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#she was like of course I love u lots ur my daughter
luveline · 8 months
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Thinking about Eddie going out to get dinner while reader is over!! Reader sees a big bug and doesn’t want to deal with it/tries to trap it so Eddie can deal with it, but Roan legit just picks it up and let’s it go easy while reader is like “roan my hero T_T!!!” Reader def brings over presents for Roan the next visit because of that LOL.
thank u for ur request lovely! eddie and roan —your boyfriend's trailer attracts creepy crawlies, but luckily his young daughter knows how to catch them. 1.3k
The thing about Eddie's trailer is that, while he's more than made it a home, it is full of bugs. Maybe because the trailer park is a huge field of grass, maybe because of the forest surrounding, you're guaranteed to find a bug or two every time you visit.
Sometimes you get lucky with small moths to be herded back out of the kitchen door. Occasionally, spindly spiders on lines of sink drop down into the room and are swiftly captured by Eddie in an open palm. You have never, ever faced this particular brand of misfortune before. 
"What is that?" you squeal, pulling Roan hard against your chest.
She's small, and before your violent flinch, she'd been quite comfortable sitting atop your thigh, her back to your chest. "Woah!" she says, her voice very high. 
"Holy crap," you say, again and again as you shuffle down the couch and off of the side of it. 
As soon as you can stand without fearing for your life, you pull Roan to your chest, her short legs dangling from either side of your thigh. Letting your new boyfriend's daughter die via a mysterious bug bite would be extremely uncool. You quite like her, and her dad's fine (you feel this yawning pit at the very bottom of your stomach whenever you think about how much you want this to work, how much you already love them). 
"Princess, what is that?" you ask, though as soon as you've finished asking, you realise it's nothing nefarious after all. 
She tips herself back in your arms, assessing the bug upside down. "Uh. That's a mildi-pede." 
The bug is long and brown, segments of its body curved and multi-legged. It moves with tiny footsteps but makes good progress, crawling across the wooden slates toward the rug. 
Eddie is the bug catcher. You're the celebrator —he grabs a cup and a piece of paper to sequester whichever insect has decided it must harass you that night, and you get to thank him for being brave with kisses that are somehow shy and congratulatory at once. You're allowed to kiss him, now, whenever you like, but each one makes your lips tingle. 
"You get a lot of those?" you ask. 
"You've never seened one?" Roan asks. 
You live in Indiana, so of course you've seen a millipede. But, you know, normal millipedes, not mutant ones the length of your forearm. 
"I feel like I haven't," you confess, your pulse thudding against your chest. 
"Where did it go?" Roan asks, wriggling to be put down on her own two feet. She sounds far more curious than afraid.
You put her down on the rug and peer over Roan's play picnic table cautiously. You're ninety nine percent sure that millipedes can't hurt people, but you're scared shitless anyhow. 
"Your dad will be back with Chinese food, soon," you say, stepping backwards as Roan creeps forward. It's adorable. You'd coo if your nerves weren't frazzled. "Maybe we could go wait at the kitchen table." 
You'd rather wait for him to come home than deal with it yourself. The thought of somehow touching it makes your skin crawl. 
"She's a super duper long one," Roan calls, dropping to her knees. 
"Roan?" you call back hesitantly. "Uh, don't do whatever it is you're doing. Come on, I'll make you a fun fruity drink again like last week while we wait for your daddy?" 
You bite the tip of your tongue so hard you're sure you've sheared the tip clean off when Roan turns back to you, the wretched (innocent) creature racing its legs uselessly as she holds it up in the light. 
You wrap your arms around your own chest. "Holy crap, babe! Put it down!" 
"Daddy says the bugs aren't scary, they just wanted to have somewhere warm to sleep!" 
"Your daddy is very smart," you concede, strained, easing away as Roan comes closer. The creepy crawly is a contrast to her silky lilac pyjamas and ruffled socks, its armoured carapace shining as it metronomes with each step she takes. "But I'm not as brave as you both." 
"If you open the door, I can put her outside," Roan says, as though you're the child and she's the adult, her tone softened by that seemingly endless patience Eddie possesses. 
You keep your doubt (your disbelief? your awe?) to yourself and cross the short distance to the front door to open it as she commanded. Roan rushes out onto the small porch and down the steps, crouching in the grass to place the millipede down with the utmost care. It's dark out, and she's unafraid, the path lit only by orange light slipping from inside the trailer and the weak headlights of an oncoming car. 
You descend the steps and join her. 
"Here you go, missy mildi-pede, back to the grass," she murmurs. The millipede's back legs cling to her hand. Roan runs out of sweetness and shakes her free. 
You breathe in the cool night air for a moment, watching with Roan as the millipede crawls out of sight between tall blades of bluegrass. 
"You're very brave," you say. You feel a little sheepish to have been rescued by her. 
"Daddy says that all the time," she agrees proudly. 
You offer her your hand and stand tall together as the headlights become apparent. Your car (with Eddie driving, to avoid a game of driveway leap frog) pulls into the space behind his own. He waves when he sees you both behind the windshield, getting out of the car with the takeout bag looped around his wrist. 
"Hi girls," he says, closing the door with his hip. "What're you doing, sending out a search party? I wasn't gone that long." 
"I had to– I had to bring a mildi-pede outside because Y/N was scared," Roan says, her sentence punctuated with a roaring giggle as Eddie swoops her up into his arms, takeout bag and all. 
"Oh yeah?" he asks, smothering her answer with kisses. 
You bracelet your wrist in the other hand sheepishly. 
Eddie doesn't look up. You assume you've gotten away with not knowing what to say until he pops Roan on his hip, reaching for you. More shameful than your inability to deal with a bug by yourself is how urgently you step into his side. He wraps an arm around your shoulder, the takeout bag hot against your back, his lips curled into a fond smile as he murmurs, "D'you finally see the spider in the bathroom?" 
You tilt your face into his cheek kisses. "No?" you ask. 
"I'm calling him Gregory," Roan says.
"He's not that big," Eddie promises, leaning back to stroke your face.
"She saved me from the world's grossest millipede."
"Were you kind?" Eddie asks her.
Roan puts a little hand over her heart. "Duh, daddy."
"She's wicked with them, isn't she? She grabs them like they're nothing," he says to you, his hand rubbing down your arm before he passes you the take out bag. Roan must weigh heavy after a long day; he needs both arms to keep her up. They grin at each other with twin mouths. "She's fearless. Thanks for saving Y/N, babe." 
"I like Y/N," Roan says earnestly. 
You like Roan too —your saviour. You bring her a big Dotty Dolly set the next time you're lucky enough to be invited over, an entomologist Dolly with khaki cargo shorts and a butterfly net. Roan loves it, and Eddie's evidently appreciative, sitting you half on top of his lap as you watch her tear it open with his arms crossed lovingly over your tummy. 
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asahicore · 1 year
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moonlight - psh (m)
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this work contains smut - minors please do not interact pairing. dancer!sunghoon x fem!reader synopsis. In August 1963, your monotonous summer vacation becomes a lot more exciting when you meet a group of dancers that work as the entertainment staff of the resort you and your family are staying at. Your fascination with them, and particularly dancers and close friends Sunghoon and Chaewon, pushes you to help them out by taking Chaewon's place at another hotel's show when she's unable to dance. The week you spend with Sunghoon as he teaches you to dance and the events thereafter give you a lot more than the ability to mambo. genre. dirty dancing au, strangers to lovers, summer au, poor boy x rich girl trope, the Big 3 (fluff angst n smut) word count. 32.2k a/n. it's finally here !!! i've been working on this for a while so i hope you guys will like it, please lmk what u think ur feedback is super important to me !!! if you've seen dirty dancing you'll see that this is like.. a complete copy of the movie lmaooo i'm sorry i didn't wanna stray from the plot cz i love it 2 much <//3 i'll make a posting schedule shortly after this so you guys can see which of my old works i'll be reposting and all that :)) enjoy !! also thanks to @ozymandia-s for betareading this u deserve the world and u made this fic a thousand times better <333 and yep thats a compliment from me to u so u better treasure it fr.
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It’s the summer of 1963, everybody calls you Baby, and it hasn’t occurred to you to mind. You’re 18, have plans to change the world, and are sure there isn’t a better man than your father.
After years of being too busy to leave work for over a week, your father has finally retired, and you can all go on a long, well-deserved summer break. Like most people your age, your dream vacation would be to backpack through Europe or Asia, discovering the wonders the world has to offer, meeting people from all walks of life and eating all sorts of foreign delicacies. But your parents wish for something more laid-back, so, on the first Sunday of August, after a six-hour drive, you get out of the car at Kellerman’s, a summer resort that belongs to your father’s old friend. You are to spend the rest of the month here, until the last day of the season.
The resort is truly a sight to behold. Even though it’s only four floors high, the main building is downright massive in terms of how much space it occupies. You can imagine the many rooms it must hold, such as the different restaurants and their respective kitchens, the ballroom and other leisure rooms, the stage for various shows, and some offices and apartments where the highest members of staff reside. Tables are scattered all across the front lawn, mainly older ladies and gentlemen sitting at them, drinking lemonade, playing cards, gossiping. You can make out a golf course and a small pond from afar, as well as the back lawn where you’re told most of the activities take place. Such activities include the outdoor dancing lessons, which your mother and sister Seeun want to get to immediately.
Max, your father’s friend, greets you as soon as you arrive as if he’s been waiting for you. Amused, you watch as they clasp each other’s hand before coming into an embrace, giving three hard but friendly pats to the other’s back. “So glad to finally have you here, Doc,” Max says earnestly. “I promise you, one week here and you’ll feel like you’ve never worked a day in your life, that’s how relaxed you’ll be.” Your father laughs and nods, and you turn your attention away when they start talking about work, and how life’s been, and how your daughters have grown, and other things you don’t care much for. 
You notice that a member of staff has begun to unload your numerous bags from the trunk, about half of which are your sister’s (“See, Mommy, I told you I should’ve brought those coral heels!” you hear her complain), and start helping him out. He turns to you with a smile as you haul a suitcase onto the trolley.
“Hey, thanks a lot! You looking for a job here?” he jokes, making you smile.
“Just wanted to help out, but I’ll let you know. I’m Baby, by the way.”
“Baby? Is that your real name?” he asks with an amused expression and a quizzical tilt to his head.
“No, but it’s what everyone calls me,” you beam back.
“Alright then, Baby. I’m Jake.” He wipes some sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand before extending it to you, and you take it, shaking it enthusiastically. 
Your conversation stops there when your father calls out your name, motioning for you to follow him and your mother and sister. “Come, Baby, let the staff do their work.” You give Jake an apologetic smile and wave him goodbye, but he simply shrugs and turns away, seemingly used to this kind of dismissal from guests.
“See you around, Baby,” you hear him say as you start to walk away.
-
Seeun only gives you a few minutes to settle into your shared room and unpack your suitcase before she practically drags you outside, eager to get to the dance class in time. Your older sister absolutely loves dancing. No matter where or with who, if there’s music, she’ll start moving. 
You, on the other hand, have two left feet, which doesn’t make dancing such a fun activity. You like it, but always feel you look like a fool. As for dancing with a partner, the intimacy that comes with it is too much for you, and isn’t something you particularly want to share with boys you barely know, nevermind complete strangers, like the people at the merengue class your sister is making you rush to. 
It takes place in the gazebo, which is wide enough to host about thirty guests and the instructor, who introduces herself as Chaewon. You try to follow her “1, 2, 1, 2” as best you can but it’s hard to focus on the rhythm when you have to avoid being stepped on by the lady to your left and stepping on the man to your right. Everything around you is turned upside down when she cheerfully calls out, “Let’s get into a circle! Gents on the outside, ladies on the inside! C’mon now!”
You manage to make your way into the inner circle, holding onto the hips of the woman in front of you, and finally start to sway to the rhythm a bit more. “Come on ladies! God wouldn’t have given you this body if he didn’t want you to shake it!” Chaewon shouts enthusiastically, emphasizing on the “shake” with a movement of her own.
“On the count of three,” she calls out, “ladies, you’ll turn around, and meet the man of your dreams! 1, 2, 3!”
You find yourself face to face with a grandma that had ended up in the gents’ circle and force on your best smile as you dance with her. She looks delighted, but that expression might just be stuck on her face permanently.
The class comes to an end and the afternoon with it, and you leave the bungalow while everyone gets ready for dinner, yelling out that you’re going to look around as you close the door behind you. It’s the early evening and the sun has just started to set, but not enough for the gentle breeze to be too cold. The small, round bushes and colorful flowers that line the pebbled path from the bungalows to the main building have been expertly tended to; there isn’t a stray weed, nor branch that hasn’t been cut properly nor a wilting plant. It’s all so perfect, it almost looks fake. Yet, when you bend down to feel a petal, it’s soft under your fingertips and very much real.
You walk on the porch that surrounds the main building until you reach the outside entrance to the restaurant. Max’s booming voice catches your attention and you’re able to peek through the ajar door, making sure you can’t be seen from where you stand. Your father’s friend sits at a table while the waiters stand in a half-circle in front of him, hands locked behind them and heads slightly bowed.
“Tonight’s the start of the second half of the season, so I’ll use this opportunity to set a little reminder. You’re here because I chose you lot from the most prestigious schools in the country and you need some financial help, correct?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “So do your job, and do it well. And if you want extra compensation, the gents here may be very generous if you show their daughters a good time and keep their wives happy. But no funny business, you keep your hands off. Got it?”
A quiet flurry of yeses is heard throughout the room just as a group of young people stride in, the sight of them piquing your interest. They’re wearing much more fitted and fashionable clothes compared to the waiters’ simple white vests and trousers, and carry themselves with a confidence you’ve only seen in celebrities and important people. The man that leads them particularly catches your attention: slicked-back hair, useless sunglasses now that the sun has set, all-black clothes, too much leather for the summer weather and the prettiest face you think you’ve ever seen to top it all off. He looks like an off-duty movie star.
“You hear that, boys? No funny business,” he says with a smirk to the group behind him, and they chuckle in response, eyeing the waiters up and down. They work at the same establishment, but they seem to be from two totally different worlds, you notice.
“I think you’re the one who should keep that in mind,” one of the waiters says just as the group passes by him, just loud enough for the other guy to hear. He reacts immediately to the taunt, spinning around and pointing a threatening finger to the waiter’s chest. 
“And I think you should heed your own advice, you jackass,” he spits, unfiltered venom in his voice. The waiter only smirks condescendingly, as if proud his remark had struck a nerve.
“Alright, alright, calm down, Sunghoon, and lay off of Heeseung. You’re booked and busy this week, and your whole entertainment team has work to do, okay?” Max says, tone stern as if telling a child off.
Sunghoon takes a step back but doesn’t look away from Heeseung as he scoffs a simple whatever. He then pivots back around and leads his team out of the room. You decide you’ve seen enough and turn around yourself, heading back to your family’s bungalow with quick steps.
Barely half an hour later, you’re back at the restaurant. The tables have all been set, the candles have been lit, a band is playing soft jazz in the corner, and the waiters are taking care of the guests’ orders and keeping them content. You’ve just sat down when Max himself approaches, introducing your waiter for tonight to your table. You try not to let your astonishment show when you instantly recognise him as the one who had had that scuff with Sunghoon earlier.
“Doc, this is Heeseung Lee, and he’ll take care of you tonight,” he addresses your father, a paternal hand around Heeseung’s shoulder. “He’s a third year med student at Harvard and has been working here every summer for the past three years. A very reliable and hardworking young man.” You feel like you’re being sold a car, but your father just smiles and nods approvingly at Heeseung.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Heeseung,” your father greets, holding out a hand for the young man to shake.
“The pleasure’s all mine, Doctor,” Heeseung responds, a most dazzling smile on his lips. If you hadn’t seen him earlier, you wouldn’t believe that this smile could turn snarky and patronizing.
“This is my wife, our eldest Seeun and our youngest Y/N, but we all call her Baby. She’s going to change the world,” your father introduces, beaming proudly at you.
“Yeah, and Seeun’s going to decorate it,” you say, turning to your sister. A bit unprovoked, perhaps, but this is just the way you and your sister have always been. You smile and tilt your head innocently as she glares at you.
“I think she already does,” Heeseung says, your eyebrow raising up in surprise as your sister looks down at her hands, the sudden compliment making her blush.
“Alright, Heeseung, go get these folks our best champagne. On the house!” Max exclaims, beaming at your parents.
“Yes, sir,” Heeseung says, bowing his head slightly to Max and your table before shooting your sister a smile and walking off. 
“Oh, and here’s someone else I want to introduce to you - Jay, come here! That’s my grandson Jay. Yale Business School,” Max says emphatically. Jay approaches your table quickly, a somewhat self-assured yet awkward smile on his face. He greets your parents and sister with a nod of his head until his eyes settle on you. “This is Baby, I was telling you about her earlier. She’s going to study at Yale too, and her dad says she’ll change the world!”
Jay’s lips form a pout, the kind of pout one makes when watching kittens play or a child running to his mother, as if he finds your ambitions endearing. Used to this kind of reaction from men, you raise your eyebrows and a small smile spreads on your face as if to say, “yep, that’s me.”
“How nice, Baby. But before you go off and do that, how about you save me a dance? Tomorrow night at the ball?” he offers, and the urge to kick him in the balls is hard to resist, but resist you must.
“Of course she will!” your father answers for you, and you have no choice but to put on your best fake smile, but none of the three men seem to see through it. If your mother and sister notice how annoyed you are, they don’t say anything. Knowing them, they probably think you’re being unreasonable if you’re not already throwing yourself at such an obviously intelligent and respectable young man.
That’s how you find yourself the next day, hands stiffly clasped behind Jay’s neck and his own on the sides of your waist, dancing with him to a slow-paced but lighthearted live song, although dancing might be an overstatement as it’s impossible to find a proper rhythm with someone as clumsy as him. You never thought you’d meet a worse dancer than you, but here you were. You have to keep yourself from snorting everytime he winces or tuts when you “accidentally” step on his foot, and you make sure to leave ample room between the two of you for the Holy Spirit.
Most of the dance is spent in awkward silence, probably due to the fact that Jay’s gaze, one that is perhaps meant to be seductive but only comes off as creepy, seems to linger on you for too long and too many times. When a pair of kids spins right by you, looking far more talented and serious in their dancing than the two of you, Jay seems to think he needs to step up his game and tightens his grip on your waist. Although you try to disguise it as best you can, the action makes you look up at him in alarm, and you have to stop yourself from visibly flinching when he bends down to say something in your ear although the music isn’t that loud.
“So, Yale, huh? What are you going to study? Design?”
“Um, Environmental Studies and Politics, actually. I’m particularly interested in how underdeveloped countries work and how we can change things there for the better, rather than making things worse,” you correct him, slightly raising your voice so he can hear you from where you’re standing. 
Jay is visibly taken aback by your detailed response, and all he can do is nod. “Right, right, that’s-”
To no one’s disappointment, you never find out what Jay was going to say next because right then, the music suddenly picks up and one of the musicians announces “Sunghoon and Chaewon of the Entertainment Team for a mambo demonstration” into his mic. Your ears perk up at the sound of those two vaguely familiar names, and you quickly recognise Sunghoon as the leather-clad man from earlier and Chaewon as the merengue class instructor from yesterday. He’s now wearing a black suit jacket and matching trousers with a tight white button-up, the clothes fitting him perfectly and making the muscles underneath them appear when the light hits him just right. On her is one of the most beautiful dresses you’ve ever seen, the red fringed fabric draping over her body like it was created for her, her toned upper back and arms on display.
The crowd of guests quickly forms a circle around the couple, giving them enough space to put on their show, and everyone, including you, is immediately enthralled by their performance. You’re mesmerized by how elegant and energetic at once their dance is, the smiles on their faces unfaltering and their legs and arms forming perfect lines at all times. Their posture is proud and their gazes are always fixed on each other even as they spin around, somehow never getting dizzy. They move in perfect synchronization as one entity rather than two separate people simply dancing together, and even though it is probably due to an impressive amount of practice, you can’t help but find that their chemistry is what makes them so fascinating. When he lifts her into the air, it’s with so little effort that she looks like she weighs no more than a feather. There is not a step out of place, and you’re reminded of those impeccable bushes and flowers from the day before. It makes you wonder how it is possible for two people to look so perfect together, and if that perfection is only superficial or not.
“Who are they?” you ask Jay, your curiosity about them greater than your aversion to talking to him.
From the corner of your eye, you see him looking surprised by your question before he leans in and answers. “Sunghoon Park and Chaewon Kim. They’re part of the dance people. Here to keep the guests happy and entertained.” He sighs, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head in discontentment. “They shouldn’t be showing off with each other like that, it won’t sell lessons. I’ll need to have a talk with them later.”
You barely register Jay’s words after he’s answered your question, your attention focused back on the dancers in front of you. On the other side of the room, you spot Max frowning at them and marching towards them. As soon as Sunghoon and Chaewon notice him, he waves them off and they separate, choosing a guest as their new partner to dance with, which you assume is their way of doing a taster session.
Jay drags you off to sit at a table and for the better part of an hour, you let him bore your ears off as he tells you either things he can’t fathom you’d already know even though you do, or things you couldn’t care any less about. It’s such a shame that a man with that handsome a face and that charming a smile would have the stalest of personalities, yet deem himself the most interesting man to walk the Earth. You nod and hum when you’re supposed to, and that’s all he needs to think you’re listening intently, when really you can’t stop thinking about the dancers you just saw, and even steal glances at them still dancing with some guests mere meters away from you. All you want to do is get up and get Sunghoon’s, or even Chaewon’s attention so they could show you how to move like them - just touching their shoulder or waist would be thrilling. But when you catch your mother’s eye a few tables away and she beams at you, two thumbs up in the air, you know you need to stay planted in your chair.
Thankfully, the amount of guests in the room starts to dwindle, and you use this dip in the evening to run off, telling Jay it’s getting late and you need to get back to your bungalow. You don’t let him try to convince you to stay back, and grab your purse, excitedly waving goodbye at him. He’s probably confused, but you’re too giddy at the prospect of finally leaving to care. 
You were on your way to the bungalow, you really were - but just as you reach it, light from a tall lodge about five hundred meters away catches your attention, and you’re too curious about the building you hadn’t noticed before not to investigate. So you continue walking up the small hill where all the guest lodgings rest until you find yourself before a sign that reads “STAFF QUARTERS - GUESTS KEEP OUT,” which you promptly decide to ignore.
In just a minute, a wooden bridge reveals itself, enabling you to cross over the current that separates you from the other bank, where the lodge stands. If you looked to your right, you could’ve made out some more, smaller and dingier-looking bungalows than the guests’ that hosted the staff behind all those trees, but you run into a familiar face before you can take notice of them.
“Hey! I recognize you. Baby, right?”
“Yeah, and you’re Jake!” you beam, surprised not only by seeing him again here, but by the three huge watermelons he carries in his arms like oversized newborn triplets. 
“Yeah…” he trails, squinting his eyes at you, his enthusiasm turning into suspicion. “You can’t be here. Max would kill me. Go back to the dance, Baby.” He can only take a few steps forward before you grab a watermelon from his unsteady hold, putting your most convincing smile on.
“I’ll help you carry these!” you state rather than offer, and march forwards across the bridge. Behind you, Jake sighs and shakes his head, then rushes to stop you in your tracks.
“Didn’t you read the sign? This area is staff only, you can’t be here,” he repeats, punctuating his words. He stays unwavering even at the receiving end of your very menacing glare, so you simply huff and stack the watermelon back on top of the other two and turn away. It takes him approximately two seconds to change his mind. “Can you keep a secret?”
Jake doesn’t prepare you for what you’re about to see when you enter the staff common lodge, but you don’t think anything could. The smell of a room full of people sweating and moving about hits you instantly, the heat it creates hanging heavy in the air. The breeze coming in through the open windows is practically useless in bringing the temperature down, but you aren’t curious to find out what it’d be like with the windows closed.
The music, a genre your father always bristles at when he hears it on the radio, is now blasting in your ears rather than whistling through the wind, and it takes you a few moments to adjust to the volume and intensity of the bass and drums bouncing off the walls of the room. The guitar sound is sensual and almost yearning, the singer longs for his lover, and the tempo is just fast enough for the dancers to find a swaying rhythm.
As if the lyrics themselves aren’t enough to make you blush, the way the staff dances makes you feel like you’re intruding on something. You try to look away as a couple thrusts their hips into each other’s, only to find another lowering themselves to the group until they’re crouching then slowly rising again, using each other as support the whole time. Skirts bunched up around hips, shirts almost fully unbuttoned or even discarded, hands grabbing onto the partner’s clothes or bare skin - you’ve never seen anyone dance that way. Far from the choreographed performances you’re used to, here, they’re simply letting their bodies move to the music without any second thoughts or a care in the world. You hadn’t even known this could be considered dancing, but surely, when your body molds itself this perfectly to the melody and your partner’s hands, then you can only be dancing. 
Watermelon in arms, you follow Jake as he snakes his way to the back of the room through sweaty bodies holding each other close. You recognise a few people here and there as the entertainment staff who host activities, teach dance classes or help guests find their way around. They peer back at you, expressions either confused or disdainful - you aren’t sure whether that’s because they don’t know who you are, or because they do and don’t like seeing you there. Even if they don’t know that you’re Baby, your dress at least is a dead giveaway of your being a guest. Your mom had picked it out for you - a white sleeveless summer dress that reaches almost to your knees and cinches in at the waist before flowing out over your hips. And no cleavage, of course. Along with your impeccably curled and styled hair, your prim and proper attire is a far cry from the short skirts, tight t-shirts and denim that the staff wears, revealing sunkissed skin and toned muscles. And if all of that still isn’t enough to tell you apart, then your wide eyes like a kid seeing fireworks for the first time should do it.
You finally reach the back of the room and set your watermelon on a bar counter. Jake rests his hands on his hips and watches the dancers, a smile on his face, the kind of smile you wear when you can never get enough of a sight even though you witness it everyday. You watch them too, but you must look a mix of fascinated and terrified - sure, they all look terrific, but if your dad caught you here, you’d be dead.
“Where’d they learn to do that?” you lean in to ask Jake as the next song starts playing, your gaze not leaving the dancers who adjust easily to the more upbeat tempo.
He looks at you, stunned. “Don’t you know? This is how the kids dance these days. This is what American basements look like on Friday nights.” His surprise turns into amusement and he steps in front of you, one hand extended for you to take and a mischievous look on his face. “Wanna try?”
Your eyes immediately double in size and you shake your hands in front of you, but he grabs one of them anyway and starts leading you back into the middle of the room. You’re saved by the doors suddenly bursting open, catching everyone’s attention. In run Sunghoon and Chaewon, wearing the same clothes from earlier, although Sunghoon has ditched the suit jacket and popped the top buttons of his shirt open. Your stomach flips at the sight of his flushed cheeks and hair slick with sweat.
Jake chuckles when he sees how transfixed you are by the two of them, dancing so differently from earlier, their moves far more sexual, hands not so polite anymore, completely free to do whatever they wish. Rather than a smile, Sunghoon wears a small frown and bites his bottom lip, deepening his dimples, and it all seems to make each of his moves that much harsher. The sheer sex appeal that he exudes is absolutely undeniable, and it makes you feel things you’ve never felt before - things you’re not quite unsure how to name. You let out a small gasp as Chaewon jumps and hooks her legs around his hips effortlessly, then as she leans her upper body back until her head almost touches the ground. Sunghoon’s hands are tight around her waist and his biceps apparent under the thin fabric of his dress shirt. You realize how strong Sunghoon must be when he carries her all the way to his shoulders, letting her rest her knees there as she plays with her skirt and swings her head from side to side. You’ve never seen anyone look so good while having so much fun.
“They look great together,” you blurt out without thinking.
“Don’t they?” Jake says, looking out at them with a fond smile. “You’d think they were a couple.”
This makes your head pivot towards Jake. “Well, aren’t they?”
“Not since we were kids, no. They’ve just been dancing together for so long that they’ve developed this- this chemistry and understanding of each other, I guess.” 
