Indulgence (w/ Hyewon)
male reader & iz*one hyewon
smut, fluff, angst, 3k words
For as long as you’ve known, you’ve been allergic to chocolate.
You’ve had to just trust me through the majority of your childhood, eyebrows knit and eyes misty as other kids tore through gold and silver foil; biting the inside of your mouth bloody instead of hard-earned Halloween candy.
But you’d be lying if you said you’d never indulged.
Under blankets, cloaked in moonlight, secrecy, and sin, you delighted in what you could sneak to bed in your grubby hands.
And for such an innocent sweet, you pieced together that it was as close to tangible a paradox could get. You reveled in how unwrapped, it was equal parts fully solid and simultaneously already melting into your fingerprints; how in taste, it was equal parts acutely bitter and simultaneously sickly sweet; how to your allergies, it was equal parts undoubtedly delectable and simultaneously why you were sweating in the cold and breaking out into bright pink patches across your neck. The symptoms were nothing close to fatal, of course, just enough of an eyesore that the wiser part of you wouldn’t eat it outside.
So: you could have chocolate, just not the optics.
You’ve pieced together enough that the same antithetical pull is what draws you to Kang Hyewon.
See, when you take the newly vacant student counselor position by next-in-line default, you just trust me’d that it’d be an easy job. You were a newly minted senior with college lined up in the fall, and wanted to take your rite of passage freedom to slack off for the rest of the school year. Now, in lieu of that, you had to man a class outfitted to become a makeshift war room for juniors as they summarized, re-summarized, and then re–re-summarized full life stories into 650-word–bite sizes.
And the college essay was not an easy opponent.
Nothing was sacred enough to not be sharpened into a sob story; tightly-wrapped childhood traumas unpacked for college admissions readers to casually pick away at if it meant more of a chance than the next applicant. The whole experience took a pressure cooker to any crumb of anxiety, and it was now your job to help navigate this.
Hyewon was a junior assigned to your group who you got to know in excruciating detail for two reasons. One, she was a slow writer.
The college application was arguably a solved concept. At best, it was a game of madlibs with a very tough audience. Fill in prompts about your childhood, upbringing, and aspirations to an interesting enough degree, fudging details here and there where you can to pull at heartstrings or fluff up the footsteps you want to follow in, score enough points, tick enough boxes, and you’d have a good shot.
But every time without fail, you got to lean back in your chair as Hyewon approached every new question like it was her first. You got to study her tells: how she tucked her lips into a pout, dimpling her chin; wrestled a hair tie out of where it nestled in her wrist; and gathered everything but two obedient strands of hair out of her face into a loose ponytail, only to slowly inch her gaze towards you a little bit later to ask how everyone else answered the question.
And two, you were absolutely head over heels.
Every time you’ve tried to pinpoint exactly what it is about Hyewon that makes your stomach queasy, you end up finding two more things that do.
One of your first leads came from how she seemingly made striking so soft. When she’d catch you in her gaze, Hyewon had a way of zeroing anything else out; like the implication was that the both of you were sharing a single breath, and any more that you took would take away from hers. No dice.
Another answer came from how from the almond curvature in her eyes, the porcelain ridge on her nose, the satisfied crease that nestled between her lips, down to the curve on her chin, it was like Hyewon physically wasn’t made up of any hard angles; like before God put her on Earth to remind everyone what was holy still existed, an angel double-checked his work. No luck there either.
It only took a couple rounds of this for you to make peace with the ambiguity; that some things were best left unanswered.
The tension that stood in stark contrast to all of this was that you, of course, were her goddamn counselor.
There isn’t a lot of graceful space between being forward and manipulative, and it wouldn’t take too disingenuous of a read for someone to question what was behind your relationship. Something about reciprocation and mutual understanding becoming dishonest when your job was literally getting to the core of Hyewon’s deepest motivations and anxieties — it didn’t take a lot of logic to see how much the guise of writing her essays made things oh so convenient.
The entire situation was at best delicate and at worst, spelled hauntingly awkward hometown visits during spring break, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
So: you couldn’t have Kang Hyewon, the optics wouldn’t let you.
And as if you needed more of a reason, Hyewon was quirky.
