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#baking with friends is always fun
not-krys · 1 month
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47. Creation [Abby, Miri]
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Happy Last Wednesday of March! It's that time again, another theme to get the writing juices going. This time, we got the theme of creation!
Raw, unedited writing below. We got Leonardo making observations about Abby and Vincent in her section, while Miri's section is cute and sweet with Luke and Barbatos.
Check out my masterlist!
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Abby
Leonardo stood in the doorway of Vincent's room, sunlight pouring into the room, but there was something else in the room that could rival the sun in brightness and warmth.
Vincent's back was to him, his apron tied loosely around his torso. His feet were planted firmly on the floor as he sat on his stool. And if that had been the only thing of note, he might have left, to leave a fellow artist to his creation devices.
But the second set of feet, dangling between Vincent's, and a smaller hand holding onto a paintbrush in his, had the older vampire smiling with affection.
He remembered the day he had found Abby struggling to make her lines looser and how he had given her some tips, as an artist, but also to help with her general demeanor. Scrunched up like a nervous kitten wouldn't help her in the long run and he had hoped the message got across when he was teaching her.
Now, it seemed it was Vincent's turn to help her, much closer to her than he had been, sitting in his lap. Both of them were growing bolder, he thought. A natural process for Abby as she was overcoming her timidity, but she wasn't the only one growing bold. Leonardo looked at his hand, remembering when he had attempted to pat her head, something he had done countless times to encourage the little cara before, only for Vincent's hand to stop him, pushing him away from her not unlike a lover would protect his love from unwarranted advances.
He chuckled and pushed away from the door frame, closing the door fully behind him. He also couldn't help but see Vincent's hand tightening on Abby's thigh, a blue eye briefly glancing directly at him for a split second before returning his attention back to the painting session.
Even for all of his long life, Leonardo felt the briefest of chills from that single look and started walking away, lighting his cigarillo as he walked away.
"Cavolo…" he whispered, shaking his shoulders of their tension.
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Miri
Miri looked at the timer on her D.D.D and checked the time, Luke standing nearby. Barbatos held onto oven mitts that matched Miri's and Luke's mitts, a gentle smile on his face.
"Is it almost done?" Luke asked.
"It's pretty close, I think." Miri answered, checking the time one last time. "It should be pretty close to that cake we saw on Devilgram the other day."
"What was it called?"
"In the Human Realm, we called it a castella cake."
"And you bake it with steam?"
"Yep, that's what makes it so light and fluffy, along with all the air inside it. That's what makes it move like that."
"It wiggled so much in that Devilgram video, it looked alive!"
"I hope this one wiggles just as much!"
A soft beeping soon echoed in the kitchen, alerting all three to the time.
"Moment of truth, everyone!" Miri said, stepping to one side of the giant oven. Luke scrambled over to her side, oven mitts at the ready.
"Please be cautious as I open the door." said Barbatos, carefully pulling down on the handle.
Hot air soon filled the room, making Miri and Luke wince, but only momentarily as the smell of baked cake soon followed. Barbatos pulled the rack forward, hot water sloshing around in the pan.
"On the count of three," Barbatos said, putting his mitted hands on one side of the baking pan. Miri and Luke took the opposite corners, ready to lift the massive cake from its watery bath, which was both longer and stood taller than all three bakers combined.
On his command, the three lifted the massive cake, moving it to the nearby counter, amazed at how much it did indeed move and wiggle, dancing to their movements.
"Wahh!" Luke exclaimed, "it does move!"
"Told you it would!" Miri laughed.
Barbatos only smiled gently.
"I'm sure that everyone will be pleased with your efforts, both of you. A job well done."
"We all made it together!" Miri said, "and I think there should be enough for everyone! Even Beel!"
"Perhaps you should message them to come to the castle?" Barbatos was already turning away, intent on finding his master, hopefully still working on the paperwork left for him that day.
"Yeah, it's waaay too big for me to carry by myself. We can have a castella party!"
"Yeah!" Luke said, "I'll message Simeon and Solomon! They have to come too!"
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moe-broey · 2 months
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Very quick and messy doodle for Valentine's cause I don't believe in romantic love BUT I ALSO don't believe in being a hater because of that 😤😤😤
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it's the 23rd... you know what that means...
Happy Ash Day!
#hehe it's my day! not too many special plans other than some cake but. lots of f/o rot#my wonderful wife a.qua is canonically good at baking. i think she'd make a cake for her beloved. i get so happy thinking about a.qua!#shes the sweetest girl ever and i'm always soooo honored that she loves me too#i have a lot of f/os and i could go on forever about all the little things theyd like to do for their special pal's birthday#but also. i've been getting into x.enoblade... and have feelings for a character... i am 🤏 this close to putting him on the list#but uh. a birthday kiss perhaps?#ash rambles 💚#but man.. just spending the day with the people that i love is really all i need. hehe so happy to be with them all!#hope everyone has a great day!#and since it's very early for me. i hope i have a great day too!#happy ash day to me~~~ happy ash day to me~~~#i'd normally be asleep by now but. i'm very brainrotted over my wife tonight and i keep reading over some of my work about her and ash#i love this s/i so much. theyre childhood friends. shes blue and ash is red. a.qua is literally named a.qua and ash is ash#theyre red and blue. fire and water. been together forever. sometimes it really does feel like they were made for each other huh?#i have so much love for her in my heart. it makes my heart feel all skdjsjdhs when i think about her#oh but where was i#right. my birthday! i have a shit ton of fankids too so i bet theyre having fun as well#but.. on the topic of k.h s/i..... R.IKU! MY LITTLE BRO!#they arent related or anything. ash just saw him and was all 'wow who is this sassy lost child... you are little bro now'#she'd get soooo emotional just knowing that the kiddo remembered. he shoots her a text on gummiphone or even visits whatever world she's in#and ash gets all 🥺🥺🥺🥺 and hugs him so tight#but yeah. birthday. f/os. lots of fluff. the good shit fr#fun times!
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ban-joey · 6 months
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sending laser beams to my professor with my mind. kenneth you said midterm grades would b up by this afternoon. it is officially TONIGHT and guess what? kenneth i would love to not be clenching my teeth in my sleep tonight. kenneth i will be sending you a bill in the mail. yes i know its probably a TAs responsibility but i blame you personally. i hate school
#i dont im having a lot of fun (genuinely) but it is often pretty stressful#did find out there are a few folks adjacent to my program doing zoonoses & climate change research so im very excited to chat w them next w#possibly directing my thesis towards one health. social epi gradually becoming less interesting#plus i think my strengths do lie in applying epi to biological concepts so. one health works there#my brain continually trying to get back to lyme disease :( sometimes i really do miss the east coast tbh!#not lying actually i think the number one thing i miss is the amt of vector borne disease research LMFAO#i do unfortunately kind of have a crush on a classmate so that's fine but whatever. grad school. men are nice to me and i lose my mind ig#need to go make out w a hot trans person i think that would solve my problems rn#but also it's nice to be so excited about someone deciding to sit next to me in every class :)#like wow how isolated have i been the last 3 years to be so delighted by like. active signs i have Officially Made Friends.#even if he does live like a block away from my dad and jokes every goddamn day like 'so i saw your dad yesterday' no you DIDNT shut UP#idk yesterday he sat right next to me in a class he usually sits w other people in and it sort of sent my brain off the edge and now im jus#yeah. sitting with this one. it's fine like it's normal. but wowie i do think it's my first time having a Big Ol Crush since (redacted)#a little scary for my animal brain i think but it's okay!#im 25 in like 3 ish weeks and i still get embarrassed about this stuff somehow? stupid.#he's just really nice and always really fun to talk to! i think i had to officially Sit With Myself today bc epi is doing a holiday party#and there's a baking contest and we were talking abt it in class and i was indecisive abt whether i want to participate#and he like fully cut me off and was like oh you should bake something so i can have some :)#and. well fuck now i have to lmao. IM SO EASY IT'S SO EMBARRASSING#good evening everyone. guess this is my journal now. anyway ken rice you owe me twenty dollars and i aim to COLLECT
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just-spacetrash · 8 months
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🫥
#brain ran out of wwdits hype juoce and now i am profoundly sad#it is just cause its late but man....😔#I'm thinking about my shit 20th birthday#sent a 'hey its my bday does anyone wanna go for drinks' text to the gc (sweating hands shaking almost passed out muted my phone for 8hrs)#and then everyone came and talked about their own relationship/mental health issues for like max 3hrs and then went home#and last week my best friend had her 20th bday#and the other friends had like. baked a cake gotten her gifts wrote cards#and like i know im not as close w the other ones as my bff is#but man it did sting a lot#at one point one of em said like 'we did all this because we care about you we wouldnt do it if we didnt care'#and ngl i almost cried then and there#but yea kept it together didnt say anything didnt ruin my bffs bday#and the rest of the party was rly fun#but it just#i wish i had friends like that#and ik im not like. like i dont know how to talk n stuff ik im not as easy to be friends with i know im super anxious n awkward like always#but like#u didnt have to say the whole 'we wouldnt do this if we didnt care'#on my birthday i cried from like 3am to 6am and then pulled myself together and went to a hotel breakfast w no sleep#and like. didnt even feel like shit in the morning so it turned out ok in the end i guess#but looking back it was kind of. fucked up#but yea even the fact that im thinking about it now means i should just go to sleep probably#or i guess i didnt ever rly process it but still#lets hope writing this to my diary (the internet where everyone can see it)#releases some of the pent up. stuff#yeaj#my post#vent#rant#whichever it is
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pastafossa · 1 year
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YOUR CUPCAKES LOOK ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE I LOVE THEM! I also love to bake and wonder if you have any favorite recipes or designs of yours that you recommend?
THANK YOU SO MUCH FELLOW BAKING ANON! 🥰 Cupcakes are just my favorite thing to bake and decorate EVER, I've made so many and I'm guilty of crawling pinterest to find new ones to try constantly!
Design wise, some Shark Bite Cupcakes are always a HUGE hit and are one of my favorites! The recipe says put strawberry jam inside but I like to do them with a raspberry jam instead (I use a jar of low sugar raspbery preserves so you get a more tart contrast to the sugary buttercream). It's hilarious to watch people's expression when they hit the little cored section, pull back to see the 'blood' jam, and start laughing.
Cupcake unicorns are adorable so I used the design on this unicorn cupcake recipe for it, but used my own recipes for both the cupcake and frosting since I wasn't sure if I'd like theirs. Bonus - fill batter with sprinkles and add EDIBLE GLITTER on top! This is also where my three color piping bag comes in handy!