“Do you know them well?”
“Sunghoon’s my best friend from home. He met Chaewon when he started working here when we were 16, and then he got me this job when we were 17. The three of us are 22 now.” He meets your gaze and his smile grows wider. “Why, you interested?”
The sudden question (and the very obvious, very embarrassing answer) takes you aback and you stammer out a few nonsensical syllables before frowning at him. Your reaction just seems to amuse him. “No, I’m not. Just asking,” you manage to say.
He looks back at them, and you follow his gaze. “Well, good, cause we’re not allowed to get involved with the guests anyway. Which is why you shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
Just then, the song ends and Sunghoon and Chaewon laugh before they separate, finding another partner to dance with. As Chaewon heads towards someone else, Sunghoon catches your stare and walks to where you and Jake stand, eyes fixed on your face. You feel small under his gaze, but you will your knees not to buckle underneath you, although that’s hard to do when his eyes sweep your figure, giving you a once-over.
“What’s she doing here?” he questions Jake without looking away from you.
“That’s Baby, she came with me,” Jake says, not really answering the question.
“I carried a watermelon,” you blurt, not really answering the question either, but that seems to satisfy Sunghoon. His eyebrows raise slightly before he heads back to the dancefloor and starts dancing again. You release a breath you hadn’t known you were holding, but another one catches right in your throat when, after barely thirty seconds, he pivots back around as if there was still something he was curious about. His eyes stay focused on you, unreadable.
And then, he bows his head slightly, looks up at you through his eyebrows, raises his hand, and beckons you to him with his index finger. As if spellbound, your feet move on their own until you find yourself in front of him, his hands reaching immediately for your hips and holding on tight there. All the nerves in your body are on edge and your heartbeat speeds up, almost matching the fast tempo of the song resonating throughout the room. Simply remembering to breathe becomes an arduous task. Jake’s voice is a faint sound as he says, “So you go dance with him, but not me?”
This kind of dancing is completely unfamiliar to you, so you have no idea what to do. Thankfully, Sunghoon doesn’t seem to expect anything else, and he knows how to guide you so that you get the gist of it. “Keep your eyes on me,” he commands quietly, gesturing with two fingers for your gaze to stay on his. “And move your hips in a circle, just like that,” he adds, executing the move for you to mirror. “Just relax, you’re too stiff. Relax your arms. Put them around my shoulders.” His hands brush down from your shoulders to your wrists, sending a trail of fire all along your arms, grabbing them and resting them on his shoulders himself before settling back on your waist. His arm snakes its way around it, bringing you closer to him. You aren’t sure what’s more electrifying, his gaze or his touch.
You start to focus on the music and on getting your body to move along to it, and it feels like a miracle when your hips, firmly pressed against his own, sway side-to-side in rhythm. Remembering what you saw earlier, you lean back slightly, hips still moving in small circles, trusting him to keep you from falling. You lean back as far as you can, and something about it is so liberating, you feel the adrenaline rushing through your body as if it’s the only thing keeping you alive. When you come back up, your palms are flat against his chest and he looks at you with a proud but surprised smirk that lits your insides up. “Just like that,” he whispers, but his face is close enough for you to hear him over the music.
He spins you around a few times, and as quickly as he appeared, he’s already gone, having weaved his way through the crowd back towards Jake. It takes you a few seconds to register his absence, but when it does, it’s like all the warmth he filled you with is gone; you’re left only with the heavy heat weighing the room down and you with it, when you’d felt light like air not a moment ago.
Before you can decide on what to do next, someone taps your shoulder, and you turn around to find Heeseung frowning down at you. In the fraction of a second, you can tell this is the snarky Heeseung that you’d seen when you were snooping around the day before rather than the polite Heeseung that had waited your table that night.
“Baby, right? I don’t know what you’re doing here, but your sister and parents are looking all over for you. If I were you, I’d go now, and quick.”
Alarm shoots through you as you realize you’d been here for twenty minutes at least, the sort of absence that wouldn’t go unnoticed by your family this late at night. You thank him rapidly and practically run towards the door before risking a look back at Jake and Sunghoon, still standing in the corner of the room. Jake looks worried, so you send him a thumbs up, but Sunghoon simply peers at you, sipping on a beer as his back rests against the wall, that same unreadable look from before back on his face. You don’t linger to figure it out and rush to your bungalow, coming up with an excuse that you got lost on your way back for your parents to believe. Because their Baby would never do anything she isn’t supposed to, right?
That night, as you toss and turn in bed, trying to fall asleep, your mind wanders off to those warm, big hands firmly planted on your waist, and how they had guided your body until it moved on its own accord, until it let itself go and only followed the rhythm. How far can you go until your body no longer belongs to you but rather to the music, or to the person holding you close, you wonder? And if that happened, would you, for a moment at least, no matter how fleeting, be freed of all your worries for your future and of all the pressure on your shoulders?
Your feet already ache - from dancing or from wanting to dance some more, you can’t quite tell.
-
Every year when August comes, it takes you by surprise how early the sun sets. Just as you’d gotten used to the sky still being fairly light by 10 p.m., it was already getting dark at nine. This is what you think about a few nights later as you look out at the dark sky, the bright full moon and the hundreds of stars lighting it up. You’re standing next to the gazebo with your parents as you watch other guests dancing about; clearly, since you’re thinking about the state of the sky and the sun in the summer, you’re very entertained. Your sister has managed to become friends with some of the other guests’ kids, as well as some of the staff, and has even formed a budding romance with Heeseung, which your parents have made it obvious they approve of. This means that she is excused of any activities she might not want to partake in, while you have to follow your parents everywhere.
Your gaze follows Sunghoon as he dances with an older woman, guiding her through the dance and teaching her a few steps. You can’t help but frown slightly at his forced smile when she lets her hands wander a bit too far down his back, and you wonder why he doesn’t say anything when he looks so obviously uncomfortable.
“You see that woman over there?” you hear Max ask your father as he motions to the lady dancing with Sunghoon. “Vivian Kim. We call women like her bungalow bunnies. Their husbands work all week and only come back on weekends. That dancer Park Sunghoon is pretty popular with them, if you know what I mean,” he comments with a dark chuckle. “But I gotta pretend like I don’t know any better, otherwise the wives are unhappy. And if the wives are unhappy, so are the husbands, and then I lose money.”
You daze out of the conversation when you see Jay approaching, his steps quick and headed directly towards Sunghoon. “Where’s Chaewon?” he questions impatiently, taking no notice of Vivian, who seems to take no notice of him either and continues swaying her hips to the music.
“What do you mean where’s Chaewon? She’s on a break, Chaewon needs a break,” Sunghoon bites back, tone just as harsh as Jay’s. That seems to shut Jay up, and he just squints at him before turning his head to where you’re standing. His whole demeanor changes instantly as he walks towards you, that smile one would reserve for children that he always looks at you with.
“Hey Baby, wanna go on a walk?” he asks, but with the intent way your parents, Max and Jay himself are peering down at you, you know you don’t have much of a choice.
You put on your best forced smile and take his extended hand. “Sure, Jay.”
He takes you to a small wooden bridge that overpasses a small but feisty current. The walk there is fairly silent, which you’re thankful for, because it’s easier to pretend Jay isn’t here when he’s not talking, but the fantasy is shattered everytime he sighs and hums contentedly. It’s like he thinks spending five minutes without talking will make the world implode, and he has to make some kind of noise to keep the balance.
When you reach the bridge, you lean back against the rail, and he leans on his side, apparently so he can look at you better. “I love to watch your hair blow in the breeze,” he says after a few moments, and it takes everything in you to keep your laughter in at the sudden romanticism.
“You know, not to brag,” he starts, and you know he’s about to say the most pretentious thing you’ve ever heard, “but around here, I’m known as the catch of the county.” He’s smiling, but you know he’s being fully serious. “I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m handsome, parents love me, and I go to the best school in the country. People ask me, ‘well, what’s the difference between you and any other guy at Yale,’ and I say, ‘five hotels and a million-dollar inheritance!’” He bursts laughing like he’s just made the funniest joke ever, although you’re not sure where the joke is. You chuckle awkwardly and nod, remembering your mother’s advice - when in doubt, just nod. You’re not particularly in doubt, but you’re also not sure how to respond to such ostentatious self-praise.
To your great despair, Jay is about to open his mouth again, but a voice coming from the exit of the forest near you stops him in his tracks. “Heeseung, please, you have to help me with this-,” the voice says, and you recognize it quickly as Chaewon’s.
“I told you, it’s none of my damn business.”
“But it is! Please!” she shouts back. He walks ahead of her and she tries to catch up to him, and just like that, they’re already gone without having noticed you or Jay.
A hand placed delicately on your shoulder snaps you from your thoughts. You turn to Jay who has a sad look in his eyes and who sighs as if pained to say what he has to say next. “You know, Baby, sometimes, in this world, you’ll see things you don’t want to see. And sometimes, you can’t do anything about them. It’s all part of growing up,” he finishes, his tone self-important like he’s just taught you a world of knowledge. 
“You hungry?” he suddenly adds, all cheery. “C’mon, eating something might take your mind off of this. We can go to the kitchens and get you anything you’d like.”
He indeed takes you to the restaurant kitchens, completely empty due to the late hour. He opens up a fridge, and even though he basically does, the way he acts like he owns the place makes you wince. “So, what have we here? Some smoked salmon canapés, some ham sandwiches… ooh, brownies! What else…” he trails off, but your attention has been caught by something else. 
You can hear someone snuffling somewhere in the room, and when you lean to the side to peer behind the wall, you can make out a female figure crouched down in the dark. She’s trembling from head-to-toe, and when she lifts her head to look at you, you recognize her as Chaewon. You’ve never seen anyone looking so scared.
Thinking quickly, you grab Jay by the shoulders, smiling at him as you say, “You know what, I don’t think I’m actually that hungry, let’s just head back to the gazebo, yeah?”
For once, you’re the one who doesn’t let him answer your question and you speed out of the kitchens and back to the gazebo. You find Jake immediately, rushing to him to tell him what you saw, and he in turn rushes to Sunghoon, who apologizes and drops his dancing partner’s hand as soon as he hears what’s going on. Ignoring Jay’s confused look, you run with them back to the kitchens, from which Chaewon hasn’t moved an inch.
Sunghoon sits next to her, taking her in his arms and helping her up. “It’s okay, you’re okay, I’m here now. Everything’s fine. Let’s get you back to my room, okay? It’ll be quiet there,” he coos, getting her snuffles to calm down and her breath to steady itself.
Since none of them tell you to go back, you follow along, Chaewon in Sunghoon’s arms in front and you and Jake not too far behind. “What’s wrong with her?” you ask Jake quietly.
“She’s pregnant.”
“Jake!” Sunghoon calls out indignantly, sending him a look as if to warn him.
“What? It’s not like she’d tell anyone.”
“Still, it’s none of her business,” Sunghoon replies, glancing briefly at you.
“And what’s he gonna do about it?” you can’t help but ask. This makes Sunghoon pivot on his heel and Chaewon frowns at the sudden movement.
“‘What’s he gonna do about it?’” he repeats, venom in his voice. “Oh of course, cause it’s my baby. Of course you’d assume that,” he practically spits at you. You try to stutter out a response, but nothing comes up. How could you not assume that, when you’ve only seen him taking care of her like she’s his responsibility?
You thought all staff lived in small bungalows, but the place you reach is more like a one-person studio. Sunghoon sits Chaewon down on a couch, covers her shoulders with a blanket and brings her a tall glass of water.
“So, whose is it then?” you ask again, eyes darting back and forth between the three figures that stare back at you. Sunghoon starts towards you, an accusing finger out, but Chaewon stops him.
“It’s fine, Sunghoon.” She sighs then lifts her gaze to look at you. Her eyes seem drained, like her tears took everything out of her. “It’s Heeseung’s,” she answers plainly, and you think your eyes bulge out of your face. What you’d witnessed earlier starts to make more sense in your head.
Next to you, Jake looks like he’ll explode if he has to keep in the words he wants to say any longer. “That bastard Heeseung. She needs money to get an operation, and she needs it soon, but he doesn’t give a shit,” Jake spits.
“But, Heeseung, he’s got money, I’m sure if you just ask him, he’ll-”
“Baby? Is that your name?” Chaewon asks softly, interrupting you. “Well, you don’t know shit about my problems, Baby,” she continues, her tone doing a 180. “You don’t think I’ve asked him? You don’t think he knows?”
“But-”
“Go back to your playpen, Baby,” she dismisses you, a finality to her tone. Sunghoon just glares at you while Jake shrugs, so you decide there’s nothing you can do than leave, and head back to your bungalow, heart heavy, but determined to help Chaewon out. There has to be something you can do, you just know it.
-
The next day, you pretend to help Heeseung set the tables for the lunch service to have a talk with him. You waste no time starting your interrogation, not even greeting him before diving straight into it.
“I know about Chaewon, Heeseung. You need to help her out,” you say sternly, using a random water pitcher you’d found at the entrance to fill up crystal glasses.
“Well hello to you too, Baby,” he says with a sarcastically sweet tone. His fake smile drops when he sees you won’t play into his game. “I don’t need to do anything,” he scoffs. “Not like it’s any of your business anyway.”
“Haven’t you seen her? You can’t leave her alone in a time like this, she needs your help. Even if it’s mostly financial help. It’s the least you can do.”
“Girls like her, they get into trouble all the time, okay? Hey, watch what you’re doing!” he whisper-yells when water spills over one of the glasses, not wanting to rouse the suspicion of any of the diners around.
“Yeah, because of guys like you,” you bite back, but he ignores you.
“She was bound to get knocked up at some point, going around like that.” You follow as he moves on the next table. 
“So you’re not going to do anything? Just put her in a bad situation and then run away?”
He finally turns to face you, looking at you like he’s exasperated, like you’re the bad guy here. “That girl’s not my problem, okay? She brought this upon herself.”
You take a step closer to him, a fakely sweet smile plastered on your lips. “You’re a jerk, Heeseung. You stay away from me, stay away from my sister, or I’ll have you fired.” You then raise the jug of water up to his chest, and keep that same smile as you pour it on him before marching away, ignoring the gasps that echo all around the room and Heeseung as he yells at you to come back.
-
Your mom is struggling to get the ball in when you find your parents on one of the many golf courses. Your dad smiles as he sees you nearing them, asking you if everything’s alright.
“Daddy.”
“Baby?” he answers, looking amused by your seriousness.
“You know how you say I should always do my best to help out others when they need it?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ve got friends who need some help.”
“What kind of help?” he asks, slightly frowning as he realizes you’re not being serious for no reason.
You take a big breath in. “Money.” You don’t like asking your dad for money, but it’s the only solution you’ve come up with.
“And just how much money?”
“Three hundred dollars?” you say, your sentence coming out like a question as you slightly wince in apprehension.
Your father sighs. “That’s a serious amount of money, Baby. This isn’t anything illegal, is it?” he adds after a beat, taking you aback. Is this illegal? If it is, your father doesn’t need to know it.
“No, no, of course not, Daddy,” you say, trying your best at a reassuring smile. It seems to work, because his expression softens and he smiles back.
“Of course not,” he repeats, “I should know that.” He takes you in his arms. “I’ll have the money ready for you tonight.” You hug him back, thanking him before skipping away to whatever activity you might find to distract yourself before the evening.
-
After dinner, when your dad’s given you an envelope filled with cash, you throw a quick excuse your parents’ way before rushing to the staff quarters, making sure no one sees you on your way there. The music emanating from the common room makes you hopeful you’ll find the people you’re looking for.
And indeed, you do - Sunghoon and Chaewon are holding each other close, her head resting on his chest, and swaying together to the slow and sensual rhythm of the music at the back of the room when you find them. You feel a ping of something uncomfortable in your heart but ignore it and head straight towards them. Chaewon turns around when you tap on her shoulder, her and Sunghoon both looking at you with unmasked animosity, but you just smile as you hand her the envelope. Jake notices you and walks over to stand next to his cousin.
“Here you go. I hope it’s enough,” you say, relieved to see her surprised but ecstatic expression when she opens the envelope and sees all the bills in there. Jake wears a similar expression but Sunghoon just leers down at you.
“Oh my God, Baby, this is amazing,” Chaewon exclaims in disbelief. “How did you get Heeseung to change his mind?”
You purse your lips. “It wasn’t Heeseung…”
She frowns slightly but her eyes widen at the realization that if it isn’t from Heeseung, it has to be from you. “Oh, Baby, thank you so much,” she murmurs.
“Yeah, takes a real saint to ask daddy,” Sunghoon says sarcastically. Chaewon’s head snaps towards you and she starts to shake her head, forcing the envelope back into your hands.
“I can’t accept it, then.”
“Why not?” you, Sunghoon and Jake blurt at the same time.
“Who cares where it comes from? You need the money,” Sunghoon says, trying to persuade her, but she just continues to shake her head.
“It doesn’t feel right. And I can’t go to the appointment anyway,” she chuckles defeatedly, and Sunghoon looks at Jake in confusion.
“I can only get her an appointment next Thursday, when you guys have your act at the Sheldrake,” he explains guiltily, as if it’s his fault.
“For fuck’s sake,” Sunghoon breathes out, looking up to the ceiling in despair, hands on his hips.
“Can’t you miss just that one night?” you ask innocently, but apparently it is the stupidest question on earth, judging from the harsh glare Sunghoon fixes you with.
“No, we can’t miss just that one night. This is our job, and if we cancel the Sheldrake, not only do we lose this summer’s salary, but also next summer’s gig. Our livelihoods depend on this,” he hisses.
“So… can’t someone fill in?” you ask again, and wince when he raises his tone.
“No, Little Miss Fix-It, someone can’t fill in. Everybody works here, unlike you. Unless you wanna do it,” he adds after a pause, chuckling sarcastically, “take some time off of Simon Says?”
You can only glare back at him, even though you couldn’t look as condescending as him if you tried. You’re just trying to help them out and find solutions, no need to be so rude about it. Jake looks back and forth between the two of you, a look on his face like he’s thinking things over.
“You know, maybe she could do it. You weren’t so bad last time, were you, Baby?” he says, eyebrows raised at you as he waits for your answer, a hopeful look on his face that makes you feel bad for letting him down.
You shake your head fervently - learning a complicated choreography and performing it in front of an audience is unthinkable to you. “No, no, I can’t even do the merengue.”
“C’mon!” he insists.
“You heard her, Jake, she can’t even do the merengue,” he repeats, adding venom to the words.
Chaewon doesn’t seem to think this is such a bad idea either. “But Sunghoon, you could teach anyone to dance, you’re an amazing leader,” she says eagerly, but Sunghoon just rolls his eyes and sighs.
“The act is in a week, even if I was the best teacher in the world, she couldn’t learn the whole routine in that time. It’s a lost cause,” he sneers, his gaze fixated harshly on you. You’re not sure whether the lost cause refers to the situation or to you.
You squint your eyes at him, trying to match his gaze. It’s one thing that you think it’s a bad idea, but it’s a whole other thing now that he’s so against it. Jake’s right - you weren’t that bad last week, you’re sure you could be an okay replacement. Sunghoon raises an eyebrow at you as if in challenge.
Challenge accepted, you think.
-
“Now it’s one, two, three, four,” Sunghoon says, synchronizing each number to the beat of the music. “You don’t dance ‘til the two.” This is probably the fifth time he tells you this in the past half-hour, and although you know what you’re meant to do, your body will simply not listen to your head.
You’re in the dance studio, trying as hard as you can to get your body to shape itself into what Sunghoon wants it to be. Arms up at shoulder-level, core engaged, back straight, head proud. He may repeat those directions over and over again, you aren’t used to holding yourself like that, and it’s a lot harder than it seems, even though he makes it look so natural.
He moves the tonearm of the record player so that the music starts from the beginning again and walks towards you, his stern gaze never leaving your eyes as if to say, “you better not mess it up this time.” It makes the room feel a lot hotter than it actually is, and the strong summer heat coming in from the open windows doesn’t help.
You can’t help but wonder if Sunghoon is this impatient with all of his students - surely he’d be out of a job if he actually behaved like this with the fancy ladies of the resort, so he must have some kind of problem with you. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that he isn’t the fondest of you, anyway. The fact that you’re only doing this to help him out and not for your own pleasure seems lost on him, but you’d rather not aggravate the situation by pointing that out.
His hands firmly holding yours, his gaze still fixed on your face, you hear your cue approaching and tell yourself “on the two, on the two, on the two,” but it’s no use, your foot starts to move a beat too early. But this time, Sunghoon anticipates your movement and says, softer than you expect ‘no,’ and you put your foot back down instead of stepping on his like countless times before. Then he instructs ‘now’, and you finally get it right, getting into the flow of the music properly. You repeat this process a few more times, and only take a break when he’s sure you won’t make mistakes anymore.
You’re halfway through a one-liter bottle of water when you hear him say, “Finally got the basic footwork down, only took an hour.” You scoff at the snarky remark and are about to come back at him with something just as petty, but you notice the shadow of a smile on his lips, more playful than patronizing, so you bite it back and try to suppress a smile of your own. With Sunghoon, you’ll take what you can get.
He doesn’t give you more than another minute of break, ignoring your complaints and urging you back towards him in the center of the room. “Let’s move on to the second part.”
You only have a week to get ready, so you practice like crazy, Sunghoon trying to reduce his working hours as much as possible and you slipping away from your parents and sister whenever you can. You go over the steps on your own, taking any opportunity to do so, whether that’s when you find yourself alone in your family’s rental or as you walk back across the bridge and lawn to the main grounds, letting your body move to the music in your head.
When she can make it, Chaewon also comes to practice with you. Her presence is always helpful - she sometimes stands behind you, holding you by the hips and correcting your posture, sometimes replaces either you or Sunghoon so you can watch her and mirror her moves from different perspectives. 
Although she was originally wary and dismissive of you, when she saw how intent you were on helping her, a complete stranger, out, her view of you completely changed. You can tell how thankful she is by the constant kindness she shows you, encouraging you to compensate for Sunghoon’s lack of praise.
Indeed, all three of you are surprised and happy to see how quickly you’re progressing, but Sunghoon has a knack for keeping his emotions behind a veil and his praises to a minimum. Sure, that means his compliments, his small ‘you did well today’ or ‘good job’ make you blush a little redder, but you wouldn’t complain if they were more frequent, either.
What he can’t hide from you, however, is that he is clearly starting to become more tolerant of your presence. You’d like to say you knew all along that he would soften up eventually, but truth is, you were scared he was going to stay this cold for the length of your time together, so it comes as even more of a relief when he stops reprimanding you so harshly for small mistakes or when he smiles along with you as you celebrate getting through a big chunk of the routine flawlessly for the first time. When one day, he actually laughs with you instead of berating you, you almost explode in on yourself out of joy. You convince yourself that those butterflies you feel erupting in your stomach is because it’s so surprising to see someone usually so guarded letting himself go a bit more, that it isn’t just the simple sound of his laughter making you feel lightheaded.
On the fourth day of practice, you manage to find enough time to practice for almost three hours in a row. Towards the end of the session, after feeling like you were about to pass out due to extortion, you have a strange surge of energy. Sunghoon, on the other hand, has almost exhausted his very impressive stamina, but still wants to go through what you’ve learned up until now.
The music starts, and you don’t know if it was this surge of energy, or if it was Sunghoon’s tired expression that made you want to tease him, but you decide it’d be funny to repeat back to him the directions he always gives you - you know them by heart at this point. 
“Hey! Head up,” you joke as you face each other again after a spin. “Lock your frame. Wiggly arms!” You’re happy to see he laughs along with you, shaking his head in amused disbelief at you.
The laughter immediately halts, however, when at the end of the routine, because of your lack of concentration, your foot slips and you find yourself much closer to him than necessary for the ending pose. Your breath hitches in your throat, and your cheeks immediately burn up. After a long moment, Sunghoon looks away, clearing his throat, and you take a big step back from him as if being any nearer might make you spontaneously combust.
“That was, um, that was good today. Good job,” he says quickly, then rushes to grab his stuff and leave the room. Forget the proximity the two of you were just in - was that a flustered Sunghoon you got to see? And was it because of you? It’s almost unfathomable that you could render him shy like that, but a small smirk plays on your lips at the idea of it.
Over the week, you start reaching for the thin tank tops and shorts you own, and steal some of Seeun’s lipgloss and mascara. If Sunghoon notices it, he doesn’t say anything. But perhaps, you’re the one who hasn’t noticed the way he glances at you in the mirror when you take a break or practice on your own, how he can’t help raking his eyes over your body when you aren’t looking, unable to reign his curiosity in. That you might want to get some kind of a reaction out of him doesn’t even cross his mind - because no matter how attractive he may be, he can’t imagine that a serious, educated girl like you with big plans for the future might be interested in a guy like him.
So even if his iciness thaws a bit, he doesn’t let it show that having you around messes with his head, and stays a stern instructor who wants you to get the routine down to a T. “We can’t afford to make any mistakes,” he always says. But there’s something about the way he delivers his instructions sometimes that makes it impossible for you to concentrate on the dance. He’s always either dancing with you, your bodies just a foot apart, or sitting on the floor close to you and watching you, so he doesn’t need to speak so loud for you to hear him. It’s this quietness mixed with the strictness of his tone that makes your insides completely melt. Soft yet rigid, intimate yet steely. 
“Don’t put your heel down, stay on your toes.” 
“Keep your eyes focused on me, especially when you’re spinning.” 
“Always keep your core and your head straight.” 
Words that have no double-meaning whatsoever, yet it doesn’t take long for you to start wondering if he keeps this tone everywhere. Whenever those thoughts cross your mind, you’re practically unable to look him in the eye and speak without stammering. He makes you dizzier than the spins you practice.
It’s on the fifth day that you realize how deep your infatuation with Sunghoon truly is. The routine isn’t exceptionally long, so after five days of practicing, you have all the steps down, except for the lifts which he keeps putting off for later. He watches you do it on your own, and although he admits you know it in and out, he said there’s still something missing. The pang of disappointment you feel at his words soon turns into anticipation as he comes to stand in front of you, closer than usual, and brings your hand to his chest, keeping both of his own over yours.
“Feel this?” he says, voice almost a whisper. By now, you’ve gotten used to the intensity with which he always stares at you, but this time seems different; there’s something more vulnerable, more intimate about his gaze, something you don’t quite understand. You just stare right back at him, unable to look away.
You aren’t sure what he means so you lightly shake your head no. “Here,” he insists, pressing your hand more firmly to his chest, and it clicks. He wants you to feel his heartbeat. Your eyebrows jump slightly, and his lips form a small smile at your realization. “Close your eyes.” he says softly, and you do as told. 
“The steps aren’t enough, Baby. You have to feel the music. It’s within you, it’s within me, it’s within all of us. You just gotta find it.” This was something you’d heard a lot of times before, said by singers on the radio, by some of your friends in the high school choir - that they felt the music. But you’d never quite understood what they meant until now, until Sunghoon showed you. With two fingers, he starts tapping against the back of your hand to the rhythmic beat of his heart. 
“Du-dum, du-dum. Feel it now?” he asks, and you nod, too transfixed to produce actual words. His smile widens, and your heart swells because of his expression, more affectionate than you’ve ever seen it. 
“Now dance.”
Your body moves as if of its own accord, the moves now ingrained in your muscles and coming as a reflex to you. Together, you go through the whole routine with no music. You hadn’t needed to check yourself in the mirror to know you did perfectly - the smile on Sunghoon’s face tells you enough.
When the evening rolls around, there’s a lightness to your demeanor that both confuses and delights your parents, but even if they asked you to explain what happened, you don’t think you’d be able to find the words to do so.
-
Sure, Sunghoon doesn’t look at you like he hates you with every fiber of his being anymore, and he even dares crack a smile or laugh once in a while, but it’s not like you’re the best of friends either. There are still moments when he gets frustrated with you - one of those being the time you practice the opening of the routine. He hadn’t yet taught you that part, but as soon as he showed it to you, you understood why.
