to your teacher about being late for lecture.

“I’m really, really sorry about being late,” you bow, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you look around the classroom with apologetic eyes, “I had cheerleading practice and it ran a bit late, so I didn’t have enough time to–”

“Sit, Ms Y/L/N,” the teacher hums, “if you have time to do any other activities other than being in class, I’m sure you’ll have time to stay after class for detention, am I right?”

“Sir, I really–”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Now, are you seeing the difference in the way you and Sunwoo were treated? That’s right. It may not look like it, because the young football player rarely puts effort into anything (other than the game), but when something angers him, it’s quite difficult for him to keep it in. 

And that’s exactly why his ass is currently sitting in one of the chairs of his classroom, legs spread wide as he looks around the silent room in boredom. Accusing his teacher for being sexist and holding to double standards wasn’t the best idea, but it was enough to get him into detention alongside you. 

His eyes get caught up with something– someone– sitting two desks in front of him, one to the right, scribbling their homework into their notebook. At least you are using up the detention time for important and useful things, he thinks. That won’t stop him from interrupting you in your task, though. Even better– it encourages him.

Tearing out a piece of paper from his notebook, Sunwoo fishes for a pen in one of his pockets, writing a short note that says: Wanna get ramen after this? before he crumbles the paper into a small ball. After watching the teacher for a few seconds, making sure that he’s not going to get caught, he throws the ball in your direction, aiming straight for your head.

He misses. Well, that’s why he plays football and not volleyball– he doesn’t have good aim when it comes to his hands– but nonetheless, the note ends up hitting your shoulder before it bounces off and falls to the ground.

Confused, you look around before you find Sunwoo staring at you, pointing towards the paper on the ground with a grin on his face. You sigh, sending a telepathic signal of ‘you’re acting like a child again,’ straight into his brain before you reach for the paper ball and take it into your hands, fingers uncurling the thin material and reading out the words he’s sent to you.

Only a few seconds pass before you throw the ball back to him– he catches it in his hands, earning an approving look from you at his strangely fast reflexes, making a sense of victory flow gracefully through his veins. A frown settles on his face when he reads out your reply, though.

can’t. I promised Aeri I’ll hang out with her later. we’re going for frozen yogurt.

Sunwoo furrows his brows. Oh how he hates to be denied. 

I can join!! i could use some froyo

You send a tired look to him over your shoulder when you receive the message, rolling your eyes at his comment. It’s obvious that Sunwoo can’t join– he knows it by the look in your eyes. Hell, he knew he wasn’t invited even before he asked– he just likes to see your frustration. Something about the way your face scrunches up, clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth, amuses him in a way he can’t really describe.

you could’ve gotten yours instead of staying in detention. what was that about, by the way?? I’ve never seen anyone willingly do detention… you must be out of your mind

The message makes him chuckle, shaking his head in disbelief. His motives are clear– well, at least in his brain. If he stays in detention, he can see you for some more. Which means he can hang out with you more (or look at the back of your head from afar, whichever you grace him with on that particular day). And he wants to spend as much time with you as he can, well, because… because he just likes to do so. Why?

Don’t ask. He hasn’t thought it out that far yet.

I just like things to be fair. I came late too :(( 

He writes back instead. Fairness is the last thing he cares about if the world is in his favor. If the world is unfair to you, though– that’s another thing. 

weirdo.

You write back. The pen is already in his hand, ink getting hotter as he masters up a reply, when the loud voice of his teacher cuts through the classroom and announces that detention is over and they’re all dismissed. Something in Sunwoo’s stomach drops. 

Sighing, he puts the note back into his pocket (and will forget to throw it out. Then, he’ll find it there after a few days, unravel the ball and read over the letters with a smile. He won’t throw it out then either– he’ll crumble it back and keep it there until the paper wears out and forms into litter in the pocket of his pants). Gathering his things into his bag, he swings the backpack over one of his shoulders before catching up with you, already halfway out of the classroom. You seem to be in a rush to meet Aeri– he understands– but there’s still one more thing he needs to do.

Clearing his throat, Sunwoo approaches you from the back. “Hey!”

“Hi,” you hum, adjusting the bag on your shoulder. “Aeri’s waiting for me outside, so I gotta–”

“Wait, I– I have something for you,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. Why does he suddenly feel so nervous? The words his sister said to him yesterday keep resonating in his head, and although he knows it’s not true and he doesn’t see you in that way, his stomach churns and he clutches his hand into a fist by his side, a desperate act to ground himself.

“What?” you look at him, eyebrows furrowed, all confused. Sunwoo’s not the one to give gifts– sure, he pays for your meals sometimes, but that’s only because you share them and he comes to the logical conclusion that he eats more of the portion than you do anyways, so it’s only fair.

“Um… well, my sister… she was making those bracelets yesterday and she made me do it with her, because she’s really annoying when she wants to be,” he mumbles, fishing for the bracelet in the front pocket of his backpack, lying straight through his teeth. 

You stare at him with wide eyes, completely unreadable to Sunwoo. Well, he already said it, so he may as well just dig his hole even deeper. The yarn is soft under his touch when he twirls the bracelet in his fingertips, eyes focusing on the shades of red and pink, suddenly too afraid to face you and look you in the eyes. “And, uh… we made too many, so I brought you one, because… you’re my friend, and all,” he mumbles, chewing the inside of his cheek.

His sneakers are oh so interesting to look at in the few seconds he spends waiting for your reply. He feels like he’s in court, waiting for his ordeal– anxiety making him bounce on the tips of his feet, his other hand clutching the strap of his backpack for dear life. 

“Did you make that?” you ask, tone of voice genuinely appreciative.

“Yeah,” he shrugs. 

He did not.

“That’s– that’s really cute,” you gasp, making the boy finally look up. When he finds that the words are addressed to the bracelet his sister made, not his act of kindness, something inside of him gets irritated, but the little devil in his chest leaves just as fast when you meet his eye and take the yarn from his hands, examining the red and pink knots from a closer distance.

“Yeah,” he hums, not really knowing what to say.

“Can you tie it for me?” you ask, offering the bracelet back to the boy and smiling at him, waiting for him to circle it around your wrist and secure it to place with a knot. It’s a bit long, the ends sticking out to different directions, but Sunwoo admits that it does look quite nice against your skin, and that if he forgets about the fact that it was his sister who actually made the bracelet (even though he begged her to teach him for approximately two hours, going as far as bribing her with his snacks), he does feel quite proud of the gesture.

There’s something possessive about the bracelet, he thinks. It's like a sign to everyone that you have someone who cares about you enough to tie it around your wrist. It’s like saying hey, this is my best friend! No one else enjoys their company enough to make a bracelet to prove it, but me. It’s like a silent translation of the heart’s calling: this person is mine. They’re not allowed to take this off until I die.

Sunwoo feels a bit giddy as he watches you admire the yarn around your wrist. You sport the same expression as Eric did when he forced a bracelet out of his sister yesterday– eyes glimmering, the widest grin on your features. While he may be sure what the face meant when it came to his best friend (although he tries to close his eyes from the obvious crush he has on his sister), he’s not quite certain when it comes to you.

In his mind, you smile like this at everyone. You’re just that kind of person.

But oh does he wish you mirror Eric’s feelings on the matter. Oh does he hope you tell everyone he is the one who gave the bracelet to you– he hopes you boost in front of your friends, tell them just how much you like it.

…maybe his sister was right. 

Maybe the bracelet had a deeper intention.

August 2007

“So,” Sunwoo hums, taking a salty chip from the bowl settled in the middle of the table, looking over at you with a curious gaze, “how have you been?” he asks, chewing as he waits for you to answer.

It’s an easy question, one would think– and it’s true, it’s not the most difficult thing to answer. But considering the circumstances, the fact that you and Kim Sunwoo haven’t seen each other since you both graduated from high school, despite telling each other you’ll stay in contact and see each other whenever you have the chance to– it gets a little bit more difficult. It’s been 6 years, many things have changed, you had your fair share of good things happening to you as well as the bad. 

What do you tell Sunwoo, though– a friend you lost somewhere along the way, much like everyone? Well, you can’t really blame him for growing distant with you– although to this day, you don’t really know the reasoning. He was the first one to leave, and although you always wished him the best, nobody can really blame you for doing your part at flying out of your nest. Everyone has to experience the outside world before they can find their place in it, no? 

It’s not your fault that you weren’t as successful as you wanted to be… 

“Well, you know,” you shrug, “so and so. Many things happened, but I guess I’m doing fine,” you conclude, nodding to yourself.

The face Sunwoo offers you is one of concern. You recognise that this is not really what he wanted to hear– not really what he expected you to say. The both of you were always ambitious, shooting for the stars, so it would be nice to know that at least one of you finally chased down the dreams you’ve had since you were young.

“What about you?” you ask quickly, shielding yourself from more interrogation. “How did football go?” 

That has Sunwoo chuckling, averting his gaze. He takes a sip of the soda placed on his table before he turns to you again and answers the question, shrugging to himself. “Didn’t really go as I planned,” he says, nodding to himself. “Guess I lost many years on it, but oh well. Can’t really take it back now.”

“Don’t say that,” you hum, chewing on the inside of your cheek. The answer he offered you was not surprising to you– not that you didn’t believe in his abilities, not at all. It’s just that by now, if Sunwoo’s dreams came true, you’d be aware. You’d hear about him everywhere. You’d see him on the news, in the paper… It seems like your friend has disappeared out of the spotlight he always wanted even sooner than he could walk straight into the stardom. You wouldn’t say you were keeping tabs on him, no– you just cared enough to try to look for him in every place you could. “It wasn’t lost years. You did what you loved, and you tried your best.”

“I know,” he says, scrunching up his nose in an adorable manner before he sighs, “I’m just moping around. Besides, I quite like the life I’ve had since coming back home,” he admits.

“You do?” you ask, eyes glimmering in the lights. Something in you shifts– moves to a more comfortable place at the information. It’s strange that hearing that he’s doing fine still makes you feel at peace. It’s been years– you really shouldn’t care by now.

“I do,” he nods, “I work at Juyeon’s father’s bakery now. I didn’t really expect to like it, but there’s something charming about it, I’ll have you know,” Sunwoo says, taking another handful of chips into his hand before feeding them to himself, seemingly trying to chase down the tipsiness in his bloodstream.

That drags out a giggle out of you, shaking your head at the news. “I wouldn’t take you for a bakery kind of guy,” you say, “I can’t really imagine you in the kitchen.”

“Well, times change, Y/N-ie,” the nickname slips out between his lips like a punch to your gut, his teasing tone dragging nails to you in a weird sense of nostalgia, “I’m the best baker in town right now. People go crazy over my cinnamon rolls,” he nods, pointing a finger to you as if to prove his point.

“I find that hard to believe,” you squint at him, shaking your head in disbelief.

“You’ll have to come and find out,” he says, the sentence so casual that the contrast of his following statement has your heart drop a little, “well, if you’re… staying around for a bit, of course…”

Humming, watching as his eyes soften at the shift in your composure, you nod in agreement. “I’ll make sure to add that to my plan.”

Sunwoo nods in acknowledgement. Swallowing down the chips that were in his mouth, he dusts off his hands off the excess salt and licks his lips before speaking up again, seemingly collecting his thoughts. “So you’re staying around for a while?” he asks, a little bit cautious. 

He doesn’t really know how sensitive this topic is for you– you don’t even know if he’s aware of your previous whereabouts, if he knows where you left off to and why– but Sunwoo stays caring, no matter the amount of time you spent not talking, no matter the big canyon that slowly formed in between the two of you in the years of no contact. It’s something you’ve always appreciated about him. He liked joking around, but he always knew where the boundaries laid, always knew when the joke went too far. He tried hard to avoid poking around too much, but he always made sure to apologize if he realized he hurt someone’s feelings. He’s a spark of violent fire, but he’s also tamed like a fireplace when he wants to be– warm, comfortable. It’s easy to feel like it’s back in the old times when you’re around him. It’s easy to pretend neither of you ever really left.

“I am,” you nod. “Things… didn’t really work out for me either, y’know,” you chuckle, the dry kind that shows just how bitter you are about the matter. “I went to New York with the internship my aunt arranged for me in KBS, but I guess I just… wasn’t really good enough to keep full-time.”

“Don’t say that,” Sunwoo mirrors your previous statement, an honest attempt at comforting you.

“No, it’s okay,” you laugh, “I stayed abroad for a while, tried hard, but sometimes, it’s just not meant to be, y’know? So after I realized my jobs weren’t making me enough money for a decent living in the States, I came back home,” you say, mouth forming a pout as you speak– the kind that shows you’re lost in thought, making up a plan as you go, “I’ll help my parents out for a while and then look for something to do here, I think.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” Sunwoo says, offering you a soft smile. “I… I guess I’d say it’s good to have you back,” he admits, averting his gaze as he says the words, “ever since I came home, it felt like something was missing, so… anyways, you’ll figure it out, so don’t worry too much.”

“Thanks, Sunwoo,” you hum, pressing your lips into a tight smile, heart squeezing a little at his sincerity. It’s strange– it’s been years, having lived through countless different situations that were supposed to change the both of you, shift you into two completely different people– but somehow, Sunwoo still feels the same. Almost as if you two never left. Almost as if you two never drifted apart and instead spent your early twenties side-by-side, just like you always planned on doing.

The boy looks at you from the corner of his eye, a content smile spreading on his lips. You feel the atmosphere shifting, the situation tensing up a bit, and with the discomfort the image of him leaving you alone brings you, the words slip out of your lips with a bit too much ease.

“Would you want to… dance with me? I wanna see if you still remember what I taught you,” you grin, watching as the playful expression mirrors on your friend’s face, a nod eliciting from him that makes you quickly put your shoes back on and get ready for the dancefloor.

“Of course,” he hums, standing up swiftly and wiping his hands on the fabric of his pants before outstretching a hand for you, tone of voice sweet like honey, “my lady?”

to. my first dance

November 1999

“Who are you asking to the dance?” you question one afternoon, the two of you behind the closed doors of his room. There aren’t many times where Sunwoo gets to invite you over– mostly because he’s too shy to have someone around when his sister is home, and his sister isn’t known to have that many friends to hang out with– so the times where he finds you settled on top of the sheets of his bed, he treasures deeply.

“I dunno,” he mumbles, looking up at you from the comfort of his rug, shrugging, “I don’t really think I’m going, actually.”

“Oh?” you gasp, pouting at the boy. “Why not?”

“I don’t really have anyone to go with,” he says. What he really means is– you’re going with someone else. Sunwoo doesn’t really see himself dancing with anyone else but you– that’s just that kind of bond you two have in his mind. Your friendship is dear to Sunwoo, and the boy can’t think of anyone else he’d like to spend the evening with. 

When his sister argued with him with logical words, telling him that he treasures his friendship with Eric just the same, but wouldn’t invite him to the prom, he just scoffed at her. MB!Y/N doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t treasure Eric in the same way, no matter the fact that they pretty much grew up together. Some things just don’t feel the same way with Eric as they do with you. He feels closer to you, in a way.

“Well, that’s bullshit,” you scoff, shaking your head at your friend, “you’re handsome. And you play football, which is every girl’s dream. I bet anyone would go with you if you just asked,” you propose, pointing a finger at the boy, not really noticing the way he blinks at hearing the words ‘you’re handsome’ coming out of your mouth in regards to him. 

Do you find him handsome? Is that your subjective opinion or are you just objectively saying what you’ve heard in the cheerleader changing rooms? 

He’d like to know. Just out of curiosity.

Sunwoo scratches the back of his neck in nerves, now fully seated and facing you. It’s hard to meet your eye when he talks, his words coming out muffled. “I can’t dance anyway, so it would be no fun for everyone involved.”

And watching you dance with his classmate Shotaro would be no fun either. See, it would be easy for Sunwoo to be okay with the fact that you were going to the prom with someone older (which is practically impossible, since you’re both seniors, just for the record…). He would understand your point, then. It’s easy to be okay with defeat when your opponent has the upper hand, but when you put two men against each other that are hierarchically equal to each other, much like Sunwoo and Shotaro, the poor boy finds it hard to not feel as insecure in his position. 

But with Shotaro being the same age as him and the same amount of popular as him, Sunwoo can’t help but compare himself to his classmate. What does Shotaro have that Sunwoo doesn’t? Is it his smile? Should Sunwoo smile more…? 

It doesn’t really help his case that you’re going to the prom with the head of the dance team. Sunwoo can’t dance… Is it the fact that he can’t dance?

Or are you just going to the prom with Shotaro because he was the one to ask you to go? Sunwoo can’t help but wonder– would you have gone with him, had he the balls and asked you first? 

“What do you mean, you can’t dance?” you say, eyeing the male. 

“Just… never learned to, I guess,” Sunwoo shrugs, “but it doesn’t really matter, since I’m not going, so…”

“But you have to go,” you pout, putting the boy in a difficult position. He doesn’t know if you’re aware of the fact, but your pleading look does wonders to his decision making. He’d commit arson if you asked him to with those glimmers in your eyes. He’d kill for you. Or die for you. Both, depending on the situation. He’d do anything.

“Why?”

“It won’t be fun if you’re not there,” you say, sighing. Your face looks so genuine Sunwoo almost believes it. It makes his heart squeeze and contemplate his decision. “I know Donghyuck is gonna spike the punch, and there are gonna be fireworks,” you hum, chewing on the inside of your cheek, “and this is our senior prom, Sunwoo… you have to come.”

The words resonate in his brain, making him even more hesitant about his decision. This is your senior prom– the last dance of your high school years. The last opportunity for Sunwoo to enjoy this time with you and his friends, the last chance he gets at seeing you in a pretty gown, all dolled up and smiling from the sneaky sips of alcohol you’ll get with everyone outside of the school gym. The last opportunity for Sunwoo to dance with you, his best friend, and possibly the last time he’ll ever enjoy his evening with the rest of his football team before all of them have to study in order for them to take their CSAT.

Maybe you’re right. Maybe he should go. 

“I’ll think about it, I guess…” he mumbles, watching as your face morphs.

“You guess?” you scoff, glaring at him. “You’ll go or I’ll personally come to your house and drag you there by your hair, you get me, Kim Sunwoo?” you threaten him, having the boy laugh at your outburst. You’re really adorable when you tease him, Sunwoo thinks. 

“Got it, chief,” he says, offering you a playful look as he salutes and lays back down onto the carpet, eyes pressed to the ceiling. “Don’t expect me to dance, though, because I refuse to embarrass myself. I have quite the reputation to uphold, you see.”

Sunwoo hears you chuckle, the noise of his sheets tousling landing into his ears. Before he has a chance to look at you and see what you’re doing, his view of the white wall above is shielded with the sight of your face, hair framing your cheeks as you stare down at him and put out your hands, waiting for him to take them and get up to a seated position. 

“What?” he asks, genuinely confused.

“I’m gonna teach you, come on,” you call him with a motion of your hand, arms still outstretched and waiting.

“Huh?” he squints, watching as you roll your eyes in frustration.

“I’ll teach you how to dance, Sunwoo,” you snicker, watching as the boy slowly takes your hands and lets you drag him up from where he’s laying on his electric blue rug, “so you don’t embarrass yourself.”

That has Sunwoo stuttering, his figure freezing even when you manage to somehow make him stand up in the middle of his room. A million different exclamation marks appear all over his brain, warning him from the upcoming events, but he has no way of denying your proposition now, no matter how hard he tries. “No- it’s- you don’t have to, I’ll just-”

“Okay, so,” you say, dismissing all his previous attempts at stopping you from your quest, “first, you put your hand here,” you order.

The skin of your fingertips touches Sunwoo’s hand, making the boy’s heart stummer in his chest. You drag his palm towards your waist, placing it on the curve of your body. He swears he feels electricity flowing through the contact, warmth radiating off your skin even though it’s shielded by the fabric of your favorite shirt. He gulps as you put your hand on his shoulder, his eyes carefully following your movements, examining every slightest shift of your composure. 

“And then you hold my hand with your other hand,” you instruct, but move to do it yourself when the boy doesn’t seem to have it in him to reach for your palm himself. 

Your fingers interlock with his, making the boy chew on his bottom lip in a sudden flash of nerves. You’re standing so close he can smell your perfume, the scent making his head spin and feel lightheaded. If you made him turn in this moment, he’s sure he’d fall over, weak legs barely holding him up in your close proximity. 

“Sunwoo?” you ask, making the boy gulp before he hums in acknowledgement.

“You have to look into my eyes when you slow dance,” you laugh, the sound soft and airy, but enough to have his stomach feel all weird, like he’s about to throw up. Still, he forces himself to look into your eyes, instantly feeling like you’re hypnotizing him. (He’s convinced he’d jump out of his window right in this moment if you asked him to.)

“Okay,” he nods, standing still, maintaining eye contact. His body is stiff, muscles tense as you just stand there for a moment. Sunwoo battles his inner fight and doesn’t look at any other features of your face– he has a weird obsession with staring at your lips whenever you talk to him lately. He feels like a weirdo every time he catches himself doing it, so he tries to get rid of the bad habit as much as he can.

“Now, you just… kind of sway to the beat,” you say. The boy nods, but his body stays unmoving.

“There’s… there’s no music playing,” he gets out, watching as you chuckle, your lips stretching out into an adorable grin.

“Right,” you nod, sighing, “well, I’ll just… let me just…” you mumble before you start humming a tune– one that makes Sunwoo laugh from how ridiculous it sounds, the notes so unfamiliar to him he’s sure you’re making it up as you go. Before he knows it, you start moving, making him mirror your actions. 

It’s not as difficult as he thought it was, he thinks. You stare at him, all encouraging, as you sway from one foot to the other, nodding at him when you see that he’s following your lead well. Dancing with you suddenly feels like the easiest thing in the world, it feels like he was born to have you in his arms, in the middle of his room as you hum an unfamiliar song to him. He thinks going to the dance won’t be so bad– not if he gets to dance with you there for at least one more time.

“Doing well,” you smile, making the boy feel all warm on the inside. A feeling of victory flashes over him for a mere second. He beams in your considerate words, feels fuzzy under your warm gaze. He feels like he just won the lottery. It’s kind of silly, if he really thinks about it.

A boyish grin appears on his face, having Sunwoo shaking his head at how both ridiculous and over the moon he feels right now. The stream of hums coming out of your throat cuts off for a second as you talk to him with an instructing tone, a warm gaze pressed into his features. “So you can either do this, or you can…” the hand that was holding his suddenly untangles itself from between his fingertips (and Sunwoo’s momentarily glad, because his palm was getting quite sweaty– although he admits that it does feel empty now that you’re not holding it), before you place his other hand on your waist as well. 

Something about the pose makes Sunwoo feel strangely intimate, a little bit bashful under your gaze. It only intensifies when your hands go up and entangle behind his neck, bringing you two even closer than before. The proximity has him blushing, red cheeks bringing heat to his face. He prays you don’t mention it– he really doesn’t know if he would be able to talk himself out of this one.

