#it’s so much stuff but it’ll hopefully be worth it

[teeskz]

¡Arriba! : “Enjoying this dirty night to escape.”

» pairing: fem!reader x OT5 (kim hongjoong, jeong yunho, choi san, song mingi, jung wooyoung)

» summary: being a bookworm, you’re used to your regular schedule of simply studying, eating, oh, and the occasional sleeping. it isn’t until one night, you find yourself at the wrong place at the wrong time, and soon get swept up in one of the craziest games you’ve ever heard. in hindsight, maybe you should’ve declined. but it was only supposed to last for one night. one, dirty night.

» w.c: 12.5k (was not aiming for this number, but this what you get)

» genre & warnings: college au, alcohol consumption, heavy kissing, oral (m. & f. receiving), tit sucking, leaving of hickies, praises, corruption, voyeurism SO MUCH, humiliation kink (reader gets embarrassed a lot), teasing, reader c*ms untouched, BUKAKKE (look it up if you don’t know what it means), no intercourse in here but there’s a shit ton of other stuff, spit mention? titty!obsessed yunho, unknown obsession w/ reader, pussydrunk wooyoung, if i were to make a pt. 2, it would be a gang bang, just saying.

» a/n: this is the first edition of my T!TS UP series, hopefully it was worth the wait! (im so so sorry for taking 19 days to upload this, yes i counted how long since i posted that teaser🙏)

» LINK TO T!TS UP SYNOPSIS HERE

» taglist: @mingyuslice @facioleeknow @sharksandminhos @yakosobaboba @xcynthiaaa @hyukssunflower @tiny-apocalypse @pearltinyy @therealcuppicake @kxrta @hrts4hanniehae @softwsan @certifiedmoa @stayskz143 @isabel-018

if your name is crossed off, i still couldn’t find you

| Pt.2 Out Now

Mmmm, no that’s not right either.

The bites on your pencil has increased significantly as you start to chew on the end, never have being so stumped at a problem before.

You’d been rolling through your homework with ease, and even finding somewhat joy at solving these difficult questions. The answers were just flowing right out of you. Until this one.

What if I squared- wait, that doesn’t work for these kinds of theories.

You stare at the paper.

But I’ve reduced the ratio up until here, so how come………….oh!

Instant eagerness returns as you quickly realize what went wrong. And just in the matter of a few seconds, you’re able to work out the rest of the problem and eventually submit your homework.

Sighing happily, you reach your arms up to stretch and straighten out your back. Sitting at the same desk for the past 3 hours, although comfortably, has been draining. Goodness, were you ready for a much needed break.

Fixing your hair, you stand up, your pajama pants falling to the ground and begin scuffling to your communal bathroom.

Sharing with 3 other girls has its difficulties, you won’t deny that, but on Saturday nights like this where all 3 are out -and probably won’t be home till the next morning- you were thankful to get the space all to yourself.

You do your business, wash your hands and right as you step back into your room, a low rumble emits from below. It’s your stomach practically yelling for food.

Oh, that’s another bad habit of yours. Since often you’d find yourself getting so caught up in your workload, more times than not, you wind up forgetting to eat. And also sometimes pee.

Even as you check your nearby clock resting on the night stand, reading 12:49 AM, determination, and maybe the high you still rode from solving that problem, drives you to venture out for food.

So, that’s exactly what you do.

Throwing on some fuzzy slippers, you don’t bother putting on a shirt to cover your tank, believing it’ll take you less than 5 minutes to find a simple vending machine and head back.

Quietly, you open your door and peer down both ends of the corridor. Both are equal distance from a couple of machines close by, so just choosing whatever, you make a left and patter down the hall.

As you’re walking, you can’t help but notice a sort of stillness in the air, one that you can’t quite pinpoint. Like everyone’s disappeared and you’re the only one left.

You finally reach the end and walk into the common area, where on most days are packed, but for tonight is eerily quiet. The vending machine glows off into the corner and your tummy croaks in gratefulness.

Hmm, what am I in the mood for? Ambling over, you stop in front of it and ponder. I could get something simple like the cookie package. Or maybe the baked chips, I think those are good.

So many options, you’re getting overwhelmed. As you continue scanning through your options, you unexpectedly get filled with the sounds of footsteps shuffling across the hard floor, and soon a boy comes into view from the far side of the room.

“Always have to do everything myself.” He’s grumbling to himself, eyes pointed downwards as he scratches the back of his head.

Your eyes are wide as you just stare at him walking closer and closer to you, till eventually the boy glances up and you two lock eyes. And it’s then you recognize him.

“Kim Hongjoong?” Your voice raises at the end as you’re genuinely surprised at his presence. He’s a senior in one of your classes, Ethics, and wow, is it shocking to see him here.

From what you know, he doesn’t live in this housing unit nor have you ever seen him around. So, what’s he doing here? His own face contorts with shock while his legs slow to a halt, tilting his head to the side.

“Y/N, what a surprise,” Starting with your head, his gaze takes notice to your attire and travels downwards, “You just wake up?”

You follow his eyes and try to suppress the sheer amount of embarrassment rising inside of you, “Oh- um, no…”

“Needed a late night snack?” He tries again, a small corner tugging up at his lips.

You lift your head and couldn’t help the sheepish grin spreading wide, “Mmm.”

Hongjoong lets out a short laugh, “Understandable. My friends were craving those powdered donuts and cookies, and tasked me with getting them.”

“Ooh!” You turn towards the snack display and regard the white packaging, “I could get the donuts.”

He watches your expression change from quizzical to astonishment, and his eyebrows scrunch. As if you’re a puzzle and he’s having difficulty figuring you out.

He murmurs before shifting just a slight bit closer to you, “What’re you doing up anyways? I didn’t peg you as the night owl type.”

The smile you bore remains on your face, moving your head back to the boy, “When I got done with my homework, my stomach was growling.”

“Growling.” He repeats, an amused tone to his sentence.

“Growling.” You emphasize again and he could only offer a nod.

He waits a beat before going to speak, “It’s Saturday, though.”

Looking back at him, you meekly shrug, not really seeing what that had to do anything, then rotate again to the vending machine, “Yeah, perfect time to get it done. None of my roommates are home so it’s easier to concentrate.”

Hongjoong hums at your words, “All by yourself, then? Isn’t it lonely?”

“Well,” When phrasing it like that, you find it does put a minor dip in your mood, “I’m always too caught up in my assignments to really notice.”

Instead of immediately responding to you, he allows your words to hang in the air. You think you might’ve just said something out of the ordinary, glancing back to Hongjoong in an attempt to reexplain, when you notice him staring at your backside.

Then, without warning, you feel a pinch at the fabric of your waistband. A soft gasp escapes your lips as warm fingers pull at your pants and tug them upwards, “Y/N, your pajama’s are so cute. You can’t have them lopsided like that.”

You’re a deer in headlights while he goes to meet your eyes. As his gaze lingers on you, you find it more than difficult to reciprocate the action. Your cheeks feel hot, and the stutter that quickly comes when going to answer further shows your awkwardness, “O-Oh, um…”

The spot still burns from where he had touched you and it makes you lose your train of thought. It isn’t until your eyes dart around, desperately looking for a distraction, and catch glimpse of the powdered donuts in the machine, “What-what about your friends? They’re waiting for you still, right? You should be con-considerate of them, and bring them back their snacks.”

Hongjoong takes in your new demeanor, with him watching your body language, and god, are you something else. How swiftly you go from advocating for yourself, excitement radiating from you, to a stumbling mess of words; it actually fascinates him.

“Right,” he follows in your footsteps and puts attention back to the donuts, the fond smile on his lips evermore growing, “They did want me back quick.”

“Yes, yes.” You affirm in a more stern manner, hoping this copes with your unsure state.

“I’ll just tell them I got distracted by something cute.” He caps off his statement with a glance over at you and you look back at him, a stunned expression present.

He does a once over at your outfit, “Your pants.”

You now understand what he means and respond by shaking your head ‘yes’. Because of course he was referring to your pants.

This time, an audible laugh emits from the boy. He has to throw a hand over his face to stop himself from showing too much of his teeth. Fuck, he is finding so much entertainment from this.

You don’t fully comprehend what’s happening, or why Hongjoong’s outwardly making claims such as this. In all honesty, this is probably the most interaction you’ve had with him in all four months of knowing the Senior, and you’ve come to realize: he’s pretty odd.

“I should-” You start right as Hongjoong goes to speak.

“You should come back to my friend’s dorm with me. It’ll be fun with you there.”

And further embarrass yourself? Absolutely, not.

“I can’t- I shouldn’t,” you bring your hands to fumble around with the hem of your tank and deliberately avoid eye contact with him, “It’s late and I was planning on heading to um..bed soon….so it- I shouldn’t.”

When you finally drag your eyes up to Hongjoong, the friendly expression he wears somehow puts you at an instant ease, “Just stop by. And then if you wanna leave, I’ll walk you back to your dorm. That sound okay?”

The way he spoke, so nonchalant and so caring, honestly made you feel stupid. Like you have no reason to feel insecure.

But this was all new for you. You don’t hang out with friends, you don’t go out on Saturday nights, that’s not you. And you don’t have a problem with it. At least, you hadn’t before.

Then, here comes this boy, who extends an invite to you. He’s giving you a chance to venture outside of your safety room. He sees you. So, albeit hesitantly, you make an internal decision to join him. Plus, you knew well you weren’t actually going to sleep.

“That..that actually sounds nice.” You agree, and Hongjoong grins.

As he goes to answer you, he’s reaching into his back pocket in search of the crumpled bills he later pulls out, “Let me get the guys their snacks, then we can head over there.”

You step back and allow him to cut in front of you. He shoves the money into the slot, enough to get multiple things of junk, and you watch as he requests 2 packages of the donuts and a package of cookies.

Once they all drop to the bottom, Hongjoong bends down to the retrieve the snacks.

“Oh, you got two-?” Him shoving one of the donuts in your hand cause you to pause.

“Here, since it’s my fault you’re craving them now.” He states and you take the snack with gratefulness. You thank him graciously and he simply rejects it, claiming it really was no big deal, then starts to make strides back to the dormitory and you follow behind.

The two of you twists around a corridor and walk down what seems like a never-ending hallway.

“You’re too kind, Hongjoong. Inviting me out, buying me stuff.” You quietly gush behind your senior while he holds in a chuckle. You’re too cute.

“Really, I don’t mind one bit.” He slows down once he’s in front of a room and so do you, assuming that his friend’s dorm is the one with the white board that has ‘WE’RE NOT BEING LOUD, YOU’RE JUST QUIET.’ written in big, bolded letters on the door.

The sounds of faint bickering could be heard from the other side so slowly, you peer towards Hongjoong, "Is everything okay?"

He's harboring a somber gaze then lets out a slow, controlled sigh, "Knowing them, probably not."

With that being said, he grabs hold of the handle before throwing the door in, announcing your guys' entrance.

The sight you're met with is unruly, though quickly you take notice of how familiar you are with every single person in the room.

There sat in nearby chairs are Jeong Yunho and Song Mingi, both from your History class, cackling at the scene unfolding right before their eyes of Choi San and Jung Wooyoung slapping and throwing hits at one another.

Choi San is an English major just like you, and you've known Jung Wooyoung since high school. But, wow, you hadn't realized they all new each other.

"You gonna talk about me again?" Choi San threatens the junior whom he's currently hurting, applying pressure to the nape of his neck.

"Aish, aish!" Jung Wooyoung winces at the pain though a crooked smile is present on his face, "What're you, a fucking barbarian? Get off."

"What the fuck are you two doing?" Hongjoong rushes over to deescalate the situation. He shoves Choi San into a corner and rolls Jung Wooyoung the other way, "I wasn't even gone for that long and already you guys try to kill each other."

At that statement, another uproar ensues. All of the boys shouting at him, yelling claims of "You took fucking forever!" "The hell?!" And other variations.

You raise your shoulders and tuck yourself inwards at the commotion yet, part of you seemingly enjoying the racket. A soft giggle flows out of you, which in turn makes your presence known.

“Y/N?” Jung Wooyoung questions first.

All pairs of eyes briskly dart to you, some bearing perplexed expressions, others with stunned looks as there you stood, pajama’s and all, in the middle of Jung Wooyoung’s dormitory.

“Why’re you here?” Choi San adds and right as you go to respond to them, Hongjoong’s quick to answer for you, retracting his hands off of the boys and pushing himself up.

“We met at the vending machines, and I invited her back.” He’s sauntering over to you now, an all-knowing smirk in place. He leans down just a smidge when he’s inches away from your face and lowly speaks, “Want me to tell them about the distraction?”

You instantly hip at that, whatever calm manner you had dissipating by the second. It wasn’t subtle either as everyone eyes you and Hongjoong’s encounter.

“She didn’t have anything else to do, and was more than happy to come here.” He continues while his gaze stays on your face.

“I…” You open your mouth as if you have something to follow up with, but then instantly close it and opt to let Hongjoong’s reply suffice. For the most part, that is pretty much what happened.

After the wave of confusion from the boys, comes a round of cheers. They’re all welcoming you in as Hongjoong walks you over to the group, and you’ve never felt more comfortable yet red-faced in your life.

You plop down on the floor between Mingi and Yunho, both of them inches above you in rolling chairs, and enjoy the swellness of want being produced from everyone, they want you here.

“Did you just wake up?” Wooyoung asks as he scoots his way back over to the rest of the group, and you shake your head ‘no’.

“She’s been up all night doing homework.” Hongjoong smiles from the far corner and the response brings in a collection of oh’s.

“You’re so smart,” San coos while sprawling himself out on the floor, him now laying on his side and propping his head up with a hand, “Wanna help me out with my shit?”

Before you could speak up, a package of cookies get thrown at his back, a burst of laughter filling the air. San yelps from the impact and the culprit, Hongjoong, wades his way closer to everyone.

“Don’t go dragging Y/N into your bullshit, do it yourself.” The Senior throws the other package of donuts to Yunho, who catches it effortlessly, then takes a seat right behind San on the floor.

Instead of arguing, San simply huffs and goes to grab at and eat the cookies while the rest of the group moves forward in conversation.

“So, what’ve you guys been up to tonight?” You gaze around the room, asking your first set of questions, only to get unexplainable looks in return from the bunch. They all stop making eye contact with you and glance at one another with an expression you couldn’t quite decipher.

There’s a beat of silence when a nudge from a foot draws your attention to Mingi, who’s at first biting his lip but then releases it with narrow eyes, “You a snitch?”

“A…snitch?” You parrot, staring up into his face then softly shake your head no. The boys couldn’t get enough of your reactions.

Yunho’s mouth goes thin as he forces himself to look away from you right as Wooyoung watches you attentively. Just like to Hongjoong, you were an interesting thing to them, someone that intrigued them like no other.

And wouldn’t that make for an interesting night?

“Alright then,” Mingi concludes and San sits up, extending a hand underneath the bed. Before you could ask for a further explanation, a near-full bottle of alcohol gets pulled out then tossed to the middle of the mini circle you all have formed.

You regard the bottle with shock. Any form of alcohol is strictly prohibited on campus, and here in front of you lies tangible proof of it.

“Who put it underneath the bed?” Hongjoong inqueries while going in to reach for the drink. He’s eyeing San while unscrewing the cap, as San stares daggers at Mingi.

“Dumbass over here kicked it underneath there.”

“Yeah, fucking big foot.” Wooyoung interjects earning him and threatening look from Mingi.

“Ah,” Hongjoong, after getting the bottle opened, takes a big swig of the liquid, downing it with ease, “Was wondering where it went when Y/N and I came in here.”

A part of your heart raced at the actions unfolding. He passes the bottle off to Wooyoung, only after teasing him for it, then you listen as everyone scolds Wooyoung for being a hog. Out the corner of his eye, however, Yunho notices you fidget.

“What’s the matter, Y/N?” Yunho shifts to amorously watch you, drawn into your well-known rule follower persona, “You’ve never seen alcohol before?”

You feel all eyes turn to you as they await an answer. Of course you’ve seen alcohol before, knew what it is. Does he think you live under a rock? But still, the sight of it leaves a twinge bit of nervousness in the pit of your stomach.

“I have, actually.” Scatteredly, you bounce between looking at the boys while trying to sound steady, “I know my roommates like that a lot.”

“Yeah?” Wooyoung beams then leans in to place the bottle in the space between your legs, “Feeling like trying some now?”

You look down at it with uncertainty. You know this is wrong, this is so, completely, wrong, “Uh….”

“Don’t be scared.” San encourages, a tiny smirk taking over, and soon a ripple of motivation circulates throughout the room. The guys are all murmuring small praises, yet keeping watchful eyes on you, testing you.

One of your hands lifts to grab hold of the bottle’s neck, the other holding the bottom for support. You scan over the glass warily then hesitantly glance up to the others, “Do I just…”

You mock an action of drinking it which earns you a laugh from Hongjoong, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Come on,” Mingi rests a palm on the back of your head, stroking you smoothly. The movement is so comforting that you don’t even realize him taking strands of your hair to wrap around his fingers, then ever so slowly he tilts your head backwards.

Instinctively, you raise your arms to guide the alcohol closer to you, and without another moment to think about it, you pour a stream of the lukewarm liquid down your throat.

“That’s it, just like that.” Yunho mutters sweetly as you continue spilling it down your throat, not really knowing when to stop.

Quickly, the burning catches up to you and reactively, you stop pouring the bitter alcohol and shoot your head forward, grimacing from the taste. Although it’d felt like you just inhaled a gallon of hand sanitizer, the congratulatory spurs, courtesy of the guys, makes up for it. They were proud of you, and it made you feel good.

San holds out his hand to you, indicating he wanted to be next, “Took it like a champ, Y/N. Good job.”

You lend the bottle to him and almost instantly, you swiftly make note of the alcohol coursing through your veins. Eyes big, a thump of reality hits you and deeply, you take in a breath while returning to your spot. Woah.

The passing of the bottle lasted for about the next 30 minutes, everyone taking turns in drinking. When it’d be close to your turn, you’d find yourself anticipating the action. Then when it came your time, all over again, you down the drink, make the most disgusted face, then hand it off to Mingi. And some time during it all, you had demolished those donuts Hongjoong supplied you with.

It’s exhilarating, the situation you’re in. It’s thrilling how you’re being commended for doing something defying. And you come to realize: maybe you actually needed a night like this.

“So, uh,” you start with a faint smile on your face, “Is this all you guys do? Drink and sit in a circle?”

Wooyoung has now made his way over to your lap, resting his head on top of your soft thigh, “Mmhmm. Sometimes, we’ll talk about other people too.”

“Oh, fun.” You smile but your attention gets captured by Mingi waving a hand out.

He’s attempting to get Wooyoung’s notice despite his lack of verbiage, “Yah, yah, what-uh…what was that game you had? That one you said we didn’t have enough players for?”

Wooyoung fails to move, instead choosing to keep his eyes shut and body close to you, “Who’s he talking to?”

A kick from Yunho sends him flying at that response, rolling off of you and makes him land on his back. You laugh amusingly as Wooyoung stumbles around to stand up.

“Okay, fine!” He whines, wavering around slightly while heading to his closet, “You guys have a fucking problem.”

Hongjoong’s laying with his back to the floor, chest up to the ceiling and yields his head to face you, “He’s always trying to get us to play this stupid game.”

“But we’ve never had enough players.” Yunho buzzes, moving from his spot in the chair to the open ground next to you.

“Not until our Y/N decided to join.” San’s tracing the exposed part of your ankle from your pants riling up, and you offer a content ‘mmm’.

“Got it.” Wooyoung uses a palm to shut the closet door, then comes back to the group with a small, red box in hand.

“What game is it?” You inquiry, bringing your head closer to the box when Wooyoung takes a spot in the middle of Hongjoong and Yunho.

Hongjoong peers over to him and begins reading off of the label, “Tits….Up.”

“The hell is this?” Mingi has the bottle currently and is resting his arms against his thighs, gripping the bottle in one hand. If you wanted to lean back, you’d touch his leg, that’s how close he is to you.

“It’s- It’s a drinking game,” Wooyoung studies the back of the box, and you happen to catch glimpse of a seductive pattern printed out on the packaging. The kissy lips are cute, you think as you aimlessly regard the box.

“So,” Yunho extends his arm out to cross in front you, the alcohol now being given to him, “How’d we play again?”

Wooyoung finally opens up the game, grabbing hold of the cards to shuffle them then instantly start to sort them out. All of the red-colored cards get grouped together, the pink-colored ones in a separate pile, then lastly the black cards lay flatly in the middle of it all.

“From what I remember, we all roll a die that tells us which color card to pick up.” He tries to grab the die out of the box but it ends up slipping out of his grip and flings towards your foot, “Whoops.”

“Ooh.” You pick it up and begin to browse, seeing the red’s and pink’s and black’s filling up different side’s of the die while the other squares have 2 ‘roll again’ and a ‘skip turn’ as the remaining options.

“Red is dare, pink is truth, and black means it’s a challenge.” Wooyoung finishes, which you could tell by him throwing down the instructions to the side of him.

“It’s just truth or dare, then?” You’re confused. If it is just truth or dare, then what’s the whole point of having this?

He shakes his head at your comment, a light laugh trickling out, “Just truth or dare? Yeah, on like steroids.”

Hongjoong retrieves the previously discarded manual and brings it to his face, “Don’t do the dares: drink, don’t do the truths: drink, don’t do the challenges: drink, drink, and drink.”

“There’s a number of shots listed at the bottom of every card, so if you choose to not do what’s on one of them then that’s the equivalent to it. That make sense?” Wooyoung explains and collectively, there’s murmurs of agreement.

“How do you win?” You perk up with a new sense of curiosity.

“Gotta have the most cards collected.” He shoots back and Hongjoong quietly confirms him.

“You only get the card if you complete what’s on it.”

“In other words, don’t be a pussy.” San teases.

Alright, you can do this. Your first drinking game, ever. Excitment’s buzzing all around you as Yunho bends down to pick up the die. So exciting.

“I’ll go first.” He says then goes to shake the cube in a closed fist. He releases the roll and all together, you watch the die travel down and around Wooyoung’s carpet, only stopping when it hits the edge of the box.

“Hmm, truth.” Hongjoong states as the rose-colored square is clearly shown upright.

Yunho reaches in to swipe one of the pink cards, turning it over, then reading aloud, “No secrets allowed, share one of your biggest turn-ons.”

Your eyebrows raise as the rest of the group hoots in await for his reply. Biggest turn on? Like…

“How many shots if you don’t answer?” Mingi asks, nodding his head in the direction of Yunho.

Yunho scans through the card till he’s at the bottom of it, “Uh, it only says one.” He says and goes to pocket the card, “That’s a fucking waste.”

You’re staring at him in awe, the suspense creeping up the walls of your stomach. What’s he gonna say? How much is he willing to expose? If you get a card like that, how much are you willing to expose?

He looks around the room while his thoughts churn, “My biggest turn on? I don’t…I guess I’ll….damn, there’s too many!”

“Just choose one.” Mingi sighs gruffly, and it’s then you decide to rest your back against his leg. It’s been brushing against your skin for some time now so, you know, maybe you need the extra support.

“Fine, just one?” Yunho catches his lip with a tooth, taking in the scenery when his eyes land on you. The eye contact doesn’t lasts too long, with him dropping his sight down briefly, too briefly for you to even wonder what he’s thinking, then he opens his mouth, “I like seeing stiff nipples through a shirt, the big, puffy ones especially. It’s so damn hot to me.”

Hongjoong immediately covers his mouth to control a snicker, San practically doing the same. Wooyoung holds in a smile and you’re left to speculate that maybe there’s something more to Yunho’s answer. And now, you’re feeling self-conscious.

“Leave Y/N alone, Yunho. You’re being a dick.” The voice behind you, Mingi, chastises.

At the mention of your name, you slowly glance down towards your chest and the embarrassment you had previously hits you like wave. You had absolutely no idea your nipples were erected, essentially sticking out miles from your tank top. They’re hard, and stiff, just like how he described them.

“Alright, fine,” Yunho throws an apologetic look your way, “But still, I’m serious. That kind of stuff turns me on.”

You want to cover yourself up, hide your chest away. You were basically flashing the boys unknowingly and yet, why does your heart start to beat irregularly? A sliver of you starts to feel shame. Is it wrong you seemingly like the attention? Enjoy the thought of knowing it was you who turned him on?

And in turn, maybe that makes you a little excited, but, a different kind. The kind you only feel when it’s late at night, your roommates are out, and have nothing but your fingers to keep you entertained.

“Should we pass it off to Y/N?” Someone questions which break you out of your state.

No way, at least not yet, “Actual- Actually, can I go last?”

The group regards you first, then pass the look off to Wooyoung who, if that’s the case, would be going next. He simply shrugs then snatches up the dice, going to roll.

In the midst of his turn, a hand is placed onto your leg, scaring you just a bit but also sending a jolt through your core, “Are you nervous now?”

San speaks quietly to you, and you look back behind your shoulder at him, “Just wanted to watch some more before I go.”

He shakes his head understandingly, but doesn’t immediately let go. It’s not until, Wooyoung announces getting ‘truth’ in which he remembers his placement on your leg. Though, he didn’t make much effort to remove himself fast.

Wooyoung’s already reading his card when you decide to hone back into the game, and you try to ignore the small build emitting inside of you. Or, is it just the alcohol? Yeah, probably just that.

“Get a good look at everyone,” He starts, “Let us know, who’s looking the most fuckable? And this one’s 2 shots if I don’t answer.”

A low ‘ooh’ rumbles in the crowd, including one from yourself. Wooyoung holds the card out to his chin, striking a ‘thinking’ pose while he examines everyone, “So hard.”

You sense your chest heaving up and down, anticipation flooding you. Wooyoung darts his eyes to one side of the room, then dramatically to other, but eventually an answer is made.

“Sannie’s been working out a lot more lately,” A sly grin spreads on Wooyoung’s face, eyeing the junior who’s currently fake flexing, and then they roll over to you, “But I think little Y/N has to be my pick. You’re just looking too good right now. So, fuckable was it?”

You ‘eep’, and before you could think, you’re throwing a hand over your face to cover the immense blush you wear. Where do these guys get off on embarrassing you like this?

He lets out a menacing laugh, knowing you’d react as such. Sometimes, he just couldn’t help himself when it came to messing with you. You just make it too easy for him.

“Wow, how’s it feel being the center of attention, Y/N?” Hongjoong smiles, taking the dice from Wooyoung’s possession and you could only offer a head shake as your reply.

San follows up next, watching you with such a fondness, “I don’t know, guys, I’m thinking she’s starting to like this.”

You drop your hands, now ready to face the group, and the intensity of your jolt worsens. It’s almost starting to feel, to feel like a throb. And instead of it residing in just your core, you could recognize it radiating to other places.

“Hongjoong, just go.” You sigh out, borderline disgusted with yourself at the new realization that you’re genuinely enjoying this. That you are getting incredibly turned on by the humiliation.

He does as you say, rolling the dice and retrieving a card after earning the first ‘dare’, but instead of reading it out loud to the rest of the group, Hongjoong looks it over in his head. His face is changing from confusion, to perplexity, then ultimately, revolution.

Placing the card back in the middle of the pile, he requests for the bottle which San hands, then takes his first shot. The rest of you guys are surprised by this decision, some of you going in to hound Hongjoong about what card he grabbed.

“Not gonna tell.” Is all he says before taking a whopping 4 swigs of alcohol back to back and shuddering every single time.

“Holy shit!” Wooyoung cackles out, amused by the older student’s willingness to not compete.

“It was worth 5 shots?” Yunho’s voice cracks and you’re left stunned. Just what was on that card?

Hongjoong tosses the die over to San, the next person to go, while he tries his best to ignore the way everyone’s watching him. No matter the looks, no matter the gazes, there’s no way in hell he’d ever reveal what was on it.

San rolls out the cube and it lands on ‘truth’. He reaches down and picks up the pink card, and unlike the senior, does read it aloud everyone, “What’s the dirtiest thing you masturbated to?”

While San lets out a disgruntled huff, Wooyoung brightens up right away, shooting an arm into the air and beaming, “Oh! Oh! I can answer this, please, let me tell them how fucking weird you are.”

“I’ll kill you,” San lowers his head, rather intimidatingly, and extends an arm out for the bottle, “It’s only 2 shots, I’ll just take that.”

Hongjoong proceeds to give him the alcohol, and San downs his shots like it was nothing. After him, is Mingi, who’s been decently far away from all of the action.

“Awww, Mingi, come down here with the rest of us. You look like a loner.” Wooyoung belittles, causing the boy behind to scoff harshly. But even then, he still does it, scooting himself off of the chair and making his way down to the ground.

You get booted off from his leg as he’s moving, though, once he has his position in front of the chair and propping himself up against that, he signals you to rest again on him, this time allowing you to lean back on his chest. He widens out his legs to get you comfortable, and now, you recline into him.

The action was so nonchalant, hardly any thought behind it, that no one even gave you two crap for it. However, they all stare enviously at the boy, “Someone give me the die.”

San fulfills his wish and does so, Mingi immediately going straight into throwing it down. The die rolls around till it lands on a red square, signaling the need for a ‘dare’. He doubles over to reach for a card, taking you down with him, and selects one of the ones at top before returning back.

He’s secretive of his card, pulling the same stunt Hongjoong did. Curiously, however, you peer over towards him. And so Mingi, all the while not taking his eyes off of the card, crosses his unoccupied arm in front of you and grabs hold of your cheek, forcibly turning you to the other side.

He mutter-reads the card softly to himself as you find humor in the way he had dealt with you, your cheek smushing against your mouth. After a period, he drops the card and extends an arm out to San, signaling him to pass the alcohol over.

“What the- you guys are pussies.” Yunho chides while Wooyoung shakes his head disapprovingly.

“Oh, booo. Y/N, do you know what this means?” He asks you, Mingi lowering his other arm so you could crane your neck back to Wooyoung.

The anxiety bubbling inside renders you clueless at the thought of knowing you’re next up, and so you stare blankly at him, “What does it mean?”

“Unless you want everything to go tits up, you need to do what’s on the cards. No matter what it says.” He finishes off his statement with a shrug, and Yunho nods encouragingly.

You feel a drop in your palm as Mingi hands you over the die, nervousness flowing through you, “I- okay.”

Your heart is pounding against your rib cage when you start to shake your enclosed hand, a mix between sweat and fear coating the cube. You release it shortly after and watch it roll around in front of you.

Eventually, the velocity of it slows and the wild spinning stops, leaving a scarlett-red square staring back at you. A ‘dare’.

“Oh, our first dare.” There’s a bite to Wooyoung’s tone, proving obvious that he's choosing to ignore the past few rounds.

San leans forward for you and grabs a card, handing it off to you, "You can do this."

You don’t even look at it immediately and instead wait until you were back against Mingi before reading it aloud to the others.

“Did someone turn up the temperatures?" you start off steadily, "Suddenly, you’re feeling hot. Have the others player choose which piece of clothing to remove, hope this helps your problem…”

Keeping your eyes locked on the words. You trail off towards the end, not finding the courage to look up knowing they're all watching you. Undressing you in their heads.

“We get to choose?” Yunho happily accepts this feat as does everyone else. They make your already rapid heart accelerate, but what’s even worse is how the stupid throb below intensifies.

Hongjoong, ever so leisurely, grabs hold of the open flap from your pajama bottoms and wiggles the fabric around, "I say we get rid of these."

San perks up excitedly at the proclamations, “I second. Y/N, you don’t need those on anymore.”

This is so wrong. So, incredibly wrong.

While you're distracted by those two, you fail to notice Mingi traveling a hand down to the waist band of your pants, lifting it up to hardly reveal the shadow of your underwear line and bare skin, “Can you take ‘em off for us?”

“Let’s go, Y/N-ie. You can’t keep us waiting.” Wooyoung pouts while also tugging at the other pant leg.

The pleads of the group grow, while your determination to not do it shrinks. God, are they making this difficult for you.

After a few more begs, and a few more touches, you break and decidedly give in, “F-Fine, I'll get these off.”

Mingi breaths out, the hand that was on your waist band slipping below to touch your smooth, outer leg. He teases the others by showing them bits and pieces of your skin, not fully pulling your pants down till Yunho comes to the other side in helps of tugging them off of you.

Collectively, they all aid in discarding your bottoms and once they’re gone, you try to suppress the urge to cover yourself. There, in full display for everyone to see, are your tight, pale yellow panties that’re always your favorite to wear to bed.

But when you’re damn-near half naked in front of a group of boys, you’re mentally scolding yourself for not wearing something more attractive; like how one of your roommates owns a lacy, black thong that you’ve seen one too many times before.

Hongjoong brings a light graze to your now exposed legs, tracing around your skin, “You’re so cute when you listen to us.”

"Look, there's even little flowers." San pokes fun at you, even going as far as pinching your underwear in a teasing manner.

“Can- Can we move on?” You’re letting out small huffs while Mingi brings a hand down to rub at your thigh.

"Aww, alright, alright. Guys, let's ease up on her." Yunho reaches over your legs to retrieve the lonely die from the ground.

The rest of the boys oblige, them returning to their spots with slick smiles on their face. Sure, they'll play the game, but just know, they're in it for the long haul.

And it’s going to get way worse than this.

Yunho gives his fist a hardy shake before releasing it to the ground. The die quickly spins before falling still and revealing a ‘skip turn’ square for all the group to see. He lets out a ‘damn’, then moves onto Wooyoung, who’s taking the cube willingly.

“It’s gonna be a good one, I can feel it.” He darts his tongue out to the side while bringing two hands to cover up the die, jiggling all around till he drops it.