You see, where other burnt out juniors had journaling or, like, gateway drugs, Hyewon had an affirmations folder. Slotted in the corner of her phone, accessible by a one-tap shortcut, was an application that she kept photos and voice notes-
“To remind me I’m doing well,” she asserts in the middle of a particularly long stretch of you poking fun at it. “You sound like you might’ve needed it considering all this projection.”
“Let’s walk back projection some,” you try and parry, palms raised.
“I mean, I’d be jealous too if I realized I did college applications the wrong way,” she adds, singsongy enough to read sweet but also with enough acid that it lands how you both know she intended. And then: “Why don’t you add to it?”
You pause for a beat, and Hyewon takes the cue, her eyes darting from her laptop keyboard to the look on your face.
“Ew, and not in any of the ways you’re thinking,” she spits. “You know, because you’re helping me secure my future at a great college or whatever. It’ll be sentimental or some shit.”
You try for a response, but the wiser part of you shuts you up. You tap the red button on her screen and leave her something sentimental or some shit.
“You’re doing great, Hyewon.”
-
For better or worse, this was how the two of you operated: permanently playing high school footsies — loaded, foxy, but finished with enough deniability that you could chalk it up to hormones or puberty. And between the two of you, Hyewon was much better at the game. In your defense, though, she didn’t play by the rules. You’d draw a line in the sand-
i just think this is really cliche, your latest Google Docs comment on her personal statement reads. do you not have any other family stories
And she’d dive headfirst over it-
odd way of getting to know me perv, she replies, before: i don’t like it either. i’ll rewrite!
But you knew you had to continue walking it back.
Call it pretend, call it reputational awareness, call it whatever you want, for one reason or another, you were aware of the very thin line of implication the both of you straddled and were afraid enough to never cross it. Balancing on it, sure — you’d swim behind the buoys all day, but you knew better than to test even just beyond where the waves picked up.
Just as luck would have it, though, it seemed like Hyewon followed a cosmic force your polar opposite. Whether on purpose or blissfully ignorant, it felt like she never looked down at where she was from the line, or even if she knew it existed. But whether like a siren out at sea testing your limits or reciprocating your feelings because she felt the same way, you’d never know.
-
“I just feel like this entire thing is so dumb,” Hyewon remarks, gesturing with a golden fry that drooped downwards like it was somber about the whole thing, too.
It was finally a Friday, which meant that unlike every other day that week in your marathon of after school essay read-throughs and polishing, you could exhale for a little.
You had just finished a long stretch of final edits for your counseling group and were taking things as slow as possible in hopes of making time move the same. You and Hyewon were parked in your car behind an old church building, under the only lamp that worked. Between the two of you sat an oily paper box on top of your center console, housing a scattering of drive through fries and in lieu of ketchup, a single frosty.
“You and everyone in the country, Hyewon,” you smirk, venturing into the box to find the perfect dipping fry.
She returns you an annoyed kiss of her teeth. “Come on. I mean, seriously. For the past couple of months, it’s just been me and how much I can cut up my identity into palatable answers. How much I can think of the future I’ll create. How much I can look backwards and pull out the motivations behind everything I’ve ever done.”
You stop and look over at her. She’s slouched in the passenger car seat, supported mostly only by the small of her back, with her feet up on your dashboard and in the Hyewon usual: everything in a loose ponytail besides two obedient strands. She’s slightly turned away from you, looking longingly at part of her reflection in the rear-view mirror like the implication was that behind the glass, the other her was happier.
You couldn’t help but sympathize. You wondered where you were a year ago, in her shoes: in the middle of writing essays and imagining how you were going to brand yourself for college.
“It’s cliche,” she prefaces. “But I feel like all this looking forwards and backwards… I’m not allowed to enjoy today, you know? The clubs, the grades, the people — I don’t know if I’m doing anything for the application or because I want to do it.”
When you look back at her again, you’re directly in her gaze.
“Are you excited about college?”
You thumb at the fries at the bottom of the box wistfully, if not to buy yourself some thinking time, at least to cut a little bit through the very expectant silence. But you didn’t have much to ponder; you had an answer loaded a long time ago.
You try to couch it as harmlessly as possible.
“I don’t know,” you start, looking for the words. “I guess I’m excited for the clean slate, right? Something about getting to close this chapter of my life and everything that came with it. The clubs, the grades, the people — being done with things I’ll cringe at in a couple of years and questions I didn’t get the answers to.”
