#no one should read too much into the fact that apparently two weeks after I make a post about administrative pedantic villains

[residenthughes]

persuasion - jack hughes

pairing: jack hughes x fem reader

word count: 5.7k

tags/warnings: college/university au, fluff, slight angst?, fratboy! jack (he's sweet in this, dw), mentions of alcohol/drinking, no mention of y/n

summary: you get a bit more than you bargained for when paired up with all-american hockey star, jack hughes.

notes: hi. it's been a (long) while since i've posted on here. not to mention, i'm back writing about someone a bit different 😭 but i've recently gotten into the nhl and this fic is the result of me drunkenly coming across this photo a few days ago. despite the changes on this blog, i hope this post finds you well and that you enjoy this (poor) attempt of me getting back into writing. much love <3

The end of the semester couldn’t have come sooner. Swapped with what was possibly the busiest you’ve ever been, the sweet relief after submitting your last assignment was unparalleled and lulled you to a much deserved slumber, only to be awoken by a barrage of messages pinging from your bedside table. Disgruntled, your arm extends in search of your phone, groaning into your damp pillow as you blink away the tired film coating your eyes and read the messages from your best friend.

frat house party tonight, presence is mandatory! 

all the girlies are onboard, your sexy ass better be ready by 9!

Another groan emits from you, exhaustion seeping through your bones at the mere mention of doing something else besides rotting in bed. You’re about to type some incoherent excuse, but your best friend beats you to it.

apparently, z and his guys are going. 

chances are jack’s there too.

There’s a messy stutter in your chest upon reading the message and suddenly, you’re more awake than before as you gingerly sit yourself up in your bed. Of course, she’d mention he was going just to convince you further. You weren’t even aware she knew of your crush. Considering you hadn’t mentioned him much besides when asked, his name being referenced feels more intrusive than it should be. Then again, as perceptive as she is, there was no denying the fact.

Jack and yourself had worked on a group project earlier in the semester, which is how the two of you had crossed paths. Upon hearing of the task at hand, you couldn’t help but let out a sigh because you were never a fan of working with others you didn’t know, but considering none of your friends took your class, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get to know others and build your social circle. When your assigned group had got together towards the end of the lecture to discuss formalities and such, you hadn’t expected the whirlwind that was to come in the presence of a sandy brunette haired boy. 

Jack is as easy-going as he is charming. Cracks a couple jokes and suddenly, all the ice isolating your group dissolves to water and there are constant hums of conversation bouncing off every member of your group. He’s nice too, considerate of everyone’s schedule and what tasks they felt confident in completing, never uttering a word of complaint unless warranted. It’s interesting, he’s interesting, you think to yourself. Perhaps due to the fact that since he’d revealed himself to be in a frat, you had some preconceived notions as to what his personality would be like and maybe at times, he’d fit that stereotype to a tee, there were other times he’d stray away from it completely and leave you curious as ever.

Peculiar is what you’d describe those few weeks to be, your interest gravitating towards any relation to Jack. Heart beating as you walked past your university’s ice arena, knowing he practically lived on the ice beyond his time in class. Eyes lighting up when he texted in the group chat, mental fuzziness plaguing you every time you sat across from one another as you completed your portion of work in the university’s library. You’d be a fool to dismiss the budding attraction you felt towards him, spinning your world round but also leaving you feeling so unsure of everything, yourself included. There’s no scarcity of girls who like him, it proved to be difficult resisting the All-American hockey star with looks to match. However, taking into account the sheer volume of attention directed his way everyday, your lingering glances didn’t seem to be much more significant. So, one-sided this crush remains to you, storing away the quiet memories of shared laughs and time spent together in a place close to your heart. 

That was until he invited you to his game, shortly after your project had been submitted for assessment. You wanted to go, you wanted to go so badly that you agonised over the decision for longer than necessary, but ultimately, as you laid awake that night, eyes blazing red with fatigue, doom scrolling to further delay your dreams, the evidence for your answer surfaced. It was nothing but a silly Instagram post from one of his friends, Trevor Zegras, the boyfriend to one of your friends. A collection of typical photos: the boys, hockey and more of the antics they got to. It’s in the last slide where in the background of a recent football game is none other than Jack, in all his handsome glory, grinning ear to ear as a girl envelopes him in a hug that feels too intimate to be seen. Embarrassment runs your skin hot and jealousy leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, the thought of you entertaining anything more than platonic with Jack a pipedream at best. Naturally, there can be so many explanations for the photo, but what rings true is that you’ve made yourself vulnerable to heartbreak, which is nowhere to be found on your agenda. So, you call it a night, turning off your phone and hoping to put the crush behind you come tomorrow.

And, it works for a bit. Jack doesn’t text you further and you don’t run into him on campus. Summer soon approaches and the last few days before your break have you buzzing with excitement for all the plans you have lined up. Your world doesn’t hinge on every interaction you have with Jack and your mind is freed from the shackles of mulling over every detail in said interaction. It’s liberating and you’d like to keep it that way. A fleeting crush, you reason, all said and done with. A mantra you repeat to yourself as you respond back to your best friend, gleaming as you and your group chat discuss outfits options and pinterest inspired makeup looks. 

-

There’s nothing better than being with your girls, you’re reminded, as the buzzing excitement never fizzles as the night stretches on. Controlled chaos dominates the night as you pack into one friend’s rooms to get ready together, helping each other with eyelash extensions and annoying back zippers. Someone makes the suggestion to drop by the campus bar for a drink or two, just to ease the nerves, and it turns out to be a great idea because by the time you stumble out of the bar and towards the frat house, the party’s in full swing. 

Trashed lawn and red cup galore, the music somehow manages to reach outside the house with hoards of people dotted around and inside the house. With the merry buzz you’ve got from the bar, confidence details your movements as you lead your friends with clasped hands into the packed house, mumbling a thousand ‘sorry’s as you trample on through the crowded hallways to find yourselves in one (?) of the living rooms. 

Hands suddenly grasp at yours and you’re thrown into a fit of giggles as your friends tangle themselves up in a messy but fun dance. You follow suit, fully relishing in the euphoria of the night and the found family you have in these girls as you dance and chatter until you have no choice to venture into the kitchen for a refreshment. 

Surprisingly, the kitchen is vacant as you push through towards its door you were directed to, scanning the room amongst belongings to find some mixer for your helping of vodka stashed away in your purse. Despite your better judgement, you resort to apprehensively searching through cupboards on your tippy toes in search for mixer and as you’re about to open the last cupboard, the kitchen door opens. 

“Looking for something?”

Goosebumps arise and your heart stills. You know that voice like the back of your hand, the same voice that echoes in the back of your mind and whispers sweet nothings in your ear when you dream. The fact that he’s so ingrained in your memory makes you curse at yourself, teeth gnawing on the plumpiness of your bottom lip as you attempt to recollect your racing thoughts. With a quiet breath, you sink back from your elevated posture and turn towards the source of the voice, blinking like a deer caught in the headlights. 

It’s comical how such a simple sight renders you a loss for words. In the doorway of the large kitchen stands Jack, shoulder and head leaning against the doorframe as he looks at you with an expectant look and a cheeky grin to match. His legs are crossed at the ankles and he’s holding a beer, but he’s got this pearl white long sleeved polo on with washed out jeans and a black snapback to top it all off. The outfit in itself is so simple and yet, here you are, heart being sent into overdrive as the effortless combo drives you wild. Sets your skin alight and conjures up electricity that pulses through you like wildfire.

“Lemonade,” you gracefully croak out, gesturing towards your empty red cup. “I didn’t bring much to mix my drink with.”

“Here, I’ll help you with that,” he reassures you, bouncing off the door frame as he draws closer to you, your feet absently shifting a few steps backwards. “No need to back up. I don’t bite, you know?”

You huff at the comment, realising how foolish his mere presence makes you and will yourself to relax, shoulders easing down from your ears as you watch Jack search through the cupboards. It doesn’t take him long to find what he’s looking for, pulling out a large bottle of lemonade that coasts against the marble of the countertop. 

“Feel free to use as much as you like, I never usually have this myself anyways.” insists Jack, turning himself around with his back against the countertop, arms crossed his chest with a peering eye directed to you. 

“How thoughtful of you.” you jester as a brief chuckle is shared between the two of you, the loud thumps of heavy bass music sounding from beyond the kitchen door as silence settles between the two of you. 

“It’s been a while, how’ve you been?” he asks, undivided attention focused on you as you pour the last of the lemonade. If not for the embarrassment of spilling your drink in front of him, the unsolicited awareness he’s currently given you would have resulted in exactly that, so you stop yourself and give him a convincing smile.

“I’ve been good, thanks. It’s the end of the academic year, I have no more complaints,” you muse, bringing the cup to your lips as you peer over the rim to look at Jack, his long lashes fluttering as his focus remains you. Your heartbeat picks up its pace. “What about you? Frozen four’s a big deal, but winning the championship is even bigger.”

Jack gives a lighthearted laugh, smugness adjusting his posture as his shoulders move back and his chest puffs out. Meanwhile, he gives this half shrug and grin that has heat gravitating towards the apples of your cheeks. It’s one of the things you like about Jack, how confident and sure of himself he is without it being overbearing and unappealing. It feels assuring, not having to dim your own light for the sake of his own comfort. 

“Yeah, that was nuts, I can’t lie. We had a really good run and I think our efforts really showed for themselves in that case,” Jack responds, taking a swig of his beer. “Christ, I sound like I’m talking to the media or something.”

“Well, consider this practice for when you join Jersey in the future,” you simper, snickering as you take a sip of your own drink. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of fun speaking to the media.”

He gives an eyeroll, amusement prominent in the way his eyes twinkle and you can't help but laugh more. “So you say. How did you even know about Jersey?”

Your laugh is cut short, ice cold realisation washing over you like a bad hangover as his words hang in the air like a gauntlet waiting for its descent. Of course, this was nothing to be caught off-guard by considering how much your university boasts about how Jack, amongst other talented players, were drafted before committing to your university. However, the painful memory of you awake one late night doesn’t escape you, said night spent hesitantly typing his name into Google to come across all the info you knew to confirm how great of a hockey player he was. You feel shameful even looking him in the eyes right now.

So, your eyes stray from him, the somewhat sticky floor being the source of all your interest. “Who doesn’t know? Our uni does a good job of reminding us of everyone that’s been drafted.” 

You decide to spare a glance at Jack, taking in how a pinkish hue decorates the surface of his cheeks as his lone hand goes to scratch the back of his neck. The timidity that clouds his movement evokes a simper out of you, one that you direct into your cup, its contents rapidly draining under the weight of your continued conversation.

“Oh, man. Maybe, I shouldn’t have asked that,” he jokes, smile all pearly white and heart fluttering. “Can’t blame a guy for being nervous, no?”

“Nerv-”

Suddenly, the kitchen door bursts open and a flood of drunken students come barrelling in, hollering as their drinks splash to the floor and chaos ensues. You’re just as confused at their unexpected appearance as you are at the comment Jack made, but before you have a chance to ponder further, a warm hand settles against the small of your back followed by the gentle waft of Jack’s aftershave, a mixture sea salt with a hint of lavender and spicy nutmeg. It takes everything in you for your knees not to buckle.

“Let’s head out back.” he whispers, breath fanning over your neck as his fingertips ignite fire against your skin. 

Abruptly, you clear your throat, mindlessly nodding along as you blindly follow him out back, Jack’s larger build serving as a shield of sorts as he seamlessly navigates his way through the hordes of students. He does so with your hand in his and as much as your internal monologue unleashes panicked squeals at the contact, you revel in his touch - calloused hands that hold yours like porcelain, warm hands that match together like the universe and all its stars. 

A cool breeze blankets your skin and your focus shifts from your inner thoughts, taking in the generous and lush green outdoor space with sparse camping chairs circling a bonfire and a large tree further up ahead draped in fairy lights. There’s some people here too, but the atmosphere is a 180 from the mayhem inside, hushed light-hearted conversations exchanged beside the lit bonfire with the faint smell of weed filtering through the crisp air. The dazzling fairy lights blind you into bumping into Jack’s back, apologising with a laugh before he collapses onto the daisy white hammock before you. 

You follow suit with the carefree attitude Jack gives you, but you miscalculate horrendously because you don’t fall into the place beside your crush, but into his lap. Shock runs through your veins like ice as your bewilderment freezes you in place, mouth gaping open as you turn to face Jack in absolute horror. He seems to fare better with the unexpected contact, enlarged azure eyes showing his awe and yet his hands are in all the right places - supporting your waist as your weightless body struggles to hold its own. 

“I’m-“ the hairs on your neck are standing and you’re close to crying, the heat of your mortification burning your body hot like a furnace. “-so sorry. I didn’t-I didn’t even-“

“Relax, you’re good,” the chill of his beer against your skin sends a shiver down your spine, the feeling intensifying by the thousands as Jack’s thumb gives your exposed skin the smallest caress. You’re sure you’re the personification of shock at how every inch of your features displays pure alarm. “Unless this was your plan?”

You’re shoving him before your brain is able to comprehend its commands, your flustered state leaping out of his lap and collapsing back alongside him this time, hands clasped over your eyes as you take the time to maybe calm down. “What frat house even has a hammock anyways?”

“Rachel - Z’s girl - thought it’d be a nice touch for the garden,” you hear Jack mumble, but you’re too busy nursing your ego to fully immerse in conversation. “You’re friends with her, right? You guys came in together.” 

“Keeping an eye out for me, Hughes?” 

Apparently, your ego isn’t as bruised to make such a comment, a smirk finding itself onto the surface of your face as you’ve yet to remove your hand from your vision.

“It’s hard to keep my eyes off you.” 

You freeze in place, the heaviness in your stomach incomparable with the hammering of your heart against your chest as your brain picks apart Jack’s comment at the speed of light. None of the comments Jack has made throughout your entire conversation have gone over your head, the flirty undertones as clear as day. He wasn’t as up front with his compliments when you two first started working together, the furthest compliment he’d given denoting how nice you looked despite rolling out of bed twenty minutes beforehand. His directness makes your eyebrows furrow, or rather his intentions have you looking around as if you could find some answers. Perhaps this is how Jack is at parties - all pleasant with a careful flirtation that gradually pulls you inwards. Or maybe, this simply is the case of him showing his interest in you. The concept is not lost on you, but there is still apprehension that manifests within you, for reasons you are yet to discover.

You’re about to say something, your parted lips issuing a single incoherent syllable that dissolves on your tongue when the faint murmur of country music from a group of guys up ahead takes your notice, Jack’s nose scrunching with delight as he exclaims, “Ah, what a banger.”

Your eyebrow quirks upwards, merriment spreading against your features. “I never pegged you as the country type.” 

“Well, I’m not a Drake guy, I’ll tell you that much.” Jack shifts in his seat, extending his arm out behind your back. 

“So, a belieber then?” you jester, taunting eyebrows raised as you can’t keep your snicker to yourself when you watch Jack roll his eyes with the same grin.

“If that makes you happy, then yeah,” Jack reasons nonchalantly, whereas you make a pathetic attempt at stopping the stammer in your chest. “But no, that’s pretty much all that plays when my brothers and I wakesurf in the summer, unless Z is on the aux. Then, he and Quinn have a go at each other for it.”

Chuckles emit from your lips as you picture the image of a sunny summer day out on a boat, Jack’s older brother, Quinn, and Trevor becoming enemies of silence as they bicker over music choices. A warm fuzziness embraces you, the image placing you right beside Jack as laughter bubbles between the two of you whilst Luke wakesurfs in the background. It’s a honeyed depiction, all rose-tinted and for you to hold close to your heart along with other fantasies you allow yourself to entertain.

“We’re planning on going back to our summer house upstate where we do loads of other stuff,” Jack trails off, his fingers tapping against the glass of his bottle as you two share a look between each other. His eyes flicker downwards almost immediately, the top of his ears crimsoning. “You should stop by sometime. It’d be good to see you over the summer.”

For someone as confident as Jack, these rare glimpses of timidity demonstrate themselves as a pure anomaly. So, you can imagine your surprise at not only his incredibly generous offer but also his sheepish demeanour; gaze never aligning with yours as you feel his fingers fiddle with the material of the hammock behind your back. The sight enamours you, a rush of endearment washing over you as you lean into the feeling, not bothering to hide the wide smile growing across the expanse of your face. 

If this is what awaits you at their summer house, you’re already packed and ready to go.

“I could be persuaded.” Jack’s already rolling his eyes and against his better judgement, he finds himself chuckling with you too. 

When your amusement blends into the night sky, Jack's eyelids fall halfway, gaze steady as he mirrors your prior smirk that’s all but gone with the quiet wind. “And, what would that involve?” 

A moment is shared between the two of you. Burning bright like a star and erupting fireworks in your fingertips as your eyes linger on one another longer than explanatory. The landscape of his dotted moles capture your attention first, your sight leading itself to the galaxy-like twinkle dazzling in the ocean blue of his eyes. It’s so precious, this point in time - so delicate and intimate that it feels like a secret, whispers of infatuation pulling you together by their invisible strings as Jack’s extended arm circles your shoulders. You lean in, the temptation of his lips calling your name. Earlier restlessness ceases to exist as your movements read as second nature, the bruising of your chest accompanying the fuzziness that dances in your stomach as Jack leans into too.

“Yo, Jack!”

The moment is all but gone, burst like a bubble as both your heads turn in the direction of the voice, spying one of Jack’s friends, Cole, standing on the porch with a hand clasped around his mouth.

“Get your ass in here, we’re playing Jenga!”

A string of unpleasantries filter through Jack’s mouth in the form of a murmur, remnants of your interrupted kiss lingering as Jack gives your shoulder a gentle squeeze and gives you the most apologetic look you’ve ever seen. Puppy eyes and pouty lips, an image you lock away in your heart forever. 

“Did you wanna head in?” He gives you the choice, head tilted to the side as he studies your expression whilst you ponder the inquiry.

The almost kiss is something to behold and if this has occurred weeks prior amidst the intensity of your crush, you would have begged and pleaded to stay, hinging on the hopes of whatever this is being fabricated once again to fulfil your fondness dreams. But, this feels different. It feels sold, as opposed to balancing upon shaky possibilities. This is undeniable, a point in time that is infinite and kissed upon by destiny. A junction you can return to time and time again.

“Yeah, I’m sure my friends are looking for me anyways,” you unravel yourself from Jack’s loose grip, hoisting yourself up before you turn to face him with a soft beam. His expression reads unsure, gaze scattered before he looks upwards before your sneakers knock against his impossibly white Air Forces. You nod towards the house, the giddiness building within you exceptional as your hand extends out to meet his. “Let’s head in together?”

It comes out more of a question than a statement, but you could care less when Jack gives you that soft smile that’s only reserved for you, grabbing a hold of your hand after he brings himself off the hammock before you proceed to return back to the party.

The bustling atmosphere appears to have maintained itself in your absence, hundreds of conversations mixing in with the booming sounds of some bass heavy hip hop song. You nod your head to the beat, grinning when you see familiar faces in the crowd as you trail behind Jack yet again, following him in promise of your friends who Cole had mentioned joined their group’s game of Jenga. You make do with getting down the stairs of the basement without tumbling due to their frigid nature, face instantly lighting up as you catch sight of your friends, collapsing into a fit of excited hugs and shared giggles as you all catch up on the events of the party.

Amidst all the dialogue, some of which you’re assuming Jack’s sorority brothers and friends make quick work of getting the bare room ready, arranging beers for everyone as the box of Jenga is brought out. The weight of concentrated eyes seers into your goosebump-riddled skin and by the time you volunteer to assemble the Jenga tower, you’re more than aware of Jack’s attention on you. Even with how overflowing the confidence you possessed was as you left the back garden, the heat of his gaze reduces you to a sheepish mess, antsy hands uncertain of their movements as you attempt to achieve some standard of normalcy, your eyes avoiding his. It’s when your hands accidentally touch that you cannot avoid it much longer, peering through clumpy eyelashes with a flush that feels as vivid as painted glass. 

A lone corner of his lips inclines, his look of allurement tangled with blatant attraction enough to make you knock over some of the Jenga pieces. A deep chorus of disapproving sounds holler at your actions, your sheepishness fended off by the laughter amongst you and Jack as you continue to assemble the tower again, this serving as the last of your communication before the Jenga game commences.

Every Jenga piece taken out of the tower involves a dare that has laughter erupting from the pits of your stomach or mouth gaping open at the gull others possess whilst intoxicated. With the muffled sounds of the music upstairs and endless talk in the room, merriment captures your heart in a gentle squeeze as the dares carry on, the harmless fun quickly becoming one of your favourite memories in recent times.

It’s your turn to go and the frat guys are already teasing you with endearing nicknames, putting a smile on your face as your hands steady to pull out a tricky Jenga piece with ease. Wooden block in hand, your line of vision skims the chicken scratch of a dare with an effortless glee that’s swiftly replaced with plentiful surprise.

“What does it say?!’ exclaims Trevor, the anticipation in his voice evident as he squeals his words.

You’re reducing to your meek self again, not daring to look upwards as you enunciate your words to aid your own comprehension. “Spend seven minutes in heaven with the player across from you.”

You’re unsure whether the universe has some really good jokes up their sleeve or this is just fate to begin with because when you lift your head up, already knowing, Jack’s amused facial expression speaks for itself.  

Hollers and cheers fill the room, enough pandemonium to make you crimson as you stumble to your feet, casting a peek at your best friend with a cross between disbelief and delight. Your best friend, the same one that texted you about Jack’s presence at the party tonight, bawls her hand into a tight fist, bringing it to her chest as a sign of victory with mischief painted all over her. The ridiculousness of this farce eliminates you from ruminating about what awaits you in the closet a mere metres away. The guy most pleased with the situation opens the closet door, a few brooms pushed back into the compact space that is surprisingly clean with no cobwebs or dust in sight.

“All clean and ready for you two lovebirds,” Trevor grins with the keenness of a kid in a candy store, pushing back his long locks of hair as he sends a wink your way. “Don’t get too carried away in there, you’ve only got seven minutes.”

Jack says something in reply to Trevor’s cheeky comment but you’re too preoccupied by your own thoughts, feet carrying you to the fate of your Jenga dare as the door closes and darkness shrouds you. 

It’s silent for a minute, nothing but soft breaths and dulled whispers from outside the closet door. The closet is dangerously compact, your back up against the wall not sparing you from establishing your own personal space, the slightest shift of your shoes inevitably going to knock against Jack’s. Outside in the back garden feels so far away now, slipping through your hands as if sand with the daunting weight of unsaid expectations folding your arms and clearing a stubborn croak in your throat.

As the seconds tick on and no communication is shared, the everlasting laps you round around your mind exhaust you for the last time and you decide to face whatever this is head on, a start being making eye contact with the man that makes it the hardest thing in the world. However, with the tiniest sliver of dimmed light peaking through underneath the closet door, you can see him. Jack, in all his glory - soft and boyish, all charming in nature. The round pool blue of his eyes and the moles that dot his skin like constellations. It’s a rush of emotions, all raw and bare, to overwhelm and comfort you, with the easiness of his smile that directs your way and warms your heart like no other.

“We don’t have to do anything in here, I’d never do anything to make you uncomfortable,” Jack explains, his hand reaching to drag down one side of his face as his eyes cast away. “I hope you know that.”

This - you feel resolute in - establishing some sense of security in this room as you smile up at Jack. “The thought didn’t even cross my mind.” 

There’s a double meaning in your words and you don’t bother to correct yourself, reading in between the lines cementing itself as your favourite pastime. But, Jack knows and so do you. Perhaps you knew all along that every nook and cranny in your heart was specially reserved for Jack and no other could do. Maybe, you spent so much time in your head because this unexplored territory felt like the birth of the universe, so big and beautiful that it had more questions than answers. A forbidden fruit of sorts - a sweet mirage that the more you pulled away, gravity pulled you right back. A place where you belonged - with him in this moment forever sealed between the two of you.

Jack offers a smile in the wake of your thoughts, timid yet teasing in nature and you can’t resist, in the almost dark of the closet, grin too because this was sealed from the very beginning. Alone with infamous fratboy Jack Hughes, under some sort of awkward pretence bringing you together because you let your fears get the best of you, a stark contrast to what they are now - engulfed in thoughts, feelings of your lips against his and how this charade will come to a close, the building tension boiling till it overflows

“Hey-” you both say at the same time, silencing as you chuckle at the unison you unite in.

“Ladies first.”

“I’m more interested in what you have to say.” 

Because there’s no doubt in your mind he’ll steal the words right out of your mouth, the mere thought of those words escaping his lips the centre of all your desires.

He pauses, eyes searching yours for confirmation which presents itself in the toothy grin he struggles not to reflect, canine sinking into the corner of his lips before he responds, “If you insist.”

Jack doesn’t miss a beat as he reaches for your hand, absently tracing patterns into the skin with a thoughtful hum that proceeds his words. 

“I think I’ve been a lot more straightforward with how I feel about you, but I’d like to chance to tell you right here that I’m interested in you, in being with you. To the point that the boys get sick of me yapping about it,” you chuckle at his comment, the humour of the joke distracting you from the flood of emotions that submerges you indefinitely. “I felt this way from the time we got assigned to work together. And, if maybe you had any reservations about us, I’d do whatever it takes so that they don’t exist because you’re what matters most and that will never change.”

No feeling can compare to this. It’s almost as if you’re experiencing the full spectrum of emotions for the first time, rejoicing in the sunshine Jack basks upon you in the wake of his confession. A mirage turned reality, the colours are bright and blinding and you’re so elated within yourself that you physically cannot do more than bring Jack’s hand to your cheek to kiss his palm. A confirmation that needs no words. 

The warmth of his hand against your cheek melts you into his skin, eyelids falling shut as you revel in the tender caresses of his thumb, of his love and the unspoken words between you. A graze against your throat has your eyes fluttering open, lips parted as Jack secures his hand gently against the nape of your neck. A soft inhale escapes you as his thumb traces the corner of your mouth, dilated pupils flickering between your own and your lips.

“Can I-”

“Yes, please.” 

A star is born at the centre of your lips as they fold over one another, blending seamlessly together as you move together in synchronised harmony. You taste the remnants of beer, inhale his musky cologne and send yourself flying into another universe as Jack holds you close for impact. All your brain knows to do is convey your sentiment tenfold, kissing him as if touch starved as your fingers thread through the curls of his hair. You commit this to memory - the slowness of the kiss, the scent of his apple shampoo and his curls around your fingers, the feathery feeling of your fluttering heart and the tenderness of your hearts beating as one. So sickeningly besotted with another that everything pales in comparison.

Reluctantly, you pull away from his soft lips when the shared oxygen between you two vanishes, eyes slow to open but ultimately capturing the part of Jack’s rouge lips that quiver in your wake, his gaze meeting yours moments later. 

You kiss him again for good measure.

“Alright, horny bastards. Time’s up!” Cole’s voice thunders from beyond the door.

Lips still pressed against Jack’s, you both smile into one last kiss, just as sweet as the last. Jack savours it for what it’s worth, forehead pressed against yours as you two stand together, bruised chests aching with all the yearning that can fit into your palms.

“Consider me persuaded.” 

