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#I do not want to go back to school jfc
bi-functional · 2 years
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In response to this ask to @tswwwit you know I love a good meme redraw
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quatregats · 2 years
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Gifted kid burnout this gifted kid burnout that where’s the representation for gifted kids who never burned out in the school system but now that they have to function in normal human society they’re going to break :’))
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heartyearning · 2 years
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one day, just ONE day without getting stopped in the street and being roped into smth i dont want to be roped into . what exactly about me is it that screams ‘this man is gullible’ bc whatever it is it sure is right 
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birdpal · 1 year
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wow this is nostalgic haha
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moni-logues · 5 days
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What the cat dragged in
Pairing: Lee Know x reader (afab, she/her)
Genre: smut, angst, strangers-to-lovers (kinda); 5+1
Summary: You followed Minho home because you had nowhere else to go. Then you kept following... all the way into his heart, but not his bed.
aka five times you and Minho don't fuck and one time you do.
Content: reader is 16yo in the first section (nothing sexual or romantic happens but there are suggestions of it), couple of references to human/sex trafficking; the gang are useless crime idiots but this is only barely relevant; interrupted foreplay; attempted car sex; unprotected piv sex; fingering; a lot of kissing tbh
Word count: 13.5k
A/N: SO this whole thing actually started HERE in JUNE (jfc, I thought I'd been thinking about this since like, October or something but, no no, a full ten months!!!!). It has drifted from that somewhat but that was its beginning and, honestly, I'm kind of stoked about this fic. I really like how it came out and it's my FIRST MINHO. It's taken me SO long to get around to my bestest evil catdad.
Huge thanks to @violetsiren90 for beta-ing! and also for reading it half-finished when I really needed some encouragment. AND for the title
*~*~*
FIRST 
“Why don’t you fuck off?” 
The voice came from behind you. It was low and cold and threatening. It was directed at Shindong, the man in front of you, whom you were sure was this close to offering to take you home. You whipped around to see who had uttered it. 
Your immediate thought was that he was too short and too slight to be walking up with that level of aggression. Your second thought was interrupted by the spark that shot up your arm when he grabbed your hand. You’d have pulled it back, but his grip was solid and your arm didn’t budge.  
“What the fuck do you want, Minho?” your companion replied, all the charm sliding off his face, replaced with a loathing, arrogant sneer.  
“I want you to fuck off.” 
“She yours? Might want to keep a closer eye on her; she was just about to come home with me.” 
The stranger’s hand squeezed yours, so hard it started to hurt. He offered nothing in response.  
Both men continued to stare at each other. Shindong had inches on Minho – both height and breadth – and you couldn’t believe your eyes when you saw him hesitating. He flicked his eyes between you and Minho.  
“What if I want to fight you for her?” 
“What if I told you she’s not legal?” 
Shindong hesitated, moved just a fraction backwards, no longer leaning in, looming over the two of you. He rolled his eyes and gave a heartless chuckle. 
“Not worth the fucking bother,” he muttered as he walked away.  
Minho, still a stranger to you, still holding your hand, who hadn’t even looked your way, pulled you sharply by said hand, storming off and taking you with him. You followed him into one of the warehouse’s many dark corners. He kicked out the couple who were two clothing items shy of a citation for public indecency, and only then did he let you go. Only then did he turn his dark, flaming eyes on you. 
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you asked.  
Shindong had been your lifeline. What did this guy think he was playing at? 
Your vehemence took him off-guard, surprise flashing across his face, until his scowl returned, worse than before. You understood now why he made Shindong hesitate. His gaze was fierce, penetrating, his jaw set, his mouth a taut, grim line. You would never show your hand to anyone, but a cold droplet of fear slithered down your spine. You straightened it, rolled your shoulders back, lifted your head. You wouldn’t let him intimidate you. 
“Do you know him?” he asked, voice still low, still threatening. 
Not personally. Not until that evening. But people like him came with a reputation that preceded them. A reputation that you were relying upon being based in fact. A reputation that had spread all around your school and beyond, but that you had heard from a source close to the truth. It was close enough that you were able to find him here, in a part of town you’d never been to. It was close enough that you were able to pick Shindong out from this crowd. Close enough that when you approached him and he laughed at you – young, naïve, foolish, all of those things you were sure he thought – you were able to drop his cousin’s name and he suddenly took you seriously. That was what you had been hoping for. A connection was all you needed to keep you covered for a night, at least. Just one would be something. 
And then this guy showed up. 
“I was about to.” 
Minho’s top lip curled, just a fraction, his nose barely wrinkling with the movement, but you got his meaning. Disgust. He could be as disgusted as he liked; that wasn’t your problem. Your problem was that his disgust had led him to chase away your only lead.  
Or was he? Was Shindong your only option? 
You changed tack. Realised that maybe you had another now. Minho, whoever the fuck he was, had approached you as if he knew you and scared off the competition. That must have been it. Despite the way he glowered at you, absolutely no interest or desire lurking behind his dark eyes, you figured you had nothing left to lose.  
You relaxed a little, pouted your lips, played up to the damsel in distress he might have thought you were. 
“But if he’s so awful, I guess I can only thank you,” you said, making your voice soft, your eyes a little wider. You lifted your lips in a tiny, shy smile and then put a hand to them, your thumb and index finger tugging a little on your bottom lip, hoping it made you look small, nervous, sweet.  
He gave you no reaction. He continued to glare, his stance unchanged, unmoving. So you moved. You stepped towards him: shy, little bird steps, until you were so close that he moved backwards. 
“Thanks for looking out for me. Your name’s Minho, right?” 
His eyes tightened minutely. He didn’t reply.  
“I’d like to thank you properly,” you said, sliding your body into his, pressing just one finger against his chest. You fluttered your lashes up at him. 
His face changed immediately. Eyes wide, mouth dropping, and he was stumbling backwards, pressing himself against the wall. 
“What the fuck are you doing? What are you, fifteen?” 
Embarrassment licked your cheeks like flames and your scowl returned. 
“I’m sixteen!” 
“Wow, big age. My mistake. By all means, let’s fuck, Sixteen.” 
His sarcasm was biting but you hadn’t given yourself up yet. 
“Don’t you want to?” you asked, innocently. “You must have sent Shindong away for a reason. If not this, then what?” 
He let out a sigh so aggrieved it was almost a shout. He rolled his eyes.  
“Jesus Christ, where are your parents?” he asked, but it was muttered, almost under his breath and you didn’t know if you were supposed to answer. You did anyway. 
“Dead.” 
His lack of reaction grated. He didn’t flinch. There was no surprise, no guilt on his face. He had robbed you of Shindong and now he had robbed you of your fun: getting a reaction out of people as a poor, orphaned, little Annie was as close as you got these days. Then again, he wasn’t a well-meaning aunt or nosy teacher. He knew what this place was; he knew, or at least knew of, Shindong. Maybe your hand-grenade was, here, little more than a snap. 
“And this is your great life plan? Offering sexual favours to predators?”  
He gestured widely to the room behind you, and you could only assume he did not mean to include himself in that group.  
Actually, it was your plan. Kind of… Insofar as you had any sort of plan at all. You would not be telling him that. You kept your mouth shut tight and jaw clenched, refusing to look down, to be the one to break the eye contact.  
“You know he’s a fucking bad guy,” he said, more softly than he had said anything so far but the hard edge remained.  
“And what are you, my hero?” 
“Absolutely fucking not. I do not want to have anything to do with whatever mess you are making of your life, but I’m not about to let that cunt take off with a child.” 
“I am not a child!” you shouted, right in his face.  
He took it, impassive, unimpressed even.  
“That’s exactly what a child would say.” 
You wanted to hit him. You wanted to smash him in his beautifully sharp jaw, or break that perfect, delicate nose of his. You were just about not stupid enough to try. How did he even know you were young? You knew you didn’t look it; you were always getting told you looked older than you were. How did he know? Why did he care? 
“Go on then,” you said, darkly. “Leave. If I’m not your fucking problem, why don’t you fuck off?” 
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t move.  
“Worried I’ll get murdered?”  
You lifted your hands to your open mouth, eyes widened, a mockery of fear.  
His face and tone were flat when he responded.  
“There are things worse than death.” 
Then he pushed past you and out of the door.  
You took one shaky breath and walked after him before you could talk yourself out of it. You decided that, one way or another, this guy owed you and it was time to collect. 
You followed him, not too closely, but not exactly hiding it, for over a mile. You wondered, at one point, if he was trying to lose you, if he was actually heading to his destination or just trying to outlast you. You’d show him. You were a long-distance runner at school; you were extremely confident you could keep up. 
So confident, in fact, so determined were you not to lose him, that you were too slow to notice him slowing, to notice him stopping, to very nearly not stop yourself walking into him.  
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked, not turning to look at you. 
“I’m walking here.” 
“Stop following me.” 
“I’m not following you.” 
He raised his eyes skyward. He stood for a moment and you stood, too, waiting for him to continue – walking or talking, you didn’t know which. He finally turned around and looked at you, everything about him a little softer than before. Not soft, but softer.  
“You can’t follow me,” he told you slowly, emphatically. “I am not looking after you. I am not your fath-“ 
“I don’t have a fucking father.” 
He scoffed. 
“Yeah, that much is very clear, Sixteen.” 
“I’m not sixteen!” 
He frowned. 
“That’s what you told me.” 
“That’s not my fucking name! Stop saying it like I’m a child. How old are you anyway?” 
“Old enough to know better.”  
“What does that mean?” 
“Go home, Sixteen.” 
“I don’t have a home.” 
“Well you can’t have mine.” 
He turned on his heel and continued walking, a little faster this time, increasing his pace to a jog as he crossed the road. You knew he hoped you wouldn’t be able to follow, that the flashing green man would disappear before you could make it, but you’d been underestimated before.  
After another mile or so, you saw him take his phone from his pocket and put it to his ear. You couldn’t quite hear what he was saying but you thought it sounded like Japanese. Was he Japanese?  
It hadn’t missed you, the knowledge that you had no knowledge of this man. You understood that you were, as far as you knew, in as much danger following him home as you had been going with Shindong. But you literally had no other options. It was follow this guy somewhere or wander around on the street all night; it was too cold to stay out. You hadn’t thought beyond that when you’d left your house earlier that day. Hadn’t thought much at all, except about getting out.  
Now you were out. Mission accomplished. And you had no idea what to do next.  
You almost missed him ducking into a narrow side street, but you caught the door he rushed through just before it shut. He disappeared from view through another door, off to the left of the dingy, dimly lit corridor you found yourself in. You stalked up to it – it wasn’t even fully closed – but something made you hesitate.  
Suddenly the fear that you had been suppressing all night raised its head. Was this a lion’s den? A serpents’ nest? Was Minho playing some kind of long game, saving you from Shindong so you would trust him, so you would follow him here, so he could…? 
“Are you going to fucking stand out there all night?” you heard a voice call from inside. It had to be Minho’s but you wouldn’t have bet on it.  
You fixed your face, your scowl reappearing, and kicked the door open with excessive force. 
It was just a bar. Just him, sitting on a stool with a beer in his hand, and one other guy, standing opposite, looking at you with his eyebrows raised in the way a parent does when they catch their child doing something naughty. 
“You break that door, I’m going to make you pay for it,” he said, in an accent that you knew wasn’t local.  
And, just like a defiant child, you slammed it shut without breaking eye contact. He turned to Minho. 
“Thanks, man. You had to bring home a fucking streetrat.” 
“I am not a streetrat,” you spat. 
“No?” Minho chimed in. “Then where’s your home?” 
“Fuck off.” 
“I really wish you would.” 
You sat down in a booth just off to your left and stared him down.  
“She can’t stay here,” the stranger said to Minho, as if you were no longer there.  
“I didn’t bring her; she just came.” 
He, the newest stranger, looked between you and Minho for several seconds. He was looking at Minho when he spoke again. 
“One night. That’s it. And she’s your responsibility.”  
He heaved a box full of empty glass bottles into his arms and wandered away, through a different door, mumbling something about ‘strays’.  
“Who was that?” you demanded as Minho continued to sip at his beer.  
You realised that you hadn’t actually been introduced to him either. And he hadn’t asked for your name. You wondered if he would now. 
“None of your fucking business,” he answered, finally moving from the stool to walk behind the bar.  
He opened the cash register and took bags from a cubby just below it. He produced a tiny pencil from his pocket and tore off a strip of the receipt roll. He took out the cash and started to count. You watched his lips move silently as he flicked quickly through the notes, pausing to drop a stack onto the bar and write a number down. He picked up the next stack and repeated.  
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned, not looking up, not even, apparently, pausing in his counting. “Even if you got your urchin mitts on it, you wouldn’t make it to the door.” 
You believed him, but you weren’t planning some kind of move. You didn’t need his money. You were just watching.  
You watched until all the notes and all the coins were accounted for, until they had been put into bags and those bags into a box and Minho turned to follow his friend. You stood from your seat and went after him.   
There were two doors, you realised. Minho took the left. It led to an office. The other guy must’ve taken the right because the room was empty except for furniture and, in the corner, a safe. Minho dumped the box before it and turned to you. 
“Turn around.” 
“Worried I’ll crack the code?” you asked with your eyes rolling back in your head. 
“Just turn around.” 
You did as you were told without a fight because, at that point, there was nowhere else to go. You couldn’t admit defeat and walk out of there; you weren’t sure that Minho wouldn’t make you do just that. It was a knife-edge, being the obnoxious, vile brat that you were. You’d stormed past boundaries before but, well, look where it got you. You were tired and worried enough now to decide you would stop pushing your luck. It had been stretched far enough already. 
There was a second of silence before you heard the beeping of the buttons pressed and the shuffling of bags, the clink of coins, the thunk of a bigger, metallic something against the walls of the safe. He didn’t tell you when he was finished, didn’t say you could turn back around. He just walked past you, out of the office, turning the light off as he went. As soon as you were out of the door, he shut and locked it.  
You followed him back to the bar and he did the same thing: turned off the lights and held a door for you (not politely, not because he was being nice), following you through it and locking this one behind him, too. You walked to the end of the corridor and he gestured you down some wooden stairs that creaked as if they would break under your weight. He turned the corridor light off, too, and locked the door at the top of the steps.  
This was it. You were locked in. There were at least two locks between you and escape. When Minho shoved past you to the left and opened yet another door, your stomach sank a little further. Three locked doors. He didn’t hold this one for you but he didn’t slam it in your face either, so you rolled your shoulders back, put on your game face and walked through.  
You almost regretted it when you saw where it led. It was possibly the worst place you had ever seen. It wasn’t messy, but there was something dirty about the room anyway. Outdoor furniture inside; everything vaguely brown in a way that you didn’t think it had been fresh out of the box; everything tired and worn and sagging; the naked lightbulb dim and humming as it shone; the fridge, scratched and dented and shoved into a corner, also hummed, managing to sound as well as look tired. It was bleak. It was grey. It made you feel like things were crawling on you and you’d only just stepped foot in it.  
You half expected your feet to stick to the floor when you took a few steps forward. They didn’t but the carpet was so old and worn that you had no idea what colour it was originally; in places, you could see the floorboards clearly through the threads. 
Minho pointed to the sofa.  
“There,” was all he said.  
Then he disappeared out of the room. You gingerly sat on the edge, wondering if you should be more concerned about your health or your safety. Maybe you were sheltered here, but you pictured a thousand and one diseases squirming on the cushions. It wasn’t fair to, because you could see that it was cleaned. The room wasn’t filthy; there were no crumbs or water rings on the coffee table; there was no rubbish littering the floor; the sink was empty and a stack of plates and bowls stood beside it, washed if not yet dried. Minho was clearly diligent.  
Minho and whoever else lived here. There were too many doors leading off this room for him to be here alone.  
Your curiosity was stopped in its tracks when he reappeared with a pillow and a towel. He threw the pillow wordlessly at one end of the sofa and then he raised the towel a little. 
“I don’t have any blankets. Don’t get cold.” 
You scoffed a laugh and were grateful that he ignored it. You weren’t indignant; you weren���t being a brat this time. You were dismayed. You couldn’t believe it. A house with no spare blankets. You were going to sleep under a towel. You glanced around you for a final time, tears pricking in your eyes, fingers at your lips, picking nervously. You weren’t going to die here, you told yourself. Probably. You were probably not going to die here and that was all you needed.  
You stood up, turned off the light, tested the door handle (not sure if you wanted it to be locked or unlocked), then returned to the sofa. You took off your shoes, took your bag from your back and hugged it tightly to your chest. You lay in the dark, in a stranger’s horrible house, alone, tired, more vulnerable than you would ever admit. You cried silently, reluctantly grateful for the towel, until you fell asleep.   
SECOND 
“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to everyone! Happy birthday to you!” 