You cautiously try for, and catch her gaze again. There’s a beat where you’re both just staring — it could have been a couple, you’re trying your hardest not to keep count — and the line you’re both teetering on erodes, now paper thin. Your ears are hot, expectant; you’re floating by the buoys and reaching out just past, testing the waters.
Hyewon’s eyes soften and her whole body decompresses with her as she lets out a short sigh.
“Beautiful,” she chides, and it’s back to a face you know: the space where her eyes meet the bridge of her nose pinches, and her lips curl up into a satisfied grin. “Some of your best work, really. Like you’re getting desperate for more spots in the affirmation journal.”
And like you rolled down all the windows at the same time, the moment dissipates into the evening, and you’re washed back onto shore.
You tap the red button on her screen.
“Keep going, Kang Hyewon.”
-
If you were being honest, there was a lot you learned about optics.
Firstly, they were exhausting to keep up with. Sure, there was a level of tactness that at a baseline was acceptable to expect of other people, but anything beyond that strayed into pushing an agenda.
And secondly, no one ever keeps a guise up in private.
Because every day you got back to the four walls of your room, cloaked in nothing but moonlight, secrecy, and sin, all you could think of was Kang Hyewon.
And you’d be lying if you said you never indulged.
Your hands find the familiar length of your shaft as they always did, and as you rouse your cock awake, your fingers working counterclockwise as your girth responds in kind, you’re coaxed to attention by the permanent picture you have of Hyewon.
Her hair is up in her usual ponytail, and you reach out to brush the two loose strands of hair away from her face and behind her ears as she kneels down to get below you, sitting on her feet. There’s a beat where you’re both just staring, Hyewon shadowing your length, her head cocked to the side. You study the almonds that shaped her eyes, how softly her nose sloped before it peaked, and as you got to the crease between her lips, you didn’t think there existed a better place to start.
You press the head of your cock between Hyewon’s lips and almost like she was protesting your entry, her tongue slid out to meet it. Your thumb teases along the slit in your tip as you imagine Hyewon runs a long line of saliva in between it and down the full length of your shaft and back, her tongue flat and obedient, slow and wandering where it wanted.
Hyewon licked you clean, running her tongue in circles around your length, teasing in response as you stroked up and down.
In your other hand, like you needed it, you instinctively pulled up Hyewon’s profile, the quick strokes and key presses to get there like clockwork, burned into your memory. And as luck would have it, as if all the gods above shined on you at once, in her last selfie, Kang Hyewon poked a fat tongue out at the camera, unassuming, teasing, and throwing your lust into wanton overdrive.
“Fuck,” you rasp, breath hot, barely a whisper. “Hyewon, you’re so good at that.”
-
“Hyewon, you’re doing so well.”
“You’re doing great, Hyewon.”
Completely engulfed under a blanket, safeguarded by only moonlight, secrecy, and sin, Kang Hyewon indulged in the depths of her affirmations journal. One of her hands sloppily swapped between thumbing the play button on her screen and swiping through its pages, and the other hand buried itself deep in her sweatshorts. Hyewon craned her neck towards her phone, getting as close as she possibly could to the small speaker it sported as she cycled through soundbite after soundbite of your praise for her. Her other hand was busy at work, thumbing the alphabet over her clit as she ran two fingers up and down her needy cunt.
She didn’t need to close her eyes long to imagine what she’d burned into her head over nights of repeating this exact sequence, her mouth drying up, breaths broken into short pants as she felt your hands work their way through her sides like she was chocolate, melting into your fingerprints.
You thumbed lazily at her ribs, caressing the skin under her breasts, taking your time as you completely unwrapped her. The full length of your cock replaced where her fingers busily worked, sliding up and down across her sloppy entrance.
The teasing is unbearable — there’s all this implication, tension, and slow burning in the rubbing between her inner thighs that you’re working with — and Hyewon puts all her energy into looking down at where you are. You catch her in your gaze, and through eyes half-lidded, there’s a beat where you’re both just staring — it could’ve been two, Hyewon was trying her best not to keep count.
“Please,” she tries, barely a whisper in the heat. And as she picks up the rhythm against her clit: “Please put your cock in me.”
