#pls tell me someone has written this fic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

randombush3 · 14 days

Text

a sense of coming home

ona batlle x reader

summary: part two of this! ona and you are (frustratingly) still just friends

words: 6.5k (i have NO idea why i waffle so much but lets pls allow it)

warnings: there's like five secs of smut at the end

notes: this has been the most self-indulgent fic i've written because this is how i met my gf and so i am glad to show you a nice happy ending

again, the quote is from 'this side of paradise' (said gf's fav book - i don't recommend however because the protagonist is a twat)

also i didn't proofread bc i am exhausted and i am hungover and i am very ready to go to sleep (#globetrotting is not for the weak) x

There is something difficult about forcing oneself back to their toxic roots. Ona discovers as such as she presses her body into a temple of meaningless sex, but she does so because she is a driven person. Ona is determined to get over you, once and for all, except she’d quite like to stay friends (hence why she agreed when asked). She also thinks it would expose her to fall out because her feelings shouldn’t have existed anyway, so she technically shouldn’t be heartbroken?

Anyway, Ona rampages through Manchester! They appreciate her accent – some even ask her to speak to them in Spanish when she is three fingers deep inside of them, to which she obliges with little fanfare – and it isn’t like the city lacks queer women. It is a super solid way to keep her busy, to tear her attention from hungrily checking your Instagram whenever possible.

It’s also what lands her with coronavirus. She’s embarrassed to admit just how many people she has come into contact with when the club doctors ask her questions over the phone.

You send her a lovely message after hearing she is yet another fallen soldier.

Ona is at home, isolating, and you are apparently trapped in Spain, unable to get into Italy. You haven’t quite made it to your parents’ house since your flight was supposed to depart from Madrid. “How come you’re not on the phone to one of your ‘connections’?” Ona asks suspiciously, wondering why this call has lasted longer than ten minutes. “Surely someone knows someone else and they can get you back home.”

“I’m hardly out of my depth in my own country,” you remind her with a twinging sigh, pained that she has suppressed all memories of your childhood. “It’s not like I don’t speak Spanish.”

“Didn’t you get rid of it in your head to make space for Italian and English? Oh, and French too, right? That’s where the fashion weeks are.”

You laugh at her pride for knowing something about your job, but it is not to ridicule her. “I am speaking to you, aren’t I?”

“In Catalan,” she points out. “Forget Spanish, but don’t forget Catalan.”

“I can’t. It’s the language everyone uses to tell me about how fucked you’ve been lately.” You take in a deep breath, uncomfortable with Ona’s silence but knowing your piece needs to be said. “Are you aware of what happened a few months ago? Why I missed the wedding?” One of your friends met her dream man and he whisked her off to Menorca for a small ceremony. Only the people she loved the most were invited, which included your childhood friend group. “We were in New York, a whole bunch of us. It was late but the show had been a big deal so we went out to celebrate, and… these ‘friends’, these people, they aren’t the same as you and me. Most of them are English, you know, and they come from very fancy schools where addiction is normal. Two of them ended up in the hospital that night – the bag hadn’t even made it round to me by the time they’d dropped. I know it seems far-fetched, but all I’m trying to say is that addiction has consequences. Bad consequences.”

“So you’re not on my side?” Ona isn’t taking this too seriously. A few people have joked about her questionable new hobby, but no one has made it seem so dire that they have needed to get you involved. You who, of course, Ona will listen to.

“I am always on your side.”

That is her main take-away from the conversation, Ona chooses, when it ends an hour later. She swoons, meaning the last twenty women have been a waste of time, but she also tortures herself into ignoring the potential problem. Being a sex addict would be embarrassing, so she won’t be.

Though your subtle shaming for her abundance of quick-fix flings is hypocritical, Ona would also hate for you to see her that way. You can avoid commitment all you like, but she is determined to be different to prove to you that she is a viable candidate, should you wish to stop stringing her along. It’s probably toxic; it probably means that you are both clinging onto a friendship that should either end or be labelled something else. It probably is the push and pull that has kept you interested, Ona thinks, because she knows that you like the chase.

However, as much as she’d like to be freed of whatever game she is caught up in, she can’t seem to let you go like that.

…

The next time Ona and you have a proper conversation about something other than how your love lives have been stunted or how people back home are not as successful as the two of you is when most of the restrictions have been lifted.

You waited out the pandemic in Vilassar de Mar, much to your annoyance, but now that you can travel again, the first person on your mind to visit is your childhood best friend. You’re not as close as you used to be, having drifted further during even more years apart, but it does not dull your love for her, nor hers for you.

Ona has changed her mind about Manchester and is forcing herself to like it. It works enough for a visit from you to be the last thing on her mind, and so she slows her response time down until the next arranged date to see each other in person is all set for the summer before the Euros in England.

You’re not quite home but you are in the country, and, with the pre-Euros camp in two days, Ona is spending the final few hours of calm left before the storm in the comforting presence of her mum and dad.

And… you, apparently.

“You weren’t supposed to be here yet,” is Ona’s greeting when she opens the front door.

Your smile is wide and genuine, and you are holding a gift bag in one hand. There is a nice bottle of wine in the other. “Not even an ‘hola’?” When no reply comes, you swallow the emotions that have arisen; the ones that are maybe, just a little bit to do with how soft Ona looks with her hair down. And the slope of her jaw. And the ghosts of defined biceps that bulge even when she isn’t flexing her arms. “I’m dropping by to see your parents. I thought you were in Barcelona with your footballer friends.”

“You visit my parents?” asks Ona curiously.

“Of course.”

With that, you side-step her and call out to her mother, announcing both your arrival and your desire to hand them their gifts. Dinner is just about to be served, and Ona is soon tasked with setting another place at the table for you as though the last ten years had never happened and your friendship hadn’t lost its innocence.

Maybe it would be better for Ona to not know what it feels like to kiss you, to touch you, to – dare she think it – love you. It would certainly make things less painful, and would have saved her from catching at least one illness and spending a good amount of money on Ubers to escape from random apartments. It would make it easier to listen to you talk about your life in Milan, where you seem to exist in a bubble of incredibly attractive people who are desperate to hold hands and form a raft.

“Modelling can be brutal,” you agree, nodding at Ona’s father as you follow on from his concerns about your career. He voices them regularly; whenever you see him. Ona realises you have spent a lot of time with her parents without her. “It gets quite competitive between the girls so I’ve been somewhat avoiding them. They’ve brought in someone new, scouted from Germany, I think, and I’m a little worried that I’ll have to switch agencies if they start prioritising her.” You glance at Ona, wanting to know if she is listening, hoping she is. You wish that she were as good at suppressing her feelings as you are. You wish she didn’t look at you like you hung the moon, because you know that you have to tell her you have hung it for someone else. “I’d move tomorrow, to be honest, but I’ve started seeing this guy and he’s convincing me to stay in Milan.”

“The minute he is your boyfriend, you bring him here,” commands Ona’s mother in a tone she hasn’t yet used on her actual daughter (said daughter has never mentioned anyone before). “Show us a picture of him! Is he a model like you?”

He is, and if Ona holds her fork tighter after she sees the photo you pull up, that is her business. You secretly take in her clenched jaw and furrowed eyebrows, and this might be the worst thing you have ever had to do. To see her so defeated, so hopeless, is upsetting, especially since you are harbouring the same feelings. However, you are able to admit when it is time to throw the towel in, and you can no longer live like this.

Ona is too perfect for you. She is driven, hard-working, and funny. She likes to nutmeg little children on the street, and she likes to buy them an ice-cream if they slip a goal past her, slotting the flat footballs into imaginary nets and celebrating as though they have just won the Champions League. She knows a lot, more than she thinks she does. She cares about people, but sometimes it manifests in anger, in frustration.

Any aspect of her is an aspect that you could love, and that is reason enough not to. Because how can you allow yourself to taint such perfection?

But, in this unspoken rejection, the compliment is obscured from the recipient’s view. All Ona sees when you gush about how he buys you flowers and takes you out to dinner, is a burning, bright question. It flashes red and yellow, both as a warning and cry for attention. How can she compete if you don’t even recognise her as a competitor?

…

“--And then they proceeded to finish a film they were halfway through as if it were the most normal thing ever,” Ona rants the minute she hits the concrete of Las Rozas, walking into the facility with Aitana and the other girls who travelled with her from Barcelona. Only the midfielder has been gracious enough to listen to the entire monologue, but the others joke that that is because Ona’s emotional state has led her to spiral in her native language. It is forbidden for them to openly speak Catalan in the Spanish camp, according to Jorge Vilda, who loves to hurl a ‘we can send you back to where you came from in an instant’ their way if he so much as hears a ‘bon dia’. Naturally, Aitana doesn’t give a fuck about the rule, although Ona chooses to believe that she is listening because she cares.

“Are you done?” Aitana asks thoughtfully, sucking on her bottom lip as she tries to absorb her friend’s crisis and formulate a valid, sensible response. The two have known each other for a while now, and Aitana remembers a time when Ona was relentlessly teased by their older teammates for being in love with her best friend. It is clear to her that those feelings never ceased, though she has heard through the grapevine (Leila Ouahabi) that you are now a model and you live somewhere in Italy. You’re part Italian, is what Leila also claims, having professed your ethnicity to a small huddle of fellow gossipers one day in the gym at the Barça training facility.

“No! Nothing is ever done with her. It’s viscous and it continues in a horrid cycle that has me flapping around in circles like some idiot. I am one of her boys.” Ona groans dramatically, the sound perhaps a little too loud. A few of the girls in front of them turn around to see why a cat seems to have been strangled, but they quickly lose interest when they see it is just Ona and her disastrous situation. “Do you know how fucking humiliating it is to be one of her guys? I am a professional footballer! I play for Manchester United, one of the most historic clubs in the world, and I am about to represent my country in a major tournament. I am successful, Aita, and yet I am still not enough for her.”

“Maybe she only likes men.”

“A man has never made her scream like I have,” she bites back. Aitana blushes, but Ona is too far gone in her rage to hear her crudeness nor preserve her friend’s sanity. “She’s been like this since she decided she was gay! Isn’t that hilarious? ‘Ona, I think I’m gay’, she said. I know lesbian breakups can be hard, but there is no way my cousin fucked her up to this extent.”

“I can’t help you with this, Oni,” Aitana laments, sorry to have to confess this to her friend. “I think you need to talk to her about it. A proper conversation to fix long-term issues, not like the ones you obviously had when agreeing to stop having sex and things like that. Only she knows what she’s thinking.” It is definitely not the advice Ona wants to hear, but she cannot deny the midfielder’s wisdom. “But for now, we focus on winning.”

…

You are more than a little confused.

To start from the beginning, Ona’s cousin fucked you up. She broke your heart, and that first impression of dating girls was incredibly traumatising. With girls, you don’t just kiss and sleep with them, you get close – really close – and then when you break up, it is like you have lost both a girlfriend and a best friend.

Men are a lot simpler. Men like you and they aren’t shy about it. They can sometimes be just as cruel, but you have never felt invested enough to care too much.

Some nights, you don’t fall asleep, tossing and turning between your sexual identity, aware that you don’t need to label it but desperate to… discover yourself. If you don’t understand that part of you, how will someone else? How can you be loved? How do you even know who you want to love you?

For as much as Milan is great, it definitely doesn’t help you with your crisis. Girls in Milan like to do what they want. It is not uncommon for the models to kiss each other in clubs, in front of appreciative male gazes or not, and then reveal their engagement to their future husband the very next day. It’s easy to be drawn into such a bubble, but the minute you step out of it, you are hit with the real world.

It’s what makes the pandemic so distressing for you personally, because you are forced to live like normal people for some time. Your eyes are held open and the question is shoved down your throat, and it really doesn’t help that Ona’s cousin never moved out of Vilassar de Mar.

She sees you one day, saying hello from a suitable distance as you pick up milk as per your mother’s request. “I heard you’re modelling?” she asks with no agenda, no seductive glint in her eye. You notice the ring on her finger, and she feels the heaviness of your staring. “Oh, I got married a year ago. Did Ona not tell you?”

You realise that you and Ona try to avoid talking about anything other than the love interests you have. “No, she didn’t. Congratulations, though. She’s a lucky woman.”

“You don’t have to pretend you’re happy for me,” laughs the woman opposite you, amused and somewhat apologetic. “Look, I’m really sorry for how I acted when we were younger. I was definitely not the most mature person out there, and I know I hurt you.”

“I cried for months.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. You suck in a deep breath, trying to hold the memories of your pain at bay. “The first breakup is usually the worst but at least it gets better, as you probably know.”

She looks at you expectantly, awaiting your confirmation. It never comes.

“I haven’t dated another girl since,” you tell her, sounding rather detached from yourself.

Her eyebrows furrow and she is clearly frowning behind her facemask. “What about Ona? I thought you were together when you lived in Madrid. It takes more than a friendship to do what you did.”

You were originally going to go to university in England. It was your dream, and Ona wasn’t entirely aware of the situation because you hadn’t wanted to tell her you were leaving. Then she was sent out on a professional contract to Madrid, and it wasn’t like you were the only one leaving.

Ona’s cousin, years ago, had suggested that you go to Madrid if you wanted to get away from Vilassar de Mar. “You’ll be close enough to come home when you’d like, but not so close that you’ll feel as though nothing has changed,” she had said.

No one had known about your offers in England aside from your parents. And Ona’s cousin, who’d only found out because you had called her, drunk on celebratory champagne, because you had to tell someone.

“You gave up a dream for her because you didn’t want her to be alone.”

“I moved to Milan. In the end, she was alone.”

“You sound like you regret it,” she replies, nodding once at you to bid you farewell and then heading over to a woman who is standing with a puppy in her arms. You watch as she pulls down her mask and kisses her wife, her eyes shining with love and happiness, and your blood runs green with jealousy.

You hate Ona’s cousin for devastating you once more.

Do you regret it?

It’s unclear.

You try to make sense of it when you don’t hesitate to fly back to Italy the minute you can, going home to lick your wounds at Ona’s non-committal response to meeting you when you are in London the next month. It hurts that she is no longer at your beck-and-call, but you are somewhat happy for her. You know that lines have been crossed and that she has suffered for it. You know that you are probably the one at fault here.

This time in Milan, you don’t fight it as much. You kiss other girls and let them go home to their boyfriends; you submit to the thing you had convinced yourself you would never become.

As you drive yourself deeper and deeper into your stereotype, the thought of Ona gets pushed away and newer, more culturally-acceptable fantasies come to mind.

It takes a photoshoot for him to ask you out on a date.

It takes returning home and gaining the approval of Ona’s parents (who are far more open than your own) for you to agree to be official.

You don’t ask Ona what she thinks. She’s busy, you reason, because she is representing Spain at the Euros. She won’t care who you are dating and she certainly doesn’t need it rubbed in her face.

There are many reasons why you go out with him.

One is that you do like him; he’s nice, he’s funny, he treats you well. (He’s not Ona.) Another is that rent is going up and him sharing the load is helpful. (He’s not Ona.) There is also that he is very popular within the agency, and your chemistry on camera is enough to keep your jobs rolling in and casting directors satisfied.

He’s not Ona. You know that.

That's the whole point.

If he were Ona, you’d be deeply in love with him. If he were Ona, you would never leave the house, never leave his embrace, never leave the little bubble created when it is just the two of you and no one else. If he were Ona, you would be excited about the conversations he gently guides you into; marriage, children, where you are going to live one day. You’d miss him more when he isn’t here. You’d care.

But you just… don’t.

Another year passes, more Ona-less than the last, and then she is suddenly coming back home to Barcelona, a medal around her neck and word of a relationship floating above her head.

You could ask her about it if you wanted to because she is still one of your closest friends, but the truth is, you really, desperately don’t want to hear it. While Ona has been falling in love with someone else, you have been proving your stupid feelings to yourself.

The act (your current relationship) lowers enough for you to go home for Christmas. You leave Milan as though fleeing from a hurricane, and you refuse to control the damage until you have entered the new year. Your parents aren’t entirely sure they want you moping about the house, confused how someone so successful can revert to a moody teenager the minute they are back in safe territory, and they heavily encourage you to accept an invite that was extended out to you a few months ago.

Your friends are going skiing in Andorra, and they’d like for you to come with them.

“Ona won’t be there,” one of them regretfully informs you. “She said she doesn’t want to make things weird. She has a girlfriend – or, I don’t know, a talking stage. She wants you to have fun.”

“But Ona and I are friends,” you try to explain, feeling exposed by the look of pity she gives you; the same look someone receives when they find out their ex has gotten married or something similar. As a defensive mechanism, you hastily pull out your phone and dial her number. Everyone watches you, now uninterested in their food as you dine and plan your holiday.

Ona picks up on the third ring, escaping her dinner with Lucy and rushing into the cool, nighttime air of Barcelona.

“Hi?” she says – asks – with raised eyebrows, wondering if you’re in danger.

“You’re coming skiing with us, aren’t you?”

Your friends hide their laughs behind their hands, surprised by how firm your tone is. You do not need it for Ona, because she does anything you say regardless, but they enjoy seeing this side of you. This is someone who has had to fend for herself in a foreign country.

Removing the phone from her ear for a moment, Ona sighs, disappointed in herself.

“Yeah, of course. I’ve missed you, you know.”

…

Skiing is not something Ona is really allowed to do. As a footballer, her legs are what pay her wage. Career-destroying planks of metal are not the best way to spend the dying embers of the year. She knows that. She does, she swears, but she is so eager to go that Jonatan cannot crush her dreams. He tells her, “if you get injured your contract will be reviewed, Ona Batlle,” and she promises him that it won’t happen. Nothing bad is going to happen.

It will be the first time she has spent more than a day with her childhood friends, and she is unbelievably excited.

Lucy finds it adorable and makes it known, helping her pack for her trip, versed in what to bring because her sister skis or something like that (Ona can’t really focus on her almost-girlfriend's monologue). Lucy likes Ona a lot, and it makes her stomach flutter when she thinks about Ona and her friends talking about them. She’s sure her feelings are reciprocated, and she cannot wait for Ona to return to her in the new year, all smiles and lingering hangovers, and ask her to be her girlfriend. Officially.

Your friends convene in the centre of Vilassar de Mar with two cars between you. There are ten people coming.

Someone, most-likely trying to keep the peace, instructs Ona into one vehicle and you into the other. The drive isn’t too long, but you suppose that the tension is uncomfortable for those who aren’t accustomed to maintaining a friendship despite the weight of it.

It’s five days, and you are determined to have fun.

Ona is naturally good at this, although she claims it is her first time. You, living in Milan, are just as advanced.

By the third day, the both of you agree that going off together to do some of the harder runs will be harmless. Spending the day together won’t feel like a date or a romantic holiday. Watching Ona glide over the compacted snow won’t be attractive, watching her cocky smirk as she scales the bumps along the side of the piste won’t do anything.

It won’t. (It does.)

And it just has to be the third day that someone pulls out two bottles of tequila and a drinking game that is going to ensure every single one of you is off your face by midnight.

In rooms opposite one another, you and Ona call your respective partners and tell them about how great a time you are having, actively avoiding telling them about who you spent the day with as though it counts as cheating. It doesn’t, technically. Nothing has happened. But, still, it feels intimate and secret; forbidden.

Then, there is a shout that rings through the house. Everyone comes to the table; the party has begun.

Ona finds out that she is absolutely terrible at drinking games, and loses in every way possible.

You find out that she is still just as touchy when she is drunk.

Your friends try not to comment on it, all having agreed upon yet another passive role in such an irritating situation. Their non-interference almost ceases by the time Ona climbs onto your lap, head turning as she whispers something into your drunk ears, making you laugh privately. In fact, someone has to hold someone else back before they shout at the two of you to make out or break up.

But it’s not really necessary, their prompting, because it hits a certain hour and… nothing else matters anymore.

Ona has been touching you the whole night and you have finally reached your limit.

Boyfriend be damned, you lead her to your bedroom.

She asks you many times if you still want this, and you cannot think of anything to say other than ‘yes’.

You’re not as drunk as she is, and you both know that, but everything feels so perfect and right.

When you wake up the next morning, your anger is more at yourself than the sleeping woman beside you, but she is an outward target for such a boiling emotion and it just makes things easier.

“Ona.” You shake her awake, not caring for her hangover. “Ona, I can’t believe we’ve done this.” She rubs her eyes, dazed and confused for a moment but coming to her senses soon enough. “I have a boyfriend, Ona, and… I don’t like you like that.”

It’s not true.

It’s really, really, really not true, but the fact that you have said it is enough for Ona to leave your room with the intention of never seeing you again.

She gets the train back to Barcelona, turning up at Lucy’s flat in floods of tears, and barrels straight into those strong arms with the intention of never mentioning what she has done.

…

You break up with your boyfriend a month later. Or rather, he breaks up with you, tired of being messed around, tired of your hesitation to fully commit.

The break-up is not the most upsetting thing you’ve been through, but your ego is a little bruised.

You try to make it look like you are having a great time in Milan, even though the agency has once again discarded your file and overlooked you for shoots you used to book in an instant. You try to seem like things aren’t falling apart, but it’s of no use when your father calls you and tells you that your mother is ill.

It isn’t cancer but it’s similar, and you know that you need to come home.

You pack your bags and leave without a second thought, because maybe Madrid was far enough. Maybe there is a reason Ona signed for her home club again and most of your friends still live relatively close to their parents.

Maybe you are not meant to be separated from those you love, because running away is futile if you are always going to end up together again.

In Barcelona, a modelling agency eagerly draws up a contract with you. Although you are from there, your career being based in Milan previously creates an international allure about you (or so they say), and you are assured that work is going to rush towards you as though someone has just knocked down a dam.

Your job is secured, your mother begins treatment, but there is something you cannot shake off.

It hurts to think of Ona, to think of how you left things, but it helps, too. Seeing her face in your mind is comforting. You hear her voice as you drift off to sleep, and you let it soothe you in your dreams.

“Ona has a girlfriend,” her mother tells you when you next visit them. Her frown is unexpected because all she has ever wanted is for her children to be happy and loved. “It’s not right, it doesn’t feel right.” You begin to shrug your shoulders and crawl into your shell, but she interrupts your thought process; “I think you should go see her.”

“Why?”

The woman rolls her eyes. “Just do what I say.”

You nod because she is so scarily sure about it, and you… It’s hard to believe, but you call Ona.

She picks up.

“I was sorry to hear about your mum.”

“Don’t worry. She’s fine.”

“Are you back at home?”

“Yeah, I am.” You pause. “Well, not quite. I’m living in Barcelona.”

Something fizzes in the air; pops, crackles.

“Need me to show you around the city?”

And it’s Ona, so how could you say no?

…

Your visit goes very well.

She takes you out to dinner and shows you around her neighbourhood. She introduces you when she runs into people she knows, and she is insistent about dragging you to her football match on the weekend.

Everything is seemingly forgiven and Ona is intent on integrating you back into her life.

She wants you to feel at home, though she knows you should already, and she wants to lessen the stress of hospital appointments and death and, if not death, then a difficult recovery.

You are sitting in her apartment – now devoid of all signs of Lucy – on her comfortable sofa, watching something together after a day of walking around and sealing up the cracks that formed in Andorra.

Sitting leads into cuddling and then into wandering hands that eagerly roam underneath layers of fabric.

Ona’s breath hitches as you brush the hard lines of her abs, your hands particularly drawn to them and just how strong she has become. “You must have only felt them on men,” she offers as an explanation. “How many have you slept with in comparison to–?”

And your hands stop.

“Sorry,” Ona mumbles, seemingly upset at her outburst. “I’m just curious. I can’t work you out.” She can’t quite look you in the eye, mainly due to the logistics of your position, but she isn’t sure she wants to see the truth attached to her statement.

You question if that’s a good thing, the fact she needs to ask; the fact that she has no choice but to communicate. It was going to happen sooner or later. “A few,” is what you settle on. Ona leaves it at that, carefully pulling the hair tie from your plait, unravelling it with one hand as the other rests against your stomach in an embrace. You smile. “You’re not going to ask who?”

Her fingers stop for a moment. “No.” She speaks so quietly, her voice almost a whisper in your ear. “I don’t care about them.” You relax into her more, feeling her against your back, feeling the softness of the blanket against your feet as it hangs at the edge of the sofa.

“Who do you care about, then?”

“You.”

Carefully, both her hands hold your hips and she sits you up, smiling as she does. You tell her she’s showing off, she replies that you are always showing off. To that, you brush those hands from your sides and lean down to kiss her, more decidedly for once; more in control. It’s a surprising feeling for both of you, the forcefulness. Urgency. Not unfamiliar, but unexpected for this time on this day.

The last time you kissed Ona, you had a boyfriend.

Your mouth goes to her neck as soon as she decides that she wants her hands back on your hips, pushing you down into her lap. It’s now a competition, you think. She’s quickly coming completely undone by your kissing and biting, but you are not ignoring the feeling as she makes you grind down, makes you need that friction. “Fuck,” you moan in her ear. She grips you tighter.

You start to pull off her shirt having had enough of the grey between you, asking if it’s okay, if she’s sure she isn’t too tired. Her reply is, “take it off, god,” and then the removal of your clothes that get thrown just shy of the wine glasses set out on her coffee table. Leggings aren’t the most practical for impromptu sex, but she’s quick and smooth and someone who has definitely done that before.

With your bare chest on display and almost nothing between Ona and you, she lifts you up for a moment with the intention of flipping the two of you, getting you on your back. You pause for a moment, trying to decide if she’s doing it because she wants to or because she thinks that’s the only way to do it, but her hands are moving now, up your sides, round the front of your chest and you relax. She laughs quietly, amused, because the tension dissipates, dissolving like sweet, sweet sugar in hot coffee as soon as your legs wrap around her back.

Ona asks before she does it, picking you up and laying you back down without needing to part her lips from your own. You watch her as she sits up, body in between your thighs. “You’re going to just stay there?” She shakes her head. “I can top,” you tease, a stark contrast from how it was the last time you did this. Ona doesn’t like being told she can’t do something. However indirectly.

“Yeah?” You nod, biting the smirk out of your lips. “I don’t care.”

You are in the process of rolling your eyes when her cocky mouth is put to good use. Your underwear was taken off at some point earlier — you hadn’t realised. Ona’s head moves between your legs, up and down, your hand that isn’t holding onto the sofa in her hair, the soft waves lacing between your fingers.

She’s good at it; thorough, practised. Her tongue circles your clit for a moment before dipping into your entrance. Something about the cockiness of her movements, her tongue, her hand rubbing between her own legs, makes everything more surreal, more blissful. She moans softly, lips kissing their way up your body, hands no longer focused on herself. Instead, they take the place of her mouth, two fingers inside you as quickly as it takes for her to ask if you are okay to carry on. Your reply (“yes”) is cut off quickly by her mouth on yours, tongue swiping at your bottom lip in another question of permission. You can taste yourself on her.