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[wordsinhaled]

dream overworking himself and sulking and stressing everyone out in the dreaming until he basically gets sent on an enforced vacation, so he's all, well, i suppose i must go to the waking then. who do i know in the waking?

which of course results in dream showing up on hob's doorstep entirely unannounced, probably in the middle of the night too in true dream fashion, like, "i will be here a fortnight." and hob is all, okay, on the one hand, it is 3 in the morning and what the fuck, but on the other hand—delighted! this is lovely! this is amazing! because dream, who, miracle of miracles, just came back to him, is now back again and it hasn't been a hundred years, it's been a month. hob hadn't thought "come back anytime" would be taken with any sort of seriousness at all, and of course he's happy to open his home to dream (and also his heart, but he's very resolutely not thinking about that. at all)

so hob is all, "of course, love. my home is your home," totally also not dwelling on the fact that he's never actually called dream "love" before except in his head, and he ushers dream inside, and shows him around, and laments the fact that it's getting to be the middle of term so his flat is a bit of a mess. he gallantly offers dream his bed, no matter that his back is going to be protesting something fierce after two weeks of sleeping on the couch, it's dream, he should have the bed

and then hob remembers it's the middle of term and he actually has to work... he explains this to dream and assures him he'll try to be there as much as he can, and dream momentarily looks like hob's job had not occurred to him at all, but then adopts a look of utmost unaffectedness

hob told him my home is your home so dream just... hangs about in hob's flat while hob is at work. going through his refrigerator and trying all the random bits of things hob has in there, not because he actually needs to eat but because no one has offered him this type of hospitality before, their space, their home, and all the things in it. reading books from hob's bookshelves. talking to hob's plants. flicking through hob's vinyl collection; putting on random records. (incidentally, this is how he discovers glass animals...). drinking all the sparkling water hob has. feeling the dream-history of hob's presence in the space and in his possessions, and it feels almost like... being held by hob, even though that's never been something they've done

on the first night when hob wanders into his bedroom to use the bathroom at 1 am he learns that dream doesn't even sleep; he just sits up against the headboard and reads with the bedside lamp on or he literally... sits in the dark... and stares off into space, eyes glimmering faintly, like he can see things in the shadows that hob can't see

dream sticking his head out from beneath the blankets of hob's bed in the mornings, watching as hob meanders into the ensuite to shower before work and swears when he realizes that he's running very late for his first lecture. hob rushing out of the bathroom with just a towel around his waist and a hair-tie in his teeth. hob forgetting entirely in his haste that dream of the fucking endless is in his bed and is not actually averting his eyes. dream watching hob pick out his work clothes and making dry commentary; hob most assuredly not blushing about the fact that dream is unashamedly watching him get dressed from their bed like they're some kind of lovers when they're most definitely not that

hob comes home from work each day and his flat is slightly rearranged, but also marginally tidier than it was before, and he's a little taken off guard but also... he'd meant it that his home was dream's home and it warms a part of hob that's ached for far too long to mention to just... have dream here, to have evidence that dream has been here, even if it's temporary

hob also has to contend with the fact that apparently dream of the endless likes to go around barefoot in just skinny jeans and a t-shirt when he's neither centennial nor a stranger anymore, which is... a whole thing, a whole situation, dream's apparently got arms and a clavicle and ankles and lord... hob still remembers when dream had been buttoned up all the way to the throat centuries ago and looking at hob like hob was a fascinating specimen of insect pinned to a board, but now dream is here asking him about his workday and he has to focus on making dinner for them to regain some of his sanity about all of this

they watch a film together one evening a few days into dream's stay and at first dream is stiff on the couch but over the course of the movie he gradually relaxes into the cushions and the next time hob looks over dream's got his legs crossed and a throw pillow tucked against his chin resting on it and hob has a litany of i'm fucked i'm fucked i'm fucked just playing in his head because seeing dream for a few hours every century is one thing, but having dream in his home? having him just there? the first time dream laughs??? to have dream's coat hung up in his hall closet and his boots at the foot of the bed??? fucked

the two of them talking late into the night after the movie is over, until hob falls asleep and tips over onto dream, and he wakes himself up on the jarring boniness of dream's shoulder and the soft brush of dream's t-shirt against his cheek. hob opens his eyes to see dream's hand hovering over his head as though he'd been about to touch hob's hair, and he smiles before he can think better of it, and dream smiles, and it's so disarming... because now he knows what dream's smile looks like not just in the warm light of the new inn but also in the bluish light cast by the DVD pause screen in this small gentle moment - a tiny angular smile, so fleeting that looks like it exists just for this moment alone, but hob will remember it long after it's gone

hob also realizing dream said he would be here two weeks only so his time with dream is Finite, and reminding himself he should absolutely not get used to making breakfast for two people or to being able to just come home and tell dream things instead of jotting them in his commonplace book

dream realizing he likes being made breakfast, and he likes hob's little flat full of plants and books and music and old things lovingly preserved and curated. he likes hob's big bed covered in blankets and quilts and pillows. he likes the way the sunshine streams in through the windows of the flat. he likes the way hob makes his tea for him and the way the heat of the mug feels. he likes feeling not-alone even when he's by himself at hob's place because traces of hob are everywhere

dream realizing he likes hearing all the little things that happened in hob's day, even the things hob hesitates to tell him because he worries they're boring compared to the broad strokes highlights he used to give dream during their meetings every hundred years. he... likes... the way hob looks in the mornings, sleep tousled and yawning; and the way he looks focused and thoughtful when he's rehearsing a powerpoint presentation for a staff meeting; and he likes the way his voice sounds when he teaches zoom class; and he likes... a surprising number of things about hob gadling, really

to his immense surprise dream likes feeling like part of the human life hob gadling has built for himself

dream and hob both feeling like Something is Happening Here and not wanting to name what it is but also not wanting it to end. feeling like... something has happened but nothing even has happened, they've just been sort of... listing towards each other... and it's been no time at all but also feels like it's been all the time in the world

hob feeling upset with himself because once, he would have given anything to have two entire weeks with his stranger and now he feels like it wasn't enough. dream feeling reluctant to return to his responsibilities and unsure how such a short time around hob has unspooled him like this. it was supposed to be something that would ground and center him so that he could return to the dreaming and be his usual collected kingly self, and it has grounded him but perhaps... it has grounded him a little too much

I JUST NEED THEM TO BE DOMESTIC AND FALL IN LOVE .....glfkjlh AUGHHGHGHG

#I'M NORMAL ABOUT THEM COMPLETELY NORMAL #the sandman #dreamling #dreamling domestic vacation

[bosbas]

Chapter 8: this is falling in love in the cruelest way

series masterlist previous part || next part

pairing: colin bridgerton x enemy!fem!reader WC: 3.4k words

Warnings: period-typical gender roles, heavily going off of book canon, me stirring the pot (im sorry)(no im not), PINING!!!!!!!, anthony being very much in love with his wife

Summary: It took precisely two days in England for you to utterly despise Colin Bridgerton. It took him approximately twelve hours after that to hate you right back. But he doesn't care that you're the only person in the ton who doesn't like him. You're set to marry someone else anyway, right?

A/N: guys i'm sorry but this picture is INSANE. the THIGHS??? HELLO? i am looking respectfully.......👁️👁️

June 5, 1816 – And yesterday, much to this author’s surprise, Lord Barlow reportedly proposed to Lady Montclair! This proposal comes unexpectedly after the Duke’s promiscuity with Miss Barrington at the Bridgerton ball a few weeks ago. Given the fact that Miss Barrington has been compromised, it is incredibly shocking that Lord Arthur Barlow would do something like this in polite society. Luckily, Lady Montclair remains a single woman and swiftly rejected her former beau’s proposal. But this only begs the question: why did the Duke propose? Is Lady Montclair simply too alluring to pass up, or is something else amiss between Lord Barlow and Miss Barrington? 

“Oh, thank God,” muttered Colin under his breath, his eyes quickly scanning Lady Whistledown’s column as he sat on a bench in the garden. 

“What’s that you’re reading, brother?” asked Anthony, ears perking up at Colin’s scandalous language, even if it was just between brothers. 

Colin felt a slight blush forming on his cheeks. He hadn’t realized he was speaking out loud, having been too caught up in the news that you had finally received a proposal from Lord Barlow. It was a lovely day out, and Anthony, Benedict, and Colin were in the gardens of Number 5 Bruton Street after a round of fencing. 

Of course, once Francesca had come outside holding a copy of Whistledown to read in the gazebo, Colin had stolen it out of her hands and abandoned his brothers in favor of catching up on the ton’s happenings. Though no one should have been surprised by his interest, really, given that you were the main topic of most of the gossip sheets nowadays. 

“Nothing,” Colin answered quickly, trying to recover from his blunder. “It’s bizarre how invested one becomes in Whistledown while living here. Is this what every summer is like when one isn’t traveling for half the time?”

“In essence, yes,” answered Benedict, still jabbing at the air with his épée as Anthony stared at him amusedly. “What does she have to say today?”

“Lord Barlow proposed to Lady Montclair yesterday,” said Colin, a slight edge to his voice. “And he looked a sight while doing it, too, apparently.”

Benedict dropped his foil, turning around to fully face Colin with a shocked look on his face. “And what did she say?” he pressed, intrigued about the outcome of this curious development. It was practically unimaginable that the Duke had proposed to you after defiling another lady in the ton, and Benedict hadn't considered him capable. 

Anthony clapped him on the back, smirking at Colin as he did so. “Well, did you not hear the man say, ‘thank God’? Obviously, she said no.”

Colin crossed his arms, immediately defensive. “It wasn’t that obvious! She could have said yes, and my ‘thank God’ could have been because she would’ve finally left me alone. Duchesses have a lot to do; I doubt she’d find the time to be irritating while attending to her duties in the country.”

Benedict and Anthony gave their brother unimpressed looks, watching amusedly as he squirmed under their gaze. 

“I assure you, brother, that there was absolutely no possibility of that being the case,” said Benedict jovially, earning a snort from Anthony. 

But before Benedict could laugh, too, Colin lunged at him, épée in hand as he glared playfully at his brother. Finding himself unarmed, Benedict yelped and ran toward the house, citing a very important painting to attend to before sprinting back inside. 

Turning to Colin, Anthony smiled curiously. “So, it’s true, then? What Daphne said?”

“What did Daphne say?” asked Colin innocently, dreading the conversation that would follow.

“Don’t be daft. That you love Y/N.”

Colin rolled his eyes, letting out an impatient sigh. “I don’t love her; that’s ridiculous, Anthony! A mere two weeks ago, we absolutely despised each other. I hardly think I could love her now.”

But even as he said those words, Colin questioned whether he actually meant them. Could he love you? He hadn’t ever felt this way about anyone, but then again, no one had ever vexed him quite like you. Though lately, he had been finding the line between irritation and fascination to be quite blurred. So blurry, in fact, that he was having trouble seeing a line at all. 

Having clearly overheard part of the conversation, Gregory ran up to his brothers, laughing hysterically as Hyacinth chased him. He stopped and let his sister catch up, smiling evilly at the older Bridgertons “Colin loves who, now?” 

Hyacinth arrived a few moments later, panting heavily. “Y/N, of course,” she stated while trying to catch her breath, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

“What? What do you mean? Why do say that?” pressed Colin. Why did everyone in his family seem to think that he loved you? Surely they saw the two of you bickering incessantly, right? Your feud was so famous it had even made it to Lady Whistledown’s column. Colin couldn’t understand how anyone could think he had so much affection for you. 

Hyacinth raised an eyebrow at her older brother, unamused. “Colin, I am not an idiot. Though perhaps you might be,” she added brightly. And before Colin could respond, she quickly turned to her eldest brother. “Now, Anthony, could you please tell Gregory to give me back my quill?” she begged.

Gregory, scoffed, glaring at his sister. “I’d only borrowed it for a moment! And I only did so because Hyacinth hid mine! Anthony, she’s being unreasonable,” he whined.

Anthony affectionately patted them both on the head and flashed a faux sympathetic smile. “I rather think both of you are being quite the nuisance right now.” 

At times, Anthony found himself slipping into the role of a father figure to his youngest siblings. It was an unspoken duty he assumed after their father's passing. Yet, it was important to occasionally remind them that he was still their brother.

Hyacinth responded with a frustrated groan, her teeth grinding audibly, thoroughly vexed with her brother. However, the sight of Gregory's smug smile reignited her fury, and she immediately charged at him. Despite being older than Hyacinth, Gregory wasn't foolish enough to underestimate her, and he took off in a panic, screaming as he tried to outpace his deceptively quick sister.

Colin shook his head in amusement as he watched the antics of his youngest siblings. “Were Daphne and I truly like that?”

“Worse,” said Anthony flatly, but he couldn’t mask the warmth and fondness interlaced in his words.

At that, Anthony began to turn back toward the house. “Well, I must be-”

“Wait!” interrupted Colin. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had stopped his brother, other than the fact that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the possibility that he could love you. You, the person he supposedly hated. The person who certainly hated him. 

But, as always, Anthony was the right person to talk to about this. He would know what to say. Though it was well known that Anthony was completely smitten with his wife, Colin remembered a time when the pair seemed to dislike each other fairly intensely.

After a few moments of charged silence, Colin met Anthony’s expectant gaze. Swallowing his pride, he spoke up. “Purely hypothetically, and simply out of curiosity, when did you fall in love with Kate?”

Anthony smiled, amused. “Hmm,” he hummed thoughtfully, putting a hand to his chin. “As long as it's purely out of curiosity,” he teased. “It wasn’t like I simply fell in love with her one day, Colin.”

“Yes, but if you had to pinpoint a moment?” pressed Colin, slightly exasperated. If anything, he needed to know if he had experienced that moment himself.

Anthony’s gaze softened, and he suddenly saw a lot of himself in Colin’s uncertainty and pause when it came to a woman who profusely vexed him. “I found Kate in the library the night after we played Pall Mall for the first time,” he recalled fondly. “We were at Aubrey Hall for the country party and it was raining outside quite loudly, a terrible storm. She was huddled underneath a desk because she was scared of the storm. I very quickly realized I couldn’t hate her anymore. Not properly, anyway. Not when I just wanted to sit on the floor with her and protect her from the storm, and anything else that might come her way.”

His voice had softened as he spoke about his wife, recalling the moment he truly knew there was no way out. Anthony had tried to deny it to himself after, but his protests simply held no conviction after that night. 

“You never told me that,” said Colin thoughtfully, not missing the glint of emotion in his brother’s eyes as he talked about his now-wife. 

“Yes, well, the real challenge was getting her to love me back,” he said, coming out of his musings. “And that didn’t happen for quite some time after that. It was rather premature of me to declare my love for this woman while I supposedly hated her and was still technically courting her sister.”

It was truly a wonder that he and Kate were married now. But when it was meant to be, it was meant to be, Anthony supposed. Something that was proving to be particularly true of you and his brother. If Colin, who had a deep-seated need to be liked by anyone and everyone, could fall in love with you, the only person who didn’t actually like him, then surely it was meant to be.

Colin, still deep in thought, chewed his lip nervously. “And how did you get her to fall in love with you?”

“We were caught in a… compromising position. She had been stung by a bee and I… Well, I’m sure you recall,” said Anthony, suddenly feeling uncharacteristically shy as he remembered the circumstances that allowed him to marry his wife. “It’s far easier to get a woman to love you when she’s already your wife,” he finished sympathetically. 

Colin choked back a laugh. “Unfortunately, I can’t very well put Lady Montclair in a compromising position, can I?” he laughed, shaking his head in disbelief.

“But Colin, I thought this was all hypothetical,” teased Anthony, playfully punching his brother on the shoulder. 

Colin cursed under his breath, rolling his eyes in annoyance as Anthony continued laughing at him. “Never mind. I’m off to find Eloise,” he muttered, patting the eldest Bridgerton on the back and leaving him free to go dote on his wife. 

After speaking with Anthony, Colin had a renewed sense of purpose. He had to find out why you hated him. He was so utterly exhausted of hating you and of having this tiresome charade of fighting with each other at every available moment. At this point, he didn’t particularly care who in the ton liked him or not. Colin knew he would happily take the entire ton’s wrath for the rest of his life if it meant you loved him.

But he needed to know just how unrealistic his hopes were. Eloise would be the best–and perhaps only­–person who would know. 

Colin found his sister practicing needlepoint in the sitting room, focused intensely on the material in front of her. It was unclear whether she was trying to sew the fabric or her finger, given how often she was pricking herself as she attempted to thread the needle. 

“El!” he called by the doorway, pausing when he saw his sister grimace after pricking herself once again. “I can return later if you’re busy.”

“No! No, please interrupt. Thank heavens,” gasped Eloise, grateful to be able to do something other than draw her blood. 

Colin laughed, amused, and suddenly felt a tad sheepish. Was he truly about to ask about you? To ask about you to Eloise, who would no doubt hold this over his head for the rest of eternity? But he had to know. He had to ask, at the very least. 

“I was just…I was wondering if you knew why Lady Montclair hates me,” he asked, clearing his throat awkwardly. 

Eloise let out a snort. “Well, I can’t imagine she’d be hard-pressed to find a reason why, given how you treat her.”

Seeing her brother’s crestfallen face, Eloise immediately sobered. Standing up and walking toward him, she placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “I thought you disliked her as well,” she said in a questioning tone.

“Of course I do,” clarified Colin quickly. “But she hated me first and I still don’t know why. I thought she might have said something to you, given how close the two of you are. Do you know at all?”

Eloise clicked her tongue in sympathy, looking at Colin with concern. Perhaps his feelings did run deeper than anyone thought, and the recent dancing and promenading were more than just Colin being his usual charming self around you. “I’m sure I have no idea, Col. But you could always just talk to her.”

Colin shook his head, smiling sadly at his sister. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? She doesn’t usually seem very eager to speak with me.”

Sure, the two of you had been getting along recently. But that had only been twice. And was that really enough to undo the weeks of hatred?

---

It was a particularly delightful Wednesday afternoon, and you found yourself feeding the ducks at Hyde Park as you watched Isabelle and Charlotte skip rocks across the pond. Though you loved Louis to bits, it was a lovely feeling to have both of your sisters home with you. There was simply something about being out in society that he could never quite understand like them, though not for lack of trying. 

After lunch, you, Charlotte, and Isabelle had managed to sneak out of the house just as the post-meal discussion grew rowdy. It was not unheard of to have such lively discussions in the Montclair household, and you frequently even enjoyed them. But there were some days, like today, that you frankly just wanted to have a quiet afternoon with a baguette and about a dozen ducks. Luckily, your sisters had decided to join you, and the three of you had set off toward the park in search of a flock of birds to feed.

It seemed that the ducks had taken much more of a liking to you than to your sisters, and they had grown disinterested in the endeavor. Charlotte and Isabelle had opted to give you their remaining bread and take a stroll around the mostly empty park, and you couldn’t say that you were complaining. Coming from such a large family, it was a rare luxury to have an afternoon largely to yourself. 

A while later, after most of the ducks found themselves happily full, you spotted a stumbling figure making its way toward you. As you turned to your sisters with a questioning look, you were disappointed to find them in deep conversation facing away from you, neither one of them noticing you. 

As the figure neared, you realized who it was: Nigel Berbrooke. Your heart skipped a beat and you felt your stomach drop, unpleasant memories of him and his disgusting words flooding your brain. You had no desire to speak to this man, and you looked around for anyone you could speak with instead. But you had not brought a lady’s maid, and everyone else was too far to intervene.

“Lady Montclair,” said Nigel, with what looked to be an attempt at a seductive smile on his face. 

You stood up from your crouching position rigidly and turned to face him. You were unable to form any words, discomfort far outweighing any other emotion you were feeling. This had to be his first time back this season after his absence, you thought. You hadn’t seen him at any events since the Danbury ball, and you rather thought you would have noticed him, looking as vile as he did now.

His nose was a tad more crooked than on the night you had met him, and the bags under his eyes were ghastly. But perhaps it was just your perception of him, knowing what you did about who he was.

“Mr. Berbrooke,” you settled for saying, nose crinkling as you caught a whiff of the pungent smell of alcohol emanating off of him.

“A promenade?” he asked roughly, reaching for your hand without permission. “It’s a lovely afternoon, it would be a shame to waste it.”

“Oh, Mr. Berbrooke, we were just about to head home,” you pointed your head toward your sisters, panicked. 

Isabelle and Charlotte were far too immersed in their conversation to look like they were ready to head home, but you prayed that Nigel’s inebriated state would distract him from this.

He growled at you, clearly displeased at your rejection. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Montclair. Your dowry, as well as your other…assets, are far too good to pass up,” he slurred, very obviously staring at your chest. “It’s a shame Colin’s gotten to you first.”

You were scandalized, opening your mouth to chastise him, or to scream for help, or anything that could get you out of this situation, really, but he cut you off before you could say anything. 

"I've heard Lord Barlow abandoned you, and truth be told, it's hardly shocking," he taunted, his voice laced with disdain as he regarded you with a sneer. "You insist on playing the coy maiden, denying every man what he craves. It's the only reason they’re after you now, you see? They want what you didn't give Arthur. And it appears Colin has taken the lead in the chase, the lucky bastard."

His words brought you crashing back down to reality. Of course, he was colluding with Colin. You had conveniently overlooked that fact as you found yourself becoming bashful in his presence, feeling secure, even desiring his company after these recent days. A surge of bile rose in your throat.

You felt tears prickling in your eyes, and you were impossibly angry with yourself for forgetting the very reason you despised Colin Bridgerton. How could you have let yourself forget? He was still the same man you overheard at the Danbury ball, and you were too embarrassed to admit that his charm had worked on you. 

You were disgusted with Nigel and Colin, but also with yourself. You were more than this, you chided. How could you have let this happen? The two men were clearly no good, and you had unwittingly allowed yourself to be ensnared, much like you had with Lord Barlow.

“Excuse me,” you said roughly, dodging Mr. Berbrooke’s outstretched hand as you ran toward where Isabelle and Charlotte were standing, propriety be damned. 

“On va chez nous. Tout de suite,” you said to them urgently, practically begging as you tugged on Isabelle’s hand (We’re going home. Right now). 

Charlotte looked at you, confused, and then noticed you glancing nervously at Nigel as he approached, angrily staggering over to you as his face contorted into an ugly scowl. 

“Ah, I’m terribly sorry Mr. Berbrooke,” Isabelle said firmly, “but it seems we have to go.” 

Not waiting for a response, your sisters hooked their arms in yours and hurriedly walked back from where you came. They’d be damned if he let anything else happen to you after what happened with Lord Barlow, and they were not about to waste any time.

Nigel only grunted, displeased, but let the three of you go without protest. Both of your sisters’ husbands were very powerful men, and Nigel was not so deluded as to forget his place in society.

“Y/N?” Charlotte questioned softly once you were sufficiently far away enough. 

But you were too embarrassed, tears streaming down your face as you choked back sobs. How could you have let yourself fall for Colin’s charm? You knew exactly who he was, and you had ignored it anyway. It didn’t matter that he made you feel safe and that the two of you had more in common than you cared to admit. He would never respect you, and you could never love him. 

Nigel had come at just the right time, you thought sullenly. Right as you were thinking you could finally overlook your rivalry with Colin, right as the memory of why you disliked him in the first place was fading. And thank heavens he did. You would not be taken for a fool again, by Colin or by Lord Barlow or by anyone. 

—

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[thevestigeofvanillaan]

I Want You.

sasuke uchiha x female reader.

cw: all characters are 18+, piv penetration, intended lower case, smut, swearing, face fucking, missionary, enemies to whatever the fuck, idk what else.. not proofread?

WELCOME TO VANNY'S COME BACK!

sasuke was hard to read. you never really understood why he looked at you the way he did, but it was always different than how he looked at others. even more than the way he eyed naruto, the pure shallowness in his eyes when he bored into yours showed almost hatred. you never knew why.

kakashi was your uncle, so oftentimes you were with him and his team, wielding naruto uzumaki, sasuke uchiha, and sakura haruno, and became quite good friends with them. well, everyone but sasuke who you just didn't talk to much.

you knew much about him though, through sakura. she'd always talk of him, "sasuke" this, "sasuke" that. "sasuke is so handsome" "sasuke is so great" "he's so strong".. you grew bored of hearing the name.

the older the group got, the more sasuke had grown to achieve his goal to provide vengeance for the uchiha name. it seemed to be the most of what he'd cared about.

"sasuke, it's too dangerous to leave the village! you're not gonna go find him yourself are you?" sakura had yelled as sasuke walked towards the border that marked the end of the leaf. you saw the pain in her eyes as she fell to her knees and tears began to fall down her cheeks. you watched emotionlessly as sasuke turned around, and he eyed you one last time, that same look of hatred he'd always only shown you. before he walked away, he looked at sakura, as she was wailing on the ground, staring at it, and then looked at you again, and he let out what was almost a laugh, and he left.

not caring much, you helped sakura get up off the ground and walked her over to where naruto had been standing, hugging her before trading her off to him. you didn't even think sakura noticed much that you handed her off. "you take care of her," you said, walking towards the village.

"do you just not care?" naruto said, not even moving to look at you. "you don't care that he just left like that? it didn't hurt you at all?" he sounded almost mad that you hadn't a care.

you smiled, not turning back. "why should i care? he's finally following his dreams, let him do what he wants." your voice fades off the further you walk away from the two.

it wasn't hard to understand why the two of them were hurt by sasuke's decision, after all, that was their teammate. but when did he ever vow commitment to them? he didn't. which is why you don't think it's so awful. you also didn't have a connection with sasuke, so why it would bother you was a mystery.

the walk to your apartment felt longer than it should have, especially when it started to rain.

about a week later, you were in your apartment, reading. it was a book called "the end", a long book that you'd been reading for a little while.

it was the knock at your door that surprised you out of the trance you were in while reading your book. you got up and answered it only to be surprised by who was there.

there were no words exchanged when sasuke pushed his way into your apartment. he was surprisingly clean for someone who'd apparently left the village for battle. in fact, he'd looked freshly showered and his clothes were also clean.

a few moments pass until a word is spoken. "it didn't bother you, at all?" his voice was deep, but unscathed, and it hadn't sounded like he went through anything difficult.

"looking good for someone who left the leaf to fight his brother, someone with so much power, no way you don't have a scratch on you." you scoff.

he looked into your eyes, though, this time, it was something else. not hatred. he didn't look bored. he looked hungry. like a lion looking at a deer that's all alone in the wild.

"that's not why i left." is all he says until about 30 seconds pass. you assumed he was searching for some excuse. "i just didn't want to be here anymore." he shrugged.

involuntarily your eyes roll, "so you left your team? left your home?".

"yeah." he sighs in a deep outward breath. he hadn't a care for what anyone thought about what he did. but for some reason, he cared about what you thought about him leaving. "you, though; you didn't care."

"was i supposed to? did you want me to get on my knees like this–" you begin, getting on your knees in front of him as he looks down at you. "and yell, 'no sasuke! please don't leave! the village needs you! i need you, sasuke! you're my hero!'.." you pretended to whine.

he smirked down at you, and now you stared back at him with doe eyes, waiting for his response. why were you still on your knees? why were you suddenly staring at him with such lust? why was he giving you those eyes.?

sasuke's hand tucked the hair that covered your face behind your ear before leaning down to your level. "so pretty down there for me.." his voice lowers to almost a whisper and his face gets closer to yours, he gets close to your ear to where you can feel his hot breath hitting it, "almost looks like you're ready for something else."

you'd never admit how that sentence made something inside you feel like it was exploding, and how it created a damp spot between your legs.

"im ready for you to leave." you trembled, no confidence in your voice. that wasn't true. you hadn't wanted him to leave. you wanted him to show you what he thought you were ready for.

sasuke stood up, "you don't want that, it's clear to see. your acting was much better when you were whining for me." he pauses before starting to speak again. "all you have to say are three words and i'll do the rest.." he chuckles.

"what three words?" you ask, curiosity making you wonder what he expected from you.

"all you have to say is 'i want you', and you can have me. but unless, it is, that you don't want that, then i may as well leave now." his voice was low, yet filled with hunger. he groaned softly at your no response, you'd only stare into his eyes until he'd look away and stand up.

the third step he took towards the door had your mouth agape, "wait." you say so soft you figured he may not have heard it. you hesitate to say those three forbidden words you had to convince yourself not to say right when he'd said it. sasuke stayed standing there, about two steps from the door, waiting for your response. you hummed quietly and looked down at your thighs, how they rubbed together at attempt to create any sort of friction that could ease the growing neediness in-between your legs.

"i want you."

sasuke let out what you believe was a laugh or a scoff or something before turning around. "i knew you'd give in."

"you're just soo irresistible, you narcissist." you smirk.

he made his way back to where he'd been standing in front of you, "shut up." he said with a cocky grin on his face, beginning to unbuckle the belt he'd been wearing with those dress pants. he was wearing black dress pants, dress shoes, a white button up. why he was dressed like that was the last thing on your mind at the time though. he didn't bother taking the belt from the belt loops but instead left it hanging, pants still loose enough to slide down, but he didn't do that.

"you want it?" he said in a laugh. "i mean, right here? right now? you want me?" he just wanted validation, you could see in his black, soulless eyes how bad he craved it from you. how badly he wanted to hear how much you needed him.

you let out a groan, letting your hands fall limp into your lap as you roll your eyes. you look up at him with the biggest, most needy it was pitiful to look at eyes with pure lust and need, they were watering of it. "it sure looks it, don't it?" you pout and spread your legs underneath you, beginning to rock yourself back and forth as to practically grind against the floor.

"you're insatiable." sasuke sighed breathlessly. "and annoying. should've shut you up ages ago."

sliding his pants along with his boxers down to pool at his ankles, you understood why sasuke had the reputation he did. there was no doubt that it was big, it mattered to you how he used it.

"go on, suck on it." he said with a shit eating grin as he stared down into your wide eyes.

taking his cock into both hands you begun to lick a long stripe all the way up before swirling your tongue around his tip, gliding your hand up to take your thumb to his glistening pre that began to wet him. moving your hand back down and continuing that motion before you finally take his length into your mouth. you look up at him as you do so, seeing his sharp jawline as his head fell slightly back from the pleasure.

his hand comes entangled in your hair as you bob on his length, him pulling at the roots slightly until he begun to pull harder. he pulled your hair and pushed you back onto his length at the speed he wanted to be going at, and it was no longer in your control.

practically face fucking you, his hips bucking, and his voice lowly groaning. you grabbed his wrist, surprising a low gasp to erupt from him, with your other hand cupping his balls before moving to his shaft, you took your head off his length before using your free hand to move up and down his cock. you breathed heavily as you hadn't gotten a chance to really breathe in a couple minutes.

laughing, you say breathlessly, "i want something now."

sasuke chuckles lowly and his hand goes to his forehead, looking up at the ceiling before his head falls to look at you. "is that how this goes?"

you nod your head up and down with a smile on your face. you grab his shirt and begin to stand, sasuke grabbing your arms to help you stand up entirely. this contact felt almost too intimate, the reason why you haven't kissed or anything. in reality, you almost wanted to, but you felt he possibly wasn't looking for that kind of a romantic act.

but god seeing his face so close to yours had you wanting to see just how it felt, even if short lasted.

"what are you thinking about?" he asked, seeing the perplexity on your face.

"it's nothing." your eyes dart down to look at his chest, slightly revealed from the top buttons being undone from his shirt. you look at the way that he's holding you, so close, holding your arms in his hands and not letting go. you sigh.

sasuke's head tilts slightly and his face moves to your neck, you can feel his hot breath before you feel his lips attach to the soft skin of your nape.

a small moan slips out and your hands go to his back, scratching at it and pulling him in closer. he moves up closer to your ear, to your jaw, making sure to leave little stains across the skin.

once his face leaves your neck, the look he gives you, him breathing heavy, and his hands now on your waist, yours on his biceps. and then he kissed you.

it was passionate but short lived, until he did it again. short lived again. "stop" you giggle, seeing the smirk on his face and your hands go to either side of his head, pulling him in to kiss you, and holding him there so he can't back away again.

he walks you over to your couch not too far from where the two of you are already standing, still kissing in the meantime.

sasuke hums into your mouth before the kiss separates. without words, his hands tug at the bottom of your tank top as he looks into your eyes almost for unspoken permission before he pulls it off over your head. impatiently, you pull down your short little skirt, pulling down your panties along with it before you sit down on the couch. you close your legs before anything happens, though. "why?" you ask. "i mean, why are we doing this now.."

"not sure." sasuke shrugs. "you ever wanted to do this with me before?"

you nod, "never really thought about it.. you?"

"oh yeah." he laughs. "how could i not?"

spreading your legs for him, you rub your clit yourself, but he looks into your eyes, putting a hand on your knee, his other holding his cock to your dripping hole.

sliding in, it feels almost painful at first before a wave of pleasure when he thrusts into you a third time at a relatively fast pace.