It lands on red, ‘dare’, and eagerly, Wooyoung snags one of the cards from the top of the scarlett pile, “Demonstrate your oral skills on a banana or peach,” he reads with an amusement to his tone, “Or if you have the real the real thing, that’s double points.”

Your eyes close as you take a deep inhale, dreading the next words to be spoken from his lips.

"Banana or peach...." He fake ponders, stroking his chin while staring up at the ceiling, "Hmm, I guess if I have to, I'll go with the peach."

"But we don't have any on us." San makes point in which Wooyoung feigns stupidity.

"Oh, you're right Sannie. Well, then what am I supposed to do?"

Almost defeated, your eyes widen after feeling a hand cupping your ankle. Wooyoung's giving you an expression, a mix between cunning and slyness, "Y/N-ie, what do you think?"

You gape back at him, "What I- I don't think anything."

"Well, don't we have the real thing?" He quips, inching closer, and you have to physically bite you inner lip to stop a whine from coming out.

Just the thought of what he was insinuating, it's just so.....dirty that you couldn't help the way you were feeling. And you aren't sure how much more you could take.

"I...I guess technically - we do-"

"Yah, Hongjoong, what's the rule about challenges and dares that involve other players?" Wooyoung calls back and the senior's fast to respond.

"If another player's required to participate due to a card but refuses, they must be the ones to take the drink instead." He reads off of the manual so swiftly you'd almost think he has it memorized.

"Would poor Y/N rather drink than let Wooyoung show off his skills?" Yunho mocks, causing, and for the first time this evening, a tiny, nearly inaudible whimper to buzz from you.

The noise leaves the rest of the group stunned.

Wooyoung regards you and just so leisurely does he fall in between your legs, now face to face with your clothed cunt, "You'd really rather drink? I promise, I won't be too long."

"Don't leave him hanging." San nudges and the rest of the group follow in the protests.

"But I..." you quiet down, "In front of everyone?"

Hongjoong leans back on his hands, intently watching, "We don't mind."

"Just, relax." Mingi guides you to rest again on his chest, providing slack for Wooyoung to draw your hips closer. You could feel his hot breath in huffs and it's driving you mad.

"Can I? Please?" He finishes off and it's then you give him a slight nod.

"Oh, my-” Yunho groans, and you almost copy him in the way Wooyoung brings a hand up to your underwear and pushes it to side.

"I'll be...quick." He mutters, eyes tracing all around your sex. His tongue darts out then before you could react, he's sliding the wet muscle up the length of your pussy.

You gasp at the feeling. Finally, a source of stimulation for you to enjoy.

He goes in again, lapping at you till he reaches your clit and sucks on it. Waves of pleasure ripple throughout your core with each slurp of your bud. Wooyoung shifts to wrap his hands around your thigh for support as he continues going down on you.

You throw a hand over your mouth to cover the scream that was just about to be let out. And next thing you know, your hips begin circling deep into his mouth while he guzzles away at your sweet pussy.

"Damn, you don't need to fucking eat her." San scoffs, which breaks Wooyoung from the haze he was in. Absentmindedly, he pulls away from your cunt with a satisfied grin, but not before going back in to give you a quick kiss on your lips. Your pussy lips.

The action makes you quiver and if he had carried on, you were sure you would've came all over his face.

"Holy fuck." Yunho breathes out shakily and it's taking all of his strength to not palm himself like a fucking pervert in front of everyone.

Wooyoung scoots back to his original spot while you're left panting on top of Mingi. What the actual hell just happened?

"Let's check the damage." Hongjoong eyes are glazed as he's watching your fucked out expression and hell, if it doesn't turn him on.

A hand gets brought around to your front and grips the peak of your underwear, scrunching it enough to transform it into a line then scoots off to the side. Your glistening, thick cunt is now open and on display for everyone to see.

"Fuck, I'm burning this into head." San whines and subtly, not-so subtly, grabs at the loose area around his pelvis and adjusts his pants.

Mingi's still holding onto your panties as Wooyoung gloats about how good you taste in front of the group, yet your mind's distracted by some sort of growth forming on your lower back.

"Come on, Wooyoung, give me the die so we can keep on playing." Hongjoong's nearly drunk off of his own lust, the way he wants to end up in the same situation as his junior.

If there's one thing he couldn't deny, it's that lately, you have been driving all of these boys crazy.

"Wait, I wanna hear what Y/N thinks of my skills," he turns to you with a self-boasting grin, "Was my game good?"

"Oh, Woo." Yunho's rolling his eyes at him. God, the last thing the group needs was Wooyoung's ego being inflated to the max.

"It was..." you take in a huff, quickly recalling the previous events, "it was good."

Wooyoung laughs lightly before going in for a lip bite, "You flatter me. But, hey, if you ever wanted a round 2, I'll get you alone and show you all of my-"

"Dare." Hongjoong interrupts, shutting the chatty boy up. You hadn't even realized he had rolled with you being too occupied in Wooyoung's proclamations.

"Is he gonna pussy out again?" Mingi mutters, mainly to you, causing you to dryly chuckle. Your head is still foggy from the timely pulses below to illicit any stronger of a reaction.

Reaching forward, Hongjoong grabs at a new card, this time actually reading it aloud, “Don’t be shy, choose a player of your choice to give a quick peck too.”

Your eyes lazily scan around the scene as everyone curiously stares at Hongjoong, whom stared back with an ever-lasting gaze. The silence is loud, though his thoughts were flashing across his face, exposing everything he was thinking. And it was evident that what he needs, is the person right in front of him.

“Y/N, come here.” He calls you over with a nod and you protests. Physically, you’re feeling weak, but mentally, goodness are you are completely, utterly fucked.

“I-” Whining, you let your breaths do the talking to try and captivate your fatigueness. How come you were always the brut of the cards? Can’t they give you a break?

The dark look your senior gives is enough to put your whimpering to an end, “Hey, let’s go.”

Mingi pushes you forward as a head start and you catch yourself with your hands, taking in the dark carpet underneath.

“You wanna crawl over to me? Hell, I’ll take that too.” Hongjoong laughs maniacally and you’re left wondering what happened to the boy that had reassured you comfort just hours before. Had he always been this way?

Nonetheless, you still do it. You make your way over to Hongjoong all the while crawling on all 4’s. The guys couldn’t get enough of this. Your submissive state, yet your will to keep going, it was fucking ammo for them. Just fueling their running desires the longer this game continued.

You stop on your knees in front of him, then cautiously you work your way up until you were eye to eye with Hongjoong. He’s watching all over your face, part of him searching for a sign that said you wanted to stop. He knew he would, at the drop of a hat if he saw you were feeling uncomfortable, he would whisk you out of here himself.

But Hongjoong also knows, just like how you know. That secretly, you were into this shit. Little, book-reader Y/N loved being publicly humiliated and shamed for the sole purpose of getting her horny.

Which is why he doesn’t feel bad when he dips down to force your lips on his, the supposed quick peck being thrown out of the window. He’s enveloping himself into you and taking your mouth like he’d been starving for it.

He’s going at you with a level of neediness even he would’ve never expected from himself. Oh, how your lips essentially get swallowed up by his with every kiss, he’d hadn’t pictured he could get this turned on from kissing someone, his pants are so damn tight. And shit, the urge to fucking push you to the ground and make you grind on his thigh is literally clawing at him. He really is trying so damn hard to control himself.

Little noises begin to leave your lips as it fills the soundless room, and by the second you can sense Hongjoong becoming more frazzled, more sporadic in the way he’s dominating you, pushing himself further onto you.

“Are you about to take her right here?” Yunho coughs out, trying to bring attention the fact that there’s 4 other people in the room who have been witnessing this steamy make out.

Hongjoong comes up briefly from you to respond, “Fuck off,” then he’s back onto your mouth, kissing you with so much passion that you don’t even mind about the watchers. Because you knew that despite their complaints and protests, they were enjoying this too, you just knew they were.

“I’m calling it, Y/N get your cute ass back over here,” San grabs hold of your underwear then wastes no time in yanking you back, separating you and Hongjoong mid-kiss. You wobble backwards into your original spot, your lips so wet and pink, it looks like you just got done sucking on a lollipop; as Hongjoong reels himself in from it all. If you two hadn’t been stopped, there’s no tell in what he would’ve done to you.

“You two would’ve down right fucked each other in the middle of the circle,” Wooyoung muses, but not because he was repulsed by this fact, but rather for how sexy it was watching you unravel at the hands of his friend.

San starts to roll next, “I better get lucky like you shits did.” He shakes and releases the die when it lands on a ‘black’ square, the first of all tonight, “Oh, shit.”

“This is gonna be interesting.” Yunho mutters as Mingi’s fingers, after getting yourself restated back in between his legs, dance up the naked skin of your legs, absentmindedly of course, and works his way to the inner parts of your thigh, just gently rubbing at your flesh.

That action causes your eyes to briefly flutter but you try your best to focus on San, who’s reaching in for a ‘challenge’ card. He pulls at the untouched deck then goes to speak aloud.

“Choose an opponent and a player out of the group,” it’s apparent’s he’s reading ahead in his mind, judging by the way the corners of his mouth turn upright, “With a minute on the clock, let’s see who can leave the darkest mark, a hickey, on the player’s neck. Winner get’s card.”

Your heart’s pounding. Oh, god.

“Y/N, can you be my player?” Despite him asking, whining even, a mock of curiosity washing over his features, it was clear that his question is more of a demand.

Mingi laughs heartily while pushing his head against the side of yours, “Yeah, you gonna be his little play thing?”

“Woah, Mingi,” San throws his hands up exasperatedly, “How about you be my opponent, cause I already know I'll destroy your ass.”

The competition that’s ensuing riles up the rest of the group as Mingi swiftly agrees. Next thing you know, you’re being shoved into the middle of the circle, firstly on your knees then sitting crisscrossed as the two boys work their way over you.

With San on your left and Mingi on your right, your having to mentally calm yourself down from all the exposure you’ve endured so far. And how this round might actually be the death of you.

The rest of the group moves around till they sit front row in front of you, ready to watch the throw-down. You take in the boys in front of you.

Yunho, as evidence on his face, feels pleasure in this scenario and he’s so intrigued in how this will go. Wooyoung’s yanking out his phone from his pocket; and right as Hongjoong’s sits across from you, you can see through heavy lids him dropping his gaze down to your uncovered body.

He doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s shamelessly watching you, and maybe that’s the reason for why you genuinely start to feel yourself drip liquid.

“I’m putting a minute on the clock,” Wooyoung officiates, scrolling on the phone that’s currently placed on the floor.

Both men beside you start to get into positions, hunching over to become more level with your throat.

“You have such a pretty neck,” San brings a hand to lightly stroke the large area, “Can’t wait to give you my mark.”

“San, you can’t say that.” You mew back, completely in a daze.

“Why not? It’s true.” He’s still running his fingertips along your skin and he could easily swear every touch made you whimper. God, could he listen to you all day.

“Gonna fuck up your neck, Y/N, just you wait.” It’s Mingi’s time to talk you up, him nearly mouthing that sentence onto your open skin, “Gonna leave a hickey so big people’ll think you’re getting it good.”

You briefly go to turn to him, but with Wooyoung announcing the commencement of the challenge, you’re forced back into the middle as they both sit impatiently.

“Start in 3…2….and….1!”

They pounce. Immediately, they stick on your neck like a vacuum, just taking in as much of the area as possible. Your eyes are rolling into the back of your head as you feel their sucking turn into straight buzzes shooting down to core.

It’s indescribable the feeling your experience. Both boys on you like their life is on the line, but it’s so interesting how you notably recognize the difference in how they’re forming the hickey.

San’s lips are more precise, smaller, tiny sucks with occasional licks. Mingi on the other hand, wide, open kisses are his forte. His singular mouth is covering up a vast area that you already knew it would be hard to cover this up.

“Dude, they are so into this.” Yunho comments while Hongjoong tries his best to not actually cream his pants at your expression.

“Look at her face, she looks like she’s gonna cum on herself at any second.” He nottes which causes a series of moans, one of them yours, to fire throughout the crowd.

“20 seconds,” Wooyoung warns, eyes trained onto the scene in front of him.

They go in harder. They’re putting more pressure onto your neck, sucking so hard now that you can’t help the mini whines that escape you. You actually think you’re about to pass out.

The build up of stimulation over the course of this night has left you with an everlasting throb that’s threatening to explode at any time. The more they suck, the heavier your breaths get, and you’re struggling to contain your new expressions.

It’s all starting to become so much, the sensation boys are causing trickles down to your cunt in waves, so intense and pleasurable that even your body starts to stutter.

Wooyoung’s begins to countdown, “10….9…”

There’s cheering in the audience, egging the participants on while you’re still fighting your inner self to not spill out. Mingi and San aren’t slowing, and are holding their pace through and through.

“3…2…annnnd…stop.”

The moment they detach themselves from you, you were already game over, with your orgasm taking over for everyone to see. You’re moaning as it happens, eyes shut and hips bucking forward on nothing.

“No fucking shot.” Wooyoung’s eyebrows are raised as his mouth hangs low.

You’re too consumed in your shakes to even hear the other remarks spewing from everyone else. Oh, you really tried to keep yourself under control. The orgasm isn’t as strong as it could’ve been, like if there had been genuine stimulation on your clit, but god did it feel good to finally let loose.

“You came untouched,” Hongjoong quips, part of him surprised the other so horny it’s making it hard for him to think, “God, Y/N, give us a warning next time, yeah?”

Yunho mewls with closed eyelids, “Guys, if I said I almost nutted from that, would that be weird?”

“Honestly, I think I leaked a little bit,” Shamelessly, Wooyoung lightly shrugs his shoulders while admittingly so, the lower half of his body squirming ever so gently.

“You really are a dirty girl.” San murmurs and trails your body up and down.

“Getting off on just a couple of hickeys? What the hell?” Mingi laughs bitterly, still reeling in from seeing you literally cum on yourself.

“We have to…we need to see the results, right?” Your face is beat. You think you’ve passed the road of embarrassment 2 stops ago, and now you’re heading straight for a ditch. A ditch full of nothing but straight satisfaction and contentment.

“Oh, right,” Hongjoong leans in closer to inspect both areas, “Mm, looks like San’s is darker.”

As San celebrates his declared victory, Mingi contorts into displeasure, his nose scrunching, “What?”

He wastes no time in grabbing hold of your chin and pulling it to their other side. He looks over this space, then push your head left to review his own.

“Yours looks like someone tried to draw a fucking lake with a dried up red marker.” Yunho criticizes which leaves the boy offended.

Instantly, Mingi’s ready to protest, “I want a rematch.”

Hongjoong waves a hand to dismiss that requests, “No, no, we’re not gonna redo the whole thing just cau-” But Mingi’s back onto your neck, this time going in on the middle of your throat, sucking with a much greater force that it basically makes you weak.

“Woah! Woah! Woah!”

Arms fly towards you as the rest of the boys work to separate the two of you, Mingi, almost comedically, looking genuinely confused as to why he's being split from you.

Wooyoung grabs the unoccupied die and shoves it into the palm of Mingi, “Roll this and go back to your spot.”

You watch Mingi be offended, him making a distasteful look, “Who do you think you are?” He grumbles yet does exactly that, taking you with him while he reverts back to your original places.

With you being dragged against the carpet, the after effects of your orgasm leaves you quaking at even the slightest touch, the remnants of the past actions driving your pulsing cunt.

Before you know it, you’re being repositioned in between Mingi’s legs as he begrudgingly rolls the die, throwing it down with such an aggression. It rolls and rolls till eventually it lands on a ‘skip turn’, and with soft conversations flowing around he hands you the die.

Now, you’re feeling completely, and utterly fucked out. So much so that you put zero effort into shaking the cube then tossing it to the ground, never having had such a vitalizing night before.

It rotates on its axis before slowing down to a red square. You aren’t sure how much more you can handle, trying to suppress a groan. Immediately, you reach forward for the ‘dare’ card, then begin to read it aloud.

“Everyone deserves a sweet treat, the person to your right especially,” Warily, you peer over towards Yunho, who’s ever more intrigued in the card, “Have them find something tasty and lick it off of any part you. Player’s choice.”

“My choice?” His throat nearly dries at the thought. He could choose anywhere. Any place on your body.

“What’re you gonna lick off of her?” San asks, his own curious heart gradually racing by the second. Everyone’s thinking the same thing, the direction this is heading.

Hongjoong lolls his head to his side, “Yah, how about those donuts?”

Oh, right, the ones from earlier. You had eaten yours clean before this, but as you glance back to Yunho, you see him pulling out the package, unopened.

"Feels like I'm craving some right about now." He mutters and regards the donuts before doing a glance over to you. He's analyzing every inch of you, determining what he wants.

You feel his fiery stare but when a small smile appears on his face, that's when you ask, "What're you thinking?"

He lowers his head, almost mockingly, and without missing a beat, he sighs, "Pull down that tank top for us, okay?"

You were too fatigued to even argue, sluggishly raising your arms to yank the thin fabric down only slightly. It's then Mingi who grabs roughly at the rest of your tank and slides the material down till it hits your midline.

Your tits are out; fat, puffy nippy erected just the way Yunho likes them, and everyone is instantly drawn to your breasts.

"They're even better than what I was imagining," someone mumbles, you aren't sure who because what you're focusing on, is the way Yunho looks about ready to jump you.

"Face more towards me."

You follow his instruction, well, more like you allow yourself to be turned by Mingi towards Yunho, but either way, Yunho's satisfied. He makes his short distance to you, stopping only when he's mere centimeters in front, sort of mimicking Wooyoung's earlier position.

"Then....I'll get these opened," Even though he's talking mainly to himself, you still follow every one of his movements, from him ripping wide the package to him taking out a donut and sprinkling the powdered sugar onto your skin.

He covers both breasts in the sweetness, dusting a generous amount all around till you're a powdery white, ready to get licked raw.

"Does it have to be just licking?" Yunho ponders, and for the record, it wasn't a you question, he was asking his friends.

"Nah, I think whatever is necessary should be good." San answers which leaves Yunho in gratification. He knows exactly what he wants, and it's to absolutely devour you.

So, that's what he does.

Quickly, he throws down the remaining donuts before latching onto your tits, taking in your flesh whole and it seems at first, he's disregarding the whole point of this dare.

Instead of focusing on the powdered sugar, he's going straight for your nipple, lapping and licking at the bud then switching over to the next.

He's cupping your breasts with his hands, and as he's suctioning onto you, his hands work mindlessly to fondle your skin, juggling the two sacks.

It's a feeling you've never felt before. You want to wince out in pain but could you even consider this as such? The way he's going in on you, the swift jolts of pain, if you could even call it that, soon transfer into that feel-good sensation you're all too accustomed with.

You're breathing falls in synch with his action, and rely on Mingi's chest as support for when you rest back on him, one of your hands throwing itself up into his hair to help with your wriggling.

With each movement from his tongue it's like another added layer for your pleasure to hold on to, your thighs squeezing around Yunho to alleviate the build up in your core, and by goodness, did you love it.

Yunho finally ends off the dare with what it should have been, him licking up the remaining sweetness on your tits with an overly loud slurp. And then he pops himself off of you with large grin, a coat of wetness evident around his mouth, "I am so doing that again."

"Can I be next?" Mingi murmurs, going in to play with your sticky tits, while you drop your arm down. He watches the way they'd ripple from his force before dropping down with a shake.

"You are so sexy, my god." Hongjoong rubs a palm over his face, eyeing your upper body. He must be a good man, truly. To be able to resist taking you right here, right now, his will power is incredible.

"Let's do one more, then call it for the night. Poor Y/N looks like she's about to pass out." San suggests, with him every other second glancing down at your chest, and you merely throw a hand up in agreement.

This hangout had went so left-field from what you were originally thinking, but you would be a liar if you said this didn't awaken something in you. Something you genuinely liked.

Yunho goes back to his spot right next to you, and Mingi decides to keep you two right where you guys are. Wooyoung takes the die from off of the ground, and shakes it with some much power, "Last one, fast one."

He throws the cube down and you all watch it spin and spin and spin until it stops on a pitch, ‘black’ square.

"Oh, hell." Yunho laughs out and you even grumble out a 'oh no'. Because, of course it has to end like this.

Wooyoung draws the last card from the all-black deck and straight way he begins to chuckle, though the way his eyes crinkled speaks to something much different, "The end is drawing near, everyone is feeling tired and it's clear it's time to wrap up for the day. To finish off the game, choose a player of your choice and have everyone finish on them."

After reading this aloud, the quiet that ensues is massive.

It's the calm before the storm.

Silence before an explosion.

Then…..

“Fuck, where should we put her?”

“Let’s have Y/N-ie on the ground.”

“My cock is throbbing so fucking hard right now.”

“This might be my biggest load yet.”

You’re being forced down into the middle, tits up, and all you see are more and more bodies popping into frame. They tower over you and just the sight is enough to get you aroused all over again. They’re undoing their pants, dropping them past their knees and leaving them all in their underwear.

“Take off my underwear,” Wooyoung, who’s closest to you, orders and you do. With shaky hands, you roll over to the side and bring down the boxers till it aligned with his pants and in return, his thick, naked, cock springs out, your mouth salivating.

“Do me next.” Hongjoong requests, and so you roll over to the other side and assist him. After a few more of the requests, soon everyone is bare and ready to complete this last task, and you go back to laying down.

Chest out and all, your eyes scan around to the scene of all the boys jerking away at their foreskin, some of them groaning as they continue watching you and the compromising position you’re in.

“Stroke me a little bit, can you do that for me?” Yunho asks, scooting closer to you and you oblige. You replace his hand for your own, wrapping around the hard length and begin to tug up and down.

As you’re occupied in doing this, San comes up and crouches down next to you, “Let me put it in your mouth really quick.”

Nodding, you widen your lips and allow him to dart his tip in and out of your hole all the while continuously rubbing Yunho.

“I wanna know what your mouth feels like too.” Mingi gruffs and so removing yourself from San, you place your attention on his girthy cock, taking as much of it as you could. Then someone else asks for a handjob, and without peeking you grip them nearby, sliding your palm against their shaft.

You make your way around, stimulating the group as best as you could. One after another, you’d find your mouth would be used to pleasure someone, while both of your hands would be busy jacking off a couple of others.

The ones that would remain to have themselves masturbate would find ways to combat their lust, like slapping their head against your sappy tits or rubbing their dicks on your stomach, leaving patches of pre-cum behind before you’d switch to aid them.

At some point, a body begins to shudder.

“F-Fuck, I think- I’m clo..close…” Hongjoong sputters, detaching himself from your mouth and going to jerk off and before he knows it, he starts to shoot out spurts of hot, viscous cum directly onto your face.

“I-I..” Yunho doesn’t even finish his sentence by the time his orgasm hits, his liquid aimed for around your mouth.

Person after person, ripples of orgasms hit the rest of the boys as they all spaz then cum sporadically everywhere, most of them not having a specific place but just desperately needed to release themselves, till eventually, they’re all finishing together.

“Oh, god.” Wooyoung groans as you work faster at his cock and basically milk him dry, any remaining cum dripping onto your breasts.

With a mix of grunts and whines, the flowing liquid begins to slow, and soon, everyone’s cocks are emptied out all over you. From face to torso, you are now, completely and utterly covered.

As heavy pants fill the room, some of guys dropping to the floor instantly while others make their way towards the bed, you continue resting on the floor and bask in the way you could literally feel left over cum dribble from chin an onto your neck.

You feel nasty. You feel dirty. Part of you is borderline disgusted with how even then, after all that you’ve endured, you still want to rut yourself against a pillow or something, fuck yourself on your own fingers, so needy to get off like how the guys did.

But that can come for another day. For now, the tiredness is catching up, heavy eyelids consuming you and just like that you shut your eyes and fall asleep, concluding the end to your single, dirty night.

- Bonus -

“Fuck, look at her legs,” San whimpers, pinching at his phone to zoom in on the photo, “Just wanna lick ‘em up.”

“Dude, are you still looking at photos of Y/N?” Wooyoung quips as he finishes tidying up bits of his room. Inviting friends over was not apart of his agenda this Saturday night, but after some convincing (and the promise of alcohol) he eventually agreed, even if there were other thing’s he’d rather do.

“How can I not?” He exits out of the photo of you at the beach then quickly scrolls through your Instagram, stopping on a dump from last Halloween of your innocently cute, yet busty angel costume, “Can I be honest about something?”

“Mm?” Wooyoung doesn’t face him when asking, again straightening up things in his room. Mingi and Yunho should be coming back at any minute with the second bottle, and Hongjoong said he’d be quick the snacks.

“I came to one of Y/N’s photos before,” San recalls the memory of him whacking away at his dick with one hand, the other propping his phone which showed a picture of you smiling side with a bouquet of tulips in your grasp. God, he loved that photo so much, “The one with the flowers.”

Wooyoung halts in his track and cranes his neck back to the boy sprawled out on his bed, “You came to a photo of her? God, have you no self-control?” At least whenever Wooyoung masturbates, it’s to videos he finds on the web that resemble you, not actual photos.

A light blush sprinkles across San’s cheeks, him closing out of the app and then sitting up on the mattress, “It wasn’t intentional…it just sort of happened.”

Wooyoung scoffs, “You’re a pervert. A pervert that’s going to corrupt my sweet, precious Y/N if you ever get your hands on her.”

“Oh for- you’ll be the one to corrupt her out of anyone,” San bites back right as the door swings open, revealing an excited Mingi and an intrigued Yunho.

“Fuck are you two arguing for?” Mingi belts, the sole bottle of alcohol tucked underneath his elbows. The two boys make their way over to the open chairs placed out for them, Yunho flopping down instantly while Mingi pulls out the bottle and sets it next to him on the ground.

“Dumb shit Wooyoung’s saying.” San offers as an answer and Wooyoung simply shrugs, part of him feeling the need to be deceitful.

“Joong not back yet?” Yunho mutters, stretching his hands above his head.

Wooyoung shakes his head, “Nah, he’s still out, taking forever tho.”

He hums in response when suddenly a memory flicks into his head and he immediately groans, “Aw, guys, did you see Y/N’s outfit today?” Yunho reminisces on earlier today where you wore a more fitting dress to classes, hugging just the right spots for everyone to see.

“And when she fucking dropped her notebook and bent over in front of us,” Mingi adds, picturing how round and full your ass looked in the dress, “Would’ve taken her right there.”

“Hell yeah.” The two fist bump as Mingi shifts over a bit, his foot accidentally kicking the liquor and sending it flying underneath the bed. Just as San mumbles out a ‘stupid’, Wooyoung clears his throat.

“Hey, guess what San did to a photo of Y/N-”

The words couldn’t even come out before San body slams Wooyoung straight to the ground, covering his mouth and preventing any form of slip up from happening, “Absolutely not.”

The junior cackles out loud and tries to pry the hand away from his face. A fight ensues, with San on top of Wooyoung, and Wooyoung defending himself. The other two simply watch in amusement at what’s happening in front of them.

The boys were so caught up in the scuffle, that to no one’s knowledge, Hongjoong barges into the room, and apparently, he’s brought a visitor with him.

"You gonna talk about me again?" Choi San threatens the junior whom he's currently hurting, applying pressure to the nape of his neck.

"Aish, aish!" Jung Wooyoung winces at the pain though, a crooked smile is present on his face, "What're you, a fucking barbarian? Get off."

"What the fuck are you two doing?" Hongjoong rushes over to deescalate the situation. He shoves Choi San into a corner and rolls Jung Wooyoung the other way, "I wasn't even gone for that long and already you guys try to kill each other."

At that statement, another uproar ensues. All of the boys shouting at him, yelling claims of "You took fucking forever!" "The hell?!" And other variations.

You raise your shoulders and tuck yourself inwards at the commotion yet, part of you seemingly enjoying the racket. A soft giggle flows out of you, which in turn makes your presence known.

“Y/N?” Jung Wooyoung questions first.

and you know the rest….

check out pt.2!

#ateez smut #ateez x reader #ateez fanfic #kpop #ateez wooyoung #ateez yunho #ateez san #ateez mingi #ateez hongjoong #hongjoong smut #hongjoong x reader #kim hongjoong #jeong yunho x reader #yunho smut #jeong yunho #choi san smut #choi san x reader #san x reader smut #choi san #mingi x reader #song mingi #mingi smut #mingi scenarios #jung wooyoung smut #jung wooyoung #wooyoung x reader smut #ateez ot5 x reader #kpop smut #ateez #teeskz

[heliocharis]

Left My Friend’s Body Outside the Mithraeum: One New Zealander’s account of the New Zealand stuff in Nona the Ninth

A few points before we begin:

I’ve quoted everything out of context, but probably don’t read this if you don’t want to be spoiled for the book.

I’m just one person (a Pākehā North Islander millennial, for context), but hopefully I caught most of it. Please tell me if you see anything I missed!

If you see something and think, ‘Tumblr user junozeta, why have you included this piece of information when it is very easily Google-able,’ it’s for the sake of completeness.

Kia ora!

Dramatis personae

Stop It, name assumed, lies under counter at dairy, red colour, big sized, four legs

Dairy: A corner store.

John 20:8

Dilworth. Otago. Auckland. Overseas to Corpus. (She likes the word corpus; it sounds nice and fat.) Then another year abroad, where he got the grant and met the men who would make things happen. Special pleading with the New Zealand government and Asia-Pacific Environmental, at his suggestion, then back to the facility outside Greytown.

Here John is reciting his credentials. Dilworth is a private boys’ boarding school in Auckland. (ETA: Please see this reblog by sixth-light for better context.) Auckland and Otago will be referring to the universities, which are notably the only two in NZ with medical schools. I will add that having studied more in NZ than overseas does not afford you a lot of prestige.

Greytown is a small town (population 2,720 as of 2021) in the lower North Island, near Wellington. (I note here that Trentham, the presumptive namesake of the Second House’s Trentham, is also near Wellington, as is Maymorn, which Tamsyn Muir has said Mercymorn was originally named after.)

Chapter 1

“Is that pikelet mix?” she said.

Pikelet: Like a pancake, but smaller and denser.

Palamedes stood like he was playing a game of Hot Chocolate and the tagger was looking right at him. Hot Chocolate was in fashion with her friends at the moment and Nona wanted to get really good at it.

Putting this here to state for the record that I’m not familiar with Hot Chocolate as a name for a game of that kind. (ETA: An anon was, though, as a different name for Red Light, Green Light. See, not all of NZ is the same.)

I’ve met leaders like Unjust Hope before.

“Unjust Hope” could be from “The Ikons” by James K. Baxter, a famous New Zealand poet.

John 5:20

He said, It was the last one that was getting to me. I knew all those bodies by name. Funny to say, but they were my mates, you know? I’d worked on them for such a long time, and they’d given us so much, and now they were going to get dumped in some concrete skip because after what we’d done to them they couldn’t be cremated or buried safely. I hated that.

Mates: Friends. Classic Kiwi.

Skip: A dumpster.

I didn’t have to worry about the public or the media—we had a pet cop, P—. She’d made detective by that point; was going on to big things in the MoD.

MoD: Probably self-explanatory, but Ministry of Defence.

We only had the demo cans; the mass-produced ones were made in a Five Eyes factory in Shenzhen.

Five Eyes: A surveillance alliance between NZ, Australia, the UK, the US, and Canada. As of 2022, not actively military, nor ostensibly involved with China. Much to think about.

I went around to everyone, talking to my favourites—I know it was weird having favourites, but let’s bloody face it, I’d gone weird—not even saying goodbye, just saying it’ll be fine, hang on for me, kia kaha, kia māia.

Kia kaha, kia māia: Well-known Māori phrase meaning “be strong, be brave”.

John 15:23

You wouldn’t believe how stupid guys get over compliments on our looks, I was vain as.

Vain as: “[adjective] as” is a classic Kiwi way to say that something is extremely [adjective].

P— said I looked like a Māori TV Pink Panther.

Māori TV: Worth noting here that this is a TV channel, and not a generic reference.

Someone’s Honda. Someone’s Mazda. Someone’s four-wheel drive. Someone’s shed. A Macca’s sign.

Shed: A garage.

Macca’s: McDonald’s.

A— and M— moved in with me, and G— set up outside; he was sleeping in his ute. C— was staying with N—, long days. She left us early in the morning and came back the next day with sausage rolls for breakfast.

Ute: A pickup truck. (Short for “utility vehicle”.)

Sausage rolls: A classic NZ food.

You hear all the cicadas in the grass, you hear the dogs in the next town over barking. You hear the moreporks in the trees and the possums skittering over shed roofs.

Morepork: A native owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae).

Possums: Worth noting that NZ has the Australian kind (Trichosurus vulpecula).

He was the bravest dog I’d ever met. Half Chihuahua, half pug. Nan called him Ulysses S. Grunt.

Maybe worth noting here that “Grant” and “Grunt” are pronounced much more alike in an NZ accent than they would be in a North American one.

Chapter 9

Cam ducked into a bakery and came out with a warm and probably radioactive paper bag of pastries that had been under the bakery light the whole time.

Almost certainly a reference to this iconic cultural moment.

She had already got her towel and the old shirt she used to swim in—much easier to go naked, but the others had all objected to this, and Cam had said it would make her a sniper target—and her jandals, and then after masks were tied and hats put on they walked to the beach in the low dusk.

Jandals: Flip-flops. Classic Kiwi.

“I’d give Palamedes the hiding of his fucking life if he wasn’t renting an ass with you.”

Hiding: A beating.

John 5:18

They were lying head-to-head, their eyes aimed at the right part of the sky to see, or in this case not see, the Southern Cross.

Southern Cross: The constellation on the NZ flag. Known formally as, of course, Crux.

