#tell no lies!curse au | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

neopuppy · 2 months

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I’m Here To Save You (M)

pairing. alpha johnny x female omega reader

genre. traditional a/b/o AU, friends to lovers, mild angst, fluff, pwp, m/f, one shot

warnings. profanity, alpha/omega dynamics, mating ceremony, pack head Alpha Johnny, size difference, use of Alpha voice, dominant but soft Johnny. smut warnings under cut. minors DNI.

wc. 15k

now playing. pied piper//bts

smut warnings. unprotected rough sex, public sex- with audience, biting, breeding, knotting, etc

a/n. I am aware of Johnny’s actual tattoos, in case it needs to be said. my apologies for the floof🫤😑

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⋆ ･

By now you’d wish to have gotten the hang of climbing up a tree.

Hissing between your teeth as you pick at splinters cutting through your palm, you lean back into a more comfortable position against a large branch just in time to catch a glimpse of the group of Alphas marching out of the village for a hunt. It’d be another week condemned to the stables cleaning horse shit if any of them were to find you this deep in the woods again.

For the most part you’ve managed to sneak around unnoticed, only catching the attention of a few elders who realized you’d been missing most of the day as you passed by and smiled inconspicuously.

Sometimes you just need to be alone, get away from the pack’s rules and hierarchy, all the duties and mundane tasks implemented. Even if your motive to distance yourself these days has less to do with wanting to be alone and more with needing to get away from a certain somebody that can’t seem to leave you alone.

“You know,” a familiar voice cuts through the trees. Long legs and thick brown hair with golden bits emerging before you can see his face in the light. “The day my father finds you out here this far from the pack, I won’t have any way to protect your ass from the punishment you’ll undoubtedly face.”

“He hasn’t caught me.” You respond, sneering down at your friend arching his neck back with a hand over his eyes to shield the sun and squint up at you.

“Yet.” He states, snapping his fingers toward you with his free hand. “Get down from there.”

“No.”

“It’s not safe!” He hisses, peering back over his shoulder to ensure the Alphas have made it past the clearing already. “For someone like you to be up there.”

“Someone like me?” You spit, ripping a small tree branch free to hurl at his face. “What the hell is that supposed to mean!”

He sighs, stepping back to dodge your weak attempt to hurt him. “Don’t make me come up there.”

“Go away.”

“No.” Setting his hands on his hips he motions toward the lake with his head. “Let’s go swimming, it’s a nice day and with the Alphas gone it’s pretty empty.”

“Don’t want to.” You sigh, leaning back on the thick part of the tree.

“Please? I already lied to Jaehyun to get out of hanging out with him today.” Reaching for the satchel laid on his hip, he pulls out a bottle antiseptic. “Bet your hands are really beat from scaling this ancient tree too. Come on, don’t make me beg to hang out with my best friend.”

Jaehyun’s your best friend. You want to snap back at him, huffing and frowning as you pick at a small splinter.

“The waters perfect right now..”

“Beg.” You say, peering down with a smile.

He chuckles, head shaking, pressing his hands against the tree. “Yeah? Should I get on my knees and cry? Would that make you come down?”

“Perhaps..”

“I said—“ with gritted teeth he grips onto the trunk of the tree firmly and shakes, adding kicks in-between. “Get down from there!”

“Johnny!” He’s stronger than you’d think from his gangly appearance, at least able to shake your position enough to clutch onto a large branch and curse as more bits of wood cut through your palm. “Stop it!”

“Are you coming down?!”

“Fine! You stupid neanderthal!”

“Nice one.” Catching his breath he moves back enough to grant you space to come down, reaching for your waist once you’re close enough to the ground. “I seriously hate when you sneak off without telling anyone.”

“It’s not a big deal.” You heave out of breath, swatting his hands away. Johnny’s persistent, grabbing a hold of your wrists and spinning you around to face him.

“‘No.” He mutters, tsking under his breath. “It’s a huge deal. Goddess look at your hands.” A frown takes over his features, kneeling down to empty his bag in search of tweezers. “I only carry these around because of you.”

“I’m fine.” You scoff, ignoring the sting shooting through your hands. “I’ll wash them out in the water.”

“And risk infection?” Standing back up, he grabs onto your wrist again, turning your palm to face him. “Have your mother blame me for allowing you to ruin your delicate soft skin?”

“And who’s to say I need your permission to do anything?” You scowl, attempting to free your hand from his grip that only tightens.

“You know she expects me to look out for you.” Ignoring your petulance, he raises your hand up to carefully dissect a splinter from your middle finger, gentle with each movement to not make this hurt more than it has to. “As future head Alpha I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” You snort sarcastically, rolling your eyes to avoid looking at the taller. “Pack Alpha this and that.”

“Right.” Johnny nods, dabbing a cloth drenched with antiseptic after each splinter removal. “This hatred towards Alphas, how exactly will that work and play out after I’ve presented?”

“Won’t matter.” You shrug, foregoing your struggle to allow him to bandage your palm up.

“And why’s that?”

“My mother’s a Beta, my father’s an Alpha.” You say as if that’s enough of an answer.

Johnny’s gaze raises to yours, biting down on his lip. “Mmm.. right.”

Squinting back at him, you shove his shoulder, nodding in the direction of the lake. “Let’s go before it gets too late.”

Too late, not referring to sundown but to the real reason you’ve journeyed out to the woods more and more these days. It’s around the corner, ready to rear its ugly head and ruin the one friendship you can always count on. Ruin the genuine care and love that’s formed between the two of you over the years.

“Loser has to clean out the pups dirty diaper can this week!” He shouts, running past you toward the lake.

“Johnny!” You whine, losing your breath to chase after him and grab onto the back of his shirt. “That’s not fair!”

“Hey!” He growls playfully, spinning around to grip around your waist as you tug on his collar and stretch the material out. “Let go!”

“You’re a cheater!” You hiss, aiming for his chest to punch lightly. “Be fair!”

“Fine.” He laughs, releasing you to drop his satchel and tug his shirt off. “3 laps.” Pointing from one end of the lake to the other he motions between the two of you, knowing you can kick his ass at swimming anyday. “Me and you.”

“Deal.” Shoving down your hoodie and shorts, you barrel into his side and run past him to cannonball onto the water first. “Loser!”

“Hey!” Johnny jumps out of his shorts, pouncing in after you, arms paddling rapidly to race after you. “What’s fair about this!”

“Me winning!”

You’re out of breath by the time you finish the last lap and bend over belly flat onto the rocks lining the lake. Johnny stops next to you shortly after, resting on his forearms as he mimics your position and swallows down air.

“Hey, I’m getting better at this.” He says breathlessly, stomach sucking in and out.

“Only because you’ve had an insane growth spurt..” you mumble, bracing your arms to shove out of the lake and move to the dry patch of grass nearby.

He takes a few more minutes to bask in the sun, skin glistening with golden rays streaming across his back and shoulders. The hours spent outside during summer really brightened up his complexion, painting his hair with light brassy streaks. It’s the same every year, as if the sun wants to be around him at all times, melting into his skin and soft brown eyes as he lifts his head and stretches.

“Yeah, dad measured me the other day.” He responds after a while, lifting his long torso to push up and out of the water and plop down by your side. “Grew another two inches..”

“Yeah, I can tell..” you mumble, looking away and rubbing at your arms.

“So, why don’t we ever talk about it?” He says quietly, picking at shards of grass by his hip. “He thinks I’ll present soon, like.. really soon.”

Instead of opening the door to what a conversation like this can lead to, you shrug and roll your neck back to crack. “Let’s head back before it starts getting dark.”

Johnny lets out a tired sigh, teeth gritted as he stands up and follows after you, grabbing your elbow. “Don’t be like this.”

“Like what?”

He’s silent for a moment, head tilted and analyzing your lack of expression before letting you go. “It could be years until we see eachot—“

“I don’t care, okay? Drop it.”

“How could you not care?!” He asks, eyes wild and bewildered. “Do you not care about me??”

“Of course I care about you!” You shout, tearing your arm away from him. “But this is inevitable, it’s your destiny!”

“And you?” He’s quick to cut you off, stepping closer. “What about you? Are you a part of that destiny? Because right now I really feel like you’re trying to push me away and forget my existence.”

If only it was that easy.

“There’s nothing more to be said Johnny.”

His gaze lowers seemingly disappointed, softly nodding, biting his bottom lip before a tremble can pass through. “Can I say something?”

No. Please don’t. Don’t make this harder on me than it already is.

“Fine.”

“Take care of yourself, for my sake? And please, stay close to the pack. Try to have some guilt in your conscience that your best friend can’t get a proper night of sleep while worrying about you running into a feral rogue or breaking a leg out there without anyone to find you.”

“Can you tell my friend that I’m not helpless and can very well fend for myself?” You retort, turning and stomping away back to the trail leading toward your pack's land.

Johnny huffs, shaking his head and gathering the clothes you both discarded, clutching your hoodie for a minute in thought. There’s barely a scent on it, a hint of your mother and father’s lingering, really nothing more than a light memory of the times he’s walked you back to your cabin. If not for the nice weather today he’d chase after you and tackle you down until you cover up, staggering behind instead to stuff your sweater up to his nose.

He shouldn’t, not even allowed to innocently scent you let alone do anything like this. His father would be so disappointed with him, always lecturing him about befriending a girl like you. Very stubborn and unruly, always disobeying the pack Omegas that only want what’s best for you.

But this could be his last chance to savor something from you for some time, because he’d never ask you to scent.. as if you’d ever let him. The smell left behind is barely enough to taste, most of the scent belonging to your Alpha father, smokey and musk. Relaxing against a tree trunk he sighs, clutching the material to his chest solemnly. As stubborn as you may be, he can’t help to think you’re hurting more than you’re willing to show.

You’d always been resilient toward him, avoiding him even after the first encounter you’d ever had.

The pack Alphas son that everyone admires and adores, all except you.

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⋆ ･

“Where’s Johnny?” You ask sheepishly, staggering nearby the head Alphas cabin too chicken to actually knock on the door for an answer. Things hadn’t ended on the best note yesterday, and typically by now your friend would have sought you out, probably dragged you to the canteen for a snack since you slept through breakfast again.

“What do you mean?” Jaehyun snickers, passing by with bags full of manure on his way to the stables. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?” You ask, mildly panicked.

Jaehyun scoffs quietly, glancing around cautiously for head Alphas presence. “He presented.”

“What?!”

“Shh!” He hisses, grabbing your arm to drag you along with him and out of the pack leaders' close proximity. “How could you not know?! Last night, head Omega had to stay with the elders because Johnny’s rut hit.”

“Rut.. meaning—he’s..”

“Oh come on.” Jaehyun rolls his eyes, flicking your chin.” “You always knew, don’t you remember the first time we met?”

Of course you remember.

When you’re five years old, you get dropped off at the learning center for the first time. It’s not much, depending on the amount of Omegas vs Alphas amongst your pack. No more than 30 pups ranging in elementary age running around screaming.

That’s when you meet Jaehyun of the Jung lineage. He’s the first boy to ever make fun of you. Stuck to share a desk with him based on the proximity of your last names. Jaehyun prods your cheek with the end of his pencil. Asking you why they’re so round, adding a jab by showing off the deep indents on his own.

He follows you out to the field when the lead Omega instructor dismisses you for break. Skipping along your side boasting about how he’s already begun learning archery.

“My dads one of the strongest Alphas the pack has!” He gloats. Drawing an arm back to shoot an invisible arrow toward the forest that surrounds your village. “Says I’ll be just like him someday, better even!”

Squinting at him, you nod, lacking the same enthusiasm he has. Opting to search for a toy to occupy your free time, you browse through the crates piled together outside. A yo-yo could be fun, once you untangle the string another pup had evidently left to be discarded.

“Hey!” Jaehyun smacks the toy out of your hold. Pouting like a petulant upset baby. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Why did you do that?” A taller boy interrupts the two of you. Bending down to grab the yo-yo that’s rolled away, hitting the toe of his sneaker. He lifts it up with a bit of inspection, beginning to unravel the string.

“..oh..Johnny..” Jaehyun stammers. His once bratty tone falling into a hushed one lacking confidence. “I was just messing around.”

Johnny, as Jaehyun calls him, concentrates on straightening out the toys string. Winding it up with ease and gesturing for you to take it once he’s finished.

“Should be all good to use now.” He smiles brightly. Having to lean his neck down as he looks over your lost expression. With the corners of his lips dropping to a pronounced frown, he blares Jaehyun with a cold stare. “Don’t do that again okay? No future strong Alpha of our pack would behave in such a manner.”

Flitting you with a rushed look, he turns away. Meeting up with a few other pups who seemed closer to his age. Jaehyun grumbles at your side, crossing his arms over his chest. His small foot lifting to a stomp for added dramatics.

“Great, now he’s going to snitch on me to the Head Alpha. I wasn’t even doing anything bad!” Jaehyun cries out. Sucking on his bottom lip in thought. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Nodding quietly, you loop the yo-yo’s thread around your index finger. Having to tighten it from where Johnny had left it.

Jaehyun continues to follow you around, quite talkative for a pup. Too talkative in comparison to you. Directing you to walk in any direction that wouldn’t bring you any closer to the boy that had clearly left him shook up.

“Do you know him?” You wonder. Glancing to where Johnny spikes a volleyball high above a net setup. The opposition weakened by a powerful collision meeting his chest.

“Pft, of course!” Jaehyun gawks, fitting you with widened eyes. “That’s Head Alpha’s firstborn son! You can’t be serious right? He’s most likely to lead our pack some day.”

The yo-yo zips up with speed, caught in your grip tightly, mewling over Jaehyun’s explanation. Cheers to your left pull you to catch sight of the pup who had helped you. Hoisted up off his feet by a group of others who cheered from a victorious outcome of whatever game they had been playing.

Johnny was destined to be an Alpha.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear the news that your best friend finally presented. If anything, you’re disappointed. You’d been too mean yesterday.. really for the last few weeks as if you could sense it coming.

“Since he’s presented, I’m sure we’ll be going next.” Jaehyun interrupts your inner turmoil, rubbing his chin. “Can feel my Alpha ready to break free any minute now.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, typically it’s somewhat of a domino effect. One Alpha presents and suddenly a slew of Omegas appear.. which triggers our Alphas.” He explains as if you’re clueless.

“Not that. I mean, I’m not going anywhere. Except to help in the kitchens along with the rest of the Betas.” You say surely, waving an arm out. “Maybe I’ll end up in the farms, wherever I get assigned to.”

Jaehyun laughs amused, eyebrows raised high. “Sweetie, you’re about as Omega as they come.”

Instead of letting the same comment you’ve heard most of your life get to you, you shrug it off and glance back toward the head Alphas cabin. “Will I get to see him again?”

Jaehyun hums. “Probably in a few weeks, you know.. when they start to separate us.”

Knowing you’d left things in a somewhat awkward place with your friend really dragged your heart through the mud, making your way back to the lake you’d been at just the day before full of regret that you’d been cutting him off and spending less time together. Perhaps deep down inside you knew the feelings you continued to stomp down into nothing consisted of a culmination of fear and anger. Anger because you don’t want to lose him, fear of what the future holds in store for you once you have inevitably presented. Fear that you will end up stuck with the Omegas until adulthood. Anger that you can’t seek Johnny to comfort your worries anymore.

Jaehyun was right, as everyone has always been about you. The domino effect took its toll on the pack, triggering heats and ruts alike until yours hit in the middle of the night and consumed you with the worst pain you’ve ever felt.

A pain of yearning and insatiable hunger, hunger that had one name written at the back of your tongue, attempting to swallow it down before your Omega could break free and shout his name out. Tears burned down your face as you fisted at your bedding and grinded your hips down, not even the strongest elixir of ancient herbs could quell your lust for the Alpha.

Johnny Johnny Johnny..

His name swirled through your mind, each memory and touch you ever shared, his hold on your waist and shoulders, the difference in size between you just this last year.

“Alpha..”

With 20 pack members presenting the council decided it’s time to move you onto your next step.

You pleaded and cried in your mother’s arms begging for her to do something to stop this, to let you stay with her somehow, someway. Realistically no amount of tears could stop the assimilation you all must face.

“It will be over before you know it my love.” She said sweetly, braiding your hair the night before you’re to move to the Omega quarters.

Won’t be over soon enough, you think, keeping your thoughts to yourself the more your eyes puff up. Sleep would be hard to come by tonight, knowing tomorrow changes everything. The days of being a young careless pup with lack of responsibility change now, cursed by your damn Omegan genetic chemistry. Because whether you accepted it or not, the chances of a Beta mating anything other than a Beta rarely ever led to the same sub-gender offspring. Even your mother always hinted and skirted around the idea of you presenting as an Omega, never an Alpha with your delicate soft nature, no matter how hard headed you may be.

“At least you will get to see your friends once more tomorrow.” She said as she tucked you in and kisses your forehead. “I’m sure they’re eager to congratulate you on presenting.”

Friends.

The only friend she’s ever even seen you with being the pack Alphas son. She knew very well how odd your relationship is, being that you don’t even come from one of the stronger lineages. Perhaps her prayers to the moon goddess to grant her daughter a prosperous future had been answered. Time would tell..

Sunlight entered your room right as your eyes were ready to fall shut after failed attempts of counting sheep to shut your mind off. Nothing could stop your incessant fear from escalating knowing what a new day would bring.

“We don’t want to be late, princess. It’s time.” Your father chirped happily from your bedroom door, gathering the bag you’d be taking with you later today.

No, of course you wouldn’t want to be late to the induction ceremony. Even with a stomach full of nerves as you made your way to the divided trails leading to sectioned off lands for Alphas and Omegas you tried to calm yourself, take deep breaths, fiddle with your hands until you had no choice but to ball them up in tight fists.

“My baby’s grown so much.” Your mother cuts the unbearable loud silence pounding in your head, smoothing loose tendrils away from your face. “You’ll surely make us proud in there, receive many merits and accolades from the elder Omegas.”

“I’ll do my best.” You say solemnly, leaning your cheek into her palm one last time. “I’ll miss you both so much.”

“Soon soon, angel. Everything will go by so fast, you’ll be back in no time.”

The ceremony to send you off lasted no longer than a few minutes after all goodbyes were said, staggering behind before making your way to catch up with the rest of the newly presented Omegas. You slowly turn to look over your shoulder, breath lodged in your throat when you find his gaze already on you.

“Johnny?” You mouth hopefully. He stands straight, stepping to the side of his group until you’re close enough to take in how much more he’s filled out in mere days. The once gangly long limbs now protrude with muscle, shoulders grown in width, and jawline sharpened with definition as baby fat disappears.

“Johnny.” You whisper, reaching a hand out for your best friend, now Alpha, to take a hold of. He visibly swallows, a tormented expression streaking across his face as he looks you over.

“I can’t.” He whispers back, blinking furiously. Tugging the straps of his bag on his shoulders tighter. “I can’t..”

He nods swiftly, turning his face away from you with a stiff twist of his neck to keep himself staring ahead. Pain scorches up your gut, burning the pathway leading to your heart as your hand falls limp by your hip and you sniffle back the onslaught of tears already rushing to the backs of your eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He barely whispers before turning down the opposite path, leaving you with the last memory you’d hold onto for the next 5 years to come.

One last look caught yours before disappearing behind the fence meant to keep new Alpha and Omega apart.

Time. Only more time can make any difference now.

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⋆ ･

“I can’t wait until we integrate with the rest of the pack.”

“I can.” You say quietly, keeping your head low to not draw the attention of the lead Omegas walking around observing how well you’ve all begun to take on your roles. “I don’t dream of being mated.”

“Ah, well.” Minnie, the bubbly Omega you’ve come to know in your last year by no choice of your own smiles softly, tilting her head dreamily. “I can’t wait to be with my first pup, and finally know my mate. It’s all I can think about.”

Of course it is, you want to say, lowly humming and continuing to brush out the furs dropped off today. They carried all types of scents from the elders, council members, even faint traces of betas. Alpha furs are only to remain within the village grounds, nowhere near unmated Omegas.

“You really have no desire to mate?” Minnie continues to pester you, smile turning mischievous. “I bet I can change your mind.”

She seems more than up to no good judging by the way her lips tweak to one side before bouncing up onto the balls of her feet, pointing this and that way while hurriedly explaining something to one of the elder Omegas.

“Fine fine Minnie, take that one with you and be back on time to help in the kitchen.” She motions your way, cutting off the younger Omega before she talks her ear off.

She skips on her way back to you, bundling up a few of the furs you’ve been cleaning. “Told her we need to deep clean these to get the smell out.”

“They don’t sme—“

“Shh!” She rushes, grabbing a hold of your arm to hoist you up and drag you away from the group of Omegas working hard to brush out knots and stains. “You have to be quiet about this okay? I’ll get into so much trouble if the word about this gets back to the council.”

“What are you going on about?!” You grit, failing to shake her arms off. Leaving you with no choice but to follow along as she leads you past the riverbank.

“I’m telling you, there’s something special a few of the Omegas showed me a while ago.” She says excitedly, teeth on full display as she peers over her shoulder to ensure no one’s nearby. “Over here, these fences behind the leaders cabin.”

“We’re not supposed to go this far..” you say hesitantly, digging your heels into the dirt path to slow her down.

“It’s not prohibited.. but they haven’t renovated these parts in decades..” she explains, using extra strength to make you turn down the short hill that covers most of the fence. “They really should too.”

“Why? Doesn’t it just lead to the village?”

“Well, no..” he trails off, biting down on her lip deviously. “You have to promise not to say anything, alright?”

Sighing, you shrug and wrap around her pinky, unsure of what could possibly be so secretive about this area. She nods, pressing a finger to her lips as you step up to the area covered by old tree branches. “Don’t be loud.”

Releasing your arm, she reaches to move a few branches aside and motions for you to come closer. There behind the mess of greenery are two holes on the old tall wooden fence. You stop for a moment to glance back at her, nodding with her lips pursed for you to look through.

Nothing could have prepared you for what actually resides on the other side of the fence. More water that you didn’t know existed, the rest of the river that’s been cut off by this man-made fence constructed decades ago when the pack struggled to keep Alphas and Omegas consistently equal in numbers. The council decided it best to separate freshly presented pups into individual camps until they experienced their first heat or rut. Segregating the two sub-genders to manage future matings with annual runs. Their plan had been successful after balancing the scale, allowing for their pack to grow healthy and plentiful.

It’s been years since you’ve last seen an Alpha.. until now.

“Is..” you stutter, blinking rapidly. “Is that..”

“The Alphas.” She whispers near your ear, lightly tapping a fingertip against the fence. “They swim and clean off at this stream after their hunts, seems to be only the ones that are soon on their way out of the camp..”

Alphas, playfully shooting water at each other, laughing and rough housing after a morning hunt. They have baskets full of fish lined up near their weapons on the path, a few of them deeper in the water scrubbing their arms and chest clean with cloths.

“Our future mates could be here right now.” She beams, pushing her cheek against yours to steal a look. “Oh Goddess, it’s him..”

“Who?”

“Head Alphas son..” she murmurs off, eyes going lazy as she rests against your head for you to both get a look

Head Alphas son? But that would be..

How could you have not immediately noticed him, trudging out from the shallow end of the stream glistening under the daylight sun, shaking off the water cascading from his broad frame the closer he reaches toward the end.

It’s him, it has to be him. 10 inches taller than you remember, hair longer and framed around his much sharper and pronounced bone structure. The baby fat on his cheeks long gone, body built up from years of hunting. The pressure of having to be the strongest and most reputable Alpha evident in his intimidating stance alone.

“Johnny.” The name passes from your lips without realizing, widening Minnie’s eyes as she turns to look at you.

“You know him?”

Know him? He was the last member of your pack that you had contact with before joining the rest of the newly presented Omegas. Even sharing goodbyes with your own family before him. You knew he’d be an Alpha eventually, but you’d never considered how painful it would be to lose your best friend to the otherside.

The reality always loomed though. The pack Alphas first born son could never present as a Beta, Goddess forbid as an Omega.

“No.” You reply, clearing your throat and tearing your gaze away. “We shouldn’t be here, it’s against pack law to be in contact with Alphas while unmated.”

“We aren’t contacting them, not really..” she smirks coyly, trapping your arm once more. “Just a little longer? They’ll be on their way eat soon.”

You shouldn’t, should stand your ground and put your foot down against this condemnable behavior.

But one more look can’t hurt much.

One more look just to be certain that it’s him, that it’s really your Johnny.

He’s changed so so much, nearly unrecognizable if you weren’t sure of his residency on the other side of this fence.

“He’s incredibly handsome, don’t you think?” Minnie disrupts the one on one conversation happening with yourself, looping an arm around your waist to bring you both closer to the holes. “Can you believe we’ll be in the same mating hunt as our next head Alpha?”

“What??” You practically shriek, covering your mouth and pulling away.

She looks at you half amused, in awe of your clueless nature. “It’s been five years silly, the elders have been discussing lowering our time inside these lands to ensure a strong Winter. The moon goddess predicts we will need many healthy pups due to the severity of climate change that’s recently taken place.”

“How do you know all of this?!”

She sighs, wagging a finger in your face. “You never pay attention during the morning lecture. They say we could be out of here as soon as the next red moon! That’s only a few weeks from now.”

A few WEEKS?!

“Judging by the look of these Alphas..” she hums flirtatiously, turning back to peep through the fence and suck a long breath in. “They’re certainly ready to hunt, and I’m ready to be chased.”

“The mating hunt, is it guaranteed that all who participate will be mated?” You ask full of worry, dragging fingers through your hair.

“Of course, that’s the point of all this!” She says, clicking her tongue. “If I didn’t know any better I’d swear you were born yesterday.”

Stealing one more look, she sighs and bites her lip excitedly. “I’m so ready to be out of here.” Turning back to you she grabs your arm. “Let's get back before the elders catch on to us missing. Besides, we’ll be with our Alphas in no time.”

In no time. Too soon.

And as if to mock your worry the days tick by faster and faster, now very alert during your usual extra nap time in the morning. You listen to every word, biting at your nails by the third week as the elders rejoice that the forecast had been correct and the blood red moon will indeed rise in the next few days.

“Soon you will birth strong and powerful members to contribute to the pack.” They preached and flounced about full of excite. “Tomorrow we will introduce you back to the pack to prepare for the hunt. Not a hair or patch of dry skin shall appear on you! You must impress your potential Alpha suitors to desire and want to chase you.”

More thrilled than you could ever be about this, they began to distribute scent blockers around the hall. Instructing you all begin using them tonight to ensure no Alpha can trail you off scent. It has to be instinct and intuition to find your true mate.

Once you have presented, every pack Omega is expected to participate in the annual mating ceremony. Ensuring the packs healthy growth to avoid a desolate village.

Your biggest dread of presenting as an Omega subsided as you met your predator's gaze. Stalking around you with snapping teeth and no escape.

There was no way to predict the Alpha determined to mate you would end up being your best friend.

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⋆ ･

“I can’t do this.” You whisper, sneaking a watery look at your mother. The reunion with your parents had been too fast, not enough time to plead your case and beg for them to find you another option. She smiles stiffly at you, securing the braids she put your hair in with ribbons.

“Sweety..” she says between clenched teeth, blinking furiously. “Do not embarrass us. It’s an honor that you’ve been summoned to participate in the mating hunt.”

An honor? Giving up your freedom and shred of independence you can barely cling onto for an Alpha? An Alpha that will breed and claim you like nothing more than a whore?

“What’s honorable about this, mother?”

She sighs, painting your cheeks with thin stripes of oil to illuminate your skin and make you more desirable for your possible mate. “I only wish I’d been given the chance you have to strengthen the pack. Omegas are the backbone of our livelihood, without you we’d go extinct faster than animals.”

Popping her mouth for you to mimic she applies a smudge of red tint to your lips, standing proudly after to take in your full appearance. “Without a scent to trail, the Alphas will really have to focus on using their other senses.. and you look ethereal. Always knew you’d grow up to be one of the prettiest in our pack, even if I worried about all those scars you’d come home with all the time.”

“What if I refuse?” You ask wearily, glancing around at the other Omegas being prepped for the hunt.

“You’ll be exiled.” Your mom says sternly, tight lipped as she grips your shoulders to look at her. “Think about your father and I, please. We barely got you back.”

A mixture of guilt and rancid vomit combines in your stomach the longer you stand around and wait for the Alphas to show up. The elders have been greeting each other, smugly smiling as if they’ve accomplished something by forcing young Omegas to hand over their lives and become breeding machines. They gather around and announce the next generation of Alphas to lead the pack. You can’t see their entrance from where you stay hidden with the rest of the Omegas participating, not allowed to see any of your potential mates. Only able to swallow down the throw up that rises up your throat as cheers and roars pound through the earth beneath your feet. Alphas praised for merely existing, for being the breadwinners of the pack that ensure longevity and protection.

Omegas are the real backbone, as your mother said, whether she meant it or simply wanted to shut you up and finish dolling you for essentially a stranger to ship off with.

“This is so thrilling.” Minnie pops up next to you, her lips a deep cherry, cheeks stung with the residue to make her skin glow. She looks radiant, lovely as ever, so ready to show off a bite on her beautiful long neck. “I want to be caught already.”

Nothing could compel you to agree, silently nodding to resist the incessant urge to gag. Judging by the giggles and squeals surrounding you, no one seems to share your sentiment. Why would they after years of being brainwashed to want this.

She takes your hand, squeezing and bouncing on the balls of her feet. “May the moon goddess bring you the best Alpha.”

“You too, Min..”

A whistle blows signaling you to line up and ready yourselves to run, everyone scrambles around excitedly, leaving you at the forefront as the elders explain the ‘rules’ again.

“You are not to ever remove your scent blockers, you are to hide once the Alphas begin their hunt. You are forbidden to leave the pack lands, and if you are not claimed you shall immediately report back to the Omega sector until the next red moon. Claimed Omegas are to come back with their Alpha mated. Only once paired off may you re-enter the pack.”

It’s due or die, whether or not you avoid an Alphas claim you’ll never be free from this restrictive life..

The second the horn sets off you run, feet pounding to the earth without a second thought. Heavy breathing and laughter fades away behind you, distancing yourself further and further away from where most of the Omegas will choose to hide, you imagine. The same trees you used to wander through catch your attention out ahead, furiously quickening your pace at the sound of another horn signaling that the Alphas are on the move.

The same forest you spent days hiding inside of is just right outside of your lands, against the rules, but you need to wait it out long enough. Once enough time has passed and the Alphas make their claims you can move back to your packs territory. No one has to know.

Not even the splinters clawing through the skin of your palms can slow you down, hoisting yourself up the largest tree you can find until you manage to get up high and let out a sigh of relief. The pounding in your heart refuses to settle even so, hissing as you wipe your hands off on your tunic and try to adjust your weight onto a thick branch. Even at this proximity you can hear howls and cries, sounds of pleasure ripping through the tears as Omegas go down, claimed and gnawed at by rabid Alphas.

Time goes by slowly as you sit still and listen, sucking at your wounded hands to ease the sting left behind. It’s nothing compared to the mix of pain swarming between moans. Deep guttural Alpha wails break through the dusk, shifting and breaking bones as they take their conquests and solidify their claim with a knot.

Only a few more hours until it dies down, you hope.. peering up at the clouds that dance around the red moon. Orange light sprays across the ground, illuminating clear paths for predator eyes to seek their prey. They’d never be able to find you up here, unless..

A loud huff snaps your neck toward the entrance of the forest, cracking tree branches and kicking rocks as the sound grows near.

Large, terrifyingly large, medium brown soft with light hints of gold, and eyes you’d recognize even if you suffered from amnesia. Those sharp sleek eyes that you’d never be able to forget no matter how much you try. Why would he come out here? Why did he have to come out here.

There’s only one reason. Snarling and puffing large breaths of air as he slowly paws through and approaches the largest tree, listening attentively for any movement. Sitting back on his hind legs, his gaze lands on you without sparing a second, squinting past the leaves you’ve shrouded yourself with. He barks, baring his teeth as trickles of saliva drip down his jowls.

Get down from there.

“Go away!” You hiss, grabbing onto a tree branch firmly as he nears and clambers up, scratching his claws along the trunk.

It’s been years and you still insist on giving me the biggest headache.

“I said go away Johnny!”

Get down. Immediately. Don’t make me climb up there.

“I’m not coming down! Now get away before another Alpha follows your trail and figures out that I’m hiding out here.” You grunt, fearfully looking out as another large wolf approaches.

You need to come down. Right now.

“You’re leading him right to me.” You whine, moving up another branch to hide yourself from the Alpha passing between the trees.

Johnny’s teeth snap, biting at the air as an Alpha with dark fur growls at him, leaping up on his hind legs he stands tall above him, shouting at the new presence to get lost.

This one's mine.

The dark furred Alpha hesitates for a bit, egging the lighter to get his nose in his face, snout digging into the others until he whimpers and backs away, slowly making his exit from the woods.

An enormous sense of relief lightens the tension weighing down your shoulders, leaning back on the tree until a sudden huge ruckus shoots you to sit up urgently.

The Alpha down below backs up and rams into the trunk repeatedly, growling and smashing his dome forward until you’re shouting.

“Johnny! Stop! Stop!”

GET DOWN. RIGHT NOW!

His Alpha sounds vicious, ripping through your mind, causing your Omega to cower and frightfully shiver. Biting down on your lip to contain a whimper, you nod and gingerly set your foot down to make your way down the tree.

“Please, don’t tell head Alpha about this.. he’ll have me condemned..” you plead, keeping your gaze to the floor to not have to look your old friend in the eye. Shame, embarrassment and fear runs rampant throughout your system, lighting goosebumps up your flesh.

No one is touching my mate.

“What?!” You nearly lunge back, falling down onto your ass as you crawl away without taking your eyes off of him. “Johnny! It’s me! You’re mistaken—“

Quiet. Omega.

Slowly trudging closer to you, he stops to sit. Stance big and strong towering above you.

Present.

“Johnny, I can’t do tha—“

The growl he lets out cracks a whimper from your throat, rustling the leaves throughout each surrounding tree, echoing loud enough for even birds to flock away out of fear.

“You don’t want this, not with me, remember me?” It seems futile to attempt conversation with an Alpha in wolf form, feeling defenseless and defeated as your back knocks against a rock and the Alpha leaves you with nowhere to run.

Present for your Alpha. I won’t ask again.

“I-I can’t, don’t ask that of me.” Bile rises up your chest, digging your fingers through clumps of dirt as the large wolf nuzzles your face and takes a deep inhale. “This is a mistake, has to be a mistake..”

Lights blind your vision, collapsing on the ground when his scent slams into you. A husk leather oud infiltrates your senses, strong and rich, immediately swirling between each crevice until your chest caves. The Alphas scent is the strongest you’ve ever felt, dominant, enrapturing, near drug-inducing. The scent of a powerful Alpha, more powerful than you’ve ever experienced. Too much for your secluded body and mind to handle atop of the raging fear beating from your chest.

The Alpha nudges your limp figure a few times, softly huffing and licking up your cheek. There’s no point in waiting it out, already gone for hours since the hunt began, he shifts back and hoists your lifeless body onto his arms, carrying you out of the woods with ease. The walk back to your lands can take about another hour, knowing his father will undoubtedly be waiting for his return with a proud smile as his son triumphantly strides back through with his future head Omega intact.

Exactly as he imagined it, his father stands tall and full of pride, the smile on his lips slowly sinking as he sees no sign of a mating mark. Confusion flows between the two Alphas as he comes to a stop and adjusts your limp weight in his arms.

“What is this son? Have you not mated?” He asks sternly, leaning in closer to inspect your naked throat.

“The Omega, she fainted before I could consummate..”

“Ah, I see. Drop her off at the infirmary and continue on your way back out. Many Alphas have already returned with their claimed mates. You need to be swift and hurry now.”

“This is my mate, father.” Johnny states loud and clear, cradling you closer to his chest. “She is the one my wolf has chosen.”

Clarity evades the head alphas features, scowling as he steps forward to whisper. “You dare to bring disgrace upon my name with this unmated weak Omega? What have I taught you?”

“No father, I do not wish to bring shame upon our lineage.”

The head Alpha snaps his fingers, ushering his main henchmen to cover up their surroundings. “Get the Omega back to your cabin. Do not bring her back without your markings.” He orders, rushing two of the elders to cut around the village to his son’s cabin. “I will not have you humiliate my name with your choice.”

Johnny nods without protest, following along with the elders that obscure your bodies behind veiled cloaks. At least in his cabin he can help you get proper rest and keep an eye on you.

“Get her inside.” One of the elders says in a hushed voice, covering the entrance to his cabin. “Listen to me my boy, if that Omega exits your sights without a mark, I don’t want to jump to conclusions of what your father may pull, but it won’t be pleasant.”

He nods assuredly, thanking the older Alpha for helping him before leading you to his furs to lay upon. At least this way you can become accustomed to his scent, enough to keep you stable even if it overwhelms you. He should have anticipated that you’d be difficult to deal with even now after all of this time apart. You’ve grown a lot, as has he, but clearly your disdain towards Alphas hasn’t changed much.

He wonders for a moment if he should have just walked away when Jaehyun showed up with intent to mate you. The thought alone makes his Alpha scream at the top of its lungs, clenching his fist and shaking his head to calm the rage building inside of him.

Anyone else mating you has never been an option, because Johnny always knew it had to be him. He always knew that it had to be you.

‘That sweaters a bit tight for you, don’t you think?’ His friend jeered, poking at the faded cotton material stretched over his much larger body.

Johnny ignored him, waving Jaehyun off before heading to the river to wash off, making a stop by the bathrooms nearby first. He’s kept your oversized sweater stuffed at the very bottom of his bag as he marched into the newly presented Alpha sector of your packs lands, heart beating from his chest as he stole one last look back and found your gaze peering over your shoulder practically begging to be saved.

He’d dreamt about it for years, what your scent would smell of, how you’d grow to be the most beautiful Omega, strong and regal by his side. Perfect to lead a pack by him in time.

In time you will see, even if you don’t have much left to spare.

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⋆ ･

Air thick as molasses glides down your tongue, struggling to swallow as you sit up and break out into a fit of coughs. Everything’s too warm, incinerating you from inside out with each breath you take in. Grasping around yourself you find a wall behind you, choking on your next breath right as the Alpha enters and rushes over to you.

“Here, drink this.” He sits down fast, raising a cup of cooled tea to your lips, tipping it for you to drink from. The sensation of calming herbs flows through your chest, filling your senses from nose to taste, opening up your air passages to breath with ease. “Drink all of it.”

“What is that??” You cough, wiping at your lips and pushing the mug away.

“You fainted, healer Ryu said it can happen when Omegas aren’t accustomed to the scent of Alpha..” tilting his head to the side, he taps at a scent blocker stuck to his neck. “This should help, you’re in my cabin thought, my scent is pretty much everywhere..”

“What am I doing here?” You try to say clearly, choking on the spit lining your throat that's thickened up. “W-why did you bring me here?”

Johnny’s gaze darkens, dragging down your even toned neck, the expanse of your smooth delicate shoulders and your bare arms. “Because.” He stiffens, glaring at your throat. “I want you to be awake when I mate you.”

“Mate me?!?” Shooting up straight, you clutch the furs on top of your body tightly, half questioning if he undressed you to get you under here in the first place..

Sitting up, he nods and reaches to move your hair back causing you to flinch as his knuckles drag down your cheek. “Do you not remember me?”

He seems hesitant to ask, lips tugged down at the sides, grazing past your scent gland still masked by blockers.

“Of course I remember you!” Glowering, you grab his wrist and dig your fingernails in. “Now answer me! What am I doing here?!”

The sensation of your stubby nails clawing at his flesh has no effect, shrugging you away as he comes to stand and paces in front of the bed you sit on. “Did you hit your pretty little head falling down from one of those trees while trying to hide?” He asks in a snarky manner, placing hands on his hips to widen his size. “How many times are you expecting me to repeat myself?”

“You know I never fall.”

Johnny rights himself, standing tall above you. “And I know where you’d go to hide from a gang of Alphas seeking their prey.”

“You cheated.”

“I found you fairly, just in time too. Jaehyun was trailing my ass knowing I’d be looking for you. You’re lucky he knows better than to go up against me.”

Jaehyun. The other Alpha that Johnny had scared away.

“It’s not fair.. you left our territory—“

“And you should be grateful that I did.” He lunges toward you, slamming his fists down on the bed. “If anyone else had found you breaking the rules like that I’d never be able to save your ass.”

“I don’t need to be saved, especially not thanks to an Alpha.” You spit, cowering back against a wall.

“Watch your tongue little one. We aren’t pups anymore.”

Hard knocks shake through the cabin, pursuing your lips together to stop an insult from dicing its way through the Alphas flesh. Moving away, he peers back over his shoulder, motioning your way. “Don’t move, Omega.”

He disappears behind the door shutting, springing to your feet to scamper your way over when you hear deep voices murmur through.

“Have you done it?” You can recognize head Alphas domineering tone, judging from the way Johnny replies alone. He sounds immature, young and still innocent but still respectful.

“Not yet father.” He’s quiet, probably keeping his head down, too much shame to look his dad in the eye.