My other favorite design, as someone who grew up living near Disneyland and LOVED the Haunted Mansion, is graveyard cupcakes for Halloween! Standard chocolate base, choco buttercream frosting, sprinkle crushed oreo cookies for dirt - then buy a pack of candy tombstones and bones (I stumbled across mine at Michael's, and knew I had to cupcake them 😂) and write funny names (Collin Sick, Noah Scape, Barry M. Deep) or cheesy rhymes on the tombstones just like at Disney (@wonderlandmind4 you might like these too 😆). Stick the little bones up out of the dirt, and you're good to go for Halloween!
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Recipe wise I have some absolute workhorses I go back to over and over!
Vanilla buttercream frosting recipe 1 (but swap milk for whipping cream if possible) and vanilla buttercream frosting recipe 2. The first is a little sweeter than #2, so I switch back and forth based on what type of cupcake and/or filling I'm using! I love these and I've used these as bases for a lot of my flavored frosting - apple cider, pumpkin spice, coffee, PB. They work SO well and are so easy and quick to make!
Chocolate buttercream recipe! The espresso powder just YES. And depending on season I add a bit of cinnamon instead of espresso.
If I'm in a hurry or don't have from scratch ingredients and am using box mix for cupcakes, I use this recipe to improve it! So far no one's noticed when I sometimes switch to box mix (used to bake a lot for church on sundays)!
These chocolate cherry cookies are SO FUCKING GOOD! I've tried it with all kinds of cherries and it's GREAT, although I'd advise frosting *after* cause melting in the oven sometimes occurs.
I LITERALLY had people emailing me after doing these apple cider cupcakes.
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solarisgod · 9 months
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Micah making the macarons like these for your muse ...
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kae-karo · 10 months
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@alienjack my beloved tyty for the tag !!!
honey or maple syrup // embroidery or knitting // sheep or cows // meadows or prairies // streams or lakes // baking or cooking // blackberries or blueberries // raspberry preserves or strawberry jam // wildflowers or rose bushes // dusk or dawn // bees or butterflies // tea or hot cocoa // sugar cubes or sugar bowls // pancakes 🥞 or waffles 🧇 // books 📚 or music 🎶 // songbirds or rustling leaves // napping under trees or sleeping in a field // checkered or floral // drying flowers or pressing flowers
i will leave this for anyone who would like to do it, please consider yourself tagged!! 💜💜
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possiblytracker · 2 years
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now christmas foods have been available in stores for a little while i have finally taken the liberty of buying several different brands of mince pie to compare and figure out which one i need to stockpile for the trying months ahead
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clamorybus · 2 years
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my birthday was good! ^__^ it wasn't anything special, but today was the sunniest and warmest day we've had all week, and i had tacos for dinner with my niece plus my parents gave me $40 as a present so a pretty solid day overall
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madegeeky · 4 months
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And, finally, dessert which I'm far too full to eat but am doing so anyway.
Basically banana cake with pineapple and maraschino cherries.
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malusokay · 5 days
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little things to feel softer
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Being kind to mean people
Teas with honey and sleeping early
A fun collection of cute mugs from little antique stores
Pearls and dainty jewellery
Buying flowers for yourself or a loved one, not just on special occasions.
being kind just because you want to, with no hidden motives, just genuine kindness
Reading and writing poetry
Self-care nights and long bubble baths
Going to the farmer's market to buy fresh fruits
No phone in the morning
Paying attention to the little things: changing seasons, moon phases, blooming flowers, etc...
Calm hobbies like painting, knitting, reading, baking
Matcha and tea over coffee
Being kind to stray animals and befriending them
Sending handwritten letters to your friends
Try cooking from scratch, make some jam, maybe attempt a sourdough... (nara smith my queen)
Flower prints and sundresses
Lacy tops and light colours
Taking time to appreciate art, listen to music, visit museums and art exhibitions, go to concerts, the theatre, cinema, etc..
Wearing only natural fabrics
Vanilla scented EVERYTHING
not sure how I feel about the title, but this all leans into the "softer/calmer life" thing; you guys get me lol. <3
As always, please feel free to share your own suggestions and tips in the comments!! ♡
love ya ・:*₊‧౨ৎ
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rebelspykatie · 7 months
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Steve’s never had anyone show any genuine interest in the things he likes. Robin rolls her eyes when he brings up sports or silly movies that don’t have a bigger plot or character work. Even though she played soccer, she doesn’t care about it in the same way that Steve cares about basketball or football. 
The kids make fun of everything from his taste in music to his choice in snacks for movie nights. Mike calls him a little housewife for baking one time and he never shows up with cookies again. They’re never intentionally mean spirited, or at least he doesn’t think so. He knows he can give as good as he gets when it comes to catty, sarcastic comments, but he tries to steer clear of personal attacks on someone’s identity these days. He learned that lesson with Jonathan. 
But even before the party came along, it was like that. His parents never stuck around long enough to find out what he was up to, never attending a game or meet, and certainly in the dark about what he might be up to outside of school. Tommy only ever cared about himself and Carol, only following Steve around for clout, popularity by association. If he asked him right now, he’d bet a lot of money that Tommy doesn’t even remember his favorite food or the movie he used to watch when he was sick. There was a point where he thought he could share things with him. Until he realized mid ramble about sports cars that Tommy wasn’t even listening to him. He was staring at Carol and nodding along with a vacant expression. 
So he stopped sharing. Stopped caring if people knew anything about him because they never asked. People always made assumptions about him anyway. The girls he slept with only wanted one thing. The kids were happy to let him chauffeur them around with no questions asked. Robin was the only one he let in, the only one that cared about digging deeper. But, and she never said in so many words, he could tell that she thought his interests were mundane, and clearly not something that sparked any enthusiasm from her. She couldn’t even keep up with the girls he slept with, giving him the same bored stare as Tommy. 
Even now, after a few years, Steve’s reminded that they never would have become friends if not for trauma and the secret inner workings of the Russian’s within Hawkins. He’s lucky to have her, but he doesn’t think she ever would’ve chosen this, chosen him. And that’s fine. He’s used to not being chosen. His parents didn’t choose him when they started leaving him alone at age 12. Tommy and Carol chose each other and the reign of a new king when Steve fell from his throne. Nancy chose Jonathan. 
He doesn’t think he has a lot to offer. 
Well, at least until Eddie comes along. He’s taken by surprise when Eddie asks after the song that’s playing in his car. He’d assumed Eddie only liked metal music, and yeah he pokes fun at the genre of music Steve seems to stick to, begging him to give metal a shot, but he doesn’t say a word about how lame it is. When they’re having a movie night, Eddie notices that Steve gravitates towards coke and brings him one without Steve asking.
After Eddie sees his bedroom, Steve gets a pack of hot wheels for Christmas. Eddie jokes that he should give one to each of the kids as their new ride, since they seem to be ungrateful little twerps. Steve places them right under his posters on his dresser and Eddie grins at them every time he comes over. They lay in bed and pretend to drive them on the ceiling like they’re kids again. It shakes something loose in Steve’s chest. 
Eddie hates sports, but he invites Steve over on Mondays, when Wayne is perched in his chair for football. He quietly works on his campaigns while Steve and Wayne watch the games. Eddie somehow worms his way into Steve’s heart, digging deeper and deeper with each new thing, like he wants to know more. Steve’s history is a minefield, but Eddie expertly navigates through it, leaving who they were behind, building something new together. Steve’s already halfway in love with him before he even realizes that Eddie is something that he likes. 
He expects to freak out a bit more, but who is going to stop him? Who is going to care if he wants to be with this boy? He’s spent so long ignoring parts of himself for others that he wants to cherish this fragile thing, to cradle it in his hands, make sure no one can ruin it for him. When he kisses Eddie, it feels like coming home, like he’s finally found that place he’s been searching for his whole life. It’s a kind of devotion that Steve’s not used to, born of love and not obsession or jealousy or anger. 
He’s not sure he deserves it, but he’ll do everything in his power to keep it.
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stevieschrodinger · 7 months
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Part One
Baker Steve and Rock Star Eddie wrong number AU
Part two
"Steve! You have no idea!" Eddie's laughing, and that always makes Steve laugh, too. He's clearly a little tipsy. "Everyone went mad for the cake! It's was just, gone! Here, I'll send you some pictures!"
"I know what it looked like Eds," but Steve's grinning, knowing he's talking to empty air, can hear Eddie very vaguely mumbling to himself as he looks through his camera roll. Next to Steve' ear, his phone vibrates several times.
"Anyway, Stevie, I was thinking," Eddie's back now, still clearly tipsy but sounding uncharacteristically sheepish, "it's Christmas kind of soon right? Going to need a cake or two there. New year. Easter. Birthdays and bar mitzvahs and...and... independence day...so I was thinking I should get my orders in now, you know? Avoid disappointment."
"Eddie," Steve starts, finds himself turning shy himself, "you don't have to have a cake on order just to talk to me."
"I, ah, don't?"
"No, I mean, pretty sure we're friends, right?"
"Friends," Eddie starts slowly, "there's, like, lots of different kinds of friends."
"Sure, sure," Steve agrees easily, butterflies running rampant in his stomach, "there's even, kind of, more than friends, really."
"That sounds really really great-"
"Eddie!" There's a cacophony in the background, people shouting, "man, you're missing your own party-"
The line goes dead, and Steve's left standing in the dim light of the evening, just staring at tomorrow's cake order where it's cooling on the racks. A minute later, his phone buzzes in his hand, "so sorry baby, talk tomorrow."
Steve smiles at his phone. He had gone a little quiet after finding out who Eddie really is. It had kind of surprised him. But then Eddie had text him, "did I do something? 😞" and Steve realised Eddie's entitled to his privacy, the same as anyone.
"Hey Stevie, how's your day?"
Steve has Eddie on speaker phone as he mixes batter, "pretty good so far, you? You hungover?"
"No, no, didn't get that wasted, too old for that nonsense now, you know?"
Steve laughs, "aren't you like, 25?"
"I mean, maybe. Definitely old enough to, like, think about settling down, you know?"
Steve's breath catches in his throat, excitement and nerves after their interrupted conversation last night, "yeah, you, thinking about that? With, uhm, someone?"
"Yeah, I am, it's just..." Steve's heart sinks in his chest," my job, you know, I travel a lot, and that would be a sacrifice for anyone, and I couldn't ask someone to live with that, you know?"
"Well...what if it wasn't? What if they just...went with you?"
"What if...this person...had a job they loved? Their own business they worked hard for?"
"Yeah," Steve agrees slowly, "but what if...well, take me for example. I love to bake, but I don't love my business. That's just a means to an end, you know? I don't always love the orders, I'd choose to make something else if I was doing it for fun. So if it were me, i'd give it up in a heartbeat as long as I can keep baking."
"Yeah? You mean it?"
"Yeah. Yeah Eddie, I mean it."
"I, I mean, sure. Good. Thanks. I mean, not thanks, I mean, good, that's great."
Steve grins at Eddie's ramblings.
