synopsis: Assigned as a peer aide for a withdrawn college student no one seems able to understand, you expect awkward conversations, difficult schedules, and long silences. What you don’t expect is Anton.
Soft-spoken and selectively mute, Anton moves through campus like someone slightly out of step with the rest of the world. He avoids eye contact, struggles to process emotions in real time, and finds comfort in routines, textures, music, and beautiful things. Most people see him as strange before they ever try to know him. But beneath his careful silence is someone painfully observant, deeply sensitive, and desperate for connection in ways he doesn’t fully understand himself.
As the semester unfolds, your role in his life slowly becomes more than academic support. Anton begins seeking you out instinctively — waiting outside your classes, memorizing your routines, touching your sleeve without realizing how intimate it feels. He doesn’t understand the meaning people attach to closeness, only that your presence quiets the overwhelming parts of the world around him.
And somewhere between rainy walks across campus, quiet practice rooms, and conversations filled with unfinished feelings, you begin falling for him.
But loving Anton means learning patience. His emotions arrive slowly, often after the moment has already passed. He struggles to recognize jealousy, affection, and longing until they’ve already rooted themselves deeply inside him. While you begin understanding your feelings almost immediately, Anton has to discover his piece by piece — through trust, comfort, and the terrifying realization that for the first time in his life, someone stayed.
A quiet, emotionally intimate slowburn about tenderness, misunderstood affection, and two people learning how to exist gently beside one another.
The words settled somewhere deep enough inside you that for a second you forgot how to breathe normally.
He sat across from you beneath the warm café lights, fingers resting loosely around his drink while rain traced slow patterns down the windows behind him. His expression remained thoughtful rather than embarrassed, like he’d simply arrived at a conclusion after careful observation and decided to share it.
He noticed when you were gone.
Not I missed you.
Not I wanted you there.
Anton’s attention drifted toward the condensation gathering on his cup after a few seconds, giving you time to recover from whatever had just happened to your nervous system.
You cleared your throat softly. “We’ve known each other for like… two days.”
“I know.”
His voice came easier now than before. Still soft. Still sparse. But less fragile around the edges, as though speaking had become slightly less exhausting in your presence.
“That’s not a long time to notice someone.”
Anton tilted his head faintly at that.
“It is for me.”
You stared at him.
He seemed to realize belatedly that he might need to explain further because his fingers immediately twitched toward his phone again. You watched him hesitate halfway there before deciding to speak instead.
“Most people feel…” He paused. “Temporary.”
The sentence came out unevenly, like he was translating thoughts directly as they formed.
“They change quickly,” he continued quietly. “Or they stop trying after they realize I’m difficult.”
Your chest tightened.
Anton looked down at the table while speaking now, voice lowering further with concentration.
“So when someone stays longer than expected…” Another pause. “I notice.”
The café felt unbearably intimate suddenly.
You wanted very badly to say something comforting and equally wanted not to scare him by reacting too emotionally. Anton seemed sensitive to emotional intensity in the same way he was sensitive to noise — too much too quickly made him retreat inward.
“Well,” you said gently, “I’m not planning on disappearing.”
The second the sentence left your mouth, Anton looked up.
Not fully into your eyes.
But close enough that the breath caught in your throat anyway.
His expression shifted in that quiet subtle way you were learning to recognize — something loosening internally, tension unwinding one careful thread at a time.
Then he nodded once.
Small. Certain. Like he’d decided to believe you.
You had to look away first.
Outside, evening settled fully over campus, the windows darkening into reflective black glass broken only by rain and scattered lights. The café had emptied considerably while you talked, leaving only a few students hunched over laptops near the back.
Anton finished the last bite of his sandwich with methodical precision before pushing the plate slightly away from himself.
You noticed immediately. “You actually ate.”
He blinked.
Then glanced down at the empty plate like he’d forgotten about it midway through the conversation.
“See? Survived.”
Anton considered that seriously.
“It helped because you stayed.”
Your heart physically hurt at this point.
You pressed your fingers harder around your cup to ground yourself. “Anton.”
He looked attentive immediately.
“You can’t keep saying things like that so casually.”
Confusion crossed his face almost at once.
“What things?”
Exactly.
You laughed weakly under your breath. “Never mind.”
Anton frowned slightly, clearly dissatisfied with not understanding. He shifted forward a little in his seat, cardigan sleeves falling down over his hands again.
“No,” he said quietly. “Explain.”
The determination in his voice startled you.
You looked at him carefully. “Some things sound more emotionally intense than you realize.”
“Oh.”
His cheeks pinked faintly.
You watched the realization begin unfolding behind his eyes in slow increments. Processing. Replaying previous conversations. Reevaluating.
“When I said touching you felt calm too?” he asked carefully.
Your stomach flipped violently.
“Yes.”
Anton immediately lowered his gaze toward the table.
“And when I said I noticed you were gone.”
“Yes.”
Another pause stretched between you both.
Then, very softly:
“I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.”
“I know you weren’t. And you didn’t.”
That seemed to relax him slightly.
But his expression remained thoughtful, distant around the edges in that way it became when he was learning something new socially.
After a while, he asked, “Do people usually hide those things?”
“Feelings?”
Tiny nod. “Sometimes.”
“Why?”
You almost laughed at the genuine confusion in his voice.
“Because it makes people vulnerable.”
“But feelings already exist even if you don’t say them.”
The simplicity of the statement knocked straight through you.
You stared at him while he sat there completely sincere, genuinely unable to understand why people buried emotions under implication and performance instead of simply stating them aloud.
And maybe he had a point. Maybe everyone else was the confusing one.
“You’re dangerous,” you muttered before thinking.
Anton blinked slowly.
The pink in his cheeks deepened. “That sounds bad.”
“It’s not.”
“Then what does it mean?”
You groaned softly and covered part of your face with your sleeve. “You ask too many direct questions.”
“I know,” he said immediately, with the faintest trace of something almost amused hidden beneath the words.
You looked up in surprise.
Anton’s mouth had curved slightly at one corner.
The sight hit you embarrassingly hard.
“You did that on purpose,” you accused quietly.
His expression flickered with confusion again before understanding caught up several seconds later.
Then the almost-smile appeared once more.
Tiny. Beautiful.
Your entire body felt doomed.
Before either of you could say anything else, the café lights flickered briefly overhead. One of the workers behind the counter called out an apologetic, “Closing in ten!”
You glanced toward the windows. “Shit, it got late.. and I missed my shift.”
Anton followed your gaze outside immediately. Darkness had settled completely over campus now, rain reduced to a misty drizzle coating the sidewalks in reflected light.
You started gathering your things reluctantly.
Across from you, Anton had gone quiet again.
Not withdrawn. Just watching.
When you stood from the table, he stood too before you could even sling your bag over your shoulder. Immediate. Automatic.
You smiled a little. “You really do follow me everywhere now, huh?”
The second the joke left your mouth, Anton stilled.
His expression changed subtly.
You recognized it instantly now — processing something emotionally complicated in delayed real time.
“Oh my god,” you said quickly. “I was kidding, Anton.”
But he still looked unsettled.
“I know,” he murmured.
Yet his fingers had disappeared deeper into his sleeves again.
You softened immediately. “Hey.”
His attention lifted toward you.
“I don’t mind you being around me.”
“You would tell me if you did?”
“Yes,” you said gently. “I would.”
Anton studied your face for a long moment, like he was checking for inconsistencies between your words and expression.
“Okay.”
-
The walk back across campus felt different after that conversation.
Not heavier exactly, but charged in a quieter way, like something between you had shifted shape without either of you knowing what to call it yet. The sidewalks gleamed from the rain, reflecting blurry gold streetlights beneath your feet while damp wind tugged softly at your clothes. Anton stayed beside you in that instinctive way he had begun to, close enough that his sleeve brushed yours every few steps before drifting away again.
You couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said in the café.
You would tell me if you did?
The question lingered unpleasantly under your ribs because it revealed too much all at once. Anton expected people to tolerate him until they didn’t anymore. Every reassurance you gave him seemed to land with the careful disbelief of someone handling something fragile enough to break if held incorrectly.
And somehow, despite barely knowing him, you already understood that hurting him would feel unbearable.
“You’re thinking too loudly again,” Anton murmured beside you.
You turned toward him with startled laughter. “What does that even mean?”
“It changes your face.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“I like it.”
The response came so naturally that he didn’t seem to realize he’d said anything unusual until several seconds later. You watched awareness arrive slowly behind his expression, watched him mentally retrace the sentence and reach the point where another person might’ve softened it or taken it back.
Anton just frowned slightly, like he couldn’t figure out whether he was supposed to.
“You say things before understanding them,” you said quietly.
“That sounds irresponsible.”
“It kind of is.”
You expected embarrassment. Instead, his mouth curved faintly against the collar of his cardigan, hidden halfway inside soft fabric. “You still stay.”
The honesty of it made your chest ache all over again.
You reached the library steps too quickly. Warm light spilled through the glass doors, students moving around inside with backpacks slung over their shoulders, the entire building humming with that exhausted nighttime energy campuses developed after dark. Your shift started thirty-five minutes ago.
Neither of you moved immediately.
Anton’s fingers disappeared deeper into his sleeves while he stared somewhere near the ground beside you. Thinking again. You were beginning to realize his silences weren’t empty pauses in conversation but entire internal processes unfolding where you could almost see them happen.
Finally, quietly, “What happens when you stop being my aide?”
You looked at him carefully.
“The semester ends eventually.”
“I know.”
But something tightened in your chest anyway.
The question wasn’t really about schedules.
Rainwater dripped steadily from the edge of the library roof nearby. Students brushed past the two of you without paying attention, conversations blurring together into meaningless background noise, but Anton remained fixed in place like he was waiting for an answer capable of settling something much larger than the conversation itself.
You tried for lightness first. “You planning on getting rid of me that quickly?”
“No.”
Immediate. Certain.
The word slipped out before he could reconsider it, soft but startlingly firm compared to his usual hesitation. His eyes widened slightly afterward, as though the speed of the response surprised him too.
You smiled despite yourself. “Okay.”
Anton looked away first.
His throat moved subtly before he spoke again, quieter now. “I don’t think I know how to stop noticing you.”
The world genuinely seemed to pause for a second.
You stared at him beneath the glow of the library lights, rain dampening the dark strands of hair curling around his face, cardigan sleeves covering his hands almost completely. There was no performance in him. No flirtation sharpened intentionally for effect. Anton said things with the devastating sincerity of someone still learning that feelings often stayed hidden inside other people.
And maybe that was why every word reached directly inside your chest before you had time to defend yourself from it.
“You can’t say things like that to me right before I have work,” you muttered weakly.
Confusion flickered across his face before understanding slowly followed. “Because it changes your body language.”
You covered your face briefly with your hands. “Anton.”
“What?”
“You are unbelievably stressful.”
That finally earned a real smile.
You’d noticed already that Anton became beautiful in motion more than stillness. The softening of his mouth when he forgot to guard himself. The way his shoulders relaxed when something genuinely pleased him. Even his voice changed slightly during those moments, growing warmer, easier, less careful around the edges.
Watching that smile appear because of you felt dangerous in ways you weren’t prepared for.
“You’re doing it again,” he said softly.
“What?”
“Looking at me for too long.”
Heat crawled instantly into your face. “You noticed?”
“I notice everything about you.”
Your stomach turned over so hard it almost hurt.
The terrifying thing was that he meant it literally.
Before you could recover, Anton stepped closer without seeming aware of the intimacy in the movement. Not enough to trap you against the library railing, just enough that you could feel warmth radiating through the damp fabric of his cardigan. His attention lingered near your face with unusual steadiness, focused and searching in that way he got when trying to understand something completely.
Then his hand emerged slowly from his sleeve.
You felt the slightest brush of his fingertips against your wrist.
Tentative. Curious.
Not grabbing. Not even really holding. Just touching your pulse like he was confirming you were real.
“You react here first,” he murmured.
Your heartbeat went absolutely feral beneath his fingers.
Anton seemed fascinated by it.
“When you’re overwhelmed,” he continued softly, still studying your wrist with complete concentration, “it gets faster before your expression changes.”
You couldn’t breathe correctly anymore.
“Anton,” you whispered.
That finally made him look up.
Really look at you this time, closer to eye contact than he’d ever managed before. His own expression had gone strangely open, all that careful distance he usually kept between himself and the world temporarily unraveled by curiosity and something warmer underneath it.
Then realization arrived. Not all at once. Slowly.
You saw the exact moment he understood what this looked like from your perspective — standing too close outside the library in the rain, fingers pressed lightly against your pulse while speaking in that soft voice of his.
His hand withdrew immediately.
Color spread across his cheeks.
“I—” He stopped, visibly overwhelmed by too many thoughts arriving together. “I was observing.”
You laughed helplessly under your breath, pulse still racing. “That doesn’t help your case.”
Anton looked genuinely distressed by this.
“You said I should explain things.”
“I know, puppy.”
The pet name slipped out accidentally.
Both of you froze.
Anton’s expression changed so suddenly it stole the air from your lungs. Confusion first, then surprise, then something deeper that unfolded slowly across his face as he replayed the word internally.
Puppy..
You watched him process it like a physical sensation.
“Nobody’s called me that before,” he said quietly.
And just like that, every coherent thought left your body.
You should’ve corrected yourself immediately.
Laughed it off. Said it slipped out. Pretended it meant nothing.
Instead you stood there outside the library with rain misting softly through the cold night air while Anton looked at you like the word had settled somewhere deep inside him and refused to leave.
Nobody’s called me that before.
The confession wrapped itself around your ribs painfully. Not because it was dramatic, but because of how sincere it sounded. Anton never exaggerated anything. If anything, he stripped emotions down so honestly that they became impossible to ignore.
You swallowed. “Really?”
He shook his head slowly.
Something about that felt impossible. Someone as soft as him should’ve been adored carefully. He should’ve had people smoothing his hair back affectionately, calling him sweet things without embarrassment, pressing warmth into all the places the world had taught him to make smaller.
Instead, Anton carried himself like someone accustomed to being handled incorrectly.
“You looked upset,” you said quietly, trying to explain the word somehow. “It just came out.”
“I wasn’t upset.”
“No?”
He thought about it seriously before answering. “Disorganized.”
Your laugh escaped before you could stop it.
Anton’s mouth softened again at the sound. Not quite a smile this time — something gentler, almost shy around the edges.
“I like when you laugh at me correctly,” he admitted.
“What does that mean?”
“When people usually laugh at me, it’s not for good reasons.”
You understood immediately. People laughed at him because they thought he was strange, or awkward, or unintentionally amusing. But Anton watched reactions carefully enough to tell the difference between ridicule and affection.
And somehow, without meaning to, you’d become someone whose reactions he trusted.
You leaned back slightly against the wet library railing, trying to steady yourself while Anton stood close enough for you to feel his warmth through the damp evening air. He’d gone quiet again, gaze lowered toward your sleeve where droplets of rain darkened the fabric.
“You’re cold,” he murmured after a while.
“So are you.”
“I don’t notice temperature immediately.”
“That sounds fake.”
“It’s true.”
“Anton.”
“What?”
“You say things that sound medically concerning and then act like it’s normal.”
This time the smile came easier. Small but immediate, hidden partially behind the collar of his cardigan as he tucked his mouth into the fabric instinctively.
You stared at him too long again. Anton noticed, of course.
“You’re doing it another time.”
“I know.”
“You stopped pretending it was accidental.”
Heat crept into your face. “You’re impossible.”
“No,” he said softly. “I’m observant.”
The worst part was that he wasn’t flirting intentionally. You could feel that. Anton approached conversations with too much honesty for manipulation, too much directness for games. Everything he said came from genuine curiosity or genuine feeling, and that somehow made every interaction more intimate than if he were trying.
A burst of laughter sounded from inside the library as students pushed through the front doors in a noisy group. The sudden volume cut sharply through the quiet night.
Anton flinched.
Not dramatically. Just enough that his body shifted closer on instinct before he caught himself. His shoulder brushed yours, warm and damp from the rain, and stayed there for half a second too long.
You felt him realize it.
Felt the exact moment awareness caught up.
But instead of moving away immediately, Anton hesitated.
His expression had gone distant again in that way it did when he was sorting through too many thoughts at once. You watched his throat move subtly before he spoke.
“When I touch you…” He paused, visibly reorganizing the sentence. “You never seem uncomfortable after.”
Your chest tightened.
“Should I be?”
“No.” Immediate again. Then softer, “I just keep waiting for it to change.”
Something painful pulled deep inside you.
Because there it was again — that expectation that eventually people would recoil from him, tire of him, decide he was too strange or too much work or too difficult to keep close.
You reached for his sleeve before thinking.
Anton went still beneath your fingers.
“You don’t have to earn basic gentleness from me,” you said quietly.
His breathing changed first, shallow for just a second before evening out again. Then came that look you were learning to recognize: the fragile disorientation of someone receiving care they hadn’t prepared themselves for.
You wondered suddenly how often Anton spent his life bracing for rejection before it arrived.
Probably constantly.
“You say things like you mean them permanently,” he whispered.
“I do mean them.”
“But people change.”
The way he said it made your stomach twist. Not bitter. Not angry. Just factual, like he’d learned it through repetition.
You slid your hand slightly further down his sleeve until your fingers brushed the edge of his wrist. “Maybe some people do.”
Anton looked down at the contact immediately.
Not nervous. Focused.
His attention lingered on your hand against him with the same careful concentration he gave beautiful objects or pieces of music. You got the strange feeling he was memorizing the sensation.
Then, slowly, his fingers turned beneath the fabric until they touched yours.
Not fully holding your hand. Just resting there.
“I think,” he said softly, “if someone was kind to me when I was younger, I would’ve become attached too quickly.”
“You already get attached quickly.”
“Oh.”
Anton’s thumb brushed faintly against the side of your hand through the damp fabric between you both, absentminded and searching. He didn’t seem aware he was doing it. Or maybe he was beginning to notice now, slowly connecting physical closeness with the emotions underneath it.
You wondered what it felt like inside his head lately. How confusing all of this must be when he processed feelings in delayed waves instead of immediate understanding.
“Are you flirting now?”
“I’m not,” he said quickly.
“I know.”
“But I…” He frowned, looking suddenly distressed by the complexity of the conversation. “I want to keep touching you.”
Your entire body went warm.
Anton seemed horrified by your reaction immediately afterward, gaze dropping toward your joined hands like he’d accidentally uncovered something too private.
“I don’t know what category that belongs in yet,” he admitted quietly. “I’m still thinking about it.”
And there it was.
The slow terrifying realization happening in pieces instead of all at once.
You looked at him standing there beneath the rain-dim library lights, beautiful and overwhelmed and trying so hard to understand feelings everyone else seemed to experience instinctively.
Then you squeezed his hand gently.
“You can take your time,” you whispered.
Anton looked at you like the words hurt him in the nicest way possible.
For a moment neither of you moved.
The rain had almost stopped completely now, leaving only the occasional drip from the library roof and the damp shine of campus lights reflecting across the pavement. Students passed in scattered groups behind you, conversations fading in and out of the cold night air, but the world around Anton always seemed strangely blurred once he focused on something.
Right now, he was focused entirely on your hand.
Not romantically, at least not consciously. You could tell he was trying to understand the sensation itself before assigning meaning to it. His thumb brushed slowly against the side of your wrist again, thoughtful and absentminded, like he was memorizing texture.
“You really think through touch,” you murmured.
Anton nodded faintly.
“It’s easier than talking sometimes.”
“How?”
He stayed quiet for a while, gaze lowered toward your joined hands. You’d started noticing that his longest pauses usually came before the most honest answers, like truth took more effort to untangle than rehearsed responses would.
“People say one thing while meaning another,” he said eventually. “But touch is usually honest immediately.”
Your heartbeat stumbled again.
Anton looked up at you then. The library lights caught softly in his dark eyes, and for once he didn’t immediately look away. Instead he studied your expression with quiet concentration, processing every piece of you at once.
“You’re careful with me,” he said softly. “Even when you react strongly.”
He noticed that too. Not just your affection, but the restraint inside it. The constant effort not to overwhelm him, not to push him faster than he could process.
“You make me want to be careful.”
Anton’s expression shifted again in that subtle, dangerous way it always did around vulnerability. You could almost see emotions arriving one at a time behind his eyes, delayed but no less intense for it.
“I don’t think people usually do that,” he admitted.
“Be careful?”
“With me.”
Before you could answer, a gust of cold wind pushed through the walkway, making Anton shiver visibly beneath his damp cardigan. Instinctively, you stepped closer and reached up to smooth his rain-curled hair back from his forehead.
Anton went still beneath your touch, breath catching softly enough that you almost missed it. But this time he didn’t freeze from surprise alone. He leaned into your hand deliberately, slow enough that it felt like a choice.
A dangerous choice.
Your fingers stayed tangled briefly in the soft strands near his temple while Anton closed his eyes for half a second like he was overwhelmed by how nice it felt.
Then he whispered, almost confused by himself, “I kept thinking about earlier.”
“The practice room?”
A small nod.
“When you touched my hair.”
The memory rushed back instantly — his face tilting unconsciously into your palm, the stunned silence afterward.
Anton swallowed subtly before continuing. “I didn’t understand why I wanted you to do it again.”
Your pulse throbbed against his fingers.
“And now?”
“I still don’t fully understand.” His mouth softened faintly, frustrated with himself. “But I think…” He paused, searching. “I think my body recognizes you faster than my brain does.”
Anton seemed unaware of the effect he was having again, too focused on sorting through the realization itself.
“It happens a lot around you,” he continued quietly. “I move closer before deciding to. Or I touch you before remembering other people think about those things differently.”
You couldn’t take it anymore.
“Anton.”
He looked at you immediately.
“You have to stop saying things that sound romantic before I lose my mind.”
The confusion returned instantly. “But I’m being accurate.”
“I know,” you laughed helplessly. “That’s the problem.”
A tiny crease formed between his brows while he tried to process your reaction. “You keep reacting like I’m confessing to something.”
“What?”
Anton seemed startled too.
You watched realization ripple slowly across his expression after hearing his own tone, like he hadn’t intended to sound playful but discovered too late that he had. The corners of his mouth twitched faintly before he ducked his face partially into the collar of his cardigan again, hiding.
“You’re getting bolder,” you accused quietly.
“I’m getting…” He paused, thinking carefully. “Less afraid of being incorrect around you.”
The honesty in that sentence nearly undid you.
Because that was what this really was underneath everything else. Anton wasn’t simply learning affection. He was learning safety. Learning that he could speak before perfectly organizing every thought, touch before fully understanding the implications, exist without rehearsing himself into something easier for other people to handle.
And somehow you’d become the place where that happened.
The realization filled you with equal parts warmth and terror.
“You should go inside before your shift supervisor hates you,” Anton murmured after a while, though he still hadn’t let go of your hand.
“You’re the one holding me hostage.”
“I know.”
You stared at him.
Anton blinked slowly, processing his own wording. Then the faintest flush spread across his cheeks.
“That sounded manipulative.”
“It sounded cute.”
His expression softened instantly at the word.
Cute.
You were beginning to notice certain compliments affected him differently. Pretty made him quiet and uncertain. Cute made him shy. Puppy had nearly short-circuited him entirely.
Like every gentle thing said to him became something he carried carefully afterward.
“You think I’m cute?” he asked softly.
There was no ego in it. Just genuine curiosity.
You stepped closer before thinking.
Close enough now that you could see every raindrop caught in his lashes, every tiny shift in his expression as anticipation and uncertainty tangled together behind his eyes.
“Anton,” you said quietly, “I think you’re a lot of things.”
The way he looked at you afterward felt dangerously close to wanting.
-
By November, Anton had developed a habit of appearing at your apartment without warning.
Not in an inconsiderate way. He always texted first, usually something minimal and strangely formal despite how often he came over now.
| Are you busy.
| Can I sit near you today.
| My roommate invited six people over without discussing it first.
The last one had arrived at 11:42 p.m. on a Thursday alongside a blurry photo of his dorm lounge crowded with strangers and empty energy drink cans. You had unlocked the building entrance remotely without even replying.