"so wh.. why did you come here— ugh. to begin with,.. sasuke?" you moan out, attempting at a regular sentence while he abuses your cunt.

he groans, "why are you talking?" he thrusts harder, faster. "just shut up.. talk– after." his hands go to your hips when your moans grow louder.

a slur of curses flow out of your mouth when you feel him in your tummy, your head falling back and moans becoming even louder. it felt so good the way he pulsed in and out of you, the way he took his thumb to play with your clit while his other four fingers press down on your lower stomach, reeling new realms of pleasure.

making grabby arms at his biceps before scratching his back so hard you probably left red marks on it, "fuck fuck fuck, please.." you moan out to him, feeling your high on its way. "sasuke.. im gonna— uggh im gonna.."

"c'mon baby, come on, cum for me, baby," sasuke groans, "come on im so close let's cum together, come onn..."

feeling yourself let go, and your walls being painted white was ethereal and otherworldly. grinding out your high, you and sasuke's loud breathing was pretty much the only sound bouncing off the walls anymore.

with barely any breath left, you still wanted an answer to your previous question. "answer my question."

"i wanted you."

#vanillaan #<3's for sasuke #sasuke x yn #sasuke smut #sasuke naruto #sasuke #sasuke uchiha #sasuke x reader #sasuke uchiha x reader #smut #naruto #naruto one shots #naruto smut

[littlejuicebox]

this is random, but a prompt idea that made me giggle is what if Tav wasn’t very interested in Astarion, maybe she’s from a more stoic or conservative country/realm/plane, so his flirting either went over her head or pushed her away… until she sees him sewing. Him acting ‘domestic’ immediately attracts her. Him secretly fixing Karlach’s bear, or later maybe fixing up Yenna’s clothes, makes her give him heart eyes.

Astarion, who already gave up after his flirting failed, is very confused by her sudden attention and requests for sewing lessons. For extra fun, what if post-brain she requests for lessons on sewing tiny clothes, not even realizing she’s asking how to make baby clothes—their baby’s.

Olive Branch

This is a bit different from my other work so I thought I'd give it a go! Not 100% satisfied with it, but I hope you still enjoy, anon!

Word count: 1.3K

Tags/warnings: All fluff, Astarion being Astarion lol

-----

Astarion finally gave up on seducing Tav . He’d originally pegged her as a naive, and therefore easily charmed and manipulated, cleric. Unfortunately, two weeks of wasted effort proved him wrong. She’d barely spoken or paid attention to him and his overt advances at all. 

Any attempts to entrance her with aggressive flirtation or the allure of his sexual wiles seemed to have an opposite effect. In fact, Tav would always gravitate more towards Wyll and Gale and preferred to avoid him almost entirely.

He couldn’t be the issue, of course. He was gorgeous, witty, and made it quite clear he was experienced in bed. He was the man of anyone’s dreams; he knows because he’d manufactured himself to be practically undeniable to the masses. 

So then it was obviously her… she was certainly the problem. Something about that – admittedly attractive – cleric was strange; she was oddly secretive about her goddess. The rogue couldn’t even be sure which goddess it was; Tav never referred to the deity by name.

Her apparent distaste for him was concerning, however. Just a few days back, the monster-hunter had outed him as a vampire. The entire group seemed ready to cast him aside after that, save their cleric leader. She’d granted him a moment of mercy and had been able to convince the others that he wasn’t a danger, though he felt he was on thin ice with her and everyone else. 

Astarion did not know how he was going to charm his way out of this one. And as the rogue sits in front of his tent, mulling over his options for ensuring his own security, he begins to consider that perhaps he should just suck it up and proposition Lae’zel or Gale. One of them would be sufficient, too. 

The elf is ripped from his scheming by a sudden groan of dismay from Karlach just a few tents over. When he turns to survey the scene, he sees the slouched tiefling grasping onto that stuffed bear she slept with every night, muttering something to a concerned Tav.

“Perhaps we can find a new bear, Karlach,” Tav says, frowning as she gently takes the stuffed animal from her friend and spins it around in her hand. The toy’s back seam is split apart; tufts of white stuffing spill from the opening.

Astarion instantly recognizes the issue. And the opportunity. Karlach is easily Tav’s favorite campmate – they were two sappy peas in a pod. It was likely that by offering his aid, he’d be able to win points with both the strongest member in camp and their illustrious leader, all without much effort on his part. Perfect.

“I can fix that for you, Karlach, if you’d prefer!” The rogue calls, snapping shut the book he’d been half-reading before taking a few strides toward his campmate, “It looks simple enough, wouldn’t take me more than an hour or so.”

Karlach, always the easily excitable, affable campmate, is grinning as she responds, “Really, Fangs?! You can do that?”

The silver-haired elf chuckles and then nods, taking the bear from a suspicious Tav before briefly examining it,  “Certainly. It’s nothing a simple whipstitch won’t fix.” 

And then he returns to his tent and quickly sets to work. As promised, the bear is good as new in just over an hour. 

*

Later that evening, the vampire sits close to the campfire, warming his icy skin. Apart from Tav, all his campmates had returned to their tents and since gone to sleep. The cleric was perhaps the only person that loved the fire almost as much as he did; she would often stare at it for long periods of time as if in prayer or meditation.

These nightly moments between the two of them typically passed in relative silence until one or the other dismissed themselves from the strained situation. Sometimes it felt as if they were fighting for a claim over the fire.

But tonight, Tav turns her head to stare at Astarion for a moment too long, prompting him to face in her direction with an arched eyebrow. 

“You’re quite talented at sewing,” She says, her eyes flickering across his face, examining it as if it’s brand new and not a visage she’s already known for weeks. Astarion thinks he sees her skin reddening, but then, she’s sitting remarkably close to the flames.

This olive branch is unexpected.

“Is that an actual compliment?” Astarion retorts, feigning shock and cocking his head just slightly, “I suppose I’ll take it, darling. I have to admit it’s preferable to the eye rolls and sighs you normally send my way.” 

Tav shrugs, not really refuting any of the rogue’s claims, before continuing on, “I suppose I didn’t think you had a domestic bone in your body. I misjudged you.” 

“Domestic?” Astarion asks, his tone betraying his displeasure at being called such a thing. He thinks she means to call him weak and is about to spew an insult in the cleric’s direction before she interrupts.

“I don’t mean offense,” She starts, throwing her hands up in surrender, “I apologize, I forget that isn’t always viewed as a compliment. But where I come from, domesticity is a highly favored attribute.” 

The rogue’s vitriol dies in his mouth as he assesses the woman in front of him. He can’t help it, he’s curious, so he asks, “And where do you come from, exactly?”

There is a long moment of silence. Tav heavily considers her response. And then she sighs and shrugs, “I’m from a hamlet in the Dalelands… it’s quite small, made up of no more than a few hundred. Most of us worship Hestia, the goddess of hearth and home.” 

Astarion’s eyebrows furrow as he tries to recall this goddess, but he doesn’t recognize the name.

Tav realizes Astarion has no clue what she’s talking about and visibly relaxes, “She is the goddess of hearth and home in our beliefs. Most inhabitants of the Dalelands worship Chauntea… Hestia worship is not widely accepted. It’s generally considered savagery.” 

The rogue shrugs. He really didn’t care who worshiped which god. In his eyes, all gods and goddesses were essentially the same and none of them seemed to respond anyway. Everyone was free to beg whatever deity for whatever handouts they wanted; he preferred to abstain from the practice entirely. 

“Good for you, darling, go on and worship whoever tickles your fancy,” The elf responds, turning once again to watch the fire.

Another stretch of silence, this one a bit more comfortable than any moments previous. Astarion doesn’t notice as the cleric quietly admires his profile, her eyes filled with a yearning that hadn’t ever been directed towards the vampire until now. 

After a while, Tav stands and briefly stretches her muscles. She walks a few steps toward her tent but then abruptly spins around to look at the rogue.

“Astarion?” She murmurs, her tone almost hesitant, as if she’s unsure of herself.

“Yes?” He replies, ripping his eyes away from the fire and dismissing his own thoughts to acknowledge the woman.

“Do you think you’d be able to show me how to sew like you? I only know the basics. I thought you could give me sewing lessons and I could teach you something in return… crochet or how to play the lyre, perhaps?” She asks, her hands twisting together in an anxious knot as she speaks.

The rogue nods almost imperceptibly, subtly cocking his head as he processes Tav’s sudden change in attitude toward him before responding, “Certainly, darling.”

Tav grins, and it appears almost childlike. Astarion feels the briefest flicker of affection toward the woman at her relative innocence, which is such a stark contrast to his own jaded nature.

“Okay, then. How about starting lessons tomorrow night?” She asks, still smiling, her eyes shimmering with excitement.

“Sounds like a plan,” The elf responds, and then watches with idle curiosity as Tav bids goodnight and walks away.

Astarion smiles as he returns his attention to the fire. He thinks this is a nice, simple plan; an easy way to keep himself safe in the wilds. Surely a plan as simple as this couldn't fall apart.

Right? 

#astarion fanfic #astarion x tav #astarion fic #baulders gate 3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfic idea #baulders gate astarion #spawn astarion #astarion x female tav #astarion x f!tav #astarion x cleric #astarion fluff

[lucyandthepen]

gorgeous ii | lmh ( ft. ldh )

part i

ever since your shower tryst with mark, donghyuck has been feeling left out, and he’s been hinting at it. not so subtly. pretty damn explicitly, actually. after multiple failed attempts at reassuring him you’re all still a well-oiled machine of a team, you’re left with only one solution.

interestingly, it’s not an option anyone seems to be too averse to.

pairing: mark x reader x donghyuck rating: R genre: humor, smut warnings: once again sorta pwp, basically hints at a mild level of polyamory kind of idk man, a threesome?? is a threesome a warning idk, mild mommy!kink for reader, slightly more pronounced daddy!kink for mark, mild baby!kink for donghyuck, some kinda praise kink for pretty much everyone, anal/double penetration, super brief impregnation!kink that i wish i had done more of but felt like it would be overkill, cum…play sjdfgj,,, light choking nothing major, more dirty talk, just. Nastie stuff i guess. please be sure that you are 18+ to read! word count: 16.6k

author’s notes : i’m simply deeply impatient and needed to post this i apologize :^)

You really should have picked up all the signs a little sooner.  

Donghyuck has never been good at acting, so he’s never been intensely successful at hiding his feelings; in fact, he’d once gotten a warning letter for looking so bored in class the teacher couldn’t overlook it any longer. In hindsight, it should have been obvious, given the way he’d been acting.  

Then again, it was fairly easy to pass off his recent behavior as regular Donghyuck, only intensified. He had always liked hanging out with Mark, which meant he mostly enjoyed hanging around you, too. He’d once crashed in your room when Mark had been out for a weekend visit to Jeonju to see some distant relatives and Donghyuck had left his room key card in the electricity slot, much to the ire of your own roommate. He’d asked the both of you to come with him to the MMCA in Gangnam because he wanted someone to take proof photos of him (your job) and read the captions on the artworks before explaining them to him so he could write his reflection paper for his Art Studies class (Mark’s much more unfortunate job). And, of course, he’d bullied you and Mark into confessing your feelings for each other to each other, although you’ve grown to suspect, almost to the point of confirmation, that he had done it not so much in the spirit of support for young love but more in response to his own intense desire to cut down on the immense awkwardness in the atmosphere whenever the three of you hung out.  

His expectation had clearly been that you two would kiss and make up before you took him out of campus for a dinner that he would wheedle you and Mark into splitting only two ways. Technically, that had all worked out in his favor, apart from the fact that in between the kissing and the making up, you had shared a steamy shower with Mark in the boys’ locker room that had ultimately ended with you scaring away the school janitor and had kept Donghyuck waiting outside in the rain (sort of) for the better part of an hour.  

He’d played it cool at first, so it seemed; he’d asked for details, which you refused to divulge in excess, and he’d promised to pester Mark about it later on when it was just the two of them, only he received the same — if not a firmer — kind of rejection from the latter. He’d even taken fairly kindly to the suggestion that he stay in Renjun’s room for a couple of nights in the week that followed so that you could, in his words, desecrate the living space with your love, which clearly implied that he’d expected the two of you to just be going at it in the middle of the common area.  

Over time, though, he’s grown fairly more wary of the implications of the relationship. It seemed to have started when he’d come home from class to find you both in the kitchen, where you had apparently been “making out next to the honey butter chips” he’d been so “excited to eat, and now it’s just ruined,” and he’d refused to listen to the argument that it couldn’t possibly be a health hazard considering the bag was still sealed. Or, it might have started a little before that, when he had to desperately run to Renjun’s bathroom to pee because you had engaged Mark in a steamier and much more enthusiastic reenactment of your shower room scene and had locked the door (something that, at the time, was for Donghyuck’s benefit). The conversation that had followed when you’d come out to an out-of breath and clearly upset Donghyuck had been sheepish and fairly uncomfortable for all parties involved, and you’d taken great care to gloss over the fact that he’d heard you repeatedly and not at all abashedly egging Mark on with a few choice nicknames and phrases.

Possibly the biggest issue, though, was the one time you and Mark had gone out for a date. There aren’t a ton of options around the campus area that have good food at a college-student-acceptable price, so there are only two options: this one supposedly Italian restaurant owned by a man who constantly ends a rundown of the specials with the statement that you can leave without paying if you don’t like the food — which you’ve long since considered but Mark says it’s unethical (something you think is kind of characteristic but still wholly unfair for him to say) — and the place you often go to with the boys that serves breakfast for dinner. You’d been trying to wheedle Mark into finally getting free pasta with you by breaking his moral code, and he’d finally agreed (possibly because you’d literally backed him into a corner after football practice and begged, among other things, on your knees), but the place had been full up, and neither of you were willing to stick around for half an hour in line. The alternative you’d gone to had been fine; for the first time in your life, you’d gotten to order something other than pancakes and sausages with egg, and you’d found out that the place did actually make good food that wasn’t meant to be consumed at eight in the morning.  

For the most part, it had been a great experience; the perks of being friends with Mark beforehand was that you had just skipped the awkward small talk phase altogether. In fact, it had been basically like a normal evening hang-out from before, except for the fact that Mark seemed less reserved than he had been when you were just friends. Also, you had never hung out with him as a friend with the knowledge that you had essentially strong-armed him into committing moral suicide at a snobby pasta joint by blowing him like half an hour prior. Even if you never actually got to eat said pasta. So there was all that.  

It had been going well until Mark had asked you to pour him a glass of water. In the middle of filling up his glass, you’d heard a tap at the window to your left accompanied by a shadow that loomed over your table. You’d snapped your head to the side to see Lee fucking Donghyuck, pouting at the both of you and pointing accusingly at the half-eaten spaghetti and meatballs on the table. His breath had been fogging up the glass to the point that his entire face was blurry, and you couldn’t really understand anything he was saying, but it had sounded a little like pancakes and without me. You had gaped so much at him that you’d completely forgotten Mark’s glass was already full, and the water had spilled out all over the table and onto his lap. By the time the fog had cleared up, you were more concerned with the problem of your boyfriend looking like he’d just wet himself, and Donghyuck had skulked off into the darkness.  

Since then, Donghyuck’s moods have ranged from teasing, to hesitant, to downright disgruntled. He’d constantly announce himself before coming into a room where the both of you were, which was kind of annoying when you were together in the library. Renjun had even once come to you during a lunch break, pleading that you and Mark take him back because he was tired of stepping on Donghyuck’s face every time he had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. You’d argued that there was a wall and a door separating Mark’s and Donghyuck’s bedrooms from each other, but he’d just fired back with the suggestion that you could chip in for some quality noise-canceling headphones. The worst was when Mark had told you — half-laughing, half-incredulous — that Donghyuck had canceled their shared Netflix subscription because he was worried all the rom-coms the two of you watch together while boning would appear on his suggested list. Mark had been more insulted by the thought of being associated with rom-coms more than anything else in that conversation.

You decided to more actively include Donghyuck into your activities at that time, and you and Mark made a pact to never act like a couple in front of him. It seemed clear that was what Donghyuck had wanted. Still, when you’d asked him out to study, it had felt kind of weird considering that you were a level higher than him and could only confer with each other, leaving Donghyuck to look sourly at you across the table like you were seducing each other instead of asking questions about the worksheet. There had even been an instance where you’d gone out for a morning jog together, but Donghyuck’s legs were much longer than the both of yours, and he ended up creating some distance between himself and the two of you, which had just led him to whine at the both of you to hurry up since you were probably lagging behind on purpose so you could find a way to slip away under the bleachers and bang one out before he’d made it around the track.

The pinnacle of tension arrives on a Thursday night, when you urged the both of them to keep Donghyuck’s favorite tradition and have breakfast for dinner. It seemed like a good idea, bringing back that one activity that represented your friendship, and even Donghyuck didn’t resist the suggestion. The problems only start when the three of you were seated in the exact same booth you’d been on during that date, a fact that Donghyuck seems to remember vividly as he stares at the table for a good, long, and wholly excruciating second before sliding in with an unreadably calm expression. You make desperate eye contact with Mark, who had been moving to sit next to you already, and he does this weird jerky reaction before he backtracks and moves to sit next to Donghyuck instead.  

A silence falls over the three of you after your orders are placed, and Mark is playing with his glass, turning it around and around idly. Donghyuck, on the other hand, is staring directly at you, still kind of blank, his hands folded on the tabletop. You open your mouth, and his eyebrows go up, but you realize you have nothing to say and shut it again.  

“So,” Donghyuck starts after a while. “Was the pasta here any good?”  

“It was okay,” you reply after glancing at Mark, who seems unperturbed by everything else, a talent you wish you could possess. “A little rich, but mostly okay.”

“Have you guys gone to that pasta place across the student center?”

“No, but we wanted to.”

“On another date, you mean.”  

You don’t miss the sadness in his voice; even Mark looks up at him, then at you, but offers nothing to say, for some absurd reason.  

“Well… that’s still up in the air,” you wave the topic away, but Donghyuck presses on, possibly convinced that this is all part of the required conversation friends that hang out should have.  

“You guys know that you can get free pasta there if you lie to the owner and say it wasn’t good, right?”  

“Yeah, I… we heard,” you admit.  

“We were actually thinking of going there,” Mark finally chimes in, although the timing is terrible and Donghyuck’s face darkens considerably. “But it was full up.”

“So you guys ended up here,” Donghyuck says, finally piecing together the bigger picture. “At our regular restaurant. That’s… cool.”  

You frown at Mark, who doesn’t even look remotely remorseful; he just shrugs, a small jerk of the shoulders that Donghyuck misses.  

That had been the longest silence you’d shared since… ever; you can’t even remember the last time that you’d hung out with Donghyuck and it had been this quiet. Mark was one thing, but Donghyuck, for the most part, liked to talk, and so did you. You distinctly remember the restaurant constantly filled with chatter, mostly from your table. What had you even talked about back then that had lasted for hours? You distinctly remember an argument about Iron Man’s fate in the last Avengers movie that had gone on until the waitress had told you to leave because she had to close down and go home to her kids. Now, you can’t even ask Donghyuck what he thinks about the weather.

The food that comes to your table is appropriate for the mood; it’s stale and a little bland, since nobody seems to like eating breakfast for dinner anymore, which just means reheated pancakes and microwaved hotdogs. Even with that topic up in the air, no one really says anything; at one point, you’re so bored that you check your phone to see that Mark has butt texted you a couple of times.  

Donghyuck’s first tiny outburst happens midway through the meal. You desperately want to add some kind of flavor to your food, but you don’t know if you’re up to breaking the silence. The result is you coughing loudly — twice, because Mark doesn’t pay attention the first time — and eyeing the little pitcher of maple syrup by his elbow. He doesn’t grasp it fully and reaches out for the napkin stand instead, which just leads to you staring more intensely at the syrup, furrowing your eyebrows at it like it’s supposed to help. All he does is throw you a much more intense look of confusion.  

Donghyuck, who appears to have been watching this depressing miscommunication between the two of you since the beginning, suddenly speaks up.  

“Do you want me to leave, or something? You can just say so.”  

“What?” You snap your gaze to him, shocked to the point that you can’t even acknowledge Mark’s intelligence belatedly returning to him as he passes you the maple syrup. “Of course not. Why would you think we want that?”

“I don’t know. This,” he points his fork at the two of you. A drop of maple syrup falls off of it and onto the table. “This weird eyefucking thing you two are doing.”

“We’re not eyefucking. I was asking for the maple syrup,” you clarify.

“Oh. Okay.” He doesn’t seem entirely convinced. “Couldn’t you have just asked?”

You have no response to this, and Mark throws you a patronizing yeah, you could have look that you pointedly ignore because you can only feel like it had been his fault for not understanding your blinks and squints anyway.  

The second scene happens when you’re finished and waiting for the bill. At this point, the silence, which had only been interrupted by brief and insignificant comments from either you and Donghyuck, had become so unbearably stuffy that you feel close to tears. In your exasperation, you try to catch Mark’s attention, hoping to get him to pull his weight by saying something. Unfortunately, he’s busy going through his wallet and rearranging the notes from the 50,000’s down to the 1,000’s, and he doesn’t see anything. You move to an alternative plan, which is to kick his foot until he notices, but when your foot collides with something hard, it’s not him that reacts first.  

“Ow!” Donghyuck yells, and you start, sitting up straighter and reaching out to him on impulse. “What the fuck was that for?”  

“Sorry!” You half-stand, unsure of what to do; Donghyuck is looking up at you like a wounded dog, which is as much as you deserve. “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t — I didn’t mean — I was going for Mark!”  

“Why?” he demands, brow furrowing for a moment before they shoot up, and his expression morphs into one of disgust. “That’s nasty, noona!”

“What? No, I wasn’t — !” You throw your hands up, embarrassed and irritated all at once. “I was just trying to get his attention!”

“How?”

“I don’t know! He wasn’t looking, and it just felt weird, and I wanted him to say something!”  

“Really? All of this kama sutra shit while I’m around? You guys are just shoving it into my face at this point.”  

“Technically,” Mark says, now very unhelpfully and — more to the fact — uselessly. “We try to keep you out of the loop as much as possible.”

Donghyuck looks incensed, so this is clearly not the response he’d wanted. “How come I’m just supposed to sit here and watch you two make out without me and take it all in quietly? You could at least try to make me less of a third wheel when we’re together.”  

“Donghyuck, we’re not trying to make you a third wheel,” you reason. “I know it feels that way, but nothing’s changed.”

“Technically—” Mark starts again, and you kick him, this time with more precision, into silence. He falls quiet without argument.  

“It feels that way because it is that way. You guys are just living your best lives in love without me.” Donghyuck stands up, and you watch him do so with confusion and a ton of regret on your face. “Can we go back now? I have a presentation tomorrow and I want to make sure my PowerPoint doesn’t have any typos.”  

You watch in helpless disappointment as Mark obediently slips out of the booth so Donghyuck can walk out as well; after a moment of dumbly staring at them fixing their coat collars, you step out and join them. The restaurant’s lights shut off when you exit, and the three of you walk quietly back home. You feel Mark’s hand bump into yours a couple of times by accident, but on the third time, his fingers lace into yours, and he gives them a tight, reassuring squeeze.  

Donghyuck disappears into his room after announcing that he’s bought some new ear plugs from the pharmacy and had been planning on testing them out anyway, but the statement that you guys can do whatever you like seems half-hearted. To be safe, you and Mark take quick, separate showers before crawling into his bed. You keep the lights on because you’re fairly certain he’s going to fall asleep if he’s in the dark for more than ten minutes, and you want to make sure he stays up so that you can get some fairly substantial feedback when you unload the thoughts plaguing you since the restaurant experience.  

Still, you’re silent for the first few moments, trying to collect yourself into articulating your feelings. Mark is on his side, an elbow propping his head up, and his palm is laying on your stomach, rubbing it in small, gentle circles. The moments tick by, and neither of you speak until he bends down to press a kiss to your shoulder.  

“You gonna break up with me or something?” He chuckles softly after letting you have your long bout of silence. “I’m willing to beg if necessary.”  

“Isn’t it just weird?” You finally begin, ignoring his stupidly absurd question completely. He doesn’t even flinch at the volume difference between your voice and his. “I thought he was okay with it.”

“Me too. He even told me he was going to tell you he heard me jerking off in the shower after we studied for the Traditional History midterm if I didn’t confess to you.”  

“Yeah, and he — did you really do that?”  

“Obviously.” He doesn’t even turn red, or anything; Mark, since that day, has defied your personal expectations and grown immensely immune to feeling embarrassment when talking about the erotic. “That was too specific for me to make up.”

“What a coincidence,” you laugh. “I masturbated after that review session too.”  

“Really?”

“Your hair looked nice, plus you smelled super good.”

“I should go back to my old shampoo, if that’s what gets you running.”  

“I don’t really think it’s the shampoo,” you turn over as well, mimicking his position. His hand stays on you, now resting on the dip of your waist. “But about Donghyuck — is it mean that I feel like he’s overreacting?”  

“Not really, but only because it seems that way to me too. Like, now I have to pay for my own Netflix because he’s acting weird, which is just such a waste of money.” You think it’s a little bit funny that Mark’s still tied up on the Netflix issue, but you suppose that you’d be a little miffed if you had to redo your entire watchlist from scratch again too, so you opt not to say anything. “It’s really hard to overlook the fact that he thinks we’re doing everything in our power to stop being friends with him.”

“I know!” You say, louder than you should, and Mark’s finger flies to his lips as you both fall silent, listening for Donghyuck. You hear nothing, so you assume he hadn’t either. Still, you lower your voice to a much more acceptable decibel thereafter. “I know. It was like that time he spent playing annoying matchmaker had just flown out of the window.”  

“But we can’t blame him either,” Mark sighs softly, fingers drumming against your side. “Being a third wheel sucks. We all know that. We’ve all been there.”

“We’re not trying to actually exclude him when we’re together, though.”

“But we do.” He shrugs. “I mean, even without doing anything, we do. It’s already inherently different for him because he knows he’s not actually part of the equation.”  

“We can’t make him any more a part of this equation than we already have,” you frown.  

“I know that. Look — maybe he just needs a little bit of time to adjust. I’m sure he’s just reacting badly to change more than he is to our actual relationship.”  

“I guess,” you sigh again, heavily and more dramatically this time. “I just wish we could do something so he wouldn’t react badly at all.”

“We’ve tried. Maybe now just isn’t the right time.”  

The both of you fall into a thoughtful silence; you can see Mark’s eyelids getting heavy, and even you’re stifling a few yawns here and there. It seems the conversation’s mostly died out unresolved, but you’re not sure it’s actually ended; neither is Mark, who’s still watching you like he’s waiting for you to say something else. When you don’t, he leans in, pressing a small, sweet kiss to your forehead.  

The quiet is broken by Mark’s bedroom door flinging open. In the doorway stands Donghyuck, one earplug in his hand, the other wedged tightly into his ear. His bottom lip is jutting out already, which is a signal that he’s already prepared a full complaint report to file beforehand.  

“You guys could at least try to keep the sex down. There’s only two of you. There’s no way you’re having that much fun to make this much noise.”  

“We’re not even naked,” you respond in disbelief, twisting your torso to look at him. “We’re just talking.”  

“Oh.”  

Donghyuck rolls the earplug between his fingers, visibly embarrassed. You guess those things have been working well considering he hadn’t even heard you talking about anything before he’d burst in and make a small mental note to congratulate him on his great new investment. You watch him, waiting for him to say something — anything — about what’s bothering him and why he’s so intent on calling you out for the smallest things. Instead, he just gropes for the light switch on the wall next to him, pushing the button and plunging the three of you into darkness. He trudges away, closing the door behind himself while muttering something about energy conservation.  

You feel Mark shift; he takes the darkness as a signal that it’s time to sleep, so he lays down carefully on his side, his hand reaching out to rub at your back. Dismayed, you right your position, facing away from him and lying down as well. A moment later, you feel the warmth of his body against your back, and his breath blows lightly against your cheek.  

He dozes off five minutes in, and you know because his breathing becomes extremely deep and even. Even when you toy a little with his fingers, he doesn’t budge, and you lie there for what feels like hours trying to decode this weird situation. First the uncharacteristic silence and moodiness, followed by the weird experience in the restaurant. And now this, with him constantly expecting you to be ravaging each other, like his mind is just totally tunnel focusing on how everything you do is a byproduct of your being perpetually horny. It’s almost like he’s too weirdly interested in it, like he’s…  

You reach backwards, smacking Mark in the shoulder. He grunts in response but still doesn’t move, so you do it again, calling out to him. His grip tightens on your waist as he mumbles a sleepy what now?

“Do you remember what Donghyuck said in the restaurant?”  

“He hardly said anything.”  

“I know. But he said something weird about us.”

“What — that he thought we were eyefucking, or that he thought you were giving me a footjob?” Mark pauses for a moment. “By the way, out of pure curiosity, if we ever make a list of things we’re into, is that something you’d put or, like — because knowing you, I feel like it wouldn’t hurt to ask once —”

“No. No, he said something kind of wack, like,” you scrunch up your nose. “How come he has to sit there and watch us make out without him?”

“Yeah?” You can tell Mark is already drifting off again, so you turn around in an attempt to force him into the same epiphany you’ve experienced. Only one of his eyes is open and the other one is giving up pretty quickly too. “So?”  

“He was annoyed that we were making out,” you repeat. “Without him.”  

Carefully, almost comically, Mark’s other eye starts to open, and his eyebrows are also rising. He lifts his head off the pillow, gaping at you in sleepy shock.

“It can’t be.”

“You said we were leaving him out of the sex, and he looked really ticked off.”

“Yeah, because who wants to talk about sex over shit quality pancakes?”  

“There’s only two of you,” you mimic Donghyuck’s sleepy, irritated voice. “There’s no way you’re having that much fun to make this much noise.”  

Mark looks stumped. He’s actually reminiscent of a goldfish, his mouth opening and closing as he struggles to find the words. The only thing he can think of is a repeat of “It can’t be.”  

“Mark,” you say slowly. “What if we’ve been including Donghyuck in all the wrong things?”  

