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salaciousdoll · 6 months

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✩˚｡⋆ ⋆ ⋆ Shawty Want The Whole Team ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ ˚｡✩

･˳ . ⋆ Team Starring Reiner Braun, Eren Yeager, Armin Arlert, Jean Kirstein, Porco Galliard, Colt Grice, Connie Springer, And Floch Forster x Fem!reader ･˳ . ⋆

Synopsis: you and Reiner make your desires merge into one on this special night

୨୧ ⁺⁎˚ ⋆━━ Be advised to the warnings of smut, Gangbang/group sex, 8some, bodily fluids( squirting, cum, spit, etc.), dark content!!!, dubcon!!!, Somnophilia( just a little bit, it’s consensual), marking body with marker , knife play but minor, cam recording, picture taking, reader is an gothic Bimbo who loves leopard( I heard that’s one characteristics goth bimbos have, may be incorrect though), pet names( nymph, pretty angel, strawberry whore, strawberry, bunny, doll, Bambi, etc.), dirty talking, deep throating, face fuck, getting used and you love it, all them wear ski mask which mask kink, voice kink, lipstick/lipliner meshed with lipgloss kink, triple penetration, double penetration( one or both holes), anal play( butt plugs, anal, etc.), creampies, breeding kink implied, messy face fuck( I mean it), nipple play, eren is obsessed with your boobs( small or big, doesn’t matter), let me know if I missed something!!! Wc: 7k

Minors do not interact, 18+

ෆ ‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿ ෆ ̟ ̇ ┈•ﾟNote from Salaciousdoll: Happy No Nut November everyone. I hope you all been lasting so far because I’m hoping to break it with this fic, I hope you all have a great time reading this long waited fic and I want to apologize to the people who were really looking forward to the aot Veterans fic like this one, but I plan on doing something else for them. Anyways I’m talking too much, so thank you all for tuning in and reading my kinktober/nnn fics, much love and this is the end <33

ﾟ•┈୨ Salaciousber Masterlist ୧┈•ﾟ｡

Staying to yourself has always been your memo. It keeps people away from you, or so you thought. You always walked throughout the hallways of your apartment with your head held high, black/brown lip liner or black lipstick on your lips with a salacious shadow attached to you. Salacious to Armin that is. Armin thought you were fucking perfect as he stared at you walking past him to get to your apartment door opposite side of his.

He stood right there with his door open for a minute as he eyed you up and down. You had your headphones on your head, listening to your music. Despite your appearance, you listened to all kinds of music. Normally people expected you to listen to only rock, metal, or alternative music. Armin smiled to himself when he heard your keys drop. He hurried to pick them up and hand them to you.

You smiled and took off your headphones, greeting him, “ Hi Armin, didn’t know you were right there, I thought you were with the others at Eren’s house for game night.”

He watched your plump lips move and nothing you said registered in his mind. He tried so hard not to lower his eyes to your pushed up boobs in your choice of clothing with black as the main color of the outfit. You had a splash of a leopard print pattern with your outfit as well. His eyes stayed on the little knife necklace in between your boobs— he noticed the knife had a vial of red liquid in the middle of it and was fascinated by it, more like making himself fascinated just so he could stare a little longer. He gave up on trying and decided to trail his eyes further down to your pudgy stomach showing through your outfit.

You were still talking and not even noticing his big blue eyes tracing your body curves/ lumps in your leopard and black outfit with a bullet belt over your lower tummy and across your hips—slanted. Your legs were covered in fishnets with stars covered over them and you had on black platform boots. You looked gorgeous in his eyes, if only Reiner hadn't gotten to you first.

You cleared your throat once you noticed him looking and giggled in your hand, “ Oh Armin, you’re gonna get in trouble with Eren for missing his game night ~” the way you stretched the word night should be considered a sinful purr. Your voice went straight to his dick and at the point in time he needed you especially as he watched you walk inside your apartment— outfit hugging your voluptuous frame. Your hips or love handles were on his mind as he imagined squeezing them into his slender fingers . He didn’t like to think of women like this, but the temptation was taking over him. He shook his head and walked ahead with nothing but you on his mind. His thoughts lasted a long time even while he was at the game night with his boys.

A few hours later, Reiner was sitting on the couch sipping his beer between his pretty ring-filled hands. He was watching Jean, Floch, and Eren argue with one another over who lost in MK1. Reiner soon felt a vibration in his pants pocket due to his phone. He took it out and looked at it— instantly turning it over on his lap and looking around to see if anyone noticed his actions and someone did: Colt.

“ What’s wrong Reiner?”, Colt said on the stool at the bar where the snacks and drinks were. Reiner looked at him and debated inside of his head if he wanted to tell him what’s actually up or make an excuse.

Reiner sighs and rubs his big, veiny hand down his face, “ Just my girl, she’s been fussing at me more than usual”.

Colt took that excuse but Porco didn’t, “ He’s lying to you, see how his ears are twitching, he’s lying. Can’t believe I know this excuse of a human better than you, Colt.” Porco had a love and hate relationship with Reiner. He thinks Reiner is tolerable sometimes and that’s enough for him to still be friends with the man.

“ Can we just drop it.”, Reiner says, unknowingly picking up his phone again to unlock and see the picture. He kept his eyes trained on the way your body sat on the bed in a doll-like position with your knees placed on the bed, legs folded behind you, and your feet connected to the fat of your ass. The lingerie you had on was totally different from what you always wear. You just had on satin black bikini underwear with a leopard-print bow on the front, your pussy outline was visible and he was thirsty for it. Gosh, he loved how fat your pussy was.

You then had on a leopard print see-through robe with black fur on the outline and as he lifted his eyes on the phone, he placed a hand over his growing bulge. Your boobs were out and your nipples were pierced as usual but this time the nipple ring was different, it was his favorite color.

Reiner was too busy admiring the picture that he didn’t hear or feel any of the men behind him. They were looking at the photo as well, instantly getting hard, each for different reasons.

Eren because of your pierced nipples and how beautiful your boobs look. Jean for how full and lucious your lips looked. The other wanted to know what they were looking at, so Armin spoke up, “ What are you guys staring at?”

Reiner suddenly snapped his head up and shut off his phone to look behind him, gasping at Eren and Jean standing behind him with Connie trying to see from behind the two.

Eren was the first to speak between the three, “ So when are you gonna share? I’ve been wanting a piece of her since lik—”

“ She’s not meat, Eren. Have some decency for once.”, Jean says, rolling his eyes with a shake of his head following.

“ Let me see dammit.”, Connie declares with a flow of desperation seeping through his voice. He wanted to see you so badly since he had a crush on you way before Reiner even got with you. Connie looked at Eren and Jean, “ one word… Selfish”.

Jean turned back to him and they started arguing with Eren joining in to say that he knows you’re not meat and how he didn’t mean it that way.

Reiner didn’t pay their bickering no mind as he thought about the conversation you had last night courtesy of Eren asking that question.

Reiner was rubbing the middle of your back as you two laid naked against each other, “ Darkest desire I have, hmm… seeing you get pounded by my friends. Every last one of us uses you, of course still pleasuring you”.

You took in a sharp inhale before looking up at him since your head was on his meaty chest, “ same desire I have but with a few kinks involved, you’re down to hear them?” Reiner looked down at you and smirked with a nod of his head in sequence.

Reiner stood up and looked around at his boys, “ Anyone know where to get a ski mask from?” The men either tilted their heads in confusion or had a glow in their eyes signifying curiosity dancing her way in the pools of color each of their eyes held.

This only led to you sleeping as you get split open in your dream. Your dream was so beautiful and hot that you wanted to sleep longer, courtesy of Reiner bullying his cock into your wet pussy in missionary style as you whisper sweet words to each other inside of your dream. You two were making love in your dream and you never wanted it to end.

Yet it ended as soon as you felt a sharp thrust inside of your already hot cunt making you scream into the cloth covering your mouth. Your eyes snapped open and you saw gold irises swimming with the intensity of salacious intent as he bullied his cock past your tight slit, “ Mmmf, ahhhn.” Your moans were muffled and Reiner loved it, but he loved the feeling of your pussy wrapped around his thick cock even more.

He bit his lips as the ski mask was starting to soak into his skin because of the sweat clouding up as he fucked you and been fucking you for 15 minutes already, more like edging himself for 15 minutes, “ oh fuck! Such a good little pussy you have. Always need you whenever I come home.”

Your eyes widened once you recognized that voice, it was your man. Reiner. Big and buff with a ski masked on his face. This was your biggest desire, too bad you couldn’t get your other desire, or so you thought.

You felt the bed dip beside you and looked around to find two other masked men, one with deep green-blue eyes and another one with big blue eyes. You started to squirm around when Reiner thrusts became more powerful, “ Mmmph. I cwnttt. Pleishhh.” Every word you tried to say came out muffled and they all loved the feeling they got. The feeling of PDI: Power, Dominance, and Imbalance.

The man with the green-blue eyes grabbed your hand and placed your long acrylic nails on his dick wrapping his hand around to guide your hand up and down his cock. Eren couldn’t believe he was finally getting a taste or feeling of you, “ Her fuckhole is taking you so well, can’t say I’m impressed though since this is what all whores do right?” Eren lips formed into a pretty smile as you looked at him with squinted eyes. “ Take cocks like this.” Eren snapped his fingers to appoint the end of his statement.

You recognized that voice and you got wetter and tightened around Reiner to which you got a slap on your pussy, “ She’s indeed a slut… tightin’ around me at the sound of - ghahh Fuck!- your v-voice”. Your clit was shaking because of that action and you were pretty sure if his big hand slapped your pussy again you were gonna squirt on this man.

Armin trailed his hands down your arm to your hand to lace his fingers with them and lifted your hand to his cock, so now there were two hands on his pulsing cock with a girth that seemed even wider than Reiner’s. He had length, but his girth was a monster.

Your panties wasn’t even torn off so that’s how you knew Reiner stood on business because he usually slides your panties off, hell he usually wakes you up as well. Hated that feeling but you loved this one. Waking up to his cock already inside of you was a dream and reality now.

Armin threw his head back as he let out a low moan, “ Fuck pretty girl, y-your hands feels so good around my cock.” You were about to cum because Armin’s words cut through you like you were a tomato. Calling you a pretty girl was your weakness.

Your pussy quivered and another guy came beside Armin with light brown eyes with gold specks in them, at least that’s what it seemed when you peered at him as you kept stroking Armin and Eren dicks with different paces for each. Eren’s cock stroked in a fast pace; straight and up and down as in comparison to Armin’s cock being stroked in a slow-twist combo.

The guy put his thumb on your clit as Reiner kissed your cervix with his cock deep inside of you. The guy rubbed in slow circles causing you to try to squeeze your legs around Reiner’s hips but two other pairs of hands snatched each leg back and out of Reiner’s reach. Your moans were louder now as you try to move up and off Reiner’s dick so your pussy can catch a break. Your pussy was so fucking wet and you heard the pussy squelching noises along with his balls slapping against your other hole. The hole you now noticed has something attached to it. It was a butt plug, specifically a bunny tail butt plug inside of you, warming you up to take their cocks in your ass. You fucking loved this feeling so damn much. The feeling of being filled in both holes.

“ Cum f’me, Baby. Let Reiner feel your first orgasm for this night. Let us hear the sweet muffled moans spilling from you like a good little slut. Tonight you’re our performer so keep us entertained baby.”, The guy with specks of gold in his light brown eyes says as he leaned over to look you directly in the eye while still thumbing your clit.

“ Fuck that! Take the blindfold off her mouth so we can really hear her. Need to hear our pretty girl moan like a brain fucked bitch in heat”., Another man holding your thighs says in a matter of fact tone. You noticed that voice as well, Porco Galliard. A man you didn’t get along with but you secretly wanted to destroy or he destroyed you. Either way, you get something out of him.

A fifth man came to plant his knees on both sides of your head, slowly taking the blind fold off. He watched your eyes closed in bliss and your mouth open in a small o. Beautiful Melodies flew out of your mouth as he stared at you with his brown eyes and face covered with a ski mask just like the rest, “ She’s a true beauty, how the fuck did Reiner score with her?”

Porco's voice was heard next as you moaned at Reiner now drilling into your pussy, “ We all ask the same question, ginger. It’s confusing but from the way he’s fucking her, you could see why.”

Colt laughed as he peered over Reiner’s shoulder to watch you just like Porco was doing, “ I never thought there will be a day you compliment Reiner, Poc.”

Reiner couldn’t listen to them when his eyes were zoomed in on the way your whimpers were growing more rapidly and the way your body shook as he was still plunging into your sobbing pussy. “ Shit, I could feel myself cumming but I need you to cum before I do baby, so cum for me. Cum for us.”

“ Ahhn, I think I’m gonn- I think I’m gonna cum. Fuck!”, Your moans were beautiful to all of their ears and as some of them watch you lift your upper body up while Reiner fucked you through your orgasm, they realize that you were perfect for Reiner, one of his types.

Connie was holding off on jerking his cock because of how in awe he was at your body and how your hands, after dropping them from stroking Eren and Armin off, were trying to push reiner away because of the overstimulation you were getting.

Reiner wanted to stop fucking you so badly so he could hold off his orgasm but he couldn’t, not when your pussy is milking his cock as she sucked him in a vice grip. You were hungry for his dick. Reiner looked down at where the two of you were connected and saw your pussy was squirting a bit on his cock whilst also creaming on his dick, still having his ski mask on with sweat overlapping on his hair and face.

“ Reiner pl-please, s’ too much for me. Ahhnnn.”, Your moans were almost pornograhic and that pushed Reiner over the edge as he snapped his hips one more time with his balls landing on the fur ball attached to your butt plug.

His dick pumped inside of you as you felt your cervix get filled with his cum. “ Shit baby! So fucking good. S’ fucking good. She’s, ughhh!” They couldn’t even make fun of him as he tried to cradle all of your body inside of his big arms with his body sweat rolling onto your body because of him holding you— pumping you full. It’s like the others were watching a porn video from the way you two were fucking each other.

Reiner was seeing stars even as he laid his head on your chest. Your hand made its way into his hair calming him down from his orgasm. You knew he was probably at his limit since average men could only cum once, but you needed more.

So, you lifted your hips up with his cock still inside of you— fucking him back to full on hard since he was beginning to get semi soft inside of your pussy. “ Need more, Rei. Need you.” You looked around at the men staring in shock and mewled out, “ need all of you.”

Reiner lifted his head up and kissed you on your lips, “ Whatever my strawberry wants, she gets. Use her how she wants guys.” He slowly pulled out of you with a full hard on now and moved out of the way for the other men to surround you now.

“ what a pretty pair of tits you have, can’t wait to suck on em’, doll.”, Eren says as he twisted your right nipple making you whimper. Most would know that Eren is a tits man. He loved boobs of all sizes and colors—yours were no different from those he loved. In fact, he would have to say they’re more beautiful to stare at instead of fucking or sucking, so he brought his phone out of his pocket and you panicked, well your eyes showed slight panic. Eren looked at Reiner, “ you wouldn’t mind if I captured her essence for later right?”

Reiner looked at you before looking back at Eren, “ Ask her, it’s her body.” It was the bare minimum but Reiner always gave you butterflies when he said anything like that. Eren clicked, “ You are so right, how could I forget that you can speak for yourself right. So I ask you, may I capture these pretty tits for later, doll?”

You gulped and slowly nodded your head. Eren smiled and whispered a sweet to himself before taking a photo of your tits but as he was doing that your eyes connected with bright hazel eyes that belonged to Connie Springer. Connie leaned down to smash his lips onto yours, tasting your spit so lovingly. His tongue inserted inside of your mouth and you moaned from that feeling alone. You reached to pump his red flushed cock causing him to hiss into your kiss, “ fuck, pretty Angel.”

You heard other belt buckles and pants unzip and knew you were about to be fucked into oblivion. Some of them kept their cargo pants on and some didn’t. Eren, Porco, and Jean kept their cargo pants or jeans on and the rest took their style of pants off, leaving them in nothing but their tattoos or piercings.

You soon felt Connie’s lips detach from yours and another pair was placed on your lips, these ones were more rougher and somehow you loved how rough they kissed you. Floch needed to see how your lips tasted and felt but it didn’t last long because Jean snatched him back to lift you up and your legs and arms wrapped around his waist and neck so tightly in fear of him dropping up.

No matter how much you weighed Jean was gonna fuck you in the air or on the wall, he didn’t care he needed to bounce you on his dick, “ You’re such a bunny. A pretty bunny. A fuck bunny so I need you to bounce on me like one, okay.” You would’ve thought it was corny if you weren’t so horny. Jean’s eyes were on you as he pushed his cock inside of your warm pussy.

You couldn’t take how long his cock was so you squeezed your eyes shut. It’s like you could feel every vein on his cock sliding inside your pussy and it felt too good, so good that tears were beginning to develop in your eyes. Jean's eyes widened and he instantly stopped himself from going in further, “ What’s wrong? Did I hurt you? Do you wanna st-”

“ No.” you interrupt as he bombard you with questions of concern. “ It’s just so good, please fuck me, Jeanyy. I promise I can take it. Please.” You felt another pair of hands from behind you as they helped you take all of Jean’s cock into your wet cunt by placing hands on your shoulders to guide you down.

“ Come on, strawberry, is that all you can take, I feel like your hole is wet enough to take Jean boy. I would’ve thought a slut like you would do better than this, I’m disappointed in you, princess?”, Porco says as he wiggles the bunny tail around making you moan with your head thrown back against his body.

“ Fuck off, Porco. You’re gonna help or what?, if not get the hell out of our space.”, Jean says as he grabs your ass in between his fingers, some of the fat spilling over his fingers. Jean hated when people called him his mother’s nickname, it’s annoying when she says it even as he’s a grown adult so it was double annoying when his friends say it, especially in front of his crush he’s about to pound in a moment.

Porco knew Jean was irritated, so he smirked at him and put his head in between your shoulders to stare at Jean, “ Let me show you how to properly fuck a slut like her. You too Reiner.” Reiner scoffed and rolled his eyes at his friend.

Porco slowly took out the butt plug as he watched how your body wiggled against Jean’s dick causing him to still himself inside of your pussy in fear of cumming before you. Once the plug was out of you, Porco stroked his cock a solid two times before lining his tip against the opening of your ass. Your ass puckered in desperation of emptiness and you needed something to fill it up after being plugged up for you don’t know how long.

Porco pushed himself inside of your hole causing you to cry with more tears pouring down your eyes, your mascara falling down your eyes. You knew you should’ve taken off the remaining of your makeup but you fell asleep right after masturbating to Reiner because of his reaction to the picture you sent.

Once Porco got himself past the tight ring of muscle, he slowly felt you relax as he gave you time to adjust to him and Jean being inside of you at the same time.

You whined as your hands were placed on Jean’s chest, “ Wan’ more. Please treat me like a slut, fuck me like a whore.” Jean smashed his lips onto yours as both him and Porco began to move in sync. Both hissing at the feeling of your pussy and ass welcoming them in like it’s a home for them.

“ Fuck princess, you’re sucking my dick into this precious little hole of yours, wish we can- fuck!- take as long as we want but we can’t when you have other wolves to feed as well.”, Porco says as he slides more of himself inside of you as he was still fucking into you, getting you to take all of his thick dick inside of your ass.

When Jean moved in, Porco moved out and you were in heaven because the feeling of being stuffed in both ends was a beautiful feeling to you, so beautiful that you couldn’t help but to babble, “ mmph, mmm, keep fucking me like this.” They both sped up with Louis pants and groans following. The sound of balls slapping against your skin and their each other balls were heard as they quickened their pace.

“ Shit bunny, you’re bouncing on my cock so well, fuck! Such a good little bunny for me.”, Jean moans into your neck prior to sucking on it as he rolls his hips into your pelvis. The loud smacks from their bodies were addictive to the rest of the men who stroked themselves to the scene in front of them.

Crazily enough, Porco liked the feeling of being inside of your ass, especially when his cock rubbed against Jean’s adding more pleasure to his fuck. Jean felt the same, only a wall stopping them from being in the same hole.

“ M’gonna, Uhhnnn, Je-annnn. Por-coooo.” The moans that came out of your mouth set them ablaze and so they fucked your even harder chasing their own orgasms not knowing that you already came onto their dicks with no hesitation, “ Yesssss, fuck me. Fuck me. You're fuc-ckingg me sooo goodd.” Your legs were tightly gripping onto jeans waist causing him to stiffen himself and cum deep into your pussy with a loud moan of your name. Reiner watched the whole thing with envy and lust. Specifically envy when Jean came inside of you and Porco followed after with a loud groan of your name.

When your body went limp inside of their arms, they both pant before sliding out of you with their cum dripping out of you and onto the floor. The others watched and whispered different things.

Porco slapped your ass and kissed your ear, “ Thank you for the ride, slut. Gotta use that mouth next time since that’s what you’re best at running.”

Your legs were still shaking and you couldn’t even register his words, but you felt the slap on your ass and you moaned. Jean had to take the ski mask off because he was sweating nonstop, he threw it behind him and took your mouth against his in hunger. In between the kisses he muttered a thank you prior to walking you to the bed with his arms around your body. Jean turned you around to place you on a body laying on the bed already, “ You took them like a champ, doll. And you looked so pretty while they took you, so will you be able to handle me, Armin, and Connie as well?”

Your pussy visibly clenched in Armin’s view as he stood behind you and when you did it, a little cum dripped down your pussy to land on Eren’s pants. Armin let out a shaken breath and placed his hands on your ass to spread you apart. You were about to look back to see who it was, but Connie took your hair and yanked back on whatever hairstyle you had making you wince, “ Ah ah Ah, nope, nuh uh, focus only on me, pretty Angel. Need all of your attention on me as I fuck your pretty face. Couldn’t wait to have you like this so I’m not gonna waste any more.” Connie slammed his cock inside of your mouth making you take all of his cock in his mouth, “ Shit! time.” He finished off his sentence at the same time your choking was heard.

Your black lip liner meshed into your lipgloss or black lipstick was starting to have marks on Connie’s dick and he loved the little black rings forming on his cock as he drove his dick back and forth in your mouth. Eren sucked on one of your boobs swinging in his face at the same time he felt Armin grab his dick to help him inside of your tight and warm pussy. Eren let out a moan with your nipple in his mouth and the vibrations went straight to your core allowing him to push himself more inside because of you opening up to him just a little bit.

Once Armin slid inside of your pussy, he let out a loud whimper shocking himself and everyone around him. Colt patted his back as he stood on the side of him wanting to feel you wrapped around his dick as well.

Feeling both of their cocks inside of the same hole was too much for you but it felt good, a weird good. “ mmmpfff, mmmm!” Your moans were vibrating on Connie’s cock which now just sat inside of your mouth, he was giving you time to adjust to both Armin and Eren inside of you at once.

Tears were escaping your eyes even more due to the pain of the stretch happening by Armin’s cock slowly moving in and out of your pussy. He finally had the chance to move more when you started to get wetter and a bit loose for him and Eren. Doesn’t mean your pussy didn’t still take the shape of his and his best friend's cocks. “ You’re doing so well, Pretty Bambi. So well for me and Eren. Now will you allow one more?”

You squirmed in anticipation at the feeling of being filled by four cocks whether they were in the same hole or not. You felt feet positioned themselves on the side of your body as you desperately heard Eren slurping sounds on your tits just as much as you felt his warm saliva covering your nipples like icing on a cake. It was like he was trying to suck some milk out of them from how hard the sucking sounds were heard.

“ Not being nice with her like you three are, so take this you pretty nymph.”, Floch says with his dick moving inside of your asshole, making you take all of his dick which was surprisingly big enough to fill your greedy hole. Once they saw your head snap back after popping Connie’s dick out of your mouth with a moan following they knew they were gonna have so much fun.

Connie looked down at you as he tried to balance himself on the moving bed that was moving back and forth. He looked at your face and his eyes brightened up at the image of you taking dicks after dicks inside of you, so bad he needed to capture this moment forever, “ Reiner, give me your camera. Need everyone to know this pretty succubus name.”

Reiner stood up with the camera that always sat on the book shelf and handed it to Connie before kissing your cheek, “ Having fun, strawberry?” You couldn’t form words at the moment because you were too fucked out. Nothing but small cries and they’re groaning and moans synced into one were heard. Some grunts were heard around the room.

Reiner chuckled as Connie angled the camera at your face with his ski mask still on, in fact all of them except Jean had theirs still on. Connie pressed record and recorded your moans as you looked down into Eren’s eyes, “ Fuck she’s taking all three of them so fucking well, a true Nymph.”

Jean chimed in, “ Slut.”

Porco next, “ Whore.”

And finally Colt was next, “ She’s incredible, insatiable.”

“ Dude can’t you be mean for once in your life, you’re fucking up the video.”, Connie says as he looks at Colt off the video. You could hear Reiner chuckling at the comment.

“ Leave Colt alone, Connie. He’s a sweetheart. A lover boy.”, Reiner says as he tweaked your nipples while he had one knee on the bed studying you as you took three cocks inside of you at the same time.

“ nnghhh, I don’t think.. hahh. I don’t think I’m gonna hold awnnn.”, You moaned as Armin’s and Eren’s cocks synced into you with rhythm, as Eren moved in, Armin swirled his hips to move out and this repeated. You had no idea Armin could fuck like this but he’s fucking you with much more rhythm than you expect.

Meanwhile Floch was on top of you and Eren drilling into your ass until he had to cum and he pulled out before that to get down, “ Fuck, she’s so fucking… ughhh I was about to cum but that’s not where I want to cum.”

Once Floch moved out the way Armin could move how he wanted. He held your hips and started to speed his thrusting up, fluently and rapidly. His thrust was matching Eren’s. “ Shit, Bambi, I can’t hold on either. Wanna cum deep inside of you. Hahhh!” Armin’s nickname and moans were getting to you and you needed to put something in your mouth before you suddenly start babbling out things you don’t mean.

Eren told Armin to stop for a second and positioned both of you down a bit off the bed and after that, he signaled Armin to go. They both started to thrust inside of your now stretched out hole and you latched your lips around Connie’s tip making him shudder and stagger a bit, he was caught off guard and anyone who watched the video back would see how he was caught off guard due to the shaking of the camera.

Eren’s balls were slapping against Armins and it added onto him pounding into your soft spot over and over “Fuck, doll. Fuck! Fuck! I swear to God I’m gonna cum inside of her Reiner, I don’t care about anything but cumming inside of this amazing pussy. How does she feels Armin? I know you’re close as well, I can feel you pumping against me.”

