#Thank you so much everyone for the most fun project i have been a part of!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bunnliix · 2 months

Text

Can't Stay Away from You - Chapter One

First chapter woot woot! This is by far, the longest chapter I've ever written, at over 7k words, and honestly, I hope this is good? It's my first time writing a/b/o, and I'm a little unsure of where this is going exactly, but I hope everyone will have fun on the rollercoaster that this fic is bound to be!

masterlist

word count: 7k

warnings: defintely some angst in here, but lighter angst?, reader is anxious at parts, but like for the most part, there's really not much to warn about I think? Please let me know if I'm wrong or if I need to add anything!

Y/n wasn’t expecting any emails, but when she heard the ding that let her know she had received one, she immediately looked. She never knew when she’d get another freelance job, so whenever an email came in, she developed the habit of checking it. This wasn’t a work email, no, but it was from one of the stores she had recently bought a couple of Stray Kids albums from. From the subject line, it was about the albums she had bought, and a fansign? She doesn’t remember signing up for one, but she also has been so busy, she probably forgot about it.

Opening up the email, she found that she had won a place at an in person fansign in Seoul, in two days. She was so shocked by this news that she held her breath, not thinking this was real for a moment. She read through the email fully, memorizing every word, she really had won, holy shit. She thanked the gods that she didn’t work a physical job, because it meant she could work from anywhere, and she started figuring out her trip to Seoul. There was no way she was missing out on a chance to meet Stray Kids.

She quickly found a plane ticket, even if it was insanely expensive, and she thanked herself for her savings, having to dip into that a bit for this trip. She then moved on to finding a place to stay, and found a nice hotel that wasn’t outrageously expensive, and immediately booked it. She’d be flying out in about seven hours, leaving her to scramble to pack and leave for the airport. Quickly packing her luggage, having a packing list made up from previous trips, she packed clothes for a week, deciding to explore a bit since she was going there.

Y/n’s travelled enough to have mastered the skill of packing efficiently, gathering everything she needed into 3 pieces of luggage. She double-checked her travel list, making sure she had packed enough for her trip. Before she shoved her laptop and cords into her bag, she sent out an email to her current clients stating that she had an emergency occur, and that her work may be delayed by a day. At this point, it was almost time for her to head to the airport. So, she finished packing the last of her things into her carry-on. Remembering to grab her coat before putting her shoes on, she grabbed her bags and left the apartment.

She took a taxi to the airport, and on the way there, texted her best friend Emily that she was heading out of the country and asking her to watch over her apartment while she was gone. Emily agreed right away, and told her not to worry about anything. She smiled down at her phone, her bestie was her ride or die, and she was so grateful to have her in her life.

When she arrived at the airport, she thanked the driver, pulling her luggage out of the trunk and heading straight to the check in counter. The process was smooth and she was quickly on her way to security, which while terribly busy, went by quickly and soon she was sitting at her gate, having grabbed a couple snacks for the plane and filled up her water bottle on the way over there. She had about an hour before boarding, so she pulled out her laptop, deciding to get some work done while she waited. She finished off the last edits to one project, sending that off to one of her clients, before starting on one of her other projects.

Halfway through her second project, the call for boarding went out over the P.A. system, and so she saved her work, slipping her laptop back into her bag before lining up with everyone else. She was lucky enough to get a last minute window seat on the plane, putting her carry-on in the overhead bin, before settling in her seat as she pushed her smaller bag under the seat in front of her. She looked out the window as the plane took off, the start of her journey to Seoul, and meeting Stray Kids, was starting now. Since it was a relatively long flight, she pulled out her laptop once she was able to do so, starting back on the project she worked on earlier. She spent the majority of the flight working on her current workload, which was about four projects at the moment.

They were all fairly simple projects, they just took time to perfect them, but it was a great way to pass the time. By the time she finished her last project, there was only a couple hours left of the flight, and so she rested and watched the clouds roll by. Y/n admired the view as they landed in Seoul, excited to explore the city.

Patiently waiting to disembark the plane, she waited until she was able to leave her row, grabbing her bag from the overhead bin and then bringing it down, pulling it behind her as she left the plane. She pulled it along, heading towards the luggage carousel, before she went through customs and immigration, quickly clearing them and heading out into Seoul. She took the metro to head towards her hotel, unpacking her headphones and listening to music to pass the time on the train. Once off the train, she pulled out her phone to find her hotel location, quickly finding her way to the hotel. Thankfully, it was late enough that she could check in right away and head to her room. She took the elevator up, finding her room midway down the hallway, and upon opening the door, found that she had a beautiful view of the city around her.

She dropped her luggage by the bed, and walked towards the window, admiring her view of the city. She may not be a heights kind of person, but this was still beautiful, and she would be looking out a lot during her week here. She hauled her suitcase up onto the bed, pulling out a fresh outfit, before heading to the bathroom to shower. Once she had, she changed into her fresh outfit, pleased to get the smell of the airplane and airports off of her. Since it was still light out for a while, she decided to get out into the city and explore the neighborhood around her. She packed her smaller bag with the necessities, grabbing her key card on the way out the door and quickly going back down to the lobby and out into the fresh air.

Y/n knew travelling alone as an omega always brought risks with it, but it was worth it to be here in Seoul, both for the fansign and just in general. It was sunny and warm in Seoul, a great contrast from back home, and she was living for it. She was always a warm weather kinda girl, and the warm air and sunshine here made her thrive. She decided on just walking the area around her, figuring tomorrow would be one of her bigger exploration days.

She saw a lot of stores that intrigued her, but thought better of shopping, she’d be exhausted much quicker if she gave into that urge. She was glad that she brought her headphones, it helped distract from the loud noises of the city, and brought the level down to a reasonable one she could deal with. The hustle and bustle of the city was normal to her, since her own city was similar,

Up until now, her omega had been strangely quiet. Usually she was very outspoken, more so than y/n herself was. Her omega was going haywire at the moment, confusing the poor girl as to what set the omega off. She felt almost pulled forward, and her omega pushed to the surface, making her walk faster to wherever that pull was coming from. It culminated in her running into someone, and ended with her on the ground in front of them, looking up at their mask-covered face.

“Are you alright? I’m sorry that I bumped into you.” The person said as they leaned down, reaching out a hand to her. She tentatively took it, and she stood up with their help. Standing so close to them, she could smell their citrusy sweet scent, it calling to and calming her omega. That confused her slightly, but she shook it off, not wanting to think about it now.

“I’m okay, and really, I bumped into you. I should be the one apologizing.” She replied.

“Let’s just say we bumped into each other then? We both played a part in this.” They told her, and she could see that they were smiling by the crinkles near their eyes.

“I can agree to that.” Y/n replied, giggling slightly.

She saw as the other person took a breath of her scent, and for some reason they stumbled back away from her, their eyes widening.

“I’ve got to go, I’m sorry.” They said, rushing away from her, leaving her standing there alone on the sidewalk.

She watched him run away, and her omega cried out, and y/n felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Her anxiety shot up, and tears came to her eyes. She’s so confused, she doesn’t completely understand what’s just happened, and why she was so affected by it.

She felt increasingly down as she walked back to her hotel, no longer feeling any urge to explore, just wanting to retreat back into her room and nest. She speed-walked into the hotel elevator, avoiding everyone. Once back in her room, she locked her door and got to work making a nest in the bed, using everything she could. She finished it and then climbed inside, curling up into herself as her omega cried out to someone, for an unknown reason. That, and she couldn’t take her mind off of the person who ran away from her, and everytime she thought of him, it made her chest hurt.

In the end, she fell asleep, and she dreamed of them again. She had dreams every so often about Stray Kids, and she assumed this was once again, her brain being delusional. She dreamed about going on vacation with them, assumedly in Australia given her surroundings, but she felt that this dream was different.

She noticed that this time, the member’s touch and reactions felt more real? It felt like these were actually the boys, and not figments of her imagination like they usually did. Their eyes seemed shocked, even as they all enjoyed the dream. They were more touchy with her, Felix especially. She noticed that he looked similar to the person she ran into earlier, but shook it off as her just being delusional again. She enjoyed her dream and found happiness with the boys, as it was just a dream, that’s all.

Waking up the next morning in her makeshift nest, she whined at the lack of someone beside her, having fallen asleep in her dream next to the boys. Her scent smelled like burnt honey and vanilla because of her sadness, but she pushed through, thinking of happy thoughts and how she’d get to see the boys later today. She got up, having to get out of her nest that smelt like sadness. Pulling out an outfit for the fanmeet, she quickly showered before changing, and then moved onto her makeup and hair. She did her makeup like she usually did, leaning more towards a very natural look, knowing if she wore too much, it would be harder to touch up later on.

Before leaving her room, she checked the rules for attending the fansign, and quickly memorized them. She headed back to the bathroom, since one of the rules was wearing scent blockers, and quickly applied them to her scent glands, making sure she covered them fully. The rule had been put into place because of an incident with a second gen girl group fansign years ago, she remembered the aftermath of it very well, despite being young at the time. One of the fans, an alpha, attended the fansign and tried to overwhelm one of the omega members of the group with her scent, and since then, companies have made it mandatory that scent blockers be worn during fansigns.

Checking her outfit in the mirror once again, she made sure it looked right, fixing anything that was out of place. She had decided on an outfit that reminded her of a mix of Felix and Han’s individual styles, but had blended them together in her outfit. Plus, it was really comfy, and knowing she had a long day in front of her, she didn’t want to be stuck in something uncomfortable. She grabbed her bag, setting out for the day. She planned to explore and see some tourist sights first, before the fansign, since it wasn’t starting for a couple hours from then.

She mostly wandered as she wanted, not having a specific destination in mind. She found herself wandering a market and buying some snacks along the way. Everything she bought tasted better than the prior snacks, and she had to leave the market in a hurry lest she get distracted. To her benefit, however, this passed enough time that she almost had to run to make it to the fansign venue.

She made it there in under 20 minutes, and hopped in line with everyone else, having brought her ID, and had the email that she won as well. Checking in was a simple process for the most part, however the ID checking part was the most tedious. Once that was finished and they confirmed that she was who she said she was and that she was allowed entry, she was quickly shuffled into the hall where the fansign took place.

Y/n found herself about midway between the front and back of the hall, and almost straight in the middle of her row. She greeted the girls next to her, making small talk with them as much as she was able to with her limited knowledge of Korean. They mostly talked about their favorite members and songs, and whose outfits they liked the most in this recent comeback. Y/n enjoyed chatting with the other girls, and a couple more of the ones around them joined in as well, and just before the boys walked out, they had created a small group chat, adding each other on kakaotalk.

The minute the boys walked out on the stage, all eyes were on them, and the cheers were almost deafening. Despite it only being a small fraction of the number of people at a concert, it was as loud as a concert. Yet it only took Bang Chan raising his hand for the crowd of fans to fall silent.

“Hello everyone!” He said, waving to the room. He and the boys quickly introduced themselves and did their “Step out” intro as they always do. They took the first part of the fanmeet to goof around on stage, playing around with some of the items laid out for them by staff.

During this, y/n couldn’t keep her eyes off of them, feeling almost a pulling sensation in her chest, and a need to keep an eye on the boys. She ignored the pulling feeling, trying to enjoy the fansign and commit this all to memory. She soaked in the atmosphere, the joy that radiated around the room, from the fans and the idols. It filled her with happiness, the feeling almost bursting out of her chest.

It wasn’t long before they boys had moved onto the signing part of the fansign. She watched as each row of fans lined up to meet the idol group, going down the line one by one, and the smiles on the boys’ faces made her smile too. It made her happy to see them happy, and she knew the girls around her felt the same way. Her hand was tapped as a girl in the row ahead of her asked her to record her interactions with the boys, and she readily agreed. Once that girl was up on stage, she zoomed in and recorded her interaction with the eight idols. In return, once it was her turn to line up with her album to meet the boys, the other girl offered to record her going down the line and talking with the boys, to which she quickly thanked her for offering and y/n handed her her phone. She lined up on the side of the stage, nervousness growing as there were only a few girls still in between her and Changbin, the first of the eight boys she’d meet today.

Soon, she sat in the chair in front of the rapper, smiling at him as she said hello, shaking slightly due to her nerves.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you!” She told him, smile as bright as the sun.

“Ahh, nice to meet you too!” He said, taking her album as she handed it to him, opening to one of his pages. “Where are you from?” He asked, noticing her nerves and the slight shake to her body, determined to get her less nervous.

“I’m from Canada. I flew here and arrived yesterday afternoon.” Y/n told him.

“Oh wow! Really? That’s so far away!” He was surprised she flew that far for their fansign, he even applauded her for it, to which she shied away, hiding her face.

“No, no hiding!” He teased her, and she slowly pulled her hands away, looking at him with red cheeks.

“Is it cold back in Canada?” Changbin asked.

“It’s not too bad, I guess? But I prefer it here where it’s warm and sunny.” She told him, replying to his question.

“Ohhh, you like warm.” He said, English skills finally breaking down a bit.

“I love the warmth. I’m always too cold, see?” She said to him, showing her hands which were slightly pink at the tips.

He grabbed her hands gently, rubbing them to try and warm them up. He knew it was chilly in there, but not to where one of their fans was becoming very cold. He was so concerned for her, almost abnormally so, but he chalked it up to just caring for their stays.

“Oh no, you’re so cold! It’s too cold here.” He said after rubbing her hands for a couple moments.

“Oh no, it’s okay, Changbin-oppa. My fingers and toes are always like this, no matter how warm it is. Just my body being bad, that’s all.” She corrected him gently, wanting to ensure he knew it wasn’t the room, it was just her.

And sadly, that is where her time with the rapper ended, with her being moved onto the next man, who was the Hwang Hyunjin, who was waiting for her to move down in front of him, which made her blush intensify.

“Hello Hyunjin!” She said, voice a little on the higher side.

“Hello, Stay!” He said, smiling at her. “What’s your name?” He asked as he received her album, moving to sign one of his pages that she had marked.

“My name is y/n! And we’re born in the same year, Hyunjin-ssi.” She informed him, slightly swaying in order to calm herself.

“Oh? We are? That’s amazing! What month?” He further questioned her, a slight surprise showing on his face.

“I’m a September baby, so I’m younger than you by a couple months.” She said, watching him sign her album.

He looked back up at her, his beauty was ethereal, and it took her breath away to see him this close up. He reached out to grab her hands, both of them pulling away slightly and flinching at the zap of electricity. It couldn’t have been more than static electricity, but it felt almost like a connection of sorts. Both of them waved it off, not thinking much of it, but inside, their beta and omega knew what had just happened, and were berating them for ignoring it.

“Your name is really pretty, I forgot to tell you.” He said earnestly, his eyes feeling like they were staring right into her soul, and she could see so many emotions floating around in those captivating eyes. She couldn't keep eye contact with him and looked away, down at her lap to avoid his gaze.

“Thank you, Hyunjin-ssi.” She said, still unable to look him in the eyes.

“Stay doesn’t have to use -ssi, call me Hyunjin, please?” He begged her, leaning down on the table to try and get her attention, to which she looked up at him, giggling at his position.

“What are you doing?” She said between giggles.

“I just wanted-” He started, but was interrupted by staff ushering her to move onto the next member, to Hyunjin’s dismay. He wanted to talk with her all day.

Seungmin was next, and his gentle smile caused her to continue to smile in return, her smile not dimming, but becoming softer.

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you.” He said, much calmer than the others, but you could see that he was just as excited to meet their fans as the other boys were.

“Hello Seungmin, it’s nice to meet you too.” She said, telling him her name afterwards, so that he had a name to sign the album with.

They made small talk as he signed, and then continued on afterwards. Y/n told him how far she travelled to be here today, and then expanded on her home as Seungmin asked her more questions about where she was from. She tells him that no matter how long the journey was, she wouldn’t have missed being here, and missing the chance to talk to them, for anything else in the world.

To this, his face is filled with awe and wonder, always surprised at what lengths their fans go to in order to see them live or to meet them. She then talks about what she loves about him, and how she enjoys seeing his interactions with the other boys, and how his voice is angelic. She just about showers him in compliments, until her time with the vocalracha member is up.

He waves goodbye to her and hands her album onto Jeongin, who’s next in line. He smiled at her as she slid over into the chair in front of the maknae, who, having heard her name from when she told his fellow member, quickly signed her album, before reaching out to grab her hands, squeezing them. This shocked y/n slightly, not expecting how intense the maknae was right then and there. He however, just felt drawn to her, like a moth to a flame, and wanted to be in contact with her. His alpha encouraged his actions, and the man himself didn’t question his alpha, and just continued looking at her with a smile on his face.

“Hi, Stay!” He said excitedly, to which y/n replied back, asking how he was doing.

“I’m doing better now that I get to talk to you.” He answered her, winking at the end and slightly flirting, to which he got lightly smacked by Minho.

Y/n wasn't faring well with the intense nature of the supposed “baby bread” youngest member, and it clearly showed on her face, which was turning, in Jeongin’s eyes, a lovely shade of pink, and her eyes were wide as she stared at him.

“You look so cute, Stay.” He complimented her, to which she blushed harder. His grin grew as he watched her blush intensify, and to which his alpha almost purred in contentment.

He continued teasing her, to which her responses were almost nonsensical, until the staff member became her savior by telling Jeongin that she had to move to the next member. Minho, being impatient, grabbed her hands from his fellow member and pulled her over to the chair in front of his space at the table, grabbing her album afterwards. Jeongin pouted at his hyung’s actions, watching you move over to the next chair. He only stopped overtly watching her when the next Stay sat down in front of him, his attention turning to them.

“Hello Lino!” Y/n said, a smile still stuck on her face.

“Hello Stay.” He said, shaking their hands as he had yet to let go. “Do you have any pets?” He asked, finally but almost reluctantly pulling his hands away so he could sign her album.

“I do! I have a bunny, named Jack.” She told him, telling him how she got him, and about all of her bunny’s little quirks.

He stopped signing her album just to look up at her and watch her talk. He was oddly drawn to her, and observed her as she talked. Her smile was extraordinary and how he wanted to never see her smile fade away, he felt pulled in by her, and he knew it wasn’t her scent, it couldn’t have been since he could see the scent blockers on her skin. But she almost called out to him, to his alpha. He internally questioned if there was something more to that feeling or if it was only just because she was similar to his omegas, to Jisung and Felix. Her outfit clearly took inspiration from them, and she seemed similar in personality, so maybe that was the culprit behind this pull he was feeling.

He realized that he hadn’t finished signing her album, and hurried to do so as he lightly chatted with her, mostly about their own pets and how troublesome they were at times. Sadly, that came to an end when she was pointed to move onto the next idol, who happened to be Felix.

The Australian man looked at her, having the silent realization that this was the girl he ran into the day prior, and did his best to push what happened out of his mind, since he hadn’t told anyone what had happened, and from the lack of reaction on her part, she didn’t know that they had met yesterday.

“Hello Felix!” She said, smiling from ear to ear at meeting her almost birthday twin.

“Hello! How are you? Also, your outfit is so cute! I love it!” He replied, a grin on his face.

“I’m well, and I’m very excited to be here!” She told him, her cheeks hurting as she had smiled since meeting Changbin. “Thank you! I tried to combine your and Han’s styles, and I hope I was able to do both your styles justice.” She explained.

“You did! So, how old are you?” He questioned, taking the time to sign her album.

“I’m your age, actually.” She confessed, as he looked up in slight shock.

“Wow, really?” He said.

“Yup! Actually you and I aren’t too far apart in age, birthday wise. I share a birthday with one of your members.” She replied.

“Wait, that means-” He started, before she interrupted him.

“Yeah, I do have a birthday twin within your group.” She giggled and nodded as she confirmed his thoughts.

“Oh wow! That’s so cool!” He told her.

“Yeah, it’s what made me a Stay actually. Well, and your Miroh era.” She confessed to him, blushing slightly.

They continued chatting, with Felix inquiring more about her life, and how long she’s been into K-pop among other things. Felix’s omega was practically purring at having this pretty girl’s attention only on him, plus that they got to see her again after Felix stupidly ran away yesterday.

Meanwhile, next to Felix, Minho was trying to concentrate on the Stay in front of him, but his mind and eyes kept wandering over to y/n and Felix. He couldn’t help but listen in on their conversation as he tried to keep chatting with the fan in front of him. That pull in his chest still hadn’t disappeared, and he kept questioning what exactly was drawing him to you. His alpha, however, knew exactly what was happening and was very happy about it, Minho could tell that much. His alpha kept talking about how Felix and the girl got along so well, and look how pretty they both were, and ‘Wouldn’t they look pretty together in their nest?’ Minho had to physically force himself to look away from the two of them, and push to only focus on the Stay in front of him.

During this, the two people who were the subject of Minho’s thoughts and glances were saddened when staff told them it was time for y/n to move on. Felix grabbed her hand, pleading with her not to go, to the girl’s laughter and her insistence that she must move on, to Han finally interjecting and reaching out for her hand and pulling her to the next chair.

“I heard you had a birthday twin in Stray Kids?” He inquired immediately, wanting to know.

“Hello Han. Yes I do.” She giggled at his impatience. “I’m birthday twins with you, actually. Down to the year.” She told him.

Hell yeah!” He exclaimed as Felix overheard, the Aussie pouting at how close he was to sharing a birthday.

Y/n saw Felix’s pout, and giggled as she looked over at him. He saw her giggling and playfully glared at her, only making her giggle more, which Han did as well when he saw what was making the girl in front of him giggle.

Han quickly signed his page in the album, before focusing all his attention on the girl in front of him. He wanted to know more about his birthday twin, and to learn if they had anything else in common. They did have quite a few things in common, their style being one of those things, anxiety was a second, and they also had quite similar personalities. This made the quokka a very happy man, and his omega wanted to steal the Stay away and keep them and Han was agreeable with that notion. A birthday twin to share the fun with? Yes please.

They joked about how maybe this was fate, and maybe this was why she was drawn to the group in the first place, with y/n admitting that their shared birthday is what made her interested in the first place. Han smiled, with a blush on his face at that confession. That she had found the group and gotten interested because of Felix, but was more interested that they both shared a birthday. Plus, she won the chance to be here and meet them, which was even more amazing.

As engrossed as they both were in their conversation, Chan finally leaned over and interrupted them, to inform her that it was their turn to chat. Han grabbed her hand, shaking them as he thanked her for coming and talking with him, and that she’d have to remember to wish him a happy birthday when their birthday came, to which she promised she would. She reluctantly let go of his hands, and moved over to sit in front of Chan, realizing that her time with the boys would end shortly.

“Hello there, sorry to interrupt your fun with Hannie.” He apologized, looking truly sorry to have stopped their conversation. He truly was sad that he had to do so, they loved their fans, and Jisung looked so happy as he chatted with her, and his alpha almost screamed his content at how happy this girl had made his members.

“It’s okay, I understand, don’t worry Chan.” She told him, understanding clearly heard in her voice.

He smiled at how understanding she was, starting up a conversation with her about what she was going to do while in Seoul. Inside, his alpha was trying to gain control over him, an overwhelming need coming over him to grab her and scent her, rules be damned. He wasn’t alone in this feeling, as y/n had been feeling a pull this entire time as she went down the line, but it was stronger right in front of the leader of the group, and her omega wanted nothing more than to sink into this man’s arms right here and now. She shook off her omega while he pushed away those feelings, one thinking it was just her being delusional and having read too much fanfic, while the other just chalked it up to his alpha reacting to the fact that it was a pretty girl in front of him right now.

They continued their chat like neither of them were experiencing anything, and she asked him about places to visit in Australia should she ever get to visit, and he turned it on her and asked about places to visit in Canada when they get the chance to travel there. Both parties enjoyed the conversation, almost feeling as if they were just two friends chatting, instead of idol and fan. They talked about animals as well, both of them gushing about their own animals and telling a couple of funny stories about them.

At last, y/n’s time with the boys was finally over, and it was at this point Chan realized he had never signed her album. Signaling to the staff to let him sign the album quickly before she had to leave, he did so. On a whim, and what he swears was his alpha’s idea, and not fully his, under his signature, he added his number. Quickly closing the book, he handed it to her, and waved to her as she left the stage and returned to her seat, focusing on the next fan to sit in front of him.

Y/n returned to her seat, feeling saddened after leaving the stage and the boys. She shrugged it off, just like she had with the rest of the odd feelings she’s had today and yesterday. After she got back to her seat, one of the girls in the row behind her that she had made friends with, asked her to film her meetings with the boys, and she agreed. After that, the girl in the row in front of her that filmed her interactions handed her phone back, and y/n thanked her for filming as the other girl waved off her thank yous.

Soon enough, it was the girl behind her turn to chat with the boys, and y/n started filming as she went up on stage. She noticed during her filming, that the boys glanced up in her direction a couple times, or at least her general direction, she doubted their gaze was on her specifically. She dutifully continued filming, trying to get the best video she could for the girl.

Y/n was wrong about the boys not looking right in the crowd for her. They really couldn’t help themselves, looking at her when she didn’t notice, and every time they had the chance. They had never felt so pulled towards someone like this, not since they all found each other. Y/n was feeling the same way, it almost felt like there was a rope between her and the boys, and it was trying to pull her in closer. She once again brushed it off as wishful thinking, and maybe her delusions of wanting the boys to notice her, as every Stay did. Plus, she probably just enjoyed talking to them so much that she wanted to talk with them again.

Finally, the girl she was filming for left the stage, and y/n ended the recording, handing the phone back to her once the other girl returned to her seat. She watched as the final rows got their chance to see and talk with the boys, and once everyone was back in their seats, the boys came out from behind the tables, and started goofing off again. There was a portion set aside for photos of the boys, and of course they were absolutely adorable during it. And then they decided a couple dance relays of S-Class were in order, and a part switch dance to S-Class as well, which went as well as anyone could expect. A.k.a, it was a bit of a disaster, with the boys not knowing each other's places nearly as well as they knew their own. Though, we did get to see Felix do Minho’s parts, which was amazing and everyone in the room loved it.

Before anyone knew it, the fansign was coming to an end, with the boys sadly saying goodbye to the fans. Y/n didn’t want it to end, but as they were ushered back out of the room after the boys had left the stage, she reluctantly left. She was in tears leaving the building, and felt a great sadness at leaving, and so did her omega. She wasn’t quite sure why she reacted so heavily, but as she walked back to the hotel, her emotions only grew. Because of this, she sped up her pace, wanting to disappear into her hotel room and cry in private, not wanting others to see her like this.

Once she was back in her hotel room, she locked the door, immediately taking off her shoes and any accessories, before crawling into her makeshift nest that still smelt of sadness from that morning. She let herself fall apart, crying as she curled into a ball. She wasn’t sure why she was so sad, she really wasn’t sure, but she could feel that her omega was really hurting. She cried herself to sleep, falling into a nightmare, where it was the opposite of her dream from the night before. The boys were the opposite of their sweet selves, and were hurling anything and everything negative about herself at her, and all she could do was sit there and cry as they did so.

Being shocked out of her nightmare, she sat up as she woke up, her chest heaving as she tried to regulate her breathing. She managed to do so after a couple of minutes, and trying to get her mind off of how hurtful her nightmare was, she reached for her phone.

She found the video of her interactions with the boys, and started watching it. As she watched it, she realized just how different her interactions with the boys were from the ones she had filmed for others and watched herself. They seemed much more intimate in a way, with how touchy a lot of the boys were with her. They were so much more emotive and interactive with her, it felt a little abnormal after the fact. She must have been so happy to meet them that none of it felt off to her, and really looking back, it still didn’t feel too odd, just a bit more intimate than the other fans’ interactions. She wondered why she was so different, and why her, over everyone else.

This pushed her to look through her album, and she stopped at Chan’s signature. Underneath his name, there was a number, along with a short message to text him. This had to be a joke, there was no way she was living the y/n life right now. She felt as if she had stepped into a fanfiction, because why else would Bang fucking Chan have given her, out of all people, his number?

She decided to fuck it and texted the number he gave her, and he almost immediately responds.

‘Who are you?’ He demanded.

‘I’m y/n, you gave me this number in my album that you signed today.’ She replied.

‘What did we talk about today then?’ He asked her.

‘A little bit of everything, honestly, but we did talk about our pets. You talked about Berry, and I talked about my bunny Jack and how troublesome he is.’ Y/n told him.

She also decided to send him a picture of herself, holding open his page of the album as she sat next to a clock to prove the time. Chan believed her, and told her as such. She then asks him why he decided to give her his number.

‘I watched your actions with the others and myself, and something about you and all of our interactions intrigued me. I felt there was something more to it all, and wanted to get to know you better.’ He explained, to which she was relieved it wasn’t a trick, but was also confused about how she intrigued him. She voiced those thoughts and to which he reassured her that he wasn’t tricking her, nor should she be confused about how she was interesting to him, because he honestly found her interesting from the start of their conversation at the fanmeet.

He further explained that the other members had no idea about what he had done, and he hadn’t planned on saying anything to them, unless y/n had reached out and told him it was okay to do so. Though that didn’t stop them from discussing her in the vans on the way back to the dorm, nor did it stop their discussion from spilling over into their group chat. He told her as much, and she was surprised to have made that much of an impression on them. Chan reassured her that their interactions with her were very memorable, from what he could gleam from the others’ conversations. What he didn’t tell her was that Minho had noticed Chan’s behavior, and signaled to the pack alpha that they would be talking after they arrived back at the dorm.

