#ducks galore

[lovegiroke]

A Meme I just thought about

this is funny

#lovegiroke #hazbin hotel #meme #lucifer morningstar #lucifer #i love him #look at him #lol #i love lucy #rubber duck #ducks galore #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin lucifer #funny #shitpost #shitposting

[darkwingsnark]

DUCKVEMBER 29: Glamorous Duck

I have a soft spot for Feathers Galore, so any time I can think of a moment to draw her... well, I will.

#duckvember #ducktales #disney ducks #feathers galore #snark art

[starsandhughes]

i’m crying real tears

#DAD IS A DAD #DUCKS PLAYERS WIVES KEEP HAVING BABIES AND I LOVE IT #PLAYDATES GALORE #GIVE ME DUCKS WITH BABIES CONTENT #troy terry #anaheim ducks #kaylin’s nonsense posts

[hoppip-haven]

@justasong asked:

do you have a favorite song?

Totally Empty Room Where I'm Totally Alone by Ducklett With A Knife is my favourite song.... :)

#amarilis lore galore (asks) #(ooc: the producer is actually called Duck With A Knife)

[nightdiary]

last night's story | jake

pairing: jake x female reader word count: 28.2k

synopsis: lured by the prospect of earning a couple extra bucks for the summer, you head north to man your aunt's surf shop on australia's sunshine coast. it's a visit that reacquaints you with everything you've been running from– old friends, abandoned memories, and one unforgettable jake sim.

genre: surfer!jake, childhood friends to exes to lovers, angst, fluff, eventual smut, attempt at humor

warnings: surfing inaccuracies galore, reader almost drowns, smut (fem oral receiving, fingering, penetrative sex). MINORS DO NOT INTERACT! please let me know if i've missed anything.

Despite growing up a five-minute drive from the ocean, you’d never quite learned how to keep yourself afloat among the waves.

Looking back on it, you found it quite ironic considering how everything you loved somehow tied back to the ocean one way or another. Whether it was your vacant seaside town, the colorful dishes your aunt prepared for you as a kid, or the people you cherished most– all of it was somehow irrevocably intertwined with the water.

And yet you’d always felt an unexplainable dread when you found yourself a bit too deep in. Once past the shallow end, surrounded by erratic water and a depthless bottom, you found it hard to breathe. No matter how much you fought to stay above, there was always a tide under all the waves, seizing you by the throat and rendering you motionless.

Coming back to your hometown felt a little bit like that– diving headfirst into a swelling wave and fearing you’d never find your way back up.

The handle of the train window jams as you yank it downwards, letting out a harsh squeak when you attempt to pry it open once again. After struggling to tug it flush against the sill, you prop your elbows up on the glass and heave your upper body to lean out, careful not to lose your balance.

Outside, you’re met with the heady smell of brine and the sun’s dying rays. The rusted sign denoting your town’s outer limits flies by in a hazy whisk, followed by the first few houses and tiny streets. The sky is a brilliant blend of soft pinks and warm yellows, the horizons of which frame the buoyant ocean’s glistening ripples.

Australia’s Sunshine Coast has always been beautiful, but the prospect of returning so soon has your stomach in knots.

The loud squawk of a passing seagull startles you into ducking back into the passenger carriage. The stop coming up is yours, but you can’t bring yourself to gather your luggage. Getting off the train seems like an impossible feat when you’re practically glued to its walls, too afraid to face what may be waiting for you once you get off.

A sharp whistle resounds from the conductor’s carriage, and you hear the tracks below you screech as the train begins rolling to a steady stop. You duck back towards your aisle to tug your suitcases out from underneath the seat, palms numb as you grip their handles and wheel them towards the door. You know you can’t stay.

The world outside slows to a painful stop as the train reaches your town’s platform, and you hesitate before pushing the rotational gear to open your door. You’re able to momentarily forget about all your nerves as you struggle to haul your baggage off the carriage, too preoccupied with the fear of missing a step to look up.

Sunghoon’s waiting for you by the singular bench the shoddy platform has to offer, hands pocketed in his light-washed denim shorts. He squints at you through the last beams of the setting sun, lips pulled in an uncharacteristically fond grin. The golden light catches his face at an angle that makes him look like a ghost. He’s everything you remember and yet nothing you recognize.

“Well, well, well,” he tsks, but it isn’t unkind. Sunghoon crosses his arms and looks you over, cocking his eyebrow sassily. It almost makes you want to forego the initial jibing, but you surmise it wouldn’t be a proper reconciliation with Sunghoon without it. “Look at what the tide dragged in. Haven’t seen this species of blobfish before.”

“I missed you too, Hoonie,” you croon, abandoning your suitcase in favor of running forward and looping your arms around him. Sunghoon readily envelopes you in his hold, bringing you into his warmth with a teasing oof.

He’s soft and smells faintly of sunscreen, the generic kind you stopped buying once you moved away to Melbourne. He still holds you like you mean everything to him, and he’s still everything to you.

Pulling back, you study the grooves of his face where the sun dips into, frowning at the chiseled remains of Sunghoon’s younger self. He’s different and grown– his cheeks don’t carry the same youthful chubbiness and his eyes are sharper, nearly devoid of the juvenile spark you’d come to adore so much.

You’ve only been away for two years, and yet Sunghoon looks like a stranger.

The two of you haul your luggage into the back of his junky Toyota, flinging the trunk closed with a resolute bang and crowding into the vehicle to avoid staying out in the humidity for a second longer. The air conditioning system sputters to life after Sunghoon slams on the dashboard twice, and you sigh out of relief once you’re finally met with air that doesn’t feel suffocating.

Leaning back into your seat, you hiss when the heated leather meets the bare skin of your thighs, pouting as Sunghoon drives off from the train station.

“How was the trip in?” Sunghoon’s question is too customary, too formal, but it still distracts you from the lingering burn.

“Fine,” you answer. You pick at the stuffing that’s coming out of a rip in your seat, frowning. “There was a crying baby in my carriage and a weird stain on my seat that I hope was juice, but otherwise just fine.”

Sunghoon hums, peering at you out of the corner of his eyes. He pulls into another street and stops at a red light, tapping his fingers impatiently on the wheel and shifting in his seat. He clears his throat, uncharacteristically nervous, and finally turns his head to look at you fully, “You look different.”

“So do you!” You’re quick to fire back, feeling flustered. You gesture at him limply with your hand, unsure of how to tell him he looks nothing like what you remember. Attractive, clearly more confident in his skin, but different.

It makes you slightly queasy, the thought that in just a matter of a year or so, you’d lost track of the boy you’d called your best friend for so long. You blame it on the swaying from the train.

Your town’s small enough to cross through with a car in about 15 minutes, but it feels like you’re locked in Sunghoon’s Toyota for several hours. The burning leather under your legs doesn’t ease up, and at some point, the air conditioner stops working and starts bringing air in from outside, so it feels a little bit like hell.

As you round the corner and enter the street where your aunt’s shop is located, you feel your chest tighten with anticipation. The houses you pass are achingly familiar, with shades of blues, yellows, and reds nudging memories that you thought you’d left in the back of your mind. It feels like the neighborhood has been locked in time, put away and forgotten after you’d seen it for the last time two years ago.

But unlike Sunghoon, you find that the shop looks virtually the same as it did when you left. The relief you feel is quickly replaced with guilt.

Parking his car in front of the sidewalk, Sunghoon pops the trunk and the two of you get to action immediately. You heave out what bags you can carry, wanting to minimize your trips to the car, and waddle after Sunghoon as he goes to unlock the front door. In the window of the shop, you spot a note with Sunghoon’s loopy writing spelling out Closed, I’ll be back later!.

Entering the shop feels weird, but not in the way that you’d anticipated that it would. You’re hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia as you look around, taking in the interior of the place with a racing heart. Minus the cheap paint job in an effort to reverse the sun bleaching along the walls, you can find traces of yourself still left behind in almost everything.

By the crown of your foot, there’s a splotchy stain you’d left on the welcome mat after attempting to balance your friends’ coffee orders, too distracted to consider the fact that the cups were hot as shit. Next to you, there are markings along the door frame where your aunt had kept track of your height throughout the years, notched into the wood for you to remember till eternity.

As you step further into the shop, you spot drawings and paintings you’d done as a kid on the wall behind the register, hung up with colorful push pins. Above them, up on the shelves, there’s a potted plant you’d gifted your aunt for one of her birthdays, now much larger and with more leaves than when you had parted with it.

“Auntie kept a lot of your stuff,” Sunghoon voices your thoughts, grinning when you look up at him with wide eyes. “Most of it’s upstairs in the guest room. You’re cool with staying there, right?”

Nodding, you set your duffle bag down with a huff, rolling your neck. The prospect of going up any stairs at the moment seemed almost painful to you, but the thought of falling into bed and resting your head on something soft (and not the dingy window of a train) was too tempting to ignore.

It takes three trips in total to move all of your belongings from the car to the room you’ll be staying in, but Sunghoon doesn’t complain even once as he strains under the weight of your luggage. You gather all of your bags in an empty corner of the room, drawing up a chair to tug open the small window higher up on your wall. Outside, the sky has darkened to a deep purple, and the first stars are beginning to appear in scattered formations.

Collapsing on the bed, you shuffle around until your head hits a pillow, sighing as you sink into the soft material.

“There’s dinner in the kitchen,” he muses, “I bought it before I went to pick you up so it won’t be warm, but you should still probably eat before going to bed.”

“I should,” you sigh, heaving yourself up and blinking blearily at Sunghoon. He leans patiently against the doorframe and stares back at you, sticking his tongue out when your sleepy mind begins drifting off again. You startle, suddenly remembering, “Shit, wait. Hoon, where are you going to sleep?”

“The couch in the living room folds out, and it’s surprisingly comfy. Don’t worry,” he promises, flicking the light switch off and cackling when you squeak in surprise. “That fried chicken isn’t going to get any warmer, by the way.”

“You got me fried chicken?” You mumble as you get up, trudging after Sunghoon into the well-lit kitchen. Indeed, you find a bucket of fried chicken sitting on the counter, covered with a plastic bag in a vain attempt to keep it warm. “Fuck, I love you Hoonie. I’m so glad I came back.”

Sunghoon laughs as you pluck a drumstick off of the top and bite into it like a vulture. He leans onto the counter and continues to watch you eat, a slow grin spreading on his lips.

“Yea? I’m glad, too.”

☀

The decision to move away was one you’d been planning since high school.

Despite containing so many places and people that you loved, you’d always thought that there was something bleak, almost draining about your town. It felt like it was slowly bleeding you out from the inside, and the choice between here and elsewhere was one that was inevitable for you to make.

Jake had always called you crazy when you brought it up, but you knew he’d never get it. His whole life was set up here. Meanwhile, you knew your existence here was only fleeting. A momentary thing, never meant to stay for long.

The logistics of it were simple enough to your sixteen-year-old self; you’d work hard to finish school with high marks, get into a university in Sydney or Melbourne on a scholarship, and leave your town for good.

But the year after you graduated high school was stagnant. You picked up a job at a seaside restaurant and focused on saving up money to afford university and move to an apartment in a bigger city. The work’s long and tiring enough to numb you for a while, but it’s unavoidable that you get sucked up in everything you didn’t manage to leave behind.

Jake’s there too, because he’s always been in every single part of your life and you can’t run from him no matter how hard you try. Freshly-single, nineteen-year-old Jake had committed himself to ensuring that you stuck around for as long as possible, even if that meant inadvertently clipping your wings by telling you he loves you.

You don’t mind it at first. It’s hard to find a problem when the boy you’ve wanted since middle school admits that your feelings are reciprocated. It’s hard to think about moving away when you’ve yearned for so long, when Jake is finally in the palm of your hand and not off with somebody else. You’d forgotten to factor him into your delicate future, forgotten that him loving you back was an option.

It’s enough for a while– even if your job is shit and every day feels like a monotonous cycle of nothing, your head’s in the clouds when you’re with Jake. You feel yourself most when you’re with him, even if you’ve begun to forget who you are without him.

Moving away is at the forefront of your mind until it suddenly isn’t– there’s something keeping you tethered down and you can’t ignore it no matter how much you love Jake.

“I don’t think I can stay here any longer,” you tell him. “I’m not meant to stay here forever, Jake. It’s not fair.”

Jake had looked at you with a tired smile, almost like he knew you two didn’t have much time left. When the light caught his eyes at the right angle, you could see that they were glossy with regret. “I know. But it’s not fair to me to uproot everything I have here. I won’t be anyone if I leave.”

And in a way, you understood. While this place was nothing to you, it was all that Jake had.

That night, you rushed home to pack everything you could fit into a suitcase and backpack. For better or worse, Jake didn’t answer when you picked up, so you left him one last token of yourself in the form of a voice mail. The final decision to move away was made on a whim, finalized with a one-way train ticket you’d bought in the late hours of the night, and you hadn’t looked back on it. Until now.

A week before you were set to finish off your university term, Sunghoon’s name had shown up on your phone at a time far too late in the evening for you to ignore. After months of radio silence, you’d been startled into picking up and stuttering your way through a greeting. You’d barely recognized his voice over the phone at that time.

He’d called with a proposition so stunning you could barely gather your thoughts before responding with a shaky yes. Your aunt had to leave her surf shop behind to get treatment, and desperately needed someone to cover while she was gone. Sunghoon had told you that he couldn’t possibly do it by himself, and he’d called the only person he knew would care so much to arrive on such a late notice.

The decision to come back was not one you’d planned for either. You’d left with the intention of staying in Melbourne until you graduated from university, and foresaw nothing that could bring you back this early. Followed by another ticket bought at an hour so late the sky outside was beginning to pinken, you ended off your last exam and left for home on the same day.

The parallels between the situations were cruel in the way that it felt like you could never really leave– something would always bring you back, no matter how much you ran from it.

The shop is drowning in the morning light when you make it to the bottom of the stairs. It’s too early for you to be up, that much is evident in the way your feet drag behind you, but you cannot afford to flake out your first day on the job. And it seems like your boss is already waiting for you.

“Mango!” You squeal, suddenly all too awake as you run to approach the counter. Your aunt and Sunghoon hadn’t mentioned anything about her cat staying behind as well.

The chubby orange cat blinks back at you unfazed, fluffy tail swishing noncommittally over the cash register. When you reach out to pet the beloved baby, he rolls over on his back and chirps while you coo over him like you’ve personally carried him for 9 months and then birthed him.

You begin setting up to open the shop for the day after you fill Mango’s bowl up and sneak in a few more chin rubs. Though you were no stranger to how your aunt ran things, you found yourself retracing your steps and looking around blankly more than once as you went through the ministrations. You felt like a ghost hovering, revisiting opaque memories and relearning how to navigate what you’d once called familiar.

Your stomach’s in knots over the prospect of having to face people you know again. Last night was different– you’d been locked away safely with Sunghoon upstairs, away from peering eyes and curious mouths. This was about to change as soon as you opened the shop.

You manage to get the doors open with only a two minute delay. No one actually enters the shop until an hour later, when you’ve cozied up behind the counter and taken to eating your breakfast. At that point, you’d shaken away some of the nerves you’d woken up with and are able to welcome the customer with a soft smile that doesn’t feel forced.

Sunghoon comes down to check on you sometime later, still in his pajamas and sporting a surprised look on his face.

“Wow, I’m genuinely shocked you haven’t destroyed the place by now,” he comments slyly, taking a loud sip from his coffee mug.

“I’m more shocked that you’ve managed to keep this place open for so long by yourself,” you bite back. When you hear the front bell chime, you immediately straighten up and call out a friendly greeting to the customer, ignoring the way Sunghoon laughs at your switch up.

He saunters over to join you behind the counter, pretending to busy himself with fixing things on the shelf while the customer pays. Once you’ve bid them goodbye and closed the register, Sunghoon rounds on you and crosses his arms, shaking his head gravely.

“You forgot to give her the receipt that the card machine printed, fucked up big time now. I should fire you.”

“If you came down here to micromanage me, I suggest you go back to sleep,” you huff, reaching out to crumple up the forgotten receipt.

Sunghoon’s face visibly softens. “Hey, you know I’m just messing around, right? I’ve forgotten receipts countless of times before.”

Humming, you begin to clear off the counter and wipe down the surface.

“Are you mad at me?” Sunghoon asks carefully, lingering next to you. “I’m sorry. We used to make jokes like this all the time back in the day, I assumed you’d still be okay with it.”

This makes you frown guiltily. Your hands pause and you turn around to look at Sunghoon fully. “I’m not mad, just a bit on edge at the moment. I’ve been a bit stressed out about this whole thing all week, and it feels like I’m going to explode if something else goes wrong. I guess all this anxiety’s been making simple shit slip my mind.”

Sunghoon nods quietly as if to urge you to continue.

“Everything is so familiar and yet it’s all so strange and I feel like I’ve forgotten everything,” you whisper, voice cracking at the end. “I miss my aunt, I miss my apartment, I miss Melbourne. I feel so silly for not coming back earlier, but I know I wasn’t ready. And I don’t even know if I am now.”

There’s a weight on your chest that’s suffocating you and making the words stick to your tongue like tar. Sunghoon’s eyes are gentle as they look into your own, understanding and patient, and you feel the guilt consume you from the inside.

“I’m scared, Sunghoon. I’m scared to see Jake again. To go outside and see everything that reminds me of him. I’m scared that I’ll have to live with this fear always, that I won’t know peace where I’m supposed to feel at home.”

You don’t realize you’ve teared up until Sunghoon quietly hands you a tissue. You wipe your eyes and laugh shakily at the incredulity of it all– you’d cried enough before leaving Melbourne, convinced you’d forget all about your worries once you were actually here. You were far from right.

Sunghoon’s warm arms wrap around you and your mind blanks for a second. He squeezes you tightly and holds you for a while, until you feel your breathing begin to even out again. Quietly, you thank him and relax in his embrace.

After promising Sunghoon you’d be fine with finishing your shift, you go back to cleaning out the counter. You only have half an hour left, but you’re determined to see it through to the end. There’s a box of inventory that needs to be unpacked anyway, and you’d rather not sit around at the register and think for a minute longer.

Once your shift’s over, you trudge up to your room and immediately slump onto your bed. It’s got a loose spring somewhere that’s poking into your thigh, but at the moment, it’s the most comfortable surface you’ve ever laid down on. You could care less when a nap is overdue.

Mango seems to have different plans, however, as he saunters into your room and meows loudly. You don’t bother to look up until he’s resorted to jumping onto your bed, incessant meowing now right under your ear. You really should’ve closed the door.

Blearily blinking your eyes open, you see that Mango has situated himself next to your bedside drawer and is preparing to jump onto the very limited surface there. Yelping, you sit up and carefully move him back onto the ground, where he can do less damage and knock over less of your belongings. He makes an angry huff, but you ignore him in favor of checking to make sure everything on the drawer’s fine.

There’s a cup that you most definitely hadn’t left. Squinting and peering inside, you find that it’s filled with tea, made from the spearmint packets your aunt used when you weren’t feeling your best. There’s still steam coming out from the top, which means Sunghoon must have made it for you right before coming down for his shift.

You can’t stop the giddy smile that stretches across your lips while you pick up the mug. As you take tiny sips, your stomach begins to warm, and the feeling slowly spreads to the ends of your being. The feeling in your chest unfurls the tiniest bit, and you surmise that despite it all, you’ll be just fine.

☀

Working at the shop is monotonous for a while. You and Sunghoon take turns swapping shifts so that you don’t have to be up with the sun every morning, but you still keep each other company for the later ends of your hours. It’s nice to have someone there with you to fill the gaps in between the customers, someone to whine to about the guy who came in reeking of wet dog and the kid that left sand all over the floor.

Catching up with Sunghoon is simultaneously weird and the highlight of your day. You’d practically grown up with him, and yet you now knew close to nothing about him. His irregular Instagram updates were nothing to lead off on, but you surmise your own lack of social media presence must’ve frustrated him right back.

Sunghoon is more than eager to share stories from the gap in his life for which you’d been gone. You’re able to piece together who he is now with relative ease, even if you’re bridging unfamiliarities in areas you’d thought he’d never change. He’s no longer the awkward, floundering boy you knew for so long. He’s sure in himself and his actions, he’s deliberate with his thinking and purposeful with everything he tells you.

Sunghoon shares with you that he’s almost finished with his kinesiology degree and that he’s been visiting the local hospital more and more often to shadow doctors. He still wants to do medicine, just like he’d told you in high school, but he wants to focus more on sports medicine and hopefully work in therapy. He also proudly tells you that he’d recently gotten his driver’s license, despite refusing to touch a car when you were both finally old enough to drive, to which you snort and tease him with yeah, who passed ya?. 

He’s still your Sunghoon, even if he’s blossomed differently from the Sunghoon you grew up with.

Aside from him, you have Mango to keep you company. The cat barely pays you any attention as usual, instead choosing to nap in places he shouldn’t be and ignoring you when you call him for pets. But you know that behind that tough exterior, Mango loves you so.

To say you’re lonely would be untrue. Every now and then, a customer will chat you up while you’re at the register. They’re curious at seeing an unfamiliar face and you can’t blame them, but it’s sweet all the while. You get a few recognizable faces in between as well, people you went to high school mixed in with older family friends who coo at you and instinctively reach out to pinch your cheek.

It’s Jake’s face that you least expect to see in your shop. You think it’s inevitable that you’d eventually run into him, but it doesn’t surprise you any less.

You were manning the register just half an hour after swapping with Sunghoon when the bell above the door whistles familiarly. You call out a friendly greeting and look up, only to choke on the last syllable. Just from his side profile you immediately recognize him– the grooves of his face are achingly familiar and the sweet tone of his nonchalant good afternoon back is like a punch to the gut.

You know he’s likely unaware that you’re back at all, let alone working here now, but it feels oddly motivated from the universe’s side. Your stomach swoops as you watch him disappear one of the back aisles, and you have a minute to pace your breathing again before he reappears and begins approaching the register.

Your blood runs cold once he finally looks up and notices you. You think your heart’s going to beat out of your chest and fall onto the tile floor when he stops in his tracks and stares back at you like a deer caught in headlights.

“Oh,” he says surprised, mouth hanging open around the syllable. “Um, hi.”

Your lips twitch but you’re unable to utter a greeting back. Jake approaches the counter like one would a wounded animal, and you hate the way your legs jerk with the want to step back. You think you hear him say something more, but it’s masked by an echoey ringing in your ears.

“Hi,” you croak, mindlessly reaching out to what he’s placed on the counter. Your palms are sweaty and so, so cold and you can’t even feel your fingertips where they’re wrapped around the sharp edges of the box.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Jake says, but it barely registers in your mind. Despite the gaping feeling in your stomach, you laugh at the formality, some color returning to your cheeks. Jake visibly relaxes at this.

“Yeah. I just wasn’t expecting to run into you right now.” Or ever, but you think it’s best left unsaid.

Jake shrugs. His eyes roam over your face curiously and you try not to curl in on yourself. “How long have you been back?”

“Just over a week now.”

He hums, gaze settling on the way your hands fidget with the item until the scanner finally picks up on its barcode. You hurriedly place it back onto the counter and slide it toward him.

“I really do mean it, you know.”

Starting, you blink up at him unassumingly. “Sorry?”

“That I’m glad to see you again,” Jake clarifies.

“What’s all this for anyway?” You’re quick to ask instead, words bubbling out of you like a stream. Your heart’s racing pathetically and you’re embarrassingly hung up on the fact that Jake cares.

Jake doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by the change in topic. “I needed a new fin set for my board. I’ve got a few competitions coming up and figured I’d polish things up a bit.”

Right. It was no surprise to you that Jake never abandoned his love for surfing, unlike everything else.

“You should come watch me at the state qualifiers next week,” Jake continues while leaning over the counter, propping himself up on his elbows and fixing you with an impish look. You want to reach out and shove his forehead with your fingers, but you have to remind yourself that this isn’t the same Jake you’d grown up with. Whatever you’d once had was forgotten in the past.

“Sure,” you say, ignoring the nagging warmth in your chest. Feigning nonchalance, you busy yourself with tapping on the checkout screen of the iPad, if only to give your hands something to do other than to fidget with your shirt. “Me and how many other chicks?”

Jake laughs good-naturedly, but the momentary lapse of insecurity in his voice isn’t lost on you. You feel guilty for just a moment, but don’t allow yourself to dwell on it. After finalizing his order on the screen, you look up to find Jake already looking back at you, almost expectantly.

“Your total’s $270.59.”

Jake’s face falters the slightest bit, but you don’t think it’s because of the ridiculously high price. “Does that factor in the ‘good friend discount’?”

The phrase makes something sour flood in your mouth, and you resist the urge to scowl. The receipt machine prints out his total, and you rip the paper out with more force than admitted necessarily. You nearly slam it down on the counter in front of Jake, peering up at his shocked face through your lashes. “Yea? What’s my favorite color, Jake?”

Noticeably taken aback, Jake’s confident demeanor slips away as easily as a receding wave. He stutters around his next sentence, and you try not to let your satisfaction show as you open the register. Jake looks down as he counts through the bills in his wallet, pulling out several and passing them timidly across the surface. “Uh–, well, hmm. Something… blue? Wasn’t it blue?”

“I hate blue,” you spit the lie out a bit too quickly, and hope Jake can’t see right through you. You accept the bills you’re handed with pursed lips, slipping them into your register and handing back the few cents you owe him.

“You don’t,” Jake answers immediately, not bothering to reach out and pocket the change. “You love blue. Specifically that light seafoam shade you see on the shore. Said it reminded you of summer.”

Despite how much you want to disagree, your throat feels all dry and your eyes are stinging and you don’t think you can bear to look at Jake much longer without saying something regretful. But something about letting him think he still knows you makes your fists clench and gut boil.

“People change,” you say with an air of finality. “I changed. You changed.”

Jake takes his bag and steps back from the counter with the expression of a kicked puppy. He looks back at you like he wants to say something, something long left untouched, and you resist the urge to hide behind your counter and cover your ears with your hands.

You feel naked and vulnerable– like Jake has carefully stripped away every last layer of your defenses and he can see the rotting remains of everything you didn’t say. You hate how he looks at you, like he knows exactly what’s going through your mind and the inner monologue you’ve been fighting since you first met him. Like he still knows you in and out, despite moving away and changing every last bit of yourself that reminded you of him.

“Thanks for shopping with us,” the smile you give him is painfully artificial, and you shut the register with a bang that echoes around the shop. “Have a good day, Jake.”

☀

Besides taking a trip up the coastline, there were only a handful of other things one could do in town to stay busy. You relied on the usual small-town things that somehow never got boring; going to the drive-in theater, drinking milkshakes until your jaw and stomach ached, and driving endless loops around the town.

Problem was, most of these only worked with other people. Your few options decreased even further during the summertime, when leaving an air-conditioned space was essentially a self-inflicted death sentence. Alone or not.

Living in such a small town also meant that out of the three or so choices you had, you were guaranteed to run into someone you knew wherever you went. It was one of the reasons you were so eager to leave, to finally go live in the big city where shops didn’t close at 5 and where you could go for a walk without seeing a familiar face you had to avoid.

And whether or not you dared to admit it, you were afraid of running into someone while out on your own.

You’d nearly forgotten about that aspect when coming back, only to be cruelly reminded on your first designated day off.

“What do you mean I’m not working today?” You cross your arms, frowning at Sunghoon’s figure behind the counter. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“You and I both know there’s like, only two possible answers to that,” Sunghoon sniffs, not bothering to look up at you from his phone. “And I don’t think you’d be interested in either of them.”

While true, you also didn’t want to give up that easily. “Shoot.”

Shrugging, Sunghoon finally divulges you with his attention, rubbing at his brow bone contemplatively. “Auntie Lee’s diner got a new arcade machine. Plus you never got to try that cookie dough shake she introduced after you left.”

“Cute, but I feel stupid going by myself,” you sigh. Heaving yourself up on the counter, you ignore Sunghoon’s noise of complaint and prompt him to keep going.

“Go see a movie or something?”

“All the new releases look like shit.”

“Get some coffee?”

“If I have another cup I’ll start vibrating.”

“Yard sales?”

“No, it’s hot as balls out.”

Sunghoon pauses, and you nearly think this is it, you’ve finally gotten on his nerves, but he taps his chin and hums, almost like he’s genuinely as invested in this as you are. And then he looks up at you with something malicious in his eyes, and you know you made a mistake coming to him.

“Jake’s place has a pool,” Sunghoon drawls knowingly, “but I’m sure you already knew that.”

Hopping off the counter, you ignore his cackling in favor of flipping him off. “Go fuck yourself, Hoon.”

The rest of your afternoon is spent very excitingly: you rot around in bed for a few extra hours, switching between three apps until refreshing your timeline no longer produces any dopamine. You get up only once Mango saunters into your room and begins incessantly meowing, a clear demand and order for you to feed him. 

Whilst in the kitchen, you decide to have lunch as well and reheat some leftovers for yourself. As the microwave drones on in the background, you fill out a postcard for your aunt to remind her you’re thinking of her and scavenge the drawers for stamps.

Unsurprisingly, you find your phone nearly dead when you come back, so, driven by a sudden burst of Marie Kondo-like motivation, you forgo charging it in favor of attempting to rearrange the entire layout of your room. It only ends up looking even more like a prison cell, except now you’ve precariously stuck up a bunch of wall decor that you unearthed in the clean-up process. A pretty prison cell.

There’s a band poster above your bed of four dudes you don’t recognize, along with fashion and music magazine cutouts from the 90’s. Your aunt had kept a surprising amount of the drawings little 5-year-old you had ceremoniously gifted her, and you try your best to arrange them in a way that complements the other shit you’d stuck up. Obviously, it doesn’t work out quite well.

Sunghoon finds you laying down, though this time it’s on the floor and not your bed. You hear him sigh obnoxiously loudly, followed by his phone’s camera shutter going off, and then a delayed but very pronounced Sunghoon-y laugh. The floorboards creak as he steps closer, pausing right next to your head.

“I’m going out with some friends,” he announces, prodding your shoulder with his foot. “I’m extending the invitation to you ‘cause I don’t want to have to drag your corpse out of here later.”

You sit up way too fast and your neck flares up in pain, but you ignore it in favor of batting your eyes up at him. “Where are we going?”

“Get dressed, Jay’s going to be here in ten,” Sunghoon sing-songs, not paying mind to the customary middle finger you flash him. “Something you can get wet in, preferably.”

There’s a dirty joke missing somewhere, but you forgo it in favor of jumping up and tugging off your ratty gym shorts.

Making yourself look presentable in ten minutes is a feat, but you manage to tidy up well enough that Sunghoon gives you a thumbs up when you join him in the shop upstairs. Despite the fact that you’re wearing shorts and a tank, it’s hot enough that you have to fan yourself aggressively as you wait for Sunghoon to finish packing his tote bag. He himself is donning a very similar attire– another pair of jean shorts and a loose, tucked-in shirt with a palm tree stitched onto the front.

The two of you are locking up the front door when a car honks loudly from behind you, startling you into dropping the keys by your feet. You grumble as you reach down to pick them up, ignoring Sunghoon’s bellowing greeting back.

As you approach the vehicle, the windows on your side roll down in tandem, and two familiar heads poke out like meerkats to gape at you.

“Holy shit, since when are you back in town?” Heeseung is the first to speak, leaning through the window and breaking off into a wince when he slams the top of his head against the window trim.

You have to hide your laughter behind your hand as Heeseung rubs at his scalp and Beomgyu chastises him for being stupid. They get over it pretty quickly though, and turn back to stare at you like meerkats. 

“Hey to you too,” you flush under the sudden attention, hugging your bag to your front. “I came in last week.”

Sunghoon must notice your discomfort, because he tugs you toward the other side of the car, opening the door for you and covering the top rim with his hand lest you suffer the same fate as Heeseung. Thanking him, you duck inside, scooting in next to Beomgyu and giving him what you hope comes off as a warm smile and not an anxious waver. 

Sunghoon climbs in after you, shutting the door and settling back in his seat with a groan. He reaches behind his back to pull out a fast food wrapper, chucking it at the back of the driver’s seat with enough force to send it bouncing back in his own lap. “Jesus fuck, when’s the last time you cleaned up around here, Jay?”

“I would’ve cleaned up had I known we’d have company,” Jay mumbles sheepishly. He drives off from the store, rounding the corner and setting you off on what you faintly remember as being the way toward one of the main beaches.

“It’s really nice to see you again,” Beomgyu interjects brightly, nudging your shoulder gently with his own. Wordlessly, you lean back into his warmth, letting your shoulders sit flush against each other. You think he gets the message.

“Why didn’t you let us know you were coming back?” Heeseung turns around to pout at you from the front. “We would’ve thrown you a welcome party or something. We missed you.”

Hesitating, you shrink under his unblinking gazes. You hadn’t given it much thought, let alone considered that you’d be missed. “Uh, wanted it to be a surprise?”

“We all know you guys would’ve been annoying as fuck about it,” Jay chimes in, “If I were her, I wouldn’t have told you either.”

“The difference is that we wouldn’t miss you,” Sunghoon chucks another wrapper at Jay, snorting when this one ends up hitting him square on the head.

Despite the growing havoc, you find yourself grinning, laughing along when Jay sends a horribly misaimed empty paper cup flying back. You allow yourself to lean back into the seat and relax, just like you used to do before you left. It’s easy to forget how on edge you were feeling earlier when you’re surrounded by people you’d missed.

You’d left many things behind, but it seems like your fondness for your friends never stopped following you.

Jay brings the car to a stop in an empty parking lot bordering one of the several beachfronts in your town. You remember this particular one being further south, where the waves grew taller and where many smaller-scale competitions were held.

Wriggling out of the vehicle after Beomgyu, you make yourself useful by popping the trunk and retrieving the straw mat that you knew Jay kept around for such visits. It’s now tattered and bears several holes in it after being thoroughly used, but you can’t imagine sitting on the burning sand with nothing underneath you.

Heeseung skips over to help you, hauling a case of beer out from the trunk and balancing it precariously over his shoulder. It’s then that you conveniently take notice of what he’s wearing– a band shirt-turned-tanktop with very revealing armholes– and nearly choke on your spit. Pretending to be unbothered, you train your gaze on the tips of your shoes, trying to focus on the way your toes wriggle, but fail miserably. Heeseung looks too good.

“We get it, you started hitting the gym,” you tease, trying not to openly gape at the way his arms fill out his sleeves.

It seems you’ve made it a bit too obvious, because Heeseung practically preens under your attention, grinning cockily and flexing the bicep nearest you. “Yeah? Just wait till I get in the water. There’s more where that came from.”

The comment combined with the rolling humidity makes you feel like you’re about to pass out, so you sneak one last glance at Heeseung’s arms before scurrying away. You choose to set up camp under the shade of a leaning palm tree, somewhat close to the shore but far enough so that the crashing waves don’t dip into the sand nearby.

As soon as the mat’s down, you flop onto it, spreading your arms and legs like a starfish before someone else can take up the space. Despite your efforts, Beomgyu easily crams into the space next to you, humming a melody under his breath while he unpacks the snacks he’d brought. He offers you a bag of gummies, so you don’t bother complaining.

The rest of the boys join you soon after, hissing once the hot sand begins to burn at their soles.

“Fuck this, I’m going in to cool down,” Jay announces, halfway through tugging his shirt off. “Someone text Sunoo and tell him to bring his speaker. And that inflatable Spongebob ball we found the other day.”

As Jay bounces down the remaining distance to the ocean, you tuck your knees under your chin and watch as a flock of seagulls crosses over the melting sun on the horizon. Despite being later in the afternoon, the air still felt heavy and sticky like caramel, practically oozing down your skin in trickles of molten sweat. You try to fan yourself with your hands, but it’s no use when each new gust of air just felt like you were being submerged further and further into a pot of boiling water.

Sunghoon heaves down next to you and Beomgyu, cracking open one of the beer cans from the case. He takes three, four, five long gulps, sighing at the relief from the cold liquid. When he notices you staring, he holds the can out in a silent offering, but you shake your head and point toward his mouth, where some of the beer had trickled out in his haste to gulp it down.

“Aren’t the waves too small for surfing?” Beomgyu asks.

Looking back at him, you find that Beomgyu’s frowning in the direction of the ocean, where a figure is trying to balance on a board under the lip of a crashing wave. Though you yourself never quite took on a surfboard by yourself, you knew that there were certain tricks one could only perform with taller waves, ones which were certainly not found on this beach during this time of year.

It was typically beginners who practiced on such small peaks, but from observing the surfer for a while longer, you could easily deduce that this most certainly wasn’t a beginner. Though they were having trouble because of the lower crest, their maneuvers were carefully executed and dynamic enough to be on a professional level, and even as the wave dipped, they didn’t lose their balance.

“Sunoo!” Your attention’s pulled back by Heeseung’s excited bellow, and you turn to find another familiar face approaching your mat.

“Are you for real?” Sunoo’s question is directed at you, judging by the way his wide eyes meet yours, and you shuffle around so you can hold your arms out for him. He readily launches himself into your embrace, albeit a bit awkwardly because he has to lean down, but it’s warm and inviting nonetheless.

The five of you pack yourselves onto the mat as you wait out the sun to dip further down the horizon. Sunoo asks you about your life back in Melbourne, and you’re more than happy to answer. In turn, you ask him about his job, about that motorbike he’d always wanted, and about the last boy you remember him having a crush on. Judging by his reaction, not everything had gone according to plan.

It’s nice to just hang around like that, too– even as you can’t help but think about someone missing. By the time your stomach’s all twisted up, Heeseung and Sunoo eventually begin to whine about their muscles cramping and get up to go cool off in the water. You watch as they race to the shoreline, snorting when they both end up tripping because of a wave.

“Sounds like you missed us too,” Sunghoon muses, eyes resting carefully on the side of your face.

Your ears warm at the prospect of being watched so carefully, and you duck your chin to avoid letting Sunghoon notice.

“I’m going to take a dip too,” you decide, hauling yourself up and beginning to tug your outerwear off. Though you immediately feel some sort of relief, it’s short-lived and it only makes you feel more eager to jump into the ocean.

The sand is pleasantly warm under the soles of your feet as you jog toward the shoreline, keen yet careful not to snag your leg on a stray branch or rock. Sunoo and Heeseung have trudged further into the ocean, joining Jay who’s now sat atop one of the huge jutting rocks and sunbathing like a cat. They’re close enough that you can make out their scheming expressions as they approach him.

As the water meets your feet, you’re overcome with an inundating sense of peace. Though you’ve already spent a week back at home, you haven’t yet had the chance to come visit the ocean. Growing up so close to it, it had become inevitably tied with your youth, associated with everything you considered home. As much as you tried to forget about it, the riptide pulled you right back under.