"I'll be away though, soon, for a couple of months, like four months, so, maybe, we could keep talking and when, I mean, if you want, what I get back..."
"I'd like that." Steve fist pumps, silently celebrating. "You never actually told me what you do for work?". Steve's teasing him, but Eddie doesn't know that Steve knows so, Steve grins to himself and keeps his voice even.
"I ah, music?"
"Yeah, you have mentioned that before, but what about it?" Steve knows he's being a dick, he just can't help it though.
"I ah, travel, with the band," Eddie starts slowly, and that is technically not a lie, Steve thinks, "and I kind of, look after some of the instruments and...have a lot to do with the sound checks? Like I'm definitely always there, for every sound check, like, I have to be."
All of that is probably true, Steve thinks, and god bless Eddie for not wanting to actually lie to Steve.
"Oh right, and what's the band called?"
"Oh, they're like, heavy metal, you've definitely never heard of them."
After they get off the call, Steve laughs all afternoon.
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asahicore · 1 year
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cherry pits - psh (m)
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this work contains smut - minors please do not interact
pairing. dad!sunghoon x fem!reader
synopsis. Your alarmingly empty bank account forces you to find a last-minute summer job so that you can afford a trip with your friends. The extremely handsome customer that comes into the store just happens to be a young single dad who's renovating the old house next to yours. The tension that settles between the two of you as you start helping him fix up his house soon becomes unbearable, but it's all one-sided anyway, right?
(Spoiler: wrong.)
genre. DILF AUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!, neighbors au, s2l, summer au, slight age gap (reader is 21 and hoon 26), reader is so down bad over sunghoon its actually crazy but also extremely relatable cause this is sunghoon we're talking about, fluff and smut, sex gets freakyyy ngl
word count. 12.9k
a/n. hey sisters had no time to write anything this week so i am coming back (everybody boos) with a repost yayyy!!! i actually love this story idkw i just find it fun so i hope you guys will enjoy rereading / reading it !!!! as always let me know ur thoughts.. even if they're just incomprehensible screaming (bad or good).. im happy w anything ok bye!!!
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You’ve always wondered about the ratio of cherry to pit. Such a big pit for so little flesh, isn’t it? Yet that’s never stopped you from biting into the small fruit, eating what you could and spitting out the unwanted part. You actually rather enjoy this whole process. Bite, eat, spit. You could repeat this with huge bowls of cherries at a time until they upset your stomach and you had to stop for your own good.
Bite, eat, spit is exactly what you’re doing when, with a trembling finger, you finally brave to open your banking app and check your balance. It’s the beginning of summer, and after two semesters of intense studying and too-much-coffee drinking, you think you deserve three long months of doing nothing but hanging out in your childhood bedroom and eating the food your parents buy and make. You’re especially looking forward to the vacation in Mexico you have planned with your friends at the end of August.
One look at your bank account and your dreams of white beaches and seas so blue you couldn’t tell them apart from the sky shatter around you, the sad, low numbers on the screen sneering at you mockingly. You were sure you had saved enough money from part-time jobs and generous relatives, but now you regret all of those night-outs and lazy takeaways. If you had cut down on those, maybe you wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of finding a summer job at the last minute, which you would definitely have to do if you wanted to eat something on that dear beach of yours and not just starve to death under the glaring sun.
That was it - tomorrow, you’d go and get a job. Today, however, you’d enjoy your last day of respite and eat some more cherries, or maybe make some jam and a pie so your parents wouldn’t chide you for eating them all, and then go pick some more from the three trees in your backyard. You’d sit outside, enjoying the warmth of the sun while you read or, if you couldn’t be asked, while you listened to the bustle of the old and worn-down house next door being renovated. You’re surprised someone had the courage to buy it and give it a new life, but you assume that’s the kind of courage that comes with having time and money. 
Yesterday night, you’d heard a little girl playing outside until her mom called her in saying it was time to go, so you made up a story of your neighbors being newlyweds that had decided they’d had enough of the city and wanted to raise their daughter in a calmer town far from busy streets and loud honks. You could bring them some cherries, maybe in jam or pie form, as a housewarming gift.
Unfortunately, the day passed and you were too busy doing nothing to actually get around to baking, so you decided to do nothing some more and then go to bed, needing rest before your big job hunt.
You’d gravely overestimated the amount of job opportunities in your small hometown, only receiving apologetic looks from the store owners as they tell you they don’t need any help, or worse, already have someone. Damn those 16-year-olds who only get summer jobs so they can blow their whole pay in a couple weeks before school starts again. You, on the other hand, need that money for important things, like sipping on a cocktail at a bar with a seaview.
The local hardware store next to the train station is your saving grace. It looks quite small from the outside, but once you step inside, rows of lamps and mirrors in all shapes and sizes along with all kinds of household needs welcome you, followed by a section for gardening and pet caretaking. The basement is where all the paints and brushes were, as well as the more technical (technical to you, at least) products, like bolts and tools or kitchen and bathroom appliances.
A lot of people undertake renovations in their homes during their free time in the summer, so it’s important for the store to have their experts helping out customers in their dedicated aisles rather than working behind the till and restocking the shelves, which is what you will be doing for the next two months. The pay is slightly above minimum wage and with twenty-one hours of work a week, you’ll earn more than enough to enjoy your vacation. You start tomorrow.
Your co-workers are happy to welcome a new face into their team. They’re nice even if they have the tendency to drone on about different types of tools and the importance of choosing the right brush for the surface you’re painting, which you don’t particularly care about, but you think you might as well learn as much as you can during your time here; it might always come in handy later.
As you expected, it isn’t the most stimulating job ever, but you aren’t bored out of your mind either. You make small talk with customers as they explain their purchases, some more defensively than others, even if you didn’t ask. You make sure to restock the shelves correctly and sometimes ask for help when you feel your arms giving out after hours of carrying heavy stuff. When no one’s in, you like to rearrange the cute bathroom decorations so that they make a little rainbow of toothbrush and soap holders.
You were daydreaming about what you would do with your friends in Mexico and all the cherries you could eat there when a man so handsome you thought he was a part of your dream walks in. He doesn’t notice (or maybe he just ignores it, you’re not sure) your gawking and smiles at you, saying “hello” before turning his attention to the map which details where everything is stored at the entrance of the shop. You manage a small “h-hello” back that probably doesn’t even reach his ears, and you curse yourself for doing a poor job of greeting a customer just because said customer looks like he’s been pushed from the heavens above onto this unworthy earth by the other angels who were jealous of his beauty. 
You stay put behind the counter the whole time he’s there to avoid the potential embarrassment of running into him in a random aisle and making a fool of yourself. There isn’t much to do anyway, so you rearrange the organic protein bars and chewing-gum at the counter and count all the money in the cash register to distract yourself. He doesn’t spend a very long time browsing and after twenty minutes, you see him approach with a cart full of the biggest cans of paint the store offers. It’s mostly white paint, but there are some browns and grays, and one of pink as well.
You thank God for those twenty minutes because they allowed you to get a hold of yourself so that you didn’t gape at him like a dead fish instead of scanning his articles, which is what you are very professionally and expertly doing. “That’s a lot of paint,” you comment lightheartedly, partly just to prove to yourself that you can also speak in front of this man.
“I know,” he chuckles, and it seems unfair that his voice should be just as attractive as his face. “The previous owners of the house I just bought had terrible taste in wallpaper and wall colors, so I have to repaint basically the whole house. Everything has to go, really. The floors, the furniture, the lights.”
“Sounds like you’re going to have a busy summer. That’ll be $132.76, please.”
“I’ll pay by card,” he says as he brings his wallet out from his back pocket and inserts his card into the reader, which allows you to look freely at his tanned arms and the veins that protrude here and there. He can’t be older than thirty, so there’s probably not that much of an age difference between the two of you, but damn does he look more mature in the sexiest way possible than all of the male college students you’re used to seeing on a daily basis. If anything, he reminds you of the hot young Linguistics professor your whole department likes to drool over. 
The beep of the payment being accepted snaps you out of your daze. “And yeah, it’ll sure be a busy summer. I’ll need a lot of stuff from here, so you might have to get used to seeing me around,” he says with a smile that makes your heart skip a beat. There’s no way this walking Greek god of a man is actually flirting with you, but the glint in his eyes tells you it wasn’t just an off-hand comment.
“I could get used to that,” you surprise yourself by replying confidently, your smile mirroring his as pretty dimples appear on each side of his face.
You hand him the receipt and notice his eyes flickering down to your name tag before trapping yours in his gaze once again. You don’t think you ever want to look away. “I’ll see you around, Y/N,” he says and walks out with his cart and his tons of paint before you can say anything, lest ask his name, except for “see you.”
You take a deep breath in and another out when he’s out of sight, trying to calm your racing heart. You can’t wait to rave to the girls’ group chat about this, but one of your coworkers calls you for help and you have to put the handsome stranger to the back of your mind for a while.
That weekend, your parents ask you to do something about the cherries slowly starting to spoil in the fridge, so you put on your headphones and listen to an audiobook for entertainment, then get to pitting. It feels wrong to listen to The Kiss Quotient and its many smut scenes when your parents are coming and going out of the room, but what they don’t know won’t kill them; you just try to keep your reactions to a minimum during the extra spicy scenes.
Pitting cherries is an arduous task that always takes longer than you think it will, but you never complain about it. You’ve found the perfect technique of cutting them in half around the pit, turning the small fruit without squeezing it, extracting the stone and making sure it doesn’t get confused and end up in the bowl with the pitted cherries, all without tiring your wrists after ten minutes. A surprise pit in a cherry pie can add to the charm of a homemade dessert, but you’d rather not have to spit out five of them while trying to eat one slice.
You prepare a crumbly dough to make two classic American-style pies and fill four jars with cherry jam that you cook while the doughs rest. It’s almost offensive how small the cherries become as they cook, the amount that fills those four jars having filled eight before, but you decide there’s no reason to take it personally since the cherries don’t do it on purpose, and put the jars away to cool down. You roll out the first rested dough and despair for a bit when it keeps on falling apart, but it just makes it more satisfying once you have it perfectly thinly rolled out and covering the tin. The second one is a bit nicer to you and you only have to try rolling it out twice. 
Two hours later, as the sun finally starts to relent and a cooler breeze flows through the air, the pies are all baked, cooled and ready to be eaten. You leave one for you and your parents to enjoy later, then head over to the next house to greet your new neighbors with the other pie. You knock and wait for a good thirty seconds before getting any sort of response, making you think no one’s in.
“Y/N?” a semi-familiar voice calls out, and your head whips in its direction. If this were a cartoon or a 2012 teen show, you’d probably drop the pie tin, but thankfully, your hands aren’t that sweaty, and the shock of the man from the other day at the store being your neighbor isn’t that great, because of course, of course he’s your neighbor. You’re Y/N, after all; the almighty gods above would never let you have a boring, uneventful summer. Of course the hot new man in town is your neighbor.