There was so much to figure out. But I’d got a dream team on tap, eh? People who could think. C—’s N—, she was on board. C— was still pretending they weren’t dating—she was an artist, so that was cool. If you have two scientists and an engineer and a detective and a lawyer and an artist you’re pretty much sweet as.

Eh: We tend to end sentences with this quite a lot (though of course it’s not just us).

Sweet as: “all good”. Classic Kiwi.

Back then we thought maybe there was something about the ground, something about our particular patch in the Wairarapas, but if we loaded up the ute with a bunch of bodies and looked out for the cops we could do the same thing anywhere else.

The Wairarapas: The region of NZ where Greytown is located. This is an informal way to refer to it, its proper name being the Wairarapa.

“Is that pikelets, Pyrrha? You’re a legend.”

Calling someone a legend to express approval, while not new, has become deeply entrenched in the local consciousness over the last decade or so, thanks to a recognisable anti-drink driving campaign. (If you’ve heard of the “ghost chips” ad, it’s one of those.)

Chapter 12

Crown Him with Many Crowns Thy Full Gallant Legions He Found It in Him to Forgive

He Found It in Him to Forgive: Lyrics from a classic NZ song, “Dominion Road” by The Mutton Birds.

“Why does Pash hate us so much?”

Worth noting here that “pash” (both a noun and a verb) is slang for making out.

John 8:1

You’ve got a wizard out in the wop-wops who’s now got blanket bans from nearly every video upload site and a whole bunch of people have entered the country because of his YouTube channel, the government isn’t all, Love that small-business entrepreneur spirit.

The wop-wops: The middle of nowhere. Often just “the wops”.

Didn’t mention that I’d only gone to Parachute ’cause of the underage drinking.

Parachute: A Christian music festival that existed from 1992 to 2014.

She’d won medals for competition shooting back north in Hamilton, but we’re not talking Jesse James. We’re talking Hamilton.

Hamilton: A city in the North Island (it’s the next city south of Auckland) which it is nationally popular to disparage, especially if you’re from Auckland (this is mutual).

Chapter 16

Crown Prince Kiriona Gaia

Kiriona: Transliteration of “Gideon” into te reo Māori.

“It can’t be my blood. It must be someone else’s. Maybe it’s tomato sauce.”

Pretty throwaway, this one, but when she says tomato sauce this is the kind I think of.

Chapter 18

“Whew!” said Nona. “Is the classroom munted?”

Munted: Busted, fucked up.

John 5:1

There was a lot of it, but we had a lot of people who needed a feed. We sat there with the window cracked so G— could hear us while he manned the barbie, which in the dark gets unwholesome as hell, and we ate off paper plates, and I told them …

A feed: A meal.

Barbie: I think this one should be easy.

He said, Which just goes to show that only getting to NCEA Level 2 isn’t going to stop you making waves in life, right. You can still eat steak, talk to wizards, and take down the government.

NCEA Level 2: This is the qualification you get in your second-to-last year of high school (typically at age 16, which is the age at which you can leave school), and has historically been the minimum you need for university entrance.

This is fairly easy to infer anyway, but John et al. being young enough to have done NCEA (it was introduced in the early 2000s) and old enough to have gone to Parachute to underage drink tells you pretty soundly that they’re millennials.

John 3:20

He said, So I went to the governments that were still sympathetic, sort of, like ours, and all the Trans-Pacifics, and we threw down our evidence.

Probably referring to the TPP.

Not only that, they looked at us and were like, We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?

Pronounce this as “fullas”, with the U as in “up”.

John 9:22

A bunch of the guys were her old coworkers—guys she’d gone through training with in Porirua, beer buddies.

Porirua: A small city near Wellington.

John 1:20

He said, So here’s us, planning to meet these agents in neutral territory, across the ditch, over in the huddle where the Territory refugees were.

The ditch: The Tasman Sea.

But they weren’t only aggro about G—, they were aggro that a nuke might go off and kill a couple million people. I was like, Guys, it’s fine, they’re Australian.

There’s a rivalry.

John 5:4

Like those old power-washing ads. Spray and walk away, right?

A very recognisable series of ads.

(End of post! If you have learned anything, I’ll be stoked.)

#this is what i was put on earth for #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #the locked tomb #locked tomb originals

[thecousinsdangereux]

Dear Beatrice,

Have you ever been to IKEA?

I saw a movie once where this couple was pretending to live out their lives in a bunch of fake IKEA sets and in retrospect it was a little weird, probably, and super inconvenient for everyone around them, but that’s the point, right? That they were so in love with each other that they were selfish in a way that was okay.

I want to go to IKEA and not care about anyone else or anything else. I want to be dumb and cheesy. I want to inconvenience people in ways that doesn't lead to the world ending. I want to get a free pass for being young and stupid and in love. I want to be selfish like that with you.

Do you know where I’m going with this?

I don’t. Not really. Not right now. But you will, by the time you’re reading this. Because I’ll have told you that I want you to go to IKEA and dance in the rain or share a plate of spaghetti with someone under the moonlight or spin around on hilltops while singing about the sound of music or spread your arms out wide and shout something from the front of a ship. Or… honestly, hopefully I’ll have told you something way better than all that because I’m still working on how I’m going to tell you and I don’t think movie references are the way to go. But you know what I mean. Hopefully, I’ll have told you that I want you to do the things I couldn’t, that you couldn’t, that we couldn’t do together. Hopefully, I’ll have found a way to tell you that doesn’t sound stupid or make you cry or make it seem like I'm taking the easy way out. Hopefully, by now, you’ll know that I love you and in a movie, that would be enough to change the universe and give us a happy ending. But here, we are what we are, and it isn’t.

That’s okay. Or… okay, fine. It’s not. It’s bullshit! It sucks! I want to be selfish and I want to be with you and I want to do all this stuff together! But it is worth it. I’m not going to make it through this, but if you’re reading this letter, that means you do and that’s worth it. Though... not fair. I know it’s not fair. But I’m doing this so you can live your life.

Maybe that’s what I’ll say to you. Because that’s actually pretty good, isn’t it? And it’s the truth too. I’m doing this so you can live your life. It doesn’t have to be the movie stuff that I always put on my dumb to-do lists. But it has to be something. The only way I’ll be able to do this is if I know that you’ll go on and do something that will make you happy. That’s a pretty shitty burden to place on someone, I know. But you can handle it. You can handle anything. (I'm sorry, but that's the truth too.) And I think it’ll be less of a burden in the end, because I think you’ll find something beautiful out there.

So… go to IKEA. Get a tattoo. Help a baby turtle make its way back to the sea. Spend an entire day reading in bed and eating ice cream. Swim with whale sharks. See the northern lights. Go to a drive-in theater and see the end of that stupid movie that I don’t remember the name of.

Live your life, Beatrice, and I promise you’ll find something every day to keep living for. Because the universe owes you that much. And by now, it owes me that much too.

I love you. If you’re right about everything that happens afterwards, then I’ll still be loving you when you read this. I think maybe I’ll love you forever, even if you’re wrong.

#avatrice #warrior nun #warrior nun spoilers #idk man I wrote this the day I finished watching that episode #I’m sure this has been done a million times by now but here’s my take on the letter #writing #tumblr fic

[of-solitude-past-and-present]

NAH, HE DOESNT KNOW WHAT A PERIOD IS?

imagine youre just. on your monthly cycle and then he thinks you’re either dying or dying.

you gotta explain to him how this stuff works and he’ll be flabbergasted. hopefully it’ll help you get away with being angry and rude if you say it’s the effects of your period

LMAO this is so funny to me... he just doesn't know what's going on. He's doing his best, though.

He's kind of like, "What is wrong with you? Are you really dying already?" He's worried, a little panicked, and a little annoyed all at once. It comes out as anger and frustration though, so that's all you can see. He's a little upset with himself, wondering if he did something wrong and you're dying because of his negligence. When you explain that no, this is in fact normal, he just kind of takes a moment to process it. You bleed for days on end in pain and it's just normal? That doesn't make any sense. Why do you do that? He knows it's not your fault, but still. Who knew keeping an entire person would be difficult?

After that, he sighs. He's relieved that nothing is actually wrong with you, not that you can really tell. He asks what you need, and he'll go out and see if he can steal it. You're left restrained in the meantime, and he's not always successful in finding it, so it's really not a good time all around...

He'd give you a little more breathing room when it comes to attitude, but not much. He's not a patient man to begin with, and he's completely aware of the power he has over you, so if you do sass him he just doesn't really understand what's going through your head. You know who and what he is, and that you're only alive because he wants you that way, and you're still talking back? Are you trying to convince him that you're not worth it?

He'll brush the attitude off a few times, but if it persists, he'll snap back at you. He just wants you to be nice for him :(

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but he's very touchy. He's new to touch that isn't violent, and it feels... nice? He finds himself holding onto you and laying next to you often. So if it makes you needy, he actually starts looking forward to it a little, even if it's a bit more work.

Ultimately, don't judge him too much for not knowing. He hasn't had an actual relationship of any kind with any other person in ages. Of course he doesn't know.

#I kinda want to come up with a backstory for him in this AU but I'd need to brush up on sumeru lore and it would take a bit #if I take the route I'm thinking of with it he'd be 500 years old at the absolute very least #I need to figure out when King Deshret died... #many thoughts. #naga scara #yandere scaramouche #genshin impact #tw period mention

[aziraphales-library]

hello, i was wondering if you perhaps knew of any fics that involve crowley and anathema being friends? ive just always felt like they would get on well, they're both similarly odd and prone to ranting about the sizes of animals brains

thank you so much for all the work you all do btw!!

Hi! Here are some fics which feature a friendship between Crowley and Anathema...

You've Got a Funny Way of Making Friends by ellbie (T)

Anathema swirled her drink in her glass. “Then what?” “Er, then… I don’t know. I didn’t see him again until the Great Flood.” “Well, when did you start, y’know…” Anathema waggled her eyebrows. Crowley flustered. “Mind your own business, witch.” “Hey, you’re the one that agreed to talk to me about all this stuff. You can’t be mad that I’m asking questions.”

Friendship is Demonic Magic by Shadow0kana & whtbout2ndbrkfst (T)

After Crowley interrupts Aziraphale and Anathema’s phone conversations one too many times, Aziraphale suggests the two have their own meetups to discuss what they have in common. Cue monthly coffee dates between a witch and a demon who can passionately discuss (debate) anything from Halloween to Astronomy to Hamlet… while also conspiring to form a book swap aimed at getting Aziraphale to read anything written after 1950.

The Nice and Accurate wedding of Anathema Device, Witch, which went just as expected by Nenchen (G)

Wedding planner Anathema Device is the Number One. She can organize anything for a wedding, flower arrangements, catering, a marching band or an emu. The name Device is a guarantee for a picture perfect wedding - and the perfect pictures will be taken by her top wedding photographer, and best friend, Anthony J. Crowley.

Both of them see weddings mostly as business, until Anathema meets Newt, Love of her life, walking natural disaster extraordinaire, and very much not a person it’s possible to have a perfect wedding with.

Which is perfect since Anathema frankly never wanted one for herself. She just wants a fun party, good food, and all of her friends to attend - including Crowley. For whom this might just as well be the apocalypse because no, he is not allowed to work on her wedding. Strictly invited only as a guest, Crowley finds himself at a loss. What the hell do you do at weddings? Well, if you are Crowley, the answer is some James Bond-like action, some worrying about fly swarms and their sources, having a lot of emotions, drinking some very funny wine, putting your foot in your mouth and just maybe meeting someone to share all of that with. Oh, and there’s always cake, isn’t there?

Healing by AppleSeeds (M)

After Crowley sustains an injury, his friend Anathema persuades him to come with her to the spiritual centre she regularly attends so that he can receive some spiritual healing. Crowley doesn't expect the healer to be quite so attractive, and certainly not that he'll end up developing a crush on him. As their sessions together progress though, Crowley starts to wonder whether Aziraphale might actually have feelings for him too.

Thrown for a Loop by MickyRC (T)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a large amount of yarn will be assumed to be a knitter.

It is a truth universally acknowledged among crocheters that this is annoying as hell.

In his many years crocheting, Aziraphale has never been one to let that assumption stand. But faced with an opportunity to join a knitting group run by a very sweet new shop owner, he decides to play along. Even if it means he has to pretend he wants to learn how to knit. Even if it means he has to hide his skill with a crochet hook.

It’ll be worth it to get to know Crowley better. Probably. Hopefully.

(It will.)

secondhand smoke by PaintedVanilla (T)

you're second hand smoke, second hand smoke i breathe you in, but, honey, i don't know what you're doing to me mon chéri

the year is 1990, and anthony crowley is looking for a church in london that might be tolerable. the one he winds up attending isn't exactly such, but he decides to stick around for one reason. said reason happens to own a bookshop that crowley begins to frequent, much to the surprise and delight of anathema device and newton pulsifer, who seem quite convinced that crowley could use something else to focus on besides gardening, their campaigns, and visits to tadfield.

- Mod D

#good omens #ineffable husbands #anathema #crowley & anathema #human au #friendship #mod d

[noodyl-blasstal]

number 9 or 19 for the prompt list for taakitz if you're feeling inspired? :)

Thank you so much for this prompt which is from this list (I’m still open to requests.) Sorry the reply itself is un-prompt (I spiralled), but hopefully you'll forgive me!

Read below or on Ao3.

--

Man, that’s going to stain…How’s it going?/ Well, haha, (doesn’t answer)

–

Kavitz screws all his courage to his sticking point and opens his eyes. He looks at the cake. He looks at his hands. He looks at the kitchen counter. They’re all still the same; bright red, unpleasantly sticky, and mocking him. The ‘icing’ could have at least had the decency to dry slightly in the air by now, but no, he’s made some kind of sugar based slime that is intent on eating everything - especially Taako’s worktops. 

Taako’s worktops… Taako definitely absolutely loves these worktops more than Kravitz. Kravitz knows this, everyone knows this, so why on earth had he decided to try his hand at baking at Taako’s house instead of his own? Maybe it was because he spent more of his non-death crime battling time here than anywhere else, he hadn’t spent a non-work night on the Astral Plane since well… hmm… and all his stuff was here, so it made sense, perfect sense. Or it would, if he hadn’t just committed a crime against baking, nature, and kitchens in general, there was no way Taako wasn’t going to notice.

He’s stuck, is the problem. He can’t operate his phone with his sugary murder hands even though it will absolutely be worth Sloane laughing at him if she can save him from this. Sadly it’s not like he can just go over there… although, no, actually, it’s exactly like he can just go over there! Kravitz reaches out his hand, and only winces slightly at the wet sound his scythe makes as it zoops into it. It’s fine. It’ll clean, and if not he can just tell people it’s blood and they’ll think he’s extra fearsome probably definitely maybe.

He cuts a very careful rift, if he can place it just right then… Kravitz leans his face gingerly into the rift and uses his nose to press the doorbell. He learned very quickly after Sloane and Hurley started dating that it was important to rift outside and wait for someone to answer the door. Sloane tugs said door open as he’s reaching his nose out to press the bell for a second time.

“Kravitz? What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck?” She folds her arms and gives him a look which means he’s definitely never going to hear the end of this.

“I need some help.”

Sloane raises her eyebrows.

“It’s a cake problem.”

“You didn’t!?”

“I…”

“Kravitz! After last time? And the time before… and…”

“I thought it might be different.”

“Because?”

“Taako’s good at baking.”

“And you figured cake osmosis was a thing?” Sloane’s lack of sympathy would be hurtful if she wasn’t entirely correct.

“On reflection, it wasn’t the best idea I’ve had in my life.” An understatement, but he doesn’t have time to properly catalogue this error right now. It can haunt him when he’s lying awake at 3am for the rest of his life instead.

“How bad is it?”

“It’s not sentient.” He’s remaining optimistic.

“Yet…” She mutters.

“I gave it a bit and it seems fine.”

“Uh huh.”

“I know that’s what I said last time, but I really think it’s okay.”

“If I had a gold piece for every time…” Sloane begins.

“Please just help.” Kravitz must sound pathetic enough because Sloane just rolls her eyes, and smiles fondly.

“Okay, are you coming to me or am I coming to you?”

Kravitz holds up his non-scythed hand.

“I’m coming to you,okay. Gimme a minute and a me-sized rift?”

“Thank you.” Kravitz nods and splices.

–

There’s a shuffling noise and Sloane opens the door again.

“Why do you even have a hazmat suit?” Kravitz tries not to feel offended, he doesn’t succeed.

“It’s not a hazmat, that would be overkill, it’s a tyvek.”

“And you have it because?”

“Do you wanna know?” The distinct edge to her question tells him he definitely doesn’t.

“Is it for work?”

“Yes.”

“The flower shop job?”

“Nope, and you said you don’t wanna know anything that you could be compelled to give up in a court of law so…”

“So I won’t ask any further questions and should instead be grateful that you’re coming to help save me and Taako’s worktops?”

“You got it on Taako’s worktops? Kravitz! I’m going to miss you.”

“I don’t know if he can kill me.”

“Here lies Kravitz…” Says Sloane as she steps through the rift. “... The bestest friend a gal could ask for. I’ll miss his ability to transport me without paying bus fare most of all.”

“Thanks Sloane, you always know how to make me feel better.” Kravitz says dryly.

“So you sure fucked this up, yeah?” Sloane looks around at the general devastation.

“The cake might be nice?” Kravitz points with a sticky hand.

“Mmhmm.” Says Sloane like she wants to believe him but can’t.

“But… it’s just… yeah…” He trails off.

“Have you tried anything yet?” 

“Er…”

“Water?”

“I can’t touch the tap.” Kravitz brandishes his free-hand. Tries for a second time to banish his scythe, fails. Maybe he doesn’t need to mention that specific issue to Sloane yet. “It’s really sticky.”

“Right. I’ll try water first. Do you have sponges you don’t care about?”

“As opposed to the sponges I do care about?”

“Hey, Kravitz, do you remember who you live with? The man who cares about nothing more than his kitchen and nearly broke up with you when you scrubbed the cast iron? You think he doesn’t have opinions about your sponges?”

She has a point. “There’s some in the garage.” He starts to move towards the door.

“No!” Sloane grabs the back of his suit and pulls. “You stay here, we need to keep the crime scene secured. By which I mean you specifically. Don’t move.

It’s a good point. Kravitz is going to stay so still. “I can’t quite remember where they…”

Sloane’s gone before he can finish and back too quickly for him to think about in depth. There’s definitely no reason for that which relates to her ability to case a joint.

“I’m going to try cold water first in case hot water makes it harden… or, you know, go on fire.” 

“That was one time!” 

“One time too many, Kravitz. One time too many.”

He opens his mouth and shuts it firmly again. The ‘gift to science’ defence doesn’t really work when he still doesn’t know how he did it.

Sloane dabs gingerly at the very edge of the worktop spatter. They both lean away in anticipation. Nothing happens. “No explosions is a good start.” She  says cheerfully, as she walks back to the sink. “I’ll test hot now.” She repeats the leaning, runs the hot tap directly onto the red spot on the sponge.

“Is it helping?”

“Nope.”

“Soap?”

She tries. “Nope.”

“How hard do you think it is to replace an entire kitchen and also me in… er…” Kravitz glances at the clock. “2 hours?”

“If anyone can do it’s Magnus. Well… maybe not you. You could ring your Mum?”

“She’s not my Mum.”

“Then why did I have to get my parents to call her before I was allowed to come play and why did I have to call her Mrs The Raven Queen when I came to visit?”

“That’s manners.”

“So anyway, call your Mum.”

“I’m not calling my Mum… I mean. Fuck. Sloane! Stop laughing! Can you help me ring Magnus?”

“Why can’t you…” Kravitz brandishes his hand again. “Ah. Fine. Where’s your phone?”

Kravitz swings a hip towards her.

“Nope.”

“Sloane!”

She rolls her eyes. Hard. “It’s a good job I love you, you know that?”

“Like I haven’t earned this.”

“Hey, I’ve never…”

“Don’t make me bring up The Plantcident.” Kravitz side eyes her as she reaches for his phone.

“Urgh, you’ll never let me forget that, will you? I maintain it could have happened to anyone.”

“But instead it happened to you and I had to talk the bank manager down so he didn’t press charges.”

“It’s a good thing you’re so clean cut and know all the fancy words. Now, sssh... “Sloane holds his phone up to his ear.” … it’s ringing.” 

“Wait, how did you know my code?”

Sloane doesn’t answer, she just smiles unnervingly instead. Kravitz worries sometimes about how much and how little he knows her all at once.

Magnus picks up before Kravitz can ask any more ill-advised questions (because he definitely doesn’t want to know the answers to them.)

“Hello Magnus, I just had a quick…. Yes? Oh… yes… No of course I think he’s a very clever boy… No, it’s okay, you don’t have to put me on to hi… Hello Johann. Magnus says you did a very good job today. Well done… Magnus? … Magnus?... Johann, can you get Magnus?... …. … MAGNUS?” Sloane winces. Kravitz mouths a quick sorry her way. “Great! Magnus, I… No, don’t hang up, I rang because I had a question, you know the kitchen worktops? … Mmmhm, yeah, they’re incredible, how long did they take you to make?... Oh? A week? Wow… And that was quick?” Kravitz widens his eyes at Sloane, her face doesn’t give anything away. “... and if it was a rush order? Oh… it was? Wow. Yeah. Lots of intricate bits…. Mmm… yes, you’re right, it is a funny shape in here. Good point… okay, so if someone had say, for example, stained them, how would one go about getting that stain out?... No it’s not a sex thing!... Magnus!... Do you really want to know the answer to that?... I didn’t think so… Look, it’s a hypothetical question which I  need the answer to please?... Yes, haha, you’re right it is a good thing it’s hypothetical, Taako would be really upset yes, but if you could just tell me… you know, for the thought exercise, yes, right… It would depend on the stain? So if something was sticky and had food dye?... Magnus please, you have to focus… Okay… Yep… Water… nail polish remover… baking powder and vinegar… toothpaste… yes we’ll try that… yes of course hypothetically… no, please don’t tell him… Because nothing has happened. Everything’s fine. Sloane can tell you.” 

Kravitz gives Sloane a pleading look and she retracts the phone to speak to Magnus herself. “Hey Magnus, yep, all fine here… Ha, yeah, just playing a fun hypothetical game, you know how we do that… give my love to Julia and Johann... Yeah, thanks from both of us… Bye!”

“So water didn’t work, but we can try the nail polish remover and the toothpaste, and I’m fairly sure Taako has the baking powder and vinegar.

“Be right back.” Sloane’s gone before Kravitz can tell her where anything is.

He tries to un-summon his scythe again while he waits. Nothing happens. He tries again, double hard, it tries to leave, there’s a second where it might, but no. Stuck fast. The door creaks open slowly before he can try a third time.

“I didn’t even know it was possible to get magic stuck to you.” He sighs.

Sloane doesn’t reply.

“Sloane?”

There’s a skittering noise. No. Oh fuck no.

“SLOANE!” Kravitz yells, hoping she’ll hear him before whichever one of them it is can get themselves stuck too.

“Pss pss pss pss pss.” He keeps his arms well out of reach, and moves slowly towards the door.

It’s Tiny Taco, of course it’s Tiny Taco. 

“Hello there, why don’t you go back out into the hall? You can play with your toys and your friends. It’ll be so nice out there in the rest of the house, in literally any room but this room.” 

Tiny Taco struts confidently forward and rubs his head fondly against Kravitz’s legs. This is the most affection he has ever shown him. Kravitz fights the impulse to lean into it, it’s all part of the ploy. Maybe if he slowly shuffles towards the door?

“You yelled?” Sloane asks from the doorway?

Kravitz turns to look at her. It’s all the distraction Tiny Taco needs and he makes a break for it.

“No no no no no no no!” Kravitz tries to block him with his body, Taco dodges. “Sloane can you…?”

She tries, she does. She moves fast. It’s not fast enough.

Kravitz reaches out and grabs him.

“Kravitz!” Sloane thwacks her palm against her head. “You had one job and it was standing still.”

Taco’s already squirming in his hand, this is going to get ugly fast.

“Shout at me later. Help, please?”

Sloane sighs unnecessarily loudly. “I’m taking a photo.”

“What? Sloane, no.”

“Do you want my help or not?”

Kravitz knows better than to try and bargain with her. “Fine.”

“Smile!” 

Kravitz is not going to smile.

“Smile or I’m not helping.”

Kravitz smiles.

“Okay, what goes best with cat? Toothpaste?”

Taco wriggles again and digs his claws sharply into Kravitz’s arm.

“Ouch! Anything, just try.”

Sloane shrugs and brandishes the Aquafresh. “Brace yourself.”

It works, eventually. Kravitz has fresh scratches, but Taco has been pasted (and slightly snipped) clean and returned to the ‘anywhere but the kitchen’ exclusionary zone with enough Dreamies to buy his silence.

“One down. Shall we try it on the worktop or your hands first?” 

“The worktop’s more important.”

“Oh wait, your phone’s going.”

“Who is it?”

Sloane checks. “Taako. There’s a few missed calls too.”

Kravitz smiles as endearingly as he can manage. Surely Sloane wouldn’t stand in the way of speaking to his boyfriend, not after how much he helped when she was worried about telling Hurley. “Would you mind?”

“Fine.” Sloane holds the phone to his ear.

“Hello Taako! It’s so nice to hear from you, love, how’s your day going? … mmhm… incredible… I hope you told him off… Maybe not the words I would have used, but as you say, it’s your school… Another award? Congratulations! Very much deserved as far as I’m concerned… How am I? Oh you know, fine… My day? Nothing much, just missing you… You can’t fireball me through a phone dearest… No, actually I don’t think you should try, if anyone can it’s you..” 

Sloane prods him hard and makes a ‘wind it up’ gesture.

“Ow… I mean… How is your afternoon looking?... Wonderful… Anyway, I should let you go. I know you’re busy… No no, honestly… I’ll see you later, I know you have so much on… Love you… Goodbye, Taako!”

“Gross.” Says Sloane loudly.

“Shut  up, you love your girlfriend.” She doesn’t have a leg to stand on as far as Kravitz is concerned.

“Yeah, you’re not wrong… I was actually thinking of… Wait, now’s super not the time. Let’s try and fix… you know, all of this?” Sloane gestures to the whole of everything.

Kravitz nods.

The layer of toothpaste doesn’t have the same effect on the counter as it did on Taco.

“Nail polish remover?” Sloane asks.

“Yes, whatever you think.” Kravitz eyes the clock warily.

It doesn’t work either, although it does remove the toothpaste effectively.

“Vinegar explosion?” Sloane sounds more excited than he’d like her to about this option.

“Did Magnus say how much to use?”

“Nope!” She says, happily, shaking powder across the worktop.

“Maybe you should start with a test patch?”

“Uh huh.” Sloane looks him dead in the eyes as she pours vinegar over it all.

The fizzing is far more dramatic than it would be on a small scale, he’ll give her that. Especially when it turns red.

It’s unfortunate that it’s still going when they hear the door open.

“Home, I’m honey!” Taako shouts from the entrance hall.

“Hi Honey, I’m Kravitz.” Yells Kravitz, automatically.

Sloane stops watching the fizzening long enough to pretend to puke. Kravitz glares at her. He can be gross in his own home. Taako’s own home. He doesn’t live here. Obviously.

“Where are you, Kraveroo? … Oh, hey there hi hello, Taco, most precious baby angel, how’re you doing this fine d… KRAVITZ!” 

“Fuck.” Say Kravitz and Sloane in tandem. 

“I can’t believe he told, we gave him so many treats!” Sloane shakes her head.

“He hates me.” Says Kravitz, mournfully. “We should never have trusted him.” 

“Kravitz? Where are you and why have you given the cat a shit haircut?” Taako’s voice is hovering somewhere between pissed off and amused and Kravitz would love to be able to tip it over into the latter category. He can’t deal with being in any more trouble right now.

He widens his eyes at Sloane, sadly she’s doing the same right back.

“I feel like we’ve gotta let it fizz? That’s what’s doing the cleaning, right?” Sloane hisses.

“Yes. That sounds logical, but how do I?” Kravitz holds his free hand up.

“You could poke your head out through the door?” 

“What?”

“He can’t see your hands if you’re just a head at the kitchen door.”

“Of course, thanks Sloane.” Kravitz makes it all the way to the door before realising his error. “Er…”

Sloane sighs heavily and dashes over to crack the door open before retreating to the counter.

“Hello my love.” Kravitz shouts, head poking into the hall and foot firmly wedged to stop the door opening any further.

Taako careens round the corner. “Why’re you in the kitchen?” His eyes narrow dangerously.

“I’m just doing something. A surprise.” 

Taako doesn’t look any less suspicious. “What’s that smell?”

“Surprise smell.” Kravitz smiles his most reassuring smile.

Apparently it’s less reassuring than he thinks because Taako disappears, and, if the “what the fuck?” From behind him is anything to go by, blinks into the kitchen.

“It’s not what it looks like!” Sloane’s hands are in the air and her head’s swivelling frantically, looking for escape.

“Cha’boy hasn’t a clue what it looks like… what the actual fuck is going on in here?”

“There may have been a slight incident.” Kravitz decides that there’s not many routes other than honesty left at this point.

“Slight?” Taako raises a single, reproachful eyebrow.

“It’s not all of the things. Just some of them.” Kravitz tries not to sound sulky, he does.

“Why’re you holding your scythe?”

“Uh…”

“Why’re you red?”

“Er…”

“Did you try to bake?”

“No.” Kravitz replies before he can remember his plan to the tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “I mean, yes. I did bake! The baking wasn’t the bit that went wrong. Look!” Kravitz points triumphantly at the cake.

Taako’s eyes soften for the barest moment. “It’s heart shaped.”

“It’s for you!” 

“And the red stuff?”

“I had to ice it.” 

“With?”

“Icing.”

“That you made from…?”

“I’m not actually entirely sure I remember.”

“Okay. Well first things first, Krav, Kraverino, beloved… you’re a skeleton. You, my guy, are made of bones. Meat you isn’t real.”

“Meat you isn’t real!” Sloane repeats. “I forgot.”

“Oh.” Kravitz unravels himself immediately and feels his scythe release into the ether, thank goodness. Not that he didn’t love it, but it’s a pain in the arse to lug around all the time, plus the drama of the reveal is always fun. “Thank you Taako.”

“Is this why you chopped Taco?” 

“There was an incident.” Says Sloane. “But I toothpasted him out.”

“And he only bit me twice!” Kravitz adds.

“See, cha’boy said you he was coming round to you!” Taako sounds genuinely delighted. To be fair, it is an improvement.

“So that’s one down.” Sloane says. “Just… this to go.”

“Have you tried, you know, magic?”

“Er…” There’s a long pause. A very long pause.

“I rifted to Sloane.”

Taako pinches his fingers at the bridge of his nose. “So just to clarify, neither of you, including you, handsome man, literally made of magic. tried any kind of mending, purifying,…” he lowers his hand to glance at the mess again. “... banishing?”

“Well…” Sloane starts, as if there’s any way to get them out of this.

“We rang Magnus!” Says Kravitz quickly. He can’t leave it all to Sloane.

“Ah, well if you rang Magnus, notoriously magical Magnus! Of course he would have thought to suggest all of the best wizardly crafts, he’s always casting spells, punch, chop, harder punch, Magical Magnus, we all call him.”

“Can you get rid of it?I think the fizzing has stopped now.” Sloane points at the still definitely-more-red-than-it-should-be counter.

“Can Taako get rid of it? This lowly idiot wizard? I suppose I can maybe see my way to trying, but what good could cha’boy possibly do against something so fearsome as icing?” Taako waves his hands dramatically. 

The red gets redder.

“Did… have you just made it stronger?” Sloane asks in disbelief.

“I meant to do that. It was just a warm up. Natch.” Taako’s voice doesn’t waver.

Kravitz tries very hard not to feel too smug. 

“Abraca-fuck-off!”

A small chunk disappears, but the rest remains just as vibrant.

“Fuck. That was high level too. Uh. Cha’boy’s out of ideas, have you called your Bird Mom, Krav?”

“She’s not my Mu…” 

Taako gives him a hard look. “Because, cha’boy’s just saying, these worktops, they’re good worktops, and it’d be a real shame if anything were to irreversibly stain them.”

“Taako, I can’t contact the god who oversees the natural order of life and death and ask her to take some time out to come fix… this.”

Taako raises an eyebrow.

Sloane gives him a look.

Kravitz snatches his phone back from her with his now blissfully un-gunked bone hands. “Fine, but I’m not communing, I’m texting.”

“She always rings you straight back anyway.” Taako says.

“Classic Mum behaviour.” Sloane adds.

Kravitz needs to spend less time with both of them, he refuses to be bullied like this.

His phone rings. “Hello M…y queen.” Kravitz glares at them both as they snicker. “We’re experiencing some issues with an, er, substance… No, not like that… No, we wouldn’t take anything that’s bad for us or the people around us… Thank you… Do you think there’s anything you can… yes. Yes, I know… I promise, this is the last time… I thought that maybe I’d be better… not just proximity… yes, okay, yes. Proximity… Thank you… I promise I won’t… I know I did, but this time I really mean it… Thank you very much… I love-you-too-bye.”

“What did your Mum say?” They chorus wearing their most pointed smiles.

“She’s going to have a look at it.” All of the fight has gone out of him. Kravitz has accepted his fate.

The counter shakes violently. Nothing happens.

It shakes again.

Nothing.

Kravitz’s phone rings.

He doesn’t want to answer. Less than anything does he want to answer, but he cannot ignore direct summons.

“Hello… yes… No… I can’t remember… I’m sorry… I don’t think… Okay. Yes. I’ll ask him…” Kravitz turns to Taako. “How attached are you to your kitchen?”

Taako narrows his eyes. “Very.”

“How would you feel if the counters had to be banished into a secure dimension?”