Now he existed in your apartment with the quiet familiarity of someone who had slowly woven himself into your routines without either of you acknowledging when it happened. His shoes stayed lined neatly beside your door. A pale blue toothbrush sat beside yours in the bathroom because he forgot things less when objects remained visible. One drawer in your kitchen held the snacks he consistently tolerated texture-wise. Your couch permanently smelled faintly like his fabric softener.
Anton liked your apartment because it was predictable.
No fluorescent lights.
No shouting through paper-thin dorm walls.
No roommate bringing strangers home unexpectedly.
No people touching his things.
Just you.
Which, increasingly, seemed to matter more than either of you knew what to do with.
Tonight, rain tapped softly against the windows while Anton lay stretched across your couch with his head in your lap, half-watching some nature documentary neither of you cared about. One of your hands drifted absentmindedly through his hair while you read over discussion posts on your laptop balanced beside him.
Months ago, touching him like this would’ve shattered his ability to function.
Now he melted into it automatically.
Not carelessly, though. Anton never became careless with affection. If anything, he grew more aware of it over time, not less. You noticed it in the tiny pauses before he touched you now, the moments where understanding flickered visibly across his face before he decided yes, he still wanted to anyway.
His fingers curled lightly against your knee beneath the blanket.
“You’re rereading the same sentence,” he murmured without opening his eyes.
“You’re distracting.”
“I’m horizontal.”
“You’re also staring at me every thirty seconds.”
“That’s unrelated.”
You laughed softly under your breath, fingers combing slowly through the damp silk of his hair. Anton had showered almost immediately after arriving, escaping the storm outside wrapped in one of your oversized hoodies and pajama pants that sat too short on his legs. The sight had nearly killed you on impact.
“You’re warm,” he said quietly after a while.
“You say that every time.”
“Because it surprises me every time.”
You looked down at him. “Are you usually cold?”
Anton considered it seriously. “I think maybe I don’t notice being cold until I’m near you.”
Your hand paused briefly in his hair.
Months later and he still said things that destroyed you casually.
The worst part was that now he understood why they affected you.
Not perfectly. Anton still processed emotions slower than most people, still arrived at certain realizations days or weeks after they began forming. But he had started recognizing tension between you. Recognizing the way your breathing changed when he touched your waist absentmindedly in the kitchen, or how quiet you became when he rested his face against your shoulder too long.
And once Anton noticed something, he studied it relentlessly.
“You did it again,” he murmured.
Heat crawled immediately into your face. “You monitor me like a science experiment.”
“You’re expressive.”
“You just know me too well now.”
At that, Anton finally opened his eyes.
The documentary light flickered softly across his face, catching on the silver chain around his throat and the strands of dark hair falling across his forehead. He looked devastating like this — relaxed enough that all the guardedness left his body at once. Soft-mouthed and sleepy and sprawled across you like he belonged there.
The realization terrified you a little.
Because he did belong there now.
Anton watched you quietly for a moment before speaking again, voice lower than before. “You know me too well too.”
Something shifted in the room.
The rain outside deepened, tapping harder against the windows while the documentary narrator droned uselessly in the background about migrating birds. Anton’s thumb traced absent patterns against your knee through the blanket, thoughtful more than nervous.
Then, quietly, “My roommate asked if I was dating you.”
Your entire body went still.
Anton noticed immediately, of course.
You looked down at him carefully. “What did you say?”
He took longer to answer than usual. Not because he didn’t know. Because he was choosing words carefully.
“I asked what qualified.”
“Oh my god.”
Anton’s mouth curved faintly at your horror. “It was a reasonable question.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was.” He shifted slightly against your lap, face tilting more toward you now. “We spend most nights together.”
“You spend most nights hiding from your roommate.”
“I could hide in the library.”
“You hate the library after ten.”
“I know.”
His gaze lingered near your face, steady and thoughtful.
“That wasn’t the point.”
Your pulse started climbing slowly.
Anton noticed that too.
You watched the realization happen in real time — the subtle focus sharpening in his expression once he recognized your reaction wasn’t irritation. Months ago, he might’ve missed it entirely. Now he tracked your emotions with terrifying precision.
“My body still does that around you,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“The heartbeat thing.”
“It gets worse when people imply romantic things about us.” His voice remained soft, observational. “I’ve been trying to understand whether that means my body already decided something before I did.”
You stared at him. He stared back with complete sincerity.
Rain filled the silence between you.
He made no effort to move.
Instead, Anton lifted one hand slowly toward your face. The movement carried none of the uncertainty it once had months ago. He still thought carefully before touching you, still approached affection with deliberate awareness now that he understood its weight, but he no longer seemed afraid of wanting it.
His fingers brushed lightly along your wrist first.
Then your palm.
Then slowly threaded through yours beneath the blanket.
“I think,” he said quietly, eyes lowered toward your joined hands, “if we aren’t already something, we’re very close to becoming it.”
And there it was again. That unbearable honesty.
No performance. No practiced confession.
Just Anton, slowly arriving at love like someone piecing together a language nobody had ever properly taught him.
You couldn’t speak for a second.
Anton remained stretched across your lap waiting patiently, fingers loosely intertwined with yours beneath the blanket while the rain softened outside into a low steady hush. His expression stayed calm in that way it always did when he said emotionally catastrophic things — not because he felt them less intensely, but because he approached emotions like discoveries instead of impulses. By the time he spoke something aloud, he had usually spent days quietly turning it over inside himself first.
You looked down at him carefully. “You’re saying this very casually for someone basically confessing to me.”
“I’m trying not to overwhelm myself halfway through the conversation.”
“That’s a real risk?”
“Yes.”
The sincerity of the answer nearly made you laugh.
Anton shifted slightly, cheek pressing more fully into your thigh as though seeking warmth without consciously deciding to. He’d become much more physical over the past few months, especially inside your apartment. Outside, he still carried himself carefully, shoulders tense beneath overstimulating lights and crowded spaces. But here he softened. Curled around you during movies. Rested his head against your shoulder while you cooked. Fell asleep with his hand tangled absently in your sleeve like he needed proof you were still nearby.
At first he hadn’t understood why he kept gravitating toward you physically. Now he did. At least partially.
And apparently that realization was making him brave.
“You’re very quiet,” he murmured.
“I’m trying not to scare you.”
Anton frowned faintly. “By responding?”
“You process emotions slower than I do.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want them.”
You watched him for a moment beneath the dim living room light, taking in the softness sleep and comfort brought out in him. Months ago, Anton rarely looked at you directly for more than a few seconds. Now his gaze lingered near your face openly, comfortably, tracing your reactions with quiet fascination whenever you spoke.
“I needed to know if wanting you near me was different from needing safety first.”
Anton’s thumb moved absently against your hand while he spoke, attention drifting toward your joined fingers.
“I think at the beginning,” he continued quietly, “you felt calming in the same way music does.”
The confession wrapped around your ribs painfully.
“And now?”
A long silence stretched between you.
Not empty. Full. You could almost feel him sorting through emotions in real time, carefully separating one from another.
“Now when I leave here,” he said finally, “everything feels louder afterward.”
You laughed helplessly, and the sound made his expression soften instantly.
There it was again — that look he got whenever he realized he’d affected you. Months ago he used to seem confused by it. Now there was something else mixed into his curiosity. Something warmer. Quieter. Almost shy.
Like he was beginning to enjoy being wanted.
The thought sent heat crawling up your neck.
Anton’s attention dropped toward your mouth briefly before he caught himself. The movement was small, instinctive, but you noticed it immediately because it was new.
And judging by the way his breathing shifted afterward, he noticed it too.
Rain whispered softly against the windows while the television continued playing forgotten narration into the dim apartment. Anton stayed completely still against your lap, but you could feel awareness building between you now, slow and electric.
Then, very quietly, “I think about kissing you sometimes.”
Your entire body stopped functioning.
Anton flushed almost immediately after saying it, color spreading slowly across his cheeks like realization had arrived one second too late to stop the sentence.
But he didn’t take it back.
Instead he looked down at your intertwined hands, visibly forcing himself to continue through the embarrassment.
“I didn’t understand why at first,” he admitted softly. “I don’t usually think about people that way.” A pause. “Then I realized I only wanted to when you were being gentle with me.”
You covered your face with your free hand immediately.
Anton watched the reaction with quiet fascination.
“You’re flirting with me on purpose now.”
The statement hung in the air.
You felt the exact moment he realized you were right.
You laughed helplessly into your hand while Anton stared up at you with growing understanding, piecing things together in real time. The physical closeness. The teasing. The deliberate observations designed to make you react.
He really had been learning emotions through you.
And now he was learning how to want.
Anton’s gaze dropped toward your mouth again, slower this time. Intentional enough that heat rushed instantly through your entire body. When he spoke next, his voice had gone softer around the edges.
“I think,” he murmured carefully, “I want to kiss you now too.”
Every nerve in your body lit up at once.
Anton stayed motionless against your lap waiting for your reaction, but you could feel tension building beneath his calmness now. Anticipation. Nervousness. The terrifying vulnerability of finally understanding what he was asking for.
You slid your fingers slowly through his hair again.
Anton’s eyes fluttered shut for half a second on instinct.
The sight nearly destroyed you.
When he looked back up at you, there was something unbearably open in his expression. Not confidence. Trust.
Like he was placing the entire moment carefully into your hands.
“You don’t have to process this alone anymore,” you whispered.
For a long moment, neither of you moved beyond breathing.
Anton stayed stretched across your lap with one hand threaded through yours, the other resting lightly against your leg beneath the blanket like he needed constant contact now that he understood what it meant. The room had gone impossibly still around him. Even the television noise faded into something distant and shapeless compared to the awareness building between you both.
You could feel how hard he was thinking.
Not retreating. Not shutting down. Just processing with his entire body this time instead of only his mind. His thumb moved faintly against your hand every few seconds, unconscious and grounding.
Then, quietly, “I don’t know what people usually do after this part.”
The vulnerability in his voice nearly cracked your chest open.
“There isn’t really a correct order.”
“But most people know sooner.”
“Anton.”
His gaze lifted toward you.
“You spent months teaching yourself how to trust someone enough to want them.” Your fingers moved slowly through his hair again, gentler this time. “That’s not late.”
Something in his face shifted at the words. You watched him absorb them slowly, the same way he absorbed every kindness directed toward him — carefully, almost cautiously, like he still expected warmth to disappear if he accepted it too quickly.
“I think,” he said after a while, “I kept separating you into categories.”
You smiled faintly. “That sounds like you.”
“At first you were safe.” His eyes lowered toward your joined hands again. “Then familiar. Then…” He paused, visibly frustrated with himself. “I couldn’t organize it anymore.”
“Because feelings overlap?”
“Yes.” Immediate. Relieved you understood. “I would miss you and want your attention and want you touching me and get jealous when other people distracted you.” His brows drew together faintly. “But all those feelings seemed too large to belong under one thing.”
Anton flushed slightly as realization continued catching up to his own confession. “That sounds more intense when I say it aloud.”
“A little.”
“I’m trying to be accurate.”
“You’re being devastating.”
Anton liked being understood. You’d learned that early on. Not praised exactly — understood. Every time someone interpreted him correctly without forcing him to overexplain, something inside him relaxed.
“You know what the worst part is?” you murmured.
“What?”
“You say romantic things with the emotional tone of someone explaining weather patterns.”
His mouth curved faintly. “That might be why you trust me.”
There was no manipulation in Anton. No performance. Every feeling arrived honest and unfinished and frighteningly sincere. When he wanted something, he studied it carefully instead of disguising it behind games.
And right now, he wanted you.
You could see it all over him now that you knew where to look.
In the way he melted beneath your touch but still seemed hyperaware every time your fingers moved through his hair.
In how his body naturally settled toward yours no matter where he sat.
In the way his gaze kept drifting toward your mouth before he forced it away again.
Anton noticed you noticing.
The realization spread visibly across his face, slow warmth climbing into his cheeks as understanding settled in.
Anton shifted then, pushing himself slightly more upright against the couch until he was closer to eye level with you. The blanket slipped lower around his waist in the process, one of your oversized hoodies hanging loose from his frame. You could smell your own detergent on him mixed with the faint clean scent of his shampoo.
The intimacy of it all suddenly felt overwhelming.
He stayed close after sitting up. Very close.
Close enough now that your knees pressed together beneath the blanket and his breath brushed softly against your skin whenever he spoke.
“I have another question,” he murmured.
You laughed weakly. “Of course you do.”
“When people want to kiss someone…” His fingers tightened slightly around yours. “Does it usually feel this frightening?”
“What kind of frightening?”
Anton thought about it carefully before answering.
“Like wanting something important enough that you could ruin it accidentally.”
The vulnerability of the confession settled heavily between you.
You reached up without thinking, brushing your fingers softly along his cheek. Anton leaned into your palm immediately now, instinctive as breathing. Months ago the movement would’ve startled him. Now it felt natural enough that he didn’t even seem aware he’d done it until afterward.
His eyes drifted shut briefly.
“You’re so gentle with me,” he whispered.
The words nearly undid you.
“Someone should be.”
Anton opened his eyes slowly at that.
You watched the emotion arrive in real time — not sudden but gradual, filling his expression piece by piece until something unbearably tender settled there. He looked at you like the sentence hurt him and healed him simultaneously.
Then his attention dropped once more toward your mouth.
This time he didn’t look away.
“I think,” he said softly, almost to himself, “I’m ready to understand this part now.”
Your heartbeat turned uneven.
“Yeah?”
A small nod.
But he still didn’t move.
Because despite everything, Anton remained Anton. Careful. Deliberate. Wanting without assuming. You realized suddenly that even now, even after months of sleeping beside you and holding your hand and memorizing every expression you made, he was still waiting for permission.
Not because he lacked desire. Because he respected yours.
“You can kiss me,” you whispered.
Anton inhaled softly.
Then he reached for you with the same carefulness he used for everything precious.
synopsis: Assigned as a peer aide for a withdrawn college student no one seems able to understand, you expect awkward conversations, difficult schedules, and long silences. What you don’t expect is Anton.
Soft-spoken and selectively mute, Anton moves through campus like someone slightly out of step with the rest of the world. He avoids eye contact, struggles to process emotions in real time, and finds comfort in routines, textures, music, and beautiful things. Most people see him as strange before they ever try to know him. But beneath his careful silence is someone painfully observant, deeply sensitive, and desperate for connection in ways he doesn’t fully understand himself.
As the semester unfolds, your role in his life slowly becomes more than academic support. Anton begins seeking you out instinctively — waiting outside your classes, memorizing your routines, touching your sleeve without realizing how intimate it feels. He doesn’t understand the meaning people attach to closeness, only that your presence quiets the overwhelming parts of the world around him.
And somewhere between rainy walks across campus, quiet practice rooms, and conversations filled with unfinished feelings, you begin falling for him.
But loving Anton means learning patience. His emotions arrive slowly, often after the moment has already passed. He struggles to recognize jealousy, affection, and longing until they’ve already rooted themselves deeply inside him. While you begin understanding your feelings almost immediately, Anton has to discover his piece by piece — through trust, comfort, and the terrifying realization that for the first time in his life, someone stayed.
A quiet, emotionally intimate slowburn about tenderness, misunderstood affection, and two people learning how to exist gently beside one another.
The email had sounded simple enough when you first read it half-awake in bed that morning. Student accessibility services is assigning you as a peer aide for the spring semester. Flexible hours. Escorting between classes when needed. Organizational support. Occasional note-taking. The pay wasn’t terrible, and you needed another campus job anyway, so you accepted before really thinking about what it meant.
You regretted that decision a little when the counselor slid a thin folder across the desk and said, carefully, “He’s… not always easy with new people.”
The folder had almost nothing inside. Just a student profile and a class schedule.
Lee Chanyoung.
Preferred name: Anton.
Under accommodations, there was a longer list than you expected. Extended testing time. Alternative presentation formats. Excused absences during periods of overstimulation. Selective mutism.
“He usually communicates through typing,” the counselor explained. “Or writing. Sometimes verbally, but not often. Don’t pressure him to speak if he doesn’t want to.”
You nodded slowly.
“He’s very intelligent,” she added quickly, like she felt the need to defend him before you’d even met him. “He just struggles with certain social situations and transitions. Some aides have had difficulty because they expected him to respond in typical ways.”
Typical ways. You almost laughed.
“So what exactly am I supposed to do?”
“Mostly help him navigate campus life. Keep him on schedule. Make sure he actually eats sometimes.” Her expression softened faintly. “He responds well to consistency.”
That part stayed with you for the rest of the afternoon.
Consistency.
By the time you found the humanities building, the campus had settled into that gray lull between morning and evening classes. Wet footprints marked the tiled floors from the rain outside, and the air smelled faintly like old books and coffee grounds. You checked the room number twice before knocking lightly against the open classroom door.
Nobody answered.
Inside, students packed their bags noisily while the professor erased the whiteboard. Near the back corner, separated from everyone else by two empty seats, sat a boy with pale headphones hanging around his neck and a cardigan slipping off one shoulder. He was staring at his laptop screen with complete focus, fingers motionless over the keyboard as if he’d forgotten mid-thought what he intended to type.
You recognized him immediately without needing the student ID photo.
He was prettier than you expected.
Not handsome, exactly. Pretty in the way porcelain figures were pretty. Delicate wrists disappearing into oversized sleeves, soft mouth slightly parted in concentration, dark lashes low against his cheeks. His hair looked impossibly soft, falling over his eyes in uneven layers that almost hid his expression completely.
The room gradually emptied around him.
He didn’t move.
You approached carefully, suddenly hyperaware of your own footsteps. “Anton?”
His shoulders tightened immediately.
Not dramatically. Just enough for you to notice.
He looked up after a second, though not directly at you. His gaze stopped somewhere near your chin instead, uncertain and fleeting. Up close, he looked younger than a college student should’ve. There was something guarded about him, but not cold. More like someone constantly bracing for discomfort.
You offered your name gently. “I’m your student aide this semester.”
His expression didn’t change.
Then slowly, he reached for his phone.
The silence stretched long enough to become awkward before the screen lit up with typed words.
| You’re late.
You blinked. “Late?”
He turned the phone toward you properly this time.
| You were supposed to come at 2:40.
You checked the clock instinctively. It was 2:47.
“Oh.” Heat crawled up your neck. “Sorry. The office took longer than I thought.”
Anton stared at you for another quiet second before looking away again. Not dismissively. More like he’d already filed the interaction away somewhere in his head.
You noticed then that he had arranged everything on the desk with impossible precision. Laptop centered. Pens aligned parallel. Water bottle label facing outward. Even the edges of his papers stacked perfectly flush together.
Without warning, he stood.
You nearly stepped back from how sudden it was.
He slid his bag over one shoulder, then paused beside you awkwardly, fingers curling once against the strap. Waiting.
“For me?” you asked before thinking.
A tiny nod.
Right. Escorting between classes.
You followed him out into the hallway, trying not to make it obvious you were observing him already. He walked quietly, head lowered slightly, one hand tucked into his sleeve. Students brushed past in loud clusters, backpacks bumping into shoulders, sneakers squeaking against the floors. Every time someone came too close, Anton subtly shifted away before contact could happen.
He didn’t speak once. You weren’t sure if you were supposed to fill the silence or leave it alone.
“So… what’s your major?” you tried eventually.
Anton pulled out his phone again without stopping his pace.
| Composition and media studies.
“You like music?”
Another pause.
Then:
| I like beautiful things.
You glanced at him.
He remained completely serious.
Something about the answer caught you off guard. Not because it was strange, but because of how plainly he said it, like beauty was an objective category instead of a vague preference.
“What counts as beautiful?”
This time he took longer to respond. You could almost see the processing happening behind his eyes.
Finally, he typed:
| Certain voices.
| Clean piano sounds.
| Rain before it gets dirty.
| People with kind mouths.
Your chest tightened unexpectedly.
Before you could answer, a group of students burst through the stairwell doors laughing loudly. The sound ricocheted sharply through the narrow hallway. Anton flinched hard enough that you noticed immediately.
His hand caught your sleeve.
Not your wrist. Not your hand. Just the fabric near your elbow.
The contact seemed unconscious.
His fingers twisted lightly into the material while his gaze fixed somewhere over your shoulder, unfocused and distant for a moment. You could feel how tense he’d suddenly become, every muscle drawn tight beneath layers of soft fabric.
“It’s okay,” you said quietly without thinking.
Anton blinked once.
Then slowly looked down.
Like he’d only just realized he was touching you.
He released your sleeve immediately, but not before his fingertips dragged against your arm through the fabric. Light. Careless. Intimate in a way he clearly didn’t understand.
A faint pink flush spread across the tops of his ears. Not embarrassment exactly. More like confusion.
Neither of you mentioned it.
By the time you reached the music building, rain had started again outside the tall windows, turning the campus silver-gray. Anton stopped near the entrance to his next class, shifting his bag higher onto his shoulder while students filtered around both of you.
You waited for some kind of goodbye.
Instead, he stared briefly at the charm hanging from your bag. A tiny cat keychain.
His eyes lingered on it with open concentration.
Then he reached out suddenly and touched it with careful fingertips. Softly rubbing the plush fabric between his fingers once. Twice.
The movement was so absentmindedly gentle it startled you.
“It was from a friend,” you explained quietly.
Anton nodded faintly but didn’t let go immediately. His thumb brushed across the worn stitching near the ear before he finally withdrew his hand back into his sleeve.
Then he typed something quickly and turned the screen toward you.
| I don’t like most textures.
You looked at the message, then at him.
“But you like that one?”
A pause. Another small nod.
For the first time since meeting him, something in his posture loosened slightly around you. Not trust yet. Nothing that simple. But maybe curiosity.
The classroom door opened behind him.
Anton glanced toward the sound before looking back at you briefly, eyes flickering near yours but never fully meeting them.
Then his phone buzzed softly in his hand. Another message already typed before he turned away.
| You should arrive at 2:40 next time.
-
You spent the rest of the day thinking about him against your will.
Not in the embarrassing way your roommate immediately assumed when you mentioned meeting “a pretty quiet boy” during dinner, but in the persistent, nagging way people stayed in your head when you couldn’t fully understand them. Anton didn’t behave like anyone you knew. Every interaction with him felt slightly mistimed, like his responses existed half a step outside the rhythm everyone else moved to. He wasn’t rude. If anything, he seemed painfully aware of other people at all times. He just reacted differently, processing everything somewhere deeper and slower before deciding what to do with it.
You found yourself replaying small details while brushing your teeth that night. The way he’d described beautiful things with complete sincerity. The careful alignment of objects on his desk. The confused look on his face after grabbing your sleeve, like he genuinely hadn’t realized touching someone unexpectedly might mean something.
At exactly 2:38 the next afternoon, you walked into the humanities building carrying two coffees and an unreasonable amount of awareness about being on time.
Anton was already there. Of course he was.
He sat in the same corner seat from yesterday, laptop open, headphones on this time. His fingers hovered over the keyboard without moving while students shuffled noisily around him. Even from across the room, he looked disconnected from everything else inside it, tucked into his own atmosphere entirely.
You approached quietly. “Hi.”
He looked up immediately.
Not at your eyes. Never your eyes. His gaze caught somewhere near your mouth before flickering away again. His headphones slipped down around his neck as he noticed the drink tray in your hands.
“I didn’t know what you liked,” you admitted, setting one coffee carefully beside his laptop, “so I guessed.”
Anton stared at the cup for several long seconds.
You suddenly wondered if maybe you’d broken some invisible routine and made a terrible mistake.
Then he reached out and turned the cup slowly until the logo faced away from him.
Only after adjusting it did he pick it up.
His fingers were slender, almost delicate-looking, silver rings glinting softly beneath the fluorescent lights. You noticed his nails were neatly trimmed and slightly glossy, as if he buffed them absentmindedly.
He took one cautious sip.
Then another.
A pause.
His phone appeared in his hand a second later.
| Vanilla is acceptable.
You laughed before you could stop yourself.
Anton blinked at the sound, attention catching on your face immediately. Not startled exactly. Focused.
“You sound like you’re reviewing a product.”
He watched you type something into your own phone for class notifications while processing the joke several beats too late. You saw the exact moment understanding landed.
The corners of his mouth lifted faintly.