“Oh! Hi! Guess we’re neighbors. Ha,” you say with a clumsy smile, holding the tin over your forearm as your other hand shields your eyes from the sunlight so you can look at him without squinting your eyes.
“Neighbors?” he repeats as he joins you on the front porch, taking off his gloves dirtied by the mud and using the back of his hand to wipe off some sweat from his forehead. The sweat makes his hair stick to his face and there are small beads of it falling from his hairline down onto his white t-shirt. You detect the slightest of stubbles on his chin and upper lip, probably from not having shaved for just a day or two. He’s even tanner than when you saw him a few days ago, and his thick eyebrows form a straight line as he frowns in what you guess is tiredness and perhaps confusion from seeing you in regular clothes and holding a pie tin on his porch. For a second, you’re scared he might think you’re some kind of stalker, but you nod and tilt your head towards your house. 
“Yep. That one just over there behind you.”
He turns his upper body to take a look at your house and nods slowly as he turns back around, gaze finding yours again like the other day at the store. You have no idea who this man is - hell, you don’t even know his name - but good lord are you attracted to him, especially when he gives you that unreadable smile that shows off his dimples. 
“Huh. What a coincidence,” he says, and that could mean anything in the world, but you hope he means it in a good way. “I’m Sunghoon, by the way.” he adds, extending his hand for you to take, which you do, and the simple action of shaking his hand without eye contact ever breaking is enough to send shivers down your spine. Hopefully, this goes unnoticed by this Sunghoon.
A walking wet dream. That’s what this man is. He’s walked right out of your deepest Wattpad-induced fantasies and into the house next door. Probably doesn’t help that you’d been listening to literary porn just fifteen minutes prior. 
“Is that pie?” he asks as he releases your hand.
“It is, cherry pie I made myself with cherries from our backyard. A housewarming gift, if you will. Here,” you reply, offering him the tin.
He takes it from your hands, the tips of his fingers slightly grazing yours, on purpose or not, you’re not sure. He lifts some of the aluminum covering the pie and peeks underneath, then hums appreciatively. “Thanks, it looks really good. I’ve been living off of ready-meals and casseroles from the neighbors, so this’ll be really nice.”
“Well we’ve got tons of cherries, so feel free to ask whenever you want some,” you offer, and he nods. A small silence settles between the two of you and you’re about to excuse yourself so it doesn’t get awkward when he invites you in, asking if you’d like to have a piece with him.
“If you want to, I mean. I was gonna take a break anyway,” he says somewhat coyly, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. You’re surprised to see him being anything else other than confident and self-assured, but it only makes him look cuter in your eyes.
“Sure,” you accept with a smile, letting him lead you inside the house.
“Sorry, it smells like paint all over the house. That’s why I was outside, doing some gardening while I aired the house out,” he explains. “Let me just get some plates and a knife out. And something for us to drink. Do you want to drink something? I’ve got water, or some iced tea or lemonade. The grandma across the street made some for me,” he says all at once, and you suppress a giggle at his sudden nervous behavior.
“Sunghoon?”
“Yeah?” he responds almost immediately, turning to you just as you both reach the kitchen.
“Just water is fine.”
A shy smile makes his dimples appear once again as he nods. “Okay, sounds good.” You help him carry everything to the back porch and set down the glasses and a jug of water on a table with two chairs around it.
“The porches are the only parts I won’t have to fix up too much, for some reason.”
“You’re going to redo the whole house yourself?” you ask, surprised, as you pour two glasses of water and he serves you a slice of cherry pie (“there might be some stray cherry pits, so be careful,” you warn as he sets a slice on his plate).
“A lot of it, yeah, but I’ve also got some people to help out. My dad’s a carpenter so I know my way around these things, but I also know it’s better and faster to have more than one man on the job, so some guys he works with come a couple times a week.”
“Yeah, with the state this house is in, you’d need more than a summer if you did everything yourself,” you comment, and he chuckles, agreeing. “My friends and I used to make stories about how this place is haunted, you know,” you say jokingly.
“Please don’t jinx my house from the get-go,” he says, making you laugh.
“Sorry, sorry. It’ll be nice seeing it all fixed-up, actually.”
“Have you lived here long?” he asks, looking at you thoughtfully as he takes another bite of the pie. “This is really good, by the way.”
“Thanks. And yeah, my whole life. I go away when semester starts but come back for the holidays and the summer.”
“So you're a student?”
“Yeah, just at the state university a few hours away. Not too far away that it’s a hassle traveling back, but not too close that I go home every weekend. What about you, what do you do?”
You wait for his answer while he swallows his mouthful and take another bite yourself. “I teach,” he starts as he dabs the corners of his lips with a napkin. “Fifth graders, on the other side of town. I used to live in a small apartment near the school I work at but it’s nicer, having more space. I saved enough money to buy this house and fix it up, so here I am now,” he says, gesturing to the house and the garden with his arms. 
You notice his use of the first person pronoun when he talks about where he used to live and his house now, which makes you wonder if it’s just him, even though you were sure you heard a woman and a young girl’s voices the other day. Surely, if he wasn’t single, he wouldn’t have invited you in or given you flirtatious looks, right? Or were you reading totally wrong into this and he was just an exceptionally friendly person?
You put these questions to the side and continue chatting with Sunghoon, letting the subject of his marital status come up on its own during your conversation. And indeed, you get your answer when he tells you about the different parts of the house he plans on having, one of them being a bedroom for his daughter.
“Oh, so you have a daughter? How old is she?” you ask as you take a sip of water, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. Considering his age, you expect that his child will be one, two years old max, so his answer makes you almost choke on your drink.
“She’s turning eight this summer.”
“Eight?” you repeat as you set your glass down, looking at him wide-eyed. So much for nonchalance. “But you’re so-”
“Young? Yeah, I know,” he interrupts with a knowing smile, probably used to this kind of reaction. “I’m 26,” he adds, then watches as you do the simple math in your head. When you turn to him with a surprised look, he answers your question before you’ve even asked it. “Yep, I had her when I was 18.”
“Wow,” is all you can say. “Can I ask what happened?”
“Sure. I mean, it’s nothing extraordinary or anything. I was in my last year of high school, and I got my girlfriend at the time pregnant. We’d only been dating four months but her parents wouldn’t let her get an abortion. They’re really religious. They took care of our baby, with the help of my parents, while I went to community college and she retook senior year since she had to drop out halfway through the year. No, we’re not together anymore, if you’re wondering,” he says, catching you off guard, as if he’d read your thoughts. 
He chuckles before sighing and continues. “If none of this had happened, we’d probably have broken up before going off to college and proceeded to forget about each other. We started out living with her parents, then got that small apartment I told you about when she found a job. We’re not on bad terms by any means, but we’ve just not been in love since Chaeryeong turned 2, probably. We’ve been more roommates than a couple for the past six years. And you know, we kept on living together for Chaer mainly, but she’s found a new boyfriend and I wanted to have my own place. Which has led me here.”
You nod slowly, letting the whole story sink in. “You’re both handling this situation really maturely, it sounds like. I’ve heard of so many teenage parents fighting all the time and not taking care of their kids properly.”
“She’s already got a weird parental situation, it’s the least we can do for her to behave like adults, you know.”
“Right, of course,” you say, nodding again. Your hot new neighbor was actually a DILF, you realized a bit inappropriately, perhaps. Cherry on top.
He tells you a bit more about his daughter and you keep talking until your dad calls you, asking you why you’re not home at dinner time, and you only notice then how long you’ve been sitting there with Sunghoon, just talking. You tell him you feel bad for taking up so much of his time but he shakes your apologies off.
“It was my pleasure, really. And thanks again for the pie, I think Chaer will love it.”
He walks you to the front door and calls out your name after you’ve waved goodbye and started walking. You didn’t know you had been expecting him to do anything until you heard the hopeful tone in your own voice. “Yeah?”
“You any good with kids?” he asks, leaning against the doorway with crossed arms and a smirk that makes your heart flutter.
Although you’ve only got one older brother, you have younger cousins as well as older ones that have babies of their own, so you’re not a complete stranger to kids, but more importantly, you like them. They have the world to learn, but they say surprisingly smart things and have really cute faces.
“I’d say that I am, yeah,” you reply, a smile growing on your face, mirroring his expression.
“Good,” he says, and pauses a second for good measure. “I’ll see you later.”
“See you later, Sunghoon,” you say as you turn back and head to your house, letting him enjoy the view of you walking away. 
On the short way home, you realize that you completely have the hots for your neighbor, although you probably knew that before. Is it twisted that you like him more now that you know he’s got a kid? Probably a little bit, but you’re not going to fight it. He’s single, after all. And not even thirty. A five-year gap isn’t unheard of. 
Your parents ask you where you’ve been as you set the table and get ready for dinner. “Just over at our new neighbor’s house to give him some pie and say hi,” you say as you toss the salad in its bowl, spreading the dressing evenly. 
“Ooh, the neighbor,” your mother echoes knowingly, wiggling her eyebrows, and steals a leaf of lettuce when it falls from the bowl because of your vigorous tossing. “We should have him over at some point, welcome him into the neighborhood. I’ve seen him a bit, you know. Out painting on his front porch or when he was in his garden the same time as me. He’s a very attractive young man,” she says, lowering her voice so your dad doesn’t hear even though he’s outside grilling the meat. “Do you know how old he is? Looks a bit young for a homeowner to me, but who knows what young people are up to these days.
“He’s twenty-six, and he’s saved a lot of money. Plus, I don’t think that house was very expensive. From what he’s told me, the renovations will basically cost as much as the house itself. He’s also got a kid.”
“Aw, must be a cute baby,” she says as your father walks in, carrying a tray of steaming barbecued steaks and potatoes.
“She’s eight,” you say bluntly, causing them both to look at you with wide eyes.
“Oh, right, then. Happens,” your mother says, bringing her glass of water to her lips and taking a sip from it. “Is he still with the mother?”
“They broke up a while ago, but they’re on good terms,” you say, and your mom nods slowly at the information.
“So, he’s single, huh?” she says, trying to hide her smile, earning herself a groan from your dad and a chuckle from you. 
“C’mon, mom!”
“What? You can’t deny that he’s attractive, and he’s single. Plus, you two must get along well if you spent a couple hours talking. Sure, he’s got a kid, but you love those, don’t you?”
“Mom, you of all people would know kids aren’t pets. Dating someone with an eight-year-old isn’t the same as dating someone with a cat.
“No one’s asking you to be that girl’s mom,” she says, dishing out some meat for the three of you. “I’d go get that man, if I were you.”
