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theemporium · 2 months

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[4.1k] as it would turn out, you were serious about your offer. and luke was serious about accepting. it was just going to take a while for his body to remember that this was a glorified business deal between friends and nothing more. and he was definitely okay with that. (smut)

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Stupidly, Luke didn’t think you were actually serious.

In his head, the whole thing felt like a fever dream, starting from the moment he spilled his drink all over you leading to the moment you blatantly asked him if he wanted you to take his virginity. It felt like one of those weird dreams that made you wake up confused and bleary and unsure what year it even was, one of those dreams that linger in the back of your head for a few days before you eventually forgot about it.

Luke would have bet money on the whole thing being a weird dream that was haunting him if it weren’t for the fact he woke up one morning, a few days after the party, with a message from you on his screen.

cherry🍒: on a scale from one to ten, how likely are you to spill your drink on me again?

cherry🍒: also my place or yours?

He stared at the messages for an embarrassingly long time, like he was staring at the proof the whole thing wasn’t some messed up dream in his head. Luke had spent the better part of the summer wondering what would have happened if he had asked for your number that night like Jack always teased him about, and now he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself with it being a reality.

hockey boy: i cannot promise anything

hockey boy: you are welcome to come to my place but jack will probably be here so…

hockey boy: he’s nosy

hockey boy: and annoying

Luke frowned at himself, finger hovering over the messages like he would have a chance to delete them before you saw them, all one after the other like he was twelve and didn’t care about double texting. Or quadruple texting. But before he could even try to hide his own embarrassment, you were typing again.

cherry🍒: my place it is then

cherry🍒: see you at seven ;)

He also didn’t care to admit how long he stared at that message before he dragged himself out of bed, trying to ignore the odd buzz itching under his skin. It wasn’t even nine in the morning and his head was already spinning.

Luke was thankful enough that it was still preseason, that there wasn’t a game he had to prepare for because he wasn’t even sure he could concentrate on anything but your messages. He had noted Jack giving him odd looks whilst they both got ready for training, giving him more space than usual as they moved around the flat (which was odd considering Jack was usually glued to his side and pissing him off whenever he got the chance).

However, the overbearing older brother role didn’t completely disappear.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, Jack.”

“You’re not sick or anything?”

“I’m literally fine.”

“Because we can tell the trainers—”

“Oh my god, dude,” Luke groaned, sinking further into the passenger seat as he shot his brother a look. “I’m fine. Calm down. You sound like Quinn.”

“Sorry for caring,” Jack retorted, his fingers tightening on the wheel before his shoulders sagged. “I’m your older brother and it’s your first year in the NHL. I just wanna make sure you’re doing alright, okay? The last thing I want is you having a shit rookie year.”

But the rest went unsaid. I don’t want you having a shit rookie year like I did.

Luke softened a little. “M’fine, promise. I’ll let you know when I need my big brother, okay?”

Jack sighed, a small smile on his face. “Okay.”

“Now, can you please shut up so I can sleep until we reach the rink?”

Jack snorted in response.

Though the conversation seemed to settle the worries his older brother had, Luke knew the other boys on the team were giving him the same looks of concern. It wasn’t as though he was playing badly, it was just very clear to everyone on the team—players, coaches and trainers alike—that Luke was distracted.

He had half the decency to be a little embarrassed when he overheard Jack reassure a few trainers that it was just rookie nerves.

But he felt restless, like he couldn’t quite keep still or focus on one thing. He felt like there was a buzz resonating through his bones, making him painfully aware of his plans later tonight. It was like an anxiety settled at the pit of his stomach, constant and foreboding and eating away at him as the minutes slowly dragged on through the day.

It was horrible and exhilirating in the weirdest possible way.

Luke had managed to make it through the rest of training, managed to avoid any stern talkings from the coach but unable to avoid the one from Nico in the locker room. It was sweet and awkward all at once, especially when the rest of the team were clearly listening in to make sure one of the new rookies were doing fine. The Devils were like a family and usually he would appreciate it.

However, he wasn’t exactly going to dive into the fact he was unfocused because a pretty girl offered to take his virginity to his captain or the rest of the team. He didn’t even want to imagine how that would have played out.

But it was sweet to know the team had his back, that they saw him as his own person rather than just Jack’s little brother who was tagging along.

…

Luke was relieved when you had mentioned him coming over to your place for your meeting later that day. Yet, what he failed to take into consideration was the fact his brother would still be a nosy shit on his whereabouts.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

Luke froze, keys gripped in his one hand and his phone in the other with your address already typed into Google Maps. He cleared his throat, trying to ignore his pounding heart as he turned to Jack with a (hopefully) nonchalant look on his face.

“Just going to hang out with some friends,” he replied vaguely with a shrug of his shoulders.

Jack paused, the spoonful of rice hovering just above his plate as he narrowed his eyes at Luke. “Is Nico hosting some rookie thing or something?”

“Uh no,” Luke cleared his throat.

Jack frowned. “Is there a team thing happening tonight that I forgot?”

“No, uh,” Luke shuffled awkwardly, feeling like an interrogation spotlight was shining on him. “It’s nothing with the team.”

Jack raised his brows. “But you don’t have other friends outside the team.”

Luke frowned. “Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” Jack retorted. “Unless you’re a part of a book club or something.”

He shot his brother a confused look. “Why would that be the only reason I have friends outside of the team?”

“I don’t know, college and shit,” Jack answered like that explained something.

“You’re such a weirdo,” Luke grumbled before he turned on his heel, making his way towards the door again.

“Are you at least gonna tell me when you’ll be back?” Jack called out to him, a hint of older brother overbearingness in his voice.

“Not sure.”

“I—” He heard Jack shuffle to stand up, his dinner now abandoned on the coffee table as he made his way over to Luke. The look of concern from earlier that morning was back on his face. “What dodgy shit are you up to that you can’t just tell me?”

“Jack,” Luke groaned, his voice tilting towards whiny as he let out a huff of annoyance. “I’m just going out to see a friend. Nothing dodgy, I promise.”

Jack didn’t say anything at first, just letting a slow smile spread across his face.

He frowned. “What?”

“Friend, singular,” Jack pointed out before he let out a bark of laughter, playfully punching his little brother’s arm. “Aw, little Lukey is sneaking out to hook up with a girl!”

His cheeks burned. “Shut up.”

“Fucking finally, I thought you were going celibate for your rookie year or something!” Jack continued to tease him. “Who is it? Do I know her? Oh my god, is it the girl from the party? Do you have a secret girlfriend?”

“I am leaving now!” Luke shoved him away, making a beeline for the door as Jack continued to cackle behind him.

“Do I need to give you a curfew?”

“Fuck off!”

He could still hear Jack laughing when he slammed the door shut behind him.

His body felt like it was on autopilot once he got behind the wheel. He followed the instructions spoken through his GPS, kept his concentration on the road—on the journey—rather than the destination. He tried to pretend like he was just going to hang out at a friend’s, that he was back in Michigan going to one of his teammate’s houses he didn’t live with.

It was fine.

Everything was fine.

Except for the fact that once he reached your door, closed fist hovering over the wood, he felt like his body was buzzing too fast to keep up with and all the pent up anxiety over the day was about to make him explode.

He didn’t even realise he had knocked until the door swung open and you stood on the other side, grinning at him like it was a normal Sunday evening. You were dressed cosy, casual even. Just a pair of leggings, a baggy shirt and some fluffy socks that had—ironically enough—cherries printed on them.

“You’re early,” you noted.

Luke’s stomach dropped a little. “Oh shit, I’m sorry—”

“I like my men eager, you’re fine,” you said as you waved him off, unaware of the fact your words just made his body feel like it was on fire for a whole other reason as you grabbed his hand and dragged him inside.

His eyes wandered over your apartment, taking in the small knick knacks that decorated the place. It was smaller than his and Jack’s apartment, but it felt more homely. His place had a habit of looking a little clinical, like a showroom they had moved into rather than an actual home. But between training and travelling and not really caring, neither he nor Jack had bothered to change it.

But, looking around at the small details of your apartment as you led him towards your living room couch, Luke found it endearing that he could see small insights into your personality.

“You still like Coke, right?”

His eyes snapped back to you, a light blush on his cheeks when he found you staring at him with intent. “Uh yeah, Coke is good.”

He settled down on the seat, awkwardly perched on the edge whilst you curled up in the sport next to him with your feet tucked underneath him. He tried to swallow the ball in the back of his throat, eyes wandering over the room once again before they landed back on you.

“Your place is really nice—”

“Tell me about hockey.”

Luke blinked. And then blinked one more time before he remembered to speak.

“What?”

“Tell me about hockey,” you repeated.

“You want to know about hockey?” He questioned, his brows furrowed together and suddenly the panic he felt moments ago was overwhelmed by his confusion.

“Well, no, I don’t really know anything about it,” you admitted with a shrug. “But you’re so tense over there like you’re about to enter the Hunger Games or something, I thought talking about something you enjoy would help you relax.”

Something in his chest stirred at your confession. “Oh.”

“Just relax,” you said as you lightly pushed him back until he was no longer sat on the edge of the couch. However, Luke’s body didn’t seem to catch the hint, something that was very clear with how tense he still looked sitting next to you. “We aren’t going to do anything tonight,” you assured him, your hand dropping to his forearm to give it a small squeeze.

He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed. “We aren’t?”

You shook your head, a soft but cheeky smile on your lips. “You need to build up your confidence a little, to really feel comfortable with everything. There’s more to sex than just sleeping with someone.”

He blinked. “There is?”

“Yes,” you laughed, but it wasn’t directed at him. He didn’t feel dumb for asking you questions. “So just take a breath and relax. Now, hockey—what’s the big deal?”

Luke couldn’t help but snort. “The big deal?”

“Yeah, why do you like it?” You asked. “I mean, you love it enough to make it your job.”

Luke smiled and there was something less heavy in his laugh—but hockey always tended to have that power over him. He knew hockey. He lived for hockey. It was as calming as it was exhilarating. It was what his whole world revolved around since the day he was born.

“I come from a big hockey family,” Luke told you. “I could skate before I could properly walk, to be honest. It’s just something that’s always…been there. I couldn’t imagine my life without it.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

Luke raised his brows in surprise. “No, I just do it to torture myself.”

“Okay, smart-ass,” you rolled your eyes at the boy, and he tried not to think about how endearing the action was. “I mean, you said it’s been in your life forever. Do you enjoy it or is it just familiar?”

There wasn’t even a moment of hesitation before he answered.

“I love it,” he replied honestly, sinking a little further into the couch as he turned his head to look at you. “It was always there but I also always sought it out, you know? I wanted hockey as much as hockey wanted me.”

“Lucky thing you were good enough to go pro, huh?” You remarked, a teasing glint in your words.

Luke’s lips twitched upwards. “Yeah, lucky me.”

“So, do you, like, fight people and shit?”

He snorted, the noise a little surprising but welcomed nonetheless. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“Damn, the two hockey videos I watched before you came weren’t lying then,” you mused.

And, fuck, his chest was doing that funny-tightening thing again.

“You watched some videos before I came?”

“Colour me curious,” you answered with a casual shrug of your shoulders.

He swallowed. “Did you like what you saw?”

Your lips pulled upwards into a smirk. “Flirting with me now, Hughes?”

In an instant, Luke’s cheeks instantly burned a red shade with a mix of embarrassment and self-consciousness washing over him. “I’m sorry about that—”

“I never said I didn’t like it,” you interrupted, watching as his eyes widened a little in surprise. But the colour remained on his cheeks. It was cute, if you were being honest with yourself.

“Oh?”

“You’re not a shy guy, Luke, I’ve seen the way you are on the ice. You just need to bring that confidence off the ice too,” you told him, shuffling a little closer to him until your knee was almost brushing his thigh. “Think of this…what we are doing…as your training.”

“My training?”

“Mhm,” you nodded as your palm landed on his thigh, right above his knee. He was so painfully aware of your hand, of the way your touch felt like it was burning through the fabric of his sweatpants to touch his skin. “Gonna help you go pro.”

His eyes darted down to your hand before it snapped back to your face. “Cherry—”

“Can I kiss you?”

He blinked. “You’re asking me?”

“It’s sexy to ask,” you told him, your thumb lightly rubbing a small line just above his knee. You shifted a bit closer, watching the way his eyelids fluttered slightly. “Consent is really, really sexy.”

“Really sexy,” he repeated, eyes locked in on your lips.

“Can I kiss you?” You asked again, squeezing his leg a little to emphasise your need for him to verbally answer.

“Yeah,” he managed to mutter out, a slight crack in his voice but you didn’t seem to care as you closed the distance between you.

Your palm was soft and warm against his cheek, guiding his head until you pressed your lips against his. It was a soft kiss, almost sweet in a way. And maybe something about the tenderness of it all washed away the unease in his chest, that lingering anxiety that he had been smothered in since he woke up. It was like the kiss washed away the lingering concerns in his head, the ones that told him this was some twisted dream or malicious ploy.

You just wanted to help, you wanted him relaxed when he was with you.

And Luke had half the mind to trust you would do just that after the initial kiss.

Your thumb slightly swept along the high of his cheekbone, soft and reassuring as he sunk further into the kiss. He seemed happy to let you take control, to let you decide how fast or passionate it was. He seemed happy to just follow.

“Better than hockey training?” You murmured against his lips between kisses, the light smacking noises a vague echo in his ear but he didn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed.

“Mhm,” he hummed as he ducked his head back down, eager to press his lips against yours again.

“Impatient,” you teased but didn’t hesitate to kiss him back. “Feeling confident already, Hughes?”

Luke could feel your smile against his lips. “Maybe.”

“Good,” you stated simply and before he got the chance to realise what you were doing, before his brain had even fully processed you had asked him a question, your leg was thrown over his body and you were straddling his lap.

Luke pulled back a little, looking up at you with his cheeks flushed. “Oh.”

“Remember, this is just your training,” you reassured the boy, though it was hard for him to focus on the words coming out of your mouth when your lips were red and kiss-swollen and probably a mirror image of his own. “Just practise, yeah?”

“Just practise,” he confirmed with a nod.

“So practise,” you told him as you reached for his hands where they awkwardly hung at his side. You gripped his wrists, giving them a small squeeze before you rested them on your waist.

He swallowed. “Oh.”

You raised your brows. “This good?”

“Mhm,” he nodded.

“Luke,” you prompted until his glossy eyes found yours. “We can stop any time you want. Just say the word, okay?”

“I don’t wanna stop,” he reassured you, his hands giving a testing squeeze on your waist. “Not right now, at least. Promise.”

And when you smiled at him, he could have sworn his heart was about to beat right out of his chest.

His chest was thudding with each racing beat, blood roaring in his ears and butterflies exploding in his fucking chest when you leaned down to kiss him again. It’s like his brain was locked in on you at this very moment, not a care or concept for the world beyond this apartment. It was just about you, you, you.

And then your hands were pushing through his hair, fingers tangled in his curls as you tugged his head back until the column of his neck was exposed to you.

Luke was almost embarrassed of the whimpering noise that left his lips when you tugged on his curls, a dull but desirable pain coursing through his whole body before your lips explored his neck. His breathing was heavy, borderline panting as your teeth scraped along the sensitive spot just below his ear. And, fuck, he felt like his whole body was on fire.

“Hmmm, pretty noises,” you murmured against his neck, wet and sloppy open-mouthed kisses pressed against his skin as his body squirmed beneath you. “You gonna keep making them for me, baby?”

He nodded.

“Yeah?” You nipped his skin lightly, almost teasingly, as his hips bucked up on instinct. “Keep moaning f’me, baby, let’s see what you like.”

His grip on your waist only tightened as you continued to explore his body, as you tried to find the spots that had him whining and panting beneath you. And just when Luke thought he had a hold on himself, when he could handle the way your hands felt in his hair and your lips on his neck, your hips slowly rolled down against his and he could feel a rush of pleasure race down his spine.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he choked out between broken moans, head thrown back against the back of the couch and eyes clenched shut. “Please. More.”

“You want more?” Your warm breath fanned against his cheek as you lifted your head, hooded eyes watching the way his face scrunched up in pleasure as you continued to rock against him. “Keep making those pretty noises, baby.”

The whimper he let out made his cheeks and neck burn bright red.

“Look at you,” you mused, the bulge in his sweatpants pressed against you as you continued to grind down on his lap. “Doing so well for me, telling me what you want.”

And it was too much.

The constant stream of praise leaving your lips, the way your face was inches away from him—even if his eyes were shut—with your breath hot against his cheek. The way your hips rocked against his hard cock, the way it was straining beneath the boxers he was wearing. The way your fingers gave another experimental tug on his curls and he saw white.

His grip on your waist was almost bruising with how tight it was, the way he held onto you as his hips bucked to meet your thrusts, the way your name left his lips on a loop as a hot flush of pleasure washed over his body, as you guided him through it.

And once his brain had caught up—once he was sure his heart wasn’t going to jump out of his chest—he was painfully aware of the sticky mess in his sweatpants.

“Oh my god,” he muttered, his whole body burning with embarrassment as he looked up at you. “I am so sorry—”

“For what?”

“I—” His eyes fell shut, his body wanting nothing more than to curl in on himself. “I’m sorry, that was embarrassing.”

You frowned. “What was? The fact you came?”

His stomach twisted a little.

“Luke,” you murmured, and he could feel your hands cupping his warm cheeks but he didn’t have the courage to open his eyes just yet. “If I didn’t want you to come, I wouldn’t have been grinding on your dick like that.”

He finally looked at you, but the hot shame remained. “You didn’t even…”

“Get off?” You supplied and he looked sheepish as he nodded. “I can still enjoy something and find it hot without getting off, Hughes.”

His brows furrowed together. “I thought the whole point was that you were teaching me how to make you feel good. For womankind.”

You snorted, grinning down at the boy. “That doesn’t mean you can’t get off too.”

Luke’s lips parted with a silent ‘oh’.

“I’ll grab you some sweatpants to change into,” you told him as you shifted off his lap, looking down at his flushed cheeks and dazed eyes. “You’re a good student, Hughes.”

He raised his brows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you grinned back at him, and his chest did that funny thing again. “And I wasn’t lying. You make pretty noises. I like my boys vocal.”

And Luke was thankful you disappeared down the corridor after that, saving him from even attempting to come up with a response.

And he was shocked that once he cleaned up as best he could in your bathroom, you patted the spot next to you on the couch and told him to choose a movie whilst you ordered in some food.

It was almost laughable to think about how anxious he had been all day, only to lead up to him sharing a pizza with you with some old Jim Carey comedy playing in the background like you two really were just friends. Like you were just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company. Like you hadn’t just made him come in his pants like he was some wound up teenage boy.

It made his head spin, in a good way.

And when he was dragging his feet through the front door of his apartment a little after midnight, there was a voice in the back of his head that was telling him this was risky, that he shouldn’t have felt so giddy or jovial after he had seen you.

You were just training him, helping him. You were just his friend.

But, for right now, Luke was happy to ignore the logical voice in the back of his head and instead focus on the fact that maybe—just fucking maybe—you were right and this whole virginity thing was far more bigged up in his head than he realised.

You were his friend. And he knew you were just his friend.

Who cares if his body took a little longer to remember than his brain did?

#luke hughes #nhl #new jersey devils #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes x you #luke hughes x y/n #luke hughes fic #luke hughes one shot #luke hughes smut #nhl x reader #nhl x you #nhl x y/n #nhl fic #nhl one shot #nhl smut

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ew-selfish-art · 8 months

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Dp x Dc AU: Tim doesn’t rest, not even in Death.

It’s a heart attack that gets him, well, that and the insane amount of fear toxin flooding his system. He was dead for a full three minutes before he watches (how was he watching?) his eldest brother get his heart going again and get his unconscious body to the cave. Alfred gets him onto bat-life support and Leslie looks gravely at his family after she’s done her best to heal him. They decide to keep trying, they don’t want to believe he’s gone.

Tim watches in fury. He’s more useful than this, he’s not just going to die and let the family mourn him! Tim sets to work trying to understand what’s happened to him and he realizes he must be a ghost. Therefore, if he wants to understand ghosts he needs to go where ghosts are, and thankfully he just read a JLD doc saying to avoid Amity Park at all costs.

It’s takes him a second to get used to flying at full speed, but he finds himself surrounded by strange people in a strange town and… he notices himself becoming more visible. He’s able to interact with more and more objects, he even picked up a pencil! Poltergeist is a step forward in his plan, Tim accepts this change of pace.

Then Tim meets Danny, a normal human kid who looks like he could be brought into the manor and given a cape, who looks straight at him.

“Wait, who are you? You didn’t die in Amity did you?”

“No, I died in Gotham. I came here to understand how I’m a ghost and how I can get back to my dying body. I just need a few answers.” Tim explains, and notices that his voice isn’t his own, like it’s a different language entirely that comes out.

“Well, uh, I dunno about going back to your body but it’s not safe for you to be here. The GIW are looking for lost souls like you that people won’t notice go missing. So get back to your family and find peace. Im sorry but that’s really the best advice I have.” Danny answers.

Tim begs him for answers on the GIW. Begs him for any answers at all. Danny shrugs him off each time, tell him that he’s just a ghost and he needs to move on before he gets hurt or becomes a problem.

Tim decides if he’s a problem, he’ll probably get more answers.

Soon enough, he’s stepping into the end of a battle where Phantom is getting Skulker into a thermos, and demands answers, and if not answers help.

They brawl, and Tim’s training as Red Robin gets him farther than a lot of ghosts. And then, when he knows he’s beat and he’s about to share thermos space with the robot jackass (who he can interrogate and then build his own robot) Tim realizes something.

“You’re still alive, aren’t you? You’re Danny, black hair and blue eyes.” Tim says and suddenly Phantom is as still as the dead despite the accusation.

“How the fuck- dude. Okay, you know what? Fine. Lets go talk, you’re clearly not giving up and I need you to never say that shit out loud ever again.”

Because blackmail works in life for Tim, blackmail also apparently works in death.

He’s given all of the info they have on the GIW, he’s introduced to ghost technology and how it works with ectoplasm. He’s told about the portal (although they refuse to sneak him into the house to see it- he can handle a few lasers, ugh) and he’s told about the general sequence of events in Danny’s life/death.

And then Tim is suddenly back in his body in Gotham.

The family found a way to bring him back and he’s 100% alive, no longer ghostly, but he retained all his memories.

“We have a war against the government to start” are not the first words his family expected to hear from Tim post death.

#dcxdp #dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #dc crossover #dp crossover #danny phantom #Tim drake #ehehehe #long post #Tim’s obsession is answers if that isn’t obvious #danny does not anticipate Tim’s ghost disappearing to mean that Batman comes to his town #and the JL suddenly lobbying the government to overturn the acts as they violate a shit ton of other laws #Tim eventually makes it back to amity as a human and Danny is like *WHAT*#they get coffee and Tim explains to danny that he’s scrubbed all the GIW files and is about to take down his parents #he wants Danny’s blessing to go after the portal and danny is blushing so fucking hard but agrees that his parent have been out of line #for like way too long #Tim and danny become friends because they’re just two restless souls who have shit to do and not even death can stop them

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toxicanonymity · 1 year

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Best friends dad Joel x innocent reader

Reader is sleeping over at her best friends house. Best friend ditches her for a party/bf which leaves her alone with Joel. Joel makes fun of her innocence and pressures her into drinking/having sex with him

Night Talks

2.8k words / best friend's dad!Joel x innocent!f!reader

NSFW 18+ / joel master list

gif from @serenaxpedroo , ask from @subby-bottom

WARNINGS: NSFW 18+ big girthy legal age gap, it's 2008 so 41-19 lmao, first time marijuana use, light drinking, pressure, dubious consent, vaginal fingering, vaginal sex, loss of virginity, depraved praise. reader can sit in joel's lap. haphazard editing.