You only got one birthday a year. The whole group of you. There wasn’t enough to stretch to everyone getting an individual birthday, an individual cake, a day off. So the middle day of the year, 2nd July, was chosen and you all had a birthday together.  
One cake, one candle each, six people blowing them out. Most unsanitary, but, by now, there wasn’t much you hadn’t shared so a little spit didn’t even register.  
You were too drunk by far, which was stupid really. It wasn’t even your first time drinking legally (because your real birthday wasn’t until later in the year), so there was no reason for you to behave as if you had never had a drink before. You should have learnt a little self-control.  
But it was your birthdays. So you kept having one more and one more and one more. As did everyone else.  
“Nineteen!” Minho called as he fell into the booth next to you.  
“I thought I was Sixteen?” 
He shrugged. 
“You do still act like it.” 
You shoved him, almost hard enough to push him off his seat completely. He shoved you back. 
“Shut up, Minnie.” 
He narrowed his eyes at you, plotting death for using the nickname he loathed above all others, and you sent a simpering smile back at him.  
“You’re a little squirt, anyone ever tell you that?” 
You rolled your eyes. 
“You, literally all the time, because you are for some reason desperate to sound like the oldest grandpa in the room.” 
He let out a growling sort of cry, dramatic because he’d also had too much to drink. Then he stood. 
“BYE, Sixteen!” 
If someone didn’t know the two of you, it would seem as if nothing had changed in the time since you met: both antagonistic, unlikable, as hard as you could make yourselves, forced together and barely tolerating it.  
Those who did know you, however, knew that things were very different now. Minho had, reluctantly, taken responsibility for you and, when you had grown up just enough to realise what that had meant, you felt all your hard resolve melt.  
They had very little, this ragtag bunch of kids (barely older than you) but they shared everything between them. Never quite enough to go around, money from legitimate enterprises never stretching far enough and having to be supported by money from less than legitimate means. You were a liability. In every sense. The only girl, a stranger, certainly not (at that time) a criminal. But Minho took responsibility and the others let you in.  
When you had learnt to see past your own nose, you saw the myriad ways in which they took care of each other. The silent, invisible way Minho cared for his friends. For you. You hadn’t forgotten the sting of electricity you’d felt when he held your hand way back when. Before you’d even seen him, before you knew his name, before any of this. You felt it all the time now. You were a live wire for him.  
No one in the group was stupid enough to refer to you as siblings or even joke that you acted like them. Your feelings for Minho were your most closely guarded secret but that didn’t mean everyone didn’t know. You were pretty sure even Minho himself knew. Not that he would ever act on it. He pretended not to notice, you thought. You had pushed close to the edge of being kicked out enough times to know that some things were still precarious. To know that he would never risk his weird family by acknowledging there was anything more than friendship between you. If it even was between you. He had given you very little reason to believe your feelings were reciprocated. So you did your best to ignore them.  
They became a fact of life. Like the fact that Minho was the only one Chan trusted to count the cash (not because the others weren’t trustworthy; they just weren’t accurate). Like the fact that Chan had the final say on everything. Like the fact that he would never abuse that authority and act for anything other than the wellbeing of the entire group. It just was.  
And it wasn’t like you were stupid enough to pine. You had some pride. Plenty, in fact.  
You stood from the booth and sauntered to the bar where your sometime-boyfriend, Johnny, was getting another drink.  
“Babe,” you whined, draping yourself over his back, hooking your chin over his shoulder.  
“Babe,” he whined back, copying, mocking.  
“Entertain me, I’m bored.” 
“It’s your party.”  
You pouted and forced him to join you on the makeshift dancefloor. You refused to notice that Minho left it as soon as you joined, his face dropping, looking only at Johnny and never once pleased about it.  
Chan had cut off the booze supply hours ago and the sun was thinking about raising its head above the horizon, which meant that, far from being wasted and happy and giddy and passing out in your bed, your hangover was already crawling in and you were tired and irritable. Johnny had pissed you off sometime before the booze dried up and then pissed off entirely before you’d begun to sober up, so you’d spent the smallest hours of the morning making your bad mood everyone else’s problem.  
Everyone except Minho. Because whilst you were always determined, at these moments, to needle him, to want to get under his skin, to want to scrape it back and spit on it, he was never there. He managed to avoid your venom and, even when he didn’t, seemed immune. He would just slow-blink at you as if he were looking through you and turn away. It boiled your blood and he knew it.  
You stomped downstairs to the same shithole basement you’d walked into two years ago. Everyone else had either left or gone to bed already, you thought. You expected it to be empty. It wasn’t. 
“Fuck sake, Mouse,” you spat, using your usual nickname, his preferred one (… preferred being too strong a term; it was the one he allowed you to use without retaliation). “Why are you sitting on your own like a fucking loser?” 
“You know he treats you like a fucking loser?” 
He turned to lean over the back of the sofa, looking tired under his eyes but energetic within them.  
“Fuck off,” you returned. “As if you give a shit who I date.” 
“Date? That’s what you call it?” He scoffed, deliberately, exaggeratedly, as if you wouldn’t otherwise have recognised his scorn. “He treats you like dirt.” 
“You would know.”  
He was on his feet and in front of you before you could blink.  
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”  
You’d had about enough of it, you decided at that moment. Not enough sleep, too much alcohol, and just enough of this bullshit. You grabbed the front of his T-shirt and pulled him with force towards you. You took him by the back of the neck and kissed him, hard and like you meant it. Because you did. It only took him a second to push you back, hands firm on your shoulders, holding you away from him. His face had lost his usual mask – the blank, passive, flat-eyed one that he used to stare people out with unnatural stillness – but he was still keeping you out; it was guarded, flashes in his eyes being stamped out with every blink, his jaw held tight and his mouth shut.  
“That’s what I fucking mean, Minho,” you hissed.  
“How dare you?” he hissed back, voice so low in his throat you almost couldn’t hear it. “You have no fucking idea.”  
His blinks weren’t quick enough this time to hide all the anger burning in his eyes.  
“No idea of what? What?!” 
His lip curled and he let you go. He let his guard down around you more than he should have: shrugged you off and turned his back on you. You took both palms and pushed him. He tumbled forward, catching his foot on a side table, pulling it down with him as he hit the floor. Cat-like in his reflexes, he was on his feet before the table had stopped rocking. He charged straight at you and continued until you were pressed up against the door, until he was pressed up against you.  
“You want a kiss?” he asked and every part of you should have been screaming yes, because you did.  
You did want a kiss, but nothing about this was how you wanted it. It was a threat, not an offer. You’d been threatened with worse. You jutted your chin out a little, always standing up, never backing down. 
“You going to give me one?” 
His eyes flicked towards your lips, hovered there a second, like he was really thinking about it. They stayed there a little longer and doubt was picking up speed on its race to your consciousness. You thought he wouldn’t. You thought he would. You still couldn’t predict his behaviour. You thought you had him pinned and then he flipped you. You always thought you had him on the ropes, but you never really did.  
You were impatient, tiring of this, doubt and insecurity and embarrassment swelling up inside you and you opened your mouth to tell him to go away, to fuck off and die, to do something vile to himself. It was at that moment that his eyes met yours again, for a split second that sent a streak of ice through your blood, and then his mouth was on yours.  
You had never once looked a gift horse in the mouth, but even if you had wanted to, even if you had decided before he did it that you would push him off, return his rejection, you couldn’t possibly have done it now. His lips were soft, his hands still tight around your arms. He crowded you further against the door, your bodies pressing together as he swiped his tongue against your bottom lip, asking for entry. You gave it to him. Your hands snaked up his chest and into his hair; it was softer than you’d expected, silky. For a moment, you were disarmed by it. Soft. He never let his softness show if he could help it. Only rarely. Only when he felt safe enough to let his guard down did it ever come creeping out from its hiding place. But here it was, sprouting from the top of his head. Here it was, pressed against your lips, brushing your tongue. You felt weak at the knees. 
As far as kisses go, it was the best you’d had. Fire and ice fighting: goosebumps erupting on your skin as it flushed hot, making you shiver. His mouth was warm and wet and sweet and you were desperate for more, knowing that he was kissing you just right and that you weren’t doing the same. You were too eager, too greedy, too needy. This wouldn’t be enough. Couldn’t be enough. Just his lips on yours, his tongue rolling with yours, his hands still pinning your sides. You couldn’t stop here. You had to have him. All.  
You whined when he pulled back, when his grip on you loosened, and you opened your eyes expecting his to be soft and liquid, to be those sweet, round boba eyes he didn’t show enough of.  
They were hard and flat. He moved away from you in one, long step and back was that impassive blankness he loved so much. 
“Happy fucking birthday,” he said. 
He stalked off to his bedroom and shut the door.  
You stayed, glued to the front door, shaking. With anger, probably. With embarrassment, maybe. With something akin to heartbreak, but you would never admit it. The roaring in your ears, the screaming of invective at both yourself and Minho in your head so loud that you didn’t hear the sound of a key in the lock, weren’t aware that someone was trying to get in until they were shoving at the door, pushing you with it. 
“What the fuck?” came a quiet whine from the other side of it as he slowly pushed you away and got the door open. “Why were you trying to keep me out?” 
Jisung’s hamster cheeks were full of kimbap, the other half of the roll still in his hand, and his eyes were wide with that cute, pitiful look he carried off so perfectly. 
You ignored him. You stomped into your bedroom and slammed the door as hard as you could. 
THIRD 
Despite having your own bedroom (graciously offered up by Changbin and very ungraciously accepted by you), privacy in the small basement flat was an issue. Which is why you were huddled in the farthest corner of it, fists stuffed in your mouth, crying as quietly as you could in the dead of night.  
You lived with five men, but you had not yet found someone to date who would take the threat of them seriously. They did make threats, on occasion, when they had to. Because you had not yet found a man who could treat you as anything more than shit but you had, apparently, found the least bothered and most unfazed men in the city. The one before last had barely flinched when all five of them had battered down his door to come for you, when you had finally managed to get a message out that he was keeping you there.  
You never found out what happened to him. You didn’t ask and no one told you.  
This one hadn’t been that bad. That was the problem. You had thought he was nice. You had thought (as you had so many times before) that he might actually be the first to treat you right.  
You were wrong. So, you were crying in the corner of your room. You didn’t always cry. In fact, you didn’t often cry. Rarely, even. It meant that, when you did, the floodgates opened and you found it hard to stop. You found it almost impossible to breathe, desperately snatching air between sobs. Your head was already pounding, your face aching. It was total and complete the way it overtook you. So much so that you didn’t notice the presence of another person until they sat down beside you. 
You gasped, as much as you could amongst your shaking, shallow breaths, and were only slightly comforted that it was him. He said nothing. He pulled you towards him and held you like that until the storm had passed. 
You continued to sit in silence as your tears dried on your face, as your heartrate settled and your breathing became even. He didn’t make a move to let you go and you didn’t make one either. You were tired. You were sad. You were, though you wouldn’t admit it, a little bit heartbroken. This bit of comfort was exactly what you wanted.  
You didn’t want him to say anything. You didn’t want to hear it. That you’d done it again. That you’d never learn. That, somehow, you were gullible and easy to fool despite the fact that you had been hardening yourself against vulnerability of every kind since you were a child. That men just found a way to get beyond your defences—that bad men found a way. The good ones didn’t find you at all.  
“His loss,” was what he said. 
You lifted your head, tears still clinging to your lashes, drying on your cheeks. He had that look on his face that he saved for you: the soft, sweet one he gave you when you’d earnt it or when you needed it. The one that made your insides curdle, that even now made your heart skip a beat, that you wanted to fall into forever, that had sealed your fate so many years ago now. He blinked slowly at you, cat-like as always, and brushed your hair from your face.  
You opened your mouth to speak but nothing came. Your voice was trapped in your throat because he was still looking at you like that but his eyes kept flicking down, then back up, then down again at longer and longer intervals until he closed them completely and brought his lips to yours.  
You didn’t have to think twice. Didn’t have to think at all. Your body did the thinking for you. Your hands pushed into his hair and your legs pushed you up so you could slot them down either side of his hips. His hands found your waist and then the soft skin on the other side of your t-shirt. 
This was nothing like the first time. You remembered it all too well: the electricity, the anger, the volcano of feelings you’d tried to suppress rumbling and threatening to erupt, to blow the lid off the equilibrium you’d found. The hunger, the desperation, your own neediness spoiling it all.  
You weren’t desperate anymore, for his approval, for his love, for whatever he would give you. You wanted it all, would lay yourself on the floor and kiss his feet if he asked, with no hesitation, but you always knew he wouldn’t ask. You’d got used to that.  
Except now he was kissing you – he had kissed you – and his hands were squeezing at your waist and it was slow. Controlled. Deliberate. There was nothing accidental about the way his tongue rolled over yours, the way his teeth bit at your bottom lip, the way his hands pulled you lower on his lap, pulled you closer to him until there wasn’t so much as a breath of air between you.  
“Mouse,” you murmured, quietly into his mouth. 
He shook his head minutely, a tiny hum swallowed by you when he pressed your lips together again. No talking. Fine. You didn’t need to talk. If he kept kissing you, kept touching you, you wouldn’t need to utter another word again. But you couldn’t stop the little gasp when he sank his teeth into the sensitive skin of your neck, the moan rising in your throat when he ran his tongue over the same spot, hurting then soothing. Like always. 
It made your brain turn fuzzy, static wavering in your mind, as all your conscious thoughts turned to liquid, melting into Minho’s mouth, swallowed down by him, eaten whole.  
Then the front door slammed hard. 
“Guys!” Chan shouted, in a way that he never did.  
You heard him pounding on doors, opening them, starting with Changbin and Hyunjin’s on the right.  
You sprang apart like two north magnets, instinctively repelled by one another, just in time for Chan to burst through the door and scan the room for you, too wired, too stressed to register that it might have been weird for you to be sitting on the floor like you were, certainly not noticing your kiss-bitten lips or heavy breathing or the way Minho’s hair was ruffled like it had just had a fist in it.  
“We’ve got to go,” Chan announced. “Like, right fucking now.” 
FOURTH 
No one wanted to up the ante. No one wanted to start getting involved with the organised crime lot. Your crime was… disorganised. It was local. It was just you doing the things you needed to, skirting around the law to survive. It wasn’t really crime, not if you squinted hard enough. Then the police raided the bar (which was illegal in pretty much every way that mattered) and you had nowhere left to go.  
There was just enough of the trust your parents left you (which you got access to at 21) to secure a new apartment (one that was not underground) and a small buy-in with a group of much larger, older, more experienced criminals. There was very little else you could’ve done at that point. Or so you all told yourselves.  
The apartment was an upgrade in every way but size. It was newer and above-ground which meant it stayed warm and didn’t get damp. It had windows which let the sun in. It had enough room for two sofas so everyone could sit comfortably. It had a gas hob which really only Chan and Minho cared about, but they cared a lot. It had two bathrooms with reliably hot water and good pressure. It did not get power cuts. It did not always smell musty. It was not brown and beige and grey. But it did have fewer rooms to be parcelled out between you all.  
The last one had four rooms that served as bedrooms. This had three. Between six. There had been furious arguments and endless straw-pulling and no one was happy with the results. It took a few weeks but eventually things shook out as they always should have.  
You shared with Minho because he was the only one who was willing. You both had reputations for being scary (in totally opposite ways: you the raging bull to his still, fathomless water); you loved to take your bad moods out on one another; he was the only one you ever willingly let see you when you were sad and small and vulnerable. Besides which, no one else would dare try to take the space at your side from him. So you shared a bedroom: two twin beds on opposite sides of the room, because Minho refused to sleep in a bunk bed and you refused to sleep together in a double. There was little room for anything else.  
You complained about the sleeping arrangements almost daily. You loved the hot water and the sunlight and the not-mouldiness of the apartment, but some days, you couldn’t bear the way you couldn’t get away from Minho.  
You’d thought you had it bad. This was even worse. 
Four days. Four days, so far, staying (squatting) in a vile, empty, dilapidated villa apartment, staring out of a window, waiting for something to happen. Just you and Minho and one room. For four days and counting.  
It was Minho’s turn to watch and he sat at the monitor, diligent, hard-working, as always, whilst you were supposed to be catching up on sleep. Instead, you were lying on what passed for a bed, tossing an apple into the air and catching it, over and over and- 
“You going to stop that?” Minho asked, with his trademark tone: both light and threatening.  
“Nope!” 
“Want me to make you?” 
You flicked your eyes over to him: he was studying the monitor seriously, but you were sure he had been looking at you.  
You hadn’t spoken about that night. Partly because you hadn’t had the time. You’d jumped up from the floor of your bedroom, grabbed as much stuff as you could fit in the first bag you could find and the six of you had legged it, making it out just in time to watch the police cars roll up and trash the place.  