Armin couldn’t even think or talk, your pussy was too good to even form sentences so he let out a low moan followed by a yeah. Eren knew his friend was pussy drunk, hell he was too if he’s talking about practically putting a baby in her.

The squelching sounds became louder and soon they both felt liquid squirting on their cocks as you tried so desperately to get away from everyone because the pleasure was becoming too much but at the same time you didn’t want it to end.

“ She’s fucking squirting on us, fuck it. M’cummin.”, Eren says as he pushes more of himself into you to cum inside of your pussy. Your eyes were rolled to the back of your head as Connie recorded your mouth swallowing his dick all the way down your throat with loud gags following.

Armin was next and he came a bit inside of you by accident before pulling out and finishing on your ass with sweat covering his body just as much as sweat was covering Eren’s. “ Shit. I can- I can’t Bambi, you are taking us so well and allowing me to finish on this perfect ass of yours like a good girl.”

Connie's head snapped up since his head was thrown back because of the head you were giving him. He suddenly snatched your head down to the base of his dick with your nose pressed into his semi-shaved grey hair. He tried to ignore the sounds of you choking and sucking on his dick so good and pointed the camera to Armin, “ Woah, little Armi…” Connie got sidetracked, “ hahhh~ fuck pretty Angel, your throat is amazing. Can’t believe you kept this all to yourself Reiner. Anyways, back to you Armin, you grew up.” Your hands came up to Connie’s thighs to tap him so you could breathe since you have been swallowing his dick so long, “ Oh sorry, pretty Angel, let me let you breathe.” He snatched your hair back to let you breathe again and you let out a loud sigh, coughs were in sequence.

Spit dripped down his cock, your chin, and tits. Eren thankfully moved his head to the right when he saw spit was dripping down your body and was about to move to his ski mask. You felt so messy and full as Eren slid out of you with his cum dripping down your pussy. “ Mmmgh, I feel so full.”

“ Good, you’re about to be even fuller and messier.”, Floch says as he grabs you off Eren to drag you by the arm to the couch in the room. He pushed you down and ripped the remaining of your clothes off and you swore you were never turned on by Floch before, but you are now. He snatched half of your body off the small couch and turned to Connie and then turned to Colt, “ You two are gonna fuck her or should I?”

Reiner wanted to say that you had enough but the way you were staring at Connie’s dick told him to shut the hell up. It’s your desire and his desire coming together as one in this night so of course both of you are gonna enjoy it even more.

Connie stalked over to you like a predator, he needed to feel your pussy around his cock, so he positioned himself in between your legs and tapped his now moist dick on your cream filled pussy, “ Fuck, you’re such a pretty slut man, it’s scary to know that I won’t find someone like you. A dedicated slut. Let me give you a reward for swallowing my dick. That’s cool with you right?”

You whimpered as you sat up on your elbows, “ fuck me, con’. Want you to make me a mess, messier than I already am. All three of you.” As you end that last sentence, you stare at the other two men standing around you. You then stared at the camera, licking your messy lips, your lipstick or lipgloss was over the area your lips were and your mascara ran down your face. You actually looked like a whore, a pretty and classic whore.

Connie had enough and shoved the camera in Reiner’s hands before properly laying you down on the couch, “ Let’s give the pretty slut what she wants. You two could take anything but her pussy. That’s all mine for now.”

Reiner recorded all three of you whilst stroking his dick just like the rest. They watched as Floch got on top of you to grab your tits to fuck them with his cock, something Eren would gladly do if they got this opportunity again. One of their phones was ringing but they could care less because all of their focus was on you being used like a slut. Colt had put his body a little bit up toward your neck to fuck into your mouth, so he wasn’t that far from Floch as he lifted your tits up and down on his cock.

“ Shit, this bitch tits are fucking amazing. Fuck!”, Floch moaned as his spit coated his cock and in between your tits so wonderfully. It caused him to move with speed.

Connie gripped your hips and thrusted into your pussy like you were his flesh light. He was in love with your pussy because it was still tight around his dick, “ shit, her pussy is amazing. Tits as well but her pussy is- uughnn- even more amazing. It’s still so tight after taking so much cock. It’s not too tight but it’s just- mmmph- right.”

You were too busy getting your throat fucked by Colt to say thank you. His cock was so long and a bit skinny but it was still long. So when he thrusted in your mouth you automatically choke because it’s too much for your throat. You were in love with how gentle he was fucking your throat, “ Ahhn, she’s swirling her tongue under my cock e-e-everytime it goes in. It feels so fucking good. So this and her prettiness and personality is amazing.”

“ Relax Colt, it seems like you’re tryna take my girl.”, Reiner says behind the camera, getting chuckles and laughs from the guys.

Colt panicked and you saw he was about to apologize, so you locked your jaws around his cock causing him to throw his head back. He now started to thrust in your mouth like there’s no tomorrow. Spit was forming around his dick and around the base of his cock. Snot was beginning form when your tears poured down your eyes from how his dick was going in and out of your throat creating throat bulges he couldn’t see, but you could feel them.

You squirm when you feel something cold and pointy near your stomach. You felt another presence and heard Reiner’s voice, “ My strawberry loves the thought of being used by men in ski masks. She liked to be fucked senseless and treated like a flashlight by men in ski mask.. tsk.. tsk… tsk, what a dirty slut you are. She especially likes when you threaten her with a good time and her special tools. Isn’t that right, my little strawberry whore?” You tried to lift your head to talk but Colt wasn’t letting up as he wiped the sweat off your forehead as an apology.

You didn’t mind but Reiner still wanted to taunt you as he circled the sharp silver knife he got from the table next to the couch around your navel, “ My bad, I forgot you couldn’t speak.”

You moaned against Colts cock when you felt the knife lowering to your vagina but not touching it at all. Connie didn’t know how to take this new information, yet he knew one thing, he was turned on. So Connie placed a thumb over your clit and as soon as he did one rub, you squirted on him which made him cum inside you unintentionally, or was it?

Connie grunted out his moans, “ fucking shit, this fucking ahahhhhh.” He couldn’t form a sentence and he never couldn’t form a sentence, not even when he was inside of his ex-girlfriend's pussy. You were what he wanted and needed, he’s sure all of them felt the same.

Floch was now fucking roughly into your tits and he soon came on your chest and neck since he was a long cum shooter. “ Perfect. Fucking perfect!”

Reiner recorded everything and came on the open space on your tummy with a loud groan. “ Such a pretty baby doll you are, letting my friends use you and get off to you. Ohhhh.” He stroked his cock even more to free himself of all the cum that needed to come out.

Colt was last and when he came inside of your mouth your tears and snot was running down your face. Colt didn’t even mind that, if anything he thinks you looked more beautiful because in his mind he caused this and he was a proud man, “ So- Aah- so pretty.”

Reiner captured everything and when Colt pulled out he positioned the camera in your face at the same time Eren gave him the marker he picked up from your dresser. Reiner let Colt get up and positioned the camera on your body and then your face. He took the cap off the marker with his mouth and threw it behind him. He then wrote “ Pretty Bambi”, “ Angel face”, “ Strawberry whore”, “ Pretty girl”, “ Whore”, and “ Doll” on your upper body.

Once he was done writing it, you finally calmed down from your high and looked at the camera. Reiner wiped the snot off your nose and onto a towel they brought out the bathroom to wipe you down, “ Tell the camera who the pretty slut of the night is.”

You smiled and gargled around Colt’s cum into your mouth before finally swallowing it and letting out a loud breath, “ I’m { reader’s name}, nice to meet ya.”

Reiner smiled and pecked your lips, “ Let’s get you cleaned up, baby.”

ෆ ̟ ̇ ┈•ﾟ Tagging: @chosoist @honeybleed @simpingfor-wakasa @angelshub @bleach-your-panties @savagemickey30 and anyone else who would like to be tagged <33 ( please let me know if any of you don’t want to be tagged in my fics like that anymore, it’s not gonna stir up no hard feelings<33)

#aot smut #aot x reader #reiner braun smut #reiner braun x reader #eren yeager smut #armin arlert smut #jean kirstein smut #attack on titan smut #connie springer smut #floch forster smut #porco galliard smut #chubby reader #x black reader #smut #anime smut #anime x reader #angelshubnetwork #plus size reader #colt grice smut

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capricores · 9 months

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if you have strong mutable (gemini, sagittarius, pisces, virgo) placements then you NEED to write things down if you don't already. all those thoughts that constantly swirl in your head: the frequent tasks, goals, feelings, aspirations, opinions, etc - WRITE THEM DOWN. this is not only therapeutic & stress-relieving for you but almost necessary, or you're going to burn out and overload your own mind constantly.

when you bottle, or when you let plans, goals, dreams, to-do lists, projects, etc live solely in your head - you'll notice you can't sleep as well, it's harder to rest, your memory gets more foggy than usual, you feel burnt out and unable to connect, etc. specifically:

write down your feelings. this will be your ultimate (free) therapy. start to journal, write a diary. make a private twitter/tumblr where you spill your feelings, frustrations, thoughts. you will feel an immense sense of relief by writing or typing your feelings out - even if no one is reading it but you. mutable moons especially. our feelings tend to change rapidly, but it doesn't make them less valid. don't bottle out of the fear your feelings will change/you'll just "get over it"!! write it down and let it out!!

write! to-do! lists!!!!! these don't have to be for important things. you want to learn digital art? you want to study coding? you want to learn french? you want to re-decorate? you probably have a billion things you want to do, and then you get overwhelmed by the options, and do nothing. write down all the things you want to do. make a to-do list for these things. get them out of your head and somewhere permanent/physical. looking at the options in front of you will feel much easier.

make excel project trackers (you can even make these for to-do list items/goals/etc)! mutable placements have a tendency to start a lot of projects or tasks, and never finish any of them. make a simple tracker for all the projects you start. you won't forget what you're working on, and you'll be less overwhelmed trying to remember what you have going on (example of the one i always use pictured below)

talking out your thoughts and feelings is also very cathartic. make fake (or real, i support u!) youtube vlogs where you spill your feelings and talk about your plans, your day, what you have to do, etc. talk to someone you love and trust, vent to them about how things are; or about what you're getting up to. i find writing has an edge, because you can go back to it for reference (mutables tend to forget things easily) - but as long as you're getting the swirl of your mind somewhere outside of your head, you'll feel so, so much less stressed.

mutable dominants tend to constantly live in go-mode, we're restless and always doing something. we feel uncomfortable and sometimes guilty about staying still. our minds don't ever shut off. it's very important for mutable placements to learn how to rest, be present in the moment, and learn grounding. this can be done in many ways, but i've found personally that writing works best for me. other helpful practices can be: talk therapy, acceptance theory, yoga, meditation, hiking, camping, etc.

i also want to remind mutable signs: we change a lot. we have a lot of ideas. there's so much we want to do. we often feel like we have no path, no big goal; we can struggle with purpose as we don't often aspire for permanent things or "one big goal". this is NOT bad. there is nothing wrong with changing your feelings, your mind, your goals, your life path. you CAN do all the things you want to do! you have your entire life ahead of you! yes, you can learn all those languages. yes, you can have three different careers in your life. yes yes yes! don't listen to negativity from others. don't beat yourself up for not having one big goal like some people around you might. cherish and embrace all the things you want to achieve and complete (both big and small). learn to follow-through with and finish the things that matter to you (writing things down will really help with this, make action plans/steps - break everything down into smaller pieces). take the time to slow down and enjoy the moments as they come. you got this!

#like PLSSSS it is so important you all NEED to write/type your thoughts and feelings #talking abt them will make u feel amazing but writing them out will get them out of your brain #astrology #mutable #luna.txt #i love u mutables <3 #this post was so scattered and random and all over the place in true mutable fashion #but im not editing it because this is for the mutables anyway and yall will get my scattered-ness #mine

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hannieehaee · 3 months

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luna, my beloved,

can i get a very down bad (and also very horny) woozi, please?? he just gives me the vibes of a very obsessed boyfie when he's truly in love.

also, i love your works so much!!!! ♡♡♡

18+ / mdi

content: simp!jihoon, established relationship, afab reader, smut, dry humping, very fluffy, jihoon is insanely in love with reader its disgusting, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, etc.

wc: 2157

a/n: thank u so much!! <3 i rewrote this four times bc way too many scenarios of woozi being down bad plagued my brain (still do), so i hope u enjoy what i came up with <3

masterlist

even after months, jihoon was unable to understand this weird feeling in his chest. one that he only ever got when he was around you (and on occasion whenever he thought about you). it was some sort of inexplicable heaviness. the beating of his heart would speed up and it would feel as if time slowed down. every touch and every breath felt like a sensible decision, and his thoughts would turn into static.

sometimes it was just in the background. sometimes he'd hold your hand or listen to you rant about your day and still be able to act as a functioning human. but there were times in which it simply overtook him.

he had had relationships before; both physical and not, but he had never experienced this feeling before. jihoon was unsure whether or not he liked it. it made him feel weak, but also made him feel more.

there were instances in which this feeling would be accompanied by lust. one accidental peak of a sliver of skin of your thigh and his lips would go completely dry. one grace of your hand a little too close to a sensitive part of his body and his knees would buckle. he was unsure if you knew about how easily it was for you to get him ready to plea for even one touch, but the truth was that it didnt matter. there was no space in his empty head to think about it in those moments.

truth was, jihoon was insanely enamored by you. some (soonyoung) would call him 'down bad' for you, but jihoon liked his term better. being enamored entailed that jihoon adored everything about you, with the pleasure you gave him included among those things. though there were times in which his lust simply grew so big that jihoon could admit to simply being down bad horrendously for you.

currently, that feeling in his chest was ever so present, and he knew that his lust was just about to take over. nothing had yet happened, but still, he felt a desperation that brought a crimson color to his ears. just looking at you as you slept beside him had him holding in a whine of your name.

to be fair, you looked angelic in this moment. you were facing him – although your face was almost completely pressed up against your pillow. your arms were wrapped around your chest in front of you, causing your breasts to press up together in the form of soft mounds peeking from under your tank top. your blanket was covering most of your body but still gave him sight of some of your shoulder. your hair was covering most of your features yet he could still rejoice in your mushed up face as you seemingly made yourself as small as possible. soft breaths coming from you were the only thing he could hear. his senses were all overtaken by you, even as he leaned down and quietly smelled the floral scent from your shampoo.

the beating of his heart was so loud he was sure it ran the risk of waking you up.

it's not that he was nervous, he was simply too caught up in you. every emotion you ever made him feel was making its way to the surface, causing his hands to clam up and his lips to run dry. he wanted to touch you so badly, but he knew that the moment he did, he would fall to his undeniable lust for you. it was hard for him to simply adore you from a distance, as his carnal feelings for you would always take over somehow.

however, his need for you won, making an embarrassing side of himself take over and pull you closer to him in order to wake you up un the softest way he could. he began to pepper kisses on the nude sliver of skin your shoulder offered him, breathing heavily as he prepared himself for what he knew would come as soon as you arose from slumber.

it was only a few moments later in which you began waking up, murmuring his name in that soft morning voice he loved so much.

he hadn't mean to sound so desperate that soon, but the moment he felt you begin to arch against his hold, – encouraging him to keep kissing any available skin – he couldnt help his pleas to let him have you in a way he relished in knowing only he had the privilege of having you.

"a– angel, please ... need you so bad ..." were the first words out of his mouth, murmured against your neck as his hands rubbed at your hips through the blanket.

"hoonie? what's wrong?", you were clearly still half asleep, only taking in his touches but not computing the words he was saying. but it was fine. he could be more specific if need be.

"you're so soft ... so pretty. can i have you, angel? please?" he didnt care how desperate his first words to you that morning sounded. he never felt any shame in showing you just how badly he always wanted you.

"oh, hoonie ...", you breathed, removing the blanket from the way and pressing yourself even closer to him.

the two of you were now curled up against each other with no distance between your bodies as you faced one another. with your lack of clothing, – him in just boxers and you in a tiny tank top and booty shorts to match – jihoon was now able to feel you up as he wanted; something which he took advantage of immediately.

he finally disconnected his lips from your skin, now making eye contact at the close proximity between you. however, before even being able to express his want for you once more, his lust won over him again, making him press his lips against yours with urgency.

he moaned and whined against your lips, his hips searching for yours as he positioned himself above you. there was no way for him to help himself. you were just so soft and pretty and beautiful and perfect. nothing couldve possibly interrupted that cloud of lust that was taking over him.

jihoon still had trouble processing how such a pretty girl could ever be his. he knew he was in love with you since the day he met you. just from a first glance, he thought you the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. speaking to you as acquaintances had been hard, but befriending you had been the biggest challenge. even back then, his feelings for you manifested in very noticeable ways. all his friends would mock him for the way he'd stumble over his words or stare at you a little too much. luckily for him, this did not last long. by some grand act of god, you had found some sort of liking towards him, giving him various obvious openings for him to finally ask you out (and admittedly, it took a lot of silent encouragement from you to get him to finally act up).

upon starting your relationship, it didnt take long for jihoon to make his adoration for you known, constantly letting you know how perfect he found you in any and every capacity. all his defenses would go down when he was around you, causing him to wax poetic whenever his emotions took over him – not to mention the endless files of love songs he had produced since meeting you. anything you desired, he would deliver just for the promise of your happiness.

your relationship had him thinking that maybe his past self suffered a grand deal in a past life; just enough for karmic retribution to grant him the girl of his dreams in the next.

and that's how he felt at this moment, grinding his clothed cock against your cunt as you whined into his mouth. could life get better than this? better than having the love of his life mewling into his mouth as he carelessly canted his cock into the warm heaven between your legs? he couldnt help but groan at the reminder than you were all his, and that he had access to every inch of your breathtaking body for his and your pleasure.

"fuck ... wanna fuck you, but you feel so fucking good like this– shit ..."

"dont stop ... i can cum like this. promise!", you cried whilst pulling at his hair, assuring his mouth stayed glued to yours.

as much as he wanted to keep letting you lick into his mouth and pulling at his hair, he was craving the two mounds that were pressing up against his chest. without further thinking, he disconnected your lips, groaning at the way you tried to chase his lips before hearing you whine once again due to his rushed removal of your top and the feeling of his tongue toying with your tit.

he practically devoured your tits, licking and nipping at every inch of them before using the tip of his tongue to play with your nipples. the way you cried his name had him losing his inhibitions, making him grind even harder and faster against you. your gorgeous and warm cunt was the only thing in his mind.

despite wanting to give you an orgasm just like this, he needed more. he needed your cunt strangling him as he chased both your highs.

"can i fuck you? please ... i know you wanna cum like this, but i cant last ... wa– wanna last for you, but you just feel so ... so fucking good."

"please, hoonie. fuck me .."

he hadnt moved faster in his life, discarding his boxers and your shorts in order to prepare himself for you, but suddenly it hit him.

"baby ... c– condom? do you have any?", he had forgotten to buy new ones before you stayed over last night, so he was hoping against all hope that maybe you had some in your discarded bag in the living room.

"no, hoonie, i .. i don't have any," your eyebrows were furrowed in concern, but he could tell you were still lightheaded from the pleasure you had been feeling just a few moments ago.

"oh, i ... i can just dry hump you? yeah, uh, i'll just–", he couldnt help himself in sounding deflated. he wanted your cunt so fucking badly, but had stupidly used his last backup condom last night.

"or ... you can just .."

his head perked up at that, halting before even starting to grind his hips against yours again.

"baby– "

"just go without it, hoonie. i trust you," you gave him a soft smile, holding onto his cheek before pulling him down for a peck.

"oh, i ... fuck. y– you– " his brain was short circuiting. raw? you were going to let him have it raw? oh. oh, fuck.

"baby, please i need you so fucking badly."

he could never say no to you. as per usual, he gave you exactly what you wanted, ignoring how badly this moment would ruin him; corrupt him and smear his brain with thoughts of your unfiltered cunt for years to come.

and ruin him it did, as he immediately lost himself the moment he entered you, groaning at the warmth and wetness coating his cock.

"you're perfect. god, fuck ... you– you're going to ruin me, arent you? you al-already have, shit ... you're my dream ... love you so fucking much, oh fuck ... make me yours and never give me back, i– i need to be yours. need you every day, fuck, please ..." he babbled senselessly as his hips went crazy against yours, drinking in every cry you released and groaning at every scratch of your nails against his back.

he was already close from having dry humped you through his boxers while he made out with you earlier, but now he knew his end was just around the corner. begging you to cum inside was likely out of the question, but his body demanded he at least try, except you somehow beat him to it.

"baby, inside, please! need you to fill me up ... fuck, please ..."

he had no way to respond other than by crying your name against your neck, relishing on the sound of slapping skin as he chased his end inside you with the desperation of a starved man.

with multiple expletives and confessions of love hidden between cries of pleasure, the two of you came one right after the other, kissing each other all throughout your highs.

now jihoon felt nothing but unfiltered bliss. he held you in his arms and caressed your body to the best of his tired ability, continuing to tell you sweet words of affirmation as you did the same in return.

jihoon was more than fine with being obsessed with you if it meant having you all to himself like this. he would gladly get teased about being down horrendously bad for you as long as he had you in the end.

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jnnul · 8 months

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ric flair drip

a/n: oh my god. it's finished. i've finally written all of her. i genuinely don't know how to explain the relief i feel right now. it feels strange writing this after writing and healing myself through writing this. i hope that anyone in college who's feeling the way y/n or jaehyun did knows that you can and will grow from it. heartbreak is inevitable and so is growth. quick note: feedback, comments, etc. GREATLY encourage writers! if you felt any sort of way (in a good or bad way!) about this fic, pls leave feedback!

word count: 20k

tags: college au!, frat boy!jaehyun x girlboss!y/n, honestly it just a dissertation about modern love and how people nowadays love each other, there's a lot of soul searching in this one, i poured my heart and soul into this please love her the way i do warnings: mentions of sex, underage drinking, and general college shenanigans! also explicit mentions of oral sex, uhhh foreplay and sex

HONESTLY, NOTHING ABOUT JUNG JAEHYUN IS REMOTELY APPEALING TO YOU. you hate the perfect boy act he puts on, you hate his need to impress everyone and everything, and you really fucking hated his dick.

because if it wasn't for his dick, which you were sure is just as perfect as the rest of his stupid self, you wouldn't be awake at inhumane hours, listening to your friend recount their sexcapades.

"oh my god, and then he did this thing with his tongue and i swear, i'm literally never going to be able to have oral again. he's fucking ruined me. i'm genuinely going to just make every guy i fuck put a jaehyun mask on from now onwards just to recreate it," sia yoo, unfortunately one of your best friends, quips dreamily. she yelps when roseanne park, your roommate and singular other voice of reason, throws a pillow at her.

"you sound like a fucking psycho. as in needs to be checked to a mental facility psycho. as in if i hadn't heard worse when you got with johnny suh, i'd be calling the cops right now psycho," roseanne says and easily ducks when sia winds up to throw the pillow back at her. fatima khan, sia's roommate and mother friend extraordinaire, pouts sympathetically with sia as the two of them turn to you as if you would fall on their side.

"sia, baby, honey, love and light of my life - i'm really sorry but i'm with rosie on this one," you say and sia puts on the most theatrical frown you she possibly could before she cocks her head curiously.

"rosie's got a reason for judging jaehyun since she doesn't even like men all that much. what's your excuse, y/n? you like men, judging by the way you were getting railed to next week by that freshie park seonghwa. you've never gotten dicked down by jaehyun."

you're half-tempted so tell sia that it's not fucking weird that you got with seonghwa, considering the fact that you're only a sophomore yourself but you're even more tempted to remind her that even though you were no stranger to a good time, you never recount your stories.

in fact, the only reason why the other three (well, you suppose rosie would know regardless given that you literally live with her) know about your sex life is because you choose to tell them whenever you felt like it. and usually, it was more than three days after the encounter.

you loved your friends, you really did - and sia was notorious for getting into one night stand rehash sessions at ungodly hours, so this was nothing new - but for some reason, every time jaehyun's name came up in the conversation, your skin would prickle with irritation.

maybe it was the fact that every single person around you seemed to be infatuated with him. or the fact that he was just so effortlessly good at capturing the attention of everyone in the room, no matter where he was.

or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that you knew that if you looked too closely into the deep end, you'd fall right in with no life jacket. and jaehyun was an endless ocean.

+++

maybe you had given jaehyun too much credit, you lament. maybe jung jaehyun's as deep as a fucking kiddie pool. you know you're wrong because you were in the same english literature class and the man had been published because the professor liked his prose so much, she had submitted it to a literary journal.

and they had accepted it.

but as you stare at him across the lecture hall, burning holes into the poor guy's skull, you sure think he's stupid. because there was no way in fresh hell that jung jaehyun was in an introduction to east asia class. as a south korean.

people begin settling into their seats as you mull over the possibility that jaehyun had fucked so much, his brain had fallen out through his dick. from the stories of his more than above average size, it was definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

just as you're send a very judgmental text to fatima, who was supposed to be taking the class with you but had had to switch last minute when one of her major required classes opened up, jaehyun gets out of his seat to stand at the front of the room, next to the professor.

you realize belatedly that the people jaehyun had been so animatedly speaking to were none other than bambam and ten - two people who most definitely were in this class. and of course, they had chosen this class over all the others because oh my god, jung jaehyun is the uta for this class.

in hindsight, it makes sense, given that jaehyun is a east asian studies minor and a stellar fucking student. but it doesn't make the text you were about to send fatima any less humiliating as you realize your attempts to undermine his character were desperately failing. you try to backtrack on your phone, deleting the winding paragraph you were about to send her when your thumb slips, accidentally sending a half written message.

you: jaehyun is fucking

you're sure the statement will be true within the next couple hours (the jung bed at the nct frat never seemed to stay empty for too long - and that was just from orientation week last week) but it felt almost blasphemous that you would send a text so crude to your friend when you insisted that you couldn't stand his guts.

or what lay between them, really.

three gray dots appear on your screen as you half-heartedly listen to your professor drone on about how he went to china, became a changed man, and now taught about the wonders of east asia and its exoticism. his name was paul but the class could refer to him by his 'enlightened name' - lao ma. even jaehyun rolls his eyes behind the professor's back as all of the asian kids in the classroom begin to eye each other warily.

if this class wasn't so easy, you're sure the population would've shrunk to a quarter its size based on the weirdness of the professor on its own. or maybe not, if it meant that people got to stare at jaehyun's gorgeous face for an hour and a half every monday morning.

mommy tima 🤍: honey, i think whatever sia's got going is contagious. mommy tima 🤍: aren't you the one who hates him? mommy tima 🤍: he really lives in your mind rent free, huh.

you scoff under your breath as you type furiously, vaguely registering that you definitely need to check the syllabus for this class later because you have not been listening to a word the professor has said this whole time.

you: first sia's got cooties or a raging std that's what she's got going you: second he's my fucking uta you: as in i am going to be forced to see his face for an entire semester mommy tima 🤍: drop the class then, babe. you: can't this is too good for my gpa & the prof's a freak you: it's a gpa cushion and a circus in one go

you tuck your phone away when you see that jaehyun is coming up the aisle on your side with a packet while the professor is on the other aisle on the other side with the same packet to hand out. jaehyun probably wouldn't care that you had your phone out during lecture (syllabus week was just an excuse for college kids to get drunk during school days anyway) but it was the principle of the thing.