Tiny. Brief. But unmistakable.
It transformed his whole face.
Before you could comment on it, students started filing into the room more aggressively, conversations overlapping loudly enough that the atmosphere shifted from quiet to crowded within seconds. Anton’s posture changed almost immediately. His shoulders rose subtly. His hand tightened around the coffee cup. The soft crease forming between his brows looked more uncomfortable than irritated.
A boy dropped heavily into the seat beside him without noticing.
Anton froze.
Not metaphorically. Completely.
The student kept talking to his friend across the aisle, elbow spreading over the shared desk space while Anton sat perfectly rigid beside him, fingers curling tighter inside his sleeves.
You looked between them.
Then gently said, “Hey, I think he needs a little more room.”
The student blinked. “Oh. Sorry.”
He shifted over carelessly.
Anton still didn’t relax.
His breathing had gone shallow enough that you noticed it immediately now that you were paying attention. You leaned down slightly toward him.
“Do you want to wait outside until class starts?”
For a second you thought he might ignore you completely.
Then his hand moved under the desk and lightly caught the edge of your cardigan sleeve.
The same way he had yesterday.
Small. Quiet. Automatic.
You waited while he gathered his things with stiff movements before leading him back into the hallway. The moment the classroom door shut behind you both, some of the tension visibly left his body.
You leaned against the wall beside him. “Does crowded noise bother you?”
Anton nodded once.
Rain pattered softly against the windows nearby. Students passed through the corridor in uneven waves, but it was quieter here, the sounds more spread out and manageable.
After a minute, Anton typed something.
| He smelled too strong.
You blinked.
“Oh.”
| And his coat kept touching mine.
The seriousness of his expression nearly made you smile again. Not because it was funny to him, but because he explained discomfort so literally. No exaggeration. No attempt to make himself sound easier or more reasonable.
Just facts.
“You don’t like being touched?”
Anton stared at the screen for a long moment after reading the question.
Then slowly typed:
| I don’t mind when I know it’s happening.
Your heartbeat stumbled embarrassingly hard at the memory of his hand around your sleeve yesterday.
Before you could respond, the classroom door opened again. Students began settling down for lecture, voices quieter now.
Anton made no move to return inside.
“You still have class,” you reminded gently.
His gaze dropped toward the floor tiles.
Then his phone lit up.
| You come too.
“You want me to sit with you?”
A pause. Tiny nod.
Technically, student aides weren’t supposed to attend lectures unless necessary, but the way Anton stood there waiting made refusal feel strangely impossible. He shifted slightly closer while students continued walking around you both, the sleeve of his cardigan brushing your arm for half a second before he stepped away again.
You followed him back inside.
This time, Anton chose seats in the very back row.
You noticed he picked the one nearest the wall.
He sat down first, then hesitated oddly before placing his bag on the opposite side instead of between you. Like he’d considered creating distance and changed his mind halfway through.
Throughout the lecture, he barely looked at the professor. Instead, he typed constantly, notes impossibly organized across his laptop screen. Color-coded. Timestamped. Every heading perfectly aligned.
About twenty minutes in, you noticed movement beside you.
Anton had gone still again.
His fingers rested motionless over the keyboard while his attention fixed somewhere ahead, unfocused. The lecture hall lights buzzed faintly overhead. Someone behind you kept clicking their pen repeatedly.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Anton’s jaw tightened almost invisibly every time the sound repeated.
Without really thinking about it, you reached into your bag for your spare earbuds and placed them gently beside his laptop.
He looked down at them.
Then at you.
“They’re noise cancelling,” you whispered.
Anton stared for such a long time you thought maybe he wouldn’t take them.
Finally, he picked one up carefully between his fingers.
Not putting it in yet. Just feeling the smooth plastic surface.
His thumb brushed over it slowly.
Then, unexpectedly, he placed it back down and typed something instead.
| You notice too much.
You frowned slightly. “Is that bad?”
He read your lips while you spoke, eyes fixed there with quiet concentration.
Then he shook his head once.
A few minutes later, without warning, his shoulder tipped lightly against yours.
Not enough pressure to seem intentional.
Just there.
Warm through layers of fabric.
Anton continued typing with complete focus like he hadn’t noticed the contact at all.
You became aware of his shoulder long before you became aware of the lecture again.
Not because the touch itself was dramatic. It wasn’t. Anton barely leaned into you at all, just enough for the warmth of him to settle against your arm through the fabric of your sweater. But there was something dangerously intimate about how unconscious it seemed. He wasn’t testing boundaries or searching for reassurance. His body had simply decided you were easier to exist beside than everyone else in the room.
And apparently, that was that.
The professor’s voice blurred into background noise while rain streaked slowly down the windows. Anton kept typing steadily, expression soft with concentration. Every few minutes he paused to adjust something tiny: the angle of his pen, the brightness of his screen, the cuff of his cardigan slipping over his wrist. His movements were precise in a way that felt practiced rather than obsessive, like the world only stayed manageable if things remained arranged correctly.
The clicking pen behind you finally stopped.
Anton relaxed almost immediately afterward.
You weren’t sure why noticing that made your chest ache a little.
When class ended, students shoved chairs back noisily and crowded toward the exits in impatient waves. Anton didn’t move. He stayed seated beside you while the room emptied around him, fingers still resting on the keyboard even after the screen dimmed from inactivity.
“You okay?” you asked quietly.
His eyes lifted toward you briefly before drifting away again.
Then he typed:
| There are too many transitions in one day.
You read the sentence twice.
It was such a strange way to describe exhaustion, but somehow it made perfect sense. You thought about how often people expected immediate adjustment from one thing to another without hesitation. Loud cafeteria to silent lecture hall. Crowded sidewalks to empty dorm rooms. Conversation to isolation. Most people did it automatically.
Anton probably felt every shift like stepping between different temperatures.
“That sounds tiring,” you said softly.
His gaze flickered back toward your face then, lingering there a fraction longer than usual. You got the unsettling feeling he wasn’t used to people responding like that. Not dismissing him. Not trying to correct or simplify what he meant.
Just accepting it.
Outside, the rain had worsened into a steady silver downpour. Students hurried across campus beneath umbrellas while water gathered along the sidewalks in shallow reflective puddles.
Anton stood beside the building entrance staring outside with visible hesitation.
“You don’t have an umbrella?” you guessed.
He shook his head once.
“You could’ve checked the weather.”
A pause.
Then his phone appeared.
| I did.
| It said 40%.
You stared at him for a second before laughing again despite yourself. Anton’s attention snapped toward the sound instantly, distracted from the rain.
“What?”
His brows pulled together faintly.
| Why do you keep doing that?
“Doing what?”
| Making that noise.
“Oh.” You smiled a little. “Laughing?”
He considered the word carefully, like matching it to memory.
Then:
| You laugh more quietly than most people.
Something about the observation felt far too intimate for someone you’d known less than two days.
Before you could answer, Anton stepped out into the rain without warning.
“Wait—”
Cold droplets immediately soaked into the dark fabric of his cardigan, dampening his hair within seconds. He didn’t seem to care. Or maybe he cared and didn’t know what to do about it. You hurried after him beneath your umbrella, catching up just as he crossed the sidewalk toward the arts building.
“Anton.”
He slowed.
“You’re getting soaked.”
He looked down at his sleeve like he’d only just noticed the rainwater spreading through it.
Then he typed while still walking.
| I like rain before people touch it.
You almost told him that made no sense before remembering who you were speaking to.
“What does that mean?”
Anton paused near the crosswalk, watching water rush along the curb in thin rippling streams.
For a while, he didn’t answer. Cars hissed past on wet pavement while students crowded beneath awnings nearby. You thought maybe he’d abandoned the thought entirely.
Then:
| Rain is clean when it first falls.
| Afterward it becomes campus rain.
You looked at him carefully.
His hair clung damply against his forehead now, soft dark strands curling slightly at the ends from the moisture. There was something vulnerable about him standing there in the middle of the gray afternoon looking entirely consumed by a thought no one else would ever have.
“You think about things strangely,” you murmured before you could stop yourself.
The moment the words left your mouth, regret hit hard.
Anton’s expression changed immediately.
Not dramatically. Just quieting.
His fingers stilled against his phone screen.
You opened your mouth quickly. “I didn’t mean—”
But he was already looking away from you.
Shit.
The walk to the arts building suddenly felt much longer.
Anton stayed half a step ahead the entire time, cardigan sleeves pulled over his hands again. You replayed your sentence over and over in your head, trying to figure out exactly where it had gone wrong. You hadn’t meant strange in a bad way. If anything, talking to him felt oddly refreshing compared to the exhausting predictability of everyone else.
But maybe he’d heard that before.
Maybe people had spent his entire life calling him strange.
By the time you reached the building entrance, guilt sat heavily in your stomach.
“Anton.”
He stopped but didn’t turn around fully.
“I’m sorry,” you said carefully. “I wasn’t making fun of you.”
Silence.
Rain hammered softly against the glass doors nearby.
Then Anton finally looked toward you, eyes lowering automatically before they could meet yours completely. Up close, you noticed faint water droplets caught in his lashes.
His phone lit up slowly.
| I know.
But he still looked hurt.
The realization unsettled you more than it should have.
You stood there awkwardly while students brushed past into the building around you. Anton readjusted the strap slipping off his shoulder with damp fingers, movements slower than usual now.
Then, unexpectedly, he stepped closer.
Close enough that your umbrella tilted awkwardly backward from the movement.
His hand appeared near your sleeve again.
Not grabbing this time.
Just touching the wet fabric lightly between two fingers.
“You’re cold,” you said quietly.
Anton blinked once, looking down at where rainwater darkened the cuff of your sweater too.
After a few seconds, he typed:
| You came into the rain anyway.
You weren’t sure why that sentence lingered so heavily in your chest afterward.
Maybe because he said things so plainly that they stopped sounding plain at all.
You came into the rain anyway.
Like it meant something.
Anton followed you silently into the arts building, water dripping softly from the ends of his sleeves onto the polished floors. The lobby buzzed with low conversation and distant piano scales echoing from somewhere upstairs, students moving between practice rooms carrying instrument cases and sheet music folders pressed against their chests. Compared to the rest of campus, the building felt strangely warm, almost sleepy, lit gold by old hanging lamps instead of harsh fluorescents.
Anton visibly relaxed the moment the doors shut behind you.
Not entirely. He never seemed entirely relaxed. But his shoulders lowered slightly, and his breathing evened out again beneath the soft hum of music drifting through the hallways.
“You have class here?” you asked.
Small nod.
“What kind?”
He typed one-handed while wringing rainwater absentmindedly from the cuff of his cardigan with the other.
| Composition lab.
That explained the major, at least partially. You tried imagining him making music and immediately could. Not performance. Nothing loud or attention-seeking. Something intricate and emotional and probably far too beautiful for most people to understand properly.
A girl passing through the lobby slowed suddenly when she noticed Anton.
“Chanyoung!”
He stiffened instantly.
She either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “Professor Kim was asking where your revised arrangement went. Did you ever email it?”
Anton’s gaze dropped toward the floor.
Three seconds passed.
Five.
The girl’s smile faltered slightly as the silence stretched.
You watched panic build subtly beneath Anton’s expression, not dramatic enough for most people to catch. His fingers curled tightly into the soaked fabric hanging over his hands. His lips parted once without sound emerging.
He was trying.
Your chest tightened.
“He probably hasn’t had the chance yet,” you answered gently before the silence could become humiliating.
The girl blinked toward you like she’d forgotten other people existed. “Oh.”
Anton remained completely motionless beside you.
“Well…” She laughed awkwardly. “Tell him Professor Kim’s been emailing.”
Then she hurried off down the hallway.
The second she disappeared around the corner, Anton exhaled softly through his nose.
Not relief exactly. More like recovery.
You looked at him carefully. “You don’t like when people expect answers right away.”
His eyes shifted toward you. Then downward again.
After a moment, he typed:
| Sometimes words don’t arrive before the moment is over.
The sentence hit you so hard you almost forgot to breathe for a second.
You wondered suddenly how many people mistook his silence for indifference when really it was delay. Like his emotions and thoughts existed behind glass slightly thicker than everyone else’s.
“That sounds frustrating,” you said quietly.
Anton stared at the phone screen after reading your response. His thumb hovered near the keyboard as if he intended to say more.
But instead, he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
A nearby piano stumbled through the same wrong note three times in a row from one of the practice rooms upstairs.
Anton visibly winced.
“You can hear that from here?”
Tiny nod.
“That’s kind of impressive.”
Another wince at the fourth mistake.
Then, unexpectedly, he reached for your wrist.
Not dramatically. Not even fully.
His fingertips just settled there lightly, cool from the rain, before he began guiding you toward the staircase without explanation.
The contact shocked you enough that you followed automatically.
Anton climbed the stairs quietly, still holding your wrist with absentminded gentleness the entire way. Not possessive. Not nervous. Casual in the way someone might carry an object they’d already decided belonged beside them.
Meanwhile your heartbeat had become humiliating.
On the third floor, the hallway narrowed into rows of small soundproof practice rooms with rectangular windows set into each door. Music spilled unevenly through the walls anyway — violin scales, fragments of jazz piano, someone singing warmups badly enough to make Anton’s nose wrinkle slightly.
You smiled before you could stop yourself.
He noticed immediately.
“What?”
Anton tilted his head faintly.
“You make expressions even when you don’t talk much.”
A pause.
Then he let go of your wrist abruptly like he’d only just remembered he was touching you at all.
The sudden absence of warmth felt strangely noticeable.
Anton stopped outside one of the practice room doors and pushed it open carefully. Inside sat a keyboard, two chairs, scattered sheet music, and little else. The room was dimmer than the hallway, insulated from most of the outside noise.
You stepped inside after him.
“This is yours?”
He nodded once, already moving toward the keyboard.
The room changed him somehow.
Not personality-wise. More like the tension he carried around campus loosened in specific places here. His movements became smoother, more instinctive. Comfortable.
Anton sat down on the bench and adjusted the sleeves falling over his hands before resting his fingers lightly against the keys.
Then he froze.
You waited quietly.
After a few seconds, he typed into his phone again without looking up.
| You can sit.
“Oh. Right.”
You settled into the chair nearby while rain tapped softly against the narrow window beside the piano. Anton remained still for another long moment, staring at the keys with intense concentration.
“You don’t have to play for me,” you said gently, suddenly worried he felt pressured.
He shook his head immediately.
Then finally, he played.
The first notes were so soft you almost missed them.
Not a melody at first. Just careful fragments unfolding slowly beneath his fingertips, delicate and thoughtful and strangely lonely. The sound filled the small room without overwhelming it, each note lingering long enough to feel intentional. Anton’s expression changed while he played. Not happier exactly, but clearer somehow. Like music translated things his body couldn’t organize into speech quickly enough.
You watched his hands move across the keyboard.
Beautiful hands, honestly.
Long fingers. Silver rings glinting faintly under the dim lights. Sleeves slipping down toward his knuckles every few seconds before he impatiently pushed them back again mid-song.
The music deepened gradually, weaving into something fuller and aching enough that your chest hurt unexpectedly listening to it.
Anton never looked at you once while he played.
But somehow it still felt like being let inside something private.
When the final note faded, silence settled gently back over the room.
You realized only then that you’d stopped moving entirely.
“That was really pretty,” you whispered.
Anton stayed motionless at the keyboard.
Then slowly:
| You keep using that word.
“Pretty?”
A tiny nod.
You smiled faintly. “Do you not like it?”
For the first time since meeting him, Anton actually looked close to nervous.
Not externally. You were just beginning to recognize the signs now — the slight tension in his jaw, fingers rubbing together beneath oversized sleeves, gaze fixed stubbornly on the piano keys.
Finally, he typed carefully.
| No one usually means it kindly.
Something inside you softened painfully at that.
The practice room suddenly felt smaller, quieter, the rain outside reduced to a dull silver murmur against the windows. Anton kept his eyes lowered toward the keyboard after showing you the message, shoulders slightly hunched like he regretted saying it at all.
You thought about him walking across campus with his oversized cardigans and careful posture, about the glossy shine on his nails, the silver rings, the softness he didn’t bother hiding even though people probably noticed immediately. You could already imagine the kind of comments college boys made when someone didn’t fit neatly into whatever version of masculinity they found acceptable.
“You know I mean it kindly,” you said gently.
Anton didn’t respond right away.
His fingers drifted absentmindedly across a few silent piano keys without pressing hard enough to create sound. Thinking. Processing. You were beginning to realize he often needed silence the way other people needed conversation.
| I know now.
Now.
Not before.
Your chest tightened again.
Before you could answer, voices echoed loudly down the hallway outside the practice rooms. Several students passed by laughing, the sound muffled but sharp enough to pull Anton immediately out of whatever calm the piano had given him. His posture straightened. His hands stilled.
One of the voices paused near the door.
“Oh, he’s in there.”
Another laugh. “Of course he is.”
The doorknob rattled lightly.
Anton froze so suddenly it almost frightened you.
Not fear exactly. Anticipation. Like his body had learned to brace before his mind even caught up.
The door opened halfway before either of you could react. Two boys from what looked like an ensemble class leaned inside casually, both carrying instrument cases.
“There you are,” one of them said. “Kim keeps emailing about your arrangement.”
Anton’s gaze dropped instantly toward the floor.
Neither of them acknowledged you at first.
“You gonna answer him this year or what?” the other joked.
Silence.
You watched Anton’s fingers slowly curl into the sleeves covering his hands.
The first guy sighed awkwardly after a few seconds. “Right. Sorry.”
But he still lingered there waiting, clearly expecting some kind of response.
Anton’s throat moved faintly.
Nothing came out.
You could almost feel the pressure building inside the room.
“He said he’ll send it,” you interrupted quietly before the silence could turn cruel.
Both boys finally looked toward you.
The second one blinked. “Oh.”
Then, lowering his voice slightly but not enough, “Does he just not talk ever?”
The question landed heavily.
Anton remained perfectly still at the piano bench beside you, expression unreadable now in that way you were beginning to hate because it meant he’d withdrawn somewhere unreachable.
“He talks,” you answered before thinking. “Just not whenever people demand it.”
The room fell quiet.
One boy looked embarrassed immediately. The other shifted awkwardly against his instrument case strap.
“Right,” he muttered. “Whatever.”
They left a second later, the door clicking shut behind them.
Silence rushed back in.
Anton still hadn’t moved.
You exhaled slowly, anger simmering hotter in your chest than it probably should have after only two days of knowing him. “They were being rude.”
Nothing.
“Anton?”
His hand moved toward his phone slowly.
Then stopped halfway there.
Instead, he pressed both sleeves against his mouth briefly, eyes fixed somewhere distant across the room. Processing again. You could see it happening now — the delayed impact arriving piece by piece after the interaction already ended.
When he finally typed, the message appeared slower than usual.
| They weren’t trying to be mean.
“That doesn’t make it better.”
Anton stared at the screen after reading that.
Then:
| Most people become uncomfortable eventually.
The matter-of-factness of the sentence hurt more than self-pity would’ve.
Like he’d accepted it as inevitable.
“Well, I’m not uncomfortable.”
The room went very quiet.
Anton blinked once.
Then again.
You got the distinct feeling you’d said something unexpectedly important.
His attention lifted toward your face slowly, cautiously, eyes stopping just short of yours like always. For a second he looked almost disoriented, as if he didn’t know where to place the statement inside his understanding of people.
Then his phone buzzed softly in his hand.
| Not yet.
The words startled a laugh out of you before you could stop it.
Anton watched your reaction immediately, shoulders loosening just slightly at the sound.
“You’re kind of mean, you know that?”
A pause.
Then:
| You laugh when you aren’t upset anymore.
You stared at him.
Anton stared back in that indirect way he had, gaze hovering near your mouth while he read your expression carefully. Observing. Cataloging.
“You notice everything,” you murmured.
He processed that silently.
Then typed:
| Only things I need to remember.
The air in the room suddenly felt too warm.
Before you could recover, Anton stood from the piano bench in one smooth movement and crossed toward the stack of papers scattered near the music stand. He crouched to reorganize them with immediate focus, aligning the corners carefully against the floor before clipping them together.
You watched him for a second before kneeling automatically to help.
Anton went still beside you.
“What?” you asked.
His eyes flickered toward your hands gathering the loose sheets.
Then toward your knees pressed against the carpet beside him.
Finally:
| You don’t have to do that.
“It’s literally two papers.”
He kept s taring anyway.
Up close like this, you noticed how long his lashes were again. Ridiculously long, honestly. They cast faint shadows against his cheeks whenever he looked downward.
Without thinking, you reached over and brushed a damp strand of hair away from his eyes.
The second your fingers touched him, Anton stopped breathing.
Not metaphorically.
Actually stopped.
Your hand froze too.
His skin was cold from the rain. Soft.
You should’ve pulled away immediately.
Instead, both of you stayed there for one horribly suspended second, Anton staring at you with open confusion written across his face. Not discomfort. Something more startled than that, like his brain had failed to categorize what just happened.
Then, slowly, very carefully, he leaned forward.
Just slightly.
Into your hand.
Your breath caught so hard it almost hurt.
Anton didn’t seem to notice the effect he had on people when he did things like this. Or maybe he noticed reactions without understanding where they came from. Either way, the movement was small enough that another person might’ve missed it entirely — the faint tilt of his head against your palm, the way his eyes lowered halfway shut for a second like he was concentrating on the sensation.
Soft.
That was the first thought that hit you.
Not just physically. His entire presence felt soft in ways the world probably hadn’t handled gently.
Then realization flickered across his expression.
Anton pulled back immediately.
His hand came up halfway toward his face before stopping awkwardly in the air. You watched confusion move through him in real time, slow and visible behind his eyes as he tried to process the interaction after it had already happened.
“I’m sorry,” you said quickly, dropping your hand back into your lap. “I shouldn’t have just—”
Anton shook his head hard enough to interrupt you.
Not upset. Just overwhelmed.
He stared down at the papers scattered between you both, fingers tightening once around the edge of a music sheet before he typed something with abrupt intensity.
| Don’t apologize for touching me if it was kind.
The sentence settled heavily between you.
You looked at him carefully. “Has nobody ever told you there’s a difference?”
Anton frowned faintly.
“Between wanted touch and unwanted touch.”
He went still again.
Not frozen this time. Thinking.
You could practically watch him sorting through memories and information behind his eyes, reorganizing old experiences against the new wording. After a long silence, he typed slowly:
| People usually touch me accidentally.
Something about that answer made your chest ache.
You thought suddenly about crowded hallways brushing against him, strangers shoving past without warning, uncomfortable handshakes, impatient taps on the shoulder when he didn’t respond quickly enough. Touch that happened to him instead of for him.
And maybe because Anton processed emotions later than everyone else, maybe by the time discomfort fully arrived, the moment had already passed.
“That’s not the same thing,” you said quietly.
He read the sentence twice.
Then:
| You ask before doing things.
You almost pointed out that you hadn’t asked before touching his hair, but Anton continued typing before you could.
| Most people decide things for me first.
The practice room felt unbearably quiet after that.
Outside, someone played scales down the hallway while rain tapped steadily against the narrow windows. Anton gathered the rest of his papers into a neat stack again, movements slower now, attention split somewhere deeper inside himself.
“You think about people a lot, don’t you?” you asked softly.
He glanced toward you.
Then away.
A tiny shrug.
After a moment:
| I have to study people longer than other people study me.
You didn’t know what to say to that.
Because it was true, probably.
Most people would look at Anton once and make immediate assumptions. Quiet. Strange. Awkward. Difficult. Sensitive. Meanwhile he seemed to spend enormous amounts of energy trying to understand everyone around him properly while they rarely extended the same patience back.
Your eyes drifted toward the music sheets in his lap. The notes were impossibly neat, handwritten annotations arranged with color-coded precision along the margins.
“You really like organizing things.”
That earned the faintest reaction from him. Almost defensive.
| Things behave better when they’re organized.
You smiled slightly. “People don’t?”
Immediately, before even typing:
“No.”
The sound startled you both.
Anton’s eyes widened a fraction.
It was the first time you’d heard his voice.