“There was so much fucking money in that safe,” Chan had said, plaintively, staring at the sky. That was when you’d offered up yours.  
You had had to find somewhere to live, and fast. You’d all had to find jobs, something to do, some way to make money that wasn’t connected to the bar. You had been passing like ships in the night, meeting only to argue about shower time and sleeping arrangements. Then Changbin had come home with a suggestion. You’d argued about that, too, but in the end, it was unanimous. Go in with the bigger boys or – well, there was no ‘or’. That was the point. 
So you and Minho were working recon. You’d pulled the short straw in more ways than one. It was the longest you had spent together. Ever. Confined for days in this space. 
On the first day, he refused to talk to you at all.  
On the second, you made everything into an argument because at least you could get a rise out of him.  
On the third, he had seemed to thaw. Something had softened and you talked, like friends, like you used to. You laughed and joked and it wasn’t so bad. 
Now it was the fourth day and that ice had returned. He had frozen over, doubled-down on silence. No sooner had you had warmed up than he was giving you frostbite, chilblains. Whiplash. Those ten words were the first he’d spoken to you all day.  
“No,” you answered. “I don’t want you to make me.”  
You paused, wondering if the words you were considering were a sign that you were going mad, that being cooped up in this space had sent you a little doolally. The unbearable nothingness of your days passing like sludge forcing all those hidden thoughts forward, with nothing to distract you from them. The words were certainly risky, but Minho had shown his hand. He had kissed you. Like he meant it. And you knew he would’ve continued to kiss you had Chan not interrupted. He’d have continued to do a whole lot more than just kiss you. 
And you were bored.  
“I want you to fuck me,” you said plainly, catching the apple in front of your face and turning to look at him.  
He was still studying the monitor. Nothing on his face gave anything away: surprise, disgust, lust, laughter. Nothing. You were used to that. 
“We’re on a job.”  
“Yeah, and it’s boring and nothing is happening and who fucking cares? I would rather have sex.” 
He sighed and rolled his head to look at you. 
“Really, Sixteen? Now is the time you want to bring this up?” 
“Stop calling me Sixteen.” 
“I always call you Sixteen.” 
“You always call me Sixteen when you want to put me in my place or make me feel like a child. I’m not a fucking child anymore.” 
“I know you aren’t.” 
“Then why won’t you fuck me?” 
He laughed and your blood began to simmer.  
“There’s more that I look for than just ‘is not a child’.” 
“Don’t try to act like you don’t want to.” 
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to.” 
“Well then, shall we?” 
He smirked and the glint in his eye was new to you.  
“We’re on a job.” 
“Stop saying that!” you cried, stalking the three steps from your side of the room to his.  
You manoeuvred yourself into his lap, blocking the monitor from his view, and took his face in your hands. 
“We’re on a job and nothing is happening and nothing will continue to happen for ages yet, so why don’t we make it a little less fucking boring?” 
You knew he wanted to. Could see his pupils dilate. Watched his eyes flick to your lips and your chest and back up. This might have been all he wanted: sex and nothing more. You didn’t know. Weren’t interested in having that conversation. Were convinced that it didn’t matter either way. If he only wanted sex, you would give it. Give it until it was too late and he was in too deep to come back out. Hadn’t worked before but there was a first time for everything. 
But even that was beside the point. You were desperately bored and bored of being desperate for him and there was one stone that would kill both those birds.  
“Mouse,” you said quietly, keeping your voice low, as you placed a kiss on his jaw, as you spread your knees a little wider, sinking lower into his lap. “Come on.” 
His hands were on your thighs, neither encouraging nor discouraging, just holding tight. He didn’t respond as you continued to press kisses to his face, to his neck, grinding your hips over him slowly. You could feel his pulse beat fast, noticed the way his breathing was getting heavier, his fingers dipping deeper into your skin, until it hurt. Until he stopped pretending he was going to continue to work, stopped pretending that he could resist you.  
“Fuck,” he gasped, his voice hoarse. 
He gripped the hair at the back of your head and pulled you from his neck, tumbling you both to the floor. You didn’t want it to be fast, but you’d take it any way he’d give it. So when his hands pulled at your t-shirt, you let him take it off as you unclasped your bra. He didn’t give you time to fumble with the hem of his top, to discard it for him; he dipped his head straight down, swirling your nipple with his tongue, sucking it into his mouth; he rested his weight on one elbow and his other hand descended. You were grateful you had no buttons, no zips to contend with, just the loose, elasticated band of a pair of leggings that had seen better days. Minho’s fingers slipped beneath it and he circled his fingers around your clit, the fabric of your underwear dulling the sensation only slightly.  
This was moving even faster than you’d expected but you’d been waiting so long already. Blood rushed to the surface of your skin and your breath began to shudder. Underwear now pushed to the side, you gasped when Minho ran a finger through your folds, shivered when he moaned at what he found there. He brought his lips back to yours but you turned away to let his name drop from your open mouth. 
“Mouse...” 
“Shut up,” he said firmly as he sank two fingers into your slick cunt and stole your breath with another kiss.  
You couldn’t talk but you could moan. Could whine. Could whimper as his fingers moved inside you, as he ground his palm against your clit, as he made your thighs twitch and walls spasm. You tried not to lose your mind completely, to stay grounded, to stay present now that this was finally, really, actually happening. You reached your own hands down to Minho’s trousers; he hadn’t got the no-buttons, no-zips memo and your fingers fumbled with both. They shook with adrenalin as you popped the button through the hole and dragged the metal zip down. You pushed them away from you, off his hips, and had one hand in his boxers when the crackle of the walkie-talkie cut through Minho’s moan. 
You both froze.  
“Minho? What’s happening? Chan said they’re on the move?” 
You glanced at each other, for one more frozen second, and then the world lurched into overdrive. Minho clambered to the monitor with his trousers around his ankles and, as soon as he saw the screen, started swearing viciously, tugging at his clothes and throwing your t-shirt back at you.  
“What’s happening?” you asked, breathless for all the wrong reasons now.  
“They’re clearing out,” Minho reported into the walkie-talkie, ignoring you but answering your question anyway. “Two loads have left, a third on its way.” 
“Shit! How did you miss it? What the fuck were you doing?”  
“Nothing! We lost the feed for a minute but it came back quickly and then they were already moving.” 
He shot you a glance, something between panicked plea and angry admonishment. It wasn’t often he was caught on the hop, wasn’t ever. You, however, were used to being on the wrong side of things, so you re-dressed quickly and had already started packing your shit up. No matter how sideways this went, you could take two positives from it. One, you wouldn’t have to stay locked up here with Minho any longer. Two, he definitely, definitely wanted to fuck you. 
FIFTH 
You still hadn’t talked about it. You continued to share a bedroom, sleep there every night, wake there every morning but you had not once discussed the twice now that you had almost had sex. You were waiting for him to bring it up, even though you knew he never would. He wasn’t a coward, not ever, but if there was one word to describe him it was loyal and you knew he would protect your group with his life. And that also meant not pursuing whatever it was that was between you. Because it was a risk. It could jeopardise the stability of what you had established—what Chan had established long before you ever came into the picture.  
But you were digging your heels in this time. You’d already come on too strong. Your pride was being wounded with each day that passed, with each day that he continued to pass you up. You’d crack first. You knew you would. You always did. Minho was unbreakable. You weren’t. But you wanted to pretend, for at least a little while, that you could be. That you could be impenetrable, too.  
“Shit shit shit shit shit,” Junho repeated as he slammed into the car, instructing Minho to drive before the door was even shut.  
Minho didn’t need telling twice.  
“Where to?” 
“Safe house,” he gasped, ragged breathing setting your teeth on edge. 
You didn’t ask what had happened. What had gone wrong. That didn’t matter as much as getting out. Getting Junho out. You were disposable, still. You knew that. Even Minho. You were runts; you also still had something to make up for given what happened on your last assignment. So you travelled in silence. Junho in the back, breathing heavily; you didn’t turn around to see if he was ok. You didn’t want to know. You assumed he wasn’t but as long as you could hear him breathing, you knew he was alive.  
Minho was facing forward, eyes scanning the roads ahead, reflexes allowing him to run red lights without accident – in this part of the city, no one would stop a flashy car like this for speeding, for driving recklessly. That was what they all did. His jaw was tense, eyes tight. He looked calm but you could see his little legs kicking under the water. You knew him well enough by now.  
You didn’t keep your eyes on the road. You kept them on him. Felt like someone needed to be watching out for him, too – not that there was anything you could have done to be helpful anyway. There were always two in the getaway car. That was the rule and you didn’t ask why because you didn’t want to know the answer.  
As a teen, you had thought you knew everything. You were old enough now to know not only that you knew nothing but also that you preferred it that way. Need to know basis. For everything. All the time.  
Minho slowed, driving more carefully as the car left the city, winding across hills, negotiating turns that you’d have driven straight over, plummeting you all to a miserable death. He turned the headlights off at the mile marker he’d been told about, one that you’d already forgotten, and crawled, slower still, up to the house, blanketed in darkness, hidden by an overgrown and untended garden.  
Junho grunted. 
“Thanks. Wait until I give the signal then get the fuck out of here. Do not go anywhere you’ve ever met with us. Ditch the car when you can; destroy the plates.” 
He didn’t wait for a response. You watched him stagger away and then waited until the light in the top right room flicked on and off and on and off again.  
Minho put the car in reverse and slowly backed out. At a further mile marker, he turned the lights on. He continued to climb, driving away from the city still, until the car reached the top of the hill. The lights from the city were so bright you almost didn’t need the headlights at all. It didn’t feel a safe place to stop. Too visible.  
Then Minho slowly and quietly backed the car into nook on the hillside. No doubt worn away from years of cars trying to pass each other on the narrow road, it barely contained the car, but it put it in some shadow and no one would hit you.  
He turned the engine off and let his hands fall to his lap. His head tipped back against the headrest and he sighed.  
“You ok?” 
You asked him all the time and he never gave a serious answer because he always was. And if he wasn’t, he certainly wasn’t going to talk about it. But you asked all the same.  
He nodded then turned to you. 
“You?” 
You laughed nervously, suddenly feeling the last twenty minutes as the adrenalin began to drain. 
“Kind of feel like I could hurl.” 
He laughed too and nodded again.  
“I feel like I want to sleep for a thousand years but also like I could run a marathon,” you continued.  
“I feel half-dead already but also fucking invincible.” 
He held his hand out and it trembled. You clasped it between yours and held it tight. He smiled; from where you were sitting, it looked like a smirk, but then he turned more fully towards you and it wasn’t. It was sweet. His eyes were gleaming. Your mouth dried.  
“Half-dead, huh?” And you knew you were going to say it. You always knew you would be the one with which it would raise its head. “How about a little dead? A little death, even?” 
“Sixteen…” 
His voice had that warning tone to it but the gleam in his eyes remained and you’d broken the seal now. Were going to push this as far as he’d let you.  
“Mouse…” 
You saw him waver. Absolutely, definitely, were certain that he was considering it. Until a car came over the crest of the hill and its headlights flashed in at you; at the same moment, Minho’s phone buzzed from the cup holder it had been thrown in. You jumped. He jumped. Whatever moment there had been was gone now.  
Minho took his hand from your grasp and checked his phone. Then he put the car in gear.  
“We’ve got to get out of here.” 
You expected it to be quick. Expected it to be simple. It turned out to be neither. You had managed to destroy the plates and were very near clear of the car you’d now abandoned when you, once again, found trouble (‘why did it always have to be you?’ you had asked yourself fleetingly as Minho shoved you towards your own piece of shit car that had been waiting for your getaway; he had not waited for you to be fully seated or your door to be closed before he slammed a foot on the accelerator and squealed off). The two of you were screaming around corners, tearing out of the city in whichever direction provided the easiest escape. With the headlights off and the city lights streaming into the distance, you could barely see the road in front of you, had no idea how Minho was still driving straight. You trusted him with your life and it was just as well, because it was in his hands. His, yours, and potentially everyone else’s, too. 
The summer sun was minutes away from popping its head above the horizon when you were finally able to return home. 
You sat in silence for a few moments. You had moved beyond exhaustion into this kind of frayed, wired alertness. You felt your eyelids dropping even as your heart still hammered. Minho’s hand found yours.  
“Mouse,” you said, letting the rest of it fall away unspoken.  
“Yeah,” he replied but you didn’t know if that was his answer. “Just give me a minute.” 
You were too tired to argue so you let silence fall again. You were almost dropping off, head just beginning to nod, when he tugged on your hand.  
“Come here.”  
You turned. You leant. His other hand cupped the back of your head and pulled you closer. He kissed you. Electricity crackled and a surge of energy rushed through you. It was happening again. He was kissing you. You couldn’t let this time pass by.  
You scrambled in your chair, forgetting to undo your seatbelt, being pulled back by it and swearing coarsely when your lips broke from his. You clambered over the gearstick and the handbrake and fell with one foot heavily in the footwell as Minho slid his seat all the way back. You didn’t have time to care about the jarring in your knee or the bump on your head as it hit the roof. Could barely feel it. Didn’t matter.  
Well, it didn’t matter until it did. Until there wasn’t really room enough for you to straddle him. Until you were pressing yourself up against the roof so there would be room for him to get his hands to his belt. Until you lost your balance and fell backwards, landing with bump on the steering wheel, which blared out into the dark dawn street.  
“Fucking hell,” Minho muttered. “Get in the back.” 
More willingly than you ever had, you did as you were told. He moved his seat forward again, all the way, and you watched him climb through to you, hands reaching for him. It was no less awkward. Not enough room to lie down. Still not enough height to sit. Not space enough between the back and front to kneel. It was messy and uncoordinated, grabbing for anything, taking what you could get, knocking into the window and falling off the seat, kicking and elbowing each other in a tangle.  
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Minho roared, in an uncharacteristic display of frustration. “No use. Not happening.” 
He sat back and sighed, trousers undone but still around his hips. He pushed his hands through his hair and you tried to settle demurely next to him, smoothing your own hair, zipping up your jeans, swallowing hard as you fought to accept that he was right. It was not happening. Not here. Not now.  
You stared through the car window and were sure you could’ve punched straight through it. You wanted to. It was the window, Minho, or yourself. Couldn’t effectively punch yourself. Knew you wouldn’t dare hit your mouse. Your fingernails pressed sharply into your palm as you squeezed your fists tightly.  
A hand covered yours. Gentle. You looked at Minho and there he was: your secret, soft guy. You unfurled your fingers and he linked them with his own. 
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s just go home.” 
FIRST 
You tramped into the apartment, bringing your bad mood with you. Everyone was sick of it by now – you were sick of it, but you couldn’t shake it.  
Minho was avoiding you. That much was clear. He had been avoiding you since you tried and failed to fuck in the car. You didn’t know why because you didn’t care. You had reached the end of your tether with the universe. Three times now. But still no cigar. You wondered – asked yourself a hundred times a day – what it was going to take to make this happen.  
Frustrated didn’t even begin to cover it. You could go out and hook up with whoever you liked. You could get yourself off just fine. But it ran so much deeper than that. If you pulled at the thread, it tugged on your heartstrings, all tangled up in knots. It hurt. It pulled at something so deeply interwoven with your very being; all anyone had to do was follow it to its source and they could destroy you. All anyone had to do was cut it and they’d cut you, too.  
You didn’t like that. Hated it, in fact. Hated that all this tugging and wiggling had opened up a hole and you could feel your vulnerability exposed. You could feel weakness leaking out of you, seeping from your pores, visible to the naked eye, for anyone to see.  
It made you bitter. Made you angry. Made you lash out even when you shouldn’t have. Because you were always on the defensive. Even now. Especially now. 
You knew the others were talking about you. About Minho. About the two of you. Knew it from the awkward silences when you walked in a room and the furtive glances and the group chat that had grown curiously quiet, leaving you to assume that there was a separate one you weren’t a part of.  
You were beginning to lose your patience and you were not starting with a plentiful supply.  
You lay on your bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm your rage. You had woken with it, just like every other day this week, and it would not leave you. You breathed slowly and carefully and tried to think of difficult and boring things.  
You thought only of Minho.  
Then he opened the door. He hesitated – you could feel him standing there, assessing – and then shut it, leaving you alone. As the door clicked, you felt that tug. You felt the knots tighten, so impossibly tight now that the joins weren’t even visible. You jumped up and threw yourself through the door. 
“Stop fucking ignoring me!” 
You hadn’t meant to shout.  
Minho turned and looked at you. His stillness enraged you further. He didn’t say anything. 
“Are you going to fucking say anything?!” 
“What do you want me to say?” 
“ANYTHING! You haven’t spoken to me for weeks! You literally walk out of rooms if I’m in them! What the fuck is wrong with you?”  
“You think this is easy?”  