“Or you can do it like this,” you say before you lead the boy again, bodies swaying to an imaginary rhythm. You’re not even humming this time, having Sunwoo follow your movements in complete silence, his aimless movements mirroring your own. He’s surprised he hasn’t stepped on your foot yet when you decide to quickly teach him how to waltz (while also mumbling something about this dance being performed with the previous hand placement). He follows your orders– step forward, close, then another step backwards– and before he knows it, you’re leading him into a gentle turn, rising and falling in a ¾ count.

He’s getting lost in your voice– the softest “1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3,” helping him to stay in rhythm– before he’s pulled out of his trance as he feels your fingers playing with the hair on his nape, entangling yourself into his black locks. The motion has him look back up to your eyes (that have been previously glued to your feet, making sure he’s not stepping on your socked limbs), surprised when he sees you staring at him with a sweet smile playing with your lips.

Halting your movements for a bit, you let out a giggle and take him by surprise when your hand reaches up towards his bangs, ruffling his hair as he still holds you around your waist, the two of you almost hugging in his room. “See? Not that hard. You’re a born natural.”

His heart feels like it skipped a beat, a weird sense of panic enclosing around his chest. He doesn’t know what it is, not really knowing how to name the feeling, but it has him nervously smiling and urging him to escape you– escape your touch, escape your scent, your voice and the way you smile at him like you may feel the slightest ounce of the things he does for you, but refuses to accept on most days.

Rushed movements make him break apart from your grasp, quick breathing making him feel like he might spiral. 

“Hey! We weren’t done yet!” you call after him when he runs towards the door of his room. 

Not looking around, the boy gulps and nervously calls back to you, facing the door. “I’ll be back! I just have to pee!”

The door to his bathroom closes behind him with a loud shut. The boy doesn’t aim for the toilet– instead, he walks over to the sink, turning on the tap and splashing his face with ice cold water. When he’s done, feeling a bit less heated up, he looks up and stares at his face in the mirror. He gives himself some time to collect his thoughts, to hopefully let go of his foolishness.

How many more times will he have to remind himself that he only sees you as a friend?

to. my first date

January 2000

The snow crunches under his sneakers and makes Sunwoo slip on the cold surface– no wonder his mother screamed at him for not wearing his winter shoes before he went out with his friends. He bets it would be way less difficult to walk in the whiteness of the ground if he had more grip in the soles of his shoes, but oh well– he’s not really good at making clever decisions half the time. Nobody can really be surprised.

Somewhere along the way between the moment he’s interrogated his sister about the reason for her bad mood and the moment where he purposefully let her with his best friend at the top of the hill with no way out (he had a hunch the two of them had some things to talk about, from both of their uneasy demeanours for the last day), he realizes he lost both his sister and his best friend, and while he’s quite certain Eric can find his way home just fine, Sunwoo shivers at the thought of not bringing his sister home to his mother. He’s not quite sure he’d survive that. 

The quest of finding you both begins the moment the friend group reaches the top of the hill. Given his sister’s impulsiveness, she could’ve ran away from home, and that’s not what he wants to deal with on such a pretty winter day.

Sunwoo finds his plan being successful the moment he reaches the hot chocolate stand. The victory he feels after finding his younger sister alive and healthy is quickly overshadowed with the sight of his best friend’s face close to hers, very clearly going in for a kiss. He thinks he has to do something before he is permanently scarred with the image of them two making out right in front of his eyes as he gathers some of the icy texture into his hands and makes a ball, aiming straight at the head of his best friend.

The snow hits the both of them, right in the middle where their faces are supposed to meet. It’s not quite where Sunwoo was aiming, but he figures it’s good enough– it stopped his sister and his friend in the act, and that’s all he really cares about at this moment.

“Eric Sohn, what the fuck do you think you’re doing with my sister?” Sunwoo hollers, watching as his childhood friend takes off and leaves his sister alone on the bench to watch the conflict. The rest of the group follows with laughter as Sunwoo gathers more snow, tailing Eric and making sure the boy is punished for whatever he’s been doing.

It’s not like he disapproves. Not at all, actually. He just thinks it’s fun to mess with him a little.

“I didn’t mean to! Hey!” Eric cries out over his shoulder, trying his best to escape the frostbite. Karma is not on his side as he trips over something and falls to the ground, efficiently helping Sunwoo and the rest of their circle to corner the poor youngest, snow hailed on his limp figure. 

One would think the group of them were making a snowman with how they’re rolling the poor boy around in the snow. Juyeon and Donghyuck make sure there’s not a hint of skin unhidden by the ice, making Eric mourn and kick around– he’s left helpless, though, outpowered and outnumbered by his peers. If anyone unknowing was watching the scene, Sunwoo is sure he’d be framed for bullying.

He thinks it’s quite deserved. Why? He’s not really sure why. He just has a hunch.

“Okay! Enough!” Eric mumbles, shaking his head when Donghyuck tries to fit snow into his mouth. “I’m sorry! It won’t happen again!” he says, eyes opening wide as MB!Y/N appears somewhere behind her older brother, a teasing pout settled on her face.

“It won’t?”

“MB!Y/N– I– Just help me..?” the boy pleads, making the rest of the group laugh and finally relax, easing the attack. Juyeon hums something about young love, making the rest of the guys roll their eyes on his unusual cheesiness, before Donghyuck taps his teammate’s shoulder, making sure he’s paying attention to him.

Sunwoo raises his eyebrows at him, waiting for what he has to say. “Look, isn’t that Y/N?”

There are a few ways to catch Sunwoo’s attention. First– you have to mention football. He could spend hours on the topic of who’s the best player– Ko Jongsoo or Ahn Junghwan? If anyone asked him to write an essay on it, he’s quite certain he’d do a great job explaining their techniques and goal statistics for numerous pages. Second– you have to mention food. He’s a big fan of junk food, but ever since his friend Juyeon introduced him to their family bakery, he’s been a big cinnamon roll enthusiast. And third– you have to mention Y/N. 

Just the mention of your name is enough for the boy to stand alert, suddenly all too knowing of his surroundings. He turns his head to look for you, catching sight of your figure dressed in your long coat, standing all alone at the bottom of the hill. There’s an almost bored-looking expression on your face, although Sunwoo thinks there’s a bit of disappointment behind your eyes, making a cloud shade your them and make them lose their usual glimmer. That alone has the boy frowning, and before Donghyuck can say anything more or try to gossip about your sudden arrival, Sunwoo takes off– trying his hardest not to slip on the snow in his sneakers as he runs down the hill and tries his hardest to get to you quickly.

“Y/N!” he calls for you, getting your attention. You turn to him with expecting eyes, watching as the boy runs towards you and does, indeed, slip on the snow.

He manages to save it. Doesn’t mean you didn’t see him falter, though. “Careful there,” you grin, making the boy mentally kick himself in the shin at being uncool in front of you.

Sunwoo glosses over the comment, ignoring the previous two seconds of his life. If he acts like he’s not embarrassed, it might as well come true. “What are you doing here? I thought you said you’re hanging out with someone else when I invited you on the phone today,” he says, curious to know why you changed your plans so suddenly.

There’s a hint of bitterness in your composure when you shrug, averting your gaze. “That fell through, and I didn’t wanna… I figured you’d be here, so I came…” you trail off, your half-assed explanation enough to bring the boy into an inner conflict– one part of him feels bad for you, his heart clenching when he takes notice of your stern gaze and the disappointed expression on your face, the other one foolishly happy that he got to see you today, that you went here looking for him.

“Oh,” he nods, not really sure if he should pray more information out of you. He tried to ask you about it when he called you this morning, twirling the landline on his finger nervously when he asked you if you wanted to go sledding with him and his friends. He even mentioned his sister tagging along to make sure you didn’t feel as awkward going– you wouldn’t be the only girl there! You’d get along with her well, he said, not really sure if he was lying or not. Either way, his sister does need her own friends… “Well–” he starts, not really sure where his own sentence is going, before you cut him off with a rushed out sentence, spoken so quickly Sunwoo barely registers it in that confused brain of his.

“Would you wanna go on a date with me?” you ask, eyes big as you stare into his. 

The question takes a few seconds to register in Sunwoo’s brain. He can physically feel the auditory waves entering his ears and converting themselves into electrical signals by the auditory system. The signals enter his left hemisphere– maybe he could point towards the area with his finger if you asked him to, the impact of the question so present in his mind– and then it decodes in the Wernicke’s area, slowly, but surely making more and more sense to him. The boy gulps at the invitation. He understands the question theoretically now, he’s registered it in his brain, but the practical implication of your preposition is still unclear– why in the hell would you ask him to go on a date with you?

“I…” he stutters, feeling heat rushing to his cheeks. He feels like a fool– he should’ve said yes a few seconds ago, when you first asked the question– but something inside of him is telling him that maybe his reaction is valid. No one expects their friend to randomly ask them out on the bottom of a snowy hill. Certainly not when he was 99% sure you liked someone else.

“Look, it’s- it’s good if you don’t want to, really, I just… I was supposed to go on a date with Shotaro today, but he never arrived, and I…” you nervously scratch your neck, once again averting your gaze from him, “I guess I was hoping you were in the mood to go out with me, since I got all ready and stuff…” you mumble, your tone of voice breaking something inside of him.

Oh. So you weren’t really asking him out. You just didn’t want to feel like a fool that got stood up. How stupid of Sunwoo to think you wanted to go on a date with him. The two of you were just friends, after all. Best friends.

And best friends are for cheering each other up. So despite feeling absolutely defeated, Sunwoo battles the weird feeling in his chest and puts on his best smile. “Of course! Don’t even mention it. Where… where did you wanna go?” he asks, watching as your face relaxes, shoulders falling back to their natural position.

“Are you in the mood for some ramen?” you ask, eyebrows rising in question.

“I’m always in the mood for some ramen,” he nods. He’s always in the mood for whatever you are.

“Great,” you nod, chewing on the inside of your cheek.

“Great.”

“So… let’s go,” you say, nodding to yourself as you walk away from the hill, having your best friend tailing you, following you towards the ramen place in the center of the town.

There’s a bit of an awkward silence hanging over you as the two of you escape the sledding area. Sunwoo doesn’t even pay his goodbyes to his friends and his sister, but he trusts that Eric can get her home safely when the time comes to head back. The boy mentally curses out Shotaro for standing you up– how does he dare to ask you out and never arrive? He doesn’t care about the possible circumstances of his classmate’s absence. All he cares about is the saddened look on your face and the unusual quietness enveloping your aura. 

“Should I go kick his ass?” he asks, trying his hardest to make you feel better.

“It’s okay, Sunwoo,” you shake your head in disapproval, eyes pressed to the ground.

“Are you sure?” he asks again, not satisfied with your answer. “I’m quite good at fighting, contrary to popular belief, but if things go wrong, I know my friends would have my back,” he says, playfully punching the air.

The little play consisting of him kicking and punching an imaginary figure goes on for a while until he’s satisfied– meaning: until you’re left laughing at his overly exaggerated movements and grunts, shaking your head in disbelief at his boyish antics. Taking his hand in yours to make him stop with the play-fighting, you drag your now interlocked fingers towards your coat pocket, hiding his cold hand in the thick fabric.

Sunwoo’s heart beats fast at that, making him believe it’s going to run out of his chest any minute now– or make him go into cardiac arrest, either or– as he grows speechless, looking at you with big, surprised eyes. You don’t seem to put much meaning to your gesture, going as far as gently caressing your thumb over the back of his palm, his frozen skin growing hot at the contact. 

He’s never held hands with you before– if he doesn’t count the amount of times you dragged him around when the both of you were late for the shared cheerleading and football practice on Tuesday afternoons– and so the intimacy of the act makes him feel strangely weak in his knees. It’s hard for him to take his eyes off you, almost looking like a deer in the headlights to anyone watching you two right now. Sniffling from the cold, you shrug.

“It’s okay,” you smile, sending him a quick glance, “I didn’t really like him like that anyway. It just… feels a bit disappointing to get stood up, that’s all,” you nod.

Sunwoo nods at that too, something in him shifting. You don’t like Shotaro like that? When was this piece of information when he really needed it? (For like the last month, every time he couldn’t fall asleep because the thought of you marrying his classmate at one point in the future haunted him too much and made him want to poke the dance club leader’s eyes out?)

“I get it,” he says, walking along with you. Every time he feels the eyes of someone on you two, he feels his chest filling up with an unfamiliar sense of pride. Something about being seen with you as you’re all dolled up and holding his hand in your coat pocket makes him all giddy on the inside– no matter if this is a real date or not.

Because screw it, Kim Sunwoo is tired of reminding himself that he’s supposed to only see you as a friend. Because he doesn’t.

“I’ve never been on a date before, though, so you have to teach me all about that too,” he hums, tonguing the inside of his cheek. 

That has a giggle escaping your throat, another shake of your head in disbelief at his words. He doesn’t know what’s so funny, but he decides that as long as you’re laughing, he’s fine with feeling the tiniest bit of humiliation. He’d do anything to make you happy, he thinks. It’s a feeling stronger than him and he doesn’t know how to make it go away– he decided to stop battling it a long time ago.

“Just be yourself, Sunwoo,” you say, “that’s already perfect enough.”

Perfect. Sunwoo’s cheeks grow hot at that. He’s happy that it’s cold out– maybe he could blame his blushing on the weather. The boy isn’t so sure you know about the effect your words have on him. He’s always thought of you as perfect– flawless, funny, friendly, smart, kind and… and beautiful– but the adjective doesn’t quite seem fitting when he looks at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t believe you could hold him to such standards. He’s nothing special. God, he knows he’s not good enough for you– still, he keeps wishing he could be. 

“You look really pretty, by the way,” he hears himself say, the words escaping his mouth before he has the chance to stop them. The tone of his voice is quite unnatural in his ears, softer than it usually is, and somehow, the comment makes you roll your eyes, which he finds to be an unnatural reaction.

“You don’t have to say that just because you’re on a date with me,” you hum, eyes not meeting his. (Which might be a good thing. Sunwoo would like to keep his feelings hidden for a bit longer, and he’s not so sure you wouldn’t recognise the tender inkling he has towards you in his longing gaze.)

“I’m not saying it because of that,” he mutters, voice quiet, yet honest. 

Watching the side of your face, eyes still glued at every feature of your profile, he knows he’s not lying. He finds you oh so pretty even in the faint hue of the winter sun, with your scarf pulled up to the middle of your chin and hair pinned up with a pretty, silky bow. He finds you nothing short of angelic. Perfect. It’s kind of silly, if he really thinks about it.

Still, he can’t help himself. To this day, he counts the afternoon he spent with you, eating ramen at your favorite place, to be the first date he’s ever gone on.

Somewhere in the corner of his soul, he begs you count it as real too.

August 2007

It’s only a couple of days later when you find yourself in front of Juyeon’s father’s bakery, nervously chewing on your bottom lip and gazing at the glass door. The sun is shining strongly down on your skin, making you feel like you’re going to get a sun stroke if you keep standing in the direct light for any longer, and with the pressure of both the weather and your own thoughts, you decide to stop wasting time and push the door open, entering the establishment.

Not really sure if you’re welcome– who knows, Sunwoo might have just been acting nice and civil for the sake of not ruining his sister’s wedding– you prepared a mental shopping list of things you wanted to get at the bakery. You hadn’t seen your parents in a long time, so you thought a few donuts might make them happy. If Sunwoo just treats you like any regular customer when you walk in, you’ll take it as your sign to act like one and let this whole thing go. 

Truth be told, you don’t even know why you’re so nervous. It’s not like you’re promising yourself something more from this… right? 

It’s not like you suddenly felt younger again when seeing him at the wedding. It’s not like the memories choked you up when you went to sleep that night, it’s not like the feelings you had for the young boy suddenly waved at you in greeting, reminding you of just how close the two of you were all those years ago. 

Not at all. Why would anyone even think that?

The ring above the door makes a sound as you walk in, your insides clenching in a weird mix of nerves and anxiety at encountering Kim Sunwoo again. The store is empty when you reach the counter, but you’re soon greeted by the sound of the staff door opening, a tall figure stumbling in with a tray of pastries, yelling out a quick: “I’ll be right there!”

And as you watch Sunwoo with his bangs sticking to his forehead, an apron tied tightly around his thin waist, you feel like he hasn’t aged a single day and you two are still the same teenagers that ran around your school in order to not miss practice. The boy looks up at you from below his eyelashes, a boyish grin taking over his features as he puts the hot tray down on the counter and throws the kitchen towel he’s been using to shield his skin from the heat to the side, greeting you.

“Y/N! It’s nice seeing you again,” he beams, wiping his hands on his apron, gaze gluing to yours and never leaving, capturing you in a sincere eye contact that you don’t have the heart to break.

“Hi, Sunwoo,” you chuckle, pressing your lips into an honest, yet a little bit awkward smile. “How’s it going?” you ask, desperate to keep the conversation going– afraid that if it dies down, you won’t be able to revive it ever again and you’ll just regret it forever. There’s a weird sense of urgency in you, like you have a time limit to figure everything out– like you have to act now, or everything you ever wanted might slip from between your fingertips– yet, the more you watch Sunwoo in the serene atmosphere of the sweet-smelling bakery, you notice yourself relaxing.

“Good! Better now that you’re here, actually, it’s been a slow day,” he muses, nodding to himself. “What about you? Can I get you anything?” he asks, eyebrows raising, round cheeks on full display as he stares at you with an expecting smile.

“I’m doing well,” you nod, humming, “really well… catching up with my parents, settling in and stuff… You know the deal,” you laugh. “I actually came to get some donuts for my parents, sort-of like a thank you gift for letting me stay until I figure out my own place and stuff,” you say, watching as Sunwoo urgently nods with acknowledgement.

“Say less, darling,” the nickname slips out from him a little too easily, a little too casually for the way it captures your heart. It has you nervously shifting from one foot to another, insides warming up with the impact of his fleeting gaze as he moves to get a box from under the counter, moving closer to the glass vitrine filled with the sweet pastry. “Your mum loves these ones,” he points towards the donuts coated with the pink glazing.

It’s kind of weird– how Sunwoo knows exactly what your mother likes, despite him not being around your house every other day like when the two of you were teenagers. It makes you realize that even though you moved away for years, the time here didn’t stop. Everyone moved on with their lives, everyone continued on as if nothing happened. And you can’t hold it against them– you guess you just hate the weird pit in your stomach that opens up with the realization that while Sunwoo knows which pastries your mum likes (most likely because she stops by to buy bread often, taking some treats with her for her and dad while she’s at it), you don’t.

You try hard not to show it on your face, though. Sunwoo continues to pack more donuts into the box, not really attempting to ask you for what you’d like– he just chooses himself, making sure you bring home the best ones of the bunch, the most delicious ones they carry. Letting him do his work, merely watching as he carefully moves the donuts from the vitrine to the box, you hear him continue on with the conversation.

“You came in on the right day,” Sunwoo hums, “Juyeon works tomorrow, so you wouldn’t be able to catch me if you went.”

Ignoring the fact that he sees right through you– sees that your intention was to see him, to have a way to visit him and attempt to rekindle whatever bond you had when you were young– you just chuckle. You can’t blame him for knowing you so well, despite not being around each other for so many years. When you were young and in love, you used to call him your soulmate, after all. You guess there’s always a hint of truth, even in the most lovesick fantasies. “Well, then I’m glad I went in today,” you admit.

Sunwoo smiles at that– the kind of smile you always loved at him, the one where he shows his teeth and his eyes crinkle up into moon crescents. Once he’s done packing your donuts, he puts the box on the counter, showing you his back just as fast when he turns around, seemingly grabbing something else as well. When he’s facing you again, there’s a sweet pastry in his hand, still warm.

“What’s that?” you ask when you notice him offering it to you, eyes peering into his.

“A cinnamon roll,” he says, waiting for you to take it into your hands, “I told you everyone goes crazy over my cinnamon rolls, so I wanna see if their magic works on you too.”

“Is this how you flirt with girls over here?” you chuckle, but take the bun into your hand nonetheless, taking a hesitant bite of the treat. The sweetness melts on your tongue, the warmth of the freshly-baked pastry enchanting you with its taste, something about its essence weirdly reminding you of home. 

“Haven’t tried it before,” he shrugs, “so tell me if it’s working,” he jokes, watching as you chew on the roll. 

“Well, is it any good?”

Humming in satisfaction, delight on the tip of your tongue as you swallow down the heavenly dough, you nod. “It’s to die for, Sunwoo.”

“Told you,” he shoots you a cheesy finger-gun, reminding you so much of your best friend from high school, before he turns and takes a paper bag from somewhere, talking to you as his back faces you again, “I’ll get you some more to take home with you. I bet they didn’t have those in the Big Apple.”

“If I knew I was missing out on these, I would have come back quicker,” you joke, watching as Sunwoo turns to you with an amused look on his face, seemingly enjoying the praise.

The eye contact unarms you again, your composure falling just the slightest. Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you clear your throat and reach for your wallet, ready to pay and leave so you can think about the interaction on your way home (and overthink every slightest detail, just like teenage you would after every fleeting touch young Sunwoo would send your way). “How much do I owe you?” you ask.

“Oh, it’s on the house,” he says, licking his lips, “consider it a… welcome gift, if you will,” he hums, offering you the box full of donuts and the paper bag consisting his infamous cinnamon rolls, your skin touching just the slightest when you take them from him, but still making electricity jolt through the nerve endings of your fingertips.

“No, Sunwoo, I really can’t-” you shake your head, but get caught off by him.

“Take them, please. You can pay me back some… other time?” he cautiously says, seemingly not really knowing if he’s still within your desired boundaries. 

“O-okay, then,” you nod, agreeing to the subtle invitation– the subtle promise to meet again, the hopeful question leading into something more. “Thank you, Sunwoo,” you hum, smiling as you turn towards the door and get prepared to walk out, giving both of you some time to think about what happened in the last few minutes.

As you open your mouth to say goodbye to him, hand landing on the doorknob, you hear him call after you once more.

“Oh and Y/N?” he says, a confident look suddenly overtaking his features. “I end here at 5, if you’d like to hang out after.”

Unknowingly, a grin appears on your features, the one that’s so strong you can’t really mask it no matter how hard you try– as you nod at him, the victorious feeling flowing through your veins maybe even a bit dangerous. Still, you don’t have it in you to turn the invitation down– you wouldn’t be able to even in your wildest dreams.

This is what you came here for, after all, isn’t it?

“Okay,” you agree. “So… I’ll see you later?”

“See you later,” he nods, teeth capturing his bottom lip. It’s kind of adorable. He couldn’t battle the smile threatening to pull at the corners of his mouth, no matter how hard he tried.

Maybe coming here– coming back home– was the best thing you could’ve done.

“Wanna come in?” Sunwoo asks. It’s a few hours later– you followed through with his invitation and waited for him in front of the bakery at 5:05 sharp, catching him after his shift. You two took a walk through the whole town, waltzing slowly through his neighborhood until you reached his childhood house. You remember far too many afternoons spent in the comfort of the walls, and although you think it would be nice to revisit those memories, you notice his mother’s car (is it still hers? You have no way of knowing.) in the driveway, and suddenly, you’re too shy to join him as he drops his stuff off in his house.