You stand back to him, heads turned towards each other. Your heights match perfectly so that, when standing so close together, his lips are right in your eyeline. His beautiful, plump, kissable lips that you find yourself thinking about too many times.
Your left arm stays by your side but your right arm is raised so that he can trail his fingertips all the way from your hand down to your waist - a sensual move that, despite setting the tone for the routine, you are not at all ready to perform. Not because it requires any kind of complex technique or years of practice, far from that, but because you don’t yet have the professionalism that Sunghoon, Chaewon and other performers like them have. Nevermind his fingers brushing past your armpit, which is obviously a ticklish place, you can’t handle the seriousness that comes with such intimacy, nor can you resist the urge to laugh every time. This, of course, does not please Sunghoon.
The first couple times it happens, he just rolls his eyes and sighs, thinking you just need to get your head in the dance and then you’d be fine. So he gets back into position, again, again, and again, and even though your full-blown laughters turn into quieter snorts or chuckles, you still can’t find it in you to keep a straight face. 
After the sixth time, his patience runs out. You can tell he wants to blow up at you by the redness of his face and the iciness of his stare, but when he speaks, he doesn’t raise his voice - his tone is so harsh that there’s no need for it. 
“You pull yourself together, or we’re done here.”
Whether he means you’re done for the day, or completely done with the practice, meaning all your efforts this week go to waste and you don’t perform on Saturday, you aren’t sure, but you don’t think this is the right time to question him. You get back into position, and finally, on the seventh try, you don’t laugh. After so many times, his touch doesn’t tickle so much - rather, it burns. Now, instead of resisting laughter, you have to keep yourself from completely melting under his touch.
But then, you realize that this is what you’ve been daydreaming about this whole time - to have him close, to have him touch you. Even though this was still part of the routine, the point of this move was to show the chemistry between the two dancers, the attraction they needed to, or at least pretend to, have for each other to take the performance from good to mesmerizing. Good thing you didn’t need to pretend.
Of course, Sunghoon has touched your waist and shoulders thousands of times by now, but after so many days together, you start to crave a different kind of touch, and in different places. You never let yourself relish too much in the warmth of his palms for fear of getting too used to it, and, worse than anything, missing it when he’s gone - as if that wasn’t already the case. But with this opening move, you can finally let yourself melt under his touch and play it off as being really into the dance. If anything, he’d probably be glad you’re letting your reserves go.
And so you do. Eyes closed, head tilted towards him and slightly back, revealing more of your neck, you feel his fingertips brush along your side until they reach your hand, and you start dancing. For the two minutes of the routine, you aren’t even thinking of the steps anymore, only looking into his eyes and letting your muscle memory do the work for you.
At the end, you stay in the final pose for a few seconds longer than usual, looking into each other’s eyes. Sunghoon isn’t the most expressive person ever, so you’d quickly learned how to decipher the slightest changes in his face. In this moment, he looks at you like he sees you for the first time, really sees you, with something like pride in his eyes. You smile at each other, and his next words make your heart skip a beat in surprise at first, then swell in satisfaction.
“I think that was the best you’ve danced so far. If you do it like this on Saturday night, it’ll be perfect.”
-
However, there’s one last thing you needed to learn: lifts. Sunghoon has been putting them off almost the whole week, saying you’d get to them later, that you needed to get the other steps down before. There are two in the routine, and whenever one comes up, Sunghoon says “that’s for later,” and keeps going with the dance. Except later never comes, and soon enough, you only have a day left to learn and perfect those lifts. The stress of not mastering them on time starts to get to your head, and your stress must be contagious, because Sunghoon explodes for the first (and only) time on Friday afternoon when you make a mistake in the basic steps.
“Are you kidding me?” he suddenly yells, taking a wide step back away from you and looking at you with uncharacteristic anger. Sure, he wasn’t always the most pleasant with you, and you were no stranger to Sunghoon’s expressions of or dislike, but you hadn’t seen anger on him until now. No matter how beautiful he is, you have to admit this isn’t his best look.
“What?” you respond, voice at the same level as his, not understanding his sudden burst of impatience.
“What?! This is a basic step you shouldn’t even be thinking about anymore, let alone not get right. The performance is tomorrow, you can’t be making stupid mistakes now!” He sighs in frustration and tears his gaze away from you for a moment, then looks back, his eyes hard. “Is this your idea of fun?”
You scoff and cross your arms over your chest. “My idea of fun? You really think I’m doing this for fun?” He doesn’t say anything, just keeps on staring at you. “I’ve been breaking my back and sneaking around for almost a whole week just to save your ass, I don’t get anything out of it, and you have the nerve to ask me if I’m doing this for fun?” You can see he wants to say something, but you don’t let him. “Oh, and I’m glad you seem to remember the performance is tomorrow, because I’ll have you know you still haven’t taught me those damn lifts! How can you get mad at me for a small mistake when you won’t even teach me the whole routine?!”
You’re out of breath after screaming so loud and so quickly, but still Sunghoon doesn’t move for a few seconds, until suddenly, he pivots and walks towards the door. At the threshold, he turns to you and tells you to follow him, as if that should have been obvious. He doesn’t give you any time for questions so you run after him. Outside, a heavy summer rain is coming down, and your clothes are soaked through after just ten seconds. You walk a few steps behind him as he heads to his car, muttering a curse under his breath when he realizes he’s forgotten his keys inside the locked vehicle. You let out a small shriek when he breaks one of the backseat windows to open the door from inside, reaching for his keys still resting in the ignition. You just stand there, watching him in confusion, until he calls to you from the driver’s seat. “C’mon! There’s a place I need to show you.”
You know it’s a bad idea - you’ve already been gone for over an hour, and if you leave with him for God knows how much longer, your parents would start to wonder where you are. But there’s something about his face, his anger that had completely disappeared and let way for what seemed like excitement, the rain pouring down and the loud sound of his car’s motor; it all creates a rush of adrenaline in you, and you want to know what he has in store. So you get in the car, and as soon as you’re buckled in, Sunghoon backs out of the parking lot and starts driving, the destination completely unknown to you, but you trust him enough to not be bothered by that.
The two of you drive for around ten minutes in comfortable silence, sometimes catching the other’s eye in the rearview mirror and bursting into giggles. You don’t know why, but when you open your window and let your arm out, letting out a big whoop, he laughs like it’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen.
In the week you spend together with Sunghoon, these are the moments you love the most. When he’s seemingly let go of his barriers and lets you see a side of him that you don’t think many people get access to, a side to which laughter comes easy. Although it gives you whiplash when he so suddenly goes back to his serious and stonelike nature, you’d rather get glimpses of his carefree self than forever be stuck with the face he usually puts on with you. You aren’t sure if he is always one or the other with other people, or if he keeps his tendency to almost switch personalities with everyone, but you’re just glad it doesn’t feel like he’d always prefer to be somewhere else than with you anymore - and that it almost feels like he enjoys, or at the very least tolerates spending time in your company now.
He parks in what seems to be the middle of nowhere, on a small patch of gravel between the road and a forest, right before a bridge that crosses over a current. He gets out and starts towards what looks like a forest, telling you good-humoredly to hurry up and follow him. The rain has calmed down to a drizzle, gentle as it falls on your shoulders and a refreshing break from the sweltering heat of the past few days. Faster than you expected, you’ve reached your destination, which is a point where the current is calm and a wide trunk tree crosses it. You have no idea how Sunghoon ever found this place, but you’ve never seen him wear such an ecstatic expression, so you don’t even question it.
He takes his shoes off and gets on the tree trunk, spreading his arms wide to keep himself from falling. You sit down, one leg on each side of the trunk, and watch amusedly as he titters and regains his balance, sending sheepish smiles your way when he gets close to plummeting into the water. 
“Where’d you learn to dance?” you ask suddenly, the question forming in your head and leaving your lips simultaneously.
He considers you for a second, then plops himself down on the trunk, letting his legs sway over the emptiness. He looks out to the current when he speaks, as if talking to the air around him rather than directly to you. “I lived and went to school in a low-income neighborhood, so there were always these people coming and going, trying to get kids like us to start working and get out of the neighborhood, or make it better or something. One day these people came in, saying they were giving out lessons to become a dance instructor, and it was the only one that ever caught my interest. I did it, aced the test, and they gave me a spot here that I managed to keep every summer. Haven’t wanted to do anything else since.” He looks back at you and you catch a glimpse of cautiousness, perhaps a fear of finding judgment in your eyes, but his expression turns friendly again when he finds only curiosity and sympathy there.
“What about the rest of the year? Do you also have a teaching job back home?” you ask, daring to go further in your interrogation of Sunghoon’s personal life. Just a few days ago, you’d never have dreamed of asking him something like this, but there’s something about him today that makes you think it’s okay to get closer, if you tread lightly.
He snickers humorlessly and looks down at his hands, palms resting on the trunk in front of him. “I’m lucky I get to escape that place just three months a year when I’m working here. Otherwise, I’m stuck with the old man and his carpenting business I’m fated to inherit when he retires.” Before you can say anything in response, he jumps back up on his feet and holds a hand out to you, making a motion for you to come to him. You’re slightly taken aback at the sudden switch in his demeanor, but you know better than to force anything with Sunghoon. “We didn’t come here to chit-chat, did we? Come over here.”
Devilish - there’s no other word to describe his expression at that moment.
“Nuh-uh, I’m not getting on there, I’m gonna fall and break an ankle,” you immediately protest, but he doesn’t need to say anything, just approaches you with a mischievous smile and reaches his hands out to you - and you take them, letting him bring you to your feet.
You climb up tentatively, glad to see the trunk isn’t slippery even after the rain, and hold on tight to Sunghoon’s hands until you’ve managed to find your own balance. “Okay, what now?” you say breathily, half-paralyzed in terror and half-pumped with adrenaline.
“Let’s dance,” he says, a playful smile teasing his lips.
“What, here?” you reply, looking at him like he suggested you rob a bank.
“Yes, here.” He grabs your hand tighter and brings you closer to him, securing an arm around your waist before you can stumble off of the trunk. It’s definitely your near-death experience and not his proximity that makes your heart beat faster, definitely.
He quietly hums the song, but you’ve heard it so many times at this point that you could do the dance with no music at all. More than dancing the same steps, there’s something electrifying about knowing that the same song is playing in your and Sunghoon’s heads right now. You wonder if he feels it playing in his heart too.
What you’re doing isn’t quite dancing - you’re just taking small, careful, clumsy steps together, giggling as you try to stay atop the trunk and letting out a yelp when he attempts to spin you but it only results in you two almost falling off. He holds you close as if making sure that if one of you goes down, the other goes down with them. Your face is right in front of his chest, and when you risk a look up at him, he’s already gazing down at you, his playfulness making the light in his eyes shine even brighter. 
Your breath hitches in your throat when his eyes drift down to your lips, moving as you talk, but you still manage to get the words out, whispering them in the small space between the two of you. “You’re supposed to teach me lifts, aren’t you?” 
“Yeah. Let’s go,” he whispers back, but makes no move to leave the trunk or distance himself from you.
“Okay,” you breathe. You repeat the word and take a step back, somehow gathering the will to tear yourself away from him, from his eyes fixated on your parted lips. “Let’s go.”
He leads you back through the woods to a wide clearing. After the downpour of the early afternoon, the sun is starting to shine again, rays of light making their way through the grayish clouds and high pines, and bathing your surroundings in a comforting glow. Sunghoon stands facing the sun, and the sunlight hits his face so perfectly, you have to keep yourself from snorting at how ridiculously handsome he is.
The only instructions he gives you are as follows: “You’ve seen lifts before. You know you just run to me to gather momentum, then when you’re close enough, bend your knees and keep your core and whole body tight as I lift you. But the most important thing is that you trust me, alright? If you don’t, we could both get hurt.”
The first few times, you just practice the running and the picking up, not wanting to venture into the actual overhead lift right away. It’s easy enough - just find the right distance, the right speed, and remember not to let your body go limp in Sunghoon’s hands.
But when you’ve gotten the hang of it, and Sunghoon tells you to try the complete lift, you freeze. You just stop right in front of him, looking at him with wide eyes. “This is too scary, I can’t do it.”
To your surprise, instead of letting out an annoyed sigh or rolling his eyes, Sunghoon smiles. His eyes go soft and the corners of his lips tug up.
“What’s scary?”
“Falling. Getting hurt, hurting you,” you say, looking into his eyes with the hope that he’ll make all your anxieties go away.
“Don’t think about those things. Don’t think about anything, just trust me. Let yourself be picked up first, and then we’ll worry about your form and how to keep it, okay?”
“O-okay.” You walk a few steps back to regain some distance, and he nods reassuringly as you take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. You run to him, and as if his words had gone straight from his mouth to your limbs, you let him lift you - and the world looks so different from this high up.
You marvel at the feeling of floating in the air, but you quickly start to feel yourself slipping forward, and Sunghoon is yelling “Hold it, hold it!” and before you know it, you’ve dipped forward and fallen right on top of him. Thankfully, it was a slow fall, and he had time to soften the blow, so that the immediate reaction from the both of you is to burst into laughter.
You roll over so that you’re laying on your back next to him and rest your palms on your stomach, feeling it shake with laughter. Once you’ve calmed down, you turn your head towards him and he imitates you a second later. You probably look like idiots, out-of-breath and smiling widely at each other in this field, but there isn’t a thing you would change about this moment.
“Do you know what the best place to practice lifts is?” he asks, and you watch how his dimples disappear and reappear as he talks. You shake your head. His dimples deepen. “The water.”
You change locations again, heading back towards the current and finding the lake it stems from. You and Sunghoon turn your backs to each other as he takes his t-shirt off and you, your denim shorts, not wanting them to weigh you down in the water. When you turn back around, you have to force yourself to detach your eyes from his perfectly defined abs and shoulders thanks to years of dancing and physical exertion almost every day. You stare out at the lake like it’s the first time you’ve ever seen so much water, otherwise you’d be gawking at him like it’s the first time you’ve ever seen a man. Your cheeks burn up when you feel his eyes on your legs, taking your half-naked figure in, and he chuckles as you rush to hide yourself in the water.
Once in the water, you practice the actual lift, which consists of Sunghoon hoisting you high above his head and you keeping a straight posture, with your arms perpendicular to your body and your chest slightly lifted as if you were truly soaring through the air. It already looks difficult, and yet it’s even harder than it looks. It does help being in the water because at least you’re not scared for your life when you lose your balance and dive forward, but you let out a yelp nonetheless each time it happens. Sunghoon keeps on telling you to hold your posture, but each attempt ends in you falling into the water and bringing him down with you.
You drift apart and swim back towards each other every time, your arms wrapping around his neck and his hands coming to your hips to get back into position for the lift. You’re having a lot of fun, too much fun, probably, when the performance is just a day away - but getting to see Sunghoon’s smile and hear his laugh as you play around and try your best at the lift makes it worth it. When the strap of your tank top slips over your shoulder, you notice out of the corner of your eye Sunghoon’s hand reaching for it just as you put it back yourself. He plays it off by raking a hand through his wet hair, getting it out of his eyes, and smiles shyly at you when your gazes lock. You have no idea what’s going to happen after the performance, if you’ll stay friends or if he’ll pretend like this never even happened - all you know is that you’d be happy doing this all summer.
“One last time?”
-
And just like that, it’s late Saturday afternoon and the performance is just an hour away. You barely eat or speak during dinner, partly out of nervousness, but mostly because you want your lie of having a headache and needing to rest in your room more believable. Chaewon had said she’d help you put your dress on and get ready before the show, so when you’ve escaped the dinner table, you rush to her cabin.
But just as you exit the building, an old woman you recognize as Mrs Jung walks in. She must be surprised at your sudden appearance because she slightly bumps into the door and drops her bag. An unusual amount of wallets fall from it, but you don’t think too much of it - you’ve seen rich people do weirder things. 
You bend down to help her gather her things, and she chuckles lightly, thanking you. “Such a sweet girl, isn’t she, Harold?” she says to her husband who had appeared behind the door as well. You wish them a nice evening and part ways, gushing to yourself over how cute old couples are as you head to the Chaewon’s cabin.
She does your hair, pulling it into a tight bun and securing every stray strand with a bobby pin. You have no experience with makeup since it’s always been off-limits in your house, so she expertly applies eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick to your face. The sticky feel of it is unfamiliar but once you look in the mirror, you almost can’t look away. It’s still you, of course it is, but the bright colors make you look glamorous, like performing in front of a large crowd is just routine for you. You thank Chaewon, a huge smile on her face, and watch her own light up in relief that you like the makeup.
As she zips your dress up, a flowy baby pink dress she got out of her closet just for you, you repeat back all the instructions Sunghoon has given you over the week to make sure you remember everything. “I just gotta keep my head up, keep my core and my arms straight, follow the mu-”
“Thank you, Baby,” Chaewon quietly interrupts, and the slight tremble in her voice and the vulnerability with which she looks at you lets you know she really means it. You stop your declamation immediately and smile at her, kindness in your eyes.
She looks down and tries to find her words. “You know, I- I just want you to know that I, I don’t sleep around, and Heeseung, I really thought he loved me, and-”
You can see the tears already forming in her eyes so you bring her into a tight hug, resting your cheek against the side of her head. “I know, Chaewon, don’t worry. And even if you did sleep around, it wouldn’t matter, Heeseung should take responsibility no matter what. We’re all here to help you. Don’t worry.” You lean back to hold her face in your hands and try to give as reassuring a smile as you can.
“I’m scared, Baby,” she whispers, trying to calm her sobs to get the words out.
“Everything’s gonna be fine, Chaewon,” you say, and you hope she believes it as much as you do. “Everything’s gonna be just fine. You’ve got Sunghoon, and Jake, and you’ve got me too.” 
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath in. When she opens them again, she grabs your hands and shakes them between the two of you, mirroring your smile. “Okay, okay,” she murmurs. “Sorry, this isn’t the best time for me to break down. You feeling ready?” she asks, and even if it’s just for now, you’re glad she’s feeling better and got to let her emotions out.
“Not at all, I’m so nervous. I don’t want to mess something up and let you or Sunghoon down,” you admit, your smile wavering for a second.
“Whatever happens, you won’t let us down,” she says, squeezing your hands. “It’s amazing, what you’re doing.” 
You can’t help but look away at her words. “It’s the least I can do,” you mumble.
“No, Baby, you’re doing more than most people would. And Sunghoon, he might have his own way of showing it, but he’s extremely grateful for you,” she says, and it puts a smile on your face.
“By his own way of showing it, do you mean not showing it at all?” you joke.
“That’s Sunghoon for you.” You giggle quietly together, but her eyes drift to the clock on the wall behind you and she lets out a sigh. “It’s time, Baby. And don’t worry, I know you’ll do amazing,” she says, bringing you into a brief hug.
You’re so nervous, everything that follows is a blur - leaving Chaewon’s cabin and sneaking over to Sunghoon’s car, the drive to the Sheldrake Hotel, the staff there leading you backstage, and finding your spot on the stage. You only snap out of it when the curtains lift and a voice booms from the speakers in the room, announcing “Sunghoon Park and partner dancing the mambo” as the audience breaks into polite claps.
The music starts, and Sunghoon can immediately feel the tension in your body. He trails his fingers all the way down your arm to your waist, just like you’d practiced a ton of times before, and he uses the proximity between the two of you to whisper “Relax” into your ear. “Just follow my lead, you’ve got this,” he says, loud enough for only you to hear, and extends his arm to send you spinning. 
You manage the first few steps, trying to let go of your anxiety, but it’s got a tight grip on your body and makes your stomach twist. You think it’s all over when you mess up a turn, going right instead of left, but Sunghoon’s quick to whisper “over here” and you find your way again. “Look at me,” Sunghoon says once you’re facing each other again, and you lock eyes with him. And for some reason, that works - focusing only on him makes you feel like it’s just the two of you in the room, just like so many times this past week, and it dissipates all your nerves, makes your muscle memory kick in. You finally let him lead you and follow the music, thinking of nothing but Sunghoon and dancing together.
And yet, when it’s time for the lift, you freeze again. You find your position and run to Sunghoon, just like you know you’re supposed to, but you can’t let him lift you, your limbs turning into lead in his hold. Thinking quickly, you come up with another step on the spot, hoping it isn’t too obvious to the audience you just messed up. Sunghoon takes the lead again, and the rest of the performance goes smoothly, the other moves and the smaller, easier lift realized perfectly by the both of you.
You finish off the number, and the sound of the applause directed at the two of you fills you with a pride you’d never felt before, a feeling much more satisfying than any good grade or won argument ever had. Another sort of daze fills your mind now, and it makes you feel like there’s a small cloud under your feet so that you’re floating instead of walking everywhere. It almost makes you miss the Jungs, but when you see the old couple slowly walking out of the room, you’re scared you might be done for.
You rush back to the parking lot with Sunghoon, whooping in excitement as soon as you're out of anyone’s earshot. In the backseat, you change out of your dress and back into your regular clothes.
“God, that was- that was amazing, I can’t believe you get to live this every week during the summer, it was just- my God…” you say, struggling to get your right hand through the sleeve of your blouse.
“Yeah? Did you have fun?” Sunghoon answers, a smile on his face that turns into a gulp when he sees your half-naked body in the rearview mirror. He can’t help but risk a few more glances, hoping you don’t notice.
“I did, I really did, but I- I messed up that one turn, and I didn’t do the lift-”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sunghoon says firmly. “You did real good, Baby.” And after a beat, he adds: “Thank you. You did real good.” Your eyes lock in the mirror but you look away before he can catch sight of your reddening cheeks.
“And oh my God, there was that couple, the, the-”
“The Jungs, right? Yeah, I saw them too,” Sunghoon chuckles. “I got so scared.”
“Right? Me too! They won’t say anything, will they, do you think?”
“Probably not. I don’t think they even recognized either of us.”
You button your jeans and climb your way over to the passenger seat next to Sunghoon, grateful for the lack of headrests in his car. It suddenly grows quiet between the two of you. You want to ask whether you’ll keep meeting now that you’ve done your part, but you’re afraid Sunghoon might want to have nothing to do with you from now on even if it doesn’t seem like he dislikes you anymore. So you stay silent, watching out of the window, sometimes turning your head towards Sunghoon and catching his eye, then smiling at each other shyly.
Something in you is screaming at you to reach out to him, brush a hand over his hair, interlace your fingers with his - any kind of touch. You thought the ball of nerves in your stomach would disappear after the show, but it’s still there, and it’s taken hold of your entire body now, the anticipation of whatever is to come almost unbearable. You notice Sunghoon’s gaze ping-ponging between you and the road, and the tightness with which he holds the steering wheel, and you dare let yourself hope, just a little bit, that he shares those same wild thoughts jumping around your mind.
When you reach the parking lot next to the staff quarters, Sunghoon is quick to get out of the car, while you rub at your eyes and lips, trying to get as much makeup off as you can. Your parents would most likely be in bed by now, but just in case they were still up, you didn’t want them to catch you with bright red lips and blue eyelids. Sunghoon walks around to your side and opens your door for you, even grabbing your hand to help you out of the car. Once you’re out, he takes your other hand in his, facing you as he walks slowly backwards, and with the way he’s gazing down at you, you think those unspoken thoughts might finally come into the light. But before either of you can say anything, you hear quick footsteps rushing towards you, and a familiar voice calling out to Sunghoon.
He swings around to find a panting, alarmed-looking Jake. “Sunghoon, it’s- it’s Chaewon, something went wrong, she’s not feeling well-”
Neither of you need to hear more before you’re running to the cabin, reaching it in record time. There’s way more people than there should be in and outside Chaewon’s room, all watching and doing absolutely nothing except for another girl you recognise as part of the dancing crew holding a wet cloth to her head as Chaewon, her face covered in sweat and her eyes shut tight in pain, moans and mumbles incoherently, slightly delirious from fever. The girl at her bed steps aside when she sees Sunghoon approaching, and he kneels next to Chaewon, holding her hand in both of his and reassuring her as best she can.
“It’s that doctor,” Jake starts, “he was so shady, had a folding table and a dirty knife, and I- I heard screams coming from that room, Hoon, awful screams, and I tried getting in and getting Chaewon out but they wouldn’t let me-”
What’s obvious to you right now is that Chaewon is in desperate need of an actual doctor, and nobody here can provide that for her, so you rush out of the room, and, as fast as your legs can carry you, run to your father and wake him up in a hurry, grabbing his doctor’s bag. You’re glad for your father’s blind trust in you - other than an instinctive “Is Seeun alright?”, which you nod your head at, he doesn’t ask any questions, just sees you need his help. He listens to your unclear and frantic explanations of what’s going on as he follows you to the staff cabin. 
“Alright, out of the way, everyone, give the girl some space,” your father says as he enters Chaewon’s room, the way he carries himself and speaks instantly commanding obedience from the group. People filter out as he takes Sunghoon’s spot next to Chaewon, checking her pulse and temperature. “Who’s responsible for this lady?” he asks without looking away from his patient.
“I am,” Sunghoon says, taking a step towards him. “Is she gonna be okay?” He seems so distressed you want to take him into your arms and tell him it’ll be okay, but you can’t do that - not here, not in front of your dad.
Your father turns his head to take a look at Sunghoon, his expression unreadable, then turns back to Chaewon, leaving Sunghoon’s question unanswered, floating in the air ominously.
He makes you all leave the room, and you wait for what feels like hours until your father finally comes out, his briefcase in hand, and announces that Chaewon just needs some rest and then she’d be okay. He lets Jake thank him and shake his hand agitatedly, but once again just stares Sunghoon down and ignores him when he tries to do the same. He takes you by the shoulder, making you walk away with him without saying goodbye to anyone. He’s silent for a few moments, waiting to have gone down a few steps before he speaks, and when he does, his voice is tense and almost trembles with anger.
“Is this what my money paid for? I’m disappointed in you, Baby. You’re not who I thought you were.” He doesn’t even let you defend yourself, just keeps walking without looking at you. “I don’t want you to hang around those people anymore, do you understand?”
“But dad-”
“I don’t want to hear it,” he says firmly, and the slight increase of volume catches you off guard. Not once has your dad raised his voice at you, or at least not since you were a child - that’s how you understand how truly upset he is at you. He finally turns around to look at you, his eyebrows furrowed. “And get that stuff off of your face before your mother sees it.”
The rest of the walk back to your bungalow is done in unbearable, utter silence, and you can’t wait to be away from your father and the anger pouring off of him in waves. But that silence doesn’t seem to go away, even when you finally reach your bed, even when your sister starts snoring quietly, completely oblivious to the events of the night. The silence grows so loud in your ears that it creates a fuzz all around your brain, making your head throb and blurring your thoughts, rendering them incomprehensible. The sheer weight of it forces your eyelids closed even though you don’t feel tired at all - there’s too much going on in your mind for you to fall asleep.
There’s the relief of your father having helped Chaewon, and the knowledge that she’ll be okay thanks to him; but there’s also the image of his disappointed expression etched into your brain and the words “You’re not who I thought you were” playing on a hellish loop. There’s the worry he won’t ever see you the way he used to, that you won’t be his little girl anymore, but there’s also the satisfaction of that exact thing, the liberation that comes with your father finally realizing you’re not perfect and make mistakes too.
And then there’s Sunghoon.
There’s Sunghoon, and his concern for Chaewon’s safety, his love for his friend that he’s known for years, the hurt on his face when your dad didn’t shake his hand, and the way he quickly retracted his own thereafter, a defeated expression like he was used to such disrespect. But before that, there’s his dimpled smile and sharp canines you find weirdly endearing, the carefree sound of his laughter after you fall on top of him in the water, his warm hands guiding you from step to step, the quick glimpses he throws your way when he thinks you’re not looking but hopes that you are. Even before that, there were the ice-covered walls he put around himself and his friends that could melt as quickly as they could freeze back up, until finally one day he opened the door for you to come in. There was the elegance in his moves and the feeling like all the air in the room had evaporated when you watched him dance, only for it to fill you back up when he took you by the hand and showed you how to let yourself go for the first time.