His voice was cold and sharp as steel. His head cocked lightly to the side and his eyes narrowed, peering at you, looking inside you.  
“You think I want it to be like this?-” 
“I don’t know what you fucking want!” 
His nostrils flared. This delighted you. He was annoyed and you loved it. 
“Not once,” you continued, still shouting because you couldn’t rein it in, “have you ever fucking told me. Not once have you ever actually said what you want! That you want me. Do you? Fucking do you? Because I don’t fucking know anymore! Every time we get close, you get further away from me! I’m not a fucking yo-yo, Minho. You can’t play with me-” 
“Play with you? You think I’m playing? What part of this is a game?”  
His voice was rising now, too, his perfectly blank mask slipping. 
“It’s never been a game, Sixteen! Not once in the entire time since we met has it been a game! How are you still not getting it? Junho almost fucking died and if he had, it would have been our fault! We all almost ended up in prison because of the fucking bar. The night we met you almost got yourself trafficked! It’s not a game! You act like life is so fucking simple! It’s not!” 
“IT IS! It can be that fucking simple! Stop overthinking! Stop taking everything so fucking seriously!-” 
“It is serious! That’s what you don’t get!” 
He was close now, had been inching closer and closer, and he was looking down at you, his eyes black as pitch, his jaw tight, his breath struggling through clenched teeth.  
“You don’t get it and you never have.”  
His voice was quiet, back to that steel that sent a chill down your spine.  
“Everywhere you go, I look out for you. Everywhere you are, I am responsible for you. It’s been nine fucking years, Sixteen, and you are everywhere I go.” 
Your vision tunnelled, stomach fell to your feet. You had to look away and hated yourself for it. You never flinched. You never backed down. You were never the first to retreat. Except for him. You couldn’t bear to look in his eyes, to see what loathing and disdain they held for you. Your embarrassment was on your cheeks already and pricking in your eyes.  
Then his nose nudged yours and he took more steps forward. He pushed you slowly against the wall and you cursed yourself for retreating to it. 
“You are in my life and in my bedroom and in my fucking head,” he whispered. “All the time. All the fucking time. And I haven’t been able to do shit about it because you are my job. You are mine to protect. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows I would burn this place to the ground for you. I would scorch the earth. I would drain the sea. For you. Don’t you get it? When it comes to you, I’m a fucking liability.”  
You risked it. A glance. Lifted your eyes for less than a second but you had to do it again. Had to stop there, be sure you were really seeing what you thought you were.  
Soft, round, liquid eyes. An openness in his face that he hadn’t let you into before. His mouth was still a grim line, turned down at the corners so slightly, had it been anyone but you, it would have gone unnoticed.  
“Mouse...”  
You tried to whisper but could barely manage that, his name creeping out on a hoarse gasp.  
He moved his face closer to yours, lips almost touching.  
“Don’t you get it?” he repeated.  
You got it. Because everything he said was true for you, too. You’d started out as a liability, for sure, but you had continued to be one because Minho was your north star. Not Chan. Not the group. Not whatever sense of purpose you might have derived from the life you had cobbled together. If he said jump, you wouldn’t ask a thing. You would jump. You’d been following him since day one and, then, it might have been desperation, a lack of options. Now... well, there was still desperation: a desperate need for him, a desperate desire to be wanted by him, kissed by him, touched by him. You had other options. Options you would never take, not as long as he existed. You would stop existing before you ever thought of leaving him.  
You nodded, feeling more like a foolish, vulnerable 16-year-old than you had when you were foolish and vulnerable and 16.  
He sighed, breath sweet with the pudding he could never resist, and you were closing your eyes, tilting your chin up, expecting him to give in.  
He turned away. You watched him, mouth agape in disbelief, as he pushed his hands through his hair.  
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” you screamed, bringing your hands down on his back in something that was half-shove, half-slap.  
He had whipped around before you could lower your arms and you found your wrists caught in his hands.  
“You don’t fucking stop, do you?” he hissed.  
“Why would I stop?! I don’t want to stop, Minho! And nor do you! You can’t say you don’t! Because I KNOW. I KNOW you want it. I know you want me. And I’m fucking throwing myself at you. Take me! TAKE ME!” 
His eyes were hard and dark. His fingers pushed so tightly into your wrists that you could feel your pulse against them. He was breathing heavily, nostrils flaring but lips shut tight, pressed together in a thin line.  
“Take. Me,” you repeated, level and firm, not sure if he would, but sure that, if he didn’t, things would never be the same again.  
You couldn’t do this a fourth time. Couldn’t put yourself in his hands, have him take you, and then... Not. And then stop. And then act as if you didn’t exist. That thread between you, tied up in your heartstrings, was taut, stretched, at its limit. And so were you. 
The pause was painful. Excruciatingly long. Adrenalin coursed through you, making you hot, making you shake, making your heart beat so hard against your ribs you thought they might break. Thought your heart might break. Hadn’t been willing to admit how fragile it was but it felt like venetian glass now. You could already feel the cracks forming, the web extending, the shards- 
He kissed you. Pulled you roughly towards him by your wrists and kissed you. Put his hands on your hips, then slid them under your top, and still kissed you. He was kissing you. It took a few seconds to slip back into your body, to feel it, the soft petal of his lips against yours, the sharp bite of his teeth, the wet warmth of his tongue. You forgot your shattering heart and grabbed his T-shirt, using it to pull him closer, to drag him into your shared bedroom. 
Not that he needed dragging. You stumbled over each other’s feet as you tried to kiss and walk and grope all at once. You tumbled backwards onto his bed and took the brief separation as an opportunity to lose your top, to unclasp your bra. Your hands were in the waistband of your joggers when Minho climbed over you, topless now too, breathless as he mirrored your actions, pushing his trousers and his boxers over his hips. He huffed a frustrated sigh as you giggled, as he stood back up to take them all the way off, to kick them off his ankles and take yours away, too.  
He didn’t give you time for admiration, for appraisal. He lay his body over you and his lips pressed against yours, quickly, firmly, before trailing them across your jaw and down your neck. He was every bit as vicious as you thought he would be, teeth nipping at your sensitive skin, sinking into your soft flesh. You wanted him to mark you, wanted the proof of it to last. You scraped your nails down his back and he hissed when you broke the skin. Hissed but didn’t complain. Hissed and moved his mouth lower, swirling his tongue around your nipple, sinking his teeth into that, too.  
When you tugged on his hair, he pulled off, looked at you, his face an open question. You shook your head. 
“It’s fine,” you panted. “I like it. I just want to pull your hair.” 
He laughed and clamped his teeth over your breast again, harder this time, so you keened and your back arched into him. You twisted his roots in your fist and he moaned, eyes flicking up to yours as he kissed across the valley of your chest.  
“Do that again.” 
“Fuck,” you gasped, tipping your head back, doing as he had asked and tugging hard.  
The ache you felt for him had ballooned inside you, taken up all your hollow spaces. There was your flushed skin and your fluttering heart, your rushing blood and your deep, persistent ache for Minho. Nothing more. Nothing less.  
“Mouse,” you whispered, voice tight with desire. “Touch me, please.”  
You never asked. You didn’t beg. If you liked a guy, you let them do what they wanted with you, and if you didn’t, you took what you wanted. It was always one-sided.  
But this wasn’t. It was Minho. It was the fathomless depth in his eyes as he lay his mouth all over you. It was the slip of his fingers through your soaked folds as he sucked sweet bruises against your neck. It was the sound of a moan caught in his throat when you wrapped your fingers around his hard, leaking length. It was mutual. It was reciprocated.  
It was burning you up, hotter and sweeter than you’d ever felt before. His fingers sinking into your core made you shudder with delight. The twitch in his cock as you brushed your thumb over his head made your mouth water. The sound of his mumbled sweet nothings pressed against your skin, whispered in your ear, licked straight into your mouth, made you dizzy.  
“So soft,” he said. “So wet... Fuck, you’re so fucking beautiful... I’ve wanted this for so long... Wanted you...”  
He used your name, your real one, the one he didn’t learn (didn’t ask for) for months after you met. You returned the favour, ‘Minho’ tripping from your lips, until he shook his head. 
“Mouse,” he murmured, mouth still pressed against yours. “‘Mouse’ is yours.”  
“Mouse,” you echoed and he nodded before kissing you so that you could say nothing at all. 
You barely spoke, couldn’t catch your breath enough to form the words, couldn’t engage your faculties to find any to say. Minho spoke, though, more than you had ever heard him speak: praise and exclamation and remembrance and, yes, even admonition, but it was all so sweet, syrupy, dripping from his tongue like honey. You’d never heard him speak like this before, never had him melt in your hands or in your mouth, never felt him as easy and pliable as this.  
It wasn’t just his body. It wasn’t just the perfect smoothness of his warm, soft skin. It wasn’t just the stretch, the fullness, he made inside you, the insistent rhythm of his hips thrusting his cock tightly into your slick, waiting warmth. It wasn’t just his wet, sugary mouth, at your lips, at your jaw, at your clavicle. It wasn’t just all these things he was doing to you, all the things you were doing to him. 
It was his open eyes, round and shining and fluttering closed as your walls clenched around him. It was the tenderness in them, the depth he was letting you see, for more than just seconds at a time. It was the gentle tracing of your face with his fingers, even as he fucked into you, even as his teeth drew blood beneath your skin. It was Minho, the entirety of him. Yours. Finally yours. Finally giving in to you, giving himself to you.  
You got it. You had said you did and you had, but now, beneath him in his bed as he loved you, you actually understood the magnitude of it. His feelings for you. Yours for him. Held back behind a dam for so many years and now, the dam had broken. Now came the deluge that would flood the world, could drown everyone in it.  
To hell with them, you thought. To hell with anyone else. You found what you needed almost a decade ago. He found you. You found each other, somehow, by some miracle.  
When the pleasure swelled up in your core, toes curling, back breaking, you cried out with all the breath you had in your lungs, felt tears sting in your eyes, and the following inhale wobbled and shook. Minho paused, pressed his forehead against yours, kissed you lightly, didn’t have to ask the question out loud.  
You nodded and kissed him again, then again, each time hungrier than the last. You didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want to feel anything but this, but him. He moved slower now, though, hips rolling smoothly, lips not leaving yours, even when he spoke, even when he murmured how fucking good you felt, how much better than he’d imagined, how hard he was trying not to come, how he didn’t want this to end.  
You couldn’t take it. Thought you really would cry, thought you would collapse entirely under his weight, under the weight of everything you’d been carrying around, all these feelings: all this love and fear and frustration. He pushed you to the edge again without even trying, your red thread thoroughly tangled, inseparable now, and pulling a greater ecstasy from you than you had ever known.  
He couldn’t hold out either, his final, sharp thrusts filling you with his sticky release. You held him there, as close as he could be. He kissed you, so light it was barely there, his fingers grazing your face as he pushed the hair from your brow. 
“Mouse,” you choked, tears threatening your waterline.  
He kissed you again, that little butterfly kiss; you’d never seen him be this gentle.  
“Sixteen,” he whispered and, for possibly the first time, it didn’t sound like disdain, didn’t come accompanied by a smirk or an eye-roll; it was hushed and secret and just for you.  
As it had always been.  
You lay on his chest, bodies pressed together in the small, single bed, as they would have been even if the bed were bigger.  
“I want some water,” he said, lips against your forehead before he manoeuvred himself out from underneath you. “Want a drink?” 
You nodded and he smiled down at you as he fetched clean underwear and pulled a T-shirt over his head.  
You watched him go, watched him open the door, and then heard the sound of party poppers, whoops, and applause.  
The apartment was empty. Had been empty when you entered your bedroom. In the midst of everything, you had failed to notice the gang return home. They had not failed to notice you and Minho.  
“Fucking finally!”  
“You mean, they finally fucked?” 
Laughter resounded from the living room. Minho turned around, closed the door, and climbed back into bed without a word. 
207 notes · View notes
ugh-yoongi · 10 months
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about u | jjk
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❝ this song is about a love that you can’t reconcile—wanting to make a home out of a person that has proved to you time and again that they are not a home; they are just a person. it’s about retracing scars, negative patterns, all with the silent belief that moments of communion and understanding might justify months of misfiring and regret. we’re all just trying to get back to that ‘first high’ feeling—an honest endeavor, however futile. ❞
✤ PAIRING jungkook x f. reader ✤ GENRE exes to fwb to strangers, college/grad school au; angst, smut ✤ RATING explicit. minors do not interact. ✤ WARNINGS toxic & self-destructive behavior (inc. jealousy and possessiveness). infidelity (with an external partner). reader is bisexual (which is not a warning but a general statement so the homophobes stay away) and there is a brief mention of coming out. two people who are both too honest and unable to communicate. swearing. cigarettes and alcohol use. kissing, some spitting, fingering, oral sex, protected vaginal sex. every time i asked jess to read this over for me she always came back with "jfc jewel" so i guess this is angsty. unhappy ending. ✤ WORDCOUNT 7.3k ✤ LISTEN TO this was based off of "winterbreak" by muna, but there are bits and pieces of the entire about u album in here, "everything" and "outro" especially. ✤ THANK YOU to muna for writing the album, @the-boy-meets-evil and @hot-soop for reading over this for me multiple times and putting up with all my brainstorming and my beloved @here2bbtstrash for the extra set of eyes. ✤ AUTHOR'S NOTE hi, thank you for reading! i cannot emphasize enough how much more sense this story will make if you listen to about u in the background. i would also like to reiterate that these two are maybe not all that likeable most of the time, but i hope they're still human. as i once saw in an ao3 tag, you are more than the worst thing you've ever done.
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[ the first. ] You’d read an article once—something about the second time you fall in love.
It’s going to feel different, it’d said. The first time felt like a dream.
As you stare across the kitchen at Jeongguk, you think that might be true. The part about it feeling like a dream, because it used to be a pinky-lavender haze and everything that has come after hasn’t felt so good. Not a nightmare, but close. At least with nightmares you can force yourself awake. You can tell yourself it wasn’t real. You can pretend.
This is as real as it gets, watching him smile over the rim of a plastic red cup. Someone else’s hand on his arm. The girl it belongs to looks nothing like you, and you wonder if she’ll be the second time he falls in love. You also wonder why you didn’t stay home. You wonder about fault and regret and if either of them even matter. No, you eventually decide: there’s just you in Taehyung’s kitchen and Jeongguk on the other side of it and the result of a million decisions in between you.
There had been a plenitude of reasons you’d fallen in love with Jeongguk, but he’s undoubtedly beautiful. Soft, tinkling laugh; a smile that reaches his eyes. Not all that long ago you used to be responsible for both, so there’s a lingering, bitter sting beneath your wonder. Jeongguk is beautiful and no longer yours, and that’s enough to have you retreating to the living room.
Jimin’s at your side immediately. Wraps an arm around your shoulders and presses a kiss to the top of your head that does little to alleviate your guilt. Missing someone is always easier with thousands of miles in between you. All those distractions. Just like a nightmare, distance lets you pretend. Not so easy to do when all those ghosts come back to haunt you; when you can still hear Jeongguk’s soft voice in the kitchen. The music is so loud but you’d be able to hear him anywhere, you think.
Even places he’s not.
Jimin leans down, forces his way into your personal space. “Are you doing okay?” he asks, and his words are warm and wrapped in alcohol, but you nod. You’re scared you might start crying if you open your mouth. Afraid of what might come out besides shuddering breaths, which just makes you feel stupid. Baby’s first breakup, you chide yourself. Maybe Jimin can get you a commemorative ornament.
Taehyung is turning twenty-four and it should be joyous. It is joyous. People that aren’t you are laughing and dancing and pressing their cheeks together as they huddle close to take selfies. Someone you don’t recognize is cackling wildly as they wrangle Taehyung into a headlock and smear cake frosting on his face. Someone else is tutting and running a rag under the tap to wipe it off and then the frosting is gone. It’s hard not to draw parallels.
There one minute and gone the next.
Gently wiped away.
But the feeling lingers, doesn’t it? The tack of the frosting, all the love that transpired between you and Jeongguk. Sometimes you fear it’s permanent—not able to be wiped away with a rag run under the tap, not able to be wiped away at all. Just this burden you’re cursed to carry, because Jeongguk isn’t and can’t be yours but knowing does nothing to erase the past. Doesn’t help you forget. It’s fucked and it’s unfair, but that’s just the way it goes.
“I think I should leave,” you say, watching another scene play out in the kitchen. Jeongguk fills a cup and hands it to a different pretty girl. Everyone here is so pretty. Makes sense; so is Taehyung. Pretty people are drawn to one another like that. “Is it too soon? Will it be obvious?”
Jimin sighs, wraps you in a hug. Says, “Oh, love,” in a way that’s too sympathetic. Makes you sound too pathetic. “No one will blame you. These things are hard.”