It’s like you’re a teenager again– except, you never had any problems meeting his mother before. She was a nice woman, although a little busy (you only heard Sunwoo complain about the fact a few times– mainly when he was feeling sentimental or particularly under the weather about something), and she always treated you very nicely. Almost like you were supposed to join the family one day. His sister once asked you if you’re gonna marry him, and you laughed at her back then– you were so young, you didn’t even think of having a wedding with Kim Sunwoo. The funniest thing was the timing: you weren’t even dating him at the time. Or planning to, really. Sure, you always imagined somehow spending the rest of your life with him, in one way or another, but the thought of marriage didn’t often cross your mind. Life is ironic, you think– MB!Y/N was the first one to have a wedding and here you are, retangling your life paths with her brother again. 

So no, you were never really scared or shy in front of his mother. Back then, things were different though. Simpler? You’d say they were definitely easier. You were more extroverted and open, more ambitious and less embarrassed of how your life turned out to be.

Also, you didn’t want to give her any ideas. It’s far too soon for that, you think. 

“No,” you shake your head, hesitating a little bit, “I’ll wait for you here,” you say, watching as he smiles at you and nods, walking inside of the house to drop off his things and change.

You two didn’t really have any plans for the rest of the evening. You told Sunwoo he could show you around town, tell you what changed and what stayed exactly the same, since he came home earlier than you– you bet it could be two or three years ago. He eagerly nodded, although noted that not much is different in your hometown and your walk could turn out pretty uneventful. No plans were set in stone, though.

Nervously shuffling from one foot to another, you decide to walk around the yard. Sunwoo’s house was always big– although it seemed more giant to you when you were a teenager. It’s a strange observation, since you didn’t really grow any more inches since you hit puberty. Your eyes study the flowers in front of the gate, the mowed grass, the big tree in the backyard. If you focus hard enough, you could almost see the two of you laying under it, letting the leaves shield you from the sun, both much younger and carefree than now. Sunwoo would show you pages of his favorite comic books and you’d play on your Tamagochi, making sure it doesn’t die in two days like his did when he first got it. When you turn to your right, you see the garden house you two– sometimes with his sister, sometimes with Eric, sometimes with both of them at once– spent many afternoons in.

There used to be an old, red sofa inside. There wasn’t much space, since it was filled with gardening supplies, Sunwoo’s and MB!Y/N’s old bikes, flower pots, packs of soil and all other things you could need for gardening, but it was fun to hide away from the sun in there and drink iced tea, talking about whatever came to your minds or solving nanogram puzzles in comfortable silence (or occasional sigh from Eric when he got stuck somewhere in the middle of his crosswords).

Your curiosity gets the best of you when you open the door, deciding to see if it’s still the same inside. Your eyes widen when you notice the garden house a little less packed than before– mainly because Sunwoo’s mother no longer does gardening in her free time and buys her vegetables on the market like your mum does, you presume– but instead, it’s full of all the things the childhood you knew so well.

Sunwoo’s old bike– red and a little rusty, but you bet it could still work. The rug they used to have in their dining room is now in the middle of the little garden house, stained with dirt. Next to the usual red sofa is a leather armchair that they used to have in their living room for a while, the dark brown fabric now worn out, chapped and peeling off. In the corner of the room, you find a box filled with various sports equipment– tennis rackets, a yellow tennis ball, a jumping rope, and lastly, a half-deflated football. The sight of it has you sighing a little, reminding you of Sunwoo’s composure when he told you about how he never got to pursue his childhood dream fully. 

Your eyes glaze towards his old skateboard, having you chuckle, the memories of him riding it down the hill in front of his house appearing in your mind. Sometimes, he would be there with his sister and his childhood friend Eric as well (that more often than not let MB!Y/N borrow the board, watching her with lovesick eyes instead of riding it himself), the young boy trying to teach himself tricks he saw on the TV.

“Do you think I still got it?” you suddenly hear Sunwoo ask from behind your shoulder, making you jump in surprise. The male laughs at your shocked face, shaking his head in disbelief at your easily shaken composure. 

“You scared me,” you breathe out, clutching your chest for good measure, to show him how much you really mean it– your heart was racing, and contrary to popular belief, the sight of him in casual attire (a gray hoodie, so similar to the one he used to wear in high school, baggy Adidas sweatpants covering his legs) wasn’t the reason for the little heart attack.

“So did you!” he exclaims. “I got outside and didn’t see you there, I thought you ran away for a second,” he hums.

“As if,” you mumble, “I walked all the way here, why would I leave so suddenly?”

“I dunno,” he shrugs, “you could’ve changed your mind, or something,” he says, his composure suddenly as boyish as when he was just a teenager, something in your heart softening. You guess he sometimes still carries some of the same insecurities he tried so hard to mask when he was young. Some things don’t really change, but you really wish at least this would’ve.

Smiling at him, you shake your head. “I don’t think you still got it, though,” you go back to reply to his initial question, pointing towards the skateboard.

“Well, who knows,” he peeps, “maybe I could do an Ollie, or something.”

“I really don’t think you could, Sunwoo,” you laugh softly, watching him regain his statement competitiveness.

“Wanna bet?”

“No,” you shake your head, “I don’t want you to break your bones, so let’s just say I believe you,” you giggle, watching as the boy mirrors your expression, his gaze softening. 

A short moment of silence overtakes you two as you sigh and look around the garden house, instinctively taking a seat on the red sofa covered in dust. You bet it’s been years since anyone’s sat on it, and you’re glad to be the one revisiting its comfort. It’s like solidifying your return– like the old piece of forgotten furniture in Sunwoo’s garden house is the spawn point of your childhood. “Doesn’t this make you nostalgic?” you ask, eyeing your companion.

“Well, I live here,” he shrugs, “so not as much as it makes you, I suppose. Having you here again makes it more nostalgic, though, I’ll give you that.”

His words have you overcome with something bittersweet. Seeing the town you love so much makes you almost regret you ever left. The rational side of your brain reminds you that you gained a lot of experience abroad, though, and so you settle with being just a little bit remorseful of your past self for being so overly-ambitious. 

“It’s weird,” you allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of him, the essence of him being your best friend– your first love, the first person you ever felt safe with– overtaking you in the moment of weakness, “it’s like everybody moved on, but I stayed here.”

“Well, not everybody moved on,” Sunwoo hums, referring to himself. “Juyeon stayed, too. Eric and MB!Y/N are moving only a few hours away… Haknyeon lives down the street now,” he points out, a poor attempt at making you feel better.

“Yeah… it’s just… I hoped I would do big things. I hoped we would both do big things,” you say, tone of voice quiet, your eyes avoiding him. It’s hard to keep eye contact with him when you share your struggles– at least that’s the way it always was when you were young. The look he offered you always made you feel so tender, so cared for that you wanted to burst out crying. In your age and state, you can’t afford to tear up in front of your ex-boyfriend anymore.

“Sometimes, things don’t work out the way we want them to,” Sunwoo says, tone of voice considerate. “And that’s fine. I wanted to be a star, and I’m not, but that’s okay, because hey… I’m happy anyway. I’m content. And I know that one day, you’ll be too. It just takes a bit of time.”

Snickering, you play with your fingers in your lap, legs plopping up and crossed, striking an almost defensive pose. “Were you… were you embarrassed when you came back?” you ask.

Sunwoo laughs, the sound so heartfelt it makes your insides squeeze. “Terribly. I mean, look at me in my mid-twenties, still living with my mother. Even back then, I felt like a failure. I felt like a disappointment, but… then I realized not everyone had the opportunities I had. Not everyone almost made it professional, you know, and that’s still something to be proud of.”

“I’m still living with my mother, but hey– she’s getting older and the house is big. MB!Y/N moved out, and I wouldn’t want my mum to get lonely… so I think I’m doing pretty well, given the circumstances,” he says. Pausing for a heartbeat, as if collecting his thoughts, he continues. “I think you should find the positives in your situation too. Not everyone got to live in New York... Work for the national TV… That’s still a huge achievement, and I think you should be proud of yourself for that.”

Rolling your eyes– although grateful to hear the words– you snicker. “It’s hard to do that right now…”

“I know,” he nods, smiling when you finally look at him. “It takes time. And until then, well, for what it’s worth, I’m really proud of you. And maybe… maybe you coming back home is how life’s supposed to go anyways.”

Biting down on your lower lip to stop yourself from tearing up– see, you knew you shouldn’t have looked the boy in the eyes during his little pep talk– there’s suddenly a weight leaving your shoulders, heart softening and growing more tender. Your wounds seem to sting a little less. It’s strange– even after so many years, he still knows just the words you need to hear.

“Yeah,” you nod, voice barely louder than a whisper, a soft smile playing with your lips, “maybe.”

to. my first kiss

March 2000

His eyes stay glued to the TV in your living room, the boy almost looking hypnotized as he focuses on the program running, furrowed brows and all, showing his utmost concentration. A sigh lands into his ears, but goes unnoticed when you enter the room, a scowl sitting on your face. “Sunwoo! I told you to watch the oven! What if the cookies burn?”

“Yeah…” he mumbles, not a single word coming out of your mouth truly registering in his brain.

“Sunwoo!” you grunt, but when you get no reply, you just choose to roll your eyes and walk into your kitchen yourself, opening the oven and making sure the cookies you two have been baking haven’t burned down into coal yet. Not long after, you plop on the sofa next to your best friend, tone of voice still showing a bit of frustration at his carelessness.

“You shit on Eric for watching those, but you’re just as bad,” you hum as you notice the kdrama going on in the TV. It’s one of the ones that hardly make any sense and each scene is overly-exaggerated and repeated at least twice to create impact, but Sunwoo finds himself living for the drama. Each argument has him examining the scene, mentally rooting for his favorite characters– and although he is busy with football practice nowadays, he doesn’t skip a single episode of Happy Together. 

It’s not as entertaining as the manga comics he borrows from Hyunjae’s father’s comic shop, but he figures that it’s good enough to pass some time… and indulge over.

“I think they’re gonna kiss,” he notes, pointing towards the screen.

“Oh, good point, Sherlock Holmes,” you sigh, shaking your head in disbelief. If there was something you’d expect out of your friend, it seemingly wasn’t his enjoyance of cheesy dramas that air in the afternoon hours of the week. 

And Sunwoo admits, he was never the one to enjoy romance. Hell, it was something he always made fun of when it came to his friend Eric– he was not the one to watch romantic comedies, he wasn’t the one to tell girls cheesy lines or bring them flowers on Valentine’s day. He does seem to be enjoying the laughable scenes rolling on the TV a little too much lately, though.

Maybe he should start hanging out with Eric less.

The scene slowly transforms into close-ups of the two main characters, showing them instinctively closing their eyes and leaning towards each other, eyes trained on each other’s lips. It doesn’t take much to predict the next actions, but Sunwoo still finds himself restless in his seat when they finally kiss, legs kicking up and a gasp escaping his mouth. One would think he won the lottery or was just greeted with the greatest surprise ever, with how he’s reacting. None of the two are true, though.

“Oh, wow,” you hum next to him, seemingly not really interested in the drama as much as your best friend is.

“You’re ruining it,” Sunwoo sighs, looking at you as you roll your eyes and settle deeper into the couch cushions. 

“Oh, sorry,” you note, but your composure stays a bit annoyed. 

Sunwoo watches the TV for some more– the scene of the two characters kissing stays on the screen, slowed-down and repeated, in the true 90s TV show fashion– before his eyes trail off the device and move towards you, glazing your side profile. He takes notice of your casual attire– you changed out of your school uniform in the time he was supposed to watch the cookies baking in the oven, and something in his stomach churns, making him blurt out the random question that so suddenly appears on the tip of his tongue.

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” he asks, genuinely curious. He doesn’t even know why the response matters to him so much– he also doesn’t really know what reply he’d like to hear better, if he’s being honest– but now it’s out in the open and he can’t take it back.

“Hm?” you hum, snapping your head towards him. “Oh. Yeah, I guess…”

“You guess..?” Sunwoo repeats, furrowing his brows. How can one not be sure? 

“Well– yeah. It only happened once, though,” you shrug. It takes everything in Sunwoo to not ask who you kissed and when, or under what circumstances, and decide to despise that person until the day he dies. It’s not his business and he shouldn’t even care in the first place… He can’t say he’s disappointed in your answer– it’s your life and your decisions– but something inside of him screams that now, he can’t be your first no matter how hard he’d try. (It’s not like you’d want to kiss Sunwoo anyway, so he really doesn’t know why he’s making such a big deal about it.)

“What about you?” you ask, the question catching the poor boy off guard. He didn’t necessarily expect you to ask him back– so much to his title of Sherlock Holmes– and the reality that he can’t lie to you takes him out in full force as he bashfully stares out of the window.

“No,” he peeps, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

There’s something embarrassing about admitting to the girl you like that even at the ripe age of 19, you’ve never kissed anyone before. Shame creeps up his neck and adorns his cheeks after the simple word slips out of his mouth, eyes refusing to meet yours.

“Really?” you ask, and you sound genuinely surprised– there’s a hint of Sunwoo’s ego recovering, but he thinks the hit was too hard for him to ever recover.

“Yup,” he says, a popping sound heard as his lips voice out the last consonant, the view of him playing with his own fingers suddenly more interesting than anything else happening in your living room right at this moment.

“I thought– nevermind,” you hum, scratching the back of your neck, “why are you asking?”

“Just… just curious, I guess…?” he stummers, shrugging. 

A moment of silence overtakes you two– enough to make the boy instantly hate everything he’s ever said on the matter. If there could open up a hole in the ground right now to swallow him, he’d jump in with much enthusiasm. Why did he have to ask?

“Do you wanna try?” you suddenly propose, making the boy’s heart feel like it burst and threw him into a cardiac arrest. His hands start sweating, his cheeks tint red and it feels like all oxygen was suddenly sucked out of the living room, his lungs collapsing on themselves.

You seem to try to save the situation, noticing the utter shock on his face. “I mean– you don’t have to, but I… I wouldn’t mind, and it’s– I don’t know… if you wanted to practice with me, or something, I’d be down to…” you stutter, chewing on your bottom lip as you finish the little tangent, terror evident in your eyes.

Sunwoo feels like a little boy that just found his favorite gift under the Christmas tree. Like he found the most pricey toy there, the one he always wanted, and now that it’s there, he’s scared to actually play with it, because he doesn’t want to break it. Much like your friendship, he thinks. There’s too much to lose if he crosses this line, and he’s very much aware. 

But the offer seems tempting. Almost too tempting. God, he doesn’t think he could say no.

He may not be your first kiss, but you’re asking to be his. This sounds like a dream, if he really thinks about it.

“You know what? Just forget–”

“I’d– I’d like that…” he mumbles, trying really hard not to avert his gaze from you.

Your gaze softens, nodding your head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“Okay,” you nod again, moving a little closer to him. Your knees knock into the side of his thigh, your whole figure now facing him on the sofa as his legs still point forward to the TV. He keeps staring at you, a little nervous, but expectant. “Are you sure? You don’t have to do it just because–”

“I’m sure,” he cuts you off, watching as your face relaxes, a smile appearing on your lips at the next addition. “I want to.”

“Okay.”

You move impossibly closer, your crossed legs in contact with his clothed skin. He curses the thin fabric of the pants of his school uniform for making him feel every slightest flex of your muscles when you move, making his skin flare up and burn. He keeps staring at you, watching you as you lean closer to him, your faces now inches away from each other. Sunwoo finds himself focusing on every feature of your face, counting the eyelashes framing your eyes, glazing over the sparkles in your orbs. You stay close for a minute, unmoving. 

Eyes locking, Sunwoo finds himself gasping a little, breathing shuddering when he notices your gaze falling to his lips. Your breathing mixes, air meeting his face when you breathe out a minty breeze. His heart is already racing and you’re not even doing anything.

When he finds you finally moving towards him and notices your eyes shutting close, he mirrors your actions, but stays unmoving. After what feels like eternity, he feels something soft pressing to his lips, warmth spreading from that part of his face to the rest of his body. The contact of your lips with his is gentle, like you’re testing the waters, and although the feeling is unfamiliar, Sunwoo decides he doesn’t hate it.

The weird firework show in his stomach actually suggests that he’s quite enjoying it. Your lips break away from his for a bit, rewarding him with only a peck, and before the boy has the chance to think this is it and it’s over, you dive in for more and kiss him again, this time longer, more firmer.

Your hands come up to cradle his cheeks, holding him close. He feels himself burning up, his composure completely crumbling when he feels you smile against his lips. 

“You know you can kiss back, right?”

“Mhm,” he hums, opening his eyes to see you staring at him with a tender look.

“Try it,” you say, hands gently coming up to brush his bangs away from his face. If anyone was looking at the two of you now, Sunwoo thinks they’d conclude that you two were in love.

And maybe Sunwoo was, by the way he was looking up at you like you hung the stars on the sky. By the way he was staring at you with such a vulnerable look he feared you might see right through him, see right to his core and call him out on every unconfessed word hiding in his heart. He looks a little scared, a little tense, still, but his eyes don’t lie. They never do. There’s no one else that could make him feel the way you do.

“Okay,” he nods, moving in his position so he’s facing you, ready for more. 

He mirrors your previous motions, leaning towards your face. He wets his lips and closes his eyes when he’s sure he’s close enough to not miss your mouth, and after another deep breath in to calm his nerves, he presses against you. He feels you freezing under him, a momentary panic spreading all over his chest as he thinks he’s done something wrong, before he feels you kissing him back.

A whole other sensation takes over him when he feels your lips moving against his, his fingertips buzzing when he drags his hand up and moves your hair behind your shoulder, large hand resting on your jaw. He’s not sure if he’s doing this correctly– hell, he’s never done this before– but after you move a bit and entangle your hands behind his neck, pressing against him a bit more firmly, yet still tender and gentle like the first time, he recognises that somehow, it feels right, and he thinks that’s all evaluation he needs for now.

The need for oxygen makes him break away from you, breathing heavily as he opens his eyes and finds you resting your forehead against his, smiling. “Like that?” he asks, shamelessly staring at your wet lips, already yearning for more.

“Something like that,” you nod, giggling. “You still need more practice, though,” you suggest, making the boy frown.

“Was it that ba–”

Rolling your eyes at him, frustrated at the way he always needs everything spelled out for him, refusing to take a hint, you press your lips against his again, teeth clashing a little when Sunwoo picks up the pace and kisses you back. The TV is a mere white noise in the background now, everything around you two disappearing, all of Sunwoo’s senses focused on you and only you. He could get lost in the way you taste– like strawberry bubblegum you bought at the store on the corner of the street– and the way you feel against him– soft, tender, warm.

He feels like he could burst. He knows his hands are a bit sweaty, but he’s only half aware of the fact when his palms move to hold your cheeks, much like you did to him before, and your hands entangle in his hair, playing with the strands.

He could stay like this forever, blissfully unaware of the consequences of this act. He could kiss you over and over and over again, even if it meant he was still bad at it and needed more practice– he could get lost in your scent, in the tender way you hold him to you, in the way you keep smiling against his lips whenever he does something to surprise you: like get a little bolder and angle your head by your chin with his thumb, getting more comfortable.

He’s glad he’s sitting down, because he’s quite sure his knees are too weak to carry him right now. When you break away from him again, lips swollen and eyes blown-out, he thinks you might just be an angel. He’d love to engrave this image into his memories forever.

Although, he’s doubtful that he could ever forget about this. Or anything about you, really.

And even as you suddenly gasp, finally aware of the world around you, running to the kitchen and screaming: “Sunwoo! We forgot about the cookies!”,

he wonders just what more you could teach him about life. He’d follow you to the end of the world if you asked him to, holding your hand in his and not thinking twice. He’d bring you down a star, if you only so expressed you would like one. He’d do anything. 

You taught him what friendship is. You taught him what it means to care for someone. What it means to have someone special. You taught him how to drink (although by scolding him when he was hungover. He felt cared for even with your stern gaze). You taught him how to slow dance– even though you spent the prom with someone else. Just now, you taught him how to kiss.

And although you’re unaware, he’s quite certain that when he’s 19 years old, spending each of his days with you, although unaware, you taught him how to love someone too.

August 2007

You feel kind of silly, standing in front of the bakery as the sun sets over the horizon, the clock striking near 5 in the afternoon as you gnaw on your fingernails and hesitate a little before coming in. Pushing the door open and slipping inside, the male currently sweeping the floor looks over at you, a look of pleasant surprise sitting at his face and a sunny smile sent your way upon your arrival.

You don’t really know why you keep running back to him. The whole town reeks of familiarity to you, every corner and inch of each street filled with the essence of your childhood and your whole growing up. It’s not like you don’t have anything else to ground yourself back to, but somehow, your inner voice always keeps calling for Sunwoo. It’s weird– it’s been ages and you shouldn’t feel like this around someone who you haven’t even properly dated for that long, if you don’t count the few months before he left– but it’s something you can’t control, an essence you can’t hold back. 

“Y/N,” he calls for you, “what are you doing here?” he asks as he continues his routinal cleaning, putting the broom away behind the counter. 

It’s a stupid question. You bet he realizes it too, but you’re somehow glad he is taking initiative. This way, you don’t have to be the first one to spark the conversation. This way, you know you’re welcome. 

“Oh, well,” you shrug, “I’m… looking for you…?” you say, tone of voice suggesting that you’re hesitant, almost a little shy to admit it to yourself. 

Maybe you’re foolish for feeling this way. Because you know what all those things mean– you know what the lightness in your stomach is, what the giddy feeling resonating through you whenever the male smiles at you is. You know that thinking about someone constantly, more so before you sleep, isn’t an usual occurrence with someone you pay no attention to, with someone you don’t care about. You’ve been in love before– with the same man that’s standing right in front of you as well, funnily enough. You know what this all means.

But with how he’s inviting you in, letting you into his little bubble, you think it’s not as bad of a thing. He’s not pushing you away. He’s not building bridges. He’s the same way he was all those years ago, and you’d hate to find out that all of this wasn’t something more and was just him being nice.

“Well, that’s good to hear,” he chuckles, wiping his hands on the apron still tied around his waist. “I’m off in a few, though, so if you want anything from the bakery–”

“I’m not here for the food,” you laugh, dismissing him with a wave of your hand. The boldness is unusual for the present you– there’s a hint of your past shining through whenever you are with the boy, though. Maybe you like this sense of familiarity. Maybe you like to feel real again– maybe you like to feel like yourself. It’s hard to admit it, but you did lose your sense of identity after moving abroad. It’s hard to stay true to yourself with so many new people around and with so many expectations and responsibilities. The pressure changes you, and you now rely on Kim Sunwoo to bring you back to default– to where you’re supposed to be.

“Okay, then,” he nods, thankfully not making a big deal out of your desperate visit, “what would you like to do?” he asks, eyes sparkling under the lights when he looks at you. It’s like an open invitation– he gives you the chance to tell him how you’d like to spend your time with him. He did this a lot when you two were younger as well. It felt good to have someone that would make the effort to enjoy your hobbies with you– no matter how disinterested he could be in the matter.

“Hang out… I guess…?” you hum, shrugging. You didn’t really have anything planned. All you knew was that you wanted to be with him. It’s like the heart’s calling– you don’t know when your inner monologue got so cliche.

“Anything specific?” he asks.

Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you shake your head in disapproval. You fear that you disappointed him, let him down in some way– you came all the way here, after all. You could’ve made something up on the way, couldn’t you? But still– just like the Sunwoo you once knew, so lively and full of ideas– he just purses his lips for a second before speaking the suggestion into existence.

“Well… do you want to bake with me? Like the old times?” he says, sending you a look full of warm honey.

You wouldn’t say no to that invitation. You’d be crazy to do so.

The Kim Sunwoo you used to bake cookies with in the comfort of your kitchen back home wasn’t so skilled in making the dough like he is now. He wasn’t so good at knowing the recipe from memory, nor was he gifted with the kitchen appliances he has now, all professional and shiny, reserved just for the use of the bakery. You don’t really know if he even had the love for baking in him back then– you just know you two enjoyed your time together, and when you are young, that’s all you really cared about anyway. It didn’t matter that he let the cookies burn sometimes. It didn’t really matter that they didn’t turn out well on some days– all morphing into one big block, making you cut the dough into pieces so you could eat it when you accidentally added too much butter. 

He still looks the same, though. A few years older, but with the same boyish aura to him when he wipes dirty hands on his apron. All grown up now, but still with the same glint in his eye whenever he looks up at you in between your conversations. When you’re with him, you no longer feel the distance between who you are and who you used to be, the distance between you and him. It’s like the old days, but a little better.

Maybe you have more time now.

The two of you work on the cookie dough, enveloped in a comfortable conversation. “You have to add more sugar,” Sunwoo hums from next to you, watching as you work on the mixture.

“Isn’t it funny how I was the one always giving you directions when we baked together and now you’re the one ordering me around?” you laugh, taking the sugar from the counter and sprinkling more in, listening to the opinion of a professional.

“Well, my cookies don’t turn into one big blob of dough anymore,” he jokes, laughing. “Besides, it’s my job now, so you’d kind of expect me to be good at it.”

“You can’t be so sure of that…” you hum, shaking your head.

“Why? Do you have any experience with being bad at your job?” 

“Oh you bet I do,” you laugh, nodding. “I was an intern before, Sunwoo. A colleague of mine once tried to console me by saying being an intern means being bad at the job, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I still cried myself to sleep multiple nights,” you conclude, thinking back to your New York endeavors.

“That bad?” Sunwoo asks empathetically.

“Yeah. Mixed up everyone’s coffee order on my first day. When I was confronted about it, I tried to play it off by saying I don’t have a good memory…” you muse.

“Well, it’s hard to remember a lot of stuff at once, to be fair–”

“I was getting coffee for three people, Sunwoo. Objectively speaking, it shouldn’t be as hard…” you say, now thinking back to the events of your internship with more humor than embarrassment.

Sunwoo laughs at your story, shaking his head in disbelief. “Not worse than my teammate back in Boston. The first match of the season, he scored a goal against our own team. His reasoning? He used to play against the goalie back in high school, so he got confused.”

The boy takes over at making the dough once it’s the turn to add in the chocolate chips, glancing at you momentarily when you laugh at his anecdote. Watching him from the side, you heave out through your laughs. “That’s actually hilarious,” you get out, washing your hands in the sink. “What about some funny stories about yourself, though?”

“Don’t have any. I’m too perfect to humiliate myself like that,” he notes, pressing his lips together and raising his eyebrows at you in an ironic expression, nodding.

“Oh, as if–”

“How is it?” he asks you suddenly in the middle of the sentence, seemingly done with kneading the mixture. Sunwoo puts the cookie dough in front of your lips, waiting for you to taste it. You’d do it all the time when you were both teenagers, but back then, the gesture didn’t feel half as intimate as the mere image of it does now.

Locking eyes with the male, you hesitantly open your mouth and let him put the dough into it, tasting the sweetness on your tongue. Sunwoo’s eyes darken, as if he’s just realized what he’s done, the weight of the situation falling down on him as your tongue comes in contact with the skin of his fingertips. Gulping, he watches as you suck the tip of his digit into your mouth, getting all last remains of the sweetness off of it, something in the air shifting towards a direction you didn’t expect from tonight.

“Good,” you nod, licking your lips, “delicious.”

Seconds turn to what feels like eternities as you stop all motion and look into each other’s eyes, finding any hint of disapproval with the so obvious turn of events. His chocolate orbs peer into yours, making you ignite with something close to an urge you can’t control, his eyes anchoring themselves to the curve of your lips when you decide to let go of all anxiety and insecurities and just go for it. The cookie dough was sweet, but you’ve never tasted anything sweeter than Sunwoo’s lips. You might just have to refresh your mind, you think.

Leaning closer to him, your breathing mixing in the few centimeters left between your mouths, you relish in the déja vu this action brings you. It feels like yesterday, yet also centuries ago since you last kissed the male, and although you’re sure you enjoyed it back then, you wish you could’ve told the younger you to kiss him more often, more firmly, with more passion, maybe even sooner. For longer. 

Pressing your lips against his first, almost like always– since Kim Sunwoo was a bit shy with his kisses when you were both just high school seniors– your eyes shut close and everything around you disappears. You guess there’s something about baking that makes the two of you want to feed off each other’s lips– except this time, it’s not practice anymore. It’s not innocent, it’s not clueless. This time, it’s real, alive and passionate. You can’t say you hate the sentiment, the weird parallel your relationship has come to. It’s like you’re reliving your life again, but this time, you know how the story ends– you know how to fix the ending. How to keep him here.

Sunwoo’s more experienced than he was when you kissed him for the first time. He’s less shy and more bold, lips firmer against yours, but still careful and gentle. His hand comes up to cradle your jaw and position you so he has the best access to your mouth as he slips his tongue in, as if chasing down the taste of cookie dough he fed you just a few seconds ago, and although you liked to battle him when you were young, you let him win this time– you let him take you home, bring your mind to where it’s supposed to be.

Hands gripping the front of his shirt, but immediately going to circle around his neck when a particular movement of his makes you moan slightly into his mouth, you play with the hair on his nape and feel him shuddering under your movements, an automatic response that makes fondness spread over your chest. Everything about him is familiar to you– he still reacts the same way to your tender ministrations, he still smiles against your lips when you tangle your fingers through his hair and want to ground yourself in the touch. 

You know him like the palm of your hand. It’s easy to get lost in something you are so familiar with, in someone that was once your everything. It’s easy to indulge too much in something that was forcefully taken from you, to get right back where you left with him, because time and circumstances were never on your side.

A touch of his hand on the side of your neck, lips trailing down your mouth towards your jaw. The boldness, the urgency of his movements is enough to have you turn your back against the counter, his body pressed tightly against yours. His palms under the backside of your knees have you sitting up on the cold marble, his lips never breaking away from your skin. 

You’re enjoying the shift in the dynamic. You’re enchanted with the way he handles you, like he’s been starved of you for years, wanting to chase down all the time you spent away from each other. Breathing heavily, feeling his plush lips sucking down on the sweet spot under your ear, then trailing down the side until he reaches the juncture of your neck, an involuntary “God…” slips past your mouth.

“I missed you,” he says, words muffling against your skin, “I missed you so much, I felt like I was going crazy.”

The confession makes you dizzy, your whole body growing weak. It’s like he knows exactly what words you wanted to hear. It’s like he knows what haunted you all those years, what you kept asking the universe on sleepless nights over and over, praying for an answer. It’s like he knows exactly how to get you close to him, to have you completely let go of the past. 

“I missed your jokes,” he says, planting a kiss on your neck. “I missed your smile,” he presses another one a little more up, “I missed your laugh,” another kiss, now on your jaw. “I missed holding your hand,” a peck planted to the corner of your lips, “and I missed kissing you…” he trails off, pointing his attention back on your mouth, locking the two of you together again, as if kissing you was his new addiction and you were the drug.

Sunwoo’s hot hand creeps up your waist, fingers slipping under the thin fabric of your tank top. The contact makes you shiver in response, your bodies still as responsive to each other as back when you were 19, and when you tug at his bottom lip with your teeth and slip your tongue back into his mouth, you feel the boy tug at the right strap of your top, sliding it down your shoulder. You’re barely registering the bowl of dough to your right, the fact that you’re in the kitchen of Juyeon’s parent’s bakery, or the fact that you only just met the boy two weeks ago for the first time in years. All you focus on is him– his touch, his taste, the way he makes you feel. All you know is longing. The desire.

Before you have the chance to take anything further, the sound of the door opening makes you jump away from each other– your head almost hitting the top cabinets, had Sunwoo not instinctively put his hand there to shield you from the impact. Before you get a chance to register what’s happening, a familiar voice calls for you, their tone a little guilty and bashful. 

“Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt, or anything–” Juyeon peeps, clearing his throat. 

Glancing at Sunwoo, you see his cheeks redden at being caught by his older friend, yet his eyes still roll in annoyance at the interruption. You can’t help but try to hide your face into his shoulder– it’s not like you’re embarrassed of being with Sunwoo, you’re just embarrassed that it had to happen here, of all places.

“Well, you just did,” Sunwoo grunts, frustration coating his words.

“I’m just here to grab something,” Juyeon hums, almost racing through the room to get to the fridge on the other side of the kitchen, taking out a carton of milk from the inside and showing it to the two of you. “This is gonna go bad soon, so I’m taking it home to use it. Uhm.. anyways, well, don’t let me stop you in anything… bye!”

Neither of you greet the male back, instead sharing a meaningful, knowing look between each other. The view of your first boyfriend with his lips puffy, cheeks flushed and hair a little disheveled makes your senses go crazy, and although you’d like to continue what you started, you don’t think now is the right time or place.

Hopping off the counter, you smile. “So… where were we with the cookies?”

to. my first girlfriend

May 2000

Eyes trained on the ball, feet restless as he runs across the field to retrieve it and pass it to one of the shooters– either Donghyuck or Jinyoung, the more capable ones of the team– Sunwoo finds himself completely focused on the game. It’s one of the last matches of the season, and since he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to play his favorite sport again– he hasn’t received a verdict on the university applications he sent yet– the boy figures he should enjoy each game like it’s the last. Because who knows– one day, it may as well be, and if he’s not prepared for it, if he has any regrets, he knows he’ll take it harder than he’s supposed to.

Kim Sunwoo’s position in football is midfielder. While Eric once told him that it’s a loser position, since he’s not the shooter and he doesn’t score many goals (which is a lie– the boy had him know he scored his fair share despite his defensive position on the field), Sunwoo’s grown to love it. He’s the one that’s supposed to counter all attacks on his teammates. He’s the one that runs after the ball and passes it to the shooters, so technically, he’s the reason why any of them even have the opportunity to score. His position is as important as any other player's, and he takes pride in the compliments he gets from his coach whenever he does particularly well at a game. 

Sunwoo loves football. He’d say his first love is football, but something inside of him keeps telling him that that’s a lie (don’t ask him why. It’s a secret.). It’s the first game he’s ever been exceptionally good at, the first thing he could do for periods longer than a few weeks. He’s been playing with the ball since he was young, and although he never had a father to kick the football around with in his backyard, his sister was always happy to be included in anything he was into at the time– when she got older, she even got better at being his designated goalie, although less interested in the play itself. Sunwoo feels like he lets go of all worries when he plays. It’s good to have an escape, something to keep his mind occupied. He doesn’t have many things to worry about, but he finds that kicking the ball around, making strategies in his brain on how to get it to his teammates the fastest, is enough for him to get out both his frustration and get something nice out of it. He enjoys the thrill. He enjoys the excitement, the shared joy of the team whenever someone scores a goal. He is addicted to the ecstasy in his veins whenever his team wins.

It was easy to determine that if Sunwoo wanted to do anything for the rest of his life, it would be football. It’s what he enjoys, what he loves. It’s what he’s good at. 

It’s strange to imagine a time when he wouldn’t play football. He doesn’t even want to imagine it in the first place– it makes a chill run down his spine and an unsettling feeling churn in his stomach. In a perfect world, he’s always a football player.

Everyone keeps telling him he could easily make it professional, if he tried. 

Football is how he met most of his friends. It’s how he met Juyeon– he was the captain of the high school team when Sunwoo was a sophomore, and he found that hanging out with the older boy was easy and fun. It’s how he met Donghyuck and Jihoon (before the latter dropped out of the team after a few months). It’s how he met you. 

His coach always warned the players about dating the cheerleaders. For his coach, it wasn’t right to do so– it would throw off the dynamic of the game. “Nobody wants their ex to stare at them during their game!” the coach had said– not even thinking of the possibility of any of those teenage romances to last. Sunwoo only laughed back then. It wasn’t something he should be afraid of– he never liked anyone on the cheer team.

Until… until he did. Sunwoo met you on one sunny day, at your joint cheer-slash-football practice. You pointed out that the number on his jersey– 03– was your favorite, and the boy felt himself smile. Ever since then, he never wore any other number. He considered it to be his lucky charm. What started as friendship blossomed into something much more for the boy, and somehow, he can’t even remember when the feelings he had for you morphed into adoration. He doesn’t know when they shifted Into absolute enchantment, or Into a silly crush– he doesn’t know when he started seeing you in a light that was more romantic.

Wearing your favorite number on his back, Sunwoo runs towards the opposing player. There’s something akin to an angry face playing with the man’s features, and Sunwoo imagines it’s because of the very clear lead his team has on them. Sunwoo makes sure he doesn’t slip as he tackles the opposing player– he swears he heard someone call the shooter Jaechan– and as soon as he secures the ball, Sunwoo aims to forward it to his teammate.

The screams resonating all around him– although he tries hard to filter them out to focus on the game completely– suggest that it’s only a few moments before the game is over. It wouldn’t matter even if they didn’t score the goal, but something inside of Sunwoo’s heart leaps at the thought of winning with such a lead. The boyish excitement only grows when he watches Donghyuck retrieve the goal and run towards the goalpost, neon-orange sneakers shining through the green grass.

“Come on!” Sunwoo cheers, a hopeful spark lighting within him as the boy prepares to shoot, eyes quickly scanning the field.

And Lee Donghyuck almost never lets him down. Maybe that’s why he liked the boy so much in the first place– Sunwoo didn’t like players that dismissed the chance he won for them. He liked the skillful ones. The ones that knew what they were doing. (He also liked Donghyuck’s humor. He found himself grateful to have a friend so funny. He made even losing feel like it wasn’t such a big deal.) 

Choosing the golden shooter proved to be a good idea once again– Donghyuck, number 35, shoots for the goal and the ball gets in. Seconds after, the sound of a whistle is heard across the place, the game over with Sunwoo’s team winning 4:1.

Everyone cheers– yells from the audience are heard, excitement reeking through the air. The whole football team gathers around, sweaty bodies sticking together as they perform some sort of a cliche group hug, arms patting each other’s backs and complimenting each other’s play. 

The commotion dissolves shortly after. Sunwoo finds himself trying to catch his breath, eyes looking across the space for someone in particular. His heart leaps even harder when he finds you standing at the edge of the field in your cheer uniform, a big smile plastered on your face. Your eyes are glimmering as they meet with his. Your hair is a little tousled from the routine you just finished doing and there are smears and smudges on your cheeks from the face paint you used to symbolize the team’s colors– blue and gold. Over-all, you look ecstatic.

Sunwoo finds himself running over to you before he even registers that he’s going to do it. He’s like a fast, unguided missile, the goal of getting to you as fast as possible being the only thing resonating through his excited mind.

“Good jo-” you grunt as the boy finally gets to you, words cutting off when he (maybe a little harshly) puts his arms around your middle and picks you up, twirling you around. You screech a little into his ear and he finds himself laughing at your reaction. It’s like a runner's high– he feels like right now, he is capable of everything. 

“Okay! Okay! Put me down!” you laugh when you start to get a little dizzy. The boy complies, since he’s running out of strength to carry you anyways, and puts you back to your feet. His arms stay tightly wrapped around your body, though, locking you into a secure hug. 

“We won!” he cheers, the brightest grin settling to his lips as he announces the obvious. 

You beam at him, eyes soft and crinckled into little moon crescents, a dumbfounded smile playing with your features. “I know, Sherlock,” you dismiss him again with the teasing nickname, shaking your head in disbelief, “I was here. Cheering for you,” you say.

And sure, Sunwoo knows that by you, you don’t necessarily mean him in particular– more like cheering for the whole team, the whole 11 players on the field– but something about the sentiment makes his stomach feel all light and a slight blush spread over his glowing cheeks. You were here– cheering for him (and his team) – and although you’re here out of your own will, out of your own devotion to your hobby, he somehow feels grateful for your presence. You never miss a game. You went even when you caught the flu and felt too sick to do your cheer routine– you just sat on the bench and rooted for your best friend. (The team lost that match. Sunwoo felt a little bad for tugging you out of your bed for it.)

The boy studies your face for a while. You look perfectly content in his hold. You fit perfectly into his arms, he thinks– almost like you’re supposed to be there all the time. He should hug you more often, he decides. Sunwoo foolishly finds himself focusing onto your lips– he blames the shiny lipgloss you put on today– the words coming out of your mouth not quite registering in his brain. “As I was saying, good job! The whole team, but you especially. Don’t tell anyone, but I think you really shined in this game. I’m really prou–”

A single peck is pressed to your glossy, sticky lips, cutting you off in the middle of the sentence yet again. Sunwoo surprises himself with the gesture– he was always too shy to initiate something with you, too hesitant to even touch you sometimes– but the euphoria is still playing with his senses, clouding his brain. He doesn’t think of consequences.

He can’t control himself anymore. It’s been weeks since you two kissed for the first time– exactly 4 and a half weeks since you taught him how to do so– and since that afternoon, he found himself thinking about it every single day, every single minute, all. The. Time. You two haven’t spoken about it since, making the poor boy a little disappointed, but he respected your decision. He knew that you didn’t particularly reciprocate his feelings, but he still expected your dynamic to shift. At least a little bit. 

And although he should’ve been glad nothing changed and your friendship didn’t crumble because of a simple kiss, he found himself desiring to kiss you every time he saw your face. 

You peer at him with eyes wide open, mouth a little agape. Sunwoo doesn’t really know how to read your reaction– you didn’t look particularly happy, but you also didn’t push him away– and so in the moment of panic, he begins to backtrack, his arms untangling from your sides.

“I- I’m sorry if I overstepped any boundary, or if I–”

You’re not fans of letting each other finish their sentences today, it seems. Before Sunwoo gets a chance to put a bigger distance between the two of you, he watches as you get on your tippy-toes and press a tender kiss on his lips– more firmer than the one he dared to give you, a little bit longer, yet still sweetly short. There’s something soft and gentle in your gaze when you pull away and press another peck onto his face– the tip of his nose this time– and Sunwoo almost physically feels his knees turning into jello, his own celebratory firework show erupting in the pits of his stomach.

“So, as I was saying,” you hum, hugging the boy around his neck, “you did well. You looked good out there,” you peep, the sparks in your eyes making Sunwoo’s skin burn with their contact.

That day, you teach him that to be loved is to have someone sharing your achievements with. To be loved is to be adored, to be loved is to have someone watching you and cheering you on, to have someone to run to with good news.

Kim Sunwoo’s football team won the match, but the boy thinks that perhaps, that day, he won something even greater.

to. my first lover

August 2000

The admission papers arrive at his house the morning he’s supposed to sleep over at your house. Your parents decided to take a trip to your aunt’s place for two days, so you invite the boy into the comfort of your home for the weekend– as far as Sunwoo’s mother is concerned, he’s sleeping over at Juyeon’s. He doesn’t have the boy covering him, but he’s also sure his mother won’t try to check if he’s telling her the truth. He’s not banned from having a girlfriend– he just doesn’t want his mum to get any wrong ideas.

He finds the envelope in the mailbox when he comes home from school, and something in his stomach drops when he sees the american stamp on the top right corner of the white paper. He debates on opening it, but every time he hypes himself up enough to tear the top of the envelope off, a little anxious voice on his inside tells him to wait. 

Although reluctant to admit it to himself, Sunwoo is a little scared to see the result of his university application. Before he leaves for your house, he puts the envelope into the front pocket of his backpack and tries to forget about it. It works a bit better when he sees your face, hears your laugh– when he spends time with you and you two play the new board game you got from your cousin. Still, the weight of the envelope keeps bugging him in his mind no matter how hard he tries forgetting about it, and you finally notice (or finally bring it up after hours of ignoring his weird mood) when the two of you lay together in your bed in the evening, both facing the ceiling.

“Is everything alright?” you ask. 

“Hm?” Sunwoo hums, lost in thought. “Oh, yeah,” he nods, “don’t worry.”

You don’t seem convinced. Shuffling a little in your sheets, you turn towards him and move your body closer to his, your arm suddenly draping over his middle. A tender kiss is placed on his temple, almost making him crumble under the gentle care, and your voice earns a concerned kind of timbre when you speak to him. “You can tell me,” you hum, “boyfriends and girlfriends are supposed to tell each other things.”

Boyfriends and girlfriends. Sunwoo feels himself soften under the possessive title. It has been close to 4 months of you dating– starting with the winning match in April, progressing slowly through the summer break– but the fact that you’re his partner is still a little unbelievable to him. Sometimes, when he hears you call him your boyfriend, he still gets a little bashful. He still feels like he’s been told the greatest news of his life. 

Maybe it’s the nature of this sentiment that has him slowly unraveling to you. And maybe, it’s because he’d tell you anyways– you’d be the first to know. He was just waiting for the right time to bring it up.

“The reply to my university application came in the mail this morning…” he trails off, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

You plop up on your elbow, watching the boy from above. Eyes big, you peer into his face. “And?” you ask, an expecting gaze glazing his features.

“I… I don’t know,” he shrugs, “I was too scared to open it alone.”

“O-Oh,” you nod, furrowing your brows at him, “well, it’s okay to be scared. I believe in you, but even if it doesn’t go the way you wanted it to, I’m still proud of you for trying,” you say, a gentle tone of voice cooing at him, like the nature of the way you play with his hair, wanting to make the boy relax from his anxieties.

“I have the letter here with me,” he says, swallowing, “in my bag.”

“Do you want to open it together?” you ask, watching as the boy nods.

He’s getting off the bed in no time, wearing just sweatpants and a baggy shirt to sleep in, grabbing his bag from the corner of your room and unzipping the small compartment at the front. His fingers take the envelope out, legs walking him over back to your bed, your figure now sitting against the headboard. Sunwoo finds himself mirroring your position as his fingers turn the little white thing in his hold with much stumbling, preparing himself for whatever answer awaits him inside.

Glancing at you, seeing you looking at him with an encouraging expression on your face, Sunwoo takes a big breath in and out to calm his nerves before he tears the top open and takes out the expensive-feeling paper. Not stopping his actions anymore, knowing that if he takes another moment to himself, he won’t be able to read the letter, he unravels the note and lets his eyes skim over the words.

Before he even has a chance to register the sentences written down in the letter, before he can even let his mind accept the result he’s given– ‘we are pleased to announce that you were admitted to the athlete scholarship program…’– he feels a pair of arms wrapping around his shoulders, jolting him awake from his thoughts.