"I know your parents are strict as hell, but you’re an adult."

You feel uncool enough without Mr. Miller acting like you're such a square. He takes “Cool Dad” to the extreme. Yeah, you're an adult, but you don't really party and you didn't feel like going. Yeah, your parents are strict. That's why you regret going to a commuter college. It's also why you didn't go home when Sarah left. You didn't realize her hot dad was awake when you came down in your skimpy pajamas to get a drink of water. Now your eyes are drifting to his biceps as you have this weird talk in the kitchen. But if you're looking at his biceps, at least you're not looking at his PJ pants.

You feel defensive even though everything he's saying is true. "I just don't like to party," you say. "Plus, they smoke weed."

He squints at you judgmentally. "So? . . . What, you’ve never tried it?"

You're not sure how to respond to that. Mr. Miller is older and hot. His judgment carries a lot of weight because of it. You've seen him after a construction job before, sweating, arms bulging.

"Damn, you're brainwashed as hell. . . ." He looks like he feels sorry for you. "C'mon, let's have a beer. I've at least seen you with one of those before." It's flattering that he would notice, even though you probably didn’t finish it.

"I should probably go home"

He rolls his eyes and tilts his head as though to say "really?” Then he gets two beers out of the fridge and starts to open them. “Let’s skip to the part where you take a sip and relax."

"Mr. Mill-"

"Oh. . ." he waves his hand dismissively. "Mr. Miller sounds creepy. You can just call me daddy." Your heart jumps to your throat. Mr. Miller is creepy.

Then he laughs. "Damn, the look on your face. Nah, call me Joel. Look," he hands you a Coors Light. “Practically water."

You accept the beer. He takes a sip of his IPA, then teases, "We can watch somethin’ pg-13 if ya want.”

You watch Saturday Night Fever on DVD. You think it's just gonna be dancing, but it's far saucier. He glances at you, watching your reaction to the most intense scenes. You're embarrassed but try to ignore him. After Joel goes to get a second beer, you’re startled when he sits down next to you on the sofa instead of back in the recliner where he was. Your skittishness must show.

“Relax,” he says and squeezes your knee. His demeanor has changed. He has a whole different voice. “I don’t bite. . .‘less you’re into it. Can’t imagine a good girl like you though . . . Fuckin’ Miss America over here.”

Your cheeks burn. “I’m not that good,” you protest. You're not sure why.

“Yeah? Prove it,” he says and begins lightly stroking circles around your knee. The challenge quickens your heart rate and sends a rush of blood to your loins before he continues, “let’s get high.”

You're unsure if you're relieved or disappointed that's what he meant. You resist, but he offers, “you don’t even have to smoke it.”

“What, brownies?”

“No, baby.” The pet name makes you tingle. He reaches into the end table drawer and retrieves a small glass pipe and a lighter.

“C’mere, I'll show ya.” His free hand grabs yours and he leads you to the tiny bathroom. You can't help but notice the way his soft pants hug his ass.

He shuts the door behind you, then closes the toilet lid and sits down while you awkwardly stand there with your arms crossed. You lean against the 6” of available wall space. It’s a very, very small bathroom.

His biceps stretch his t-shirt as he holds the pipe to his mouth and flicks the lighter on. He moves the lighter around the weed in small circles and the glow spreads as he sucks the air through the pipe. He closes his eyes and a sensual expression loads on his face as he inhales. It’s a face of pleasure. His brow furrows and his eyes open. He slowly exhales, politely pouting and pointing his lips away from you, but keeping his eyes in your direction, shamelessly scanning your body.

As the stench of the weed creeps into your nostrils, you reflexively reach for the exhaust fan switch on the wall and he says, “Nope. Can’t hotbox with the fan on. That’s the whole point."

When the second-hand smoke starts to hit you, you feel a little woozy. Good, but woozy. You start to sit on the counter and he stops you. “Sink’s not braced yet.”

He pats his lap. There’s nowhere else to sit unless you leave the bathroom, and you don’t want to. So you sit on Mr. Miller's lap. His pants are soft and his legs are warm. You’re hesitant to put all your weight on him until he says, “Relax, I can handle it,” and he does have meaty thighs. He strokes your bare thigh, making you wet and self conscious that you hadn’t shaved in a week.

He looks around at the smoke in the bathroom. “How’s it feel?”

“Um, good,” you say. He looks back and forth between your eyes and smiles.

"Good, good. . ."

You look at each other for what feels like a few minutes, playing chicken about who will finally talk next. Then he asks, "ready for the next step?”

“Nah. . . I don't wanna smoke.”

“Don’t have to. Just breathe out when I squeeze once." He squeezes your thigh once to demonstrate. "And breathe in when I squeeze twice." He demonstrates again. "And keep your mouth open."

You don't say anything, trying to envision what he's going to do.

"You’re gonna love it.”

“Okay,” you say. Why not? You’re feeling pretty relaxed.

“Gotta face me though,” he says. He nudges you to stand up, then he urges you back into his lap, but straddling him.

You hesitate and resist a little.

“Only live once baby”

You go ahead and straddle him, but you're very aware of how short, loose, and flowy your shorts are. You can feel the air between your legs. He takes a deep, horny breath as you settle in and his eyes darken.

"God, you're hot," he mutters. That's the moment you're certain he wants to fuck you. You shyly look down and away.

"I'm serious," he says.

Then he spares you the need to respond, leaning back to make room between you for his muscular arms before he brings the pipe to his mouth. He sucks in and holds the air in his mouth then turns and puts the pipe on the back of the toilet behind him. When he faces you again, his large hands slide up both your thighs. His chest expands as he inhales the smoke in his mouth, then he holds it in and squeezes your thighs once.

You breathe out. He leans in, cradles your head with one hand and opens his mouth, not exhaling yet, smoke curling between his lips, then squeezes your thigh twice. As you begin to inhale, he blows the smoke right into your mouth. And he keeps his face close to yours as he watches you turn your head and exhale.

“Attagirl,” he says and your heart flutters.

Every part of you wants to kiss him right now, and it looks like he wants that, too. He leans in a little.

But the smoke burns, and you turn your head and cough. Joel pats then rubs your back. "Damn, I shoulda gone slower." When you stop coughing, your watery eyes meet his, and he cracks a smirk. You're super high and very wet. He looks entranced by you.

"Guess you're right," he murmurs.

"Hmm?"

"You're not that good a girl. . ." You feel conflicted hearing these words, until his hands return to your legs and he says, "Only one thing I like more than a bad girl." His hands slide all the way up your thighs and his eyes follow his hand. His thumb easily nudges its way inside the inseam of your shorts - it happens so fast - and before you know it he lightly strokes the apex of your folds. Your hips tilt into his touch and he strokes lower, feeling how wet you are. With his other thumb he pulls the shorts to the side to see your pussy. He inhales deeply through the nose, looking you in the eyes. "Only thing better than a bad girl? A good girl gone bad."

His hands find your ass and pull you into his crotch where the stiffness of his warm length takes your breath away, and you softly gasp.

“Yeahhh,” he says. “You like that?”

Yeah, you do, and he clearly knows you do. But you’re super high and too embarrassed to say it.

“Bet you're a virgin, too.”

“I-"

“You don’t have to say it,” he whispers, to your relief. Then he leans forward and his facial hair brushes your cheek as he brings his mouth to your ear and says, "Cause I know you don't wanna be."

He leans back, pulling you into him harder and his arousal swells into you, making your walls twitch and your clit throb.

He wets his lips then wraps one arm around you and cradles your head with the other hand. His lips press into yours and a wave of arousal ripples through your body. Your nipples harden. His tongue brushes yours and he grinds into you with a soft grunt into your mouth. You've never been more turned on.

Your lips tear away from his as you literally swoon. He easily catches you as you slump to the side.

"Whooaa, okay." He holds you in one arm and reaches to open the door. "Let's get you some fresh air."

He puts a hoodie of his on you and you go outside for a few minutes. You're embarrassed.

"Sorry," you say, unsure what you're sorry for.

"No, no, don't be sorry baby. That was all me." He puts his arms loosely around you and you rest your head on him. "Couldn't think straight cause you're so goddamn hot."

You smile shyly into his shirt. "I think I'm okay now."

"Good." He strokes the crown of your head with his whole palm.

You ask, "Think Sarah will be back soon?"

"Doubt it. Usually sneaks back in around dawn. Wanna watch another movie?"

"Um, sure."

"We can do whatever we want."

It’s not long into the movie before things heat up again. You’re at the end of the sofa and he has his arm around you. He caresses you with that hand, starting with your arm, then your shoulder, then your collar bone. Out of the corner of your eye, he adjusts himself. “Lord almighty,” he says under his breath.

“Why dontcha bring those pretty legs up here?”

“I haven’t shaved in-”

“Think I care?" he urges your legs into his lap, pulls them all the way into his crotch, and presses them down on his solid wood with a soft grunt. Your eyes go wide and you take a deep breath. He stops pretending to watch the movie and eases your legs down flat on the sofa, scooting himself out from under them, getting on his side.

"C'mere," he growls. He watches his fingers trail up your leg all the way to your breast as he lays down facing you, slightly on top of you. His gaze remains fixed there as he slides his hand up your thin pajama shirt and palms a breast. Your mouth falls open and he grinds his hard package against your hip. Then he lifts your top up to see both your tits. "God damn," he says.

He slides his hand into your shorts, brings his face to yours, and starts kissing you again, hard and slow, his tongue claiming your mouth, your lips softly accepting every movement of his while he gropes your dripping seam desperately and moans into your mouth. His movements intensify, becoming more urgent as he gets between your legs. Sweat is blotching his shirt. He slides an arm under yours and a whiff of his armpit opens your legs.

“Fuck yeah,” he breathes as your hips tilt for him. He urgently tugs down your shorts, breathing heavily. He expertly fingers you, making your toes curl. He inserts one, then two thick digits. Three is a stretch but not too bad. “perfect,” he murmurs. He fingers you for a minute, both of you getting hornier.

Then he frees himself from his waistband and his thick arousal falls heavily against your slickened clit, sending a bolt of need to your chest. He drags it down and nestles his tip at your entrance, then his large hand lifts your thigh and you wrap your leg around him. He looks up at your face, reads your eyes and says in a low rumble, "yeah, you're ready for it. . . couldn't be more ready, could ya?" Maybe he’s right. Maybe.

He grunts as he begins to push into your tight, wet hole and you gasp at the stretch of his tip. "C'mon now, you can do it baby." He inhales deeply, then pushes further. "Yeahh." It hurts, but the pain is nothing compared to the incredible feeling of being filled. He's pretty slow and gentle, but never asks if you're okay. He pushes harder until about half his shaft is sheathed by your warmth. "Perfect fuckin' pussy" he breathes. "Tight as hell. Wet 'n ready for this cock."

"C'mon, baby." He retreats halfway before plunging to the hilt, parting your insides and bottoming out with a shudder. There's an unfamiliar, primal look on his face that stirs something deep inside you. He stays there, all the way inside for a moment as though trying not to come instantly at the feeling of you wrapped around him. He pulls back again, all but the tip, then pushes forward, a little smoother but still a squeeze. He does it again and groans "Yeeahh," he bottoms out. His face makes him look like he's in pain.

He lowers his chest over yours and the way he looks at you makes you feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. He slowly backs out and fills you up again, saying "Good, that's it baby" as you tilt your hips. He kisses you and his cock slowly recedes then pushes in again. Your ample slick allows him to slowly pump in and out of you even with you being so tight.

He kisses you aggressively, then plants his lips on your neck as he buries his length in you again and again.

Slower, then at a moderate pace. He kisses you. He looks at you. "Hot as hell, baby." He gropes a breast. Then his lips graze your throat as he fucks you.

You’re looking over his shoulder with his face in your neck. Never imagined this would happen tonight. Or here, or with him, but he feels incredible. He fills you up harder, then a little faster. The way his back stretches his tight t-shirt is a vision.

“God damn." Your whole body is rocking with this power of his cock slamming into you. "You’re a natural, baby." He thrusts hard with a grunt. "Already takin’ my cock this good?” He brings his filthy mouth back to yours and keeps filling you with his thick cock. "Ohh yeah. . . " His breathing changes. "wanna come in this tight pussy so fuckin bad"

"You can't, I don't-"

It looks like it kills him. He mutters, "fuck," holds his breath, then pulls out, "Ahhh," he releases the breath with a loud sigh and spills his cum on your bare stomach. His anguished face, his cock in his hand, his cum shooting out onto your stomach, it’s the hottest scene. You feel it searing into your mind.

He tucks himself away, lies down at your side again, and starts fingering you, circling your clit. “Look even hotter with my cum all over ya.” He’s making you feel things you thought only a toy could do, not even your own hand. “C’mon, baby, come for me.” It doesn’t take long before your back arches and you’re seeing stars, jolting into his big, veiny hand, his dark eyes watching you in a trance.

As your orgasm fades, a smirk spreads across his face. “Damn, didn’t think it’d be that easy.”

The blood drains from your face.

“No, no, makin’ you come, baby. Makin’ you come.”

He cups your face reassuringly. “You’re real damn hot, you know that? Fuck.”

Thank you so much for reading and interacting 🖤

This Joel evolves into the menace that is night walks!Joel.

I have a NEW dads' best friend!Joel x virgin!Reader series Left in Lincoln.

Night Walks : @tehweeana @blackvelveteen1339 @cutesyscreenname @ele-meno-p

All joel: @ethanhoewke @silkiers @eiviea @evyiione @xdaddysprincessxx @queerly-anxious @chernayawidow @ambassadortotrilliusprime @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @jasminespringtime @romanarose @fandomsfallnomore @djarinxore @lokanda

please lmk if i missed you!

#joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #dark!joel miller #dark!joel #creepy!joel miller #pervy!joel miller #perv!joel miller #toxicanonymity ☠️#pedro pascal #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal fic #night walks!joel #best friend's dad!Joel #bfd!Joel Miller #creepy!Joel #bfd!joel #joel miller/reader #nightwalks☠️#content label

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bomertheshark · 6 months

Text

Riding

A Nanami Kento x top male reader

Short

You can’t quite remember how you got to this point. The very man who you had been chasing for ages now was now bouncing up and down your cock in pure bliss… what the hell happened?

You had an infatuation with a man named Kento Nanami, he had been working at your firm for some time now. You met him when he was a new guy since you were the assistant of the guy who had to show him the ropes. You thought he was a nice enough person, not too talkative but still not timid. The only real conversation you had was at a company dinner. You had been sitting across from each other and decided to strike up a conversation with him. Through out the entire night you both talked about this and that as he drank, you never drank much so you decided that tonight was not the night to try and hold your own. You learned a lot about him that night since his lips had gotten loose from the alcohol, and you suppose that’s when it all started. You spent months after that trying to get him to date you. You weren’t shy about it either, you came out and just confessed of course he thought you were joking but that didn’t matter to you, you never stopped flirting with him. You would talk to him everyday going out of your way to have lunch with him and other things to try and court him.

“Listen I think you should stay for dinner, I know it’s a cliche you know, stay for dinner cause it’s raining and I’ll confess my love to you that whole thing. But I just think it’ll be safer and we spent a long time on this project and I think we could use a break, plus you already know I like you and I’m one hell of a cook. And it’s not like this overtime or anything. ” You said moving around your kitchen to start preparing for the meal. “I suppose it’s fine, just don’t try to get me to stay any later than that.” He said as a response while going to sit down at the island.

After making the dish and serving it you sat across from him and ate in silence. “Is there anything you’d like to drink while we eat? I have wine, beer, champagne, water and some soft drinks.” You said after swallowing a bite of your food. “Some wine would be nice, preferably red.” He said in response “yeah I have some Saldo… does that work?” “That’s perfectly acceptable.” You poured the both of you some Saldo albeit you have yourself less just so that you could keep a clear mind in your own home.

Time had passed and you had finished one bottle of the Zinfandel. You cleared the plates and put them in the dishwasher. You were thankful you hadn’t had that much to drink as it seemed that your counterpart was having a hard time being clear headed. He had gotten up to help with the dishes but had ended up leaning on you and rubbing his face into your neck. To say this was embarrassing was an understatement, not only was your coworker probably drunk but he also happened to be the very man you had been attracted to for months.

“Okay Nanami I’m sure you don’t have a very clear mind right now so why don’t you sleep it off on my couch, I’ll make sure you’re on your way after you’ve sobered up.” You say to him trying to pull his arms off of you and start walking to the couch. He obviously didn’t like this idea as he whined a cling onto you tighter. Once you managed to get him on the couch you were turning to walk away and get the blanket that had fallen off in the process when he had grabbed you and you fell on top of him, he obviously enjoyed the position as he keened and started to wrap his arms around your head. This was a very compromising position for you, you could feel yourself start to get hard and flush. “Look Nanami we are coworkers and while yes I do really like you I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to do this when you are intoxicated.” You managed to get out of his grip as he whined and stood up. You have him the blanket and as soon as he got situated he fell asleep.

You finished the dishes and decided to go ahead and go to bed since Kento was already asleep for the night. You fell asleep pretty quick since you were exhausted from the work and trying to deal with Nanami.

You were having the strangest dream when you woke up to a weird feeling. It felt like someone was in your room, you looked at the clock to see it was 4 o’clock in the morning. Rubbing the sleep out of your eyes you looked around to see Nanami standing near your bed, in confusion and a bit of fear you asked “what are you doing in here Nanami? Did you want to go home now? I can get up and take you if you really want to leave.” He didn’t respond just getting closer to the bed. “Nanami..? Nanami you’re freaking me out a little I can’t see you that well.” At this point he was now at the foot of your bed, you couldn’t see his face but you knew it was him, why wasn’t he wearing any pants…? “Kento are you alright?” He got on your bed, starting to crawl towards you as you backed up. “Are you still drunk Kento? You’re freaking me out man talk to me.” He was now straddling you peering down at you, you had put your hands on his thighs to stabilize him, when he started to grind on you you knew something was weird.

All of that led to now. Where the man who you had been chasing for months was now on top of you riding you like his life depended on it. With every rock of his body he gasped at how deep you reached. This was your third round and it was already day break. The both of you were sweating and panting, the pleasure that coursed through your veins spurred you on and you continued letting him ride you as he used your chest to stabilize himself. The view was impeccable. You couldn’t believe that you were experiencing this with the very man who you wanted to spend all of your time with. All of it was perfect just like him.

You were really hoping that this meant he would finally take you seriously and let you indulge yourself in loving him with every fiber of your being. But for now you focus on the time you have with him and not the fact that today is a work day.

I really hope you guys like this 😭

I’m sorry it took so long to post!

P.S Saldo is my favorite red wine 🫶

#top male reader #bomertheshark #dom male reader #x male reader #seme male reader #male reader #bottom character #nanami x male reader #nanami kento #nanami kento x male reader #Kento x male reader

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lizzieisright · 4 months

Text

She looks like fun

dom!reader x sub!Abby

Summary: During the patrol you find a pretty pleated skirt. In Abby's size.

Tags: okay, here we go fingering, oral, strap usage, strap sucking, Abby wears a skirt and a collar for sexy purposes, scene negotiation, safewords (traffic lights), aftercare, Abby and R are switches.

wc: 6.5k (it's a huge bitch, but 1.5k is a sfw part in the beginning)

a/n: listen I love when girls wear short pleated skirts, and Abby is not an exception.

MINORS DON'T INTERACT I'll hunt you for sport

-/-/-/-/-/-/-

It’s rare to find something worthy when you’re out on the patrol, and you try to contain your disappointment every time - mostly because you hate losing and you and Abby have a rivalry going on who can bring more cool shit for the other. It’s romantic and sappy and also it drives you both crazy since you’re competitive. (people said hate sex was hot - have you tried sex after your super competitive partner loses to you? The best thing ever). So usually you won’t be happy at the end of your patrol.

But today you manage to get into a store that hasn’t been raided yet, so you start taking everything you see - people need clothes all the time, and it’s valuable. You put a mark on your map so others can go there later to take the rest and you go to women’s section, not feeling optimistic: the fabric is worse, the sizes are fucked, and even if you find something nice it tends to not last long.

But then you see it.

On the rack next to jeans there’s a rack with skirts - and why the fuck you’d stop to look at them? - but the skirts are pleated skirts. Short pleated skirts that cover ass just enough to be socially acceptable.

You can’t stop looking at them - you’ve seen before how nice they flow and how absolutely delicious girls look in them.

But it’s so not Abby’s style.

But she’ll look so good in one of these skirts.

She will probably tell you to go fuck yourself if you show it to her.

You pack it in your backpack anyway.

“Found something?” Abby asks as she comes inside the shop. “Oh wow. This is nice.”

“Choose whatever you want, my treat.” You say with a cocky smirk and Abby rolls her eyes.

“It doesn’t count.”

“You’re being unfair.” You whine as Abby makes her way to you.

“No, I’m not.” Abby murmurs. “This store is a public service, where is your personal touch?”

“You’ll talk shit just to keep your score, huh?” You smirk and Abby gives you a peck on your lips before diving into the racks to find something for herself.

The skirt gets a buddy in the form of a tight cropped white t-shirt and you don’t tell Abby about it.

The week passes and you still don’t talk about that damn skirt even though you can’t stop thinking about Abby wearing it: how it would hug her round butt and how her thick thighs would be so shamelessly out for you. You think about how cute she’d look walking around your shared space, the skirt bouncing and almost showing you everything. You think about the possibility of Abby not wearing any underwear under it, and how hot it would be to lift the skirt up and touch her and make her moan. You think about Abby all sprawled out with your head under that skirt, making a mess out of it.

Abby is not an idiot, so she notices the change in your mood for the last few days. She knows something is on your mind, so she catches you off guard, with her fingers buried deep inside you.

“Come on baby, tell me what’s been bothering you.” Abby murmurs into your ear while her fingers relentlessly hit the spot that makes you see stars.

“Shit- what?” You ask, totally lost in your pleasure.

“You’re keeping something from me. So share.” Abby kisses your neck and you try really hard not to cum, but your thighs start to shake.

“Fuck- the fucking skirt-”

And you see Abby in that skirt, all cute and shy, and you spasm around real Abby’s fingers, cumming with a groan. Abby is too distracted with watching you go through your orgasm, still fucking you, and you both forget about the topic.

Until you’re calmed down and Abby is satisfied with how fucked out you are. Then she remembers.

“Skirt?”

Shit, you think. Now you’ll have to explain it to Abby who definitely will tell you to fuck off.