Taako’s mouth forms into a tight line.

“It may also not really be a question of whether you’re happy for it to happen or not because Raven checked with Istus and there’s a strand of fate which needs to be snipped right now…”

“So what you’re saying is that cha’boy’s losing a chunk of the kitchen he spent what feels like a century planning? That his best friend in the world hand crafted for him?” Taako presses his hand to his forehead and pretends to faint.

Kravitz opens his mouth and shuts it again. Guilt gnaws at him. He wants more than anything to fix this, but he doesn’t know how.

“Shall I tell Magnus you said he was your best friend?” Sloane asks.

“Take the counter.” Taako replies immediately.

“Taako, I’m so sorry.”

Taako smiles and waves his hand. “Honestly, Taako was bored of them.”

“But…”

“Magnus hasn’t really been challenged lately. I think he needs this. We’ll do it as a favour to him.”

“Are you…?” 

“Honestly, Taako made the kitchen with himself in mind, but it’s not just cha’boy living here anymore, is it?” Taako waves his hand flippantly.

Kravitz pauses. “I… Taako.”

“Tell her to do it now.”

His tone leaves absolutely no room for disagreement, Kravitz gives the answer.

There’s a brief moment of nothing, enough time for Kravitz to chance a tentative look at Taako. He meets Kravitz’s eyes confidently, doesn’t even flinch as reality twists around them and there’s a gentle pop. Kravitz doesn’t need to check to know the counter is gone. 

Taako smiles at him.

“I’m gonna head out. Kravitz could you…?” Sloane asks.

He cuts the rift without looking at her. “Thank you for helping.”

It seals behind her.

“I’m sorry.” Kravitz says again, because he is.

“You made me a cake.” Taako says again.

“Yes.” Kravitz replies, because he did. Regardless of everything else, he did.

“Because you wanted to fuck my kitchen up?”

“No! I, look, you made the me the pastries.”

“The date ones?”

“Yes. The ones from home. You spent weeks working at it and you didn’t even have a recipe, just me trying to explain a taste I can barely remember.”

“And cha’boy nailed it.” Taako grins smugly and Kravitz loves him in all his brash confidence.

“You did. You really did.”

“So you decided I needed cake too?”

“No one ever bakes for you.” Kravitz says quietly.

“Ango did that one time.” 

“Yes, that’s true. But it’s been ages and they got set on fire, and no one else does. You deserve it. You deserve to be taken care of right back.”

“Hey, Krav. Quick question, just a teensy smidgey one. Who got the shoe organiser after cha’boy kept falling over them?”

Kravitz tilts his head, uncertain what this has to do with anything.

“Go on, don’t get shy on me, who did that?”

“Me.” Says Kravitz. He’d been sick of worrying that Taako was going to fall over and get lost in a shoe pile and need help when he wasn’t there to give it.

“And who actually puts the shoes on the shoe organiser when cha’boy forgets?”

“Me?” It’s not like he does it all the time, just now and again.

“And who got the cats those extra perches to go round the walls because I was worried they were bored?” Taako doesn’t wait for an answer. “Oh, yeah, that was you too.”

“But…”

“Bones, you care for Taako in so many different ways, so leave the baking to the professionals because so help me fantasy Jesus if you wreck any more of our house.” 

“Our house?”

“Yeah. Now shut up and tell me what your perfect kitchen looks like so I can fix it.”

#Sloane and Kravitz are friends and I refuse to hear any different #Sloane #Kravitz #Taakitz #Taako #Background Magnus because nothing brings me more joy than one sided phone conversations with him #Can you guess which line made me laugh so hard I choked on my drink? #This went off piste and I had a great time #The adventure zone #TAZ #Taz balance #Tiny Taco is my favourite villain

[khaylin27]

You're a What!?

Part 1 of DODGERS VS PHILLIES BABY!!!

Pairing: Miles Teller x Fem!Reader

Summary: What if Miles Teller dated someone who was a Dodger fan instead of a Phillies fan?

Warnings: SO MUCH FLUFF, Miles being drunk, So many baseball references, Dodgers v.s. Phillies lol

Word Count: 1893

A/N: BEFORE Y'ALL COME AT ME, I respect Miles and Keleigh's relationship and marriage. THEY ARE RELATIONSHIP GOALS!!!! I wanted to write this because I love Miles and baseball. If you feel this isn't for you, please don't read it.

You met Miles not too long ago at a mutual friend's wedding in Philadelphia. He was one of the groom's friends and you were the bride's friend so you guys were ironically sitting at the same table.

You knew who he was because of his recent movie Top Gun Maverick but you were shy to say anything as he was drunk and dancing to Single Ladies by Beyoncé. So instead you decided to watch the Dodgers v.s. Angels game at your table while everybody danced.

As Max Muncy was up to bat, you suddenly got disturbed by a very drunk Miles Teller sipping another glass of whiskey. "Aren't you a little bit too drunk right now to be drinking some more?" You ask as your focus was now on Miles instead of the game.

"Maybe just a tiny bit but I'm sobered up now because you're talking to me." His flirty comment made your cheeks slightly red as he moves right next to you. "What are you watching there?"

"Umm the Dodgers v.s. Angels game. I've been a big baseball fan since I was little, especially for the Dodgers." As you said that you see that Max Muncy hits a home run and the Dodgers win. "OH MY GOODNESS. WE WON!!!" You shout out with happiness while Miles covers his ears. "Sorry for being loud."

"It's okay. I like a girl who's very passionate, especially about baseball. I'm the same way too. " He winks as he says that. "I don't think I introduced myself. I'm Miles, Miles Teller."

"And I'm James, James Bond." You both laugh at your response. "Just kidding. My name is Y/N L/N. I'm a friend of the bride."

"It's nice to meet you Y/N. I'm a friend of the groom but hopefully, I can be more than just a friend to you." He smirks at you as your cheeks were turning bright red. "Is it possible to get your phone number?"

"Well, I would give you my number but I don't think it's worth it considering how drunk you are. You might forget me." You laugh at the end because after tonight he might forget you ever existed.

"Sugar, I won't be able to forget a pretty face like you getting so excited about baseball." You're writing your number on a napkin as he says that and put it in his coat pocket.

"That's my number. If you don't forget about me, text me and we can go on a date." You say as you get your stuff to go say goodbye to the newlyweds. Leaving Miles at the table smiling happily as you leave.

The Next Day

You were asleep in the hotel bed until you hear your phone buzzing nonstop. At first, you thought it was your manager texting you for an upcoming project but to your surprise, it was someone else.

UNKNOWN: Hey sugar! I don’t know if you remember me from last night but I remember you ;)

YOU: Ahh so you didn’t forget about me, Miles. I feel touched 🥹

MILES: How can I forget a beautiful woman like you that passionately loves baseball?

YOU: You remember that too, I guess I left an impression on you. Are you hungover right now?

MILES: Yes you left a very good impression last night. And yes I am VERY hungover *sends pic

YOU: Aww so sorry for that bud. Wish I can help but your actions do have consequences. You drank too much and now you have a hangover.

MILES: It’s nothing that I’m not used to. It’ll go away once the medicine kicks in. What are your plans today?

YOU: Nothing really. This might be the only time I have free time so I’ll probably explore Philadelphia. I’d never been here before until I got invited to the wedding.

MILES: Oh that sounds fun but if you want I have Behind the Plate tickets to the Phillies tonight. Wanna come?

YOU: Ooh you got me at Behind the Plate tickets. Who are they playing against?

MILES: The LA Dodgers. Why?

YOU: Oh no reason :) What time do I have to be there?

MILES: We have to be there by 5 pm. So I’ll come to your hotel by 4:30 pm cause your hotel is close to the stadium.

YOU: WOW! How do you know I’m staying at a hotel?

MILES: I might have asked my friend where you were staying at 🫣

YOU: Wow 😅 you really think you have a chance with me?

MILES: Yep cause we both love baseball 😉 and I like you.

YOU: Is this considered our first date?

MILES: It can be our first date ;) Hey, I’ll text you when I’m at your hotel. I have to get ready.

YOU: Okay, talk to you later.

Hours Later

A couple hours later and now you’re heading down the hotel lobby. You see Miles wearing a red Phillies hat with a Phillies jersey. The Dodger fan in you was kinda disgusted but you didn’t want to say anything. This was considered your “first date.”

He hugs you. “Hey beautiful. You look amazing.” You were wearing a simple black romper but it made you look amazing. But there was one thing Miles didn’t like and it was the blue Dodger hat that was on your head. “Except I don’t like that hat.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble hot stuff but this girl is from LA and loves her Dodger blue.” You smile at him and comment back at him. “I also don’t like yours either.”

“I didn't know you were a Dodgers fan!?"

"If you weren't too drunk last night then maybe you would've remembered me saying that I've been a Dodgers fan since I was little." You laugh a little because he totally forgot you said that last night.

"Is that why you asked me what team the Phillies were playing today?” He asks as you guys walk into the limousine.

“Of course! If they were against someone else I wouldn’t have come. I’m loyal to my boys in dodger blue.” You smile at him. “You’re very lucky to have met me at the right time or else you would’ve lost me.”

In The Car

As you were heading to the stadium you guys started to get to know each other. He was born and raised in Philadelphia and perused acting. For you, you were born and raised in LA and perused being an influencer on social media. The conversation was very good and you got to know him a little more until you reached the stadium.

“Hey Y/N. I think we should hold hands. There’s going to be a lot of paparazzi and you might get lost.” He suggests as the limousine had stopped.

“Are you asking me because you’re worried or you just wanna hold my hand?” You ask with a smile as he smirks back.

Miles gets out of the car first and holds your hand as you get out of the car. He was right about the paparazzi, there were a lot and you were a little bit anxious. But when Miles was holding your hand it was calming to you and you got to your seats safely.

“Hey, thanks for holding my hand. I was feeling a little anxious back there with all that paparazzi but you calmed me down.” You sincerely thank him and he smiles.

“I’m glad that I helped. There’s going to be a lot of that today since I’m an actor and you're an influencer. But I’m going to be here for you.” You smile back at him. “Is it just me or are you hungry?”

“I’m kinda hungry too."

"I’ll ask a staff member to get us some Philly cheesesteaks. It’s a staple to have in Philadelphia and since it’s your first time you need to get it!” He says as he calls a staff member to get us some cheesesteaks.

Once he’s done talking to the staff member you ask him a question. “So who do you think is gonna win tonight?”

“I gotta go with my team. We got Harper and Schwarber!” He say’s excitedly. “You think your team is gonna win?”

“I for sure think my team is gonna win! We have Betts and Muncy.” You say with so much confidence to him.

Your Philly cheesesteaks come on time and you both open them. It smells so good but the taste is! Was so good!! “OH MY GOODNESS!! This is so good!!! How did I live my life not trying this!?”

“That’s what happens when you're a Dodger fan sugar. All you have is hot dogs.” Miles says.

“That’s not true. We have some BOMB tacos every Tuesday.” You say as you eat your cheesesteak.

Once you guys finish your cheesesteaks Miles makes you a deal. “Hey Y/N you wanna make a deal?”

You were now curious, “what type of deal?”

“I know you live in LA and I currently live here. I don’t want this to end. If the Phillies win tonight, this doesn’t end and we get to keep talking. Even though we live far away from each other.” Miles suggests.

“And what if the Dodgers win?” You ask with a smirk on your face.

“That’s up to you then. But I have much faith in my team that they’re gonna win.” He smiles as the game starts.

Bottom of 9th Inning

It was the bottom of the 9th inning. You guys were both anxious for different reasons.

You were anxious because the Dodgers were winning 4 to 3. Since it was the bottom inning, the Phillies were batting because they were the home team. If someone from the Phillies magically got two runs that would mean Miles would win his bet.

Miles was very anxious too. The Phillies need two more runs and they would win. Except there were two outs and if one more batter got out it would be over.

This was a make-it-or-break-it moment. If this batter gets out it’s game over, but if he hits a run the Phillies still have a chance. As Julio Urías was pitching the last pitch to determine it the umpire declares it as an out.

THE DODGERS HAVE WON!!! All Dodger fans at the stadium we cheering with joy because they won. Miles however wasn’t.

He lost his bet with Y/N and that meant he might never see her again. “OMG MILES!!! WE WON!!! WE WON!!!”

“Congrats to guys I guess?” He says with a sad smile.

You can tell he was sad. He really thought his team was gonna win. “Hey don’t be so sad? Cheer up hot stuff.” You say with a little smile.

“Why would I cheer up. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to see you again.” As he says that you put your arms around his neck and kiss him passionately.

You pull away and ask with a smile, “Does that answer your question hot stuff?”

“That most definitely does sugar.” He kisses you again but this time it gets caught on the Phillies kiss cam.

And this was just the beginning of their relationship and their feud with the Dodgers and Phillies.

A/N: OMG THE FIRST CHAPTER! Hope y'all liked it.

Here's to be added to the taglist

Taglist:(crossed out means I couldn't tag you) @eternalsams @angiem219 @mizzysx @xlynnx07 @withakindheartx @lethalbeautiful @atarmychick007 @shanimallina87 @adoringsebstan @mak-32 @nograce-nomercy @brittancqs

#miles teller #miles teller x reader #dodgers #los angeles dodgers #philadelphia phillies #mlb national league #Phillies #baseball #bradley bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x reader #top gun #top gun maverick #rooster top gun #rooster x reader #rooster imagine #rooster fanfic #bradley rooster bradshaw

[waynes-multiverse]

Plastic Hearts – Part 1

Pairing: Director!Dean Winchester x Actress!Reader

Series Summary: Los Angeles, 1985. Y/N’s a young actress without any success, hopping from one failed audition to the next until one desperate mistake brings her to her breaking point. Dean Winchester, on the other hand, is a grade A asshole and washed-up director at the end of his career, known for his godawful slasher movies in the 70s and his love for blow, booze, and women. Lost in the toxic Hollywood life, their paths cross when one hopeless little wrestling show changes their trajectory.

Chapter Warnings: +18, GLOW AU, self-worth issues, implied smut (reader x unknown dude 🤷‍♀️), cheating, Sam and Dean are not related in this story (--> check the series masterlist for overall warnings!)

Word Count: 2.8k

A/N: Truthfully, I wasn’t gonna share it because it was just a fun, silly project to get over some writer’s block (which I did!). Netflix never gave me an ending to this amazing show, so I wanted to write my own, y’know? But hey, it’s already written, so why not share it with the class, right? As my awesome cheerleader on this project @panicking-outside-the-disco said, the dilaogue screams Dean AU 🖤 (Thank you so much for your encouragement, bestie!) Fellow fans of the show, you’ll be happy to know I kept all the good stuff in there, from Steel Horse to pink, frosted donuts. Everyone else will make sense of those words soon enough. So, hopefully, you’ll enjoy this nostalgic love tribute, and let’s give ourselves a decent ending, shall we? 🤩

Series Masterlist || Main Masterlist

1. Holding Out For A Hero

Another failed audition.

Moving from Nebraska to Los Angeles at the sweet age of eighteen, Y/N has played the Hollywood game for quite some time. Now, at the ripe age of twenty-seven by La-La Land standards, she only has little to show for herself, though. She’s had a few background roles and starred in a handful of low-budget plays, but her big breakthrough, the role that changes everything, still remains a hopeless and seemingly unreachable daydream.

Worst of all, she is sick and tired of the simple and reduced roles Hollywood forces upon its actresses. She wants more than the shitty role of the secretary who tells a powerful man his wife is on the phone. Y/N wants a real part instead of playing second fiddle to yet another pompous dick.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

After her latest failure, she even became so desperate she hid in a bathroom stall for three hours before ambushing her casting director Josie while the poor woman was fucking peeing. But instead of the customary, unexplained rejection, Y/N wanted to hear reasons this time. She wanted to find out why she always gets pushed over for someone else, wanted to know if she could do something better, for crying out loud.

Usually, it’s the agent’s job to tell an actor all the reasons why they were wrong for the role, but she doesn’t even have an agent anymore because, as it bitterly turns out, everyone stops fucking caring about you if you haven’t worked in over two years. For once, though, she wanted some goddamn feedback.

The casting director’s response?

“Look Y/N, every director I work with says, ‘Get me someone I don’t know. Someone I haven’t seen. I want a girl who’s real.’ That’s when I bring you in, so they can see that they don’t actually want the thing they think they want. It’s 1985. Everyone wants Jane fucking Fonda. I’m sorry, honey… But listen, I have some experimental projects in the Valley, if you’re interested. Would you consider doing erotica?”

So, fucking porn. That’s where she’s at with her life.

Defeatedly, Y/N leaves the casting office in West Hollywood once more and gets swallowed by the city’s filth, lost between hellfire and demons. No matter what she does, she never feels like it’s enough. Each audition, you throw yourself against the wall and hope, this time, it’ll stick. It’s an endless game, a gamble of hope – hope isn’t an infinite resource, though, and hers is running out.

Y/N likes getting tortured. That’s the conclusion she’s come to. And because she seems to thrive on torment, she joins her best friend Joanna for a Jazzercise class – aka a room full of toned women in leotards, sweatbands, and leg warmers. The two friends have known each other since middle school and have done everything together since then, including their move to the big city. Joanna is a blonde bombshell who immediately got a role on a popular soap until she quit acting and had a baby a couple of months ago. Now, she’s a housewife and mother in Pasadena while her husband brings home the money.

Y/N loves Joanna, but admittedly, the blonde sometimes makes her feel small and insecure. She doesn’t have the big tits, the perfect curves, or the shiny hair. Jo has always been more successful than her in every aspect of their respective lives, the friendly competition leaving Y/N, more often than not, with a bad aftertaste in her mouth. She constantly tries to keep her envy in check, though, even when the blonde’s boobs exploded during their freshman year of high school. Simply put: Joanna is a sparkling diamond, while Y/N feels like a dirty lump of coal next to her.

The cheer captain versus the theater geek.

“You know, I’d actually do porn if it had a good story. Like, Shakespeare porn,” Y/N half-heartedly jokes as the women change in the locker room after their class.

Jo arches an eyebrow at her, the smile on her lips a bit condescending. “C’mon, Y/N, would you actually do porn, though? You hate being naked in front of people.”

“Things have changed since you disappeared,” Y/N shrugs her shoulders, her voice laced with rebellion, and purposely changes out of her leotard in front of her friend to drive the point home. She also tries not to sound too bitter about the fact that the blonde basically abandoned her after getting married and pushing a human out of her vagina. She knows her jealousy is silly. It’s just part of life. That’s how it goes. It wasn’t always going to be them vs. the world forever.

“I didn’t disappear. I had a baby,” Jo retorts on cue before her face lights up with an insane amount of excitement. “Which you could too! Then we’d both have babies.”

“Great idea,” Y/N snorts sarcastically and slips into her sneakers, playfully musing, “Who of the guys I randomly fuck would make a good baby daddy, huh? The alcoholic I met at the farmer’s market or the depressed stand-up with a heroin addiction?”

Jo sits down on the bench next to her and conspiratorially leans closer. “Can I tell you something that I realized recently?”

Y/N gives her a raised look that borders on amused. “What?”

The blonde has been a bit of a postpartum mess these days. It’s the lack of sleep and the fact that her boobs won’t stop leaking. Also, her kid is a biter.

“When I first was cast on Paradise Bay, I was thrilled, okay? I mean, it was so exciting, remember? And then they put me in that year-long coma, and I was just lying there in this hospital bed, feeling powerless. And then when season three came, and they graduated me to that wheelchair with that blanket–”

“I’m sorry… Is this going somewhere?” Y/N interrupts her because the last thing she needs to hear today is another one of Joanna’s success stories.

“I’m getting there,” Jo frowns and continues straightaway, “Anyways, I was so relieved when Sam asked me to marry him and told me to stop working. He was right. It was completely ridiculous. Why would I do this to myself, you know? I swear to God getting pregnant and written off that show was the best decision I ever made,” she tells her enthusiastically.

Y/N just twitches her shoulders and ignores the guilt that’s bubbling in her gut. “Well, we’re different people. I choose work. I can have a baby once I win an Oscar.”

Jo lets out a deep sigh, “But you’re not even working, Y/N. Don’t you wanna be happy and have a family?”

“Of course I do.” Y/N’s not sure that answer is the whole truth. She knows she’s supposed to want the supportive husband, the cute kids, and the white picket fence, but all those things come with the end of your career. She’s not ready to give up and pay that price yet. She wants to make it on her own first, not needing a hero to save her like some damsel in distress. “‘Sides, don’t I need a boyfriend for starters? Isn’t that how it works?”

“Oh, it’s not that complicated,” Jo huffs and rolls her eyes dismissively. “Just pick the first nice guy with money you find. It’s what I did. I mean, Sam is a complete idiot and so out of my league, but it works,” she shrugs. “Why don’t you come visit me in Pasadena sometimes if you miss me so much? I called you like a million times in the last few weeks.”

“I know,” Y/N groans in response and finishes buttoning her blouse, swallowing the giant lump of shame in her throat. “It’s so far away,” she excuses, even though it’s another white lie. A big one, this time.

Jo tilts her head at her, but Y/N knows the wrinkles on the blonde’s brow are not out of concern. It’s pity. She’s seen that look all her life. “Y/N, are you okay? ‘Cause you look sad and fucking depressing, honestly.”

“Thanks. But I’m fine,” she brushes her friend off with a bitter smile. “Just the usual, you know? I have $28 left to pay my bills, including rent, which is why I’ve been waitressing at that awful diner in Downey all week… Oh, and, uhm, I’ve eaten Honey Nut Cheerios for my last eight meals,” she lists off her miserable life and grabs her duffel bag, feigning the brightest grin, “But hey, I’m gonna do porn. Things are looking up.”

It’s late at night when Y/N returns to her rundown shoebox apartment. Her decorations include one dead plant and two ripped posters of Angela Lansbury and Barbra Streisand, respectively. It’s a sad affair, really.

Completely beat, she checks her fridge, which resembles an empty ice cave, except for that half-full box of cheap wine. Yeah, she can’t even afford to get drunk properly. The old mattress squeaks as she falls face-down on the bed and exhaustively snatches the rotary dial phone from her nightstand, only reaching her parents’ answering machine.

“Hey, Mom. It’s Y/N. I didn’t get the audition today either, but I’ll get another one soon. So, fingers crossed… again. But I was just wondering if you and Dad could maybe wire me some money? You know, just so I can pay my electricity bill and… eat food. I’m really sorry… I know I can’t keep asking you guys for money because I’m a grown-up now… but I swear it’s the last time, okay? And I’m aware I said that the last time, too… Anyways, love you. Call me back, please? Okay, thanks… Bye.”

Slamming the receiver onto the phone, she groans loudly and is close to screaming into her goddamn pillow. When did she become such a pathetic fucking loser?

Needless to say, she imagined her life would go a lot differently.

In the midst of her nervous breakdown, her ears then perk up at a strange noise, eyes darting warily to the window. There’s an audible jam of the lock, followed by the rustling of the yellowed blinds before a large hand pops through the crack.

Shit. Someone’s trying to break in.

Anxiously, she grabs the phone and holds it up like a weapon, her heart thrashing wildly in her ribcage, the sound ringing in her ears. Then, she bravely yells with a shaky voice, “Whoever you are, I have a knife in my hand and already called the cops!”

“Whoa, whoa… Y/N, it’s just me.” A young man’s head pokes through the window, raising his large palms with a chuckle.

Her shoulders slump, the tension of fear replaced with one of annoyance as she sighs half-heartedly in relief, recognizing the intruder. Y/N lowers her makeshift weapon, tossing it on the bed. “Oh my God! What the fuck are you doing here? Why are you climbing through my window? You can’t be here! Climb back out – now!”

“You said the last time that no one can find out about us, so I took that seriously,” he explains as he gaspingly pushes his tall body through the small opening. “Can’t you just be happy to see me, Y/N? It took some effort to come here and climb through that window, you know?” A charming laugh bounces off the thin, bare walls once he’s made it into her apartment and towers over her.

Y/N folds her arms over her chest and cocks an eyebrow, “You want credit for cheating on your wife?”

He sighs and rolls his eyes back a little, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Can we please not call it that?”

“What would you like me to call it? You’re married to someone and had sex with me,” she counters sternly. She absolutely doesn’t want him here. That man is only trouble and part of the reason why her life is so fucking shitty these days.

“Look, this isn’t normal behavior for me,” he shrugs innocently as if the madness can’t be helped and adds the softest puppy dog look. “I just-, I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“So?! It was a huge fucking mistake!” There’s a sharp inhale of breath as she tries to gulp down the anger, guilt, and shame inside of her. “It happened weeks ago! You shouldn’t be here… It was a party. The drinks were free… I-I was feeling sorry for myself, and you took advantage of that.”

Quietly clearing his throat, he mumbles under his breath, “I think we both took advantage of that.” As he meets her gaze, his whiskey-colored orbs mirror the same guilt she feels.

Y/N places her hands on her hips with a deep exhale, her head bobbing as the words sink in and her head begins to spin. She knows he’s right. They’re both equally to blame, but it doesn’t change anything about her regrets. “Please leave. Go home to your family,” she begs him softly, too soft, not enough strength left to fight.

“You can’t just pull the plug on this. You and me. This is real,” he tells her, his hazel eyes boring into hers. “I think you’re the one, Y/N.”

“No, I’m not,” she stresses with a heavy shake of her head, fighting against the tears that prick her eyes and cloud her mind. “I’m nothing special.”

Pensively, he nods and licks his lips, a humorless chuckle escaping between them as he rubs his mouth and ponders, “I keep thinking about what you said to me that night… You know, how there are shiny people who have everything? And then there are people like us who have to go to parties with those people and watch them get their pictures taken. And it’s not fair... ‘Cause we deserve good things, too. We deserve attention and love and… sex.”

Silently staring at him for what feels like an eternity, her mind races a mile a minute as her heart shatters into a thousand sharp daggers that pierce through her skin and leave deep scars in their wake. And then, Y/N foolishly crashes her lips against his just to stop the goddamn pain in her chest.

What is there to say that even justifies any of this? She’s fucking weak.

The harsh sunbeams that fall on her face and blind her eyes announce another dreadful morning as she wakes with a pessimistic groan. The bed is cold and empty; the married guy is long gone, leaving right after the fuck.

Y/N is alone again – with nowhere to go.

Why did she do what she did? In all honesty, she can’t quite understand it herself, the truth too cruel and pathetic to accept it. The only positive thing she can find about her situation is that at least she can’t sink any lower than rock bottom. She’s certain she’s reached the depths of Hell at this point. Los Angeles mistakenly gets called the city of angels. Truthfully, though, it’s filled with devils who lure you to the dark side until you can’t even look in the mirror anymore without seeing a white line instead of your own goddamn reflection.

The funny thing, though? She’s never even been into drugs or booze or whatever bad habit you can catch in this city, like an STD. She has always worked her ass off and walked the straight and narrow. And for fucking what?

Y/N is definitely at her lowest of lows, but that also means there’s nowhere to go but up, right? And when the red light on her answering machine keeps blinking, her hope and good spirit return as she eagerly presses the button, restarting the endless cycle once more.  

“Y/N, this is Josie. I have an audition for you tomorrow. I’m not running it, but I thought of you. It’s in Watts. And it’s not porn... They’re looking for unconventional women, whatever the fuck that means… Oh, and uhm, if you ever ambush me in the restroom again, I’ll make sure you’re gonna be blacklisted on every casting call in Los Angeles. Are we clear? Anyways, good luck, honey!”

A loud scream echoes through the tiny apartment. Y/N can’t believe her fucking ears and jumps excitedly up and down when Josie’s message ends, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.

The game is back on – and it’s not fucking porn.

2. Livin’ On A Prayer

Yikes! I think it’s fairly easy to guess who this mystery guy is, but let me know all your suspicions and gasps, anyways! 😉 And don’t worry. You’re getting plenty of Dean tomorrow (some would say too much Dean) 😎😈

Everything Jensen (1st part tag only): @extraterrestriali @this-is-me19 @writercole @awkward-and-indecisive @eevvvaa @imherefordeanandbones @dean-winchester-is-a-warrior @jassackles @maggiegirl17 @perpetualabsurdity @deandreamernp @roseblue373 @lyarr24 @deanwanddamons @deanwithscissors @flamencodiva @chriszgirl92 @lhymer1995 @wittyboldsoul @djs8891 @snowlovespie​ @b3autyfuldisast3r​ @recoveringpastaaddict​ @muhahaha303​

Plastic Hearts Series: @spnexploration @jessjad @siospins2 @mrsjenniferwinchester @akshi8278 @xlynnbbyx @wayward-dreamer @foxyjwls007 @smellingofpoetry @justrealizedimmascifygurl @ladysparkles78 @leigh70 @4getfulimaginator2022 @globetrotter28​

#plastic hearts #glow au #dean winchester x reader #director!dean x actress!reader #dean winchester #dean winchester fic #dean winchester fanfic #dean winchester reader insert #dean winchester series #dean winchester x #dean winchester imagine #dean winchester x you #dean winchester x y/n #dean x reader #dean winchester x female reader #director!dean #supernatural imagine #netflix glow #glow fanfiction

[fluffy-critter]

#crosspost #busybee

[angelaiswriting]

Stage Love | Park Joong-gil

✏️ Pairing: (kind of eventual?) Park Joong-gil x fem!reader (mentions of fwb!Lim Ryung-gu x fem!reader, mentions of past Park Joong-gil x Koo Ryeon)

✏️ Summary: it’s supposed to be just work, but what happens when you actually start falling for the Park Joong-gil?

✏️ A/N: this is what happens when @kind-wolf​ goes on a tangent with some random AU and I dish out The Sex 😂 I also hope this drama actually has a fandom :’) (I also did go on a tangent with this, so it’ll have a part two hopefully soon.)

✏️ Content Warnings: modern!AU, singer!AU + fluff (I guess), slowburn, and smut, so 18+ only. Fwb stuff, fingering f/r, oral m/r and f/r, dry-humping, female masturbation, alcohol, food ? PJG is one sexy mf and everyone falls for him. [If I missed anything, just lmk.]

✏️ Word Count: 21k

✏️ Extra: I actually saw this on IG a few days ago and thought it’d fit well with this fic. Worth checking out imo 👀

PART ONE  >>  part two  |  part three

The surge of post-performance adrenaline is still rushing through your veins when you plop down onto the back seat of Joong-gil’s van. All the dancing on stage, rubbing into him in some parts of the choreography, the flashing lights, the audience – it all has you wired and buzzing, ready to take on anything the rest of the night might throw your way.

What’s even better, your manager has given you the night off to celebrate the foreseen (albeit still unbelievable) success of your new collab stage with one of the most wanted solo singers of Korea’s music scene, and his manager is currently standing outside the car, getting the last recommendations before you’re off for the night.

“You did well tonight,” Park Joong-gil says, sliding in and sitting down next to you.

He’s already making quick work of buckling his seatbelt when you correct, “we did well,” with a grin on your face. Despite the subtle scent of the still-lingering petrichor, you’re still so wired that your body doesn’t even register the chilly air blowing into the van in the few seconds it takes your fellow artist to pull the door closed. “I mean, after all these months I knew tonight’s performance would be awesome, but I wasn’t expecting for the fans to love it so much!” You’re pumped, barely able to put one thought after the other as you grin up at him.

Next to you, he chuckles low under his breath. “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

You don’t even have the chance to see him miraculously half-smile: you’re bowing your head and waving goodbye to your manager, the bracelets on your wrist clinking against each other, and nodding when she gestures a ‘call me when you’re home’. She can’t hear you from inside the van, but she does catch on to you giving her the thumbs up.

“So, do you have any place in mind to go celebrate or can I pick one?” Joong-gil presses on, turning around to pick one of his hoodies from the rack in the back. The adrenaline will wear off sooner rather than later, and he doesn’t want you catching a cold because of the light outfit you wore on stage.

“Your choice, I’m not picky,” you nod, typing a quick I’ll tell you everything tomorrow to let your mother know not to wait up for your call. She’s always been your number one fan, and despite the fact that she would have wanted for you to pick a more traditional career path, she’s always supported you more than anyone else ever did.

“Good, I know a place safe enough.”

You don’t have time to ask what he means by ‘safe’ – guessing wouldn’t be too hard, though, what with that stupid ten-line article assuming this collaboration stems from a secret relationship between the two of you and the few comments it managed to garner before both your and Joong-gil’s agencies had it deleted. You don’t have the time to ask, and that’s because he’s shoving his black hoodie into your lap a second before he impatiently knocks on the side window to catch his manager’s attention.

“I’m good, don’t worry.”

“Take it, Yun-ho won’t come with us. I can only take you back home on my bike, unless you’d rather get a cab.”

It’s then that his manager, Yun-ho, gets into the car and turns back around with a grin on his face.

“Jumadeung?” he simply asks as you’re left sitting there with Joong-gil’s hoodie in your lap.

It’s almost warm against the bare skin of your stomach, and you’re torn between the realization that this is the first time he’s shown some sort of care towards you outside of the studio in the long months of preparation that led to this comeback and the curiosity lying underneath the fact that you have no goddamn clue what a Jumadeung even is.

As it turns out, Jumadeung is the name of a bar located one story below Seoul in what, at first sight, looks very well like an abandoned building. If it wasn’t for Joong-gil being there with you and giving you a semblance of security, you would have run the other way.

The cul-de-sac Yun-ho steers into is a dark and narrow alleyway, and when you get out of the van right after Joong-gil, your boots stomping right into a puddle left behind by the early evening storm, you decide you don’t even want to know what’s at the end of it – rats? Seoul’s lowlife? Death reapers? Yeah, no thanks, you’ll happily pass.