“You made it! Oh my god, you made it!” you cheer, excitement taking over your whole body as you shake the boy in your hold from side to side. The reality still isn’t quite settling in for him, so he just lets you do whatever you please– which includes all of the following: screaming incoherent words into his ear when you hug him closer to your chest, planting a kiss to his cheek and throwing your hands up into the air in a winning gesture. 

“You made it, Sunwoo,” you repeat, this time a little more collected.

Sunwoo finally allows himself to put the letter away and look into your eyes. “I made it,” he sighs, a soft smile playing with his features. 

“You did!” you nod, grinning back.

It’s strange. The first step towards Sunwoo’s dream is now complete. He got admitted to the university of his dreams– the one that’s good for athletes, the one that is supposed to shoot him towards stardom. He has the opportunity to take classes there and train with some of the best aspiring players in the whole world. He has the opportunity to move out of the country, live at dorms in Boston, and most importantly, he has everyone’s support. 

There’s nothing more a boy his age could want more. He has everything. His whole life ahead of him, only the brightest future waiting for him at the end– only if he keeps trying hard and improving. He’s happy. Don’t get him wrong– he really is. Somehow, though, it all feels a bit scary.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you excited?” you ask, a pout taking over your once excited features. The amount of worries you have over Sunwoo gets bigger and bigger the older the two of you are. There are only so many things that can go wrong when you are a teenager, but now that you’re adulting, the list keeps getting longer.

“I am,” he nods, forcing a smile onto his lips.

“You don’t seem excited,” you argue.

“I am! I really am,” he says, trying to battle with himself.

“What is it?” 

“What is what?” 

“Come on, Sunwoo,” you sigh, “I can tell when something’s wrong. You don’t have to hide it from me, because I’ll know anyway. What is it?” you insist, staring the boy down with an examining look.

The boy sighs, shrugging to himself. “Well,” he starts, “the school is in America.”

“And?” you start, furrowing your eyebrows. “We knew that when you applied. Why is it such a problem now?” you ask, genuinely not grasping the whole situation.

Sunwoo chews on his cheek for a little while, plays with his fingers in his lap. A part of him is telling him that he both looks and seems foolish– because you’re right. It was his dream, he is excited, and this is good news. But still, there’s something he didn’t really think of when applying. Well, he did. He just thinks that the fact that him being accepted wasn’t really a realistic idea, no matter how hard he wished and prayed for it, so he didn’t have the need to think about it so seriously back then. Now it’s here, all real, and it’s a struggle he didn’t really grasp that he was going to have to go through.

“Well,” he starts again, still avoiding your eyes, “that means I have to move. And we won’t see each other for a while.”

There’s a heartbeat of silence following his confession– one in which he contemplates all possible reactions you might give him, some with truly catastrophic endings– but after what seems like eternities, he hears your soft, gentle voice. “Is that what’s making you so worried?” you ask.

“Kind of,” he nods, feeling his cheeks redden. You handle him with so much care– sometimes, he doesn’t know how to react.

“Awh,” you coo, taking his hand into yours, preventing him from picking at the skin of his cuticles until they bleed– an action he always does and you keep scolding him for. “Sunwoo, we knew about this when you applied. I am okay with you going away. Sure, it will suck, but it’s only for a little time, and I can come visit you there and you’ll show me around and stuff…”

Sunwoo presses a tight-lipped, hesitant smile to his lips. He feels reassured.

“And we’ll call, and it’s going to be fine, because this is good. This is good news, Sunwoo, and you’re gonna do great, and you’re gonna be a star, and I’ll be so, so proud of you,” you hum, voice tender and caring, doing your best at consoling the boy.

“I’m already so proud of you now, y’know?” you hum, squeezing his hand. “Everything will be alright, so don’t you worry.”

Sunwoo’s arms reach out to envelop you into a hug. He once again recognises how easily you fit into his arms, how perfectly you shape into his skin, and when he burrows his nose into your neck, breathing in your scent, he feels your lips reach into his hair, planting a soft kiss into it. Your words did more to the boy than only consult him– they gave him hope, they gave him joy, they made him feel like perhaps, this is not such a terrifying occurrence. And it really isn’t– it’s quite possibly the best thing that he’s ever achieved, and the circumstances of him leaving don’t seem as horrifying to him now. 

As long as he knows that you have his back, he thinks he can do anything. And what’s 3 years abroad against the 4 years he’s known you?

When you pull away, you press your lips against his, the contact making his muscles finally relax and his mind let go of all the worries. There’s suddenly nothing in the world that could make him falter, nothing that could make him worry or stress or fret or change his mind, because he has your support, and you’re here with him, promising him that you’ll always be right by his side, wherever he is.

Your mouth molds against his, the familiar motion of your lips against his still surprising him sometimes, still making him curious even after those months. He’s been dating you for some while, but he still likes to explore what makes you crumble under him, what makes you hum into the kiss, what makes you tug him closer to you– it’s a fun game to him, trying to figure you out completely. 

He still has some time, but it’s like he is trying to engrave those moments into his memory before he no longer can experience them first-hand as easily.

He goes out to explore again– his tongue gently inviting itself into your mouth with a swipe of your lower lip, relishing in the way your composure falters a little bit, letting him be in charge. You were always the more experienced one out of you two, so Sunwoo often shied away from being the one dominating intimate situations– afraid he’s not good enough, too inexperienced, too immature for you– but in the rare moments he does take the lead, your reactions give him a new source of confidence. 

His hand comes up to cradle your jaw, nose pressing against your cheek as he angles you so he has more access to your lips. Something about his ministrations makes you forget to breathe, breaking away from him in a search for much needed oxygen, but Sunwoo acts like he’s been starved of you, latching his lips to the trail from your mouth towards your neck, planting open-mouthed kisses to your soft skin. He faintly remembers the time you gave him a lovebite that one time you came over to his house to work on homework together, sucking and biting at his neck (and although he enjoyed seeing the possessive bruise on his skin whenever he saw himself in the mirror, he wore the strings of his hoodies tightly tied to his neck, shielding him from being teased by everyone– but mostly Eric). He tries to mirror your motions, recreating the action to the best of his abilities.

He hears you grunt, making him fear that he’s doing it wrong– a momentarily panic settling in his chest screaming at him that he hurt you– but the worries are quickly dismissed as you move impossibly closer to the boy, straddling his lap and threading your fingers through his hair, keeping him close. 

Humming under his touch, Sunwoo gets a kick from hearing the sounds coming out of your mouth. It’s like a reward– it’s like the praise he goes after his whole life, like validation of his actions being satisfactory for you. The pressure of your body against his lap makes him feel hot all over, sweaty hands holding you by your sides. Every slightest shift of your figure against his makes him shudder, composure faltering when you move in a way that has his breathing particularly quicken, a bundle of nerves forming in his stomach from the newly found hypersensitivity. There’s only so much fabric shielding the two of you from each other, and just the thought of it is slowly driving the boy crazy.

Pulling away from your neck, admiring the artwork he managed to portray on your skin, he feels you pulling him up to meet your lips again, heated, firm kisses shared in the silence of the room. He feels your hands resting on his abdomen, feeling him up for a moment before you sneak them under the hem of his shirt, dragging your nails against his skin. 

Sunwoo hears a sound escape his throat at the contact, making him instantly feel foolish– until he feels you smile against his lips, following your ministrations by mirroring his previous actions and kissing down his neck, finding all the spots that make him the most reactive– like the place under his ear, the juncture of his shoulder. You revisit all the places you’ve tested before and perfected your aim to make him efficiently crumble under you. Sunwoo finds himself losing the initial control he had over the situation, instead letting you take over and lead him, much like you’ve done in most areas of his life. He likes to be your follower. He likes to see where you want him, where you need him, he likes to comply. It’s more comfortable for him this way. It makes him swell with pride when he makes you happy.

Another shift of your hips against him has Sunwoo digging his fingers to your side, whole body feeling like it’s electrified under your touch. Placing a soft peck to the spot you’ve had your attention on, you mumble into his skin. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Sunwoo swallows, noticing you leaning your forehead against his tenderly, eyes meeting. 

“Are you sure?”

He nods. He’s never been more sure about anything in his life– he enjoys your company, he loves your touch, the way you make his every sense heighten, his heart beat quicker. Still, he feels a bit nervous at the prospected events. “I just– I’ve never done this before,” Sunwoo whispers the obvious, watching as you carefully observe him.

“Sweetheart,” you tenderly call, placing a soft peck to his lips. “That’s okay. Me neither, but we could… we could try and see where this leads us, if you’d like?”

The sweet pet name alone makes the boy let go of all his worries, of the stress and nerves he’s been holding on to for the past few weeks. You hold him like he’s going to break, and Sunwoo’s never felt so loved before. You reassure him that it’s going to be okay. You are there to remind him that life isn’t so hard, as long as you’re by his side.

“Okay,” he nods, smiling at you. 

“Okay,” you repeat, holding his face in your hands as you kiss him again– it may as well be for the thousandth time. Truth is, while he tried to keep up at first, Sunwoo lost count a long time ago.

Everything there is to know about love, Kim Sunwoo learned from you. You showed him the childlike playfulness during your dates. You taught him how to kiss, only to take advantage of his newly found skills and keep them all for yourself. You showed him what it is to share joys, dreams, but also worries together. You were his first crush, date, relationship– and now, his first lover.

In the comfort of your childhood bedroom, holding you closer than ever, Sunwoo dreams of eternity with you. He doesn’t realize what a foolish thought it might be. Somehow, he’s got a feeling that no matter what it is, you two will figure it out. You always do.

to. my first love

September 2000

Muscles sore and whole body heaving in pain, Sunwoo trails inside the small bungalow the university gave him as student accommodation, dropping his duffel bag to the floor. His face is pulled into a small frown as he enters the house and his roommate can’t help but notice. “Everything alright?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Sunwoo hums, nodding at the question. He has 3 assigned roommates– all male, all around his age. Sunwoo’s english isn’t bad, but it also isn’t that great either. He knew that this was going to be one of the main concerns of him moving out abroad, but he figured that the more you encounter the language, the more comfortable you get with it. Due to this, though, the two American boys he rooms with– their names are Josh and Sam– aren’t as close with him. Sunwoo doesn’t really blame them. It’s not like he tried to get close with them anyway. He talks much more with Mark, the one year older boy that’s also Korean, but has been living in the States for years now. The language barrier is nearly nonexistent there, and so he feels much more comfortable.

Not comfortable enough to vent to him about his problems, though. It’s good to share a laugh with Mark when they eat breakfast together in the kitchen, but he won’t go on and talk his ear off about his homesickness, for example. Sunwoo wouldn’t talk to him about the weird, unsettling feeling in his gut whenever he takes the bus or walks down the street, not recognising every face he encounters like he did back home, in his small town. He won’t tell Mark Lee about how much he misses Korea– he’s sure the boy has his own things to worry about. Besides, it’s not like Mark talks about personal stuff with him either. After four days of living here, he can’t say their relationship got to the level of going deep with their personal lives.

And so, Sunwoo walks up the stairs in silence, not giving Mark more information about his mood. Each step up hurts, since the training is twice as demanding as it used to be at home, making his muscles sore and his back hurt terribly from the stone hard mattress in the bed of his new home. He is willing to endure it, but he also has the terrific need to complain about it to anyone that would be willing to listen.

He should start writing a diary, he thinks as he stares up on the ceiling, chewing on the inside of his cheek. It sounds good enough to channel his feelings out into while also not being a bother to anyone else. Besides, he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s having a hard time here in Boston. This was all his decision, his dream, and sometimes, things are going to get difficult. And that’s okay. Sunwoo just… feels like he lacks the support system he once had back home in Korea. Like someone took it from between his fingertips, forcefully kept it away from him, locked somewhere miles away. Maybe the person who did that to him was himself all along…

Which is why he doesn’t deserve to whine about the fact that he feels terribly lonely. He did this to himself. All him.

If he had a diary, he’d write about the terrible mattress first, he thinks. Then, the weird weather around here– it’s always hot, but not humid. It doesn’t rain as much. He kind of misses the rain. 

If he had a diary, he’d write about how he misses his old coach. The high school coach that always made sure the game was fun, yet productive. He misses his teammates as well. Their team never did big things, but he felt like they were some sort of a family. They knew each other well on the field. They had chemistry. They had fun.

He’d write about how he misses his annoying little sister. How he wishes she would appear in the doorway of his room and talked to him about the stickers she still collects, or dragged him to make another friendship bracelet together. How he feels bad for leaving her all alone back home, even though he was never the one to share his brotherly love for her so outwardly growing up. He feels a sort of appreciation for her that he didn’t quite understand when they were little. They are right when they say your sibling is your first best friend after all. 

He’d write about the second best friend he’s ever made, Eric. He’d write about how he longs for his presence, his encouraging words. His funny remarks, the pranks he’d pull on him. How he always appreciated him being just across the street, how he enjoyed growing up with him by his side.

He’d write about how much he misses you– perhaps the most out of everyone. There aren’t many words he could use to describe how much he wishes for your presence, and so he thinks the pages filled with sentences directed to you would be rather sparse, and it makes him kind of sad to think about. In his mind, you deserve novels written about you. You deserve love letters and poems and essays filled with every little detail of your existence. Maybe if Sunwoo loved you less, he would be able to talk about it more.

When his eyes go out of focus staring at the ceiling, Sunwoo decides to call you. It’s been 4 days since he arrived and he hasn’t spoken to you since you waved him off to the airport. His mother drove him and you couldn’t go to send him off at the gate, but Sunwoo almost thinks he prefers the fact that you only said goodbye to him in front of his house. It would be that much harder if he saw your face the last thing before boarding the plane. 

For the last four days, he’s been slowly settling in, taking in the new country and the new environment. He’d say he was just too busy to call, but that would be a lie.

He was just scared to hear your voice. Terribly.

What if you changed your mind? What if you no longer want to stay with him? What if it’s too hard to handle? And Sunwoo knows it’s hard– hell, it’s the most difficult thing he’s ever done– but all he wishes is for you to keep handling it well. To keep his heart in your hands gently, like you always have, sending him your energy.

He figures that if there’s one thing that can help his growing homesickness, it is to hear your voice. 

Sitting up from his bed and walking over to the bag he carried with him through the airport and kept with him on the plane, he scrambles through the item to find the piece of paper you forced into his hand on the driveway of his house. 

“We changed our landline yesterday, so call me on this number when you get there,” you said, pressing a kiss towards his cheek before you let him get into his mother’s car. Sunwoo promised to call back then– he hopes you don’t mind the delay. Maybe he could blame the timezones…

Hand thrusting into the front pocket of the bag, Sunwoo feels around and tries to fish out the little piece of paper. He’s 100% certain he put it there after he got into the car with his mum, making sure it’s safe and sound. He would hate to lose it– it was some sort of safety net for him. Something to fall back to, something to keep him above the water.

Panic settles in his chest when he doesn’t feel the soft piece of paper anywhere. The boy unzips all other compartments of the bag, turning it around, shaking out everything that’s inside. The phone number to your new landline has to be there somewhere in there. It needs to be.

When he doesn’t find it in his bag, he opens his closet. He throws everything out to the ground– his clothing, his shoes, the notebooks he bought for university– all in the search of the stupid, little, yet so important piece of paper. He searches through all his other bags. All pockets of his jeans, every centimeter of his folded clothing. All drawers of his desk, the whole floor, hell, he even crouches to check under his bed, blowing the dust bunnies out of reach, desperately hoping he could wish the paper into existence. He searches his bed. All possible parts where the landline number could be– some more unreasonable than others. Sunwoo feels like he is losing his mind.

The paper is nowhere in his room. It’s like it vanished. Was it really there at all? Did he dream that moment up?

Running down the stairs towards the landline, he takes the phone off the wall and punches in the numbers to your old landline, the pattern so familiar in his fingertips he couldn’t tell you the number if you asked, but he could recreate it with punching in the buttons in on any other phone in the world. He clenches his fist together, breathing more heavily as he listens in, praying for the universe to stop playing tricks on him and make you magically answer on the other side.

When the phone makes a dismissive sound, signaling that the number he called no longer exists, Sunwoo shuts the phone against the wall and takes it again, putting in your old number once more, like a summoning ritual. Maybe he put the numbers in wrong the first time… Maybe he made a mistake somewhere along the way…

When he gets the same response, he tries again. And again. And again. 

He can’t believe it. Tension settles into his shoulders, making him twirl the cord of the landline in between his fingers as a way to calm himself down, listening in to the dull noise on the other side telling him there’s nothing that can be done, nothing more that he can do. He doesn’t have the number, and somehow, although it sounds foolish, it feels like he lost you alongside it too. 

“Everything alright, man? You look–” Mark enters the room, peering at the boy with curious, worried eyes. It’s only now that Sunwoo realizes he is breathing heavily, fingers clammy on the cord, heart begging to run out of his chest to get all across the ocean to you. It’s only now that he realizes his cheeks are wet with tears, the solidification of his inner turmoil taking a physical form and appearing on his face, making him feel pathetic in front of the older boy.

Sunwoo once again puts the phone back to its original place, but this time, he doesn’t take it back and tries the useless old phone number again. Simply turning away from his roommate, he accepts his fate as he quickly puts on his shoes and slams the door shut after him, going out for a run.

Is this his punishment for waiting too long? Did the paper vanish out of his possession because he was deemed unworthy of hearing your voice? Should he have tried to look for the number earlier? Would this have prevented it?

It’s hard to run when your nose is stuffed and your breathing hitches with silenced sobs, he learns. Sunwoo doesn’t get as far as he would have liked, crumbling on a bench somewhere next to a playground, picking at the dry skin of his lips until they bleed and the irony taste on his tongue snaps him back into reality.

What was once his dream is starting to feel more like a nightmare. When he calls Eric two days after to ask him to get him your new landline number, he gets the news that you abruptly moved out to New York. 

September 2007

“If you really think about it, Y/N,” Sunwoo hums, making you shift your attention towards his serious-looking face, “we never really broke up in the first place.”

The boy is holding a bottle of cider in his hand, one of the four you got on your way to your tonight’s destination. Sunwoo rang the bell to your house a few minutes before 10 PM, and although you weren’t expecting to see him that day and you weren’t even looking as presentable as you’d like, you agreed to take a walk with him. Somehow, the two of you found yourselves climbing over the fence of your old high school, sneaking into the football field, figures settling on one of the benches of the tribune.

“Oh yeah,” you hum, lightness evident in your tone, “you just never called. What’s up with that, by the way?” you ask, snickering when you watch the male avert his gaze in a bashful manner, as if he was embarrassed to tell you his reasoning.

You take a sip of the apple cider, enjoying the sweet, fruity taste on your tongue, watching as the male contemplates his next response for a bit, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I lost your new landline number,” he peeps, voice barely louder than a whisper.

His answer doesn’t register immediately in your brain. The words take a moment to string themselves together into a sentence, taking another few seconds before you understand the meaning of his confession. A soft laugh drags out of your throat, disbelief coating your very essence. “What?”

“Yeah,” he nods, scratching the back of his neck before looking back at you, eyes full of guilt and shame, “I… I lost the number you gave me, and when I called Eric to try to make him get me your new number, he told me you moved to New York, and I guess… I guess I took it as a sign…?” he says, shrugging.

“A sign of what?” you ask, genuinely surprised to hear his answer.

All this time, you thought he didn’t call because he didn’t want to. You thought he didn’t call because he was too busy, too tired to deal with anything else other than his career at the moment. He was trying his hardest and training every day, so you understood that he wouldn’t have time for you every day. When he didn’t call for so long, even after you moved to the States as well– you hoped he’d somehow try searching for your number even then, because in your mind, everything was possible– one day, you just… stopped waiting for him to call. You stopped hoping you would hear his voice on the other side of the line.

And you accepted it. He realized long distance relationships were too difficult to maintain, especially in that time and age, and he had too many of his own worries to take care of before focusing his attention somewhere else. You didn’t resent him, no. You longed for him, you missed him, but you never once hated him for the decision he made. You wished him well, all this time. 

“A sign that… that maybe we weren’t meant to be,” he hums, shrugging. “It sounds stupid, really, but…” he trails off, cutting himself off in the middle of the sentence.

Something about his confession makes you feel a bit lighter. Your shoulders feel like there’s no longer anything weighing them down. It’s not like you waited for an explanation all those years and when you finally got one, something in you shifted into a more comfortable position.

“For me, back then, you were the right person, wrong time. And I didn’t want to let you go, I really didn’t, it’s just… everything was already so hard and the world seemed to put so many obstacles in my way of contacting you, that I thought it was the universe telling me to drop it and let you go. So you could… so you could find someone else, I guess…” he finishes explaining. He averts his gaze from you, pointing it towards the empty field, as if scared to see your reaction to his blabbering. He takes another few sips of his cider, snickering. “It wasn’t fair of me to want you to wait for me either.”

So you could find someone else… You think back to all the times you went on dates after you concluded that your relationship with Sunwoo was over. You try to remember their faces, their mannerisms in such detail that you could only make up one of your previous lovers– the one sitting next to you right now– and you chuckle at your foolishness. Remembering how you kept comparing every new person in your life to the one that stole your heart first, remembering how you thought about him late at night, wondering where he is right now and how he’s doing. You used to look through the sports parts of newspapers, looking for his name somewhere, looking for his team name, but never seeing a glance of how he was doing. You wore the stupid friendship bracelet he gave you in your junior year around in New York, having people point it out and ask about it, all until it broke off by itself  one day and you reluctantly said goodbye to the sentiment. 

You dated around after losing contact with Sunwoo. You don’t really think you found someone else, though. 

“I wanted to wait for you, though,” you say, shuffling closer to the male on the bench, voice sincere. “It was my decision.”

“Well,” he chuckles, “life had other plans for us two.”

His sentence makes you think. A few days ago, it would make you sad. Embarrassed, even. Life had other plans for you two and they didn’t align with what you two have calculated during the summer break after your senior year. Sunwoo didn’t become a star. His football career never took off. He finished his degree and came back home, bitter and heartbroken. 

Your plans ended just as fast as you came up with them. Not going to university after high school, you were left with nothing to do. When the opportunity to take an internship for a news company in New York came to you so suddenly, you took it without thinking, trying to find your place in the big world ahead of you. You had no plan, but you think that maybe, some part of you wanted to get away from your hometown all along. You wanted to do big things, make everyone proud. Being a news anchor wasn’t even something you dreamed of when you were little, so you guess you weren't supposed to really feel that let down, but the defeat still stings.

Or, at least, it used to. You find that the failure doesn’t hurt as much anymore. 

Looking at the male next to you, you think you know the reason why. “It’s okay,” you say, shrugging, “we figured it out anyways, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Sunwoo sighs, looking at you with a soft smile playing with his lips. “I guess we did.”

The sound of cicadas hits your ears when you two fall into a comfortable silence. Healing old wounds was surely one of the items on your check list when you came back home, but you didn’t expect to get over things so quickly. You don’t think you would have been able to get over everything alone, though– and this makes you twice as grateful to still have Sunwoo by your side. A sense of nostalgia takes over you at the fact, but this time, it hits you with more fondness than longing for the old times.

“Remember how young we were? It’s like I still see you chasing the ball around the field when I focus hard enough,” you say, pointing ahead of you.