Soon enough the boys arrived back at the dorm, and the leader had to say goodbye for now to y/n, Minho staring him down as they walked into the building and then the elevator. The other alpha grabbed his hand as soon as the elevator doors opened, and led him through the front door of the apartment, and straight to the Aussie man’s room.

“Who are you texting? And why am I sure it’s that girl from the fansign?” Minho interrogated him, not leaving him a second to talk.

“You’re not wrong. I gave her my number.” Chan confessed.

Taglist: open!

143 notes · View notes

kellystar321 · 7 months

Text

THE MAP IS OUT!! Here's my individual part for it, along with my credit image! I'm so happy to have been able to work with such cool collaborators on this project, this was so fun! :D <33

WIP and fun facts below the cut!

First pass of my part!

General Notes: - All of us had a cut-off frame so Sammy (our MAP host!) had space to transition shots! the stick in my cut-off is my oc Lixy <3 - As always, I don't have an actual animation program. Each frame of this was individually drawn in Clip Studio, saved as PNGs, and meticulously arranged in a video editing software. it took a while and a headache. the software crashed 4 times hdkjh </3 - The process was sketching, lining, then compiling it all together! Line art took the most time (because i don't like lineart hkjdh) - Fun fact, all of the sketches (seen in the wip above) were all drawn on my first plane ride ever :> <3 - The background is Alan's animation program that I took from a screenshot from AVA 6 :> I didn't want to do anything too complex for it ;w; <3 - All of the slide transitions were done manually! It may look like tweening, but I don't have a program that can do tweening lmao :'> <3 Each of the slidings was individually 3-6 frames of moving them across the frame, a single frame of stretch for movement, then a settling frame before the next stick slid in. - Green is doing air guitar as they slide in :3 <3 - My Blue design has a hat that can magically change into a Witch hat (when potion making), Chef hat (when cooking) or Sunhat (when gardening <33 - Purple looks nervous after he crashes into everyone, like they're expecting to be in trouble, but smiles and laughs when everyone else does. You can see Blue with their hands up, reassuring Purple. - Originally Yellow didn't move as much in the final laugh scene, but I saw the first frame of the person after me (@/sleptonce!) which had Yellow in a little crouch :> i adjusted Yellow to match the next frame a little better! - Also Yellow's hair is flipped from the way I usually draw it because I felt it worked better this way hgkjh <3 - (I totally didn't forget my Second's design has green eyes and had to edit those frames very quickly hfkjh <33) - The only colors that aren't the stick's original colors are when Blue's hat falls on Purple, and Red's yellow bandana <3 (These are also the only movement animation in the blinking sequence!) - Adding Alan's cursor was a literal last minute decision, he was never in any of the sketches, I literally added him in 15 minutes before submitting my part hgkjh <33 I think after my shot, Alan helps gently pick them up <3 - My suit in the credits is mostly red and orange, because my favorite sticks are Red and Second! <3 The rainbow cape reflects how I enjoy the color gang the most though hkjdh <33

Thanks for reading!! :D <33

#Alan Becker #Animation Vs Minecraft #Animator Vs Animation #AvM #AvA #my avm art #avm red #avm second coming #avm orange #avm yellow #avm green #avm blue #avm purple #starlight originals #lixy

179 notes · View notes

dotster001 · 1 year

Note

hihi! just in here to say that i love your twisted earth au very much, its such an interesting concept and i love the way you write the characters?!!?!/ and to request some twisted earth hcs with rollo, chenya, and neige!

Twisted Earth Part Six

Summary: non NRCx gn!reader. You are the game. They are real.

A/N: full disclosure, I'm on the English server and have worked really hard to avoid masquerade spoilers. So Rollo's part is based on the snippets I've seen. After I play the event, if I think my assessment is off, I'll redo his part. Also, initially I was going to have Neige be a VA of your best friend, but an anon gave me an idea to have him as a villain. Special thanks to you boo!

Parts: One Two Three Four Five

He is a little like Floyd in that he's always searching for fun. Unlike Floyd, instead of crashing, he just continues to up the silliness stakes. His friends downloaded the game on his phone as an attempt to keep him out of trouble for a while.

And it worked! Kind of! When he's not sneaking onto NRC campus, or going to his own classes, he's got his eyes trained on his phone. It's the first time a lot of his peers have ever seen him sit still.

He decided you would be the most fun to prank, and the most likely to enable his behavior. Whether this is true or not, if you were real, he'd be dragging you along for the ride. I wish you luck man. If you think you hear breathing or giggling behind you, but can't see anyone, trust your instincts. He wants to see you jump.

He didn't start playing until later so he only has one or two of your cards. He is incredibly jealous of his classmates who have the cards he wants, and may or may not make it very difficult for them to play during event periods so that they don't get any farther ahead of him.

He's been acting ever since he was a child. But he's never gotten a chance to let loose! With this project, it wouldn't be outright clear that Neige was in it at all, so he got to be an antagonistic millionaire's son in the second book. And he had so much fun! Plus, now he's friends with all these voice actors, who really want to allow him the chance to let loose as the villain. He's so excited for his new opportunities!

He plays because it reminds him of working with his voice actor friends. Because the cast was so large though, he didn't have a chance to work with everyone. You and your immediate friend group were not an arc he got to see come together. He thinks that's why he was drawn to you. You were a route that was completely new to him. The novelty, and just how precious of a character you seem to be, keeps his attention, no matter how long he plays.

If you were real, he would wrap you in a blankie and tell you all the ways he loved you until you loved yourself, and could never doubt in yourself. He really really really wants to kiss the tip of your nose. (He can't explain it. It's just an urge he has)

He has all of your cards but one. It's just the bonus of playing since its release. He's missing an event card where you are dressed in a Halloween costume. He really wanted it too, but it's alright! He can just ask to see the script, that way he doesn't miss the story.

A world without magic? Magicless humans? He is wondering if the Devs got a little glimpse of heaven when they were making this game.

You. You are so perfect. You could be his pure human, who will help him fix this world. After he helped you see the light of course.

(I am so sorry. My image of him is kind of like a psycho)

He plays after a long hard day of being surrounded by flawed mages (himself included). It just eases his spirit a little bit. Not all is wrong with the world.

He doesn't really bother collecting cards. He has what he has and he's alright with it. He gets what he needs from you from the main story, and his late night shower thoughts.

Side note, he does not like other people's fan theories about you. Only his are correct, and he'll fight people on it until they get annoyed and give up.

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #chenya #twst chenya #chenya x reader #twst chenya x reader #neige leblanche #twst neige #neige leblanche x reader #neige x reader #rollo flamm #rollo flamm x reader #twst rollo #rollo x reader

877 notes · View notes

gimmethatagustd · 5 days

Text

venor (final) | kth + jjk

The barista at the university’s café keeps telling Jungkook not to come back, but Jungkook is too busy daydreaming about kissing the beauty marks on his face to be paying attention to his warnings.

○ Pairing: Tiger!Taehyung x Bunny!Jungkook

○ Rating: Explicit/18+

○ Genre: Hybrids, predator/prey, college au, strangers to lovers, slow burn, fluff, light angst, eventual smut

○ Word Count: 5,064

○ Warnings: Scenting, lots of kissing and happy crying, gross cute romance and all that other annoying stuff

○ Notes: It's the end of an era, my friends. I promised a Bestie Who Must Not Be Named that I'd write an epilogue, so technically this series isn't 100% over. I hope you had fun with it! And thank you to everyone who was so kind to me as we went on this unique little journey together 💜

○ Post Date: April 21, 2024

○ Masterlist | AO3 Cross-Post

○ What was Jai listening to? The series playlist

Series Masterlist

Jungkook and Taehyung wait until they finish their final projects and exams before visiting Taehyung's family home. As much as a getaway trip, no matter how short or ordinary, would help alleviate Jungkook's end-of-the-year stress, his commitment to his studies, and his fear of disappointing his parents force him to focus on his studies. Exercising helps, especially when he convinces Taehyung and Yoongi to tag along, but most days near the end of the semester, Jungkook spends in the library or in class.

When Jungkook submits the last project due, the mobile app he spent the whole semester designing, he feels like his brain dribbles out of his ears. With final presentations and exams now over, they have the freedom to do as they please in the last few days before they must leave the dorms for winter break. He's lucky he doesn't have to drive to Taehyung's house, even though it's a short trip.

"Jiae is still in school, but my appa should be home," Taehyung explains, keeping his eyes on the road as he drives.

"Where did you say she's studying?"

"New York University. I've never been to the United States, but she likes it for the most part. She said the city is dirty, though."

Jungkook watches Taehyung smile as he shares a story about his sister's first time seeing a rat scurry across the city streets. Without a sibling, Jungkook doesn't know what it's like to share a life with someone for so long and then be separated by so much distance. There's love in how Taehyung talks about Jiae; Jungkook can feel it. Taehyung also experiences a little bit of joy in knowing his sister has been chased by rats, and Jungkook supposes that's just how it is being an older sibling.

When school isn’t in session, Taehyung stays with Jiae and their father in the home where the children grew up. It’s a small villa in a quiet neighborhood far enough away from downtown Seoul that Jungkook almost feels like he’s back in his own town, free from the bustling city and the hassles that come with it. The villa is well-maintained but modest and home to four families, with the Kim family occupying one of the apartment units on the second floor. The building is cute from the outside, not as big and intimidating as the apartments Jungkook imagined in the city, and a few of the nerves jittering through his body calm down.

Taehyung finds street parking nearby so they don’t need to walk far in the cold. Just like the end of the semester, winter descended on Jungkook quicker than he expected.

In the villa’s compact front yard, a few young children bundled up in thick coats, scratchy scarves, and winter hats too big for their heads build miniature snowmen. Feline tails whip out from two of their coats, and another child has sparkly olive scale splotches on his cheeks like freckles.

“Taehyungie hyung!” squeals one of the children when Taehyung leads Jungkook up the front steps.

Once the other two children notice Taehyung, they fumble in the snow, knees lifting high to jump over the lumps of snow they’ve pushed together. They’re adorable, even more so when the three crash into Taehyung, clinging to his legs and tugging on his gloved hands.

“Hey kids,” Taehyung pats each child on the head with the hand that isn’t being pulled nearly to the ground by one girl.

“When is Jiae noona coming back?” the little boy demands, making Taehyung frown.

“I come home for the first time in months, and you want my sister instead?”

“We missed you too, oppa,” one of the girls insists with wide eyes that remind Jungkook of how he looks when he’s trying to get someone on his good side. He can’t help but giggle over it, and the sound alerts the children to the fact that he’s there, patiently waiting on the front steps behind Taehyung.

“Hello,” the little girl hanging on Taehyung’s arm swings her body around to look at Jungkook. “Who are you?”

“That’s my boyfriend, your Jungkook oppa.”

“You have a boyfriend, Taehyungie oppa? Did your appa say that you can have a boyfriend?”

With his hands on his hips, Jungkook turns to Taehyung, giving him an expectant look that mirrors the three children's expressions.

“Well, Tae, did your appa permit you to have a boyfriend?”

“Bun, not you, too,” Taehyung groans as he tries shaking off the children.

“Oh my gosh! He’s a bunny! Look at his ears!”

“Come on, guys. It’s cold.” Taehyung grabs Jungkook’s bicep and pulls him forward as the children rush to cling onto Jungkook instead.

Shouting over each other, the children demand that Jungkook remove his winter hat to show off more of his ears and demonstrate if he can jump really high. Their silly questions are endearing, but Jungkook’s nose is frozen, and he grows more nervous with each step he climbs to reach the villa’s front doors.

“Go back to your snowman.” Taehyung shoos the kids away while he holds the door open for Jungkook. “You’ll see Jungkook later.”

“Bye hyungs, bye oppas!” the children call out, fumbling over each other to move out of the way when Taehyung tries to usher them from the door.

Despite Taehyung’s grumblings, his affection for the children is evident by how sweet and patient he is with them. Jungkook hasn’t thought much about children. He knows his parents expect grandchildren, especially since they only have Jungkook to provide them, but he always saw parenthood as a far-off concept not worth worrying about in his youth. Seeing Taehyung interact with the neighborhood children makes Jungkook consider that, perhaps, he could spend a little time thinking about it more than he has in the past…

“My appa did give me permission to have a boyfriend, by the way,” Taehyung says with a silly smile as he loops his arm through Jungkook’s to lead him down the hall once they’ve reached the second floor.

“Oh, good. What would we have done if he hadn’t?” Jungkook smiles, too, just as goofy.

“Break up, I guess?” Taehyung offers, laughing when Jungkook stops in the middle of the hallway to stomp his foot in frustration.

Taehyung is obviously joking; Jungkook can’t imagine him ever asking for permission to do anything, not that he’s the type of kid to go against his parents at every turn. Something tells Jungkook that Taehyung’s mother encouraged his free spirit rather than trying to stamp it down. Perhaps some of that has rubbed off on Jungkook, too.

“You didn’t even formally ask me out!” Jungkook complains.

Squeezing Jungkook’s bicep, Taehyung tugs on him gently. “I totally did!”

“When?!”

Taehyung removes his gloves to input the apartment unit’s code. His hat covers his ears, but Jungkook can tell that they twitch under it just as his tail flicks out to smack Jungkook on the thigh. He’s so cute that Jungkook thinks he might genuinely die over it one day. How can he possibly withstand this type of cute aggression for the rest of his life? Because that is what he wants, to be with Taehyung until the end, even if it’s too early to say such a thing.

“I was nervous, okay,” Taehyung presses his shoulder against the door to give it a little push as he opens it. “Just saying it seemed easier than asking. Besides, I knew you wanted it, too.”

Winking, Taehyung gestures for Jungkook to enter the apartment first and grins when he notices Jungkook’s bright pink cheeks. Ridiculous. Taehyung is ridiculous. The only reason Jungkook is willing to let this slide is because Taehyung does get nervous when he’s put on the spot, as Jungkook quickly learned during their final presentation for their Art History class. Standing at the front of the lecture hall, Taehyung had forced his tail through his belt loops so it wouldn’t nervously swish back and forth and started off the presentation with wide eyes pleading for Jungkook to take the lead, but it went well.

The Kim residence reminds Jungkook of Taehyung’s dorm room and his father’s restaurant. It is bright and nature-toned, with plants in every corner and large windows providing natural lighting. It isn’t perfect, but it’s lived in, and Jungkook prefers that over something so minimalist that it’s sterile. Taehyung kicks his boots into the corner of the entryway and tosses his coat on the kitchen table as he walks past, meaning Jungkook should follow his lead.

“So it’s just you, your appa, and your sister?” Jungkook asks.

“Yup. It’s kind of small for three adults, but as a kid, it felt huge.” Taehyung shrugs. “We’ll both be out of the house soon, anyway.”

Jungkook folds his outerwear and neatly places it on the kitchen table, trying not to take up too much space. He’s hesitant about taking off his scarf. The bruise Taehyung left Jungkook when he bit his neck still hasn’t entirely disappeared, but Jungkook concludes that it would be more suspicious to keep his scarf on inside than to have splotchy skin.

“Your appa will be so lonely…” Jungkook looks around, taking note of the little pieces of Taehyung and Jiae scattered around the house — Taehyung’s pottery and Jiae’s soccer trophies. Recently, Jungkook has learned that both Kim children are exceptional athletes.

“Eh, he’ll be fine,” Taehyung says, intertwining Jungkook’s fingers with his. “I’ll give you a tour.”

It’s a bit of “organized chaos,” as Taehyung calls it. Clothes are strewn around the apartment, draped on the backs of the kitchen chairs and the arm of the living room couch. The whiteboard calendar on the fridge still reads “November” despite it being the beginning of December now, and there are kitchen appliances everywhere, including niche ones Jungkook can’t name.

“Appa is somewhere around here…” Taehyung thinks aloud, “Might be on the roof, though. There’s a garden up there. The one I told you about.”

Taehyung’s mother’s garden. Jungkook nods, but he doesn’t interrupt Taehyung as he shows off the chaotic apartment, even jiggling the doorknob of his sister’s room hard enough to force it open so they can take a peek at the disaster of boy band posters and too much pink.

“She’s such a girl,” Taehyung teases before ushering Jungkook down the hall to his bedroom. “At least she gets to keep her room, though. Appa turned mine into a fucking office.”

The last room on the short but thorough apartment tour is Taehyung’s, which is more like an office than a bedroom. It seems that Taehyung’s furniture—a bed, dresser, and nightstand—has been arranged in one corner to free up space for a desk, bookshelf, and filing cabinet that wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the apartment.

“Why does he need a filing cabinet? Who keeps paper documents anymore?” Taehyung shuts the bedroom door behind them.

When Taehyung turns around, Jungkook feels a shift in the energy between them. Having been uncharacteristically talkative, Taehyung suddenly grows quiet.

“You didn’t put your backpack down,” Taehyung notices with a frown.

Jungkook squeezes his backpack straps and shrugs, hoping Taehyung’s predator hybrid senses don’t ruin everything by noticing his nervousness. He’s trying to be chill, just as he tried when he first met Taehyung. It hadn’t worked then, and it probably won’t work now.

“I, um…” Panicking, Jungkook looks for a distraction, not ready to let Taehyung know why he still has his backpack with him. “Didn’t you say you wanted to give me something?”

Eyes widening, Taehyung rubs the back of his neck and averts his gaze. Why are the two of them being so awkward right now? It catches Jungkook off guard, making his chest tighten and his heart feel as though it’s being crushed by his ribcage.

“Tae—”

“Can you sit on the bed, please?”

Nodding, Jungkook sits on the edge of Taehyung’s bed, thinking Taehyung will follow him. Instead, Taehyung squats in front of the old wooden dresser. He pulls out the bottom drawer and looks through the clothing, no longer neatly folded, as he pushes it to the side. Whatever he’s looking for is buried deep in the back of the drawer beneath cable-knit sweaters and flannels.

“I wanted to keep it safe,” Taehyung mumbles once he pushes the drawer shut.

In Taehyung’s hand is a small pouch of blush velvet that matches the shade of pink blooming across Jungkook’s cheeks. Shy embarrassment makes his upper body feel hot. Though Jungkook was excited about the gift when he first learned of it, the reality of being presented with it is nearly too much for his little bunny heart to bear. With a frenzied heart, he takes the pouch from Taehyung, and his breathing stutters when their fingers brush, as though it’s the first time they’ve ever touched.

“I hope you like it,” Taehyung says softly, and Jungkook thinks he might explode.

Undoing the tie at the top of the pouch, Jungkook lets the contents inside slip out and fall into his hand. Rose gold and cold against his skin, the expensive bracelet shines in the natural light bathing Taehyung’s bedroom. It’s a simple gold band that comes together at the top of the wrist where the tiger-shaped clasp is. Decorated with sparkly white diamonds for eyes, the bracelet shimmers when Jungkook turns it to examine every little detail.

“It was my eomma’s. She didn’t wear it a lot, mostly just for fancy things. But she gave it to me when she… Well, she said I should keep it for someone special.”

“It’s beautiful,” Jungkook murmurs, too afraid to speak louder because he can already feel a lump growing in his throat.

Taehyung reaches out to take the bracelet. He turns it so Jungkook can see what’s engraved into the inner part of the bracelet.

“I found a jewelry shop that does engravings, so I got our names…” Taehyung’s face turns bright red, and his tail flips between his ankles faster than Jungkook has ever seen. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’ve been… ah, fuck , why is this so hard.” He exhales through pursed lips, making a silly sound when his lips flutter. “I’ve been courting you, and I’m supposed to give you something really nice at the end to ask if you accept me, okay? That’s what I’m doing. So. Yeah. That’s all.”

Thrusting his arm, Taehyung holds the bracelet for Jungkook to take back.

Taehyung never formally asked Jungkook to date him, but Jungkook knows that this means something more than just a silly title for a young relationship. Although prey hybrids have different customs, it’s easy to see how important this moment is for Taehyung. He’s unbelievably agitated. Not once has his tail calmed down, and now his hands tremble enough for him to shove them into the back pockets of his jeans.

Conversely, Jungkook’s infatuation makes him burn with an eagerness he’s never felt. He can’t help but smile, even when Taehyung frowns, and it feels good because Jungkook knows Taehyung well enough that he can tell the frown is because Jungkook has yet to say anything. Does he accept Taehyung? What a silly question!

“Tae,” Jungkook begins and thinks he can genuinely feel Taehyung grow tense from how suffocating the room is, “I would have accepted you with just the striped donuts. This is… this is more than I could ever imagine, Tae. I accept you, but I don’t know if I can accept something so special to your eomma.”

Shaking his head, Taehyung sits down next to Jungkook. He takes Jungkook’s face in both hands to slowly rub his thumbs across his cheeks, gathering the tears that stain them.

“You’re special, bun. She would’ve loved you. Probably more than she loved me.”

“Shut up, that’s not true.”

“It is, I swear! I gave her so much grief. You’re literally perfect.”

Jungkook’s giggle sounds wet and stuffy. He shivers as Taehyung pulls him against his chest so he can tuck his face against Taehyung’s shoulder.

“Baby, why are you crying?”

Jungkook tries answering Taehyung, but his words get muffled and lost, and he can hardly put the scrambled mess together in his own head. It takes a few minutes, but he eventually stops crying. It helps that Taehyung eases the backpack straps off Jungkook’s shoulders so he can rub his back in soothing circles. He hums a gentle purr and plants little kisses atop Jungkook’s head until Jungkook finally pulls away to look at him with glossy eyes.

“You’re really sweet, Tae,” Jungkook says with a soft smile that grows larger when Taehyung tries to look away from him. “You want to act like you’re not, but you are.”

“I’m alright, I guess.”

“You’re lovely.”

Taehyung’s ears flatten against his head, and he sticks out his tongue, reaching for Jungkook’s hand to squeeze it.

“Can I put it on you?” Taehyung takes the bracelet and clasps it around Jungkook’s wrist. It fits well, not too tight, and it doesn't slip down his forearm.

Jungkook can’t stop thinking about how pretty it looks and how important it is for him to keep it nice. He’ll cherish it for the rest of his life. This gift is not only a declaration of Taehyung’s love but also demonstrates the level of trust that Taehyung has in Jungkook to keep his mother’s beloved possession safe.

Taehyung rubs his wrist against Jungkook’s, scenting him before he pulls back so they can both admire how the bracelet looks on Jungkook. A thick band of rose gold, it’s pretty but isn’t dainty, instead solid and bold. Jungkook knows he won’t wear it always; he’ll be afraid to. Perhaps he’ll wear it on the days he wants to feel Taehyung’s love the most, so his love can be a tangible pressure on his wrist, pressed to one of the points of his heartbeat.

“I love you,” Jungkook whispers against Taehyung’s lips when he kisses him. He loves hearing Taehyung purr when he unexpectedly initiates a kiss, and he loves feeling the warmth of Taehyung’s hands on his body.

“I love you too, bun,” Taehyung whispers back, but he speaks into the corner of Jungkook’s jaw, then nips at each faded hickey down his neck. “Are you gonna tell me what’s in your backpack now? Or do you wanna keep stalling? I could come up with some ideas…”

“Taehyung.” The scold doesn’t mean much when Jungkook digs his fingers in Taehyung’s hair to hold him close as he scents him.

“Come on, baby. What are you hiding from me?”

Of course, Taehyung sees right through Jungkook and catches on to what he’s doing. It should be embarrassing, but Jungkook is too drunk on the feeling of Taehyung’s lips against his throat to care that he’s the most obvious person in the history of the universe. It doesn’t matter anyway. Jungkook has no reason to lie or hide things from Taehyung.

Though this is at least a little bit serious — in a good way, but still…

“How do you know I’m hiding something?” Jungkook stalls just like Taehyung guessed he would, though not in the way Taehyung might want.

Rather than respond, Taehyung pokes Jungkook on the tip of his nose. Like Taehyung has hit a magic button, Jungkook immediately scrunches his nose and giggles when Taehyung kisses the tip of it.

“Suyun told me you were courting me,” Jungkook admits shyly as he drags his backpack into his lap and unzips it.

“Of course she did.”

Jungkook buzzes with excitement even as Taehyung pouts. He holds all wiggles in, though. He can’t afford to have Taehyung teasing him during such a brave moment. Instead, he focuses his energy on not growing too nervous.

“Close your eyes,” Jungkook commands. He stares blankly at Taehyung until he follows his instructions, unwilling to tolerate Taehyung’s cheekiness when it gets in the way of an important moment.

Once Taehyung has obeyed him, Jungkook pulls out a thin, rectangular frame from his backpack and places it in Taehyung’s lap.

“Okay, you can open them now.”

When Taehyung saw Jungkook’s half-finished portrait, he’d sucked Jungkook off so good that Jungkook allegedly passed out. Jungkook didn't want to make any assumptions, and he’s still nervous from being in Taehyung’s dad’s apartment, so he tried not to imagine what Taehyung’s reaction would be after seeing the finished product.

“I know it’s not as fancy or as special as your eomma’s bracelet, but—”

Jungkook quiets when Taehyung presses his finger to his lips and shushes him while his amber eyes scan over the artwork.

“Baby, respectfully, shut up.”

The snort that comes from Jungkook is uncharacteristic. It feels like a Yoongi thing Jungkook must have picked up in the months they’ve lived together. Taehyung pays him no mind, though. He holds the frame up to admire the print. It’s colorful, glossy, and perfectly matted because Jungkook asked one of the digital photography students at their university to help him with it. The girl knew Taehyung; she swore to keep the print a secret and didn’t even charge Jungkook for help. That might be a testament to how sweet Jungkook is, but it could also indicate just how personable Taehyung is, that people are willing to do kind things for him without anything in return.

“Bun,” Taehyung says after spending a quiet moment with the portrait, “Please don’t downplay yourself like that ever again. You are an amazing artist. Your talent, god, bun… your talent is unreal.”

Taehyung is almost too serious when he speaks, and Jungkook feels the looming need to scoot away from him. He doesn’t, though, because he knows this is Taehyung working through his intense feelings for Jungkook, feelings that his predator hybrid instincts don’t know what to do with. Neither Taehyung nor Jungkook is hardwired for a relationship like theirs.

“Thank you.” Jungkook runs his fingertips along Taehyung’s clenched jaw and watches the tension slowly melt away when he pulls back his sleeve to scent him. “Having a gorgeous model is half the battle, actually.”

Ignoring Jungkook’s teasing, Taehyung slides his hand around the back of Jungkook’s neck to pull him closer.

“I love you, bun.”

Jungkook can’t answer, though he doesn’t need to. His lips speak in other ways when Taehyung slips his tongue between them. Unlike before, their kiss isn’t heated or rushed. It’s sensual, but Jungkook is learning that all intimacy with Taehyung, sexual or not, is still somehow sensual. But this kiss feels comforting rather than rousing. It lulls Jungkook instead of stimulating him, and he likes the reassurance that it brings.

"Is this your final courting gift, too?" Taehyung asks once they've finally detached from each other.

Jungkook blushes with a shy, "Yes."

Months ago, Yoongi told Jungkook that pursuing a predator hybrid would break his heart. For the first time in his life, Jungkook feels like his heart finally has a home.

“Would you like me to speak with your parents, Jungkook?”

“Oh, no, no, that’s okay!” Jungkook politely but quickly shuts down Mr. Kim’s offer. “They’re, uh, they would probably be upset if they heard it from anyone other than me.”

With an understanding smile, Mr. Kim resumes cleaning the kitchen, though his endeavor must begin with decluttering, considering all the appliances and utensils tossed around. It’s the life of a chef and restaurant owner, Taehyung had groaned as he complained about how long it would take for them to eat dinner when his father had created a disaster in the kitchen.

Jungkook is eager to scramble out of the kitchen and return to his spot on the living room couch with Taehyung, bringing two bottles of beer given to him by Mr. Kim.

“What was appa talking to you about?” Taehyung asks, before opening his mouth for Jungkook to give him a sip of beer. He looks like a baby bird waiting to be fed, and it makes Jungkook giggle despite how his stomach twists with new nerves.

“He asked me if I told my parents I’m staying with you for winter break yet…”

“Well, have you?” Taehyung raises his eyebrows, but he keeps his eyes on the TV.

Jungkook feels like he needs to remind Taehyung to blink occasionally, but he doesn’t. This is Taehyung’s first time playing video games; Jungkook may as well let him get the authentic gamer experience by fucking up his eyes.

“No.”

“Bun,” Taehyung’s scolding is cut short by a string of expletives when his video game character is murdered.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Taehyung would choose to play a game about a virus that turns humans into vampires and the human hunters dedicating their lives to slaying them. Violent video games aren’t Jungkook’s preference, but it certainly feeds into the stereotypes about predatory hybrids.

“I’m nervous about it…”

“What’s the worst thing that’ll happen? They’ll get upset, and then they’ll get over it. It’s not like you’ll never come back ever again.”

