📁 2026.works. ╰ 📂 JAKE : SMAU/NSFW — best friend’s boyfriend!jake cheating on her with you (part 11)
PART 10 — INDEX
﹕𝜗𝜚﹕ NOTES ; sooo this is part 11 of @jaeyunsbabygirl request. ik there’s a lot going on and ik a lot of you want to know hee’s past so bad sooo i thought i could drop a few hints in this part since its only going to be revealed in part 13 (probably) and who knows mayb yall will guess part of what he did (cuz u can’t guess fully there are too little elements lol 😆) ANYWAY i hope you like it we’re not near the end i repeat it there are still many things i have in mind. ALSOOO this part is happening on several weeks which is why at th start of it it’s beginning july and by the end of the chap it’s beginning august
⌗ in which . . . a drunk night with nishimura riki turns into a blur of closeness where everything you’ve been holding back finally slips out
流星 ໑ . . soberbf!riki x drunkfem!reader
⌗ includes . . . smut (18+), established relationship, intoxication, penetrative sex, unprotected sex (don’t), fingering, grinding, riding, creampie, filthy talk, praise kink, glasses kink, intimacy & aftercare ➜ intended for mature audiences | minors do not interact ♡ purely a work of fiction, none of this reflects reality | wc: 7.0k
♪ el’s bubble: riki with glasses 😍 i love love love ! also because i can’t bring myself to actually wear my glasses . . for my baby @bellaflippy🫰all the filth was her idea, okay? enjoy — likes, reblogs, and feedback are deeply appreciated on here ♡ requests are open if you want to see me write something specific ۫ ׅ
tags: @simsimluver @maishee @grdientlips @kristynaaah @psychicdazestrawberry @heesroses @vmpiricou @seungiesdoll @malibluess | send an ask if you’d like to be added ˙𐃷˙
now playing . . . nights by frank ocean
"Be careful, baby."
Riki's voice cuts through the haze in your mind, but your body is already betraying you.
The second you stumble inside the apartment and the door clicks shut behind you, you pitch forward dramatically and catch yourself on the wall, your fingers scrabbling against the painted surface like it's the only thing keeping you upright.
The cool plaster feels good against your heated palms, and you press your cheek against it for a moment, letting the chill soothe the flush that's spread across your face.
"Your floor is evil," you mumble, the words slurring together in a way that would be embarrassing if you had the capacity to feel embarrassment right now.
Your tongue feels thick and unwieldy in your mouth, and the sentence comes out more like "Yerr floorrrs eevul," but you don't care.
You're too damn busy trying to remember how knees work.
Riki snorts behind you, and you hear the metallic clink as he drops the keys into the small ceramic bowl by the door.
The sound is sharp and clear in the quiet of the apartment, a stark contrast to the thumping bass and layered conversations you'd been surrounded by all night. "The floor is not evil, darling. You're just incredibly drunk right now."
"'M not drunk, baby," you protest, pushing yourself off the wall with all the dignity you can muster, which is approximately none, because the moment you try to stand upright, the room tilts sideways and you have to grab the wall again.
"You're drunk."
"I've had two drinks," Riki says dryly. "You've had... what, six? Seven?"
"Three," you say, and then pause, frowning as you try to count on your fingers. The numbers keep swimming away from you. "Maybe four… or eight. I lost count after the shot that tasted like juice."
"That's because it was juice," Riki mutters, stepping closer. "Juice with three types of liquor in it."
You try peeling yourself off the wall, determined to prove him wrong, determined to show him that you are a fully functioning adult woman who can absolutely navigate a flat surface.
But when you attempt to kick off your heels, your balance deserts you completely.
Your ankle wobbles dangerously, the strap of your heel catching on your other foot, and you nearly face-plant onto the hardwood, a yelp escaping your lips as you pitch forward.
Strong hands catch you just in time, steadying you with practiced ease.
Riki's fingers wrap around your biceps, gripping firmly enough to keep you upright but gentle enough that it doesn't hurt.
He pulls you back against his chest, and you can feel the rumble of his laugh against your shoulder blades.
"I've got you," he says, his voice low and steady, a familiar anchor in the spinning room. "You can't do anything by yourself tonight, can you?"
"I can do plenty by myself," you mumble into his shirt, your words muffled by the fabric. "I'm very independent."
"Uh-huh." He doesn't sound convinced. "Can you walk?"
"Obviously, who the hell do you think I am?" You take one step and immediately stumble, your heel catching on the hem of your dress.
Riki catches you again, and this time, you can hear the exasperated smile in his voice.
"Sure, darling. Very, very independent."
He realizes you're essentially useless in this state, your limbs are heavy and uncooperative, your motor skills have abandoned you entirely, and your judgment is questionable at best.
So Riki, being the amazing man he is, shifts into full caretaker mode, his entire demeanor changing from amused boyfriend to responsible caretaker in the span of a heartbeat.
He's trying to be the good boyfriend who takes care of his incredibly intoxicated girlfriend, even though he's tired too, even though his own head is swimming slightly from the drinks, the dancing, and the late hour.
But he's more functional than you, and he knows it, so he steps up.
He guides you carefully toward the bed, his arm wrapped securely around your waist, supporting most of your weight as you shuffle across the room.
You're leaning into him heavily, your body pressing against his side like you're trying to merge into a single person, and he adjusts his grip to accommodate your clinginess.
"Sit here," he instructs gently, helping you settle on the edge of the mattress. "Just sit for a second. Don't move."
"I'm not moving," you say, even as you sway slightly, your body refusing to cooperate with your intentions. "I'm perfectly still."
Riki shoots you a look that says he doesn't believe you for a second, but he doesn't argue.
Instead, he crouches in front of you, his knees hitting the floor with a soft thud, and reaches for your heels.
You're fumbling with the buckles yourself, your fingers clumsy and uncoordinated, missing entirely as you try to undo the tiny clasps.
Your nails scrape uselessly against the metal, and you make a frustrated sound in the back of your throat.
"Let me," he says softly, batting your hands away gently.
His fingers make quick work of the buckles, sliding the straps free with a dexterity that seems almost unfair given how useless your own hands are right now.
You look down at him and start giggling uncontrollably.
From this angle, you can see everything: how messy his hair has become, strands falling across his forehead and sticking up at odd angles from hours of dancing under hot lights.
How his black shirt has come completely untucked from his jeans, the fabric rumpled and slightly damp with sweat.
He has that tired, slightly annoyed expression on his face, his brows drawn together and his lips pressed into a thin line.
He looks like he's been thoroughly wrecked by the night, but in the best possible way.
It’s like something you want to ruin even further.
He glances up at your laughter, his eyebrows drawing together even more. "What?"
You reach down and squish his cheeks between your palms, pushing his face together until his lips pout out like a fish. "You're cute when you're nagging."
Riki rolls his eyes, but you can see the corner of his mouth twitching like he's fighting back a smile despite himself. "Fantastic. Lift your foot."
You obediently lift one foot, then the other, watching as he deftly unbuckles your heels and slides them off.
The moment your feet are free from the torture devices you've been wearing all night, you let out a groan of relief that's probably too loud for the hour, your toes curling against the cool floor.
"Oh my god," you moan. "That feels amazing. Why do we wear heels? Who invented them? They should be arrested."
"They should," Riki agrees mildly, setting your heels aside. "You wore them voluntarily, though."
"Because they make my legs look good." You wiggle your bare feet, examining your toes. The nail polish is chipped, but you can't bring yourself to care. "Absolutely worth it."
Riki stands, rolling his shoulders, and you immediately reach for him, your hands clutching at his shirt like you're afraid he might disappear if you let go.
Your fingers curl into the fabric, pulling him closer, and he stumbles slightly, caught off guard by your sudden grip.
Unfortunately or fortunately, that clinginess is what starts changing the atmosphere.
"Hey," he says, his voice softening. "I'm not going anywhere. I just need to, you know, take my contacts out. My eyes are killing me."
You make a sound of protest, your fingers tightening on his shirt, but he gently pries your hands away and presses a quick kiss to your forehead. "One second, baby. I'll be right back."
He walks to the desk, probably intending to take out his contacts because his eyes are strained from hours of dancing and drinking and the smoky air of the club.
You watch him through half-lidded eyes as he opens a drawer, pulls out a glasses case, and carefully removes the frames inside.
He slides them onto his face with practiced ease, adjusting the arms behind his ears and pushing the bridge up his nose with one finger.
It's such a tiny action.
Such a mundane, everyday thing.
But the consequences are massive.
You're sitting there, feeling boneless and tipsy and incredibly warm, watching him turn around.
Messy hair. Post-club black shirt, untucked and rumpled.
Glasses now framing his face, making him look somehow even sharper, more intellectual, more devastatingly attractive.
The frames are simple and black, rectangular, but they draw attention to his eyes in a way that makes your breath catch.
He looks unfairly put together for someone who was just grinding against you on a dance floor an hour ago.
It looks like he belongs in a magazine spread, not a cramped apartment.
"Wait," you blurt out before you can stop yourself, the word escaping your lips with enough force to make Riki pause mid-step.
He stops, halfway back to the bed, his head tilting slightly. "What's wrong?"
"You look..." You trail off, your drunk brain struggling to find the right words.
There are so many of them, hot, gorgeous, beautiful, edible, devastating, but they're all jumbled up in your head, and you can't seem to grab any of them. "You look really hot."
Riki visibly stops in his tracks.
You say it with full drunk sincerity; there’s no teasing, no filter, no hint of exaggeration.
Just pure, unfiltered admiration, your eyes wide and your lips parted like you're seeing him for the first time.
You're staring at him like he's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, and the intensity of it makes his breath hitch in his throat.
He adjusts the glasses awkwardly, his fingers brushing against the frames in a self-conscious gesture that you've never seen him make before. "You are so, so fucking drunk."
"I'm serious," you insist, leaning forward on the bed, your elbows braced on your knees as you peer up at him.
You keep staring, letting your eyes roam over his face, taking in every detail, the way the glasses make his eyes look darker, more intense, the way his hair falls across his forehead, the way his shirt clings to his shoulders and chest.
That prolonged stare makes him self-conscious and smug at the same time.
It's a dangerous combination, because Riki with an ego is already a lot to handle, but Riki with an ego who's also slightly flustered is absolutely lethal.
"Stop looking at me like that," he mutters, but there's no real conviction in his voice.
"Like what?" you ask, entirely innocent.
"Like… like you want to eat me."
You consider this for a moment, your head tilting to the side. "Seriously, who wouldn’t want to eat you out?"
Riki exhales sharply, his jaw tightening, and you watch the muscle flex with open appreciation.
He walks back over to check on you, probably planning to get you some water and help you sober up, to be the responsible one in this situation.
The second he's close enough, you catch his wrist, your fingers wrapping around his skin with surprising speed and accuracy.
He loses balance slightly and ends up standing between your knees, trapped by your grip and your position on the bed.
His thighs press against the mattress on either side of your legs, and you can feel the warmth radiating off him, smell the remnants of his cologne mixed with sweat and something that's just him.
You look up at him through your lashes and literally just keep touching his face.
Your fingers trace along his jawline, feeling the slight stubble that's grown over the course of the night.
You run your fingers over the glasses frame, tracing the metal where it rests against his skin.
You push them higher on his nose, adjusting them like you have every right to be this intimate with him, like this is the most natural thing in the world.
"Smart boy," you murmur, amused with yourself, the words slipping out without any thought to how they might affect him. You're smiling, your lips curved in a lazy, satisfied grin, and you can see the exact moment the words land.
Riki exhales sharply, his breath catching in his throat, his eyes darkening behind the lenses.
Because this is getting to him.
This is really, really getting to him.
He puts his hands on your thighs, not with any sexual emphasis, just to steady both of you, to keep you from sliding off the bed.
His palms are warm and heavy through the thin fabric of your dress, and you're suddenly very aware of how close he is, of his fingers splayed across your skin as if he's claiming territory.
But now you're close.
Fuck.
Very close.
The heat of his body seeps into yours, and you can feel the tension radiating off him, the way his muscles are coiled tight like he's holding himself back.
You lean your forehead into his stomach and laugh softly, the sound muffled against his shirt. You can feel the hard plane of his abs beneath the fabric, the way his stomach tenses when your breath ghosts across his skin.
Then you pull back just enough to look at him, and there's that quiet. The club noise is gone, the music is just a memory, the world outside this room has ceased to exist.
It's just the two of you, breathing each other's air, existing in this small pocket of stillness.
You end up in his lap almost accidentally.
Riki tries to sit down beside you because he thinks: okay, calm down, give her water, let her sober up, be responsible.
But you follow him immediately, climbing half into his lap because you want warmth, you want contact, you want to be as close to him as physically possible.
You don't even think about it, it's instinct, pure and simple, your body moving toward his like he's gravity and you're helpless to resist.
It feels like the most natural thing in the world.
Your legs drape over his, your arms wrap around his shoulders, and your face tucks into the crook of his neck.
Very tipsy, clingy girlfriend behavior, but you're too far gone to care about dignity or propriety or anything except the way his skin feels against yours.
Riki's hands automatically settle at your waist to keep you from sliding off, his fingers pressing into your skin through the fabric of your dress.
He goes still, his entire body tense beneath you, and you can feel his heartbeat hammering against your chest.
This is different.
Now this is something else entirely.
You nuzzle into him, breathing in his scent, expensive cologne mixed with sweat and something distinctly Riki that makes your head swim, and mutter against his skin: "Comfy."
He laughs under his breath, but it sounds strained, like he's fighting a losing battle with his self-control. "Yeah?"
"Mhm." You pull back just enough to look at him, your faces inches apart, your breath mingling in the small space between you. Then you tap the glasses again, your finger grazing the lens. "I still can't get over these. You look so good, like… so, so fucking good. Why do you look so damn good, baby? It's absolutely unfair."
"You're complaining that I look good?"
"Yes," you say seriously. "It's a problem. For my heart."
Riki shakes his head, but there's a smile tugging at his lips. "You're outrageous."
"You like it a lot."
"I do," he admits, and his voice has gone soft in a way that makes your chest ache.
You reach to take his glasses off him playfully, your fingers curling around the frames with the intention of trying them on yourself. "Let me see. I want to try."
Riki catches your wrist, his grip firm but not painful, his fingers wrapping around your pulse point like he's checking your heartbeat.
You can feel the pad of his thumb pressing against the thin skin of your inner wrist, and it makes your breath stutter.
He looks at you for a long second, his dark eyes searching yours through the lenses, reading something in your expression that makes his jaw tighten.
Then, instead of stopping you, instead of pushing your hand away and telling you to be careful, he takes the glasses off himself.
And slides them onto your face.
Slowly.
His fingers brush against your temples as he positions the frames on your nose, and you can feel the deliberate care in the gesture, the way he's taking his time, making sure you feel every second of it.
The frames are too big for you, sliding down your nose slightly, and you blink up at him through the lenses, everything fuzzy and blurred and slightly distorted.
You start laughing because you probably look ridiculous, wearing his glasses with your messy club hair and your smudged makeup and your flushed cheeks.
"Riki—" you start, but he cuts you off.
"Keep them on."
His tone is low and certain.
Commanding, actually.
It’s a tone you've never heard from him before, or maybe you have but never with this intensity, never directed at you with such deliberate purpose.
You quiet immediately, because suddenly you're aware of everything, his hands still on your waist, his fingers pressing into your skin like he's leaving marks.
How closely he's watching you, his dark eyes tracking every micro-expression that crosses your face.
The glasses sitting on your nose, heavy with the weight of implication.
The way your heart is hammering against your ribs so hard you're sure he can hear it.
You feel seen in a way that makes you squirm, exposed and vulnerable, and incredibly, overwhelmingly turned on.
You try to steady yourself, to sit properly on his lap facing him, and your thighs bracket his hips as you settle more firmly against him.
Your dress rides up, the black satin sliding higher on your thighs, and you can feel the rough denim of his jeans against your bare skin.
Then, suddenly, you lean in and kiss him.
It's not a gentle kiss.
It's messy and desperate and fueled by alcohol and want, your lips crashing against his with enough force to make him groan into your mouth.
Your fingers tangle in his hair, pulling him closer, and you're whispering praises between kisses, the words tumbling out of you without any filter.
"You're so cute," you breathe against his lips. "I love you. You're so handsome, Riki, you have no idea—" Another kiss, deeper this time, your tongue sliding against his. "So pretty. My pretty boy."
You can feel him getting harder beneath you, his body responding to your words and your touch and the way you're pressing against him.
You can feel the growing bulge in his jeans, the way his hips shift slightly like he's trying to find friction, and it makes you smile against his mouth.
"Someone's excited," you murmur, grinding down against him in a slow, deliberate circle.
Riki's breath catches, his hands tightening on your waist. "One day, you are genuinely going to finish me off."
"That is such a nice way to go," you say, and you start teasing him properly now, rolling your hips in slow, torturous motions that make him exhale shakily against your neck.
Your hands slide down his chest, feeling the hard planes of his muscles beneath his shirt, and you push the fabric up slightly so you can trace your fingers along the line of his stomach.
He's your pretty boy, your Riki, and you know exactly how to make him fall apart.
His hands slide under your black satin slip dress, his fingers tracing patterns against your thighs, and you shiver at the contact, your skin breaking out in goosebumps.
He traces higher, his fingertips brushing against the edge of your underwear, slick with your dripping juices that have already soaked through the thin fabric, and you gasp, the sound loud and uninhibited in the quiet room, your clit throbbing desperately under the pressure.
Riki goes still, his eyes snapping to your face, his cock twitching hard in his pants as he hears your raw hunger.
That gasp, that noise, was louder than anything you've ever made during sex — your voice cracking with pure, animal need, pussy clenching around nothing, begging to be filled.
You're usually so quiet, so restrained, so careful about the sounds you let escape, biting your lip to stifle the sloppy wet sounds of your arousal leaking out.
But now, with alcohol loosening your inhibitions and his fingers on your skin, smearing your creamy wetness higher up your thighs, you can't seem to hold anything back, your hips bucking involuntarily, grinding your soaked cunt against his hand like a bitch in heat.
"Did you just—" he starts, but you're already grinding down against him again, your drenched panties sliding over his bulge, coating his jeans with your sticky arousal, and this time you moan, the sound low and throaty and absolutely filthy, guttural and dripping with lust, your nipples hardening into stiff peaks under your dress as your core gushes more slick down your legs.
It's like something unlocks inside you, a floodgate of depravity opening wide, your body surrendering to the need to be fucked raw and hard.
All those sounds you've been holding back, all those reactions you've been suppressing, they all come pouring out, and you can't stop them, don't want to stop them.
"Riki," you whimper, your head falling back as his fingers trace along the edge of your underwear again, teasing you through the thin fabric. "Please."
"Please what, baby?” he asks, his voice rough, and you can hear the wonder in it, the disbelief that you're actually asking, actually begging.
"Damn it, touch me. Please. I need you so, so bad."
He doesn't need to be told twice.
In what universe did you have to tell him twice?
His fingers slip beneath the fabric, finding you already wet and ready, and when he slides one finger inside you, you cry out, the sound echoing off the walls of the small room.
"God," Riki breathes, his eyes wide behind the glasses that are still somehow perched on your nose. "You're so loud."
"I can't help it," you gasp, your hips bucking against his hand as he adds another finger, curling them inside you in just the right way. "You feel so good, baby. So good, so good, so good—"
He's fingering you now, his fingers moving in and out of you with a steady rhythm, and every thrust pulls another sound from your throat, moans and whimpers and broken fragments of his name.
You're clutching his shoulders, your nails digging into his skin through his shirt, and you're saying things you'd never say sober, filthy things that make his eyes darken with every word.
"More," you beg, your voice breaking on the word. "Riki, please, more—"
"You're being so good for me," he murmurs, and the praise goes straight to your core, making you clench around his fingers. "Such a good girl, taking my fingers so well. You sound so pretty, baby. I love hearing from you."
All hell broke loose.
Every word of praise he gives you makes you louder, makes you squirm more, makes you say things that he's never heard from you before.
He realizes that he's been starving for this, starving for vocal feedback, for audible proof that he's making you feel good, for sounds that he can catalog and replay in his mind later.
He's been living off crumbs for so damn long, a sharp inhale here, a slight tremor there, and now he's being served a feast, and he doesn't know how to control himself.
The switch happens so fast you barely have time to process it.
One second you're in control, riding his fingers, grinding against his hand, whispering praises and commands.
And the next, he's flipping you onto your back, his hands pinning your wrists to the mattress as he looms over you, his eyes dark and hungry behind the glasses.
"Baby—" you gasp, but he cuts you off with a kiss, hard and demanding, his tongue claiming your mouth with a ferocity that makes your head spin.
"I need to hear more," he growls against your lips, and the sound of his voice, rough, low, and absolutely wrecked, makes you whimper. "I need to hear everything. Every sound. Every moan. I need to know exactly how I'm making you feel."
He pulls back just enough to look at you, his eyes roving over your face, taking in your flushed cheeks and your parted lips and the glasses still sitting crookedly on your nose.
He reaches up and adjusts them, straightening them with a tenderness that contradicts the intensity of his gaze.
"Keep these on," he says, tapping the frames. "I want you to see everything."
Then he's kissing down your neck, his teeth grazing your pulse point, and you're arching into him with a moan that's way too loud for shared apartment walls.
He sucks a mark into your skin, his tongue soothing the sting, and you can feel him smiling against your throat when you make a sound that's embarrassingly close to a sob.
"So responsive," he murmurs against your skin. "All this time, you've been holding out on me, baby. Keeping all these pretty sounds to yourself."
"I wasn't—ah—" You break off with a gasp as his hand slides between your bodies, his fingers finding you again, sliding inside you with ease. "I wasn't holding out. I just—couldn't—"
"Shh," he soothes, his fingers curling inside you, finding that spot that makes your vision blur. "I know. I know, baby. But now you don't have to be quiet. I want to hear from you. I want to hear everything."
And you give him everything.
He works you open with his fingers, one, then two, then three, stretching you with a care that contradicts the hunger in his eyes.
Every curl of his fingers pulls a new sound from you, whimpers and moans and gasps and his name, over and over, like it's the only word you know.
"You're so wet," he groans, his voice strained. "All for me, baby?"
"All for you," you manage, your voice breaking. "Only you—fuck, Riki, please, I need—"
"What do you need?" He pulls back to look at you, his eyes searching your face, and there's genuine concern there beneath the hunger. "Tell me what you need."
"You. I need you inside me, please."
He doesn't make you ask twice.
He sits back on his heels and quickly undoes his jeans, pushing them down just enough to free himself, and you watch with hazy fascination as he strokes himself once, twice, his eyes never leaving your face.
Then he's pulling your dress up around your waist and hooking your legs over his hips, positioning himself at your entrance.
"Look at me," he says, and you force your eyes to meet his through the fuzzy lenses. "I want to see your face when I fill you up."
He pushes in slowly, inch by inch, and the stretch is overwhelming, the fullness making your mouth fall open. You moan, loud and long and unashamed, and Riki's breath catches in his throat like he's been punched.
"Fuck," he breathes, his hips stilling once he's fully seated inside you. "You're so loud. You're so fucking loud, baby. I love it. I love it so much."
You can't respond, can't form words, because he's so deep inside you that you can feel him everywhere, can feel the press of his hips against yours, the way your body is stretching to accommodate him.
The glasses are fogging slightly from the heat of your combined breath, and you can barely see him through the haze, but you don't need to see him to feel him.
He starts moving, slow and deep, each thrust deliberate and measured, his massive cock stretching your tight cunt walls to their limit, the veiny shaft dragging through your sopping wet folds with obscene squelching sounds, and you're making sounds you didn't even know you were capable of — high, keening moans that fill the room, desperate whimpers that break in the middle as his balls slap heavily against your ass, full-throated cries that would be embarrassing if you had any shame left, your voice hoarse from screaming his name while you coat his cock.
But you don't.
The alcohol stripped that away hours ago, and now you're just a mess of sensation and noise, writhing beneath him as he fucks you with a tenderness that belies the filthiness of the sounds filling the room.
Each deep plunge forced obscene slick sounds from between your thighs, the sheets clung damply to your skin, soaked in sweat and release, while the room smelled unmistakably of sex. His grunts mixing with your wails as he bottoms out, each thrust burying him to the hilt.
"You feel so good," he groans, his forehead pressing against yours, his breath hot on your lips. "You sound so good, baby. I've wanted this for so long. Wanted to hear from you. Every night, every time we're together, I've been dying to know what you sound like when you're not holding back."
"I'm not—ah—I'm not holding back," you manage, your voice cracking on the words.
"No," he agrees, and he sounds almost reverent. "You're not. You're being so good for me. So loud. So perfect."
He shifts his angle slightly, hitting that spot inside you that makes your vision go white, and you scream, the sound tearing from your throat without any warning.
Riki's hips stutter, his rhythm breaking for just a second, and you can see the way his eyes widen, the way his jaw drops, the way he looks absolutely wrecked by the sound you just made.
"Do that again," he demands, his voice rough. "Scream for me again."
"I can't—"
"You can." He thrusts harder, deeper, hitting the same spot, and you do scream again, your back arching off the mattress, your hands flying up to grip the sheets. "That's it. That's my good girl. Let me hear you."
He's going hard now, chasing your sounds like they're the only thing keeping him alive, and every thrust pulls another cry from your lips.
Then, without warning, he slows down, his hips moving in lazy, grinding circles that make you feel every inch of him. He leans down and kisses you, soft and slow and sweet, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips.
"You're so beautiful," he whispers against your mouth. "So beautiful when you're loud. So beautiful when you're falling apart for me."
"Riki," you whimper, and his name sounds like a prayer on your lips.
"I love you," he says, and then he's speeding up again, his hips snapping against yours with enough force to make the bed shake, and you're screaming his name like it's the only thing that matters.
He flips you over without warning, pulling you onto his lap so you're straddling him, and you sink onto him with a moan that seems to go on forever. Your head falls back, your throat exposed, and Riki takes advantage, leaning up to suck a mark into the sensitive skin while you ride him.
"Look at you," he groans, his hands gripping your hips, guiding your movements. "Riding me so well. Making all those pretty sounds. You're so hot, baby. So fucking hot."
You're grinding down on him, chasing your pleasure, your greedy cunt swallowing his throbbing member whole, walls fluttering and milking him greedily.
The sounds between your bodies were obscene — wet slaps of skin, the bed groaning beneath each brutal thrust, your moans breaking helplessly into his as slick arousal ran down his thighs and gathered in a messy ring at the base of his cock.
"Faster," he commands, fingers digging into your hips hard enough to bruise, nails scraping red welts into your skin as he yanks you down harder. "Ride me faster, baby. Show me how much you want it—milk me until I spill every drop inside you."
You obey, bouncing on his lap with renewed urgency, your breasts jolting with every rise and fall, nipples dragging against the heat of his chest. The angle is different now, deeper and sharper, each drop onto him drags his cock against that sensitive spot inside you until your eyes roll back and a broken cry spills from your lips.
You're loud, unbearably loud, but it feels far too good to care, slick arousal smearing between your bodies as you grind down on him and beg for more with every desperate bounce.
"Riki, baby—Riki, I'm gonna—" You can feel the orgasm building, coiling tight in your stomach, and you're clenching around him, your thighs shaking with the effort of holding yourself upright.
"Not yet," he says, his voice firm. "Wait for me. Be a good girl and wait."
"I can't—"
"You can." He slows your hips, holding you still, and you whine, high and desperate. "Wait for me, baby. I want to come together. I want to feel you fall apart at the same time I do."
You're both breathing hard, sweating, trembling, and he's looking at you with such intensity that it makes your chest ache.
His hand comes up to cup your face, his thumb brushing across your cheekbone, and he pulls you down for a kiss that's slow, deep, and thorough.
"Now," he whispers against your lips. "Come for me now."
You do.
The orgasm hits you like a wave, crashing over you with enough force to make you scream, your entire body convulsing around him as wave after wave of pleasure crashes through you.
You're loud, so fucking loud, screaming his name and words that don't make sense and sounds that aren't even words, and Riki follows right after, his hips jerking up against yours as he groans your name, his face buried in your neck, his fingers tangled in your hair.
You're both shaking, trembling, gasping for air, and the room is spinning, but in a good way now, in a way that feels like floating rather than falling.
The glasses are fogged completely, and you can't see anything, but you don't need to see to know that Riki is looking at you like you hung the moon.
He pulls the glasses off your face gently, setting them on the nightstand, and then he's kissing you again, soft and sweet and so tender it makes you want to cry.
"Are you okay?" he asks softly, his voice rough and wrecked. "Was that okay? Did I hurt you?"
You shake your head, unable to speak yet, too overwhelmed to form words.
It was more than okay.
It was everything, actually.
He must read the answer in your expression, because he smiles, small and soft and so full of love that it makes your chest ache. "Good. That's good."
For a long moment, you just lie there, tangled together, both of you breathing hard, your hearts racing in sync.
Riki is still inside you, his weight pressing you into the mattress in a way that feels grounding and safe.
He presses soft kisses to your face, your forehead, your cheeks, your nose, your lips, each one gentle and reverent, like he's worshiping you.
"You were so good," he murmurs against your skin. "So perfect for me, baby. You have no idea how much I loved hearing you like that."
You make a soft sound, somewhere between a hum and a whimper, and he shushes you gently, pressing another kiss to your temple.
"I know, I know. Overwhelming, right?" He strokes your hair back from your face, his fingers gentle and soothing. "Just breathe, darling. I've got you."
Slowly, carefully, he pulls out of you, and you whimper at the loss, your body already missing his warmth.
But he's right there, gathering you into his arms, pulling you against his chest as he settles back against the headboard with you tucked against him like you're something precious.
"Shh, it's okay," he soothes, rocking you slightly, his hand running up and down your spine in a calming rhythm. "I've got you. You're okay."
You curl into him, your face buried in his neck, breathing in his scent — sweat, cologne, sex, and something that's just Riki. You can feel his heart beating against your cheek, steady and reassuring, and it helps ground you, helps bring you back to reality after everything that just happened.
"Let me clean you up, okay?" he says softly. "Just let me take care of you."
He shifts you gently, laying you back against the pillows, and you make a small sound of protest, your hands reaching for him.
He catches your fingers and presses a kiss to your knuckles. "I'll be right back. One second, baby."
You watch him through half-lidded eyes as he moves around the room with quiet efficiency, his movements unhurried but purposeful.
He comes back with a warm washcloth and a bottle of water, and he sits beside you on the bed, his hip pressed against yours.
"This might be a little cold," he warns, and then he's cleaning you up with such gentleness it makes your chest ache.
He wipes away the evidence of what you just did, his touch careful and reverent, like you're something precious that might break if he's not careful. He takes his time, making sure you're clean and comfortable, and the whole time he's murmuring soft words of praise and comfort.
"You're so beautiful," he says, mostly to himself, as he works. "So perfect. I love you so much. You did so well for me, baby. So, so good."
When he's done, he tosses the washcloth aside and helps you sit up, holding the water bottle to your lips. "Drink. Slowly."
You gulp it down greedily, realizing only now how thirsty you are, how dehydrated you are from the alcohol and the exertion and the hours of dancing.
The water is cool and soothing, and you drain half the bottle before Riki gently pulls it away.
"Easy," he says softly. "Not too fast. You'll make yourself sick."
You nod, settling back against the pillows, and he sets the bottle on the nightstand before climbing back into bed with you. He pulls the covers up over both of you and gathers you into his arms, your back pressed against his chest, his arms wrapped securely around your waist.
"Are you okay, baby?" he asks again, his lips brushing against your ear, his breath warm and familiar.
You turn in his arms so you can face him, so you can see his face in the dim light filtering through the curtains.
His hair is an absolute mess, sticking up in every direction, and there are scratch marks down his neck from your nails, and he looks thoroughly debauched and so incredibly beautiful that it makes your heart hurt.
"Yeah," you say, your voice hoarse from all the sounds you made. "I'm good. That was... that was really good."
Riki smiles, and it's the soft, unguarded smile he only wears when it's just the two of you, when there's no one around to see how completely gone he is for you. "Agreed, it was amazing. You were amazing."
You reach up and touch his face, your fingers tracing his jawline, feeling the slight stubble beneath your fingertips. "I'm sorry… I’m sorry that I'm usually so quiet," you say softly, the words coming out serious despite your intoxicated state. "I didn't realize you needed... that, I didn't know you were paying that much attention."
He catches your hand and presses a kiss to your palm, his lips warm against your skin. "It's okay, baby. I know it's not your fault. I know that's just how you are, and I love everything about how you are. But tonight..." He pauses, searching for the right words. "Tonight was different. I loved hearing you, loved knowing what felt good, what you needed, what made you fall apart. It felt like I could finally hear you, really hear you, in a way I never had before.”
You smile sleepily, your eyes starting to drift closed. "I liked it too. Being loud. It felt… so damn freeing. I didn't have to hold anything back or anything."
Riki kisses your forehead, then your nose, then your lips again, each kiss soft and lingering. "We can do it more often," he says. If you want. No pressure, okay? I just... I want to hear you. I want to know everything you're feeling, want to make you feel so good you stop trying to stay quiet."
"I'd like that," you murmur, your voice fading as sleep starts to pull you under.
He reaches over and slides the glasses back onto your face, positioning them carefully on your nose. "You can keep these tonight," he says softly, a hint of amusement in his voice. "They look good on you."
You laugh quietly, the sound muffled against his chest. "I look ridiculous."
"You look beautiful," he corrects, his voice firm and certain, like it's the most obvious truth in the world. "You always look beautiful. But especially right now, wearing my glasses… right here in my bed with me, after making all those pretty sounds for me."
You swat at his chest weakly, too tired to put any real force behind it. "You're insufferable."
"And you're perfect," he counters, pulling you closer. "Now sleep. You're going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow, and I'm going to need all my energy to take care of you."
"You'll take care of me?" you ask, even though you already know the answer.
"Always, baby." He presses one last kiss to your forehead, his arms tightening around you. "I've got you. I'll always have you."
As you drift off, wrapped in his arms, wearing his glasses, feeling more loved and safe and thoroughly satisfied than you've ever felt in your entire life, you think that maybe being loud isn't so bad after all.
Not if it makes him look at you like that.
Not if it makes him hold you like this.
Not if it lets you hear the way his voice breaks when he says your name, or the way “I love you” slips out like it was always meant to be yours.
Hey can u make a older boyfriend heeseung who is working and has a girlfriend of age above 18 any age but in university they live together and write the smut stuff after he comes home tired from work
You paced anxiously near the apartment entrance, your oversized university hoodie hanging loosely over your frame, one shoulder already bare as you fidgeted with the hem. The day at college had dragged on forever, and all you could think about was Heeseung coming home. Finally, the door clicked open. Heeseung stepped inside, exhaustion etched into every line of his face. His broad shoulders sagged under the crisp dress shirt, tie dangling undone around his neck, dark hair disheveled from countless frustrated rakes of his fingers.
"Welcome home, babe." you greeted softly, stepping forward with a warm smile.
His tired eyes lit up the instant they met yours, the weariness melting away into pure affection. He dropped his bag with a thud, kicked off his shoes, and swept you up into his strong arms in one fluid motion. Your legs wrapped around his waist instinctively as he clung to you, burying his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent like it was his lifeline.
"Ah ~ My baby’s here" he murmured against your skin, voice husky with relief and love. His hands gripped your thighs firmly, holding you close.
You threaded your fingers through his tousled hair, pressing a tender kiss to his temple. "How was work today? You really look beat."
He pulled back just enough to gaze at you, his affectionate smile deepening as he nuzzled your nose with his. "Long and brutal, but seeing you makes it all disappear. How was your day at college, sweetheart?"
He carried you a few steps into the hallway, your bodies pressed together while you chatted about the classes that bored you, a group project that frustrated you, but mostly how you'd counted the minutes until he walked through the door. He listened intently, peppering in soft hums of sympathy and pride, his thumbs stroking soothing circles on your hips.
"I've been waiting for you, so we could shower together." you whispered finally, your lips brushing his ear. Heeseung's eyes darkened with desire, but his touch stayed loving. He didn't answer with words. Instead, he captured your mouth in a deep, needy kiss, his lips warm and insistent, tasting of the coffee that had fueled his endless day.
Clothes shed between fervent kisses, your hoodie pooling on the floor, his shirt unbuttoned with your eager fingers, his belt clinking as it hit the ground, and his pants going next. By the time you reached the bathroom, both of you stood naked, skin flushed with anticipation. Heeseung twisted the shower knob, steam rising as the water heated perfectly, then guided you under the hot spray with him.
The moment the water cascaded over your bodies, his mouth claimed yours again, slower now, deeper. Tongues tangled lazily as rivulets streamed down your skin. His large hands explored reverently, cupping your breasts, thumbs circling your nipples until they hardened into tight peaks, then sliding lower to grip your ass and pull you tight against his hardening cock.
Heeseung broke the kiss, his lips lingering hot and swollen against yours for a long moment before he began trailing downward. Water cascaded over both of you, slicking his dark hair and making his skin gleam as he pressed open-mouthed kisses along the curve of your neck, sucking hard enough at your fluttering pulse point to leave a mark. His teeth grazed the sensitive skin, sending sharp sparks of pleasure straight to your core.
He moved lower with deliberate hunger, mouth latching onto the swell of your breasts. His tongue swirled around one stiff nipple, then the other, before he sucked them deep into his mouth, one after the other—firm, wet pulls that had you arching into him. A deep, needy groan vibrated from his chest as his hands gripped your hips tighter, pinning you to the tiled wall.
He kissed his way down your abdomen, tongue dipping teasingly into your navel, then lower, tracing the crease of your hip with filthy reverence. By the time he dropped to his knees on the wet tile, water streaming down his face and shoulders, your pussy was already dripping, slick arousal coating your folds and inner thighs, the shower doing nothing to wash away how soaked you were for him.
His dark eyes lifted to yours, burning with raw lust and utter devotion. Strong hands gripped the backs of your thighs, lifting one leg over his broad shoulder and spreading you obscenely open. “Lean against the wall for me, sweetheart,” he murmured, voice thick and rough. “I need to taste all of you.”
You pressed your back to the cool tiles, breath shaky as he leaned in like a man starved. He started with slow, worshipful kisses all over your soaked pussy, pressing his lips to your swollen outer folds, sucking them gently into his mouth one by one, then the other, lapping up every drop of your wetness with a hungry moan. He was completely devoted, eyes half-lidded in bliss as he savored you.