“I never expected this from you son.” Head Alpha sounds disappointed, drawing out a long sigh. “All of this over some Omega.”

“She’s more than that.”

“I do not care.” Shutting down his son quickly, head Alpha takes heavy steps, most likely pushing his chest out to instill intimidation.

“If you do not mate her by the end of today, I have no choice son. I will not allow your obsession with this inadequate Omega to tarnish the reputation I have helped you build. No one wants to follow orders from an Alpha that cannot even control his Omega. You will do what I see fit or I shall summon the council to order a public mating.” Head Alpha spits each word out like shards of glass, gashing through even your flesh from where you listen through the door. The thought of Johnny on the other side trying to keep up a strong facade pings through your chest, willing it away with your arms tightening around yourself.

He must be stoic, emotionless to his father’s rage, because he doesn’t reply, nothing but the sound of footsteps follow for the next few minutes.

Stepping back inside abruptly, he catches you off guard, leaping away from the door and rushing to hide your tear-filled eyes. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t stay in place.”

“You know me.” You mutter sarcastically, lips tugging down at the sides. “Public mating?”

Johnny sighs, starting to pace and run his hands through his long locks. “I assume you heard everything.”

“What was head Alpha talking about? Is he going to have me exiled?”

He scoffs, glaring at you from the corner of his eye. “As if I’d ever allow that.”

“You’d have to, you can’t go against your father.”

“I can’t?” Lifting a defined eyebrow at you, he steps forward to get in your face, neck craning lower. “What do you not understand? You are my mate. I would go against anyone for you, even my own damn blood.”

“I don’t understand, okay?!” You shout, frustrated, taking a step back nervously.

“I’ve always known.” Johnny cuts you off, following you with long strides until your back meets a wall. “You have too.”

“No.. Johnny..”

“Alpha.”

“No!” Lifting your hands, you press flat against his chest to put distance between your bodies. Useless as he doesn’t so much as budge, reaching for your waist as he bends in closer until his lips hover an inch away from yours.

“This stubborn act was endearing when we were kids, you know.” He laments, laughing under his breath. “It was cute and I may do whatever it takes to make you mine, but you will respect me as your mate.”

His tone lowers, near a rumble that has your Omega howling in pain, every signal warning for you to behave. “You’re not my mate.”

He snaps fast, growling deep in his chest, palms slamming down on the wall behind your head. “Do not disobey me.”

The Alphas voice cuts deep, rolling tremors down your limbs until your knees give and buckle, dropping your face between his chest as a pathetic whimper springs from your lips. You crumble at the fury, the Omega inside of you curling up into a ball in shame. How could you anger our mate enough to make him use his Alpha voice? It’s your fault, unleashing an onslaught of pain throughout your body the more you cower against him.

An exhausted sigh blows across the side of your face, standing up straight with arms wrapped around your waist he holds you close, nose dropping to your hair to take in a long inhale. “I shouldn’t have. I don’t know what overcame me just now..”

“I hate you.” You cry between chattering teeth, weakly hitting his chest. “How could you do that to me?”

“No you don’t.” Johnny’s eyes fall shut, dragging his nose against your crown. “I need you to listen to me. I’m sorry. I’m frustrated and stressed over what my father said..”

Sniffling, you ease against him, looping an arm around his waist to regain your balance, and maybe comfort the emotionally wounded Omega whimpering inside of you to fix this. “Public mating?”

“Yes..” he hesitates for a minute, rubbing a soothing large hand up and down your back before pulling away to cup your face.”If the council agrees, I will be summoned to claim you before the pack Alphas..”

“What??”

Pursing his lips, he looks away, forehead wrinkling. “As their next head Alpha, I cannot risk dishonoring tradition..”

“What’s traditional about this?!” You speak up, pushing away again only to be kept in place by strong built arms.

“It’s not up to me anymore.”

“Then let me leave!” Hissing, you strike a balled up fist against his chest, lip trembling to contain your tears. “Johnny, please!”

“I can’t.” He says firmly, taking a hold of your shoulders to keep you still against the wall. “Tomorrow I will mate you, and if you try to run, I will never stop chasing after you.”

Silence falls between the two of you as he keeps you stuck in place with a look full of hunger. Eyes dancing between desire and passion. It’s enough to bite your tongue and hold back the whiplash of words your mind fights against your heart to shout at him.

“There’s no other way?” You ask brokenly, throat exhausted as if your Omega used your vocal chords to scream her murderous tears.

Shaking his head slowly, he leans in and plants a gentle kiss on your forehead. “There is no other way.”

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⋆ ･

There is no other way.

Because this is the only way to prove to the pack that you belong to Johnny. That the Alpha has truly thoroughly fucked and claimed you, that no one will ever question his position to lead this pack.

The council wastes no time on discourse, immediately proclaiming that a mating ritual shall take place today, and that the Omega set to be the next head by pack Alphas side will have a mark on her neck by the end of this day.

“Here I thought the hunt would be the highest honor, you’re lucky the council has been lenient enough to allow this.” Your mother’s fixing up your face once again, unable to remove the giant dumb smile from her face as she moves to brush your hair. “Ah, the moon goddess truly heard my wishes. Head Alphas son of all Alphas! What a blessing.”

Every single member of the pack seemed to question how and why you were chosen. Walking through the village to your parents cabin drew more attention to you than you’d ever experienced. Whispers floated through the air, backing the rumors that you couldn’t even handle the next head Alpha, that you’d passed out before he’d even had the chance to mate you.

‘Doesn’t make any sense why he’d even bother with her after that.’

‘Heard one of the Alphas over breakfast mention that they were close as pups. Head Alphas son probably imprinted on her years ago, none of us ever stood a chance against that type of bond.’

‘Seems unfair if you ask me, she’s not even grateful.’

They spoke so foul of you without knowing anything about you. To even dare question the innocent relationship you once had with Johnny. The friendship that you cherished and would sell your soul to have back. Everything’s different now, he’s different.

“I’m already dreaming of the pups you’ll have.” Your mother sighs happily, fluffing your hair to frame your face. “Johnny’s so handsome and strong, with his genes you will birth only strong pups.”

Pups.

Birth.

With Johnny.

Fear heightens in your stomach similar to a ticking time bomb, sensing your imminent doom as the elders come to escort you to the Alphas sector where the ritual will take place. They wear pleased smiles, cheerful as they drag you along and bring you to what can only come straight out of nightmares.

Alphas stagger around, eyeing you curiously as you’re brought to stand in the middle where a large lifted platform covered with cushions and furs has been set up. It’s worse than the hunt, multiple predatory eyes burn into your skin, gathering closer to get a good look at the flimsy garment doing a poor job of hiding your ample curves. Growls and grunts fly around you, trapping you with nowhere to go as they circle around and barricade you, shortening your breath the more imprisoned you begin to feel.

“J-Johnny?” You ask hesitantly, gaze stuck to your feet, too anxious at the thought of meeting eyes with any of the unknown Alphas around.

“I’m here.” A soft tone ripples up your spine, standing straight and pulling your shoulders back as he takes a hold of your elbow and turns you to face him. “Look at me.”

Slowly lifting your head up you see him, warm eyes and a soft smile intended to comfort you. He stands before you, moving in closer to wrap around your waist. “You’re nervous.”

Sniffling, you nod, embarrassed that every Alpha in the pack you’re meant to lead side by side with the one currently holding you tight will see you defiled for the very first time in mere minutes. “It’s just you and me right now, got that? Don’t even think about anything else. No one else exists, only us.”

As much as you wish to believe that to be true, your ears can’t tune out the whistles and jeers coming from every side, biting on your lip and shaking your head, you reach for the Alphas shoulders to hide your face in his chest. “Can’t.. they’re everywhere.”

“I said look at me Omega.” He speaks more sternly, not moving to force you, but waiting for your head to raise and return to his still lovingly warm gaze. “You will not take your eyes off of me, do you hear me? You’re mine, you are only to look at me.”

Without using his Alpha voice he still manages to make your chest tighten, stomach churning anxiously as you nod slowly and he bends closer until your foreheads are pressed together. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

A part of you wants to scream, consider running only to be tackled down by a militia of powerful Alphas, but the other part of you swoons, reminded of the days you craved nothing more than to be by Johnny’s side and ripped your own heart to pieces once you realized the inevitable fate you’d been dealt.

“…for how long, Alpha?” You ask, barely above a whisper, fluttering his eyes in surprise.

“Forever.” He whispers, nose brushing against yours. “I’d wait an eternity for you.”

“You’ll take care of me Alpha?” You question cautiously, lips barely grazing his plump pout. “Make me yours to protect?”

“Always have.” Johnny states, licking your upper lip with closed eyes. He blinks slowly, reaching to cup your cheeks and dip his mouth to yours. “And I always will.”

It may not be ideal nor how you ever allowed yourself to imagine, but as the Alphas lips meld to yours, the tension weighing on your back dissipates. Easing into his dominant touch, you fall into the kiss easily. Every worry and silent wishful hope lets out a sigh of relief throughout your body, dragging your arms up higher to cling around his neck and deepen the kiss.

This time your lips planted together unlocks what you never knew you needed. The Omega inside of you quells instantaneously, rolling around with what can only he a giant smile now that your Alpha finally seems satisfied. The two of you rejoice, drawing him in deeper to grant your tongue access inside the delicious cavern of his mouth. If only a kiss can ignite this much in you, you can only shake as you imagine what more your conjoined bodies can release.

“I’ve got you baby.” Johnny says softly against your lips, for your ears only. “No one else exists.” He repeats, calming the tremble rolling up and down your spine with tender pets. “Your first time?”

You nod, skin flushed with goosebumps as your nerves skyrocket and missile launch to the sky erupting each and every worry you’ve ever had. The Alphas never had to be concerned with any inexperience. Always taken care of with various concubines in preparation for the day they’d have to race for a mate. Johnny knew exactly what to do with you, how to use your body and pleasure himself, only heightening your anxiety.

“You trust me don’t you?” He continues to whisper, brushing against your now swollen lips. “Trust that your Alpha will make you feel good, you’ll always reach your pleasure first with me.”

“Can I trust you Alpha?” You ask for further affirmation, sliding your hands beneath the leather furs draped over his shoulders.

“Have I ever lied to you?”

Without answering, you push the furs off, eyes going wide at the sight of ink carved onto his skin. Immediately you reach to run the tips of your fingers across the raised flesh, poked through with sterilized needles and squid ink, half scarred from the forced injury to create the permanent markings. “Is that?”

“You.”

It’s as if you’ve woken up in Johnny’s cabin once more, short of breath as you trace over the lithe wolf prowling along a tree branch between leaves. Large golden flecks stare back at you, running your touch over the leaves as the Omega tattooed on his skin almost watches your movements. “Me?”

“My Omega.”

Grasping your wrist he drags your hand higher to the path of flowers blooming open on his shoulder. “My Omega made of honeysuckle and snow coated grass. As sweet as Autumn and fierce as Winter.”

“Johnny..”

Nights of clenching your eyes shut, pretending to ignore the Alphas eyes appearing in your dreams, shove aside the warmth you sought out from the memory of his touch. Every night and day kept apart had taken more of a toll on both of you than either could have realized, desperate to be close as you sink into his chest and wrap around him with a tight hug. “Alpha.”

“I know.” The gentle tone he keeps with you could erase any fear, comforted by the scent that had been suffocating you. Taking deep long inhales you finally let him in, head hazy as the Alphas scent combines with yours. “Never take your eyes off of me Omega.”

He means it, tempted to use his Alpha voice to manipulate you to follow his orders. It’s hard enough to tune out the whispers and groans that surround you from the crowd gathered around as he begins to strip your flimsy tunic away and slowly takes in every inch of your exposed skin, quietly cursing under his breath. “Beautiful, you’re so beautiful.”

Every touch is soft, voice hushed for only your ears to pick up on, gaze lit up full of love that you can feel each time your eyes meet. Nerves prickle under the drag of his finger, softly gliding down your stomach to the tops of your thighs to part you open, swallowing down a loud deep breath. Embarrassment twitches your knees, wanting to slam them shut as the Alphas lowers to get a close up look and curls his biceps around your thighs. “The most perfect Omega, aren’t you pretty?”

Slick gushes between your folds, shaking from the tips of your fingers to your toes as your peer down between your thighs. Johnny’s eyes shoot up, lowering his thick lips to your center. The invitation of your warm glistening cunt is enough to have him groaning, unintentionally teasing the hood of flesh hiding your clit. Pouty pressed together lips flatten and kiss the bundle of nerves, lighting triggers up your calves and thighs for more slick to drip out onto the Alphas chin grazing across your awaiting entrance.

Given any other circumstance, including the one you could have ended up in, he would have had you present on all fours and fucked you like a proper Omega slut. Alpha urges roar for him to hurry it up, enough to worship your cunt. Ignoring his wolf's demands, he moves lower to kiss at your entrance, slurping up the sweet sticky syrupy slick for the direct source. Burying his nose in to snort your aroused scent this up close. He mouths sloppily at your hole, not even to get you off yet, but to finally have a taste of his dreams. A taste of what he could only imagine for years.

Nothing would ever be able to compare or come close to the heavenly taste of you.

“My Omega, so sweet. Taste so fucking sweet, pretty pretty girl.” His chins doused with your gleaming arousal when he decides to finally come up from air at the sound of your moans turning into impatient whines. Jerking against his mouth desperately, needing something inside. He can feel it, the frustration coming from both of your wolves, attacking you from inside out to mate mate mate.

The Alphas breath fans across your now sweaty neck, body heat rising at accelerated speed the more he teasingly tortured you. Licking up your scent gland, he drags a way to your ear, biting on the lobe softly. “My innocent Omega wants Alphas cock so badly? Rutting against me like some horny pup.”

And it’s true, without thought your thighs wrap around one of his long muscular legs, jamming your bare core up and down the flexed limb. Hair grazes your slick cunt, making a mess of wet down the Alphas thighs as your hips speed up chasing after a relief only he can fulfill.

“Alpha, I need to.. be closer.” Every and each bone in your body rattles, craving and needing to feel him inside of you. Johnny tenses, eyebrows wrinkling together as he grabs onto your hips and forces you to stop.

“You’re gonna give me a hard time with that pretty ass and pussy, aren’t you?” He says through gritted teeth, eyes fluttering shut. “I’ll fuck you, fuck you full of my pups. Keep you satisfied until all you know is how to take your Alphas cock. Is that what you want?”

Thick palms slide beneath your back, gliding lower to cup and squeeze your ass, encouraging your hips to push down on his thigh again and plead for more. Vigorous grinds of your hips force him to lodge his knees down, shifting the furs laid out beneath you. He grunts, rasping out breaths shakily. “Fuck baby, get it nice and wet for me. Keep doing it just like that.”

As if to warn you, he grips your ass roughly, jamming his hardened clothed length against your hip for you to really feel what you’re about to take. A heavy hot thick rod ruts from your lower belly to your hip, a thin garment separating your lower halves, bowing your spine up pathetically. “Alpha—that, please, please, g-give me!”

A round of groans sound around you, quickly reminding you of where you are, but not long enough before Johnny sits up between your thighs, bringing your hands to his hips.

“This what you want?” He asks damn near mockingly. Licking at his lips akin to a thirsty rabid wolf.

“Alpha—want, want it!”

Hisses, growls, harsh ragged breaths turn louder the more you whine, resisting your Omegas curious urge to glance around. Johnny cups your chin to keep you focused, sleek eyes melting your gaze. “What do you want? Say it clear for your Alpha.”

The size of him above you makes you feel so small, curling into yourself as he positions close between your thighs to jam his clothed size against your drenched cunt. Johnny trembles at the contact, having to sneak a look down as you soak through his light fabric cover up and the shape of his cockhead fully pokes through, pressing the tip to your swollen clit. “Want this?” He mutters, curling the fabric around his cock to slap down heavily between your thighs.

Jerking up in response you let out a howling scream, arms shooting out to grab his biceps. “Please please!”

“Say it!” He growls ferociously, slapping the heavy meat down with audible loud wet claps of skin hitting skin. The contact rushes blood down, chubbing your pussy up in preparation to squeeze the life out of your Alphas dick.

“Want your cock Alpha! Wan-want you to breed me, pup me!”

If only you had anything else on your mind other than the Alpha burying inside of you, you’d hear the uproar of feral cries set off around you. Each Alpha willing to sell their soul to be in Johnny’s position right now. They watch on drooling, snarling, rubbing themselves over their garments as your Alpha sits up proudly and strips his lower half free of the fabric. His thick cock bounces up, slapping loudly against the flat planes of his ripped stomach. The visual of Johnny’s chest rising and falling rapidly has slick pouring out of you obscenely, toes curling as you take in the full mass of him. Clenching up as small as you can as you envision what can only be compared to your forearm in size penetrating you.

“Alpha, s’too big..” you say wantonly, still wanting to feel him split you open. Still needy for your Alphas cock to break through your cervix and fatten your belly full of cum.

“I know, baby.” Laying down on you without resting his weight, his cock pressed against your stomach. The tip slotted a few inches above your navel as a preview of how deep he’ll be inside of you soon. Maneuvering his fingers between your thighs, he nips at your jaw, murmuring praises about how wet you are.

“It’s so loud, so warm.” Johnny sighs, sucking on your earlobe. “So slippery between my fingers.”

Tapping at your entrance, he nudges your thighs open further, gliding two fingers in past the ring of muscle that feels as if you’re trying to bite them right off of his hand. Cursing again, he sucks in a ragged breath, licking swirls along your ear. Thumb making way to your clit to loosen up the clamp your cunt has around his fingers. A few meticulous rubs and flicks combined with his hot mouth have you relaxing, shoulders laying flat as he begins to scissors inside of you.

“Feel that Omega? Your pretty tiny fucking pussy.” He grits, fingers beginning to jam in and out of you at heightened speed. “Feel so tight and warm around me, gripping me so good baby.”

Johnny’s nasty words make your mind spin, head thrown back watching the sky above you turn upside down. The sound of your gushing slick louder than anything, muting all but the guttural groans coming from your Alpha. Pleasure scorches throughout your body, reaching for his wrist with a trembling saliva covered bottom lip and watery eyes. “Please, enough. Alpha, I need it, need you.”

He hears you loud and clear, tongue toying with his lip for a moment before drawing free from your cunt. As much as he wants to make this easy for you, there’s no way. Both of you too insatiable and driven by your hunger to be one. To feel conjoined, even if you know it will hurt.

Slowly stroking his cock, he watches your pussy in a trance-like state. Stomach muscle twitching, taking sharp breaths as he rubs a smear of pre-cum around the tip. Dipping his fingers between your sensitive pussy lips again because he can’t help himself, too enthralled by the gush of slick that bubbles out messy and loud. It’s all for him, slowly collecting the wad of slick to coat his cock with like some type of silent apology for what he’s about to do to you.

The twitch your tiny little hole gives in response only makes him groan, setting the head right against your slit to admire the difference in size for a minute.

“Perfect.” Johnny whispers, rubbing his thumb down your clit to the outer rim of your cunt pulsing against his length. He can��t stop his hips from jerking, slowly thrusting to watch your muscle stretch, fighting back the much too large intrusion trying to invade and make a home for himself. The fat tip of his size throbs, pushing it in until he feels your hole snap around him, hissing and biting his lip. “Babies first time, just for me..”

It’s dizzying for him, almost too dizzying to hear your rushed intakes of air, to see your eyes clenched shut, fists balled up on your chest, and your teeth grinding to not scream. Johnny reaches for your forearms, pushing them down for leverage. Slowly he plunges in more, managing to get a few more inches in before pausing to take deep breaths. “You okay baby?”

Nodding furiously, you curse at him to continue. Distracting yourself from the pain by focusing on your breathing. You have to be good, prove yourself worthy, not only for your Alpha, but for the pack of onlookers. Determined to take him, you let out a moan and force your hips up into a swivel, further sliding his length inside.

A slew of curses spring from his lips in shock, reveling in the pressure and tightness enveloping half of his length. “Want it so badly, don’t you.” He says more to himself, moving to grab your hips and hold them down. “But you’ll do as I say.”

He pulls out, a lewd loud pop resounding as Johnny lifts his hips back enough to rub his length up and down. The fat tip of his size purposely nudging and bumping your swollen clit. Each drag against your sensitive pussy further ruining you, sobbing out loud without a care. The hold on your hips keeps you from moving, letting out a desperate shout as Johnny lays his palm flat on your stomach, taking his cock in hand to slap down on against your clit.

“Alpha! N-no!”

“Take it.” He groans, struck by the thick we s of slick that cling to his length with each heavy smack. Emitting pornographic squelching sounds for everyone of the Alphas he will lead someday to hear, to memorize, to know that they will never have a taste of you, let alone ever experience this again.

With a pleased smirk, the engorged tip of his length meets your entrance again. Pussy throbbing like a wounded animal as the Alpha finally presses in again, slowly breaching your hole to make you feel every overwhelming sensation all over again. The pain subsides as pleasure and desperation takes over, incessantly starving to feel him stuff you full. You sob, reaching out for something as he leans in to bracket your head with thick biceps. Finding solace in his shoulders, you claw at his smooth skin, arching up to bite down a scream into his muscle.

It’s heat inducing, arching against the Alpha to get him deeper inside of you. Long thick cock stretching you with each new inch added, too good once fully sheathed inside. You can’t stop whining, licking at Johnny’s smooth pronounced collarbone. Split open by the only one you’ve ever wanted, something about it swells your chest. Wrapping your arms around his shoulders to feel even closer.

“Alpha, please—“ you start to wail, drooling on his neck, planting haphazard messy kisses.

“What are you begging for, huh?” He chokes out, moving to wrap around your shoulders in the same manner, knowing that your Omega needs to be close. That your heart needs to feel his beating against it. “You’re so tight for me baby. Gonna ruin that perfect pussy you have, make it mine.”

“Ugh!” Dropping your neck back, hot tears fill your eyes, raining down your cheeks as he begins to thrust in and out.

“All mine, my pretty gorgeous Omega.” He moans, fully pulling out only to ram back in and sending your back arching up with a shout. Johnny can’t slow down, chasing after your release to get to his. Falling into a rough rhythm, he thrusts hard enough to have you both sliding up with each ramming force of his hips. The clenches you give around his cock accompanied by drool coated moans only encouraging him to push in harder, make you taste his cock in the back of your throat from here.

“Alpha..”

“Yeah, what did I say baby? Keep those pretty eyes on me baby. Keep looking at me.” Clutching your neck, he presses your foreheads together. Cock drilling deep past your tight hole. It’s not completely without pain, snapping around the intrusion of his thick long girth. Johnny works hard to keep his own eyes open, consumed by the way your pouty lips fall apart with a moan, how your eyes roll up and back to him over and over again. “Opening up so so good for Alpha. Feel good baby?”

Gliding a hand between your bodies, he lowers closer to your chest, pushing his arm lower to rest the back of your head along the dip of his elbow. Fingers find their way to your clit, circling the bundle of nerves with another thrust, easing more inches past your convulsing heat.

“Ahh—!” Incoherently you begin to nod, head spinning, thighs aching around his hips. The pinch to your clit shoots up your spine, lifting your butt up only to be slammed back down into place with another powerful thrust. Johnny curses, sucking at spit around his tongue as he lifts enough to watch you take the last inch of his cock again.

“Oh shit baby.” He croons, biting down on his lip at the sight of his cock completely disappearing inside of you like nothing. The way you take it only as an Omega can. It’s indescribable to feel your heat suck around him, the way your walls clamp on his size like wet firm kisses. Pangs of pleasure throb up his length, cockhead pressed to your cervix at this angle. “Can’t believe—“ the Alpha drags his slick coated fingers to your lips, pushing them down on your tongue, teeth gritting. “Can’t believe I’m inside of you.”

That awakens your lost mind, licking between his digits as he circles down into you and lets you truly feel how big he is. Each twist of his hips feels like a delicious new stretch, opening your cunt up to always be ready for your Alpha to fill you up. He sighs, smiling and pressing in to capture your lips. Cock thrumming inside of you letting you get used to the sheer size of him. Distracting you with wet and messy glides of his tongue, he continues to slur between sucks, drawing your tongue out with his suctioning lips.

“Such a pretty fucking pussy baby, best cunt ever.” Johnny sounds lost himself, lapping at the combination of your spit smearing between your chins. “Tight, so tight for your Alpha.”

All you can do is whine and agree between his overpowering kisses, failing to grab his tongue with yours. Johnny controls everything, the way you kiss, the way you fuck, the way your body reacts to him. Infiltrating your brain, lungs, heart, cunt, filling every empty hole inside of you with himself, staking claim to his Omega the way only a real Alpha can.

“Pl-please, Alpha, please,” you start to beg, throwing your limbless arms around his shoulders to weakly throw your hips into a circle. Turning desperate to really feel him, to really get fucked by your Alpha.

He fully lets go, tearing past his own resistance to fuck you full, hard and fast. Wet sounds clap around you, jostled by each punching thrust, swearing you can feel him as deep as your lungs from the way you gag on spit and choke on your breath. Weakly tapping at his shoulders you lose it, clamping on the Alphas size hard enough to make him stop for a moment. Johnny growl’s animalistically, pounding through the splash of slick threatening to push his size out from the force of your powerful orgasm. He keeps fucking you through it, looming large over your body going lifeless beneath him.

“Knot, g-gonna knot baby.” The veins lining his long throat pop out under sweat glistening flesh, dropping his nose to yours as his stomach convulses and he thrusts in all the way deep surely leaving your cervix bruised. “Fucking—-fu—ahh shit!”

It’s the most shattered he’s sounded, raspy and whiny, coming to a stop as the base of his length begins to expand. Swiping his lips against yours between panted breaths.

“S’too.. can’t.” You beg, lightly tapping his chest. It’s useless, both of you too strung out by the peak of your pleasure. The only option left is to wait it out and grit your teeth through the burn stretching against your hole.

Right as you feel every last inch of your body go limp, Johnny securely cups behind your neck, licking across the top row of his teeth practically salivating at the sight of your extended throat arched up so invitingly. The knot thrums against your walls, painful stretch burning as he adjusts to lower his chest to yours and whisper against your lips. “My Omega.”

The bite hurts initially, gnawing deep through the flesh covering your scent gland. Long canines dig through your veins, sucking at the blood that gushes past his bite. Memories of the first time you met the Alpha flash behind your eyes, weakly sinking your nails into his shoulders as tears rush from your eyes and everything he’s ever wanted to say to you flies around your mind. The days you spent together, the times he always let you win just to see you smile, and the frantic need to protect you. Pain washes away along with the tears rolling down your face, whimpering and clutching onto him as hard as you’re able to.

“Johnny..”

The pitiful sounds that come from his throat remind you of a distressed pup, lapping up your bite aggressively as guilt claws at his chest seeing you grow weaker beneath him.

“S’okay Alpha..” you mumble, sliding your hands up his neck to hold his cheeks. The difference in size seems more daunting now, stuck on his knot that hasn’t deflated one bit, the visual of your small hands thumbing his wet cheeks feels right. Feels as if you’ll never have to fend for yourself as each emotion and reassuring sense of devotion fills your head.

Johnny’s your Alpha, destined to lead, destined to be yours.

“Hurt you..” he barely whispers, thumb caressing the mark on your neck solemnly. Fighting between his pride and lust to prioritize what you could be going through. “Sorry..”

“No no,” tucking your chin, you capture his thumb to suckle on, head shaking softly. “Love you.”

The look that illuminates his features can only be described as one of love. Adoration and admiration, relief, lightly tipping the corners of his lips upward and releasing the tension pinching at his ears. “Love you, my mate.” He says proudly, knot gone down enough to fix your positions and lift you onto his lap. “Let's go home.”

Without allowing you time to look around, he holds onto your bottom, keeping you impaled in place with his knot as his thighs burn to stand, free hand petting the back of your head and easing your nose to rest against his scent gland, successfully masking your eyes from the Alphas that stand around drooling, hard cocks pulsing, desperate to have a piece of you for themselves. With a last look of warning at the group, he turns and takes the back trail back to his cabin, shushing your whines.

“Almost there baby.”

“We’re going home?” You ask drowsily, clinging onto his shoulders as if you fear the idea of falling, knowing the Alpha would never allow for such a thing.

“Our home.” He states, rounding a corner to the back entrance of his cabin to avoid allowing anyone else that may be roaming around to see you in this position. “You did such a good job for me back there pretty.”

“I did?” Warmth fills your stomach, brows knitting as your hips roll against him on their own to feel the Alphas half deflated knot push past your aching entrance. He hisses, cupping your ass firmly on the way to the bed you rested in yesterday, already soaked with your scent, weakening his knees as he lays you down and hovers above you, fist planted by your sides.

“So good for me, my perfect Omega.”

Reaching up for his shoulder, you trace the wolf gazing down at you once again, head tilted curiously. “Has it always been me? Really?”

Johnny’s eyebrows gather together furiously, nodding rapidly, clicking his tongue annoyed. “You know that it has.”

“It’s nice to hear.” You smile, biting on your lip.

“Yeah?” Lowering down, he thrusts the rest of his size in to fill you with every inch, knot gone down enough to shove his length in deep once again. “And me? I want to hear you say it.”

Damp strands of hair hang around your face, framing the Alphas sharp cheekbones, long eyes that stare down at you obsessively.

“It’s always been you.” You admit, arching up for a kiss.

Already knowing that is one thing, but hearing you say it strikes a nerve, growling from deep in his chest as he reaches to draw your hands above your head and teases your lips with barely there kisses.

“You’re mine.” Small pecks litter your top and bottom lip, lowering to your chin and jaw, trailing a pathway up to your ear and back as he continues to repeat mineminemine.

“Mine to have.” Another kiss.

“Mine to keep.” Another kiss.

“Mine to save.” Another kiss.

“And mine to ruin.” The last kiss steals your breath, bred full again by the next thrust, only held in place by his solid grip on your forearms.

The Alpha made good on his promise to take care of you, fucked and bred night after night to birth the strongest members of your pack.

Occasionally you’d find your way back to the forest, now with Johnny by your side helping you climb trees that you insisted on being able to do on your own.

“It’s nice up here.” He hums, laying back on the large part of the base with you on his chest, stroking up and down your spine soothingly.

“It’s nicer with you.”

“Yeah?” His eyebrow lifts, tapping your chin to look at him. “No more running away from me then?”

“You’re here with me, aren’t you?” You tease, pretending to bite his finger.

“That’s my girl.”

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⋆ ･

#johnny suh smut #johnny smut #johnny nct smut #nct johnny #nct 127 smut #kpop smut #neopuppy fics #nct smut #nct 127 au #nct 127 fanfiction #nct fanfiction #kpop fanfiction #nct 127 imagines #nct 127 scenarios

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earthtooz · 1 year

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x : BETWEEN LOVE AND LIES :*+ﾟ

in which: you thought nagi was dating you for media reputation... so why does this relationship feel suspiciously real?

warnings: 11.9k words, pro-soccer player!nagi x physiotherapist!gn!reader, reader has hair, lots of food, not at all a realistic story but that's okay pls don't come for me, SLOOWWWWBURN, fake-dating au, reader is oblivious :<

a/n: goodness. if this flops i will cry bc i spent way too long this for it to be healthy for me. enjoy !

↳ 5K EVENT MASTERLIST ༉‧₊

nagi approaches you the day after his name goes viral.

you weren’t doing anything spectacular, merely putting away all the kits and equipment you’d used for the day when the white-haired soccer player approaches you, his hands in his pockets, strolling over to you as he would on any occasion.

your heart races- as it does whenever he’s around, regardless of said occasion, but what tumbles out of his mouth next was worthy of ceasing your heart rate all together.

“wanna date?”

you’re speechless. malfunctioning as you register what he’s saying. the sheer casualness of it all is alarming and you have to snap yourself back into your physical environment before your mind loses to a universe of questions and doubts.

out of all people who have asked you to date, nagi was definitely the most unique. was he okay in the head? did he come for a check up? did he get one of rin’s kicks to the head? or was he just straight up delusional?

“uhh, why?” you ask, cursing yourself a little for how disgusted you sounded.

fortunately for you, your ungracious tone didn’t phase him, not one bit. “isn’t that what two people do when they like each other?”

yeah, romantically. you don’t even think nagi likes you beyond simply platonic, whereas you have to try and shove your feelings for him down your throat every morning before walking in to the training grounds for blue lock’s official team.

you find yourself agreeing regardless, still a little overwhelmed by everything that was going on.

the soccer player then has the audacity to give you two thumbs up in approval, a dumb smile plastering on that expression of his. this confuses you even more.

“okay cool, so what should we do now that we’re a couple?” he asks.

you glance away, unable to look him in the eye for too long without getting flustered. the various weights and foam rollers still scattered on the floor catches your attention, reminding you of your previous task before nagi came to stir up a storm. “well, i have to put these away amongst various things. you can sit on the couch if you want to pass time?”

“do you need any help?” he questions, already bobbing down to be eye-level with you, ignoring the second half of your statement.

“no it’s fine, thank you though.”

“are you sure?”

“yeah! i don’t want to bother you.”

“well if you do this all by yourself, it’ll take longer, and you take longer, it means i have to wait longer to spend time with you.”

when you turn around to say something, the words die on your throat when you realise just how close he’d come to you during the time you had your back towards him. a flash of hurt crosses his typically emotionless eyes when you instinctively recoil from him, his innocent stare dimishing just a little.

“you know how much i hate waiting. it’s such a pain, so let me help out and you’ll get done faster, right?” his hands are already reaching for some of the foam rollers before you can stop him. with an affectionate sigh, you take it from him, placing it back in its original spot.

“fine,” you say with a smile. “if you insist then would you mind putting the ice packs in the fridge? isagi’s ankle was messing up earlier and chigiri came in for his knee again.”

the white-haired hums before obeying, his footsteps that shuffled along the floor telling you know that he is carrying out his duties that you’ve assigned for him. the way his tracksuit makes a noise every time he walks is distracting, but you can’t help but think how much nagi reminds you of a penguin. the adorableness of it all might just kill you.

if only the internet and ‘#nagi seishiro’ tags knew just how much of a teddy bear that 6’3, legendary prodigy, nagi seishiro was, and how you had to massage him almost everyday after training sessions otherwise he’d come to practise the next day with the resolve of a five year old.

being a junior physiotherapist for the blue lock team, you only took care of a few blue lock athletes as your clients since the team was divided between you and a senior physio. nagi wasn’t one of your assigned athletes, however when you first came to the job, he would come during almost closing times (when you had no one booked) and ask for a massage, even if he had his own physiotherapist to request that of. however, nagi seemed to always have some sore muscle because his demands for a massage became a daily recurrence.

you just hope whatever is wrong with him gets sorted out soon.

sure athletes are meant to work hard and use their bodies in the field but physio massages were to assist with injuries by minimising the risk of them, fixing the alignment, or help extend any limited range of movement.

whatever. now’s not the time to think too hard about it because you’re about to go on a date with nagi seishiro.

after cleaning up your space so you could prepare to take care of more athletes tomorrow, nagi is sauntering over to you once more. this time, he drapes himself all over you, causing you to stumble a little from how heavy he is. you pray to whoever’s listening that he can’t feel or hear the way your heart races in your chest, threatening to climb up your throat and jump into his hands.

“tired, nagi?” you question, words muffled against his shoulder as you bring your hands to soothingly pat his back.

“yeah,” whines the white-haired. the smile that creeps onto your face is one full of adoration for the man slung over you. “let me take you out.”

“where to?”

“a night market? it’ll be fun.”

“sure.”

at your confirmation, he separates from you with an excited glimmer in his eyes,

after grabbing your bags and setting out, you’re violently flooded by dozens of paparazzi and interviewers who are click their cameras in hopes of catching blue lock’s soccer player who has taken the world by storm. it’s a little overwhelming, but when nagi covers you from the reporters with his arm which had his tracksuit jacket draped over it, you’re thankful for his thoughtfulness, especially when you’re relying on his grip around your waist to pull you in the right direction.

the crowd is shouting a flurry of things, nothing that you can make out amongst the mess of your mind, your heart, and your ears.

it’s not until you decipher someone shouting something about dating rumours with a japanese pop singer, that you piece together his intentions; a loud wakeup call to the reality of your ‘situation’ with nagi.

the possibility that nagi was using this ‘relationship’ for media coverage and acknowledgement was very likely, especially with his recent growth in popularity and social media following- it would be understandable if he wanted to prolong his moment in the spotlight by entering beneficial relationships.

except typically, celebrities would do it with other celebrities.

so what’s the appeal behind using you?

a funny feeling brews in your gut, one that clawed at your chest with a series of disappointment, anxiety, and dismay. it was unbelievable that someone as hot, both literally and figuratively, as nagi would be interested in you; a junior physiotherapist fresh out of university, but you had hoped. his abruptness today and the whole ‘we should date’ ordeal was to dispel the media from his back, not bred from any genuine feelings.

if this was the only chance you got to stand beside nagi and have him hold you like this, so protectively against him, then you were going to take it until fate deemed it over and pulled you away from him itself.

you were young and simply put, nagi could provide the companionship you were looking for.

fortunately, the press left him alone at the parking lot where security guards were standing, two in the booth and one purchased near the gate. you give them a shy greeting and they return it with a bow.

“sorry about that,” nagi mutters, not looking at you even when you turn your head to stare up at him. “i wasn’t expecting paparazzi to be right outside, they’re such a pain.”

“it’s okay, if anything i owe you a thank you for covering me from them,” you huff, stuffing your hands into your pockets, mind still a little frazzled over the memory of how protective nagi was over you. “stuff like this happens when you’re famous, mr soccer hotshot.”

he rubs his neck, looking to the side as his next words tumble out of his mouth: “does that impress you?”

“why wouldn’t it?”

you try not to think too hard about the blush that manifests on his face, pinning it on the colder weather and frostbite rather than your words.

“so… where’s this night market? i didn’t know tokyo had many night markets.”

“just in shibuya.”

“won’t it be busy?”

“yeah,” he shrugs before adding as an afterthought: “does that bother you?”

“no not at all, i just thought you hated big crowds and busy places.”

“‘s won’t be so bad with you there.”

for someone who prefers to keep quiet majority of the time, nagi sure does have a silver tongue. this is probably the third time in the past half an hour that he’s made your stomach flip, and you can’t help but question his intentions. if he was trying to make you actually fall for him to make your relationship look more legitimate then he’d be disappointed to know that you already had, way before he approached you today.

he agrees to drive the way since one: it was easier and two: you could avoid the paparazzi that way.

upon arrival, you’re glad to see that there aren’t too many people in the crowd. since it was a weekday, students would be participating in extra curriculars and businessmen would be only just finishing work. the majority of the people here were older with a few couples here and there.

“oh, they have lemon tea,” nagi mutters, grabbing your hand before unceremoniously dragging you to the stand. his excitement was endearing, especially when all 6’3 of him approaches the lemon tea stand, needing to bend down in order to be seen by the elderly stand owner. a flash of surprise crosses the maker’s face as he makes eye contact with the white-haired.

“two lemon teas please,” requests the soccer player, using his hands to gesture ‘two’ as he fishes out the appropriate amount of money.

“hey, you’re that soccer player, nagi! you scored an awesome goal the other day. mind if i get a picture?” the owner’s gruff voice requests, a cheery smile making its way onto his face.

“oh. sure.”

you take the picture for them, counting down ‘3, 2, 1’ as nagi gives the camera a peace sign and the owner has a wide, bright smile on his face; so bright that you couldn’t help grinning as well. “i’m putting this on my store front. now you want two lemon teas?”

“coming right up!”

“did you just buy me a lemon tea without asking?” you question, a smile appearing on your features as you glance up at your companion.

he meets your eyes, “yeah, ‘s there something wrong with that?”

“no, not at all. i wouldn’t mind some lemon tea right now. i’ll pay you back.”

“don’t worry about that,” nagi cuts you off before you can even reach for your wallet. “everything’s on me.”

“but-”

“-it’s on me.”

the stand owner is handing over two iced cups of lemon before you can continue bickering and nagi hands one over to you with a wordless expression and you’re compelled to take it, though reluctantly.

“are you two a couple?” the owner asks.

nagi nods, “yeah, we are.”

“ah! no wonder. you two look amazing together, you bagged a real gem,” he says to nagi, pointing at you. you laugh it off, flattered.

“i know i did. thanks for the tea, sir.”

“thank you!” you call out to the owner before being dragged away by nagi again, careful not to spill your drink from how much vigour was in his steps. for his one stride, you had to take two.

after going from store to store and blindly following nagi who led the way with his stomach, you’re eventually brought to a less busy, picnic-like area where there were various benches for you to sit on. it was away from the busyness of the main street, but still had lanterns hung around the premise, combating the darkness of the early sunset during colder months.

you take a seat beside him whilst he sets down the variety of food he bought from the merchants, not trying to think too much about the way nagi presses himself closely against you.

“oh, one of my games had a character drop an hour ago,” he absentmindedly comments, opening his phone for the first time since being with you. you catch a glimpse of his dim phone screen, seeing the notification banner from the game he was referring to.

“that’s cool,” you mutter, unsure of what else to say as you take a bite into the red bean taiyaki.