At her command, you sit up, letting her pull you back onto her lap as she sucks at your neck. “Don’t leave any marks,” you warn as her teeth pull a whimper from your supposed stoicness. “I don’t want the makeup artists asking questions.” It comes out too late, because you feel her teeth graze your collarbone quickly, not painful, no, but something that feels so, so good. “Ona.” She sighs in disappointment and adjusts where you are in her lap, so your legs are either side of her thigh.

You find yourself rocking slowly, letting her savour your breasts between her hands and her mouth. She whispers that she wants to see you come, that you don’t need to hold back – not with her, not ever – so you start grinding down, harder, faster. Her hands drop back to your hips, guiding your movements, forcing you to slow down when she feels everything building up. Each time, you let out a “fuck” and attempt to go against her grip to get that friction. “Not just yet,” she mutters, no longer touching you anywhere other than where her hands meet your hips and her thigh presses between your legs.

“Fuck off, Ona,” you breathe, frustrated. “When, then?”

She slows the pace even more. “Can you last a little longer?” You look at her face, brushing away the strands of hair that have fallen over her eyes, ghosting your fingers along her cheek, running your thumb along her lips. She smiles again, eyes creasing slightly.

As her hands drop to cup your face, you say, “you’re beautiful.”

Ona blushes.

You look down at her exposed cleavage, nipples pebbled against the sports bra that is unusually low-cut. It might border on intense staring as you begin to grind against her with the intention of actually getting off now. She laughs, saying her eyes are higher up than that, but going back to her trail of kisses along your jaw nevertheless.

For what seems like longer than a few seconds, the build up finally stops, the tower toppling over in a rush of pleasure. Ona’s hands move your hips as your head drops to rest on her shoulder. She talks you through it, telling you that you look so pretty, telling you that she’s so turned on.

And that’s when she whispers it.

It has taken years to get to this moment, many of them filled with unnecessary suffering.

It has taken years but it does not matter.

Ona tells you that she loves you and that is when you have finally come home.

#woso x reader #woso #randombush3 #barca femeni #woso imagines #ona batlle x reader #ona batlle #ona batlle smut

280 notes · View notes

rubyreduji · 1 year

Text

reading and doing — ljh

summary: jihoon catches you reading fanfic about him

tags: smut (minors dni!), gn!reader, idol!jihoon, pre-established relationship, lowkey crack warnings: badly written dirty talk, small dick jihoon <3, explicit unprotected sex, dom(ish) jihoon, choking, restraint for a sec, spit used as lube, fingering, rough sex, fingers in mouth, creampie wc: 2.3k an: a meta ass fanfic. i tried to keep it gn so pls don’t mention the use of certain words okay bye

Woozi thrusts his thick, large juicy cock into your soaking wet pussy and you squeal in delight.

A giggle escapes from your throat as you read the sentence. You will never not be amused by how people like to describe Jihoon’s dick in their writing.

“What’s so funny over there?” Jihoon asks as he turns his desk chair to look at you where you sit on his studio couch.

“Oh nothing,” you tell him, a small grin still plastered on your face.

Jihoon knows better than that and stands up and walks over to you. Before you can react Jihoon plucks your phone out of your hand and looks at what you were reading. A look of confusion mixed with disgust appears on his face.

“What is this?”

You snatch your phone back from him. “Fanfiction. About you specifically.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means Carats write stories about you, usually about you and them being a couple. The stuff I read is mostly sex stories, but some of the slice of life stuff is cute too,” you explain with a shrug.

“Sex stories?!” Jihoon now looks more worried than anything else.

“Yeah, they’re kinda funny. Everyone thinks you have a big dick.” You know your boyfriend isn’t insecure about his size, whether it’s his height or…other parts of him, but you still like to playfully tease him every once in a while.

“I don’t know why the Carats would want to write something like that.”

“It lets them be delusional about being with you, let them have it Jihoonie.”

“It sounds like something Mingyu would like. You know how he is about fan interactions.”

“Oh there’s a lot for Mingyu!” You tell Jihoon. “I don’t read them though of course, I only read yours.”

“That I also don’t get. Why even read them when you have the real thing.”

“Because it’s fun! I like to see how people characterize you. The one I’m reading is just for shits and giggles, but some of them are actually good. Here.” You scroll on your phone until you find your folder of saved fics and pull up one of your favorites.

Jihoon takes your phone from you and reads a couple of lines before scrunching up his face and shaking his head. “I still don’t get it. You can’t actually find stuff like this hot.”

“I don’t know, it kind of is. I know you better than anyone else so I can just put you in those situations. It’s fun. I read them when you’re away on tour.”

This gets another dramatic look out of Jihoon. “You do not.”

“I miss you okay! And you’re always busy so I just go to the next best thing. If it makes you feel better sometimes I’ll also put on Ruby when I’m masturbating and just listen to that to get off.”

“Okay and now this conversation has taken a whole new turn.”

You giggle. “C’mon Hoonie, just read this with me. It’ll be fun! Maybe you’ll even find you like them.”

“I’m not sure how I’ll find enjoyment in reading what someone else has written about me.”

“You need to take a break anyways, please!” You give him your best puppy dog eyes and Jihoon glares at you but sits down on the couch.

“I don’t even know why I’m doing this,” he grumbles.

“Because you love me. And you’re secretly curious.”

Jihoon moves so your body is between his legs, your back leaning against his front. His head rests on your shoulder as you hold the phone up to read the fic.

“This is technically a few chapters into a series but I really enjoy the smut so if the plot doesn’t make sense, don’t mind it.”

“Y/N this ridiculous-”

“Shhh, just read.”

Jihoon listens to you and you can tell he is actually reading the fic from the small grunts he lets out in reaction to the story. There’s a bit of plot at the start before it gets into the smut and Jihoon stops you at a moment when you can scroll to it.

“Do people really like this? They want to see me in these situations?”

“Oh come on Jihoon you know what the fans think of you. You can’t be totally oblivious. You read your comments and I know you have a burner Twitter.”

Jihoon doesn’t have a rebuttal for that and you smile knowing you’re right.

“Y/N I really do have work I need to-”

“Wait no, this is the good part.” You lean all of your body weight on Jihoon so he can’t get up, even though you know realistically he’s strong enough to displace you if he really wanted to. Jihoon just huffs and allows you to keep him hostage.

You try not to giggle as you read the smut, especially because you can tell Jihoon is invested. The smut in the fanfic that you picked isn’t anywhere near how Jihoon actually acts in bed and you wish you could see his face to see if he’s either intrigued or disgusted.

“Do people actually think I’m this mean?” Jihoon finally says and you laugh.

“Some people. You can be kinda mean sometimes. I think on camera you come off as standoffish,” you say. “But a lot of people think you’re sweet too. Also people are just kinky like that and enjoy this stuff.”

“Do you? You know I’m nothing like this.”

“I think you’re perfect the way you are. Don’t think me reading this stuff is me actually wanting you to be like this, I just think it’s fun to picture you in different scenarios. I mean, if people wrote smut about me would you want to read it?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it, because that’s weird to think about,” Jihoon grunts.

“Getting defensive there Hoonie?”

“Just shut up and go back to reading,” Jihoon grumbles.

“Oh you want to go back to reading? So you like it?”

“I just want you to shut up.”

You do shut up, but only because you want Jihoon to continue reading.

The fic is getting to your favorite part when things start to get really intense. You have to give props to the writer for really going in. You know that you would never be able to find such…colorful language to use to describe the things you and Jihoon get up to.

You can feel Jihoon shift behind you. A small smirk spreads on your face when you feel the smallest bit of bulge press into your lower back. Jihoon likes this.

“You okay back there Jihoonie?” You wiggle your hips a bit and Jihoon lets out a huff that you’re pretty sure is hiding a moan. “Enjoying this?”

“No.” His voice sounds tense and he answered a little too quickly to not be suspicious.

“It’s okay if you do Ji. It’s a bit of an ego boost isn’t it? Knowing all these people find you’re hot. I know this fic is particularly well liked, it has nearly three thousand interactions on it, and then all of the people who have read it without interacting. Do you like that? Three thousand people want to fuck you Hoonie.”

“I-I don’t-”

“Even if you don’t find that hot, isn’t the actual story kind of sexy? Just imagine it’s you and me in this scenario. Don’t you wanna be tangled up together as you fuck my brains out?”

“Y/N,” Jihoon whines. “Stop.”

“Stop? Stop what? Teasing you? No, I think you like it, just like how you liked the fanfic. Doesn’t it sound fun? Don’t you wanna do mean things to me while telling me how pretty I am?”

“Th-”

“Admit it baby, you like thinking about putting your big, fat cock into me.” You know you’re taking a gamble with your choice of words but it seems to work because Jihoon finally breaks.

You feel Jihoon’s hand come up around your neck and slam your body back into his. “Maybe I do.” His mouth is right next to your ear and you have to admit you do let out a shudder. “You want me to do mean things to you?”

“I think you want to do mean things to me.”

“Maybe I do, what then?”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

That’s all Jihoon needs to flip you both over, position himself over you. You definitely were not expecting to awaken a new kink in Jihoon when you told him to read the fic with you, but you’re definitely not complaining.

Jihoon keeps his loose grip around the base of your neck as he leans down to lock his lips with yours. The kiss is harsh and hurried and it doesn’t take long for Jihoon to stick his tongue in your mouth. He licks at your mouth and you arch your body into his.

His body rests between your legs and you can feel him grind down against you, his dick already fully hard. Jihoon’s mouth pops off of yours with a loud smacking sound. His hand moves off of your neck and trails down your body before it makes it to the hem of your shirt. He pushes his hand up under it, his fingertips making contact with the warm skin of your stomach.

He rubs his palm over your waist before moving higher to grope at your chest. His finger flicks over your nipple and you moan. Jihoon chuckles at this.

“Clothes off,” he growls as he pulls away from you. You quickly comply, stripping down to nothing as Jihoon does this same.

His cock is already slick with pre-cum at the tip and you have the urge to get on your knees and suck him off. Jihoon doesn’t allow this though, as he pushes you back onto the couch. You’re definitely worked up yourself by now and Jihoon can tell.

“Needy little thing, aren’t you?”

“You’re one to talk,” you bit back.

“Ah, but I’m the one in control here.” Jihoon grabs your wrists and pins them above your head. “Aren’t I?”

“Hoon-ah, please,” you beg.

“Please what?”

“Please fuck me.”

Jihoon grins. “Glady.”

Jihoon lets go of your hands and brings his fingers up to his lips. You watch as he spits on the digits before moving them down to play with your entrance. You buck your hips into his hand and Jihoon uses his other hand to push them back down.

After what feels like an eternity of teasing Jihoon finally pushes one finger into you and you let out a mewl. Jihoon pumps it in and out of you until you start to loosen up and then he shoves another one into you. He continues to do this over again until you’re finally adequately opened up.

“Ready for me?”

You nod and Jihoon lines his cock up to you and pushes in. It’s a comfortable, familiar feeling as Jihoon starts to rock his hips into you. Jihoon is buried balls deep into you when he grabs your leg and hikes up over his shoulder.

Whereas Jihoon is usually soft and slow with you, he’s now fast and hard as he slams his cock into you deeper and deeper. Jihoon has always been an adequate lover, but now you get what people mean by it’s not the size but how it’s used.

Jihoon locks one of his hands around your thigh, digging his fingertips into the fat there. You’re sure you’re going to bruise later, but you don’t care right now. His other hand reaches down and cups your jaw. His thumb swipe over your lower lip before pressing down.

“You right, you do look pretty like this,” Jihoon smirks down at you. This thumb presses harder into your bottom lip until Jihoon finally pushes it all the way into your mouth, pushing down on your tongue. “Next time I’m going to tie you up and make you choke on my cock.”

You whine around Jihoon’s thumb at the image. It’s a good thing Jihoon is blocking you from saying anything because you’re sure if you tried it would just be utter nonsense.

With the way Jihoon is cramming up your g-spot you know you’re not going to last much longer. Luckily it seems like Jihoon is close as well from the concentration displayed on his face.

“Fuck, gonna cum inside, yeah?” You just nod the best you can.

You’re expecting Jihoon to cum first, but your climax creeps up on you and suddenly your legs are shaking as your back arches up off the couch. Your eyes roll back into your head as you let out a wanton moan.

Seeing you fucked out thorougly makes Jihoon spill over the edge finally, his warm cum spilling into you. He stays in you for a moment to catch his breath. He leans down to press kisses to your bare shoulder, nipping at the skin as he does.

Once you two finally have recovered, Jihoon slowly pulls out of his. You can feel his cum slide out of you as he does and it makes you whimper a bit.

“You were so good for me,” Jihoon coos.

“So you liked it?” You grin at him.

He defeatedly nods. “Yeah, yeah I did.”

“Yay! See Hoonie, look at all the doors this has opened. Maybe we should read more fanfiction together.”

“No, nope. We discovered this one thing, no more.” With that Jihoon gets up to go get you some water and a rag to clean up with.

Despite his final protests, you still feel victorious as you grab your phone and scroll down to the comments of the fic you two were reading.

You’re not going to understand this, but thank you SO MUCH for writing this fic, you’re the best <3

taglist: @pandorashbox @leejihoonownsmyheart @soonhoonietrash @chaimi-yuta @embrace-themagic @kayleeshinee @joonsytip @heyxxitsxxtay @synthetickitsune @chwecardcaptor @candidupped @dreamhannies @d0nghyck @niyizh @baldi-2 @enhacolor @noniestars @heavenly-mobo @sunnyteume @debsworld23 @m1nghaos @just-here-to-read-01 @blxckswxnxge @17kwans @jeanjacketjesus @x-veex @namjoonbaby @ovai @belladaises @todorokiskitten @jihoonliker @valentxi @1694 @niktwazny303 @brxzilianbaby @moshiyuron @im-gemmy @honeylovemoon @wonchansbrooklynn @opwolfe @luvthatleader-nim @cbgisland @lorde-oftherings @hoeforcheol @hotricewoozi @prpldahy @nox-writes @wujihoons @0717luv @yeosayang @marzmeltdown @calvinkleinhoon

join my taglist: here!

905 notes · View notes

deanscherrypie69 · 2 months

Text

You left without saying goodbye |DW.|

♡Dean Winchester X Female Reader♡

♡Warnings: Mentions of Y/n picking up an alcohol addiction, no use of Y/n. (Maybe like twice) Langue and mentions of blood. 18+ pls minors DNI!!!!!♡ please do not post my fics anywhere else expect tumblr, you have been warned! Also most of this was written on my phone 😭

♡Feedback is appreciated! Comments and reblogs are appreciated!!!!♡

My inbox is open!

Dividers by: @cafekitsune !!!

A/N thank yall sm for the love and support on the first part of the fic! It means the world to me!!! And as yall requested. Part two! Pls don’t hate me it’s a long one so buckle up✋🏽🥲

Also Happy bday to Jensen!!! Love you v much!!🤠🤎

♡Part one♡

It had been three moths since that night with Dean, it had played over and over again in your mind when you went to sleep every night.

You swore you could feel his lips on yours, or the sounds he made when he was moving in and out of your body.

You hated it so much, you hated him. With his stupid eyes his pink lips you hated him.

But you took all of that rage out on, the monsters you’d hunt. Shooting them stabbing them. Anything you could think of.

You had come back from a bad werewolf hunt with Bobby, one of the wolfs clawed your abdomen trying to save Bobby.

So here you were nursing a bottle of whiskey as the old man stitched you up.

Oh yea and you forgot to mention you kind picked up a drinking habit over the last few months.

“Do you have a deal death with or something?” The old man asks as he threads your skink back together.

“No.” You hiss as he pulls the thread in and out of you.

“You’re not a very good lair.” He says grabbing the scissors to cut the string.

You raise your brow, “you aren’t a very good nurse either.” You say standing up. You grab stomach with a groan as you walk to the kitchen.

Bobby watches you struggle to walk away. He begins to clean the blood off his hands with a towel.

Bobby never bought it up because it was never any of his business. But. He cared about you a lot. You were like his daughter he’d never had have.

That day when he picked you up from the hotel. There was something wrong. You hadn't said anything to him about it since then. It has been three months and Bobby had grown curious.

Bobby takes a sigh and sits in his chair in front of his desk.

“What happened that I had to drive almost three hours out to pick you up from a motel?”

Bobby saw your body stiffen with the questions, he knew he had struck a nerve.

You grown and begin to walk up stairs, not wanting to answer his questions, “Good night Bobby.” You groan.

Bobby rolls his eyes “damn kid.”

This had been the worst sleep of your life by far. You couldn’t sleep you were up all night tossing and turning. You groan as you flick the covers off of your body.

You look over at the time on your alarm clock, it was almost 12 in the afternoon.

You groan and begin to rummage through your pile of clean clothes you had just washed.

“Please tell me you have coffee on and some painkillers.” You groan grabbing your stomach as you walk down the stairs

“I really could use some.” You say rubbing your eyes.

When Bobby didn’t say anything you remove your hands away from your eyes. And when you opened them you did not expect to see someone you haven’t seen in three months.

“Dean?” Your voice was barely above a whisper. You were angry.

You turn to the old man who was sitting across from him, “What the hell is he doing here?” You question, not looking over in Deans' direction.

“He’s here because he got a weird call, someone pretending to be Sam.” He says “just wanted to know if we got the call that’s all.”

You roll your eyes and clench your stomach, you don’t even look his way, he had left you after sharing an intimate moment, he left you vulnerable.

You scoff and walk over to the coffee pot, you poor yourself a cup, Bobby looks between you and Dean.

Dean had his eyes glued to your back, waiting for you to turn around and look at him. But you didn’t. He watched as you grab the painkillers from the top cabinet with a groan.

“I’ll be upstairs.” You mumble.

Bobby nods as he watches you carefully disappear upstairs.

“Are you gonna talk about it?” Bobby questions.

Dean huffs and leans back “nothing to talk about, just came here to see if you got that call that's all.”

Bobby let’s out a chuckle. “You came here to see if she was here.”

Bobby states.

Dean rolls his eyes. “No i didn’t,” Dean argues.

“Bullshit, something happened between you too.” Bobby says looking at the green eyed man.

Dean nods his head “it did but it was a mistake, we both were missing Sam.” Dean rubs a hand down his face.

Bobby cuts Dean off “Does she know that?” Bobby questions. “That girl has had a death wish for three months. I made her stop hunting, I don't know if you noticed, she has a pretty bad injury."

“Whatever you did you need too clear it up.” Bobby says.

Dean stands up from his chair “There’s nothing to clear cause nothing happened, it didn’t mean anything, not to me anyway.” Dean grabs his jacket.

Before Dean reached the front door he saw you at the bottom of the stairs, with your bloodied bandages that you had just switched out with new ones. In your hands

He didn’t miss the way the tears in your eyes welded up. He give you a small smile the exits the house,

“How much did you hear.”

You swallow hard, “Enough” you walk into the kitchen and shove the bandages in the trash. And once again you had disappeared up the stairs.

It has been three days since Dean had come. Bobby wasn't home, he hasn’t been home for a few days he was cleaning up a ghoul hunt in Ohio. You were left alone reading lore books. About monsters.

Your wound on your abdomen, still hurt like hell, you felt like it was keeping you from hunting and you hated it.

You were bought out of your thoughts when there was a frantic knock at the door, you carefully get up from your spot and make your way to the front door.

“Who is it” you say.

“Y/n? It’s Sam open the door.”

You raise your eyebrows.

“Thats impossible you’re in hell.”

You hear a loud sigh coming from the door, you watch as the bottom lock jiggles and then the door opens, it opens up enough to see the tall hunter standing in the door way.

“Sam?”

He rolls his eyes and squeezes past you, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everybody.” He huffs closing the door behind him

“How.” You watch as the tall man makes his way through the house as if he was looking for someone? “Where’s Bobby?”

“Ghoul hunt.” You say watching him,

“Dean? Did he go with Bobby?”

You shake your head ‘no”

“I haven’t talked to him not really, not since-“

Sam nods at your words

“How did you-“ you point

Sam shrugs “I don’t know.” He chuckles. Sam stops and looks at you. “Give me your phone.” He says

You raise your eyebrows in confusion, reaching into your back pocket you fish out your phone, handing it to the tall man.

Sam smiles he clicks the screen a few times.

You sigh and walk past him, into the kitchen.

You listen as Sam mumbles a quick 'bye' into the phone.

Sam walks back to you handing you your phone, "Who'd you call?" You hum tucking your phone back into your pocket.

You had already knew the answer to that question. You didn’t even know why you asked.

Sam reaches beside you and opens the fridge, he reaches in and grabs two beers.

"Dean." He says handing you the bottle.

You don't say anything expect, you pop the top off and throw it into the sink. Sam sighs as he watches you knock back the beer in a few sips.

"Did something happen between you guys, when i called he thought it was you." Sam says.

You set the empty bottle down. "It did, but according to him, it didn't mean anything." You state. You take a shaky breath, "He left me, without saying goodbye Sam. I don't even know where he's been for the last three months."

Sam notices a tear slide down your cheek, "He's been playing house, with Lisa. Seems like when shit hits the fan he keeps going back to her."

"What?" Your voice was shaky. You don't remember anyone in Dean's life named Lisa. But then you rack through your brain.

"The dark-haired lady? With that kid named Ben?"

Sam nods.

You remembered them both, You three were working on a case when Dean had knocked at the door, and she had answered, it was her son's birthday.

"He was in love with her?" You question. Sam nods. "I guess he still is."

You sigh, you wondered if you were Dean's second option.

'I'm going to- take a nap." You say looking down at your watch.

Sam nods and rubs the small of your back,

Walking into the living room, you had grabbed a blanket that was. Draped over the back of an empty chair, you always liked sleeping on the cot Bobby had by the window, it was peaceful hearing the birds chirping, pulling the blanket up you quickly fall asleep.

it had felt like you were sleeping forever but that was until you felt someone shaking you.

Opening your eyes you see Sam, "Hey.” he says, “Bobby called, and told me you needed your bandages switched out."

You yawn and rub your eyes. Sam helps you sit up. You lift up your shirt with a wince.

He grabs the bandages that had been on Bobby's desk.

Sam pulls a chair up.

You had been hardly awake for that long when you heard the side door open. "Hey." Sam says not even looking in that direction, he had been placing the new bandages on you.

You knew who it was, you had been hoping. That he wouldn't had come tonight you didn't want to have to face him.

You watch and he walks in the room where you and Sam where, his eyes glued on you, he had a fresh beer in his hand.

Sam pats your leg motioning you pull down your shirt. "Thanks." You mumble. Sam smiles at you, he walks into the kitchen past Dean to wash his hands.

You pull the blanket back over your body.

Dean watches you stare out the window, it had remined him of that night- before he left.

He sits in the chair that Sam was just in. His beer resting between his legs. "Please go." You sniffle not wanting to look at him.

When Dean didn’t listen you turn to look at him, your breathing was harsh. You were mad.

The anger that you had built up for the past few months was just begging to come out.

“So Lisa huh?”

Dean opens and closes his mouth.

“Did you decide to go be with her before or after you fucked me!” You spat, throwing the blanket off your body you sit on the edge of the bed.

Your chest heaving up and down.

When Dean didn’t say anything you continue. “You left me Dean, you didn’t call you didn’t text, for all I could’ve know you could’ve died. But no you were playing house with some whore.” You spat

Dean licks his lips, “don’t talk about her like that.” He grumbles

You roll your eye, I’ll talk about her however I goddamn please.”

You and Dean stare at each other.

“Was it a mistake Dean?” You question.

Dean blinks a few times. He had forgotten you heard his and Bobby’s conversation.

Dean shakes his head, he had convinced himself it was a mistake the day he left you and went to Lisa.

But he knew deep down it wasn’t. If it was he wouldn’t have been the first one to kiss you.

“No, I thought about you everyday for three months when I left.” Dean was telling the truth weather or jot you decided to believe it or not.

He dreamed about you daily. He could still smell your perfume. He could hear you little moans. When he hit that sweet spot inside of you.

He didn’t know why he left he was scared.

Scared that maybe you would’ve regretted it too.

But it turns out, you were far from thinking that.

You scoff, “Bullshit.” You spat. “I was your second option Dean. You got your fix and left me. I’m nothing to you, and I never will be.”

Tears stream down your face, Wiping your hands doen your face you get up from your spot on the cot. “You Sam and Bobby don’t need me,” you say grabbing your jacket. You reach into on of the draws that Bobby have in the kitchen, it had sets of car keys in it.

You take a random one and walk out the door.

Dean chases after you.

“Y/n stop!” Dean shouts.

You had stopped in your tracks, you turn around to face Dean.

“I’m leaving Dean You can’t stop me.” You say.

You hit the car alarm on the key fob and one of the cars that were sitting in the lot begin to light up. Turning the alarm off you hop into the car.

Dean watches as you pull away in the car.

Something in the back of Dean’s mind told him to stop you. He wanted just to talk it over with you maybe. Just maybe it could have a different outcome.

It was just one big misunderstanding.

He watches as you pull out of the driveway.

Your car begins to move slowly. It was like you wanted to come back. But you kept driving.

Until. Another car coming from the opposite direction, came speeding down.

You tried to get out of the way but it was too late.

Dean watches as the car rams into yours with full speed.

“Y/n!” Dean shouts as he begins to run.

Dean ran, it felt like forever. When he reached the car you were in he sees your body hunched over. There was blood all over you face it was coming out of your ears and nose.

The wound on your stomach was open, there was so much blood, Dean had seen nothing like it.

This was not happening hew knew he should’ve stopped you. He should’ve stopped you.

He scoops your body up in his arms. He looks down at your face, your eyes begin to flutter open.

“I’m sorry-“ was all you say before it all went black.

“I’m gonna get you help sweetheart, you ain’t leaving me.” Dean says putting you in the back of the impala.

But Dean sees your eyes closed.

He was not going to let you die, not in his watch.

Fic tags: @emilyroxy @preciouscupcake @aylacavebear @suckitands33 @nescavaneck @rockstargal @star-yawnznn @constancelynn @deangirl96 @sacrosankta @tomorrowseverything @brightlilith

Thank you for all of the support!! Love you all!!!