Taehyung is right, but he’s also wrong. Is Jungkook being dramatic? Perhaps, but he knows his parents better than everyone else, and he knows that they are sensitive.

“Let me talk to them. Do a video call so they can see how handsome I am, and they’ll know you made the right choice.”

Rolling his eyes, Jungkook takes a few more sips of his beer to take the edge off his nerves before he gets up, phone heavy in his hand like a weapon or a ball and chain.

“Pray for me,” Jungkook mumbles into Taehyung’s hair when he kisses him.

“Tell them I’ll eat them if they’re mean to you. I like how bunnies taste.”

“Oh my gosh, Taehyung, your appa is right there,” Jungkook whispers harshly, but Taehyung’s boxy grin is the symbol of audacity.

Jungkook uses Taehyung’s bedroom to make the phone call. It takes a few minutes of Jungkook biting at a hangnail before he randomly chooses his father to call, having no idea which of his parents will be the least likely to be upset over the news. Jungkook wonders if other college students must worry about having this conversation when they go away for breaks.

Before visiting the Kims, Jungkook tried to do a roleplay scenario with Suyun and Yoongi to see if that would help him plan what to say.

Yoongi was too scary to talk to; Jungkook kept slipping up. The more he talked, the worse it got, until he was practically sharing the whole story of his romance with Taehyung to justify why he was choosing to stay with a predator hybrid.

“Well, don’t tell them what he is!” is what Suyun had insisted.

“True… I don’t have to. It would be lying, though. I’m so bad at lying!”

“It’s not lying. It’s just withholding information. Totally different.”

As usual, Jungkook thinks hanging out with predators changed Suyun — but probably for the better.

With a sigh, Jungkook sets his phone on speaker and lies on Taehyung’s bed, counting each ring and thinking that his heartbeat somehow harmonizes with it.

“Jungkook-ah?”

“Oh, eomma, hi. Where’s appa?”

Jungkook doesn’t think it matters which one of his parents hears the news first, but he doesn’t like being caught off guard. Despite being proud of how much confidence he has gained and the personal growth he has experienced since transferring to Seoul, Jungkook still feels like a kid when around his parents.

“He went into town for groceries but forgot his phone again. I think I need to buy him one of those watches. Do you know the ones?”

“A smartwatch?”

Despite their flaws, Jungkook loves his parents. It’s just that the love they all share for each other is different, and it isn’t always easy. Jungkook feels that love while his mother rambles about his father being forgetful, and he reminds himself that Taehyung is right. This isn’t the end of the world.

“Hey, eomma, I can’t talk for a long time right now, but I needed to tell you I have a boyfriend now…” Jungkook takes a deep breath and continues before his mother can respond, “And I’m going to stay with him and his family for winter break.”

The silence that follows is expected. Because of this, Jungkook hears the bedroom door open, and he nods when Taehyung asks for permission to come inside. He sits on the bed beside Jungkook, who is now lying on his stomach, and gently scratches the base of Jungkook’s ears.

“Oh. For the whole break?”

“Mhm.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.”

Jungkook cringes. “I know, eomma. I’m sorry.”

Taehyung doesn’t seem offended. He plays with Jungkook’s hair and ears and keeps quiet to let Jungkook think.

“Hmm, Jungkook-ah, I hope he is treating you well. Is he smart? What is he studying? What do his parents do for a living?”

“Ah, please, don’t interrogate me!”

“I’m just asking simple questions every eomma should know.”

“We can talk later, okay? I will call you, and we’ll talk with appa, too.”

One day, Jungkook will tell his parents more than the bare minimum details about the boy who holds his heart. For now, Jungkook tells his mother he loves her and tosses his phone off to the side once the call ends so the pretty tiger, who smells like summer rain, can shower him with sweet kisses until all of Jungkook’s worries are washed away.

“I can’t wait to meet them,” Taehyung purrs against Jungkook’s throat, where he kisses him. “How many times do you think I should visit with them before I ask them if I can marry you?”

“Stop it,” Jungkook whispers, though Taehyung can’t tell if Jungkook is scolding him for what he said about marriage or for how he’s got Jungkook flat on his back with his leg hiked up over his waist so he can grind their hips together.

Both? Either? Jungkook doesn’t know.

“Did you know Jackson can officiate weddings?” Taehyung asks with a slow roll of his hips. They’re both in jeans and sweaters; Taehyung just likes being a tease.

“Taehyung.”

“I heard sex feels different after you’re mated.”

“Taehyung. You’re so gross.”

Jungkook throws his arms over Taehyung’s shoulders and crushes him against his chest, ready to drown in the giggles he earns in response, giggles from a big, scary tiger who is utterly whipped for his bun. Who would have thought?

Series Masterlist

Disclaimer: All my writing is fictional and for entertainment purposes only. None of these characters are meant to actually represent the real people mentioned in the stories.

All rights reserved © @gimmethatagustd - Do not copy, repost, modify, or translate any of my writing. Do not use my writing for any AI purposes whatsoever. Do not use my fics for anything aside from reading and commenting on them. My fics will only be posted on this Tumblr and on AO3 (gimmethatagustd & daddytaehyungie).

#taekook #taehyung x jungkook #bts fanfic #taehyung fanfic #jungkook fanfic #bts smut #bts fluff #jungkook smut #jungkook fluff #taehyung fluff #taehyung smut #venor #jai writes #gimmethatagustd

54 notes · View notes

imtrashraccoon · 3 months

Text

Whew! It's over...don't mind me but I'll probably be taking a few days off writing again. Thank you so much for coming along on this journey with me! I learned so much and had so much fun! It's definitely given me so many ideas for future projects...

There will probably be an announcement post coming soon... (ﾟ⁠οﾟ⁠人⁠)⁠)

@owl-bones

First Day & Previous Day.

Bad Sansuary: Free Space - Snuggle

Word Count: 3,301

Feat. Everyone!

You were relaxing in your room with a book you'd borrowed from the library after dinner. This high fantasy series Nightmare recommended was seriously good and once you'd started, it was incredibly hard to put down. Well, unless someone interrupted you that is...

There was a playful knock at your door, pulling you out of the story and back to reality. You knew exactly who had chosen to bother you and a part of you wanted to just pretend you had gone to bed early so he'd leave you alone. But...that wouldn't be very nice and you could always read later on before you did actually go to sleep.

With a sigh, you slipped a book mark made from laminating the pressed flowers Axe had given you between the pages and hauled yourself off the comfortable couch to go answer the door. The knocking grew more insistent until you finally threw it open and fixed Killer with your most exaggerated grumpy face.

"What's so important that you would drag me from the realm of Middle Earth just to see you?" you grumbled.

Killer shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and smirked. "hm? oh i was just bored out of my mind, angel face~"

You sighed and ran your hand down your face. "So, you want me to help you?"

"nope."

"What? Then...why did you come see me?" Now you were really confused and you stared at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to break and claim he was just messing with you.

"i wanna have a movie night and almost everyone else has already agreed. so...?" He wiggled his bonebrows in a playful way until you finally relented.

"Alright, I guess that sounds like it could be fun."

No sooner had you agreed did Killer take your hand and nearly drag you into the common area. You protested from the suddenness, but he only laughed and barely slowed down at all. It seemed you'd have to revisit Middle Earth another time.

"she said yes!" he announced to the other three skeletons.

Axe and Dust seemed to have been trying to figure out which movie to watch, but by the looks of things, they hadn't been able to come to a decision. Nightmare was casually lounging on one of the couches watching the two of them. All three looked up at the news and Axe smiled at you.

"guess i could whip up some snacks. do ya wanna help, lil' chip?" he asked.

You shrugged and glanced over at the tv to see what they had narrowed the choices down to. "Sure, but what movie were we going to watch anyways?"

Dust, Axe, and Killer glanced at each other before saying different titles at the same time, none of which you'd ever heard of before. They then proceeded to start arguing over which was the better movie.

Nightmare sighed and shot you a look that seemed to say "See what I deal with?" You gave him a sympathetic smile before clapping your hands to get the other's attention.

"Why don't we watch all of them and just turn this into a movie marathon night?" you suggested.

Thankfully, your idea seemed acceptable and they nodded in agreement. Even Nightmare seemed suitably impressed which made you quite happy to have solved the argument.

"guess we should start on those snacks then," Axe hummed and started for the kitchen.

"dusty and i could go pick up some pizzas and pop if you're fine with that?" Killer suggested and glanced at the aforementioned individual, who merely shrugged.

"sure, do what ya want," Axe rumbled, not even bothering to stop and look at them.

The two disappeared to presumably go get the food and you went to follow Axe into the kitchen, although not before glancing back at Nightmare. He gave you a bit of a disinterested look before getting up and leaving the common area.

You frowned and started to go after him to figure out if something was wrong, when Axe called out for you.

"ya comin' lil' chip?"

"Yeah, I'll be right there." You hesitated for a moment before hurrying to the kitchen. It seemed you'd have to check in on him later.

You helped make some buttered popcorn, cut up some fresh fruit, and arrange some cookies that Axe had made earlier on a plate. By the time you were done, the other two skeletons had returned with a couple of still hot pizzas and two bottles of pop. You didn't question where they'd likely pilfered them from and neither did Axe, as the answer would likely be either unpleasant or exactly what you suspected they'd done instead of paying like proper monsters.

Just as you were helping to arrange the food where it would be easily accessible, Nightmare reappeared with his arms and tentacles full of various cushions and blankets. While you were a little surprised, you were also glad to see that he was interested in participating in the fun afterall.

It didn't take long to make the floor by the tv extra comfy and get situated. Axe was content to lean against the couch where his large frame wouldn't be blocking anyone. Dust claimed a beanbag chair, which practically swallowed him up, and you were pretty sure he wasn't planning on moving anytime soon. Killer, being the absolute gremlin that he was, went about stealing as many pillows as he could to make a makeshift pillow nest for himself. At first, Nightmare chose the couch, but when you all but insisted that he should join everyone else, he relented and eventually chose to copy Axe, leaning against the couch instead.

Two problems quickly became apparent though. Problem one was that no one could agree on whose movie choice to watch first. Problem two was that you could tell each of the boys wanted you to sit with them.

You really didn't want what was supposed to be a fun evening devolving into a jealous fight. So before anyone could actually get upset, you decided to try and take charge.

"How about this... To keep things fair, I'll just swap places for each movie so that I can sit with all of you in turn," you suggested. Unfortunately, your attempt at a solution wasn't nearly as effective as you'd hoped.

"sooo...who gets to have the cutie to themselves first?" Killer asked. He had a dangerous look on his skull as he spoke and while his tone sounded light, even like he was almost teasing, you knew him well enough by now to know that he wasn't playing around.

"definitely not you," Dust growled and sat up a bit, his gloved hands digging into the bean bag.

Even Axe seemed to stiffen up and his good eye socket narrowed into a harsh glare at his loud-mouthed colleague. His clawed phalanges twitched slightly, as if aching to wringe a certain someone's neck or curl around the handle of the weapon of his namesake.

While Nightmare remained silent, you could tell by the way his tentacles were twitching restlessly, that he was at the very least mildly annoyed by this situation. His cyan eyelight flicked to you and the intensity of his gaze was almost enough to make you want to shrink into yourself. His expression held something else though; a look that you couldn't quite place but one that seemed to suggest he was scheming about something.

You swallowed and managed to tear your eyes away from his piercing gaze. Raising your voice again, you cried out, "No fighting! I have another idea...you should all play rock, paper, scissors to determine the order."

They glanced at each other but no one protested. After playing a few rounds, an order was established, minus Nightmare, who claimed he didn't care when his turn was. Killer won each time making him first, Axe was second, and Dust was third, much to his frustration. Nightmare was content to go last, which of course nobody protested over.

Killer was all too happy to welcome you into his nest. His arms fit snugly around your waist, teasingly close to your pelvis, although he otherwise kept his hands to himself and just continued spooning you during the first movie.

Speaking of, the movie was one of those corny horror movies. It was full of gratuitous violence with plenty of obviously fake gore. Still, you couldn't help but cringe whenever the monster attacked the very doomed side characters. Killer was quick to soothe your nerves with soft whispers of encouragement and occasionally making fun of the many cliches present in the film. Overall, the experience left a sort of thrill coursing through your veins and you were admittedly a little disappointed when the movie was over, a sentiment Killer seemed to mirror, although he attempted to hide it.

Axe had picked a tamer movie, although that wasn't saying much as there were more jump scares than the previous one that never failed to startle you. Still, Axe was also very good at comforting you and multiple times throughout the movie, you felt his eyelight watching your reactions just to make sure you were okay.

You ended up snuggled up against his left side with his hand around your back and resting on your left hand which was on your thigh. You wrapped your right arm around his broad back and laid your head against his ribcage, which inadvertently meant you could listen to the soothing hum of his magic that emanated from his soul.

At some point during the second movie, you glanced over at Nightmare and were a little surprised to find that he seemed a bit bored. It was odd because you had assumed he'd actually get some sort of satisfaction from witnessing how terrified the protagonists of the film were.

He sensed your gaze and glanced over, tilting his skull in a silent question.

"Are you okay?" you mouthed.

His eyelight flicked back to the screen and he shrugged. "It's manufactured fear... I can't gain any benefits from attempting to absorb it," he murmured. When he glanced back at you though, a subtle smirk formed across his skull and he went to say something but stopped himself when Axe took notice of the conversation.

You were momentarily fascinated that there was that much of a difference. Would it be any different if it was a live broadcast and the actors didn't know what was going to happen? You'd have to ask him about it sometime.

You glanced at Nightmare a few more times throughout the movie and occasionally caught him looking a little amused. The boys weren't easily spooked but the rare times one of them was seemed to coincide with those little moments. You figured he was the one who hadn't exactly wanted to have a movie night, however he'd seemingly decided to go along with it anyways. Probably under the guise of this being a group bonding activity like any good boss would host. The thought was actually kind of funny to you now that you knew them all a lot better.

Dust's movie of choice was definitely a thriller, and while you didn't mind the change, it made you feel really anxious, which you hated. It was about an old cop trying to solve a series of murders apparently perpetrated by the one criminal he had failed to bring to justice years prior. The plot was certainly intriguing at points and you could see why he had picked it.

You'd been right on the money earlier when you'd assumed he wasn't planning on budging from the comfortable beanbag for a long while. That was fine of course since he didn't really need to move in order to actually cuddle with you. His idea was for you to sit in his lap so you'd be as close as possible, which you'd expanded on and chosen to sit side saddle. It meant you could both hold each other and he'd get to watch your face, so he didn't protest at all. You wrapped one of your arms around his shoulders and he sort of mimicked the gesture, except he supported your back, leaving your other hand free to hold his other one.

By the time of the fourth movie, which was a classic monster movie about a mad scientist and his creation, you noticed something strange. Save for yourself and Nightmare, everyone else seemed to doze off, almost at the same time too.

Turning to the only possible perpetrator, you narrowed your eyes suspiciously. "Did you...put them to sleep?" you hissed under your breath.

His grin seemed only to grow more smug and even without him saying anything, you knew your suspicions were correct.

"Indeed~" he purred. "It is said that good things come to those who wait. They had their fun, so now I get to have mine..."

Your heart skipped a beat at the deliciously dark tone of voice he'd used. It was at that moment that a flock of butterflies decided to assault your insides with their delicate wings. You'd managed to control yourself with the others but now that you were technically alone with him...well, you weren't sure if that was possible anymore.

He pressed his skull against your hair and growled low in his throat. "I had to watch them hold you so close all this time... Have some empathy, dear..."

A chill went down your spine from the possessive tone of his voice and your tongue felt heavy like it was made of lead. Even if you could complain, he probably wouldn't even listen to you.

Nightmare pulled you into his lap yet again, which seemed to be his preferred method of holding you for whatever reason. Maybe it was because he could cage you in with his arms and tentacles so you couldn't escape. Or maybe he just liked the feeling of having you so intimately close to him. You tried not to dwell on it, partially because you liked it too.

Neither of you said much of anything for a little while, being content to enjoy the closeness and intimacy of this rare moment in time.

He was the one to break the silence first. He seemed to grow restless the longer you went without saying anything and his tentacles twitched with pent up energy, leaving you wondering what was really on his mind today. Then his clawed phalanges hooked under your chin, gently turning it so he could make eye contact and ensure he had your full attention before he even attempted to say anything.

"My dear, I cannot see into what the future holds, but I believe with all my soul that you'll fit in here. You've won over each of my boys in your own way and they've come to care a great deal for you in return."

He paused to take a breath before continuing. "I'm not normally a very...romantic person... But, even I can admit that I care a lot for you. No matter what you think, you matter to us and you've made a difference in our lives...for the better. I hesitate to use the word 'love' as I don't, and maybe can't, exactly feel that...but you will always be safe under my care."

He drew closer to you, his touch growing more tender now, and his tendrils slowly undulating against your clothing. "I promise, dear..." he murmured, almost against your lips, before closing that final distance.

For a moment, you were frozen in place as your brain tried to process what all he'd said. You caught on quickly though and wrapped your arms around his cerebral vertebrae so he wouldn't pull away too soon. You felt him stiffen ever so slightly but he soon relaxed into your embrace and actually deepened the kiss further.

It was over much too soon. You had to separate to catch your breath, although he didn't seem winded in the slightest. There was a soft cyan glow colouring his otherwise dark cheekbones and you could also see a small spark of what you thought might be true happiness in his eyelight.

Neither of you said anything for the short remainder of the film and you snuggled up against him as close as you possibly could get. Your soul was practically leaping for joy in your chest at the implications of what he'd said. You'd been assured by the others, but now you had definitive proof that he really did like you afterall.

Whatever magic he'd used to put everyone else to sleep seemed to fade as the end credits began to roll. One by one, the boys stirred before waking up, although you could see they were still a bit drowsy from the effects of the spell.

"Nice of you all to join us," Nightmare remarked with a chuckle and lightly squeezed your body against himself one last time.

They could only seem to respond with a cacophony of various tired grumbles, which even you had to admit was a little amusing.

Dust was the first to move and his mismatched eyelights scanned the room before locking onto you. The intensity in his tired gaze was nearly breathtaking but you couldn't read what could possibly be going through his mind right now. He dragged himself to his feet and managed to shamble his way over to you like a dead man walking. He ended up collapsing half on top of you so that his skull was resting just above your knees.

As soon as Killer realized what he'd done, he dragged himself over to you as well, plopping himself down on your shins with his skull resting on one of his arms so he could still look up at you. Interestingly, the black ooze that always leaked from his eye sockets had slowed to a meer trickle now, possibly from sleeping?

You were slightly flustered by all this contact at once but there was still one skeleton missing. Glancing over at Axe, you saw that he seemed to be conflicted. His eyelight flicked from his two colleagues to you and back again, while his large hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

You couldn't exactly reach for him but you motioned with your chin to try and reassure him that you didn't mind if he wanted to join in. That little push was all he needed to scoot over and wrap both you and Nightmare in a big hug.

The aforementioned god let out a low growl of annoyance at basically being smothered and his claws pressed into your waist in a vain attempt to keep you to himself. Yet, he didn't shove any of them away, even though he was plenty strong enough to, as demonstrated when he used his tentacles to move some of the boys and yourself into more comfortable positions.

You couldn't move even if you wanted to and definitely wouldn't be able to for a while. Your eyes were finally starting to grow heavy, but still, you resisted the tempting allure of sleep to enjoy what had turned into a snuggle pile.

It was obvious that all four of them felt strongly about you and if the events leading up to the movie marathon were anything to go by, this wouldn't be the last time you'd need to intervene. Each of them were equally stubborn and also quite dangerous when provoked, which could quickly lead to hurt feelings or injuries.

You would have to either get good at breaking up future arguments or simply pick one of them and stick with your decision. Unfortunately, you didn't want to pick one over the others as you liked each of them equally. You'd have to give this matter a lot of thought.

You were confident you'd make the right choice though...

131 notes · View notes

dazed--xx · 1 year

Text

Breathless

Member: Hyunjin x reader

Word count: 21.3K

IDOL CAMEOS: Karina-Aespa, Yeji-Itzy, Lia-Itzy, Joshua-Seventeen, Chanyeol-Exo

Trigger warnings: SMUT, toxic relationships, ANGST, oral sex, breeding kink, unprotected sex (wrap it up guys), fake texts, mentions of alcholism (By side character), mentions of cheating, mentions of medical issues, mentions of anxiety. anything else i could have forgotten.

A/N: I wanted to start writing for other groups for a while, and i watched the Case 143 comeback and just fell down a Stray Kids rabbit hole again so i decide to write this i hope you guys enjoy, let me know if you want a part two. also i do commissions, personally i dont like buy me a coffee but i do have cashapp, paypal and venmo if you ever want to get a commission i do still have a buy me a coffee as well anyway enjoy

“Can't you stay?”

Your voice is shaky as you look at him with hope filled eyes. You could tell even just from looking at his back, as an annoyed sigh is released from his lips, he had rolled his eyes. “Cant. Sorry” He states matter of factly. He wasn’t sorry... you knew he wasn’t; he never was. He always said it anytime you'd ask, never giving a reason beyond ‘cant’ yet you still find yourself asking “w-why not?” your tone is so soft you don’t even register the words had actually come out until he snaps “I mean it's not really your business is it?” quickly turning to face you as he forces his shirt on. “Does it matter?” your teeth capture your bottom lip as you hold the blanket over your bare chest. Your gaze avoiding his glare “I guess not...” the familiar prick behind your eyes has your vision blurring. You hear your bedroom door open “H-have fun I guess....” you call to him only to be met with the sound of the door closing.

Of course, not.... You hadn't expected as much anyway.

In the past 10 months of your relationship with him you have learned plenty of things about Hwang Hyunjin. He was a passionate dance major, spending more time in the dance studio than in his own dorm. He had a love for art, with dozens of classic paintings littering his dorm. Along with his own. He was independent, charming, and undeniably gorgeous. But he was also cold, distant, and lacked social etiquette. He was quick to tell you exactly what was on his mind whether it hurt or not. If he chose not to vocalize his disinterest; his expression was an open book for all to read anyway. He enjoyed the party lifestyle, if his social media was anything to go by, he’d often be spotted in the background of photos with his best friends; Seo Changbin and Han Jisung.

Everyone in your university wanted at least one of them. Most of the female population had a ‘night to remember’ story with either one of them. They were blunt and honest about their lack of commitment, only needing a warm body as a temporary place holder in their beds.

Relationships were off the table. Sure, they’d be down for a good time here or there but in Jisung’s own words “Relationships equal clingy annoying problems” which is why you were so surprised when Hyunjin asked for exclusivity oh so matter of factly last year. You had been sleeping together on and off after your dance instructors paired you up for your first joint project between both of your classes. It had been a late night in the studio running through one of your last rehearsals before evaluations. You weren't sure if it was the close sensual nature of the choreography, thanks to Hyunjin, or the ambiance in the dimly lit studio but as the song came to its conclusion; both of your chests heaving against each other, your eyes meet. Your bottom lip finds its way in between your teeth. His hand caressing your cheek as his thumb traces over your bottom lip “Fuck......Don't. Don’t do that” his voice full of something unfamiliar to you. “Do what?” you ask innocently your hands grip his shirt. His hold on you tightens around your waist, pulling you closer into his slim muscular figure. The tip of his tongue brushes over his plush lips. Your cheeks and ears burn a bright scarlet. Looking back, you weren't entirely sure who initiated it but soon, your lips meet. Shortly after you felt the cool glass mirror against your bare chest as Hyunjin attacked your core. His thrusts ruthless until you reached a mind-bendingng orgasm. Youd only realized your mistake afterward when he quickly fixed his clothes and ran out the door.

You took the loss in stride. Avoiding the topic during the last 2 weeks of rehearsal, acting as if it never happened. You never stayed alone with him longer than necessary, you'd pull away the moment the song came to an end even though sometimes he’d try to hold you in place for a while longer. Youd make sure the studio was properly lit at all times. Only texting him about rehearsals and quickly dismissing his selfies and flirty remarks. You would begin spending your lunch in the university library when Jisung set his sights on your best friend, Karina, and he and his best friends began impeding on your time with your best friends. Only truly having to come face to face with Hyunjin at your evaluation.

As the song came to a close you ripped yourself from Hyunjin’s grasp, thanked the judges for their time, collected your phone and made your way out of the studio and into the locker room. Reaching your locker, you force your dance bag out of its confinement. A sigh of relief is released from your throat. Your eyes focusing on the mirror you kept on the back wall; you steady your breathing. Closing the door, the need to shower now replacing your anxiety. Turning toward the private showers your face is met with a wall of muscle. The familiar cologne fills your nostrils, dread fills your stomach as you silently beg the ground to swallow you whole. “Sorry” you murmur as you attempt to make your way around him. A small ‘tsk’ is heard from above you as he places himself in front of you again. “Do you have a problem or something?” you snap. An amused smirk finds its way to his plush lips. Damn you Hwang, you think to yourself, as he shrugs and shakes his head. “Why are you avoiding me?” He pouts. You hate how your heart races “I'm not” you shrug “Just no reason for us to interact anymore” his eyebrows scrunch together his pout only growing at your words “You don’t want me anymore?” needless to say you ended that interaction pressed against the shower wall his lips attached to your neck as he guides you on his shaft. Only for the cycle to continue over and over until your presence in each other's lives was nonstop. Then one day he had asked you to be his girlfriend with a nonchalant shrug, murmuring back a shy ‘yes’ and 10 months later your cat and mouse game continued.

Apart from the occasional quickie or stolen kiss, you rarely see the man that claims to be your boyfriend. Your offers to accompany him to the studio remain declined, stolen moments with him moved from the library study rooms to either one of your dorms in the late hours of the night. You should have seen his rejection coming; it's all he’s ever done. His friends, the studio, parties all get more of Hyunjin’s time than you. With the summer coming to an end and the dance studio finally opening up again tonight, you knew immediately he’d go; especially with it being all the other dance majors can talk about due to the party being held there.

“UM....HELLOOO!!!” your dormmate Lia, exclaimed as she snapped in front of your eyes pulling you out of your trance. You glare at her petite frame. “Busy in wonderland there, Alice?” she giggles. “HA.HA. You’re so funny I forgot to laugh.” you quip. “Anyway...what's up?” you question adjusting the blanket, Lia places a pout on her lips “I need a favor”

“If it's buying condoms for you again the answer is no” you growl.

“No, smartass. Not this time, but I'm really busy studying for the stupid exam I have tomorrow since my psychology professor is a psychopath and Yeji is sick do you think you can run and grab some medicine for her?” she pleads. You smirk at her “What if I was busy?”

“With what? Hwang left already. You’re going to spend the rest of the night in bed. Like you always do” she snarls before she turns and makes her way out the door.

“Love you. Goodnight.” she calls

______________________________________________________________

You couldn’t help but get lost in the beauty that is Jongno-gu, walking along the river toward Yeji’s off campus dorm. Your eyes drift to the beautiful lights that decorate the road indicating the little restaurants and shops. An envious feeling grows in the pit of your stomach as a young man chases his girlfriend around the gorgeous area; smiles plastered on their faces as he finds his arms encasing her from behind. Lucky....you think to yourself. If only you were more like Lia or Yeji or Karina. You take a single pause in your movements. A memory growing in your mind of you having to spend your last paycheck at your summer job your senior year on bail for Karina due to her ex cheating on her and her taking a bat to his car and him. Okay maybe not Karina......you thought. The whirring of an engine cutting your thoughts off as a single headlight blinds you. You force yourself right and collide with the hard concrete. Brushing your hair out of your face before you dust off your legs. Pulling yourself off the ground, you notice the motorcyclist shoving the bike off his leg. “Oh my god! Are-Are you okay?” Your eyes widen in panic as you rush toward the driver. He unbuckles his helmet and pulls it off.

Your heart races as honey blonde hair begins blowing subtly in the small wisps of wind. His brown eyes sitting in a scowl. You couldn’t help but stare at his heart shaped plush lips, noticing the freckles that litter his face.

Fuck...

He was absolutely mesmerizing. He opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by the roar of multiple engines. His eyes widen as he stares in the direction he came, tossing his helmet into your arms he takes off in the direction you had just come from. Your eyes widen as you stare down at the glossy black and red headgear. “E-Excuse--” you tried to call after him as 4 motorbikes whip past you following after the mystery man. You contemplate just leaving the helmet on the bike and returning to your task. You groan to yourself as you notice the headlight still on and the idling of the engine. You stomp your foot in frustration.

Ughh this is so not worth my time....

You notice the bikes disappearing in the distance. Taking the helmet and placing it on the ground before you grab the handlebars of the motorcycle and after a long struggle you were finally able to lift it. Bringing the kickstand down you place the helmet on the seat. The tightness in your chest from the unexpected work out has you reconsidering if you care if the bike got stolen or not; the owner obviously didn’t. You stare in the direction of Yeji’s place noticing the beautiful welcoming lights. You growl to yourself as you slowly lift the kickstand taking hold of the handlebars once again you drag the vehicle in the direction its owner dashed to. Your eyes roam the area as you wearily drag the bike along in search of its owner. You notice a group of motorcycles in the parking lot to the docks. Hiding the bike behind the dumpster in front of said lot. Helmet in your arms, you quietly make your way toward the sound of shouting. You can hear them getting louder as you stand against a pilar attached to the side of the dock. You notice the honey blonde stranger dashing toward the end of the pier you were currently on. You thanked God no one saw you as they dashed past you. You throw your head back in relief and in an instant a sharp pain rings through the back of your skull.