“yeah, he’s a cracked character. been wanting him forever.”

“are you gonna pull? i wanna see him.”

“really?”

when you give him the nod of affirmation, nagi opens the game whilst you continue eating, gentle anticipation hanging in the air as well as a comfortable silence. it doesn’t take long before he’s purchasing special event tokens, going to the special character screen and pressing the ‘draw x10’ option. you peer over his shoulder, trying to resist the urge to rest your chin on it.

you’re snapped out of your reverie when nagi emits a small gasp. “no way.”

“what?” you ask, watching the way his screen lights up in gold which signalled a successful draw. he looks up at you, eyes wide and mouth partially parted. “did you get him?”

“yeah, on the first go,” he says in wonder, a dazed look in his eyes. “that’s never happened before.”

“no way! you’re so lucky!”

nagi’s face erupts into a small smile, and you’re caught off guard all of a sudden when his hands snake around your waist, pulling you up to sit on his lap. the new proximity and abruptness of it all causes your mind to stop for a second, shutting off as nagi peers up at you with stars in his eyes. you want to hide, but his grip around you is too tight, pulling you in to him.

this feels criminal.

“nah, i just think you’re my lucky charm.”

a quiet squeak of ‘is that so?’ is all you can reply with before looking away, trying to distract your rampant thoughts, hoping that the cool breeze will calm the heat creeping up to your face. “so,” you begin, trying to recover yourself from embarrassment. “can i see your characters? all of them?”

“all of them?” nagi repeats and you miss the small look of bliss on his expression.

“yeah.”

“i showed them to you the other week.”

“okay, well show me this new character then.”

“as you wish.”

he talks you through the characters and their tutorials, showing you their special combos and ultimate moves, all whilst you have to feed him the variety of foods he bought whilst dragging you around like a dog and its owner. as he munches on the takoyaki, kebabs, and sweet potato, you realise just how bottomless nagi’s stomach was and the way he hums in satisfaction after each bite was very adorable.

the night fades into a nice memory of laughter, emptied food boxes, and easy conversation. somehow nagi has manoeuvred himself so that his head was now in your lap, snowy hair spread so invitingly as you resist the urge to run your hands through it, wanting to respect any boundaries of his.

every so often you have to remind yourself that this wasn’t real.

reality hits you once more the following morning when you check social media just to see ‘#nagi seishiro’ trending all over again, all talking about the paparazzi photos that were taken yesterday. taking a glimpse for yourself, you hate the way your gut sinks, especially as articles with the title ‘nagi seishiro with a new lover?’ shine in your face.

it only solidifies your speculations about this (fake?) relationship, and despite coming to accept it, growing resentment poisons your system, rendering you incapable and bitter as you let your breakfast grow cold.

at least nagi correctly covered you with his jacket, your face is completely obstructed, only your body is revealed. you thank your lucky stars that you decided to not wear your ‘blue lock’ staff clothes that morning and just opted for your own athletic wear, that way your identity could be hidden at least just a little.

a message from reo captures your attention and you click on it immediately.

reo: is that you with nagi?

you: yeah!

reo: about fucking time. got sick of you two never doing anything.

you: haha 😐thanks reo 😐

reo: did he take you to the night market last night?

you: yeah! it was fun :)

reo: that’s good, nagi’s been waiting forever.

reo: don’t break his heart

you scoff at the irony of reo’s last text, typing something noncommittal before throwing your phone else where.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

the whole team practically knows about you and nagi when you return to work the following monday and the second you enter the building, you’re swarmed by the friendly faces of bachira, isagi, and chigiri, who are seemingly holding a tired nagi hostage. quite an amusing sight. three people, who are roughly a head shorter than the white-haired, restraining a lethargic 6’3 athlete with their bodies.

“are you really dating nagi?” isagi begins before you could even fit in a ‘hello’.

“uh… yeah?” you sound unsure; because you are. a fake relationship is still a relationship, it’s just that one party is more infatuated with the other.

“damn. i didn’t think it was real,” mutters chigiri. “are you sure? he’s not like… paying you to do this, right? you like like him?”

“yes?” you exclaim, a little overwhelmed. “i’m not getting any monetary returns even though i wish i did.” nagi narrows his eyes at you, you poke out your tongue. “please, no more questions, it’s way too early for this.”

“you don’t know how long we’ve been waiting for nagi to ask you out, y/n. even we placed money on him,” reveals isagi but before you could say anything in response, bachira cuts in, practically skipping up to the white-haired.

“finally grew some balls and asked, good job bro!” bachira sings, patting nagi on the back with a violet slap before disappearing.

“see you at practice, nagi!”

the three athletes disappear and you finally exhale after holding in a breath for what felt like ages. what an animated way to start the day.

you hold your breath again when nagi approaches to stop in front of you, a singular coffee cup in his hand; one that he holds out to you.

“good morning, nagi,” you greet.

“hey, i got you coffee.” instinctively, you take the cup from him, immediately warmed up by the heat emanating from it. “i hope it’s still warm. i’ve been waiting for you for a while.”

“you were waiting for me?”

“yeah. wanted to see you before going to training. makes my day less of a bother.”

you smile into your cup, trying to hide the effect that nagi has on you. you were so stupid for him it was insane.

“i’m sorry for making you wait, the trains were a little delayed this morning,” you confess, “but thank you. you’re very thoughtful, nagi.”

his face contorts into an ugly expression, a display of his feelings that are quickly quelled by the feeling of your cold hand grabbing his warm ones. “you take public transport to work?”

“i don’t want to pay for parking and everything. it’s not all bad, i get lovely views and a wake up call every morning.”

the white-haired athlete makes a face of contemplation briefly. “let me pick you up from now on.”

“no, it’s fine. i don’t want to be more of a hassle. i know how much you hate waking up to even just come to work so-”

“-i want to.”

your heart flutters at his insistence and all you can mutter out is a feeble ‘ok’ before slipping your hand out of his. you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to get used to the way nagi seishiro so effortlessly warms your insides; to the point that it becomes an unrecognisable pool of putty.

after a moment, you regain your senses. “you should be going off to practise. don’t make ego mad before the day even starts.”

he groans, “won’t you come and watch? i’ll feel a little better if you’re there.”

“i have my own work to get to but i don’t have many checkups today so if i can, i will.”

“i suppose that’s good enough,” mutters nagi before pulling you in for a loose hug, arms wounding around your waist, breathing you in before stepping back, as if rejuvenated by your touch and presence alone.

“work hard, nagi.”

you go your separate ways, him to the field and you to your office where various coworkers resided.

after a morning of answering emails, going to meetings and consulting the results from various body screenings, you finally have a chunk of time around 11:45 am to go and watch practice. as soon as you entered the training grounds, you’re a little stunned and impressed to see that they were all doing shooting drills, landing them perfectly with no effort, the harsh sound of shoe slapping against leather ringing throughout the area.

nagi notices you almost immediately, his eyes lighting up a little when you shoot him a small wave before wandering into the bleachers, taking a seat in a second row.

you continue watching, straightening up in your seat whenever it’s nagi’s turn, waiting to watch the genius at work. the results are no less than impressive every time but you have to pretend like you weren’t at all marvelling at him whenever he turns around and looks at you expectantly.

15 minutes later, ego calls for an hour lunch break, allowing the players to break off to do whatever their heart desires. the first thing nagi does is walk over to where you sit in the stands, leaning over the first row of chairs to reach you.

“why hello there, soccer sensation,” you greet and he gives you a lazy smile.

“hi.”

“you going to go for lunch?”

“yeah. have you had something to eat yet or do you wanna grab a bite together?”

“i brought cup noodles but i don’t mind. don’t you want to go with your friends?”

“you’re better.”

“please shut up, that’s so cringe,” you murmur with an undeniable grin, one that causes his gaze to soften as well. “let’s get lunch together then.”

“let me get dressed,” the athlete says, about to run off when you abruptly stop him, causing him to turn around suddenly, his hair whipping around with his actions. “what’s up?”

beckoning him over, he returns to where he stood before and you take out a hair tie, one that you store in your pockets all the time just in case. “does your hair not bother you when you practise?” you silently ask for permission, hand merely hovering near his head until you realise that he was okay with the contact. “it’s getting all in your face, even i was annoyed when watching you.”

gently, you run your hands through his hair and despite the sweat on his forehead, it’s still soft and fluffy. goodness you could play with it forever.

then, you gather nagi’s front bangs, bringing them together to resemble a unicorn horn, tying it with your hairband. when you part from your work, you’re pleasantly surprised that it holds but you suppress a giggle because of how ridiculous he looks, paired with that dazed look in his eyes, you never thought you’d see nagi like this.

when you reach to tug your hairband out of his hair, he waves you off, taking the updo out himself.

“can i keep the hairband?” he pleads and you quirk an eyebrow.

“it’s just a hairband,” you say.

“so you won’t miss it right?”

“no, i won’t-”

“-okay, epic,” he mumbles before putting the hair tie around his wrist and a part of you swells with pride at the sight; a feeling that you try to shove down with little success. “can i get changed now?”

“yes, go.”

whilst you watch the white-haired disappear from your vision, you can’t help but wonder how you got yourself into this situation with such a weirdo. still, you adore said weirdo and this was no one’s fault but your own.

nagi wears the hair tie for the remainder of the day.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

roughly two months or so pass by and the days become a blur, especially since training is becoming more rigorous for the team due to the preparations for their spring soccer season. your schedule is piled day by day with athletes coming for their regular checkups and consultations, leaving you drained as soon as the work day is over.

nagi, your loving ‘partner’ notices this because he always likes to stick around after hours and bother you for a massage. he always insists that you do it because it’s like an immediate ‘full heal’ but you just think that he’s too lazy to book a professional masseuse and that you’re the next best thing.

whatever. at least he’s cute.

“i hardly see you nowadays,” he mutters, voice muffled by the leather bed of your workspace.

you gather a little more lotion on your hands, spreading it along his calves before pressing your thumbs into his muscles, trying to identify where any tight spots might be. “i’m sorry, i don’t have much time nowadays. appointments with you guys go all the way til six, and i don’t get home until 6:30. then i’m practically out like a light.”

he hums in torment and in consideration, tensing his shoulders a little as a natural response to the pain in his legs. “well, tomorrow’s a saturday. can i take you out?”

“i don’t know, some athletes may sporadically come and bother me to get a massage so i’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“be serious.”

“i am free tomorrow.”

“sick. keep it that way.”

“even if athletes bother me for a much-needed massage in order to perform at their best?”

he huffs something in response before flopping his face back down on the leather bed, the (seemingly invincible) knots in his calves taking too much of your attention for you to think too hard about tomorrow’s date with nagi.

he’s still wearing your hair tie around his wrist.

true to his word, nagi picks you up the next day at 3pm for your date since he insisted that was the earliest he would be ready by (meaning, it’s the earliest he can wake up). when you meet him, you’re a little stunned by the amount of disguises he’s wearing. sunglasses, beanie, and a face mask, you’re not sure whether he’s going to attract more attention or blend in.

also, when you’re 6’3 it’s hard to avoid eyes.

“hey, i’m supposed to meet someone called nagi, he’s got white hair, grey eyes, 190 cm, have you seen him?” you ask as soon as you approach the soccer player. he sighs through his mask when you erupt into a fit of laughter. “i’m just kidding.”

nagi brings down his mask to sit below his chin. “your boyfriend is right here,” he corrects, voice demanding and authoritative, sending shivers down your spine.

“so he is,” you mumble, stepping closer to engulf him in a hug. he wraps his arms around you in return and you contentedly sigh when he pulls you into the comfortable, expensive material of his hoodie. “what’s with the disguise?”

“i don’t want anyone to ruin our day out so i’m wearing this.”

“ever so thoughtful aren’t you?”

when you take a step back, nagi’s careful to not let you stray too far which is indicated through the protective arm he keeps around your shoulders.

“should we get going?”

“yeah.”

the white-haired laces your hands with his, his grip gentle yet committed to keeping you near him as you stroll down the warming streets of tokyo.

“it’s finally spring,” nagi comments offhandedly, causing you shift your gaze towards him. you’re surprised that he was initiating conversation, majority of the time it was you doing the rambling and him partaking in the listening. “the cold weather was getting bothersome. hated going to practise all freezing, makes warmup so hard.”

“i like the cold weather,” you say. “it’s easier to dress for winter than it is for summer.”

“that is true.”

“do you like spring?”

“yeah, ‘s my favourite season.”

you didn’t think someone like nagi would bother too much with having a favourite season. “why’s that?”

“it’s a good season for napping and staying inside. i like that i don’t have to do much nor think about much.”

such a nagi response. you admire how stubborn he sticks to his ideals and general philosophy, it’s a comforting quality and aspect to have.

“plus it’s your birthday season,” you add.

he looks at you with a gentle smile before repeating: “it’s my birthday season.”

nagi takes you to a park where the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, its petals decorating the scenery and ground, creating a dainty, lovely carpet of pink and beauty. however, the main attraction of the date isn’t the scenery of the park but rather, the lake where several pedal boats float on the water; some occupied, some vacant.

the soccer player shows the attendant his purchased tickets, getting them scanned before you’re led to get on one of the boats.

“so… are you liking the date?” nagi asks when you’re out far enough from the dock so that no one can hear you. here, he takes off his mask, tucking it into his pocket.

“i am, i’ve been wanting to ride one of these boats for a long time but i’ve just never found the time,” you confess. “i’m glad that it’s with you. thanks, nagi.”

he looks away, an obvious pink tint appearing on his cheeks as he rubs his neck in embarrassment. “it’s okay, i s’pose.”

“you’re so cute,” you say whilst raising one hand to drag through his hair.

“stop,” he whines but not brushing you off or pulling away, instead, he leans into your touch.

a few minutes of silence pass by before nagi speaks up again, retreating back into his personal space as he fishes for something in his hoodie pocket. he pulls out a long velvet box, handing it over for you to take which you do with a little hesitation.

“i wanted to give you something to mark two months,” he tells you and you feel your heart drop.

“wait what? two months? i didn’t know we were celebrating that!” (because you spend too much time fretting over the day he’d tell you that he wants to break up, not needing this fake relationship anymore.) “i didn’t get you anything, i feel terrible now-”

“-it’s not a big deal, i just wanted to give you something.”

“nagi i can’t accept this, this is too good-”

“-i insist.”

“but i don’t have anything for you-”

in the blink of an eye his hands are clasped tightly around yours, his face incredibly close to yours that you’re stupefied into silence. “i. insist.”

you stare at him for another three seconds before relenting, opening the velvet box with the utmost care in fear that you might drop it in the water; a horrifying thought.

a gasp of delight slips out of your mouth when you see an emerald necklace beaming brightly in your face. it’s in the shape of a pendant, encrusted around a halo plate with gold surrounding it, and from the looks of it, it couldn’t have been cheap.

looking back up at him to express the disbelief you feel, you’re silenced by the gentle look in his eyes, one that shines with adoration and devotion.

“it’s beautiful,” you whisper, unable to talk much louder in fear that it’ll cause the emerald to shatter in your hand. “you shouldn’t have.”

“i wanted to because i really like you. stop worrying.”

you exhale deeply, a little flustered and caught off guard by how candid he was. this feels suspiciously real.

“where did you learn to be so romantic?” you quiz, using humour to narrow how awkward you felt.

“shoujos,” he answers shamelessly.

“ah.” makes sense as to why he makes you feel like you’re in one. “can you help me put the necklace on?”

the white-haired shines with glee, features brightening for a second. “y-yeah, of course.”

“thank you.”

when he grasps the jewellery in his hold you turn around to expose the back of your neck to him, practically holding your breath when you feel his warm fingers brush against your skin, his touch barely there yet still prominent enough to blaze trials of fire where he caresses.

“how do i look?” you ask, turning back around.

“beautiful,” he says, no louder than a whisper.

eventually the boat ride comes to an end and you return back to the dock. a lingering feeling of bliss and giddiness resonates in your chest, evident in the undeniable grin plastered on your face whilst you walk through the park; this time with a pretty gemstone adorning your neck.

“nagi, look!” you exclaim, gesturing over to a company-branded photo booth that had set itself up in the middle of the park. there were various people lining up for one and judging by the pleased squeals from groups of students, it would be a nice memory to keep for today. “should we take one?”

“sure,” he shrugs, letting you drag him to hop in the queue which was going much faster than you anticipated.

when it’s your turn, there’s hardly any time to discuss poses when the cameraman clicks the countdown button so unexpectedly. you reflexively hug nagi whilst smiling and he just gives a simple peace sign. he then stands behind you, wrapping his arms around you to place his head atop yours. finally, he bends down to kiss your cheek, rendering you completely mentally inable as you default a pose, not entirely too sure which one whilst you wait for the countdown and the camera flash.

“you guys are so cute!” the photographer exclaims, handing your photobooth strips already. even then you hadn’t regained your senses, relying on nagi to guide you with his hand on the small of your back.

glancing down at the photo strip, you’re stunned into speechlessness at the last photo. you can still remember the feeling of his lips on your cheek, specks of his warmth lingering on your skin whilst you continue trying to register what just happened.

you might explode or something.

“cute,” nagi mumbles whilst putting the photo strip into his wallet, pulling you in by the waist to stand closer to him, whispering in your ear. “i still have one place i want to take you.”

“do you?” you squeak, earning you a nod as he leads you through the park, coming to a stop when you enter a somewhat secluded section that had a sign labelled ‘private picnic rooms’ with various price ranges according to the number of people.

once again, he claims to have a reservation and you’re led by an attendant towards a specific area that had a table scattered with plates of snacks and various decorations. the vibe of the room was incredible with tatami mats, a floor to ceiling glass window that outlook the cherry blossoms, and if you tried hard enough, you could hear a stream running.

“you… really outdid yourself,” you murmur, wandering over to one side of the table, expecting him to sit on the other. instead, he takes the spot right beside you.

you’re not too sure if this layout is how the establishment intended it to be but it is now.

“so you like it?”

“i do. i love everything you’ve done today, you’re too good for me.”

“not true,” he grumbles, too quiet for you to address it further but loud enough for you to hear.

your relationship doesn’t make any sense to you. why is nagi trying so hard to impress you when this relationship was just for beneficial gain? what does he get from booking a pedal boat ride, buying you a (clearly expensive) emerald necklace, then taking you to have a private picnic?

picking up a piece of halved mochi with the provided fork, you give the first bite to nagi who is more than happy to oblige, chewing on it with a satisfied expression.

he’s so cute, you could pinch him.

your eyes then flit over to the decorations on the table, reaching over to the branch of cherry blossoms in a vase before you could think, ripping off one of the sticks with the bloomed flower and putting it in nagi’s hair and behind his ears. his adorableness just tripled.

“aww you look really cute with pink!”

“ya think so?”

“yeah! you’re so pretty nagi,” you reach over to fiddle with the flower, not registering how close you’d gotten to him until you feel his breath fan across your face.

then you comprehend it, frozen in place for a second as you study nagi’s beauty from an angle you hadn’t before. how his snowy hair fanned perfectly over his forehead, the way the light bounced in the reflection of his eyes, and the imperfections that littered across his skin all contributed towards making the pretty being that was nagi seishiro.

he leans in. you freak out, instinctively turning your head.

your breath gets caught in your throat when you feel nagi’s lips brush against the corners of your mouth, lingering there for a moment before parting and the look of hurt that flashes across his face hurts your soul.

did you do the right thing? you thought you did- you know nagi isn’t into you the way you are into him. this relationship was made for media attraction, for him to gain more seconds of fame, so why does he keep acting like you two are real? why does he keep protecting your identity from the internet, why did he wear a disguise when meeting you when he would have wanted to boast that he was taken, why does he want to kiss you?

why does he look so hurt when he didn’t?

this was all so confusing.

tension lingers in the air for the rest of the date. you try to compensate for it by being a little more affectionate, giving in to your desires of openly loving him for the day. nagi’s satisfied.

you don’t notice how the cherry blossom fell from his ear.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

you won’t find answers to your questions for a long time. in fact, the amount of questions you had quadrupled one night when you had spent the day at nagi’s apartment after work one day to watch a tv show that was on his ‘to-watch’ list.

“stay the night?” asks nagi, resting his head on your shoulder to give you his best puppy-dog eyes. you will yourself to not look at him by keeping your gaze firm on the television screen.

“oh this episode sounds good. maybe we can watch this then i’ll get going,” you mutter whilst fiddling with the remote, dutifully ignoring his pleads and the way he tugs at you; something that does not resonate well with him.

“oi. don’t ignore me.”

with a rough exhale, you finally turn towards him. “i can’t.”

“why not? we don’t have work tomorrow.”

“i know but i just feel bad to bother you and take up your space.”

“you’re not botherin’ me. there’s so much space here, it feels empty without you.”

“nagi-”

“-won’t you call me seishiro? or something more romantic?”

the relationship shifts with his very words and you feel the genuine desperation that bleeds from nagi through his tone. when you look him in the eye, part of you shines with hope that maybe your relationship was real and not bred for media benefit.

in this moment of weakness, you let the top of your walls crumble.

“okay, seishiro.”

he beams. a smile so pure that you shatter like glass in his hands. “yay.”

you then find yourself underneath him as he lays his entire body weight over you, pressing you into the comfortable cushions of his couch as his hands delicately run up and down your waist. paralysed with confusion at the amount of love he pours into his touch, you keep forgetting that the higher you climb, the harder the inevitable fall will be.

“stay the night, please?”

how could you say no when he was asking so nicely? “okay, seishiro.”

“yay.”

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

“hey seishiro, are you ready?” you ask, fiddling with your rings as you round the corner of your living room where your oversized boyfriend is lounging across the couch whilst you got ready (boyfriend still feels weird to say even if he has zero problems with addressing himself by that title).

“yeah. let’s go-” he grumbles, cutting himself off when he glances over at you, eyes widening. “-whoa.”

heat rushes to your cheeks whilst nagi continues to shamelessly marvel at you, slowly standing up to cross the distance between you, his hands naturally hovering to hold your hips when he’s close enough. his gaze lingers even longer on the emerald necklace that sits between your collarbones. “like what you see?”

he stays silent for a second, leaving you to anticipate his answer. “we don’t have to go to isagi’s,” he mumbles. “how do we feel about staying in?”

“don’t. your best friend is hosting this party, can’t you at least show up for him?”

the white-haired sulks. “but you look so good. why should i celebrate that shortie instead of you?”

you push his face away, jokingly fed up with your boyfriend’s lazy attitude. “isagi is also my friend and i want to celebrate with him, just for an hour or two and then we can leave. deal?”

“fine.”

twenty minutes later, you arrive at isagi’s place where a good amount of his closest friends had gathered, showing up far earlier than you and nagi did.

truthfully, you were looking forward to isagi’s party since he was not throwing a massive rave where everyone was invited- those always ended up to be more unfortunate than fun in your opinion, and that wouldn’t exactly cater to his shy and sensible character. tonight was a gathering for his friends to hangout and celebrate. some you recognise from the team, some of them must be from high school or elsewhere.

bachira’s cheery face is the first one you see upon arrival, his smile wide as he practically bounces off the walls in excitement and you already begin to wonder just how many desserts and sweets he’s had upon arrival.

“hey it’s the couple of the century!” he exclaims with a wink. nagi keens at bachira’s compliment, all proud and boastful as his hand creeps up to hold your hip protectively. “lookin’ good as always!”

“yo, where’s isagi?” the white haired questions.

“around, i’ll take you to him c’mon!”

the two soccer players are off before you can even count to three, nagi and bachira disappearing into the crowd as the hyperactive boy drags your 190 cm of a boyfriend through the crowd. well, at least he took the gift you both bought with him, but now you feel a little alone and very awkward.

walking around the hallways of isagi’s, you feel a little out of place since most of them seemed to be high school friends. it’s not until you reached the kitchen that you sigh in relief, met with the familiar, friendly faces of chigiri and reo who see you first.

“hey!” the red-haired calls out, waving at you as you walk over to them. “it’s good to see you, y/n, how are you?”

“hey chigiri, hey reo, i’m good! i just arrived but this seems like a cool gathering. isagi’s really outdone himself,” you greet.

“yeah he did. good way to unwind before the soccer season gets too crazy,” reo chips in. “nice outfit by the way, you served!”

“oh shut up, you look amazing yourself. you too chigiri.”

“so… where’s nagi?” the purple-haired asks, checking his phone to see if he had received any texts from his best friend. “didn’t he come with you?”

“yeah but bachira dragged him to go talk to isagi as soon as i arrived. you know how he is.”

after a few more minutes of talking with the two, you finally pause the conversation out of concern about nagi’s whereabouts might be. you thought he’d come and find you after a while but guess you’ll search for him first.

informing the pair first before breaking away, you wander into the rooms where bachira pulled nagi into, blindly hoping that they’ll be in there. to your chagrin, there were only a few unfamiliar faces spread along the couches, discussing something with a drink in their hand. you ignore the sight of otoya and one of isagi’s friends sitting too close for comfort.

when you walk into the next room, you stop in your tracks at the sight in front of you: nagi leaning against the wall with a stranger who clearly has no distinction of personal space, their hand resting on his chest. your heart plunges the bottom of your stomach as distraught settles within you because of the scene unfolding in front of you, chest churning with a distant ache that you can’t put your finger on.

then he looks over at you.

the instinct to turn around and run overpowers any rational judgement, especially when a flurry of emotions begin to well up inside you, causing you to sink further and further in an ocean of doubt and fear.

you had no right to be jealous, not over nagi because you’re just his ‘pseudo-partner’, he’s not really yours and it’s moment like these that truly humble you into remembering. you’re just his ‘pseudo-partner’, you’re just his ‘pseudo-partner’, you’re just his-

“-where are you going?” comes an indifferent voice from behind you. all anxiety floods out of you like a broken dam. a warm, large hand tugs on your wrist and even if he had not spoke, you’d know from touch alone that it was nagi behind you. the multitude of times that he’s spent holding you, intertwining his hand with yours, and cherishing you has forced you to brand him into your memory.

you are his. even if it is not mutual, you would be his until he stomps the fire out.

“i-i thought i was interrupting something,” you stammer, looking into at nagi’s doe eyes.

“you didn’t. actually, you made it better by coming,” he says before wrapping his arms around your torso. “that person wouldn’t leave me alone, such a pain. tried to say i was taken too, so glad you came.”

you return the hug, trusting his words. “glad i came too.”

nagi pulls you out of the water.

“can we leave yet? i don’t wanna be here anymore.”

“just a little longer. i haven’t even seen isagi yet. plus, we should dance.”

he gives you a quick look up and down before nodding in agreement. you smack his shoulder.

you manage to locate isagi rather quickly. he was near the food bar where refreshments and various desserts and snacks laid so after greeting him, wishing him ‘happy birthday’, and chatting with him for approximately five minutes before nagi started getting bitchy, you’re pulled into the dance floor by the white-haired. he said that they were playing a good song when you asked why he was being so impatient.

with a laugh, you give in.

nagi doesn’t really know how to dance but you can’t help but be a little entertained, deciding to end his awkwardness when you grab his hands and lead him through some moves, singing along to the song with each other. it ends with your arms around his neck and his around your waist (again) when a slower song plays.

hiding your face in his chest, you breathe in the subtle aroma of his cologne that you urged him to put on earlier. when he gently prompts you to look up at him with a hand gently pulling on your hair, your breath gets caught in your throat at the close proximity as nagi stares at your lips, glancing up to meet your eyes again before leaning in.

this time you don’t feel as cruel, bracing yourself for the first sip of water after crossing the desert, for the final puzzle piece clicking into place, for the feeling of his lips slotting against yours; for the feeling of completion.

instantly you relax at the sensation, melting into his embrace as you hold onto him a little tighter, wanting more. you want to take as much of him as he’ll allow and even then, you’ll cherish every last part.

you want him the same way the ocean longs for the moon.

parting from him makes you feel empty. the lidded look he gives you is full of temptation and… love?

snapping out of your reverie, you step away from him, using his dazed state to create some distance between the two of you as you come to your senses. senses that scream at you for possibly ruining… this.

you hate that you keep running away from him, leaving him in the dust of the mess that are your feelings. it’s immature, irrational, and downright childish, really it is, but how else can you stop the way you’re about to burst at the seams? how can you stop yourself from devoting yourself fully to nagi seishiro if you don’t forcefully screw the lid over your emotions?

for the second time tonight, the white-haired chases after you because there was never another option. he despises being away from you and despises it even more when it’s him you’re running away from, wanting nothing more than to be by your side at all times.

for the second time tonight, he grabs your wrist but now, he leads you through isagi’s house, weaving through a series of well-kept and simply decorated rooms to finally arrive at a balcony. one that was untouched by the party goers.

“why do you keep doing this?” he asks, pleading for an answer as desperation laces his voice and eyes. “why do you keep running away?”

you’re stunned. he’s hurt by your carelessness and the way you constantly recoil from him as if he was electric, his powerful figure slouching, all his quiet confidence and stubbornness seeping out of him, running to pool at your feet.

“am i doing something wrong? i thought you liked me.”

“i-i’m confused,” you stammer stupidly.

he grows even more perplexed. “you’re confused? i’m even more confused! one second i think you like me then the next, you’re trying to avoid me. why do you keep doing this? i really really like you, y/n. but it doesn’t feel like you like me at all sometimes.”

“no!” you blurt out. “it’s not like that! i do like you, a lot, in fact i might even… love you? it’s just…”

as you try to recap the timeline of your relationship in the past few months, you find yourself at a loss for words as you truly realise the multitude of your stupidity. you might slap yourself in the face.

this entire time, nagi has liked you- genuinely liked you for who you are yet you’ve been denying the love he has been trying to share with you since you internalised it all to be a sham. that someone like nagi seishiro couldn’t want you in the same way you wanted him. you’ve been hurting him this entire time and you don’t know how to begin explaining why.

well… no other option than with one word at a time.

you go to grab both his hands, inhaling. “i didn’t think we got together based on genuine feelings.”

he recoils, eyebrows and nose scrunching.

“i thought you were using me to- i don’t know, trend on the internet by teasing everyone with some sort of secret relationship which sounds so stupid, i know, but i just couldn’t believe that you would want me for me,” you ramble, only stopping to breathe. “these few months have been amazing but i lowkey thought you were going to break up with me and say something like ‘surprise! i’ve never liked you’ before leaving me. i don’t deserve someone like you and-”

“what?”

you shut up.

“you thought you don’t deserve me? that’s the biggest lie i’ve ever heard. you’re perfect. i was the one that got lucky.”

“lucky? you? really?”

“yeah,” he breathes. “you’re like a gift sent by fate.”

that renders you speechless for a little. there’s more to say, you know there is because of the pregnant silence that lingers around the two of you for a little but maybe that’s for another time.

are you dreaming? this feels surreal. maybe you’ll start floating too.

“also, why would i want to trend for any other reason but soccer?”

“i don’t know! you asked me out really abruptly- i’ve never been asked out like that before! talk about confusing. and the paparazzi was waiting for us after too like, what was i supposed to think!”

“i see.”

“yeah.”

more silence.

“so… you love me?” nagi asks and you groan, removing your hands from his to cover your face from embarrassment.

“i guess i do,” you grumble.

“hey, don’t hide from me,” the white-haired says before grabbing your wrists to lower them from your face. “i love you too.”

“really?”

“yeah.”

“that’s cool.”

“it is.”

you do both of you a favour by kissing him fervently.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

“sei, shouldn’t you be getting ready for the match or whatever it is you athletes do?” you ask when nagi’s mop of white hair peaks up from behind the door to your physio office.

he steps out from behind the doorframe, crossing the distance to get to you. he’s sporting his blue lock tracksuit with his hands dug into his pocket and you’re a little envious of how comfortable he looks. “i was until i realised you weren’t there. i was waiting for you to show up.”

“well i don’t really have to be there early. i just get there around 20 or so minutes earlier.”

“i see.”

“why, did you want me there or something?” you ask with a cheeky eyebrow raise, poking him in his sides causing him to recoil a little from your touch.

“why else would i walk all this way?”

“a stunning 50 metres- i’m so sorry for your perilous journey,” you comment, placing a kiss on his cheek before walking away from him to set up your box of medical supplies including kinesio tapes, bandages, and cold spray. he slumps down on the waiting couch near the entrance.

your role as blue lock’s official therapist meant that you had to be on standby for the team at all time during official matches. even though you aren’t their nurse, you still bring first aid things like ice packs to minimise the amount of time spent travelling between offices, especially if that distance is not needed.

after scanning the box for the last time and mentally ticking your checklist of materials required to bring, you pat your leg in satisfaction before standing up. “i can go to the field now. there’s probably tape changes that i need to do.”

nagi lazily grins, searching for your hand to help pull himself up. “yay.”

“you need to be warming up while we’re at it.”

“aw. okay.”

the walk back to the field is painless enough with nagi holding onto your hand for dear life whilst carrying your box of supplies for you. for someone who is about to compete in less than an hour, he is surprisingly calm, hardly different from his passive, pacifistic self. should you be nervous on his behalf?

stepping in to the field, you’re overwhelmed by the enormousness of blue lock’s home stadium, the lights shining down on you so brightly that you need a moment to recollect yourself. to think that all these empty seats will be filled with various people scares you mindless; even vacant it was still overwhelming.

“y/n!” isagi’s voice breaks you out of your reverie and he jogs over to you with that friendly smile of his. “what’s up?”

“hey isagi, sei dragged me out of my office,” you grumble before turning around to the white-haired who places your supplies on the ground, instructing him to: “go continue warming up.”

he grumbles something incoherent, leaning in to place a kiss on your forehead before running off, leaving you a little flustered as the dark-haired player waits patiently to talk to you.

“so what’s up?”

“i just needed my ankle to be retaped, is that okay?”

“that is my job so come over,” you say, beckoning isagi to one of the benches nearby where you decide to station yourself for the time being.

whilst you’re unrolling the adhesive, he awkwardly sits there with his shoe and sock off, exposing his joint where he already you tape it for him.

“do you want pink or blue tape?” you ask, holding up the two options.

“pink.”

the background noises of athletes shouting and kicking soccer balls fill the silence whilst you cut up the length needed to tape isagi’s ankle.

“how are you and nagi?” he asks.

“we’re good,” you respond, mentally reminding yourself to give isagi a present in exchange for his birthday being the sole reason why your relationship strengthened. “both been busy cause of the season but it’s fine.”

“that’s okay, you’re making it work!” he reassures, “well, nagi is really happy.”

“is he now?” you ask, looking intently at your hands as they worked around isagi’s ankle, hiding your giddy expression from the soccer player. the effect nagi has on you will never disappear.

“yeah! always talks about you to us.”

“does he?”

“of course, why wouldn’t he? swears you’re the best thing to have happened to him in a long time or whatever.”

your heart warms uncontrollably. nagi seishiro was going to be your downfall.

finishing up on isagi’s ankle, he tests it out quickly before thanking you and running off again to blend in with his teammates again. ‘don’t work too hard!’ you yell out after him.

after retaping chigiri’s knee, commanding karasu to do his recommended exercises, and other various checkups, the boys are ushered back into the stadium so the audience could begin filing in. before nagi went in, he runs over to you, bundling you in his arms despite the various exclaims of ‘hurry up!’ yelled at your white-haired partner.

“gotta go,” he says breathily.

“wait, shouldn’t you take this off?” you ask, gesturing to your hair tie which sat snugly at his wrist.

“do i have to?”

“you can always rewear it after the match sei, it’s not a big deal.”

“fine. i’ll see you soon then.”

you give him a smile of reassurance, hugging him back. “go. i’ll be watching, my superstar.”

his eyes shine. “cheer for me, won’t you?”

“of course i will. i’m your lucky charm,” you tease but he takes your statement quite literally, grinning at what you say which only illuminates the cheery look on his face.

“can my lucky charm give me a kiss?”

cupping his face, you quickly place a peck on his nose before lightly pushing him away. you know the kiss is not good enough to satiate his hunger but perhaps that’s just what you want from him, to try hard for a better reward. and in this case, by trying harder, he would bring home the trophy.

“go line up!” you command.

nagi grumbles something before stepping away, “i’ll score for you.”

he dashes towards the stadium entrance, leaving you in a lovesick daze as you watch him retreat. someone clears their throat behind you and you remember where you are, sitting down to preserve some professionalism.

sitting in the medics corner was scary, especially as you watch every seat getting gradually filled with an onslaught of different people, but all you need to do for the 90 minutes is watch and be attentive to the game and the health of the players. an easy job for the amount of pay you get.

when the teams walks out into the field, everyone in the stands erupt into a roar, waving their various flags and colours. despite the chaos, nagi looks over at you and you blow him a kiss, unsure of whether or not he could actually see you.

as everything settles down, the match finally begins, starting off with a bang. from time to time you talk with the two other blue lock medics and spend the other moments admiring your boyfriend in his athletic glory.

it’s not until almost halftime that something disastrous happens. when itoshi rin collides face-first into another player, toppling over on the field on top of each other, the crowd erupts into a series of gasps and concerned noises. as the referee’s whistle is called, you three official blue lock staff scramble to the middle of the field where a crowd was gathering around the two, trying to help their soccer players but stepping out of the way when you approach.

“where are you?” one medic begins asking.

“the stadium. we’re in the middle of a match,” comes rin’s gruff tone.

“you are?”

“itoshi rin.”

“how many fingers am i holding up?”

“four.”

“what hurts?”

“my fucking face,” rin snarkily replies, trying to stand up but not making it past his knees as he stumbles a little, holding on to his nose. “shit.”

taking his hand away, there are droplets of red coating his skin and you snake yourself under his arm in order to assist with helping him to the medic’s area, another nurse doing the same. hopefully it’s not serious and he won’t need be to sent to hospital, only benched by ego. which, he was.

in your panic, you don’t register any of the commotion happening within the players themselves whereas nagi, on the other hand, hears it all clearly. how a player on the team he was playing against says something like ‘look at that cutie. reckon i could cuff ‘em?’ where his friend replies with a ‘yeah dude. seems like a babe to be honest, workin’ as a nurse and shit’, geturing to you.

nagi has never felt such an overwhelming urge to punch someone, to jump the two players and tear them apart with the fury he feels accumulating in his insides.

the whistle to notify that the game was continuing disrupts nagi’s train of thought. he goes back into position but not without snaring at the opposition.

blue lock seems to be doing fine without their number one player for the remainder of the game; in fact, nagi is practically dominating the whole field as he shoots, earning goals left and right for blue lock. he’s moving with unmatched determination; a blazing kind that you’ve never seen from him despite having seen countless of his games. you wonder what happened to him since rin got injured, where did the calm, unbothered nagi go? why are you kind of scared of your boyfriend right now?

maybe your good luck kiss worked in giving him the boost you predicted.

however, you never could have predicted the huge turnaround that your life would take when nagi’s jealousy gets too ahead of itself. when his urge to show the world whose you are outspeaks his rationality, too caught up in the torments of untamed jealousy. he’s never felt this way before; a carnal desire so inherent that it makes him feel bare.

only you could do this to him.

and only you could fix the ugly monster inside him

when blue lock scores the goal needed to take the trophy home, the stadium is deafening, so loud that you need to cover your ears from the unrestrained passion of fans and watchers alike, the buzz of excitement unmatched.

nagi is awarded man of the match, taking home a shiny trophy in recognition of his athleticism and remarkable talents. yet the first thing he does when taking his prize is not rush over to his teammates and… do whatever it is that men do, but to run over to where you reside, a possessive and dark look in his eyes. it sends shivers down your spine.

he sweeps you into his arms, winding you so close that you can feel the body heat radiating from him, even through the fabric of his jersey. the trophy presses against your back.

“can i kiss you?” nagi questions although it sounds more like a demand, especially with that breathy voice due to how much he’s been running around.

short circuiting for a moment, you reply: “but everyone’s watching.”

“let them.”

you’re well aware of the multitude of cameras that may be pointed at you and nagi. if you act stupidly, it will appear on the internet and who knows what repercussions it might bring, are you ready to be thrown into a life of chaos, joining alongside your boyfriend?

the answer is obvious when you take the initiative of kissing him, allowing him to devour you whole: his first act of establishing just exactly who you were to the entire world.

you adore how scandalous this feels.

his second act comes mere minutes later at the exit where paparazzi and media were waiting patiently behind barriers for their star players. this time, instead of leaving alone or with his teammates, there’s an unidentified figure accompanying him, hugged close to his side and proudly wearing his jersey. the very one that boasts ‘NAGI’ along the back. everything descends into chaos.

an immense feeling of deja vu encompasses you when you recall the day nagi asked you out and the overwhelming lineup of paparazzi and photographers that waited for him outside. it’s different now. you feel confident in your place beside nagi, looking perfect to him in his clothes- as if you were meant to be his.

nagi walks in front of you to use his stature to protect from the greedy eyes of the internet whilst you use your hands to cover your face as best as possible, all to ensure your privacy from those who are going to eat these photos up when they see them.

and- well, if everyone is going to see them then why not send a little message whilst nagi’s here?

the kiss nagi sneaks on your neck is entirely proprietorial, a clear sign of affection for the whole world to see as he eyes the cameras with a deadly look in his eyes.