Heeseung parted your slick lips with his thumbs, exposing your dripping center completely. His tongue dragged a long, heavy stripe from your entrance up to your throbbing clit, then back down. Without warning, he stiffened his tongue and pushed it inside you, thrusting deep, fucking you with it in slow, deliberate strokes while his nose rubbed against your clit. The wet, obscene sounds of his tongue plunging into your pussy mixed with the shower’s spray and your broken moans.
“Fuck… you’re so wet for me,” he groaned against your folds, the vibration making your walls clench around his tongue. He pulled back just enough to suck your swollen inner lips into his mouth, tugging and licking them thoroughly before sealing his lips around your clit and sucking with perfect pressure.
Only then did he bring his fingers into play, two thick digits circling your fluttering entrance, coating themselves in your slick before sliding deep inside you. He curled them instantly, stroking that spongy spot while his tongue flicked rapidly over your clit. He devoured you with single-minded obsession, sucking, licking, and fingering you like your pleasure was his only purpose.
Your juices coated his chin and fingers, dripping down his wrist as he worked you harder. He added a third finger, stretching you open while his mouth pulsed around your clit, sucking in rhythm with every thrust. Your thighs trembled violently, one leg hooked over his shoulder as you ground against his face.
“Oh my god ~ Heeseung” you whimpered, fingers yanking desperately at his soaked hair. He moaned loudly into your pussy, the sound filthy and encouraging, refusing to let up even as your walls started fluttering wildly. He kept his tongue working your clit and his fingers pumping deep and fast, curling on every pull until the pressure snapped. “I’m… fuck! I’m gonna cum!”
Hee growled against your core and doubled down, sucking your clit hard while his fingers drove into you relentlessly. Your orgasm crashed over you like a wave, thighs clamping around his head as you gushed on his tongue and fingers. He didn’t stop lapping and sucking you through every pulsing wave, drinking down every drop of your release with devoted hunger until you were shaking, oversensitive, and barely able to stand.
Only then did he soften his mouth, pressing gentle, loving kisses to your twitching pussy as the aftershocks rolled through you. He looked up at you with glistening lips and dark, satisfied eyes, like he could stay on his knees worshipping you for hours.
When he finally stood, his cock was fully hard, flushed and heavy, water dripping down the thick length. You didn’t hesitate. You dropped to your knees on the slick tile, gazing up at him with pure hunger and adoration. Heeseung’s hand gently brushed wet strands of hair from your face, thumb stroking your cheek.
“You don’t have to, baby…” he murmured, voice already rough.
“I want to,” you breathed, eyes locked on his. “I need to taste you too, and I want to spoil you a little after a hard day.”
You wrapped both hands around the thick base, feeling the scorching heat and how it throbbed powerfully in your grip. Leaning in, you started with pure devotion, pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses all along the underside, tracing every bulging vein with your lips. You licked broad, wet stripes from base to tip, savoring the velvety-taut skin stretched tight over steel. His cock twitched and jumped under your tongue as you worshipped every inch.
Heeseung groaned deeply, one hand resting lightly in your soaked hair. You swirled your tongue around the fat, leaking head, lapping up the salty precum like it was nectar, then suckled gently on the sensitive tip. Moaning softly around him, you finally parted your lips and sank down, taking him into the wet heat of your mouth. Your tongue pressed flat and firm against the underside, tracing that thick vein as you bobbed, coating him in spit until saliva dripped messily down his shaft and over your fingers.
You sucked him with utter devotion, hollowing your cheeks, nursing his cock like you couldn’t get enough. Wet, filthy sounds filled the shower as you worked him deeper, relaxing your throat to take more with every pass. Your hands stroked what you couldn’t swallow, twisting slickly around the base while you moaned continuously around his girth, the vibrations traveling straight through him.
“Fuck… baby,” he hissed, head falling back under the spray, abs flexing hard. “Your mouth feels so fucking good.”
You pulled off briefly just to drag your tongue slowly up the entire length again, tracing every ridge and vein with reverent care, then dipped lower to suck one of his heavy balls into your mouth, humming happily as you lavished it with attention before moving back to his throbbing cock. You took him even deeper this time, nose brushing his pelvis as you swallowed around the head, throat tightening rhythmically. Spit ran down your chin, mixing with the shower water, making everything slick and messy.
Your moans grew louder, needier, as you lost yourself in pleasing him, sucking harder, faster, eyes watering with how full he made you, but never stopping. You loved every second: the way his cock pulsed hot and heavy on your tongue, the salty taste of him, the broken sounds he made above you.
Heeseung’s thighs trembled, his grip tightening gently in your hair. “Baby~ I’m so close… if you keep sucking me like that I’m gonna cum down your throat.” You moaned loudly around his cock in eager response, doubling your efforts. You sucked him with pure, devoted hunger and wet, sloppy, and relentless, until his hips stuttered and he let out a deep, guttural groan.
Thick, hot ropes of cum pulsed across your tongue and straight down your throat. You swallowed greedily around him, milking every last drop with your hand and mouth, humming happily as you savored the taste of him. You kept sucking gently through his orgasm, prolonging it until he was shuddering and oversensitive.
Only then did you pull off with a soft, wet pop, lips shiny and swollen, a thin string of spit and cum still connecting you to his twitching cock. Heeseung immediately pulled you up, crashing his mouth against yours in a fierce, messy kiss. He tasted himself on your tongue and groaned into it, arms wrapping tightly around your waist like he couldn’t bear even an inch of space between your bodies. The kiss was deep, hungry, and filled with raw need.
After several long moments, he turned you around. Your palms and cheek pressed against the warm, wet tiles as Heeseung molded his chest to your back. One strong arm snaked around your waist, holding you securely. His other hand guided his still-hard cock to your entrance, rubbing the head through your slick folds. He pushed in slowly, inch by thick inch stretching your walls with a deep, delicious burn. Both of you moaned loudly as he bottomed out, his hips flush against your ass.
“God, you’re so tight,” he whispered against your ear, voice trembling with restraint. “So fucking warm and perfect around me.”
He stayed buried deep for a moment, just holding you, breathing against your neck as the hot water poured over your joined bodies. Then he started moving in slow, deep, rolling thrusts that dragged his cock against every sensitive spot inside you.
It wasn’t frantic. It was intimate, almost reverent. Heeseung fucked you like he was pouring all the stress of his day into the connection between your bodies. His arm around your waist kept you pressed tight against him while his free hand slid down to rub slow circles over your clit.
Every thrust was deep and deliberate, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in to the hilt. The wet slap of skin on skin mixed with your soft moans and his low, gravelly groans.
“You feel so good, baby. You're taking me so well,” he murmured, lips brushing your shoulder. “My beautiful girl, I needed this so fucking bad.”
He angled his hips slightly, hitting that perfect spot inside you with every stroke. Your moans grew louder, echoing off the tiles. Heeseung’s pace stayed steady but gradually grew a little firmer, chasing both your pleasure and his own.
When your second orgasm hit, it was slower and deeper than the first, your walls fluttering and clenching rhythmically around his cock as pleasure flooded your body. Heeseung groaned at the feeling, thrusting through your release until his own climax overtook him. With a deep, broken moan of your name, he buried himself as deep as possible and came hard, pulsing inside you in thick, warm spurts. He kept rocking gently into you even as he came, drawing out every last second of pleasure.
For a long while afterward, neither of you moved. Heeseung stayed buried inside you, arms wrapped possessively around your waist, forehead resting against the back of your neck as the water slowly began to cool. He pressed soft, lingering kisses along your shoulder and the side of your throat.
“I love you,” he whispered, voice hoarse and sincere. “Coming home to you… this… it’s everything.” You smiled softly, still catching your breath, pressing back into his warm chest.
💭 hard thought... about how much Riki loves it when you suck him off.
꒰ n. riki x fem!reader ꒱ 𖢖 warnings: smut! mdni, softdom!riki, oral sex (m. rec), handjob, slight praise, overstimulation, pet names, hair pulling, deepthroat, cumshoots, cumeating 𖢖 word count: 2k
wen’s note: dont mind me, just me going feral over his kiss tattoo yamyamyam lol
He loves it—more than he’d care to admit—but you know it, and it fills every inch of you with arousal.
You know he loves it and enjoys it because of the way he simply lets you do it, completely yielding to your rather submissive position, yet still holding plenty of power. The little details drive you wild; knowing exactly what and how he likes it. It turns you on to give him pleasure.
You study and memorize his reactions, not just for the sake of pleasure, even though it’s something you already know, even though he tries—sexily yet pathetically, and without success— to keep his composure, you adore watching him slowly fall apart, his skin shivering as your lips trail down his abdomen, agonizingly slow, teasing him further with the obvious frustration and desperation written all over him.
When his cock is exposed and you want to tease him by kissing and licking his abs, you simply take his manhood lightly in your hand, teasing it just enough to build even more tension in him, because nothing compares to his frustrated expression—his furrowed brow, the veins in his hands and arms visible and palpable, his lower lip red from biting it hard, and that certain pleading look in his eyes... But, just as it is now, where you haven’t taken off his underwear, you gently grind his noticeable erection with one hand, while with your other hand, you trace the path your lips and tongue take until they reach the elastic of his boxers.
At this point, Riki places his hands on your head; in their weight, you can feel his desperation. You look up at him and notice his ragged breathing, the desire and gentle arrogance on his attractive face, as he has you there, submissively on your knees before him, about to please him completely.
Your hand stops stroking his cock through the fabric, and now your throat presses against his erection while your chin rests on his abdomen and you smile broadly and mischievously.
Riki knows you’re doing all this to tease him, to make him even more tense, and you’ve achieved your goal—after all, the grip on your hair gently tightens and caresses it with a certain desperation. He can’t stand it a second longer; he wants the warmth of your mouth on his cock, satisfying him.
He licks his lips, and almost purring, his voice slightly whiny but deep and throaty, he encourages you.
“Come on, baby, put it in your pretty mouth, please.”
His voice and gentle plea only make you even hornier, your core throbbing with desire and lust. It’s simply an act that you both enjoy immensely.
Your attention returns to his arousal, and you don’t waste a second pulling down his underwear, finally freeing his hard cock, which springs out and gently brushes against his stomach attractively. You swallow hard, already tasting and feeling his texture in your mouth.
Riki groans, takes a deep breath, and his grip on your hair grows even tighter. You know he’s trying to act tough, but he’d soon be whimpering at your touch. You gaze at his rigid member, slightly flushed even without any stimulation, the vein popping across his erect length… and then, you gaze at him, waiting for you. Both of your pulses quicken, and once again, without wasting any time, your hand wraps around his girth.
However, before you begin... you indulge in one of your favorite activities: making him suffer a little longer, prolonging his pleasure, overwhelming him with foreplay. You push his cock aside so your face and lips can focus on his highly sensitive skin, which reacts immediately as you plant sensual, tempting kisses on his pelvis, his attractive, defined V-line, his soft, freshly shaved pubic area—kissing right on that daring tattoo of a red-lipstick-kiss that fits perfectly against the outline of your lips— while you try to make eye contact, but he breaks it, overwhelmed and aroused as he moans and throws his head back. His muscles tense, quiver, and his body vibrates to the rhythm of his soft, breathy gasps. You’re torturing him with sizzling kindness, with your perverse, sweet, seductive games.
But he’s not the only one suffering, because no matter how much you enjoy teasing him, the situation is pleasantly complicated for you, since there you are, incredibly turned on, on your knees before him, your panties wet, your femininity—every part of you—yearning intensely to be touched by him… but the satisfaction of sucking Riki off is a very good reward, it makes up for everything.
Finally, you lick his entire rigid length, from base to tip. Riki groans, feeling a rush of intense sensations wash over him, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, and the strongest tension returns to him. He watches you do it again, satisfying himself with the sweet yet dirty image of you stimulating his cock.
His precum begins to leak from his tip, and you find it somehow both tender and hot—knowing just how desperate he is, him and every inch of his cock in your hand, at your disposal.
You let out a little giggle at his heavy panting; you’re genuinely amused, turned on, all at once, while he struggles with each of his deepest desires—to stay calm, to be there for you, and not to shove his cock roughly into your mouth to fuck it all the way in.
You begin to stimulate him with your hands while your tongue lubricates and boldly traces his cock, which throbs vigorously at the touch of your tongue. Riki moans, drawing him closer and closer to an overwhelming ecstasy, gently teasing his impending orgasm.
Your tongue teases his highly sensitive glans, circling it gently and provocatively. Riki has no idea how much longer he can last, while you squirm in your spot, feeling faintly weak with your panties soaked through.
But it’s so fun to watch him lose control of himself that you pull your mouth away from his erection and start stroking his cock, one hand pumping his stiffness, getting used to the friction of his soft, rough texture, while the other plays with and holds his testicles. You know that poor Riki is so aroused, on the verge of coming, but somehow he’s holding back.
Riki gets frustrated, thinking that with your tongue on the tip, you’d start sucking him off, but you simply pull away to stroke his dick, so he curses under his breath and asks you, once again, in his seductively husky voice, almost at his limit:
“Oh! F-fuck, yeah... please, please, baby, suck my cock, put it in your mouth...pl—”
You decide not to be so mean and obey him right away. He sighs, gasping, heavily and breathlessly. Finally, your lips encircle his thickness; his cock meets the softness and warmth of the inside of your mouth. His throbbing manhood fills you completely, his skin brushing against the inside of your cheeks, his glans teasing your uvula. You know this is exactly where you both want to be.
Riki deftly gathers a handful of your hair into a loose ponytail while one of your hands holds the base of his cock and the other rests on his thigh.
You look him in the eyes as you take his cock into your mouth and begin to suck him, gently bobbing up and down his shaft, hollowing out your cheeks to feel every throbbing vein. Riki shifts his hips and delicately guides and pushes your head. It doesn’t take long for him to start panting with pleasure, and suddenly the act becomes dirtier, messier, more intimate. The obscene sound of your drooling mouth, gagging subtly and stimulating his cock and his moans fill the room. Your nipples and skin bristle inevitably… and you think it might be possible to bring yourself to orgasm just by squeezing your thighs together and just keep sucking him off slowly.
But so far, you’ve been taking it at your own pace, taking in as much of his length as you can, just a little more than half of his cock, alternating with the stroking of your hands when your jaw gets tired. But he’s impatient, the dirty idea just fills his mind, so once again he asks:
“Please, baby, let me fuck your throat, baby, okay?”
You pull his cock out of your mouth and, looking him submissively in the eyes, you nod. It will bring mutual pleasure to both of you.
You steel yourself mentally, take a deep breath, and take his cock back into your mouth. This time, Riki pushes deeper and deeper, gently.
“There you go, princess, take it, take it, I know you can—”
Your eyes well up immediately, the tickling sensation in your nose becomes intense, his glans teases your throat, until part of his cock slides inside it, but Riki doesn’t stop pushing you and doesn’t let up until you’ve taken every inch of him, until your nose brushes against his pubis and your nails dig into his thighs, leaving you breathless and helpless, drooling and desperate.
Riki growls intensely as he feels his cock trapped in the tightness of your throat and could stay like that, if he didn’t know you’re struggling a bit to adjust, so he pushes you again with gentle force so you can breathe.
“Good girl, good, you did very well, princess. One more time. Can you do it?”
Your eyes are teary, your face is slightly flushed, your heart is pounding, you’ve made a mess on the floor and at the corners of your lips, his fluids and your saliva dripping pornographically, there’s just something about the thin string of saliva that stretches from the tip of his flushed, glistening cock to your lips.... but you nod again.
This time you want to last longer for him, to satisfy him. So you take every inch of him again, whimpering and staring intently into his eyes, hoping he’ll pick up on the signal in your helpless, tearful face—which he does instantly. Riki begins to gently thrust into your throat, this time without holding back his cries of pleasure, without prolonging his orgasm.
The sounds grow more obscene; your throat is being used, filled with a massive intruder that desperately brings you pleasure but takes your breath away and tires your jaw. You cry out even louder, your nails digging into his thighs, but Riki is just in heaven right now.
“Oh, yeah. Fuck, you’re doing so well. Taking me so well, princess. Yes, yes. I’m gonna cum in your pretty mou—shit!”
He whimpers desperately as you feel his penis twitch inside you. Riki pulls your hair, roughly sliding his cock out of you, then quickly grabs the base of his dick and gently rubs his glans against your lips while you’re still gasping for air.
Riki admires the beautiful mess he’s made on your face, but he still pushes and urges you on for one last thing, tugging your hair back to gently lift your chin, forcing you to look up at him.
“Open wide for me, baby.”
You feel your body burning, your cheeks hot and damp, but you obey him, understanding perfectly what he wants, so you stick out your rosy tongue, ready to receive his load.
Riki roughly strokes his pulsating shaft, filled with all his pent-up tension, letting out a muffled moan as his long-awaited orgasm finally spills out with force. His restless cock rests on your tongue as he finally comes, spurting hot, pearly-white semen, a few drops decorating your lips and the space between your mouth and nose.
A hot, beautiful mess.
Both of you are breathless, satisfied—you still hungry for more—but you smile at him anyway, licking your lips, tasting and swallowing every drop of him, genuinely blissful.
Riki tries to catch his breath as well, his cock going limp in the aftermath of such an intense, satisfying orgasm. Nevertheless, in his characteristic husky voice, he reassures you just how much he liked it.
“Good. You did so well for me. Are you okay? God, I loved it, my baby doll.”
synopsis. heeseung regrets everything, but his regret comes too late.
pairing. alpha!heeseung x omega!female reader
genre(s). omegaverse, fated mates, strangers-to-lovers, angst, fluff
warnings. angst angst angst!!, everyone cries a lot, heavy angst..., slowburn, vomiting, insecurity, depressive behaviour, hyperventilation and panic attacks, attempts (just one attempt), heeseung is so fucking desperate, featuring: alpha!jay (our target again), alpha!jungwon, wolf hybrid!sunghoon, fake-omega!sunoo (pls i love him), beta!jake, beta!ahn yujin, omega!rei, not beta read we die like injang, ok just hmu if i miss anything!!!
word count. 17,837
note. girl wtf tumblr didn't let me post the whole fic!!! im crying, part 3 coming right up!!
For the first time in his life, Heeseung wants to stay.
No. He wants you to stay.
But he doesn’t dare say anything. He doesn’t even know if he deserves to open his mouth. It’s like a knot of uneasiness has lodged itself in his throat, preventing him from moving even an inch of his muscle.
Not that he can even move, honestly. His entire body is on fire, his scent gland is pulsing in pain. But nothing, nothing can compare to the hollowness in his chest.
Nothing comes close to the gravity of the situation, slowly settling in his mind.
Heeseung can’t breathe.
Across from him, you’re leaning on your cheerleader friend for support. Someone he vaguely recognises as Riki’s cousin—Rei, if he’s not mistaken. She has rushed out of the crowd when people had stopped dancing to watch a literal romance suicide happening in the backyard.
“Oh my Goddess—you’re bleeding—Riki! Call the ambulance!”
“Let’s just drive her to the hospital,” Jake, a beta who belongs to the frat house, emerges from behind Riki, looking more sober than the other guests. “It’s faster.”
Among the chaos, of people murmuring in surprise, of your friend and his friend fussing over your condition, you stand there silently. If you were pale before, you’re looking even more ghostly now that if someone were to cut your cheek, there’d be no blood coming out.
He watches you, eyes never leaving your face, begging, pleading through his gaze for you to meet his eyes. But you never do.
You keep your head low and let Rei and Jake usher you away, steps wobbly and unsteady.
Heeseung can’t breathe.
It feels like he’s underwater and his lungs have turned to bricks.
“—seung! Breathe!”
Heeseung snaps out of his thoughts and realises that his knees have finally given up. He’s on the ground, the tiles bruising his knees as Jay crouches beside him, shaking his shoulders. He realises, as his chest burns and moves rapidly, that he’s been hyperventilating.
Heeseung can’t breathe.
“Oh God—” he chokes, clawing at his burning throat. Sweat dots on his forehead, his face turning red with each passing second. Beside him, Jay is shouting at someone over his head, but the sound is muffled to his ears.
All he can hear is the echo of your voice.
‘I ended it.’
The pain cracks through his chest. The tears are unstoppable now.
‘There’s nothing between us anymore.’
Heeseung thinks he might die.
A violent sob racks through his chest, both of his palms touching the ground. He can faintly sense Riki’s presence around him, the younger trying to lift him up with the help of Jay, but Heeseung’s body is dead weight.
His wolf refuses to move.
This is all your fault, his alpha growls in his mind.
You defied fate and now we lost her. This is your fault, Lee Heeseung.
Heeseung covers his face, feeling the wetness on his cheeks. His body shakes with every sob, showing no signs of stopping. On either side of him, Jay and Riki have given up on trying to help him stand. The two watch as their friend cries his heart out.
Out of sorrow. Out of grief.
Out of regret.
“I’m sorry,” Heeseung sobs to no one, the words dripping with remorse.
He looks up, chasing the ghost of you with his guilty eyes—but you’re long since gone. The weight of the abandoned bond now sits heavy on his chest, pulsing in pitiful longing.
“I’m really sorry.”
The space swallows his words, the emptiness a permanent reminder of his too-late apology.
Hospitals aren’t exactly a place you look forward to visiting.
But right now, you are willing to take anything to escape the eyes. You silently curse yourself for pulling that scene in a place where privacy is a luxury, but at least now you have escaped from it.
From Heeseung.
Most importantly, from the consequences of your actions.
You bring your finger to your nape and graze the scent gland gently. The pain it has borne for the last two weeks has finally stopped. It brings great relief to you, really—not having to feel the slow death of being an unwanted mate. But freedom has its cost.
You’ve never felt so empty.
You don’t know how your omega did it, but the bond is severed. Traces of Heeseung’s pheromones are nowhere to be found. Gone are the warm, spicy cinnamon and the cool, salty sea air that used to linger around your sweet scent faintly.
You no longer smell like him. You no longer feel the need to see him. You no longer feel the agonising pain shooting up your spine every time he kisses someone who isn’t you.
Yet you feel empty.
You expected more pain. You expected longing. But your body feels quiet. Your omega, previously hysterical and loud, is dead silent inside. A protest to the Goddess or she’s just genuinely exhausted, you don’t know. You can’t put it past her if it’s both.
You sigh, dropping your hand on your lap as you stare at the blood stain on the sleeves of your cardigan. You pay no mind to the nurses and patients passing by in front of you. Jake and Rei left not too long ago, after you managed to convince them that you’ll be okay and that Yujin is on her way.
As if on cue, your nose picks up the smell of green tea among the sterile and sharp odour of the hallway. Yujin.
“Y/N!”
Your friend greets you with a slightly breathless voice, clearly running her way into the hospital. She bends down and immediately makes a show of inspecting you, turning your body left and right frantically. When her eyes drop on the dried blood staining your sleeves, she nearly shrieks.
“Who the fuck must I kill?!”
“Shh! Keep your voice down!” You hush her, sending apologetic looks to the nearby people who have become alert of Yujin’s death threat. “And no, you’re not killing anybody.”
“Please tell me what happened before I lose my mind,” Yujin pleads, the worry on her face softening her features. You halt.
Before you know it, your eyes have turned glassy. The weight of everything—the constant pain, the relief, the broken bond—you finally feel the full force of it. As if the gate has been completely destroyed, it’s so easy to cry now.
You let yourself get pulled into a hug, clutching at the fabric of Yujin’s shirt desperately.
Your bitter scent washes over her, smelling of heartbreak and guilt. You think of Heeseung; of how devastated he looked when you broke the bond, like he had lost something precious—which should be a lie, shouldn’t it? He never acknowledged the bond. He never admitted to it.
Then you think of yourself; of the way you used to carry the pieces of your heart everywhere, begging for him to see the bond that used to tie the two of you together. The bond that you treasured, the bond that bloomed hope in your heart, making you believe in a future together with someone who was supposed to love you.
Something inside you breaks again.
You had lost something precious.
“I—I ended the bond with him,” you choke, the words struggling to get out. “It’s over. Yujin, it’s over.”
You feel Yujin freeze for a moment before she tightens the hug, feeling her lips touch your hairline.
“But why does it still hurt?” Your chest heaves with a new wave of tears, voice completely broken. “Why does it hurt so fucking much? I ended it, and—and he hurt me,” you hiccup, trying to arrange the string of your sentence properly.
“But I still want to hug him,” you whisper wetly, feeling your wolf stir inside you. “I still want to hold him and tell him I’m sorry for doing this to him.”
Yujin remains quiet, rubbing a hand at your back in an attempt to comfort you.
“It’s okay, Y/N. You did the right thing.”
She holds you and never lets go. She holds you the way that you wish you could’ve done to Heeseung; in the way that you wish he could’ve done to you.
That night, you let yourself surrender to the grief of something that you almost had. The grief of the tale of true mates that you used to hold close to your heart, longing for the wreckage of potential love that is damaged beyond repair.
You grieve for the love you could’ve shared, the life you could’ve had if only the world was on your side.
You grieve for Heeseung.
For the past of the warm embrace that he once gave you and for the pain he inflicted on you.
Heeseung never knew how hard it was to find you outside of the court and practice room until now.
He realises, with a regret that has become all-too-familiar now, that he knows almost nothing about you. Other than the fact that you can bake, that you’re friends with almost everyone on the cheerleader squad—he doesn’t know much about you.
And it kills him.
It takes him two days of losing sleep, of dragging his legs to classes, of forcing the pain in his chest down, before he finally catches a glimpse of you.
It’s completely accidental. He’s on his way to a group discussion, walking past the cafeteria when a breeze of air passes by him, carrying the soft scent of your pheromones.
Light, blooming daisies and sticky, sweet honey.
Heeseung halts in his steps, his alpha already whining in longing.
Across the hall, at one of the tables, you sit with your friends. A pair of chopsticks presses against your lips as you listen to your friend animatedly talking about her clumsy professor—something that’s only possible for Heeseung to hear had it not been for his dominant trait.
Heeseung doesn’t know what to expect once he sees you.
A small part of him foolishly hopes that you’d look back to him just as quickly, the way you used to do whenever he steps into the same room as you before.
Another part of him wishes that when he senses your scent, the usual undertone of his own scent would still linger underneath.
But you do nothing of those, completely oblivious to his presence, to his scent—like the mere his walking into the same space as you’re in doesn’t affect you anymore. And your scent is completely bare from any traces of his pheromones, the daisies and honey are completely and only you.
Right, Heeseung swallows thickly. Of course you can’t feel him.
The bond is no longer there.
You cut it a couple of days ago.
The wound is still fresh, pulsing in his scent gland like a reminder of his sin. His heart squeezes painfully, but Heeseung only presses his lips. Not a sound comes out of his mouth. Not even a breath.
He lets the pain course through his body, enduring it for as long as he can. He deserves this, he quietly thinks.
He deserves watching you from afar, feeling the one-sided bond punish every fibre of his being.
He deserves this; sensing your scent whenever you’re near, but no longer having the privilege to hold your eyes and share the same feeling only true mates understand.
Deserves the silence. Deserves you not looking up. Deserves being nothing to you.
There’s a gaping hole in his heart when he realises that nothing is tying him to you anymore. There’s no safety net of the Goddess of the Moon’s fated mates tale. There’s no longer the string that connects the two of you—no reason he can find to be anything to you.
A stronger, more desperate part of him forces him to take the leap. To just take over and charge. His feet shift forward slightly, the dominant alpha in him wanting to just grab you and tell you how sorry he is. He’d beg on his knees if he must, so long as you’d at least spare a glance his way, even if it meant you would look down on him forever.
But you look happier.
His eyes trace the curve of your lips as you laugh at something your friend says. The selfish part of him stubbornly stays to steal the moment, letting his undeserving ears hear your voice like a secret.
You look happier.
Heeseung takes a step back, angling his body to leave. He looks at you one last time, hoping to catch your gaze at least once. Just something—anything to soothe his anxious wolf, even when he doesn’t deserve it.
But you never look back. And something inside him cracks.
He can feel it—the incoming suffocation building up in his chest, like a storm waiting to happen. Before his scent could turn bitter, Heeseung forces himself to leave, eyes frantically searching for exit.
Heeseung is slowly breaking apart, and he does nothing to stop it.
“You’re so—” Jay stops himself, then sighs loudly. “I’ve called you stupid way too many times that I’m actually starting to feel bad now. Why did you skip your group discussion? Jungwon won’t stop asking me for you.”
Heeseung doesn’t react. After catching sight of you at the cafeteria, he’s rushed back to his house, deliberately skipping the group discussion with an apology over a text. The hyperventilation—an occurrence that is frequent now—comes back, and Heeseung doesn’t intend for you to see him unravel like that.
Not out of pride or shame. God, no, there’s nothing left of him to care about those. Heeseung just doesn’t want you to feel bad seeing him like that. Because you shouldn’t feel bad for cutting off the bond.
After all, he did hurt you to the point of death.
Jay studies his friend, watching as Heeseung sits in his producer chair and stares blankly at the monitor. He was just about to go for a gym session with Riki, but decided to stay at home after Heeseung burst through the door, gasping for air with a red face. And it broke his heart.
Calling out Heeseung for his ignorance is one thing that he’s not sorry for, but seeing him in this condition? It kills him. He just wants everyone to stop hurting each other. But first of all, he knows he has to start with Heeseung.
“Hee,” he calls, but Heeseung barely moves. Jay presses his lips. “Hee—”
“I saw her.”
Jay pauses, holding back his tongue when he hears his voice. He waits patiently, giving Heeseung the space he needs.
But Heeseung doesn’t say another word for a few extended seconds, just sitting there like he was talking to himself. If it weren’t for the small movement of his chest, Jay would’ve panicked and thought that he’d lost his friend.
It is quiet until his voice, smaller and quieter, echoes inside the room again.
“She always looks prettier than the last time I see her.”
There’s a heavy silence between them. Jay takes the chance to look around the room.
It’s Heeseung’s producer room, the room Jay let him take to do whatever he wanted with it. The lighting inside this room is moody, dim purple and blue LED lights alternating every minute.
The glow washes over everything in slow pulses—across the mixing console, the twin monitors, the mess he never bothered to clean. Cables snake along the floor like they’ve settled there for good, curling around the legs of the desk. A track sits paused on the screen, its waveform frozen mid-breath, like it, too, is waiting for something to break.
Jay slowly exhales, his chest tightening as his gaze drifts from a closed notebook to the abandoned headphones hanging at the edge of the console. This room feels less alive—not like what he last remembers of it.
It used to pulse with passion. Whenever he walked in, Heeseung was always up to something. The bass would play like a behind the scene, his sweet voice would sometimes blend with the strum of his newly-bought acoustic. There’d be balls of crumpled papers rolling on the floor, rejected lyrics that he’d still pick up and look back before he went to sleep.
But now, the room is too clean. Ever since he carried Heeseung on his back from Jake’s frat house a few days ago, this producer room has been nothing more than a haunted house.
And at the center of it, is his dying friend.
“Hee,” Jay starts, breaking the silence. He gives his words a lot of thoughts, carefully curated to make it clear that he cares. “Heeseung, you must do something. Or you’ll die, and I won’t let you die.”
Jay grabs his shoulder and turns him around, the chair spinning to face him. Heeseung’s face is void of any colour, sunken eyes looking like faded embers. His lips are dry and chapped, his skin dull and grey. Inevitably, something sharp twists in his chest at seeing his best friend in this state.
“God,” Jay breathes out, trying to hide the tremble in his voice. He’s so fucking scared. “You’re dying, Heeseung, and I—”
Jay hangs his head low, closing his eyes as he tries his best to compose himself. Heeseung needs me, he whispers in his head, Heeseung needs me.
Finally, after what felt like hours, Jay takes a deep breath and lifts his gaze. Heeseung is looking away, blank face staring lifelessly at the wall like a portrait of emptiness and grief. His grip on his shoulder tightens.
“I talked to my parents,” Jay tries again, “there is a way to fix this. Two, actually.”
The moment stretches without any reaction from Heeseung. Jay takes it as a sign to continue.
“We can save this if you…if you can win her back and make her omega want to patch the bond back up.”
The tiniest flicker of something crosses Heeseung’s eyes. His jaw twitches almost imperceptibly.
“Or,” Jay licks his lips, preparing himself. “You can cut the bond from your side, too,” he finishes.
Heeseung turns his head to look at him, wide eyes watering with unshed tears.
“Cut it clean once and for all, Heeseung.”
His lips part, but nothing comes out. Despite his passive façade, Heeseung’s mind is a whirlwind of thoughts and regret.
Fix the bond and face you, which he doesn’t think he deserves.
Or cut it off and lose you for good.
For the first time in his life, Heeseung doesn’t know which option is worse.
The nightclub is still as noisy as he remembers it. Blinding lights that hurt his eyes, loud bass that pierces his ears. People are dancing with their company, seeking friction and heat between slicked bodies.
Heeseung used to be in the center of it all, basking in the attention of perfectly-manicured nails on his chest and the alluring scents enveloping him. A perfect distraction from a rejected demo. A relief for his frustration over a losing game.
The escape he always chose to run from facing negative emotions.
But tonight, he stands motionless in a corner, lips pulled in a tight line.
There’s an old pull coming from the crowd. After all, having people worship your body does feel addictive at one point—and Heeseung is no exception to that. He’s used to showcasing his dominance whether it was on the court or in a bedroom, a drug he kept feeding his alpha to the point of no return. He’s used to command and dominate, a trait that helps him as a captain and as a pleaser.
Like facing a withdrawal, his hands twitch by his sides, itching to inch forward.
You are feeling bad now, a voice whispers in his head. Go on. There are plenty of omegas that can make you feel better.
Heeseung forces his gaze down. No, he counters.
No more of that life.
Heeseung is dominant in every aspect of his existence—from biological traits down to his own personality and mindset. But when his mind drifts back to the thoughts of you, he finds himself crumbling in submission.
It hurts his pride. God, it hurts so much.
But the ache doesn’t compare to the look on your pale face when you break the bond you shared with him, like cutting an infected part of a root that’d destroy your field of daisies.
Nothing hurts more than being the reason you had to resort to such a critical decision, that might cost you your own life.
The urge finally quiets down after a few seconds of redirecting his thoughts to the more pressing matters at hand. Heeseung smooths down his clothes in an attempt to calm himself.
He’s wearing one of his baggy graphic T-shirts, black and bigger than his frame. A picture of The Strokes, stretched and scratched from use clings to the fabric. Beside him, Jay stands tall in his usual button-up, always looking out of place in the nightclub thanks to his distinguished gentleman image.
On the other side of him, is a cute menace.
“Okay!” Sunoo claps his hand, adjusting the collar of his yellow sweater. “This is a bad idea, but since you’re a masochist, let’s do what we’re here for!”
The sass in his speech doesn’t go unnoticed by both alphas. Jay lets out a big sigh, already massaging his temple, while Heeseung only gives him a side-eye, hardly offended by his words.
He’s right, of course. Sunoo’s never wrong.
The brown-haired boy, feigning ignorance to the stares he’s receiving, continues. “Since you want to cut the bond clean—”
Jay interrupts sharply. “Try to cut it clean.”
“Right,” Sunoo gives a small smile. “Since we want to try cutting it off clean,” he makes a show of slicing the air with his hand, “let’s find you an omega and see if you can kiss her or him without throwing up.”
Heeseung lets the bass swallow his voice, already hating the idea inside his head. Which is ironic, because just a few days ago, he was adamant on trying to convince himself that he didn’t have a mate.
Oh, well. Just look at him now.
Jay seems to share the same sentiment as him. “This can either turn worse or better. Are you sure you’re doing this?” Jay looks back from Heeseung to Sunoo. “Can’t we find other ways?”
Sunoo taps his chin, looking serious for the first time that night.
“I don’t think we can. The one breaking the bond should be his wolf,” he starts, pointing to Heeseung’s chest. “And since he’s been giving Heeseung a silent treatment, we have no idea where he stands now. This is the only way to trigger a reaction.”
Heeseung thinks he’s had enough of being talked about like a case study. “What do you mean? We don’t know where he stands now?”
Sunoo pats his shoulder, understanding his confusion. “Yeap. We don’t know whether your wolf is okay with cutting the bond with Y/N and finding another mate, or if he still wants Y/N and wants to fix the bond with her.”
“It’s one-sided, Heeseungie hyung. Your wolf didn’t agree with the breakup,” Sunoo then lowers his voice, now talking softly when he notices the gloomy look on his face. “That’s why we either cut it or fix it,” the alpha fidgets with the sleeves of his sweater, already feeling emotional.
“Or you could die, hyung. That’s the reality of true mates.”
He’s right. Heeseung knows, despite being a little devil that he is, Sunoo will never lie about something as serious as this. Especially when it involves life and death.
But Heeseung hasn’t been on good terms with his wolf. They’ve been clashing since the night that he met you, always debating whether you were his fated mate or not. And each time, it was Heeseung who never listened. It was Heeseung who refused to give in, in denial to the possibility of a mate and…love.
Even tonight.
“Let’s just cut it off,” he grunts, his voice grim and clipped. Sunoo and Jay whirl around and look at him like he’s just lost one eye.
“I just told you, we can’t just—”
“He’s not responding, and he never will,” Heeseung exhales through his nose, frustration spilling into his scent. “My wolf—”
“That’s because you never wanted to listen to him, Hee.” Jay finally speaks up, cutting the conversation short. Heeseung pauses, his voice dying in his throat.
From his left, Jay’s citrusy pheromones—bergamot and lime with a soft undertone of amber and metal—swirls into his senses with an air of authority. Heeseung recognises this. It’s the accent that Jay uses when he wants someone to relax and listen to him.
The dark-haired alpha plays with his whiskey, watching the liquid swirl and the ice spin as he speaks.
“Or to me. To us.”
He lets the words linger, as if begging Heeseung to finally understand. Jay meets his eyes, looking into him with desperation. There is a flicker of something there; something that makes the wall inside him rattle.
“Please. Just tonight. Please try for us. For you,” his voice is lower, shaky, “I don’t want to lose you, Hee. Please.”
“I just don’t want to hurt her anymore.” Heeseung hesitates. “What if I touch another omega and I hurt her again?”
“You won’t,” Sunoo convinces. He nudges Heeseung’s shoulder with his. “For now, she won’t feel anything because the tie is broken. It won’t be easy, but saving yourself means saving her too.”
A heavy silence falls upon them, filled with unspoken tension and pleading eyes. Jay and Sunoo share a look, each of them on the edges of their nerves waiting for Heeseung’s answer.
At last, Heeseung finally relents. A small sigh escapes his lips and he takes a step forward.
“Okay. Let’s give this a shot.”
It isn’t hard to find someone to kiss. It was never hard for Heeseung. He manages to mask his gloomy scent that could shoo people away from him and gets into his flirty mode. His smile, though a little strained on the edges, still looks pretty as ever.