#dean winchester x reader #dean winchester angst #dean winchester fanfiction #dean x you #dean winchester fic #supernatural dean #dean x reader #dean winchester #sam and dean #dean winchester comfort #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester x you #dean winchester x female!reader #supernatural fic #spn one shot #spn imagine #spn fanfic

232 notes · View notes

ggwritesstuff · 2 years

Note

heyyy i have this request for like 1970 elvis or something like that, or basically any one you feel like writing for … can you do a fic where elvis and the reader are together and right before a show they’re basically like begging for him but he has to go on and the reader gets upset and frustrated and so they let someone flirt with them in the crowd during the show and they can tell he saw them bc he started acting really different and sarcastic on stage and then afterwards he gets really jealous and basically drags you to his car on the way back home and while you’re in the car he does like one thing like maybe getting really close to them in the car with like a rough, angry voice and the reader has an orgasm and he acts differently than you’ve ever seen him and when you get home he does like everything to you bc he knows he’s the only one who can ever truly please you???

Safety.

pairing: elvis x reader

warnings: absolute filth. smut. 18+ mdni. reader is a major brat. elvis has a jealousy kink problem. some degradation. elvis is a major tease. mild fem masturbation. some face fucking. creampie lol. a little bit of elvis being in his feelings. one tiny mention of infidelity. prob missing some so as always please read at your own discretion <3

a/n: 70s elvis does absolutely sinful things to me. i am a whore. thank u anon. i am sweating. i am feral. this is very long. like i said my smuts are always slow burns for some reason lol. i think this is the filthiest thing i have ever written. it got a bit fluffy at the end.

a/n part 2: i don’t proofread or else i’ll delete everything and never write again lol enjoy and pls excuse any errors. feedback is always encouraged, and i hope i did your idea justice anon <3

You felt pathetic.

You were pathetic.

But you couldn’t help it. He just had this affect on you that made you feel like a bitch in heat.

You basically had him pinned against the door of his dressing room, your legs wrapped around his torso and holding on for dear life while your face was nuzzled into the crook of his neck. The angle made it so easy to reach that one spot on his neck you knew he couldn’t resist giving into.

“E.P., five minutes ‘til curtain, let’s move.” A stage hand knocked on the door.

“Darlin’ please, I gotta go, alright?” Elvis pried you off of him, setting you back on your feet. “I love how much you want me, baby, but I can’t be goin’ out there as hard as a rock and end up messing another suit.” He joked, alluding to the incident of his comeback special.

“Fine, go.” You huffed, your sexual frustration seemed to get the better of you in the moment.

“Don’t be catchin’ an attitude with me. I’ll take care of you later, I promise.” He said sternly, cupping your cheek with his hand to pull you in for a quick kiss before running out of the room, only a minute to spare until the show began.

You were pissed. You know you shouldn’t have been, but you couldn’t help it. He always left you such a desperate mess for him, you were starting to think he got off on denying you.

His dramatic introduction echoed throughout the area. You turned to the mirror behind you to fix yourself up before you headed out to watch him perform. You stopped at the bar for a drink before going to your table, lord knew you needed one to keep your composure for the next hour.

Vodka soda in hand, you made your way to your seat to join the rest of the Memphis Mafia. You watched from the crowd as the man you adored moved in ways that created thoughts you were sure would bar you from the gates of heaven. You were entirely hypnotized by him.

He knew damn well what he was doing to you, too. He glanced in your direction, locking eyes with you as he let out such an obscene grunt that gave you flashbacks to the night before. You felt a flutter between your thighs as you recalled those events.

It’s like you both were playing a game of chicken, waiting to see who would snap first.

Your arousal began to feel overwhelming, your cheeks burned up when you felt yourself clenching around nothing. You stood from your seat on weak, shaky legs and made your way back to the bar where it was a bit less humid. The bartender brought you another drink and you sat on the stool, turned around to continue watching Elvis on stage.

Suddenly, a tall figure appeared in your peripheral vision, taking a drink from the bartender. “How’s the show been?” He asked, subtly biting at his lower lip.

“Oh, it’s been good.” You said, not really paying him much mind.

“I’m Collin.” He extended his hand, inviting you for a handshake.

You were still so aroused by Elvis’s little torturous game that even a handshake from a man of average attractiveness set your nerves ablaze.

“Y/N, nice to meet you.” You looked up at him with innocent doe eyes, giving him the look that would have had Elvis bending you over the bar making you scream his name. You tried to push the thought out of your mind, focusing back on Collin.

You would never cheat on Elvis, though. This little back and forth with Collin was simply some harmless flirting. Just a little something to get Elvis riled up. You knew he was constantly scanning the room in search for you, you caught his eyes a handful of times in your conversation with Collin.

The night went on until the last song of Elvis’s set, his eyes were glued to you and Collin for the duration of it. You turned your head to meet his gaze, you’d never seen him as green with jealousy as he was in that moment. You decided it was time to head backstage before the song ended so you said goodnight to Collin, placing a hand on his broad shoulder as you walked away and practically having a staring contest with Elvis on stage. You already knew you were in for it tonight anyways.

You made your way backstage again, watching from the side as the curtain fell in front of Elvis. He rose from his kneeled stance and beelined right towards you.

“Let’s go.” He said sternly in your ear, his hand was placed on the small of your back, ushering you forward as he shouted a general goodnight to the crew. Security opened the back door for him and he lead you to the car, opening the door for you.

“What the hell was all that at the bar?” He asked as he climbed in. He was trying to keep his composure but you could see right through it. He was furious. You had him right where you wanted him. You shrugged in response as you tried to keep your lips from curling into a smirk, but he saw right through that.

“That’s how you want this to go tonight?” Elvis raised an eyebrow at you. “Y’know, baby, I was gonna go real easy on you tonight. I was gonna make love to you.” He placed a hand on your thigh, squeezing it harshly as he started the car. “But I don’t think that’s what you want. I mean, why would my angel go and act like a little slut if she didn’t want to be treated like one, right?”

You were already soaked when he swiftly shoved two long, calloused fingers in you. The sudden feeling of fullness caught you off guard, but it was more than welcomed. Your back arched away from the seat and a high pitched whine escaped your lips.

He chuckled at your reaction, curling his fingers inside you and turning you into putty in his hands. “Fuckin’ drenched. This for me or for the guy you were makin’ googly eyes with at the bar, huh?”

“All for y-you, El. Been soaked all night cause of you.” You admitted, clinging to the seat for stability as Elvis continued to work his fingers in you as he drove home, his other hand gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. He was pissed, and you couldn’t have been more turned on.

Elvis threw the car in park as soon as he pulled into the driveway. He stepped out and walked around to open your door because he’s still a gentleman despite his jealousy fueled rage and the ever tightening of his pants as his own arousal grew. Without words, he offered his hand to assist you in getting out of the car.

Once you were on your feet, he stopped you before you could walk inside. “Here’s how this is gonna go, darlin’. You’re gonna take those panties off and give ‘em to me. You’re gonna walk inside and I’m gonna take that cute little dress of yours, and you’re gonna go wait on the bed for me.” Elvis explained. You were a bit shocked by this level of dominance from him. He always had a bit of a dominant edge to him in the bedroom but this was different. It was exciting.

“Yes, sir.” You said quietly, biting on your lower lip.

“Panties now, please.” He demanded, holding his hand out as he waited for you to peel them off and place them in his hand. He toyed with the fabric between his fingers, feeling just how damp you had been all night. “What got you all wet and needy, princess?”

“Just watching you all night.” You breathed out as he ushered you in the house and unzipped your dress, letting it fall to the floor. Before you could go upstairs to wait for him like he said, he grabbed you by the waist and pulled you flush against him. He went in for your neck, and instead of the sensual kisses you were used to, you felt his teeth biting at the skin, letting your blood rise to the surface and coloring your skin, drawing a moan from you.

“Upstairs. I’ll come up when I come up. No touching.” He stated, calm yet still stern. A light smack on your ass nudged you upstairs.

Now upstairs and waiting like he said to, you debated with yourself on whether you wanted to be good for him or be a brat. You were still a bit annoyed with him for leaving you all hot and bothered before the show. That was enough to make up your mind. Brat it was.

With your mind now made, you got yourself comfy on your shared bed, legs spread wide as you disobeyed Elvis’s order not to touch yourself. You wanted to push his buttons a bit tonight, and you were desperate for any stimulation you could get. You trailed your fingers down to your core, gathering some of your wetness and gliding a finger around your clit. You almost could have came right there from how turned on you were. Quietly at first, whimpers tumbled from your lips, but your volume increased as your pleasure did.

Elvis’s footsteps were heavy coming up the staircase, you could hear him grumbling something under his breath until he reached the bedroom. “My god, you’re like a bitch in heat. Too damn turned on to keep your hands outta that pussy.” He scolded, you could only moan in response to his degrading words as you watched him remove the robe he had changed into after sending you upstairs. Standing only in his boxers, he made his way over to you on the bed, taking your hand away from your clit and prohibiting any further pleasure for the moment, ignoring your whining protests.

“Kneel on the floor, gonna put that mouth to good use.” He ordered, pulling his cock out from his boxers and giving it a few strokes while you assumed your position at his feet with your mouth open. “Look at you, such a good slut for me.” Elvis marveled at the sight beneath him, tangling his fingers in your hair as you took as much of him in your mouth as you could. “Fuckin’ shit.” He groaned out as the warmth of your mouth enveloped him as much as possible. With hollowed cheeks you continued to take him as deep as you can, gagging around his length when he hit the back of your throat.

“Hold on-“ He muttered, stilling your movements. You stared up at him with those doe eyes that drove him to the brink of insanity with his cock still in your mouth, running your tongue around whatever surface of skin you could. “Shit, doll- Lemme fuck your pretty face.” He managed to get out. You gave him a slight nod allowing him to use you as he pleases.

Just like that, he was animalistic. He used your hair as leverage as he mercilessly thrusted himself into your mouth, relishing the feeling when you would swallow around him. Strings of profanities left his plump lips before pulling out, his tip left your lips with a small pop. You whined at the loss, but he brought a hand to cup your cheek, gently stroking your face with the pad of his thumb and sucking on it when he ghosted it against your lips.

“C’mon, up on the bed.” Elvis offered his hand again to help you up from the floor. He sat you down on the silky soft bedsheets, resting his hand on your thigh once again. “Tell me something- you ever think about goin’ and finding another man?” He asked, laying you down gently.

“No, sir. Just want you.” You confessed, beginning to squeeze your thighs together for some sort of friction as your desperation continued to grow.

“Why is that, doll? You love me?” Elvis asked, sneaking his hand down to pry your legs apart, letting his fingers drag themselves through your folds and smirking to himself at the feeling of your wetness and the way you writhed under his touch. “Or is it cause you know ain’t no other man can make you this messy just barely touching you?”

Something about that question did something to you. He was right. He knew he was right. This man could play you like a fiddle without even touching you. “B-both.” You stuttered while Elvis indulged himself in toying with your pussy that was now unbelievably sensitive due to how aroused you were. You were already overstimulated, seemingly just by his mere presence.

“Tell me, mama. You tell me I’m the only one who could make you cum just by listening to me gruntin’ and groanin’ up on stage and I’ll give you the world.” He said sweetly, teasing his middle finger at your entrance before filling you with it and making you cry out.

His demeanor had softened compared to earlier, he was calmer, not as angry. But he was still jealous that you had given Collin more attention than you did to his show, and this was his way of getting the reassurance he craved. This was how he was finding the security he feared losing.

“The only one, Elvis, please.” You were begging for more at this point.

“That’s right, mama. ” He cooed in your ear, removing his fingers from you and positioning himself between your legs that were now shaking. Elvis lined himself up with your entrance, enjoying the sight and sound of you all strung out under him, all strung out for him, whimpering for him.

Without warning, he snapped his hips forward, plunging into you with a groan. You cried out as he filled you, hands instinctively flying to his back where your nails anchored themselves for stability as he rutted into you. His thrusts were desperate, it was almost as if he was trying to get even closer than just being inside you.

The last several hours you had spent so hungry for him were coming to a head, the coil in your belly had been wound up so tightly, you worried that he would have you cumming around him in less than two minutes.

“Don’t you ever go ‘round thinking you’ll get this feeling from another man.” Elvis said as he wrapped his hand around your throat with just enough pressure to dizzy you, filling you with ecstasy.

“All yours, El, I promise.” You panted while he fucked himself into you, muttering under his breath about his good little slut as he lost himself in between thrusts. His sweat dripped from his forehead and onto your chest, a slight sheen blanketed your breasts.

“That’s right, angel. All mine.” His thrusts turned sloppy as soon as he reached between your hot bodies to paw at your clit, you were squeezing his cock like a vice and he wasn’t sure he could last much longer.

He slowed his pace while he toyed with your clit, savoring the sensation of how you clenched up around him; it nearly sent shivers down his spine. The pressure and speed he applied to your clit combined with the way he was hitting that sweet spot within you with each stroke brought you right to the edge, verging on tumbling off at any moment now.

“l- fuck, I’m close-“ You managed to form the words, you could hardly recognize your own voice.

Elvis lifted his head from the crook of your neck for a moment. “Go ‘head, and cum for me, doll”. He allowed, increasing the speed of his thrusts again as he neared his own climax. “Cum for me like I’m the only one who can make you cum, cause that’s right, isn’t it?”

And oh god, did that do you in. His desire to be the only one for you. You clutched his strong arm as your orgasm tore through you; chanting his name like a prayer, like it was the only word in your vocabulary. Elvis was right behind you on that ledge, toppling over along with you. His hips stuttered in you as your walls contracted around him and he found his sweet, sweet release spilling inside you with a strangled moan. You rode your orgasms out together, his hips slowing as you squeezed around him, overstimulating him just a bit until he pulled out and collapsed next to you.

Your chests heaved in time, glistening with each others sweat as you caught your breath. Elvis regressed into a bit of a vulnerable state. “Don’t go pullin’ that shit again, darlin’. Can’t be letting my girl get swept away from me.” He mumbled into your skin as he nuzzled himself into your bare chest.

“I know, honey, I’m sorry.” You lovingly stroked his hair that was now laced with sweat. “You’ll always be the only one for me, I promise.” You reassured him with a kiss to his forehead. Elvis snaked his arm around your waist, beginning to drift off to asleep. You followed not far behind him, wrapped up in each other’s embrace.

This was safety. This was security.

#elvis presley #elvis x reader #elvis presley x reader #elvis presley fic #elvis fluff #elvis presley smut #elvis presley fluff #elvis 2022 #austin butler #austin!elvis x reader #austin butler x reader #austin butler smut #austin butler fluff #austin!elvis

1K notes · View notes

sublimecatgalaxy · 1 year

Text

♥️ Rafe Cameron Masterlist ♥️

This is a masterlist dedicated to things I've written about Rafe Cameron.

Check out my Prompt List and my Character List in my Masterpost which is pinned for more info on who I write for and some inspiration for requests.

Liability (Completed): masterlist

Read It and Weep: Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3

A Lot Worse:

Summary/Request: "Sarah and wheezie realizing rafes good mood is actually because of a new woman in his life?"

Third Wheel:

Summary/Request: "rafe cameron x reader??? PLEASE?? when wheezie third wheeling but she loves it bcs she can see her brother become so soft…

The Storm:

Summary/Request: "Rafe Cameron x tutor!reader? I know it’s been done a lot but it’s a really fun idea.

Answer It:

Summary/Request: "hey babe may i request a blurb\fic of Rafe x Pogue!reader where theyre secretely fucking and JJ calls her while theyre doing it and rafe tells her to pick it up and doesnt stop hile on the call"

Soothing Bruised Skin:

Summary/Request: "Daddy Rafe 🥰 with “come on, let’s get you cleaned up"

Need Help:

Summary/Request: "a little hurt/comfort with Rafe 🥺"

When and What:

Summary/Request: "could you do rafe x reader with a broken bone or something where they are just super loving and cute together !!!!"

Stupid Sometimes:

Summary/Request: "can you write one where she has a to patch rafe up after a fight and its an angst fluff typa thing i love you and your writing sm btw 💗"

Fussy:

Summary/Request: "any fluff or hurt/comfort related to my life rn would be appreciated ❤️ with our baby daddy Rafe of course 😃"

Shitty Nurse:

Summary/Request: "can I have rafe with a reader with a broken neck 🥹😭 for legal reasons 😭"

A Giant:

Summary/Request: "Can you write Rafe Cameron x a teenmom!reader? Whether it be his kid or not, I just wanna see what he would be like dating someone who has a kid and how awkward he'd be (cuz it's not like he has a very good role model to go off of lol)."

Only Place:

Summary/Request: "Could you do prompts 1 and 3? Maybe some angst??"

Top Heavy:

Summary/Request: "I need a part 2 for my fav fic (you know what I'm talking about hehe) with our baby rafe! id love it if maybe he's helping her with daily stuff, just being a big teddy bear and the banter."

Manipulator is Manipulated:

Summary/Request: "can you write an rafe x routledge!reader with a lot of angst? like the reader is trying to manipulate rafe in order to gain her trust, and somehow rafe is falling for her (and her lies) (nothing violent)."

Annoyance:

Summary/Request: "“I guess I didn’t realize I was such a nuisance.”"

Sass:

Summary/Request: "'I really don't like you.' - 'And I really don't believe you.' Friends to lovers."

Puppy Dog Eyes:

Summary/Request: "Rafe w/ broken neck reader again pls :) you can include these lines if you want to hehe or you can work your own creative magic!! ily"

Seafoam Green:

Summary/Request: "I would love this I just thought you would like to know that I’m not wearing any underwear right now. Do what you must with this information.’ With Rafe and kook!reader ❤️"

Lectured:

Summary/Request: "Argument/fighting + hidden injury- “whose blood is that?”

Going Down:

Summary/Request: "Rafe Cameron smut where he's literally just going down on her and absolutely loving it? I feel like this guy would definitely do it every chance he could humanly do it."

You Up?:

Summary/Request: "Rafe Cameron smut friends with benefits? Super playful vibes and stuff but hard core smut LOL"

Ups and Downs:

Summary/Request: "This time, her getting the brace off + having atrophied muscles, maybe some PT appointments, all the things."

Growing Pains:

Summary/Request: "hi bestie 😃 I was wondering if you could recreate me and the hubbys first Valentine’s Day with Rafe."

Around Town:

Summary/Request: "Hi! Can I request prompt 22 and trope 4 for soft!rafexreader?"

Coward:

Summary/Request: "Rafe with the quotes "Go fuck yourself rafe" and "Fuck me yourself you coward""

Migraine:

Summary/Request: "could u possibly do a rafe imagine where the reader has a migraine so rafe takes care of her?"

Deeper:

Summary/Request: "Can you please do a Rafe Cameron imagine where the reader is a Pogue and has a secret friends with benefits with Rafe, which was going well until they started catching feelings for each other and became increasingly jealous."

Birthday:

Summary/Request: "'Rafe x birthday reader for me. PS: make it extra smuttyyy ☺️'"

Sloppy:

Summary/Request: "reader and rafe getting high together and having sloppy sex?"

Never Let You Go:

Summary/Request: "Would you just do something super duper fluffy with Rafe? Like her trying to leave when he’s holding her but he just refuses to let go or something like that?"

Sweet:

Summary/Request: "MORE SOFT!RAFE PLS I'M BEGGING"

Just Life:

Summary/Request: "s it possible that u could write something where the reader is rly stressed and she carries all her tension in her shoulders, and rafe notices so he gives her a nice long back rub?"

Beach Day:

Summary/Request: "is it possible that you could do a request where rafe and the reader have a beach day together?"

Hot Stuff:

Summary/Request: "could I please request one where Rafe suddenly realises Sarah's BFF from childhood is hot."

Wake Up:

Summary/Request: "I love your fluffy Rafe stuff so I was wondering if you could write something fluffy? Maybe waking up with Rafe?"

Blocked:

Summary/Request: "idk if anyone requested this but PLZ PLZ PLZ HEAVY ANGST 12+9 with Rafe"

Bed Ready:

Summary/Request: "ow abt him and the reader just got out of the shower and are getting ready for bed?"

#rafe #rafe x reader #rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron #the outerbanks #the outerbanks fic

472 notes · View notes

dojunie · 1 year

Text

into you; hrj [sneak peek]

[★]; YOU LIKE HUANG RENJUN MORE THAN YOU’VE PROBABLY LIKED ANYTHING IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. Sure, you've only been more than friends for like, two weeks— a title-less thing that has you hanging out nearly every day but still hovering in the gray space between people who kiss sometimes and something a little more concrete— but it didn’t take you long to realize that he's pretty much everything you've ever wanted. What you’ve got going on with him right now is perfect in its own way, even if you find yourself almost overwhelmed with how much you like him these days… but considering that Renjun seems perfectly fine with the way things are, you’re not really gunning to tell him that.

(Though, after an incident at a party has you blowing up on your ex for a less than savory dig at your relationship— however unofficial it may be— you might not have to tell Renjun anything at all.)

info;

huang renjun x fem!reader

college au but no learning is going on

oneshot

genre/about; friends-who-kiss-sometimes to lovers, semi-established relationship but much pining is to be had, mc is Smitten, the full fic will have nsfw elements

teaser wc; 1k / full fic wc; 8-10k…ish (5k already written, woo, short fic era incoming)

[a/n: here is a very brief peek into a renjun fic that came to me in a fever dream, the one i’ve been working on non stop for like four days straight!!! renchins and others pls leave your thoughts in the replies or send me an ask, i beg]

YOU'VE SIMMERED DOWN EVEN FURTHER BY THE TIME YOU'VE GOTTEN INSIDE HIS APARTMENT AND TAKEN A LONG, HOT SHOWER; scouring both the party and Jihoon’s touch from your skin, the nearly burning water is a welcome cleanse from the nights earlier events. (Though, if you’re being completely honest, the reason your face is so warm isn’t only because of the heat.)

Upon opening the front door and hustling inside, not a second had passed after toeing off your shoes off before Renjun spun you around kissed you.

And it wasn’t— It wasn’t rare for him to kiss you first. You didn’t want to make it seem like you had to chase him down for a smooch. But Renjun, as you’d guessed from his personality even before you started dancing around each other like this, was much more reserved than you were. He chose his moments for affection purposefully; a hand held here, a kiss on the cheek there, or (on more delicate occasions) a press of his lips against yours, mainly whenever you’d drop you off late at night, a quiet goodbye whispered against your mouth.

So it wasn’t rare but it wasn’t an exact science either, which is precisely why you didn't know what was happening until it was already over. The giant, dopey smile on his face only served to explain that he’d known exactly what he was doing by surprising you like that, and you held back the urge to launch yourself at him.

“That was my thank you,” Renjun started airily, teasing but still looking a little pink around the edges himself, “For trying to fight someone twice your size on my behalf. No one’s ever done that for me before. However, I would be very happy if you never did it again, because if you got hurt I would be very mad. Do you understand?”

You only stared at him. Your lips were tingling.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured. “Do you want to shower first?”

“…Yes,” you said lowly, finaly finding your voice. God. “Yeah. You take forever.”

“Well then I’ll get you something to change into,” he said. Then, terrifyingly, he leaned in as if he was going to kiss you again— but right when he was close enough for your eyes to cross, waiting, waiting, unwilling to not be ready this time— “What are you waiting for?" he whispered. "You’re blocking the closet. Go.”

He laughed when you ran, cursing him the whole way.

Once you were out, sufficiently clean and doused head to toe in Renjun’s clothes (despite the fact that after like, the tenth time you’d been here, you brought a change of clothes to keep in his closet for spontaneous nights exactly like these), you found yourself both alone and introspective for the first time since the Jihoon incident. It was only expected that your mind would wander to how you got yourself to this point in the first place, draped across the couch of a guy you hadn’t even known the name of three months ago—

And it had started as a seating chart.

Seating charts were always a risky game. You could either be stuck next to the too-loud or the too-quiet, the cheaters with wandering eyes or the chatty kids who didn’t understand that class wasn’t only for socializing— or you could be put near an angel, someone would end up changing your life in a way that you never would have expected from that first day of classes.

Thankfully, in Chinese Literature 201, it was the latter.

Renjun was a Language Study major; the pretty guy with soft brown hair, a pair of big silver glasses perched on his face and a sweet little smile to match— the quiet student who sat across the aisle from you in the lecture hall. Being dismissed by row after collecting your midterm practice grades meant that, out in the lobby, he had a front row seat to catch you pulling your hair out over your less than desirable grade— and seemingly out of nowhere, he tapped you on the shoulder and asked if you wanted a little help. Grateful (and frankly terrified by the idea of failing Chi Lit and having to take it again if you bombed this midterm), you’d taken him up on his offer: three times a week in the Sulim Library from 6 to 8PM.

The rest was pretty much history.

You got to know him outside of just flashcards and extra assigned readings, learned that he liked to sing and did ballet for four years in high school and hated the taste of matcha anything. You learned who his friends were and what he liked to do on campus. Renjun wasn’t like any guy you’d— actually no, scratch that, he wasn’t like any person you’d ever met before. He was quiet, but he wasn’t shy. He was able to shut you up with startling accuracy; an ability your friends even found miraculous when you told them after the first few tutoring sessions, a dumb smile on your face and swinging your feet, that you’d finally found someone who could argue better than you could.

Renjun could bring a smile to your face by saying your name alone. He was nice and he was sweet and he was thoughtful, but he had a temper that matched yours and the most endearing frustrated face you've ever seen on another person.

You often left his side feeling almost ill with awe that one person could be so… perfect. As awfully mushy as that sounds.

Thankfully, after a few weeks of woo-ing him with your roguish charm, when you bit the bullet and told him you liked him, he replied with a smile and a challenge— because Renjun was nothing if not focused on the goal of actually tutoring you— he told you that if you passed the midterm with a grade of B or above, he’d let you take him on a date.

Easy fucking money. There wasn’t a chance you were going to let this opportunity slip away from you. You studied so hard for that test that for nearly six days you only came out of your room to eat and pee.

(You got a 96%— A big, beautiful red A+ on the midterm and a professors recommendation for your accompanying essay. Renjun only later told you that the alternative to a good grade was him taking you out instead, the prick; and he laughed so hard at the look on your face that you thought he was going to throw up.)

[a/n; crying screaming i'm so excited to post this lol]

[will put full fic link here when posted] [other works]

299 notes · View notes

maochira · 1 year

Note

Yo can I request an event fic where the reader is helping more and more in the bastard München team Because of ness *wink ** wink *

pls I’m just in love with him and there’s no ficsssss so I know I can trust you with this!!

I LOVE NESS SO SO MUCH and I love writing for him!! You ask, I serve <3 By the way, if you haven't already, check out this Ness x reader fic I wrote a bit ago!! One of my favourites I've ever written

Falling in love with Ness!