"here you go - oh, it's stuck together," jaehyun says as he stops at where you're sitting. his tongue slips out as he thumbs at the packet to give you one instead of three and suddenly, your treacherous brain takes you back to sia's rambling the night before.

and then he did this thing with his tongue...

you're shaken back to reality when you realize that you're staring at a blank wall, with a pink packet in front of you, and jaehyun has already reached the back of the classroom.

fuck. shit. bitch.

jaehyun had seen you stare at his stupidly handsome face and then some. he was your ta. oh my god, what if he docked points on some test because he thought you were the creepy stalker type.

damn you, sia yoo, you curse in your head.

+++

"damn you, sia yoo!" you yell over the blaring music that's so loud, you can feel the vibrations in your skull. there absolutely no reason you should be caught dead in a frat on the friday of syllabus week but sia had made it her mission to make sure you had a going out rate of at least 80% this school year, given that you were prone to trying to skip out on weekends out last year.

not that you didn't like going out - you actually really liked going out with your friends. you just took a little more inertia to get to the energy levels of actually going on.

sia just nods at you lazily as she bounces to the beat of another shitty remix of 'what you came for' by calvin harris and rihanna. you never understood why frats always found the worst remixes of classic party bangers but anything flew after you had enough alcohol in your system so the music would recede to the depths of your mind in a couple cups of whatever the fuck this drink was.

especially since you were a full sunshine drunk; whenever you were drunk, you became the life of the party and would always be found in the center of the room, regardless of the music. sia was a flirty drunk and you really couldn't remember the last time sia actually spent the entire weekend in her own bed. props to her stamina, honestly.

rosie was a mix of you and sia in that she would become so much more bubbly but the second she found someone she wanted to spend the night with, she went after them with no hesitation.

fatima usually played the role of sober mommy when you all went out. although she was never one to miss out on a good time, when she did get drunk, she much preferred it to be within the confines of the four walls that she shared with her roommate and the people she trusted the most - you, rosie, and sia.

which is why when rosie abandons you for her on again, off again fuck buddy (miyeon cho) and her fuck buddy (yugyeom kim), you're not surprised at all.

"that's going to be an interesting story in the morning," you say, nodding to where rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom are all heading upstairs together. fatima nudges you to look at sia, where she's pressed up against none other than johnny suh (or the love of her life, prior to jaehyun, apparently).

"that's going to be an interesting story in the afternoon," fatima counters. you turn to her with furrowed eyebrows, as if to question the timing. "i don't think i've ever heard of a girl leaving johnny's bed before 3 o'clock the next afternoon."

your jaw hangs in shock as you watch your friend wrap her arms around the tall man's neck, whispering something into his ear when he bends down to kiss her collarbone.

"are all of the nct boys secretly porn stars or something? how can they all be that good in bed?" you gape, waving at sia when she turns around to wink at you and fatima as her and johnny are bustling out of the door, undoubtedly to the nct frat house.

"they test us as part of rushing," says a low, velvety voice behind you. a hot rush of shame runs up your spine for two reasons: a) you were able to recognize jung jaehyun just from his voice and b) he heard you gossiping about his frat brothers' sexual prowess.

you exchange a look with fatima before whipping around to meet jaehyun eye to eye. he's wearing a plain black t-shirt and lightwash distressed jeans but he might as well be wearing designer trash bags for all you care. what you do care about, unfortunately, is the almost slutty way his v-neck dips to show off the beginnings of the planes of his chest.

you feel no better than a victorian man and it takes fatima a poorly concealed cough to break you out of your thoughts. fuck, you'd done it again. you really needed to stop getting caught up in jung jaehyun's pretty face. and body. and that stupid smile.

"haha. very funny. sounds like something straight out of a cheesy porno sponsored by viagra or something," you say, rolling your eyes. smooth. very smooth. normally, you like to think that you're proficient in the witty banter department but something about this boy made you almost feel dumb about your comebacks.

jaehyun cocks an eyebrow, and you're distinctly made aware that even with platform sneakers on, jaehyun is a good head taller than you when you have to look upwards to notice the motion. "you seem to be well versed, y/n. you make it a habit to stay up to date?"

you flush at the thinly veiled euphemism at your x-rated movie watching habits before clearing your throat. "i'm more of a fan of practical study, really. i am a scientist, after all."

you're aware that fatima has slipped away from you to talk to another friend, park jeonghwa, and also the fact that you are slowly beginning your descent into drunkenness but you can't seem to bring yourself to find the caution in it all. it's just jaehyun, after all.

jaehyun hums, bringing the solo cup in his hand to his lips to take a swig. "you're a biomedical engineering major, aren't you?"

you balk at that. "wait, wait. you know my name and my major?"

jaehyun nods slowly, seemingly stumbling for a moment before he gains his self-confidence once more. "you don't know mine?"

"you're literally my ta. i know you're an east asian studies minor and your name because you told the class," you say, recovering quickly. it was a really good thing you were a quick thinker because you were lying through your teeth.

you knew jaehyun's name, minor, and even major (computer science) because of his notorious reputation, not because he was your ta. but the last thing you wanted was to give him the satisfaction of asserting his popularity on campus.

"anyway. what was that you were saying about 'practical study'?" jaehyun's eyes twinkle in the dim lighting of the cramped basement you were in and you had a feeling that if you were any more inebriated, you'd be diving headfirst into jung jaehyun's bed as long as he looked at you like that.

but fortunately (unfortunately?) you're sober enough to make mostly intelligent decisions - which just means that you're not going to jump headfirst. maybe feet first but not headfirst.

"wouldn't you like to know," you sing-song, leaning into jaehyun's body enough to smell the mix of woody pine, fresh water, and vodka that seems to emanate from him. jaehyun watches you as you lean over him to grab another solo cup from the assortment that some lower ranked frat brother had been forced into bartending.

you down the entire drink in two swigs, patting away the stray stream of alcohol that had dripped down onto your chest. you don't notice the way jaehyun's eyes follow your hand down its descent to your chest. but you finally feel like your element, and in a moment of sheer idiocy and liquid courage, you enter the growing throng of bodies behind you, beckoning jaehyun to follow you.

you're not 100% sure what you want from him, honestly. you want to have a good time, and you're sure you'll have one with or without him. but something about the way jaehyun follows you like a puppy into the mess of people makes you feel like a zap of electricity has hit your body.

and if you're being completely honest with yourself (as you usually only are with ethanol in your system), you really didn't hate jaehyun. you had no qualms with him as a person, even if you hated the consequences that came with a night with him.

it's when you're in the middle of the crowd, with jaehyun looking at you with those hooded eyes and hands tucked into his pockets when you realize what you want from jaehyun jung.

you want him to desire you the way that his mere presence makes people desire him.

so you do what you do best and just let go. it's ric flair drip by metro boomin that's playing - a song that's definitely not the one to get down to. but the bass fills you up in a way that never hits the same outside of a sweaty frat basement so you can't even bring yourself to care.

"i'm tryna fuck you and your bestie," you sing along with the near hundred people surrounding you. jaehyun is still looking at you with an eyebrow sitting higher and an appraising expression; something that somehow manages to get under your skin.

in a moment of passion, you manage to hook your fingers into one of jaehyun's belt loops, pulling him closer to you. you're aware that you've painted yourself to be jaehyun's next conquest if the way that the girls next to you look upset means anything, but you couldn't care less.

especially when you're this close to the bane of your existence. the song switches to something a little more what you need (under the influence by chris brown) and you look up at jaehyun through your lashes and in that moment, jaehyun knows what you're offering him through your gaze.

a challenge.

+++

jaehyun never really meant to take on the role of nct's resident whore. in fact, jaehyun had been planning on doing the exact opposite when he came to college.

although it was unbelievable now, jaehyun jung had originally just been a very strange, nerdy, and sweet boy. he never got up to much trouble, kept to himself most of the time, and was known for...nothing, really. he was sweet and bubbly but he wasn't exactly running with the popular crowd.

in fact, jaehyun was kinda forgotten all throughout his schooling. it was easy to forget about jaehyun, as though he were some visage in a dream that everyone shared.

it hurt.

so when jaehyun finally hit his growth spurt in senior year, started going to the gym, and his voice no longer cracked every other sentence, he felt like a whole new person. like he was finally the main character in his own life.

it felt so fucking good to look at the same girls who had smiled at him pitifully and have them melting under a single wink. the summer between high school and college had been wild, with more stories than jaehyun could really even care to keep track of.

but when college began, jaehyun was fully intending to return to flying under the radar with his new upgrade in personality, appearance, and wardrobe. with a face like his, however, doing so was about as easy as trying to pass professor yoon's intro to bio class - nearly impossible.

slowly but surely, jaehyun morphed back into the personality he had adopted that summer and surprisingly, it wasn't as foreign as he thought. he was still a good student and wasn't a stranger to having to skip out on hanging out with his friends to study.

but having a new girl in his bed every other day? that was definitely new. a new revelation, but a welcome one nonetheless.

and in that, jaehyun was used to people using all sorts of tactics to get with him. playing hard to get, with coy smiles and flirtatious winks. or the bold ones, who told him straight up that they wanted to spend the night with him. even the downright horrifying ones who tried to pretend like they were blackout drunk in hopes that that would 'attract' him. spoiler alert? it didn't.

jaehyun originally thought you were of the 'hard to get' caliber. the type of girl to say that she wasn't like other girls and that's why he should get with her instead. so initially, when he approached you at the party after seeing you in his class, he was mentally preparing himself for the whole pick me speech.

but it was something about the way you looked at him.

it was like two halves of your mind were battling against each other. on one hand, you looked like you wanted to fax jaehyun straight into the fiery pits of hell with high speed shipping. on the other, it also seemed like you wanted nothing more than to ride him until the sun came up. mixed with a little bit of curiosity, confusion, and downright anger with yourself for all the emotions, you looked like the perfect cocktail of firebrand that jaehyun couldn't help but become intrigued by.

so when you were laughingly talking to your best friend (jaehyun's frat brother kun was half in love with fatima, which meant that jaehyun was more than well acquainted with her) about him and frat brothers, he took it to be the opportunity he needed.

and when you're looking at him like this, daring him to make a move, almost as if to make your mind fall one way or another about drawing a conclusion on him, what is jaehyun to do but to make good on the challenge you've offered?

he watches you for a moment more, trying to commit the memory of what you look like when you're this carefree and happy, before taking the micro-step it takes to get so close he can smell the citrus and apple cider that you seem to always smell like.

"i promise you i can fuck you better than johnny," jaehyun says, a corner of his lips tilted up as your eyes flutter the closer he draws.

"johnny's your 'bestie'?" you say, and jaehyun can tell that the last threads of your resolve are starting to snap by the way that your hand is now pressed against his chest.

"that's what you're curious about right now? the dynamics of the nct frat brothers?" jaehyun asks but he knows that this back and forth is exactly you need right now; the time to decide if you can take the plunge. or if jaehyun's worth your time tonight.

"as i mentioned, i'm a scientist," you say, and even as your voice stays stable, your fingers seem to leave burning trails against jaehyun's skin as they dip and feed into crevices of jaehyun's body that he didn't even know existed.

"hmm," jaehyun manages to eke out when your fingers lace into his hair. he's not sure how you manage to find every single sensitive spot he has but he's fairly impressed by the way you catch his breath hitching as you work your other hand up as well.

"hmm? cat got your tongue, jaehyun?" you say, making sure that jaehyun looks straight into your eyes as you lean impossibly closer. "you know that sia's with johnny right now, right? girls talk - especially with your best friends. which means that if you can't make good on your promise, i will find out."

jaehyun feels like he's sweating like a pig but thankfully, you don't notice, too busy making him sweat. he clears his throat once, and then twice to make sure that his voice doesn't give out.

"that right?" he says, and you roll your eyes, letting go of him and stepping back. you seem to appraise him for a moment (and jaehyun is unnaturally nervous about what you will decide) before grabbing his hand and leading him to the door. you only pause to flag down fatima, who takes one look at your intertwined hands, and waves the two of you away.

jaehyun blushes like a schoolgirl at the way fatima flashes him a catty smile.

"i swear to god, jaehyun, if you're all talk and no game - or if you're gonna sit still and look pretty the whole time - i will literally blue ball you. i don't do pillow princes," you throw over your shoulder as the two of you make your way to the nct frat. jaehyun knows for a fact that the nct frat will not be a quiet place tonight by the number of dresses and pants he sees in the foyer and leading the way up the stairs.

he says nothing, even as you're quite nearly storming up the stairs with a certain level of urgency, almost as though if you were to slow down and think about just exactly what you're doing, you'd turn around and leave right now.

jaehyun definitely can't let that happen.

so the second that he gets you into his bedroom (he had to rock, paper, scissors with doyoung to get the room tonight), he shuts the door and locks it behind him. he turns around to see you looking between the two beds, as if trying to guess which one was jaehyun's.

he mentally pats himself on the back when he sees the fresh sheets on the bed. reaching where you stand in less than a stride, jaehyun turns you so that you're facing his bed, and you squirm to turn to meet his eyes even as his hands are on your waist.

"what is with your hands?" you ask harshly and jaehyun blinks as he looks down.

"what do you mean? they're on your waist," jaehyun says softly, and once again, he's hit with a wave of citrus and apple cider. you simper at him, grabbing his wrist and moving it incriminatingly downwards.

"what am i? a virgin? put them somewhere useful." you whisper the last part and it's as though jaehyun has just woken up.

"you know," jaehyun begins, sliding his other hand downwards to sit comfortably on the curve of your ass. "if i didn't know any better, i'd think you were trying to rile me up. i wonder..."

he doesn't finish his thought, instead pulling you close so that your hips are pressed against his. he can hear the gasp that you're desperately trying to conceal, coughing uselessly to the side. a devilish smirk grows on jaehyun's lips and for the first time in a long time, you're sure you're going to be up all night.

+++

you were, in fact, trying to rile him up. you had heard all the rumors about jaehyun and johnny, about how one night with them was like one night in heaven. hell, you'd had first hand accounts from sia yoo about exactly what it's like to be in bed with either of them - multiple times.

so when jaehyun had fronted with such a cautious attitude when he realized what you wanted, you were almost offended. if you wanted to take control and fuck a man's brains out, you could do that with anyone. why would you fight against your own mind this much to get with him?

but seonghwa park. changkyun im. even kun qian, before you discovered he was head over heels for fatima. jung jaehyun.

these were all people who put you in your place. the way you wanted to be. it just seemed as though jaehyun might've needed a little more persuasion to get there.

so yes, you were riling him up. was that such a crime?

by the way jaehyun's looking at you right now, his breath hot and heavy on your neck and his eyes dark with a feeling that you can't describe but resonates with you on a deeper, more primal level.

"you know, after you got with kun, he wouldn't shut up about it for a week," jaehyun says, pressing kisses down your neck, pausing when he reaches your breastbone. he eyes your corset top with a discerning eye before reaching behind you to pull the lace strings that were precariously holding your top for a week.

"yeah?" you ask, threading your fingers through jaehyun's thick hair as he makes quick work of your top, leaving it pooled on the floor as his lips find your chest as though he couldn't be physically parted from it.

"yeah. even after he met fatima, he said that you were the best he's ever had - that's a big reputation to live up to when you're in nct," jaehyun says, his voice breathy and deep as he walks you backwards so that the back of your knees hit the frame of his bed.

"hmm. what can i say? i know what i want and what i want is usually lots of fun," you say, letting jaehyun unzip your jeans, pulling them down and kicking them off when jaehyun moves too slowly.

"i know. god, after knowing that you and kun were going at it, i swear everyone was jerking off in their room for an hour. even winwin wanted to go for you today. you're an unpredictable woman; no one knows where and when you're going to show up to one of the parties so everyone has to take their chances when they get them," jaehyun says, tugging his shirt off and throwing it somewhere behind him carelessly.

you nearly melt when you see jaehyun's uncovered top, eyeing each and every hard ridge of his body, reaching out to touch him. his chest is almost soothingly warm as your fingers memorize each and every aspect of the planes of his chest, almost worried that they might disappear if you let go.

jaehyun looks at you amusingly as he lets your fingers dance across his body, focusing on tugging your panties off to discard them where he's sure he's going to have to search for them later on.

you pout when you see the difference in clothing but jaehyun just gently pushes you backwards so that your back is against his bed, leaving your pussy exposed in away that makes you feel absolutely mortified. you move to gain some level of privacy back but jaehyun is too fast, gripping onto your thighs incriminatingly as he raises an eyebrow.

"don't think that i'm soft just because i'm being nice to you now, pretty girl. i know you don't like to listen but don't hide from me. i will not let you have any fun if you try to hide from me," jaehyun says, his voice dropping a full octave. you suppress the shiver that runs through your body (and that simultaneously delights jaehyun) as you nod softly.

he seems satisfied by the way your body melts and rewards you for your submission by licking a wet strip up your pussy, one hand snaking up to touch your nipple while the other one keeps your thighs open.

jaehyun is slow at first, exploring each and every hidden crevice of your body but as he feels you get wetter and wetter, he can't seem to stay soft for too long. he continues to press his lips against yours but the moment you try to grind your hips against his lips, he pulls away, his tongue darting out to taste your essence on him.

you almost whine at the loss of his hot mouth on your pussy, and you're embarrassed to realize that in front of jaehyun jung, you are no better than your best friend in falling in love with the way he moves.

"you're not going to cum from my tongue, baby," jaehyun says, practically ripping the belt out from where it was caging his jeans. "especially when i know that your pussy is magic."

"you say that, jaehyun, but you're being so fucking soft. if i didn't know any better, i'd think you're in love with me," you snort, trying to catch your breath. jaehyun freezes from where his boxers are hanging so low on his hips, you can see the muscles in his pelvis tense angrily as he looks at you dangerously.

"my fucking bad for making sure you're wet enough to take me," jaehyun whispers, pulling close to you. his eyes turn even darker than usual and a small spark of excitement ignites in your chest when you realize that you've finally reached it - jaehyun's breaking point.

"sounds like you're scared, jaehyun. you know what? you know why kun was so good? because he wasn't scared. he wasn't scared to fuck me like he was trying to break the bed," you retort, and saying kun's name is when jaehyun finally snaps. he tears his boxers off as he pushes you so that you're further up on his bed.

"y/n, i'm not fucking joking around. if you want me to stop, say it now. just say the word, and i'll pretend like this never happened. because i swear to every god in existence, if you let me, i'll ruin every other man for you," jaehyun says and his knuckles turn white from how hard his clenching his fingers to keep himself from pouncing. the thought is almost cute if you weren't desperate to be fucked into next week.

"if i wanted you to stop, i wouldn't have said kun's name, would i?"

that's all it takes. no sooner do the words leave your mouth, jaehyun's on top of you, every inch of his body fighting to claim yours. he's not sure what it is about being with a bratty girl but every time a girl tries to challenge him, jaehyun can feel his excitement grow as his mind runs wild with ways to prove you wrong.

and with a girl as beautiful and sexy as you? he was going to have the time of his life.

time of his life he does.

+++

when jaehyun wakes up, he's almost happy. almost because he has bruises on his hips from how hard he had pounded into you, a litter of hickeys across his chest, and freshly washed hair from when you had enticed him into taking a shower with you.

inevitably, it led to another hour in the shower that jaehyun had spent having his soul sucked out from his dick, eating you out under the shower, and seeing you cum twice just from his tongue.

if only he had woken up with you still in his bed, jaehyun would've actually been happy.

realistically, jaehyun had no clue what he was expecting. after taking a shower, it had taken you a total of five minutes to fall asleep in his arms, wearing nothing but jaehyun's oversized t-shirt and your panties.

there was no pillowtalk, no heart to hearts, nothing. no discussions of having whatever happened last night happening again. no trying to get to know each other better.

not that you had ever been obligated to do so. if anything, jaehyun was far more obligated to do so, after practically declaring that he had wanted to get with you since last semester - which he had been completely serious about.

but with his reputation, regardless of what he had said last night, jaehyun's almost 100% sure that you would've disappeared by the morning.

he's so caught up in his thoughts that he almost misses the bright pink post-it note on his neatly folded shirt on his desk in the corner of the room.

9.5/10. if you see sia, tell her she was right about your tongue. see you in intro to east asia on monday.

jaehyun's half disappointed and half happy. disappointed because you'd never left your number or anything and happy because at least he knew that you weren't going to completely avoid him whenever you ran into each other next.

he shakes his head as he folds the post-it note and throws it in the trash can next to his desk.

jaehyun jung may not have started college with the intention of becoming the resident fuckboy but he still had a reputation to maintain. he had fucked countless women over his time at sm university and he had no intention of falling for any of them.

he was not about to get soft-hearted or soft-dicked by a girl he was with once.

even if she was really good in bed. like really really good. like good enough to make him think about the other boys she's been with and if they'd made you feel as good as he did.

fuck. her. which jaehyun had already done. which meant that he needed to move onto the next step of the day before his head exploded with all of the implications flying around in his mind about their relation to each other (nonexistent) and if you were thinking about him like he was thinking of you (you weren't).

he pads out of his room, passing doyoung on the way out, who claps him on the back and says, "you finally got with y/n?" jaehyun doesn't know how doyoung knows but it strikes him that neither of you are very subtle people and you had caused quite the scene leaving with him last night.

similar reactions are offered to him by everyone he passes. he's not really sure how many of the boys you've been with but jaehyun can feel his street cred go up by at least a decameter with the way some of these pledges are looking at him.

in fact, everyone is looking at him with a new look of respect in their eyes until he reaches the kitchen, where yoo sia and johnny are sitting, practically eye-fucking.

jaehyun was very used to seeing johnny's friends in the kitchen the next day, neither of them ready to really say goodbye each other yet but for some reason, knowing that sia was your best friend and seeing her with johnny sets jaehyun's stomach into a series of knots that he was sure he was going to have to unravel when he had his head on straight.

"she already left?" sia says, finally breaking her stare from johnny's. jaehyun shrugs, digging around the fridge to see if they had any coffee. they didn't (none that wasn't expired anyway) so he has to settle for a caprisun.

"she had somewhere to be," jaehyun says. he wants to ask sia if it's normal for you to leave that early. it can't be if sia seems surprised that you'd left before the clock struck ten. what did that mean? what does that say about jaehyun? oh god. what if you hated it. what if you hated it so much that you didn't want to spend a second longer with jaehyun.

he cringes as he locks eyes with another shiny eyed pledge (jaehyun thinks his name is jungwoo) and tries to shake his head to clear any and all thoughts of you. he was pussydrunk. that was the only explanation. he just needed to dick down someone else and then he would get over whatever little infatuation thing he had going on.

"really? hmm..." sia says finally. jaehyun turns to see her looking right at him and suddenly, he's transported back to the previous weekend, when sia had been wrapped up in his sheets.

+++

"why did you start fucking around like this?" sia had asked, her chest still heaving from their previous illicit activities as she wraps herself tighter in jaehyun's sheets. jaehyun pauses for a moment as he catches his breath, pulling on his boxers as he thinks. he throws the shirt that sia's grabbing at, still not sure how to piece together his thoughts.

or why he wants to tell sia the truth. maybe it's because no one's ever asked about it before, but jaehyun feels strangely vulnerable as sia watches as he clambers back into his bed, her expression pensive and uncharacteristically wise.

"i don't know," jaehyun says honestly, laying over the covers as he feels his face grow hotter under sia's unrelenting stare. "i think it's because i wanted to know what it felt like. to know what it felt like to be wanted for a night instead of just being in the sidelines as the guy with the potential. just the guy that people brought along as the friend of the hot guys that kept him around."

sia doesn't say anything, instead turning so that she was lying on her back. jaehyun turns to look at her, to see if he could decipher some level of understanding from her silence. really, he knows that he should feel embarrassed about confessing his insecurities to a girl that he's hooked up with two or three times but he can't bring himself to for some reason.

maybe it's because he knows that she wouldn't say anything about it to anyone. or because he knows that she's head over heels for johnny, whether she'd admit it or not. or maybe it's just because for the first time, someone had asked something about jaehyun just to get to know him as a person, rather than trying to get him in their bed.

not that he really minded that - it just made him feel like it was all a lot more transactional than he was used to. he had been a romantic once upon a time. when you grew up with the nickname of 'valentine boy', it would have been stranger if he didn't have some sense of romance.

but jaehyun's penchant for romance disappeared almost just as soon as he realized that no one else was yearning for a pure type of love like he was.

and yet, it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. turns out that jaehyun's a very adaptable man. if he wouldn't find love in this decade, then perhaps it would be lust that he would have to settle for.

"then again," he begins, gaze darting over to where sia had slipped on his t-shirt as she tiredly begins to settle down in his bed once more. "isn't that what everyone is doing nowadays? looking for a warm body for the night, instead of a genuine connection?"

sia snorts at that, turning so that she was facing jaehyun now. "don't tell me that you're one of the boomer types. the ones who always go around peacocking about how they were born in the wrong generation and that they're one of the 'good guys'. i might actually leave right now if you are."

"no, no i'm not. well. maybe a little bit. but i don't know why that's so bad to be honest," jaehyun acquiesces finally. sia rolls her eyes, but even she goes quiet for a moment. once again, jaehyun's reminded that this is sia yoo - a girl who routinely wakes up in someone else's sheets every saturday (although it was johnny's more often than not) and as sexist as it was, someone who carried a reputation for it. even jaehyun was surprised to find that she was such a deep conversationalist.

of course, he mentally berates himself soon after but he can't help the thought. for him, sia was just the girl he would get with a couple times. a good time. the fact that that's the only role she fulfilled in his mind made him feel disgusting inside out as he waits for her response, vowing that he would work to change his mindset. or maybe just change personalities altogether. ick.