The fog in your mind clears at the thought of him, like sunlight forcing its way through gray clouds after a thunderstorm. You need to see him.
You need to check on him, to make sure he’s feeling alright, and laugh with him if he is or cry if he isn’t. You need to hold his head between your palms and graze a hand through his hair and do and say all the things you’ve been wanting to this week.
You climb out of your bed and grab the first cardigan you see, then slip your shoes on and make your way to the front door. You try to be as quiet as possible, but once outside, you hang back just for a few moments in case anyone has heard you leaving, so that if they come to check, you can just say you’re getting some fresh air on the front porch. No one seems to stir so you rush to Sunghoon’s cabin. It’s past midnight and the only light guiding you is that of the stars and the bright moon up above.
When Sunghoon opens his door, he seems at once relieved and surprised to find you there. “Baby,” he simply says, gazing down at you. He looks so tired, you think. The performance at the Sheldrake was just a few hours ago, but it already feels so far away.
“Hey. Can I- can I come in?” you ask, slightly out-of-breath from your walking so fast.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he says, turning his body to let you in his cabin. Since your first time here, that night you’d found Chaewon crying in the kitchen, you’d learned more about this place. Thanks to his seniority here, Sunghoon has a separate studio-like cabin further down the path where all the staff bungalows are, and it’s bigger than most of them, even though it’s still just one room that accommodates his bed, a closet, a desk, a sink and some other chairs, shelves and drawers.
A soft song is playing in the background and the main light is off, the small lamps here and there providing enough light for you to see. You hadn’t at all thought to look around when you were here last, so you’re curious to really see what Sunghoon’s living space is like.
You walk further into the room, taking in your surroundings and reveling in all the traces of Sunghoon’s life - discarded clothes here and there, a stack of record players from the early fifties to now, posters of movie stars and famous singers, some photos of him with Jake, Chaewon and other members of the entertainment team. He looks around like he’s seeing the room for the first time too, maybe trying to see it through your eyes and imagining what you could be thinking of it. He picks up clothes from the floor and from an armchair only to throw them in his closet, gesturing for you to sit down, and rubs the back of his neck in what seems like an embarrassed gesture.
“It’s not much… you’re probably used to a lot better…” he says with an apologetic tone.
“No, no, it’s great,” you say quickly, not wanting him to feel embarrassed. You look at him with a smile. “I love it here.”
He mirrors your smile, letting out a shaky breath of relief, then sits down at the edge of his bed, too far away for   your liking. The tense atmosphere from earlier in the car is back, filling the room with the silence of a thousand unspoken words. A beat passes before you speak up. “I’m sorry about the way my father treated you, Sunghoon. It wasn’t nice.”
Sunghoon looks genuinely shocked upon hearing your words and starts to shake his head fervently. “No, no, your father was great, the- the way he took care of Chaewon, I could never do anything like that in my life, he was amazing.”
“Yes, but I’m talking about you, Sunghoon, not Chaewon. He completely ignored you, he should have treated you with more respect.” His eyes find yours, and the look on his face like he wants to believe you but can’t quite bring himself to makes your heart ache.
He chuckles and lets his head hang low, looking down at his hands. “Why should he? I’m- I’m nothing,” he says quietly, so quietly that you think you might have misheard, because never in a hundred years would you have thought that someone like Sunghoon could think so lowly of himself.
Your surprise makes it hard to gather your words and say something coherent, but you try your best. “What- Sunghoon, how could you say that? You’re not nothing, you’re- you’re everything,” you say, the last word coming out breathy.
He looks at you like he’s never heard those words before, never had somebody tell him he was so much more than he thought he was - but maybe that’s because he’d never told anyone how he really felt. A pained expression flashes across his face, and you’re scared you might’ve said the wrong thing but his next words reassure you that that’s not it.
“You don’t understand… One month, I’m living off of scraps and struggling to make ends meet, and the next, rich ladies are stuffing hundred dollar bills in my pockets and giving me the key to their room. Everywhere I am, people just use me to get what they need. My dad basically forces me to work with him and doesn’t give a crap what I really want, the women here use me to escape the boredom of their lives, and Max and his asshole grandson Jay just want me to make as much money as I can so they can get even richer.” His voice gets louder the more he talks, the anger getting to him. He chuckles darkly, but his expression softens when he catches your gaze. “I have to live like this. If I start thinking I deserve more, that I- that I’m everything, like you say, I’ll never be satisfied. I’ll always want more. I can’t handle that.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. It shouldn’t be that way,” you say quietly, shaking your head and looking at him sadly. You don’t know how to make him see that for the joy he brings everyone who gets to see him dance, for the care and safety he gives the people he loves, and the way he’s made you feel like you can finally escape the thoughts in your head, he deserves everything he wants in the world. You don’t know how to make him see his worth and the respect he deserves as much as anyone else.
He smiles at you wistfully, like he can see his own, long-gone, naive hopefulness on your face. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Baby. You look at the world and you think you can make it better.”
It’s your turn to chuckle humorlessly. “Yeah, I run to my daddy, like you said.”
“No,” he says firmly, his tone catching you off guard. “No, that took a lot of guts, doing what you did. I love that about you, you just go ahead and do things. You didn’t even know Chaewon, and yet you learned a whole professional routine in a week just because you wanted to and you could. And now you risked your relationship with your father just to help her out once again. You- you’re not scared of anything!”
“Me? I’m scared of everything!” you cry out, suddenly standing up, the emotions boiling in your stomach making you unable to sit any longer. “I’m scared of the disappointment in my parents’ eyes, of failing school, of being stuck in a life I can’t escape from…” Your gaze travels around the room before it settles on Sunghoon once again, your gazes locking each other in so tightly you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to look away. “But most of all,” you continue, voice shaky and desperate, “I’m scared of leaving this place and never, ever feeling again the way I do when I’m with you.”
His jaw tightens and he has to force himself to look away from you, his eyes focusing on a random object in the corner of the room. With the way he huffs air through his nose and tenses his whole body, he almost looks angry, but you know that’s not it - finally, after a week of torturous hesitation and not-knowing, you understand how Sunghoon feels about you. He feels just like you. All those lingering gazes, those small shocks of electricity whenever you touched, those loud heartbeats at his constant proximity, he felt them too, and it drove him crazy too; you’re sure of it.
Or at least, almost sure of it. And there’s only one way to confirm your suspicions.
Sunghoon thinks you’re not scared of anything, so you’re going to prove it to yourself. You take a step towards him, then another one, and another one, until you’re standing right in front of him. You extend a hand out to him and he doesn’t question it, just takes it and rises, now towering over you as you had over him just a second ago. You’re as close as you usually are when you dance together - or perhaps a bit closer than that.
“Dance with me,” you whisper into the space between your bodies.
“What, here?” he whispers back, finally looking at you. His gaze lingers in your eyes before dropping to your lips, his pupils slowly dilating - there’s your confirmation. 
“Yes, here,” you reply, echoing your conversation on the tree trunk, which somehow was only yesterday.
You wrap your arms around his neck just as his hands come up to hold you by the waist. It’s a position you’ve found yourselves in a hundred times by now, but tonight, it feels so different. The air around you is charged with electricity and all of your moves are purposeful, trying to make the other feel all that you’re feeling with just a touch.
Tight in each other’s arms, you sway to the slow rhythm of the music, your head resting in the crook of his neck while his hands travel from your waist, to your shoulder blades, back down to your hips. Even with two layers of clothing between your bodies, the feeling of having him so close sends shivers down your spine, even though your skin burns everywhere it comes into contact with him. Your breath makes goosebumps appear on the side of his neck, and when his grip on your hips tightens, you take it as a green light to start pressing faint kisses to his skin. He bunches the fabric of your blouse in his hands, slowly pulling it from the confines of your jeans and over your head, making you raise your arms. He makes a ball out of your top and throws it somewhere across his room, his attention fully taken by the sight of your now half-naked body. He immediately discards his own t-shirt, putting his hands back on you as quickly as he can, as if scared you might suddenly disappear.
You go on dancing together, bodies moving in harmony, as if you’re one being rather than two. You let your hands travel over his shoulders and chest and rest them on his stomach as you lean your upper body backwards, trusting him to hold you while you circle your way back to him. When you do, his hands roam down to grab your ass and hike one of your legs around his hips, the friction of your pelvises rubbing together eliciting a heavy, relieved sigh from both of you.
Finally, your lips find each other, and you kiss like you’re each other’s sources of oxygen. Of course, Sunghoon is one of, if not the best, kissers you’ve ever had the honor of sharing a kiss with, because how could he be anything other than perfect? The way he kisses is intense and a little bit messy, and it ignites your whole body, making you crave only more and more until you’ve had everything you want. Your hands and his are restless, endlessly drifting over each other’s bodies, grabbing at shoulders or hips or strands of hair.
He walks backwards to his bed, never once breaking the passionate embrace, until the back of his legs hit the mattress. He sits, spreading his legs wide enough for you to stand between them. His face is right at the level of your chest, and the way he looks up at you as he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses there makes your insides burst and the fire in your core burn harder. Keeping eye contact with him is too much to handle, so you close your eyes and let your head back slightly, grazing your hands through the soft locks of his hair and simply enjoying the feeling of his mouth on you. His warm hands roam your lower back before traveling north to the clasp of your bra. He undoes it but doesn’t take it off - instead, he calls your name, and it’s never sounded better than on his lips.
“Baby?”
“Hm?” You look back down at him and find in his eyes a sort of lustful, dreamlike daze that you’re sure must reflect your own perfectly.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks breathily, wanting to be certain this is okay for you, but sounding like it’d be the death of him if you said no.
You smile softly and take his head in your hands. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
He smiles too, exposing his sharp canines and pretty dimples, and sighs of relief. “Thank God.”
Your bra comes off, and you almost laugh when his pupils blow out at the sight of your naked chest, but your amusement dies, cut off by a loud moan as soon as he takes one of your nipples in his mouth, twirling his tongue around and sucking on the sensitive bud before moving on to the other one. One of his hands rests on your ass while his other arm is wrapped around your waist, and his grip on your waist tightens every time you make a sound that he particularly appreciates. You’re pulling at his hair so much, you’re almost scared of hurting him, but truth be told you’re too focused on the way his mouth feels on you to really be careful about it.
“Come here,” he says, voice hoarse. His jeans aren’t doing a very good job of hiding how hard he is, and he groans at the sudden contact when he pulls you down into his lap. You press kisses everywhere you can - his cheeks, the crook of his neck, his hair, before finding his lips once again. You don’t even realize you’re grinding yourself against him until he breaks away from the kiss to let out a quiet moan, and you bury your face in the dip between his shoulder and his neck, breath hot against his skin as you whine in pleasure.
You could do this for hours, and maybe you do - but at some point, you start needing something more and your core throbs, desperate for more attention. And what better way to communicate that to Sunghoon than to show him exactly what you want?
You unwrap your arms from around his shoulders and let your hand roam down to the waistband of his jeans, smiling shyly at him as you get down on your knees in front of him. He watches with a pained expression, like the anticipation of what you’ll do next actually hurts him, as you unbutton and unzip his jeans, then slide them along with his boxers down his legs. To distract from the fact that his size slightly intimidates you, you take him in your hand right away, circling his reddened tip with your thumb before starting to bring your palm up and down his shaft while your other hand rubs his thigh.
You’re absolutely breathtaken by the sight in front of you: Sunghoon’s abs tensing visibly at your ministrations, his head hung back and his neck and Adam’s apple flushed red on display for you, moans increasing in volume as you continue. You had a feeling Sunghoon wouldn’t be a quiet one, and you’re proud to be proven right.
You put your own needs aside for now, just wanting to see Sunghoon in as much pleasure as you can give him. You bring your head forward and lick a stripe up his length, satisfied when he lets out his loudest moan so far. You don’t tease for too long, only licking at his tip for a bit before taking more of him in your mouth. You keep one hand at the base of his shaft and swirl your tongue around the part you’re able to reach. 
This is the first time you’ve gotten so much pleasure from giving - maybe because Sunghoon’s reactions feed your ego, maybe because you’re so obsessed with him that knowing you’re making him feel good is enough, or maybe both. Definitely both.
But Sunghoon doesn’t let you have your fun for too long, and soon pulls your face gently away from him. His flushed face and fucked-out expression is gratifying to say the least. You look up at him with a smile, rubbing his thighs with your palms as you wait for him to catch his breath.
“A minute longer,” he says, panting, “and I would’ve died.” You giggle at his dramatics and hoist yourself back up, about to position yourself again on his lap but Sunghoon has other plans. He lays you down on your back and comes to rest on his side next to you, holding himself up on a forearm; that way he has both full access to and full view of your face and body. Perfect.
His face is close enough to yours to press kisses there and on your neck while his hand makes his way down your body. When it reaches the waistband of your jeans, you don’t wait for him to say or do anything and undo them yourself, which makes Sunghoon smirk.
“Impatient, are you?” he teases.
“You’re one to talk,” you bite back with a smile, even though your cheeks start to burn.
He slips a hand under your jeans, and gathers slick from between your folds before starting to rub small circles on your clit with the pads of two fingers. He soon gets frustrated from the way your clothes restrict his movements, and whispers in your ear, “Might as well take everything off while we’re at it, don’t you think?”
You roll your eyes at his playful tone but comply, more than happy to undress if it means he can touch with more ease. And indeed, he wastes no time before slipping a finger inside you, smirk widening at the loud half-gasp half-moan you let out at the feeling. “Much better,” he whispers again, but any comeback is wiped from your mind as he adds a second finger in, curling them so that they hit just the spot. You’re drenched at this point, your arousal sticking to the inside of your thighs, but that only makes it easier for him to slip his fingers in and out and means you’re more than ready for him. He keeps his thumb on your clit so that the friction there doesn’t stop either, and it isn’t long before you start to feel that familiar knot twisting your insides, appearing much quicker than you’d like it to.
“Sunghoon- I’m gonna, I’m-”
“You are, huh?” he breathes against your neck in between kisses. And just like that, as if you’d told him to stop and not that you were about to finish, he slips his fingers out of you, watching your reaction with a devilish, amused smirk.
“What? No, no-” you whine, but it’s no use. He rolls away from you, opening the drawer in his bedside table to retrieve something, and he’s lucky it’s a condom, because you might have killed him if it was anything else.
“Just because it’s our first time, I’m making you cum on my cock,” he explains as he rips open the small packet and puts the condom on. He comes back and places himself over you, pressing a kiss to your cheek and aligning himself with your entrance. “Next time, you’ll cum on my fingers and mouth as much as you want, Baby.”
And then, he pushes in.
You don’t need to tell him to go slow, or to wait before he starts moving; he knows. He holds himself up on his hands, biceps tight, and watches your face carefully for any sign of pain or discomfort while he furrows his way in, inch by inch.
When he finally bottoms out, he presses a soft kiss to your glistening hairline and bends down to whisper in your ear, “I’ve been thinking about this all week, and it’s even better than I imagined.”
The corners of your lips tug upwards, but the feeling of Sunghoon filling you up like this makes your brain go fuzzy and you can’t even begin to form coherent words or thoughts. You grab on to his biceps and shoulders as he starts to move back and forth, slowly at first, but progressively picking up speed, your moans egging him on.
He takes one of your legs and hikes it up around his hip, allowing him to go deeper and hit that spot that has you arching your back and crying out. You’re clawing at his back, eyes shut tight and mouth going dry, and his fast, regular rhythm is bringing you to the edge once again. Either Sunghoon has terrible timing, or he knows precisely how close you are and wants to tease you, because he slows down and pulls out. “I just want to make it last a bit longer,” he explains, murmuring the words in the crook of your jaw and neck before pressing a kiss there.
He pushes himself away from you and sits up on his bed, his back against the headboard. He looks at you with a lopsided smile, and when you position yourself on his lap, you take a couple moments to admire him before taking him again. His hairline beads with sweat, his face and upper body are flushed a light red color, his breathing is quick and shallow, mouth slightly agape, and his eyelids are heavy with lust, eyes almost closed. He’s never looked so good. 
“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” he asks, and you smile both at the compliment and at the fact that you were thinking the same thing about him just a second ago, as if you shared each other’s exact thoughts. You shake your head, and his gaze turns loving as he brushes a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Baby. There. Said it.”
You kiss him passionately before taking him in your hand and raising yourself on your knees to guide his tip towards your entrance, keeping eye contact with him as you sink onto his length. The new position hits even more sensitive spots and makes the two of you moan simultaneously. 
Deciding to let him rest for a bit, you start moving yourself up and down on his cock, quickly settling into a nice rhythm that doesn’t tire your legs out too much but still manages to make you see stars. You hold onto Sunghoon’s shoulders, hands sometimes grabbing onto his hair while his stay firmly planted on your ass, kneading the soft skin there. You try to hold his gaze for as long as you can, but the pleasure starts to overwhelm you and you can’t do anything but shut your eyes, head falling back as loud moans escape your lips. There’s no way you could have kept it quiet, so you’re extremely grateful that Sunghoon’s living quarters are far enough away to avoid an audience.
Despite the immense pleasure of being on top of him and of choosing your own rhythm, your thighs start to hurt after a few minutes of this. Thankfully, Sunghoon notices your decreasing pace and the way your legs falter, and takes things into his own hands, finally ready to stop edging and bring the both of you to your ends. One hand on your lower back, one arm wrapped around your shoulders, he presses your chest firmly to his, hugging you tight, and starts bucking his hips into you at a pace that has you crying out into his shoulder. Your hands find purchase in his hair, pulling tight enough to hurt at the roots. If Sunghoon stops, it might be the death of you, so even if it’s a struggle to get the words out, you want to let him know how you feel.
“Fuck, Sunghoon, right there, please don’t stop, please- oh, my God!”
The sound of your two bodies coming together is lewd, but it only adds to your bliss, and in just thirty seconds of this, the knot in your stomach breaks loose and sends your whole body trembling against Sunghoon’s. He’s not long after you, the sound of his name over and over on your tongue as you cum sending him tumbling over the edge. You feel hot tears streaming down your face at the relief of finally having come undone, and the sounds leaving your lips now are fainter, your body too weak to even make any noise. 
You stay like this for a few moments, body limp on top of his, allowing your breaths to return to normal. You’ve had two boyfriends before, and they were the only two you’d ever had sex with, so it’s not like you had already discovered everything about the joys of sex, but you knew for sure that it didn’t always feel like this, didn’t always take you to heaven and back. Usually, you’d have stood up and cleaned yourself by now, but with Sunghoon, you never want to leave this spot. Fall asleep like this, wake up like this, stay as long as you wanted like this. But after a few minutes, Sunghoon stirs and you jolt out of your daze, getting off of him, wincing slightly at the sensitivity between your legs. 
He slips from his seated position and lays on his back. You follow suit, turning your body towards the ceiling, suddenly feeling shy at the idea of touching him, of getting closer - or maybe scared that he’ll suddenly want to be left alone, or worse, never want to see you again. But all your negative thoughts dissipate when he shifts to his stomach, sliding slightly down the bed to rest his head on your chest, burying his face there, hugging your waist tight, and letting out a contented sigh. Although your heart swells at his ridiculously cute actions, to say you aren’t a bit surprised would be a lie - after seeing a leading, more dominant side to him all week, since he was the one teaching you the dance and guiding you through the moves, you had thought it would translate to the way he was in bed. Yet, he had let you do what you wanted, let you set your own pace, as much as he had himself. And now, he was perfectly happy seeking out your affection and not making you come to him. It made you appreciate him that much more.
One of your hands makes its way to his back, grazing your fingernails along the expanse of it, while the other plays gently with his hair. You fall asleep in record time, perfectly at peace and exhausted from so much exertion.
-
When you wake up a few hours later, you’re still laying on your back, and although Sunghoon has drifted away, probably due to the heat in the room, your legs are still intertwined and he’s got an arm resting on your midriff. There’s nothing to let you know the time, so you look out the window and notice with panic that the sun has started to rise, which means it must be close to six a.m. You try to shake Sunghoon awake, but he just grumbles something incoherent and hugs you tighter to him, which you absolutely would have swooned over if you didn’t need to get back to your bungalow - and so you shake him harder.
“Sunghoon, wake up!” you say, far too quietly for it to actually wake him up, but he looks so cute asleep that it’d break your heart to wake him up too harshly.
“Why…” he whines, face buried in your neck and voice coming out muffled.
“I don’t want my father to notice that I’m gone,” you say, the aftertaste of the words bitter in your mouth.
“Why, what time is it?” he asks, slowly coming to his senses.
“I’m not sure, but he never wakes up late, so I don’t wanna risk it.” Your father, needing a real break from intense work days, had started waking up at 6:45 instead of 5:30 every morning. How relaxing.
“But I want you to stay,” Sunghoon grumbles, and you bless him for speaking your own thoughts but also curse him for making it harder to leave.
“I know, so do I. But I’ll see you later, okay?”
A beat. “Fine,” he sighs, then pushes himself off of you. He doesn’t look at you while you put your clothes back on and walk out of the room, but you know he can’t have fallen asleep again so quickly, so you’re terrified of having said or done something extremely wrong, but you can’t take it back now, so you just close the door behind you and rush back to your own bed.
The breakfast table is completely silent, the tension between you and your father clear to your mother, who doesn’t say anything, scared of accidentally adding fuel to the fire, and even to your sister, who eats her grapefruit quietly, darting her eyes back and forth between the three of you. Jay shows up from only God knows where and, not even trying to read the room, asks cheerfully what you’re all planning on performing at the show.
“We won’t be at the show,” your father says, making everyone’s heads snap towards him. “We’re leaving tomorrow morning, miss the weekend traffic.”
“We haven’t discussed this, honey,” your mother says just as Seeun whines, “But Daddy, we’ll miss the show!” You keep quiet, pretending the overcooked scrambled eggs on your plate are the most interesting thing you’ve ever seen. 
“It’s the biggest night of the season!” Jay chimes in, also trying to persuade him.
“Yeah, and I wanted to sing something!” your sister adds.
Your father looks back and forth between your mother’s and sister’s bewildered faces, then sighs and begrudgingly bows to their wishes. “Alright, alright, it was just an idea.”
A smile breaks on your mother’s face and Seeun clasps her hands together with a small noise of joy. “Perfect,” Jay exclaims, pointing a finger at you as he walks away. “Baby, I’ll need you for props.”
“So, Seeun, what songs do you have in mind?” your father asks and gets up, gesturing at your sister to follow him, although he looks completely uninterested. She practically jumps up from her seat and starts listing all her song ideas, leaving her half-finished breakfast behind.
You finish eating your own, making small talk with your mother for long enough so that she isn’t suspicious of your trying to escape, although you can tell she knows something is up and just won’t mention it. You thank her silently for it, and excuse yourself from the table to go check up on Chaewon.
When you get to her room, she’s still in bed, but isn’t sleeping and doesn’t look in pain anymore - she’s sitting up, flicking through a fashion magazine. She smiles brightly when she sees you at her door, discarding the magazine and extending her hands out to you.
“How are you feeling?” you ask as you take her hands in yours, crouching next to her bed.
“Much, much better,” she says, sounding relieved at her own answer. “You just missed your father. He’s an amazing man.”
You only have time to talk for a minute when the door opens once again to reveal Sunghoon. Seeing him creates a pit in your stomach, either from the memory of what you did last night or from the way you had to escape soon thereafter. You stand up straight, taking a few steps away from Chaewon. He looks at you briefly before turning his attention to her, and asks the same question you did moments prior.
“I’m feeling a lot better. Baby’s father says I’m still able to have children.”
“That’s great, Chaewon, that’s amazing,” Sunghoon says, sounding relieved.
“But what about you guys? How did the show go last night?” she asks, a hopeful expression on her face.
Sunghoon glances at you, and you avoid his gaze as best you can. “It went well,” he simply says, not explaining any further. 
“Yeah, I didn’t do the lifts, but other than that it went well.”
Chaewon looks at him, then at you, and all at once notices the awkward tension in the air - and she understands the situation as clearly as if it had been written out in black and white for her.
It’s silent for a few seconds until you speak. “Well, I guess I better go then… I’ll see you around.” You give Chaewon a small smile and head to the door, letting your eyes linger on Sunghoon before slipping out. But of course, you can’t actually bring yourself to leave, and sit on the stairs a few meters away from the door. From where you are, you can hear every word spoken inside the cabin.
“Sunghoon,” Chaewon starts.
“So, you’re feeling better, huh?”
“Sunghoon.”
“But you should still get some rest, right?”
“Sunghoon, stop it.” That shuts him up. “What are you doing? You’ve told me so many times not to get mixed up with them,” she says, sounding at once worried and reproachful.
“I know what I’m doing, alright?”
“Sunghoon, listen to me you gotta stop it, you know it’s not gonna end well-”
“I said I know what I’m doing,” he snaps, but seems to immediately regret it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Chaewon, I just- you’re in no position to be worrying about me right now. I know what I’m doing. I trust her.” There’s a small silence, and you have no idea what expression Chaewon must be wearing right now. Is she unsure, satisfied, worried, angry? Is she nodding, trying to respect his decision, or looking like Sunghoon’s making the biggest mistake of his life? “I’ve gotta go, but I’ll see you later, alright? Rest up.”
“Alright, see you later, Hoon,” she says quietly, and when Sunghoon opens the door, he finds you waiting for him. You stand up and just look at him, unsure how to express what’s on your mind. You’d completely forgotten everything you had meant to tell him.
“Oh, hey, Baby,” he says upon seeing you.
“Hey.”
You both just stand there, staring at each other, no idea how to start the much-needed conversation.
“Look, I’ve got a uh, a lesson I need to go to right now, so…” he trails off.
“Right, right, no problem,” you say, nodding far too vigorously.
“But I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah, you will.”
Neither of you move for a few moments, and you feel like you’re completely stuck in place, unable to move until you’ve had the reassurance that things can stay as they were between you and Sunghoon. But he walks past you, already a few meters away when you gather the courage to call out his name, and he turns around so quickly, you dare to hope he might have been waiting for you to do so. You don’t say anything, you just smile, and hope he understands. He smiles back, an actual smile where his dimples appear and the corners of his eyes crinkle, and you know that for now at least, everything is okay.
-
“God, I am so sick of this rain,” your sister complains as she dabs powder on her face, covering up non-existent blemishes. All four of you are in the living room of your bungalow, resting after lunch and getting ready for the rest of the day. You and your father play a boring game of checkers, trying to make the tension disappear slowly, while your mother reads some detective novel.
“Where is my beige iridescent lipstick?” Seeun asks furiously, punctuating each of her words, as if that was the kind of everyday thing that lies about in everyone’s house.
Your father wins the game and looks relieved that it’s over more than anything. You pick up a light raincoat and head towards the door, but your mother calls out your name, stopping you in your tracks.
“Where are you going in this weather?” she asks with curiosity rather than wariness in her voice.
“They’re playing charades in the main lobby,” you reply casually, used to giving out random excuses by now.
“Quite the little joiner, are we?” your sister teases, and you’re not sure if she’s just making fun of you or if she knows you’re up to something but you ignore her anyway and walk out of the cabin.
You make your way to Sunghoon’s place as quickly as you can to avoid the rain. You had ran into him that morning and, when your parents weren’t looking, he let you know that he was free all afternoon with a smile that was as good as a spoken invitation.
He brings you into a hug as soon as you’ve closed the door behind you and presses a kiss to the top of your head, murmuring an apology into your hair. “I’m sorry I acted so awkwardly yesterday. You left so suddenly that night, and I was scared you regretted it…”
You lean back and gaze into his eyes. “I regret absolutely nothing, Sunghoon.”
He breathes out a relieved sigh, smiling as he nods. “Good. Me either.”
You press your lips to his, and although the kiss starts out slow and soft, it doesn’t take long for things to heat up. You let out a small yelp when Sunghoon lifts you up and carries you to the bed, laying you down gently on the mattress. He holds up to the promise he’d made the other night - namely, making you cum on his tongue and fingers as much as you want, or rather, as you soon find out, as much as he wants.