Because as much as she craved the real thing — getting with her counselor? Could you imagine the optics?
She taps the button on her screen.
“Keep going, Kang Hyewon.”
---
;)
branfics debut! hope you enjoyed!! thank you @capslocked, @majorblinks, @praeluxius, @ggidolsmuts for pre-reading and just truly setting the standard — literally none of this comes out without the inspiration and LUV i get from being around yall
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Putting Terms on the High Shelf: Main Character Syndrome
As I'm watching C2, one thing I've noticed about Caleb's various sidebars to talk to different people is that he's still very much involving them—the conversations reveal various different priorities not just for Caleb, but for the people he's talking with. Liam's RP is often geared toward encouraging character work out of the other players at the table; it's something you see with Vax early on, and it's very present with Caleb.
So I find the accusations and warnings of Liam having Main Character Syndrome, which started during C1 but really ramped up in C2, to be rather shallow. Look at the contrast between the tables during this:
and this:
In C1x27, Orion adds pressure to the cast's already-frayed nerves with him, compounded from previous incidents of bad behavior, by taking up several minutes of time purely to himself—his only interaction with anyone else at the table is to ask Keyleth for help with alchemy mechanics (fun fact, early Keyleth was into alchemy!). This included:
An attempt to buy 1500 mirrors to build a light array;
A request to his father to send in his home country's army to Whitestone; and
An attempt to combine a fog spell and a sleep spell after being told point blank that it was mechanically impossible
This was all very obviously an attempt to make himself the hero in what is clearly set up to be a Percy-centric arc. (Worth noting, for the record, is that up to this point Percy had actually had very little focus and largely kept himself in the background, while Tiberius had been in focus for most of the show's run up to that point.) Laura snarks that he's like the giant eagles in Lord of the Rings and can just do everything, and if you actually watch the clip that I've giffed above, Travis's tone is genuinely aggravated. This, by the way, is all after Tiberius was notably not present for Percy revealing his backstory to the rest of the party in episode 24; while everyone else voiced concerns for him and went down to his workshop to check on him, Tiberius largely ignored this and went off to do his own business.
That is a selfish player. That is selfish behavior and a clear example of someone who thinks the story should revolve around them. There are several reasons Orion was asked to leave, not just because he fudged his dice rolls.
C2x62 is a completely different story. None of the conversations Caleb has within that episode are just a way for Caleb to gain information; he's engaging with what the other people are doing. When he asks Nott and Jester about the letter they wrote to Astrid, he reveals a little about himself—something he is particularly reluctant to do with Jester—and they are given an opportunity to respond. His conversation with Beau gives time for both of them to check in on each other and where they're at and lets Beau give her own perspective on the politics of the Empire, the Cobalt Soul, and Xhorhas. The discussion with Fjord lets them both level with each other a little and does more work for Fjord's character, letting him open up about his insecurities and issues, than it does for Caleb's. Caleb is still initiating these conversations and he still gets something out of them, but both the players and the audience still get the benefit of the other characters pushing and pulling against that in response.
Like many terms that get thrown around in this circle ("player agency", "manipulating", "metagaming", "going dark", to name a few), Main Character Syndrome has been so misconstrued and warped to fit a heavily biased perspective as to be almost meaningless. Main Character Syndrome is not when a character initiates a lot of conversations, even if you personally don't like the conversations for whatever reason. Main Character Syndrome is not when a character chooses to take a risk or push a big red button, even if you personally don't like the choice for whatever reason. Main Character Syndrome is not when a character has an arc or aspect of lore heavily focused on them, even if you personally don't like the character for whatever reason. (Particularly considering that arc focus is entirely out of the player's control; Taliesin, Liam, and Laura did not in fact force Matt to focus a significant portion of each campaign's lore on Percy, Caleb, or Imogen's backstories respectively.)
Main Character Syndrome is specifically about player selfishness—it's a player inserting their character into scenes or roles where they do not logically belong in order to make them the center of the story, as we see with the example of Tiberius. The camaraderie at the current table versus what was going on back in 2015 does not suggest that anyone currently sees anyone else like that; everyone is laughing at the jokes made at someone's expense, and everyone is getting something to do. Your favorite character may not always be flashy or in focus all the time, but then again, you wouldn't want them to have Main Character Syndrome, would you?
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