Quiet wasn’t even the right word for it. His voice sounded soft in the same way fabric could be soft, low and airy from disuse, almost careful around the edges. Like speaking required more physical effort for him than most people realized.
For a second neither of you moved.
Then color rose slowly into Anton’s cheeks.
He looked away so quickly it almost gave you whiplash.
You tried not to react too strongly, suddenly aware that if you made a big deal out of it he might retreat completely.
But your heartbeat was going insane.
“You’re right,” you said gently, pretending your pulse wasn’t stumbling all over itself. “People are kind of impossible.”
Anton kept staring stubbornly at the floor.
The blush spread all the way to the tips of his ears now.
You bit back a smile.
“You have a nice voice.”
The reaction was immediate.
Anton’s shoulders drew up slightly, like the compliment physically struck him somewhere sensitive. He tucked his hands deeper into his sleeves and focused aggressively on aligning the papers again even though they were already perfectly straight.
Interesting.
“You don’t like compliments?”
A pause.
Then, quietly this time, barely above a whisper:
“I don’t know.”
You almost melted directly into the carpet.
Anton seemed startled by his own answer too. His throat moved faintly afterward, like he was still adjusting to the unfamiliar feeling of speaking aloud. But he didn’t fully shut down again. If anything, he looked more disoriented than distressed.
“You don’t know if you like compliments?”
Tiny shake of his head.
“Why not?”
He reached for his phone again, clearly more comfortable typing complicated thoughts than saying them.
| Sometimes people compliment me because they think I’m strange.
| Like observing an animal that learned something impressive.
Your expression must’ve changed because Anton immediately looked down again.
“I wasn’t doing that,” you said quietly.
He nodded before you even finished.
| I know.
That I know sounded different now too. More certain than earlier.
You sat there for another moment listening to the muffled music outside before your phone buzzed with a calendar reminder.
Work shift. Ten minutes.
“Shit,” you muttered, checking the screen. “I have to go.”
Anton’s attention lifted immediately.
“I forgot I’m covering someone at the library tonight.”
The atmosphere shifted so subtly you almost thought you imagined it.
Not disappointment exactly.
But something adjacent to it.
Anton looked toward the rain-streaked window automatically before typing:
| You don’t like leaving in the middle of things either.
You stared at him.
“No,” you admitted softly. “I guess I don’t.”
For a second he just watched you gather your bag and jacket. Or rather, watched your hands. Anton seemed to focus on hands often, you realized suddenly. Movements. Gestures. The physical shape of emotion instead of eye contact.
When you stood, he stood too.
Immediately.
Like it was obvious he should.
“You don’t have to walk me out,” you said.
Anton blinked once, confused.
Then:
| I know.
But he still followed you anyway.
The hallway outside the practice room had grown quieter by the time you left, most classes already in session. The muffled sounds of instruments still drifted through the walls in uneven fragments — piano chords from somewhere downstairs, a violin stopping and restarting the same passage over and over again, distant laughter echoing briefly before fading down another corridor.
Anton walked beside you without speaking.
Not awkwardly silent. Just present.
You were beginning to realize there was a difference with him.
Most silence between people felt empty because both parties waited for someone to fill it. Anton’s silence felt occupied already, crowded with observation and delayed thoughts and tiny details he seemed to absorb constantly without comment. Walking beside him made you hyperaware of your own movements in return — the squeak of your shoes against the polished floor, the shift of your bag strap on your shoulder, the warmth lingering in your palm from where he’d leaned into your touch earlier.
You tried very hard not to think about that too much.
At the stairwell landing, Anton stopped suddenly.
You nearly walked past him before turning back. “What?”
He looked distracted by something over your shoulder. Following his gaze, you noticed a girl descending the stairs carrying a bouquet wrapped in pale pink paper. Tiny white flowers peeked through the plastic.
Anton stared openly.
Not at the girl. At the flowers.
The intensity of his focus almost made you smile.
“You like those?”
His attention flicked back toward you, caught.
Then he nodded once.
“They’re just baby’s breath.”
Another small shake of his head this time. Incorrect.
Anton typed carefully while still watching the bouquet disappear downstairs.
| They look soft.
Of course that was his reason.
You wondered if he categorized the world entirely through sensory feeling. Soft. Sharp. Loud. Beautiful. Wrong. Safe.
The realization made him seem somehow even more vulnerable.
As you continued downstairs, Anton drifted closer beside you whenever groups of students passed in the opposite direction. Not enough to touch. Just enough that his sleeve brushed your arm occasionally before he corrected the distance again. Like his body naturally sought proximity before his mind remembered it was supposed to maintain space.
By the first floor lobby, the rain outside had softened into a fine mist coating the windows silver.
You adjusted your bag strap. “I’ll see you tomorrow before your lecture?”
Anton nodded immediately.
Then hesitated.
You could tell by now when something was stuck inside him trying to become language.
His fingers moved once against the edge of his sleeve before he finally typed:
| You don’t have to keep talking when I stop responding.
“Oh.”
You frowned slightly. “Was I talking too much?”
He looked alarmed instantly and shook his head hard enough that damp strands of hair fell into his eyes again.
Quickly:
| No.
| Most people become uncomfortable with silence.
You stared at the screen.
Then at him.
“Do you?”
Anton seemed genuinely confused by the question.
| With silence?
“Yeah.”
A long pause.
| Silence is easier because nobody expects immediate versions of you.
The words settled somewhere deep in your chest.
Immediate versions of you.
You thought suddenly about every rushed conversation you’d ever had, every moment people interrupted each other or filled pauses before anyone could truly think. Anton moved through interactions like someone translating feelings manually while everyone else operated automatically.
No wonder he got exhausted.
“You think really beautifully sometimes,” you murmured before you could stop yourself.
Anton went still. Not tense. Just attentive in that startlingly complete way he had.
Then slowly, carefully, he typed:
| You say things to me like they aren’t dangerous.
The comment confused you for half a second before understanding arrived.
Compliments. Kindness. Gentleness.
Things he’d apparently learned to handle cautiously.
Your chest ached again.
“Well,” you said softly, “they aren’t dangerous.”
Anton looked at you for a very long time after that.
Not direct eye contact. You still weren’t sure he’d ever fully meet your eyes comfortably. But his attention stayed fixed near your face with unusual steadiness, expression unreadable beneath the soft fluorescent lobby lights.
Then someone entered the building loudly behind you both, the door slamming harder than necessary.
Anton startled.
Not dramatically, but enough that his hand caught the fabric of your sleeve again automatically.
The movement happened so naturally now that neither of you reacted immediately.
His fingers stayed there lightly curled against your wrist while he glanced back toward the entrance, orienting himself. You looked down at the contact for a second before lifting your eyes toward him again.
Anton followed your gaze belatedly.
A flush spread across his face almost instantly.
He released you carefully this time instead of jerking away.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
The second the word left his mouth, surprise crossed his expression again. Like he still wasn’t entirely deciding when speech happened.
You smiled a little despite yourself. “You don’t have to apologize every time you touch me.”
Anton stared.
You watched the sentence process in real time.
Slowly. Dangerously.
His lips parted slightly before closing again. He looked down toward his own hand like it had become unfamiliar to him somehow.
Then his phone appeared.
| I think about it afterward.
“What part?”
| Whether I was supposed to know something.
Your heartbeat stumbled.
“About touching?”
Tiny nod.
The honesty of it nearly killed you.
You leaned against the wall slightly, trying to steady yourself before answering. “Most people attach meaning to physical affection.”
| Even small things?
“Yes.”
His brows pulled together faintly.
| That seems exhausting.
You laughed softly before you could help it. “It can be.”
Anton watched your face with quiet concentration.
| When you touch me it feels calm.
| So afterward I don’t understand why everyone makes those things complicated.
The entire world seemed to tilt sideways for one horrifying second.
Anton, meanwhile, looked completely sincere.
No flirting. No awareness of the effect he’d just had on you. He said things the way people described weather patterns — observationally, honestly, without understanding how intimate they sounded once spoken aloud.
You were absolutely doomed.
Before you could respond, Anton’s phone buzzed sharply in his hand. The sudden sound made him flinch slightly before checking the screen.
His expression shifted immediately.
“What is it?”
He turned the phone toward you.
A calendar notification.
Dinner — 6:00 PM
Underneath it, another smaller reminder:
Eat full meal. Not snacks.
You blinked.
Then looked at him slowly. “Did someone actually schedule meals into your phone?”
Anton took the phone back.
After a moment:
| I forget.
“You forget to eat?”
Tiny shrug.
| Other things are louder.
-
You looked at him for a moment longer than necessary after that.
Other things are louder.
Anton said sentences like they were simple facts, then left you standing there trying to recover from the weight of them afterward. You wondered if he had any idea how revealing he sounded sometimes, how easily little pieces of himself slipped into conversation before he could recognize them as personal.
Probably not.
“Have you eaten today?” you asked carefully.
Anton’s silence answered first.
You stared at him. “Anton.”
Another pause.
Finally:
| A banana.
“Since when?”
His eyes drifted upward slightly, thinking.
| Morning.
Your chest tightened in immediate irritation. “That’s not enough.”
He looked mildly confused by your tone, like your concern had arrived too intensely for him to categorize right away. You were beginning to notice that too — strong emotion seemed to make him pause longer, processing each word more carefully before deciding how to react.
“I mean…” You exhaled, softening your voice. “No wonder you’re tired.”
Anton leaned lightly against the wall beside you, cardigan sleeves pulled over his hands again while students passed through the lobby in scattered groups. He looked genuinely thoughtful now, considering your statement with unusual seriousness.
| I didn’t notice until you said it.
“That you were hungry?”
Small nod.
You weren’t sure why that made you sad.
Maybe because Anton seemed disconnected from his own body half the time, noticing discomfort only after it became impossible to ignore. Hunger. Overstimulation. Emotions. Everything arrived delayed.
“Well,” you said, adjusting your bag again, “you should eat before your next class.”
His gaze shifted toward the rain outside immediately.
Avoidance.
“You don’t want to go to the dining hall.”
Another tiny nod.
Too loud. Too crowded. Too unpredictable. You could practically map the reasons out yourself already.
“You could get takeout somewhere quieter.”
Anton didn’t answer.
You narrowed your eyes slightly. “You’re not going to, are you?”
| Eventually.
“That means no.”
Anton blinked slowly, caught.
The expression that crossed his face was so unintentionally cute you almost got angry about it.
Before you could stop yourself, you sighed and said, “Come on.”
He frowned faintly
“Where?”
“There’s a café behind the library that stays pretty empty around this time.”
You watched confusion spread across his expression in stages. Then surprise. Then something more hesitant underneath both.
“You don’t have to,” he said quietly.
The soft sound of his voice caught you off guard again. It was still strange hearing him speak aloud after spending most of the past two days communicating through typed messages and silence. His voice felt intimate somehow. Fragile in a way people instinctively leaned closer to.
“I know,” you said gently. “I want to.”
Anton stared at you for a second too long after that. Then lowered his gaze first.
You were starting to suspect he did that whenever emotions became too large to process immediately.
The walk to the café was quieter than usual because the rain had driven most students indoors. Damp leaves clung to the sidewalks, the entire campus washed gray and silver beneath the evening sky. Anton stayed close beside you without seeming aware of it, occasionally brushing against your shoulder before drifting away again.
At one point, your umbrella tilted slightly from the wind.
Anton adjusted it for you automatically.
Not taking it from your hands. Just reaching up carefully to straighten the angle so the rain stopped hitting your sleeve.
The gesture was so natural it took you a second to even process it.
“Thanks,” you murmured.
He nodded once like the action required no acknowledgment.
The café sat tucked behind the library exactly as promised, warm yellow light glowing through fogged windows. Inside smelled like espresso and cinnamon with soft instrumental music low enough not to overwhelm the room. Only a few students occupied the scattered tables.
Anton stopped just inside the doorway.
You turned toward him. “Too much?”
He looked around carefully.
Then shook his head.
Relief loosened something in your chest.
While you ordered at the counter, Anton lingered several feet away studying the dessert display with complete concentration. Not the food itself, you realized after watching him for a moment.
The colors. The arrangement.
Tiny fruit tarts lined perfectly in rows beneath warm lighting. Frosted cakes decorated with edible flowers. Soft pink macarons stacked like polished stones.
Beautiful things.
You smiled to yourself before ordering.
When you carried the drinks and food back to the table, Anton immediately moved his phone and sleeves out of the way for you with careful precision. You set a sandwich in front of him.
His eyes widened slightly.
“That’s too much,” he murmured.
“It’s half a sandwich.”
“It’s large.”
“You had a banana six hours ago.”
Anton stared at the sandwich like you’d handed him a complicated assignment instead of food.
“You remembered.”
The words landed strangely soft between you.
“Of course I remembered.”
Something changed in his expression again. Small enough that another person probably wouldn’t notice. But you were starting to recognize these tiny shifts now — the way his shoulders loosened when he felt safe, the faint unfocusing of his eyes when emotions became difficult, the careful stillness whenever he was trying to hold onto something internally.
Anton picked up the sandwich obediently after a moment.
You expected him to eat delicately.
Instead, he took one bite and immediately closed his eyes.
Not dramatically. Just briefly.
Processing.
“It’s good?” you asked, amused.
After swallowing, he typed one-handed:
| The bread texture is correct.
You laughed so suddenly a nearby student glanced over.
Anton’s attention snapped immediately toward your face.
Again.
Always again.
He watched your reactions with such complete focus it made your stomach feel strange.
“What?”
His fingers stilled against his phone.
| You laugh differently now than yesterday.
“Oh?”
Tiny nod. Less careful.
You looked down at your drink for a second, suddenly embarrassed by how comfortable you’d already become around him. It had only been two days. Two very strange, emotionally days.
Across from you, Anton continued eating in small precise bites while occasionally glancing toward the rain streaking the café windows. His damp hair had finally begun drying, soft dark strands curling slightly near the ends.
Without warning, he spoke again.
“You touch people a lot?”
You nearly choked on your coffee.
“What?”
Anton looked immediately concerned, like he’d skipped too many conversational steps again without realizing it.
“You…” He paused, visibly searching for the words. “Move close easily.”
“Oh.”
Heat crept into your face embarrassingly fast.
“I mean, not everyone.”
Anton processed that carefully while peeling the wrapper from his straw with meticulous attention.
“Only people you like?”
You stared at him across the tiny café table while he waited with complete sincerity for an answer, entirely unaware of how loaded the conversation had become.
“I guess so,” you admitted quietly.
Anton nodded once.
Then returned to eating like he hadn’t just destabilized your entire nervous system.
For a while, neither of you spoke again.
The café settled into a comfortable hush around you both, low music blending with the soft hiss of the espresso machine behind the counter. Rainwater crawled slowly down the windows in thin uneven trails, turning the lights outside blurry and gold. Anton seemed calmer here than anywhere else you’d seen him on campus so far. Not fully relaxed — you were beginning to think that state barely existed for him — but settled enough that the constant tension in his shoulders had eased.
You watched him absentmindedly peel the paper sleeve from his straw into perfectly even strips.
Not fidgeting.
Organizing.
His sandwich sat precisely centered on the napkin between bites.
“You always do that?” you asked softly.
Anton glanced up.
“With objects.”
Then his eyes drifted toward the neat pile of paper strips beside his drink.
“Oh.”
He looked faintly embarrassed for the first time all evening.
“I’m making a mess,” he murmured.
“No, you’re not.”
You reached over before thinking and straightened one of the uneven paper pieces he’d missed. Anton went completely still watching your fingers brush the table.
The silence stretched.
“You don’t get irritated by things?”
The question caught you off guard. “What kind of things?”
He gestured vaguely toward the strips.
“The wrongness.”
You looked down at the table.
Then back at him slowly.
“I mean… sometimes.”
Anton waited.
“But not like you do, I think.”
He stared at your mouth while you spoke, expression thoughtful and slightly distant again. Processing. You were getting frighteningly good at recognizing when he’d gone inward like that.
After a moment, he typed:
| Most people say I overreact to discomfort.
The ache in your chest returned immediately.
You wondered how many parts of himself Anton had spent years apologizing for simply because other people experienced the world less intensely than he did.
“Well,” you said carefully, “if something genuinely feels overwhelming to you, then it’s overwhelming. Even if other people don’t understand it.”
Anton stopped moving entirely. Listening.
You saw the exact moment your words landed somewhere important.
His fingers tightened once around the edge of his sleeve before loosening again. Then he lowered his gaze toward the table almost abruptly, like he suddenly needed somewhere else to look.
“You say things softly,” he said after a while.
Your heartbeat stumbled.
“What does that mean?”
Anton frowned faintly, searching.
“Like…” He paused again. “Like you don’t want them to hurt anyone.”
The sincerity in his voice nearly killed you on the spot.
You looked away first this time, pretending to focus on your drink so he wouldn’t notice how flustered you’d suddenly become.
Across from you, Anton continued studying you openly in that indirect way he had. Not eye contact exactly. Attention contact. Total and unnervingly observant.
Then his phone buzzed against the table.
The reaction was immediate.
His shoulders tensed before he even checked the screen.
You watched his expression shift as he read the notification. Not upset. Just… burdened.
“What is it?”
Anton turned the phone toward you after a second.
Mom calling
He stared at the screen while it rang. Didn’t answer.
The vibration stopped after several seconds before immediately starting again.
“You should probably pick up,” you said gently.
Anton looked genuinely distressed by the idea.
“She worries if I don’t.”
“Then answer?”
Another ring.
He swallowed faintly before pressing accept and lifting the phone to his ear.
You looked away automatically to give him privacy, but silence stretched so long you eventually glanced back.
Anton hadn’t spoken.
He sat perfectly still listening to the voice on the other end while his thumb rubbed repeatedly against the edge of his sleeve beneath the table.
Then, very quietly:
“Yes.”
A pause.
“No.”
Another pause.
“I ate.”
Something in your chest twisted at how carefully he said each word, like speech over the phone required even more concentration than face-to-face conversation.
His mother’s voice carried faintly through the speaker, too muffled to understand.
Anton’s gaze drifted toward you unexpectedly.
Then away again.
“Yes,” he whispered after another long silence. “I’m with someone.”
Your stomach flipped embarrassingly hard.
Whatever his mother said next made faint pink rise into his cheeks almost instantly.
“No,” he murmured quickly. “Not like that.”
You nearly inhaled your straw.
Anton looked absolutely horrified the second he realized you’d probably heard that.
His fingers tightened around the phone.
“No,” he repeated, quieter this time. “She’s my aide.”
The sentence shouldn’t have stung. It did anyway.
You hated yourself a little for that.
Another stretch of silence followed while Anton listened again, expression becoming more and more strained by the second. You could almost see the social exhaustion building in real time.
Then finally:
“I know.”
A beat.
“I’ll sleep.”
Another.
“Yes.”
And softer this time:
“Love you too.”
The call ended.
Anton immediately set the phone facedown against the table and exhaled through his nose like he’d been holding tension in his lungs the entire time.
You looked at him carefully. “You okay?”
He nodded automatically. Too quickly.
You didn’t call him out on it.
Instead, you stirred your drink quietly while Anton reorganized the paper sleeve strips again despite already arranging them perfectly. The café lights reflected softly against the silver rings on his fingers.
After a minute, he spoke without looking up.
“She asks if I’ve eaten every day.”
You smiled faintly. “Sounds like she knows you well.”
Anton’s expression shifted strangely.
“She remembers things even when I don’t tell her.”
The words lingered between you both.
Then, after another pause:
“You do that too.”
Your chest tightened so suddenly it almost hurt.
Before you could answer, Anton finally looked up fully enough that his eyes nearly met yours for half a second. It was the closest he’d gotten yet.
“She’ll think…” He stopped, visibly reorganizing the sentence mid-thought. “She’ll think you’re important.”
The café suddenly felt too warm again.
You stared at him across the table while he remained completely sincere, completely unaware of the effect he had when he spoke like this. He wasn’t flirting. He wasn’t testing anything. Anton just said honest things before understanding the emotional consequences attached to them.
And somehow that made it worse.
“What do you think?” you asked quietly before you could stop yourself.
The second the question left your mouth, Anton went still.
Slowly, carefully, his attention fixed near your face again while the entire café blurred strangely around you.
Then, after what felt like forever, he answered in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I think…” He paused. “I noticed when you were gone.”
₪ synopsis: you randomly shoot your shot with him at the airport, thinking you’ll never see him again but that one moment turns into constant texting, late-night calls, and slowly getting closer. what starts off as something casual and silly grows into something deeper as you keep meeting and spending time together, until one day, you realize it’s not just a random connection anymore…
you were fully prepared to never see him again tbh because for you it was just a random, bold airport moment that you’d maybe laugh about later. so when your phone buzzed with “is that you three rows behind me lol”, you genuinely thought it was a joke. but when you looked up, there he was already looking back at you, a quiet smile spreading like he couldn’t believe it either. the eye contact lasted a second too long before you both started laughing, and just like that, the “stranger” part disappeared
✈︎ 📍Korean Airlines Business Class Restroom
when you texted “i’m using the restroom”, he didn’t think much of it at first but the follow-up text made something in him shift, he stared at his screen for a second, then another, before sighing quietly and standing up. when he reached the restroom area, he hesitated for half a second before knocking lightly. “hey,” he said, keeping his voice casual, almost playful. “it’s me… don’t panic.” there was a pause on the other side before you cracked the door open just enough to look at him, clearly embarrassed, “i’m so sorry, this is weird—”
“it’s not weird,” he cut in gently, shaking his head like that was the least true thing you could’ve said, “it happens you don’t have to apologize”
“do you… have what you need?” he asked, a bit more quietly. you hesitated, then shook your head, eyes dropping. “okay,” he nodded immediately, “give me a second” when you came out a bit later, he didn’t bring it up again. he just fell into step beside you, talking about something random, some movie, something dumb like nothing had changed
✈︎ 📍iPhone Texts
landing didn’t end anything. if anything, it made it easier. there was no awkward “bye” that cut things off, you just kept talking. messages rolled into each other like the conversation had no real starting or ending point. he’d send something random, you’d reply instantly, and neither of you pointed out how quickly this had become normal and somewhere along the way, he started telling you everything. not big, dramatic things but just small pieces of his day. what he was doing, where he was going, things that reminded him of you. and you did the same without realizing it. one day, it clicked that you were the first person he thought to text, and somehow, he had become that for you too
✈︎ 📍2AM FaceTime Calls
the first few calls were messy filled with cut offs, glitching, full of awkward laughter. but once you switched to FaceTime, everything softened. seeing each other changed the pace and your conversations slowed, voices got quieter, and sometimes you’d just sit there without talking at all. it should’ve been awkward, but it wasn’t. the first “we can sleep on call” said was meant to be a joke but neither of you ever ended the calls when your calls started to run deep. at some point, the conversation faded, replaced by quiet breathing on both ends. you woke up to the call still connected, his voice groggy when he realized you were awake. for a moment, neither of you said anything. it felt strangely intimate, like you’d crossed into something softer without meaning to. still, neither of you acknowledged it, you just kept doing it
✈︎ 📍3F Cafe
your first hang out was meant for “just to study,” but it never really turns into studying. the books open, the notes are there, but the conversation always drifts somewhere else within minutes. and for some reason anton always shows up first. not early in a noticeable way, just consistently before you, like it’s built into his routine. he picks a seat without thinking too hard about it, then saves the one next to him like it was never in question. when you arrive, it’s already waiting his bag slightly shifted, the space subtly kept open for you
you steal sips from his drink even though you ordered your own, like it’s become a habit neither of you questioned after the first time. he notices but never stops you. instead, he just slides it a little closer the next time, as if that’s the most natural solution. you pretend not to see him doing it and he pretends not to notice you noticing
✈︎ 📍Yonsei Girl Dormitory
the first time it happens, you think he’s joking. you’re lying on your bed, texting him something dumb like “just climb through my window then,” not expecting anything to come from it. but then your phone buzzes. “open the window” before you can even process it, there’s a soft tap against the glass. you pull the curtain back and there he is slightly out of breath, hoodie slipping off his shoulder, looking up at you like this is normal. “you’re insane,” you whisper, opening the window anyway. “you told me to come,” he shrugs, climbing in like he belongs there
after that, it becomes a habit, but he’s terrible at being quiet (yes i know the quietest person is the now somewhat loud), always almost knocking something over, whispering too loudly while you try to shush him. you end up pulling him down onto your bed before he gets you caught, both of you laughing under your breath. he also always says he won’t stay long but he does. minutes turn into hours, conversations into comfortable silence, your shoulders brushing like it’s nothing
and sometimes when rehearsals run late and he’s completely tired out he falls asleep next to you, completely unguarded, you don’t move you just sit there, heart beating a little faster, realizing this isn’t nothing. you know something has shifted but neither of you has said it yet but you both feel it
✈︎ 📍Incheon International Airport
the airport feels different this time. last time, it was loud and unfamiliar, and he was just a random boy you walked up to on impulse someone you were sure you’d never see again. now you’re standing next to him like this is normal, tugging lightly on his sleeve so he doesn’t wander off while he complains about how you’re “dragging” him
by the time you reach security, the teasing fades a little. you both slow down without meaning to, like stretching the last few seconds. you look at him, and your mind drifts back to that first day, to nervously asking for his Instagram, to realizing you were on the same flight, to late-night calls, to open the window texts, to him showing up again and again like it was never a question
you don’t notice how quiet you’ve gotten until he gently nudges your shoulder, pulling you back. his eyes linger on you for a second, softer than usual, like he’s noticing something too. and then he steps closer and kisses you, the kiss is gentle, unhurried, like he’s giving you time to pull away but you don’t. your hand tightens slightly on his hoodie without thinking, grounding yourself in something real. he’s warm, steady, familiar in a way that makes your heart stumble
when he pulls back, he doesn’t go far. his forehead brushes yours for a moment, a quiet smile lingering like he’s holding onto something he doesn’t want to let go of just yet. you stay like that, close enough to feel his breath, the world moving around you while everything between you slows. his hand lingers for a second before slipping away, like he’s reluctant to break the moment completely and somehow that small hesitation says more than anything else could
as he walks off, he turns back once and asks, “you're still going to open the window when I get back, right?” you roll your eyes, smiling a little before answering him, “you're still going to climb it like an idiot, right?”