Sunwoo laughs, shaking his head at your antics. “Yeah. I almost see you leading the cheer practice in the back there,” he points, “in your cute cheer uniform, with the ridiculous pom poms in your hands–”

“Hey, don’t call them ridiculous,” you gasp, “they were my favorite part of the whole routine!”

“Oh, I could tell,” he laughs, poking fun at you. 

“Well, you must have liked the pom poms enough to stare at me during practice all the time,” you shrug, teasing the male back. The fact that Sunwoo had a crush on you long before you reciprocated the feelings wasn’t something you two explicitly talked about before, but you always deemed as clear as day. Or, at least, it was to everyone back then.

“I did not–” he gasps, making you gently shove him with your elbow.

“Come on, everybody used to say you had a crush on me back then,” you hum, “you were pretty obvious with it too.”

“You knew?” he looks at you, eyes big and surprised. Gears clearly running in his head, he tries to piece the information together, running through the memories now so distant, but still so clear.

“Girls always know,” you point out, shrugging. You take another sip of your cider, licking your lips after and speaking up again, tone of voice almost confidential. “I just acted like I didn’t. But then I realized I liked you back, so I was trying everything in my power to make you confess to me first. Which… took you long enough, young man,” you giggle, seeing the male shake his head at you in disapproval.

“You could’ve confessed first, if you were so confident,” he mutters, obviously a little gutted by the revelation.

“That would be below my level,” you nod, pressing your lips together into a straight line, “besides, it was fun watching you act all cute and clueless.”

“Don’t call me cute and clueless–”

“That’s what you were, though! Like the time when you got super drunk on your birthday and begged me not to leave–”

“I didn’t even like you back then!”

“Sure you didn’t.”

“I was in denial,” he furrows his brows theatrically, putting the empty glass bottle to the grass, “but I see that you had a lot of fun watching me suffer.”

“Fine, pretty boy,” you say, catching a glimpse of the boy momentarily shying away, presumably at the endearing nickname, his cheeks tinting pink even in the faint moonlight. “Would it make you feel better if I confessed first this time?”

“Huh?” the boy asks, lips parted, eyes a big, honest pool of honey.

Cute and clueless, you think.

The story comes full circle when you realize that this football field is perhaps what started it all. This is where you ran up to the new addition to the team, saying that your favorite number was on the back of his jersey. As the leader of the cheerleading team, you took it as your job to make every newbie feel welcomed– no matter if they were a fellow cheerleader or a football player. You didn’t expect for the boy to never stop wearing the number– although it was your favorite, it didn’t seem to be so important back then. (One day, you learned that Sunwoo kept the number on his jersey even after moving abroad. You read it in one of the sports magazines you foolishly flipped through in every kiosk you encountered and almost teared up in the busy store after.) 

This field is where you watched him play football every week. It’s where you both practiced, sending each other funny faces after the coach was mean to either of you for not being focused on your training. 

This is where Sunwoo found his passion– where he found his dream. This is the place that shifted the next couple of years of your life towards all sorts of directions. This is where he kissed you after winning a match, a gleeful confession slipping past his lips. This is where your relationship started, and metaphorically, also ended. The field that kept you apart is now a thousand miles away, but the one that brought you together is now right in front of you.

You guess it’s only right to use it for new beginnings.

“I think… I think I’m still in love with you, Sunwoo,” you start slowly, playing with your fingers in your lap, “well, I don’t know if my feelings for you ever ended… they could’ve, I mean, we were apart for so long… I just… all I know is that I don’t want us to be apart anymore, and I–”

Your words die on your tongue when the boy cuts you off with a kiss, the taste of apple cider mixing on your lips. The way he kisses you didn’t really change even after so many years, still swaying you with the familiarity of his loving. Still, even though you know the way he angles your jaw, the way he presses against you, the way he takes his sweet time, truly showing you how much he enjoys the act, you never grow tired of it. Something in you reacts the same way as when you were young. There’s still excitement, there’s still tender softness in your heart every time you kiss him.

His lips break apart from yours, a playful tint in his words when he speaks to you again. “Don’t try to take credit for it now,” he says, “because the last time I checked, we never really broke up in the first place, so you could say we were dating all along, all because I confessed back in–”

“God, you’re unbelievable,” you grunt.

“But you love me,” the boy says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe it is.

“Always have,” you say, pressing a quick peck to his plush lips, “always will.”

The starlight glazes your cheekbones when you rest your forehead against his, as if to send him a telepathic message that is worth more than a thousand words. It’s hard to find the words to explain the mixture of your emotions right now, but when your memory washes up the encouraging monologue Sunwoo offered to you when you first arrived, you finally agree with his sentiment. Perhaps, one word could summarize it all– you feel truly content. 

They say you never forget about your first love. At 25 and still counting, you guess you could say that’s true.

#deoboyznet #sunwoo #the boyz #sunwoo fluff #sunwoo x reader #sunwoo angst #the boyz angst #the boyz fluff #the boyz x reader #the boyz scenario #the boyz imagine #sunwoo scenario #sunwoo imagine

[mykoreanlove]

Acts of intimacy

Eyes shot open as you woke up from your slumber. It took you a minute to realize where you were. This was not your room, not your bed, not the scent of your home but everything fell into place as memories of last night clouded your vision.

Jackson and you ended up at his place, getting to know each other on a whole new level. Greedy kisses, lustful touches and heavy moans filled his walls for hours, until the two of you were too exhausted and had to take a break.

From the moment you met him you assumed he was a passionate lover but he outdid all the expectations you had of him. He did his hair style justice as he showed you his two prominent sides: the dark, dominating, hard one and the light, romantic, intimate one. Jackson was far from ordinary, but so were you.

And now he was laying behind you, still sound asleep. You felt his naked body on yours. Memories of you kissing every ab of his followed by sucking him off made you blush.

Suddenly, Jackson shifted and hugged you, pulling you closer to him. His big hands held you tightly, just like they did last night. You swore you could still feel his grip on your hips, the skin would definitely be bruised. He caught you by surprise as he murmured in his sleep. You couldn’t understand a word, you were too preoccupied with the deep tone of his voice anyway. You adored his voice, especially when he used it to demean you.

„You like being fucked like that? What a bad whore you are.“

Just thinking about it made you wet. Jackson must have sensed it as he slowly woke up, too. His voice was even raspier than before.

„Baby, are you up?“

You nodded.

Jackson felt you up and stopped at your tits, kneading them thoroughly. „I can’t believe what we did last night“, he chuckled amused. You felt his cock grow hard again, pressing into you. „Fuck, I want to go again but I’m so tired. Are you?“

His voice was soft and deep from exhaustion. You placed your hand on his and guided him down to your pussy, making him feel your wetness. Jackson sucked in his breath, less exhausted now.

„Baby, you’re insatiable“, he whispered into your ear as he played with your pussy. Circling, sliding, stretching - he was finger fucking you, making you melt within seconds. You grabbed his wrist for stability as you buckled your hips, loud moans escaped your pretty lips once more.

„Fuck, you’re so good for me. My sweet little whore.“

And with that you came all over him, again. Jackson smiled into your neck, leaving small kisses on your damp skin.

„I really like making you feel good like that, y/n. Can you make me feel good, too?“

You would have done anything for him. Quickly, you wanted to turn around but felt him blocking you moving.

„Stay that way. I want to slide into you from behind and… sleep within you. Is that ok?“

You giggled at the idea. „Your dick wants to sleep in my pussy. Is that it?“

Jackson nodded. „Please. Keep it warm in your pretty tight hole for me.“

You pressed your ass against his hips, signaling him to do it. Jackson let out a deep grunt as he pushed himself in you easily, your pussy was welcoming him dearly with your warmth and wetness. „God, you have no idea how good that feels“, he praised you once more.

For him, this wasn’t a kind of cockwarming, no to him this was an act of intimacy - something he craved dearly and finally found in you. You moved your hips, unsure if he had found the best position yet.

Jackson’s hands landed on your hips immediately, holding you in place firmly. „If you keep moving like that we won’t be sleeping anytime soon, Princess. Give me some time to refuel, okay? I promise I’ll make you scream my name before breakfast.“

#mykoreanlove #jackson wang fic #jackson x reader #jackson wang scenarios #jackson wang imagines #jackson wang fanfic #jackson wang smut #got7 jackson #jackson wang #jackson wang x y/n #jackson wang x reader #jackson wang fluff #jackson wang imagine #got7 imagines #got7 fluff #got7 fanfic #got7fanfic #got7 smut #got7 scenarios #got7 x reader #wang jackson #wang jiaer #got7 #got7smut #got7 fanart #kpop x y/n #kpop imagines #fanfic x reader #kpop smut #kpop fanfic

[woso-dreamzzz]

Colic

Pernille Harder x Hardersson!Reader

Part of The Big Adventures Universe

Summary: You develop colic

Magda returns to England after six weeks.

She would have stretched it longer but there were Champion's League fixtures starting up again and she needed to be there to keep the Chelsea girls in check.

So, after six weeks, it's just you and Pernille.

For the most part, you're a calm baby. You don't do much. You cry, you eat, you sleep. Sometimes, if you're feeling particularly active, you try to pull Pernille's fingers into your mouth and suck on them.

You're practically an angel baby...Though you're quite firmly attached to your Momma.

She can't set you down for a nap until you're fully asleep otherwise you'll cry and whine until you can see her again. She can't let other people hold you without being nearby otherwise you panic. There's not a moment that goes by where you don't want to be attached to her.

You're almost equally attached to Magda but it's still a pretty easy transition for you to lean fully into Pernille being your remaining caregiver.

It also means though, that with Magda returning to England, Pernille also returns to training. She's not ready to join the team just yet, not so soon after your birth so she's just gone back to light training.

For the first day back, she had wanted to be well rested but you seemed to have caught a case of colic so were crying for hours on end all night.

You're still whiney and tearful, rhythmically sucking on your dummy (one of the only things that Pernille can use to get you to stop sobbing) when she pulls up at the training centre.

The staff members suitably coo at you before Pernille escapes into the gym. It's mostly empty apart from the trainer that's working with her as the other girls are out training on the pitch.

Thankfully for Pernille, you've slipped off to sleep as she begins her workout.

She's completely exhausted, bags under her eyes and movements sluggish as she uses the machines.

"Rough night?" The trainer asks.

She gives him a tight smile. "She got colic. She wouldn't stop crying until four in the morning." She spares a glance over at you. "We're lucky that she's tired too otherwise we wouldn't even be able to do half of this."

The trainer laughs, clapping Pernille on the back. "My wife and I had our son a few years back. Colic doesn't last forever."

"It feels like it does."

They share a laugh just as the other girls fill into the room.

"Pernille!" Pajor cheers," You're back!"

Pernille drops her weights. "I'm back."

More girls flood in and move to crowd around where you're napping. It's the first time for a lot of them that they've seen you in person. Of course, everyone had known you were born and had seen the picture on the group chat but never in person.

"She's beautiful," Popp compliments as she crouches down to look at you," She's so, so beautiful. Like an angel."

"When she isn't crying, she is," Pernille replies.

The crowd swells for a moment as she moves through and picks you up, swaddling you up tightly in your oversized baby blanket. Everyone coos and looks like they're moments away from snatching you from her arms.

"Alright," She says eventually," Are your hands clean? You can all have a quick hold before we go."

A line forms quickly, girls pushing each other to try to edge forward.

"Just quick holds," Pernille says," She's been very tearful lately. I don't want her to wake up in someone else's arms and start crying."

Thankfully, you stay asleep all through your holds and all through the car ride. It's at home where everything falls apart.

You spit out your dummy and screech and whine and sob even when you're safe in Pernille's arms.

You scream so much that your little cheeks turn an alarming shade of red and Pernille paces the length of her apartment to try to soothe you to no avail.

She tries feeding you, setting you down for a nap, changing you but nothing works.

"Please," She says softly, feeling exhausted and utterly broken and thinking about just how unfair it is that Magda's away in England while she's hanging on by a thread with a colicky baby that just won't stop crying," Please stop. Please, please, please."

But you don't stop. You reject your dummy. You reject a feed. You reject all comfort and you scream and cry until you're red in the face and gagging over your own tears.

Pernille starts crying too. From frustration. From exhaustion. From genuine despair over the fact that you haven't stopped crying for hours.

She thinks about calling Magda after nearly two and a half hours but there's nothing Magda can do to help but offer kind words and encouragement and, if that had happened, Pernille's ninety percent sure she would have snapped viciously at her partner without explanation.

So, it's just you (you who's screaming and crying and nearly throwing up) and Pernille (who's crying and pacing and trying to soothe you to no avail).

"Please," Pernille sobs as you continue to scream, your lips taking on a slightly blue tinge from the lack of oxygen you're getting," Oh, please, princesse."

She does another lap of the apartment. She checks to see if you need to be changed. She tries to feed you. She tries to get you to nap.

"Okay, okay, we're going to try this, alright?"

Pernille wipes her own tears away as she starts to run the bath, stripping both herself and you down and sliding into the water. You lay on her chest as she slowly pours lukewarm water over your back as her other hand gently rubs at your head.

You didn't have much hair (and her doctor had assured her that a lot of your wispy baby hair would fall out soon) but it was enough that Pernille could brush against it as you lay on her.

Your face is still scrunched up, a little crinkle between your brows, but you've stopped crying. You coo as more water runs down your back and you finally look up at Pernille, your eyes no longer glassy or tearful.

Curiously, you reach up and poke at her mouth with you little fingers.

Pernille smiles down at you, playfully biting at them before she readjusts.

Your lips are back to a normal colour again and your red cheeks are fading.

She sighs in relief.

"Why are you crying so much, huh?" She teases," Do you miss your Morsa? Is that what it is? I miss her too but we've got each other to look after now, alright? We're gonna be okay, princesse. It's all going to be okay."

#woso x reader #hardersson x reader #pernille harder x reader #pernille harder #woso community #woso fanfics #woso imagine #woso #The Big Adventures Universe

[aprocessionofthoughts]

Left Behind

ai-less whumptober day 19- left behind/why wasn't I enough fandom- dp x dc TW- abandonment Summary- The Fenton parents leave their kids at the Gotham Public Library

ao3 ailesswhumptober masterlist part 1 of TFR

Barbara was working the closing shift at the library. She was putting some books away when she overheard a conversation.

“Do you know when mom and dad are going to pick us up?” said what sounded like a teenage boy.

“No, I– Oh, wait they just messaged me.” said what Barbara thought was a slightly older teen girl.

Silence.

“Jazz?

“They left.”

“What?”

“Someone posted about a possible sighting in Metropolis. They said they’ll be there for a few days.”

There was more silence. Barbara stayed quiet.

“So, they left us behind.”

“Yeah.”

“Again.”

“...Yeah.”

Barbara closed her eyes, thinking of Tim and how he had been left home alone so much. And these kids… their parents had abandoned them too.

“Well at least we’re not helpless.”

“I hate them.”

“Jazz–”

“No, Danny. I hate them. They’re supposed to be our parents. They’re supposed to take care of us.”

“I know. They always chose something else over us. Why aren’t we enough, Jazz?”

“I don’t know.” she sniffled.

“Jazz, hey, look at me. We’ll be okay.”

“I'm sorry, Danny. I'm just so tired.”

“I am too.”

Barbara was about to speak up when they continued.

“At least i have a credit card this time so it won’t be like the time they forgot is in Bridgton.”

“Yeah, that sucked. We were lucky we were able to sneak onto that semi.”

“Well, tonight we can get a hotel room and then get bus tickets tomorrow.

“I could just... you know. Do my thing.”

“I guess, but we should at least get a hotel for tonight. I don’t want to try traveling while you’re exhausted.”

“That’s fair. But–”

Barbara finally decided she should make her presence known. She cleared her throat as she made her way around the bookshelf.

The two teens startle. They looked like siblings. The girl was a redhead with teal eyes, and the boy had black hair and blue eyes.

“Hello, I’m Barbara. I work here at the library. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.” she paused as the siblings glanced at each other, the boy reaching over to grab his sister’s arm. 

“What do you mean?” asked the girl, Jazz, if Barbara was correct.

“You need a place to stay tonight? It’ll be hard to find a good hotel at this hour. I’ve got an extra bedroom at my apartment, and you’re welcome to stay the night. You won’t owe me anything.”

“Why?” asked the boy, Danny.”

Barbara considered for a moment. “I have a friend who went through a similar situation as you guys, so I’m familiar with what it's like to have your parents be too busy. And you wouldn’t be the first kids I've let stay the night. I can help you find bus tickets in the morning. I’m familiar with most of the routes and can let you know which ones are the safest and quickest.”

The girl glanced at her brother, who stared at Barbara. There was a moment where his eyes seemed to glow and Barabar felt as if he were really looking at her. She suppressed a shudder at the intense feeling. 

Then he turned to his sister and nodded.

“That’s very kind of you. Thank you. I’m Jazz and this is Danny.”

“It’s nice to meet you both. I have to finish locking up so I’ll meet you by the door.”

They nodded and started gathering their stuff.

Barbara went to finish the rest of the closing shift duties. 

She also had a call to make.

#ailesswhumptober2023 #ailesswhumptober #day 19 #left behind #why wasn't I enough #Danny fenton #jazz fenton #barbara gordon #let Jazz break down #fanfic #dc x dp #dp x dc #dpxdc #dcxdp #dp x dc crossover

[moonstruckme]

Hi Mae! I absolutely adore you and your writing, you truly have a gift!

Can I please request something with James Potter where readers anxiety is really bad and is super emotional cause pms and is just kinda struggling and needs to be dealt with the most gently? Totally not projecting much at all lol 😬😫🤣

Totally no pressure if you don’t feel up to it! I love reading anything you write ❤️❤️

Hi lovely, thanks so much!!

James Potter x fem!reader ♡ 772 words

“Here y’go, love.” James presses a mug’s handle into your hands, and you take it quickly once you realize he’s holding the hot sides. 

“James!” you hiss, chiding. “You’re going to burn yourself.”

Only James Potter could make a shrug seem fond. He sits down beside you on the couch, hand resting on your thigh, and the knee you hadn’t realized you’d been jiggling slows to a stop. 

“What’s eating you?” he asks mildly, rubbing you from knee to hip as he sips his tea, quietly hinting for you to do so as well. 

You sigh, blowing on your tea before raising it to your lips. “Nothing so important I should be this stressed about it,” you say bitterly. “It’s just PMS.” 

You hate how your hormones mess with you around this time of the month. It makes it feel like you can’t trust yourself, because you’re never sure if the emotions you’re experiencing are valid or amplified by your body’s punishing cycle. Your already oversensitive nerves go into overdrive, and you feel three times as susceptible to bouts of rage or crying, though which one it’ll be is as good as a coin toss. Everything is just more, and all the time, and it sucks. 

James makes a sad puppy sound. “Yeah? Are you hurting, honey?” 

“Not really.” You have a headache, but that’s probably more due to your anxiety than anything else. 

“Well, why don’t you try telling me what’s bothering you,” James suggests. “Even if you think it’s not a big deal, maybe I can help.” 

You sigh again, a heaving, dramatic exhale. “Macy’s having a birthday party this weekend.” 

That surprises a smile out of James, and he tilts his head to look at you bemusedly. “Oh, how nefarious! Shall we curse her?” 

You give him a look that says not funny, even as your own lips curl up slightly. James smothers his grin as best he can (which is to say, not very well), nodding at you seriously to continue. 

“I just—” you heave another sigh, and James’ hand redoubles its efforts on your leg, squeezing the fatty inner part encouragingly. “I’m not going to know anyone there, and I’m going to have to go straight after work on Friday, and she and her friends always stay out so much later than I want to. I just know I’m going to be exhausted.” 

“Okay.” James is nodding, still looking slightly confused. “So don’t go.” 

“But it’s her birthday,” you say, the last syllable taking an unexpected turn into whiny territory as your eyes grow wet. “I don’t have an excuse to miss it and I’ll be the worst friend in the world if I do.” 

“Sweetheart, hey.” James’ voice takes on a slight panicked edge due to the appearance of tears, though you can tell he’s trying to be soothing. His hand abandons your leg to snake around your waist, scrubbing up and down your side. “Honey, you’re a great friend. You’re just looking out for yourself a little bit,” he promises, kissing the top of your head. “Let’s think about who’s going to be more upset, alright? If you miss it, Macy might be a bit sad you didn’t come, but she’s still got all of her other friends who don’t know you anyway, and the party will probably go on as it would have. But if you go, you’ll have to hurry there straight after work, you might be too tired to be much fun, and you could end up miserable the whole night. Sound right?” You nod wretchedly, and he hums into your hair. “So just miss this one, and make it up to her with lunch or something another time, yeah?” At your hesitation, he adds, “You have plans Friday night, you can’t make it.” 

You look up at James. “I don’t have plans, though. I don’t want to lie to her.” 

“Sure you do, sweetheart,” he contradicts you, grinning. “You have plans with me, duh. You’ve only been friends with Macy for a couple months, right?” You nod. “Well then sorry, Macy, but I’m pulling rank.” You laugh, and James swoops down to kiss at your dimple when it appears. “I need my girl for Friday night. She’s pre-engaged.” 

James can never stop kissing once he’s gotten started, and you hide your cheek from him in his own chest, wrapping your arms around his waist in an awkward sort of hug. “Thanks, Jamie.” 

You can still hear the smile in his voice. “Anytime, my love. Now, since that’s been resolved, do you think you can drink your tea? It’s gonna get cold.”

#james potter #james potter x reader #james potter x fem!reader #james potter x y/n #james potter x you #james potter x self insert #james potter fanfiction #james potter fanfic #james potter fic #james potter fluff #james potter imagine #james potter oneshot #james potter drabble #james potter one shot #james potter scenario #marauders #marauders era #the marauders #marauders fanfiction #marauders fanfic #marauders fic #the marauders era #marauders fandom #hp marauders

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Isn't The Same Without You

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1k

Warnings: angst, major character death, fluff

Summary: Ever since you started dating Spencer, you hate sleeping alone. You always try to find a way to bring him into bed with you, even if he can't be there physically.

Square Filled: breaking a promise for @badthingshappenbingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

x

One thing you hate doing ever since meeting Spencer is sleeping alone. He has provided such a safe space in bed for you that it’s hard to sleep away from him. Thankfully, you have the same job so if he’s away on a case, so are you. Plus, he’s so warm which makes for comforting cuddles.

You startle awake with a gasp, disgusted at how dry your mouth is. You look to the right and see Spencer lying peacefully next to you. You have to get water. You’re known for sleeping with your mouth open so that’s why your throat is always so dry. You usually keep a water bottle by your bed but this time, you didn’t.

You carefully sneak out of bed so as not to wake him up. You walk through the darkened apartment expertly. If a robber ever broke in, you’d know how to escape easily with the lights off.

You get to the kitchen and open the fridge, squinting at the fridge light. You grab an ice-cold water bottle and close the fridge to drink in darkness. The ice-cold water does wonders for your dry throat and it cools your insides. You’re about halfway through the bottle when you feel arms around you.

“The bed isn’t the same without you,” Spencer mutters and kisses your neck lightly.

“I needed water,” you chuckle. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay. Come back to bed.”

You take the water bottle to bed and cuddle with Spencer until dawn.