You squeeze your eyes shut. Not that you don’t appreciate Jimin’s reassurance, but sometimes it all feels a bit silly. Weren’t you the one to walk away? Call it off? Are you allowed to mourn the very thing you destroyed?
And Jimin, bless him, is so patient with you. Asks if you need a ride home and you wave him off, remind him your parents’ place isn’t far, that the cold might do you some good. You tell him you appreciate him and his night shouldn’t be ruined on your account, and you just laugh when he tries to protest, tell him to go get himself another drink.
“Text me when you get home,” he says, voice stern, and you brush that off, too. “I’m serious. It’s late and it’s dark and anyone could be out there—”
“Maybe I should walk you home, then?”
All those articles you read about the second time you fall in love didn’t mention this. Said nothing about the way a voice will always be able to turn your world on its axis and how to right it again. Said nothing about how to coexist with ghosts. Said nothing about what to do with all the yearning and the pain and the stupid, selfish strands of hope. There are paragraphs about an overarching, general grief, but nothing about the specific one living inside of you.
The shock on Jimin’s face is reflecting your own. It’s nice to not be the only one caught off-guard and stammering over their words. It’s nice to have a friend when it feels like your entire world is on the edge of collapse. “I don’t…” he begins. Swallows thickly and turns to look at you, an obvious question biting at the back of his teeth.
You know the answer.
You know that what you should say isn’t what you want, just like you know it isn’t fair, this thing you’re doing. Because you turn to Jeongguk and say, “Are you sure?” which might as well be a yes, because you’re selfish and suspended in this liminal space and don’t want him to go home with anyone else. You don’t want him to move on.
He shrugs. “It’s on the way.”
You say okay. Let Jimin help you into your coat, hide his face in your neck as he tells you to be careful, and that stings. You’ve never had to be careful around Jeongguk before. The two of you never, ever hurt one another—until you did. The kind of hurt your heart hasn’t easily forgotten, is still stubbornly clinging to.
Your heart wants Jeongguk, always.
You want Jeongguk, always, so you let him grab your hand, link your pinkies together. You let him lead you out of the house and don’t turn back to see who might be watching. God, you want to, though. Want all those pretty girls to see that he’s leaving with you. Want them to know it’s your name that’s branded on his heart; your name beneath his skin. For once, you want someone to want what you have.
It’s strange. The two of you have been apart for eight months, and there’s a lot of things you might want to tell someone in that amount of time, but you find it hard now. Don’t know where to start, which words to use. Don’t want to say something stupid, because Jeongguk is just walking you home but you’ve assigned a lot of meaning to it, and eight months is a long time to yearn for something and finally get it.
So you say, “You didn’t have to do this, you know,” because it’s something that’s true and easy to say.
Jeongguk doesn’t answer right away. Drops your pinky so he can hold your hand properly—fully, all five fingers intertwined—and squeezes. “Is it weird for you?” he asks, and he doesn’t sound nervous. Almost sounds like he’s smiling a little, giving you shit. He sounds familiar.
“No. I don’t know. Maybe a little.” He asks why? at the same time he passes under a streetlight. Lights up golden and amber. He’s beautiful—“I don’t know. It’s just… I guess it’s just been a long time. We didn’t leave things the best.”—and no longer yours.
The Jeongguk walking beside you is not the same Jeongguk that walked out of your dorm eight months ago, tears staining his cheeks, the smell of a goodbye fuck still clinging to his clothes, his skin, sweat still dotting his hairline. This Jeongguk is sharper, more selfish with his laughter, and you wonder about all the ways heartbreak can change a person. How you’re changed for facilitating it. You wonder if Jeongguk blames you before deciding you’re too much of a coward to find out the answer.
“Was it that bad?” When you look over at him, he’s chewing on his lip ring, trying to bite back a smile. “You’ll have to remind me. I don’t remember.”
You stop walking, jerking forward when Jeongguk is left unaware and keeps going. “That’s not funny,” you say. “Jeongguk, that’s not—I did what I thought was best, okay? I thought I was doing the right thing—”
The smile drops from Jeongguk’s face. “Hey, hey, look at me,” he says, and he’s hesitant to reach out and touch you but he does it anyway. Cups your face in both hands. “I know, it’s okay. That’s just—it’s just life, right? You did what you had to do, babe. It’s okay.”
You did what you had to do, babe.
Did you?
Jeongguk is selfish with his laughter but never his affection, and knowing that feels like an albatross around your neck. You have broken him so entirely, but he’s still kind to you, finds it a worthwhile thing to be.
His eyes go to your lips. Tattooed fingers dimple your face just a little more, dig in deeper. When you dare to take him in, he looks… different. No longer amused, the way he was just seconds ago; now, there’s something dark there. Longing, anger, hunger. Jeongguk looks like he wants to swallow you whole and make you suffer; looks like he wants to cage you beneath him and worship you through the comedown.
I’d let him, you think as you bury your face in the crook of his neck. As you smell the smoke that lingers, the sweat and the alcohol. I’d still let him.
It’d be so easy to press a kiss there. To feel his skin beneath your lips: flushed, still warm from the party, not all daunted by the bitter winter wind biting at your cheeks. As you lean in further, you wonder if it’ll taste the same. You wonder how much can change in eight months and if all those old comforts change, too. If it’s something inevitable.
Jeongguk moves his hands to your waist. Crawls his fingertips beneath your jacket and finds bare skin. Sucks in the smallest bit of air, and you would’ve missed it had it been any other time, but winter is always quiet and subdued. Always smells transitional, something dangerously close to hope and redemption.
And eight months is a long time to miss the feel of someone’s lips, isn’t it, so you think you can be excused for reaching for something you thought you’d never have again.
The first kiss is hesitant, testing; pressed to the spot just beneath his ear. Maybe you don’t know this Jeongguk, but you know the version of him you used to love—the one you still do—and you know the way he’ll sigh. You know the way his hands will grip tighter. You can still hear it, the way you used to kiss him there and he’d say, don’t start something you can’t finish, baby, and the way you’d laugh and always, always finish it. Can still feel the warmth that used to bloom in your chest. The love.
Jeongguk won’t say that now, you know. Wonder if it’d sound more like don’t start something you already finished if he did. He huffs a small laugh, more an exhale than anything, and asks, “What are you doing?”
And you answer, “I don’t know,” because it’s honest. You admit, “I guess I just miss you,” because it’s true.
A war wages within Jeongguk. You can see the storms, the white flags that are close to being thrown out. Can see the way his gaze flits between your lips and your eyes. What he’s looking for, you don’t know, but the storm rages on. And just like real life, just when you think it’s at its worst, there’s a break in the clouds: a tangible beam of silvery-warm light when Jeongguk tangles his hands in your hair, thumbs at the hinge of your jaw. Jeongguk tilts your head back and looks ethereal in the amber glow of the streetlights.
He says, “We shouldn’t,” and you nod, because you know and the anguish on his face is surely mirrored on yours, but when he follows it with, “let me take you home, let me take care of you,” you find it impossible to care.
You nod.
Everything is amber.
Eight months is a long time to go without the way Jeongguk kisses you: intentionally, demandingly, insatiably. He still tastes the same. Tastes like the first time you’d ever dared to kiss him, back at that party freshman year, tongue flavored with cheap liquor. Jeongguk tastes forbidden and feels like coming home.
You couldn’t say how you make it to Jeongguk’s apartment, but the way you stumble over the threshold feels familiar. The way the door is barely locked when Jeongguk crowds your space; picks you up, wraps your legs around his waist, presses you against it, hips moving on their own accord, rutting, all those little sounds spilling from his lips—everything is familiar. This is not just a practiced song and dance but something memorized. Something instinctual. You could be apart from Jeongguk for years instead of months and your body would still know what to do.
He carries you to his bedroom and you don’t think about who else has been between his sheets, because he puts you down so gently. Kisses your lips, your jaw, your neck—all gentle, powder-soft. Sounds like spring when you paw at the velvety cashmere of his sweater, pull it over his head, and he sighs. Feels like he’s breathing fresh life into something he shouldn’t, something long dead, but then you skim along his warm skin and your world is reduced to the way it feels like silk beneath your fingertips.
“I still love you,” Jeongguk whispers against your mouth, his inked fingers toying with the button on your jeans. Pops it open, pulls the denim down your thighs. Doesn’t bother pulling them off, only goes as far as your knees. And it’s uncomfortable, the way it’s bunched there, but the way Jeongguk says, “Fuck, missed you so much,” is so sweet.
Everything happens too fast.
Jeongguk leaves your shirt on. Drags it up and over your breasts and kisses at the newly-exposed skin. Sinks his teeth in, lets it hurt for a second before he laves over the marks. Settles between your legs and coaxes an orgasm out of you with his mouth and his fingers. Speaks his praise into the juncture of your thigh, breathless as he touches himself, strokes his cock with the wetness lingering on his fingers. Looks so, so pretty when he sits back on his haunches and says, “Just wanna look at you,” and makes it sound wistful and longing.
Makes it sound like it means something.
He’s still touching himself, still slicking himself up. There’s a split second where he goes to move and thinks better of it. Looks to the side before looking back at you. The storm kicks up again. “Have—” he begins before he swallows thickly. Dares to look hopeful, even through the squall. “Have you been with anyone else? Since…?”
You haven’t. Tried to, once—another stupid party, more cheap liquor passed to your mouth from someone else’s, but it hadn’t gone anywhere. They hadn’t tasted like Jeongguk; hadn’t felt the same. Two puzzle pieces that fit together all wrong.
Jeongguk has, though. Something you’d heard from a friend of a friend that you weren’t meant to. They’d called it a rebound, and it had bloomed so many ugly thoughts in your head. Five months had passed. Jeongguk was fucking someone else in his bed while you were in yours, torturing yourself over whether or not to tell him happy birthday. Whether it was allowed to or not, it’d stung.
(You had. You’d reworded the text a million times, plucked up all the courage you could find before you sent it. It’d gone unanswered, just like you expected it would, and you thought it was because Jeongguk didn’t want to talk to you. Thought you were digging your fingers into wounds that had yet to heal, so it’d stung but you understood.
But Jeongguk hadn’t answered because he was fucking someone else. Had someone else’s taste on his tongue; was panting someone else’s name into the dark. The embarrassment had been the worst part.)
Still does, if you’re being honest with yourself, so you lie. “I—yeah,” you answer. “Just one.”
Looks like it stings Jeongguk, too. “Right,” he responds, blinking back tears, and he’s got a lot of nerve, you think. “Yeah, okay, I’ll just—a condom. Are you…”
“Jeongguk—”
“Are you sure? Maybe this isn’t…” He huffs. Drops the condom on the bed, hangs his head. “What are we doing?”
You stare up at the ceiling. Nothing up there but the swirls in the plaster. “I don’t know,” you admit. “Hurting each other, probably.”
Jeongguk walks his fingers down your thigh. Grips at your skin, wants it to bruise. Wants you to have something to remember him by come morning. “Sometimes I’m really mad at you, you know?”
“Yeah, trust me, I know.”
He nods. Refuses to look you in the eye now that you’re watching him. “I still love you so fucking much and I’m still so angry. What am I supposed to do with that? What am I… fuck, I thought I was over it. I thought I’d see you and not feel a fucking thing.” There’s fresh ink on the back of his left hand. You hadn’t noticed it earlier, but you notice it now, when he runs his hands down his face.
You also notice the way the atmosphere shifts, the split second in which his heartache bleeds into something else—resolve, maybe. Obstinacy. Like he knows how this is going to end and he’s going to do it anyway. He’s going to find the most painful part and press on it, dig his fingers in, and it’s just an inevitable, foregone thing. Something he can prevent and something he’s choosing not to.
“You fucked someone else,” he sneers. Rips the foil open with his teeth, flashing too white in the dark of his bedroom. Rolls the condom on like it’s an inconvenience. Like you’re an inconvenience. “Was it good? Was it worth it?”
You roll your eyes. Feel the way your breath catches in your throat, because you’re not going to cry. Jeongguk fucked someone else and is vilifying you and it’s hypocritical and ugly and unfair, but you’re not going to cry over it. You’re going to press the gas pedal as far as it can go, say, “Yeah, it was,” and find some wicked delight in the way his eyes squeeze shut, as if it can spare him from the pain.
The two of you used to love each other. Jeongguk used to smile down at you when you were naked beneath him like this. Used to lean in close and whisper that he loved you just as he pushed inside even though you knew, you could feel it in everything he did. Now, there’s no smile. Now, he leans down and spits on your pussy and pushes inside and doesn’t tell you a goddamn thing.
Not with words, anyway.
Because the way he fucks you says it all. Impersonal, desperate, bitter. He grips your hips and fucks into you frenzied and fast. Takes your hand and puts it on your clit and tells you to get yourself off. An inconvenience. Tells you he misses your tight cunt, tells you he misses the way it milks his cock, tells you he misses watching the way you come undone underneath him, but he doesn’t tell you he misses you.
There’s a moment, just after he spills into the condom and stays inside, just catching his breath, when you think he might say it. Might tell you he loves you around the lump in his throat, might apologize, might ask if you two can’t figure it out.
There’s only a moment.
Jeongguk doesn’t say anything. Lets the moment pass. Pulls out and ties off the condom and wordlessly gets up to throw it away. It’s the silence that pisses you off. The disregard. Jeongguk hates you for something you’d lied about doing that he’d done for real, so you can be wordless, too. You can treat him like an inconvenient, cheap fuck, too. You can get up and find your clothes and pull them on and let him watch, words biting at the back of his teeth, and you can tell yourself to feel nothing.
You can say, “You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve,” and not shy away from the resentment in your voice, because it’s properly placed. “You fucked someone else, too, so you’ve got a lot of fucking nerve, Jeongguk.”
Eight months is a long time to miss someone, to play at daydreams. To think of all the things you want to say, the things you’ll do. In not one of them did you think about this: you, fully dressed and stinking of sex, saying, “It’s late. I’ll show myself out.”
Jeongguk, tears glistening on his cheeks, saying, “No, let me—baby, I’m sorry, please—I’ll drive you.”
A shake of your head. Jeongguk doesn’t push it.
Roll credits.
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[ the second. ] Jimin wants to talk your ear off about it—the girl you’re seeing.
It’s new and there isn’t much to say. You tell him the two of you met at one of the student showcases put on by the art department and leave off the part about all of Jeongguk’s old friends being there, that he would’ve participated, too, if he hadn’t dropped out after you broke his heart. Leave off the part where you would’ve been there to support him instead, in another life. Leave off the part where it’d just been morbid curiosity: you, not an art student, wandering those halls to see if Jeongguk’s photographs were still framed on the wall.
“Is she nice?” Jimin asks, head nearly knocking into yours as someone shoves by him. “Fucking asshole.”
You nod. “Why would I date someone that wasn’t nice?”
Jimin, perpetually unbothered until he decidedly isn’t, sends you a look that he hides behind the rim of his cup. “Because you’re in your self-destruction era and aren’t thinking clearly.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said. You know I’m happy if you’re happy, but…” He pauses as he trails off. Tries to wrap his words in something delicate. “It’s pretty clear you still aren’t over it. That’s all.”
You snort. “That’s all?” you repeat, like it’s some small thing. Like it’s normal and fine.
“I’m sure it’s easier to pretend when the two of you are thousands of miles apart,” Jimin amends, and he must see how you bristle, stung by the callout, because his eyes soften. “Tell me about her.”
She’s beautiful and kind and smart. Smokes clove cigarettes and the smell is always clinging to her skin. You know how to make her come but don’t know what she’s majoring in—fashion, you think, because she’s always holding fabric swatches against your skin. Tells you what suits you and what doesn’t. Tells you which textures don’t work, what’s too warm, and she doesn’t need to tell you what’s too cold because you already know it’s you.
She’s beautiful and kind and smart and has no idea you’re still in love with someone else.
But you can’t tell Jimin that, can you? Can’t tell him about how she’d dragged you to a private corner in the gallery and kissed you breathless; the way she made you come on her fingers; the way Jeongguk’s name nearly slipped out of your mouth as you shook. Can’t tell him that she’s got arms full of art. Delicate patchwork; nothing like the harsh, bold colors inked into Jeongguk’s skin, but it feels the same to trace the lines.
You can’t tell him much of anything, so what you settle on is, “She’s nice—good for me,” and it doesn’t sound convincing to either of you.
Jimin doesn’t call you on it, though. Not again. Instead, he keeps his gaze steady, staring into the fire, the flames dancing wildly when you meet his eye. “You need to be careful,” he says. “You’re going to hurt her, too. Maybe worse than you hurt him.”
“Jimin—”
“Just be careful,” he reiterates, and all you can do is nod. What else is there to do besides wait for the inevitable crash and burn?