“obviously”
“then yeah”
this time, when he disappears into the crowd, it doesn’t feel uncertain. you just stand there for a moment, heart still racing, thinking about how it all started and how random it felt, how small it seemed. and how somehow, it turned into something you’re not ready to let go of
content - edm concert setting, drinking/smoking, smut, everyone’s in college, Anton gives reader a shoulder ride
note - can you guys tell i love college student anton? if any of u guys go to raves stay safe and have funnn!!
✧₊ ⊹ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ⊹ ₊✧
The harsh fluorescent lights of the concrete parking garage buzzed overhead, cars were packed bumper to bumper on every level, trunks popped open, music bleeding from portable speakers. The air was thick with the smell of exhaust, alcohol, and the distant, muffled thud of bass vibrating from the stadium a few blocks away.
“Hold still, you’re going to mess up the gems,” Yunjin scolded lightly. She pressed a final iridescent rhinestone near the corner of your eye, using the rearview mirror of Shotaro’s SUV as a makeshift vanity. Stepping back, she admired her handiwork. “Okay. You look devastating. If you don’t ruin at least one man’s life tonight, I’m revoking your rave privileges.”
She pulled out her silver digi cam, the flash blinding you for a second as she snapped a picture of your makeup. Then she squeezed in next to you, pressing her cheek against yours, and held the camera out at arm’s length. The flash went off twice—one normal, one with both of you mid-laugh because Sunoo yelled something stupid from across the trunk.
You laughed, adjusting the straps of your top. You’d gone all out tonight: a black mesh set that hugged every curve, layered under a harness. Your arms were stacked with kandi bracelets, the plastic beads clinking together as you reached for the plastic cup resting on the bumper.
“She’s not ruining anyone’s life, she’s going to be too busy trying not to pass out before the opener finishes,” Sunoo chimed in, appearing at your side. He passed a joint to Yunjin before handing you a plastic cup filled with a mix of peach soju and Yakult. His own face was dusted in silver glitter. “Pace yourself. You just took a shot and hit that twice.”
You rolled your eyes, taking a sip. The alcohol burned pleasantly down your throat, mixing with the warm, heavy buzz of the weed already settling in your limbs.
It wasn’t your first rave, but you were definitely the more casual raver of the group. While Shotaro and Sohee hit festivals almost every other weekend, you usually only tagged along here and there when you had time. Tonight was the final stop of the Illenium and Dabin tour, and it was your first time seeing either of them live. The group chat has been hyped for months.
“Are we moving or what?” Sohee yelled, bouncing on his heels near the concrete stairwell. He and Shotaro were already halfway to the exit, looking back at you three with impatient grins. “We’re going to miss Dabin’s intro!”
“We’re coming!” you shouted back, downing the rest of your drink. You tossed the cup into a nearby trash can, linking arms with Yunjin and Sunoo as you hurried to catch up.
The walk to the festival grounds was a blur of neon outfits, pulsing lasers bleeding into the night sky, and thousands of people vibrating with the same collective anticipation. The alcohol was definitely hitting you now. The edges of your vision were soft, your limbs felt light, and the heavy dubstep echoing from the main stage made your heart race.
You followed Shotaro as he navigated your group through the dense crowd. He was a seasoned raver, weaving through the sea of bodies with practiced ease, his hand firmly gripping Sohee’s backpack so they wouldn’t get separated. You kept one hand on Sunoo’s shoulder as you pushed deeper into the crowd, aiming for a spot just behind the VIP rail.
“We’re meeting a friend of mine here!” Shotaro yelled over his shoulder, his voice barely cutting through the music. “He saved us a spot!”
You finally broke through a particularly dense wall of people, stumbling slightly as the alcohol made your platform boots feel a little heavier than usual. You bumped into a solid wall of a chest, letting out a small gasp.
Large hands immediately caught your shoulders, steadying you before you could fall.
“Careful,” a deep, yet soft voice rumbled above you.
You looked up, and your breath hitched.
Standing there, towering over the rest of the crowd, was a guy who looked like he had been carved out of marble specifically to ruin your life. He was ridiculously tall, with broad shoulders showcased perfectly by a black, sleeveless muscle tank. A silver chain rested against his collarbone, catching the strobe lights. His dark hair was slightly messy, falling into his eyes in a way that looked effortlessly perfect.
Shotaro crashed into him with a massive hug, clapping him on the back. “You actually held the spot! You’re a legend.”
The guy laughed. His voice was a rich, warm rumble that you could feel in your chest even over the heavy bass. He hadn’t let go of your shoulders yet.
Shotaro pulled back and gestured to your group. “Guys, this is Anton. We play soccer together. Anton, this is Sohee, Sunoo, Yunjin, and…” Shotaro’s eyes landed on you, a knowing smirk playing on his lips. “…and this is my favorite person, but don’t tell the others.”
Anton’s gaze shifted down to you. The moment his dark eyes locked onto yours, the rest of the festival seemed to fade into background noise. He looked you up and down, a slow, deliberate sweep that took in the platform boots, the mesh, the harness, and the few gems around your eyes. When his eyes finally met yours again, a slow smile spread across his face.
“Hi,” he said, his hands finally dropping from your shoulders. Up close, he smelled like expensive cologne and clean laundry, a sharp contrast to the sweat and smoke of the crowd.
“Hi,” you breathed back, suddenly hyper-aware of how much skin you were showing, and how warm your cheeks felt from the vodka.
“Okay, group photo before we lose each other!” Yunjin interrupted, pulling out her silver digi cam. She shoved it into Anton’s hands since he was the tallest. “Take one of us?”
Anton chuckled, taking the small camera. He took a step back, crouching slightly to frame you and Yunjin as she threw an arm around your waist. Right before he pressed the button, his eyes flicked up from the screen, catching yours over the top of the camera for a beat too long. The flash went off, blinding you for a second, but you could still feel the weight of his stare. He handed the camera back to Yunjin before turning his attention fully back to you.
“First time seeing Illenium?” he asked, leaning down slightly so you could hear him over the music.
“First time seeing him, yeah,” you admitted, having to tilt your head up to meet his eyes. The size difference between you was staggering. He was a wall of solid muscle, his presence completely enveloping you. “Not my first rave, but… I don’t go as often as the other guys.”
“I can tell,” Anton murmured, his eyes dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before flicking back up. He tilted his head, studying your flushed face. “You pregamed a little hard, didn’t you?”
You blinked, feeling caught. “Is it that obvious?”
“Just a little,” he chuckled, the sound low and incredibly attractive. “Stick close to me. The crowd gets rough when the headliners come on, we don’t want you getting trampled.”
You didn’t need to be told twice. As Dabin took the stage and the crowd surged forward, Anton naturally positioned himself just behind you. He didn’t touch you, but you could feel the heat radiating off his chest, a solid, protective barrier between you and the crushing weight of the thousands of people pushing from behind.
The set was incredible, but about thirty minutes in, the combination of the heavy bass, the flashing strobe lights, and the alcohol you had downed in the parking garage started to catch up with you. The air in the middle of the crowd was stiflingly hot. You swayed slightly, pressing a hand to your forehead as a wave of dizziness washed over you.
Instantly, Anton’s hands were on your waist. “Hey. You okay?”
You leaned back against his chest instinctively, closing your eyes. “Just… a little dizzy. It’s really hot.”
“Alright, come here,” Anton said smoothly. He didn’t ask Shotaro or the others. He just wrapped an arm securely around your waist and gently but firmly guided you out of the thickest part of the crowd, moving toward the slightly more open space near the back rail.
He found a spot where the air was cooler and the bodies weren’t pressed so tightly together. He turned you around to face him, his hands resting on your hips. “Better?”
“Yeah,” you exhaled, opening your eyes. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Anton said softly. He reached into his small crossbody bag and pulled out an unopened bottle of water, twisting the cap off before handing it to you. “Drink this. Slowly.”
You took it, sipping the cool water gratefully. Anton stood in front of you, blocking you from the chaotic flow of people walking by. He reached up, using his large hand to gently fan your face, the cool breeze feeling heavenly against your flushed skin. He was so attentive, his dark eyes watching you carefully to make sure the color was returning to your cheeks.
“Thank you,” you murmured, looking up at him.
“Anytime,” he replied, his thumb brushing lightly against your waist. “You feeling sober enough to go back in, or do you want to stay back here for a bit?”
“I’m okay now,” you smiled, the dizziness fading into a pleasant, manageable buzz.
When you moved back to your group, the dynamic had shifted. Anton kept one hand resting lightly on the small of your back the entire time, instead of just standing behind you. Every time the crowd shoved forward, his grip would tighten, pulling you flush against his chest to protect you from the impact. The touch was respectful, but it sent a jolt of electricity straight to your core every single time.
Halfway through Illenium’s set, the music slowed, the heavy bass fading into a soft, melodic acoustic intro. The crowd roared in recognition as the opening chords of “Hearts on Fire” echoed through the stadium.
“You want to see better?” Anton’s voice rumbled right next to your ear, his breath hot against your neck.
You turned your head, your face inches from his. “What?”
“Get on my shoulders,” he offered, a playful glint in his eyes. “You can’t see the visuals from down here.”
Before you could protest, Anton crouched down slightly, tapping his broad shoulders. “Come on. I got you.”
You hesitated for a second, then grabbed his hands to steady yourself. You swung one leg over his shoulder, then the other, and the first thing you noticed was how wide he was. Your thighs barely fit around the span of his shoulders. Then he stood up, lifting you with effortless strength like you weighed nothing. You could feel the muscles in his shoulders and neck shift and tighten beneath your thighs as he adjusted you, his traps solid and warm under the thin fabric of his tank top.
The view was breathtaking. The entire festival grounds stretched out before you, a massive ocean of people swaying in unison under a canopy of lasers. But as incredible as the view was, all you could focus on was the feeling of Anton beneath you.
Your thighs were pressed flush against his neck, his large hands gripping the backs of your thighs to keep you steady. His fingers dug slightly into your skin, a firm, possessive grip that made your breath catch. You could feel every shift of his broad shoulders between your legs—the way they rolled when he adjusted his stance, the hard muscle flexing under your weight like it was nothing.
The beat dropped, a massive, euphoric explosion of sound and light. Confetti cannons erupted, raining colorful paper down on the crowd. You threw your hands up, completely consumed by the music and the adrenaline. Anton’s hands tightened on your thighs, his thumbs stroking the sensitive skin just below your skirt, and a sharp spike of heat coiled low in your belly.
When the song ended, he slowly lowered you back down to the ground. You slid down his chest, your body pressing flush against his for a long second before your boots hit the grass.
You were breathless as you looked up at him “Thank you.”
Anton didn’t step back. He stayed exactly where he was, so close you could feel the rise and fall of his chest. His eyes dropped to your lips again, and this time, they stayed there.
The tension between you was thick, pulling you toward him like a magnet. You wanted him to kiss you. You wanted it so badly your skin ached with it.
“Hey!” Sohee’s voice shattered the moment, and you both jumped slightly as he threw an arm around Anton’s shoulders. “We’re going to grab water before the finale. You guys want anything?”
Anton cleared his throat, taking a small step back, though his eyes never left yours. “We’re good. We’ll hold the spot.”
The rest of the night was a blur of heavy bass, blinding lights, and the suffocating tension between you and Anton. You traded kandi with him during a quiet moment, teaching him the PLUR handshake. When your fingers interlocked with his, he held on for a second too long, his thumb tracing the back of your hand. He gave you a bracelet that said RAVE HEAD, and you gave him one that said YOURS. You had made it as a joke, but when he read the beads, his eyes darkened, and he slipped it onto his wrist without a word.
By the time the final fireworks went off and the festival lights came up, you were exhausted. Your ears were ringing, your feet ached, and the adrenaline crash was hitting you hard.
The walk out of the venue was a chaotic mass of thousands of people trying to leave at once. The crisp night air felt amazing against your sweat-slicked skin, but you couldn’t stop a shiver from running down your spine.
Without a word, Anton pulled his black zip-up hoodie out of his backpack and draped it over your shoulders. It was massive on you, swallowing you completely, and it smelled exactly like him.
“Okay,” Shotaro announced as your group huddled near the rideshare pickup zone. “There’s an afterparty at this warehouse downtown. Sohee knows the DJ. We’re all going.”
You groaned internally, leaning your head against Yunjin’s shoulder. “Taro, I love you, but if I hear one more bass drop tonight, my brain is going to liquefy. I’m so tired.”
“You can’t tap out now!” Sunoo protested, though he looked sympathetically at your exhausted expression.
Anton looked down at you, his eyes assessing. He could see the fatigue pulling at your features, the way you were practically holding yourself up with Yunjin’s help.
“My hotel is three blocks from here,” Anton said quietly, addressing Shotaro but looking at you. “I’m not really feeling the afterparty either. I can take her back with me. Let her crash there, and you guys can go.”
Shotaro looked between the two of you, that same knowing smirk returning to his face. “You sure, man? We don’t want to impose.”
“It’s fine,” Anton said, his voice steady. He looked down at you, his dark eyes intense. “If she wants to.”
You pulled the oversized hoodie tighter around yourself, your heart hammering against your ribs. You weren’t drunk anymore, but you were definitely not feeling like going to the after party.
“Yeah,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. “I want to.”
Yunjin gave you a look that screamed we are talking about this tomorrow in excruciating detail, before hugging you goodbye. You waved to the rest of the group as they piled into a rideshare, leaving you and Anton standing alone on the crowded sidewalk.
“Come on,” Anton said softly, his large hand wrapping around yours. His fingers intertwined with yours perfectly, his grip warm and solid. “Let’s get out of here.”
—
The walk to his hotel was quiet, the ringing in your ears making the city sounds feel muffled. He kept you tucked close to his side, his thumb tracing slow, rhythmic circles over the back of your hand.
His hotel was upscale, the lobby quiet and dimly lit. You rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor in silence, watching the numbers tick up.
Anton unlocked the door to his room and pushed it open, stepping aside to let you in first. The room was dark, illuminated only by the city lights filtering in through the large window.
The heavy door clicked shut behind him, the sound echoing loudly in the quiet room.
You turned around to face him, but before you could even open your mouth, Anton was there.
He didn’t hesitate. He backed you up against the door, his large hands coming up to cup your face, and crashed his mouth down onto yours.
It was everything that had been building up since the moment you locked eyes in the crowd. You gasped into his mouth, your hands flying up to grip the front of his tank top as his tongue slid past your lips, tasting you like he had been starving for it all night.
“God,” he groaned against your mouth, his hands sliding down from your face to grip your waist, pulling you flush against his massive frame. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the second I saw you.”
You breathed, tilting your head back as his lips trailed down your jaw to the sensitive skin of your neck. “Don’t stop.”
Anton let out a low, ragged sound. He grabbed the hem of his tank top, pulling it over his head and tossing it aside. The sight of him made your breath hitch. He was huge. Broad, thick, and carved with heavy, defined muscle, his skin glowing in the dim light of the city.
He reached for the zipper of your skirt, his large hands making quick work of your rave outfit. The mesh, the harness, the boots—everything was discarded until you were completely bare, standing against the door.
He dropped to his knees right there in the entryway.
Your breath caught in your throat as his large hands gripped the backs of your thighs, pulling your legs slightly apart. He looked up at you, his dark eyes blown wide with lust, the city light catching the sharp angles of his face.
“Anton—” you gasped, your fingers tangling in his dark hair.
“Shh,” he murmured, his breath hot against your center. “Let me taste you.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He pressed his mouth against you, his tongue swiping in a broad stroke that made your knees buckle. You cried out, head falling back against the door. He was relentless, his large hands gripping your thighs tight enough to bruise, holding you in place as he devoured you.
“So fucking sweet,” he hummed against your slick folds, the vibration sending a jolt straight to your clit. He sucked hard, his tongue flicking with a precision that had you sobbing his name.
“Anton—please—” you babbled, fingers gripping his hair as your hips jerked forward.
He pulled away right before you tipped over the edge, leaving you whining. He stood up, massive frame towering over you, lips slick with your wetness.
Anton led you toward the bed, shedding the rest of his clothes in seconds. He didn’t lay you down. He sat back on his heels, grabbed your hips, and pulled you forward until you straddled his lap.
The size difference was staggering. Sitting on him, you felt incredibly small, his broad chest and thick thighs dwarfing you.
“Ride me,” he whispered, eyes dark and hungry.
You guided his thick, heavy length to your entrance and slowly sank down. The stretch was overwhelming. He was so big you had to stop halfway, a broken whimper tearing from your throat.
“Fuck,” Anton groaned, jaw clenched tight. His hands steadied your hips. “Take your time. You’re so tight.”
You took a shaky breath and forced yourself down the rest of the way. When you finally bottomed out, a loud, shameless moan ripped from your lips. You were completely full, the pressure making your vision blur.
Anton’s hands moved from your hips to rest flat against your lower stomach. His eyes widened.
“Look,” he commanded softly.
You opened your eyes. His large hand was pressed right over the faint, visible press of him against your lower bellythe subtle outline of how deep he was inside you.
“Hmm,” he breathed, thumb tracing the slight bulge. “You take me so well.”
You started to move, lifting and sinking at a slow, agonizing pace. The angle was incredibly deep, every downward thrust making you gasp. Anton watched with hunger, his hand staying firmly pressed against your stomach to feel every inch of himself filling you up.
After a few minutes, Anton let out a frustrated growl. He grabbed your hips and flipped you over in one fluid motion, pinning you face-down against the mattress.
Before you could process the change, he settled between your thighs, lifted your ass slightly, and drove into you from behind with a single, brutal thrust.
You screamed into the pillows. The angle was even deeper now, his broad chest pressing your back, his large hands gripping your hips like a vice.
“You feel so good,” he panted, pace turning frantic. He was relentless, hips snapping forward with bruising force, the wet slap of skin echoing loudly in the quiet room.
He reached around, his large hand sliding down your stomach to find your swollen clit. The moment his thumb pressed against it, your brain short-circuited.
“Anton—ah—wait—” Your voice cracked on a high, broken moan as he bottomed out inside you, thumb circling your clit simultaneously. “It’s too much—”
“You can take it,” he breathed against your ear, his voice thin, strained, almost whiny. “Fuck—you’re squeezing me so tight—” He let out a shaky, desperate sound against your neck. “Don’t stop.”
Your protests dissolved into loud, broken moans. He kept his pace hard and deep, each thrust dragging against oversensitive walls, pulling high, desperate sounds out of you.
“Oh my god—Anton—fuck—” You babbled, words slurring, fingers clawing the pillows. “I’m gonna—”
“Come for me,” he panted, voice breaking. His thumb pressed harder, hips stuttering as his breath came in ragged gasps. “Let me feel it. Come for me.”
You couldn’t hold back. The orgasm crashed into you—sharp, intense, ripping through you. You screamed his name, walls clamping down hard around him as your body convulsed.
The force dragged him over the edge. Anton let out a broken, wrecked cry against your shoulder, his whole body shuddering as he spilled deep inside you, hips jerking in shallow, desperate thrusts. He collapsed against your back, heavy, sweat-slicked body pinning you to the mattress, chest heaving.
Neither of you moved for a long time. Just the sound of ragged, uneven breathing filling the room, your bodies tangled together, both of you trembling.
He slowly pulled out of you, and before you could even process the emptiness, he was flipping you over onto your back. Your body was limp, boneless, and he moved you like you weighed nothing.
The sight of him above you knocked the air out of your lungs. His chest was flushed, his dark hair falling into his eyes, his lips swollen and parted. His broad shoulders blocked out the dim hotel light behind him, caging you in completely.
“Anton,” you whimpered, your thighs trembling around his waist. You were so sensitive it almost hurt. “I can’t—not yet—”
“Please,” he murmured, lowering himself until his forehead pressed against yours. Sliding his tip up and down your wet slit, and you felt him push back inside you—slow, agonizing. The stretch on your oversensitive walls made your eyes roll back, a broken moan dragging out of your throat.
“Oh—fuck—” Anton’s voice cracked the second he bottomed out, his whole body shuddering above you. His arms were trembling where they braced on either side of your head. “You feel so—god—” The words came out thin and strained, like he was barely holding himself together.
You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders. Your hips bucked up against him involuntarily, and the friction made both of you moan.
He let out a shaky exhale that sounded more like a whimper. “Ngh—I’m not gonna last—”
He started to move anyway, slow and deep, his hips rolling into yours with a deliberate rhythm that had your back arching off the mattress. Every thrust dragged against your swollen walls, punching out sounds from your chest with every roll of his hips.
Your legs wrapped around his waist on instinct, pulling him deeper. A high, broken groan vibrated against your collarbone. “Fuck—baby—don’t do that—” His hips stuttered, his composure slipping. His voice pitched up at the end, needy and wrecked.
“Feels so good,” you whined, your head pressing back into the pillows. “So deep—Anton—ah” Your words dissolved into a trembling moan as he hit a spot inside you that made your vision blur.
You clenched around him on purpose. His forehead dropped to your shoulder, a choked whine spilling out of him as his hips jerked forward. “Please—” he gasped. “I’m trying to make this good for you and you’re—”
“It’s good,” you breathed, pulling his face up to yours. His eyes were glassy, his bottom lip bitten raw. “It’s so good.”
Something in him snapped. He hooked one hand under your knee, pressing your thigh up toward your chest, and the new angle made you scream. Your free hand flew to his back, nails raking down his spine. “Anton—I can’t— too much—” A sob cut off whatever you were going to say, your body arching off the bed.
His free hand found yours, lacing your fingers together and pinning your hand beside your head. He buried his face in your neck, broken moans muffled against your skin, your name slipping out of him over and over.
“Look at me,” he breathed, pulling back just enough to meet your eyes.
You forced your eyes open. His face was inches from yours, his pupils blown wide, his jaw tight, his lashes wet. He looked completely undone.
“That’s it,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Stay with me.”
“I’m gonna—” you whimpered, your walls fluttering around him. “Anton—I’m so close—”
Every time he bottomed out, a small, helpless sound punched out of his chest. His breathing was ragged, punctuated by quiet, whiny gasps every time you clenched around him.