The air really is chilly, however, and you’re suddenly glad you accepted Joong-gil’s offer of wearing his sweatshirt because now, underneath the thick cotton of it, you can feel gooseflesh tug at the hairs on your arms.

“Are you…” You turn around with a surprised gasp when you hear the sound of his van driving away, and you scurry forward until you’re childishly holding onto the back of Joong-gil’s leather jacket. “Are you secretly a serial killer?” you whisper, furtively looking around to mentally check for quick ways out.

Don’t accept candy from strangers and don’t get into strangers’ cars, you hear your mother scold you, twenty or so years ago, after you had just moved for the first time to a new house in Busan. Oh boy, if only she could see you now!

But Joong-gil chuckles, turning to look at you from above his right shoulder before he shakes his head in amusement.

“You know I have money. No need to kidnap me if you want it!” You keep the tone of your voice light and airy, and laugh – after all, you’ve mastered the art of coming off as though you have a hold of the situation – but you still suspiciously eye the closed dry-cleaner you spot as soon as you step foot into the building.

“I also do have money,” he laughs, taking a turn to the left to walk past an empty shop with a big ‘for sale’ sign on the dirty glass door. “Our collab will bring me more than kidnapping you might. So…”

“Of course, I was just kidding,” you shrug, letting go of his jacket and taking a few quick steps so that you can walk side by side with him. That’s not very reassuring is what you were on the verge of saying but you manage to bite your tongue and get a grip on yourself. Nevertheless, there’s still a spark of uneasiness twisting your insides into knots when he starts walking down a dimly lit set of stairs.

You’re almost tempted to just turn around and bolt your way out of there, but you didn’t exactly pay attention to your surroundings on the way here and you wouldn’t know which way to go before he catches up to you. After all, you were too preoccupied with texting back to your closest friends and confirming to your manager that yes, you’re gonna be safe and that yes, you’re gonna stay glued to Joong-gil’s side like a mussel to a rock, so she really has nothing to worry about.

Well, think again.

The man in question looks up at you from the bottom of the staircase when he notices you haven’t been following him and you see the way he tries his damndest not to snicker in your face. “C’mon down, I’m no serial killer.”

“Sounds exactly like something a serial killer would say,” you reply with fake laughter in your voice as you grab the railing with your left hand, just to immediately regret it when you feel how sickeningly sticky it is against your skin.

“Jumadeung’s just a bar,” he sighs, walking up three steps before stretching an arm out in your direction and making you feel like you’re being too dramatic. “Others like us come here for the privacy,” he continues. “Jade’s not exactly… keen on the paps and the whole ‘overstepping boundaries’ part of our job, so we’re good. No risk of other articles like that one.”

That one – he says it in a way that brings you back to when that article came out. The PR team of your agency managed to screencap it before they had it taken down in no time. Still, he was furious, and didn’t show up at meetings for a whole week and a half, leaving you to work in the studio alone. It made you wonder whether being caught up in a dating scandal with you really was that bad, but you managed to overcome that quickly enough. After all, you’re well aware of your worth. Always have been.

“Alright.” If he picks up on the uneasiness in your voice, he doesn’t show it.

Ah, fuck it! He has a cute-enough face, you think, trying to be reasonable and not let the true crime shows you watch in the dead of night on screen-share calls with your best friend in Busan get to you.

You walk down the steps and accept his outstretched hand, allowing him to pull you along with him. A swift turn to the right, and there’s a long corridor lit with what feels like hundreds of colorful fairy lights that lead closer and closer to the source of the faint music you can now hear. It’s like walking towards a portal to another dimension, the atmosphere in this corridor is completely different from that of the rest of the building – warm, peaceful, like there’s no safer place than this in Seoul.

“Okay, the whole bar story seems a lot more believable now,” you chuckle, forcing a smile to stretch on his lips in turn.

“See? Told ya,” he teases as he pulls the door open and the warmth of the bar wafts right into your face.

The music is louder here, but still at a reasonable volume that would allow you to have a comfortable conversation with him but probably not hear what the patrons sitting at other tables are saying.

“I’d go wash my hand if I were you, by the way. The rest of this building isn’t exactly famous for being clean,” he says, quickly letting go of your right hand all of a sudden.

His words don’t leave you the time to look around – not that you would have understood the reason behind that sudden lack of contact anyway – for your gaze shoots down to your left hand almost as though it’s a magnet. The skin of your palm still does feel sticky in the most uncomfortable way. 

“Ew!”

You quickly walk down the side corridor he points out to dash into what you hope is a clean bathroom. And it really is. It’s a stark contrast with the rest of the building, or the very little part of it you’ve managed to get a glimpse of when you dramatically thought you were walking the last stretch to the gallows.

The foamy soap smells fruity when you start scrubbing your hands, and there are other fairy lights reflecting in the wall-sized mirror the counter with the sinks is standing against. The stalls behind you are a simple deep burgundy color and from how all doors are pushed open, you can see you’re alone in here. It gives you the time to finally breathe and get a good look at yourself in the mirror.

What was a perfectly clean make-up look at the beginning of the night, before your performance on stage, is now slightly smudged and lighter, but the fairy-dust glitter on your face is still there, glimmering underneath the blinking fairy lights. Joong-gil’s black hoodie perfectly matches with the black cargo pants they gave you for tonight’s stage – definitely not your favorite kind of outfit, but it is still very comfortable to dance in – and the black, vine-like (but unfortunately fake) tattoo slithering its way around your wrists all the way to the pulled-back sleeves around your elbows.

You’re dabbing your hands dry with paper towels when your phone vibrates in the pocket of your pants. When you unlock it, it’s your best friend asking for your whereabouts – and dusting off that crush you’ve always had on Park Joong-gil and that you had to hide ten thousand meters deep.

[11:47 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: i know he’s famous and all, but if he’s a perv, i’m coming all the way to Seoul to kick his sexy sorry ass.

It makes you laugh – she’d probably be late to your death, but at least you know she’d have your back. She’s always had it, ever since you joined her ballet classes when you were a child up until you left Busan to pursue music.

[11:48 PM] you: proof i’m still alive!

You quickly shoot back, and while still chuckling, you attach a mirror selfie.

[11:48 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: cool! but whose hoodie is that?! didn’t know you were into others’ merch.

[11:49 PM] you: yeah he took me to a nice bar in a shady building. i’ll update you when i’m back home! if ever lol

[11:50 PM] Bit-na 👯‍♀️: he? Park Joong-gil?!

Your reply is a quick yep, and you’re still laughing quietly when you sit down in the booth Joong-gil’s picked.

“Something happened back there?” he asks, picking up on your hilarity and leaning to the side to shoot a quick glance in the direction of the bar’s restrooms.

“Just my friend,” you shrug, taking your (his) sweatshirt off when the stuffiness of Jumadeung finally gets to you. “She thinks she’s funny,” you grin. “You’ve met her. Sort of. The one I was on a call with that day in the dance studio.”

He laughs. “Oh, yeah, I remember her. What was she asking? Something about you getting great head, no?”

His words – or probably more the fact that he actually remembers that embarrassing bit of the conversation when your phone accidentally connected back to the bluetooth system of the dance studio – take you so much by surprise that your hand jerks a little and spills some soju on the table by his glass.

You groan, filling your glass and turning your head to the side to bottom it up. “Damn, how the hell do you even remember that?” you manage to ask from behind your hands, currently hiding your burning face from him.

It was a late night two months into the two of you working together, after you both agreed to turn your one-song collab deal into a full album after seeing how flawlessly you worked together between songwriting, producing, and dancing. Joong-gil had gone down to the front desk to pick up your food delivery, and you had taken the opportunity to call Bit-na back after the three missed calls she had left on your phone that day.

Everything was going smoothly, with you asking her about her date and her asking you about… well, yours, even though it was more like a friendly hook-up than anything with actual feelings. It was then that Joong-gil had walked in, put the bags down onto the table, and accidentally touched something on the laptop you were using to play the music. His mistake had paired back your phone to the system after you had enabled it that afternoon, and the rest apparently became history when Bit-na’s cheerful, “I can’t believe you’re getting great head with him and I can’t even get a boyfriend” sounded all around the studio and you felt yourself being swallowed up by the floor as you watched Joong-gil’s back tense in the mirror for a moment before he let out a cackle.

After that night, you both silently agreed to never bring that accident up and, to say the truth, you had started to forget all about it. That is, well, until tonight.

“Hey, it’s all right!” Joong-gil chuckles, pulling your hands away from your face and handing you your refilled glass. “Drink up before you combust right in front of me.”

“God, I can’t believe you had to hear that, or that you even remember,” you groan, covering your eyes with one hand and clicking your tongue at the bitterness of your drink. “I hoped you’d have forgotten by now.”

He laughs again, careful not to be too loud, before he downs his soju. “Where did the sensual Y/N that danced and sang on that stage end up?”

You glare at him with mock annoyance before snorting. “I can be both sensual and embarrassed at the same time. One doesn’t necessarily cancel the other.”

He smirks, “fair enough.”

It’s silent for a heartbeat, and then there’s a middle aged woman – Jade, you assume after a while – standing by your table, wearing an apron around her waist that has a marble pattern printed on it in the hues of ivory and gold. “I saw your stage on tv,” she says, first glancing at Joong-gil and then at you from behind her sparkly glasses. “Joong-gil told me how great of a performer you were, but I was still pleasantly impressed,” she grins.

Blood rushes to your cheeks, but you want to brush it down to the warmth of the place, or to the fact that someone is complimenting you without going over the moon in the attempt to. It’d be unhealthy to think you’re flustered because he’s apparently spoken highly of you – or of you in general – to someone he knows, because that would bring back the first sparks of that crush you started to develop on him through all the time you’ve spent together for this new album – and even before that.

“Thank you,” you reply with a bow of your head, quickly glancing up at your friend before you notice the plate of chocolate cake the woman’s putting down on your table.

“He’s also mentioned you thought he was taking you to your death earlier,” she continues.

Her words make your head fall into your hands in the third attempt at hiding yourself tonight. “I’m really sorry. With how the building and the neighborhood look, I really thought-”

“It’s alright.” She’s chuckling, so you figure it’s not that bad, or at least that she hasn’t taken offense to that. “I know how the first impression can be. It’s part of the reason why no one knows about this place. People that need a hide-out find me through word-of-mouth, that’s what matters.”

You nod, not knowing what to say but thankful for her being so understanding, and she leaves.

“You really had to tell her, didn’t you?” you pout, picking up one of the golden spoons and digging into your shared slice of cake. You love a good source of chocolate after a performance that has made you stress out as much as tonight’s stage did: Joong-gil’s known for never doing collaborations, and you’ve been agonizing about the reaction his fans would have when you’d finally perform together live for the first time. You try to suppress the smile this cake brings onto your lips: you suddenly recall telling him of this sort of tradition you have, and you can’t believe he’s actually remembered. He seems to be particularly good at that when that realization starts making you feel dangerously warm inside.

He’s smiling when you look up at him, and for the first time you realize he’s never really smiled at you before. Sure, there have been tight smiles or smirks, or the photograph smiles he always puts on during photoshoots or interviews, but the way he’s smiling at you now makes you feel as though the butterfly you have tattooed on your wrist has moved all the way up your arm and down to your stomach, where it has gathered an army all of a sudden.

God, you think. Now you understand why everyone always swoons for him – the way his fans love him, the way interviewers love him, the way tv or youtube hosts love him. The reason why you started crushing on him. One smile from him and everything’s warm and fuzzy all of a sudden, like the rest of the world slows down to allow him time to shine.

His smile forces you to look at him for the first time since you’ve arrived at Jumadeung – his tousled hair, not as perfect as it was before your performance; the shadows his long lashes cast on his cheekbones; the way the hues of the fairy lights above dance along the bridge of his nose.

“She was simply complimenting your performance tonight, and it just came out. You gotta admit it was funny, the way you thought I’d kidnap you when I’m the one who pushed hard for this collab to happen in the first place,” he grins, shaking his head.

He’s fucking gorgeous. Now you can whole-heartedly agree with Bit-na and allow yourself to admit it. Not that you didn’t know before, of course! The dude is a fucking model; you’re sure he could have anyone or anything he wanted with a simple snap of his fingers. But you’ve always done your best to keep it very… professional  – for lack of a better word – between the two of you. No touches out of line during dance practices, during all the time you’ve spent together to fine-tune your choreographies – and you must agree with him that there are a few that are more sensual than others. No lingering gazes in the studio, or during promotional photoshoots. Everything has always been clean and precise, like any other polished interactions you’ve had with fellow artists, stemming from nothing else but the sheer need to not be caught up in some rumor.

Tonight feels different, however. And you know it’s one-sided, but fuck. It’s the stupid atmosphere in this stupid bar, you decide. It’s cozy and private and extremely relaxed, with booths you can hide away in, and the fact that the paparazzi have never once found this place surely is a nice perk. It makes you believe that you’re on a date with him – on a date with fucking Park Joong-gil, of all people. That you’re just some normal girl out with some normal dude.

You shake your head, finding it extremely hilarious that your hormones would decide to go down that path now.

But you’ve been silent for long enough, and you don’t want to give the wrong impression. Like you’re mad, or like you’re starting to actually crush on him. So you level him with an amused stare and, “well, watch out then, Park. Next round’s mine, I’ll be embarrassing you.”

He chuckles at that promise, and you’re left there, grinning up at him like you’re a fangirl at a fan meet of his. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; you just want to be professional – you’ve always been, and there’s no reason why the frenzied hormones of a post-stage night should ruin that for you.

But then, just as you’re both back to digging into your cake, someone calls your name loud enough to be heard from the other end of the room. Your eyes snap up, and you see Joon-woong waving a hand in your direction.

You wave back, noticing the pink-haired woman and the dark-haired man sitting opposite him with their back to you. Ryeon and Ryung-gu – you could recognize them from miles away.

“The RMT guys are here,” you inform Joong-gil. “Looks like Joon-woong is inviting us to their table. Wanna go?”

You’re grinning, and your eyes are sparkling just as much as the light, dust-like glitter on your face, and of course you have no knowledge of any of that, but it strikes something inside him, punches him right in the guts. And fuck, he can’t say no when you look like that, like you’re some dream miraculously materialized in front of him. So, he begrudgingly nods and picks up your plate with the unfinished cake, and trails after you like a puppy.

Ryeon greets you with a smile, putting down her phone for a moment to congratulate you, but you miss the way she looks up at a Joong-gil who’s uncharacteristically standing awkwardly next to you, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. After quick bows of your heads, Joon-woong wraps you in a tight embrace, grinning at the way you’re finally not someone who turns down his hugs, and then sits back down to allow Joong-gil to sit on the chair next to him while you pull one from under the neighboring table.

“Hey,” you whisper as you lean into Ryung-gu, playfully pecking him on the cheek as he wraps an arm around your waist, giving your hip a quick squeeze. Maybe if you think a bit more about the kind of head he gave you on the few times you’ve met up for that, you won’t be acknowledging the weird way Joong-gil’s making you feel tonight.

After the introductions, it’s awkward at first, and you can’t exactly put a finger onto why. The RMT guys and Park Joong-gil have never been caught up in any scandal of any kind, not involving each other at least and not that you know of. And being signed for the same agency as they are, you’ve never heard of any tension or unfriendliness between them.

But then you’re not thinking about that anymore because you’re all talking. Well, you and Joon-woong are – you’ve always been the chatterboxes, after all – with Joong-gil and Ryung-gu chipping in every once in a while, and Ryeon listening more than she’s participating.

Joon-woong talks about your performance, the way both you and Joong-gil fired up both the stage and the audience, and how crazy everyone’s gone over the two of you on social media. From Instagram to Twitter, he’s been keeping an eye on it all. If your mother is your number one fan, then Choi Joon-woong is number two: he’s always been nothing but encouraging and supporting, even more so after you texted him about your collab with his very own idol, Park Joong-gil.

You’re sexy. He’s sexy. This is gonna be fucking bomb! – you remember him texting you that after he accidentally sent a voice message of himself screeching excitedly at the news and all the new career opportunities working in such tight contact with someone like Korea’s ‘it’ boy could bring you.

When Ryeon receives a call, however – you think you recognize their manager’s voice over the phone – they get up and bid their goodbyes. Ryung-gu holds you close this time, whispers something into your ear that Joong-gil doesn’t catch, but then suddenly everything’s as clear as day for him.

“We should go, too,” Joong-gil says after a moment of the two of you being alone, standing up and motioning for you to put his hoodie back on while he goes up to the counter to pay.

His bike stands lonely in one of the empty underground garage boxes and he leads you to it in silence.

You have this nagging suspicion that something’s shifted between the two of you between the moment you entered Jumadeung and the moment you left, but you’re tired, and the stress of the days – months – leading up to this performance and that of all the stages you’ll have to dance from now on when you leave on tour is finally catching up with your body. your legs are heavy and your arms are sore. You really can’t wait to be home, take a quick shower, and then disappear underneath the fluffy blankets you have on your bed.

“We have the first round of interviews tomorrow afternoon, remember?” he asks as he hands you his spare helmet. Maybe now would be the right time to tell him you’ve never been on a motorbike – the prop you used in one of your past music videos doesn’t count – but the words somehow don’t come out.

So you nod with a hum as you let him buckle your helmet. “Make-up at 3. Quick photoshoot at 4. Three interviews starting at 5:30,” you list, your mind providing you with the mental photograph of the schedule your manager jotted down on a post-it note stuck to your fridge. “Then dinner with our teams at 8.”

He makes a face at your detailed response, almost as though he’s surprised by how precise you are. But he’s satisfied with you being well aware of your joint plans, and he straddles the bike without another word, waiting for you to slide in behind him.

You’ve been close to him already – of course you’ve been. What with the dancing, or all the photoshoots you’ve had so far. Even the time spent brainstorming on the couch in his studio, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, going over lyrics and munching on snacks, pretty much breathing the same air. But it’s never felt like this, and when he reaches for your wrists to wrap your arms around his torso, you chastise yourself for feeling this way.

There’s a line you shouldn’t cross, and before tonight the urge to do it had never surfaced. You wonder what has been the source of that change, and all you can come up with is tonight’s – well, last night’s – performance.

“Hold on tight,” he tells you from above his shoulder and before you know it, you’re back into the streets of the capital.

You’d facepalm yourself if you weren’t riding a bike at breakneck speed. Of course it’s the chemicals in your brain all going off at once after performing the first stage of your comeback! By the time you wake up later today – you tell yourself – you’ll be back to normal.

You fall asleep with that thought kept on repeat in your mind and with the lingering feeling of Joong-gil’s leather jacket underneath your fingertips.

*

You wake up with your feelings all over the place, however, after a restless night’s sleep with dreams of him one after the other. If you didn’t have a busy day ahead, you’d be texting back and forth with Bit-na about the topic, asking for an opinion or simply a wake-up call. Instead, you call your mother to briefly tell her about last night and try to ignore the fact that you seem to have finally started to succumb to a crush you thought you had forgotten everything about.

The infamous article insinuating romance between you and the solo singer is somehow being kept on the backburner of your mind. The way fans reacted at first, or at least those that managed to before the article was taken down. The judging comments, insinuating you were using him for his fame – which, considering also his modeling and acting gigs, is considerably more than yours, there is unfortunately no denying that – despite the fact that he is the one who seeked you out first, but that is something nobody outside your agencies knows.

“Nervous?” Joong-gil asks, looking at your reflection in the mirror while his stylist fixes his hair.

He always looks so perfect, so well put-together, not one single hair out of place. It’d be hard not to fall for his charm. And then he opens his mouth and shows off how well-spoken and knowledgeable he is, and the difficulty triplicates.

You shrug, smiling lightly and closing your eyes to allow your make-up artist to finish the sophisticated look they picked for your eyeshadow. “Every time’s like the second time.”

“Not the first?” you hear the curiosity in his voice.

“I was a mess on my first time,” you chuckle, and then chuckle some more when your make-up artist says, but you held it together like a champ! She’s been with you since the beginning, and you’re glad she’s still here: she’s always been an integral part of keeping you sane and calm. “My second time went a lot better because I knew what to expect, but I was still nervous.”

He’s holding out a hand for you when you open your eyes, and you’re hesitant to take it. You think back to last night, when he stood a few steps below you in that dirty building, when you still thought Jumadeung didn’t exist or that it was some horror-movie room of torture where you’d heave your last breath. It was warm in your hand, his skin smooth aside from the few calluses from gripping the weights he lifts at the gym.

You take a hold of it now, and he wraps his fingers tightly around your hand before he grabs the arm of your chair with his other hand and pulls you closer until your knees are slotted between his spread legs and pressed up against the edge of his seat.

It’s a relief that everyone’s left the changing room because you wouldn’t want to explain the way Joong-gil’s sudden action makes you gasp.

“Hey, it’s gonna be alright,” he smiles. It’s a soft smile that does more harm than good and all you can do is look down at the way he’s still holding onto your hand, like that’s exactly where he belongs. You have no clue how to tell him today’s interviews are not exactly what’s making you nervous or even if you should be telling him in the first place. “We’ve already done this to prepare for yesterday’s show plenty of times. You’re great at this game.”

You nod silently, playing with the hem of the confetti baby pink dress you’re made to wear. You hate this color, and you hate the way the organza of the skirt makes the skin of your thighs itch. “I can’t wait for today’s schedule to be over,” you confess, and that’s not even a lie.

“It’ll be over in a heartbeat.” His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and you don’t know how to feel.

You know how you do feel at the moment – your butterfly has fled your wrist again and is back in your stomach, moving around with the same strength of a herd of elephants, which is considerably more than it was last night.

It’s like being back on that stage, just as everyone cheered your flawless performance and you turned around to briefly glance at him at the end of your show. The droplets of sweat running down the side of his face, the way he was panting, his chest rising and falling underneath his loose shirt, and the grin he sent your way. Then you got off the stage, back behind the scenes, and he pulled on your hand and wrapped you in a hug tighter than Joon-woong’s, all sweaty and scorching hot, laughing like a maniac with the adrenaline pushing through his system.

Part of you is still right there, rooted to the spot.

You wonder whether your brain’s still wired up on the same frequency it latched onto last night – the excitement of having jumped the first hurdle, the way performing on stage always makes you feel, the sheer joy dancing brings upon you and how powerful singing makes you feel. You want to think it’s that, and not that you’re falling for him, because that would simply make the rest of this job harder. There’s a million people like you, but apparently only one like him.

But then last night at Jumadeung crawls its way back to the forefront of your mind. You felt something at the table and caught a look Ryeon sent Joong-gil’s way, a look you couldn’t exactly put into words, even more so because you were distracted talking to Joon-woong and feeling Ryung-gu’s hand on your thigh.

They are your friends, they have been ever since you started training at the agency and even more so after you debuted… You want to be able to invite them to celebrate all together at some point down the line, and if that means the atmosphere isn’t going to be relaxed, then you won’t be able to do it.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, tilting your head back to face him by grabbing your chin between his thumb and forefinger.

The proximity makes your heart jump up into your throat. You want your brain to calm down, and for the butterflies in your stomach to stop flying around.

“Did something happen between you and the members of RMT?” The question is out before you can bite your tongue.

He tilts his head to the side. “Why?”

You shrug, trying to be as nonchalant as you can muster, but deep down fearing you won’t be able to have your friends there with you when it eventually comes to celebrating this collaboration. “Last night felt… I don’t know, tense, in a way, I guess, after we joined their table. I don’t remember reading anything about a fight between you or-”

“Ryeon and I dated for a while.”

Your babbling comes to a screeching halt when he says that. He says it matter-of-factly, like it’s the most random thing and not such a well-kept secret even you, after all the time you’ve spent with her, knew absolutely nothing about. “What? When?”

Fuck. What the fuck are you even doing here with him, allowing yourself to feel the way and the things you feel?

“Three years ago.”

You’re still blinking, barely even processing what he’s saying. There’s only one Park Joong-gil, you’re well aware of that, but there’s also only one Koo Ryeon. Of course, they would have ended up together one way or another at some point. Your imbalanced brain really does see the sense in that. “How long?”

“A few months.” He frowns before adding, “why are you so shocked?”

“Ryeon never mentioned anything about a relationship…”

You’re still gaping when someone knocks on the changing room’s door, warning the both of you that you still have ten minutes before the shoot.

“Yeah well, it’s over now.” He says it in a way that makes you believe he’s still somewhat suffering because of it and you know you shouldn’t overthink or insinuate stuff about others, but now some of his lyrics kind of do make more sense. “Talking about RMT…” He’s smirking, changing the topic, which is never a good thing when it comes to him and how surprisingly teasing he can be. “Lim Ryung-gu…”

Your spine straightens up before you can make yourself hide the surprise his name douses you with. “What about him?”

His hand is still in yours, and you find yourself praying to anything good and holy that he doesn’t feel how clammy it becomes. You know how good an observer he can be; you’ve come to learn a lot of things about him in the time you’ve been working together.

“Just wondering. Is he the one with peak head game?”

Your eyes widen for a moment and you can feel all the blood both drain from your face and rush to your cheeks.

It’s a weird feeling. You never thought you’d get caught. Ryung-gu lives in your same condominium, so sneaking around when one or both of you need a way to release stress has always been easy. No one sees, and no one writes anything. It’s always been a great deal.

You escape Joong-gil’s question by the skin of your teeth when your manager opens the door to announce it’s time for the photoshoot. The sudden wave of relief makes you jump up like a spring and push your chair back in one single movement, and you try to ignore the way Joong-gil chuckles under his breath.

Throughout the whole photoshoot you try not to think about Ryung-gu, or about how close to Joong-gil some poses have you be. With his arms around you, caging you against the prop brick wall, his eyes staring into yours the way the photographer orders him to while you look straight at the camera, it’s somewhat easy to forget the rest of the world. You just hope he doesn’t hear how loud your heart is beating inside your chest, or how deafening the blood flow in your eardrums is.

“Thaaat’s perfect,” you hear the photographer cheer. “A few more like that, and then we’re moving on to the last batch.”

“Relax,” Joong-gil murmurs against your cheek, his nose brushing against your skin with how the next pose has the two of you. “Even I feel like you’re about to go into cardiac arrest,” he chuckles under his breath.

The sound and feel of him so close makes a thrill crawl down your spine, and suddenly your brain’s not focusing anymore on your friend Ryeon dating Park Joong-gil or on Joong-gil (correctly) suspecting about something between you and Ryung-gu. Back in the changing room you almost wanted to tell him it’s just sex, a way to lock the rest of the world out for a moment, but you have no clue what idea he’s going to have about you if you tell him that.

“I’m alright,” you whisper back, peering up at him and immediately regretting doing so. With how close together your faces are, you could count every single one of his lashes if you wanted. His breath fans the top of your lips in such a way that it feels like the ghost of a kiss, and you’re so close to him you can smell his cologne, and probably the faint scent of his foundation cream as well. “Just a bit nervous. It’s really real now.” And then you add, “the collab, I mean.”

His smile feels more blinding than the flashing lights of the camera, and the rest of the day goes by in a blur. The photoshoot, the interviews… You go on autopilot, almost, and only come out of it by the end of the third interview. It’s for a magazine your mother loves to read. No cameras are rolling, only the reporter’s voice recorder is recording on the coffee table between you and Joong-gil on a low leather couch and her on a matching chair.

“Last night’s stage was a huge success,” she says. “Your mv did really well on all platforms, but that performance was bomb. Everyone’s talking about how good you look together!”

You smile, daring a glance at Joong-gil. He’s setting his jaw, but he’s good at masking that with the smile he still has on his lips, unwavering.

“The chemistry between the two of you seems to be off the charts, truly. Your fans have been going crazy ever since you posted the first video.” You’ve seen this particular interviewer on TV a few times, and you know what part of the interview this is. Just because you’re not being recorded on film doesn’t mean she’s changing her M.O. “Has anything sweet bloomed between you?”

Joong-gil chuckles, and if that woman wasn’t already hanging from his every word before, she sure is now, heart eyes and all. But then again, you do understand her: resisting his spell isn’t easy. He’s one fine specimen, always has been. “Y/N’s an amazing person and artist, and I do admit we work really well together, but not everything boils down to a romantic relationship.”

You find yourself nodding. Get out of your head, this is strictly business, you tell yourself, but then voice your agreement with what your colleague’s just said.

A few more pleasantries, and then you’re being dragged back into the changing room and to your van. This time it is your van. You sit in the back and your manager behind the wheel, and then you’re off for some informal dinner in a reserved restaurant where no one will bother you.

You look up from your phone screen only when she calls your name.

“Great job today,” she grins through the rearview mirror when she stops at a red light. “The photoshoot was spectacular and you handled yourself well during the interviews. To someone who knows you, though… is everything alright? You seemed a bit distracted.”

“It’s just…” It’s just me developing a stupid crush on a colleague. And Ryeon apparently was in a relationship with this colleague in the past, and she never mentioned a word about it. And then, oh yeah, it doesn’t happen often, but I’m fucking Ryung-gu when I’m stressed, but now I’ve been so stressed and busy that I haven’t been able to, and my Joong-gil’s apparently found out after spending half an hour with us anyway. We have so much scheduled that I’ll probably have to schedule restroom breaks as well. And I’m always afraid of messing up on stage, no matter how hard I prepare for it. And what if I really do end up falling for Joong-gil? Dude’s been closed off to the world so much that it’s a miracle he and Ryeon even dated. But you confess none of that, opting for a neutral, “I’m a bit nervous about all future performances. We still have like a billion interviews coming up and I really hate being asked about relationships and having to pretend I’m the fairy this industry portrays me as.”

She smiles understandingly and nods her head, her eyes always trained on the road. It’s a good thing that she’s a great driver and that she cares about everyone’s safety so much that she never trails her eyes off the road. She’d probably see right through you if she were to turn around right now. “That’s understandable. I can’t imagine being in your shoes, it would make me freak out six times out five.”

You giggle with her.

“But you’re great at what you do. Leave it to me and the PR team to monitor the comments online and the articles, don’t worry about that. You’re doing great already,” she reassures you. “Also, you’re not doing it alone this time. Mr Park looks like he knows what he’s doing when it comes to prying questions. He’s always very reserved when it comes to his personal life, so I’m sure he’ll help in keeping those questions to a minimum like he did today.”

“You’re right,” you nod absentmindedly, looking out the window at Seoul’s night traffic. But you apparently don’t sound convincing enough.

“Is anything else on your mind?”

You decide to lie. “Nope.”

*

He is on your mind, however.

Park fucking Joong-gil.

For the first time ever, he’s sitting at your kitchen table after your teams’ dinner, dropping a piece of candy into his soju. You don’t know what got into you when you invited him up to your place, and you want to say the fact that you were all pressed up against his back on his bike for the second time did not cloud your common sense, but that would be a fat lie.

“I’m sorry if I pried this afternoon,” he says after a while, when you finally sit down with a steamy mug of chamomile tea for you and push another one his way. It’s a silly mug, with grinning fluffy white sheep on a green background, but your mother loved it too much not to buy it for you. It’s probably not the best thing to give your guest, you realize at the last minute. “What’s going on between you and Lim Ryung-gu is none of anyone’s business but your own.”

“No, it’s…” You huff, scrunching your forehead with your fingers before smothering your hand down your face. It’s kind of intimidating to sit there bare-faced in front of someone who looks so good even after a long day of work. “I was the one who poked her nose in your business first. Ryung-gu and I are just… friends. It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated?”

The skin of your face burns, and you can’t look him in the eyes. Instead, you let the night skyline outside your window catch your attention. “We… It’s just… It’s hard sometimes, you know? This life.” You look down. Your nerves get the best of you and you start tracing the rim of your mug with your middle finger. “It’s stressful already as it is, and then you go out and there’s suddenly a new rumor about you every step you take. This is dating that. Or X got a nose job. Y has been caught dancing in a club. It follows you everywhere you go even after you clock out for the day.”

He smiles. “Sometimes I feel like we don’t really clock out.”

You groan. “Don’t remind me of that. Fucking yes. So… Ryung-gu lives two floors above me. It’s easy to… let out stress when no one can see.” You’re burning even more than your chamomile tea is.

Why the hell are you telling him that? You don’t owe him anything, least of all an explanation, and yet, you’ve started to realize that a silly part of you kind of does want him – and for him to want you. Park Joong-gil, that is.

He’s nodding, almost as though he’s piecing the pieces together. “Is he who your friend was talking about that day on the phone, correct?” he asks again.

You nod.

“There’s nothing wrong with falling for someone.”

Your eyes shoot up to meet his, but he’s the one looking out the window this time and you only catch his side profile and the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down when he drinks his soju.

“It’s not… like that.” You don’t know where your voice went. It almost makes you feel bad that you don’t have feelings for Ryung-gu and that he doesn’t have any for you. Almost like you fuck on autopilot. Like the connection is only physical and platonic and it doesn’t go deeper than that. Maybe, if you did it more often, then you would start catching feelings, but you’re careful with not fucking around too much.

“You look like your heart’s beating out of your chest again,” he smirks, taking the mug you prepared for him.

“Yeah well, maybe because it is.” You hide behind your hands again, sighing down into your mug.

“You know, you have no explaining to do. It’s just… natural. As long as it helps…,” he shrugs.

He’s so nonchalant about it. It almost makes you wonder whether that’s how things started between him and Ryeon, even though Ryeon never seemed like the one to do things just because she’s horny. She’s level-headed, probably the most level-headed person you know – despite the fact that you had no clue she was seeing someone, so who knows.

“Are you nervous now?” he asks and you hum. There’s a beat of silence and then, “is it because of me?”

“No!” Well yes, but you can’t tell him that last night at Jumadeung gave you the illusion of being on a date, or how months of working in such close proximity are finally starting to catch up on you.