Jay’s squawk of surprise as Sunoo and Heeseung haul him into the water startles you into looking back over at them. You bark out a laugh as you continue to watch their shenanigans, Jay resurfacing and promptly dragging both of the perpetrators under with him. They all yell in unison, cut off once they plummet under, followed by a stream of bubbles as they wrestle with each other.

Any thought of joining them is thrown out the window when you see one of their legs stick out from the water, only to flail around uselessly and be sucked right back under.

You dip further in until the water is lapping at your chest. It’s pleasantly cool against your sun-streaked skin, and as you run your palms through the undulating water, your body readily immerses itself until you’re bobbing pleasantly with each new wave. The noise of the ocean stuffs your ears like cotton, and you can’t help but think you never want to be so far from it again.

An unexpectedly forceful wave has you yelping and rushing to keep your head above the water. When you bring your palms back up, you notice with a sinking feeling that a few of your rings are missing, ones you were sure you came into the ocean with. Cursing yourself for your carelessness, you look around aimlessly, squinting against the sun and watching for any signs of them in the water.

A bright glare reflecting from a stroke’s distance away from you has you venturing deeper, toward a section of the water where you’re certain you see something floating.

You lunge forward, expecting to catch onto the next level of rocks with your feet, but instead, you’re met with cold gaps of water and nothingness. A surge of panic seizes you by the throat, and you have half a second to process that you’re falling before your head’s submerged and you’re entirely suspended in the ocean.

There’s something tugging at your body, relentless and forceful and even as you squint blearily through the water, you don’t see anything there.

You feel yourself go cold all over, and the shock of the situation renders you immobile for a split second. Your legs thrash about trying to locate the nearest surface to find purchase on, but you’re pulled back by another crescendoing wave, and you lose all semblance of direction before you can head for the surface. As the wave flips you, you’re sent hurdling even deeper, where the water grows colder and the noise from above is muffled beyond comprehension.

You feel your chest grow tighter and tighter by the second, a newfound fuzziness suffusing your head. Your lungs burn with the need to breathe in, but you can’t tell which way is up and down and you think you’re going to run out of breath and–

There’s a tight grip at your forearm, pulling you toward the surface with a searing strength. Your legs kick out from under you as you try your hardest to propel yourself along, until another hand joins the other to clasp onto your other arm. You break the surface of the ocean with a ragged gasp, groaning when you feel your torso hit something solid.

You realize you’ve been hauled onto a surfboard as it buoyantly sways atop an incoming wave. Inhaling deeply, you grip the sides of the board until your knuckles turn white, fearful of slipping back into the never-ending whirlwind of water. The roaring of the ocean fills your ears like static until you can’t discern it over the sound of your own coughing.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” there’s a familiar voice above you, but you’re too preoccupied with hacking up water and trying to breathe to look up.

Something brushes your forehead, and you feel your hair being pushed out of your face, allowing the setting sunlight to burn against your eyelids. You blink the world back into view, wincing when some of the salty water dips right back into your eyes. You find an achingly familiar face staring back at you amidst the noise in your ears, and for a split second, you think it’s your oxygen-deprived brain conjuring up hallucinations.

Jake blinks at you timidly when your gaze focuses on him. He looks alarmed, as if the sight of him is enough to send you rearing back into the water. But even in the hazy aftershock of your incident, you’re unable to feel anything but gratitude.

Slumping against the board, you close your eyes and focus on taking deep breaths. The water around you sloshes as Jake maneuvers the two of you toward shore, taking extra precautions not to let any waves spill out against you. You hear shouting from the shore end, where you presume the rest of your friends have caught on to what’s happening.

As the board reaches the shallow end, you feel the same hands envelop your sides, this time bringing you into a secure hold against Jake’s firm skin. Your heart’s pounding in your ears and you’re too preoccupied with taking shallow breaths to focus on how warm Jake feels against you.

The next few minutes feel like a blur in the most literal sense. Your vision is still bleary and you have a hard time making out your friends faces as they cluster in around Jake and try to help him lay you down. There’s so much noise that you can’t discern any words in particular, everything jumbled together into a sequence of distant-sounding, unrecognizable utterances.

You groan as your back hits something soft and you become acutely aware of all the unwavering stares on you. You try to sit up but fail, clearing your throat and taking a few deep, staggering breaths.

“Fuck, I feel like shit,” you rasp. It makes a relieved bout of laughter ring out around you, and you smile despite the discomfort in your chest.

“We’ll give you some space,” Sunghoon says gently, patting your calf. The touch lingers as he draws away, and you follow his retreating figure with your unfocused gaze.

One by one, you watch as your friends pull back, reconvening further away so as not to overwhelm you with their conversations and bearings. But you feel a lingering presence remain by your head, and the curious urge in you beats out the embarrassment you think you should feel. Looking up, you find Jake already staring back.

“Is it hard for you to breathe? Do you feel like there’s still pressure in your lungs?” Jake’s eyes seek yours out anxiously, and you realize with a start that he’s genuinely worried.

“I’m okay,” you promise, “I think I just need to rest. I’m more in shock than anything else.”

Nodding, Jake exhales sharply, and you notice his shoulders deflate. He settles down on the mat, leaving a comfortable gap between the two of you. You watch as the material beneath him dampens from his swim trunks, eyes trailing along the exposed skin of his legs, now covered in smatterings of sand. You only look away when you spot a familiar mole on his upper thigh.

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly.

You’re met with silence, heavy and unnerving. It’s the kind that makes you think you’ve said something wrong, something that needs to be taken back, forgotten. You nearly think Jake’s missed it until you hear quiet shuffling, then–

“S’okay, you just scared me a bit back there, that’s all,” he mumbles. You feel the warm weight of his gaze settling on your face again, but you think any last breath you have in you will be knocked out if you try to look back up at him. Looking at Jake has always been a bit like looking into the sun. “I still care about you a lot, despite what you might think. I was really worried.”

The sincerity in his words makes your chest churn painfully. Breathing in deeply, you reach out blindly with your hand along the mat, feeling the damp straw beneath your fingertips as you search for the familiar callouses you held onto earlier.

“I know,” you whisper, for a lack of better words. There’s something unsaid left hanging in the air, and you hope Jake can catch onto it before it disappears.

Jake’s fingers meet yours, and you hold your breath as they slip between the crevices of your own. You don’t dare to open your eyes, instead focusing on steadying your racing heart, on Jake and his gentle touch along your knuckles. His hold is grounding, but your mind still flutters at the prospects of what if, what if, what if.

☀

The momentum between you two shifts after that, but the nagging voice at the back of your mind stays.

Jake begins joining your group around town more and more often, usually for smaller increments of time between his practice sessions and work shifts. You come to learn that he now works as a trainer at the same academy he started training at, and that he coaches the under-12 group. He’s still busy as ever, but your friends make it a point that he’s always invited no matter when he’s able to join.

Jake takes these invites seriously; he drops by your hangouts nearly every time you’re there, a feat that isn’t hard for you to miss. He keeps a respectful distance but it doesn’t feel like he’s taken to ignoring you and ruling you out of his life completely. If anything, it’s the latter. You know the distance is more for your own sake than anything, and with each time you see him, it becomes increasingly harder for you to stay away.

Jake also begins visiting the shop more and more often, though never to buy anything substantial. He’ll usually do a quick round of the aisles before coming to hang out at the counter, where he’ll make (initially shy) conversation with you before purchasing a Clif Bar and leaving.

Admittedly, you enjoy the company more than you should, even if Jake’s presence is technically a hindrance to your professional work environment.

“Don’t you have a competition to be getting ready for?”

Jake’s eyebrows furrow, and he stops reading the ingredients label of the bar he’s holding to look up at you like you’re crazy. “I am. This is part of my new pre-practice ritual.”

“What, buying Clif Bars and showing me funny Tiktoks?” Your question’s meant to be amusing, but Jake nods at you, dead serious.

“I think I like the Crunchy Peanut Butter flavor the most,” he hums, handing over the bar so you can scan it. “Also, if I don’t have your socials, how am I supposed to show you all the red panda Tiktoks I’ve been seeing?”

The iPad dings softly as you go through the motions of finalizing his purchase. You feel Jake’s unfaltering gaze follow your hands, and you try not to let how flustered you feel show. “Is this you trying to be slick while asking for my number?”

“Maybe,” he grins. “Only if it’s okay, though.”

Jake slides a bill toward you, taking the bar and pocketing it in his shorts. No matter how confident he sounds, you’re able to tell he’s nervous by the way he wrings his hands behind his back.

Wordlessly, you pass your phone across the counter, trying not to look too pleased as Jake practically whoops and picks it up to type in his digits. When you get it back, you see that he’s written himself in as Jakey, followed by an emoji combination that you can’t make sense of. Something warm stirs in your gut.

☀

It’s your fourteenth birthday when you finally muster up the courage to let Jake teach you how to surf.

The word teach being used very loosely, but rather, just letting Jake mess around with you on his board. At that point, he had been in the academy for just over three years, enough to give both of you some kind of reassurance that he knew what he was doing. Jake had offered you lessons countless of times before then, eager to get you on the same board that had brought him so much joy, but you’d never had the guts to agree.

“This feels like attempted murder,” you whine from where you’re perched on his board, shrieking when a wave jostles you the tiniest bit.

Jake laughs at you, though not unkindly, and he expertly grabs onto your forearms and maneuvers you into a more secure position. He’s surprisingly gentle yet firm, and when he wades a bit deeper into the water, you find that you’re not as nervous as you thought you’d be. He instructs you on what to do when the next wave comes, promising you that he’ll be next to you in case anything happens.

He helps you ride out the first wave, making a show of clapping for you even though you did none of the work. The next few come and go very similarly, until you begin to get a hang of the general motions needed to keep you above the water. The reassurance of Jake’s hands on your skin is enough to have you soaring with your head in the clouds.

When a higher wave approaches, you tell Jake you’re confident in taking on it yourself. His eyebrows arch when he looks at you, but he steps away to let you handle it on your own. Your stomach swells in tandem with the wave and you scream bloody murder once you feel the board move, but you’re somehow able to stay above the water without any of his help.

“I did it! Did you see that? Jake, holy shit!” Your peals of joy are muffled suddenly when a wave slams into your side and your open mouth fills with briny water. Sputtering, you turn to see Jake fail miserably at hiding his amusement, doubling over from his laughter.

“Yah, it’s not funny! I could’ve died!” You scold him, but it only makes him laugh harder.

“It’s a little funny, you have to admit,” he says, and you really can’t disagree with him. “Besides, you’re doing really well. I’m happy you finally let me, even if it’s taken me months of convincing.”

“There’s a reason I don’t trust you,” you huff, but the words carry no animosity and you couldn’t mean them less. You trust Jake with your every fiber.

“I think this is your sign to join me in the academy,” Jake declares.

Frowning, you move to dismount the board and sink into the water next to him. “I can’t see myself enjoying it as much as you do, Jake.”

Jake hums, frowning. You can’t take looking at him upset, so you decide the best option is to climb up on his back and smother him in a tight hug. He complains when your arms come to encircle his shoulders and you cling onto him like gum, but his protests are weak and only motivate you to hug him harder.

“Can I be honest?” The vulnerable edge to Jake’s voice has you stiffening. “I’m scared we won’t be as close soon. I’ve got the academy and school, and I know you’ve got all those tutoring sessions after school too. What if we can’t hang out anymore? What if you start to think you’re too cool for me?”

Snorting, you can’t help but squeeze his shoulders tightly and lean even more of your weight on him. Jake doesn’t seem to mind one bit, hands warm where they’re holding your knees.

“If I thought I was too cool for you I wouldn’t be spending my birthday alone with you.”

“Not true, we had lunch with the rest of your friends earlier,” he mumbles, which earns him a chastising flick against his temple. “Ow, what! It’s facts!”

“Can you just accept the fact that I care about you?” You rest your chin atop his damp hair. “Maybe I even love you. Have you thought about that, Jake?”

When Jake doesn’t respond, you’re left to listen to the crashing of waves around you. You sit with the words in your head, and as anxious as you feel having said them out loud, you know you mean them. Jake’s been an inseparable part of your life for as long as your brain can conceptualize being alive, it’s inevitable that you’d grow to care and love him.

You didn’t know it then, but it was also inevitable the love that you felt would blossom into something much, much harder to ignore.

“I love you too,” Jake echoes, and it’s so quiet you nearly miss it.

Clambering off his back, you fall into the water with a splash.

“My last birthday wish is that you get me to that buoy over there.” Pointing in the distance, Jake follows your finger and squints at the bobbing yellow buoy. You’ve never been that far in, but you feel oddly brave in the wake of the setting sun.

“This is, like, your 5th birthday wish already,” he says without much conviction, already moving to pull the board in closer to you.

“I know,” you grin. “But you love me, so I doubt you care all that much.”

☀

The day of the state qualifiers falls on the first Saturday of January, a warm and humid day with a sky as blue as the ocean. You and Sunghoon close up the shop at noon to join your friends on the beach, where they’ve occupied the closest spectator area to the shore and are frantically applying sunscreen before the shade pulls back from their zone.

As expected, they’re all boasting varying shades of blue– Jake’s (mostly) self-proclaimed lucky color. The whole shtick started at one of his first competitions at the academy, where you and Sunghoon had happened to both be wearing blue when Jake won his first ever podium title. Jake had called you his lucky charms, fully knowing it was silly, yet neither of you ever dared to show up without the color afterwards.

You’re also donning your own bit of blue, a discreetly tucked handkerchief in one of your pockets, with which you mindlessly fiddle as you approach your friends. You’d thought it to be subtle enough, easy to blame on a mindless coincidence, but one raised brow from Sunghoon had confirmed otherwise.

Sunoo’s speaker borders on obnoxiously loud as it blasts Megan Thee Stallion’s Thot Shit, garnering concerned looks from the company of grandmothers that have taken up seats next to you. They seem to reconsider their choice of seating, but the quickly filling lot on the sand leaves them with few options to move. You and Sunghoon have to squeeze in next to Heeseung on the end to fit on the blanket, and end up sitting shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee.

You’re also close to the judging panel, a small shaded hut where a few people in white polos are shuffling around with papers, readying as the tournament draws to a start. Heeseung passes the bottle of sunscreen to you and you thank him with a smile, squeezing out a handful to begin lathering onto your exposed arms and legs. The sun overhead begins muscling through the canopy soon after and you’re forced to savor the last few moments of shady reprieve.

The first competitor is introduced over the speaker, and an immediate ripple of cheering rings through the audience. You clap good-naturedly but can’t deny your attention begins to stray the longer it takes for Jake to be called. He’s one of the last names, and as soon as the two familiar syllables of his name are announced, you perk up excitedly.

Jake and his signature baby blue board appear seconds later, followed by a tumult of deafening cheers from your section. It’s partly due to Sunoo’s incredible lung capacity, but it’s also no secret that your town has always shown up to support Jake in competitions. He’s been a favorite ever since he began winning the junior championships in high school, climbing his way up to the highest ranks along the Sunshine Coast and earning himself the title of your town’s pride.

The rest of the competitors are familiar to you in their own ways. You recall seeing a few of them at past events, where they’d gone against Jake and failed to strip him of his title, and the rest being fellow members of Jake’s surfing academy.

The panel of judges officiates the beginning of the tournament, and with a resounding whistle, the first surfer drops into the water and meets his first wave.

Though you’d been to your fair share of surfing competitions, you’d forgotten the infectious thrill that usually accompanied attending them. The thrum of excitement in the air has you leaning forward throughout the entirety of the first, second, and third heats, watching the surfers tackle waves with an effortlessness that leaves you astonished.

Jake’s able to pass through all of the heats with remarkably high scores, a feat that’s never failed to impress you. The waves he catches within the competition zone are simple enough to leave no room for mistakes, and yet complicated enough that the other competitors struggle in their maneuvers to impress the judges. He performs his usual routine, the one you’d watched him rehearse for years on end during practice sessions, and ends it off with a foam climb that sends a ripple of applause throughout the audience.

As his last twenty-minute set draws to an end, Jake paddles back toward the shoreline while the competitor prepares to jump in after him. He waves over at your section, grinning boyishly when Heeseung wolf-whistles and Sunoo makes a suggestive hand sign at him. Your eyes meet for the briefest moment right before Jake has to exit the water, but it’s all you’re able to think about while the rest of the competition drags on.

As expected, Jake takes a place among the top 3 competitors. He’s just a few points from first place, but it’s enough to qualify him for the next, higher level competition that’ll undoubtedly be more important to him.

As the customary ending ceremony concludes, your group waits for him off to the side, away from the huddle of audience members queuing to get a photo. They’re currently swarming the third place champ, who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else but there.

Jake appears not long after. He’s still shirtless, which is really awful but also really great for you, and he’s pushed his damp hair away from his face. You think you’re going to die when he gets close enough for you to make out that the necklace he’s wearing is a wooden star charm you gifted him when he first started surfing. You know he’s most likely forgotten who gave it to him in the first place, but the chance that he might possibly remember has you feeling feverish.

Sunoo jumps on Jake’s back as soon as he joins you all under the shade. Jake oofs, but readily supports Sunoo with his arms, who cheers cutely and grips onto him like a koala. You tell yourself that you really couldn’t care less if Jake’s biceps flex from the action.

“There’s our guy,” Jay hollers, ruffling Jake’s hair. He circles Jake like a vulture and tries to jump on Sunoo’s back, which sends all three of them screeching and barreling down into the sand. You can’t find it in you to feel embarrassed even as people look over, laughing heartily at the way they wriggle around and curse.

“I’m going to blacklist you from all of my competitions,” Jake threatens once he’s finally off the ground, scowling as he shakes the sand out of his hair.

“You did really good,” you blurt out. “That last Pipeline came out of nowhere, but you handled it well. Even the judges thought so.”

Jake knows this. He knows his routine better than you do, knows what happened out in the ocean better than you do. And yet he still smiles sweetly, thanks you, and tells you he’s really glad you came. You see the way his eyes flicker towards the bandana sticking out of your pocket, and try not to preen under his gaze when he all but flushes.

“You should all come to mine to celebrate, my mom’s going to be making barbecue later,” he offers. Much to your dismay, he tugs a shirt on and hauls the strap of his bag onto his shoulder.

“Auntie Sim we fucking love you,” Sunoo mumbles.

It’s a unanimous decision, and you couldn’t be happier cramped into the back of Jake’s car.

☀

Aside from your friends, the only thing you’ll admit to missing from your hometown would be Auntie Lee’s Double Cheeseburger and Milkshake Combo™. It was what you ate to celebrate your high school graduation, what you ate with Jake to console him after one of his many breakups, and the last thing you ate before you thought you’d be leaving for good.

But despite Melbourne’s more than abundant choices of fast food, all of the restaurants you’d tried out had only left you missing Auntie Lee more. You blamed some of it on nostalgia, but really, when it came down to your very professional opinion, she just made a really good burger and milkshake.

So, when Heeseung proposes you all hang out again soon, you’re quick to suggest her diner as the meeting spot.

Thankfully, not much has changed there either. Auntie Lee’s hair is now a burgundy red, a shade you think suits her better than her past ginger tint, and she greets you at the register with the same crooked smile you’ve come to associate with her good food. Her apron still has an array of colorful pins she’d collected over the years and a stubborn grease stain right below the neckline that makes you feel oddly reminiscent.

The six of you squeeze into one of the booths by the window, the same one you used to crowd into as high schoolers after late-night study sessions. The formation in which you choose to sit in is strikingly similar as well, and when you run your fingertips along the underside of the table on your side, you’re able to quickly locate a carving that you’d done haphazardly in your senior year.

“Holy shit, our initials are still here,” you say, and Sunghoon reaches under the table to check as well.

As Auntie Lee brings your orders in record time, you sit back against the booth and survey the rest of the table. If you dig far back enough in your camera roll, you’re certain you have an exact shot of a moment just like this captured.

“Inflation somehow never hit this place.” Jay’s looking at the food like a predator, and you try not to giggle. You hear Sunghoon mumble a prompt amen from next to you and you look down at your own food with an increasingly salivating mouth.

“Cheers to us and to the economy,” Heeseung raises his milkshake, and the rest of the table is quick to follow suit. As you laugh and clink your glasses together, you catch Jake’s eyes peering at you from across the booth, but he’s quick to look away when you notice.

As you dig into your burger, you try not to think about the lingering feeling of his eyes on you. Jake’s always had a sort of maddening effect on you– once the thought of him circulated in your mind, getting rid of him was like tugging gum off of hot asphalt.

“My shift earlier was ass but this is enough to fix me,” Heeseung mumbles through his mouthful of burger, wiping at his sauce-stained mouth with a napkin.

“Do you still work at that cafe by the bike rental place?” You ask.

Heeseung furrows his brows and shakes his head adamantly, swallowing his bite before responding. “I left a while ago. I work at that one hotel by the beach now. The one with the funny misspelled sign outside.”

Humming in acknowledgement, you swallow the bite in your mouth and frown. “Huh.”

“I feel like I don’t know anything about you anymore. And I feel like you don’t know anything about us anymore, either,” Jay admits with a pout. His words make your stomach turn uneasily, and you put down your burger with guilty fingers.

“Yeah,” Sunoo hums in agreement, “what’s been going on with you? You told us you were leaving to study in Melbourne, but that’s pretty much all I know. You never post on Instagram either.”

It’s true– when you were first planning on leaving, you had no intention of forgetting everything behind. You didn’t have time for goodbyes, and as shitty as it was, the thought of keeping in close touch with your friends scared you. You worried that what had happened between you and Jake would alter all of your friendships forever, and that they no longer saw you in the same way.

Clearing your throat, you try not to let your voice waver under the weight of their attention. “I do study in Melbourne, I pretty much live there full-time now. Have an apartment and everything,” you pause when Sunoo cheers brightly, and you flush at his enthusiasm before continuing. “That’s pretty much it, though. I was going to work in the city this summer, but I’m honestly kind of glad Sunghoon called. Didn’t realize how much I missed this place.”

Everyone awes, and from beside you, Sunghoon squeezes your shoulder gently.

“Do you live with anyone?” Sunoo asks slyly, popping another fry into his mouth. He props his chin up on his hand, feigning indifference, but you know him well enough to tell when he’s trying to be foxy. “Roommates? Friends? …A special someone?”

Waving him off, you laugh at how his lips quirk up inquisitively. “No, it’s a small space so I’m glad it’s just me. And if you’re trying to ask if I’ve got a boyfriend or girlfriend, you’re not being slick at all.”

The rest of the table laughs with you, but you don’t miss Sunoo’s whine of protest.

Jay crosses his arms, cocking his head. His stare makes you put down your fry. “So? Do you?”

“I expected this from Sunoo but not from you, Jay,” you huff. “Fuck, you’re all nosy as shit, you know that?”

When everyone continues to stare back expectantly, you pout and look down in defeat, “But yes, for the record, I’m single.”

“Jake’s studying in Brisbane now,” Heeseung says out of nowhere, and you look up to see the boy in question choke on his milkshake out of surprise. “He commutes, like, every day. As much as it’s crazy, I respect the grind. He’s always been smart as shit.”

The rest of the table hums in agreement, but you feel Sunghoon stiffen up next to you.

Jake clears his throat and rubs his neck sheepishly, clearly a bit startled by the sudden attention. Not for the first time that afternoon, he looks up at you tentatively, almost like making eye contact with you will sting him. “Um, yeah. I’m studying engineering. Architectural engineering, if we’re being technical. I applied and got in last year.”

“That’s really nice,” you say earnestly. Your throat feels all dry but you’re eager to hear more, almost desperate to grasp at everything you’ve missed in his life since you’d left. “Sounds hard, won’t lie, but you’re smart like that. I’m happy for you.”

Nodding, Jake’s lips twitch, almost like he’s trying to suppress his grin. The edges of his eyes crinkle as he tips his head forward in a show of gratitude. “Thank you.”

You’re not quite sure if you should continue the conversation or leave it where it is, so you reach for your milkshake, awkwardly tucking the straw between your lips to give yourself something to do. As you sip up the last of the liquid, your slurping screeches around the table and you wince.

“Fuck, it’s worse than I thought,” Heeseung groans loudly. His fork clatters in his plate where he drops it, the clang resounding around the empty diner dramatically.

“You two need to fix this, like, now,” Jay agrees, rubbing his temples. “The sexual tension is throwing me off. Do you get how bad that is?”

Frowning, you let go of your straw to stare at them in dismay, and, quite frankly, embarrassment. You’re sure your ears and neck are telling shades of red, based on how warm you feel all over, and you’re sure everyone can see. You knew you couldn’t avoid this for much longer, but the bandaid being ripped off didn’t hurt any less.

“You’re making her uncomfortable,” Jake speaks up. He’s looking at you concerned, but you can’t bear to meet his eyes for longer than a second.

“It’s okay, I know they’re joking,” you say meekly, frustrated with how upset you sound. You’re not, no matter how much you wish you were anywhere but here.

The blanket of silence that swathes the whole table weighs on you like stones. You stare at your empty cup stubbornly, refusing to look up at the pairs of eyes that are watching you intently, some with pity, some with guilt. You feel like a caged animal, backed into a corner and left with nowhere to run.

“I’m going to get some fresh air,” you announce. Still looking down, you get up abruptly and wade out from the booth, murmuring apologies under your breath as you knock into Sunghoon’s feet.

The night air is stuffy and briny as you breathe in mouthfuls of it. The headlights of a passing car blind you momentarily as you lean against the wooden railing of the restaurant’s porch, making you blink disorientedly. A group of teenagers noisily clamber in past you, and you ignore the looks that get thrown your way.

Jake steps outside soon after. Some part of you knew he would come after you, and it preens selfishly when he spots you and all but jogs to you.

“Hey,” he says awkwardly. There’s some scuffling against the porch floor before he comes to join you against the railing. A beat of stillness passes, then– “I’m really sorry.”

You snort. “Not your fault. Nothing to be sorry about.”

Jake regards you silently, the intensity of his gaze burning into your slumped shoulders. He always looks at you like he can see right through you, right through all of your skin and flesh and ugly secrets. It's unnerving thinking about just how much he knows.

“No, I–”

“Jake,” you cut him off, voice falling just short of desperate. Your knuckles begin to turn white where your hands curl against the porch. “I don’t want you to apologize. What happened between us isn’t something to be sorry about. It happened, and that’s that. Just wish you and everyone else wouldn’t be so stubborn about bringing it up all the time.”

The silence that follows rings in your ears and settles uncomfortably in your gut. You hesitate before speaking again, wanting to gauge Jake’s reaction, but you’re afraid he’ll leave if you don’t hurry.

“I just want to start over. Clean slate,” you mumble.

Jake remains quiet for what feels like an eternity. Your stomach twists anxiously, tossing and turning when his ruminating gaze shifts up from your shoulders and onto your face

“Is that what you want?” Jake’s voice is feeble and it washes over you like a breeze.

Breathing in sharply, you nod.

“Okay,” he says simply.

Then, in an act so unexpected it throws you off guard for a good few seconds, he thrusts a hand between both of your bodies, grinning impishly. “I’m Jake. Nice to meet ya. You come here often?”

The laugh that bursts from you is so raw and genuine and it makes your chest flutter. You take his hand and mutter your name between giggles, ignoring how the warmth encasing your palm is achingly familiar. "Fuck, you’re actually unbelievable. And no, first time in town actually.”

“Really,” Jake plays along easily, smirking when he leans against the railing next to you. “You wouldn’t reckon you need someone to show you around, would you?”

The implications of the offer are clear as day, and you visibly hesitate in your response. Jake’s features soften the slightest bit, like he’s afraid he’s crossed a boundary, and you hate the way your heart swells at this.

“I wouldn’t mind,” you say cheekily.

☀

You and Jake have always had somewhat of a normal relationship.

You first met him in primary school, when he was still shorter than you and had a gap in his teeth when he smiled. Having recently moved into town, he was placed in the same homeroom as you, and, by the will something much greater than the both of you, into the empty chair next to you.

It was hard to ignore him for more reasons than the fact that he was sitting just two feet away from you. Jake was full of personality, as you’d come to learn, and as charismatic as a boy could be at the tender age of 7. He was funny, knew a bit too much about whales and turtles, and was nice enough to share his lunch with you on the days you’d forgotten yours.

It was inevitable that he’d become your friend– you’d walk home together, play at the park together, and dig around in the dirt for worms occasionally– and you never thought it would get any more complicated than that. Until you entered secondary school.

Jake followed you into one of the three secondary schools in your town, and it’s where the two of you would come to meet Sunghoon. Although you two were no longer in the same homeroom, you still made efforts to spend the majority of your free time together, now joined by a third. Sunghoon seamlessly became interwoven into your life just like Jake had, and you couldn’t think about a future without either of them.

At the end of your first year in secondary school, Jake started surfing lessons and got his first girlfriend at the academy.

It was weird for you and Sunghoon, now one person less as you gathered at your usual spots at the park, your backyard, and the parking lot behind Auntie Lee’s diner. Sunghoon reasoned that nothing much had changed, but you both knew that wasn’t true. There was a Jake-shaped void that was impossible to ignore, much less fill, as he became more and more enthralled with the sport and his new girlfriend.

You’d never really met Haeun properly, despite how entangled you both were in Jake’s life. You had no reason to believe she wasn’t nice– Jake seemed more than happy every time he talked about her and boasted the widest grin you’d seen on him every time they texted. She was among the top in her age group at the surfing academy, had pretty hair, and even followed you back on Instagram. You really had no reason to believe anything bad.

And yet, you couldn’t help it. There was some deep, ugly feeling within you that you couldn’t get rid of for as long as she was involved with him. Looking back, it didn’t bother you as much as it probably should’ve. When you’d divulged your feelings to Sunghoon, he’d also brushed it off as innate jealousy. Your best friend was spending more time away from you, who wouldn’t be a little bit frustrated?

But from there, everything went downhill. Jake and Haeun broke up by the time summer ended, much to your relief, but it was far from the last girl that Jake got involved with. As the three of you worked your way up toward graduating, Jake grew further into his features and learned to embrace his hobbies with more and more groups of people. It was inevitable that Jake would earn himself a place among your school’s most well-known, and consequently, draw even more attention to himself, both from guys and girls.

Despite all of that, he continued to be someone you and Sunghoon could lean on. He had rigorous practice sessions that took up most of his week but made an effort to visit both of you after school to study and get food. Any time you felt like he was drifting away, he’d reel himself back in and attach himself to your side like gum. Which only made the suffocating feeling in you grow stronger.

It wasn’t until year 12 prom that you realized what was wrong with you.

While Jake had a date from another class, you and Sunghoon decided to show up to the event together, if only to take advantage of the free food and drinks your school was offering. The whole night, you couldn’t take your eyes off of Jake from across the dance hall, anxiously watching the way he’d spin his date, the way he’d smile, laugh, and look at her like she’d personally hung the stars up in the sky.

As selfish as it was, you imagined yourself in her spot. And in retrospect, it really couldn’t have been more obvious.

“Are you not having fun?” Sunghoon had asked, hands slipping from where they were holding you by the waist.

When you’d turned back to look at him, the crestfallen expression on his face made you flinch. He looked like a kicked puppy, and it stung more to know you’d been the one kicking this whole time. “I’m sorry, I got distracted.”

“Really?” He’d scoffed, this time fully letting go of you. There was a vulnerable look in his eye as he stepped back, face dipping into the shadows of the dancing lights. “What’s the point of agreeing to go with me if you’re just going to stare at him like that the whole time?”

Everyone had gotten a bit weird around this time, but it wasn’t hard for you to tell what was going on. Sunghoon had never been really good at hiding his own feelings; you knew the cafe study dates were beginning to turn into more than just study dates for him. You’d noticed the lingering touches, the meaningful glances, the fond way he’d call your name. Somewhere along the way, Sunghoon had gotten caught up in you.

In hindsight, it was selfish of you to forgo addressing it. It was selfish to ignore it, stash it away at the back of your mind and hope he’d one day find his way out. But the paralyzing fear kept you so eagerly and cruelly reciprocative, so willing to play along. You already felt like you’d lost Jake, you couldn’t afford to lose Sunghoon too.

“Hoonie, I’m sorry, you know I–”

“I know,” he’d said, lips twisting into a pained smile. His eyes drifted over somewhere behind you, where you knew Jake was dancing with his date, and he shook his head. “And yet some stupid part of me hoped you’d finally get over him.”

In all your infinite luck, it seems like you never fully could.

☀

Slowly and heedlessly, Jake intertwines himself in the fibers of your life once again.

He’s the first face you see in the mornings at the shop. His laugh reverberates in your ears long after you two part ways for the day, his brief, fleeting touches linger along your skin like those of a receding wave’s. His contact name is the last thing you see at night, and he’s all you think about until you slip away to unconsciousness.

You’re so full of him you’re drowning– he’s everywhere around you and you think there’s really no escaping him this time.

“When does your shift end?” Jake pushes yet another Clif Bar across the register’s counter toward you.

The clock behind you chimes softly in response. You squint up at the rusted arrows and turn to Jake inquisitively. “In 10 minutes. Why?”

“Cool,” Jake rips open the wrapper and takes a bite from the bar. Chewing, he grins at you slyly. “You wanna come by mine after?” The proposition sounds more like a question than anything, but Jake knows you’ll say yes.

Jake’s car is a shacky little thing his family gifted him for this 18th. It’s the same as you remember it, with a mess of stickers haphazardly stuck along the dashboard and a row of stuffed animals along the back window that his cousins had left behind. The passenger seat still squeaks when you try to adjust it, and you both laugh when you end up sitting down and the cushion whines from under you.

Jake drives you through a route you know too well. He rolls the windows down (as far as the car allows them) and points at renovated buildings and new lots alike, narrating everything you’d missed while away. You lean against the door and let the breeze wash over your face, fiddling with the bag in your lap.

You’re there but you’re also not– Jake’s voice serves as an anchor while your mind wanders off just far enough not to worry him. These are all places you’ve been with him, and with each passing place, you have to blink away vivid memories that flash before your eyes in technicolor film.

You and Jake celebrating your middle school graduation at the rundown arcade that’s now been modernized. You and Jake troubling over what to gift Sunghoon at the comic book store that’s now shut down forever. You and Jake chasing his dog at the park that now finally has a special fenced off section just for dogs. You and Jake–

“This is the park where you lost one of your baby teeth from falling off a swing. You started crying and I had to take you home on my bike.”

“You remember that?” You blink at him incredulously, face growing hot.

“Of course I do,” Jake says matter-of-factly. “It’s hard to forget when the tooth’s still in my room.”

“What?!” Your bag slips off your lap when you sit up straight, bewildered and embarrassed. “No way, your mom wrapped it up and I took it home with me.”

Jake brings the car to a steady stop by the curb in front of his house. He reaches over across you to help you roll your window back up, and you try not to squirm under his amused gaze. “I’ll just show you then.”

Layla greets both of you at the threshold of the door, yelping once she lays eyes on you. You have a solid second to brace yourself before she leaps forward, propping both of her front paws against your thighs and wagging her tail so fast you worry she’ll start floating. Nearly losing your balance, you squeak in surprise, but are quick to reach out and pet her. 

You coo at her like she’s your own baby and in a way, she certainly is.

She’s soft and warm, cuddly as she headbutts your palms and licks at your fingers. “I missed you so much, cutie.”

“She missed you too,” Jake says, and you look up right as the camera shutter on his phone goes off. Squawking, you cover your face, albeit too late, because Jake giggles at his screen and you hear him mumble a quiet cute.

Jake’s room looks smaller than you remember it being. You think it’s because the small twin he used to have has been replaced by a modest queen, but you’re also no longer fresh out of high school and naive. There are sun-bleached spots in places where his old posters are, the walls now sparsely lined with polaroids and printed film photos.

Your feet subconsciously bring you closer to the walls. You squint at each of the photos, the people in some of them unrecognizable to you. There’s one from the day of your graduation, but it’s just Jake with his mom, along with a bouquet large enough to take up a third of the frame. There are a few of Layla in a wide range of settings, including one that you’re certain was taken while you were at the park together. There’s even one of the sunrise at the beach on a morning with calm waters and no people in sight.

Most notably, there are none of you up there. You reason that it wouldn’t make any sense for there to be in the first place, given everything that had happened, but some pathetic part of you wishes that Jake still held onto you the same way you did to him.

“Here,” Jake says, snapping your attention back to him. He’s unearthed a plain blue box from the depths of his closet, and he’s pushing it towards you with a lopsided smile.

You abandon the photographs and plop yourself down on the carpet. Peeling back the lid of the box, you peek inside and try to ignore the way your breath quickens when Jake situates himself right next to you. Your knees brush together as your fingers slowly sift through the contents, your mind barely registering what you’re looking at in the box.

A bunch of movie tickets from screenings you’d seen years ago. A birthday card you’d painted for him in middle school. An old Pikachu figurine you’d won for him at the fair. A postcard you’d mailed him from a school trip to Sydney. A magazine cutout from when you’d sat down to do vision boards together. A polaroid of you and Jake at the beach, posing with a hyperactive Layla who’d come out blurry on the film. A tiny plastic box with your baby tooth in it.

Your mind is racing so fast you feel the world around you halt still. Your shaky fingers pick up the box, peeling back the napkin that it’s wrapped up in.

“You– Why’d you keep all of this?”

Jake blinks at you like it’s a ridiculous question. “What, am I supposed to get rid of everything that reminds me of you? This box doesn’t have even a fraction of all that, anyway.”

It’s hard for you to wrap your mind around the thought, but Jake’s been holding onto you far longer than you could’ve hoped for.

“Can I tell you something?” Jake asks.

“You already did,” you joke, crumpling up the napkin under your hands and chucking it at him.

Jake catches it effortlessly and grins at you, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know you said you wanted to forget everything from before, but I feel as if I owe you an explanation. If not you, then for my own sake. It keeps me up sometimes, ya know?”

Your breath begins to thin out, but you nod anyway. You’ve known this conversation was inevitable, no matter how much you pushed it off. You couldn’t go back to Melbourne without letting Jake rip off the same bandaid for which he was responsible.

Jake’s eyes are soft as they meet your own, his hands gentle as they seek yours out to cradle them. “I could never be upset at you for prioritizing your own future back then, and I hope you don’t carry any of that burden with you. It was me who was unsure of what was happening in my life, what I wanted to do after high school. And it was wrong of me to try and tie you down with me here.

“If anything, you were the only direction I had in my life. And I was so, so scared I’d lose you to something else. Something better. But when I look back on how selfish I was, how desperate I was to keep you around, I can’t help but feel so guilty. Because I should’ve seen how unhappy you were here, and being with me couldn’t change that.”