Soon enough, he already has an omega in his arms, tucked away in a dimmed corner near the bar. Sunoo and Jay keep a safe distance from him, not too close to intrude but not too far out of his sight.
“You’re so tall,” the omega purrs, gliding her pretty nail up his arm. Heeseung barely responds. “Tall and so handsome.”
His heart is telling him how out-of-place the touch feels. The familiar feeling comes back. The same feeling he ignored for two weeks in fear of confronting his own destiny. The same feeling he buried for the sake of proving to no one but himself that he’d do fine without you; without the sacred bond that connected you both.
He wants to flee. He wants to push her away and scratch at the spot where she’s touched him. Where her skin meets his skin, Heeseung feels the strongest urge to recoil. The same nausea returns, clouded by her scent that doesn’t sit well in his nose.
But his rational mind reminds him of the intention behind this.
“Yeah?” He tries, struggling to look her in the eyes. He tightens his grip on her waist and hesitates before pulling her slightly closer. “I’ll need to bend down to kiss you, then.”
The girl lets out an airy giggle. She circles her arms around his neck and pulls him down, peering at him through her lashes seductively. “Mhm, bent down enough?”
Heeseung freezes. It’s going to happen. Heeseung fights the urge to turn his face away, but Sunoo’s words serve as a reminder that stops him from doing so.
Saving yourself means saving her, too.
Shakily, he exhales, closing the gap between their lips as slowly as he can. His heart is angry behind his ribs, his pulse rushing loudly in his ears. Heeseung braces himself until the pout of her lips brushes against his.
The kiss starts gently, mainly initiated by her. Heeseung tries to follow, tries to lead, but the feeling of her mouth on his feels so wrong. It doesn’t feel right. It’s like fitting a triangle puzzle with round pieces.
He opens his mouth, trying to deepen his kiss when something inside him stirs.
No. His wolf finally speaks. It’s no longer distant and muffled.
Like a wolf being reborn from the first death, this time, his voice is sharp and clear.
Not her.
Heeseung closes his eyes, feeling a bile rising behind his throat. But instead of darkness, what he sees instead is an image of you. Your soft features, your silky hair, and your pretty, pretty eyes that he can only see in his memory.
The eyes that used to look at him with sparkles of hope, waiting for him to notice the magnetic force of a bond that you shared with him. The same grateful eyes that looked at him under the moonlight, when the convenience store was empty except for the two of you.
His stomach turns sharply he might actually be sick.
Oh Goddess, what has he done to you? Why did he do you so wrong? Why did he think so highly of himself that he thought he was above love and fate?
A drop of tears slips down his cheek.
Before he knows it, Heeseung is already crying into the kiss. Hot, fresh tears seeps into the lock of their mouths, making the kiss taste like salt and grief; just like how his scent smells right now.
I want Y/N. His wolf echoes again, firmer than he’s ever been. We want Y/N.
At last, after weeks of battling himself, Heeseung finally listens to his wolf.
He breaks the kiss with a breath, pushing her gently by the shoulders and putting a distance between them. Head dipping low, Heeseung lets himself cry, watching the tears drop from the tip of his nose to the sticky floor. The omega is left confused, but she doesn’t say a word.
If anything, Heeseung looks so pitiful that she forgets about feeling upset.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m sorry,” he hiccups, bringing his hands to his face. He doesn’t realise how hard he’s shaking until she places her hand on his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, I can’t do this—”
“Hey, it’s okay,” the girl convinces, pursing her lips into a straight line. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Heeseung doesn’t answer. Drops of grief and regret keep pouring out like a broken faucet, staining his cheeks wet. The sound that leaves him isn’t even a sob; it’s something raw, broken, pulled straight out of his chest.
“My heart belongs to her.”
Heeseung feels his wolf paw at him, finally winning the prolonged war of love and pride. A war whose price may be greater than the sin he’s committed.
His scent gland is pulsing even harder, as if reminding him of the bond still barely alive.
With a shaky exhale, like he’s at last allowed himself to be free, Heeseung tries to let it out.
“I think…” his voice breaks, softer now, like he’s afraid of the truth even as he says it.
“I think I finally accepted that my heart has always belonged to her.”
For the first time, Heeseung doesn’t try to deny it. His wolf purrs, almost crying from relief.
“And she doesn’t want it anymore.”
It is very early in the morning. Rays of orange glow cracks through the horizon, bleeding light into the ground. Somewhere in the distance, the moon is slowly getting swallowed by the sky and soon enough, the sun is proudly ascending.
It’s a Saturday, which means, there’s no classes scheduled today. But Heeseung finds himself stepping foot on the campus ground. Faintly, from where he’s standing at the car park, he can hear whistles coming from the field. His wolf, who’s done giving him the silent treatment, nudges him to hurry.
Right. He’s here, abandoning his usual sleep-in on the weekend to find you. It’s the only place he knows where you’d be and he might’ve just bribed Jake to tell him when his football friendly match is going to be.
Taking a deep breath, Heeseung finally moves his legs. His ribs rattle with how fast his heart is beating. He purposely chooses to come fifteen minutes before the match ends—he’s not exactly here to see Jake play (sorry dude). He doesn’t know what to do with himself if he has to wait around for hours just to talk to you. He might go crazy.
Well. That is, if you want to talk to him.
“Don’t discourage me now, you dog,” he mutters under his breath, berating his alpha.
The field is not that far from where he parked his (Jay’s) car. A few paces more and he’s going to see the vast green-grassed space where a bunch of alphas are running around chasing a ball using their legs.
But to his surprise, the field and the bleachers are almost empty.
“Fuck,” Heeseung curses under his breath and checks his watch. He still has three minutes left before the game ends—if what Jake told him was true. Did they end it earlier than planned? He could’ve sworn he heard whistles just now!
You spent too much time on your pep talk, his wolf rolls his eyes.
Heeseung doesn’t waste time. He whirls around and forces his brain to think quicker. His legs move faster, turning corner after a corner in search of you.
Where would the cheerleaders go after a game? To the locker room? No, that’s for the athletes. To the car park? That’s possible, but he didn’t cross paths with anyone on the way here. To the practice room? He rounds a corner. Okay, that actually—
A subtle wave of daisies and honey washes over him almost instantly. Heeseung immediately stops, his breath catching in his throat.
Standing in front of the vending machine, just a few feet away from him, is you. You’re wearing your usual costume—sleeveless top that cuts right at your waist and pleated skirt that ends just above your mid-thigh. But today, the theme seems to be pink. You have your hair up in an updo, a blue ribbon—the official representative colour of the college—is tied neatly around the silky strands of your hair.
There’s only a glimpse of your side profile visible to him, but it’s enough to quiet the prideful alpha in him. He’s not even sure if he’s said it enough, but every time his eyes land on you, you just get prettier.
For a second, Heeseung thinks he doesn’t mind dying at that moment.
You don’t look up to him instantly, or sensing his presence by his pheromones—another reminder of the broken bond that you used to share. Heeseung gulps down the hurt, clenching his sweaty palms into fists.
A clang of a can dropping in the vending machine booms through the hallway. You bend down to take it.
Call her name. His wolf urges. Idiot, just call her name!
Heeseung gathers his breath.
“Y/N?” Your name leaves his name like a sacred prayer, tender and delicate, like a whisper only the Goddess can hear. You freeze in your spot, finger brushing the can only a fraction.
The silence stretches for a few seconds. In waiting, Heeseung holds back his breath, afraid that another sound from him will scare you away.
But you only straighten up, abandoning your can of drink and turn to him. The edges of your eyes harden at the sight of him.
You hold his gaze, lips unmoving before you finally say his name.
“Heeseung.”
It’s flat. It’s polite. It’s cold. It’s nothing like the night when you ran into his arms. It’s not warm like the way you called his name before falling asleep on his shoulders, back when your wolf trusted him with your life.
Back when the bond was still there. Back when his name was still written in the stars beside yours.
Heeseung thinks this is worse than death.
“Can I…” he pauses, already fearing your rejection mid-sentence.
Saving yourself means saving her, too.
He pushes through.
“Can I talk to you?”
The words finally leave his lips, and Heeseung doesn’t move. It’s as if he was intruding; like he was poking your safe bubble and he wasn’t allowed to move without your permission.
Your eyes assess him, like you’re deciding if he was a threat. Then, with a firm tone he never heard from you, you reply. “I have practice.”
“I won’t take long,” he rushes out, the words tripping over each other. “Please—just for a moment. Please.”
Please.
The one word you’d never expect coming from a dominant alpha like him. Someone who seems prideful in everything he does, who commands attention wherever he goes with his voice alone.
So he does have the courage to talk to you. He does know what he did was wrong on so many levels—and yet.
Yet it took you almost dying for him to learn.
Yet it took you bleeding on the floor for him to realise.
For once, you really thought you could be the bigger person. You really believed that your heart, as soft as it always has been, would fold and melt the moment his honeyed-voice greets your senses again.
But you were wrong.
Your resentment still lingers, caging your chest in a protective embrace, not daring to lose its heartbeat for the second time.
“No.”
You take a step back, and this time, you make sure it is a line being drawn.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
Your verdict echoes like a gavel tapping against a sound block. It’s straightforward. It’s clear. But to Heeseung, it’s a punishment too small to what he did to you.
He tries his best to school his expression, swallowing the lump in his throat with force. He then nods, weakly, then a bit too fast.
His wolf cries, not willing for him to back down so easily. His human part, on the other hand, is split into two.
Old Heeseung is ready to isolate and never reach out again. Same old habits that used to bring him comfort and distractions.
This is why you don’t do commitments. Just forget about this.
Another Heeseung, a new side that feels awkward but is still slowly growing, is trying to rationalise your decision and understand your boundaries.
Give her time, Heeseung. The wound is still so fresh.
“Okay.” He finally breathes out, the heavy word weirdly sending relief to his system. “Okay. I understand.”
You don’t move for a moment, just staring at him blankly like he might change his mind, before you nod. You honestly don’t know what to expect, but this is a pleasant surprise. You don’t think you can handle a pushy alpha now—especially the same alpha who had pushed you too far.
You leave without another word, feeling his eyes boring into the back of your head as you round the corner. Once out of his sight, you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding,, gripping the wall for support.
Your heart pounds like a war drum, threatening to break out of your chest. Seeing his face after actively avoiding him seems to be harder than you’d thought. You didn’t know he’d come looking for you on the weekends like this.
The Heeseung you remember always leaves first.
You put a hand over your chest, trying to calm your frantic heart, and realise one thing with a sinking feeling.
Your quiet omega is still silent, lips sealed shut. Not even a word was heard from her since that tragic night.
You sigh. Heeseung’s got a really long way to go.
On the other side of the wall, Heeseung trails after your steps with his gaze—longing, hopeful, and sorrowful.
He’ll wait. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed yet, but he’ll wait.
Heeseung heaves out a long sigh, his throat feeling dry. The vending machine suddenly looks interesting to him. Rows of canned drinks lined up the interior but Heeseung already has his mind set on his go-to Zero Coke.
The can drops with a loud clang. Heeseung reaches down, ready to feel the coldness of the red-canned drink, only to pause when he sees green instead.
Grape juice.
Oh, right. You forgot your drink.
He takes both cans, but his attention on his Zero Coke is long gone. He inspects your drink instead, eyes lingering on the brand like it’s something precious, his fingers wet from condensation.
So you like grape juice.
Heeseung finally learns something about you today.
But waiting is easier said than done.
Anxiety lives under his skin, prickling in his system like thorns in flesh. Every time he closes his eyes, the memory of you bleeding in the frat house haunts him back. He’d wake up gasping, lungs burning like he just survived a drowning.
Your silence has turned his longingness into a desperation so deep you practically could smell it on him. Heeseung can’t be with himself, not when he’s been spending every hour fighting every instinct to scream your name and throw up.
And that’s exactly how Heeseung finds himself lingering around the business building not long after the last time spoke to you.
He doesn’t know your schedule, he doesn’t know what classes you’re in, or the circle of friends you have other than the cheerleaders. He only knows where you live because he sent you home the night you fell asleep on his shoulders—but he doesn’t think going to your house is appropriate. It’s too private and he doesn’t want to stain your safe abode with his presence.
Which is why he decided to wait at the campus, at the building he’s not familiar with.
Heeseung never hated himself more than he does now.
Fuck. How ignorant had he been towards the person who was supposed to be his mate?
Is it too late to learn about you now? Is it too late to knock on your door and hold his heart in his hand like a beggar right now?
So Heeseung spends hours waiting for you without even knowing if you’d come to campus today. He messaged Sunoo for help, but it has slipped from his mind just how busy a med student can be. Sunoo’s probably losing his mind over human anatomy again. The text remains delivered until the night falls.
Black sky takes over the horizon, only lending lights from the moon and the stars as a mercy. Heeseung’s feet are numb from walking around and standing for too long. He looks around the emptying hallways, not sure where exactly he is other than the fact that he’s at the business compound—a path where most students use to get to their classes.
He glances at his watch. It’s almost 8 pm. Most classes have already ended, and the last session would have ended half an hour ago.
You’re probably not here anymore.
Heeseung bites back a groan, licking his dry lips as he turns around to leave. Meeting you at the court is not possible until a few weeks more for a friendly match with that eastern university team again. He can’t possibly wait until then—so he’ll come back tomorrow.
Heeseung knows that he’s a walking contradiction. He vows to respect your decision, to let things go with time. To step back when he’s asked to, to wait around until the tide dies.
However, wasn’t this the way he lost you?
For being too passive. For being too cowardly. For running away.
Heeseung really wants to give you time, but at the same time, he doesn’t know if your ‘no’ yesterday is still applicable today. He should at least try today, right? Or should he wait more?
Fuck. With self-hatred thicker than before, Heeseung curses himself for not knowing. For not understanding. He’s only well-versed about omegas when it comes to sex, but other than that, he doesn’t fucking know. His carelessness and ignorance are biting him hard in the ass right now.
Though, the desperation persists.
He just needs one thing: closure.
Not for himself, but rather for you.
You deserve to know only the truth.
But it’s getting late, and the thin layers he’s wearing aren’t doing a good job to protect him from the chill. Now, he hopes you’re already home, safe and tucked in warmly in your room.
He will try again tomorrow.
Just as he’s about to leave, as if the Moon Goddess finally hears his prayers, Heeseung catches the sound of your voice drifting down the hallway.
You’re here.
God, you’re actually here.
Before he can overthink it, Heeseung is already on his feet, following the trail of daisies and honey using his sharp senses. And he sees you—just rounding the corner, talking to your classmates while heading towards the exit.
He can no longer hold back the instinct to call your name.
“Y/N.”
You freeze in your spot, recognising his voice in a heartbeat. You hate that you do.
He’s already on his way, closing the distance between the two of you with a look of desperation that seems foreign when he wears it. Beside you, your classmates are already whispering, equally surprised as you are.
“Is that Lee Heeseung?”
“Isn’t the music faculty so far from here?”
You pretend you don’t hear anything and frown instead.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can we talk?” Heeseung blurts out the moment he’s close enough. There’s still an elephant distance between you and him, but he doesn’t dare step closer.
Can he even be near you? Is he allowed to?
When there’s no answer from you, he tries again. “Please, can I please talk to you?”
“Just go home, Heeseung.” You mutter, already walking away. You send an apologetic look to your classmates and start to leave, but Heeseung is already hot on your tail.
“Y/N,” he croaks out, the tremble in his voice almost going unnoticed. “I just need ten minutes. No—give me five minutes, please.”
No response from you. You don’t even know where you’re going anymore, taking a turn after a turn to lose him.
How did he know where you were? Did he find out your schedule from someone else? What is he doing here? How long has he been waiting for you?
It doesn’t seem like he has another reason to be here. So did he wait around for you?
You bite your lip, not entirely prepared for the inevitable confrontation to happen so fast.
But you underestimate how desperate Heeseung is because he keeps following you like a lost puppy, long legs slowing down slightly so as to not crowd you from behind. Being this close to him allows your nose to pick up on his sense—eye-watering cinnamon spiking with anxiousness with an undertone of a brewing sea storm.
Heeseung can’t stand the silence any longer.
“I was wrong.” Fuck. If you won’t even look at him, that’s fine. But he needs you to know how sorry he is. “I know what I did was terrible and I—”
“Terrible?” You finally come to a stop and whirl around, your scent brimming with anger. “Terrible? I almost died, Heeseung!”
Heeseung catches himself before he crashes into you. He stares at you, wide-eyed, as you crane your neck to look up at him. The unwanted memory comes flashing back—of blood and tears and regret he’d never move past.
Your eyes glisten with angry tears, fists trembling by your sides.
“What you did was almost criminal.”
Heeseung flinches. He doesn’t expect the word to land so heavy in his chest, so sharply in his gut. His hand flexes by his side, urging him to cradle your soft, soft face in his hold and pour out every single apology he’s been carrying but he stops himself.
“I know, and I’m not asking you to forgive me,” Heeseung murmurs, suddenly unable to meet your eyes. “I just want you to allow me to fix the bond.”
You let out a laugh. A hollow, humourless laugh. The emptiness doesn’t even echo in the air.
“So now the bond is real to you?” You spit out, venom leaking into your voice. “Wasn’t it all just in my head, Heeseung? Wasn’t it all just my heat messing with me.”
Heeseung is hit with a pang of shame, not expecting you to throw his words back at him. He cowers and lets the full impact of his hurtful choice of words consume him to the bone.
You put a fist over your heaving chest, your tongue getting loose now that the inevitable has come.
“I thought I was losing my mind,” your voice trembles slightly, treading along something dangerously close to a breakdown. “I thought something was wrong with me. I was sick for weeks and none of the doctors could cure me! And the whole time it was just…”
You swallow, blinking back tears furiously.
“The whole time it was just you choosing someone else over me.”
It’s like sand has filled up his mouth. Every answer tastes wrong and bitter on his tongue. He doesn’t even know what to say to that for how true it is.
How was he supposed to atone for a sin that nearly killed his mate?
“I know,” is the only thing he can whisper. Shame spreads across his chest like a disease. “I know. I—I did that. I’m sorry for not choosing you, Y/N.”
There it is. The truth, bare as it is, lies there like a final verdict. It feels almost tangible for how suffocating it is. It feels almost too cruel for how much it hurts you. It feels almost alive for how hard it is pulsing in your ears.
The dam finally breaks. “How long have you known that we—” your voice catches, silent tears gliding down your cheeks. “That we were fated mates?”
Guilt gnaws at his chest. “Two weeks before the tournament,” he quietly answers, already feeling small.
So since the beginning of your streak of pain.
You feel sick to your stomach.
“How many of them?”
“What?”
“How many omegas did you fuck to convince yourself that I wasn’t your mate?”
Defensiveness flares up in his chest. “I didn’t fuck them. I couldn’t. I tried—”
“But you still stayed there, trying to prove to everyone in this world that that’s what you wanted and not me!” Your voice booms, no longer holding back on the pain.
Silence rings so loud afterwards, it stretches and stretches until the tension is left in a tight thread waiting to snap.
You stand there, shoulders shaking from sobbing quietly. Long, silky hair cascades around your face as you look down, biting back any sound.
And every hitch of your voice rips his heart apart.
His wolf, wounded as he is, thrashes inside. Shivering daisies and acrid honey droops around him, eliciting another whine from his alpha. Heeseung braves another step forward, hesitation edging on his heels.
“I messed up. I hurt you all because I tried to prove to myself that I didn’t need you.”
His hands twitch, hovering mindlessly on his sides.
Heeseung has promised himself that he’d only say the truth from now on. Harsh as it is, bitter as it is—it’s the only thing you deserve to hear. He couldn’t conjure any more lies to protect himself.
God. Even his lies are killing him now.
“I never slept with them. I couldn’t touch them without feeling like I was about to throw up,” he goes on, voice softening around the edges. “I couldn’t even walk into a room without hoping that it’d be you.”
You shake your head. “But you still did.”
He nods weakly. “That doesn’t erase the fact that I did. I chose to run away because I couldn’t handle the fact that our fate is bigger than what I was willing to hold.”
Our fate.
Heeseung inhales shakily.
“I forced myself to enjoy the touch because I was so fucking busy proving the Goddess wrong.”
A sob escapes your lips.
Why does our fate have to be so tragic, Heeseung?
“I was dying, Heeseung,” you whisper wetly. “Your actions were killing me.”
Heeseung bites his tongue. “I know. I was wrong.”
A minute passes without any words. The hallway is only filled with the soft sobs and sniffles coming from your lips. Heeseung stands, wretched and torn. One leg is urging him to go to you and hold you. Another leg is forcing him to stay because he doesn’t think he deserves to touch you.
What he knows, for sure, is that this image of you crying in front of him will haunt him in his sleep.
After a moment, you finally speak, your voice hoarse.
“I don’t think we can ever come back from this.”
Heeseung’s throat closes up, a sudden stab lodging its pointy end into his chest. No, his wolf cries out. Please, no.
He lifts his hand, longing to touch you, but then decides to drop it. “Y/N. Please—”
“I don’t even know how we can fix this,” you sniffle, wiping your cheeks with the back of your hand. “My omega has been silent since the day she cut the bond.”
In response, his wolf whines, trying to get a reaction. But you feel nothing.
Not a stir. Not even a shift. Your omega is deadly unresponsive. If it’s not for your beating heart, you’d think that you’d been dead since that night.
“I don’t know if she still wants this or not. This—bond. You.”
“But do you?” Heeseung can hear his voice cracking, and he thinks his heart is facing the same fate too. He’s sure of it.
“Do you still want this?”
You are silent for a moment and it’s the longest second Heeseung has ever gone through.
“I—I don’t know,” you quietly mutter. “You hurt me more than anyone ever did, Heeseung.”
Heeseung would have preferred you shout at him than this. He’d rather have the heat of your hatred than this.
This cold winter of your uncertainty. This soft, subtle turndown, like you’re already resigned to the fate of not having him in your life anymore.
Heeseung’s knees hit the ground with a thud before you can stop him.
It’s not weak, or pathetic. It’s utter devotion, surrendering his heart stripped bare from pride and lies to you. It’s complete submission, one that his dominant side has always found it hard to do but done it so easily when it comes to you.
Heeseung doesn’t do worship, but you’re the only altar he will ever kneel to.
His head hangs low, burgundy hair falling over his eyes as his shoulders shake once.
“I know,” he mutters, sounding wrecked.
Heeseung has his hands fisted on his lap, as though it’s his only source of strength, shaking from the overwhelming desperation brimming in his scent.
“I was a coward.”
You gasp, not expecting such action. “Heeseung, get up—“
“Not until you hear me out,” he pleads.
He lifts his head. Heeseung’s wide, bambi eyes look up at you, veiled with a thick layer of tears.
“I fought the bond because I was afraid. I was so fucking scared. I was always the one to leave first, to run and detach fast, but you, Y/N…”
His fingers twitch, fighting the urge to reach out.
“You made me want to stay.”
Your breath catches.
“I’m scared because giving in would mean finally belonging to someone.”
His eyes find yours again, looking soft and destroyed all over. Your heart traitorously skips a beat.
“But right now, I’d give up everything to belong to you.”
His vulnerability, raw and edged with hopelessness, tugs at your wounded heartstrings. You instinctively step back from the sheer weight of it.
“Y/N, please. If your omega never forgives me,” he chokes out, feeling the distance like a slap in the face. He bites back the instinct to take your hand, but he doesn’t dare touch you.
Not until you allow him to.
“If she never forgives me, I’ll spend the rest of my life earning forgiveness from you.”
A teardrop spills from his lash line, staining his cheeks wet.
You give a helpless shake of your head, your resolve slowly crumbling.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“Then I’ll show you. I’ll show you that I mean this.”
His knees scrape against the floor as he inches closer. Tears stream down his face in relentless waves, the lower part of his lips trembling greatly.
“I’m not asking you to take me back. I just need permission from you,” he begs, almost sobbing into his speech.
“Please let me try. I want to become the man that deserves you, Y/N.”
Your lips part, a ghost of a shaky breath escaping your lips.
You’re not used to this kind of devotion.
Not from those alphas who wanted you because they thought having the shy girl who barely talks to men was trophy-worthy. Not from those men who see you as nothing more than their kink fantasies. Not from those guys who thought you were boring and not exciting.
But tonight, as moonlight leaks through the glass of the windows and spills across the floor as if the Moon Goddess has decreed this to happen herself—Heeseung sits there, bruising knees digging into the marble tiles, and begs you to give him a chance.
You’re not used to this kind of devotion, yet you let a small part of your heart, a traitor that it is—flutters from the impact of his words.
You take another step backward, as if being physically away from him would help recover your resolve.
“I…” you can’t find your voice, not when he’s looking at you with regret spilling from his round eyes. Not when he’s gazing up at you like he was a sinner and you were his only saviour.
“I don’t understand, Heeseung,” is the only thing you can whisper, deciding to be truthful. “You were so—so hellbent on trying to deny the bond. You even went to Narin after I confronted you,” you lick your lips, gut twisting sharply at the mention of your captain. You still haven’t spoken to her until this day.
“Why now? Why…change your mind? I already made it easier for you—I cut the bond!”
Heeseung flinches. The reality slaps him in the face again, presenting him with the consequences of his actions on the table.
He knew it won’t be easy, but God—hearing the hurt in your voice pains him more than the ache in his knees.
Heeseung almost crawls forward.
“I’m a coward, Y/N,” he breathes out. “Losing you made me realise that I was never trying to escape the bond.”
His head dips lower, shaking it slowly to himself.
“I was trying to escape what the bond demanded of me.”
Heeseung lifts his gaze, raising his hands, gesturing to you like a priceless painting. There’s a sad smile on his face.
“Settling down, staying, being devoted only to you…those are the only things you deserve. Nothing less.”
His voice is somehow louder than the racing pulse in your ears. You know what’s coming, yet you’re still not prepared for the sting of the truth.
“I am everything less than that,” he finishes. He closes his eyes, not willing to see the look you might wear on your face.
There’s a long pause. The world is quiet outside, not even a sound of cars passing by can be heard. Heeseung doesn’t know how late it already is, or how long he’s been on his knees, but he doesn’t care.
Hurting his knees is the kindest punishment you can ever give him.
You, on the other hand, are beyond devastated. Truly, you don’t think Heeseung could ever hurt you more than he already did. But his confession—fuck.
Heeseung wasn’t ready to step up and become the love that you deserve and it’s killing you that he chose to run instead of try.
It’s killing you that you weren’t an option until fate decided to twist everything around.
With resentment and resignation, you finally decide.
“The bond is no longer there. You can just forget about this, Heeseung.”
Heeseung thinks being shot to death would hurt less than this.
You, however, are already shutting him out.
“If you need closure, just know that one day I will forgive you. It’s not now, not next week, and probably not in months.” Or years. “But I will.”
There’s a strange ache blooming in your chest. One that comes as a price of letting something precious go.
“I hope that’ll help ease your mind.”
God, the bond was precious to you. Heeseung was precious to you.
How did it come to this?
Across from you, Heeseung is crumbling down.
“No, please—” he chokes, scrambling for some air. He can’t breathe.
“Please, Y/N. Give me a chance to be forgiven.”
“You don’t have to try so hard, Heeseung. The bond is gone.”
“I don’t care about the bond!” He hits his chest with a fist, the pain becoming unbearable. “I hurt you, Y/N. With or without the bond, nothing can change the fact that I hurt you and I can’t live with myself knowing that I hurt someone innocent.”
Heeseung can feel the sting of his nails digging into his palm. Anytime now and he’ll be drawing blood from how hard he’s fisting it.
The tears are welling up in your eyes again but you hold your ground.
“Please, I beg you, and I beg you hard, Y/N.”
Heeseung clasps his hands, the pink of his nails turning white from how hard he’s doing it.
“I beg you—please let me try to fix this. Please let me earn your forgiveness. Please, Y/N.”
Your heart breaks at the determination in his voice.
“It won’t be easy.”
“However long it takes,” he pushes, searching your eyes with his glistening ones, his voice raw with urgency.
“I won’t wait for you.”
His eyes burn with more hot tears.
He’s lost you for good, hasn’t he?
“You don’t have to,” he quietly whispers. “I just need your permission to try.”
You swallow down the urge to scream. His promise sounds bigger than his whole existence, yet your heart foolishly roots for him.
“You can try. But I can’t promise you anything.”
You don’t wait for his reply. Quickly, as if your heels were on fire, you turn around and leave him.
Alone, still kneeling. Traces of his regret are still wet on his cheeks.
You hear him sniffle, but you don’t look back.
Heeseung sits alone in the darkness of his producer room.
The space resembles a shipwreck. If Jay didn’t see any crumpled papers the last time he was here, he’d be surprised to see the growing pile of them now.
Heeseung has tried to write something. Or anything that could get this remorse out of his system. He wants to translate his grief into something that is at least listenable. Not whatever mess he is inside.
But nothing really comes out.
The bullpoint of his pen ends up writing your name instead. In round letters, in cursive. In shaky hands, and in tears.
Y/N.
I’m sorry, Y/N…please forgive me.
A word of your name turns into long written words of regret and silent confession. Letters that he will crumple and throw, then pick it up to read back and add more.
There is a dull ache in his knees, turning purple from the time he spent on the floor for you. He lets the bruise pulse, making no attempts to ice it or stop it. It’s a reminder to him.
A reminder of the ticket of mercy you barely granted him.
A reminder of the bond still hanging limply by his finger.
It’s not even a pain if he put it beside the suffering you went through because of him.
You’re a coward.
His wolf suddenly speaks, adding salt to the wound.
Heeseung closes his eyes shut.
“Shut up,” he grumbles, not appreciating being reprimanded when he’s already a wreck. But his wolf, justifyingly so, seems to hold a grudge against him because he doesn’t stop.
I lost my mate because of you. You ran away from her.
“Yes, I did. I know that,” he grunts. He already resents himself for it, why is he wolf making it harder for him as if they weren’t two halves of one soul?
Knowing isn’t enough. Remember the night you made her bleed.
The memory, as if summoned, crawls its way back into his mind. As if he was brought back to that fateful night, Heeseung can feel his gut twisting sharply inside.
Remember the night she trembled and cut the bond because you went too far.
“Stop,” Heeseung whisper-shouts.
It feels like the room is shrinking and the walls are closing in on him because the air can’t seem to reach his lungs. Heeseung cowers, covering his ears with both hands. The sting of hot tears starts to burn at the corners of his eyes.
Your face, pale and ghostly, haunts the edges of his thoughts. He still recalls how hard you shook from shock. He still recalls the tremble in your legs as you hold onto the door for dear life.
He really went too far.
And if proving his point, his wolf taunts more.
Remember the omegas you touched while she was dying when I kept telling you to stop.
The pen drops and clatters on the floor. Heeseung stands and sways, his vision blurry from unshed tears.
He remembers it.
The nights he spent trying to bury any attachment towards you and the bond. The nights he spent pleasing other omegas despite not enjoying it at all. The nights he spent ignoring the ache in his chest, the voice of his wolf—as if running away would ever be enough to excuse him from his fate.
While all the time, you had been suffering alone.
Nausea creeps up the back of his throat.
“No, please stop—”
His wolf snarls, pent-up anger and frustration finally spilling out.
She could be in someone else’s arms now. Someone gentler. Someone braver than you.
The nausea punches through his chest.
Heeseung scrambles for the door, yanking it open and stumbles out of his producer room to the bathroom. He barely makes it before his stomach churns violently and doubles over.
He throws up his long-forgotten lunch because he missed his dinner, the bile unforgiving to the spasms in his gut. Heeseung knees over the toilet until his stomach empties and grief starts to taste metallic on his tongue.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and slumps onto the floor. It’s a ringing silence in his ears before a sob escapes his lips.
Then another.
Before he knows it, it has turned into a full-on wailing. The tears are finally giving up, now streaming endlessly down his cheeks like tiny rivers.
Heeseung lets himself remember the faces of the omegas he touched. A betrayal of the bond he’ll never forgive himself for.
Heeseung lets himself remember the person you are—someone who deserves protection and affection. Someone who can be literally with anyone; any deserving alpha who knows how to treat you right.
Anyone in this world. Anyone from his campus. Anyone from his team. Anyone from his house.
Heeseung is fast to turn around and vomits again. The image of Jay being the perfect alpha for you makes his chest caves and breaks.
Fuck. Fuck, no. Please—no.
He always made fun of Riki when the younger complained about their too-good alpha friend. He never really understood why Riki is still on edge whenever Jay is around his girlfriend, despite knowing that him agreeing to help with his girlfriend’s heat was purely out of kindness.
But now he knows. Now he fucking knows.
Jay is just too good to be true. Jay never touches omegas carelessly. Jay lowers his voice when he speaks to them. Jay likes taking care of people like they’re his own.
Jay also cares about you. He knows that. The punch he almost threw at Heeseung that night was proof enough.
And in a peak of complete crumbling from his desperation to be forgiven, from his humility to admit to his mistakes—a fast-growing insecurity is piling up in his chest.
Heeseung can’t breathe.
He’s suffocating again.
A sudden thought flashes through his head. His frantic mind, desperate for some relief, entertains the thought without thinking further.
Just cut the bond too. End this suffering and cut the bond.
Heeseung raises his finger to his scent gland, still thudding violently from the rush of his emotions running in his veins.
Could he really cut the bond?
Don’t you dare.
“But it’s too painful…” he cries.
She’s my mate! If you end it now, I will tear you apart myself. You will fucking die, Heeseung.
Heeseung folds in on himself, crouching lower on the floor. His whole body shakes from the force of his tears.
“Why her?” he whispers helplessly.
“Why someone so precious? Why her?”
His wolf doesn’t answer. Heeseung is left sobbing to himself, already resigned to his fate and the silence from his alpha.
Because he knows, only the Goddess of the Moon has the answer to that.
Only she knows why he was sent something holy when he’s too ruined to hold it.
You never would have expected to get hurt from the one thing you wanted the most.
Love.
The tale of true mates.
Maybe that’s the reason why most people dislike it. Maybe all this time, it wasn’t because of envy or ridicule. Maybe all this time, people had already realised how destructive it could be before you did.
Something intangible that can only be felt has the power to destroy you through someone else’s actions and decisions? It’s no wonder, really.
You were just too blind and too delusional for even dreaming of it in the first place.
Life hasn’t been easy since the breaking of the bond.
You went on autopilot for the first week, just trying to save yourself from a bad attendance record and getting kicked out of the cheerleader squad. The latter proved to be harder to overcome since the source of your pain and the current centre of your universe—Heeseung—was always there on the court, glancing at you at every chance he got.
It’s almost laughable, the way he’s trying to catch your gaze now when he used to avoid it so much.
You dated people a couple of times before, but the breakups were never this bad. They hurt, of course, but this bond seemed to amplify every emotion you felt for Heeseung and yourself. Again, one of the reasons you believe why most people started hating it.
The whole time, you only had yourself. Sometimes Yujin would come into your room to cuddle you and let you cry into her shoulders. She’d stay as long as a med student could—watching movies together, painting your nails, crying with you.
All the time when you thought you craved love, you sometimes forgot that love doesn’t always mean romantic relationships. Sometimes it comes in the form of Yujin waking up before her alarm to make you your favourite pancakes.
Sometimes love comes in the form of Rei, despite the two of you having only gotten closer recently, checking up on you every meal time to make sure you eat well.
Sometimes love comes through a phone call with your parents, asking about your day and showing you the small garden they’re growing in the backyard.
And slowly, eventually, you realise that love also means choosing yourself over the bond.
Choosing yourself means stop clinging onto the bond. Choosing yourself means not waiting on Heeseung to get his acts right or for the right apology. Choosing yourself means you stop letting the bond and Heeseung dictate how you go about your life from now on.
Heeseung can try all he wants, and you might or might not see his efforts—but you won’t wait for him.
You’re done waiting.
Strangely, it doesn’t feel bitter. The thought of finally letting go of the bond sounds more freeing. Like the air is finally settling in your lungs after weeks of drowning.
You find your way back to the pieces of you since the bond broke. For the first time since you cut the thread, your world revolves around something other than pain.
Life comes back in fragments. In trying out pilates with Yujin and laughing when the instructor turns her back to you because Yujin just sucks at stretching.
In late-night convenience store runs with Rei to eat extra spicy noodles that’ll upset your stomach the next morning.
In falling back to your old study habits and excelling a difficult pop quiz.
In helping the squad choreograph for the upcoming routines—because alphas just run hot and can’t seem to stop challenging each other in sports.
You laugh freely now. You don’t have to spend the night worrying about a thread tugging at your ribs.
You don’t have to overthink about…Heeseung. Not anymore.
For a moment, he becomes a maybe. For a few days when you successfully avoid him, he becomes an ‘if only’. A background noise. A consequence.
A wound becoming scarred.
Nothing more.
Or so you tell yourself.
There’s been barely anything from Heeseung since he fell to his knees for you a few days ago. For a while, you think maybe you scared him too much—frightened him with the possibility that you may never come back, until he decided to let silence become his apology.
But apparently, you just don’t notice him trying.
Heeseung, you realise, moves in quiet devotion.
It starts with a can of your favourite grape juice sitting beside your tote bag every time you come back from the restroom. You assume it’s Rei being sweet as always—the omega has taken a great liking to you since the day you first spoke.
You don’t notice how consistent its appearance is with Heeseung’s promise.
You overlook the fact that it starts showing up the very next day after your painful conversation.
“But how did he know?” you whisper to yourself, staring down the can like it’s a threat now.
You turn it in your palm, feeling the coldness seep into your fingers. Then, faintly, you smell him.
His pheromones. Cinnamon and sea salt clings to the can like an afterthought. Like Heeseung didn’t mean to leave his traces but the scent lingers anyway.
It’s been quite a while since you smelled it. Ever since you cut the tie, you no longer can sense his pheromones from afar. It only happens when you’re in close proximity to him, which is very rare to happen now.
Now, as his scent drifts to your senses, you find yourself actually missing it. Missing the warmth and safety it used to offer. Missing the familiarity of it.
Your heart aches.
No matter how forward you’ve moved in your healing progress, there’ll always be a big why living in the back of your mind.
You really could’ve had it all.
But you don’t let it get to you. In all honesty, it is a sweet gesture and a nice start, yes, but it’s not enough. Even your baby cousin knows that you’re crazy about grape juice. Heeseung didn’t exactly make a groundbreaking discovery with this one.
The thought still counts, though.
It slips from your mind faster than you’d like to admit. Apart from the upcoming great friendly match between your basketball team and their sworn rival the eastern university, you have a business case study pitching competition set in two weeks.