“mine,” he mutters in your ear, sending one last glare over his shoulder before disappearing from their nosiness and intruding flashes.

the cameras can see your hair tie that slips up when his sleeves are tugged too short.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

your notifications are rampant the next morning, mostly because of friends, and ‘#nagi seishiro’ has taken the internet by storm once again.

this feeling of anxiety settling in your stomach will never go away whenever you check social media to see if any of your information has been leaked and by whatever miracle, you’re absolutely relieved to see that nothing drastic has been revealed.

speaking of boyfriend, nagi stirs from where he lays beside you, stretching for a moment before patting the bed in search for your warmth.

shutting off your phone and putting it down, you watch him try to locate you, unable to stop the smile from stretching at the corner of your lips. he’s adorable. even more so when he has to open one eye because his instincts were failing him.

“oh. why are you awake?” he asks groggily, still adjusting to consciousness. nagi tries to sit up to rest on his elbows only to fail miserably and fall face-first into his lush pillow.

“body clock,” you say. you’ll talk about yesterday later. right now, it was just you and him and the soft glow of the sun saying good morning.

“turn it off and go back to sleep.”

“fine.”

“c’mere,” nagi beckons you over weakly, hands reaching for your figure but falling short due to the enormous size of his bed.

it’s not like nagi to splurge on things but it is like him to splurge on getting the most comfortable bed ever, so when he demands you to fall back asleep, how could you say no when it feels like napping on a cloud? and with your adorable boyfriend? some things in life come too easy.

shuffling back towards him, he’s quick to throw an arm and a leg around you, trapping you in.

“my body hurts,” whines nagi. “so much.”

“what do you want me to do about that?”

“massage later, please?”

“is that all i am to you?” you question teasingly whilst rubbing hearts into his skin.

“maybe,” he sings.

astounded, you give him your best look of betrayal. “we’re breaking up.”

“no, don’t do that,” nagi pleads, hugging you closer as if you were going to get up from his vice grip in the first place. “don’t be mean.”

“oh sure because i’m the mean one,” you joke as he burrows his head into your neck. instinctively, your hands card through his hair, extra soft from washing it last night. after a moment of silence, you speak up. “you’re trending again because of me so just remember that what i said about our fame-grabbing relationship was true.”

“i didn’t mean for that to happen. i’m just too good,” he takes his head out of your neck, doe eyes looking up at you with heart wrenching awe. “and i love you too much to hide it.”

you pat his cheek, unable to stop a wide, dreamy smile from appearing on your face. “go back to sleep.”

“‘k. goodnight.” the second nagi’s head hits his pillow, he’s out like a light.

it’s a little surreal to be wrapped in his embrace like this, to be able to gaze at his features so closely and unabashedly whilst his arms extend to mould you into him. even being as close as humanly possible isn’t enough for nagi who has an unlimited desire for more, at all times.

if it’s you he wants, then you’ll happily grant it.

the last thing you see before falling into a deep slumber is a hair tie that lies on his bedside table.

#pls be nice to me i'm really fragile rn i'm sorry this wasn't amazing #nagi x reader #nagi fluff #nagi seishiro x reader #seishiro x reader #nagi x you #nagi drabble #blue lock x reader #blue lock nagi x reader #blue lock drabble #blue lock fluff #bllk fluff

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kissme-suguru · 2 months

Text

You and Their Kids

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺ JJK Gojo, Nanami, Geto x Fem Reader

Warnings: Non Curse Au, mention of menstrual cycle,

A/N: I'm such a sucker for dilfs. This is like a drabble mixed with headcannons based on what I think the main aspect of their parenting style is. part 2 maybe?

Gojo Satoru ♡︎

Becoming the guardian of Megumi and Tsumiki at the age of eighteen was no easy feat, still being a kid himself he grew with them and sometimes acted more like an older brother than a father but that didn't stop his (sometimes overbearing) affection.

When he first introduced you to Megumi you coulda swore the kid was raising Satoru and not the other way around. His level of maturity was off the charts which Satoru tried to take credit for (lies). Megumi liked having you around for the main reason of his guardian having someone else to bother, constantly stating how he likes you more than him. The boys bickered pretty often and it always made you laugh.

Satoru loved to watch you and Megumi interact, seeing a nurturing side to you warmed his heart to the core. Megumi began seeing you as a guardian as well when he witnessed you taking care of Tsumiki in the hospital, which was a part of his daily routine he didn't really like to talk about. And for that they both appreciated you immensely.

"Megs!" You called out to the navy haired boy as he walked with his peers, turning around at the nickname. He stopped in place waiting for you catch up. "I brought you lunch, I didn't want you to be starving after training."

His hand accepted the bento box with a nod of acknowledgement.

Suddenly the sound of Satoru's singsong voice caught your attention. He quickly jogged up to you two, wasting no time wrapping his arm around your shoulder and placing a kiss on your head. "You didn't tell me you were coming today, babe."

"I was just bringing Megs some food real quick." He look offended.

"And what about me??" You rolled your eyes with a slight smile at his pouty words.

"How could I forget?" Reaching into your bag you pulled out another bento and handed it to Satoru, making is eyes light up dramatically.

"Ah! You're the best. Just in time for training, thanks babe." He pressed another kiss to the top of your head before letting you go and walking ahead to talk to Yuji and Nobara.

Megumi lingered back for a moment, wrapping his arms around you in a soft in embrace. Your hand stroked his hair softly with a smile on your lips. Although he didn't convey his emotions often it was obvious this little gesture meant a lot.

"Thank you."

"Of course."

Geto Suguru ♡︎

Similar to Satoru; Suguru adopted his girls young, bringing Mimiko and Nanako into his care not long after graduating. He had such a soft spot for the girls and never failed to cater to their every need.

As the girls grew into their teen years Suguru had even more trouble saying no to them, practically bending to their every request and spoiling. He allows them to drag him into various malls and restaurants and of course he carries their many bags with a smile on his face.

The girls took to you very quickly when you entered the picture, happy see their dad smile more than usual and excited to have a woman's presence around the house.. You really played the mother role well, giving them tips on makeup and taking time to do their hair. You were the one they came to when they got their periods and it was times like those were Suguru was glad you were around to educate them on the things he couldn't. Suguru took pride in your mother like instincts, often just watching the three of you quietly with a smile on his face.

His ability to say no diminished even further when you two started dating, the girls often let you in on their schemes knowing he couldn't turn down all three of his girls.

"Can we go get ice cream? Pretty pleeeeasee?" Nanako intertwined her fingers as she pouted.

"Pretty pleeeeasee?" Mimiko followed suit, matching her twins pouting.

"Yeah Sugu, Pretty please?" A teasing smile lingered on your lips as you followed, making Suguru itch the back of his neck with a groan.

"What am I gonna do with you girls?"

"Take us to get ice cream?"

"I vote for that."

"Yeah me too."

He shook his head with a smile. "Alright, alright. Put the puppy dog eyes away."

Kento Nanami ♡︎

Nanami wasn't exactly Yuji's dad but he was the closest thing the boy had to a father figure, allowing him into his home under his protection. Despite his sometimes stoic personality Nanami cared for the boy deeply and wanted to see him succeed in life. Although it did take a bit of effort for him to bring his walls down and get out of his comfort zone when it came to his interests.

When you and Nanami started dating his softer side to him began to grow, taking more time to spend with the two of you and relish in the presences of his loved ones.

As much as he didn't want to admit it he loved that you and Itadori kept him on his toes and brought new found excitement into his life. The fact that you and the pink haired boy had similar personalities always made him chuckle to himself, the two of you were like peas in a pod and that made it even harder to say no.

"Y/N, tell Nanamin that we have to go see the new Human Earthworm 4!"

"I just don't see the appeal in those types of movies, they're too hard to follow ." Nanami didn't bother looking up from his newspaper while you and Itadori baked cookies.

"It's entertaining, hon."

"But the story doesn't make sense." "How could you not get it?! It's a tragic love story between a girl and a human earth worm, you can't get a better plot!" Itadori's eyes practically sparkled as he talked about the movie, making you chuckle.

You finished putting the cookies on the sheet allowing Itadori to put them in the oven while you walked behind Nanami and wrapped your arms around his neck, resting your head on his. "Come on hon, I heard this was the best movie out of the series."

He sighed, setting down the newspaper and rubbing the bridge of his nose. The blonde's eyes glancing back and forth between his lady and Itadori who held a small pout.

"If we must."

"Yay! Thank you!!" The two of you said in unison as Itadori also wrapped his arms around Nanami. The gesture made him crack a small smile and lean into the affection.

"Mhm."

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heraxic · 3 days

Note

I’m sorry if you already answered this (I didn’t find it mentioned) but why was Kyril/Karl mutated, imprisoned and hunted in the Greek Myth AU? This definitely feels like Miranda/Athena was punishing him. What happened?

Thanks for asking!

Here’s pre-curse Kyril (story under cut, body horror/gore warning)

Yes, it was meant as punishment (unlike Alina and Daphne), and to no one’s surprise his crime was hubris.

Kyril worked at his father’s forge, far surpassing his skills in both metalworking and stone masonry. As such he was blessed by Hephaestus himself.

He got commissioned to make a statue of Athena in honor of her craftsmanship. He rolled his eyes and set to work, complaining that it’d be more fitting to make one of Hephaestus, who picked up the slack, since Athena abandoned her craft and stopped making beautiful things for the sake of her sick game (Athena’s Gauntlet of Monsters, so far containing a living whirlpool and a sphinx, was widely known and many daydreamed of or even sought the glory of defeating the beasts). In spite of his grumbling the statue came out stunning with clean cut stone and gilded detailing.

The next day, a weaver came to Kyril’s forge saying she’d heard his complaints about her goddess, which confused her cause with a statue that beautiful a blessing would naturally be in order, yet he burned that bridge. ‘What if she could give you the power to make the most life-like statues in the world?’ Kyril laughed and said it wasn’t her domain, and besides he didn’t need it.

Refusing a blessing from a god is one thing, but to mock them and be telling the truth at the same time is unforgivable.

The weaver lifted her shawl from her head and revealed a brilliant blue plume and with it a golden helmet. Athena arose to her full dreadful height, one hand holding her winged spear, the other pointed towards the terrified sinner in front of her. ‘You will know what power is when you see it. You shall have my blessing whether you wish or not.’

In a second, Kyril fell to the floor screaming with blinding agony, feeling horrible squelching and crunching as bone and muscle grew where it shouldn’t. His nails fell out and out of the raw empty spots grew thorny black claws; his spine extended to accommodate a tufted lion tail; the skin of his back ripped to tatters to unfurl two sets of bloody grey wings; his black curls turned to angry, writhing snakes, each more venomous than the last; his teeth grew sharp and pointed, cutting rifts on his tongue so blood filled his mouth; and lastly his eyes grew heavy in their sockets as they were imbued with the last of the goddess’s curse.

Hearing the commotion, Kyril’s father rushed in and cradled the strange figure he knew was his son, turning his head towards him. He instantly froze in place, a perfect image of paternal worry, and the monster felt the arms holding it turn hard and grating like stone.

Athena took him away to her islands somewhere in the Cyclades to become the next glorious creature on her roster, the Gorgon. There he lied writhing in pain for 12 days without sleep or food (besides the right leg of Pallas, which further changed his body and gained him far more muscle and size). When the pain subsided enough to let him speak he prayed for his patron Hephaestus to help him, but alas gods can’t break each other's curses. Instead he carved out a spacious cave for him in which to seek shelter as well as several unbreakable stonemason and smithing tools to keep up his spirits.

700 yrs later Elias comes to the islands.

#ask #re8 #greek mythology #re8 karl heisenberg #re8 heisenberg #re8 mother miranda #re8 miranda #fanart #my art #sketch

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twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat · 6 months

Text

where you lead me, i’ll follow ; suguru geto

synopsis; opening up is hard, even under the comfort of a starry sky, seated next to your childhood friend. fortunately, suguru knows you like the back of his hand.

word count; 10k (dont even look at me i got carried away ok….)

contents; suguru geto/reader, gn!reader, mutual pining, childhood friends to lovers (eventually. probably.), hurt/comfort (mostly comfort tbh), fluffy overall!!, reader is silly and suguru is down horrendous, written with a no curses au in mind, i’m madly in love with suguru geto and it shows

a/n; nothing goes harder than sugu w/ the childhood friends trope i fear. the angst potential, the fluff potential….. the slow burn of it all……….. anyways can u tell i miss him :’3

time goes by so very quickly.

as you look up at the starry sky, the thought envelops you like a fuzzy tidal wave. heavy, suffocating; entirely unavoidable. these days, sinking beneath its weight is all you seem to do.

a sigh flows from your parted lips. soft and quiet, somewhat resigned. the midnight air tastes cold and crispy on your tongue, turning into a flurry of vapour as you breathe it out again. watching it dissipate into the summer night.

beyond the boundary of your vision, stars burn in tandem — all you can see is the darkness of the cosmos, pupils dilating as you take in the immensity of the world, the little flickers of starlight that glimmer in that all-encompassing veil of black. blooming out across the galaxy.

the moon is beautiful, tonight.

a big blob of reflected sunlight, smiling down at you so very tenderly, so gorgeous that it makes your heart ache. shining with a hazy kind of brightness, soothing like the lilt of a mother’s voice.

and there’s a comfort, in the familiarity of the sight. because the moon is always, always there. always shining down on you, always when you need it most, even when it’s carved into a crescent or hidden by a blur of clouds. a view that never ever seems to change, no matter how many years go by.

what a lovely thing to be.

another second lost, as you gaze into the nothingness of space. time keeps passing you by, never stopping — seconds turning into minutes, minutes turning into months. that incessant moving of the hands of the clock; tick, tock, tick, tock. over and over again.

and, really, it’s a little bit scary. you think you might be terrified of time. you’re so afraid, afraid of being left behind, afraid that the world will turn its back on you and then walk away. afraid that everyone and everything will change shape before you know it.

but even in this always-changing, turbulent mess of a life —

one thing remains the same.

”ah. there you are.”

(that voice.)

honeyed and smooth, but still rough around the edges. just a little husky. deep and familiar, etched into your brain; even if you were to forget everything else, you’re sure you’d still remember it. that familiar, familiar voice. it sounds like moonlit nights, and sunkissed kitchens.

it sounds like coming home.

a turn of your head. it’s a subconscious reaction, as natural as the beating of your own heart, memorized down to the very marrow of your bones — muscle memory, to seek him out after hearing the low timbre of his voice. you do it as if it’s the only thing worth hearing.

and suguru is smiling, when your eyes meet his. that gentle upward tug of his lips, small yet sincere. the one that always puts your mind at ease.

a warmth settles in your chest, at the sight of him. hair down, cascading over his shoulders and back, a little messy; as black as the night sky. a stark contrast to the white of his shirt, old, oversized, with some indie band on the front.

his eyes glimmer like little pockets of stardust in the darkness of the night. cutting through the haze, into your very soul.

”… damn,” you click your tongue, faux pout playing at your lips. ”how’d you know i’d be up here?”

suguru shrugs. ”lucky guess,” he lies.

of course i knew, he thinks. finding you is his specialty. always has been. like that one time he found you hiding under a table at your twelfth birthday party, or the time he found you crying in the woods when you got lost on your school field trip.

finding you comes easy, to suguru. almost like he’s always seeking you out, subconsciously or otherwise, always paying attention to your movements. you go south, and he follows. you go north, and he’s already waiting up ahead.

he’s worried. just a bit, is what he tells himself, but truthfully it’s more than that. because tonight was supposed to be for you. for the both of you, a celebration of your shared graduation — but before he knew it, you had slipped away. seizing the opportunity as soon as people grew too sleepy to notice.

(sadly for you, no amount of fatigue could ever distract him from the lack of your presence.)

you look small, suguru thinks, curled up with your knees to your chest. sitting all alone up on the roof of his home, a place you’d always go to on nights when you couldn’t sleep. together, sharing whispered secrets and hushed laughter until the sun began to rise again.

back then, it felt like the two of you were the only ones awake in the whole world.

(the safest world he’s ever known.)

the distance between you grows narrower, as suguru makes his way over to you — and it always does, at the end of the day. no matter how much time you spend apart, that uncomfortable distance always, always ends up broached. one of you always moves closer. as if it’s unavoidable, two planets spinning around each other’s orbit.

suguru plops down right next to you, crossing his legs and leaning back. his knee bumps against the side of your shoe, and his shoulder grazes yours. it’s natural, as natural as the glow of the moon, this closeness between you. it reminds you of the gentle lapping of ocean waves at your bare ankles; on mellow summer days, comforting and familiar. a warmth that never goes away.

a brief inhale, and your heartbeat settles into a tender rhythm again. the scent that always lingers on suguru’s skin drifts throughout the air, mingling with your own — it can be hard to distinguish between the two, with how often you end up wearing each other’s clothes, but you could never mistake it for anything else. cedarwood and earl gray, with a hint of coconut-scented shampoo. enveloping every single one of your senses, grounding you in a way nothing else can.

leaning just a little closer to him, subconsciously, you let a fond exhale slip from your lips. barely audible. and suguru mimics it.

”of course i knew,” he whispers, voice gone soft. ”i know you.”

(your chest tightens. it doesn’t go away.)

another tiny breath flows into the air, as you gaze up at the stars in wonder. ”… yeah.”

the silence between you is a comfortable one. always has been. a little fickle, always shattered by one of you before long — usually you, though suguru isn’t much better.

but this time, he stays silent.

he’s waiting. you know he is, because he always does. he’s waiting, waiting for you to break the silence first. waiting for you to say something, tell him what’s wrong, explain why you’re up here instead of celebrating with the others. waiting for you to explain why your eyes have looked so tired, this past week.

(you’d like to ask him the same thing. he’s an idiot if he thinks a little makeup is enough to hide those dark circles from you.)

suguru is nothing if not patient. so he waits, unbothered by the silence. admiring the stars, and the flicker of their light. a vague worry simmers in his chest, however, and he can’t stop himself from glancing down at you every now and then.

an insatiable yearning to soothe you gnaws at his heart — but he can’t, not unless you let him.

a sigh drops from your lips, suddenly. deep and heavy, like a rock thrown into the depths of a lake. the silence breaks.

”hey, suguru.”

the man in question doesn’t speak, only emitting an inquisitive hum. he doesn’t look at you, either; a form of respect. knowing you’ll find it easier to get whatever’s bugging you off your chest without him scrutinizing you.

the pads of your fingers tap at the tiles of the roof. an absentminded habit, as you inhale a bit of the midnight air. it tastes like summer. ”do you remember how we first met?”

suguru glances at you, a surprised glint in his eyes. he can’t help himself — unable to resist the temptation of seeing your face, drinking in your expression.

then he chuckles.

”haha.. are you feeling sentimental?” he teases, a lighthearted sense of amusement in his voice. bubbling up like seafoam. ”did you come out here just to brood?”

the corners of his lips quirk up when he hears you huff, hugging your legs closer to your chest with a furrow of your brow. cheek squished against your kneecap as you meet his gaze.

”c’mon,” you whine, pouting childishly in a way you know will make him give in. ”just indulge me a little…”

suguru smiles. it’s soft around the edges, smoothed over with an unmistakable fondness — and he does indulge you. he always does. ”of course i do,” he assures you.

the silence that settles between your words is tender. a mutual understanding, of sorts.

of course i remember. how could i not?

”you broke into my backyard.”

a sigh. heavy and sharp, as it tumbles from your lips, and suguru has to bite back a grin. his eyes shine with something teasing, in the dark, when you shoot a glare his way.

”okay, first of all —” you begin, ”i didn’t break into anything. i climbed over the fence. peacefully.”

suguru raises a brow. ”that literally doesn’t matter? it’s still trespassing.”

”i was seven years old!”

”some criminals start young.”

another harmless little huff, as you halfheartedly try to sound annoyed. it doesn’t work. in an attempt to hide your growing smile, you tuck your face into your knees. ”whatever.”

then your gaze shifts. towards that expanding starry sky, the vibrant flicker of the moon, like a moth to a flame. helpless to its charms. it looks like a giant sponge cake, the kind you and suguru used to make when that was the only recipe you knew — you’d eat from the batter, and he’d scold you. then he’d do it too, when your back was turned.

a smile settles on your lips. in every star, you find a new memory; and the fuzzy nostalgia that engulfs you makes your heart feel bare. ”i just wanted to pet your cat,” you recall, softly.

suguru nods. gazing down at you, basking in the expression on your face — peaceful and relaxed, a little more yourself. so effortlessly pretty, bathed in moonlight. ”yeah. i remember.”

he allows the memory to sweep him away, for a second or two. recalling the sight of you, all those years ago, an unfamiliar child in his backyard. it was like you had just fallen out of the sky. quiet and meek, but looking at his cat with an excited glimmer in your eyes.

”you just pointed to her and expected me to understand,” he continues. a grin blooms on his face, hopelessly endeared. ”you were shy back then.”

a raise of your eyebrow. ”um? i’m still shy?”

suguru gives you a look. he doesn’t have to say anything — it’s written all over his face. the classic suguru look, the kind where you can tell he’s itching to say oh, really now? the kind where he tries to look judgemental, but never quite manages to hide the amusement in his eyes.

a small giggle leaves your lips, and suguru smiles, once more. so helpless in the face of your joy.

”then we watched movies at my place.”

you hum. ”it was fun.”

”yeah.”

another bout of silence. soft, terribly precious. the air is chilly, but not enough to make you shiver; a mild summer night, pleasant on your skin and light on your heart. a gentle breeze tousles your hair. in the distance, you hear cicadas buzzing — a familiar sound. unchanging.

(if only everything else could stay the same, too.)

”do you remember what movie it was?”

a lazy smile plays at suguru’s lips, when he angles his face to look at you. one eyebrow raised. ”is there a point to this, or —?”

”i just wanna reminisce.”

suguru pauses. your eyes trail across the view that stretches out before you, from the moon to the distant city lights, as you fidget absentmindedly with the strings of your hoodie. he thinks to himself that you look a little lost. gaze forgotten, within the depths of that endless night sky.

no more teasing, he decides, tactfully. instead, he opts to answer your question; softly, as if he could hurt you if he raised even a single octave of his voice. ”whisper of the heart,” is all he says.

a hum, as you nod. decisively. ”the best one.”

suguru turns his head away, and mutters something under his breath. but you can still hear him — and you know he wants you to.

”spirited away is the best one…”

out of the corner of your eye, you shoot him a thoroughly unimpressed look. he bites back a soft bout of laughter, teeth sinking into his lip gently, not enough to sting.

”you’re so basic,” you grin.

”you just want to feel quirky,” suguru shoots back, instantaneous. ”and you only like it because of seiji.”

”you only like spirited away because of haku!”

suguru closes his eyes, and leans back a little, crossing his arms in a childish fashion — and you know he only does it to make you laugh. ”i don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies.

”oh please,” you scoff. ”you really think i don’t remember your queer awakening?”

”hm? what was that?” feigning confusion, he puts a hand to his ear. but there’s a mirth in his eyes, impossible to miss. ”you’re gonna have to come closer, i can’t hear you from here.”

another unimpressed look. you exhale, something in between a huff and a chuckle. ”if i get any closer i’ll be in your lap, dumbass.”

suguru bites his cheek, softly. gulping down the words that almost slip off his tongue.

(i wouldn’t mind.)

”sorry, say that again?”

a little push meets his shoulder, as you roll your eyes. ”yeah, yeah. whatever.”

the banter dies down, as fast as it appeared. then a smile breaks out across your faces, in tandem, the atmosphere shifting into something more sincere — and doesn’t it always, when you’re watching the starry sky with the one you love most?

when suguru continues, his voice has taken on that softer tone, again. the one he only ever really uses around you. ”i liked thinking of us as them,” he admits. ”me as haku, and you as chihiro.”

a soft blink. then your smile grows, sweet like syrup. ”.. hehe. that’s funny,” you cross your legs. palms flat against the roof, knee leaning comfortably against suguru’s. ”i always thought of us as seiji and shizuku.”

there’s something faraway, in your eyes. something suguru can’t look away from.

tentatively, his fingers dig into the skin of his palms, and he speaks. absentminded, a little uncertain.

”… they get married at the end, don’t they?”

a pause. then your gaze snaps over to suguru’s, suddenly mischievous — and he regrets opening his mouth.

”oh?” you purr, almost beaming. inching closer, like a predator sizing up their prey. ”oh shit? are you about to propose, mister geto?”

”i’m just stating facts,” he quips, hands raised in defense. desperately hoping you won’t notice the red tint crawling up his neck, obscured by the darkness of the night.

”incorrect facts,” you grin. if you notice the blush on his face, you don’t say anything. ”they get engaged. not married. big difference.”

suguru huffs. it’s small, as he tries to keep himself from smiling. the beating of his heart is faint, a tender rhythm, stirred by every move you make. he pushes the words he yearns to say back down his throat.

(i wouldn’t mind that, either.)

again, silence blooms. curling around the space between you. it feels nice, just to be like this; just you, and your very best friend, under the soft lighting of the moon. as if you’re the only ones who exist, in an otherwise empty universe — devoid of space and time. like the night could just stop, and stretch on forever.

there’s an unspoken question in the air, though. one suguru is still waiting for you to answer. one you refuse to answer properly, until he does the same.

you’ve both noticed, of course. even if no one else has, neither of you could ever miss it. suguru has noticed the turmoil in your eyes, and you’ve noticed the fatigue under his. those little signs of stress, as everything around you keeps spinning on; as the future grows closer, with every passing day.

(it’s overwhelming, you both muse.)

— and finally, you’ve had enough.

”suguru,” you call out, and his gaze finds yours instantly. ”have they been stressing you out, lately?”

suguru blinks, eyelashes fluttering softly. a little sleepy. they.

then he smiles. maybe a bit weak, but still as sincere as always — resigned to the fact that he really can’t hide anything from you, after all.

(of course you’d notice it. he was stupid to think you wouldn’t.)

a hum, as he breathes in the air and then exhales it all. trying to formulate the words inside his head, turn the feelings into syllables. and you’re patient. silent, as you admire the way moonlight caresses his skin.

”i’ll manage.” is what he finally says, and your lips curl down into a frown. ”they’ve just been getting on my case, again. you know how they are.”

suguru closes his eyes, and you inch closer to him. barely, by a hair, just to let him know you’re still listening. that you’re waiting for him to continue.

it’s tough, for him. opening up, being vulnerable.

but he knows you won’t do it unless he does, too. so he takes that leap, despite the insistent voice in his head urging him to just keep it to himself.

”it’s just… all these expectations, you know?” he meets your eyes, a little sheepish. downplaying his troubles so smoothly, as if you wouldn’t notice. ”i’m used to it by now, but sometimes i guess it still gets to me.”

you hum, and he continues.

”i feel like i have to be… solid,” he decides on. ”put-together. responsible, and mature.” a sigh, as he wrings his hands together. ”and that’s fine — but it’s like they have everything planned out. like everyone does. how i should act, where i should go…”

suguru gnaws at the flesh of his bottom lip, so focused on verbalizing his thoughts that he barely notices your fingers curling around his. but he still squeezes them, lightly. as naturally as breathing.

”it’s like my future’s already set in stone. and i’m just expected to follow it,” he looks up at the moon. ”which is also fine. i already know what i want to do. but somehow, all of it just feels so…”

he pauses. unsure of how to put it.

”… suffocating?” you finish for him.

there’s a second in which suguru can do nothing but breathe. as if frozen, stuck in motion, caught off guard by how deeply your minds are intertwined.

— what a wonderful thing, to have someone pluck the words you’re afraid to say from the back of your throat.

a smile blooms on his face, and a gratitude shines in his eyes. almost overflowing.

(you’ve always been the only one who ever seems to understand.)

”yeah,” he sighs, relieved. and suddenly his chest feels a lot lighter. odd, how just the tilt of your voice when you say a certain word can chase that discomforting sensation away.

”don’t listen to them,” you say, assuredly, so softly it’s like you’re coaxing him into believing you. it works. ”they don’t matter.”

suguru chuckles, rueful. ”they’re my parents.”

”so? they aren’t you.” you nudge his side with your elbow. ”they have no say in how you live your life. you don’t need to live up to all those expectations, you know.”

a soft little breath leaves your lips, and suguru wonders how you seem to always soothe his heart so easily. ”you just need to be suguru,” you mumble, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. ”that’s all.”

a moment passes. suguru parts his lips, closing them again when no sound comes out. and then finally, he speaks.

”… yeah,” he muses. ”maybe.”

”definitely,” you huff. ”trust your best friend. i know best.”

”careful,” he teases, tilting his head lazily to meet your gaze. ”you’re starting to sound like them.” the smile on his face only grows when you gape at him, wholly offended, as if you can’t believe what he just said.

”wha — suguru…” you whine, sleepy, clinging to the sleeve of his shirt. digging your nails into the fabric and tugging on it childishly. ”don’t say that. i’m nothing like them!”

a giggle pushes past his lips. ”sorry, sorry,” he soothes, ruffling your hair with his palm. rough hands, big and warm, that always seem to find their way to your skin. ”i’m just kidding. thank you. really.”

the smile that he gives you glows brighter than the moon. he squeezes your hand, softly — a silent i love you. eyes closed, formed into little crescents, and when he speaks he sounds so painfully sincere.

”i think i’ll be fine as long as i have you,” he says. it comes out sounding something like a prayer.

the words make your eyes soften. melting into a mellow hue, so full of affection that you can almost taste it on your tongue.

”everything will turn out fine,” you murmur, consoling him. still not letting go of his hand. ”you have your whole life ahead of you, you know.”

he chuckles. the sound would be sweet if it didn’t have that teasing tilt to it, the one that tells you his amusement is at your expense. ”now you’re starting to sound like my grandma,” he quips, as if itching for something to bicker about.

but you only pout, and let your fingers slip from his. the warmth that leaves you is so jarring that you’re almost tempted to take his hand into yours again — but you just frown at him. ”i can never win with you, huh?”

suguru shrugs. ”need to keep you humble,” he chirps, pulling at your cheek gently. a lazy grin on his lips. ”we don’t want that ego of yours to grow as big as satoru’s.”

trying to keep yourself from grinning with him, you slap his hand away, playfully. ”that would never happen.”

”uh-huh.”

you give him a look.

”my bad.”

a moment passes. gradually, you feel your heart beginning to melt — just a little, but enough to get your voice hopelessly soft on your tongue. the glimmer of the moon embraces every cell in your body, painting over your features with a certain kind of bleeding tenderness. it’s hard to stop it from seeping out.

”you know that i love you. right?” tumbles from your lips, breathed out into the sky, words too heavy to be held back. ”even if your parents give you trouble, and everyone else, too — i’m still on your side.”

”always,” you promise, devotedly earnest. meeting his gaze. and suguru can’t look away.

something flickers, in the depths of his eyes, like a shooting star. something delightful.

he doesn’t quite know what to say. but he nods; almost meek, in a way, and it makes your chest ache. suguru’s always been the type to keep his troubles to himself, content with never letting anyone see into his heart — even if he’d like them to deep down.

if you can be there for him, even just for a night, then that’s more than enough.

he lets the silence linger for a while longer, soft breathing and the rustling of grass filling the space where your words would be. then he looks at you with newfound determination, suddenly, eyes shining in a way you don’t recognize.

”— and you know that i love you, too.”

a moment passes.

an affirmative hum buzzes in your throat, and you give him the ghost of a nod, shying away from his deep gaze. hoping to escape the intimacy of the question. but he doesn’t let you, stare so heavy that you have no choice but to meet his eyes again, after he nudges your hand with his.

the words that fall from his lips surprise you. something akin to a pout plays on his lips, but it’s more serious than that — he looks dejected.

”… do you, though?” he pushes, a troubled frown on his lips. ”do you know that i love you? just as much as you love me?”

at your stunned silence, suguru sighs, bringing a hand up to smooth over the crease between his brows. ”sometimes i worry that you don’t,” he admits. ”you always think too much. but i don’t want you to ever have to worry about that.”

his voice is firm, when he continues. ”i don’t want you to ever second-guess my love for you,” he declares, and you cower a little under the intensity of his gaze. playing with your fingers instead of looking at him. ”— so i want your answer.”

when his hand finds its way to your face, you stiffen, just barely. but it’s soft, the way he cups your jaw; the warmth of his palm smoothing over your skin. gentle, as he forces you to meet his eyes, tilting your chin up slightly. a bold move, even though physical contact is no stranger in your dynamic. you feel your heart pick up in speed.

”do you know that i love you?” he asks, and it sounds almost pleading. you can only find it in you to stare.

suguru’s eyes are filled with something, something you’d like to call love. and they’re looking deep into yours, almost as if coaxing you into drowning in their hue. mesmerizing. ridiculously pretty. if you stare into them for too long, you fear that you might never be able to look away.

but they’re sweet, and warm. painted over with worried hue, something very kind. familiar. the same eyes that have soothed you for as long as you can remember.

in your flustered state, you can do nothing but blink dumbly — gaze darting from his eyes, to his forehead, to the sky, to his lips.

he can tell the eye contact makes you nervous, but some part of him won’t allow you to squirm away. this is important. he needs to know that you know. he doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep at night, otherwise.

finally, you squeak out an affirmative yes. and that’s all it takes for him to relax; in one smooth motion, his hand leaves your skin, a relief having bloomed in his eyes.

”okay. that’s good,” he exhales.

swallowing down a gulp, your gaze drifts away from the boy to your left. suguru is terrifying, really — doing stuff like that out of nowhere. you check your pulsepoint, discreetly, just to make sure your heart is still beating.

”alright, then,” he suddenly proclaims, breaking the fleeting silence. ”your turn.”

a blink. your eyelashes flutter in confusion, as you gaze up at him, a question painted on your features. suguru glances at you out of the corner of his eye.

”you’ve been stressed, lately,” he remarks. stating the obvious so you don’t have to. with a soft gaze, eyes that shimmer with understanding. ”i can tell, you know?”

(yeah. he always can, can’t he?)

”… uh,” you croak. clearing your throat and attempting to gather your thoughts, hoping the words will find their way to your lips. ”well. i dunno, really...”

suguru emits a low, affirmative noise, not looking at you. opening up like this makes you feel so uncomfortable. but it’s suguru. you trust him. and you know he won’t let you get away from this, either; he’ll stay up all night if he has to. just waiting for you to put your faith in him.

a sigh leaves your lips, finally, and it comes out sounding just a tad exhausted. ”i… guess i’ve just been thinking, lately.”

and, really, it’s an understatement. thinking is all you’ve been doing, for these past few weeks. thinking of this, and of that. the past and the future. him and you.

suguru hums. an unspoken encouragement.

”everything is just so…” you move your hands, haphazardly, hoping they’ll make the words easier to say. but nothing comes to you. everything is all jumbled up, inside your mind, and it’s just —

”overwhelming,” you finish. the word falls off your tongue like a tidal wave. ”everything passes by so quickly, and…” you bite your lip. ”i feel like i can’t catch up. i can’t visualize the future at all, and that’s…”

(it’s scary.)

”— it just makes me feel confused.”

suguru waits. patient, attentive, making sure you get all the words out before he speaks. as grounding as the moon, as warm as the sun.

when you don’t elaborate further, avoiding his gaze, he opts to finally soothe you.

”that’s understandable,” he chimes, voice buzzing with care. ”you don’t have to think about the future right now. living in the present is enough,” a breeze drifts by, tousling his black hair. ”.. it’s for the best, really.”

a smile. it’s a little sad, as you wring your hands together. ”i know,” is all you can say. because you do. it just doesn’t change anything.

the sensation of your nails scraping against the tiles of the roof is discomforting, but you don’t stop. when you part your lips, your voice comes out tiny. barely above a whisper.

”i’m so afraid of change.”

suguru looks at you. his gaze softens, impeccably.

”everything keeps changing. all the time,” you bite into the flesh of your cheek, harshly. ”i hate it.”

”that’s understandable, too,” suguru soothes. tentative, as his hand goes to rest on your head, smoothing down your hair gently. ”change is unavoidable. but you get better at dealing with it.”

”mm, i know.”

”and some things stay the same, too.”

you glance up at him, and his eyes crinkle. there’s something unspeakable in them, something that’s always been there. light and heavy, all at once. something a little bit too wonderful for words.

suguru smiles. almost a little shy, as he looks into your eyes. ”like you and me.”

…

a deep love unfurls in your chest, warming you up from the inside out. fuzzy and tingly. but with it comes a deep sadness, bittersweet, that you can’t chase away no matter how hard you try; like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, no matter how many times you try to scrape it off against the concrete.

like you and me.

(he doesn’t know that’s what scares you the most. the thought of that one thing changing, while you just stand there, helpless to stop it.)

”yeah,” you breathe. a wounded little breath.

suguru notices it, despite your vague attempts to act like nothing’s wrong. he notices the fear in your voice, the uncertainty. and once again, he gets the impression that you look a little lost. like you aren’t sure where to plant your feet.

it bothers him. an itch he wants to scratch away. but before he can get to the bottom of it, you begin to speak, once more.

”with you, it’s like…” a breath flows from your lips, as you try to find the words. but this time, they come to you with relative ease. ”if i could do my life over again, and make everything turn out different… then i’d still always keep you.”

silence. you continue, suddenly a little embarrassed at the honesty in your tone. but it’s too late to back out now.

”and even if everything else changes, if i could pick just one single thing to keep — then it’d be you, too.” the smile on your face is small, a little sheepish. “that’s how it is, so…”

you trail off. not sure what else to say. suguru isn’t, either; he feels just a little bit stunned, in the face of your sincerity. yet he parts his lips, softly, words making themselves manifest before his mind can even begin to catch up.

”i don’t think i’ve ever told you this,” he begins, not entirely sure where the words will take him. blinking up at the sky, entranced, whilst you look at him quizzically. ”you always call me your guardian angel, right?”

the question makes your lips curl up. it’s a habit of yours, one that’s become almost muscle memory. you don’t remember how it started, but it’s in everything suguru does; from the way he can always tell when you’re feeling overwhelmed, to the way he never fails to bring you a coffee right before your exam starts.

suguru is always looking out for you, even when you’re apart. like a guardian angel. yours.

you nod. ”because you are.”

suguru smiles, breathing out a fond chuckle, and then shakes his head. ”it’s the opposite.”

you turn to the man beside you, and he’s already looking at you. with his pretty, soothing brown eyes, and the barely visible dark circles beneath them. his gaze is warm and fond, grateful in a way that makes your chest squeeze tight. you melt a little, under its weight.

”you’re my guardian angel,” he says, sickeningly sweet. ”always have been. even back then.”

inhaling the mild air, suguru lets his eyes flutter shut. the taste reminds him of the summer vacations you used to have as kids, when you would ride your bikes to the nearest river and play all day. stopping by any ice cream stand you found on the way there; you always took a bite out of his without asking, and he always tried to get angry at you. but he never could.

on your way back home, the sky was always dark. a soothing blue hue, stars glittering in the distance, while the moon looked close enough to touch. a night just like this one. you’d walk, together, talking about everything and nothing — sometimes he’d carry you on his back. not once did he drop you.

a breath, deep and drawn out as he exhales, basking in memories you aren’t privy to. a saccharine smile painted on his lips.

”without you…” he muses, voice a little breathless. fond, and somewhat helpless. but he’s smiling. ”i don’t really know what i’d do, to be honest.”

a moment passes.

”it’s the same for me,” you echo, words escaping your throat before you even get the chance to realize their weight. gaze stuck to the stars, as always. ”i can’t imagine life without you.”

suguru doesn’t speak, afraid that his heart may crawl out his throat if he does. the honeyed smile on his face says more than words ever could, anyway.

a small bout of laughter leaves your lips. sudden, sad, dripping with longing. it surprises you, catches you off guard — like something within you just overflowed.

“you know what my biggest fantasy was?” you grin, ruefully. maybe just a little manic. ”i used to think about it all the time, when we were kids.”

suguru looks at you in silence, but there’s a confusion in the way he tilts his head.

there seems to be a knot of some kind, stuck in the very bottom of your chest. something that makes it hard to speak. ”i’d get on a train, and just kinda… leave,” you breathe, hoping it’ll unclog your throat. it doesn’t. ”you know? to somewhere far, far away.”

and suddenly, the world grows just a little blurred. suguru can see it, in your eyes — you’re someplace else now. gaze trained on something he can’t see. there’s an amused touch to your voice, but also something rather pitiful. a childish wish that never came to fruition.

there’s regret, there, suguru thinks; something close to pain.

”maybe, like… a small port town,” you continue, closing your eyes. “with a cute little café close by, or whatever… somewhere you can see the sea.”

another breath. you pretend it tastes like salt, like an ocean breeze. then you swallow the lump in your throat, and whisper. ”with you.”

when you finally muster up the courage to meet suguru’s eyes, they shine with nothing but pure understanding. he doesn’t say anything, but he understands. he’s always been like that. not a single word is needed for him to ground you, the way a rock always meets the bottom when it’s thrown into the depths of a lake.

suguru’s comfort is as natural to you as the gravity that keeps the stars up in the sky.

the voice you’ve grown so used to hearing reaches your ears again, and it’s a low sound, a little raspy. but soft. achingly so, enough that you could almost miss it if you weren’t always so aware of every word that falls from his lips.

suguru looks up at the moon, in tandem with you, and lets the ghost of a smile show. ”… you know what my biggest fantasy was?”

his gaze is sincere, a little forlorn; hopelessly softened, as you meet his eyes. they’re painted over with something sweet, and something that looks just a little bit like regret.

a tilt of your head beckons him to continue, and the corners of his lips curl up further.