Jake’s voice is so fragile you could smash it into a million pieces like fine china. Your eyes blink once, twice, and then your cheeks feel all damp and you can’t hold it in anymore. Jake thumbs at the tears that skid down your skin, and you try to swallow down your erratic hiccups, but even through your sobs, you can feel yourself laughing. Despite your tears, you’re happy.

“I don’t think I was ever unhappy,” you admit. “I was just scared. Scared of getting stuck here like everyone else. Scared I’d never accomplish anything and that I’d waste away the most important years of my life. I was so scared I forgot to think about everything that was worth staying for here. Like you.”

Pulling the box into your lap, you look down at its contents with a teary smile. Though you feel shaken up, there’s an underlying cathartic release to it all– this is the closure that you left without, the closure you thought you were never going to get.

“I hope you don’t mind me taking my tooth home with me,” you tease, pocketing the packaged tooth in your shorts. Looking up, you push the box into Jake’s hands. “You can keep the rest.”

Jake regards you silently, but the look on his face is so soft it makes your ears feel all hot. He nods, looking down into the contents of the box with a smile wide enough to make the edges of his eyes crease up. “I don’t mind,” he muses, “I really did keep a lot of things, huh?”

“It’s cute though!” You’re quick to reassure, and Jake’s answering laughter sounds like fizzy soda pop.

The two of you lounge around on the floor of his bedroom until it’s too hot to even lay around. As Layla enters the room and pounces on you, Jake sits up to look at you while you scratch behind her ears and mumble nonsense to her. “You wanna go in the pool?”

“I didn’t bring my bathers though,” you frown between coos.

“Oh my God,” Jake groans, getting up from the floor and pacing over to his drawers. “You’ve even started speaking like a Melburnian. They’re togs, excuse you, and I can lend you some shorts or something.”

The shorts and shirt he passes you have random cartoons on them and are thankfully dark enough to not go transparent in the water. You clamber up from your spot on the floor and wince as you stretch.

“I’ll change in here,” you tell him. When Jake remains standing in the room with a blank expression, you point towards the door and tell him to shoo.

“Got it chief,” Jake salutes you jokingly, “Layla, let’s go girl.”

“Layla can stay,” you interrupt him, whistling to call her back over. Layla obediently follows, planting herself by your feet and barking at Jake, who remains frozen in the doorway.

“This feels really mean,” he pouts at you, grabbing the door knob to shut the door after him. But even after he closes the door, you can hear his voice in the hallway. “Last one in the pool is a loser!”

Huffing, you look down at Layla and giggle when she nudges your foot as if to say hurry up.

☀

There’s a lightness to your breaths that you swear came after that day at Jake’s. You think it’s silly to attribute it to a mere conversation, but in retrospect, any weight you’d carried before was because of an absence of any such conversation.

You feel good, oddly much so that it’s almost weird. You feel as if the universe had absolved you of all the pain and guilt you had tied to this place, and all you were left with was the fondness and euphoria of finally being back.

Until shit begins hitting the fan soon after.

On an unusually gloomy day for the summer, you and Sunghoon find yourselves on the steps in front of the shop, taking advantage of the opportunity to be outside without experiencing heat stroke symptoms. The concrete is still warm under your legs, enough so that Sunghoon offers up his shirt for you to sit on at one point, but it’s a welcome change from the unpleasant temperatures you’d seen thus far.

It’s Sunghoon’s part of the shift currently, but the store’s been eerily empty for the first half of the day, so you two have taken it upon yourselves to take a well-deserved break. Perks of being your own bosses, and you’re sure your aunt would approve. You’d hardly broken a sweat, and who are you to turn down Sunghoon’s offer of ice cream and a soda?

Besides, listening to Sunghoon fervidly talk about the new tv show he’s started watching while you chow down your cone is a treat of its own. You take the chance to rant about the last weird TikTok you saw while Sunghoon finishes off his own ice cream before it melts.

There’s a natural lull in your conversation at which point you decide to check your phone. Jake’s name is atop most of the notifications on your screen, and you’re not quite sure what to reply to first. Your fingers fidget on the device and you bite your bottom lip, holding back a grin when you finally click on your messages and see a picture of Layla with a hat too big for her head.

“What’re you smiling so much at?” Sunghoon’s voice is teasing, and you have half a second to process his question before he’s cramming into your side and peeking at your phone with prying eyes.

“Hey!” You scold, but it’s too late, because he’s seen the contact name atop, and you can’t think of a lie fast enough before his next question comes.

“You’re texting Jake?” The teasing smirk on his lips melts with the accusatory tone in his voice, and you wince as you lock your screen and hide your phone.

“Why do you sound like that? You’re acting like you’ve just walked in on me trying to hide a body or something!”

Sunghoon’s lips purse and he eyes your side, where you’ve tucked your phone away. “Don’t be ridiculous, this is basically the equivalent.”

“Ridiculous?” You scoff. Something in your throat settles uneasily, and you try not to sound too hurt when you speak again. “I’m just talking to him, Hoon. What are you on about?”

“Really? You’re giving him a second chance after everything he’s done?” Sunghoon fixes you with a dismayed stare, brows furrowed and fists clenched where they rest in his lap. “Do I have to remind you that you left in the first place because of him?”

The lump in your throat grows and you feel like you’ll throw up. Looking away, you blink up at the cloudy sky and try to focus on evening out your breathing. Fights with Sunghoon have never been easy, but fights with Sunghoon about Jake, though rare, always left you numb for days on end.

“I’m not giving him a second chance. We’re friends, testing the waters again, that’s all,” you say meekly. “And I didn’t leave because of him, I was going to study in Melbourne anyway. Stop giving him so much credit.”

Sunghoon’s silence feels like an eternity. You hear him shift next to you, then, out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he stands up. His stare burns into your scalp like the scalding sun. “Even you don’t believe yourself.”

Sunghoon’s eyes are glossy and tender from where you can see them, and it dawns on you that he’s close to crying. His teeth are digging into his bottom lip and his eyebrows are set and furrowed, but you can tell that he’s upset and failing at hiding it.

“It may not seem like it, but it hurt all of us when you stopped keeping in touch after you left,” he continues, wiping at his eyes with his hand. “It sucked a lot. We all thought we lost a good friend forever.”

“Sunghoon,” you call, voice breaking off at the end. You reach out to grab him by the wrist, looking up with wide, apologetic eyes. “Sunghoon, I’m sorry. I’ve always–”

“Had a thing for Jake? Yeah, I know,” he dismisses, smiling shakily. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “I know. And you know I’ve always had a thing for you. But I didn’t let that get in the way ”

“Because it’s not fair to either of us.” You can feel your throat begin to tighten in the same way it does when you’re about to sob, can feel your eyes sting and your heart falter painfully.

Abruptly standing up from the curb, you ignore the way your skin burns from the heated concrete and reach out to envelop Sunghoon into a tight hug. His arms remain limp at his sides for a brief second, until he hears you sniffle and immediately reciprocates the embrace. You close your eyes and inhale deeply, coaxing Sunghoon into rocking back and forth with you.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much and I don’t want to see you hurt again.”

Nodding against his shoulder, you pull back to look at him. The rims of his eyes are red and his face is slightly puffy, but you realize he’s no different than the boy you’ve always held so dear to your heart. No matter the distance you’ve spent apart, the disagreements you’ve struggled over, the spats and rocky paths. He’s still your Sunghoon.

“I love you too, Hoonie.” Wiping at one of the tear streaks on his cheekbone, you gently cup his cheek and ignore the way your heart falters when he leans into your touch. “Even if it’s not in the way I wish I could, I still love you so much."

Sunghoon doesn’t say anything for a minute, instead resigning to just closing his eyes and melting against your hand. You hold still all the while, humming softly under your breath until he feels ready to move off.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Sunghoon decides. He wipes at the remaining tears on his face, and moves to hold the door to the shop open, gesturing you inside. “I’ve got cookie dough Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer that I need your help finishing. And no, you cannot get out of this.”

Snorting, you step inside and look over your shoulder to tease, “If you seriously think I’d pass on Ben and Jerry’s, we should re-evaluate this friendship.”

Sunghoon laughs, a full-bellied one where you can see the endearingly sharp edges of his teeth and his Adam's apple bob, and closes the door behind him. He doesn’t say anything to that, silently wrapping an arm around your shoulder as he leads you up the stairs. When you look over, he’s still smiling. You think you’ll be okay.

☀

Rolling down the window, you thrust your arm out into the humid evening air and relish in the gust of wind that meets your palm. From your position on the hill, you can see the entirety of the shoreline in all of its tranquil glory, devoid of any visitors and undisturbed in the wake of the sunset.

You think that this is where you’re meant to be– in a quiet world, next to Jake, with every trivial worry left behind.

Jake parks the car underneath the jagged shade of a pandanus tree and races over to the other side to open your door, almost tripping in his haste. Laughing, you step out and help him unload his board from where it’s tied to the roof of the car.

The two of you have routinely begun choosing the same spot on the beach. It’s close enough to the water so that you can reach it without the sand burning your feet, but far enough so that the crashing waves don’t end up touching you. You know it’s the same spot because it’s next to a mosaic made of seashells that has yet to be destroyed.

Jake thinks the mosaic resembles a cityscape, but you think it looks like a blooming rose.

Sometimes, Jake swims around on his board and practices old moves while you watch him keenly. Sometimes, you read an old book or doze off while Jake does laps around the shore. Sometimes, he even invites you into the water with him, and sometimes, you say yes. You mutually bask in the presence of the ocean and each other, and it’s all you really need.

“God, it’s so humid today,” you complain, huffing as you drop your bag onto the sand. Jake hums in agreement and straightens out the blanket so that you can sit down.

“It won’t be getting much worse after this. Summer’s almost over anyway,” Jake says mindlessly, tugging at his own bag and rummaging through it with a pout.

Right. It was at the forefront of your mind until it suddenly wasn’t– leaving again.

The prospect of having to return to a life without Jake and Sunghoon and everyone else you loved here was proving difficult for you to conceptualize. The return ticket sitting in your wallet was long forgotten, tucked away in a pocket and left untouched until now. Your fingers itch to reach for it in your bag, to rip it to shreds and dig it under the sand and forget about it for good.

A nudge on your shoulder snaps you back to the present, and you find Jake holding out a Melona bar in a silent offering. You take it with a wide grin and rip open the plastic without hesitation. You haven’t had these popsicles in a while, probably since the last time Jake bought you one.

“You wanna tell me what you’re thinking about?”

Popping your mouth off of the bar, you lick your lips and crane your neck to look at Jake. He’s in the process of opening his own popsicle, but he’s watching you carefully, almost timidly.

“A bunch of silly shit,” you admit. “Like how I don’t want to go back to Melbourne all that much anymore.”

Jake’s eyes dip across your face, like he’s searching for indications that you’re lying. You think they pause on your lips for the slightest second longer, but then he’s looking away altogether and you don’t know if you can trust yourself.

“I don’t want you to go back to Melbourne either,” he laughs, voice breaking off toward the end. He’s nervous.

“Clingy much?” Your joke’s meant to ease the ache in your chest but it only makes it worse. “It’s fine, you have my number and socials. You can bother me there.”

“We don’t have to talk about this right now. You’ve still got a few weeks anyway, why focus on leaving when we could be making the most of this time?” And Jake’s right. Last you were here, you hadn’t known you wouldn’t be back for a while. You never got a proper goodbye with many people or places. But now you knew, and there was no use mourning the inevitable.

You knew you would be back eventually.

You and Jake finish off your Melona bars and shed your outerwear so you can wade into the water. As your fingertips graze the water by your hips, you close your eyes and wiggle your toes against the sandy floor. You hear Jake dive into the water nearby, followed by a split second of calm before something brushes along your calf and you can’t hold in your terrified shriek.

Looking down, you find Jake peering up at you through the water, his wide grin visible even under the buoyant ripples. He resurfaces with a big splash in front of you, sticking his tongue out at you childishly while you wipe the water from your face. You feel your jaw drop incredulously, and you have half a mind to retaliate and give him a taste of his own medicine.

Jake seems to read your mind, however, because he makes a dash for the shore before you can move to splash him back.

The sand dips beneath the soles of your feet as you chase after Jake, sending water droplets scattering up around you in frantic arcs. You think he’s running toward one of the inlets, the one where there’s a loose rock formation that allows you to venture further into the ocean. He stops where the sand bleeds into dark, jagged rocks, leaving you to catch up to him in seconds.

You barrel into his back and giggle as he turns around to hug you to his chest, shrieking when he lifts you up and your feet kick around aimlessly in the air. Your heart flutters in your throat as you look down to see Jake grinning up at you, eyes crinkled up endearingly and mouth opened around a boisterous laugh. His hands are warm where they’re holding your waist tight, fingers splayed out against your skin.

Jake sets you back down, chest rising and falling rapidly with each breath he takes. Your skin feels impossibly warm even after he’s let you go, and you find yourself unable to look away from him. Against the backdrop of the sun, he looks like an angel.

Wordlessly, he holds out his cupped hand to yours, and you reach out to accept with wide eyes. When he pulls back, you see that he’s left two seashells in the dips of your palms, small and round in shape. The bigger of them is tawny and has a dipping crevice in the middle, while the other is a pristine white with several ridges along its arch. They’re beautiful.

“Do you still collect these?” Jake’s question makes the butterflies in your chest stir.

“I do,” you murmur, feeling oddly bashful that he remembers. “The box is under my bed in Melbourne.”

The same wooden box he’d gifted you for your 16th birthday once you told him you kept all the shells he’d been giving you.

The two of you abandon your blanket and sit on the patch of damp sand you’ve been standing over. The yolk of the sun has begun to slip behind the ocean’s horizon, coloring the water and sky a brilliant red and sending cascading pockets of light along the shore. Jake’s gaze follows the length of the skyline and you can’t help it that yours strays to him.

There’s a rough, pink scar bridging across the length of Jake’s shoulder, one that you’ve never seen before. You’re no stranger to Jake’s recklessness out in the ocean, but the long span of it is unlike the rest you’ve seen on his skin. From its color alone you’re able to tell that he’s gotten it recently, and it hasn’t quite healed yet.

“This one’s new,” he says as if reading your thoughts. Jolting, your eyes snap back to his face to find him looking at you knowingly. “I was too close to an inlet and lost control of my board.”

You hum in response, reaching out to brush your fingertips against the blemished skin. It’s jagged under your touch, warm from where the sun’s kissed it, and you ache to lean down and run your lips over it. Jake exhales softly, head tilting the slightest bit so he can watch you.

“You’ve always been a bit clumsy,” you joke breathlessly, in an attempt to disregard the weird squirming in your chest. But then Jake continues to stare at you silently, and you shift nervously, hand pausing to hover above his back. “Guess you haven’t changed all that much.”

“Neither have you,” Jake mumbles, eyes still caught on your face, “you still look at me like that.”

You burn to ask him what he means, but your heart is stuck in your throat and you don’t think you can speak without saying something you’ll regret.

Yet in a way, you don’t need to ask him what he means. You think there has never been any need for explanations like this. You love Jake, and that’s true without all of the complexities that the statement conjures up. Past or present.

The lapping waves at the shore flood your ears like cotton. Jake’s face is so, so close, and yet it feels like he’s too far away. Like he’s always been.

“Hey,” he whispers, but the word crashes louder in your ears than the waves. “Is it okay if I kiss you?”

You can’t speak, but the eagerness that bleeds into your nod is telling enough of just how you feel. Jake’s warm hand tenderly cups the side of your face to bring you closer, and right as another wave breaks onto the shore, his lips meet yours in an achingly gentle way.

He’s everything you remember– he tastes like ocean brine and spearmint gum and his favorite iced tea, remnants of the past and the future you’d yearned for. The calluses on his palm are familiar where they brush against your jaw as he angles your face to deepen the kiss, and you try not to practically whine into his mouth when his tongue slips past your lips.

Your hand travels up from his shoulder to tangle itself in his hair, weaving your fingers through his locks with an urgency that seems to throw both of you off guard. Jake giggles into the kiss when you tug at the hair at the nape of his neck, and you break off when you feel a string of laughter bubbling out of you in response.

“Wow,” he whistles, face adorably red as he tries to smooth his hair back into place. You snort at his predicament, though you suspect your own state isn’t much far off from his. When Jake reaches out to fix up your hair as well, you go quiet, watching him through your lashes.

The silence you lapse into is silent and comfortable, so unlike the standoffish moments you two shared just a few weeks earlier. The thought of how quickly things between you two changed startles you; you realize that you no longer think twice about all the intimate moments and touches you share with Jake, much less feel guilty for any of them.

The voice at the back of your head is no longer there to whisper incessant reminders of the past, reminders of things you should have never taken with you in your baggage to Melbourne.

“You hungry?” Jake’s question startles you back into the present, and without thinking, you nod eagerly once more. His answering laugh makes the tips of your ears burn red, but you’re far too focused on his proposition of food to care. “There’s a really nice diner in the next town over, and I’d love to take you there.”

“Okay, it’s a date,” you grin.

Jake grins back, and you decide there’s no use holding yourself back anymore. You love him.

☀

Jake’s last competition for the season is scheduled the week before you’re set to leave for Melbourne. It’s a big one– his biggest yet– and in the days leading up to it, you’re not able to catch much of him outside of your shop.

He visits twice. Once to pick up an extra emergency repair kit in case something unpredictable happens during his practice sessions, and once to buy his usual Crunchy Peanut Butter Clif Bar. He tells you he’ll save it for the morning of the competition, kissing you on the cheek and sprinting out the door before you can “distract him further”. Whatever that means.

In a way, you don’t look forward to the competition. It serves as a constant reminder that you’re bound to leave at any moment, and of everything wrong that can happen with Jake out on the ocean. Though every competition carries that same latter risk, this particular one required its attendees to take on some of the highest waves your region had seen in years.

You worried for Jake, and as selfish as it was, for what would come of you two after.

“Stop moping, Jake will still be able to give you dick over in Melbourne,” Sunoo had chastised you one night over dinner, flicking a pickle at you.

You’d dodged it, crumpling up a tissue and tossing it right back at him. “Yeah, but it won’t be the same!”

Sticking to tradition, your friend group had decided to gather one last time for dinner before the tournament day. Jake couldn’t make it– that much was customary, too– and you found yourself glancing at the empty spot in the booth one too many times while eating.

It seemed like you couldn’t avoid talking about your fickle future with Jake, much less thinking about it. You knew that there was another conversation due soon, one which you refused to bother Jake with until he was finished with the season. But it was beginning to eat at you from the inside, slowly gnawing through your defense built on friends’ reassurances.

You’d just finally gotten ahold of Jake again, you weren’t ready to give him up so easily.

The shore is more crowded than you’ve ever seen it. Despite arriving relatively early to the tournament grounds, you and your friends had found the sand chaotically packed, with the only remaining spots to spread out a blanket being near the very back. Stopping by the slanted wooden walkway that leads down to the beach, you survey the entire length of the shore, hoping to find a spot with open space.

“Are you sure we’ve got the right place?” Heeseung frowns at the crowd, scrunching his nose up when a kid screams. Sunghoon shrugs, moving to check his phone.

“Surfing’s a big deal guys,” Sunoo chastises, “what? You don’t believe all these people are here for Jake?”

“I don’t think it’s that,” Jay sets down the cooler he’s holding, stretching his arms out with a groan. “I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen any beach this packed ever. Even when they had that free-entry hippie festival last summer.”

“There’s literally a poster,” you deadpan, pointing to the information bulletin board off to the side. Half of the board is taken up by a familiar, colorful poster, the same one your entire friend group had adamantly reposted onto your Instagram stories for days, plastered onto its surface. You resist the urge to laugh when a collective ohhh follows at your revelation.

Slowly but surely, your group makes it down to the beach with all of your belongings and elaborate signs, all donning Jake’s signature blue. The competitors are nowhere to be seen, so any plans of seeing Jake before everything begins are thrown out the window. You manage to squeeze yourselves further inward, not quite toward the front, but it’s better than the view you’d have to settle for in the very back.

As all of you busy yourselves with setting up the umbrella and blankets, Sunghoon slips away with the promise of returning with cold drinks. But by the time he makes it back, the audience has gotten impossibly larger, and the cardboard trays in both of his hands begin to teeter as he tries to nudge past the thickening crowd. Sunoo laughs at him, but is quick to rush over and take one of the trays into his own hold.

“This tournament’s for the entire Sunshine Coast,” Sunghoon says in a huff, passing around a plastic cup to everyone. “It’s the biggest event for surfing held in this region in decades. No wonder it’s so crowded.”

“Thanks Hoonie,” you smile. The drink is some odd concoction of fruit punch and other sweet juices you can’t recognize, but it’s refreshing and cold so it’s the most delicious thing to you.

Sunghoon nods, finding purchase on the blanket next to you. He takes a swig of his own drink and pulls back to watch the ice clink around in the cup. “The finalists from today are going to attend Nationals in Sydney. South Bondi, or something like that. That’s what the barista told me.”

Your eyes go impossibly wide, and you almost choke on the liquid in your mouth. Sunghoon pats you on the back while you cough it out, and you put your drink down lest you spill it over yourself. “Nationals? Fuck, I feel like I should know if my boyfriend is trying to qualify for Nationals…”

Jake had mentioned that the gravity of the tournament was greater than any of the previous ones he’d been part of, but you had absolutely no recollection of him mentioning the word nationals. You’re certain you know why he didn’t– the worry swelling in your gut is telling enough. But it’s followed with a burst of pride in your chest that makes you feel so giddy you’re sure the grin on your face looks stupid.

Once your coughing fit’s over, you reach down to pick up your cup and take another sip. But it’s then that you sense four pairs of eyes on you, and you look over to find your friends gawking at you. You curl in on yourself subconsciously, grin slowly melting at their expressions. “…What?”

“Boyfriend?” Sunoo all but yells, breaking the silence. The people around you throw weird looks in your direction, but you don’t pay them any mind.

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” You surmise that the dramatics aren’t unprompted in this situation because you truly hadn’t found a way to break your friends the news yet either, but could anyone blame you? In your eyes, there was no subtle way of announcing it.

“Ha! Heeseung, you owe me 100 bucks,” Jay claps, reaching to high five you. You return the gesture with an exasperated face, not too keen on being stuck between their childish feuds.

Heeseung dishes out the money from his wallet with a sour expression, handing it to Jay and shoving a middle finger in his face.

“No one’s going to congratulate her?” Sunghoon finally speaks up, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. “Shame on all of you.” Turning to you, he whispers, “Congrats, by the way.”

The other’s enthusiastic good wishes follow suit, and you can’t help the jaw-aching smile that splits your face. You pick up your cup and chase the last of the liquid in there, both to hide your grin and to quench your growing thirst.

By now, you’d gotten more than used to the routine of surf tournaments. You knew when to expect different sections, how long you’d be able to watch Jake out in the waves, and when to anticipate the final minutes. As the music from the judge’s panel diminishes and is replaced by a cheery, high-pitched voice, you sit back against the blanket and get comfortable.

The participants are all introduced with grandiose speeches that make the speakers crackle from the deafening volume. You make sure to whoop and holler extra loud when Jake Sim is announced, squinting against the beaming sun to try and spot his face among the line of surfers.

Jake clears all of his heats with an astounding performance and form. The audience oohs in tandem with each of his moves, and you have to prop yourself up on your knees halfway through to be able to properly see your boyfriend. You cheer and clap animatedly after he completes each series, heart beating faster with each swelling wave that he meets.

The judging panel also seems to love him. From the way they refuse to break their staring while he’s out on the waves to write anything, to the way they mumble amongst each other with dazed looks on their faces after every particularly difficult trick, you can’t help but feel proud. It’s almost disappointing watching him paddle toward shore and give way to the competitor after him.

Despite the intimidating waves, Jake handles himself well and is able to clear through his routine with ease. He doesn’t lose control of his board even for a moment, braving into the highest waves you’d ever seen him take on. The other participants also seemed to be doing well– though not quite as well as Jake– and you find yourself applauding and cheering after some particularly hard routines.

You think it should come as no surprise to anyone on that packed shore that Jake scores a remarkable lead in first place. He carries the highest wave scores throughout most of the tournament, only bettering them further as the heats pass. You get to watch him perform moves you’d never seen before, moves you’d only seen on the news performed by Australia’s best. He’s truly breathtaking in the water– you know you’d think this no matter who he was to you.

The awards ceremony almost makes you burst into tears. Jake’s gold medal is handed over by the main judge, who shakes his hand and pats him on the back as Jake accepts it with a deep bow. He reaches over to wrap his arms around the shoulders of the competitors who’d won second and third place, congratulating them with an earnest smile. When the flashes from the photographers become impossible to ignore, Jake turns to the cameras and brings his medal up to his mouth, biting down on it cheekily.

The crowd doesn’t begin to thin out for a long while. You’re not able to reach Jake until half an hour after the ceremony’s ended, your boyfriend occupied with on-the-spot interviews and eager fans waiting for a photo together. Meanwhile, Sunoo and Jay race back to the car to bring out the bouquet and balloons that you’d brought to surprise Jake.

When Jake is finally able to attend to his personal matters, he all but runs barefoot on the sand towards you, opening his arms in warning once he’s close enough. You yelp at the tight hug you’re all but swept up into, feet kicking out in the air under you when Jake lifts you and begins spinning you. 

“I’m so happy right now!” He shouts toward the sky, voice breathy from exhilaration.

“I’m so proud of you!” You shout back, ruffling his damp hair. The fringe falls into his face and you push it back so you can lean down and kiss him.

“I take back my congratulations,” Heeseung speaks up from behind you, and Jake sticks his tongue out at him before putting you down carefully. He moves to pat your boyfriend on the back, grin so wide it takes up half his face. “Just kidding. That was sick Jake, you killed it out there.”

Sunghoon and Jay echo the statement and barrel into Jake’s sides to hug him, wrangling him into their holds so they can hold him up in the air. Jake doesn’t even bother fighting against them, accepting the inevitable with a fond grin and rolling his eyes once they let up and put him back on the sand.

“And obviously he’s going to kill it in Sydney too,” Sunoo brandishes the bouquet from behind his back, holding it out for Jake to take.

Jake’s face flushes cutely as he accepts the flowers and balloons, posing for photos as you whip out your phone. The thin gold metal sits like a sun against his chest, illuminated with beams as you instruct Jake to turn toward the horizon. You decide that you’re going to set this one as your homescreen later.

As a few more of Jake’s friends from the academy come up to him to personally congratulate him, you hang back and watch him with a smile. Despite growing up, learning more tricks, and climbing his way to your region’s top spots, Jake’s humble attitude hadn’t changed. He still met the hand of fellow surfers and treated them like equals despite any rankings, refusing to let anyone put him up on an invisible pedestal.

The shore has somewhat cleared out by now, most of the people remaining being the competitors themselves and their friends and families. It’s no longer hot enough to make you feel like bursting, and you decide to jog down to the water to dip your feet into the ocean. The water’s cool against your warm skin, the tiny waves lapping at your ankles in rhythmic motions as you stand there and soak in the last of the afternoon sun.

Jake joins you along with the rest of your friends sometime later. You all stand ankle-deep in the water quietly, and when you look over at them, you can’t help the fond grin that blooms on your face.

“Are we celebrating at Auntie Lee’s?” Heeseung suddenly breaks the silence, and you can’t help but burst into laughter.

“We could,” Sunghoon shrugs. “Or we could just hang out here for a while.”

“Jake and I will join you guys later,” you say shyly, reaching for Jake’s hand. “I have to steal him away for a bit right now.”

“Thanks, I just threw up a little bit in my mouth,” Jay faux-gags, pretending to vomit. You pay him no mind.

You and Jake bid your friends goodbye with the premise that they’ll join you later and load his surfboard onto his car. When you finally set off toward your aunt’s shop, you heave a sigh of relief and lean back in the seat. The air conditioner’s broken now, meaning you have to rely on a crammed open window for pockets of fresh air, but even amidst the sweltering heat of the late afternoon, you’ve never felt better.

“I’m hoping that’s a good sigh,” Jake speaks up from the driver’s seat, “I’m driving as fast as the law allows me to, we’re almost there.”

Snorting, you lean against the door in an attempt to catch as much of the breeze filtering in. It’s a bit tricky, given that most of the surface is hot from sitting in the sun. “It’s good, I promise. Just really happy that everything went well with your tournament. And that I have you all to myself now.”

The food you’d prepared for him earlier in the day is sitting in the kitchen, lidded and ready to be portioned out. You and Sunghoon had dug out your aunt’s fancy dinner plates from the basement and cleaned them off for the occasion, setting the table with them in a manner decidedly too formal now that you’re looking at it again. There’s even a candle in the middle, awfully regal in its glass holder and waiting to be lit.

Jake snorts, but it’s fond. He loops an arm around your shoulder and kisses your cheek. “You didn’t have to do all of this for me.”

“I felt like cooking something nice for myself,” you tease. Kissing his cheek back, you move to shrug him off of you so you can sit down. “It just happened that your tournament was also today. Don’t let it get to your head.”

“How can I not when my girlfriend prepared a feast for me,” Jake exclaims, sitting down next to you and rubbing his hands. He peers closer at the dishes, eyes going wide at the contents of a particular pot. “Dude, galbitang? Just say you want to marry me and go.”

Your ears feel impossibly hot as you reach for the ladle and begin pouring some of the soup into your bowl. “Hey, less talking, more eating.”

If Jake notices your flushed face, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he silently reaches out with his chopsticks to begin filling your plate with the dumplings you’d made.

As much as you’d like to, the meal is too hefty for you to jump Jake straight after. Once the both of you finish eating and put away the remaining food, you wound up in your aunt’s living room, on her vintage floral couch that’s draped with a nostalgic white sheet.

Jake laughs when he sees it, carefully sitting in the middle so as not to get onto the actual couch. “God, I remember sitting here when we were kids, and your aunt wouldn’t let us watch TV unless we kept the couch covered.”

“I swear no one’s actually touched the real surface of the couch since she bought it in the 90s,” you groan as you settle into the cushions next to Jake. You feel pleasantly groggy, like you could fall asleep at any minute, and it doesn’t help that Jake is so warm and comfortable. “Remember that one time we tried sneaking in TimTams to eat here? I’ve never seen her angrier.”

“That was your idea, by the way, and second, I think she was angrier when we tried to hose down her roses in the backyard. Why were we so evil as kids?” Jake’s head finds its way onto your shoulder, and you try not to shake as you giggle.

Looking at the black TV screen across from you, you make out the matching smiles on both of your faces. It makes your stomach swoop, but you don’t think it’s from the good food you just had. Closing your eyes, you breathe in Jake’s shampoo and sigh. “I miss her a lot, I can’t wait for her to be back.”

You don’t notice you’ve begun dozing off until Jake startles next to you from a buzz in his pocket. Confused, you straighten up and watch as he looks down at his phone with a frown, rubbing at his eyes.

“Shit, Sunghoon texted me that they’re going to be back soon,” he mumbles.

“That sucks,” you say.

The two of you stare at each other for five still seconds, before Jake tosses his phone behind him on the couch and you practically pounce on him. You stagger onto your feet and pull Jake up with you, laughing as you all but race to your room down the hallway. Pushing open the door, you loop your arms around his neck and bring him in for a needy kiss, one you’ve been holding back all afternoon.

Jake shuts the door behind both of you, giggling against your lips when you huff impatiently. Your fingers sidle up under the hem of his shirt, brushing urgently against the heated skin you find. It was getting harder and harder to reel your self control back in around him, and now that you two were alone, you could barely resist jumping him like a predator. But who could blame you?

You also barely resist the triumphant noise that teeters behind your lips once Jake finally relents and takes his shirt off. It’s discarded somewhere in a corner of your room, forgotten as soon as it’s out of your sight. Your hands are back on him quicker than he can turn around, and when he leans down to press his lips against yours again, you feel him smile into the kiss.

“Jake,” you pant, palms drifting up his back with newfound desperation, “Jake, please.”

“Please what?” He teases, breaking off into a surprised groan when you lean down to bite his neck, suckling on the skin and running your tongue over the purpling bruise you leave behind.

Neglecting him of an answer, you continue your venture down his neck until you reach his collarbones. His hands are purposeful where they dip under your shirt to paw at the skin of your tummy and lower back, nudging the material higher and higher until you break off from his neck to take it off altogether.

Jake doesn’t let you continue marking him– instead, he’s the one that incessantly attaches his lips to your chest, tongue lathing over your nipple leisurely. His hand envelopes your other breast and kneads it while your breathing grows laborious, your head falling back as you weave your fingers through his hair. When he switches his attention to your other nipple, you decide you’ve waited long enough.

“If you don’t do something more I’m seriously going to explode,” you warn him, pulling him away from your chest. Jake barks a laugh, wiping at the spit on his chin with the back of his hand before letting you lead him toward your bed.

You fall backwards on the mattress easily, Jake towering over you with heady eyes. He picks up where he left off, plush lips dipping between your breasts and traveling further down with fervent motions.

“You’re so pretty,” he mumbles against the skin of your hip. The warmth fanning from his breath makes you go lax in his hold, and you hazily blink up at the ceiling in an effort to ground yourself.

His nimble fingers slip under the edges of your shorts, and with one quick look at your desperate nods, he begins tugging the material, along with your underwear, down your legs. Discarding the garment somewhere behind him, he hooks one of your knees over his shoulder, angling your other thigh outwards until you’re comfortably spread out for him. You inhale sharply at the cold air that meets your sensitive area, but the feeling is short-lived.

Jake leans in with an eagerness that has your breath catching in your throat. His lips suction right on your clit, and it takes every effort within you not to buck your hips wantonly into the feeling. His free hand settles warmly on your hip bone like a promise, holding you down against the sheets with a strength that only makes you squirm more.

Whining, you try to slow your breathing as his calloused fingers travel up your inner thigh and brush against your sopping entrance teasingly, where they catch strings of your growing arousal. You’re not normally this sensitive, already wriggling and gasping at the mere brush of his touch, but you reason that it’s because it’s him touching you.

You tense as one of his forefingers prods into you, slowly at first, then with a cocky certainty that makes you see stars. He sinks it into you until his last knuckle, curling it against your walls with growing fervor as you relax in his hold. As Jake adds a second finger, you reach out to weave your fingers through his locks, mewling when his grip on your hips tightens.

“I missed you so much,” he hums into your cunt between rolls of his tongue, groaning when you tug on his hair. “Fuck, you’ve been driving me crazy for such a long time. Can’t believe you’re finally mine again.”

Something in your chest squeezes, and you look down at him with glassy eyes.

It’s a sight that knocks the breath out of you. Jake’s eyes meet yours over the curve of your abdomen, and he takes the moment to lewdly spit directly onto your clit. He massages the saliva with tight figure eight motions, and combined with the rhythmic pumping from his other hand, it makes you feel like you’ll burst.

“I’m close,” you whisper, voice raw and spent. You feel strung out, like you’ve been stuck on the verge of an orgasm for an hour, when it probably has been five minutes at most.

Jake’s fingers squelch when he speeds up his motions, lapping incessantly at your clit as you continue to writhe helplessly. He looks up at you with dark eyes, fingers curling at just the right angle, and it’s enough to send you over the edge.

You come with a drawn-out whine, fingers clutching at his hair with desperation. You feel your thighs quiver before they settle on the mattress around Jake, exhaling deeply as you lean back into the sheets to calm down.

“Holy shit,” you laugh, covering your face as Jake crawls up next to you. He kisses the back of your hands, peppering more kisses along your arms, chest, neck, and whatever parts of your face he can reach. It only makes you giggle more, shying away from his affection with a racing heart.

“So good to me,” he mumbles, finally pressing his lips to yours. You sigh, looping your arms around his neck and leaning into his adoring touch with uncharacteristic bashfulness. Jake holds you like you’re made out of china, like you’re something precious, and the implications of that make your own heart throb with fondness.

Pulling away from the kiss, you push back on his chest gently, shuffling around so that you can sit up. “Lay down, I wanna ride you.”

You crawl over to one of your bedside drawers, tugging the top compartment open and feeling around until you can find what you’re looking for. As Jake leans back against the headboard and makes quick work of discarding his pants and boxers, you fish out the condom and join him so you can perch yourself on his lap. You tear open the foil, discarding it somewhere off to the side, and hold it up between you two like a gem.

“You’ve been planning for this, huh?” He teases, but you ignore him in favor of rolling the condom down his length. He watches you all the while, sucking in air through his teeth when you touch a particularly sensitive part of him.

“It’s hard not to when my boyfriend is so hot,” you answer, leaning down to kiss him again. His hands settle on your hips, and when you grind down on him experimentally, he practically moans into your mouth.

Leaning back on his lap, you reach down to align him with your entrance, pouting when your first two attempts to press him in fail. He’s awfully slippery with the lubricated condom, and you’re awfully nervous about the whole situation, so it’s no wonder your hands shake as you attempt to do it again. You let out a frustrated laugh, frowning when his cock flops back onto his stomach and you’re left hovering above his lap.

“Let me,” he whispers, gripping his length and holding your hip attentively. He pushes his tip in slowly, eyes trained on your face for any signs of discomfort, and biting his lip as he sinks further. About halfway in, you feel him pause reluctantly, and you hiss as you clench around him.

“Love, you’ve got to relax. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” you mumble, looking away from him when you feel your face begin to burn from embarrassment. Jake’s hands envelop your sides to bring you close to him, and you bury yourself in his shoulder as he slips out from underneath you. “I’m just really nervous. Don’t want to mess this up.”

His hand begins to draw patient, comforting circles on your lower back. You feel your breaths begin to even out, along with your racing heart, and you turn your head to leave grateful kisses along Jake’s neck. He shudders and hugs you tighter. “You’re okay. Let me know when you’re ready.”

And that’s the thing– because despite running from your feelings, running from him, Jake has never once let his patience run thin with you. He’s always been right there, waiting for you to come back, waiting for you to love him back with the same certainty that he always has.

It feels entirely unfair. But as you look back at his glittering eyes, at the handfuls of adoration in each of them, you feel your jitteriness slip away and become replaced with wholehearted sureness.

“I’m ready,” you say with conviction, pulling back to rest your hands on his toned chest. “Jake Sim, I’m about to rock your fucking world.”

Jake’s laughter sounds like bells in the springtime. He leans back to watch you push him back in, letting out a drawn-out sigh when he bottoms out and the backs of your thighs meet his hips. The shaky moan that slips from you feels too loud in the quietness of your bedroom, but you can't find it in you to feel shy as Jake’s cock drags leisurely against your walls.

Despite how weak you feel, you’re able to build up a steady rhythm with your hips. With each downward thrust, you revel in the way Jake’s eyes follow you, and in the soft sounds that are coaxed out of his mouth. You reach out to push away the fringe that has fallen into his face, cupping his face for a brief moment before your hand snakes down between your bodies to rub at your clit.