“I’m close,” he choked out, his hips losing their rhythm. His hand squeezed yours tight. “Baby—please—”
“I’m coming—” you cried, your voice shattering into a broken moan as your body seized around him.
He came with a sound you’d never forget. A raw, wrecked cry that cracked in the middle, his body shaking as his hips pressed flush against yours and stayed there. The feeling of him pulsing inside you, the desperate way he clung to you, his broken whimpers against your neck—it dragged you over the edge with him, your second orgasm ripping through you in slow, devastating waves.
Neither of you moved for a long time after. Just the sound of ragged, uneven breathing, his body still covering yours completely. His face was pressed into the crook of your neck, and you could feel the wetness of his breath against your skin.
When it finally subsided, you were boneless. Completely spent.
Anton slowly rolled off you, pulling you flush against his side. He wrapped his strong arms around you, tucking your head under his chin. He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead, his hand tracing soothing circles over your bare arm.
“You’re staying the night,” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep and satisfaction. It wasn’t a question.
You smiled against his chest, closing your eyes as the last of the adrenaline faded away. “Yeah.”
—
The next morning, sunlight was streaming through the sheer hotel curtains when you finally woke up. Anton was still asleep, his heavy arm draped securely over your waist, his face buried in your neck.
You carefully reached for your phone on the nightstand, wincing at the brightness of the screen. Your group chat was blowing up.
Shotaro: [Voice note: 0:25]
Yunjin: ????????????????
Yunjin: HELLO????
Sohee: lol
You smiled, typing out a quick I’m alive, tell you later before tossing the phone back down. You noticed Yunjin’s silver digi cam sitting on the nightstand. She must have slipped it into your bag before you left the venue.
Curious, you turned it on and clicked through the photos from last night. There was the one of you in the parking garage, the group photo Anton took, a blurry one of the stage, and then the one Yunjin had secretly taken of you on Anton’s shoulders.
“What are you looking at?” a rough, sleep-heavy voice mumbled against your skin.
You turned the camera off, sliding back down under the covers and pressing a kiss to his jaw. “Nothing. Just pictures from yesterday.”
content — fluff, attempt humor, established relationship, boyfriend anton, reader teasing anton, anton being soft, period comfort, protective anton, mild sexual humor, suggestive jokes, marriage mention, MDNI
note — Heavy on the Attempt humor ok? im still trying to get the hang of Smau´s
warnings: explicit sexual content, oral sex (male receiving), deepthroating, face fucking, vaginal sex, wall sex, praise kink, light degradation, hair pulling, size kink, quiet/semi-public sex (dorm setting with members nearby), tired/soft dom anton, creampie (implied), swearing, slight d/s dynamics, age gap (older girlfriend)
wc: 2.6k
synopsis. late at night in his private dorm room, exhausted 22-year-old anton stands in his sweats and has his older girlfriend y/n kneel on the floor. he fucks slowly into her mouth while they talk quietly, finding real, tired relief after a long practice day. what starts as gentle oral quickly turns into desperate, needy sex against the wall, with anton staying vocal and mixing praise with filthy degradation as he uses her to unwind.
the dorm was dead quiet by the time you slipped inside using the code anton sent. only the faint hum of the fridge in the kitchen and someone’s low snoring from another room broke the silence. you moved down the short hallway to his door at the end. he opened it before you could knock twice, standing there in the dim light from his room spilling out behind him. 184cm tall, broad shoulders filling the frame, black hoodie on, grey sweats sitting low on his hips. his hair was still a little damp from the quick shower after practice, face tired but eyes lighting up just a bit when they landed on you.
“hey,” he said softly, voice rough from the long day. no big smile, just that quiet relief. he stepped back to let you in and shut the door, locking it with a small click. the single room felt even smaller with him in it—bed pushed against one wall, desk cluttered with a notebook and earphones, practice hoodie tossed over the chair. the air smelled like his body wash mixed with the faint leftover sweat from hours of dancing.
he didn’t sit. instead he stayed standing right there in the middle of the room, a couple steps from the bed, legs slightly apart. “practice kicked my ass today,” he murmured, looking down at you. “new formation keeps changing at the last minute. my calves are killing me. couldn’t stop thinking about you the whole way back in the van.” he rubbed the back of his neck, then let his hand drop. “missed you. like, bad.”
his fingers hooked into the waistband of his sweats but he didn’t push them all the way down. just enough to pull his cock out, leaving the sweats bunched around his upper thighs. he was already half-hard, thick and heavy, the kind of size that matched his tall frame. at 22 it didn’t take much after days of no time for himself. he stood there solid, masculine, hoodie still covering his torso, sweats staying on like he was too tired to bother with more.
“kneel for me?” he asked, simple and direct, voice low so it wouldn’t carry. his hand rested on your shoulder for a second, guiding you down gently until your knees hit the wooden floor in front of him. the height difference was stark—you on your knees, him towering above, cock right at face level. he looked down at you, one hand lightly on the top of your head, thumb brushing your hair once.
you looked up at him, voice soft. “you look really tired, baby. long day?” your hand came up, wrapping around the base of him. he was warm, skin smooth over the growing hardness. you stroked him slowly a couple times, feeling him thicken fully in your grip.
“yeah… fucking exhausting,” he answered, breath hitching a little when your thumb rubbed over the head. “but this helps. missed your mouth.” he stayed standing, one hand now bracing lightly against the wall beside the door for balance, the other resting on your head.
you leaned in, lips parting to take him in. the first slide of your tongue along the underside made his hips twitch. “mmh… yeah, like that,” he breathed. you took him deeper, mouth warm and wet, working slowly at first because he was thick. your hands rested on his thighs through the sweats, feeling the solid muscle underneath.
anton let out a quiet groan, head tipping back for a second. “fuck, that’s good.” you pulled back a little, lips shiny, and murmured against him, “you’re already so hard. been thinking about this all day?” then you sank down again, taking more of him, tongue pressing flat.
“all fucking day,” he admitted, voice rough. his free hand stayed gentle in your hair but his hips started moving, slow at first, pushing into your mouth. he wasn’t rough, just needy, sliding deeper with each shallow thrust. the head bumped the back of your throat and he paused, letting you adjust. “shit… sorry, you okay?” he asked, looking down at you, eyes dark but still checking.
you nodded slightly, humming around him, the vibration making his thighs tense. “yeah, keep going,” you whispered when you pulled off for air, spit connecting your lips to his cock. “use my mouth if you need to.” then you took him back in, relaxing your throat as best you could.
he groaned again, quieter this time, and started fucking into your mouth in steady, controlled thrusts. hips rolling forward, cock sliding over your tongue, pushing deeper each time. the wet sounds were soft but clear in the quiet room—your mouth working him, his low breaths, the faint creak of the floor when he shifted his weight. his sweats stayed bunched around his thighs, fabric brushing your cheek sometimes when he moved.
“god, you feel so good,” he muttered, voice breaking a little. one hand cupped the back of your head now, not forcing but guiding the rhythm as he fucked your mouth. his other hand pressed flat against the wall, keeping him steady while his legs, still sore from practice, held him up. every thrust was deliberate, realistic, the kind that came from real need after holding it in for days. sometimes he’d go a little deeper, holding for a second when you swallowed around him, then pulling back so you could breathe.
you looked up at him between strokes, eyes watering slightly from the depth, and pulled off just enough to speak. “you’re so big tonight… taking it easy on me?” your voice was husky, a small smile tugging at your wet lips before you licked along the vein on the underside.
he let out a short, tired laugh that turned into a groan when you sucked the head again. “can’t help it. missed you too much.” then he pushed back in, fucking your mouth with a bit more urgency, hips snapping forward in shallow thrusts. the head hit the back of your throat repeatedly, spit dripping down your chin onto the floor. his breathing got heavier, chest rising under the hoodie, but he kept it quiet, biting his lip sometimes to stay silent.
“keep doing that with your tongue,” he whispered, voice strained. you did, swirling it around the head every time he pulled back, tasting the salty precum that leaked steadily now. his thighs trembled a little under the sweats—not from coming, but from the long day finally catching up while pleasure built on top of it. he stayed standing the whole time, tall frame leaning slightly forward, one hand in your hair, the other on the wall.
you hummed around him again, taking him as deep as you could, and he cursed under his breath. “fuck… yeah, just like that, y/n.” his thrusts stayed steady, cock sliding in and out of your mouth, wet and warm. no rush to finish. he was drawing it out, letting the relief wash over him slowly in the safety of his locked room while the rest of the dorm slept.
you pulled off for a breath, hand stroking him firmly while you looked up.
he looked down at you, eyes half-lidded, sweat starting to bead on his forehead again. “this is perfect. don’t stop.” then he guided your head back down gently and slid back into your mouth, fucking into it with that same controlled rhythm, tall body moving above you, sweats still around his thighs, hoodie still on. the night felt long and private, just the two of you in the quiet room, his tired body finally unwinding through you.
anton’s hips kept rolling forward in that steady rhythm, cock sliding deeper into your mouth with every thrust. his sweats were still bunched around his thick thighs, the fabric brushing your cheek each time he moved. you were on your knees on the wooden floor, hands gripping his legs through the material, jaw aching a little from how thick he was but you kept going, tongue working him as best you could. his breathing had gotten heavier, chest rising fast under the black hoodie, one hand tangled in your hair while the other pressed flat against the wall for balance.
“fuck… y/n, i’m—shit, i’m close,” he whispered, voice cracking. he was trying so hard to stay quiet, but the sounds kept slipping out anyway. low, broken grunts and shaky breaths that he couldn’t hold back. his members were just down the hall—probably sleeping, but the dorm walls were thin. every time he pushed into your throat and you swallowed around him, a helpless little “ah—fuck” escaped through gritted teeth. he bit his lip hard, eyes squeezed shut for a second, but it didn’t stop the quiet moans.
you looked up at him, eyes watery, and hummed around his cock, sucking harder. that did it. his thighs tensed under your hands, muscles jumping. “oh god… yeah, just like that—don’t stop, please,” he breathed, voice getting higher, more desperate. he was vocal, couldn’t help it, the words tumbling out in that tired, needy tone. “your mouth feels so fucking good… i’m gonna—fuck, i’m coming—”
his hips stuttered, pushing deep one last time as he came hard down your throat. hot spurts filled your mouth, thick and salty, and he let out a choked groan that he tried to muffle by pressing his face into his own arm. “ahh—shit, shit, fuck…” the words were muffled but still loud enough that he winced right after, listening for any movement outside. his body shook a little, tall frame leaning heavier against the wall while he kept coming, pulse after pulse. you swallowed as much as you could, some of it slipping from the corner of your lips, but you stayed on him until he was done, sucking gently through the aftershocks.
he was breathing hard, chest heaving, when he finally pulled out slowly. his cock was still half-hard, shiny with spit and come, twitching when the cool air hit it. “holy fuck… sorry, i tried to be quiet,” he whispered, voice hoarse. a small, tired laugh escaped him as he looked down at you, thumb wiping the mess from your chin. “you okay? that was a lot.”
you nodded, swallowing the last of it, voice a little raspy. “yeah… you came so much. felt like you really needed that.”
“i did,” he admitted, still catching his breath. he didn’t let you stay on the floor long. his hands slid under your arms, big palms warm as he guided you up to your feet. at 184cm he towered over you even more now, pulling you close until your back hit the wall beside his desk. the room was small, so the move only took a couple steps. he pressed against you, hoodie still on, sweats pushed down just enough, his body heat radiating through the fabric.
“turn around,” he murmured against your ear, voice low and rough from coming. you did, palms flat on the wall. he tugged your bottoms down quickly, not bothering with anything else, just enough to get access. his hand reached between your legs, fingers sliding through how wet you already were from sucking him. “fuck, you’re soaked… all that just from blowing me?” he sounded half-amused, half-turned on again.
he lined himself up and pushed in slow at first, thick head stretching you open. you gasped, forehead pressing to the cool wall. “anton… big—fuck.” the words came out shaky. he groaned quietly as he sank deeper, hips flush against your ass once he bottomed out. “so tight… always so good for me,” he whispered, starting to move. his thrusts were deep and steady, the kind that made your knees weak. the wall creaked faintly with each push, but he didn’t care anymore, too lost in it.
you came first, faster than you expected. the angle was perfect, his cock hitting that spot inside you over and over while his hand reached around to rub your clit. your legs shook, a broken moan leaving your lips before you could stop it. “i’m—i’m coming, oh god—” your voice cracked, body clenching hard around him. words stopped making sense after that. everything blurred into soft, helpless sounds—whines and gasps that you couldn’t hold back.
anton didn’t let up. he kept fucking you through it, hips snapping harder now, one hand fisting your hair and pulling your head back gently but firmly so your back arched. “that’s it… come on my cock like a good girl,” he breathed right against your ear, voice dark and low. the praise and degradation mixed together in that real, breathless way. “look at you, can’t even speak anymore, huh? all dumb and fucked out just from my dick. so fucking pretty when you’re like this.”
he tugged your hair a little more, not enough to hurt but enough to keep you right there, head tilted back so he could see your face from the side. “yeah? nothing to say now? just taking it like you were made for it.” his thrusts stayed deep, grinding against you every time he bottomed out. “my dumb little slut… so wet, creaming all over me. you love when i use you after practice, don’t you?” the words were filthy but spoken softly, mixed with softer ones right after. “but you’re so good for me… always letting me have you when i need it. fuck, i love this pussy.”
you couldn’t form real sentences anymore. just broken whimpers and moans, forehead sliding against the wall as he fucked you harder. your brain felt hazy, every thrust pushing you further into that floaty, dumb feeling where only pleasure existed. anton kept talking, voice husky and relentless, switching between praise and degradation without missing a beat. “can’t talk? that’s okay, baby. just make those pretty sounds for me. let me hear how stupid i’m making you.”
his free hand gripped your hip, fingers digging in as he drove into you, tall body curved over yours. sweat was beading on his skin again, hoodie sticking to his back. he was vocal the whole time—groans, curses, whispered filth right into your ear. “fuck, you’re squeezing me so tight… gonna make me come again if you keep doing that.” every pull on your hair sent sparks down your spine, keeping you arched and helpless against the wall while he used you exactly how he needed after that long, exhausting day.
the dorm stayed quiet outside, but inside his room the sounds were unmistakable—skin against skin, your muffled moans, his low grunts and dirty words. he didn’t stop, hips rolling deep and steady, dragging it out because he wasn’t ready to be done with you yet. his cock throbbed inside you, thick and relentless, pushing you toward another edge even as your first orgasm still pulsed through your body.
you were completely gone, mind blank except for the feeling of him filling you, his voice in your ear, his hand in your hair. anton leaned in closer, lips brushing your neck as he whispered, “good girl… my perfect dumb girl. take it all for me.”
wc: 4.4k , pairing: older brother's bsf & past fwb!eunseok x fem!yn , genre: smut, angst (MDNI!!!) , warnings: name calling (baby, seok), lots of kissing, fingering (fem receiving), handjob & blowjob (m receiving), slight angst at the end (there might be w part 2 to this .) , featuring: txt's beomgyu as yn's older brother (i am a beomgyu eunseok friendship enthusiast and also the biggest briizemoa alive)
synopsis! growing up as beomgyu's younger sister, yn has always gotten everything she's wanted, but not the one person she needs. after a year abroad, eunseok comes back within reach again, and yn finds herself right where she left off, like nothing between them ever really ended.
you’ve always gotten what you wanted. there was never a moment you didn’t. your parents made sure of that. your brother did too. so when you set your mind on eunseok, it felt inevitable—like he would fall into your hands the same way everything else always had.
except you knew beomgyu wouldn’t allow it.
eunseok was the one thing he never let you touch.
the first time beomgyu ever told you no, you were children, asking to play with him and eunseok. still, they both showed up to your tea party later that afternoon, sitting cross-legged on the floor like nothing had happened. years later, as preteens, beomgyu shut his door in your face when you asked for help with your homework. eunseok solved the problem for you at the dinner table that night instead.
by the time beomgyu and eunseok were preparing for college, your gratitude for eunseok’s kindness had twisted into something else entirely. stolen glances that lingered too long. smiles meant only for you. a warmth you learned to tuck away whenever beomgyu entered the room, careful to keep what felt like yours hidden in plain sight.
eunseok’s been gone for a year.
the last time you held him was when he climbed into your room in the middle of the night, careful not to make a sound, just to tell you he was leaving. the last time you saw him was from behind, watching the familiar slope of his shoulders disappear into airport security. the last time you heard from him was a postcard sent to your dorm from greece, written like nothing had ever been unfinished between you, saying he’d decided to stay an extra month.
“beomgyu’s going to have it rough, huh?” you’d said when eunseok finally told you, forcing a laugh that came out wrong. “his best friend gone all across europe for a whole year.”
you’d already known, of course. you always did. a month earlier, you’d overheard beomgyu in the kitchen, telling him to go, to have fun, to not think about home. eunseok hadn’t argued.
“yn,” he’d said that night, your name soft in his mouth, almost careful.
you tried to pull away then, to pretend this was just another goodbye. he didn’t let you. his hands stayed at your waist like they belonged there, thumbs brushing familiar paths as if by habit. when you cried, he wiped your tears with a tenderness that felt too practiced, too intimate to mean nothing. he held you against his chest until your breathing evened out, until sleep claimed you the way he never quite could.
when you woke up, he was gone.
your phone buzzes with a notification from someone who isn’t eunseok, so you don’t bother checking it. stretched out in the guest room of beomgyu’s new apartment, you stare at the ceiling and think about how this makes two christmases without him. you wonder, briefly and stupidly, if he’s noticed the same thing.
the thought sits heavy enough that you don’t hear the front door open. it isn’t until three firm knocks hit your bedroom door that you react. you roll your eyes. beomgyu had said he’d be back late—so why was he home already?
“i’m studying right now,” you call out, dry and unimpressed. “naked.”
a scoff comes from the other side of the door, followed by a voice you know too well. “is that supposed to make me leave?”
your body reacts before your mind does. you jolt upright, heart slamming into your ribs, breath catching like it’s been stolen from you. by the time you reach the door, your hands are shaking.
you don’t give him a chance to say anything.
your arms wrap around his waist, tight and desperate, like you’re afraid he’ll disappear if you don’t anchor him there. the force of it knocks the air from his lungs, and for a split second, you’re embarrassed by how much you need this—how quickly your control slips the moment he’s in front of you. his body feels achingly familiar, solid in a way you’ve missed more than you ever admitted to yourself.
his arms come around you immediately, sure and instinctive, holding you just as closely, just as carefully, like no time has passed at all.
“you’re not beomgyu,” you breathe into his chest, the words more confession than observation.
“and you’re not naked,” he murmurs with a soft laugh, pressing a kiss to the top of your head—gentle, practiced, intimate enough to mean something. "who's more disappointed?"
you pull back just enough to kiss him.
he meets you immediately, like he’s been waiting for it, tilting his head down until your lips fit together the same way they always have—familiar, soft, devastating. the sweetness is still there, but it’s layered now with hunger, with everything you didn’t let yourself want for the past year. you kiss him long and slow, pouring every unanswered thought into the space between your mouths.
“i thought you weren’t coming back for another month,” you murmur against his lips, breathless.
he shakes his head, his mouth still moving gently against yours. “wanted to surprise you.”
your heart stutters. “me?” the word slips out barely louder than a whisper.
he smiles and nods, like it’s obvious. like it could only ever be you.
you don’t quite believe him. not fully.
“how are you even here?” you ask. “how did you know i’d be here?”
he huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head at you. “i still talk to beomgyu almost every day. he sent me the address when he moved.”
“he gave you the door code?” you narrow your eyes. “he knows you’re back?”
“i guessed the door code,” he admits easily. “and no. you’re the only one who knows.”
something warm and dangerous coils low in your chest.
“come,” you say softly, already reaching for him.
you guide him to the bed, and he sits without question, watching you like he’s trying to memorize every detail. you stand between his knees, close enough to feel his warmth, close enough that stepping back would hurt. you cradle his face in your hands, thumbs tracing his cheeks, then his jaw, reverent and unsteady. the look in his eyes makes your breath catch—open, wanting, a little afraid, like he’s been holding onto this too.
you ruffle his hair once, a familiar, almost teasing gesture, before your hands slide down to his shoulders, then along his arms. slowly, deliberately, you bring his hands up to your face and press a kiss to his knuckles, lingering.
“your hands are tan,” you murmur, guiding them down to your waist, keeping them there. your own hands return to his face, grounding yourself. “but everything else is the same.”
he swallows. “is that good?” he asks quietly, like the answer matters more than anything else.
when you don’t respond, his grip on your waist tightens, pulling you closer until there’s no space left to question. his forehead dips toward yours, breath warm, uneven.
“did you miss me, yn?” he whispers.
your mouth feels dry as you look at him—at his pink lips, his wide, shining eyes, the way he’s bracing for your answer like it might undo him.
“yes,” you breathe. “eunseok. so much.”
he stands suddenly, hands firm at your waist, and before you can even react he’s guiding you backward, laying you down on the bed with a level of care that makes you want to cry.
then his mouth crashes back into yours and there's nothing gentle about it.
the kiss steals the breath from your lungs, deep and unrelenting, like all that restraint finally snapping. his hands stay careful while his lips move against yours with a desperation that makes your head spin. it doesn’t match, and somehow that makes it worse. he’s holding you like something precious while kissing you like something he’s been starving for.
your lips only part when he pulls away just long enough to tug his shirt over his head, tossing it aside without looking. before he can hover over you again, your hands are already there, pressing into the warmth of his bare back, urging him down until his weight settles against you.
“don’t—” you breathe, fingers digging in, “don’t go anywhere.”
a soft, broken sound leaves him at that, and then he’s kissing you again, slower now but no less intense. his mouth trails along your jaw, lingering, before moving down your neck—familiar and deliberate, because he knows exactly where you’ll react. your breath stutters, your hands tightening against his skin.
“eunseok,” you mumble, voice wrecked. “did you miss me?”
he stills for half a second, forehead resting against your shoulder, breath warm and uneven against your skin.
“every day,” he whispers. “don’t ask me that like you don’t already know.”
his lips press back to your neck, softer now, almost aching, like he’s trying to say everything he couldn’t over the past year without using words. one of his hands slides up to cradle your face, thumb brushing your cheek.
“i tried not to,” he murmurs between kisses. “i really did.”
you tilt your head instinctively, giving him more, pulling him closer with a quiet sound that feels like surrender.
“you’re here now,” you whisper back.
he exhales shakily, pressing his forehead to yours again. “yeah,” he says. “i’m here.”
and then he kisses you like he plans on staying.
his hands slip beneath your shirt, skimming your ribcage as his lips never leave yours. you let eunseok kiss you however he needs to, running his tongue over your lips before sticking it in your mouth.
his fingers toy with the hem of your shirt, restless, distracting enough to make you squirm.
“take it off,” you murmur against his mouth. “please.”
he nods, but instead of listening, he pulls back just far enough to breathe, forehead dropping to yours as if he’s steadying himself.
“is beomgyu coming back tonight?” he asks quietly.
you close your eyes with a soft sigh and sit up, reaching for your phone on the nightstand. a new message lights up the screen, and you can’t help the grin that curves your mouth before you set the phone face down again.
you answer him without words.
your fingers hook into the curve of his silver chain to bring him closer to you.
“the snow’s too heavy,” you whisper, tracing a slow line along his jaw. “beomgyu can’t drive anymore.”
his gaze flicks back to yours, sharp and hungry, like he knows exactly what you’re offering.
“so,” you continue softly, leaning in just enough for him to feel your warmth, “you can stay.”
your thumb brushes his pink bottom lip.
“play with me all night,” you murmur. “like we used to.”
the words barely leave your mouth before eunseok moves.
his hand slides up the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair as he pulls you into another kiss—deeper this time, slower. your breath catches as his mouth presses against yours again, warm and insistent, and whatever space was left between you disappears.
you kiss him back just as fiercely.
your hands slide over his shoulders, across the heat of his back, feeling the way his muscles tense under your palms. he exhales softly against your lips when your fingers press in, like the touch alone is enough to undo him. the sound sends a rush of warmth through you.