Surprisingly, it isn’t hard to convince Mark to play along. Maybe it’s because he’s not doing a lot of the proverbial heavy-lifting, or maybe he just knows there’s not much point in attempting to talk you out of anything once you’re convinced that you’re going to do it. Either way, he falls asleep in the middle of dazedly agreeing to what you’re planning, and when you wake up, he’s stuck a note to your forehead saying he’ll see you during practice and reminding you to eat your breakfast. Even Donghyuck is gone for his first class of the day.  

There’s a slightly new development when you go to practice after your classes, where the team captain, Sooyoung, instructs you all to go back to the locker room because the shipment of the new uniforms has finally arrived. You feel a slight twinge of resentment towards her, partly because the team had been waiting around under the heat of the afternoon sun for a good fifteen minutes before she’d arrived but also mostly because going back to the locker rooms means you can’t watch Mark do laps with the rest of the football team, a personal tradition you’ve always loved.  

Still, you don’t have much of a choice, and you allow yourself to be trooped back into the locker room with the rest of your team to squeeze yourself into the uniforms. The fact that you’d already gotten a little sticky from being outside makes it almost impossible to get yourself dressed in top speed, and it didn’t help that Sooyoung came to tell you all to hurry up so that you could try the new routine in the new devil’s suit. You don’t necessarily miss the old uniform, but this one, despite being more elastic, also has thick stripes of glitter around the collar and hem as well as in regular intervals on the skirt pleats, so you have to stay far from each other when walking to avoid melting together into one, gross glitter bomb.  

It pays off when you get back out, though, because the change is welcomed by the people on the field — mostly the players themselves — and it shows in small things, like how Jaehyun gets a face full of ball because he’s too busy checking his girlfriend out to pay attention to Jeno, who lobs the ball towards him with all his might, or like how Mark just stands by the ice box full of half-melted bottles of water with a blank, almost dazed expression until the coach calls him out by name.  

Football practice ends half an hour before cheerleading practice does today, considering you’d wasted time wrestling with your uniforms, but Mark patiently waits on the bleachers after his shower while you finish up. You actually think that his presence helps cut Sooyoung’s twenty-minute after-practice talk down to ten minutes because she keeps looking at him, like she’s worried he’s going to tell her to shut up, even though all he’s doing is staring ahead politely. When she dismisses everyone, you walk over to him, and he hands you a water bottle. You don’t miss the once-over he gives you before he decides to fix his gaze on your face.  

“Is this the new uniform?” He asks, as if he doesn’t know.  

“Yeah. Is it nice?”

“For sure,” he agrees. “It’s good you guys busted that out today instead of during a game. It looks like we have to learn how to get used to it. Me, especially.”  

“And Jaehyun.”

“And Jaehyun,” he laughs. “He’s still guilting Jeno into apologizing, even though we all know he wasn’t paying attention.”  

“I’m going to take a shower, then we can go back together. Did you do what I asked?”  

“Yeah. Oh — if you haven’t yet,” his fingers toy idly with a pleat on your skirt. “You should consider doing it in this.”  

“The fact that you’re actually actively participating in this is seriously attractive.” You run your fingers through his hair; the water keeps it stuck in the messy way you push it into. “I like your hair like this.”  

He chuckles, rejecting your hand and combing his hair forward into the neatness he’s so used to. You laugh when he smacks your hand away lightly as you try to muss it up again. “Go shower. I’ll wait out here.”  

You take a quick shower, only slightly derailed by the fact that you have to dash out to grab your towel, which you’ve left on the bench near your locker. When you come out, Mark is waiting by the door instead of on the bleachers, playing games on his phone. On the way back to his room, he tells you about how he had to leave that area because he thought that he’d heard Jaehyun moaning from somewhere under the bleachers, a sound he was not emotionally prepared to hear, and the thought that he’d been eavesdropping on something highly private and easily escalatable had driven him from his seat.  

When you get back to the room, though, you’re surprised that Donghyuck isn’t back yet, considering his classes had ended hours earlier. Mark theorizes that you’d scared him away, but you note that the food in the refrigerator is exactly as you’d seen it this morning when you’d grabbed breakfast, which heightens the likelihood that Donghyuck hasn’t come home at all. He doesn’t, actually, for another hour, during which you and Mark watch Blue Earth on Netflix simply because he doesn’t want the 10,000 won he pays every month to go down the drain. You’re halfway through the deep sea creatures episode when the door lock clicks and Donghyuck comes in, just as Mark is headed to his bedroom to take a call from his mom, who you distinctly hear asking about how well he’s treating you.  

“Nice suit,” you comment, noticing that Donghyuck dressed up for his presentation; you know he only has, like, one actually nice suit that he saves for events that require him to look decent and formal, considering the fact that he usually goes to class in ripped jeans and worn cotton t-shirts. “How’d your presentation go?”

You don’t actually expect a proper response, and you don’t get one; he just glares at you as he toes off his shoes and drops his backpack on the floor by the door. It’s a half-minute staring contest, with your innocent, questioning expression and his more venomous one, which ends when he stops in front of you, towering over your head and effectively blocking the television.  

“Where’s Mark hyung?”

“Talking to his mom about what a great girlfriend I am,” you reply. “Why?”  

“I have a bone to pick with both of you.”

“So pick away,” you reply, leaning back on the couch. “We don’t have to wait for him. I’ll get him up to speed when he comes back.”

“Fine,” he fishes around for his phone, extracting it from his pocket before opening it, angrily tapping on the screen and scrolling. You can hear his nails hit the glass with the force of his taps. “Fine. Care to explain this?”  

He shows you his phone, and you squint to read what he’s presented. It’s your Facebook chat with him, and on the top is the first thing you’d sent him this morning: a good luck on your presentation! message, with some very caring heart eyes and star emojis. Granted, you’d also accidentally pressed the middle finger emoji, but you’d quickly retracted that.  

“It’s a message that represents my utmost support for all of your academic endeavors,” you raise your eyebrows at him. “That you’ve cruelly seen zoned, so thank you for that.”  

“Not that — these,” he scrolls the chat further downwards for you.  

There’s a set of pictures under your earlier message, dated after practice today, none of which expose your face. The first one is focused on your chest, and you’re carefully tightening your arms closer together to push your boobs together, a selfie that had been fairly difficult to take and that you’d actually taken great pride in when you’d done it. The one under it is from a similar angle, except you’ve taken advantage of the amazing elasticity of the top of your cheerleading uniform to pull down the collar, the cup of your bra going down with it. Your thumb and forefinger are lightly pinching your nipple, and you hadn’t noticed earlier when you’d taken the picture, but there’s a smattering of residual glitter from the uniform that makes your skin look kind of awesome and mystical.  

The latter two had required a fair amount of logistic forethought as well as patience, since you had to wait for everyone else to leave before you could do it. You’re fairly pleased that they’d turned out pretty nicely; the third picture is a view of your ass, the uniform’s skirt pushed up over your hips to expose your underwear. Cheerleaders are technically required to wear cycling shorts under the skirt because, well, school rules, but you’d discarded them before taking the picture. You also usually favor function over fashion during practice, but since you’d prepared yourself for this moment, you’d decided to put your own preferences aside and worn something lacier and, consequently, a little more see-through. The last photo is a personal favorite, with you still in the same position, except you’ve pushed your underwear aside, revealing your pussy. As an added bonus, you’re also using your index and middle finger to spread your lips, which you thought was kind of hot at the time, except, by the look on Donghyuck’s face, it might have been overkill.  

Under all of those photos, you’d written one short and sweet message: All for you, baby. No lame emojis this time, because it had seemed like a serious matter.  

You look back up at Donghyuck, who’s clearly close to bursting with words with how red his face is.  

“We got a new cheerleading uniform today,” you explain, although you know it’s not really the reasoning he wants. “I was kind of proud of how nice it looked.”  

“I can barely see the uniform — you know what? You’re totally missing the point.” He looks like he’s gnashing his teeth. “That’s not even all of it.”  

He turns the phone back to himself, and you calmly wait as his taps grow increasingly aggressive. A minute later, he turns the phone back to you, showing you a different chat; Mark’s name is on top this time, and there’s only one picture. It’s actually kind of funny considering it’s a little blurry, but you greatly appreciate it nonetheless, considering it’s a photo of his dick, half-erect, while he’s standing in what appears to be the shower stall in the locker room. The exact same message you’d sent Donghyuck — the horny one, not the one about his presentation — is also under his single photo.  

You make eye contact with Donghyuck again, still fairly stoic. “Is that all of it?”  

He looks torn between being annoyed and nonplussed. “Is that all of it? You guys both wrong-sent me your couple nudes!”

“Do you not often get them, or something?”  

“I was at dinner, noona,” he clutches his phone to his chest now, like he’s afraid you’re going to nab it and start taking more naked pictures. “I was out with Renjun when you sent me these!”  

“So? You let Renjun look at your phone?”  

“No, of course not, but I—” he splutters, clearly befuddled by how calm you are about everything. “I don’t want to be eating something then have to see your accidental nudes to each other!”

“They’re not,” you correct him.  

“Not what? Nudes? These are, by every definition of a nude, nudes!”  

“I meant that they’re not accidental.”

You’ve seen Donghyuck stumped before, but you’ve never seen him this lost for words; after a brief, perplexed pause, he’s started making all these weird, breathy, disbelieving sounds, like he’s just forgotten how to form sentences at all. His knuckles turn white as he grips his phone even tighter.  

While he’s coming to terms with your statement, Mark quietly comes back in, having ended the call with his mother; you notice he’s watching Donghyuck carefully, but he says nothing as he sits down next to you. Donghyuck looks at him, like he’s expecting a sensible answer, or like a statement that this is all a joke, but Mark just sits there in the same kind of silence as you. You don’t even bother keeping him up to speed; it’s clear by his expression that he’s already aware of what’s going on.  

Two long, heavy minutes pass, and it becomes clear that Donghyuck isn’t going to speak. He’s just looking at you now, this sort of distant, glassy gaze on his face, his mind clearly working overtime and frying out. You decide to break the silence, since you know Mark isn’t going to.  

“Donghyuck,” you call out to him, and he apparently comes crashing back down to earth. “Do you want to have a seat?”  

“What do you mean they’re not accidental?” He finally demands.  

“Not accidental. Intentional? Deliberate.” You elaborate with a tone that suggests this should be obvious. "We sent them to you on purpose.”  

“But Mark hyung sent me the — the — this!” He flips his phone around again, almost losing his hold on it, to show Mark the screen. The latter just looks at it with mild interest.

“And when does Mark message someone the wrong thing?”  

“But you said! You said,” he turns the phone back to himself, eyes scanning the screen feverishly before showing it to you again, index finger jabbing at your message. “You said all for you, baby!”

“I don’t really call Mark ‘baby.’” You shrug. “I know you know that much now.”  

Donghyuck’s eyebrows have practically disappeared into his bangs, and his mouth is opening and closing soundlessly. Mark takes the phone from his hand, exiting his chat and going to yours, scrolling up a little to look at your pictures.  

“Nice,” he says appreciatively as he hands the phone back to Donghyuck, who takes it robotically.  

“Thank you.” You squeeze his thigh. Donghyuck just watches this exchange, disbelief still written on his face. “Donghyuck — I really do think you should sit down, or something. You look like you’re going to faint.”  

You watch him slowly go over to the tiny dining table in the kitchen, grabbing one of the monobloc chairs and dragging it back to his former position. He sinks down onto the seat, now looking at you with a renewed desire to speak.  

“You need to explain.”  

“Actually, I think you need to answer my question first.” You lean forward, and you see Donghyuck swallow. Hard. You also don’t miss the fact that his eyes flit nervously to your breasts, which have been pushed together slightly again as you rest your elbows on your knees. “Donghyuck, when you said you didn’t like being left out like a third wheel, what did you mean?”  

He fixes a bemused look on you, rubbing the back of his neck. “What do you mean ‘what did I mean’? Have you ever heard someone say damn, I wish I could be the loser third wheel to my best friends for the rest of my life?”  

“We’ve tried to do things with you, haven’t we? As far as we know, we’ve done most of the stuff we used to do with you before even until now, after Mark and I got together. We don’t do gross, couple-y stuff when you’re around. But we can tell that there’s still something bothering you. Isn’t there?”  

“Well,” his eyes flit to Mark, who’s just carefully and politely watching the events unfold. “Well, yeah. I just… wanted to sort of be included in stuff. More stuff.”

“Like?”  

He lets out a soft huff, but he doesn’t bother to say anything. Instead, you watch as his face grows redder, and he’s now refusing to make eye contact with either of you. Unfortunately, the only other thing in his immediate line of sight is your chest, which he has a spectacular view of from his seat, so he averts his eyes to the side, staring at the empty space beside you on the couch.  

“I’m going to just go out on a limb here,” you shrug when it’s clear he’s lapsed into another stony, embarrassed silence again. “And you can just tell me if I’m right, and if I’m wrong, Mark and I will sincerely apologize for everything we’ve put you through today. You just have to be honest. Okay?”  

You see him give the tiniest of nods towards the empty space on the couch.  

“Donghyuck, were you upset because you wanted in on the sex?”  

You’ve never seen Donghyuck this red; the reddest you’d seen him was during that Avengers argument, and even that look on him didn’t hold a candle to the state of his face now. He’s twisting his phone in his hands, agitated, and he keeps inexplicably glancing at you. After a while, he takes a shaky breath, once again keeping his gaze firmly away.

“I know it’s super fucked up.”  

“Not the most fucked up thing in the world, I’m pretty sure.”  

“Still sure it’s halfway up that list,” he sighs. “Look — at first, you know, it was… okay? I mean, technically, it still is, like, I’m not really mad that you guys are together, or whatever. But then, I don’t know — I got jealous, I guess? And it was kind of mixed in with how much I like you guys, and it was also this weird realization that, you know, maybe, maybe, I was kind of… attracted. To the both of you. I mean,” he flails his hands in an attempt to get the words to come out faster. “I mean, you’re both super hot.”  

“Thank you,” your joking voice harmonizes with Mark’s weirdly more serious and immediate response.  

“It was an extremely confusing period of time for me. So, I mean, obviously I got frustrated. Like, mentally, but also sexually. I shouldn’t have, but I guess I took it out on you guys.” His shoulders slump forward. “Sorry.”  

“First of all, thank you for your honesty,” you lean back onto the couch, and you hear him breathe out a small sigh of relief as he sees a window of opportunity to look at you again. “Second — I hope you don’t think you’re not super hot yourself.”  

“I mean,” he twiddles his thumbs; the shock and disbelief have left him, it seems, replaced by growing sheepishness. “I’m okay, I guess.”  

“That’s crappy modesty.” For the first time since he’d stormed in, he lets out a soft laugh. “Look — we’re sorry too.”

“You guys don’t have to be.” He looks up, a little alarmed. “I mean… you’re a couple. No one really wants their friend to just dive in when they’re supposed to be a third wheel.”  

“That’s the thing, though,” you shrug. “We don’t want you to be just a constant, unhappy third wheel.”  

You stare at Donghyuck’s phone, and he notices, peeling it away from his chest and looking back down at your messages with his brow furrowed. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Mark raise a hand to his mouth, probably to cover up the fact that he’s close to bursting out into laughter at Donghyuck’s constantly morphing comical expressions. He poorly disguises one chuckle as a cough.

Donghyuck seems to be stuck on buffering mode again, just opening and minimizing each picture in the chat ceaselessly. You place a hand on his knee, giving it a small squeeze to get him to look at you again.  

“What we’re asking  — you don’t have to do it, or whatever. But if you want to — if you really want to — just say so.”  

It’s a staring contest again, except there’s much less heat involved; Donghyuck seems to be mapping every plane of your face, trying to figure out if there’s any sign of insincerity. After a long moment, you see the corners of his mouth twitch, and his voice comes out soft.  

“You know I want to.”  

“Good,” you squeeze his thigh again. His eyes follow you as you stand, and he stays silent as you settle back down onto his lap, only sparing a glance at Mark like he wants some sort of confirmation. His gaze falls back on you as you comb his hair back with your fingers, a small smile playing on your lips. Donghyuck looks like he has a lot of questions, but he swallows them down as your fingers fall to his shoulders then to his chest, pushing aside the folds of his blazer. “If at any point, you feel like stopping — if it gets weird, or anything like that, just say so.”  

“I’m not going to.”

“I was hoping you’d say as much,” you laugh softly, helping him out of the blazer. Donghyuck isn’t by far the most muscular person you’ve met, but he’s naturally more substantial than most, and the fact that his inner shirt is kind of tight on him just highlights that. You can feel him shivering slightly under your fingers, which gives you the brief impression that he’s nervous, but it doesn’t show all that much when you start unbuttoning his shirt and he moves to help you, from the bottom up.  

His eyes keep shifting between you and Mark, like he can’t decide who to focus on more, but you catch his attention for a little while longer as you undo the knot on his tie, tugging it loose from his neck. The front folds of his shirt have fallen away from each other, hanging loose at his sides, and you can see now how quickly he’s breathing, his chest rising and falling erratically.

“You okay?” You whisper, hanging the tie over the back of your neck. You’re so close to him you actually hear him swallow slowly.

“Yeah, it’s just…” He licks his lips. Once. Twice. “This slow, sexy pace is coming at a bad time for me.”  

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ve been pretty hard since I left the restaurant. You guys couldn’t have picked a worse time to send those pictures.”  

“We were assuming you’d just be home,” Mark’s voice is a welcome addition to the dialogue — low and a little gruff, a telltale sign of his arousal. “You usually are.”  

“Yeah, well I…” Donghyuck’s voice trails off as he fixates on your fingers, which are moving around your neck. You observe his jaw going slack, little by little, as he takes in the fact that you’re using his tie as a makeshift choker, the ends forming a lopsided ribbon at the base of your throat. “I…”  

“Go on. We’re listening.”  

“I… am so…” He inhales deeply, closing his eyes for a second like he’s rebooting himself. “I am… unbelievably turned on.”

“You like this?” You finger the ends of the tie, your smile growing as he nods. “That’s a little kinky of you.”  

“I’m kinky?” His laugh is part breathless, part incredulous. “I’m not even half the kinky you are, noona.”  

You lean in closer, watching Donghyuck’s eyes instinctively flutter close; your lips land on the bridge of his nose first, then the tip, before falling onto his mouth, where he tilts his head up just enough to meet the kiss firmly. It’s brief but sweet, and when you pull back, his head follows on impulse, trying to chase yours. When you lean in again, your lips land on his jaw, trailing up the sharp angle all the way up to his earlobe. Your breath on his skin is either tickling him or revving him up, because he grips your waist tightly, blunt nails digging shallowly into your skin.  

“I’ll accept that compliment,” you murmur, blowing more hot air into the shell of his ear. “But no one in this room isn’t at least a little bit kinky.”  

“Even Mark hyung?”  

“Even Mark,” you agree, trapping his earlobe between your teeth and tugging on it lightly. A soft gasp escapes him, but instead of pulling away, he only holds you tighter, pulling your hips closer to his. “But we don’t call him that right now, do we?”  

Donghyuck’s shoulders freeze; it’s clear he’s holding his breath. For a moment, you’re worried you’ve scared him off, and you stay still too, until you feel him exhale shakily. He gives a minute shake of the head.  

“That’s right. What do we call him?”

Not for the first time today, you wonder if what you’re doing is a little overboard for Donghyuck, especially since he’s being initiated into this weird situation where you’re essentially playing out some of your personal whims. You experience a slight wave of worry in the span of time it takes for you to ask that question and for Donghyuck to respond, but the wait pays off when he clears his throat a little and answers, voice barely above a whisper.  

“Daddy.”  

“What about you, Donghyuck?” You continue to whisper, only pausing to let you tongue slip out, the tip tracing the shell of his ear. “What do you think we should call you?”  

His breathing hitches again, and you have to hold onto his shoulders while he shifts in his seat so you don’t topple off his lap. When he speaks, though, his voice is surprisingly clearer. You don’t know if he thinks there’s a right answer, but he says it nonetheless.

“Baby.”  

“That’s good,” you squeeze his shoulders in assurance, and he returns the favor on your waist. “You’re already doing so well, baby. Are you looking at daddy?”  

His earlobe bumps against your tongue as he nods again, and you trap it between your teeth again, tugging on it until he makes a soft whining sound.  

“Can you tell me what he’s doing?”  

“He’s…” Donghyuck clears his throat, losing a little bit of the nerve he’d had just a moment ago. That, or he’s distracted, and you can’t blame him given his answer. “He’s — he’s jerking himself off.”  

“Is that so?” You pull away, unable to resist confirming for yourself. You’re not disappointed; Mark is still in his exact same spot on the couch, but he’s pushed down the front of his sweatpants, palming at his cock through his boxers. His eyes lift to meet yours when you turn, and a small smile lifts the corners of his lips. “Having fun on your own?”  

“Just enjoying the view,” he chuckles softly. The bulge pushing against the fabric just keeps growing. “You can pretend I’m not here.”  

“No way.” Your hands make their way back to Donghyuck’s chest, tracing spirals down his skin. He sucks in his stomach a little when your touch travels down to his abdomen, and he blows out the air against your cheek a moment later. “Audience participation is mandatory.”  

“At least let me appreciate it for a little while longer.”  

“Fair enough,” you turn back to Donghyuck, who snaps his head back up to your face like he’s been caught not paying attention. He really hasn’t though, having taken more of an interest in wondering how far down your hand is going to go and looking a little crestfallen that your index finger is just hovering above his navel. “What do you say, Donghyuck? Should we give daddy a little show?”  

“What kind of show?”

“I was thinking something along the lines of my mouth around your cock, but I’m totally open to suggestions.”  

Donghyuck doesn’t waste time deciding, nodding instantly before you even finish your sentence. “No suggestions. That’s the best suggestion. Please.”  

Mark laughs softly along with you, but Donghyuck can’t afford to be amused when he looks so desperate to have something of any value happen. You oblige, fingers finally completing their journey as they find their way to his slacks, undoing the fastenings and carefully tugging down the zipper.

Donghyuck initiates the next kiss, his hands suddenly coming up to trap your face in between his palms and turning your head up so quickly you don’t even register what he wants before he’s already pressed his mouth against yours. There’s a greater level of want, if not need, in the way he mouths at your lips, like he’s finally realized this is really going somewhere and he doesn’t want to waste time anymore. His mouth is hungry, taking your bottom lip between his teeth and sucking on it so roughly it starts to go a little numb.  

You almost forget you’re in the middle of something, but his hips give a little jerk as if to remind you, and you blindly get back to work, pushing down the front of his boxers and wrapping your fingers around his cock. He’s already hard, the tip slick with pre-cum, his cock twitching at your touch. Even if he’d been enthusiastic about your idea, he doesn’t free you from the kiss immediately; he deepens it, tongue finding its way into your mouth, curling up against the roof of your mouth and rubbing against your own. You give his cock a couple of slow pumps as a reminder, but he just moans into your mouth, fingers tangling into your hair.  

It’s you that has to break contact first, coming back up for breath. Donghyuck just stares at you, dazed, his mouth still parted slightly. Before you say anything, he’s leaned in again, trapping your lips in another brief but wet kiss. And another. And another. And another. When you press your free hand against his chest to signal him to slow down, there’s a thin line of saliva traveling between your mouth and the corner of his lips. You laugh softly, wiping it away with your thumb. “You’re very eager.”  

He holds your face again, giving you another firm kiss; his aim misses slightly this time, landing more on your upper lip. There’s a bit of wetness sticking to the bottom of your nose after. “Is that bad?”  

“Of course not. It’s good.” You take his hands away from your face, bringing them up to your lips instead. You press a kiss to each of his knuckles affectionately. “You’re so good for me, baby.”  

You land a final kiss against the tip of his nose before shifting backwards. His fingers are still clinging onto yours, and you’re holding hands even when you get onto your knees, easing yourself between his legs. You glance back at Mark; he hasn’t really moved, save for the fact that his cock is now fully exposed too, and he’s pumping it in that slow, almost torturous pace he loves starting with. You don’t see Mark touch himself often, especially since you usually form a party of two with him to get off anyway, but this is a rare sight you actually wouldn’t mind enjoying more often. His brow is slightly furrowed, dark eyes trained on the both of you, a thin sheen of sweat glowing across his forehead. When his eyes meet yours, you wink, way too salaciously for him to take seriously, and the laugh that leaves him is breathy.

Donghyuck gives your fingers a small squeeze when you turn back to him. From this angle, you’re more aware of how flushed his neck and how dangerously quick his Adam’s apple is bobbing, probably because he can’t stop swallowing in anticipation. When you inch your head closer to his cock, he grips your hands even tighter, until the tips of your digits actually turn white.  

“Relax, baby,” you whisper, trying to curl your fingers — in vain, unfortunately, because he refuses to let go.

“I can’t,” he replies a little hoarsely. “I’m going to cum fast. I don’t want you guys to think I’m a quick shot.”  

“Don’t worry about it,” you reassure him, twisting your dominant hand out of his iron grasp. Desperate to still have something to hang onto, his hand moves immediately to your head, gripping your hair in a haphazard half-ponytail. “I think it’s cute that you’re this excited.”

“Don’t tease me, noona.”

“I’m not teasing you,” you say calmly, but your index finger is enjoying its independence way too much, dragging down the side of his shaft lightly and drawing spirals against his skin as it travels back upwards. He lets out a short, sharp hiss. “I’m just telling it as it is. And if you want to cum, all you need to do is tell me where.”  

“What?”  

“Tell me where. Mark prefers the mouth, mostly.” He gapes down at you, shaking his head slowly like he’s not fully comprehending how workaday your tone is in comparison to what you’re saying. “Although you can obviously choose on your own.”

“Wh—” His question dies in his throat as his eyes fixate on your mouth, which is now wrapped around the head of his cock. You feel it twitch against your lips, and Donghyuck’s low, drawn-out moans are the rhythmic soundtrack to your endeavor. His grip on your hair tightens, and he starts a mantra of curses once your tongue begins rolling around the tip. “Oh my g— noona, you need to slow down, holy shit—”

Your giggle is muffled against his skin, but the vibrations just seem to spur him on; he clenches your hand like you’re dangling him off a cliff. His head is tilted back, and his chest is heaving dangerously. The hand in your hair jerks your head accidentally, but you power through it, moving your lips downward. His swearing only intensifies as you start to suck on his length, your mouth running up and down half of it.  

Donghyuck can’t seem to come to a decision on how to proceed; on one hand, he frequently wheezes out a “no” in between sentences he never finishes, but on the other, he’s starting to place pressure on your head in an attempt to lead it further down. You end up deciding for him when he hisses out an almost angry “fuck, that feels so good,” pressing your tongue up against the underside of his shaft. His cock throbs noticeably in your mouth again; the timing perfectly aligns when you look up at him just to see his eyes roll back one quick moment before he squeezes them shut. His mouth is slightly agape, and he can’t even bring his lips together to swear properly at this point.  

Another dangerous twitch of his cock signals that he’s close, and he confirms this when his head suddenly snaps down, eyes flying open.  

“Fuck, I’m gonna—” He shakes his head again, now looking panicked. “I want �� can I cum on your tits?”  

You think that’s kind of a complicated decision considering you’re the only one in the room still fully clothed, but you don’t want to deny him, especially not when he looks so desperate. You pull your mouth away quickly, a wet pop sounding between you, and he finally releases your now-numb hand, using it to stroke his cock in your absence. Leaning back, you wrestle your shirt off; you’re about to work on the clasp of your bra too, but a gentle hand gets there before you. Mark has shifted closer for a better view, now unhooking your bra with the hand that isn’t stroking himself.

“Show off.” You grin back at him. He laughs softly, but the sound is drowned out by a slightly louder moan from Donghyuck. His head is in its previous position, tilted back, his bangs matted to his forehead. He’s sucked in his stomach, like he’s holding his breath just to stop himself from cumming. You tap his moving hand to tell him to stop, but he moans out a throaty albeit much more insistent no. Slightly amazed, you watch him shift forward in his seat, half of his ass hanging off the edge, leading his cock closer to you.  

It takes you a split second before you cotton on, and in that short interlude, his groans get exponentially louder, so you try not to waste any more time, leaning forward again so that his shaft can rest against your cleavage. It’s clear that your guess on what he wants is correct, because the fist around his cock loosens; instead, he presses his thumb down on his cock, making sure it stays flush against your skin as he starts to roll his hips upward haphazardly.  

You’re so new to the sight of this that you don’t even move; you just watch him rut against you, wondering why you hadn’t at least set up a camera so you could have a souvenir when this was all over. Surprisingly, it’s Mark that takes the initiative again; sacrificing personal pleasure, both his palms slip under your arms, pressing against the sides of your breasts and pushing them closer to the center. The friction Donghyuck is creating intensifies when they press up against his cock, and his reaction is immediate; his hips jerk up sharply, cock barely missing your chin.  

Donghyuck’s movements are more erratic now, and the flush on his neck has spread upwards to his cheeks. He’s so close, and the only thing you can do at this point is to egg him on.

“That’s so good, baby.” Your whisper is barely audible, but you know he can hear it, even with everything else he’s saying about how much he’s already losing his mind. “You’re doing so well. I bet you look so good when you cum, don’t you? Show mommy how much you want to cum all over me.”  

His hips give one last sharp lurch before a drawn out groan rips from his chest; you feel a splash of heat against your neck first. Donghyuck has all but slid off his seat, but he manages to right himself, pulling away from you slightly so he can fist at his cock again to coax his climax to completion. You let out a soft, appreciative noise as you feel his cum hit your skin in quick bursts.  

You smile up at him when he slouches back into the chair, breathing labored. Something like a disbelieving laugh escapes him when your gazes lock, and your grin just widens in response.  

“Mommy?”  

“Sorry. Heat of the moment, and all that,” you shrug. “Too weird?”  

“Kind of hot, actually,” he admits. “I’m not mad about it.”  