You can feel his gaze on you, but you dare not look up. What if you do and end up blurting out nonsense? Embarrassing yourself and changing the dynamics between you for good?

“I’m nervous, too,” he confesses, and that’s when you find it within yourself to peer at him. “I’ve been working with a crazy talented artist and it’s been making me feel like I should be doing more.”

“A crazy talented ar- me?” you frown. By all means, you’re good at this game, but you know there’s better performers than you out there.

“Have you heard about me collabing with someone else?”

His smile takes your breath away for a moment. You want to think he’s trying to flirt with you, but you really shouldn’t be throwing gasoline onto the fire of your crush. Everything was going so smoothly… Fucking comeback, you think.

“I’ve been a fan since day one, just saying,” he shrugs, sipping on his chamomile tea.

“You…” You gasp at how unexpected this is, and then you’re laughing. You must look like a lunatic, messy hair and loose pajama, trying to keep your cool after confessing to having a fuck buddy to one of the most wanted people in the country. Part of you can’t wait to tell Bit-na about that, and another part of you really doesn’t want to hear what she’d have to say in response.

“Fuck, you really are stressed out of your mind…” He’s amused, it’s clear both in his voice and on his face.

He brings your mug to your lips, leaning across the table towards you, and he steals your breath for the second time tonight. He helps you drink, and it calms you down. Only on the outside, though, you think. You can still feel your heart inside your chest when he stands up to wash the mugs and the glass he used to drink his soju, and your thumb absentmindedly brushes over your tattooed butterfly.

“Don’t let this life stress you out so much,” he murmurs from behind you, leaning over you to speak against your cheek before he kisses it. “If you need a hand with it, you have my number. We’re partners now, after all.”

What’s he suggesting? You torment yourself with that question for what feels like forever before you make up your mind.

Ryung-gu comes over when Joong-gil leaves. You called the wrong number – on purpose, of course. There are some things you can’t talk about with ‘your partner’, but you’ve always been an open book for Lim Ryung-gu.

It’s nothing regular, the thing you two have, but this is the first time in months that one of you calls the other for stress relief. It’s not bad by any means, it just… feels different, in a way. Like your brain is still stuck on a loop of last night at Jumadeung, when you were staring at yourself in the mirror of that fairyland-like restroom, wearing Park Joong-gil’s soft hoodie over your golden top, standing under winking fairy lights.

You see the kitchen table from where you’re half sitting, half reclining on the couch in the living room, with Ryung-gu kneeling between your legs. You can still picture Joong-gil’s back, the gray cardigan he wore after the interviews were over, his perfectly styled hair, straight out of a magazine cover like some sort of walking dream.

A particular brush of Ryung-gu’s fingers inside you makes your toes curl and your back arch, your head falling back against the pillows as your hands tug on his hair. His groan against your pussy makes you tingle all over, and when his lips latch onto your clit you know you’re done for.

“Fuck, just like that,” you manage to whisper, breathing hard, pulling him closer to you by the back of his head.

You can hear how wet you are by the squelching sound his fingers moving in and out of you make. It makes your head spin – and your heart ache as well, maybe, because part of you feels like you’ll never have anything real, not in this department and not in this line of work where you feel controlled twenty-four seven.

But with Ryung-gu it’s easy to pretend: he eats you out like he does that for a living, and in the spur of the moment, with the air scorching in your lungs, you think the world deserves to know his fingers aren’t only great at playing the piano.

Then he curls his fingers, gets to work on that one patch of sensitive skin deep inside you, and you come with a low moan that comes up from deep within you and seems to go on forever as his tongue keeps on lapping up at your juices.

He gives your clit one last suck and that makes you whine, your thighs quiver in overstimulation as you tug on his hair to get him off of you. Then, he’s using your discarded panties to clean you and his hand up.

You come down from your high cuddled up into his side, your head on his shoulder, and the way his fingers trace patterns on your back, through your t-shirt, calms your raging heartbeat and roots you to the present moment.

“I think we should stop doing this,” he whispers against the side of your head, lips brushing against your hair when he speaks.

Your only reply is a hum. It’s not like you’ve been thinking about that, too, but it’s true that in the last few months you’ve come to secretly wish for something more. A deeper connection. Doing this with someone you have actual feelings for – someone that hopefully also has feelings for you, too. Ryung-gu brought everything else to the table – he’s understanding, fun, blurts random bits of knowledge in the middle of the night when you’re lying in bed covered in sweat – but not that one part of the picture.

“I met someone, and I also feel like you’ve been slowly drifting away,” he continues, his voice soft. You can hear his heart beat inside his chest, underneath your cheek, and you move your hand up to brush your thumb over his sternum. “Is it Joong-gil?”

He’s smirking in amusement when you move your head to meet his gaze quicker than the speed of light just to moan the split second later because your neck is sore and all that haste didn’t sit well with it. But there’s no lying to him – you’ve been friends since you left Busan together, so if anything, after Bit-na, he’s the one person you trust the most when it comes to actually opening up.

“I don’t know what’s up with me,” you confess eventually. It’s then, as you wish for any kind of distraction to bless you, that you notice he’s cut his hair and got rid of his toned hair tips. He must have met with his stylist today, you reason distractedly, because yesterday his hair was longer, sporting a look you’ve come to love on him. “Yesterday at Jumadeung… which, by the way,” you deadpan, pushing yourself up onto your elbow. “Wow, that’s so very loyal of you, bestie. Thank you for telling me about that place.”

He snorts. “As if,” he chuckles, pushing your bangs away from your face. He likes this new look on you, and he’s probably the main reason why you’ve let yourself enjoy it, too. “It was my first time there as well. Ryeon wanted to go out yesterday afternoon and she brought us there. Joon-woong knew about it, though, so if you really wanna be mad at someone… be mad at the golden retriever.”

“But he’s so cute,” you playfully pout, making the same face you would if you saw a cute puppy. “He has my approval for anything he wants to do or say.”

He snorts again, trying not to laugh, but eventually failing. “Don’t derail the conversation,” he scolds, playfully smacking your bare thigh. “Was last night a date?”

You shake your head no, but you feel your face grow hotter at the mere idea of it being one. You really don’t know how it happened, and you tell him as much. “I don’t think so. There’s never been anything more than just work. And when I went to bed last night I thought it was just because I was still all over the place after the show and how cozy it was at Jumadeung. But then I woke up at noon today and I was still thinking about him…” you huff, lying back down next to him, and wrap an arm around his waist.

“Do you like him?”

“Who doesn’t?” you scoff, and then hide your face in his chest because fuck. What’s with your hormones and this crush? You stay quiet for a while, enjoying the silence of the night and his fingers still lightly tickling your back from above your blue pajama shirt. “I don’t know what to do, Ryung-gu. Like…” You rub your face with both hands when you can’t keep in the groan. “What if this crush or whatever gets out of hand and ruins everything?”

“With the collab, you mean? Or your… situationship?”

You hum. “Like, he’s always been incredibly attractive, both inside and out, but so are you and a lot of other people I’ve met…”

“Wow, thanks, I guess,” he laughs, only to be met by a flick of your fingers against his forehead.

“You know you’re hot. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen what people comment under your posts on Insta.”

“Oh, I know i’m sex on legs,” he jokes, looking at you like he’s all high and mighty before cracking into an amused grin. “It just hits different when it comes from that mouth of yours.”

You flick him again, this time on his chest, before you’re pushing yourself up again to look down at him. “I just don’t know what to do, and… ugh!” You bite your tongue, and needing a way out of this conversation, you ask, “what about your person, though?” You smirk, wiggling your eyebrows and making him laugh. “Who is it? Do I know them? Is it another singer? A backup dancer? Model? Min-ji from back home?”

He silences you with a hand on your mouth, but it just makes you giggle, and suddenly you’re hyper aware of how he’s looming over you on the couch, and your pussy is still out and wet, and God this feels so wrong. You would’ve never called him had you known he’s met someone. Thinking about him going down on you when he’s considering the idea of pursuing an actual person makes you feel worse than spilling the beans to Joong-gil did, and dirtier than the railing you grabbed yesterday in that building was.

“What, so you can snitch to the tabloids?” he asks, but he’s smiling, so you know there’s no bite behind his words.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt out all of a sudden. “For calling you over. You ate me out despite all that and…” He lets you sit up and moves to sit next to you on the couch. “God, I feel like such a bitch,” you groan from behind your hands. They’ve quickly become the wall you hide behind.

“Hey, it’s fine.” Ryung-gu pulls you into his side and leaves a kiss on the crown of your head. “You’re my friend, I would’ve never left you alone in a time of need when I have nothing really going on yet. You would’ve done the same, I’m sure. Unless…”

“Unless?” You don’t dare look up at him, even though you can hear the smile in his voice. He still feels like the same Lim Ryung-gu he’s always been, but then also like you’re miles apart for the first time in forever – or probably ever.

“Unless that Park dude really has a hold on your pussy.”

He doesn’t stop cackling when, indignant, you hit him with a pillow.

“Shut up,” you groan. “I’ve been a mess since last night’s stage, let me be.”

He wipes your pout away with a thumb before pressing a kiss to your cheek. “Just saying… I’m sure it’s hard to stay stoic when he has those hip rolls in your choreo.”

Your face is scorching hot. Ryung-gu is right, Joong-gil has some sexy moves, but so does he in his own solo numbers. They’ve always been one of his distinctive traits and while yes, you’ve always swooned a little every time, you’ve also always been able to stay professional when he danced them with you.

“You know, I actually think this is a great opportunity for the both of us,” Ryung-gu says after a while, when you’re putting on a fresh pair of panties. You snatch your pajama shorts from his hand when he hands them to you, and join him in the kitchen for the leftover pizza he brought over from his apartment. “We both get to find out what we really like with a partner,” he explains when you simply frown in confusion at him.

“Maybe you will. I’ll be trying not to think too much about it. He’s there,” you gesture with your hand held up high above your head, “and I’m here,” you continue, placing your other hand much lower.

“In my book you’re here,” he corrects, raising the hand you used to show him where you stand, “and he’s here.” He lowers the other one. “You’re great. What are you even implying here?”

“Yeah, a crazy talented artist,” you groan, quoting back Joong-gil’s words to your friend with a roll of your eyes. You don’t even know why it stings so much to be just that to him. Well, of course, you do know why, but you don’t want to linger there.

“I was thinking more about a crazy awesome person.” Ryung-gu boops your nose before adding, “but yeah, whatever floats your boat. Just don’t put him on a pedestal. You both have the same job and are equally as talented. Don’t start treating him like a god on Earth, leave that to his fans. Because if anything, he’s lucky to be doing this with you.”

*

Despite everything, you’ve managed to keep it as professional as possible with Joong-gil thus far. Everything always runs smoothly – interviews, photoshoots, promotional shoots, even performances or radio appearances with your usual banter and jokes, even if shipping comments follow you every step of the way. What’s worse is that when you come off stage, high on adrenaline, one simple look from him is somehow enough to make your panties wet.

You’re really not proud to admit it, and after every show, it’s becoming harder and harder to conceal the effect he has on you. Giving him the wrong impression is the last thing you want to do, and at the same time it’s hard to figure out what’s going on in his mind, behind those dark eyes of his.

Tonight’s not any different, you notice when you’re pushed into your van right behind him after the opening concert to the Japanese leg of your joint tour.

There’s the adrenaline again – all the post-performance feelings, the fact that you managed to sell this venue out in less than three minutes twice when the tour dates were first announced. You’re wired beyond belief, every fiber of your being buzzing underneath your skin, your heart leaping in your chest like that’s some Olympic sport. It’s been a while since the sensations were this intense, so much so that it’s overwhelming and you end up planting a celebratory wet kiss on Joong-gil’s lips without even realizing you’re doing it.

Your brain only catches up with it while you’re standing under the warm jet of the shower, a ballad humming through your phone’s speakers in the background. It should be a quick freshening up, because you know Joong-gil will take a quick shower as well before starting his post-concert VLive stream while he waits for you, but you can’t help but freeze, the loofa stopping on your chest and the trembling fingers of your right hand coming up to your lips.

You still feel his lips against yours, and hear the harsh breath he took and which you never really registered in the moment, buzzing as you were with excitement, the goosebumps tugging at your sweaty skin.

“Fucking fuck,” you mutter under your breath, mouth agape for a moment before you shut it and turn the waterstream off.

Thinking about it will do you more harm than good, you know that, but your heartbeat is every-fucking-where now when you think back to the way he grabbed a hold of your biceps to keep your balance and prevent you from falling fully onto him.

Maybe you can play it off tomorrow morning, pretend like you passed out right after your shower and say you’re deeply sorry for missing out on the quick post-concert catch-up with your fans. You’re about to text Bit-na about your misstep in the van and how fucked up it got you, to the point you almost touched yourself in the shower, when the notification of Joong-gil going live pops up on the screen of your phone.

You stand there for a full minute, naked, dripping water onto the tile floor of your hotel room’s bathroom. There’s no resisting the curiosity, those brain chemicals going hysterical, and your finger taps on the notification before you can stop yourself.

He’s sitting on the couch in his hotel room, pretty much a twin of yours. Tokyo’s lights at night are blinking behind him and while that’s definitely a view, he seems to be an even better one now. White loose t-shirt, wet hair still slightly dripping droplets of water onto his shoulders, bare-faced but still incredibly charming in the way he talks, answers comments, says Y/N will join us shortly before drinking from his water bottle. It all makes you want to kiss him again, but this time on purpose while being fully present in the moment.

“Fuck.”

You’re cooked.

You’ve got it real bad – you facepalm yourself as you close the app, lock your phone, and quickly get dressed into something you can lounge in while still looking presentable. You really do not want to look bad next to him.

It’s now or never, you tell yourself when you force yourself out into the corridor.

Joong-gil’s door is right opposite yours and as you walk the few steps that separate yours from it, you quickly glance out of the window at the end of the hallway. By the looks of it, it’s going to rain tonight.

The livestream goes by quickly: Joong-gil is more entertaining than you thought he’d be, but this time he does a great job at keeping the conversation with the fans flowing despite the fact that you’re, well, beat. You should have known that the moment you’d finally sit down, slumber would start creeping up on you. And, well, he’s better at Japanese than you are – that’s something that should be mentioned.

Nevertheless, you still step in with puns and funny anecdotes about tonight’s show or the time you and Joong-gil have spent working together. In the live chat, someone even swoons about your coordinated outfits on stage, and that’s just another opportunity to flaunt the amazing stylists you have this time around – an excuse not to think about the way you do know you look like when you’re together. Like you’re a match made in fucking heaven, but that could also be your crush speaking on your behalf.

When the stream is finally off and you get the thumbs up of approval from both your managers, you let yourself fall back against the couch with a sigh.

“Tired?” Joong-gil asks, moving around to plug his phone in. He puts it down on the nightstand and grabs a bottle of water from the minifridge for you.

“Exhausted,” you groan, pulling your legs up and resting your head on your knees.

It’s easier to look at him now without thinking about that rather chaste kiss you gave him and the ways he moved on stage earlier on in the night. You don’t feel like you might catch fire with just a look from him, but when he sits back down next to you, some of that anxious tension comes back.

“I’m really enjoying this,” he smiles. When he leans his head back and fully relaxes, however, you notice how tired he looks, too. His eyelids are heavy and all his weight is leaning against the couch like he’s a bag of potatoes.

You hum and nod, taking a long sip from the water bottle he handed you while thinking about Bit-na. During the two weeks between the first stage performance and Jumadeung and tonight’s show, you’ve told her about this whatever-it-is that you started feeling for Joong-gil. Nothing too detail-heavy, but there’s no way in hell you could have survived without her opinion on the matter. You wish she were here now, a tiny celestial being perched on your shoulder, ready to give you counsel.

“I’m enjoying this collab a lot, too,” you say, leaning back and turning your head to the side to look at him. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’s fallen asleep.

But he softly giggles, amused, and you know he’s still awake. “I mean… Yeah, the collab as well. But I was thinking more about… you. The time we’ve been spending together.”

You bite your tongue, a way to prevent the wrong things from leaving your mouth, but also to stop that smile from stretching on your lips.

“What was that kiss about?” he asks without giving you the time to even think. “Back in the van.”

The expression on your face must be the epitome of regret because he looks taken aback in a way you’ve never seen him. The truth is, you have no clue what to tell him. You don’t want to make things weird, but you also fucking do want to kiss those plump lips of his again.

“I… The excitement always gets to my head, I’m really sorry if that made you uncomfortable,” you murmur eventually, finding it difficult to meet his gaze.

“So, do you kiss a lot of people like that?”

“Fuck, no!” It’s the nerves acting on your behalf that make you chuckle and all you can do to try and stop the tremor in your hands is close your eyes and deepen your breaths. “No, I… That was a first, even for me.”

His hum is questioning, and you feel his weight on the couch shift. It’s only when his fingertips touch your lips that you will yourself to open your eyes.

He’s incredibly close, just like that day during the photoshoot and many other photoshoots before that. You can smell the faint minty aftertaste of his toothpaste when he says, “should we make it a tradition?”

It’s like you’re hypnotized, and you’d like to blame your deafening heartbeat for the fact that you can’t stop that meak yeah from tumbling past your lips. He clouds your senses, and you’re suddenly glad that your rooms are so up high because that means no paparazzi will be able to snap a picture and you can finally feel safe enough to-

His lips touch yours. Soft, smooth, and you wonder why the fuck they feel so hot against yours. The kiss cuts your breath short, makes the butterflies in your stomach rouse again, and then some other warm and wet feeling starts rearing its head. He’s staring at you and you can’t help but stare back. Your brain leaves on a tangent and it’s soon wondering how quickly an ambulance will be able to come in case you dramatically go into cardiac arrest, even though neither of you is deepening the kiss. It’s chaste, just his lips pressing against yours as his hand cradles the side of your face.

Is it you being dramatic if you say you want to stay here forever?

When he eventually pulls back, he lets his tongue come out for a split second to brush against your lower lip and that’s when your body decides to betray you, to break your composure to let a shaky breath out.

His eyes fall down to your lips and you’re helpless as you stare at the way that grin of his plasters on his face.

He’s so fucking- ugh!

You feel like you could punch the sky with the way Park Joong-gil makes you feel. You decide then and there that it’s senseless to sit there and ponder how the fuck that bubble of feelings decided to pop only now – well, at Jumadeung – because now you’re stuck with the defeaning certainty that you’re down really bad for him.

“I love new traditions,” he grins, leaning back against the couch without breaking eye contact.

Head empty. There’s not one single thought in there that’s not Park Joong-gil. If Ryeon never said anything about him just so that she could keep him all for herself, well… You can’t really blame her. He’s charming. He pulls you to him like he’s a magnet. And it doesn’t even matter that you don’t even know where you stand anymore with him because your brain starts working a mile a minute until suddenly it’s picturing him between-

No.

No, you can’t go there.

He speaks before you have the chance to. “I think I wanna repeat it after tomorrow’s show if that’s alright with you. But we should probably go to bed now.”

You don’t resist him when he says he’ll accompany you to your door despite the fact that it’s literally less than ten meters from the couch you’ve been sitting on for the best part of the past two hours. If you can have thirty more seconds alone with him, then who the hell are you to say no?

But sleep doesn’t come easily – not with the feeling of his lips against yours, and not with the promise that you’re going to have another fix of that tomorrow night. You’re ready to bet you’ve never ever wanted a whole day to go by at the speed of light the way you desperately need it to now.

You feel guilty as hell when you let your hand slip past the elastic band of your panties to toy with the wetness between your folds. But that’s your best bet at trying to force slumber to come back, and you eventually fall asleep with Joong-gil’s name on your lips.

*

It’s silly, the way your heart somersaults inside your chest every time Park Joong-gil honors the silly tradition you accidentally started during your first night in Tokyo.

He kisses you after your second concert in the Japanese capital.

He kisses you after the concert in Nagoya.

In Osaka, you kiss before and after you hop onto the stage.

And every time, that celebratory kiss deepens a little more. By the time you land in Los Angeles to embark on your seven US American dates, you’re not thinking I should be keeping this professional between the two of us anymore, but instead I need more of him.

You’re on a video call with Bit-na after the concert in the SoFi stadium – between the crazy demanding show you put on and the jetlag, both you and Joong-gil are way too beat for a livestream.

“How’s your predicament going?” she asks as she continues doing her make-up.

“It’s hard,” you groan, falling back onto the hard mattress and shuffling around until you’re all cocooned into the blankets, only the top half of your head peeking out from the fluffy material.

“You mean his dick is?” She’s bold, always has been, and you’re glad you opted to put your earbuds in. The last thing you need is a late night visit from Park Joong-gil in which he hears your friend talk about this kind of shit again, with the only difference that this time it’s not Ryung-gu she’s talking about.

“That… too, yeah.” The temperature of your face could rival that of the sun. All you can do is fully hide your head underneath the blankets and hope your body will cool down quickly, but it feels like an impossible task when you can still feel his erection pressed against you when you kissed in the powder room after the concert.

Bit-na’s laughter is loud and hysterical. It deafens you for a moment but you figure that’s a good thing: it prevents you from replaying in your head the way you moaned into the kiss when you did your best not to roll your hips into his. “Did you really give him a boner?!”

“I’m sure it was just the excitement after the concert,” you mumble, finally re-emerging from your hiding place.

She clicks her tongue. “And I am sure it was aaaaall you,” she chuckles, putting her lipstick back down and picking up her mascara. “Sucking face with someone sure can lead to that.”

“We were not sucking faces.”

“Who do you think you’re fooling? I can see how swollen your lips are from all the way across the Pacific.”

You groan, covering your face with one hand. “I knew I should’ve called Ryung-gu.”

“He’d tell you to just sleep with him already.”

“Oh, shut up. It was different with him. Things just happened and it was his idea,” you remind her. “But now that he’s trying this relationship thing with this new person, it made me realize I want the same. I don’t want to just fuck. I want the whole experience. What if Joong-gil’s not into me like that?”

“The dude made up a making-out tradition just because you kissed him by accident once. I think the chances that he did it because he’s into you are higher than those of him just wanting to make out with someone.” She shrugs her shoulders and disappears for a moment to get dressed. “Stop holding back, Y/N. Just let things happen without trying to stop them.”

*

And ‘let them happen’ is exactly what you do.

One week after your call with Bit-na, you find yourself kissing Joong-gil in your hotel room in Atlanta, after an English post-concert livestream for your international fans.

It started off innocently enough, with the both of you sitting on the floor, your backs to the foot of your bed and your phone propped up on the coffee table you decided to use as a stand. Then it got less innocent soon after you turned the stream off, when his hand slipped underneath your t-shirt and dragged up your spine, pulling gooseflesh wherever he touched.

That’s how you find yourself being dragged into his lap now, how you find yourself now almost kissing down his throat.

His kisses are something else entirely, and the way his tongue brushes against yours makes you moan into his mouth. They’re intoxicating, his touches on you – the way he cradles your head in both hands, keeping you as close as possible without letting you go for a single second, or the way he suckles on your lower lip when he pulls back just enough to allow the both of you to catch your breath.

“It’s hard,” he says, his eyes roaming your face before being inevitably drawn back to your parted lips.

You have no clue where you find the strength or even the presence of mind to keep your lower half elevated just enough to avoid sitting down on him.

“What is?” you whisper back, suddenly being brought back to what you talked about with your best friend – you said it was hard, and she brought up the erection you had felt in Joong-gil’s pants while kissing. There’s no telling what would happen if you allowed yourself the time necessary to think about that now, or to even sit down comfortably in his lap and feel it, if that’s tonight’s case as well.

“Holding back.” His lips brush against the line of your jaw when he replies, his hands sliding down your sides and over your ass.

He is hard – that’s the first thing you can think about when he pulls you down flush against him. Your breath is caught in your throat when the tip of his nose brushes just right under your ear.

“Acting like I don’t want to fucking worship you.” His voice is deep, probably deeper than you’ve ever heard it in the time you’ve worked together but also before that, even though it’s hard to even think straight right now. “God, I’ve been thinking about you for weeks now.”

It’s like you’re not in control of your body: you hear yourself whimper, and then your hips roll down against his of their own accord.

Just let things happen, you hear Bit-na say again.

Joong-gil’s head falls back against the mattress and he gazes up at you from underneath. It does something to your brain, the sight of him underneath you, his eyelids heavy and his lips kiss-swollen. Because of you, you feel the need to remind yourself. He is like this because of you.

Fuck, it really does mess with your brain. Like thunder strikes and incinerates your ability to keep a grip on yourself.

And then he’s gripping your buttcheeks in both hands and moving you against him. His breathing is heavy, but so is yours. You can feel how hard he is against you even through your layer of clothings – in the spur of the moment you wish neither of you was wearing any. Every last one of your synapses is alight and all you can do is lean down into his lips again for another kiss.

Who would fall for the whole ‘new celebratory kiss tradition’ if anyone were to catch the two of you right now? Maybe Bit-na was right; maybe Joong-gil really did start this because he sees something in you that you yourself don’t see. As he kisses you back, pushes his tongue past your teeth to brush against yours, you find yourself hoping for your friend to really be right.

The buzzing of his phone by his head, on your bed, goes unnoticed when he starts bucking his hips up into yours. He swallows your whimpers, and when he moans in return, you’re suddenly aware of the pleasure starting to coil tighter deep in your stomach.

If he manages to make you come by simply dry-humping you, you can consider that a first.

But then someone knocks on your door, and the quick rapping on the wood breaks the spell. You find yourself looking into his open eyes and realize one of his hands has moved to the back of your head during the heat of your make-out session, the other one is under your t-shirt in the middle of your back.

“Alright, bedtime! We’re catching a flight at seven tomorrow!” You recognize Yun-ho’s voice, but it takes your brain two more seconds to finally give a meaning to the words you’ve just heard.

You jump back up on your feet before you can stop yourself, but Joong-gil doesn’t move immediately. He keeps his eyes trained on you, on the way you’re almost panting, trying to avoid looking down at his groin, and he doesn’t know how hard you’re throbbing right now or how drenched your panties feel even if you’re this close to telling him.

God, if anyone finds out while you’re overseas, you’re fucked. Both of you are.

“See you tomorrow?” he asks when he eventually stands up, movements all fluid when he does – a stark contrast to yours, to how sharp-cornered you felt when you jumped up from his lap and to how sharp-cornered you still do feel when you pick up your phone from the coffee table, unable to meet his eye and knowing that if you do, there’ll be no sleep for you tonight.

You nod and hum in response, but it’s apparently not enough for him. He steps forward, closes the distance between the two of you, and grabs your chin between his thumb and forefinger. He’s done that already once in the past, but right now you’re barely able to remember your own name. This motherfucker really does have that effect on you – brain and body alike.

“I asked, see you tomorrow?” he repeats, but all you can focus on is the way his lips move when you speak.

Part of your brain wants to bite back a of course, where the hell else would i be?, but another part of it is simply paralized. You wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s decided to make your body take the reins, for once.

He plants a chaste kiss to your lips when your reply is a simple, breathless yes. It’s like the kiss you accidentally gave him after your first concert in Tokyo, but this time it makes you tingle all over.

Would it really be so wrong to tell him now how fucking wet he’s made you?

*

To your displeasure, however, things don’t go further than that for the rest of your American stay, or even during the one concert you have in Toronto, although Joong-gil somehow ended up hearing you push yourself over the edge in the shower in Boston and fingering you in your dressing room in Chicago before your performance. (Which, by the way, sort of made it hard to fully focus once you were on stage, but whatever.)

Your days simply get busier, what with the concerts and the extra American interviews both of your agencies agreed upon at the last minute. Some of them were chill, but most had those sneaky so are you two dating? kind of questions hidden among much better ones. Joong-gil did a great job at deflecting them, but deep down all you can say is that they made you want to scream. You’re definitely not dating but fuck, if he doesn’t give you those fingers of his one more time I swear to God I’ll go insane!

“What are you thinking about?” Joong-gil asks, looking up from the magazine he’s been reading (there’s a double-page picture of the two of you on the pages he has open right now, one of those you posed for during your last photoshoot in Korea) and turns to glance at you.

You don’t think that ‘your fingers in my pussy’ is an appropriate enough reply, so you babble the next best thing that pops up in your mind when you look out of the plane window to your right. “Can’t wait to have a few days off before our concerts back home.”

Maybe if you focus hard enough on the fluffy clouds outside, you’ll stop overthinking about the implications of everything the two of you have started doing together. Like spending time in either of your hotel rooms after livestreams to simply relax. Or like kissing before and after concerts. Or the way he moaned straight into your mouth when you were making out in your room in Atlanta.

Fuck, that sound has been stalking you even in your dreams ever since.

“What’s your plan for that?” He turns slightly towards you to give you his undivided attention and you don’t know why, really, but that small gesture makes you sort of warm and fuzzy inside.

Your gaze swipes past him to the next row in first class and then over the few seats you can see from yours, but no one’s paying attention to anything but their own business. “I’m going back home, gonna spend a few days with my mother. It’s been almost a year since I last saw her in person,” you reply. And then, before you can even ponder your words or even just realize what trajectory your brain’s following, you find yourself proposing, “you’re invited, if you’d like. If you have nothing else to do.”

He looks surprised for a moment, and you want to slap yourself on the mouth for being so stupid. You’re aware your proposal might have come off as a ‘we’ve been doing things together, so it’s time to meet the parents’, but he’s smiling before you’re done biting your tongue. “Sure, why not? I’ll book a hotel room as soon as we land.”

There’s a surge of courage bubbling up from within you, something you’ve never really had around him because at first you were too excited to even be offered a collaboration deal with the Park Joong-gil, then you were trying to always be professional, and then you were a bit too busy trying not to think about the way he makes you feel.

So, you end up saying, “you could… stay with us. My mother hasn’t had guests over in ages and I’m sure she’d love the company.”

Am I being too straightforward? Is it too early? Is this something like what Ryung-gu and I used to do, or is he really into me?

That’s how you end up brushing your teeth next to Joong-gil in your childhood home.

That’s also how you end up trying to convince your mother she won’t be having grand-children or attending your wedding all that soon.

We’re just friends – you say ‘friends’, not ‘colleagues’, and that somehow surprises you. Like that’s something you’ve never even considered – the possibility of you and Park Joong-gil becoming friends, and maybe going out for drinks together a few years down the line and reminiscing about this collab album you’re doing together now.

He doesn’t really look at you like you’re just a friend is her reply, one that haunts you during your concert back home in Busan and during the two you hold in Seoul.

You also end up going down on him in his Seoul penthouse apartment after your tour has been wrapped up, and that’s when your mother’s insinuation comes back. It confuses you, this thing you have with Joong-gil, but you barely have the time to think because he’s keeping you close to his pelvis with a hand on the back of your head, and all you can do is swallow around him.

The moan he lets out when he feels your throat constrict around his dick is loud and it goes straight to your core. It makes you moan in return and that’s when he warns you he’s close and pulls you off.

“Come in my mouth,” you plead, breathless – almost as breathless as he is. He looks so good staring down at you with hooded eyes, a light flush powdered over his cheeks and the upper part of his torso. Somehow, it makes you want to ruin him.

The sound he lets out is halfway between a moan and a groan, and he lets go of your hair in favor of wrapping his hand around his erection. You allow him a couple of strokes before you’re wrapping your lips around him again, and a swipe of your tongue on his frenulum is what pushes him over the edge and right down your throat when you take him all the way into your mouth.

Your hands caress up and down his thighs when he lets himself fall back onto his bed, and as he catches his breath, you pepper light kisses over his hips and abdomen. He looks and sounds so good that you can feel how uncomfortable the wetness in your panties is, but still don’t dare speak up.

“Fuck,” he pants, chuckling when he stretches a hand out for you to take. You intertwine your fingers with his and move to lie down next to him. “Let me see,” he pleads.

It takes you a couple of seconds to realize what he means, but then you show him you’ve swallowed every last drop by opening your mouth and pushing your tongue out.

“That was fucking sexy,” he groans before pulling you over onto him and kissing your breath away, licking into your mouth and making your heart almost give out in your chest.

Your phone rings.

“I gotta go now.”

He’s sitting up on his bed when you speak, after he’s tried – uselessly – to pay back the favor. His eyes follow your every move – the way you pick up your phone (almost a mirrored repetition of what happened in Atlanta), the way you check yourself out in the mirror of his dresser, how you hesitate for a second when you pick up your handbag from the floor.

“My manager’s asking for my whereabouts and I can’t exactly tell her what we’ve been doing here,” you chuckle, looking back at him just to find him two steps away, standing only in his boxers behind you.

He hums his agreement, but then surprises you by grabbing you by the hips and pulling you into his chest. Resisting the urge to wrap your arms around his neck or to press a kiss onto his skin takes everything you’ve got.

“I want to keep seeing you,” he confesses matter-of-factly, looking straight into your eyes. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips before he leans his head forward to peck your cheek. “I want to keep seeing you after this collab is wrapped up,” he repeats, this time whispering in your ear and making the baby hairs at the back of your neck stand up in gooseflesh.

“You do?” Somehow, you’re breathless. You barely even register it, with how wildly your heart is pounding in your chest and in your throat and – bonjour, finesse! – between your legs.

“Yep,” he chuckles. He pulls your pelvis right into his, and you feel how he’s getting hard again. If you don’t leave his house soon, you know you’ll be in trouble with your team, but at the moment you can barely even remember all the rules you have to follow. “I want to keep seeing you.” It’s the third time he says it, and you’re starting to believe his words. “I want to get to know all of you. I want to see what you look like naked, too.”

You can’t stop the giggle.

“I think it’s unfair you got to see me,” he whispers, rolling his hips into you, “and I couldn’t even take your panties off in that changing room. And then,” he continues, kissing down the side of your neck like you have all the time in the world, “I want to know how you feel around me. Wanna be so deep inside you that all you can remember is my name. Because that’s how I felt not even five minutes ago.”