"you know one of my best friends? y/n? the one who got with kun before he decided to go clean for fatima?" sia says with a careful tone. jaehyun nods, not trusting that he wouldn't say something dumb after his sudden realization of his flawed thinking.

"this is something she always says but it's honestly pretty simple: love is however you want to define it. humans spend so much trying to find labels and definitions for things that just might not have or need them. for such an advanced species, we spend so much time concerned about how to put a feeling into a box or how to classify a thought instead of rejoicing in the fact that we had such a beautiful feeling in the first place."

"for people in this generation, the old school love is hard to find because they've got so many other types of love that weren't allowed back when old school love was big. it's a different type of freedom to love someone on the weekends but never to fall in love with them. maybe we're just romanticizing hookup culture but who's to say that we can't? maybe we're all more romantic than we want to admit. maybe when we fall into the sheets with someone we barely know, we're looking for a fragment of love to satiate our heart in ways we didn't know it needed."

jaehyun doesn't know what to say to that so he just pulls her closer to him and she lets him, throwing her leg over his as they fall asleep, closer to each other than they had ever been.

+++

you're not sure what had compelled you to leave so quickly that morning. you usually like to get the boys who sleep with to at least cook you breakfast before you left (for compensation of being terrible in bed, if the situation so called for it) but for some reason, every instinct in your body had pulled you to leave.

you had waken up at nearly 5 in the morning, a mere two and a half hours after the two of you had fallen asleep, gathered your clothes, and were about to leave when you turn to look at jaehyun, still snoring away peacefully, his arm crossing his body to rest on the empty space next to him that you had occupied previously.

you had a feeling that you're going to lament leaving this early after psychoanalyzing why you were leaving so early later in the day but for now, if your gut was telling you to leave, you were going to heed the precautions.

but even as you're about to leave, you find yourself turning to jaehyun's desk, sparse but somehow still a little messy as you rummage for a post-it note and a pen to write with. you grin to yourself when you find yourself successful (and endearing somehow that jaehyun has bright pink post-it notes).

you pass a brother on the way out (undoubtedly a freshman who had received the short stick of the duties tonight) but you wave him off when he offers to walk you home. dangerous? most definitely. but you really needed the time and space to yourself and the short, almost ten minute walk back to your apartment would offer some enlightenment.

spoiler alert: it didn't. no matter how hard you wracked your brain to come up with some version of a logical explanation, you realized that there was just simply no way to do so.

and something about that frustrated you. you knew it wasn't a big deal. jaehyun was just a hook-up. a one night stand. and yet...something wasn't fitting right in your mind. so you start to think in the only way you know how, collecting all of the pieces of information you did have.

a) you just had sex - mind-blowing sex with jaehyun. he was everything you expected and more when it came to a sexual partner. b) you didn't develop feelings for him. sex comes fifth on the list of things you subconsciously (or now consciously, since you've spoken it into existence) have when looking for a potential boyfriend. first comes personality, then intelligence, then ambition, then looks, and then sex. you didn't even have a conversation long enough to figure out if jaehyun had more than three brain cells to piece together. c) jaehyun jung had confessed that he had wanted to get with you since last semester. did he mean with you-r body or with you?

you shake your head as if to physically shake the irrational thoughts in your mind out and press your id against the scanner at the entrance of your apartment building, rubbing your fingers against your temples as you get into the elevator to reach your apartment.

unlocking the door to your (empty) apartment, you decide to shelf the thoughts for some time when your head wasn't pounding and collapse on your bed, thanking the lords you'd had the sense to take a shower at jaehyun's.

and the last thing you remember is the smell of jaehyun's shampoo in your hair as you drift into blissful, dreamless sleep.

+++

you're not surprised to feel a weight on your bed when you wake up the next morning. you blearily open your eyes to make out sia's general figure, rosie and fatima undoubtedly chatting quietly in the kitchen.

you vaguely piece together something about fatima having kun over but him sleeping on the couch and you try to push down the guilt that creeps up into your brain as you realize that you had left fatima alone at the party. a party where all of you knew a lot of people (and the outcome was just as everyone had thought it would be) but the principle of the matter stung nonetheless.

you push aside the thought - along with the idea that you should probably apologize to fatima when the cottony feeling in your mouth started to subside - in favor of looking at sia, who is strangely quiet as she watches you gather yourself. for her boisterous personality, sia yoo could see through anyone to the extent of theorized telepathy so you don't even bother trying to hide anything from her.

although, it really is hard to take her seriously when she's got hickey's littered across her neck. well. you suppose you don't look much better at the moment.

"you left before 10 o'clock," sia says simply. you don't pretend to not understand what she means as you nod, pushing yourself up on your bed as fatima and rosie also enter, rosie handing you a glass of water.

"i know," you say softly. "but i want to hear about everyone else's nights right now. i just don't know that i'm in the right headspace to think about why i left so early - i'm not even sure i know why i left so early."

sia says nothing for a moment, watching your face, almost as if she were trying to read your very essence. but she relents, reaching out to hold your hand briefly before completely switching up, speaking animatedly about her very adventurous night, leaving you to simmer in your thoughts.

had sia always been this smart? probably. who's to say that she wasn't, after all?

turns out that sia and johnny were actually going to go on a date on wednesday, after realizing that their chemistry extended further out of the bedroom than either of them had expected. sia was through the roof, obviously, given that she had been thirsting over johnny (although more in a sexual sense than anything else) for so long.

rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom also worked a lot better than any of them had thought so you were sure that you were going to lose your roommate to the other '97 liners more often for the foreseeable future.

fatima was the only one who had a pg night, with kun coming over to her apartment and just chilling together the whole night, eventually having him sleep over since he was too tired to walk back to the apartment that he lived out (it was on the other side of campus, given that he moved out of the nct house pretty late into the semester last year).

"speaking of kun, when are you guys gonna make it official? i mean after this year, you guys are going to only have one year together before you guys graduate," you say, bunching your comforter before letting go. it felt weird saying that. especially in regards to your friends. theoretically, you had all the time in the world together.

but all the time in the world wasn't enough when it came to these girls.

fatima sighs before getting up, wringing her hands together as she thinks. "i don't know. i mean kun's graduating a year early so i really only have this year left. i - i know how much he likes me. i know that he wants to do this right way. go the whole nine yards."

"but...?" rosie says, elongating the syllables as you and sia look at her patiently. fatima shakes her head, getting up to walk around the room, six paces enough to take her from one side of your room to the other.

"i just don't know. kun's great and honestly, i really think that's the one. or at least one of the ones for me. but i just don't know if my parents would be okay with it. i mean my parents are great! they give me so much freedom and honestly, i'm really thankful that my parents allowed me to find religious and spiritual freedom on my own, without ever trying to shove it down my throat."

"but at the same time...how can i betray their trust in me by dating someone who is so far from my religion? like. kun is a great guy but he's not muslim. and sure, i don't follow a lot of the stricter things in islam but i - i have god in my heart. and i don't know that god would want me to start a family that doesn't follow islam. especially since i can see that in my future with kun and kun - i don't know that i could ask kun to convert to another religion for me."

the room is silent for a little bit after fatima finishes, with her collapsing in your bed next to you. rosie and sia exchange a look with each other, and then you, as they both decide to leave the room, leaving you to console fatima.

you were always the most philosophical one out of the bunch anyway.

"look, fatima, i can't pretend to know what it's like to have that kind of mental burden and i really can't understand what it's like to think about the future and be concerned about the impact on the world you might create. i read about something the other day though - did you know that kun means 'manifesting' or 'believing' in arabic?" fatima looks at you with disbelief written all over her face, shaking her head.

"how did you know that?" she asks and you just shrug, nodding at the 'islam for dummies' book you had bought in hopes of understanding a little bit more about one of your closest friend's religion.

"that's not the point. but fatima, you are the single kindest, most beautiful person i know. and i have faith that you will choose what's right for you, not what's right for the people around you because you know better than everyone that the only person who can judge you is god. and no one - no one - on this earth has the right to take that peace away from you."

fatima is silent before wrapping you in her arms, the soft material of her hoodie comforting you and lulling you back into a sleep that's dreamless and calm.

+++

jaehyun doesn't know what to expect when he walks into intro to east asia on monday. should he say hi? wave? start a conversation? should he acknowledge that he spent the better part of his weekend wondering if he would lose his fuckboy status if someone realized just how down bad he was for you?

probably anything but the last one was a good idea.

jaehyun was not in a good state of mind. he was a hot 19 year old man with a near perfect gpa (a whopping 3.98 only because he got a singular a-), a not so terrible set of dimples, and a killer body. and yet he was walking around like how he had been prior to his enlightening summer.

it's almost freeing but also humiliating to think that one night in bed was enough to make him start an entire philosophy but that was where jaehyun was at so who was he to question anything, really?

in fact, jaehyun is so caught up in what he would name his new branch of philosophy (loserism, with a lot of inspiration from zeno) that he doesn't even realize that you've already walked past him and taken your seat.

third row, first seat. you're putting your bag down next to your chair, pulling out your laptop, tossing your hair over your shoulder when it falls in your face. jaehyun tears his eyes away, knowing that this was not a good look for him.

if jaehyun really wanted to pursue you, which he was sure was where all of his jumbled emotions were eventually going to lead him anyway, he knew for a fact that you weren't going to be interested in having to take the lead. especially if jaehyun wasn't even sure that you were interested in the possibility.

but that's a struggle for another day. what was it that stephanie laurens said? that all women want sometimes is a little old-fashioned loving?

that was, in fact, the opposite of what sia had said you were really into but jaehyun had a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn't mind handing the reigns over in the decision making process portion of a relationship, or the courtship, if your time together this weekend alluded to anything.

jaehyun almost misses the beginning of the lecture, where professor ma (no one actually calls him that besides himself) was going into some of his favorite places to stay during his time in china. and while missing any portion of professor ma's lecture was of no crime, he also almost misses the way that you're looking straight at him, faking a yawn when jaehyun finally locks eyes with you.

professor ma was known for giving stellar recommendation letters (which was why johnny had coerced jaehyun into ta'ing for his class in the first place) but he was such a pain in the ass.

jaehyun has to keep from laughing out loud when he sees your exaggerated gestures to show how boring you were finding the professor's lecture to be, pulling himself together in time for him to finally be able to take a seat in the back of the classroom, professor ma having asked him to take attendance for the some two hundred students in the classroom. by hand.

he almost drops the piece of paper that you slide into his hand, subtly slipping it into the pocket of his basketball shorts as makes his way up the flight of stairs to the tenth row, dropping his backpack on the floor next to him, in a rush to open the delicate piece of paper in his hands.

there's only three words on the piece of paper and a series of dashes and yet jaehyun knows that this is all he needs. this is all the signal he needs to know that he wasn't imagining the chemistry or the tension between the two of you. and fuck what anyone said about his 'reputation'; it was jaehyun's turn - the old jaehyun's turn - to get the chance to experience the relationship he had always been dreaming of.

he rereads the little piece of paper before smiling and tucking it into his pocket again.

earn the rest. 9__-___-____.

+++

johnny suh is getting whiplash from his best friend's actions.

one day, he's asking sia yoo if her best friend usually leaves her one night stands by the time they wake up. then he's throwing said one night stand's notes into the trash can before leaving for some frat meeting or another.

the next day, he's carrying another note from the same one night stand he can't seem to get out of his head.

jaehyun doesn't tell johnny anything. he really doesn't need to at this point. johnny suh is a senior in college and he's pretty much seen it all. he's also the vice president of a frat - which means that even if he didn't have all the experience that he did just because of his seniority, he definitely seen it because of the sheer number of stupid decisions frat brothers will find themselves making when they think they're going to either a) get drunk b) get high c) get their dick wet.

johnny knows it's all in good fun (fun that he's definitely not opposed to) but jaehyun's always been a little bit of an enigma when it came to all of it. he was good at the drinking and alright at the getting high and absolutely fan-fucking-tastic at the getting his dick wet.

it was the goddamn dimples. everyone always fell for the dimples.

and sure, while jaehyun had had crushes before (johnny could read his little like no other), they'd always been fueled by the hormonal rush of adrenaline and testosterone pumping through his veins. in fact, johnny's not sure that jaehyun had had a proper crush on anyone at college after getting fucked over in high school, where johnny had also gone to with jaehyun.

not that johnny had really known jaehyun. he was quieter and kept to himself more then. didn't really hang out in the same crowd as johnny.

he knows that's not necessarily true. johnny had, truthfully, just completely overlooked jaehyun. like a lot of girls had until jaehyun had finally started to grow into his features.

but johnny knows jaehyun now and he also knows that if jaehyun had never met gianna lee, jaehyun wouldn't have ever dove headfirst into the deep end of shitfuckery and sleeping around with every breathing body in sight.

cliché story of course. college boy becomes a fuckboy after having his heart broken by a girl in high school. johnny's almost 100% positive that sia's shoved at least two or three novels like those in johnny's face, with the same exact plot.

but what is life but a series of clichés after all. and honestly, did it even matter? it was real. it happened to jaehyun. that was all. end of story.

so johnny doesn't even say a word when he sees the post-it note in jaehyun's trash can. he's silent as he watches sia and jaehyun talk and jaehyun fall into a period of overthinking (and jaehyun knows he's overthinking too because johnny can see him shake his head even as he continues to stare at the 'people' tab of intro to east asia).

and johnny finally decides to break his silence when he sees jaehyun with a new post-it note, although this time it was a much more tame blue post-it, and a pensive look.

jaehyun slips it to johnny to read as they're sitting at the local starbucks, with johnny filling out some paperwork for the job he was signed on for as soon as the school year ended and jaehyun studying for the organic chemistry exam he had coming up the next week.

he doesn't say anything when he passes the note but johnny can see him sideye-ing him to catch his reaction and it's all he can do to keep from letting a little smile slip through.

he hands the piece of paper back, watching as jaehyun immediately stuffs it into his backpack, and for some reason, he's really not sure what to say. if sia were here, she would know exactly what to say, and how to say it. she had a way of saying things that were a little too straightforward to feel good but also obviously coming from a generally good place.

it was one of the reasons why johnny had thought it would be a good idea to make it official with her. sia yoo was nothing like what johnny had thought - and the thought simultaneously frightens him and comforts him.

"you plan on asking her out on a date?" johnny says lightly, sliding his laptop over to pretend to look at his phone casually. in actuality, he's typing furiously to sia (one of the few people that johnny trusted or consulted when it came to advice giving) about what was happening.

johnny is not very surprised when sia's gray bubble appears, disappears, and then appears again only to say, "yeah, i know."

he waits for a more elaborate response. or even a more sia-like response but the more that he talks to her, the more johnny is learning that sia is more unpredictable than she really seems to be.

and sia yoo seems to be completely out of the box.

johnny shakes his head, as if to physically get rid of the thoughts of her from his head, unsure why he was thinking of her when he was supposed to be helping out one of his boys.

"yeah. i think so? i don't know. i mean we had a good time and we definitely have chemistry. but we literally just had one night in bed and that's it." jaehyun furrows his eyebrows as he realizes that's not just it. "well, there is the fact that kun was walking around singing her praises. and i know that fatima wouldn't be friends with kun or y/n if she wasn't sure they're both good people. not to mention the fact that i've always thought she's kinda hot. but it's always been superficial. even us spending the night together was really nothing more than finding each other hot or trying to figure out if the talk around town was real or not."

johnny takes a sip of his americano as he lets jaehyun's words sink into his own mind. jaehyun rests his heads on his arms crossed in front of him and johnny knows exactly the set of thoughts that's running through jaehyun's mind because they were the same as johnny's when he had decided to ask sia out on a date.

is it worth it? is it worth possibly getting my heart strung up on someone again just to face the possibility of breaking it again?

so johnny offers the only advice that he really has.

"talk to roseanne. girls' fiercest protectors are their friends and something tells me that talking to her will make you fall on one side or the other."

+++

the next time that jaehyun sees roseanne is a complete coincidence. he really only meant to say hi to one of his homies, yugyeom, on the way out of the library and hadn't expected to run into roseanne or miyeon at all. especially not a singular day after johnny had suggested that he seek her out in the first place.

he watches as yugyeom thumbs the rip in miyeon's jeans as he continues to talk to jaehyun about something jeongguk had done the previous weekend. and then he sees miyeon press a kiss to roseanne's cheek as she gets up to fill up her water bottle.

jaehyun didn't think he would understand that dynamic at all but whatever floated their boat. who was he to judge? he had watched the barbie movie and was still having a crisis about his masculinity and was actively searching out his one night stand's (were you still just his one night stand?) roommate and best friend to fix it. to be fair, he didn't really fully understand the barbie movie, to the chagrin of doyoung's girlfriend nairobi but that was besides the point.

yeah. jaehyun was really in no position to speak. wow he had a lot of things to work on internally. the more he talked to the women in his life, the more he was realizing this. again. not the point.

roseanne takes one look at his face and then exchanges a look with miyeon and then yugyeom before standing up and walking towards the exit, looking at jaehyun questioningly when she realizes that jaehyun hasn't moved an inch. jaehyun hurriedly bids yugyeom and miyeon goodbye as he rushes after her.

the two of them linger outside of the library and roseanne just raises an eyebrow as she appraises jaehyun. and for some reason, jaehyun stands up straighter, and she just sighs, a small smile playing on her lips.

"let me guess. 'who makes people work for their number? what is this? sprinkle sprinkle type of stuff?' or maybe 'this is kinda cringey, isn't it?' or just a sweet and simple 'what the actual fuck?'" roseanne says nonchalantly, listing out each possible question jaehyun could have come to ask.

"would it make me a bad man if i said yes to all of the above?" jaehyun asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. roseanne shrugs, crossing her arms across her chest.

"not really. i don't think so at least. it's a fair set of questions that even i asked her the first time a guy came up to me asking who the fuck my roommate thought she was," roseanne says. she takes sees the look of confusion on jaehyun's face as she continues, "you're definitely not the first person to ask me that but you are of a selective few. y/n usually doesn't let people get this far in the first place. and secondly, she doesn't really tell us much about people she's interested in until much later."

"she's a strange person, if i'm being honest with you. there's just something about her that makes her so captivating and invisible at the same time. she'll capture the attention of everyone in the room but if you talk to her, she'll make you feel like her best friend. she seems like an open book, and an even more open friend. and you feel so close to her within a conversation and then you end the conversation, you realize that even as she spoke, she revealed nothing about herself."

"i'm her best friend and i could tell you very confidently that i didn't know a single thing about her truly until recently. it made me frustrated at first. like i was a shitty friend or something. but the closer to her i got, the more i realized that she's always been a great friend but no one's been a great friend to her. she's very selective with the people she associates with - not just people she lets herself be seen with but people she confides in."

"this whole thing is a defense mechanism. she'd be caught dead before she'd ever admit it but she just hasn't been loved in the way that she's loved and now she's more guarded for it. i'll tell you this jaehyun, but if you want to give up, do it now. she says she's just going to give you her number if you earn it but once you get all 10 digits, know that she's gonna give you her heart."

"it seems like i'm violating girl code by telling you all this but like i said, even if you were to ask y/n, she would say the same thing. not in so many words but still. like i said. she's an open book and a closed heart. she knows you're gonna ask me and so she only tells me something that she would be okay with you hearing."

jaehyun, who had been listening quietly and patiently the whole time, cuts in with a quiet voice. "isn't it exhausting to live like that?"

roseanne looks at him strangely, as though she was truly seeing him for the first time. jaehyun doesn't know if he's offended or relieved that she'd done what he'd done to sia - made assumptions based on his appearance. he lands on neutral. it's human nature, to try and make proper guesses about who's gonna act like what.

the ancient art of preventing heartbreak, jaehyun supposes.

"maybe. i don't think so though. it's gotta be a different level of relief knowing that no one's gonna talk shit about you because a) no one knows you well enough to do that or b) because you're so careful with who you trust that you know they'd never betray you or even c) they can only talk about what you put out into the world. it's why censorship is so effective. people can only talk about what they know. there's few people who will ignore what they see to find what they can't see tangibly."

"are all of y/n's friends secretly poets or something? why the hell are you guys all speaking cryptically like you're all freemasons or some shit like that. i can't tell if i find it cringey or cool," jaehyun says, cocking his head.

roseanne lets out a real, full bellied laugh at that, clutching her stomach as chuckles escape her. jaehyun's not sure what he's said that's so funny but he knows for a fact that she's not laughing with him, but at him.

"why is it cringey, jaehyun? why would it be cool? it's just what it is. we're just girls. you'll see us at the party next weekend, drinking our weight in alcohol. we'll have the conversations about makeup and dresses and having fun and our future and our past. there's nothing like freemasonry, i promise. it's just so amusing to see men get alarmed by the thoughts that girls have been wrestling with since they've been twelve. the duality of man, i guess," roseanne says finally, once she's caught her breath.

jaehyun doesn't know how to respond to that so he elects to save the remaining tatters of his dignity by just not responding at all. if there's one thing he's learned about you, it's that you surround yourself by women who are not hesitant about putting him in his place. and he's oddly thankful for it.

"i have one last question. well, two last questions, actually," jaehyun says when he sees roseanne turning around to head back inside, still wiping the tears from her eyes from laughing too hard.

roseanne turns, a knowing glint in her eyes even before jaehyun asks his question.

"how many guys have talked to you? and what's the highest number anyone's ever gotten to?"

roseanne is silent and just as the silence begins to turn awkward, she promptly turns on her heel and begins to walk away. she opens the door to the library before she seemingly changes her mind and looks back at jaehyun.

"two guys have talked to me. you're gonna have to ask fatima about the second question though. and jaehyun? the next number is 6."

96_-___-____.

+++

jaehyun finds fatima not soon after his conversation with roseanne. he's sitting in the nct house, watching johnny pace back and forth in his room, trying to figure out if what he was wearing was too casual for a date to a bowling alley.

it was way too formal, in jaehyun's opinion. but he was just going to wait for johnny to finish panicking (even if he would never admit that he was, in fact, panicking) to figure that out on his own. seriously though, who wore a button down and slacks to a bowling alley?

then again, he was going on a date with sia yoo so really, anything was fairplay when it came to that girl. she was a whirlwind of literally everything that could possibly go into a human being. she was a maximalist to the fullest, seizing every opportunity she could to make good memories, pressing forward with a sense of perfect clarity and sobriety that most people would be scared of.

the type of girl who was the main character of any story that she would feature in. sia was the type of person that people who trip and fall over themselves trying to have a good time with that she practically promised. she walked around with fairy dust in her fingers and a strange sense of wisdom that felt like she could read you like a book within a singular meeting with her.

jaehyun knows that she's the most intimidating out of all of the girls. out of you, roseanne, fatima, and sia, she was hands down the most frightening because even though she could read everyone else, no one could really read her.

then there was roseanne. she was the wet dream of every girl alive - the reason why straight girls lamented that they were straight and still falling a little bit in love with her. she was hot, flirtatious to the extent of making everyone wonder what they were when she gave them even a split second of attention, and so incredibly full of life. it doesn't surprise jaehyun that she had become exclusive with miyeon and yugyeom. for some reason, he feels like she just wouldn't have been able to settle for liking one person at once.

she was a little too much for just one person to be able to handle. she was like the human personification of a leather jacket wearing, motorcycle driving, woody cologne smelling wattpad trope. jaehyun understands her appeal all too well.

and then there was fatima. she was kind, sweet, kept to herself, and always offered a helping hand to those around her. jaehyun understood why kun had fallen so hard for her within two minutes of meeting her. she had an air about her that made you feel like she was someone who truly cared about you, even if you didn't know her and she didn't know you all that well. she was the type of girl who was always forgotten in the novels about warriors and princesses. the girl who was often reduced to nothing more than the main character's best friend.

until you met a girl like her in real life. fatima was still a little forgotten, and jaehyun knew that. guys often overlooked her in favor of her 'hotter' or 'wilder' friends, which is admittedly what jaehyun had thought at first. but she was just so genuine and clearheaded. she protected her peace in a way that was so unusual for young, college-going students. not to say that sia, roseanne, or you weren't genuine or anything like that. but fatima was the type of girl that jaehyun knew was perfect for kun. the girl that he could go home and know that no matter what he had done in his past, she would love him all the same.

and there was you. smart, strangely private, and a series of contradictions housed within one heart. jaehyun wracks his brain, trying to gather everything that he knew about you and yet, he comes up empty.

frustratingly empty.

jaehyun vaguely registers the fact that johnny has finally changed and is getting ready to go. he knows that he should say something about how johnny should just be himself and that sia liking him is completely up to her, regardless of what johnny were to do. but when he locks eyes with johnny, he realizes that johnny already knows.

so jaehyun just claps him on the back as he heads back to his room, his mind spinning as he tries to think of everything that he knows about you. and he draws a blank every fucking time.

he knows superficial things about you. maybe it's because he doesn't know you like he knows your friends. he hasn't talked to you as much as he's talked to them. but how does he not know you? he's been wanting to get with you for so long. he wanted more than just your body. he wanted your charm and your appeal.

was it just your body? is that all it was? is that all jaehyun wanted? somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to believe that. he doesn't want that for himself. logically, he knows that gianna's impact on his life shouldn't be extending this far. he knows that he shouldn't want or have to fight himself this hard but you're not making it much easier for him.

when was the last time jaehyun wanted to get to know such an enigma of a girl? gianna lee. and he wants nothing to do with a girl like that ever again.

and yet, here he is. falling into the same trap all over again.

jaehyun's so caught up in his own thoughts, feeling himself starting to spiral when he bumps in fatima and kun, who are equally caught up in a conversation with each other.

"oh, my bad," jaehyun mumbles, ready for fatima to brush past him but she doesn't, looking at jaehyun and then kun.

"hey man, we're headed back to my place. why don't you come back with us?" kun offers, and jaehyun just nods blankly, as he starts to follow them out of the nct house. kun stops at the entrance where he picks up a textbook from yuta, who had been borrowing it for the last week, before the three of them make their way out.

"how are you, jaehyun?" fatima asks with a sweet smile as they pile into kun's car. somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to give her a generic, insincere answer.

"i'm...okay. i'm just okay. confused but okay," jaehyun says and fatima seems alright with this answer. kun pulls out of the 'driveway' of the frat house, exchanging in a quiet conversation with fatima about what they were planning on eating for the night, leaving jaehyun to simmer in his thoughts.

gianna lee. there was a name that he thought about almost every day and never all at the same time. the girl who had made him and broke him. the girl that jaehyun had trusted with his heart and made him regret ever doing that.

the girl who had been the first love of his life.