”running away with you,” he breathes. ”anywhere at all. wherever you wanted to go, i’d follow.”

for a moment or two, all you can do is stare.

you feel your lips part, but no sound comes out, nothing at all. suguru’s hair sways with the breeze, softly, and the light of the moon makes him look somewhat ethereal. like he could disappear if you blinked.

the silence that blooms in the space between your words is fragile. precious, if a little overwhelming, as it stretches out before you — growing heavier with every passing second. so tender that it makes you feel sick to your stomach, as if the sound of the wind whistling could shatter it into pieces.

(your heart aches, aches, aches.)

a weak laugh bubbles up from within your throat, something raw and tender hidden behind a veil of faux amusement. something vulnerable you're trying to cover up, like the glassiness of your eyes.

like a memory that never got to happen.

”what, so you’re saying we could’ve been by the seaside by now…?” you groan, forehead slumping against your knees with a bonk. ”what the hell, dude…”

suguru lets out a chuckle, resting his jaw on the heel of his palm and looking down at you with a smile on his face. one that reaches his eyes, glimmering with something akin to starlight.

”we can still go there,” he consoles you, reaching over to tousle your hair with a palpable softness. ”to the seaside, i mean. i’ll take you.”

for a while, you don’t say anything. a pout plays at your lips, as you attempt to get your emotions under control.

then you lean back, to lie down flat on the roof. the movement is so sudden that it stings a little when the back of your head meets the tiles, and you wince — a soft but exasperated murmur of careful comes from the boy on your left.

your elbows go to cushion your head, as you take in the immenseness of the sky. ”alright, then,” you hum. ”take me there sometime soon.”

suguru blinks. then his lips curl up. ”got it,” he chirps. mentally mapping out a nice spot, trying to remember the timetables at your local train station.

(next week, maybe. a picnic by the sea. he’ll make those sandwiches that you like.)

then he follows your lead, and goes to lie down on his back. right by your side, so close he can smell the fading scent of your shampoo, curled up right next to you. breathing out a sigh as he takes in the night sky in all its glory.

there’s something tender, in the air. something that doesn’t need words. a kind of comfortable silence that you’ve learned to treasure, whenever suguru is with you.

so you simply stare at the dark veil over the city, in tandem with him — a pitch-black blanket sewn with stardust.

everything expands, before your very eyes; an infinite cosmos, with all the light you could ever want. the stars blink down at you, as if saying hello, mapping out the galaxy. you try to find the constellations you’re familiar with, the ones suguru have taught you about in the past, but nothing really comes to you.

it’s nice, though. just staring at the stars in wonder.

an exhale, as you breathe in, and then out. you part your lips to whisper, breaking the sleepy silence.

”the stars are so pretty….”

suguru hums, the sound buzzing right by your ear. a soothing summer lullaby, that only you get to hear. ”yeah,” he whispers back.

a moment passes.

then you both part your lips to speak; smoothly, in a fashion that would be embarrassing if you didn’t feel so terribly safe in each other’s company. simultaneous, as the sentence tumbles from your throats.

”and so are you.”

silence. the seconds stretch on, and on. everything goes quiet.

you’re the first one to burst into laughter — deep, the kind that comes from the very bottom of your stomach. almost wheezing, as you try to catch your breath, arms snug around your shaking body. suguru follows close behind, trying to contain his laughter, but you can hear his little chuckles clear as day.

”eww, what the fuck?” you grin, shifting to lie on your side so you can get a good look at his face. ”you’re so corny!”

suguru snorts. ”i heard you say it too, dumbass.”

a little giggle flows from your lips, and you slump against his shoulder, still trying to control your breathing. suguru curls an arms around your midriff, bringing you closer. muscle memory, to make it more comfortable for you.

”haah…..”

the smile on your face shines brighter than the stars, suguru thinks, looking at you with a bleeding kind of fondness. as if you’re the only thing worth looking at.

”i hope things stay like this forever.”

the light of the moon shines down on the roof, bouncing off the white of your teeth. your canines shine in the dark as you grin, youthful — but there’s a sadness in your eyes, now. one that suguru will never fail to notice.

(one he’ll always yearn to smooth away, the same way his thumb always goes to wipe at any stray eyelashes on your skin, or crumbs at the corner of your mouth. muscle memory.)

”they will,” he assures you, reaching over to find your hand. enveloping it in his bigger one, cradling it, linking your fingers together and squeezing them softly. ”i’ll make sure that they do.”

a chuckle leaves your lips, but suguru thinks it sounds a little meek. like you still don’t believe him.

”i mean it,” he reiterates. more serious this time.

”i know,” you grin. ”but, i mean —”

a moment passes, and then your grin falters. ”you can’t promise that, though.” the expression on your face seems sort of pained, now, troubled by something. ”maybe we’ll move away from each other, or just drift apart, or —”

”that would never happen to us —”

”maybe you’ll meet someone.”

…

”a nice guy, or girl…” a sigh, as you run a hand through your hair. ”and then you’ll… i dunno. get married, i guess. and then eventually you’ll have kids, and buy a house, and —”

a pause. in a smaller voice, you continue. almost childlike. ”you’ll leave me behind.”

suguru bites back a scoff. it takes concentrated effort. he turns to look at you, but you won’t meet his gaze, and a frown finds its way to his lips. ”… do you honestly think that’s what i want?”

another moment passes you by. more seconds lost, never to return. ”… isn’t it?”

suguru sighs, a little exasperated. maybe just a little hurt, too. ”marriage and kids aside…” he mutters, burning holes into your skin with his steadfast gaze. determined, self-assured. the tilt of his voice leaves no room for doubt. ”there’s only one person i love.”

resisting the temptation to keep your eyes away from him becomes nearly impossible — so you let your gaze trail over, and take him in. in all his glory, silky black hair framing his face, a soft look painted over his features. looking at you as if you matter, as if nothing matters except for you.

and again, something breaks out across the scope of his iris, a shooting star you don’t know what to do with. he looks so hopelessly sincere.

for a second, all you can do is stare.

then you nod, solemnly. ”satoru, right?” you hum. ”you’re gonna break my heart if you keep bringing him up when we’re together, sugu.”

you don’t need to see his face to know that he’s giving you that unimpressed look, again. the suguru look. he rolls his eyes, and you bite your cheek to stop yourself from smiling.

”i love him too, but that’s different,” he huffs.

”how so?” you prod, eyes crinkling. but there’s something a little meek about the question. he notices it, of course, because what doesn’t suguru notice?

something soft curls around his features, and a hum buzzes in his throat. a heavy tenderness bleeds into his voice. ”i wouldn’t die for satoru,” he says, simply.

a moment passes.

”… you totally would.”

”huh?” suguru blinks. ”no, of course not. are you insane?”

”suguru,” you sigh. ”you are literally the most self-sacrificial bitch i’ve ever met —”

”well, obviously i’d take a bullet or two, but —”

”what do you mean obviously —”

”— you’re the only person i’d die for.”

suguru is smiling, now. amused, sincere. almost on the verge of laughter, the sweet and soft kind that always turns your heart into a puddle. his eyes almost seem to glimmer, in the night, and it’s all you can see for a while. as you try to gather your thoughts, get the right words out.

”… always so dramatic,” you murmur, at last, a little gruff. his smile grows. you shift a little more, lying on your side to face him with a serious expression. ”don’t tell satoru that, okay? he already has it out for me. at this rate he’ll kill me and steal you away.”

a chuckle rumbles through his chest, deep and fond. you continue, a frown tugging at your lips. ”… and i wouldn’t want you to die for me, anyway.”

suguru lets a giggle slip, a bit too sleepy to hold it back. ”mm, i know. but if it ever came down to it, then i still would.” he shifts, too, lying on his side to face you properly.

”to me,” he exhales, and he’s so close you can smell the mint off his breath — ”as long as you’re by my side, i can make it through absolutely anything.”

the smile on his face is boyish. all teeth and crow’s feet, blooming in the light of the moon, a flower just for you. it’s perfect, you think. you don’t want a single day to pass without you seeing it.

”me too,” you mumble, linking your pinkies together. a silent promise. ”so don’t die. ever.”

suguru’s eyes soften.

then he hums, absentmindedly. ”… well. i mean,” he clicks his tongue. ”eventually i will. that’s not really something i have a say in.”

a roll of your eyes. ”alright, smartass,” you scoff, and suguru’s eyes crinkle with humour. ”just don’t die before i do, then.”

a hand comes to touch your skin. and it’s sudden, warm, but you don’t flinch away. suguru smooths over your cheek with the back of his hand, seemingly unable to stop himself. soothing, as he exhales a soft breath.

”… i think i’d prefer that to the alternative, honestly,” he admits.

you furrow your brows, softly. a part of you wants to protest, to call him a selfish prick — for even thinking the thought of leaving you behind without a best friend.

but something in you knows he won’t budge, on this one.

(it’s childish, in a way. stubborn, for him to take a joking conversation so seriously. but suguru doesn’t think he could even jokingly suggest that he’d survive without you.)

”seriously, though,” his voice takes on a firmer tone. ”i wouldn’t leave you behind like that. it’s us we’re talking about. you and me.”

he says the words like they’re undeniable — because they are. there is no him without you. that’s always been the case, hasn’t it?

suguru stops to think. do you not feel the same? there’s still a crease between your brows, a sign of worry that’s impossible to dismiss. he can’t help but wonder just how long you’ve been thinking about this; how many nights have you spent sleepless, thinking of the future? of the possibility that it entails your parting?

(the thought makes him feel a little bit nauseous.)

”are you afraid that we’ll grow apart?” he asks, into the haze of the summer night. it resounds in the air around you, softly spoken, gentle but coaxing. almost pleading you to open up to him.

and it’s a stupid question, really.

of course you are. it’s the only thought that really scares you.

time moves so, so fast — always leaving you behind. who’s to say that suguru won’t do the same? that he won’t be taken away from you, swept away by that flow? into the future, while you stay glued to the past — stuck on the roof of your childhood, while he moves on to better things?

the night sky is infinite. sometimes, on nights that are a little too long, when your mind has grown a little too muddled, you think of suguru as a star in that sky. blinking down at you, while you can do nothing but watch. hopelessly out of reach.

gaze trailing down to rest on suguru’s collarbone, you swallow the lump in your throat. a little too vulnerable to feel comfortable with looking into his eyes, afraid of what you’ll see in them.

but he’s patient. waiting, always waiting, for you to catch up. for as long as it takes.

”… of course i am,” you mutter, at last. a weak little thing. farther down the street, a car swooshes by, drowning the sound — but suguru still hears it clear as day. ”i mean, it’s just…”

a meek intake of breath. you blink, desperate to chase away the glassiness forming in your eyes. trying to grasp control over your wavering voice. ”even if you say that we won’t… it’s not like there’s any guarantee. you can’t know for sure.”

suguru wants to stop you, right there. wants to ensure you that he does know, that it’s the only thing he’ll ever know for sure. just that one fact; you and him. never one without the other.

wherever you’d go, he’d follow — that’s how it’s always been. that’s all he’ll ever need.

but he knows you. knows you better than he knows himself. and he knows that he needs to let you speak freely, without interruption, until you’ve gotten every last worry off your chest.

so he settles for simply looking at you, curled up and biting his lip to stop himself from speaking. wishing he could smooth away the moisture in your eyes, already — but the tears need to fall first. he knows it’ll make you feel better.

”i love you,” you whisper, and suguru’s heart claws its way up his throat. ”i love you, and i want to be with you forever — but…” a shaky inhale. ”but i can’t get rid of that fear. the idea of losing you… i just can’t deal with it.”

”don’t you think i feel exactly the same?” he cuts in, softly.

a beat. you glance up at his face, for a split second, and then back down to his collarbone. a little fragile, curling into yourself as if hiding. ”i don’t know,” you sigh.

(suguru’s heart breaks.)

”i know that you love me too, and all. and i trust you. but…” you trail off, swallowing thickly. ”you already have your future planned out, and everything. maybe i just… don’t have a place in it.”

suguru scoffs, unable to bite back the sound any longer. it’s soft, but frustrated. ”there’ll always be a place for you in my future,” he vows. ”i wouldn’t accept anything less.”

you cower a little, under the warmth of his gaze. sweet, but stern. so distinctly suguru that it makes you falter.

”besides,” he clicks his tongue. ”i don’t need to follow the future that’s been planned out for me. i just need to be suguru.” a warm smile. ”right?”

at the sound of your own words, a light flush blooms on your skin. but for once, suguru isn’t teasing you.

”and you just need to be you,” he continues, arm still wrapped around your midriff. trailing up slowly, so that his hand can smooth over the back of your head. ”that’s all.”

”as long as both of us do that — we’ll always be together.” he looks into your eyes, and you think you spot a constellation inside his iris. ”won’t we?”

another moment of silence, the familiar comfort that settles between you. there’s no pressure to continue — but you do so, anyway. muddled mind still spinning, worried about this and that, despite suguru’s soothing words.

a part of you can’t put your faith in that kind of future. one where the two of you are together, that you could envision so clearly when you were younger — when him and you was all that you knew for certain. it’s not as simple as it was back then.

(but another part of you desperately yearns for him to prove you wrong.)

”… but,” you mumble, shaky. ”what if it’s not that easy?” a chuckle pushes past your lips, humourless. ”i mean, you can’t possibly… always stay by my side, you know?”

there’s something childish, in the way you say it. like you’re still kids, and you’re whining for him not to leave you behind. selfish, in a way.

what right do you have to chain him to you?

suguru emits a hum. his eyelids flutter shut, for a few seconds — and then he opens them again.

”… alright,” he drawls. ”let’s make a promise, then.”

confused, you glance up at him. he just smiles — responsible, dependable. your very best friend.

”have i ever broken a promise i made to you?” he asks, and you pause.

”… no,” you answer, hesitant. voice still a tad meek, a little helpless.

(and it’s true. not once has he broken one. when suguru makes a promise, he keeps it. you’ve always, always admired that about him.)

”right?” he grins, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. admiring your moon-lit features. ”so let’s do it.”

a frown tugs at your lips. furrowing your brows at him, your voice flows out, uncertain. ”promise… what, exactly?”

the moon glows, big and bright. hanging in the sky, a beacon of light, the same as it’s always been. suguru thinks you look radiant, under its illumination — even though you’re nervous, and a little teary eyed. just a single glance at your expression is enough to make his heartbeat soften.

you look like what home feels like.

he could never bear to let that go, to let you go. his very best friend; the one thing in his past he has no qualms about. the one thing in his future worth hanging onto, cherishing fully. no matter what.

suguru parts his lips, smiling. he links your hands together. ”keep being you,” he implores, steadfast. ”and stay by my side.”

a moment passes.

something crumbles, inside your chest. unable to break away from his gaze, all you can do is fall deeper into the hue of his eyes, crinkling softly — in the same way they always have. he squeezes your palm in his, tightly. a silent promise not to let you go.

— and then you realize something. the same realization that always comes to you, at the end of the day.

the man in front of you is just the same as the boy you met, all those years ago. the same boy who saw you climb over his fence, and let you pet his cat, and watched whisper of the heart with you even though he wanted to start with ponyo instead.

the same boy, always the same boy, no matter how much time passes. even though he’s all grown up now, features more defined. voice deeper and huskier. hands larger, with rougher skin.

he’s changed, just like you have — but he’s still just suguru. just that cool, sweet boy. a dorky guy who never, ever lets you fall too far behind.

a tremendous softness seeps through your veins. a kind of love, old and matured, carefully nurtured. the blinks you indulge in are slow, and your eyes shine with tears. it’s overwhelming, seeing him so up close, but you still can’t look away. he’s so beautiful it hurts.

”suguru…” is all you can sniffle, meekly.

your best friend is still smiling, fondly. wrapped up in you, as close as he can be. a familiar warmth, like a big fuzzy blanket draped over your shoulders; smelling of cedarwood and earl gray, and just a hint of coconut-scented shampoo. tailor-made just for you.

suguru never breaks his promises.

”but… you can’t,” you croak out, gasping as if searching for air. ”you don’t know if —”

”i do,” he cuts you off, gently. ”i do know.”

a breathless inhale of air, as you grasp tighter onto his nimble fingers. you feel meek, lost. not sure where to put your hands, or what to believe. ”how?” you ask, terribly fragile.

suguru takes a deep breath. oxygen enters his lungs, exiting as he breathes out. a soft flicker of life. his thumb goes to wipe away the stray tear that trickles down your cheek, his touch delicate. and then comes his response.

”— because i need you the way i need air.”

and, really, it’s a sappy thing to say. a little pretentious. he’d feel embarrassed if it wasn’t for the soft flicker of the moon, the intimacy of the moment. he simply couldn’t bear not to tell you the truth — even if you end up bringing it up tomorrow, just to tease him. he can deal with a little embarrassment, every once in a while. just for you.

fortunately for him, no thoughts of teasing run through your mind. maybe if you were in a better headspace, a little less of a wreck, you could muster the will to make fun of him a little. who do you think you are, shakespeare? i knew i shouldn’t have lent you that copy of romeo and juliet. — something light and amused, just to distract him from the rapid beating of your heart.

but right now…

all you can do is take a deep breath. and you think you understand what he means, when that breath of life courses through your lungs.

”i’ll never leave you behind,” he continues, words so very self-assured that it leaves you reeling. rubbing comforting circles into the skin of your palm, without thinking. muscle memory. ”can you trust me on that?”

connected to his gaze, you stumble for something to say. anything.

but then he smiles, again. that familiar, familiar smile. as soothing as a mother’s caress. and only one single word makes it past your lips.

”… okay.”

you do trust him. more than anyone else in the world. so you take that leap, no matter how frightening it is —

and the world narrows down to just the two of you.

just you, and him, in this one single moment. illuminated by the light of the moon, lying side by side and looking into each other’s eyes, on a roof you always find yourselves at one way or another. laughing and sharing secrets until the sun begins to rise; a silent promise that needs no words.

(the promise of tomorrow. a summer that never quite seems to end.)

suguru cups your cheek. his touch buzzes with warmth, trickling down his wrist and through his veins — and you melt into his palm, eyes fluttering shut instinctively. the sight makes the corners of his lips curl up, hopelessly.

leaning close, he plants a kiss on your cheek. delicate, tender; his lips against your skin, a silent whisper of i love you. fervent, full of devotion. of a love that’s as steady as the sea.

”i’ll always, always be by your side,” suguru repeats, like a mantra. hoping you’ll feel his conviction through the whisper. ”you’ll always have me to fall back on. i promise.”

a little smile breaks out across your lips, meek and teary. as fragile as a sheet of glass, but still persisting in the dead of night. your voice wavers, as you raise your pinkie, right in front of his stupidly pretty face.

”pinkie promise?”

it’s a childish gesture. something to lighten the mood a little, make it all easier to chew. you expect him to roll his eyes, or raise an eyebrow, or tease you a bit. but he doesn’t.

instead, suguru raises his own pinkie, and curls it around yours. then he smiles. sweet and boyish, painted over with a rosy, tender nostalgia.

”— pinkie promise.”

and you believe him.

you believe him, because suguru has a way of making you do so, even when he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about. with that confident tilt of his voice, that makes it sound like he has all the answers in the universe — that flicker of genuine faith, in every word that falls from his lips, that tells you he truly does believe in them.

you believe him, because suguru is the only person in the world who’s never once broken a promise he made to you. not a single time. and some part of you suspects that if he ever did, he really would be okay with you cutting his pinkie off. a little frightening, the depths of his devotion. the pure loyalty that courses through his veins.

so you believe him.

you believe him because he’s suguru. and, just like you can't exist without him, he can't exist without you. never one without the other.

on instinct, you inch a little closer, wrapping your arms around his waist and squeezing him extra tight. face hidden away in the crook of his neck, just like you used to do when you were kids. he’s bigger now, harder to properly embrace — but still so very, very warm.

and he squeezes you back, just as tight. comforting and grounding, and so, so secure. tugging you closer, like he needs to have you near to properly breathe. like he needs to feel that you’re there to relax, melting into the hug with a soft sigh. relieved, that you’re still with him. relieved at the promise that you always will be.

wherever you go, he’ll follow. to the roof of his home, to the seaside, to the ends of the earth. the same way every star in the sky orbits around the center of the galaxy, endlessly, before burning out into the night.

the smell of cedarwood and earl gray floods your senses, filling your lungs as you nuzzle into his neck. he’s warm, and soft, and your very best friend.

you close your eyes. indulging in his body heat, every familiar sensation that’s been etched into your bones for as long as you can remember. and you can tell he’s doing the same — breathing you in, arms resting securely around your back, pressing his cheek against the top of your head.

and maybe it’s true, after all. maybe suguru really does need you, just as much as you need him.

and maybe that’s all you really need to know.

the moon rests in the sky. smiling down at you, unchanging. a living proof that some things really do stay the same.

— you hug suguru tighter, and decide that his presence is proof enough.

#suguru geto my bicoded princess…#he could fix me.#sugu is suchhh a ghibli boy u cant convince me otherwise. his fave movies are spirited away and porco rosso #(and ponyo but hes a lil embarrassed to say it LOL… he was obsessed w sea animals as a kid. <3 now im just making stuff up but im right)#physically incapable of writing for suguru without giving him a silly reader…. unbeatable dynamic #i have other sugu childhood friends fics planned but some r. Angstier than others #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #geto fluff #jjk fluff #jujutsu kaisen fluff #geto suguru x you #geto hurt/comfort #geto angst #geto x reader #geto x you

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folkookie97 · 5 months

Text

❝ hating you's the only way ❞ — JJK

— SUMMARY: ❝Loving you hurts so bad. Jungkook finds a better way to try lessing the pain. ❞

— PAIRING: boyfriend!Jungkook x girlfriend!reader

— TYPE: angst | non-idol AU

— WORD COUNT: 547

— WARNINGS: Inspired by Hate You (Jungkook), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Jungkook is bad at feelings, Mean!Jungkook, Mentioned Kim Taehyung, Curses, Argument.

— NOTES¹: that's my Jungkook's fav song <3

— NOTES²: it's crossposted on my ao3 account in Jungkook's version, but also in a JJ Maybank (OBX) version.

— RELEASE DATE: November 09, 2023

— CROSSPOSTING: ao3

"What did I do wrong?"

The words left your mouth after an absurd amount of time in complete silence. Such a long absence of speech while you remained sitting on the couch, your eyes looking at your boyfriend and searching for any answer.

His indifference remained implacable and causing pain in your heart. "Jesus! You don't even care about our relationship."

It wasn't a question. But the confident statement at least caused a reaction from Jungkook. "Oh, so now we're talking about who really cares about this bullshit? 'Cause you don't even seem caring about us when you're looking at Taehyung with your fucking puppy eyes." He chuckled, even though his sentence wasn't actually sarcastic. "Fuck, (Y/N)! He's my best friend. You really think I wouldn't realize what you were trying to do?"

Your eyes widened, getting up from the couch so quickly that you made a loud noise. Jungkook still had his body fixed on the armchair in front of you, but you saw him shiver slightly.

"You crazy? I never thought anything like that about Taehyung!" Your throat burned at the volume of your voice. "Or anyone else!"

Jungkook rolled his eyes, starting to anger at your frustration. "Stop yelling. The world doesn't need to know that my ex-girlfriend is a whore."

Your eyes filled with tears at the venom present in his words.

If anyone else said that, you would get angry and trying slap them for such audacity. However, he was not just anyone. He was Jungkook. Your Jungkook. Your perfect boyfriend. Your boyfriend who hugged you during night storms. Your boyfriend who liked teaching Korean cooking recipes, no matter how bad you were cooking some of them. Your boyfriend who liked spoiling you with cute gifts every month.

Your boyfriend who called you "my little one" and "my princess". That Jungkook would never call you a "whore." He would never accuse you of something like that.

"Why are you acting like this? Why are you being so mean and accusing me of things I never thought of?" You let out a sob. A sob so sad that it soon turned into an avalanche of tears.

Lowering his head and swallowing hard when you starting your crying fit, you heard the last words Jungkook spoke to you before the official end of your relationship. "Stop crying, you're just making me hate you even more."

And when he walked quickly out of your house to get on his motorcycle, Jungkook knew he was just a coward guy. A guy who was afraid of love.

He chose painting you as the villain in your relationship. He chose to believe that you were telling lies from the beginning. He even chose to believe that you were thinking about kissing his best friend someday.

Jungkook was too afraid of love. Because it hurts. Loving you hurts him so bad.

Even though you two weren't perfect, you came very close. He couldn't afford to unexpectedly lose that. The thought of the possibility of you one day deciding to end everything literally killed him inside everyday.

If he were the one to destroy the relationship, maybe the consequences would affect him less. He would at least be ready, right?

Maybe hating you's the only way it doesn't hurt.

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bitterie-sweetie · 1 year

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This is how we fall

Pairing: Mingyu x reader Genre: fluff, light angst, fake dating au WC: 18.5k Warnings: swearing, mentions of blood, alcohol A/N: happy belated mingyu day!! this is an updated ver of my fave fic i posted for another fandom, but i think it fits mingyu the most <3

You should know better than to make a deal with a stranger, but the need for a date to Minghao’s party has you desperate. It can’t be too bad though; all you have to do is show Mingyu what you saw in your reading, and he would be your date for one night. Simple enough, right?

The fates were playing with you.

That much you can be sure of—there is absolutely no way you should be seeing yourself in one of your clients' readings, in the same way that you aren't able to see what lies in your own future. And yet, here you are, getting a glimpse at the same hairstyle, the same smooth skin and face shape that you see in the mirror every day. It isn't entirely clear when your client doesn't look at his lover's face directly, but surely those features are enough to conclude that it's you, right?

"I see myself in your future."

"Is that a terrible pickup line or are you serious?"

You vaguely notice that Mingyu is laughing. It makes you realize that neither option was a good one really; a pickup line would imply you're interested in him, while seeing yourself in his future certainly implies a lot more than that. Perhaps you silently pray to the fates that those words didn't make their way to your boss in the other room.

But as the scene progresses, there are some other details that you notice. The kitchen in the background doesn't look familiar at all, nor do you recognize the light fragrance of oranges surrounding you—not a bad scent, though it isn't one you have lying around at home. What his lover is wearing is different from anything you own too, which could only indicate that you were wrong: they have to be someone else.

"Nah," you shrug, quickly trying to brush off your mistake, "I was just kidding."

That earns you a bemused smile as Mingyu raises an eyebrow, entirely unconvinced. "You sure about that?"

With a nod, you quickly pull your hands back to break out of the visions and internally curse yourself for being stupid enough to think that the lover in the visions was you. Just how delusional are you now? Sure, you've always been a head in the clouds type of person, falling in love with the possibility that everywhere you go, the next person you meet might just be the love of your life. Eye contact with the cute dog walker at the park turns into getting lost in their eyes while walking under the stars, and a brush of hands with the hot barista at the local coffee shop turns into holding hands while reciting wedding vows.

And admittedly, Mingyu is good-looking. But this isn't the same—he's a client, and you're working. It was silly to have thought of the possibility of being in his future in the first place, but even more ridiculous to have said it out loud.

You immediately shake off the thoughts when you catch him staring.

"So?" He leans forward, looking at you like he has some big secret to share. "What did you see?"

"Um, your love life will be just fine."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." You avoid his gaze, choosing to stare at the small piece of lint on your sleeve instead. "Things will run smoothly with your partner. I could sense your love for them and how committed to them you are. And similarly, how in love with you they are."

This is the part you've always hated the most about the job. Jeonghan may have thought that hiring a "real psychic" was a good idea, but you think otherwise—surely anyone who knows anything about palm reading would immediately be able to tell that you're a fake. A fraud. You're not here to look over the love lines and life lines on your clients' palms when the visions come to you as naturally as breathing: they let you see a few scenes from the client's future, usually scenes involving a lover from what you've gathered over the years. And while it's no surprise that Jeonghan put you on love readings because of this ability, it's not like you can tell clients about the exact scenes you see.

Hence why you resort to vague summaries of the readings that make you feel like an imposter.

"Really?" Mingyu cocks his head, still watching you carefully. "Anything else?"

There were three scenes that you witnessed: holding hands across the table at what looked like a dimly lit restaurant, with tiny scars on his lover's hands. "There might be some dark times in your life or your partner's, but the two of you will be able to support each other." A kiss in what seemed like an open-air market, with the sweet taste of apples on your lips and the warmth of sunshine against your skin. "They'll bring you warmth." Then there was the final scene where you thought you'd seen yourself—slow dancing in the kitchen at midnight with faint music playing in the background and Mingyu's soft whispers reaching his lover's ears. "And your partner will make you believe in love again."

A fairly normal set of scenes compared to some of the things you've seen from other people, although it's a bit strange that they happen to be scenes where he's not looking directly at his lover.

"Hmm, okay." Mingyu nods slowly and then purses his lips, seemingly deep in thought. Maybe it's the dimness in the room, but it's like you can see the gradual change in his demeanour as his smile falters. "That sounds great and all, but I'm single as hell right now."

It takes all your efforts to not let your shock show. "Well, it can be your future partner."

"Sure, I guess." He shrugs, but the gloomy expression never leaves his face.

You open your mouth to give a retort, to defend yourself or to convince him somehow, but nothing comes out. Plenty of skeptical people have sat in that very seat before, but you've never dealt with someone who reacted like this. It almost seems like a prank or a test that Jeonghan is giving you to gauge how well you can react in these types of situations.

"Things didn't really end well with my ex, so I don't know if I'd want to go through all of that again." He grimaces. "But I'm kind of curious as to know how you came up with that."

"Well, what did you expect?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe something more realistic? Like telling me why my past relationship failed and if I'm destined to have bad luck with them."

Destined to have bad luck with them? Now that's a first. Many clients have argued with you before that any bad readings would never come true, but you're surprised to hear that it's the other way around with Mingyu. Just what has he gone through to make him doubt a good reading? You almost want to convince him, to have this reading be what helps him out of this turmoil that he's going through.

"I can show you, if you want." The words are out of your mouth before you can process them, and it isn't until you see the stupefied expression on his face that you realize just what you said.

"What?"

"I can show you what I saw in the reading," you repeat, figuring it's too late now to back out. Show him? Are you out of your mind? At least the worst that can happen is it'd make you look stupid; there is no way he'd accept—

"Oh. Um, yeah." Mingyu's shock gradually disappears and turns into something else that you can't quite pinpoint, but you might say that it almost looks like hope. "Okay, sure. How would that work?"

"I can show you the locations that I saw and, um, the—" You pause because how are you supposed to word this? "The events that happen in them."

This should be when he says you're joking, that he's not going to fall for some scam. But against all odds, he nods, and a smile gradually appears. "Is this a part of what's included in the reading, or do I have to pay extra?"

You're about to open your mouth and tell him that it's included—to essentially own up to your own mistake of offering in the first place—but something else comes to mind.

There is the party coming up. You've been complaining to Jeonghan all day about your lack of a date for Minghao's party, since receiving the invite and figuring out just who would be there. And while normally you wouldn't care about whether you had a date or not, this would be the first time that you're reconnecting with your old college crowd since graduating and leaving certain people behind.

"It's not included, but you don't have to pay; I'd gladly accept a favour instead. There's this party that I'm going to, and I need a date—not even like a real date. You could just be my fake date and—" You force yourself to stop when he doesn't react and simply blinks at you. "Never mind, forget I ever said anything. I'll just ask Jeonghan to be my date—"

"Y/N, you know I can't go to that thing," Jeonghan voice comes floating in from the other room. "I have a business to run."

Mingyu's face brightens, eyes twinkling in amusement, and you have to resist the urge to sink into the ground. "Okay, so a party? Sure, I can go to this party with you if that's what you want."

You want to stop this thing in its tracks. Your joke of an offer coupled with the mention of the party to a complete strange surely would be a recipe for disaster, and besides, why would he would even care to know what you saw in the reading? Why would he believe you if you do show him the scenes? But you can't bring yourself to say any of that. At the prospect of being handed a solution to your dateless party problem, you decide to bite your tongue and go ahead with it. Showing him a few locations that you saw in your reading would be nothing compared to being alone with certain people from your past.

"Okay, deal. Let's do it."

A few minutes later, he's leaving the shop with a little wave, and a new contact has been saved into your phone.

"You good?" Jeonghan raises an eyebrow, stepping out of the back room as he gives you a look that says he heard everything. His glasses are halfway down his face and hair ruffled like he tugged on the strands in frustration way too many times, which isn't surprising when the shop is on the verge of needing to be shut down. "Were you serious about asking me to be your date?"

"No, you must've heard wrong." You quickly shake your head, plastering on a smile. "And I'm great. Wonderful. Amazing." You're definitely not. "Everything is fine." It definitely isn't.

The only reaction you get is a teasing grin. "Well," Jeonghan pats you on the shoulder, "let me know how it goes. Maybe you really did see yourself in his future."

Great.

It was at this moment you knew you fucked up.

"You look like you just lost your job," Soonyoung says right when you step into the apartment that night.

You shoot him a glare. "Unprovoked?"

He's slouched in yet another strange position on the couch, eyeing you with the concern that should probably be going towards fixing his posture, and his phone screen in hand is flashing with probably some show he's been bingeing despite the TV being only a few feet away.

A typical night at your residence, really.

"Should I leave?" he asks, sitting up straighter.

You kick your shoes off, too worn out to think of a smart retort tonight. Then you slump onto the couch beside him. "Is it that obvious?"

"Uh huh. You want to talk about it?"

With a sigh, you start from the beginning. Mingyu had been friendly when he walked in that evening, all charming smiles and lingering stares. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about him, though you may have thought he was good-looking and may have been a tiny bit glad that he made a last-minute decision to switch from the career reading to the love reading.

You tell Soonyoung about the readings, dragging on the details until he's waving you on impatiently. And then comes the end—the deal you made where you'd show Mingyu what you saw in the reading in exchange for having him be your date to Minghao's party.

"Why the hell would you do that?" Soonyoung narrows his eyes, stare seeming to bore into your skull. "He was hot, wasn't he?"

"Um, well..."

"I knew it." Then he put his hands on your shoulders and shakes you a little. "Y/N," he looks you dead in the eye, "you need to stop being so nice to people you find hot. Well, except for me; I'm an exception."

You scoff. "It's not that. I need a date for this party, okay? You know he's going to be there so there's no way I'm showing up alone."

"Forget the party," he gives a dismissing wave, "how are you going to show him everything? The guy seems like someone who doesn't believe in this kind of stuff."

"Yeah," you mutter, "maybe he knows I'm a fraud and is secretly filming all this for his YouTube channel. Can you imagine the title? Delusional psychic makes up romantic scenes."

If Mingyu really did think you were a fraud, he wouldn't be wrong. After all, you only learned about the different palm lines as a cover for the real abilities you used for these readings. Maybe it isn't such a bad idea to switch over to regular readings now though; if only you'd been blessed with Jeonghan's bullshitting skills instead of this ability that's starting to feel more like a curse.

"No, Y/N. Who does he think he is?" Soonyoung abruptly gets up from the couch, hands balled into fists instead of laughing at your joke like you thought he would. "No one forced him to go to you. And we all know that fortune telling is a big sham; surely he should know to take everything with a grain of salt."

You nod, but then you think back to the reading. "Well, I did think that I could be wrong. The reading was... well, it was weird. I couldn't see his lover's face, like, it either went by really fast or he wasn't looking at them at all."

"Those scenes don't necessarily have to be with the ex he mentioned, right? You have no control over what point of someone's life you see."

Soonyoung is right. You can't control the time frame of someone's life you witness, so it's plausible that the love interest is someone else entirely. Perhaps from a future relationship, or maybe Mingyu and his ex if they get back together one day.

Or maybe the visions are wrong. Just because they haven't been wrong before doesn't mean it can't happen.

"Or," Soonyoung flops back onto the couch excitedly, "do you think it's because he has bad eyesight?" He leans in until his face is mere centimeters away from yours, pretending to examine you through squinted eyes. "Maybe he never sees his lover's face that clearly anyway."

"There's a big difference between having bad eyesight and simply not looking at something, you know."

"Then do you want to use me as practice?" He holds out his hand, placing it on your knee with his palm up. "You can check if futures can change or if eyesight really does affect the readings."

You give him one last skeptical glance before going along with it. Then you press two thumbs at the edges of his palm with your eyes closed and wait for the visions to arrive.

It's been years since you've glanced into his future, but still you immediately recognize the images. There's Soonyoung laughing while on a picnic with Wonwoo in the same sunny field, Wonwoo playing the guitar in your current apartment, and a final close up of the ring on Soonyoung's slender finger. You wonder if he still remembers this last one; you're at the age where all of your friends are getting engaged left and right, and you're half expecting a wedding invitation any day now.

But just before you can pull your hands back and ask him if the first two events have already happened, the vision changes. A new scene takes shape this time and it confuses you at first because the view starts off with an unfamiliar ceiling. Then as Soonyoung glances down, Wonwoo's face comes into view and—

"What the hell?" You immediately jerk back, scrambling to break out of the vision. "Please don't get me to do your reading ever again."

Soonyoung gives you a confused glance. "Why, what did you see? Did it change?"

"Let me just say that I really don't need to see the things that you and Wonwoo do."

"You—you saw what?"

"I heard it too." You bury your face in your hands, trying to wipe the memory away. "The visions really just had to give me first person seats to a show I never wanted to see."

Soonyoung chokes on his spit.

If Mingyu forgot about this agreement entirely once he left the shop, it wouldn't surprise you. You'd just take it as one of those situations where friends tell each other to hang out but never end up making plans, so why would this be any different?

What surprises you is that he does text you a few days later.

So through your text conversation, you tell him all about the first scene you saw—the restaurant with the hand holding across the table. A dinner date, essentially. It's a good thing that this is the easiest scene to reenact; maybe after this he'd decide that he's had enough of this fake fortune telling stunt while still upholding his end of the agreement.

But despite how simple the scene is, the thought of doing this makes you all kinds of nervous. Your stomach twists at the thought of spending a whole night on the receiving end of Mingyu's intense stare, especially when this would be so different from your interactions with him while working that day. At least at work you knew what you were doing. This on the other hand, is completely out of your range of knowledge. Like, what do people talk about during these kinds of events? What if whatever you're eating gets really messy? What if—

"Wait, where are you going today? Soonyoung didn't tell me about this." Wonwoo glances over at his boyfriend in confusion before turning back to you. "And what did you agree to do?"

"Um," you say slowly, glancing between the two perched on the couch. "I made a deal to show a client what I saw in his reading."

"But why?" Wonwoo puts his hand on your knee, leaning over with concern written on his face. "You haven't done anything like this before for your other customers, have you?"

"No way. I probably wouldn't be doing this if he hadn't agreed to be my date for Minghao's party."

Maybe it was weird to have agreed to this—the look on Wonwoo's face said as much. After all, Mingyu is a stranger, and you don't know anything about him other than the flashes of his life you witnessed through the reading. But won't it simply feel like an awkward first date? All you have to do is take him to a restaurant that resembles the one you saw and hold hands across the table. It can't be too challenging when there is no need to do much talking nor get to know each other.

"Oh. Because of..." Wonwoo trails off, giving you a feeble smile. "Right."

"Well, don't mention him," Soonyoung elbows him in the ribs.

Wonwoo waves his boyfriend off. "I'm not sure how you're going to make this client believe you, but your time with him today doesn't have to be a bad thing."

"But babe, you didn't see how upset Y/N was that night after agreeing to this." The dramatic pout on Soonyoung's face has you rolling your eyes. Then he turns to you. "He might be hot, but he could still be an asshole. This guy seems like bad news. What if you get kidnapped? What if you go missing? Who's going to help pay the rent then? And—"

"Don't act like you're not waiting for me to move out so that Wonwoo can move in," you reach over to flick him on the forehead. "Thanks for your concern but I think I'll be just fine."

"At least share your location with us, okay? If you need an emergency phone call to get you out of there, I have my scream perfected."

"Unfortunately, I am very aware of that." You definitely don't want to think about the last time Soonyoung called to pull you out of a group meeting back in college and nearly damaged the hearing of your entire group. "Okay, I'm really going to go now."

"Oh and," a hand wraps around your wrist just as you stand, "don't fall for him."

"Shut up, it's literally one meeting."

One meeting won't be a big deal. It'd be a nice dinner date with some innocent hand holding, and then you probably wouldn't have to see Mingyu again until the party. Nothing can't go wrong when you'd be in public the whole time anyway.

Soonyoung shouts something that sounds like, "At least wear something nicer!" but you're already out the door.

"Oh, you actually came." Mingyu comments, face instantly lighting up when he spots you. "I almost thought you decided to back out."