A shiver runs up your whole body, from toes to head, and it pulls a low moan from your lips before you can even swallow it back. The way you’re throbbing makes you feel like you’re definitely going to lose your mind.

Forty-five minutes later you’re lying naked on your bed – after having managed to send your manager back home and after the coldest shower of your life. But Joong-gil is still on loop in your mind: his moans, the way he cradled your face when you knew he wanted to let go and fuck your throat but held back, and then the way he confessed his desire to keep on seeing you outside of work. It works you up like crazy and it’s delusional of you to think you’d ever be able to stop your hands from wandering down your body – your breasts, your belly, and then finally between your legs.

You’re so wet you almost shoot him a text, but then you start burning in embarrassment and the only thing you can think of to distract yourself is to tease your entrance before pushing two fingers in.

This time is different from that one in a hotel shower, when you had to be quick to stop yourself from drowning in your sense of guilt. This time you have all the time in the world, and working yourself up with the memory of Joong-gil in your mouth so fresh in your mind is extremely easy. Your toes curl, and your back arches, and your breathing is labored, scorching hot and loud, although not as loud as the squelching of your juices.

You’re not even aware of the way you’re dripping onto the fresh bedspread, nor can you really control the volume of your moans when you bring back the memory of him fingering you. You’ve never appreciated the soundproof system of your apartment as much as you do now, as you have three fingers massaging that one spot deep inside you while your other hand plays with your breasts.

The pleasure builds up and up, like it doesn’t ever want to stop, and you’re burning and doing your best to keep that moan of Joong-gil’s name trapped inside your chest. But then your hand brushes your clit and you’re coming, your orgasm crashing down on you as though it wants to pull you down under and never let you back up.

It does take you forever to come down from it. You put the ceiling of your bedroom into focus before you actually realize how erratic your heartbeat still is or how the tenderness of your pussy makes your thighs tremble when you trail your hand upward to rest it on your lower belly.

The ring of a notification comes at the same time your brain has the lucidity to think I need another shower.

It takes you a good five minutes to fully get back to your senses and stop thinking about Joong-gil’s lips on you, and at first you think about ignoring your phone. It’s late and you’re tired and overstimulated, and despite having a whole day for yourself tomorrow, you feel like you should take tonight off as well. But then a million and one thoughts start wracking you, and with a groan, you pick up your phone from the nightstand.

To your surprise, you read Joong-gil’s name on the screen and faster than you’d ever thought you would, you find yourself clicking on his text message.

[9:07 PM] Park Joong-gil: was thinking about you. what are you doing?

You feel your face grow hotter and you can’t help but giggle excitedly, slightly kicking your feet in the air before quickly venting to Bit-na. It’s been a while since the last time you felt this childish, but it’s not in a bad way this time, and it feels really good.

Still, you have no clue where you find the courage to text Joong-gil back:

[9:13 PM] you: wishing my fingers were yours

Another squeal rushes past your lips as you lock your phone and throw it at the foot of the bed. God, you feel like you’re sixteen all over again, when you were still crushing on that classmate of yours, Min-ho, who used to be a math genius and a Prince Charming.

Instead of a text reply, however, your phone starts ringing with an incoming call that makes your heart skip a beat inside your chest. Panic flashes past your thoughts for a split second, but then you convince yourself to grab your phone and lie back down while you answer, part of you expecting for it to be Bit-na.

It’s Joong-gil, of course. Bit-na is out on a date and you know it well, but hope is always the last spark to go out.

“So, you were saying…?” You see the smugness in his smirk, but it’s hard to focus when he has one arm bent behind his head as he sits in bed with his back against the headboard. The faint hickey you left on his collarbone is right there, staring right back at you, and you have to press your thighs together because all you can think of is the afternoon you spent making out and then sucking him off.

“You read it right the first time,” you stagger, trying to keep your phone angled in such a way that only your face and neck are visible.

“Are you naked?” He moves closer to the screen for a second before he sits back again. His smirk turns into an actual grin, and the spark in his eyes makes you want to gush out about him to Bit-na for the rest of the fucking month.

“Yeah,” you breathe out.

“Show me?”

You don’t know where you find it in yourself to counter-attack until you hear yourself speak. “You first.”

You really thought you could have a smart moment, but when he tilts his phone to show you he’s only topless but still wearing a pair of navy blue pajama pants, you realize you’ve simply tricked yourself.

“That’s not fair.”

Your pout only makes him chuckle, but you’re still teasing enough to show yourself only up till the top of your breasts.

“Where’s the rest?”

“You’ll have to come see it in person.” This time you know you have the upper hand. He might be the country’s crush, but you’re still sensual enough to play your game.

He looks genuinely sad when he says, “my schedule is full till the end of the month and I want to spend more than just five minutes with you.”

He’s told you countless times today that he’s seriously interested in getting to know you, but it’s still surprising yet heartwarming to find confirmation of that yet again in his words.

“So you were serious? This afternoon.”

“That I wanna pursue you?” When you nod, he continues, “never been more serious.”

You end up talking about the tour you’ve just wrapped up, about a song he’d love to collab with you on once again, maybe next year, and about how fun it was to work together. When you go to bed that night, after a late night snack and a quick shower, you realize you’ve been on the phone for almost three hours and that you’ve never felt this comfortable with him ever.

Park Joong-gil is the last thought on your mind when you eventually fall asleep.

*

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. However, you find yourself realizing how slowly the seconds can tick by and it’s a never-ending surprise to find out how much pent-up frustration your body can bottle up while you wait until the end of the month for your date. You still don’t have the details; you don’t even have a date, Joong-gil hasn’t set it yet, but that’s still your one and only thought.

Lim Ryung-gu reads you much better than Bit-na ever could, what with the distance or the fact that while you finally have more free time now that your comeback is behind your back, your best friend’s work life has slowly turned into a nightmare, preventing you from video calling. And, truly, maybe that’s a blessing in disguise because you hate the fact that Joong-gil is capable of affecting you this much without even trying, but at the same time it’s nice to have something other than work or anxiety making your heartrate pick up.

You’re in the studio with Ryung-gu one chilly afternoon towards the end of September. The RMT guys are going through a chill stretch of time before their end-of-year performance, and while Ryeon and Joon-woong are taking advantage of this time to get some more sleep in, Ryung-gu is still busy producing. You technically shouldn’t be allowed previews of their music, but the four of you are pretty much your agency’s money-makers, so there’s really no one stopping you.

“How’s it going with Park Joong-gil?” Ryung-gu absentmindedly asks, eyes fixed on the music software he’s been playing with all day.

You’ve been keeping him up-to-date with the most important things, unable to take your mind off of Joong-gil. It’s almost as though he’s one of your most recurrent thoughts nowadays; the situation wasn’t this bad even when you were spending all your time together during your tour or during the whole album-creation process.

“It’s… I don’t really know,” you shrug your shoulders, sucking pomegranate juice through the straw. “He’s busy now and I feel like I’m all of a sudden losing my mind for him.”

Ryung-gu clicks around on the screen, switching between pieces of software and tweaking his lyrics around, but then he turns towards you and gives you his full attention. “Too busy to even text?”

You feel how your face starts burning and when you avert your gaze from him, he must take it the wrong way, for he says,

“That’s a lame excuse.”

“No, I mean, we’ve been… texting,” you admit eventually, your exhale quivering at the thought of the kind of texts that have been going back and forth between the two of you on your burner phone.

“Why that pause?” But then, a second later, it must hit him. “Sexting? You’ve been sexting with the Park Joong-gil?” Surprise is as clear as day both in his voice and on his face, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.

You hide behind your can of juice, but it’s hard to wipe that wide grin off your lips. Joong-gil’s groggy morning voice last week still affects you to this day when you replay it in your head – can’t wait to have my hands on you is part of what he left in your voicemail before heading out for his day a few hours before you even had the chance to wake up.

“Damn, I didn’t picture him to be the sexting type. He seems… intimidating, sometimes.”

You have to agree with him. Your collab brought along one surprise after the other, and it’s almost hard to believe people are still talking about it weeks after it ended.

“I think I really want to try this thing with him,” you say – to Ryung-gu or to yourself, you really don’t know as you look out the narrow window to your side. You see the top of a tree from there, its branches moving in the wind, and the clouds run by fast in the sunny sky. “I think I want to have with him what you have with your person, but at the same time I’m afraid this is too much too fast.”

Ryung-gu doesn’t say anything for what feels like the longest time, looking out the window, too, lost in thought. Maybe he’s thinking about his person, you assume, and for a moment you wonder how fast things moved between them before they started being an item. You wish he would tell you more about them, but at the same time you appreciate the privacy he allows his relationship.

“I think you should go for it, then,” he says eventually, moving his gaze from the view outside to your face. He’s smiling, and in that split second you realize why nothing’s ever felt rushed between the two of you. He puts you at ease; there’s probably no one else in Seoul you’re this comfortable around. It’s not just because of the sexual sort-of relationship you agreed upon, with its sporadic encounters you’ve had when either or both of you were too stressed to even breathe. It’s him, and his aura, that unperturbed calm that follows him around wherever he goes. “One step at a time. There’s no too fast or too slow. And if it doesn’t work out…” he shrugs, “at least you can say you tried.”

You nod in agreement. “You don’t think he’s into me just for the sex, do you?”

His gaze is stern for just a moment before he starts cackling. “I’ve seen your interviews together,” he replies when his laughter subsides, “and the interviews he’s given on his own. I think he’s genuinely into you as a person, I don’t know why you don’t see that, too.”

*

You decide to believe your friend, even when his question – are you into Joong-gil just for the sex? – starts eating away at the back of your mind with the only purpose of trying to make you doubt everything you know about him. It was a rhetorical question, of course, not Ryung-gu implying you’re into Joong-gil just for his dick or the way he still teases you about that one time you confessed to fingering yourself to the thought of him, but it’s still enough to leave you frustrated.

Some more days pass, and there’s an actual attempt of getting to know the little things about the both of you in-between the teasing texts you send each other. You find out he’s into martial arts and that he actually used to compete at national level, when he was younger. He learns you make origami when you’re sad, after he’s seen the collection you have in your living room on a video call, and that you have this one scar on the back of your left thigh from that one time you slipped on a rock at the beach, when you were eight and your mother on a business trip, and your father had panicked so much that you had had to calm him down.

Eventually, Joong-gil sets the date on his first day off – saturday night. I’m taking you to eat the best food in Seoul, he promised, and there’s no muffling the excitement that grows and grows inside you with each day that passes.

The anticipation is much better than the absence, that’s for sure, and when saturday night comes around, you get ready by doing your make-up and putting on that nice black dress you modeled for during that one fashion campaign last year. It’s a pity that you never got to wear it before, but it’s also exciting to know you’re wearing it for the first time on a date with someone so charming.

Yun-ho rings at your door at six on the dot, and then he leads you down to the underground garage of your condominium. For a moment you worry it’s just going to be you and him in the car, but when he opens the back door of a dark SUV with tinted windows, you find Joong-gil already sitting there on the back seat waiting for you.

You panic when you take in his outfit – light jeans and a maroon turtleneck that make you wonder whether he has given you the details after all and you simply didn’t notice in the excitement of the moment. “Am I overdressed?” you fret, buckling yourself in when his manager starts the car.

“On the contrary.” Joong-gil looks you up and down. He eyes the slit in the long skirt of your dress, the way the jewel shoulder straps twinkle in the light of the streetlamps, and then back down over the swell of your breasts and to the high-heeled sandals you wore. “You’re breathtaking.”

You want to tell him that he is breathtaking with the way he’s staring at you, almost like you hung the stars in the night sky and lit every single light in Seoul yourself. “Well, if anything, I’m not underdressed for wherever we’re going,” you say as a way to calm your nerves – you don’t even remember when the last time you went out on an actual date was.

“Oh, I know the owner,” Joong-gil grins, taking your hand in his and interlacing his fingers with yours. His hand is warm; it reminds you of the things he’s used it on you for – tuck your hair behind your ear but also finger you on a make-up desk. “He’ll have nothing to complain about.”

As it turns out, he is the owner. After a detour to not let you guess exactly where he was taking you, you find yourself stepping out of the car and into the underground garage of his apartment building, and then up the twenty-four floors to his apartment.

It hits you as soon as you step through his door, the fact that the last time you were here things could have gone much further than they actually did. You still feel the way he kissed you when he walked you backward into his apartment and the way his hands roamed your body before you eventually ended up on your knees for him.

Catching yourself red-handed, you force your train of thoughts to take another direction. After swapping your heels for the pair of house slippers Joong-gil gives you, you follow him into the open living area. It’s there, on the dining table, that you see all that food and your jaw drops.

“Where did you get all this?” you gawk, all kinds of delicious aromas tickling your nostrils and making your mouth salivate.

He’s smug when he looks at you before being the gentleman he is and pushing your chair closer to the table once you sit down. “I should’ve mentioned I’m a fairly decent cook,” he grins, moving to sit opposite you.

It’s then that you notice your favorite side dish, the one you told him about at your mother’s house and how you’ve never eaten it again after your father passed away. There’s another one, closer to him, that you suddenly remember praising a couple of times when you were still in the songwriting process of your collab album and used to spend entire nights in the studio.

It touches something inside you, the way he seems to have actually paid attention to your likes and dislikes, even though you just mentioned them or they never felt like they were truly that important. But you’re either good at hiding the pleasant surprise, or he simply doesn’t point it out when you start eating.

It’s quiet at first – you just feel his eyes on you as you bring food to your mouth and enjoy your dinner in silence. It doesn’t last long, however: he really is great at cooking – and not simply ‘fairly decent’ as he said – and compliments after compliments start spilling out of your mouth. This is so tasty, or I remember my grandma used to make it just like this!, or I can’t believe you cooked this yourself. It flusters him, and he’s such an endearing sight. This tall, dark, intimidating man when it comes to the heights of your industry really did go out of his way after a booked-out month just to cook your favorite things.

You could smooch his whole face right here and now.

By the time all the plates have been emptied, you’re full as an egg.

“Was it good?” he asks, a satisfied smirk on his lips, leaning back into his chair, one arm stretched out on the table and the other hooked on the back of his chair. Sitting like that, with that turtleneck fitting him like a glove, he feels like a whole course of desserts.

“It was incredible,” you gush out again, beaming, lightly massaging your stomach with one hand.

It hits you then, that you could play dirty and tease him the way he’s been teasing you all this time. You don’t even know what you’re talking about, just that you’re somehow keeping up with him, when you decide to strike. You remove a slipper under the table and stretch your leg out to play with his ankle.

He jolts slightly, and there’s an automatic “What are you doing?” slipping past his lips that just tugs at yours.

“What do you mean?” You lean forward, and you’ve acted in your fair share of dramas at the beginning of your career to be able to effortlessly pull off the most innocent of expressions. “I’m just playing a little game.”

Your foot trails up his shin and you have to control the impulse to laugh at what you’re doing.

“You’ve been teasing me all this time after that evening… It’s only fair that I have my payback,” you grin.

“Is that why you went braless?”

Your grin widens. So he has noticed, you think. You want to keep just for yourself how gentlemanly he is, however – not pointing it out, and not staring at your chest, either. Not that him being everyone’s heartthrob is surprising, but you keep on noticing the little things now and it’s those little things that make you fall for him a little more each day. How considerate he is. How attentive to the little things he is.

Or even how fucking sexy he looks right now, as he rounds the dining table to come pull you to your feet.

His hands trail up your arms, and you do your best to hold his eye contact despite the fact that you feel yourself melting in front of him into a puddle of hormones.

“Fuck,” he groans, letting his hands come up to your shoulders. He plays with the straps of your dress almost as though he’s considering pushing them down your arms, but he doesn’t. What he does, however, is move his hands down your body to grab your hips. “You make staying away so fucking hard.”

It’s like there’s just the two of you – which is technically correct since no one else is in his apartment, but at the same time it’s like there’s nothing outside the walls of his home, just the two of you inside.

There’s a tiny voice at the back of your mind that whimpers at how desperately you want him inside of you, but that’s a story for another time.

“Then don’t.”

You pull in him for a kiss, and it doesn’t take long for one of his hands to creep up your chest and grab a boob through your dress.

“I still want to play a game, though,” you smirk when you pull back, just in time to see that look of suspicion flash across his gaze.

“I already know I’m going to regret playing along with this.” He lightly pinches one of your nipples before his hands are back on the crystal straps of your dress. When you nod your consent, he pushes them down your shoulders and takes a step back to take in how it reveals your body as it glides to the floor. Your breasts, and your stomach, and your legs. Fuck, no one’s looked at you the way he is right now.

You sure hope no one in the skyscraper opposite his apartment complex will see you through his windows.

“My busy weeks are about to start,” you say, stepping out of your dress and moving closer to him. His hands guide yours to the waistband of his jeans and you don’t hesitate when it comes to unbuttoning and unzipping them.

“What about that?” He’s trying his best to keep his breathing even, but you see how it’s not really working when your hand sneaks into his pants, your palm pressing right against his hardening cock through his underwear.

“I think we should wait,” you whisper against the side of his neck before licking a stripe against his skin. He shudders, and you’re loving your upper hand for once.

“Fuck that.” He removes your hand from his pants and picks you up. He walks up to the couch and sits down with you in his lap, and this time it’s not like in Atlanta. This time he pulls you down flush against him from the get go so that you can feel exactly what you do to him. “Why wait when we’re both here now?” You swallow his groan when you roll your hips against him just once.

“You can touch me,” you murmur, taking both of his hands in yours before guiding them onto your breasts. “And I will touch you,” you reassure him when he shoots you a burning gaze.

You’re pulling his pullover out of the waistband of his jeans when he asks, “but?”

He hisses and then shudders when you graze the skin of his abdomen with your nails. His reaction makes you smirk and the only way to hide your satisfied expression is by leaning in closer to him so that you can mock-bite the skin of his neck. You remember that part of his body to be sensitive from the one time you ended up giving him a blowjob, and he doesn’t disappoint you – he bucks his hips up and pulls your head back so that he can crash his lips into yours.

It’s distracting, the way he kisses you. All-consuming, like he can’t get enough of you and this is the next best thing he’s thought of to be as humanly close as possible to you when he’s still fully dressed. One of his hands trails down your back and slips into the back of your panties before he’s grabbing tight onto your buttcheek and kneading it. You’re pretty sure that if he moved his hand a little more down, those long fingers of his would be able to feel how absolutely drenched you are.

But then you remember what you were trying to say, that stupid little game that suddenly popped up in your mind when you realized how fucking bad you wanted his dick – but with feelings. You pull away, gasping for hair, and when you meet his eye he’s already staring at you with that heated gaze of his. If your panties weren’t soaked before, they sure as hell are now.

“No fucking,” you pant, sliding your right hand up along his chest and brushing your thumb across his nipple. You don’t really know what he feels for you aside from the lust that always drips from his racy texts, but you still want him to crumble for you just as much as you do him. “No sex until I’m free again.”

“When’s that gonna be?” He’s already regretting doing this, but there’s also a curious spark behind the lust in his eyes, and you absolutely love the way he pulls you closer by your ass on his dick, even though the fly of his jeans grazes your inner thighs. “Hm? How long’s that gonna be?”

You shrug your shoulders. “Mid-November, most likely.”

He gapes, speechless, but he still lets you take his turtleneck off. “You’re crazy. You can’t be for real.”

You don’t even hide that amused smirk this time. You simply lean into him fully, chest-to-chest, and press a wet kiss right underneath his jaw. The throbbing in your pussy picks up when you feel the light twitch of his dick in his briefs. “Don’t you think it’s gonna be worth it?”

“I think you’re gonna make me lose my mind,” he flat out whines, wrapping his arms around you tight enough to make you stop teasing him. “Fuck, can’t you feel me twitch?”

You can, and you’re doing your best to ignore that.

“It’s gonna be fun,” you murmur, gently sucking a hickey into his neck – probably against your better judgment, but your tits pressing into his chest and his clothed cock pressing against your core.

“It’s gonna be torture,” he retorts, kissing your shoulder. He’s so gentle that gooseflesh breaks out all over your body, and you’re forced to pull back and rest your forearms on his shoulders to stop yourself from giving in to him.

“You will survive,” you chuckle. “And then you’ll be able to have me however you like.”

“Can I at least eat you out now?”

You peck his lips, and he’s quick at opening his mouth to deepen the kiss for a moment before pulling back. “I don’t know,” you pant. “Can you?”

Unlike Instagram, Tumblr runs on reblogs, so if you’re in the mood, kindly consider leaving a comment and/or sharing this fic with your friends. However, any form of feedback is welcome :)

If you’d like to be tagged in what I write, let me know!

Original video used for banner: https://www.pexels.com/video/close-up-video-of-dried-roses-6092477/

#mbc tomorrow #tomorrow #kdrama #park joong-gil #park joong gil #mbc tomorrow imagine #tomorrow 내일 #park joong-gil imagine #park joong-gil x reader #park joong-gil smut #park joong gil imagine #park joong gil x reader #park joong gil smut #park joong-gil au #park joong gil au

[bvannn]

Weekly Update December 22, 2023

Still recovering from the semester, going very slowly. I’m trying to do stuff but mood and body are being volatile. Probably dread and anxiety leading up to the surgery next Tuesday, but I have been updated that most likely I will actually be able to leave on the same day after all because they moved it to 7:30 in the fucking morning. Convenient I guess but also going to be messed up that whole week probably.

I did a good few drawings yesterday. If I’m feeling up tonight I might do more. I’m trying to do more of the soft shading in addition to the hard shading, so the hard shading isn’t as harsh looking. Did it in my new pfp and it looks really good on the ghosts in particular. Has had more mixed results on the others but that’s probably due to my color choices.

Going to try fiddling with comic thumbnails as well, hoping it’ll be a larger project for next year. I’ve been drawing the characters for my secondary story a little more than I probably should so I’m going to hope inspiration hits for the O’Malley kids soon, since art block is kinda cropping up in that regard.

Music: the main song I’ve been working on is done instrumentally for now, soundfonts did in fact fix everything. Specifically the Touhou soundfont, because of course it was that one. I’m hoping if I get more energy tonight I can record pieces for the next song. I’ll still need to fiddle with outlining and lyrics for the first song, but I can’t progress much further on it until I manage to snag a vocaloid or utau (or synthV or cevio I guess, but idk or care much about those). Next couple ones I try to bite at are going to probably be instrumental. I might throw boards together for videos for them but that will be low priority until the songs are done done.

TRGA: so due to circumstance I haven’t really had as much chance to work on it as I thought. I did start cleaning up Tim 1-4, but not too much beyond that. Mostly because the time I set aside for it has been allotted to tending to my mood and body, so hopefully after some rest I can start taking bigger bites at it. If I get messed up on painkillers next week that is the project I will be most likely to work on, so I’ll try to get actual big bites out of it. If I get myself back to doing a schedule, I can probably get shots done faster than I have, which is good because admittedly I have been probably more proscrastinatey than I should be. Tonight I’ll try to continue on it, until I get Tim completely cleaned up, and potentially also get started on his face or hands.

Next week will be unpredictable, due to holiday and surgery. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get that computer I’ve been teased about so I can try to actually unload all my music making stuff, and get a good opportunity to reorganize my CSP brushes. I went a bit crazy on Black Friday this year since music software sites apparently just have 100% off sales on some of their cheaper items, and I got like $300 worth of stuff for free and then some. Haven’t been using it because of storage space. Whatever, bottom line is I can’t really predict next week but I can try to put a schedule together tonight and maybe abide by it as best I can. Whatever.

#weekly update

[laluxea]

Farm Frolics updates!

Hi everyone, it’s been a while!  I’ve received one or two worried PMs wondering what happened to the next instalment of Farm Frolics, so I’ve put together this post as an update – hopefully it’ll put a few minds at ease. :) . 

Basically we’ve both had RL stuff to get out of the way, which has slowed our productivity a little – @ri0thouse had a lengthy thesis chapter to complete while I had work-related stuff coupled with one or two health issues.  Thankfully we have dealt with these and are now in a position to resume normal writing service.   

So without further ado, the wedding chapter … don’t worry, it’s coming!  It’s a very special one so @ri0thouse and I are working hard to ensure we get it just right for you all before we release it into the wild.  It’s also long …  easily our longest so far, and we haven’t even finished it yet!  The good news is we are about three quarters of the way through, maybe a little more, and once the main body is complete we just need to give it a once-over (or a twice-over) before unleashing it on you all sometime within the next couple of weeks.  We definitely don’t want to half-ass this one – we want to make sure it’s worth the wait for everyone.  

This chapter won’t be the end, either - far from it! We have several more chapters of the main story planned, with ideas for further chapters popping up all the time, in addition to numerous ideas for B-Sides!  

Apologies for the wait (but not for much longer!) and thank you all for your support and patience!

Luxe  xx

@ri0thouse @keepcalmandcarryfire @skullmann @ledbythreads @lzep @lara1606 @laysidel-dekie @starrie-amethyst @jimmysdragonsuit13 @ritacaroline @zepislove @jimmypage7 @waddles-to-waddles @achilleslaststand7 @ritacaroline @herobsidianheart @just-cur10us @miss-violet @firethatgrewsolow @goliah0 @summerofsmiles and anyone else I missed!

#Farm Frolics #welsh fuck cottage #jimbert #jimbob #wfc #jimmy page #robert plant #led zeppelin slash #zepfic

[fuumiku]

What if we were both kids who had become entangled in dangerous things beyond our understanding, and you just want to be loved and take great care in upholding a cute persona to be liked, and I just want to be loved and uphold a persona to seek it through shallow relationships and being desired, and while you were protected and became a protector I was harmed and became harmful. What if we both need to be needed. What if we both craved attention and were overly willing to give it. What if we’re both sidelined and dismissed and whereas I came to loathe the world and want it reduced to ashes you see beauty in it everywhere, what if you brought me understanding and elation, an actual connection that I hadn’t had since my life became a cycle of pain and trauma and acting. What if I said I hated butterflies because they act all pretty and fancy but without their wings they’re actually really ugly, and you told me that they had to live as ugly caterpillars before earning their pretty wings. What if I was a caterpillar and you were a butterfly and I love you but I hate you but I love you but I hate how you might leave me. What then.

"When I’m with you I feel like a kid again." Alois just stab me, it’ll be less painful than hearing you say this to Lizzie

At first in my drafts I had these lyrics of Someone to Stay written all around them but if you’re not in an intense aloizzy mindset it looks crazyyyyy lol. I still made it an alt version and put it under the keep going line though. Also I made them wear each other’s eye color hehe, blue and green <3 Oh yeah man the sketch for this was from yearssss ago and the lineart it’s gotta have been a solid year as well… Look I just have tons of wips and I’m a slow artist. But yesss this is one of my guilty pleasure OTPs… Even as a kid I was a rarepair shipper gbdgdg. So uh this is my obligatory aloizzy post!! There will be more, hopefully

Fic recommendation!! Ice into intimidation is visceral and childish and timeless and universal. It touched me as a 11 years old and my appreciation for it has only grown as I became less and less childishly innocent like Lizzy and more acquainted with the horrors of the world that Alois has lived and seen. THIS FIC Y’ALL. CHANGED MY NEURONS. It’s like bruised ribs, an all-encompassing hug that softly hurts. It probably influenced my tastes in ships and fiction a lot gdbgdgd. I will never recover from it being discontinued, I will forever dream and wonder about what could have been. They’re so tragic. I’m gonna draw so much fanart of this fic when i can. Like just for his post I took the opportunity to go back and read the "butterflies are ugly" scene and the last chapter and many more excerpts and it makes me go rabid it makes me on the verge of tearssss, I could make a whole essay about this fanfic… Though! CW for ptsd, but otherwise it’s all very implied and not told. If you’ve seen the season and Alois’ character you know you have to prepare for actual dark shit. The fanfic isn’t graphic at all as I said, but if you know Alois’ backstory you know. As mentioned I did read this as a 11 years old and the dark stuff flew over my head it’s chill 👍

My aloizzy playlist!! I have a longer one but it’s 16+ because of aforementioned dark themes and I don’t wanna post it here. If you’re curious about some of my other playlist picks though, I recommend Appetite of a People Pleaser & Hansel by Soddiken

For better or for worse i don’t know But for what it’s worth I made you my whole world

— October passed me by, by Girl in red

#Black butler #kuroshitsuji #elizabeth midford #Alois trancy #alois x lizzie #Alois x lizzy #aloizzy #aloliz #fuumiku art #i want them to stumble into something caring and increasingly healthy despite everything #i think they should have a princess tutu au #Yes i will draw that #… in a way Alois is a sort of book Howl Pendragon if something had gone very wrong #Another au for my wips #I did a mix of improvizing clothes and making up my own #Sorry for the barechested alois. I’m worst at improvizing whatever the hell he wears. I only know like 2 canon outfits of his #And drawing him in the red kimono would inflict me severe psychic damage #Sorry for the long post but when else do i get to talk about this ship #ship playlist #character playlist #I experimented with my shading and I really like how Alois’ hair came out especially #Why does alois’ coat outfit kinda looks like a Onceler fit #I can’t believe dunmeshi just ended and this is what I finish

[dutifullyshamelessearthquake]

*deep inhale*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH😭😭😭😭

I’ll say it. I think this is one of my favorite if not THE favorite sick fic I’ve read thus far, ever…and I read a lot of sickfics lol 😂.

seriously and genuinly, everything about this last chapter was just so ridiculously good. Tighnaris affection, just him..like him *genuinely* not being bothered by Cyno being sick and all gross and icky, the way he just holds him and comforts him…when he was ROCKING HIM??? HELLO???? BABY BOY?????? I can’t. It radiates comfort and safty cuz nari would probably take care of Cyno forever if he needed to, and vice versa and that’s just so- there aren’t words for this!!!!- Also when Cyno began to cry…my heart literally sank. Which is just a testament to your writing for one, but also just, he was finally at his breaking point 🥺 between getting sick and making a mess and hurting Tighnari, plus that wildly high fever…poor poor thing. I love torturing him as much as the next freak but he truly was *going through it* (making me so excited to see more and explore that anxious puker and all the other silly head cannons we’ve made for this boy)

I loooooveee the fic ends too 😭😭😭 Tighnaris birthday, cyno finally *finally* getting some relief. And just the pure coziness of it all. I feel like this whole vacation will be a story that is shared with their friends upon returning and for many years to come and I love that so much 🥺

I believe that nari managed to get by with maybe just a bad cold since he was smart and wore layers, but I also believe Cyno would wait on him hand and foot, doing everything he could to make sure he returned the favor. Although he probably would end up needing to slow down cuz you don’t just casually jump from being that sick to 100% in a day. But like whatever, it’s a happy ending and they are all okay in the end 🥰

SAP TIME

I’m continually so happy to have found this blog and the others who follow and enjoy your work. Being able to find solace amongst like minded folk Sharing a niche interest with so much passion is not something I’d think possible not to long ago. Being able to share and freak out and fixate on stuff is one thing but seeing others around you who feel the same- priceless. I am thankful ☺️

100/10 work as always Earthquake, enjoy that break…. Enjoy All the things, you’ve earned it 😭

I can’t wait to see what you do next, and to see Cyno throw up on naris shoes or heizou give him self a concussion or..whatever you write

it’ll be fantastic

I don't have words, this whole comment just absolutely made my day 😭 I am almost emotional reading this, you have no idea how much this means to me

I am so immensely happy you enjoyed the fic as much as you did!! I already had a lot of fun writing it and would never have regretted the time spent on it, but knowing it brought somebody else this much joy just makes it so much more worth it!

I love writing these two boys so, so much, their whole relationship is just so soft and gentle and perfect. I loved writing Tighnari in this fic, pulling out all the stops for his boyfriend. Really showing the through thick and thin part of a relationship 😭 These two will ALWAYS be there for each other, come what may.

When I first started this fic I didn't plan on pushing Cyno this far, but I really ended up completely breaking him here. I am really sorry, my poor baby boy 😭

I am so happy you like how the whole thing wrapped up! I thought about the ending a lot before I got to that point. Cyno really deserves to start feeling better. He's definitely got several days of recovery ahead of him, I doubt he's going to feel a 100% for a while. But the worst is over and he can (hopefully) enjoy what is left of their holiday. I wanted to leave it very open ended, but if I think about what will happen next, I definitely imagine Tighnari won't get nearly as sick as Cyno did; like you said he's been bundling up and looking after himself better than Cyno, but I also imagine he'd treat it differently from the start. If he knew Cyno was going to get as sick as he did, he probably would've handled it differently, so I think he'll treat himself differently from the get go. And yes, still sick, but Cyno would 100% want to do everything for him 😭 Baby don't go overworking yourself too quickly, please.

You have absolutely no idea how much this last segment means to be, I've probably reread it three or four times now and I simply cannot stop smiling. Starting this blog was one of the best decisions I made, even if I was terrified to do it initially. I've had a lot of second thoughts about whether or not it's worth it to put this much time into being a sickfic writer, especially with how niche the topics I enjoy writing are. But trust me when I say every single moment of it has been worth it.

Not only is this the most fun I've had with writing in actual years, but getting to gush about these characters with you guys and being a part of this tiny community, it's immensely special. I want to continue being a part of this for many years to come.

Thank you so, so much again for this lovely message, you absolutely made my day with this. I want to gush more, but I'm also just going to repeat myself, so I will hush now. But seriously, thank you so much.

And thank you to each and every person who read and support my works! You are all awesome!

#I am so happy right now #thank you so much #earthquake author's note

[bryan360]

Here’s my note before I’ll get started….