+++

gianna was a year younger than him. smart, so incredibly sweet, and yet someone that no one could confidently say that they knew. she was the type of girl who could slip under the radar as easily as her friends seemed to always stay on top of.

she ran in the same circle as jaehyun had in senior year, right when jaehyun was beginning to blossom into the man that he was today. she had always been kind to him, if not a little withdrawn, even when he was a skinny boy with proportions that absolutely did not seem to match each other.

jaehyun didn't even know her well enough for her to break his heart, honestly. jaehyun had liked her even before having a proper conversation with her. he knew how left out she felt in her own body. even though he couldn't imagine a more gorgeous girl, he knew that she didn't feel that way about herself.

he knew that she always compared herself to her friends. her well-accomplished, 'main character' best friends who were the talk of the school. and her. no matter how intelligent or kind or put together she was, no one really looked at her the way that jaehyun did. she knew it.

even jaehyun couldn't place why he liked her so much. maybe it was the fact that he was somehow comforted that a girl with so much beauty could feel the same way as him. maybe it was the fact that she had always held the same smile for him, regardless of what he looked like. or maybe it was even the fact that one time, she had held his hand as she pulled him across the street, running to catch up with their friends who had already crossed.

jaehyun just remembers looking at her dyed cherry red hair falling into her eyes as she laughs, pulling him forward to where the rest of their friends were standing. and as he breathes in the smoke in the air and the raspberry scent of her perfume, he just knows that he really, truly likes gianna lee.

gianna lee doesn't like him the way that he likes her. he knows that. logically, jaehyun knows that his feelings are truly unfounded. he really has no reason to like gianna the way that he does. and yet, there's a part of him that holds onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, she'll turn around with those big eyes and upturned lips and say that she likes him the way that he likes her.

so he continues to look at her first when he makes the friend group laugh. he always slips her a napkin when he's getting one for himself when they're out getting milkshakes. he offers to help her with apush when she's stressing about a test the next week.

the closer he gets to her, the more jaehyun realizes that really, she was nothing like the image of her he had conjured in his head. she was every bit sweet as he had thought but she was argumentative, competitive, and all too obsessed with perfection. she always needed to be right in an argument, always had to win, and always had to make sure that she looked flawless doing so.

jaehyun doesn't realize it, of course. he's so obsessed with his glazed over façade of her that he just continues to let her win the arguments even when he knows that she's wrong. and she lets him wrap his arms around her when she gets an 89% on her test.

he lets her walk all over him and she lets him act on his feelings.

it was a toxic, parasitic relationship that neither of them were truly happy in. when gianna asked him out, jaehyun hadn't felt like fireworks were going off in his stomach. he felt like he had won a prize at a marathon. like he'd won a medal.

gianna wasn't a medal. she was a flawed, beautiful human being - every bit gorgeous and horrible as jaehyun and every other human being was. but jaehyun had won, hadn't he?

he hadn't. and it took so long for him to realize that by the time he'd realized that gianna had really only taken to him out of pity, he was so far in his own head that he didn't know how to leave her.

eventually, the summer before college rolled around and gianna had taken it upon herself to do the nasty deed of breaking up with him. it had been an amicable split, as far as their friends were concerned.

but none of them had ever truly either of their friends. so what did they know?

what did they know about gianna finding comfort in her ex's arms? what did they know about her grades slipping at the end of the school year? what did they know about her having to excuse herself at a meeting for her internship to sob in the bathroom as she realized the true fallacy in the way she had acted? what did they know about the way she had to reconstruct herself bottom up? nothing.

what did they know about jaehyun spending every other night with a different girl, trying to ease the ache in his heart? what did they know about the obscene number of hours at the gym, not sure how to combat the sudden numbness after girl after girl? what did they know about the fact that jaehyun could not physically stand the smell of raspberries anymore? absolutely nothing.

no one knew anything until jaehyun had finally come to college. it was once he joined the frat and met guys who were so alike and different from him at the same time that he finally opened up about gianna.

only to doyoung, kun, and johnny but people nonetheless. everyone had gone through something similar - while for some it happened at college or back home, they all knew the pain. some of them were more in the fault than others but pain is pain and a paper cut bleeds the same red as a gunshot wound.

which is why when kun sits him down on the couch and fatima hands him a cup of iced tea to save them all from the sweltering heat as august makes a last stand against september's winds, jaehyun spills everything.

gianna. his past. his insecurities. everything. he knows he shouldn't. logically, fatima had nothing stopping her from going and telling everything that jaehyun had told her to you, but for some reason, jaehyun thinks that she won't.

she doesn't.

+++

fatima knows that jaehyun was going to talk to her about something like this. it seemed that all of the nct boys came with some level of trauma like this. she wasn't sure what it was about every single boy she had met in college (although, granted, they were either her friends' conquests or kun's friends - a very interesting group of very intertwined boys) having their hearts getting ripped to shreds. sometimes it was of their own volition but they all seemed to be some level of hurt either way.

so when jaehyun spills his heart out on kun's carpeted floors, she's ready with a well-rehearsed speech. he's one of six boys she'd already had this same exact conversation with (kun has a bad habit of picking up strays) but when he looks at her with such raw anguish in his eyes, she falters.

she looks to kun, who's looking at her with the same question that she knows jaehyun is asking.

"how do you know when to choose between your head and your heart? because my heart is so fucking scared of getting attached to someone again. but my head knows that i can't push everyone away because i'm scared."

fatima is quiet, searching for the right words. she's about to say something when kun speaks up, looking determinedly at fatima.

"you learn to choose you. instead of choosing between your head and your heart, just choose yourself. at the end of the day, you and y/n are good people who aren't trying to hurt each other. you're both trying not to get hurt. and honestly, maybe you'll realize that you both are better off as friends along the way. maybe you just realize that you don't want to be with someone right now. or maybe you find someone who makes you feel like you're safe and loved when you're around them, whether you're in love with them or not." fatima looks at kun with a soft smile, reaching out to hold his hand gently.

"you have to choose yourself, jaehyun. trust me. the more you start thinking about what is best for the people around you instead of thinking for yourself, you'll look back fifteen, twenty years down the road and see everyone but yourself in your life. don't do something because gianna and how she made you feel. don't let your past define your future," fatima says, and jaehyun can feel the tears prick his eyes. he blinks determinedly, trying to make them disappear but when kun sits on one side of him and fatima on the other, he starts losing his battle against his emotions, finally letting himself mourn the innocence he had once had.

he buries his head into fatima's shoulder and for some reason, he feels as though kun and fatima would be amazing parents. because jaehyun doesn't remember the last time that he had felt this safe in an embrace.

"and jaehyun? the furthest anyone has ever gotten is five numbers. you're at three. it's your call from here. do what you want, not what you think you need to do." fatima taps his shoulder gently and lets him cry for as long as he needs to.

963-___-____.

+++

jaehyun gets the next number from you. after his conversation with fatima, he's sure that if he wants to go any further than this, he needed to talk to you first.

it's strange. he's earning your number but it feels like jaehyun's somehow earning himself back. and when he finds you again, he knows that you can tell.

even johnny could tell. when he had come back from his (successful) date with sia, the first thing he had said was, "wow. you look so...light."

jaehyun hadn't said anything but 'thank you' but it was enough.

johnny had just smiled at him and recounted the date, stating that he was going to ask her to go on another date this saturday night. jaehyun doesn't mention the fact that nct is throwing that night because johnny already knows.

and honestly, sia is a junior and johnny is a senior. they've been to their fair share of parties. one party being missed wouldn't be life changing for them. but skipping a party as the vice president of a frat and a girl who was sought after as a sweetheart for six frats meant something nonetheless.

he hadn't expected that they were to get that serious that quickly but it was a refreshing change. even fatima and kun were starting about talking about talking to fatima's parents to get their blessing for their relationship. her dilemma was no secret and it seemed that the conversation between the three of them had served to help them through their own issues as well.

there was just something in the air, jaehyun had supposed. august turned to september in the week that jaehyun had wrestled with himself, eventually leading to seeking you out.

it had been at the nct party, actually. you were standing with some of your acquaintances, all of your friends having dispersed to do what they were going to do. jaehyun had been on the other side of the room, convincing bambam that it was most definitely not a good idea to try and pursue soyeon jeon if he wanted to make sure that he woke up with all his limbs intact the next morning.

you had met his eye, raising an eyebrow before continuing your conversation, all thoughts of him seemingly out of your mind. jaehyun looks between bambam (who has gone from trying to get with soyeon to jumping into the pool) (that pool had not been cleaned in a full six months) and you. he just finds jungwoo, one of the pledges, and hands him a very drunk bambam.

"do not let him do anything dumb. i'm counting on you pledge," jaehyun called out over his shoulder as he weaves through people to get to you.

"jaehyun! hey! long time no see," hailey whitfield says, throwing herself in jaehyun's arms. jaehyun looks at you, where you're staring straight at where hailey's body ends and his arms begin. jaehyun tries to push her off of him. once upon a time, jaehyun would've been behind happy about getting with her again - she was so good with her mouth. but now, he has no intentions of giving you the wrong impression.

at least until he has a proper conversation with you so that you knew where he stood with you. and where you stood with him.

"hey hailey, sorry i've gotta get to my friend," he says, not even looking at her as he pushes off of her, resuming his threading through the crowd to where you're standing. you look at him, unimpressed, but jaehyun knows you well enough to know that three numbers are enough to make you feel a certain way if jaehyun was fooling around with other girls.

which he hasn't been. not a single night. jaehyun jung's bed has been empty for an entire two weeks, something that doyoung and nairobi have been taking full advantage of.

even some of jaehyun's friends had started asking if he was having problems or something but he had brushed them off. he definitely wasn't having problems, if hailey whitfield was any indication. but he felt like it would be doing you dirty if he had someone in his bed while he was talking to your friends about you.

so he hadn't.

he knows you know. he knows that you know he's talked to sia, roseanne, and fatima. he'd figured that you'd find out either through them or just by him. he can tell by the look in your eyes that you've read him thoroughly.

so he really doesn't feel bad about pulling you away from your friends, taking you upstairs to his room. finally, doyoung had promised that they would go back to nairobi's place on the condition that jaehyun made sure that no one would try to fuck on his bed. he promised, knowing that the only person who'd be coming up here would be him. he needed to talk to you tonight. if he knew anything it was that.

but once you're sitting on his bed, watching him pace back and forward, he's lost everything he's been wanting to say. where does he even start? with gianna? with the questions he has for you? with the number? where does he begin?

jaehyun looks at you, where you're watching him with a small smile on your face and suddenly, it doesn't matter where he begins. you'll listen to it all. he knows that much.

"why do you want me to work for your number?" jaehyun asks. you look at him curiously, tilting your head as you piece together an answer.

"are you sure you don't know the answer to that question?" you say, folding your legs so that you're sitting criss cross on the navy covers.

"i do. but i want to hear it from you, y/n. you know what all your friends say about you? that they didn't properly know you until a full year of friendship with you. but they said that you never lie. so i want you to tell me," jaehyun says, chest heaving by the end of his ramble. his eyes turn soft as he watches you become more and more solemn and he steps forward, sitting down on his desk chair and swiveling it over so that he was sitting directly across from you.

you pause for a moment, searching for the words before saying anything. "i've never been in a relationship before. so i don't have the trauma that could come from something like that. but i know what it's like to lose your heart to someone. and i know that it hurts. i want to be loved in the way that i never thought i could be. so the number thing is just an excuse for me to get to the point where i won't feel guilty about liking someone."

you shrug, smiling but not allowing the smile to reach your eyes. "it's a good way to make sure that the guy knows what he's getting into either way."

jaehyun nods at that. he knew that much. it feels different hearing it from you though. when you're the one saying it, jaehyun knows that it's real. raw. not coming from people trying to protect you because they know that you're far too soft to truly come at him guns blazing.

somehow, he likes it. he likes that you're much softer than you seem. that you're a lot more vulnerable than you come off as. and for some reason, jaehyun hopes that you never perfect the art of becoming standoffish.

"hmm. you've never been in a relationship before?" jaehyun says finally and you nod, shrugging once more. a shadow of bittersweet nostalgia crosses your face before you're back to your soft smile and guarded yet curious eyes.

"nope. part of it was on me; i've got high standards, if you can't tell. and the other part was that i've always wanted someone who fascinates me. of course, i wasn't all that appealing to men because i spent so much time trying to beat them at the only thing they were good at - ego-boosting themselves but they weren't interesting. none of them were people i really wanted to get to know," you say, unfolding your legs.

jaehyun likes the fact that the tips of your toes are the only part of your feet that touch the ground from how far back you're sitting on the bed. in an act of boldness, jaehyun moves forward to sit next to you, right where you're sitting. his feet are flat on the floor, he realizes.

he doesn't know why he's noticing things like this but he is and something about that frustrates him, frightens him, and tugs at his heartstrings altogether.

"you're heartbroken, aren't you? boys like you always seem to be a little hurt," you say, tossing the words into the air like rose petals. they're recklessly thrown but they're somehow beautiful in the way that blackened roses are always beautiful.

"yeah. i was. i think i will always mourn who i was before that. i was so naïve. but i'm not him anymore. and i think i'm realizing that i'm actually okay with that." jaehyun says the words just as carelessly as you do but once they're out in the open, he realizes that he's being completely honest. he turns to you with a strange look though.

"boys like me?"

you smile and nod at him. "boys like you."

you stand up, walking to where jaehyun has a corkboard with a shitload of scraps and photos from the past two years. you don't mention the fact that none of the memories that he has on the board date from before senior year. you don't need to.

"boys like you who've never been loved completely. boys who think that they need to listen to what the world says about how they should be acting or thinking. boys who are hopeless romantics but what would the world say if they knew that these boys just wanted a little bit of love? what would they say if they were looking for warmth in an empty and cold bed?"

jaehyun hates that you're right. it's the college boy tragedy. condemned to never be able to completely heal from one bad experience and then always breaking hearts to collect enough pieces to build themselves a new one.

he didn't want to end like that. even if it wasn't with you, he was ready to grow past it. he didn't want to end as a heartbreaker.

"boys like me...and you like a boy like me?" jaehyun asks. he doesn't know why he does. this is the first proper conversation you've had with him when both of you are decidedly sober. you want to deflect the question but if he's being honest, that's a sign for you to be just as honest.

"i don't know. from what my friends say, and what i know about you as a person in class, i know you mean well. and honestly, i've always just been the type of person to like someone past things like the books they read or the way they dress," you say, still looking at the memories jaehyun's pieced together over the years on this board. "i feel something around you. and i don't know you well enough to know that i like you as someone more than a friend but i'd like to at least have the chance to get that far."

that's all jaehyun needs. he gets another number that night.

+++

jaehyun waits for you outside of intro to east asia, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for you to make it out of the classroom. you're the last one to leave, knowing that technically, you and jaehyun weren't allowed to see each other while he was your ta.

jaehyun had never really pegged you as someone with so much respect for the rules but you had argued that it was mostly about the principle.

he'd learned a lot about you that last weekend. you and him had stayed up all night, talking about nothing and everything under the sun until the sun itself rose, eventually falling asleep in a tangled mess of limbs and conversations.

he learned that while you didn't like the rules, you often followed them as long as they followed your own moral code. that you would die for your friends and that had landed you in many bad friendships when people would use that to their advantage before you'd met your friends in college. he learned that you were super close with your family, and that they were quite literally the best friends that you could always rely on.

and he learned that you wanted to see him again. on a date. sometime soon. so with no real way of communicating with you outside of social media (and he somehow felt like sliding into your dm's was corny and somewhat of a copout), here he was. waiting outside of the classroom like he was ripped straight from a 1950's romance movie. he even had the letterman jacket on to boot.

"oh my god, you scared me," you say, pressing a hand to your chest as you quite nearly bump into jaehyun. he smiles, readjusting his backpack on his shoulders as the two of you start walking.

"you knew i was waiting for you outside, didn't you?" he says, pushing the side door open to walk towards the parking lot, where he's convinced kun to let him borrow his car for the day.

"yeah but i didn't think you would be literally outside the door," you murmur, checking your phone to see the rest of your day's schedule. you had purposefully blocked off three hours of your schedule to hang out with jaehyun, which you were sure to regret later on when your organic chemistry class kicked your ass. but that was a later issue.

"well, i couldn't text you where i was so i figured i'd wait in plain sight," jaehyun retorts, opening the passenger door for you without a word. huh. that was the first time a man has ever done that for you. and jaehyun did it as though it were second nature - like it was a given.

you don't know why something so small means so much to you but you're alright with it. you're alright with just appreciating it.

"that's fair," you say. another number's on the tip of your tongue as you watch him get into the driver's seat but jaehyun beats you to the punch.

"don't give me a number. not yet," jaehyun says. "not that i don't want one. but i just...me waiting outside your classroom or opening your door isn't enough for a number. even if i don't get all ten, you've got to up your standards."

you don't know what to say to that so you don't say anything, turning on the music and letting the melody of chemtrails under the country club by lana del ray fill the rainy september afternoon sky.

+++

when jaehyun pulls up to a run down diner, you're pleasantly surprised. although you're not much of a sucker for romantic places, the fact that jaehyun is somehow makes you happy. it makes you happy that he still sees the beauty in places like these. and when you look over at him, dimples threatening to show as he breathes in the air of misty fog and the smell of milkshakes and burgers, you're so tempted to kiss him.

so you lean over, looking at him with a twinkle in your eyes once jaehyun has parked.

"can i kiss you?" you ask, mere inches from his lips. jaehyun just looks at you, and from this close, you realize just how beautiful his eyes are. they're dark, darker than anyone else's that you know. and yet, it feels like you could fall in and never regret it.

"please."

it's all you need. and it's all he needs because as soon as word slips from his lips, he's pressing forward, his lips against yours. he's soft, you register vaguely. nothing like last time. nothing like how he'd kissed you like he could think of nothing but absolutely ruining you.

jaehyun is soft. like the feeling of slipping a cold hand into someone's warm jacket pocket. he kisses you like he's scared of ruining you. ruining this. and you're absolutely addicted to the feeling.

the feeling of knowing that he could just claim you instead of trying his best to claim your heart. no matter how fucked up it was that you were even thinking that someone could 'claim' you. he wasn't like that and you could work with that.

he pulls away from you, eyes still closed as he sits against the drivers seat, his head against the headrest. you watch him, a silly and childish smile on your face - although you're not really sure why it's there in the first place. but who are you to knock anything?

there aren't many words to exchange as the two of you make your way into the diner. jaehyun had opened your car door again. this time, you just offer him your hand and you're strangely alright with just how safe you feel with his hand locked in yours.

the diner seems as though time has frozen still here.

and everything about the date seems the same. it feels as though time has frozen still - almost as though the two of you are in a little bubble with no one but each other. it's a feeling you haven't experienced in a while. a feeling you don't think you've ever had because of a boy.

it feels...almost scarily comfortable. it doesn't feel as though there are fireworks exploding for every word that jaehyun says. but it does feel as though that there's a hot mug of cocoa that's been handed to you on a cold winter night. and that feeling, the feeling of warmth spreading through every corner of your body, is the feeling that you know is good for you.

so you listen to him, watch him speak animatedly about basketball or a book he read, chin resting in your palm as you find yourself falling deeper and deeper.

jaehyun gets two numbers that day.

+++

it doesn't take much longer for jaehyun to get the rest of the numbers. soon enough, you're more than happy just to spend time with him the way that you spend time with your friends. you feel as though you've made a good friend out of someone you'd thought that you wouldn't even be able to get along with.

"you know, when i first met you, even before i knew you, i really didn't like you," you say, taking a sip out of your latte. the seasons have changed, fall giving way to winter. the november air bites your skin every time someone opens the door to the tiny café the two of you were sitting in.

jaehyun smiles, nodding as he leans back in his chair. "i know. i could tell by the look in your eyes."

"the look in my eyes?"

"yeah. the one that said that you wanted to get to know me. to figure out my deal even if you didn't necessarily want to find out for sure. kind of like you wanted to be the one that said 'aha!' at the end of a movie, even though you weren't sure of the ending at all."

you look at jaehyun for a moment before laughing, shaking your head as you laugh. "you're even starting to talk like me now."

jaehyun pauses before he nods, smiling with you. "yeah, i know. you've rubbed off on me in a lot of ways."

"i've improved your music taste, that's for sure," you snort, taking another sip out of your latte. "i still can't believe you didn't like ric flair drip when we met."

"it's not that i didn't like it and it's still not that i like it now. but i guess i just have a good memory associated with it now so it's growing on me," jaehyun says. your eyebrows furrow as you try to recollect what good memory he could possibly be referring to.

"oh my god. the night that we met! i was trying to get in your pants with ric flair drip," you say incredulously, shivering when someone opens and closes the door once more. jaehyun hands you his hoodie, leaving his arm extended silently when you protest.

you don't know why you still bother trying to protest with him when you knew you were going to lose. you put the sweater on as jaehyun starts talking, letting the scent of clean water and pine trees swaddle you softly.

"honestly, i think i was more than you that night," jaehyun says, as he looks at you with an incriminating twinkle in his eyes. "that was around the time that even taeyong said that he wanted to see if kun's vivid descriptions were true or not. and i wasn't about to let him get the opportunity to get to you before i did. i don't know why. i felt almost protective over you. but not in a good way. in the type of way where i wanted to show you how good i could make you feel - more than anyone could even begin to think of making you feel."

the previously cold café begins to become a lot hotter than you were feeling before, clearing your throat as you try to let the moment pass.

"how did we even get here?" you say, fanning yourself delicately. the move only serves to work against you when you fan yourself so that the scent of his cologne on his hoodie only gets stronger in your mind.

jaehyun leans back, letting you switch the conversation. he'd bring it up to you later in the night, anyway. besides, for someone who puts on such a strong front, it's honestly a little fun to see you squirm at the slightest implications from jaehyun.

"but, uh, jaehyun. i've been meaning to ask you something for a while," you begin, fidgeting with the wrapper of the straw in front of you. jaehyun tilts his head as if to question what you have to say as he waits patiently.

"what are we?"

now jaehyun is truly confused. was the past month of going on dates not clear enough? jaehyun wasn't going on dates with anyone else. oh my god. were you going on dates with other men? is that why you're asking.

"i thought we were dating?" jaehyun says, phrasing his sentence more like a question than a statement. "i mean i'm not talking to anyone else and i kinda assumed that since i'd gotten all ten numbers, neither were you."

you hum, unable to stop the silly smile on your face.

"good. that's just what i was thinking too."

+++

honestly, everything about jaehyun jung is appealing to you. from the way that he engulfs you in a hug when you're up late studying. or the way that he convinces you that you have a virus on your laptop just so that he could spend more time with you 'fixing' your laptop for you. or the way that he sits with you and your friends, patiently listening and offering advice wherever he can (or honestly, is just allowed to speak).

you're so glad to see him like this. as your boyfriend of four and a half months (you hadn't let him make it official until he was no longer your ta), you've seen him grow in ways that you'd never thought. jaehyun was every inch the stupid, naïve fuckboy you'd thought him to be in the beginning. and he was also every inch the hopeless romantic with a little too much love to give for a scarred heart.

so you heal together. you help each other when you quite literally can't handle the pain and together, you grow. he's more confident. not just in the way that he looks - but the way that he speaks around people. the way that he educates himself. the way that he communicates how he feels.

and he helps you everyday. he shows you what it feels like to be loved the way you love others. he shows you that you are worth the princess treatment. and most importantly for you, he loves the people around you the way you love the people around you.

kun and fatima find their happy ending. fatima had spoken to her parents and while they took some time to warm up to kun, his soft demeanor and the way that he loved fatima so completely and sincerely eventually won them over. fatima even met kun's parents with equal success, although kun's mother kept asking when fatima and kun would get married.

(their wedding was already in the works by both fatima's mother and kun's mother. you were beyond elated to go to both the traditional muslim ceremony and the traditional chinese ceremonies.)

johnny and sia ended up going out on a couple more dates before realizing that they probably just weren't meant to be a couple. they loved each other as friends and were probably always going to hold a special place in each other's lives but it just wouldn't be as each other's significant others. johnny was already starting to retreat from the frat boy lifestyle after meeting a girl at the library one day. and sia had finally met someone who could handle her crazy personality with a sweet smile, bringing her back down to reality whenever she went a little...too lively. you're looking forward to meeting him over summer, where the four of you and your friends were going on a vacation together.

roseanne, yugyeom, and miyeon still haven't put a label on their relationship. but you've caught roseanne falling asleep in yugyeom's arms more than once (one too many times than rosie cares to admit) so you figure that it's a good thing that they've all found each other. as unconventional as their relationship might be, they all mesh together so well that you can't even find it in yourself to question it. all's fair in love and war.

jaehyun and you frequent the diner as a favorite date night spot to visit, although you're upset to hear that they're remodeling the entire establishment for favor of a new, more 'modern' atmosphere. although how modern a diner could get was a little bit of a strange notion. but as people change, so do the winds.

and when you walk into the diner the next semester, hand in hand with jaehyun, you're a little comforted to see that diner is now a speakeasy (in true 1970s fashion) with three words written in blinding rhinestones against the velvet background. of course.

ric flair drip.

#jnnul #nct fic #jaehyun fic #jaehyun fluff #nct fluff #jaehyun smut #nct smut #nct 127 fic #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 angst #jaehyun angst #nct angst #nct x reader #jaehyun x reader #nct 127 x reader #jaehyun imagines #nct imagines

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sincerlycas · 1 year

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handle that.

summary: plug eren takes his girl out to the mall after working overtime for the past days but gets into a run in and y/n gets the repercussions.

warning: plug eren, bad bitch y/n, black y/n, drugs, gun, toys, backseat sex, slight rough sex, full nelson, mature scenes, etc.

don’t forget to dm me for commissions <3

see one thing eren hated more than anything was being away from his girl for too long. it’s not like he wanted to be away from his favorite lady but he has a job and it’s a supply and demand thing. driving towards your apartment eren thought of what he should get you as an apology. not only was he not able to be with you but he was also ignoring your texts.

he was being bombarded with texts from clients and suppliers that he really couldn’t even sit for a second to send you a simple hey. but not today, today he was going to hang out and spoil his girl no matter what.