And it’s a little unfair, you think, that Taehyung grows older every single year. A little unfair that guilt won’t let you decline the invitations. A little unfair that you can still pick Jeongguk’s laughter out of a crowd. A little unfair that these hometown friends-turned-acquaintances still throw sideways glances whenever someone else touches him, as if he still has someone to answer to; as if they’re expecting something.
An hour. You’ve survived an hour longer than you did last year, and it’s not much but you’re still proud of yourself. You’ve had a drink, talked to someone other than Jimin. Managed to ignore the way Jeongguk is ignoring you; the way he immediately leaves a room as soon as you enter.  Maybe it’s better like this, you reckon. Maybe it’s what you need.
An hour is long enough. Jimin doesn’t comment on the way your bones crack when you stand to leave. No one needs a reminder of growing older. He doesn’t ask if you’ll be okay, either; if you need a ride home. Instead, he stays quiet as he studies you, clearly wondering if lightning strikes twice. If you’re going to be able to walk past Jeongguk and out the door without making another mistake.
You can at least make it across Taehyung’s sprawling yard and to the house. You can dodge the sweat-slick bodies and the girls sitting in laps. You can toss your empty cup in an overflowing trash can. You can pretend the eyes on your back are well-intentioned.
You can make it to the bathroom.
Annoying, the way your phone has been vibrating all night only to disappoint you. Irrational. You scroll past the emoji-laden messages, the coy flirting, because they’re from the person you’re actually dating—the person you told you were going to sleep early—and not from Jeongguk. You should feel guilty. You should feel guilty, but the face staring back at you in the mirror doesn’t look guilty at all.
She looks tired. A little beat-down, but that’s life.
Maybe that’s just what happens when you’ve spent the last two years of your life chasing after ghosts.
A knock at the door startles you. Sends your phone tumbling to the floor, screen probably cracked to hell, and you swear under your breath. “Just a minute!” you call out, a little stunned from how threadbare you feel all of a sudden.
Still, the knocking continues, and you’re on your knees on this bathroom floor and all you want to do is cry. You don’t want to be on this floor in this house. You don’t want to keep putting in the effort of maintaining the facades of all these friendships. You don’t want to keep coming back to this town, don’t want to keep being confronted with the harsh reality of all your mistakes.
“Just a fucking min—”
The words die on your tongue, because there Jeongguk stands, all the air in your lungs dissipating at the amount of space he takes up. Even worse when he steps inside and locks the door behind him. You feel like you’re going to drown. You feel like you’re going to scream or cry or both, and you’re still on the floor, still on your knees, and it feels too much like penance when you look up at him. Feels like you’re groveling, praying for forgiveness.
You stand quickly, ignoring the rush of blood to your head, the way your legs tingle. Jeongguk still hasn’t said a word, doesn’t seem like that’s going to change, either, and it’s really all you can do to stay on your feet when everything in you is screaming to collapse.
Eventually, he says, “You’re seeing someone,” and it isn’t a question, not really, but it borders on one. It’s a question and a confirmation and somehow sounds a lot like he’s asking for permission for something.
“I—yeah.” You swallow. “It’s new.”
He hums. Steps a little closer. Leans against the sink. Darts out his tongue to swipe at his bottom lip before he tugs his lip ring between his teeth. “Yeah? Does he treat you well?”
“She,” you correct, and there’s a flash of something in his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Jeongguk, at one point, had known everything about you, but not this. “And yeah,” you add on, barely a whisper, “she does.”
Part of you feels embarrassed. Jeongguk had known everything about you but not this, and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed or guilty but it still sits there in the middle of your chest. Feels like you’ve been keeping secrets. Feels like shame, even though you aren’t ashamed. Feels like you’re awaiting judgment. But the surprise in Jeongguk’s eyes disappears and something else settles in its place—uncertainty, if you had to guess.
“Are you happy with her?”
You shrug. “Like I said, it’s new.”
And Jeongguk is as emulous as ever, because he asks, “Does it feel like what we had?” and you already know the answer is no.
“I’m not sure anything will.”
It’s honest; you hadn’t said it to appease him, but he looks pleased anyway. You’re starting to understand why so many people write about their first love. Why it’s such a powerful role to fill. Because you and Jeongguk are standing in a bathroom behind a locked door, feet apart from one another, and you think, I don’t think there’s anyone I will ever love more than him even though it’s been two years. You think, I don’t think I’ll ever recover from this.
You think, I would try over and over and over again if he asked me to.
Later on, when you’re alone in your childhood bed and your face is streaked with tears, only your shame and guilt for company, you won’t be able to figure out who moved first, but one of you had.
Once upon a time, you had known everything about Jeongguk, too. You could recite his taste from memory, but it’s different this time. He licks into your mouth and it tastes like ash—nothing like the clove cigarettes your girlfriend smokes, but close enough that the parallel burns like acid in your throat. It’s close enough that you can keep your eyes shut and pretend again.
This time there’s no softness to be found. There’s just Jeongguk’s mouth pressed to yours, barely letting you breathe, not wanting anyone to hear. There’s just the sink digging into your back. Jeongguk’s hands gripping at your waist, pulling at the hem of your skirt. There’s the frustration and desperation of two people who love each other but will never, ever get it right.
There’s Jeongguk asking, as he spits into his hand and slicks you up, if you’re going to tell her.
There’s you, already too far gone, saying you don’t know.
There’s Jeongguk asking, as you’re clenching around him and dragging him with you to the edge, if you’d come back to him if he asked you to.
There’s you, already knowing the answer to this, too, saying you would.
But this isn’t that and Jeongguk doesn’t ask. When it’s over, he tosses the condom and does a half-assed job of helping you clean up and he doesn’t ask. He splashes water on his face and fixes his hair and he doesn’t ask. He tucks his cock back into his briefs and zips his jeans and he doesn’t ask.
Jeongguk has one hand on the doorknob and he doesn’t ask you to come back. Instead, he asks, “How long are you gonna keep doing this?”
For once, you don’t have an answer.
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[ the third. ] You go even farther away for grad school.
You try to put more distance between you and Jeongguk, more distance between you and all the skeletons in your closet, but you just pack them up in different boxes and bring them with you.
You spend New Year’s Eve chain-smoking in your parents’ back yard—that same brand of clove cigarettes, because hearts are easy to break but some habits are not. Sometimes it’s a comfort to hurt yourself in the same way you hurt others, so you chain-smoke and you don’t go to to Taehyung’s birthday party because you weren’t invited and it doesn’t sting in the same way that it doesn’t sting that Jimin doesn’t call you once you’re home because he hasn’t spoken to you in a year.
The clock ticks down to midnight. Someone sets off fireworks. Absolutely nothing changes.
There are no half-baked resolutions. There’s no hope that this is going to be the year you get your shit together. There’s just you and the bed you’ve made for yourself; the autopilot you can’t—won’t—turn off, because you don’t know where you’re going anyway so you might as well just go wherever it’s taking you. There’s guilt and there’s shame and there’s baggage, but they’re all old friends. Those are old scars.
The sweatshirt you’re wearing doesn’t belong to you, and it does little to protect you from the bitter cold that bites at your skin. Jeongguk doesn’t belong to you, either, but he keeps coming back to you like he does.
“Mind if I sit down?”
You shrug, gesturing to the empty chair beside you. The small fire you’d built is down to its last embers, and it’s what you focus on, because you can’t focus on Jeongguk anymore.
“You weren’t at Tae’s.”
“Wasn’t invited.”
“Oh,” he breathes. “Sorry, I didn’t know. I would’ve—”
“It’s fine. I wouldn’t have gone anyway.”
He seems to hear what you don’t say. I wouldn’t have gone because I can’t be around you anymore. I wouldn’t have gone because I don’t trust myself with you. I wouldn’t have gone because I’ve burned down every good thing in my life trying to keep you. “Oh. Yeah, that—that makes sense.”
He’d texted you. Asked if he could see you. Just wanted to talk, and you’ve never cared much for symbolism, but nearing midnight on New Year’s Eve had seemed as good a time as any to let it go, so you’d said yes. Now, when there isn’t much to say, all of Jeongguk’s flimsy excuses are laid bare. Transparent.
“Was Jimin there?”
Jeongguk nods. “You didn’t know?”
You shake your head. Feels like it’s made of concrete. “No. We haven’t talked since last winter break.”
“Because of—”
How cruel, that you’d confessed to Jimin instead of the one person who deserved to know. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
You shrug again. “It’s okay. I don’t think it’s permanent, just until I can get my shit together, I guess. Wasn’t fair to drag him into my mess anyway.”
“It’s not that easy,” Jeongguk says, and it sounds like something he wants to be true. It sounds like something he’s said countless times in defense of himself. “We’d—I’d do it if I could.”
“Yeah,” you agree, “of course.”
Silence creeps up again, so you dig another cigarette out of the pack and offer one to Jeongguk that he waves away. “Cloves? That’s a weird choice.”
“Just something I picked up along the way.”
He hears you again: They’re what she used to smoke. It helps me heal to hurt myself with something that reminds me of her. Sometimes I chain-smoke clove cigarettes and I don’t wash the smell from my hands, my clothes, my hair, because it makes me feel less alone.
So he asks, “Was it real?”
“Doesn’t matter,” you answer, flicking the wheel of your lighter, words spoken around the cigarette stuck between your lips. “It never had a chance. Not a real one, anyway.”
“Do your parents know?”
“Know what? That I went away to college and started fucking women?” Jeongguk shrugs. Has the audacity to look embarrassed. “What are you trying to ask me? You wanna know if I keep coming back to you because I’m scared to come out to my parents?”
“No. I don’t know. I just—”
The laugh that escapes you is scorched and bitter. Sounds the way the tobacco tastes. “No, Jeongguk. I keep coming back to you because I keep hoping you’ll ask me to.” I keep hoping you still want me.
“I almost did,” he admits, and you can hear how he swallows around the lump in his throat. “The first time.”
“When you were a dick about me sleeping with someone else? Yeah, okay. You didn’t want me back, you just didn’t want me to be with anyone else.”
He huffs. “How the fuck do you know what I want? You’ve never bothered to ask.”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” comes your response, stilted and practiced. “It doesn’t matter what we want, because we’re just going to keep hurting one another trying to get it right.” You suck in a breath, wipe furiously at the tears on your cheeks. “And we’re never going to.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Then ask.” Jeongguk startles, looks at you with wide eyes. “Ask me to come back for real, Jeongguk, and I will.”
A beat of silence.
Two, three, four.
Someone sets off another round of fireworks. A dog barks. It’s so cold that you can see Jeongguk’s breath each time he exhales, each time he breathes out instead of speaking. All the words he isn’t saying. And it’s exactly how you knew it would go, but it does nothing to tamp down the devastation in your chest.
You’d confessed your transgressions to Jimin and thought your silence to your ex-girlfriend was a gift, that it was sparing her the pain of what you’d done. Now you understand that someone’s silence can be the most vicious thing of all.
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[ the last. ] Graduation looms. It’s the last winter break you’re spending at home.
Your therapist suspects you get your compartmentalism from your parents.
They don’t mention it. They see the stack of boxes and your bare bedroom walls and they don’t say a word about any of it. They watch you pack everything in your car and don’t offer to help. They process their grief silently, and when you can’t stand it anymore, you say, “I dated a woman my senior year of undergrad, you know.”
They don’t say anything to that, either, but it feels good to tell them. Feels a little like freedom and reclamation, like you can be who you are in front of others.
When you leave for good, you don’t want to repackage all those same skeletons.
So you meet Jimin for lunch and you take it in stride that everything is weird, that there’s nearly two years of silence to fill. You don’t ask for forgiveness and he doesn’t demand it of you, just asks if you’re doing better. “I’m doing the best I can,” you answer, and it’s human and honest enough that he accepts it with a warm smile.
Jeongguk is more difficult.
There’s no way to neatly box up that kind of baggage.
You’d intended to stop by his apartment to talk, tell him you aren’t coming back anymore. There’s nothing left here for you, you’d told him, and there was a flash of something. A there’s me, isn’t there? that had gone unsaid, destined for the same fate as a million other unspoken words between you.
Because there is him, but there’s also the way you’re desperately trying to claw back into something resembling normalcy. You’d lost yourself when you also lost Jeongguk, and you need to figure out who you are without him. You need to know who you are once you stop running and let your demons catch up with you. You need to hear what they have to say.
Maybe Jeongguk had said it best last year—“It’s not that easy. I’d do it if I could.”—because you’re nothing if not predictable and self-destructive.
You’re nothing if not naked and on your back beneath him, your fingers threaded through his hair as he rocks his hips into you, more tender than you deserve. His lips are ghosting along your skin and every press feels like a brand. Feels like he’s both making a mockery of you and declaring you ruined for anyone who might come after him. Feels like you’ll love him until you die.
(Some version of you must exist outside of Jeongguk’s grasp—outside of his orbit, his bed—but right now, as he twines your fingers together and pins them above your head, you can’t figure out who she might be.)
Eight months had been a long time to think of all the things you wanted to say, and four years is worse. Four years, and you still can’t bring yourself to ask him to try again, but there’s nothing after this, nothing to lose, so your voice is hoarse and raw when you say, “Jeongguk,” and he groans a little, nips at the column of your throat because he loves the way you say his name. “Jeongguk,” you repeat, because he senses the urgency, hears what you aren’t saying.
“Yeah, baby, say it. Whatever it is, tell me.”
He rolls his hips faster. Before, he would’ve tried to prolong the ending, but he’s hurtling towards it now. There’s nothing after this, you know, but you need the confirmation. You need to finally put all of this to rest. “I want to—” His cock strokes someplace that whites out your vision. “Fuck, want to—want you to come with me.”
He laughs, full of himself, probably smirking out the side of his mouth. “Keep squeezing me like that and I will soon.”
“No,” you insist, shocked at the conviction in your voice, “when I leave. Come with me.”
Everything slows. Jeongguk pulls back, moves his hands to cover himself, and there’s nothing but cold confusion in his absence. “What?”
“I didn’t ask you before. Last year. I just—I left it up to you, and you’re right, I didn’t ask what you wanted, but I didn’t tell you what I wanted, either. But I’m telling you now. I’m asking—”
There was never going to be anything after this.
Jeongguk’s silence says it all.
The way he pulls out and rolls you onto your stomach. The way he fucks as fast and as hard as he can. The way he used to love you openly and honestly and now holds whatever’s left close to his chest like it’s something to be ashamed of.
Someone’s silence can always be the most vicious thing of all.
Roll credits.
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thank you so much for reading, and an additional thank you in advance if you decide to reblog my work. as always, my inbox is always open for any feedback! ♡
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celabi · 1 year
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It's your local fungi with a horny thought. We had our sports fest at school today and I played badminton for my section. I went to the bathroom after my match and was all sweaty and shit (Tennis shorts and all that wink wonk.) But also secretly wishing Scara would see me and take me in one of the stalls. That was hours ago, I spent the whole time since, trying to not lose my shit over being sexually frustrated. Expound on this please I will kiss you if you do <3
Gym class with Scummy Scaramouche! ☆彡
Blublublublub hiiii I don’t think they do pe in college but take wtv this is *bites lip seductively* mwa (it’s short$) tbh this is kinda not what you asked but it’s also similar at the same time lol sorry!!
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Scaramouche used to absolutely despise P.E class. Because no matter what sport the teacher made them participate in, almost everyone tried to target him some how, y’know, cause he’s a loser and stuff. People using all their strength to peg a dodge ball at him, going out of their way to trip him over him track, being the last one picked in group activities… yeah, it was kinda rough. So naturally, as he got older, he tried to put his past behind him as much as he could— wether that be lying to the professor and saying that he had a bad knee (sometimes he’d make Ei write him a sick note to make it more believable… this is a grown man everybody), or just skipping out on the lesson entirely (by cramming himself in a bathroom stall and playing on his phone). Basically just doing anything to get out of it— but that all stopping when you came in.
Coming in with that tight gym uniform that he thinks hugs your body figure just perfectly— watching as it slightly raises when you bend down to do all those different physical activities. The way the sweat that drips off your face and down your neck made you look almost if not angelic… and if he had a jar, he’d ask to take a little sample from you jfc I’m so sorry. How your tits bounce every time you jump up the catch the ball, you’d have to literally shake him back and forth for his attention to leave them (but even then he’s looking down and watching them jiggle lawl). The small shorts that let your cute little butt peak out from under them … he quickly grabs his bag and places it in his lap to hide his boner.
Um anyways, he scrambles up from the floor and slowly walks over towards you— momentarily stopping you and your friends conversation, which you smile and they groan about. “Hi Scara, need something?” So cute, he thinks, his feet padding across the ground until he’s finally, fully in front of you, while also trying to secretly scoot your friend further away. “Yes, you…’re help with something, can you cu— come with me? Please?” You smell even better then he thought. Scaramouche hums happily when you agree, and reaches out for your hand to pull you along and away from everyone else. Your friend tries to pull you back, but he shoots them a deathly stare over his shoulder and tightens his hold on your hand, a silent head shake in warning, they roll their eyes and let you leave.