“I took a skirt from that store we found. It’s a pleated skirt, a cute one.”

“So? You want to wear it?”

“I want you to wear it.”

Abby is silent, and you expect it, so you already drop the subject in your head, letting it go. But Abby is not letting it go.

“You want me to wear a skirt?”

“If you want to, obviously. I think you'll be so hot in it. But I know it’s not your style.”

“It’s really not.” Abby chuckles. “So that’s why you’ve been so spacey lately? Thinking about me in a skirt?”

“Yeah. Can’t stop thinking about your pretty butt in it.” You kiss Abby’s neck and flip her on her back. “You’d look so cute.” You kiss Abby’s abs as you make your way down. “I’d run my hands under your pretty little skirt and you’ll just take it like a good girl, yeah?”

This shift is always beautiful: she just fucked your brains out, but a couple of words and your head between her legs makes Abby go pliant and soft, her big blue eyes giving you a Bambi.

“Holy fuck.” Abby sighs and you smile into her pussy. “I’ll wear it for you.”

The hungry monster inside you roars and claws at your chest.

Abby walks funny the next day.

You don’t actually expect Abby to wear it - after all, what is said under horny subby fog can’t be held accountable. Abby is really not a girly girl - fuck, it’d be easier to make you wear a skirt (after getting shot and stabbed repeatedly, mind you), and you understand that Abby might not be comfortable with this idea.

But you leave the skirt and the t-shirt on the bed one day to give her the choice. When you come back, it's gone.

Next time the skirt topic comes up when you're taking a bath together - a rare luxury, so you enjoy every second of feeling Abby's warm skin against yours.

"Do you still want me to wear a skirt?" If you were relaxed a second ago, now you're suddenly alert.

"Only if you want it too." You kiss her shoulder.

"And if I wear it..?" Abby gives you space to finish the phrase for her.

"I'll fuck you on every surface in this apartment." Abby laughs, but you know what she wants to know. "Yeah, I want it to be a scene." You take a second. "Do you want me to plan it?"

"Yeah."

You freeze for a second, not really believing your luck - Abby doesn't ask for a scene plan unless she wants to do it, and right now it means she will wear a skirt for you.

"Fuck baby, you're going to wear it for me?" You ask excitedly, squeezing her in your arms. "With a t-shirt too?"

"Yeah, yeah. Don't let it get into your head."

"We have a few free days next week, right? Is it okay?"

"Yes, you horndog." Abby laughs and you bite her gently.

So you spend the next days planning what you would do with Abby, writing a short list of kinks so she could veto whatever she doesn't want to happen or add something she wants to happen (the ropes last time? Her idea). She still won't know in which order everything will happen or where exactly, or even when in some cases, to save the magic of the moment, but in order to feel safe with each other, you write your lists every time, unless you both get spontaneously in the mood and have to negotiate on the fly.

You pass your list to Abby and as she reads it, her face warms up in a pretty red colour, just like apples in the garden.

"Okay." Abby smiles at you. "This sounds good. But I pulled my shoulder today, so I won't be able to get on my hands and knees."

"Fuck, I'll give a massage later." You say, worried. "Okay, that's fine, no doggy."

"We can do that one, when you push the pillow under me?"

You swallow in horny, the pictures flying through your head, as you scribble it down on your list.

"Fuck yes. Are you going to be fine like this? You still put your arms up."

"It's not that bad." Abby shrugs. "I want to add something."

You nod eagerly, always ready to give Abby whatever she wants. Abby walks away to go through her backpack and comes back to you, giving you a piece of small leather belt. It's too small for any human, and just as your brain starts to catch up, Abby drops the bomb on you.

"Collar me."

You blink a few times, not believing your ears.

"I'll fucking destroy you, Abs." You say, your voice low and dark.

You had this talk before, and Abby was honestly weirded out by the ritual of collaring, so you decided not to add it, especially since you weren't in a 24/7 dynamic and not in fixed roles either. And you know Abby doesn't mean putting this collar as the collar, but it is still so hot. The whole thing is not done by the book or by rules, but you really don't care: whatever Abby wants, Abby gets.

"I will want to tug on it." You tell her, honestly, and Abby thinks for a second.

"Yeah, okay. Traffic lights, then."

You nod and add "collaring" in your messy handwriting.

You know Abby will wear this skirt, it's not a surprise, but you're still not prepared when you walk into the kitchen.

Abby is standing there, and you trail her bare legs up until you see the edge of the skirt and holy fuck. Holy fuck she looks good in it, her trained perky ass making the folds of the skirt to look especially delicious. You lick your lips as your fingers twitch, because you want to lift it already and get a look at her pretty little pussy.

And your eyes go up and you see this tight t-shirt that shows all the muscles in Abby's back and shoulders and you want to bite her and mark her.

"Wow, princess." You sigh and make your way to her, squeezing her waist. Abby jumps, surprised, but relaxes against you. "You look so fucking pretty."

"Thank you."

"Give me a twirl, will you?" You step away to give her space.

Abby is clearly embarrassed, but she does the cutest twirl in the world and yes, you can see her ass. And she is not wearing underwear, just as you told her.

"Beautiful." You murmur and run your hand up her thigh, lifting the skirt just a little. "You wanna watch something? I brought this from the library."

You show her the dvd and Abby is still tethered to reality, so she reads the summary carefully.

"Sounds okay. Not like the last time."

"Fuck you, baby." You pinch her side in revenge. "Let's go."

It seems so normal. It seems like any other day off, you and Abby sitting on the couch, but even as you pretend to watch the movie, you see how twitchy Abby is getting.

She plays with the ham of her skirt and it's so fucking cute - but then she smooths the fabric and you feel like you're going to explode: Abby enjoys wearing it. Abby likes it in a way that a girl who was forced to grow up in a horrible fucking world would enjoy doing normal girly things.

Maybe Abby is not not so girly after all.

Your heart feels tender right now and you can't help but to put your hand on her thigh, drawing little circles on her sensitive skin.

"Do you like it?"

"A little predictable, but still better." Abby shrugs and squeaks when you squeeze her thigh. "Yeah." She is shy now. "I feel pretty."

"You are pretty, princess." You whisper in her ear, making her shudder.

But you don't do anything else. You keep watching the movie, caressing Abby's thigh and pretend not to notice the change in her breathing. Then Abby starts shifting a little and you look down to see her nipples perked up. The fabric is rubbing against her sensitive skin and you just wait, because in a minute you feel how Abby tries to press her thighs together, thinking she is sneaky.

You chuckle and move your hand under the skirt, slowly parting her folds. Abby tries to keep her whimper to herself, but you feel how wet she is.

"What's got you so worked up, pretty girl?" You ask innocently while you brush your thumb over Abby's clit.

"Nothing." Abby breathes out and you chuckle.

"Really?" You wonder and pick up the speed, flicking Abby's clit until she presses her thighs together.

It's such a pretty sight: your hand under Abby's skirt, squeezed by her warm thighs, her knees pressed together. Abby is biting her lip and you watch her while your fingers tease her relentlessly. She looks desperate and helpless, and you live for it.

"Were you thinking exactly about this? How good I will make you feel under your pretty skirt?" You gently bite Abby's neck and she joists. "But we are watching a movie, princess, and I'm really interested in it. So you will give a narration while I play with your pretty pussy." You can't give less fucks about this movie, but making life harder for Abby is your favourite game.

"Yes, ma'am." Abby is not fully in the subspace yet, so she feels a little shy, but she crumbles completely when your eyes meet.

You slide down to the floor and make Abby put her feet by her sides for better access. The skirt falls between her legs and covers her cunt, and you lean back to look at her. Abby is blushing and frowning in desperation, her nipples are perking through the t-shirt and her plushy thighs are open so shamelessly for you.

"You stop talking, I stop touching you." You warn Abby and she nods. "Now lift your shirt up."

Abby does as she told and now this is a sight, her small tits squeezed by the t-shirt, her abs flexing as she breathes deeply. Abby already looks ruined and you haven't done anything yet.

"What is happening there?" You ask routinely and lift Abby's skirt up, revealing her soaked little cunt. You spread her lips open and circle her clit with your thumb.

"She is- she is at work again." Abby sighs and you hum, encouraging her. "She is talking to the cigarette selling woman." It sounds like Abby is relieved when she finishes her line and you laugh to yourself: your poor baby is trying to be good for you.

You leave her clit alone and push two fingers in slowly, watching her body react to you as beautiful as always. Abby freezes and instead of watching the movie, watches your fingers disappear in her.

"I'll take them out." You threaten and Abby snaps back into watching.

"There's this creepy guy," Abby swallows hard when you start slowly pumping your fingers in and out. "And she has an idea- fuck." You just curled your fingers and Abby stops watching again, but quickly opens her eyes.

"What's the idea?"

"She wants the sell- ah, fuck - selling lady and the- the-" You pick up the speed of your fingers and Abby clutches to your shoulders. You reach with your free hand and pinch her nipple, and Abby twitches in response, her pussy clenches on you. "Fuck, it feels so good, ma'am."

"And I'm yet to hear about her idea." You say with a hint of a threat, but your thrusts only get rougher.

"She is playing matchmaker, ohmygod!" Abby whimpers and in reward you lick the long strip from your fingers buried in her pussy to her neglected clit. You suck on it and Abby lets out a shriek as her knees are closing up above your head. "Fuck, oh god- I can't-"

You keep sucking on her clit until she is shaking and moaning, but then you move away and take out your fingers.

"Is she still playing matchmaker?" You ask sternly. Abby blinks and checks the screen.

"No."

"That's what I fucking thought." You knead Abby's thighs a little painfully and keep her legs open for you. "Keep talking, princess."

Abby nods feverishly and swallows. Such a pretty fucking sight, you think as you look up to her: Abby's mouth is open and she really tries so hard to watch this stupid movie, but you push your fingers inside again and all her efforts go to waste as she twitches and blinks very fast in a attempt to not close her eyes.

"She is telling the selling lady that the creepy g- fuck-" Abby sobs when you put your mouth back on her. You play with her clit and suck on it again, making Abby buck her hips into your face. "The- the creepy guy is in- ma'am! - is in love with her!"

You push Abby's legs together and up, almost folding her in half and push your tongue alongside your fingers, getting drunk on her taste. Abby is a smart girl, so she holds herself under her knees to help you and moans when she feels your tongue and your fingers inside. Abby always tastes and feels like heaven, and you never want to leave her pussy alone.

"Ma'am I'm gonna cum." Abby whimpers and you get rough, every push of your fingers is moving Abby's whole body with the sheer force of it, because Abby is not behaving.

"Is her idea working?" You suck on her clit again and Abby whines and sobs while forcing herself to look at the screen.

"Y-yes!" Abby shouts and cums on your fingers, sucking them in on every spasm. You pick up the pace and Abby tries to fight you off, but you slap her hand away and fuck her through her orgasm until her thighs are shaking uncontrollably. Abby is whimpering on every exhale, her abs are twitching, and you smile wolfishly.

"You did so good, princess." You let Abby's legs go gently and fix her skirt, smoothing the fabric. Abby looks at you with pleading eyes and your heart swells, so you straighten up and kiss her slowly and delicately. Abby relaxes and caresses your neck, chasing your mouth, and you can’t help yourself as you pinch her nipples playfully.

“You want your collar?” You ask softly and Abby nods eagerly. “Show me how good your throat is first.”

Bratty Abby is fun, and you like the back and forth of it, but good girl Abby makes you feral: you just told her what you want and she is already opening her mouth for you, sticking her tongue out.

“Good fucking girl.” You growl and push your fingers down her throat.

You fuck Abby’s throat until she is gurgling and her eyes roll back into her skull: you know she likes it, likes to relax her throat and let you use her as you wish. Abby is not even gagging now, so used to it, but you can feel how her throat clenches on you sometimes. Abby looks so cute like this, her tits out, her eyes closed and her thighs pressed together under the skirt as it spreads so prettily around her hips.

“Beautiful.” You murmur and clean up her spit from her chin. Abby smiles at you, clearly pleased from praise, and you kiss her again as a reward. Abby likes kisses, especially if she is needy, as if it keeps her tethered to you. "Show me your neck, princess."

Abby straightens up and proudly shows you her neck - she is so cute you can't help your giggle. You take out the small belt and Abby looks at you with wide eyes as if you’re her god.

"Mine." You tell her when you tighten the collar around her neck. "You're mine."

"Yours, ma'am." Abby answers in a small voice and you see how any rational thought leaves Abby’s head as her eyes get cloudy. "Can I touch it, ma'am?"

"Go ahead." You nod and watch her strong fingers that leave bruises on your thighs brush over the leather with such care. "We're not done, princess."

Abby nods and you tug on her collar until she stands up on her shaking legs and follows you to the bedroom. There's enough space for your fingers to fit in under the collar, but you're still careful with it: it's a new thing and you don't want to hurt Abby in a way she doesn't want to be hurt.

You lead Abby to the bed, but instead of getting her to lie down, you sit on the bed and tug on her collar to get her down on her knees. Abby slowly sits on her thighs and fixes the skirt again, and you just can't. She is so fucking cute in it, and you can see the curve of her hips in the mirror, her waist looks tiny and the dips along her spine are so fucking hot.

You caress Abby's cheekbone with your thumb, adoring her, and she blooms. Abby likes subbing because she's loved so fully at her weakest and most vulnerable like she's never been before - she's literally on her knees, with a collar around her neck and in a skirt and you look at her like she is divine.

"Is your throat good enough for my cock too, princess?" You ask with a teasing smirk, palming your strap through the fabric of your pants.

"Yes ma'am. I'll be so good for you." Abby pleads and grabs at your thighs before she remembers herself.

"Too eager for your own good, huh?" You weave your fingers through her hair at the back, right under the braid, holding her head up. "Come on, get to work."

Abby tugs your pants down and you can see in the mirror how she presses her thighs together when she sees your strap, and that won't do.

"Spread your legs and arch your back, I wanna see how wet you're gonna get."

Abby does exactly as she is told, even lifting herself up a little so she could reach your lap, and you see her skirt covering everything. It's a downside, but Abby is smart, so she pushes the skirt to the front just enough for it to go up and your grip in her hair tightens from how sexy she looks. The edge of the skirt is now reaching to the middle of her ass and you see her wet pussy glisten; the contrast of her waist to hips ratio makes her ass look even better, and you feel like you're gonna cum just from watching Abby getting wet.

"Fucking beautiful." You growl and Abby even shakes her ass a little to make it jiggle. "Focus, princess." You tell her sternly, and Abby arches into you even more.

You tug Abby's head back and she opens her mouth automatically, so you push your cock inside just a little - Abby wraps her lips around the head and you let go of her hair, letting her run the show and have fun. Abby leaves wet open mouthed kisses along the length of your strap and you hum in approval, petting her head. She is blushing and her freckles look so pretty on her pink cheeks, her eyelashes flatter when she closes her eyes and licks the whole length of your strap. The movements cause the harness to move against your clit and your breathing gets heavier - you didn't expect it to happen, you must've put the harness in a different way - and Abby notices how tense are your thighs under her hands. She makes eye contact with you to check in, and you smile at her.

"You're doing so good princess, you might make me cum if you keep it up."

Abby whimpers when she hears it - it's very rare for you to even allow her to touch you when you dom her, let alone make you cum, but Abby wants to. She always wants to please you in any way she's allowed to.

"Please let me make you cum, ma'am." Abby begs, looking at you with her big doe eyes.

"You can try, princess." You chuckle, not very sure that she can, but Abby seems determined.

Abby lifts up a little again and lowers her head on your cock, taking as much as she can while she still can breathe, and when she comes back up, the harness grinds against your clit, making you hiss. Abby wiggles in excitement and starts to bob her head up and down, getting dizzy from hearing your panting and hissing above her.

"Just like that, babygirl." You pant and put your hand on Abby's head, slightly pushing the strap deeper. "You can take it, right?" You coo and Abby moans in agreement. "Good girl. Relax for me."

You hold Abby's head by her braid and push your strap deeper and deeper while Abby's eyes roll back into her skull. There is something so comforting about having her throat stuffed Abby can't help herself but to go absolutely slack while you fuck her throat, grunting and panting as your own pleasure builds up.

"Ride your fingers, princess, I know you want to."

Fucking hell, you think as you watch Abby pump her fingers in and out in the mirror, her thighs and ass look so delicious with the skirt on. Abby moans and whimpers as you fuck her throat and she fucks herself, and you know you're not going to last long.

Your grip tightens in her hair and Abby whimpers, and you can see in the mirror how rough she is being with herself, desperate to cum.

"Fuck-" You whimper and buck your hips up to get more friction and the same time as Abby swallows you down, and the pressure ticks you off right away.

Your thighs shake and your hips buck, chasing the aftershocks of your orgasm while Abby watches you with wide eyes, her own fingers forgotten. She is not even breathing, absolutely mesmerised by your reactions - she made you cum, she made you cum without even touching you.

You pant, still twitching from your orgasm, but you find the strength to move Abby away from the strap despite her whining.

"Come here." You tug on her collar again to make her move and Abby straddles you. "Holy fuck." You whisper when you look at her. "My best girl." You kiss Abby's shoulder and she giggles.

"Thank you, ma'am."

You smile at her and then lie down on the bed, tugging on Abby's hips so she would move. Abby is bright red - for some reason she is still so shy when you make her sit on your face - but she moves up, until her thighs are by the sides of your face. Abby can't even look at you, her eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks.

“Look at me.” You tell her and Abby steals a glance at you, which is not what you wanted. “I said look at me.”

And Abby looks, tries her hardest to maintain eye contact with you as you push her down on your face, burying yourself in her soaked pussy.

Abby whines when you suck on her sensitive clit since she's been close after fucking herself earlier. You don't waste any time and eat her out messily, getting her wetness all over your face as you devour her, fucking her with your tongue, rubbing and sucking her clit, while Abby writhes on top of you.

“Oh god-” She sobs and you grab a handful of her hips, pulling her skirt up so you can see her. “I'm gonna-”

And that is exactly your cue to stop, leaving Abby panting and whimpering on top of you. You watch her pretty clit throb from being so close to orgasm and smirk.

Abby is confused and there's a tiniest hint of hurt on her face: she did such a good job and you are not letting her cum?

You chuckle and signal her to move.

“Lie down on your stomach.” You tell her and while Abby does as she is told, you fix your harness and grab a pillow to put it under Abby's hips.

Seeing Abby's fat thighs pressed together with her wet glistening hole between them makes you want to ruin her. The sight of your strong, dangerous girlfriend all shy and pretty and in this damn skirt makes you froth at your mouth like a fucking dog. Abby makes you feel like the most unhinged obsessed creep and the way she welcomes your dark side - as you think of it - is why you would die for her at any moment.

You can't help the possessive bite you leave on her neck, practically growling into her ear.

“You're mine.” You tell her and Abby nods, shows her neck with a collar on it.

“Yours.” She whispers and bucks her hips into you, presenting herself for you.

You line your strap up and push inside, feeling how tight Abby is from being so close to an orgasm.

“It's a pity you can't see yourself, princess.” You tell her as you watch the head of your strap slowly disappear in her hole. “You're close, aren't you?”

“Please, ma'am.” Abby whimpers and you part her ass cheeks to give yourself a show.

“Please what?”

“Please fuck me.” Abby says and you smile.

“You can do better than that.”

You're not usually the “beg me” type, but now you want Abby to be desperate. You keep pushing extremely slowly, teasing Abby and moving away when she bucks her hips.

“Please, I need you.” Abby starts shyly and oh, what a great idea it is. “Ma'am, I need you, please fuck me, only you can make me feel good, please-”

You push all the way in in one go and Abby moans loudly.

“Good fucking girl.” You growl and pick a hard pace right away, slamming into Abby so hard her ass jiggles. Abby sobs and her back tenses: she feels you so deep and she is so tight in this position, and she is so fucking close. You knead her ass through the skirt and just watch your strap disappear in Abby, fucking her mercilessly.

“Ma’am-” Abby whimpers and holds the pillow under her head for dear life, trying to hold off her orgasm. “Can I-” Abby doesn't get to finish her sentence as your next thrust knocks the air out of her.

“Cum, babygirl.” You tell her gently while you thrust into Abby's tight little pussy with force, grabbing her hips for stability.

Abby coils and lifts her ass as her orgasm rips through her body like an electric shock, and you chuckle, satisfied, your movements slowing down. You're not stopping, still moving inside her, and Abby squeezes her thighs together under you, whimpering.

“Relax, princess, and let me have you.” You murmur into her ear and continue fucking her slowly, watching your strap come out of her covered in her cum.

Abby genuinely tries to relax, but she is sensitive right now and your cock drags along her walls so slowly it drives her crazy. She likes feeling so stuffed, so full of you, but now she wants to cum again.

“Ma'am, please go faster.” Abby asks you and you chuckle.

“You're so impatient.” You tsk and slap her ass cheek lightly, watching it jiggle. “You're gonna cum like this or not at all, understood?”

“Yes ma'am.” Abby says, humbled, but her voice breaks in a moan when you push inside to the hilt. “Fuck.”

You smile and pull out just to push back and Abby clutches to the pillow, her whole body feels like she is on fire. You don't make it easier as your lips travel over her sensitive back, every touch of your hot tongue makes her tighten around your strap and moan pathetically.

Abby is so close and so, so fucking far away from her orgasm and you know it, so you continue thrusting into her slowly until Abby starts to squirm and misbehave as she pushes back, chasing your strap.

“Stop it.” You tell her sternly and push her lower back into the bed to stop her from moving.

“Ma'am, please!” Abby whines.

You tug on her collar quite roughly and press your lips to her ear.

“Such a brat.” You growl and slam into Abby roughly, making her squeal. “Turn on your side.”

And that's how Abby ends up being fucked roughly from behind while you squeeze her throat and play with her clit relentlessly, bringing her to the edge immediately. Your pelvis hits her ass at every thrust and Abby whines and whimpers, her eyes rolled back, her head absolutely empty. Abby feels like she doesn’t exist anymore, only your hands and your voice and your cock do - and she feels so fucking good.

“Ma’am-” Abby moans frantically. “It feels so good, you feel so good, thankyouthankyouthankyou” Is all you can hear between Abby’s sobs. You smile darkly and fuck her harder until she shrieks and cums again.

But you don’t stop. You keep fucking Abby through her orgasm, you keep fucking her when she whines from being too sensitive, you keep fucking her even when she tries to move your hand away from her clit.

“Ma’am, it’s too much- I can’t-”

“You can take it.” You pant into her ear. “You wanted to cum so much before, so keep cumming.”

And Abby does, with another sob. She cums again, and again, until it becomes too much for real, and her face is wet with tears. She feels like overstimulation now hurts more than pleases, and maybe you’re right, she has another one in her, but Abby feels exhausted.

“Yellow.” Abby sniffles, and you stop moving right away, carefully letting go of her tit, but not removing the strap yet in case it will hurt Abby.

“Too much?” You ask her gently and Abby nods. “Does something hurt?” You ask her with such care in your voice Abby wants to cry, because she feels like she could’ve gone longer and now she’s disappointed you.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Abby sniffles, and you get more alert than ever.