He starts by undressing you slowly, taking his time to revel in the sight of your naked body and the idea that it’s all for him. He only leaves your panties on, rubbing small circles over your clothed clit as he works his mouth on your nipples and breasts, paying each side its due attention. He then makes his way down, leaving warm kisses everywhere he can from your stomach to your inner thighs, and makes sure to work you up and have you squirming before actually slipping your panties off and giving you what you want. Once he’s wrapped his lips around your clit, it’s like he can’t get enough. With two fingers inside you, he sucks and licks at the sensitive bud for what feels like so long that you don’t know how his wrist and jaw don’t get tired. You don’t even try to count the number of times he makes you cum, simply taking every orgasm in stride, and even though you get so sensitive after a while, you’ve entered some sort of blissful, exhausted daze that you can’t bring yourself to break away from.
Afterwards, you’re lying next to Sunghoon, your head resting on his chest and grazing your fingernails up and down his arm while he plays with your hair. You’ve somehow managed not to fall asleep despite the tiredness filling your entire body, and you and Sunghoon talk quietly, the sound of the rain outside like a peaceful background song. You listen to him describe his dream of opening a dance school someday and choreographing professionally, then he listens as you talk about all the places you want to visit and the things you want to learn about the world. You share childhood memories and awkward first kiss anecdotes and compare your relationships with your parents and the similar sort of pressure they put on your shoulders, albeit for two very reasons.
“My dad especially, he just doesn’t understand that dancing can be an actual profession. He sees it as some kind of hobby I’ve had since I was a teenager and that it’ll pass soon when I realize I can’t make a living out of it. He completely ignores the fact I get paid more in three months here than in half-a-year with him, but he doesn’t mind taking the part of my salary I give our family when I come back, that’s for sure,” he chuckles humorlessly. “I’m scared he’ll think I’m betraying him if I don’t take up his carpentry business.”
“I was top of my class in elementary school, and my parents thought that meant I was the brightest little girl in the world and would grow up to achieve great things,” you explain in a joke-admirative voice. “And even if they tried not to say anything, I could see the disappointment on their faces when I brought home a B or was ranked third at a test. I’m happy I got into Yale, and that they can afford to pay for my studies, but it’s just gonna be even more pressure for four more years.” After a beat, you decide to add, “I can only forget about all of this when I’m with you. You just make all of my worries disappear for a while.”
The conversation takes a slightly sentimental tone as you tell each other what your first impression of the other was. You admit sheepishly to Sunghoon that you were attracted to him as soon as you saw him dancing with Chaewon that first night, and that you hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him after he danced with you, even though you found him a bit of an asshole the first couple of days he taught you the dance. You tell him you were sure he hated you at first, and he reveals that he didn’t at all.
“But I can see why you thought that. I just… I had never met anyone like you, Baby. Someone who thought she could just show up somewhere and decide to help a stranger out for no other reason than to help them out of the kindness of their heart. I didn’t know if you were the most foolish or the bravest person ever. And yeah, I’ll admit, I wasn’t the nicest to you at first. I kinda have this thing against… against rich people, I guess,” he says, chuckling softly. “For me, a wealthy person is like Max, or Jay, or all those ladies here. They use their wealth to get you to do what you want. But you’re not like that, and it took me a while to understand that. I’m sorry,” he finishes, pressing another kiss to your hair.
“No, no, it’s okay… I’m sorry they’ve all treated you like that. You deserve better.” He thanks you quietly and a comfortable silence settles between the two of you for a few minutes and you’re close to falling asleep when Sunghoon calls out your name.
“Hm?”
“What’s your real name?”
You raise your head to look at him and flash him a big smile. It’s been ages since someone asked you that, most people not bothering to question your nickname.
“It’s Y/N.”
“Y/N…” he echoes, gazing at you lovingly. “It fits you perfectly.”
You press a gentle kiss to his lips in response, and you think it’s gonna end at that, but Sunghoon pulls you back in right as you’re about to lean out, and you know you’re done for. You’re still extremely sensitive but that only adds to the pleasure of him filling you up, intertwining your fingers with him as you make love, his thrusts slow but deep and your bodies pressed flush against each other. Your heart is bursting with something that you can only recognize as love.
-
That night, as you’re on the verge of falling asleep, your sister says something that jolts you awake.
“I’ve decided to go all the way with Heeseung,” she says, a hint of a smile in her voice. 
You snap your head towards her. “What? Seeun, no, you shouldn’t-”
“I’ve already thought about everything. I want it to happen on the night of rehearsals, I know what I’ll wear-”
“No, Seeun, listen, you can’t do it with Heeseung, I’ve already told you he’s bad news!” you whisper-scream, trying to get some sense into her head without your parents overhearing.
“Who else with, then?” she whisper-shouts back.
“Just- I don’t know, but not with him, it needs to be with someone you actually love, someone you can trust-”
“I can trust Heeseung. I do trust him - more than I trust you, actually,” she says, the conversation taking another turn.
“Seeun-”
“No, Baby. You don’t actually care about this, or even about me. All you care about is that you’re not Daddy’s little girl anymore. He listens when I talk now.” She turns her back to you with a huff.
“Seeun-” you try again, but she’s already done talking.
“Goodnight.”
You want to find a way to stop your sister from wasting an important experience like having sex for the first time on a guy like Heeseung, but you also know that once she’s set her mind to something, it’s hard to stop Seeun from doing it. Maybe this will be a lesson for her to learn from, you think, trying to reassure yourself.
The next afternoon, when your parents are busy playing cards with another couple and Seeun is off somewhere with her friends, you sneak off to visit Sunghoon in his dance classroom. He has an hour free in between classes and you use that opportunity to mess around for a bit. You put on a song you both love and dance together whichever way you want, acting out and lipsyncing to the lyrics. You have fun teasing him by swerving your head when he leans in for a kiss or trailing your hand along his arms, shoulders and back.
The sound of loud footsteps coming up the stairs spoils your fun, and you quickly position yourself face to the mirror and pretend you’re practicing basic mambo moves while Sunghoon heads to the record player. The one and only Jay stands at the door and seems to falter for a second at seeing you here.
“Hey, Baby, taking dance lessons?” You simply nod at him. “I could teach you kid,” he says, mirroring your moves and dancing a few steps until Sunghoon makes the record scratch, stopping the music abruptly. Jay’s arms drop to the side and he gives you a look as if to say “check this guy out,” and you try not to roll your eyes at him. 
“Sunghoon,” he says, walking towards him with all the confidence of a boss talking to his employee. The addressee simply raises his chin at him, pretending to busy himself with the record player. “My grandfather put me in charge of the talent show, and I’ve been thinking about the final dance. I’d like to uh, you know, do something different-”
“Yeah?”
“Move with the times-”
“Yeah? That’s great, I’ve got plenty of ideas-” Sunghoon says, speaking so quickly he cuts himself off, but Jay’s smile drops instantly. “We’ve been working on something with the staff, it goes like-”
You watch in the mirror as Sunghoon dances a step you’ve never seen before, and it looks really cool but Jay shakes his head, gesturing at Sunghoon to quiet down like he would a kid, as if they weren’t the exact same age.
“Woah there, you’re way over your head, boy.” Sunghoon stands up straight once again, jaw locked tight. “I was thinking, instead of doing the last dance to the mambo, how about, this year, doing it to the pachanga?” Jay asks, looking at you with a smile and nodding, as if he’d just said the most revolutionary thing ever.
“Right,” Sunghoon says coldly, bursting Jay’s bubble.
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, “you’re more than welcome to do the same tired number as the previous years, but I’m sure that next summer, we’ll find a dance instructor who’s-”
“The pachanga,” Sunghoon cuts him off, raising his voice over Jay’s. “Great idea, Jay, let’s do that.”
A satisfied smile grows on Jay’s lips as Sunghoon turns back to the record player, and he struts back towards you. When he’s close enough, he leans in and says conspiratorially, but still loud enough for Sunghoon to hear, “He’s, uh, a bit hard to get through to sometimes, but the ladies seem to like him.” He doesn’t realize that you’re one of said ladies. “Make sure you’re getting the full half-hour you’re paying, kid,” he says once he’s at the door, and slips out on that graceful note.
Sunghoon’s next class takes place on the gazebo, so you accompany him there, trying to keep up with his long strides made quicker by his frustration. “God, I just hate that guy, he has no idea what he’s talking about. He wouldn’t recognise a good idea if it hit him in the pachanga,” he huffs angrily.
“But can’t you just talk to him? I’m sure he’d listen if you’d just tell him-”
“Didn’t you see what happened, Baby? He won’t listen. I can’t get everything I want just by asking, he’s the one with the money, with the power, I can’t do anything-”
“But it isn’t right! You have to fight harder-”
“That’s not how it works for me, Baby-”
You let out a small gasp, interrupting Sunghoon whose head pivots towards you, but you take him by the shoulders and bring him down to a crouch next to you. He follows your gaze to find your father, leaving a building with Heeseung and Seeun. Your dad brings his arm around Heeseung and shakes his shoulder in a fatherly manner while Seeun looks at them with a smile. 
Sunghoon’s muscles tense in realization - you don’t want to be caught with him, especially not by your father. 
You’re completely oblivious to this, and stand back up when the three of them are out of sight. “Alright, I think they’re gone,” you say, and only realize what you’ve done when you see the tight expression on Sunghoon’s face.
“Fight harder, huh?”
You just messed up real bad. “No, Sunghoon, I was planning on telling him, I just haven’t yet-”
“I don’t believe you, Baby. I don’t think you’ve ever had the intention of telling him,” he says, shaking his head. His eyes look down at you harshly, and it hurts so much more now than when you’d just met. 
“Sunghoon, please-”
“I gotta go. I’ll see you later, Y/N.”
You watch Sunghoon’s shrinking figure, cursing yourself for your cowardice and for your inability to do exactly what you preach. Your father was already so disappointed in you for simply being friends with Sunghoon, so if he knew what you were actually up to, he might go and disown you.
A few hours with no one to spend them with get you thinking. You had always thought your father was the best man on earth. Funny, loving, kind, fair. But you now realize it might not be so - he is prejudiced towards people who aren’t like him and isn’t forgiving of others’ mistakes. He made you believe in a world where everyone should be equal, but he himself doesn’t treat everyone the same. 
You also hate what this is doing to Sunghoon. You, who had told him he deserved everything he wanted, weren’t even capable of holding his hand proudly for everyone to see. So, for Sunghoon’s sake as well as for your own, you have to tell your father how you feel for Sunghoon, and put up a fight if he tries to stop it.
But first, you had to find Sunghoon and apologize. It’s nearing dinnertime, and he shouldn’t be working anymore, so you go look for him in his room. He isn’t there, so you head to his dance studio, then the gazebo, and anywhere else you can think of where he might have classes. But he’s nowhere to find, and after half-an-hour of running around, your last option is to go ask Chaewon where Sunghoon might be. At least, you know she’ll be in her room, still recovering.
You take a second to catch your breath then knock on Chaewon’s door, then wait until she calls you in to open the door. “Hey, Chaewon, have you seen Sunghoon?” you ask, only realizing after you’ve said the words that it might be rude to be so direct, but you don’t have time to apologize because your eyes shift to the other person in the room, who is, of course, Sunghoon himself. He stands up from his seat on the armchair in the corner, looking at you with an unreadable expression. He could be anywhere on a scale where one extreme is ‘he hates you and never wants to talk to you again’ and ‘he has never been so relieved to see you’ and you’d have no idea.
“Can we, um, talk? Outside, if it’s okay?” you ask, eyes darting back and forth between Sunghoon and Chaewon. She smiles and jerks her head towards the door, silently telling Sunghoon to go with you. He purses his lips and nods, following you outside and closing the door behind him.
He rests his palms on the banister of the front porch, looking out at the lawn and the resort buildings in the distance. You stand behind him, bringing your palms up to his arms and kissing his shoulder. He closes his eyes and sighs, basking in your touch despite himself. “I’m sorry, Sunghoon. I’m sorry.” 
He turns around, gazing down at you with that unreadable expression on his face. “It’s okay. I understand.”
When he kisses you, the relief in your bones is like nothing else, better even than coming home to your bed after a long, tiring day, or than getting a good grade on a test you thought you’d failed. Your arms wrap around his neck while his find their way to your waist, and you revel in the closeness of your bodies and the taste of his lips, like mint and something uniquely Sunghoon that you can’t ever get enough of.
But unfortunately, you stay long enough in this position to attract the attention of a one-man audience. “Damn, guess I picked the wrong sister,” you hear Heeseung chuckle, and when you pull away from Sunghoon, you see that insufferable smirk on his face. How you wish you could just smack it off of there. “Didn’t know you put out like that, Baby.”
It all happens so quickly, you don’t have time to understand what’s going on, let alone stop Sunghoon from jumping over the banister. He stomps over to Heeseung, grabbing him by the collar and shaking hard. 
“Repeat what you just said, I dare you,” he says in a low, menacing voice, face close to Heeseung’s. The latter’s smirk falters for just a split second before coming back, as if incapable of not looking like an arrogant asshole for more than a few seconds at a time.
“I said,” Heeseung starts, “that I hadn’t thought Baby was so fucking easy.”
Heeseung has barely finished speaking that Sunghoon has raised his fist back, ready to strike the insolent expression off of the boy’s face. It’d be satisfying, that’s for sure, but it wouldn’t be worth risking his job, so you call out his name and make him stop in his tracks. He doesn’t look back at you, though, just keeps his hard gaze fixated on Heeseung, breathing heavily in anger.
“Sunghoon, please,” you repeat, pleading with him. 
“So, what’s it gonna be, loverboy?” Heeseung teases, but Sunghoon just drops his fist and pushes him away, making him stumble a few steps back. 
“You’re not worth it,” Sunghoon practically spits, sending one last cold look his way before walking back to you.
You don’t care enough to check how Heeseung reacts, just watching Sunghoon make his way back to you, relieved nothing happened. He stands in front of the banister, the height difference allowing you to hug his head to your chest and you press a kiss to the top of his head, whispering in his hair that you’re proud of him.
Soon afterwards, you have to head back to the building where the talent show will happen. He could do it anywhere else, but Sunghoon decides to plan out his performance in the same room, using the excuse of needing to see the stage just to stay around you. 
You’re painting some sort of fake coconut tree while competitors rehearse their performance, your sister by far the loudest of them. You try not to cringe as her dissonant voice reverbs around the room, but nobody pays her too much attention. It’s hard not to steal glances every two seconds at Sunghoon, and you tell yourself that he just looks especially good today in his tight black t-shirt and black jeans, but you also know he looks good everyday. His gaze also strays towards you more often than not, and you try not to burst into giggles every time your eyes meet, not wanting to raise any suspicion. 
This room is also where a group of men play their games of poker, and since it was big enough to host all of you, they had decided to stay there even through the preparations, sure that it wouldn’t disrupt their game. 
The not-staring takes on another level of difficulty when a lady you recognize as Vivian Kim leaves her spot standing behind her husband at the poker table to make her way to Sunghoon, walking in a fashion far too languorous for your taste. 
From where you are, you can’t hear exactly what she says, but it’s not hard to guess - an invitation to spend the night with her while her husband is busy, one last time before she leaves the resort and goes home.
Sunghoon stays silent but that doesn’t seem to deter her, and she flashes him a lurid smile before walking back to the poker table. He turns his head to check if you’ve seen what happened, but you look away from him and back at your coconut tree, hoping the jealousy you’re feeling isn’t written all over your face. 
Vivian’s husband calls out Sunghoon’s name, waving him over good-naturedly. You watch once again as Sunghoon walks over to the table and as Mr Kim pulls out dollar bills from his wallet. “Tonight’s the final poker tournament, so how about some dance lessons for my wife?” he asks, and you can’t tell from his tone whether he thinks that dance lessons really are what his money is paying for or if he knows what’s actually going on.
Sunghoon takes the money and Mr Kim smiles at him, returning to the game, but Sunghoon just stands there, staring at the bills in his hands, then to Vivian, behind him to you, and finally back at Mr Kim. “Thanks, Mr Kim, but I’m all booked up for the rest of the week ‘cause of the show, so I don’t think it’d be fair to take the money.”
Mr Kim nods as Sunghoon hands him back the cash, saying he appreciates his honesty. Vivian looks at him, eyes wide, obviously surprised at his sudden refusal. Sunghoon walks back to his seat, sending a small smile your way, and you try your best not to gloat. 
-
In the past few days, it’s become a bit of a habit to sneak out of your bungalow and rush to Sunghoon’s when your family has gone to sleep. Except tonight, what you don’t know is that Seeun hears you, because she’s planning on doing the exact same thing and paying Heeseung a visit. You’re already with your own lover when she heads out of the room, skipping in excitement and anticipation the whole way there. She’s applied lotion to her entire body, sprayed perfume to her neck, wrists and ankles, and has read all the sex advice columns of her favorite magazines - she’s more than prepared for this.
She reaches the door. Takes a deep breath in, stands up straight. Calls out, “Heeseung, it’s me!” but no answer comes. So she opens the door slightly, and almost drops her bag at the sight in front of her, gasping loudly. She has just enough reflex to close the door again and rest her back against it, taking a few seconds to let it sink in before running back to her bed, where she promptly explodes into tears.
Now more than ever, she wishes her sister was here, whether to comfort her or to say “I told you so.” She wishes you were here to help her make sense of finding Vivian Kim and Heeseung naked together in his bed when he had spent weeks making her believe he wanted to be with her and her only. She wishes you would curse him out and call him all the names she wants to but doesn’t have the courage to.
But unfortunately, you’re not there with her. Instead, you’re with Sunghoon, laying together in bed, your head resting on his chest and your legs intertwined. You’re both spent from a night of lovemaking and from your shower that was supposed to be innocent but quickly turned steamy. You wake up at dawn, knowing you’ll have to go soon but heart breaking at the thought of tearing yourself from Sunghoon’s warm embrace. You press soft kisses to his neck and whisper his name, trying to wake him up gently. His eyes stay closed as he tightens his arms around you and pleads with you to stay just a little bit longer, and you’re not strong enough to say no.
“I had a dream earlier where your father called me ‘son’ and put his arm around me like he did with Heeseung earlier.” His morning voice is raspy from sleep and sends butterflies straight to your stomach.
“I’m sorry, Sunghoon,” you hum. “I’ll talk to him today. I’ll tell him about you.”
You feel his chest rise up then down as he sighs. “I thought about it, and I feel like it’d make things even worse if he knew about us. He just seems to think I’m a bad guy, for some reason, and me being with his daughter will only make him hate me more.”
“But you’re not a bad guy. You’re the best guy,” you say, voice slightly whiny. You’re too sleepy to come up with a better reply, and it makes Sunghoon chuckle.
“Thanks, Baby.” He presses a kiss to your hair, and it’s become such a familiar gesture that you’re not sure how you’ll live without it once you go home.
It’s not long before you have to head back to your bungalow, and Sunghoon walks you outside, slotting his lips with yours for one last time this morning and making plans to meet up later. You don’t pay attention to anything other than him - not to the slight breeze picking up, or the sun rising, or the staff bungalows, off to the side from Sunghoon’s. But not paying attention means not noticing a figure standing on one of those staff bungalows, not seeing her eyes squinting at yours and Sunghoon’s embrace, first recognising him, and, once her initial shock wears off, recognising you. Because of course, just like you, Vivian Kim has to leave Heeseung’s bungalow before anyone notices - except that in your case, someone notices you.
And the consequences of it appear only a few hours later, as your family are having a late breakfast with Max and Jay. When the conversation first begins, you don’t think it’ll be of much importance to you.
“You know that feeling when you look at a patient and think he’s all fine, but then you get his x-rays and something’s completely wrong?” Max starts, addressing your father. “That’s exactly what it is to find out one of your staff, a trusted one at that, is a thief.”
“What happened, Max?” your father asks, eyebrows furrowed.
“Mr Kim’s wallet was stolen,” Max simply says, sighing. Jay jumps on the opportunity to explain the story himself, leaning in conspiratorially.
“It happened yesterday night when he was playing poker. One minute, his wallet was right there in his coat pocket, hanging on his chair behind him, and the next, it wasn’t.” Your sister lets out a small gasp.
“Vivian says she saw that dance kid Sunghoon walk by,” Max continues, and your head snaps up at the mention of Sunghoon’s name. “So we go and ask him if he’s got an alibi, and he says he was in his room alone all night, reading.”
Jay snorts. “There is not a single book in Sunghoon Park’s room.”
The whole time, you’re shaking your head slightly, unable to believe that Sunghoon might be wrongfully framed for this. You turn towards Jay, a pleading expression on your face. “Listen, there’s been a mistake, there’s no way Sunghoon did it-”
“There’s been similar thefts at the Sheldrake and even here. Three wallets stolen, and now Mr Kim’s!”
“No, I know he didn’t do it-”
“Stay out of it, Baby!” Jay snaps at you. You look at him in disbelief, because of the way he just talked to you, because of what they’re accusing Sunghoon of, but above all because it’s inconceivable that your parents ever wanted to set you up with a guy like him. Entitled, judgmental, unkind.
But you can’t just stay out of it - this concerns Sunghoon, and if you can stop it from happening, you’ll do everything so that he doesn’t lose his job over a false accusation. So you turn towards your father and Max, and plead Sunghoon’s case.
“I know Sunghoon didn’t take Mr Kim’s wallet, I know.”
“How can you be so sure?” your father asks.
“I-I can’t tell you, but Daddy, please, you have to trust me.”
Your father sighs, turning his attention back to his plate. “I’m sorry, Baby, but I can’t.”
“But- it could’ve been anyone else,” you continue, looking at Max now that your father avoids your gaze. “Maybe it was- oh, maybe it was that little old couple, the Schumachers, I saw her with a couple of wallets-”
“The Schumachers? Impossible,” Max refutes as your father furrows his eyebrows at you, raising his voice slightly.
“You don’t go around accusing innocent people, Baby!”
“But I saw them, I saw them at the Sheldrake- you said something was stolen at the Sheldrake, right?” you say, turning towards Jay again, your voice growing desperate.”
“Listen, Baby,” Max cuts in, voice calm but firm, “I’ve got an eyewitness and the kid has no alibi. Come on, Jay, let me show you how to fire an employee.”
You catch his wrist before he can turn away and gulp, preparing yourself for what you were about to say. “Wait a minute. I know Sunghoon didn’t do it, I know it, because he was in his room all night, and I know that because,” you pause for a second, risking a glance at your father, “because I was there with him.”
The table goes silent. You can feel yourself weighing down under the heavy gazes of everyone seated. After a few seconds that feel like an eternity, Max clears his throat and awkwardly says, “Right, well, we’ll investigate some more in light of these news-”
He’s cut off by the screech of your father’s chair being roughly pushed back. You watch as your father leaves the room, steam coming out of his ears, and you can only hope revealing the truth will be worth it in the end.
After giving your father some time to cool off, you find him in the empty gazebo, looking out at the lake. The water is still except for the parts where ducks dip their heads in and back out. Even now that the rain has stopped pouring every day, clouds still render the sky a blinding white, and the sun only appears now and then when they part enough to let a ray through. There’s a slight breeze that makes leaves flutter around, and you need to tighten your light cardigan around your shoulders.
You know he sees you approaching, but he keeps his gaze fixated on the lake, even when you call out to him. 
“I told you I wasn’t lying about Sunghoon,” you start. “But I’m sorry I lied about the money. I’m not proud of myself for that, you know. But you lied too,” you say, and he finally looks at you, awaiting an explanation. “You told me everyone deserved a fair break, but you meant everyone like you. You said I could change the world, but you meant by becoming a lawyer, or an economist, and marrying someone from Harvard!”
He closes his eyes as if in pain, then looks back out to the lake, staying silent. “I made a mistake. There’s things about me you don’t know, and things you might not like, but I’m in this family too, and if you love me, you’ll have to love my faults too.” Your voice shakes and your eyes start to water. Seeing your father’s eyes do the same only adds to the difficulty of saying what you want to say.
“Because I love you, Daddy, and I’m sorry I let you down, but you let me down too!” Your voice completely breaks on those last words, and you turn away, letting your feet guide you wherever before your dad can hear the sob that escapes your throat. You know your dad’s silent treatment won’t last for long, so you leave him in the gazebo to think and cry as much as he needs to.
Your body must have developed new instincts, because soon enough, you find yourself in Sunghoon’s cabin, unsure how you even got here. His things are still there, which reassures you of the fact that he hasn’t left yet. You pace back and forth in the room for a few minutes until your emotions suddenly come crashing down, all the stress and tension and strung feelings, leaving behind only exhaustion. You lay on Sunghoon’s bed, thinking you’ll just close your eyes for a few minutes. But when you open them again, they fall on Sunghoon’s face, and you have no idea how long you’ve been there.
“Sunghoon?” you murmur.
“I have been looking for you all over,” he says, crouching in front of you, and gives you time to sit up and rub the sleep out of your eyes. “You were right about the Schumachers. Fingerprinted their glasses. Turns out they were wanted in a bunch of other states for theft too. They found them when they were already trying to leave the resort,” he explains, and your smile grows wider and wider as he speaks. 
“Oh my God, that’s amazing! I knew it’d work out!”
But Sunghoon diverts his gaze down, unable to match your euphoric expression. “I’m out, Baby.”
You quickly put two and two together. “They fired you anyway because of me.” 
“And if I leave quietly, I get my summer bonus,” he says sarcastically.
Your anger makes you stand up, walk to one corner of the room then back, your voice rising on its own accord. “So I did it all for nothing, then? I hurt my family, you lost your job anyway - it was all for nothing!”
“It was not for nothing!” Sunghoon exclaims, volume matching yours. “Nobody has ever done anything like that for me!” He searches your eyes for the reassurance that everything that happened this summer was worth it, but he only finds sorrow in them.
“You were right, Sunghoon,” you say with a sad smile, voice lowering to a hum, “you can’t change anything no matter how hard you try.”
“No, Baby,” he says, walking towards you, “I don’t want that from you, you hear me? You can. You can do whatever you want.”
Your gazes stay locked in each other for a few painful moments until it becomes unbearable and you have to look away. “I used to think so too.”
There’s nothing left to say. You watch silently as Sunghoon begins packing the few belongings he has in two small suitcases and a rucksack, then help out when the passivity starts to make your muscles ache. He hasn’t got much, so he’s done in just a few minutes, and you don’t realize you have tears pooling in your eyes until Sunghoon himself notices and wordlessly takes you in his arms.
You’re heading to his car when he suddenly stops in his tracks, saying he has something he needs to do first. You don’t question it, just agree to wait for him. It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do anyway.
A few minutes later, unbeknownst to you, Sunghoon is knocking on your cabin’s door. Just as he’d hoped, your father is the one to open the door, squinting his eyes meanly at the young man behind it as soon as he realizes who he is. Your father stays silent as he stares Sunghoon down, making a chill run down Sunghoon’s neck. He clears his throat before speaking. “Doctor, I-” he starts, already cutting himself off to take off his sunglasses. “I’m going anyway, and I know what you must be thinking-”
“You don’t know anything about me,” your father interrupts, shaking his head in disdain at Sunghoon. “Anything at all.”
Sunghoon had really wanted to stay calm and focused, to just say what he wanted to stay, but now that he’s leaving, he has no reason to put up with the blatant disrespect and contempt of the clients and higher-ups any longer. “I know you want Baby to be like you. An admirable person, the kind people look up to, but if you could just see, she’s already like that-”
“I know my daughter far better than you do, so don’t you tell me what to see,” your father practically barks, unable to contain his anger. “What I see right now is someone who got his partner in trouble and sent her off to some butcher, then moved on to a younger, innocent girl like my Baby.”
Rather than frustrated, Sunghoon’s eyes grow tired and sad. There’s no fight left in him anymore - he can see he won’t be able to change your father’s mind, there’s no point even trying. “Yeah, I guess that’s what you would see,” he murmurs before walking away, back to you, the only person who’s ever wanted to truly understand him.
And then it’s goodbye. 