You keen at the feeling, but your fingers are quickly replaced by Jake’s own, which nudge at the bundle of nerves with growing urgency. His hips are rocking back up in tandem with your thrusts, eyebrows furrowed and lips wrapped around a breathy moan that reverberates around the room and makes the heat in your stomach triple.

You feel like a mess; you’re breathing heavy and your skin’s all sweaty and your thighs are burning with the effort to make both of you feel good. But Jake looks at you like you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and it makes you forget about everything else.

“I’m really close,” you breathily laugh. Your hips begin to stutter as you feel the growing wave in your abdomen swell higher and higher with each of your motions, slowly losing all sense of coordination. Jake doesn’t seem to mind all too much though.

“Me too,” he mumbles the sentiment. The flush on his face has spread to his neck and chest, a pleasant rhubarb shade that you can make out even in the darkness. He’s so lovely, and all yours.

Jake’s thumb on your clit hastily adds more pressure as your breath quickens. Your vision grows blurry at the edges but you can’t look away from Jake, whose eyes are boring into yours.

“Jake, I’m so close, m’cumming, God, please, Jake–” your babbling is cut off when your orgasm hits you like a tidal wave, pulling you under and rendering you breathless. You distantly feel your thighs shake around Jake’s hips as you ride it out, followed by a drawn out groan from his side when he hits his own high.

Your heart is pounding in your ears when you slip Jake out of you, and you barely have enough energy to roll off of him before flopping down on the bed. You still don’t quite feel like you’re on the ground, brain all mushy and struggling to piece the night’s events together. A part of you is convinced you’re dreaming, if the hazy ringing in your ears is anything to go by.

“Sweet girl,” Jake coos, brushing the hair that’s gotten in your face. He reaches over the side of the bed to fish his underwear out from the messy pile, tugging the briefs on and standing up. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

The ceiling of your room is bleached a moon white from the light streaming in outside. You listen with a racing heart and heaving chest as Jake rummages around in your bathroom, returning seconds later with a damp rag in hand. He maneuvers your legs around so he can wipe up the worst of your mess, gently hushing you when you whine from the drag of it against your sensitive skin.

“I really hope Sunghoon and the others aren’t back yet,” he quietly giggles, discarding the rag off to the side once he’s cleaned himself up.

“We warned them earlier,” you mumble sleepily. You can already feel an ache settling into your knees and lower back, but decide that it’s a problem for tomorrow’s you to worry about.

Jake lays down next to you and props himself up on his elbow to look at you. Even in the bleak darkness, you can make out the way his eyes won’t drift away from you, the way their edges crinkle when you giggle. Feeling shy, you pull the blanket up to your chin and try to hide behind it.

Jake doesn’t take any of it though. He slips right under the blanket with you, fingers immediately reaching for your sides to try and tickle you. You give up almost immediately, shrieking with laughter and begging him to stop while your feet thrash around.

“You can’t hog the whole thing,” he laughs, “I’m getting cold out here!”

Instead of answering, you drop the blanket on top of both of you and use your free arm to loop around his neck, bringing him in for a tight hug. You nudge your face into his bare chest and kiss him on one of his older scars, whose outline is so faint you can barely make it out anymore.

“How are you feeling?” Jake whispers.

He moves to wrap an arm around your waist and you throw one of your legs over his hips. He’s warm, and you can faintly hear his thrumming heart and each breath he takes. His hand is pleasant against your lower back where he traces meaningless shapes into the curve of your spine.

“I love you so much,” you answer. And you mean it.

Jake’s hand continues without pause, and you think you feel him smile against the top of your head. His lips are soft where they press a kiss to your hair.

“I love you too,” he says. And you know he means it.

☀

Melbourne Central has always felt like hell, but today it seems exceptionally so.

You’d think the entire city has spilled into the railway station at once with how crowded the platforms are, each person practically shoulder to shoulder with the next. After an entire day of traveling, you’re beyond spent and in desperate need to be back home, so it’s with tired feet that you attempt to trudge through the chaos.

“Don’t get lost on me now,” you hear Jake’s familiar voice from next to you, and the weight from your luggage on your hand disappears. “Hold onto me, I need to make sure I deliver you in one piece or Sunghoon’s going to kill me.”

You loop your arm around Jake’s bicep and wince as he maneuvers the both of you through the crowd. Both of you begin to sound like broken records with how often you’re mumbling pardon us and different variations of sorry as you squeeze yourselves past different groups of people. Overhead, the announcer’s monotone voice about a delayed train arrival blends into the amalgamated mess of noise in the station, and you swear you’re going to go insane if you don’t get out of there fast.

Outside, the pleasant autumn sun has you squinting up at the sky and reveling in the fresh air that greets you. Jake tells you that the taxi he ordered is here, and you have only a few seconds to take in the world around you before you’re being whisked away again. As you haul your luggage into the back of the car and cram into the back with your boyfriend, you lean over to watch the city pass you by through the window and tune everything else out.

It’s weird, being in the same position you were in just a few months ago. Familiar buildings fly you by but you’re no longer stricken by grief or holding back tears as you watch them disappear. The feeling in your chest is bittersweet– you’re looking back on this summer with a smile and a warm heart. You’d reconciled with everything you’d been avoiding, and came back with more than you could’ve ever hoped for.

“We’re here,” Jake says, and you blink your hazy thoughts away. Looking over, you find that he has one of your hands in his own, thumb smoothing over your skin gently as if he can read your mind. You smile, squeeze his hand, and step out of the taxi.

Against your complaints, Jake takes on doing most of the work of taking your luggage up to your apartment. He doesn’t let you carry any of the heavier bags, rushing to grab them once he’s hauled them out of the taxi before you can even reach for them. You’re left trailing behind him, trying not to make your leering too obvious as his arms bulge under the weight of your luggage.

The door to your apartment opens with a high-pitched squeak. You trudge in slowly, taking in the sun-lit hall with wide eyes. It’s exactly like you remember leaving it, but now Jake’s standing in the middle of the tiny space, looking around with a grin so earnest it makes your heart swell. You know that it’s only a matter of time before everything here reminds you of him too.

“We’ve got some cleaning to do,” Jake notes as he passes by the dusty shelf in your living room. Looking out the floor-length window that takes up the entirety of one of the walls, he whistles and turns to you with his face lit up. You distantly think it reminds you of a smiling dog, only that his tongue isn’t out. “Yo, this view’s crazy! You can see so much of the center from here. I’d kill to be waking up to this every morning.”

“We do have some nice surfing spots a short drive away,” the implications of your words are clear as day, and Jake’s eyes narrow at you playfully. “What? I’m just saying.”

Jake looks out the window again, humming as his eyes trace the edges of the buildings that stand out against the horizon. You feel a bit nervous being so brazen with your future intentions, but everything Jake’s said and done so far has led you to believe he’s on the same page. “I’ll think about it when I finish this term. I’m serious about getting my degree, but I’m not against seeing your pretty face when I come home every day.”

Nodding, you try not to let the excitement bleed out onto your face, but it’s impossible when Jake’s words sound like a promise. “Hey, when do you need to go back for uni, anyway?”

“My term doesn’t start for another week,” he glances back at you and pouts. “Why are you trying to get rid of me so soon?”

You can feel the tips of your ears reddening and you quickly shake your head. “No no, I just wanted to make sure you don’t end up missing your own important stuff. I’d want you to stay here forever if it were up to me.”

“Right,” Jake drawls, and he rounds the couch to attach himself to your back. You feel every curve of him pressed up against you, and with the way his arms snake around your waist and his hands inch under your shirt, you know exactly where this is headed. “Just so you know, you couldn’t get rid of me even if you wanted to.”

“And just so you know, the building in front of us can see everything through these windows,” you say, but Jake’s hands remain incriminatingly low on your hips.

You feel the sigh of his laughter fan out against your neck and your breath hitches. “That’s fine, you’ve still gotta show me your bedroom anyway. So I know where to put our bags.”

“Mhm,” you agree, and the disappointed noise you make when he lets go of you is embarrassingly loud. Jake giggles, and you waste no time in dragging him by the wrist through your apartment.

“My bed’s big enough for the both of us, so you can just sleep with me while you’re here,” you open your bedroom door and usher Jake in after you. It’s cute how nervous he looks standing around, unsure of where to sit or what to look at first. “And stop making that face! You’d think I kidnapped you and I’m holding you hostage.”

After enough coaxing and changing into clean clothes, you and Jake both end up sitting on the edge of your bed, but his mannerisms are still telling of how anxious he feels. His movements are all jittery and his hands run repeatedly over his knees, almost like he’s wiping the sweat off his palms. “It’s just crazy to think about the fact that you have a whole different life here. I don’t know where I’m supposed to fit in, and it’s really hitting me now that I’m actually here, y’know?”

“Jake,” you softly prompt him to look at you, frowning when his eyes meet yours and you see the same uncertainty that you were struggling with in them. You cup his face gently and thumb at the skin of his cheek, whispering, “I can promise you that you’ve got nothing to worry about. There’s more than enough space for you in my life. There always has been.”

With the way he leans into your touch, you can tell that he believes you.

You both lay back against the mattress, if only to rest for a second before you know you’ll have to inevitably get up again. But before you can move to sit up, Jake’s hovering above you with a knowing grin, and you can’t complain much as he leans in to press his lips against yours. It’s soft at first, nothing more, but then he’s cupping your jaw and slipping his tongue in between your lips and you know where this is headed.

“We should unpack first,” you half-heartedly mumble between kisses. Jake begins kissing down your neck, and you groan, head falling backwards. Your words come out increasingly less convincing with each vowel, until there’s absolutely zero conviction in everything you’re saying. “We should really… we’ll be too lazy later…”

“That’s no way to welcome your guest,” Jake pouts against your skin. 

You let him continue venturing down your neck until he’s slipping the shoulder of your t-shirt off, eager to get his mouth on your chest, when you startle in his hold and make him pause. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I just have something to show you,” you laugh, sitting up and scooting to the edge of your bed. You clamber down onto the ground and look under your bed, reaching out to unearth the box you’d suddenly remembered.

“The box of seashells you gave me,” you tell Jake. You place the box carefully on your bed and begin to rummage through your backpack for the ones he’d given you right before kissing you.

The box is a tiny wooden thing with a metal clasp in the front that opens with a bit of force. You open it and let Jake peek inside, placing your newest additions inside with careful hands. Jake’s jaw is slack as his fingers poke at the different seashells you’d accumulated over the years of knowing him, bottom lip jutting out as he turns to look at you.

“You really kept all of them,” he mumbles in awe.

“Well I wasn’t going to throw them away.” You joke, closing the box and placing it on your nightstand. “Besides, they meant a lot to me. Still do.”

Wordlessly, Jake leans down to kiss your exposed shoulder. He rests his cheek against the skin there, and you reach out to card one of your hands through his unruly hair. It’s not damp from the ocean or sandy after one of his surfing sessions. It’s soft under your fingers, tousled after a long day of traveling, and it smells faintly of mint. 

“You know what I think?”

Jake hums questioningly, peering up at you through his lashes.

“I think we should shower. Then continue where we left off, if you still want, and then nap. Like for a while. And then we can go to that diner down the street I kept telling you about.”

Jake smiles against your shoulder and leans up to kiss you on the nose. You cup one of his cheeks and thumb at the faint freckle near his temple. He looks beautiful, like all of the sunsets you’d seen in your hometown, all of the seashells you’d collected, and all of the roses in your aunt’s backyard.

The edge of Jake’s lips quirks up at your offer. You kiss him before you can respond, and revel in the dazed look and breathy response you draw from him. He’s beautiful, and all yours. “Yeah, I think that sounds like a great idea.”

author's note: if you've read all the way down to here i hope your pillow is cold on both sides, always. i worked very hard on this baby and i hope that whoever reads it enjoys it at least a fraction of the amount that i enjoyed writing it 🤍 if you did enjoy, leave a comment and reblog, it means the world to me!!! support your writers!

taglist: @enhastolemyheart, @fakeuwus, @jakesimsgf, @hannivrse, @jayk2025, @bluesoobinnie, @luvvsjungwonn, @cha0thicpisces, @thejjrl, @sweetjaemss, @ohmykwonsoonyoung, @yaatrickyaaa, @albono-bueno, @itstessasblog, @emiliasstuffs-blog, @ddeonugu, @bloobworld, @loveleejn, @flower-lise, @jayfrvr

©nightdiary 2024. do not repost.

#enhypen fic #jake smut #enhypen smut #enhypen fluff #enhypen angst #enhypen hard hours #enhypen headcanons #enhypen x reader #jake angst #jake x reader #jake fluff #enhypen scenarios #enha imagines #enha fanfic #enha fluff #enha smut #enhypen fanfiction #enhypen jake #enha jake #enha x reader #heeseung smut #jay smut #sunghoon smut #nightdiary.writes #sim jaeyun #sim jake #jaeyun smut

[fanficriter]

Dating Lucifer Morningstar

Warnings - None!

Notes - I need this man biblically 🤤🤤 Might be a bit OOC

Not proof read :3

Gender Neutral Reader

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- First off, he is quite literally THE bf

- Literally the most perfect man

- Aside from the random depressive episodes he gets

- If you make it a point to have a good relationship with Charlie, you may as well be planning the wedding already

- She’s so happy her dad finally found his forever person :(

- Would call you sooooo many pet names

- Darling, sweetie, angel, HUN 🤤

- And my personal favourite… ‘duckling’

- Oh my god i need him

- Definitely a gift giver

- MAKES YOU RUBBER DUCKS 😭

- Is a bit embarrassed of his little duck obsession

- But if you show your acceptance, we’ll… he’d probably cry

- But he’d be so greatful

- If you ask questions, or show INTEREST in his ducks

- Bros on his knees sobbing, wondering how he managed to score such a person

- Always stares at you with pure adoration in his eyes JESUS I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

- “What? Do i have something on my face?”

- “No, no…. Just keep doin what you’re doin hun…”

- Likes to twirl you around

- Just randomly

- Little twirl :3

- Mans is definitely on the spectrum

- Will literally STIM over how much he loves you

- Am i self inserting?

- You are on his mind 24/7

- If you go out for a bit he gets like… EXTREMELY sad

- Makes ducks to get his mind off of your absence

- In the early stages of your relationship, he was NERVY

- Shaking in his boots bc HOWWWW did he manage to bag you?????

- Would stutter over his words a lot

- Would also do stupid shit to impress you

- “Luci, dear… what are you wearing?”

- Frog blinks in his ‘hip’ outfit (its a crop top and booty shorts)

- “A-are you not into it….?”

- He also just LOVES kissing you

- You sitting on his lap while he peppers your face with kisses OH MY GODDDDD

- Also just giving you little pecks on the lips like all the time :(

- Cuddles galore with this guy

- You’re making food? He’s hugging your waist from behind

- Your sitting at a desk doing some work? His arms are wrapped you

- You’re standing around for plot convenience? So is he! You have so much in common he just wants to squeeze you!!!!

- He loves you to heaven and back, and would do ANYTHING in his power to keep you safe and healthy

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I wrote this at 3am on a whim soz if it’s not the best!!!

#lucifer morningstar #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin lucifer #lucifer x reader #lucifer morningstar x reader #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #fanfiction #fanfic writing #fanfic #i need him so bad

[roo-bii]

ᴋɪꜱꜱ ᴍᴇ ᴀɢᴀɪɴ !

⋯

^᪲ ⁞ ᵖᵃʳⁱⁿᵍˢ﹕ ᵃˡᵃˢᵗᵒʳ ⊹ ˡᵘᶜⁱᶠᵉʳ ⊹ ᵛᵒˣ ˣ ⁽ ⁿᵃᵐᵉ ⁾

ꔫ ⁞ ᵍᵉⁿʳᵉ﹕ ᶠˡᵘᶠᶠ

୨୧ ⁞ ᶜᵃᵘᵗⁱᵒⁿ﹕ ᵍⁿ ﹗ ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ , ᵉˢᵗᵃᵇˡⁱˢʰᵉᵈ ʳᵉˡᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢʰⁱᵖ , ᵖᵒˢˢᵉˢˢⁱᵛᵉ ᵇᵉʰᵃᵛⁱᵒʳ ⁽ ˢʰᵒʷⁿ ᵇʸ ᵃˡᵃˢᵗᵒʳ ⁾ , ⁽ ⁿᵃᵐᵉ ⁾ ⁱˢ ⁿᵒᵗ ᵐᵉⁿᵗⁱᵒⁿᵉᵈ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵒⁿᵉˢʰᵒᵗ.

❜୧ ⁞ ᵃⁿᵃˡʸˢⁱˢ﹕ ʳᵃⁿᵈᵒᵐ ʰᵉᵃᵈᶜᵃⁿⁿᵒⁿˢ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ʷᵃʸˢ ʰʰ ᶜʰᵃʳᵃᶜᵗᵉʳˢ ʷᵒᵘˡᵈ ˢʰᵒʷ ᵗʰᵉⁱʳ ᵃᶠᶠᵉᶜᵗⁱᵒⁿ ᵗᵒ ʸᵒᵘ ﹗

Alastor, being the gentleman he is, mainly shows his form of affection towards you in the form of complements and random acts of service, usually not being a fan of PDA. He makes sure to give you compliments no matter what the two of you are doing. It can either be when you're helping around the hotel or just in general, always making sure to have a keen eye on you.

It doesn't matter if it's getting something from onto of a shelf or just needing help with something. Alastor is literally always there to help you with whatever you need, keeping one of his shadows on you. Though, the charming devil makes sure to think that this is his way of.. claiming you, marking his territory, even. You know, with being a powerful, sadistic overlord and such.

Expect gifts galore with Lucifer, especially duck shaped ones. That stash of ducks can't just be for himself, right? He even gets you a small plush version of him as a duck, with him having the duck version of you. Brushing the duck themed gifts, I could see him showing affection by physical touch. This could either be through hugs or kisses.

This man will literally wrap those big ol' wings around you, could literally be in the middle of the street, and begin to talk about how much he loves you. Being honest, he doesn't know if his need for physical contact had gotten stronger due to the fact his wife left or what. Possibly even putting his depression at fault... Welp, He still has you and his daughter !

As silly as it sounds to him, Vox really has a thing for spending time with you. He doesn't know if it's because he's usually busy or if it's the feeling of having someone you love near you. Unsurprisingly, Vox makes sure to make your relationship completely public, literally not giving a damn about it either. He will have you have you wrapped around his finger with a blue bow if he really wanted to.

( Don't forget to put ' VoxTech ™ ' on it )

He does make sure to give you a lot of compliments both on and off air, mainly about your appearance, possibly even teasing you while at it. Unlike Lucifer, Vox gives you gifts that are more to your liking. They are definitely more - bougie than what you are used to, even going as far to get gem - bedazzled versions of your usual necessities. Who knows, maybe the TV demon has a little thing for spoiling you.

#alastor x reader #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor x you #hazbin alastor #alastor hazbin x reader #alastor x ( name ) #lucifer morningstar #lucifer x reader #lucifer x you #lucifer x ( name ) #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin lucifer #lucifer magne #hazbin hotel vox #hazbin vox #vox #alastor #lucifer #vox x reader #vox x you #vox x ( name ) #fluff #romantic #romantic relationships #headcanon #blurb #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #not good with tags 😭

[houseofripley]

HEYY

Can you do a rhea x fem!reader story where rhea and reader are in Highschool and have both had feeling for eachother for the longest time and both haven’t confessed but all that changes because rhea ask reader to prom and they end up kissing and it leads to something else (ifykyk😏) (smut n a lil bit of fluff too🙏)

Starry Prom Night

Rhea Ripley x Fem!Reader

WARNINGS: 18+ SMUT, Kissing, Vaginal Fingering, Cunnilingus, Scissoring, Praise, Cheek Cupping & Kissing Galore, INSANE PLOT BUILDING FOR NO REASON LOL SORRYYYYYY IM A YEARNER (im serious this is like 67% plot building)

WORD COUNT: 3,731

A/N: this is just pure sapphic yearning on my end LMAO anyways anon i had so much fun writing this even though its all over the place!!!

also can you tell where i got impatient with all the plot building lol

“Rhea, I seriously don’t know how many more of these cheesy signs I can’t take. I think I’m gonna go insane.” You grunted, rolling your eyes to the back of your head. 

Prom season was in full swing. It was third period and you had just witnessed what had to have been the seventh promposal of the day. This year would be the mark of your and your best friend, Rhea’s senior prom. Senior prom was a date thousands of dreamed about, wanting to show up and show out one last time before waving goodbye to their highschool years. 

Every girl except you and Rhea. You both despised the thought of prom. Why would any sane person spend hundreds of dollars on an outfit just to spend their night drenched in sweat in the school gymnasium? 

Fuck that!

“Romeo O Romeo! Will thou spend your Saturday night with I, drinking punch next to the locker rooms?” Rhea mocked, elbowing your arm. 

You shook your head, pressing your lips together trying to keep your laughter silent. The commotion of classmates was soon drowned out by thoughts as your eyes met Rhea’s, causing your tightened lips to curl into a small smile.

Rhea’s blue eyes never failed to warm you. Everytime you gazed into those beachy eyes you were brought back to the day you first met the girl. Seventh grade, first period, language arts. A quiet blonde girl sporting a Pierce The Veil shirt was assigned to sit next to you. Nobody knew anything about the girl besides the fact she had just moved basically across the globe. You spent the entire period thinking of what you could possibly say to her, because what do you even say to a kid that was just relocated from South Australia all the way to some shitty suburban town? 

“Cool shirt.” 

And it fucking worked somehow. You were immediately attached to her hip. The two of you grew closer with each day that passed. You were inseparable. She was everything to you. Sleepovers every weekend. ‘Study’ sessions that were spent play fighting with each other. Singing pop-punk songs at the top of your lungs till your throats were raw. Dying your hair the same shade of blue at three in the morning. She was even at your side while your parents scolded you the morning after for said blue hair. 

Jesus Christ. Lost in her eyes again? Snap out of it already! 

“Yo, Alice in Wonderland, you okay?” Rhea playfully questioned, breaking your trance by poking at your thigh.

“Just…thinking. That’s all.” You softly chuckled. You were telling the truth, you were just thinking. Just thinking about her. Thinking about her touch, her hands, her pierced nose, her lips, her stupid cool shirts. 

══════⋆☆⋆══════

“Jesus, someone’s eager to get out of here.” You laughed, trailing behind Rhea who was booking it over to her small black Lexus.

“Dude, can you blame me? It’s like everyone has some sort of prom fever. I am not letting it catch me.” Rhea complained, ducking into the vehicle. 

You made your way to the passenger side of the car before hopping into the seat next to Rhea. “I counted eighteen of those damn signs today.” You babbled, resting your arm on the center console before trailing on, diffusing the topic, “Anyways, let’s go thrifting or something. I don’t wanna go home.”

Rhea shrugged in agreeance before pulling out of her parking spot. She knew things were tough for you at home. You had recently come out as lesbian to your parents. They weren't unsupportive but they weren't exactly supportive at the same time which had built quite a bit of tension in the household. You came out to Rhea just about two years ago, who was more than supportive. She was your number one defender, always there to threaten whichever classmate that dared to ridicule you.

You knew absolutely nothing about Rhea’s sexuality. Hell, even Rhea knew nothing about her sexuality. She only knew one thing, that she liked you. She didn’t even know when she caught feelings for you, it was like the sentiments were there since the moment you first spoke to her. She hoped as time went on the flutters she’d feel for you would pass on but recently she couldn’t seem to even push the mere thought of you out of her head, it was killing her.

The drive to the nearest thrift shop was comfortably silent…silent if you ignored the Black Veil Brides cd Rhea had blaring…

Entering the store the pair of you let out scoffed laughs as the first thing catching your attention was a large display of second hand dresses. Shaking it out of your heads and ignoring it at first you carried on to wander the isles, grabbing whatever caught your eye to try on later although you’d inevitably end back up to the racks of long dresses. You weren't a big fan of dresses but you wanted to waste as much time as you possibly could, so you decided to browse the gowns with Rhea. 

She pulled a deep maroon dress, the form fitting glittered bodice was paired with a looser, more freeing skirt. “Try it on!” Rhea pushed, shoving the dress into your arms.

“I’d look so stupid in this.” You gave Rhea a bewildered look.

“Oh c’mon just try it!”

“Rhe’ when have you ever given a shit about this stuff?”

“Dude you’re the one that wanted to waste time here…” Rhea playfully scorned, diverting your question.

“Urgh, I hate when you’re right.” You huffed, shuffling towards the dressing room. 

“How ridiculous do I look?” You pouted, opening the door of the changing room before shuffling to the closest mirror.

Rhea stood behind you, peering over your shoulder as you silently studied yourself in the mirror. You looked at Rhea through the mirror as she opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself in her tracks. “I mean it’s cute but where in the world would I wear this?” You shrugged, adjusting the straps as Rhea chewed on her cheeks.

“Wear it to prom.” Rhea timidly broke her silence.

“Why would I go to prom, Rhe’? First of all it would be so lame and second of all I’d have nobody to go with. I’m just gonna put this back.” You mumbled, turning to make your way back into the changing room.

 A hand grabbed your wrist, stopping you in your tracks. “Go with me…” Rhea blurted out, sounding scared of her own words. Her statement caused you to turn to face her with a puzzled expression, Rhea herself even looked surprised at what she just said. Fearing your rejection she quickly added on, “Ya know, like as a joke and stuff. We can make it not lame…”

“As a joke?” Your heart that was skipping beats just seconds ago was immediately let down. 

“Yeah. It’s just a stupid idea we don’t hav-”

“No, let's go…as a joke.” You interrupted Rhea’s nervous deflection. “We’ve got nothing better to do.” You shrugged on watching Rhea’s anxieties fade into the distance as her classic cheeky smile crept upon her face.

After you swapped out of your dress you returned to Rhea who was holding up a silky black dress with a deep slit in the skirt. “This’ll work. I’m too lazy to try anything on.” She chuckled while shrugging.

“That's ballsy Rhe-Rhe.”

══════⋆☆⋆══════

Tonight was the night, you were sat atop Rhea’s bathroom counter, finishing up your makeup while Rhea was shuffling around her closet searching for a pair of shoes. It had been four weeks since Rhea ‘asked’ you to prom and you simply couldn’t keep your mind off it. Although you two planned this whole thing as a joke, something shifted ever so slightly between the two of you, maybe it wasn’t a joke, who knows. Rhea had your heart in your throat at every moment and you were the topic of every thought that popped into Rhea’s head. More than ever the both of you were head over heels for each other, just terrified the other wouldn’t reciprocate those shared feelings.

Your parents were completely unaware you’d be attending prom. You had informed them you were staying with a friend before immediately storming off to Rhea’s house. Rhea’s parents hadn’t a clue either, they were under the impression tonight would be just another night of the two of you doing nothing for hours then sneaking out to go for a drive at three in the morning. There truly wasn’t much reasoning behind this secret, you guys just wanted to have this night for yourselves without pestering parents. 

“Urgh! At this point I’m gonna go barefoot!” You could hear yet another pair of shoes be tossed to the floor. You slid off Rhea’s counter, stepped out of her bathroom and over to her closet. She was already in her dress tearing through a pile of shoes on the floor. “What has gotten into you Rhe’?” You leaned against the doorframe laughing at the fact that Rhea of all people was stressing over shoes. 

 Rhea rolled her eyes ignoring your banter. “Would it make me a hipster if I wore converse?”

“Oh absolutely, I dare you!” 

“You know I will,” Rhea retorted, picking up a black pair of the canvas shoes.

You chuckled before turning to return to the bathroom, letting Rhea know you were gonna change. You got into your dress with ease up until you came to the zipper on the back. You groaned in annoyance, reaching behind to your back attempting to wiggle the zipper to no avail.

“Rhe’, can you help me real quick?” You asked while popping your head out the door.

“Hm? What’s up?” Rhea turned around and questioned before making her way up to you, trying to keep her gaze from falling down to the hand placed on your chest, keeping the dress from completely slipping from your body.

“Zippers stuck,” You pouted, turning around. Rhea’s hand swept across the base of your neck, sweeping your hair to the side. You watched her through the mirror as she began fumbling with the metal, ultimately getting it to slide up your back.

After an awkward exchange of bashful looks the two of you finished getting ready in each other's company. You sat next to Rhea slipping into your shoes while she tied off her converse, took a handful of polaroid pictures together, then eventually snuck out Rhea’s window to begin your hike to the school.

══════⋆☆⋆══════

“Ouu! Ripley’s got a date!” Was whistled out by a classmate as you and Rhea made your way down the congested hallway, making Rhes roll her eyes.

“Shut up dickhead! We’re here as a joke.” Rhea rebutted, flipping the guy off as she carried on down the hall. 

Here as a joke but her flushed cheeks and sweaty hand gripping yours told a slightly different story.

“Dickheads always running their mo-” Rhea muttered, stepping into the crowded gymnasium.

“Shh. It’s fine, you shouldn’t worry about them.” You cut off Rhea, giving her hand a squeeze as you examined the starry night themed room. The area was dimly lit by blue leds and strings of fairy lights. Blue curtains decorated with paper stars draped over the majority of the walls while an array of tables adorned with bottles of fairy lights surrounded a dance floor full of teenagers.

You both seated yourselves near the stage where a live band was playing. Your legs pressed against one another as you fell into an array of conversations. Thirty minutes had managed to sneak by before your meaningless conversation was cut short by your biology teacher.

“You girls gonna sit here and chat all night? Go dance!” 

“But dancing is lame, Mr. Brown.” Rhea groaned while you both turned to face the man.

“I promise you that in ten years you’ll regret not doing anything at your senior prom. Seriously, go dance!” Your teacher stood behind you giving his words of advice. Rhea peeked over to you looking for your opinion. You gave her a ‘why not’ shrug before rising from your seat.

“But I don't even know how to slow dance.” Rhea whined to herself under her breath as she stood up. “If we have to dance, we’re dancing in the corner cause I’m gonna look stupid.” She stipulated.

You guided Rhea over to a secluded section of the dance floor near a wall, reassuring her that you also had no clue on what you were doing. 

“We’ll just do what everyone else is doing, Rhe’.” 

“I think this right,” Rhea unassuredly giggled with a racing heart, taking a hold of your left hand while wrapping her free hand around your waist. You shook your hair to cover your flushing cheeks as you brought your right hand to rest on her shoulder. The pair of you began swaying to the music while trying to hold back laughter, both in slight disbelief at your current situation. Prom was the last place either of you ever expected to be attending.

You were already trailing back into the pit of those sapphire eyes, drowning out all external noise you missed Rhea humming about how beautiful you looked. You were too occupied taking in the essence of your childlike crush to take notice of the grip Rhea had on your waist tightening. You were fully prepared to stare into those eyes all night, but Rhea was eager to run a risk.

A set of warm lips fell onto you abruptly, pulling you by the waist into a desperate kiss. All five senses rushed over your body, sending a rush of adrenaline through your bloodstream, placing you in awe too shocked to move.

Rhea forced herself to pull away, letting a sigh of relief out before the panic settled in, “Shit. I, god I’m so-”

Your thoughts had just now grasped what just happened.

This was a kiss that spent years in the making…you were not just gonna let it end like that.

Your hand slipped to the back of Rhea’s head, pushing Rhea back into the kiss, forcibly putting an end to her apology. She immediately fell back into your lips, closing her dilated eyes. While her tongue slid across your bottom lip begging to deepen the kiss, her hands slid up to cup your cheeks. Time slid away as the two of you fell into each other in your isolated corner of the gymnasium.

Rhea pulled herself from your lips breathless, her parted lips forming an open smile. She wanted more. You attempted to collect your thoughts while catching your breath. Both of you were attempting to draft a response while gazing into each other, because what do you say after tasting your best friend of five years?

“Cool.” You nodded

Rhea shook her head scoffing out a laugh, still making an attempt to regulate her breath. She took grip of your hand, giving it a squeeze before beginning to pull you into the hall without speaking a word.

“Wher-”

“Just follow me!” Rhea cut you off, rushing through the halls as she dragged you behind herself, both of you trying not to stumble over your dresses. 

She halted in front of the nurses office before fiddling with the keypad on the door, “God bless modern technology,” She muttered, managing to get the door open as you watched in disbelief. “Don’t even ask.” She chuckled, scanning the hall to make sure you were in the clear before tugging you into the room.

Once Rhea’s foot forced the door shut her lips directly got to work pinning themselves to your neck, nipping at the delicate skin. 

“Shit Rhe’, there might be cameras.” You pushed through a stunned whine. 

“There's none…” Rhea couldn't even pull her lips away from your skin as she spoke, “Wouldn't stop me either way, I’ve waited too long for this.” She grunted, dragging her kisses to your collarbone. “Now please tell me I can keep going.”

“I don’t think I could ever tell you to stop.” You pulled Rhea’s face to meet your eyes, whispering your confession. There was no need for Rhea to open her mouth, the look on her face alone told you that was exactly what she needed to hear.

“You have no fucking clue how long I’ve waited for this.” Rhea growled, grasping your cheeks as she pulled you over to the nurses twin sized treatment bed. 

She brought her legs to straddle over you, lowering her chest to hover over you. Rhea was attached to you like a dog, her lips were sloppy against yours as her hands snuck to pull up the skirt of your dress. 

Rhea brought herself between your legs, in a rush to finally get a taste of your core.

“Please…I’m begging you, please don't make me wait more than I already have.” Rhea looked up at you pleading.

Your heart was in your throat as you fervently nodded. “I wanna hear your voice,” Rhea begged, whispering out your name.

“Rhea, please just do anything, I need, I need you.”

With that said she hurriedly slid your panties down your legs, tossing them to the foot of the bed. Rhea was making it clear that tonight was her time to shine.

“Fuck, you’re perfect…” Rhea murmured, awed at the sight of your soaked cunt. Her arms tangled themselves around your legs. After years her tongue finally made contact with your delicacy, she preached a string of curses, finally getting what she was after. You propped yourself on your elbows to catch the sight of Rhea exploring your brand new world. You could feel a smirk between your legs as her eyes met yours, thirstily watching you watch.

“Tastes so good.” Rhea praised, sweeping her tongue through your folds before bringing herself to round your clit. You chewed on your cheeks to hush the moans escaping your throat as Rhea wrapped her lips around your sensitivity, allowing her to lightly suck at your skin. Your legs made an unsuccessful attempt at wrapping around Rhea’s head only to be overtaken by her hands, prying them open, giving her full access to devour your aching heat. 

The stealthy addition of two fingers into your emptiness was only amplifying the wobbly knees her mouth alone had created. Her fingers began steadily massaging into you, causing an arch to form over your back. The mixture of Rhea’s roaming tongue and grinding digits already had a knot forming in your stomach.

“Fucking Christ Rhe’, where the fuck did you learn all this.” You struggled out through moans. Rhea let out a soft chuckle as she continued to take your clit into her mouth, rolling her tongue piercing over your sensitivity.

Rhea gave your cunt one last kiss before she brought herself to face you. Now that Rhea had finally gotten a taste of your mouth she couldn't get enough, she had to return for more. Your lips once again blended together, your moans now slipping into Rhea’s mouth as her fingers curled inside your core. 

“God, you sound so beautiful.” Rhea admired, pressing her warmed forehead against yours while her digits continued toying with your clenching walls. Her thumb was soon added to the mixture of pleasure as it rubbed rhythmic circles over your bud. 

“Rhe’, I want to feel you against me,” You opened your eyes, pulling from her kiss while your hips rolled against her working digits. “Please.”

Rhea nodded, her eyes full of adoration, she’d do whatever it took to please you no matter if it took minutes or hours. She let her fingers come to a declined pace before withdrawing from your warmth. She stood up, licking her fingers clean before riding her dress up her legs and dropping her panties. She rushed to return to the bed pulling your leg into the air before propping a leg of hers next to your hip.

Rhea settled her heat against yours, letting out a heavy breath. She gradually started rocking her hips against you, mixing your slick together. You watched as the new sensation of pleasure washed over her, causing her jaw to drop open and her eyes to roll to the back of her head. 

“Just…just like that.” You whimpered as you began to grind your hips at a matching pace, chasing towards your climax. Rhea’s arm clung to your leg that was situated in the air for support as the sound of quiet moans and the rustling of dress fabric bounced around the room. 

“Feels so good, fuck.” Rhea quickened her motions, moaning out the nickname she created for you through heavy breaths.Rhea pushed herself further against you chasing her own high as you squirmed beneath her grinds. 

“Rhe’, I’m gonna cum.” You whined out, reaching for a hand to cling to. Her hand met you halfway, instantly taking you into her grip she pulled you up to meet her face. She was back to those oh-so passionate kisses she could now never get enough of. “Please, Rhe’!” You cried against her, her movements bucking against your cunt.

Rhea nodded into your kiss signaling for your release, her own climax just seconds away. Your series of moans brushed against Rhea’s lips as your orgasm washed over you, hers quickly following. Muffled whines echoed around the room as Rhea’s thrusts against you faltered.

After riding out your highs together, Rhea squeezed herself next to you on the tiny bed and rested her hand on your thigh, giving it a soft squeeze. “I swear to god if you say cool.” Rhea looked over at you giggling. 

“Unfair!” You joked, resting your head against Rhea’s chest. You both fell into silence simply taking in the moment, reflecting on everything that had just happened. Rhea peppered small kisses to the top of your head as you toyed with the fabric of her dress.

“We should probably get outta here before somebody finds us.” Rhea suggested, breaking the silence.

“Wanna go dance again?” You teased as you turned to face her.

Rhea quickly shook her head, “I’m never gonna dance again. I was so bad.” She laughed, “How about we go find a parking lot and makeout under the stars, hm?”

“I seriously would have never expected you to be all smoochy, Rhe’.”

“Look, I have like five years of kisses to make up for!”

#this one is such a mess sorry lol #i fear i yearned too much #rhea ripley smut #rhea ripley fanfic #rhea ripley #rhea ripley oneshot #rhea ripley x reader #rhea ripley fluff #rhea ripley fanfiction #wwe x reader #wwe smut

[sporadicthingcollection]

Smash or Pass: Part 2/4 (LA!Buggy the Clown x F!Reader)

Summary: It's the last stop before the Grand Line and you slink away for a quiet evening. The universe, however, decides to clown on you. Sequel to Kiss, Marry, Kill. Pairing: LA!Buggy the Clown x F!Reader Rating: Semi-explicit. Warnings: Violence, description of injuries. Word Count: ~3.7k.

A/N: Someday I'll figure out the best way to make a tag list on here (if anyone has any experience with that hmu). Hope you enjoy this one~

---

PART 2: In which you lend a helping hand, provide clown care, and tell a joke.