“I agree,” Mark’s voice sounds fresh in the situation considering how absent it had been for the better part of the blowjob. His hands are still against your breasts, now cupping them lightly instead of pushing them together. You lean back slightly, your head bumping into his shoulder.  

“It was nice to have an active audience too, actually,” you sigh softly, feeling Mark’s torso shake weakly as he laughs again. “Very helpful at the right time.”  

“I just took advantage of a sudden opportunity.” His fingers squeeze at your breasts gently. Donghyuck has caught his breath now, mostly, and he sits up a little straighter. His expression has gone back to looking a bit careful, which you’re disappointed about until he speaks up again.

“So… is that… really it?”  

“Why?” You bite back a laugh. “Did you want more, or something?”  

“Kind of.”  

“That’s good, considering I wasn’t really planning on stopping just yet.” Your hands move up your sides, overlapping with Mark’s. “Looks like you need a break, though.”  

“I really don’t,” Donghyuck answers quickly, almost talking over you.  

“How quick is your recovery time?”

“I don’t usually have a stopwatch on me when I jack off twice in a row,” he frowns. “I usually don’t jack off twice in a row. Isn’t it bad for your heart, or something?”  

“I don’t know. Naver it, if you’re curious,” you suggest.  

“No, thanks. Kind of a mood killer.”  

“True.” you shrug. “I guess we’ll just have to speed it up a little.”

Your fingers close around Mark’s hand, peeling it away from your breast slowly. He makes a small, disappointed sound but doesn’t resist, even when you let his hand go for a moment before taking his forefinger back into your grasp. Leading it back to your skin, you slide his finger over your nipple, Donghyuck’s release slowly gathering on his digit as you move it upwards. You hear Donghyuck inhale sharply as you bring Mark’s finger up to your mouth, your tongue coming out to meet it so you can lick off the residual cum.  

“Is she usually this horny, or, like… what?” Donghyuck sounds both scandalized and amazed.  

“This is definitely in the top ten list of horniest things she’s done,” Mark replies. You don’t miss the fact that his words are laced with a soft, affectionate tone. “Right up there with a morning blowjob and offering to eat my ass.”  

“You didn’t take the offer?”  

“We had a test the next day. Also, she was half-asleep when she offered.”  

“I would have done it if you had woken me up after ten minutes like you were supposed to.” You drop your hold on Mark’s hand.  

“I could tell you were tired. You needed rest, not another reason to rile me up into having sex four hours before a morning exam.”

You shrug as Donghyuck laughs incredulously. Mark, catching up to your intentions, starts using his thumb to wipe the rest of Donghyuck’s cum off your skin before lifting it back up to your mouth. “The offer still stands,” you say right before your lips wrap around his finger, suckling on it languidly. You’re excessively noisy about it, since that seems to interest Donghyuck.  

“I’ll take it up on another day,” Mark promises.  

“And the daddy thing,” Donghyuck presses on, even though his eyes are fixed on where your mouth meets Mark’s skin. “Whose idea was that?”  

“Who else’s?”  

“Noona,” Donghyuck shakes his head. “You’re a hazard to men, do you know that?”

You pull your mouth away, pouting. “That’s not the whole story. You’re telling it wrong.”  

“But you did start it,” Mark replies simply, going back to the task of slowly wiping your chest clean.  

“I said it as a joke, but it turned you on so much I just kept using it,” you elaborate.

“Fine. So that’s what happened,” he concedes. “But you still started it.”  

“But you love it,” you fire back. He chuckles, his finger coming back up to trace the shape of your mouth. The movement of it laces the last of Donghyuck’s cum onto your lips.  

“Of course.”  

Donghyuck’s cock visibly twitches as he watches you trace your tongue over your lips, slowly licking the cum off of them. He just gapes for a moment, even when you’re finished and smiling up at him again, then gently pats the side of his face like he’s trying to get himself to wake up.

“I’m going to have a heart attack.”  

“Story of my life,” Mark responds. You feel his heat leave your back for a moment as he moves to sit back onto the couch, but he reaches out for you again quickly, arms snaking around your waist so he can tug you onto his lap. You lean most of your weight back onto his chest, and his hands move down to unbutton your shorts, thumbs digging into the waistband in an attempt to push them down. “Help me out here, Donghyuck.”  

The latter leans forward as instructed, tugging down your shorts by the hem and dragging your underwear along with them. You have to lift yourself to help them slide it off, and when you sit back down, you press back against Mark’s hips, feeling the shape of his cock push up flush against your bare ass. His knees slip between your legs, pushing them apart to give Donghyuck a fair view of your pussy. He takes in a deep breath, as though mentally preparing himself.  

“We usually do this in front of a mirror,” Mark explains. “But I think it might turn her on more to know you’re watching.”  

“Oh, I’m definitely watching,” Donghyuck promises. “I don’t even know if I have it in me to fucking blink.”  

Mark laughs, but you don’t join him; what comes out of you is a slightly needy sound as you feel his fingers press up against your core. He slips one between your folds, tracing lines repeatedly along your slit, and your moans just grow louder with every time he brushes up against your clit. The sounds you’re making reach its first apex when two digits press down a little harder against the nub, rubbing with a fair amount of intensity.  

In most other instances, Mark isn’t one for a lot of talk; he’ll play along when he has to, but he isn’t instinctively prone to mouthing off during sex unless you prompt some kind of dialogue. You’re not sure if it’s also because Donghyuck is watching, or because this is just one of the rare times he’s feeling up to it, but even in the haze of your growing pleasure, you feel mildly surprised when he suddenly speaks up.

“What’s going on, __________?” His voice is low, muffled against your shoulder as he speaks in between the kisses he’s pressing against your skin. “Tell me. What’s happening to you right now?”  

“Oh my god,” you whimper, feeling him add more pressure against your core. “You’re… you’re rubbing my clit. Your fingers feel so good, fuck.”

He hums softly in approval. “What else?”  

Your answer comes slightly delayed as you moan, a longer, slightly more tortured sound as his fingers leave your clit, moving down to toy at your entrance. “I’m getting so wet, holy shit.”

“Wet for who?”  

“Fuck,” your voice comes out as an embarrassing, high-pitched whine. “For you, daddy. I’m getting so wet for you.”  

“Who else?”  

“For Donghyuck.”  

You feel Mark’s lips brush against the curve of your neck as he speaks again. “Should we show him?”  

You nod, unsure if you can still speak without everything just coming out as a mess, and Mark moves his hand back to your folds, his forefinger and middle finger spreading them. Your legs instinctively follow suit, shifting further apart, and Donghyuck’s mouth goes slack to the point that you can actually see a little bit of drool pooling near the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t even seem to be noticing the fact that he’s growing harder again as the seconds pass, too fixated on Mark’s hand, which has found its way back to your entrance. One digit dips into your core, and you tense around it. He starts to pump it into you, but the movement is too shallow, and your mind is honestly thinking about something else entirely. He knows this, you’re fairly sure, but Mark isn’t usually one to tease, so when he does, you let him get away with it.  

Still, you instinctively let out a frustrated noise, and he catches it. His finger slows in you, and your nails bite into his forearms as a tiny form of revenge. He doesn’t even sound perturbed when he speaks again.  

“What’s wrong?”

“I want…” You huff, hips moving in a bid for some kind of friction. “I want more.”  

“More?”  

“Cock,” You demand. “I want your cock, daddy.”  

His other arm frees your waist, moving to press his palm against your back. You take it as a signal to lift yourself, and your thighs get an unexpected workout as you wait for him to align himself under you. The same hand leads you back down, and you let out what might be the lewdest moan you’ve made for the day so far, feeling the familiar girth of his cock stretch you in that subtle, delicious way you’ve come to love.  

Mark doesn’t even wait for you to settle back down on his lap; you’re only halfway down before he lifts his hips to meet yours, burying himself into you completely. It knocks a little bit of wind out of you, but you won’t deny the fact that his eagerness is a peak turn on at this point. You’re glad that he’s firmly holding your waist, because you don’t know how much strain your legs can take anymore — partly because of practice, but mostly because Mark is funneling all of his energy into thrusting deep into you, which just renders you incapable of focusing on any other task requiring more than minimum effort.  

There’s slight movement in front of you; Donghyuck’s hand has found its way back to his cock, and he’s stroking himself to hardness again, his expression half-pained, half-amazed. His eyes keep moving back and forth, once again unsure on what to focus on. For a while, his gaze is fixed on your breasts, which are bouncing slightly with the force of Mark’s thrusts, but for some reason, he ultimately decides to focus on your face. His fingers tighten around his shaft for a moment.  

“Are you hard again, baby?” You ask the obvious, but he doesn’t seem to mind, considering the fact that he nods immediately. “Does it turn you on —watching daddy fuck me like this?”  

“Jesus.” He runs a hand through his hair, locks sticking out at odd angles. “Jesus Christ.”  

“His cock feels so good in me. He’s filling me up so well, baby. Can you see it?”  

He nods again. “This is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”  

Your head tilts back a little when Mark bucks his hips up a little more sharply than before, mouth falling slack to allow a groan to escape; you feel yourself tighten around him, legs twitching in response. You think you hear Donghyuck call out to a deity again. When your head lifts back up, you lock eyes with Donghyuck again, and he speaks before you can think of anything filthier to say.  

“Can I fuck your mouth, noona?”

He’s already half-standing before you say yes, and Mark has to slow down for a moment as Donghyuck clambers up to line himself up to your mouth again. He doesn’t even need any prompting anymore, one hand immediately moving to tangle into your hair and keep your head still. He uses the other to guide his cock past your lips, and you notice that he feeds you more length than you had taken in earlier.  

Seeing Mark resume his movements is what gives Donghyuck the cue to start, too; he uses his hold in your hair as some kind of leverage, hips rolling forward in slow, controlled thrusts. There’s very little you can do apart from suck with whatever strength you have left and moan intermittently when Mark shifts down a little so he can pump into you at a different, slightly deeper angle. One hand has also found its way back against your pussy, picking up where it left off and toying with your clit. You feel your legs shake slightly with the overstimulation, and it takes a lot of concentration for you to keep yourself from going limp.  

In an attempt to stay preoccupied, you look up at Donghyuck. The sight of him feels almost criminal, with his tongue curled up against his upper lip and his brow furrowed with concentration. His thrusts are growing a little more confident, and with this newfound boldness, he pushes more of his cock past your lips. It doesn’t seem to be an accident, either; his hand leads your head forward a little every time, and if you had to guess, you had probably just about a quarter of his length left before you took it all in.

Suddenly, he pulls his hips away, and you gasp out a soft fuck when he frees your mouth, once again unable to focus on much else apart from Mark’s thrusting, which has also increased in pace and intensity. You’re practically praying in swear words, and Donghyuck has to call your name twice before you look back up at him.  

“Noona, do you think you can—” He swallows hard, fingers falling away from your hair. “Can you relax for me?”  

“I’m getting the dicking down of my life over here,” you rasp between moans. “I don’t think I can.”  

“I meant here,” his hand falls down to your jaw before tracing a line down your throat. His forefinger hooks into the ersatz choker you’ve fashioned out of his tie. “I want to see if you can take all of me.”

You nod, not even bothering to tease him about how uncertain he’s acting even when he’s asking for a goddamn deepthroating, and he tugs on the tie, once again bringing your slackened mouth closer to his tip. You feel Mark’s fingers tighten around your hip, and his hips start lifting up harder; the slap of skin on skin is obscenely audible, almost like applause as Donghyuck slides himself past your teeth again.

He doesn’t bother with thrusting anymore; it’s one smooth motion until your mouth is back where it had been a moment ago. You remember he’d asked you to relax, so you try not to give into your instinct to moan over and over, letting your jaw go slack. You know he feels the tension go down because he starts pushing forward again. Your tongue is pressed up flush against his cock, but you can’t move it at all. The rest of Donghyuck’s fingers join the one wrapped around the tie, gripping it a little tighter as he tugs you forward to meet his hips, and you have the good sense to breathe in right before he slips the remaining length into your mouth.  

The tip of his cock presses up against the back of your throat, and you feel the expected tears pool in your eyes and streak down your cheeks; you try to focus on Donghyuck’s expression, which is completely blissed out, but it’s a little hazy. When you start feeling lightheaded, you reach out to blindly swat at his thigh. He gets the signal, pulling away right before you can gag, but he doesn’t leave your mouth. Instead, he resumes thrusting, deciding to follow Mark’s quicker, rougher pace.

You’re pretty sure you would be moaning like crazy now, but you can’t even make noise properly. Without any warning, Donghyuck tugs at the tie again, and your throat instinctively loosens when you feel him pushing in deeper again. He stays there, buried in your mouth for what seems like forever, almost growling when he feels you trying to swallow around him.  

On his second withdrawal, he pulls out all the way; a long, escalating groan leaves you, and you feel your legs buckle suddenly as your climax hits unexpectedly. Mark’s arms wind around your waist, trying to keep you steady, but his hips move relentlessly, hellbent on keeping you going until your high ends. You collapse against his chest when it does, breathing heavily, your eyes closing halfway. Donghyuck inches closer, though, still lining his cock up against your mouth, and your tongue comes out to greet it, running messily along its side.  

“How was it?” Mark asks softly from under you, one hand gently rubbing your stomach.  

“Fucking amazing,” Donghyuck replies, watching you mouth at the tip before you suck on it languidly. “You’ve never tried?”  

“Not yet.”  

“It’s out of this world, hyung.” Your heart swells at the praise, and your mouth becomes a little more enthusiastic. Donghyuck lets out a shaky exhale. “Pro level.”  

Mark chuckles, the sound rumbling against your back. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“If you add that to the fact that she basically swears like a pirate, she could really make a career out of it.”  

“That is something that’s never going to happen,” Mark squeezes your waist. “Like, over my dead body.”  

“I’m just saying it as a hypothetical thing. You know. To drive the compliment home.” You try to interrupt them, but Donghyuck’s shaft is still pressed up against your lips, muffling the sound. He angles his hips away so you can speak. “Sorry. What was that, noona?”  

“More,” you breathe out. Donghyuck’s eyebrows fly up as you repeat yourself. “More. Please.”  

“Are you sure? You can take a break. Trust me, with what just happened, we’ll still be hard.”  

You shake your head, carefully pushing yourself up off Mark’s lap; you’re still fairly wobbly, so he has to keep his hand on your back just to make sure you don’t reel backwards. He looks up at you, wide-eyed, wondering what you’re planning. You motion for him to scoot back near the armrest, and he does so, adjusting himself horizontally once he understands what you want. He reaches out a hand to help you back onto the couch, where you straddle his lap for a moment before you raise yourself, reaching between the two of you to hold onto the base of his shaft. His teeth come out to dig into his lip as you once again take in his cock, biting back a moan.  

When you turn back, Donghyuck is still in the same position, watching you; he’s clearly wondering where he fits into this equation. You beckon for him to come closer, and he complies wordlessly. You need to twist your arm a little to reach out for his, leading his fingers to your mouth. Your tongue presses up against his digits, rolling around them slowly for a long, fairly intense minute before you let his wrist go.  

He cottons on belatedly, after you’ve leaned back down to press your chest against Mark’s, pushing out your ass. Your fingers grip your cheeks, spreading them slightly, and Donghyuck lets out a strangled noise.  

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” you murmur, pressing the side of your face against Mark’s shoulder.  

“Are you — I’ve — hold on,” Donghyuck falls silent trying to form the best possible sentence, which is, apparently, “How are you this calm about this?”

“What do you want me to do?” You laugh breathily. “Cry about it?”  

“Have you ever done this before?”

“No,” you admit. “So you better stretch me out, or we might have a problem.”  

“Yeah, okay, no pressure.” You feel the couch dip a little as he inches forward, and in the next second, his hand finds its way to your ass, helping you push your cheeks apart. “Why hasn’t Mark hyung done this?”  

“He’s too scared.”

“That you’ll get hurt?”  

“That he’ll cum right away.”  

Donghyuck barks out a laugh, and even Mark snorts a little. “What about me? I’m afraid of that too.”

“Yeah, but we already know you’re kind of a quick shot.”  

Something cool presses up against your ass, and in the next moment, Donghyuck is sinking the first knuckle of his forefinger into you. You let out a slightly surprised moan that he talks over. “Am not.”  

“We’ll see,” your words come out short as you hold your breath in anticipation. Nothing happens, though; his finger stays completely still. “Fuck. You’re really taking your sweet time.”

“You’d kill me if I just stuffed one finger in right away,” he complains. You clench around him unexpectedly, and he pulls his finger away. “Okay, can you not do that first? My finger is just going to get sucked in or something.”

“That was the idea. Hurry up.”  

“Are you always this impatient?��� More shifting happens behind you, and a moment later, you feel something softer and wetter press up against your entrance. You jerk forward in surprise, but Donghyuck’s hands are keeping your hips steady, allowing him to lap at the puckered flesh. You let out a breathy, incredulous laugh.  

“He’s eating my ass,” you inform Mark, who grins up at you. “This is the kind of kinky shit I could have done for you instead of reading Homer.”  

“You passed the exam, which is more important than my personal pleasure.”

“Agree to disagree.”

Mark doesn’t reply, allowing you the space to moan as Donghyuck’s tongue lubes you up. When he pulls away, you try to crane your head back in an attempt to catch a glimpse of his lips, which are shiny with saliva. His hand moves towards you again, and he eases his finger in slowly until it’s in entirely. You start to moan a little more loudly once he starts pumping his finger, and Mark slowly starts rolling his hips up again to add to the stimulation. You have to tuck your face into the crook of his neck to soften your groan as Donghyuck slowly pushes another finger in, spreading them out carefully before he resumes pumping.  

You think you could pretty much get off like this, and you actually feel pleasure building in your stomach, but it’s a low-burning fire with how slowly they’re taking it. A couple of times, you try to push back against them, but Donghyuck in particular seems to be enjoying taking his sweet time. The third finger enters when the buzz of ecstasy has settled in your nerves, adding a bit of spark to the low thrum coursing through your body. Even Mark doesn’t see the necessity in speeding up yet. You’re breathing deep against his neck, inhaling his scent constantly and getting heady from it, and you don’t even register the fact that your mouth has been half-open for the last ten minutes, just letting low, weak moans pass through. At one point, you actually cum quietly again, even with that horribly slow pace, and no one says anything; Mark just turns his head, pressing a firm kiss against your forehead.  

“Please,” your voice is barely audible. “Please. Give me your cock. I’m begging you. I want both of you in me already.”

Donghyuck doesn’t respond, but he does acknowledge your words, slowly tugging his fingers out of you. A moment later, something hard presses up against you, and your moan escalates exponentially once you feel it stretch you. You have to constantly tell yourself not to tense up, but with how desperate you are, you can’t help but feel a little tightly wound, and there’s a small bite of pain when the tip of Donghyuck’s cock makes it past the first ring of muscle.  

Mark’s hands leave your waist, lacing into your fingers and squeezing them reassuringly. You’ve gone back to swearing again, your voice more guttural this time, as Donghyuck works his way further into you. His hands are back on your cheeks, trying to help himself in by spreading them slightly as he moves. It takes what feels like an eternity before he bottoms out, and you let out a long, heavy sigh of relief, belatedly realizing you’d been holding your breath this entire time.  

Donghyuck’s breathing is pretty loud at this point; his hands are roaming across your back aimlessly. “You’re tight as hell. How does it feel?”  

“Fucking incredible,” you whimper. “I feel so fucking full.”

You don’t know if they’d quietly agreed on something, but Mark and Donghyuck start moving at the same time, at the same pace. It’s difficult to decide which feeling to focus on, and you have to shut your eyes to block out anything else that might distract you from the pleasure. Your nails bite into the backs of Mark’s palms, but he doesn’t say anything against it; his breathing is coming out a little more labored too as he thrusts up into you.

Donghyuck loses his reluctance a lot more quickly than Mark, you’ve come to learn; once he’s realized you’re not complaining, he starts speeding up, trying to match Mark’s practiced intensity. You let go of Mark’s hands, letting them move back to their original position as you press your palms against the couch, lifting your torso up slightly. Donghyuck’s hands, on the other hand, find their way to your breasts, rolling your nipples between his fingers.  

“Harder,” you whisper, now fully adjusted to the situation. “Fuck me harder, please, please.”  

No one objects at this point, each one of you ultimately more concerned with chasing your highs. Mark adjusts himself under you so that he has more mobility, and his thrusts become sharper in tandem with Donghyuck’s. The moans leaving you are shorter but more frequent, breathless and a little too loud, but you can’t find it in yourself to care. A small part of you is astonished at the idea that twenty-four hours ago, it had never crossed your mind that you’d be naked in between your boyfriend and his best friend, but that small part is ultimately shunted by the knowledge that, twenty-four hours later, you are, in fact, in haphazardly planned threesome with the aforementioned people.  

You haven’t said anything for a while now, having lost your own ability to form anything coherent and replacing words with garbled moans. Your expression has probably been dazed for the last few minutes, and when you look down, Mark is staring intently at you. Without any prompt, you lean down, pressing your lips hard against his; his mouth moves against yours, engaging you in a messy and wet kiss that ends with his tongue in your mouth and you suckling on it. Donghyuck’s fingers are digging into your breasts, squeezing them tightly as he briefly interrupts his thrusting to grind his hips up against your ass. You groan in surprise, letting go of Mark’s tongue, and Donghyuck takes this opportunity to tug you up, holding you flush against his chest. His hands move in opposite directions, one hand snaking around your waist tightly, the other dragging up against your cleavage and landing at the base of your throat, tightening a little.  

“Want to tell us what’s going on?” He seems to be taking a page out of Mark’s book. “Tell us what’s happening to you.”  

The first thing that leaves you is a whimper; you’re pretty sure you’ve been speaking in tongues for the past five minutes or so, and your mind is blanking out. Donghyuck’s fingers squeeze a little more against your throat before loosening again.  

“Come on, mommy,” he whispers into your ear, and you squeeze your eyes shut for a second, trying to keep yourself from imploding at that second. “Talk to me. What’s happening to you right now?”  

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you hiss out, feeling his fingers tighten and loosen again. “I’m getting fucked so good, holy shit—”

“Yeah? So good you’re going to cum for us again?”

“Yes, yes, oh my God,” your voice is thick, and it doesn’t help that Donghyuck’s hand squeezes around your throat in increasingly longer intervals. “I’m going to cum so hard. Please — don’t stop, don’t stop—”  

You yelp as Mark’s hips jerk up sharply, stopping for a second before he continues; the result is him falling out of sync with Donghyuck, thrusting in just as Donghyuck pulls back. The new rhythm gives you very little pause, and you feel your arousal heightening much more quickly. You know that Mark, at least, is close; his eyes are shut, and he’s starting to moan lowly — usual tells you’ve noticed over time. The timing seems perfect, then, as Donghyuck presses his lips back to your ear.

“Where should we cum, noona?” He murmurs. “It’s your choice this time.”  

You’re in no real state to make decisions, so you don’t answer right away. The only prompt you have to do so is Donghyuck’s hand once again closing around your throat, cutting off your air supply for a sweet second before letting you breathe again. You’re so close, you can’t care about logistics, and moving would just ruin everything.  

“Cum in me, baby,” you reply hoarsely. “Fuck — please, cum in me.”  

Donghyuck gives your throat one last squeeze, a slightly longer one, fingers flexing against your neck as he buries his cock into you with a throaty groan. You feel the heat almost immediately, and your vision whites out around the edges for a moment before he frees you. You use the air that fills your lungs almost immediately, moaning unrestrainedly as you climax once again, pulsing around both of their cocks. Mark moves his hips for your sake, hitting your sweet spot help you ride it out until you come back down. Donghyuck gently pulls his hands away, and your spine suddenly feels like jelly; you collapse into Mark with a soft thud.

A moment of stillness follows, filled only with heavy breathing and the occasionally whispered curse word. The three of you stay that way for five blissful minutes, until Donghyuck’s phone starts ringing obnoxiously from his bag near the door. The call drops and goes to voicemail because he takes his time pulling out, wasting a couple more seconds to watch a bit of his cum dribble out with an appreciative hum. When the phone rings again, you swat him away, and he sprints across the floor to dig it out of his bag. It’s Renjun, you learn when he answers the phone.  

You and Mark watch him converse with Renjun naturally, like he hadn’t been deep up your ass a moment ago, talking about an assignment he had forgotten to do research on. When he says he’s going to go online so the two of them can discuss, he shoots the two of you a look, like he’s asking you for permission. Mark mouths for him to stop dawdling and get to work, and Donghyuck pulls a face as he picks his backpack and trudges into his room. You notice he peeks at the two of you surreptitiously just before he closes the door.  

“Good job, mommy,” Mark murmurs when Donghyuck is finally out of earshot. He pushes your hair away from your face, tucking locks messily behind your ear to keep them from falling into his face and tickling his nose.  

“I could really get used to that name, but I might miss the title he stole from me now and again.”  

“I don’t mind either way,” he chuckles. “They both kind of suit you.”  

“At least we worked that out,” you hum softly. “I kind of felt bad for him at the beginning.”  

“He pouted and got to cum twice. Things work out.”

You stare down at him, confusion suddenly seeping into your expression. “Yeah. But you didn’t. At all.”  

“I know. It’s not like I can cum like this,” he laughs. “You have to move off of me. Quick, too, because I’ve been holding it in forever.”  

“Why?” You ask, perplexed.

“What do you mean, why? Because I can’t reach your mouth from down here.”

“You don’t have to,” you press a hand to his chest, stopping him from moving up. He meets your eye, now confused too. “I meant what I said. I want you to cum in me.”  

Shock crosses his face. “But—”

“Didn’t you want to? The first time?” He nods, and you tilt your head questioningly. “Do you not want to now?”

“I do. I mean — it would be so hot, but I’m just — I mean, are you sure?”  

“I’m sure.” You lean down, pressing a kiss to his nose. “It’s okay. I want to feel you.”  

He looks up at you, unblinking, assessing your expression like he’s trying to figure out if you’re just pranking him. When he decides you aren’t, he nods, and you dip your head again to press your lips to his. His hands grip your waist once again, and you feel him start to thrust — slowly at first, his speed building gradually. Your hands are pressed to his jaw, thumbs running up against his cheek as you kiss him — adoringly, carefully.  

His movements still for a moment, and you think he’s already climaxing, but you only feel your body shift in position; the next thing you know, you’re lying back against the couch, Mark hovering above you. He thrusts in deeper, sharper, and you whine, reaching out to press your hand to the back of his neck and bringing his head down. Your foreheads touch, and there’s very little gap between your lips and his, but you don’t close it. Instead, you keep your gaze locked on his, letting the breath that accompanies your moans wash over his lips as his hips start to move more intensely.  

That same expression you know so well starts to form on his face again; his eyes, however, are still uncertain, searching yours, offering you room to back out. You shake your head, but his brow only furrows deeper.  

“I’m okay,” you whisper, only loud enough for him to hear. “Please. I want it.”  

“You’re sure?” He rasps out. His voice sounds a little broken, like he’s doing all he can to keep himself from tipping over the edge. “I can still… I can still pull out.”  

“Don’t,” your voice comes out a little more sharply. “I want all of your cum. Please, daddy.”  

“I—” You feel his cock twitch in you, and his eyes start to close again. “God, I’m—”

“Daddy, please,” you urge him, your fingers pressing hard against his sides. “I want it. I want your cum. I want your baby. Please. Fill me up.”  

“Fuck—” His hips jerk, and he snaps them forward, burying himself inside you. You feel his release a moment later, and you mewl softly, tightening around him. He doesn’t move this time, and when his eyes open, they immediately shine with concern. You shake your head, tilting your head up to press a reassuring kiss to his lips.  

Even with him slowly softening inside you, he doesn’t pull out; you stay in the same position for some time, exchanging light kisses. At one point, he leans in, pressing a kiss much firmer than the others, and when he pulls back, words that break the silence tumble out.

“I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’ve never… I’ve never wanted anyone but you. Ever.”  

You lie there, stunned at the sudden confession. Mark doesn’t even look remotely abashed or regretful; he just stares down at you, and it doesn’t even look like he’s waiting for a response. You reach up, trapping his face between your palms and inching your head forward to press another deep kiss to his lips.  

“I love you,” you murmur against his mouth. “I always will.”  

At your words, he tugs you up with him, gathering you into his arms. His lips rest on your forehead, unmoving, hand rubbing your back lightly.  

It would have ended an extremely heartfelt moment, if not for the soft cough that had caused you to look up and see Donghyuck standing by his door, now fully clothed and slightly amused.

“So you guys decide to act like a normal, loving, not-kinky couple now?”

#mark smut #haechan smut #lee donghyuck smut #nct smut #mark x you #mark x reader #haechan x you #haechan x reader #mark drabbles #mark imagines #mark scenarios #haechan drabbles #haechan scenarios #haechan imagines #nct imagines #mark lee smut #nct drabbles #nct x you #nct scenarios

[da-proti-toku-grem]

kiss ask: 8 bojure:))

This idea popped into my mind the moment I read this request and I literally couldn't wait to finally write it, so... hope you like it as much as I loved writing it 🫶

Send me a Ship and a Number and I will Write a Kiss

8. …in secrecy.

Bojan and Jure had been dating for... well, quite a while now.

That didn't mean everyone knew about it, though. In fact, no one did.

Bojan still laughed every time he remembered the conversation that had led them to this situation.

They were lying on the couch at Jure's house after what had started as a friend's get-together but had ended up being their first date. Jure was lying on his back on the couch, Bojan lying on top of him, his head resting on the drummer's chest and their legs entangled with each other. The blond was running his fingers through his now boyfriend's hair, delicately untangling the knots that had been formed in it over the course of the evening, when the singer spoke up.

“Do you think we should tell the guys already or...?” He asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

It's not that he was afraid of not being accepted. At the end of the day, they knew their friends would be more than supportive of their decision and would most likely be very happy for them, but he wanted to know that the other was ready to make the move as well. They were together, after all.

“Actually, I was thinking…” began Jure, letting out a little chuckle before continuing, “What if we don't tell them anything and wait to see how long it takes for them to figure it out?”