“hey mamas give me a kiss” leaning forward to give him a quick peck after seating in the passenger seat the turning your body away from him while fixing your skirt. “really y/n?” gripping your face eren turned you to look at him in the eyes. “mamas you know I’ve been working overtime there’s no need to act like this.” rolling your eyes you moved his hand off your face and looked out the window. “so busy you can’t even text a bitch ‘good morning’ ‘how are you’ ‘i love you’ or a simple ‘I won’t be able to text much I’m working overtime’ ?!” turning your head to look at him with a mean mug. you knew he was working so he could be able to spoil you like he always has but you still wanted his attention is that so hard?!

“y/n now you’re acting like a brat because you know damn well I didn’t have the time too so shut this shit down right now before you have sum coming for you. and put on the damn seatbelt imma take you shopping.” starting the car eren shook his head knowing you had every right to act how you acted but he wasn’t putting up with it today. biting your lip you grabbed the seatbelt and buckled up listening to him because quite frankly you loved when he spoke like that.

feeling a hand on your thigh you turn to look down at see eren rubbing between your thighs comfortably. rubbing his hands you look at the tattoos he had on them one specifically being a red inked tattoo of your birthdate located on his middle finger which was sporting your guys matching promise rings. “mamas you know id never deliberately ignore you.” stopping the car in the mall parking lot eren turned to rub the side of your face with his thumb while his hand rubbed the back of your neck.

“mhm” nodding your head you rubbed his arm as you leaned forward over the console and gave him the kiss he wanted. “atta girl” slapping your ass eren pulled back from the kiss and got out the car and helped you out and walked into the mall hand in hand with you.

“where to next ma?” holding bags from Chanel to Gucci eren carried them as he followed you mindlessly to each store you wanted to go to. “hmm how bout Sephora?” turning around to face him catching him staring at your ass you laughed. “nigga are you even listening to me?” looking up at you eren let out a hm? which told you your answer. “I said let’s go Sephora pa” hooking your arm with his you leaned your head on his shoulder as y’all continued walking with each other.

“y/n?! that you?!” turning around to see who called you and spot it was one of the guys you used to hang with but dropped him since he was acting weird. “oh hey jay” waving hi at him then turned on your heel to walk away but was interrupted by Jay stopping you and asking for a hug. you didn’t think nothing of it because you guys did used to hang with each other. giving him a hug as he asked but then you felt a large slap on your ass and two hands gripping it. “damn your ass still fat like I remembered”.

before you could let a word out eren punched the guy right in the face while you were still hugging him causing the guy to fall back while letting you tumble to the side. “eren- .” trying to stop eren by grabbing his shirt to which he moved you aside and grabbed ol boy and slammed him on the wall. “who tf you think you touchin like that huh?” landing another blow to his face eren gripped Jay by the collar not letting up. “m-my bad man I ain’t know” “you ain’t know? you didn’t see her holding onto me the whole time or what?” eren pressed the guy harder into the wall causing any bystanders to be blinded from what he was finna do.

pressing the cold gun against the guy’s abdomen eren looked at him straight in the eye “you gone apologize to her then you gone get tf on and speak nothin of this igh?” nodding frantically Jay moved aside and went to apologize to you then jogged off.

shocked you looked at eren who was grabbing your bags then went and grabbed your hand as well exiting the mall with you and making you guys hop back in the car.

starting the car eren stayed silent while you tried to process what happened. “eren wtf is your issue, I know what that guy did was wrong but you shouldn’t have caused a major scene like that if you were there for a second later you could’ve gotten arrested-“

“y/n does it look like I give a fuck about that shit right now?”

jerking your head back at his words you pushed the side of his head not giving a fuck if he was driving. “nigga remember who the fuck you talking to cuz I’m not the one remember that.” automatically after saying that eren swerved the car around and headed towards a empty parking lot nearby the house and parked. “get in the back y/n.” eren unbuckled his seatbelt and turned towards you waiting for you to talk back to him again, to which you did.

“ion even know why you’re acting like this bruh you’re trippin” rolling your eyes you sat down still. “y/n another man just slapped your ass but I’m supposed to be akeke ajaja? fuck no, let alone the fact you literally hugged his ass knowing why the hell you dropped him in the first place. you’re not fucking innocent so stop fucking playing with and get your ass in the fucking back !!”

staring at eren you saw how angry he seemed and decided to let him win this time because you knew If you kept trying him it would just get worse. “mmcht” sucking your teeth at him you took off your heels and moved into the back. while sitting down with your arms crossed, you stared at eren through the car mirror to which he looked back while lighting a blunt and began speaking while staying in his spot in the drivers seat. “mamas- I buy you shoes, dresses, jewelry, I pay for your nails and hair, I fuck you good, I cater you with everything and all I ask is for you to listen to me without running that spoiled ass mouth of yours and you can’t even do that” taking a inhale from the blunt while leaning his head back.

“that’s fine because that ends today imma teach yo ass a lil sum.”

that lil sum he was referring to was making you go through misery. “keep them legs spread or imma make hold your nut.” currently you were ridded from your skirt and your back leaning against the car door with your legs spread wide and cunt on display. “fuckkk~ eren please~” eren held a black bullet vibrator to your clit on the highest setting while scissoring your hole with two fingers. “please nothing shut that shit up” closing your thighs on his hand while closing your eyes and arching your back off the door shaking from cumming again. “y/n.. I know you didn’t cum without my permission, I’m seeing things right?” slamming your legs back open eren looked down to see you leaking.

“your spoiled slutty ass don’t listen for shit- now look you’re ruining my seats !” taking his fingers out your cunt and sliding them into his mouth while looking at you “you lucky you taste good.” whining you feel eren slide in slowly while putting one of your legs on his shoulder. “f-fuck~ pull some out renn~” pushing his stomach with your hand you teared up from how much pressure was being put on your g-spot and right after your orgasm. “move your hand move your mf hand.” slapping your hand from his stomach and dragging you to lay fully on the seat he wasted no time and thrusting into you harshly while holding onto one of your tits.

“e-erennn~!! give my pussy a breakk~” moaning loudly into his ear as he laid on top of you gripping the car door behind you pounding down into your hole with no chance of slowing down. “don’t act like you can’t take dick mamas, I’ve trained this pussy more than enough for you to be acting like you can’t , so you can stop acting up and take daddy’s dick?” biting your lip while wrapping your legs around him and nodding your head yes.

smiling down at you eren fixed your hair to move it away from you face and kissed you and sucked on your bottom lip “you’re so gorgeous mamas especially when you spread out for me like this.” kissing the side of your face eren leaned up off you and bringing both your legs to rest on one shoulder and started hitting deeper than before while pinching at your clit and occasionally adding the vibrator onto it.

“ohh shittt~!! eren n-no more~!! I can’t take it anymore~” pushing against his chest while squirting up onto his stomach and your thighs. laying there huffing and puffing eren watched as your eyes rolled in the back of your head while you squirted and smiled.

“alright I’ll give you a break ma, but when we get to that house you better be ready”.

fixing his clothes before he got out the car eren made it back to the driver seat but not before he shoved another vibrator into you and tied your hands together with his belt to prevent you from taking it out. the whole ride home all eren heard was muffles of his name and moans and those sounds were better than any song being played in the radio.

upon arriving to the house eren covered you with a blanket and took you out the car and carried you to the room. “t-t-take it out~” laying down on the bed naked and legs spread wide open with the vibrator still buzzing inside you. “why should I? I’m still not done punishing you because I know right after this is over you’re gonna still act like a spoiled bitch.” squeezing at your thighs eren leaned over you and took the belt off you hands and sucked at you nipples. “I p-promise I won’t, I’ll be good~”

chuckling at your words eren licked his lips and tugged at your nipple. “you’ll be good mamas?” “I’ll be good daddy” “that’s nice to hear ma but imma still fuck this pussy of yours up.”

biting your lip and tearing up knowing your pussy is going to be domestically abused.

today eren was feeling a little different so while putting the lit blunt back between his lips he put you in a full nelson and started fucking up into you with no mercy ! “o-o-omggg~!! why are you fucking me like thisss~!!” arching your back off him you squirted yet again while shaking on him. reaching his hand in front of you he quickly rubbed your clit in harsh circles to prolong your orgasm. “don’t act like you don’t know why- fuckkk~ I’m cumming~” gripping onto your neck and jackhammering up into your cunt eren cummed inside then calmed down after. taking the blunt of his mouth and blowing the smoke into your face eren spoke “you gone behave now?” nodding frantically not wanting to continue with your pussy being sore.

“that’s what I thought, try me again and imma handle that.”

commission for: @spaceforher

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nerdgirlnarrates · 3 months

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Even though it's been months since I switched from neurosurgery to internal medicine, I still have a hard time not being angry about the training culture and particularly the sexism of neurosurgery. It wasn't the whole reason I switched, but truthfully it was a significant part of my decision.

I quickly got worn out by constantly being questioned over my family plans. Within minutes of meeting me, attendings and residents felt comfortable lecturing me on the difficulties of having children as a neurosurgeon. One attending even suggested I should ask my co-residents' permission before getting pregnant so as not to inconvenience them. I do not have children and have never indicated if I plan to have any. Truthfully, I do want children, but I would absolutely have foregone that to be a neurosurgeon. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon more than anything. But I was never asked: it was simply assumed that I would want to be a mother first. Purely because I'm a woman, my ambitions were constantly undermined, assumed to be lesser than those of my male peers. Women must want families, therefore women must be less committed. It was inconceivable that I might put my career first. It was impossible to disprove this assumption: what could I have done to demonstrate my commitment more than what I had already done by leading the interest group, taking a research year, doing a sub-I? My interest in neurosurgery would never be viewed the same way my male peers' was, no matter what I did. I would never be viewed as a neurosurgeon in the same way my male peers would be, because I, first and foremost, would be a mother. It turns out women don't even need to have children to be a mother: it is what you essentially are. You can't be allowed to pursue things that might interfere with your potential motherhood.

Furthermore, you are not trusted to know your own ambitions or what might interfere with your motherhood. I am an adult woman who has gone to medical school: I am well aware of what is required in reproduction, pregnancy, and residency, as much as one can be without experiencing it firsthand. And yet, it was always assumed that I had somehow shown up to a neurosurgery sub-I totally ignorant of the demands of the career and of pregnancy. I needed to be enlightened: always by men, often by childless men. Apparently, it was implausible that I could evaluate the situation on my own and come to a decision. I also couldn't be trusted to know what I wanted: if I said I wanted to be a neurosurgeon more than a mother, I was immediately reassured I could still have a family (an interesting flip from the dire warnings issued not five minutes earlier in the conversation). People could not understand my point, which was that I didn't care. I couldn't mean that, because women are fundamentally mothers. I needed to be guided back to my true role.

Because everyone was so confident in their sexist assumptions that I was less committed, I was not offered the same training, guidance, or opportunities as the men. I didn't have projects thrown my way, I didn't get check-ins or advice on my application process, I didn't get opportunities in the OR that my male peers got, I didn't get taught. I once went two whole days on my sub-I without anyone saying a word to me. I would come to work, avoid the senior resident I was warned hated trainees, figure out which OR to go to on my own, scrub in, watch a surgery in complete silence without even the opportunity to cut a knot, then move to the next surgery. How could I possibly become a surgeon in that environment? And this is all to say nothing of the rape jokes, the advice that the best way for a woman to match is to be as hot as possible, listening to my attending advise the male med students on how to get laid, etc.

At a certain point, it became clear it would be incredibly difficult for me to become a neurosurgeon. I wouldn't get research or leadership opportunities, I wouldn't get teaching or feedback, I wouldn't get mentorship, and I wouldn't get respect. I would have to fight tooth and nail for every single piece of my training, and the prospect was just exhausting. Especially when I also really enjoyed internal medicine, where absolutely none of this was happening and I even had attendings telling me I would be good at it (something that didn't happen in neurosurgery until I quit).

I've been told I should get over this, but I don't know how to. I don't know how to stop being mad about how thoroughly sidelined I was for being female. I don't know how to stop being bitter that my intelligence, commitment, and work ethic meant so much less because I'm a woman. I know I made the right decision to switch to internal medicine, and it probably would have been the right decision even if there weren't all these issues with the culture of neurosurgery, but I'm still so angry about how it happened.

#I would love to do something about this but I have no idea how to #even the faculty that I do really admire and respect seem entrenched in some of these attitudes #it's really hard to convince people that women aren't traitors in the making #simply because we might get pregnant one day and need time off #oh I also heard people shittalking a resident that was on maternity leave #and saying she wasn't serious about neurosurgery #so it's just inevitable #I'm not the only female student that feels this way btw #there's a reason no women have applied to nsgy from my school in years #sexism #neurosurgery #surgery #medicine #medical school #med school #med student #medblr #my content #my text posts

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blughxreader · 9 months

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building off of this platonic yandere batfam headcanon where they're slaves to your moods and whims...

I also kind of enjoy the idea of batfam revering and fearing batsib. Not enough to lesson their control over you (or back off their affection in any way), but they want your love so badly / think you're a jewel among rubble / cling to your every thought... I can see them freezing up when they know they're about to make you mad, or when you give your opinion.

Tim's like, "*shaky sigh* hi... we need to upgrade the tracking chip in your neck :) itwasbruce'sidea." (his idea actually)

or they know your triggers by heart (mentioning your past family, your aspirations of travel, lost career goals, etc) and immediate silence falls over them as they wait for your reaction.

This works especially well for Darlings that withdraw into themselves. It's impossible to NEVER give a single opinion or extra explanation, so on the rare occasion when you divulge something about yourself, they're like oh god its happening JOT THAT DOWN

Dick is good at talking around your pointed silence, even if he gets nervous under your glare. He has stars in his eyes when you finally engage with him, even if it's only a sentence more than your usual "yes/no" responses.

Dick is unpredictable too because you never know where his limit is. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine, then he comes back from patrol with broken knuckles and the scariest look on his face because he couldn't take the stress anymore. The only one in the house who will match your anger (rarely happens, though), and he apologizes through actions, not words.

Jason, who always has some shitty remark to make, finds himself at a loss for words when you're not talking. You two sit with your arms crossed in silence and look sour for two hours, then he walks away thinking it was a relatively good visit.

He gets overwhelmed the easiest when you're mad. When you're in a bad mood, very slight disturbance in the house sets him off and he needs the rest of the day to cool off.

Tim has no clue how to handle you. He doesn't fit the reliable older brother role and he can't fool anyone with the doe-eyed baby brother act, so I think he'd take the "best friend sibling" approach.

He's always trying new ways to curry your favor, despite it occasionally pissing you off from how obvious his attempts are. Tim's the least likely to be deterred by your rejection, despite how deeply it hurts. He sulks in the shower for an hour then gets out to cause problems only he can solve.

Kind of like how Damian absorbed Dick and Bruce's moral code because it fit his end goal of being Batman, I feel he would do the same to you but for slightly different reasons.

Damian walks around like your mirror. He unconsciously mimics everything you do, absorbing your behaviors and speech like a sponge. An outsider wouldn't be able to see past his trained neutral expression, but on the inside he thinks you're so cool.

He also copies you as a coping mech in order to limit upsetting you, and gets VERY embarrassed when he says something that contradicts your feelings.

Bruce, ever the scapegoat, has resigned himself to the brunt of your anger. He can't weasel his way into your heart like the boys can, so he's the most transparent about his bonding efforts. His gifts and attention are steady and unrelenting, no matter the response.

I think he's the sweetest... He's definitely the best listener in the house, and genuinely wants nothing more than for you to be safe and happy. Yes he wants you to accept the child/sibling role, but he won't manipulate you to get there (unlike some of the boys). Your anger gives him stress, but he takes it in stride.

for more yandere batfam content, visit my masterlist!

#platonic yandere batfam #platonic yandere #yandere batfam #yandere dc #yandere batman #yandere x reader #yandere damian wayne #yandere bruce wayne #yandere dick grayson #yandere jason todd #yandere tim drake #platonic yandere dc #yandere headcanons #yandere imagine

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halcyone-of-the-sea · 3 months

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CAT-EYES

PAIRING: Runaway Groom!John 'Soap' MacTavish x F!Thief!Reader

SYNOPSIS: What begins as a normal day of stalking the back road for wealthy carriages, turns into a walking nightmare spanning three days. Who is this finely-dressed man stumbling about your woods?

WORDCOUNT: 13.3k

WARNINGS: Blood, injury, light gore, pining, intense banter, sarcasm, insults, kind of enemies-to-lovers but eh, angst, protective!John, light hurt/comfort, bittersweet?, etc.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

You were sitting in the branches again.

Lightly swinging your legs from over the sides, the rough bark at your spine shifted as you let out a tiny sigh into the chilled air. In your ears, you’re hearing the bugs fly past, and the large hart about fifteen feet away pushing through the undergrowth—built body just barely there as the puff of his hot breath wafts upwards.

Twirling the arrow between your fingers, your bow sitting carefully in your lap, you close your eyes and listen.

The years had come and gone and yet you remained here in this small corner of nowhere—resting in this old gnarled oak tree with its branches and leaves giving protection from the elements when nothing else would. Sure, you had a small home to call your own in these very woods, but your windows didn’t give a view of the back road to the East. Barely anyone took it now, and you think you’re partially to blame for it, but, well, perhaps those pesky nobles shouldn’t have been too prone to flashing their coin.

So it was their fault, and on your failing honor, the money always went to a good cause anyway. Who wouldn’t want a poor woman to eat?

But, no. There are rules that every thief follows, no matter how unsavory. You never killed anyone; you never harmed them, either. Just the money—a brandished dagger or an arrow to the side of a carriage wouldn’t hurt anything besides pride, and many of those you stole from had enough to last them multiple lifetimes.

“Greedy fellows,” you sigh under your breath before you stretch like a cat, arching your spine and spreading your arms high above your head. The few rays of sun you get through the leaves dance across your face, but still, the thick layer of cold air is present all around.

Shuffling a bit in your shoulder-wrapping, you yawn and fall back once more—licking your lips and thinking of warm stew and fresh bread from the inn down in the town. Shivering, your fingers move to play with your bow, tapping along the bend of wood as the trees are brushed by a soft breeze. The hart below huffs louder still—hooves crushing across the fallen twigs, and you think it’s a bit strange the thing is still here despite your scent clearly in the air, but your eyes are more focused on the road than an animal.

Until it speaks.

“Hells fuckin’ bells, this damn get-up is going to be the death of me,” the words are barked out quickly—laced with heated anger as a branch is slapped by heavy hands.

Startling, your head snaps below you rapidly; heart jerking inside of your chest so suddenly that you nearly send yourself off the side of your perch. Scrambling for your bow to make sure it doesn’t clatter to the dirt of the Earth, you force down a loud gasp at what you see.

“Bastard things,” meets your ears as you stare open-eyed at a bulky man as he stumbles out into the small clearing below your tree, looking behind him as he pants. Your jaw goes slack at the extravagant apparel clothing this sudden stranger—a red, black, and blue tartan thrown over his shoulder, pinned with the silver image of a great boar head, and the kilt has more than one bramble stuck into it as it swishes with his turn.

He has a sporran as well, made of dark furs with three tassels hanging, the metal also silver, as your experienced eyes can tell as they narrow in confusion.

“What in the hell…” You breathe quietly, leaning just a bit more over the edge of your branch slowly.

There were black belts and buckles, rich shoes of leather, and your gaze slowly drags to the hanging body of a sword strapped to his waist, swinging as the man rests his feet and looks down at himself with a deep annoyance. There wasn’t an inch of him not coated in dirt, mud, or sweat—all that deer-ish panting and huffing escaping his mouth in condensed clouds.

“Fuckin’,” he stops himself from continuing the curse, holding up his hands as he glares down at his form. “Jesus, this’ll never come out at this rate.”

This comment made your lips twitch, eyebrow-raising as your sharp vision filtered from one detail to the next—learning the brown shade of his cut hair and the strange way it’s kept long down the center, and short along the sides. He had a strong build to him, and the boar broach, while it may be something to distinguish a family line as he seemed wealthy, perfectly reflected the individual.

He was a being of muscle and stubborn willpower. All tusk and bristled fur.

Your eyes linger a bit longer on the silver of that broach—the thing that glints in the light alluringly. You hum under your breath, tilting your head softly. Yet, your impression was made, and your wits are about you as sharply as they always had been.

This was a formal outfit, for a formal occasion. So, why was this important man trampling through the woods where you were set to ambush the next unassuming noble on the road? Why was he looking over his shoulder so tense-like? Your curiosity had piqued the second you’d figured out the rabid crunching from the bushes wasn’t a deer but instead, a wealthy-looking man who wasn’t, you admitted, too hard on the eyes.

Blinking, you smile, fingers twitching over your bow as the stranger brushes his vest rapidly, growling down at the large mud stains.

“Lost, then?” Your voice makes him startle, skull whipping forward to the tree trunk until you whistle and lean forward; moving your bow to push away the cover of leaves. “Up here, now,” blue eyes immediately lock with yours and you hum, chuckling, at the moment of shock that shines through. “Poor bastard, look at you and all that mud. You’ve been through hell, mate, eh? By the state of you, I’d say you fought a bear and found yourself at the end of an unfortunate outcome.”

Your words are smooth—nearly sly just as they always are. There’s intent leaking out of every one of them until all that remains is a layered purpose, like that of a butcher peeling away flesh from a hide. You have to process that skin: lay it to a rack to let it dry before it can be stretched to the desired firmness, and, finally, softened.

You took as much pleasure in the mental hunt as you did the payoff. Where there’s money to be earned, there’s also knowledge—you were a thief of all.

The man watches you with wide eyes, those blues glinting as they blink, glancing around rapidly to check for any others like you that may be hiding. He steps back, a hand brushing his sword, and you think to yourself slowly, he’s smart.

You breathe down chilled air. Before he responds he checks to make sure it’s not an ambush—the man understands he’s out of his element here. He’s on edge.

The both of you stare at one another, before your face shifts, brow-raising up on your forehead.

“What, did I startle you?” Legs looping to hang off the same side, your body feels lighter than a feather as you send yourself over the edge, knees taking the brunt of the force as your head catches up to your stomach—grunting as you hold your bow heavily in one hand. The jostle moves the limbs of your arrows, kept in a quiver at the small of your back.

Standing fully, you huff and set an easy smile to your lips, all teeth.

“My apologies, Lord.” Your free hand finds your heart, and you bend your spine forward. “I couldn’t help but see you down here below my tree.”

“Best to stay where you are,” the stranger grunts, only giving you enough of a glance to deem you unthreatening, apparently. Your form straightened. He watches you warily on the next go-around, attention always drifting to every snap of a twig off into the trees or the breeze shifting the leaves. “No need to apologize,” is the hurried reply, caught on a rough accent and a hissed gravel huff. “I’ll be on my way once I get my bearings. I don’t have time for conversation—and you should find your way home before long.” Eyes dart. “It isn’t good to be out today...or tonight, I’d say.”

If possible, your intrigue gains strength like a saint in Heaven.

The man’s square face raves in a clench of his jaw, tongue darting out to wet his lips.

“Are you sure you’re not lost, Lord?” You continue, undeterred, and shift your bow to sling it over your shoulder. “I live in these woods, I’d have no trouble directing you to the road. It isn’t far.”

“It’s John,” he grunts, glancing over, out of sorts. He was tired—his limbs were shaking with exertion even if he didn’t realize it yet. You think that perhaps if he were more focused, he’d ask why a woman had just landed in front of him from the branch of an Oak; dressed in trousers and a tunic, with just a woolen wrap to keep out the chill. Dirt over her face and a cunning edge to her words. Or, maybe he did know, you wondered, and simply didn’t care at the moment.

“Just call me Johnny. And,” he shakes his head firmly. “No. Go home to your husband, Bonnie, this doesn’t involve you.” He blinks, staring with a line across his forehead, stubble pulling along his cheeks. “I know this place—there’s a road just to the…” he turns his head to the direction of your trail, blinking at the coverage of thick foliage. “Fuck,” the dark-haired stranger growls, blues sparking up in a feral display of desperate weight.

You can only see the winding bends if you have a vantage point—that was why you chose your tree in the first place. Your smile grows.

“It’s that way, Lord,” you breathe, pointing in the opposite direction of the road, back to the small path of brambles and bushes that leads closer to your home instead. “We pass my property on the way, I can offer you some drink for your troubles.” A chuckle wafts the air. “You look like you need it.”

There’s a large moment of hesitation, in which you begin to wonder if this prize might be too big to catch, but, then, as there’s a flash of something over John’s face, he grits his teeth and sighs.

“Aye, fine,” he nods, looking to the side as he lowers his tense shoulders and clears his throat. You’re offered a sincere expression that borders on strained guilt. “Thank you, Dearie. I…” John pauses, frowning. “I hope I didn’t scare you too much when I burst through the trees like that—I’m in a bit of a rush if you can’t tell. I need to make for the shore.”

“My,” you huff, shifting your body and motioning him to follow—he does, setting his feet carefully ahead of him with experienced movements; keeping a respectable distance away. Johnny wasn’t new to the woods, then. He knew where to place his feet, at the very least. “The shore? That sounds exciting.” You conclude, hiding your creased brows as you stare forward. “Making for the South? I’ve heard handfuls are leaving for the weather.”

Looking over your shoulder, you make sure he keeps on your trail as you push through the bushes. “More agreeable, they say. Less rain.”

John chuckles, though he’s still visibly aware of everything around him. He spares you a look, a small smirk taking over his slightly chapped lips. “Keep talkin’ like that, and I just might.”

You’re surprised by the genuine laugh that fights in the back of your throat. Humming under your breath, you shrug it off as simply as a dog does a fly. It was painfully obvious neither of you trusted the other.

John’s eyes were stuck on the back of your head, and yours were eager to slide back to his form on the off-chance you had to use the dagger strapped to the meat of your thigh, carefully hidden under your trousers and accessible via a cut in your pocket. He was all muscle, and already you know that any attack coming to you would be unwise to try and retaliate—slash and retreat was a much better escape plan.

You could outrun him.

“So,” your words bleed curiosity, eyes imploring as you glance over your shoulder. “Why are you out in the woods, Johnny? In such a nice outfit as well. Is there something going on around here?”

The dark-haired man tilts his head your way, sighing long. “A wedding, actually. Horrible thing, if I have to comment on it.”

Your lips twitch.

“Oh, aye. I’d heard about it in town not two days ago—something about a marriage of advantage? Who was the unlucky pair, then?”