Meetings become more frequent, time spent at the library becomes longer. You wish they would pick another place to do the discussion because the library is literally an air conditioner reincarnate—always too cold for your body.
The chill autumn air only worsens the cold. Winter is coming and you can’t help but keep adding more layers to your clothes each time you walk out of the apartment to visit the library.
Except today, there is someone already waiting by the library door. A face that you recognise with a single glance. Features that you memorise by heart, stopping you in your tracks before you reach the door.
Heeseung.
His body is adorned with a brown trench coat that reaches his calves, outlining his proportions and tall figure perfectly. He has one hand resting in one of the pockets, while another is holding a pink paper bag.
Burgundy hair curtains his forehead, a complement to his already-handsome features. But the look on his face is forlorn, distant eyes staring into space, looking lost in his own thoughts.
You try not to pay him any mind and start walking again.
As if he was wired to only sense your presence, Heeseung snaps out of his trance and whips his head to you. His eyes soften, lips parting slightly. You avert your eyes.
“Y/N.”
This time, you pretend you just notice him and give him a nod. “Heeseung,” you reply, already moving away to get inside. But Heeseung is fast to stop you.
“Wait! I–I have something for you.”
Heeseung holds out the paper bag to you, his own ears turning the same shade. You blink up at him before trying to peer inside, not yet accepting it.
“What is this?”
“Something to keep you warm,” he breathes out, like he can’t believe you’re actually talking to him. “It’s getting chiller. Please accept it.”
For a second, you just study his face. His round eyes look at you like he’s appreciating and memorising your face all at once. There is something about his expression that looks like he’s hopeful that you’d accept the paper bag, but at the same time, already expecting you to reject it.
After a few seconds of no signs of you accepting his gifts, Heeseung slowly lowers his extended arm. His face falls, but he quickly schools it into a neutral expression.
“It’s okay, Y/N. You don’t have to,” he licks his lips with a swipe of his tongue, already foreseeing the rejection.
“Why are you doing this?” you ask and instantly regret your tone. It’s unintentionally clipped, very unlike you.
But Heeseung isn’t fazed. If anything, he looks shyer now.
“I don’t want you to catch a cold,” he mumbles, averting his eyes. The pink in his ears has turned bright red—from the cold or from his own shyness, you’re not sure.
One thing you know is that you’re not used to this side of the dominant alpha.
The side that he showed you once before he dipped. That night when he held a heat pack in your hand, insisting on keeping you warm. For a split second, you wonder if it was instinct or if he really meant it, already knowing the answer to it.
It was probably the former.
A gush of chill air passes by and you shiver. Right, you’re still standing outside of the library with two layers of sweater and are still trembling.
Finally, you take the paper bag from him. Heeseung startles, not expecting the sudden gesture and definitely not expecting the graze of a touch of your finger brushing his. It makes him shudder, like your touch is bigger than the cold autumn air.
“Thank you,” you give him a tight-lipped smile, watching as his expression brightens up. Without waiting for his reply, you’re already heading to the door, ready to leave the alpha behind.
Before the door closes, you hear a whisper of his voice, carried by the bone-chilling air.
“Good luck with your competition, Y/N.”
You wonder how he knew about it, but the moment you sit at the table right in front of Jungwon—one of your teammates—you finally remember that they’re somehow friends.
The alpha gives you a dimpled smile. “Hey, Y/N. You’re early.”
“You too.” You pause, weighing the words in your head. “Jungwon, do you know Heeseung?”
Jungwon doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he eyes the pink paper bag now placed on the table, then nods to himself.
“Yes. Please don’t get mad at me, though. I’m kind of rooting for him.” He peeks into the paper bag and whistles. “Wow, hyung really doesn’t play.”
You snatch the paper bag and put it on the chair beside you. You’ve peeked inside, and is it a surprise to say that you were surprised?
A bunch of heat packs. A pair of blue mittens. A pack of tissue. A minty inhaler. And the one that contributes the most weight—a can of grape juice, already unchilled.
It’s that night all over again. The paracetamol that you downed because you did get a headache after a whole night of crying. The wet tissues that you used to wipe your tear-stained face. The heat pack that kept you warm the whole time you sat outside of the convenience store.
Everything Heeseung picked out has always been too…thoughtful.
While waiting for the rest of your group members to arrive, with Jungwon already typing on his laptop and talking about something you’re too distracted to hear—you’re swamped with your own conflicting emotions again.
Heeseung has always had the capability to care for people. To care for you. He was gentle with you that night. And fuck, you still hate what he did to you—but even the day he called you delusional, he was very soft with the way he talked to you.
The cruelest part is that Heeseung was never incapable of tenderness.
He had simply been too afraid to offer it where it mattered most.
He told you he wasn’t ready to step up to be the man that you deserved, but that sounds like a flimsy excuse now.
What was he so afraid of?
You really don’t want to make it easy for him, and you’re already ahead of the bond and the concept of love. You’ve already learned your lesson. You still remember the pain.
But, dear Goddess, sometimes you really wish that he was brave enough.
The rest of your group members arrive shortly after, each wearing thick layers like you do. As Jungwon begins the discussion that will continue on until late evening, you reach inside the paper bag and grab one of the heat packs.
Silently, you thank Heeseung in your head.
Just as you have expected, the discussion wraps up when night has already fallen. You stretch in your seat, taking your own sweet time as your group members tidy up.
Jungwon is the last one to leave, carrying his backpack on his wide shoulders. He looks at you finally standing up with a cheeky smile on his face.
“See you tomorrow for the consultation, Y/N. I would’ve offered to walk you home but I don’t wanna ruin the chance for a certain alpha.”
Your brows furrow, not really catching the meaning behind his teasing smile.
“What do you mean?”
“Just make sure to use the front door,” Jungwon is already walking away, giving you a dismissive wave of his hand. “Night!”
You stare at his retreating figure and then something clicks in your mind. Like an instinct, your heart starts racing fast.
Did he mean Heeseung?
Your hands quickly gather your stuff and toss them into your tote bag. The paper bag from Heeseung hangs tightly in your grip as you near the entrance of the library.
True to your speculation, Heeseung is already waiting outside. He has ditched his trench coat, now wearing his jersey that shows off his arms. The number ‘1’ and ‘HEESEUNG’ on the back of his jersey stares at you, unmistakingly him.
You quickly move past him as if you didn’t see him. Almost less than a second after, his footsteps are already echoing from behind you.
“Y/N, wait!”
Heeseung is barely panting in front of you, blocking your way home. You sport a blank expression despite the skips your heart is making.
“What are you doing here?”
“I,” Heeseung catches his breath, and you can’t help but notice the goosebumps in his skin. You almost frown.
What the hell was he thinking, wearing that sleeveless jersey in this weather? The trench coat must be inside his duffle bag, because you don’t see it hanging in his arms.
But the thought remains in your mind. And will probably stay there forever.
You almost miss it when he continues.
“I want to walk you home. No.” Heeseung gathers his voice, now sounding softer, asking for permission.
“Can I walk you home?”
Your answer is quick. “No.”
You can almost feel the pause in his breath. Heeseung blinks once, regaining his composure after a few seconds.
“...Okay,” he nods, eyes slightly distant like he’s not even sure if he means it. “Okay. But can you let me call you an Uber?”
You shake your head, standing your ground.
“My dorm is not far from here.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“I want to walk.”
Silence passes by, along with the air that’s borderline freezing. You don’t know if alphas just naturally run hot, because you’re close to turning into ice despite the layers, but Heeseung doesn’t even flinch.
He finally takes a step back, slightly dipping his head as he nods.
“Okay,” he says again, more like convincing himself. But then he meets your eyes, and the wistful glint of his gaze doesn't go unnoticed by you. Something tugs at your heart.
“At least let Jungwon know when you’re home. Please?” he pleads. “You don’t have to text me. I’ll just—hear from him.”
You purse your lips, giving the alpha a once-over before finally giving in.
“Fine. I will.”
The corner of his lips quirks up but Heeseung covers it quickly. He steps aside, clearing the path for you to go home. You don’t waste time and begin walking, feeling his eyes boring into your skull.
“Please be safe, Y/N.”
You never reply.
The next day, the alpha is not waiting by the door. Jungwon stands in his place instead, the paper bag now has been upgraded to a reusable lunch bag with flower motifs on it.
“Your alpha has a producer meeting today.”
You’re quick to deny.” He’s not my alpha.”
Jungwon ignores you like you’re a wall and opens the lunch bag for you to see.
“Two thermos there. One is chicken porridge, another is hot tea. Not sure if you’re a coffee-person or not, so Heeseung hyung wanted to be safe.” Jungwon speaks like he’s rehearsed it, and to be honest, he kind of did (Heeseung forced him, but you don’t have to know that).
You’re stunned. “What?”
“Don’t worry, it’s grape tea. I don’t know where he got it from, though,” Jungwon shrugs then continues his duty as Heeseung’s greatest accomplice. “More heat packs. I didn’t see you use the mittens yesterday so I told him maybe you didn’t like blue…? So he prepared the red pair for you.”
“Wait, Jungwon—”
“And lastly, a lunch bag with daisies prints, for his most precious daisy in this world.” Jungwon beams wide, dimples curving deep and shoves the lunch bag into your bag.
“How’s his performance?”
“You’re insufferable,” you scoff and snatch the lunch bag from his grasp. You quickly go inside, ignoring the warmth in your cheeks betraying your indifference.
Your mind, another traitor, is filled with the thoughts of Heeseung.
Is this him trying?
You’re not sure how to feel about it, but your heart surely knows her shits—fluttering like you’re a virgin being courted.
Which, technically, in every way possible—you are.
You try to ignore it. During break, you remember to control your expression as you eat the porridge, aware of Jungwon’s hawking eyes gauging at your reaction.
Heeseung is sure smart to pick him as his wingman. That alpha is a persistent menace.
But no. You’re not going to fold easily.
Your omega is still silent, and the damage has been too severe. For all you know, Heeseung might be just performing remorse. Only time can tell if he was really sincere and serious or not.
After all, consistency is a great telltale of devotion.
However, as if the world was suddenly eager to prove you wrong, Heeseung keeps showing up.
He comes again at night, this time fully covered up and looking dashing in his white button up and loosened tie. You guess he just came back from the meeting, judging from the formality of the attire. But you can’t help but let your eyes linger longer on his face, suddenly too conscious of his height.
Okay, what the fuck. He’s always been handsome. There’s nothing surprising about it.
“Can I walk you home?”
You’re snapped out of your thoughts when his voice, low and soft, reaches your ears. You shake your head.
“No.”
“I’ll keep my distance,” he says quickly. “You won’t even notice I’m there. Please?”
You keep your walls steady. “Why are you doing this?”
The question hangs in the air. Heeseung’s gaze softens, but there’s a cloud of doubt swirling behind his eyes now. For the first time, you see the alpha shivers in the cold.
“You gave me a chance,” he says, voice clear and crisp. Like it’s a conviction. Like it’s something he’s deliberately chosen.
“I want to try until you can forgive me. And I know it’ll never be enough. I know I’ll be too selfish to hope…”
Heeseung swipes a tongue across his lips. He gives you a nervous glance, but seeing how attentive you look despite your indifference, Heeseung almost breaks down.
You’re still kind even in your resentment.
“But I still hope that one day you can accept me as your alpha.”
You hum, trying to sound unimpressed despite the loud thumping of your heart. The bitterness still leaks when you speak.
“You were my alpha.”
Heeseung shakes his head and gives you a humourless smile.
“No, I wasn’t,” his voice is strained, like he’s holding a storm of emotions with his palm.
“The Goddess might’ve assigned me to be your alpha. But I failed my duties. You were just forced to deal with what fate had chosen for you.”
The moonlight shining on him highlights the tired lines at the edges of his eyes. For the past few weeks, you have no idea how Heeseung was doing. And you know no one can hold it over your head for not caring.
But something in him feels altered. Not gentler—Heeseung had always been gentle in ways he never admitted.
He seems more humbled. Like the weight of pride is finally bowing his head down, his gaze always sanded down by grief. Every word now sounds chosen, as if he has learned the cost of speaking carelessly.
Heeseung holds your eyes, sincerity spilling over the edges.
“But now I want you to choose me. Not out of obligation, or because fate said so. I want to be chosen because you know I’m the right alpha for you.”
Isn’t it unfair?
You want the resentment to turn into fiery hatred, but your traitorous heart still melts at his devotion. How can you hate him when he makes you sound like you were the centre of his universe?
Still, you hold your ground.
“You know I won’t wait for you. What if I choose another deserving alpha?”
Heeseung’s face goes white. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows, but he still nods.
“I will break,” he admits, the most honest he’s ever been. “But I’ll still pray that he shows you the love I failed to give when I had the chance.”
The sheer weight of his speech almost renders you breathless. Remorse, as if it’s been a lifelong companion, drips heavy in his voice. For a short moment, you can’t hold his gaze—it looks so intense and longing, you don’t know if you can hold this newfound devotion. It’s too deep and full of regret.
It’s after a minute of silence that you finally find your voice.
“You can walk me home from behind.”
You turn around first before he can see the change in your face. Your stupid human heart, as if awakening from the slumber from weeks ago when things were still all butterflies and stolen glances—seems to recognise the alpha now trailing after you ten paces away and fluttering around shamelessly..
The moon shines exceptionally bright tonight, as if the Goddess herself is watching her war-torn lovers patching up the bridge once broken by pride and fear.
“Are you still angry?”
Once you’re home and stripped and showered, you stare at the dark ceiling of your bedroom. The moonlight cracks through the small space you leave open, decorating your bed with stripes of pale blue.
You put a palm over your heart, trying to feel your wolf.
“Are you still mad at him?”
Silence. There’s no response from your omega. You wait for a few breaths before sighing.
“You’ve always been the hard headed one out of the two of us,” you comment, suddenly missing the other half of your soul that’s been so long quiet.
“But it’s good that you are,” you slowly whisper.
“Because if you’re as soft as I am, then Heeseung would be forgiven already.”
This time, there’s no resistance as the memory of the burgundy-haired alpha comes back—not that he ever left, anyway.
“I’m still mad at him, too.”
You remember the time Heeseung actively avoided your gaze. You used to wonder why, but knowing the answer also didn’t help ease the pain. Knowing that he avoided you because of the bond never makes the pain feel less hurtful.
But the way he searches your eyes now, holding your gaze with a tenderness you’ve never seen before…it softens the pain.
Where he used to run from you, he’s now seeking you every chance he gets. After practice, after meetings, after classes. In sleeveless jersey, in suit and tie, in his usual baggy graphic T-shirts.
Heeseung used to be nowhere to be found, but he’s everywhere now.
The reality of his efforts to try patching up the bond suddenly feels too scary. Because if he’s changed for good, if he’s really putting his all to win back your heart—are you confident that you still can move past everything?
The sufferings you endured. The omegas he slept with. The sleepless spent chanting his name in pain. The night when everything fell apart.
Can you really let them go?
“I don’t know,” you whisper to no one, a knot of uneasiness tightening in your chest.
“I don’t think I’m ready yet.”
Heeseung seems to find you easily nowadays.
At first, you doubt the people around you. Everyone is suddenly related to him in some ways somehow. There must be an insider that tells him your whereabouts.
Whether it’s Jungwon or Yujin, you don’t know. You hope it’s not Yujin, though. You know she despises what Heeseung did to you, but the beta is also quietly rooting for him. She hid it well, too.
But her cover was blown one night when you were having a movie night in your bed. She was so close and she was typing something on her phone. You accidentally looked, but honest to Goddess your heart almost dropped when you saw Heeseung’s name.
“Why are you texting with Heeseung?” You forced your face into the screen, deliberately ignoring the sudden seeds of jealousy in your chest.
Yujin scrambled to sit up, but it was too late. You had already seen them all.
Lee Heeseung
did she arrive home safely?
You
Yeap!
Safely tucked in bed!
“Yujin, you traitor!”
“Ow! Ow!” Yujin ducked the pillow you threw at her, but she wasn’t fast enough to avoid your punches. “Girl, hear me out first!”
“Why are you helping him?” you heaved out, glaring daggers at her. Yujin rubbed her arms, jutting out an apologetic pout.
“I’m so sorry…he just wants to know if you get home safe, Y/N. I don’t see anything wrong or invasive about that.”
Your heart stuttered. Did he really do that? But you feigned an angry look.
“So you just agreed to be his accomplice? You’re no different from Jungwon.”
“I mean, I lowkey ship you guys. But he has to grovel first, and I hope he’s been doing it right.”
You rolled your eyes and settled back under the covers. “How long has it been?”
“Don’t get mad at me please.”
“Yujin.”
“He’s been asking me if you reach home safely for more than two weeks now.”
Your breath hitched.
That’s…since before he started appearing at the library.
And today, as you see Heeseung lingering around the business compound, donning a thin brown cardigan that highlights his body snugly, you’re contemplating whether to assault Jungwon or Yujin through the phone after this.
But there’s no time to think, as Heeseung—curse his dominant trait, really—easily senses your scent and catches your eyes. He gives you a small smile and walks up to you. The grip you have on the strap of your tote bag has turned knuckle-white.
“Y/N.”
“Hey.”
“Have you eaten yet?”
You swallow, trying not to fold. “Yeah, just now. You?”
Heeseung nods.”I have too.” Then he extends a hand towards your tote bag.
“Let me hold your bag and walk you home.”
You hesitate for a moment before giving in.
Fuck, you curse the universe.
Why is he so consistent?
Heeseung knows he’s not being slick when he suddenly makes a detour to the convenience store under the pretense of feeling hungry.
But you follow him anyway, gullible enough to believe that he has more space for more food. Which, actually, you’re not completely wrong. Heeseung loves food. But he’s not exactly here to eat.
He’s here to steal more time to be with you.
The fluorescent lamp hums overhead, the convenience store smells like cooked noodles and microwaved pastries. Under this light, you look shorter than him, reaching not taller than his chin.
Heeseung holds back the urge to reach out and caress your head. He can’t ruin things now that you finally let him walk you home side by side. That’s progress. A couple of weeks ago, you didn't even let him follow.
He really can’t afford to ruin it.
Heeseung trails after you to aisle number two where rows of snacks and chips line up the shelves. There’s something almost domestic about watching you hum as you skim through the options.
It feels more intimate than kneeling at your feet ever did.
“What do you usually get?” he asks, trying to sound casual.
You hold up a bag of snacks, a small grin unknowingly splits across your face.
“This one,” you shake the plastic with eyes shining bright. Heeseung thinks he’s lost his breath. “These seaweed tempeh chips.”
Heeseung stares at you like you just handed him a sacred relic, eyes dripping with silent, genuine surprise.
“These are your favourite?”
You blink and tilt your head, not sure how to make sense of his stunned reaction. “Yeah…?”
A small smile breaks on his mouth. Heeseung looks down at the bag of chips, feeling his chest tightens just from that simple information.
She likes grape juice. She likes tempeh chips.
God, I’m learning about her.
His silent meltdown goes unnoticed by you. You walk further and stop by the drinks fridge, already reaching for your favourite grape juice.
This time, Heeseung couldn’t stop the chuckle that leaves his lips. “You really love drinking that, don’t you?”
“I sure do,” you glance up at him. “Since kindergarten, by the way. It’s just so good and cheap. What about you?”
Heeseung’s heart nearly stops.
“I’m sorry?”
“What’s your favourite drink, Heeseung?”
Heeseung forces himself to reply when you’re already looking at him suspiciously.
“Zero Coke.”
“Ah,” you nod, then reach up to where a line of Zero Coke is put on display. You pluck the second can in the line and hand it to him.
“Hygiene tips: always take the second or the third can,” you casually say and tap on the can. “Because everybody touches the first one.”
Then you turn around, drifting toward the candy aisle, blissfully unaware of his turmoil.
Leaving Heeseung stunned, standing like a statue of racing heart and quiet breakdown as he holds the can close to his chest.
Later that night, after sending you home safely, Heeseung enters his shared apartment wordlessly. He can hear the F1 sportscaster from the living room—Jay must haven’t gone to bed yet.
“Hey, Hee,” his friend greets, sprawled on the couch with a can of beer in one hand. But his focus on the television stops once he notices Heeseung’s red-rimmed eyes.
“Fuck. Heeseung!” Jay rushes to him and holds him just before his knees finally give up.
The anchor of sorrow and grief that has been weighing heavier since the convenience store run is finally pulling him down. Heeseung drops to the floor, already feeling the tears wetting his cheeks.
“Hee, what’s wrong?” Jay asks, trying to keep the worry in his voice. “Did something happen? Tell me!”
Heeseung shakes his head, curling up into Jay’s hold and sobs even harder.
“Jay-ah,” Heeseung chokes, unable to hold back his sobs.
“Her favourite chips are seaweed tempeh.”
Jay is rendered speechless by the unexpected revelation.
“...What?”
“Seaweed tempeh,” he sobs, voice cracking. “Seaweed tempeh chips, grape juice, gummy bears. She bakes when she’s stressed. She hates mornings but wakes up early. She has hygiene tips for canned drinks.”
His voice splinters, like a branch breaking down from the tree.
Jay blinks. “You’re sobbing over…basic information?”
“That I should’ve known.”
Heeseung clutches Jay’s shirt, the sadness now palpable.
“Simple things about her that I never made any effort to know because I was so fucking busy being an asshole.”
In that moment, it finally clicks in Jay’s mind. It was never about snacks.
“I was her mate and I didn’t know.”
It’s about regret.
Jay’s expression softens instantly, understanding settling in his features. He sits on the floor with him, letting Heeseung cry into his shoulders, shaking like a dead leaf. The distressed accent of his spicy and salty pheromones is drenching the air, but Jay fights the urge to scowl. Alphas don’t exactly respond well to another alpha’s distressed pheromones.
Beside him, Heeseung is still sobbing like a child experiencing a trip of his foot for the first time.
“Somebody else could’ve been in my place,” he cries softly. “She could’ve been asking another alpha, ‘What’s your favourite drink?’ and I almost made it not me.”
Heeseung cries for what it’s worth. For the regret and grief of the what-ifs that could’ve happened if only he didn’t mess up. For the gratitude that you’re finally letting him the access to the information only privy to those who are close enough with you.
For the unexpected relief when you asked him back.
“So you’re crying because she let you know her,” Jay concludes once Heeseung has calmed down enough to talk properly.
They’re still sitting on the floor. The F1 show that Jay was watching prior to his sudden breakdown is now playing like background noise.
Heeseung nods weakly. “Yeah.”
“What did it feel like?”
Heeseung gives him a wistful smile.
“Disbelief. Because I can’t believe it feels so easy to just…have this affection for someone over knowing what their favourite drinks are.”
Heeseung looks into the distance, lost in thoughts and memory.
“I never feel this way for anybody. It’s scary, because now I want to know more.”
He stares into the space in front of him, absentmindedly playing with the hem of his cardigan.
“I want to know how she likes her eggs. I want to know which detergent she likes to use. What side of the bed she sleeps on,” Heeseung whispers, voice trembling. “I want to know everything about her and it’s so scary, Jay.”
There’s a pause before he looks down, sounding more broken than he has been tonight.
“It’s so scary because I realised it wasn’t the bond that terrified me.”
Heeseung remembers how happy he felt when you still rub your nose every time you get shy. How excited he felt when you cover your mouth as you laugh—little things he used to know about you that still makes you you.
“It wasn’t.”
Knowing someone has never felt this easy and freeing.
“It was how badly I could love her.”
The confession doesn’t land hard. It settles slowly, like a missing puzzle finally finding its place. His wolf stirs inside, yipping happily at the declaration.
Jay takes a moment to process everything before he sighs. He reaches out a hand and pats Heeseung on his shoulder.
“There, there. You’re making progress, Hee. You’re starting to see her more than the bond you guys shared.”
As if summoned, his scent gland pulses sharply. Heeseung yelps, clutching his nape with a quick hand. His scent spikes dangerously, spicy cinnamon burning the atmosphere.
“Hee!”
“It hurts,” Heeseung chokes, the pain quickly spreading to other parts of his body. “Fuck, Jay—”
Drip.
Both alphas instantly freeze.
On the carpet where they sit, is a drop of blood, staining the cream-coloured material with crimson red.
Jay slowly looks up, heart beating fast, chanting ‘No, no, no. Please, not you, Heeseung. Please,’ in his mind.
To his horror, the blood came from Heeseung’s nose.
Jay can feel his gut sinking to the floor.
“Hee,” he grabs his shoulders, eyes trained on the trail of blood dripping down his philtrum and his chin. “Hee, listen to me and answer me, okay? Please don’t panic.”
Inside, Jay is already panicking.
Heeseung tries not to, but his body feels scalding hot. The pain comes in waves, not once stopping even if he were to rip his heart open.
“Heeseung, answer me. Did you tell Y/N about the two options or not?”
Jay’s voice is muffled to his ears, but through his hazy mind and blurry vision, Heeseung can still make out the words.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Why?” Jay whispers, breathless and shaken.
“I didn’t want to pressure her into thinking she has to choose me to save me.”
Heeseung’s unfocused eyes find him, desperate and so pitiful that his heart clenches painfully. Jay drops his head on his best friend’s shoulders, fear consuming his being.
“You idiot,” Jay sobs, the dam breaking almost instantly. “She might’ve chosen you anyway.”
Heeseung feels lightheaded. Jay’s voice is like a distant dream—something he’s not sure if he hears or not. Dark spots start appearing on the edges of his vision, almost turning black no matter how hard he blinks.
“Jay-ah…”
The last thing Heeseung remembers before he loses consciousness is Jay screaming his name, voice cracking and hoarse.
okay dang tumblr said this post has reached its limits wtf im gna kms!!! anyway posting a part 3 real soon!!!
your voice came out tired and sleepy as you walked into the bedroom with your one-year-old daughter still awake in your arms despite it being way past bedtime.
heeseung looked up immediately, his gaze softening as he saw the two of you.
your daughter was still wide awake. you, however, looked seconds away from collapsing.
he smiled a little.
"c'mere.."
you walked over slowly, letting out a dramatic sigh the second you reached the bed.
"haeun won't sleep.." you said tiredly, carefully handing her over to heeseung. "i tried everything."
heeseung took her gently into his arms, one hand automatically rubbing her back in slow circles.
"everything?"
"everything.." you repeated. "i sang to her, rocked her, carried her around for forty minutes.. she even started laughing at me."
your daughter giggled immediately like she was proud of herself.
heeseung laughed quietly under his breath.
"wow."
"don't encourage her, heeseung." you scoffed, already climbing into bed beside him. "we're not friends right now."
your daughter gasped softly at that, immediately leaning toward you with her tiny grabby hands.
you stared at her for a second.
"no, haeun. you made your choice."
heeseung started laughing again while your daughter turned toward him, instantly cuddling into his chest.
"traitor.." you whispered.
"she switched sides quick."
you pulled the blanket over yourself with another exhausted sigh.
"good. she's your problem now, not mine."
your daughter grabbed onto the strings of his hoodie happily, kicking her feet while heeseung looked down at her with the softest expression.
"baby.." he whispered. "it's bedtime, haeun."
she smiled at him. then shook her head.
hard. like she meant it.
heeseung blinked.
you pointed tiredly from the bed.
"you see that?"
his lips curved into a smile again, pulling her a little closer against him.
"yeah.. i do."
your daughter reached up, her tiny hands resting against heeseung's cheeks, letting her do whatever she wanted.
he always did that.
"you're supposed to be sleeping, princess.." he said softly.
she just stared at him sleepily. still awake. but calmer now.
you watched through tired eyes as heeseung continued rubbing slow circles against her back, starting to gently sway her side to side without even thinking about it.
like it was instinct.
"you're too good at this.." you mumbled.
he glanced over.
"she only likes me because i let her do whatever she wants."
your daughter giggled quietly again.
"see?"
for a little while longer she kept trying to stay awake.
small babbles. small fingers tangled in his hoodie. a tiny smile each time he quietly whispered something to her.
until eventually.. her movements slowed. her head dropped against his shoulder.
finally asleep. finally peace.
heeseung somehow softened even more, looking down at her like she might disappear if he blinked too fast.
"there we go, haeun-ie.."
haeun let out one more sleepy sigh, her fingers still curled loosely into hee's hoodie.
heeseung adjusted her carefully before pressing a soft kiss to her hair.
then he looked over at you.
except you were already asleep too.
half-hidden under the blankets, completely exhausted, your lips slightly parted.
he stared at the both of you for a second before laughing to himself.
"wow.."
his voice came out softer this time.
"my girls really abandoned me tonight, huh?"
but he still smiled anyway. like there was nowhere else he'd rather be.
synopsis: in which you post about the most insufferable guy in your class on an AITA thread, only to find someone in the comments defending him a little too passionately.
genre: enemies to lovers??
pairing: insufferable!sunghoon x menace!reader
warnings: sexual tension, so many gawddamn arguments, some eye fucking from sunghoon’s behalf, lowkey bratty!reader, dom!hoon, semi-public sex, washroom sex, spitting, choking, oral (m rec.), fingering, biting, mirror sex, so much degrading, begging, spanking, slapping, teasing, unprotected p in v (don’t do it…), creampie, light cum play…i think that’s it…
wc: 13k
a/n: i love me some enemies to lovers i feel ashamed 😔😋 anyways after almost 3 months ya gurl is back w anotha banger 😛😛 warning, this isn’t edited properly i did like a quick read over or 2 and ran out of patience. ill sit down months later to revise it (no i wont). as always, notes, reblogs and comments are always appreciated. enjoy :p
˙𐃷˙
the literature lecture hall buzzed quietly with the usual sounds of a monday morning class—keyboard typing, coffee lids snapping shut, chairs dragging lazily across the floor.
rain streaked against the tall windows beside you, grey light spilling across rows of half-awake university students while professor choi clicked through his lecture slides at the front.
this class was your last pick and you were barely listening until the next discussion question appeared on the board.
what does meursault's emotional detachment represent?
professor choi adjusted his thick framed circle glasses.
"thoughts?"
and then, unfortunately, park sunghoon raised his hand.
you already knew this was about to piss you off. your face twisting into one of pure disgust before the man even opened his mouth.
sunghoon sat three rows ahead of you, posture relaxed, one arm slung over the back of his chair like he owned the lecture hall. he didn't even look interested in the discussion, which somehow made it more annoying whenever he spoke and everyone listened anyway.
professor choi nodded toward him."go ahead."
sunghoon spoke evenly, like a corrupt politician who was going to promise world peace. like he was delivering some groundbreaking intellectual revelation instead of absolute nonsense.
"i think the novel critiques performative emotion more than emotional detachment itself."
you narrowed your eyes immediately. all you could hear was blah blah blah meh meh meh.
sunghoon continued, his tongue jutting out to wet his lips so the bullshit he was going to spew would come out smoother.
"society condemns meursault not because he committed murder, but because he doesn't react the way people expect him to emotionally. he refuses to fake grief, guilt, remorse—"
"because he doesn't have any," you interrupted flatly.
a few heads turned instantly, students giving each other knowing looks. sunghoon glanced over his shoulder at you.
not irritated. oh no no, worse. he was amused.
"that's an oversimplification." he clicked, leaning his head back to the front to give professor choi a lazy look that basically said 'you see what's happening here?'
"no," you said. "you're just romanticizing emotional incompetence because the author used fancy wording."
a quiet snort came from somewhere behind you causing sunghoon to turn fully in his seat now. "you think the entire point of the novel is that he's a bad person?"
"i think the point is that detachment isn't inherently profound just because a man is quiet."
that got a reaction, small and subtle. a couple students trying not to laugh, their binders going up to hide their facial expressions as professor choi gave them a warning look.
sunghoon's eyes narrowed slightly for the first time.
finally.
"you're reducing existentialism to a personality flaw."
"and you're treating basic human empathy like it's optional."
professor choi opened his mouth and closed it again. probably deciding it was safer not to interfere yet.
sunghoon rested his arm against the desk beside him.
"the novel literally argues that societal expectations of emotion are artificial."
"okay, but there's a difference between rejecting social performance and acting like a disconnected freak."
sunghoon gave you a look at the last word, "interesting choice of wording."
"oh please," you scoffed. "you're acting like meursault is some misunderstood visionary when really he's just emotionally constipated."
someone coughed to hide a laugh and sunghoon's jaw ticked slightly.
barely noticeable, but you noticed. because you notice everything about park sunghoon, the good and the bad. unfortunately, more of the good which was all physical. nothing mental of course, the man had an IQ of a turnip.
arguing with park sunghoon had become a skill you'd accidentally perfected over the past two years. he always looked composed, always calm. but there were little tells and small cracks. tiny expressions that appeared when you pushed hard enough.
and right now? he was getting annoyed.
good.
"you're too emotionally reactive to engage with the text objectively," he said, his dark eyes boring into your own as if he was trying to get under your skin.
which, to be fair, he was. you knew that, and he definitely knew that.
you let out a short laugh. "and you think sounding detached makes you intelligent."
his gaze held yours for a second too long. steady and sharp. "maybe i just know how to separate emotion from analysis."
"maybe you just enjoy hearing yourself talk."
sunghoon tilted his head slightly, "you've interrupted me four times."
"because every sentence somehow gets worse."
a few quiet laughs spread through the room again. you saw professor choi pinch the bridge of his nose from the corner of your eye.
sunghoon looked entirely unbothered by the class watching. if anything, he looked more focused now.
like he enjoyed this, he enjoyed the attention he was receiving. the perfect spotlight to argue with a classmate. which made you irrationally angrier. "you're intentionally ignoring nuance."
"and you're intentionally making this deeper than it actually is."
"literature is supposed to be analyzed deeply."
"not every quiet man with a god complex is philosophically revolutionary, sunghoon."
that one landed, hard. his brows lifted slightly and the room went quieter. you could practically feel everyone pretending not to listen now.
sunghoon leaned back slowly in his chair. still staring at you, not daring to break eye contact.
"you know," he said lightly, "for someone who claims i'm insufferable, you spend an impressive amount of time thinking about my opinions."
your stomach flipped in annoyance. strictly annoyance.
"trust me," you replied sweetly, "criticizing you is not a difficult intellectual exercise."
the corner of his mouth twitched, almost a smile. which only irritated you more because why did he look entertained right now?
"you get weirdly passionate whenever i disagree with you."
"because you say insane things with unnecessary confidence."
"and yet you always argue back."
you opened your mouth immediately. "because someone has to humble you."
sunghoon's eyes flicked briefly down toward your mouth before returning to your eyes so quickly you almost thought you imagined it.
almost.
then he said quietly, "you've been trying for two years."
your heartbeat stumbled once, completely involuntary by the way. and judging by the sudden silence in the lecture hall, several other people noticed the shift too.
professor choi finally sighed loudly enough to cut through the tension.
"well," he muttered dryly, "this has certainly been more engaging than most of your discussion contributions."
a few students laughed softly.
you tore your gaze away from sunghoon first, reaching for your pen like your pulse hadn't just betrayed you for absolutely no reason.
meanwhile, across the room, sunghoon leaned back in his chair again.
looking entirely too pleased with himself.
˙𐃷˙
by the time professor choi dismissed the class, the atmosphere in the lecture hall felt weirdly charged.
like everyone had just witnessed something they definitely shouldn't have.
chairs scraped against the floor as students packed up their bags, conversations immediately erupting around the room.
you shoved your laptop into your tote aggressively, muttering curses about the boy who shall not be named.
mostly because you could still feel park sunghoon's smug expression somewhere in your peripheral vision.
you hated him and his stupid fucking beautiful face.
the worst part was that he never even looked genuinely angry during your arguments. no matter how heated things got, sunghoon always stayed calm—relaxed posture, steady voice, slightly amused expression like he was watching you self-destruct for entertainment.
it was infuriating.
sunoo appeared beside your desk, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "you know," he said casually, "that was kind of the highlight of my week."
you glared at your so called best friend, "you're sick."
"no seriously," sunoo grinned. "when you called him emotionally constipated i almost started clapping."
you huffed, standing up. "he deserved worse." together, you and sunoo started toward the lecture hall doors with the crowd of students funneling out into the hallway.
except—someone was standing near the exit.
waiting, wearing a black hoodie. arms crossed loosely.
park sunghoon.
of course he was, because the argument that had erupted during class just wasn't enough for this troll doll. your steps slowed instinctively and sunoo noticed immediately, his smile widened, ear to ear.
fucking traitor.
sunghoon's eyes found yours through the crowd almost instantly. calm as ever and annoyingly unreadable.
then, as you got closer, he pushed himself off the wall.
you already knew he was about to say something irritating, you could feel it.
sunghoon stepped aside just enough to let other students pass before leaning slightly closer toward you.
close enough that you caught the clean scent of his cologne beneath the lingering smell of coffee and rain.
"for someone who hates my opinions," he murmured quietly, "you seem obsessed with hearing them."
you stopped walking and slowly turned your head toward him. you hated how you had to crank your head up to make eye contact with him, the height difference between you two surrendering your loss.
"and for someone who claims to be emotionally detached," you replied sweetly, "you sure spend a lot of time trying to get my attention."
sunghoon's mouth twitched, that stupid almost-smile again. he looked down at you at with this look that you couldn't quite identify.
"see you monday." you hope one of you don't make it to monday, preferably him.
you stared at him for one long second, really stared. at his stupid face. his stupid sharp jawline. his stupid pretty mouth that constantly said the most unbearable things imaginable.
then you walked away before you committed a felony.
sunoo was already laughing beside you. "OH my god," he breathed. "you two are unbelievable."
"he's unbelievable," you snapped immediately, a faint flush covering your face and neck.
sunoo hummed, clearly unconvinced. he was your best friend since elementary school, he knew exactly what this was.
the hallway buzzed with students moving between lectures while rain hammered softly against the windows lining the corridor. you shoved through the doors toward the outside courtyard, irritation simmering hotter with every passing second.
"i genuinely cannot wait until i graduate," you muttered. "the second i get my degree i'm never seeing that freak again."
sunoo snorted, looking at your pink tinted cheeks with a grin. "you still have two years left."
your eye twitched at the realization.
right.
two more years.
two more years of literature classes and discussion boards and seeing park sunghoon sitting three rows ahead of you looking annoyingly composed all the time.
you groaned dramatically. "i can't do this anymore."
sunoo bumped your shoulder lightly. "you've survived two years already."
"barely."
the more you thought about him, the angrier you got.
because sunghoon was the exact type of person that's easy to hate.
too calm. too smug. too aware of how intelligent he was.
and worst of all—too attractive for absolutely no reason.
everything about him irritated you.
his stupid perfect smile whenever he thought he'd won an argument. his stupidly long fingers tapping against his desk during lectures. the way his hoodies stretched across his broad shoulders.
the fact that he somehow looked composed even when everyone else looked exhausted during midterms.
it was deeply, deeply annoying.
you physically smacked yourself in the forehead.
sunoo blinked at your sudden outburst. "what was that for?"