Even when you’re on cases, you always find a way to make it into each other’s beds. Hotch has a rule where the men are separated from the women even though he knows that rule is broken most of the time.

Hotch has made it clear that the women were going to bunk with each other and the men were going to be on opposite sides of the hotel. You and JJ took up one room while Emily and Penelope had the other. Derek and Spencer shared one room while Rossi and Hotch were in another.

JJ went to bed nearly two hours ago but you can’t seem to sleep. Spencer isn’t next to you to provide that safe space, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever find sleep tonight. That is until you heard someone knocking softly on your door.

You smile knowing who it is.

You make sure to be quiet as you make your way to the door. You don’t even have to look through the peephole to check who it is. Spencer’s tired face smiles when you open the door.

“Hi,” you whisper with a smile.

“The bed isn’t the same without you in it.”

“Come in. Be quiet. JJ is a light sleeper.”

You bring Spencer inside and quietly lock the door. You make sure not to make too much noise as you two shuffle into bed. Spencer pulls you close and breathes in your scent by your hair. There, this is more like it. Exhaustion catches up to you now that your safety net has returned to you.

Spencer kisses your head and the two of you fall asleep with ease.

Even when you and Spencer can’t be together, like if you got sick or he had to stay back because his mom needed him, you two still find a way to sleep in the same bed.

You’re sick with either the stomach flu or bad food poisoning because you can’t leave the bed without vomiting everywhere. Spencer offered to stay back and take care of you but the team needs him more than you do. It sucks but it’s only for a couple of days, and you can handle being away from him for that long.

He and the team flew to California for a serial rapist who has yet to be caught while you’re stuck in bed trying not to puke up your insides.

It’s storming outside so the rain is pelting your window hard. It’s not the noise that is keeping you up, you quite like the sound of rain. No, it’s the fact that  Spencer isn’t here to help you sleep. You two have become so dependent on each other that you can’t sleep without him next to you. If you can sleep, it’s because you’re sick and your body is forcing you to.

Your phone rings, illuminating the dark room. The sound almost makes you jump ten feet out of your body but you grab it and smile when you see Spencer is trying to FaceTime you.

“Hey,” you smile when you answer.

“The bed isn’t the same without you in it,” he mumbles against the pillows.

“I know.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like shit but I’ll live,” you chuckle. “I’m so tired. Stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“Of course,” he smiles.

It’s not ideal but knowing he is right there next to you is enough to send you into a dreamless sleep.

No one ever told you how hard this part would be. No one gave you a rule book to study beforehand. You thought the worst part was over but you’re just now realizing the worst part has just barely begun.

It’s raining hard outside so the water is just smashing against the window as hard as it can. The curtains are open so you can see the rain fall from the clouds above with the occasional lightning storm that lights up the whole sky.

You turn away from the window and let the tears fall freely onto the pillow you’re clutching. You’ll never be able to sleep the same ever again knowing Spencer won't be there next to you to comfort you. He promised to come home. He promised he’d make it back to you but he never did. 

An unsub got the better of him and now you’re left to pick up the pieces he left behind. You touch his side of the bed and refrain from screaming out in pain.

“The bed isn’t the same without you in it,” you cry.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fiction #spencer reid fan fic #spencer reid fan fiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fan fiction #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds angst #cm #cm fic #cm fanfiction #cm fanfic #cm angst

[your-girl-mj]

The truth. [42!Miles Morales x Spiderwoman!reader]

summary: He wants the truth, and you can't give it to him.

warning: cursing, mentions of cheating, accusations, arguments. angst (?)

notes: written in 3rd point of view,

created: july 25, 2023

published: july 26, 2023

exhausted, tired, drained. those three words are to describe what [name] is feeling. dragging her legs on the floor of the empty, quiet hallway of her apartment building. her suit hidden inside her (miles') jacket and some loose pants that her boyfriend gifted her.

Miguel gave her a rough mission with two anomalies on the loose in the same dimension. it's a good thing she her battles didn't leave wounds. god, she missed her bed already. the soft sheets, with miles snuggle up to her from behind.

the girl smiled at the thought of the one she loved the dearest and thinking about what he's doing at this time of hour, [1:47 am]. her heart melted at the image of miles sleeping soundly in his bed and how good he looked when his brows were relaxed and not formed into a scowl.

the air paused its way into her lungs when she opened her apartment door and saw the said boyfriend leaning on the couch's back rest, facing the door. as if he knew she would come back at this time of hour.

her grip on the knob tightened, but not too tight. yet her fingers left a dent on the cold metal. "miles! hey, i didn't know you were coming over." [name] beamed warmly at him, acting as if she didn't come home so early in the morning.

miles' stare was hard and unnerving. "where were you?" he asked, tilting his head as if challenging her for the truth. "the last message i sent you was around nine, saying I'll come over, and its one in the fucking morning." he push himself off the couch, approaching his s/o with threatening steps, slowly closing the door behind her. "so... where were you?"

his face was inches from her, and she hates fights. especially fights with miles. "i was working overti—"

"you said you were sick." miles suck his cheek, breathing out his nose, not buying to her another lie.

"i am!" she defended, quickly thinking another excuse when it was clear she was caught in the spotlight. "por eso... de camino aquí, compré medicinas, teroso." she took his arm, softly squeezing it to ease his worried thoughts. remembering about her last excuse to miles, she told him when he asked for a sleepover. [that's why... on my way here, i bought medicines, treasure.]

though, it didn't stop him from going to her apartment. he wanted to take care of her after she told him she had a high fever. with his mom working in the hospital, he knew a little bit of medicines and treatment. but he was met in an empty home.

his eyes narrowed, not fluttering from her touch, yet he made no effort to lean away from it. "i was so worried." his tone almost gone mute, "i came to your window because i thought you were resting, you weren't there." miles couldn't help his voice as it started to weaver, "pensé que estabas en la sala de estar pero no estabas allí. i've even looked the streets for you." he sighed. [I thought you were in the living room, but you weren't there.]

he runs his hand into his face in exhaustion, as [name] stayed in silent with guilt — guilt, that is slowly eating her up for not telling him everything. he needs to know, he deserves to know. but the thought of him causing his life to save hers always goes through her head. once he knows it's his s/o, he'll feel the need to protect her when she is supposedly protecting him.

"miles, I'm sorry for worrying you." 'and for every lie i told you...' the girl utter yet few words are left in her mind, she embraced him. griping his shirt, having a feeling that shit will be going down soon. "i have something important to do and—"

"and what? tell me." he pulled away as much as he wanted to stay in her arms, but he's a little too pissed right now. "tell me where you were. it's been months." [name] felt her heart drop with culpability, miles known for a long time now. his hard stare soon softens, hating how he's acting.

"cariño, sé que me has estado mintiendo, te conozco. dime por favor..." whispered in his soft voice with her hands in his, miles kissed the back of her palms, he feels like begging for the truth now. [I know you've been lying to me, I know you. Tell me please...]

his patience is getting thinner and thinner as days passed. his girl, disappearing with excuses and lies that he didn't point out. but what's a relationship without trust?

her eyes met his, [name] breath out. "miles..."

"all I'm asking is for you to be honest." his hold tighten, already have a thought about what will happen.

"i... can't tell you." her lips pursed, turning for head to the side. he'll die if he knows about her identity. with all her other version in multiverses; their miles as spiderman... left in dust, crying his eyes out, her body in his arms covered in her own blood. what can prevent such a tragic event when their roles are now reversed?

[name] closed her eyes, trying to leave those horrible thoughts, now breath heavily. she saw other versions of miles, they're mostly spider-people, and her fate in their canon event always left shivers. much like her coworker gwen stacy, her canon event made her peter parker died, when it got their roles reverse.

she can not risk it. she can't. she'll break.

"why not?" miles' jaw visibly clenched, his mind is slowly clouded with horrible doubts.

"miles, you need to understand — " she paused, "i just... can't lose you... i can't tell you." she turned her head away, unable to witness the hurt and anger mixed in his face. it's hard to lie to him. it's hard to resist his plead at times. but there are times when it has its limit.

miles stood, back straight. towering over [name], his face held betrayal when she peaked, and she knew where this was about to go. "you're cheating on me, aren't you?" his face holds a scowl, disappointment, distrust, betrayal mixed into an expression.

"what? no!" she was quick to deny, "i would never do that to you." she frown, hurt for being accused by such a thing.

"that explains more than you ever told me." his tone is starting to rise, with her on his tail matching his voice.

"why don't you trust me?!" her hands flown with an exaggerated movement.

"i did! but you keep on disappearing!" they're now head to head. one holding her ground while the other digging deep for the truth. "on dates, hangouts, movie nights, even in the middle of dinner! what is more to not assume?!"

"its was an emergency!" it was easy to tell the neighbours are listening to the argument right now. how can you not? when the couple who are oh-so-lovely are fighting about one of them cheating.

"of course it was!" her s/o's voice laced with sarcasm before it turned into a venom. "not to mention, i can hear you talking to guys on the phone!"

"it was my boss! he needs me for something!" with her unconventional strength at this moment, she accidentally left a crack on the wall when her hand smacked it while explaining. but miles didn't notice. his eyes were on her, and it didn't leave for a split second.

"yeah right, and what about that tall fucking dude with the funky ass hair?!" he pointed on the couch, remembering when he caught the two of them drinking soda and saying he was a friend at work. he believed her, of course he believed her. but right now, he's doubting eveything.

"i told you, hobie was a friend from work!" she defended once again, not telling the full truth. "i invited him in that time because we both needed rest!"

"rest from what exactly?!" miles felt like punching something, anything. horrible images flashing in his mind, he despise it. he deeply despite the thought.

"you don't understand, i'm doing this for you!" she yelled, dropping the subject. knowing if this continued one or both with end up getting hurt. wounded by harsh words.

"¡ay bendito!" he shouted, his hands almost pulling his braids out as he ran his hand on his head. "enough with your bullshit excuses! if it's not true, then what is the truth? tell me." he demanded, infuriated.

— choose your ending:

tell him the truth.

lie for his safety.

this is the first time in a while to write again, but miles keep running in my mind 😩

#earth 42 miles morales x reader #miles morales x reader #miles morales #across the spiderverse #spiderman #miles morales x you #miles morales x y/n

[passivenovember]

(sharing again because I'm so proud of this one)

When Billy Falls in Love

--

Max's hair is twisted into a rough pink towel when she answers the door. She’s got a berry sorbet sunburn peeking through the angry red flush on her cheeks, freckles looking like they could peel off at any moment. It’s the same way Billy gets in the summertime, but he turns gold in seconds.

Max stays angry red. 

She wasn’t at the pool today. Steve knows because he was at the pool fifteen minutes ago, and Billy wasn’t there. And if Billy’s gone so is Max, and if Max is here-- 

“He’s not here. What’s with the flowers?” Max wonders, with her teeth pulling at the wrapper of a Scoops brand popsicle as she eyes the poorly picked and assembled bouquet of daisies and weeds Steve managed to convince the gardener to let him snag. 

Steve can tell she doesn’t really want to know what the deal is. Maybe she already knows. 

Max is fourteen and a perpetually bored pain in the ass, already moving to shut Steve out of the house when he jams his foot so the door won’t close. 

Max tugs on it. Groans. “Steve,” Max says, sounding tired.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know because we don’t keep tabs on each other, you psycho.”

“Bullshit,” Steve says. Neil’s car isn’t in the driveway, he almost points out.

Doesn’t.

Max almost cracks a smile, seeming to hear him anyway. If Neil’s gone that leaves Billy to play guard dog. “If you care so much about my stupid brother all of a sudden--”

“--All of a--”

“Get in your stupid shitty car and go drive around until you find him,” Max says, like. Get lost.

They’re so similar it burns. Chars licking over Steve’s skin in the shape of how they sneer and heckle the same, and they’re both so smart that Steve has to do math and study chemistry, and perform mental gymnastics just to keep up.

There’s a lot to latch on to, Steve’s hands slip over it like a gymnast missing the high bar. 

The way she’s looking at him, the way Max said all of a sudden like Steve’s done something wrong--

“He used to drive you around,” Steve says, like. Aha. “Don’t you give a shit?”

About him? 

About his bones and blood. 

Max shrugs. “Why should I?”

And. Steve’s an idiot but he remembers how it was before, back when this whole thing started. His lips, red and tender from sucking on any piece of Billy he could find. His fingers, tugging on worn belt loops and begging for a night on Loch Nora and that dull, exhausted phrase gotta watch my sister sinking a hole in Steve’s hope.

“It’s summer,” Max says after a minute, irritated, “We have an arrangement in the summer. June to Labor Day I do what I want, Billy fucks off for a bit, and we always show up here right when--”

“His car's gone,” Steve says. Because she owes it to him and his months and months of blue balls at her lack of self-preservation. She owes it to Billy.

“His car’s gone because he’s not here, Steve, we just went over this--” 

Max moves to slam the door and Steve holds it open, trying to ignore the hollow feeling that spreads through his stomach. “Why are you acting weird?” Steve demands.

“I’m not acting weird, you’re the one who’s trying to break into my house because Billy stepped out for five minutes,” Max tugs on the door, groaning dramatically, “C’mon Steve--”

Steve clutches the bouquet of flowers close to his chest. “We’re supposed to go see a movie.”

Max stops pulling on the door, all the attitude cut from her with something dull. 

Steve swallows. His nails dig into the palm of his free hand. Steve feels blood swell, but it’s probably just sweat. “Billy. He’s not on a date--”

“Look, Steve,” Max says suddenly, sounding. Much older and wiser than she did five seconds ago. “I like you. You’re cute and dumb but you’re annoyingly sweet and thoughtful. You’re tall, too. You’ve probably failed freshman biology a couple of times.--”

“--I--”

“Shut up,” Max tells him, and Steve swears there’s a bit of green swirling in all that red, embarrassment mixing like watercolor. “Can I be honest with you, Steve?”

Steve nods. He takes his foot from the door jam and rubs his hand on his jeans. Shudders as the feeling in his stomach ebbs and swirls and gets so much worse.

“You’re not his fucking boyfriend,” Max says, and slams the door in his face.

--

“Well. To be fair, she’s not wrong.”

Steve grips the steering wheel. The leather crackles and squeals with the skin of his palms, giving way to the rumble of the engine when he turns the car onto Park Avenue. 

“Jesus,” Eddie snaps, his free hand scrambling to brace against the passenger door while the bouquet teeters dangerously on his lap, “You don’t have to take the turns so fast, Harrington--”

“I can’t believe she said that.”

“--Fucking Evel Kenevil--”

“I mean. I’m practically his boyfriend, right?”

“Sure, and you’ll still be ‘practically his boyfriend,’ even if you drive at the speed limit.”

“Thought you said Max wasn’t talking out of her ass, Munson?”

“Look, I’m allowed to take things minute by minute. I’m just saying,” Eddie tightens the seatbelt against his chest, “You haven’t exactly popped the question.”

“You think Billy’s the kind of guy who--”

“Yeah,” Eddie says casually. “He’s exactly the kind of guy who wants to be asked out. I’ve seen the way he picks flowers and puts them in his own hair when he thinks no one’s looking.”

Steve snorts. “When has he ever done that?”

“We hang out, you know,” Eddie tells him, in lieu of an answer. “When you’re not around, we hang out loads--”

“Maybe you’re Billy’s mystery man,” Steve says only half serious. Mostly joking. 

Eddie flushes deep red, “Anyway. This bag of weeds is a good start,” He mumbles, twisting the fat head of a dandelion gently between two fingers.

Steve doesn’t have it in him to unpack any of what that might mean.

They’ve been driving for what feels like hours. The sky has turned hazy, floating in that honey-dipped place between dayglow and starlight. The world will be gold, soon, and then dark. Midnight black. 

Hawkins is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair. A shithole. Billy only has a handful of places to hide.

Steve presses a little harder on the gas, knowing in the very pit of himself that this is crazy. This is insane, driving around like a bat out of hell with Eddie Munson, but Billy likes Eddie Munson. Steve tolerates him. And Robin’s at camp, so.

Eddie clutches the door again with another sharp, sudden turn. “Harrington--”

“I’m not dropping you off until I find him.”

“Alright,” Munson grumbles. He lights a cigarette and stares out the window for half a neighborhood block and then says, “How do you know he’s not at home, already?”

Steve grips the steering wheel, convinced Eddie wasn’t listening the first time. “Maxine said--”

“That was an hour ago.”

“Neil doesn’t get off until seven, if Billy’s gone he wont be back until six-thirty at the earliest.”

Eddie checks the dash. “It’s six-thirty now.”

“Do you wanna die today, freak?”

“God, you’re so unpleasant,” Eddie says, handing his cigarette over, anyway, “You’re the worst, actually. Worse than I ever imagined and I’ve imagined it a lot when Billy and Dustin yap their fucking gums about how great you are.”

Steve takes a harsh pull from the cigarette. Coughs and hands it back. 

Eddie takes it from him. Ash gathers on the cherry but he’s got no self-awareness. 

“If you get ash in my flowers, Munson--”

“Jesus Christ, would you give it a rest? He’s gonna love them. He’ll probably cry, once he’s done beating the shit out of you.”

Silence falls, lurid and uncomfortable, and Steve realizes Munson is watching him. Staring at him, 

“This is insane boyfriend behavior, Harrington,” Eddie says.

“So, you admit I’m his boyfriend?” Steve tries weakly, in lieu of what he means. Why Should I Take Advice from You?

“I’m saying this is boyfriend behavior but you won’t be a boyfriend for long, once he finds out what we’re doing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Steve grits his teeth. “What are we doing that’s so wrong, Munson?”

“Hunting him. Like a couple of crazy fucking bloodhounds.”

“We had a date,” Steve tells Eddie again. For the eightieth time. “Billy’s never missed a date so he’s either dead or dying or riding some other guy’s--”

Eddie bangs his head against the window.

Steve rolls the window down for him if only to protect the integrity of the Beemer. “Look, I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but I know Billy. And he wouldn’t just disappear without--”

“You’re not his dad,” Eddie tells him, and Steve.

Steve doesn’t have time to get into all the reasons that’s spot -fucking-on. He’s not Billy’s dad, because Steve loves Billy. To his bones and beyond, a little knob of heartache swirling around each nucleus of every atom in the very core of him.

Steve loves Billy so much it gets him into trouble.

Eddie sucks down his smoke again, like, “You’re really doing all this for a missed date?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m just saying,” Eddie shrugs, “I heard stories about you and the Wheeler chick. Seems like she missed a lot of dates at the end and you never did anything like this for her.”

“Billy’s not Nancy. Billy’s not like anyone, he’s--”

“Holy shit,” Eddie says, coughing. “You. You’re not just blowing smoke up my ass, you’re serious about him.”

And.

Munson says it like it’s a shock. 

Like Steve Harrington’s not capable of loving anything but himself. His hair and his house on the hill and this stupid fucking car and maybe that’s what the losers at Hawkins High think, but they’re wrong. 

Way wrong. Stuck four years in the past.

Steve has to bite down against every harsh word on the tip of his tongue, tear the sentences apart and swallow them down because of course he’s worried.

Steve’s worried all the time about a lot of things when it comes to this crush he’s been nursing for a year and a half. Steve worries if Billy sleeps enough, for one. If Neil was in a good mood today. How many new bruises Steve will have to cover with hickies the next time they see each other, paint all that hurt over with something good.

It makes him crazy.

Steve worries all the time if Billy loves him. If actually saying it makes a difference.

Steve wonders most of all how much money and begging it’ll take to get Billy out of that house on Cherry Lane. Steve’s spent many restless nights doing the math in his head, staring at the popcorn ceiling as he imagines taking Billy away from here. And if Steve’s taking Billy home, to the coast, then he’s taking Max, too.

So whatever number, whatever dollar amount Steve’s gotta hoard to make it happen--he’d better take it and multiply it by seven, because. Steve’s going to lasso the moon and give it to Billy in a bouquet of yellow daisies. 

If it kills him. 

He’s going to find Billy tonight and tell him the truth if it kills him--

“We’ve gone down this street, already,” Eddie says.

“You’re not helping.”

“I'm just pointing out the obvious.”

“And I’m just pointing out--”

“Look, if you care about Billy so much, why don’t you respect his privacy?” Eddie demands. Somewhere, along the way, he ashed his cigarette on the dashboard.

Steve wants to check the flowers. 

Can’t find it within himself to be angry about that. “I just want to make sure he’s okay. If something happened to him and I wasn’t there to make it better and figure out how to stop it from happening again--”

“God, you’re such a brownie,” Eddie snaps, turning from the window. “What if he ditched you because he’s not into you anymore, Harrington?  What if Billy got tired of waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass and stop obsessing over him where no one else can see it? What if he’s sick of being the plaything you fuck in the dark?”

Steve swallows. Feeling so, so small.

“Everyone says you’re a changed man,” Eddie gets closer, somehow. Looms. “What if Billy thinks you’re bullshit?”

Steve pulls the car to the side of the road. In front of them, hazy with the dregs of the afternoon, a coal brown sign announces that Hawkins will soon be a spot on a map left somewhere far, far away. 

Everything in that shitty little town hangs over him. Feels so huge. Max and Neil and his parents and graduation and the last month of summer, sitting bigger than the sky. 

The engine thrums underneath them and Steve swallows, turning against his seatbelt. “If Billy doesn’t love me,” Steve says, easy and slow, “He can say it to my face.”

Eddie blinks. 

Steve can sense the cogs turning, underneath all that hair. Brown like his, curly like Billy’s. “It won’t change how you feel about him?” Eddie asks. 

And Steve realizes, like a punch to the gut, that Eddie Munson cares about this.

About Billy.

He’s worried, too, in his own twisted, guard-dog best friend kinda way. It reminds Steve of Robin. Dustin, too, always baring their teeth at Billy because they’re not fully convinced that this thing between them will survive the summer.

That Steve would survive losing this. 

He wishes, a deep ache thrumming in his chest, that everyone would either get it or fuck off.

“I love him,” Steve says easily, “Love isn’t something that stops just because the other person’s come to their fucking senses about how much of a loser you are. It isn’t something you say because you want to hear it back. I’ve loved him for a year and a half and I’ll love him even when he realizes I’m not half good enough.”

Eddie smirks. It’s slow and terrible.

“Alright, Harrington,” He leans back in his seat and nods, satisfied. “I think I know where our boy is hiding.”

--

Duane county used to house to the only mall within a hundred miles until Starcourt. 

It’s a small and bustling and annoyingly progressive city, compared to Hawkins, and Steve isn’t the least bit surprised that Billy would run to a place like this to hide for a while.

What surprises him is that Billy knows how to skateboard. 

He’s riding the half pipe, so focused on the concrete that laps like waves under the wheels of his long, colorful board that Billy doesn’t notice when the Beemer’s engine cuts and Steve opens the driver’s side door. 

Eddie doesn’t move. 

“You coming?” Steve asks, frowning when Eddie sparks something too pale and skinny to be a cigarette.

“Nah, you go ahead.”

“You don’t wanna give me your blessing?” Steve wonders, suddenly terrified that Billy won’t go steady with him if he doesn’t see the irritatingly awful face of his best friend giving the thumbs up. 