Swords clash. Punches fly. Bodies go flying. The band launches into a rousing up number. You admire their dedication until a chair flies past your head. You should get out of here.

You get to the door, but you stop. Where’s Buggy? He was just right there, but there is now occupied by a man with a big hat and a bear club.

More importantly, why do you care? Well, you know why you care. You just went over this. It’s because you’ve got a stupid little crush. You shouldn’t care but you’re so liquored up that you do. This was probably his plan all along—

A guy comes at you with a sword. You duck beneath him, punch him in the dick, and throw him out the door and into the street. No cheap shots in a bar fight. 

And then you see it: a candy cane-striped patch deep in the throng. You skirt the edge of the brawl to get closer to it.

For a drunk guy with no hands, Buggy’s doing pretty well. Kicking, headbutting, body part separating. Cheap shots galore. You suppose it helps that he’s not fighting to win, but to get the hell out of here.

He’s almost at the edge when a mountain of a man hooks him around the neck with a wire of some kind. You expect him to separate his head, but his eyes go wide and he thrashes to no success, scrabbling at the wire.

Oh, that’s bad. Real bad. What do you do? C’mon, girl, think! There’s gotta be a way for you to lend a helping—

Hands! There they are! Smacking into everyone and everything as he tries to recall them. You grab one and then the other. You look around to return them but now there’s a whole scuffle between you and him. Three very large men all whaling on each other. There’s no way you’re getting through that.

“Hey!” you shout. He can’t hear you over the din. “Buggy!”

Still nothing. The pirate pulls tighter. He gasps and struggles.

Somewhere in your brain, you know this is the perfect moment to make a break for it. He’s occupied, won’t see you leave, and can’t follow you back to the ship.

But you can’t leave a man to die just to save your own skin. Especially when the brawl started because he was trying to defend you. C’mon, think of something!

…Oh. Duh.

You take a deep breath. You hold his hands over your head. "Hey, big nose!"

Buggy's head whips towards you as his eyes fly open, burning with white hot rage. It vanishes as he sees your trophies, replaced with awe.

It's a nice look on him.

One hand zips out of your grasp to jab his assailant in the eyes. The other grabs you by the collar.

You shriek as your feet leave the ground, lifting you up and over several dozen brawling sailors. It sets you down gently behind the bar, safe from the throng.

You’ve never flown before. You’re not a fan. But you are grateful, even if he did put you down so far from the exit. “Thanks,” you croak.

The hand shoots you a finger gun. You can practically hear the click of his tongue as the thumb flexes. How’d he hear you over the chaos?

Right next to your ear, a low voice says, “Don’t mention it.”

You scream and throw your elbow back, colliding with something hard. The low voice grunts as you jump away, and you turn to see Buggy clutching his nose.

You grimace. You know how pointy your elbows are. “That’s your own fault, sneaking up on a girl in the middle of a fight.”

He gives you an incredulous glare. “That’s not your line. You’re supposed to say…” He assumes a high-pitched voice. “‘Oh, thanks for the help, Captain Buggy! My hero!’”

You really hope you don’t sound like that. “Go soak your head. I saved you!”

He sneers at you, but he strokes his throat. An ugly ring of bruises will certainly be there later. “I had it under control.” 

“Bullshit!”

“I’m sorry, did you want to be dragged into an alley and used like a two-bit whore—“

A loud crack cuts him off. He blinks, looking more shocked than anything. His eyes roll back, his shoulders slump, and his head lolls forward. The rest of him follows and Captain Buggy, your hero, goes down like a sack of potatoes.

He hits the floor in a big puddle of assorted spirits, making a slap that you can only compare to when a pancake hits the ceiling. It would be funny if...

...actually, it's pretty funny as-is. You wish you were sober enough to commit the sound to memory.

Anyways, a chair in a bar fight really ought to be cheating. Then again, this is a pirate bar. The patrons are pirates. You are pirates. Everyone is pirates. It's pirates all the way down in here.

You catch the chair as it swings at you, and you see your assailant is, in fact, not a pirate. It’s the bar matron, scowling.

“You,” she grumbles. “This is your fault, you know that?”

“I didn’t ask him to help.” You yank the chair from her hands and toss it away. “And I didn’t ask to get felt up.”

Her eyes widen. “Is that what…?” She sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Guess I can’t be too surprised about that. The boys have been spoiling to fight all night.” She looks down at Buggy. “Sorry ‘bout your boyfriend.”

Boyfriend. You really hate that you don’t hate the sound of that. But that would eventually make you Mrs the Clown and that you cannot abide by.

You wrinkle your nose. “Not my boyfriend.”

She scoffs. “Man started a brawl for you. It’s only a matter of time.” She kneels down and hooks her arms under his shoulders. “There’s a room upstairs we can stash him in. Grab his legs.”

You do so. On three, you both heave up… and he separates in the middle. The bar matron gasps in horror.

In his maybe-concussed definitely-drunk stupor, Buggy giggles. It’s kind of cute. Not at all menacing the way it’s been before. High-pitched. A bit like a weathervane squeaking in the breeze.

“Pull yourself together, dickhead,” you say. When he doesn’t, you roll your eyes. “Devil Fruit,” you say to the matron. “I’ll be right behind.”

Carrying a pair of legs is far more difficult than you expected. You can’t pick them up bridal style. Dragging them by the ankles is no good, either. You resort to throwing them over your shoulders, one leg on either side of your neck with your hands on his shins. An inelegant solution, but the only one you’ve got.

You’re halfway up the stairs when you feel something twitch against your head. Something hard. Something stiff. Something that seems like it’s pretty thick, based on the weight against your ear.

Your cheeks burst into flames. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about Buggy’s cock. Don’t think about how you were wrong about Buggy having a small cock.

The matron leads you to a small room right under the roof. A bed, a trunk, and a dry sink with a wash basin are the only furniture, but a marvelous view of the harbor from the window makes up for it. If it wasn’t dark, you could probably see the Merry from here.

She tosses her half of Buggy onto the bed. You follow suit. The mattress squeaks as they bounce and, with a pop, the twain meet and he’s a whole man again.

“Devil Fruits,” the matron mutters, shaking her head. She turns to you. “You can stay here ‘til he’s well enough to walk, but I want you gone by morning. Got it?”

You nod, only to grimace. “I, uh, don’t have much money. I don’t think he does, either.”

She waves her hand as she exits. “Just don’t come back and I won’t collect.”

You realize a problem. “Th-There’s only one bed.”

“One of you can sleep on the floor.”

The door closes. You are left alone with the muffled sounds of a brawl, the rhythmic breathing of a mostly unconscious clown, and your own turbulent thoughts.

Again, you are presented with an opportunity to leave. Can’t follow you if he’s out cold. Save your friends. Save your ship. Save yourself.

And again, you hesitate. He drank a lot with you. And you did laugh quite a bit. And dancing with him was like floating — the good kind, not the kind with disembodied hands. And he whacked some guys about to manhandle you. And then he pulled you out of the fight.

How was it he had described you? Back on the Merry, when he read you like a picture book? ‘Once bitten, twice shy, but when he comes around a third time, you just can’t help yourself.’

Boy howdy, do you hate how accurate that is.

Speaking of which, he hasn’t moved since he hit the bed. You pat his cheek. “You alright?”

He stirs slightly. “Mfmn.”

That’s not good. With a sigh, you put on your triage hat. Seeing as how he got bashed on the noggin, might as well start there. "Sit up.”

He mutters something incomprehensible, but doesn't fight you as you guide him into a sitting position against the headboard. It takes a moment to untie his bandanna.

You're expecting sensibly short hair. Or perhaps missed-a-few-trims-touching-his-earlobes medium-ish hair. Maybe even brushing his shoulders in what guys consider long.

But no. What you get is honest-to-god long hair, textured by salt water and adorned with little plaits, flowing out of the bandana and waterfalling down his back. In need of a good brushing, perhaps, but otherwise healthy.

You want to run your nails through it. Twirl a few strands around your finger. Pull a comb through it. Cut a lock to braid into a rope bracelet, the kind sailors give to their sweethearts to remember them by—

You give your head a good shake. Where did that come from? That’s weird. Don’t do that.

Gently, you part his hair to inspect the scalp. A few small cuts, but nothing worth wasting gauze on. A nasty lump, though. That'll for sure hurt in the morning.

Satisfied, you let his hair fall. His face is next, but this literal clown makeup makes it hard to tell what's blood and what's not. Rummaging around in your satchel, you pull out your rubbing alcohol and a gauze pad and dab away.

It doesn’t come off easy — this is definitely the good shit — but you get enough off. Barefaced Buggy isn’t much different than the regular one, just less obfuscated by whacky colors. High cheekbones. Strong, stubbly jaw. Cleft chin. He'd be handsome if it weren't for the nose… or maybe he is anyways? Some cultures like big noses. And you know what they say about guys with big noses—

Nope. No. Knock it off. Gonna behave yourself? Good. Back to work. Where were you again?

Nose. Right. Speaking of which, you're still not convinced it's not real. The intrusive thoughts win this time and you give it a pinch and a pull.

It's real. He gasps and snatches you by the wrist as his eyes pop open, wide and darting around. They’re the color of a calm river on a cloudy day, though the river is rough at the moment. Why does such a repulsive man have such pretty eyes? 

"Easy, easy," you say. "I'm just checking you out— up."

If he heard the slip, he ignores it. After a moment, he drops your hand and lays back with a sigh. "W'happen?"

A few spots of blood stick to your fingers, coming from a small cut down the middle of his nose. You couldn't tell on account of the... well, everything about it. "Someone got you from behind with a chair." You go to dab at the cut. "Knocked you out cold. Smashed your face on the floor and gave you a bloody nose."

The rage returns. He snatches your wrist again. "What about my nose?" he growls, voice raw.

On one hand, you like that husky tone. On the other, this rubbing alcohol is stinging your fingers and you're not going to entertain his insecurities. "You landed right on it. A schnoz that big and it didn't do a damn thing to break your fall."

He does not like that. He squeezes tight enough to hurt and pulls you in closer. The river in his eyes whirls and churns. "You're talking a lot of shit for someone all alone in a room with Buggy the Clown."

Not a single word of excrement has left your mouth. "And you're talking too much shit for someone with a busted nose," you spit. "You want it to get infected? Scar up? It'll look even worse."

It's blunt, but you're right. And you know he knows you're right. He's a fool, but he's not foolish enough to not listen to a professional.

What you don't expect is the way his face drops for a moment. All of the anger, all of the bluster, all of it gone. All that remains is a boy with shocked eyes. Hurt eyes. Vulnerable eyes.

But only for a moment. The walls go back up and the angry man returns, albeit at a simmer and not a boil. He drops your wrist and scowls, avoiding your gaze.

Your stomach sinks. Being snippy is one thing, but you don't like being mean by accident. Even to a jerkoff like him.

With a gentle touch, you take his jaw. "This'll sting," you say as you press the pad to his nose.

He hisses, but doesn't pull away. "How bad is it?"

Now that the blood's gone, not bad at all. "Just a scratch. Won't even need a bandage."

He fixes his gaze somewhere past you. “Shame.”

And you continue to feel bad. It doesn’t look that bad on him. You were right earlier. It does suit him. You discard the pad. “Sorry ‘bout what I said,” you say. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”

Buggy he continues to look past you. He waves his hand, only to flinch. He tries to hide it with a scoff.

Your soft eyes don’t miss. “Give it here.”

He huffs and grabs the injured hand with the other, yanking it off at the wrist. He plops it in your own hand and crosses his arms.

You almost laugh. But you hold it back.

You pull his glove off, revealing calloused fingers and shredded nails. When the seas get rough, he works the ropes with everyone else. And he's been at it awhile. 

"You're a career sailor," you say. You're not sure why you're surprised.

“Only trade I know,” he says.

Fingerbones intact, if not a little bruised at the knuckles. "Piracy pay that well?”

He gives a bitter smile. “You’d be surprised what you make in tips.”

Maybe you’re just drunk or maybe that was actually kinda funny. Regardless, a laugh almost manages to escape this time. Almost. You catch it in time for it to turn into a weird snorting sound.

The bitterness evaporates like mist in the morning sun as he finally turns his gaze on you. His smile brightens his whole face, scrunching the rivers of his eyes into little oxbow lakes.

Yep. He’s handsome. That little crush burns in your chest.

You swallow some infatuation-flavored bile. "Take your shirt off," you say. "Wanna— Wanna check your ribs."

He regards you for a moment. Wordlessly, he pulls his scarf from his neck and tosses it to the floor. Next goes the sash-belt thing. Finally, he shrugs out of the vest.

You're not sure what you're expecting. A sea of scars, perhaps? The mottled, diseased skin of a syphilitic sailor? A gaping void where his heart ought to be?

No. What you get is an expanse of smooth skin, dipping and rising with mountains and valleys of lean muscles. Hair covers his pectorals, thickest on his sternum. A soft belly pushes against his waistband as he breathes — not a gut by any means, but a logical consequence of indulging one's every desire. A thin trail of fuzz leads down below his trousers, growing thicker as it dips below. The carpet matches the drapes, apparently...

Your cheeks heat up. Don't even think about it, girl. Just check him out and be on your way— up. Check him up.

"Does it hurt anywhere?" you ask. You trail your fingers down his ribs, gently poking and prodding.

"Not particularly." Pressing the side of his pec makes him hiss. “Alright, maybe there.”

You lift his arm — his hard, wiry arm — and lean in close. A bit of a bruise is blooming, but it doesn’t look too serious. What is serious is how distracting the smell of fresh sweat is.

His sweat. On his skin. Glistening. Like dew. Musky. Tangy. Tasty.

He says something and it doesn’t even register. The thoughts drown him out. Do it, they say. Stick your face in there.

A light poke to your cheek yanks you out of your… whatever the hell that was. You turn to see his hand hovering. Its fingers wiggle in a wave. “Hello? Anyone aboard?”

You shake your head hard enough that you can feel your brain bouncing around. “Sorry. Thinking about contusions.”

“Should I be worried or not?”

You press your thumb into the bruise. “Does it hurt to breathe?”

He squeaks like a mouse. “When you’re doing that, yeah!”

The sound of pain is a big turn-off for you, which is exactly what you need right now. You jam your finger against the bruise one more time just to hear him yelp. “You’re fine.”

You drop his arm. You try to move away as quickly as possible while still looking casual and not tripping over yourself. You fail and land on your ass. Not hard enough to hurt, but an uff escapes you all the same.

Buggy giggles, peering down at you. “I love a good pratfall.”

He looks good from this angle. Above you. That worries you. “You’re completely fine. Worst thing you’ll have in the morning is a lump and a hangover.”

His brow wrinkles. “Not gonna check out my legs?”

Oh, you’ve already spent plenty of time checking out his legs. Nice boots. Muscular thighs. Trying to figure out if the bulge in the crotch was fabric or something else.

You grab the edge of the bed and haul yourself up onto it. “Do they hurt?”

“Sister, all of me hurts.”

You sigh. “Bring your knees to your chest. First one, then the other.”

His left knee joint pops out from its rightful spot on his leg. He presses it to his chest, then repeats the action with the other. He looks at you expectantly. “Now what?”

A banged-up half-naked clown, sitting on a bed, holding his knees in his hands. The situation is amusing enough, but something in his expression, the tone of his voice… it breaks you.

You slide from the bed back onto the floor as loud, cackling peals burst forth like floodwaters through a dam.

It feels good to laugh so hard. It hurts your ribs, your stomach, and your cheeks, but it's a good hurt.

The fit subsides, leaving you flopped on your back, arm slung over your eyes, trying to catch your breath. A few giggles bubble forth, and you do your best to swallow them.

You fling your arm from your eyes to see Buggy gazing down at you, resting his head on his arm, eyes scrunched up. “Didn’t think that one would get you."

“Shut up.” You climb up to your knees. “And stop making me laugh.”

“But you’re so cute when you laugh.”

You snort. “You tried that one earlier.”

Buggy frowns. Deeply. He moves his head to his fist, leaving his gaze level with your own. “But I meant it.”

“You’re full of bird shit.”

You try to move away, but he grabs your arm and guides you back down. He stares right into your eyes, straight into your soul. “I meant it,” he says firmly.

For a moment, you believe him. Your voice of self-doubt is silenced. The voice of what an unladylike laugh. No man could ever find that attractive. How do you expect to get a husband sounding like that?

His voice disturbs your ruminating. "Y’know, if you join my crew," he says, "you can laugh like that all you want. As loud as you want. Whenever you want."

It's probably the alcohol. It's probably because he's half naked. It's probably because you're a weak woman. Whatever the reason may be, to your horror, you do consider it.

It could be a good time. You enjoy his company. You enjoy laughing. You enjoy adventures and making mischief and romance. Both the kind with the wind in your sails and the kind with a man in your arms.

Perhaps even this man.

But you can't. You know you can't. He’s cruel. He’s crazy. You couldn't live with yourself if you betrayed your friends. Not to mention that there'd be no escape if it all went wrong.

In your moment of weakness, he slips a finger under your chin. Millimeter by millimeter, he guides you closer. His eyes drift shut as his nose bumps yours.

Don’t do this, your good sense screams. You’re drunk. He’s drunk. Stop thinking with your snatch. Don’t—

The slightest bit of nerves quiver in his voice. “Something wrong…?”

Everything. “Nothing.”

You push forward and finally, finally, your lips meet his.

It’s nothing like your previous kisses, sudden and sloppy. This one is slow. Measured. Gently crackling like the soft flame of a low fire, radiating warmth.

A featherlight moan escapes him as you pull away. His eyes search your face, bracing himself, waiting for something, hoping in vain that he won't find it.

You lay a hand on his jaw, stroking his cheekbone with your thumb. “What is it?”

His gaze drifts to the side as he inhales sharply. “Waiting for the punchline.” He swallows. “No way something this good could happen to me.”

This poor, pathetic man after your own heart. “I got a punchline for you. What did the sawbones say to the clown?”

Shining eyes peer at you. “I dunno. What did the sawbones say to the clown?”

“She said...” You lean in close. “‘Kiss me again.’”

Those eyes go wide.

---

Part the 3rd goes up Thursday!

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[masterofmunson]

slipping through his fingers

Rockstar!Eddie Munson x Ex!Reader AU

Summary: You’ve only wanted the best for Eddie, even if that means you’re no longer in his life. 

Word Count: 5.4k+

Warnings: language, ANGST ANGST ANGST GALORE (I’m so sorry) with a happy ending

Author’s Note: this has been brewing in my drafts for a week. I’m so excited for you guys to read this! Just a few notes: this takes place in 1991 so Eddie’s 25 and the reader is 24! Also listen to love of my life by harry styles to get the full angsty experience. Please, please, PLEASE let me know what you think! Enjoy xoxo 

The moment you step into the bar, you realize how much you regret agreeing to go on a double date with Annie, her boyfriend, and their friend they’ve been wanting to set you up with for the last several weeks.

The bar is way too crowded. You just want to go home and watch some trashy show before going to bed. Your day was especially long today at the hospital and the last thing you wanted was to sit in a crowded bar packed like sardines.

You know you can’t get out of the date. You can’t even pretend to be sick when your best friend knows it’s a fat lie. You just don’t want to be here in this shitty bar with shitty beer and shitty food.

Biting back the sigh threatening to spill from your throat, Annie drags you by the hand through the sea of people to a high top near the stage. She pulls away when she sees Malcolm sitting beside who you can only assume is your date for the night. You hate to admit it, but he’s incredibly handsome.

He’s muscular with thick arms and a broad chest. His face has a perfectly manicured beard and he has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. His hazelnut-colored hair is styled to perfection and he grins when Annie approaches.

Trailing behind her, you watch Annie kiss Malcom’s cheek affectionately and you stand awkwardly beside a chair. Heat creeps up your ears when the handsome stranger waves at you and you feel like the smile you try and fake turns into a grimace instead. You were already getting off on the wrong foot with this man.

Annie shrieks your name and pulls you towards the table, effectively towards the man across from you. “Seth, this is my best friend,” Annie introduced the two of you, grinning like crazy. You watch the handsome stranger —Seth— stick his hand out for you in a kind introduction. You shake his hand delicately and slide into the chair beside him, facing the stage. You shrug off your jacket and rest your purse on your lap.

“I’ve heard a lot about you!” Seth yelled over the music with a smile. “You’re a nurse, right?”

You nod in reply and glance over at Malcolm. He hops off his chair and hurries over to the bar, ordering drinks for you and Annie. “Yeah! How do you know Annie and Malcom?” you asked over the music.

“I’ve known Malcolm since we were kids. Annie’s doesn’t really stray far from him, as I’m sure you know.”

You smile at his answer and laugh, nodding along. They’ve been together for three years now. You try not to remind yourself of the time when they first started dating. It was the worst time of your life, having gone through an awful breakup.

“Thanks for humoring Annie and meeting me. I know you would probably rather be anywhere but in a crowded bar waiting for a band to play with a guy you just met.”

“There’s a band playing tonight?” you asked, sipping on your beer. “Annie didn’t tell me.”

Seth grins. “Yeah. It’s some heavy metal band Malcolm and I have been listening to over the last couple years. They’re really talented and they’ve gotten really successful.”

You laugh, quirking a brow at him. “Are you one of their groupies?” you teased.

A soft blush covers his cheeks and he ducks his head down to hide his smile from you. Seth runs a hand through his hair and scratches the back of his neck bashfully. He shakes his head. “No, just a big fan.”

“What’s the band called? Should I start listening to them after tonight?”

“Corroded Coffin.”

You choke on your beer and the wind is knocked out of you. Seth’s eyes widen and he rests a hand on your shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Your head spins and you tug at the neck of your blouse, attempting to relieve the tightness in your neck. Your breathing sputters and you stumble off your chair. Annie’s brows pinch together, worry etched across her face.

Grabbing your purse, you hurry through the crowd towards the bathroom. Annie yells after you as you storm into the bathroom, clutching at the counter. The door pushes open and Annie stands in front of you apologetically. She smiles sheepishly and scratches the back of her neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be here performing?” you asked her with a frown.

“I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t want to come on the date,” Annie admitted.

“You’re damn right I wouldn’t,” you hissed. “It’s been three years since I’ve seen him and you know how bad our break up was.”

“I know, but like you said, it’s been three years. You’ve moved on, Eddie’s in your past. Can you please come back to the table? Seth really likes you.”      

You let out a childish huff and roll your eyes at your best friend. Washing your hands, you leave the bathroom and return to the table. You didn’t care that it’s been three years since the last time you saw Eddie. Every now and then your mind wanders back to him if you let yourself reminisce on the past.  

You wonder what he’s been up to over the last three years. When you were together, the band started to take off. They performed at bars and clubs across San Diego nearly every night until a music producer offered to sign them to his record company after one of the sold out shows at a nearby theater.

You were ecstatic, thrilled that Eddie and the band were finally getting the recognition they deserved. Their hard work was finally paying off. They didn’t have to rely on their minimum wage jobs anymore to make a living. They were pursuing their dreams to be rockstars.

Their first tour was a major success, even though they performed in smaller venues across the west coast. They were itching to make it big, even though it took time. You always admired Eddie’s drive to succeed. He never took no for an answer and it got him far in life.

You would go to his shows on the weekends when your schedule allowed. You hated that you couldn’t spend as much time with him as before. You were busy with school and your clinical rounds at the hospital to go weeks on end touring with Eddie.

You wanted a career of your own, which Eddie understood, but the days, weeks, and some times months apart started to put a strain on your relationship. Every phone call you exchanged grew shorter and shorter with each day. When Eddie wouldn’t answer, there was a hole in your heart in the shape of him.

You missed how things were before Corroded Coffin rose to fame. You missed visiting the autobody shop Eddie used to work at and surprising him with lunch. You missed the excitement you felt whenever you snuck him into your dorm room at night. You missed feeling like a priority to him.

Your relationship fell apart on a Wednesday night. You begged Eddie for a date night the night before. You hadn’t had alone time together in a while and you couldn’t remember the last time you went on a date. You bought a brand-new outfit for the occasion and a racy lingerie set as a surprise for him. Eddie promised to meet you at the restaurant when they were done recording, but he never showed up.

The embarrassment you felt as you waited for him for nearly an hour would always stay with you. The pitying stares and soft smiles sent in your direction burned the back of your head as you drank yourself stupid to try and mask the pain you felt.

You left soon after you finished the bottle of wine you bought and hailed a cab home. When you walked through the front door to your apartment, Annie was surprised to see you home so early. You told her you wouldn’t be home until the morning because you planned on spending the night over at Eddie’s apartment.

The moment the door shuts behind you, you drop your purse to the ground and cry pathetically. Annie coaxes you to the couch and pulls you into her arms. You cry against her shoulder, ruining the makeup you perfected just for the date. Your mascara smears and you stain Annie’s t-shirt with your foundation.

Between your sobs, you tell her everything. You tell her how long you waited for Eddie at the restaurant until you made the decision to leave and come home. Your fingers cling to the blanket splayed across her lap as you voice what you’ve been trying to ignore: Eddie’s pulling away from you and you’re no longer a priority of his.

You suppose that you’re also to blame for the fall of your relationship. You and Eddie have been dating for the last four years and fell into a routine when you made the decision to go to California for school to be closer to Eddie. He was thrilled when you told him you would be coming with, and when you made it to California, you hadn’t expected for things to change so drastically between the two of you.

You thought it was going to be easy. It’s you and Eddie. It’s always been the two of you together. Who are you without each other? He’s your other half, your soulmate, the person you can’t live without, but you came to the stunning realization that the dreams you shared about starting your lives together in the future weren’t shared by him. Eddie chased his dream to be a star and left you behind.

For as long as you’ve been together, you were always on the same path. You and Eddie were going the same direction and then you slowly started to divert away from each other. You were holding him back and you only wanted the best for him. As much as you wanted to stay together because it’s what you know and what you’re used to, you have to let Eddie go.

You want different things now. You want something secure, tangible, something of what you had when things were easier and you didn’t feel second best. Eddie would always want more for the band and he would do anything to get it. You wouldn’t get in the way of his dreams.

Wiping away your tears, you let out a shaky breath and walk to the bathroom to take a warm shower. When you’re done getting ready for the night, you lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. Tears threaten to spill over your cheeks and there’s a soft knock on your bedroom door.

“Eddie’s here,” Annie murmured, poking her head through your door. “I can tell him you’re asleep if you don’t want to see him.”

“No, no, that’s okay,” you sighed, kicking your sheets off your legs and climbing out of bed.

Walking down the hall to the front door, you open it and slip outside. Eddie smiles sheepishly at you with a bouquet of your favorite flowers in his hand. He rocks back on his heels anxiously and bends down to kiss your cheek.

“I’m so sorry I missed date night,” he apologized. “I lost track of time and Jeff came up with this incredible song idea for the next album and we just had to finish it. I can’t wait—”

“Eddie, stop,” you interrupted firmly, pushing a hand against his chest in order to create space between the two of you. Eddie’s soft smile crumbles and turns into a frown instead. He reaches out to touch you and you take a step away from him. The silence weighs heavily on your shoulders and you let out a huff. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable. If you didn’t do it now, it would only make things harder. “I think we should break up.”

Your heart drops to the depths of your stomach as the words escape your mouth. Your throat tightens and you feel like there’s cotton in your cheeks. The words hang over Eddie like a dark cloud as he digests your words. You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from crying. It’s like you punched Eddie in the gut with the wounded look across his face. He hadn’t expected you to break up with him.

“W-What?” he stuttered as tears glossed over his eyes. “I know I’ve been distant lately, but it’s only because we have the album to work on and tour coming up soon. I can ask David to cut our schedule in half if you’re worried about the distance. I know I haven’t been putting a lot of effort into our relationship lately, but I’m willing to work on it. We can cut some of our hours in the studio so that I—”

“Eddie, stop,” you said again through your tears. You bite your bottom lip and turn to look down the hall of your apartment to avoid looking at him. “I’m not going to ask you to do that. I don’t want to get in the way of your success. I’m holding you back and I don’t want to make you choose.”

“You’re not,” he pleads, closing the gap between you and holding your face between his hands. Eddie rests his forehead against yours as the tears slide down both your cheeks. “You’re the reason why I’m so successful. I wouldn’t be where I am without your love and support. I’m nothing without it. I’m sorry if I make you feel unimportant. I’ve been so wrapped up in Corroded Coffin that I’ve lost sight of you… of us and you’re the best part of my life. Please don’t let us go.”

You blow out a shaky breath and close your eyes momentarily, basking in Eddie’s loving embrace one last time. His rough, calloused fingers brush against your soft cheeks and you breathe him in. The scent of weed, a deep musk, and tobacco fills your nose. You sniff quietly and swallow hard.

“It’s… it’s better this way. You get to live your dream without me holding you back. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you throw your career away in order to be with me. What kind of person would that make me if I did? I have to let you go. I’m sorry,” you whispered through your tears, pulling away from him for the last time. You wipe away your tears with the back of your hand and look at Eddie’s warm brown eyes. They’re broken with tears as he looks at you. “Goodbye, Eddie.”

You turn your back towards him and sneak back into your apartment. Shutting the door behind you, you run to your room and cry yourself to sleep.

“Hey, are you okay?” Seth asked, resting a gentle hand on your shoulder when you return to the table. His bright, blue eyes stare at you curiously.

You laugh nervously and nod in reply. “Yeah, sorry. I think I just ate something funny before I came here,” you lied, downing the rest of your beer. “I’m getting another beer, do you want one?”

Seth nods and you hurry to the bar to grab two drinks. When you walk back to the table and slide into your seat, the house lights dim and the crowd cheers. You hold your breath as the silhouettes of the band appear against the backdrop on the stage before they walk out one at a time.

You feel 18 again when Eddie steps on stage. You suddenly feel like you’re back in Hawkins at the Hideout watching Eddie perform for the first time. You can’t help the look of awe that paints your face as you stare at Eddie.

The three years apart did him well. He’s dressed in a loose fitted t-shirt and his arms are incredibly muscular. Tattoos of all kinds paint his skin and his long hair sits messily on his shoulders. The longer you stare at Eddie, the faster your heart races. Your throat goes dry and blood rushes to the tips of your ears.

You watch with rapt intensity as Eddie walks to the center of the stage. He picks up his guitar and glances back at Gareth. He hits his drumsticks together three times before the thundering sound of Eddie’s guitar roars through the bar. You see Seth glance at you with a grin in the corner of your eye.

You never thought you would see Eddie again. You hadn’t imagined watching him perform again either. You feel like you were stuck in a dream. This was your brain’s way of mocking you. It was a constant reminder that you made the biggest mistake of your life by breaking up with him. It would haunt you forever and you couldn’t dream up what if scenarios had things been different.

By the look on Eddie’s face as he makes his way through the set list, you know you made the right decision. He belonged up on stage. It’s where he thrived. It’s what he was always meant to do. Eddie was always meant to be a rockstar.

It only confirmed what you know to be true: you would’ve held Eddie back had you stayed together. You wonder for a brief second if he’s ever grateful that you broke up with him all those years ago. Who’s to say what would’ve happened if Eddie did ask for the schedule to be cut in half to make more time for you? He probably wouldn’t be here had he done it. “Can we turn the house lights on for just a second?” Eddie asked into the mic as he took a sip of water. “I want to see the beautiful crowd!” the bar patrons and fans alike cheer and the lights turn on seconds later.

Eddie squints at the harsh light filling the room. His eyes scan the bar and he laughs, “I see why the lights are off,” he teased as the crowd laughs at his joke. You don’t bother trying to hide the smile on your face. You watch him look over the audience and then his eyes find yours and you feel time stop.

Your heart thunders against your chest as Eddie sees you for the first time in three years. His eyes widen in shock as he stares at you in disbelief. His doe, brown eyes fill with surprise and awe, his mouth slightly a gap.

Warmth flushes up your neck and across your face the longer he stares at you. You shrink into your chair and smile bashfully at him with a small wave. You ignore the worrying glance Annie gives you and the look of confusion across Seth and Malcolm’s faces.

Eddie stutters into the microphone and tears his eyes away from you. His cheeks flush a deep red and he scratches the back of his neck anxiously. “Uh… anyway!” he said, “It’s been a pleasure being with you all tonight. This is our last song of the night.”

The house lights turn off in favor of the stage lights and the bass thunders against your chest. You feel like you can barely breathe through the entirety of the song. Your ears ring from the loud noise and the sound of Eddie singing in your ear.

When the song ends, they all wave and bow towards the audience as the crowd claps for them. They leave in a cloud of smoke and the lights turn on again. A sigh of relief leaves your throat and you lean back in your chair, taking a large gulp of your second beer of the night. Annie reaches across the table and squeezes your hand.

“You okay?” she asked gently.

You nod, swallowing the alcohol in your throat. “I’m fine, Annie,” you answered.

“Do you… do you know the lead singer?” Seth asked you with a curious gaze.

You swallow hard, considering how to answer. “You could say that,” you really hoped with your short and incredibly vague answer that Seth would drop the subject altogether, but it’s Annie who comes to your rescue.

“Malcolm and I were going to head to his place,” she offers, “would you crazy kids like to take the party there?”

“No, thank though. I’ll finish my beer and head home,” you declined with a polite smile.

“I’ll stay too,” Seth replied.

“You don’t have to,” you told him. “I don’t want to ruin the fun. You can go with; I’ll survive on my own.”

Seth smiles gently at you. “Why would I go when the party’s staying with you?”

God, was that corny. You try and refrain from wincing at him. You hug Annie and Malcolm goodbye and watch them disappear out the door. You really hoped that Seth would’ve gone with them. You wanted to be left alone and wallow in your own self-pity. You weren’t in the mood to be on a date anymore.

You turn your head to the direction of the stage door when you hear it creak open. Gareth, Jeff, and Eddie spill out the back and into the bar. They’re grinning like idiots and as they attempt to walk to the bar counter, Eddie’s immediately surrounded by a small group of women. A bitter smile reaches across your face. It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed since you saw each other last.

Gareth and Jeff squeeze past them and make a bee-line to the bar. The older patrons sitting at the counter shake their hands and congratulate them on their good performances as beers slide into each of their hands. With their backs to the bar, they stare out into the crowd and Jeff’s eyes light up when they land on you. You watch him nudge Gareth in the side and nod towards you before they walk the small distance from the bar to your table.

“It’s so good to see you!” Jeff gushed, pulling you in for a hug you weren’t expecting. He leans back with his hands on your shoulders to get a better look at you. “This is such a nice surprise. How have you been?”

Your once hesitant smile turns genuine at your old friend’s greeting. It was nice to see them, despite everything you’d gone through with Eddie. Gareth and Jeff had been your friends once, but you cut them off too when you broke up with Eddie. It was too painful to be around them when you knew Eddie was nearby.

Jeff steps away from you and allows Gareth the opportunity to greet you with a hug. It’s warm and tight and reminds you of home.

“I’m good. You guys were incredible as always,” you trailed off, “Eddie, too.”

They smile apologetically at you and it feels weird to have his name leave your mouth after all these years. You talk quietly and politely introduce Seth to your old friends.

“How do you guys know each other?” Seth asked with intrigue.

“We went to high school together,” Gareth answered.

Seth nods and you talk quietly amongst yourselves and catch up for several minutes before your old friends are pulled away by a group of fans. You wave goodbye to them and turn back to your beer. It remained mostly untouched through the entirely of Corroded Coffin’s set. You take a long sip and resist the urge to look over at Eddie.

“Did you want to go to your place or mine after this?” Seth asked with a sly grin, reaching across the small space between you and squeezing your thigh.

You brush his hand off you and blench at him. You hop off your chair and it screams under the hardwood floor. “You seem like a nice guy, Seth, but I’m really not interested. The only reason I came was because Annie asked me to, not because I wanted to,” you replied honestly, shrugging your purse over your shoulder.

Seth frowns at your blatant rejection. He hadn’t expected you to say no. “You’re joking, right?” you shook your head. Seth’s once gorgeous face turns down into a sneer the longer he stares at you. “You’re an ugly bitch anyways. I don’t know why Malcolm insisted on meeting you.”

You glare at him and your hand wraps around the glass of beer you abandoned as you splash the liquid on his face. Gasps of surprise fill your ears but you’re so enraged to notice all the eyes on you. “If I’m such an ugly bitch,” you hissed under your breath, “why did you want to sleep with me, asshole?”

You slam the empty glass on the table just as security is about to escort you out. “I’m going!” you yelled. “There’s no need to escort me out, I know where the door is.”

You storm out of the bar into the crisp night air. Your heart beats wildly against your chest and you can’t help but cry tears of shame, embarrassment, but most importantly regret, on the walk home.

You stop in your tracks when you hear Eddie’s unmistakable voice chasing after you. You did not want Eddie Munson to see you cry after not seeing each other for three years. You pinch your nose and square your shoulders as he approaches you from behind.

“Are you okay? I saw what happened back there,” he said, standing in front of you.

You let out a shaky breath and meet his eyes. You never thought you would be this close to Eddie ever again. You roll your eyes as a tear touches your cheek. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” you said with a sniff. “Just another entitled prick upset that I said no.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

The silence that follows is heavy and deafening. It has you itching to sprint the rest of the way home. This wasn’t what you pictured your reunion to be like. The last thing you expected was for him to see you cry over a stupid date.

“Don’t be. I should be the one saying sorry. You’re out here instead of at the bar. You didn’t have to come check on me.”

“I wanted to,” he murmured quietly with a light blush to his cheeks. “I just… I had to see you.”

“Eddie,” you warned with a pointed brow, “don’t.”

“Can you blame me?” he asked with a laugh. “It’s been three years and when I see you again, it’s like I’m seeing you for the first time all over again.”

“Stop it. Stop talking. Go back to the bar, Eddie,” you demanded firmly, stepping around him and returning your journey home.

You must be dreaming. There’s no way Eddie Munson is running after you. You’re dreaming. This is your mind playing tricks on you. This is a cruel joke. You’re not the protagonist in a John Hughes film. The man you loved and had to let go was not chasing after you all the way home.

“No!” Eddie shouted, running after you and blocking your path. His eyes are wide with determination and he rests his hands on your shoulders, keeping you in place. “I am not leaving you, not again. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

Fat tears coat your cheeks. You shake your head. “It’s been three years, Eddie.”

“And I’ve thought about you every day since.”

“Stop it. You’re making this so much harder. Please, just let me go.”

Eddie reaches to cup your face in his hands and the worn calloses on his fingertips brush against the tops of your cheeks. He swipes your tears away and his big, warm doe eyes stare back at you. Tears gloss over Eddie’s eyes.

“I’m not letting you slip through my fingers again.”

You tear yourself from his gentle embrace and look out into the street. Cars drive past you and people walk up and down the strip where most of the bars were where you lived. You swallow hard. “It’s better this way,” you muttered quietly.