"nothing."
sunoo narrowed his eyes. then slowly—dangerously—he smiled. "oh my god."
you frowned immediately, not liking the way he was smiling down at you. "what."
"i think you might be the issue."
you stopped walking so abruptly someone nearly walked into your shoulder. "excuse me?"
sunoo shrugged innocently. "i'm just saying."
"how the hell am i the issue?"
"you do start a lot of the arguments."
you stared at him in betrayal. "because he says ridiculous things."
"sometimes."
"all the time."
sunoo hummed thoughtfully, not agreeing, which was offensive. why is your best friend not blindly supporting you even when you're probably wrong, which you aren't, but even if you were—the fuck?
you scoffed loudly. "sunghoon is literally the one who started this whole thing."
and he had, freshman year. first semester.
he'd corrected one of your points during a class discussion with that calm, mildly condescending tone of his and something inside you had immediately gone: absolutely not.
listen you can take criticism, just not from that man specifically.
ever since then, every interaction between you had turned into some kind of competition. you couldn't help it. sunghoon always acted so composed, so polished, so annoyingly perfect that it made you want to knock him down a level, or several.
sunoo shoved his hands into his pockets. "okay but maybe if you stopped interacting with him—"
"impossible."
"you didn't even let me finish."
"because you're wrong."
sunoo laughed softly, knowing damn well that nothing he was going to say would penetrate through your thick skull. "you could just ignore him."
you looked at him like he'd suggested murder.
ignore park sunghoon? absolutely not.
that sounded suspiciously like losing. sunoo noticed your expression immediately and burst out laughing. "see? that's exactly what i mean."
you crossed your arms. "i am not the problem here."
sunoo just gave you a look. one of those deeply irritating best friend looks that implied he knew you better than you knew yourself.
which, unfortunately, he probably did.
you pulled your phone out of your pocket causing sunoo to raise a brow.
"what are you doing?"
"i'm getting unbiased opinions."
"from who?"
you opened reddit with complete confidence and sunoo immediately groaned.
"oh no."
˙𐃷˙
your dorm room was suspiciously quiet except for the aggressive tapping of your keyboard.
sunoo sat cross-legged at the end of your bed eating gummy bears straight from the bag while watching you with the exact same expression people have witnessing a public breakup.
concern mixed with entertainment.
you ignored him. because right now you were busy crafting the most objectively accurate reddit post ever written.
the glow from your laptop lit your face as you reread the title for the fifth time.
AITA for telling a guy in my class to shut up because he thinks he's always right?
perfect. concise. truthful.
you cracked your knuckles dramatically before continuing to type. sunoo snorted from the other side, picking out all the red gummies before stuffing them into his mouth.
-
there's this guy in one of my university classes and he is genuinely one of the most irritating people i've ever met.
he's quiet but in a pretentious way? like he thinks being emotionally constipated makes him intelligent. he corrects EVERYONE during discussions and somehow always sounds smug even when he's technically being polite.
the worst part is that he's annoyingly good at everything. presentations? perfect. essays? perfect. participation? professor's favourite somehow.
one time i got a question wrong during class and this man literally smirked at me. SMIRKED. like a disney villain.
today we got into an argument during lecture because he was saying some pseudo intellectual nonsense and i told him to shut up because nobody cares about his superiority complex anymore.
now some people are saying i overreacted but i genuinely think he needed to be humbled.
AITA?
-
you hit post.
then immediately grabbed your phone while bouncing slightly in your seat.
sunoo stared at you with mild distaste. "you look like you just launched a cyber attack."
"i'm right and soon the public will confirm it."
sunoo snorted. "you're insane."
the first comment appeared almost instantly.
you gasped dramatically. "OH MY GOD." sunoo leaned over slightly as you opened it, rolling his eyes as soon as he read the first word.
-
NTA
this guy sounds like if a philosophy podcast became a person.
-
you slapped sunoo's arm excitedly."SEE?"
another comment appeared.
-
girl stand UP. why are you letting a man who's probably named after a victorian disease humble you in public
-
you folded over laughing, sunghoon was a disease alright. a disease that would rot and corrupt your brain before leading you to your own destruction.
sunoo grabbed your laptop before you dropped it off the bed. "okay that one was funny."
more comments flooded in rapidly and sunoo watched as your expression morphed into one of pure joy. like a kid who had just walked into a candy shop with an unlimited budget and no parental supervision.
-
NTA
he sounds insufferable.
-
ESH
you both sound annoying but in a sexual tension way.
-
you frowned, "what does that even mean?"
sunoo looked away suspiciously fast, hiding his smirk.
another one.
-
i know EXACTLY the type of man you're talking about. probably wears silver jewelry and thinks eye contact is a personality trait.
-
your jaw dropped. "THEY GET ME."
sunoo popped another gummy bear into his mouth, eyeing you. "or maybe you're describing every business major ever."
you ignored him because the comments were getting better by the second.
-
does he perchance look like this:
🗿
-
"OH MY GOD." he totally does.
-
girl he likes you.
⤷
no literally this sounds like academic enemies to lovers fanfiction.
-
"okay why does everyone keep saying that," you muttered, a deep frown now etched on your face. you were beginning to not like where these comments were headed.
sunoo made a noncommittal noise. you narrowed your eyes at him briefly before scrolling again.
-
i'm crying at "emotionally constipated." please cook him again.
-
next class hit him with "you're not beating the pretentious allegations."
-
ask him if he learned emotional intelligence from patrick bateman edits and sigma bro podcasts lol.
-
you physically wheezed, your body folding over in laughter. sunoo shook his head slowly, watching you upvote every single comment that dissed sunghoon.
"you're enjoying this way too much."
"because i'm finally being validated."
you pointed accusingly at him. "unlike SOME people."
sunoo rolled his eyes before muttering, "whatever bitch."
another comment appeared.
-
INFO: is he actually arrogant or are you just threatened because he's smarter than you?
-
your smile vanished instantly. "BOOOOO."
you downvoted it immediately, sunoo burst out laughing. "you are NOT supposed to interact emotionally with the comments."
"they interacted emotionally with ME first."
you kept scrolling, feeling increasingly euphoric as strangers across the internet continued confirming what you'd known all along: park sunghoon was deeply irritating.
the comments only got more ridiculous from there.
-
"he smirked at you after you got a question wrong" oh huny he wants you BAD.
-
this sounds less like hatred and more like unresolved yearning.
-
enemies to lovers ahh post.
-
"unresolved yearning?" you repeated aloud in horror.
oh fuck no.
sunoo was smiling now. not laughing. no no, he was smiling.
which was somehow worse, you turned your head slowly to shoot him a glare, "what."
he shrugged. "nothing."
you narrowed your eyes suspiciously then looked back at your screen.
another comment. this one longer.
-
honestly i think you're leaving out context. from your own description, it sounds like he was trying to engage in discussion normally and you took it personally because you already dislike him.
-
your smile faltered slightly.
who the fuck was this? and why the fuck do they think they know the situation?
the comment continued:
-
correcting people during literary discussions isn't arrogance if he's contributing meaningful analysis. also, calling someone "emotionally constipated" because they interpret a book differently than you is kind of ironic.
-
you scoffed loudly. "OH BROTHER." get a load of this guy, why don't they just go and suck sunghoon's dick at this point.
sunoo leaned closer, reading the comment out loud "wait that one kinda—"
"no."
you clicked reply immediately, your fingers flying across the keyboard.
-
if you defend people like this i just KNOW nobody likes you in real life.
-
sunoo let out a disbelieving laugh. "you're fighting civilians now?"
"they started it."
your reply posted and within less than thirty seconds—
the person responded.
-
bold assumption coming from someone who wrote an entire essay about a classmate because he annoyed her.
-
you froze and slowly sat up straighter. you felt your face tense in what you can only identify as pure raw anger.
sunoo noticed instantly when your face went from. mildly annoyed to baboon ass red. "what."
your eyes narrowed at the screen. something about the reply irritated you immediately. the tone. calm. slightly condescending. annoyingly articulate.
...absolutely not. no way.
you started typing again with renewed aggression. you stared at the username with pure hatred.
notniceprince02
your eye twitched, something about it already annoyed you. the reply sat there on your screen like a personal attack.
calm and smug. condescending in a weirdly articulate way that made you want to throw your laptop across the room.
sunoo leaned closer from beside you. "what happened?"
you pointed aggressively at the screen. "this person thinks i'm the problem."
sunoo made a face. "well..."
you slowly turned toward him eyes like slits and your mouth scrunched. "choose your next words carefully."
sunoo immediately looked back down at his gummy bears.
fucking coward.
you cracked your fingers dramatically before typing a response.
-
sorry i didn't realize his defense attorney was in the comments section. should i call you next time he starts acting like a rejected sherlock holmes adaptation?
-
you hit reply with satisfaction, finally letting out the breath of anger you had taken earlier,
sunoo blinked. "you type like you're in a duel."
"because i am."
less than a minute later—another response.
-
maybe people correct you often because you're wrong often.
-
you gasped so loudly sunoo nearly dropped the gummy bear bag. "OH this bitch."
you didn't know who this person was but you are not the one to be fucked with like this. your fingers flew over the keyboard with new found passion.
-
and maybe you defend emotionally detached weirdos online because you see yourself in him.
-
reply posted and the response came back almost immediately.
-
emotionally detached = calm
emotional instability = writing reddit essays because a guy disagreed with you in class
-
sunoo physically leaned forward now the gummy bears had been abandoned.
"okay wait," he said slowly. "this is getting good."
you ignored him, mostly because your blood pressure was rising.
-
if being calm means acting like a pretentious AI generated philosophy quote then congratulations i guess.
-
reply and instant response.
-
if being intelligent sounds pretentious to you that might be a personal issue.
-
your jaw dropped. "PERSONAL ISSUE?"
sunoo was trying not to laugh, badly. you glared at him before pushing at his shoulder hard enough to have him almost fall of your bed. unlucky for you, he managed to catch his balance and stay seated next to you with a dumb grin on his face.
"i'm sorry but they kinda cooked you there."
"whose side are you on?" fucking twink.
"the entertainment's."
traitor.
you sat up straighter on the bed, narrowing your eyes at the screen like notniceprince02 had personally wronged your entire bloodline.
-
you sound exactly like the guy i'm talking about btw. same superiority complex. same "i think i'm the smartest person in every room" energy.
-
the response appeared almost immediately, which somehow irritated you more. did this person have no life? fighting with strangers on the internet like a loser.
this doesn't apply to you of course.
-
maybe you're just intimidated by people who challenge you intellectually.
-
you stared at the screen in disbelief.
sunoo let out a quiet whistle. "they hit a nerve?"
"i'm going to hit THEM."
you typed furiously, your thumbs cramping up but you don't let weak things like this stop you.
-
intellectually challenge me? please. this man raises his hand in class like he's announcing a new world order then says the most pseudo intellectual nonsense you've ever heard.
-
response.
-
interesting. you seem to remember his class participation very vividly.
-
you froze for like half a second and then scoffed loudly.
because it's TRAUMATIZING. not because you care enough to remember, but because it's shocked itself into the crevices of your brain.
sunoo snorted while you kept going.
-
he literally smirks when people get answers wrong. do you know how deeply punchable that is?
-
response.
-
maybe he smirks because your reactions are dramatic.
-
you narrowed your eyes dangerously. this conversation, more like argument, felt more natural that you'd like to admit.
-
okay now i KNOW you're him.
-
sunoo's brows shot up immediately. hold on...
you pointed at the screen frantically. "LOOK AT HOW HE TYPES."
sunoo leaned closer, the two of you stared silently at the replies for a moment. then—sunoo slowly looked at you. "that actually does sound like him."
"THANK YOU." validation surged through your body instantly. you pointed aggressively at the laptop. "RIGHT? the annoying calmness? the fake intellectual wording? the superiority complex?"
sunoo tilted his head, a shit eating grin plastered on his porcelain face. "you know him disturbingly well."
"unfortunately."
another reply appeared.
-
i think it's funny how much attention you pay to someone you supposedly dislike.
-
you barked out a laugh, completely humorless.
-
oh my god. you ARE him.
-
response.
-
and if i was?
-
you sat there, staring. sunoo sat there too, also staring.
the room suddenly felt strangely quiet as you squinted at the screen.
"why did that make me mad."
sunoo was smiling again, that knowing smile. you hated that smile.
"because you think it might actually be him."
"it's not him."
"mhm."
"it's just some annoying reddit user." another response appeared before you could keep ranting.
-
for the record, if this guy really is as arrogant as you claim, why do you keep engaging with him?
-
you rolled your eyes instantly.
-
because someone has to humble him.
-
reply.
-
sounds more like obsession.
-
you gasped, like actually gasped. you? obsessed with sunghoon? out of all the people in this world? fuck no.
sunoo folded over laughing. "OH MY GOD."
"OBSESSION?" you typed so aggressively the keyboard started clacking violently.
-
you people see a man and woman arguing and immediately think there's romantic tension. have you considered that i simply think he's irritating and unfortunate-looking?
-
sunoo looked at you, slowly. "unfortunate-looking?"
you avoided eye contact because unfortunately that part wasn't true. at all. which was deeply annoying. you hated how you couldn't get away with dissing his appearance because as much as you hate to admit it, there was nothing to pick at.
another reply.
-
unfortunate-looking yet you described his facial expressions in detail.
-
you froze. sunoo froze. your eyes slowly widened as you stared at sunoo who looked equally as surprised as you.
"..."
sunoo pointed at the screen. "THAT IS ABSOLUTELY HIM."
"SHUT UP."
˙𐃷˙
by the next morning, your hatred for user notniceprince02 had evolved into something genuinely concerning.
your phone had been vibrating nonstop since eight in the morning.
every. two. seconds.
ping.
ping.
PING.
another reply. another argument. another smug paragraph typed in that calm, annoyingly articulate tone that made your blood pressure spike on sight.
you sat in the student lounge with your laptop open and your phone in your hand simultaneously, responding across two devices like a woman fighting in active warfare.
sunoo sat across from you, fully invested now. having the thread opened on his laptop as he watched you type out responses like it was war.
classes? irrelevant.
education? secondary.
this reddit argument had become the main event.
"you've replied to him thirty-seven times just in this past hour " sunoo said.
"thirty-eight." you hit send aggressively and sunoo blinked in pure shock.
"that was immediate."
"because he's wrong." your phone buzzed again and you looked down instantly.
-
notniceprince02:
"you keep proving my point by reacting emotionally to everything."
-
you scoffed so loudly the two people at the next table glanced over.
"OH my god." your fingers slammed against the keyboard.
-
sorry i forgot being emotionally unavailable is apparently a personality trait now.
-
send.
and would you look at that, a response within seconds.
-
no, but making hating one guy your entire personality definitely is.
-
you stared at the screen with a scowl etched on your face. offended, deeply offended.
sunoo leaned over your shoulder to see you clutching your phone was a grip that would shatter your screen.
then immediately started laughing. "okay no because why does this genuinely sound like sunghoon."
"it's NOT him."
"__."
"it's just some weird sigma male ass kisser who probably listens to podcasts hosted by divorced men."
you ignored him because your phone buzzed again—another reply.
-
you seem weirdly committed to misunderstanding him.
-
you rolled your eyes so hard it physically hurt. at this point you wondered how many people at the library thought something was mentally wrong with you.
-
and you seem weirdly committed to defending him. is this his burner account or are you just in love with him?
-
send.
sunoo nearly choked. "OH?"
"what?"
"you're spiraling."
"i'm WINNING."
sunoo pointed at your screen, a thread of reddit beef that's exceeded an appropriate limit. "this does not look like winning."
you frowned at the ongoing thread. unfortunately, it had become one of the top comments under your post. people were fully invested now with random users jumping into the argument just to spectate.
some were taking sides while others were making it worse, much worse.
-
y'all are literally flirting.
-
this is the most enemies to lovers thing i've ever read.
-
somebody invite me to the wedding.
-
"irl academic rivals is CRAZY."
-
you physically recoiled at the thought of being shipped with that garden troll of a man. "what is WRONG with people?"
sunoo looked way too entertained. "they kinda have a point."
"they absolutely do not."
another comment:
-
at this point just kiss and get it over with.
⤷
i would rather chew denim.
-
you typed immediately, brows furrowed and jaw clenched. this was the last thing you had expected as an outcome when you posted on reddit.
sunoo burst out laughing. "chew denim?"
"i'm emotional."
your phone buzzed again.
-
notniceprince02:
"that's dramatic."
-
your eye twitched as you read the message out loud. "HE KEEPS SAYING THAT." people had now physically turned on their seats to look at the two of you with curious and annoyed looks in their eyes.
sunoo pointed accusingly at you while gives others a apologetic smile. "because you ARE dramatic." he whispered to you harshly all while motioning you to shut the fuck up.
"you're both against me."
"no," sunoo corrected. "i just think this is the funniest thing that's happened all semester."
you glared at him before standing abruptly, grabbing your phone. "i'm going to the washroom."
if sunoo wasn't going to appreciate this properly, then some girl in the stall next to you will. sunoo hummed absently. "tell your boyfriend i said hi if he replies again."
"die."
you walked off before he could keep talking.
the hallways buzzed with students moving between lectures, conversations overlapping with the sound of footsteps and lockers shutting nearby.
your phone buzzed again and without looking up, you immediately started typing.
-
no, because at this point you're defending him like you want him carnally.
-
send.
you turned the corner toward the washrooms—and slammed directly into someone.
hard.
your shoulder collided with a solid chest and your phone nearly flew out of your hand.
"shit—"
steady hands caught your arms before you stumbled backward. familiar hands. long fingers curling briefly around your sleeves.
your stomach dropped instantly, because of course.
of fucking COURSE.
park sunghoon looked down at you with mild surprise, dark hair slightly messy like he'd been running his hands through it all morning. a pair of headphones rested around his neck, black hoodie sleeves pushed to his forearms.
and unfortunately—unfairly—he looked really good today.
which immediately irritated you, because how dare he have a shit personality and look good while ruining your mood by just breathing in your vicinity.
sunghoon glanced at your death grip on your phone before meeting your eyes again, a small smirk playing on his pink plush lips.
"you should probably watch where you're going." his voice was calm, low and slightly amused.
you narrowed your eyes instantly. "maybe people would move if they weren't standing in the middle of hallways like decorative statues."
one corner of his mouth lifted slightly. there it was, that stupid almost-smile. you hated that stupid almost-smile.
sunghoon's gaze flicked downward briefly. to your phone screen which was still open to reddit. your heart stopped for half a second because the thread was visible. very visible. and at the top of the screen sat a fresh notification from—notniceprince02 replied to your comment
sunghoon's eyes lingered on the notification then slowly lifted back to yours.
silence. your brain short-circuited instantly, no. absolutely not. there was no way. sunghoon looked at you for one long second before asking casually, "still fighting with strangers online?"
your entire body went still, just for a second. because there was absolutely no way—no actual way.
sunghoon stood there holding your arm loosely, thumb brushing the fabric of your sleeve while your phone screen glowed between you both like evidence in a criminal investigation.
notniceprince02 replied to your comment.
your brain was buffering. loading. malfunctioning.
sunghoon's expression remained frustratingly neutral but there was something there. something subtle: amusement.
your eyes narrowed immediately. "why are you looking at my phone?"
smooth. good recovery. yup yup.
sunghoon let go of your arm slowly, way too slowly. "hard not to when you almost tackled me with it."
you scoffed, "you were standing in my way."
"you walked directly into me."
"semantics."
sunghoon hummed quietly as his gaze flicked toward your screen again and then back to you.
"so," he said lightly, "what stranger online managed to upset you this badly?"
your grip tightened around your phone instantly. absolutely not. you were NOT about to entertain sunoo's ridiculous theory.
"nobody."
sunghoon raised a brow, "you look homicidal."
"maybe that's just your effect on people." you retorted back almost automatically. you wonder if you've ever responded to sunghoon in a normal way.
that stupid almost-smile appeared again. small and annoyingly attractive. you hated it, like actually hated it.
sunghoon tilted his head slightly. "you know," he murmured, "you get strangely defensive whenever i ask simple questions."
your stomach flipped in irritation, strictly irritation. "and you get strangely nosy for someone who acts emotionally detached all the time."
his eyes held yours for a second longer than necessary, steady and focused. like he was trying to figure something out.
the hallway around you blurred into noise and somehow you were still standing there.
too close to him, way too close.
you noticed stupid things at the worst possible times, like the faint scent of his cologne or the tiny mole near his neck. or the fact that his hair fell into his eyes slightly when he looked down at you like this.
deeply irritating.
sunghoon's gaze flicked briefly toward your mouth before returning upward so quickly you almost thought you imagined it.
almost.
"what?" you snapped immediately. you could feel a small flush cover your cheeks and neck at the thought of sunghoon sneaking glances at your lips. maybe he thought you looked really slapable right now, or really kissable. it hurt your ego to think that either one of those things were deemed acceptable to you.
his brows lifted slightly. "nothing."
liar.
you narrowed your eyes harder. "you're being weird."
"you say that every time you don't know how to respond."
your jaw dropped at his audacity. "i always know how to respond."
"mhm."
that stupid calm tone again. you wanted to bite him. which—bad wording. very bad wording.
sunghoon watched your expression shift in real time and something in his face changed slightly. like he noticed the exact moment your thoughts betrayed you.
horrifying. absolutely horrifying.
you recovered immediately, sort of. "why are you even talking to me right now?" you asked. "don't you have some freshmen discussion group to intellectually terrorize?"
sunghoon laughed quietly under his breath—actually laughed. and it caught you so off guard that you momentarily forgot to stay angry.
which made you angrier. "you're the one who ran into me."
"unfortunately."
"yet you're still standing here."
you opened your mouth then closed it. sunghoon noticed, of course he noticed. the only thing he doesn't seem to notice is his mouth opening and closing with cow noises spilling out during class.
the corner of his mouth twitched again. "that's new," he said softly.
"what is?"
"you being speechless." your face heated instantly, not because of him.
obviously.
you crossed your arms defensively. "you're unbelievably annoying."
"and yet," sunghoon said calmly, stepping slightly closer, "you keep talking to me."
your heartbeat stumbled. just once. which was unacceptable.
because now he was close enough that you could see every tiny detail in his expression—the faint curve of amusement in his eyes, the way his lips kept threatening to smile fully.
he looked way too pleased with himself. you hated that too. a group of students walked past nearby and one of them whispered: "there's no way they're not dating."
you whipped your head around instantly. "WE'RE NOT—"
sunghoon's hand suddenly landed lightly against the wall beside your head. not trapping you, but enough to make your words catch awkwardly in your throat.
his expression remained perfectly calm which somehow made the gesture worse. "you're loud when you're flustered," he said quietly.
your brain short-circuited. flustered? FLUSTERED?
you stared at him in disbelief. "i am not flustered."
sunghoon hummed, completely unconvinced as he reached into his pocket to slip out his phone. your pulse was going insane now for reasons you refused to examine.
then—your phone buzzed loudly between you both.
the notification lit up the screen and your head snapped down, unlocking your phone to see something that only made your heart drop to your gut.
-
notniceprince02:
"you still haven't answered my question."
-
silence.
sunghoon looked down at the notification then slowly back up at you. and this time—this time he smiled properly.
small. sharp. dangerous.
your stomach dropped straight to hell. because suddenly—suddenly you knew.
oh my god.
it WAS him.
your soul briefly left your body. there was no other explanation for the horrifying full-body shutdown you experienced standing there in the middle of the hallway.
because park sunghoon was smiling at you. actually smiling. not the tiny smug almost-smirk he usually wore during arguments.
a real smile. sharp at the edges. dangerously entertained. and your phone was still glowing between you both with the notification from: notniceprince02
oh my god. OH my god.
you stared at him, sunghoon stared back. this fucker was playing with you this entire time and he had the audacity to look calm, composed and completely evil all at the same time.
your voice came out accusing immediately. "you're insane." sunghoon's smile widened slightly. which honestly should've been illegal because why did he suddenly look—no.
absolutely not.
"that's a strong reaction," he said mildly.
"you've been fighting with me online for like fourteen hours."
"thirteen, actually."
you blinked up at him, horrified.
sunghoon tilted his head slightly. "you stopped replying around three in the morning."
your jaw physically dropped. "YOU KEPT TRACK?"
"you type aggressively when you're tired."
you looked genuinely offended. "that is such a weird thing to notice."
"you notice weird things about me too."
silence. dangerous silence. because unfortunately—unfortunately he was right. and judging by the look on his face? he knew he was right too.
you recovered immediately or at least attempted to. "okay first of all," you started, pointing at him aggressively, "using a burner account to argue with me on reddit is psychotic behavior."
sunghoon crossed his arms loosely still way too relaxed. "you made an entire public post about me."
"i didn't SAY your name."
"you described me like a wanted criminal."
"because you're irritating."
"it was weirdly detailed."
your eye twitched. "you're unbelievable."
sunghoon leaned slightly closer, close enough that your stupid heart started acting weird again. "you wrote three paragraphs about my facial expressions."
heat crawled up your neck instantly. because in hindsight—mentioning the smirking might've been a mistake.
"that was for CONTEXT."
sunghoon hummed not buying it for a second. "right....right"
you hated how calm he sounded. like this entire situation entertained him more than anything else. which made sense, considering the man apparently spent his free time anonymously provoking you online.
actual freak behavior.
"and YOU," you shot back, "were defending yourself in the comments like a loser."
sunghoon's brows lifted. "i was defending myself because you compared me to a podcast for divorced men."
"because you talk like one."
"you literally accused me of wanting attention 'carnally.'" your face heated instantly, sunghoon looked way too pleased saying that out loud. "that was BEFORE i knew it was you."
"does that make it better?"
"a little."
his mouth twitched again. you wanted to throw him into traffic. respectfully.
sunghoon glanced down at your phone screen where the reddit thread was still open. hundreds of notifications flooded the post now. people were still replying, still arguing and still shipping you both for reasons you refused to acknowledge.
sunghoon read one of the comments over your shoulder, then laughed quietly. "someone said we have 'academic rivals to lovers tension.'"
you looked horrified, shooting him a quick glare before downvoting on the comment. "don't read those."
"why not?" he asked lightly. "they seem passionate about us."
"there is no 'us.'" you snapped back.
sunghoon's gaze flicked back to yours, steady—focused.
"you sure?"
your stomach dropped. hard. something about the way he said it felt unfairly intentional. like he knew exactly what he was doing now. which—he probably did.
you crossed your arms tighter, defensive. "you're enjoying this way too much."
"you started it."
"you kept replying."
"so did you."
"because i don't lose arguments."
sunghoon stepped closer again, just slightly. enough that your back nearly brushed the wall behind you.
"is that what this is?" he asked softly.
you frowned. "what."
"you needing to win." his voice had gotten quieter somehow, lower and suddenly the hallway noise around you felt distant again.
students walked past constantly but it barely registered.
because sunghoon was standing too close and looking at you like he'd figured something out.
you swallowed once, annoyed at yourself for even noticing. "obviously," you replied.
sunghoon watched you for another second. then, "i think you just like arguing with me."
you let out a disbelieving laugh immediately. "that is genuinely the dumbest thing you've ever said."
"is it?"
"yes."
"then why do you always look excited before you disagree with me?"
your mouth opened. closed. opened again. nothing came out. because that was—that was not the point. like fuck, you caught me i guess.
sunghoon noticed your silence instantly, of course he did. his expression shifted into something smugger and more dangerous. "there it is again."
"what."
"speechless."
you hated him, like actually hated him. especially because he looked so unfairly good right now standing there with messy dark hair and that stupid smug expression like he'd won something.
you narrowed your eyes. "you know what? maybe people only think you're smart because you say things confidently."
sunghoon leaned one shoulder casually against the wall beside you. completely cornering you now without actually touching you.
"maybe," he said calmly, "you only argue with me because i'm the only person who argues back."
your heartbeat betrayed you again. you stared at him, sunghoon stared back. then—your phone buzzed loudly again between you both.
another reddit notification, sunghoon glanced down before taking your phone into his own hands then read aloud: "'just kiss already and save us all the trouble.'"
you lunged for your phone instantly. "give me that."
sunghoon lifted it out of reach easily and your eyes widened. "park sunghoon."
he looked down at you with blatant amusement. "that's the first time you've said my full name without sounding homicidal."
"i AM homicidal."
"mhm."
you reached for your phone again, sunghoon caught your wrist lightly before you could grab it. everything stopped. your breath. your thoughts. your functioning nervous system.
his fingers wrapped loosely around your wrist, warm and firm. and suddenly you became painfully aware of how close he actually was.
sunghoon looked down briefly at where he was holding you and then back at your face. his expression changed slightly, less teasing and more—dangerous.
your pulse went absolutely insane. then quietly—way too quietly—he said, "you know... you're a lot less mean when you're flustered."
your brain completely stopped functioning. like genuinely. because park sunghoon was still holding your wrist, still standing way too close, still looking at you with that horribly calm expression while your pulse was actively trying to kill you.
and the worst part? he knew. you could tell he knew. his thumb shifted slightly against your wrist and your stomach flipped so violently it made you angry.
sunghoon's eyes flicked briefly to your mouth again. then back up, slowly and deliberately.
"you know," he murmured, "the comments might be onto something."
your brows furrowed instantly. "what comments."
his mouth twitched. "'just kiss already and save us all the trouble.'"
you stared at him in disbelief. "absolutely not."
"why not?"
"because i'd rather die."
sunghoon hummed thoughtfully. "dramatic."
"you make me dramatic." that slipped out before you could stop it, the silence was thick.
sunghoon's expression shifted almost imperceptibly. something darker settling beneath the amusement. your face heated instantly. great. excellent. love that for you.
you tried pulling your wrist back but he didn't let go. not fully, he just loosened his grip slightly. enough to remind you he could let go if he wanted to, but wasn't.
"you know what i think?" he asked quietly.
"i don't care."
"i think you enjoy this."
you scoffed immediately. "arguing with you is psychologically damaging."
"yet you keep doing it."
"because someone needs to humble you."
sunghoon smiled slowly, that smile should've come with a warning label. "you've been saying that for two years, i don't think you're making much progress, __."
your stomach twisted, you hated how softly he said it. like he'd been thinking about it too, absolutely disgusting.
you crossed your arms tighter, or tried to. hard to look intimidating when he still had your wrist trapped loosely in his hand. "you're weirdly obsessed with me for someone who acts emotionally detached all the time."
sunghoon tilted his head slightly. "says the girl who wrote a public essay about me." at this point the both of you were repeating yourselves for the nth time, none of you progressing anywhere.
"because you're irritating."
"and handsome?"
you nearly choked. "WHEN did i say that?"
"you didn't have to."
you looked genuinely appalled, sunghoon laughed quietly under his breath. the sound went straight through you in the most irritating way imaginable.
you hated that too, everything about him irritated you. his stupid voice, his stupid face, his stupidly long fingers still wrapped around your wrist.
"you're insufferable."
"you like that word."
"because it applies to you constantly." you say sweetly, batting your eyelashes in the most dramatic way you could possibly pull off.
sunghoon leaned closer, close enough that your back finally brushed against the wall behind you.
you swallowed hard, annoyed. deeply annoyed.
"you know," he said softly, "for someone who claims to hate me, you stare at me a lot."
your jaw dropped. "you stare at ME."
"because you're loud."
"and you're annoying."
"yet here we are."
your heart was beating so hard you were convinced he could hear it. which was humiliating, especially because he looked entirely unaffected.
calm. steady. composed. which is what his heart monitor would read after you ran him over with your car. you wanted to ruin that composure so badly. sunghoon's gaze dropped to your mouth again, this time slower and less subtle. your breathing hitched involuntarily and that smug bastard noticed immediately.
his eyes darkened slightly. "there it is," he murmured.
"what."
"that look."
"what look?"
sunghoon smiled faintly. "the one you get before you start losing an argument."
you pushed against his shoulder instantly, hard. or at least hard enough to make a point but sunghoon barely moved. which only irritated you more. "i never lose."
"sure."
"i'm serious."
"mhm."
you glared at him, sunghoon stared back. then quietly—
way too calmly—he said, "maybe we should give people what they want."
your stomach dropped. "what."
his fingers tightened slightly around your wrist before he stepped closer again, completely boxing you in now.
"the comments seem very invested in us."
"there is no 'us.'" you repeated for the nth time.
"you keep saying that."
"because it's true."
sunghoon looked at you for one long second, then his voice dropped lower, dangerously soft. "then how about we start with the kiss?"
your brain short-circuited so violently you physically stopped breathing. "excuse me?"
sunghoon's expression remained infuriatingly calm. but his eyes—his eyes looked anything but calm now. "you heard me."
heat exploded across your face instantly. "you are OUT of your mind."
"probably."
"i would never kiss you."
sunghoon leaned down slightly, close enough that his voice brushed against your skin. "you keep saying things your body language disagrees with."
your stomach flipped violently. you hated him, because he sounded so certain, so unfairly confident. you opened your mouth to argue again but footsteps echoed nearby and a group of students rounded the corner laughing loudly.
both of you glanced over instinctively, the moment broke slightly. just enough, except sunghoon didn't move away. instead, his gaze flicked briefly down the hall toward the nearby family washroom.
then back to you and your pulse spiked instantly. "sunghoon—"
before you could finish, he tugged lightly on your wrist.
your breath caught as he pulled you forward down the hall.
"what are you DOING?"
sunghoon glanced back at you once, that same dangerous almost-smile pulling at his mouth.
"proving a point."
your stomach dropped straight to hell. your sneakers squeaked slightly against the floor as sunghoon pulled you down the hallway.
not fast enough to look suspicious, which somehow made it worse. his hand stayed wrapped around your wrist the entire time—warm, firm, steady—like he already knew you wouldn't actually pull away.
which was irritating, deeply irritating. "park sunghoon—"
"you say my full name a lot when you're nervous."
"i'm not nervous." he glanced back at you briefly, that smug look again.
"sure."
you swore out his entire bloodline at this moment as your heart was currently beating like you'd just sprinted across campus. sunghoon stopped outside the family washroom and pushed the door open casually before looking back at you expectantly.
your eyes widened immediately. "oh my god."
"what?"
"you're insane."
"you've said that already."
"because you keep proving it."
sunghoon's mouth twitched then he gently tugged your wrist again. you should've walked away, seriously. you should've told him to go to hell and left immediately.
instead—you followed him inside. which honestly felt like a personal failure.
the door clicked shut behind you.
the washroom was too bright and too small. and now sunghoon was standing directly in front of you with nowhere to escape to, hoodie sleeves pushed up his forearms and dark hair slightly falling into his eyes.
you became painfully aware of every inch of space between you both, which unfortunately (fortunately) wasn't much.
your pulse went insane. sunghoon leaned back lightly against the sink counter, still watching you with that same unreadable expression. except now there was something sharper underneath it, something heated.
you crossed your arms immediately, defensive. "if you murder me in here i'm haunting you."
sunghoon laughed quietly, the sound bounced softly off the tiled walls. "you think i'd need to drag you into a bathroom to kill you?"
"probably not. you'd do it in a psychologically manipulative way."
"interesting that you've thought about it."
"i think about punching you constantly."
sunghoon hummed. "violent."
"you bring it out in me."
his gaze held yours for a second too long. then, "i know."
your stomach flipped, you hated how low his voice sounded in here. hated how every tiny expression felt amplified now that you were alone. you needed to regain control of this conversation immediately.
"so what exactly was your master plan here?" you asked. "corner me in a public washroom and continue being annoying?"
sunghoon tilted his head slightly. "you came willingly."
well, he got you there. "against my better judgment."
"yet still willingly."
you rolled your eyes aggressively. "you're obsessed with having the last word."
"that's rich coming from you."
"i'm right most of the time." sunghoon smiled slowly, there it was again. that stupid smile that made you irrationally aware of how attractive he was.
you hated that too, everything about him was annoying.
the way he stood, the way he talked. the way his hands and forearms looked resting against the sink behind him—okay.
you needed to stop thinking immediately. sunghoon noticed your brief lapse in concentration. his eyes narrowed slightly, amused.
"what happened?" he asked softly. "lost your train of thought?"
"i'm deciding how much jail time i'd get for assault." good cover up!
"probably less if you looked this cute during the mugshot."
your brain completely blue-screened, you stared at him.
sunghoon stared back. completely calm after saying the most insane thing imaginable.
"you—" nothing, your thoughts evaporated.
sunghoon pushed off the sink slowly, one step closer.
then another. your back instinctively hit the door behind you.
oh my god.
"what?" he asked quietly. you swallowed hard, annoyed at yourself.
"you can't just say things like that."
"why not?"
"because it's weird."
"you're flustered again."
"I AM NOT FLUSTERED."
sunghoon looked down at you for a long second then his gaze flicked to your mouth again. slowly and deliberately. your stomach twisted so hard it physically hurt and you wondered what would happen if you just threw up your guts onto him. how pretty would he look with a bacon egg and cheese splashed onto him?
"you know," he murmured, "for someone who claims to hate me, you let me get very close to you."
"you cornered me." you snap.
"you could move." you opened your mouth then closed it. because—well technically. he wasn't wrong. you absolutely could move, but instead you stayed exactly where you were.
sunghoon noticed immediately, that smug look returned. "there it is."
"stop saying that."
"then stop proving me right."
you glared at him, he stared back. neither of you moved.
the tension in the room felt ridiculous now. thick enough to choke on.
and the worst part? sunghoon still looked calm. slightly amused, even. like he was waiting for you to figure something out.
your phone buzzed loudly in your pocket. both of you glanced downward instinctively. another reddit notification, causing sunghoon laughed softly. "they're probably asking if we kissed yet."
your face heated instantly. "they're delusional."
"mhm."
"stop doing that."
"doing what?"
"looking at me like that."
his brows lifted slightly. "like what?"
you gestured vaguely, frustrated. "like you know something i don't."
sunghoon stepped closer again, barely any space left between you now. his voice dropped lower, quieter.
"maybe i do."
your breath caught, his hand lifted slowly toward your face. you froze up, completely. sunghoon's fingers brushed lightly against your jaw, gentle and careful.
somehow that made it worse. your heartbeat was so loud you were convinced the entire campus could hear it.
sunghoon looked at you for one long second. then quietly—almost teasing—he murmured "still think you'd rather die than kiss me?"
your brain was screaming because park sunghoon's hand was on your jaw right now. his thumb resting lightly against your skin while he looked at you like this —calm on the surface, but with something much more dangerous underneath.
and the worst part? you still hadn't moved away.
your back pressed against the door behind you as your pulse absolutely lost its mind. sunghoon waited patiently for an answer.
that smug bastard. "well?" he murmured softly. you swallowed hard. "you're very confident for someone who uses reddit burner accounts."
the corner of his mouth lifted immediately. there you were, finally talking again.