Eddie hands Steve the bouquet. It’s crushed and it smells like dope.

“Billy’s gonna take one look at these sorry fucking flowers and break up with me,” Steve grumbles, his nose scrunching, and.

Eddie smiles at him. 

It’s soft and real, and kind of beautiful, and Steve gets why Chrissy Cunningham is apparently head over heels for the guy. 

“He loves you, too,” Eddie says, like, “Go on. Quit stalling. Don’t think your big love confession will feel the same if I have told your hand through it.”

Steve slams the door, and Billy floats to the top of the half-pipe with the echo of it. He looks like an angel in the clouds, shirtless with his skin golden in the setting sun, jeans slung low on his hips. The curly, bronze tendrils of hair Steve will always remember the feel of are swooped back in a scrunchie.

Max’s scrunchie.

Billy squints across the parking lot and recognizes Steve, his expression clouding over immediately. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He demands.

Steve waddles across the parking lot, “Eddie’s here,” He calls, like an idiot.

“So?” You fucking him now?”

“No, I--”

“What are you doing here, Harrington?”

Steve almost trips over himself, knees with with nerves. Billy does that to him, always. Forever.

The half-pipe is huge up close, looming like the mast of some ancient, terrible ship and Billy is the pirate waiting to throw him overboard. “We had a date,” Steve says.

Out of breath.

Weak.

“I had to get out of that house,” Billy shades his eyes with one hand, holding the long board aloft with his bare foot. He doesn’t say anything for a long, terrible moment and then he says, “Whatcha got there, pretty boy?” 

“Flowers,” Steve tells him.

“Flowers,” Billy mocks softly. There’s no bite.

He considers the moment. The Scene. Steve Harrington, with flowers clutched to his chest and the dingy little park beyond that and Eddie Munson, probably, hanging from a cloud of marijuana smoke as the afternoon crashes into nightfall.

As Steve crashes and burns.

Steve holds his breath. Billy glides down the half pipe, seeming to ride on the wind until he comes to a delicate, perfect stop in front of him. 

He smells like peaches. 

He’s been eating peaches. Billy’s hands are sticky when he grabs the bouquet, and Steve’s skin lights on fire from his touch. 

It’s so usual. It’s brand new every time.

“You bought me flowers?” Billy asks, pinning Steve with a clear, vibrant stare. 

His eyes are so blue. So beautiful--

“I didn’t buy them, I. I picked them,” Steve says dumbly, “The gardener was going to clear them away, but. I wanted to pick some for our date. I always pick you up on the way but I never bring anything, and I thought. Maybe Neil wouldn’t notice who they were for if it seemed like someone just picked them from a garden. Or the side of the road,” Billy snorts, and Steve nearly breaks an ankle trying to recover, “But I’ve thought about it, and they’re almost out of season, so the gardener--”

“--Right--”

“And. I see them every morning, from my bedroom window, and they remind me of you. Pretty and. Golden, so. I caught the gardener just in time, and i had to pay him $5 to let me pick ‘em before he cleared them away. They’re pretty. Right? I wanted--”

Billy sniffs the daisies first. His eyes close, lashes casting long, noir shadows over the cinnamon freckles on his cheeks and Steve aches to live forever in this moment. To scrape the image into his mind so it can live there, in a house made in Billy’s image. 

“Some of these are weeds,” Billy tells him.

“I--”

“Are you in love with me, Harrington?” Billy rubs the petals of one flower with his thumb, watching as the stems knock together. He’s holding the bouquet like it’s made of glass. Like it might shatter and crumble away if he’s not careful, and Steve.

Feels that way about Billy.

“I,” Steve tries again,

“Thanks for the flowers,” Billy says, and he turns to go.

“Wait,” Steve says. Begs. He almost reaches to stop Billy but he doesn’t want to hurt him. 

Billy stops. Waits. 

Something sharp and fragile sits there, just under the layer of indifference Steve was always too stupide to notice before, but.

“I love you,” Steve says. He sounds strangled. Drowning. 

It hurts.

It hurts and it really, really doesn’t when Billy flushes red. “I love you, too.”

And. 

Steve’s going to catch on fire at any moment. “You love me,” He repeats, testing the words. He doesn’t trust them to hold his hope. Doesn’t think Billy means it how Steve aches and dreams he does. “You love me, like. How you love Max? Or Eddie? Like a friend who you want to suck off sometimes--”

“Eddie and I are just friends,” Billy says, quickly. His gaze is steady on Steve’s face. “I don’t need anyone else for that, I have. You.”

He does. 

He really does.

Billy’s watching Steve like he’s expecting him to say something else, and maybe he is. Has been, for as long as they’ve been sliding inside of each other. Steve was just too dumb to get it before now. 

So he straightens his spine. Clears his throat. Says, “Well. I love you like I want to take you on dates. And introduce you to my parents. I want you to go steady with me and wear my letter--”

“We can’t do that sort of stuff, Harrington.”

“I know.”

“Well, then, why’d you say it?”

“Because it’s what I want,” Steve snaps. Like, “You’re so annoying.”

“It was your idea,” Billy smirks. It’s beautiful. It’s Steve’s second favorite thing, second only to his laugh. And the soft curve of his lips. Billy fiddles with one of the weeds and says, “You don’t even have a letter to give me.”

“Neither do you, asshole,”

“So now what?” Billy demands, his arms flaring wide, “You’re gonna say you want to go steady with me and we’re not gonna do it? Tease.”

Steve rolls his eyes to the heavens, grumbling as they plop wetly on the sun-warmed earth. Billy’s still barefoot and Steve wonders how his toes aren’t burning. “How are your toes not burning?” He demands.

“They are,” Billy tells him, annoyed.

And then. 

Steve gets an idea.

He sits on the ground and pulls both shoes off.

“What are you doing?” Billy snaps, but Steve can hear a smile in his voice, curling tendrils through the teasing annoyance that has made him so different from anyone Steve has ever loved before. “Steve--”

“Here,” Steve says, standing to hold the shoes out in front of him. He hops from one foot to the other as his heels start to burn.

Billy stares at the Nike’s as if they’re coiled snakes. Like if he takes them, they’ll burrow under his toenails and poison him from the inside out. “I don’t get it--”

“I don’t have a letter, but. People might see you in them and get it, right? When has anyone ever seen Billy Hargrove in a pair of Nike’s?”

Billy blinks, confused.

“You’re mine,” Steve says. “So they’re yours. Take them,”

Billy considers him for a long moment and then sets the bouquet on the ground. “Wait here,” He says, and skates off around the bend in the half pipe.

Steve’s feet are on fire.

He’s hopping dramatically, and in the distance he can hear Eddie laughing, and Steve’s going to kill him, but then.

Billy’s back and he’s holding his boots in his hands. “Here,” He says, “Eye for an eye, right?”

And Steve doesn’t need to be told twice. He slips into the worn leather, pleasantly surprised at how comfortable they are. His feet thank him, the raging fire finally simmering.

Steve watches Billy. 

The careful way his fingers lace the Nike’s onto his feet. How his hips shift his weight when he stands. Billy walks in a slow, timid circle, “Shit, Harrington,” He says thickly, “I’ve never been someone’s boyfriend before.”

Steve shrugs, “I’ve never had a boyfriend, before.”

“Think we’ll be any good at it?” Billy asks. He squats deeply, popping back up with a wide, beautiful smile planted pretty as a forest on his face.

It beams itself, magically, onto Steve’s. Startles a bright, hysterical laugh from somewhere deep inside of him. 

“You’re perfect,” Steve says. Nothing has ever felt more true.

#harringrove #clothes sharing #fluff #love confessions

[justtwotired]

Hello ! I hope you’re doing well. I was wondering if I could get an ask for Sam and Colby. Maybe reader (female or gn neutral pronouns are fine !) is invited to go with SnC exploring an abandoned place but she’s been struggling with body image (I’m kind of in the slumps rn :/) so she’s cut back on food. Through the trip they notice her lagging behind and getting tired easily. She ends up fainting due to exhaustion and lack of food and they take care of her when she comes to. Preferably Colby pairing and lots of angst ! Only if your comfortable writing about this thank you xx 🫶🏽

Why hello there, I am so sorry for posting this rather late, I wrote a part of it, then got busy and forgot about it and just finished and edited it, so hope it’s alright!

I really like this request! Mostly because I can really relate to reader, this is always chill because then I can write five that actually make sense ya know.

I did write some angst but not LOTS, because angst is one of those things I still find difficult to write, but I hope you still like it<3

“What’s up guys it’s Sam and Colby!” Colby started. “Today, we are at an abandoned manor in the woods right behind us. It is quite a walk, but I think we will survive!” Sam told the camera.

“Also, we brought someone with us,” Sam then pointed behind him where I stood rather awkwardly, wearing a huge hoody that I may or may not have stolen from Colby’s closet.

“This is Y/n, you guys know her of course, we had lots of questions to bring her back to the Chanel, so we did of course.” Sam explained before turning the camera fully on me.

I sucked in an unnoticeable sharp breath. Did I look alright? Was that pimple I hid under makeup this morning still invisible? Did the hoody hide my body enough?

“So, N/n, are you excited?” Sam asked and I gave the camera a genuine smile. “I am actually, this place is not too far from my home town and I’ve been wanting to go here for a while, but I didn’t want to go alone, so now I have these two idiots to come along.” I joked and Sam pointed the camera at Colby.

“Did you hear that, dude?” He said in fake sadness. “I thought you where coming with us?” Colby said also jokingly hurt. “I’m still stuck on the fact she called us idiots.” Sam said and pointed the camera at himself.

“Seems like we have to change the channel name to ‘Y/n only’ because she is taking over.” He said and I chuckled. “Oh yeah, definitely, and I’ll give them weekly uploads instead of your monthly shit.” I said and Colby grinned.

“What you’re going to the conjuring then? Staying a week there?” He asked and I pursed my lips. “Well I didn’t say that.”

The two laughed and Sam shut off the camera. “Heading to the forest, then?” He asked and we nodded. Suddenly my stomach made a growling noice and they stopped.

“We could get something to eat first?” Colby suggested and I shook my head. “Nahh, it’s fine, I’m not that hungry really,” I waved it off and kept walking.

“Are you sure? You haven’t eaten breakfast yet and it’s almost two in the afternoon,” Colby said and I just chuckled.

“I’m fine, really,” I smiled at him and kept walking, not missing the look the two of them exchanged before following me.

Truth to be told, the last time I ate would be the crackers from the day before, as I had just a bit in the afternoon after almost passing out.

Colby walked in the back, having taken over the camera from Sam and he recorded as we entered the forest.

I knew the walk would be about 20 minutes, so it wasn’t that bad, but I felt myself stress out when I became light headed.

Oh no, please, please not now.

Passing out has become normal now, the lack of food I’ve been consuming has been taking a toll on me. I never tell anyone, it’s my little secret, I didn’t need them to worry about me or feed me lies of how I was ‘beautiful’ because I know I’m not.

I stumbled and almost fell but steadied myself. “You alright there?” Sam turned around with a small grin and I gave him one back. “I’m fine,” I lied and we kept on walking, Cole shutting the camera off.

When the building came in sight he started it up again, and of course, as if fate had planned it, I fell and I noticed my consciousness slip away.

The last thing I felt was two arms around my waist and I was out.

I heard someone calling my name from afar and my eyes slowly opened.

“Oh, thank god, Sam! Sam she’s opened her eyes!” Colby called out. I slowly sat up. I was laying in the grass and I noticed Sam jogging over with his phone in his hands.

“Are you alright?” I looked at Colby who had a concerned look on his face and I nodded, trying to stand up but he put his hands on my shoulders.

“Woah, lets keep sitting down for a minute, love,” he said and I sat, rubbing my head. “How long was I out for?” I asked and Colby looked at his watch.

“Five minutes at least.” He told me. “Yeah, I tried calling for help, but there’s no service,” Sam said and I gave him a weirded out look.

“What help did you try to call?” I asked and he shrugged sheepishly. “Your mum, I thought maybe this had happened before,” he said and I sniffed.

“It happened a few times, but my mum doesn’t know, and don’t even think of telling her,” I said and the exchanged glances.

“You know what’s happening then?” Colby asked and I sighed. “I haven’t eaten in a moment, that’s probably it.” I confessed and Colby sighed.

“I told you that you should it this morning- when is the last time you ate?” He questioned. “Uhh, yesterday, some crackers,” I said and he clenched his teeth slightly.

“A decent meal,” he clarified and I bit my lip thinking back. “Tuesday, I think?” I said a bit uncertain. “That’s five days ago, Y/n!” He scolded and pursed my lips.

“Sorry,” I said in a small voice. Sam got his backpack of his shoulders and started to rummage trough it, pulling out an apple.

“Eat this,” he said and I took it from him, frowning at it a bit. “N/n,” he said and I sighed taking bite.

They made me sit for about ten minutes, and demanded I tell them why I wasn’t eating. With a bit of reluctance, I told them about how I felt, how I hated how I looked and that I felt like I was to fat.

The next twenty minutes where spent with them telling me all the things they liked about my look and my personality, giving me reasons to eat and demanding we go to a restaurant after this so I could eat a decent meal.

They also demanded I ate a desert, encouraging me to continue eating and not worry about my looks, because in their opinion, I looked beautiful.

At the end of the conversation, I had tears in my eyes, and I wiped them away, and I reassured them that it’d be fine to still film the video, as we all wanted to continue.

#sam and colby x reader #sam golbach x reader #sam golbach #sam and colby #colby brock x reader #colby brock #xplr club #xplr

[ghostieyanyan]

If you don’t mind, which yandere twst boys do you see being most likely to exploit a mentally exhausted prefect to kidnap them?

To clarify, I think it can be argued that the prefect would be absolutely done with NRC after six life-or-death situations due to the overblots on top of being forced to adapt to education system of another world and putting up with the quality of students at NRC. You can’t tell me that a school full of villains would treat the only magicless student well. That just screams prime opportunity to manipulate the prefect into leaving NRC to go somewhere “safer” with one of the boys.

Once again, I’m just curious about your thoughts so don’t feel pressured to respond!

yes yes yes!!!

poor perfect tired to the bone from crowly and the other students. if only there was a knight and shining armor that can come and save them.

No longer an accidentally post! But I mean it did help me finish it lol

~Mental-Exhausted!Mc~

Yan!Riddle x mc

Yan!Leona x mc

Yan!Jamil x mc

Yan!Lilia x mc

Warnings: yandere, kidnapping, drug use (shrink potion), abusive behavior, chains, collar, gag, parenthood (gender-neutual), gritting teeth(?) (I know some people hate it so ill put it in here), not a lot of proof-reads,

~~~~~

Riddle

yes, riddle was the first overblot (technically) and after his overblot, he felt awful about how he behaved. he was supposed to look after Heartslaybu but he ended up becoming his mother. he hated himself for that.

So now, not only is he taking better care of his dorm, with the help of his dorm. but whenever he sees you, he tries his best to check up on you.

How are you? Do you need help with any school assignments? etc.

they all had sweet intents at first but over time, you started to look drain.. like the life was sucked right out of you. when he asked ace and deuce, they confirmed that you were just tired of all the overblots and being crowley's lap dog. if only he knew how to help you...

at first he asked, trey and cater about how he should help you. they were mature enough to know, right?

cater, being cater, teased him on "having a crush on the perfect" or how he phrased it "oooohhh you are down bad!! lol" whatever that means...

Trey said that maybe ask the perfect if they do need help. but Riddle knows the perfect, they'll say they're fine even when they're not..

riddle felt lost and swallowed his pride as he dials his mother's number.

his mother was furious with the fact that riddle was facing an issue he cant fix himself but what she said about perfect shocked him.

"well.. maybe if this perfect isn't as perfect as their title, maybe they don't belong in Night Raven College!"

with that... the call ended.

now that he wasn't being held by his mother's strings, he saw red...! no one talks about his perfect like that! but.. she has a point.. (which makes him more frustrated) if perfect is miserable here... maybe they shouldn't be attending NRC. but where would they go...?

when he thought about that, he realized he didn't really want to be away from you... you mean too much to him.

so later that day, he requested you to join him in his room, he need to talk to you. you agreed cause why would you be cautious with someone you trust, plus you were too tired to worry about how strange the request was. he gave you tea and asked if you were okay.. you said yes, just stressed with some classes and drank you tea. it tasted... off.

you feel yourself shrinking.. you were shrinking!

you looked at riddle and he was just smiling at you! he picked you up and placed you into a tea pot.

"it'll be okay, my dear. once i graduate and get us a nice home, we'll live our happy lives away from this stress and... toxic poison. But for now, you'll have to behave. i love you, my dear"

~~~~~

Leona

Whether you noticed him or not, Leona watches you run back and forth, from hallway to hallway. Kinda like a mouse running around for food but also staying hidden. Sometimes your running around helps him sleep or just ease him to a zen.

He'd normally wouldn't bat an eye because you're just a lap dog for that crow. But after time has past. He watched as you get slower, more exhausted. like you're pushing to prove something. It ercked him more than he would like. It hit too close to home for him.

When he finally was able to approach you on the matter, you looked like your soul was taken from you. Something within just snapped. He had enough of this. He made the call and suddenly, savanaclaw students came to your side and dragged you to leona's room. If you try to resist, Leona lucky told them to not hurt you too badly. But accidents happens. With their rough handling, you blacked out.

You wake up with a pretty collar around your neck and a chain attach to it? You look around and this is not your ramshackle room. You tried to sit up for a better look and get quick pulled down by the chain collar. It nearly broke your neck! But Leona would say you're being dramatic.

"Quick moving, im trying to sleep.."

You looked and saw Leona. He was laying on your chest and his legs were holding your legs down. He was like a strange weighted blanket. He wasn't in his school uniform but looks like he's in home attire?

"Where are we, leona..?"

You said, scared cause your literally in the hands of a lion that could kill you really quick..

He ears twitched and he looked up at you, bored. But he let out a smirk.

"Were home~"

It took you a minute to process what he said... home? Apparently your confused was evident on your face and leona let out a long sigh. He moved or above you, pining you down.

"Were at Sunset Savanna palace and WE are both gonna be staying here until I can trust you'll be a good obedient herbivore and stay by my side."

You were lost for words and unconsciously started to struggle under leona. Trying to push him off, kicking your legs, he got really annoyed when you accidentally pinched his tail with the bed and your foot.

His retaliation was to slam you down, knocking the wind out of your lungs. As you were gasping for air, he bit you really hard on your throat. You let out a silent scream. You thought you were going to die. This was your last moment of life.

Leona eventually let's go but quickly replacing his fangs with his hand.

"You WILL be obedient... do I make myself clear.."

That wasn't a question.. it was a demand.

~~~~~

Jamil

Jamil hardly noticed you.. PERIOD.

He's busy not only taking care of scarabia but also their housewarden. While his housewarden takes the credit.. he hated it. And the fact his housewarden is so happy go lucky to him too. Makes his blood boil!!

Jamil truly believed that no one would feel his pain, his struggles.. because everyone sees Kalim "success" before anything!

You and Jamil were in the housewarden meeting, well on the outside of the office during the meeting. Jamil had to be there because Kalim and you were there for Crowley...

You both had a quick moment until you asked him hows he been? He lends his head back against the wall and sighs. You laugh at his actions.

"I get that, hehe"

His eye twitched.

"Do you now..?"

"Heh.. I really do. I'm here for Crowley, even tho he's the Headmage. He's like a spoiled brat with responsibility... and HE knowing more about this world, and the work he does for it, more than I do. But nooo... he still gives it to me!"

Jamil stares at you as you vent about your stress and struggles in NRC. He honestly thought that your life is harder than his! How on the seven do you-?

The doors to the office opens and you and jamil both stand up. The other housewardens walked off and kalim ran to jamil, like a parent picking up their kid in kindergarten.

Jamil sighs, seeing kalim's face makes him exhausting... he quickly looks at you, not turning his head to not make it obvious. You were walking into Crowley's office as he hands you a big stack of papers. He practically saw the light in your eyes fade... he HAS to do something.. but what?

A few days past and he just watched you get more exhausted. The more he watches you the more his feelings for you grows. And the more he watched you get degraded the more he wants to set the world on fire for you..

You couldn't hold a conversation as long as you use to now! What is Crowley making you do?

His hand balled into fist. Then he get an idea.. he's always wanted to do this but never thought about it, there will be come changes to the plan with you in it but it could work!

It was in the evening and he stopped by the Ramshackle dorm. With shaking hands he knocked. He can't believe he's gonna do it.

You answer and he quick took out a cloth from his pocket and covered your mouth. Your struggles were pointless with his strength and your muffled screams wasn't going to be heard by anyone since you practically lived in the middle of nowhere. You went limp and he smile grew.

You woke up, chained, gaged, and blindfolded. You didn't know where you were you were so scared.. but you hear foot steps...

"Good morning, my little desert flower~ im sorry I had to contain you like this, I can't risk anymore seeing you. But once we leave the Isle of Sages, ill let you see."

~~~~~

Lilia

Lilia has been watching you since that first day you came here. How much chaos your presence cause, not including Grims presence, was amazing.

He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel something for you after that first day.

Whenever you're doing anything, he watches. And if hes busy, he has his bats watch you instead. They'll report any and everything about you. Including the dark circles appear under your eyes.

To say he was a little pissed... was an understandment. How dare the Crow hurt someone he cared for..

Lilia had half a mind to just get rid of Crowley with a big display of his remand.. but his kids will be scar so probably not.

He'd would think about if for a bit and told himself, why not just take you to live in Briar Valley? You could live there and he'd support you and care for you. You have a caring personal type with how much you take care of those first years.

You'll make a perfect parent...

Lilia stopped by Ramshackle dorm for a "surprised visit". You thought his strange behavior was just lilia being a strange guy? Meanwhile lilia felt like he was young again when he's with you. He felt shy and anxious. He was all fidgety and not making 100% eye contact with you.

Oh by the seven, you stir something within him and its not unwelcomed.

"Lilia? I don't mean to be rude but.. umm... why are you here..? You kinda came at a bad time.. Crowley has some paper work he wants me to fill out for him.."

Lilia fidgeting stop and if you had his super hear, you'd hear him grit his teeth for a moment.

He flips around suddenly and gets a unsettling smile.

"I came because I just remembered a old story and I wanted to tell someone before it slips my mind!"

You stared at Lilia but nodded for him to continue.

"Do you remember when I told you about the story of the Thorn Fairy? And how she put a curse on this cute little human~?"

With every word he spoke, he got closer to you.. you tried to make some distance but it quickly was put to a halt when lilia grabbed your arm.

"L-ilia.. You're hurting me.."

You tried to pull away but nothing can compete with Lilia's strength.

"Did I also tell you that with skill and focus, a powerful mage, can change the effect of such a powerful spell~?"

You're particularly trembling at this point. He got up really close to you and he shows you a small sewing needle.

"I promise, it won't be too long. Just long enough for everyone to stop looking for you~"

{I didn’t give Lilia an art piece because I drew something similar already}

#twst fanart #twst #twst headcanons #twst wonderland #disney twst #yandere twst #art #digital art #disney twisted wonderland #twst x reader