Requests open! - event list - event introduction

Tags: gn!reader x Ness, fluff

Event synopsis: you, Claire (@deerangle3 ) and Mao (me) are assistants in the Neo Egoist League

-as soon as someone is asked to help out with the Bastard München team, you're the first one to accept that. Every single time

-you don't realize it at first, but you like helping out there so much because of Ness. You always hope for him to ask you for help or just talk to you in general

-outside of working hours, you always try to spend your evening with the Bastard München team. You usually drag either Claire or Mao along

-it doesn't take long until you get jealous of Kaiser. And it shows. Your voice always has some passive-aggressive undertones when you talk to him

-Claire and Mao pick up on that, so they ask you why that is. They actually just want to shittalk about Kaiser for a bit, but the more you tell them the more you realize you dislike Kaiser because you're jealous of how much Ness admires him. And then you realize you have a crush on Ness

-you kind of feel like a hopeless romantic. From the way Ness always talks about Kaiser, you believe there must be some stronger feelings going on

-but!! Claire and Mao are your besties. They're hyping you up (especially Mao) and they're helping you to find ways to spend even more time with Ness

-Mao has made it their second job to get Ness to fall back for you

-at this point, you almost exclusively help out at the Bastard München team. You're barely seen around the other teams

-Ness enjoys your company a lot. He notices you see him as an equal to yourself, which is something he's really not used to from Kaiser

-Ness feels so safe around you, he starts calling you his best friend very quickly

-you try to not make your crush on him so obvious, but whenever he hugs you, your blush a lot because feeling his soft hands on you just makes your heart melt

-you find him with his bloody lip after he gets so frustrated because of Kaiser. You take him to your room (Claire and Mao are currently spending time with the Ubers team) and you comfort Ness

-you let him vent as much as he needs to, and somehow it ends with the both of you cuddling on your bed. And that's when you confess your feelings to him

-you really made his evening go from horrible to amazing. He almost can't process your love confession, but he's very happy to become your boyfriend!

-Ness is the sweetest boyfriend ever. He loves you so so so much and he tells you how much he loves you over and over. Expect lots of compliments from him!!

-although, that starts making Kaiser jealous. All the attention Ness put on him before is now going towards you. But you don't care if it makes Kaiser feel bad, all you care about is making your boyfriend happy

#blue lock #bllk #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader #blue lock x you #bllk x you #blue lock headcanons #bllk headcanons #blue lock scenarios #bllk scenarios #blue lock ness #alexis ness #alexis ness x you #alexis ness x reader #ness x you #ness x reader #bllk ness

201 notes · View notes

hanlimz · 1 year

Note

JUNGWONSPIDERMANAU

cass. pls dont say that and just. LEAVE. expand. i would like to hear your thoughts 🎤

bc truly spider-man/peter parker was my first love and personally i have had the idea for a jake as spider-man au for quiet a bit now but it has never really taken off but now i NEED to hear all your thoughts.

(also if u have any good spider-man au fic recs pls send them my way thnx 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩)

PLSSS I COULD TALK FOREVER!!!! BUT OKAY—here are some bullet points plus a small blurb/summary/idk? i literally am going to write so much im so SORRY??? (this has convinced me n i will be writing a fic LMAOO)

(+ two vvvv good spiderman fic recs!!)

it’s safe here (with me) by @enhypenandpaper !! | very cute story, well-written, i love when writers can put their own unique spin on scenes that inspire them it’s rly motivating and wonderful (i need to rb this on my fic rec blog asap) (jake x reader)

i’ll save you (again) by @jayflrt !! | amazing stupendous wonderful show-stopping ,, literally one of my Favorite reads on this app .. this author manages to encapsulate both spiderman And jake sosososo well .. they also make it a point to rly flesh out the other friendships mentioned and I Love That (jake x reader)

general hcs (?):

won is the dorkiest spiderman ever .. stutters over his quips, never has anything cool to say to the villains he fights, doesn’t know how to respond to ppl thanking him

one time someone he saved tried to ask for his number and he panicked and said he was banned from both t-mobile and verizon (he’s not btw)??

another time he just got done saving a group of ppl n said “no thneeds necessary” ?? bc he was trying to say “no need to thank me” n “no thanks necessary” at the same time

but he’s also the sweetest .. any time someone asks to “repay him” he’s a double it n give it to the next person kinda guy .. he always tells them to stop by the soup kitchen or donate old clothes to thrift stores or just be kind to someone else

also ,, on another note ,, won has the Biggest crush on u and knows u like to help out at the local preschool, so he always tells ppl to buy and donate extra school supplies

sometimes when he’s out patrolling late at night, he’ll see u on ur way home from the library n quietly follow u to make sure u get home safe

tries to talk to u once after seeing a spiderman article open on ur computer and u indulge him for a moment, saying how bad u felt abt the daily bugle’s tabloid pieces .. won’s p sure his heart exploded

but overall, he’s very gentle and kind .. ever the king of duality tho .. he can beat a bitch up when need be, but most of the time—won’s just a high school senior trying to get into MIT and make the person he’s been in love with since the beginning of fall semester feel the same way abt him

ANYWAYS in a high school!au setting i see a lot of ppl like to hc jungwon as class/stuco president, but i think he’s definitely more on the quiet side .. he’s popular, yes, but not too popular if that makes sense. for him, though, this is perfect ... he flies under the radar, and him missing school a couple days in a row every month or so goes virtually unnoticed. HOWEVER, you’ve always had a sneaking suspicion .. it’s not like you and won are Rivals—there would be no merit in picking an unnecessary fight with the boy who volunteers at the soup kitchen on the weekends and feeds the stray cats near the gym and asks the lunch ladies how their days are going—but, there’s something strange going on. you’re sure of it.

jungwon comes into school one day w a busted lip and a black eye. everyone is fawning over him, asking him what happened—did he get mugged, did his face hurt, did he give the other person a run for their money? you don’t bother checking in on him when he takes his seat next to you. you just hand him his calculus test (he did better than you again n it’s infuriating) and clench your jaw, willing yourself to disappear. that familiar, green monster hangs in the shadows behind you, and its breath fans across your neck as it attempts to coax a physical manifestation of jealously from your lips. eventually, you excuse yourself to the nurse’s office and skip the rest of the day.

later that night, you’re trying to study in your room, but you keep getting distracted by the daily bugle’s twitter updates. spiderman is out and about again, and they won’t let the poor guy’s good reputation rest. it’s all “spiderman fights villain and knocks over streetlight onto local man’s car” and “spiderman forgoes saving lady’s churro to destroy half of grand central station”—and, honestly, you feel a bit bad. he’s trying his best. but, as rain patters against your window, the sound threatens to lull you to sleep. exhaustion overtakes your body, your eyes are drooping, and your head keeps falling from your hands. and then BOOM—the loudest noise you’ve ever heard startles you from your fatigue-induced trance. with a look of fear in your eyes, you glance over your shoulder to look at the window and the sight that greets you is enough to freeze every molecule in your body.

the aforementioned hero is clinging to the side of your building, banging his fist on the glass and practically begging to be let in. his movements are frantic and a bit scary. you open the window as quick as you can and let him slide through the small gap you’ve created. there are copious tears in his suit, blood flows from a nasty gash on his shoulder. rushing around on some crude form of auto pilot, you grab a clean shirt from your closet and press it into his wound. you tell him to hold it there and instruct him to sit in your desk chair. he's sopping wet from head to toe, and all you manage to think about is how glad you are that your parents are away for the weekend.

eventually, after only almost vomiting once, the cut is clean and bandaged up. "you're so lucky that i've been trying to get rid of this shirt forever, mr. spiderman," you scoff as he perches on the sill of your window, preparing to swing away into the night. "if i had grabbed one of my favorite outfits, i would've killed you before that wound could have."

a giggle escapes from his lips, and for a moment, you find yourself taken aback. he sounds like a high schooler—young, lively, and everything but the twenty-something year old man you thought he would be. "sorry about that ... i'll have to swing by and drop off some laundry detergent one of these days," he laughs. his voice sounds so familiar, but your mind is still reeling from your recent discovery. the hero offers you a wave and gestures toward his previous seat. "sleep well—and, good luck on that calculus homework."

the next day at school, jungwon is nowhere to be seen. you thank whatever happens to reside in the sky that he can't see the bright red 67 at the top of your most recent calculus test. the next next day, however, jungwon comes in with his arm in a sling. as his seatmate, you're the one that has to help him out for the rest of the week. but, when you're sitting in free period, you happen to take another glance at the bandages around his shoulder as jungwon naps next to you. a sharp column of ice pierces through your lower abdomen; under jungwon's sling, the lowest layer of bandages are covered with dried blood and sweat.

they look eerily familiar. almost like the ones you used to patch spiderman up over the weekend.

but, jungwon couldn't be spiderman. he couldn't be—he's too sweet, too gentle, too kind. peeking over at his backpack, you note that it seems a bit bulkier today; a recognizable purple cap winks at you from the unzipped main pocket. a chill tickles the length of your spine as you register what happened to be resting against his class notebooks.

laundry detergent?

you pause for a moment.

oh.

oh god.

#ੈ.faves #ੈ.nyx 🌌#enhypen #enhypen fluff #enhypen headcanons #enhypen reactions #jungwon fluff #jungwon x reader #enha fluff #enha reactions #enha headcanons #enha imagines #jungwon reactions #jungwon headcanons #jungwon imagines #LMAOOO i did too much honestly #the whole blurb is so messy im so SORRY #but when i have more time (prob my spring break ㅠㅠ) ill Definitely be fleshing this out n writing a full fledged spiderwon fic

164 notes · View notes

prfctparis · 10 months

Text

I’d Give You My Lungs So You Can Breathe (I’ve Got You, Brother) [CH1]

AO3 Link / Next / Masterlist

summary:

Danny Fenton was adopted at age ten, with little to no memories about his former family. At age fourteen, he died yet lived and those memories began to return. He didn’t do anything about those memories – didn’t plan to, at least not yet – but then he got captured by the GIW, saved by his friends and someone who might be his sister who he only somewhat remembered, and taken to Gotham to, apparently, his biological father for safety until further notice.

Team Phantom was there, too, and they did not sign up for this family drama.

a/n:

so i figured i’d post this here too, since there are so many dcxdp lovers on here, and in case someone has no access to ao3 somehow or just doesn’t use it…well, here you go! also i’m bored & this blog needs some action lmao. anyway, this first chapter is technically a prologue, but whatever. there are 2 more chapters i have already written (which are also on ao3), so i’ll upload them here in a day or so if anyone wants me to, and i’m gradually working on the next one. hope you guys enjoy! FYI, so no one is confused, in this athanasia is danny’s twin – not damian :)

warnings for the entire fic:

canon-typical violence of the DC variety; angst; memory loss/repressed memories; do i need to say major character death(s) or is that just a given for this fandom; questionable parenting tho every parent is trying to do good & care for the kids; implied/referenced past child abuse bc of the child assassin backgrounds; pls tell me if i missed something

CHAPTER ONE —

[italicized conversations are implied to be spoken in arabic]

At age ten, he didn’t remember much of anything.

He woke up at the edge of some woods, in dirty and dark clothes that, for some reason, made his mind go Assassin. His head was fuzzy, and the left side of both his chest and back hurt, and there were streaks of dark brown-ish red on his hands that flaked off when he scratched at them.

Eventually, he got up. The sun was rising, and he needed to figure out where he was. So, he walked. He walked, and walked, and when he made into a town, he kept on walking. The sign read ‘Amity Park’ in English.

…That unnerved him. Usually he didn’t read things in English. Right? They were in another language, letters and words read from right to left rather than left to right. Arabic, his mind supplied.

Why was everything in English? he thought, a little hysterical, and then tensed, eyes roaming around as if someone might have heard him – might have had a sixth sense to sniff out fear.

He wasn’t allowed to be afraid, or panic. He couldn’t afford to. He couldn’t. Because…

Because of what?

“Excuse me?” A young voice broke his thoughts.

He spun around and saw a girl with red hair and blue headband with a backpack on her shoulders. She was older than him by a few years…maybe.

(He was ten. How he knew that, he didn’t know, but he was ten.)

“Are you lost?”

Face careful not to show any emotion, he glanced around. The roads were beginning to get busy. People were walking out of buildings, and into other ones.

The girl just smiled – nothing that made him want to bolt, or fight to get away, or freeze in fear. It was…kind. “It’s okay if you are, I can help you. I’m Jasmine,” she said. “But most people just call me Jazz; it’s a nickname. Can you tell me yours?” She knelt down. Some of the nerves dissipated at the action; no longer was she standing over him.

For a moment, he continued to eye her suspiciously. Then, he looked away with furrowed brows as he tried to think. His name… It started with a ‘D’.

“…Danny,” he spoke, voice quiet but rough, after a few more seconds, and looked back at her. He didn’t know much of anything right now, but he did know someone used to call him that. It was short for something. “My nickname is Danny.”

Jasmine – or Jazz – smiled again. “That must be short for Daniel,” she said.

No… Yes? He didn’t know. It didn’t feel right, but not really wrong, either. So, he shrugged.

“Well, Danny,” Jazz began, “can you answer my first question? Are you lost? It’s okay if you can’t, but I still want to help you.”

“I…think so,” he spoke slowly. And, much to his embarrassment, his throat started to tighten with panic. “The sign said Amity Park. But I do not– I do not know where that is.”

“Yeah. You’re in Amity Park, Illinois.” Then, belatedly, “In America.” Her brows pulled together. “Do you- Do you know how you got here?”

He started to shake his head slowly, but the panic and fear had reached their peaks. The movement became rapid, and tears made his eyes sting. “I do– I do not know, I–.” His breath stuttering cut his words off, but the action moved his wounds on his chest and back and he winced, pressing a hand to the one near his heart. “I do not know how, or what happened to– to me, and it hurts.”

Jazz’s eyes widened. “Okay. Okay, it’s okay – I’ll help you. Will you let me?”

Something in him told him to say no. To run. This girl wasn’t trustworthy; she could be dangerous.

But he was scared. Terrified. (Why didn’t he know anything?) So he ignored that first instinct with a shaky nod as tears ran down his cheeks.

And Jazz helped him.

Jazz ended up becoming his sister. His older sister. That adjective to describe her was important to him, for some reason. Adoptive less so. She was his sister – adoptive or not – that was who she was; but she was older.

Maddie and Jack – who, eventually, became Mom and Dad to him, and who, as absent as they were, really did love both him and Jazz – asked once if Danny had a little sister, one day after he had explained that to them offhandedly.

Danny thought. He tried to remember.

“…No,” he answered. Because as far as he knew, he didn’t.

But also because saying, I don’t know, was getting exhausting. He’s only been with them a few months.

He grew to hate not knowing things.

(Jazz said it was anxiety, or potentially paranoia, but also maybe PTSD. Danny thought she was just being a know-it-all with her new found love of psychology.)

Some days it felt like he was missing something. Not just his memories, but something that was a part of him. Another person, or two.

Maddie and Jack would say something odd, or confusing, and he would turn to look at someone who wasn’t there to silently question and/or judge them.

At age fourteen, Danny, on a dare, did something very, very stupid.

He died, but also didn’t.

He accidentally got his parents’ ghost machine to work and now ghosts caused chaos in town.

He became Phantom – a halfa; someone who was dead, but also alive �� and became the town’s vigilante, of sorts.

He…began to remember.

This wasn’t the first time he died but lived.

Sam and Tucker, his two best friends, were there at the accident, so they knew from the get-go. He told Jasmine, not too long after, mostly because she suspected something and he was shit at lying to her, but he told her. Mom and Dad, avid ghost hunters, were kept in the dark about it.

For a while, no one knew he was starting to get his memories back. After all, how was he supposed to explain that he was a former child assassin?

But then he had a nightmare-esque memory of being a child with a katana in his hands, a girl his age close by, and a toddler between them. Someone barked orders in Arabic.

He was forced to kill.

(Not the girl, nor the toddler. But someone. Someone who didn’t deserve it.)

Danny woke up having a panic attack, with Jazz hovering over him. After some tears, calming down, and spending the following two hours sitting in silence on his bed with his older sister, he finally told her.

There were more tears.

Jazz just held her little brother tightly.

Sam once brought up that he fought like someone who was used to somebody being beside him.

He feigned confusion and chuckled. “What?”

“When you fight, you leave blind spots open,” she explained further. “Like you’re relying on someone who isn’t there.”

Tucker nodded. “She’s right. I noticed, too.”

Danny shrugged. “That’s just how I fight,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

What he didn’t say, was that he now had a fuzzy memory of fighting with someone – that girl his age from his memories. But it wasn’t necessarily fighting as it was training, and it wasn’t always with one another but also against each other.

Sam hummed. “Okay, Danny.”

Dan happened.

Danny didn’t want to become Dan.

He began having nightmares of an old man dressed in green radiating pride because of him – because he was Dan.

It made him sick.

Vlad Masters – also known as Plasmius, also also known as a pain in Danny’s ass – cloned him.

He now had a little sister. Ellie. Vlad named her Danielle, and she at first went by Dani, but that got too confusing, so. Ellie, she became.

She roamed around the world after the whole situation with Vlad got handled, and Danny let her. But they kept in touch, and she often told him where she was headed, or where she was resting, or how long until she might come back.

Sometimes when she stopped by, when they were hanging out, something about her jogged fuzzy memories of a little brother. But then sometimes the way she fought with him against Vlad and ghosts brought up vague snippets of another sister.

At age fifteen, he defeated Pariah Dark. Enough said.

He also told Mom and Dad about the ghost thing. And the assassin kid thing. They took it well, considering.

He no longer had to worry about vivisection by his parents, or about being kicked about because he killed someone as a child and they were now scared of him, or something.

They still loved him. He loved them.

Memories about his childhood were still sparse, though they were gradually coming back.

(Some good. Most bad. Danny woke up from nightmares far too many times, nowadays.)

“Are you… Are going to want to find them? Your family, I mean,” Dad asked, late one night when Mom was asleep and Jazz was studying and Danny decided to bother him instead of his older sister when he came home with a large gash on his arm from Skulker.

It was random, but he still answered. “Um, maybe eventually. My younger siblings, at least. I don’t know their names, or even if…”

“Well, when you decide to, I’ll help out in any way,” he said.

He smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

Dad smiled, gently ruffled his hair, and then pulled him into a near-crushing hug. “Of course, Dan-o.”

At age seventeen, the GIW barged into Amity.

It didn’t go well.

They caught him.

He didn’t get out until after he turned eighteen.

+++

At age ten, Athanasia watched her grandfather run a sword through her twin brother’s chest from the shadows.

She stood there, numb and in shock. A voice in her head screamed at her that, if someone were to attack right now, she would also die. She couldn’t help but not care when her twin brother was bleeding out before her eyes.

And unless she wanted to face Grandfather’s wrath as well, she couldn’t do anything about it.

Grandfather, with a casual swipe to clean his sword, turned away. “Clean this up,” he ordered the servants. He flicked his wrist to Dányál. “Rid of the body. It is time I speak with Talia.”

The servants obeyed. A couple began to clean. One picked up Dányál and began to leave, staunching the blood with cloths as to not leave a trail. On quiet feet, Athanasia followed.

Suspicion and confusion addled her brain when she realized the servant was going to one of the Pits. Her footsteps became more determined, but no less quiet.

She followed them to the Pit. Watched how the servant dunked him into it until the wound was no longer life threatening. Then followed them to one of the many hidden exits. Watched as the servant left with her twin brother for good.

Her other half was gone. Something in her shattered.

Athanasia now had a burning hatred for Ra’s al Ghul.

Life in the League was different now, without her twin. Too different.

She wanted out, but couldn’t leave Damian.

Not yet, anyway.

At age eleven, she met Jason Todd. Sort of.

He was catatonic, most of the first year, but still a good fighter. She was mostly indifferent to him, the adoptive son of her biological father.

(Mother didn’t know she knew about that, about Bruce Wayne – the Batman – being her, Dányál’s, and Damian’s father. But there were so many times she would overhear Ra’s complain about the man and Mother’s previous relationship with him before things clicked together.)

But then she learned Jason shouldn’t even be breathing, and her indifference turned into intrigue.

Alive, but should be dead? It reminded her of Dányál. Made her wonder if he was catatonic as well, wherever that servant took him.

Her feelings about him did a 180 when she noticed Mother looked at him how she used to look at Dányál, years ago. The looks stopped when Dányál first began to voice his dislike about killing, but now here that look was, directed towards a boy no older than sixteen.

That look stayed after she dunked him in a Lazarus Pit, and Jason, in Pit induced rage, killed everyone in the room he woke up in. It formed into pride – a look Athanasia never saw towards Dányál.

It angered her. What – was Mother trying to replace her twin brother with Batman’s lame sidekick? She was offended on her twin’s behalf, wherever he was now.

On one of the nights she snuck into Damian’s rooms to spend time with him, the young boy noticed her anger. He asked what was wrong. She told him nothing. He scowled in that way when he knew someone was lying and there was no one to reprimand him on unnecessary emotional expressions. She flicked his ear. He hissed. She rolled her eyes.

“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” she told him. “Now – tell me why I heard about another fight between you and our dear cousin, Mara.”

Damian’s scowl turned into a sneer. An impressive one, too, for a six year old. “She insulted Dányál. Called him weak.” He paused. “So I bit her.”

Athanasia had never been more proud.

At age twelve, she spoke to Jason for the first time.

“Tell me about Batman.”

Jason turned, confused surprise clear as day on his face as he looked at her. “They have kids here?”

She stared at him, unblinking. “Tell me,” she repeated, demanding, “about Batman.”

He crossed his arms, eyes calculating as he continued to stare back. His head tilted, his eyes squinted, and then his brows rose like he saw something that he wasn’t expecting.

Agitated, she said, “Do you need another dunk in a Pit? Are you still catatonic? Answer me, Todd.” She snapped the last sentence in Arabic.

Jason rolled his eyes. He muttered a few cuss words. “Why do you want to know about Batman?”

“I need to know.”

“That doesn’t answer my question–.”

“And you have yet to answer mine,” she sneered.

They had a stare down. Jason blinked first – Athanasia smirked. He cussed again and ran a hand through his hair, which now had a white streak in it ever since he got dunked.

“He’s a detective. A good one,” he said. “One of the best, if not the best.”

She nodded once. “Is he a good man?”

That caught him off guard. For a moment, he didn’t answer, and she began to worry that her plan was already failing and she hadn’t even started it yet.

“Yes. Yeah, he’s a good man. Flawed to hell and back, but he’s good.” His brows pulled together. “Why? Why ask me?”

“Because you are his son, and he is your father.”

The teen glowered. “He is not–!”

Athanasia left before she could hear his dramatics.

There weren’t many moments where Athanasia spent one on one time with Talia. At least, moments where the woman wasn’t training her into a perfect assassin. Sitting here, in front of her vanity, with Mother braiding her hair and humming quietly, was a rarity.

And Athanasia was about to ruin it.

“I want to fake my death.”

Mother’s hands froze where they were nearly done braiding her hair. “Excuse me?”

“I want to fake my death,” she repeated. Maybe Mother liked Jason so much because they both needed phrases spoken twice, she thought. “To find Dányál.”

“What,” Mother hissed.

“And then,” she went on, staring straight back at Mother through the mirror, as if daring her to interrupt or refuse, “I want you to send Damian to our father, Bruce Wayne – the Batman.”

“And why would either of us do those things?” Mother asked slowly, dangerously.

“Because I watched Grandfather run a sword through my twin’s chest, and then I watched him be put in a Lazarus Pit to keep him alive by one of your servants who was disguising himself as one of Grandfather’s. Because I do not want be the heir, and I want to find my brother, and I do not want this life for Damian, and Jason Todd said Bruce Wayne is a good man.”

Mother didn’t respond right away. They continued to stare at one another through the mirror.

“If you have an ounce of love for any of us, you will help me.”

Mother finished the braid, then sent her away to her room.

Athanasia instead went to Jason’s rooms, where she snuck in again and poked through his collection of books Mother brought him. He complained and tried to get her to leave. She jabbed him in the gut with her elbow and asked what made Batman, Bruce Wayne, good.

Jason cussed her out.

He still explained what made his father good.

(“There is a very likely chance he will not remember you. As well as restoring memories, it can take them away.”

“I know, Mother.”

“Do you?”)

At age fourteen, Athanasia did just what she planned to do.

She faked her death.

But not without speaking to Damian first.

“Listen to me,” Athanasia said, hands cupping Damian’s face. He tried to move away. She gripped tighter, but still made sure not to hurt him. “Listen to me,” she stressed, “I am leaving. I have to go somewhere, and I will not be back until I find Dányál.”

“Dányál is–.”

“I said what I said,” she interrupted. “Understand?”

He scowled. It was cute. “No.”

“Too bad. Do not stop pestering Mother about meeting our Father, understand? Hopefully the next time we see each other, you will be with him and I will have our brother. But when you do meet him, do not mention me or Danny. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Good.”

Damian huffed. “Remove your hands before I remove them for you.”

“No,” she said, and pulled him into a rare hug. He squawked, and wiggled away not even a second later. “Fight Mara for me while I’m gone.”

She slipped him a communicator she remade that only went to the matching one she was keeping for herself. He hid it in his clothes immediately.

And then she left to die, but not really.

Her heart stopped for five minutes.

At age sixteen, she finally found her should-be-dead brother.

He was in a haunted town in Illinois. Ghosts were real, apparently, and made themselves at home in this town. It was…odd. And ironic. And Athanasia couldn’t be happier.

She found that he was adopted by a scientific couple, who went from hunting ghosts with no ethics at all to studying ghosts with ethics. They had an 19 year old daughter named Jasmine, and Dányál went solely by ‘Danny’ but everyone (adults, really) occasionally called him ‘Daniel’. He had two best friends: Sam Manson and Tucker Foley. They were good people.

Dányál also seemed to be unknowingly following in their father’s footsteps. He and Phantom were obviously the same person. Although, Phantom often called himself a ghost. Dányál wasn’t one.

And as much as Athanasia wanted to make her presence known, and hug her twin for the first time in six years… She couldn’t. He was happy here, even with constantly fighting ghosts.

So, with plans to keep an eye on him, she left Amity Park.

And then went to Gotham City.

A year ago, Damian sent through their one way communicators that he was now with Father. From time to time, she now checked on Damian from afar when passing through, not yet in person because Dányál still wasn’t with her.

She also regularly broke into Jason Todd’s safe houses and stole one or two guns, or pushed the furniture five inches in various directions, or messed up his meticulously organized books, or stole food that he made.

It wasn’t what she saw herself doing after faking her death, but, well… At least they were all out of the League.

At age seventeen, she got word the League infiltrated the Ghost Investigation Ward.

And they had Phantom.

She wasn’t able to get him out until after she turned eighteen.

+++

At age five, Damian lost a brother.