(NO COPYING OR PLAGIARIZING FROM ME AND ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIEND’S WORK! THAT INCLUDES OUR CHARACTERS, DESIGNS, STUFF, ETC. IMPOSTERS AND SEXBOTS ARE NOT WELCOME TO FOLLOW MY BLOG WHATSOEVER! 😡 That will be all….I mean it.)

Fixing my JBL Headphones w/newer ear pads

Sup, guys? While I’m still working on my continuing NexiGo video game controller; since last time where I’d addressed of testing its connection test and some features. (Link Here)

I promise It’ll happened to continue, but had to put on hold until I decided when doing free time. Can’t go to rush in without expectation, though.

Anyways, just dropping off with this recent item I’d got it from Amazon.com. Its more of fixing my JBL headphones set since July. 15th, 2018; after owning it back then. (Link Here #2)

⬆️ 1st through 2nd Images (Aug. 13th, 2023; at 6:07 P.M.)

As you can see, I’d ordered this replacement kit from “SOULWIT” brand; very compatible to any headphones including JBL models. Thankfully I’d picked carefully for “JBL Tune 450BT” type after reading from its description. It also had soft cooling-gel to keep my ears comfortable and hopefully doesn’t go flat. I’m sure it’ll works than my original JBL ear pads I’ve wear them from past few years.

⬆️ 3rd through 5th Images (June. 15th, 2023; at 7:49 to 7:53 A.M.)

Just before getting my new ear pads months ago, I took some time to show off what’s happening with my JBL headphones set. While it’s running fine that I’m relief about, but the older ear pads shows its age. You can see that it completely rips off after many uses later. Took of 5 years since July. 15th, 2018 after owning my wireless headphones; as I already mentioned.

It’ll be a right time to replace its older ear pads for newer ones. I even carefully take off from the right side ear pad before saving it for later.

⬆️ 6th through 7th Images (Aug. 13th, 2023; at 6:07 to 6:11 P.M.)

Back to where I’m started, I’d unpacked from the bag itself while prepare to replace my old ear pads. It includes two new ones, some tools, and some manuals which I’ll get into it for a bit.

However for the blue tool I’m using, its for pushing the edge to secure my new ear pads tight while inserting. Something like that. It would be tricky if I’d use with my fingertips or other substitutes.

⬆️ 8th through 10th Images (At 6:18 to 6:20 P.M.)

These are the two sided manuals and a small one to read from. Though apologize for how it crumbled up even after trying to flatten out.

Nevertheless, I’ve read through those just fine while follow some instructions. However, I’m pretty much know to take off my JBL headphones old ear pads.

BTW, just ignored the other side of the manual for “JBL Tune 600BTNC” model; which was also included on the packaging. I don’t have that model.

⬆️ 11th through 13th Images (At 6:23 to 6:24 P.M.)

Before doing so, I still got one old ear pad to remove before cleaning from the inside. I don’t want to get any dust of it for that matter.

⬆️ 14th through 16th Images (At 6:29 to 7:08 P.M.)

Now here’s what I’ve inserting new ear pads to get fit with my headphone set. I described it “a bit hard” to cover up about few hour before finishing. I tried to stretch both of new ear pads without ripping it by accident.

I’d use with my blue tool to close up the edges tight. I’ll be keeping that for anytime of getting newer ear pad replacements.

Anyways, I’d managed to get it fit with my headphone set. Took about just one hour as I mentioned as well, but got it stretched out as I can to have it fit the inside the speakers. Though let’s see if it worth to wear without hurting my ears.

⬆️ 17th through 20th Images (At 7:13 P.M. to 7:22 P.M.)

First, I’m going to have some water drops into my new ear pads; as I followed the small manual to enhance the cooling sensation. I needed to be careful with it by using the dropper; which was also included from the packaging.

Sorry if I missed that to show at the beginning, though.

Anyways, I use a cup of water and collect some droplets with a tool I’m using. Afterwards, I needed to be careful to go around the ear pads. Not too much because it’ll get soggy if putting too much moisture. Or what I was thinking, though.

After that, I’ll let it dry about 2 to 3 minutes before wearing it. Well, I considered this good as new just like that. 😉

⬆️ 21st through 25th Images (August. 16th; at 4:19 to 4:20 P.M.)

I’d secretly wearing it from past few days til now. However, it felt good wearing with my new ear pads for my JBL headphones. 👍

In fact, it was better than my original JBL ear pads to wear after years later. I’ve gone through having older pairs before decided to replace newer ones. I mean my ears are fine despite had some problems later on.

Thanks to having a newer ear pads with cooling gel material, I’m hopeful it’ll be feeling with my ears without little pain. 😌👂

Overall thoughts: ⬇️

I’m enjoy my newer ear pads after replacing the older ones for my JBL headphones. It’ll help me to cool off my ears with its soft-cooling gel, but also had better sound quality when I listened to music or videos from YouTube. Not sure how long it’ll last long, but at least it was worth picking up from Amazon.com for this month of August 2023.

Hope if everyone will be saving some money of getting these for your older headphones.

Tagged: @murumokirby360 @carmenramcat @alexander1301 @rafacaz4lisam2k4 @paektu

#review #my review #review of 2023 #item review #new item #fixing #fixing headphones #ear pads #new ear pads #jbl headphones #jbl #accessories #tool #manuals #etc. #august 2023 #august 21st 2023

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Reading for Redemption in Post-Golden Age Berserk

Below is some rambling thematic/character analysis and vague gay flapping about how Berserk could have *ahem* or should have ended. So please enjoy my little theory brain working on overdrive again (if you like) as I discuss how Griffith and Guts’s relationship could have been resolved through one decisive act... No it’s not killing Griffith, get out of here!

To follow are some ideas including (pearl clutch):

Griffith’s “redemption”

An act of love between Guts and Griffith

Guts becoming a shield instead of a sword as the culmination of his character arc

A second (!) sacrifice

This is a bit of a grasping-at-straws deep-dive into post-GA Berserk, but one that is I think actually surprisingly well-substantiated, that is if you’re willing to follow me into the vague realm of thematic parallels. For those of you who were unsatisfied with the way this latter part of the story treated G&G's relationship, I hope you might especially enjoy it.

Caution: I’m basically reading the entire post-GA story through the lens of Griffith and Guts’s relationship, because to me that’s the emotional and narrative heart of the story. I think we can in fact view a lot of post-GA relationships and characters through this lens, and the story becomes, imo, richer for it. Think Jill and Rosine, Serpico and Farnese, just for some easy ones.

Please keep in mind that this is obviously 1000% empty speculation and useless headcanon at this point, and it relies on drawing connections between seemingly disconnected scenes and characters, but it’s fun to think through this stuff, so I hope you enjoy this little journey into my sad gay heart and hopefully it’ll at least give you some food for thought by the end.

I’m also relying on previous meta written by myself and @bthump, so if you feel you’re missing context for any of this, please check out my previous two metas and basically bthump’s entire archive (an intimidating prospect that I assure you is totally worth it).

For all those simply interested in “Guts chops off Griffith’s stupid head”-esque discussions... Well, you’re welcome to stay... but strap in.

Part 1, On Post-Eclipse Griffith: Griffith Needs to be “Redeemed,” But What Does That Actually Mean?

The way I read NeoGriffith, and basically every moment post-Eclipse for Griffith generally, is that he is living his own personal hell. He is lonely, he is miserable, he’s playing prince charming in an empty and unfulfilling (heterosexual) relationship with Charlotte. He is loved and adored by everyone around him, he is the bearer of light, but I think it’s clear that in spite of this (and perhaps because of it) he still hates himself.

His last act as a human soul was to destroy himself by destroying those around him, and that moment was crystallized into the form of Femto.

And indeed, that shadowy other half remains very much present post-Eclipse. Femto and NeoGriffith are shown to be inextricable mirrors: the charming outward persona and the festering self-hatred beneath the mask. The two are halves of the same coin – Griffith’s two coping mechanisms, forever intertwined after the Eclipse.

We see this at play in “Backlighting” especially, where it’s made clear that Femto is always “with” NeoGriffith.

(Chapter 303, “Backlighting”)

(And side note, I hope to eventually post another meta about this motif of light/darkness in post-GA Berserk at some point… probably in like three years or something given my posting history lol)

In addition to this continued presence of Femto as an embodiment of Griffith’s self-loathing, we are also clearly shown his loneliness as NeoGriffith, and also his dissatisfaction with his life, in every panel where we see him standing alone/isolated from his new Band of the Hawk.

However – and this is where I begin my pitch for reading the entirety of Berserk through the Guts x Griffith lens –  I think his mindset is also communicated to us as reader indirectly, through the voice of a different character entirely: the Pontiff. A minor character to be sure, but take a look at his inner monologue in Chapter 264. It’s both visually and rhetorically associated with Griffith.

See the parallels in the theme of repression of personal desires, a zealotry-based leadership role, light/darkness interplay and mirroring, castle and hawk wings imagery, and an assertion of worthlessness:

(Chapter 264, “Divine Revelation”)

Tell me that doesn’t sound suspiciously similar to someone else we know!

Now this is the type of thing that I find post-GA Berserk does a lot – it gives us these highly emotional moments about characters we really don’t know or care very much about as readers. It can lead to a bit of disconnect and feeling that the story has cheapened itself by highlighting these random characters. However, at least for me, this recurring pattern can be recontextualized by reading these charged moments as analogues for other characters, in that they are giving us insight through parallels with characters we know and care more about. I realize there is no in-text justification for doing this, but it provides a richer post-GA reading experience, at least for me, and hopefully for some of you as well.

So, through the Pontiff, I think we’re being granted a small glimpse into what Griffith might be feeling in his new life. Lest you think I am grasping at straws, which I totally am, nevertheless I offer you this: to Griffith too, the world in his new life has become a pretty painting, a castle on the wall, but he is left cold and lonely, stranded in the dark. “There was no love, hatred, nothing.” The absence of everything, specifically his everything, the world-shattering pain and love that Guts represents for him, remains a void in Griffith’s life.

(And as a bonus, also note the scene’s prominent light/dark reflection of the black and white Hawk – i.e., Femto and NeoGriffith, as visually paired and inverse)

Now, what does this have to do with Griffith’s capacity for “redemption”? Well, according to my previous readings of Griffith’s motivations behind sacrificing Guts and the Hawks, I do not believe that he feels any remorse or regret about the sacrifice. That’s because in order to feel regret, he would have to believe that both:

There was another choice he could have made

He deserves to feel something other than pain

I would offer that regret doesn’t belong in a headspace where Griffith thinks he is currently paying the price for his actions – with his emptiness, eternal suffering, repression, self harm, all of it. His life as NeoGriffith is, for him, both imprisonment and penance – it is the embodiment of the idea that he has to live as a monster. This is him reaping what he’s sown, "bear[ing] his evil and confront[ing] his destiny" as Void puts it.

In other words, he can’t regret his decision because he’s living with what he thinks he deserves. To admit otherwise is to admit that he doesn’t deserve this torment, which should be unthinkable to someone who still wears his self-loathing as a literal suit of armour.

And yes this perspective is extremely selfish, it’s not seeing the world from the perspective of those who he has harmed by his actions, but, evidently, that’s what self-loathing can do to people.

To conclude Griffith’s arc in a satisfying way, I would have liked to see him confront his actions, to experience regret, to repent from a non-selfish perspective. However, to do so, he would have to finally see himself as someone worthy of being loved, and to recognize that he in fact was that person once. That the sacrifice was a mistake after all, because he was loved by Guts all along.

The story has set up the fact that Griffith still absolutely needs Guts. Griffith at his most traumatized, at his moment of greatest despair needed (and now still needs) help to escape from the hell he’s living and thinks he deserves. And it’s all because he’s the victim of a misunderstanding that has led him to mistakenly believe he was never loved and was never worthy of love.

He chose the sacrifice because he was told by the Godhand that he is too dirty, too evil, to be redeemed or to be loved, in spite of Guts loving him all along. This is the belief that tore their relationship (and the world) apart. And it was a mistaken one! Guts is the one with the ability and the willingness to give him that: to right that narrative wrong. From this perspective, the only thing that will “save” Griffith, to allow him to repent and acknowledge what he’s done was a mistake, is an expression of love from Guts.

Now, I would have believed that this ending was unlikely or impossible except for the fact that Guts is not only aware that he fucked up with Griffith and is consumed with regret over it, but he has also spent the rest of the story trying to right that wrong in misguided ways (i.e., through Casca instead of through Griffith). And given Guts’s inability to fully embrace his hatred of Griffith, because he still loves him, I suspect that in fact all it would take to be swayed into redirecting this back to Griffith is for him to understand what Griffith is actually feeling (still human underneath, heart beating for him and otherwise dead inside, consumed by self loathing, believing he isn’t worthy of love).

I basically think the post-GA story was set up to end with Guts demonstrating his love for Griffith in some way. That’s the reason why the story continued after that point. And in fact, Guts being given a do-over has been foreshadowed explicitly – karma is a spiral, and “those children” have the chance to right the mistakes from the first time around.

(Chapter 222, “Claw Marks”)

Some sort of do-over seems both narratively and generically necessary here – Griffith has been operating since their second duel under a mistaken belief about how Guts felt about him all along, and Guts has the key to fix it.

If the narrative ended without righting that mistake, undoubtedly in the most juicy, melodramatic circumstances possible (e.g., perhaps it would be too late to matter as both are poised to die anyway), it would be both narratively unsatisfying and incomplete. This mistaken belief – that Guts never loved Griffith – lies, after all, at the heart of the story, it’s what made everything go wrong in the first place. Narratives about misunderstandings must correct them for the emotional payoff, I think it was simply a matter of when it happened and under what circumstances.

Part 2, On Foreshadowing: There Are Lots of Interesting Parallels Between Pre- and Post-GA Berserk, OK?

One idea for how this narrative resolution might have gone down I’m also taking from a non-directly G&G related plot beat in post-GA Berserk.

Now, we all know about the explicit and more subtle (read: gay) parallels between Rosine/Jill and Griffith/Guts drawn throughout the Lost Children Arc. But what if I were to suggest that the final note of their relationship, Jill throwing herself on top of Rosine, might have offered a thematic parallel to Griffith and Guts at the end of the story? Perhaps Guts might do the same in a moment of love and pain:

(Chapter 116, “The Way Home”)

This hope and a prayer (i.e., super amazing thematic prediction that isn’t based on any concrete evidence whatsoever) would have been a neat conclusion for the story, tying together a bunch of story threads in an incredibly simple and elegant way:

The narrative misunderstanding/wrong at the heart of the story (i.e., that Guts never loved Griffith) would finally be finally put right

It provides a neat resolution to both Griffith’s and Guts’ character arcs

The parallels are on point

To expand on this, in terms of character arcs, on Griffith’s end, a moment like this, perhaps where Guts bodily protects Griffith from a killing blow, would finally allow him to correct his fundamentally negative and damaging view of himself that has defined his entire character arc, the view that has led him to believe that he should bury himself under self hatred and repressed desires. Because if Guts sacrifices himself for him, it would not just tell but show Griffith that he was in fact loved all along. This act would finally provide him with a genuine sense of self and self worth through a love that is entirely reciprocated (instead of through dreams: either selfishly or selflessly pursued).

This would be incontrovertible evidence of Guts’s love for him; one of the main problems in resolving this narrative misunderstanding is to create a situation where Griffith can actually believe that Guts’s expression of love is genuine – how can he possibly believe this through anything other than an extreme, incontrovertible act? And so I offer Guts sacrificing his life for him.

On Guts’s end, it would finally allow him to take his life into his own hands and truly self actualize – he’s been passively reacting for most of the story, and this would be a chance for him to actively do something, to finally make a meaningful choice, and it would be an act that would allow him to unburden himself of hatred, regret, guilt, etc. It would also fulfill what I think of as one of Guts’ most deeply held personal values and beliefs – his desire to save someone through an act of love rather than through his sword (and yes I read Guts as fundamentally a caretaker at heart, more on this below).

In terms of parallels:

The theme Berserk often returns to about the merits of being with someone v. the burden of “protecting” someone would finally be resolved with Guts (likely) failing to protect his loved one, but also in doing so finally being with him in their (likely) dying together and finally fully coming to an understanding of each other.

Guts realizing that his life can mean something outside his sword (what he’s been looking for his whole life) – basically becoming a shield instead of a sword at the end of the story.

Griffith’s sacrifice at the end of the GA would finally be mirrored by a reciprocal act by Guts in the form of a second sacrifice, but this case one that is born out of love instead of hate. This idea in particular I need as a reader so badly, particularly because the acts they each took on behalf of the other across their relationship are so uneven – Guts has just been so passive overall and as a reader it would be incredibly satisfying to have him take up his role as the protagonist and take the final, decisive action to resolve their relationship. This is also why I can’t get on board with any resolution where Griffith has to take another action “for” Guts – imo the resolution of this arc should rest on Guts’ shoulders.

Basically, it would give both of their lives meaning in one swift move.

And what’s especially neat about this potential conclusion to the story is that I think the story gives us some really provocative small moments that foreshadow it, where we're shown that love can triumph over hatred.

At least some sort of reconciliation/act of love comes up again and again in the story, though in seemingly unrelated situations that imo just have too much in common with Guts/Griffith to dismiss outright. There’s of course the “karma is a spiral” moment and the Jill & Rosine parallels that I’ve mentioned, which suggest that it’s possible to still right a deep-seated wrong, to “save” (at least emotionally, if not physically) someone who has fallen into darkness through an act of love.

But there’s also the idea of saving one’s “other half” “from being torn to pieces in the storm” via Serpico and Farnese:

( Chapter 211, “Evil Horde Part 1”)

God, this passage. First off, I think Guts and Griffith's relationship is being explicitly paralleled through the word choices (“other half”/”half of me”), but also because this sentiment is basically echoing all of Guts’s paralysis and helplessness at the moment of the Eclipse.

Like Serpico, he too was unable to set his loved one free from a prison of darkness and hatred, something perfectly visualized in Guts trying in vain to pry his way in to Femto’s eggshell – as well as all the regret, hatred, and feelings of impotence (i.e., the darkness) that came along with that failure.

The “I didn’t think to try” aspect to this is also relevant and interesting given the changed context of pre- and post-Eclipse G&G. Guts during the GA didn’t see what Griffith was going through as leader of the Band of the Hawks as being a prison, a burden, or damaging to his sense of self; he simply thought he was “flying alone” above all of them but couldn’t conceive of how personally devastating that was for Griffith. Now though, after Guts has taken up the mantle as the RPG group leader, he’s probably in a better position to understand this and to also understand that something better is preferable for both of them, even if it seems like it’s forever out of reach.

And yet Serpico’s statement seems to be a really significant idea in light of all this – it’s suggesting that maybe this dilemma isn’t over – that maybe Guts can still see to it that his “other half isn’t torn to pieces” in some new storm that’s brewing.

I also submit Case B: Luca and her tribute to “the chick [child] that died within the egg”… Now, while she’s specifically addressing Eggman throughout this scene, this moment also explicitly parallels Griffith as a similar child who died within an “egg.” Compare:

(Chapter 83, “God of the Abyss” and Chapter 176, “Determination and Departure”)

This is a “sinner’s” tribute to a child who died too young, who is now buried and alone, who has no one to love or mourn him. Again, I think the parallels to both Griffith and Guts are there, telling us that even those people who have done terrible wrongs, who have lived shameful lives, can still be loved (i.e., mourned), and that trauma does not have to define you or your legacy.

And this connection doesn’t just appear through the language choices (sinner, chick) but also through mirrored imagery between the above scene and these ones:

(Chapter 59, “Devil Dogs Chapter 1” and Chapter 331, “Spring Flowers of Distant Days Part 3” although admittedly the latter one comes much later, so it only works as a retroactive parallel)

The essential thing that Luca’s tribute is telling us as readers, is that in mourning (a form of love) someone evil and despicable, love offers the counterpoint, specifically the remedy, to hatred.

Part 3, On Narrative Conclusions: Why a Second Sacrifice?

So, my dumb little brain is telling you that the conclusion of the story should have been a scene where Guts makes a sacrifice for Griffith. But why?

Well, most importantly I think it offers a crucial structural parallel to the other sacrifices we've seen throughout the story. That's because there are some important distinctions to make between this sacrifice and earlier ones. This sacrifice would not be with a behelit. It would not be the consequence of magic or the gods meddling, the strings of fate, or an action born of hatred. It would not be a sacrifice that destroys people but instead one that actualizes them.

I think this is the best possible ending to the story, in large part because Guts demonstrating his love for Griffith is what was been set up to unburden both of them from their current armours (see: Femto) of imprisonment and their respective “shackles” of hatred.

(Chapter 202, “Magic Stone”)

Now, on a character level I think it would be overly simplistic to say that the story is telling us that Guts will forgive Griffith. I think both characters too far gone for simple forgiveness between the two of them, I don’t think that was ever a realistic outcome to their story.

What they need instead is shared understanding and a shared declaration of love to help them realize who they are as people (loved and worth loving). That's why I think the Jill/Rosine parallel works so well, because it only needs to be an irrational action on Guts’s part (like throwing himself in front of Griffith to protect him) as a definitive expression about what Guts wants to do, outside of his usual waffling as well as any obligations or duties he might feel. A sacrifice by Guts would be a simple action, one taken because of him following his heart.

Guts making a genuine sacrifice for his “other half,” to save him, to finally know himself and know another person, creating a deeply honest a connection through an expression of love… tell me that’s not a perfect conclusion to a story about trauma and its devastating impacts on people and their relationships with each other.

Because I think it’s clear that the idea of not being able to truly hate Griffith is just as relevant to Guts as it is to Rickert:

(Chapter 336, “Pandemonium”)

Guts says this to Rickert while looking sad, not angry. Maybe, just maybe, Guts is aware of his own feelings on the matter too. Perhaps he's as much speaking aloud as to himself here.

The wrench in Guts’ desire for that all-consuming hatred is, of course, that residual love he feels, the structural equivalent to Griffith’s own bthumping heart. In that light, that love could very well make Guts do something spontaneous and irrational, essentially bursting through his own darkness to definitively break the hold of the hatred that’s shackling him. Especially if he somehow comes to understand the pain and love that Griffith is still feeling too.

Now to be clear, I don’t think forgiveness necessarily needs to come into the equation here, and I think it’s psychologically reductive to say that Guts can overcome his trauma this way. I think those wounds run too deep, but conversely I think that his love does too. Basically I think the resolution to their arc absolutely could and should have remained messy as fuck. An act of love born from a crippling wound is as honest as it gets for these characters.

Now, the narrative explicitly tells us after it declares that Guts is shackling himself to hatred through his sword, that that the way Guts will go about this unburdening/unshackling of his hatred is through Casca, by taking up the sword for her sake as a “protection against hellfire” AKA as a protection against his own hatred:

(Chapter 203, “Elementals”)

But we see repeatedly that this is simply a “path [he’s] chosen,” not necessarily the only path or, indeed, necessarily the correct one. In fact, we see that this path is not actually succeeding at protecting him or Casca from anything. And that’s because when we look at Guts’s actions, he isn’t actually working to protect himself from his own hatred, because he can’t help but be reminded of his own trauma as a result of Casca’s trauma:

(Chapter 287, “Bubbles of Futility”)

“At the end, it’s always.” Trauma lies at the end of this road named Casca. And I think that’s because Casca is no longer really an independent person to him; she is a symbol, a burden, and a force that keeps The Struggle alive; she’s a means, not an end in itself. At the end, instead, it’s always that wound, and purposefully so. (And this interpretation is of course aided by her being a veritable doll throughout the majority of the rest of the story).

The Struggle and Casca herself aren’t presented as what Guts objectively wants as an end consequence of his actions – they are presented as the means towards something else.

The story drills into us the idea that this goal of restoring Casca is based on neither a positive and altruistic motive on Guts’ part, nor is it something that’s destined for jolly good things. See: the ominous foreshadowing with “The power to protect someone and the power to be with someone are different,” “fixing” Casca despite her own wishes, and Casca also seeing Guts as a monster from the Eclipse in her own right. In this light, I think it’s very appropriate that Casca views Guts in exactly the same way:

(Chapter 359, “A Wall”)

The “path [he’s] chosen” – The Struggle, the burden, the guilt, or everything that Casca is to him – isn’t good for Guts. It’s a path shackled, and it’s one that makes his sword heavy with guilt, anger, and hatred.

(Chapter 188, “Winter Journey Part 2”)

But we’re told that this isn’t a path that’s been set in stone (re: “those children are not bound to choose the same paths you and I did”). Guts has the power to choose differently than continuing to fight as a sword.

To sum up, I read Guts as explicitly thinking of Casca as a duty/chain/burden rather than as something personally fulfilling or as a genuine escape from his hatred. At the end, it’s always. And that’s why the conclusion to his story, at least imo, should lie somewhere else.

(And sidenote, this dynamic between duty and desire (giri and ninjō) is a huge part of the Japanese cultural (literary, dramatic, and cinematic) tradition, and I think it’s pretty clearly at play here, where Casca represents duty, Griffith represents desire).

To me, this is the whole point of Guts still being “bound” to Griffith, because in his heart of hearts, he still wants to be, because can’t ever truly hate Griffith, because he’ll always love him/be in love with him. And accordingly, any act Guts takes for Griffith at the end of the story will not happen because he feels obligated or burdened, like he does with Casca, but because on some level he genuinely wants to embrace love and be free of the burden of his Struggle and hatred.

~~

Small tangent on Guts: the question of what Guts actually wants is obviously crucial to the story, he’s the protagonist after all. But what does he want? To save Casca? Well, he did his part there. What now? To live with Casca? Continue The Struggle? To kill Griffith? Honestly, this question is actually really fucking ambiguous, which is kind of shocking for a protagonist (supposedly) three-quarters of the way through his story. (My headcanon reason for this ambiguity is that Miura wanted to maintain plausible deniability that this story is gay AF, which is also the reason behind Griffith’s motivations being so ambiguous as well).

To make this question a bit more abstract, if Guts was free to do whatever he wanted – as in, if he didn’t feel obligated to do what he’s supposed to – what would he do? If we can’t answer that question, I think we can’t truly understand Guts as a character.

My own answer to this question lies in reading those moments we see him as a caretaker as the most genuine senses of who Guts is as a person.

(Chapter 1, “The Golden Age”)

Those desperate moments of grabbing his mother’s hand as well as him trying to return the flower spirit to its home are the moments I think he is acting in line with the person he genuinely wants to be outside of any expectations of what he thinks he’s good at or what he’s “supposed” to be, or in terms of obligations in trying to impress someone or doing what he thinks is expected of him… He just does these things instinctively, because I think fundamentally he’s a loving person who essentially just wants to be loved back.

These moments are especially important to highlight I think, because in these moments Guts has no external motivating factors. He is a child who loves his mother, who wants to reassure her and be reassured in turn; he is a young man who wants to repay an act of kindness out of genuine good heartedness.

I will submit also the following, as a pretty clear crystallization of what Guts is about:

(Chapter 33, “One Snowy Night”)

If he ended up sacrificing his life for Griffith at the story’s conclusion, it would be exactly in line with this same impulse: to love and be loved. This is what has always, at least imo, defined Guts beneath all the shame, and rage, and guilt, and shackles of duty, and his feelings of inadequacy.

In becoming Griffith’s shield, he wouldn’t be protecting him through his sword, he would be saving him through an act of love.

~~

And OK, what I see as the smoking gun for this weird little theory comes from this very innocuous page from a random, seemingly unrelated story thread and chapter.

(Chapter 206, “Troll Raid”)

This page is framed in such an aesthetically significant way – a full page spread given to such a small line, like why unless it’s about more than some random townspeople.

The key that saves us lies in those we are trying to forget.

Guts has been trying to forget Griffith, to move on, for basically half of the story – this line very easily could be read as directly commenting on Guts’ journey and his inability to unburden himself.

BUT this line goes further – it’s not only suggesting that Guts trying to forget his past is not a good thing, it’s also suggesting that Guts needs to be saved somehow, and that it can happen through the one he’s “trying to forget.”

What does Guts need to be saved from? Well, from the burden of The Struggle, from berserking, from his sword, his regret, his hatred. And how can he do this through Griffith? By giving his love/life to him, as a shield instead of as a sword… It’s just too perfect!@!

So yeah, while this is all entirely wishful thinking, I also don’t think Guts sacrificing his life for Griffith is totally unreasonable or “out there” spec – I do legitimately see this as a once-possible and honestly pretty perfect ending to the story. So that’s what I’m fucking going with, goddammit.

Part 4, Conclusions

Imo Guts making a sacrifice for Griffith would be the most important theme Berserk could ultimately endorse – because, in my reading at least, Griffith has entirely defined his choices around the belief that he does not deserve absolution (reminder: I think he ultimately made the sacrifice because the Godhand convinced him there was no coming back from what he already was, and so as a result he doubles down on that belief by agreeing to the sacrifice). For someone who believes that he isn’t worthy of love to be loved nonetheless, outside of those cycles of worth, exchange, and self loathing that he is so bound within, that would be a pretty damn powerful message. And for a character who is defined by his trauma to decide that love is ultimately more important? That's what I want from this story.

And as I noted above, on a character level, I can absolutely buy that Guts would make a sacrifice for Griffith, because I read this as being in line with Guts’s most fundamental desires as a person, and because I think Guts feels personally responsible for what happened to Griffith and still desperately wants to right that wrong, he just doesn’t know how to do so.

However, on a broader narrative level, I think this is more difficult to make a case for because to a lot of readers Griffith seems beyond redemption.

And honestly I think if Miura had wanted to do a classic redemption arc, where Griffith comes to realize that he regrets his original decision to make the sacrifice (as in a reading where he chose the dream and has now come to be dissatisfied with his current situation), this arc would have started long ago and it would have been made abundantly clear to readers.

If Miura had been gearing up for Griffith to come to realize that he did the wrong thing and eventually at the end of the story planned to have him take another action on Guts’s behalf to redeem himself, I think for a turn like this to work effectively, his emotional state wouldn’t still be so ambiguous to us – Miura would have been showing us his incremental but explicit realizations that this is not in fact what he wants in order to get us to root for his redemption. If Miura was in fact headed in that direction, it just seems like it was too little too late at this point.

OTOH, though, if Griffith already knows what he did was wrong, as with my reading, then the thing he needs to come to understand in order to be redeemed isn’t that he made the wrong choice, it’s that he doesn’t have to hate himself. And for that, he needs to be told that he is loveable, and indeed, is and was loved even at his most despicable. It’s Guts’s love he needs, narratively and emotionally, and such a realization could come right at the very end of the story, no build up on Griff’s end necessary.

To put this in slightly different terms, Griffith’s redemption involves him coming to realize that the sacrifice was the wrong choice, but not because he realizes he never actually wanted the dream after all, but because he comes to realize that he never had to punish and hate himself for all his prior actions, because he was loved all along – that his sacrifice/act of suicide was wrong because it was never “necessary” in the first place.

Basically, whether he’s chosen the dream or the sacrifice yields different stakes for Griffith’s redemption – they hinge on fundamentally different things, and I don’t buy that the first one was possible given post-GA characterizations, but the second seems not only possible but necessary to bring this interpretation of the story to a satisfying resolution.

And I think there are different scales of redemption that are possible to admit here. But I do think both Guts and Griffith need some sort of redemption for the story overall to be satisfying – they’ve both done atrocious things, but the story has also expressly shown us that neither of them are a lost cause.

Both are still fundamentally broken, vulnerable, and fragile people; especially because both still need each other, after all, they’re both still in love with each other. This isn’t the characterization of people who are fundamentally beyond some kind of redemptive final act(s). It also helps that Griffith is basically treated as a deuteragonist post-Conviction Arc.

And ultimately I think Miura has shown us that this is a state that the apostles/“monsters” of the story all have in common. I’m thinking here of this moment we see at the very beginning of the story:

(Chapter 4, “Guardians of Desire”)

As Puck says here, apostles are very much still fragile humans. The most fragile, in fact. Their deformed bodies are proof of their having broken themselves. The clearest demonstration of this is of course Griffith, who as an apostle became what he always hated. These are “fallen” people, unloved, hiding from themselves and from the world. If that’s not someone who is in need of mercy and redemption, I don’t know who is.

As to whether both Guts and Griffith still need to “pay,” narratively and morally, for their actions, this is not something I have a strong personal opinion about – I think both of them have already suffered hugely. That being said, I do think a second sacrifice narratively should lead to both of their deaths at the end of the story. That’s for two reasons, one because I think they both would both probably view death as a release more than anything, and two because it would function as the narrative consequence for their actions, especially if they were to get taken out by Apostle!Casca, who has also suffered hugely at the hands of both of these men.

Death would be what finally frees both Guts and Griffith from their pretty fucking miserable/doomed lives and would finally provide them some kind of peace as well as self-actualization – in that sense Casca’s actions could be read in the mode of both mercy and vengeance. So that’s why I lean in that direction, but then again I’ve always been more interested in mercy/forgiveness/redemption as story tropes than revenge/punishment, though I think the story was set up to be able to balance both in a really interesting way.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my senseless ramblings. If I had my druthers this is how the story would have ended, and I guess it gets to live in my headcanon forever, and maybe yours too if you like my interpretation of the story.

Sorry for any of you who were waiting for another post from me – the news of Miura’s death really kept me from thinking about Berserk for a while, for obvious reasons. But the story is what we make of it, especially now, so I hope this maybe gave you a bit of solace too.

As always, feedback, discussion, etc. is welcome.

#since it's all fanon now i figured why not throw my hat in the ring #yes im hating the continuation series #also I've been sitting on this post for literal years #how did that happen seriously wtf #this post has been about gay stuff #as per usual #berserk #berserkmeta #berserk meta #griffith #griffith meta #and even some #guts meta #!!! #im really branching out