“Abby? Can I hug you?” Abby nods and you carefully wrap your arms around her and bury your face in her neck. “Talk to me, what’s wrong? Did I hurt you? Did I say something?”

“No- It’s just- It started to hurt and I’m tired- fuck, I’m sorry.”

“Baby, why are you saying sorry? It’s okay, you did good by using the safeword.”

“I just feel like I could go longer, I should not have stopped you.” Abby admits and sniffles again, ashamed - her emotions skyrocket in subspace.

“I don’t want you to push your limits to please me. How about we stop now, get clean and then cuddle and talk, if you want? How does it sound?”

“We can continue, I just need a moment.” Abby pleads as her guilt grows.

“I don't think we should, sweets.” That pet name makes Abby squeeze her eyes: you only use it when she is not allowed to argue. “It's okay. You're okay. You didn't do anything wrong.” You kiss her shoulder and Abby's head gets a little clearer. “Thank you for telling me, you did so well.”

This makes Abby feel a little better; she nods and squeezes your hand in return. You carefully remove the strap while Abby winces and then you help her get up and go to the bathroom, to shower.

You take her clothes and collar off, and Abby doesn’t look at you, still beating herself up, but you won’t have it. So when you two get into the shower and water starts to wash the sweat and cum off both of you, you take her face in your hands and kiss her cheeks, her nose, her eyes and forehead, everywhere really. Just small gentle kisses, until Abby smiles and looks at you bashfully.

“You have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.” You tell her honestly and Abby blushes, but her mood seems to go up.

You wash both of you gently, carefully going over Abby’s crotch, and she relaxes under your arms. You dry both of you after and help Abby change into her pjs. She gets under the blankets and you kiss her forehead before going to the kitchen and getting some food for both of you.

When you return with two plates and a big cup, Abby looks sleepily at you, seemingly calm. But you know her, you know how guilt can eat her alive, so you keep being alert.

“Drink this first.” You give Abby warm water with honey and she drinks it, scrunching her nose from the sweetness of it. Then you eat in comfortable silence, both noticing with surprise how hungry you were - which should not be a surprise by now, really. You finish your food and clean up so you can cuddle Abby and sooth her. Abby gets on top of you and you caress her hair and shoulders absentmindedly.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Abby sounds more sober now too. “I just-” She huffs, annoyed at herself. “I dunno how to explain. I could've gone longer.”

“I don't want to hurt you. Not in a way you don't enjoy.” You remind her. Abby loves you so much she is scared to fuck everything up, and it led to some problems before, when she put your needs above hers. You talked about it, but sometimes, especially if Abby subs, she slips and does it again. This is exactly why you have a “sweets” rule: to stop her before she hurts both of you with her sacrifices.

“I just feel like I'm..weak.” Abby admits and you chuckle.

“You're not. You're a grownup who can tell their limits, and I'm so happy you did.” You say kindly. “I trust you. You were so good for me today, including using the safeword.” You kiss the top of Abby's head and she hugs you tighter. “I'm sorry I didn't check in with you.”

Abby nods and looks up to you.

“We both agreed to this, right? We literally fucked around and found out.” You chuckle and reach out to grab the honey water for Abby.

“I know you hate it, but your throat needs it.”

Abby groans and drinks it, absolutely despising the honey: this is the only drawback of getting her throat fucked.

“Did you like the skirt?” Abby asks playfully.

“Yes. You looked so good in it, god. I got a little crazy.” You kiss her honey lips and Abby smiles into your mouth.

“Well, next time it's your turn.” She says seriously and you laugh.

“If you promise to not rip it apart.”

#abby anderson x reader #abby anderson x you #abby anderson smut #sub!abby #abby anderson #abby tlou #this is my coping mechanism

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sucker4colby · 9 months

Text

Parties over: Part 2

Summary : Colby’s in the doghouse after forgetting his girlfriends birthday to hang out with amber. He has to knock down the wall she built around herself.

Warning : angst , jealousy , insecurity, cussing

Pairing: Colby Brock x female reader

Part 1

It took me a moment to be able to tear my gaze away from my reflection and to stop criticizing everything I saw. I had to accept today was going to be one of those where I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin so I just made my way downstairs after changing into shorts and a knitted sweater hoping I wouldn’t see the blue eyed boy I was upset with.

Unfortunately for me he sat at the island eating a bowl of cereal in his own world as our friends did their own thing around him. I noticed how his hair was unruly and he looked tired as If he didn’t sleep last night. My eyes snapped away from him as Sam called out my name. “ there’s breakfast over on the counter if you want some.” The blonde boy pointed over his shoulder at the counter where a stack of waffles resided. I could see Colby’s head snap up from the corner of my eyes to look at me as his friend announced my presence but I avoided looking at him knowing I’d break on the spot to look at him. I smiled at Sam muttering a thank you as I made my way over to the food.

I heard his chair scrape against the floor as he hurriedly walked over to me stopping me from taking a plate . “ I can get your food.” Colby offered grabbing the plate I was reaching for looking down at me. Anger bubbled up inside of me and I glared at him. “ I’m not hungry anymore thanks.” I spat spinning on my heels and walking away from the prying eyes of our friends. He was just going to act like he didn’t blow me off on my birthday to be with another woman and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that slide.

I might overreacted but If I wasn’t important enough why did he keep the act up, why not just rip the bandage off and break up with me. I sighed walking into the living room to see the mess from last night, cups ,trash bottles of liquor littered every surface. Grabbing a trash bag from the cabinet I began picking up hoping to get a head start before everyone came to help out.

I know he was standing there trying to figure out how to approach me but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him what he needed so I just pretended he wasn’t there. It was a difficult task to do when his blue eyes felt like they were burning a hole in my skin, I could see the distraught look on his face and it hurt my heart but he was the one who messed up.

Finally he cleared his throat to announce his presence as if I didn’t already know, it was hard not know when you’ve memorized the sound of his footsteps and when his presence filled up the whole room. I looked up to meet his sad eyes quirking an eyebrow up at him. “ I have something for you.” He told me in a small voice and brought his hands out in front of him presenting a small black box. I could see him deflect more as he noticed I wasn’t changing my stoic composure towards him. “ I also ordered you a cake from that bakery you like, I know you wanted one of those for your birthday.” He rambled only making me more upset. I hated that I couldn’t stay angry at him, was I really that smitten over him that I’d roll over and act like nothing happened just because it was him.

“ yeah for my birthday Colby.. which was yesterday had you of cared enough you would’ve remembered but how could you ? You were a bit …preoccupied.” I spat out the last word throwing the trash bag on the couch moving past him to go cool off in my room.

I threw myself on the bed and cried wishing my comforter would just hide me away from everything. He was probably trying to be nice so he wouldn’t feel bad once he left me for amber. My chest burned with jealousy at the thought of him doing everything I wanted of him for her, why wasn’t I good enough for him, He was everything for me and maybe that was the problem. I had to make it easier on both of us and end things myself because I know he wouldn’t do it.

I didn’t hear my door open or close but I noticed my bed dip making me wipe my eyes and look out from under cover. I cried even harder once I saw Colby sitting next me. He had tears in his eyes as well as he moved to put me on his lap, I didn’t try to fight him because this is probably the last time I’ll get to be in his arms. I wanted to memorize everything about him before I lost him.

“Baby I’m so sorry, I was a dumbass, I promise I didn’t mean to forget I just had to much on my plate and I got my days mixed up.” He sniffled setting his cheek on my head and caressing my leg knowing that calmed me down. “Do you not love me anymore?" I asked looking down at my lap picking at the loose thread on my knitted sweater. I felt like I could throw up waiting for him to answer me. "What ?" He asked me I could feel the bed shift under his weight as he turned to face me.

My face heated up at having to repeat my previous statement. I was embarrassed I had to ask him if he still loved me , if he did I wouldn't have to ask and save myself the heartache. " if you don't that's ok, i just.. I feel like I should know if you don't love me anymore, no one should be in a relationship without love." I mumbled my voice cracking as I tried to stop myself from crying even more. I could feel the tears pooling at my waterline even more as I tried to stop myself causing me to grow frustrated with myself . I put my hands over my face shielding my face from his view as my body shook after each sob.

“ baby I love you so much it hurts, I’m so sorry I made you feel like this. I’m sorry I made you doubt my love for you.” He whimpered rocking us back and forth holding me tighter to his body. “ I love you so so much, I was looking forward to yesterdays date because that’s the day my love was born, I should’ve been here but I promise I’ll make it up to you now.” He whispered kissing the crown of my head and I wrapped my arms around him. My heart softening “ I could never love anyone the way I love you, I can’t imagine getting so excited to come home to someone that isn’t you, you’re my favorite part of everyday and I don’t ever want to lose that.” His words slowly eased my worries.

I felt horrible because Colby wasn’t a bad person and he’d never intentionally hurt someone. I was so insecure I forgot how kind hearted and pure he was, That’s why I fell in love with him in the first place. I was caught up in my head I almost him because I was being childish. “ I’m sorry, I overreacted.” I hiccuped into his neck as I hugged him close to my body. He let out a small laugh rubbing circles on my back under my sweater. “ I think you under-reacted, I thought I was done for.” He told me causing me to giggle. “ I’m really sorry baby I know you were looking forward to your birthday.” He apologized again leaning back to look at me. I sat back on his lap to look at him. “ I just wanted to be with you, but you’re here now and that’s all I care about.” I told him making sure he knew I just wanted him.

He smiled and placed a kiss on my lips causing a smile to grow on my face. “ that one’s because I’m sorry and these are because you turned 23.” He said before attacking my face with kisses causing me to laugh as he counted each kiss. He let out a quick oh reaching over the bed to retrieve the same black box he had shown me earlier passing it over to me. I shot him a questioning look taking the small box and opening it. My eyes started watering again and I let out a small gasp at the small necklace that rested inside. “ I chose this out a while back and I wanted something you could wear everyday.” He explained taking it out of my hands and moving my hair to the side, I moved on his lap so he could clip it on. “ thank you, I love it.” I told him as he placed a delicate kiss on my expose shoulder where my sweater started slipping off. “ I love you .” He mumbled wrapping his arms around my again pulling my into his chest. I exhaled in relief leaning back and taking comfort in his warmth knowing we’d be ok, I had fallen in love with the sweetest soul and as perfect as he was he was only human, he was bound to make mistakes.

—————

Part 2 guys !!!

I hope you enjoyed it. I almost made them break up but I just couldn’t bring myself to make Colby the bad guy 🥲

Let me know what you guys think !!!

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lucyrose191 · 2 months

Note

I don't know if you're accepting writing requests, but I thought about it just now.

I don't know if you know that people are talking about Sebastian's “possible return” in 2025 with Mercedes. So I thought you could write part 3 of "a shared story"? Sort of like if the two of them came back, their son appeared. Anyway, it's up to you to write, that's all that came to mind.

A SHARED HISTORY: THE RETURN| S.VETTEL

Pairing; Sebastian Vettel x Wife!driver!reader

Summary; With the news of Lewis moving to Ferrari in 2025, the formula one world is in chaos and Mercedes is left to find a driver, why not ask their for their best to return?

Warnings; Lewis is perceived as a bit of a dick.

F1 Master List , Part 1, Part 2

When something was a constant in your life for so long it was hard to part with the routines that came with it which is why Y/N found herself in her and Seb’s home gym at five in the morning even over a year after retiring and only a few months after having a baby.

It was working well in her favour though because with the addition of the working out she did during her pregnancy she pretty much had her body back the way it was pre-baby.

She was scrolling through her phone to try and find a song to start her workout with when she got a notification from her f1 app and her face dropped as she clicked on it.

LEWIS HAMILTON TO JOIN FERRARI IN 2025

The message filled her screen as she simply stared in shock.

Workout forgotten, Y/N turned around and ran up the stairs. "Seb."

She jumped on their bed and aggressively shook him, "Sebastian, wake up!" She whisper shouted, not wanting to wake the baby. "Sebastian!"

He turned his head over to look up at her with half-closed eyes, "what time is it?" He muttered.

"Who cares? Lewis is moving to Ferrari."

That woke him right up, he pulled the top half of his body into a sitting position and forced his eyes fully open, looking at Y/N in disbelief. "What?"

"It’s everywhere, he’s driving for them in 2025."

Seb continued to look at her in shock, "Is he okay? How could he be so stupid?"

His words struck something within Y/N, knowing how rough her husbands time at Ferrari had been, how she had watched his demeanour shrink throughout the years he spent there, how guilty she felt winning near enough every race whilst the love of her life felt like he was getting nowhere.

It also caused her to think about Lewis himself and the things he had said about his team last season, as though Mercedes hadn’t made him who he was and now he was leaving after one particularly rough season. "Apparently he only told the team two days ago," she muttered.

"No," Seb uttered, not believing that Lewis would tell the team only two days before the entire world knew. "Poor Carlos," he added, knowing how Ferrari treated their drivers when they had found a replacement for them.

"You’d think Lewis wouldn’t have taken that seat considering he knows how toxic that environment is, I hope he doesn’t think he’ll be number one driver just because of his experience," Y/N thought aloud.

"He’ll be very disappointed if that’s what he does think," Seb scoffed, the resentment he felt towards Ferrari breaking through, it was hard not to with not only the way they treated him but the way the fans did too. Their refusal to accept that he was in fact not the problem but it’s in fact the poor communication and leadership within the team.

"I think I’ll ring Toto later, it’s four am in England right now, I doubt he’d be impressed if I rang him now." Y/N smirked.

Sebastian smiled "He’ll probably be up with the news being released."

Y/N hummed in agreement before reaching up to push Seb’s hair back from his forehead, "I’m going to go start this workout before Ansel wakes up, you can go back to sleep, sorry for waking you," she leaned forward to press a kiss to his lips.

"It’s okay, liebe." Sebastian laid back down and watched Y/N walk out the their bedroom, there was no chance he was going back to sleep now that she’d woken him up but she didn’t have to know that.

Later in the day.

"Hi, baby!" Y/N cooed to her son who she held in up in the air, loving the loud uncontrollable giggles that he let out. In the past two and a half months he hasn’t lost those beautiful blonde curls he got from Sebastian, bright white coils sprouted in every direction and with his bright blue eyes, baby Ansel would no doubt be a heartbreaker when he was older.

She laid him back down on the floor and tickled his belly, enticing another round of laughter to burst from him. "God I love you so much, you’re so cute."

"Liebe?" Seb walked into the living room with her phone in his hand.

"Yeah, who is it?" Y/N paused her tickling and allowed Ansel to catch his breath.

"Toto," her brows shot up in surprise at Sebastian’s response, she didn’t have to give him a call after all. "I’ll watch him whilst you speak to him," Seb handed her the phone before picking Ansel up from the floor with an over dramatic grunt and leaving the room.

Y/N places the phone against her ear, "Hello?"

"Y/N! Hi, how are you doing?" Toto’s thick Austrian accent sounded through the phone.

"I’m doing amazing, I’d ask you the same question but I’ve seen the news and I can’t imagine you’re doing great," she sympathised.

"It’s been chaotic to say the least," Toto replied honestly, "I only found out two days ago and I was surprised if I’m being honest."

"He only told you two days ago as well?" Y/N was surprised. "I saw that he told the team two days ago but I thought he would’ve told you sooner."

"I thought he would have too but he didn’t, I’m going to be straight with you, Y/N, I am calling for a particular reason."

Y/N stared at the blank wall in front of her, curious as to what he might’ve called for. "Go on…"

"Have you done much training or simulator work since retiring?" Toto asked absentmindedly.

His question shocked her into silence for a moment before replying. "I trained all throughout my pregnancy and I’ve still been training, I’ve cut back on the neck training but other than that it’s remained the same really and I’ve done a bit of simulator work but not much, I haven’t really found the time to keep that up."

"I understand, you’ve probably been very busy with a newborn, it can be hard," Toto said understandingly.

"I think we’ve been lucky to be honest, Ansel’s quite calm."

"I’m going to be blunt here," Toto told her, "what do you think of becoming a seven time world champion?"

Y/N froze completely at his question.

She knew what he was asking but she just couldn’t allow that idea to simmer in her mind, not when it had taken her so long to become content without racing in her life. "I have a son to take off."

"I know," Toto responded, "and I would never ask you to give that up, I understand completely how he is your number one priority, you have a family to take care of and I don’t expect you to put racing above your family but Y/N, you are the best driver Mercedes has ever had and I don’t believe you’ve accomplished everything you could."

"That’s a very big ask, Toto," Y/N released a heavy breath.

"It’s for 2025, you can sit on it until half way through the season but I can promise you if you agree, it will be a championship winning car." The confidence in Toto’s voice was impossible to miss.

"You’ve already started designing it, haven’t you?" She mused.

"Yes, we aren’t taking any chances of losing in 2025, we want you back Y/N, we didn’t want you to leave in the first place. George is a great driver but he’s only been with us one season and he is not number 1 driver ready yet."

"I’ll think about it but I am not promising anything," she iterated, wanting him to acknowledge that the chances of her returning were very very slim.

"I’m glad you’re at least considering it, take as long as you need," Toto repeated his earlier words and Y/N ensured she would be taking all of the time she was given before they bid their goodbyes.

As the call ended, Y/N felt a heavy wait in her chest, the idea of returning to formula one hadn’t even crossed her mind because she never thought the opportunity would even arise and her and Seb were making their family, the family they always wanted.

She pushed the idea out of her mind and pulled herself up from the floor, she walked into the kitchen and began looking through the fridge for ideas on what to make her and Seb for lunch.

"What did he want?"

Y/N jumped and snapped her head to the doorway where Seb was stood, holding a sleeping Ansel against his chest. He frowned at her reaction because she wasn’t one to be easily frightened.

"Uhm," Y/N cleared her throat and closed the fridge. "He was just asking how we were and telling me about the whole Lewis situation, the parts the media didn’t know."

Her response set off alarm bells in Sebastian’s mind that made him thing there was something else, something she hadn’t been anticipating. "Anything else?" He asked,

Y/N swallowed and looked down at the floor, she could never lie to him about anything but especially not something this big. "He, uhm, he asked me to come back. He wants me to drive for Mercedes again."

Sebastian’s hands subconsciously tightened around Ansel’s body at the news, he stood frozen in the doorway with a blank face as he processed what that could mean. "Wow," it was the only word that expressed what he was feeling right now.

Y/N scoffed out a laugh and nodded. "Yeah."

The lost look on her face tugged at Seb’s heart and he stepped across the threshold into the kitchen and walked closer to her. "Would you want to?" He asked in an almost whisper.

Y/N shrugged weakly. "I have no idea," she replied honestly. "When I retired, I felt lost and I thought that feeling would never leave and I convinced myself I had made the worst mistake I could ever make. I had everything, I was still at the height of my career and to suddenly not be racing anymore…. It was hard, you know that, but then Ansel was born and this new life we have made it all worth it to me. I accepted I wouldn’t be going back but now Toto is literally holding out that seat in the palm of his hand and i don’t know what to do."

Sebastian adjusted Ansel so he was holding him in one arm and wrapped the other around Y/N’s shoulder, pulling her into his body. She rested her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around her boys, smiling as Seb pressed a kiss to her head. "How long do you have before you need to make a decision?" He asked.

"Until about halfway through the season, I told him I’d probably need every bit of that time," Y/N muttered before looking up at him. "Can I ask you a question?"

Sebastian smirked, "you just did," he teased causing her to roll her eyes. "Go on." He added seriously this time.

"Would you be okay with it if I did say yes? I’m not saying I want to but I definitely wouldn’t if you want things to stay how they are, without all of the travelling."

It was one of the things that truly made their marriage work, they both understood that it was in fact a partnership and would never agree to something that the other person wasn’t a hundred percent on board with.

He thought about her question for a moment before answering. "I didn’t retire because of the travelling, I retired because I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I wasn’t meant to be a midfield or back of the field driver and that’s the only place I ended up. If you find that you do want to return then Ansel and I will follow you."

The two of them left the conversation there, not speaking of it anymore for the next couple of weeks as Y/N didn’t want to stress herself with feeling the need to make a decision as quick as possible.

February 2024

"OH FUCK OFF!" Y/N groaned loudly the minute she saw Danica Patrick appear on the screen.

Sebastian tilted his head back against the sofa and laughed at her reaction.

They weren’t even half way through the first episode before she showed up onto the screen and YN wasn’t impressed to say the least. "Why the fuck is she here?"

"She wants to tell everyone what the mindset of an f1 driver is like," Sebastian teased and YN scoffed.

"Oh yes please, let this woman who knows nothing about f1 tell me how I felt when I was in that car for fifteen years. I mean, if they want a woman, ask Susie!"

"I doubt she’d say yes after last year." Sebastian snorted.

"Yeah, that’s true," YN agreed, reaching for the remote to skip until Danica was no longer on the screen.

2nd March 2024

In case Y/N did choose to return to formula one in 2025 she had returned to her full training and diet so that she would have as much preparation as possible which was why the coffee table was filled with healthy snacks, much to Seb’s dismay, as the pair of them snuggled up on the sofa with a now four month old Ansel between them, ready to watch the first race of the season.

The entire weekend her eyes hadn’t left the W15, it hadn’t surprised her that they had incorporated part of the iconic silver design that Mercedes was famous for since it was Lewis’ last season. She had watched the launch of the car and it felt awkward for her, knowing that Lewis was leaving made it feel tense but that could’ve just been her imagination.

The RedBull was a rocket which wasn’t surprising after their success last season, she doubted they had changed much, they hadn’t needed to but what was fascinating was how the W15 didn’t seem so bad in comparison, George was driving that car as if they were one.

Now being able to see the improvement from last year, the confidence she heard in Toto’s voice for next year made sense to her. She believed him in his promise that next years car would be capable of earning her a seventh title and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t now tempted.

"It’s looking good," Sebastian commented lightly, subtly side eying her.

"Yeah it is," She replied, her eyes not leaving the tv screen as she leaned her head against his shoulder.

A month later

Sebastian apprehensively walked into the living room, smiling at the sight of Y/N lying on the sofa with Ansel asleep against her chest, her hands resting on his back protectively.

She looked up at the sound of his light footsteps and smiled before noticing the wary expression on his face. "Hey, are you okay?"

Sebastian swallowed thickly. "You’re not going to believe this…."

Y/N rose a challenging brow, "yeah? Try me."

"Christian just called."

"Horner?"

Sebastian nodded, walking over and sitting on the sofa by Y/N’s feet. "He isn’t resigning Perez next year, he’s offered me a seat."

If it wasn’t for the seriousness of the conversation, the look of shock on Y/N’s face would’ve been laughable. "Seriously!?"

Sebastian nodded and Y/N let out a small laugh, "Wow," she whispered. "Do you want it?"

"I don’t know," he replied honestly. "I understand the pressure you feel under now, to make a decision. I asked if I could think it through, I also have till mid season to give an answer."

His words caused her to smile as a memory flickered through her mind.

"Seb and I entered formula one together and it feels right to leave it together too, it's great knowing that we quite literally went through the entire thing with each other"

The pair of them had never driven in formula one without the other, if they both returned then that connection between the two of them would remain too. It was a beautiful connection that meant a lot to Y/N for a reason she couldn’t really think of.