The day started out normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. He trained, sometimes with Mother, but more often than not with other instructors. Sometimes Grandfather watched, and he did this time. It surprised him, not that he would show it.

Later that night, Athanasia snuck in. Unshed tears were in her eyes. Immediately, he was on alert.

“…Uhkti?” he asked.

Athanasia moved to sit in front of him on his bed. She reached her hands out until she was cupping his face, which was odd. Dányál did that, usually, but almost always to be annoying. The action felt…weird coming from his sister in a more serious way. He wanted to move but was frozen.

“I have to tell you something,” she spoke slowly.

With a start, he realized she was sad. Why was she sad? Not many things could upset his big sister.

“What is it?”

“…Dányál is gone,” she said. Her voice choked. “Dán– Danny is gone, Dames. He… He will not be coming back to the League. I’m sorry.”

Damian’s confusion crumbled into sorrow.

Seeing Athanasia without Dányál was something he didn’t like. For the most part, they didn’t allow the kids to interact outside of training, their cousin Mara al Ghul and the children of the Demon’s Fist included. All, except the twins.

They were born together. They lived together. They trained together – but also sometimes against each other. Those always turned into draws.

Two halves of a whole.

He once heard someone call them the Twin Terrors. He understood why – they were ruthless when they fought by themselves, but decimated opponents when they were side by side. Damian expected them to lead the Demon’s Fist together – and they did, for a short time. But then something changed.

It was abruptly only Dányál. But then Dányál died. Then it was Athanasia.

Mara said it should be her. She taunted his sister. She then began to taunt him. Athanasia never gave in, but during training she didn’t hold back. Damian did give in and vowed to beat his cousin in every fight against her, training or not.

No one called his brother weak.

(Mother seemed to agree. Two members of the League got caught speaking about perhaps Dányál al Ghul just wasn’t strong enough. They were gone by nightfall, and Damian walked in on Mother cleaning blood off of her sword.)

At age seven, he first noticed Athanasia’s hatred at their Grandfather.

It was during a training session. Him against his sister. Grandfather was watching and judging. Athanasia beat him, but he came close to beating her.

It was when Grandfather had his back turned, when they were off to the side tending to bruises and wounds, when Damian glanced up at Athanasia and saw nothing but pure hatred on her face.

It was gone a second later.

Damian almost thought he imagined it. Almost.

“Who killed our brother?” he asked one night.

They were sitting on the window sill of an opened window, squished together as they watched the stars. It was uncomfortable. Damian didn’t mind.

“Why do you think I know?” she asked in return.

“Because you are you. You learn things – detect them out.”

“‘Detect’ is a big word for a seven year old.”

“I will gut you like a pig–.”

She never told him.

He had his suspicions, though.

At age nine, Athanasia left him. Left the League of Assassins.

She said she would see him again when she found Dányál and, seeing as though their brother was dead, Damian knew he would most likely never see her again.

He sort of hated her for leaving.

Though, he still took the communicator she gave him and kept it on his persons at all times, just in case.

Just a week after she left, word spread through the League that Athanasia al Ghul died during a mission gone wrong. Mother came back with bloodstained clothes and a look in her eyes that made Damian refrain from asking any questions.

A servant tried to offer their condolences. Mother slit their throat.

He continued to ask Mother about his Father, though. She continued to refuse, and said he would learn about the man once he beat her in a fight.

Damian took that challenge to heart and made sure he got better and better and better – until he was as good as his older siblings.

Mara continued to be an annoyance and a pain. With now two of Talia’s children dead and gone, she taunted Damian with how pathetic they were. How Dányál was killed because he began to defy orders and refuse to kill. How it was only a matter of time before Damian died, too, and she would be the true rightful heir to the Demon’s Fist and then the Demon’s Head.

It was far from the truth. He might not be the fighters and killers Dányál and Athanasia were, but he was better than Mara. After all, he was the only blood son of Talia al Ghul and a great, powerful man he desperately wanted to meet. He was a far better assassin than Mara ever was.

They fought against each other during training again.

He won, of course.

He also blinded her in one eye.

At age ten, he finally got to leave to meet his father. It was not as he was expecting.

There was a rule: no killing. Damian didn’t like that rule. That was how Dányál got killed himself.

What he also didn’t like, were the hundreds of other children Father had – apparently they were Damian’s siblings. He already had siblings, two of them, and they were both gone, and he didn’t need any more of them.

He sent Athanasia a message saying that he was now with Father. He got a simple, ‘Good,’ in response and nothing else.

He was both relieved she was alive and angry that she still hadn’t come back.

“Where the fuck is your sister?” Todd asked after they first met.

Damian stared him dead in the eyes and asked, “What sister?”

“Y’know… Your older sister,” he said.

“I don’t have a sister.”

“Um, yes, you do.”

“Then what is her name?”

“It’s… Well, what the fuck does that matter? She’s your sister, you should know!”

“I told you, I do not have a sister. Do you need to be dumped in the Pit to fix your brain again?”

Todd paused. He then let out a string of curses and angrily left.

Damian smirked to himself.

Shortly afterward, Father died. Except, Timothy Drake, like the idiot that he was, believed that he was still alive.

In that way, he reminded Damian of Athanasia and how she left to find she left to find Dányál, and he also reminded him of Dányál when he snarked while fighting, which he was admittedly great at. He also excelled at detective work.

Drake eventually left to find Batman.

Damian hated Drake.

Richard Grayson was…okay. Certainly better than Drake, the insolent whelp that he was. Grayson took up Batman, Damian was Robin. It was rough at first, but they eventually got the hang of it.

It just…took some time.

And then of course Drake came back with evidence that Father was, in fact, alive.

(Damian also had a metal spine, now, but that was neither here nor there.)

At age eleven, Father came back from being lost in the time stream.

Richard went back to Blüdhaven. Drake came and went from his own place and to the manor. Todd did his own things as per usual. Cain came and went, too, but often tried to spend time with Damian.

Drake tried once, too. It shockingly went well – right up until ‘Dames’ slipped out of his mouth.

“Do not call me that,” Damian snapped, the awkward but good atmosphere disappearing within milliseconds.

Drake startled. “Whoa, okay,” he said. His hands were held up as if he was surrendering. “All right, I won’t. I’m sor– wait, Damian, come back! I’m sorry!”

Damian ignored him and stalked to his room.

At age twelve, his communicator with Athanasia went off, the message telling him to look into the Ghost Investigation Ward immediately.

Only, he didn’t see or hear it.

He was dead, at the time, thanks to Heretic.

He didn’t see it until after he came back. He tried to get into contact with his sister once he did, but something blocked the connection.

It wasn’t until months later, now at age thirteen, when he heard from her again.

And she had Dányál with her.

#dc x dp crossover #dc x dp au #dcxdp #dc x dp fic #dp x dc #dc x dp fanfiction #idk which one to use so why not all of them #my writing #hope u guys enjoy!#dpxdc #dp x dc fic #dp x dc au #danny phantom #dc #stay with me my blood #batpham

75 notes · View notes

lovingmattysposts · 2 months

Note

Listen. If you wanna make the decision to make your next fic Matt X OC!fem reader. As your next fanfiction.

Though clearly your polls say people prefer Y/N & all the angry & down right scared people are to see you their favorite author, join a sub group (OC writers), that they don’t subscribe to.

Autumn? Have you imagined that your stories are bigger than YOU? It’s odd to think about because Christ your the author, right? Your the person who owns your account, correct?

I’m my opinion. to a girl reading for example YDKM. Y/N is/was in self harm. To ANYONE regardless is of age, it helps to see thing’s written you can heavily relate to.

Me included it’s to weird & awkward reading about Matt moaning a random girls name. It just feels wrong in my brain.

Or Chris kisses Self harm scars, people who your stories SAVE their nights, their moods, hell what about people who read your stories instead of Self harming aka you saving their lives.

You may be taking away from those girls who just don’t feel good hearing Chris kiss idk a random name like “grace” scars, it may add to that feeling that it will never be them to HAVE ANYONE love them like that. Because it’s not, Y/N & the person on Tumblr will struggle to hear Chris who is the object of their escape cuz they would be choosing to read either a Matt or a Chris fanfiction & that’s reading for escape.

I’m a Chris girl… & I guess YDKM was the last work you’ll write with Y/N used. It saved me a lot it helped when I was in bad depression this winter. At times I wanted to relapse in self harm & i just re read Chris & Y/N relationship in YDKM.

I know you’ve gotten a lot of hate on the OC aspect of where you take your writing style & your account from here on out…. I thought before you made permanent changes you’d be grateful to likely hear a hot take on changing, Y/N to OC that you haven’t heard before.

The only further compromise I can help you out with, is 2 weeks or so before you actually start a new work or a new writing process. Make MULTIPLE POLLS over a 4-5 DAY PERIOD.

If on day 1-3 Y/N wins & days 4-5 OC wins. That way we have say so….. idk I’m part of that people honestly scared to see you change your account because it’s a safe place people like me may loose forever :/

- well wishes Anon..

wow okay

first and foremost—— I am so happy to hear that my stories helped you so much in a personal way and if you ever need someone to talk to my DMs are always open.

I didn’t realize how much of an effect it would have on people from me changing from y/n to OC. I see you point throughly, but I feel like at the end of the day it’s just a name

You guys tell me all the time that my stories could be actual books and actually authors (I am not claiming to be one pls don’t send hate) don’t use y/n they use actual names and I thought it would make more since to use a name rather than y/n, because with longer stories it can become annoying to write. When reading does it make you less attached to the characters or relate because she has a name?

But as much backlash that this has caused me I think I’ll just keep Y/n because I want you guys to love the story and not hate the fact that I’m using a real name.

I didn’t realize how attached you guys were to y/n I just want to give you the best quality stories as possible. I don’t wanna let you guys down

autumn🧡

#chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #sturniolo triplets #matt sturniolo #nick sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo smut #nicolas sturniolo #sturniolo x reader

41 notes · View notes

hot-patootie-bless-my-soul · 1 year

Text

Either im just not seeing it or it's not being spoken about - but not enough people talk about the trust issues that Steve will have in dating after Nancy telling him it was all bullshit.

Like just imagine eddie having to painstakingly show him that he does love him and it's not bullshit. The constant reassurance and the bad days where Steve won't believe him.

Or even first getting together and Steve won't let it be anything more than casual to start with because he doesn't believe that someone can love him romantically when the first person he loved told him it was bullshit and it would be heartbreaking.

If someone has written this concept into a fic pls let me know, I have a need for like slowburn, eddie breaking Steve's walls down one by one until he can let himself be loved by someone other than the kids or Robin

#steddie #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #personal #i never have original ideas that i share #if this is a popular idea then pls tell me cause i am clearly not looking in the right places #yelling into the void #cause its 6am #and i have steddie brainrot again #queued

280 notes · View notes

effortandmore · 1 year

Text

all that we wouldn't say (myg x knj)

summary: if yoongi told someone that letting go of BTS and namjoon at the same time was hard, it would be a gross understatement. it was, in fact, the worst year or so of his life, but he’s managed to somehow move on. he’s had time, therapy, and lots of friends, family, and work to distract him. things are good now—the best they’ve ever been, maybe. but yoongi knows better than anyone that good things don’t always last, and that point is proven when namjoon shows back up in his life out of nowhere with an album that needs producing and questions yoongi doesn’t have the answers to.

pairing: yoongi x namjoon, yoongi x ofc

rating: explicit (18+ please)

genre: smut, angst, ambiguous (happy tho) ending

au: canon divergent, post-disbandment idolverse

warnings: a little angst, this is post-disbandment so like... they disbanded and that seems like it should be a warning. the ending is hopeful but not concrete... not unhappy but not like... your traditional happy ending either. smut! bisexual!yoongi (he sleeps with a woman and a man in this fic). penetrative sex, anal sex, oral sex (f!receiving, m!receiving), namjoon has a praise kink a little bit prob, anal fingering, kissing, idk... bottom!kim namjoon... i think that's probably everything but as always pls tell me if i missed something...

word count: 20k

a/n: sorry that this fic is two months late! this was written for the composition of the century yoongi collaboration. thank you to @kithtaehyung for the banner, and to @ugh-yoongi and @the-boy-meets-evil for reading this over. you are all very lovely people and i'm so so happy that we were able to see yoongi together!! that said, all mistakes are mine and they're lovely people who would have caught anything if i asked them to. let's be honest, we're just here for vibes at this point.

read on ao3

He wakes up, and not that he’s counting, but it’s been eight hundred and fifty two mornings that he’s been on his own (he’s definitely counting). By now, that shouldn’t be the first thought that crosses his mind each day, but without fail, it is.

When they were younger, he would tease Namjoon about his penchant for forgetting details—”Namjoonie, everyone knows you didn’t mean to change your stage name, you just forgot what it was supposed to be one day”—to a predictable chorus of responses: falling on the floor laughter from Tae and Jimin, surprise from Hobi, stifled almost-giggles from Jungkook and Jin…

Now, he wishes he could forget like that.

Briefly, he wonders what it would be like to wake up in the morning (afternoon, but don’t tell his mother) and not know how many days it had been, to have just a small break from remembering what his life was like before. Instead, every day he wakes up feeling half-right, ruffled, a little on edge, and a lot alone—the last remnants of something like pain that all the therapy in Seoul hasn’t managed to ease.

Just like the previous eight hundred and fifty one days, he shakes off the disorientation. It happens pretty quickly now—he does it much faster than he used to be able to. His routine now is good, grounding. Coffee first. He goes through the motions, humming a little and tapping out a beat on the counter while he waits for the fancy machine (Jin bought it for him, he was perfectly happy with his old french press) to pull his espresso shots. When it’s ready, he takes it to the piano bench and sits facing the window while Holly spins until he finds himself a seat on top of Yoongi’s feet. Over coffee, he has his first (sometimes only) conversation of the day,

“Who’s the best boy?” he coos softly.

“You are… yes, you are.”

“Are we gonna have a good day, Holly? Hmm?”

(It’s not for lack of trying that Holly only responds with wide eyes and a wagging tail).

Then it’s pilates, which he’s done for a while now. Long enough that he can remember getting Namjoon into it, can remember taking online classes together eventually, can remember the first time he tried it again on his own. It’s almost mindless at this point, which today makes him pause to wonder if he should try something new. Is it really a workout if you don’t have to try that hard anymore? Maybe he’s gotten complacent. Or just stronger? He looks at his thin arms in the mirror and smiles. Complacent, he thinks.

In the shower, he contemplates calling Jin to get together over the weekend. They don’t see each other as much as they used to before Jin stopped coming around the company to record. He knows if he texts he’ll get a call back relatively quickly at least, which is more than he can count on from Jungkook. It’s like this nearly every day—he thinks about who he could call: music friends, old friends, new friends (except you can’t always be sure they’ll actually turn out to be friends, Yoongi knows), and decides to stick with what he knows best. It’s always Jimin, Hobi, or Jin. Always. Tae and Jungkook are too busy, and while he misses them, he loves seeing them so successful and happy. Small victories.

More coffee while he walks Holly. It’s cold outside, so he’s in as many layers as he could find and cutting their morning stroll a little shorter than he normally would. Jimin always teases him for complaining about the cold, but he lives at least a quarter mile closer to the river than the rest of them, so what would they know, anyway? It’s definitely colder at his apartment than any of theirs, and he’ll die on that hill.

Finally it’s time for work. He’s lucky that he makes his own schedule and can dick around for a few hours from whenever he wakes up until whenever he decides to work. Not that he doesn’t have things to do and deadlines to meet, he just knows himself well enough to put in the right amount of time and effort nowadays. It’s not worth being burnt out over, which is something a younger version of him would have never thought he’d be someday saying. It’s one of the only things he thinks Namjoon was right about eight hundred and fifty two days ago.

Here’s where his routine varies. Sometimes he drives, sometimes he calls a driver, sometimes he walks when he’s feeling especially ambitious or nostalgic (it’s not often). Today, he calls a driver. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be there or if he’ll feel like driving when he’s finished, and he hates leaving his car at the company overnight. It’s inexplicable because their security is great, of course. It just makes him feel like he’s stranded in his stupid large apartment with no way out. Trapped. He despises that feeling even if he doesn’t actually end up wanting to leave.

In the back of the car, he decides it’s a good day. The sun is out, but not harsh, Holly woke up happy, he’s working on a couple of tracks he’s really proud of with people he likes collaborating with, and he’ll probably see Jin this weekend if everything goes to plan. He’s lucky, he knows. Some people don’t have the privilege to decide if their days will be good or not. So, he tries to simply let himself feel content. It’s a challenge, but on the days he succeeds, it’s worth it. And on days like today, he really believes it when he repeats affirmations of his own success and happiness in a silent mantra as the car crosses the river into Gangnam.

“Morning,” he greets the receptionists. It’s not bright or cheery, because he’s not onto coffee number three yet, but they smile regardless. Neither of them correct him to say it’s afternoon, because he’s who he is and they’re probably intimidated. He wishes it weren’t like that, but his whole last fifteen years has been a testimony to the importance of keeping professional distances, so he lets it slide. It’s not about him; not really.

The nice thing (one of many, he knows), about being his own boss (more or less) is that he doesn’t have to worry about running to his email inbox first thing to see if anyone needs anything from him. People perpetually do, but hardly any of them sign his paycheck, so they can usually wait a bit. So, he doesn’t bother. He gets his computer on, opens Cubase straight away, and starts work (after he texts to see if someone will bring him coffee number three). It’s peaceful, he likes this track so much it’s going to almost hurt when he’s done with it. That’s the moment he loves and hates the most—the one where something he’s put his soul into transfers ownership to someone else. If you love something, let it go, as they say, but Yoongi’s never really been very good at that.

The songs he’s been writing for himself have been sad. They’re too honest—pure and crystalline, each verse a surface reflecting another way in which his breakup with Namjoon ruined him piece by piece. The rest of the storyline, where he’s gradually started to put himself back together, has only shown up in his ability to produce songs that are happy, angry, defiant, hopeful… Still can’t write anything like that, though. Has songs he’s worked on for months and the lyrics simply sit in his notebook unedited, unfinished. For someone like Yoongi, words turn the theoretical into the tangible. So, if he never finishes those songs, his pain remains as an idea—the remnants of it haunt him, but he never has to let anyone know that, not really.

Instead, he can take the words and ideas of others and bring those to life. Maybe it’s healing for them, maybe they’re braver than him, but he plays a small part in their happiness and their success and that’s as worth clinging onto and being proud of as getting his own thoughts to paper would be.

Later, after coffee and before lunch, he’s immersed in the song, but his phone won’t stop buzzing. It’s annoying and incessant and he can feel it more than he can hear it as he tries to ignore it in favor of working out a harmony on his keyboard. Finally, on what he assumes is the fourth or fifth missed call, he tugs his headphones off and grabs the phone. It’s the fourth missed call, it’s Bang-PD each time, and he can’t place why the man would call him so many times in a row. Then he gets a text that just reads, “Check your email, please.” Ominous or curious, he can’t really tell.

In his inbox there are a hundred or more unread emails, but one sitting right at the top from his old boss—the subject line reads “Favor,” and it has an attachment.

The email is simple; just that Bang-PD needs a favor. Needs someone to lead production on an album, and the artist has personally requested Yoongi. Yoongi doesn’t work for him anymore; their former boss has been long replaced by someone a little younger, a little more interested in running the company now that it’s bigger than big with divisions and sub-corporations so numerous that Yoongi can’t even count them all. But… even though he’s not the boss, he’s certainly someone Yoongi owes a favor to. Their relationship is complex—somewhere between friendship and mutual respect… When everything had ended, when Yoongi was lost and low and scared, his old boss was there for him. An ear to listen, a guest room to sleep in, a job when he was ready to do something with himself again… So, even before he knows who the artist is, Yoongi knows he’ll do it. It’s not like Bang-PD sends him shit usually, anyway. If he’s onboard, it’s probably at least half-good already.

Yoongi pops his headphones back on and opens the attachment. A demo, rough around the edges but well-executed. Good ideas musically, superior ones lyrically. He doesn’t recognize the voice on the track, but he supposes it may or may not actually belong to whomever the song belongs to, anyway. There’s something about the song… something about how the words manage to be melancholy and optimistic at the same time, something about how there are maybe one too many competing sounds in the track… It’s so familiar. He likes it instantly, he also knows he can fix it, he knows it’s good but that he can make it great—doesn’t even finish the whole thing before he texts back. I’ll do it, this is good. Really good.

The response is immediate. “I knew you’d like it. I’ll be in touch.”

And just like that, Yoongi has a new gig as the current one is winding down. He still doesn’t know why it carried the urgency of an email and four missed calls and a text, still doesn’t know who the artist is that asked for him, but that’s how it goes sometimes. He’ll know all the details soon enough, he decides. No use in overthinking.

***

So, life goes on. Work and routine and warmer days as spring rolls through Seoul, and meetings with rappers and singers and other producers… It’s busy in the way he likes, keeps him just on the healthy side of distracted, keeps him feeling productive, human even. His therapist, it seems, was right all along: things seem better with time and distance.

When he meets Jin a couple Saturdays later for drinks, everything is as it should be, everything is squarely in its place in Yoongi’s carefully crafted world.

“Yoongi-chi!”

Seokjin looks happy—bright smile, bright voice, always a little hint of a tease in it.

“Jin-hyung, I’m glad to see you.” And he is. These are always his favorite parts of the week. He’s wrapped in a crooked hug—Seokjin is and always has been a little awkward with this kind of contact (unless it’s with Jeongguk).

“Glad to see you, too,” he says into Yoongi’s hair.

They sit, they flag down the server to place their order, and they catch up. Jin’s not making music anymore, but he’s busier than ever with all of his other endeavors: restaurants, makgeolli, commercials, MC gigs… the list is almost endless. It’s good to see him happy, trying new things with his friends. Of all of them, Seokjin’s always been one of the most private, so Yoongi likes seeing him this way, happy and open. It feels like something gifted to him, a part of his friend that not many people will ever get to see.

“So…” Jin says lazily, and Yoongi knows he isn’t going to like what’s coming next—he knows this tone. It’s the “I’m planning something and I know you won’t like it so I’ve taken it far enough that you can’t back out or argue about it without looking like a dick” tone. Usually only reserved for Yoongi (and used to be Namjoon, too, but Yoongi—thankfully—doesn’t know much about Namjoon and Jin’s current relationship, if they’re still close enough for Jin to pull this kind of shit anymore).

“You might as well spit it out,” Yoongi murmurs.

Jin laughs and takes a long drink of his beer. “Well… There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“No.”

“Yoongi, just hear me out.” He draws out the vowels of Yoongi’s name like he’s already begging. This means one of two things. A music favor or a date he doesn’t want.

“What’s his name?”

“Her name.”

“A singer?”

“No…”

Yoongi sighs and picks at the label of his beer bottle. “I don’t think I’m ready,” he says.

“It’s been almost three years.”

“Time is a construct,” Yoongi retorts. He means for it to be under his breath, but he knows Jin heard him, knows it wasn’t quiet enough.

“Her name is Hiah. She owns a small soju brand we brought into one of the restaurants. She’s smart, Yoongi, really smart. And interesting, too. She plays the guitar and volunteers at the childrens’ hospital with Iseul. They get along great, and I know you’d like her.”

Ah… So the truth comes out. Kang Iseul is a force to be reckoned with; you’d have to be to put up with Jin, Yoongi thinks. But Yoongi likes Iseul, respects her, and if she likes this girl… Maybe. “So you want a double date or something?” he asks.

Jin’s grin reappears as he taps his temple. “Ah, Yoongi-chi, you were always the smartest one in the group.”

Yoongi scoffs. “When?”

“Next weekend. Saturday. A fundraiser for the hospital. Wear a suit and get someone to do your hair.”

“Hiah, huh?”

Jin nods. “Hiah. She’s great, you’ll see.”

A week later, Yoongi finds himself at the mercy of a stylist at the company who is ensuring he looks photograph-ready. It’s been a while since he’s been forced to shoot anything, dress any certain way, wear any makeup that isn’t of his choosing… He forgot that he kind of likes it—just a little bit, anyway. It’s nice to let someone dress you up and make you look like a different (hopefully better and less tired) version of yourself.

It’s hard not to sit in the chair and be reminded of how he used to share these moments with the rest of them: how Jeongguk and Jin used to play-fight while the makeup team yelled at them, how Taehyung and Jimin would tease each other and Hobi and whoever else would pay attention to them… and Namjoon—how Namjoon would sit in the back of the room on his phone, always finished first, always pecking out a lyric or a text, meeting Yoongi’s eyes in the mirror every so often and giving a wink or a smirk or just a barely there flash of a dimple when no one was paying attention.

“That’s a big sigh.” He hears Jin’s voice before he sees him, pulling him back into the present moment.

“Who let you up here?” Yoongi teases in reply.

Jin makes flower hands around his chin and pushes his lips out in a half-kiss, half-pout. “Ah, this face still gets me everywhere. Almost ready?”

The stylist nods for him, and pushes the front of his hair back with one last spritz of hairspray before she signals that he can leave. He stands and bows to her quickly and then checks himself out in the mirror. Not bad, really. Actually, pretty good. His hair is long again, but she’s got it swept off his face, and he looks good in the suit she chose. It’s simple, navy, which isn’t his usual first choice, but looks pretty nice. When he checks out his profile, he decides maybe the pilates are still working just fine. He looks good.

“Done preening?” Jin asks.

Yoongi feels himself flush a bit under his makeup. “It’s been a while,” is all he says in return.

“I know it has.” Jin loops his arm over Yoongi’s shoulders as they make their way to the elevator bank. “But you can do this,” he says.

Yoongi’s not sure Jin’s right, but he’s gotten this far, so he figures he might as well give it a shot.

***

Turns out, he ends up being glad he gave Hiah a chance. As promised, he does like her. The fundraiser actually ends up being fun, and it’s mostly thanks to her. She keeps up with Jin, she isn’t shy around Yoongi, she makes jokes (and Yoongi finds a great satisfaction in announcing to Jin that Hiah’s jokes are funnier than Jin’s, which Iseul agrees with, sending Jin into a panic of telling even worse dad jokes than he had been before). Jin was right: Hiah is smart, pretty, and interesting. She doesn’t just play the guitar, she plays the guitar in an indie band, which Yoongi thinks is painfully cool even though he really isn’t supposed to be impressed by that kind of thing anymore. She’s taller than him in her heels, probably a little taller than him without them, too, and looks incredible in her dress, which is off-white and off-the shoulder and shows off her collarbone and the delicate, fine-line tattoo that runs across the length of it, as well as her tanned skin, which Yoongi never has himself and has always been a sucker for.