“For who?” Eddie can’t help but yell. “You?”

You turn and look at Eddie with a menacing glare and shove him in the shoulder. All the pent-up emotions you’ve suppressed over the last three years came bubbling to the surface. You should’ve known that this conversation was going to happen. You should’ve left the bar earlier when you had the chance.

“No!” you yelled back, “For you! You got what you wanted, Eddie. You’re a rockstar. You’re rich and famous. It’s all you ever wanted. You were always meant for bigger things. You should be thanking me! If I didn’t break up with you, you probably wouldn’t be where you are right now.”

Eddie shakes his head at you, grabbing at his hair. This was not how either of you pictured reuniting. “I would’ve had you had we stayed together. You’re all I’ve ever wanted. None of this means anything to me if I don’t get to share it with you,” he confessed, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand.

You shake your head in denial. “That’s… that’s not true. You would’ve resented me for asking you to sacrifice your career to make me happy and I couldn’t do that. I knew that when the band started to blow up, that we were on different paths. I was busy with nursing school and I knew after I graduated that I wanted to get married and have kids eventually. I couldn’t ask you to settle down when you were just taking off. I wanted you to be happy, even if it wasn’t with me.”

The silence between the two of you is deafening. Now Eddie knows the truth. The weight on your chest lifts and a deep sigh leaves your throat. Eddie stares at you like a fish out of water. You step around him and ignore the tears blurring your vision as you resume the journey home.

Eddie yells your name again and grabs you by the wrist. His fingers slip through yours and he squeezes gently. “If you asked me, I would’ve said yes. I loved you… I still love you. I would do anything for you. It would’ve been hard getting married and having kids when Corroded Coffin started to take off, but at least we would’ve had each other. You’re all I’ve ever needed. You were always my priority, but I was losing sight of what was important to me, and then you left. I’ve regretted it ever since.”

Another onslaught of tears makes their way to the corners of your eyes and Eddie caresses your cheek in the palm of his hand. His forehead rests against yours and he brushes his nose against your cheek. You sniffle quietly and meet his brown eyed gaze, swallowing hard. “Do you mean that?”

“Have I ever lied to you about anything?”

You shake your head, a soft laugh bubbling through your throat. “No.”

Eddie’s mouth presses into yours. He swallows your surprise and pours every ounce of love and passion into the kiss. The kiss was three years in the making. He kisses you like a starved man. It makes your stomach twist. Eddie kisses you slowly, savoring each delicate breath the bled into his mouth. Your fingers press into his chest and squeeze the fabric of his t-shirt. Eddie smiles against your lips and his teeth kiss your skin. Your spine tingles and blood rushes to the tips of your ears.

His hand slides to the back of your neck and tangle in your hair. Eddie presses his chest against yours and you taste the saltiness of each other’s tears. He holds you in place, his free hand wrapping around your waist and pulling you on to your toes. It makes you gasp and he pokes his tongue into your mouth before pulling away for air.

You breathe hard, catching your breath and resting your hands against Eddie’s chest. Warmth spreads across your body, up your neck, and into your cheeks. You have only dreamed about this moment for the last three years.

“I’m not letting you get away this time,” he whispered into the night air. “I lived without you for three years, and I’m never doing that again.”

“I don’t want to, either,” you replied, kissing him again.      

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson imagines #eddie imagine #eddie imagines #stranger things #stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine #stranger things imagines #my writing

[charlottelie]

oh, lucifer?

chapter i. (or, selkie sees a snake) ✧･ﾟ

tags: reader uses she/her pronouns, fem!reader, reader is a trapeze artist, sinner!reader, reader works at lu lu world, no use of y/n, ducks galore

.

You hadn’t meant to. Your guiding philosophy in life and afterlife had always been ‘Ask for forgiveness, not permission’, and it seemed so sound a maxim that you were usually slightly bemused when you found yourself in the unfortunate position of actually having to ask for forgiveness. Upon your arrival in Hell you had thought, Well, I certainly didn’t mean to end up here. Upon your arrival in Lu Lu World you had thought, Well, I wouldn’t say I exactly intended to join a Hadean circus. You hadn’t meant for either of these moral catastrophes to come about—that is, your sending yourself to the Other Place and your working at a fairground—but, despite all your good intentions, here you were. Rotten luck. 

You also hadn’t meant to be late for your act again, but here you were, late as always. You dusted your hands with chalk, briskly clapping them more out of habit than anything else as you examined your makeup in a misty mirror someone had propped up outside the dressing rooms. A poster on the wall, framed by peeling paint, announced your act in proud block capitals: Selkie, the Flying Seal! They had put you right before the interval. Did that make you the star performer? Third-best, at any rate: best were the acrobats, Belladonna and the Bedbugs, the grand finale, and second-best was Sunny’s balancing act, which opened the show. You could hear someone approaching, and fast. Your boss, no doubt, come to gently encourage you to get the fuck onto the stage. 

You looked at him mildly: Didier, who insisted it was pronounced ‘Didi-AIR’, tall, half-imposing, mostly composed, rarely generous, currently furious beyond belief. 

“Selkie! Where the fuck have you been? You’re on in thirty seconds! Ten, nine, eight—” 

You liked to think of him as sort of a lost soul, someone you’d taken under your wing, although, of course, he had been the one to take pity on you and hire you in the first place, and, of course, it was your soul that was on the line. “I’m sorry, Didi-yur,” you said quietly, and he scoffed. As you watched him thoughtfully, compassionately, he grabbed you by the shoulders and half-pushed, half-led you onto the platform—surely a textbook case of abuse in the workplace, if you weren’t in Hell—and you gave him a final glance of serene benevolence before, at his command, you whipped around, stepped into the blazing golden lights of the great circus tent, waved to the crowd, flashed a smile, and leapt from the platform into the open space before you. 

The breathless silence. The hot dusty air. The rush in your stomach like an oncoming wave before you lightly caught the bar another performer had flung towards you, adjusted your grip, and neatly somersaulted to another swing. Here a half-turn, here a straddle whip, and here, at the very peak of the motion of the trapeze, you let go, and hung impossibly in the air for a second before you plummeted, as you were wont to do, and were caught by another trapeze artist. Of course the dizzying leaps and the melodramatic plunges were part of the act. You knew the movements, the swings and the sways and the somersaults; you were, admittedly, at home here. The onlookers roared in delight; your heart, admittedly, soared. But as you spun, leant back, shifted your weight, glanced at the audience, you noticed, about three rows from the front, an unprecedented, unsolicited, indeed undesirable arrival: the strangest demon you had ever met. Or, at least, the strangest demon in the past three days. 

The fine kettle of fish was this. Belladonna, Sunny, Pell-Mell, the clowns, the knife-throwers, the knife-throwees, even the Bedbugs, bless their hearts, had all signed their souls over to Didier. He had expected the same of you when you had been given the job. But you, unused to asking, used to getting, were not prepared to quite merrily hand over the one thing that had guaranteed your continued existence to a man in a slim red tie. And so you had taken on a different sort of contract—which could have been hot, but, regrettably, Didier was not inclined to make such exchanges. You were simply paid far less than what you needed. That was all. The prosaic truth. He had you under contract, but nothing so poetic as a soul-binding one. You simply sewed your own costumes, went without breakfast. You scrounged around for whatever you could whenever you could. You had taken up residence in a formerly-disused caravan with the structural integrity of a multivitamin capsule. 

You had found there was little glory in starving, little romance. It was the banality of it that struck you, when you sighed weakly after your taps wouldn’t turn on, or Didi cut off your electricity, or you found you would have to choose between food and heating. It was the endless rolling of the cold and empty days that you suspected would grind you down in the end. But of course they were punctuated by your dazzling nights, your whirling wheeling flights through the grandly lit top tent that drew so many to Lu Lu World. And of course you were resourceful. 

In your life you had always been willing to bend the rules. In your death you were no different. You had the right kind of mind for business, and your business was, up there and down here, remarkably effective. Any con, put-on, cutup, cantrip, flimflam, ramp or scam anyone could think of, you’d done it. You once stole a woman’s shoes and sold them to her husband’s mistress for twice the retail price. Double-joke was on her, because purple was not her color. Only yesterday you had sold a sweet-looking sinner an ‘astral lightning rod’ meant to attract ‘negative interdimensional frequencies’ and channel them into their neighbors’ houses. The lightning rod in question was a refashioned rake you had found in the bins outside the gift shop. To put it plainly, as it were, if it had to be said, you were a, quote-unquote, ‘scammer’, though you and yours would never call it that. You hadn’t meant to end up in this trade, after all. You would like to think you had an entrepreneurial mindset. 

This entrepreneurial mindset had landed you in a stall (without a permit, obviously) in the Lu Lu World food court, having donned a wig and taken on the persona of a charming Texan aunt. Here you sold separately heart-shaped chocolates you had bought in bulk, meticulously unwrapped, and meticulously re-wrapped in shiny pink paper, to whichever passing demons or sinners appeared lonely or gullible or both. You told them all these chocolates, if consumed, would make anyone fall in love with them. To a pale imp in a band T-shirt you had sold three for five times what you’d paid for a box of eight; to a fishlike sinner whose disinterested girlfriend had abandoned him for the fairyfloss stall you sold five at, you told him, fifty percent off (which was three times the usual price). They had told their friends; their friends had flocked to your stall; soon afterwards, your original buyers had come back for more. But now there was a lull in business, as there usually was at this time of the afternoon. So when you noticed a duck demon – literally, a demon the size and shape of a duck, albeit a cartoonishly cute one – with an odd gait and a faraway look in his eyes, you were thrilled to have once again hit the jackpot.

You called him over excitedly. “Hey there, friend, what’s got you looking so glum?” That caught his attention. Hook. “You know, I see all sorts of people come through here. But ain’t none of them got such a positively chap-fallen look on their faces—not to insult you, gorgeous.” He was watching you with wary curiosity. Line. “Come on. Don’t you wanna tell old Mrs. Appleby all about it?” Sinker. 

“You’re not married,” he said. Sinker? That was strange. 

“What?”

“You’re not married. You’re not wearing a wedding ring.” Was he one of those? A flirt? Read: creep? Those were often easier to sell to. 

You pointed at your sign. Mrs. Appleby’s Apple-licious Treats. “Mrs. Appleby. That all that ambiguous?” you said, which won you a small smile from this bizarrely fluffy, bizarrely yellow duck. He flew surprisingly gracefully (you, the Flying Seal, knew what made a graceful flight) towards your stall, perching on the countertop just in front of your merchandise. And as he did so, you felt a dull crackle of power in the air, but, habitually incautious, you ignored it. Perhaps an Overlord-adjacent was taking a piss behind the neighboring food truck. Something like that. 

“It’s just heart-shaped candy,” he said. Usually demons looked like they’d just crawled out of a monsoon drain. Not this duck. He looked like a dapper gift-shop-plushie, the kind that comes with a sweet tag with their inevitably adorable name, written beneath it, Please look after this [relevant animal]! 

“Just heart-shaped candy? Why, this is the best heart-shaped candy you’ve ever had the good fortune to feast your eyes upon! ‘Why is that, Mrs. Appleby?’ Why, I’ll tell ya!” He seemed to be enjoying himself, not least because he hadn’t left. “This chocolate is magic!” That earned you another smile. 

“Really? Is that so?”

“Sure is. Straight from my distant uncle Asmodeus. Just eat one, wait three hours, and you’ll be feeling sprightly as a spring lamb. Two’ll have all the hens—or the men, don’t look so dejected, whatever you prefer—running after you like you’re catnip and they’re a litter of kittens.”

“Hold on now. You’re trying to sell me chocolate…chocolate-ified love potions? Love potion-ified chocolate? Love-ified—” 

You waved a hand at him in pleasant dismissal. “Now, don’t you overthink it, honey. I just saw you needed a helping hand and Auntie Appleby thought she’d take a”—you surprised even yourself with this one—“quack at it.” For a glorious moment he struggled between delight and disappointment. Then he laughed, genuinely, and smiled at you with something like satisfaction.

“Two’ll make me catnip. What’ll three do?”

You paused, then shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, I ate three, and look at me now.” 

And after that it really had been sinker, and you’d sold him a box of ten and wrapped it up in pink parchment and given it to him in a pretty heart-shaped bag with added glitter. You wondered if he’d realized he was being fleeced. There was an air of irony about the way he treated you, but you were pleased to play along. A sale was a sale.

Naturally, though, you tried not to encounter people you’d sold something to after you’d sold it to them. You’d been a little careless today, telling them to wait only three hours. You’d thought that’d be enough to get them out of the grounds, but this duck was persistent. As usual, you hadn’t meant for this to happen. He still had his heart-shaped bag. He was sitting smugly in a seat far too large for him. Did he recognise you? Could he recognise you? The Flying Seal was a far cry from homely Mrs. Appleby. It could have been a coincidence. Perhaps he just liked the circus. It wasn’t strictly unusual to re-encounter your customers. But he was watching you intently, you realized, before you had to maneuver yourself into the arms of your closest friend in the circus, your counterpart, Pell-Mell, the Soaring Fiddler. And then, still incautious, you let the strange duck slip from your mind, and flung yourself from the catchbar again. 

Lucifer had decided to visit Lu Lu World less out of curiosity and more out of boredom and a vague sense of duty. It was, after all, his theme park. He’d been reckless, coming as a duck, but who’d guess this out-of-place, out-of-sorts waterfowl was the Lightbringer himself? Besides, he’d wanted to watch the circus. He hadn’t quite known what to expect. Perhaps he’d expected to be disappointed. 

But now he watched you in what seemed your most natural state. Flying, entertaining. Even without the wig and the bizarre Texan accent he recognised you (he, of all people, knew what made a good trick, a good show). He saw how you fed on the crowd’s cheers like they kept you alive. It was miraculously complex and miraculously simple. You were happy they were happy. He watched you as you rose and dove through the air as your namesake might through water—easily, happily, unembarrassed—and the lights, your smile, the spectacle, recalled to him, dimly, as if seen through rain, something he had felt a long time ago. 

You landed delicately on the platform opposite the one you had arrived from. “Selkie, the Flying Seal!” the ringmaster declared triumphantly. You winked mischievously at the audience. Did you realize they were thrilled with you? Could you realize it? Did the whole performance require a level of obliviousness? You caught the outstretched hand of your fellow performer, a small, slender girl sporting a glossy bob, and lifted her onto the platform. The two of you gave a final bow, and you, beaming, looked not down at the audience but up at the distant lights. 

Lucifer decided half-consciously that he ought to come back.

#hazbin hotel #lucifer x reader #lucifer x you #hazbin x reader #lucifer morningstar x reader #hazbin imagine #hazbin x you #hazbin hotel x reader #lucifer #lucifer morningstar

[creatorping]

“What if the boys were moodulated”presented in 4 doodle pages!

credits to @flowery-laser-blasts for the og idea! check out her post

This is my take on how the scenes would go if Drakken and Ron are controlled by emotions. Generally, I think that both of their skills shine more when they have confidence and let it loose (especially Ron).

For example, Ron’s charisma will increase along with skills like crafting and being the Jack of all trades. Drakken will be able to create his inventions a lot faster due to heighten emotions. His decision making is stronger but may execute them recklessly.

In Love:

Ron has all the confidence that he rarely shows, and directs it at Kim, only her. Every move he makes to woo Kim chips away her barrier of resistance. Ron would continue to show the puppy love affection, including physical touch (hugs galore). Ron asks her to the parade festival, convincing her with flowers.

Drakken goes full The way of the Househusband mode: cooking, cleaning, and showering Shego with gifts and affection every chance he gets. Heck, he’ll even make new gadgets just to benefit Shego in any way. Shego is weirded out by his behavior but inwardly crumbles at his affections. However, she gets concerned when Drakken gradually loses his ambitions to take over the world, which she didn’t want him to lose that. Well maybe a bit more love time wouldn’t hurt as Drakken begs her to go with him to the parade as a date. (He gave her the pout and dinner)

At the Parade:

Shego of course agreed to the festival date for fun. After overhearing about the moodulator she wants to get it to break Drakken out of control and get back to evil ambitions OR perhaps control Drakken for herself and make things easier.

She decided to use the E.M.A on the moodulator (even tho she has no idea how it works but she’ll try it) after eavesdropping on Kim and the Inventor. But girlie doesn’t know shit about inventions so she accidentally charged the moodulator to extreme anger

Extremely angry Drakken… bites. ha r d.

yeah he wrecks havoc and she loves the power he shows but he lacks the direction he had in the first place. So Shego ultimately tries to shut him down from being a mindless zombie

Shego had to use her upmost ability to shut Drakken down and not destroy himself at the parade. So at the end, she puts a muzzle on him after dragging him out of the scene. Then perhaps an aggressive kiss sets Drakken on a sudden emotional overdrive that broke the chip, which set him free from the moodulator.

In my take of Kim trying to reject Ron is that she feels he’s been a bit off and not truly himself. Like she loves the affection but the sudden bursts of emotions during the whole time makes her suspicious. Therefore Kim tried rejecting Ron at the festival

but then right as Kim tried to tell Ron her suspicions, the moodulator changes and angry Ron misunderstands the rejection and yeah…

Kim found out about the moodulator… and internally was torn about whether or not Ron’s emphasized feelings were genuine.

Ron channels his anger on not being enough for Kim and explodes with monkey kung fu, wrecking havoc at the parade. (I noticed that Ron gets the powers when his emotions take over him)

And of course kim isn’t going to be a sitting duck so she gets back with her martial art skills. They had a battle similar to what Hiro and Kim had in the exchange ep. Lowkey Kim finds it attractive of him fighting like that.

The chip breaks after they come at a draw in the fight. Ron panicked after realizing what he did to Kim and frantically apologizes but Kim kept the conversation playful to cover up the awkward confrontations until SO THE DRAMA MOVIE

#kim possible #doodle #doodle page #FINALLY #HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE #ron stoppable #shego #drakken #drakken x shego #kim x ron

[boneblushed]

Mine (Taylor’s Version)

short n sweet + unedited xo Ri

“You’re lucky we weren’t together when Red Taylor’s Version came out,” you muse, your pretty eyes alight with mischief.

“Because you’d have asked me to fake break-up with you?” Rafe asks, though he knows the answer to his question already. He snakes his arm around your waist and hands you the purple concoction he’s created — expensive Prosecco with just enough soda water to fizz, an amaranth liqueur making it taste like candied grapes. You take a generous pull, feeling his hand slide up and cup the side of your jaw.

When he turns your head to his, it’s mostly for selfish reasons. He ducks down and gives you a slow kiss, his wet tongue pressing over yours steadily. “You’re right,” he breathes out, breaking away for just a moment. “Although, I was already prettily heavily in love with you by then.”

“It was two years ago,” you huff, as if that explains it.

Rafe raises his eyebrows. “And?”

You balk. “C’mon. You’re fucking with me, right?”

“You think it was a coincidence that I posted All Too Well ten minute version on my Instagram story the day it came out?” Rafe asks then, somewhere between amused and exasperated.

“I thought you liked Taylor Swift,” you reply, a little indignant.

“Oh yeah, love her,” Rafe nods, faux-solemn. “Especially Shake It Off. Love Story, too. Great songs, really…”

You roll your eyes and make to break away from his embrace, “If this is your way of telling me you aren’t going to listen to Speak Now Taylor’s version with me —”

“The opposite, actually,” Rafe interrupts, only tightening his hold in response. He ducks his head again and sponges a kiss to your neck, another to your jaw, a few more to your cheeks and nose, just enough to have you giggling and gasping for breath. “You know how whipped I have to be to cancel my Friday plans to listen to music I don’t like with you?”

“You like Taylor Swift,” you command, your soft voice still a little breathy.

“I like you,” Rafe corrects, angling away a little. “Love you, actually. Would do anything for you. Even,” he gestures around his living room meaningfully, decked out in Speak Now memorabilia and speakers galore, “have a 2-person Speak Now party with you, apparently.”

You grin up at him, fond and amused. “Simp.”

“Tell anyone,” he ducks his head to your earlobe, his rough voice raising goosebumps over the skin of your neck, “and you’re dead.”

“Oooh, I’m so scared,” you tease, pressing a kiss to his cheek, the stubble rough on your lips.

“You should be,” Rafe replies, faux-serious.

“What’re you going to do, Cameron? Put me on your Instagram story with Mine playing in the background?”

Rafe doesn’t sound as grim as he probably wants to when he replies, “You know I did that as soon as we listened to it.”

“Simp.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rafe replies, nudging your drink with his own purposefully. “We going to keep going, or what?”

You fix him with a serious look. “You know once we’re done we’re just going to go back and reply, right?”

“I grew up with two younger sisters, baby,” Rafe replies, his handsome face full of mirth. “I know exactly how this goes.”

“Not to mention, you’re a swiftie.”

Rafe eyes widen, and he looks around mock surreptitiously. “Christ, sweetheart,” he hisses, feigning indignation. “Keep your voice down. I’ve got a fucking reputation to uphold, yeah?”

“Oh yeah?” You waggle your eyebrows, placing both of your drinks onto the counter to free your hands. As you pull him against you, your arms around his neck, his automatically encircling your waist, and you add, “I remember how it felt sitting by the water…”

“…and everytime I look at you, it’s like the first time,” Rafe murmurs back, any amusement fading away as his blue eyes deepen, his strong figure pressing you close.

“I fell in love with a careless man’s careful daughter…”

“She is the best thing, that’s ever been mine,” Rafe finishes, and then he pauses, his gaze ablaze with pulse-jolting conviction. “Although…”

“Although,” you repeat, voice weak.

“Enchanted’s a bit more our song, don’t you reckon?”

You crinkle your nose up at him, his words making your heart feel too large for your ribcage. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” he nods, ducks his head again. “Freshman year: please don’t be in love with someone else; sophomore year: please don’t have somebody waiting on you; junior year —”

Your eyes widen. “That long?”

“Longer,” Rafe admits. Another pause. “I was enchanted to meet you, you know.”

You can’t help it. A peal of laughter escapes your lips, the sweetest sound Rafe has heard in a while. It’s just — this guy, six-foot-two with a football scholarship and shotgunning record, is quoting Taylor Swift lyrics to you like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“If your team could see you now,” you tease, still swaying against him.

“They’d say,” he leans down, kisses you hard, “that I’m,” again, “the luckiest motherfucker on Figure Eight.”

#rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader

[flamingoprincess25]

TTTE sleeping headcanons

Thomas: Will toss and turn while giggling like a five year old.

Edward: Has some warm tea by his nightstand and would occasionally sleep with a teddy bear.

Henry: Will curl up under the blankets and cowers like a baby if the night light is off.

Gordon: Snores louder than a god damn diesel horn.

James: Is the type of guy that face plants on the bed with his ass in the air.

Percy: STUFFED ANIMALS GALORE

Toby: if it's raining, he'll immediately fall asleep.

Duck: wears a sleeping cap so that his hair wont get messy.

Donald: Sleeps with Dilly by his side.

Douglas: snuggling with Oliver.

Oliver: snuggling with Douglas.

Emily: has a face mask and sleeping mask. Her hair is gonna get messy regardless.

#ttte #thomas and friends #thomas the tank engine #ttte thomas #ttte edward #ttte henry #ttte gordon #ttte james #ttte percy #ttte toby #ttte duck #ttte donald #ttte douglas #ttte oliver #ttte emily #ttte headcanon

[the-californicationist]

The Logistics

This is (at long last!) a short request gift for the wonderful @glitterypirateduck who is an amazing source for all things COD fics!! Seriously, you are missing out if you're not following their blog. They've got challenges and recs galore. Be sure to stop by and give them some love!!

DUCKS! I'm so sorry this took me so long. Thanks for being patient. It's a little short and a little sweet, but I hope it inspires you. ✌️🩷

The goal was to capture the fun lovin' from this scene from Crazy Stupid Love. I have NOT seen this movie, so thanks for suspending your expectations, everyone.

Everything about him screamed man. He was brazen with his body language, making wide sweeping motions with his hands when he talked, using a voice that rumbled and boomed like thunder, using his heavy, muscled form to take up space in the room. His beard and hair were immaculately groomed, and his clothing choices all seemed to have a level of intent in their favor. 

His name was Alex Keller. You didn’t know him, but everyone else did, and they couldn’t stop talking about him. He was supposedly some hot-shot CIA agent with a license to kill, but that all sounded like a tall tale to you. And you didn’t really care to know the truth until you locked eyes with him from across the bar. 

You thought he’d look away, maybe turn back to his friends, laugh heartily at more of their jokes. A quick glance was all it was supposed to be. But, it wasn’t quick. He stayed bound by your gaze, and you watched as his face went slack. Those big blue eyes gleamed in the low lamp light of the bar. Then, as if suddenly thawed back to life, he started to make his way over to you and your friends’ table.

“Oh, my God,” Tara gasped, slapping you on your bare thigh.

You winced, looking over at her, 

“What?”

“He’s coming. Keller is coming over here.”

“What? He’s what?” Helena craned her neck around you to stare. 

“So?” You asked.

“So!?” They both exclaimed at the same time.

“Good evening, ladies,” his voice melted over your group like warm honey, soft and sticky, clinging to everything it landed on. 

You rolled your eyes, edging out of the booth.

“Hey, leaving so soon?” He smiled down at you from his towering height. He smelled expensive, and it was intoxicating. You did everything you could to ignore it. 

“Yeah,” you sighed, reaching for your clutch, “My carriage is turning into a pumpkin soon, and you really don’t wanna be inside it when that happens.”

“Yeah,” he said, following your movements with his eyes, watching you pull yourself together, “Sounds sticky.”

“Very,” you smiled curtly. 

Then, he started following you to the door. You looked at him over your shoulder, 

“You lose something?”

He laughed, putting his hands in his pockets, fully at ease in the most attractive way,

“No, but I’m looking for something.”

You made it to the curb and waited for a cab. It was raining hard enough to make you shiver, and you couldn’t help but glare as you turned to reply to him,

“What are you looking for, Mr. Keller?”

He was getting soaked, but he smiled slyly as he looked down at the glistening pavement in a brief moment of vulnerability,

“You.”

You scoffed, 

“Does that line work on anybody?”

He glanced up at you incredulously, 

“Sometimes, yeah!”

You smirked, rolling your eyes again and waving down a cab driver. 

“Wait!” He grabbed your arm.

You looked at him like he was out of his mind for touching you like that, and he let you go, raising his hands in surrender. He continued with his pitch,

“Come back to my place. Just for one drink. And if you’re still not into me, I’ll bring you home. I promise.”

“And what happens when you serial kill me?” You asked, impatient.

“I don’t think it’s serial if it’s just once.”

“That doesn’t make it better!”

He laughed, backing up a half-step,

“Okay, I promise not to serial kill you. You just…” His face softened and he looked at you in a way no one had ever looked at you before, “You look good. Please. One drink?”

“So, is this how it normally works?” You asked in a short tone. You could tell that you were fidgeting, feeling your hands tugging on the short hem of your dress, and you tried to stop. You just needed something to do while he was stripping down in front of you. It was the most delicious display you’d ever witnessed, and you couldn’t look away. 

“What?” Alex looked up at you as he stripped off his outer jacket, rolling it over those muscular shoulders.

All the words rushed out of your mouth at once before you could stop them, “You know, you, like, put on the perfect song and make them drink… and then you sleep together.” 

“…um, yeah.” He smiled, crossing his arms over his wide chest as he leaned against the back of his white leather sofa.

Everything in his place looked expensive. The CIA apparently paid pretty well. The countertops were a glittering white quartz, the floors were marble, and the walls all seemed to be made of glass. Everything shone, except for you, it seemed.

“I’m very nervous,” you laughed, not sure why you were confessing to him.

“I’m getting that,” Alex laughed, too. It made you feel better, though just a bit.

“Okay, ‘cause I know I seemed confident back at the bar. That was, um… that was mostly just because I was cold… and wet… and trying to be dramatic, a little bit.”

He was watching you through your whole speech, raking his eyes over you without worrying about hiding his leering. Then, he smiled again, tempting you,

“You’re adorable.”

“No!” You found some courage somewhere deep down in your heart and stood your ground, “I am sexy. I am R-rated sexy. Okay, I know what happens in the PG-13 version of tonight, alright? I know. It’s - uh, that - I get really drunk and pass out and you cover me with a blanket and you kiss me on the cheek and nothing happens! But, that’s not why I’m here. I am here…” You made sure to emphasize your words with your body language, turning up the aggression as far as it would go, “...to bang the hot guy that hit on me at the bar.”

“Alex,” he pointed to himself, helping you with his name.

“Alex.”

“Do people still say ‘bang’?” He questioned.

“Oh, I do. We are gonna bang. Yeah, this is happening,” you sighed, shaking off the nervousness quite literally. Then, resolutely, you commanded him, “Take off your shirt.”

“What?”

Breathless, you repeated yourself in a rush, hoping you wouldn’t lose your nerve,

“Please, will you just take off your shirt? ‘Cause I can’t stop thinking about it. And I need you to just…”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Alex started to take his shirt off, undoing button after button until he was able to shuck off his last layer.

“Okay, okay,” you mimicked, breathing steadily to keep yourself calm.

“Okay.” 

It was unbelievable that a real human person could look like that. It was even more unbelievable that a person who looked like that would be standing in front of you. You threw up your hands in despair, 

“Seriously!? It’s like you’re photoshopped! Can I…?”

Some demonic possession took over your body and stretched out your arms to touch his warm abdominal muscles. They felt smooth and pliant beneath your fingers, and when he flexed them, they went as rigid as a stone.

“Ah! You have cold hands!” He yelped, moving away, “Now, you take off your dress.”

“No!”

“Yes,” he insisted.

“No way! Not with all that goin’ on. No, thank you. Is there dim lighting somewhere?”

“No,” he smiled at you, holding back his laughter.

“Oh, God. Okay,” you ran your hands through your hair, trying not to panic, “So, what do we do? What happens now? Like, logistically? What’s your move?”

“I got lots of moves, babe,” his smile turned smug, and he shook his head as if to shrug off your doubt.

“What’s your big move?” You pressed.

“I’m not telling you about my big move. You’re not ready for the big move.” 

“Yes, I am! I want your big move,” you insisted. Alex was right; you were not ready, but you’d gotten this far, and you decided that there was no turning back.

“Dirty Dancing.”

“What?” You hadn’t heard him correctly, because it sounded like he was saying the words Dirty Dancing.

“It’s the song from Dirty Dancing. I put it on and then I do the big move,” he lifted up his hands in a mock rehearsal, making a strong base with which to lift his date up into the air, “You know, from Dirty Dancing. Works every time.”

“Oh, my God! That would never work on me,” you laughed out loud, eyes wide with shock. 

And that’s how you found yourself, seven feet up in the air, hoisted above Alex Keller’s head in the middle of his living room while the theme song from Dirty Dancing was playing in the background.

It should have been ridiculous, really. You wanted to laugh at yourself. But, you couldn’t. As he lowered you, keeping you close to his chest, sliding you all the way down his body with elegant ease, you could barely breathe. It was as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room, and suddenly, you were taking Alex Keller’s big moves very seriously. You took them even more seriously when your thighs and belly grazed over the biggest move of the night: his hardening cock. 

He gazed down at you with the look of a starving man. His eyes had lost their humor, and he was studying you with sincerity, tuned into your every breath and movement. You were looking at his mouth, and you saw his lips part. You thought the kiss might be slow and careful, but it was everything else. 

Alex rushed you. His mouth was on you in a flash, pressing into your lips and teeth with blissful abandon, not caring how he was holding you or where he was standing. All of it - the whole room - fell away and it was just his tongue sliding across yours, his jaw pushing into yours, his body warming yours. You were overwhelmed by him. 

The straps of your dress were pulled down, and his belt jangled off. Shoes clattered, clothing pooled, and you were falling backwards onto the leather sofa together like two ravenous wolves, hungry for each other beyond measure. 

He kissed your neck, licking at your skin before he sucked on it, tasting your makeup, your perfume, your lotion, and you. He gasped, wrapping you tighter in his arms,

“Fuck… you are so goddamn fine.”

You didn’t know what to say, so you didn’t say anything at all. 

His hands found your panties, and he shuddered. It was as if he had just been shocked, bitten by the warmth of you. 

“Oh, my God,” you whispered.

“What? Are you okay?” Alex gave you his full attention.

“No. Yes! No, it’s just… you’re too hot.”

He smiled, 

“You’re one to talk. This is all your fault.”

You felt him slide his cock out of his boxer briefs and tap its rigid length against your lacy panties. It was sexy and absolutely ridiculous, and your body loved it. You let out a short moan, and he caught it. 

“Mmm, she’s naughty.”

“You’re a lot of talk for such a hot dude,” you teased.

“Aren’t hot dudes allowed to be nervous, too?” He asked, looking up at you, his cock still in his hand. 

There was the slightest hint of shyness behind his eyes, just enough to let you know it was there. You smiled at him, raking your hands through his shock of blond hair, 

“No. You’re too hot to be nervous.”

“Well,” he chuckled, “I am, a bit.”

“Yeah, well… welcome to the club,” you kissed his cheek, worried that it was too sweet. 

But, it was just what he wanted. He melted into it, leaning into your kiss, sighing at its contact. Then, his voice dropped to a whisper, and he kept his face close to yours as he said,

“What if we just stay like this? Just for now. Is that okay, pretty girl?”

He slipped his cock inside of your panties and nestled his shaft between your wet lips, rubbing himself on you. 

“Yeah, that feels good,” you admitted, letting him kiss his way down your neck. 

His hands were everywhere. He plucked at your nipples, wetting his fingers before he did so, letting them slip and slide over your tight peaks, making you gasp for him. All the while, he was thrusting into you, slicking himself in your wetness, gasping and moaning with you. 

You angled your hips to give him more of you, more of that warmth you kept between your thighs, and he laughed. A look of shock was plastered on his face, and you asked him,

“What’s wrong?”

He was still reeling as he whispered back to you,

“I can’t believe I’m close.”

You brought his face back to yours to kiss him again, feeling yourself building up to a climax as well, though it was a ways off. You grinned at him softly,

“Why? Are photoshopped guys not allowed to get turned on.”

He chuckled, kissing you back,

“I guess we are. Maybe when a photoshopped girl is here, like this, yeah…”

You gave him a gentle slap on his chest, giggling together as he rubbed himself against you. Then, his hand joined his efforts, softly encircling your clit and coaxing you closer and closer to your peak. His thrusts became frantic, searching for pleasure with every push and pull.

The way his body was yanking against the elastic of your panties was intoxicating, and his hands seemed to sense exactly what you needed when you needed it. He picked up his pacing, and you watched in awe as all of those muscles and bones worked for you, struggled just to get you off, flexing and curling and flushing above you like a delicious morsel, ready to be devoured.

You heard yourself mewling quietly, and he egged you on,

"That's it, pretty girl. I like that. Need that..."

You wrapped your arms around his neck and held on tight to him, feeling your body tense and freeze as you melted into a warm, shimmering orgasm, crying out louder and louder as you lost control.

You still didn’t know Alex Keller very well, but you were starting to really enjoy finding out.

#call of duty fanfic #cod mw2 #cod mwii #cod #alex keller smut #alex keller x reader #alex keller cod

[sungbeam]

OFF THE RECORD ▷ PART TWO (EP9-17)

nonidol!ji changmin x fem!reader

everyone thinks ji changmin is cute and harmless, but you know that's not who he really is.

▷ genre, part warnings. e2l, childhood friends gone bad, (extra) slow burn, fluff, angst, crying lol, mentions of childhood trauma and parental manipulation, arguing, bittersweet galore, nct ten is there for the sole purpose of being nosy like the rest of us or for being a 2nd male lead who knows!, swearing, hurt/comfort, kissing!, ji changmin dancing (need i go on), symptoms of panic/anxiety, a lot of non-tbz moments sorry i meant it when i said extra slow burn, im literally writing abt people who dance like gods but im a plebian w two left feet i have no idea what im looking at except for hips—, pining haha...ha (more subtle until the end), he's in a bathrobe near the end sorry children

▷ PART TWO WC. 17.6k

love in unity series m.list / otr part one

a/n: if u haven't read part one GO AWAY GO READ PART ONE ??? WHAT'RE U DOING HERE

EPISODE NINE: OFF THE AIR

IT was common knowledge that the week before finals week was referred to as the dreaded Dead Week. Campus was barren, coffee shops and libraries were packed, and almost everybody lived in some variation of sweats, hoodies, and eye bags. You were actually holed up in the research lab (yes, again) because your deadline to get this paper to your graduation advisor was literally looming over your shoulder, and though you were practically done, you were too paranoid of not catching some dumb typo before you turned it in.

Plus, the coffee in the lab break room was free and sponsored by your resident graduate student supervisor, and beloved older brother figure, Qian Kun. God rest his workaholic soul and empty pockets.

There weren't many people here this afternoon; most had retreated to their own homes or offices or wherever they dwelled during the Week of the Dead.

Then there was Ten.

"So do you guys just wither away here by yourselves?" Amongst the empty workbenches, his words seemed to unnecessarily resonate. From his perch in Kun's office, he spread his arms wide to gesture to all the empty space.

Kun pressed his fingers to the space between his eyes. "Yes, now let me wither in peace."

"No, I don't think I will."

You felt yourself smile. Ten had come in a few hours ago with lunch for both you and Kun. Supposedly, when he had heard that the two of you habitually ran on only coffee and dreams during Dead Week, he took it upon himself to swing by the nearest fast food restaurant and pick up a very belated lunch for you both. You’d chomped down on it with Kun in his office, but as soon as you were done, you retreated back to your desk.

The sky outside of the research laboratory was already beginning to bruise to a gray-blue-purple, the color of a dusty blueberry. Soon, you would have to surrender yourself to the night and head back home, but hopefully before that, you would decide that you were at least too tired to continue staring at these same seventeen pages for hours on end…

All three heads perked up at the sound of the laboratory building door opening and closing in the distance. None of you were exactly expecting anyone, especially when people usually indicated when they would come into work. You craned your neck from your workbench to see who had come in—

“I’ll only be a minute,” you heard and recognized your colleague Jacob Bae as he strode in from the outside corridor and into the main laboratory floor.

He met your eyes and smiled. “Hey, Yn.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

He let out a sigh as he jogged past your desk and headed toward a cupboard in the back corner. “I forgot that I left my—” His voice cut out as he ducked into the dark cupboard and withdrew a giant plastic tub. From the plastic innards filled with paper, he fished out a specific packet of paper shoved into a flimsy manila folder. “Forgot my thesis draft.”

You coughed out a laugh. “Dude.”

His grin was innocent and boyish, standard Jacob. “What? A guy’s gonna forget some things sometimes.”