Your dad shakes his head and you eat your food as you listen to them bickering with a smile. You think about what your mother said - should you go and get Sunghoon? Your heart says yes, but your brain is a bit more reluctant. Another part of your body, lower down there, is screaming ‘yes’ at you.
He does live right by, after all.
That night, you FaceTime your roommate and best friend from college and bring her up to date about ‘the hot man from the store the other day.’ She paints her toenails but listens intently as she always does when you talk about boys, humming and chuckling here and there.
“God, Y/N, I didn’t know you had daddy issues, of all things.”
You gasp fake-dramatically. “Excuse me, I do not! I was attracted to him before I knew he was a dad, I’ll let you know.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let me know when you guys actually hook up, I’m curious whether older men are actually better,” she says, making you scoff.
“I hope he is. I’m very much tired of those boys that don’t know where the clit is and use too much tongue.”
“You know, when I complain to my mom about guys, she always tells me to wait it out a few years. She says they get more mature and, well, she didn’t say that outright, but she very heavily implied that the sex is much, much better. Kinda gross hearing it from her, but it’s good information.”
You hum. “Well, he’s not that much older… But let’s hope that it still makes a difference,” you say, and then move on to another topic. 
One thing that eating cherries has taught you is that if you want to enjoy eating the sweet flesh, you’ll need to deal with the pit as well. Ever the grand philosopher, you realized soon enough that this was applicable to real life and not just your favorite fruit. Wanna get a good grade on your test? Gotta study for it. Wanna go on holiday to Mexico? Gotta find a summer job and earn money.
Wanna make your way to Sunghoon’s bed? Gotta seduce him.
Over the following days, you stand behind the counter at the hardware store, elbow perched on the hard surface, head resting on your palm and vision fuzzy as you daydream about your next encounter with Sunghoon. More often than not, a customer will clear their throat to awkwardly let you know of their presence and you’ll have to exchange your imagined dialogue with Sunghoon for a quick apology and some pleasantries; more often than not, a coworker will call out your name for some help just as you get to the juicy part of your reverie. In those moments, you always feel like you’ve been caught red-handed watching softcore porn, even if no one knows the last thing about what goes on in your head, nor do they care. 
Much like the first time he walked into the store, when he does again on a Thursday morning, you think your daydreams have just gone too far and you’re now hallucinating. But, lo and behold, this is the true Park Sunghoon in the flesh, and he smiles and waves at you as he strides in before disappearing behind one of the many aisles.
You spend the next fifteen minutes going over witty conversation starters that will surely make him fall for you, only for you to stutter out a “h-hi, Sunghoon,” when he finally reaches the counter.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he jokes, and you laugh a bit too hard for a comment that isn’t that funny.
“How are the renovations going?” you ask as you scan his articles - some more paint and brushes, lots of tile glue, a bunch of nails and two different sizes of turnscrews. He frowns in concentration at the snacks next to the counter until he caves in and gets a chocolate protein bar that’s more sugar than protein. 
“Pretty okay,” he starts. “I’m in a bit of a rush, cause Chaer is already coming in two weeks and I need to have finished at least the interior by that time. My dad’s friends helped me get the roof done, so that’s good, but now they’re all busy with other sites so it's just me. Right now I’m redoing the tiles in the bathrooms. You need so much damn glue,” he says with a chuckle.
You think for a second, then timidly offer, “I could help out, you know. If you needed me to.” 
He looks at you with raised eyebrows, halfway through getting his card out of his wallet. “Really?”
“I mean, I don’t have much experience with this kinda stuff, but I’ve picked up a few things here and there from working here. If it saves you time, I could do the easy things. This job isn’t particularly physically demanding so I’ve still got energy at the end of the day. That’s $78.96, please.”
A small smile appears on his face as he inserts his card into the reader. He punches in his code and then returns your gaze. “That could be nice, actually.”
And that’s how you find yourself over at Sunghoon’s house in denim shorts and your dad’s old t-shirts almost everyday for the next two weeks, helping him fix up the old two-storey home. He measures out the perfect length for wood planks or marble tiles that you assist him in fastening to the floors of different rooms and he fixes holes in walls that you paint over afterwards. Sometimes on your breaks, you share a bowl of cherries that you brought from your garden. (One morning, you tried to make cherry juice out of them, but when after almost two hours of pitting the liquid barely filled a glass, you decided that it was too much effort and that you’d keep on just eating them and baking the occasional pie.) You asked him to tell you what each of the rooms upstairs would be and you realized that the window of his room faced yours directly. The blinds were down as they had always been, so you hadn’t known what the room would be.
“I’ve been sleeping on the couch since I haven’t gotten around to fixing up this room yet. Guess I should get to it, though,” he says, giving you a look that blurs the meaning of his words so that you’re not sure what he’s implying, which happens a bit too often with Sunghoon.
And you’d think that spending the better part of two weeks with the current man of your dreams would be amazing, right? 
Wrong. It’s unbearable.
Maybe that’s exaggerating it - it’s mostly fun, and sometimes unbearable. Usually, you’re an avid fan of sexual tension, especially with attractive men like Sunghoon. Lingering gazes, eye contacts when there shouldn’t be any, remarks with a deeper meaning that they let on, barely-there touches on the back of your hand or on your waist that manage to take your breath away. These are all very fine things that keep your heart bouncing and a blush on your cheeks, but they are supposed to amount to something more in the end. Maybe you’re impatient, but after two weeks of sending sex through your eyes to Sunghoon, you get the feeling that he doesn’t reciprocate your desire. One afternoon, you’d made sure to go and sunbathe in your bikini at the exact moment he was doing some work outside, and even then, he merely gave your body a one-over and disappeared a few minutes later inside his house. When he came back about ten minutes later, he could still barely look at you.
At the same time, there’s no way he doesn’t know what he’s doing when he stands close behind you, letting you feel the warmth of his chest against your back, big, rough hands enveloping yours as he demonstrates how to cut a plank of wood with the machine. There’s no way the way he smirks when the action turns you into a stammering mess is innocent, either.
Yet nothing happens. The tension is thick enough to be cut with a knife, but maybe Sunghoon hasn’t bought cutlery yet. The air is already heavy from the heat and the relentlessness of the sun, but this thing between you and him makes it almost suffocating, in somehow the best yet worst way possible. You’re this close to simply throwing your naked body at him, and it doesn’t help that you see his flexing, working muscles and beads of sweat on his hairline everyday. On the days he wears shorts, which is most days, all you can think of is getting off on his thick thighs, of his hands holding you tightly by the waist, of the way he’d look at you, eyes clouded over, of the words he’d whisper in your-
Your phone buzzes, interrupting you in your horny downward spiral. It’s your dear mother telling you to come home for dinner. As you pick up your phone, a second buzz. Ask Sunghoon if he wants to eat with us. 
You find him in his bedroom, adding the last touches to the walls. “I think I’ll be able to sleep here starting tomorrow night. I just need to go buy a bed,” he says when he sees your figure standing in the doorway.
“We can go together if you want,” you blurt before you can stop yourself. Hoping it’ll make you seem less weird, you add, “I’ve got really good taste in furniture.”
“Is that so?” he questions, turning to you with a smile. “I’d appreciate the second pair of eyes, actually. There’s a lot of things I need to get.”
“Yeah, I didn’t wanna comment on it, but I think you’ll end up needing more than a couch, a plastic dining table and two chairs,” you tease, making him roll his eyes lightheartedly. “We can go to that huge second-hand store they have just outside of town. You’ll be surprised how good - and cheap - the furniture is there.”
“Sounds good,” he nods, and checks his watch. “Are you going home?”
“I am. My mom’s invited you over for dinner, if you’d like,” you say, tilting your head at him.
He raises his eyebrows in delighted surprise. “I’d love to. Just need to shower first.”
“That’s fine. I’ll go home, just come over whenever you’re ready.” You exchange quick see you laters and you head home, taking a shower yourself and making sure to use your best-smelling body lotion.
Sunghoon arrives half an hour later with a bouquet of roses in his hands and an award-winning smile on his face. You let him in and he greets your parents, offering your mother the bouquet. “Sorry I took so much time getting here, I wanted to pick these out as a thank you.”
You can tell your mother is pleased to the heavens as she waves him off, leading him inside your house. “That’s awfully nice of you, Mr Park-”
“Call me Sunghoon, please,” he says with a warm smile.
“Right, Sunghoon. And no worries, you’re just on time. Please, sit.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Oh, no, you’re working all day fixing up that house, just sit and relax. We’re very happy to have you over, aren’t we?” your mother says, sending a very obvious smile your way, which makes you furrow your eyebrows and shake your head lightly at her, silently telling her to shut up. Sunghoon chuckles at the exchange but says nothing and you want to bury yourself and your mother ten feet underground.
Sunghoon sits across from you at the dinner table, which allows you to stare unabashedly at him as he works his charm on your parents. He’s the neighbor, so technically, he’s not a boyfriend you brought home to meet them, but still, you can’t help but compare him to those few boys that you did bring home. None of them were a disaster, but none of them went as smoothly as this, either. There were always some awkward silences and dry chuckles with your past boyfriends, but Sunghoon clearly knows how to make parents happy. Maybe because he lived with his ex’s parents for so long, or maybe because he’s a parent himself. Either way, it only adds to your desire to take all of his clothes and let him rail you into next week. Too bad he clearly doesn’t feel the same way, you remind yourself with an audible sigh, which makes him look curiously at you, but you brush it off with a smile.
You watch as he accepts a beer, compliments the food and the house, talks football with your dad, accepts another beer, and shares teaching anecdotes with your mom, who herself is an elementary school teacher. You jump in every now and then when you have something witty to add or someone asks your opinion on something, but most of the time, you sit back and enjoy, happy that everything is going well. 
You bring out your infamous cherry pie that you’d baked the previous day along with some vanilla ice cream for dessert, and smile when Sunghoon tells you how much he’d been waiting to have some of it again, trying not to blush as his gaze stays focused on yours for a second too long. Thankfully, your parents don’t notice, too busy cutting themselves a slice. 
He stays for another hour or so, until the sun has set and the streetlamps and the moonlight are the only things keeping the world visible. Your mom forces him to accept tupperwares full of leftovers from the night and makes him promise to come back with his daughter. Sneakily, she tells you to help him carry the tupperwares home even though he’s more than able to do it himself, then hugs him goodbye, hurrying you out of the door.
Sunghoon hasn’t yet changed the lightbulbs to more efficient ones, so his kitchen bathes in the faint glow of the overhead lighting as you put away the leftovers in his fridge. He stands a bit to your right close behind you, closer than needed to simply hand you the tupperwares he was holding. When everything is stored, you turn around, but you’re trapped between his body and his arm that holds the fridge door open. With his free hand, he takes you by the waist and pulls you gently towards him. “Careful,” he says so quietly, it’s almost a whisper, and closes the fridge door behind you. 