You groan placing your hand over your mouth and rolling your eyes at your foolishness. Your heart sinks into your ass as red and blue lights begin to come from behind you and the loud wail of a siren rings through the air. Your eyes widen in bewilderment as you quickly try to find an off switch on the unexpectedly placed 112 help box. You can hear the sounds of the boys retreat as you continuously hit the box. The siren finally coming to a halt.

You let out a sigh of relief as you slowly back out from your hiding spot. Your back meeting a warm wall. where one previously was not; you jump at the contact, whipping around you come face to face with the angelic honey blonde stranger. A gasp escapes your throat at the sudden closeness, his lips were drawn in a straight line, arms crossed over his chest. “Are you a stalker or something?” he questions, you were shocked at the amount of bass in his voice. Your eyebrows scrunch together letting out an annoyed scoff as you turn to leave. A ‘tsk’ is released from his lips as his hand grabs your hood and pulls you back into his chest; his arm snakes around your waist. You turn your head to face him, your heart races as your noses brush. Your eyes widen as you pull back, your eyes roaming over his face. They land on his alluring heart shaped lips. You wondered what it would be like to kiss them, though you don’t believe they’d feel as good as Hyunjin’s, they do look quite soft. Butterflies danced in your stomach, as his lips turned up into an amused smirk “What are you looking at?” He quips. Your face is painted a bright scarlet as you force yourself from his arms “Bye!” you call as you dash toward the direction of Yeji’s place. You can hear his deep raspy voice calling toward you as you continue your escape; completely and utterly embarrassed. Your legs refusing to stop until you finally reach Yeji’s door. Knocking as you try to catch your breath.

“Finally,” Yeji declares as she swings open her door. Her cheeks a rosy, pink, lilac fluffy blanket enveloping her petite figure. “Where the hell did you get a helmet?”

______________________________________________________________

You hate Mondays.

And not in the Garfield way or the ‘79 school shooter way. You just hate them with a passion from today on. After yesterday's rounds with Hyunjin and the motorcycle debacle your body is absolutely sore and ready to give up on itself. Regretting even getting out of bed, you stare tiredly at the gates of the university. You scowl at the crowds of people with happy smiles on their faces, coffee in hand. A yawn escapes from your throat before you could stop it, you notice a small crowd standing under the cherry blossom tree. Your hair races as you recognize the familiar blonde tresses, a smile on his lips as he slightly shoves Jisung. You take a small step forward before your movements halt; a petite brunette and what you could assume to be her friends came into to view. Her hand lay on Hyunjin’s bicep before she slowly trails it along his arm. He smiles at her leaning in and whispering something in her ear. A gut-wrenching sting fills your stomach as your throat burns with jealousy when you see him remove a petal from her hair and stroke a stray hair behind her ear. Your breathing grows shaky as tears threaten to fall.

A manicured hand snapping in your face forces you to pull your attention away from the pair. You smile as a coffee is handed to you; a pair of arms are wrapped around your neck as you come face to face with your childhood best friend, Yoo Ji-Min (who’d kill you if you called her anything but Karina. Her new name she had claimed when she declared she wanted to be an idol 5 years ago). “What are we staring at?” she questions as she places her cheek against yours releasing you from her grasp as she notices the pair. “Seriously?” she scoffs. You shake your head at her tone “They're just talking....” you mumble. She crosses her arms over her chest “Thats why I found you alone instead of over there like last year?” she growls. You shrug in response “I don’t want to bother with it right now, I'm so tired”

“What are you doing for your intro solo today?” she asks, your whole-body tenses as your eyes widen in realization “crying?” you respond. “You?! The queen of having everything planned down to the second of a song doesn’t have a plan? Like no choreo at all?” Karina gasps as she drags you along the path to the dance building. “Don't remind me, okay? I went through too much last night! And no are you crazy of course I have some choreo it's just not........up to my standards I guess” you whine as you stomp your foot pressing your chest against her arm with your chin sitting on her shoulder. “So then, you're ready” she smirks wrapping her arm around your shoulders. “You over think these things Y/N you need to relax honestly, you're a great choreographer and you're only in your second semester! Your dance is fine” she reassures you.

You shrug in response “Not this time....” your eyes can't help but drift to the pair once again. The girl leaned against the cherry blossom tree, Hyunjin stood a little too close as she giggled at something he was saying. “No! THIS time I decided ‘oh let's be special lets at stunts’ and then completely forget I even had to do the damn dance and now I'm going to make a complete fool of myself. The instructor already emailed me personally to tell me she was looking forward to my solo specifically, I can’t go in there and fall on my---BIKE!!!!” Your whines were cut off by a loud shout and the familiar roar of an engine grew louder. Hearing it come closer and closer to you, you whip your head around only to see the familiar silhouette of a motorcycle barreling toward you; quickly wrapping both of your hands around Karina’s arms you shove her back with your back pressed against her chest. Your heart races as you notice the black and red bike. Your eyes flashing to the driver, “no. Way...." You whisper to yourself in disbelief as the driver cuts off the engine and pulls off the matte black helmet. The same angelic glowing stupid face...you think to yourself. You notice a group of guys greeting him with warm cheers and hugs. A glare sits on your face as anger courses through your veins like venom. Releasing your hold on Karina you stomp your way over to the honey blonde boy.

He smiles as your eyes meet; your hands quickly meet his chest as you shove him back. A loud ‘oh’ is heard from the small crowd of boys. “That is the second and last time you almost kill me with that thing” you exclaim as you shove him again. His hand wraps around your wrist and pulls you into his chest. Fighting against his hold you notice the smug smirk on his lips. Your knee jerks into his thigh. He jumps at the close call. “If you don’t want me to hit you there let me, go cause that was the warning shot.” you growl. “Are you calm?” he questions. “I won't hit you again if that’s what you're asking” at your words his grip is released on your waist.

As soon as you were free you punched his arm

“You said!”

“I lied! Do you have a thing for almost running me over or can you just not see for shit?” He places his finger in his chin as if he were thinking “I think it’s a you thing” You glare at him “I should have let your stupid bike get stolen” you grumble as you turn to return to Karina. Your movements are brought to a halt as you notice all eyes on you. Your eyes drift over the crowd as you feel a hand on your wrist. You turn your head to the owner “Wait.” he smiles. Your heart races as your eyes meet “w-what?”

“You still have my helmet, gorgeous” he whispers in your ear. Your eyes widen in realization as you pull away from him. “Fuck! I do!” You exclaim “I'm so sorry I'll bring it to you tomorrow” your eyes fall on Karina who looked on in amusement a mischievous glint in her eye. Looking past her, you notice Hyunjin’s attention fully on you; a scowl on his face his arm wrapped in Jisung’s grip. “She your girlfriend Lixie?” One of his friends teased as you stomp past them. You glare at him, Bang Chan, the school's number 1 in academics a senior. Deciding it's better to just let it go you shake your head and stomp away.

Karina rushes to your side, her hands quickly wrapping themselves around your arm as she drags you toward the dance building.

“Explain. Now.” she demands

______________________________________________________________

You can't help the smile that remains planted on your lips as you enter the dance studio. Dropping your bags in the corner and out of the way you drag Karina to the center of the room and dropping into your position for stretching. The studio always made you find a sense of relief and comfort. You loved the way you’d lose yourself in the choreography. You were quite flexible; taking advantage of the gymnastics and taekwondo skills you’ve acquired over the years now making you able to include high level stunts in your routines. While you wouldn’t say you were the best dancer in your major, you could argue you were in the top 15. Changing from your legs open to spreading into a straddle you grasp Karinas hands as she slowly lays back.

“Damn Y/N, if I knew you could do that, I definitely would have hit that before Hwang” Jisung whispered in your ear, a scoff is released from your throat as your head whips around to see Jisung only a couple of inches from your face. Your eyes widen as you pull your head farther away from his face. “What is wrong with you?” You question in disgust as a black boot comes in contact with Jisung’s ribcage kicking him over. Your eyes trail up the person's figure, only to be met with your boyfriend's bored expression focused on you his hands sitting in his pockets. You quickly look away as your cheeks heat up, butterflies fluttering all over your stomach. “It was a fucking joke....” Jisung mumbled, as he glides across the floor next to Karina “Kiss it better?” he pouts to her. You feel a warmth surrounding you, a pair of arms wrapping around your waist. You notice Jisung staring awestruck at Karina while she did her split stretching one up and leaning back. “Do that on me please” He begs her, her cheeks burn a bright scarlet. You feel Hyunjin’s fingers losing themselves in your hair as he places his face in your neck. You tangle your fingers in his hair, a shy smile growing on your face; your ears and cheeks burning a bright scarlet at the new action.

“Oh my god! Why are you here?” Karina snaps both of your eye's flash to her and Jisung who now had his head on her shoulder “Aren't you a music major?” He lifts his head from her and places his hand on his chest “You’re keeping tabs on me?!” A sly smirk grows on his face “You should just let me give you what you want baby”

“I'd rather fuck a double-edged sword” She growls.

“Can I watch?”

“Why are you such a fan? Huh Simp Boy?”

“You act like you don’t want me” Jisung counters, his eyebrow raised. You shake your head as you roll your eyes. “Ladies” you interrupt “You’re both pretty” you groan before you reluctantly pull yourself from Hyunjin’s grasp and stand up. You can feel his eyes on you as you make your way toward the water fountain. “Where are you going?” Karina calls. “Away from whatever the fuck is going on with you two” you retort.

Taking a deep breath, you feel the uncomfortable pressure that filled you once Hyunjin’s arms encased you. That’s odd... you thought Hes never done anything like that before.

You remember the scowl embedded on his face, Jisung’s hand wrapped firmly around his wrist. You know you'd have to explain the interaction......possibly, judging by the way he, himself, was flirting with another girl this morning he more than likely wouldn’t even care. You laugh at the irony; you don’t understand why you felt so guilty when he didn’t, yet you did. “Wow helmets leave some water for the fish” A familiar deep velvety voice rings from behind you. You hate how annoyingly sexy you find it----Helmet?!?! A glare forms on your eyes as you turn to face him. “Are you stalking me or something?” A bright smile is brought to his face, your heart flutters at the action, a warmth grows in your stomach.

“Why, Helmet you seem to think highly of yourself” He quips, his eyebrow raised “Why? you into that sort of thing?” he winks. Your mouth falls agape at his question. How could someone that looks so angelic be such a.........demon. “Stop calling me that! My name is Y/N”

“Well do I have my helmet?”

“Well, no but---But nothing until I have my very expensive helmet back, you'll be whatever I call you” He cut you off “You'll have it tomorrow until then-------OKAY PEOPLE! I don’t have all day so I’ll make this quick. Places! I'm explaining this one time and one time only. You will all be doing your intro solos if you aren't prepared that’s not my problem; everyone got the email. Everyone will be required to perform a routine that best represents your dance style; you will then be paired up with another person that’s style matches your own. They will be your partner for the rest of the semester. Any Questions?” The instructor declared as she barreled through the double doors, dropping her bag and placing herself at the head of the room. Everyone's eyes roamed around the room as the stragglers began to join the semi-circle that had formed due to the instructor's abrupt entrance. You notice a familiar pixie like brunette in your place beside Hyunjin.

Great......she's here too.... you thought to yourself.

“Okay! Yang Ye-na you're up” the instructor calls as the girl stands from her spot and makes her way to the center of the room. You grow envious at the winks her and Hyunjin exchange. You notice the darkness in his eyes as he stares her down. Embarrassment fills you as you beg the ground to swallow you whole. Tears burn your eyes at the realization, He doesn’t care......You were so fucking stupid to think you were different; that he wanted you and only you. Of course, he’d want her, she was absolutely flawless. Her beautiful wavy hair pulled up in a half up half down style; her bangs framed her face perfectly. Her body was curvy in all the right places while you were just average. Hyunjin was practically a god, why would he actually waste his time on you when he could be with women on his level. You’re snapped out of your thoughts by the sounds of applause. Quickly joining in with your peers, you clap unenthusiastically.

The rest of the performances flew by, you received high praises for your choreography to ‘Unholy’ by Sam Smith. Yet, you quickly placed yourself where you previously sat and tucked your face behind your hair. Continuing your train of (over) thought. Going through the motions as everyone performed but Karina. You couldn’t help yourself when your best friend performed. Your applause louder than the rest of the class as her song came to its conclusion. A proud smile on your face. “Okay! That was the final dancer, good job everyone.” the instructor calls as she tapes a paper to the mirror. “Here are your partners” she declares as she walks toward the back of the room. Everyone quickly rushed over to the list.

Choi Yeonjun-Han Eunji

Han Jisung-Yoo Ji-Min

Hwang Hyunjin-Yang Ye-na

Jung Wooyoung- Hwang Yeji

Kang Chanhee-Kwon Eunbin

Lee Juyeon-Kim Min-Jeong

Lee Minho-Lee Chae-yeon

Lee Yongbok-Park Y/N

Son Dongju-Lee Seoyeon

Your heart sank in your chest as Karina grasped your arm examining the list. A scowl grows on her flawless feature. Her mouth hanging open as she internally rages. “NO!” she finally exclaims. You hear a chuckle from behind you, turning around your met with Jisung standing with an arrogant smirk “It's like were meant to be or something” He laughs. Karina fakes a gag as she shoves her way out of the crowd. Jisung reaches out to her “But Baby!” you couldn’t help but laugh at his antics. Shoving your own way out, you notice Hyunjin and Ye-na huddled in the corner by the speaker. A smile planted on his lips as he sat beside her. Your eyebrows scrunch together as they shift closer. You knew his reputation but at least last year he was fucking subtle. Why'd he even ask you out? You wonder to yourself. It's not like he actually acted like he was in a relationship. It was always late-night booty calls when no one could dare catch either of you leaving the others dorm. Your texts typically go unanswered and if he does take the time to respond it's always one or two words. You notice his hand now placed on her knee, as he stared at her. Wow you thought to yourself.

Your view of the pair is blocked by the one person you wished you'd never have to deal with again. “WOW!” you roll your eyes at his enthusiasm. You notice Hyunjin and Ye-na's attention leaving each other and turning it to the loud boom of the boys' voice in front of you. You finally plant your eyes on his face, his eyes are squinted adorably as his heart shaped lips formed an angelic smile. “Looks like were partners, Helmet” He states happily “It's like fate. Maybe you're like my soulmate or something?” you groan in response “or god just hates me....” you stomp your foot, grabbing your water bottle from the ground and shoving past him toward Karina.

“C’mon Helmet, don’t break my heart already” He whined as he followed you wrapping his arm around your shoulder and jostling your hair. “Yah! Do you want to die?!” you threaten as you shove him off you and fix your hair. You hold back a laugh as, Yongbok apparently, trips over his feet and comes colliding with the person walking past. Your hand smacks over your mouth as you snicker while he bows his head at the person mumbling a quick apology before springing up and reaching for you. You hold your arm out your finger pointed at him “No, whatever it is youre planning. Unplan it” you warn as you take a step back. He feigns innocence shaking his head and holding his hands up in surrender.

“Cute” he states matter of factly

“What?”

“Nothing just the fact that you thing you're scary is cute”

“Okay. No.” you hear from behind Yongbok before you feel a strong grip on your arm as you are whisked toward the door. Your eyes land on your captor, the familiar mop of blonde hair. Your eyes widen as you look at Karina pleading for her help. She sat comfortably in her position giving you a knowing smirk.

You stumbled on your feet as Hyunjin continued to drag you out of the studio. You struggle to stay up right as to you tried to keep up with his pace. Your nerves build as he pulls you into an empty studio locking the door before he shoved you against the wall. A loud ‘THUD’ rings through the room. Your eyes drift over his flawless features, an irritated glare planted on his eyes. “What the fuck do you think you're doing?” he growls wrapping his hand around your throat sending a shock to your core. Your eyebrows scrunch together as a confused pout forms on your lips “W-what?” He presses his body against yours “Dont act fucking stupid” he snaps his grip getting tigher on your throat making your panties grow wet. “Hyun, I really don’t know what youre tal---Why was he all over you?” he cuts you off. You’re completely awestruck at his question. Your mouth hangs open in disbelief, the words not coming to you

His patience grew thinner as each second passed. You hate to admit it to yourself but he has you absolutely soaked. “I-its not like that” you finally mutter “I just met him”

“When?”

“When what?”

“when did you meet him?” he asks “you two seem.....comfortable” you almost laugh at the irony, he had some nerve that’s for sure. “I mean its not really your business is it?” you quip throwing his words from last night back at him “Does it matter?” you see a fire grow in his eyes “so what? Youre fucking him now?” He spits. An offended scoff is released from your throat “Sure, I mean its not like youre the only person I've fucked for the past few months.” You argue.

“Does he know that?”

“Does Ye-na?” you counter.

A smug smirk grows on his lips, as his eyes drift to your lips. “Does he know how hard I fuck you?” Hyunjin asks as he turns you around pressing your chest against the cool wall. You whine at his rough action. “I just met him!” you declare “Yet he has a little name for you” His nip at your ear, his fingers tangling themselves in your hair gripping it roughly and forcing your head back. You groan internally at the mention of the new nickname. You hate how easily Hyunjin turns you into a whimpering pleasing mess for him. His arousal evident as he presses his member against you. His lips brush over your ear, his free hand trailing over your jaw before gripping your chin and forcing you to face him. Your bottom lip finds its way in-between your teeth. Your eyes connecting once more, his grasp on your hair tightens. Suppressing a moan, you squeeze your thighs together pressing your ass firmly against his hard member.

Your breaths fill the air as your body trembles in arousal and hints of fear. You’ve never seen Hyunjin this mad or angry in general. His eyes burned holes into you, your eyes flashing behind him. Your body jumps when you feel his soft plush lips on your throat; fingers wrapping in his hair pulling him closer to you. It was no secret to anybody, including Hyunjin, that you were weak for him. Even if you typically would not stand for half of the things, he put you through you still find yourself making excuses for it time and time again. Yet, in moments like this, where you can see that glint in his eye you can trick yourself into thinking you were more than a temporary fascination. You hate how badly you want him despite his previous actions in the day. You’ve never been the bratty type, but the look on Hyunjin’s face unlocks a new part of you. You’ve never thought to actually test Hyunjin’s limits and see how far you could take things like he’s done oh so many times before. Still, you can't find yourself stopping the words before they come out.

“Hes cute isn't he?” A mischievous smirk plays on your lips. “And he’s my dance partner. You never know what could happen when you have to be so......close” you whisper in his ear seductively. You could practically feel yourself dripping in anticipation when you feel Hyunjin’s body tense against yours; Pulling back you can't help the warmth that grows in your chest when you notice the panicked expression painting Hyunjin’s face. His jaw clenches as his strong grip returns to your hair pulling you forward so your faces were only centimeters apart. “You wanna repeat that? I don’t think I heard you correctly” He challenges, you knew this was your one and only chance to take back what you said but you felt a little rebellious considering he was all but sucking face with Ye-na; so instead you chuckle “Don’t worry babe, you’ll always be my favorite” using another one of his infamous lines. You can see why he always antagonizes you when you berate him for never knowing when to draw the line; because the panicked look on his face and possessive grip he holds on to you has you ready to risk it all.

“I better be your only” He growls as he shoves your faces closer together finally closing the space between your lips. You moan at the contact; his hand releases your chin wrapping itself around your waist pulling you deeper into his form. His teeth nibbling at your bottom lip “only me, baby” he whines against your lips “Hyun, you know I only want you” you reassure between kisses. You whine as he pulls himself away and releases his grip on your hair. A look of confusion falls on your face as you turn to look at him. A squeak is released from your throat as his arms encase your waist. His lips attack your neck leaving a wet trail along his path to your sweet spot. You whimper against him as your hands find their way under his shirt, roaming along his muscular torso. You feel a shock run down your spine and into your core as he sucked roughly on the sensitive skin leaving a large purplish red mark, as his fingers dance along the waistband of your leggings. “All mine...” he groans in your ear, the roughness in his voice making you almost cum in your panties. You nod in excitement at his words as his hand plunges into your waistband. Not wasting anytime, he quickly enters your panties his fingers teasing your slit.

You jump at the feeling, a whimper forcing its way out. “Can he make your pretty pussy this wet?” He questions as he rubs circles into the bud. You shake your head in response; He brings his fingers to a halt. You practically cry “D-daddy, please...” you beg grasping at the waistband of his joggers. “Use your words, baby” He teases “Can your little dance partner make your pussy as wet as daddy does?” You bite your lip as he begins his motions again “N-No” you moan. Hyunjin brings his lips centimeters from yours; your lips brushing ever so slightly as he continued his toying with your sensitive clit.

“No what?”

“He doesn’t even get me wet at all daddy”

Hyunjin gives you a faux pout “Aww baby, that’s cause even this tight little pussy knows who owns it” you nod in response, your eyes roll to the back of your head as he plunges two digits into your hole. His lips connect with yours as he roughly begins pumping his fingers into your core hitting the familiar bundle of nerves deliciously. His tongue brushes against your bottom lip before groaning and forcing his tongue into your mouth. You moan against his lips as his tongue dominates your mouth. Your hand palming him over his joggers, “Yeah you're doing so good, you only want to be good for me, huh baby?” His voice is rough, lips swollen as he presses his forehead against yours; his hips buck into your hand. “Y-yes daddy” you whimper “no one but you” His lips press against yours hungrily, his fingers thrusting mercilessly; you nibble on his bottom lip as your hands roam over his body. Your mouth hangs open as a familiar knot builds in your stomach. “I-I'm gonna---” your words are cut off as Hyunjin’s pace speeds up bringing you over the edge. “Fuck cum for me” He groans as his lips attack your throat. “Only daddy could make you feel this good baby, fuck... you got my cock so fucking hard” You can only respond with a moan, your fingers run through his hair pulling him deeper into you. Your legs are shaking as you come down from your high. He pulls his hand out of your pants lifting his fingers to your mouth. You connect your eyes as you bring his fingers into your mouth, his mouth hangs open at the action; pupils blown out.

“You look so pretty when you act like a little slut for me, baby” He coos

Your cheeks heat up at the praises, unable to hide your smile you bury your face in his neck. You hear a chuckle rumble through his chest, his arms tighten around your waist pressing you against him. Your cheeks burn a bright scarlet under his gaze, you pull back from him. His eyes are hooded, lust clouding over them. His tongue traces over his bottom lip, before connecting them with yours once more. A gasp is released from your throat as your back is pressed against the wall, his hand running down your thigh lifting your leg at the knee pressing you even deeper against him. Your hips buck at the contact of his clothed member “Are you gonna be a good girl and let daddy fuck you?” he groans against your lips. You nod enthusiastically, “pl-please daddy, I'll be so good for you” your hands run over his chest and along his abdomen as you pressed small kisses against his neck earning a moan from Hyunjin. The sound has you enthusiastically sucking and nipping at the sensitive skin. Your heart swelled with pride as you observed the mark you had left on his neck, your eyes trailing over him only to be greeted with a fucked-out expression on his face. Letting his forehead fall against yours, your noses brushing ever so slightly “Fuck baby....” He whispers against your lips “as much I'd love to fuck your mouth right now I need to be inside you” His hand quickly forces your leggings down around your ankles taking your panties with them before freeing his own member from its confines.

Your mouth waters at the sight, his hand wrapped around his shaft as his painfully red tip leaked precum. Before you knew it your chest was once again pressed against the cool wall. Hyunjin’s large hand cups your ass before giving it a loud, painful smack.

“Fuck...” you groan. Throwing your head back in pleasure as Hyunjin’s cock glided up and down on your folds teasing your clit.

“Please...” you whine

“Please what baby?”

“Please fuck me Daddy”

You feel Hyunjin’s hips thrust forward at your words, before pulling away slightly. “Fuck” He growls your head whipping around to see him searching his bag and wallet a frustrated scowl on his face. “What is it?” you question removing your pants as he throws his bag to the ground “I don’t have a condom” Oh. A disappointed pout forms on your lips, you bite your lip before nervously suggesting “I mean.... I am on birth control” your eyes roam over the room before landing on him. His expression turning from frustrated, to confused before his mouth hangs open in realization. “Are you sure?” He can't even begin to try to hide his enthusiasm. “I-I mean unless you don’t want to” your voice is small, your eyes not meeting his “s-sorry I shouldn’t have suggested it” you apologize. “Come here” he calls as he sits against the sofa in the corner. You hesitantly make your way over standing in front of him shyly. His hand takes a hold of yours pulling you into his lap, so you straddle his hips. His hand caresses your cheek, “Do you want me to fuck you raw baby?” You try to hide your face in his neck as his hands trail over your thighs. He brushes his nose with yours “No, look at me” Your eyes connect as you nod biting your bottom lip grinding your bare pussy against his shaft. Weak whimpers leave your throat as he connects your lips.

“Fuck I can't get enough of you baby” He moans pressing your hips tighter against him increasing the friction on your clit. His tip continuously teases at your hole. Your hand sliding between your bodies holding his member in place before gliding him inside you slowly. Your eyes fall on Hyunjin, his mouth hung open as his head fell back against the sofa. “F-fuck...” his hands hold you in place “Don't. Don’t move yet” he struggled to get out. His heart raced as he stared at you behind hooded eyes, your cheeks a bright red. His tongue ran over his bottom lip as his cock twitched inside you. He fights the need to cum embarrassingly fast. He had just gotten inside you and he felt like he would explode already. He struggles not to thrust mercilessly into you as you press your chest against his. His lips following yours until they meet his hands guiding you up and down on his member. Hyunjin could have sworn he’d seen stars. For the many times he’s had sex, he’s never even thought to go raw but during the course of your relationship he couldn’t help but imagine the scenario every single time he was inside you. He wondered what it would be like to paint your walls with his cum. You’d always taken him so well; he gets lost in the sight of his cock disappearing inside your tight little pussy. “Look at you baby” He moans “I bet your dance partner would love to be me right now” your pussy clenches at his words.

He hated how jealous he had gotten, but how fucking dare that guy? You were his. He fought the urge to fuck up into you harshly to remind you of who you belonged to; him. “Fuck daddy you stretch my pussy out so well” you moan. He holds back a smile at the almost pornographic noises coming out of your mouth. He could never get over this feeling, he loved every moment he had a chance to spend ruining the innocence your beautiful face portrays. He loved the look on your face as you came around him. And him only. He craved your body every time he was away from you wanting to bury himself deep inside your womb and remain there. He lost his will to hold back as your lips attacked his neck once again; an action he used to detest but now he found himself praying for you to leave your mark on him. Claim him for the rest of the world to see. “You’re doing so well” He praises as his hips find a steady rhythm into your g spot. “You make daddy feel so good, baby” a feral growl is released from his chest as you come undone with a moan of his name. His resolve completely breaks as he feels the familiar knot forming in his stomach. “It's like you were fucking made for me” he laments “All mine baby fuck I'm gonna cum deep inside your little pussy” his arms hold you against him tightly his eyes rolling to the back of his head “P-Please daddy cum deep inside my pussy” you whine in his ear “own my pussy with your cum” His vision blurs as his hips stutter against yours “FUCK! I'm gonna fucking breed you baby. The whole fucking world will know who you belong to then” You connect your lips as the contents of his orgasm fill you.

He held you in place, enjoying the feeling of your lips on his. His hands guide your arms around his neck before returning to your hips. He was in deep, he knew it. Though he would NEVER let you know, he absolutely loved the way you held him as you kissed him. He hated the butterflies that filled his stomach when he’d pull away and see the reddening of your cheeks. Seeing your dance partner blatantly flirting with you all morning and you unknowingly flirting back drove him mad. His friends noticing his jealousy when they saw that guy way to close to you this morning, Hyunjin quickly became ready to risk it all the moment he saw the guy whispering something in your ear; only stopped by Jisung’s grip on his wrist holding him in place. The straw that broke the camel's back was the blush on your cheeks when he called you cute. It was bad enough for you to be partnered with the guy, but he was the only person you were allowed to look like that for. And for it to happen in front of him, he felt his blood boil and his heart clench. The possibility of you walking away from him and never looking at him like that again had his body acting before his mind could catch up to what was happening. He needed to know you still belonged to him. That the introduction of this new guy and his past mistakes wouldn’t have you looking elsewhere. He hated that he knew he didn’t deserve you, but he was selfish and couldn’t let you go. Not when this was starting to mean absolutely everything, and he would die before he lost it. “Tell me you love me” He pleads against your lips.

“I love you” ______________________________________________________________

“Can’t I just drop the class?” Karina suggests.

You give her a knowing look “I don’t know. Are you a dance major?” you question. She places her head in her hands “Out of anyone in the class, I get paired with the one guy I didn’t want to be paired with. Who did I piss off in my past life?” Yeji shrugs as she scrolls through her phone “I think you guys make a cute couple” you snicker at her words as you check your phone.