She didn’t want to lose that.

That one flicker of a memory had solidified her decision in a mere second.

"If you were in that RedBull would it return your drive and passion for racing?" She asked softly.

Seb set his eyes on his sleeping son for a moment as he thought about her question before returning his gaze to hers. "I think it would."

"Would it ignite a hunger for a fifth title?"

"Yes," Sebastian answered immediately and Y/N smiled.

RedBull was an important part of their careers, it was where she had started out and won her first title and it was where Seb had achieved all of his records and titles.

"I think you have your answer, Seb. You just haven’t convinced yourself it’s real."

Three months later, Austria 🇦🇹 (30th June 2024)

Sebastian and Y/N walked through the Spielberg paddock, a seven month old Ansel was attached to Sebastian’s chest in a baby carrier, his face covered from the cameras with a hat.

They waved to the fans as they walked by but didn’t stop to speak or take photos because they had places to be, they entered the pits and walked past eight team garages, parting once they reached the Mercedes garage, Sebastian continued towards RedBull.

Toto Wolff, the man she was looking for, was standing in the entrance and seemingly waiting for her.

Y/N walked up to him with a cheeky smile on her face and stood beside him in silence, the pair of them looking inside of the garage to where the mechanics were working on the car.

"You weren’t lying to me," she eventually spoke, keeping her voice quiet from prying ears.

Toto looked down at her with a raised eyebrow, not understanding what she meant.

"The car," she explained. "It’s going to be worthy of a title, isn’t it?"

She wasn’t talking about the car in front of her, she was talking about the W16, the one that hadn’t been built yet.

"Yes," he responded surely.

"Okay," she nodded, only now removing her eyes from the car to look him in the eyes. "Well, I want to look over your numbers and speak to the designers because I will not be driving a car that looks like a four year old picked it out and I get to choose how the news is released."

She watched as the realisation slowly took over his features, the shock that riddled his face would forever be ingrained into her mind. "Seriously?" He asked, voice filled with a mixture of disbelief and hope.

"Unless you’ve found someone else?" She asked teasingly, knowing he most certainly hadn’t and even if he had, he wanted her more.

Toto quickly shook his head as a smile grew on his face, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Y/N’s waist, lifting her feet from the floor as he took her into a bear hug, the pair of them laughed as he spun her round once in utter joy before setting her back down.

No doubt the media would soon be filled with suspicions and theories about what their conversation had been about and what she had said that had caused Toto’s overly happy reaction.

Just over a month later (beginning of August 2024)

With both Sebastian and YN now giving Toto and Christian the verbal agreement that they would drive for Mercedes and RedBull in 2025, it caused for both them and Ansel to make the move back to their property in England.

The summer break had now begun so it was the perfect time for them to sign their contracts and go through all of the necessary things to get prepared for next season and to get back into the swing of things.

This included deciding on when to announce the information of their return.

Both Sebastian and Y/N had given Christian and Toto the conditions that they wanted the news of their return to be together which meant a combined photoshoot and social media post from both Mercedes and RedBull teams.

It also meant that the two team principals and their heads of social media needed to work together to come to a compromise that everyone was happy with for the release.

They weren’t very happy having to work so close together but both were eager for their star drivers back that they pushed through.

It also meant that both teams were holding a shared secret about the other team.

As of right now the only people that knew Sebastian and Y/N Vettel were returning to Formula One were Christian, Toto and each teams head of social media, and family of course.

As neither team principal wanted to step into enemy territory, it left the announcement photoshoot to happen in the Vettel household.

The pair of them were stood in their living room in front of a black backdrop with their race suits on and since they didn’t have their 2025 helmets yet, they used the helmets they retired with.

Both their visors were up as they rested their foreheads against each other and stared into each other’s eyes with serious looks on their faces, preparing to show to the world that they were back and they weren’t playing around.

"Just cause you have your good luck charm back doesn’t mean you’ll be able to catch up to us."

Y/N and Seb rolled their eyes simultaneously,

"You’ve gotten very cocky after a short lucky streak, get to seven in a row and then we’ll start talking." Toto didn’t hesitate in replying.

"How about instead of comparing cock sizes, you two can figure out a date that we launch this news because you still haven’t came to an agreement." Y/N smiled sarcastically causing Sebastian to laugh at the way they promptly shut up.

"Great. If I have to listen to you two go at it next year then I will whip both your arses, got it?"

The two team principles nodded at her words so she turned back to Sebastian, who was looking at her in amusement, so that they could continue with the photos.

November 2024

It was Ansel’s first birthday today and you and Seb were refusing anything formula one today, the entire day was for your son and you both would give him every bit of your attention.

You and Seb were still 100% serious that he came above everything else and you both would remain stern on that, both Christian and Toto understood that yours and Sebastian’s conditions were that your son came first and that was the only reason you agreed to return.

Ansel didn’t at all understand the purpose of a birthday or opening presents so it left you and Seb to open his gifts but he did have the time of his life playing with all of his new toys.

Y/N still couldn’t believe this was her life. Sebastian and Ansel were her everything and to think if Christian Horner out of all people hadn’t taken a chance on her that she wouldn’t be where she is now is crazy and now she had been given the opportunity to return to the sport that had young drivers lining up to be a part of, she knew how lucky she was and she would never take it for granted.

December 2024, Abu Dhabi

If there was one thing that Christian and Toto had in common it was their flare for dramatics, both wished for the news of the Vettel’s returning to take the world by storm and so they were announcing it the day of the last race of the season which was in two days.

Barely any of the team even knew, George now did which he was thrilled about but Toto didn’t want to tell Lewis the news, Y/N thought he was feeling a bit petty and still a bit hurt from how long it took Lewis to tell him about him moving to Ferrari and just wanted to maybe get one up on the driver.

In the meantime, Y/N was going to take George’s car out for a couple of laps today before free practice and none of the team knew it yet but that was about to change.

The garage privacy barriers were up as the team watched in shock and building excitement as Y/N got into George’s car. She smiled as an immediate feeling of content mixed with anticipation built within her, her body knowing this is exactly where she belonged.

She had her 2022 helmet on so if anyone looked carefully they would definitely know that it was not George inside the car.

"Can you hear me, Marcus?"

"I can hear you loud and clear, Y/N. It’s good to have you back."

"Let’s do this then." She put a thumbs up towards one of the team members to move the barriers, gave a nod to Toto who was watching her with a blank expression on his face, (she thought he might be worried that she’d change her mind after giving this apparent shit box a drive) before she pressed down on the accelerator and left the garage.

Leaving the pits, Y/N grinned as best as she could beneath her helmet as she pressed down further on the throttle, smoothing through the gears as she increased her speed.

As she got onto the straight after turn 5, she heard Marcus in her ear. "How are you feeling, Y/N?"

"Great! Just like riding a bike." She replied, the tone of her voice making it clear that she had a large smile on her face.

"Nice to know you’ve still got it, we never doubted you for a second." Marcus told her before cutting the connection.

Up in the commentary box where David Croft and Martin Brundle were setting up for the weekend, they both looked out onto the track in confusion at the sight of the Mercedes, they hooked up their microphones before speaking.

"And that’s the Mercedes of George Russel on the track, free practise hasn’t started yet so I’m not sure if they’re allowed to be doing that…." Crofty’s voice sounded through the track speakers.

"That Mercedes seems to be driving better than it has all season, they haven’t put any updates on for the final race, have they? Is that even allowed?" Martin Brundle continued.

"Let’s see, are we able to take a closer look at that?" Crofty asked, followed by the screens on the grandstand zooming in on the car as it drove on the track. "…..that is not George Russell’s helmet…."

"Isn’t it? Who’s driving his car?" Martin questioned.

"I’m not sure, I’m also not sure this is actually allowed."

"I don’t think Mercedes actually care at this point- sorry, I’ll rephrase that actually. I don’t think Toto Wolff even cares what is allowed at this point."

"Okay, Y/N, if you could bring it into the pits now, we’re going to keep you in the car until the barriers are back up." Marcus instructed.

"Copy," Y/N replied.

The mechanics wheeled her into the garage and put the shutters down so that no one could see inside as she got out of the car.

As soon as her feet hit the ground she was embraced with pats on the back by happy team members.

George approached her with a smile on his face and was shaking his head at her. "I’m not sure how I feel about this anymore, you’d have managed to put that shit box on the second row with that second lap time." His tone made it clear that he was just joking and he was actually more than looking forward to have her as a team mate.

"I’ve still got it then, that’s good."

"It’s great," Toto’s voice from behind her made her jump and then around. "You think we should tell the team?"

"Now?" Y/N asked in surprise and Toto nodded, gesturing that she could do the honours.

Y/N gave him a toothy smile before stepping forward and climbing on top of George’s car, standing just in front of the halo, drawing the attention of everyone in the garage.

"Hey everyone! I know this season has been quite rough on you all, not just with the lack of results the team is used to but also with the fact that we all know Lewis has made the decision to leave Mercedes and join Ferrari which was as much of a surprise to me as I’m sure it was to you guys and it’s honestly been hard for me to see a lot of you feel a bit lost as to how the team can make a comeback and be on top but I do hope that next year you’ll all be able to see just how great Mercedes is and to hopefully regain that hunger because I know I’m hungry for a seventh title and I have every bit of faith that this team can help me achieve that when I come back and drive for you next year…."

The garage filled with a series of gasps followed by cheers that would definitely be heard from outside.

"…this is a finalised decision, Toto and I have been speaking all year and we’ve both signed the contract and I do hope you’re happy to have me back."

The team clapped and the garage was filled with whistles and cheers again as she finished and climbed down from the car.

"The news is going to be released Sunday morning so if you could all keep it on the down low until then it would be greatly appreciated!" She finalised before turning to Toto and George with a raised eyebrow. "There you go, no turning back now."

And for the rest of the weekend, the entire paddock could see the change in the Mercedes team, it seemed every member had a spring in their step as they walked through the track and they all seemed to have a permanent smile on their faces.

When asked about it they all seemed to give generic answers like ‘they were just happy to be here’ but no one believed it, not even Lewis who was left in the dark and when he asked about it he just got the same response.

But as Sunday morning came, both Mercedes and RedBull was filled with anticipation as the news of the Vettel’s return to the sport was shared across four Instagram accounts; RedBull, Mercedes, Y/N’s and Sebastian’s.

The world was taken by storm that morning, not only by the news of the return but also the fact that both teams had seemingly worked together to keep it under wraps.

Seb, Y/N, Christian and Toto entered the track together that morning and were bombarded with cameras and questions making both Vettel’s glad they had left Ansel at the hotel with Fabian who was going to bring him later in the day.

"Seb! Y/N! When did you decide to rejoin formula 1?"

"Christian, did you boot Perez before signing Sebastian or did tell him you were terminating his contract after you had already asked Sebastian to return?"

"Toto, did you ask Y/N to come back to get back at Lewis for leaving Mercedes?"

"Lewis said he had no idea of Y/N taking his seat, is there a reason you told the team but kept him in the dark?"

The four ignored the questions and continued their way into the track, not batting an eye at the other teams who watched as they walked by, astounded to see the four of them together.

"Feels good, doesn’t it? Success…." Christian smirked arrogantly causing Y/N, Seb and Toto to roll their eyes.

"I’d even go as far as saying we make a good team, us four." Toto added and Y/N scoffed.

"Please, this would’ve been a complete disaster had Seb and I not mediated the last year. The pair of you are a ticking time bomb."

Both team principals sent her affronted looks at her words which she ignored, once they reached the Mercedes garage, Seb leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Y/N’s temple. "I’ll come and get you later before the race and we’ll watch it together."

Y/N nodded with a smile and bid him goodbye.

Both her and Toto walked into the Mercedes garage and were met with whoops and cheers from the team causing her to laugh at their dramatics but she soon stopped at the sight of Lewis.

He was approaching her and he looked quite disgruntled.

"Both of you returning?" He asked.

Y/N shrugged. "Toto asked me and then Christian asked Seb a month later, it was purely a coincidence."

He didn’t look like he believed her but it didn’t bother her too much. "I thought it would’ve been off the cards now that you have a child."

Y/N looked at him in confusion. She thought it was a bit rude that he was bringing her son into a conversation that they were clearing having because he felt left out of the news.

"I wouldn’t have returned if Seb didn’t get approached by Christian, we’ve always been in F1 together and as soon as he was offered I knew that I wanted to come back."

"When was this?"

"I got asked in January, after your move was confirmed." Y/N replied honestly.

"You’ve kept that under wraps for a while then." He said in a tone that could only be described as bitter.

"Because we weren’t sure that we were actually going to return. It was a shock to us as well but it felt right and so we accepted. Toto and Christian agreed to wait until closer to the end of the season for the release so that the press would focus on this season and not next."

Which in her opinion is what he should’ve done.

"The team already knew." He stated.

Y/N nodded. "I told them on Friday that I would be driving for them, it’s really upped their motivation for 2025."

"Why didn’t I know?" He eventually just came out and asked.

Y/N looked at him strangely. "Because you chose to leave the team, Lewis. After today, you have to accept that Mercedes is no longer your team and whatever concerns them is no longer your business either. The teams plans for 2025 have no impact on you whatsoever."

Lewis bit his lip and nodded before walking away, nothing else to say.

Y/N watched after him for a moment. They had been teammates for eight years and had an amazing friendship through that but for some reason she had a feeling that was about to end since she was driving for Mercedes.

Had he really thought Toto wasn’t going to find a driver to replace him?

Just before the race.

Seb and Y/N were standing between the first two rows on the grid so they could be nearby Max and George as they got ready as Martin Brundle approached them for his grid walk.

"Sebastian! Y/N! Could I have a quick word?"

"Go on then," Y/N nodded.

"So, you’ve surprised us all this morning by announcing that you’ll both be returning next season, Sebastian you’re going to RedBull and Y/N you’re returning to Mercedes. We want to know something, anything about the process cause nobody was expecting this."

Sebastian smiled. "It’s nothing exciting. After the news of Lewis going to Ferrari, Toto wondered if there was a chance for Y/N to return and then about a month later Christian also called and asked me if I would be willing to come back."

Martin nodded before turning to Y/N. "After Mercedes’ rough two year since you left, do you think they’ll be able to get back on top next year."

Y/N smirked. "I wouldn’t be returning if there wasn’t a chance for me to become a seven time world champion, Martin."

He seemed to be delighted by the news and nodded, thanking the two of them before walking away to hopefully find some of the drivers.

Sebastian wrapped his arm around Y/N as they started walking back towards the garages. "Where do you want to watch it from?"

Y/N thought for a moment. "We’ll watch it from RedBull."

2025

"Okay, state your name, occupation and your team." The woman behind the camera instructed.

Y/N smiled at the camera and began speaking. "I’m Y/N Vettel and I’m a Formula One driver for Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team."

She then leaned forward and stared directly into the lens. "I’M BACCKKKKKK!"

Bahrain. 🇧🇭

"Okay, Y/N, are you ready to become a seven time world champion?" Bono asked over the radio.

"You bet I am." She replied confidentially.

"Are you going to become a five time world champion, sunshine?" Hugh asked Sebastian, using the nickname from when Seb won his first all those years ago.

Seb smiled. "That depends on how nice Y/N is feeling."

Y/N kept her gaze on the lights as each one appeared and as soon as they disappeared she let up off the break and slammed her foot down onto the accelerator, both her and Seb driving along side each other as they approached the first corner.

2025 was certainly going to be an interesting season.

#formula one x reader #f1 fanfiction #formula one #f1 imagine #f1 x reader #sebastian vettel x you #seb5 #sebastian vettel imagine #sebastian vettel x reader #sebastian vettel #sebastian vettel fanfic #sebastian vettel fluff #fluff #motorsport

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yokohamapound · 8 months

Note

If you have enough time, could you please write about Fyodor, Dazai, chuuya, and tecchou (You could add more if you want) reacting to their s/o pinching, squeezing, and kissing their both cheeks with a slight nibbling on them? If you don't mind, ty.

This request is so cute and sweet that Ranpo is going to try and steal it. For which I am also adding him to the headcanons~

Characters: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dazai Osamu, Nakahara Chuuya, Suehiro Tetchou, Edogawa Ranpo

Contains: Smoochies

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I imagine it takes a little while for you to gather the courage to do this. While Fyodor has a very pretty face, his aloof demeanour and sinister edge don’t encourage people to touch him casually. Obviously, as his partner you have much more freedom in this sense, but it was probably still a while before you reached out and pinched his cheek.

Fyodor’s surprise is fascinating to see. He lets out a small, throaty laugh, raising an eyebrow at you for your impulsive gesture.

“What prompted that, may I ask?”

His amusement is only compounded when you follow your pinching up with kisses. He’ll allow you to get away with it for a moment or two before he takes your chin and asks if you’re so terribly in need of his attention. If you ask ever so sweetly, he might just give it to you.

Dazai Osamu

No matter how gently you pinch his cheek, Dazai will overplay it. He’ll widen his eyes into big chocolate brown pools and pout, clutching his cheek (conveniently trapping your hand against the side of his face).

“You’re so cruel, bella!” he proclaims.

He’ll require you to kiss it better, and will not stop at just one. It’ll take multiple kisses to stop “the pain”.

Despite all his whining, Dazai enjoys your soft, playful affection. Just be warned that he’ll repay you tenfold, and probably in public, too. He has no shame, (which is incredibly ironic when you consider the first line of No Longer Human).

Nakahara Chuuya

Chuuya cleaves very tightly to his “tough guy” reputation. He’s slick, he’s cool, he’s a dangerous executive from the Port Mafia. He can’t be having you pinching his cheeks and cooing at him over how cute he is. Even if he is pretty cute.

It’s a little bit hypocritical, since one of his favourite “cool guy” ways to greet you is to pinch your cheek and be like, “Hey, dollface.”

If you do it, be prepared for him to sputter and turn his face away, his ears burning red and starting to blend in with his hair.

“Tch, the hell was that for?!”

He’s a little mollified if you follow it up with a kiss, but only moderately. He frowns at you in that grumpy way of his and rolls his eyes. “Fine, you’re forgiven. Just don’t ever do that in front of the guys, you got it?”

Suehiro Tetchou

Tetchou’s face doesn’t show much reaction the first time you reach out and pinch his cheek, squishing the flesh of his face between your thumb and forefinger. His eyes slide toward you, but apart from a blink, he seems stoic.

“Are you testing the strength of my facial muscles?” he asks, quite serious. “I can make them stronger. I will.”

You have to explain to the dolt that it’s just an expression of affection. You’ve also developed a habit of kissing those three little markings under his left eye. He normally shuts that eye and lets you get away with it.

Edogawa Ranpo

I feel like this request was made for Ranpo. Amongst the right people, this young man inspires such a prodigious amount of cute aggression that you’re practically shaking with the need to pinch his cheeks.

Depending on his mood and current snack level, Ranpo might placidly accept it as you tug on his cheek like it’s made of playdoh, or he might bat your hand away like a cat, or he might try to nip at your fingers.

He might pout a little when you grab his face in your hands and start covering his cheeks in kisses, muttering that he is a grown man, you know. That said, he doesn’t mind being considered cute and adorable, so long as you recognise he’s the World’s Greatest Detective.

“If I’m so cute, why aren’t you spoiling me more?”

#yokohama pound #bungo stray dogs #bsd headcanons #fyodor dostoevsky #dazai osamu #nakahara chuuya #suehiro tetchou #edogawa ranpo #fyodor x reader #dazai x reader #chuuya x reader #tetchou x reader #ranpo x reader

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lucyandthepen · 9 months

Text

love on the floor - i. | njm

exactly when does vice president na turn from the company’s worst nightmare into your favorite daydream?

pairing: chaebol!na jaemin x secretary fem!reader rating: vaguely M, but will very quickly escalate into a hard R in coming chapters genre: romance, fluff, (eventual) smut (in later chapters), chaebol!au warnings: jaemin isn’t really a total asshole but he isn’t great at the beginning either and i think that should be a warning, there’s probably some language use that deserves a bit of caution i GUESS, but tbh nothing much here because we want to pretend that this is a fic of chaste circumstances and not a lead-up to raunchy, depraved smut word count: 16.4k

author’s note: first of all, the development of this fic is absolute SHIT because i love context too much and refuse to shut up at the beginning only to get antsy for the ending so if the pace is a little stop and go … it’s because i’m a Fewl !! and i totally own up to that !! and second of all, this is actually just a set-up for about two more shorter (?? what’s shorter) works that i’ve already been wanting to write but felt like i would be remiss in doing so without some kind of build-up to the relationship so :^) here we are ! heavily unbeta'd and miss lucy is a bit rusty but we carry on for the sake of enjoying oneself (and practicing writing once again) muah enjoy!

At least this job gets you free medical.

Actually, all things considered, this is an excellent job with limitless benefits. You never have to worry about the three-level insurance, you have monthly paid-for visits to the dentist, and you sometimes get to use the company car for personal errands for as long as you meticulously check everyone else’s schedules and butter up the head secretary, Son Seungwan, just enough so that she feels mollified enough to let you have this favor (but not too much to the point that she catches on and gives you a ten minute lecture on the rising prices of gas post-the-turn-of-the-decade). Your rent’s well paid-for, and the apartment you’re staying at is comfortable, albeit a little smaller than most, although that’s just because you prefer spending your money on once-in-a-lifetime type things, like front row seats to a Paul Kim concert. You get 50% discounts at the company cafeteria, which boasts a pretty nice salad bar with more than just perilla leaves as the greens. The bathrooms even have luxury soap installed into the automatic hand dispensers, so you always come out clean and fancy smelling.

All in all, the job’s pretty perfect, to the point that you don’t think leaving will ever truly be in the cards — except for the fact that you barely see your boss, which, as nice as it sounds on paper, is actually the most stressful part of the position.

You’ve always been of the opinion that if Vice President Na Jaemin put his mind to something, he’d actually do it very well, but the running issue is that he hardly ever puts his mind to anything, especially when it comes to work. In fact, the only thing he ever seems to take seriously is having eleven hours of uninterrupted sleep, which you personally think is an extremely hard thing to achieve, leading you to the firm belief that if he channeled that energy into something less dead-to-the-world and a little more productive, things would be amazing.

And maybe things would also be a little less distressing if his family would just accept him for who he is instead of expecting too much (or, actually, anything) from him, but Vice President Na is the only son of the family that owns the largest telecom company in the country, so his parents have a ton of huge expectations for him. His father, in particular, is clearly trying to prepare him to take over the entire business, something that the Vice President clearly isn’t keen on doing, based on the many arguments you’ve had to sit through alongside Head Secretary Son. The result is a lot of tension that’s only exacerbated by the Vice President’s desire to avoid more conflict, which he does by suddenly disappearing from the office for hours — sometimes days — at a time.

So for as much medical, dental, and reasonably priced caesar salad as you’re getting from this job, you’re not entirely sure how worth it those things all are if they come with the task of you having to sit through twenty minutes of lecturing in place of Vice President Na Jaemin himself.