He’s never been this forward with you, and even though you’ve fantasized many times about this exact moment, now that it’s really happening, you don’t know what to do except to search for an explanation in his eyes. His eyes that are looking right into yours and are a bit clouded over, from the alcohol or the proximity between the two of you or both, you don’t know, but that also have the twinkle of a smile in them. 
His lips are close enough to kiss, you think, and as if on cue, his gaze drifts down to your slightly parted lips. “You’re very pretty, Y/N,” he says, before sealing your lips with his own. You respond immediately to his kiss - you’ve thought too much about it to stand there and do nothing - but it’s all so slow and so soft that you’re not sure if it’s actually happening, so dreamlike it all feels.
You’re called back to reality when his other hand finds your waist, your own hands coming up to his shoulders before one of them snakes its way to the nape of his neck, tugging lightly at his hair. This seems to change something in Sunghoon, who all of a sudden tightens his hold on your waist, his arms wrapping around it to bring you closer to him. His kiss gets faster and deeper too, and, to your surprise but not your distaste, a bit desperate. You’re happy if you have on him half of the power he has on you. You taste sweet vanilla ice cream and tangy beer on his tongue, and it’s not at all unpleasant. It makes you want to eat cherries together so you can then taste them in his kiss. 
A lustful sigh escapes your lips and then the warmth disappears all at once. Sunghoon looks at you like you just woke him up from a deep slumber and takes a step back away from you. You call out for him worriedly and the sound of his name seems to make him think he did something terribly wrong.
“I-I’m sorry, Y/N, I don’t know what came over me. We shouldn’t do this, it’s not- I shouldn’t have done that,” he sighs, looking defeatedly at the ground.
“Why?” you ask quietly, almost inaudible.
“You should go home,” he snaps, then closes his eyes as if in pain, cringing at his harsh tone. “I’m sorry. I think you should go home, it’s getting late,” he repeats, softer this time, but the words still sting.
“O-okay,” you say to the floor, already feeling tears well up in your eyes. You feel like you just got rejected by your high school crush, and the humiliation makes you want to crawl into a hole and die. 
Sunghoon sighs again. “I’ll let you know tomorrow about the furniture shopping, yeah? Chaeryeong is coming in the morning so we can go with her.”
“O-okay,” you repeat, surprised he still wants to do that with you. “Good night, Sunghoon,” you say without looking at him and scurry out of his house.
“Good night, Y/N,” Sunghoon answers to the emptiness after you’ve left, touching his lips with the tips of his fingers and feeling the ghost of your kiss there.
Truth be told, you haven’t always loved cherries. Because of a heinous lie your older brother had made you believe when you were just six years old, you hadn’t eaten cherries for two summers in a row. It was the summer your parents had finally allowed you to eat cherries as they came from the trees in your backyard - beforehand, they’d been too scared that you’d choke on the pit or swallow it unknowingly, and had always prepared purées or other forms that cherries can take for you to eat, so to be finally handed the small fruit and told “go ahead, try it,” felt like an honor. 
A simple “don’t forget to spit out the pit” from your mother had sufficed for you to be careful, and yet, your brother had thought a fear tactic would be more effective. “If you swallow it, a tree will grow inside your belly and make you puke out cherries,” he’d lied when it was just the two of you at the outdoor table. 
“Really?” you asked him in disbelief, horror written all over your face as you looked at the seemingly harmless yet deadly fruit in your hand. You’d already eaten two and were in the middle of eating a third; your brother nodding ‘yes’ in response was all it took for you to spit out the cherry furiously and immediately start sobbing, afraid you’d swallowed one even though all three pits were right there on the table, a guarantee that no unwanted flora would grow inside of you. 
Your mother rushed outside at the sound of your wailing and quickly put two and two together when she saw your brother laughing uncontrollably while you hid your face in your hands, desolately imagining your future as a walking cherry tree. She held you tight in her arms as she told your brother off and reassured you that he was just playing a stupid prank on you. Still, the simple thought of swallowing a pit had terrified you and you were unable to eat cherries for the remainder of the summer and the one after that.
This is the story you tell Chaeryeong and her dad as the three of you sit outside together, making them laugh - although, a few minutes later, when Sunghoon is gone to the bathroom away, Chaer leans over the table and whispers, “It’s not true, is it?” so you reassure her that you’ve eaten cherries your whole life and have never had one single root take life in your tummy. 
It’s been a bit over a week after you shared that kiss in his kitchen, and the awkward atmosphere is just starting to fade. You’re glad he didn’t ignore you after that night, even if pretending nothing happened when both of you are very aware that something did happen is only the slightly better alternative. It’s a refreshing change from boys that sleep with you and then act like you don’t exist, for sure.
The kiss hasn’t done anything to burst the tension; if anything, it’s made it even more electric. You catch him looking at your lips more than once and you wonder why he still acts the same way as before when he’s made it very clear he didn’t think kissing you was a good idea. Catching him shirtless one night in his bedroom doesn’t help, and neither does him catching you staring at him - you’d quickly shut the curtains, but it was too late, and he’d seen you ogling his toned chest and abs.
At least, the fact that Chaeryeong is here forces a bubbly atmosphere upon you, and you hope you’re not crazy when you notice him fondly looking at the both of you interacting. Chaer is an outgoing little girl and seems to have liked you as soon as you complimented the toy puppy in her hand, saying you used to have the same and it was your favorite.
The day you went food shopping was practically hell to get through. One evening, you were holding onto Sunghoon for dear life, finally kissing him, and the next afternoon, you were browsing through the endless aisles of your local IKEA, holding his daughter’s hand and pretending like you hadn’t kissed her daddy.
When it got to the bedroom part of the store, you and Chaer decided to try all the mattresses and find the most comfortable one. You usually were never one for seating and laying on random beds in stores, but there was a kid with you, so you were sure it’d be fine. When you found the one you liked most, you looked up at Sunghoon from your position and said, “This one’s pretty good, Sunghoon.” His immediately reddening cheeks told you everything you needed to know and you quickly sat up, clearing your throat. He tested the mattress by pushing his palm against it and muttered a “yeah, it’s pretty good” before scribbling down the number of the mattress onto the small sheet of paper customers use to remember which products they wanted.
Of course, now that Chaer is with him and most of the work in the house is done, save for some minor things that Sunghoon can finish up on his own, you spend a lot less time together. You hate that you miss him so much. You miss the way he makes you feel, like your whole body is on fire with just one look or one touch, the way his stupid jokes make you laugh or how endeared he looks when he talks about his daughter. Seeing him with her only adds to your stupid crush - he’s doting, protective and caring, makes sure she has everything to be happy and manages to treat her at once like the kid that she is but also like a human that has opinions and feelings. He’s a really good dad, and that does nothing whatsoever to stop your DILF fantasies, although now, it’s really Sunghoon that you want, and the fact that he’s a dad isn’t a dealbreaker, it just makes him that much better.
You hate that you miss him, and yet being with him is somehow worse, because you can’t do any of the things you want to do. You fall asleep one two many nights dreaming about his lips and how nice it’d be to feel them again - on your lips, on your neck, everywhere. You want to feel him everywhere, and this longing lust is starting to drive you crazy. You’d never wanted anyone this much.
He invites you over for dinner one night, and the look he gives you when he opens the door sends a shiver right down your spine. “Hi, Y/N.” 
“Hi, Sunghoon.”
He leads you into the kitchen with a hand on your waist, even though you’ve been in his house many times before and need no assistance getting there. A small, horny voice at the back of your head tells you that tonight may be the night, but you quickly shut it down, not wanting to get your hopes up all on your own.
Sunghoon serves you a glass of red wine, and you ask him what the occasion is. “Just to celebrate the house being almost done,” he answers with a smile.
Dinner would have gone as usual if Sunghoon wasn’t practically staring you down the whole time, eyes full of something you can’t quite put your finger on and that drives you crazy. His gaze lingers on you every time you speak, and he punctuates the syllables of your name like he’s trying to get a feel for them on his tongue.
Your heart is pounding in your chest when the clock strikes nine p.m. and it’s time for Chaeryeong to go to bed - you don’t know if you’ll be able to handle being alone with Sunghoon, and you might have to make a run for it, Cinderella-style. 
Chaer goes to the bathroom to wash up and change into her pajamas, and when she comes back, she asks - no, demands - that you’re the one who tucks her in, and who are you to say no to the cutest little girl on Earth? She holds you by the pinky as she drags you up the stairs to her room then buries herself in her covers, tapping on the bed next to her body for you to sit there. “Okay, now we can talk without Dad around,” she says all business-like.
She tells you about the boys at her school and the birthday party she went to last week and the latest drama with her friends. The both of you are too busy chatting and giggling to hear footsteps coming up the stairs and stopping at her door, hiding behind the wall. After ten minutes, she yawns loudly and says, “Can you call Dad? I think he’ll be sad if he doesn’t wish me good night.”
“Of course,” you reply and kiss her on the forehead, wishing her a good night yourself. You’re only half-surprised to find Sunghoon at the doorway, waiting for his cue.
“Wait up for me, yeah? I’ll just be a minute,” he says, that smile still on his lips, that smile that keeps you hoping.
“Okay,” you whisper, and head downstairs, nervously taking a sip from your wine glass as you wait for him on the living room couch.
He is indeed back in a very short time, too short a time for your nerves to settle, so when he sits down close to you on the couch, body turned towards yours, you can feel your heart in your throat. He traces the rim of his glass with the tip of his pointer finger and you both watch the slow movement for a bit, a heavy silence hanging over both of your heads. You wait for him to talk because you’re too scared of what you might say if you start the conversation.
“Y/N, I’ve been thinking,” he starts shakily, “about um, our kiss, the other day-”
“Oh, we don’t need to talk about that,” you quickly interrupt, waving your hand in dismissal at him. “You made it clear you didn’t like it-”
“No, that’s the thing-”
“And that you thought it was a bad idea-”
“No, just listen-”
“So let’s just forget about it, and-”
“Y/N,” Sunghoon says in a stern voice, raising his tone just enough to make you stop in your rambling.
“Yeah?” you look up at him, eyes wide open. Expecting, as always.
“I haven’t once stopped thinking about that kiss,” he says, sounding out-of-breath. “I handled it awfully, and I’m so sorry that I made you feel like I didn’t like it, because, God, I liked it. A lot,” he chuckles. “Maybe even too much.”
There they are, the words you’ve been dying to hear. Yet all you can say is a stupid “Oh.”
“I just… I was tipsy, and Chaeryeong was coming the next morning, and I panicked. I didn’t know what to do for the rest of the week, and you didn’t say anything, so I didn’t, either. But I can’t pretend like it isn’t there.”
“Like what isn’t there?” you echo, voice almost low as a whisper.
“You know… this,” he replies, voice as low as yours. Slowly, one of his hands comes up to trace your jawline. You release a shaky breath as you set your wine glass on the coffee table and rest your hand on his knee.