While you were waiting, you kicked pebbles, brooding over the fact that your already shortening time with Sunghoon was getting cut off even more. But as soon as you see him, those thoughts evaporate, and you’re left with bittersweetness in your mouth. You spent the most incredible summer with him by your side, and even though it’s coming to an end, maybe the experience and the memories are all that matters.
Sunghoon closes the trunk when he’s done packing it, and walks over to where you’re standing, back against the passenger door, arms crossed over your chest. He rests his forearm on top of the car and neither of you are able to look the other in the eye for fear of emotion overwhelming you.
“Guess we took them all by surprise, huh?” you say, trying on a light-hearted tone to dissolve the tension in the air.
“Guess we did,” he chuckles quietly, risking a glance up at you. Your eyes meet and before you can break down, you turn your body towards his, nesting your face in the crook of his neck. He presses a kiss to your hair like a hundred times before and it’s enough to make your heart break. 
“I don’t know what I’ll do without you around.”
He rests his chin on the top of your head. “You’ll just have more time for card games and croquet,” he jokes, but you can’t laugh. “And Jake and Chaewon will still be around.” It’s silent for a few more minutes, and you try to commit the feeling of him against you and the smell of his skin to memory. “I’ll never be sorry,” he finally says, voice muffled by your hair.
“Neither will I,” you whisper against his neck.
He inhales deeply and tears himself away, gazing down at you sadly. With his thumb, he wipes a tear as it drops down your cheek, and presses his lips to yours in one last kiss, tasting the saltiness of your heartbreak. “I’ll see you around, Baby,” he says against your lips, forehead resting against yours. But he can’t linger - it would only make this impossible moment even harder.
Your vision is too blurry for you to see properly as he walks to the other side of the car and disappears in the driver’s seat. In a matter of seconds, his car becomes a fuzzy black dot in the distance, and you’ve no choice but to walk back to the place that made you discover love only to rip it from your hands.
-
The three days until the talent show feel like eternity. Counting down the minutes until you leave doesn’t make time go by any faster, but you don’t feel like doing anything else. You hang out with Chaewon and Jake and their friends when they’re free, going back with them to the staff main quarters one night, and even though the music is the same as the first time, Sunghoon’s absence changes everything. You can’t dance without imagining his hands on your waist and his voice guiding you through the steps. 
Seeun is also a lot nicer to you. She tells you what happened with Heeseung, and it’s like your shared love troubles bring you closer, reminding you that you’re not so different after all. As you get ready to go watch the talent show, she sits next to you on the bed, offering to do your hair. But then she takes a strand of it in her hands, trailing her fingers through it, and looks at you with a soft smile. “You know what, I think it looks perfect just like that.” 
You mirror her smile and drop your head to her shoulder. You stay like this for a few seconds, words unnecessary to understand each other. “You’ll do great tonight, Seeun. I can’t wait to watch you.”
“I know,” she replies, making you both giggle. “Now let’s go, it’ll start soon.”
You’re not surprised to see that your parents have chosen to seat you in a corner, trapped between a wall and your father. Practically the same thing, you think, but you’re wise enough to keep the comment to yourself. 
The performers have gathered in a line on the stage, your sister included, to sing the resort’s last day song as a conclusion to the show now that Sunghoon isn’t here to do the final dance. Max even gets his own solo. The song goes on for far too long to your taste, so you take the time to look around the room.
The lights are dim, save for the ones on the stage so that the focus of the audience stays on the performers, and wall fixtures next to the exits so they can be found easily. Chairs have been brought to the center of the room right in front of the stage while tables line the walls, candles adorning each one. Staff don’t get seats - instead, they stand at the back of the room, their backs against the wall as they watch the stage with boredom written all over their faces. You catch Jake’s eyes and he winks at you, a mischievous smile on his face, and you chalk it up to his usual playfulness.
Heeseung walks near your table, and your father stands up, calling out to him. He gets something that looks like an envelope out of his pocket, handing it to him. “Good luck in medical school, son.” Heeseung takes the envelope, looking down at it with a smile, and your father rests a hand on his shoulder.
“Thank you so much, Doc,” Heeseung beams. “And I also wanted to thank you for your help with the Chaewon situation, I guess we’ve all gotten into messes like these, huh?” Your father stands with his back to you, so you can only imagine the way his smile falls and his eyes harden.
“What?”
Heeseung’s smile falters slightly and he chuckles awkwardly. “I-I thought Baby told you… Look, it’s what Chaewon said, but I’m not sure, you never know with girls like that, they could pin it on anyone-”
Your father snatches the envelope back from Heeseung’s hands, glaring at him, and walks back to his seat next to you without a word. It’s only now that you understand your father’s dislike of Sunghoon - he had been certain Sunghoon was the one who had gotten Chaewon into such trouble. How could you have missed that? All this time, you thought it was just because Sunghoon was part of the staff and didn’t come from your world. Regret and frustration bubble up in your stomach. So many misunderstandings could’ve been avoided if only you had known what your father thought.
It’s only after a few minutes that he breaks the silence. “I’m sorry, Baby.”
You take a deep breath in. “Thank you, but I’m not the one you need to apologize to, Daddy.”
He turns his head to look at you. “You’re right. You’re right,” he sighs.
Just then, Jake walks past your table and towards the stage, disappearing behind the curtains on the side. You lift your head, trying to see what he’s up to, but the sound of the doors at the back of the room opening and closing loudly catches your attention. It seems to catch everybody’s attention - you hear small gasps and small murmurs of a familiar name, and your mind directly lands on the possibility, but you don’t believe it until you see it standing right in front of you, a hand reaching out to you - Sunghoon’s here.
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
You take his hand and let him guide you away from the table. You’re so enchanted by seeing him again that you barely notice your mother having to keep your father from stopping you. Together, you climb up the small set of stairs, walking past the performers and standing in the middle of the stage, the music stopping abruptly. His voice booms throughout the room when he speaks.
“Sorry for the disruption folks, but I always do the last dance of the season. This year, I was told not to. So I’m gonna do my kind of dancing with a great partner. Not only is she an amazing dancer, but she also taught me that people will stand for other people no matter what it costs them, and about the kind of person I want to be myself. Miss Y/N Y/L/N, everyone.” 
Whoops emerge from the back of the room where the staff are standing and you watch as Sunghoon walks to the side of the stage, discarding his leather jacket and exchanging a nod with Jake. The music starts to play - it’s a song you’ve heard before, a song you know well because you’ve danced to it many times with Sunghoon. It’s a song you love. 
He walks towards you, a smirk on his face, eyes heavy with desire. He places his hands on your waist, your own coming up to his forearm, and dips you backwards in a circle, which elicits more cheers from the dancers. He then stands behind you, imitating the starting position of the dance for your performance at the Sheldrake. The music picks up, and after that, it’s like magic. You and Sunghoon know exactly what to do, a mix of the choreography he’d taught you and of other moves you had picked up when you just danced together for fun. All the steps and turns come to you as if you know this dance by heart, and the whole time, you’re looking into each other’s eyes as they shine with happiness.
Sunghoon makes you spin away from him, and, your arm extended between you two, brings your hand up to his lips and places a delicate kiss to the back of it. Then, he jumps off the stage, prompting gasps and cheers from all around the room, and makes his way while dancing to the back of the room, where the dancers join him. Seconds before the second chorus is about to start, some of them run to you and help you off the stage, and Sunghoon nods at you from the middle of the room. So you run to him, gathering momentum until you reach him and he picks you up, lifting you from the ground up into the air, and you manage to keep your bird-like position for a few seconds. A huge smile breaks on your face as everybody cheers, your mother and sister clapping excitedly and even your father looking at you, astonished, proud. 
Sunghoon brings you back down slowly, grinning as he gazes at you with only love in his eyes. “I knew you could do it,” he whispers.
The staff starts to invite the guests to dance with them, pushing chairs to the side and getting people to stand up. Jake shows Seeun how to move, reminiscent of the way Sunghoon had done with you, your mother and Jay dance together, and the whole room turns into a dancefloor where couples and small groups can let go and move however they want to. 
You and Sunghoon head to the exit to find a quieter place, but your father calls out to you before you can slip away. “I found out you weren’t the one to get Chaewon in trouble.” Sunghoon simply nods. “I was wrong. I apologize,” he says solemnly, and the corners of Sunghoon’s lips tug slightly upwards.
“Thank you, Doctor Y/L/N.”
Your father’s eyes drift to you, and his polite expression turns affectionate. “You looked great up there, Baby.” You sigh, relief washing over your whole body and alleviating the weight on your heart. You let go of Sunghoon’s hands to wrap your arms around your father’s neck, and he takes you in a brief but tight hug.
“I’ll let you two go now. I need to find your mother, haven’t danced with her in ages. That’s something else I can thank you for,” he says, smiling down at you.
You watch him walk away for a few seconds until Sunghoon takes your hand in his again, and you slip out the doors to the front lawn. Outside, you close your eyes and take a deep breath of fresh air in, laughing for no reason other than simple joy when your eyes meet his.
He leads you to the gazebo and brings his hands to your waist again. The song is nearing its end but you can still hear it drifting through the open doors and windows of the room. You know that even when it’s over, it’ll keep playing in your head - and in your heart.
Just like you’ll always keep Sunghoon there.
You move slowly to the rhythm of the last chorus, gazing into each other’s eyes. You want to enjoy this moment for what it is, but the fact that you’re leaving tomorrow won’t leave your thoughts. This might very well be the last time you and Sunghoon ever dance together, or ever see each other. You can give each other your address and send letters, or exchange home phone numbers and call, but how long will that last? You’ll go to college while he goes home and starts working with his father again, or finds a way to fulfill his dream.
He probably sees the sadness in your eyes and brings you closer to him. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to - you know the same thoughts are cramping his mind. Words are unnecessary, and promises are futile, so for now, you forget everything else, and focus on the sway of your bodies and on his hands holding you tight against him.
Resting the side of your head on his shoulder, you look up at the night sky. The stars are shining bright, unbothered by any clouds, and the full moon gazes down at you protectively. Even when you’re apart, you and Sunghoon will still sleep under the same moon every night. You may be just one of the many love stories she’s witnessed, but you dare to think that yours is a special one, one that can’t be reproduced, one that is uniquely yours.
You continue to dance even when the song is over, letting your bodies bask in the moonlight.
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fic taglist: @jaetaimjadore @sleepingsag permanent taglist: @ozymandia-s @bbujiikseu @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 © asahicore on tumblr, 2023. please do not plagiarize, repost or translate my works. feedback and reblogs are always appreciated!
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hugshughes · 2 months
Text
Patience is a Virtue C. Loveland
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Colston Loveland x fem!Minter!reader
synopsis - Colston gets the trophy, and finally gets the girl.
wc - 3.8k
contains - UNEDITED! this is based off of this request! READER IS COACH MINTER(michigan defensive coordinator)'S DAUGHTER!!!!!!! kissing, hugging, fluff, cursing, stress over the game. guys if u don't like my cute outfit i picked then #1 ur a hater and #2 it's not a big deal! think of something else🤞🤞🤞 cause my Adidas navy handballs with gold accents ARE STAYING. there IS a picture of the outfit im describing but im obvi not gonna stick it in the middle of the fic so if anyone wants that i guess request or message me lols?
an - GUYS PLEASE LET THIS POST LETS PRAY TOGETHER. THIS WAS CUTE. i've been getting the BEST requests lately. i'm on my Michigan FOOTBALL grind. ive spent a long while introducing the jesse minter daughter reader.... she might have to stick around. i want to write for Blake Corum but don't know what to do because literally all i have written for the past week is like "girlfriend or friend of player reader comes to watch their playoff game, reader and love interest kiss after love interest wins game" so... DONT GET ME WRONG I LOVEEEE WRITING THAT SHIT. but it feels so repetitive. BUT THIS? I LOVED THIS. daughter of the coach is so scandalous and i love it. minter is only 40 so like we're just saying he had his daughter (reader) pretty young, like 21. hope u enjoyyyyyyyy ;)!
-
You woke up with a start. Your body jolted as you brain registered a shout somewhere in the room. You sucked in a breath, opening your eyes, only to close them again. You squinted, trying to orient yourself. You were in a hotel room, your brothers were the ones shouting.
You groaned at the realization, then let out a shout when you felt three small bodies land on top of you.
"Holy shit, get off of me!"
They immediately scrambled, most likely going to tell your mom you cursed in their presence. You loved your 3 baby siblings, but they were pains in your ass sometimes.
You heard a faint "she said shit mommy!" in the conjoining hotel room, and rolled your eyes. You sat in bed, stretching, grabbing your phone before grabbing your bag and locking yourself in the bathroom before your mom could scold you so your siblings shut up about it.
Today was the college football playoff championship, and it was safe to say your family members above the age of 8 were stressed. It was 8:11, and you had to be out the door by 9:50. You showered, drying your hair after and then starting to pick your outfit. You brought a lot of different gear, you had not clue what you wanted to wear to the game. You had so much Michigan gear, and even more maize and navy colored clothing, courtesy to your father.
After almost 30 minutes, you decided on a cute denim skirt, a maize long sleeve, and your navy Adidaas Handballs. You perfected your hair and makeup, successfully erasing any signs that you'd only been awake for about an hour.
You came out of the bathroom all put together, your bag and pajamas in hand. Your siblings were sitting on your bed, watching something on the TV. Since you guys had 6 people in your family, you'd gotten two hotel rooms with the connecting door in the middle. You slept in one room with your little sister on the other bed, and your parents and brothers slept in the other room. You walked through the connecting door, checking the time. 9:17.
Your mom was getting ready in the bathroom when you walked into it. You sat on the closed lid toilet and started talking to her about the plans for today.
"You really gotta stop cursing in front of the littles!"
Your mother scolded you, a grin wide on her face. She was joking, of course. You and your parents had always been close, you'd been their baby for the longest. You'd been with them since they were two just married 20 year olds in college. Not that you remembered it, but you were there for all of your dad's junior and senior year games when he played at MSJ. You'd been there through all the coaching jobs. From Cincinnati, to Georgia State, to the Baltimore Ravens, you'd been there through all of it.
You sat with your mom until it was time to go. Your dad corralled everyone together, taking a photo before you all headed to the elevator. When an elevator came, it opened up and there was barely any room unless your parents held two of your siblings, so you told them to go ahead and that you would wait for the next one.
You only waited about a minute before the doors slid open again, revealing none other than Colston Loveland. His eyes lit up, a grin shining on his beautiful face. You'd always had a weird little thing with Colston. No words were ever said about it, but there had always been a vibe between you.
Being the daughter of the defensive coordinator definitely drove a lot of the guys, even ones you had classes and other school related things with, far far away. The boys knew how protective their coach was of his family, and didn't want any bad blood on the team. Something about you just attracted Colston so heavily. He knew he shouldn't even think about it, but he never could help himself.
"Hey coach."
You rolled your eyes at him playfully as you stepped into the elevator. He always called you coach, he had to remind you he was one of your dad's players. You would've loved to forget that for two seconds.
"Hi Cole."
He could've died. You'd called him Cole, instead of Colston. It was the smallest, most insignificant little thing, but it made him melt.
"Where's your family at?"
You tilted your head towards him, he wanted to talk, okay. You smiled at him, he loved it.
"The other elevator was too full, some of the guys were on the way down too."
He nodded, the smirk never leaving his face. You thought about kissing it off of him, then realized you had just thought of kissing his smirk off of him. Shit. You were in deep with this kid, and there was little to no chance anything would ever happen.
The elevator reached the lobby, and Colston gestured for you to step out first. You exited the elevator, the boy hot on your tail. You were immediately greeted by a hallway packed full of Michigan players, coaches, families, and more.
You have Colston one last glance and smile before finding your mom, taking your baby brother out of her arms and into yours, playing with him. Colston's eyes followed you, he admired you as you smiled and laughed with your brother. You were perfect. He was gonna have to find a way to get around the fact that you were his coach's daughter.
You held your brother with one arm and your sisters hand with the other as you smiled at the cameras, walking through to the buses. Your family followed behind the rest of the coaches and families, the team trailing behind you.
The ride to NRG took longer than you assumed it would, almost an hour because of the traffic, and it didn't help that everyone could tell that the buses were transporting one of the CFP Championship teams in them.
Everyone went into the stadium together, through some backstage type area. You walked with the team until you had to go separate ways. You hugged your dad, squeezing him tight. You would see him again before the game, so you saved your 'Good luck, I love you Dad.' sentiment for then.
You'd always had a special connection with your dad, you were closer to him than almost anyone else. You were his baby, his first baby. Still, you were his baby in his eyes. Your dad would do anything for you, and he was quite protective. Though he was protective, all he wanted was for you to be happy, and if it meant dating one of his guys, he would have no problem with it.
Your family sat bored in the box of the stadium, looking down on the field as Washington practiced. There was over 6 more hours till the game started, and there was practically nothing to do.
You took a nap on the carpeted floor of the box with your siblings for a couple hours, your mother snapping photos that although you were embarrassed of, were undeniably cute. Once you guys had woken up, there was about 2 hours till game time. You voted with your family on whether you guys wanted to stay in the box, or sit way close to the field. You all wanted to be closer to the field, you wanted to see the action head on.
Your family departed the box, along with a few others to see the team one more time before the game. You got down onto the field in about 20 minutes, and stood with your dad for awhile. When you were being told it was time to go, you quickly hugged your dad.
"Good luck, I love you!"
He thanked you, saying the three words back as you guys waved at him, going to leave. Your eyes caught on a certain brunette as he ran off the field, his eyes finding you quickly. He smiled at you, ugh, that smile.
"Good luck, Cole!"
You smiled at him, right before you turned to go up the tunnel. More and more fans started to pour in as you got settled into your bleacher seats. You were three rows from the bottom with a perfect view of the field. You settled in as the national anthem ended and the game began.
As the game progressed, you were so happy to say that Michigan was winning, the entire time. You'd caught Colston's eyes multiple times during the game, letting it linger for a few seconds before giving him a stern look and gesturing towards the field. He'd mouth back, 'okay, coach.' and turn back around. Your mother caught the interaction once, her heart warming seeing her baby with a crush.
You stood up, your brother in your arms as you jumped up and down, shouting, Michigan had finally won! You cheered and danced around with your little siblings as you celebrated. You were all so insanely proud of your dad. Soon though, you were being escorted to the field, eager to see your father and congratulate him.
Blood was pumping and hearts were racing as you exited the tunnel, smiles burned onto your faces as you went to look for your dad. You held your sister's hand as you two ran around, trying to find him. Your mom shouted, and you turned to look at her. She pointed to your left, and there stood your dad, hugging one of his players. Your sister went back to your mom, to walk over to your dad with her as you all but sprinted over to your dad, weaving in between sweaty boys and families.
Your dad saw you incoming and held his arms out accepting your forceful hug. You both laughed, your dad squeezing you tightly. Your best friend had finally done it.
"Literally told you you would do it."
He laughed again, agreeing as he laid a kiss to your temple, pulling back with one arm to accept your other siblings into the hug, who'd finally made their way over. After a minute, you took your siblings from your dad so your mom could hug him, and kiss him, much to your brothers' disgust.
After talking with your dad for a little, you spotted a familiar 6'5 frame standing by himself as his teammates walked away from him. You sauntered over, shouting his name when you were in earshot. The brunette quickly turned around, the smile already gracing his face deepening.
"Well hi, coach."
"Congratulations, Cole. You know your catches were pretty legit."
You gave him a slightly impressed face, shrugging your shoulders. He laughed, rolling his eyes playfully.
"You can't win 'em all over, can you?"
You laughed in turn, stepping closer to him. Colston's heart was racing as he looked down into your eyes.
"But really, Cole, you were incredible, serious."
He nodded, accepting your praise with a grin, before he looked around, over-exaggerating a look of being in thought.
"You know, coach, I think I might just deserve a reward, for my quote incredible performance."
Your eyes widened, your heart starting off, faster and faster.
"Really? What might that entail, Cole?"
Shit, he was gonna have to kiss you if you kept calling him that. He was about to take the leap. He knew he had to at some point, and he was on an adrenaline rush, that just chanted at him to do it.
"Well I think it entails you accepting a date with me back in Michigan."
Your jaw dropped slightly, you were dumbfounded. Colston really wanted to go on a date with you?
"For real?"
Colston nodded, seemingly confident, though he was shaking in his boots on the inside.
"Well then, I think we can make that work."
Colston's heart erupted. He literally could not have been happier. He'd just won the Natty, and got his dream girl to agree to a date, holy fuck. You got nervous all of the sudden, leaning up to kiss his cheek, before turning to leave.
"Just text me, Cole!"
He nodded, his eyes following you as you went to go find your family again. His family came back over to him, they'd been gone for just a second but stopped and waited when they saw him talking to you. His family, especially his mom, knew quite a bit about you.
You found your family, immediately grabbing your moms hand to pull her a few steps away. You looked at her with the biggest eyes ever, still in shock over what had just happened.
"What's up, sweetheart? Why are you all, thousand yard stare-y?"
"Mom Colston just asked me out, and I said yes! And then I kissed his cheek! And then I left!"
Your mom laughed, her baby was finally growing up. You'd had a few boyfriends in all your days, but you'd never been proper crushing like you were right now.
"That's so good! I knew this was coming, we just had to wait for one of you to get the courage."
You blushed, hiding your face in your hands. Your smile suddenly dropped, a realization coming to you.
"Is dad gonna hate me?"
"Why would I hate you?"
Shit.
You ended up telling your dad later on in the night, when you were tired and sitting in the back of a restaurant the team was celebrating in. Your family didn't party for too long, having a 4, 7, and 8 year old didn't exactly allow you guys to stay out for too long. Even your parents 19 year old daughter got a bit cranky if she stayed out too late.
When you told your dad, he just laughed. He knew you and Colston had things for each other, he was waiting for the tight end to make a move.
-
You were stressing. Tonight was your date with Colston. You sat at your vanity, ranting to your roommate over it. You put on makeup and did your hair, wanting to look cute but not over the top.
Colston had told you to wear comfy clothes, so you were in one of your most common outfits. Leggings and a Michigan sweatshirt. You stared at yourself in the mirror, doubting yourself. You had known Colston for over a year, almost two, but you didn't really know him that well. You wanted him to like you so badly.
"Babe, you look fantastic. He's going to stare at you all night."
You sighed at your roommate's encouragement. But before you could respond, you got a text from Colston. He was outside your dorm building. Your roommate pushed you straight out the door, saying bye.
You went down the stairs quickly, making your way out of the complex. You saw Colston as you opened the door, slipping out. He looked up and smiled at you, his stupid beautiful smile.
"Hey, Gorgeous."
You felt the heat on your face even in the Ann Arbor cold. You smiled, shaking your head as you gave him a spin, showing off your extra casual outfit.
"Even in this ensemble?"
He nodded, his smile deepening. He pulled you into his side, hugging you. You were immediately enveloped in his warmth. You ducked your head down to hide the shock in your eyes. He smelled really good.
When you pulled away Colston led you to his car, opening the door for you before going around and getting in. You two buckled up before Colston pulled out of the parking spot, setting off into Ann Arbor. He gave you the aux, warming your heart. You both knew he probably didn't listen to the same music as you, but he wanted you to listen to whatever you liked.
Smaller Acts by Zach Bryan came on when you hit shuffle on your main playlist, making you smile. You resonated with the song, always having thought that smaller acts of love were more important than any grand gestures. You got to really look at Colston while he drove. He kept his eyes right on the road always, until you got to a red light, that's when you'd jerk your head back forward as he turned to look at you. He was really pretty, his jaw was so insanely defined, he had a strong neck, and the deepest brown eyes. You stared at the tattoo on his left forearm, he was hot, to put it simply.
You drove for around 40 minutes before the car slowed, pulling onto a gravel driveway. You looked out of your window, seeing a large screen and projector, and lots of cars. He had brought you to a drive in movie. You could've cried when you saw the sign reading the movie you would be seeing. Ocean's 11. The very first time you ever talked to Colston, he'd asked you your favorite movie. You said you couldn't pick one, then settled on Ocean's 11 because it was one you'd seen so many times you could quote any scene.
You couldn't believe he remembered. You'd never mentioned it since then. That was the kind of smaller, seemingly insignificant thing that meant the world to you. You jerked your head to the left, staring at Colston with wide eyes. He was dealing with the tickets for a few seconds before you pulled into a spot, then he finally looked to you.
"Cole, I cannot believe that you remembered."
Colston smiled, and on the inside he was celebrating that you loved it. What he hadn't expected though was you leaning over the console and hugging him. It was honestly the sweetest thing any guy had ever done for you, you were beyond grateful for this boy, and it was your first date.
"This is the sweetest thing a guy's ever done for me, I'm being serious."
Though you were mostly saying that about the fact that he'd remembered, the date itself was also amazing. Colston knew you enough to know that you'd have preferred this over any fancy restaurant, and that meant a lot.
"It's the least I could do, coach. You mean something to me, 'm gonna take care of you."
You just squirmed in your seat, getting more comfortable and smiling as you looked ahead of you. You wordlessly reached over and slipped your hand into his, pulling them into your lap.
Colston was so happy he could've gotten out of the car and started dancing. He acted as cool as he could on the outside. You two settled in as the movie began.
At some point, Colston had reached back into the backseat and grabbed a blanket that he tossed into your lap, and a bag of food and snacks.
You traced your free hand over Colston's tattoo, admiring the line work and shading. The movie ended, and Colston's hand stayed with you as you two began the drive back. You fell asleep on the drive, your head leaning against Colston's arm.
You woke up slowly about 5 minutes out from school. You kept your head on Colston's arm, but allowed yourself to carelessly stare at him in your tired state. At a stoplight, he turned to look at you, smiling deeply when his eyes met your sleepy ones.
"Hey, coach. Nap good?"
You smiled and nodded, yawning at him. He laughed lowly, turning his head back when the light went green. You parked outside your building, dampening your heart. The night had been perfect. You sleepily got out of Colston's car, after he told you to not dare opening your own door. He walked you up to the entrance with his hand on your back, rubbing his fingers back and forth lightly.
When you got to the door you stopped and turned around, wrapping your arms around his middle.
"Thank you so much Colston. This was like, the best date I think ever."
He smiled, hugging you tightly. Colston had the best time, obviously you were gorgeous, but getting to talk to you one-on-one without interruptions was his idea of a good time. His insides melted whenever you fell asleep, and before then, he could've swore he was in love while you traced over his tattoo.
You pulled away from him, looking at the boy through heavy eyes. He looked absolutely handsome in the dim lighting of a street lamp. You put your hands on his shoulders, leaning up and kissing him. You probably wouldn't have if your drowzy mind hadn't commanded you to. Obviously you wanted to, but you weren't sure if it was 100% mutual yet, but it was.
Colston's hands went to hold the back of your head, his hands in your hair. He kept the kiss shorter than you would've liked, knowing you were tired.
You looked up at him with stars in your eyes, a smiling fighting its way onto you face. Colston's hands shifted from your hair to your jaw, rubbing his thumb over your cheek.
"I'll see you tomorrow baby."
Your blown out eyes widened at the name, your heart clenching in your chest. Colston saw the reaction, his lips quirking up the slightest bit.
"I'll see you, Loveland."
You let go of him, turning towards the door. You paused for a second, quickly turning back around and kissing Colston again. Colston's hands grabbed at your hips, pulling you closer. Colston smiled brightly into the kiss, giggling to himself.
You pulled away from him, a grin falling to your face.
"You ever gonna let me leave, coach?"
"Thinkin' about it."
"You get inside, gorgeous. It's too cold for you to be out here."
You smiled, nodding at him, letting go of him for the last time.
"You gotta go too, off season just started. You gotta stay on your A-Game Loveland."
He laughed at you, shaking his head as he watched you walk into the dorm complex, turning the corner and out of his sight. You ran back up the stairs and to your room, squealing like a 13 year old as you described your date to your roommate.
Colston sat in his car, texting his mom that everything went well. When he put his phone away, he finally let himself think that you were the girl he'd want to be with forever. It was finally real. The boy just had to be patient.