‘NO NEW MESSAGES’

You sigh in disappointment as Karina picks up a piece of bread off her tray and tosses at Yeji hitting her forehead. “Not even close to funny” Karina growls. You cross your legs a slight hiss releases from your throat at the soreness between your legs. Your chin rests on your palm “Why do you act like you hate him so much?” you question “you still in love with him or something?” Karina’s eyes widen as she quickly looks around quickly “Yah! Do you wanna die?” a faux offended scoff is released from your throat as you launch yourself from your seat dashing around the table and straddling Karina’s lap. “You’d never do that baby” you state as you wrap your arms around her neck “You love me too much” you pucker your lips leaning in pretending to kiss her; her hands coming between your bodies as she groans “Stooooooppp” A pout forming on her lips. You smile at her as and pepper kisses all over her face, smacking your hand over her mouth and kissing the back of your hand. “You’re so annoying” She whines. “I’d be less annoying if you’d just accept my love” you argue.

“Fuck” you hear from behind you “Kiss her again” Whipping your head around seeing Jisung and Changbin standing there eyes wide in amusement. Quickly shuffling off of Karina’s lap you make your way back to your seat. “Did you put a tracker on me or something?” Karina growled at the innocently deceiving boy. “Nope! Just your lucky day I guess babe” He smirks. You and Yeji share knowing glances and snicker to yourselves. “Aren't you guys one short?” Changbin asks disappointedly. “Lia had some sociology lecture or something” You reply placing your hand on his forearm as you notice his sadness. He nods dejectedly.

You felt for Changbin, despite his two friend's actions, he was the tamest of the three. Sure, he slept around as well but he was more for friends with benefits rather than one-night stands. You had noticed his lingering stares at Lia earlier last year; yet you never once mentioned it as to not embarrass the shy boy. But Changbin knew you knew his feelings for your friend. It remained an unspoken secret between the both of you. “Aren't you guys missing someone too?” Yeji questioned as she looked at you, your eyes flashing to her in contempt. She shrugs in response. The last thing you wanted was to acknowledge Hyunjin’s absence; mainly because you felt exceptionally awkward due to his request earlier due to him leaving abruptly leaving a few minutes after but also because you were afraid of the answer. “I guess he had to.... talk about something with his dance partner. He said he’d meet us here though” Changbin states as he sits a little further down the bench from you. Your heart sinks into your stomach at his words. You hate how your heartbreaks at the slight suggestion of Hyunjin and Ye-na being alone. You wanted to trust him; he’s never actually cheated on you....as far as you knew. But how could you know anything? You rarely spent any real time with him and if you did it always turned into sex within minutes.

You’re pulled out of your thoughts by a warm hand resting on your shoulder. Almost jumping out of your seat, your head turns to scold the culprit. Instead, you let out an annoyed sigh groaning before you rest your head on your arms on the table at the sight of your dance partner and his annoyingly stupidly perfect smile. “Do you need something, Yongbok?” He places his leg over the bench straddling it, his gaze locked on you. “I prefer Felix” He corrects. “I prefer being left alone yet here we are” you shrug your eyes focusing on your shoes. “Anyway” He shrugs off “Kinda hard to do considering were dance partners” you shrug in response. “But after you...ehm...left. We got a project basic hip-hop, so I'll be needing your number” Your head lifts at that not expecting him to be so close, your noses brush and you pull your head back.

“Why?” You question; your eyebrows scrunch together. “So, we can figure out a good schedule for rehersals. I hope you arent one those dancers” He states matter of factly. “One of what dancers?” you egg on. A smug smirk sits on his face “Oh, you know one of those that gives the bare minimum and relys on others to get by” you roll your eyes at his accusation, your hand quickly jostles his hair. “Yongbokie~” You coo “Just tell me you want my number” you tease. “Stop calling me that” He whines an adorable pout form on his lips. “Yongbokie~, Yongbokie~, Yongbokie~” your teasing pauses as you feel eyes on you. Looking around the table you notice Jisung and Changbin sharing worried looks; only to act obviously suspicious as they look around.

“Im not kidding!” He groans. You ruffle his hair once more before grabbing his phone from his hand; holding the screen to his face to unlock it you text yourself from his phone. He nods slightly as he lifts himself from the seat you grabbed his sleeve pulling him back down. “Dont text me first I'd rather not deal with you anymore than I have to” He places his hand over his chest “You’re a heartbreaker, Helmet” shaking your head in response as he gets up and walks away. You feel all eyes burning holes into your face, your cheeks heat up as a confused expression grows on your face “What?” they shake their heads, Karina’s eyebrow raises as her arms cross over her chest “nothing....” you nod at her.

“So whens the wedding?”

______________________________________________________________

You were greatful the rest of your classes went by without a hitch. Unfortunately for you, you were alone in the rest of them. Your stomach filled with dread everytime you’d pass Hyunjin in the hall with Ye-na stuck to his side. Smiles plastered on their lips; standing way to close for comfort. As you allowed your legs to trudge the way toward your moms convience store you find your mind wandering farther than it should have. You felt stupid honestly; why did you allow your relationship to be what it was? Why had you entered it in the first place? Apart from sex, as far as you knew, you were no different from Ye-na, Minji, Yerim, Garam and all of the other girls Hyunjin decided to pass the time with. His flirty comments and lingering touches happened to all of you. You grew tired of things not being 100% clear, because despite the odd way he had acted today; you still couldn’t tell if he genuinely cared for you or if you were something to pass the time with when he was bored. You hoped he could notice you were pulling away, since typically, you’d be trying to cling yourself to Hyunjin as you walked to work. Instead, the idea of being around him made you feel exceptionally nauseous. So, you abandoned your plan to walk to work with your 3 best friends and began your journey solo.

The day felt overwhelming in every sense of the word. You felt your throat constrict against itself as tears welled up in your eyes. Your breath shaky as a ding rings through the air. Pulling your phone out of your hoodie pocket, staring at the notification on the screen.

You shake your head not wanting to deal with this at this very moment

Your eyebrows scrunch together as you stare at his message. You can't help but feel confused; he’s never blatantly told you he wanted to see you and honestly it makes you nervous. You decide to just ignore his messages not wanting to get even more overwhelmed by him. You sigh as you push the door open to your mother's store. “Welcome to- Oh Y/N!” your mom exclaims her eyebrows scrunched together as her eyes flash to the clock. “Early for once I see” You give her a sad smile with a soft nod of your head as you walk into the back room. Dropping your bag on the empty chair behind the desk and grabbing one of the red and blue mesh vests and cash drawer. Making your way to the register, gently placing your hand on your mother's arm. “Eomma, why are you here? Wasn’t Chanyeol supposed to open?” a scowl grows on her face at the mention of your brother's name. “Aish, that boy. He didn’t even come home last night” opening the register and taking the cash drawer out. “I had to open late because I didn’t know he didn’t come home until I came down to get some things and we were closed still” she growls as she places your cash drawer in and assigning it to you.

“You should have called me. Or Karina. One of us would have come in you know” you scold “You know youre not supposed to manage the store alone” you look at her worriedly. “Im the mother here” she soothes you, her hand running over your hair. “Besides I’m not having you miss your classes, you can worry about my health when youre actually a doctor” You froze at her words, guilt crashing into your intestines like a tsunami. It wasn’t like you wanted to lie to your mother about your choice to pursue dance like your older brother but, the last time you brought up the idea of majoring in dance she—it didn’t go well. Apparently, there are no stable jobs in dance. It's not a good career path in her eyes due to your brother's failure and subsequent alcoholism. Even so, you still majored in dance and told your mother you were pursuing medicine as she had asked. How were you eventually going to break the news to her? You werent sure but you knew this was your life and you were going to live it how you deemed fit. You do love your mother, of course you loved your mother, which is why you continuously picked up the slack for your older brother; picking up shifts if you learned she would be working alone, walking her home and staying with her until morning so she didn’t have to walk home late by herself.

Ever since your older brother had returned from his failed endeavor to be an idol, you found yourself taking on a lot of the burdens for both of them. Your brother struggled with the fact that he could not make it as an idol as your mother's health deteriorates. You could only sit by and do your best to help them during their own struggles so much to the point they don’t notice yours. You were greatful to Karina for being the one other person to understand the massive change in your family as she had been there since long before your father died when you were 14. She had witnessed your struggle to cope with the loss of your father, then your subsequent depression pulling you out before you got too deep. You had been together through boyfriends and fights, rumors and friendships. She engrained herself in your family practically as a member in her own right. So much so, that at 16 when your mother had gotten her diagnosis of Susac’s Syndrome, she began working at the store with you. Karina was the only reason you could cope with everything. Which is why you were so greatful when your mother informed you that she had called her to work with you since your mother now will be going home instead of closing with you.

“The truck is coming by the way” your mother informs “Make sure you guys get most of it put away please” she pleads as she walks into the back room. You roll your eyes at her quick escape.

“Of course,”

______________________________________________________________

“Have a nice day” you call as the stranger smiles waving on their way out. Walking to one of the coolers you grab a soda before going back behind the register, pulling your phone out you scroll through instagram. The sound of the door’s beep has you shoving your phone in your pocket. Your eyes flash to the door only to see Karina making her way over to you. A smile on her lips, your eyes look at the time. “Sure. Be all smiley and shit it's not like youre 30 minutes late or anything” you scold her as Yeji enters through the door fully engaged in a conversation with Changbin. Jisung and Hyunjin followed them shortly after. Your eyes widen as you grab Karina’s forearm pulling her infront of the storage room.

“What the hell are they doing here?” You ask behind gritted teeth. An innocent pout sits on Karina’s face as she shrugs “They’re with Yeji” You roll your eyes at her “fucking Yeji...” you mumble. “I don’t get the problem” she states confused, grabbing a vest. “I didn’t really want to deal with all of this today...” you groan as you follow her back to the front. You notice Yeji scanning through the aisles engaged in conversation with Changbin, Jisung and Hyunjin just talking in the corner eyes flashing to Yeji and Changbin every once and a while. “Did you already assign yourself a drawer?” Karina asks. You nod in response “Honestly, you don’t have to stay the full time.” You suggest as Yeji and Changbin place their items on the counter. “I only really need help putting the truck away then you should be good to leave if you want” You mention as you begin scanning the items, noticing Jisung and Hyunjin making their way over to you. “And what? Leave you to close by yourself?” Karina quips crossing her arms over her chest. “Yeah, youre absolutely crazy to think you should be here by yourself so late” Yeji interjects. “Why would you be closing alone anyway?” A worried look grows on her features as she reaches over the counter grasping your forearm “what happened to your mom?”

“What do you think could have happened?”You quip. “Fucking Chanyeol...” you growl more to yourself than to anyone else. Your brother's name was all it took for Yeji’s worries to subside. You notice Changbin standing with a confused expression “Chanyeol...???” Yeji releases a sigh as you input a discount for her. “Her brother....” she answers, leaving the words to hang in the air. “Dont put that burden on me!” you groan “We just so happen to have crawled out of the same hole”

“And grew up together, pursued the same major, lived in the same house, have the same parents. Ecetera ecetera” Karina teases. You glare at her before turning back to Yeji. “Anyway, can you just run by my mom's place and make sure shes okay. I don’t know if Chanyeol has finally come back or not, and I really don’t need her to be alone right now” You beg. She gives you a small smile in return “Of course, I havent seen mom in a while. It'd be nice to check on her, maybe your brother will be there” she winks. You and Karina gag to yourselves and shudder. “Ew” Karina groans in disgust. “We need to find you someone suitable for you cause holy crap gross its Chanyeol” Karina argues as you tell Yeji the price. Your eyes flash to the street noticing a truck driving down the alley to the store. “Can you bitch and take money please; the truck is here” you sneer. You groan before walking infront of the counter and making your way toward the storage room and heading out the back door.

You smile at your delivery driver and cousin, Hong Jisoo, “Y/N?!” He smiles wrapping his arms around you. You let out a squeak as you’re lifted into his lean frame. “Oppa! Let me down!” you whine as you playfully shove at him. His lips upturning into a bright smile. “I havent seen you in like forever. Feels like youre avoiding me” He jokes as your feet touch the ground once more. You roll your eyes at him “Cause youre my most annoying cousin” you playfully shove him snatching the clipboard out of his hands. “Yah! I come out of my way to bring you things and this is how I get treated” He jests. “Oh, boo hoo how dare you have to do your job” you prod. “Im making an after-hours delivery, Y/N” he retorts. You scoff at his nerve “A late one at that” signing for the delivery before handing it back to him.“BUT, since you love me youre going to help me unload the truck?” You bring your hands together in a pleasing motion, your eyes big.

“Why can't you guys do it?”

“Karina is the only other person working”

“Your mom still lets her work the register after what happened last time?” He questions in shock. “You can fuck all the way off, Joshua” you hear Karina snap from behind you. A smug smirk grows on your cousins' lips. “You know? I havent spent any time with my favorite cousin in a while I think I'll stick around for a bit” He suggests, his eyes falling on Karina. Her eyes narrow as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Play nice you two...” You warn giving them a threatening look before opening the door to the truck. Lifting yourself inside you grab a large crate of sodas, placing it down on the ground near the door you take a step down. Placing your hands on each side of the crate, you lift it and carry it inside only to see Yeji and the boys still standing there. “Damn, took you long enough” Yeji quips. Placing the crate infront of the freezer, you let out a whine “Joshua and Karina are going to drive me crazy” You pout. Placing your head on her shoulder “Never mind what I said stay and make sure they don’t make me commit an actual murder” you plead. She shakes her head at you.

“Would it be wrong for me to leave them alone?” You question.

“Yes.”

“But Karina—would burn down the store if she was left with Joshua” she cut you off. You roll your eyes in response. You nod in agreement. “Sorry hun, I can run to your moms and stuff, but I have to meet with Wooyoung at the studio at 5.” She apologizes petting your hair softly. A pout forms on your lips as you turn at the boys pleadingly, bringing your hands together “you guys wanna become my favorite people in the entire world” Changbin looks away from you at your request scratching his neck before pretending to look at a newspaper. Jisung sits with his hands in his pockets looking at the ceiling rocking back and forth on his heels. Your eyes finally turn to your boyfriend. A look of shock fills his expression “I should already be one of your favorite people!” he exclaims in disbelief. “You’re slowly losing that title....” you grumble as you walk back toward the crate you had put down. You feel a hand wrap around your waist pulling you back into Hyunjin’s frame. “What was that? I don’t think I heard you, babe” He whispers in your ear, his voice borderline seductive.

“Go be gross somewhere else!” Karina exclaims, as she comes into the store a large box in her hands. You roll your eyes at her as you go to pull yourself from Hyunjin’s arms only to have his arms tighten around your waist. “Hyun...” you trail, his lips cutting your words off as he connects them with yours. Your eyes widen at his sudden PDA, you couldn’t help but melt into him as his tongue runs over your bottom lip. Your cheeks heat up as he pulls away, before releasing his hold on you and turning to Karina “Gross enough for you? I can make it worse if youd like” he states with a wink before turning back toward you, his hand caresses your cheek before brushing a stray hair out of your face. “I have practice as well tonight babe......” he states apologetically. You nod in response “It's fine” You smile at his use of the pet name, He gives you a worried look “Honestly I usually do it by myself, I have Karina and—OW!!” Your words are cut off by a loud bang and a scream from Joshua in the back. You and Karina dash out the door toward the backroom, a trail of footsteps follow behind you. Karina reaching outside first you notice her immediately almost fall in a fit of laughter. “Whats goin—oh crap what the hell happened?!” you bellow.

Youre greeted with Joshua sat on the ground, a milk crate all over the backroom and himself. Gallons of milk litered the ground, milk all over the ground, boxes and Joshua. “i may have made a little bit of a mess” Joshua states guiltily. “This is unreal!” Jisung laughed hysterically. Your fingers sat on the bridge of your nose. “So, I don’t have Joshua, Jisung I will literally pay you” you beg, you see him placing his chin between his finger and his thumb, thinking “How do you know I don’t have rehersal?” You stare daggers at him “Because your partner will be here dumbass! putting this truck away......forget it” You roll your eyes, turning back to Joshua “Get up, clean this, and just....” you clench your fists “put milk on a delivery for tomorrow.” You feel large hands on your shoulders, Hyunjin’s colonge fills your nostrils. His hands run down your arms, “Come here” he gestures to the front. You take a deep breath as you follow him through the door and outside. “I'll come back” he states, your eyebrows scrunch in confusion. You shake your head at his offer “It's fine, you really don’t have to I’ll be fine as long as Joshua just stays behind the register.” His eyebrows scrunch together “He’s staying?” you nod casually “Yeah, he’s helping me put the truck away I havent seen him in a while”

“I-I can cancel” Hyunjin blurts, you shake your head in response. “Hyun, it’s fine I literally can just put the truck away with Karina and make Joshua work the register I should have known better than to have his scrawny ass help me unload it” His hands wrap around your arms as he locks eyes with yours “I want to help babe I can cancel” his voice is soft. “Dont. Hyunnie its fine really you don’t have to.” You brush your hair out of your face. “I usually do it alone anyway im just never here to unload it my brother usually does it” The sound of Hyunjin’s ringtone sounds through the air, he pulls it out of his pocket. Your heartbreaks at the contact's name, Ye-na's name sat with the red faced emoji. He quickly locks the screen, shoving his phone back in his pocket. You stare at the ground “I should get back” you state hastily pulling yourself away from him opening the door. You feel a hand around your wrist

“Babe--Have a good practice” you cut him off forcing your wrist from your hand and make your way back inside.

______________________________________________________________

You were greatful for Karina, even though you now owed Jisung $100, you had finally finished getting the truck put away. Jisung having left as soon as it was unloaded as per his agreement with Karina. Your mother had sent you a text about Yeji visiting her, which you had appreciated tremendously. You had sent Karina and Joshua home at close, which was over an hour ago. Opting to do the closing procedures and cleaning projects. Purposely ignoring your phone for the majority of your shift, not wanting to confront what you had seen on Hyunjin’s phone. You knew you had a plethora of unread messages; you didn’t understand where his now oddly attentive behavior came from and as much as you enjoyed it; you didn’t understand why now? Why when you’ve finally begun to open your eyes to how messed up your relationship did, he want to put effort? You didn’t know. You’ve finally opened your eyes to everything and youre not sure where you stand at this point. Why was her contact saved like that in his phone? Well, you know why it was saved like that, but has he used it?

You groan to yourself as you struggle to empty the mop bucket, the water splashin all over your pants as you dump it down the floor drain. “Fucking great” You grumble to yourself. Your foot slides slightly as you make your way out of the back room with a sigh. Giving the store one more passover before grabbing your things and making your way out the front door. The soft wisps of wind kiss your cheeks as you lock the door behind you. You jump as two hands circle around your waist a squeak makes its way out of your throat. Quickly whipping yourself around and pulling yourself from the person's arms. Your nervousness calms as you see Hyunjin standing there a confused expression grows on your face.

“W-what are you doing here?”

“Is your phone not working?” He questioned. A dejected look plastered on his features; his eyebrows scrunched together as his plush lips drew into a pout. Hyunjin felt confused, why hadnt you answered his messages? You always answer him; you’ve never gone longer than 30 minutes without responding. were you actually mad about Ye-na calling him? Did that Joshua guy keep you occupied to the point you forgot about him? Who was that Joshua guy? Hyunjin couldn’t help the tightness in his chest, he had to explain he couldn’t just let things linger he knew that. He tried to explain that he just forgot he had her number let alone had her saved like THAT. But you had left so quickly, as you pulled away from him Hyunjin felt like his heart was going with you. He needed you to know there was nothing with Ye-na. It’s the whole reason he came here, but as he stared at you his mind was drawing a blank. He didn’t know how to approach the topic, let alone how to explain but he knew he needed to. He’s hoping you’ll just forget about it. He’s hoping him showing up and trying to fix this fucking mess that hes turned your relationship into would fix this.

He’s worried you're going to wake up one day and realize you didn’t deserve this. That you were so much better than to deal with his bullshit and leave him. His heart clenched at the thought, he couldn’t let that happen. Fuck he wouldn’t be able to handle that, he loves you. He only began considering the notion recently but today reinforced the insecurities Jisung had drunkenly planted in his head a couple weeks ago at some party. He had been talking to some music production major who he hadnt bothered to learn the name of before Jisung drunkenly stumbled against his shoulder casually whispering Karina and Yeji were also in attendance and had seen him. It was the first time since you guys had gotten together that he felt an overwhelming sense of panic. He had only been in a conversation, honestly pretty casual but the girl was making her interest pretty known and had been a little closer to Hyunjin than he would have liked but he was used to those types of things. Ever since he had hit puberty women had flocked to him and made suggestive gestures. He enjoyed the attention and the lack of effort it took to get them into bed without having to commit to something, it felt amazing. He was happy with casual sex with no feelings on his part. Of course, there were the select few that wanted more than he wanted to give them, and he’d successfully curb the whole drama aspect before it started.

Being with you was different, for some reason you were the only girl that didn’t get her hopes up the first time. You had avoided him, ignored his flirty remarks, and never gave him the time of day for a while afterward. Hyunjin had to convince Jisung and Changbin to ‘casually’ stumble upon your group of friends at break so he could see you. Only completely lucking out when Jisung had taken an interest in your best friend Karina and he could use Jisungs interest as a way to see you, but after the first couple of times you had disappeared, and he had to start all over again in his pursuit to get close to you. He’d never wanted someones attention so bad, sure he had still flirted here or there but after being with you he wanted to only be with you time and time again. So, when he had found his opportunity to get you alone, he immediately took it. He needed to be with you in some way, he couldn’t get over how perfectly your body had fit into his, how your nonchalant attitude about everything and your acting like it never even happened only made him want to scream in the middle of the quad that it did. That you had given yourself to him and in turn took a part of him with you. That you were different, and he wanted no one but you so why werent you giving him the time of day? Why didn’t you want him? Everyone wanted him, why not you? Why not the one person he wants? So, when you finally had given in to his advances, he knew he had to do whatever he could to keep you around. It started off (in his mind) as casual sex to him, a quick way to get off and have a good time but then almost immediately after he found himself getting annoyed with both Jisung’s and your former dance partner, Lee Minho’s, flirty comments to you. He quickly realized for the first time he wanted more. He was over the moon when you agreed to be his girlfriend, but for some reason he found himself keeping things at a distance. Like if held on too tight things would break, he didn’t realize he hadnt held on tight enough until that night at the party. When, Jisung started slurring about how your friends were definitely going to tell you that theyd seen him with some girl and that him and her looked like they’d probably hook up tonight; Jisung practically cheered that Hyunjin would probably be single again and they could have all the fun they wanted. Hyunjin felt bile rise to his throat as tears burned his eyes at the idea. You wouldn’t leave him.............right? Jisung looked worriedly at him, “Wait, are you okay?” Hyunjin took a harsh gulp of his drink his eyes drifting back to the cup. “She-she wouldn’t break up with me...” he mumbles sadly. Hyunjin had ended the night on Jisungs couch with tears streaming down his face at the idea of you leaving him and he couldn’t understand why.

He couldn’t understand the tightness in his chest and the need to call and beg you not to break up with him. He’s never felt the need to explain himself to anyone but for some reason he can't help but feel like he had to this time. He needed you to know nothing happened that your friends misunderstood. That you were the only person he cared about that he loved you. He wanted to tell you so badly that he realized it that night, deciding only to say it if you were to mention the party but you didn’t. You never broke up with him and he never had to reveal himself to you like that.

Having Ye-na call him and to have you pull away like you did, brought him back to that night. He didn’t even want to leave when you had gone inside, he wanted to call Ye-na and cancel. You needed his help and he wanted to help you so why werent you taking it? Why did he never even know about this place? He’d walk past it so often with Jisung and Changbin on his way to and from his dorm. How had he not known that not only do you work here but it's your mother's store? Of course, he knew little tidbits about your mother's condition and your brother's situation. But why did he not know about this? He didn’t even know you had a job, honestly, he’d never even thought about it in the grand scheme of things. How long has your mother had this store? Had you always worked after you left him when you guys walked together? Did you always close this late and have to walk by yourself? The idea made anxiety raise in his chest. You wouldn’t have walked alone......right? Youd have at least called him, he tells himself. “Were you going to walk home by yourself?” he questioned worriedly. You nod a confused look grows on your features “why wouldn’t I?”

“it's late, you could get hurt what do you mean why wouldn’t you?” His voice is full of worry. “Hyun, I do it all the time nothings ever happened im literally 10 minutes from my dorm” You state matter of factly, starting your journey home. “Why wouldn’t you call me? Why would you think it's okay for you to do something so dangerous?” He found himself growing more and more angry as the words came out. “Would you have even answered? It's not like you have before” you scoff as you begin speed walking as you roll your eyes at him. He has some fucking nerve.... you think to yourself. Hyunjin stood frozen in place at your words. A conflicted expression sitting on his face as his heart clenched. He didn’t realize how tired you actually were, not until now at least. Had you called him to walk you home before? Had he not been there for you when you needed him? “Babe....” he called dejectedly, noticing your retreating figure. “Wait! Talk to me” he exclaimed as he rushed to catch up with you. His hand encasing your wrist turning you to look at him. “Im sorry I didn’t mean---I don’t want----fuck im sorry okay” he apologized behind teary eyes and a shaky breath. “I-I—please just call me next time okay” you look at him worriedly, your heart broke at the sight. “Hyun are you okay?” your hand grasps his bicep. Your eyebrows scrunch together.

Fuck......he was in way deeper than he thought.

______________________________________________________________

Lee Felix is the absolute worst.

You completely regret agreeing to let him make the rehearsal schedule. He was an annoying thorn in your side everywhere else, but a complete drill sergeant in the studio. Early morning rehearsals, during break, after classes before you go to work, after work. The days you don’t even have classes you have rehearsals, due to the overly nitpicky boy. You thought you were over-prepared, until you met Felix. You did appreciate the fact you both would not be happy until the whole dance was perfect in both of your eyes. BUT the guy seemed to forget you had a social life and other priorities even though he himself has now not had a choice and worked a shift at your mothers' store with you. You hated that the longer you guys continued your crazy rehearsal schedule the less and less time you had to see Hyunjin and your friends. You had finally convinced Felix to allow at least Karina and Jisung to watch the rehearsals and give critques. He was oddly warmly welcoming to the two, yet only asked for Karina’s opinion on the dance.

“Honestly, when it gets to the bridge Felix I can see you a little off with the timing can I see you run it again like just you this time?” She states professionally completely emerged in her dancer mindset. You gave a sigh of relief before laying completely on the ground, chest heaving as you reveled in the break you had finally gotten. You noticed Jisungs eyes on you “can I help you with something, Hanji?” he sat quietly his arms crossed over his chest “Do you like this guy or something?” He asks accusingly. You sit yourself up rapidly “What the hell did you just say to me Han Jisung?” your tone is no longer friendly. A scowl sitting on your face. His expression follows yours “Do you. Like. This. Guy. Or. Something?” He repeats behind gritted teeth “Did you forget I have a boyfriend?” You growl your arms crossing over your chest.

“No. It sure seems like you did though”

“You’re fucking joking, right?!”

“So why isnt Hyunjin allowed to be here? Why is it only you two all day every day? Are you cheating on Hyunjin?” He snaps before standing up and clenches his fists. Your resolve breaks at his questions, you jump to your feet your hand quickly connecting with his cheek “ASK, FELIX! IVE BEEN ASKING FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS FOR HYUNJIN AND ALL OF YOU TO FUCKING BE HERE! AND IM NOT YOU OR HYUNJIN OR CHANGBIN THAT CAN JUST FUCK RANDOM PEOPLE AND BE OKAY WITH IT! AND YOU WANT TO SIT HERE AND DEFEND YOUR FRIEND THAT DOESNT EVEN GIVE A SINGLE FUCK ABOUT ME ENOUGH TO LITERALLY DO ANYTHING BUT FUCK ME AND LEAVE! GET OUT JISUNG! NOW!” Karina and Felix step inbetween you and the boy, Karina’s arms wrapping around your waist holding you in place so you couldn’t get another hit on Jisung. “YOU OBVIOUSLY DONT KNOW YOUR FRIEND WELL ENOUGH JISUNG! IF HE HAD A PROBLEM THEN WHY IS HE FUCKING YE-NA?! WHY ISNT HE THE ONE HERE SAYING ANYTHING? BECAUSE HE AND YOU DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT MY RELATIONSHIP! FELIX KNOWS ABOUT HYUNJIN! HE KNOWS I WANTED MY BOYFRIEND HERE AND TO BE WITH ME FOR MONTHS! HYUNJIN IS THE REASON WHY HYUNJIN ISNT HERE CAUSE EVEN IF I ASKED HIM TO COME, HE WOULD HAVE SAID NO LIKE HE ALWAYS FUCKING HAS! SO WHY BOTHER ASKING ANYMORE?! YOURE LOOKING FOR A REASON FOR HYUNJIN TO BE SINGLE! YOU KNOW WHAT, YOU GOT IT! YOU AND YOUR FRIEND CAN LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE” you growl ripping yourself from Karina’s arms grabbing your bag and storm out the dance studio.