“This is the last time,” President Na roars — not necessarily at you, but at you, in your general direction, while you stand helplessly in front of his desk, your hands folded across your lap and your head hung low. You don’t really feel terrified or hurt — more than knowing that the President isn’t shouting at you for your incompetence, you’ve also gotten used to being on the receiving end of these weird, indirect lectures and have thus come to know the exact standard of ‘sorry’ that you have to look for it to be over as quickly as possible. Still, you’re kind of annoyed that this particular spiel is taking up precious minutes from your afternoon break. Then again, you don’t know what you’d expected to begin with when you’d come back from the cafeteria after lunch and found the Vice President’s chair abandoned, leather cold, indicating that he’d been gone for quite a while. It’s about four o’clock now, and he still hasn’t come back, and all your messages to him have gone unread, as you’ve also grown used to. “You tell my no-good son if he isn’t back within the hour, he can live the rest of his life without my last name.”

You’re not sure if the implications of that will really sink into the Vice President’s heart enough to trigger the guilt it’s clearly trying to elicit, but you know better than to voice your opinion. You nod once, then bow at a perfect ninety-degree angle. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Four years of this, and he hasn’t learned a single thing,” the President continues, completely ignoring your useless and vaguely insincere apology. “Where’d he run off to this time?”

You don’t know. You never really know. Since he actively tries to avoid all work-related things, he also actively tries to avoid you, something he does by never picking up the phone or telling you the details of his daily schedule anyway. You can only share what you do know, which is very little and, therefore, extremely useless, but you try to say it in a way that appears relatively helpful. “His schedule says he was supposed to have lunch with the foreign investors that are trying to connect Prime Video to the Korean market, but it seems he didn’t show up for that.”

Which essentially translates to: you have no clue. Again, all parties in the room — inclusive of Head Secretary Son, who constantly has to bear witness to the many threats Vice President Na receives via you — know this isn’t your fault, but it doesn’t make the vein that’s about to pop out of the President’s temple any less pronounced, nor does it stop you from bowing and apologizing again when he says “get him back in here before five o’clock or tell him he’ll never be able to step foot in this building again!” even though you know that the threat would probably sound more like a gift than anything else to Vice President Na.

“And you,” the President points a vaguely accusatory finger at you. Your eyes widen slightly in surprise. “If he isn’t back here at that time, you can kiss your job goodbye too. You go ahead and tell him that. Let’s see if Jaemin will finally get off his ass if he knows someone else is going to have to suffer for his behavior.”

The only person who sees your jaw fall open is Head Secretary Son, who’s now leading you away from the President’s desk and towards the door; the President has taken to staring at this huge family picture of himself, his wife, and the Vice President that’s hanging just behind his executive’s chair, all looking considerably happier than anyone in this situation feels. You hear him mutter something that sounds like “where did I go wrong with you, you punk?” before the door shuts close behind you.

“I’d say he doesn’t mean that, but we don’t actually know to what lengths he’ll go to get the Vice President on board.” Head Secretary Son admits, lifting two fingers to gently shut your mouth, still agape. “If I were you, I’d figure out how to keep him on a leash. The fact that he’s never around is probably ninety-percent of our current problems.”

“I can barely get him to respond to schedule reminders,” you groan; your fingers pinch the bridge of your nose like this will somehow stop the oncoming migraine. “Let alone get him to stay still. I was just about to put in a down payment for a car of my own, too.”

You’ve never really been considerably attached to this job, mostly because there isn’t much to actually attach yourself to, but if you think about it now, it really is better than most, and this economy isn’t really kind to people who get fired from their jobs. You feel like puking at the thought of losing the free unlimited coffee in the pantry and trading it in for a life behind a convenience store counter, which is probably where you’ll end up, pessimistically speaking.

You excuse yourself from Head Secretary Son, who has the heart to look a little pitying as you trudge towards the elevator. You don’t even know where you’d start looking for the Vice President, especially since he spends quite a lot of his efforts trying to avoid having to communicate with you. You don’t even know what his habits are, which means you can’t make educated guesses on where he might have run off to, so the only route to go is to look in the immediately surrounding area and widening your search diameter as time passes.

Until five o’clock, of course — a deadline that, if unmet, will likely mean you also won’t be returning to the office either.

You start off at the nearby bookstore, extremely skeptical that the Vice President would ever willingly go to a place that requires more effort even after you make a purchase. As expected, he isn’t there, but he isn’t in the nextdoor candle shop (also unlikely) either, nor do you find him in the hand-cut noodles shop next to that as well. You walk down the entire street for a good twenty minutes, pressing your face against the windows of stores shamelessly, to the ire of many startled and disgruntled staff, trying to look for a familiar head shape in the small crowds in them, but to no avail. Then, you think about calling him again, but when you pat the pockets of your jacket, you realize your phone is still on your desk, where you’d left it when you’d been summoned to see the President. With a loud groan and an annoyed clip clop of your heels as you stamp your feet on the pavement, you walk back to the office.

In your frenzy to find the Vice President, you’d gone quite a distance, and your shoes simply aren’t made for long, aggravated walks; they start hurting your feet halfway back, and you’re pretty sure you have a blister behind the strap of the left one. Pride would tell you to tough it out, but you’d thrown that out at the thought of losing your job at the expense of a single man, so you don’t even hesitate to take them off and run back to the building. The big digital clock above the elevators says you have ten minutes left to find your boss, and you start thinking about using that time for better things — like packing your stuff up neatly in a box for when you get sacked.

With the situation seemingly hopeless, you trudge to the first floor cafe, where the return counter has a pitcher of water and a stack of tiny paper cups. They’re tiny tiny, like the size of your thumb, so you have to keep refilling it just to start feeling a little more human.

You’re on your third refill when you hear a giggle come from across the space. The barista’s just finished laughing at what must have been an extremely hilarious joke, or she might be flirting with whoever’s leaning over the counter to talk to her. A whoever that seems to be the exact same height and build as the elusive Vice President of this company.

You accidentally toss the paper cup in the plastics bin in your desperation to get moving, worried that if you’re not fast enough, he’ll disappear into thin air again. Luckily, his attention’s completely focused on the barista, so he can’t go anywhere when you finally reach his side and huff, loud enough to interrupt what seems like an intimate-ish conversation between them.

“Sorry, I was just — oh, it’s you.” The Vice President’s smile fades when he sees it’s you, someone he can’t charm out of what they’re supposed to be doing. You don’t think you’ve ever seen the Vice President smile at you in any capacity, anyway, except for maybe one or two slightly sarcastic smiles that are probably more fit to be classified as grimaces. “What do you want?”

“I’ve been looking all over for you, sir,” you say, stiffly and a little quietly because you still don’t want to embarrass him in front of the slightly confused barista. “You haven’t answered my texts.”

You don’t have any way to check, but you’re pretty sure this is a safe enough assumption, which is corroborated by the Vice President bringing his phone out and checking the screen lazily before turning it back off.

“Sorry. I don’t answer unknown numbers.”

You guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to save your number when he hates hearing about work, which is all you really try to communicate with him about, but it still stings considering it’s been two years and you’ve been using the same number since high school. It’s fine, you think. You really can’t expect much from him.

“Well, your father’s been looking for you, too. He wants to meet you.”

“I’ll take a rain check, but thank you.”

“Sir,” your voice quivers with poorly quelled exasperation. “This isn’t an optional thing. This is very serious.”

“I can see that, Briar Rose,” his eyes are trained towards your shoes, still dangling from your grasp, with a level of unabashed amusement. “Did he summon me from deep within the woods, or is this a new casual Friday look I should get in on?”

When his words are met with a stony silence, he sighs, pushing himself off the counter. His half-finished Americano is collecting a small pool of condensation under it, and you offer him the little handful of tissues you had gotten from the return counter and had originally been planning to use to wipe your tears in case you cried after getting fired so that he doesn’t waste time looking for something to hold his cup. He takes them without even a word of thanks, opting to instead say ‘lead the way, miss.’ You don’t miss the fact that he meets the barista’s eye with a considerably more genuine grin, raising a hand in goodbye to her before he strides ahead — before you even get a chance to lead the way at all — towards the elevators with you, hobbling on one foot to slip your shoe back on, not far behind.

The President’s office must be sort of soundproof for instances like this. For the first time, you’ve been asked to wait outside with Head Secretary Son as the Vice President gets chewed. It doesn’t matter; you don’t really want to be in the middle of yet another round of shouting that has nothing to do with you in the same afternoon, plus you also know how the conversation usually goes: the President making very agitated threats and talking about his heart condition (even though the medical reports from their private doctor say he’s in perfect health) that the Vice President, who just spends the time looking boredly at his nails, will inevitably trigger. When you press your ear to the door for a minute, you actually hear something like ‘... strike you out of the will so that when you kill me, you won’t get a single won!’, and you can imagine Vice President Na’s exasperated sigh punctuating the statement.

Ten minutes later, the room has gone quiet, and you step aside just in time for the Vice President to open the door and step out. You don’t even understand how he can look so unaffected after being ripped apart, but you suppose he’s also heard the lecture as many times as you have and is pretty much immune to all the insults. He doesn’t really have to make a show out of not caring, though, with his hands in his pockets and his lips pursed to allow him to whistle idly as he strolls down the hall to his barely used office. He’s been in it so few times that after long, inexplicable vacations, he sometimes forgets how to get there. You’ve always had to walk behind him just in case he gets lost or, worse, tries to make a run for it. You’ve never had to tackle him to the ground reciting the Miranda warnings, or anything, but he has faked left a few times just to give you a mild heart attack for the fun of it all.

This time, he just walks, not bothering to joke you into trying to create a human wall he could just as easily push away. When he gets to his office, he lazily plops down onto his couch, extracting the Rubik’s cube he’d been working on for a few weeks now from underneath himself and spinning the top layer idly. He’s only ever finished the blue side.

You just stand there, kind of perplexed and unsure of how to start the conversation. He’s still whistling, and you’re not sure if talking over him will count as interrupting him, which isn’t something you’re supposed to do. Thankfully, he stops after about two minutes of fiddling with the yellow side of the cube, looking up at you with a slightly surprised expression that somehow makes you want to cry.

“Can I help you with something, Secretary ___________?”

“Well, I…” You stutter for a bit, unsure of how to politely point out that he should be asking you for help with his job instead of the whole other way around. “Because… I just thought…”

“You can always leave a message with my secretary if you need time to figure it out.” He grins. “Oh, wait a minute.”

“Sir, don’t you think you should… I don’t know. Figure out your schedule, or something? Prepare for… anything?”

“What’s that smell?” He lifts his nose to the air, suddenly curious, and because he looks so serious, you also start sniffing, but you can’t really smell anything out of the ordinary. “Smells… fresh. Very clean. A little like green tea.”

“Oh.” You awkwardly shift your weight from leg to leg. “I think that’s my perfume, but I don’t see w—”

“You smell very expensive, Secretary _____________.” He sounds genuinely surprised that you do, like he’s somehow saying he hadn’t expected you to have good taste. You have no idea where this conversation is coming from, so you chalk it up to him wanting to derail you from talking about work. “I like it. Very classy. Not too strong.”

“Sir, I don’t think now’s the time to be talking about perfume scents.”

“You’re actually quite pretty.” He sounds genuinely surprised again, but this time, it stings a little more. “I never noticed that before. How come?”

You want to say that it’s because he spends most of his time and energy playing long-term hide-and-seek with you, but there’s also no polite way of putting that into words; even if there were, with the way you’re now bristling under his gaze, you’re not really sure you’d go the courteous route, anyway. You just decide to ignore the comment and question entirely, which you almost get to do.

“Wouldn’t you like to take a look at some of our upcoming projects? For instance, we’re just about to start negotiating the terms of this new partnership with Huawei —”

“You’re pretty, but you’re also pretty tense.” He cuts you off again, now looking a little dejected at this newfound information. You can’t understand why this disappointment in you actually hurts your feelings a little. “I think the cafe downstairs serves some tea, if that kind of stuff helps you.”

“Sir,” the one syllable is laced with weariness, and you knot your fingers together in front of your lap. It probably looks polite, but it’s mostly so that you can feel like you have some semblance of control over anything, even if it’s just your own body fighting off the urge to grab him by the collar. “Please. If you could just take a look at your schedule — even just for tomorrow —”

“What’s the point?” His shrug is nonchalant, and he’s turning the cube over in his palm now, more interested in looking at it than witnessing your tired expression. “It’s almost six o’clock. I’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow, you know what I mean? If my dad finally loses his marbles, I’ll deal with it all then. In fact, I might actually be okay with losing this department if it finally actually gets him off my back. I’ll also deal with that when it happens, probably.”

Another long, uncomfortable silence blooms as his words sink in; not for the first time today, President Na has threatened the existence of your job, now alongside a good twenty other people’s, all for the sake of snapping some sense into the Vice President. However, like everything else, it seems to just be backfiring; Vice President Na doesn’t seem to care about anyone else in this department, most likely because he’s barely interacted with anyone else. You’re surprised he even remembers your last name, considering he once called the department accountant ‘Heejin’ even though her nametag clearly spelled out ‘Jinhee.’

It makes sense that the threat of abolishment means absolutely nothing to him, but it doesn’t make the knowledge of that any less distressing. He watches you curiously as you tug back at your ponytail, like it’ll once again stop the crawling migraine.

“Sure a cup of chamomile tea isn’t in the cards today? I think I have the company card in here somewhere, although I can’t be sure that it hasn’t been cut off, based on my dad’s last threat—”

“I’m fine; thank you.” You mumble, checking the clock. He’s wasted what’s left of the hour anyway, and the lack of change in his position just means he’s not going to change his mind for the rest of the time. “At least let me give you tomorrow’s agenda.”

“Boring, but okay. Give it to me, then.” He yawns to make a point, and you offer him the tablet you tote around with you everywhere you go, just in case Vice President Na finally decides he wants to do his job. To clarify: that’s two whole years of you carrying that heavy thing around, with the Vice President only having touched it a handful of times. You’re mildly shocked that he actually opens it to check, because he barely does even that, but that all goes away when he yawns again, his expression glassy as he scrolls down aimlessly. “This is a lot. Can’t you just clear my schedules tomorrow? Actually, if I can make demands for real, I’d like to clear out my schedule for the rest of the year.”

He stretches when he stands, ignoring your slightly agog expression as he pats you on the back, smacking his lips sleepily. “Good day’s work, Secretary _____________. Want to grab a beer? Have ourselves a little intra-department party? I’m pretty sure ‘intra’ stands for ‘us two,’ or am I wrong?”

You sincerely hope he doesn’t mean a goodbye party, but with his attitude right now, that might very well be. You shake your head, and he shrugs, like he wasn’t really expecting you to agree in the first place. “No thank you, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He’s already halfway out the door, waving dismissively with his back turned to you. When you peek out of the space he leaves by opening the door, you can see about half the entire department’s watching, not even bothering to pretend to scurry back to their seats as he saunters out of the office. He calls out to you, his voice ringing clear even though he’s already out of sight.

“We’ll see about that.”

You come up with a master plan, but not before you scope potential jobs.

You actually stayed an hour overtime at your desk looking for positions, but all of them pay lower than average or are about an hour’s commute away from where you live, so none of them seem worth it. The search ends when some people from the department come over to say goodbye and see your computer open to SaramIn, at which point they connect the dots and start to panic about their insurance. You shut your monitor off and spend another useless twenty minutes calming Jinhee, who’d started having a mild panic attack.

In that time, your resentment builds. Why can’t Vice President Na simply get his act together? You suppose that there’s some indescribable burden to being in his position, but between him, a rich heir who owns two sports cars and lives in a paid-for house, and you, a public-transport-using, pays-by-the-month nine-to-five worker, you can’t really understand why he would be having it worse than everyone else who works under him. If he worked even just half as hard as everyone else did here, he might scrape by.

You can’t know if President Na’s anger was only short-lived or if he actually meant to downsize the company by getting rid of your department entirely, but you also know that if he’s serious, then there’s nothing much you can do about it, short of terrorizing the Vice President into stepping into bigger shoes.

So, that becomes your master plan.

It isn’t very refined, mostly because you think about it on the bus home, but the heart and spirit are there, and those are probably the most important things anyway. It’s that heart and spirit that motivate you to get up an hour earlier than you usually do, dressing quickly for the day before taking the company car from your place to downtown Apgujeong. You usually don’t take it on days that Vice President Na doesn’t come into work, which is practically every other day, but this time, you’re determined to see him into the office. The ride with Hyunsung, his official company driver, is quiet, save for the question he asks when you roll up to the Vice President’s driveway.

“Are you sure about this?”

“No,” you admit. He’d probably seen you chewing down on your thumb, some of your confidence taking a hit when you belatedly realize you could be shot with a huge privacy lawsuit if this doesn’t go the way you plan. But you do know a lot of secretaries that do the morning calls for their superiors, so this should be fine. Not that you’ve ever heard from those secretaries ever again.

Vice President Na’s laziness seems to extend to all aspects of his life, including the fact that he doesn’t ever change his door’s passcode; it’s still the same numbers as it had been when he first bought the house a year ago and had you install his lock while he was missing in action from work, yakking it up with some farmers up in the Netherlands. He likes to do that — ‘see the world,’ or whatever, even though his wanderlust makes everyone else’s lives very difficult. At least it makes your life easy now, and you step through the door and walk quietly across his unnecessarily large living room.

You’ve never been in here exactly, and you only realize very belatedly that this house’s design would be very frustrating for a break-and-enter criminal because nothing seems to be where it’s supposed to be. You learn the owner’s suite is actually on the basement floor, so all the climbing of those slippery stairs was for nothing.

Vice President Na’s bedroom is bigger than your whole apartment, which also means he has a sizable bed and, thus, is completely out of sight under his gigantic covers. The only indication that he’s even still in there is that they’re rising and falling in a rhythmic pattern. You stand by the edge of the bed, on the side he’s closest to falling off of, clearing your throat at the tuft of hair peeking out from under the comforter.

“Vice President Na? It’s time to go to work.”

Your voice has been tempered down by years of this professional work, and this is easily the loudest and most demanding you’ve ever heard it. You’re not even sure you can do it again, but the muffled groan from under the covers is all the motivation you need to try.

“Sir, you have a ten o’clock meeting with Samsung’s representatives for Apple. President Na also asked that we contact Amazon right away to reschedule the Prime Video deal.”

“How,” his voice comes out first before he does, squinting up at you, completely disoriented. “The hell did you get in here?”

“Sir, I’m your secretary.” You sigh, skimming over the fact that you’d walked into his big kitchen twice through two different entryways before coming into his bedroom. “I’m supposed to be able to get in here.”

“Except this is a first.” You think he’s about to get up, but he just shifts his weight, rolling over so he can cocoon himself tighter into his blankets. “Goodnight. There are eggs in the fridge if you’re hungry.”

“I’ve already eaten, like a normal, functioning human being with a very important job that starts precisely at nine o’clock would.”

“This seems like a very targeted comment, Secretary ____________. I’m not sure I appreciate it.”

“Since we’re already having this conversation, I’m guessing you’re conscious enough to get dressed.”

To your relief, he actually does throw the covers off of him, leaning up on his elbows. You try not to balk at the fact that he’s shirtless, although you’re also not sure why this should surprise or bother you to begin with. He doesn’t even seem to mind; he just yawns, wide and unashamed, as he looks over at the clock.

“It’s seven-thirty. This is insanity.”

“No, this is a wake-up call.” You offer him a neatly folded towel that he eyes suspiciously. “We need to get you in the office on time.”

“There’s really no point,” he sighs, scratching his head idly. “It’ll just be another boring day of talking to people I don’t care about. Someone who cares about it should talk to them. You care about it, don’t you?”

“I won’t talk to them for you, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because, frankly, I don’t get paid enough to be doing that.”

He once again stares at the towel like he’s trying to will it to evaporate, but in the end, he only sighs louder and takes it from you, kicking his blankets off completely. You look up at the ceiling, not in prayer but to avoid the more embarrassing fact that he’s only in his boxers after all. Well — it’s embarrassing for you. He doesn’t even seem to care.

“Something’s different.”

“Usually I don’t wake you up,” you offer the painfully obvious. “Or come here. Or talk to you.”

“Yeah, all that stuff,” he says dismissively, halfway through a yawn. “Did you have a life-changing experience recently?”

“Something like that.”

“Couldn’t it have been one where you decided to leave me alone for good instead?” He grumbles, more to himself instead of to you. It doesn’t matter, anyway; you already see he’s up and fishing socks out of his drawer, so you’re marching out of his room to avoid having to hear more of his complaints (and, quite frankly, to avoid looking at his broad back).

However, the day thereafter doesn’t go as planned. You thought that waking Vice President Na up for an early day of work might shock him into doing something with the knowledge that it was urgent, but you’re not sure why you didn’t anticipate a scenario in which he’d fall asleep in the car on the way to work and you’d have to shake him into waking in the stuffy parking lot. He spends the rest of the morning out of sorts, ignoring you point blank when you try to brief him on the meeting. The meeting in and of itself doesn’t go any better, with him excusing himself fifteen minutes in by saying the pitch doesn’t seem all too exciting and innovative. You didn’t even know he knew the word innovative and, by the shocked faces of the Samsung people, they were of the same mind.

By lunch time, you’re more exhausted than you’ve ever been, and a part of you is wondering why you wanted Vice President Na in the office in the first place when you’re already used to the much simpler routine of get up, work, eat lunch, get yelled at, work again. Sometimes, on slow days when Vice President Na is completely out of town for the week and President Na is out of things to yell at you about, you even get to just sit back at your desk and play old crossword puzzles.

Now, you’re basically handholding him, but the weight that keeps him down is so heavy that you’re being dragged down, too.

“You mean people do this every single day?” He shuts the folder with a contract that requires his signature that you’d given him just now, not even bothering to peruse the first page, much to your rapidly increasing ire. “This is ridiculous. Working makes no sense.”

“All employees come to work to do that, sir. It’s literally what makes up half their lives.”

“Except it shouldn’t,” he sighs, like this is a true global issue and not a problem of his own making. “Everyone needs to be able to do what they want and live life to the fullest.”

“Not everyone can,” you point out flatly. “Some people don’t have the luxury of time even for that.”

“Then, they should. The more I’m in this situation, the more it feels like it might be better for everyone to have a little work break for — I don’t know. The next year or so.”

Vice President Na has his arm outstretched, handing the folder back to you. You don’t know if it’s what he says that causes your blood pressure to rise, or if its the completely unconcerned look on his face, or if it’s the fact that he’s holding the folder so lazily that the papers are starting to slip out on your end, requiring you to use two hands to keep them all from falling apart and creating a mess you’ll end up having to clean up anyway. Whatever it is, you snatch the folder from him with a little more aggression than necessary (or that you’d even care to admit). Even though it’s out of place, you can’t help but feel a small sense of triumph at the slight surprise in his eyes.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, sir.” You pause, mostly because you can tell he doesn’t believe you — Vice President Na is nonchalant, not stupid — and you want to give yourself a little bit of time to grapple with your pride before you admit the truth. “Yes, sir. It isn’t fair to your entire department for you to talk that way.”

“I’m saying the entire department doesn’t have to work this hard. It’s senseless. How are you supposed to live a good life if all you’re doing is sitting behind a desk?”

“Like I said, not everyone has the luxury of living your life. If they want even a little bit of that comfort you enjoy, they have to work very hard for it first.”