“Are you sure about this? ‘Cause if you tell me that you want me… then I’ll be all yours, Sunghoon,” you murmur, hands slowly sliding up his thigh. He takes you by the wrist and puts your hand right on top of his already growing erection, letting you know exactly how he feels about you.
“God, can’t you see what you do to me? I want you so bad, Y/N,” he almost growls, and with that, his lips are on yours, trapping you into a kiss far hungrier and more ferocious than the previous kiss, your mutual intentions finally laid out in front of you for you both to see.
Sunghoon wastes no time as he grabs you by the waist and brings you to his lap, sitting you on top of his crotch so that you can feel his hardening cock against your core. The kiss turns desperate in mere seconds, and you’re relieved to see that Sunghoon seems to have been waiting for this as long and with as much ardor as you have. Your hands are fisting his hair, tugging almost harshly, while his hands roam the expanse of your back until they settle on your ass, grabbing at it to press you closer to him. You can’t stop yourself from moaning into his mouth when his erection rubs over your core in just the right way, and he takes that opportunity to add tongue to the kiss, deepening it.
You start to grind yourself against him, which he helps you do by slightly rutting his hips into yours and bringing your ass closer at every movement. Quickly, you fall into a rhythm so perfect and that feels so good, you think you might explode right then and there. Forget riding his thigh, this is infinitely better.
Needing to catch your breath, you pull away from the kiss, but your lips find his jaw immediately and you start pressing wet, needy kisses there and down his neck, sucking in some spots so that light bruises appear. “Fuck, Y/N, that feels so nice,” he breathes, eyes shut closed. His scent drives you crazy, and his small praise makes you double down on your actions, almost biting the soft skin of his neck.
As you continue kissing him there, occasionally returning to his lips for more, his hands roam your thighs and then up your back, snaking themselves under your t-shirt and finding the clasp of your bra, quickly doing away with it. He pulls away just so he can help you out of your top and takes your bra off of you, hands caressing your sides as he admires your half-naked body in all its glory. You take his hands and bring them to your chest, resting your hands on top of his as you continue grinding onto him and let him play with your boobs. “You’re so fucking hot,” he practically moans, making you chuckle. You reach for the hem of his t-shirt, because it’s only fair that you get to see him too, and you bite back a moan when he uses the absence of your hands on his to pinch your nipples lightly, then takes one in his mouth, catching you off-guard. You forget all about your plan of undressing him as his tongue flicks at the perked bud, your hands finding his hair again as you moan unabashedly. 
“S-Sunghoon,” you breathe, the combined feelings of his now fully hard cock pressing against your clothed but soaking cunt and of his warm mouth around your nipples really getting to your head and making you see stars, so that all you can say is his name. “Please,” you beg, you’re not sure what for. Mercy, perhaps. Or release.
“Please what, baby?” he asks, and the nickname goes straight to your core.
“I don’t- just, please, Sunghoon, please,” you say incoherently, making him chuckle.
“Okay,” he says as if he can read your mind, and you think he actually does when he lays you down on the couch, fingers finding the zipper of your shorts. He unbuttons them and slides them down your legs along with your soaked panties. He makes sure they’re fully off of your body before running his palms up both of your legs, from your ankles to your hips.
“Don’t tease, please,” you plead, too desperate for him to take his time.
“As you wish, princess,” he smirks, and brings a finger to your folds, sliding it down to gather some slick before pushing it inside your hole. Your back arches as an instant response to his touch and you let out a small whine, already craving for more. “Fuck, so wet, and all for me, yeah?” he questions, his eyes not once leaving your glistening pussy.
“Yes,” you breathe out, mind too fuzzy to produce a longer sentence.
“That’s a good girl,” he coos, and adds another finger, pushing all three of his knuckles in and massaging your sweet spot as soon as he finds it. When he’s found a rhythm for his motions, he finally looks up at you and curses himself for not having watched your face earlier. Head tilted back in pleasure, mouth agape as your breathing gets more and more irregular and eyebrows scrunched together, you look like the definition of sex, and it takes everything in Sunghoon to not start touching himself.
He forces himself to look away from you only to focus back on your pussy and notices your swollen clit that is begging for attention. He licks it tentatively, and when your back arches at the feeling of his tongue on you, he dives in completely, licking a stripe up your folds before wrapping his lips around the bud and sucking at it like he did with your nipples earlier. The pace at which his fingers are pumping out of you quickens and you’re pulling so hard at his hair, you think you might rip some strands off. You feel yourself getting close, and you’re reminded of all those frustrating encounters with college boys where they stopped right before you came, so you can’t stop yourself as you desperately chant “oh my God please don’t stop please don’t stop,” not even noticing the way you’re holding his head down against your clit and bucking your hips into his face.
Your orgasm hits you like a truck - this is probably the first one you’ve received from someone other than your own hand or your vibrator in the past year and a half. It takes your breath away, and you’re left gasping for air for a good thirty seconds, your mind reeling from the intensity of such pleasure. When you calm down, you lift your head to look at Sunghoon who’s already watching you with a grin on his face, your slick coating his chin and mouth.
You plop your head back down with a groan when realization hits you. “I’m sor-”
“Don’t even finish that sentence,” Sunghoon commands, hands rubbing your still-trembling thighs. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he marvels, and you can’t help but giggle.
“Really?”
“Really.”
After another couple of seconds, you sit up on the couch and send Sunghoon a mischievous look. My turn, you think, and if his smile is any indicator then he seems to have understood. “Let me thank you,” you say, gesturing at him to sit up himself as you lower yourself to your knees on the couch in front of him.
You look up at him from between his thighs then unclasp his belt and undo his jeans. He lets out a shaky breath and says, “You don’t need to do this, you know-”
“Don’t be a gentleman, Sunghoon. I want to do this and I know you want it too. It’s pretty obvious,” you tease as you run your hand over his erection, watching in delight as his eyebrows furrow and his eyes close. “Now help me get these off of you.” He nods and raises his hips so you can take his jeans and underwear off, imitating his actions from before as you take your time to get them over his ankles and caressing his legs until they reach his crotch, watching as he takes his t-shirt off as well so that you can finally see him entirely. You’d caught glimpse of him shirtless before as he worked in his garden, but the sight still manages to take your breath away. Taut muscles and sun-tanned skin, laid bare right before you. This is what they mean by sculpted like a Greek god, you think.
You haven’t done anything, yet his head is already laid back against the top of the couch, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he gulps in expectation and chest rising visibly at every intake of breath. You must’ve saved a thousand souls in your previous life to be deserving of such an image.
You spit in your palm before taking him, starting out by slowly moving your hand up and down his shaft, then rubbing small circles against his tip, the small moan-like sighs that leave his lips letting you know you’re doing a good job. You gather some saliva in your mouth and spit on his length to add some lubricant and smirk when he lets out a low fuck. You bring your head closer and lick his balls, taking one at a time in your mouth and sucking very gently, making the volume of his moans increase. “Just like- fuck, just like that, Y/N.”
You then lick a long stripe up his cock and swirl your tongue around his tip when you reach it, humming at the taste of precum there. Sunghoon gathers your hair in a makeshift ponytail so it doesn’t get in your way, and finally looks down at you, blown away by the beautiful sight of your flushed cheeks and your mouth around his cock. He groans when you take him deeper and unconsciously bucks his hips into your throat, making you gag around him. He loves that feeling but doesn’t want to hurt you so he grabs your face and makes you look up at him, lust and worry written all over his face as he apologizes, but you quickly stop him. “It’s okay, I like it. You can do it again,” you say, and smile before wrapping your lips around him once more.
“Fuck, are you sure?” he asks and you hum, sending vibrations all over his body.
“God, o-okay,” he says, in disbelief that you’re okay with him practically fucking your throat and even liking it. And you do like it - you love letting him use your mouth to get off, just like you had earlier with him. He must have amazing core strength because he’s able to buck his hips into your mouth rapidly as he holds your head tight in his hands. The way you keep coming back for more every time he lets you breathe is enough to drive him crazy, but after a couple minutes, he stops you from taking him in your mouth again.
“I can’t- I don’t wanna cum like this,” he breathes, looking just as fucked-out as you do.
“Where, then?” you ask, kissing him all over his thighs as he trails his fingers through your hair. “Inside?”
He groans at the offer but shakes his head, eyes shut as if trying to calm himself down. “I haven’t got any condoms.”
“I’m on the pill,” you tell him, still pressing kisses on his warm skin. You’re far too desperate to feel him inside you to let a lack of condom stop you, especially when you don’t even need one.
He lets out an umpteenth shaky breath and makes you look up at him. “Are you sure?”
“Sunghoon,” you say, looking him dead in the eyes, “I’ve never been more sure of anything.” You’re relieved when he smiles and nods, bending down to trap your lips in a heated kiss for good measure. Something about being in this position, kneeling in front of his spread thighs and having to look up at him, turns you on even more.
“Okay, then,” he says, still smiling as he pulls away, holding you gently by the chin. “I don’t think I’ll be able to last long, and I want to feel you cum around me. So, tell me, what’s your favorite position, princess?”
The question takes you aback but you answer it anyway, looking at the ground. “Reverse cowgirl…” you admit shyly, a small smile spreading on your lips.
“Reverse cowgirl, huh?” Sunghoon repeats, and you don’t need to look at him to know he’s smirking. “Come here, then,” he says, and helps you up, making you turn around so your back faces him and seats you down on top of him, keeping your hips raised. He takes his cock inside his hands, pumps it a few more times before guiding it to your entrance, pressing kisses to your shoulders and nape to make you relax. 
You moan at the simple feeling of his tip teasing your entrance and Sunghoon whispers “I know, baby” against your skin. “Sit down for me,” he commands gently, and you oblige, lowering your hips slowly to feel all of him stretching you out, the both of you moaning in synchronization when he bottoms out.
Sunghoon wraps an arm around your middle and pulls you onto him so that your back rests against his chest and you can let your head hang back next to his. “Let me do all the work, yeah?” he murmurs into your ear, and you hum in response. He doesn’t move for a bit, roaming his large hands all over your body until he feels your walls relax around him. One of his hands finds your breasts, playing with each nipple in turn, while the other finds your clit. It’s all so much but so good that you’re already a moaning mess before he’s even started moving. “Ready?” he asks, but you’re too far gone to answer.
His pace starts out slow, but you’re impatient and whine as you try to move your hips against his to go faster, which makes him tut. “I told you I’d do the work, didn’t I?” he asks, pinching one of your nipples in reprimand. “So be good for me and stay still, Y/N. I promise I’ll make you feel good.” You whine again but stop moving, heeding his words.
“Perfect,” he whispers and kisses your neck before picking up the pace, shushing you when your moans get too loud.