John clenched his jaw, hand coming up to push at the smear of dried blood on his cheek, which you’d just noticed wasn’t dirt and instead the result of a branch slap. Pale cheeks were wind-bitten. Lungs heavy. You narrow your gaze before stopping the surge of questions in your mouth.

“Some poor bastard, that’s who,” he responds slowly, mostly under his breath, before blinking. “How much further is the road, Dearie? No offense,” he grunts, staring seriously at you “but I'd rather not be here for much longer.”

The boar broach winks at you.

“Not far,” you smile coyly. “Forgive me, Lord John—”

“Just Johnny—”

“—But I do hope you’re not a fugitive.”

Blue eyes widen, sure feet faltering.

“.... Negative, Bonnie, no, I’m not running from the law. You don’t have to worry about any of that with me,” he breathes, and not once does he look away from you. You have to commend the man, he seemed an honest fellow, and those, you knew, were very rare indeed in your time. “I just need to get out of these woods. You’ll never hear from me again after I’m gone.” He takes a breath, looking past you. “You have my word.”

“Is it worth believing?” You push, smirking. “There’s few dressed like you that I can say it is.”

John licks his lips as you both pass a fallen tree, standing more side by side than previously now that the density of bushes had dispersed. He huffs, sending you a side-eye before he seems to study your face, brows pulling jokingly.

“I don’t think my answer would make much of a difference, would it?”

You pause, enjoying this man’s company more by the second. “No, it wouldn’t.” The both of you stare, before you grin and pull your sharp gaze away, chuckling. “Follow me,” you motion a hand. “Before you fall into a mud pit and completely ruin what little is left of your outfit that’s sellable—” You fumble, faking a cough as you clear your throat and finish off with tension now in your spine, “Salvageable.”

“If I’m bein’ honest, Bonnie,” Johnny grumbles, either not noticing the mistake or simply not registering it. “I wouldn’t fuckin’ care if it got covered in horse shit.”

—

You open the door to your home, shifting out of your bow and setting it against the wall with your quiver following to rest beside it as two siblings should.

“You’re lucky,” you hum, “I just went to the well this morning—freshwater is in the basin, cups on the table.”

John’s eyes give a firm once-over, fingers fidgeting above his sword’s hilt. He nods once, moving into the doorway, and immediately goes to where you describe and grabs onto a carved cup, tilting it in his hands.

“Thank you,” he mutters sincerely, hand dipping into the collection of water. “Eh,” John puffs a laugh, “I’d imagine I would still be stumbling along if it wasn’t for you, little Lady. These woods are larger than I remember them.”

“You come from around here?” You ask, brushing down your wool wrapping as you pull at the burs in the fiber. “Don’t recall your face in the town, though I’m not there often.”

“Hm,” he takes down the water, and you watch his Adam’s Apple bob as droplets slip from his lips to drop off his chin. Once he had drunk the entire cup, he removed it and wiped at his mouth with his forearm, blue eyes peeking above it. “I…wasn’t in town usually. Not really my place—the forests outside of my property took most of my attention.” He confesses, head tilting as the strange cut of his hair flops along with his skull. “Those, I could run blind.”

“I’m sure,” you puff a laugh.

While the air was somewhat calm, there was still an underlying hesitancy: Johnny didn’t know who you were, and you didn’t know what he was running from. Both were important questions that needed to be answered. Yet, John seemed the casual type.

“Doubt me?” His eyes narrow, a smile brewing.

“I never said that,” you walk past him, also grabbing a cup before dipping it into the basin. Your finger points. “But it would be interesting to test.”

“Unfortunately,” John breathes, setting down his cup, “I’m occupied at the moment.”

“A groom would be,” you tilt your head, casually sipping at your drink. “Your wife must be fucking fuming right now.”

The room flips on itself, and the man is instantly frozen.

Johnny stares, shocked, and you see his feet instinctually ready a stance to either blot to the door, or to take up his sword. His expression is layered with secrecy.

“...What was that?”

“I said your wife must be fucking fuming,” you say louder, slipping your hand into your pocket and shrugging to make it seem meaningless—your dagger’s hilt is smooth under your flesh. “Or did you not finish the ceremony? Betrothed, then, Johnny Boy?” Your eyes glint. “Hell, the event must have been absolutely laced with wealth. Did you have wine imported? New fabrics for your wedding clothes? I’d almost be disappointed if you didn’t.”

“That’s none of your business, Dearie,” he levels, glare heavy and firm while his face is stoic. You can clearly see his body wound up like a wild dog. “I think we’re done here.”

He backs up quickly, legs taking him to the exit until you’re suddenly right behind him, and the man feels the sharp press of a blade into the back of his spine.

Your lips are at his ear, and you chuckle. “Sorry, but we’re not done until anything valuable is in my hands and not on your body.”

“If you wanted me naked,” he growls, glaring from over his shoulder, as his form is rod-straight. “You could have just asked, Little Thief.”

“I’d call it heavy persuasion,” you chuff. “Sounds better, don’t you think.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Johnny barks, teeth gnashing. “Put the knife down before this gets ugly.”

“I’m not entirely sure I want to,” your answer meets the air. “There’s enough silver and fine fabric on you to feed me for an entire winter, even when the deer move to better grounds.”

John grits his molars, his neck bent as his fingers twitch at his sides, slipping along to his sword slowly.

“Money? That’s why you’ve got a bloody blade on me? Christ, my day just keeps getting better and better.” You glare, anger moving behind your eyes.

“Some people have to work for what they want, you—” Your hand is slapped to the side as John spins, and your dagger is sent along the floor in a loud clatter; a hand finding your upper arm as you gasp, and, suddenly, there’s the chilled edge of a blade at your throat.

Wide-eyed, you gape at John as the man smirks at you, yet his orbs are infected with annoyance.

“When you draw a knife on someone, you best know how to use it.” The edge is slightly pressed deeper and your body refuses to move. “You put it at the neck, Cat-Eyes.” John frowns, glaring. “Knew there was something about you—down to the bow and arrows.”

“What,” you growl out, a low embarrassment stemming in your gut as John’s puffs of breath move along your face. Your face burns, and your fingers jerk with anger. “A woman can’t have hobbies?”

“Not when I find ‘em up trees waiting to ambush any bastard that comes by wearing silver.”

“Mate,” you sneer, eyes glimmering. “At this point, you can keep your damn silver. It’s more of a reward to watch you stumble like a fool through the woods five feet from the road.” Johnny’s face tightens, yet there’s little time to fight like children anymore when the sound of breaking branches is echoing off the windows of the house.

Both of your necks whip to the door, yours a great deal more carefully as you’re slightly nicked by the sword's edge, but the drip of blood is voided. High voices carry over the air.

“Find him!”

“His tracks lead through here—get the hounds on it!”

“Here!”

Your brow raises, smirk getting larger as you chuckle under your breath. “Better get on your way quickly, then.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Johnny snarls, all at once ripping his sword from your neck yet keeping his ruthless grip on your upper arm. He looks nervous now—his eyes jumping from one place to another, thinking. “Where’s the damn road, you minx.”

You shrug, eyes sharp. “What road, Lord?”

The strong man rages, eyes burning with a thousand suns as the sword is taken from your neck and re-sheathed in one motion—a second hand staples itself to your waist, gripping tightly. You blink, saliva swallowed down thickly at the dig of heavy fingers into flesh as your heart stutters.

“You’re going to tell me,” John levels, shifting the both of you back as the sounds of fast footsteps are echoed by the bay of dogs. “As much as I would enjoy being away from you in any capacity at all,” you smile humorously to him through his dead-tone monologue, “I need a guide out of these woods and across the land. If you won’t help willingly, I’ll just have to make do.”

You blink, confused.

“Make do?” Your body is taken up, and you shout as you’re ruthlessly flung over the man’s shoulder with a hiked toss.

Johnny’s smirk is lost to you, but his chuckle is not as he dashes to the door and slams it open, taking a quick left and looping the house—diving into the foliage as if a fish to water. “Unhand me, you brute!” You scream, clawing and hitting at the man’s back—kicking even, as your knee speedily finds his ribcage. “Ow!” John laughs, his grin highly amused as he turns back to look at you. The shouts from the trees get larger, but that doesn’t help you much as you’re both soon going deeper and deeper into the woods. “Jesus, you have a pair of legs, don’t you?”

“If I were marrying you,” you bark down at him, struggling with all of your might as your home disappears from view. “I’d be running instead of the other way around!”

“Well,” Johnny calls, his sword bouncing off of his hip. “It’s a good thing you’re not, then, isn’t it, you bonnie little thief? Your husband would be dead and all of his coin in your dirty pockets!”

“Stop calling me a thief!” You send a closed-fisted slap to the top of his head, and he grunts, balking to the side. “Learn how to handle a fucking lady!”

“Lady?” He breathes heavily, shoving into another bush as leaves get tangled in his hair—twigs stuck in yours as you scowl rabidly. “If you’re a lady, Bonnie, then I’ve got a beast waiting for me back at my ceremony.”

—

He stopped when the light of the sun was low, and your constant attack of his spine left an array of large, fist-shaped bruises on his skin.

“Easy,” John grunts, dropping you with a huff to a down-turned stump.

It isn’t long before you shoot back up, hands clawing for his throat. “Hells Bells!” The man ducks, boyish glint in his eyes as he darts to the side, stepping out of the way as you stumble on tingly legs.

“I’m going to skin you alive,” you yell. “Piece of utter dog shite!”

“Now that’s a bit strong,” John breathes, panting from his mad run for his single life. “Don’t you think?”

You take one step forward, and he takes two back—stuck in a game of cat and mouse. Your eyes are like tiny fires, illuminated with only anger and hatred.

“Give me one reason why I should even attempt to help you,” your screams rise above the trees, hands splayed as John puts his hands to his knees, taking down breaths as sweat dribbles down his neck into his vest. “You-you,” your tongue fumbles, “kidnapper!”

“Technically, it would be an abduction, Dearie.” You slap him across the face and see the man’s cheeks go red from the blow. Shoving your nose nearly right into his, you sneer.

“Correct me again, and it’ll be your balls I hit next.”

He swallows, blinking, before he smirks and pairs it with a chuckle as his eyes spark. “Yes, Ma’am.”

You growl as he holds up his hands, moving one to rub at the back of his neck and itch at the shaved portion of his scalp. That damned smirk—you despised it.

“Get me to the closest port,” John settles, getting to business as his expression mellows out. “And I’ll make it worth your while, I give you my word.”

“What?” You laugh, shaking your head in exasperation the longer the silence falls; realizing how serious the man is. “Oh God in Heaven, this has to be a joke.”

“Anything you ask for, you can have from me when this is over,” he sighs, crossing his arms over his chest and shifting his mud-caked shoes. “I don’t need more than the fee to secure a spot on a good ship sailing away from here, and whatever is left I’ll give to you if you want it. You win in this situation, and I’m not trying to hide it from you.”

Your sharp eyes hone in, unwavering in its heat.

“Christ,” Johnny breathes, “I’d even give you my damn socks if that’s what it takes—I need to get out of here. Quickly.”

You stare, sneering. “Is your betrothed a damn witch or what?”

Blue eyes blink, and his words are firm as they meet air. “Are you taking up my offer or not, Cat-Eyes?”

“Of course, I’m taking the offer!” You bark ruthlessly, rolling your eyes as you kick at the dirt. Rocks and grass fly as darkness settles heavier. “I’m not a fool.”

“Well,” he sighs in relief, looking to the shadows along the ground. “I can’t say you’re that, either, but you are certainly something.”

You narrow your eyes at Johnny but don’t waste your time any longer as you turn and study what you can see.

You had grown up here—in this land. The woods knew you just as much as you knew them. Already you could pinpoint a general map of this section based on the large cracked boulder to your right, and the tiny cluster of trees across the way. You knew the way to town, and from there, the port.

“It’s a three-day walk,” you grumble, side-eyeing the man as he moves to lean against a trunk. He wouldn’t be moving through the night—you didn’t complain on that front either. “You grab at me like that again, and I’ll—”

“Let me guess,” Johnny raises a brow. “You’ll hit me in the balls.”

Your thin lips tell him all he needs to know.

Shuffling past him, you frown and pull your wrapping closer, shuffling your chin into it. No fires for warmth, you know—not with people on your trail.

“I want an explanation,” you turn and dig into him, walking closer as John looks to the side. “If I’m sticking my neck out, I want answers as well as coin.” Poking him in his chest, you force your neck to find his gaze. “Why are you running?”

Johnny sighs, licking his lips as he nods with a low, “Fine.”

You tilt your head, and John moves back to sit against the stump, moving out his hands in an honest display.

“I was told I needed to marry and produce heirs if my house was going to survive, aye?” He states, and you know the story well. “My parents are gone, and my sisters are all married, but my estate is barren of anyone besides myself and the staff. To keep the peace, I gave my word that I would join into a union to secure my assets for my bloodline.”

It was all so formal, the talk of a wife and children—you never understood it. Why couldn’t people simply marry who they love and leave it at that? All this bloodline and assets. Don’t they ever get sick of it?

“What’s your last name, then,” you ask. “McDuff? Mackenzie?”

“MacTavish,” John shakes his head, rubbing his hand up and down the back of his neck. Blue eyes stay with yours. “John MacTavish, I have lands to the North.”

Your brows tighten, arms going to cross themselves. “You’re running from your home because of a union you can freely exit?”

“It isn’t free,” he grumbles, shaking his head firmly and setting his jaw. “My father’s wishes for his children were written down and sealed. I was to marry a daughter of Arthur Campbell when I came of age.” John chuckles face going a bit pink. “As you can see, I’m a good few years past that.”

You tilt your head, and while Johnny was certainly passed the normal age of a male in his position to be wed, it struck you as odd as to why he didn’t want to be in the first place. In marriage during these times, a man has little to lose when joined. Almost nothing else changes for them except another title is added to their long line of others already living under him.

John continues, and you stay your snake-like tongue for now. “Wasn’t until I learned that by now, Mr. Campbell’s second born daughter, who was the only one near my age, had passed nearly an entire year ago—leaving only the oldest behind.”

“And?” You hum, intrigued to see where this goes. Johnny itches at his chin, scratching the stubble that lives there along with the dirt and grime. “What, I’d imagine the head of the Campbell family wanted to uphold the arrangement?”

“Aye, they did,” John grunts, nodding. “Fiona Campbell was the woman I was set to marry today.” He pauses, sighing heavily before looking to the side. Darkness had set, and there was little light by way to see the expression of guilt growing on his face. “I’m not lyin’ when I say I didn’t want to make such a mess of it, but there’s only so much a man can do when he learns his bride is not only twice his age,” John breathes, grunting, “but also just…” He stops himself, sighing.

You frown, gut swirling.

“She was blank, do you understand?” Johnny asks, motioning a hand in a display of unknowing explanation. “All she seemed to care about was children and wealth. A slate waiting to be filled with someone else’s thoughts and ideas. I didn’t want to be the one to fill it—I’ll not be some husband that runs a wife around like a dog. That isn’t right to me; it wasn’t how I was raised.”

Your mind twists on itself with an indefinable feeling—skin tight to your bones as if taken and tied by ropes. Your heart pumps blood a little harder, but just because this man seems less of a bastard doesn’t mean you like him. He’d dragged you into this hunting party of his grand problem, and the sooner you got your payment, the better and easier it would be to disappear.

“How noble,” you huff, rolling your eyes. Yet, your voice is hiding an under-the-breath shock. “So you bolted into the woods?”

Johnny rubs at his nose bridge, growling in annoyance. “Yes—it was the best cover I had. Been going through the trails since sunrise.” He slaps his hands to his knees and stands back up with a grunt and an ache in his thighs. His sarcastic voice peels the shadows. “Are we satisfied, now, Bonnie?”

“I won’t be until you’re out of my sight,” you level, moving forward. “So are you going to bed so I can drag you to the port or not?”

John’s body is heard shifting as you slip down the trunk of a tree, backside hitting grass as you settle in for a restless sleep—pulling your wrap tighter over your shoulders. Here you were: weaponless and in the company of a runaway groom still in all of his finery.

You wanted that damn boar broach.

“Sleep’ll be smart, we need to be up early,” John says seriously, his shoes shifting the leaves. Letting the chill seep in, you burrow into your fabrics and glare ahead. Johnny’s sly voice is so reminiscent of yours, that you have to wonder if the two of you were cut of the same cloth. “I won’t be opposed to a cuddle if you get chilly, Little Lady—”

“I should have stabbed you when I had the chance.”

Johnny’s low chuckles waft over the air, and then the silence settles fully.

Yet, you’re up far later than you anticipated…and you find this honest man’s confession to be bouncing inside of your skull like an enraged bird.

—

“Christ, did I do that?” A finger is pressed under your chin, tilting your head up as you strangle a gasp at the sudden motion.

Johnny looks at the tiny cut along your neck from the edge of his sword—the barely-there irritation of the skin that you’d been itching at as you walked forward through the trees.

He frowns, glancing into your eyes as your body stills at the feeling of warm flesh.

It was the first day of walking, and the silence between the two of you had stayed. Not only were you annoyed at the situation, but also John’s story—you’d been mulling it over since last night.

But below that anger, you might have even felt a little wrong.

“Who else?” You sigh sarcastically to the man, trying to hide the rising flood of heated shock. Thick digits drag along your esophagus slowly in study, and John’s face creases the longer he looks. He’s hunched near you, too—and you can smell the low scent of leather and earth.

Johnny pulls back with a huff and slips a hand into his sporran. Your eyes watch with blatant distrust until a relatively clean rag is taken out by a steady hand.

He motions with it. “Come ‘ere. Let me get the dirt out of it before it gets infected, eh?”

You sigh lowly but decide it’s a good idea at the very least before nodding—John’s fingers return as the light from above leaks through the branches. The morning was cold, but not unreasonable; the woods gave shelter from the otherwise abusive wind of the open country.

“Look at that,” you breathe, “The first nice thing you’ve done for me.”

“Ah,” John lightly glares. “Not quite right—I carried you away instead of making you run with me.”

Your eyes roll, and Johnny’s chuckle echoes off the surroundings.

“Such a gentleman,” you grumble, feeling the rag press into your throat and the soft scrape of it across your scratch.

“So,” the man hums, blue eyes stuck to your flesh as he takes care of it far more nicely than you’d imagined someone to be. “Seeing as I’ve shared my sob story, Cat-Eyes, I think I’d like to ask after yours.” His voice is full of amusement. “As we’ll be keeping one another company.”

“It’s less as in-depth than yours,” your fingers twitch as Johnny moves back after the cleaning is done—returning the rag to his sporran as he blinks.

“I don’t believe that,” he raises a brow, as you ignore the remembrance of his touch and continue, paving the trail as the dark-haired man follows a close distance behind. “Can’t say there’s many times I’ve seen an unwed woman wielding a bow and thieving someone out of their money. I’ve seen a lot of things, Bonnie,” he laughs, “but never that. Scared the hell out of me when you dropped down.”

“You can add me to the top of the list, I suppose,” you puff a teasing breath. After an expecting pause in the conversation, you grow bored of the nothingness.

“I’ve lived out here my entire life—I do what I have to. That’s all there is to it.”

John’s face gradually pulls into itself, only looking away from you to glance at the path to make sure he won’t fall.

“No family?”

“None,” you tilt your head, shimmying under a low branch and pushing leaves off your shoulders. They sway to the ground softly as you brush an arm over your forehead, sensing Johnny’s attention.

The man grunts. “M’sorry.”

Your feet stumble for a moment, pace faltering, until you cover it up easily. You turn to stare, narrowing your eyelids as open blues watch silently. John’s shoulder brushes yours.

“It’s life,” you blankly answer. “Least I wasn’t married off. Where you had to worry about a blank slate, I had to worry about becoming a broodmare for a man who most likely would never love me.”

Johnny licks his lips, eyes darting to the ground. “Can’t imagine you like that,” he mutters, but it isn’t some joke—he’s truthful.

“Perfect,” is what his ears twitch to. “Because I’d sooner act like you and bolt from my wedding as well.”

“Would that make me the thief in your story, then?” Johnny asks, chuffing as he smiles towards you, reaching a hand above him to push another branch out of the way—separating it from your form as you bend under. “I’m tellin’ you, I wouldn’t be very good at it. All that dropping down from trees would have my knees screamin’. Not that they don’t already.”

Your laugh pierces his chest, and the man sends a kind if not a bit startled, show of interest to you. It sounded like a bowstring slapping a wrist—harsh and telling all at once: something to be known and understood even if heard only once.

John blinks at you, and his heart patters along in his chest.

“I think it would be more fun to think about you with a dagger,” you narrow your gaze at him, smiling. “A small thing like that would disappear in your hands, Johnny Boy.”

“Disappear?” He tilts his head, raising his hands to hover in front of him. “Ah, they’re not that big, are they?”

You shift, and, nearly without thinking, you slip your hand to sit above his. Johnny makes a noise in the back of his throat, eyes going wide as you reference the size of his grip under yours, but allows you to regardless. A blue gaze slides to your face, openly imploring, before they dart back down to your shared hands as the roughness of his callouses scraped against your flesh.

“Care to compare?” You smirk, lifting a brow.

Johnny’s lips parted quickly, blinking a few times as he tried to find the words to accompany his running mind. He clears his throat, but the small sheen of red pigment on his cheeks is undeniable.

Laughing, you detach the connection and pull ahead, leaving the man behind as he stutters with a fast pulse.

“You’re the strangest woman I’ve ever met,” is what he decides minutes later, a large grin on his face—he was enjoying this, for whatever twisted and flawed reason, he was. John’s adrenaline was pumping, his heart was pounding, and his feet were passing over the earth, yet, even better, his brain was sparking at a mile a minute for the woman who walked only three feet ahead of him. He watches you take these trails like an expert, not having to look down at your feet as stone and wood are passed as if you were water above them, whispering and nearly silent.

“At least I’m not boring.” Your eyes meet him, and in them, they create some horribly beautiful amalgamation of twin flames—two sparking fires that feed from the same ember. “You would never catch me becoming a housewife, Johnny Boy.” Your gazes never break. “There are far too many things to steal in this country, and so very few men who can keep up.”

John’s chest moves in the beat of his pulse—his attention wholly transfixed upon the sight of this wild-born woman whom he’d only met yesterday. There were leaves in your wrap, and brown-black mud coated up to your ankles, even sweat sitting at your temple, yet you moved with grace befitting a Lady: never seeming to tire of jokes or firm surety. Yet…you weren’t cruel—you weren’t without purpose.

Any accomplished thief would have just stabbed him and taken what they needed in your house. You offered John water, however, you chose to give him a chance to comply. It was such a small thing in the grand scheme, but Johnny was always one to analyze how one feather on a bird can affect the flight pattern, so to speak. One action that speaks volumes.

You liked creating games, and, lucky for him, John loved to solve them.

And that glint in your sharp-slitted eyes was becoming more and more enjoyable every second, he found.

Pushing back the strands of his wayward hair, John keeps up with you for every step, not unfamiliar with how to traverse unsteady terrain. He wasn’t lying in what he told you—he had spent most of his life in the forest beside his home: hunting, fishing, riding. There wasn’t an activity he didn’t enjoy when he was outside, though his mother was always heavy on him about the mess he brought back.

Blue eyes drop back down to your dirt-laced pants, and the man can’t help but give his best, lip-pulling smile.

Hell, if he didn’t know any better, he would say that you were something that made so little, and at the same time so much, sense to him.

“Well, maybe they just aren’t accustomed to hiking, Little Cat-Eyed Thief.”

There was something special in the glances you two would throw one another.

—

Your hands dip into the clear water, fingers open to feel the current drag through them gently.

“If you want a sip,” you say, cupping the liquid and bringing it up to your lips, “it’s safe. This river flows down from the hills—not perfect, but there’s only a small chance it’ll make you sick.”

John comes up and hums as he sits down beside you, folding his legs under him and leaning forward to submerge his arms up to his elbows in water. He sighs, and you hear the river gurgling as the man begins to rub up his flesh, getting rid of all the grime.

“Good to know.” Blue eyes spare you a look as he continues. “What’s this one called?”

“Woodney river,” you answer. “Old Man Jack Woodney ran a water wheel on this river a long walk West. If this place had a name before that, it won’t tell.”

Johnny washes his face, scrubbing at his stubble as the scratch of it plays in the side of your ear. You watch along the opposite shore, eyes going from trees to birds—even to the shadows of fish that quickly swim past. Sighing, you have to admit the beauty of this adventure. There were few times you could say you’d gone this far into the woods with no wealth to trade in with the townspeople.

You side-eye John and study him just as heavily as you do a wild animal.

He wasn’t unattractive, you admitted. Strong—sturdy. Johnny was capable in a way that most Lords wouldn’t be, some, you guessed, would already be complaining about the uncomfortableness of their clothes or the flesh of their blistered feet. But John was bright-eyed; more than once you’d seen him actively watching the stretch of the trees for any sign of his pursuers. He never complained. Not once.

“You’re not as insufferable as I thought you’d be,” you say. Frowning, your hands push back into the water and cup some of the chilled liquid. You let it drip before you extend your hand to your neck and feel your eyes droop in relaxation.

Johnny laughs, staring at you for a minute as he slowly raises a brow. His face shows amusement.

“Am I supposed to be insulted or not?”

“I leave that for you to decide.”

John cracks his knuckles and shakes his head as he stands. “C’mon,” he drags, but the smile in his voice is clear. A hand is set in front of yours. “Sooner I get out the port, the sooner I’m out of your hair.”

Your face softens slightly.

“Am I ever going to get an apology for being tossed like a sack of potatoes?” Skin meets skin as you slip your hand into his, and the man pulls you to your feet as you smile. Calluses brush yours, and yet again, you find you enjoy this game—perhaps more than any other you’d played before.

And you don’t understand why.

Johnny’s fingers are firm over yours, curling as water drips to the ground below in reflective droplets, and you think back to the first time you’d met him—panting breath and rapid eyes. Your eyes glance to that boar broach, and find it attached to a man that is suddenly more of a mystery than a closed book.

“Easy,” John mutters, steadying you by your shoulders as you remember where you are. The dark-haired man squeezes your flesh and looks into you.

Blue eyes glint, and that smirk, you find, is always followed by a tiny tint of his head. “And what’s that look for, Cat-Eyes?”

“You called me strange.”

John’s brows furrow. “Aye. I did.” He looks you up and down slowly. “You are.”