"Me? Never." You try for a smile, but you know he's referring to your tardiness.

It'd be easy to blame your annoying roommate for holding you up today, but embarrassingly enough, it wasn't because of him. Your shortcut through the park's uneven grounds was the culprit, causing your massive tumble which ultimately led to being much too late for this date. It's times like this when you wish your ability would let you see more useful things than random points in other people's futures.

Upon arriving at the restaurant though, you realize that something else you wish you'd seen is how your choice of restaurant is nothing like what you expected. You picked the place after scavenging through the depths of Google Maps, digging up pictures left and right from various reviews, and the single review of this place was the only one that seemed to match the one in your visions. In the photo, the restaurant was just as dim, and looked like a casual place. But now, in front of you, is a restaurant that looks nothing like the one in the photo.

In front of you is something much fancier—small chandeliers hang above every table and elegant decorations line the walls. There is no doubt that it must've gone through a major upgrade since the local reviewer posted those pictures from five years ago. Now not only was your attempt at finding the restaurant in your visions futile, but this place also makes you wish you chose a different occupation entirely. Preferably one that pays more than the meager amount your readings are worth.

"Well, this is an interesting choice," Mingyu comments, eyeing the walls. "Seems like a nice place."

You debate pulling him right out of there. "Um, actually, it's not—"

"Hi, do you have a reservation?" the hostess asks, looking between the two of you. And before you can even answer, there are two menus in her hands and she's leading you to your table. Great. Perhaps you'd just have to take off one of your rings and fake a proposal for the sake of a free meal if it turns out to be too expensive. You heard that it worked for a friend of a friend once upon a time.

Once seated, you nearly do a double take. There is no dim lighting obscuring Mingyu's handsome face this time, and under the glow of the chandelier, you can finally see his smooth skin, plush lips, and large eyes that seem to twinkle when he glances at you for whatever reason. If you thought he was good looking before, you have to admit that he looks even better today.

You turn to the menu instead, studying it intensely despite having immediately picked out the cheapest option. Five minutes go by. The waitress comes by to take your orders. Another five minutes. Are first dates always this awkward? It's been years since you've gone out with anyone, but if this were the reality of the dating scene, maybe third-wheeling your friends for the rest of your life wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Mingyu clears his throat. "Should we start with the basics?"

"What?"

"A story to tell people at the party if they ask about us." He swirls his drink around, eyes flickering to yours occasionally. "We need to be on the same page with our answers to make it convincing."

Right, he's going to be your fake boyfriend for the party. You haven't thought that far yet when you've had the scenes to worry about, but he's not wrong. "Oh. Um, okay. So how did we meet? It wouldn't be through mutual friends because most of them would be there. Maybe a dating app?"

"Hmm," he hums, looking over everything on the table as he thinks. "We met at your shop when I got a reading done. Then you showed me how everything happens."

"We're just going with the truth?" You're slightly doubtful of whether this story would be believable, yet the same time you're relieved you wouldn't have to be lying. Soonyoung has always said you were a terrible liar. "I guess that works. So then how did we fall for each other?"

Mingyu presses his lips together and thinks for a while. "Through reenactments of the things you saw in the reading." As if for emphasis, he moves his drink out of the way before putting his hand on the table between the two of you, and then beckons for you to do the same.

"Oh. This is what you mean by reenact it."

Of course you knew this might be what he wanted, and you came here fully prepared to reenact this with him. But because of your fall at the park earlier, now the fresh scrapes on your palms are telling you to stop in your tracks. You shouldn't be touching anything and sure as hell don't want him to see the state of your battered hands.

You opt for a shrug, feigning nonchalance. "Um, yeah it was just hand holding. You know, we don't have to actually—"

"Come on, Y/N." He puts on a pout and the longer he stares at you, the more his eyes somehow start to have the effect of puppy eyes. "Just humour me?"

So you give in, reluctantly. You reach out a hand and rest it on his with your palm up to show him exactly why you don't want to do this.

Mingyu's eyes widen at you before he's holding your hand up to examine it closely. "Oh shit. What happened? Did you fall on your way here? Is that why you were late?"

You nod a little.

"Hey, you should've said something. I'll go ask for some bandages, okay?"

"No, it's fine—" you start, but he only shoots you a smile before leaving his seat.

Looking down, you can see that your palms already appear to be much better than earlier—the red splotches are mainly dry now, and the dirt has been wiped off. Thankfully, Mingyu didn't see the worst of it, but that does little to stop the embarrassment in its tracks. You only hope that the heat at your cheeks fades when he comes back a few minutes later waving a handful of bandages around.

You think that it would end there, but it doesn't. Mingyu insists on putting these bandages on your wounds. His fingers are light where they graze your skin as he carefully places them on your scrapes, and it's such a nice gesture that you're suddenly taken aback. This is supposed to be a quick dinner, and he's supposed to hate you for the bad reading. But now you question if any of that is true when he continues to act so kind and friendly.

"This is not how it's supposed to go." You frown, trying not to stare at his face as he works on the bandages in total concentration. "Not at all."

Because your hands may be in his across the table as you wait for your food to come, but he's only holding them to bandage your wounds. And while this restaurant does seem romantic, it's nowhere near the look of the one in your visions.

Mingyu's eyes fill with amusement when he looks up. "Holding hands across the table as we wait for our food, right? Isn't this close enough?"

"You're bandaging me. This isn't remotely romantic."

"Love isn't always supposed to be romantic, Y/N," he says dramatically, rolling his eyes. "Haven't your readings shown you the small things that people do for each other?"

You wonder just what kind of readings he thinks you do. "Um. I guess."

He does have a point. Maybe this moment, no matter how embarrassing or ridiculous it seems, is better than having to sit through faking or pretending everything. It may force you to be vulnerable, but each gentle brush of Mingyu's fingers and each press of a bandage against your palms hint at a vulnerable side of him too.

You study him, wanting to figure out just what kind of person he is. Why is he being so kind when the two of you are practically strangers? When this meetup should be a quick meal at a casual food place, involving no more physical contact than two seconds of hand holding? Well, perhaps five seconds. But now, it seems like the two of you have gone beyond your original plans of fake pleasantries.

"All done." He lightly presses the last bandage onto your palm, and you're grateful for the arrival of your food as an excuse to pull your hand back.

"So, um," you rack your brain for literally anything to say, "why did you come in for a reading that day?"

"There was a career decision that I was stuck on," Mingyu picks at his food then looks up with a twinkle in his eyes. "I don't believe in this whole fortune telling thing, but I needed some advice on what to do. Figured that maybe while you were telling me to look deep inside myself and to follow my heart or whatever, I'd suddenly get an epiphany about what to do."

"And did you?"

"Yeah."

"Even without the reading? The boss would've done a good job on it." That part is true; you may be the real psychic of the two of you, but you can't deny how good Jeonghan's readings are. Heck, you'd rather choose to believe his words over what you see in your own visions.

A nod. "Just going there gave me what I needed. I decided it would be good to start fresh, to try something new." He pauses to take a sip of water, but then his eyes snap to yours. "Wait, hold on. Did you say he's your boss? You were going to ask your boss to be your date? For the party?"

"Oh, Jeonghan?" You want to laugh at the incredulous expression on his face. "Nah, he's not exactly my boss. We met in college as classmates."

Your previous thoughts about not needing to talk completely disappear as you tell him about how this little psychic shop started. It had been Jeonghan's idea, a backup plan for a backup plan essentially. He'd always joked about starting a business if nothing else worked out after graduation, and the opportunity came around sooner than expected.

"Damn, I wish my boss was chill like that. Mine really makes everyone stay back to finish the projects that he deems urgent when they aren't."

"You mean you're not in school?" You have to wipe the shock from your face. "I would've thought that you were some frat boy in college."

Mingyu stares at you blankly, blinking a couple of times. "You know, I'm not sure if that was a compliment or insult." He frowns. "Well, I guess it's good that my job hasn't aged me too much yet. But frat boy? Really?"

"Hey, maybe that should be our cover instead," you tease. "Frat boy Mingyu who I met at a party in college years ago but only recently reconnected with."

He rolls his eyes at you, suddenly starting to chew so aggressively that you have to laugh at his expression.

The rest of the night goes by similarly, allowing you to forget all your worries about awkward first dates. Mingyu is a good conversationalist and surprisingly funny to, and when he drops his fork and later bumps his head on the chandelier is so endearing that you find yourself smiling every time you look at him.

As the two of you walk back to the shop afterwards, your time together leaves you thinking about how he's not the person you thought he would be. Maybe you should know that already based on the glimpse into his future because the warmth that you'd seen from those scenes alone could've been an indicator.

"There are two more things you saw, right?" Mingyu turns to you, sparkles in his eyes from the reflection of streetlights right outside the shop. "Are you free next weekend too?"

"Wait." You're almost sure you heard wrong. "You—you want to see the rest of them? The scenes I saw?"

"Yeah, of course," he says like it's obvious, seemingly unable to understand the surprise that must be on your face.

This is a possibility that you never considered at all. You don't get why he would want to see you or spend time with you again, or how showing him what you saw in the visions would possibly convince him that they're real. "Oh, um. I didn't think you would be interested."

"Why not? We still need to figure out more of our cover story for this party too." He gives a shrug and then raises a hand up in a wave. "See you next week?"

"Yeah, okay," you manage to say. "Next week."

The rest of the way home is filled with Mingyu's words echoing through your mind.

When you open the door to your apartment, Soonyoung drops his phone mid-scroll, giving you a onceover that makes his eyes as big as saucers. Then he's running over to you.

Right, you completely forgot about your state of being until this reminder.

"What the fuck happened to you? Did the Mingyu guy do all of this?" He stops you in the middle of the hallway, hands on your shoulders to spin you around as he glances over every inch of the mess of blood and dirt on your clothing. You understand what it would look like from the outside—the result of your fall must be fueling his thoughts about Mingyu being a bad guy. Maybe it looks like you bravely jumped out of a moving car and managed to crawl back home.

"No—"

"See? I told you he was bad news," he huffs and then guides you into the kitchen where he sits you down on a chair. "What happened? Did he pull something weird? Should we be calling the police?"

You feel a laugh on the verge of escaping your throat, but you bite it back. Soonyoung's questions are so absurd that you almost want to keep quiet and make him frustrated by his overwhelming curiosity. That'd certainly be one way of annoying him the way he always annoys you.

"No, nothing like that," you say instead, shaking your head. "I tripped and fell while walking through the park." Then you hold up your palms to show him the small bandages where they're peeling at the corners. "He helped bandage me at the restaurant."

Soonyoung nods slowly, but judging by his narrowed eyes, he's entirely unconviced. "Okay, but you look like you got into a fight with him or something. And why would you go through the park?"

"You're the one who made me late, okay? I had to take the shortcut." You go to push him then instantly regret it when the contact makes your palms throb. "Anyway, Mingyu was really nice. Though the, um, reenactment didn't really go as planned."

Then you begin to update him on everything that happened during your date, starting from the restaurant and how it didn't match the visions, to your fall and the bandages. But as you go over all of the moments, you realize there are a few things you intentionally leave out, like the tiny crinkles that appeared at the corners of Mingyu's eyes whenever he smiled. His soft hands that bandaged you so tenderly. Maybe he was right that love is all about the small gestures—even though you initially thought the moment paled in comparison to the one in the reading, the more you replay the day over in your mind, the more you realize that it was indeed romantic in its own way.

"And? Is that it?" Soonyoung gestures wildly. "You won't have to see him until the party, right?"

You can feel the smile on your face fade. "Um, actually. He wants to meet again for the next scene that I saw."

"Don't tell me that's the kiss scene?"

"Yeah... the kiss."

"Well, good luck with that one." Soonyoung's smirk only grows at your reaction. He gives you a pat on the back, but it feels just as insincere as his words. "Try not to fall for him."

As your roommate leaves the room, you can only sigh. This is exactly why you left out those details about this date—Soonyoung would be making fun of you forever. Yes, that has to be the reason. It definitely wasn't because you considered those moments special.

All week, you try to come up with a plan to avoid showing Mingyu the next scene from the visions. You think about making up a more PG-rated scenario since there is no way he would know if what you're showing is real or not, but how can you lie about it when he'll experience the real thing in his future? Besides, Soonyoung tells you the scenarios you come up with are lame.

So your choices for this scene are really limited—either you would have to share a kiss with him in public or watch as his face contorts with disgust at the thought of having to kiss you. Or perhaps you would be dealing with the awkwardness of dead silence between you once he turns down the kiss. Either way, today is not looking good for you.

On top of that, the location for this scene gives you even more trouble than the first one did. You hadn't exactly gathered much information from it; without being able to use your sense of sight, you only know there was kissing, the smell of the outdoors, and light chatter in the background. A park might seem too public, too open of a space to be doing this, and a forest trail might be too isolated and not sunny enough compared to the sun you'd felt on your skin.

In the end, you decide on the market. A cute date at the market seemed like it could be the perfect balance, and today it bustles with the afternoon crowd of couples on their date and the elderly running their errands. When you look at Mingyu, your hypothesis is confirmed—beside you, he watches the rows of vendor carts and tents with amazement in his eyes.

"You've never been here before?"

Mingyu shakes his head. "Nah. I've been meaning to, but just haven't had the chance to yet." Then he turns to you with a teasing smile. "You chose the perfect spot. It's like you actually read my mind."

"I can assure you I'm not psychic like that," you mutter, stunned for a second. "Let's take our time exploring and see everything today."

So the two of you slowly walk through each aisle and you watch him marvel at different items from each of the stalls you stop at. It's merely an excuse, though. You're stalling. You still haven't told him about what is supposed to happen in the second scene, and you've been carefully dancing around the topic each time he asked. How are you supposed to blatantly say that the two of you are supposed to kiss? All you can do is hope that the wonders of the market would distract him enough so that he forgets why you're here at all.

"So how long have we known each other?" Mingyu turns to ask as the two of you walk to the next stall. "And what kind of party is it? Don't tell me I unknowingly signed up to go to a wedding with you."

"It's not that much better actually—it's an engagement party."

He stops dead in his tracks. You laugh.

"A year minimum," you continue like he's not giving you a deadpan stare. "Maybe two? We should be pretty serious about... each other."

"Do you think I could watch over the shop for you while you take your boss to be your date?" He pauses, looking at you with hopeful eyes that immediately dim when you shake your head. "What have I gotten myself into?" Then he's walking to the next stall with dramatically loud steps, though you manage to catch the smile he tries to hide.

The rest of your cover story slowly comes together over the course of the date—he asked you out, some of the places you frequent are last week's restaurant and today's market, and you sometimes spend the weekend at his place which is why Soonyoung and Wonwoo haven't met him yet.

After exploring the majority of the stalls a while later, Mingyu finally turns to you.

"Hey, let's head over there." He nods at the field behind the market, shooting you a grin when he takes your hand in his.

You hope he doesn't hear the startled sound that escapes from the back of your throat.

Tucked away behind the row of vendors at the very edge of the market is a field with a few empty picnic tables. And while you aren't sure if this is how the kiss happens in the vision, you get the feeling that maybe he knows. The bit of privacy behind the stalls and the way the noises of the market gradually fade into the background as you approach the table tell you as much—if you were looking for an opportunity to reenact the scene today, it would be here and now.

You climb onto the table, letting your legs dangle off the bench while Mingyu follows suit beside you.

"You haven't said anything about why we're here today." He eyes you up and down with amusement playing on his lips. "Why? Is it something bad?" The teasing tilt in his voice paired with a slight eyebrow raise is enough to have your cheeks quickly burning up.

Then the embarrassment kicks in. You know that there is no avoiding it when the two of you are already at the location of the second scene in your vision, and now it's just a matter of telling him. But no matter how you try to phrase it in his head, what could possibly be a good way of telling your client that you're supposed to kiss him? That's what Mingyu is, right? A client that wanted to see and experience the things in your reading of his future.

"Um. It's... a hug," you say hesitantly, testing the way it sounds in your mouth. Picturing the way his face would fall at the word 'kiss' is enough to scare you into changing your mind at the last second. "A hug is supposed to happen here."

As if he knows you're not telling the truth, Mingyu cocks his head. "Oh yeah? Here of all places?" Maybe it really was a bad idea to lie; you should've believed Soonyoung when he said you can't tell a lie to save your life.

"Yeah." You try to swallow the lump in your throat. "I'm not sure why it's here either."

If he does detect your lie though, he doesn't say anything about it. Instead, his expression morphs into something softer. "Love can be found everywhere, Y/N. Even in a hug at the market if you want it to." Then he gets up and holds his arms open, eyes twinkling with the question of whether you want this.

And do you want this? It might be too soon to be doing this when you barely know each other, but it's also too soon for your heart to be speeding up the way it does, for you to feel a small burst of butterflies in your stomach every time he so much as stares at you for a moment too long, and for this cover story and the reenactments to feel more tangible than the abstract concepts they are meant to be.

But despite all that, you find yourself getting up from the table and carefully stepping into Mingyu's arms. You slowly relax in the warmth of his embrace and let the faint scent of his cologne envelop you, and though it's a tender, loose hug, you can feel the steady beating of his heart and the rises and falls of his every breath.

"Is this how it happens?" he whispers, the rumble of his voice vibrating through his chest.

You can't respond. You don't know how to, nor do you know why he's even the slightest bit willing to act out a scene from a stupid reading that he probably deems a scam anyway. So the obvious answer would be to say yes and call it a day.

The answer is at the tip of your tongue. But as you open your mouth to respond, something stops you from continuing the lie. "No, not quite."

It's the same feeling that tells you to cup his cheek and bring him closer to you, and it makes you lean forward, just until you can see his smooth sun-kissed skin and the small mole at the tip of his nose. And then you're slowly squeezing your eyes shut and bringing your lips to his—kissing him, like how it happens in the reading.

Mingyu's surprise is evident in the way he freezes momentarily, and the rational part of your mind would think that this is it. This is your big mistake and now he's going to back away and—

He kisses you back.

He pulls you even closer and you expect it to feel like the delicate kiss in the reading, but it's completely different in that he kisses you like he wants this. Like he wants you. Those supple lips glide across yours, consuming you, making you feel like you're sinking into the depths of his touch and his body. And all you can do is hang on, grasping weakly at his collar as every essence of your being is filled with want for a person you shouldn't want.

Mingyu breaks the kiss just as you start to think this might be too intense to be done in public.

He catches his breath and then gives you a shy smile, not quite meeting your eyes. "Oh, so that's how it happens?"

Your head is still spinning, but when you look at Mingyu, it's like he's glowing. The way the sun glistens on his skin and lights up his face makes him so beautiful that you almost forget to breathe. If the kiss hadn't felt so real, you might've been thinking that this moment, and Mingyu himself, are straight out of a dream.

You can answer him easily now. "Yeah, it is."

When he takes your hand a moment later, all the thoughts about cover stories and readings and Minghao's party disappear from your mind, leaving only the warmth of him beside you and the memory of his lips on yours.

However, reality hits you very soon. There, by one of the nearby stalls, is someone who looks like Mingyu's lover in the visions. They have the same hairstyle as you, the same smooth skin, and even the same face shape. Without directly glancing at their face, you can assume that you are looking at yourself.

But even though they don't turn your way as the two of you walk by, simply seeing them has your heart sinking. It sinks at the thought that the kiss might be nothing more than a figment of your imagination or of a world where you're both pretending that you really are the lover from the visions. That Mingyu's eagerness to kiss you, to want you, wasn't actually meant for you at all, but rather for someone he hasn't met yet.

And you don't get it. You don't understand why you're disappointed by this when it isn't even real. It shouldn't ever be real. Regardless of whether it was a good kiss, of whether it felt wonderful and realistic and enticing, you should know that it wouldn't mean anything.

Because you're not the lover from the reading.

Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise to you at this point, but Mingyu agrees to reenact the third and final scene of the vision. You were sure that he would say no, that he definitely wouldn't appreciate having a stranger barge into his home for this one. So to have him actually agree to it has you thinking that maybe if you tell him you're going skydiving he'd agree to that too.

This time it's not as difficult to tell him what happens in the scene—it's just slow dancing, which should be easy to reenact at least compared to the kiss at the market. All you have to do is rest your hands on his shoulders and then step side to side to the beat of the music. How hard can it be?

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Soonyoung peers at you from the doorway of the bathroom. "You barely managed to escape from this guy during your first meeting, and now you're walking right into his home." He comes closer to where you're checking your outfit in front of the mirror, and says in a loud whisper, "where you'll be alone with him."

Right, that is the part you're trying not to think about.

"You sure you can handle it? After," he gestures in the air, "what happened at the market and all."

Internally, you grumble. Externally, you ignore him.

"I know you're picturing that steamy kiss." He rolls his eyes, which you can all too clearly through the mirror. "But anyway, if you're sure about going to his place tonight, just remember to be safe, yeah? Share your location just in case. Hold your head if you're about to jump out of another moving car."

"Don't you have a boyfriend you should be bothering instead?"

That earns you an enthusiastic nod. "He should be coming soon. So take your time on your date tonight."

You finally get some peace and quiet when you step out, once again leaving your roommate mid-sentence about how you picked another terrible outfit.

You're the first to arrive at the restaurant, though it isn't long before you spot Mingyu coming from a block away—he's late for your date and clearly running to make up for it by the way he dodges other people on the street, nearly knocking them over. He gives a big wave when he sees you.

"Sorry for being so late," he pants as he bends over to catch his breath. "Thank you for waiting."

"Guess that makes us even. Although I hope you didn't trip on your way here."

That puts an instant grin on his face. "Nah, I just had to clean up the apartment a little. Well, actually," he pauses, the grin fading, "a lot. Can't have it be a mess for when you come over tonight."

"Oh, right." You still don't know why he would agree to all this, especially if it takes that much work.

The dinner goes well. It's one of the few moments of peace, considering your first meal together was ruined by the remnants of your nasty fall, and the market date was interrupted by an abrupt awakening. Despite the mishaps, you don't exactly see these events as losses when your memories are brimming with Mingyu's gentle touch when he bandaged your hands, and the warmth of his lips fitting so perfectly with your own.

And tonight? You know that there will be another moment for you to commit to memory forever.

When you arrive at your destination, you finally understand why he was late for your dinner. The place is spotless; unlit candles fill the room, a bottle of wine with empty glasses are on the counter. There are flowers in a beautiful vase on the table. It's like he spent all day running around just to set up for this moment.

"It's presentable, right?" Mingyu cracks a smile, slipping off his shoes and sliding his jacket onto the rack, followed by taking your coat as well. "Not sure how it's supposed to happen, but I figured I should at least try to make it—well, as romantic as possible."

"Wow, you didn't have to do all this," you manage to get out. You're still standing right in your spot as he goes over to light the candles, in shock and confusion over why he would possibly do such a thing.

He turns back to give you a small shrug. "I wanted you to have a good time."

When he finishes lighting the candles, he puts on some music by selecting it on his phone, seemingly having put together a whole playlist for the occasion. And if you didn't know any better, it would be so easy to believe that he simply put together a romantic date night at his place for the two of you. That he did all this because you're someone special to him. That this means something.

Well, if he can pretend for a night then maybe you can too.

You shake the thoughts from your mind and replace them with a smile as a song you don't recognize starts softly in the background. Mingyu heads to the table, beckoning you to follow, and then pours two glasses of wine.

"You know, I'm really glad I went to you that day." He takes a sip of his wine and then swirls it when he puts it down. "For the reading. I'm glad I met you. And um, I should thank you for showing me all of this."

"Shut up," you scoff, rolling your eyes. "Don't lie. You still don't believe in any of this fortune telling stuff, right?"

Mingyu bursts into laughter. "Okay, you're right. I don't. I just wanted to see some acts of love after going through a breakup, to kind of feel like there could still be hope for me. Honestly though, when you offered to show me what happens, I thought you would make up random scenarios just to date me or something." He waves dismissively at the frown on your face. "But it doesn't matter to me. Real or not, I like spending time with you, and... well, maybe you've convinced me."

"I convinced you that the reading was real?"

You're met with a shrug as he takes another sip of his wine, and in that brief silence you ponder about what he's referring to. There is no way he believes in fortune telling, so what else is there to convince him of?

But then something else pops into your mind.

"Can I ask you something?" You take a deep breath, letting out a sharp exhale when Mingyu nods. "What happened with your ex?"

It's clear that he hesitates with the way he swirls his glass, pressing his lips together and avoiding your gaze.

"Never mind. We don't have to—"

"It's okay. It was a long time ago and I'm over it." His eyes meet yours before flickering away. "Actually, I think I knew it was over long before it was really over. But I kept hoping that things could be fixed. I was stupid and kept trying."

"Hey, no, that's not stupid." You reach over and take his hand. "You were willing to put in the effort to save your relationship, and that shows you care."

But he merely shrugs. "Seems like a waste when they were busy cheating on me."

"That's not your fault, and it's not a waste. The love that you show the world is never a waste." There's a flood of emotions running through you, you belatedly realize—you're clutching the glass so tightly in your free hand that you begin to fear it might crack. It's directed at Mingyu's ex, at the thought that someone would hurt him like that when he's done nothing but fight for their relationship.

"It's kind of ironic now that I think about it," he continues. "Right before I found out they were cheating, I went to a psychic and got a reading done on the relationship. Apparently the reading said everything would be fine, and I just stupidly believed it."

"Mingyu... is that why you don't believe in this stuff anymore?"

He nods.

"I wish I didn't either." You swallow the lump in your throat, letting go of the glass. It's not only the mention of his ex that's making you feel this way, but also the lover from the visions. You want to hate them, to curse at them and at your fate for ripping away what could be a beautiful relationship before it's even within your reach.

But it all makes you want to try harder to prove it to Mingyu. That he's worth more than what his ex had made it seem, and that he doesn't need to be closed off to the idea of love because someone in the future is going to walk into his life and show him exactly that.

"Why?" He squeezes your hand lightly. "What makes you say that?"

"It's also because of an ex."

It was Junhui. Or rather, what you saw in his future. Two years after the start of your relationship and four after the start of your friendship, you'd trusted him enough to tell him about this little fortune telling party trick, and he'd trusted you to take a look at his future. Maybe that's where things went wrong.

Looking back, you aren't surprised that you saw someone else in his future. They appeared so happy together, he made her laugh, and she seemed to fit in all the ways you didn't. But there was no point in waiting for fate to inevitably bring them together while pulling the two of you apart, so you ran—you didn't want to stick around to find out what would happen.

"Wow." Mingyu blinks at you, seemingly unable to speak after your story. "Do you know if they ever met or got together? Your ex and the person you saw in his future."

You shake your head. "Haven't heard anything about him since we broke up."

"And he's the one who's going to be at this party?"

"Yeah. He's one of Minghao's close friends."

"I'm sorry that happened to you," Mingyu drops his gaze as he gently traces circles into your palm with his thumb. "I see why you don't want to believe in that stuff now. Actually, it's kind of funny how it was this fortune telling thing that screwed both of us over."

"Right? I should get Jeonghan to close the shop and we could open a boba store instead or something." You roll your eyes, chuckling at the thought. "Probably makes better money than this ever will."

"That's not a bad idea." Then he sets his glass down and stands, coming to your side to pull you into a hug. "But Y/N, don't beat yourself up for what happened, okay? You didn't know what you would see, and you have no control over it."

"I guess."

"Besides, I'll be such a good date that you won't even notice him the entire night." Mingyu releases you and steps back, smile turning shy as he holds out a hand. "Shall we?"

"I have to warn you that I'm not great at dancing," you mutter, taking his hand anyway and letting him guide you towards the space in the living room. "Don't hold me accountable for any injuries you might sustain."

When you put your hands on his shoulders, you can feel yourself tense up—your body is awkward, and your arms are too stiff as if not wanting to rest your weight on him. But when you hear a bubble of laughter and see the way Mingyu looks at you so fondly, you feel the same pull as you'd felt at the market. The pull that makes you want to relax and sink into the warmth of his body.

His touch is gentle when he places his hands on your waist, all too carefully and delicately. It makes you wonder if it's even possible that those are the same hands that his ex had willingly let go of, and if those light steps that he takes when swaying to the music are the same footsteps that will walk into the life of the lover in the visions. You wonder if this Mingyu, glancing back at you so tenderly, is the same as the one that will forget about you as soon as this moment is over.

But most of all, you wonder if the you that had originally agreed to do this is the same as the you whose heart beats faster and faster when he meets your gaze now. If the you who only wanted a date, any date for the party, could possibly be the same as the you who now finds yourself wanting to lean into his touch, wanting him to want you.

"You okay?" he murmurs, pulling you out of your thoughts.

"Yeah. Perfect."

Mingyu breaks into a soft smile. "You know, I've always wondered what you keep thinking about. When you get lost in that world in your head, what do you see? What do you dream about?"

"It's different every time." You try to ignore the way your palms feel all too hot against his shoulders. "But these days... it's you."

You don't tell him that it's also getting to know him, falling for him, and imagining how you should be the one doing all those things with him like in the reading. It's picturing a love that flourishes ever so slowly, one that silently rests between the two of you, growing steadily until a day when it becomes the only thing you notice.

And though you leave all that out, your answer seems to be enough for him.

"Me?"

"Yeah," you say softly. "Whatever happened in the past—I really hope it doesn't keep you from experiencing the kind of relationship you deserve. You're not hard to love, Mingyu." Just a brief moment of hesitation before you admit, "Not at all."

Your words feed the twinkle of hope in his eyes as well as the one that seems to have been blossoming in your own heart for a while now. Maybe you can finally admit it; this would be the last time you see him, so maybe it wouldn't matter what happens tonight.

The thoughts swarming your mind are soon forgotten though. Mingyu pulls back slightly to gaze at you with a bright grin that sends your heart back into the frenzy it never recovered from. And a moment later, when his lips are on yours, the dancing, the music, and the entire scene are long forgotten in the background.

This time you let yourself believe that it's real.

You fall deeper into the world where you're the lover from the visions, a world that contains just the two of you. And this time you aren't afraid to kiss him back like you want him because you do. You pull him close until your bodies are inseparable, and you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the heat of his mouth and the burns of his touch. You let yourself want, as your back hits the wall and you're trapped between it and the weight of Mingyu's body pressing against you, and you let yourself take, let your hands trace over the defined lines of his muscles, the smoothness of his skin, and the softness of his hair.

You kiss until you're breathless, until your knees are weak and you're sinking once again. Until his little breaths come out in fuller moans, and hands are wandering into dangerous territory.

"Is this how it happens?" Mingyu whispers, gaze dropping as he leans in to press his forehead against yours. "Is this how we fall for each other?"

No, you immediately think, not at all. The apartment is dim with only the small lamps at the sides of the room and the candles lining the table as the only source of light. The music, despite being slow and romantic, feels much too loud for some reason. It feels forced. And the way you manage to step on his toes on all the wrong beats surely can't be the right path to falling in love.

But maybe you're not afraid to admit it anymore.

"Yeah," you say instead, "it is."

Mingyu eyes snap to yours, and what you find in them makes you want to repeat your answer again and again. You're not sure why he would be hoping for this answer or why he would be satisfied if his own creation were to match perfectly with the one that you'd seen. Even more uncertain is why he would choose that particular set of words to say. But none of it matters when his lips are back on yours, writing an answer of their own.

And for one night, you let yourself be Mingyu's lover from the visions.

One thing becomes painfully clear after that—you cannot be seeing Mingyu ever again. Not even for one last party date.

On the surface, you know that your job is done. You showed him all of the moments that are supposed to happen in his future, and you upheld your end of the deal. But the truth is that every time you were with him, it became difficult to remember that you're not the lover from the reading, and every time you talked to him, you found yourself wanting more and more to be that person.

Your plan to avoid him doesn't go as expected though, for he keeps texting you. He sounds normal, continuing to send memes and share posts like he's been doing for the past while. And when he asks you for a movie date the following weekend, he acts as if the past three meetups were exactly that—dates. It's like it never occurred to him that you were there only to show him how everything happens, and not to actually date him. Though now, you're no longer sure if that's true.

So you say you're busy, you limit your texts to once per day, and you don't pick up when he calls. You follow the textbook formula for ghosting for days to the point where Soonyoung hides your buzzing phone under the couch cushion while spewing threats about throwing it out the window, and even Jeonghan's sighing at you tiredly, telling you to call Mingyu back.

You give in eventually. You call him back and schedule a meetup, and now you find yourself sitting at a cafe with him across from you.

"Hey, thanks for agreeing to meet with me. This won't take long." There is no smile on his face this time, and you realize that it might really be the first time seeing him like this—eyes devoid of emotion, face a neutral mask. It reminds you of the first time you met him at the shop, when he was spiraling into a hopeless void, but perhaps even worse.

You nod slightly in acknowledgement, trying to hide the way your heart sinks at his words. They are something you should be relieved to hear, but you know you're still clinging onto the inkling of hope that you can go back to pretending the two of you mean something to each other.

"Have you been doing okay?"

"Just busy," you repeat the same kind of boring answers from your texts. "You?"

"Yeah," Mingyu says slowly, dragging out the word. Then he takes a deep breath. "Are you avoiding me?"

Yes. "I didn't really see any reason we should stay in touch." A partial lie. It barely makes it out of your mouth.

"Are you for real? Y/N, where is this coming from?"

"I did what I said I'd do." The mask on your face was threatening to crack, especially after seeing the flash of pain in his eyes. "I showed you all of the scenes I saw in the reading. What more is there?"

"I—well, yeah." He frowns. "That might be what we initially agreed, but you can't deny that we had something special. There is no way you didn't feel anything when we were together."

You merely shrug and try your best to harden your eyes instead of giving in to the tears that threaten to spill. Because how can you tell him the truth? How can you give him hope just to crush it with the reality of your doomed fate?

"So—so what, all of it was just pretend? The things you said—you lied, didn't you? When you said I'm not hard to love..." He looks away, biting his lip. "I should've known."

"Hey, no. Everything I said was true, but this has nothing to do with that."

"Did you want to do this at all or were you doing it out of pity? Did you hate every moment of it?"

"Mingyu, stop. Okay, you're right. Let's say I did feel something and that I do like you. But does any of it matter? You're forgetting that I'm not the one in your future. You might not believe in this stuff, but my readings have never been wrong before." You can't do it anymore; it's too hard hiding it. Everything comes tumbling out all at once when he looks so broken. "You're going to meet them someday, and you're going to love them. Whoever they are. It just won't be me."

His jaw goes slack, mouth opening but nothing coming out. It's as if he finally realizes the truth that both of you had forgotten along the way.

"Oh and also," you say, clenching your fists at this final difficult lie you have to tell. "You don't have to hold your end of the agreement. I'm not going to the party anymore."

You know that what you said today would definitely change things since people tend to be averse to anything that goes against what they believe to be their fate. So when you get up from the table and leave, you know that Mingyu won't be chasing after you.

You're right.

Mingyu stops texting you.

It should be a good thing; now you would both return to your normal lives and pretend like this entire thing never happened. But even though you know all this, there is still something weighing you down. It weighs down each step you take, becoming a salient presence that you can't seem to wrap your mind around.

And despite knowing that your relationship with him was only temporary, that you would be no more than a filler until the person in his future arrives, you still look over at your phone in the hopes that maybe the notification would be from Mingyu. You can't help but want him to still want you.

"You're in your head again, you know," Soonyoung jabs you in the arm, dragging you away from the thoughts and back to where you're seated in your living room. "Can't you think more quietly?"

"Can't you shut up for once?"

"See? I told you he was an asshole!" He flicks a piece of popcorn over at you, hitting you perfectly on the head. "I told you that he was all kinds of bad news. Didn't I say you were too nice for your own good? I knew something like this would happen."

"You said," you roll your eyes at him, throwing the piece of popcorn back, "that he might try to kidnap me. And to stop being so nice to hot people—no, I'm not making an exception for you."

"He really said that last part?" Wonwoo asks incredulously.

You nod. Soonyoung shakes his head.

Wonwoo clicks his tongue at his boyfriend and sighs with disbelief. "So about this fate thing. I know you believe you're not the one in Mingyu's future, but do you think a relationship with him is something worth pursuing regardless?"

"Why would it be worth pursuing if I know it'll just end?"

"Well, how do you know that for sure?" Wonwoo puts a hand on your shoulder and pats you comfortingly. He shakes his head a little. "Y/N, maybe you weren't meant to see his partner's face. Look at the rest of us—we don't have your abilities and we all go through it blindly. I started dating Soonyoung because I liked him, and not because I knew that he was the one who would be appearing in my future."

"But—" you start, and then stop. It takes a few replays of his words to let their meaning sink into your head.

"Hey," he continues, "if you think this is something worth going for—and by the way you've been moping around, it sure seems that way—then you should talk to him. See what he thinks."

Maybe Wonwoo is right, and part of you really wants to believe him, but you can't help but think that you should be using the information you have to your advantage. Surely, your ability has to be a blessing at some point, right? Isn't it a good thing to have put an end to your relationship with Mingyu now so that it wouldn't hurt even more later?

"You never know what could happen in the future." It's as if Wonwoo can hear your thoughts. "Maybe the future can change, or maybe the person in the reading really is you. There may be other people who can fit what you saw but that doesn't discount the possibility that it might be you."

"Yeah, yeah. All this talk is nice but that doesn't mean that Mingyu isn't just an asshole who's playing with you," Soonyoung stuffs a handful of popcorn in his boyfriend's mouth and turns to you with a serious look. "You need to think this through, okay? Do you really like him or do you just like the attention he gives you?"

"Y/N can't possibly fall for someone that easily, right?" comes out muffled from where Wonwoo is still trying to chew through the popcorn. He raises a brow at you.

"You'd be surprised." Soonyoung rolls his eyes then turns back to you. "Do you really like him or do you just like kissing him?"

You feel the full force of their scrutiny when Wonwoo also peers closely at you, searching your face for answers. Maybe the heat on your cheeks is enough to provide one.

"Do you really like him, or do you just enjoy fixing broken people?"

"Um—"

"Do you really like him or is he just hot?"

Wonwoo snorts. "By that standard, I'm quite surprised that Y/N never had a crush on you."

"They did—" Soonyoung quickly stops himself, but it's too late. Wonwoo's judging eyes are already on you, making you slowly sink into the couch and hoping you can disappear.

Not going to the party was a lie that you told Mingyu—an excuse so that you would have no reason to ever see him again. However, the problem is that scrapping the agreement hasn't only left you with a broken heart, but it also brought you back to square one: you still do not have a plus one for Minghao's party.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad though, or at least that's what you tell yourself.

From the outside, Minghao's house looks massive. He has fancy lights installed at every corner, lighting up the exterior walls every couple of feet, and giant windows through which you can already see people mingling about. Wonwoo pulls into the driveway slowly and turns back to give you a worried glance just before the three of you step out.

The interior of the house is just as impressive. A chandelier hangs in the front foyer, and symmetric spiral staircases spread off to either side. Minghao stands near the front, a drink in hand, and his shy smile is plastered all over his face as he greets everyone that walks in. He greets you with a hug.

"Congrats on your engagement," you say, taking in his new look while trying not to glance around the room. His hair is a bit longer than what he had back in college, and you don't recall ever seeing him wear anything remotely formal back then.

"Y/N, how long has it been?"

"Considering the last time I saw you was when you were single?" you laugh. "Yeah, it's been a while."

"It's good to see you again," Minghao grins and then goes to peer behind you. "Oh, is your boyfriend here too?"

"Um, he wasn't feeling very well so..." A lame excuse but it's the best you could come up with at the moment. "He couldn't make it."

"That's okay," Minghao's face falls for the briefest second before it lights up again. "Oh, you even brought the Soonyoung? What a rare sight." And then he goes off to wrap Soonyoung and Wonwoo in a big hug before dragging them off into the living room. At least he wouldn't be the one questioning you about your non-existent fake boyfriend tonight, though Minghao isn't who you should be worrying about.

You follow along, sticking to the walls in the hopes you'd be just as invisible as wallpaper. Even without seeing Junhui here, this is what you fear the most—being amongst your college crowd would bring back feelings you haven't touched in years. Feelings that you're not sure you want to ever unpack. But soon it gets a little easier when Minghao pulls you with him to greet everyone around the room, and so you catch up with Vernon and Seungkwan, and then later, you say hi to Chan and Jihoon.

It isn't until you reach the kitchen when you finally spot him. Junhui has his back turned to you, helping with preparations, and beside him, Seokmin greets you silently with a nod as your eyes meet. You smile at him, thankful that he's not alerting everyone of your presence especially when you know just how loud he can be.

Just before you turn to leave and make your escape, you see her. From far away, she's another face in the crowd, though you can feel a spark of familiarity as if you've seen her somewhere before. Perhaps in one of the readings that you've done over the years for clients? You've read somewhere that the brain never forgets faces, after all.

She greets you and then heads over to the kitchen.

"Hey, Junhui, right? It's so nice to finally meet you," she says, holding out a hand. Her voice seems just as familiar as her face, and now you're sure you've seen her before. "I'm Minghao's cousin."

When Junhui takes her hand, she smiles. It's a full smile that reveals her teeth, and her eyes disappear, and—

The drink you're holding falls to the floor.