You notice Hyunjin and Ye-na, in conversation as they casually walk in the direction you came. Hyunjin’s eyes meet yours, a concerned look growing on his face. As you got closer to the pair, he extended his arm to try to stop you “Baby you okay whats wron--” his words are cut off by you quickly shoving his hands away and continuing on your path facing him. “Ask your best friend. And just leave me alone” you scoff as you turn away from him. “Wait, what?” he called after you “BABE!” you kept walking, ignoring his calls. Shoving your way out of the Dance building, you keep your legs moving, your eyes plastered to the ground as you walk toward the exit.

“Helmet!” You hear call from behind you, you shake your head and keep going. “Y/N! Come on you know I don’t run that fast” Felix whines. You halt your movements, tears welling in your eyes as Felix encases you in his arms. “I’m sorry......” you cry into his shirt. His hand pets your hair “what happened? Me and Karina are so confused” you shake your head not wanting to get into it “It’s nothing” He scoffs in amusement “Nothing. If it was nothing, then why did you hit Jisung like that? And why did Hyunjin come into the studio absolutely fuming and lose his shit on Jisung? what happened?” You took a deep breath, taking a seat on the stone wall behind you, before explaining the parts you understood. Why Hyunjin went into the studio and yelled at Jisung wasn’t your business nor did you have a real explanation for it. But you were greatful for Felix, though your friendship began as more of a rivalry thing you both had learned to appreciate the others insights and each other as a dancer. And after you had finally returned his helmet (after 4 days of him asking about it) you began to notice how nice and funny he actually was. You now found the nickname Helmet almost tolerable and gotten to know him over the past month. “well, Jisung is pretty rude to think you were my type, Helmet” Felix jokes nudging your shoe with his, You playfully smack his arm “Youre an ass.....but I just got so pissed because like Jisung KNOWS everything about my feelings for Hyunjin And for him to act like he has a right to ask me questions like that—tch.” you explain “and with YOU?!” you fake a gag before guilt sets in “but I didn’t have to hit him”

“You acted in the moment, and you’ll apologize later” He smiled “Can we go back and run through it one more time though? Karina telling me I was off is really getting to me?” He begs

______________________________________________________________

You felt absolutely drained. One more run through turned into 2 more hours of rehearsals. Your body ached as you wiped the sweat from your brow. “One more time," he said. I'll be on beat if we do it one more time” you sneer toward Felix, who stood in the center of the room hands on his knees as he gasped for air. “Shut. Up.” He groans between breaths. “yeah, sure Lix you think you got it cause im not sure if I'll be able to do another run through” you groan “At least im not doing no damn flips that’s for sure” you state hands on your hips. He shakes his head as he makes his way over to his bag grabbing his water bottle out. You finally checked your phone, only to see a flurry of messages from Karina and Hyunjin. Sighing to yourself you click on Hyunjin’s notifications.

Opting to ignore Hyunjin’s messages, you decide to see why Karina had blown up your phone.

You roll your eyes at her last question, of course that’s what she’d be worried about.

You respond before putting your phone back into your bag and saying your goodbyes to Felix. You were happy your dorm was a short 15-minute walk from the campus, spending majority of the day in the studio was not ideal. You couldn’t wait to take a shower and lay in bed forgetting about this whole day. You had no clue why Jisung had acted the way he did, but you still felt terrible about hitting him. You werent sure as to why he immediately assumed you were intimately involved with Felix, while he was an attractive guy, he 100% was not your type and you were definitely not his.

You felt utterly stupid, for even begging for him to even be accepted by Felix in the dance studio, you can see why Felix was so reluctant he wasn’t a dance major, so he’d focus on things that werent important. You had argued that he’d probably sit quietly on his phone, you wished you would have just accepted Felix’s offer to let Hyunjin sit in, due to his also being another top dancer in our class. You were so tired of thinking about it and just opted to not let anyone but Karina into the studio from now on. You were happy that the walk went by in no time, but you were halted as you saw Hyunjin sitting on the ground next to your door. His eyebrows scrunched together eyes not leaving his phone. You sigh as you slowly make your way over, Hyunjin noticing you as you stand in front of your door unlocking it. “So what? youre not talking to me anymore or something?” He scoffs, you can hear hurt in his voice. “I don’t have time to deal with this right now Hyunjin” you stoicly explain. Hyunjin couldn’t help the crack in heart at the use of his name. What did he do? Why were you treating him like this? Jisung couldn’t say much behind his panicked stammering so Hyunjin couldn’t understand what happened. All he could get was Jisung was sorry, and you wanted nothing to do with him anymore. When Hyunjin heard that he couldn’t hold himself back quickly grabbing a hold of Jisungs collar, “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!” He had lost himself; he knows that, but you had never not talked to him. You’ve never pushed him away let alone told him to leave you alone. He didn’t know what happened with Jisung and You, but he knew he needed to figure out why his whole relationship had gotten put on the line.

“Just tell me what happened!” he begs his hand grasps your arm, his free hand caressing your cheek “Babe, talk to me” you feel tears well in your eyes. Hyunjin’s arms encased around your figure his hand caressing the back of your head as you struggled to hold back tears. “Can I bring you inside?” He asks softly, you nod against him tightening your grip on his waist. He let out a sigh of relief, he stood there for a moment enjoying the feeling of you in his arms. You fit so perfectly in his arms, just knowing youre accepting him again has his heart racing so wildly he knows you can hear it. And for once he doesn’t care. He just wants you to talk to him again, look at him so brightly like you always did. Just the simple act of you using his full name made him almost burst into tears. He didn’t know why you were angry with him, but he knew he wouldn’t let it last long if that was the result. Hyunjin never wanted to feel that sense of panic again. He reluctantly let you go as he entered the code to your door. You slowly trudge your way in until you finally enter your room, dropping your bag, you lay yourself down on your bed. Hyunjin slowly follows behind you before placing himself over you. His hand strokes your hair “Whats going on baby?” his voice was soft as your eyes connected. You noticed the concern sitting deep within them. You shake your head “Nothing its nothing” you sigh. He gives you a frustrated pout “Babe. It's not nothing” he eggs on “Please tell me what happened please” your arms wrap around his neck as you press your lips against his pulling him closer to you.

He responds quickly taking control pressing you deeper against the bed, you moan against his lips as his hand runs up your side. Your tongue traces over his bottom lip, he allows you entry. Your tongues battle before he gains dominance. Your fingers playing with his hair, pulling yourself closer so he can have more access to your mouth. He moans at your taste, “Fuck baby we need to stop” he pulls away slightly placing his forehead against yours. Both of your breaths are heavy “why?” you whine before placing soft kisses against his throat. “Because I need to—fuck—know what happened” he stated behind gritted teeth. You knew his resolve was breaking, you just needed a little push. With faux disappointment you sigh “Fine” before signalling for him to let you up. You stand outside the door to your private shower pulling your shirt off. “What are you doing?” He asks behind a suspicious glint in his eye as he lays himself on your bed, his hand behind his head as he kept his eyes on you. You shrug as you pull your leggings off “Felix made me spend literally all day in the studio I need to shower youre more than welcome to my bed apparently” you state sarcastically a sly smirk on your face as you enter the bathroom leaving the door cracked slightly.

Hyunjin could hear the shower running, his eyes stayed stuck to the door. He knew what you were doing, he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. How could he when you were literally offering yourself up on a silver platter? He already had to force himself to stop when you kissed him, he took a moment to revel in your taste. Fuck, he was addicted to your lips. His cock twitched at the sight of you stripping for your shower. His hands were shaking as he continued to stare at the partially open door. He could just come in at any time if he wanted, yet he couldn’t tell if it was intentional. You’ve never been a tease, not with him at least. You always gave into him and his advances, but you’ve also never left the bathroom door open if you were showering. He wanted to come in so bad and feel your naked body shiver under his touch. He could feel his determination growing thinner and thinner the longer he imagined your petite figure, completely naked and from how badly you made it seem like you wanted him he knows more than just your body is wet. He knows he has to maintain his composure so he can get real answers from you, so you know this wasn’t just sex to him. That you could tell him what happened and he’ll do whatever he could in his power to fix it; but the more he thought about it, you seemed to not even care about your words to Jisung and allowed Hyunjin inside, you held onto him with tears in your eyes in the hallway, you had kissed him and not the other way around. Maybe you didn’t want to talk about what happened with Jisung, and if it doesn’t seem to be ruining your relationship anymore, maybe he shouldn’t bring it up again.

His resolve absolutely crumbles like the lost city of Troy, you exit the bathroom drying your hair, towel in your hands and not wrapped around your body. Hyunjin could no longer control the need to be inside you, to feel you submit to him and let him give you immense pleasure. He rapidly jumped from your bed and behind your naked figure. His hand immediately ripped the towel from your hands and tossed it across the room, taking the opportunity to grip your hair forcing your head back almost sitting on his shoulder. “What are you doing?” he growls behind hooded eyes. You look up at him innocently, “nothing daddy” you state sweetly, his hand smacks down harshly on your ass causing you to squeak and jump at his action.

“Dont lie to me, baby” He warns in your ear. You can feel yourself practically dripping in excitement, you had to contain your smile as Hyunjin fell perfectly in your trap. You knew you’d at least be able to do some form of seduction at some point in the time he chose to be here, you just didn’t know it would just ta cke a simple shower with the door open to completely break him. You figured you were going to have to do more, but you were happy you didn’t have to work so hard for it. “I-I’m not I just took a shower daddy” you reaffirm. “It seems like you just want to be punished, I know what you’re doing” He loosens his hold on you “On the bed. All fours. Now" he demands as he forces his shirt over his head, and you quickly rush over to the bed and position yourself. You feel his hand caressing your ass before sliding down toward your entrance.

You feel his fingertips on your core, your legs shake in anticipation. “You’re fucking soaked but you weren’t doing anything?” He quips “Acting like a bitch in heat is nothing?” You stay silent, whimpering as he growls at you. You can feel his fingers teasing your slit, you push yourself back against his hand to add some pressure to your bud. “Fuck---you want daddy to fuck you huh?” He groans as he feels your juices all over his fingers. You nod excitedly, only to be met with another harsh smack of your ass. His hands grip your hair forcing your head back “Use your words babygirl” Your eyes burn with tears “D-daddy f-fuck me please” you beg.

“I'll be so good for you I promise, I need you inside me please daddy” He could feel his pants growing exceptionally tight, quickly forcing them down. “I would prep you baby but fuck it's been way too long since ive fucked you” Rubbing his tip against your slit, before gliding himself inside of you. Your head is thrown back, your mouth hangs open; a loud gasp is released from your throat. Hyunjin’s eyes roll to the back of his head at the feeling, fuck he didn’t realize how long it had been until he was finally back inside you.

“S-so fucking tight baby” He groans as he gently glides himself out before thrusting harshly back inside you immediately hitting your sweet spot. “Fuck daddy” you moan “It's so big, feel so—ngh—feel so full” your need to adjust to his size completely gone from his mind at your words as he begins rapidly attacking your core; his hand with a death grip on your hair as he forces you back on his cock. His free hand taking a hold of your waist to keep you right where he wanted you. His eyes traveling to where your bodies are connected, He throws his head back as his mouth hangs open. He almost, heavy on almost, grabbed his phone and had this moment saved in a hidden folder he kept of similar images and videos you had sent him. His pace is unrelenting as he revels in the practically pornographic noises coming from your throat. “Fuck youre doing so good baby come here” he moans as he pulls himself out of you and lays on your bed. “Come ride me baby” He looks at you, a pleading look on his face as he stroked himself.

You quickly straddled his lap; he presses his lips against yours as you ease yourself onto his length. His arms immediately wrapping themselves around your waist pressing your chest against his. He whines against your lips at the snail pace you’ve chosen to go. His eyes watering with tears at the need to fuck you into oblivion. Your moans and taste only doing more to drive him deeper into insanity. He was so fucking happy you didn’t even think about a condom, the warm velvety feeling of your walls on his bare cock being the only thing he could focus on. His mouth follows after yours as you sit yourself up on his chest, your hands placing themselves on his pecks before speeding up your movements. Hyunjin could tell by how tight your pussy had gotten around him, the way your eyes rolled, and your head hung back that you were close. His hands place themselves under your thighs lifting you slightly as he pounded rapidly into your core. “FUCK--its—it's too much. D-daddy im gon-gonna---Cum for me baby. Fuck please cum around my cock baby.” His voice strained. His vision blurred as you came undone around him.

Quickly, flipping you both over; pressing you against your bed legs wrapped firmly around his waist as he chased his high “Fuck!” he exclaims “Who owns this tight little pussy?” he groans against you. “Y-you do daddy” you moan weakly. He can see you struggling to keep your eyes open at the harshness of his attack on your core. His hand wrapping around your throat “Fuck can—can I cum inside you baby?” He bites his lip, his tone is soft almost inaudible, yet you still heard him and eagerly nodded and begged for him to finish inside you. He buried his face in your neck leaving wet hungry kisses against it as he felt the familiar tightness in his stomach.

“Fuck baby im gonna fucking breed you so well” He groans against your throat. “You want that, babygirl? You want daddy to fuck a baby into you?” he can feel you tighten around him at his words. You can feel the knot forming in your stomach, your arms wrapped around his neck as he pressed your bodies closer together. You felt his fingers on your clit bringing you closer over the edge. “You take daddy’s cock so well—nghhh—fuck I-I--” His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he climaxes deep inside you. Reattaching his lips to yours his hand caressing your face as he pulled himself out of you. Your legs were shaky as you stared at his figure disappearing in the bathroom only to return with a washcloth.

Hyunjin’s mind was all over as he helped clean you up. He almost told you he loved you, he mentally face palmed. That was the last way he wanted to tell you how he felt. His worries quickly fading as he sees your fucked out form, struggling to stay awake as he cleaned you both off. He watched you turn to your side back to him before laying himself back into your bed for the first time since you two had gotten together. His heartbreaks at the confused look you give him as he wraps his arms around you. You open your mouth to say something as he quickly cuts you off before you can say anything “Im staying” he states softly kissing the back of your head

“Get some sleep baby”

______________________________________________________________

To say you were anxious would be an understatement.

When you had received the email from your professor after you and Felix were able to present your routine stating you and Felix would also be in the schools showcase and representing the dance program with your outstanding choreography, you had completely rejected the idea. Not only would that put a hindrance on your mothers not knowing about you majoring in dance, but you would have to dance kinda of sexy with Felix, infront of the whole University and whoever else decided to come to the well-known showcase. BUT Felix seemed really excited about the whole thing and was happy to have been the chosen pair over Hyunjin and Ye-na. Who were also contenders for the top pair in your program, it had been months ago but apparently your first effort as partners really impressed the instructor and she had informed a friend of hers at JYPE who will now be watching the showcase.

Your heart sunk into your ass as you stared out the curtain at the large crowd. You noticed the smiles on the crowds' face as Jisung, Changbin, and surprisingly Bang Chan (who apparently is also a music production major) finish up their set. Your eyes scan the crowd, you notice Yeji, Karina, and Lia all placed in the front row eyes wide with pride and excitement. Your hands are shaky as you nip at your bottom lip, a habit only done in your nervousness, you rub your palms against your dress. You can feel Felix’s eyes on you “Do I look as nervous I feel?” You question looking at him pleadingly. He scratches the back of his neck as he looks everywhere but you. “Yongbokie~” you whine extending the pronunciation of his name with a stomp of your foot. He places his hands on your arms looking directly into your eyes “Dont worry remember im right there and weve done this so often you can do it in your sleep”

“PLEASE HELP US WELCOME LEE YONGBOK AND PARK Y/N FROM OUR DANCE PROGRAM” Your eyes widen at the introduction. “Showtime” Felix’s sings as he walks toward the other end of the stage as the music begins. You stand frozen taking deep breaths as you and Felix stare at each other from across the stage, he gives you a reassuring smile and thumbs up as you both make your way out into the public eye.

(Song- Breathless- Luke James and Jude Demorset)

Yeah Oh yeah Oh, honey Why you looking like that

Didn't I tell you I'd have you hooked By the morning you'll be coming back, oh

You both take slow fluid steps as you walk toward each other, eyes on the other until you reach him, you make a flirty smile as you place your hand across his chest on his shoulder his hand around your waist as you circle each other eyes locked. Oh, baby Why you making that face Like you didn't accept that my body would have you so out of place Oh, baby

You remove your arm from him, turning your head away as he wraps his arms around your waist from behind. As you step toward the front of the stage, with a soft lift of your leg behind you between Felix’s legs as his hands grab yours while you dip and sensually lift yourself. Honey, don't worry You are on your way to heaven Just relax (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)

You both pull away and begin making your way to opposite sides of the stage as the music comes to its climax. Your heart no longer shaking, as confidence fills you. Before launching yourself across the stage, toward Felix’s waiting figure. You aerial once you were near him landing perfectly infront of him, your dress flowing beautifully with the choreography.

I don't wanna hurt you I just wanna blow your mind Tonight Imma leave you breathless Breathless (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)

Felix’s arms wrap around you as you gracefully turn in his arms, your head bent back whilst your arms are in 5th position. You backbend landing into a split.

Girl I know I'm a rebel Really hope that you don't mind I just wanna leave you breathless Breathless (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)

Felix’s hands help guiding you up as he guides you back up to your feet over your head turning you both around slowly as you extend your arms a smile plastered on your face as you flip yourself over his head and back onto your feet

Baby, I don't bite

Felix’s steps are smooth and fluid as he steps toward the front of the stage his hand coming up to cover his chin and mouth as he faced you his other arm wrapping around his torso

Maybe I'm lying But I promise I'm gonna do it right, oh

on beat his head goes faces each side his arms moving gracefully as he extends his arm to the crowd before spinning and giving the audience a flirty smile and wink as he extends his hand toward you.

Honey, don't worry You are on your way to heaven Just relax (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)

You point your toe as you walk toward him, your arms moving with the beat before Felix grasps your hand and lifts you over his head. Slowly turning you around as your dress adds another beautiful element to the choreography. You smile at each other at the use of the dirty dancing lift. You both struggle not to laugh as he guides you back down. I don't wanna hurt you I just wanna blow your mind Tonight Imma leave you breathless Breathless (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh) Baby I know I'm a rebel Really hope that you don't mind I just wanna leave you breathless Breathless (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh)

You spin your arms guiding your spin before you jete. Standing on one foot as you lift your leg behind you extending your arm up into an Arabesque. You drop to one knee both of your arms crossing into an X over your chest as you tuck your head. You bring your head up elegantly, as your arms extend over your head and back flip into a standing position your arms straight up. You turn into Felix’s arms, his hand wrapping itself around your waist as you place your hand on his chest, your faces inches from each other as the song comes to a close.

Your chest is heaving as you hear the roar of applause from behind you, turning to the crowd you take a hold of Felix’s hand taking a bow before pulling him off stage. A large smile playing on your lips, Felix is giddy as you guys made it off stage. You wrap your arms around his neck “That was fucking awesome!” you declare as Felix laughs in disbelief. You smack his arm as you pull away “How were you so calm? you werent nervous at all?” You question, he scoffs at your words “I WAS TERRIFIED! Theres a scout from JYP out there I was fucking terrified, you couldn’t tell?” he exclaims. Your eyes widen in disbelief “NO! FELIX!” He shrugs as he lifts his hand to point behind you. You turn your head in the direction he was pointing in only to see Karina, Yeji, Lia and your mother and brother running up to you. Your heart sinks at the sight of your mother, you look at the ground in embarrassment. Karina is the first to reach you wrapping her arms around your neck “You were fucking amazing! Is this why Felix is such a dick about people coming to your practices” She exclaims giving a small playful glare to Felix. He rolls his eyes at her words “What the hell are you talking about I’ve invited you” he argues as she removes herself from you. “Guys---” your words are cut off by Yeji and Lia wrapping themselves around you.

“You did so good!” they exclaimed; you laugh at their insync jinx. Your eyes drift to your mother and brother standing behind them, wide proud smiles on their faces. You pull yourself away from the two. Trudging your way over to them, you look at the ground. You feel your brothers' arms wrap around you, “I-I’ve never seen you dance before” his voice is filled with tears you notice the lack of liquor smell on him, only a strong colonge. You feel tears welling in your eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” You can hear the heartbreak in your mother's voice. “Eomma!” you cried as you wrap your arms around her “I'm sorry...I wanted to tell you! I did but you were so disappointed at the idea I didn’t want to hurt you” you cried. She shook her head as she wrapped her arms around you “you could never disappoint me, I'm sorry for making you feel like you couldn’t tell me" She wiped your tears “You’re an amazing dancer, you remind me of your father”

“Hi Im Felix” Felix exclaims excitedly extending his hand toward your brother a large bright smile on his face.

______________________________________________________________

You were greatful for the showers in the female dressing room.

After your overwhelmingly emotional moment with your family, you quickly rushed into the dressing room, undressing and quickly making your way into the warm water waiting for you. You can hear the dressing room open, the murmur of voices making their way into the vanity room. Choosing to enjoy your shower you grab your shampoo and lather it onto your hair. You hear a crash from the strangers in the next room.

“Ye-na what is going on?!” her friend exclaimed as you heard more crashes from the room. You hear a pause before you hear the familiar screech of Ye-na's voice “I just don’t get Hyunjin, I thought we were like going somewhere but apparently not” she snapped. Your ears perk up at the sound of your boyfriends name. Your eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “what do you mean?” her friend inquires. “I mean he had no problem sleeping with me at the party the night before we started classes and now all of a sudden I don’t fucking exist!!” your heart breaks at her words. He slept with her.....tears well up in your eyes. He slept with her the same night he slept with you. You scoff in disbelief.

“Wait doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” her friend questions. You press yourself against the shower wall, waiting in anticipation. Your heart pounded against your chest, your hands shaky. Your shower long over but you were frozen in place under the rapid cascade of the water. “He said they werent anything serious” You could hear the smirk on her lips. Nothing serious? You heard the door close. Turning the water off, you slowly make your way out of the shower. Grabbing onto the towel you allow the tears to fall. You feel your body trembling as you hold the towel against your chest, leaning against the doorframe. Nothing serious..... that’s what you were to Hyunjin. Nothing serious. Pulling your phone out you see new messages from Felix, your tears cascading down your face. Quickly responding to him you pull your long sleeve skin tight shirt and black sweats on.

You hear a soft knock on the door. Wiping your cheeks you crack the door slightly, only to be met with a set of soft concerned eyes staring back at you. Once his eyes landed on your sobbing form, he wraps his arms around you pulling you into his chest. You sobbed against him as he cooed in your ear. “what happened? You were just so happy what changed?” He questions. Sniffling as you pull back you explain what you had overheard. You notice a change in his demeanor, his fists balled up at his side. “Youre kidding right?” He growls behind a clenched jaw. You shake your head as you grab your bag “Can you please just bring me home?” you plead. He runs his hand through his hair. “Arent you going to talk to him?” He inquires. Shaking your head rapidly “Not....Not now” You state dejectedly “Not today”

“Honey, theres no day but today.”

“Ill do it another day Lix forreal I cant handle anymore right now”

He shakes his head “No. Youre doing it today. Theres literally no day you should even do it but today. You don’t think hes going to figure out youre avoiding him?”

*PING*

Your phone sounds. Seeing his contact name pop up you open his message.

Quickly, locking your phone without responding you turn your attention back to Felix. “Can you bring me home? Yes or No? Cause if not I have to leave now while I still havent seen him”

*PING*

Rolling your eyes at his nerve to be annoyed. “Felix~!” you beg as your phone goes off once more. Irritation filling you at his words. “Fine, BUT you owe me” Felix groans pulling your attention away from your phone for a second. “nice to know your profiting off of my misery some friend you are....” You groan as you finally respond to Hyunjin.

You smile to yourself at your petty use of the nickname you called Felix that Hyunjin absolutely hated. Feeling quite proud of yourself as your phone goes off with countless messages now being ignored. Walking with Felix out of the auditorium and into the parking lot you see his familiar black and red motorcycle. You hesitate at the thought of actually getting on it. Felix grabs his spare helmet and holds it out to you. Grabbing a hold of the item you feel a hand wrap around your wrist and turn you around. Your eyebrows scrunch together as you force your hand out of the persons grip. Your heart cracks once more as you come face to face with Hyunjin, an irritated scowl on his features. “Is there something you want?” You growl.

“Yeah why the fuck are you going home with Felix?” He snaps back. “Woah, okay dude relax she just asked me for a ride home” Felix quips from behind you. You can see the fire in Hyunjin’s eyes “Are you my fucking girlfriend?!” he spits. Felix chuckles to himself “She wont be your girlfriend for long....” he mutters under his breath as he rolls his eyes. “Y/Nie~, ill wait over there for you just let me know when your ready to go” Felix states calmly as he wraps one arm around your shoulder giving you a small side hug before ruffling your hair and walking over to the bench by the entrance.

You nod softly before looking at the ground. “What the hell is your problem?!” you snap, you notice the confusion on Hyunjin’s face. You’ve never really truly yelled at him before so to say he was shocked would be an understatement; but his shock was soon replaced with anger as he growls “MY PROBLEM?!” you nod before shoving him back slightly “Yeah! Your problem. Why are you such a dick to Felix? Hes been nothing but a good friend to me, and you always act like such an ass to him for literally no reason”

“Why cant you see he wants to be with you?!”

“WHY DOES IT MATTER?!” You snarl “Its not like we’re anything serious right?”

You cant help but feel guilty as you see hurt flash across Hyunjins face “We’re- we arent anything serious?” His voice is laced with pain. “Why would—why would you say something like that?” you notice tears in his eyes his voice growing shaky. “Its what you told Ye-na right?” You stare at him, tears filling your eyes as you remember why you wanted Felix to bring you home. “what?......” His voice is so small its almost inaudible “w-where did you hear that?”

“So its true? Nice to know” you state matter of factly crossing your arms over your chest as a stray tear makes its way down your cheek.

“N-no! I didn’t--I wouldn’t---I never told that to anyone. I am serious about us” He declares in a panic as he reaches for you, you take a step back. “Babe....” He pleads. “i swear I-I never said that to Ye-na" you shake your head at him lifting your hand “And shes just so delusional that she thinks you two slept together as well right?” Sarcasm drips off your tone like venom. His face drops his mouth hanging open to say something before closing it again unable to find the words. You scoff at his hesitance “So you did. You slept with her?” He steps close to you once again you step back.

“not recently......”

“Please just—just delete my number” Your hurt obvious in the way your voice cracks, Hyunjin’s tears begin to fall “What?” His voice is shaky “N-no. Why?” you shake your head in disbelief “Because you cheated on me Hyunjin are you stupid or something?”

“No I didn’t I swear! Baby I never cheated on you, me and ye-na was a long time ago before us please belie-believe me” His hand finally is able to wrap around your wrist pulling you into him burying his face in your neck. You shake your head as you attempt force your way out of his arms “Let. Me. Go.” You growl. Hyunjin shakes his head as his arms wrap around you tighter “No! No I cant” he cries “I cant youre going to leave” you continue your fight as you feel your shirt growing wet, Hyunjin’s form now trembling. “please! I cant lose you please.....I would never---I could never cheat on you please don’t go please just listen to me” He sobbed. You look over to Felix signalling him to come back and start his motorcycle. You shake your head “I cant. I cant do this anymore Hyunjin”

“NO! Stop please im Hyunnie, your Hyunnie. Please, please I don’t know what else to do babe I didn’t cheat on you. Im serious about us im so fucking serious about us please believe that! I cant lose you, not like this, not because of her I swear nothing happened with her in so fucking long. I’ve only been with you. I only want you please at least let me prove that” He pleads as you hear the roar of Felix’s engine. Finally pulling yourself away from his arms, you take one final look at Hyunjin’s face. He still looked absolutely perfect, even as he cried. Your heart raced as you felt his lips press against yours. Your resolve almost crumbles as his lips moved against yours, the taste of his tears mixing with your own. Pulling away he presses his forehead against yours his hands on either side of your face. “Im sorry, I just cant trust you.” you cry, he shakes his head “please don’t do this, I love you please” he pleads, youre heart breaks at his confession. Taking a step back. “let’s........break up” you declare softly as you hop on the back of Felix’s bike and tap him signalling for him to drive away.

Ignoring the flurry of calls and text messages now flooding your phone you allow the tears to fall completely and whole heartedly, you sob into Felix’s back.

#hyunjin angst #hyunjin smut #hyunjin fluff #stray kids angst #stray kids smut #stray kids fluff #skz hyunjin #skz felix

536 notes · View notes

thefrogdalorian · 5 months

Text

Hello and welcome to my contribution to Dincember!

Following NaNoWriMo (which I used to complete a draft of a modern AU!Din x reader fic that I aim to start posting in January) I wanted to attempt another writing project to maintain my sanity during this festive period! I'm aiming to complete all 25 days but life can sometimes be unpredictable, especially at this time of year.

I really hope you enjoy my interpretations of each prompt and best of luck if you're also participating, can't wait to see what everyone creates. Thanks @dindjarindiaries for putting these prompts together, celebrating all things Din is a wonderful way to close out the year!