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kairiscorner · 9 months
Note
Hi!!! I absolutely LOVE ur writings. Not sure if ur requests r open but do u mind if I request a spider noir x reader where they have a daughter together and one day when y/n walks in to check on noir and their daughter they see their daughter putting a bunch of makeup and accessories on him 😭😭😭 I think it would be so cute and funny!! I love the way you write spider noir btw, he’s my fav and ur fics are amazing!
HI ANON !! yep, my requests are open :DD sorry i'm super slow and easy to sidetrack though 😭😭😭BUT THANK YOU FOR THE COMPLIMENTS AND IDEA !! I LIVE FOR DOMESTIC PETER PARKER AAAAAAAA @thecoolerdor i hope this is to your liking boo <333
(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)
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you trusted your husband peter with all your heart, so much so that you agreed to have a family with him. you could still remember that day when you announced to peter you were pregnant. oh, his little sequences of jumping up and down from happiness, the tears of irrefutable joy falling down from his eyes as he picked you up, spun you around and kissed you all over--his smile... oh, his charming, loving smile that you hoped your little one would have once it'd be born.
and nine months passed, nine wonderful, peaceful months passed, and your little bundle of joy was brought forth into the world; she was a girl. you could remember the moment when peter held your little girl in his arms--he choked on his own tears of love and unbridled joy, hearing her coos and her reaching for his glasses as he looked down at her with the brightest smile on his face.
"i promise you, my love... i'll keep both you and our daughter safe. i'd risk my life to see her grow up happily and normally. i... oh, i... i love you both so, so much." he said with a soft, genuine-sounding voice as he looked at you with glistening, teary eyes as his daughter grabbed hold of his glasses, and you both chuckled as tears came from both of your eyes, celebrating your new chapter in life as parents, as a family.
three years passed, and peter has since spoiled his little princess rotten. she has your hair, and his beautiful gray and brown eyes. she has his smile, which makes you melt when they both flash a smile; their dimples evident on their cheeks as the curves of their mouths become more prominent at the sides. peter's always loved his little girl more than anything and anyone. and of course, he always lets her know he's there for her; that daddy will protect her and keep her from feeling sad, hurt, or lonely, or anything bad. he's her light in the darkness, her superhero, literally and figuratively; he set the standard for her who a man should be in her life, and she loves him to bits.
you never felt jealous that your daughter preferred peter sometimes over you, you couldn't be, seeing as how, despite being spider man and a working man, he was always her father and he always delivered and did his job to the very best of his ability. though you trusted peter so much and believed in him, you were still worried if he knew what to do when you, the only one keeping the house together when peter's gone with no other adults in the house, would be gone for the whole day to run some errands.
"oh, you'll be out the whole day?" peter asked you as he held his daughter in his arms and sat her down on his lap as she played with her dolls. you nodded. "yeah, i have a lot on my plate today, i can finish them up by tonight." you explained. peter smiled up at you as you spoke. "that's okay, you gotta do what you gotta do." he said with a chuckle as he tickled his daughter, blowing a raspberry against her cheek, making her squeal and laugh, with you and peter laughing, too.
"are you sure you two will be okay while i'm gone...?" you asked with a concerned tone in your voice. peter smiled up at you and carried his daughter in his arms as he put a hand on your cheek. "hey... it'll be okay, we'll be okay. i'm peter parker, spider man, and i'm your husband, you don't have to worry. i can try doing what you do for a day and survive. at least i hope i can, but we'll be alright, love. i promise." he said as he leaned over to plant a sweet, soft kiss on your lips. you kissed him back, and it was in that kiss that you felt as though peter was emphasizing to you that he's got this, that you don't have to worry about a thing.
you pulled away soon and peter's hand found its way to your cheek again. "alright, then. i trust you." you said as you put your hand on the back of his that held your cheek, and you leaned over to kiss your daughter and say goodbye to her. "bah-bye! i wub you!" your daughter beamed with a flying kiss notion that you taught her, which made you and peter giggle at her cuteness.
they'll be okay. right?
you soon came home after 7 hours of running errands and buying groceries for dinner, thinking of your dear husband and darling daughter back at home. you headed home and opened the front door, all expectations of them being in the living room gone as they were nowhere downstairs. "peter? loves?" you called out for them as you put away your coat and kicked off your shoes by the entrance.
you climbed up the stairs where you heard faint giggling in your daughter's room and the air filled with high pitched laughter from your daughter and low chuckling from your husband. you smiled and sighed to yourself in relief as you entered the your daughter's room after knocking a few times. "loves?" you called for them as you peeked your head in through the door.
there, you bore witness to the sight of peter being slathered on with your makeup; your lipstick, mascara, blush, and eyeshadow were not spared. your necklace and earrings were on peter, dangling on him all lopsided. "oh, dearest!" peter called out with a crooked smile, with lipstick streaking down past his lips as he smiled up at you.
your daughter greeted you with a hug and asked you to come over and sit down at her little makeup parlor. you chuckled instead of getting mad, how could you when your daughter was so... talented at beautifying her own father?
you looked at peter as you sat down with him on the floor as your daughter took the rest of your makeup, with peter wrapping his hand around your waist and smirking at you. "don't i look absolutely irresistible, love?" he asked in a low voice as he adjusted his glasses and wink at you with the mismatched eyeshadow on his eyes and such exaggerated eyelashes from your mascara.
you couldn't stifle the laugh any longer, and out it came as you erupted in peals of laughter as you rested your head against peter's shoulder at how ridiculous he looked. peter chuckled low as he put his other hand under your chin. "i get it, you're wishing i could be as pretty as you..." he said as he leaned over and pressed a kiss on your lips, your lips now two different shades of lipstick as you kissed him back.
"i wish you just gave her crayons instead of my lipstick, but seeing you like this..." you said as you rested your hand on his chest as he leaned his head against yours. "it makes me remember just how much you love her, so willing to let her do anything with and to you, like a good father does." you said as you pulled him in for another kiss. your daughter soon came back to do your makeup now, and you pulled away from him, giggling still at how exaggeratedly beautiful he was like this.
a/n: THIS SHIT MELTING MY HEART FRRRRR
tags !! @thecoolerdor @miguelswifey04 @binibinileonara @k4tsu3 @luvstarrstruck @connors-cumslurper @maxoloqy
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two-white-butterflies · 9 months
Text
fence | d. targaryen
Description: Daemon Targaryen meets his best friend's daughter in a Taylor Swift concert.
Genre: social media au
Rating: Teen [age gap, dad's best friend, beach au]
Author's Note: picture below is by the lovely @nyctophilic0vitnir 🥰
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Daemon's smiles slowly - seeing that both of his daughters were enjoying the concert. Of course, it cost him a fortune - but anything for his twins. "If we survived the Great War!" Baela kept singing and dancing to the sound of Taylor's acoustic melody.
"Uhuh, uhuh..." she hummed while holding her sister's hand.
Daemon turns to the scene in front of him - another woman was blocking his view. You were wearing a white button down shirt, and colorful pants that were decorated with purple-pink butterflies.
"Clôture," he mumbled in French, and to his surprise you turned around. "Excusez-moi?" your eyebrows merged into each other. "Sorry," he rolled his eyes - not in the mood to get into a fight.
A frown is permanently etched on his face after that.
Annoying.
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ilikesojubutsojissilent 🔐 some old asshole called me a fence in taylor's concert....like know ur place oldieee mcoldddieee
swanchiken9: didn't u call him 'lana del rey' vinyl? - ilikesojubutsojissilent: I CAN'T REMEMBER THAT
ssexretary22: 'idc if he cheats on me or something but he's kinda hot' - ilikesojubutsojissilent: THE VOICES, THE MF VOICES 🥰
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Of course, fate wasn't happy with just one interaction.
Daemon saw you again - a few weeks after the concert.
"Ah, this is my daughter." Harwin smiles, pulling you closer to his body. "Last time I saw her, she was still 'this' tall." Laenor chuckled, hands pointing at his knees. Oh, does he remember seeing you - the little cunt that blocked his view during the concert.
"She's already taller than you," Harwin laughed, gaze trailing towards Daemon. "Don't remind me." Laenor rolled his eyes while taking a swig of his beer. His jaw clenches seeing you in front of him.
Plump lips that were perfect for kissing - eyes that were perfect for staring - most of all, he liked the way he hated you.
Harwin turns his head slightly in your direction. "He's Uncle Daemon - we used to be friends back in high school." Harwin explained and you extended your hand for him to shake. He clicks his tongue in distaste, but he still shakes your hand - soft and fragranced.
"It's nice to meet you," you mumble shyly - staring at the floor.
"You too." his lips settled into a thin line.
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itz_y/n: the mood for today 🦋
14 comments 459 likes
helaenablackwidow: amazinggh rhae_strong: I LOVE IT 💗 - itz_y/n: thanks auntie!!
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Daemon was beginning to regret staying in Harwin's house.
A groan escapes his mouth, watching you play with your food. It seems like everything you did managed to anger him. "So, Daemon? You've ever been to this part of Australia?" his friend inquires, one hand was holding a fork - and the other was around his new wife, Rhaenyra (his niece.)
"Never, actually - I've only been to Sydney." he confesses, choosing to ignore your existence. "Well, you're going to enjoy it here - it's calm and the beach isn't filled with that much wildlife." he pointed, and Daemon's gaze moves in your direction.
There was a slight tan on your face - hair slightly matted from saltwater and he could smell the salt breeze. He'd enjoy it here.
"I've heard a lot of conflicting reports," he chuckled, exchanging a knowing stare with his niece. "I got bitten by a spider once!" she defends herself, knowing that she wasn't used to Australia's fauna. "She got very lucky - it wasn't venomous." her husband grinned.
"But my daughter, not much." Harwin looked at you.
"Got bitten by a venomous one - but trust me, I wasn't the one panicking." you giggled, and Harwin smiled defeatedly. It was hard raising a child on his own - since your mother was a no show. "I had to rush her to the hospital via airlift, it was a good thing they got the antidote in time." he informed.
"Via airlift?" Daemon questioned.
"Yep, because apparently the car isn't fast enough." you rolled your eyes playfully. "The helicopter gives them a sense of urgency," Harwin shrugged, turning towards Daemon. "I'm sure you get it mate. We'd do anything for our daughters." your father looks for an ally.
Rhaenyra chuckles quietly.
"Don't let his cold exterior fool you. He once rushed Rhaena to the hospital because she got a rash - and he thought that it was sepsis." Rhaenyra rats out, and her uncle lets out a small laugh.
"I guess we are the same, Harwin."
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itz_y/n: surfing weather 🌊
10 comments 829 likes
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"I remember you, actually." your opened your mouth - taking a casual sip of the newly-fermented kombucha that your dad made. "You called me a fence," you pouted, and he kept staring down at you. He had a murderous glint in his eyes - one that spoke 'sex' and lust. He keeps looking at you - gaze trailing up and down from your navel to your face. "You were." he admitted, no sign of remorse on his face.
"It's not my fault that you're short," you rolled your eyes, adjusting your bikini top. "But I'm still taller than you," he yapped - amused by your sudden fieriness. What was inside that kombucha?
"It would be embarrassing if you weren't, right?" you smirked and he leaned down on your body, butt firmly pressed on your bed-bed. By this point, your hips were barely touching each other. "Shame too because you'd be handsome, if it weren't for your attitude," you mumbled - seeing how far his temper would reach.
A light scoff exits his lips, his hands were on your thigh.
"My attitude, now?" he growled - rubbing small circles on your inner leg. It made your blood pump - eyes see red. The thought that anyone could walk in on the both of you eye-fucking was exhilarating. The chase was fun - but to have this man? It was wrong, immoral, weird - and you liked that.
"You should be thankful that I find you handsome, not a lot of men are." you replied - seemingly unfazed with his seduction. "- and not a lot of women are pretty too," he answered, eyes staring deep into your soul. "When you say it - it sounds offensive," you narrowed your eyes and his hand reaches for your cheek.
"You're a pretty girl - if that eases the offensiveness," he mused. He was the pomegranate - and you were Persephone. "A little," you stared at his lips - smiling as his face moves closer.
He was just about to kiss you - but you pull away.
"It was nice chatting, Uncle Daemon." you grinned, rising to your feet and wrapping the dainty towel around your hips.
Uncle Daemon, the word seemed to stir something inside of him.
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itz_y/n: late nights and early mornings down under 🦘🪖
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Daemon keeps staring at your instagram post - he doesn't usually do social media but he wanted to pry deeper into your private life. It wasn't hard finding you - Harwin and Rhaenyra posted you regularly.
A low growl escapes his mouth seeing the first photo - only a sheet was covering your body.
"Daemon, we'll be gone for a few hours. Can you watch the little girl for me?" Harwin offers with a kind smile and he closes his phone immediately. His friend would kill him. "Sure," he nodded - quickly handed with a bottle of beer.
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He leans on your doorframe, watching while you scrolled through social media mindlessly. "Are you always left at home?" he cleared his throat and your attention shifts to him. "I don't mind," you answer, patting the empty space beside you.
"Well, I do - it's boring here." he complained - having no issues in laying down beside you. His father always told him that his best asset was his command of everyone. Daemon took up space, he could say what he wanted to without fear of consequence. "What do you propose we do?" you place your phone on the pillow.
"Fuck?" he teased - a laugh escapes your mouth. "You're older than me - aren't you supposed to make more sense?" you joked, staring deep into his purple eyes. He was wearing a tight shirt - you could make out the small curves of his body - his abs and his nipples. "I'm making perfect sense," he shrugged - hands moving to your hips.
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@nyctophilic0vitnir @watercolorskyy @bellastwd @icarusgloom @pearlstiare @areaderinlove @hc-geralt-23 @rozendiors @immyowndefender @ammo23 @xcinnamonmalfoyx @ammo23 @immyowndefender @bitchyunknownuser
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huckleberrykai · 6 months
Note
single dad kai who meets you randomly one day <3 you guys hit it off at the start and he was very transparent with you when it came to his daughter. of course you accepted and continued dating him, him being a responsible single parent was something you thought of as a turn on <3 he introduces you to her one day and she instantly falls in love with you 🥺 you being chubby like her made that connection almost instantly. of course shes only a child, she doesnt know anything about society and hate.. but she sees herself in you and nothing matters more to a small girl than to see someone older thats so pretty and looks just like her
ofc kai instantly thought it was adorable,, how you two were meshed in that instant. he loved how you both got close 🥺 calls you both his ‘chubby wubbies’ <3 lots of tummy rubs and maybe a few grips on yours >//< i see single dad kai w chubby reader being so so SO loving towards you 🥺 lots of love making and kisses all over your body,, telling you how much he loves you because he does !!!he would definitely be a bit pervy too 0.0 seeing the squish above your jeans and pinching it while pullinh you towards the tent forming in his jeans <3 but overall i think he would just be a sweetheart. he has his insecurities both from being a single dad, and of his own body. and while he knows insecurities dont ever go away,, he vows to always make you feel loved and safe while being around him and his daughter
there r tears in my eyes MOONBEAR WHAT HAVE U DONE
this is so fuckin cute and comforting i don't even have anything to add im just 🧍🏻‍♀️.. 🥹🥹
CHUBBY WUBBIES I'M CRYING I CAN JUST IMAGINE HIM SAYING THIS WHILE RUBBING UR BELLJES N MAKING U LAUGH I AM DISTRAUGHT
he'd be so happy his daughter loves u just as much as he does like they are ur biggest fans always hovering around u n rubbing ur belly and giving u hugs oh this is sickeningly cute. the huening household is a belly rub household idc it's true.
he finds so much happiness and comfort in the fact that his daughter identifies with you and thinks you're beautiful, just as he thinks too. he deffo thinks you're a good influence on her and you treat her so well and so softly he probably wants to wife you up within the first 5 minutes of you meeting her LMFAO
there's also something so special to me about perv kai but specifically perv kai who's just so sickeningly in love and obsessed with u and full of love that he can't help but get excited at every peek of pudge~ or the way your thick thighs sit just right in your jeans like he's just so whipped !! all he wants to do is push you onto the bed and worship your body and show you how beautiful u are :(
he's a love making extraordinaire fr !! no quick fucks around here he is taking his time and pouring every ounce of love in his body out to make u feel good !!
he'd just be the biggest ball of love and tenderness in the world, he'd do anything to make sure his daughter is happy - and the same goes for you once you come along. his sweet pudgy girls :')
this just cheered me up so much my soul is soft now thank u moon i am significantly happier than I was 10 minutes ago when I hadn't read this LMAO
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snapscube · 1 year
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hihihi ok. so i’m in my last of us fixation mode and i’m being extra silly about it but i NEED to know what’s ur current opinion on the last of us hbo?? also i logged onto tumblr and saw a lot of rly good points defending joel’s final choice and i remember during the last of us pt1 playthrough u had differing opinions so i wonder if u think the show’s differences affect that at all? btw i LOVE ur stuff and cannot wait until u do last of us pt 2 wehehehehe!!! anyway besides all that i just want u to know that u are one of the things in my life that makes it easier to get up in the morning
I still feel exactly the same about the final events as I always have! The show didn't change it for me, and actually being able to remove myself from being in control of the situation in the game and actually just watch the events play out in show format solidified that further. The connection I have to Joel as a player when I play the game really helps me understand his perspective more and stomach the goal a bit more easily, but without that immediate intimacy it puts into perspective for me how kinda monstrous the whole thing is from every angle. Obviously I don't ever lose that sympathy for him, and I never stop understanding why, because the whole point of the conflict is that no one is in the right. Ultimately I think the damning thing for every single person involved is that they removed Ellie's agency from the equation, and I still stand by that. They all should have talked to her. They should have told her the truth. All she wants is for her immunity to matter, and I believe that they may have been surprised at the lengths she's willing to go in order to make a difference, whether it's ultimately the right call or not.
I don't know what arguments you've seen exactly in defense of Joel's choice, but personally I don't really agree with one I see a lot and I'd expect will pop up again now that the show is over, which is the whole "well who's to say a vaccine would have worked anyway?????" angle. I think, while reasonable from a meta standpoint, completely ignores the intended framing of the story in order to more conveniently justify a protagonist that the story through its entire runtime is trying to tell you is a little bit of a piece of shit. It's pretty clear and safe to assume that the ultimate intent here is that... yes, the vaccine WOULD have worked. Maybe not in the sweeping way they hoped, but Ellie's sacrifice absolutely would have done something. The whole moral dilemma of the situation really does not make any sense unless you give them that as fact imo.
So then, assuming that is true, you have to wrestle with the idea that Joel is willing to take down the entirety of humanity for Ellie. And not really for Ellie, because none of this is what Ellie wanted. The game AND the show QUITE LITERALLY SPELL OUT for us that Ellie really really really does not want to go back to Jackson without finishing what they started, regardless of the cost. Joel's reasons for saving Ellie, while understandable, are ultimately selfish and rooted in his own trauma and having just seen the light at the end of his grieving over Sarah. Again, incredibly sympathetic, but it's selfish. I know we like to joke as much, but Ellie IS NOT his daughter. They share a similar bond after everything they go through, but by the end of the game you can already feel Ellie pulling away from that notion because she's starting to realize Joel doesn't have the same commitment to the idea of her immunity being meaningful as she does, they're only a few miles away and he's already asking her to give up and go back to Jackson with him.
Then, of course, I think what ultimately damns Joel in my eyes on a poetic/storytelling level is his decision to lie to Ellie after it's all over. That's the nail in the coffin for me. It would be one thing if he said "they were going to kill you on that operating table without even telling you what was going on and I couldn't let them do that", but instead he lies to her to make sure she's still able to see him as the father he desperately wants to be again. It doesn't change anything. He tells her her worst fear has come to pass: her immunity, this unexplainable thing that has taken so many of her loved ones from her, is completely useless. Not only that, but now even more people are dead. Including Marlene, who's known her since birth. The only thing his lie changes is the fact that he's responsible for it all.
Anyway, part of what I love most about The Last of Us Part II is how it follows up on these threads and you may be pleased to know that I actually just started streaming the game last night after the HBO finale premiered cause I was so pumped up I couldn't wait any longer haha. So you'll be seeing VODs for that soon :)
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girljeremystrong · 4 months
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cat!!!! hi!!!! i want to get my non-reader friend into reading. he probs won't read anything over 150-200 pages so i'm trying to find an entertaining short book. all the short books i love are essays or philosophy or things i think he could like in time but would probably find dry at the start (especially cause he hasn't read anything recreationally for years). so im at a loss and wanted to know if u have any recs for short books that are page-turners/easy to read <3 hope ur having a good day beloved xo
hello my love <3
first of all sorry for replying late but i was sleeping and then i had to go to the BANK but anyway i have compiled a little list of books i loved that are under 200 pages. there are lots of classics that are shorter and i've included them even though i think some of those would be stuff that you or him might have already read!
contemporary fiction
open water by caleb azumah nelson: THIS IS SUCH A GREAT ONE that i can't imagine anyone not enjoying. truly. it's a love story between two black young british people but it's far from a tiktok romance novel. it explores themes of race and masculinity and vulnerability and it's soft but also very real and it's wonderful. honestly if i had to only recommend one it would be this!
small things like these by claire keegan: very good and quietly hopeful story of a man in a little irish town at christmas. everybody was talking about this book last year and with good reason, it's great.
whereabouts by jhumpa lahiri: the story of a woman in the town she lives in and how it can change in a year. this is an introspective one but jhumpa lahiri is a genius so it reads very easily and it's so wonderfully written.
interpreter of maladies by jhumpa lahiri: short stories, mainly dealing with indian characters in the US. they feel absolutely universal while teaching something about culture and belonging. won the pulitzer in 1999.
how not to drown in a glass of water by angie cruz: a woman narrates the story of her life to her counselor who's trying to find her a job. it's funny and hopeful and memorable. the author is so great (she wrote another one called dominicana that is a masterpiece although is longer!)
kim jiyoung, born 1982 by cho nam-joo: the story of a new mum living in korea that explores the estrangement of being a woman and having to give up so much. it's definitely more serious but it's written very well and it doesn't feel heavy at all.
swimming in the dark by tomasz jedrowski: this one is incredible. it's the story of a polish university student who falls in love with another man in the 1980s in an obviously very repressive society. so he's in love but he wants protest and he can't ignore the struggles and the disparity around him. it's very political but also lyrical and tender.
someone who will love you in all your damaged glory by raphael bob-waksberg: okay this breaks 200 pages at 256 pages long. but it's so good. everybody would love this. it's by the creator of bojack horseman if that can be an incentive somehow. it's a collection of stories that are so unconventional and bizarre in the most incredible way. they are funny stories and sweet and absurd and sad. i really loved reading this book.
infinite country by patricia engel: the story of a colombian family dealing with deportation. it's from the pov of elena who is the eldest daughter. it's a beautiful book that deals with very real struggles and it does it beautifully.
classics
recitatif by toni morrison: very short story (about 20 pages) but so clever and so well written of course. it's the story of two women who have known each other since they were children. they lose touch and then they reconnect when they're older. one of them is white and one of them is black, but the author never tells you which is which. so it's a great story about race.
the cossacks by leo tolstoy: the story of a man who loses his fortune and retires to a cossack village. it's very russian... but it's very well written and definitely explores some of the themes that tolstoy will then explore in war and peace like the purpose of life and war and his love of nature.
white nights by fyodor dostoevsky: again very russian. but less than 100 pages long! it's the story of a young man living in st petersburg who one day meets a girl and they become fast friends. they both feel like outcasts, so together they feel like they can belong. it is actually great.
giovanni's room by james baldwin: lots of baldwin's books (both his fiction and non-fiction) are short ones actually. this one is the story of a man in paris who, while waiting for his girlfriend to get there, falls in love with a man. it's an incredible story dense with love and passion and shame and it is wonderful.
the old man and the sea by hemingway: old man tries to catch big fish after not being able to catch any fish for a long time. but also so much more than that and nobody made me read this in school so i only read it at 25 and it blew me away. everybody told me it would be so sad but i think it's actually hopeful and a little bit it is a story about community? and it tells you that there's people waiting for you to come back.
of mice and men by steinbeck: again i read it in my mid twenties and loved it. it's a gut punch. it's about two men clinging together as laborers in california. it deals with what it means to feel powerless in a tyrant world.
franny and zooey by salinger: one of the best books ever i think. franny and zooey are brother and sister and they are two young people experiencing existential doubts. it's a book about family and about growing into adults and about the alienation that comes with that. salinger knows how to write young people in a crisis so well and how to make it engaging and entertaining.
having compiled this list i now see that my tastes definitely are oriented in a certain way but i hope at least one of these can work for your friend. i tried to include all the shorter books that i have read and loved and i think that generally anyone could enjoy them, but you never know!
hope you're having a great day too!!! mwah!!
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nottiinrosso · 5 months
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um i need more convent au IMMEDIATELY (pretty pls 😳)
🫡🫡🫡 ur wish is my command (nsfw-ish below the cut)
((in ref 2: aus i havent written a word of))
lesbian convent au (think the little hours). carlos is a disgruntled eldest daughter whose been sent to the convent to honour god. dont get me wrong she is VERY devout and prays 5 times a day like a good cath. shes just like. a bit upset because she'd grown up dreaming of a big wedding with a strappingly handsome young lord chosen for her by the king and she would get to run a household the way she  wanted to etc etc but NOW there's a civil war because people like? aren't happy? crazy. 
also every single other nun in this convent is like. a terrible catholic by medieval standards and like. smokes medieval weed and fucks lesbically and can read. except for like. that weird english girl who was sent here to marry a prince but then disgraced her family in a very scandalous way that noone will talk about. she's very pious (now she is, snickers sister liam and makes a weird v with her fingers and mimes licking it)
Anyway one day she and sister george are out in the woods gathering sage and rosemary for tonights dinner (one slay about being in the convent is that at least their wartime soup isnt like. just leather. yet.)
anyway theyre out foraging in the woods and there's a lovely little clearing and omg those look like MUSHROOMS and all of a sudden a horse bursts through the treeline whinnying and nickering in distress and OH. its because there's a very attractive knight bleeding out on its back.
they hurry to guide the horse back to the convent where mother superior is like omg quick sister carlos get the herbs or whatever and then carlos is undressing the handsome rebel knight and vowing to double whatever confessional punishment she gets later for oggling him except. 
EXCEPT. the very handsome guy is in fact…a very handsome NOT a guy!!! carlos is blushing and like. oo-ering about how this discovery does nothing to assuage her frazzled and curious feeling in her [redacted] 
bruised and bleeding ser charles is like...pls....keep my secret... because obviously being a she/they lesbian is NOT exactly legal in medieval waves haphazardly at a map of ye olde europe 
and sister carlos is like omg um. yeah of course. and then is the only one to change her bandages for AGES bc its winter and charles isnt HEALING and charles tells her about why the old gaurd (including carloses dad et al) are destroying the lives of ordinary ppl and feudalism is BAD and also all of the nuns have a betting pool as to whether or not carlos is getting her world rocked everytime she slips into charles's quarters
they let it slip and sister carlos is sosooso affronted like NO i would NEVER betray my vows like that but she's blushing as she thinks about the curve of charles's breast under the bindings and the moles on their neck and the way she flushes pink when she's talking animatedly about how they want to run her sword through carlos's second cousin and brother in law 
anyway she's telling all of this 2 da priest in confession like. everyday bc she's so worried about the level of impurity (horniness) of her thoughts except father/prior vasseur is a notorious little gossip and gets regularly blasted with the products of sister estebans herb garden if u get what i mean
so obviously everyone knows about charles being Not a Man which kind of works out great because carlos's dad and his army are passing through otw back from a great battle (they lost) and charles has to hide as a nun (and fucking hates it) and drags carlos to all the girlboss activities that she's been avoiding they have lots of fun and almost kiss several times and carlos goes to confession again and father vasseur says are you fucking kidding ME RN??!?! just have a wank and figure out how u feel about it 
and sister carlos is like no omg thats a sin but also now that u bring that up i DID have a life-altering experience pleasuring myself to the thought of soft lips and strong arms and the ridges of a six pack with a massive scar running thru it and i feel like. um. …
also there is like a very big and emotional revelation for carlos about religion and sexuality and gender and how she doesnt actually have to hide herself and how she can wish more for herself that what shes grown up believing but also if that IS what she wants why should she be ashamed of wanting it with who she wants etc etc
anyway blah blah blah stuff happens they have crazy insane lesbian sex carlos cums so hard she thinks if this was like. a real sin god himself would not have just flashed before her eyes, so.
the other sisters are like omg slay finally u uptight slag and invite them to the weekly orgy and carlos is like. er, maybe too much all at once but then sees the village witchbon put her whole hand inside sister george and she's like oh um. maybe we can stay :)
and THEN theres a Dramatic Event and charles is like ive been here long enough its late spring i need to go fight with my compatriots and carlos is like i literally cannot live without u and father vasseur is like slay what if i married u because TECHNICALLY i dont know that charles is Not A Man and theres a gay wedding at the convent (i am definitely NOT using this au to Process Things) and then carlos follows charles around the country like a loyal lady wife to her lord husband and they slay so hard (literally) and win the war and then charles becomes the medieval MP or benevolent lord or whatever of the constituency that includes the convent and they adopt some kids orphaned by the war so carlos gets her big phat household and they are all besties and happily ever after <3
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hajimeskitten · 2 years
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divorced iwa!
when the two of you drop your kid off to one another it’s always some sort of chemistry and Hajime ask if you could stay for dinner with them.. and you don’t try to refuse because you were just gonna go home and watch some cheesy sitcom shows. You get dinner started your daughter sits in front of the tv watching disney movies.. you miss this actually, being with Iwa he’s all you’ve ever known since highschool.. honestly the two of you got a divorce because the lack of communication, both of you were busy plus the baby, instead of you two fixing the situation you just thought it’d be best to separate at the time.