"deflecting already?"
"i'm not deflecting."
"mhm."
you hated that sound. hated how he kept looking at you like he could see directly through every thought in your head. because right now those thoughts were actively betraying you.
you were suddenly hyperaware of everything, the warmth of his hand, the faint scent of his cologne, the way his hoodie sleeves stretched around his forearms when he shifted closer.
deeply irritating. you narrowed your eyes, trying desperately to regain control of the situation.
"you know what your problem is?"
sunghoon hummed softly, looking down at you with an unreadable glint in his dark eyes. "you think everyone secretly likes you."
"not everyone."
his thumb brushed your jaw slightly as he spoke and your stomach flipped violently.
"just you."
your breath caught embarrassingly fast. sunghoon noticed instantly and his eyes darkened slightly. suddenly the teasing atmosphere shifted into something heavier, quieter.
you hated how good he was at this. "you're unbelievable," you muttered.
"you've said that too."
"because you keep acting insane."
sunghoon leaned down slightly, close enough now that his voice felt warm against your skin.
"you haven't told me to stop."
your brain short-circuited. because—because technically—you hadn't. you opened your mouth immediately. "stop."
sunghoon smiled faintly, but didn't move. "that sounded forced."
you glared at him. "you're annoying."
"and yet you're still here." he kept doing that. kept pointing out things you didn't want to acknowledge.
like the fact that you could absolutely shove him away right now if you wanted to.
except you didn't, which felt like a massive personal failure. your phone buzzed again in your pocket making sunghoon laughed quietly under his breath. "persistent audience."
"they need hobbies."
"says the girl who argued with me online for thirteen hours."
"because you were WRONG."
"about what exactly?"
"everything."
sunghoon's brows lifted slightly. "including the part where you're obviously attracted to me?"
your jaw dropped. silence. violent silence. your entire nervous system shut down. "you—"
nothing came out and sunghoon looked way too pleased with himself. "there it is again."
"if you say 'speechless' one more time i'm calling campus security."
he laughed again, soft and genuine. and it hit you in the chest in the most irritating way imaginable because you'd never heard him laugh like this before.
not during class, not during arguments. this was different, warmer, more relaxed. like he was actually enjoying himself.
you stared at him suspiciously, sunghoon noticed immediately. "what?"
"why are you smiling like that."
"like what?"
"like you're having fun." his gaze held yours for a second, then, "i am."
your stomach twisted again, it felt as if your body was actively betraying you . you looked away first this time, suddenly very interested in the tiled floor beneath you. sunghoon's hand shifted slightly, fingers brushing gently beneath your chin.
guiding your attention back to him and your heart nearly exploded.
"don't do that," you muttered weakly.
"do what?"
"that."
"very descriptive."
you glared at him, or attempted to. hard to look intimidating when your face was hot and your heartbeat sounded like a construction site.
sunghoon studied your expression quietly for a moment.
then smiled slightly, smaller this time and less teasing. "you know what i think?"
"i think you should stop thinking entirely." you spat out weakly.
"i think," he continued calmly ignoring what you just said, "you've spent two years picking fights with me because it's the only time you stop pretending not to care what i think."
your stomach dropped straight to hell you stared at him only to see him look at you with a look you were afraid to identify. and somehow that was worse than the teasing, because he sounded genuine now.
which felt unfair.
you recovered immediately through anger, your favorite defense mechanism.
"oh my god you are SO full of yourself."
"am i wrong?"
"yes."
"then why are you blushing?"
you slapped your hands over your face instantly, and sunghoon actually laughed. fully this time and the sound was so unexpectedly attractive it made you want to walk directly into traffic.
"stop laughing."
"you're cute when you're angry."
"you're making me angrier."
"i know." his voice softened slightly on the last two words, your hands slowly lowered from your face.
sunghoon was still standing impossibly close. still looking at you like he wanted to see what you'd do next.
your heartbeat wouldn't calm down and neither would your thoughts.
and then his gaze dropped to your mouth again, slowly—intentionally.
your breath caught again and sunghoon noticed. again.
his hand slid lightly from your jaw to the side of your neck.
you completely stopped functioning. "sunghoon," you whispered, first name only this time. this was probably the first time in the two years you knew him that you had said his name with such softness.
something shifted in his expression immediately and his eyes darkened. his thumb pressed lightly against your neck.
"yeah?" he murmured.
oh.
oh this was bad.
his thumb pressed gently against the pulse hammering in your throat. that single point of contact felt like a live wire.
"yeah?" he murmured again, his voice dropping into a register you'd never heard, low and rough and utterly dismantling. you had no witty retort, no clever insult. your brain was static, every neuron firing toward the heat of his hand, the dark focus in his eyes.
he saw the surrender you hadn't even voiced. his other hand came up, fingers threading through your hair to cradle the back of your head, and then he was closing the last inch of space.
his mouth was on yours.
it wasn't tentative. it wasn't a question. it was a firm, smooth claim that stole the breath from your lungs and the strength from your knees. his lips moved against yours with a confident pressure that was instantly dizzying. he tasted like mint and something darker, something uniquely him.
a soft, surprised sound escaped you, swallowed immediately by his kiss. he angled your head, deepening it, his tongue sweeping past your lips to tangle with yours.
it was an argument you couldn't win, a debate settled with a devastating, sensual finality. your hands, which had been balled into fists at your sides, came up to clutch at the fabric of his hoodie.
he broke the kiss just long enough to whisper against your swollen lips, "finally." then he was moving again, his body pressing you firmly back against the cool door. you felt your heart pounding in your chest like you had ran a mile, his one word stealing the strength from your legs.
in one fluid, shockingly strong motion, he captured both your wrists in one of his large hands and pinned them above your head. you gasped, a thrill of helplessness shooting straight to your core. his other hand returned to your throat, not squeezing, just holding, a dominant, possessive weight.
"always so loud," he breathed, his lips trailing down your jaw. "so much to say." you could feel the hard, undeniable ridge of his dick pressing against your stomach through both your clothes. the evidence of his desire was a shockwave that made you whimper. he smirked against your skin. "what's wrong? no clever comeback?"
he leaned in again, but instead of kissing you, he hovered. his gaze locked on yours, dark and intense. then he gathered a bit of saliva on his tongue and let it fall, slow and deliberate, past his own lips and onto yours.
the warm, wet intimacy of it made your eyes flutter closed for a second. "open," he commanded softly. dazed, you did. he sealed his mouth over yours again, sharing the wetness, the kiss turning filthy and deep.
you drank him in, your earlier defiance melting into a desperate, aching need. you could feel your underwear stick to you uncomfortably, shifting slighting only to have sunghoon's large body pin you against the door harder. his bulge pushing into your stomach firmer, you could feel him grind against you.
he pulled back, his breathing slightly ragged, and began to mouth down the column of your throat. his teeth scraped lightly, then bit down, not hard enough to truly hurt, but enough to make you cry out and arch against him. he soothed the spot with his tongue before sucking hard, leaving a brand you knew would bloom purple.
he admired his work, then the dizzy, wrecked look on your face. "look at you. all that fire, reduced to this."
his free hand slid down, grabbing the hem of your shirt. "all those essays about my emotional incompetence," he said, tugging the fabric up. you shivered as cool air hit your stomach.
"all that time you spent thinking about me." the shirt went over your head, discarded somewhere on the floor. his eyes raked over your bra. "and for what? to end up here."
"you're—you're still insufferable," you managed to pant, even as you pressed your chest toward him—urging him to take it off.
"i know," he said, his fingers deftly finding the clasp of your bra. it came undone. "and you're still obsessed." the bra straps slid down your arms, still trapped in his grasp. he let go of your wrists just long enough to pull the garment away and toss it aside. immediately, his hand returned, clamping back down.
you used your momentary freedom to grab the bottom of his hoodie, pushing it up. he helped, releasing you to yank it and his shirt off in one impatient move.
then he was back on you, skin to searing skin. he was a biter, just as you'd imagined. his mouth latched onto the swell of your breast, teeth grazing your nipple before he sucked it deep.
you cried out, your head thumping back against the door. "if you can do it," you gasped, twisting to reach his shoulder with your mouth. you sank your teeth into the hard muscle there, a retaliatory claim. "then i can too."
"fuck." he groaned, the sound vibrating through your entire body. you think you just gushed and ruined your panties.
a competition of marks began. he left a trail of bruises and blooming red patches down your chest, over your ribs. you reciprocated on his neck, his collarbone, his pectoral, each bite earning a sharper gasp or a low, approving growl from him.
the pain was a bright, sharp pleasure, a physical manifestation of all your tangled, furious energy.
suddenly, he was pushing you down. a firm hand on your shoulder guided you to your knees on the cold tile.
you looked up at him, dazed. he loomed over you, his expression one of dark, predatory amusement. he undid his belt buckle, the click obscenely loud in the small room.
"i wonder," he mused, his voice thick, "how much shit you can talk with your mouth full of me."
he popped the button of his jeans, lowered the zipper. the outline of his cock straining against his boxers made your mouth water. "hands behind your back," he ordered.
you hesitated, glaring up at him. with a frustrated noise, you reached for his waistband. he caught your wrist instantly. "ah-ah." his other hand came up and delivered a firm, almost casual pat against your cheek. it wasn't a hard slap, but it was a stinging, dominant correction that made your eyes widen and your clit throb. "i said, no hands."
swallowing your pride, you leaned forward. you nuzzled against the fabric of his boxers, feeling the hard heat beneath. using your teeth, you caught the elastic waistband and tugged it down, revealing him.
he was thick and fully hard, the tip already glistening. you licked a slow stripe from base to tip, looking up at him through your lashes. his jaw tightened as you took him into your mouth, slowly, relishing the salty, clean taste of him, the way his hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk.
he let you set the pace for a moment, his hands fisting in your hair. "that's it," he breathed, his composure fraying. "all that attitude... fucking gone." you hollowed your cheeks, taking him deeper, until he hit the back of your throat.
you relaxed, letting him slide further, tears pricking your eyes. the rhythm became faster, harder, driven by the soft, choked sounds he was making above you. his grip in your hair tightened, guiding you.
you could feel his hips shudder and his pace falter as he peered down to see his cock disappear in your mouth. he felt his chest swell just at the sight of you, eyes watering and face red.
"gonna cum," he warned, his voice ragged. you didn't pull away. with a sharp, guttural groan, he spilled hot and bitter over your tongue and across your chest, painting stripes over your skin.
he took a second to admire the mess he had made of you, your skin flushed a pretty pink with his cum coating you like icing on a cake.
he pulled you to your feet, his own legs seemingly unsteady. he pushed your pants and panties down in one rough motion, his fingers immediately finding your slick heat.
he pushed your soaked underwear aside, sliding two fingers through your folds. "so wet," he laughed, a dark, triumphant sound. he brought his glistening fingers to your lips. "and for me. after all that."
he turned you around, bending you over the sink. your reflection was a shock—flushed face, bruised lips, hair a mess, his marks covering your skin. he positioned himself behind you, one hand wrapping around your throat again, pulling you back against his chest. the other hand rubbed tight, demanding circles over your clit.
"look," he whispered harshly in your ear, nodding at the mirror. "look at how silly you look. falling apart on my fingers when just hours ago you were calling me a 'rejected sherlock holmes adaptation' on the internet."
the overstimulation was maddening. pleasure coiled tight in your belly.
"the comments... were idiots," you panted, even as you pushed back against his fingers trying to get him to slip them inside your needy weeping hole.
he chuckled, the sound vibrating against your back. "they saw right through you." he pushed a finger inside you, then another, curling them. you gasped, your knees buckling. "admit it. you wanted this every time you picked a fight."
"i wanted to win," you moaned, the words torn from you. he hooked his fingers in you, rubbing your gummy walls while his thumb continued to rub circles against your needy clit.
"you are winning," he breathed, nipping your earlobe. "look at you. you won my full, undivided attention." he removed his fingers, and you felt the blunt, hot pressure of his cock at your entrance.
he pushed in, slowly, inch by devastating inch, filling you completely. the stretch was divine. he held you there, both of you panting, watching in the mirror. he almost came at the sight of your fucked out face, his hands gripping your waist with pressure that would surely bruise.
he began to move, a slow, filthy grind that had you seeing stars. his hand on your throat kept you upright, the other hand sliding around to rub your clit in time with his thrusts. "beg for it," he murmured, his eyes locked on yours in the reflection. "beg me to let you cum."
you didn't answer, trying to avoid his gaze in the mirror only for a particularly rough thrust and his blunt nails digging into your face to swiftly put you back in your place.
"no," you gritted out, even as your body shook.
he spanked you once, hard, on the ass cheek. the sharp sting made you cry out and clench around him. "beg."
"sunghoon—"
another spank. his fingers on your clit became relentless. you were so close, teetering on the edge, but he held you there, his thrusts measured and deep.
"you're so stubborn. just like online. all that typing." he punctuated each word with a thrust. "just. give. in."
the pleasure was a tidal wave, held back by his will alone. you were so overstimulated, so desperate, your pride the only thing left. he leaned forward, his mouth at your ear. "come on, sweetheart. let go. tell me you need it."
as much as it killed you to beg, it also killed you to not cum all over his stupidly thick cock. you could feel the coil in your stomach tighten up as you try to push yourself back to meet his strong and unrelenting thrusts.
sunghoon smirks when he notices your desperation, slowing down on purpose. "c'mon, sweetheart. you don't wanna cum f'me?"
the pet name, the raw need in his own voice, broke you. "please," you sobbed, the word barely audible. "please, sunghoon, let me cum."
"good girl," he purred, and his rhythm became punishing and his fingers began to rub punishingly against your swollen clit. "now."
the orgasm ripped through you, blinding and violent. you screamed, your body convulsing around him as he fucked you through it, his own groans joining yours.
you felt his warm cum flood your cunt as you twitched with the aftershocks of your high. he watched you fall apart in the mirror, his expression one of fierce, possessive satisfaction.
as your spasms began to subside, he slowed, still buried deep inside you. he was breathing heavily against your neck.
he planted soft kisses on your shoulder blade and neck, his dick still in you—twitching. your body trembled slightly, refusing to look into the mirror because then you would see the aftermath of what sunghoon had done to you.
the silence afterward felt strange.
not awkward. not exactly.
just... different.
like something between you had shifted permanently and neither of you quite knew how to deal with it yet.
the fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead while rain tapped faintly against the tiny washroom window. your heart still hadn't calmed down properly, which was deeply irritating considering park sunghoon looked entirely too composed standing in front of you when you had finally found your guts to look.
his dark hair was messy now, lips pink from kissing you. his body was covered in a thin layer of sweat that gave his pale skin a beautiful glow.
which—you immediately looked away.
absolutely not.
sunghoon noticed, of course. he noticed everything.
"you're quiet," he said softly.
you scoffed weakly, body twitching when you feel sunghoon grow hard in you. "this is emotionally traumatic for me."
the corner of his mouth lifted, that stupid almost-smile again. except now it looked softer somehow and less smug.
you attempted to move only for his body to keep you caged between the sink and him. you looked down for a moment to see his cum that had escaped from you dripping down your thigh, a shaky breath leaving your bruised lips.
"don't look at me like that."
"like what?"
"like you just won something, you didn't win shit."
sunghoon leaned back lightly against the door of the washroom eyes still fixed on you. "maybe i did."
your stomach flipped and you frowned immediately, just because you two fucked doesn't mean that you would admit defeat to sunghoon and his annoying antics. "you're so annoying."
"you keep saying that."
"because you keep being annoying."
sunghoon laughed quietly under his breath, shaking his head slightly. the sound hit you straight in the chest in the most irritating way imaginable.
silence settled again for a moment, except this time it didn't feel sharp or tense like your usual arguments.
it felt warm, which was arguably more terrifying.
your eyes narrowed suddenly. "sunoo is never letting me live this down."
sunghoon's smile widened immediately. "he already thought you liked me."
"he's delusional."
"mhm."
you pointed at him instantly. "stop doing that."
"doing what?" he snickers as he finally pulls out, a small whimper escaping your parted lips and sunghoon swears he could cum from that little sound alone.
"that fake calm thing."
"it's not fake."
"that somehow makes it worse."
sunghoon pushed himself off of you before turning you around so your back faced the mirror and stepped closer again.
not cornering you this time, just close enough that your pulse started acting stupid all over again. his gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, then your thighs that were trembling before returning to your eyes.
"so what now?" he asked quietly, his hands coming out to grab on to your hips.
you folded your arms tighter, defensive reflex.
"what do you mean."
"are you still gonna argue with me in class?"
you stared at him like that was the dumbest question ever asked.
"obviously."
sunghoon laughed softly. "figured."
"just because i fucked you doesn't mean your opinions suddenly got better."
"ouch."
"you still sound pretentious."
"and you still interrupt me constantly."
"because you're wrong constantly."
sunghoon shook his head, smiling now. his hand reaching down to push the cum that was trailing down your inner thigh back up—rubbing your swollen cunt with his remnants.
you squeaked out at the feeling, grabbing a hold of his wrist as he watched you with a lazy smile. you hated how much better he looked when he smiled properly.
your phone buzzed loudly against the counter beside you.
then again and again.
you looked down at the endless reddit notifications flooding your screen and groaned dramatically.
"i genuinely hate everyone on that app." sunghoon glanced at your phone before looking back at you, his fingers leaving your cunt to rest back on your hips again much to your dismay.
amusement flickered across his face immediately. "they were pretty accurate though."
"don't start."
"'enemies to lovers' seemed popular."
"they're unemployed."
sunghoon laughed again and you stared at him suspiciously for a second, then narrowed your eyes. "you know this is all your fault."
"interesting argument."
"you replied first."
"you made the post first."
"because you're irritating."
"and yet here you are."
your face heated instantly, sunghoon noticed. his expression softened slightly after that, teasing fading into something quieter.
more careful, he looked at you for a long second close enough that your heartbeat immediately betrayed you again. then, with that same smug little smile returning to his mouth, he tilted his head slightly and murmured, "so."
you narrowed your eyes immediately. "so what."
sunghoon's gaze held yours, steady, amused and dangerously warm.
"do you still think i'm the asshole?"
— enjoy this fic? check out my other ones right here!
⌗ in which . . . you’re baking late at night when lee heeseung walks in and the quiet kitchen shifts from playful comfort into something heated
流星 ໑ . . bf!heeseung x fem!reader
⌗ includes . . . smut (18+), established relationship, oral sex (f. receiving), food play, use of kitchen tools as sensory props, kitchen setting, dominant dynamic, dirty talk, sensory-heavy descriptions ➜ intended for mature audiences | minors do not interact ♡ purely a work of fiction, none of this reflects reality | wc: 2.6k
♪ el’s bubble: okay, kinkiest thing i've probably ever written . . i have to get off my phone and reflect 😢 requested by anon, thank you ! not my best work imo, please ignore any errors, none of this has been proofread and i ended up changing a lot of things last minute 😂 enjoy — likes, reblogs, and feedback are deeply appreciated on here ♡ requests are always open if you want to see me write something specific ۫ ׅ
tags: @simsimluver @maishee @grdientlips @kristynaaah @psychicdazestrawberry @heesroses @vmpiricou @seungiesdoll | send an ask if you’d like to be added ˙𐃷˙
now playing . . . sweet by cigarettes after sex
The soft hum of the refrigerator was the only sound in the apartment, save for the gentle clinking of a metal spoon against a ceramic bowl.
You hummed along to the silent melody, lost in the sweet, comforting world of late-night baking.
Dressed in one of Heeseung’s oversized t-shirts that hung loosely over your frame, paired with a tiny pair of shorts peeking out from beneath, you felt perfectly at ease.
The kitchen air was thick and warm, smelling deliciously of vanilla, sugar, and melting chocolate.
A tray of perfectly golden cupcakes sat cooling on a rack. At the same time, you meticulously piped swirls of creamy buttercream onto another batch, adding a scattering of rainbow sprinkles to each one.
You were so engrossed, head tilted in concentration, that you didn't hear the soft shuffle of bare feet until a warm presence leaned against the counter beside you.
"Mmm, something smells good," a low, raspy voice rumbled, still thick with sleep.
You jumped, nearly smearing frosting across your cheeks. "Heeseung! That scared me!"
You turned to see him, hair mussed, eyes still heavy-lidded, but a small smile playing on his lips.
He was wearing only a pair of sweatpants, his chest bare, and you felt a familiar warmth bloom in your chest at the sight of him.
"I couldn't sleep," he mumbled, reaching out a finger and swiping a dollop of frosting from the bowl. He licked it slowly, his eyes closing in bliss. "This is amazing."
"Hey, hold up, that's for the cupcakes!" you playfully scolded, swatting his hand away. "Go back to bed, Hee. These aren't even close to ready yet."
He grunted, leaning his chin on your shoulder, his breath warm against your neck. "But I'm really, really hungry, baby. Can't I just have one?"
"No, you cannot," you giggled, trying to push him away gently. "They need to be fully decorated, and you're in my way, mister."
"Just one little bite? Please?" he pleaded, his voice a low purr as he nipped playfully at your earlobe.
"Hee!" You swivelled, pushing him back with a hand on his bare chest. "Stop that, you're going to make me mess up." You laughed, genuinely enjoying his sleepy antics.
This was literally your life.
These quiet, playful moments in the late hours were all part of your routine after having been living under the same roof as Heeseung.
You turned back to your task, reaching for a bottle of chocolate syrup from the top shelf.
As you stretched, your shirt rode up a little, and the hem of your shorts rose with it. You leaned forward, craning your neck to see the label, completely oblivious to the sudden, subtle shift in the atmosphere behind you.
Heeseung had been about to steal another taste of frosting, but his eyes had drifted.
The soft, buttery curve of your lower back, the smooth line of your thigh, and then, a fleeting glimpse of delicate lace peeking out from beneath the fabric of your shorts.
It was just a flash, a whisper of ivory against your skin, but it was enough.
More than enough, actually.
The playful glint in his eyes vanished, replaced by a sudden, intense focus. He went completely still, his half-raised hand dropping slowly to his side.
The sweet smell of vanilla and chocolate suddenly seemed to amplify, becoming almost intoxicating.
You finally retrieved the syrup, turning back with a cheerful hum. "Alright, now for the chocolate drizzle..." You trailed off, noticing him.
Damn it.
He wasn't even looking at the cupcakes anymore.
His gaze was fixed on you, heavy and unblinking, his earlier playful expression entirely gone.
"Heeseung?" you asked, a little confused. "What's wrong? Is there something on my face?" You touched your cheek self-consciously.
He didn't answer, just took a slow, deliberate step closer. His eyes, usually so warm and expressive, were now dark, almost predatory.
The playful hunger he'd shown for the cupcakes was now directed solely at you, and it was a hunger that made your breath catch in your throat.
"Hee? Baby? Hello?" you tried again, a nervous flutter starting in your stomach.
The air in the kitchen, once warm and comforting, now felt thick with an entirely different kind of heat.
He reached out, his fingers tracing the curve of your hip through the fabric of his shirt. His touch was light, yet possessive, sending a shiver through you.
"You look really pretty right now," he murmured, his voice deeper, rougher than before. "So, so sweet."
He moved closer still, caging you against the cool marble of the counter.
The half-decorated cupcakes, the bowls of frosting, and the sprinkles all seemed to blur into the background.
His eyes devoured you, tracing the line of your collarbone, lingering on the soft swell of your chest beneath his shirt.
"Heeseung, what are you doing? I'm in the middle of baking," you protested weakly, your voice barely a whisper.
You could feel the heat radiating off his body, the sudden, desperate intensity of his gaze.
This wasn't the playful Heeseung from moments ago.
Hell no.
This was something else entirely.
He leaned in, his lips brushing against your ear. "Forget the baking," he breathed, his hand sliding up your side, fingers brushing against the bare skin of your waist. "I want to taste you instead."
A beat.
Before you could even fully process his words, his mouth was on your neck, a soft groan rumbling in his chest as he kissed and sucked at the sensitive skin beneath your ear.
His hands were everywhere, tracing the curves of your body, pulling you flush against him until you could feel the hard evidence of his desire pressing against your shorts.
"The fuck, Heeseung, wait," you tried, a weak protest, but your body was already betraying you, arching into his touch.
The rich confectionery scent was suddenly mixed with his intoxicating musk, filling your senses.
He pulled back just enough to look into your eyes, his own dark and burning. "Please," he whispered, a raw, needy edge to his voice that made your knees tremble. "Just... please give me a taste."
He kissed you then, deeply and urgently, his tongue sweeping into your mouth, tasting of frosting and something uniquely, deliciously him.
His hands found the hem of his shirt you were wearing, easily pushing it up and over your head, tossing it carelessly onto the floor amidst a scattering of rainbow sprinkles.
The cool air of the kitchen hit your bare skin, but you barely noticed, consumed by the fire he was igniting.
He broke the kiss, his eyes dropping to your exposed chest, a low growl escaping his throat.
"Gosh, you're going to make a mess, I don’t want to clean up so much," you managed, a faint protest as his fingers brushed over the sensitive skin of your breast.
He chuckled, a dark and husky sound.
"That’s good, baby. I love making a mess," his thumb grazed your nipple, making it harden instantly.
"Especially when it's this fucking sweet."
He bent his head, his mouth closing over one peak, drawing a sharp gasp from your lips. His free hand slid down, pushing aside the thin fabric of your shorts, seeking the soft warmth between your thighs.
The cool marble counter pressed against your back, a stark contrast to the burning heat his body was generating.
"Heeseung," you whimpered, your fingers tangling in his messy hair as he suckled greedily.
The kitchen, once a sanctuary of domestic calm, had transformed into a playground of raw desire. Bowls clattered as his elbow nudged them, a half-finished cupcake toppled, its frosting smearing across the counter. A sticky trail of chocolate syrup lay forgotten beside a whisk.
He pulled away from your breast, his eyes still heavy-lidded, but now blazing with a possessive hunger that made your core clench.
He reached for a bottle of whipped cream from the fridge, shaking it vigorously before spraying a decadent dollop onto your stomach.
"So good," he murmured, licking it clean with slow, deliberate strokes of his tongue, making you writhe against him. "So, so, so fucking good, baby."
His mouth moved lower, tasting, teasing, until you were practically melting against the counter.
He was insatiable, devouring you with a desperate urgency that left no room for thought, only sensation.
Your ragged breaths now drowned out the soft hum of the refrigerator, the soft moans escaping your lips, and the frantic rhythm of his touch.
He lifted you, settling you onto the counter amidst the forgotten baking supplies, your legs wrapping instinctively around his waist.
The cool marble, the sticky frosting, the scattered sprinkles – it was all a deliciously messy backdrop to the heat building between you.
He peeled your shorts away only to be met with a teasing glimpse of lace, and his hands tightened on your thighs as though restraining himself was rapidly becoming impossible.
“You wear this while making cupcakes and expect me to behave?” he rasped, voice thick with disbelief, fingers hooking into the delicate sides before tugging the lace down in one impatient motion, his stare turning darker as he left you completely exposed beneath him.
Heeseung's dark eyes burned into your exposed pussy, splayed wide on the counter amid the chaos of scattered bowls — thick buttercream frosting oozing, chocolate ganache pooling, sugar dusting everything like filthy snow.
The air hung thick with the thick, sugary aroma clashing against your sharp, heady scent of arousal.
He licked his lips slowly, predatory. "Fuck, baby, your cunt's weeping for me already. So puffy, so slick, lips parted like they need my mouth buried in 'em. I'm gonna tongue-fuck this juicy thing until you're a shaking mess, begging to soak my face."
You shivered, thighs trembling as he draped your legs over his broad shoulders, knees hooked high to splay you obscenely.
His strong hands gripped your inner thighs, thumbs digging in to hold you open without mercy.
He snatched a spoon from the mess, scooping a dollop of frosting, but instead of your core, he smeared it thick across your sensitive inner thighs, cool cream trailing up toward your crease, inches from your heat, making your skin prickle and twitch.
"Gonna paint these slutty thighs first, make 'em sticky for me to lick clean while I devour your dripping slit. Feel that chill? Your body's already begging for more."
"Heeseung, baby... please," you whined, hips rolling instinctively, clenching on nothing as the frosting melted warm against your flesh.
He smirked, dragging the spoon's edge along your thigh muscles, pressing firmly to massage the cream deeper into your skin, sending tingles racing toward your core.
Then he grabbed the piping bag’s rounded, flexible form, brushing against your skin as he steadied it in his grip, making your muscles jump, blood rushing hotter to your system.
"Spread wider for me, you greedy girl. Let me mark these thighs red while your pussy throbs untouched. Look at it, all shiny and desperate." He held the piping bag steady as his other hand guided your thighs further apart , exposing every inch of your pulsing entrance.
His hot breath ghosted over your clit first, making it throb harder.
Then his tongue struck — flat and broad, lapping from your hole upward in one long, greedy swipe, collecting your tangy slick.
No utensils here, thankfully, it was just his wicked mouth claiming you.
He groaned deep, the vibration humming straight through your core. "Shit, you taste like pure sin, gorgeous. Salty-sweet nectar. Gonna slurp every drop while these thighs quiver around my head."
You moaned loud, fingers twisting in his hair, yanking him closer.
“Ugh, keep doing that, baby.”
He dove in ravenously, lips sealing around your cunt to suck hard, pulsing pulls that hollowed his cheeks.
His tongue flicked the peak relentlessly, tip battering it side-to-side, then circling tight spirals.
Below, he thrust his tongue into your entrance, spearing shallow but insistent, fucking your walls with wet, obscene thrusts.
Slurping sounds filled the kitchen as he sucked your lips into his mouth, tugging them gently between sucks, releasing with filthy pops.
While his face stayed glued to your cunt, he reached for the spoon, dipping its bowl in chocolate ganache.
He ran the curved underside of the spoon lightly over your ass cheeks, the cool metal gliding across your skin in slow, teasing passes, dipping into the crease but never breaching, just hovering at the rim, making your hips buck wildly into his devouring mouth.
"Feel the spoon tickling your tight ass? Chocolate dripping down, begging to mix with your come. But this sloppy cunt? All mine to tongue. Clench on it, baby. Fuck, milk my tongue like the cock it wishes it was."
Your breaths came in gasps, body arching off the counter. "Ugh—fuck, yes… Baby—faster."
"That's my filthy girl," he rasped against your folds, pulling back a slick string of your arousal, connecting his lips to your pussy.
He snatched the icing spatula next, its side gliding over your lower belly, pressing into your hip bones, then down to slap lightly against your clit, sending a sharp jolt through your core.
The frosting from your thighs smeared onto his chin as he plunged back in, nose grinding your clit while his tongue lashed your entrance, plunging deep, curling to hit that spongy spot inside.
He hummed filthy praises into you. "Your pussy's gushing rivers, pretty. Coating my tongue, dripping down my throat. So fucking responsive, I love it. Twitching every time I flick this clit. You love being my little kitchen toy, don't you? Legs spread, thighs sticky, cunt feasted on like dessert."
His free hand slapped your thigh with the spatula again, the sting amplifying every lick, every suck, as he alternated between vacuuming your folds and tongue-fucking your hole.
Pleasure built like a storm, coiling viciously in your gut.
He grabbed the whisk now,its looped wires dragging slowly over your breasts, trailing down your sides, grazing your nipples through, tiny scratches raising goosebumps everywhere, indirect fire that made your pussy clamp harder on his invading tongue.
"These wires on your tits, huh? Making your whole body buzz while I eat this perfect cunt. Push it out, grind on my face, gorgeous."
You thrashed, heels digging into his back. "Heeseung! Oh fuck, I'm gonna—"
"Not yet," he growled, pulling his mouth away just as you teetered on the edge, your pussy clenching desperately in the air, slick drooling down your ass.
He used the spoon to smear more frosting along your inner thighs and ass, the cool sweetness contrasting his hot breath as he blew teasingly over your throbbing clit. "Gonna edge this needy slit until you're sobbing. Beg for my tongue back in your sloppy hole."
"Please! Damn it, just use me, Hee!" you cried, hips humping nothing.
Satisfied, he attacked again, fiercer.
Tongue swirling your clit in furious circles, then flattening to lap your entire pussy in broad strokes, sucking your folds clean of any stray juice.
He added fingers to spread you wider, his digits holding your lips apart for his tongue to plunder deeper, lapping your walls, humming vibrations that shattered you.
"Come for me now, my pretty girl," he demanded, voice muffled in your heat. "Flood my mouth with that hot liquid. Drown me in your come while I lap it all up."
The dam broke.
Waves crashed through you, your cunt spasming violently, gushing slick in rhythmic pulses against his greedy tongue.
He drank you down, swallowing every spurt, nose rubbing your oversensitive clit to drag out the ecstasy until tears pricked your eyes and your thighs quaked uncontrollably.
He eased off slowly, licking softly through the aftershocks, cleaning every drop. Rising finally, his chin glistened with your release mixed with thigh-smeared frosting and chocolate.
"Best meal I've ever had." He pressed a tender kiss to your sticky inner thigh, nipping the skin lightly before licking away a chocolate streak.
Pairing: senior!heeseung x loser!fem!reader
Genre: slowburn, college!au, smut MDNI, comedy, fluff, socially challenged fem!reader, misunderstanding, he fell first he fell harder
Synopsis: The hopeless romantic you are decided to confess and give a heartfelt letter to your all time crush but fate decided otherwise and made you confess to the wrong person...the so-called womanizer of campus, Lee Heeseung. Maybe you should have just keep your feelings to yourself...or maybe it was a sign from the universe.
Warnings: footjob, swearing, oral (fem!rec), fingering
WC: 17k
Note: This one is a long one guys (just so you know), I really wanted to try putting more efforts in my writing and do something longer than I usually do, I don't know if people tend to read the shorter or longer fics but well... I'm really proud of myself for writing more detailed and polished fics, especially knowing that I'm a lazy person who usually do the bare minimum.
"You're a disaster...but God help me if I don't want to be a disaster with you for the rest of my life"
You’re staring at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror, and the girl staring back looks like she’s about to either throw up or ascend to another dimension. Maybe both. In that order.
The letter is clutched so tightly in your hand that the pale lavender envelope is starting to crease, and you force yourself to loosen your grip before you ruin the one thing you’ve spent three weeks perfecting. Three weeks. That’s twenty-one days of drafting, crossing out, rewriting, Googling “how to write a love letter without sounding like a desperate loser,” and then rewriting again. You’ve used up an entire pack of stationery. You’ve watched so many calligraphy tutorials that the YouTube algorithm thinks you’re training to become a medieval scribe. All for this one moment. This one letter. This one massive, terrifying, possibly life-ruining leap of faith.
You are a hopeless romantic. Hopeless being the operative word.
It’s not that you don’t believe in love. You do. Desperately, overwhelmingly, with every fiber of your first-year STEM student soul. You believe in meet-cutes and slow burns and the exact moment when two people look at each other and the entire world goes soft around the edges. You’ve read about it a hundred times. You’ve watched it play out on every screen you own. You’ve composed entire daydreams about it during particularly boring chemistry lectures. Love is your favorite subject, the one you’ve studied with more dedication than calculus or physics combined. There’s just one tiny, inconvenient, absolutely infuriating problem.
You’re terrified of it.
Not the idea of it. The idea is lovely. The idea is safe. The idea lives in your head where everything unfolds exactly the way you want it to, where you always say the right thing, where you never trip over your own feet or laugh too loud at the wrong moment or stand frozen in a doorway like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. But real love? The kind that requires vulnerability and eye contact and actually speaking words out loud with your mouth? That kind of love makes your palms sweat and your heart race in a decidedly unromantic, fight-or-flight kind of way. You are, and this is the most embarrassing part, a coward. A romantic coward. You dream of grand gestures but can barely manage a coherent sentence when an attractive person so much as glances in your direction.
Which brings you back to the letter.
The letter is your loophole. Your workaround. Your way of confessing your feelings without actually having to say them, because writing them down felt manageable in a way that speaking never has. You can be eloquent on paper. On paper, you can say things like “the first time I saw your smile, it felt like someone had turned on all the lights in a room I didn’t even realize was dark” without immediately wanting to crawl into the nearest hole and live out the rest of your days an hermit. On paper, you’re brave. On paper, you’re the kind of person who goes after what she wants.
In reality, you’ve been hiding in this bathroom for fifteen minutes, and your hands are shaking so badly that a passing person would think you are having an epileptic seizure.
“Okay,” you whisper to your reflection. “Okay. You can do this. You are a woman on a mission. You are a warrior. You are-”
A toilet flushes in one of the stalls behind you, and you nearly launch yourself through the ceiling.
A girl you vaguely recognize from your introductory programming class emerges, gives you an odd look as she washes her hands, and leaves without saying anything. You wait until the door swings shut, then press your forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and contemplate every life choice that has led you to this moment.
His name is Jungwon.
Yang Jungwon. Second year. Undeclared major but leaning toward something in the humanities, which you know because you may have done a bit of light, respectful, completely non-creepy research. He has a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and a laugh that sounds like sunshine if sunshine could make noise, and he holds doors open for people even when they’re still like ten feet away, which creates that awkward situation where the person has to speed-walk to not seem rude, but he never seems to mind. You first noticed him at the campus library during midterms when he quietly slid a pack of gummy bears across the table toward you at 2 AM, muttering something about glucose being good for brain function, and then went back to his book like he hadn’t just fundamentally altered the trajectory of your entire emotional existence.
That was four months ago. You’ve been pining ever since. Pining, yearning, longing, you’ve run through the entire lexicon of unrequited affection, and you’re exhausted. Today, you’ve decided, is the day it ends. One way or another.
You push yourself off the mirror, square your shoulders, and march out of the bathroom with the determination of someone going to war. The envelope is slightly damp from your grip, but it’s still intact, and the words inside are still true, and somewhere on this campus, Yang Jungwon is about to receive the most heartfelt confession letter ever written by a first-year student who has consumed an unhealthy amount of romance media.
Now you just have to find him.
—————
The hallway is bustling with students, the usual midday chaos of people rushing to classes or huddling in groups to complain about assignments. You scan the crowd, looking for a familiar face that might point you in the right direction, and your eyes land on a guy leaning against the wall, scrolling through his phone with the dead-eyed expression of someone who has just finished a three-hour lab.
“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out about an octave higher than normal. You clear your throat. “Sorry, um, do you know where I can find Yang Jungwon? Second year?”