When the speeches start, the part of these kinds of events that Yoongi hates the most, Hiah leans in and whispers to ask if he wants to get some fresh air, and then promptly tows him out of the ballroom to a balcony on the next floor.

“So…” she starts, looking a little unsure and a little wild as they lean against the railing. “Can I be forward with you Yoongi-ssi?”

Oh, he likes her already.

“Of course. And just Yoongi is fine.”

“Iseul tells me you might not be over your last relationship.”

“Does she?” It isn’t what he expected to hear from her; he was hoping to avoid the ex talk.

Hiah nods and then turns to look out over the city, holding her weight off of her heels when she leans over the balustrade. “I don’t know if I am either,” she says quietly. “Over my ex, you know. But you’re interesting, and handsome, and pretty obviously out of my league, so…” She lets herself down with a hop. He likes watching her, he realizes, likes her playful body language, likes that she seems to have these bits of energy bubbling in her veins just under the surface of her skin that she needs to let out. She’s different from him in that way. “I think we should just kiss and get it out of the way.”

“What?”

She smiles widely. “You know, just see if anything’s there. If there is, maybe we see each other again, take things slow. If there’s not, then… Well, we can tell Iseul and Seokjin we tried and maybe they’ll get off both our backs for a while.”

“You’re an interesting woman, Hiah.”

One step closer… then another, and then Hiah is right there, breathing the same air as him, looking down a little at him with a smirk. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm,” she murmurs, and then brings her hands to his lapels to smooth them down over his chest. Something in the back of his poorly-functioning-at-the-moment brain tells him that they were already smooth, that she’s touching him just for the sake of touching… And he thinks he likes it. “I’ve also been told I’m a good kisser.”

“Interesting…” He chokes it out, nervous, anticipating. Hiah’s clearly holding the reins and Yoongi’s excited, he realizes, to see what she does next.

What she does is dip her head down and press her lips to his, all softness and kindness and something sweet that Yoongi immediately realizes has been missing from his life for a couple years. Hiah is warm and her lips are plush and when her tongue slips into his mouth, licking softly against his own, she tastes like strawberries and a little like the champagne they’ve been drinking. It’s nice—nice to feel wanted, nice to have the taste and smell of someone else weaving their way through his senses. It’s mostly nice to feel connected to someone. His chest hurts, thinking about how long it’s been since someone touched him like this, since someone showed him affection like this. The kiss is nice, tender, and a little bittersweet as he realizes how different it is… kissing someone that isn’t Namjoon. Without meaning to, he whimpers quietly when Hiah pulls away, already missing the feeling of her mouth on his. Missing the closeness.

“That was…” he starts at the same time Hiah speaks.

“Maybe there is a little something there,” she says, eyes wide. He’s relieved that it’s not just his unadmitted loneliness making him think there was a bit of a spark between them, that maybe she felt it, too.

They share a few more sweet and quick kisses on the balcony, and then the sound of applause floating through the air decides for them that they should go back inside. He isn’t really sure how long they’ve been gone—kissing and laughing and sharing some sense of anticipation under the crescent moon.

Seokjin literally giggles when they make their way back to the table, as Iseul politely points out that Yoongi has the dark red stain of Hiah’s lipstick on the side of his mouth. He would be embarrassed under most circumstances, but Hiah is laughing when she grabs his jaw gently and dabs at it with a damp cloth napkin. It makes him feel light and more free than he has almost since he can remember.

He doesn’t escape the teasing from Seokjin for the rest of the night, and for weeks after that. He takes Hiah out a few times, keeping Iseul and Jin in the loop on how things are progressing. Each time he sees her, he likes her more. On the days when they have dates planned for the evening, he finds himself smiling more, focusing less, and even a little giddy looking forward to his time with her. She’s a good companion, still making him laugh like she did the first time they met, still easy on him and a little hard on herself—Yoongi can relate to that.

Everything is going well, and he has to stop himself from thinking it’s going “too well,” that he doesn’t deserve this kind of happiness, that it’s not meant for him.

***

The first time Yoongi invites Hiah back to his place after a date, he’s had an objectively good day. He finished the track he’d been working on for Younha, he met with one of the company’s girl groups to see if a song he’d written a while back could work for their new album—they loved it—and he finally got a meeting set up with the management of the artist whose album Bang-PD asked him to produce a couple months prior.

His date with Hiah that night was great; they met at the company building and then walked to a cat cafe. It was stupid and simple, but they drank wine and ate cake and played with cats, and she was so funny and kind, and whip-smart with her conversation… He felt like he just stared at her the whole time with big, dopey eyes—this girl in baggy jeans and a hoodie with cats crawling all over her lap while she made stupid jokes about Schroedinger—and he knew that he was going to take her home, knew he wanted to try and take things further with her, knew he was about to cross into new territory and he was shitting bricks just thinking about it.

“Hiah?”

“Hmm?” She looks up at him and smiles, hands carding through the soft fur of a calico kitten that hasn’t left her side since they got there.

“Do you… maybe want to come back to my—”

“Yes.” Hiah nods emphatically before he can even finish his sentence, and then they’re both immediately reduced to nervous laughter and shy smiles, downing the rest of their wine more quickly than people should, and scurrying to get a taxi back to his flat.

As soon as they’re through the door, they’re on each other, Hiah pressed against his door, his hands pushing under her hoodie, and hers in his hair as he kisses up her neck and jaw, warm and soft skin pricking up with goosebumps as he goes.

“Want the tour?” he asks, a little breathlessly.

“Not now,” she replies. “Just the bedroom, yeah?”

And then it’s happening. It’s like a fever dream, and he doesn’t even remember how they got there, but she’s naked on his bed (and Yoongi hasn’t had someone naked on his bed in a shamefully long time—not since Namjoon, not since tanned skin and long, thick legs, and playful dimpled grins that are still etched into his brain), and she’s also long and tan and fuck, she’s wet already, he can see it when she opens her legs for him…

The first thing he thinks when he sees her is that she’s so different from Namjoon. And he hates himself a little for even thinking about him in this moment. He wants to give his attention to Hiah—doesn’t love her, but loves spending time with her, wants her to feel good and special and cared for, and thinking about how her legs are long and tan like Namjoon’s but that nothing else is the same isn’t achieving that.

It’s been so long since he’s been with someone, longer since he’s been with a woman, but he finds, as he brings his focus back to Hiah, that it’s the same now as it has been in his memories and fantasies for the last couple of lonely years. She rolls her hips into his touch when he slides one, and then two fingers inside her. When his thumb finds her clit, she whimpers, tells him it’s been so long and he feels so good. She whines again when his lips close around one of her nipples, rolling his tongue around where it peaks and letting his teeth sink in just enough for her to feel it, not enough to hurt.

He’s hard and he’s self-conscious, because as good as he knows he is at making other people feel good, he also hasn’t been naked in front of anyone since Namjoon. Namjoon with his, “God, you’re so gorgeous, hyung,” and his deep, deep moans, and his jaw clicking around when Yoongi would tease him, making Yoongi feel sexy… powerful even, like he could do anything, ask for anything, and Namjoon would let him, would give it to him. Except when you asked him to stay, his traitorous mind tells him as he slides his briefs off and gives Hiah her first view of all of the rest of him.

“Fuck,” she says. “Pilates works for you, huh?” as she sits up on her elbows and smirks. It makes him blush, makes him feel good, makes him decide that maybe dating Hiah, bringing her home with him, was one of the best ideas he’s had in a long time.

“I do okay,” he replies.

“You look great,” she assures him. “Now will you please fuck me?”

Sex with Hiah starts out fun. They laugh, and their teeth clack together a few times when they try to kiss, and it’s clear that it’s been a little while for both of them, but they eventually find a good rhythm. She’s a little whiny, a little desperate, and Yoongi likes that—it’s a confidence booster, makes him feel like he’s still got “it.”

At one point, after he’s given her one orgasm already, she gets him on his back, straddles him, and slides slowly onto his dick. It’s the closest to perfect he’s felt in ages. She moves her hips against him, grinding more than bouncing, and it’s just like Namjoon. Just like him. There’s a warm wave of nostalgia that washes over him, and even though her hips feel different, and the soft skin of her stomach isn’t as firm under his hands, if he closes his eyes, he can almost swear he’s gone back in time. Namjoon grinding down on him, whining when Yoongi thumbs at the head of his cock, dragging precum and lube down to the base and fisting him tight. It’s so clear in his memory, the little grunts he would let out, the breathy, “fuck, hyung,” with each upstroke, getting more desperate as he got closer to release.

Soon, Hiah is moving up and down, riding him fast and hard and he’s got his fingers wound tightly into the bedsheets because she’s not Namjoon—because he doesn’t know where to touch her, doesn’t know what she might like, and if he tries something, it might ruin the fantasy playing out in his head. The one of his best friend fucking himself on Yoongi’s cock until there’s cum all over Yoongi’s hand and chest, until they’re breathless and Namjoon feels like dead weight on him, reeling in his orgasm and just letting Yoongi fuck into him until he’s finished too, letting Yoongi use him to get off and moaning quietly through the overstimulation. It’s perfect, really, because Hiah is bent over him now, kissing her way along his collarbone and chest and it’s warm and wet just like Namjoon would have made him. And she’s giving him soft whimpers that he can distort in his mind to make them sound like Namjoon’s, and nothing is the same about them, not really, but nothing is so different that he can’t imagine it.

He’s coming before he knows what’s happening, almost saying Namjoon’s name, his hands releasing their tight grip on the sheets to land on Hiah’s hips, to hold her down as he thrusts up into her hard, spilling into the condom. He knows she hasn’t had another orgasm, knows it’s selfish that he didn’t even try to give her one while he was still inside her. As his orgasm fades, the guilt sets in. It’s not fucking normal, he thinks, to be thinking about your ex-boyfriend while some near-perfect girl is hot and tight and wet on your cock, while she’s telling you how much she likes you, how good you make her feel. He feels himself turning red with shame, hopes she thinks it’s sex related… Pulls the condom off and tosses it before he dives back between her thighs to hide his embarrassment.

It works, at least a little bit, because he loses himself in the way she feels and tastes, and she fucks his face like she’s taking something that doesn’t belong to her, and she whispers something when she comes that doesn’t sound like his name at all. Her eyes are pinched shut and there’s a tear slipping out of the left one, and right then, he remembers what she said the first night they met about maybe not being over her ex, knows what they’re doing is fucked up, but at least they’re in it together.

They both clean up quietly, he invites her to stay, and she accepts, and he’d be willing to bet money that they’re both in it for the same thing—the delay of the crash that’s coming, the loneliness that will set in when they’re not curled up next to someone warm, someone who shares their pain, someone who gets it.

Her breath is shallow and warm on his chest, and she’s kind and sweet and sexy, and he wishes he could have done this differently.

“Are you alright?” she whispers.

“No. Are you?” It’s honest; probably too honest, but he owes her that, at least.

Hiah smiles against his skin. “No.”

“At least we have each other,” he says, knowing it’s not enough and hoping it’ll do, anyway.

“Could be so much worse,” she says.

“The cats were nice.”

She lets out a loud, bright laugh. “The cats and the orgasms,” she agrees.

***

When he wakes in the morning, he tries to stick to his routine, even with Hiah there. It’s strange to have someone in his space like this, he’s not used to it and it throws him off a little. He doesn’t know anymore how to make the right amount of coffee for two people. Doesn’t remember that Holly has to go for a walk and Hiah is probably a person who eats breakfast and those two things seem exceptionally challenging for him to coordinate properly. But Hiah is easy, relaxed about things in general, so she takes Holly for a walk while Yoongi cooks for them, and by the time they’re done eating and Hiah is borrowing a toothbrush and a towel so she can get ready for work, he almost forgets that he doesn’t know how to do this.

They part ways when a car comes for each of them, one to take Hiah to her office in Sinchon, and one headed to Gangnam for him. She gives him a kiss before she gets in the car, and they make plans to see each other again on the weekend, and they don’t talk about how she cried, don’t talk about how he was picturing someone else on top of him. It seems like they don’t need to.

He’s halfway through the day when he gets a “Good job” text from Seokjin with eggplant emojis because apparently they’re still fifteen, which means Hiah told Iseul that they’d slept together, and Iseul told Jin, and Jin is going to want to tease him relentlessly about it—worse than the teasing he was getting for not sleeping with anyone, probably. But they go back and forth for a bit, and Yoongi gets one of the interns to bring him coffee and the good dakgalbi from the place down the street, and he’s still on a bit of a high from the orgasm and the friendship and the food when there’s a knock on his door.

It’s time for his meeting with that mystery artist, and he’s excited. He’s prepared for it, has ideas for each track that he thinks will help, but also needs to hear all the lyrics so he has a better idea of what they’re trying to accomplish with the songs.

He’s got a smile on his face when he opens the door to Genius Lab, and it lasts approximately half a second when he realizes that standing in the hallway in front of him, for the first time in years, is Kim Namjoon.

“Hi, hyung.”

“No.”

Confusion crosses Namjoon’s face, Yoongi sees it—Namjoon has never hidden his thoughts well, never had a good poker face. “Sorry, I’m not sure what to say,” he says.

“Me either,” Yoongi says, still in disbelief that this is happening.

“Can I come in?”

And that feels… like something Yoongi doesn’t want. Or, at least not right now. That’s his place. It’s private and it’s safe and it’s been redecorated since Namjoon left—the pictures of him all gone except for one of the seven of them at the Grammy awards a long time ago that Yoongi couldn’t bear to shove in a box.

“I don’t think so,” he says.

Namjoon looks crestfallen. “Well… okay. Alright… I guess… I guess I can go. Or can we go somewhere else?”

“I have a meeting with…” And something dawns on Yoongi at that very second. “You. They’re your songs. You’re the one who asked for me.”

“I did.” Namjoon nods, hands shoved in his pockets, just the right amount of sheepish. It pisses Yoongi off. How does Kim Namjoon have the audacity to think Yoongi owes him anything after everything they went through? After Namjoon left him…

Yoongi scoffs. “Bold.”

“Hyung…”

“I can’t do this right now. I was having a good day, Namjoon.”

“And now you’re not. Because of me?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Yoongi mutters it, but not quietly enough that Namjoon misses it. It’s catty and shitty and everything Yoongi has tried so hard not to be. It’s not who he wants to be, but seeing Namjoon in front of him just makes him so fucking mad. Like all of that hurt and sadness and feeling like he wasn’t good enough is just right there, taking a human form. A fucking gorgeous human form, because of course he is, because the universe isn’t fair enough to make him anything but the man of Yoongi’s dreams. It fucking sucks.

“That’s not fair,” Namjoon says softly.

“I don’t think you get to decide that.”

Namjoon’s shoulders slump. “Fine. I deserve that,” he concedes. “But I really need your help with this one, hyung. I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important. I know what a big deal this is.” And then he digs one of his toes into the carpet, twisting it around nervously. “I know I don’t deserve it. But I’m here, begging. You’re the only one who can make these songs right. I need you.”

I need you. Those three words hang in the air between them. Namjoon’s face contorts as soon as they come out, like he knows there’s so much more meaning associated with them than he meant for there to be. He has to know that Yoongi has waited for years to hear those words from him. Fucking literal years. He’s had dreams about hearing Namjoon say those three words to him. And yet, now that it happens, he doesn’t feel anything he expected to feel. Not hope, not love, not even anger. It’s just hollow.

“I need to think about it.”

Namjoon pauses and sucks in a breath. “Okay, sure… That’s fair, yeah. Thank you. I mean, for even considering it. I know there’s a lot of… stuff here between us and… Well, I’m ready or willing to talk about it… Or whatever you want. If you’re ready, hyung. The ball’s in your court.”

It takes a lot for Yoongi not to give a snarky reply. He knows it’s fair, more than fair. He doesn’t owe Namjoon anything, doesn’t owe him closure or support or his time. Where was Namjoon when Yoongi wanted to talk years ago? When Yoongi wanted to work through things? But he’s trying, really trying, to not feed his own negativity. So, instead of making things more awkward, he lets out a long breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and nods. “I’ll be in touch, Namjoon,” he says quietly before he shuts the door, leaving Namjoon on the other side.

There’s something surreal about knowing Namjoon is right there, he thinks as he slumps against the door. Close enough to touch, and Yoongi has been thinking about that touch for years. Part of him is mad—over time, he’s run through a million scenarios in his head, what he would say when he ever had the chance to speak to Namjoon again. None of them had played out like this: more wistful than angry, more heartache than rage. He’s dreamt about giving Namjoon a piece of his mind, and still, given the chance, he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring himself to hurt Namjoon, not really. Doesn’t even think it would be worth it—nothing he could do to Namjoon would come close to hurting as much as what Namjoon did to him, so what’s the point?

A while ago, if this had happened, Yoongi might have panicked. Now, he feels eerily calm about it. He does want to ask some questions, though, so he makes his way back to his desk and sends an email to Bang-PD, asking why he wouldn’t tell Yoongi that the mystery artist was Namjoon. It feels a little like a betrayal, and he wonders if anyone else knew. Did Jin know? Did Hoseok? Yoongi knows he and Namjoon are close. Maybe it doesn’t matter. If he hadn’t been blindsided, he wouldn’t have taken the meeting. So, perhaps, this was the only way to get them in front of each other.

He leaves early that day, feeling a little shaken and more than a little confused about what he should do.

So, he does nothing. He doesn’t go into the studio for the rest of the week, doesn’t call Jin, doesn’t leave the apartment except to walk Holly. He spends four days sort of frozen—reminiscing, thinking, trying to figure out the right next move. After four days of thinking and delivery chicken and self-admitted sulking, he pulls out the box.

It’s a pretty morning in Seoul—the sun is soft in the deceptive way, where you could be tricked into thinking you can go outside without a jacket, but it’s hiding a bitter chill. Yoongi likes these mornings, not the cold, but the apricity—likes the way the pale, dissipated light filters through his living room. Likes the way the air smells when he cracks a window open, reminds him of stolen mornings with Namjoon at Naksan. Which reminds him of the box.

It’s tucked in his guest room, hidden deep deep deep in the back of the closet under old equipment. It’s not big—it’s a shame or a wonder that you can fit ten years of memories into a 40x40x10 centimeter box, he can’t decide which. He hasn’t opened the box since he filled it, but he knows what’s inside. Everything that he needs to be reminded of Namjoon, including one particular picture he’s looking for. It’s halfway down in the stack of photographs and tickets and memories. Probably from 2014. In fact, he knows it’s from 2014 because Namjoon has that ridiculous hair, the swept back blond with the undercut that’s darker than dark. He’s standing on Naksan Beach, with the ocean on one side of him and the mountains of Seoraksan Park on the other and he looks like the love of Yoongi’s life.

Even then, back when they were young and scared and stupid, he looked radiant. Namjoon has always had this quality about him that Yoongi can’t resist—it’s magnetism, magic of some kind. Even when they fought and scrambled to survive and things were shit, there was no one Yoongi would rather have done that with than Namjoon. And that day, on the beach, before the real fame and the complication and the endless travel, he seemed perfect. Yoongi still remembers it—early summer, sneaking out of the dorms early in the morning without sleep, clambering into his shitty car, driving all the way to Seoraksan before Namjoon begged him to keep going to the beach, said he just needed to remember he was small, that he didn’t matter in the big big scope of the world, that everything would be okay.

The sun rose on them as they pulled up, and Namjoon took his shoes off and ran to the sand as soon as the car was in park. Despite the sun, it was wickedly cold, but Namjoon didn’t even seem to notice. Head back, tan skin glowing, stupid haircut and all, and Yoongi’s only (terrifying) thought as he watched from the hood of the car was, “I’m so in love with him.”

In his hand, the picture still feels like love. Feels like the day Yoongi handed his heart to a young blond boy from Ilsan in a quiet transaction. Namjoon smiles so wide you can barely see his eyes, his dimples are crater deep, and his palms are out wide—looks like he’s just trying to absorb all that sun and steal it, let it become him. Sometimes, back then, Yoongi was sure he’d figured out how, too.

Certainly, at the very least, he stole something important from Yoongi that day.

Nothing happened then, not between them, but it was a big day. The biggest. He took all those big feelings and shoved them into his chest and did what he thought was the right thing for the group, for him, especially for Namjoon. He didn’t know until later that Namjoon felt the same way, didn’t figure it out until they were in a hotel room in Osaka three years later, high off their world tour and finally alone for the first time in months. Yoongi lamented all the time they’d wasted not talking about how they felt, and Namjoon said that no moment with Yoongi could ever be a waste. And again, Yoongi’s thought was, “I’m so in love with you.” But that time, he said it out loud, and Namjoon said it back.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until a tear lands on the picture, right on Namjoon’s face, like the clouds opened up and dropped a bit of salty rain right there, Namjoon with his face titled, ready to receive it. It’s still precious, he wants to keep it, thinks he’ll save that picture until he dies, probably. It gets carefully wiped off on his soft hoodie and put back in the box, but this time, he puts it right on top.

And when he puts the lid back on the box, it doesn’t feel at all as final as it had nine hundred days ago.

***

On the weekend, he still has plans with Hiah, so he drags himself out of the house for the first time and meets her at a hole in the wall restaurant near Ehwa. It takes her all of five minutes to realize something’s up with Yoongi.

“You can tell me,” she says after one of the women working there takes their order.

“Tell you what?”

“You’re not subtle.”

He lets out a quiet laugh. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Hiah takes his hand in hers on top of the small table. “Would talking help?”

“I’m not sure,” he says honestly. “I saw my ex this week.”

“Namjoon,” she replies softly. It’s not a question.

Yoongi nods. “Yeah… How’d you know?”

“Iseul told me. She thought I should know what I was getting into. A little more complicated between you two than a typical relationship, maybe.”

He just hums in agreement. It’s true, and it’s a wild understatement.

“How long has it been?” she asks.

“Since we disbanded… So, about a month before it was announced if you were keeping up with it back then.”

“I wasn’t,” Hiah says, “but it was hard to miss even for people like me who weren’t big fans.”

Yoongi brings a hand to his heart in faux insult. “You weren’t a fan?”

This, at least, makes Hiah laugh. “Not really. But I wasn’t not one, either. If that means anything. And I’m a fan of you, now.”

It makes his cheeks flush—Hiah is sweet. He’s a fan of hers, too. It should make him feel good that they have this mutual attraction, but instead he just feels kind of sick. He should be thinking about her, and instead he’s thinking about the box, about the pictures in it, and the boy in the pictures. About how the boy in the pictures became the man who stood in front of him at his studio the week before: beautiful, contrite, and small in a way Yoongi had never really seen before.

So, when their food is in front of them and they’re settled in, instead of telling Hiah he feels the same way about her in return, he says, “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

Across from him, her expression doesn’t change. She takes a big piece of pork off the grill and wraps it in lettuce, chews it carefully and rolls her eyes back with pleasure just like Seokjin would. It’s funny, or would be anyway, but neither of them are laughing.

“You’re not over him,” she says once she’s finished eating.

“I don’t know if I am or not. That hasn’t changed. But I know that before, I really, really wanted to be.”

Hiah gives him a smile he doesn’t deserve, understanding and more kind than his behavior warrants. “And now?”

“Now I’m not sure.” Yoongi takes a shot of soju and pours more for each of them. “I’m still hurt. But… I don’t know. I think he might be, too. And maybe I owe it to myself to find out why. Maybe I don’t and I’ll just get hurt more but…”

He trails off, but she picks it up for him. “But you were together for a long time and you need to know why it ended.”

“I think so. And I don’t feel right about this while that’s still hanging out there unfinished.”

Hiah doesn’t placate him with a nod of agreement or a murmured “that’s okay”. It’s fine really, he doesn’t deserve her grace, he thinks. He certainly isn’t giving much to himself, and isn't proud of himself at this moment. He picks at the potato salad and tries to will himself out of this situation. It doesn’t work, of course. He’s always been an honest person. He knows he’s not ready, knows he’s probably going to hurt her or at least not be available emotionally if Namjoon is back in his life. Not at first anyway.

“I think I get it,” she finally says.

“I can’t do both things at once,” he adds. “Not well, anyway. Can’t get closure with him and give you what you need at the same time… It’s not fair, but I think I need this.”

“As long as it’s for you and not for him,” Hiah says, with authority in her tone. It sounds like the advice of someone who has done this before. Someone who has been in his shoes.

Yoongi doesn’t know what to say to that—doesn’t know if in the time that he’s been apart from Namjoon if he’s figured out what separates what’s for him and what’s for Namjoon. It used to always be interconnected, and he’d like to think it’s not that way anymore, but there’s a part of him that he thinks might never get over wanting to see Namjoon happy and secure. The same part of him that couldn’t tell Namjoon off the other day in the studio, the same part that still thinks of that day at Naksan as one of the best days of his life because Namjoon was happy, because he was giving Namjoon what he needed and that was enough. That’s always been enough; at least for Yoongi.

But Hiah doesn’t need to know all that. So, Yoongi nods his agreement and makes a non-committal murmur over his bottle of beer. Tries his best to make it through dinner without feeling like he’s making another Namjoon-induced mistake, the kind he thought he was done making a long time ago.

After a semi-awkward dinner, he turns down Hiah’s offer for coffee. She doesn’t owe him any kindness and he just wants to be alone with his thoughts again. They agree to stay friends, but it feels hollow, the kind of promise only made because both parties know the other won’t deliver. He might see her around, definitely wants to stay friendly, but can’t picture a future where Hiah pursues a friendship with him after he dumped her. He wouldn’t if he were in her shoes. He didn’t with Namjoon.

It makes him want to scream, the way his traitorous brain relates everything back to Namjoon, every thought just seconds away from being connected to his past somehow. It feels like years of progress are reduced to nothing. He walks through the crisp night air and thinks he should go back to his therapist soon, thinks he’s probably actually going insane this time.

The next day, he ignores his messages from Jin and Iseul, both asking why he’s broken up with Hiah, both not scolding but coming close enough that he doesn’t want to hear it. Both worried, he knows, Hiah’s probably told them that Namjoon had something to do with it and he’s sure Jin has thoughts about that. Honestly, though, he’s got no idea what they might be, because he and Jin have never talked about what happened with Namjoon—not out of the context of what happened with BTS, anyway. It’s actually one of the things Yoongi appreciates most about his hyung. One time, right when it happened, when it became abundantly clear to everyone that Yoongi and Namjoon were no longer sharing a car at the end of the work day, when Namjoon kept later than usual hours at the studio despite claiming he needed a break, when Jin caught Yoongi crying on the floor of one of the practice rooms at two in the morning… Then and only then did Jin ask. “Things are over, right?”

Back then, Yoongi nodded through his tears and let his head slump onto Jin’s stupid shoulder when he took a seat on the floor beside him.