“Then they should at least do something they enjoy. If this department goes down the drain —”

“If this department is abolished,” this is your first time interrupting a superior, and it already makes you want to throw up. “Then people will have a very difficult time finding a job in this market. More than that, a lot of people enjoy working for this company — quite genuinely, in fact. I don’t think it’s right to think that they’ll be happy while they’re jobless and floundering in this economy.”

“So you’re happy like this? You really want this job — this whole working under me situation?”

“Well…” you trail off, your voice taking on a slightly thoughtful tone. It’s been a relatively long time since you’d entered this job, but you do faintly remember the feeling of excitement at getting this position — the desire to want to learn from the best in this industry, the anticipation of being able to meet and network with interesting and important people. Your first few weeks of work had involved wanting to spend as much time in Vice President Na’s shadow, in case you could pick up some important business tidbits from an entrepreneurial master… until, of course, you realized there wasn’t much you could stand in the shadow of to begin with. “These days, it isn’t ideal. But this job is a really good thing for most of the people who work here.”

“Then it sounds like you have more to gain from me working hard than I do.”

You can’t contain your disapproving frown, and your voice comes out a little sharper than you intend. “Doesn’t it bother you at all, sir? Knowing almost twenty people could lose their jobs in the blink of an eye? Think about all the people who look up to you and rely on you — they’ll have to suffer because of this. They might never find a job that matches their needs, and a lot of them have families to take care of, too. If you can do something to make sure they have these good lives you keep talking about, why not do it? I know you’re capable of that. You’re capable of doing much more than what you’ve been doing thus far.”

Vice President Na is quiet for a moment before leans over on his desk, lacing his fingers into a loose combined fist and putting his weight on his forearms. One of his forefingers detangles itself from the pile of digits and curls inwards, beckoning you closer. Your grimace is probably obvious, and you lean in a little warily. He lifts himself off his chair slightly so he can whisper in a low voice, as if you two aren’t the only people in this wide office.

“If you care about it so much, then ask a little more nicely.”

Your light breakfast almost makes a reappearance, and you draw back in mild shock. He also leans back, significantly more relaxed than you, looking unperturbed as he settles back against his chair. You two engage in a very uneven staring match, until he gestures for you to proceed, looking expectant.

“You want me to beg for my job?”

“Not what I meant, but I could accept that,” he hums. “I just think you could throw in a please while you’re guilting your boss, at least.”

Gawking probably doesn’t suit you, but you do it anyway, wondering how you managed to find yourself in this position. This morning, you had been strictly guiding him through what to do, and now you’re paralyzed in front of the Vice President, feeling very foolish for saying so much out of turn. You couldn’t even get through a whole work day before seeing your grand master plan slip down the drain.

But there is, at least, some small comfort in what he said — the part about guilting, which, if you squint hard enough, seems to be implying that this conversation has left him with a small amount of guilt. You don’t think it’s that much, but it’s a miracle he feels it at all, so you take the horribly subtle win and inhale deeply.

“Please, sir.” The words are very thick and reluctant, unsticking from your throat. “This department really needs you.”

He stares, very unnervingly, without saying anything, but there’s something in his gaze that makes you vaguely certain he’s actually thinking about it. In fact, he actually looks a bit serious, which isn’t anything you’d ever think you’d be able to characterize him by. That impression easily falls apart when he claps his hands, once but very loudly, startling you into jumping a little.

“Ah, how could I turn down such a nice request?” Vice President Na is grinning from ear to ear, something you’ve never seen him do in the context of the office, much less a few feet away from you. His smile is actually kind of nice, if you don’t think about the fact that it seems to be smug at your expense. “Since you asked, I guess I’ll have to try my best, or whatever it is people do in this damn company. I guess that means you owe me now, Secretary ____________. You’re very welcome.”

The silence that once again blooms as you stand, motionless, in front of Vice President Na is suddenly interrupted by the sound of chairs scraping back all at once. The floor vibrates a little as the entire department troops out to the elevator area so they can go to lunch. You only watch stupidly as he also stands, shrugging off his jacket and flinging it over the back of his chair. “See you, then.”

“Where are you going, sir?”

He looks a little surprised that you even ask. “To lunch. Do I have to ask for your permission for that, too?”

“Are you… coming back?”

“You want to come along with me and make sure I don’t run away?” He smiles even wider, which you didn’t even think was possible. It makes you awkwardly uncomfortable to know he’s taking a lot of pleasure in joking around with you, mostly because you were kind of hoping you’d get him to take things seriously in a serious manner, not in a … whatever this is that’s making you feel like you’ve lost a game manner.

“A little bit.”

“Ask a little more nicely, then.”

“Never mind,” you mumble. “Have a good lunch, sir.”

He snaps his fingers a little comically before turning to the door, flinging it open so he can join the now thinning throng of people leaving the floor. “Thought I almost had you there. Well, if you need me, you know where to find me. Or not.”

In the end, to your utmost relief, Vice President Na does, in fact, stay inside the entire time he has lunch. You’re not sure if this is the product of you sitting two tables away, trying to will an imaginary chain to his wrist so he doesn’t bolt off or because he’s still feeling a little affected by everything you said earlier on, but whatever it is, it works. He just eats his club sandwich in peace, picking off the crust easily and double dipping the fries that come with it in his ketchup. At some point, he looks up and notices you burning holes into his torso, so you quickly have to avert your eyes in shame. You think he laughs at this, but you can only see out of your peripheral vision at this point, so you can’t be sure.

You’re supposed to have one hour for lunch, but he eats quickly and gets up before the whole hour is over, so you end up throwing your half-eaten wrap and following him. Again, you’re not sure what’s funny, but he’s chuckling to himself as he holds the elevator door open, waiting for you to run in next to him.

“Relax, miss secretary. I already said I was going to do my best.”

“No offense, sir, but I don’t know what that looks like, so I have to be careful.”

“Fair enough.” He hums, letting the door close on its own. “But you should still take it easy. You’re pretty t—”

“Tense. You said so yesterday, sir.”

“That’s two times you’ve cut me off in a single day.” He doesn’t sound very annoyed about it; in fact, he’s still got that amused, inside joke tone to everything he’s had all morning. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were gunning for an insubordination report.”

You don’t think that’s fair for him to say, especially since you haven’t really had much of an authority figure to be subordinate to for most of your career in this company, but you keep your mouth shut since saying so is exactly what would be on the first line of an insubordination report.

When you arrive back at his office, you take the time to discuss what you should be doing from now on. It’s an extremely messy exchange, with you two grappling between terms you can’t agree on. For instance, Vice President Na thinks that it seems only fair that he should really only be coming in after one o’clock, but you’re insistent on making sure he gets to work on time, since most important meetings happen within that time period (a fact he already seems to know but chooses to ignore anyway). You end up agreeing on bringing him in for the standard nine-to-six for as long as he never has to work overtime. You also find it necessary to iron out the fact that if he has lunch outside, he has to actually come back, a statement he once again finds very amusing for some reason, as if you’re the weird one in this conversation.

And to his credit, he tries to stick to his word. It isn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially not during the first couple of weeks, but you suppose that habits are very difficult to break when they’ve been so easy to acquire and nurture over many years. More than once, you’ve arrived late to meetings to the disapproving gazes of Head Secretary Son and President Na. However, the latter finds he has less to say these days because Vice President Na’s presence in said meetings had, before this time, been nothing but a pipe dream for everyone.

You also notice he starts taking the time to ask about things he doesn’t understand, as opposed to his initially brash or sometimes completely unresponsive approach, which has turned out better results when it comes to business lunches with investors and potential partners. Even the Samsung people, who are extremely wary of him during the callback meeting, come out of their next encounter with the Vice President looking vaguely more satisfied than they did the last time (the bar isn’t that high, considering they’d left shell-shocked previously, but you’ll still take the improvement).

Of course, with all the time you end up spending with, chasing after, and vaguely lecturing (only when the need truly arises) Vice President Na, you also learn some things about him that you hadn’t expected, like how he doesn’t really like milk in anything he drinks (but especially coffee) and that every third Sunday of the month, he meets his old high school friend Lee Jeno, the son of the guy that owns half the residential high rise condominiums on this side of the Han. Apparently, they play badminton together — he had told you that when he’d caught you wondering about the super out of place little kid’s karate trophy among other more adult, official ones in his living area. The trophy goes to whoever wins the match of the month, and according to the Vice President, he’s been ‘wiping the floor with that bastard’s handsome face for half a year straight.’ Although you can’t verify this by anything more than the slight blanket of dust on it, you think it takes nothing out of your pride to applaud him like this is an amazing thing. It also does you no harm to see him swell with misplaced pride about a kid’s karate trophy.

You also notice that despite how healthily he eats at the office, he has a bad habit of craving deep fried food in the afternoon, which is why, over the last few weeks, you’ve been accompanying him to the corndog street stall two blocks away, a few days a week. He’s even had to borrow loose change from you a few times to because he always forgets that no street vendor likes to receive crisp, fresh-out-of-the-bank fifty-thousand won bills, but you just let him have it; his heart’s in the right place when he orders an extra one for you without even asking. You realize that he has a fairly good memory for as long as he’s concentrating, and that he likes to spend late nights watching the shittiest horror movies ever known to man (his words, much to your bemusement), and that when he listens attentively to you telling him about the day’s agenda, his left ear twitches a little when your voice hits it.

Somewhere along the way, you realize that Vice President Na is a charming, outgoing, and fairly capable person, and in doing so, you also realize that he seems to be, for lack of a better word, your style.

You can’t really believe it either, and you’re not even sure when it started. In between sitting with him in the company car and handing him forty-page agreements he has to look over carefully (very carefully, as you’ve taken to reminding him, so often that he starts saying it before you do now, which has only somehow endeared him further to you and not annoyed you the way you were sort of hoping it would), the small non-work related part of your consciousness had decided that it needed a more complicated situation now that things were going relatively well.

To be fair to yourself, liking him isn’t a huge distraction; most of the time, you’re both so engrossed in something you desperately have to finish that you don’t even have time to think about it. Instead, it kind of catches you off-guard, like when he’s double dipping his french fries into his ketchup, or when he smiles at you (politely to him, probably, but overwhelmingly charmingly to you) before he leaves the office, or when his brow’s furrowed in (a total shocker) concentration as he reads.

Then again, everything about Vice President Na seems to be catching you off-guard these days. This much is proven by the fact that instead of the normal silence that you’ve grown accustomed to being greeted by when you enter his house, there’s a lot of noise coming from one area that can only mean either that someone had broken in to mug him or for some reason, he’s up before you need to wake him.

It’s nothing you have to call 911 for, but it still paralyzes you to see him, surrounded by opened jars and a particularly dirty bread knife as he stands in front of his fancy toaster, drumming his fingers on the counter impatiently.

“If you have a minute to spare, could you bring my laptop into the car?” He asks without turning around. His hand, still holding the bread knife, points towards the bar counter on the far end of the kitchen, where the laptop is still whirring away.

“Of course, sir. Um,” you gingerly shut the monitor, putting the laptop to sleep and tucking it under your arm. “Were you… working this morning?”

“No, I was playing a riveting game of bridge against the computer AI.” He turns to you, grinning. “Of course I was working, miss secretary. What do you think I’d be up this early for?”

You try to think of an answer, but nothing comes to mind — Vice President Na hasn’t ever woken up early for anything to your knowledge, anyway — so you just nod and bolt, unwilling to bear witness to his smile this early in the day. When you come back, particularly less red in the face, you find him topping one of two sandwiches with the last slice of bread to complete it. He takes one, as you expect he would, and you stand there, trying to look polite as you essentially observe him eat.

This isn’t something very unusual; ever since the first time you’d done it, you’ve been watching him out of habit. So far, only the motivation’s changed from you wanting to make sure he doesn’t bolt to you simply enjoying the view of his profile when he eats. Of course, he probably doesn’t know this, but he’s also just gotten used to you watching him and probably finds it funny — as suggested by his perpetually amused expression — that you still think, after all this time, that he’s going to make a run for it. You don’t actually mind it; you get to watch him for free, and he has something to laugh about, so everyone kind of wins.

He’s halfway through the sandwich when his expression turns quizzical. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Eat,” you echo hollowly. “Eat what, sir?”

“A delicious, handmade, gourmet peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich.” When you don’t move, he pushes the plate with the untouched sandwich forward towards you like he thinks you can’t understand anything he’s saying. “What? Are you allergic to something?”

“No, but…”

“But?”

There’s no but; you don’t have a good reason to decline other than the fact that accepting it feels weird, but refusing him when he’s looking at you this expectantly is just as awkward. You rub the back of your neck as you walk over, not missing the look of triumph that crosses his face as you pick up the sandwich and take a bite. It’s good, but you don’t really think that has anything to do with his culinary skills, based on what it is; still, he looks like he’s patting himself on the back for this feat.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Secretary ____________, I hope you can count this as a momentous occasion for the both of us.” He chuckles. “You get free breakfast made especially for you by your direct superior in the comfort of his own home, and I finally get to learn what all the settings on my toaster are for. Between you and me, I think mine’s the better achievement.”

You’re still in the middle of eating when you laugh, and you hastily raise a hand to cover it — only Vice President Na catches your wrist halfway through, so quickly you vaguely choke on the bread that’s only partially down your throat.

“I’ve never seen you laugh,” he looks as surprised as you feel, although probably for a different reason. “I don’t even think you’ve ever smiled at me, specifically.”

“Oh.” You need time to respond, mostly so you can swallow but also because you need to collect yourself from your shock. There seems to be a lot of that going around this morning. “Sorry. Should I do that more often?”

“I mean, if you ask like that, it’s kind of disingenuous,” he laughs. “But I like it. I like knowing you’re not just in a constant state of stress because of me. Feels even more momentous than the toaster thing.”

He loosens his hold, and you manage to take your hand back, now refusing to meet his eye. “I’m not… stressed by you.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” you agree, and he looks particularly delighted when he sees the corners of your lips turn up again. “Not for a while. And not that my opinion matters, but you’ve been performing above expectations, sir.”

“You’re right,” he hums, taking the plate and putting it in the sink — a problem he seems to be saving for later. “It doesn't matter. But I like it, all the same.”

You’re willing to chalk the morning off as a wonderful anomaly, especially since the rest of it passes as it normally does, with a generally quiet car ride (you’ve also learned that Vice President Na likes to listen to rap music on days when he wants to avoid falling asleep in the backseat, which is equal parts amazing and amusing) and a fifteen minute briefing of what he has on his plate today. He disappears for the better part of the morning and even the whole lunch hour, but you expect this because he has a business lunch with the representatives for some Norwegian appliance company that’s looking to break into the Korean market. You can’t imagine many people want a state of the art rice cooker alongside their monthly internet bill, but it’s polite for him to go anyway, and the prospective partner seems very on edge about company secrets. It’s one of those meetings you aren’t allowed to come along to, which means that you’re missing out on a few hours of Vice President Na trying to iron details out with a couple of old guys.

While you eat, you’re once again struck with the random notion that it feels weird not to be around the Vice President. You’ve been working together regularly and in a very close capacity, which basically means that you’re always in his shadow. It’s the life you were kind of hoping to have at the beginning and were deprived of for a good two years. Now that you have it, it feels weirdly natural — so natural that it’s unnatural to not have his voice ordering you around in that easy tone or his aftershave lingering in the air directly above you.

You throw the tissue you used to wipe the oil from your egg toast off your mouth onto the table, crumpled and wilted.

You miss him, which is ridiculous considering you don’t even know what there is to miss. Your relationship, while admittedly lightyears ahead of the starting point it had been at back then (again, not a great standard, considering you didn’t even have a relationship before this period of time), is nothing close to the point of being what it should be for one to miss the other.

And yet, you look forward to seeing him, watching him do something from afar, helping him whenever he needs you. You like the fact that he still sometimes fakes left when you’re accompanying him back to his office, and you do this thing where you pretend to be annoyed even though it makes you happy to know he won’t go anywhere. You like the little sounds he makes when he eats his super unhealthy corndog as if he’s eating it for the first time every single time (see: very unnerving and slightly disturbing but altogether amusing mmmmmmmmmms). In fact, if you didn’t have a vivid memory of telling him off from way back then, you feel like you could easily convince yourself that things had always been like this — that you two had always been together, happily at work.

You’re not surprised that he isn’t back from his meeting even when you get back to your desk after lunch, but you do feel a pang of dejectedness that lasts for a few more hours — time which you spend lazily looking over a contract he’d signed yesterday that needs a fair amount of amending and re-signing. It’s hard to pretend to care today, for some reason, especially since your mind keeps going back to peanut butter sandwiches and some ridiculous vision of Vice President Na standing in the middle of your tiny studio apartment’s kitchen area.

Your reverie’s broken when an envelope falls onto your desk, covering the page of the contract you’d been glassily staring at for the last hour and a half. You’d drawn the same circle about twenty times already, and the paper’s all dented from your efforts. When you look up, Vice President Na is staring down at you, grinning from ear to ear.

“Miss me?” He drums the envelope, the paper muffling the noise of it all. “Oh? I was joking, but it looks like you actually did. That’s twice in a single day, Secretary ____________. You’re setting a very high record.”

You try to tamp down the smile on your face upon seeing him, clearing your throat so that you have an excuse to press your lips together. You guess it doesn’t work because he just keeps smiling, anyway, or maybe he’s just in a really good mood. “Did your meeting go well, sir?”

“Is Lotteria the national fastfood chain? Too bad I don’t work for anyone because it kind of feels like I deserve some kind of reward.”

“Could we say that this partnership is its own reward?”

“It doesn’t have the same ring to it,” he sighs. Once again, his forefinger taps the envelope, calling your attention a little more clearly to it. “I know we’re on a tight schedule for this, and I hate to ask this so late of you, but —”

“Of course, sir; I’ll have it in your hands first thing tomorrow.”

You’re already gathering it up along with your other (vaguely unfinished) paperwork when his whole palm comes down, trapping the envelope and everything else you’d been intending to carry under it. Your hands go up like you’re being held at gunpoint, your eyes wide.

“On second thought,” Vice President Na muses, a little too serene for someone who’d just scared the living daylights out of someone else. “How about I take care of the Samsung deal you’re looking over, and you can handle the Norwegian contract?”

“I haven’t… really made a lot of headway with it, if I’m being honest.” You’re hoping he doesn’t ask you why because you’re too embarrassed to come up with a lie on the spot and will inevitably have to confess your random attraction to him under these terrible circumstances if he does. Luckily, he just shrugs.

“All the more reason to split the work, then.”

The still mildly stern part of you is begging to point out that he’s giving you a whole new set of documents to look over anyway, so it’s not even like you’ll have less to do, but the larger, more endeared part of you tells it to shut up and mind its own business. “I thought the crux of our agreement was that you’d never have to work overtime.”

“Because I look like such a stickler for the rules, don’t I?” He snorts, waving you in with the same envelope, and you concede.

Working next to Vice President Na isn’t anything new to you; you’ve been doing it everyday for a while now, especially if he needs you to be quick on call. Ever since you’ve realized his presence makes your heart beat a little faster, you’ve promised yourself not to let that fact show at all when he’s around, something you’ve been quite careful about perfecting.

Something’s different, though, when it’s after official hours. Maybe it’s because the floor is quieter than it is during the day, so there’s nothing you can listen to but the sound of pen scratching on paper and Vice President Na’s steady breathing. The only real interruption is when Hyunsung knocks on the door to ask if the Vice President is going home; the look on his face is panicked and confused, like a puppy that’s just been dropped off at the mouth of a dumpster site, when he’s told that Vice President Na will drive himself home, so he can just leave the keys.

Maybe it’s also because it’s pretty dark outside, and while you’ve worked into the night a few times, it’s usually alone or with some other poor sap that has even more backlog than you do — it’s never been just you and the Vice President, who seems supremely unperturbed by the fact that he isn’t at home doing… whatever he does at home after work. You can only guess at it (or wish you knew).

That makes one of you that’s keeping busy, although you know it should be two. The fact that you’re distracted by his presence all of a sudden is only exacerbated by the mutually exclusive headache that the paperwork you’re looking over gives you. You don’t know why you had expected it to be in Korean, but you and your intermediate level English struggle to keep up with all the little things you have to look through. Sometimes, you can’t tell if the clauses are actually confusing or if you’re just the poor product of your middle school education. It strikes you more than once that Vice President Na had gone through this, somehow, himself — talked to people in a completely different language, probably with ease. You can at least be proud of yourself for being right: for as long as the Vice President puts his mind to something, he’s able to do it — perhaps even well.

What shocks you after an eternity of silence is the hand that extends towards you, forefinger lightly nudging your chin. You sit up straight like a bolt of lighting had gone through you, meeting Vice President Na’s thoroughly and inexplicably amused expression. Your jaw slackens in shock, but his finger just stays there, like it isn’t invading your personal space. Like it just belongs there.

“What are you doing?”

“What—” you splutter, bemused at the fact that you hadn’t asked the question first. “What are you doing?”

“You keep moving your mouth. What — are you praying or something?”

“No, I —-” You gesture at the contract page you’ve been trying to stumble through for the past twenty minutes. “No, I’m just… I’m reading?”

“You’re…” The start of a laugh escapes him, and you really don’t know what’s so funny. “You’re reading aloud?”

“I wasn’t making any noise, I think,” you grumble, sounding a little more defensive than you’d care to admit.

“You read silently aloud, then.” His eyes twinkle at this information, although why it should elicit this reaction also completely escapes you. “Why? Because it helps you memorize it or something?”

“My English isn’t that great,” you admit begrudgingly, suddenly feeling a little exposed. “Sometimes I need to mouth the words to understand it.”

And he does the most outrageous, inexplicable thing: he gently cups your chin, making sure you can’t turn your head to look away in embarrassment. Now you have to look at him, red in the face and close to exploding.

“Don’t you think that’s a little too much, miss secretary?”

You can’t ask what; your voice isn’t working. You just open and close your mouth around the syllable, and after a couple of attempts, he starts copying you, evidently having a better time than you are based on the grin stretched across his face.

“What? What? That you’re doing something this cute in front of me is what I mean. You’re obviously going overboard, and I don’t think it’s very nice.”

He retracts his hand as quickly as he’d used it to close the distance between you, and your hand immediately comes up in its place, almost cupping your jaw like he did. It definitely doesn’t give you the same tingly feeling, so that’s an obvious bust.

You and Vice President Na have a sudden staring contest with amended rules: you blink a hundred times a minute at him while he laughs quietly, leaning back on his chair like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It confuses you and kind of enrages you, but you also find your heart thumping away in your ears like it’s trying very hard to remind you that Na Jaemin makes you feel alive.

“I— I just—”

“Coffee? I could use some coffee. You look like you could use some too.” He stands, buttoning his blazer with one hand like he has someplace important to go. You’re still so shell-shocked that you don’t even try to stand up to help him, a fact which he notices very clearly. “Oh no, I’ll do you this favor. You sit tight and read your contract. I’ll be back. Keep doing that cute thing with your mouth.”