“Is that what you tell your girlfriend?”

He sent you an unimpressed look. “Ha ha, Yn. Very funny. For your information, she’s more forgetful than me sometimes.” He stuck his tongue out at you as he passed by your workbench, and you, as the very mature person you were, stuck your tongue out back at him. It was only fair.

A cough sounded out from the entrance to the laboratory, and you turned your head to find Changmin, out of all people, standing awkwardly in the doorway. Peering out from behind the corner of the wall, however, was his friend Sunwoo from that other night. And yanking Sunwoo back behind the wall was Chanhee. Strange.

Someone (you suspected Chanhee) gave Changmin a firm shove into the laboratory, sending the latter stumbling in before he caught himself and regained his balance. He was swaddled in a dark colored puffer jacket and a red scarf, his red-tipped nose and cheeks bitten by the cold. For the first time, he looked smaller than he was, almost shy or nervous. You hadn’t encountered this Changmin in a long time.

He wasn’t one to look vulnerable out in the open like this.

As Jacob passed by Changmin, he clasped his shoulder in reassurance.

“Hi,” Changmin said slowly as he approached your workbench.

You were still a little dumbfounded that he was here again. “Uh, hi. What’re you doing here?” The argument the two of you had earlier in the week replayed in your mind, and you almost grimaced. You’d both said even more hurtful things, and you supposed you had just been so sensitive that your brain just automatically went into defense mode to protect yourself.

No, you hadn’t been there that night for him. You hadn’t expected to see anyone there at that time of night. That was the whole point of you going so late. You had been trying to get yourself to go into the practice room on your own, but the longer you had stood there, staring at the door, the more you realized you couldn’t do it. It still didn’t sit well with you, how affected you were by your mother’s past words.

Changmin kept his distance, but he came close enough that you could hear what he was trying to say without the others listening in too much. “I was wondering if we could talk.”

You blinked. “Talk? Like right now?” Your eyes darted to your computer screen and the practically finished paper displayed. It wasn’t like you wanted to keep working on it, but your heart beat startled at the sudden thought of having that very important conversation right now, when you weren’t ready.

He caught onto your movements though. “No, no—I mean,” he stammered, recovering with a quick swipe of his tongue over his lip, “just whenever. It doesn’t have to be now. I just figured it’d be best to get that… out in the air, you know?” I think it’s what we’ve been needing all this time. Something proper; no more yelling matches.

For a second, you thought you could see some of the old Changmin in this one. It wasn’t like he had changed, per se, it was more like he was finally showing that part of himself that you had been missing all along. You swallowed, nodding. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll, uhm, text you sometime tonight after I turn this paper in.”

He nodded back at you. “Yeah, cool.”

When you saw him begin to back away, a thought suddenly occurred to you. You called out to him to get him to stop, and you could have sworn that there was a gleam in his eyes then. “Changmin—about Sumin…” You inhaled deeply as you fought for the right words to express your next thoughts, “be gentle with her, okay?”

Even then there was a pang in your heart as you uttered those words. Sumin had texted you all about her interaction with Changmin a day or so ago regarding his “interview”, and she had been gushing about her crush on him. She had even asked you how much you knew about him and if you could give her a crash course in all things dance or even Changmin. Suffice to say, you felt trapped between a rock and hard place, but you didn’t want to let her down. (You’d always wanted to be a big sister; you didn’t want to push her away because of feelings that you were too petty to address.)

Changmin’s head tilted to the side as he made a confused face. “Huh?”

You sighed, “You seriously didn’t notice?”

“No, actually,” he quipped.

You pursed your lips; why weren’t you surprised? It wouldn’t be very cool of you to reveal Sumin’s crush on him if that wasn’t what she wanted. You would have to be subtle, but also not subtle, then. “Just—” you made a vague gesture with your hands, “—don’t be brash.”

“Brash?”

“Don’t be mean,” you amended.

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

You thought even Ten rolled his eyes from where he was in Kun’s office. “You’re hopeless, really.”

Changmin’s face pinched, and he was moving back closer to your workbench. “I’ll have you know that we’re both hopeless.”

You deadpanned. “Now I’m pretty sure we’re not even in the same ballpark,” you muttered in exasperation. “Whatever. Your friends are waiting for you, Changmin.”

His lips pressed into a line. He glanced quickly over his shoulder where his friends were pretending to not be eavesdropping, then looked back at you. “Okay, yeah. Just don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” you promised.

EPISODE TEN: OFF THE MARKET

CHANGMIN glanced up at the entrance to the coffee shop, matching the sign in the window to the one he had searched up on his GPS app. It seemed to match from what he saw.

Today was the Friday of Dead Week, a handful of days after he dipped out of his interview with Sumin and confronted you at the laboratory. He had consulted Chanhee that day, regarding his mess of feelings about the situation with you, and Chanhee had practically forced him to go with him and Jacob to the laboratory. (Sunwoo just happened to tag along because he, apparently, felt left out.) Changmin wondered how Chanhee could have possibly known that you would be there, but Chanhee dismissed his worries by assuring him that after he asked you, he would feel a lot better and less like a hot pile of shit.

Chanhee was right, as per usual. Not that Changmin was going to admit that aloud to him ever.

But today was important because of two things in particular, and they both had to do with things that occurred several days ago. The first item on the agenda was going into this cafe to finish up that un-started interview with Sumin. After he had given her his number that day, she was swift to send a greeting text to him to set up a time and place to meet. Changmin actually had yet to visit this coffee shop in particular, but then again, he was a bit partial to the one Jacob introduced to the group last quarter.

Your words of advice, or caution, rang in his ears like the bell that twinkled above the door as he walked into the building. Be gentle with her. Don’t be brash. Don’t be mean. What did all of that even mean? He liked being interviewed, especially when it was about dance, so why would you think he would be anything but well-behaved? Part of him thought it was based off of the two of your interactions for the past three years, but he knew you had the good sense to know he didn’t treat just anyone like he treated you.

The thought remained fresh in his mind even as he scanned the room for a familiar face.

Sumin was seated in a secluded booth in the corner of the coffee shop. When she saw him, she waved him over excitedly, slipping her compact into her purse. Her laptop was left on the table in front of her, but unopened. Huh, maybe she just got here, too.

Changmin slid into the booth across from her. “Hi, sorry, were you waiting long?” He asked as he shouldered his jacket off and set his bag on top of it.

Sumin perked up a little bit. “Oh, no! Don’t worry. Did you have a good week?”

“Ah, as good as the week before finals can be, I suppose,” he chuckled, leaning back against the booth seat. His eyes darted to the unopened laptop still in the middle of the table and he cupped the back of his neck. “Did you wanna order anything to drink? Or have you ordered already?”

She shook her head, her hand reaching up to fidget with the end of one of her curled locks of hair. “Hm? No, I didn’t order yet! I was waiting for you so we could order something together—I mean, at the same time.”

“Cool, yeah,” he cleared his throat, signaling for one of the workers’ attention with a wave of his hand. “We can order and then get started.”

“Ah, ha, right.”

Once orders were taken, Sumin finally cracked open her laptop and got a couple things set up. Changmin patiently waited for her to get all settled, his eyes wandering about the shop and absentmindedly observing the workers behind the counter as they bustled about to prepare drinks and pastries.

Sumin coughed, “Okay, I figured that recording is a little unnecessary, so I’ll just be jotting some notes down on my laptop.”

Changmin bobbed his head. “Sounds good.”

She shifted in her seat, her posture straightening, as she figured out how exactly to start. “I hope you’ll be patient with me since I haven’t been doing this for a long time, but Yn gave me some pointers to start with,” she said sheepishly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“No problem! I totally understand; take your time.” He cocked his head to the side unconsciously, “Yn didn’t offer to sit in for your interviews?”

“Oh! Uh, she did, but I insisted that I was feeling confident enough to do them on my own,” she laughed lightly. “Definitely a bit nerve-wracking, but I think the interviews with Juyeon and a few of the other dancers went well earlier in the week.”

“Hey, I mean, I admire your courage,” he said with what he hoped was an encouraging enough smile. “Just take your time with it, Sumin. We’ll make sure to get you all the info you need.” There. Was that what you meant by not being mean? Wasn’t this just being considerate, though?

His foot tapped against the ground absentmindedly as he thought about the next thing on his agenda after this interview: talking to you. It was weird, having to almost set an appointment to have this very needed talk, but as you had said, you texted him your availability and the two of you just happened to both have this evening free. He just needed to finish this interview… There was still plenty of time.

His words to Sumin seemed to make her shoulders relax a little bit, and she jumped right into her first question. Changmin would answer as thoughtfully as could, which wasn’t too difficult seeing as he was literally talking about one of the things he was most passionate about in this world. He could probably talk about dance and his love for dance for days on end. Sumin, in turn, would skillfully and naturally continue the conversation so it felt a lot less like an interview, and more like an interaction between friends about dance.

Perhaps he didn’t even realize when the questions became less about his experience about dance and more about him; when Sumin gradually stopped typing notes down on her laptop and instead leaned her chin onto her hands to watch him; or when she suddenly asked—

“Is that your ideal first date then?”

Record scratch.

The words on Changmin’s tongue died instantly, and his brain scrambled to process what she had just said. “Sorry?”

Sumin’s eyes widened, her cheeks flushing. “I—I mean, you were talking about going to see live dance shows with your former partner and I just…” She shook her head with an embarrassed laugh, “Sorry, was that too forward?”

Changmin blinked once, twice; dear god, he must have been running his mouth without even realizing. “I was talking about Yn?”

That ripped Sumin right out of embarrassment—well, it was closer to mortification. The color on her cheeks had turned pale. “Yn is your ex?”

Fuck— “No, no, no! She’s not. She’s definitely not—”

Sumin covered her face with both of her palms in distress, a sentiment that was definitely shared between both parties in the booth. “Oh my god, and I’ve been telling her all about my crush on you, too. I must have looked so stupid.”

His eyes flew open. “Huh?!”

“Please, I’ve been so obvious, Changmin!”

Not to me, he thought. Jesus, was he really so blind? Was this what you meant this whole time? Changmin waved his hands around in an X formation, trying to reign the conversation into some level of sanity. “Sumin, I can assure you, that you definitely weren’t obvious until you literally just said it,” he began. “And so we’re clear, Yn is not my ex-girlfriend. She was my ex-dance partner and friend, but not a significant other.” As much as it sucked to admit that—

Sumin slowly lowered her hands from her face with the light reflected in her eyes wobbling. “Oh… okay, I guess that makes sense then.”

Changmin let out a haggard sigh, holding his hand to his head. “Yeah, well… I guess I should say that I’m sorry, but I don’t really share the same feelings for you?” He shook his head to himself, trying to rephrase: “What I mean is that I’m not exactly looking for a relationship. I’m kind of messed up right now.” Understatement of the century.

She pursed her lips, but nodded. “I get that. Thanks for being so cool about it.”

“Least I can do,” he said, clasping his hands together over the table.

“So,” she drawled with a wince, “I take it this interview is over?”

He brushed a hand through his hair. “If you have everything you need and there are no hard feelings?”

She inclined her head in the affirmative, and that was that.

— ✶

Even on a Friday evening, if it was the week before an exam season, the library study rooms were always packed, one occupier after the other. Attempting to score one was the equivalent of launching a stakeout, complete with charging cables, two cups of coffee, and a will of steel (to wait hours for a room to open up). Someone must have been looking out for you though as you managed to snatch a study room as soon as you arrived on the second floor of one of the main student libraries on campus. When you and Changmin had exchanged an, albeit brief, bit of texts, you both agreed that meeting somewhere that could serve as common ground would be good for the both of you. It had to be semi-private, as well, since neither of you wanted to let anyone else in on your private, personal problems.

The library study rooms were your solution, and maybe this was the universe’s sign that this discussion needed to happen.

As soon as the door closed gently behind you, you set yourself up in one of the chairs around the small, rectangular table at the center of the room. Changmin said he would be a couple minutes late because the bus had been late to pick up his stop and Chanhee was borrowing his car, so you texted him to let him know which room you were in.

While you waited, you attempted to ease your mind by scrolling through social media and flipping through emails and returning to social media, and wait, did you ever get a reply back from that one TA? All the while, your knee would bounce up and down ceaselessly, your fingers shaking and cold and numb. You were perhaps seconds away from your throat closing in on itself again, but then the door opened.

Changmin murmured a “hey” to you as he closed the door behind him and lowered himself into the seat across from you.

The room was quiet. “Hey,” you said back, clearing your throat.

You watched as his nostrils flared slightly as he exhaled. “What did you mean by ‘when did I stop caring’?”

You were a little startled that he decided to start right away, but on the other hand, relieved that he did. You wouldn’t have known how to begin anyway. “When did you stop caring?” You parroted in case you hadn’t heard him right. If you weren’t mistaken, he was referring to what you had said that night in front of the practice rooms.

He gave a nod. “Yeah, I was thinking about what you said…” He scratched his jaw, continuing lowly, “...y’know, on the bus ride over here. And I just don’t understand where in the world you got the idea that I ever stopped caring about you.” He met your eyes then, and you could see the tightness in his jaw, but the gleam in his irises.

This wasn't about being right anymore; it was about making things right.

"You—" you grappled for words, finding yourself pinned down by Changmin's relentlessly piercing gaze, "—I just got so much radio silence from you."

"You were giving me the same excuses."

"Because it was the same, exact problem," you fired back. "And, okay, so they were excuses, but god, Changmin. I could just see how with each passing day, you looked at me differently because I was late or I told you I couldn't make it. Didn't I give you reasons why? Just that disappointment and cold shoulder…" It broke my damn heart.

Changmin's arms were crossed over his chest as he considered your words, his tongue poking the inside of his cheek. "I never," he began, "thought poorly of you, Yn." It sounded like he was struggling to piece together the right words, too, and he choked down a swallow. "I was going through a lot of shit around that time, and my patience was always paper thin by the time it was our usual practice time, y'know? It was never you specifically I was mad at."

He paused for a moment. His head hung, and he picked at a stray thread on his jacket cuff. "My parents said they wouldn't support me if I majored in dance."

Your heart stopped clean.

"They basically said I'd have to finance myself for all four years if I wanted to make dancing a career," he said with a flippant, helpless gesture. "I was given some scholarship money from the school, but it was nowhere near a full ride. So I was stressed the fuck out because I knew I needed to win those comps to get more money. They were cool with me dancing as, like, a hobby or a way to get into college, but as soon as I told them my intended major was dance?"

Well, shit.

Horror pooled in your gut, the kind that started up at your shoulders and spider-crawled down the length of your spine. "I'm so sorry, Changmin. That must have been so much pressure for you, oh my god."

This entire time, you'd been under the impression that his parents were fine and dandy with their son becoming a dancer. He'd always had a natural, prodigal talent for the art form. He was the absolute cream of the crop from your class, and you couldn't believe they could be anything but proud of having a son like him.

But you supposed you shouldn't have assumed. There was a cost to being a hypocrite.

Changmin nodded, but it wasn't very affirming. It was like he had heard it all before and had already accepted it all grimly and reluctantly. "Yeah, well… I won all those comps, but what did I lose in the process, y'know?"

He gestured to you. "I just thought I'd always have you to run back to, but you were going through your own stuff. I'm not trying to pin the blame on you—it's… just that… you were my best friend. My partner."

"It's funny you say that," you said then, drumming your fingers anxiously against your leg. "I thought I could rely on you, too. And I definitely drifted away from you, but it was because of my own reasons."

Changmin nodded, settling his hands on top of the table and leaning in slightly.

Still, every time you told someone, you could never get it right. But maybe you could get it right this time. "You know how my parents got divorced and I said that my mom had changed?"

His forehead creased then, and he nodded again.

"She started yelling a lot," you said. "Would always make me listen to her scream in my face about how dance was useless, how dance would never help me in the real world, how I was absolutely awful at it and that I should be focusing on something worth my time." You swallowed, continuing on, "And when I told you I couldn't make it or that I was late, it was because she started refusing to take me to practices and competitions and shows.

"And I mean—I tried really hard to keep going, Changmin, I really did." You raised your eyes to meet his and found him staring at you still, but this time you saw that glisten in his eyes again. The tension in his jaw had slackened, and had been replaced with that same dread you had while he was telling you what happened to him. "I thought that I could get past what my mom kept telling me, and that once I got to the practice room—I just needed to get to the practice room—it would all be worth it."

There was a stinging feeling in the back of your eyes, at your tear glands. Your vision was blurring and you blinked back the traitorous tears.

Changmin pursed his lips, his face contorting slightly as he too tried to contain the emotions welling up in him. "And then I shut you out."

"We shut each other out."

"Why—" he rasped, his hand coming up to cover part of his mouth, "—didn't you tell me? I would've—god, I would've—" He didn't know, actually, but all he knew was that he would've been better. Would he have though? Truly? Would you have?

"I didn't like talking about it," you confessed, sniffling. You were ashamed of yourself, both then and now. You raised your hand up to wipe the corner of your eyes. "I'm sorry."

"No, fuck, don't apologize." He stood, arms opening and palms turning upward like an offering, "C'mere."

Both of you, teary-eyed messes, stumbled out of your chairs to close the distance in each other's arms. It was the feeling of finally holding each other after three years that made the two of you break down completely. The study room's quiet was filled with sounds of messy, blubbering sobs—hands grappling at the other's jacket, faces shoved into the warmth of a neck or shoulder.

Two pieces of a puzzle having finally been reunited.

This was where you belonged.

"This was all I wanted," you bawled into his shoulder.

It seemed to make his body tremble harder. "I would've given it to you—god, I would've given you anything. I'm so goddamn sorry."

"Hey," you mused half-heartedly, "if I'm not allowed to apologize, then neither are you."

He gave a watery chuckle. "Okay, fine." His wet eyelashes fluttered as he closed his eyes and tightened his hold around you. "That must have been awful, Yn. How…? Just how."

You rested your cheek against his toned shoulder. "Somehow… I don't really know. I'm proud of you, though, you know? I'm really proud of you."

"Thank you. I'm proud of you, too." He sniffled, mouth pressing against your shoulder. "All this time, I thought you hated dance and hated me."

"Oh, god no," you sniffled, sucking in a breath. "I—I knew I couldn't be strong anymore; I didn't want to disappoint you." And when you could no longer attend those practices, you had believed it would be better to not be there to drag him down. You thought that without having to wait on you every time, he would have been all the better. You see now that perhaps you were wrong in your logic.

For a moment, the two of you stood there in the other's arms as words settled and feelings sunk in. The realization that this tension between the two of you was possibly over now was crazy.

"For the record," Changmin murmured, "you're a great dancer. No matter what your mom told you, you'll always be a great dancer."

You laughed a little, shaking your head. "Not anymore, I'm not."

"That's where you're wrong." He pulled away from you and you saw the tears staining his dimpled cheeks, but the smile he was giving you was something out of a dream. He gently, playfully punched your arm. "You're still my partner, after all."

EPISODE ELEVEN: OFF THE SHELF

EVER since Changmin, Chanhee, JC!Yn, and her roommate Kei decided to change the weekly grocery shopping session to Saturday mornings, Changmin had never been so grateful for such a change until now. It used to be on Sunday mornings during the fall quarter because JC!Yn volunteered at the local children’s club on Saturday mornings, but since the Sunny Side Up Club had begun closing its doors on the weekend until summer break, her Saturdays had suddenly freed up.

Kei, as usual, had waltzed off in search of her own shopping list items, leaving JC!Yn and Changmin with the shopping cart of groceries and Chanhee sitting in the middle of it, cross-legged and swaddled in a pink hoodie.

“That’s awful,” JC!Yn lamented as she slowly trailed after Changmin while pushing the cart. There was a frown etched into her face, as well as Chanhee’s, while and after Changmin had caught them up on the events of the previous day’s talk with you. “I mean, I know some parents are super strict about their kids studying, but…” She shook her head, “You’ve both been through a terrible amount of shit, man.”

Chanhee nodded his agreement, peering up at Changmin who was at the helm of the cart, staring at the label on a container of canned corn blankly. “Yeah, for sure. How’re you holding up, Changminnie?”

Changmin shrugged half-heartedly and rather mopey. “As well as I could be.”

“Well, are you guys good now?” JC!Yn asked. “Y’know, after clearing all the air?”

Changmin made a face at the canned corn, but handed it to Chanhee to place amongst the other things in the cart with him. “I mean, kind of? Not really?” He scratched the side of his head, and his two friends looked on at him, then exchanged worried glances. Usually Changmin was the one cracking jokes, but to see him in such a state… “It’s just a little awkward now because we’ve been on ice around each other for years. Going back to normal shouldn’t be easy, should it?”

Chanhee pursed his lips, his head tilting from side to side. “That’s true. When you guys were still in grudge era, you let all the angst between you do the talking.”

“Angst? I was not angsty, for your information.”

Both of his companions scoffed their disagreement. “Every single time her name was brought up around you, you gazed far off like some kind of angsty main hero,” Chanhee retorted. “Like Kevin at that one dinner when we were interrogating Eric.”

JC!Yn laughed. “That feels like so long ago.”

Changmin sent her a look, the corner of his lips tilting upward like the arch of his eyebrow. “That’s because you and Jacob act like you’ve been married for ten years.”

Her face heated at those words, but she held her chin up in pride. “I’m gonna pretend this is your jealousy talking.”

“Oh, please,” he quipped back and turned back to the shelves to hunt for any other familiar labels that would trigger his hunger. “If I wanted to be so grossly in love—”

“Then you’d go find Yn?”

“—Then I’d go find Y—HEY!” Changmin sputtered as his cheeks lit up like the can of roasted red bell peppers in his hand. Chanhee and JC!Yn exploded into equal fits of delighted cackles, the former extending his arm back so the latter could return his fistbump. Changmin scowled through his flustered haze. “Whatever; taking advantage of my vulnerable state is not cool, guys.”

Chanhee beamed up at his best friend with the kind of smile that no one could be mad at. It was impish, adorable even. “Aw, it’s only ‘cause we love you.”

“Gross,” Changmin muttered, wrinkling his nose dramatically, then nudging his glasses up his nose.

As she stopped the cart behind Changmin, JC!Yn rested her arm against the bar and let her chin sit atop her fist as she and Chanhee watched Changmin scour the shelves again. “Didn’t you say you had feelings for her back then, Changmin-ah? Would you say they were still present or not?”

He sucked in a breath at the question as he let the question marinate in his brain. After yesterday’s world-altering talk with you, neither of you were able to stay too long afterward to catch up. You’d both, unfortunately, been called to your own separate summons. But this morning, when Changin had woken up with the information having been properly processed in his brain and given him room to overthink as he did… Truthfully, he had no idea where the two of you stood with one another. It wasn’t going to be the same, not like childhood and not like the past three years.

He didn’t exactly know what to say to you now, only that there was still that emptiness in his chest. He hadn’t expected the feeling to go away, but he also hadn’t expected it to remain. What was he supposed to do? He was pretty sure you didn’t even like him like that back then, so there was no way your feelings would have changed in that sense over the past three years. Some said that distance made the heart grow fonder, and while Changmin wasn’t one for cliche lines, he did feel an ache for you. He wanted to make up for lost time. Even if you didn’t feel the same way he had back then, it didn’t mean that he still felt the same… right?

“I think we lost him,” came Chanhee’s very loud stage whisper.

Changmin shook out of his mind and leveled a glare at his two friends. “I’ll think about it.”

“Didn’t you just think about it?”

“Hey, if JC!Yn-ie can take an entire quarter to tell Jacob-ssi her feelings, then you can give me like, five minutes to think about mine!” He squawked, waving his arms around in the air like one of those car-wash balloon people that flopped around in the wind. Except this one was high on emotions and his round lenses were slipping down his nose, adding to his overall mad man-like look.

JC!Yn deadpanned, shaking her head as she began pushing the cart after Changmin. She muttered under her breath, “He’s just astounded that he has feelings for someone, JC!Yn. Let him be touchy today.”

Chanhee, who had heard her speak to herself loud and clear, twisted around to grin and pat her arm reassuringly. “He’s just malfunctioning because he might actually have a chance now.”

“I can hear you!”

Chanhee chuckled, and the sound was villainous.

The three of them, as per routine, met up with Kei at the checkout lanes. There was one occasion where one of the workers was so tired that they tried to scan Chanhee and make them pay for him, but other than that, most people just offered him a sweet from the jar on the counter. As groceries were bagged up, and Kei was caught up on the situation at hand in verbal bullet point format, she took only a moment to suggest: “Why don’t you invite her to the dance showcase?”

All eyes went to Changmin, even as JC!Yn pushed the cart out with the group.

Changmin chewed his bottom lip. “I would, but... I dunno. I don’t want to trigger anything for her.” He winced to himself, “It would be really cool to have her there, of course! But I literally saw her in the practice room a week ago and she looked like she was seconds away from having a full-on panic attack.” As much as inviting you to watch him perform for the first time in three years thrilled him (and nearly sent him into cardiac arrest), he had seen you that day—blanched, struggling to breathe. He couldn’t imagine just what thoughts were running through your head then, especially after hearing what you had told him yesterday.

He was so—god, he was so angry at your mother. He knew about the divorce and the negative effect it had on her, but for her to practically take all that energy out on you? It was something simply unforgivable. His heart hurt for you.

Chanhee dipped his head in a slight nod, mouth curved down into a frown again. "That's fair. But I mean, it wouldn't hurt to ask, would it?"

"I just don't want to come off as insensitive, especially after three years of the cold shoulder." Your words from yesterday had penetrated him deeply—he hoped to never make you feel abandoned ever again.

Kei peered around at Changmin from the other side of JC!Yn. "If it counts, I don't think she'll take it as being insensitive, Changmin."

"She might feel better about getting, y'know, a personal invitation from you," JC!Yn chimed in. "Even if she isn't comfortable with going, she'll know you're thinking of her."

Changmin pressed his knuckles to his lips, bouncing on the balls of his feet anxiously. It was amusing, and perhaps a little concerning, for his friends to see him like this. He flapped the ends of his sweater sleeves in the air like he was hyping himself up. "Okay. Okay, yeah, I'll invite her to see me perform."

He raised an arm into the air toward the sky. "The next time I see her, that's what I'll—"

"Oh, look, she's right there," said Chanhee, pointing in the distance from his cart throne.

Changmin squeaked, "She's what?!" He slid behind JC!Yn in a very poor attempt to hide himself from the oncoming party.

Said party consisted of you, Yeri, Mark, and Ten—again. Except, instead of the coffee shop across the shopping mall, it was the parking lot on his friends' turf. Mark and Yeri were the first to see Changmin's friend group, both of them making unsubtle glances at Changmin. They passed by with friendly greetings, excusing themselves as they argued over the possibility of the store having watermelon (the answer was no; sorry Mark).

You and Ten lagged behind slightly, seemingly deep in conversation. The latter listened intently, but he felt eyes on him and looked up. His eyes twinkled as he made eye contact with Changmin—Changmin couldn't tell whether or not he liked that feeling.

You realized that he was looking outward and onward, and so you followed his gaze. Your eyes widened a tad at the sight of Changmin's friend group manifesting out of nowhere. "Hi guys," you said with an awkward smile when you and Ten met them in the middle.

"Hi Yn-ie," Chanhee giggled, turning around to wag his eyebrows at Changmin.

Changmin threw back a very unimpressed scowl. He let a smile grace his face just as he looked back at you. "Hey Yn, Ten."

JC!Yn unsubtly began pushing the cart to uncover Changmin. "Hey, you two. Changmin was actually just talking about you, Yn!"

Traitor! Changmin's jaw dropped.

Ten grinned. "That's really funny, 'cause Yn was just talking about you, Changmin."

You glared daggers at your friend with the same level of betrayal in your eyes as Changmin expressed. At least you were both getting thrown under the bus.

Kei nudged him. "Don't you have something to say to her?"

"We'll get out of your hair!" Chanhee chirped, patting the side of the cart as JC!Yn resumed her pushing on the cart past you and Ten. "See you at the car, Changminnie!"

As Changmin's last line of defense walked away with JC!Yn and the shopping cart prince, Ten inclined his head to you. "Should I stick around for this?"

You sighed under your breath. "Probably not. I'll see you inside?"

"Whatever suits your fancy," he mused, shrugging. As he passed by Changmin, he winked, then whistled some random tune as he went on his merry way.

"So what's up?" You asked him then. It seemed to be a cozy morning for you as you fidgeted with the ends of your big, woolen sweater. There was something delicate about the way the corners of your lips curled up into a smile.

Changmin cupped the nape of his neck. "Oh, uh, I know we had that whole talk yesterday, and I was wondering if you'd wanna come see my performance at the winter showcase on Friday?" He added quickly, "No pressure, of course. If you're uncomfortable, then you don't have to worry."

Your lips pursed together in a slight pucker. "I'd actually love to go. I mean—" you swallowed, "—I haven't gone to one since freshman year, but I'd love to."

"You can leave whenever you start feeling uncomfortable," he assured you, but he was smiling widely now. "It'll be cool to, y'know, have you in the audience."

"That means a lot, Changmin," you said earnestly, your smile sweet. It was almost weird to not have you frowning or glaring at him. It felt… good. It felt really good. “I will try my best.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets as he rocked on his heels, teeth biting down on his bottom lip to suppress the eager grin threatening to come out. “That’s all I could ask for.”

EPISODE TWELVE: OFF THE CHARTS

YOU were late. You were extremely late, actually, and to be honest, if you had known the bus was going to break down in the middle of the stupid road, you would have gotten off and walked. But then again, you were practically buried in all of the bundles of flowers you wanted to bring for your friends performing tonight. There were four bundles in total that you bothered to pick out just about two hours ago, one for Minho, one for Jungwoo, one for Ten, and of course, you could not forget one for Changmin.

When Changmin had personally invited you to come see his performance tonight earlier in the week, you couldn’t deny that the feeling made your chest warm and fuzzy. Even as you trudged your way up the stairs to the front of the performing arts building, you were filled with adrenaline and antsy energy. You’d waited so long for this, hadn’t you?

The last time you had come to see the winter showcase was in freshman year, the year the Daily asked you to write a review piece on one of the performers debuting that year, and even that had been enough of dance for the years following. It would be nice to know, this time, that you were wanted in the audience. (Changmin would have wanted you in the audience all this time, but you didn’t know that.)

Because you were unquestionably late, the doors to the hall would be closed shut now.

That was why having a friend like Boo Seungkwan was paramount.

“Thank you,” you gasped as one of the doors to the performance hall burst open and allowed you into the warmth of the lobby. You could hear the bass of whatever song was on and the audience’s cheers from here.

Seungkwan swept half of the bouquets from your arms with a click of his tongue. “Yah, you’re insane for taking the bus all the time. Yeri even asked to pick you up!”

“I know, I know!” You cried, the two of you scurrying over to one of the doors in the hall. “I panicked at the last second to get flowers and then I had to go all the way to the shop on fifth! By the way, did you know they’re open until 11?”

Both of your voices quieted as you slipped into the darkened auditorium. The stage was the only part illuminated in blinding, searing hot spotlights. You had just walked in on a brief break between acts as performers switched on and off stage. Seungkwan led you to one of the rows of seats in the nosebleeds that was relatively in the middle.

All of your friends practically occupied the entire row, and they lit up in delight at the sight of you.

“Yo Yn!” Mark whispered as he leaned over Yeri. “You’re actually here!”

Yeri reached over to squeeze your hand as you took the open seat next to her, and Seungkwan took the last seat in the aisle. “I’m so happy you’re here, Yn-ie.”

Doyoung and Kun peered out from around Mark, and you recognized a couple others from the NCT frat and RVE sorority further down the row. “Hey guys,” you said quietly to them as you wrangled your purse into your lap and adjusted the flowers in your arms, “how much did I miss?”

“Not much at all," Doyoung replied. "It's just been a few of the first years."

"We've got a little while until the older batch," Kun said with a wave of the program in his hands.

You nodded your understanding and settled into your seat to get comfortable. The performances went on one after the other. There was a mix of all different genres, ranging from contemporary ballet to tap and popping. Because everyone in the final winter showcase were in some kind of dance course on campus, a lot of the acts displayed a ton of experience already, even as first-years.

The longer the night went on, the less you believed your antsiness was a result of a nervous tick, but rather the bottled up adrenaline building up from watching all the performances. At some point, you realized you weren't even analyzing the performances anymore, but rather, sitting in awe of each one.

When a brief intermission was announced, Yeri and one of her sorority sisters squeezed past to head to the restroom while a few others from the row headed out to stretch their limbs and find some other friends. You and Seungkwan lingered in your seats, discussing your favorite performances so far, as well as how your finals weeks had gone for each of you.

"I'm just so glad we have spring break now," he groaned, his head hanging with exhaustion. "I might have skipped tonight if that meant I could sleep early."

"You would have regretted it though," you pointed out to him.

He gestured with his hand. "Right, you are." He let out a sigh as he raised his head and met your smile with a tired one of his own. "Well, Yn, you did it. You're watching your first full winter showcase. How do you feel?"

Your gaze flickered back to the stage. The house lights had come on for intermission, leaving the stage drenched in darkness. You could have sworn you saw the heavy red curtains shudder as if someone had poked their head out to view the audience. You remembered when you and Changmin used to do that when you were kids.

You turned back to Seungkwan. "I feel surprisingly okay," you confessed. "I was a little nervous before, but I think that I'm doing good."

He nodded. "Good. I'm glad you're here."

"Thanks, Kwan." You exhaled. "I didn't fully realize how long this was gonna be," you mused.

Seungkwan raised a brow at you. "Well, didn't you only stay for like, Changmin's performance last time you were here?"

"Well, yeah—"

The house lights suddenly shuttered off, and people rushed back to their seats. Your friends who were coming back squeezed past you and Seungkwan, effectively cutting off your conversation from before. The last half of the night would be handed over to the students who were majoring in dance and had been a part of the program for over two years.

You were properly in awe of the next performances. They had decided to put Ten out first, dancing to a song called Baby Don't Stop. He had mentioned the song to you once, but you hadn't really thought much about it until now. It was a side of Ten you hadn't seen yet since you had never seen him dance properly, but… you were definitely going to need to gush about this to him afterward.

You were pretty sure the crowd didn't quiet down for five performers in a row, as crazy-talented dancers such as Minho and Jungwoo followed after.

Each performance was incomparable to the next, and soon, you were sucking in a breath to the sound of Changmin's name being announced.

You slapped your hands onto Seungkwan's and Yeri's on either side of you, both of whom squeezed and shook your hands back as the curtain rose.

The lighting began a deep, electric purple, painting Changmin to look like a dark silhouette on stage. You almost couldn't make out the details of his white and black suit-like uniform. It was dynamic and unique with the suit cut outs and gloves, and he paired it all with an eye look that made his eyes feel darker and smokier.

He was still at first—until a set of horns, like trumpets, blared from the speaker's and he began striding forward.

You heard Mark gasp from two seats over. "Holy shit, he's dancing to Action Figure."

You vaguely recognized the title, but if you were thinking of the right song, then the room was about to get a lot louder. Unconsciously, you squeezed Seungkwan and Yeri's hands as you leaned forward and lingered on the edge of your seat.

The performance was everything you expected and more. Changmin was, as you had expressed before, the absolute cream of the crop. Each movement was brought with sharp precision, like the blade of a knife. Even during the slower bridge portion, he somehow executed the legato-like movements with a crispness of 4K HDR quality.

Everyone in the room held their breath (or screamed it out) with each sultry gaze, each lick of his lips, each smirk—a great dancer, a great performer; he would forever be one of the greats. That, you were very certain of.

When the song came to an end and he raised his head to peer at the audience through his bangs, you and everyone else erupted into applause, whistles, yelling—all the works. Your heart palpitated so hard in your chest that you thought it was trying to mimic his own dance. You were practically shaking from all of the bottled energy, and…

"Wow," you breathed out as you leaned back in your seat as the stage was reset for the next act. Your knee began bouncing fervently, sending the flowers in your lap up and down as well.

Seungkwan murmured his agreement, "Whew. I can't tell if I'm attracted or intimidated."

You snorted, patting his hand with your palm. "Both?"

"Probably."

You laughed, your hand lifting up to absentmindedly press against the base of your throat and sternum.

You couldn't help but think about what Changmin had revealed to you that day. How could a pair of parents not be absolutely floored to have a son as talented as Ji Changmin? It was so unbelievable to you, but you couldn't imagine how it might have felt to suddenly have all that support be ripped out from beneath your feet like his support had been.

The performances following would finish off those of the solo category. Afterwards, a handful of groups performed, including repeats of a few performers. Minho and Jungwoo had performed a stage together (Finesse, if you weren't mistaken), while Changmin and Juyeon made a return to the stage with another sultry hit by the name of Light a Flame.

By the end of the night, you were eager to head backstage to see your friends who had just performed their hearts out.

Plus, the bouquets were wilting.

Once the house lights had thunked to life, and the crowd was beginning to lessen, the row you were seated in with your friends stood together. Some of them were going to head straight home, but a few others planned to stay back to congratulate the performers on a night well done.

"You guys ready to head back?" Mark asked while nodding toward the stage with his hands shoved into the pockets of his puffer vest.

The high you were on was gradually fading out, and you had to clear your throat. "Can I meet you guys back there? I think I'm gonna take a quick breather and then just go in through the backdoor."

They were more than okay with accommodating you, encouraging you to take as long as you needed. Mark and Yeri both took the remaining two bouquets from your arms as Seungkwan ushered you out the door to take that breather.

As you hit the cool, early-March air, you wrapped your coat tighter around yourself and inhaled deeply. All around you, people lingered and chatted with each other, gushing about their favorite performances and reenacting the most memorable parts. You smiled to yourself when you overheard a group of boys near you talking about Changmin's tasteful choice in music, as well as the cohesion of his entire performance, ranging from not only the music choice, but down to the costuming as well. (And the choreography, of course. Everything about his performance, as emphasized, was breathtaking.)

With a sigh, you began rounding the building toward the back entrance.

Now that you had the space to deconstruct your thoughts, you realized that although you felt an indescribable amount of pride for your friends, you couldn't help the pit forming in the bottom of your stomach. In a way, you envied the performers onstage. You wished you had held on a little longer; maybe then, you could have been one of the people on stage tonight like you had wanted when you were just a teen.

When you reached the back door, you managed to gather your strength and let yourself in.

Like that day you had taken Sumin backstage, it was all hustle and bustle, but ten times that. Pandemonium erupted as performers raced past you left and right trying to find their friends, fellow performers, and even the location of their hairspray. (They should have put their name on it, you thought cheekily, but even then, it might not have worked still, you supposed.)

You kept your arms crossed over your chest as you squeezed past people toward where you were hoping to find your friends. As you walked into the dressing room corridor, you nearly collided with a silky dress shirt.