“yn…” he murmurs, barely pulling away before kissing you again.
his thumb brushes along your jaw while his other hand settles at your waist, under your shirt, holding you firmly against him. the kiss turns messy—mouths opening, breaths tangling, the kind of kiss that keeps deepening instead of ending. every time you think he’s about to stop, he just pulls you closer and kisses you again.
your fingers slide into his hair, tugging slightly, and he responds immediately with a quiet groan that vibrates against your mouth.
“how do you want it today?” he breathes, lips brushing yours.
eunseok has always been one to give you whatever you wanted, in and out of the bedroom. if you asked for the moon, he might actually try to give it to you.
“doesn’t matter,” you whisper, chasing another kiss. “just need to feel you right now, seok.”
he sighs against your lips at your words. his hands stay at the hem of your shirt, pulling away to look you in the eye for permission to remove it. when you nod, he pulls it off your head quickly. his hands are shaking when they reach up to cup your chest, and a small gasp escapes your lips.
his mouth collides with yours messily as he continues to play with your chest. your tongues tangle, and you’re starting to feel dizzy from the lack of air.
“how did we get so bad at this?” you laugh against his lips at your clumsiness.
“i’m a little out of practice,” he pants, softly tucking your hair behind your ear. your heart swells upon hearing his words. you didn’t think he would have messed around with other girls when he was abroad, but you couldn’t expect him not to, either. whatever you and eunseok were before he left had no label, no commitment, and no rules.
still, his confession gave you a slight ego boost. you can’t help but grin ear to ear as he rids himself of his pants. when he's done, you wrap your arms around his shoulders and pull him down into you, until your chests are pressed flush, skin warm against skin.
“wow, you really meant it when you said you want to feel me,” eunseok laughs, looking into your eyes adoringly. you can’t believe that this is your real life and that eunseok is smiling down at you with your chest against his in the middle of december.
both of your hands move to cradle his face and bring him back to your lips. upon contact, you immediately turned your face to get a better angle to shove your tongue into his mouth. eunseok lets out a breathless moan at your aggression. he was completely at your mercy, he decided.
you must be too focused on relearning the inside of eunseok’s mouth because you fail to notice his hand finding its way down your body until he’s cupping your heat. you bring your hips closer to his hand that begins pressing into you. when you let out a whimper, he takes control of the kiss. you moan and arch your back off of the bed when he gathers your wetness between his fingers.
“you’re so fucking wet,” eunseok and you look at the wetness coating his fingers. your face goes hot in embarrassment.
“it’s been a long time, so… i’m sensitive,” your voice is small. “i don’t know how much i—”
“that’s ok,” he coos, his forehead against yours. “i’m here now. we have time, baby. i’m here to make you feel good.”
one of his fingers slides inside of you, pumping slowly. you moan quietly, spreading your legs wider for him. “eunseok…” you groan against his lips. his eyes never leave yours.
it’s been a year. a year of pretending this didn’t matter, of swallowing down every thought of him, every memory that came too easily at night. and now he’s here, exactly the same, exactly where he used to be, like nothing between you was ever temporary.
you think you should be embarrassed by the noises your body is making in response to eunseok, but when he inserts another finger, you feel completely overwhelmed and full of him.
“yn, this is crazy,” he breathes against your lips, thrusting his fingers in and out of you at a quicker speed. “you’re so wet.”
“please,” you plead, not knowing for what. when he curls his fingers, you see stars. the thought of his fingers being the only ones to stretch you out for the first time in so long makes eunseok feel dizzy.
“i missed you so much, yn,” he coos to you sweetly when he can tell you're close.
you have half of a thought to reach down and touch him too, attempting to ungrip the sheets beneath your hand. but he speeds up even more, and your breaths turn into pants, and your orgasm crashes over you before you know it.
as you come down from your high, eunseok begins trailing open-mouthed kisses along your jawline. they grow warmer as he moves down your neck, lingering in places that make your breath catch, your chest still rising and falling unevenly.
when his mouth reaches your chest, you thread your fingers into his hair, holding him there—not forcefully, but like you need the weight of him, the warmth, the proof that he’s real.
your fingers tighten slightly in his hair.
“i shouldn’t have let you leave,” you whisper, more to yourself than to him.
he stills for just a second at that, breath warm against your skin, before pressing another kiss there—softer this time, almost apologetic.
“you didn’t let me,” he murmurs. “i just… went.”
his hands slide up your sides, slower now, less desperate, more intentional. there’s something different in the way he touches you now—like he’s not taking it for granted.
you swallow, your heart beating a little too fast.
“i thought about you,” you admit quietly, staring somewhere past him. “more than i should have.”
he exhales against you, a shaky, quiet thing, like the words hit deeper than he expected. his forehead rests briefly against you before he looks up, eyes searching your face.
“i didn’t stop,” he says. “not once.”
something in your chest tightens at that.
you’d always known, somewhere deep down, that this wasn’t just habit or convenience, not just something easy and secret to fall back into. but hearing it—feeling it in the way he’s holding you, like you might slip through his fingers if he loosens his grip—makes it harder to ignore.
your hand drifts from his hair to his cheek, thumb brushing lightly across his skin.
“eunseok…” you start, softer now, uncertain.
he leans into your touch without thinking, eyes closing for a brief second, like he’s been waiting for it.
“i missed you,” he says again, quieter this time. “i think i—”
he stops himself, jaw tightening just slightly, like the rest of the sentence scares him. but you already feel it.
it’s in the way he came back early. in the way he looked at you the second you opened the door. in the way he’s touching you now—careful, like this means more than either of you ever said out loud.
your chest aches with it.
“don’t,” you whisper, not pulling away, your fingers still resting against his face. “not if you’re not going to finish it.”
his eyes open again, meeting yours, conflicted and wanting all at once.
“i don’t want to say it wrong,” he admits.
your heart stumbles, because you think you might already know what he means. and worse—you think you might feel it too.
your hand slides back into his hair, pulling him up just enough to kiss him again, slower this time, softer—but somehow heavier with everything neither of you is saying.
you reach your hand down, testing the space between you, wanting to feel him, to close whatever distance is left.
his hand catches your wrist gently before you can go further.
“you don’t have to, yn,” he murmurs, voice softer now, like he’s trying to hold onto something fragile.
you look at him, really look at him—at the way his eyes search yours, at the way he’s holding himself back.
“i missed you, seok,” you say, your voice quieter than before, but steadier. sweeter.
something in his expression gives.
he exhales slowly, tension leaving his shoulders as his grip loosens, his hand slipping away from your wrist. not stopping you this time—just letting you choose.
the moment stretches between you, heavy and warm.
when your hand grips him over the thin fabric of his boxers, he reacts instantly—his head dropping into the crook of your neck, like it’s the only place he can steady himself. his breath is uneven against your skin, warm, familiar, and it sends a shiver down your spine.
“yn…” he breathes, barely holding it together. you smile as you sit up to help him out of his boxers completely.
“hi,” you giggle when his cock springs free, the tip leaking. he lays back down, his cheeks turning pink and his member twitching under your unrelenting gaze.
“stop,” he mumbles weakly, closing his eyes. “i haven’t even seen it like this before.”
your face goes red at his words. “you really must have missed me.”
you know you’re right because his breath hitches as soon as your hand wraps around his twitching cock. you stroke him slowly, indulging in the small sounds he’s letting out.
“feels good.” he’s hiding his eyes behind his forearm, but you want to see him fully.
“eunseok,” you coo softly, strokes speeding up. “can i see you?”
he shakes his head at first, a quiet, almost helpless sound leaving him. eunseok’s pants mix with the wet sound of you jerking him, mirroring how his fingers sounded inside of you earlier.
“please?” you whisper, hand slowing down just slightly. there’s a pause—just a second—but it feels longer.
then, slowly, he lowers his arm.
his eyes meet yours, glassy and overwhelmed, lips parted like he’s trying to catch his breath. there’s something raw there, something unguarded you don’t think you’ve ever seen so clearly before. it makes your chest tighten.
“there you are,” you murmur, softer now, smiling as you lower yourself down.
“yn, i’m really, really—” his whines are cut off with a hiss when your tongue circles his tip. your left hand continues to pump him slowly as you place soft kisses around his tip. “baby, i’m really close,” he pants, his chest rising and falling quicker.
his hands grip the sheets when you place your lips around his tip fully. he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and you bob your head up and down, hollowing out your cheeks.
you mean to pull off of him to tell him it’s ok to cum, but his body tenses before you know it and he’s twitching and releasing in your mouth. you swallow what he gave you before you lay beside him.
“thank you,” he whispers, pressing a soft kiss into your hair.
when his breathing finally evens out, he shifts beside you, slipping his boxers back on before gently pulling his shirt over your body. the fabric still carries his scent. then he slides back into bed, like he never plans on leaving.
you settle into your place against him without thinking, resting your head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart—the sound you missed more than you ever admitted.
“i missed this,” you mumble against his skin.
his hand comes up to your head, patting softly, absentminded, familiar. it doesn’t take long before sleep pulls you under.
it’s almost noon when you wake.
you haven’t slept like that since he left last year. somewhere in the blur of it, you remember the ghost of his lips against your forehead—but sleep had held you too tightly to follow it.
when your eyes finally open, you’re alone.
the light spilling through the window is pale and cold, reflecting off a fresh blanket of snow outside. the other side of the bed is empty. cold.
your breath quickens.
you pull on pajama pants and a sweatshirt with unsteady hands before stepping into the hallway. “eunseok?” your voice is small, but if he were here, he’d hear it.
no answer.
beomgyu’s door is still closed. the apartment is quiet—too quiet. it used to be normal. now it makes your chest tighten, your heart picking up with every step you take further from your room.
was it a dream?
you try to retrace it, every detail, every touch, wondering if your mind could really make something feel that real. but the thought hits you all at once, sharp and familiar—waking up alone was always the worst part.
your least favorite part of whatever this was between you and eunseok. because he was never someone who stayed. and you always hated that.
your cheeks are already wet by the time the front door opens.
“yn?” beomgyu’s voice calls out, softer than usual, a plastic bag rustling in his hand. “yn, are you crying?”
he finds you curled up on the couch, knees pulled to your chest. another set of footsteps follows quickly behind him.
eunseok. his cheeks are pink from the cold, and his lips are fixed into a pout.
you wipe at your face quickly, standing up. “no,” you say, even though they’ve already seen. both of them are looking at you now—worried, confused.
“the snow is really pretty,” you add, gesturing vaguely toward the window, turning your head away from eunseok. but you can still feel him looking at you.
“she doesn’t even care that you’re back,” beomgyu calls as he disappears into the kitchen.
eunseok doesn’t move, not until beomgyu is fully out of sight.
then he steps closer, dropping down in front of you so you can’t avoid him anymore. you finally look at him, lashes still damp.
“what happened?” he asks quietly, his hand lifting to your cheek, gentle.
your voice wavers. “you left again.”
he frowns. “we were getting food.”
“i thought i imagined it,” you admit, swallowing hard. “or that it was a dream. you always leave me, eunseok.”
something in his expression shifts.
“i came back,” he says, softer now. “i’m not leaving you again, yn.”
you have to look away. you want to believe him. you really do. but you know better. because eunseok has always been the one thing you could never keep.
“i really wanted pasta for lunch,” beomgyu calls, popping his head back into the room, “but eunseok insisted we get takeout from your favorite place, yn. you really do always get what you want.”
you let out a quiet breath.
“everything i want,” you say, your voice steady now, even if your chest isn’t, “but not the one thing i need.”
you walk past eunseok and into the kitchen, leaving him behind.
i won't lieee i have a lot more free time rn bc the professors at my uni went on strike lmfao 😭 so hopefully i can go back to writing bc i have sooo many wips and a lot of good stuff gathering DUST in my asks but we shall wait and see... but thank you again! 😁
hello... do not take this seriously i was bored and pulled this out of my ass 💔 also this was completely born out of me and @007chan 's oomfcoming story so i believe this makes me anton and everyone who reads this is dating me. heart emoji (not proofread!)
at 10:08 pm, anton was staring at his laptop, 'how to make your crush like you back' written in bold italic was staring back at him— the bright screen making him even more agitated.
he wasn't the one to search for answers on the internet, especially not on some website called girls asking dot com. but times were tough and anton was desperate.
one might dare to ask what even got him in this position, and the long answer to that would be; anton has had a crush on one of his classmates for the past seven months, and he's scared to talk to his friends because they'll tease him for hours.
the short answer to that is; he's a pussy.
but! a guy has to have some fear here and there, that's what keeps you in check after all. maybe not. but it's the feeling that's important or whatever.
so anton took a deep breath, scrolled down and started reading the long list to get this over with.
one: treat them like a friend.
two: compliment on something deep.
three: eye contact.
four: ask questions.
five: talk to your friends.
five whole topics and not a single one of them would work. who the hell had even written this? even a first grader could think of these and more and get with their crush. the last part was roasting anton himself but the truth hurts, just like how his eyes were hurting from squinting. the truth hurt probably more though.
anton huffed and closed his laptop, picking his phone up instead because the radiation wasn't enough. maybe he should ask his friends? but asking them meant anton had hit a new low, and he wasn't really interested in digging deeper.
but maybe he was.
putting his phone down, anton laid down and stared at his ceiling, when the best idea he's ever had popped up in his brain. he'd do everything on text. because of course texting was easier, and anton was a good texter, said humbly. so he opened up his notes and started writing down his plan.
week one- become mutuals and like reposts
week two- like their own posts
end of week two/week three- comment and soft launch texting
week four- ask them out
satisfied with his plan, anton got to work. first, he stalked gyuvin's following, but he couldn't find anyone who could be yn. so he was forced to go through sohee's hundreds of followers, because everyone was following sohee.
he tapped on sohee's account, already dreading the ache that would fill his thumb later, when he found it.
there it was, in all its glory, user purinpilled.
just as he was about to hit follow, he stopped. would that be weird and freaky, or like, overly disgusting? but if he didn't follow yn now, he wouldn't do it ever. and not doing it meant seeing yn get married and die happily with someone else, so he hit follow and threw his phone towards his nightstand, too nervous to care if it even landed on it or not.
the moment anton opened his eyes, he scrambled to get his phone and check if yn had followed him back. thanks to last night's anton, finding his phone took a whole good eight minutes. and he had done all that searching for nothing because there wasn't any notification from yn.
maybe it was a glitch or because he hadn't updated his apps yet or something, but there were no needed updates when he checked, so he went on instagram to see for himself.
well he did see for himself— that his followers count hadn't moved.
but it was okay! this was only day one. he could just change up his plan a little bit and like everything they posted. maybe that was bordering creepy, but if a person's pure of heart no one would misunderstand their intentions.
so anton went to liking.
yn's reposts were the only things that would come up after a while, and anton took that as his cue to stop so he wouldn't get blocked. while waiting, anton went over his plan once more.
four weeks was a lot. a whole ass month to ask someone out was ridiculous. maybe he could bring it down to three weeks. two and a half. one week.
listen. one week was plenty of time to ask someone out. seven days. seven whole days to plan everything. it was awesome.
you know what would be even more awesome? yn following him back. so anton decided to spend five days (including today) to make yn follow him back, and two days on the date itself.
so anton posted everything he could while waiting between each post so it would become acceptable. maybe yn would look at his stories, maybe they would come across something anton had reposted so the latter could find out if they had anything in common.
but when someone who doesn't post at all starts posting, an eyebrow raise comes naturally. so he didn't have much time until one of his friends questioned his actions.
but for now, all he had to do was wait for yn to post.
and boy, post they did.
the second that bisexual flag looking circle appeared around yn's profile picture, anton clicked on it. and there stood yn's own personal real-not-fake twitter account.
so anton did what he had to, and followed yn on there too.
that was probably the angels granting anton a wish or something, because now he would learn more about yn than he ever could. again, anton went on a not-stalking-but-more-like-checking-out spree, trying to memorize everything the posts said.
but being a living person meant responsibilities and socializing, so after hours of research-scrolling, anton had to put his phone down.
but it was fine, he could deal with not obsessing over internet posts for a few hours.
a day had passed without anything happening. no follow back, no watching anton's story, nothing. and anton had decided that it was enough, he would take matters into his own hands.
and ask yn to follow him back.
before this ruffles some feathers! anton was still sticking to his plan, things had just gotten mixed up. and the first thing on the plan was follow first, ask out later.
so he waited for yn to post on somewhere, and when they did, he would comment something to soft launch the concept of oomfness. did that make sense?
when yn had finally posted, anton had decided that he had one minute to come up with something that would make him memorable at least. but he was never good under pressure, so the best thing he could come up with was 'i have an oomf crush on you.' which was two truths meshed together, so... yay for anton?
after sending his comment, anton, hit with immediate embarrassment and regret, once again threw his phone away. such nostalgia...
and since he didn't have anything better to do, anton put on a show and tried to nap for a while to get his nerves to calm down a bit.
anton seemed to have developed a routine, his last few days consisting of sleeping, waking up and going on yn's accounts to do some research.
but his researches have been for nothing, since there still wasn't anything from yn. so anton decided to grow some balls and just do it. before he could change his mind, anton logged into his twitter and sent yn a message.
okay, maybe he had sent more than a message and might have fucked up all his chances... but! a confession was a confession, and he had done it no matter how and what the outcome.
all he had to do was wait for an answer. he could wait for an answer— anyone could wait for an answer.
but luckily (question mark) yn had replied pretty quickly. but them being this quick had raised anton's blood sugar and his heart beat. he really had to see a professional for those soon.
Anton knew eventually he’d have to explain it to you. It wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, he thought it might actually upset you when you found out. But how best to explain it was the real issue. Words didn’t always reach you in the way he hoped. A physical demonstration would probably make things worse. Videos were an option, but so many of them left important things out or put too much information in. No, if he wanted to explain it to you, he was going to have to do it the old fashioned way: a high school sex ed textbook.
He didn’t want it to be taken the wrong way. He loved that you were now so comfortable being physical with him. Especially since during your first couple meetings you never left the other side of the tank. You still liked comparing hand sizes and casually running your hands up his legs. But in between those moments, you also liked kissing him. Much to his surprise. For such a majestic creature that had no idea what a kiss was before meeting him, you sure knew how to get a man going. Your hands always found the right spots to make Anton have to readjust himself in his shorts.
The last time you made out you had noticed his erection and expressed concern for his discomfort. His face was a dark red, mind in a complete daze as if he were drowsy, hands trembling. Plus a part of his body was sticking out, something you’d never seen before. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that you’d automatically think something was wrong. Anton had been so embarrassed, he just apologized over and over again, kissed your cheek and left. Without an explanation.
He thought the worse part of the follow up meeting was over after you had gestured to his groin with a worried expression and he replied saying he was good now. When he brought out another book, you instantly sunk deeper into the water of your tank. Afraid of ruining it like the other one. Anton reassured you that it was fine. Carefully he helped you lean halfway out of the water, laying you on your stomach, so he could be next to you while explaining the pictures. He also brought a towel to wet and press to your skin every time you felt like you were drying out. A painful sensation that you had discovered during an irrationally long make out session.
“Male. Female.” Anton pointed out each diagram of human anatomy. “Females have a vagina and males have a penis.” As uncomfortable as he was having to explain this to someone else, he appreciated the fact that you didn’t laugh. Presumably it was because you were a mermaid and had no preconceptions of human genitalia or what they were for. But you were interested in learning. Your eyes went from the external organ depicted in the image of the man to between Anton’s legs. This explained what was there, but not why he was so adamant on hiding it from you.
You focused attentively to his words and the pictures he showed you. He explained what these body parts were and what they did. You had to admit, the image of the tiny human inside the middle of the female startled you. Suddenly the pieces started to come together. Anton didn’t want to make a child with you. But then again, surely the human male ‘penis’ needed a human female ‘vagina’ to make a child. You definitely didn’t have one of those. If it wasn’t because he wanted to prevent himself from having a child, why else would he hide that part of his body?
Perhaps he did already have a mate. Humans were much more singular when it came to mate selection. It seemed most only had one and reproduced with that one human. If Anton already had a mate, he wouldn’t be interested in engaging in any reproductive actions with you. Probably shouldn’t interact with you at all. “What’s wrong?” he asked, noticing your disappointed face while pressing the damp cloth to your neck. His tone made it seem like he was anticipating this reaction from you.
“An-ton.” You spoke his name then pointed to the small human child inside the female. Wide eyes looking up at him. You repeated the sequence. The second he realized what you were asking, he vehemently shook his head.
“No, I don’t have any children.” Then in simpler terms he said: “Anton baby no.” You seemed to understand. However, you still looked upset much to his dismay. You stated his name again, this time pointing to the woman. A small smile came to his face when he got what was bugging you. You thought he was with someone. The thought that you would be unhappy to find out he was in a relationship stirred something inside him. He dragged the towel over your shoulder and down your arm. “No. Anton woman no. Anton only.” With his index finger he pointed to himself.
You couldn’t hide the relieved smile that came to your lips. Anton chuckled softly, pushing a lock of hair out of your face. Then if it wasn’t because he didn’t want a child or has a mate, why was he so secretive about that body part? Maybe touching it hurt him. You ran your hand over his thigh, right below the private area. “Touch pain yes?” Anton deliberated your question. Ultimately shaking his head.
“No, it’s not exactly painful. It’s like…” he drew a blank. How could he describe it to you? The painful yet pleasurable feeling sex was. How the pain is what made it pleasurable. An idea came to his head. “It’s like this.” He reached for your hand, pressing your index finger to the gravel-like tiles they had around your tank. He rubbed the pad of your finger along the small rocks. Slow at first, then picking up speed. It didn’t exactly hurt. Just felt a little uncomfortable. After a few seconds the skin went slightly numb. He then lifted your hand up and lightly rubbed his thumb along the sensitive skin causing it to tingle in a way that made your entire body tremble.
Your gaze went from your finger to his face and lastly to his groin. “Good… pain… yes?” He confirmed your assessment with a quiet ‘yes’. Somehow this made you understand less. If touching that part of his body made him feel good, why didn’t he let you touch it? Kisses felt good and he let you do that with him. Your hand went back to his thigh. “Touch good, Y/N touch yes.” Your fingers had just traced down his length when he pulled your hand away.
“Not yet,” Anton said the strange phrase again. A concerned look in his eyes. He anxiously bit his lips.
“Touch no always?”
“Always no.” He said clearly, unsure of how to stop your exasperation. You were trying to understand. He knew that. Explaining that intimacy was between romantic partners proved to be more difficult than he initially thought. “You touch someone only when you love them.” Another interesting word. ‘Love’.
“Luh-f?” Anton was at a loss for words. How could he possibly begin to explain what love was? Most humans couldn’t even define it well. This seemed like an impossible task. It took a long time. You almost thought that he fell asleep while sitting. But finally he figured it out.
His hand delicately grasped yours. “Love.” He brought your intertwined hands to your cheek, brushing your skin softly with his knuckles. “Love.” Then he led the back of your hand to his lips, placing a delicate kiss on it. “Love.” He stared down at you in adoration. The feeling he gave you was the same as the one from your ‘kiss the girl’ kiss but so much more intense. Your hand went to his shoulder and you tried pulling yourself closer to him with very little success. Noticing your struggle, Anton hoisted you onto his lap with an arm around your waist. Water splashing onto the book, not that he really cared. He was way more interested in you.
You placed a gentle hand on his cheek, gazing into his warm brown eyes. You thought you understood this new word. Leaning in you pressed your lips to his. Not rushed or anything. Just a simple lingering kiss. “Love?” You asked. He smiled sweetly, bringing you in for another kiss before repeating the word in confirmation.
I recommend and push for softer, kinder, and loving fics. specifically for riize. as a woman, I rather not see a bunch of this garbage about the members being super abusive to the reader. that includes the fetishizing of rape, incest, domestic violence, and more. if we as women fight against this type of crime every single day, why are we writing it? young girls (children) and adult women daily, monthly, yearly, are victims to these crimes and that leaves a very vulnerable and fragile person. a broken person who no longer gets back the time before such crimes took place. so! why are we writing these kpop men out to be complete monsters? not sure but I as a woman will make a stand and post about it to stop. it’s not cute, romantic, or sexy. if you’re a person struggling because you were a victim to one of these crimes then I think it’s best you get the professional help needed and stop writing it into sick and twisted fantasies for young girls to get ahold of. unfortunately minors are on this app and can read all of the gross fanfics you’re writing about men you don’t know. which can cause confusion. if you were an actual fan of these people—you wouldn’t write such trash. and I mean that in the nicest way possible, let’s stop.