Scaramouche thinks gym class is not that bad, as he locks the door to the stall and turns around, where you’re standing there, unaware (or aware, maybe who knows) of the effect you have on him, and looking at him questionably. “You… want me to help you pee, or something?” He blinks, and lets a little, amused chuckle fall from his mouth.
“… no I— i uh. Can you turn around really quick?” A strange request, but you comply nonetheless, and turn around until you’re facing the wall. There’s a quick shuffling sound coming from behind you, as well as Scaramouche letting out a few curses under his breath— before you feel his body pressing up behind you. “Thank you… you don’t know— know what you’re doing to me, do you?” His arms wrap around your torso, hands sneakily slipping under the fabric of your shirt and landing on your bare skin— which he shamelessly prods at. And when you look down, you can just barely see something poking through the gap of your thighs… it’s the tip of his cock, it’s angry red and leaking cum already :( “you look so beautiful wearing this, so— so perfect. I hate that everyone else can see you.”
Humming, you reach down and tease your fingers over the slit of his cock head, making him drop his head into the crook of your neck and whine pathetically— before he slowly starts to rut his hips into you. “So good, so good…” even through your clothing he can feel the way your pussy rubs against his cock.
“The lesson ends soon… we’ll have some fun, yeah?” (A threat not a question) your voice is so heavenly, he squeezes his eyes tight shut, and moans into your skin. “Yes… yes please.” He feels your hand leave his cock, and your arms raise up to pull off your shirt, and he gulps. ‘..finally.’
Err the end bye 🫡
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crestfallercanyon · 1 month
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Kristen is so fucking relatable as a repressed teenager jfc. I am both horrified and in awe of Ally Beardsley’s playing of Kristen Applebees — Kristen is a MESS but she’s a lovable mess who I’m glad everyone’s kind exasperatedly supporting. I knew plenty of people like her in my school or going through this wild renaissance of new information about themselves (or that they wouldn’t let themselves learn about who they were) and it’s just really uplifting to see Kristen have such good friends through it all (though her speech started sweet and very swiftly needed to be shut down lol) but I know lots of people might like really regard her as frustrating and awful but she’s a teenager who is going through a lot of changes and crises of faith and persona and I just gah. I love her.
Fig and her care toward her two dads is adorable, every interaction with Gilear is gold (also props to Gilear for recognizing Sklonda is too much woman for him) but also the mantras in the mirror were so sweet. I also love how Gilear interacts with all of Fig’s friends and how Fig asserts herself and just wants the best for literally everyone. Yes she is very mischievous (also holy shit her deception skill is so fucking high??) but she’s mischievous on the path of good and I love it.
Fabian makes me sad. Like, he wants to impress his dad but he wants to be his own man. And Bill Seacaster — I still don’t know what to make of him— but being around someone whose mood is entirely unreliable (and assuredly that bleeds into other aspects of him) no wonder Fabian tries so hard to be strong and stable because he’s had to deal with instability his whole life.
Gorgug — I’ve talked about Gorgug a few times now but he’s just such a sweetheart. He called himself stupid and that’s tragic because he may not be the one figuring out all the clues and know what to do but he’s also the one they can rely on to diffuse a situation or just be kind about unknown things and as a barbarian that’s a huge tonal shift that’s so impressive. He’s not the brightest bulb but he may be the sweetest and that matters.
Adaine and her whole sibling rivalry gives me life. I’m glad she’s rebelling against her parents. She became powerful and wonderful and adept DESPITE her parents (whereas Aelwyn always had their full support) and I think that’s something that — while painfully — I hope she’ll learn to carry with pride.
Also Riz? One, he’s such a great like awkwardly confident teenager, and I’m glad he responded to his mom’s hiding of information the way he did (I love that him and Sklonda are like— healthy parent/child relationship) (also love how Brennan plays Sklonda), but he takes this with stride and won’t let all the things dragging him down hold him back and I’m sure for Sklonda that’s both amazing and scary because she wants her son safe but it just warms my heart to see.
And the teamwork here!!! Kristen and Adaine detecting magic and good here? Gorgug trying to find a power source for the palimpsest. THE BIZ REVEAL?? Also Riz’s final move here to take the palimpsest and then pull the gun with Biz!!! That was fucking AMAZING, because of course he’s not cool with what Biz is doing and I also I want Riz and Adaine both to absolutely tear Biz apart.
Adaine and Riz teamups are truly my beloved — like go you angry intelligent kids, go go go!
Honestly all of them — I’m so excited for this fight at the arcade let’s get it.
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steviesbicrisis · 1 year
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Stranger Things S2 rewatch thoughts
I finally finished rewatching S2 and this is everything I've written down as I was watching lmao
KEITH USED TO WORK AT THE ARCADE?? Also the arcade is right next to family video so Keith just moved next door in season 3 lmao
Steve omg you’re so cute stop
FINALLY MAX IS HERE
Okay Billie is bad, yes? We all agree Billie is bad, right? But Dacre IS SO HOT I CANNOT HE TOOK A “PORCA TROIA” OUT OF ME LIKE IT WAS NOTHING
Honestly they’re so dope for dressing up as ghostbusters and going to school with matching outfits
Ugh Nancy and Steve are so terrible for each other
Steve’s face during the bullshit scene really broke my heart 🥺
People being annoyed at Joyce for being super protective of Will like what?? That boy was proclaimed dead, they had a funeral and he turned out to be in another dimension??? I dare you to not be at least a little paranoid
I’m getting the gayest vibes ever from this basketball + shower scene I’m not even joking, Harrington 100% felt what it is like to be a girl objectified in a nightclub
Billy calling Steve pretty boy is so fucked up like are you Eddie Munson? No so imma need you to back off ✋
Jfc no wonder Vecna chose max she’s a walking gold mine for therapists
One drive with Billy would be enough for me to become a target for Vecna I swear
A part of me will always blame Dustin for the cat’s death 🥲
Stranger things is so good I cannot fucking believe my eyes sometimes
First Nancy, now Hopper… can they like, stop going inside creepy ass portals all by themselves? FFS
OH MY GOD ERICA WAS SO SMALL HOW CUTE SINDFKJDF
Lucas telling Max “if I tell you the truth, you could be arrested or killed. Do you accept the risk?” Hits different now
FINALLY THE DUSTIN/STEVE DUO IS BORN
I was today years old when I realized Nancy broke up with Steve in S1 for a month but then she got back with him because she got tired of waiting for Jonathan
Dustin’s proud smile when Steve told him “good call dude” I CANT IM WEEK IM CRYING ON THE FLOOR
I will never get over Dustin’s pure adoration for Steve in this season
JUSTICE FOR BOB
BOB NEWBY THE SUPERHERO 😭😭😭
Everyone: it’s like the mind flyer! Steve&Max: don’t speak nerd in my presence pls
I’m sorry but Mike holding that small trophy as a weapon LOL
I CANNOT BELIEVE THE KIDS WERE AT THE WINDOW WHEN BILLY CAME ARE STUPID
I cannot believe they wanted to leave a beaten-up and concussed Steve behind, are you crazy???
I totally forgot that Steve, in a span of a couple of hours, pushed his girlfriend to be with another guy, got beaten up defending kids he barely knows and then went down - all beaten up and concussed - the upside down tunnels just for said kids?? ARE U EVEN REAL MAN?
Will turning to Mike when that girl asked him to dance 🥺
Nancy is so fucking right, those girls are so stupid turning Dustin down like fuck you who do you think you are????
Jopper at the end, I love my parents so much
Here my thoughts on S1!
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nevarrhoe · 2 years
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nsfw hcs for billy, eddie & steve?? <3
anon, i have been waiting for you. i have many, many, thoughts on this and i am more than happy to share with the class. i hope u enjoy.
-jazz (@dameronology)
smut (afab! reader) below the cut!! by hitting read more you and thereby consenting to said content & agree that you 18 years or older. if i catch minors interacting with this post or following me i will put u straight in the bin
eddie munson
ok i know canonically that eddie isn't the most popular guy in high school but i refuse to believe he hasn't had sex before. he plays in a band once a week at a bar?? hello?? also there's definitely some popular girls who find him high-key hot and seek him out because it's shameful and maybe they're into that
MY POINT IS basically that eddie is experienced and he knows what he's doing
he's a little above average, in terms of endowment. kinda skinny but blessed with a fair bit of length that hits the right spot
it's hairy but trimmed
what he probably has less experience with is sex in a relationship; like being with one person long enough to learn their likes & dislikes, to find kinks, to have actual romantic sex, etc
and trust me, this boy is eager to learn!! after your first few times, he starts to pick up on what gets you going on, what spots are the best for your pleasure & he's gonna map them out in his head and learn them like the back of his hand
eddie is hyper-focused on your pleasure; it's a win-win situation because he gets off on you getting off
his favourite thing to do is go down on you. he could literally do it for fuckin' hours, tongue just playing around and sucking on every sensitive area. it's when he moans in pleasure and your entire goddamn body seizes beneath him that he normally just cums himself without even being touched
bonus points for when he uses his arms to hold you down when he's giving you head
speaking of head: eddie will never say no to receiving. he always has two hands on your head when you do it, guiding you a little but never pushing
because he's not the kind of guy who always wants to instigate the whole sub/dom thing; he loves when it happens but for the most part, sex with you two is sort of like an equal partnership??
he's definitely the more commanding one though. this might be unexpected but c'mon mannn we've all seen him playing d&d and i refuse, REFUSE, to believe that he doesn't have elements of that in the bedroom
when he does go full top/dom/whatever u wanna call it, he's still quintessentially eddie. he'll tower over you, large, ringed hand around your throat as he gently praises you and rings orgasm and orgasm out of you until you forget your own name
he's also absolutely willing to give up control as well. he's an absolute slut for a cocky, confident partner and if you catch him in the right moment he will do literally anything you say
eddie somehow has an endless stamina. maybe it's his blatantly fucking undiagnosed adhd but his recovery period is actually impressive and he's ready and raring to go even after like four rounds jfc
he's also pretty much always horny i won't lie to u. he absolutely will not push it onto you but if you give even the most subtle hint that you're good to go then this man is pouncing on you
that means you've had sex in a lotta different places; the car, the shower, the throne in the d&d room, round the back of the theatre, in a cleaner's cupboard at starcourt mall...the list goes on
kink-wise, eddie is down to try anything at least once but from the get-go he actively encourages choking, marking and being tied up (for both of you)
position wise, his favourite is cow-girl and doggy but again he will try anything
after care !! he doesn't always have the supplies for it but you bet your fine ass his heart is in the right place
he'll probably grab the nearest shirt of his if there's no cloth but hell, it works. and sometimes the water he has on his nightstand is like two days old but water is water, right??
steve harrington
it's at least a little bit canon that steve used to pull a lot, so it's safe to say he has some experience both in a short term and long term sense
he is very average sized; six, maybe six & and a half inches, but he uses it fuckin well and it's curved super nice. trust.
a little hairy, but trimmed
steve harrington is a manscaper. u heard it hear first.
overall, he's very good !!
at the basics
missionary?? he's got it down. moaning encouragingly when you're sucking him off?? absolute king. fingering you?? mind blowing stuff
and good LORD he is obsessed with calling you "good girl/boy/etc" like he'll be ploughing into you and just repeating it over and over like a mantra
so essentially he's like mostly a top but it's not until he gets super comfortable in a relationship and you begin to communicate with him your likes & dislikes that it really and truly comes out
the signs were always there, mkay? it just takes the right encouragement and confidence and suddenly he's literally getting off on you giving him full control
it's definitely a trust thing. there's so much love in trusting this man and he feels it in his bones
so sex w steve is 50/50; sometimes it's kinky and rough and other times it's very slow and sensual
it'll be those times that he likes you to ride him. back against the headboard, you on his lap with one hand on his shoulder and one tangled in his hair so that he can press kisses to your lips and chest and collarbone
steve is very basic with his kinks: he was all like "omg no mine are so shameful" and then admit he's into choking and all you can do is laugh, not bc you're kink shaming him but because it's cute he thinks he has to be ashamed
so yeah, he loves to have a hand on your throat
one day he accidentally leaves scratch marks on your back and the next night he goes fuckin FERAL. and that's the story of how you discovered steve's marking kink
he loves car sex. it's cramped as hell because he's a lanky little shit but it's his favourite thing
his favourite position is missionary, as basic as it is, but if he's feeling a bit more rough he'll pull you into doggy and pound into you from behind
steve has a pretty good sex drive but after work he would literally rather cuddle than have sex
but then he also has days where he's pulling you into fuckin closets to fuck you because he has to have you there & then
he just loves to hold you straight after, arms wrapped tightly around you as he presses kisses to your bare skin
billy hargrove
billy is probably the most experienced out of all of them. he's got a new girl every other week (minimum) so his body count is pretty high i'm ngl
he's not fucking stupid about it though - he gets tested for shit regularly and uses protection
any sort of sex with billy would start casually
there would be no emotion but that does not mean he doesn't fuck your brains out
it's pretty much a silent agreement amongst us all that he is well above average in terms of length and width
(his hair is very fair down there so it doesn't need much work, but he does trim it)
and even though billy is ice cold, he very self-aware of his monster dong and will prepare you accordingly with his fingers until you're wet enough - probably actively encourages lube as well
that's pretty much the start and end of him being nice because everything else involves him pounding into you from behind, a hand either pulling your hair back or shoving your face into the pillow
if you can think of a degrading nickname i can guarantee that he's used it
billy's favourite sight is you on your knees in front of him
he leaves marks everywhere; bruises on your hips, hickeys on your neck, between your legs, literally everywhere
but you tell him to stop at any minute and 100% he will
aftercare in that stage of your relationship is pretty much non-existent. he'll ask if you're okay but then his jeans are on and he's out the door before you can even come back down from your high
NOW let's assume, by some freak of nature, you manage to make this man feel something for you
sex will be different after that. there will still be times when it's all of the above but there's a more giving side of him that you can unlock, like some freaky sex video game
he'll let you be on top for once, which is pretty much unheard of before; hands exploring all over your body - probably settling on your ass tbh - but occasionally tangling your fingers with his
billy will kiss you during as well which he never did before
he never spoke before either, but when you're more intimate he's using all kind of pet names
his go to "my girl/boy/etc" but also "sweetheart" and "angel"
there's aftercare as well!! mostly he just wants to hold you and be vulnerable for a second, but he'll also clean you up and sleep beside you
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WIBTA if I stopped going to Family Suppers every weekend?
So in my family it's just four: My Father (76M) and Aunt (72F) live together in the same house, divided in two. My Brother (38M) and me (34F) live on our own in separate houses. We are expected to go have supper with FA(FatherAunt Combo) every weekend and holidays.
This is basically a four hour event every S and S which occupies half the day and my Brother and I both work all week long and have only weekends to rest. My B is a teacher (in school and afterclasses) and I am a Customer Care Specialist, which means we both have to constantly deal with people and we are wrung out one by rambunctious children and unhappy costumers that behave like them respectively.
FA are very needy, wanting constant validation, and are the sort that complain if, for example, I do not call them everyday to check on them, expressing how "callous" and "ungrateful" I am for not "getting interested in them". But I honestly deal with clients all week and I'm all talked out, so to say. Sometimes when I finish I just want to not talk again in the whole day and lie down and not feel like another cog in the machine. I am still expected to fix everything wrong with them or their houses when I finish though, which is what exhausts me.
It might seem easy to say don't give in, but thing is, they have done so much for me and my B. My A helped me rebuild my house and F helped my brother fix his: they're always there when we need them and I love them to bits. They worry and love us and if we're in trouble they're the first to be there. My father helped me with my tumors and the expenses and my Aunt helped me get out of awful situations.
Thing is, this is reciprocal as much as it can be: B and I have always been ready to help where we can, but we don't have the same resources they do (both boomers who basically were hired before they even finished university whilst B and I had to fight years of unemployment and minimum wage and their relentless mockery of it) so what we can do is limited. We still do our best. To an almost unhealthy point. When things break, I fix them - even if I have an art degree and what broke is the washing machine or my fathers boat (my father has a sailing boat and I can barely reach the end of the month with 50uds in my bank account jfc). I cannot buy them a house, but I do my best to repay them for everything as I am.