All my fics are GN!reader and I don't include physical descriptions. Nothing more mature than a bit of smooching either :)

Happy Dincember, tumblr!

Link to read on AO3 | Link to read in Chronological Order

Day 1 - Snow: After a busy few months, Din surprises you and Grogu with a well-earned retreat to a snowy paradise in the run up to Life Day. Snow-filled chaotic fun ensues!

Day 2 - Fire: During a trip to a peaceful cabin with Din and Grogu, you awake one morning and discover that Grogu is poorly. You and Din are extremely worried but after a visit from a healer and the warmth of the fire you light, his condition soon improves.

Day 3 - Gloves: As you sit watching Grogu play by the fire while holding hands with Din, you reflect on how a simple part of his body says so much about the complex man that you are so privileged to love. A simple pleasure that you would have been denied, if he had never removed his gloves.

Day 4 - Lights: You introduce Din to a favourite Life Day tradition of yours: hanging up lights. It's a tradition that he finds slightly bemusing but after a slight hiccup which is soon resolved, thanks to the abilities possessed by Grogu, the two of you set about making a cheesy new Life Day tradition all of your own.

Day 5 - Cold: After your favourite Mandalorian's latest assignment with the New Republic means that his return to your cabin is delayed, you head to bed, thoroughly miserable. But when Din finally arrives home the reunion does not go entirely smoothly, as you find yourself needing to warm him up, with adorable consequences.

Day 6 - Gifts: It's Life Day and time for you and Din exchange gifts. You love sharing in the joy of seeing others surprised with your gifts, but nothing surprises you more than the incredibly thoughtful gift Din gives to you.

Day 7 - Star: As you lie on Din's strong chest, looking at the stars and reflecting how grateful you are that your paths crossed, you discover once again, that the man with the fearsome reputation is incredibly soft underneath his hard Beskar shell.

Day 8 - Flame: A fire pit outside your little cabin on Nevarro has always been a dream of yours. So, when Din finally agrees to build one, you are delighted, especially when he secures your favourite sweet treats too. But it's Din's first time roasting candy on a campfire and things don't exactly go to plan...

Day 9 - Boots: Raising a Force-sensitive child is not an easy task, especially one as mischievous as Grogu. When the little guy decides to play a game of hide and seek without telling you and Din first, you find him in a place that you would never have expected.

Day 10 - Sweater: After his latest job with the New Republic takes him away from your home, you find yourself missing Din terribly. But, despite how sappy and lame as you feel for doing so, you find wearing his sweater brings you a great deal of comfort when you need it most.

Day 11 - Icicle: An innocent icicle causes Din to reminisce on a moment he shared with Grogu on the Razor Crest shortly after rescuing The Child from the Imps on Nevarro.

Day 12 - Warmth: After you find yourself caught up in a rainstorm that drenches you to the bone on the forest planet you call home, an unexpectedly kind Mandalorian helps you to get warm again.

Day 13 - Family: Din Djarin is a complex man, with many walls you have not yet successfully broken down. You have been slowly building a life with the man who has a traumatic past he has alluded to, but never discussed in detail. One night, Din wakes up from a nightmare and finally lets you in. You comfort him, reminding him of your love for him and how much he deserves his unlikely family.

Day 14 - Home: During a moment cuddling with Din underneath the festive lights in your cabin, Din confides in you what home means to him.

Day 15 - Candle: Despite planning a special evening to mark your final night in the cabin that you, Din and Grogu have enjoyed a relaxing vacation in, your plans are soon thwarted by an unexpected power cut. However, the sudden loss of light ends up having very romantic consequences.

Day 16 - Sweet: After a tiring day of yard work, you decide to introduce Din and Grogu to one of your favourite festive drinks: hot chocolate. Although the sweetness proves a little too much for one of your Clan.

Day 17 - Joy: Despite you and Din having plans to go to a special festive market with Grogu, you wake up feeling awful, as though all festive cheer has been sucked out of you. Fortunately, you have a loving and caring Mandalorian who helps you regain your joy.

Day 18 - Snowflake: As Din stands by the window, watching the snow fall outside your cabin in the mountain paradise he brought you to for a vacation, he reveals a hilarious memory of his first encounter with snow to you. One that you are keen not to let him forget in a hurry.

Day 19 - Coat: You and Din arrive for a vacation in a picturesque snowy mountain town. There's just one problem: you brought the wrong coat. You head into town in search of the perfect coat but after a long day of fruitless searching, fortunately you have an incredibly patient and attentive Mandalorian to help you through the shopping stress.

Day 20 - Celebration: To show Din how much he means to you, you decide to make a special gesture in celebration of him by cooking him a traditional Mandalorian feast. Despite having your heart set on a perfect evening, a certain green child has other ideas...

Day 21 - Love: Despite how much time you have been spending with Din and getting to know him, you are still none the wiser as to whether your feelings for him are reciprocated. But an impromptu night of stargazing leads to a confession that may just change everything for the two of you...

Day 22 - Cozy: When Grogu wakes up upset in the middle of the night, both you and Din are concerned for him. But getting cozy and cuddling with his Clan soon brightens the little boy's mood.

Day 23 - Frost: You and Din wake up one morning to discover the volcanic planet you call home has been plunged into a deep frost. You are awestruck by the gleaming ground and the icy crystals that cling to every surface. You and Din decide to head out for a walk with Grogu, who is fascinated by the way his favourite pond has frozen over.

Day 24 - Ice: The unseasonably weather on Nevarro causes a pond to freeze and thanks to a stroke of good luck, a passing vendor is able to offer the opportunity to skate on it. You expect that Din will be a natural, but things do not go entirely to plan.

Day 25 - Holiday Waking up before Din on Life Day gives you the opportunity to admire all the little details and features of the man you love so much.

#do you like my moodboard i feel like i'm 12 again (in the best way)#life is full circle but you gotta get through The Horrors somehow #dincember #dincember 2023 #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian fic #my fics #masterlist #pedro pascal characters

113 notes · View notes

greenerteacups · 3 months

Note

Hi! Just wanted to say the latest chapter is lovely & amazing & sweet & had me smiling the whole time! I absolutely love your characterisation of everyone, especially Draco, so it was so so lovely to return to this world & to his thoughts!! with his best friend and crush at malfoy manor no less! All the yearning is already off to a great start hehe I am so excited for the rest of book 5!

Wanted to ask you how has it been for you to write this new book and volume? Has your writing process changed since when you’d first begun taking on a long form project like this?

& also are there any moments or surprises in this book that you’re especially excited about?

sending so much love & gratitude for you and your incredible works 💓

Thank you so much! This is really encouraging, I so appreciate it.

Inasmuch as I can use this metaphor without having kids myself, I sort of see each of the books as a different child. The first one flew out in basically a few weeks of very intensive writing, and it was a total dream — plot, pacing, symbolism, major beats, all fell into place basically without effort. The character stuff was the hardest, as I've written about before, but even then, the glorious part of writing beginnings is it's the most energy you'll ever have for a project, so the lows were pretty soft lows. Book 2, in contrast, I had to drag kicking and screaming by its ankle from under the bottommost mattress of my brain. It's one of my least favorite books (tone problem; COS has killer plot/setting/ingredients for a YA novel, but it's stuck in the doldrums of Harry Potter's well-documented Early-Installment Weirdness, before Cedric Diggory slams the gas and upshifts the whole series into its correct age bracket). More specifically, once I'd gone through and picked out everything in the book that happened because of Lucius, I didn't have a plot — hey alexa how do you rewrite Chamber of Secrets when We Got No Fucking Chamber Of Secrets — and oh by the way, even if you want to do a moody tone/political setup book, remember that your protagonists are still twelve, so if you go too dark or too intense, you'll risk torpedoing your readers' suspension of disbelief. Good luck, Charlie.

Book 3 felt the most like its own novel, if that makes sense? It's the last truly feel-good book of the series; it's a great stand-alone mystery novel with relatively low stakes. Plus you get a bunch of the big series icons: patronuses, dementors, werewolves, Hogsmeade, the Marauders' Map, and time turners arithmancy. It just felt like a good old-fashioned motherfucking romp of a mystery/adventure story, before any of the complex character work and major stakes of the late books come in.

Book 4 was the most fun I've had writing anything maybe ever. I don't even know what it was. Maybe the tournament arc, honestly? Love me a tournament arc. But in any case, I opened every new chapter feeling a tingle of excitement for what I was gonna get to do. Oh, and the romance started, finally, Jesus God (if it feels like a slow burn reading, just imagine what it felt like writing it, when everything takes ten times as long, and you have to figure out how to word the fucker.)

Book 5, in contrast, has felt much less like that tingle of "here we go!" and more like "oh, man, this is gonna be cool." Because this is the arc of the story that composed the original idea for Lionheart, literally years ago, and to be honest, I didn't think I'd get this far! If you'd asked me "do you know that it's going to take you 500,000 words of backstory before you can start writing that concept you're thinking about, and you're going to do it anyway?" I would have said: "absolutely not, strange mind-reader!" But like... I'm here! Finally! And it's... real now? Like, this isn't just a bunch of clips of scenes in my head anymore! That's rad!

That being said, it's definitely been slower than Book 4, because I kept switching back to my outline document to make sure that certain things were set up properly, and that I hadn't lost any of the plot threads or forgotten a minor beat that was vitally important for the story three chapters later. And I had a minor crisis about three months ago when I ripped out about 8 chapters in the first third of the book — basically everything from September to December — because I'd done a readthrough to check pacing (big mistake! never edit while drafting, that's satan talking) and realized I had a missing storyline. Like, there was a whole layer of the story that was just. Missing. Not there. And the existing text really couldn't fit another thread, so instead of taking weeks to pore through and try to sift out what I could save, I needed to factory reset and start over. And I didn't want to! I vividly remember sitting there with my head in my hands, trying not to weep, because I'd decimated 90,000 words of work in a single edit. But it had to be done. Because the story wasn't going to work. And now (hopefully) it will.

And of course, there's still that sense of excitement and exhilaration from before. Always. But whereas Book 4 felt like a delicious chocolate pudding, Book 5 is a medium-rare steak.

(Book 6, so far, is four shots of espresso and a whiskey chaser. FWIW.)

#greenteacup asks #lionheart #lionheart spoilers #dramione

68 notes · View notes

casinoroyale · 5 months

Text

Hi everyone!! Theseus cquackity viceduo zombur revivebur here.

This blog has seen several hiatuses (my bad seriously my bad), and bouts of irregular posting. So I'm sure people who regularly check it have noticed that we (Fiona @quackbur and I) haven't been posting daily anymore and haven't for a bit now. So below the cut I'm gonna talk more about that, and our plans for this blog going forward

For starters, I love roleplaying on this blog so much, as does my cohost Fiona @quackbur. Fiona has done so, so much writing for this and I feel kind of bad for taking her credit over the past two or so years, so props to her for being such a good sport and for everything she's done. This blog wouldn't exist without the shared passion she had for it.

To get sappy, I love the friends I've made in bedrockverse, they remain some of my best and closest companions. I would not trade the times I've spent with them for the world. Beau, Holly & co, Met & Co, and Thunderbottles are some of the loveliest, most supportive, and insanely talented people I have ever had the pleasure of writing with and meeting.

This includes people who aren't part of the bedrockverse that I've written with!! Shoutout to Javi anonymous-jey casino-duckling, TGM the-g-m duckofthelaw, and AD anonymous-dentist therealnoodleman. It was so much fun bringing all the quackverses together, and I respect all of you so much as writers.

AND that also includes EVERYONE who has interacted with her!!!!!!!!!! Everyone who has sent asks (thank you so much, sorry we're terrible at replying), reblogged threads, commented, posted/liveblogged, DREW FAN ART (BLOWS OUR MINDS. THERE'S BEEN SO MUCH INCREDIBLE ART CREATED, WE CANNOT THANK ALL OF YOU ENOUGH), even just liked a thread, thank you. Seriously, it has meant a lot to us to be part of this community, and have so many people enjoy this blog. Insert Pitbull image happy you enjoyed.

So, going forward it would make us really happy if you all pictured casinoroyale as happy. He has songbird-sunrise, goofygoop, and a nation full of citizens that she loves. She babysits for tubbolul and latenightmining, and terrorizes rp!emduo not infrequently. All we really wanted was to bring c!quackity to a happy place and I feel we've done that. Of course he still has shit days, as a ptsd baddie, but the good days are more common. And if we never get to it (though I hope someday we do, maybe in the form of a collaborative one-shot or fic) know that casinoroyale and songbird-sunrise DO eventually get [REDACTED]. And one of them DOES get [REDACTED]. That was always the plan! Yay! [REDACTED]!

Not to say that we don't have more arcs planned for this blog, because we do! I just don't know when/if/how they'll ever get written, especially because a lot of my friends have moved on from their rp blogs as well. But I really do still feel happy with where he's at and happy with everything I've done. This is a project I'm really, really proud of and I will always look back on fondly.

None of this means that I'm not interested in c!Quackity or DSMP as a whole anymore, either. Actually that couldn't be further from the truth. But now I'd like to be able to focus on fics, and other forms of writing, which I've been doing more recently :D actually, you can read a short one shot I posted for exile's anniversary HERE

If you've made it this far into this long, sappy post, THANKS!!!!!! The TLDR; this blog is on an indefinite hiatus, and won't be returning to its formal glory, and that's okay. We had a really good run. Now, off we go to other things

147 notes · View notes

sarcastictissy · 18 days

Note

Hola :D I just wanted to thank you for being so positive lately and looking at things regarding the qstudio situation with nuance. It feels like people have been so stressed and angry after all of the admin stuff came that they began to take every bit of news we hear as some sign that bad things are to come . I think a lot of people underestimated just how long this process can take, there a lot of factors to be considered here, including: q's lack of experience, the union, the laws, the admins. And unfortunately there is no way to satisfy everyone when it comes to stuff like this. This was never going to take a week or two, I feel like people didn't fully understand that.

Some admins are going to be pushed out of the project due to the lack of funds and the fact that this is a legal issue first and for most. It's unfair but it's the law. Not everyone understands that and because of that people are going to say things without understanding the situation. Not every thing is black and white and sometimes things aren't going to work out the way we want them to. Nobody is perfect and we shouldn't expect people involved in this situation to act like that. Which is why you should always look at the situation from multiple perspectives before forming an opinion.

It makes me feel tired to see the same takes over and over agian with no nuance. So your post have really helped me feel better :) I've seen people from both qsmpblr and qsmptwt act like every ccs involved in this is a war criminal or like this is a admins vs quackity or french/brazil vs quackity. It's kinda drove me off most social sites and forced me to only watch YouTube and stuff (on the good side of things, I've been watching quackity's discord videos and some dsmp vods :D it's been fun)

What I am trying to say is that, scrolling through your blog feels like a breath of fresh air and has made me feel 8× more calm about this situation. I don't think doomposting is necessarily bad but after seeing so much of it, sometimes you just need to distance yourself and look at the good parts of life. No matter how much I complain, I am never changing the course that qstudio is headed and neither can any one else, The only one who can do that is quackity. I hope that he does the right thing and the studio gets better. I love the characters that qsmp has brought us and the community it has formed, qsmp is a beautiful project that I want to see thrive. For now the only thing I can do as a viewer is hope for the best <3

I'm sorry if this came off as a trauma dump, I just really wanted to thank you.

So, this has been in my askbox for a while because I was so grateful and happy to hear I've helped someone!! Thank you sm anon that means a lot to me and knowing I'm keeping others optimistic, helps me feel optimistic too! :D

This is a very complex situation with so many moral grey areas mixed with black and white. It's not simple, it's not easy. These things cannot be fixed in a matter of weeks, you're absolutely right about that.

I also agree doomposting isn't necessarily bad! It's a good way to get off some steam and vent/ rant for a bit. There's nothing wrong with that. We all need it at times. For me, personally, it becomes toxic when that's ALL I'm seeing in social media. When I go on my phone and all I see is negativity, that's when I need to call it quits and start blocking people or start taking time away (which is why I deleted twt off my phone) everyone's tolerance levels are different ofc, so, not everyone is affected by that negativity, but I certainly was. This is why I want my blog to be positive and uplifting and you know what? Each and every time I get a ask or a message thanking me for that, I gain faith in humanity and it just encourages me to keep being positive! I'm so thankful for your ask and dw it wasn't trauma dumping at all!! :D I hope you're doing well anon! Take care of yourself. You matter

#qsmp #quackity smp #qsmp discourse #qadmin situation #tissy answers #thank you for your ask!

45 notes · View notes

chicgeekgirl89 · 4 months

Text

Festive Friends- Read on AO3

Rating: T

Words: 8600

This one is for @strandnreyes as part of the @tarlos-santa 2023 exchange! I chose the prompt: AU - Carlos and TK unknowingly have each other for the office secret santa exchange. Up to you if they’re pining idiots, “enemies”, secretly dating, or anything else! Hope you enjoy and have the most festive of holidays!

“Good morning Mr. Reyes.”

Carlos looks up to find the office intern, Mateo, standing cheerily next to his desk, a stack of envelopes in his hand. “Good morning Mateo. And again, you can call me Carlos. Mr. Reyes really isn’t necessary.”

“Sorry Mr. Reyes, I’m just not really used to being like, a real adult yet I guess,” Mateo says sheepishly.

Carlos keeps a chuckle to himself and doesn’t admonish the kid again. “I understand. Whatever you feel comfortable with is fine.”

“Cool. Thanks Mr. Reyes. I brought your mail over for you.”

“Thank you,” Carlos says, accepting the stack from him.

“Can I get you anything? A coffee? Oh! I think Mr. Strand has some new kind of energizing smoothie or something in the break room. Although, it looked kinda gross to me,” Mateo says.

The thought of that smoothie sends a shiver down Carlos’ spine. He hasn’t known Owen Strand for very long, but his health nut tendencies have quickly become too much for Carlos’ taste. “No, that’s okay. I don’t need anything right now. Besides, your job here is to learn about the business, not fetch everyone’s coffee.”

“Right. Yes. Learning. I love learning all the things. Hey, are you coming to the office tree lighting on Friday afternoon? I heard they’re gonna have those little pigs in a blanket.”

Carlos’ eyes dart back to his screen and the half finished email staring at him. “Um, yeah. I’ll be there for a little bit.”

“Awesome!” Mateo seems genuinely thrilled and Carlos once again has to bite back an amused smile. The kid is ninety nine parts enthusiasm and one part overly helpful. “Well I’ll let you get back to it. Lots of…what exactly does HR do?”

“Emails,” Carlos says. “Lots of emails.”

“Right. Sounds fun. Good luck with that!”

Mateo sends him a parting wave and then disappears around the side of his cubicle.

Things have been absolutely crazy at PD and Sons since they merged with 126 Designs a few months ago. Owen Strand had been brought in to manage the merger and insisted on hiring a significant number of new staff. Onboarding the new hires like Mateo has been a ton of work, especially since Owen insisted on being extremely involved in the entire process. Carlos has been in non-stop meetings for weeks and today is the first day he hasn’t felt completely overwhelmed in forever.

He flips through the stack of mail, tossing a few random flyers in the recycling, and setting aside the important envelopes to open later. He wrinkles his forehead when he finds a folded up piece of red paper at the bottom of the stack. When he opens it his eyes immediately widen in horror.

What. The. Hell?

“Lexi.” He stands up and looks down into the cubicle next to him where his work wife is busy with some kind of design project. “Why did I just get a paper telling me who my Secret Santa is this year?”

“I signed you up because I knew you wouldn’t do it otherwise. It’s the season of giving and part of that means giving up your Grinchy ways and pretending like you’re interested in getting to know all the new people in the office,” Lexi says without looking up at him.

His jaw drops. “Okay, first of all, I’m not uninterested in getting to know them. I just haven’t had time to get to know them. And secondly, I hate Secret Santa. Nobody ever really knows what to get you, so you end up with all this random crap and candy that you don’t want and it all sits in a drawer for three or four years until finally you throw it out.”

She finally stops and turns to look at him. “Wow. Okay Uncle Scrooge. First of all,” she echoes him, “it’s not Secret Santa, it’s Festive Friends. Not everybody celebrates Christmas. Get your terminology right. And secondly, it’s not about getting good gifts, it’s about spreading joy for the holiday season. So take the Christmas tree out of your ass and start fa la la-ing with the rest of us.”

“Lexi,” he grinds out her name between his teeth and quickly glances around to make sure no one is in earshot. “I got T.K.”

Lexi is the only one in the office who knows what an incredible disaster meeting T.K. Strand has been for his life. A week after the PD Austin and 126 Designs merger the entire office had gone out for drinks. One thing led to another, which led to another, and ultimately ended up with T.K. very naked in Carlos’ bed.

They’d been incredibly hot and incredibly heavy for a couple weeks after that, sneaking around together, making out in the supply closet, booty calling each other in the dead of night, and Carlos had been so ridiculously happy. T.K. Strand had turned him into a horny freaking teenager.

And then he’d made the mistake of surprising T.K. with dinner. He’d thought it would be romantic. That it might move them from booty call status into something a little bit more permanent.

But T.K. had freaked out, stormed out, and shut Carlos out of his life. Thank god his cubicle is all the way around the corner on the other side of the building. They barely have to see each other except for the occasional awkward brush in the break room or men’s room.

Carlos’ heart has been more broken than he’d like to let on, not to mention his ego is bruised too. The whole thing has made getting to know the other people from 126 Designs like Marjan, Paul, Nancy, and Judd very awkward.. They’re T.K.’s friends. And he doesn’t want to piss T.K. off anymore than he already has.

Of course he has to interact with T.K.’s father, Owen Strand, he is the manager after all, but other than that he’s kept everyone else at an extremely polite and professional distance.

So finding T.K.’s name in his hands is like a punch in the gut.

“Good,” Lexi says, surprising him. “You’ve been pining for him for weeks anyway. Might as well do something about it.”

“Lexi, this guy hates my guts,” Carlos says. “He doesn’t want presents from me.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you. You’re Carlos Reyes. No one hates you.”

“Please switch with me.”

“No.”

“Lexi!”

“No! I got Paul. I already have ideas. I’m not switching. It’s only three gifts, you’ll be fine.”

“Three?! I thought Secret Santa was only one gift!”

“God, do you even read your email? It’s three gifts in the week leading up to the holiday break. This will be good for you. Now go away. I’m working.”

Carlos sinks back down into his chair, misery settling in his stomach. This is going to be absolute torture.

He takes another look at T.K.’s scrawl. His writing looks hurried in a way that suggests he’s so excited that he can’t be bothered to slow down and shape his letters more carefully. It has that same kind of frenetic, joyful energy that drew Carlos to him in the first place. Now the only energy he exudes toward Carlos is coldness.

Carlos catches himself tracing his fingers over the letters of T.K.’s name and balls them into a fist before forcing himself to read T.K.’s answers to the Festive Friends questionnaire. T.K. has written down that he likes sour candy, Harry Styles, boba, and interesting tea flavors. He doesn’t like black licorice, the Mets, or anything with alcohol.

Carlos frowns at that. He doesn’t remember T.K. mentioning anything about alcohol during their weeks together. But then again, they didn’t exactly spend much time talking. Their mouths had been occupied with other things.

It feels unfair to have this scrap of T.K., to get this little glimpse into his life. These are things he doesn’t want Carlos to know. He made that clear when he stormed out the door of Carlos’ condo and left nothing behind except Carlos’ fractured heart.

He takes a breath and squares his shoulders. It’s just a stupid office tradition. They’re colleagues. They’re going to have to become cordial at some point. Maybe this is how he can start to smooth things over. Besides, it’s not like he has to talk to the guy. That’s literally the point. To keep it secret.

This is going to be fine.

It is not fine. It’s not fine because Carlos is the type of person that agonizes over gifts. And in this case, there’s even more pressure because the gifts have to be perfectly impersonal so they don’t say, “Your dick was life changing and I don’t think I’m ever going to recover because now you hate me and I don’t really know why.” He’d much rather they say, “I’m fine and I don’t ever think about you and that thing you did with your tongue that one time.”

Ugh.

He arrives Monday morning the week before Christmas with a gift bag in hand, a Yankees baseball cap tucked inside. It’s a lame gift. Perfectly impersonal. And the rest of his gifts for the week aren’t much better. There’s a small part of him berating himself for not doing a better job. He could at least try. The guy broke up with him, he didn’t murder anyone.

But then he remembers how miserable he was in the days after T.K. had stormed out. Whatever. He didn’t sign up for this anyway. T.K. deserves his boring gifts.

The office is quiet as he makes his way to T.K.’s cubicle. Even just the sight of his desk makes Carlos’ heart ache a little. There’s a picture pinned to his bulletin board of T.K. with their other co-workers, Marjan, Paul, Judd, Mateo, Nancy, and Tommy all smiling and having fun, clearly out for a night on the town together. He’d known 126Designs was small and that was part of the reason for the acquisition; to bring on a tightly knit team to help their own, but seeing T.K. so happy with them all doesn’t really feel great.

He’s been so preoccupied by his own shopping that he completely forgot that he is also getting gifts until he steps into his cubicle and sees a bright green bag with little white Christmas trees all over it. He inspects it carefully, relieved to find there’s no glitter anywhere.

He hates glitter.

There’s a little card attached to the handle and when he opens it it reads “Hope you have a Write Christmas- FF.” It takes him a second to figure out that FF must mean Festive Friend.

He carefully extracts the tissue paper and looks into the bag. It’s office supplies. Pens, post-its, a new stapler, blue paperclips, and a ball of rubber bands.

The pun on the card makes sense, even if it is as terribly lame as the gifts inside. At least it’s practical. He can always use new pens.

“Hey!” Lexi pokes her head in. “Ooh what’d you get?”

He shows her the bag and she nods in approval. “Your Festive Friend knows you like office supplies. Nice.”

“If you’re expecting a thank you for going behind my back on this, you’re going to be waiting a long time,” Carlos tells her as he sits down and opens up his laptop.

“Pretty sure people with that attitude get coal in their stocking,” she tells him, flipping him off before heading to her own cubicle.

It’s midway through the morning and Carlos is about to make yet another phone call when Owen Strand steps into the middle of the bullpen. “All right, attention everyone!” he calls.

The ambient sound of typing and low chatter ceases. “Thank you,” he says. “I just wanted to remind everyone that we have our first team building activity this afternoon. So if you have anything scheduled this is your last chance to rearrange. Mandatory fun is in store for all!”

Carlos bites back a groan. He is really not into mandatory office fun. Especially when it means he’ll be in close proximity to T.K. But he’s also not one to flaunt the rules, so he’s going to have to suck it up and deal.

No one has been allowed in the conference room all morning and when one o’clock rolls around Owen waits at the door with a massive grin on his face. The man is clearly thrilled with whatever he’s cooked up to torture them today.

When Carlos walks through the door he sees why. The tables have been covered in red plastic tablecloths and every two feet or so sits a pile of materials like graham crackers, marshmallows, frosting, and candy. It’s immediately obvious how they will be team building today.

“All right everyone!” Owen says when they’re all assembled. “As you can probably guess our team building activity for today has taken a turn for the festive. And I’ve taken the liberty of assigning you all a partner to work with. Each team will be assembling a pre-determined part of our gingerbread village. Paul, you’re with Marjan.”

They immediately turn and high five, clearly thrilled.

“Nancy with Lexi, Judd with Tommy, Mateo with me,” Owen flashes him a smile and Mateo lets out a whoop.

Carlos’ stomach drops. That leaves him with—“T.K., you’ll be with Carlos.”

Fuck.

“Send one person to grab your pre-assigned building assignment! Remember this is not a competition. We’re all working together to build our village. Just like it takes a village to run a company.”

There’s a brief silence in which everyone internalizes what a dumb, schticky thing Owen has just said and then he claps his hands. “Okay, get to work!”

Everyone claims a spot around the tables. Carlos takes a paper slip from Owen and then looks around to find T.K., who is sitting across the room with his back to Carlos.

Carlos reluctantly walks over and sits in the empty seat next to him, all the while wondering if he can fake sick or claim a family emergency to get out of this. When he finally looks up at his partner he recoils in shock. T.K.’s lip is split and swollen, and there’s a dark ring of bruising underneath his right eye. “What happened to you?” Carlos asks, a surprised reflex releasing the words from his mouth before he can stop them.

The look T.K. sends him immediately reminds him that they’re not friends anymore. It’s full of vitriol and misery and…Carlos looks a little closer. Pain. There’s a rawness there that Carlos doesn’t remember seeing before.

“Sorry,” he says. “I just…that looks like it hurts.”

“Doesn’t feel great,” T.K. agrees, his voice stiff. “What are we supposed to be making?”

Carlos looks at the paper. “Police station.”

“Perfect. Way to read the room Dad. ACAB and all that,” T.K. grouses as he reaches for a pile of graham crackers and immediately begins squeezing icing all over.

“Um,” Carlos hems and T.K. stops.

“What?”

“Don’t you think maybe we should make a plan first?”

T.K. sighs and dramatically drops his piping bag onto the table. “Fine. Do whatever you want.”

“No I—I didn’t mean—” Carlos struggles to find the right words. “It’s fine. Let’s just try and get something standing first. That’s the hardest part anyway.”