Jin stayed quiet and just let Yoongi cry there until he didn’t have any more tears. And then finally, after a long stretch of silence, he poked Yoongi in the side and said, “Well, everything goes.”

Yoongi looked up, ready to lose his shit completely, only to see Jin stifling a laugh. Sent Yoongi into laughter, too, and soon the two of them dissolved into a fit of giggles in the quiet city morning, laughing because one didn’t know what to say and laughing because the only alternative for the other was to cry again.

“Thanks, hyung,” Yoongi said when they were done with hysterics and gathering all their stuff to leave.

“We can talk if you want,” Jin replied.

But they never did. So, Yoongi really doesn’t know what Jin ever made of the whole situation, doesn’t know if Namjoon and Jin ever talked about it, either. All this time, he’s made the assumption that Namjoon talked to someone about it, Hoseok probably, maybe Jimin, too. But he doesn’t really know. Doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to ask.

His phone is a graveyard of missed calls, missed texts, and email waiting for responses, but he ignores it all in favor of sending one message in a long-dormant kakao chat. He shouldn’t send it, he knows better, he’s pretty confident this is going to end up in more therapy and more tears, and probably a lot of whisky consumption, but he can’t tell his heart to shut up. It’s always been as loud or louder than his brain. An advantage usually, but sometimes he’s his own worst enemy.

It’s just a few words, but he can’t help but remember that’s more than Namjoon used to break his heart.

We can start work on your album tomorrow at noon.

Yoongi doesn’t wait for a response—Namjoon will show up or he won’t, and Yoongi decided a long time ago that he deserved better than to wait around for someone who couldn’t make up their mind about him. The circumstances are different, but the principle is the same. He plugs his phone in and leaves it while he takes Holly for a walk. He hopes the fresh air will clear his mind, but knows it probably won’t.

***

There’s something like a loud crash against his studio door exactly at noon. If Namjoon is the same as he always was, he’s probably been standing out in the hallway worrying about how loud to knock or if he should knock at 11:59 or if 12:01 would be more polite.

“Come in,” he says, spinning around in his chair.

There’s a soft thud and a groan. “Can’t.”

So, Yoongi gets up and opens the door for Namjoon, tries to push down the intrusive, cheesy thought that it’s a metaphor for something bigger.

“Hi,” Namjoon says quietly. His hands are full, coffee in each one and a bag of takeout hanging from one of his wrists. He’s bundled up, mask still on, a fluff of dyed brown hair poking out from under his hoodie.

“Hey.”

“I brought food. You haven’t eaten?”

“Not yet,” Yoongi admits. He doesn’t like that he’s still this kind of predictable to Namjoon, but he doesn’t want to lie either, and if Namjoon owes him a lot for what they went through, rice and kimchi is a good down payment. “Sit, and we can eat and go over some ideas for the album.”

Namjoon lights up—Yoongi can see it even under his mask. “Sounds good,” he says, more calmly than he looks.

They accomplish the first step; Namjoon sits on the small couch and his eyes dart around, probably trying to take in what’s changed since he was last in the room. Yoongi sits in his work chair across the coffee table and unpacks the food. It’s awkward. Awkward enough that they don’t quite make it to the second step: talking. Yoongi feels queasy, Namjoon looks like he is, and so they shove food in their mouths and avoid eye contact and the silence is simultaneously safe-feeling and painfully uncomfortable.

Until Namjoon breaks it.

“Are you sure you want to do this, hyung?”

Yoongi’s usually careful with his responses to questions like that, and takes time to choose his words. But he doesn’t have to this time. “No.”

“Why are you, then?”

“I’m not sure, honestly. Curiosity, maybe?” It’s not quite the right word, but he can’t think of a succinct way to say that he needs to know why Namjoon stopped loving him, why he wasn’t good enough to stick around for.

“Hmm…” Namjoon just murmurs, nothing coherent in response. It’s so terribly awkward, and Yoongi hates that they’re in this situation. He’s frustrated with himself for not being mad or angry, he’s frustrated with Namjoon for everything… But more than that, he wishes they could just be normal with each other. Just for a few hours. Just pretend like nothing ever happened and go back to 2014 when things were simple. He wishes they were at Naksan.

“Do you remember the day we drove all the way to Naksan for the sunrise?” he blurts out. He regrets it immediately when he sees Namjoon freeze, chopsticks in midair, eyes wide.

Then Namjoon nods, a cautious smile making it onto his face. “I do. That was a good day,” he says fondly. And then more quietly, he says, “That was the day I think I knew I loved you.”

And Yoongi doesn’t know what to say to that. Almost doesn’t believe it. It’s his turn to let his eyes go wider. “What?”

“Sure,” and Namjoon’s blushing now, bashful in a way that makes Yoongi’s heart feel like an instrument. “I remember thinking I was so lucky to have you in my life. So lucky that you would go out of your way to do something like that for me for no real reason other than that I wanted it.” He finally makes eye contact with Yoongi. “I remember thinking that it had to be what loving someone was; making sure they were happy. Putting them first. I felt so loved by you that day.”

Yoongi swallows. They’d never talked about it, not once. Never had that, “when did you know?” conversation that he thinks most young couples probably have.

“I would have done anything for you,” Yoongi replies. “That’s the day I realized that. That’s the day I knew I was in love with you, that I would choose you over me.”

Namjoon’s face falls a little. He’s not frowning, but it’s the look he gets when he’s really considering something, when he’s trying to put the pieces of some puzzle together. “Is that why you’re doing this?” he asks. “I don’t want you to do this if it’s like that. I don’t want you to choose me over you, hyung.”

He sounds a little desperate, a lot concerned. It’s not what Yoongi expected from him. Really, he’s not sure what he expected. Album talk, glossing over the past, asking about polite things like their military service, how their families are, what trouble their dogs are getting into… It wasn’t this.

“I don’t think so,” Yoongi answers.

“Good. If you’re sure.”

Yoongi nods, still a little shaken up from their conversation, ready not to talk about it more. Which is ironic, because the whole reason he’s agreed to this is to get answers and now that he has Namjoon here, seemingly willing to give them, he can’t even bring himself to ask the questions.

“Let’s get to work, then.”

They do, and it’s still weird, and the air feels thick and sticky and uncomfortable between them, but the music helps. Yoongi outlines his ideas for each track, Namjoon scribbles in his notebook and hums along, chewing on the end of his pen in between writing notes. They don’t get to the lyrics yet, just Yoongi’s initial impressions and thoughts, and Namjoon promises to review everything and make some adjustments and let Yoongi make some of his own. It starts to feel a little more natural, working on music together, and Yoongi almost lets himself feel good about it, in his element.

“I think what I really need to know is what you want to accomplish, you know?” he asks Namjoon as they start to wrap up for the evening. “What’s the message overall? And then, from there, we can get working on the individual tracks.”

Namjoon stares at him for a beat too long, pen pinched between his lips. He drags it out slowly and taps the other end on his notebook—one of the same nervous habits he’s had since Yoongi can remember.

“It’s a love letter, kind of,” he says. “Maybe more like an apology. I’m not entirely sure yet.”

Yoongi tries not to throw up or yell or just storm out of his own studio. A love letter. Kim Namjoon dragged him into producing some sort of love letter to someone after everything they’ve been through, after all this time. It’s fucking unbelieveable. His head feels like it’s spinning around in his skull and his heart isn’t cooperating much better. But, much to his surprise, he keeps his voice steady and calm when he replies, thinks he schools his expression into something stoic. “And you think I’m the right person to help you with this?”

“You’re the only one, hyung.”

And as much as Yoongi wants to tell him to fuck right off, something on Namjoon’s face doesn’t let him do that. He looks sad, hopeful, serious… Yoongi knows that for whatever reason, Namjoon means what he’s saying. And he may not like it, and it may drag up some shit that Yoongi’s been eager to keep to himself, but he may also get what he needs from this. If Namjoon’s so bent up over someone that he needs Yoongi to help him write an album of love letters to them, then he’s definitely moved on. And maybe he can help Yoongi move on, too. It’s dumb, but Yoongi’s always been a little dumb about Namjoon.

“Okay.” He stands, walking toward the door to let Namjoon out. “Same time next week?”

Namjoon’s voice is low and soft when he replies, a careful smile on his lips as he meets Yoongi at the door. “Thank you. You won’t regret this.”

Yoongi wishes he could believe that.

***

Whether it’s for better or worse, Namjoon was right. Yoongi doesn’t regret working with him on the album. There are times, of course, when things are tense, when the awkwardness between them seems to fill the room and threaten to suffocate him. But then one of them, somehow, lets the air out, and they move forward.

And they work so well together—Yoongi wishes he could say he’d forgotten about that, but of course he hadn’t. He and Namjoon had always managed to sink into a familiar rhythm together when they were making music, and working on Namjoon’s album was proving no different. When they were caught up in a track, it was easy to forget that Yoongi was supposed to be hurt, that Namjoon had chosen to walk away, easy to forget that Yoongi still didn’t truly know why Namjoon was back.

“Hyung!” The voice outside the door is unmistakable, and Namjoon and Yoongi both respond to it.

“Come in,” they say in tandem before Namjoon seems to realize it’s not his studio to invite anyone into, and Yoongi realizes that maybe Namjoon’s been in closer contact with the other members than he’d known.

Jungkook swings the door open, two coffees in hand, and freezes just inside the doorframe when he spots Namjoon sitting on the floor across from Yoongi with his lyrics notebook spread open on his lap.

“Hyungs?”

“Hi, Jungkookie,” Namjoon says fondly. “How’ve you been?”

“Good… I’ve been good. Busy. I, uh… I wasn’t expecting to see you.” He tilts his chin to the drink carrier he’s holding. “I would’ve brought you one, too.”

Namjoon just gives him a fond smile and lifts up the iced coffee he’s been nursing since dinner. “I’m okay, thank you.”

Jungkook seems nervous, eyes darting between Namjoon and Yoongi, not knowing what to say or where to sit.

“Well, can I have the coffee, or what?” Yoongi teases.

It at least seems to shake Jungkook out of his shock. “Right! Yes, here you go.” After he hands the drink to Yoongi, he adds, “What are you two doing?”

“Ah, working on Namjoon’s album.”

This seems to be even more surprising to Jungkook than finding Namjoon in Yoongi’s studio. His eyes go a little wide and he turns to Namjoon, whispering, “You played it for him?”

Namjoon’s cheeks flush and he scribbles in his notebook, pointedly not making eye contact with either of them. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “He’s helping me with the production.”

“Oh…” Jungkook seems like he’s considering the idea pretty seriously. “And how’s that going?” He’s cautious sounding; like he’s trying to ask something else but can’t find (or doesn’t want to find) the right words.

“Pretty good, I think,” Namjoon spits out quickly. “You know how it is with Yoongi and me.”

“Boy, do I,” Jungkook says under his breath, probably not realizing he’s louder than he thinks he is.

Yoongi feels a little lost, like they’re having a whole conversation that he’s not hearing, and he doesn’t know why Namjoon looks like he just got caught out doing something he shouldn’t. It makes him feel strange, like an outsider in his own studio with the idea that there’s something else going on. So, he interrupts them. “You’ve heard the songs, too?” he asks, head tilted up at Jungkook.

“Oh, I… Yeah. Hyung played them for me a few months ago when he was trying to figure out what to do with them.” He pauses for a second, taking a drink of his coffee, and then finishes. “They’re pretty personal… I think the album will turn out well.”

“Me too,” Yoongi agrees, and to his side, he practically hears Namjoon shrink under the praise, embarrassed probably, to be spoken about like he’s not in the room.

“Well,” Jungkook says with a shrug, “I should go. I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about.” His smile brightens. “Or, maybe you already have if you’ve heard the so—”

“Bye, Jungkook!” Namjoon practically shouts, too loud for the room.

Yoongi definitely does not know what’s going on with these two, and he’s not sure he wants to. By the time they all agree to get together for dinner in the next couple weeks, and Jungkook is shuffled out of the studio with lots of confusing murmurs to Namjoon as he leaves about being proud of him, Yoongi feels lost—he’s missed something, but he’s not quite sure what. He’s replaying the last five minutes over and over in his head before Jungkook’s even to the elevator bank.

“Still a strange kid,” he says as he sinks back into his chair.

Namjoon never really responds, just nods into his notebook and hums noncommittally.

***

Things, as they’re prone to do, finally come to a head a few weeks later. They’re in the studio, Namjoon recording a verse that hasn’t been sitting quite right with either of them. The more Yoongi hears it, though, the more he thinks it’s the lyrics that he’s taking issue with, not the delivery.

He spits out a line about nights being as long as eternity, another about getting out his words and then feeling empty inside, and all Yoongi can think of is how much those lyrics feel like all the sad and lonely lines he’s been writing since Namjoon left. It makes something pull at his chest, makes a lump in his throat start to swell for some reason he can’t quite identify. If Namjoon keeps going, Yoongi might assuredly do something stupid, might cry in front of his ex or try and pull him into a moment too intimate for what they are to each other now.

“Joon, can we take a break for a second? I want to talk about these lyrics.”

“Sure, yeah.” Namjoon pulls his headphones off and sits on the couch with a bottle of water. “What’re you thinking?”

He should have thought about this more, because now that he needs to say it, there’s no way to make it sound professional. Probably also no way to get Namjoon to drop it and put his headphones back on, so he’s a bit stuck.

“Maybe I’m missing something,” he says, trying to be as careful as possible, “but this seems so sad for a love song. They all do, really. And I… Well, I just want to make sure it’s saying what you want it to say to whoever you want to say it to. If I’m being honest, right now it sounds like you just feel sorry for yourself and that’s… That’s okay if that’s what you want to say, but if I put myself in the shoes of whoever it is you’re dating, this might make me think you’re still thinking about someone else.” He takes a long pause and watches Namjoon carefully for any sort of reaction. There isn’t much of one, just a crease in his brow that only appears when he’s thinking about how to say something he’s thinking. Yoongi knows that look, it’s familiar in the same way as the lyrics they’re talking about now—it’s Namjoon’s alone, but Yoongi knows it in his soul because nothing used to belong to only one of them.

Then Namjoon speaks, and it’s so quiet, Yoongi barely hears him. “Not dating anyone… haven’t for a long time.”

“Oh…” It takes Yoongi by surprise, because this whole time he’d been under the impression that Namjoon wrote this album for someone. Why write a love letter when you haven’t got anyone to write it to?

“I am, for what it’s worth.”

“You are what, Joon?”

Namjoon slides his fingers through his fringe and blows out a long breath, puffing his cheeks out. “Thinking about someone.”

The twist of feelings in Yoongi’s chest is rough. Confusion, a little hope, a little anger, because if Namjoon doesn’t mean him, it would hurt too much to know there was someone after him that meant more. If Namjoon does mean him… That’s almost worse. He tries to be measured in his response. “Well, I think we all do that sometimes.”

“Yeah… Maybe we do,” Namjoon agrees. Then more tentatively, he asks, “Do you?”

“Do I still think about people I used to be with? Of course I do.”

“Do you still think about me?”

And there it is, the question he’s been simultaneously hoping to get and hoping to avoid. He’s thought a million times about what he would say if they ever actually spoke about this, about them. Now that they finally are, though, he feels dumbstruck.

What he thinks is, every goddamn day. What he says is, “Yes, sometimes. You and I were…”

“Yeah,” Namjoon agrees. “We really were.” His voice just sounds like nostalgia, and Yoongi recognizes it in the way he’s been delivering these lyrics, choruses and verses bound with sadness and hope, a plea for absolution and to be loved.

It’s a startling realization when he has it, but at the same time, he wonders if he should have seen this coming all along. Little pieces of information start to snap together in his head—Namjoon asking for him specifically to work on this, and on every song, which is unusual in their business… Jungkook being so strange, Namjoon himself being cagey about who the album was for, about why he was inspired to write these kinds of songs, too wistful even for him.

“Who’d you write this for, Namjoon?” He’s firm in asking, not wanting to show how vulnerable he’s feeling, even though he’s asking for that vulnerability from Namjoon.

“Hyung, I…”

“Just tell me, please.”

Namjoon looks like he wants to sink into a hole, and Yoongi has no idea what Namjoon thought would happen, if he thought they could make this whole album and never have this conversation, or if he just thought he’d be able to control the timing and environment when they did. That would be classic Namjoon, thinking he has to plan out even his feelings so that they don’t pop up and inconvenience him.

It’s soft when he says it, a whisper almost. “You. Of course it’s for you.”

And Yoongi knew that, but having it confirmed sends him reeling. So he asks another question he’s not sure he wants the answer to.

“Why?”

On the couch, curled in on himself and looking uncharacteristically scared, Namjoon stays quiet for a while. Feels like Yoongi might sit here until his bones brittle before he gets an answer. Feels like that might be okay, like he’s probably not ready for whatever Namjoon is going to say anyway.

“Because you deserve an apology. You deserve to know that not one single day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you, about us… About how things ended when… when I didn’t even want them to. I have tried, hyung. I’ve tried to move on. And I can’t, you know? Feels like I lost everything and all this time I’ve been running trying to get it back, trying to fill some space in my heart that feels like a chasm and I… I just can’t do it. No matter what. It always comes back to you, and how we were—How good we were. I just…”

“You’re just selfish,” Yoongi interrupts.

Namjoon is crying now, glassy eyes filling and slowly spilling trickles down his cheeks. Was crying before he got called selfish, but now he’s crying and he looks like Yoongi just slapped him, surprise written across his face like a stain.

“What?”

“Selfish. You heard me. You say I deserve an apology, and I do, but not like this. Not with some grand gesture bullshit. A whole fucking album, Namjoon? You could have called. Did you even think about me when you did this, really? Or did you think about needing to feel less guilty?”

“I tried at first… I called, left you messages you never returned… and then… I don’t know,” Namjoon says. He looks like the leaking tears might turn into something harsher at any moment. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.”

Yoongi’s not sure why he says the next thing he does. Wants Namjoon to hurt a little, maybe. Doesn’t care anymore if Namjoon knows how much Yoongi’s still affected by him. “You know I was seeing someone when you came around?”

“No… I didn’t know.”

“She was great, you know? Smart, funny, beautiful. She was good for me, too. And then you showed up, and just the faintest idea of you being back in my life… It made it impossible to keep seeing her. It wasn’t fair to her, to be trying to build something with her when I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Knowing you were going to be around… I couldn’t give my attention to her the way she deserved. After all this time…”

It’s cruel, the way Yoongi saying he broke things off with Hiah puts this look on Namjoon’s face… One that’s part empathy and part anticipation. Cruel that he would give Yoongi the idea that they could be something again, cruel that he thinks that’s possible after what happened, after so much time has passed. Does he think so little of Yoongi that he thinks they can go back? Pretend like nothing happened?

“You should go, Namjoon.”

“Hyung…” It’s desperate when he says it, like he’ll take any crumb Yoongi will give.

And equally as desperate, Yoongi replies, “Please, Joon. Just go.” He can’t let Namjoon see him cry, and it’s going to happen soon. He doesn’t even want to have these feelings, but especially not in front of Namjoon. Not when he doesn’t know yet exactly what they are or what they mean.

Mercifully, Namjoon gets up to leave, packing his headphones and his notebook quickly, mumbling unwelcome apologies under his breath. Yoongi’s not sure he even knows what he’s apologizing for, still doesn’t think Namjoon really understands what happened between them or why it hurt so much. Certainly, Yoongi doesn’t begin to fathom why Namjoon seems like he was as damaged as Yoongi by the whole thing. Can’t understand what Namjoon said, that he didn’t want things to end with them. Because that day, he’d said plain as day, sitting them all at the big table in their old dorm, “I need a break from this.”

Everyone knew what that meant—a break from BTS, from the pressure and the lack of privacy and the heavy weight of expectation. And Yoongi knew, too, that their relationship went hand in hand with that. More pressure, more secrets… Hiding is work, it’s exhausting, it looms over every moment, and once you get over the excitement of something illicit, the constant fear isn’t fun anymore. So, Yoongi gave Namjoon what he wanted: a break. No matter how painful it was, no matter how unloved it made him feel, no matter how much he wanted to call, text, touch… anything.

As he leaves the studio, he turns to Yoongi one last time, tears still welling up but a little angry now, and says, “I wanted a break from the group, but you’re the one who took a break from us.”

This time, it’s Yoongi who feels like he’s received a verbal slap in the face.

All that night and the next day, it’s the only thing Yoongi can think about. How can they possibly see things so differently? How can their perceptions be so starkly opposed?

“Can we talk?” He says vaguely into the phone.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, voice breaking. “I’m not sure.”

Jin is at his apartment within the hour. It’s good, he knows, to have a friendship like this. Even when they’re both busy and on separate paths, that they’re still there for each other when it matters, that they carve out time to maintain their friendship of over a decade. There’s something so comforting about knowing someone cares for you as much as you care for them. There’s a quiet confidence in his relationship with Jin that’s hard to achieve with most people.

“What’s going on with you?” Jin asks, fussing in the kitchen for whiskey and water and probably trying to find something to feed Yoongi, too.

“Do you remember,” he starts, “that day when Namjoonie sat us all down and said he needed a break?”

Jin snorts out a laugh. “Of course I do. Our lives sort of changed that day.”

He knows Jin isn’t laughing because it’s funny, more because it’s ridiculous to think any of them wouldn’t have the memory of that day imprinted on them… “What do you think he meant?”

The look he gets in return is part thoughtful, part surprised. “I think he meant he wanted a break, Yoongi. Not much gray area there.”

“A break from what?”

He hums in consideration before he answers, “The pressure mostly, I think. We all needed it, all wanted it. He was just the first one to say it. It was a lot. To write songs we didn’t love, and for him to be the spokesperson, to not have time for his own creativity to bloom anymore.”

“And?”

“And nothing, Yoongi. Sometimes people say what they mean. Namjoon usually says what he means.”

“So… Did you think… Didn’t you think he wanted a break from me, too?”

Jin stares at him like he’s just said the most outlandish thing. “No. No, I never thought that. Did he tell you that?”

“Not exactly…”

“Oh, Yoongi…” The look of pity on Jin’s face is enough to make Yoongi want to vacate the planet, but instead, he just turns his eyes to the carpet and listens. “I think you and Namjoon should talk.”

“Maybe,” Yoongi shrugs.

“I don’t think I have to tell you how ridiculous it is that the two of you might have given up years of being happy over something so…”

“Stupid?”

Jin gives him a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, sorry to have to say it.”

“Did you know? This whole time, did you know?”

There’s a long pause before Jin speaks again, and it’s fine. Yoongi knows it's a question that puts his friend in the middle—maybe makes him choose between honesty and loyalty. And aren’t those sort of the same thing anyway?

“No. Not really. We never talked about it, you and me. And Joon is so…” Jin waves a hand around for emphasis.

It’s clear what he means though. Some combination of smart, closed-off, quick to surrender. “He is, yeah…”

“He told me you weren’t taking his calls at first. Then when he enlisted… he told me he only regretted that you and he hadn’t found a way to talk through things. But he didn’t tell me what happened, not really. I assumed he said something without thinking, hurt your feelings, assumed you broke things off properly… But Yoongi, if you just… stopped speaking to him…”

It’s a little clearer now, in Yoongi’s head, what happened versus what he’s been telling himself. Namjoon got the group together, said he needed time to focus on himself, and Yoongi took that to the extreme, assumed the worst, let his biggest insecurities get the best of him. Maybe Namjoon did just mean a break from BTS. Maybe he didn’t mean a break from Yoongi. He had called a lot those first few days—left voicemails saying he knew he should have talked to Yoongi first, shouldn’t have blindsided him in a team meeting like that. Said he loved Yoongi and he was sorry. It’s so easy to see how what Yoongi thought he meant could have been wrong; how it could have just been taking things one step further than Namjoon was trying to take them.

“Fuck.”

“Sounds about right.”

“I should talk to him.”

“Couldn’t make things worse.”

***

It’s been one thousand days since Namjoon broke his heart, and the thought and those words weigh heavy on his heart and feel thick on his tongue. One thousand. It’s ten one hundred days. It's been almost three years. It’s all the time that he’s been running in place trying to get his life back but always feeling a little off kilter. Jin was right—Yoongi needs to talk to Namjoon, needs to confirm his worst fears, that he made this happen, that he shut Namjoon out preemptively, before Namjoon could do it to him. That, contrary to what he’s been telling himself, it’s been one thousand days since he broke his own heart.

Maybe the line between self-preservation and self-destruction is thinner than he’d ever thought.

It’s difficult though, hard to swallow his pride and his nerves and pick up the phone.

So, he doesn’t. He packs a bag and sends an email to work that he’ll be out for a few days and messages Jin to let him know he’ll be gone, too. When Jin asks him where, he just says he needs to go back to where things started. It’s vague enough that he knows Jin won’t track him down, probably thinks he means Nonhyeon-dong or Daegu. He wouldn’t know about Naksan.

The drive is longer than he remembers, quieter without Namjoon beside him rambling about Murakami or Skinner or some other author that most people would have choked through in college but Namjoon read by choice.

For the first time in a long time, he lets himself reminisce without trying to shut it down. He thinks about those drives: Namjoon reading out loud to him, Namjoon snoring in time with the rain beating down on Yoongi’s hood. Later, Namjoon sliding his fingers across Yoongi’s thigh and squeezing softly, his head thrown back and eyes scrunched closed with his smile in the passenger’s seat. Thinks about the first trip when he knew he loved Namjoon, thinks about the last one where they walked along the beach, Namjoon shirtless and glowing in the sun until Yoongi couldn’t stand not having him alone and dragged him back to their cottage.

He’d love to say it wasn’t intentional, booking that same hanok again—the quiet, cozy cottage tucked in closer to the forest than the ocean—but of course it was. Really, he just didn’t know where else to go, and well… if he’s planning to think (wallow) he might as well do it right.

When he pulls the car into the driveway, the cottage looks like it’s been stamped directly from his memory onto the landscape. It’s so funny how whenever it seems like everything in Yoongi’s life has changed, he somehow stumbles on the little things that remain the same.

Walking through the hanok, he sees vignettes of his past playing out on the low walls, across the countertops, and all over the sofa and beds.

Namjoon, sheepish, bringing a tray to the bed with something that vaguely resembles breakfast on it. Laughing when Yoongi runs a hand through his hair and tells him it’s the thought that counts.

Later, Namjoon’s fucked out moans when Yoongi shows him exactly what he’d had in mind for breakfast instead, his tongue moving in languid circles around Namjoon’s rim, fingers pulling his cheeks apart to slip deeper and deeper.

Sand covering the floor of the foyer as Namjoon panics because he didn’t realize he’d brought his new crab friend all the way back to the cottage. Yoongi in tears from laughter, Namjoon mortified at his potential animal abuse before making his way back to the beach to right his wrong.