It all rushes back to you. The reason why she's so familiar is because you've seen her in the scenes of the fateful reading you did years ago. You've seen her on an amusement park ride, with one hand in the air and the other in Junhui's. On a dancefloor at a wedding—that you now assume to be Minghao's—with arms wrapped around him and later, lips against his. And then there was this very moment where their handshake was interrupted by a glass of wine hitting the floor.

This is the moment they would meet. The one that you've been running from all those years ago, the one that would start everything between them.

This is how it happens.

"Are you okay?" She comes rushing to your side without missing a beat, paper towels in her hands. "Be careful of the glass."

You're frozen on the spot, unable to feel bad about dropping the glass and unable to help clean it up. Unable to feel anything except for the one thought that flashes through your mind: you have to get out of there as fast as you can.

Everything is a blur after that. Somehow your feet get moving, slowly at first and then quickly after that, and you hear your name being called a few times as you head to the door, but you don't stop until you're outside and halfway down the steps.

Outside it's quieter and the air is cooler, and it's enough to slow down the thoughts running through your head. You end up sitting on the steps and leaning against the cold metal of the railing in the hopes that it might numb your feelings.

"Y/N? You okay?" a voice mumbles above your ear. It's familiar for a different reason this time, and you look up to see the person you least expected but wanted the most. Mingyu steps out of the house and closes the door behind him, glancing at you with an unreadable expression. You hadn't seen him inside, but he must've arrived sometime after you—too late to be your date, and too early to miss your embarrassing moment.

"Mingyu? Why are you here? I told you I wasn't going to the party."

"I hate to break it to you, but it wasn't exactly a believable lie." He gives a weak smile then sits down beside you on the steps. "I wanted to make sure you'd be okay."

"I really should've stayed home. I knew this would be a bad idea but—" You quickly turn away to get rid of the tear that slips out.

"Hey, Y/N. Talk to me. What's wrong?" Mingyu takes off his jacket and wraps it around you, and then gently moves you until you're leaning against him, buried in the crook of his shoulder. "Was she who you saw in his future?"

"Yeah, but it's—it's not just that. This was the moment that I saw in his reading. This is how they meet."

He tenses slightly. "This was in your reading? That's tough. Y/N, I don't even know what to say. I'm sorry, I should've gotten here earlier to be here with you from the start like we planned."

"It's okay, it's not your fault. But Mingyu, what have I done? I broke up with him thinking that he would leave me for her one day, so I didn't want to find out if and when they would meet." You have to swallow the sob in your throat. "I've always held onto the hope that it would be wrong. But now, I got to witness it anyway, right in front of me."

"Do you regret your decision?"

"No." You shake your head. "Well, I don't know. I'm over him but I just—I hate it so much. I hate feeling like I'm helpless and unable to do anything about fate."

A silence stretches out between the two of you with only the music from the house and the distant rumble of cars filling the night. It hasn't been long since he sat down beside you, but the warmth of his arms around you and the rising and falling of his chest are enough to slowly wipe away the worries from earlier.

"Look, I thought about what you said," Mingyu breaks the silence, pulling away to meet your eyes instead, "and I don't think it changes anything."

You immediately know what he's referring to. "How does it not?"

He takes a deep breath. "You want to know why I don't believe in fortune telling? This is exactly why. I don't like the idea that we are locked into our fates, or that certain things will or won't happen no matter what choices we make."

"What about when you really meet them one day? And inevitably fall for them?"

"I get why you would be afraid of that, Y/N, I really do. But none of that matters. When I say I want to be with you, this is my choice. It doesn't matter who it is that you saw in your reading; I want to choose you and love you on purpose. Not by accident, and not by fate."

You know he's right and Wonwoo was too. This entire time, you've been trying to run away from a fate that you can't escape, and what you saw today only proves that.

But maybe now, it's time to stop running.

"Do you really think that we can change things?"

"We can do anything we want to do." Mingyu nods firmly. Then he takes your hand, squeezing you gently. "But first, let's get out of here?"

"Yeah." You smile for the first time that night and let him lead the way.

A small diner at the corner of the street near your place is what the two of you decide on. When you enter, the first thing you notice is how much it reminds you of the "before" images of that nice restaurant. Half of the diner is dark with the overhead lights flickering once in a while in an attempt to turn on, while the other half is cast in an unpleasant fluorescent light. There are pieces of garbage on the floor that an employee sweeps up as she greets you. In short, the state of it almost makes you want to walk right out.

But instead, you order your food. You sit down at a table towards the darker half of the room as you wait.

Mingyu clears his throat. "You know," he starts, a shy smile on his face, "I can read your palm too."

"What?" That isn't remotely close to anything you might expect him to say. You give him a questioning look as you put your hand on the table, palm up. "Um, sure. Go for it."

He takes your hand and then gently runs his fingers over the lines on your palm, tracing them as he closes his eyes and pretends to envision something the way you do. Soon, your confusion fades into amusement at the effort that he's putting into this. Each of his feather-like touches causes your heart to speed up a little, and you have to try to will your palms not to start sweating because that would not be attractive at all.

"So? What do you see?"

"Shh," he whispers with his eyes firmly shut. "The spirit is still talking."

You use the chance to really glance at him. Not much has changed since the last time you'd seen him, but somehow he looks even better now—perhaps healthier or more radiant, like he's completely healed from the remnants of a broken heart plaguing him before. Maybe even happier. You wonder if what Soonyoung said about you healing broken people is true.

"I saw a lot of things," Mingyu finally says as he opens his eyes, and his lips automatically curl into a smirk when he catches you staring. "First, I saw myself in your future."

"Yeah? What were we doing?"

"We went on a picnic and ended up getting chased by bees," he chuckles. "Then we went to a bookstore but ended up making out between the shelves, but we got kicked out by a tired employee who looked like it wasn't his first time kicking people out for doing that."

You stifle a laugh. "Why does it seem like our dates are always being interrupted?"

"Hmm, there was one where we had some peace, actually. It was when we were skating, and I fell right on my butt. Then you asked if it hurt when I fell for you—well, you tried to say it as a pickup line, but you messed it up." Mingyu pauses for a second, biting his lip like he's almost hesitant. "Instead, you ended up asking me if I've fallen for you."

"And? What did you say?" Your heart speeds up tenfold.

"I said yes, Y/N. I've fallen for you. I think you already knew it by the time I said it, but you just smiled. Then you suddenly fell too, and we laughed about it."

The way he says it with all the confidence in the world tells you that maybe it's okay for you to admit it too, that there's no need to be afraid to confront your feelings like you'd always done before. Now the insecurities that had been plaguing you suddenly fade away, leaving only one thing clear in your head: there would be no more running.

You break into a smile. "Then I said I fell for you too, right?"

"Yeah, you did." It takes a moment for the initial shock on his face to disappear, and when it does, he's smiling so widely that small crinkles appear near his eyes. "And if you want, I can show you how each of these scenes are supposed to happen."

"Okay, sure. Show me."

Mingyu lets out a loud exhale. "That's a relief. For a second I thought you were going to complain about everything the way I did with your reading."

"Hey—see? I'm nicer than you are." You shoot him a glare. "Who even does that?"

"Yeah, I'll admit that wasn't the greatest impression. Maybe we can start over?"

"Well," you pretend to think about it but can't help the smile creeping onto your face. "This is kind of a shitty place for a first date."

"Maybe our first date will be that picnic I saw in my reading then. But without the bees, yeah?"

You nod.

"Oh yeah, have your wounds healed? They didn't leave any scars, did they?" He lifts your hand to examine it carefully before taking your other hand as well, turning both of them over to look for the evidence of your wounds from the fall. Then he simply holds them.

And suddenly, it clicks into place. The small scars you'd seen on the hands in the vision, the dimness of the diner, and the blurred face of the lover. Everything seems to line up so perfectly that it has your head spinning for a moment with deja vu. Had it really been you in the vision?Was the lover not someone with your hairstyle, nor Mingyu's ex, but actually you yourself? And wasn't this moment at the diner—with your hands and the tiny, healing scars on them enveloped by Mingyu's—the first scene in the vision? Maybe this is how it happens. You really hope that this is how it happens.

You don't know whether you should tell him or not, but when you look up and see the small smile dancing on his lips and the sparkle in his eyes, you get the feeling that Mingyu already knows. And whether he's purposely trying to recreate the scene or whether he merely lets it occur, the gesture ignites a sort of warmth in your heart. It fuels the seed of hope that maybe, just maybe, you won't have to say goodbye one day.

It takes a couple of weeks for life to settle down after that. Between working your regular hours at the shop and then coming home to Soonyoung and Wonwoo's invasive questions, you also have to deal with the aftermath of Minghao's party. Which, surprisingly enough, is not as scary as you once might've thought.

Junhui is actually the one who reaches out to you first. He sends a text asking if you're okay after what happened, and you nearly jump at seeing the name flashing across your screen; admittedly, you never did end up deleting his contact info. And with a bit of encouragement from Mingyu, you end up not only texting back but also meeting him for a chat about everything that's happened since college.

He's grown up since you'd last seen him, but otherwise, he's still the same Junhui: quiet, smiley, and laughs easily at the things you say. Most of all, he doesn't resent you for what you did and rather understands. You're not sure if he says this because he's finally met who he's meant to be with, or whether he remembers the scenes at all, but you don't bring it up. You want to save him from going into this new relationship with any expectations, whether that be the failure or the success of it—something you only learned recently. Regardless of what happens, you hope he can be as happy with her as he was in all the scenes of his reading.

The weekend after that, the picnic date that Mingyu jokingly mentioned in his reading finally happens. Well, it's not exactly a picnic date since he switches it up at the last minute and the two of you end up going apple picking instead.

It's a beautiful day—the sun is shining brightly with no clouds to be seen—and it gives you a sense of relief when the past while has been so hectic. Mingyu picks you up at your apartment, and you rush out while ignoring your roommate's terrible advice and continuous questions about what you'd be doing and where you'd be going. Although even after you go downstairs, you're almost sure you can see Soonyoung peering from your seventh-floor balcony; knowing him, he's probably got binoculars out too to watch your every move.

"So what happened to the picnic date that you saw?"

Mingyu shrugs without missing a beat. "The reading changed, and I just went with what I saw."

"Oh, did it?" You give him a questioning look, but he only smiles back at you and doesn't give away any more information.

The drive to the orchard is slow with the busy traffic of the city around you, and you enjoy your time relaxing in your seat and listening to Mingyu talk about his week. He tells you about his new job and moving to new place and says that Seungcheol is a much better manager than his previous. And when he asks about meeting Soonyoung, you're ready to spill all the details about all of your roommate's silly antics—from avoiding baking because he didn't know to use oven mitts when taking things out of the oven, to setting an eight-hour timer every night in place of an alarm. There was also a time when Wonwoo had unknowingly poured salt into Soonyoung's coffee instead of sugar, and being the considerate boyfriend he is, Soonyoung drank it without so much as a grimace.

They are stories that have gotten old to you, yet Mingyu laughs like they're the funniest thing. The way he turns to you at each red light to simply look at you with a smile is enough to have your heart speeding up and your palms sweating. He takes you in like he's committing each moment to memory. Well, at least until the cars behind you start to honk impatiently when the light turns green.

It turns out that Mingyu does that a lot. During your time at the orchard, you could be saying something as you reach up to grab the apples, and he would just be staring at you as he listens intently.

"What?"

A nonchalant shrug. "Just appreciating the view."

"So tell me," you say, glancing at him up and down, "what's supposed to happen here? What did you see?"

"Hmm, we picked two bushels of apples."

"That's it?"

"Yeah," he confirms enthusiastically. "And they got quite heavy to carry."

"Oh."

"Were you expecting something more? Hmm?" A small smirk rests on his lips when he leans in a little closer. He's so close that you have your lips parted and eyes nearly shut, anticipating the feel of his soft lips on yours. But instead, he pulls back with an apple in his hand. "Found a good one right behind your head over there."

You roll your eyes, turning to leave so he doesn't see the embarrassment on your cheeks.

"Hey, I'm kidding. But if you want me to kiss me, you should just say so." He stops you from leaving, and this time he traps you in place with hands on the branches on either side of you. "I'm all yours, Y/N."

Then he finally closes the distance. You expect it to be like the last time, for hands to wander and for lips to consume you, but this time his lips are barely there. It's almost achingly slow the way he kisses you so tenderly, lighter than you thought possible, like a gentle breath against yours with the taste of apples lingering between you. His hands reach up to caress your jaw as if any more pressure would break this fragile moment, and then your senses are overwhelmed by sweetness. The sweetness of apples, the sweetness of Mingyu's lips and the warmth of his mouth, and the sweetness of the sun against your skin and breeze in your hair and voices floating over from a world away.

When you pull apart and open your eyes again, something about this suddenly triggers a memory. You thought the second scene of Mingyu's reading would take place at the market because the faint taste of apples in it reminded you of the cider at the market. But maybe the answer isn't the market at all, and rather an orchard. And maybe it is this particular moment.

Your heart races a little faster at the thought that it really could be it. You really could be Mingyu's lover from the visions.

"Oh, watch out." He steps aside, pulling you with him to avoid a bee flying by.

"Hey—I thought you said no bees?"

That gets you a laugh as Mingyu takes your hand and tugs you along. "Maybe it's good that it interrupted us."

And you simply smile, brushing off your thoughts and letting yourself enjoy the moment.

"I know you said he's hot, but I didn't expect him to actually," Soonyoung gestures, "be hot."

You turn away from the rink to shoot him a glare. "I am offended."

Initially, you thought Mingyu's idea for turning your skating date into a double date would go terribly. How were you supposed to let him meet the two friends who thought he was a creep? Especially Soonyoung—you were sure he'd make some crude comments that might entirely sabotage your budding relationship. But to your surprise, a charming smile and an offer to help lace up their skates is all it took for Mingyu to have them wrapped around his finger.

Pretty privilege, that's exactly what it is.

"Hey! I wasn't sure if you were serious or if you only found him hot because he gave you attention—" The rest of Soonyoung's words get cut off as he goes to dodge your punch. "Anyway, you're treating him well, right? Are you nicer to him than you are to me? Don't hurt him, okay? Don't break his heart."

"I can't believe you," you snort. "Whose side are you on?"

"I'm saying all of this for your sake, Y/N. We can't have you moping around like you did for the past few weeks."

You turn back to the ice and pretend you didn't hear him at all. Should you be laughing or crying in this situation? While you're glad your friends are getting along with Mingyu, it's all too ironic how a pretty face is all it takes for Soonyoung to go back on his words about not being so nice to hot people.

After Mingyu and Wonwoo finish up their laps around the rink, Mingyu comes back to drag you with him this time. You go, albeit reluctantly. The feeling of falling at the park was still too fresh in your mind, and so you skate with one hand in his while the other is grasping at anything to avoid a hard collision with the ice.

"You're not going to fall." Mingyu raises an eyebrow at you, eyes brimming with amusement. "I was only joking about that."

You glance at him warily. "You said that you would."

"Maybe, but only for you."

He smiles, and despite the anxiety that courses through your veins, you find yourself smiling too. Every step you take with Mingyu squeezing your hand reassuringly, you're able to relax like you're basking in the warmth that radiates off of his happiness, and slowly but steadily, the two of you make it safely around the rink without falling.

By the time you stop to take a break, Soonyoung and Wonwoo are nowhere to be seen. You scan the rink, trying to find the familiar faces amongst the larger afternoon crowd now, but your search is unsuccessful. What you find instead, strangely enough, is that people are suddenly gathering around on the opposite side. The rink seems to quiet down with a silence now lingering in the air as if everyone is waiting with bated breath, and in your curiosity, you pull Mingyu over with you to join the crowd.

And that's when you see it: Wonwoo on one knee, Soonyoung covering his mouth in shock, and a ring resting in the box in Wonwoo's hands. The same thin, silver ring that you've familiarized yourself with from seeing it in Soonyoung's future. This must be the exactmoment you saw.

Soonyoung smiles brightly when he gives his answer that you're a little too far to hear, though you don't doubt it's a good one judging by the looks on their faces. The crowd erupts into applause and then Wonwoo is tackled to the ice by Soonyoung enveloping him, and two of them are lost in their own world, too busy to notice anything or anyone else.

"And this is how they fall for each other," Mingyu murmurs into your ear. "Guess my reading was wrong—it wasn't us. It's them."

Once the crowd dissipates, the two of you wait for the newly engaged couple by the bench. Soonyoung flashes the ring on his finger before heading to the snack bar, and while later, Wonwoo joins you with an endearing grin on his face.

"Wow, congrats!" You pull him into a hug as soon as he steps off the ice. "But why didn't you tell us? We could've helped you prepare for it, or we could've taken pictures or something."

"That was..." He lets out a loud exhale. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I was going to do it over dinner—I had one of those private rooms booked out at the restaurant and all. But the ring fell out of my pocket when I fell on the ice, and well. It landed right in front of him. So," he gives a wry smile, "I didn't really have a choice."

Mingyu pats him on the back reassuringly. "Hey, it's about the simple things. Love doesn't always have to be romantic."

You remember him saying these exact words from your first date at the restaurant but hearing them again now makes you wonder if you had it wrong this entire time. Maybe you've been focusing so much on making your reenactments romantic to match the scenes in the visions that you never realized the scenes are meant to happen anywhere. They're meant to happen in between the normalness of everyday life. They're simple acts of love, just as Mingyu always says.

Later when the four of you are sufficiently warmed up with hot drinks and laughter is in the air, you think you have it figured out. Each of these moments can easily be something that you witness in a reading, but maybe the point isn't to go out searching for them or to run away from them. Maybe it's to make choices that will create a future that you want—on purpose, and not by fate.

"What do you think, Y/N?" Mingyu pulls you out of your thoughts, gently wrapping an arm around your waist.

"What?"

"You can come over tonight," he suggests. "Since Soonyoung will be out all night anyway."

"Wait, are you sure? I don't want to intrude or—"

"Yeah, it's fine. Besides, you haven't seen my new place yet."

Your heart gives a loud thud at the thought of being alone with him again, all too reminded of what happened the last time. But you swallow the nerves away, put on a smile, and agree.

The two of you leave the couple to go to their fancy dinner as fiancés, and afterwards, you find your hand in Mingyu's as you head back to his place.

Right when you step into his apartment, you get the strangest thought that you're relievedto see nothing is set up. There are no fancy candles lining the room this time, no vase of beautiful flowers on the table, and no strings of sparkling lights hanging from above. Mingyu's place looks entirely normal, albeit slightly messier than before since it's clear he hasn't fully unpacked yet.

"Don't judge," he says, quickly going to collect the few pieces of clothing left in the living room while avoiding your gaze. "I just moved in recently."

It's a smaller space than his previous apartment, but much nicer—newer looking and without any cracks at the seams like there were in his previous. As if this were a fresh start for a fully healed heart, one that was ready to love again.

Mingyu cooks a nice dinner and as you try to help out in the kitchen, you start to think that you could really get used to this. Watching him add all the different ingredients and seeing the gears turn in his head, and then when you're seated at the table, feeling the smile lingering on your mouth until the last bite of the first proper meal you've had in a while. You think that maybe this is it.

And a while later, you're settled on the couch to watch a movie though it quickly fades into the background when the warmth of his body is pressed against yours. His lips are soft, mouth sweet from the wine, and all around you is the faint smell of oranges from his bodywash and a hint of citrusy detergent from his clothes clinging to your skin.

It has to be past midnight when the movie comes to an end, with the credits slowly fading out. Mingyu gets up to refill your glass of water and you follow him into the kitchen grab a snack when suddenly a blast of music comes from the other side of the wall. It's noticeably loud at first but is soon turned down into a quiet melody in the background.

Mingyu frowns, pausing to listen to the song. "These walls sure are thin, huh. It's generally been pretty quiet around here until now."

"You could probably Shazam their entire playlist like this," you joke. Or, well, maybe it's not so much of a joke when you feel like looking it up yourself because there is something familiar about the song. You can't quite place it, but it's so familiar that it almost bothers you like an itch you can't scratch.

The corner of his lip twitches. "It's okay, maybe they also have something to celebrate."

You're still thinking about why the song sounds so familiar when Mingyu gently takes your hands and guides them to the back of his neck, and then wraps his arms around your waist to pull you in. And when you look up, everything clicks. The familiar walls and familiar music, the snacks on the counter, the light scent of oranges from the bodywash, and even the clothes that you're wearing—Mingyu's clothes. This is the final scene you saw in your vision. This is how dancing in the kitchen at midnight is supposed to turn out.

"You're not going to step on my toes again, are you?" Mingyu's eyes twinkle with amusement as he slowly starts to move with the music, dragging you with him.

The two of you step and you sway, and it's not quite to the beat of the song. You do end up stepping on him, your knees bump a few times and your foreheads nearly do too. It's every bit as awkward as the first time you did this, and even more so without the blanket of darkness or the pretense of romance.

And yet, you hear the endless bubbles of laughter coming out of your mouth. You see the sparkles in Mingyu's eyes, the bright smiles like he can't contain his happiness. You feel it in the way you dance together at a rhythm that belongs to no one else but the two of you.

You know it when he leans in, breath but a whisper at your ear as he says, "Thank you for making me believe in love again."

Now you don't have to look into his future to know that all the scenes you'd seen were about you. Now you can picture it—Mingyu looking up from your laced hands on the table and seeing your smile, face no longer out of focus. Pulling away from your kiss in the orchard has you seeing your own gaze, surprised but content. And then there is this very moment when you see yourself in Mingyu's eyes and you just know.

This is how you fall in love.

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sketchguk · 6 months

Text

part time lover (moodboard)

➳ pairing: investigative journalist!jeongguk x daycare teacher!reader. alternatively, spy!jeongguk x assassin!reader

➳ genre: smut, fluff, angst, fake marriage au, dad au, spy x family au

➵ word count: 465 (teaser) / 30.8k

➳ summary: there is no crime more perfect than marrying jeon jeongguk. your relationship is nothing more than a ruse - while your friends pester you for being perpetually single, jeongguk desperately needs a wife to complete the pristine image of a family, fooling his way through the parent interview at the nation’s most prestigious private school.

only time will tell how deep your lies will run as you find home in one another’s minds. because untangled in the moonlight, he is but a spy, exposing a secret world of corruption, and you, an assassin, ridding the streets of danger one hit at a time.

➳ warnings: themes of parenthood, raising a child, reader and jk are both orphans, reader has a past where she struggled with financially supporting her family, eldest daughter trauma, reader is insecure, fears of abandonment, mentions of violence and m*rder (but not explicit), mention of weapons (guns, knives, grenades, poison), jk has a bruise from boxing, descriptions of an explosion, blood is drawn twice (via kitchen knife and shrapnel from aforementioned explosion), (1) mention of weight loss, jk changes his appearance in an attempt to fit in, mention of a minor car crash, social drinking, scars (surgical/knife, bullet wounds), characters are liars for the sake of the plot, side characters are misogynists (satire), food descriptions, pet names (hers: angel, good girl, princess his: love).

➳ publish date: saturday, october 14th 8pm EST

➳ a/n: thank you for all the love you've shown on the teaser. i really didn't expect so much support >.< i hope you're all as excited as i am though !! once again, this is part of the “industry baby” collab! please look forward to all of the other fics in the masterpost 💛

smut warnings below the cut!

➳ smut warnings: virgin reader, sexual tension, body worship, nipple play, marking, oral (f receiving), fingering, hair pulling, unprotected sex, jk has a big dick, praising, stomach bulge, spitting, use of the word slut, marriage kink(?) he loves his wife so much, reader wants to be bred, cumshot

“You can touch me if you want,” he offers.

You’re not as confident as Jeongguk, but oh, how you wish you were.

“Do you want to?” He senses your hesitation, yet you nod your head, affirming.

“I do,” you bite the inside of your cheek. “I want to touch you- feel you.”

Jeongguk wraps his fingers around your wrists, bringing your hands to rest on his broad shoulders. They’re muscular beneath your touch. You curse yourself for letting your mind wander and for letting your panties soak with arousal ー neither of which you can control.

Somehow, you resist the urge to look down at his physique. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to the elbows, revealing his strong forearms, adorned by the dark tattoos that coil up his muscles. Your gaze darts across his features, struggling to focus on the starlight in his eyes. You switch between the edge of his jaw, the dip of his neck, and the plump of his lips.

“My eyes are up here, angel.” The corner of his mouth draws into a smile ー so bright and devastatingly beautiful. He hooks a gentle hand beneath your chin, guiding you to meet his stare. “Tell me what you’re thinking about. What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”

Your voice is soft, just barely above a whisper. It’s nearly inaudible. “Thinking about what it would be like to kiss you.”

The innocence of your words makes Jeongguk blush. He’s never been the type to be so easily affected. After all, he’s the bold one in the relationship ー confident, decisive, dominant. But you make him weak in the knees.

“You don’t have to ask permission to kiss me.” Jeongguk inches closer, considerate hands squeezing around your waist. “You’re my wife.”

Why does the thought of belonging to Jeongguk make your heart stutter? You’re certain that this is nothing but pretend, yet the only thing that makes you believe this could be real is the soothing circles that Jeongguk draws onto your skin. He’s present. He’s willing. His lips are right there, right in front of you. You could take the leap of faith and close the distance, leaning forward to kiss him.

So you do.

Your eyes are half lidded as you murmur a quiet confession, “I want to kiss you again.” Normally, you wouldn’t dare to be so bold, but you feel drunk on his taste.

“You can do whatever you want to me.” Jeongguk draws you closer, dragging your core onto the apex of his thighs, thick and sturdy. “I like anything that you like. Kissing you. Holding you. Just looking at you,” he shrugs. “And if it wasn’t obvious enough… I like you.”

Jeon Jeongguk makes you absolutely breathless. “Ar- are we still pretending?”

check it out here!

#jungkook smut #jungkook angst #jungkook fluff #bts smut #bts angst #bts fluff #jungkook x reader #jungkook scenario #jungkook #jeon jungkook #bts imagine #bts scenario #bts fanfic #bts fan fic #bts fanfiction #bts fan fiction

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50cal-fullauto-astarion · 8 months

Text

to leave the blood stay in the veins

monster!könig x f!rcursed!reader (no use of 'y/n') 6.6k words NSFW!

DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT‼️CW: extremely NSFW, descriptions of gore, implied consumption of human flesh by a non-human monster, mention of necrotic curse, monsterfucking, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, knotting (no omegaverse), outdoor sex, ambiguous ending, pre-established relationship, 0% proofread, könig and reader are both fucking unhinged.

Day 01 of the Haunted Hoedown Challenge by @/inklore

taboo au (monsterfucking) + "i'll be your dirty little secret, if that's what you're into." + oh no i'm dating the town serial killer

There is a beast in the woods, and it leaves so little meat on the bone that not even carrion birds find value in the corpses it leaves behind.

It’s a strange town in the foothills of the Austrian Alps, full of little sicknesses hiding in the corners, and you learned them well when you moved here. No one goes past the treeline at night. Hardly anyone is outside of home if they can help it. Tourists are the beast’s fodder.

Your boyfriend thinks it’s funny.

König, under his ever-present hood–a not altogether uncommon sight in your town, people come here when they have something to hide, something they are uncomfortable with or find hideous in themselves, and he has given an unimaginable amount for you out of love–laughs, sharp in the tooth.

“Anyone dumb enough to head into the trees is dumb enough to die,” he teases, but there is an arrogance and a contempt swimming deep in his bloodshot blue eyes.

“That’s coldblooded, but not wrong,” you tell him, from behind your own mask. Plain thing, blank in expression, modeled from the one from Eyes Without A Face. It covers the ravages of a curse, numb necrosis slowly spreading up your face through the years. “I still want you to get me a gun.”

“What’s a gun going to do against a thing like that?” he asks, tilting his head, the hood bagging off the curled horns that start at his temples and sweep back over his ears. “Something like that, you need silver. I’ll get you a knife. Big one. Nice and fucking sharp, Schatzi.”

The knife isn’t a comfort when the beast begins to hunt in town. It stalks from house to house, preying on people in their beds, their living rooms, their bathtubs–there is no rhyme or reason, not a whit of discernable pattern.

Only teeth-gouged bones and viscera ground into wall, tile, and carpet alike. Your neighbor falls victim, and you watch the police from your window, flinching when a veteran officer stumbles out into the fall-frosted grass to vomit, sobbing and pulling his hair.

“It got Emil,” you say, still watching through your sheer curtains.

König nearly cackles from your bed, lounging as he visits. “Good. Emil was a piece of shit. Depperte Fut.”

You glance at him from the corner of your eye, over your shoulder, before returning back to the circus in the yard next door. “‘Stupid cunt’ is a pretty strong insult. He was an asshole, but I don’t think he deserved to die like that,” you mumble.

“You don’t know all that much about your neighbors, Schatzi.”

You begin to rock side-to-side on your hips, the enormous silver blade König gifted you turning over and over in your hands, the point digging lightly into your palm.

It’s insane, the way you begin to tell yourself that you’ve seen König’s face nearly everyday for the last two years—you can see it right now. He lies on your bed, pointed teeth gleaming under his split philtrum in the soft yellow light of the bedside lamp and the red-blue flash of the cruisers. You know there is a man under the hood, however odd and satyr-seeming.

And yet. And yet.

The blade digs a little too deep, drawing a curse-blackened bead of blood. König’s eyes burn into the back of your neck, and you can only guess his horizontal pupils dilate into black holes.

Just quit your job. I’ll take care of you.

It’s a simple enough promise, and one you know König will keep, but not one you’re willing to make. You have few shreds of independence, hard-bought through years of fighting back against misfortunes and setbacks, and, no matter the depths with which you love him, you’re not willing to trade your shit wage on faith for love of a man. It doesn’t matter how helplessly besotted he is.

It’s this molar-cracking grit that delivers you right to the beast. Because you were forced to pick up an extra half shift at the hotel to fold towels behind the front desk, because you needed the money, because you wanted to pay back your beautiful, bloodthirsty boyfriend for the ridiculous blade he begat you.

The god forsaken thing lumbers down a deserted street, blocks from your little rental, and something fucking horrendous seizes you. It’s enormous, walking on cloven hooves and back-bent legs. Its arms are too fucking long, clawed, jagged. And worst is the skull, bleached white and glowing like a beacon in the dark, an enormous rack of brutally sharp horns dripping trinkets of bone and gold that glints in the street lamp it approaches.

A horrible fact hits you. It’s not lumbering, it’s wandering. Putting a massive, craggy hand on fences and peering into houses, taking its time, evaluating. You swear you can almost hear it humming.

You don’t know when your hand found the handle of the silver blade strapped to your belt under your coat, but the leather on the grip bites your palm with the force of your grip, a nauseous, cold sweat terror tearing apart your ability to think.

It’s a primal fear, one that makes you want to protect your soft, vulnerable neck, even if the blood that warms it runs venomous.

It’s a bad choice, but there are no good ones. When the beast lifts its head and scents the air, skull snapping your direction and shaking its grisly trophies, you run. You snap the huge blade off your hip and drop into a dead sprint, cutting between yards, trying to escape the horrendous bellow that reverberates through the bony chambers of the monster’s skull.

Choosing to run instead of freezing maybe bought you a few extra minutes before death decided it was time to seize your pulse in reclamation, and it hurts. The physical exertion it takes to bomb through the last stretches of suburbia before the forest closes in feels like you are breaking every bit of your body by forced choice, listening to that awful fucking thing chase after you.

Your blade makes a slicing sound cutting through the air at your side, the monster’s hooves pound the dirt as it digs in and chases after you, but, good god, it doesn’t sound like it’s even trying.

You don’t dare look back, pushing your body past agony, your lungs shredding in your chest. You’ve never moved this fast, you’ve never run this hard for this long. Your body is TV static—hissing, popping, distant—and, insanely, the urge to cry drills into your eye sockets.

You’re going to die. You’re going to die. You’re going to fucking die, stupidly and dumbly and pointlessly, because you wanted to pay your boyfriend a stupid sum of fucking money, for a stupid fucking knife that he bought you on a stupid fucking joke.

Two meters from the second worst decision of your life, the monster snaps out, rough hand between your shoulder blades, crashing you into the goddamned dirt. Your eyebrow splits on a tree root, your eyes roll in the back of your head, your hand stays manically tight on the blade, slicing your other arm.

“Schaaaatzi,” the miserable fucking thing hisses, pressing that same hand between your shoulder blades, pinning you into the freezing dirt.

Oh, god, no, it has König’s voice. It’s—it’s not him, but it has his voice, thin and washed out as low-hung fog, but you would know that voice. In hell, in high water, in the dirt with a massive, bark-rough hand grinding your skin raw through your coat—you - know - his - voice.

Furiously, you slash the blade over your head, behind your back, screaming and digging your feet in the dirt. For a brief second, as you hack at the wood of the monster’s hand and wrist, you’re even able to push yourself off the ground by mere inches. The beast growls and shoves you back down twice as hard, knocking the wind out of you, spasming your hand open. The knife drops, and you begin to blindly try digging and dragging yourself away.

“Stop…hurting…me,” the beast lows, still in your boyfriend’s voice, and you imagine a bathtub full of gnawed bones, a living room with scattered body parts, your kitchen smeared with blood like cave wall art, and you start to scream as loud as your lungs will allow, your mask filling with dirt in your horrendous and futile bid to escape. Bloody murder bellows, filled with rage, wanting to kill and consume and conflagrate.

If König is dead, you will take your pound of flesh. You will either die fighting, or win, and you will hack apart this freak-fuck’s corpse to burn in your woodstove to warm your home. You’ll mount its fucking skull on your front door, so anything else in these woods will know you won’t hesitate to make trophies of them either.

Bone, warm to the touch, presses against the back of your head. When it breathes, the air is as hot as exhaust, almost scalding your back. “Schatzi,” it bids you slowly once again.

“I’LL KILL YOU!” it rips your throat raw to shriek it, reaching back and almost dislocating your arms to rip at anything you can. Your hands fall on the dressings attached to its horns, you tear off a vertebra, and a gold wedding band, and a bracelet of rave kandi in plastic beads. “IF YOU HURT HIM, I’LL YOU FUCKING KILL YOU!”

The head presses harder, driving your face into the dirt. There is something desperate in the pressure. It spits all at once, grating and wide in a voice you know better than your own, “You pissed off a fucking witch, because you ran out of riddles to tell her, when she was ransoming you to your arshloch grandmother. She never paid. That’s why you were cursed—no one gave a fuck. But I gave her my face for you, to stop it halfway, better than fucking nothing.”

Your rage freezes immediately, your chest heaving under the weight it presses down on you.

No one knows that. Only König. He’s the only person who would know about his lonely and quiet climb up to the Scottish highlands. Besides you, and the witch, König is the only one who would know why his human face was distorted, malformed, made animalistic.

“Lee?” you pant, unleashing part of his first name, the only one he ever tolerates. And, fuck, instantly the pressure pulls away, the skull rubbing against your back to soothe it.

“It’s me, Schatzi,” the slow voice promises, nuzzling you. There’s rustling above you that you don’t dare turn to see. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

A tinkling piece of jewelry lowers in front of your eyes, and you can see that it dangles from an enormous, ligneous finger. You’re being shown a sterling silver charm bracelet. You’re being shown your bracelet, the one you thought you had lost months ago.

Your hand shoots out, wrapping around the finger, the peeling bark shearing off under your grip. You find instantly that you can pull yourself up on your hip, sitting, caged and protected under the beast’s massive body—under König’s massive body.

He shifts back onto his digitagrade haunches, holding himself over you, still offering your bracelet. He shudders at your touch on his hand, and you imagine that he may’ve never been handled with kindness in this shape. Which makes a certain amount of sense. Because he fucking kills and eats people.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you snap, staring dead into the hollow sockets of his eyes. He shifts uncomfortably, turning his head. “Why—you have me so fucked up—what have you been thinking—?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, do you have to—”

“Yes, I have to, fucker.” It’s impossible to wrap your head around the magnitude of what a simple secret and a silver bracelet has done to your understanding of the world. A complete unraveling—upheaval, utterly.

You take the bracelet from his finger, on which it fits like a ring, and push it into your wrist, sitting up on your knees and grabbing him by the underside of his jaw. Though it puts you in his blind spot, staring dead center at the sinus dimples between his eyes, it feels like you have a mote of power over him.

(If he were asked, he would say the power you hold over him could corrupt, absolutely. He would badly like you to ask someday.)

“Why are you—what are you? Have you always been like this? Or was this new, with the fucking witch? Are—Jesus Christ—why are—the monster isn’t supposed to come into town, why are you in TOWN?” you run off at the mouth, words stalling and crashing and fusing together as your thoughts overwhelm just how quickly you can speak.

And up from that impossibly deep throat–simultaneously from the center of your brain, and from all around you all at once–crawls König’s pitchy hyena-laugh, edged, always, with cruelty. He butts the jagged end of his nasal cavities into your stomach, catching on the threads of your sweater.

“Leshy, Schatzi, say it for me.”

Your hands pull his jaw closer, digging the bone into your stomach, wondering if he can feel the pressure of your deep breathing. Oh, fuck, you could crack. This is your König. You start to wonder how many of his perverse buttons you can hit, the part of you that felt shame for your attraction to what the world discarded as ‘ugly’ long ago removed from your emotional bank.

“Leshy,” you say, really leaning into the word, saying it deep in your chest. One of your hands travels the long length to the hinge of his jaw, gripping tight, directing his head to turn so you can meet one of his empty eyes. “Answer my fucking questions.”

The laugh doesn’t come this time. In its place is a near-violent whole-body shudder that wracks through you.

“Old! Alwaaays been this way,” and even in the strange disconnect of his voice from his physical form, you can tell his arousal is eating away at him in big bites–clipping his speech, broiling his brain with body heat, “can’t remember ever being young, haa-haa. And why do you think I’m hunting in town?”

Another trap, a stupid pop quiz, wanting to test your knowledge of him, or a gotcha! to check your observations and what you had missed.

Your hands get tighter, and you pull his jaw open, marveling at the sharp grooves ground into his teeth, like nightmarish, ivory rook pieces, tall and straight in the dry sockets. His chest begins to heave, his breath fogging into steaming clouds over your hands, and, remarkably, it smells like nothing at all apart from pin needles and snow.

You’d thought you’d smell decaying flesh or rotten blood. The only blood you can smell comes from your own busted brow and sliced arm, crusting black on your skin and in the fabric of your sweater as it coagulates.

“If I was working on a hunter’s instincts, I would say that Schladming has become too good at keeping people out of the forests. Even during daylight hours. It cuts down on prey,” you say, ice cold and clean as a slit throat. Your eyes flick back up to the socket, surrounded by the feeling that those glass-blue eyes of his humanoid form are drilling into you. He’s waiting for you to hit the hook. “But I’m working on your logic.”

“Oh, yeeaah,” he drawls, his hips shifting, and you feel as if he would bite his lips in anticipation now, if he could.

“Oh, yeeaah,” you echo him, “the logic of a fucking crazy asshole.” He feels like a huge grin, hands on his muscular, bunched, and flexing thighs. That detail is not lost on you. “You’re hunting in town because you’re pissed off. You reached a limit, and you got tired of sitting on your fucking reaction.”

You swear to god he moans a little. Just softly. It could be a breath, but you know him too well to dismiss it out of hand.

“That’s good, Schatzi. I like that. I like that you figured that out,” he says, definitely panting in rhythm now, his fogging breath giving away the rhythm secondary. “People are looking at you too much. I don’t fucking like it when they look at you too much.”

That’s a sudden thought that had not occurred to you, and you lash yourself silently because it hadn’t. König has always been possessive of you. Jealous. Protective. And he held grudges in ways that could spark blood feuds and successive generations of death.

Like a curse.

It’s a testament to how fucking cracked and perfectly matched the two of you are that you start laughing, stroking his orbital bones in big, pleased pats, kissing the bridge of his nose.

“Schatzi, please,” he groans, pressing into you insistently. “Promise you won’t tell. Promise me.”

“Why the fuck would I tell?” you laugh, losing track of your faculties, your very sense. What does it matter? What does it all even mean? You’ve found a man that loves you so deeply and truly and twistedly that he slaughters those who desire or deign you. You’ve found, and fallen in love with a man that would sell his face to save as much of yours as he could. “Who the fuck would I tell?”

The slope of his shoulders relaxes, and he moves closer to you, once again shielding you with the massive bulk of his body, warming you in the cold air. Tucked under his chin, you can study the soft suede-like material of his body, how the bark covering his arms gives way to a ruff of dense, double-layered fur around his shoulders and his long, muscular neck.

The rest of the muscle on him is horrendously hard, flexed like steel cabling under a layer of fat. There is something about this body that reminds you of the shape of the human one so well–long legs, a nipped waist, and flat hips built to strut and rock, all of it buttressing a broad set of shoulders.

You press your face into the ruff, pushing your fingers into it. Dear god, your hand goes deeper and deeper, and it just never seems to stop. His scent is–it’s almost familiar. He’s in there, somewhere–his musk, the metallic tang of blood seemingly sunken into his skin–but there’s so much more to it. Green, and earthy, almost like soil and moss.