As your cutting the food up you kind of go on autopilot
“do you feel like we should’ve stayed married” iwa’s voice snaps you out of your trance.. “well.. yeah sometimes i really wish we stayed together i miss you so much hajime” before he could say anything your daughter comes rushing in the kitchen wanting to know if the food is ready, her big eyes starring up at the two of you .. “of course princess go set the table up with mommy” iwa gives her a kiss on the forehead before she runs off dragging you along with her… Hajime fixes everyone plates and brings them to the table .. your daughter starts the conversation “how was work today daddy did the big volleyball guys scare you” she asks…both you and Iwa chuckled at her “no princess i train them to become big and scary” he growls at her to shake her up a bit “woah daddy you’re cool” she lights up giggling. she stuffs her mouth with rice balls before turning around in her chair to look at the tv across the room.. “how was your day beautiful” iwa grabs hold to your hand.. “it was ok i had a lot going on today but i managed” you respond.. by the time dinner is over your daughter’s head is trying to stay vertical but she keeps titling over from her sleepiness. Hajime picks her up and takes her to her bed where she sleeps peacefully for the rest of the night.. then, he comes up behind you while your washing the dishes giving your shoulders a nice massage trying to relax you because you’ve been tense for a while now he can see it. “why don’t you get some rest beautiful” you know Hajime means well. “ y/n i don’t want you stressing you know if you need a break you need to let me know i promise i’ll take our princess for a few extra days” .. you turn around to meet his eyes before kissing his lips tasting his vanilla chapstick “i’m not tense that type of way hajime” .. it takes a while for him to comprehend it before his eyes widening.. are you saying you’re sexually fustrated? the two of you haven’t had sex since the divorce.. and he’s has sex with women after.. so are u saying you aren’t having sex?
hajime has you spread across the bed legs wide, face on perfect display for him.. “if i’d known you haven’t fucked anyone after me, i would’ve came to fuck this pretty pussy when you needed me to doll” he kisses the tears on your cheek, rubbing the sweaty hair out of your face “focus pretty girl i don’t need you passing out for cumming on daddy’s dick” one of his hands cups your face and the goes to play with your clit.. you haven’t felt this in so long.. the blitz of cumin “only want u daddy fuck me please please” you love how he pays attention to your body, knows which spots to touch to get you going “missed you too baby never got to tell you earlier.. miss you and miss this pussy.. my pussy baby mine” in this moment you realize either way it goes you’ll spend the rest of your life with Iwaizumi Hajime “give me another baby please” that was like music to his ears he could give you however many kids you want aslong as “gonna be my pretty wife again first?” he’s asking while he ruts in you “ yes yes gona be ur wife again m’ bout to cum daddy” in the whole world you’re the only woman he needs “ gonna cum in this pussy make u full again” as he pushes deep into you to let his cum flow out you feel the sensation of his cock head touching your cervix pushing you over the edge.
“did you mean it you’ll be my wife again” he’s pulling you close to his chest just wants to stay like this forever “i mean it with everything i’ll be your wife”
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theflyinvelaris · 1 month
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Okay wow I had never seen this before and GOD do i LOVE IT!! 😍😭🥹🤩🫠🤧🤤
Art done by inkfaeart on IG! 🌷
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Aelin + Rowan’s daughter & Feyre + Rhysand’s son 💝
(pls ignore blossom in the gif above, i am easily buttercup in this scenario. thank you, i digress)
Okay for starters, wtf is going on
why cant i breathe ?????
HELLO NYX??? Nice to meet you 😭😭😭😵😵🤮🤮🤮 (throwing up because omg grown nyx has me SO EMOTIONAL for some reason)
okay okay okay but he kinda looks like feyre to me no seriously
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Tell me you don’t see it!! Their cute lil pinched noses! That is mother and son right there.
portrait of the high lady (above) by madschofield 🌷
defender of the rainbow (below) by neural_art_v 🌷
LOVE. THE. FREAKIN. DETAILS. In this thing
like i really am so sorry, but the feysand child is serving feyre’s face, and that bod (AND WINGS‼️‼️‼️) is (are) rhysand bb
love that
of course they make pretty babies
AND LETS TALK ABOUT ROWAELIN DAUGHTER!!
Because wow i dont even know her and yet i alr know i would never DREAM of getting on her bad side
SO COOL that she has aelin’s fire like fuck yes
thank god it continued on
(honestly i choose to believe that aelin’s power did eventually come back— gradually, soooo slowly, and def not to the extent that it was before, but she gets it back 😏)
a follow up question for you (rowaelin offspring):
DO YOU KNOW LIDIA CERVOS IS SHE UR COUSIN ARE U RELATED ANSWER ME!!!!!! DID U KNOW SHE NAMED HER CHILD AFTER YOUR, LIKE, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT (?) GRANDFATHER?! AND ALSO SHE WIELDS FIRE LIKE YOU. BUT SHE CAN BECOME AN ENTIRE BALL OF FLAME.
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anyways…
I also love that rowaelin’s daughter has tats because of COURSE that is so fitting
i feel like they (the ‘rents— rowan and aelin 😌) would def use it as a bonding thing with their kids; like in training with discipline and commitment, use it as rowan/aelin/and the cadre did for grief and representation, maybe also to wear success/honor ???
but who r we kidding
they also think it’s so fun and def get a kick out of their kids’ whining and fussing once rowan starts
and they just love tattoos
and everyone and their mom can appreciate rowan’s art i mean the male is a genius
also how special that they’d get to tattoo their whole family CUTE
ROWAELIN 🍾 ROWAELIN 👏🏽 ROWAELIN 😻
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aelin and rowan art done by mellendraws 🌷
Are they not just the most wholesome and perfect and beautiful relationship that’s ever come from sjm???
I actually cant for sure claim that.
💀
I think I would need…
A couple of weeks, LOTS of sticky notes, google docs, a big ‘ol joint, and a thorough reread of all the books
…BEFORE i could make such a declarative statement
🤍
MY FAVES FROM EACH SERIES, that I can manage. Take it as you will. Behold, my fave SJM couples (in *no* ranking order):
ACOTAR = feyre + rhysand
You dont understand. I would sell my soul to discover their relationship for the first time again. THE WAY HIS LOVE FOR HER CHANGED MY LIFE. I literally have said out loud before that if Rhysand was a real person, I would quickly single-fy myself. 😀🤡 i wish i was kidding. Feyre is a SLAY idc what anyone says, i think she’s fucking badass.
TOG = aelin + rowan
I think about these two ALL. THE. TIME. Talking to customers at work? Thinking about Rowan *biting* Aelin that first time. Brushing my teeth? Reminiscing on their reunion in QoS. Making a sandwich? “Where is my wife?!” I, um, I am obsessed. They make me NAUSEOUS with envy. So much devoted, unconditional love. Stfu. They are perfect.
CC = bryce + hunt
of course these two are my faves is anyone surprised?????(tho… ruhn and lidia sit at a comfortable #2). I love them. Their growing friendship throughout the whole series makes me ache inside. They just love each other. And know each other. And would do, and DID do, anything for the other. Hunt adores the fucking shit out of Bryce even when she’s driving him crazy. And Bryce would take on the entire world and then some if it meant defending him. LOVE. LOVE LOVE. LOVE.
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Okay lmao what was meant to be a “hey! Look at this cool fanart” turned into “so here are my favorite sjm pairings” bitch wth
🤡🤦🏽‍♀️
my bad, yall! But just appreciate the art!
gooooooodnight and goooodbye
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cringefailcabitha · 2 months
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sorry i dont have tumblr (i only use it to stalk cabby art LOL) and idk if youll answer this but i am known as the cabby yapper by my friends so i wanted to bring this up to someone who thinks about her as deeply as me
do you ever like think about how terrifying mephones plan for a season 4 would have been to cabby specifically? out of all of the final 3 she has been hurt by the game the most (with no closure mind you unlike balloon), i think having to go through everything again would genuinely break her. even if shes less misunderstood the game still puts pressure onto her to be a facts machine, a strategist. when shes literally the kindest person ever, trying to comfort silver (despite his constant mistreatment of her), and sacrificing almost every post merge challenge for the sake of somebody else (i.e giving up her inani-mate for yinyang, sacrificing herself in episode 13 to put herself on the line with yinyang even if she was manipulating them out of obligation, AND EPISODE 15 SHE DEFINITELY WOULD HAVE WON IF SHE HAD USED HER FILES and completely foiling blueberrys plan, but she didnt because she cared about bot)
in the episode when shes reading the file, the screen actually starts shaking a little. implying she was absolutely horrified at what she was reading. and she had every single right, especially considering what shes gone through.
the other thing that’s absolutely insane to me is the fact that this information was conveyed to her via a file. aka her disability aid, something she relies on. that mustve been horrifying to see something so person to her used against her in such a way.
sorry i regurgitated a lot of this info from the shut i put on tiktok. im just genuinely crazy about cabby
ALSO UR A CABTUBE TRUTHER IM LITERALLY SO IN LOVE WITH CABTUBE i am lesbian cabbys number one truther and see her shipped with men far too much. but like i was so hoping test tube would at least apologize or something. it irritates me how they can make one sided silvercandle canon but they cant show us anymore one-sided cabtube. just make her blush or something. but tbh it made me emo when test tube (and pb bc they nodded) oraised cabby, it made me genuinely crazy.
also unshout out to everyone bullying cabby this episode genuinely why were half of them so mean please let silver Die slowly and painfully. also if lifering (i hc him and cabby as father and daughter, like u cannot convince me lifering and floory arent her dads) switched up on cabby i will personally take his soul like the grim reaper he will be seeing these hands.
sorry feel free to ignore this!
-🍭
😭 I was for real thinking about that earlier today like hasn’t she been through enough… Yes Cabby is a very competitive person but after everything that happened to her in this season and the fact that she’s Still in a vulnerable place right now I don’t think she would find it particularly enjoyable to not receive a prize and then immediately be thrust into a new season of competition— and as a team leader, no less.
Test Tube thanking her for apologising was,,, weird to me. I literally rolled my eyes. It gave me the impression that she (and Paintbrush) think Cabby *should* be apologising to everyone for making some of them uncomfortable? And I just don’t agree. As polite as it is, I think it’s way overstating her actions. Like… why is it “right” to apologise to the entire jury for her past behaviour making “some of them uncomfortable” pre episode 7 when she had never even worked with half of them when said behaviour was supposedly occurring? It’s so frustrating to me, like… how much smaller does she have to make herself for them to be satisfied? I don’t get it.
And of course, “making them uncomfortable” thing again comes back to her files. It’s basically impossible for her not to internalise the idea that keeping information is bad because she Might get things wrong (which. Is another thing. As far as we’ve seen, her writing is almost always correct, barring Bot which is an obvious outlier, and erroneously attributing Suitcase turning on her alliance in season 2 to Balloon’s manipulation.) In episode 15 too, aka the worst Test Tube episode to me, she says Cabby thinks everyone is just “what she happened to write down” as if Cabby is careless and doesn’t do her due diligence when writing her files. Which to me directly contradicts her calling Cabby’s Fan file “impeccable” and having “so many notes” back in episode 2?
And as for Test Tube’s assertion that Cabby would turn on her the moment she stopped being useful, and that she treated everyone like chess pieces on her little board, it really felt like her jumping to conclusions because of what happened with Fan. Because she has done that to no other member of the Pinkers. And there is way less manipulation on Cabby’s part in the show than Test Tube’s irritation would have it seem.
I’m not sure if the writers intentions were to make Cabby as manipulative as Silver from the beginning, but if it was and that’s why this is all going on, well. Mission status isn’t exactly a success to me— the only manipulation she does is in episode 2, when she tries to get Bot to vote out Fan (and presumably the rest of the team as well), and episode 7, where she makes a big show of approaching Silver about how it would be better for him to stack the ice cream because, knowing him to be lazy and careless, it would increase the odds of him screwing up the challenge and make it easier to vote him out.
I’m at least relieved that Test Tube seems to have been thinking about things whenever Cabby says something self-effacing or seems to be nice, because it gives me hope that she may finally realise she’s been taking it too far and maybe Cabby will get an apology, but the fact that she’s been just sitting on it for like 3 episodes by now is killing me,
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xxbl00ds0akeds3raxx · 3 months
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Hello dear Seraphina. Thank you for all your best wishes :-) I'm looking forward to my retirement I'm all honesty. It's time to spend some time on myself, and on my dear husband, of course.... When I go retire my daughter will be visiting us for the summer... I'm very thankful for the internet to be able to so easily keep in touch with her, but I won't deny I miss her.
As for you dear girl, don't think like that... It might seem hopeless but you mustn't lose hope. When you do that's when they win.... You're a clever woman, and quick and skillful on your feet... You know... If you're planning to leave town, I can provide you some additional financial support.
One condition though. That Kylar is bad news. Trust me on this please... I know. I know I must sound like a prude old bat screeching in your ear but please believe me. I know.
If you stay away from him I'll provide you with 300 dollars a month. The details we can discuss in private messaging. I'll be waiting on your reply.
Ps. I love your drawing :-) you have a lot of potential and it's very characterful.... I hope you'll be able to pursue developing your skills in art in the future... I believe in you :-)
-Camille M.
of course!! ♪(´▽`) time 4 urself & family sounds wonderful!!! also, u have a daughter?1 how old is she!!! actually- nvm that! u seem like a great mum 。゚(TヮT) ik i dont know u that well, but w/ the way u give me advice? tha prospect of keeping in touch w her even when ur far away?? mmm... ur a gem </3
u r just too kind !!! umm i rlly appreciate ur offer but i'm fine financially <33 u don't sound like an old bat, i truly appreciate ur concerns but i have everything under control ^.^ things w/ kylar are good!! not just saying that bcoz he found my acc, i'm being honest ^^ we r working on it— he wants 2 keep me safe like u want me 2 be safe & idk. i won't delve into it rn
Ps. thannnkieesss :D he was so excited 2 see the drawing he practically cried in class xD... he has big feelings that r rlly . overwhelming & i get that bcoz i do 2. i will send you more drawingz as i make them :D!!
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bcofl0ve · 5 months
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I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure the age of consent in Germany 1959 was 14. What are ur opinions on people saying elvis groomed her? And what do u think about people saying they hate elvis even more now after watching the Priscilla movie? From what I’ve heard the movie lacks a lot of information. And I like Priscilla but I’m not very fond of the movie because it (apparently) has scenes where he’s shown as abusive, when he threw a chair in her DIRECTION. But I’m not sure if it shows when Priscilla threw a vase AT him. I just want I bit more of ur opinions because every other one is people being biased to Priscilla
respectfully, it doesn’t matter if he wasn’t breaking age of consent laws. y’all know i personally don’t choose to call him the g word out of respect of priscilla not calling him that but. she was *so* young. even if his friends in the memphis mafia were concerned about how young she was and how it would look. it’s such a complicated thing for me to talk about because i love elvis and don’t want to “wish away” the reason we got lisa marie, and therefore riley. but on its face, it was wrong. i don’t think it makes me a bad fan of any of the above parties to be honest about that. I think hell would freeze over before i’d let my hypothetical 14 year old daughter gallivant around with a 25 year old and *her* parents boggle my fucking mind sometimes. but again- i can’t in good conscience wish away why we got lisa. so it’s just. a lot of complicated feelings. 
of course the movie lacks information, if they pulled every little detail from her book it would be hours and hours and hours long. it’s legitimately not possible to include everything, elvis 2022 didn’t either! no adaptation ever will. 
as for the chair thing it really confuses me when the same people (not you! speaking generally) who make jokes about how violent he was re “i’d let him do whatever he wanted!”, jokes about his love of guns etc turn around and act scandalized at the suggestion that his anger issues got taken out on women too.
priscilla is NOT the only girl he was with to talk in blunt terms about his anger issues. anita wood went even more ‘blunt’ then priscilla did with the chair story and said elvis physically shoved her against a door when she (anita) confronted him about having an affair after she found a letter from priscilla. and went on to say that he begged her not to tell anyone saying how young she was. i think he was a deeply traumatized and troubled man and that his anger issues had roots in all that. but a reason doesn’t = an excuse. 
i can love him and still hold space for not excusing away bad behavior. it’s possible. i’m tired of people acting like it’s not. 
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twotangledsisters · 6 months
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Hey, love ur stories! Can u tell me more about Fred and Ari and their relationship when they were young and started dating? Also when is ur fanfic about Fred and Ari releasing?? I just love Fred and Aris relationship and u write they amazingly!
Oh my goodness, thank you so much and, of course I would absolutely love to talk about Ari and Fred's relationship!
But first I will address your second question!
The Adventurer and the Prince, the prequel fic focusing on Frederic and Arianna's relationship, has no planned release date. But I do have a plan for how it'll release! I plan to start publishing as soon as I have a few full arcs and release the chapters on an arc based schedule.
So what that means is that there may be weekly updates until an arc is complete and then a hiatus of however long is needed! I'll make sure arcs don't end on cliffhangers and are a sort of-self contained mini stories with an overarching plot similar to Tangled Sisters during Within the Walls of Corona.
I am really excited about this fic and recently I've been really wanting to work on it! It's just important I prioritise Tangled Sisters as it'd be easy for me to fall behind on daily updates if I didn't.
The first arc is just one scene away from being complete and it's named the Prince and the Puppy.
Which is a great way for me to move into talking about their relationship!
I know in the show, technically Arianna was also royalty from birth because she competed in the Contest of the Crowns, however, it was a minor detail and for this AU Arianna has already stated she married into royalty. A change that I think helps Arianna as a character understand her daughters, who are learning the ways of royalty later in life, but I also found it made for a funner backstory.
Arianna first meets Frederic when she is requested to take a very special delivery to the Crowned Prince of Corona. A puppy! Her firsts impressions of the prince are that he's pretty stuck up and definitely not someone she wishes to engage with.
But then she sees something she shouldn't have (not going to go into detail for spoilers!) and her opinion of him changes ever so slightly. She feels a sense of obligation to help but isn't sure how until she sees an opening for a riding instructor for the crowned prince who apparently is completely useless at horse-riding!
So that is how they start out! Arianna trying (and failing) to teach Frederic how to ride a horse while also trying to be a friend to him. Frederic at first is wary of her and thinks her foolish, but eventually he comes to appreciate how genuine she is.
Frederic's father is not at all in favour of Frederic dating a commoner, especially one who came from outside of Corona! He tries to cause trouble for the couple, but instead these attempts just end up teaching Frederic to stand up to him more.
It's planned to be a pretty slow development, from not enemies but certainly two people with very different opinions and ways of life, to friends, to lovers.
There are miscommunications on both sides with Arianna not knowing how to behave within a royal environment. And Frederic, not really knowing how to talk to someone who isn't a servant or high-ranking nobility, neither of which quite match up with Arianna.
Frederic learns to be more open about his emotions, learns it's okay to not always be this imposing presence that demands respect.
Arianna learns how to be a more regal and imposing presence when handling certain types of company.
It's a lot of sweet moments, stuff like Arianna asking Frederic to head to the store to get some sugar because she's baking and has run out, and he comes back with an entire sack because that's what they have in the palace kitchens.
Frederic having his entire schedule messed up because Arianna didn't realise it was her job to keep track of lesson time for the prince.
Perhaps one of the cuter moments is when Arianna sees Frederic's room in the palace and it's just... boring. All white walls, royal paintings, very formal. She asks about the decoration and he explains it's what a prince's room should look like and that anything out of place gets thrown away so he knows to keep it pristine.
So Arianna clears a corner of her home (she rents a place in Corona Village) for Frederic to decorate as he pleases.
Basically, the early stages of their relationship is Frederic, bringing Arianna along to regal events like balls, and dinner; and Arianna, in turn, dragging Frederic to outdoor picnics and hikes! A, 'here, let me show you my world' sorta thing with both being patient and wanting to make the other one happy.
I cannot wait to share this fic with you!
Thank you so much for the ask and the excuse to ramble on a bit about them! I'm so glad you enjoy how I write them as they're one of my parent-couples in media ever! ❤️❤️❤️
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Since you said any AUs... what about a 'nothing bad happens' Pokemon AU? I'm unsure if you did one of these already. People don't die/murdered, sure there might not be 'perfect' lives (Like Zenitsu still being an orphan/adopted, Inosuke growing up in the wild, etc) but Tanjiro and Ayame do still have their families. Still in the same professions, but their families want them to be happy and go on a ~adventure~ Cue Pokemon shenanigans, meet the Gym leaders(hashiras), and fight evil organizations(demons).
A sadder one... Tokyo Ghoul AU. Who would be a ghoul, is someone a 'half-ghoul'? Are they all human... or is someone lying?
;3c
a pokemon au!!!!! much like anyone my age, i too have had my pokemon phase. that being said, the only pokemon game i ever played extensively was pokemon red, and i haven't watched a pokemon episode in over a decade. so...... the pokemon i assign everyone will most likely be first gen. bc that's who i am as a person.
Pokemon!AU
- i love the idea that ayame and tanjirou still remain as blacksmith and charcoal burner ngl
- u would expect both kids to choose charmander as their starter pokemon but nope! well, tanjirou does end up with a charmander, but ayame surprisingly chooses a squirtle
- or maybe not so surprising. akihiko had chosen the same.
- but ayame finds a vulpix all alone not far from okutama and ends up catching it. she has both of them out of their pokeballs, so she kinda has two companions that accompany her on the journey
- do gym leaders take apprentices? probably not, but ayame ends up taking a shine to kyoujurou anyway and he has a ninetales, so he helps her with training her vulpix a lot. she jokingly calls him shishou at first, but then it kinda stuck
- ayame and tanjirou set off on their journey at different times but end up meeting in asakusa anyway
- i can totally see zenitsu with a pikachu, but like ash's where they don't really get along at first. eventually their relationship kinda evolves into a "i'm the only one allowed to bully them" kind of thing.
- yes, zenitsu has an all electric team. his adoptive grandfather is a former gym leader after all!
- does nezuko end up joining tanjirou on his journey? yeah sure why not. she loves fighting pokemon, although her starter pokemon is actually a poliwag. keep working hard with ur poliwag, nezuko-chan!
- much like nezuko, inosuke also prefers fighting pokemon, although his best friend is actually a cubone that he didn't fight. they just found each other in the mountains and decided to stick together. i guess because they both have masks????
- tanjirou... hm. it's hard to say what his team configuration is. there is, of course, charmander. but he also has a dratini, a pidgeotto that he evolved from a pidgey, and a growlithe. he caught an eevee in asakusa with ayame and his evolved into a vaporeon
- ayame's evolved into a flareon. she loves her flareon, but she was kinda hoping for a vaporeon too... not that she would ever admit it outloud.
- ayame's team configuration is very obviously water/fire. she wanted it to be more water, but fire pokemon are drawn to her. tanjirou always jokes it's because she's a blacksmith's daughter. she has a seel, a vulpix, a squirtle, and a ponyta. the only pokemon she has that comes as a total surprise is her gastly.
- kanao has a clefairy!!! and also an oddish that kanae helped her find. i can see her team configuration as a fairy/poison type.
- genya...... genya and a mankey. his mankey is the sweetest mankey ever and it's even funnier when genya has resting bitch face. he also has a slowpoke and a staryu, and it was both those pokemon that caught ayame's attention when they met
- who would be team rocket for these kids????? like... i know akaza and douma for sure. oh i guess that would fit. maybe they're just obsessed with tanyame's eevees turned flareon/vaporeon
Tokyo Ghoul!AU
- fjwndkwnwowk how did u know i was obsessed with tokyo ghoul once upon a time???? kaneki ken one of my og fave charas.........
- i can see nezuko as a man-made half ghoul the way kaneki was turned, which still leads to tanjirou being very concerned and overprotective of her
- the higuchis... ghouls. yeah. akihiko joins aogiri tree and ayame has her loyalties with anteiku. obviously their parents die at the hands of the ccg and it's all very tragic. she has four younger siblings to look after and it's very stressful for her
- ayame and tanjirou used to be neighbours, until her parents were killed and she was moved with her siblings under the protection of anteiku
- that being said, i guess the rengokus would be ghouls too, bc of course kyoujurou needs to look after ayame. and hey!!!! free younger sisters!!!!!! (that's not how it works, kyoujurou - )
- it does mean that tanjirou has to work very hard with the ccg, bc it's the only way he can keep up with his half ghoul sister and his full ghoul kinda childhood friend
- maybe there's some sort of trainee program for ccg hopefuls and that's where he meets zenitsu and inosuke
- inosuke... could be half ghoul ig. but like the way the quinx squad are half ghouls
- (i'm very behind on tokyo ghoul: re i'm sorry)
- i think most of the hashiras would be ghouls actually. the only exceptions would be sanemi and obanai
- genya is also a half ghoul though, but bc of experimentation bullshit that killed the rest of his siblings. that just means that sanemi is even more protective of genya - almost like a guard dog
- listen i could go on forever abt a tokyo ghoul au u have no idea
- anyway! kagune! the higuchis are ukaku-types, while nezuko has a bikaku type. inosuke is koukaku-type, and he can make two jagged blades from his forearms - they're shorter than most that will fully wrap around the arm, but that also means he can move faster because of it.
- the kochou sisters are rinkaku-types, although kanao's is actually an ukaku-type like the higuchis. the rengokus are bikaku-types, although their ideal form - so to speak - is a nine-tailed form (i'm pushing the rengoku nine-tails agenda idc). himejima is koukaku-type, same as genya, which is why genya trains with himejima almost exclusively. muichirou is rinkaku-type as well, same as giyuu. they work terribly together though. it's mostly personality incompatibility issues. tengen is ukaku-type, which means ayame also trains with him a lot - and neither of them are happy about it. mitsuri is a koukaku-type! and bc of her muscle density, she's also faster than most koukaku-types (obanai thinks that's so cool of her)
- i can see the idiots squad coming together c of a rogue ghoul that's making it seem like the attacks are from anteiku. very very dangerous for her sisters, and tanjirou just ends up coming along bc nezuko insists that they help her. also bc that's kinda his first case in the ccg training program, so zenitsu and inosuke stumble along the investigation as well.
- okay i have to stop now or i will end up writing a whole fic about this and now i want to aaaahhhh
- wait does this mean the twelve kizuki and muzan are actually the ccg...?
- (wait what if the ccg training program gives them quinques and tanjirou's somehow ends up with hanabi's.........)
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