They spend a couple minutes in silence gluing graham crackers together with icing and using some marshmallows to prop them up until they have something that roughly resembles walls and a roof. “You’re kind of good at this,” T.K. says.

It’s the closest thing to niceties that they’ve shared in weeks.

“I have a lot of nieces and nephews. Not my first gingerbread house. Although it is my first police station,” Carlos admits.

“Cool,” T.K. says, then winces, his lip clearly hurting.

“You sure you don’t want to tell me what happened?” Carlos asks, feeling a little emboldened by T.K.’s compliment.

T.K. shoots him a glare. “You’re kind of annoying. You know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” Carlos says, trying to let the jab roll off his back. “But I know you’re new around here and you’ve obviously gotten into some trouble. Sometimes it helps to talk things out.”

He gets silence in return. God what the hell is wrong with this guy? He’s literally just trying to help. “Fine. You don’t have to tell me. But you should probably tell someone before whoever gave you that shiner comes back to give you a matching set.”

T.K. goes quiet, fiddling with the icing bag in his hand. When he speaks his voice is soft.“I went to a bar last night.”

“Ah. A little drunk and disorderly,” Carlos says, aware that he’s being snarky and not caring in the least. “So you have an idea of how the inside of this police station should look then.”

“I wasn’t drunk,” T.K. says quickly and Carlos remembers his Festive Friends answers. He looks down. “I just went through a really bad break up. Like nuclear bad. And then I relapsed.” He looks around and lowers his voice. “I relapsed with substances.”

Oh.

Carlos sets down the graham cracker in his hands, his full attention now on T.K. as memory slices through him. “I tried to pour us champagne during dinner. I’m such an idiot I’m sorry—“

“It’s fine, ” T.K. cuts him off quickly, like if he gets interrupted now he won’t ever be able to find the strength to share this again. He fiddles with the peppermint wrapper in his hands. “Ever since I’ve gotten here it’s just…it’s grey. And I just feel numb all the time. So I went out to a bar looking for trouble. And I found it. Big time. I guess I just…I wanted to feel something.”

He’s pulled in on himself, his body looking vulnerable and wounded. Carlos gets it now. The overenthusiastic sex. His no-strings attached mentality. The complete meltdown during dinner. This is a man who has been hurt, and he’s struggling to find a way to heal. Carlos had unknowingly probed at the wound in his soul and T.K. had lashed out. It makes sense, even if it wasn’t fair.

T.K. looks miserable and despite their history all Carlos wants to do is make him feel better. “Judging by that lip, I’d say mission accomplished,” he says, trying to lighten the moment.

“You’re really busting my balls right now?” T.K. asks, an unreadable expression on his face.

“No,” Carlos says. “I’m busting your jingle bells.” He tries and fails to hold back a smile at his incredibly stupid joke.

T.K. blinks at him. “That’s terrible,” he says, but he is also struggling to keep his face neutral.

“And yet you’re smiling,” Carlos says. He feels lighter, like there’s been an ominous blizzard hanging over him in the weeks since they stopped seeing each other. Now it feels like the snow has finally started to fall and all the ugliness of the bare world in winter is being covered in a fresh layer of soft white powder. There’s a sense of hope to it.

“I’m laughing at how stupid it is,” T.K. says.

“Well laugh while you work,” Carlos says, reaching for a bar of Hershey’s chocolate to put on the roof. “I know your dad said it wasn’t a competition, but Marjan and Paul seem to be working on a second story. So I’m not sure they know that.”

Together they finish the roof, adding on lots of dripping icing as snow and icicles. Carlos carefully starts to add windows while T.K. works on the landscaping.

“Tommy I don’t know why you’re trying to make me do these little details when you know I’ve got fat fingers,” Judd is saying across the way as he and Tommy try to add a steeple to their church.

Marjan and Paul’s apartment building does indeed have two stories and they’ve somehow managed to chisel out actual windows in the graham crackers. Lexi and Nancy are creating a ski chalet that includes a chairlift, and Owen and Mateo’s fire station sports a fire pole made of pretzel rods.

“There,” T.K. says, plonking a creation down in front of where Carlos has crafted a front door out of Kit Kats.

Carlos raises an eyebrow. “What is that?”

“A snowman.”

Ah. Now Carlos sees it. There are two marshmallows stacked on top of each other and T.K. has shoved pretzel sticks in each side for arms. There is a lifesaver on each one and they’re connected by a thread of Twizzler. “What’s on its arms?” he asks.

“Handcuffs,” T.K. says.

“The snowman is getting arrested?”

“Or getting ready to do something kinky.”

“In front of a police station?”

“Some people get off on a little exhibitionism. Don’t judge Carlos,” T.K. says, a smirk on his face.

Damn it. They should have stayed mortal enemies. Now that they’re talking again, Carlos feels the urge to drag T.K. into the nearest cubicle and kiss the shit out of him. He didn’t need to go to a bar to find trouble. He could have shown up on Carlos’ doorstep and gotten into plenty.

Carlos’ attempt at a police cruiser has them both laughing; the oreo wheels keep falling off the rice krispie body (which T.K. snuck out and stole from the break room and has loudly been declared illegal by half the staff in the room) no matter how much icing he uses to try and stick them on.

“Stop eating our building materials,” Carlos admonishes a few minutes later when he goes for another red gum drop and finds they’re nearly gone.

“Why? They’re delicious. Tis the season for sugar,” T.K. says.

Carlos goes to give him a look and notices a dab of frosting on the corner of his mouth. “You’ve got some—“ He mimes brushing it away.

T.K. grabs a tissue and wipes, but misses completely. “No other side,” Carlos directs without success. “Here just, let me.”

He swipes the tissue from T.K.’s hand and dabs carefully, taking care not to pull on T.K.’s split lip. Their eyes meet and a heat passes between them, setting Carlos’ bones on fire. He clears his throat. “Got it.”

“Thanks,” T.K. says quietly.

They spend another half hour decorating before Owen makes them put all the buildings together into a little town while he snaps a picture for the company social media accounts. It’s actually pretty adorable once assembled and Carlos goes home that night strangely optimistic about what the rest of the week has in store.

Tuesday is business as usual and by the time Wednesday morning rolls around Carlos finds himself excitedly driving into work, his gift for T.K. in the passenger seat. He’s scrapped all his other gifts and spent the last two days looking for better items. Last night he visited a local tea shop and probably went a little overboard. They’d definitely upsold him on a few things and he’d let it happen because Monday’s gingerbread decorating had put a kernel of hope in his chest and…it can’t hurt to make sure T.K. likes his gifts, right?

He drops off T.K.’s gift bag and is only mildly disappointed when he walks into his own cubicle to find his desk is empty. It doesn’t matter; at least, that’s what he tells himself. Honestly, he’s not surprised. People are terrible at doing Secret Santa, it’s very likely that his person has forgotten him in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

He heads to his desk and gets right to work because they’re all heading out early to help with a toy drive at the local fire station; another of Owen’s brilliant ideas to encourage office camaraderie. It means he has a lot more to take care of than usual to try and make up for the lost time, and by mid-morning he’s in desperate need of a second coffee.

He’s about to get up and make one when his phone rings. It’s Ernie, their security guard from downstairs informing him that there’s a delivery waiting for him. Confused but intrigued Carlos heads for the elevator.

“Hey Ernie, all set for the holidays?” he asks when he reaches the desk on the ground floor.

“Just about. Got a couple more things to pick up today, but then I should be good to go,” Ernie tells him. He nods toward a bag and a coffee cup on the desk. “That’s for you.”

“Thanks.”

Carlos picks up the white paper sack and has to hold back a snort when he sees what’s written on the side. Hope the holidays don’t make you “cronuts”- FF. He peeks inside and inhales the scent of cronuts from Twiggy’s. Cronuts are a massive weakness of his, and a sip of the coffee tells him it’s made just to his specifications, a little bit of cream, no sugar. Whoever his Festive Friend is, they know him well. His suspicions are definitely leaning more and more toward Lexi.

He gets back in the elevator and when he steps off he nearly runs over T.K. “Whoa, sorry,” he says, holding up the coffee so it doesn’t spill all over T.K.’s chest.

“Lunch?” T.K. asks, nodding toward the bag.

“A snack from my ‘Festive Friend,’” he says. “Cronuts from the Twiggy’s.”

“That place is great. Enjoy,” T.K. says.

“Do you want one?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself. God he’s needy. “I um, I got two and I can’t eat both. They’re really only good fresh, it’s not like I can save one—“

“Sure.” T.K. thankfully interrupts his ramble and the affirmative response sends a jolt of electricity through him.

They step into the break room and T.K. boils some hot water for tea before settling down across from Carlos at one of the high top tables, a kitschy little vase of fake flowers between them.

Carlos pulls out the cronuts and puts each one on a paper plate. They’re decorated for the season as little Santa bellies, and hopefully they’re as delicious as he remembers. He slides one toward T.K. before picking up his own and taking a massive bite. He has to hold back a groan. They’re freaking amazing.

When he looks up he finds T.K. staring at him with an amused smirk on his face. “Sorry,” Carlos says, feeling his cheeks heat. “I um, these are my favorite.”

“So I can see,” T.K. says, the smirk widening a little. “The last time I saw that look we were both way more naked.”

Carlos feels his entire face go red at the reminder. He finishes chewing his bite, trying not to let memories of said naked time take over his brain. “So your dad,” he says. “He’s really into the holidays huh? We’ve never had so many festive office events.”

“Yeah my dad doesn’t really do anything by half measures,” T.K. says. “I think he might be overcompensating on the holiday cheer a little bit this year. The move down here was kind of a lot and I haven’t exactly been a bundle of joy lately, so he’s trying to fix it with cocoa and faux Christmas wreaths.”

Carlos takes another bite and thinks carefully about his next move. This new dynamic between them still feels tenuous, and he doesn’t want to fracture it. But at the same time, he can see the unfiltered hurt in T.K.’s eyes and he longs to help bear the weight of it. “You mentioned a breakup the other day,” he says quietly. “Is that part of why you came?”

T.K. blows out a breath and looks down at his cronut. “It’s the whole reason we came.”

Carlos watches as he wrestles internally and he’s just about to say that T.K. doesn’t have to tell him anything, when T.K. starts to speak again. “I had a boyfriend, in New York. Alex. We were together for like…I don’t know, a year I guess? He was the first boyfriend I’d had since getting sober and I wanted it to work so badly. Like this relationship was proof I finally had my shit together, you know?”

Carlos nods.

“I had this plan, I was going to propose to him. Had a ring, a restaurant, the whole thing. I was basically down on one knee and he—he told me he’d been cheating on me. With his spin instructor.”

Something hot and violent shoots through Carlos. “That motherfucker,” he says, before he can stop himself.

T.K. looks up in surprise and lets out a startled laugh.

“Sorry,” Carlos says. “That’s just…wow what an asshole.”

“Yeah he definitely was,” T.K. says, looking a little more relaxed now, as if Carlos’ angered sympathy has put him more at ease. “For a long time I think. I can look back on it now and see little moments. We only ever went where he wanted to go for dinner. He was always busy when I asked him to meet my friends. There was stuff I was overlooking because I was trying to prove to everyone else that I was stable.”

“I get that,” Carlos says.

T.K. shifts a little. “I went home after that, found a bottle of pills and…took them until I couldn’t feel anymore. My dad had to bust down the door to save my life.” He shrugs. “And that’s how we ended up here. He knew I needed to get away, so he took me as far as he could get.”

He looks up at Carlos. “I’m doing better now. Well, kind of.” He indicates his black eye. “But that’s why I freaked out on you that night. It wasn’t the champagne or anything you did. You were—you were so kind to me Carlos. I just wasn’t ready for it. And I’m really sorry that I walked out on you.”

The urge to reach over and touch him, to hold his hands and soothe away the hurt that’s painted into the lines of his forehead is overwhelming. But he’s not sure T.K. would be into that so he grips his own thighs instead. “Thank you for telling me,” he says. “That all sounds really difficult. I’m sorry I ambushed you. And I’m sorry I wasn’t more understanding when I realized you were uncomfortable. I think um, I think my ego took a little bit of a hit,” he says sheepishly.

“Oh you think Mr. ‘I Know It Doesn’t Look Like a Lot of Work’?” T.K. asks with a grin.

“Hey, that fish took me like three hours to make,” Carlos teases. “You missed out.”

T.K. sobers a little and fiddles with his cronut again. “I think I missed out on a lot.”

Carlos opens his mouth to offer a response, but Lexi pokes her head into the break room. “Carlos, your phone is ringing off the hook.”

“Coming,” he says, sliding off the stool and picking up his plate with the last couple bites of cronut on it. “Are you going to the toy drive this afternoon?”

“Boss dad said be there so yeah, I’m going,” T.K. says. “Thanks for the cronut.”

“You’re welcome,” Carlos says and then hustles back to his cubicle, where his phone is indeed ringing off the hook. He shoves the last bite of cronut into his mouth as he sits down, chewing furiously before he picks up. “This is Carlos.”

An HR crisis means Carlos is the last one to leave the office and arrive at the fire station’s toy drive. He looks for T.K. as soon as he gets there, but Lexi pulls him over to a table where they’re taking donations for one of the local food pantries.

“So,” Lexi says as they fill boxes with canned beans and stuffing mix and mac and cheese, “looks like someone’s back on Carlos Reyes’ nice list. Although with the way you were looking at him, seems more like you’d prefer he stay on the naughty list.”

“Lexi!” Carlos hisses, looking around. “There are kids here!”

“Oh they can’t hear me,” she scoffs, handing him a bag of flour. “They’re all at the make-an-ornament station.”

Carlos looks over and finds T.K. hunkered down by that very table, laughing and smiling as he helps a couple kids glue pompoms and sequins to colored paper. It’s adorable and Carlos’ heart melts a little at the sight.

“See? That look right there. You’ve got it bad. You want him to jingle your ba—“

“I’m going to remind you that I’m your HR rep and you probably shouldn’t finish that sentence,” he says quickly.

“Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “But you two did look pretty cozy in the break room earlier. The great branzino war is over I take it?”

“Yeah we had a good talk,” Carlos says.

She clears her throat. “You can say thank you anytime now you know.”

He furrows his brow. “For what?”

“For making you do Festive Friends and fixing your broken heart.”

“My heart was not broken,” he scoffs.

“You have been acting like you’re in the last ten minutes of a Hallmark movie for weeks. Time to finally realize you’re in love and kiss under the mistletoe,” Lexi tells him.

“Just because we’re friendly now doesn’t mean we’re going to kiss.”

“Okay. Sure. Believe whatever you want.”

There’s a massive influx then from a church group and thankfully the matter is dropped for the rest of the night.

On Friday Carlos stops at home to change his clothes before heading to a local bar for their holiday party and the big Festive Friends reveal. He puts on a pair of dark jeans and winces when he pulls on the ugly sweater that Owen insisted they all wear. As far as they go, his is pretty tame, albeit with a bit more sparkle and pizazz than he usually goes for. It says Feliz Navidad in tinseled letters with some primary colored pom poms decorating the rest for good measure. It had been part of a family white elephant a few years ago and has sat in the back of his closet since for good reason.

He gabs the box he wrapped up for T.K. on the way out the door. It’s nearly as brightly colored as his sweater. Generally he tries for a more sedate theme in wrapped gifts, but T.K. is so vivacious and colorful that he broke into the stash of wrapping paper he usually saves for his nieces and nephews.

He’s nervous as he drives and he can’t quite put his finger on why. Is it because he wants T.K. to like his gift? Because things between him and T.K. have shifted in a more positive direction and his stupid heart can’t quite stop believing that tonight might be like that first night at the honky tonk? Is it because he feels very stupid in this sweater and he really hopes everyone else obeyed Owen’s instructions from the email invite?

Probably all of it.

Ah well. At least if things don’t go well there will be liquor around to help drown his sorrows.

There’s immediate relief when he walks in through the doors of the bar and sees holiday themed knit-ware all over. “Hey Carlos, glad you came,” Owen says, greeting him at the door in a sweater with a massive reindeer head on the front.

“Mr. Strand,” Carlos says, giving him a nod.

“Carlos we’ve been over this. You can call me Owen,” Owen says, a tinge of good natured exasperation in his tone.

“Yes, right, sorry” Carlos says, embarrassed. Didn’t he just chide Mateo for the same thing last week? Somehow this seems different. And definitely a weird way to address the man who fathered his most recent hookup.

“Go ahead and grab a drink, there’s hors d’oeuvres, I highly recommended the stuffed mushrooms, and then when the time feels right make sure you deliver your gift to your Festive Friend,” Owen says brightly. Then he leans close. “I got Judd a new belt. Italian leather, handcrafted, this thing is a masterpiece. He is gonna love it!”

“I’m sure he will,” Carlos agrees.

“Oh! Nancy! Come on in!” Owen gives Carlos a pat on the shoulder and moves past him to greet her.

Carlos says hello to Judd and his wife Grace, his eyes searching the room and finally landing on T.K. who is standing at the bar chatting with Mateo. Carlos’ heart flutters at the sight of him even as he tries to figure out what the heck is knitted on the back of his sweater. It appears to be a long, yellow tail, but that can’t possibly be right, can it? He takes a breath and then abruptly loses courage and goes to find Lexi instead. “Nice earrings,” he says when he gets to her table.

“Thanks,” she says, pushing her hair back so he can see them better. “They’re from my ‘Festive Friend’ Marjan.”

“Great,” Carlos says as he grabs a chip from a bowl on the table. “Did you give Paul your gift?”

“Yes, he is thrilled with the crime novels I got him. He hasn’t read that author yet so hopefully he likes them.” She gives him a look. “Why do you still have T.K.’s?”

“I haven’t seen him yet,” Carlos says defensively.

“You mean you saw him and you’re too chicken to go over there because you’re having feelings and don’t know what to do with them,” she says bluntly. “Are you going to ask him out when you give it to him?”

“I—I don’t know,” Carlos says. “That seems pushy.”

“You two were practically making out in that break room.”

“We were literally sitting three feet apart,” Carlos says dryly.

“Fine. You were emotionally making out.”

He wrinkles his nose. “That’s not a thing.”

“I think you should ask him. It’s Christmas. The season of miracles. And wishes. And Santa shit. This is your chance!” she says enthusiastically.

“How much have you had to drink?” he asks.

She scoffs. “This isn’t drunkeness. It’s my Christmas wish that you grow a pair and ask T.K. out.”

“That is a terrible wish,” Carlos says.

“Well it is what it is. You wouldn’t want to break a girl’s heart at Christmas would you?”

He opens his mouth to respond but Paul calls Lexi’s name and beckons her toward him. “That’s my cue,” she says, hopping off her bar stool. “Gonna go kick Paul’s ass at darts. Good luck!”

And with that she’s gone, leaving Carlos alone with his feelings and his gift box. He stares at it for a moment and gives himself a stern pep talk. It’s a gift. Not a marriage proposal. If T.K. hates it, it’s whatever.

“Hey Carlos.”

He’s waited too long. He looks up to find T.K. standing on the other side of the table, a smile on his face. Carlos can now see the front of his sweater. Some kind of lizard smiles at him, clearly the front end of the tail he spotted before. Above it are the words “Merry Crickets.” It is truly the most hideous thing he’s ever laid eyes on, but somehow T.K. makes it look adorable.

“Hey,” he replies..

Excellent. Great. He’s crushing this.

“Nice sweater,” T.K. says, taking a sip of the drink in his hand.

“Thanks. This is some party. Your dad is quite the host.”

T.K. rolls his eyes, but there’s a fondness to it. “Just be grateful I talked him out of chartering a party bus. And roller skating.”

“Your dad thought our holiday party should be at a roller rink?”

“He was going with an 80’s holiday theme at first,” T.K. says. “It took a lot of bargaining to get him down to ugly sweater instead. I think he was an event planner in a former life.”

“He definitely has a flair for it,” Carlos agrees. He looks down at the present in front of him. He should have gotten a drink before doing this. “So um, actually, I’m your Festive Friend. Surprise. This is for you.”

He slides it across the table and T.K.’s eyes immediately light up. “Can I open it now?” he asks eagerly.

He looks like a kid on Christmas morning and it’s so endearing that Carlos can barely breathe. “Yeah, yes, it’s all yours.”

T.K. pulls off the bow and rips open the paper, lifting out the soft yellow sweatshirt inside. He doesn’t say anything for a moment and Carlos feels a flutter of nerves. “It’s—“

“The sweatshirt Harry Styles wore in New York last summer,” T.K. says. His tone is almost reverent, his thumbs moving back and forth to stroke the material. “Oh my god. I have Harry Styles’ sweatshirt.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not the exact one he wore,” Carlos says, feeling sheepish. “But I know you like him and hoodies so it seemed right.”

“It must have taken forever for you to find this,” T.K. says.

“Oh, no, it was…it was no big deal,” Carlos says, omitting the entire night he spent on instagram combing through Harry’s outfits of the last few years and trying to find them for sale.

“Thank you Carlos,” T.K. says, sincere gratitude in his voice. “This is amazing. All your gifts were amazing.”

“I mean, that hat was kind of lame,” Carlos says, still embarrassed that he bought something so generic.

“No it’s great! I’m going to wear it the next time I go to an Astros game,” T.K. says, a twinkle of mischief in his eye.

Carlos chuckles. “Yeah good luck with that.”

“Did you get your last gift yet?” T.K. asks casually.

Carlos shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“Any guesses who it might be?”

He has no idea. There’s no one in the office that knows him well enough to send him cronuts besides Lexi and he knows she had Paul. “No,” he says. “Usually I’m pretty good at figuring this kind of thing out, but everyone in the office is so new I haven’t really been able to get a read on anyone.”

“Marjan?”

“She had Lexi.”

“Paul?”

Carlos looks around until he finds him standing in a corner next to a Christmas tree, laughing at something Lexi just said. “I don’t think so. He’s from Chicago, I doubt he would know about Twiggy’s.”

“Judd?”

“Something tells me he wouldn’t know about cronuts either,” Carlos says with a laugh. “I feel like it has to be someone who knows me pretty well, but Lexi is the only one—“

His eyes land on T.K.’s face and he knows. He can see it in his eyes and he feels stupid he didn’t realize it before when T.K. used that false casual tone. “You?” he asks in surprise. “You’re my Festive Friend?”

T.K. reaches into his back pocket and pulls out an envelope. “Merry Christmas,” he says as he hands it to Carlos.

Still in a little bit of shock Carlos carefully lifts the flap on the envelope to reveal a printed out email inside. “A cooking class?” he asks, looking up to search T.K.’s eyes.

T.K. nods, a flicker of nerves flashing over his face. “It’s bruschetta, pasta, and a dessert. A husband and wife team run it out of their home. I thought, I mean you obviously know how to cook, but I thought it might be fun.”

“It sounds amazing,” Carlos says genuinely. He’s always wanted to try his hand at homemade pasta.

T.K. nods and takes a breath. “I um, I got you two tickets. You can take whoever you want, but I—“ He runs his hands nervously over his jeans. “I know I fucked things up between us, so I was hoping that maybe this could be kind of a do-over for us. If you want?”

“Yes,” Carlos says immediately. It’s embarrassingly fast and absolutely gives away how badly he wants them to try again, but he doesn’t care. “Yes I would love a do-over.”

“Yeah?” T.K. asks, his eyes full of hope.

“Yeah,” Carlos says. A smile plays on his lips and he’s about to thank T.K. for his other gifts when something occurs to him. “You little shit!” he says incredulously. “You bought me those cronuts and then sat there and ate one like you had no clue who’d given them to me!”

T.K. sends him a wicked smile. “I was counting on your holiday generosity,” he says.

“How did you even know about that bakery?” Carlos asks.

“You mentioned it,” T.K. says. “I don’t know, it was the second or third time we hooked up. I saw a flyer for them on your fridge and you told me how good they were.”

“You remember that?” Carlos asks in surprise. After their blowup he’d convinced himself that he was just a warm body for T.K. to be with, another notch in his bedpost who’d meant nothing to him.

T.K. looks at him, his face serious. “I remember all of it Carlos.”

The words make his heart swell and he hysterically wonders if this is how the Grinch felt when he heard the Who’s singing on Christmas. “I remember too,” he says. “It was incredible.”

“That first night, in the honky tonk. Best bathroom hookup of my life,” T.K. tells him.

“Only bathroom hookup of my life,” Carlos says.

“Yeah, I know,” T.K. says with a roll of his eyes.

“How could you know that?”

“Because you kept looking around like it was the most unsanitary thing you’d ever seen in your life,” T.K. tells him. “So I made it my mission to make you forget all about it. Pretty sure I succeeded.”

Carlos flushes as he thinks about T.K.’s mouth and his hands and the way they felt on his body. “You definitely did.” His gaze drops to T.K.’s lips. “God, I want to kiss you so badly right now.”

T.K. smirks, clearly please that he’s turned Carlos on in the middle of this bar. “What’s stopping you?”

“Um the fact that all of our co-workers are here. And also your dad,” Carlos says with a laugh.

As if on cue Owen’s voice rings out over the crowd. “All right everyone!” He claps his hands a couple times. “If I could have everyone’s attention please! Thank you all for coming to the 126 Designs holiday party. I have a little surprise up my sleeve. Tonight, we are going to be participating in some holiday karaoke!”

A bar employee rolls a karaoke machine in out of nowhere to cheers from the crowd. “Did you know?” Carlos asks.

“No,” T.K. says. “But I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Get on over here!” Owen encourages them. “Judd! Let’s hear a little Deck the Halls buddy!”

“Come on.”

T.K. reaches for Carlos’ hand and pulls him toward a side door. “Wait, what about karaoke?” Carlos asks.

“Do you really want to stay here and listen to my dad attempt a version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town?”

Carlos considers this. “Actually…”

T.K. laughs and tugs him again. “Come on Reyes.”

They step outside into the night, the door closing behind them. It’s quiet and the air has a slight chill. Nothing that would even hint at a white Christmas, but enough that it feels like the holiday season instead of the dead of summer. A few stars have managed to permeate the light pollution and the moon shines brightly above them.

The side of the restaurant is lit by a single streetlamp, giving them just enough light to see each other, but also the illusion of privacy from anyone else who might be walking by. T.K. leans against the brick of the wall and tugs Carlos toward him, dropping his hand so he can grab his waist, his thumb pressing into the crease between Carlos’ thigh and his hip through his pants. “Well,” T.K. says, the cocky ass smirk on his face that shoots something hot through Carlos’ veins. “Go ahead. Kiss away.”

Carlos looks around in fake concern. “Mmm, I don’t know. Someone could still see us out here.”

“Don’t worry,” T.K. pulls a sprig of mistletoe from his pocket and dangles it over their heads. “I swiped this from inside. Now you have to kiss me. Christmas rules.”

“Oh is that right?” Carlos asks with smile, pressing in a little closer, and lifting a hand to run it through T.K.’s hair before sliding it down to cradle the back of his neck.

“Definitely,” T.K. says.

Carlos doesn’t waste another second before leaning in and fitting their lips together. The sparks inside him whirl and dance before bursting into full on flames. It feels like coming home.

T.K. opens up and invites him in, their bodies coming flush together, searching for as much contact as possible. Carlos fists one hand into T.K.’s hair, the other landing solidly on his lower back and urging him closer, while T.K.’s roam everywhere, traveling Carlos’ biceps, his chest, his back, his ass, and everything in between.

Carlos slots a thigh between T.K.’s legs, pressing into him and T.K.’s head falls back against the wall, eyes closing as he lets out something between a groan and a sigh. Carlos smiles and uses the change in position to press kisses into the sensitive spot just below his ear. “I missed you,” he says in between breaths.

“I missed you too. Am I going to have to report this to HR?” T.K. asks.

Carlos pauses and pulls back, sending T.K. a withering look. “Haha,” he says dryly. “Thanks for reminding me that I’m going to have my hands full with this one in the new year.”

“My ass is quite a handful,” T.K. says with a smirk. “But you can handle it. It’s just a little bit of paperwork. And someone got you really nice pens for the holidays.”

“Yeah someone did,” Carlos says, poking him in the side until he squirms. “Speaking of paperwork, you owe me a thank you note for your gifts.”

T.K. bites his lip. “Why don’t you take me back to your place and I’ll do a little better than a thank you note?”

Fuck. Carlos swallows hard. “What about the party? Won’t your dad be upset?”

“I’m spending Christmas day with him. He’ll live.” He slides a finger along the waistband of Carlos’ jeans. “We can go back in if you really want to though. I do a mean rendition of Jingle Bell Rock. We can stand in there with all of our co-workers and you can try not to think about how good I’d make you feel if the two of us were in bed together.”

Carlos strokes a thumb across T.K.’s cheek. “As much as I would like to hear you sing Jingle Bell Rock, I think I’d rather take you home.”

T.K. gestures toward the street. “Then lead on Festive Friend.”

It’s the merriest Christmas Carlos has had in a long time.

#Tarlos #Tarlos Secret Santa #tarlossanta #tarlossanta23 #Festive Friends #Office AU #Christmas #Secret Santa #Christmas Fluff

50 notes · View notes