“I’m sorry, just feels too good,” you manage to let out.
“I know, but you need to stay quiet, baby,” he says, yet gets rougher with his thrusts, which does not help in the slightest. His hand that was on your breasts comes up to cover your mouth, but he quickly decides to make you suck on two of his fingers instead, muffling your moans a bit.
His fingers on your clit haven’t relented this whole time and after just a few minutes, you feel that familiar knot tying itself again in your stomach and you know you’re mere moments away from it coming undone. Judging by his rapid but clumsy thrusts, Sunghoon must be close too. He pounds into you like you’ve been wanting him to ever since you first set eyes on him as he entered the hardware store, hitting your g-spot over and over again. Tears roll down your cheeks and you whimper around his fingers, biting down on them as your second orgasm hits you.
You’re practically sobbing as he helps you ride out your high, his movements sending your body into pleasant overstimulation until he reaches his high too, the feeling of your pussy clenching tightly around him pushing him over the edge. Ropes of his semen paint your walls white, and there’s enough of it for him to become a father of two. You whine as he pulls away, and feel his cum slipping out of you and onto the couch underneath you. Before you can catch your breath, he asks, “Baby, can I do something very dirty?” and you nod without thinking much. This man could do anything he wanted to you, and you’d thank him for it.
He settles you back down onto the couch, kneels on the floor, head level with your core, and sticks his tongue inside your hole, making you yelp in surprise and overstimulation. You don’t understand what he’s doing until he comes back up and makes you open your mouth with his thumb, then spits inside it, telling you to swallow. You do as he says and taste his cum, laughing in disbelief at what he just did - and at how much you liked it. “Fuck,” you giggle.
“Was that too much?” 
“God, no,” you say, and he smiles. You open your arms, gesturing for him to get back on the couch. He rests his head between your breasts, the both of you sighing in contentment as he rubs small circles on your belly and you graze your fingers through his hair. He’s so silent that you think he’s fallen asleep, but he speaks up after a while, voice soft and calm like you’ve never heard before.
“We should go get cleaned up…” he says, and you hum in agreement, “...but it’s so nice here,” he finishes, making you giggle.
“If we get cleaned up quickly now, we can cuddle in bed right afterwards,” you argue.
“You’re right. Infallible logic. You’re so smart, you know that, Y/N?” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice.
“Of course I know that,” you joke. “Let’s go,” you say, kissing the top of his head.
You take a shower together, cleaning each other and leaving kisses here and there, or touching in places you shouldn’t touch and that maybe lead to more, right there in the shower. Now that you’ve had a taste, you’re insatiable, and you warn Sunghoon that the both of you are in for a very long night, to which he answers that he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Once you do fall asleep, (which isn’t until two rounds later, and you’re surprised either of you have this much energy), however, you’re holding each other tightly, the fan on high so that you don’t feel all sticky, being so close to each other. Even if you wake up here and there because he shuffled or he snored too loudly, it’s one of the best sleeps you’ve ever had.
You wake up the next morning by small giggles and snorts that come from none other than Park Chaeryeong herself, who’s buried herself between you and her dad, shaking her body to wake the two of you. You’re glad that you listened to Sunghoon when he told you to put on a t-shirt of his as well as some underwear so neither you or Chaer would have a fright when she came and woke you up as she liked to do every morning. “You had a sleepover!” she exclaims excitedly when she sees you’ve finally opened your eyes, looking at her with a sleepy expression and a smile.
“We did!” you reply, trying to keep the same level of excitement.
“We did,” Sunghoon repeats, taking his daughter in her arms to hug her tightly and blows a raspberry in her neck to make her laugh.
“You didn’t invite me!” she shrieks when her dad’s left her alone.
“Sorry, sweetheart. It was just me and Y/N.”
“No fun,” she pouts, laying on her back and crossing over arms before turning back to her dad. “So, is Y/N my new mom?” she whispers even though you’re right there. You gasp at her question, making wide eyes at Sunghoon who just snorts, and you can’t tell if she’s genuinely asking or if she’s an eight-year-old with an advanced sense of irony.
“Of course not. Is Heeseung your new dad?” he asks, mentioning his ex’s new boyfriend. Chaer shakes her head.
“No. He’s Mommy’s boyfriend.”
“Exactly, and Y/N is Daddy’s girlfriend. Isn’t she?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at you, smirking.
“She is,” you reply, and Chaer turns back to you, giggling. She snuggles close to you, wrapping an arm around your middle, and you’re taken aback by the sheer cuteness of it all. You look at Sunghoon with a fake pained expression, and he smiles endearingly at the two of you before sighing and joining you in your hug. He rests his arms around you and his daughter, kissing the top of your heads in turn. 
“My girls,” he mutters in your hair, and you smile peacefully.
There’s a lot of things you have to talk about with Sunghoon. You know your parents - especially your mom - will be okay with the two of you together, but will his parents be? And once semester starts again, what will happen? You’ll have to go back to campus and he’ll have to stay here - will a three-hour drive be a dealbreaker, or will you make it work?
The thing is, there’s no point in thinking about all of this at this moment. You’ve got the whole summer to figure things out. For now, you’ll eat cherries and spit out the pits, and everything will be perfect.
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this is a one shot, there will not be a part two!
permanent taglist: @k-ingzo @bbujiikseu @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts (ask to be removed/added!)
© asahicore on tumblr, 2023. please do not repost, translate or plagiarize my works. feedback and reblogs are always appreciated!
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st7rnioioss · 1 month
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౨ৎ⋆ ˚。⋆ bags, clairo
matt sturniolo x reader
warning: swearing, fluff, kissing
a/n: i LVOE this request, thank so so much. btw, sorry if i misunderstood the thing and matt and the reader arent in a relationship HELP. anyway, i literally love bags by clairo so much.
this is based off this request!
౨ৎ
You stood in the triplet’s kitchen with Madi and Chris’s girlfriend Nat, short for Natalie.
For Natalie’s channel, you were doing a “baking deaf, blind and mute” challenge, where one had a blindfold on, one with headphones on, and one with tape covering their mouth.
Nat introduced the video, immediately getting on with the challenge.
“MADI, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” Nat laughed loudly, due to her sudden loss of hearing, almost falling backwards.
“Nat, I can’t fucking see!” Madi yelled back, trying to pour the flour nicely into the bowl. You stood beside them, uncontrollably muffled-laughing because of the duct tape over your lips.
You tried your best to help them, but it was very hard to do when you couldn’t communicate normally with them. From time to time, you took over Madi’s or Nat’s tasks, pushing her out of the way.
The triplets were sitting on the couch behind the camera. Chris was having the time of his life, watching his girlfriend terribly fail at baking a few cupcakes. Nick was for the most part on his phone or going back and forth from his room and the couch. 
Matt was also having fun, watching you try to get Madi and Nat out of the way so you could stop them from pouring batter on the floor. You had always been just a tad bit closer to Matt than Nick or Chris, until he finally confessed his mutual feelings for you.
“Okay, so we just put the cupcakes in the oven, so now we’re going to work on the icing. I’m gonna be blindfolded, Madi’s is gonna be mute, and Y/n will be deaf. Alright, let’s start!” Nat clapped her hands, handing you the headphones.
You put your hair down, the headphones sitting comfortably. Nat grabbed her phone, turning on the song she had stopped mid-through.
You didn’t recognize the first song, the second one being “yes, and?” by Ariana Grande. For the most part, you were standing beside your two friends humming along, occasionally smiling at Matt who was looking at you. He smiled back at you, adverting his gaze back to the mixing-bowl with the milk and vanilla.
“MADI, YOU’RE SPILLING THE MILK.” You yelled way too loudly, grabbing Madi by her shoulders with one hand, the other one stabilizing the bowl.
One song later, Madi was mixing the icing together to a thicker consistency. Your headphones were silent for a second, before your favorite song, Bags by Clario, started playing.
“GUYS, I FUCKING LOVE THIS SONG!” You yelled, trying to jump along with the beat in the song. Madi and Nat completely took over as you danced along. 
Matt looked up from his phone due to your yelling. Of course, he didn’t know what song was playing, but he was curious. You backed away from Madi and Nat, dancing along to Bags.
“EVERY SECOND COUNTS, I DON’T WANNA TALK TO YOU ANYMORE, AND” You laughed, singing loudly along. Matt’s face almost instantly lit up, due to this being your guys’s favourite song.
Almost everywhere you went together alone, Matt was listening to it with you (even when he was alone). On late-night car rides, cuddling in his room, or quietly singing in the triplet’s car videos, it was your song.
Your relationship was kept secret from the triplet’s fandom since Matt didn’t want you to receive hate or backlash. And you didn’t mind, as long as you both were happy, it was all that mattered. Currently, you have been going strong for two and a half years.
“ALL THESE LITTLE GAMES, YOU CAN CALL ME BY THE NAME I GAVE YOU!” Matt was beaming, staring in complete awe. If he wasn’t already madly in love with you, he was now.
Nat was continuously gently slapping your arm to stop you from dancing, but you didn’t budge. Almost like you were singing to Matt, you tried to point secretly at him, a smile immediately growing on your face as you locked eyes with him.
“CAN YOU SEE ME? I’M WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME,” You kept going, dancing, jumping, spinning, all sorts of expressions of excitement were expressed right then and there.
Nat and Madi had given up a long time ago, placing the rack with the cupcakes on the counter.
The following Thursday, Nat released the video to her channel.
You were cuddled up with Matt in your shared his bed, both mindlessly scrolling through social media. Matt was checking his Instagram, you on TikTok. One particular TikTok caught your eye.
An edit of you and Matt to Bags by Clairo. The clip of him mentioning the song in their Wednesday video, followed along by your singing.
You smiled to yourself, opening the comment section to find multiple people suspecting a possible relationship between the two of you. A bunch of people agreed, and a bunch of people turned it down.
You liked the edit, scrolling further, only to find more, more and more edits. Matt noticed your giggles, looking up from his phone to look at yours.
“Are you watching edits of.. us?” He smiled, putting his phone on his nightstand before turning back around to wrap an arm around your waist.
“Yeah, look. There’s a fuck ton of them. To Bags!” You smiled from ear to ear, a faint blush creeping up on your cheeks. Matt stared at you in awe, looking back at your phone to see more edits. He couldn’t stop smiling either, watching you so excited to see edits of you two to your favorite song.
“Oh my God, I love you,” Matt chuckled, pressing a few kisses from your forehead, down the side of your face.
“Matt, I lov- it- it tickles, stop!” You laughed loudly, the tickling sensation making you drop your phone. He couldn’t stop smiling, softly planting a kiss to your lips.
He pulled away slowly, his eyes glued on yours. “Can you send me that second one you showed me?”
a/n: i hope it lived up to your expectations arghhh, love the request once again, thank you thank you.
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