"Yn! I can't believe I found you," Ten chuckled.

You laughed, wrapping your arms around him in an affectionate embrace. "Ten! I can't believe you found me either. It's a madhouse here." You scanned the faces and bodies buzzing about for any sign of your friends. "Have Mark, Yeri, or Seungkwan found you yet? They have the flowers I was gonna give you."

Ten's lips curled up into a smile as he pressed a hand to his chest. "Gasp, you got me flowers?"

"Yes, and please never say 'gasp' aloud ever again," you winced.

That only made his smile grow. "No promises. But what'd you think of the show tonight? I'm glad you stayed the whole time."

"It was incredible! You were incredible," you amended with your eyes likely the shape of stars. "Who gave you the absolute audacity to be so talented, sir! I swear I heard some girl faint a couple rows behind me," you joked.

His eyes narrowed into sly, little crescents. "Oh? And did you faint for mine, too? Or did you save that reaction for another special someone?"

You flushed, your eyes averting to anywhere but the nosy feline before you.

Ten threw his head back in a loud guffaw. "Okay, okay. I see how it is. He's been looking for you, by the way."

Your eyes went wide. "And you wait until now to tell me?"

"I wanted my dose of Yn affection, too," he shrugged, giggling like a schoolgirl. "Plus, the look on your face was well worth it."

"Sometimes I hate you."

"Some is not all," he pointed out.

"—you said she was over here? Yn!"

Yours and Ten's heads turned and you watched as Changmin's eyes found yours in the crowded room. He began pushing his way toward you, sweat still dampening the strands of hair and falling into the collar of the dark blazer he wore for Light a Flame.

Ten snickered under his breath. "Well, I'm gonna go find Mark to get my flowers. Text me later, 'kay? Okay!"

Before you could blink, Ten had disappeared into the masses. You swore that man was so slippery sometimes.

You glanced back in the direction that you saw Changmin coming from,but when you couldn't find him, you frowned. It really was awfully hard to find people in here…

"Boo!"

You swore your soul left your body for five seconds. You whirled around, glaring daggers at the impish squirrel man who somehow ended up behind you. "You're such a menace."

Changmin grinned so wide it looked like even his dimples were strained. "Sorry," he wheezed, not sounding sorry at all. "The opportunity presented itself on a gold-plated platter."

"You should feel very lucky that I wasn't holding lemonade this time."

"Okay, but why were you drinking that without a cap on the cup? Did they not give you a plastic lid or something?"

You felt the corner of your mouth lift. How was it so easy to recall these things? "It's just the universe telling you to end your pranks."

He shrugged helplessly. "I can't help that you are so easy to sneak up on."

"You're gonna say that when I somehow heard you asking if I was in here from across the room?"

"That's because I let you hear that; there's a difference," he said, leaning against the corridor wall next to you. He looked you up and down, tongue darting out for a moment. "Thanks for coming tonight."

You leaned your shoulder against the wall next to him. "I enjoyed myself," you said in reply. "You did really well tonight though, Changmin. It was a great performance."

He grinned, and his tongue had to poke the inside of his cheek. "Just great?"

You raised your eyebrows at him and decided to bypass that question for the moment. "Did my friends give you your flowers?"

Changmin showed his empty hands and you deadpanned.

"What?" He giggled. "I'm just stating the obvious."

"You're so infuriating sometimes."

He gently bumped your shoulder with his. "Nothing new."

Nothing new, indeed. It was strange, actually, falling into this kind of easygoing, light-hearted banter. You'd seen how easy it was that night in the lab, but this was nice, you had to admit. Banter and arguing were two different things, you learned, and the latter always took such a toll on those involved.

How did the two of you stay away for so long? Maybe you were both too prideful, too afraid to break the ice.

Changmin's expression sobered a little as he observed your expression. "What're you thinking about?"

You blinked, glancing over at him. "Nothing, just…" Your voice lowered to something like a whisper, "I missed this." I missed you.

And as you met his eyes again, you knew that he had heard you. He swallowed, roughly. "Me too."

EPISODE THIRTEEN: OFF THE CUFF

THE quad was in bloom with the coming of spring and spring break. It was tradition at your university to take pictures and to take a stroll through the freshly bloomed cherry blossom trees lining the rectangular lawn. Only in spring did the trees reveal their beautiful, baby pink flowers, so it was optimal to go frolic amongst them while they were full.

Changmin had been dragged out by Chanhee. Well, he liked to say that Chanhee forced him outside, but in reality, Changmin had put just as much effort into his appearance today as Chanhee did, just not as formal. And luckily, it wasn't just the two best friends who were out with them among the crowd of people, but also the entirety of their friend group—plus the significant others, too.

"I hate this more than Valentine's Day," Sunwoo grumbled as he blew a curl out of his eyes. He was referring to the couples all around them taking pictures and holding hands and kissing.

"You're telling me," Kevin sighed as he messed with the settings on his camera for the pictures he wanted to take of the scenery. "At least on Valentine's Day, people won't photobomb you."

Sangyeon had his phone out and was already taking photos of the blooming flowers around him and in the trees. He suddenly turned his phone around, set at point five zoom. "Hey guys, look here and smile!"

Everyone in the shot (all the singles: Chanhee, Changmin, Sunwoo, Kevin, Juyeon, and Hyunjae) slapped smiles onto their faces. As soon as Sangyeon put the phone down, their smiles dropped.

"Who was that for?" Juyeon asked as he slung an arm around Sangyeon's shoulder to peer at the eldest's phone screen. He made a groaning noise before peeling away. "Ahhhh, 'The Girlfriend'. I see."

Sangyeon cocked a brow at him. "Have you finally accepted that I have a girlfriend?"

"Nope."

Sangyeon's eyes looked up and away in exasperation, before he shook his head and returned to doing whatever he was doing.

Changmin surveyed the crowded quad with disinterest. He scanned all of the faces present around him; too many to count that was for sure. Jacob and JC!Yn had separated from them almost immediately; Eric and his girlfriend were off being cute or something; Younghoon and his partner hadn't even traveled here with most of them; but at least Haknyeon and his significant other stayed with them for the first five minutes to make conversation about the dance showcase a few nights ago.

He sighed. That was how long ago it had been since he last saw you. (My god, he sounded like some kind of lovesick teenager, waiting by the landline for his lover to ring him up—)

On the other side of the quad, you and your friends had just arrived to do the same exact thing Changmin's friends were. But as soon as you saw the crowd, you were five seconds from simply giving up.

"We'd get like, one flower, and that's it," Seungkwan argued to Yeri who was trudging forward despite the load of people around.

Yeri huffed. "Not if you don't try, Boo Seungkwan."

He made a noise of disgruntlement, his head lifting up and nostrils flaring. "Oh my god—"

"Yn, my wife, defend my honor!"

You snapped up straight, tuning back into the conversation. Mark and Jungwoo trailed somewhere behind the three of you and if you weren't careful, you'd lose them, too. "Huh? Oh, well, Seungkwan…" Your voice trailed off, and your eyes wandered to a specific gathering of trees further down the lawn from where you currently were.

It was unfair how he was framed like a K-Drama shot: the slow motion pink petals drifting around him, his lithe body gracefully leaning against the dark bark of the cherry blossom tree, the green sweater vest layered over a white shirt and pants. You gulped—he looked way too pretty to just be standing there—

"—hello? Earth to Yn?" A hand was waving in front of your face and someone was poking your shoulder.

You shook away from them, eyes wide like a child with your hand caught in the cookie jar. "Huh?"

Seungkwan and Yeri sent you curious looks. "You were staring at Changmin," said Yeri, arms crossing over her chest.

Seungkwan let out a dramatically wistful, little sigh as he scratched the side of his head. "You're so lucky that Ten's not here; we are so very merciful compared to him."

You rolled your eyes, even though they were right. "I wasn't staring! I just—I couldn't tell if it was really him or not."

"Because I'm just so breathtakingly beautiful?"

"Definitely n—what the fuck," you yelped, nearly leaping out of your skin again at the right of Changmin's dimpled smile as he seemingly appeared out of thin air right next to you.

Changmin erupted into howling laughter, folding over onto his knees as he slapped his leg once, twice—

"You're not even that funny," you grumbled, side-eyeing both him and your friends. (Guess you really did lose Mark and Jungwoo…)

Seungkwan and Yeri did not hide their own laughs very well, but they definitely weren't knee-slapping themselves.

"How'd you even cover so much ground that fast?" You queried, whirling back on Changmin.

He lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, his hands resting in the pockets of pants as he stood in a relaxed posture. His skin was unfairly pretty in this lighting, like his smile. "I harnessed my inner squirrel."

"You mean your inner furry?"

Seungkwan and Yeri chose this moment to slip away, calling out something like "we're just gonna go walk a tree" before bowing out. Changmin feigned an expression of offense, pressing a hand to his chest. "Rude! It's called athleticism."

You wrinkled your nose. "Like you know what athleticism is."

"I'll race you to the stairs over there right now—HEY, CHEATER! I DIDN'T SAY GO—" Despite his indignant squawk, Changmin's cheeks hurt from how hard he grinned as he raced after you toward the stairs at the other end of the lawn.

— ✶

"So… no Ten today?"

After a daring race, you and Changmin settled on top of the stairs overlooking the entire lawn. The sun hung at golden hour position and painted the landscape and people below in beautiful, buttery gold wash. You even swore you saw Chanhee chasing after Sunwoo with a handful of loose cherry blossom petals, no doubt to dump into the latter's hair.

You looked over to where Changmin was leaning back onto his palms next to you. "This again?"

He pursed his lips. "Well, I mean," he drawled, "you guys are pretty close. I just figured you'd do this kind of thing together."

"That's fair," you conceded. "Uh, he's actually on a trip with a couple of his frat brothers this week. Something like backpacking in Switzerland."

Changmin gave an indulgent nod of his head. "Wow. Switzerland."

"I know, right?"

He peered out into the distance, eyes squinting against the strength of the sun, but he looked like an art piece nonetheless. “You and Ten aren’t, like, together? Are you?”

You tilted your head to the side. Interesting question. “No, we’re friends. I think in the beginning it might have felt like something on that level, but we’ve both—I think we’re both on the same page where we stand with each other.” You didn’t know why you were telling him so much; he’d only asked you a question. But speaking of being together with someone… You coughed, “Sumin told me what happened during the interview a couple weeks ago.”

Changmin smiled sheepishly, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “Oh, ha, she did? I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.”

“You really didn’t know?”

“That she liked me? No,” he laughed with a shake of his head. He leaned forward onto his knees then, turning his head to the side to look at you with his fingers laced over his knees. “Who do you take me for, hm? I couldn’t just assume she had a crush on me.”

You feigned a look of disagreement, and he gasped, shoving your upper arm playfully. “I’m not that bad!” He exclaimed.

“You could be that bad,” you teased.

You watched as his expression cooled and the air around the two of you shifted. There was an earnestness in his eyes now, emphasized by the brilliance of the setting sun reflecting across his smooth lines of his face. “Have you ever thought about, you know, like trying to dance again?”

You weren’t sure what prompted this change in subject, but you gave it a thought. “I definitely have,” you said honestly, “I just can’t really step into a practice room without getting nervous.” You picked at a stray thread on your pants as you spoke and felt his gaze on you. “That night—the one when you saw me in front of the performing arts hall really late at night—I was trying to get myself to go in. To at least… try, y’know. Maybe prove to myself that I could work up the courage to go in, but I couldn’t.”

Changmin was quiet for a moment. His knees angled themselves toward you, and he leaned forward so his chest practically laid over his legs. “I said a lot of bad things to you in senior year,” he said lowly. “They were stupid—I was stupid. And—and if your anxiety with practice rooms comes from me, then—”

“Changmin,” you interrupted and captured his attention. You shifted to mimic his body positioning, so your eyes were level and you were both just as small as the other. “I said really shitty things to you, too.”

“I told you that you should quit,” he rasped. He had to turn his head so you wouldn’t see the silver pooling in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Yn; I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.”

You heard his sniffle over all of the chatter from the lawn below and you moved closer to him until your legs and arms were pressed together. You wrapped an arm around him, only for him to raise himself up and practically drape himself over you, his arms looped around your upper body and his face tucked into the side of your neck. Your heart tripped over itself in surprise, but you let yourself lean into his body heat.

“I’m sorry, too. I know you didn’t mean any of it. I didn’t mean any of what I said either.” You breathed for a moment and sighed, simply allowing him to stay in your arms for however long he needed. “I think,” you started, “even after three years, I still blame myself for letting all of that get to me. Sometimes, I want to go back in time and slap some sense into myself; maybe tell myself that I shouldn’t have let what my mom said bury itself so deep inside me. I mean… where would I be now had I not listened to her?”

Changmin pulled away then, resting his forearms on his legs again, but he didn’t back away from you. “You were just a kid, Yn. You can’t blame yourself.”

You rested your cheek against your fist. “I know. It’s hard not to, though.”

“I know.” He took another look at you, and you felt his eyes really take you in for a moment. The corner of his lips lifted. “Are you happy?”

“With?”

“With how you turned out? Where you ended up?”

You held your breath. It was a good question, and as you turned to search yourself inwardly, you came to a couple of conclusions. “In a way, I am. It’s probably just bitterness and regret I feel when I wonder what could have been, but maybe things happen for a reason.”

He nodded, his hand reaching up to pick out a stray leaf that had fallen into your hair. “We can always make up for lost time now,” he said. “We never did get to finish that duet.”

EPISODE FOURTEEN: [GET] OFF THE GROUND

THE next day, you found yourself standing outside the back door to the performing arts building. Because it was spring break, a large helping of the student population had abandoned campus as soon as their finals were over, leaving the place barren except for the area with the cherry blossoms. You stood next to Changmin, the latter holding his bag by the strap over his shoulder. You had been staring at the door for more than a minute now, trying to slow the palpitations of your heart.

“We can leave whenever you want to,” he murmured to you, the back of his hand nudging yours. “Let’s just try.”

You got yourself to nod.

The hallways were uncharacteristically quiet compared to the previous couple of times you had been back here. Since there was no one else here, you and Changmin got to pick whichever practice room you wanted. The largest one was the winner, and the lights flickered on to wash the shadows away. You immediately moved to one side of the room to set your things down, and Changmin went to his corner by the speaker. He was already hooking up his phone to the aux cord, but kept one eagle-eye on you as you inhaled the sight of the empty room around you.

As usual, your throat began closing in on itself, and you coaxed yourself into taking deep breaths.

You started out on the floor in front of the mirror, your legs crossed over each other and Changmin’s phone in your hands. Changmin had shouldered off his white athletic jacket, and began stretching as you swiped through the selection of music on his phone. The two of you collectively agreed for you to start off just watching. Once you were comfortable in the practice room environment, and if you wanted to dance, you would join him whenever you were ready. If you were never ready, then you could continue to just watch him and cheer him on during the practice.

You watched him card a hand through his hair as he peered at himself in the mirror behind you. “I always thought this mirror made you vain,” you chuckled, your hand having settled into your lap instead of at the base of your throat.

He furrowed his brows at you. His hands rested on his hips, the muscle in his forearms emboldening from the action. “Rude. I think you were the one who made me vain.”

“The fuck? How so?” You challenged.

“You always said you admired my facial expressions and my pretty smile,” he grinned at your reaction, snickering to himself. “Did you pick a song yet?”

You watched him dance. For the first few songs that played on shuffle, he was simply warming up his body and freestyling to whatever he heard. You knew Changmin was no stranger to people watching him dance, but there was something still so intimate about watching him in this space. You could watch him create things like magic, as well as watch him fumble and laugh at his own misgivings. Except, instead of doing it all by himself, his eyes would find yours and smile.

Next quarter, Changmin was supposedly signed on to be a TA for one of the dance courses, so he asked for your opinion on a few of his ideas for choreographies he could teach.

After showing you his second idea, he gestured to you then looked back at himself in the mirror. “What do you think? I’m not sure if writing something for each nuance in the beat would be a bit too much or if it’s something that should be used as a challenge routine.”

You hummed in understanding. “Well, if it’s an intermediate dance course, then I think it could be worked up to. Are these people dance majors or… maybe minoring in dance?”

He nodded when you said the latter. “Supposedly, they aren’t necessarily dance majors. But yeah, I agree—it could probably be brought out later in the quarter instead.” He made a motion with his hand as he backpedaled a couple steps to give himself more room between you and him. “Could you rewind to the first verse again? I wanna see something.”

You obliged him and rewinded the song to his desired timestamp. He tried out another possible set of choreo, but ended up stopping halfway through the chorus.

Again and again, you rewinded the song for him to try something new, but each time, he was met with his own dissatisfaction.

You suddenly stood, setting his phone on the ground with the song having been rewinded just slightly before the intended timestamp. Your hands were shaky and your heart was probably beating at an unhealthy speed, but you needed to try out something.

Changmin’s eyes opened wide as you came to stand next to him, but he said nothing. Instead, he let you loosely show him what you had concocted in your head while watching him go through trial after trial.

Before you knew what was happening, the two of you were weaving your ideas together, taking pieces of his original choreography and amending it with yours. You had watched him from the beginning so many times that you didn’t need long to pick up on the rest. By the end, the two of you had danced the entirety of the song together, your chest rising and falling fast with the speed of your breath.

Changmin released an exclamatory yell, thrusting his fist to the ceiling, then clasping your hand with his. “Let’s go! I really like that, Yn,” he said with his face split by a shit-eating grin.

Your heart was bursting again, not with nerves, but something you hadn’t felt in a long, long time. You brushed the hair from your eyes, a satisfied beam set on your face. “I like it, too.”

There was a sheen akin to pride in his eyes. “I wanna show you something,” he said, walking over to his phone with a skip in his step. “Stay there! I wanna teach you this bit of choreo that’s been living in my head for a while now.”

And so, you followed Changmin’s instructions as he put on a groovy-type beat. The routine was simple enough—looks-wise. But if you knew anything about the things Changmin choreographed, the difficulty was all in the subtlety and technique. When you were younger, the appeal between you and Changmin as partners were that you were practically foils for each other. While Changmin ruled the arena of sharp, focused isolations and movements, your area of expertise laid in bigger, fuller movements like that of a brushstroke. When you had watched Juyeon and Changmin’s performance during the winter showcase, you supposed that was why they were able to complement each other well. It was essentially what you and Changmin were, in combination.

The longer you and Changmin danced, the more your chest filled with air and warmth and love and happiness. The guilt and fear from before had melted away to reveal this suppressed portion of you that had been hidden for a long time.

At some point, the two of you were just messing around, and ended up sprawled on the polished wood floor of the practice room clutching your stomachs while choking on laughter.

Changmin rolled onto his side, eyes still squinted in delight as he tried to get a grip of his breathing. “Is your back okay?” He managed to wheeze between gasps and howls.

You wiped a tear that crept out from your eye. “No! I just tried carrying a fifty-something-kg man on my back. Do you think I’m okay?”

“In my defense,” he said, peering down at you as he rose into a sitting position and leaned back onto his palms, “you claimed you were stronger than me and could be the base.”

“A warning would have been nice!” You exclaimed. You rolled onto your stomach, laying your chin over your arms. “No one in their right mind just jumpscares people like that.”

“Have you met me?”

“Fair enough.”

A remnant of that merriment remained on his lips as he felt around the floor around him for where his phone had fallen out of his pants pocket. He caught a glimpse of the time, sighing, then raking a hand through his hair. “It’s already one o’clock. Are you hungry? Wanna get lunch or something?”

“Sure, what do you feel like?” You asked, eyes following his movements as he clambered up to his feet and tucked his phone back into his pocket.

He pressed his lips together in thought, humming, “Dunno. Fast food maybe?”

You rolled into a sitting position, similar to the one he had been in just moments before. “Okay.”

“Come on; let’s get up then.” He offered a hand out to you, and you clasped his forearm tightly.

In one fell motion, Changmin swept you upright and to your feet—but he used a little too much pulling force, and you were stumbling into him, palms pressed flat against his chest, and his arms coming around your waist. You held your breath as the two of you fought to stabilize the other.

“Shit, sorry about that,” he muttered from above you with a low chuckle.

You opened your mouth to reply, but as you raised your head to meet his eyes and not just his Adam’s apple, you lost all your breath. There was barely a hairsbreadth distance between your face and his. Changmin came to the same determination as you had and his eyes went wide.

A curious thing happened. His pupils dilated, and his eyes darted down to your mouth and his tongue swiped over his own to dampen them.

Your breath as you exhaled was as unsteady as your heart rate.

You felt his hold on your tighten slightly; his Adam’s apple bobbed. And then he was leaning forward, his eyes fluttering closed—

He kissed you then.

His lips were soft over your own with the slightest bit of pressure, nose nudging the side of your cheek.

Your hands moved up the plane of his chest to grasp his toned shoulders; he shifted his left hand to cradle the back of your head.

Wait, what is happening—

You both pulled away, as if the same thought had echoed through both of your heads at the same time.

Panic leapt into the two of you and you jolted away when the distinct sound of Boss by some group called Neo Culture Technology blasted throughout the quiet practice room.

"Fuck," you swore. You glanced back at Changmin and saw the question, the uncertainty, the—you couldn't even tell. Your mind was everywhere and nowhere at once. You could still feel his mouth on yours. "That—that's Doyoung's ringtone. I have to take this."

"Okay," he whispered inaudibly, and you slipped out from his hold.

With your back to him, he rubbed his hands down his face and an indescribable emotion seized his chest. He rubbed a thumb over his lips…

"Doyoung, you need to calm down," you said as Doyoung's voice quite literally rambled at lightspeed into your ear.

You heard your friend take one deep breath, then repeat, "I think one of these final draft files are corrupted. I'm freaking the fuck out right now, and I know you're not out of town, so if you could please—for the sake of my sanity—come to the office and help me!" He was pleading, begging, and Kim Doyoung did not beg. He sounded like one hair-pull from dropping down to his knees.

In any other context, you would have wanted to record this for the history books. Any other context.

Your eyes darted over to Changmin who was still standing in the middle of the room, hands tucked into his pockets, and gaze pinned to you.

You couldn't just—leave? Could you? Not after that—

Then you caught Changmin nodding his head in the direction of the door, his head cocking to the side in silent question. Do you need to go? He mouthed.

You pursed your lips with a reluctant nod. Something's wrong with the paper.

Then go. We'll talk after.

Talk. Yup. You started grabbing your things and you squeezed your phone between your ear and shoulder. "—okay okay, Doyoung. Can you stop wasting your energy for me, and tell me exactly what the screen is telling you?"

You began making your way to the door, but halted in the doorway. You hesitated, turning back to look at Changmin. You really shouldn't leave—but you had to.

"Yn."

You grabbed your phone and pressed the speaker into your shoulder. "Yes?" It sounded breathless.

Desperation gleamed like silver in his eyes. One did not often see that emotion from Ji Changmin. "Don't shut me out."

EPISODE FIFTEEN: OFF THE BOOKS

THE first person that came to mind was Choi Chanhee. "What—"

"I kissed her!" Changmin blurted, hand slapping over his mouth.

"You what?!"

— ✶

You were breathless, brain muddled, a hot mess of a shitshow, when you got to the Daily. The rest of the Board members were on break, including your resident tech expert, so you had assured Doyoung that you were free if he needed anything. (If you weren't deeply regretting that now though.)

You had fast walked all the way from the performing arts center to the Daily's newsroom, effectively cutting travel time down from ten minutes to seven, even with your bag of items. Though, it definitely didn't help your headspace. You could hardly think about Changmin, the kiss, and a corrupted file all at the same time. Not to mention, you finally managed to wrangle Doyoung off the phone with you so he could go splash water on his face to calm the fuck down.

The newsroom was dark when you got there, but you saw the light from Doyoung's office shining down the corridor. He was seated behind his desk, his expression a lot more calm than he sounded from the phone, but his face and bangs were a bit damp, meaning he had actually gone to wash his face. Good.

He saw you trudging down the hall, your baby hairs flying everywhere, and your breath coming out in pants. He noticed the bag slung over your shoulder and had the nerve to ask, "Oh, were you on the way somewhere?"

You sent him a pained stare and collapsed into the chair on the opposite side of his desk.

"You look stressed."

"Changmin and I kissed."

Doyoung's eyes nearly fell out of his head and his body was half an inch from falling out of his chair. "HUH?"

Your head craned back against the back of the chair. "I know."

"Girl, why are you here then?"

"You said it was an emergency!" You cried, straightening. You didn't even acknowledge the fact that Doyoung had just called you "girl". "Now, let's work this file situation out."

Doyoung moved his laptop further away from you. "Oh, nuh-uh, Missy. You're gonna just send me your copy, and then you're gonna go on your merry way back to Mr. Dancer Man and kiss him again."

Your face scrunched up. "Hello?" What was in the sink water in this building…

"Did you talk about it? Are you two dating now?"

"Doyoung," you whined, scrubbing a hand over your face, "you literally called right after we kissed."

Doyoung made a noise of disappointment. "Damn, I'm never gonna live this down."

"Seungkwan's gonna call you a cockblocker for the rest of your life," you muttered in agreement.

He snorted. "You said it, not me." He sobered then, closing the lid of his laptop so he could lace his fingers over it and fix you with a serious expression. "So how do you feel? Tell me what happened."

You twisted and dropped your bag to the ground by your feet, moving your chair closer to the desk so you could drape your upper half on top of the cool surface. "We were dancing—"

"Really?"

"Mhm," you hummed against the table. "It was… it was really nice, Doie. I actually had fun. And then we just—I don't even know—we played around a little and he was helping me up off the ground, and suddenly we were kissing."

Doyoung's brows furrowed together. "Ah, I see. Did he kiss you or did you kiss him?"

"He kissed me, but I didn't stop him." You could recall the look in his eyes with a striking amount of clarity. "I… I don't really know what it all means, or what it means to me. I'm a little confused, if I'm honest."

He sighed. "And that's okay. I think this is something you definitely need to go back and talk to him about though, hm?"

"Yeah."

"But Yn," he continued, reaching over to rub the top of your head and get you to look up, "did you ever have feelings for the guy?"

You slowly raised yourself up from the table with a frown on your face. "When I was a kid, I didn't really see anyone else but him," you confessed, almost unconsciously. You hadn't known what the feeling you harbored for him was back then, but maybe you could seek to understand it now.

Doyoung made a vague gesture with his hand as he sat back in his chair. "Well, that's a start for sure. But you and he have been on rocky terrain for years now. You're not kids anymore and a lot of things have changed." He was right, in some sense. You and Changmin had spent three years convincing yourselves you didn't need each other. Perhaps it had been the opposite the entire time, but what did it all mean?

"I'm glad to have him in my life again," you said quietly. "I think I've always felt… different about Changmin than any other friend I've had before, y'know? It was just unconscious in a way."

"Would you want to act on that then? See where it goes?"

You let his questions resonate around your head for a minute. But the more you thought about it, the more certain you became of your answer.

— ✶

The back corridors of the performing arts hall were just as dark as it was when you had left. For a moment, you were afraid that Changmin had left. But as you neared the practice room from earlier, you could make out the sounds of voices drifting from the cracked open door of the room.

You strained your ears—who was that with Changmin?

You reached the door, quietly pressing yourself against the wall to peer in through the cracked doorway. There, sitting opposite Changmin on the practice room floor, was Chanhee.

"—think about it, Changmin," said Chanhee as he dropped his friend by the shoulders to keep him from sulking. "She kissed you back. Don't you think that means something?"

"She could've just been caught up in the moment," Changmin countered. "She could've—" He made a frustrated noise and threw his hands out in front of him, "Maybe I just don't want to be disappointed."

Chanhee frowned. "Disappointed… that she doesn't return your feelings? Changmin, can you be honest with me for a second?"

He gave a solemn nod.

"Those feelings you had for her when you were a kid—have they ever gone away?"

You had to back away from the door and press your palm against your mouth. But because of that, you weren't able to catch Changmin's answer. Your heart slammed against your ribcage, your hands shaking as your thoughts raced in your head. You had to open the door now. You'd already intruded when you eavesdropped on their conversation.

Sucking in a breath, you pushed the door open wider. No going back now.

Changmin and Chanhee were both frozen in place when you poked your head into the room. The former paled in the warm-toned practice room lights, and you saw him gulp.

"Yn!" Chanhee laughed nervously as he and his friend both scrambled to their feet. His car keys jangled noisily from where they hung on a clip from his belt loop. "Uhm, I think I should leave," he said, clearing his throat and brushing past you.

You grabbed your arm as you shuffled into the room and gently kicked the door closed behind you.

Changmin cupped the back of his neck. "How much did you hear?" He asked, not even bothering to hide the open glisten in his eyes, the pure vulnerability lying stark on his face. It felt like you were seventeen again, standing alone together in the practice room, not really sure what the other person would say or do or feel.

"What did Chanhee mean by you having feelings for me when we were kids?" You asked.

The silence was palpable. "You really didn't know?"

No, you shook your head, definitely not. "I—I mean, no. Not really. I guess I always thought… I don't know what I thought."

He braced both hands behind his head now, his eyes tilted back toward the ceiling. "Yn," he said before looking you in the eyes again, "every time I saw you, I saw someone who put the fucking stars in the sky. If you watch any of our videos from back then—" He pushed out a haggard breath from his mouth. "I could never not care for you, could never stop caring for you. It hurt a lot when we stopped being us because I thought I…"

His hands fell to his sides, helpless. "I thought I lost you. And then it felt like you hated me, so I tried to hate you, too. And then we worked shit out. And then…" Changmin brushed his bangs back and was unable to look you in the eyes for longer than a second with each glance. "I'm sorry I kissed you. I don't want to lose you again, Yn."

Your heart thundered in your ears so loud that you almost thought he could hear it, even from so far away. You got yourself to take a step forward, and then another.

Changmin waited as you walked closer to him, his lips pressed together.

You inhaled. "Changmin, I can't say for sure what I felt for you back then, and I definitely can't articulate my feelings for you as well as you just did—" His eyes clashed with yours, that energy colliding, "—but I'm not sorry you kissed me, or that I kissed you."

You thought you heard his breath hitch for a moment.

"I don't want to lose you again, either," you said and tentatively reached for his hands. Never in your years of knowing him had you known a moment where his fingers trembled like they did now. "And I—I really want to see where this goes. Would you want to see where this goes with me?"

His fingers curled around yours as he nodded. "Yes."

EPISODE SIXTEEN: OFF [MY] FACE

"WHAT about that one?"

"Don't touch that one."

"Will it burn my skin off?" Changmin asked in a sleepy daze as one hand rubbed his eye and the other reached for the gallon of liquid that sat behind a locked cabinet with a clearly marked DO NOT TOUCH. DANGER. plastered on the side.

"Yes," you said without looking up from your organic chemistry textbook.

Changmin's hand dropped immediately and he turned to send a look your way. "Well, that's not very safe."

His hoodie-covered head began bumbling back over to you through the maze of workbenches. It was the first week back to school from spring break, thus, the very first week of the spring quarter. You and Changmin were currently in your regular lab space that you unofficially dubbed your study area. Kun was in the break room probably half asleep over a bag of shrimp chips, and Ten… Ten was somewhere around here. Maybe he got lost down the hallway looking for the bathroom or something.

Changmin had come to hang out with you though, even though he was practically a walking baby giraffe as drowsiness possessed his whole being. But he insisted on staying until you went home.

"It's actually just distilled water," you said with a chuckle. "The lab professors just don't want people using it because for some reason, the convenience stores around here are always out, and they don't want to go hunting for more."

You felt him drape over your back with a fwump. "I love when you talk dirty to me," he said through a rather large yawn.

You grinned to yourself, shaking your head. "Okay, I think we need to get you home."

"Not before you take me to dinner first."

"Are you sure you're not drunk?"

You packed your things up quickly, especially when you saw Changmin nodding off while standing upright. It was already around nine o'clock by the time you said good night to Kun and located Ten (yeah, he'd gone looking for the bathroom and almost gotten locked in a supply closet instead).

Changmin tried to convince you he was okay to drive, but by the way he couldn't even figure out that his keys were hanging on his belt loop, it was safe to say that you were driving tonight. The drive over to Changmin and Chanhee's apartment was an easy one since they lived in the university district and the streets were quite barren at this point. You helped him up to the apartment, greeting Chanhee who was in a fluffy pink robe and matching headband.

"Hi Chanhee," you sighed as you pushed Changmin into the bathroom to shower.

Chanhee looked on in ill-concealed amusement. "He'll be much better after he showers," he reassured you from his perch on the couch. You saw the page-long math problems spread out on the coffee table and held in a gag.

"Dear god, I hope so."

Chanhee directed you to where Changmin's room was and you dumped both yours and his backpacks on the floor by his desk. You actually had yet to step foot in here until now, so while Changmin was doing his thing in the bathroom, you let your eyes roam all around the room. It was relatively clean (emphasis on relatively) with walls that were minimally decorated. There was a whole separate rack of shirts and jackets left outside the small wardrobe, and you recognized a couple of them.

You leaned over his desk to see what he had posted on the wall above it. There were a couple dozen printed photographs of him and his friends, as well as an award or two that were big in name and no doubt special to him. You felt yourself smile; you didn't have to be up here, but you liked seeing his smile in all of these pictures.

And then you saw it.

There was a printed copy of a review pinned amongst the pandemonium of memorabilia. The layout of the page was incredibly familiar, and with widened eyes, you realized that it was a review from the Daily's Opera Glasses.

In fact, as you squinted and skimmed, it was your review from freshman year. It was your (anonymous) review about his debut winter showcase performance.

Wow.

You barely registered Changmin shuffling into the room in slippers and a bathrobe of his own, his dark hair still dripping with water.

He passed you a glance while heading for his wardrobe. "Hey, do you wanna stay over?"

You definitely weren't prepared for that question. "Stay over?" You parroted dumbly. "Also, you have an Opera Glasses review printed out?" Your hand gestured to the sheet of paper pinned to the wall.

Changmin's head turned and he abandoned the wardrobe to walk over to you and his desk. You pressed yourself against the wall to the side to give him space to look. "Ah," he said with a boyish grin, "that was yours, wasn't it?"

"How the hell could you tell?"

He leaned in close to you, bracing an arm above your head. The smell of his shampoo was strong and you came to the realization that he was still in a bathrobe. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. "You don't think I could tell what your writing voice sounded like?" He asked, his voice suddenly lowered.

You inched forward, a dare. "Are you gonna get dressed, Changmin?"

His smile widened. "I could," he teased.

"Hey! Can you guys close the door or keep it down? Some of us are single and have math homework!"

Both you and Changmin laughed at Chanhee's outburst even though your face was definitely heated up.

Changmin took advantage of your unassuming state and pressed his mouth to yours, tasting your laughter on his tongue until you could only taste his in return. It was a dizzying sort of kiss, his arm still above you and his other curled around your waist.

When he pulled away, he bit his lip around a smirk. "I'll get changed now."

Criminal. Absolutely criminal.

He indeed got changed. And so did you. Apparently, he was being serious about you staying the night, and soon enough, you found yourself buried beneath his covers and swept in his very clingy arms. Not that you were complaining; he smelled nice.

You and Changmin laid facing each other in the darkness of his room. Round spectacles sat awkwardly on his nose bridge since the side of his face was pressed against the pillow, but he said he wouldn't take them off until he was just about to drift off.

"Yn-ie."

"Hm?"

He giggled, turning over and reaching over the side of his bed for something. You were about to question what he was doing until he quite literally shoved his wretched Chucky doll into your face.

"What the flying fuck—" You glared at the toy and its creepy stitched face. You had been startled by it, but you had grown used to it after having to deal with his obsession with the damn thing in the last two years of high school.

Changmin hugged the abomination to his chest as he snickered loudly.

"I thought you got rid of that thing."

"You clearly don't know me well enough."

You began to sit up and make a show of throwing off the covers. "I'm leaving—"

"Wait, wait, wait!" He blubbered, grabbing your upper arm and yanking you back down onto the bed next to him.

He leaned over you, his Chucky doll still tucked in the crook of his arm, as Changmin pouted. The glasses were practically sliding off his nose and his hair was sticking up in the back. What a duality. "I don't want you to leave."

"I'm not cuddling with Chucky, Changmin."

"But—"

"I will go ask Chanhee for an extra blanket."

Changmin's pout contorted into a scowl. "I'll murder him."

You wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of this conversation. "I think you need to go to sleep."

He flopped back onto the bed next to you, reluctantly setting Chucky back down on the floor next to the bed where the wretched thing had been hiding this whole time. You suppressed a shiver.

Finally able to breathe easy, you settled back into Changmin's arms. He tucked you against his chest, his chin settled on top of your head. You felt him shift as he took his glasses off and reached behind him to set them on the nightstand.

You were just drifting off to sleep to the melody of his heart beat when: "Yn?"

"Hm?"

His lips pressed to the crown of your head. "I missed you."

You knew what he meant. You pressed a kiss to his chest and heard the shuddering breath that fell from his lips. "I missed you, too."

EPISODE SEVENTEEN (EPILOGUE): [ON OUR TERMS]

THE problem with the restaurant was that it reminded you of something like the word "home". The sign above the door was made with some common font that one could find on Microsoft Word and you were pretty sure they only took cash, too. There was a reason you had chosen this restaurant in particular, and it was because you thought that eating at a place with your comfort foods would, well, comfort you. But you had been staring at the front for a minute or two now, and you weren't sure it was working.

From beside you, you felt someone take your hand in his. "We don't have to go in," said Changmin, his expression blank and reserved as he looked at the eatery, but softened a considerable amount when he looked over at you.

Your mother was waiting for you in there, somewhere. You wanted to finally talk to her—maybe make some peace with yourself. You'd told Changmin about it, and he insisted on coming as moral support.

You squeezed his hand and he squeezed back. "I can't just not go, Changmin."

His touch was gentle as his thumb grazed over the back of your knuckles, just as gentle as his voice was, "You don't owe her anything, Yn. You deserve an apology from her and you deserve closure, but you don't owe her anything. Not after what she put you through."

You were quiet for a moment and your free hand brushed over the hollow of your throat where the tightening sensation was.

Changmin added, "I'll support whatever decision you come to."

You considered the restaurant again. It had always held a great amount of significance and comfort for you. Did you want to ruin that with a potentially sour conversation? For all you knew, this could end incredibly poorly.

But… there were some things that needed to be done.

You steeled your resolve. "Ready?"

Changmin, all dapper in his dress shirt and pants and styled hair, flashed you a dimpled smile. "Whenever you are."

a/n: wow ... anyways lol thanks for getting through that madness, and hope u enjoyed!! pls do consider reblogging, commenting, or sending an ask to my inbox teehee i would really appreciate it ! now, onto hyunjae's ! >:)

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