Bojan seemed to think about it for a moment and then giggled. “Okay, that could be fun.”

“Who do you think is going to be the first to notice?”

“Oh, probably Nace. He's always looking after everyone, he'll notice for sure,” the brunet stated.

“Nace? Nah, he's too busy staring at Jan,” Jure said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Bojan let out an amused chuckle. “My money’s on Kris - that man knows everything. I can literally feel him looking at me like he knows all my secrets every time I do something.”

“The Guštin Stare,” they both exclaimed at the same time, bursting into laughter right away.

Once the laughter subsided, the singer propped himself up with his hands on either side of Jure's torso, looking him in the eye.

“Though I can't assure you it's going to take them too long to figure it out,” he smiled, licking his lip.

“Uhmm and why's that?” The drummer asked, his hands coming to rest on Bojan's ass, squeezing it teasingly and giving him his big sunshine smile.

“Well, you see... I don't think I'll be able to keep my hands off you now that you're all mine,” Bojan whispered, his lips ghosting against the older's.

“Oh yeah? I guess there's only one way to find out then,” Jure declared, closing the distance between them with a kiss that made Bojan feel warm all over.

It turns out that Bojan had been wrong.

After two months in which they hadn't been all that subtle – holding hands, using affectionate nicknames, cuddling on the studio couch or backstage before and after concerts, occasionally sharing kisses, hugging each other from behind, or arriving at a rehearsal together with hickeys that clearly screamed "we spent the night together" being a few examples of how the weeks had gone by – neither of them had mentioned a single word about it.

Okay, it’s not like they were full-on making out in front of them, and yeah, they all did kiss each other every now and then just because, but come on… They couldn’t be that oblivious, could they?

Except apparently, they could.

After another successful concert, everyone was hanging out backstage. Jure was talking about something with Kiki, while Bojan was having a conversation with Damon.

What was the conversation about, you might wonder. Well, Bojan wouldn't know the answer to that question, if he was being completely honest. Not when his eyes couldn't stop wandering over to the blond across the room, shirtless and wearing big chains on his torso, his hair disheveled and eyeliner a bit messy.

He looked so damn good, and Bojan needed to do something about it ASAP.

Taking advantage of a moment when Damon turned to say something to Kris, Bojan excused himself and walked over to where the drummer was standing.

“Jure, honey, can you come with me for a moment, please?” Bojan asked as soon as he was by his side.

“Comin’ baby,” beamed Jure.

Once they were out of the common room, the singer grabbed him by the hand, dragging him along the corridors at a somewhat hurried pace.

“Where are you taking us, pup?” asked Jure, but he got no answer from the brunet, who seemed to be too busy looking for something.

As soon as he found what he was looking for – what had turned out to be an empty room – Bojan quickly dragged him inside, shutting the door behind them.

Before his brain could register it, Jure found himself with his back leaning against the door, Bojan's arms on either side of his face and his lips pressed against his in a fierce, hungry kiss, their tongues dancing together in a now all too familiar rhythm.

Quicker than Jure would have pleased, Bojan broke the kiss, starting a trail of kisses and nibbles down his jaw towards his neck, the soft, wet touch of his lips contrasting with the almost sharp graze of his teeth against his skin.

The singer grabbed a bit of skin in an area where he knew Jure was quite sensitive, pulling it a little between his teeth; not enough to leave a mark – after all, they still had more gigs to play and he knew that the ever shirtless drummer wearing a turtleneck on stage would raise suspicions – but enough to make the blond's knees go weak.

“Fuck, Bojan,” he breathed out, tilting his head back against the door to grant him more access.

“God, do you know what you're doing to me?” the other muttered, grabbing his hand and guiding it so he could feel his dick already half-hard inside his pants, causing Jure to draw in a shaky breath. “All day without getting to touch you, feel you, and having to see you like this, looking so fucking hot, just for me… but they don't know that, do they?” Bojan continued, his mind hazy with want.

And Jure wanted to tell him, to let him know that yes, it's just for you and you're driving me crazy too and please don't stop, you're making me feel so good, but the moment was cut short when they heard footsteps in the hallway.

Startled, Bojan stopped his actions and pulled away slightly. Jure's hands came to rest on the younger's shoulder blades, pulling him close again, warm bodies pressing against each other, trying to catch their breath as they waited for the footsteps to move away.

“You weren't completely wrong I guess,” said Jure, still a little out of breath.

“What?” Bojan asked, confused.

“About not being able to keep your hands off me,” he teased.

“Well yeah, I warned you,” Bojan smiled, his thumbs rubbing circles on either side of Jure's waist. “About the other part though…”

“They are really oblivious, aren't they?” Jure laughed, amused. “Like, okay, I understand Jan and Nace because they’re too deep into each other’s asses to even notice whatever is going on around them; but Kris?!”

“At this point I think we'll have to fuck in front of them or something for them to realize we're together,” joked the singer.

“I mean…”

“No. Stop there.”

“Just saying… Maybe they're into that,” he shrugged.

“We're not having sex in front of our friends, muca,” Bojan stated, a hint of a blush creeping up his cheeks.

“A blowjob?”

“Jureee.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Jure said, raising his hands in surrender and making them both burst into laughter.

masterlist | ao3

#it's probably too late to post this but oh well #and yeah. it did end up being 1.1k in the end oops 🤭 #joker out #bojan cvjetićanin #jure maček #bojure #ask #mine #maca writes #kiss prompts

[changetyre]

Not the last time

SUMMARY: You're stuck in a complicated love triangle with 2 of your closest friends, you decide that you're not gonna pick either and that's how you'll get out of this situation. Except it seems it only takes one night to change everyone's minds. Daniel Ricciardo x Reader x Max Verstappen.

WARNINGS: Terribly written intense smut, threesome, fem!oral, male!oral, face fck, PinV, an*l.

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing Smut so forgive me for the mess but hope you enjoy ;) Also this isn't proof read so sorry for any mistakes.

Realizing that you could in fact be in love with two people wasn't as fun and dramatic and interesting as it appeared in the movies. And what makes things more complicated is that the two men you're in love with completely reciprocate your feelings.

You, Daniel, and Max had been best friends ever since the boys become teammates. You were Max's new P.R. manager and you hit it off with Max straight away, both realizing that although you should get along, what you had was a little more special than that.

Given your proximity to Max, you quickly began forming a friendship with Daniel too, what made this all the more fun was the fact that you were in between them both when it came to ages which meant you connected with them both on different levels.

It didn't take long before you three became inseparable, even after Dani left Redbull and even after you'd been offered a better job in a different team and took it.

However, the feelings between the three of you started becoming clearer as the increased time apart became more apparent. And it all came into understanding when you realized how much you despised seeing the boys being way too friendly with any woman and the boys felt exactly the same way about you with other men.

You were never one to wallow around with your feelings, being the kind of person to just face them up front so pulling the boys aside at the club one night after they were both practically throwing daggers at you for dancing with another man you finally revealed your feelings.

You were in love, with them both. BUT you didn't want anything to be ruined between the three of you. The boys revealed they felt the same way about you and you agreed the best approach would be for everyone to ignore the feelings and they would eventually go away. That way non one would get hurt. Right?

_________

2 weeks later:

You'd be lying if you said things between the three of you didn't get slightly awkward. There was now a weird tension in the atmosphere and you all took notice of the lack of contact with the opposite gender from all sides.

You thought the best medicine to get you guys back to being your usual selves would be for one of your movie nights like you had in the old days. You got the boys to clear their schedules for a weekend so they could spend 3 nights at your place, a slumber party if you will.

After scrolling through countless movies for too long and not coming to an agreement you decided to simply close your eyes and scroll until you landed on a random movie.

Secretary (2022), was the title of the movie. None of you had seen it and you decided to watch it.

It all started out okay, until you started realizing what this movie was about. Was this some kind of cruel prank form the universe?

You were at what was maybe the 4th sex scene in the movie, you were extremely horny at this point and little did you know the boys felt exactly the same.

The tension in the room was almost making it hard to breathe. You squeezed your thighs together and your mind wandered to the last time you had sex only now noticing how long it had actually been and now realizing how much you need a relief right now.

The boys take notice of your shifting and almost imperceptible whimpers as they start shifting uncomfortably in their seats trying to tame their need for you.

You can't take it anymore.

"I can't do this I'm so f*cking horny, I need one of you to fuck me right now." you blurt out, knowing damn well there's a possibility you might regret it later but all logic is out of the window right now, your wet core doing all the thinking right now.

Although the next thing that came out of Max's mouth took you by surprise.

"How about both of us?" he asked.

You looked at him waiting for any sign of a joke to which you find none. You turn to Daniel who already had a smirk on his lips.

"I've never been one to turn a threesome down baby." He bit his bottom lip already undressing you with his eyes. That's all the confirmation you need of what you're about to do.

You get up and start walking to your room the boys exchanging confused looks. "What the hell are you waiting for?!" You turn around to ask them both.

They jump up immediately following behind you.

_____

You're not sure where to start but to yours and Max's luck Daniel chooses to take the lead. He pulls you in kissing you softly as he starts pushing your clothes off you fumbling with his belt.

Max stands awkwardly unsure of how to follow but Daniel finally unlatches from you starting to kiss down your neck, and then your body nods for Max to come over.

This time you're the one taking the lead as you grab Max's collar pulling him into you with desperation to get your lips onto his. You're so distracted kissing Max and trying to undress that you don't realize when Daniel had left you completely exposed from the waist down now wearing nothing but your black lace bra.

The next thing you feel is as Daniel has found his way in between your thighs gliding his tongue over your folds making you tremble with surprise and let out a moan into Max's mouth.

You look down grasping onto Daniel's hair and pulling him back in between your legs indicating for him to keep going. His tongue covers you whole licking back and forth in slow swipes before he starts picking up the pace and occasionally sucking on your clit making you moan loudly.

Max getting incredibly turned on hearing your moans of pleasure. He guided your hand to his now exposed dick and you begin stroking him. Max starts kissing your chest, unclasping your bra before he starts sucking on your already hard nipples, showing equal praise to them both.

You bring your hand up gathering spit and licking it before bringing your hand back down to Max's shaft as you kept stroking him at a good pace hearing him groan in pleasure.

Once Daniel had given you your first orgasm all gentleness seem to go out of the window from there. Daniel picked you up throwing you down onto the bed before climbing over you.

He scooted all the way up before hoovering over your face, tapping his dick on your chin indicating for you to open up which you gladly do. You take him and Daniel lets you go at your pace at first.

Max now has full view of your dripping wet core, he wants a taste of it too. He kneels down between your legs locking his arms over your thighs as he takes his turn eating you out.

Your strangled moans being enough indication of how much you're enjoying this as well as the fact that he has to use a slight bit of force to keep your legs open for him.

Daniel grabbed the headboard behind you as he angled himself slightly to start thrusting into your mouth, the glint in your eyes letting him know you're more than okay with this as you open your mouth wide for him to face fuck you.

You're taken by surprise when Max has now lined himself up with your entrance and started thrusting into you causing an overwhelming amount of pleasure to course through your body.

You bring your hand down rubbing circles on your clit as the boys keep their pace going.

"Fuck y/n!" at this point it's hard to distinguish which of the men it's coming from with how much they've repeated the phrase tonight.

You all uncoil at the same time, Daniel cumming into your mouth, Max spilling all over your folds and you trembling at the 2nd orgasm of the night.

The boys take turns fucking you in different positions, you have your 3rd, 4th, 5th orgasm and you're not sure how much longer you can go.

Max is now under you as you bounce on his dick, barely able too from your trembling legs but the need for pleasure being enough strength for you to keep bopping.

Daniel licked your ass adding to your enjoyment and takes a step back as he takes in the view of his best friends fucking. But now he can't resist his urge to fuck you too watching as Max's dick thrusts deep into your pussy.

"Sweet," he whispers.

"Hmm." You only hum in response as your breathlessly moan.

"Can you can take us both?" he asks as he's rubbing circles over your asshole.

You've never tried it before. The question takes you by surprise.

But you accept being in a high unlike anything you've ever felt before and knowing if anyone's going to take care of you through this it's them.

"Yes." You finally give him a vocal agreement.

Daniel approached you and Max slowed down his pace giving you time to adjust to what was about to happen. Daniel lined himself up with your second hole starting to push in slowly as he can feel you clenching.

The stretch from their both massive lengths had you wincing at first but as Daniel kept pushing in slowly you almost felt your body shut down at the new and immense pleasure that filled your body.

"Faster!" You tapped Max's chest feeling a new feeling arises in the pit of your stomach that needed to be explored immediately.

Daniel didn't move until you indicate to him to and it doesn't take long before you're also reaching back and tapping Daniel's arm telling him to speed up.

You thought the pleasure these boys had already given you couldn't get any better but oh how wrong you were when they were both thrusting into you at the same time making you completely lose control of your body.

It only took a few minutes of this before the wave finally hit, fireworks in your entire body, seeing starts, ringing in your ears, collapsing atop Max's body trembling in complete ecstasy letting out loud cries of pleasure.

Both boys moderately slowed their pace letting you ride out your explosive orgasm.

Daniel gave you a few seconds then was the first to start pulling out of you and as he did you squirmed over Max's chest as he rubbed circles on your back. Max then gently placed you beside him as he began pulling out too, making you squirm once more.

The boys had literally fucked the living daylights out of you as you were still trying to catch your breath occasionally shaking at the remnants of pleasure left in your body, barely able to move at how weak they'd left you.

You were barely aware as Daniel went to the bathroom starting a warm bath as Max lay next to you still rubbing soft circles on your skin, your back, your cheeks, and your legs which had you letting out soft huffs at how sensitive your entire being felt right then.

A few minutes later Max got up and scooped your naked body into his arms, you're too weak to even protest at wherever it is he's taking you so you only loop your arm around his neck knowing damn well you trust the man to take you anywhere anyways.

He carried you into the bathroom where Daniel was adding oils into your bath before Max very slowly with Dan's help started placing you down into the bath letting your body adjust to the very warm temperature of the water.

The bath certainly helped you relax especially after the boys started helping you wash up. Max massaged and washed your hair while Daniel gently scrubbed your body.

You had asked the boys to join you needing to feel them with you. Max sunk in behind you spreading his legs on either side of you as you leaned your back against his chest. Daniel then sank in front of you as he picked your legs up placing them over his, you comfortingly rubbed circles over Dan's chest.

"Please don't let that be the last time boys." You hummed as your head laid back into Max's shoulder in comfort.

You felt so at peace in their arms conscious of the fact you were completely vulnerable. Naked and raw in front of them but they were your safe place, your happy place. You were completely surrounded by love.

Max and Daniel shared a smile, not answering you right now but knowing they could get used to making you feel like this. Being so head over heels madly and deeply in love with you they couldn't let you go.

#formula1 #f1 #f1smut #maxverstappen #daniel ricciardo #f1 x reader #max verstappen x reader #daniel ricciardo x reader #formulaone #f1fic #smut #throuple

[southpawbitch]

Homebody | Rhett Abbott x Reader

Masterlist (this is part SIX; read the others here)

word count: 1.9k

summary: eight months later; rhett is back and some things have changed

warnings: drinking, trevor tillerson being...not great

A/N: ok ok so I've been sitting on this for an embarrassingly long amount of time because I feel like everyone (including me) isn't excited about it anymore, but I've actually really enjoyed writing this and can't believe it's almost over!! hope u enjoy!!! x MJ

You reach your hand up and pinch the skin of your forearm so tightly you leave a crescent shaped mark behind when you finally drop your hand. You’re awake. This is real life, and Rhett Abbott is standing just across the road from you, loading bags of topsoil into the back of his truck as if it’s just another Tuesday evening on main street in Wabang. It would be if not for the fact that he’s been living somewhere around Denver for the past eight months–doing god knows what with god knows who. Well, you know who, but you’d rather not think about her right now.

His return is not something you expected–not when you know about Cecilia turning his room into her study and Royal hiring someone to replace him only a month after his absence. He didn’t even make it back for Christmas. It all seemed so permanent–like he was going to be gone forever.

You remember the day he left like it was yesterday. You had been busy wedding planning with your mom–picking out table linens and centerpieces at a cute event rental place a few towns over. Your head was spinning with all the decisions that you’d be making practically on your own. Ben wasn’t too involved in the process, and your mom just wanted you to be happy, but you weren’t happy, which is why you felt a weight lift off of your shoulders when your phone vibrated in your bag and Rhett’s name flashed across the screen. It had only been a week since he showed up to your house, ending everything, and you perked up at the thought of him changing his mind. 

Except it wasn’t Rhett on the other line when you answered.

“Hey.” You greet sweetly, excusing yourself from the conversation with the sales associate and your mom to take the phone call outside. There’s silence on the other end as the cool breeze outside causes the hair on your arms to raise. “Rhett?” 

“Do you know where Rhett is?” The voice on the other end belongs to his brother, Perry. You swallow nervously, looking around you to see if anyone might be close by as you feel tears begin to well up in your eyes when you remember the conversation you had with him only a few days ago. It was less of a conversation and more of him telling you that he was leaving because he couldn’t see you anymore–like you were the reason he wanted to skip town. 

You were heartbroken, but you didn’t think he’d actually do it. You thought once he cooled off, he’d be back to his normal self again. Apparently not. 

“You’re the last person he called, and he left his phone on his bed…we’re just worried.” You can hear it in his voice. Although they don’t get along too well, Rhett’s still his brother, and he’s been through more in the past few years than you could possibly imagine. You pull yourself together for his sake. He probably doesn’t know why the two of you were speaking, nor does he care. He just wants answers, and unfortunately, you think you have one for him. It’s like the missing pieces to this shitty puzzle are just now presenting themselves to you. Maria was accepted into a law school in Denver. She left just days after Rhett visited you. You didn’t even put two and two together–not even when Rhett all but confirmed that they were together officially. 

“I’m sure he’s just with Maria. You should call her.” You say flatly, keeping calm despite the anger and sadness that you feel on the inside. Perry doesn’t say much else. He hangs up and you walk back inside to continue planning for your wedding. The weight of the ring on your finger feels heavier now than it ever has, knowing that whatever you and Rhett had between you is officially over and you’re Ben’s for good. Forever. 

When he’s finished loading everything, he hops up to sit on the tailgate of the truck and pulls out a cigarette, lighting it with ease. The sun is setting, and most of the shops in town are closed at this point. Only a few cars remain on the street. He doesn’t seem to notice you standing on the other side of the road, staring at him. He looks out towards the mountain range, just beyond the edge of town, bending his leg up and wrapping his arm around it, resting his chin on his knee as he blows a puff of smoke out of his mouth. Like he never left.

Rhett sits at your favorite coffee shop–the one on the corner of Heath Street that has a nice view of the mountain range in the distance–waiting for you to walk through the creaky, wooden door and order your usual. He’s been back for almost a week, but he’s yet to see you anywhere around town, and he’s smarter than to start asking–he knows that wouldn’t be a good look for either of you, and he doesn’t want you to know how desperate he is to find out how you’re doing. He was hoping that running into you accidentally would ease his mind a little. Even just seeing you from across the room would be enough to ease his mind.

He could just ask Perry, but that would turn into a whole thing. He knows Perry called you after he ran off. It was hard enough trying to convince him that nothing was going on between him and an engaged woman, but it seems all is forgotten now that he’s back for good, and he doesn’t want to open that whole conversation up again. 

Because he is home for good. 

Denver wasn’t for him, and bull riding just didn’t feel the same without any kind of support system. Things with Maria were a whole different beast. He knew they wouldn’t last. He spent most of his time there thinking about you and pretending he could be just as happy with someone else, but it’s a lot easier said than done. He missed how easy it was to talk to you and how you didn’t try to turn him into someone that he’s not. He never would’ve thought you’d have this hold on him. He thought leaving was the right thing to do–leaving so that you could be happy without him getting in the middle of the plans you made for your future. He wants to make sure he made the right decision, so he waits for you.

But you never show. Not in the four hours that he’s been sitting here have you even walked past the building. He’s about to throw his coffee out and leave once the clock strikes noon, and it’s clear that you won’t be stopping by, but then he hears the familiar shriek of one of your friends–Katie Palmer. He stays seated, keeping his back pressed hard against the booth as he turns his head ever so slightly as if it will make his hearing better. She’s just in the booth behind him, talking to someone on the phone. 

“Jade and I are leaving around ten, but she did say she might meet us at The Pit Bar later.” She lets out a small chuckle in response to the person on the other end. “No, no…don’t worry about it. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind the company.” Is she talking about you, or maybe to you? He can’t imagine who else it could be unless you’ve stopped talking to your friends in the eight months he’s been away. The conversation ends there, though, giving him nothing more than a vague timeframe and the name of a bar in town. It’s not his favorite. The Tillersons have sort of claimed it as their own territory, and it’s not often Rhett leaves there without a bit of blood on his knuckles, but if there’s a chance you could be there, he’ll take it. 

He places his Stetson on top of his head and gets up, taking one last look around the coffee shop as he heads towards the exit with his unfinished room temperature latte. 

It’s almost midnight when you step outside The Pit Bar to take a breather and have a cigarette before rejoining your rowdy friends for the night. It’s the first time in a long time you’ve agreed to a night out. You haven’t been anywhere except work and the general store for most of the year, but you miss your life. You miss getting coffee at Hitch’s every morning and having lunch at the diner with your friends once a week. You miss going out and drinking and having fun. One day, you suppose, it’ll be fun again. 

The door to the bar swings open and out walks Trevor Tillerson. He looks in your direction and smiles, making his way over. You take a deep breath, dropping your hand and ashing the cigarette into the gravel below your feet as he greets you, tilting his hat slightly like he’s some sort of gentleman. You give a small smile in return, taking a drag and breathing it in as you look out into the parking lot–doing your best to ignore the six-foot man standing right next to you. 

“Oh, come on.” He chuckles, and though he’s smiling, his tone is a little sinister. “Can I bum one, baby?” 

You’re not sure where he gets off on calling you baby, but you do your best to ignore the atrocious pet name and his audacity. “This was my last one, sorry.” 

He steps closer and places his hand on the building behind your head, partially blocking you in. He mumbles out something, but you can’t tell exactly what it is. He’s very drunk and very much trying to flirt with you–something you’ve been trying to get used to ever since you called off your engagement with Ben. Guys who never even looked in your direction before were suddenly all over you all the time, which is why you had to stop going out. You couldn’t handle the attention, or the fact that the one person you wanted was hundreds of miles away. 

“I can take you home if you need a ride.” He says somewhat politely, reaching up and pushing a loose strand of hair behind your ear, causing the hair on your arms to raise in a spine-chilling way. His hand lingers for a moment and you feel yourself stiffen. You’re more than uncomfortable, and you have no idea how to get out of it. Trevor’s just trying to get into your pants–you know that–but you also know that he has a bad temper when he’s mad, and though you’ve never known him to hit a woman, you don’t want to be the first. 

“I don’t need a ride.” You confirm sweetly, watching his eyes turn dark with rage as his mouth turns down into a frown. His hand curls into a fist and pounds into the wall behind you, causing you to jump slightly. 

“I don’t know why you’re playing so hard to get.” He spits out, leaning down so that his face is mere inches from your own. You take a deep breath, feeling yourself sink deeper into the wood of the building behind you and screw your eyes shut, preparing to wind back your dominant arm to attack his face when suddenly, the heat from his body is gone and a strangled grunt comes from his throat. 

Your eyes open the second that Rhett’s fist connects with Trevor’s jaw. 

#rhett abbott #Rhett abbott x reader #Rhett abbot x reader #outer range #outer range fanfic #lewis pullman #rhett abbott fanfiction #Rhett abbott fanfic

[kay-elle-cee]

@jilytoberfest 31 Prompts: Day 19 || 712 Words || Read on Ao3 —

“Mate, I brought you here to help, not ogle the other bloody mechanics.”

“Keep your fucking voice down, Sirius!” James splutters. “And I am not ogling her!”

James turns his back to where the ogled-mechanic-in-question stands, lovely red hair pulled back and out of her face as she works on a car across the garage. Instead, his focus is on the man—his supposed best friend—within arms’ reach, who's currently hunched over his motorcycle and tinkering away, desperately looking to James like he needs some sort of slap across the head.

“She didn’t hear me. She’s always got earplugs in when she works.”

“Yeah you know, you should probably invest in some of those as well.”

“But I aspire to the day where I don’t have to hear you fretting over me like your mother.”

“Oi, you keep my mother out of this!”

Sirius breaks his concentration to look up, grinning at the fact that he’s hit a nerve. “Why? You think she’d be mortified to know her kind and respectful only son is just openly salivating as he gives the poor girl the glad eye?”

“I am not doing that!”

“You kind of are, though,” a voice—amused and so close—answers from behind him.

Sirius lets out a bark of laughter as James spins on his heel to come face-to-face with the woman in question (the ogled mechanic, not his mother). He doesn’t have to see his reflection to know his cheeks are red with embarrassment even at her clearly-not-offended reaction. 

As a matter of fact, she raises a brow in interest, her sparkling green eyes glued to his even as her head tilts slightly to the side in consideration. 

“Black,” she starts, and the volume is loud enough that James knows with absolute certainty that this is a conversation with Sirius, even if her eyes are still connected with his. “Decide to bring a friend to help you with that mess of a bike of yours?”

James can hear Sirius laugh behind him but he cannot seem to pull himself away from this woman’s gaze. “Help’s a bit of a strong word. He’s my best mate, but dead useless when it comes to auto repair.”

Indignantly, James whips his head around to where his friend sits, this insult apparently enough to break the trance of the ogled mechanic. “Hey! Then why even invite me along?”

He doesn’t miss how Sirius’ eyes flicker quickly between James and the woman behind him, nor how his brow arches as he shrugs his shoulders with a satisfied smirk. This was a set-up. “Honestly, James, I’ve got no clue.”

“Ah, so you’re James.” As he turns back to face the woman, he notices as her eyes look past him to Sirius and a small flush creeps up her neck. Before he can spend too much time deciphering whatever silent conversation the two seem to be having, her eyes are back on him—appraising.

“Er, suppose I am. And that makes you…”

The woman grins, chin raising ever-so-slightly. “Lily Evans.”

“You’re Evans?” James blurts, turning once more to stare wide-eyed at his friend, who’s watching the whole scene playout with amusement. James had heard about nothing but Evans for weeks on end—how she drove Sirius up the wall, how she was admittedly a very skilled mechanic, how she had the absolute gall to correct him (and even worse, in Sirius’ book—had been right). Sirius couldn’t stop talking about how much Evans annoyed him, which meant she was alright in his book. 

After a particularly rough day the previous week, Sirius had recounted how Evans had caught him smoking out back and ripped him a new one. Unfortunately he had done this while pulling out another smoke and receiving a similar lecture from James—which he did not receive well. (“You two are bloody made for each other, Christ!”)

“Suppose I am,” she answers with a smirk. “Well, considering this arse just insulted you, would you mind coming and helping me with something?”

“Oh, I’m not sure—I’m really not—”

She turns on her heel, walking back to her side of the garage with a look over her shoulder that James knows he would follow literally anywhere.

“Relax, James, I just need another set of hands. You won’t break anything, I promise.”

#it's (always) you #jilytober2023 #jily #jple #james potter #lily evans #31 prompts

[ncteez]

10 AND 32 WITH MARK FOR THE DRABBLES

“Try to stay quiet ok” + “It’s just us, everyone else has gone to bed”

wc: 2.7k

paring: mark lee x afab reader

tagged: ex bf mark, they still have feelings, angst kind of at the beginning, jealousy, fingering

note: when i say i took this and SPRINTED || not proof read

minors dni 

Being on vacation with a group of friends would seem to be a great distraction from everyday life. It should be a time where you can relax your body and mind, a time where you can let go of everything that muddies your thoughts. 

There’s one issue. He’s going to be here. He, as in your ex-boyfriend, Mark. To be fair, it was understandable that he was invited. After all, the two of you ended on good terms, great terms even. He was still around during most hangouts and almost always available to you if you were to ever need his help. But also, to be fair on your end, you never really lost feelings for him. Nor has he, though you’re not aware of it. 

You’re unsure as to why the two of you haven’t gotten back together, aside from the fact that the two of you lead two very different lives, with very different goals. You were never able to meet in the middle. Either you’re too busy or he is. At least it was like that. Now that the two of you have been broken up for the better half of a year, suddenly the two of you have all of the time in the world to pretend you don’t want to get back together. 

Despite seeing Mark multiple times a week, this vacation for you could have been your first and only chance to really sort out these feelings. You could have talked about it, you could have admitted your faults and wishes, your dreams even. But not with him there. Mostly because you’d definitely end up admitting before he does if he still feels the same. 

So now, here you are laughing at some joke that wasn’t even funny, and there he is, texting someone with full focus. Part of you wonders who he could be texting when all of your friends are right here in the same room, but you try to not think of it too much. 

“What about you? Do you want to go?” Your friend asks you, mentioning a local club that, apparently, offers all sorts of experiences. 

You nod, glancing over to Mark, who was already looking at you. The thing is, this little club trip is for the girls only. Meaning, Mark can’t go. He can’t go and see you get all touchy with some other guy and that, oddly, upsets him. He doesn’t want you to go. Then again, he’s not your boyfriend so he doesn’t have a say in it. Even if he were, he knows he still wouldn’t be able to stop you.

~

The club was a bust just as expected. You danced with both women and men, your friends urged you to open up and have fun, to loosen the reigns on your heart and get laid for the first time since Mark last touched you. It wasn’t possible though, even in your tipsy state, no one had his face, his voice, or his hands. 

Still you at least try to indulge as a man presses his non-mark cock against your ass in a heated dance. You try even harder when the man’s voice heats up your skin and forces the goose bumps to swell. Are you finally tipsy enough? Did this man make a break through? Turning to face him, you’re hit with the reality that even if you have every right to be out here having fun, you’re just not. The goosebumps sink back into your skin the moment this man makes eye contact with you. 

He looks so eager and willing to come home with you, but your face is all he needs to get the hint. 