The guy looks up, blinks slowly, deciding whether or not to acknowledge your presence, and then shrugs. “PC room, I think. Saw him heading there like twenty minutes ago.”
The PC room. Of course. It’s in the engineering and informatics building, a place you’ve rarely ever been to. But you know where it is, roughly, and you thank the guy with what you hope is a normal smile and not the rictus grin of someone rushing toward emotional catastrophe.
The walk across campus takes approximately seven minutes, and you spend every single one of them rehearsing what you’re going to say. You’ve already written the letter, so technically you don’t have to say anything, you can just hand it over and flee but you want to say something. Something cool. Something memorable.
“Hey, Jungwon, this is for you.” Simple. Direct. Good.
“I wrote you something. No pressure, just read it when you have time.” Casual. Low-stakes. Excellent.
“Hi, I’ve been emotionally compromised by your existence for several months, please accept this paper rectangle of feelings.” Okay, maybe not that one.
The engineering building looms in front of you before you’re ready. You push through the main doors and immediately feel out of place. The students here move with a different energy, less frantic, more focused, the kind of people who probably know what a server is and have opinions about programming languages you’ve never heard of.
You follow the signs toward the PC room, your footsteps echoing in the corridor, and with every step, your heart climbs higher up your throat. This is it. This is the moment. You’re going to walk in there, find Jungwon, hand him the letter, and then whatever happens happens. At least you’ll have tried. At least you’ll have been brave, even if it’s only for thirty seconds.
The door to the PC room is slightly ajar, and you can hear voices inside, multiple voices, which gives you pause. You assumed he’d be alone. Or with maybe one other person.
You hesitate. Your hand hovers over the door handle. Every instinct is screaming at you to turn around, go back to your dorm, and spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been. And maybe you would, if not for the small, stubborn voice in the back of your mind that says: You’ve already come this far. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to be the kind of person who actually does the thing instead of just dreaming about it?
Yes. Yes, you do.
You squeeze your eyes shut, take a breath so deep it makes you lightheaded, and push the door open with more force than strictly necessary. It slams against the wall with a bang that makes approximately twelve heads swivel in your direction, and for one horrifying moment, you are the center of attention in a room full of strangers.
But you don’t see any of them. You only see the figure sitting at the computer closest to the door, his back half-turned to you, hair falling over his forehead, the exact silhouette you’ve been looking for. Or at least, the exact silhouette you think you’ve been looking for.
You don’t stop to confirm. You don’t let yourself think. You just march forward, thrust the letter out in front of you like a shield, and launch into the speech you’ve been rehearsing for three weeks.
“This is for you. I’m sorry if this is weird or sudden but I’ve liked you for a really long time and I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. You don’t have to respond right away. You don’t have to respond ever, actually. I just wanted you to know that someone out there thinks you’re wonderful and I wrote it all down because I’m better at writing than talking and honestly I might pass out if I keep standing here so please just take this and I’ll go-”
You finally look up.
And the face staring back at you is absolutely, categorically, one hundred percent not Jungwon.
The boy in front of you is taller than Jungwon. Broader shoulders. Sharper jawline. Different eyes, darker, deeper, currently widened in a mixture of surprise and something you can’t quite read. His lips are parted slightly, as if he was about to say something before you launched into your emotional word-vomit, and he’s holding a half-eaten protein bar that’s now frozen halfway to his mouth.
The room has gone completely, utterly silent.
You can feel the stares of every single person boring into the back of your head. Someone coughs. Someone else whispers something that sounds suspiciously like “did she just-” before being shushed by their neighbor.
And then the boy, the very handsome, very wrong boy, sets down his protein bar, takes the letter gently from your trembling hand, and says in a voice that’s low and smooth and completely unfamiliar: “Wow. Okay. What’s your name?”
This is the worst moment of your entire life. You are going to die right here, in this PC room, surrounded by computer monitors and half-empty energy drink cans and a dozen witnesses who will spread this story to every corner of the university within the next three hours. Your obituary will read: here lies Y/N, the loser who can’t even recognize her ultimate crush.
“Y/N,” you croak, because your mouth is apparently still functioning even though every other part of you has shut down. “L/N Y/N. First year. STEM.”
You don’t know why you said STEM. He didn’t ask for your department. You’re offering information nobody requested. This is a disaster.
But the boy, he’s looking at you with an expression you can’t decipher, his head tilted slightly to the side like you’re a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. He’s wearing a dark hoodie with the informatics department logo on it, and there’s a pair of expensive-looking headphones draped around his neck, and his hair is slightly mussed in a way that suggests he’s been running his fingers through it while concentrating. He’s absurdly good-looking, the kind of good-looking that makes you simultaneously want to stare and look away, and you’re only now noticing the way several girls in the room have been watching him since you entered, not just because of your blunder, but because they’ve been watching him.
“I’m Heeseung,” he says, and there’s a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”
Lee Heeseung. The name registers somewhere in the back of your panic-addled brain. It’s familiar in the way that campus gossip is familiar, attached to words like hot and player and don’t get your hopes up because he’ll charm you and then move on. You’ve heard girls in your dorm talking about him in hushed, giggling tones, trading stories about brief encounters and misinterpreted invitations. And you, in your infinite wisdom, have just handed a love letter meant for someone else directly into his notorious hands.
You have to fix this. You have to tell him it was a mistake. You have to-
“I’m flattered,” Heeseung says, and his smile widens slightly, not quite a smirk but definitely approaching smirk territory. “Really. This is... I mean, no one’s ever confessed to me with an actual letter before. It’s kind of old school.” He turns the envelope over in his hands, examining it with what seems like genuine curiosity. “The handwriting is really pretty. Did you do the calligraphy yourself?”
“Yes,” you say, because you are physically incapable of lying when put on the spot, and also because your brain has apparently decided that the best course of action is to just answer whatever questions he asks like this is a normal conversation and not the emotional equivalent of a tornado.
“Impressive.” He looks at you, really looks at you, and something shifts in his expression. The teasing edge softens just a fraction. “A confession is a lot, though. I mean, I’m honored, but we don’t even know each other.”
This is your opening. This is the moment where you say “actually, that’s because this letter wasn’t meant for you, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding, I’m so sorry, please forget this ever happened.” The words are right there, lined up on your tongue, ready to go.
But the room is still watching. A dozen pairs of eyes. The whispers have stopped, but the staring hasn’t, and you can feel every single gaze like a physical weight pressing down on you. If you correct him now, in front of everyone, you’ll have to explain. You’ll have to admit that you walked into a crowded room and confessed to the wrong person like an absolute buffoon. You’ll become a campus legend for all the wrong reasons: the girl who was too stupid to even identify her own crush. The story will follow you for the rest of your university career. You’ll never live it down.
But if you just... let him believe it... if you just nod and agree and leave as quickly as possible... you can fix this later. Privately. Without an audience. You can find him tomorrow, or send him a message, or do literally anything other than humiliate yourself further in front of all these people.
Your mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“I know,” you hear yourself say. “It’s a lot. I know.”
Heeseung nods thoughtfully, like you’ve said something profound. “But I’m not against it. Starting slow, I mean. If you want.”
What.
“What,” you say, but it comes out more like a statement than a question.
“I’m okay with starting slow,” he repeats, and now the smile is definitely back, a little crooked, a little curious. “You’re cute. And clearly brave. I like that. So if you want to, I don’t know, get coffee sometime and see where this goes... I’m open to it.”
Someone in the room lets out a low whistle. Someone else says “Heeseung, are you serious right now?” in a tone of utter disbelief. But Heeseung doesn’t look away from you. He’s waiting for your answer, his gaze steady and warm, and you are standing in the epicenter of a complete and total catastrophe with absolutely no idea how to get out.
Say no. Say it was a mistake. Say the truth.
“Okay,” you whisper.
Okay?! Okay?!
“Okay,” he echoes, and the smile breaks fully across his face, transforming him from handsome to devastating. “Good. I’ll find you. Y/N, first year, STEM, right?”
You nod mutely.
“Cool.” He tucks your letter carefully into the pocket of his hoodie, like it’s something precious, like he’s planning to read it later, and the gesture makes your stomach twist with guilt so intense you think you might actually be sick. “I’ll see you around, Y/N.”
You don’t remember leaving the room. You don’t remember the walk back across campus or the elevator ride to your floor or the moment you collapsed face-first onto your dorm bed. All you know is that one moment you were standing in the PC room, and the next you are here, staring at the ceiling, replaying every single agonizing second on an endless loop.
You confessed to the wrong person.
You confessed to the wrong person.
And for some reason that you absolutely cannot comprehend, he said yes.
Across campus, in a PC room that has finally returned to its normal hum of activity, Lee Heeseung pulls a slightly crumpled lavender envelope out of his hoodie pocket and stares at it for a long moment.
“Dude,” says his friend Jay from the next computer over, not bothering to hide his grin. “What just happened?”
“I don’t know,” Heeseung says honestly. And he doesn’t. He’s used to attention, he knows how to handle it, how to smile and nod and gently redirect without hurting anyone’s feelings. It’s a skill he’s developed over the years, the only way he knows to deal with the unfortunate side effect of his people-pleasing tendencies. He’s nice to someone, he helps them with an assignment, he holds a door open or offers a pen, and suddenly they’re looking at him with stars in their eyes, and he doesn’t know how to tell them that he was just trying to be polite without sounding like an arrogant jerk. So he lets them down easy, or he avoids the situation entirely, and his reputation grows in ways that don’t reflect the truth at all.
But this, this is new. A letter. An actual, physical, handwritten letter, with swooping calligraphy and a lavender envelope and a girl who looked so terrified that he thought she might actually pass out right there on the linoleum floor.
She looked at him like he was a natural disaster. Like she was watching a building collapse in slow motion and couldn’t do anything to stop it.
And then she said okay anyway.
“She’s interesting,” Heeseung murmurs, more to himself than to Jay, and carefully opens the envelope.
“Interesting how?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s too busy reading, his eyes moving slowly across the carefully penned words, the ink slightly smudged in places where the writer’s hand might have trembled. It’s beautiful. It’s earnest. It’s the kind of letter that someone writes when they mean every single word, when they’ve poured their entire heart onto the page without holding anything back.
He’s never received anything like it before.
And he wants to know more about the girl who wrote it, the girl who burst into his afternoon like a hurricane of nerves and feelings.
“Jay,” he says, still staring at the letter, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “I think something interesting just walked into my life.”
He doesn’t notice the way his friend shakes his head and mutters something about “here we go again.”
He’s too busy wondering when he’ll see Y/N next.
—————
The following forty-eight hours of your life can be accurately described as a masterclass in strategic avoidance and tactical regret.
You skip two classes. Not on purpose, exactly, you just can’t bring yourself to leave your dorm room when every shadow in the hallway might be Lee Heeseung coming to collect on that coffee date you apparently agreed to in a moment of temporary insanity. You survive on instant noodles and the protein bars your friend left on her desk with a sticky note that said “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY,” which this absolutely qualifies as. You watch three entire seasons of Bridgerton without retaining a single moment because your brain is too busy replaying the PC room incident on a continuous, merciless loop.
“I’m Lee Heeseung. Third year. Informatics engineering.”
“I’m okay with starting slow.”
“You’re cute.”
You bury your face in your pillow and scream, but it comes out muffled and pathetic, like a small animal giving up on life.
By day three, you’ve developed a system. You only leave your room during off-peak hours, skittering through campus, your head on a constant swivel. You’ve memorized the locations of every vending machine in buildings Heeseung is unlikely to frequent. You’ve started taking the long way to your remaining classes, cutting through the art department and the greenhouse and once, memorably, a service corridor that smelled strongly of bleach and soap. You’ve become a ghost. A phantom. A creature of the shadows who survives on granola bars and instant noddles.
But the problem with running away from your problems is that your problems don’t actually go anywhere. They just wait. And think about you. And eventually, when you least expect it, they catch up.
It happens on a Thursday.
You’re crouched behind a potted plant near the science building, scanning the courtyard for any sign of tall, attractive informatics students, when your phone buzzes with a text from your best friend, Yunjin.
Yunjin: heard you’ve been living like a sewer rat. want me to bring you real food?
You: can’t. i’m in the middle of a crisis
Yunjin: You’re executing what we talked about yet?
You: it’s in process
Yunjin: at the end of the day, you will have to tell him
You stare at the message for a long moment. It’s such a simple solution. So elegant. So reasonable. And yet, every time you imagine yourself walking up to Heeseung and saying “actually, I meant to give that letter to someone else,” your entire body physically recoils like you’ve touched a hot stove. The humiliation would be astronomical. The look on his face, surprise, then confusion, then that horrible moment of realization that he was never supposed to be the recipient would haunt you for the rest of your natural life. And you’d still have to explain the Jungwon part. And Jungwon would find out. And then you’d be the weird girl who couldn’t even confess to the right person, and Heeseung would be the guy who got accidentally confessed to, and everyone would laugh about it for weeks, and-
Your phone buzzes again.
Yunjin: i can hear you overthinking from across campus. just rip off the bandaid. what’s the worst that could happen
You type back a single message: he could tell everyone and i’d have to transfer schools and change my name and become a farmer in New Zeland
Yunjin: dramatic. but valid. good luck with your plant hiding
You shove your phone back into your pocket and peek around the potted plant again. The courtyard is clear. This is your window. You take a deep breath, steel your nerves, and scuttle out from behind the foliage.
The plan for today is simple: find Heeseung, explain the misunderstanding, and disappear forever. You’ve spent the entire morning psyching yourself up for this. You’ve practiced the speech in the mirror seventeen times. You’ve even written a script on your phone that you can refer to in case of emergency. It’s thorough, it’s clear, it leaves absolutely no room for misinterpretation, and it ends with a sincere apology and a polite request that you both pretend this never happened. It’s perfect. It’s foolproof. All you have to do is locate the target.
Easier said than done. You’ve been looking for him since yesterday, not to talk to, but to observe from a safe distance so you could plan your approach and the universe, in its infinite comedic wisdom, has made him completely unfindable. It’s like he vanished off the face of the earth the moment you actually wanted to see him. Three days ago, you couldn’t walk three feet without catching a glimpse of him, but now? Now he’s a ghost. A myth. A concept rather than a physical entity.
You’re going to have to ask for help.
This is, objectively, a terrible idea. Asking for help means talking to people, and talking to people about Heeseung means potentially revealing that you’re looking for him, which means potentially revealing why you’re looking for him, which means the whole campus could know about the letter situation by lunchtime. But you’re running out of options, and you’re running out of granola bars, and you can’t live behind potted plants forever.
You find your informant near the engineering building, a girl with neon green headphones and a laptop covered in stickers, sitting on a bench and typing furiously at something that looks like code. She seems approachable. She seems like she won’t ask too many questions. You approach with what you hope is casual confidence and not the desperate energy of someone who has been living on protein bars.
“Excuse me,” you say, and your voice comes out surprisingly normal. Points for you. “Do you know where I can find Lee Heeseung? Third year, informatics?”
The girl looks up, her eyes flicking over you with mild curiosity. She doesn’t ask why you’re looking for him, which makes you want to hug her. “Heeseung? Yeah, I think I saw him heading to the quad about ten minutes ago. Something about meeting up with some people before his next class.”
The quad. Of course. The most open, public, exposed location on the entire campus. The place where literally everyone congregates. The absolute last place you want to have a conversation about accidental love confessions.
“Great,” you say, and your voice is definitely an octave higher now. “Great. Thank you. Thanks. So much.”
The girl gives you a weird look, shrugs, and goes back to her coding.
You’re already moving, your feet carrying you toward the quad before your brain can catch up and talk you out of it. This is fine. This is progress. You’ll find him, you’ll pull him aside, you’ll give him the speech, and then you’ll be free. You’ll be a normal person again. You’ll be able to walk through campus without checking every corner for a tall informatics student who thinks you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date.
The quad is bustling when you arrive, clusters of students sprawled across the grass and gathered around the stone benches near the fountain. The afternoon sun is bright and warm, the kind of weather that makes everyone want to be outside, which is lovely and picturesque and deeply inconvenient for your purposes. You squint against the glare, scanning the crowd for a familiar dark-haired figure.
No Heeseung.
You circle the perimeter, weaving between groups of friends and dodging a frisbee that comes sailing dangerously close to your head. You check near the fountain, near the big oak tree, near the cluster of food trucks that’s set up along the east edge. Still no Heeseung. Your informant said ten minutes ago, he should be here. Unless he already left. Unless you missed him. Unless this is a sign from the universe that you should give up and commit to the farmer life plan after all.
You’re so focused on your search that you don’t notice someone approaching until a shadow falls across your path, and a voice, warm, familiar, the exact voice you’ve been daydreaming about for four months, says:
“Y/N? Hey, it is you!”
You look up.
Yang Jungwon is standing right in front of you, smiling like the sun just came out from behind a cloud, and every single coherent thought in your brain immediately evaporates.
He’s wearing a soft-looking cream sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his dark hair is slightly windswept, and there’s a tiny mole near his chin that you’ve never noticed before but is now seared into your memory forever. He’s holding a book, something with a cracked spine and a title in a language you don’t recognize and he’s looking at you with genuine, undiluted pleasure, like running into you is the best thing that’s happened to him all day.
“It’s me,” you say, because you are a conversational genius. “I mean. Yes. Hi. Hello.”
Smooth. Flawless execution. Ten out of ten.
Jungwon doesn’t seem to notice your complete lack of verbal grace. His smile widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes in exactly the way you’ve catalogued in your mental Jungwon database. “I thought I recognized you. You’re in my philosophy elective, right? Front row, near the window?”
He knows where you sit. He knows where you sit. This is both the best and worst information you’ve ever received, because on one hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, but on the other hand, Yang Jungwon has noticed your existence, and now you have to be a normal human being and not the disaster you currently are.
“Front row near the window,” you confirm, nodding a little too vigorously. “That’s me. I like the natural light. For... note-taking purposes.”
“Makes sense.” He shifts his weight, tucking the book under his arm. “You take really detailed notes, by the way. I sat behind you once, and I was honestly impressed. Your color-coding system is no joke.”
Jungwon has looked at your notes. Jungwon has been impressed by your notes. Your brain is short-circuiting at approximately the speed of light, and you have to physically resist the urge to fist-pump in the middle of the quad.
“Thank you,” you manage. “I have a lot of highlighters. Maybe too many. Is there such a thing as too many highlighters? I don’t think so, but I’ve been told my stationery collection is concerning.”
Oh no. Why are you talking about stationery? You need to say something charming. Something witty. Something that will make him see you as more than the girl with the aggressive color-coding system.
“I don’t think it’s concerning,” Jungwon says, and there’s a teasing lilt to his voice that makes your knees go weak. “Passionate, maybe. Dedicated. I respect it.”
“Passionate and dedicated,” you repeat faintly. “That’s... yeah. That’s my brand.”
He laughs, and it’s exactly like you remember, bright and warm, the kind of laugh that makes you want to do whatever you just did again and again just to hear it on repeat. “I like it. Passion is underrated.” He tilts his head, studying you with an expression you can’t quite read. “So what brings you to the quad? You usually eat lunch in the science building courtyard, don’t you?”
Your heart stutters. He knows where you eat lunch. He’s observed your habits. This is either a sign of mutual interest or you’ve accidentally become the subject of a sociological case study, and at this point you’re willing to accept either outcome.
“I’m, um, looking for someone,” you say, and the confession letter debacle comes crashing back into your consciousness like a wrecking ball through a glass window. Right. You’re supposed to be finding Heeseung. You’re supposed to be fixing the misunderstanding. That’s why you’re here. Not to bask in the radiant warmth of Jungwon’s attention like a lizard on a sunny rock.
“Anyone I know?” Jungwon asks, and there’s something in his tone, curiosity, maybe.
“Probably not,” you say quickly. “Just a... just a person. A random person. Not important.”
Jungwon raises an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced, but before he can press further, a new voice cuts through the afternoon air like a knife through butter.
“There you are.”
You freeze. Your blood turns to ice. Every cell in your body screams in unison: run.
Lee Heeseung is walking toward you across the quad, his headphones hanging around his neck and his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his jacket. He looks exactly as devastatingly attractive as he did three days ago, which is deeply unfair. His expression is a mixture of curiosity and amusement, and when his eyes meet yours, that slight smile, the one that’s not quite a smirk but definitely is a smirk’s second cousin, curves across his lips.
“I heard you’ve been looking for me,” he says, coming to a stop beside Jungwon like this is the most natural gathering in the world. “You know, if you wanted to see me, you could have just messaged. I would have given you my number at the PC room.”
Jungwon looks between you and Heeseung with visible confusion, his earlier smile fading into something more guarded. “Wait. You two know each other?”
This is it. This is the moment the universe has been building toward. Every terrible decision, every act of cowardice, every misguided attempt to avoid embarrassment, it’s all led here, to this exact spot on the quad, with the wrong guy standing next to the right guy and your entire romantic future hanging in the balance.
“I wouldn’t say know,” you begin, but Heeseung is already talking over you, apparently immune to the desperate telepathic signals you’re trying to beam directly into his brain.
“She confessed to me two days ago,” Heeseung says, and his tone is so casual, so conversational, like he’s discussing the weather or what he had for lunch. “Walked right into the PC room, handed me a letter, told me she’d liked me for a long time. It was very romantic. Very old-school. I was impressed.”
Silence. Jungwon stares at Heeseung. Then at you. Then back at Heeseung.
“She... confessed to you,” Jungwon repeats slowly, and his voice has gone flat in a way that makes your heart splinter into approximately seven thousand pieces.
“Full confession,” Heeseung confirms, still smiling. “I’m thinking we’ll start with coffee. Keep it simple, you know? She’s shy. I don’t want to overwhelm her.”
This is a nightmare. This is a waking, breathing, actively-unfolding nightmare, and you are trapped in it like a fly in amber, unable to move or speak or do anything except watch as every possible future with Jungwon crumbles to dust before your eyes.
Because here’s the thing you realize in that horrible, crystal-clear moment: you can’t correct Heeseung now. Not in front of Jungwon. Not when Jungwon has just been told, in no uncertain terms, that you confessed to someone else. If you explain the truth, that the letter was actually meant for Jungwon, that the whole thing was a catastrophic mistake, then what? Jungwon would know you’d been planning to confess to him, but he’d also know that you somehow managed to mess it up so spectacularly that you confessed to his friend instead. You’d look incompetent at best and completely unhinged at worst. And Heeseung would be humiliated, and Jungwon would be awkward, and you’d be the epicenter of a social catastrophe so immense that all three of you would have to avoid each other for the rest of your academic careers.
You are trapped. Completely, utterly, irreversibly trapped.
“Interesting,” Jungwon says, and the word is so neutral that it cuts deeper than any insult ever could. “I didn’t realize you two ran in the same circles.”
“We don’t,” you croak. “We really, really don’t.”
“We’re just getting started,” Heeseung says cheerfully, and he has the audacity to wink at you. Like this is some kind of adorable inside joke instead of the emotional apocalypse it actually is.
You have to get out of here. You have to escape before the sob building in your chest forces its way out and makes everything infinitely worse. You can feel it pressing against your ribs, hot and insistent, and if you don’t leave right now, you’re going to burst into tears in the middle of the quad in front of both of them, and then the disaster will be complete.
“I have to go,” you blurt out, and you’re already backing away, your feet moving before your brain can issue any kind of warning. “I have… a thing. A class. A lab. A lab class. It’s very important. I can’t miss it. I have to go.”
Heeseung’s brow furrows slightly. “Wait, I thought you wanted to talk to-”
“Nope! No talking! We’re good! Everything’s fine! Bye!”
You spin around and power-walk toward the nearest exit, which happens to be in the direction of the fountain, which you only realize when your foot catches on the low stone ledge and you go sprawling forward with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.
Your knee hits the ground. Your dignity hits the ground approximately three feet to the left. Several people turn to look.
“Y/N!” That’s Jungwon’s voice, concerned and moving closer, and you absolutely cannot handle that right now.
“I’m fine!” you shriek, scrambling to your feet with adrenaline-fueled desperation. “Totally fine! Happens all the time! I’m very clumsy! It’s part of my charm!”
You don’t look back. You can’t look back. If you look back, you’ll see Jungwon’s worried expression and Heeseung’s confused one, and you’ll have to confront the full magnitude of what just happened, and your fragile emotional state simply cannot withstand that kind of pressure. So you run. Not jog, not power-walk…run. Across the quad, past the food trucks, through a gap between two buildings, and out onto the main campus pathway like the hounds of hell are snapping at your heels.
You don’t stop until you reach the arts building, and you don’t start breathing normally until you’ve locked yourself in a practice room on the third floor, surrounded by soundproof walls and a piano that’s seen better days. You slide down against the door, pull your knees up to your chest, and let out a sound that’s halfway between a groan and a wail.
Everything is ruined. Everything. You had one chance, one single, solitary chance to fix the misunderstanding and salvage your dignity and maybe, just maybe, preserve the possibility of something with Jungwon somewhere down the line. And instead, you let your hopeless romantic heart get distracted by a five-minute conversation about philosophy notes and highlighters, and now you’re the girl who confessed to Lee Heeseung, and Jungwon thinks you’re interested in someone else, and there is no conceivable way to untangle this mess without making everything exponentially worse.
You’re going to have to transfer schools. You’re going to have to move to another country. You’re going to have to fake your own death and start a new identity as a goat farmer in New Zeland.
The door handle jiggles behind you. “Occupied!” you yell, your voice cracking.
“Y/N? Is that you?”
Your best friend Yunjin’s voice filters through the door, muffled but unmistakable, and the sound of it is enough to crack the dam you’ve been desperately trying to hold together. You scramble to your feet, fumble with the lock, and yank the door open to reveal Yunjin standing in the hallway with a cup of bubble tea in each hand and an expression of profound concern on her face.
“I saw you running,” she says, her eyes scanning your disheveled appearance. “Like, truly running. I’ve never seen you run before. You once told me running was for people who don’t appreciate the journey.”
“Yunjin,” you crumble, and your voice is so pitiful that she immediately sets down both drinks and pulls you into a hug.
“Okay,” she says, steering you back into the practice room and closing the door behind her. “Okay. Sit down. Tell me everything. What happened? Did you talk to Heeseung? Did you fix it?”
You laugh, but it comes out wrong, high and wobbly, on the edge of hysteria. “Fix it? Fix it? Yunjin, I made it so much worse. I made it so much worse that I think I actually created new dimensions of worse. Scientists are going to have to invent new words to describe how badly I messed this up.”
She settles onto the piano bench, and you collapse onto the floor in front of her, crossing your legs and burying your face in your hands. The story spills out of you in a torrent, the quad, the search for Heeseung, the unexpected appearance of Jungwon, the conversation that made your heart soar, and then the moment Heeseung appeared like a harbinger of doom and casually announced your confession to the one person you never wanted to know about it.
“And then I fell,” you finish miserably. “In front of both of them. And I ran away. And now Jungwon thinks I like Heeseung, and Heeseung thinks I like Heeseung, and I can’t correct either of them without making everything even weirder, and my life is a romantic comedy written by a petty incel.”
Yunjin is quiet for a moment. Then she lets out a long, slow breath. “Okay. That’s... that’s a lot.”
“I know.”
“And you’re telling me you couldn’t just say, hey Heeseung, sorry for the mix-up, the letter wasn’t for you, my bad?”
You look up at her, your eyes rimmed with red. “In front of Jungwon? After Heeseung already told him I confessed? What would Jungwon think of me?”
Yunjin considers this. “That you’re a disaster, probably.”
“Exactly!”
“But a lovable disaster,” she adds. “Disasters can be endearing.”
“Yunjin, please focus.”
She holds up her hands in surrender, but there’s a glint in her eye that you recognize, the one that means she’s about to drop some wisdom on you whether you’re ready for it or not. Yunjin has been your best friend since orientation week, when you both accidentally joined the wrong club meeting and ended up spending two hours in a competitive gardening seminar before realizing your mistake. She’s practical where you’re dreamy, decisive where you’re hesitant, and she’s talked you down from approximately four hundred anxiety spirals since the semester started. If anyone can find a way out of this mess, it’s her.
“Okay,” she says, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Let me present you with an alternative perspective.”
“I’m listening.”
“Lee Heeseung,” she says, ticking off points on her fingers, “has a reputation. A big one. Everyone knows it. He’s the guy who’s super nice to everyone, especially girls, and then they fall for him and he gets all surprised when they expect something more, and then things fizzle out because he wasn’t looking for anything serious.” She makes air quotes with her fingers. “Sound familiar?”
You blink. “I mean... I’ve heard things. But he didn’t seem like-”
“That’s his whole thing,” Yunjin interrupts. “He doesn’t seem like it. That’s why it works. He likes when everyone is after him. But nice doesn’t equal interested, so girls get the wrong idea and then they get hurt. It’s a cycle.” She pops a tapioca pearl into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “My point is, you don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to fix this. You just need to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For him to get bored.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Think about it. You’re not actually interested in him, right? You’re not going to fall all over yourself trying to get his attention. You’re not going to be waiting outside his classes or accidentally showing up wherever he hangs out. You’re not going to be like every other girl who’s chased after him.”
You frown. “So... what, I just... do nothing?”
“No, you do the opposite of chasing.” Yunjin grins, and it’s slightly wicked. “You make yourself as uninteresting to him as possible. You’re awkward, you’re weird, you’re clearly not trying to impress him. You don’t dress up when you know you might see him. You talk about boring things. You mention, I don’t know, your extensive collection of vintage stamps or whatever nerdy hobby you can think of. You make yourself boring.”
“I don’t have a stamp collection.”
“Then make one up! The point is, Heeseung is used to girls who want him. If you clearly don’t want him, his interest is going to fizzle out faster than a cheap sparkler. He’ll move on to the next girl who bats her eyelashes at him, and you’ll be free. No confrontation necessary.”
You turn this over in your mind. It’s... not the worst idea you’ve ever heard. In fact, compared to your current strategy of blind panic and tactical fleeing, it’s practically genius. If you can’t correct the misunderstanding without making everything worse, maybe you can just... let it die on its own. Let Heeseung’s fabled short attention span work in your favor. Become so aggressively unappealing that he loses interest within a week and never thinks about you again.
And once he’s out of the picture, once enough time has passed, maybe you can try again with Jungwon. Properly. With better aim.
“You’re a genius,” you tell Yunjin, the hope creeping back into your voice. “An absolute genius. I could kiss you.”
“Please don’t, you’re covered in grass stains.” She nudges one of the bubble teas toward you with her foot. “Drink your tea. Hydrate. And then we’re going to brainstorm all the ways you can make yourself seem as unappealing as possible to a hot third-year informatics student.”
You grab the drink and take a long sip, the sweetness settling something in your chest. For the first time in three days, you feel something other than panic. You feel strategic. You feel determined. Lee Heeseung might think you’re cute and brave and worthy of a coffee date, but he hasn’t met the version of you that’s about to emerge, a version so bland, so uninteresting, so aggressively mediocre that he’ll run in the opposite direction before the week is out.
“Okay,” you say, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. “Okay. Let’s do this. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested starts now.”
Yunjin raises her bubble tea in a toast. “To being boring.”
You clink your cup against hers. “To being boring.”
Somewhere across campus Heeseung is still standing in the quad with a confused expression on his face and a lavender envelope in his pocket, wondering why the girl who supposedly has a crush on him just sprinted away like she was being chased by bears.
He’s not used to this. He’s not used to any of this.
And that, he realizes with a small, bemused shake of his head, is exactly what makes it so interesting.
—————
Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested lasted exactly four days before it encountered its first major obstacle.
That obstacle is approximately six feet tall, has flowing hair that falls perfectly across his forehead, and is currently walking directly toward your table in the cafeteria with a tray in his hands and a smile on his face that suggests he has absolutely no idea he's supposed to be losing interest in you.
You spot him approximately 2.3 seconds too late. By the time your brain registers the approaching danger, you are already mid-bite into a sad cafeteria sandwich, your mouth full of bread and lettuce and the dawning realization that you are trapped. There is no escape route. Your table is in the corner, surrounded on three sides by walls and on the fourth side by Heeseung's rapidly approaching form. You are a cornered animal. A very stupid, very panicked cornered animal with mayonnaise on her chin.
"Y/N!" Heeseung says your name like it's his favorite word, bright and warm and entirely too enthusiastic for someone who's supposed to be a notorious womanizer with a short attention span. "I was hoping I'd run into you. Mind if I sit?"
Mind if he sits? Of course you mind. You mind immensely. You mind with every fiber of your being. Sitting with Heeseung is the exact opposite of what Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is supposed to accomplish. Sitting with Heeseung means talking to Heeseung, and talking to Heeseung means opportunities to accidentally charm him, and charming him is categorically Not The Goal.
But Heeseung is already pulling out the chair across from you, and his smile is so genuine, and there's a tiny bit of what looks like grease on his cheekbone that suggests he's just come from some kind of engineering lab, and you are weak. You are so, so weak.
"Go ahead," you hear yourself say, and then immediately want to punch yourself in the face.
Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested, Day Four, 12:34 PM: catastrophic failure already in progress.
Heeseung settles into the chair with an easy grace, setting his tray down and immediately stealing one of your fries like you're old friends who share food on a regular basis. You watch the fry disappear into his mouth and feel a small part of your soul leave your body.
"So," he says, leaning back and studying you with those dark, unreadable eyes. "You ran away from me pretty fast the other day. Should I be worried? Do I have something on my face?"
He doesn't. He absolutely doesn't. He has the kind of face that belongs on a billboard, all sharp angles and soft edges and that one little mole on his forehead that you are definitely not noticing because noticing things about Heeseung's face is counterproductive to the mission.
"No," you say quickly. "No, you're fine. Your face is fine. I mean, you don't have anything on your face. I just remembered I had somewhere to be. Very suddenly. It was urgent."
"An urgent… lab class?" Heeseung's lips twitch. "That's what you said, right? An urgent lab class on a Thursday afternoon?"
Your face heats. "Yes. Exactly. Lab class. Very urgent. Science doesn't wait."
"Mmm." He pops another one of your fries into his mouth. "Well, the good news is, you don't look like you're in a hurry right now. So we can actually talk. You know, like normal people who are supposedly getting to know each other?"
Right. Getting to know each other. Because you confessed to him. Because he thinks you like him. Because you're living in an elaborate lie of your own making.
This is your chance, though. This is the perfect opportunity to implement Phase One of the Make Him Uninterested plan: Be Weird and Off-Putting. You just have to be the most boring, strange, unappealing version of yourself that you can possibly imagine. How hard can it be?
Pretty hard, as it turns out, because your brain chooses this exact moment to go completely blank.
"So," Heeseung says, apparently unbothered by your silence, "tell me about yourself. What do you like to do for fun? Besides writing beautiful love letters and then running away from the recipient?"
You choke on your own saliva. Just… straight up choke on nothing, like a cartoon character. "I don't…that wasn't…I do normal things. Normal fun things. Like… watching paint dry. And counting ceiling tiles. Very relaxing. You should try it."
"There are forty-seven in this cafeteria," you say, doubling down with the desperate energy of someone who has already committed to the bit. "Forty-eight if you count the one that's partially covered by that vent over there. But some people don't count partial tiles. It's a philosophical debate, really."
"Fascinating," Heeseung says, and the worst part is that he sounds like he actually means it. "What else?"
What else? What else can you say that will make you sound completely unappealing? You cast around for inspiration, your eyes landing on your sandwich. Okay. Fine. If words can't do the job, maybe actions can.
You pick up your sandwich with both hands and take the weirdest bite you can physically manage, mouth open slightly too wide, chewing with exaggerated jaw movements, making an unfortunate amount of noise in the process. You feel like a cow. You look like a cow. You are embodying the spirit of a cow, and surely, surely, this is enough to make any self-respecting hot informatics student run for the hills.
Heeseung watches you chew. His expression doesn't change.
"Good sandwich?" he asks mildly.
"Mmf," you say, still chewing, still being a cow. "Very good. I love-"
And then the lettuce hits the back of your throat.
You don't know how it happens. One moment you're chewing normally, well, abnormally, but in a controlled way and the next moment a piece of lettuce stages a rebellion and lodges itself directly in your windpipe. Your eyes go wide. Your hand flies to your throat. You make a sound that is somewhere between a wheeze and a honk.
"Y/N?" Heeseung's amused expression shifts to concern. "Are you okay?"
You are not okay. You are choking. You are choking on lettuce in front of Lee Heeseung in the middle of the cafeteria, and this is how you're going to die.
Heeseung is on his feet now, moving around the table with surprising speed. "Hey, hey, can you breathe? Do you need me to-"
You shake your head frantically, still making dying cow noises, and grab your water bottle with shaking hands. The first gulp does nothing. The second gulp, by some miracle, dislodges the lettuce just enough for you to cough it up into a napkin with all the grace and dignity of a cat hacking up a hairball.
Silence.
The entire cafeteria, you're convinced, is staring at you. In reality, probably only a few nearby tables have noticed, but it feels apocalyptic. You sit there, red-faced and teary-eyed, clutching a napkin full of your own near-death experience, and want the floor to open up and swallow you whole.
Heeseung kneels beside your chair, one hand hovering near your shoulder like he isn't sure if touching you would be welcome. "Hey. You're okay. You're okay, right? Do you need me to get you anything? More water? A doctor? A new sandwich without lettuce?"
His voice is gentle. Genuinely gentle. Not the smooth, charming tone you expect from someone with his reputation, but something softer, something that sounds almost like real concern.
"I'm fine," you croak, your voice ravaged. "I'm fine. That happens. All the time. I'm very bad at eating. It's one of my traits."
"One of your traits," Heeseung repeats, and the corner of his mouth twitches despite his obvious worry. "Being bad at eating?"
"It's a lifestyle choice."
He laughs. Not a polite chuckle or a mocking snicker, but a real laugh, surprised and bright and completely unguarded. He sits back down in his chair, shaking his head, and looks at you with something that is definitely not boredom or disinterest.
"You're really something else, you know that?"
You don't know how to respond to that, so you don't. You just sit there, still clutching your napkin of shame, and wonder how Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has somehow resulted in him laughing at your jokes and looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's encountered all week.
"So," Heeseung says, propping his chin on his hand, "I've been wondering. What made you decide to confess to me? Was there a specific moment? Something I did?"
Oh no.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
This is the worst possible question he could ask. You can't tell him the truth…I didn't mean to confess to you, I meant to confess to your friend, you just happened to be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time, please don't hate me…but you also can't just… not answer. He's looking at you expectantly, his dark eyes curious and open, and you have approximately three seconds to come up with a convincing lie before the silence becomes too awkward to recover from.