When Anton heard that the Seoul Aquarium had caught a real life mermaid, he knew he had to go check for himself. He couldn’t believe his eyes. You were gorgeous. Through glimpses he could see your flowing hair, bright eyes, and that breathtaking iridescent tail. Going there everyday wasn’t enough. He needed to see you up close. After days of begging, Anton finally convinced Shotaro to sneak him in.
The first couple visits were tough. It took you a long time to warm up to Anton. You didn’t exactly have good experiences with humans. But this one was kind to you. Didn’t try to touch or hurt you. Only made weird sequences of noises that you later realized were words. “I brought you something again,” he spoke softly — as he always did — sitting on the edge of your tank. A light smile on his face. He lifted up a small plastic bag with little orange pieces inside. “They’re called Goldfish.” Placing one in his mouth, a crunching sound followed after.
He offered you the bag, which you only stared at questioningly. Then peered up at him. “They’re not actually fish… or gold. They’re crackers. It’s food. See?” He ate another one, showing it was fine. Hesitantly, you reached into the bag. He nodded in reassurance. You grabbed one of the Goldfish and slowly ate it. Eyes widening at the unusual but good taste, you pushed up using your arm on the edge to grab another one. “You like them,” Anton stated gleefully.
Cautiously, you removed the bag from his hand, placing it next to him. He already had his palm facing towards you, aware of your innocent habit of comparing body parts. In some ways you were so alike and others completely different. As he was with your tail, you were fascinated by his legs and feet. Your small hand left his and settled on his shin. It ran up to his knee, up his thigh, and — as always — was removed by Anton before you could reach in between his legs. You didn’t understand why he was so secretive of that area, but by the redness on his face you could tell it made him nervous.
With both hands on his knees, you lifted yourself out of the water and onto his lap. Anton fell back onto his arms. One immediately wrapping around your waist as you desperately clung to his shoulders, almost slipping back into the tank. “Whoa!” He whisper shouted. “What are you—“ He paused when your index finger began tracing the bridge of his nose. It scrunched up for a second, feeling ticklish. Then you did the same with your nose. He watched your concentrated expression. You moved onto his lips, tracing them before your own. They felt the same. Anton shuddered at your touch.
You wriggled out of his hold, grabbed his hands and in a sudden movement, pulled him into the water. The first few seconds Anton had to regain his sense of direction, but you never left his side, holding onto him by his arm. Your eyes darted to his stomach where his shirt had bubbled up, revealing his bare torso. You placed your hand on his warm, smooth skin. His eyes focused on your own. Air bubbles leaving his nose and mouth. As if with a mind of its own, your tail wrapped behind him, drawing him closer. His hands went from flailing around to delicately holding your face. Then with no explanation whatsoever, he pressed his closed mouth against yours.
You were so lost on human culture and gestures. The feeling of his lips softly moving over your own was strange, but you kind of liked it. You liked having Anton this close.
When his mouth stopped moving, your eyes opened to find him starting to choke, panic on his face. You wrapped your arms around his waist and brought him back up to the surface. Your hands caressing his face as he coughed up water. Not knowing what to do, you reached for another Goldfish, placing it between his lips. He smiled at you while he chewed the snack food. Though you had no idea why he pressed his mouth to yours, you couldn’t help but hope that he would do it again.
There wasn’t a visit where Anton didn’t bring something new to show you. Something you had never seen before. Something exciting. Markers and a whiteboard. A rubber duck. Hair clips. These tiny colorful sweet things called M&Ms. A beaded friendship bracelet that you hid in the sand below and then ask him to re-tie each time he returned.
One day he had brought something called a ‘book’. You didn’t understand much but you understood the word ‘mermaid’ as it was used often before giant groups of humans would gawk and stare at you. He tried to explain the story, showing you the pictures. In an impulsive act you grabbed the object out of his hands and to the water where it ripped when you tried to look at the other images. Upset, you swam to the bottom of the tank, softly crying. Anton didn’t hesitate to jump in after you. Unable to speak, all he did was hold up his palm to you, showing forgiveness. He smiled when you placed your palm against his.
You thought Anton was a strange human. He wasn’t afraid of the water like some of the others. Also, he didn’t treat you like a shark stalking its prey. He was kind and gentle. You couldn’t help but wonder if he had been your kind, would you have mated with him. You wondered if he already had a human mate. He wasn’t a small human like the ones that tapped on your tank, but he also wasn’t one of the slow ones with white hair that stayed still on the flat coral across from your tank and watched you swim around for hours. You dreaded the day that he wouldn’t return.
But he did. On a regular basis. And you enjoyed every second of it that you could. Your hands gripped the edge of the tank, shaking your head as the red haired girl on the strange box Anton called a ‘computer’ ran the fork through her hair. Even you knew that wasn’t normal human behavior. Anton stared at you while smiling, finding every single one of your reactions to the Disney movie endearing. When he had set up the object, repeating ‘water no’ over and over again as he pointed at the water in your tank and the object, you had less interest in the object and more on the fact that he was getting inside your tank with you.
For a while you just playfully splashed him, then held onto his arm in excitement. But once the ‘movie’ began you were completely transfixed. The girl was like you and she saved a human man. And turned into a human herself. You thought about what you would do if you suddenly had a pair of legs. Surely, Anton would take care of you. Help you learn how to walk. Maybe if you had legs you wouldn’t have to meet on the top of your tank.
You liked the songs. You learned about music from Anton. He had brought an object called a ‘violin’ once and used it to make such beautiful sounds. You liked the song that the crab sang while the girl and the man were on the boat. ‘Kiss’ was a funny word. You were certain you had heard it earlier. It meant an action, similar to what Anton had done when he pressed his mouth to yours. But during the song there was something different about it. A different meaning. The girl and man were staring at each other in a way that put a fluttery feeling inside you and made your heart start to race. ‘Kiss the girl’. They were telling the human to press his lips to hers, weren’t they?
“Kiss… da… gil,” you voiced aloud when weird symbols appeared instead of the image. Based on Anton’s reaction, the story was over. The girl remained human to be with the man. An ending you weren’t certain how to feel about. He turned his head towards you. It wasn’t as if this was your first time trying to speak, but he still got surprised each time.
“Yes,” he confirmed with a bright smile. “Kiss the girl. It’s a song.” He imitated the sounds of the song with his voice, starting to pull himself out of the water to collect the computer object. You held onto his upper arm, preventing him from getting out of the tank. Anton gave you a questioning gaze.
“No,” you stated firmly, loosening your grip. “Kiss.. the… gir—girl. Kiss the girl.” For a moment he just stared at you blankly, trying to understand what message you were attempting to convey to him. Your fingers slid down to his, a shy expression on your face. Suddenly, it clicked in his mind. He swallowed a mouthful of nerves. His hand slipping from the edge of the tank to hold yours. You swam closer together, inch by inch, until your chests were almost pressed against each other.
He leaned down carefully, nose brushing yours. Anton told himself that the last time had been an accident. A lapse in judgment. You weren’t human. Who said that you could consent to any affection he desired giving you? But here you were closing your eyes as if you had done this before. Telling him to ‘kiss the girl’. He hadn’t even known you long but he already knew that there was very little he would ever deny you. His lips gently pressed to yours.
When he pulled away, staring down at you with that sweet, half dazed expression, you wondered if this is how the girl on the object felt when the man looked at her. Without thinking too much of your actions, you placed a hand on Anton’s shoulder and kissed him again. You hummed contentedly as his lips moved softly with yours, and all bets were off. Anton deepened the kiss, tongue brushing against yours in a weird and magical way. His hands roaming your back. You followed suit, hands touching his chest, working their way down. And the moment your hands reached between his legs he didn’t say ‘no’. Instead his lips briefly left yours. “Not yet.”
His eyes searched your face. A hand coming up to caress your cheek. And then leaned down to another kiss that you hoped would never end.
synopsis ⭑.ᐟ eunseok is desperate to make things right the only way he knows how, whether you agreed to his methods or not.
content warning ⭑.ᐟ smut! bf!eunseok x fem!reader, dubcon, implied somnophilia but not quite, dry humping, sleepy sex?, spooning position bc i think that's his go-to, unprotected sex, overused the word desperate/desperation because no other word hits as hard.
word count ⭑.ᐟ 3.4k+
ㅤas infuriating as it was, eunseok had been busy the entire week.
you were working remotely at your shared apartment, while eunseok was away for an entire twelve hours. you were lonely and eunseok was exhausted— it was unavoidable for the two of you to get into fights every now and then.
patience wasn’t exactly your virtue and you hated apologizing first, and unfortunately eunseok was the exact same because he refused to even acknowledge the fights you’ve been having; he somehow thinks it'll go away if he just let it be.
ㅤit all started a few days ago when you offered to drive eunseok to his workplace in an act of charity, with the excuse of spending more time with him because your schedules just wouldn’t match. he refused your offer for whatever reason, stating that he’d rather carpool with some of his coworkers instead, and that irked you.
you barely see him already, and learning that most of his coworkers were women was enough for your jealousy to flare up. words you never meant to say were said, and naturally, eunseok took offense to it.
you were hurt that he decided to defend his coworkers over you, and that made things worse even though eunseok seemed to realize the impact of his words at the heat of the moment.
now, you barely even speak to each other even though you’re in the same space.
it took you some time to recognize how harsh you came off and that his reaction was justified— but that didn’t mean you’d apologize first. you just reacted on what he said, and eunseok was far too nonchalant that it made you question his feelings for you.
as much as it pained you, losing eunseok was the one thing you couldn’t handle and saying you’re sorry was just a small price to pay. besides, his working hours had been far too brutal that you couldn’t help but worry about him even more.
your messages recently were all straightforward, asking about meals or what time he’d be coming home. your fingers itched to type more, feelings threatening to pour out of desperation. even on days where you felt lighter, you wanted to share some things you found with him but you found yourself hesitating.
you didn’t know why you let your pride get in the way for this long when you missed eunseok, and you missed the carefree days you used to have.
ㅤtonight, your resolve was steeled and you planned on staying up all night if it meant you’d get to see him somehow.
and you did. no matter how heavy your eyelids got or how your head began to pound, you stayed up for him. you kept checking the clock, the minutes passing by agonizingly slow, but it was nothing compared to the ache in your chest from how much you missed seeing and hearing him.
by the time you hear the front door open, your mind was already giving in to sleep. you try to fight it, just until you could feel his arms around yours, hoping that maybe it’ll pull you out of your drowsiness.
you were laying on your side, back facing his side of the bed. when you heard the bed creak and felt his body close to yours, you just felt even more sluggish. your body reacted on its own, seeking his warmth and slowly giving in to sleep as your earlier plans flew out the window.
eunseok wrapped his arm around your waist, pressing himself close to you instead of pulling you and potentially disturbing your rest. despite the fight you had going on, eunseok was aware of your growing workload so waking you up right now wasn’t the best decision even though he was also itching to talk with you.
he hooked his other arm under your body, hand patting around the space for your hand. you could feel his hand over yours, gently interlocking your fingers with his. he didn’t seem to be aware that you were half-asleep, his hands wandering over your stomach absentmindedly.
it was honestly a pleasure to see you laying on your side, your back facing him like this. memories began to rush through eunseok’s head and none of them were decent. he was far too fatigued and there was only one way he knew how to destress— and maybe even attempt to make it up to you.
he sighed into your neck, rubbing his lips against your pulse point as he squeezed you in his arms. you could only melt against his body, soft murmurs leaving your lips in your half-asleep, half-awake state.
”i missed you so damn much, baby,” eunseok whispers, his voice cracking from desperation. he kissed your shoulder, sighing softly as your familiar scent took over his senses.
it had been far too long since he last held you in his arms like this. like you, eunseok had been hard-headed, your most recent fight still fresh in his mind. he’s been thinking of apologizing, but he couldn’t catch you awake even on days where he overslept.
eunseok missed casual conversations with you where he could joke around, or even hold you as he pleased. he never would’ve thought that such a small argument would blow up like this— had he known, he would’ve taken his words back immediately.
nevertheless, eunseok was at his limit, and he couldn’t go on for too long without feeling you in his arms, especially not on a night where he feels particularly needier than usual. he decided that the apologies would have to wait and giving in to his desires were far more important, silently hoping that you felt the same.
another sigh escaped his lips, his mind in a complete daze as his hands mapped out every dip and curve. your body was slightly cold because you slept without the blanket on so eunseok took it upon himself to warm you up.
you could feel his body pressing against yours more insistently, his legs wrapped around yours while his hands fondled your curves. you were about to stir awake when you felt something hard poking your ass.
ㅤ”fuck,” eunseok mumbled under his breath, hissing as his hips began to move and before he knew it, he was completely erect against your plush ass.
your eyes flew open in surprise, drowsiness slowly fading away with each roll of his hips. eunseok was breathing shakily against your ear, sending shivers down your spine. you stayed still in his arms, body starting to tense up as every single sensation went straight to your core.
eunseok began to press hot kisses all over the crook of your neck down to your bare shoulder. his teeth sunk into your shoulder, making you shiver in response. he kept biting you everywhere he could reach, his mouth trembling from how much he was holding back on biting down hard.
for a second, you thought that he’d realize you were awake, but it seemed like he was too lost with the way your body felt against his that he didn’t even catch the way your breath hitched.
he groaned, one hand making its way down in between your thighs. he lifted one thigh up while his other hand pressed your hips against his own. you could feel how hard his cock was despite the layers of clothing you both had on, showing just how desperate eunseok must be feeling.
likewise, you were getting just as turned on, body shuddering in response. both of your sleep-addled brains were desperately seeking pleasure from each other, and neither of you had any plans of stopping one another.
eunseok’s hips stuttered, his breath coming out shaky when he felt your familiar wetness enveloping the tip of his cock. it was throbbing against the thick fabric of his sweatpants, yet he could still feel how wet you were through your shorts, like some fucking miracle.
he was taking it as a sign that your body missed him, just as he did with you.
“fuck, you’re wet,” he whispered, drawing his words out, “dreaming of me, baby?”
shivers ran down your spine when eunseok began to thrust more insistently against your clothed core, his throbbing cock sinking into your wetness so easily as if he knew every part of you like the back of his hand.
the feeling of your clothes adding pressure against your slit and swollen clit made your body shudder in pleasure. you could almost feel him inside you, your slick walls clenching down on nothing.
he panted against your neck, small moans slipping from his lips. eunseok wasn’t always this vocal but the mixture of exhaustion and desperation must’ve made him this way, and you honestly found it hot.
your body kept shuddering, stimulated from the way he was rubbing his cock against your core to the way his hot breath fanned over your sensitive neck— it was all too much and you had no idea how long you could pretend to be asleep.
eunseok sighed softly, pressing into your wet heat and keeping it there to feel every twitch from your sensitive heat. there was nothing else he wanted more than to push your shorts to the side and enter, but he was patient; he always was.
“i know you’re awake, baby,” he whispered, sending shivers all over your body.
a whimper escaped your lips when you realized that he knew. you thought you were doing a good job at pretending to be asleep since not a single moan even left your mouth yet even though your entire body was humming in pleasure.
“since when did you know?” you mumbled, rubbing your hips against his throbbing length. the tip of his cock was now hitched against your clit, making you moan softly.
he threw his head back, groaning. god, he almost came from that alone. the lack of sleep and exhaustion made him more sensitive than usual that every movement was enough to drive him insane.
eunseok had never felt this desperate before, yet somehow, the chase felt more exciting than the real deal.
”you think i couldn’t feel your body trembling in my arms?” he spoke in a low voice, hot breath hitting your neck, following it up with lazy, wet kisses all over your flushed skin.
ㅤ“why didn’t you say anything?” eunseok whispers, almost sounding like a whine, “i was waiting for you to say something, just anything so i don’t have to keep humping your ass like some pervert.”
you couldn’t help but let out a breathy chuckle, turning your head slightly to look at him from behind you. eunseok smiled right back, his cheeks round and pink. he leaned in to leave a brief kiss on your lips, but you pulled him in before he could stop.
the kiss was slow, messy, and desperate. your tongue was challenging his and eunseok had no intentions of backing down. even when you felt your head getting lighter, you didn’t pull away, moaning into his mouth.
eunseok was the same, his brows furrowed as he focused all his attention into the kiss. he held your jaw with his hand, keeping your head in place as he kissed you fervently. his hips surged forward, pressing against your growing wetness.
the heat was starting to get into your head, breath coming out short as your body desperately craved for more. you pulled away from the kiss, quickly moving on because you needed something else from him now.
it didn’t take much to shed your shorts, leaving you bare from your waist down. you held your thigh up, legs spread open as you laid on your side. eunseok didn’t fail to catch the hint, pushing his sweatpants down along with his boxers.
something about your impatience just meshed well with eunseok’s personality, and it always shone through whenever you were in bed like this.
your skin was burning up but somehow his cock was even hotter to the touch along with the added friction. you didn’t need to take a glance down to know that the tip of his cock must’ve been bright red by now, judging by how much he was throbbing against the plush insides of your thigh.
”no condom?” eunseok breathes out, almost hopeful, panting against your neck as he pressed your upper body against his chest. his lips never left your skin, leaving soft and hard bites along your shoulder.
you quickly shake your head, “none of that. i need to feel you inside.”
eunseok chuckles in response, pressing a kiss behind your ear before taking your earlobe in between his teeth. “careful, i might start fights with you more often if you spoil me like this,” he teased, eliciting a soft laugh from you.
neither of you have brought it up yet, but you both knew that you’ve already forgiven each other for that fight. although you both knew this was still something you had to talk about later— for now, you were both too desperate to feel each other after being cold for so long.
”tell me if this position is uncomfortable for you, yeah?” he breathed out, propping himself up with one arm as he position the head of his cock against your slick entrance.
his cock slipped in without much effort, making you moan against the pillow. you breathed out, your walls getting stretched tastefully. eunseok’s groans filled your ears, hot breaths making you shiver as he bottomed out completely inside you.
ㅤ”i’m home,” eunseok whispers teasingly, a small smile on his lips as he rested his chin into the crook of your neck. he kissed your cheek, peeking over to see your reaction.
you couldn’t help but laugh, turning your head to look at him. seeing him smile like this made your heart flutter. you really missed him so much that you couldn’t even begin to imagine getting mad at him again.
”is that really what you’re going to say?”
eunseok smirks, eyes turning mischievous as he pressed forward against your deepest walls, eliciting a cry out of you.
”really want me to be honest?” he pulled out before slamming back in, reaching impossibly deeper than before, “i missed fucking you like this, baby. i missed your tight walls around my cock, the way you take everything so well— fuck.”
your thighs trembled from the force of his thrusts, a steady and consistent rhythm that hit your soft spot without fail. eunseok hissed against your ear, one hand going back up to hold your jaw, inadvertently pressing your on your throat.
you bit your bottom lip, fighting back the moans that threatened to spill out from how rough he was taking you. there was nothing you hated more than having him know how much you enjoyed being handled roughly, but surrendering control over to someone that knew every weakness of yours felt right somehow.
”you’re clamping down on me too much, don’t you think?” eunseok taunts for a reaction out of you, knowing that you’re still holding back. he laughs breathlessly at your whimpers and your poor attempt at pressing your thighs close.
he grips on your inner thigh, keeping it up in the air as he slammed into you. wet sounds began to fill the space, yet eunseok still hadn’t earned one tasteful moan out of you. he could already tell you were trying to be stubborn for whatever reason, but he was down to play this time around.
eunseok presses deep inside, a gasp escaping your lips. “baby, you don’t have to behave for me right now,” he groans, but desperation was clear in his tone— eunseok just had to hear you, to know how good he was making you feel.
you whimpered, walls pulsing around his length as the tip of his cock kissed your womb. a drawn out moan finally escaped you when his thumb began to rub your sensitive clit, the bundle of nerves throbbing under his touch.
”fuck!” you cried out as he rubbed your clit in tight circles, his hips moving shallowly, stimulating you even more. he chuckles against your neck, kissing a line down the back of your ear to your shoulder.
”i want to hear you, baby. let it all out for me,” he pants, hips starting to pick up the pace again. eunseok’s hips snapped against your hips, making you moan out loud. your back began to arch against his body, his cock now reaching new depths.
he chuckles weakly, biting on your shoulder as he held your thigh against your body, the force of his thrusts making your leg swing in the air. your body starts to tremble, reaching a familiar high, one that you’ve been craving for days now.
”eunseok, fuck— seok, i’m close,” you whimpered, followed by a string of moans, each one getting higher than the last.
ㅤit was music to eunseok’s ears, especially since your release was his undoing. he couldn’t wait to feel the way your walls clamped down on him, pulsing deliciously around his cock as he fucked you through your orgasm— he couldn’t fucking wait.
your mouth dropped open, breathless moans leaving you as your body tensed up, preparing for your high. you were close, so close you couldn’t even stay still. eunseok’s fingers continued to roll your clit, keeping his thrusts consistent but powerful, knowing just how you needed it.
”eunseok!” you cried out, head thrown back onto his shoulder as your entire body shivered from the force of your own orgasm. his hips didn’t stop moving, helping you ride your high out the way you needed it so desperately.
when you began to relax around his length, eunseok pulled out, his hand leaving your oversensitive nub to grip his cock. he buried his nose against your hair, pumping the head of his cock restlessly before finally reaching his own high.
eunseok shudders, a whimper escaping him as his release covered the insides of your trembling thigh. he chuckles softly, kissing the top of your head. he held you close, both of you completely satiated.
”tired?” he mumbled, one hand massaging your thigh. you winced at the ache in your legs when he put it back in place to help you relax better, making eunseok jump up in surprise.
”are you hurt anywhere?” he quickly searched your face, only to find nothing but a satisfied expression on your flushed face. his panic settled down as quickly as it came, laughing softly at how carefree you looked.
with how quiet you were, eunseok could tell how good he was to you just now. he hums against your hair, taking a deep breath, “were you uncomfortable? with the position, i mean.”
you shake your head, staying nonverbal. your throat was just as sore as your lower body, glancing up at him. eunseok stares back down at you, playfully waiting for a proper response even though he knew what you were asking for.
when he refused to budge, you frowned, “i wasn’t uncomfortable at the moment. i am now, though.”
eunseok’s laughter rang in your ears as soon as he heard your hoarse voice. you never understood why he always pushed you like this, just to hear how broken you sound after a good fucking.
”fuck off,” you grumbled, almost losing your voice. “i’m thirsty, do something.”
eunseok smiled, enjoying how demanding you were. he missed being ordered around like this, even if he had to be a little annoying just to get a reaction out of you.
”yes, princess. i’ll go grab you the coldest glass of water for your poor throat,” he teased, slowly pulling away from you.
you, however, couldn’t stand to be away from him for even a second, not when you just made up. your hands grabbed on his shirt almost instinctively, shooting him a wide-eyed stare.
eunseok couldn’t help but laugh. how could he even say no to a face like that?
”want me to carry you while i grab you a glass of water?” you nodded.
”even though i’m tired and overworked?” you nodded.
”seriously?” you nodded, tugging on his shirt more insistently this time.
eunseok had no choice but to lift you in his arms, smiling widely as he did so. “you’re lucky you’re cute,” he whispered against your hair before pressing his lips against your head.
”you owe me that much for feeling me up in my sleep,” you retorted, earning a sheepish laugh from him.
you glanced at him, cheeks turning red, “but, you know, if you ever need me like that again, you have my permission.”
eunseok stares at you, eyes shaking as he tried to decipher what you meant, and if you meant what he thought you meant— and, god, that would give him more things to look forward to when he comes home now.
”are you serious?” he gasped out.
you nodded, eyes shifting shyly, “only if you need me that badly. otherwise, i want to be awake for it.”
he chuckles, leaning down to kiss your cheek, “trust me, baby, you will be.”
blakekathryn
stormborns
kianamaiart
2087
germansingergirl