But this expecting me to come every weekend and be in my Best Mood, never complain or rant and basically entertain them, prepare the table and food and clean the dishes and fix the Tv that broke and the phone that is not working is sucking me dry. My B stopped going at some point, because he finishes work at 21:30 and weekends are his only days off and he said he's exhausted and cannot deal with these expectations, but now I take the brunt of the FA complaining on how awful he is, the asshole he has become, how ungrateful, for not being constantly at their whim and call. And a part of me knows they are toxic, but this is also the people who brought me up, helped me at my worst and the only people who really stood by my side when I needed someone, so maybe it really is asshole behavior to not repay them in some way.
I have tried talking to them about it, explaining that sometimes my body will not work right and my brain shuts down and I need to unplug, but they do not understand and get offended at the simple notion that being with them to us is not as simple as just enjoying their company. Because truth is, to me it is almost an extension of my job: It is CC voice and face and mood, always jovial because I get shit or "have you tried not being sad/tired/angry" and fixing the toilet flush. Do not raise your voice, clean their house (return to clean yours) and maybe get back home at 4 to rest a bit. This every weekend. And I owe it to them for having taking care of me for years when I was at my worst. I already managed to avoid going to make their grocery shopping too, but they're also a certain age and they need the help. Jesus why is this so hard, they're not even my kids and they should be able to take care of themselves and I feel like a mother but they do need the help.
So the question is, WIBTA if I just... did not go? Follow my brother's example, even if I know how they will take it, and just reduce the number of times I go to them? Or would I actually prove myself to be the asshole they consider him to be?
Ah also I am expected to go visit my F after work too, or call him or else I am the unfilial daughter who does not remember she has a father, haha. Man, just writing this makes me exhausted and feeling like a dick because they're old and need the help.
What are these acronyms?
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quinloki · 2 months
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#JFC this is the first time in my life I've been ambushed#wait no second time#that was three guys with bats
HELLO? Story time???
Okay, so I want to start this with, I was neither hospitalized, nor like permanently scarred, and - I guess in true Quin insanity - I ended up with three friends.
Anyway, I lived in what people called a nice neighborhood, it was about as inner city as the small city knew how to get, but it was built up for the big factory boom back in the day. Cookie-cutter houses (meaning they had similar/identical floorplans), schools within easy distance, and a couple small parks scattered around.
This made it easier for workers to get to work, kids to get to school, and there were ample places to chill after school while you waited for dad to get home and dinner to be ready.
Fast forward some decades to my time, and some of the smaller parks were mostly forgotten. Not completely decrepit, but not really used. One of these places was like a block from my house, and when I didn't want to be at home, I'd go walk there.
Anyway, my... 10th? 11th? grade of high school I had a letterman's jacket from my school by then so it wasn't my freshman year, but I put that on and headed down to that park. To get to it from my house you walked through a VERY narrow fenced pathway that was extra dark because of all the trees.
And that's where it happened.
Three guys, I forget if they had bats or pipes, I just remember it was metal. I wanna say aluminum bats, cause our factories weren't metal ones. I took a couple hits, hate to say I did *not* get any licks in, but once I swore it stopped the fight.
These guys were waiting for a guy. 15/16 year old me absolutely did NOT have the voice they were expecting.
It went from an ambush to an impromptu medical questionnaire. I don't think I've had so many apologize to me before or since, honestly. I got a couple gnarly bruises from it, but no concerning swelling, no breaks, etc. We were all pretty buddy buddy by the time all was said and done, and they even walked me back to my house just in case.
One went to school with me, the other two didn't. I didn't ask who they were waiting for, but the why had to do with some guy beating on his girl, who was someone's sister out of the three of them. (I got the why free of charge cause they were apologizing and explaining themselves, like yeah, okay, be bloody sure next time y'all, goddamn.)
I was such a klutz I had bruises and shit all the time, so no one even asked, and none of the hits had been to my face, so /shrug/. We were kind of sort of friends for the rest of the school year, but I couldn't even tell you his name, just that he was a senior at the time.
Far and away it wasn't my only fight, but it was the only one that was so one-sided.
But there you go ^_^
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Cranky McCrankypants
I've been spending a lot of time on Den of Angels and Instagram. Got an email from Tumblr thanking me for another month of advertising-free payment, and I realized, "Oh, shit. Tumblr."
I am a cranky collector today (again). Sorry.
Things that irritate me (in no particular order):
Scalpers. Oh, sorry - resellers. I remember when "drop-shipping" first became a thing, and everyone and their neighbor paid for those stupid "learn to be a drop-shipper" online courses. I didn't pay it much mind, cuz I wasn't a doll collector back then. Now, I live in Scalper McScalperville. A doll will go on sale at my local store, and by the time I get there, it's gone, and 50 of them are on feeBay for double or triple the price. Message said scalper, and it's all, "Oh, I couldn't possibly let it go for less than list price." Bitch, you paid $10 for that doll, and you're a SAH-soccer-mom looking for some extra pocket money for your nose candy habit. Trying to buy a doll now is a click-war... unless you know the scalper's threshold, and you bid over it. For example, old R&D Susie dolls? Scalpers don't want to pay more than about $40 USD for her, cuz they re-list her for $75. So - bid $75, and you're more likely to get her for $40.
Related: Mattel. You are a multinational corporation that has been around since 1959. Fucking learn logistics, already. JFC.
On a less serious note: plastic. Dear dog, the amount of plastic (and foam and bubble wrap and...) these dolls are packaged in. I get it for playline dolls, but holy shit, for BJDs? You're already charging an arm and a leg for these dolls. Add $50 to the cost already and ship in a reusable cotton bag, FFS. Also, use plain cardboard boxes, please. I can't recycle them once you've put all that fancy foil decoration on there. When you own as many dolls as I do, keeping the boxes makes you look like a hardcore hoarder. If you're keeping the boxers to maintain the resale value, you aren't a collector anyway. You have inventory. Get a warehouse like every other business.
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(the hoard)
Doll nudity. It's an inanimate object, FFS. It doesn't care. If you can't handle seeing nudity, the problem is YOU, Becky. People are born nude. They wear clothes to stay warm and protect sensitive bits. Get laid already.
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(holy shit, newds!)
The drama blog. I am aware that the mod thinks they're offering some sort of "public service" letting "shy people" confess their opinions. I'm old. We old farts call that "passive-aggressive bullshit." Besides, that's not what the blog is being used for. It's being used by newer doll artists to shit on other newer doll artists. Econ 101, doll artist: if your doll isn't selling as well as you like, it's not cuz of competition. It's because not enough people like your doll. Work on your sculpting. Don't take it personally: Iplehouse is about as old-school as it gets, and their dolls are notoriously shitty posers. Impldoll has been around how long? And they just now released a new body that a lot of collectors like. It takes time and practice to make a very popular doll. So, invest the time, and practice. Don't bitch about how you can't afford to. I knew - personally knew - lawyers who worked days as attorneys and worked nights as stock workers at Target. If a lawyer can get a second job, so can you. Does it suck? Sure. But that's the world we live in, kids.
Phew. I feel better now.
Again, sorry. Needed to get this off my chest.
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ozrockbitway · 1 month
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Taps on window glasses
Yes, hi herrooo! I was wondering if you had any Taizo/Touya thots you'd be so kind to share? ((Your fic with them was so cute!!! The cardfight boys deserve more love!!!))
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the glass is being tapped!! what do!! uwaaaaaa I am here....to give you rare pair food...ueiladkjfladsjf thank u for reading the silly fic. sobs they both deserve more love!! (Taizo more since I dont see as much as him sobbssss)
anyway THOTS
me joking about Taizo being Tonya's sugar daddy. I will die on this hill!! (I won't). I like to think Taizo tries to treat Tohya but. man. he doesn't really like to accept things (unless their cards). He's a little stubborn but if you keep pushing eventually Tohya will cave.
Taizo would like to recruit Tohya as like...a personal doctor/nurse?? Considering Tohya was like top of the class/school prior to dropping out Im P SURE this man can clean a wound and pull some doctor words and its like 100% right.
CEO man would offer to pay for his schooling (so he has a back up from card fights) and would just say he pays him back by working for his company. Does Taizo ever keep track of him working off his debt tho? Probably not he'd let him go free if he wanted to.
I KEEP FORGETTING TOHYA TECHNICALLY DOES KINDA WORK FOR HIM??? he has that sticker underneath his hoodie so like. sponsor??
okay but for some gay shit...I like to think Tohya would be kinda slow at realizing he's into Taizo. Meanwhile Taizo realizes and always has a really hard time holding back doing anything gay. (tfw ur hands brush when picking up a card and you have to not blush)
CEO with his personal cheerleaders....I feel like his assistants?? team?? everyone sees he's into Tohya and roots for him hehehe
fellas is it gay to sleep under the same roof with the homeless man you card fight with? aka I think Taizo forces offers his home to Tohya bcuz he is rich and jfc Tohya plz take care of yourself...eat food!! self care!!
Tohya treating Taizo to the little things...Imagine him taking him to some lil mom n pop restaurant that serves his fav food (I forget what it is that he and yuyu eat in one ep and they're like yeah good food even if its. childish??). Taizo isn't that pompous ass rich type so Im sure he'd enjoy the ambiance and difference there!! smaller and more comfortable places.
tbh...I dont think their parents would approve RIP. Taizo is an heir to a company and his dad probably wants offspring and Tohya...I hc that he is disowned after dropping out of med school.
I thought about how Welstra calls Bastion 'Basty' (I forget the spelling whoops) and just think that Taizo would give Tohya a lot of lil nicknames...in private at least.
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br1ghtestlight · 6 months
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random thought but i love eugene mirman's gene sounds ESPECIALLY when gene is sleeping. they're so good & cute
louise tina bob and linda looking @ gene literally exactly like this when he forgets how his song goes at breakfast LMAOO
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love that tina and louise seem to actually pay attention to what songs gene is writing and what they're about despite the fact that there are SO MANY. supportive family <3
gene's dream.... bro that was god speaking to you. like for real wtf
also im only a minute in and there are SO MANY good screenshots already he's such a cutie i love him so much!!!! <3 gene episodes my beloved
"Now I'm going to change into last night's pajamas, AKA my only pajamas, and brush my teeth with Tina's toothbrush because that's what I accidentally did last night."
"Wait, what?"
gene and tina are so silly?? 😭
me and gene share many similarities including waking up in the middle of the night every two hours for no fucking reason. like THATS relatable
MR AMBROSE APPEARANCE LETS FUCKING GOOO‼️‼️ why does his voice sound slightly sped up is he okay. does he have a new voice actor?? he sounds slightly off not like in a bad way its just strange
THERE WAS A NEW VOICE ACTOR BCUZ BILLY EICHNER WASNT CREDITED maybe bcuz its such a small appearance but thats very weird. i feel like mickey fans in season 12 episode 6 when loren did that horrible mickey impression 😭😭 also whoever did his voice in this episode wasnt credited so it was somebody from the main cast doing an impression of him. will try to figure out who. sorry episode review cancelled i need to figure out who the hell voiced mr ambrose in this episode
based on the fact that u cant obviously tell who it is i dont think its eugene mirman and probably not h jon benjiman?? dan mintz can only do one voice so its not him either. probably either john roberts larry murphy or a random crew member who they didnt bother to credit
(most likely billy eischner just wasn't avaliable to voice mr ambrose due to his movie career etc so i dont blame them but it was noticeable enough to ME that i needed to figure it out. not even a bad impression honestly the average fan wouldnt notice)
"What do you lucid dream about?"
"I do revenge stuff on people who were mean to me in high school, some fantasy and science fiction, some adult stuff I can't tell you about."
this is literally the gayest thing mr ambrose has ever said omg FHFMDDJKSKS i cant believe this drama club ass nerd was bullied in high school who could have guessed. not me thats for sure
(now somebody has to write a fanfic about mr ambrose having Adult Stuff dreams about mr frond. i want this on my desk by 3pm tomorrow)
love mr ambrose and his gay ass curly hair..... mr ambrose my beloved <33 kisses u
i dont have anything to say im just strangely invested in gene's lucid dreaming plot at this point. Love all his silly little dreams and its incredible he never seems to have any nightmares or anything!!
this is reminding me of the movie where gene had a dream and he was scared that he wasn't good at music and that people weren't going to like his performance and the aliens came down to told him to stop 😭😭💔 his insecurity that he might not be that good a musician literally makes me cry. he's so sweet and kindhearted my babyy boy
CAN I SKIP SCHOOL AND GO BACK TO SLEEP LMAO
"Even successful musicians went to sixth grade, Gene."
"That's a MYTH!!"
weirdly mr ambrose started sounding completely normal at some point like did his voice actor come back and just wasn't credited?? or whoever did this impression was REALLY good jfc
mr ambrose HATES these fuckign kids bro
HES SO UNHINGED LMAO 😭😭
NOT THE STARING AGAIN. why are they literally just this image every single time gene plays music in this episode im gonna cry
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love this specific frame of gene running his hand through his hair
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awww bob is such a good dad
sidenote but this subplot with tina and louise is so stupid it actually made me laugh LMAO the fucking girl cricket. thr female cricket. like what if he's gay huh what then
"or if she's not his type she also makes a great best friend. she's a good listener" THANK YOU louise for acknowledging the cricket might be gay. she's an ally 🙏
AWW GENE WRITING HIS SONG <3 eugene mirman isnt a Good singer (not hating he literally says that all the time. they have to record each line seperately bcuz he cant sing on key) so its hard to tell when they're trying to make gene's songs seem good or not but this is really sweet. u can tell he just loves music so much
why is gene's song kinda making me emotional..... like this show is usually 50/50 on if it actually wants to take gene's songwriting ability seriously but in this episode its so clear how much he LOVES music and songwriting and how talented he is at it. he has trouble with focus and commitment sometimes but thats never an issue when it comes to his music and he'd happily spend an entire afternoon writing a song from start to finish (even skipping out on dinner) because he was so hyperfocused. love how much respect they give gene in this episode tbh
deeply appreciate the "larry murphy as teddy" credit despite teddy not having one single line in this entire episode. Literally just a legacy credit at this point
I LOVED THIS EPISODE 😭😭💕 i dont think it'll be as widely popular as some other episodes this season but as a gene fan and an artist this episode really resonated with me. the ending sequence was actually really beautiful (gives me the same vibes as "your heart's not broken its only growing" tbh) and i loved gene's song and all the different costumes they put him in for his dreams!! tina and louise's subplot was really cute too. very enjoyable episode if you're a gene fan or just a casual viewer who wishes he got more focus. he's SO SWEET and so passionate <3
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hippolotamus · 7 months
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top 9 books 📚
tagged by @eddiebabygirldiaz (who I constantly pest to write a book and will add to this list if they ever do 😘) @thewolvesof1998 @cowboy-buddie @your-catfish-friend @spotsandsocks Thank you loves 💖
I can say right now that these are in the moment picks. Books are far too special to narrow down to just 9.
Anthem by Ayn Rand
A short read about a society where people have careers and partners chosen for them. Everyone is addressed in collective terms and the word I is never used. It's been a long ass time, but I legit cried the first time I read it.
1984 by George Orwell
Another one that has fascinated me since the first time I read it, way back in the dark ages of high school. Dystopian society where Big Brother is always watching. The main character is lured into going against the grain only to ultimately be punished. That's a terrible excuse for a summary but here we are.
The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris
Some satire and humor as the author details his time working as an elf during the Christmas season. If you don't wheeze and piss yourself laughing I really don't know what to tell you.
Psycho by Onley James
Book 2 of a MM series about 7 psychopath brothers. I love the series but August is my favorite.
Moth by Lily Mayne
Book 5 of a human/monster romance series. Moth is my very special baby. Look at him wrong and I'll maim you.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
jfc how do I even summarize this? IDEK... battles, romance, platonic love, soulmates. Just go read it and have yourself a good cry.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Dear gods what a fucking fabulous book. Chronicles the life of the (fictional) mysterious hollywood actress, Evelyn Hugo, with an absolutely insane twist at the end.
The Christmas Box Collection by Richard Paul Evans
Technically a trilogy but I can't separate them. This begins by telling the story of a young family who move in with an elderly widow. It then moves on to the details of who the widow was before, starting at the very beginning with how she met her husband, and the reason for the large marble angel statue on the property.
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
One of my favorites from my youth. All about friendship and imagination and what happens when that gets ripped away. Again, a shit summary, but it's a fantastic read. I have absolutely considered an au about this one.
Bonus: When the Summer's Over by Anna Pollock
A m/f romance that's cute AF, written by one of my besties @walnuts-and-berries, with cover art by my beloved wife @lizzie-bennetdarcy. Minnesota farm gal meets city boy and is instantly disgusted. gasp can they overcome their differences and make it work?
no pressure tagging @stereopticons @blackandwhiteandrose @buddierights @apothecarose @spotsandsocks @shortsighted-owl @mysteriouslyyounggalaxy @jesuisici33 @lizzie-bennetdarcy and anyone else I normally tag (or don't) who wants to play 🥰
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