“What happened?” Your friend chimes out as you take a seat on a cushion beside her. “He was hot, why did he leave?”

You look at her with an exhausted face and a shrug, the drinks in you doing little to calm your nerves knowing that you’d just have to go back to your temporary home where Mark is waiting. 

“You look like you want to leave.” She pats your shoulder, knowing full well that she’s having a much better time than you are, but you’re thankful that she picks up on your needs. “Do you want to?”

You nod, but insist that she can stay and have fun with the others that are still somewhere on the dancefloor being enticed by all sorts of new people. Ignoring her arguments, you were happy to see her finally agree and lean in for a swift kiss to the forehead. 

“Make it back safe, okay?” She says, dipping her head to look at you. “We will get you out of this funk before the trip is over, I promise.” 

An assuring nod from you at that, but you know deep down that you’ll go home twice as exhausted from your heart as you already are.

~

Walking through that door felt like you were between two different situations you didn’t want to be in. Situation one being at a club where Mark isn’t, and situation two being in a house where he is.

Thankfully, you walk in to an empty kitchen and living room. Weird, but you appreciate the silence as you slip off your shoes with a deep sigh. Running your fingers over your face, you make your way to the fridge to grab yourself some water. 

“Have fun?”

Mark’s voice startles you, causing you to jump back from the fridge with a slam of the door and a small yelp. You look over at him in question, noting his loose t-shirt and sweat pants. You remember wearing that specific shirt many times before having to give it back along with his other things. 

“The guys went out too, I wasn’t feeling it tonight.” He says, noticing the confusion on your face. "Well? Did you have fun?”

You just look at him, the atmosphere instantly feeling heavy because it’s the first time since you’ve broken up that the two of you were in a room alone together. 

“Yeah, it was fun.” You laugh, trying to shake off the nervousness you feel around a man that once made you feel so at home. 

Maybe the reason he doesn’t feel like home anymore is that you’re searching for it in everyone else but failing. Maybe it’s because he locked the doors and swallowed the key.

“Oh? Did, um, did you meet anybody?” He looks away from you when he asks. What business is it of his to ask anyway?

“Yeah.” You say back in a cold tone, stepping out of the kitchen and preparing to head to your room.

Mark can’t stop you, and does his best to forget that you definitely ignored him when he tried to ask you to stay before leaving for your room.

~

The silence in the house didn’t last long. One minute you’re drifting to sleep at the muffled sounds of whatever the fuck Mark is watching in the living room, the next minute you can hear the front door swing open with loud laughter.

“Mark! You’ll never guess who we ran into!” One of the male friends shouts with glee before moving to the side and presenting the group of girls who forbid them from joining their club night.

You can hear all of your friends in the best of moods, but to you, you know that escaping Mark would have been impossible anyway. If you had stayed at the club, you’d have ran into Mark with the others, and you would have probably had to sit and watch him sweet-talk someone that isn’t you. 

“Oh, is she sleeping?” You hear echoing through the hallway and under your door. 

With a groan, you pull yourself out of bed and head for the room of chaos. 

For a while, the party continues. Everyone is drunk save for you and Mark, and everyone is slowly showing signs of exhaustion by the time the clock hits four in the morning. The loudness of the laughter begins to fade away and be replaced with hushed whispers. Pairs of your friends going off into bedrooms and shared rooms in order to stumble to their beds to rest.  You follow suit, opting to disappear with the other faces in the room before Mark can make eye contact with you again.

~

Not even an hour passes by before the house is almost entirely silent. You’re drifting for a second time when your phone vibrates aggressively against you. In a sigh, you check the screen. You’re awake now. Wide awake.

Mark: can we talk?

You feel at a loss, remembering how full this text box used to be. You had deleted all of your conversations save for one single text several months ago where he wished you a happy birthday. It felt about as empty as your heart does at the very thought of ‘talking’ with him. 

Of course, the most you thing you could possibly do in this moment is go against what your gut is telling you. You lift yourself from the bed and tip-toe back into the living room where Mark is lounging against one of the sofas watching a nearly-muted sitcom.

You look at him, sleepy and exhausted, and he looks back at you much the same. 

“Did you really meet someone?” He asks softly when you walk closer to him.

You don’t miss the way his face falls a bit when you nod to him. You did meet people, but that didn’t mean that you kept them.

“Why are you being so nosy about it?” You try to argue, sitting down on a different sofa next to the one he’s claimed.

“You came back so early. I knew you didn’t want to go.” He whispers back protectively. “You shouldn’t have gone. You could have stayed here with me.”

“Mark, I left specifically to get away from you.” You pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration, not yet wanting to look at him again.

“Why!?” He asks in a slightly louder whisper. ”I’m always trying to spend time with you, and you always blow me off!”

In a fit of all of your emotions bubbling to the top, at the worst of times in this darkened silent house, you release your feelings as if he were a diary. 

“Because you’re too much for me to be around. I can’t look at anyone else anymore, i cant even look at you the way I want to.” 

Mark winces at your tone but his eyebrows raise a bit. 

“What do you mean?” He asks for clarification, knowing that the subject is touchy. 

“It means I miss you. I miss being able to look at other men and know why I felt no interest. I miss when you’d be beside me, and not always in front of me and out of reach.” You spill more, realizing that this is the absolute worst thing you could do to yourself. 

He doesn’t say anything after that, and instead stands up from the couch and walks over to you. Looking down at you, every feeling that never went away was confirmed. 

“So, you too?” He asks, gently placing himself beside you and hesitating to move your hair from your face so that he can see you.

You look at him for the first time since you’d finally released how you felt, though you could argue having much more to say. His eyes are just as shining as they always have, and you missed looking into them for more than a mere second of awkward eye contact. He looks at you the same way he always did. 

“Can I kiss you?”

Shocked, you glance down to his lips and want nothing more than to feel them against you again, even for just a second. 

“No, no.” You say, backing away from the void you know you’re about to fall into. “Not like this.”

You look around the room, wondering who could be listening in. Anyone could walk in and call out this mistake the two of you are making. They could point, laugh, and mock the fact that you’ve been hurting so badly just to hear his voice speak to you as more than what you were. 

“Not like what?” He pulls back, reaching for your face to turn your attention back to him. “Not when i’m literally, always, trying to get you alone so that we can talk? So that we can work out whatever the fuck happened between us before?”

Your eyes widen, realizing that maybe, he’s just like you. Maybe, you avoided him without entire intent, assuming that he’s already moved on while thinking you’d be perfectly fine with it. 

It’s almost like you’re breaking free from a glass bottle filling with water, the truth of it all hits you so hard that you can physically feel it pushing you closer to him, leaning against him, looking into his eyes with a sort of ‘please don’t be lying to me’ look. 

He looks back at you just as intently, holding you steady as you lean closer and closer. 

“Do we really even need to talk about it at this point?” He whispers, looking to your lips and being unable to take his eyes away from them. 

He doesn’t even see you shake your head before you’re feeling all of the things you’d missed at once. His lips, soft and plush against your own. His breath hikes up like it always did when you kissed him, as if it were always a first time. His tongue still felt the same, and held the same skill as before when he began to use it. You wonder if he kissed anyone else while the two of you were separated. You wonder if he used it in other ways, for other women to cry out for him. 

The thoughts are erased the moment he breaks his own walls down. It happened so fast, his hands holding the back of your head and adjusting to lean himself on top of you, all the way until you’re lying on your back with him breathlessly giving himself to you through his lips. 

Truth of the matter is that, Mark tried to get with other women. He tried to move on and let you be free, but he couldn’t. He hasn’t done more than hug a woman since the two of you broke up and he kind of hopes, though embarrassing, that you can tell by his excitement. 

The temperature in the room begins to feel hot as he kisses you, his hands going from different parts of your body that he missed the most, but you stop him when he reaches to your thighs. He pulls back from the kiss and looks at you with question. 

“It’s just us, everyone else has gone to bed–” Mark assures you when he notices you lift your head to check the room. 

He’s right, but the worry of someone walking in on the moment you needed most still bothers you. On any other day, you’d be floored to know Mark wanted you again, and you would let him have you at any moment in any place. Now that it’s happening though, you almost wonder if the two of you should retire into a room with a door. 

“Just, try to stay quiet, okay?” He dips down to whisper against your neck, simultaneously prying your legs apart with his own. “If you want me to stop, just tell me–but–”

He presses his fingers beneath the hem of your pajama pants and lifts his head to look at you. You know what this look is, and it’s something you’ve never been able to resist. His eyes are almost pleading. 

“You always look so good like this, do you really expect me to not try?” He admits, trailing his fingers lower and lower to toy with your slick folds, tracing a finger up and down. He groans at how much he’s missed this, and coos at the way you react the same way you always did when he eagerly presses his fingers into you. 

He listens closely to the sounds your body makes as he works you apart with his fingers, all while kissing as much exposed skin against your neck as he can. 

“You still get so wet for me after all of this time–” He mumbles as he begins to lift your shirt with his other hand. “I swear, you drive me insane.”

~

#mark smut #mark lee smut #[mark] #nct smut

[bloody-bee-tea]

IntiMarch 2024 Day 24 - Love like galaxies

The prompt for this was "I feel safe here". This fic really was inspired by this amazing art on Twitter. Eldritch Abomination Gojo my beloved 😍 And apparently that art was inspired by Cannibalization of the Apex, which is definitely something all of you should read if you haven't yet!

Suguru doesn’t have to look up from the book he’s reading to know that it’s Satoru who comes in through the window. He only every comes through the window—and he’s the only one to ever do so, too—and the one time Suguru asked him about that, Satoru didn’t show up for almost two weeks.

Suguru has never asked again.

“Welcome back,” Suguru says, once he hears Satoru’s feet land on the ground and when he does finally look up, Satoru is already staring at him.

It’s almost unbearable to have that gaze fixed on him—Satoru’s eyes too blue and too big and too all-knowing for it to be comfortable, but Suguru has never minded it.

It’s Satoru who is looking at him after all.

“Suguru,” Satoru sighs out and as if a switch has been flipped, his posture becomes more relaxed, his shoulders slightly curing forwards, his head almost hanging down.

“You’re exhausted,” Suguru observes and that’s as much as he’s going to say on that topic.

Satoru is cagey about—everything, really. It took Suguru almost a month to learn his name, after the first time he climbed in through his window as if he’d always done that and until today he has never learned what brought Satoru to him that very first day.

He never talks about why he sometimes seems so haunted, why there are tears in his clothes on some days, why he’s jumpy as if he’s waiting to be attacked.

Suguru doesn’t ask. He won’t get an answer and if he pushes too hard he will only take a place away from Satoru where he feels at least comfortable enough to come to on a regular basis and Suguru doesn’t even want to think about what not having that could mean for Satoru.

Who knows what his circumstances are; if he’s from an abusive household or a delinquent or something else entirely—Suguru only knows that he always wants Satoru to come to him, no matter what.

“Today was—difficult,” Satoru admits and immediately Suguru rakes his eyes over Satoru’s body, checking him for obvious wounds because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Suguru only relaxes when he can’t even spot any tears in his clothes.

“But now you’re here,” he then says and shifts on the bed, making more room for Satoru to join him.

Satoru lets out an exhausted sigh before he kicks off his shoes and then comes over to the bed, instantly curling up on his side, pressing his forehead to Suguru’s hip bone, seeing as he’s still propped up against the headboard.

“You’re really beat today, huh?” Suguru asks, putting his book to the side and carding his fingers through Satoru’s hair.

“Sorry,” Satoru quietly says. “I’m not good company today, probably.”

Suguru bites his tongue so he doesn’t blurt out how Satoru is always good company, because simply having him physically near is improving Suguru’s day significantly but he’s not sure Satoru would want to hear that.

“Why not go home then? Why come here? You need to rest, too, Satoru,” Suguru softly gives back, not stopping the motion of his hand and Satoru leans into the contact like a cat.

“I feel safe here,” he says after a long moment and Suguru’s stomach drops out.

It’s the first time that he verbally alluded to the fact that wherever he’s home he’s not safe and the thought makes Suguru sick.

“You know you can always come here, right?” Suguru asks, because Satoru only ever drops by when Suguru is also there. Suguru knows because he did ask about that once. “Even when I’m not here. I leave my window unlocked for you.”

“Suguru,” Satoru gasps out, his head flying up. “You shouldn’t do that. That’s not safe. There are so many bad people out there, what if one of them finds you?”

“They won’t,” Suguru says, because it’s not as if he’s advertising the fact that he’s keeping the window open.

He even changed the window handle, so that it’s not visible from the outside when it’s open. He’s not stupid after all.

“You need to be more careful,” Satoru still mutters and Suguru chuckles.

“What, so that no strange boys with white hair and blue eyes can drop in?” he teasingly asks and pulls on a strand of Satoru’s hair.

“I’m not strange,” Satoru huffs out, laying back down in his previous position without waiting for Suguru’s reply, which is just as well because Suguru doesn’t know what to say to that.

The thing is, Satoru is strange. His eyes are too intense, his hair is too white, his behaviour too—strange. There is no better word for it. Sometimes it seems to Suguru as if he’s too much, pressed into too little space and he wonders if trauma might have to do with that.

He tried to read up on that a little bit, but there are so many different reasons to have a trauma response and then there are also so many different trauma responses itself that Suguru couldn’t make heads or tails of it without outright asking Satoru, which of course is out of the question.

“You’re a little bit strange,” Suguru admits to him, resuming to stroke his hair once more, “but I like it that way.”

“As you should,” Satoru huffs out, and then presses himself closer. “Can I stay the night?” he then asks and Suguru smiles, even though Satoru can’t see it.

“Of course you can, you know that. You don’t always have to ask. Do you need something? I still have your toothbrush from last time,” Suguru says and chuckles when Satoru bares his teeth in a disgusted manner.

“I don’t like doing that,” he grumbles out and Suguru taps his head.

“I know but you have to. Healthy teeth are important.”

“Not as if mine could rot anyway,” Satoru mutters, barely audible and that, too, is just one of the many strange things about Satoru.

Sometimes he acts as if normal rules don’t apply to him and his body and it’s puzzling at best.

“Will you also maybe finally take the key I had made for you?” Suguru asks after a moment of comfortable silence and Satoru peeks up at him, one iridescent blue eye blinking up at him.

“No. It’s not safe to come in from there,” is all Satoru says to that and Suguru drops the subject.

It’s always the same; Suguru offers, Satoru refuses with confusing statements, rinse and repeat.

Satoru is stubborn, but Suguru is, too. One day he’ll get him to accept the key, if only so he carries it around. That alone would make Suguru feel better because he’s living on the third floor. One day Satoru might be too exhausted to climb up outside and Suguru wants him to still be able to come home even when that happens.

“Come on, let’s get ready for bed, I’m beat, too,” Suguru decides and nudges Satoru until he hisses at him.

It’s a strange sound to hear out of a human throat but Suguru only flicks Satoru’s nose and laughs when he goes cross-eyed over it.

“You are ridiculous,” he says, amusement colouring his voice and Satoru blinks at him.

“But you like me anyway.”

It’s not a question, not quite, but Suguru sees the tightening around Satoru’s eyes, the way his finger suddenly taps away at his thigh and he knows that the answer matters to Satoru.

“Of course I like you,” Suguru says and leans forward to rest his head on Satoru’s shoulder. “You’re my favourite stray.”

“I’m not a stray,” Satoru bristles and it makes Suguru laugh so hard that he almost falls off the bed.

“Sure you’re not,” he easily agrees, which only seems to anger Satoru more because his eyes blaze almost electric blue.

“I’m not! Take that back!”

“Or what?” Suguru asks, and yelps when Satoru tackles him into the bed, fingers dancing over Suguru’s sides, tickling him until he can barely breathe.

“Okay, okay, you win, you win! You’re not a stray!” he eventually manages to cry out and immediately Satoru ceases his attack, flopping down on top of Suguru with a satisfied look.

“Better,” he decides and Suguru can’t help but to get his fingers back into Satoru’s hair, pushing his bangs out of his face.

“You’re still my favourite, though,” Suguru softly admits, because Satoru is his favourite everything and isn’t that a terrifying thought.

“You’re my favourite, too,” Satoru solemnly gives back and rubs his cheek against Suguru’s chest. “My very favourite of all,” Satoru adds in a mumble and for a moment Suguru finds it hard to breathe but for different reasons than just a few minutes before.

They stay like this until they fall asleep and Satoru is insufferable the next morning when he stresses again and again that he didn’t brush his teeth.

Suguru wouldn’t have it any other way.

~*~*~

Suguru wakes up with a start when something falls in from his window. It’s the middle of the night so it’s too dark to see anything and Suguru fumbles with the lamp at the bedside table for too long.

By the time he finally manages to get some light, who- or whatever just tumbled into his room has already moved, he could hear it.

His heart is beating so fast he fears it’s going to beat right out of his chest and he wonders if maybe Satoru was right. Maybe he shouldn’t have kept his window open at all times.

“Suguru, don’t switch on the light,” Satoru’s voice suddenly reaches him, strangely muffled and just in that moment Suguru finally manages to switch on the light.

What he sees takes his breath away.

Satoru is propped up against the wall under the window, clutching a hand to his side and he’s covered in a dark substance, glowing and iridescent as if there’s glitter in it.

“Satoru! Are you hurt?” Suguru rushes out and in his haste to get out of bed he almost tangles himself up in his blanket but he manages to get to Satoru’s side without faceplanting into the ground.

“Don’t look, please don’t look,” Satoru chokes out, and he tries to curl up, to make himself as small as possible even as he lets out a pained whimper.

“Satoru, what’s going on?” Suguru whispers, hands hovering unsurely over Satoru’s frame and he still doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.

The black-ish substance is everywhere, and it seems as if it’s getting more the longer Satoru sits on the ground.

“Nothing, nothing, Suguru, please, just go back to bed, I just—I needed a safe space, just for a little while, don’t look at me,” Satoru rambles out as if Suguru could simply get up and go back to bed when Satoru is so obviously hurt.

“Where are you hurt? What is this stuff?” Suguru asks, gently touching Satoru’s shoulder and flinching when the substance there is warm. Dread curls in his stomach. “Satoru, what is that?”

“Please don’t,” Satoru sobs out, curling up even tighter and the movement makes more of the stuff ooze out from somewhere just as Satoru lets out another pained noise.

“Satoru, what happened?” Suguru breathes out, completely helpless as long as Satoru doesn’t talk to him, doesn’t tell him what to do but Satoru stays quiet.

“I’m so sorry, Suguru,” Satoru eventually whispers, and he sounds heartbroken. “I never meant for you to see.”

“See what, Satoru?” Suguru asks, tries for calm and probably fails by a mile because he simply doesn’t understand what’s going on here.

Before Satoru can say something though, voices drift inside through the still open window.

“I saw it go inside there,” a male voice says and a woman laughs in response.

“Perfect. It’s cornered there, time to end this. We already wounded it, we can kill it easily now.”

“No, no, nonononono,” Satoru whispers, and it feels as if the entire atmosphere of the room shifts. “I won’t allow this,” he goes on, more vehemently but before he can say anything else someone jumps in through the window.

Suguru turns around, positioning himself in front of Satoru, between whoever just came in and Satoru, who is already hurt, but the guy barely spares him a glance.

“There you are, you freak. Thought you could escape us, huh?” the guy sneers and when the woman laughs from right behind Suguru, his head snaps around.

She’s perched on the windowsill, a strange looking weapon in her hand and a cold shiver runs down Suguru’s back.

“Who are you? What do you want? I don’t have anything valuable here,” he tries, even though he suspects they are not here for him.

“Oh, that is indeed right, little human. It’s not valuable at all. It’s barely able to shed this ill-fitting form, and yet it will still bring us at least a little bit of money. You really picked the runt of whatever litter kicked it out,” the woman conversationally says and Suguru doesn’t understand a single thing she’s saying.

“But since you’re here, we’ll get rid of you, too, no worries,” the guy chimes in again and suddenly there’s an immense pressure from behind Suguru before an inhuman voice fills the room.

“You will not touch him!”

Suguru’s head flies around but his mind cannot comprehend what he’s seeing. There’s this—Satoru shaped entity behind him, emitting an eerie white glow, bleeding black galaxies from various cuts all over its body, its face—or what Suguru thinks must be its face—almost split in half by a yawning abyss that must be its mouth and there are eyes appearing all over its face and—they are blue.

These eyes are the same colour as Satoru’s and Suguru dumbly falls on his ass.

“Satoru?” he whispers out, momentarily forgetting the threat in the room and when one eye snaps towards him he knows that it’s Satoru.

He would know that gaze anywhere.

Satoru lets out a shriek that is so high Suguru’s teeth ache before he spills forward, there’s no other word for it. It’s as if he’s no longer solid, no longer compressed into a steady form, but he’s everything, everywhere.

The man lets out a surprised yell and tries to get his weapon up but Satoru is on him before he makes it and then there’s only Satoru.

The man is gone.

“Fucking shit,” the woman hisses out but instead of fleeing like she maybe should she jumps into the room, aiming her weapon at Suguru and even in this state, Suguru can tell that this is a monumentally bad idea.

Satoru intercepts her before she gets even close to Suguru.

“Didn’t know you had it in you,” she gets out, voice strangled by Satoru’s part that currently holding on to her and it’s the last thing she says before there’s a horrible crunching sound and her body goes lifeless in Satoru’s grip before she, too, disappears into the swirling mass that is Satoru right now.

Suguru swallows heavily.

“Satoru?” he carefully asks, because he’s not sure if Satoru is still aware like this or if he’s going to be the next to disappear and he jerks when Satoru’s eyes suddenly appear on what Suguru thought was the back of his head.

Satoru makes a noise, no longer so high that it hurts, but this one is more inquiring, worried.

Suguru gives him a shaky smile.

“I’m not hurt,” he promises him because of course Satoru would think about himself last. “Satoru, I—” Suguru starts, reaching out for Satoru, who jerks back and then his entire form shudders before he presses himself into something more humanoid.

He doesn’t quite manage his normal human form; there’s a spare eye on his left cheek, right under his normal one and his mouth is still endless and black, and the various cuts all over him are still emitting that dark substance which—

“Satoru, is that your blood? Holy shit, you’re bleeding so much, don’t move!” Suguru rushes out and then turns around on his heels to dart to the bathroom where he keeps his first aid kit.

He’s back in less than a minute but it feels like ages before he drops back down next to Satoru.

“I don’t know what’s going to help, so I’m just going to bandage them, okay, I’ll clean them and then I’ll bandage them, please don’t die on me, Satoru,” he mutters, his hands shaking so much he can barely get the bandages out of the kit.

He’s so scared Satoru is going to leave him.

“I’m sorry,” Satoru finally says, his voice back to normal though still a little rough around the edges and Suguru frowns at him.

“For what?”

“You don’t have to do this,” Satoru whispers and gently pushes Suguru’s hands down when he wants to clean a cut on Satoru’s shoulder. “I’ll leave. You don’t have to worry about anything. I won’t come back. You’ll be safe.”

Suguru drops his hands in his lap, his mind suddenly empty and his heart aching.

“You’ll leave?” he mutters and Satoru can’t meet his gaze when he nods.

“I’m sorry you had to see this. I’m not—I’m not going to kill you, Suguru, you—fuck—you don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“Afraid of you?” Suguru breathes out. “Satoru, I’m afraid for you. You’re bleeding so much, surely that can’t be good?”

Satoru blinks at that, all three eyes of his doing that slow, confused blinking Satoru usually does and then all the cuts on him heal up.

“You can heal yourself,” Suguru whispers in wonder and reaches out with a shaking hand to smooth his fingers over the now unblemished skin on Satoru’s shoulder.

“I’ll leave. For what it’s worth, I really am sorry, Suguru,” Satoru says as he gets up and Suguru shoots up with him.

“Will you stop!” he yells out and that finally gets Satoru to look at him. “I don’t want you to leave so will you stop staying that! Just—come here,” he gets out and roughly pulls Satoru into a hug. “I thought we would die. I thought they would kill us,” he says, voice shaky and he thinks maybe the adrenaline is fading now because Suguru feels shaky all over.

“Who were these people?”

“Suguru, stop. It’s okay. You don’t have to—it’s okay. Let go of me, you’re shaking,” Satoru says and it finally clicks for Suguru.

Satoru thinks he’s shaking because he’s afraid of him, afraid of what he is, of what he did.

That couldn’t be further from the truth though.

“Satoru, I’m shaking because you were seriously injured. I am shaking because these people broke into my apartment, trying to kill you. I am shaking because I thought I would lose you, so will you please just stop this nonsense and let me hold you until I stop shaking?” he hisses out, tightening his arms around Satoru.

“Suguru, I—I’m not human,” Satoru shakily says and Suguru huffs out an annoyed breath.

“Goddamit, if you can’t even give me a minute then at least let me sit down,” he decides and takes Satoru’s hand in his, threading their fingers together and pulling him towards the bed where he heavily sits down.

Satoru follows him but he doesn’t sit and his fingers are slack.

“I don’t care,” Suguru says and looks up at Satoru. “Whatever you are, I don’t care. You’re Satoru. You’re my favourite. It doesn’t matter what you are.”

“I lied to you.”

“Yeah, well, it seems like a bit of a heavy conversation starter,” Suguru snarks at him and he spots the little tick at the corner of Satoru’s mouth.

“I killed two people.”

“Who tried to kill you and me first, I’d say that’s warranted. They called you an ‘it’. What’s up with that?”

“They are—hunters, I’d guess. My kind can be dissected once killed. The parts sell for huge amounts of money.”

“Fucking hell,” Suguru mutters and pulls on Satoru’s hand until he gets with the program and sits next to Suguru. “Don’t leave, Satoru, not now, not ever. Just don’t.”

“You’re not even a little scared?” Satoru asks and he sounds so painfully surprised by that that Suguru wants to weep.

“I’m not,” he promises, brushing his thumb right under where the extra eye sits. “I love your eyes. I don’t mind seeing more of them.”

“Oh, fuck,” Satoru mutters and just like that the eye vanishes.

“You’re listening to me just as well as you always do,” Suguru says with a roll of his eyes because that sure as hell was not what he wanted. “That woman,” he then starts, “she said you couldn’t change. But you did change into something.”

“I couldn’t before. A few changed attributes here and there was all I could do. I never managed the complete form.”

“Why now?”

“They were aiming for you,” Satoru simply says, as if that’s explanation enough and maybe it is.

Maybe that’s the only answer that matters.

“I’m not afraid, because no matter what, it’s you. It’s still you. I could never be afraid of you.”

For once, Satoru seems to understand what Suguru really means because he leans in and brushes a fleeting kiss over his lips. It’s not enough—nothing with Satoru will ever be enough—and so Suguru pulls him in for a real kiss.

Satoru’s mouth is still too dark to be human, the abyss-like quality still there, but Satoru tastes sweet, just like Suguru expected and he reciprocates the kiss with a desperation that takes Suguru’s breath away.

“I’m here,” he whispers when they part, says the words right against Satoru’s lips. “I love you.”

It makes Satoru sob, makes him hide his face away in the crook of Suguru’s neck, but he still hears the whispered “I love you, too. Thank you for not hating me” loud and clear and it almost tears his heart apart to hear it.

“Let’s sleep, okay? We can talk more tomorrow, but right now I think I’d like to simply hold you and sleep.”

Suguru’s hand is already back in Satoru’s hair and at this point he might have to admit that it’s his favourite thing to do, carding his fingers through Satoru’s starlight hair over and over again.

“’kay,” Satoru agrees, sounding about as beat as Suguru feels and Suguru doesn’t care about his stained closes or the fact that he most likely did not brush his teeth, so he simply tumbles them into bed, tucks Satoru close until it feels more like they are one entity than two different beings and he’s asleep almost instantly.

He’ll have a lot of questions in the morning, but for now, it’s more than enough that he has Satoru right in his arms where he belongs.

And he’s not going to let him go.

#bt writes #jjk #satosugu #geto suguru #gojo satoru #no curses #little bit of violence #and death of some insignificant npcs #eldritch abomination gojo #hurt/comfort #angst #getting together #love confessions

[bitchofdarkness]

Title: 5+1: Unlucky Seo-jin Pairing: Kim Yeong-hu/Kang Seok-chan Rating: Teen and Up-Audiences Word count: 2,7k Summary: Five times Min Seo-jin accidentally saw Kang Seok-chan and Kim Yeong-hu all couple-y and one time he went looking for it.

Excerpt:

1. A successful mission meant a week of freedom. Seo-jin had planned to use it for gaming and partying– meeting up with his friends outside the military and of course to spend time with his family. Unfortunately Dong-jun had managed to piss off his parents enough for them to outright refuse to let him come home and Seo-jin took pity on him out of the goodness of his heart.

This was how they ended up in a bathhouse to relax. He was scrubbing his legs ferociously when he heard something on the other side of the wall parting the washing stations. 

“Babe, I'd appreciate an answer,” the guy said, whose voice he recognized from somewhere. Now, it wasn't unusual to call your close friend babe, but to do it in a bathhouse was next level comfortable. “Come on, Yeong-hu-ya, do you rather want to eat tteokbokki or jjajangmyeon?” The guy said and Seo-jin unmistakably identified him as Seok-chan, who apparently was on a very informal level with Sergeant Kim. 

Without looking, he slapped Dong-jun next to him and then motioned for him to stay silent, when he was about to complain. He pointed at the wall and then his ear to convey he was supposed to listen. 

“Will you be the one who cooks?” The Sergeant asked and even the tone of his voice had changed drastically. Seo-jin's eyes were bugging out and he could see Dong-jun had a similar reaction and even went as far as standing up to look over the wall discreetly. 

He instantly sat back down. Eyes wide as he looked at Seo-jin, “Dude!” he whispered. 

“I know!” Seo-jin whispered back. 

“Do you see a ring on this finger?” Seok-chan replied in such a sassy tone that Seo-jin could only sit and stare to digest this information. “No, I was thinking tteokbokki and grilled meat at this small restaurant we went to last time.” Seok-chan continued, “You can buy me some beef.”  