A sound comes from his body, like a house settling. A deep, broad creak. The trophies on his horns rattle together, clinking like dull wind chimes. “More,” he says simply, leaving you to figure it out. Simple enough.

Your hand drops from the ruff, tracing over his convex chest, down to his stomach. Another shudder, and he pulls those big arms around your entire body, a fuller, more protective hug than you’ve ever felt.

“Schatzi–would you let me…” he breathes, a heaving sigh.

Another laugh cracks out of you, hysterical, constricted by your mask. Why not? Why shouldn’t you? You’ve always been a woman that loves monsters. You, yourself, are one. You can’t find a reason to halt your hands, nor your body, nor his desire.

In an odd show of tip-to-tail, you push the mask off your face, and kick off your boots, going for your zipper. “Yeah. Yeah, honey, come on. Show me,” you urge him, pawing at his massive waist as you struggle out of your jeans.

He groans and this obscene trill escapes his body–a low, rattling moan that travels miles through every cell of your body, his legs spreading wider. You laugh in delight and mania, watching rapt as his cock slides out of a sheath you hadn’t even caught sight of, his monstrous body a foreign land you hadn’t traveled yet, but, fuck, do you want to learn the lands well enough to call them home.

It’s heavy in your hands, a little slick, and, childishly, you almost giggle (holy shit, that is a sound that has never left your mouth in your living memory, and yet, here you are). It’s hot, hotter than you expected, and a vulnerable shade of pale, like a plant slip. Oh, and it’s elegant, almost spiraling. He huffs as you stroke the length of it, pushing your fingertips into his sheath at the base.

“I don’t think this is gonna fit,” you warn him, and it somehow feels as if you’re challenging yourself with the statement.

He takes it as a challenge for himself, though, and an aspiration to hold for you, “You are going to take all of it. I’m going to make sure.”

His massive hand comes to the back of your waist, finding your fulcrum without needing to search, pulling you off your knees to hold to beneath him. “You naked yet, or still fucking around?” he asks, breathing heavily, and you shove your jeans off the rest of the way.

“You’re being a little bitch,” you snipe, a dumb swipe at reclaiming dignity after you realize you’re so wet that it slicks your thighs, having darkened the crotch of your freshly abandoned jeans pathetically.

He throws another coarse laugh, haa-haa, shifting his massive body long, pulling you into place.

It’s on you, then, to figure out the logistics. Somehow, it just works, even through layers of physical translation. Under your hands, he reads König, loud and clear.

There’s a brief, flighty moment of terror as you rub the head of his cock between the lips of your cunt, rolling your hips to stimulate your clit against it. It is just fucking enormous, almost half again the size of his human cock. But then you grit your teeth, tipping your weight back so your shoulders rest against the dirt, bleak and unyielding ruthlessness seizing your mind.

You do not back down, you have never done it once in your life, and tonight is no different.

His head lifts, bottom jaw dropping, and he bays as you push yourself down on his length. The sound crashes into you, rocking your entire body, and the stretch burns, but you buckle down. What are the people in the houses just at the edge of suburbia thinking? Has the fucking abberation that has been slowly killing its way through their number taken to a different form of punishment? Has someone unlucky fallen to its new tastes?

It cuts your mouth into a horrid grin. If they only knew that you were no victim at all, if only they had an inkling of the fact that you are a victor. That you are the hand holding this nightmare’s collar, and he attacks for the sake of you.

Inch by inch, a slow journey, he fills you, pressing completely against your walls, body shaking with the effort it takes not to thrust fully into you. Oh, what destruction that would result in, what a wreckage that would make of your body, what lengths he would go to not ruin you in such a fashion.

“Fuck–fuck–Liebes,” he mutters, just for you, the moment he is as deep in you as he can go, most of his length still outside of what your body can handle, pleading, “I can’t–I. I have to move. Please, meine Liebes.”

“Go. Go-go-go,” you answer back, almost frantic, too full and occupied, needing motion or you might split apart into atoms. The way he answers is instant, undeniable, desperate, rocking into you as if testing waters, going faster as if he finds them warm and welcoming.

You lose yourselves to it, and your eyes threaten to roll back into your head, gripping onto the elbow of the arm suspending you, blood rushing to your head in an ache from the way you hang off him, forcing you lightheaded. Sap-like blood from where you’d hacked at him in rage drips down your arm, your waist, clinging to your skin in a way that feels permanent.

He tenses all around you, panting, clouds of steam fogging the air over your head from his pants. Words escape him, leaving nothing but animalistic grunts, the grinding of his dry, exposed teeth as your desperate pussy sucks him deeper and tighter.

You’d taught him as a human to find your g-spot, to destroy your brain with a steady climb, and he doesn’t even need to search now, every movement pressing every inch of his cock into it, and unrelenting onslaught that makes you shake and nearly drool, being fucked like a sacrifice.

König raps his other fist above your head and pulls out without warning, shaking his head and breathing roughly.

You imagine brutally grabbing him by the scruff and biting his ear–what kind of punishment would that even be, no worse than a bug bite to him, more likely than anything else–for the loss of his cock. Mostly just an impulsive fantasy, too barbaric and stupid to actually act upon, but you were thoroughly enjoying yourself, and it feels like hell to be split open against him with nothing inside you.

Breathless–and naked, sweating, and trembling in the woods–you start to sit up on your elbows, cunt throbbing. "What is it? Are you okay?" you ask, your love for him–your fear for him–overwhelming even your damnation-worthy starvation.

König, massive and so dark he's almost indistinguishable from the night apart from his skull, shakes his head again and puts up a clawed hand. Fine, the gesture says, and you’re realizing he’s beyond words now, but trying his best to communicate. Then he curls it into a loose fist and pantomimes masturbating and finishing.

"Christ!" But you’re laughing, tugging at a tuft of fur on his chest, spun out in your giddiness. It’s still him, you’ve already known, but to see it. To find him through this–this utterly new reality. "They teach you that signal in the forces?"

In his hollow sockets, twisting his body to watch you closely, he looks pleased with himself, ducking forward, bracing on his free hand to one side of your head as he nuzzles into your neck and breathes deeply.

He huffs, rough fingers running over your back, claws trailing the parts of your spine he can reach as he holds you, before he taps the side of your thigh with his other hand. At your eye level, he turns his finger in a slow loop. Roll over, maybe? It's worth a shot.

"Okay. Alright," you sigh, relieved. When you try to roll in his palm, he shakes his head and sets you down, pressing down against your body, pushing his arm under your ribs. With his other hand, he gestures a flat line on the ground. You ask, "On my stomach?"

Two knocks against the ground next to your head. Yes.

You stretch out flat over the frost-crisp grass, too hot to even register the chill against your bare skin, and König lowers with you, sliding the arm under you down to your diaphragm. With his knuckles, he taps your outer-thighs until they're drawn back together, and your breathing hitches when you understand what he intends.

With his legs on the outside of yours, he uses his free hand to run his cock up the length of your seam to tease your pussy, but he takes his sweet time with it. Impatient, you slide onto your knees with near-perfect timing, driving your entrance against his head, snarling with indignation when he bows away. "Fucker!"

He rumbles something almost humanoid, between a laugh and a gruff, trilling ‘rrrr’ you recognize as cousin to a sharp, challenging hum he makes when faced with an idiot comment in his human shape.

"Stop teasing me. I can't stand it," you try instead, turning to give him big eyes over your shoulder because you know that it works well on him.

He bends down and barely-barely nips the top of your ear, a startling move that leaves you perfectly inflamed all over again again. Greedy brat, it says to you, so pleased in the fact he is so desperately wanted.

The feeling of him inside you is extraordinary. He lubricates in this state, but you hardly need it with the nearly absurd way you’re wet, slick down your thighs. You wonder if your cunt is glimmering under the dim moon and streetlamps, because he'd said that to you once. Heilige sheiße, you have the prettiest pussy I’ve ever fucking seen, could just stare at how wet you get for me forever, he'd laughed during one delirious, marathon session of staying sunken between your legs.

He begins to rock his hips, growling quietly and pleased at the wet sounds of your of cunt squelching around him–another sound he enjoys, a marker of pride, how wet can I make my girl get–settling onto his forearm and pressing a little weight against your back.

He rests his head across your shoulders, burying his snout in your hair, breathing in hard-bought bursts of restraint.

"Yes, honey," you almost seethe, loosening your body, giving up a little of your own iron will to become just a little lost in the feeling of him. You relax your walls in a bid to take more of him, breathing tight, voice pitching up into a plea, "Yes, baby, that's perfect. That's so perfect, keep going. Just like that."

He rocks a little faster, thrusts a little deeper, breathes a little harder. The hand around your waist shifts up to your breast, but isn't dexterous enough to do more than give it an encompassing squeeze.

With your thighs pressed together, you feel as if your body can't stretch properly to take as much of him as you want (and you want all of him, every burning hot inch, fucking him so well that he cannot disappear into one of his miseries where he will not let you follow, because they all live in his head).

He ratchets back his speed, tries a new motion with his hips. He rolls instead of thrusting, a more fluid movement, brushing your insides in new ways that leave your swollen clit screaming for attention and your eyes watering. You breathe in ragged pants, fingers digging into the turf over your head, trying not to rip it with the force of your grip by the fistful.

You might cum. You might cum. You want to cum, and you might, and he's so much deeper now, panting hot as fire against your shoulders. You can feel the muscles in his abdomen clench and dance, his horns cutting the air in swipes of agitation above you, and he is so much this way. König: bigger, sometimes bloodier, but always so, so amplified.

"Honey, honey, honey," you whine in a chant under your breath, trying to ground yourself, trying to encourage him. You squeeze your thighs together for the extra stimulation, but you know you’re going to orgasm from him alone, no extra assistance needed. You’re just greedy, you just want it all, but you want him the worst.

When he pulls out this time, you snarl loud and gnash your teeth, digging your dirt-packed nails into his unyielding skin. You were full to the brim and on the wire-edge of climax, and he is so suddenly fucking gone it's almost as abrupt as violence.

"KÖNIG!" you shout, his callsign cutting from between your teeth like the desire to slit a throat, shattering the quiet around you both, reeling to find him with your burning eyes.

He collapses onto his side, cock jumping and leaking, and he whines deep in his throat, pulling at you with the flat of his hand. Your thigh, then his hip, your chest, then his–more hand signals, a story-told like a man with a sucking chest wound needing saving. He snakes his arm under you again, whining growing deeper, and you understand.

You roll, throwing your thigh over his hip, tucking tight against his chest. You give yourself one second of feeling cool air against your overheated pussy before you take him in hand and direct him home, and his deep, slick slide into you knocks the air out of your lungs like a punch to the solar plexus.

You’re only seconds away, and he can't be much farther, driving his head under yours to give you something to rest on that isn't the ground.

You don't utilize his offering, craning your neck as if you'll somehow get a glimpse of your connection from this angle–flat against him from belly to breast, resting your cheek and forehead against his heaving chest. His whine turns into a series of small, strangled howls and gasps as your voice crawls from whimpering to keening.

You’ve known you were going to cum, but you’re still somehow surprised with yourself at how quickly it's raced up, and how overwhelming it feels like it's going to be. You feel like you’re going insane.

His other arm wraps your ribs, too, squeezing you to him like you’re the only thing in the world worth keeping close, and damn him for it. You don't know why, but damn him.

"Cum, baby, cum," you instruct, gasping when you aren't clenching your teeth. You curl close to him, as close as your body will allow, spreading your legs as wide as you can. You drive back down into his thrusts, giving as much of yourself as you can, taking as much of him as you’re able.

You want it all–everything–every little bit of blood and bone that's built him into a home he offers only to you. "Cum in me. I'm ready, I want you to cum," you demand, finding it truer than true, finding yourself right on the razor-edge.

The command is all it takes. Three hard thrusts, and he's buried in you to the base, punching the wind out of your lungs, and filling you to the point of what feels like impossibility with his spend. It forces you to finish as well, lighting you up like a lightning storm, swallowing him deeper as you cum and cum like you'll never be able to stop, soaking the both of you.

You gasp a raw-throated howl, tears pricking the corners of your eyes, and you praise him as his cock kicks and kicks, emptying everything he's got to give into you.

A pressure builds inside you, beginning nearly unpleasant, until something just gives and his knot anchoring him to you feels right.

It feels special and dazzlingly intimate, and you’re boggled, again, with the knowledge you’re the only person in the world that he's ever shown himself to this way. It’s just a thing you know in your marrow, an immutable truth, like the sun setting in the west, or the cruelty of witches without their wants.

You wind down, sweating and panting and filthy in each other's arms, and you rock against him, holding him inside, clenching around him what little you can. You feel so wonderfully safe, so immaculately powerful, so stupidly, crazily, fantastically in love.

When your combined breathing evens, and the knot between you retreats, you groan when König shifts back into his human form, but only for the resituating you both have to endure.

The body against yours is familiar again, and you’re dreadfully sleepy, though you want to clean yourself and eat. You crave something raw, something bloody. You hunger the way an animal hungers after a hard fuck. His spend drips out of you now that his cock's returned to normal, and it forms a trail of cooling wet down the crease where your thigh meets your ass.

You feel lovely.

König laughs, rough and spent, tucking hair out of your face and kissing your closed eyelids. "Holy fucking shit, Schatzi," he marvels, looking at you like you are the only god that has ever mattered.

Your smile cuts sharp, and your fingers find his pulse point, tracing it thoughtfully. “You hungry? I bet you're fucking starved,” is all you say in return, eyes trailing the way his hand finds the charm bracelet newly returned to your wrist, touching it like a token.

It’s late and dark when you both manage to stumble your way back to your rental. He stays close, needy and soft, his hand on your hip, tugging you into his body when he can, careful of not knocking into the big, silver knife you’d placed back in the scabbard on your belt.

The hood is back on his head, rolled up to his nose, and his split mouth kisses against your neck and behind your ear, his eyes closed like he endures a waking dream. You, in your own filthied mask again, allow it, craning your neck to give him more room, anchoring him with an arm around his waist in return.

It is late now, and the neighborhood is silent. Again, you wonder what the quiet lives inside must be thinking–whether they think the crimes have increased into a new field of brutality, if they are fearing and wondering what body parts they will find at the treeline come dawn.

You know they will not leave the safety of their homes to investigate. They would be stupid to do something like that.

“That shower is going to feel so goddamned good,” you mutter, unlocking your door, and he nods against your skin.

“Oh, yeeaah,” he says, and the familiarity of the phrase makes you hum a laugh, shutting your eyes as you push through the threshold. "Get that blood off your skin before it stains. Your poor face, your poor arm. Poor Schatzi."

He splits off from you with a facsimile of a kiss–your masks pressing together at the mouth–and he pinches your ass before he takes off to the kitchen, his stomach growling, not even bothering to take off his boots.

You, however, kick off your shoes, and pull together clean clothes, heading toward the bathroom in the hall, the one with the big shower, in case he decides to join you.

Sleepy and content, you listen to his boots move heavily over the kitchen tile, the sound of the fridge door hissing snickt as he pulls it open, and shoves things around in his search for food. You nearly sway up to the closed door–why is it closed, you barely manage to wonder–your eyelids lead-weighted.

It takes only one thing to make them snap open wide, your back going ramrod straight. A dark smear, curling around the knob, around the edge of the door where it seams to the jamb.

Cold grips your lungs, sending your heart galloping painfully in the cage of your ribs, wondering if it really is copper you smell, or if it is a trick of your mind. The hall is too dark to tell if the swipe on the white door is red or black–if it is blood, if it is König’s or yours.

There is a presence at your back, and enormous hands on the door on either side of your head, so fast you cannot tell if you were even able to blink before you saw his wide, scarred, and knuckle-broken limbs spreading wide across the wood.

Your hand finds the grip of the knife, looking at the brutal gouges you had hacked into his forearm earlier in the night, and you are thinking faster and harder than you ever have in your life, realizing in a terrible microsecond that you will have to make a decision–that you will have to choose what reality you are willing to live with, or that you are simply mistaken.

Either way, you are moments from learning.

“Something wrong, Schatzi?” your boyfriend’s familiar voice asks, low and raspy, hot against the nape of your neck.

The laugh in his tone is cruel, and you can’t tell whether it belongs to König, or something pretending to be him.

tag-list: @alittleposhtoad @bitchoftoji @dotcie @kastlequill @miyabilicious @moths569 @parttimeprophet @pssytrux <3

#hauntedhoedown #konig #könig #call of duty #cod mw2 #mw2 #konig mw2 #konig call of duty #konig x reader #konig smut #my work

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thatdeadaquarius · 8 months

Note

Okay so-- i was reading some sagau posts and came across this one where the reader was an army vet and my brain just Did Its Thing--

So now I'm here to inflict this on to you--

Would guns be considered as catalysts. And would they only do Phys Damage.

Me reading this ask:

😶 😐 🤨 🧐 🧐 😰 🥲 😭😭😭 💀

STOP YOU'VE INFLICTED ME WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL DMG FROM THIS ASK 😭

(Also srry took so long to respond, when i didnt realize how short this was/was just sitting over here 😓)

^ For the sake of gun imagery being a lot/maybe staff might hate me for it,

we'll put this gay shit instead (i almost mispelled to "gay shot" lmao)

☆

Sun: Army Veteran Reader, Gender neutral Reader (you/they/them)

Orbit: SHORT Headcanons

Stars: everybody bc i think itd be funny

Comets & Meteors: Content Warnings: gun stuff, mild violence, mild cursing & Trigger Warnings: Gun fun everywhere

THIS ASK HAS ME GIGGLING TO MYSELF LIKE A MANIAC

You're out here having a whole gun they let you take for off-base

And u ofc have a license so u can conceal carry

(idk how non-american gun laws work, but tbh ours are so fucked idk how they work here either, just that an army guy i knew once could have his gun when he got back home)

And ofc ur just paranoid enough (more like it just makes u feel safe)

That when u get yoinked into a portal to a silly little brightly colored gacha game fantasy world, the gun comes with 💀

Id like to add in my silly little "ur in a video game, so video game rules" AU version of genshin so:

The only other gun (ish) wielder (Mika) has unlimited bolts

Sooo I'd think your gun would be the same jfc lol

NO BC YOUD SCARE THE ACTUAL SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE IN UR VICINITY IN A BATTLE

BC GUNSHOTS ARE A DIFFERENT TYPE OF LOUD

When u first stumble into abyss monsters/hostile creatures of the realm, u nearly scare off a Lawlachurl bc every shot's like thunder to these bitches😭

So not only the monsters but the vision holders think u fucking summoned lightning

OMG THE BULLETS ARE SO FAST THEYD PROBABLY NOT SEE IT

ESP BC DISTRACTED BY GUNSHOT LOUDNESS

SO U AIM THIS LITTLE BLACK CROSSBOW (???) AND THINGS JUST DIE (OR GET RIDDLED WITH HOLES) WITH NO CLEAR ARROW STICKING OUT

STOPP- you're becoming a witchy god or smth to all of Teyvat bc it just looks like hella high level magic atp to them LMAOOO

Rumors of you get out of hand and say u just point or snap ur fingers and things get wounded/just die on the spot 💀

Oh another difference between Teyvatians seeing ur gun vs. crossbow (what they know)

Is that guns are wayyyy more destructive

Like an arrow would get shot but it'd bounce off of things like rock or wood or metal, maybe dent a little depending on how close

But a bullet goes thru that shit so easy, and leaves a whole little explosion behind, once again depending on range

(I once saw a Mythbusters episode? of them proving bullets would definitely go thru car doors, like movies lied to u, this is why drive-bys acc work like for gangs)

Lmao, the image of you in like full armor with a Teyvat made automatic gun after showing it to blacksmiths

Makes u just more convincing as a god, esp bc military training

(Ppl like Gorou and Kokomi begging for military tactics/training ur world has done)

...

....Ok.

I'll address it.

But only so u dont think im stupid later.

Yes, the Fatui have guns.

No, this not the same as having a glock LMAO

End of story.

(Also, urs runs on bullets, whereas the Fatui rely on magic/delusions to power theirs, plus they dont seem as fast or destructive as urs, more "explosions aimed at you" than real bullets)

Which,,, u leave the managing of ppl copying ur gun to ppl like the Qixing or smth, but make sure to give them advice on good gun laws if teyvat accidentally revolutionizes bc of ur advanced gun that anybody can wield (non-vision users)

Thats the best ive got abt that

Oh, also enjoy being praised as a War god now.

☆

... dammit i had smth i was gonna tell u guys-

Uh what tf was it, it was important

Next post is the Eldritch God Oneshot! Look out for it :) !!

☆

Safe Travels Kid,

💀♒️

♡the beloveds♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist / @thedevioussmirk / @the-dumber-scaramouche / @chocogi / @fallen-starr / @areaderofbooks

If you wanna join a taglist, DM me what for! "Pspspsss, please tag me for [All SAGAU posts, Only SAGAU Language AUs, diff fandom, etc.]!"

(If you ever wanna drop, just DM me! "No more taglists/[specifically this AU/fandom] please!")

#lookie i made my first border image guys!! 🥺#a little rough but eh #i used a stock image and then added that little moon #also this gun shit takes me out i could write just a whole crack oneshot abt ending up in teyvat with a gun lmao #genshin sagau #genshin impact #sagau #genshin isekai #genshin imagines #my asks #gender neutral reader #genshin impact sagau #self aware genshin #✨️forgot all my tags again✨️#uh #genshin harem #i mean what #genshin x reader

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yuri-is-online · 2 months

Note

Hi I love your soulmate au, consider Ace or Deuce as soulmate but not touching each other until much later.

rules for au/prev posts can be found on my masterlist

So I could not quite tell if you meant ace x deuce or aceyuu/deuceyuu but since I am a Yuu focused blog (and you said "or... but not untill later") I am going to focus on x yuu.

I think the first potential time for them to touch Yuu is after beating the phantom at the end of the dwarf's mine. They're cheering, you're cheering, there's a half second where they scoop up Grim and swing him around and half reach for you but... hesitate. It's like everything stops for a moment before he shakes himself out of it. You're just Yuu, some magicless human he literally met today, why's he feeling so... strange about it???

I could see Ace knowing about soulbonds. His best subject is magic analysis/theory, he's far from unaware of theoretical concepts. But he's also Ace. The bratty kid who hates being seen as vulnerable, who thinks romantic things are uncool, whose way more comfortable being someone's friend than he is their boyfriend. He doesn't want a destined mate, he wants someone he can laugh with and likes being around... and he sort of hates how much you fit that description. So! Only solution he can think of is trying to bait you into making physical contact first, that way if anyone makes a big deal about this all consuming need to be close to each other it's you and not him.

Even though he's the one who proposes sharing a bed. It would have been your fault if you said yes! He's unprepared for what it feels like to get his wish, after Vil curses him to spend the night on the floor with Deuce and Grim he expects you to just abandon him to your room... but you creep back with blankets and pillows for your friends and hesitate when you go to give them to him. Slowly, so gently it makes a mockery of the searing undeniable realization that tears through him as you lay yourself next to him and lay your hand on his shoulder and rest.

While he lies there awake cursing Vil (he refuses to blame himself) for denying him the ability to hold onto you like he should.

~~~~

Deuce is different, I don't think he would be aware of soulbonds nor does he seem to believe in soulmates. I don't think he's thought much of romance at all really, so he doesn't fully understand what he's experiencing or why he's so nervous to touch you. He wants to though. Badly. It's all he can think about sometimes, he's never had a friendship this close or intimate. He really treasures you and this closeness, he doesn't want to break it. While Deuce might not know what is driving this desire, he knows that if he touches you he will understand. And that scares him, what if he breaks you with touch? What if nothing good can come from this connection, what if he is unable to let you go? He really wants you to be able to see your home again... but the thought of losing you leaves him strangely listless. Like you would be taking a part of him with you...

I don't think he ever finds the correct word for it. Maybe sometime way in the future Malleus or a professor will make him aware, but somewhere in a dream he finds it; the understanding of just what this bond means. Physically, he is unconscious in a hospital bed after failing to dodge the shards of Ramshackle Dorm's ceiling, but mentally he is wrapped in the warm, heavy sensation of his love for you. When he wakes and you aren't there he almost tears himself in half looking, and when you come back he holds you so tightly you can feel the tension shaking through his body. The only thing that soothes him is your gentle touch on his back, rubbing soothing circles into his soul as he breathes the bond between you in.

#<3 asks #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #aceyuu #ace trappola x reader #deuce spade x reader #soulbound au #yuri when it comes time to write stuff she says she will: -_- sleep #yuri when it comes time to write more aceyuu angst: 0-0 real shit

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ichorai · 2 years

Text

dlz ; jake lockley.

track ten of DEAR SCIENCE.

pairing ; jake lockley x gn!reader

synopsis ; jake lockley wasn't your husband. steven and marc were. jake was just... he was just there. a ghost living in your house.

words ; 3.5k

themes ; angst, mild fluff, married au

warnings / includes ; suggestive, implications of sex, jake is a rough kisser e_e, mentions of injury/blood, mild cursing, marc and steven both have appearances, jake is emotionally constipated, jake calls reader peach !! reader is a sweetheart <3

main masterlist.

Jake Lockley didn’t like your perfume—it was almost nauseatingly fresh and its smell permeated through his own clothes so that he’d often walk out smelling like he had doused himself in Febreze.

He didn’t like the way you’d hum to his favorite songs while doing the dishes. Nirvana, Elliott Smith, Radiohead—were you singing them on purpose just to annoy him? Nearly every night, he could hear your faint voice drift into the living room, where he was reading the same three sentences of the daily paper over and over and over again because he couldn’t concentrate on anything but your endearingly inconsistent mutters to the music.

He especially hated when you’d walk out of the bedroom in nothing but Steven’s shirt loosely draped over your form, rubbing the last remnants of sleep from your heavy-lidded eyes. There was just something about seeing you at your most vulnerable. You were comfortable around him, and that made Jake uneasy.

When Jake fronted, he slept in the guest room. Marc had convinced him not to blow more money staying at a hotel—and Steven was trying to persuade him to at least sleep in the same bed as you. After all, they were married to you.

But Jake wasn’t your husband. Steven and Marc were. Jake was just… he was just there. A ghost living in your house.

The very thought of sharing a bed with you made a chill dance down Jake’s spine. He could never. As appealing as the thought of having you slotted between his arms, sleepily recounting how your day went to him, sounded, he couldn’t ever have that. Jake Lockley wasn’t a domestic man.

His hands would always be dripping with blood that wasn’t his, no matter how hard he tried scrubbing it away.

There were times Jake felt a morsel of regret. He was nowhere near nice to you, and yet you still spared him that infuriatingly patient, sweet smile, always telling him to stay safe before he left to drive his cab around (or do Khonshu’s dirty work), and never failing to whisper good night before slipping into your bedroom.

Sometimes he had a queer, niggling feeling scratching at the pits of his stomach one would commonly refer to as jealousy. He knew that Marc and Steven got to hold you, kiss you, tell you they loved you as they pleased.

Jake couldn’t do that. Jake wasn’t even entirely sure he was capable of loving someone.

What made it even worse was that Jake learned about you through them—not because he ever actually tried to get closer to you.

He knew you loved apricots, but not as much as peaches. He knew you loved lighting scented candles whenever it rained. He knew you named each one of your house plants. He knew you were only slightly ticklish. He knew you had a tell; your nose would twitch and your eyebrows would quirk upwards whenever you lied. He knew from Steven to kiss just above your pulse point against the column of your throat to make you melt into him. He knew you had a birthmark between your thighs from when Marc—

Yeah, he’d rather not think about that one.

Jake knew you cried a lot—that one he learned on his own. He could hear you through the walls, but you probably weren’t aware of that fact.

One night, Jake sat in the living room, staring into nothing, heart twisting angrily at himself until he couldn’t take it anymore, storming out of the apartment after shoving his hat onto his head and grabbing his cab’s keys. Steven and Marc had yelled angrily at him the whole time, but he learned to block their voices out.

He wasn’t very good in the emotional department, that was abundantly clear.

When he came back home hours later, having driven around the city several times to clear his head, he tried to be as quiet as possible. At an hour as late as this, you were bound to be asleep, right?

But alas, there you were, curled into the corner of the couch, head uncomfortably lolled onto your shoulder. The house was entirely dark save for the dim glow of the television, casting a blue luminescence over your dozing form. Long shadows kissed the slopes of your features, softened with sleep. He noticed that there were tear tracks faintly outlined over the skin of your cheekbones.

Jake froze at the doorway for a moment. Were you waiting for him to come home?

He pushed down any and all intrusive thoughts, begrudgingly shrugging off his coat and hanging up his hat. A calloused palm carded through messy, coffee-hued curls.

Heart dipping heavy within his chest, Jake stalked forward to turn the TV off, setting the remote down on the coffee table. He stood over you for a moment. A frown twisted at the corner of his lips, drawing his brows together.

Jaw clenching, Jake stepped away from you, slipping into the hall. He leaned against the door to the guest room for a moment, huffing out a low groan. Gods, what in the hell was he doing?

After another minute of frustrated hesitation, Jake willed himself to make his way back into the living room. You were twitching in your sleep, eyelids fluttering with what he could guess were the beginnings of a harsh nightmare.

Gently—or, as gentle as a highly-skilled mercenary could be—Jake hooked an arm beneath the crook of your knee, the other looping over your shoulders and neck. When you stirred, Jake could only quietly make hushing noises, wincing at himself. Thankfully, you didn’t fully awaken, a soft noise falling from your lips as your nose turned to press against the fabric of his shirt obscuring his chest, just above where his heart scratched at the walls of his ribcage.

He kicked the door to your bedroom open none too silently, eager to set you down. Get as far away from you as possible. The sound of the doorknob thwacking against the wall behind it made your lids shoot open, and you groggily mumbled incoherent phrases under your breath before peering up at him with confused, watery eyes. He cursed internally.

“You’re back,” you said, voice hoarse with disuse. “You okay?”

There were lots of things Jake wanted to say to you at that moment.

No, I’m not okay. Were you waiting for me to get home? I’m sorry if I made you worry. I’m sorry I’m such an asshole. Am I an asshole? You shouldn’t ever wait for me again. What were you dreaming of? Was it a nightmare about me?

Instead of any of that, Jake merely set you down onto the mattress with a grunt, dusting his hands onto his pants. He glared down at you as if he was angry—and he was, but not necessarily at you.

But wasn’t he, though? He was angry that you were just so… so kind to him. He was angry that you were patient. He was angry that you were so easy to love.

“Go to sleep, peach,” he gruffed. A hot flush coursed over his face at the nickname that had unintentionally slipped out. To his relief, you didn’t seem to notice.

Your sleepy expression seemed to cave in on itself and you dazedly nodded, head falling back into the pillow.

If only he could slip in beside you, entangle his legs with yours as you kissed softly over his tense face, call you his.

Jake nearly slapped himself to get his head screwed on straight. He spared your already-sleeping form one last glance before trudging out of your room. Hurriedly, he threw himself into the guestroom, ripping off his shirt and pressing a palm flat against his chest to quell the racing thunder of his heart.

You were not good news for him.

You didn’t see Jake for weeks after that incident.

A part of you was glad—you were beginning to miss the sound of Steven’s sweet voice, his tender touches, his passionate kisses. You missed Marc’s back hugs, his strange fixation with your bare legs, his lopsided smiles.

The other part of you, however, wondered about Jake.

“Does Jake ever… say anything to the two of you?” you asked Steven one day, stirring sugar into your steaming tea as you leaned against the kitchen counter. Your husband looked up from the novel he was reading, pushing his glasses up his nose while considering your question.

“Sometimes. Mostly stays to himself—quite the quiet bloke, innhe? Why, love?”

Your bottom lip trembled as you glared into your tea, as if it was the source of all your troubles. Steven was immediately out of his seat, tugging you close until your forehead rested upon his clavicle bone. You sniffled into him, crushing your eyes shut with shame.

“Does he hate me?” you asked, voice cracking. “I don’t… I don’t know what I did to make him—”

Steven immediately held you all the closer, crooning out, “No! No, of course not, silly. He’s just… he’s just having trouble with himself, that’s all. Doesn’t really talk to us much, either. It’s not you, love, I promise. In fact, I’m nearly certain he fancies you.”

“You’re not just saying that?” you said, scrutinizing him with wide, glassy eyes. “I don’t need him to love me like you and Marc do. I just… it’s hard when it feels like a man with the same face as your husband hates you.”

Steven’s expression crumbled, and he kissed over your left eyelid softly. “I know. I’m sorry, darling, I can’t imagine what that’s like.” Rubbing soothing circles over your back, he urged you to take a seat next to him, leaning over to move your mug of tea from the counter to the kitchen table. “Come on, I’ve got an amazing poem I want you to read.”

It was only two days later that you saw Jake again. You strode through the door, juggling grocery bags in one hand and a stack of books you borrowed from the library in the other. With a huff, you set the groceries down in the kitchen, turning around to see Jake quietly observing you, leaning against the fridge. You bit down a startled scream, flinching at his unexpected presence.

“Oh,” you said after a second of flustered silence. “Hi, Jake. Didn’t see you there.”

He was observing you with such a sharp gaze that it felt like his irises were cutting straight through your flesh. Finally, he pushed away from the fridge, slowly moving towards you until he stood just in front of you, about an arm’s length away.

“Jake, what are you—?”

“I don’t hate you, peach,” the man said, all gravelly and brusque.

It took you a moment to fully register what he was saying. “Oh,” was all you said, parroting yourself from five seconds ago in a rather poignant manner. “Well… I don’t hate you, either, Jake. Far from that.”

You could see the struggle in the dark depths of his irises. Turmoil raged behind those narrowed lids, and you couldn’t bring it in yourself to look away, not even if you tried.

Feeling bold, you shuffled forward to slowly raise your hands, cupping Jake’s face within your palms. His glare seemed to harden at first, always so angry at things for not going the way he expected it to go, muscles tensing beneath your touch—but when your fingers gently scraped over his stubble, he could feel himself letting go, practically liquefying into you.

“Why are you like this, Jake Lockley?” you murmured, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. The action made his eyelids flutter shut. He’d never let himself be this vulnerable in front of you before. He wasn’t prepared for his walls to come crashing down around him so quickly—so easily. “Did I do something to upset you?”

All previous inhibitions thrown out the window, Jake grumbled out a small, “Yeah. All the fuckin’ time, peach.”

You quirked a brow. “Go on, then.”

One of his eyes opened before sliding closed again. “Where do I start? You smell too good—I can never concentrate around you. You’re always singing my favorite songs and it’s buggin’ the hell outta me. You’re always so nice to me—even though you know I’m not like your precious Steven and Marc.”

Something akin to a guffaw fell from your lips. “Well, first of all, thank you? Somehow you managed to compliment me in the rudest way possible, and I commend you for that. Second, I know you’re not like Steven and Marc. But I still love you all the same.”

The kitchen grew so quiet, Jake could’ve sworn he’d be able to hear a pin drop.

His heart began tripping over its own gallop of a pace. You’d said it so easily, so swiftly, as if loving him came as naturally as breathing.

Jake found his eyes falling to your mouth, slightly puckered to the side in thought.

Noticing his sudden change in demeanor, you started saying, “Jake—?”

“Can I kiss you?” he interrupted, glowering at you with a newfound fire crackling behind his eyes.

You blinked once, then twice. Then you nodded.

A small sigh of content that made Jake far too excited for his own good escaped your lungs as he dove forward and melded his lips with yours, dipping you backward ever so slightly in the midst of his vigor.

He kissed differently than Steven or Marc did. Steven was languid, careful, and tender whilst Marc was feverish, calculated, and explorative.

Jake Lockley, however, kissed like a mad man. He was all tongue and teeth, desperately furious with his motions, kissing you as if it was the very last time he’d have the chance to do so. His nose slotted against yours, brushing against your cheek as you caved into him, arms winding over his neck to pull him ever so close.

His fingers immediately clutched at your waist, one moving upwards beneath your (Marc’s) shirt to lightly scratch over the skin of your ribcage and the other shifting lower to tug over the back of your thigh.

Gods, you just felt so right.

“Mmh, peach,” Jake growled into your skin as he traversed down your neck, biting at the spot just above your pulse point, which made a low, desperate noise scratch at the back of your throat. He’d do anything to hear that noise over and over again.

“Why do you call me that?” you panted out, fingers threading through his haphazard curls to haul him away from your neck and back onto your lips.

“You like peaches,” he breathed into you, a groan of agony rumbling from his chest when you nipped at his bottom lip with a hum of approval. “Don’t you?”

A choked sound was all you could let out when he shoved you none-too-gently against the counter, bending over to accommodate for his eager lips over yours.

“I love them,” you whispered once he parted away to catch his breath.

There it was again. The L word.

Fuck, he couldn’t do this.

Suddenly, as if snapped back into reality, Jake halted any and all ministrations, nose only a hair's breadth away from your neck. You smelled so damn good, so tantalizingly tempting, lips raw-bitten and skin flushed with heat.

But Jake couldn’t. You didn’t belong with a person like him. With Steven? Yeah, of course. With Marc? The idiot loved you too much to ever let you go, even if he tried to.

Jake would bring you nothing but pain and misery and the thinly-veiled threat of danger.

“This is a mistake,” he said, voice rough with tremendous restraint.

He thought that if he kissed you, all these stupid feelings would wash down the drain, as if you’d be able to suck it all out of him like a goddamn love vacuum. But, no, it was as if just having a taste wasn’t enough. He needed the rest of you. He needed all of you.

But he couldn’t.

“Jake…” Your voice was quiet, breaking off slightly when he let go of you, stepping back while glaring a hole into the ground.

With the maturity equivalent to that of a prepubescent teenager, Jake stormed out of the kitchen and into the hall, slamming the guest room door behind him so hard that the picture frames of you and Steven and Marc on the walls rattled.

A week passed by until you saw Jake again.

You were in bed with Marc, shivering as he ran his palms down your waist, swatting his hands away while gritting out, “That tickles, Marc!”

He hummed noncommittally, pressing kisses down your shoulder, nosing your cheek affectionately.

“Tell me about this one,” he whispered into you, taking your hand to trace a thin scar over the inside of your wrist.

“I was seven,” you whispered. “This boy pushed me off a swing in the playground. I threw my hands out and a rock got me bad—fractured my wrist, too. I don’t remember much, but I remember there was a lot of blood. I’m pretty sure the poor kid was the one that ran screaming for a teacher to come help.”

Marc regarded you with a look of pure adoration, thinly laced with amusement. “Did you really just call the bastard who pushed you a ‘poor kid’?”

You barked out a laugh and he pressed a lasting kiss over your faded scar.

“Alright, your turn. Tell me about this,” you playfully pressed your thumb between his brows. “You got a little divot here. Been furrowing your eyebrows too much, huh? And you wonder why I call you the grumpy eagle muppet.” When he rolled his eyes, you chuckled out, “What? Listen, it’s not my fault Khonshu got rid of all your scars! I gotta work with what I’m given, here!”

“That’s enough out of you,” Marc bit out, though you could tell he wasn’t really being serious with the smile that pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, turn around. Sleep time, baby. Love you.”

You hummed in mild contentment, turning around so your back molded perfectly against his chest. “Love you, too, Marc.”

The rise and fall of his chest was deep, rhythmic, so calming that you were just on the brink of sleep—

Until it stopped.

You could feel the body wrapped behind you stiffen. Immediately, you knew this was Jake.

With a lump lodged in your throat, you hesitantly turned around, only to be met with Jake staring back at you, wide-eyed. It was dark, so you could just barely make out the upset tautness of his features.

Jerkily, he started moving to clamber off the bed, all but shaking you off of him like you were a pesky insect.

No. No, you wouldn’t stand for this.

“Jake,” you said firmly, reaching out to wrap your hand around his wrist. “Stay. Please.”

Mute, the man shook his head, legs slipping out from beneath the blanket.

Desperate, you sat up, wrapping your arms around his midriff and pressing your cheek into his back as you said, “You deserve love, Jake. You deserve my love. Please, stay.”

For a moment, you wondered if he’d just push you off again. Disappear into that guestroom you were too scared to venture into when he left for work. Just when you were on the near precipice of relinquishing any and all hope, you could feel Jake’s shoulders sag. His head hung low as he sighed.

Wordless, he shifted around and you let go of him so he could slip back under the covers.

Tentative, you laid down next to him, shifting so your head could rest over his chest. His arm jostled around to rest comfortably beneath your neck.

Jake held you differently from Marc and Steven.

Jake held you as if he was afraid you’d break apart. Jake held you like he had to be ready to let you go at any moment. Jake held you like he was afraid to show you just how much he loved you.

You craned your neck upwards to press a light kiss to his stubbled jaw, then settled back down.

You heard Jake sigh, but this time, it was one of pure relief—utter bliss. It was quiet, but it was there.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered finally, nose tucked into your hair. “I’ll try to be better with you. I’ll try, peach.”

Nodding minutely, you intertwined your hand with his free one, playing absentmindedly with his fingers. “I know.”

Just before your breaths evened with sleep, Jake could only barely hear you drowsily mumble out, “I love you, Lockley.”

He knew you were already asleep, which made the feat of saying it back somewhat easier for him.

“Love you, too, peach.”

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