You do the same to him, not wasting more than a moment. “And I find it funny that you haven’t said the same thing about yourself. You’re far more strange than I’ll ever be.”

“Guilty,” Johnny smiles, nodding slightly. His hands are still on you, and he doesn’t seem to even notice. “I don’t think a normal one would fuck off from his own wedding, would he?”

“Or kidnap a woman as a guide,” you state, pulling out of his warm hold even as your stomach flips as you brush past

“Again,” John’s hand motions through the air. “Abduct.”

“You’re just saying that because it sounds slightly better,” you grimace over your shoulder. “Like comparing a dog to a wolf.”

Johnny is hot on your heels, and when the river-eroded stepping stones to the other side of the water are the clear path to take, he’s already on the first and holding out his arm for you as a true gentleman would. You glance at him and hop to the first stone, liquid sloshing at your shoes.

Your smirk is stuck with his like two pieces of a quilt, and neither of you realizes it.

“You put a knife to my back first, Dearie.” John puffs and his face is right next to your ear as you both cross the stones—you lean into him and elbow his side before your arm slips into his. The man grunts, blinking as he chuckles above the slosh of water.

“So? Maybe I only point knives at the men I like.”

“Then I’d say you have every right to put one right at my throat.”

Feet move carefully over rocks and the spray of the water that coats them—a dance of wit in their own right. It was like animals circling one another, all sharp eyes and pulled lips trying to find weaknesses. Deadly flirting and addictive banter.

Where annoyance was such a common emotion, now there was a near expectation of jabs; of tantalizing quips for the glimpse of another's mind.

Neither of you could understand the other, which was exactly why you both reveled in the brush of warm flesh.

“Careful,” your feet meet the hard ground once more on the other side, and John only lets go when he knows that you don’t need him to steady you. “You’re engaged, Johnny Boy.”

Your tease slips in one ear and out the other, and the man watches you turn and begin walking again with sly eyes. John’s wide gaze stays stuck there for a moment—mouth eager to continue any conversation given. Watching you walk, his heart beats speedily.

“I think my, ah, reputation has all but ruined my chances on that front—”

There’s something unique about the sound of an arrow sinking into flesh that can’t really be forgotten. John had heard it many times—even been behind the bow that shot it; the slap of the string across his forearm, the set of his shoulder blades widening until the arrow disappeared.

But there’s something worse knowing that the sudden expulsion of air from lungs, in fact, belongs to you and not some wild animal.

You’re hit in a fraction of a second, down on the ground in less than that—your mind not even understanding above the immediate pressure and the slam of earth. You gasp loudly, and then the pain hits.

Hand snapping to your left bicep, your eyes slash down to stare as grass and mud fly into the air, rabid sounds escaping the back of your throat at the image that strikes you. An arrow was stuck deep into your skin—sticking out as blacked feathers flutter at the end of the shaft. The adrenaline hits rapidly, but the expression of horror still remains.

“Cat-Eyes!” Johnny yells, rushing forward, and unsheathing his sword, the sound of metal on metal harsh, but not as harsh as the sound of blood in the man’s ears.

You see the swelling of crimson, and, from under your fingers, the red of blood slips as your breathing gets hoarse. Biting into your lip, the quick sound of an under-the-breath groan of agony ripples.

But you’re not stupid.

Scrambling to your feet with the arrow still poking out of you, Johnny gets to you and pushes you behind him just as your shaking legs straighten—-your eyes slashing the woods in panic. Pain can wait.

The runaway groom spares you quick glances, pushing you further behind as his raging gaze darts this way and that. He yells into the trees, anger and order infecting his voice, “Show yourself!”

Just as suddenly, there’s a relieved call and a moving shadow. You clench your eyes tight and grit your teeth as a wave of pain rockets through you.

“Fuck,” you grind out, lost under the louder voice. Blood drips to the ground.

“My Lord!” Men burst through the leaves, bows, and swords aloft. “Quickly—to us!”

Johnny’s face is stiff; there isn’t an ounce of care, but the flash of recognition is swift, and in his chest, his heart, once beating so quickly, drops to his stomach.

Knights. His knights. Christ, the two of you hadn’t been fast enough.

“Stand down!” John spits, and cares little now for the thought of robbery or assault on his person—these men wouldn’t hurt him, but they were tasked to bring him back. “Fucking bawbags, the lot of you.”

His sword is sheathed by twitching fingers, and no sooner were those digits around you instead.

You pant hoarsely, face tight as your vibrating body tells you to run—eyes locked onto Johnny’s, the man in front of you ushers you over to the trunk of a tree hurriedly, uttering, “Just breathe now, Dearie—listen to me. It’s alright, aye?”

“What is this?” You raggedly push out, flinching as your spine meeting the bark jostles your arm painfully.

Your teeth grit, tears collecting in the corner of your vision.

“Knights,” John mutters as if his words are chased by wolves. “They’re after me—probably thought you were either holding me hostage or trying to lead me into an ambush.” The colorful fabric of his pinned tartan is dragged off from over his shoulder and shoved into your weeping flesh, and you lightly moan in agony, head falling back to the tree.

Tears slip from over your cheeks.

“Easy.” John’s concern is palpable. Worried eyes dart from your face to your wound. “Jesus,” he utters under his breath, anger flashing.

“Who is this?” One of the knights asks, taking a step forward as Johnny holds the fabric to your wound and speaks to you lowly, utterly ignoring the people behind him.

“I need to break the shaft off, okay?” Blue eyes try to keep even, and John’s other hand captures your cheek. He levels your face right in front of his, breathing lowly. The man clears his throat as your tight gaze flutters, tightening his grip. “Hey,” Johnny breathes. You grunt, voice a low grind.

“Just make it quick.”

John’s lips thin. “Yes, Ma’am.”

His large hand swiftly moves to the arrow, gripping around it just where flesh meets wood, you hiss loudly, spitting and raging as your vision partially blackens. Pain sparks up and down your spine, racing like a cat after a mouse.

“Lord,” one knight tries again, coming closer and reaching out for Johnny’s shoulder. “We need to get you back to Castle Campbell—we’ve been hoping to find you unharmed for your future wife’s comfort. Everyone is in a panic!”

“I’ll count down to three,” Johnny whispers to you, breathing heavily as he swallows and steady himself, hand lightly clammy. He wished he had his hunting gloves with him, but this was the best he could do. “Eh,” the man grunts, eyes steady, “You listening, Bonnie?”

“I don’t care what you count to,” you nearly bark, orbs flashing. “Just break the damn thing off—!”

The wood snaps with a defining splinter, and your scream afterward has the man having to hold you up with his arms around your waist, muttering into your ear with his lips against the shell.

“It’s alright, you’re alright,” John hears the clatter of the shaft to the grass just as the knight’s hand is heavily placed on his shoulder. “Breathe. M’right ‘ere.”

You sag into Johnny taking in the scent of sweat, blood, and dirt—the musk that stays even as your ears start ringing and the voices start getting louder.

“Best get your hands off o’ me before I break ‘em, Mate” Johnny grunts from deep in his chest, shifting your body to the side and effectively ripping his flesh out of the knight’s hold.

All the others shift nervously—hands on their swords and looking back and forth between the strange scene.

Who were you? A mistress? A bandit luring their Lord away? Why was he with you out here; going in the opposite direction of where the ceremony was supposed to take place? They’d been given orders, and a knight is no good unless he can follow them.

John MacTavish was needed, and their duty was to see it through.

Johnny’s tartan had fallen to the ground behind the two of you, getting kicked by feet as they shuffle and as your blood slips off of your limp fingers. Mind failing, your pain-addled form shakes even as the knowledge of imminent danger is present.

You needed to figure out a way to get out of here.

Pushing your head up from Johnny’s shoulder, your eyes flutter but manage to analyze what little you can see clearly—adrenaline can take care of most of your agony, only leaving a dull ache as your heart continues to rage.

A group of four knights have their hands on their swords, and all of their eyes are on John.

Run, a deep part of you urges. Your legs are still good. Take off—none of them know the terrain like you do. You’ll be free.

You pant, your nostrils flaring with every breath as your sweat trickles off your jawline. Johnny’s grip on you tightens, head shifting back and forth, unknowing where to anchor itself, not understanding which is more important—your state, or your safety.

Free, free, free.

Your mind flashes to an empty house: silent woods. How you would go months without seeing another human face, but that was your own choice.

Wasn’t it?

Your eyes slip to Johnny.

“We’ve been tasked with bringing you back, My Lord,” the first knight says, looking heavily upon the runaway. “We have our orders. Please understand.”

“And I’m telling you your orders are utter shite,” John spits. “So back the fuck up and drag yourself out of this place. Now.” He glares, teeth snapping. “Those are my orders.”

Your arm is numb, and your chest expands as it sits on John’s own. And you think.

You knew you were a selfish person.

There was no debate about it—even when you’d stolen enough coin to feed you for weeks, there was still a part of you that longed for some chase; some challenge to your senses. You liked stealing. You liked the looks on people's faces when they realized they were being swindled for every valuable item they had in their possession. But there was something you liked even more than all of that—a challenge.

Johnny, to you, was that challenge. He was the largest challenge you’d ever faced. A Lord who was running from a bride, a man who held his beliefs higher than praise or standing…a blue-eyed stranger who matches your poking jabs word for word.

“Damn,” your growl, and John takes it as an exclamation of pain.

He grits his teeth and studies you, opening his mouth as his concern grows at the smell of blood.

“We need to tie it off,” he utters. “Bastards made me drop the tartan—I’m sorry, Dearie.”

Your lips are near his ear.

“When I say ‘go,’ run to the left.”

Johnny halts, attention snapping down. His fingers flinch around you, face open until the mask of sudden knowledge flies over it like a curtain. But it’s gone just as quickly—hidden by intelligent eyes that glint.

He doesn’t question you, and, in the crux of your shoulder, you get a near-infinitesimal nod from Johnny’s head.

The guards grow suspicious, all mulling closer by the second the longer you two remain so close—on opposite ends, you feel your heart mirroring John’s in a rapid and ravaging pulse: Thump-thump, thump-pump, thump-pump-thump.

Your attention is split three ways.

One: the rising numbness of your limbs and the heat of your brain. Two: the spread of Johnny’s panting breath across your sweat-slick skin and his hands tightening. Three: knights and the clatter of their armor. How they slide their hands across their weapons like intimate partners—the tension building in a hemp bowstring and the sound of arrows hitting off one another; one taken and played with between fingers so similarly to how you would act.

Your tear-stained eyes glare at the knight who’d shot you, your expression building into an act of hatred.

They take a step forward.

“Cat-Eyes—” Johnny begins to warn slowly.

“Go.” Your words are no shout. They don’t echo off the trees, which all hold their breeze in expectation, they don’t ring in ears except the ones of the man holding you. But they’re like the personification of a sword strike—like the release of an arrow and the impending thump of it hitting home.

The knights dash forward with calls for their Lord to stand down, but John’s already flinched away with a heavy grunt.

You do the same, your plan already formed—you would run the opposite way as Johnny, only slipping off when the cover of bushes had enshrouded the both of you to create two sets of tracks. With any luck, the guards would break off into two groups and pursue the both of you, and you could easily lose yours.

From there, circle back and find John: get your bearings before—

Arms never detach from your waist, and you’re once more tossed into a strong grip.

Eyes bugging, your focus breaks as gravity leaves and your head goes light. Johnny dashes away, and, just as the last time, you’re in his boar-like hold.

“You idiot!” You bark, the only difference to your predicament now is that you’re held in a bridal grip and not slung over his sweaty shoulder. There was only a small sliver of relief before the annoyance overtook you.

Johnny’s body crashes through the leaves, the shouts of the knights following as he gruffly raises his voice to the wind. The trees shake with amusement.

“Thinking you could hand over some directions, Dearie?!”

“Thinking you could put me down?!” You shout back, your arm sparking with pain as your opposite wraps the man’s neck firmly. “Damn.” Your lips twist in response. “My legs work just fine, you know—I wasn’t shot in the arse!”

“Acting like you were,” John grumbles, a branch slapping his cheek before you can. Despite it all, he chuckles wholeheartedly at his own joke.

An arrow whizzes through the air, and you yelp, ducking behind his body even more as your skull fits under his jaw. Your eyes snap to the visible terrain as Johnny’s legs push from one side to the other, running in a zig-zag pattern to avoid any more injuries.

“There,” your brows rise, fighting past the pain to find the familiar slash of a gnarled willow tree that whizzes by in brown and dark green.

Your head rises to see more of the woods, only to be pushed back down by an all-expansive hand as John utters a fast-breathed and firm, “Not the best idea.”

He shoves through brambles, and the sounds of rampaging knights are gaining. The second John sloshes through a low pool with a loud curse, you know instantly where you two are.

“Take a left near the overhang with vines coming down!”

“That one?”

“Yes!”

And so this game continued long after the knights had been lost to the woods, stumbling about without any sense of where they were, and the two of you came to a panting halt an hour later. Deep night was setting in on the second day, and, as your shaky feet hit the ground, John kept a heavy eye on you.

“Steady,” he mutters, sweat pouring off his face; saturating his clothes. He worriedly stares, looking you up and down.

Your vision swirls, the glade around you the exact place you both needed to be. There were hills here—surrounded by thick trenches carved by rivers long dried. The stars were out, and the moon was shining down; one thin trickle of a river was feet away, the sound of water on rocks addictive to your pounding ears.

All of it was null to the way your gut flipped at the humming agony of your arm.

Your hand snaps to the puncture and the flood of blood is enough to leave your fingers dripping with crimson glinting in moonlight.

There’s a heavy ripping sound, and then you find yourself sitting down in the grass as Johnny shoves the torn fabric of his suit into the small river. You hear the splashing as you glance down at your arm before rapidly looking away, biting at your lip as your spine hunches.

“Christ almighty,” you growl, glaring to the side as your fingers quiver. Tears well.

“The arrowhead is keeping pressure,” John hurries to speak, trying to distract you just as his own exhaustion is bare to see. The rung-out fabric is looped around your arm, tying off until you have to strangle down a scream at the tightness on your flesh. “We have to keep it there until there’s enough sterile material to fix it up.”

“Your knights are pieces of work,” you hiss, more from the wound than anything.

John gives a little look, blue eyes darting up until falling.

“Aye, they are.” His strong jaw clenches. “This shouldn’t have happened, Dearie.”

You stare as he finishes up, and you feel his fingertips slipping along your arm. Your eyelids droop, closing as your nostrils suck in shaky air. You take a moment to take in the silence that follows, John’s eyes not straying as your face is illuminated.

He watches the streaks of dirt along your skin, and, in a soft attempt to fix this, he stands and moves to the river once more—cleaning his hands. Johnny takes the rag out of his sporran and wets it, coming back to your body as the grass waves back and forth.

“Let me…” the man says slowly, and your eyes open back up as the chilled item is pushed to your cheek.

Wide orbs staring forward, you swallow as John concentrates on cleaning your skin carefully.

“Infection is my immediate concern,” the man says with a sigh, yet continues as your tongue stays tied; face growing more heated by the second. “But you mentioned it takes three days to the town, aye? That’s not unmanageable with two already under our feet.”

Blood, dirt, and sweat slip away with every drag of the fabric, and, stuck into his suit, that boar broach still sits—crooked now, but still there.

Your attention is momentarily taken by it, and your fingers twitch before you notice how very close John’s face is to yours.

The man focuses, relaying a plan as you’re stuck mute; your arm holding its own heartbeat as the grass shifts.

“I’ll use what I have to get you into a doctor. Make sure there’ll be no problems before I get going.” John blinks, tilting his head. “‘Course, that’ll decrease the amount you’ll get in turn.”

“Fortunately for you,” you breathe, voice strained, and blue eyes stick to yours. John pauses, brows slightly pulling up on his face. “I value my own life too much to complain about a man paying for my care.”

John’s rag stays where he placed it, right on the swell of your cheek as, this close to one another, you can see the scar on his chin—one that curves to the muscle and bone.

He was handsome, make no mistake about it. You knew it; you understood it. A lord with morals and the smarts to go along with the strength—now that was utterly unheard of. You liked that, truthfully. Someone who could think, and plan.

And, of course, follow directions.

“You’ll be fine,” John mutters, glancing to the side, yet his head doesn’t move back. He clears his throat with a sigh.

You roll your eyes, moving out and grabbing his hand with the rag. Johnny’s expression startles, arm tensing as you steal the dripping fabric from him. Water runs down your neck.

“I know I am.” You huff, smiling.

You push the rag onto his own face, and begin your cat-like approval of his character, washing away the grime just as he had your own. A blue gaze stays firmly on your flesh, the man’s shoulders loosening until he’s sitting just in front of you. Verident grass whispers in a language like a soft breeze, and you study Johnny’s skin until everything becomes a mosaic of scars and blemishes—stories woven into sinews holding as much history as the tines on an elk or the chipped tusks of a boar.

Two days and he’d become even more of a mystery than he had been before. Or maybe he always had been, and now your previous contentment had grown into an addictive curiosity.

He’d called you Cat-Eyes.

You couldn’t love a title more—not even if Lady were on the table.

“I settle my scores,” you grunt, tilting your head as you push back mud from his forehead, leaning in. “You wash my face, I wash yours.”

“Literally, then?” A sarcastic eyebrow makes you huff.

“Is that not what I’m doing, Johnny Boy?”

“Seems so, Cat-Eyes.”

Your matching glares hold no venom.

Smirking, you lean back after the last swipe at his forehead, pushing Johnny’s skull back as he chuckles, moon-lit visage something you would see scrawled on the parchment of an old story-teller's sketches. A man not made for this age.

Your face softens slowly, and it is a strange thing sitting atop the sharpness of your eyes.

John’s chuckles fade, and his breath catches in his throat.

“You’re an odd fellow, John MacTavish,” you say, here, with blood from an arrow wound drying to crack along your skin.

Your head tilts, eyes narrowing.

John’s lips slowly pull upwards, and the water on both of your faces drips to the listening earth. This place is alive with possibilities, and all of them stem from the growing draw of twisted human souls.

A just Lord and a cunning thief.

A sharp-eyed cat and a strong-bodied boar.

A future and a past—riddled with arrow marks; long sword slashes.

“Well…then I’m thinking we make quite the pair, Bonnie.”

—

The third day was spent on the latter half of the journey. Re-correcting the course and giving the best directions you could with the numb ache of your arm spreading up your shoulder.

But the town came easily as the midday sun rose to crest your heads.

“Want to lean on me?” Johnny asks, standing close by, but you’re already shaking your head.

“Feels better to keep myself focused,” you mutter, grimacing. You look at the entrance to the town, and as you both walk it, the stares are immediate—shocked residents looking at the haggard appearance of two individuals.

“Alright,” John sighs, side-eyeing you. “Just let me know if you’re goin’ to keel over, yeah?”

“Duly noted,” you tilt your head his way. Your lips smirk like a smug child. “You’ll catch me, won’t you?”

Johnny chuckles, shrugging his wide shoulders as his tattered finery is chock-full of brambles and leaves.

“Can’t say no to that.”

The Lord kept his promise—the doctor took the arrowhead, cleaned, cauterized the wound, and sutured you back up. For payment, as you lightly touch the bandaged section of your arm, you find your eyes freezing as a silver glinting reflects off the light through the window.

Johnny hands over his boar broach to the doctor.

Widely staring at the prize being pawned off for your health, your heart stutters in heavy greed.

No, you rapidly think. No, that was the one thing that I—

Your eyes inexplicably snap to Johnny.

The immediate thought is that he looks angry, but, the next and more accurate one, is that he looks sad.

John’s blues continue to follow the broach as it disappears into the doctor's pocket, and you see the weight fall back to his chest and arms—sitting heavy like a stone. The man’s feet shift along the ground for a moment, and he looks like he’s about to say something before he grits his teeth and shakes his head to himself. John grunts, fixing his nose.

You blink, and then your heart twists in on itself for no reason at all.

Or maybe there was a reason.

“C’mon, Cat-Eyes,” Johnny sighs heavily, tilting his head as his arms cross. “Time to see me off, then.”

He walks out the door, and your eyes follow like a loyal dog.

Standing there for a moment, your lips contort your face into a deep frown, sharp eyes gaining a sheen of light anxiety. Yet, there was no mistaking it—it had been said a million times—if there was one thing you could do, it was play a game.

Maybe you weren’t so bad after all.

“Oh my,” you mutter, putting a hand to your head and stumbling.

The doctor starts forward quickly, grasping at your un-injured arm. “Careful now, Woman. Don’t rip my sutures.”

He tells you, getting you fully up as you chuckle, placing your hands above his thigh, fingers twitching on the fabric.

“Apologies, apologies,” you mutter, retracting your hand and cupping it against your abdomen with a meek smile. “Just a little lightheaded. Thank you, Doctor.”

“Best be off, now,” the man grumbles, and you’re out the door swiftly.

Your shoes meet the cobble as you shift your hands into your pockets, shifting your body to look along after the large form that leans against the home waiting for you.

“Ready?” Johnny asks, though his attention is firmly planted on the ground five feet away, lost in thought.

“Aye,” you sigh, nodding your head to the East. “Port’s that way—let’s get this nightmare over with.”

“Hm,” Johnny agrees, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Quite the adventure for a runaway.”

“You can’t have thought it would be easy?” Your brows furrow. “You’re heir to the MacTavish lands.”

“I never said I thought it would be easy,” John moves at your side, a great hulk of honesty. He hands over his attention at last as you fiddle with the smooth item in your pocket. He huffs. “Just that it was an…experience, to say the least. One I’m not sure I’d want to go through again.”

“You’ll miss me,” you say confidently, meeting eyes with a smirk and a cocky shift to your form despite the lessening pain.

Johnny watches. He smiles, eyes crinkling. “Aye. I will.” You pause, expression stilling. The man hums, and you swear there’s something special in the way you can describe his look as delicate.

“You were the one part that I don’t regret,” he says lastly to you as if the words aren’t spears laced with poison.

Your breath gets caught in a way it never has, and John seems not to notice as he pulls ahead, muttering about him seeing the docks. The smell of salt water slaps your nostrils.

The legs under you slow until they’re stopped, and you look after the man as he begins speaking to workers along the port, asking for a spot on the large ships that sit in the water, rocking with the winds.

Your eyes trail, seeing the way he talks with such confidence—openly offering physical labor as his payment for even the dark quarters with the other laborers.

After what seems like hours of watching, you see him shake another man’s hand, and, just like that, passage is earned. He jogs back over, smiling.

You open your mouth to say something, but find the words null and void. You don’t know what to express. For once in your life, everything seems to be moving horrifically fast.

“Well,” John’s expression slowly sombers. “I suppose this is it then. I said you could ask for anything, and, I suppose,” he shifts the sword on his belt off after a moment, looking down at it. He holds the item, testing its weight. “I suppose this is all I have left.” Blue eyes slowly meet yours. “If you’ll take it.”

Always a thief, never a saint.

“I suppose it’ll have to do, Johnny Boy,” you sigh, the pain in your heart outweighing the one on your arm. “Hand it over.”

The sword is transferred and slipped to your waist. Many a man on the docks gives you strange looks, and, you find you welcome it—none could compare to the admiration in Johnny’s.

You lick your lips.

“Do one thing for me, hm?”

“Anything,” John mutters, not blinking.

You move forward, and place a firm kiss to his lips.

The man freezes, fingers twitching at his sides, before he sags and bends into you—his great hand capturing your cheek until all that remains in the sear of his heat and the scent of the earth.

You softly pull away, though not far enough as to where you can’t feel his breath on yours. Gazing into his eyes, you smile the widest you can remember.

“Don’t go running away from another wedding anytime soon. I can only save so many Lords until my reputation gets slandered.”

“You’re ruthless,” John growls, smirking as his eyes glint, looking you up and down. “Little Thief.”

He leans in for another kiss, but your hands only shift above his sporran before you dart back, chuckling.

“Always,” your hands brush his sword on your hip as you walk backward, grinning behind the strange pressure in your heart. If someone asked, you wouldn’t even know how to describe it.

John takes a step after you, face open and raw—an emotion you feel like mirroring if not for your excellent control.

Not yet.

“I’ll take care of this,” you call, patting the weapon.

“Good,” Johnny calls, taking one more step forward before stopping himself. One of the shipmates calls from the dock, and his eyes snap there with a jaw tense. He looks back at you and blinks, brows pulling in. In the heat of the moment, he exclaimed, “I’ll be back for it one day, Cat-Eyes!”

“Lovely!” You yell, back turning. “I’ll be waiting for you then. I do hope you’ll be able to get through the woods, and, please, don’t keep a woman waiting! You’re much too handsome for any of that.”

And then you’re gone.

Johnny stares at where you were, his smile large and his face heated, and after a louder call from the dock, he’s forced to turn and jog to the ship, hurrying up the board until he can stand on the swaying deck with his two feet.

He looks around, chuckling to himself, and still, his eyes shift back to land without fail; hoping for a glimpse—a small shadow.

Shaking his head at his own foolishness, the man reaches into his sporran for his rag, intent to clean and set it to dry when he’s able to get the chance to settle in. It’s one of the last items to his name no matter how pathetic.

Yet, his hands touch something far more precious.

Johnny’s body goes as straight as a tree when his fingers caress smooth metal, and, slowly, his grip pulls out the silver of his broach.

It glints in his palm as he sets it there, and his breath is stolen in one great bound of shock and confusion.

“What in the…” He already knows.

Johnny’s feet take him to the railing gently, and his body stands there—torn wedding clothes and all looking over a town that begins to move as the ship sets sail. He holds the broach carefully, not intending to let it go for an age. He just needs to lay low for a while. He needs time.

John smiles.

“I won’t keep you waiting,” he mutters to the moving homes, and he swears he sees the glint of a sword from between the buildings, and two sharp eyes digging into him.

You’re there, of course. Hidden as always.

You want your trees back, and you think that a day of sitting in your Oak is a good idea.

There’s dirt on your face again—your lips are chapped and your face is bitten by the wind; scars and blemishes that time won't heal but make all the more visible as the ages pass by on bird’s wings and cat purrs. Yet here is an action held immemorial.

A gift given freely by a thief is one to be treasured like pure gold, and the man on the ship knows that more intimately than any other as he clips the broach to himself with a hum.

You both watch the other from opposite, distant points until there’s no sun in the sky left to see with. Just a faint hope lights the way: the hope that your eyes will grace each other's visage, at the very least, just one more time in your life.

There was never a story so willing to be experienced than that of a runaway groom and his cat-eyed Thief.

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