Seo-jin could hear the sergeant grunt in displeasure and then there was splashing of water and a shocked exclaim from Seok-chan. “Why am I the one buying you beef again?” 

AGAIN? Dong-jun mouthed at Seo-jin. 

“Simple, Yeong-huya, you're the one with the higher salary,” Seok-chan replied matter of fact. Seo-jin was flabbergasted and when he looked over at Dong-jun the guy wasn't doing any better. 

Seo-jin was about to just rinse himself off and go to the tubs to relax and forget he ever heard anything of this, when the sergeant suddenly thought it was a great idea to give him a full tmi. “I'd rather get a massage after this. I don't think the water will do much.”

Seok-chan sighed, “Why didn't you say something earlier? We could've picked a place that got both.” 

“Not that kind of massage.” Yeong-hu told him and Seo-jin could feel his world view collapse. Everything else could've been just shenanigans between friends, but this was pretty fucking gay. 

“Oh.” Seok-chan sounded less shocked and more excited. “Perhaps I should cook after all.”

“Perhaps you should, Seok-chan-ah.”

Yeah, they were in gay love and now Seo-jin and Dong-jun knew without any clue how to react to that newly found info. How weird it was to know your two comrades– one of them your superior– were going to fuck today and probably any other day too. 

He distinctly remembered that it was considered a felony within the military and decided to just forget about it. Seo-jin hoped Dong-jun would do the same. 

Really, he just wanted to not think of those two for as long as he could. 

Read on AO3

#sweet home 2 #sweet home fanfic #kim yeong hu x kang seok chan #min seo jin #kim yeong hu #kang seok chan #bitchofdarkness writes #5 + 1 fic

[star-niolo]

– I'm here, breath.

nick sturniolo x male!reader | cw: cursing, intentional lowercase, suggestive ending, anxiety attack, y/n use

req: Hey!! Can you do one where Nick’s boyfriend is struggling with mental health (like BPD or something) and Nick tries to help him??

POV: you're Nick's boyfriend and you have a anxiety attack.

₊˚𖹭

⠀Nick always thought you're the the funniest guy ever, always smiling for everyone, sometime it felt like you never had a hard time, but he knew better than that. he knew that you're always being harsh on yourself and overthinking.

⠀this week wasn't different. you were invited to film a car video with them, but declined. Nick knew something was up because you would always say ‘yes' and your eyes would sparkle, so why you would turn it down this time?

⠀you decided that if you weren't record with them, you would just chill on Nick's room until the come back home.

⠀“hey love, u okay?” Nick's message pop up.

⠀“im fine, sweetheart!” you responded, being half honest. you weren't feeling your best this night, a thousand thoughts have been running through your mind all day.

⠀– maybe I should have accepted.. – you said to yourself as a photo popped in your chat. its was Nick, Matt and Chris in a 0.5, which made you giggle. apparently they would take a while filming, so you decided to scroll down your instagram.

⠀you and Nick made it public a few months ago, some fans loved you, there were edits of you all over your tiktok, but some would constantly make hate comments, asking why Nick choose ‘someone like you'.

⠀you could have just ignore it, but your mind would bring it up all day. all the comments on your photos were half people point out things to make you insecure, and the other half were praising you and your boyfriend.

⠀opening Nick's instagram it wasn't much different, except the fact that he would not give a fuck to the haters comments, and that would be way more people complementing him, saying how cool he looks.

⠀“I wish I was cool as him..” you thought, “I’m no one compared to him..”

⠀how could it be? why he chose you from all this cool and famous people he's surrounded by? were you just someone to fulfill his lack of affection? why you?

⠀“he could've done sm better smh” you read in his comment section through your teary eyes. “why r you still with him lol” and “dump him nick” were some of other comments you could catch up before letting all your tears out.

⠀your breath is no longer paced and your heart is clenching, almost hurting, after reading it all. you know this feeling too well, but your body just can't comprehend why your mind is feeling so sad.

⠀everytime you try to catch your breath it only got worse, tears rolling down all over your face and hands, not being able to fully wipe your tears out.

⠀you could almost feel your body giving up and passing out, but your body jumps when the loud stomps from the stairs fade and Nick opens the door, eyebrows frowned with concern.

⠀– love.. breath. it's me, Nick, I'm here! – Nicks wraps you in a hug, oh so, thigh. his sweet smell filling up your nose and finally giving you a sense of realization, and hugging him back.

⠀– are you ok, love? look at me, please – he cups your face with his two hands, using his thumhs to wipe off your tears and his voice sounds so worried that you feel bad for him. – yeah.. I’m fine – you tried to lie, knowing he wouldn't fall for that.

⠀– don't say that! look at you.. – he plants a soft kiss on your wet cheeks, reaching out for your phone. his eyes widening reading everything you've read – oh love.. –

⠀his voice tone is so sweet and low you almost melt – y/n, I love you! do not give a fuck about those comments, ok? I love you, and that's all that matters – he put your lips together in a soft peck.

⠀– I didn't mean to worry you, Nick.. I'm so so sor- – he sushs you, not letting you finish your sentence, kissing your lips one more time – you talk too much.. – he smiles sofly.

⠀– you don't kiss me enough! – you pull him by his shirts collar in a deeper kiss, your mind wondering now on your lovely boyfriend's kiss.

₊˚𖹭

– english is NOT my first language, i didn't reviewed for any misspelling or grammar errors!

#nick sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #fluff #angst #y/n #madi filipowicz

[imagionary]

if you're open to talking about them (unless it's more of like a 'reveal information about them over time' type of thing) do you maybe have any information on dave's hollywoods? they're super interesting to me, and i love the fact that imps in your au apparently gain a sort of resemblance to the people they consider to be their boss. i really love the unique design they have too...guys with weirdo eyes just like their boss... also I'M REALLY SORRY if this is like worded weirdly or whatever! this ask was actually originally a lot longer (and it honestly is still pretty long for an ask...) until i realized i should probably shorten it...

totally unrelated as well, but i would love to learn more about this au and stuff, even if it isn't through art! i really liked the sort of writing post you made about the whole 'buck and dave and their connection with high roller in your au' thing and i would definitely love to see more sort of writing posts like that (if you want!)

Golly,, you have no idea how much I loved getting this ask, this is very kind to me, thank you! I'm shy when it comes to talking about our AU, but it means a lot to me that you're so interested in it, and that you'd like to read my silly ramblings! ^v^ 💚

Dave has his three Hollywoods: Left Suit, Middle Suit, and Right Suit. They are his posse, his guys, his main men, his trio, his henchmen sorta, etc, etc.

The three of them are all supposed to look exactly the same, and they did for an extremely long time, however, the first week that Evils and I were telling story, there was a mass layoff happening in COGS.Inc, and Left Suit happened to get fired; Dave was FURIOUS about this, because his Hollywoods were supposed to have special protection against that sort of thing, but he did his best to keep his cool during his time without Left Suit,, the whole situation seemed bogus and fishy to him, but there was nothing he could do about it, so life went on; I think it was around a year since Left Suit had been fired, but it was revealed that it was an inside job; Doctor Googlemuffin and Brian were so incredibly interested in how High Roller had come into being, that they wanted to see if they could make any clone fusions using extracted soul essence from one of Dave's Hollywoods (so, they decided to have Left Suit fired without notifying Dave or anyone else of the reasoning, and slipped his name on the list last second)

Doctor Googlemuffin and Brian's plans worked, albeit better than they had planned; almost every clone fusion they had conceptualized had finished itself just like how High Roller had; except the Aggregator, Top Dog, and Bulldozer all seemed to have a strangeness to them that the two scientists couldn't foresee:

The Aggregator and Top Dog were highly aware that they were created in the lab, and that they were fusions of two peoples blueprints (created using two people's blueprints as basis? Idk how to explain it) (the Aggregator being a secret project that Doctor Googlemuffin was creating to spite Brian; she used Brian and Graham's blueprints as a basis) (Top Dog was created using Graham and Zak's blueprints as basis); both were created with Graham's strangely advanced blueprints, so Brian and Doctor Googlemuffin chock off their peculiarities to being side effects of being created with them in mind;

However, Bulldozer is different. He doesn't have Graham's strange blueprints to blame. He was created with Mr. Wilde and Winnie's blueprints as basis, and he survived the destruction of the conglomerate extension.. well, came back to life after his body put itself back together (he had been mangled and shot through the core multiple times by Spruce to finish him off).

The reason I'm rambling about all of this is because Winnie's pixie dust magic, and Wilde's tough material, blended with Left Suit's soul essence in a peculiar way and it gave Bulldozer near indestructibility and rejuvenation powers like a Hollywood. So, this is why, when Left Suit was alive again, he had gone out and sweet talked Bulldozer and gave him a kiss; he was taking his soul essence back. Being near indestructible and with the power of rejuvenation had left Bulldozer unable to comprehend that the way he was treating the molemen, maintenance crew, and the skelecogs that were building the conglomerate extension (before it exploded) wasn't good. If he could withstand as much as he could, everyone else surely could to, is what he ignorantly believed; so Left Suit took his soul essence back to knock him down a peg; Bulldozer is still incredibly resilient, but he doesn't have his rejuvenation abilities anymore; Bulldozer doesn't know this yet, but once he gets hurt real bad again (hopefully he wont) he'll understand what he was doing to his subordinates.

Golly,, I got side tracked, oops,, so, after Dave had found out about why Left Suit had been fired, and what he was being used for, Doctor Googlemuffin made sure to get Left Suit finished up so she could return him to Dave. Dave was furious about this, he knew that Left Suit wouldn't have all of his soul essence back, but he would take what he could get,, he missed Left Suit so so much,,

However, once Left Suit was finished, he appeared within the darkness in High Roller's office, because, according to his contractual existence, he belonged to Dave,, but High Roller was made with Dave's scrap, so there was a paradoxical issue with the contract,, Left Suit now has feathery fur like High Roller (albeit, his is still white and black and not green like High Roller); Left Suit was there to serve High Roller, but Dave wanted Left Suit back, so he made some contractual changes with High Roller (having High Roller sign that he wouldn't be in charge of any of Dave's Hollywoods) amd they shook signed on it with a cold Inky electric flame entering High Roller's body through their handshake. And thus the deal was made and Dave could keep Left Suit as his own (Left Suit still has feathers that he tries to pluck out, but they always come back, so he hides them so he can look like Middle and Right)

Left, Middle, and Right all have the same voice and think and act relatively the same; however, if someone were to get to know them long enough, it's possible to get to know their differences:

Left Suit happens to talk smoother and can come off as the most friendly and calm of the three; he's got a playful sass to him; he's the weakest of the three now (powers wise), since parts of his essence has been stolen; he's the least likely to get angry

Middle Suit happens to be the most stern of the three, and is normally in charge of trying to calm Dave down when the time arises; he happens to be the most protective of Dave and his wishes; despite Right being more likely to get into trouble, Middle is more likely to get upset (still a rare occurrence that he'd show it though)

Right Suit happens to be the more tricky of the three and can come off as a bit sassy and the most likely to break Dave's rules, however he is also the most trusted when it comes to handling dirty work; out of the three Hollywood's, Right is most likely to "break character" and have his expression change

All of the Hollywoods have little horns that they hide from their appearance, as to appear more normal, like how Dave hides his more monstrous parts

The Hollywoods all have gloves and white cores like Dave, to show that they are under Dave's control; their plug tails can be used to control people like how Dave can with his, however, their abilities to erase or eat people's memories aren't as powerful as Dave's, so if you ever have your memories of an event wiped by a Hollywood, it'll seem like you had a lucid nightmare, but you'll think it wasn't real

The Hollywoods, like Dave, can disappear and appear within the dark; Dave can also use his Hollywoods as extra eyes for him; whatever they see, Dave can see, if he has his thoughts set on knowing (Dave can also give his Hollywoods knowledge of things they're not supposed to know either)

Sorry if this got rambly,, I get shy when talking about our AU, so I hope this answers your question! You're more than welcome to ask questions if you have any

#thank you again for the ask!! it means a lot to me that you'd want to know more about the Hollywoods #I love them a lot 🥺💚 #imagionary rambles #toontown corporate clash #ttcc #toontown: corporate clash #ttcc au #toontown #mr hollywood #hollywoods #Dave Brubot #major player #left suit #middle suit #right suit #doctor googlemuffin #ttcc brian #since the others aren't mentioned too often I won't tag them i don't think? #I'm really glad that you like my designs for the Hollywoods!! #that means a lot to me JCJFFJ 🥺🥺💚💚💚

[its-jaytothemee]

Until I Met You - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: The Path Forward

Pairings: Halsin x Tav

Word count: 3,627

Rating: Currently M, will be Explicit in later chapters.

Read on AO3

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Summary: The party makes their way back into the Underdark, discouraged and down on their luck after their time at the Creche. Now, they have to decide how they can move forward and find a new lead to cure their tadpoles. Part 8 of the slow burn fic. Halsin and Tav POVs

Tags: Slow burn, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, fluff, eventual love confessions, eventual smut, light angst, implied past rape/non-con and abuse, graphic description of injuries.

A/N: Sorry for the wait between updates here! Life got a bit hectic for a couple of weeks. I ended up needing to split the Underdark chapters up so they wouldn't get too long. The next one should be a much shorter wait :) Thanks for continuing to read!!

Tav led her dejected group of adventurers back through the wilderness, making their way down to the Underdark again. While she was still unconscious, the others had found another entrance to the Underdark in the Zhentarim hideout. Given that it was a little closer, they opted to go this way rather than march all the way back to the goblin camp.

Last night, just as everyone was beginning to turn in for the evening, an unexpected visitor had shown up at their camp. Kith’rak Voss, knight supreme, and a fellow traitor in Vlaakith’s eyes. He came to recruit Lae’zel to his cause, to overthrow Vlaakith’s unrightful rule. Apparently, the prism they carried held the key to her demise. He explained that the purification process githyanki boasted about was nothing but a bold-faced lie. The zaith’isk does not extract, it only kills. They had promised to meet him in Baldur’s Gate, should they survive that long. Lae’zel had been strangely quiet about the ordeal, likely still coming to terms with the fact she wasn’t welcome with the majority of her kin. So now, not only were they still hosting mind flayer parasites, but they had been branded enemies of Vlaakith herself, doomed to be hunted across the Sword Coast by her faithful. Fighting their way out of the Creche was difficult enough, she wasn’t looking forward to the lich queen sending her best warriors to pursue them.

Tav’s disappointment was plain to see in her slumped shoulders and shuffling footsteps. The past two days were a detour they could scarcely afford, and she was the one who pushed them in that direction. Even Karlach seemed subdued, merely chuckling at any half-assed quips Astarion let out rather than her normal cackle. He was the only one who was relatively content with keeping his tadpole, allowing him to walk in the sun a little while longer.

Halsin jogged his way up to her at the front of the group. He slowed his pace to walk alongside her.

“I can’t help but notice you’re looking a tad displeased.” He said.

“I think I’ve earned the right to feel a little upset right now, Halsin.” Tav knew he meant well, she just didn’t have the energy to joke right now.

“Of course, I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.” His voice lowered a bit, sending a stab of guilt into Tav’s gut. She let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do next. They followed me to the Creche, which was a dead end. Almost literally.” She remembered their bruised and battered bodies stumbling into camp last night. Her shoulder still ached slightly from falling off of a ladder during one of the fights.

“I know. I can see the uncertainty in your eyes. You think you’ve wasted precious time following false hopes. I can’t imagine my sulking helped with that guilt.” He looked away from her for a moment.

“First and foremost, your priority has been to remove the tadpoles lodged in your heads. You had no way of knowing where Lae’zel’s hunch would lead, at the time it seemed like the most rational path. And you are not the only one here who chose that path.”

“That’s kind of you to say.” Tav responded, her eyes still stuck on the dirt road in front of her.

“I know something of doubting your choices as a leader, my friend. As I told you, I’m here to lend my counsel whenever needed. I’ve met many people who have claimed to be leaders in my life, few have had the heart and compassion that you do. It’s obvious how you care for those in your company, you make decisions with great respect and consideration.” He kept his voice low so only they could hear.

She stayed silent for a while longer, thinking on his words. When their group had decided to band together, she hadn’t exactly meant to be their leader. At some point everyone just started to defer to her for all major decisions.

“I know that this is quite the setback, but please do not doubt yourself so heavily, Tav. Everyone trusts you a great deal – myself included. I doubt that anyone here is a stranger to disappointment and defeat. Except perhaps Shadowheart, but that is only because she is missing so many of her memories.” His last quip did make her chuckle a little.

“I am confident that you will all recover swiftly.”

“What makes you so sure?” She asked, finally looking up at him.

“Because you have no other choice, I’m afraid.” He had a sad smile on his face. They continued walking together, Halsin had grabbed one of her packs from her injured shoulder to carry. Lunari trotted around them, every now and then bumping her head into their legs to get them to pet her.

“I truly am sorry that you weren’t able to be cured of the tadpole yet.” Halsin broke their silence. “But if it is any consolation, I am grateful to have a few more days in your company.” He briefly rested a hand on her shoulder as they walked.

“As am I.” She replied. “Except…you know…about you.” A familiar warmth covered her cheeks at her awkward rambling.

Come on, Tav. I thought we were past this now.

As they approached Waukeen’s Rest, she let some of the others take the lead. They took her and Halsin down through the hideout, the smell of ash and decaying bodies filled her nose. As she looked over the ledge just inside the secret entrance, she saw that almost everything, and everyone, had been burnt to a crisp

“What in the hells did you guys do here?” Tav asked, covering her nose with the back of her hand.

“What? Like it’s our fault that they had the entire area laced with explosives? Karlach is literally a walking flame, darling. Accidents happen.” Astarion waved his hand dismissively.

“Hey now, Karlach didn’t touch the explosives at all. Gale was the one with speedy spell fingers.” Karlach had run up to join them.

“To be fair,” Gale started, pointing one index finger up in the air, “the fire bolt wasn’t aimed at the explosives, it was aimed at one of the Zhentarim. Who caught on fire. And then wandered too close to an oil barrel.” The little bout of banter brought a smile to Tav’s face. She was relieved to see they hadn’t completely lost their sense of humor.

Towards the back of the hideout, there was a concealed elevator of sorts. It looked old, Tav was skeptical about all of them piling onto this at the same time.

“I think we should probably go in groups. This seems a little…dated.”  She gulped as she inspected the ropes and pulleys attached to the platform. Everything at least seemed in good working order.

“Who wants to go first?” She asked.

“After you, darling.” Astarion teased.

“I uh, I can wait for the second group.” Tav said quickly as she took a step away from the platform.

Everyone looked at her curiously. Astarion and Karlach started to giggle a little bit.

“Are you…are you afraid of heights?” Astarion pointed an accusing finger at her.

“I’m not afraid! I have a healthy skepticism of old wooden machinery that happens to dangle a mile above the ground.” She could feel her cheeks getting warm at the teasing.

“I’m sorry, you can slaughter a camp of goblins, a hag, an entire Creche filled with githyanki warriors, and a fully grown owlbear. But you draw the line at a little elevator ride?” Astarion was laughing harder now.

“Well, if you’re so confident why don’t you hop on?” Tav shot back.

“Fine if it’ll help you get over your fears.” He waved his hand in the air again and strode over to the platform, jumping on it lightly to show how sturdy it was.

“See? Nothing to be worried about.” He crossed his arms and stared her down.

She flared her nostrils at him and pressed her lips into a hard line. With everyone staring at her, she took a few tentative steps toward the wooden platform. Her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. The first step she took onto the elevator caused it to wobble slightly and she recoiled away from it, slamming into Halsin behind her. He smiled down at her and stepped to the side to walk onto the platform next to Astarion. He turned around and held his arm out to her. Tav quickly dug a scroll of Feather Fall out of her pack and held it against her chest...just in case. She nervously reached out with her other hand to grab Halsin’s arm and pulled herself tight against him. Wyll walked on behind her as well and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Lunari trotted over to lay down at her feet, giving a soft whine. Tav continued clinging to Halsin as the winch began to turn and slowly lower them back into the Underdark.

***

Halsin was grateful for the lower light to hide his blush and grin. Tav was breathing heavily and grasping the Feather Fall scroll in one hand, turning her knuckles white. She had her face buried in his shoulder and both of her arms wrapped around his arm tightly. Her free hand had his in an iron grip, digging her nails into his knuckles. She must have been terrified based on the fact she didn’t seem to be blushing or embarrassed as she held onto him like her life depended on it.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t call you our ‘fearless’ leader anymore.” Astarion giggled.

“Fuck off.” Tav’s voice was muffled by Halsin’s shoulder.

Tav let out another shaky breath as the platform swayed in an unnerving manner. He watched as they slowly descended through the ground, the environment around them gradually shifting to the strange flora of the Underdark. After a long ride, he could finally start to make out the ground beneath them. The glowing crystals and mushrooms lit the area below, giving them just a little more light to see by.

“We’re almost there, Tav. I can see the ground now.” He whispered as he briefly placed his other hand on one of her arms. She nodded against him in response, still maintaining her death grip.

“You know, Tav, you really are missing a splendid view.” Astarion mocked from the other side of him. “Just open your eyes, face your fe–”

Halsin cut Astarion off with a small nudge, just enough to make him think that he could go tumbling over the edge of the elevator. Of course he wouldn’t let that happen, he had a hold of the back of his shirt. The small squeal that escaped Astarion’s throat was worth it though. Wyll was stifling a laugh on the other side of Tav.

“How clumsy of me.” Halsin said with a smirk. Astarion glared at him over his shoulder.

“Oh gods…why are we shaking?” Tav somehow managed to squeeze him even tighter, causing him to grunt in pain.

Worth it.

After a few more minutes, the elevator hit the ground below. Tav remained stuck to his side even after they stopped moving.

“Tav? We made it.” Halsin urged her gently. She slowly rotated her head to peek at their new surroundings, releasing a relieved sigh when she saw they were once again on solid ground. Right on cue, she realized she was still clinging to Halsin’s arm and jumped to the side like he had shocked her; her cheeks turned that endearing shade of pink.

“Oh! Ha, thanks.” She laughed awkwardly and looked down at his hand spotting the small nail marks she left there. “Oh shit…I’m sorry about that.”

“Nothing to worry about, you didn’t even draw blood. I’m sure the marks will fade within the hour.” He smiled at her reassuringly, trying and failing to keep his mind from wandering. He found himself imagining the marks lined up and down his body.

No, stop it. Get ahold of yourself, Halsin.

He shook his head to force himself back to his current conversation. Astarion had a smug grin stretched across his face.

“Yes, no worries, Tav. I’m sure he’s used to the feel of your nails digging into him, what with your recent late-night excursions and all.” He teased, batting his eyelashes as his eyes shifted between her and Halsin.

His breath caught in his throat and Tav’s eyes went wide, her skin now turning a shade that matched Karlach’s. Wyll looked between all three of them, obviously confused and scared to ask for clarification. The elevator behind them started the ascent back up to the Zhentarim hideout.

“No that’s…it’s not what…we haven’t even…I don’t…” Tav was sputtering nonsensically. “Argh! You are so annoying, you know that?” She yelled at him as she stormed off in a huff.

Halsin thought she’d scour the entire Underdark easily at the pace she was setting. But a strange voice called out to them, stopping her in her tracks.

***

“They are coming.” The voice calling out to Tav in her mind was gruff, yet somehow melodic and charming as well.

“Please tell me I’m not the only one hearing that voice.” She said quietly.

“No, no I heard it too.” Halsin sounded concerned.

Wait…Halsin?

“You can hear it?” Tav asked, shocked. She assumed it was something to do with the tadpole. Wyll and Astarion must have shared her theory because they whipped around to stare at him as well.

“More are coming. You are coming.” The strange voice glided out of her thoughts.

“What the fuck.” She mumbled under her breath.

“Please tell me we aren’t going to look for the source of that voice.” Astarion pleaded.

“Something tells me we won’t have much of a choice.” She sighed. “We’ll wait for the others before moving on just in case.”

Astarion dramatically threw himself onto a pile of crates.

“For fucks’ sake…” Tav muttered. “Here, you big baby.” She reached into her pack and fished out a couple of lockpicks and some tools for disarming traps.

“Why don’t you keep busy and start looking through some of these chests, huh? That one looks expensive.” She held the small tools out in her palm, trying to entice him out of his tantrum. He looked up and gave her a brooding look. “You can keep the gold you find.” She pumped her eyebrows up and down a couple of times.

“You have to ask nicely.” He pouted. She flared her nostrils at him and fought off an eye roll.

“Oh, Astarion…your hands are so slight and nimble. Your fingers dance around locks like silvery rays of the purest moonlight. None of us could compare with that level of finesse.” She said the words in the most monotone way possible, gesturing her hands lazily at the chests and boxes around them.

“And…?”

“You are such…an…” She gritted her teeth, not wanting to finish.

“Say it.” Astarion coaxed.

“Inspiration.” She growled.

“Oh, stop it, darling. You’re embarrassing yourself.” He slid over to her and snatched the tools out of her hand before running off with a giggle.

Whatever, it’s better than him sulking until the others arrive.

Tav and Wyll went through some of the unlocked crates to look for any supplies. Halsin seemed distracted as he took in the Underdark surroundings, he had a distant look on his face that worried her.

“Halsin? You okay?” She asked quietly as he blankly stared over the Underdark landscape ahead of them.

“Hm? Oh, of course. My eyes are still just adjusting to the darkness here.” He smiled lightly, but there was a nervous undertone to his voice. Before she could press the matter further, Karlach’s voice called out to her.

“Hey, soldier! You made it down in one piece. No big deal, right?” Her giant smile shone easily through the darkness.

“Outside of clawing Halsin’s arm to shreds? Yeah, no big deal.” She rolled her eyes slightly. “Listen, we have a situation.” Tav explained the voice they heard.

“More voices? My mind is full enough of those as is.” Gale complained.

“I have a feeling we need to go towards it. When it entered my mind, it felt…scared. Like it was a cry for help.”

“The last time you had a feeling, we ended up fighting dozens of githyanki warriors for our life. Besides, we can hardly afford another detour.” Astarion had come back over to join the group and draped an arm over Gale’s shoulder. He was wearing noticeably more jewelry than before, a golden chain adorned with tiny sapphires dangled from his hand.

His words caused Tav to withdraw slightly, her earlier guilt returning tenfold. She looked around the group of tired faces, suddenly feeling paralyzed. What if she made the wrong decision again, delaying them further? Her eyes fell on Halsin who gave her a reassuring nod.

“And what if the help they need is related to the Absolute?” She finally said. “What if they can help us find our way to Moonrise? We have no idea where this secret stronghold is.”

“Which is why we should have just taken the route from the Mountain Pass. We have to deal with the shadow cursed lands eventually, we might as well just get it over with.” Wyll countered. He had suggested the route before – he was anxious to find his father.

“Perhaps, but the area just past the Mountain Pass is heavy with the curse. I fear if we went that way we would not long survive before the shadows would overtake us.” Halsin spoke up.

“Halsin’s right, the shadows there are a wicked, terrible presence. Some types of light will protect us for a short time, but it won’t be enough. We’ll be lucky if we can make it to Moonrise Towers before it consumes us.” Tav shuddered at the thought.

“No…we need to find out how the cultists are able to traverse the land safely. If we can find this secret passage, we’ll likely find out how they’ve made it that far.” She insisted.

“How bad could it be? We’ve got Shadowheart to cast some handy light spells, we can scrounge up some torches, not to mention that nifty glowing mace we found. So long as we stick together, I’m sure we’ll be fine!” Karlach’s peppy tone did little to calm the anxiety gripping Tav.

“Well spoken, Karlach. I agree, we haven’t gone too far yet…” Wyll continued talking, but Tav couldn’t listen anymore.

The darkness around her swirled like smoke, choking her, trying to bring back memories of those cursed shadows. She forced them down, refusing to let them overtake her now. They didn’t understand, how could they? There was no way to explain to them the horrific magic that awaited them at Moonrise. Her vision swam, her chest burned with anxiety and dread. She felt the phantom claws of shadows and wraiths reaching for her arms, struggling to pull her into the wicked darkness around her, beckoning her to follow.

“No!” She bellowed, startling everyone as they whipped around to face her again. “I’m not spending any longer in that cursed land than I have to. None of you understand, you weren’t there!”

Involuntary tears started streaming down her face, dripping off of her chin and soaking the collar of her shirt. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body and squeezed her eyes shut to try and force her tears to stop. It didn’t help, she continued to sniffle as dark memories tried to drag her down into their abyss. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground, still tightly clutching her own chest.

“You weren’t there…” She whispered between sobs.

The others simply stared at her in stunned silence. She hung her head and tried to gain some semblance of composure.

“If you won’t follow me on this path, feel free to go back on your own. I’ll continue through the Underdark alone if I must. Perhaps we’ll be able to meet again at Moonrise.” She barely choked the words out. “Just don’t ask me to go back there yet. I can’t. Not until I know that I can protect us.” It hurt her to offer the ultimatum, she was really starting to consider them friends. She couldn't stand the thought of them facing the curse without her guiding them, but she couldn't go yet. She knew exactly what was waiting for them and she was terrified of going back. No, she needed more time to prepare.

Everyone exchanged uneasy glances with one another but said nothing. Tav slowly stood up and turned away from them, ready to continue on by herself. A large hand gently grabbed her arm and pulled her back. She glanced over her shoulder to see Halsin standing behind her.

“You won’t be alone, Tav.” He assured her. She turned around to face him as the others walked up to stand with them as well.

“Of course you won’t be. We’re with you, soldier.” Karlach added. “If you say this is the way, I’ll follow you.”

The rest of the party walked up behind her, all nodding and murmuring their agreement. They would stay and follow her, hopefully to find a way through the shadows.

“Lead on, friend.” Wyll patted her shoulder.

Tav nodded and took a shaky breath. She knew that their path was leading back to Moonrise Towers, it was unavoidable now. But she at least had a few more days to prepare for it. As she moved to start leading them further into the Underdark, Halsin’s hand briefly passed over hers, his fingers lingering against hers for just a moment longer than expected.

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