Vice President Na finds you exactly as he left you: still wondering if you should be offended at his teasing or enamored by his touch and, more importantly, what the hell his deal is. You have a million questions that need answering, but the only thing you blubber out when he comes back is “Why?”

“Because you’re amazingly fun to tease,” he responds simply. “And because it’s true. I find it extremely cute. I find you very cute, Secretary _____________, in a kind of good girl, cool girl kind of way. It’s a little confusing to me too, but I think this slightly stern but overall gentle aesthetic of yours is actually growing on me a little.”

“Sir, I—”

“While we’re taking a break,” he interrupts you. You guess it’s probably the right time for a break considering there’s no way you can work in peace now. “Do you constantly have to call me that?”

“What else would I call you?”

“My name,” he suggests, taking a sip of coffee. You ignore the shit, that’s hot that comes out of him as he puts the paper cup down gingerly on his desk, looking a little bit betrayed by his drink. “Jaemin. Many people call me that.”

“People who are close to you, you mean. Like your family or… your friends.”

“Are you saying you don’t think we’re close? Or that we aren’t friends?”

“Sir, I work for you.”

“So by that alone, we simply can’t be friends? Et al?I think you really are being too much now, Secretary ____________.” He folds his arms across his chest, tutting disapprovingly as he leans back on the edge of his desk. You try not to think too hard about the fact that he does it very close to you, at an angle optimal for viewing the leanness of his form. “After all those times you broke into my house—”

“To get you ready for work.”

“— walked into my bedroom—”

“Only whenever necessary—”

“— gone through my things while I’m half naked in bed like you’re trying to organize a charity drive—”

“Because you need to get dressed, not because I have some perverted agenda —”

“—eaten the food off my kitchen counter, too—”

“You told me to!” You get to your feet, the contract slipping from your lap in your enthusiasm to defend yourself. “You offered it to me!”

Whatever happens next is completely out of your control, and you know this because the room spins without you moving by your own will. Vice President Na must have been an expert dancer in his past life, or something, because after that one dizzying moment, you find yourself leaning against the edge of the table he had been just a second ago. Warm hands are on your waist, tucked under your cardigan, the heat bleeding through your shirt.

And the Vice President’s smile is inches away from your face, still mischievous but much gentler than any other time before.

You’re not sure if you’re paralyzed or if you just don’t want to move, but the reason doesn’t affect the outcome: all you can do is stare up at him, once again dumbfounded after a small outpouring of words that ends in some kind of forced defeat. Except this particular surrender doesn’t feel so sore, for some reason.

“Even when you’re angry, you’re still pretty, you know that?”

“I wasn’t… angry,” you mumble under your breath, afraid that talking louder will scare him off. You don’t even think he’s listening all that much to you, considering that all he does is tuck your hair behind your left ear and completely change the topic.

“So, tell me, Secretary ____________. Is this still a situation where we’re not close at all?” He pauses for a moment, probably to let you answer, but you don’t say anything. You’re pretty sure your swallowing nervously is the only true sound you make. He seems to be eager to do a lot of the talking anyway, which is absolutely fine by you. “Or have I completely misread all your cute little signals?”

“Well — no, but I didn’t send any signals.” Obvious ones, at least. You’d been pretty sure you had tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible, but you’re starting to realize it’s a little possible you’re not as great at pretending as you think you are.

“Not on purpose, probably. Although you really almost got me with the one-man show vibe you have during lunch hour.”

“I… didn’t think you knew, if I’m being honest.�� Honesty is the only thing you have right now, anyway, especially since Vice President Na has pretty much confirmed, in his own way, that he knows about how you feel. Now you can only wonder if he’d noticed before you even came to terms with it yourself, and the thought of that being a real possibility urges you to grab the still-steaming cup of coffee and douse yourself with its contents.

“For a while, I was pretty sure you were messing with me. I would never,” he adds just as you say it too, mimicking your astounded tone up to the lilt. “Which is why I started thinking about why else you might be looking at me so intently. You weren’t sitting there objectifying me, were you, miss secretary?”

“Sir, I would never,” you repeat, and he mouths the same words again in his amusement, although silently this time.

“I think I would have been okay with it if you were. Or would be, even until now. For the record.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You sure? No shame in it. Totally fine. Not sure about anyone else, but I’m totally okay if someone else thinks I’m eye candy in the privacy of their own minds. I am, I think, a fine specimen of a human, if I do say so myself.”

“I really wasn’t, sir.”

“You should have, then. Lost opportunities.””

“I could argue that I was just worried you’d leave and not come back.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that to you,” he hums. “Not anymore, anyway.”

The ‘to you’ is what stumps you into another silent spell, but this time, Vice President Na doesn’t attempt to fill in the void. He just starts running his eyes over your face, like he’s trying to read something there or maybe memorize your features, or something. At some point, you start thinking about how this kind of silence isn’t exactly uncomfortable, contrary to your expectations and with interesting consideration of the fact that he’s still holding your hips. Apart from the idle skimming of his thumb over the curve of your pelvic bone, he doesn’t move — nearer or closer, which is probably for the best since you don’t know which one you really want more at this point.

Again, when you gather some part of your wits, the only thing you still know how to ask is “Why?”

“Because,” he replies immediately, simply, like the answer has always been very clear and you’ve just been too ignorant to figure it out. “You said that I could, not that I had to.”

It’s hot. Isn’t it hot? You don’t know what he’s talking about, but your body already reacts on principle, and you have to stand-half-lean there with your entire face burning and Vice President Na’s body heat washing over yours like an electric blanket.

“I don’t know what that means, sir.”

“It means I didn’t do this for my dad or just because you told me off in the comfort of my own office.” He bites down on his lower lip to keep himself from laughing (yet again) at you as he witnesses, from the best seat in the house, your face turning almost purple with the effort of keeping down your embarrassment. “Although that played a bit of a factor in it. I couldn’t tell if it was rude of you to say so much or kind of cute that you did despite knowing you were being rude. But that’s besides the point.”

Good, you think. If he manages to hit you with another cute in this timeframe, you may easily cease to exist.

“You know firsthand, anyway, what my dad always says. You must take on the responsibility you were born with. You have to do your job. You must remember that you owe your life to my achievements.” He mimics his father’s gruff, booming voice amusingly well, to the point that you can’t stop yourself from laughing. His facade breaks easily, and you think you hear him mumble cute under his breath again, although you choose to ignore it so your knees don’t buckle completely (something that you think would be very embarrassing with you so close to him). “I don’t think he’s ever once said an encouraging word to my face. And if there’s anything I can confidently say I won’t do, it’s doing what people only say I need to do. It’s my life, you know what I mean? I’ll do what I want.”

“You’re saying you suddenly wanted to work because I said you could?”

“More like I wanted to see if you were right.” He muses. “I was pretty sure I didn’t have the personality for it. Or the attention span. Or the skill, either.”

“I think a couple of those things are still up in the air, sir.”

“One compliment and you’re already gunning for another insubordination report.” Vice President Na’s voice is a low, casual hum, but you notice the grip around your waist tightens for a brief moment. “At first, I figured I’d just show up to get everyone off my back, but I realized along the way that I’m pretty good at this being at the helm business. I’m sure you’ll agree. Hopefully because you want to, not because you also have to.”

“I do agree.” Your reply is wholehearted, and the Vice President’s smile widens. Your chest swells so much that you think you might explode right in front of him. “Because I want to.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, miss secretary. I’m not attributing all my successes to your impulsive words.” He teases, although his eyes stay gentle despite his tone. “The efforts were still all mine. However, I’m not too proud to admit I had a very responsible first mate by my side, for whom I am very grateful. Although I hope this doesn’t mean she’ll pluck up the courage to ask for a raise considering how well I pay her. I think. Does she get paid well? Maybe I should ask Park Jinhee from accounting.”

“She won’t,” you laugh softly, not missing the fact that he’s finally learned her name. “And she’s not really doing this for the salary, even if it is a nice bonus.”

“What’s she doing it for, then?”

As a job, this was really mostly about yourself — or it was, in the beginning. You’d terrorized Vice President Na to some degree because of the innate tendency towards self-preservation, and when that felt a little one-sided, you also considered everyone who might lose their jobs if the department got cut. It had been, for the most part, an act of pure desperation, so strong that you were willing to point fingers and raise your voice (only a few decibels, because you’re not a crazy person) at your boss. Now… that wasn’t really part of the equation. Maybe you had gotten used to the fact that the Vice President wouldn’t be going anywhere, so you’d stopped worrying about your and everyone else’s jobs, which all seem to be on a smooth path alongside the captain of the ship.

But if you had to be honest to yourself, part of the reason you’d grown a bit complacent about thinking about the fate of the department also had to do with the fact that you genuinely enjoyed being next to the Vice President. Mornings spent helping him prepare for work were regular highlights in your week, and the looks of approval you received from him every time you helped him finish a particularly difficult task were second to none. Always being close to him, always being the first and last to see him in the day, simply being able to look at him -– silly as that all sounds, they now play an undeniable factor in your desire to wake up and go to the office every single day.

“I did it for you.” You answer, and because the answer’s honest, it feels completely natural to say. A pause slowly lengthens between you two, though not nearly as tense or borderline uncomfortable as you thought it might be this time around. A slow smile stretches over the Vice President’s face, but his words don’t easily take the straightforward route this time, either.

“Should I take up with the human resources department the fact that you’re outright breaching the terms of our contractual workplace relationship? How am I?” He speaks over, with you again, your voices overlapping. You can’t help it — you laugh at the absurdity of how well he’s come to know your responses, from the word choice to the lilt in your voice that signals some level of affront. When, exactly, did Vice President Na start committing the things you said and did into memory? “You’re seducing me, miss secretary. Before you say you’re not — you are. You are, without even knowing it. You’re winning me over, telling me all these sweet nothings to tickle my heart — I believe in you, Jaemin. I love working with you, Jaemin. I did it all for you, Jaemin, because you’re obviously the best in the whole world, ho ho ho.”

“I never said it like that.”

“You might as well have.”

“Should I stop believing in you so that we can avoid a scene, then, or is the damage to your good standing too far gone?”

“Rather than stopping something already in full motion, I think it might be better to make certain amendments to our current agreement.” Vice President Na reaches for the pen tucked into his breast pocket — the gold clip catches the fluorescent light and momentarily blinds you as he brings it up between you. He brings it to one side, then to another, and your eyes follow it, amused but also admittedly a bit hypnotized.

“What kind of trance are you putting me under, sir?”

“The kind that gets you to stop calling me that,” he chuckles. “Among other, more important things on my agenda.”

You have an excellent view of Vice President Na’s stellar smile from the back of the meeting room.

The deal he closes three days later goes even better than expected; not only does he bring Amazon into the fold after weeks of (surprisingly consistent) hard work and no small amount of beguiling charm (owing to the fact that he’d offended said Amazon representatives earlier on in his still relatively short-lived career), but he also manages to snag Samsung Electronics’ participation. As an already existing subscriber to the company-provided phone plan, you’re pleased to find out that you’re entitled to twelve guilt-free months of Prime Video as part of a new promotional deal, which you can now enjoy on nights you aren’t working overtime — something you’ve racked up more of as you’ve found yourself striking more of a work-life balance, thanks in large part to the Vice President’s steadily active involvement in all things on the ‘work’ aspect of the scale. Your first goal is to finally get past the first episode of an animation everyone in the department is raving about (but that you haven’t seen more than five minutes of, in actuality, because the horrible subtitles and sluggish 144px stop motion-esque have, until recently, adamantly deterred you from enjoying anything about the story).

Standing a fair distance away from the executives, you wait for the flurry of handshakes and accompanying congratulatory statements to die down; it takes quite a while, considering the sheer volume of people, and the thickest throng has come to gather around Vice President Na. At one point, all you can see of him is the slightly unruly lick of hair that’s sticking out above the rest of the considerable crowd of balding men around him (the sole crow’s feather a mountain range of gray). All their voices overlap, and you’re only able to catch key phrases — brilliant young mind… knack for business! … just like the President… bright future ahead, you know?

Fifteen minutes of conversation and bellowing guffaws pass before Vice President Na emerges, adjusting the front of his blazer as a result of too much handshaking. Behind him, still speaking to one of the marketing executives, is President Na, who shoots his son a surreptitious look you’ve never seen him wear in your considerable number of years in the company’s employ — one of triumph and pride. The Vice President, however, is intently loosening his tie and scanning the room, stretching himself just a fraction taller above everyone else to get a better view throughout.

You wait, wondering if he’s looking to speak to someone, lost in that host of black and gray suits — the Amazon media director, perhaps, or the in-house designer that also seems to be trying to catch his eye, for some reason (you sense the needy greed for a sudden promotion that seems highly unlikely in such a setting), but even though his vision passes over them, however briefly, Vice President Na doesn’t seem satisfied.

That is, until his eyes land on the corner of the room you and Secretary Son have backed yourselves into to allow the higher-ups room to mingle.

One beat later, and the corners of his mouth are pulled up — a soft, knowing smile directed in your general direction. You glance at Secretary Son, maybe out of instinct, maybe somehow out of panic — as though you worry she’ll somehow come to chastise you, but she’s too busy trying to re-buckle her thin coat belt with rapid-fire tsks. She seems acceptably preoccupied, so your eyes flit back to the Vice President, whose eyebrows are now slightly raised, the telltale signs of a growing grin now playing on his lips as the front of his teeth begin to peek out from the seam. Another cock of his eyebrows, lifting them higher, tells you he’s waiting for some kind of message — an indication that you see him too, maybe, or… perhaps, oddly, any sign that you’re as proud of him as everyone else in the room is.

You can’t help it — you laugh, louder than you’d have originally liked to, a hand coming up over your mouth as Secretary Son’s head snaps up from her waist, bamboozled at your quick but sudden outburst. She throws you a look that suggests she firmly believes your mind has snapped, quite like a stale breadstick in a derelict Italian restaurant, but it’s worth it; Vice President Na looks satisfied at this — though, why he would be, you haven’t a true clue.

As the managers and members of the board file out of the room, both you and Secretary Son inch closer to your respective direct superiors; you both stand a few steps away as the last of the executives drag their feet, still hoping to share one last handshake with either of the two, until an elderly Mrs. Kwon’s surprisingly firm grip is finally shaken off by a sheepish President Na. He turns to his son, who’s still hosting the remnants of a genial smile on his lips, clearly poised to say something. For some reason, you expect the senior to berate the former, simply out of sheer habit, but he does nothing of the sort.

“Jaemin-ah,” his voice is gruff but not at all begrudging; it’s a low rumble of triumph. “Who’d’ve thought? My boy… you brat…”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental now, dad,” the Vice President teases, to which the President chortles heartily.

“Old men like me have the right, much more than anyone else.” You’ve never seen the President wear an expression even remotely close to softness, but you see it in his gaze now; it strikes you, then, that although you’ve always known the two to be related, this is the first time you can confidently say they resemble each other to the cores of their being — a view of happiness, somewhat mirrored in each of them. “I’m proud of you, son. You did everything I hoped you would — no, no… more than that, even.”

“I’ll take most of the praise, thanks,” Vice President Na replies with his characteristic cheek. For a moment, so quickly you think you may have missed it, his eyes flicker to you. “But I can’t say I could’ve done it alone.”

“Punk,” President Na snorts, yanking on his son’s earlobe; you and Secretary Son have to avert your eyes with expert speed to avoid being caught snickering at the slightly juvenile “ow, dammit,” that the Vice President groans out. “One big closed deal, and your head’s this big? I better not catch you floating away to a Las Vegas casino after all this.”

“Give me some credit; I’d at least visit the desert first.” This time, when the Vice President glances at you, his father’s head turns too, and you stand up straighter at the unprecedented onslaught of attention. “Besides, I’ve got someone here to keep me anchored now.”

“Good work, Secretary ____________,” President Na offers you a rare smile that truly has you feeling like the world has turned upside down: the President in an agreeable (almost ecstatic, though you’d never say that out loud) mood, the Vice President doing his job not just in general but actually commendably well, and not a single strand of baby hair sticking up from out of your ponytail. Inconceivable.

You bow, murmuring a thank you, and Secretary Son quickly follows suit for the formality of it all before she strides over to the President, who’s leaving his son with one last thunder-like clap on the back before he’s leaving the meeting room, still jovial when he catches up with the suspiciously lagging figure of Mrs. Kwon by the door.

Vice President Na starts to follow suit, walking towards the other end of the meeting room; you quickly scurry behind him, still clutching your tablet, blinking a low battery warning, to your chest. You’ve come to grow accustomed to the ‘secretary’s pace’ over the last few weeks as well — always close enough to help, never too close enough to step on a superior’s toes.

But in the moment you fumble to silence your device, you end up stepping into someone’s shadow; glancing up at the Vice President, you find yourself looking at not the familiar view of his back but that of his side profile (one you’re actually also familiar with, though you refuse to admit to the level of familiarity). He’s slowed his pace considerably, allowing you to naturally fall into step with him, and even this, he expects a response from you somehow — he asks for it with yet another wiggle of his eyebrows. You laugh again, shaking your head, and yet, inexplicably, it seems to be exactly the reaction he hopes to see.

The department floor erupts into applause when the two of you pass through the glass doors; a flash of mollification crosses the Vice President’s features before he’s back to his signature light humor, raising a palm up in receipt of praise. Park Jinhee is clapping with only her left hand smacking the side of her mug, a few drops of coffee streaming down the handle side on impact. One of the team managers rushes forward, eager to shake Vice President Na’s hand, and, riding his high, also yours, pumping it up and down with so much vigor that you mumble a quiet ow behind a strained smile. Only the Vice President’s hand on your shoulder, steering you away, saves you from what feels like possible dislocation.

He’s still waving at them like this is a pageant and not his day job, even as he guides you towards his office door; you have to use your elbows to push it open and effectively help you both avoid ramming into frosted glass. The applause dies down as your somewhat conjoined figures disappear through the doorway — you first, albeit convolutedly, your heel still holding strong in the job of keeping the door wide open enough for Vice President Na to saunter through before you let it swing shut to a now relatively silent office floor.

His hold on your shoulder doesn’t let up, though; it’s still urging you forward, towards his desk, and you open your mouth to say something along the lines of I’m gonna break my hip if we keep going this way, but just as your throat conjures up the first syllable, he turns you around, letting you rest light against the edge of the table.

In a pattern reminiscent of three days prior, Vice President Na’s hand finds its way to your waist, utterly comfortable in a way that mystifies you; he acts like it belongs there, as natural as the smile that’s still playing on his lips.

“Sir, you realize it’s the middle of the day?”

“You realize that we had a deal,” he corrects you, brow furrowing in feigned sternness. “Hold up your end of it, miss secretary.”

“Only if you stop calling me that.”

“Now, that absolutely was not part of the contract.”

When you laugh this time, he chimes in; there’s a harmony in your voices that has your posture softening. You feel airier, your heart much lighter, and when you look up at him, you can’t help but flush at his expectant gaze.

“You realize it’s the middle of the day,” you repeat, carefully, the words suddenly somewhat unfamiliar on your tongue — the next two syllables, most of all. “Jae… min.”

Odd as it is, you’re rewarded with the pleased look that takes over his features; he takes a moment to exaggeratedly revel in this new occurrence.

“Better. Much better. You could still be a bit more comfortable with it, I’d say, but… baby steps?”

“Please re-prioritize your day, si— Jaemin.” The terse tone you’re going for is brutally marred by your blunder, which has his shoulders shaking from laughter. “Someone could very easily walk in.”

“Who’s going to fire me?”

“I can think of one person.”

“You heard him. I’m proud of you, Jaemin. You’ve completely exceeded my expectations, Jaemin. You are the light of my life — my favorite son, Jaemin, ho, ho, ho.”

“Sir,” you sigh. “You’re his only son.”

“We had a deal,” he repeats, letting the return to habits slide, and there’s a laughably childish air to his words. “I’ll… file an insubordination report. Breach of contract as well. Tsk, tsk, miss secretary. Not on such a momentous occasion.”

“Some might classify this as threatening behavior.” Your eyes are soft, though, when they meet his humored gaze. “If you want a reward… ask a little more nicely.”

A soft snort — his fingers dig lightly into your waist, and the next second, he’s lifting you off your feet and settling you lightly atop his desk. his palms never leave you, even after you’ve been placed; they’re increasingly warm beyond the fabric of your top.

“____________,” he murmurs, saying your name so naturally that you could almost believe he’s referred to you as nothing else for as long as you’ve known him. “Kiss me.”

Your own hands find their way behind his neck, but he does most of the work in closing the gap anyway; you’re not even sure who, between the two of you, gave that first sigh of longing, of relief. Perhaps it was both of you, all at once.

Jaemin still tastes like the coffee you’d given him this morning — not a trace of richness, but a bittersweet and earthy twang that’s signature post-Americano. There’s even a hint of mintiness from the nervous handful of Tic Tacs he’d had just before the meeting started; you find that out the moment his tongue swipes against yours, leaving behind the invisible bite of menthol. And then there’s you, a clean taste that settles against his teeth, subtle first but growing stronger until you’re satisfied with the notion that you may linger there for some time — even after you pull away, slightly breathless.

“Congratulations to me,” he breathes out, trademark grin flashing bright again. “So what happens if I close next month’s Disney Plus deal?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer; his hand’s already skimming down, over your hips, following the path of your thigh. Your hand reaches out on instinct to stop him, but he’s oddly more aware of his surroundings than you give him credit for (or maybe, you’re just that predictable to him). He meets your palm, fingers lacing into yours and allowing him to lift your wrist to his lips. There, you feel the warmth of his kiss again, and he uses his hold to bring himself even closer, until he’s able to press his face into your neck.

“Sir—”

“Jaemin. You call me Jaemin from now on, remember?”

“Sir.” You’re adamant. “It’s work hours.”

“You’re not tense.”

He doesn’t move his head; in fact, you feel him burying his face further into your shoulder. In this position, there’s no real way for you to pull away — there’s also no real desire for you to do so, anyway.

“No, I’m not.”

“Good.” Warmth again on your skin — his lips leave an invisible mark just above your collarbone. “I like you best like this.”

“What? Not tense?”

“Happy,” he corrects for accuracy. “Happy that you’re with me.”

You fall silent, not because you’re not sure of what to say, but because you don’t need to tell him that he’s right.

Moments later, his fingers find their way into your ponytail; the index hooks into the elastic, bringing your hair down. You feel his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, he’s inhaling your perfume again.

“Green tea. Something floral. Jasmine? Maybe a little bit of citrus.” He lifts his head but stays close, warm breath washing over you. “It’s so you. Fresh. Pure. Beautiful.”

The gap between the two of you doesn’t last for too long thereafter; he kisses you again, and your heart lifts to find that your taste still lingers somewhere there. It’s longer because it’s slower — less playful and more exploratory, until he pulls away to a much more breathless you. How he finds the air to talk even after is miraculous to you.

“Be mine, miss secretary.”

You blink — once, twice, at his serious expression, wondering if it will break and give way to more humor. But he waits, unwavering, until the last piece of resistance you’ve clung onto is washed away — the last thing that made you, for a second, deny that you were in love with him.

His smile slowly mirrors yours as it grows.

“Like you could ever get rid of me, Na Jaemin.”

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