The two of them, backs against the sofa and legs tangled at the ankles in front of them, arguing about the form of a song that would never even make it to an album. “Why don’t you just listen to hyung?” Yoongi says.

Namjoon’s muttered response as he pouts because he knows he’s wrong but he’s argued too long to admit it now—always so stubborn. “Because it sounds better my way.”

Yoongi shutting him up with a soft kiss that doesn’t stay soft for long.

He stands in that living room today, swearing he can see the two of them still on the floor: argument forgotten, song abandoned, panting into each other’s mouths and slick with sweat as they came to an understanding in their own way.

In the kitchen, he sees a golden-skinned Namjoon, perched on a barstool saying, “I love you so much I think I could drown in it,” as he watches Yoongi make him a sandwich. “Love you so big I can’t breathe around it sometimes,” he adds as an explanation as he twists his t-shirt around in his fist right above his ribcage. Sucks the air right out of Yoongi’s lungs, too, with the way Namjoon is looking at him.

All that for a sandwich.

Neither of them knew then what they know now—neither of them knew that they would drown in it, but that they’d also be the other’s fresh air, until the day the ugliest parts of their self-doubt snuffed it out like a spent cigarette.

Yoongi knows one thing: he’s barely been in that hanok for an hour and he needs to get out.

It should be easy to distract himself that day—he walks along the beach and only thinks about Namjoon a little bit. He runs to the closest store and gets some essentials for the next few days: whiskey, pork, rice, kimchi… He grabs what he needs to make jajangmyeon, too, even if he doesn’t like it all that well anymore. It’s just that it’s Namjoon’s favorite and Yoongi used to make it for him all every time they came to the hanok—slurping cold noodles together in the yard and drinking cheap beer until they were so full they both complained they’d never be able to move again. Then somehow finding the energy to move when Namjoon looks at Yoongi through his eyelashes in his best approximation of coy and says he should probably properly thank his hyung for the meal.

It should be easy, but it’s so very difficult to distract himself from thoughts of what used to be, he thinks woefully as he tries not to get hard in the market.

That night, he puts on a movie and eats quietly on the couch. He doesn’t return the missed calls he has from Jin, but he decides he likely will in the morning when his thoughts start to run away from him again. For now, it’s easier to be on his own—easier to worry silently over if this whole painful three years was a terrible misunderstanding, whether or not he took away his own happiness instead of letting someone else do that for him.

Neither is good, but one makes him feel so so so much worse.

***

There’s low, buzzy thrumming through his head when he wakes in the morning. There’s an ache in his shoulder that matches it—dull and persistent… He should know better than to fall asleep on the sofa like this. Warm beams of sunlight make the hanok feel a little stifling—he gets up to open some windows, lets the swift, salty breeze off the sea take away some of the stuffiness in the room.

Over coffee, he pulls his notebook out of his bag. He hasn’t touched it in ages, hasn’t thought about it much in between work and Namjoon. But it’s just as he left it, full of the words that he’s been afraid to turn into reality, too sad, too true, too much of his life on display. But knowing that things may not have (probably didn’t) actually happen the way he always told himself they did, the words take on a different temperament.

While it sits worse with him that he might have at least partially put himself in this position, it also seems easier to let it go. Seems like he needs to, like it’s time. People always say it’s hardest to forgive yourself, but Yoongi’s had a lot of experience with that. He knows he’s bound to betray himself at times, he knows he’ll do things that are stupid or reckless or thoughtless. It’s been harder for him to forgive Namjoon because he never thought Namjoon would take him for granted, never imagined Namjoon would hurt him in a significant way. Yoongi might hurt himself as a part-time job, but Namjoon treated him like something precious—cautious and sweet, kind and compassionate. Namjoon was more graceful with Yoongi in their time together than Yoongi could ever imagine being with himself back then. Before he and Namjoon even got together, he promised himself he wouldn’t look back on his mistakes as such anymore—they’re just him. He did his best, he’ll do better in the future.

It’s not easy to forgive yourself, but he’s practiced at it.

So, he sits with his coffee in the sunlight and lets those words breathe the sea air with him, gives them life, makes them real, and tries his best to start giving himself the grace he knows he deserves.

***

The day passes like that, Yoongi writing furiously, ignoring the cramps in his hands and the crick in his neck. When it’s nearly golden hour, Yoongi’s stomach rumbles and breaks his concentration for the first time.

It occurs to him that he’s strayed from his routine for the first time in a long time, and it feels surprisingly good. His heart is splayed out on the pages in front of him, and his stomach is painfully empty, but he is more full inside than he has been in three years. It’s not over, he knows he has to talk to Namjoon, knows there’s still forgiveness he needs to extend and receive in that relationship to really find some closure, but he’s far more equipped to do that now than he was when he arrived, certainly more than when he forced Namjoon out of his studio days prior.

When he goes back to Seoul, Namjoon’s will be the first number he dials, he promises that to himself while he grabs some fruit to stick in his pocket and leaves the hanok to spend at least a few minutes out of the house before sunset.

Outside, he can see a storm coming over the sea. There’s still time, but the sunlight is filtered in stripes through thickening clouds. It’s hazy and low, perfect for photos, but ominous for the small number of families Yoongi sees trudging toward him, away from the beach, weaving around him as he carefully makes his way down the path toward the ocean.

When he reaches the sand, the incoming storm has shooed enough people away that it’s nearly unoccupied. Rare for any place in Korea, but welcome. Yoongi likes being able to walk undisturbed, likes the sound of the waves giving a rhythm to his steps, likes to see if he can pattern his breath to match when they hit the shore. It makes music in its own way, and as he walks, he thinks about the songs he worked on that day, about what it might sound like to give a Pacific Ocean backbeat to some of the more hopeful of the lyrics he’s finished.

Ahead of him, someone sits in the sand facing the sea, knees pulled up to their chest and what looks like a backpack next to them. It looks like a man, although Yoongi’s far enough away he still can’t make out any of their details, not really. The folded body looks like it’s probably long when stretched out, but it’s curled in on itself as if whoever owns those long limbs is trying to coil them inward and gather some momentum from them.

Yoongi feels a twinge of empathy—something about their posture makes him think they’re gathering courage just like he is. He wonders what it is they have to do that they’re afraid of. Wonders if they’ve felt the freedom of finally putting words to their turbulent thoughts.

He’s probably reading too much into a man sitting on the beach.

He gets closer, and the person must hear him—their gaze finally breaks from the water and they turn their head in his direction.

It’s silly—Yoongi laughs silently at himself for thinking this guy looks like Namjoon. He’s spent too many hours shut in the hanok, too much time hunched over his notebook thinking about the past.

But then, the man stands up and plants himself in the sand, facing Yoongi, and runs a hand through his marine-air mussed brown hair.

“I knew you’d be here,” the man says... Namjoon says.

It’s enough to make Yoongi stop in his tracks, he tries to rationalize, tries to think of any possible reason his brain would actually hallucinate Namjoon standing on this beach talking to him in a perfect imitation of his deep voice.

“Jin told me you were going away for a while. He said he didn’t know where, but that you told him it was ‘back where things started’. So, I figured…” Namjoon’s nervous, his words trail off into the breeze. Yoongi’s still in shock, maybe, unable to move.

“Why are you here?” he asks softly. He can’t decide if it’s lucky or unlucky that the wind blows toward Namjoon, carrying his words along with it. They’re harsh, but his tone isn’t, it’s soft like the sand, the rocks in his heart already smoothed over more than he’d like to admit.

Namjoon gives him a one-sided grin that’s just as soft in return. “Wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice,” he says as he takes a couple cautious steps toward Yoongi.

“I don’t know what that means, Joon.”

“You said I didn’t try back then. I could have tried so much harder. I should have—you were right. I should have stood in front of you and made you listen, made you hear that you were the last thing I needed space from.”

Yoongi doesn’t know what to say to that—of all the ways he pictured his next conversation with Namjoon panning out, this wasn’t one of them. The wind is picking up around them, and so is Yoongi’s heartbeat and the speed with which Namjoon’s speaking.

“Hyung, I’m going to try this time. I’m here to try.” His dimple is gone, but the smile has been replaced with Yoongi’s favorite of Namjoon’s looks. It’s fierce determination—youthful and reckless and exactly the way he was when Yoongi started loving him (and a lot of things change, but oh, all the small things that stay the same, he thinks in a flash).

“I wanted a break from the group, but not from you. I wanted a break from that so that I could focus on me and what I wanted, but what I wanted was you. I wanted us to have a future, I wanted us to have time. We never had time… We deserved that.”

The storm is there now, and Yoongi can’t tell if the salt water on his cheeks is ocean spray or tears. Doesn’t think it matters either way, still doesn’t have the words to respond to Namjoon, still wishes they could have had this conversation years ago, still can’t separate the hurt from the fear from the love.

Rain starts, the sky splitting open above them as Namjoon watches, waits for Yoongi to respond. There’s water everywhere, and everything is overflowing and Yoongi thinks he must have wasted every good syllable he ever had writing lyrics today because he doesn’t know a goddamn thing anymore except this: he fell in love with a boy on the beach once, and he’s pretty sure he never ever once stopped loving him.

When Yoongi moves, it’s like the lightning that’s streaking across the sky above them. Namjoon’s eyes fly open when Yoongi’s arms fling around him, and he’s finally just as speechless as Yoongi when their lips meet. It’s rain-soaked and cold but Namjoon’s lips are warm and his arms around Yoongi are home and when he finally kisses Yoongi back it’s like drowning all over again.

They stay like that until Yoongi can’t feel his fingertips and Namjoon’s shivering into each slide of Yoongi’s tongue against his. When they pull apart, Yoongi’s found a few words, so he just repeats them into Namjoon’s soaked hoodie. “I’m sorry, let’s talk… I’m so sorry…”

And Namjoon holds his jaw carefully, thumbs wiping raindrops off Yoongi’s cheeks but losing the battle against the clouds, whispers back, “I’m sorry too, I never stopped loving you… Please, Yoongi, please…”

Their icy fingers are threaded together as they scramble back to the hanok. Sometime as they run along the beach, Yoongi realizes he doesn’t even know how Namjoon got there, doesn’t care really, but maybe someone’s waiting for him or expecting him…

“Joon-ah!” he calls over his shoulder, into the wind, realizing he never actually asked the question. “Do you want to come over and talk?”

Namjoon’s smile is bright enough to break the storm, and he looks like love with his wet hair stuck on his face, water flowing down his cheekbones like waterslides to his lips. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask for so long,” he says, squeezing Yoongi’s hand in his.

Jin’s car is in the driveway of the hanok, and it’s running, and the window opens just a crack when the pair rushes up through the yard. “You need me to stay, Namjoonie?”

“No, hyung, thank you… I don’t think so.” He turns to Yoongi, and it’s obviously a question: can I stay? Are we going to fix this? Do you want this?

Yoongi’s not sure what he expected, but Jin in his driveway after apparently driving Namjoon three hours there wasn’t it. He nods his head in agreement and mouths a “thank you” to Jin as he pulls Namjoon a little closer. The rain’s slowing, but they’re soaked and shivering and Jin has a long drive back to Seoul if that’s indeed where he’s going, so they wave and keep moving toward the house, peeling off shoes and hoodies as they enter. They see Jin flash his lights as he backs out, and Yoongi makes a mental note to buy Jin all the meat in Seoul when he gets back for what he’s done today.

They don’t really talk until they’re inside, dripping onto the foyer floor, Namjoon looking around curiously. Yoongi wonders if he’s trying to see how much has changed, wonders if he has the same film highlight reel of their greatest moments there playing across his field of vision as Yoongi did a day ago.

“Let me get you a towel and some dry clothes,” he says.

When Namjoon emerges from the hanok’s bathroom a few moments later, hair now half-wet and fuzzy from the towel drying, he’s wearing a pair of Yoongi’s sweatpants—comically short and not even covering his ankle bones.

It’s a stupid thing, probably, the way that Yoongi loves his ankles. Namjoon is big, that isn’t a secret, and he’s especially large in comparison to Yoongi. But his ankles are so delicate, tendon narrow and bone sharp against his maple wood skin. For years, Yoongi’s admired them, how they keep Namjoon’s long frame so (mostly) steady—they’re a miracle of physics and a good parallel for Namjoon as a person. Larger than life and painfully delicate at the same time.

“You’re staring,” Namjoon notes, drawing Yoongi’s attention away from his lower half.

“Those pants look stupid on you,” is all Yoongi says in return, and he doesn’t even mean it. Namjoon can probably tell; the words are delivered with a specific fondness that he doubts has been forgotten.

“I’d say that means I should take them off then, but maybe we should talk, instead.”

That’s a consideration, certainly. Kissing in the sand, Yoongi hadn’t let his thoughts get that far. Should they talk? Doesn’t he want to? Yes, and eventually, but mostly he wants to get that feeling back—the one of Namjoon’s thick bottom lip on his, the one of Namjoon’s arms holding him firm and insistent against a broad chest.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too, hyung. All the time and every day.”

“I think I know that now,” Yoongi admits quietly.

Namjoon gives him a hint of a grin in return, but it’s not an entirely happy one. “I wrote you letters,” he says. “Once a month. Never got brave enough to send them, though. Turned them into all those songs, instead.” Yoongi sits on the sofa while Namjoon speaks, and he pats the spot next to him in encouragement.

“I never knew you were so sad, Namjoonie…”

“No one asked,” he shrugs. “Don’t blame them… Things were hard for a while and that was mostly my fault. I know that. I guess Jungkook did once, though. That’s when I showed him all the lyrics.” Namjoon laughs, mostly to himself. “He cried for like an hour after he read them. He’s always been so soft.”

“They are pretty sad,” Yoongi agrees.

“I have another track for it. One with a little more hope. Haven’t been able to get it quite right—didn’t feel the right way inside to finish it, I think. But maybe…” He trails off, eyes lifting from where he’s been staring at the rain outside to look at Yoongi. “Maybe I could finish it now.”

And there is so much they need to talk about, so much to resolve, to hash out, to work through. This morning, Yoongi was just thinking they might be able to salvage a friendship, and now it’s confusing and bigger and all he can focus on his Namjoon’s lips on his and how nice nice nice it felt and how safe safe safe he would be with Namjoon if he just let himself forgive—let himself forget.

Just for a while, he thinks.

“Just for tonight,” he says, “maybe we can not talk…”

“Can I kiss you again?” Namjoon asks.

Yoongi doesn’t answer, just scoots himself forward until he can fit Namjoon’s jaw in his hands and his thumbs on those pretty pretty cheekbones and presses his lips careful careful quiet (but not nervous) to Namjoon’s.

They both hum into the kiss, Namjoon’s deep like a moan and Yoongi’s with the higher pitch of relief and release. Letting go of all the nerves and the fear and breaking everything down to the basest of parts: lips and tongue and teeth and hearts and he swears he can feel Namjoon’s beating steady like the waves and right in time with Yoongi’s.

They’ve always had the same rhythm.

It’s like that for a while—time feels fake because Yoongi thinks they must have been kissing for years, they must have never been apart. It gets messier and deeper and more intense as they kiss, and somehow he ends up in Namjoon’s lap with his fingers twisted in damp hair, pulling Namjoon as close as he can. Namjoon’s long fingers are teasing along his back, light touches under Yoongi’s shirt, moving across the back of his hip bones in a way that’s driving him wild, pricking up goosebumps on the thin skin there and daring to skim his waistband every now and then. It’s a question unspoken and one that they both already know the answer to.

“Take me to the bedroom,” he breathes against Namjoon’s lips. It’s not a request, not really.

Namjoon nods furiously, out of breath and flushed as he lifts them both from the couch at the same time in a display of strength that makes Yoongi’s insides tumble and twist.

They kiss their way down the hall, and Namjoon’s still clumsy in the precise way Yoongi remembers—his pointy elbows bump into the drywall to keep Yoongi from taking the hit and his teeth tug on Yoongi’s lips as he licks and groans into Yoongi’s mouth.

It’s an eternity before they make it to the bed—feels like the kind of forever Yoongi wants when Namjoon lays him down in the middle of the mattress and slowly pulls his joggers and briefs off.

“You’re so fucking pretty, hyung.” It comes in an exhale and Yoongi feels just as breathless when his mostly-hard cock bounces against his own pelvic bone.

“Did you forget?” He teases Namjoon instead of giving away quite how affected he is (beyond the obvious). “Used to tell me all the time, remember?”

Namjoon wraps a hand around Yoongi’s cock and strokes slowly, still looks surprised to be there, surprised Yoongi’s naked under him. “Didn’t forget… Pretty skin, so smooth and perfect. Pretty face,” he says fondly. “Pretty cock, too.” He squeezes around the shaft at that and leans over to kiss Yoongi again, tongue insistent and just as skilled as Yoongi remembers.

Yoongi’s already lost in it—it’s a little dry and a little less confident than he thinks Namjoon used to be, but it’s still so good. Namjoon thumbs over his slit and with his other hand, he swirls around Yoongi’s balls just the way he likes and it’s all so much. Unfair, Yoongi thinks, that Namjoon’s still not naked, but Yoongi doesn’t even think he can open his eyes anymore, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

“You still with me?” Namjoon whispers into his ear, teeth tugging gently at his earlobe and then lips moving down the column of his neck to tease at the thin skin there.

“Yeah, yeah Joonie… I’m here. Feels so good. You’re so good for hyung.”

Namjoon sounds like he might cry, voice cracking when he replies, “I missed this so much… Missed you.”

When Yoongi opens his eyes, Namjoon’s eyes are glassy, his pupils are blown and he’s got love and lust written in ee cummings trickles across the planes of his face. It’s a look Yoongi never thought he’d see again, makes him feel wanted and proud and so fucking turned on he might pass out before he comes.

“Want to feel you, Namjoon,” he whispers. “Please… need to see you.”

Namjoon kisses him lazy and deep before he sits on his knees and yanks his (Yoongi’s) shirt off with a hand behind his back. His body has changed—Yoongi can see all the soft spots gone a little firmer since his enlistment. His chest looks wider and more filled out, his abs are more defined… The way Yoongi’s sweatpants sit low on his hips is beyond indecent. He can almost hear himself swallow his arousal.

“I think I look a little different than last time,” Namjoon says in the most absurd understatement Yoongi’s heard this month. He looks bashful, and Yoongi can’t possibly think of what Namjoon would have to be ashamed of—he thinks he’s perfect.

“I think you look perfect,” he mumbles. It changes Namjoon’s bashful smile into a smug one as he climbs off the bed and pulls Yoongi’s sweats off. His back is to Yoongi, and it’s a view he’s seen more times than he can count, but it’s still as good as the very first time.

“You still keep lube in your bag when you travel?” Namjoon asks, throwing Yoongi a look over his shoulder. “In the small pocket?”

Yoongi nods, a little embarrassed to be known like this, a little awkward since it’s been so long since he’s been with Namjoon like this. He wonders, briefly, if anything’s changed about what Namjoon likes, wonders if he’ll still know how to make him come untouched. Wonders if Namjoon’s as predictable still as he seems to find Yoongi to be. Wants that, and also wants the small thrill of discovering all the new things, too.

Namjoon gets back on the bed and Yoongi moves to make room when Namjoon taps on his hip to scoot him over. He’s always been like this, a little bossy, a little quiet until he’s got something brushing his prostate—then he’s pliant, talkative, a bumbly mess in the best way. Filth spills from his lips but it never makes much sense, just fragments of feelings and always a little bit of desperate pleading mixed in, always wanting more and deeper and harder.

When Yoongi scoots down the bed and sits on his knees, expecting to slick up his own fingers and work Namjoon open slowly the way he likes, he gets his first surprise. Namjoon’s on his back with a pillow under his hips and he’s already two fingers deep, cheeks pink with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and staring right at Yoongi.

It takes a lot of self-restraint not to try and slide one of his own fingers in alongside the two already there. “Oh, Joonie… You look so good like this, opening yourself up for hyung.”

“Want to be good for you,” Namjoon says, a little whiny. “Think about you all the time when I do this. Always you…”

The angle’s all wrong, Yoongi knows it can’t feel great on his wrist, but then he sees the moment Namjoon finds the spot he’s been looking for—Namjoon’s eyes roll back in his head and he lets out a groan that sounds a lot like, “Yoongi,” and Yoongi has to kiss him.

He pushes Namjoon’s hair off of his forehead and presses their lips together, slides his tongue across Namjoon’s and then pulls away to whisper praise into his ear—tells him he’s a good boy, he’s so pretty, he’s doing so well, Yoongi can’t wait to be inside him.

They kiss slow and heavy, Yoongi’s dick is pressed up against Namjoon’s hip, and as Namjoon works a third finger in himself and moans long, Yoongi moves in little grinding motions against him—can’t help himself, needs just a little relief while he waits for Namjoon to be ready for him. He’s not huge, but Namjoon’s always needed a good amount of prep and they both like this part, like the anticipation and the teasing and the kissing.

“I’m ready,” Namjoon says, voice shaky. “Need you to fuck me now… Please,” he adds.

Always so polite while he makes Yoongi lose his mind.

Yoongi sits up, makes a point of mouthing along Namjoon’s cock before he goes—it’s nothing too intense, just wet and open lips across Namjoon’s length, a little swirl of his tongue around the crown that makes Namjoon whine loudly and repeat himself. “Please, hyung… Please, I need it…”

“Okay, yeah…Want to take care of you,” Yoongi agrees. He finds the condom Namjoon had left on the bed earlier and rolls it on, then sets himself between Namjoon’s thighs. He pauses then, because in movies, this is the moment when everything changes. When sex makes the feelings irreversible, sets two people on a path that they can’t walk backward along. Whatever he and Namjoon have isn’t a movie, it’s absolutely no fairytale, and even if Yoongi never slides into Namjoon’s tight heat, things will have changed between them. So, there’s nothing to lose, not really, and he’ll get the whole fucking world, he decides when he looks in Namjoon’s eyes, if things keep changing for the better.

Before, they weren’t careful and slow. Before, when Namjoon said he was ready, Yoongi would believe him and give him everything all at once. It was always deep and deeper and fast. But this time, he takes his time sliding into Namjoon. Wants to remember this, wants to document each still frame in case this is the last time. It’s something he’s always regretted about before, that he took their last time for granted.

Or, what he thought would be the last time, anyway.

“Oh, holy shit,” Namjoon sighs as Yoongi’s tip enters him. It’s followed by that mumbling, slurred rambling that Yoongi’s missed so much. It’s a mess of, “feels so good… hyung, please… fuck me, please” but never comes out coherent like that and Yoongi bends over to kiss the words right out of his mouth. When their lips part, Namjoon whispers, “Please hurry...” in the most desperate voice Yoongi thinks he’s ever heard.

“You’re so tight, Namjoon, give me a second… Feels too good, don’t want to come already.”

Namjoon’s coherent enough to smile at that, his lips so close to Yoongi’s still that it’s almost as much a feeling as it is a sight.

Finally, finally, Yoongi works all the way in, his hips flush with Namjoon’s skin. He pauses for a minute, finds one of Namjoon’s hands and tangles their fingers together at their sides, and then he pulls out halfway and thrusts back in.

“Oh my god,” Namjoon groans. “Don’t stop, please…”

And Yoongi doesn’t. Keeps licking the curses out of Namjoon’s mouth and pushes one of his thighs back further so he can get the right angle. When he starts hitting Namjoon’s prostate on every thrust, he feels Namjoon’s fingers tighten around his, feels him moan into Yoongi’s mouth, sees the tears gather in the corners of his eyes.

“You’re so good, Namjoonie, feel so good around my cock.”

“I’m so close, hyung,” he whines, follows it with a little begging, just like always, greedy for more.

“Are you gonna come for me,” Yoongi asks. “Just like this?”

Namjoon can only nod because Yoongi’s picked up his pace, curves his back so he can get one of Namjoon’s nipples in his mouth, teases and nips at the skin there and makes Namjoon absolutely keen underneath him.

This is what Yoongi remembers, the almost nonstop, “Please, please, please… wanna come, hyung,” that Namjoon’s repeating.

“Yeah, come on, baby, want to see you,” he agrees, out of breath and so enamored all over again.

Yoongi lets go of Namjoon’s thigh and runs just the tip of a finger along Namjoon’s cock—that’s all it takes. Namjoon lets out a long moan and then he’s coming, body tightening around Yoongi and cum streaked across his own stomach before he goes lax and loose.

“Want you to come, hyung,” he says, and it comes out a little raspy and foggy, and Yoongi loves him like this.

Loves him.

“Fuck, I love you… Love you, Namjoon.”

Namjoon wraps long arms around Yoongi’s shoulders and pulls him closer. “Love you so much, hyung.”

And that’s what does it for Yoongi. He gives a couple of staccato thrusts into Namjoon and then he’s spilling into the condom and trying not to collapse down on top of the man underneath him.

They’re kissing again, drawn out and soft, and they stay that way until they can’t really anymore, Yoongi slipping out of Namjoon and disposing of the condom while Namjoon closes his eyes and wipes leaking tears out of his eyes.

In the bathroom, Yoongi grabs a washcloth and looks in the mirror. He doesn’t look any different than he did this morning, but he feels like he’s been reborn a little. It’s dangerous to feel this hopeful, but it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than feeling so sad.

He cleans Namjoon as best he can, and gets water for both of them before climbing back into bed.

“We should talk tomorrow,” he says as he pulls Namjoon tight against him and presses a kiss to his shoulder.

“Yeah, we’ll talk tomorrow… Need to talk,” Namjoon agrees sleepily.

“Go to sleep, Namjoonie.” Fond, fond, fond.

“G’night, hyung.”

Namjoon’s asleep before he can say it back.

Yoongi lays in the dark bedroom and he holds Namjoon tight, and sleep evades him. There’s so much unsaid, so much they really do need to figure out. They can’t just pretend the last three years didn’t happen, and there’s so much Yoongi wants to know, so much he wants to tell Namjoon, too.

But it’s late, and he’s tired, and Namjoon’s already started snoring, so it will wait. They will sleep, and in the morning, they’ll walk this new path together and this time, Yoongi will say what he means and ask questions and get all the information before he decides what someone else is thinking on their behalf. If Namjoon can try, he can, too.

They both deserve at least that much.

It’s been less than one day since he let Namjoon back into his life, and the last thing he thinks before he slips into sleep is that for once, he might not still be counting the days when he wakes up in the morning.

#yoongi x namjoon #yoongi fic #namjoon fic #yoongi imagine #namjoon imagine #bts fanfic #bts smut #yoongi smut #namjoon smut #bts writing #kvanity #btshoneyhive #btswritersclub

80 notes · View notes