"Your… kindness," you say, grasping at straws. "You're very… kind. To everyone. I noticed."
Heeseung tilts his head. "My kindness?"
"Very kind," you repeat, nodding vigorously. "So kind. The kindest. I saw you… hold a door open for someone once. It was… inspiring."
"I held a door open."
"A door. Yes. It was a very heavy door. And you held it. For a long time. Multiple people went through. It was very impressive."
Heeseung stares at you for a moment, and you stare back, your face burning, your soul evacuating your body. This is it. This is the moment he realizes you are completely unhinged and decides to never speak to you again. This is the victory of Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested.
"That's…" Heeseung starts, and then pauses. "That's the first time anyone's ever confessed to me because I held a door open. Usually I get compliments about my face. Or my voice. One girl told me I had a nose made to be sat on, which I still don't fully understand."
"Your node is… fine," you say weakly. "I didn't notice your nose. Or your face at all. Just the door. The door was the important part."
"A door," Heeseung says, and that smile is spreading across his face again, the one that makes him look less like a notorious player and more like someone who has just found a particularly entertaining puzzle. "You wrote me a three-page love letter because I held a door open."
"The calligraphy alone took a week," you say, and immediately regret it.
Heeseung laughs again, and this time it's softer, almost wondering. "You're not what I expected," he says. "At all."
"Is that… good or bad?"
"I haven't decided yet." But he's still smiling, and his eyes are still fixed on you with that curious intensity, and you're starting to get the sinking feeling that everything you do, no matter how strange or off-putting you try to be, is having the exact opposite effect of what you intend.
You need a new strategy. Something foolproof. Something so aggressively unappealing that even the most determined people-pleaser can't pretend to be interested.
And then, like a gift from the gods of social awkwardness, the topic of video games comes up.
Heeseung mentions something about blowing off steam after a tough assignment by playing a few rounds of something, and the question slips out before you can stop it: "Wait, do you play League of Legends?"
He raises an eyebrow. "Sometimes. You?"
And that's it. That's the moment the dam breaks.
You don't mean to start geeking out. It just happens. One moment you're thinking be boring, be uninteresting, be bland, and the next moment you're fifteen minutes deep into an impassioned monologue about the current meta, the problems with the jungle role, and why Riot Games needs to nerf a specific champion into the ground before she single-handedly destroys the competitive scene.
"-and don't even get me started on the new items, because the balance team clearly doesn't play their own game, which is fine, whatever, it's not like I have strong opinions about it except I absolutely do, and I wrote an entire essay about it on the subreddit that got like two thousand upvotes, so clearly I'm not the only one who thinks the armor penetration scaling is completely broken-"
You stop.
You stop because you have just realized, with dawning horror, that you have been talking for an incredibly long time without letting Heeseung get a single word in. You have been gesticulating. You have been making sound effects. At one point, you're pretty sure you drew a diagram on a napkin to illustrate the optimal jungle pathing route.
This is it. This is definitely, absolutely it. There is no way a hot third-year informatics student wants to listen to a first-year STEM girl rant about video game balance for fifteen straight minutes. Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested has just achieved its first genuine success.
You brace yourself for the polite excuse, the awkward glance at his phone, the slow backing away.
Instead, Heeseung leans forward, resting his elbows on the table, and says: "Okay, but hear me out, what if the armor penetration scaling isn't the problem, and it's actually the base damage values that need to be adjusted? Because if you look at the win rate data across different elos, the issue isn't consistent at all levels of play."
You blink.
"I main ADC," he adds, as if this is a perfectly normal confession. "So trust me, I feel your pain about the jungle situation. Do you know how many times I've been left to solo dragon because my jungler was AFK farming? Too many. Too many times."
"You… main ADC?"
"Vayne and Kai'Sa mostly. Sometimes Jhin if I'm feeling dramatic."
You have no response to this. Your brain has short-circuited somewhere around the phrase "win rate data across different elos," and it's still rebooting.
"Your essay on the subreddit," Heeseung continues, pulling out his phone. "What was the title? I want to read it. I love seeing well-reasoned arguments about game balance, and honestly, most of what gets posted is just people complaining without any actual data to back it up."
"It was… it was called The Current State of Armor Penetration: A Statistical Analysis and Why I'm Losing My Mind," you say faintly.
Heeseung types something into his phone, scrolls for a moment, and then his face lights up. "Found it. Two thousand three hundred upvotes and fourteen awards? That's impressive. Wait, you made graphs? You made graphs?"
"I was very passionate about the subject."
"Passionate," Heeseung repeats, looking up from his phone with an expression you can't quite read. "Yeah. I'm starting to get that about you."
He tucks his phone away and smiles at you, and it isn't the smooth, practiced smile you expect from the campus womanizer. It's something smaller. Something realer. Something that makes your stomach do a weird, traitorous flip that you immediately try to suppress.
"You know," he says, tilting his head as he studies you, "you remind me of a mouse."
Your brain screeches to a halt. "A… mouse?"
"Yeah. A little field mouse. The way your nose scrunches up when you're thinking, and how you get all twitchy and skittish when you're nervous. It's cute. It's really cute."
Cute. He calls you cute. He compares you to a rodent and somehow makes it sound like a compliment, and worst of all, worst of all, you can feel a traitorous blush spreading across your cheeks like wildfire.
"I'm not…I don't…mice are not cute. Mice are pests. They carry diseases. I'm basically a health hazard."
Heeseung laughs, and it's the same genuine laugh from before, and he's looking at you like you're the most entertaining thing he's seen in years. "A health hazard. Right. Well, consider me warned."
He stands up, gathering his tray, and for one beautiful, hopeful moment, you think the ordeal is over. But then he pauses, looking down at you with that unreadable expression, and says the words that haunt you for the rest of the day:
"I was interested before, but now?" He shakes his head, still smiling. "Now I'm really interested. See you around, little mouse."
And then he walks away, leaving you alone at your corner table with a half-eaten sandwich, a napkin full of regurgitated lettuce, and the sinking realization that Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested is not only failing, it's backfiring spectacularly.
You try to be weird, and he calls you cute.
You try to be boring, and he engages with your niche gaming opinions.
You try to choke to death in front of him, and he kneels beside your chair with genuine concern in his eyes.
You bang your forehead against the cafeteria table once, twice, three times, not caring who sees. This is a disaster. This is an unmitigated, unprecedented, absolutely catastrophic disaster. Hana's plan was supposed to work. Heeseung was supposed to get bored. He was supposed to move on. He was not supposed to look at you like you're a puzzle he wants to solve, or call you a mouse in a tone of voice that makes your heart do gymnastics, or read your League of Legends essay and compliment your graphs.
You need to regroup. You need to call an emergency meeting with Yunjin. You need to figure out a new strategy before this situation spirals even further out of control.
But first, you need to go to the library and return the books that are due today before you accrue another fine, because no matter how catastrophic your love life becomes, the university library shows no mercy.
—————
The library is your sanctuary. It always has been, a quiet, climate-controlled haven where the smell of old paper and the soft hum of fluorescent lights can soothe even the most tensed of nerves. After the cafeteria incident, you need sanctuary more than ever. You slip through the main doors with your stack of books clutched to your chest, inhaling the familiar scent of knowledge and dust, and feel some of the tension begin to ease from your shoulders.
Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine. You return your books, you find Yunjin, you regroup, and you figure out a way to-
"Y/N?"
The voice comes from somewhere to your left, and you know that voice. You know it the way a flower knows the sun, the way a compass knows north, the way a hopeless romantic knows the exact cadence of her crush's greeting.
Jungwon is sitting at a table near the history section, surrounded by a fortress of textbooks and loose papers. He's wearing glasses…glasses…and his hair is slightly mussed from what you assume is hours of intense studying, and he's looking at you with that smile, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes your entire nervous system short-circuit.
"Hey," he says, waving you over. "What are you doing here?"
Existing in the same space as you, you think. Breathing the same air. Trying not to spontaneously combust.
"Returning books," you say, holding up your stack as evidence. "I have some overdue ones. The library fines are no joke."
"Tell me about it. I had to pay fifteen thousand won last semester because I forgot about a book I'd checked out for a research paper." Jungwon winces at the memory. "My wallet still hasn't recovered."
"That's brutal."
"The library giveth, and the library taketh away."
You laugh, and it comes out surprisingly normal, not too loud, not too high-pitched, just a regular human laugh from a regular human person who is definitely not having an internal meltdown about how good Jungwon looks in glasses.
"Hey," Jungwon says, glancing at the empty chair across from him, "if you're not in a hurry, do you want to study together? I've been here for three hours and my brain is starting to melt. It would be nice to have some company."
Your heart stops.
Yang Jungwon, the Yang Jungwon, the owner of the smile and the laugh and the gummy bears at 2 AM is asking you to study with him. This is the kind of moment you've daydreamed about for months. This is a meet-cute in progress. This is the universe throwing you a lifeline after the cafeteria disaster, a chance to actually spend time with the boy you've been pining over since midterms.
"Yes," you say, before your brain can remind you of all the reasons this is a terrible idea. "Yes, I'd…I'd love to. Let me just return these first."
You practically skip to the returns desk, your heart doing a full backflip in your chest. By the time you make it back to Jungwon's table, your philosophy textbook and notebook spread out in front of you, you've convinced yourself that this is exactly what you need. Some time with Jungwon. Some time to remember why you wrote that letter in the first place. Some time to reconnect with the feelings that got buried under the chaos of the Heeseung situation.
The only problem is that you can't focus on studying at all.
You try. You really, genuinely try. You open your textbook to the assigned chapter. You uncap your highlighter. You fix your eyes on the page and attempt to absorb information about ethical frameworks and moral philosophy. But your eyes keep drifting up, against your will, over the top of your book, to the boy sitting across from you.
Jungwon is studying. Actually studying, not fake studying, not pretending to study while secretly watching you the way you're watching him. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his pen moving steadily across his notebook as he takes notes. Every so often, he pauses, taps the end of his pen against his chin, and then resumes writing with renewed focus. The late afternoon light slants through the window behind him, catching the highlights in his dark hair and making him look like he's stepped out of a painting.
He is beautiful. He's so beautiful that it makes your chest ache, a soft, sweet ache that you've been carrying around since the moment you first saw him in this very library. You watch the way his fingers curl around his pen, the way he bites his lower lip when he's thinking, the way his glasses slide down his nose and he pushes them back up with an absent gesture.
"I can feel you looking at me," Jungwon says, not glancing up from his notebook.
Your entire body jolts like you've been electrocuted. "I wasn't…I was just…there's a clock behind you. I was checking the time."
Jungwon looks up then, and there's a knowing glint in his eyes that makes your stomach do a slow, somersaulting flip. "The clock is to your right, Y/N. Not behind me."
You look to your right. Sure enough, there's the clock, hanging on the wall in plain view, which you would have noticed if you'd spent even one second actually looking for it instead of gazing at Jungwon's face like a Renaissance painter studying their muse.
"I'm… directionally challenged," you say weakly.
"Uh-huh." Jungwon sets down his pen, and the smile playing at the corners of his mouth is soft and teasing and absolutely devastating. "Come here for a second."
"What?"
"Just come here. Lean forward a little."
Your body obeys before your brain can intervene. You lean across the table, your heart hammering so loudly you're certain the entire library can hear it. Jungwon leans forward too, closing the distance between you, and you catch a faint whiff of something clean and subtle, laundry detergent, maybe, or the kind of fragrance that just smells like him.
His hand reaches out, and before you can process what's happening, his index finger gently pokes your cheek.
"Boop," he says.
You make a sound. You don't know what the sound is supposed to be. Maybe a laugh, maybe a question, maybe a plea for mercy. What comes out is something closer to a squeak, a small, strangled, completely undignified squeak that would be embarrassing if you had any brain cells left to feel embarrassment.
Jungwon's smile widens, and his finger lingers on your cheek for just a moment longer than necessary. "You had an eyelash," he says. "Right there. But also, you just looked really cute staring at me like that. I couldn't resist."
Cute. He calls you cute. That's twice in one day that a devastatingly attractive boy has called you cute, and your hopeless romantic heart doesn't know whether to celebrate or go into cardiac arrest.
"I wasn't staring," you whisper, but it comes out completely unconvincing.
"You were absolutely staring." Jungwon withdraws his hand, but his smile stays, warm and fond and knowing. "It's okay. I don't mind. It's kind of nice, actually. Being looked at like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I'm something worth looking at."
The words settle into your chest like a stone dropping into still water, sending ripples through your entire body. He thinks it's nice. He thinks you're nice or at least your staring is nice and he pokes your cheek and calls you cute and now he's going back to his studying like he hasn't just fundamentally altered your brain chemistry.
You try to return to your textbook. The words swim in front of your eyes, meaningless and blurry. You highlight a sentence at random, realize you have no idea what it says, and highlight it again for good measure. The page is now approximately forty percent highlighter ink.
"You're going to run out of highlighter at that rate," Jungwon observes, not looking up.
"I have backups," you say. "I always have backups."
"Of course you do."
The studying session continues for another hour, and you absorb approximately zero information about ethical frameworks. What you do absorb is a comprehensive catalogue of Jungwon's study habits: the way he organizes his notes with color-coded tabs, the way he mutters to himself when he's working through a difficult concept, the way he absentmindedly drums his fingers against the table when he's thinking. Every detail is another entry in your mental Jungwon database, another thread in the tapestry of your affection.
By the time you pack up your things and say goodbye, "See you in philosophy," Jungwon says, and you respond with something that might be words or might be a series of enthusiastic nods, you are floating. You are literally, physically floating, your feet barely touching the ground as you drift out of the library and across campus toward your dorm.
Jungwon pokes your cheek. Jungwon calls you cute. Jungwon says he likes being looked at by you.
You are winning. Despite the Heeseung disaster, despite the cafeteria catastrophe, despite everything, you are winning.
By the time you reach your dorm room, you are a mess of giddy energy with nowhere to go. You close the door behind you, throw your backpack onto your desk chair, and then proceed to wriggle across your bed like an ecstatic worm, kicking your feet and muffling your squeals into your pillow.
"He called me cute," you whisper to your empty room, your voice muffled by fabric. "He poked my cheek. He did the boop thing. The boop thing, you guys. Who does the boop thing? Adorable people, that's who. Perfect people. People with beautiful smiles and kind eyes and-"
You roll onto your back, staring at the ceiling with a dreamy expression. The ceiling has forty-three tiles in your room. You counted them on your first night in the dorm. But right now, all you can see is Jungwon's face, the way he looked at you across the library table, the way his finger felt against your cheek, the way his voice went soft when he said like I'm something worth looking at.
You are going to marry him. You are going to marry Yang Jungwon and have a beautiful wedding with string lights and wildflowers and a three-tier cake, and you will tell the story of how you stared at him in the library and he poked your cheek and-
You stop wriggling.
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait.
You can't marry Jungwon. You can't even confess to Jungwon, because Jungwon thinks you confessed to Heeseung. Jungwon thinks you're interested in someone else. Jungwon was sweet and friendly and maybe a little bit flirty, but that's just his personality. He's nice to everyone. He gives you gummy bears at 2 AM; he probably gives gummy bears to everyone who looks tired. You aren't special. You are just… there.
The giddiness begins to drain out of you, replaced by the familiar weight of reality. You are still trapped in the Heeseung situation. You are still the girl who confessed to the wrong person. And no matter how many times Jungwon pokes your cheek, that fundamental fact isn't going to change.
With a heavy sigh, you drag yourself through your evening routine: shower, skincare, the episode of the baking show you're halfway through and finally crawl into bed around midnight, your emotions a tangled knot of hope and despair.
Sleep comes slowly, a gradual descent into darkness, and then-
—————
You are in the PC room again.
But this time it's different. The lights are dimmer, the computers all dark, the chairs empty. It's just you, and the door is swinging shut behind you, and there's someone waiting at the computer closest to the door.
Heeseung.
He's sitting in the chair, facing away from you, his headphones around his neck and his shoulders relaxed. When he hears your footsteps, he turns, and his expression isn't surprised or amused or curious. It's something else entirely. Something darker. Something that makes your breath catch in your throat.
"You're here," he says, and his voice is lower than you've ever heard it, a rumble that vibrates through your bones. "I've been waiting for you, little mouse."
"I'm not-" you start, but he's already standing, already moving toward you, and you can't seem to make your feet work. You're rooted to the spot, watching him approach with a mixture of fear and something else, something you don't want to name.
He stops inches away from you, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his body, close enough that you can see the individual strands of his hair and the curve of his lips and the way his eyes, God, his eyes are fixed on your mouth.
"You know what I've been thinking about?" he murmurs, and one of his hands comes up to brush a strand of hair away from your face, his fingers lingering against your temple. "I've been thinking about that letter. The way you said you only had eyes for me. The way you said you couldn't stop thinking about me."
"That wasn't-" you try, but your voice comes out as barely a whisper, and Heeseung's thumb is tracing along your jawline now, feather-light and devastating.
"I can't stop thinking about you either," he says, and his face is getting closer, closer, and you can feel his breath against your lips. "Do you want to know what I think about?"
Your heart is hammering. Your skin is on fire. You can't move, can't speak, can't do anything except stare up at him with wide eyes as his other hand settles on your waist, warm and solid and pulling you closer.
"I think about this," he whispers, and then his mouth is on yours.
The kiss is…it's…
It's intense. It's consuming. It's the kind of kiss that erases every rational thought from your brain and replaces it with pure, unfiltered sensation. His lips are soft but insistent, moving against yours with a confidence that makes your knees weak. His hand tightens on your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you make a sound against his mouth, something small and breathless and completely involuntary.
When he finally pulls back, his forehead resting against yours, his voice is rough. "You’re what I’ve been looking for my whole life, Y/N. You’re my miracle."
And then his lips are on your neck, trailing fire down to your collarbone, and your head falls back, and his name escapes your mouth in a way you've never said it before-
He kneels before you, his movements fluid and deliberate. His eyes never leave yours as he unzips his jeans, freeing his already hard cock. It stands proud and thick, the tip glistening with pre-cum. He takes your foot in his warm hand, bringing it to his shaft.
"Look what you do to me," he murmurs, his voice husky with desire. He wraps your foot around his length, his thumb pressing against your arch as he begins to move your foot up and down his cock. His eyes flutter closed for a moment, a low groan escaping his lips.
The sensation of his hot skin against your sole sends shivers through your body. You watch, mesmerized, as he uses your foot to pleasure himself, his hips thrusting in rhythm with the movements of your foot. His other hand moves to your ankle, his grip firm but gentle, his fingers stroking your sensitive skin.
His eyes open, locking with yours again, and the intensity in his gaze makes your breath catch. "You're so beautiful," he breathes, his movements becoming faster, more urgent. "You’re perfect the way you are."
His breathing grows ragged, his muscles tensing. With a guttural moan, he comes, his hot release spilling over your foot and his hand. He leans forward, his tongue darting out to taste his own cum from your skin, his movements slow and sensual. He licks your foot clean, his tongue tracing patterns on your arch, between your toes, sending waves of pleasure through your body.
Then he shifts, positioning himself between your legs. He looks up at you, his eyes dark with desire. "I need to taste you," he says, his voice rough with need.
He hooks his fingers into the waistband of your panties, pulling them down slowly, his eyes never leaving yours. He tosses them aside, then leans in, his breath hot against your most sensitive flesh.
His tongue flicks out, teasing your clit, and you gasp, your hands flying to his hair. He chuckles, the vibration sending another jolt of pleasure through you. "Patience, little mouse," he murmurs against your skin.
His tongue moves in slow, deliberate circles, building your pleasure gradually. He alternates between broad, flat strokes and quick, precise flicks of his tongue against your clit. His fingers join in, one, then two, sliding inside you, curling to hit that spot that makes you cry.
Your hips buck against his face, your breath coming in ragged gasps. "Heeseung," you moan, your fingers tightening in his hair.
He responds with increased enthusiasm, his tongue working faster, his fingers pumping in and out of you. The pressure builds inside you, a coil of pleasure winding tighter and tighter until it snaps.
You come with a cry, your body convulsing as waves of pleasure wash over you. But Heeseung doesn't stop. He continues his assault on your senses, his tongue and fingers working in perfect harmony to bring you to the edge again.
And then you are squirting, your release flooding his mouth and chin as he drinks you in, his movements never faltering. He looks up at you, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he laps up every drop.
When he finally pulls away, his face glistening with your juices, he crawls up your body, capturing your lips in a searing kiss. You can taste yourself on his tongue, and the intimacy of it sends another wave of desire through you.
"Tell me you’re only thinking of me," he whispers against your lips, his hands roaming your body. "and not Jungwon."
You wake up.
You wake up in your dorm room, in your bed, at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday morning, with your heart pounding and your skin flushed, your panties soaked and your sheets twisted around your legs like they've been through a battle.
For a long moment, you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.
Did you just… did you just dream about… did Lee Heeseung, the guy you're supposed to be making uninterested in you, the guy you've been trying to avoid and ignore and repel, just star in what can only be described as an extremely obscene dream? The virgin you are just cringed at the memory.
You press your hands to your burning cheeks and let out a sound that is somewhere between a groan and a scream.
"No," you whisper to the empty room. "No, no, no. This isn't, this can't…I don't even like him. I like Jungwon. Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon for four months. I wrote a letter to Jungwon. I have a color-coded mental database of Jungwon's habits. I want to marry Jungwon and have a three-tier wedding cake with wildflowers!"
But your brain, traitorous and unhelpful, keeps replaying fragments of the dream, the way Heeseung's eyes go dark, the way his voice rumbles against your ear, the way his hand feels on your waist, the way his tongue is warm and-
You grab your pillow and press it over your face, screaming into it with all the force your lungs can muster.
This is wrong. This is so, so wrong. You are a Jungwon girl. You've always been a Jungwon girl. You don't think about Heeseung like that. You don't think about Heeseung like anything. Heeseung is an obstacle. Heeseung is a problem to be solved. Heeseung is the guy you're actively trying to repel, not the guy who shows up in your subconscious and does things that make you blush in the privacy of your own bed.
"I'm a psychopath," you say to your pillow. "I'm a complete and utter psychopath. Who dreams about this with a guy they're supposed to be making uninterested? A psychopath, that's who. A deranged lunatic. A person with a broken brain."
Your pillow, predictably, does not respond.
You drag yourself out of bed and into the bathroom, splashing cold water on your face and avoiding your own reflection in the mirror. You don't want to look at yourself. You don't want to see the evidence of the dream still lingering in your flushed cheeks…and between your legs.
This is a problem. This is a Major Problem with capital letters and possibly a warning siren. You can't afford to be having dreams about Lee Heeseung. You can't afford to be thinking about Lee Heeseung at all. Your entire strategy, Operation Make Heeseung Uninterested depends on you being able to keep a clear head and a steady heart, and neither of those things is going to be possible if your subconscious keeps ambushing you with extremely vivid, extremely inappropriate content.
You need to talk to Yunjin. Immediately. Before your brain can conjure up any more unauthorized imagery.
But as you grab your phone and type out a frantic message, EMERGENCY MEETING REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY CODE RED REPEAT CODE RED, you can't quite shake the lingering sensation from the dream.
The way Heeseung's thumb traces along your jawline.
The way he calls you little mouse in that low, rumbling voice.
The way he says you were perfect the way you were like he means it, like it's true, like he's been into you his whole life and hasn't even known it.
You shake your head violently, flinging droplets of water across the bathroom mirror.
"Nope," you say out loud. "Nope, nope, nope. We're not doing this. We're not thinking about this. We're going to go to class and eat lunch and avoid all tall informatics students, and we're going to get our brain back on the Jungwon track where it belongs."
But even as you say it, even as you try to mean it, a small, treacherous part of you wonders if maybe, just maybe, the Jungwon track isn't the only track worth following anymore.
You shove that thought into a mental box, lock it, and throw away the key.
You have a plan. You have a strategy. You are going to make Heeseung uninterested, and you are going to figure out a way to untangle the misunderstanding, and you are going to end up with Jungwon like you were always supposed to.
The dream is just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. It can't mean anything.
You refuse to let it mean anything.
(But when you catch yourself glancing toward the informatics building on your way to class, you walk a little faster, and you definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent do not wonder what Lee Heeseung is doing right now.)
—————
The dream haunts you for three days.
Not in a supernatural, ghost-in-the-corner kind of way. More in an I-can't-make-eye-contact-with-my-own-reflection kind of way. Every time you close your eyes, fragments of it flicker behind your eyelids like a movie you hadn't asked to watch. The dark PC room. The way Heeseung's voice drops to a rumble. The phantom sensation of his tongue on your clit, his hand on your ankle, his look-
You physically convulse every time the memory resurfaces, which is approximately every forty-five minutes. Your philosophy notes become a graveyard of distracted doodles, half of which look suspiciously like the curve of someone's jaw. You have to throw away an entire page because you accidentally write "little mouse" in the margin instead of "moral relativism."
Yunjin is no help whatsoever.
"So you had a wet dream about the hot guy who you’re supposedly getting bored of," she says over bubble tea the day after the incident, her expression thoroughly unimpressed. "This is a problem because…?"
"Because I don't like him, Yunjin! I like Jungwon! I've liked Jungwon since midterms! Jungwon is the goal! Jungwon is the three-tier wedding cake!"
"And Heeseung is…?"
"A temporary obstacle! A misunderstanding with legs! A very tall, very inconvenient plot twist!"
Yunjin sucks on her tapioca pearls with the air of a therapist who has heard it all before and is no longer surprised by anything. "You know what they say about protesting too much."
"I am not protesting too much. I am protesting exactly the right amount. I am protesting a perfectly calibrated quantity."
"Sure." She pats your hand with condescending sympathy. "Whatever helps you sleep at night. Oh wait-"
You throw a tapioca pearl at her face. It sticks to her cheek for a solid three seconds before falling off, and the look of absolute betrayal on her face is the only bright spot in your otherwise nightmare-plagued week.
But now it's Thursday. Thursday, 2:15 PM. You're stationed in the science building's main hallway, crouched behind a bulletin board that is absolutely not wide enough to hide your entire body, waiting for the coast to clear so you can sprint to your next class without encountering any tall informatics students.
Your system has evolved since the early days of the crisis. You now have a color-coded schedule of Heeseung's known movements, courtesy of some light reconnaissance work that Yunjin calls "stalking" and you call "strategic intelligence gathering." You know his class schedule. You know his preferred study spots. You know that he tends to grab coffee from the campus café at exactly 3 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means the science building hallway should, theoretically, be a Heeseung-free zone at 2:15.
Theoretically.
You're just about to make your move, a quick dash to the stairwell, then up two flights, then a straight shot to classroom 307, when you hear it.
"Hey, is Y/N L/N in there?"
Your blood freezes. Your muscles lock. Your soul briefly departs your body and then slams back into it with force.
That's Heeseung's voice. That's unmistakably, undeniably, catastrophically Lee Heeseung's voice, and it's coming from approximately ten feet to your left, where the door to your department's main office stands open.
You press yourself harder against the bulletin board, praying for invisibility, praying for a sudden power outage, praying for the ground to open up and swallow you into its merciful embrace. None of these things happen. Instead, you hear the department secretary respond with cheerful obliviousness.
"Y/N L/N? First year, STEM? I think I saw her in the hallway just a minute ago. Let me check, oh, there she is! Y/N! You have a visitor!"
The secretary is pointing directly at your bulletin board. Your bulletin board that is not hiding you at all. Your bulletin board that is, in fact, leaving approximately seventy percent of your body completely visible to anyone who happens to look in that direction.
Heeseung turns.
Your eyes meet.
Time stops.
There are moments in life that feel like they stretch into eternity, moments so profoundly awkward, so cosmically embarrassing, that the universe itself seems to pause and take notice. This is one of those moments. You are frozen in a half-crouch behind a bulletin board, your backpack dangling from one shoulder, your hair escaping from the ponytail you threw it into this morning, your expression one of pure, unfiltered terror. Heeseung is standing in the doorway of the department office, looking unfairly attractive in a simple black hoodie and jeans, his eyebrows rising slowly toward his hairline.
A small crowd of students has paused in the hallway to watch. You can feel their eyes on you like a physical weight. Someone whispers something to their friend. Someone else pulls out their phone.
You are going to die. You are going to perish right here in the science building hallway, and your ghost will be doomed to haunt this bulletin board for all eternity.
"Y/N?" Heeseung's voice is a mixture of confusion and amusement. He takes a step toward you, and you instinctively take a step back, which results in you bumping directly into the bulletin board and causing several flyers to flutter dramatically to the ground. "Were you… hiding behind that?"
"No," you say, too quickly. "No, I was…I dropped something. A contact lens. I was looking for my contact lens."
"You don't wear contacts."
"I might! You don't know my life!"
"Your glasses are literally on your face right now."
You reach up and touch your glasses, which are indeed sitting on your nose, clearly visible, doing their job of correcting your vision. You have no response to this. There is no response to this. You have been caught in a lie so transparent it's essentially a window.
Heeseung's lips twitch. "You know, most people who have a crush on me don't run away and hide behind furniture. This is very confusing for my ego."
The crowd is still watching. Why is the crowd still watching? Don't they have classes to go to? Midterms to study for? Lives to live that don't involve spectating your public humiliation?
"I wasn't hiding from you specifically," you say, because apparently your mouth has decided to operate independently from your brain. "I was hiding from… the sun. It's very bright in here. I'm photosensitive."
"You're a STEM student hiding from the sun in a basement hallway with no windows," Heeseung says slowly. "That's… a new one."
"It's a medical condition. It's very serious. My doctor says I need to avoid direct fluorescent lighting."
"The fluorescent lighting is what's getting you."
"Absolutely. It's my greatest enemy. Well, second greatest. After-" You stop yourself before you can say after incredibly hot informatics students who keep appearing in my life like a recurring nightmare.
Heeseung waits. When you don't finish the sentence, that smile, the one that's definitely a smirk's second cousin, maybe even its first cousin at this point, spreads across his face.
"Well," he says, "now that I've found you and dragged you out of the shadows, literally, I was wondering if you wanted to grab coffee. With me. Right now."
Every single person in the hallway is looking at you. The secretary is looking at you from the office doorway, her expression one of grandmotherly delight at what she clearly perceives as a romantic overture. The students who stopped to watch are exchanging glances and whispers. One girl gives you an encouraging thumbs up.
You are trapped. You are cornered. You are a mouse being offered coffee by a very tall, very persistent cat.
And just like every other time Heeseung has put you on the spot, you open your mouth and the wrong words come out.
"I love coffee," you say. "Coffee is my favorite liquid. After water. And possibly juice. But it's definitely in the top three."
can you please make a Jungwon smut where he is an idol and they are havjng a concert. He was horny that time and y/n were at the backstage mid concert just using her phone. Then Jungwon snuck backstage to fuck y/n? please make it long! add some scenarios too, up to you, author! Thankyouu!
FAN MAIL?
─── turns out winning the raffle was the least lucky thing to happen OR four years of watching him perform — and he spent the whole night making sure you’d never forget who you were on your knees for.
laceys note this has been in my drafts for ages so im finally posting it this is filthyyyy, I hope it’s close to the request above! enjoy ☺️
The raffle had been a joke.
You’d entered it half-asleep at two in the morning, phone screen too bright, telling yourself it didn’t matter because you never won anything. Three weeks later you were standing in a queue of twenty-three people outside an arena in Seoul with a lanyard around your neck that said WINNER — VIP BACKSTAGE ACCESS and your hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
The concert itself had been — there weren’t words for it.
You’d been a fan for four years. You knew every line, every note, every choreo transition. But nothing prepared you for the reality of him under stage lights. Jungwon, center stage, moving like the music lived inside him, his jaw sharp and his eyes darker than any photo had ever captured. You’d screamed yourself hoarse and cried twice and your friend would never let you live down either of those things.
But the last two performances — something had been off. Not to the general crowd, maybe. But you’d watched enough lives and studied enough fancams that you caught it. A timing slip in the second song. A note in the bridge that didn’t land where he wanted it. The way his expression had shuttered slightly, professional mask snapping back into place.
You knew that look. You’d seen it in interviews. Jungwon was a perfectionist to his core, and he was unhappy.
—
The backstage room was nice — long tables with food and drinks, the other winners milling around talking excitedly, staff members guiding everyone through. You were still buzzing from the show, accepting a drink someone handed you, trying to look like a normal functioning person.
Then the members came in and functioning became significantly harder.
They were still in their stage clothes, hair slightly damp, the kind of beautiful that shouldn’t exist in person. Sunoo found your group first, immediately warm and bright and making everyone laugh within thirty seconds. You drifted toward him naturally — he had that gravity.
“Did you enjoy the show?” he asked, he was asking the group but his eyes landed on you.
“It was incredible,” you said honestly. “The production on the third act especially — the lighting changes were perfect.”
Sunoo looked pleasantly surprised that you’d noticed something specific. “Right? We worked on that transition for weeks.” He smiled, full and genuine. “You know your stuff.”
Jay appeared at Sunoo’s shoulder, equally effortless, falling into easy conversation about the setlist. You were laughing at something Jay said about a quick-change that had nearly gone wrong when you felt it.
The quality of being watched.
You glanced sideways.
Jungwon was standing a few feet away with another winner, nodding along to whatever they were saying — but his eyes were on you. Dark and direct and assessing in a way that made your stomach drop clean out of your body. When he saw you catch him, he didn’t look away. Just held it for one beat, two, before returning his attention to the person in front of him.
You turned back to Jay and Sunoo and willed your face to behave.
It didn’t work very well.
He made his way through the room gradually, the way a leader did — attentive to everyone, making each person feel seen. You tracked him in your peripheral vision.
He reached your small cluster eventually. Up close he was worse. Better. Both.
“You’ve been talking to my members for long enough,” he said, and his voice was the concert voice, low and unhurried, but quieter. For the group but somehow aimed at you. “I’m Jungwon.”
“We know,” someone in your group said, and there was laughter.
He smiled — polite, idol-smooth. His eyes cut to you. “You were at the barrier. Left of center.”
Your heart stopped. “You noticed that?”
“I notice things.” A pause. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Genuinely one of the best nights of my life,” you said, and you meant it without any performance. “You were—” You stopped yourself from saying something embarrassing.
“Go ahead.”
“You were extraordinary,” you said. “All of you. But you especially. The way you held the second act — the control you have, the stage presence. It was flawless.”
Something shifted in his expression. Small, subtle — but you caught it, the same way you’d caught the slip earlier. Something loosening slightly behind his eyes.
“You’re kind,” he said.
“I’m honest.”
Another pause. He looked at you for a moment like he was recalibrating something. “Who’s your bias?”
The group made a collective oooh sound. Your face went warm.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said, and his mouth curved just slightly. He already knew. You could tell he already knew. He just wanted to hear you say it.
“It’s—” You pressed your lips together. Looked at him. I mean. Look at him. “It’s you. It’s been you for four years.”
“Four years,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
The question surprised you — not aggressive, genuinely curious. You considered lying or deflecting and then decided against it. “Because you care so much. You’re never coasting. Every performance like it’s the only one. You’re—” You shook your head slightly. “You hold yourself to an impossible standard and you almost always clear it. That’s rare.”
The almost landed. You saw it land.
He looked at you for a long moment. Then he said, very quietly, “Almost?”
“Tonight,” you said, equally quiet. “But the recovery was immediate. Most people didn’t see it.”
“But you did?”
“I pay attention.”
Something in his jaw tightened. Not at you — at himself. That perfectionist core, the thing you’d recognized from three years of watching him, pulling taut. And underneath it, you realized — underneath the composure and the idol-smooth surface, he was frustrated. Genuinely, quietly furious at himself.
The room kept moving around you. Conversations, laughter, cameras clicking. He leaned slightly closer. “What’s your name?”
You told him. He repeated it once, low, like he was filing it somewhere. Then he said, “Come with me for a minute.”
You probably should have hesitated.
You didn’t.
He moved through the room with practiced ease, pausing once to say something to a staff member who nodded, and then a door and a corridor and the noise of the backstage room faded behind you. He led you down a quieter hallway — equipment cases stacked against the walls, the distant bass of the venue’s post-show music — and then into a room. Small. A green room, someone’s, a couch and a vanity mirror and a rack of clothes and the door clicking shut behind you.
The noise disappeared entirely. He turned to face you and up close, away from the crowd and the performance of it, the frustration was more visible. His jaw was tight. His eyes were dark and working through something. They moved over you slowly.
“You’re very pretty,” he said, low and plain, like it annoyed him. “Did you know that when you walked in there?”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“I was.” His hand came up to your jaw, tilting your face up. His thumb traced your cheekbone. “Four years you’ve been watching me. Paying attention. And then you walk in looking like this.” His grip tightened slightly. “Problem.”
“I’ve been told,” you said softly.
“I had a bad night.”
“I know.”
“I need somewhere to put it.” His eyes stayed on yours. “You’re going to let me.”
Not a question. Still — “Yes,” you said. “Sir.”
Something shifted in his face. Settled. Like a decision made.
“Good girl.” His mouth came down to yours and it was nothing like gentle.
He kissed you like he was taking something, his hands moving over you with focused precision — one at your jaw tilting you where he wanted, one fisting in your hair, and you made a sound against his mouth that made him pull back just enough to look at you.
“Again,” he said.
You made it again and his grip in your hair tightened and he walked you backward until your knees hit the couch.
“Down,” he said.
You sank to your knees between his legs as he sat, looking up at him, and his expression from above was dark and satisfied and still burning with that frustration looking for somewhere to go.
His hand came to your face — thumb tracing your lower lip, pressing in slightly. “Open.”
You opened. He looked at you for a long moment like he was deciding how much of himself to lose, and then his fingers curled into your hair and he guided you forward.
You took him into your mouth slowly, learning the weight and size of him, and your jaw stretched immediately and your eyes watered slightly at the corners and his exhale above you was sharp and rough.
“There,” he said, low. “Look at me.”
You looked up.
His jaw was tight, eyes fixed on you, and he held that eye contact as his hips rolled up — not all the way, not yet, just testing. Feeling. Your hands went to his thighs to brace and he looked at them there and something in his expression darkened further.
“Hands behind your back.”
You moved them. Locked your own fingers together at the small of your back.
“Good girl.”
He set the pace gradually — not merciful about it, building from slow to something that had you gagging slightly around him, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes and spilling, and he reached down and wiped them with his thumb, almost tender, before gripping your jaw and tilting your face up further.
“You’re doing so well,” he said roughly. “Taking it so well. Such a good girl.” His thumb stroked your wet cheek. “You’re crying and you’re still not tapping out. You want it that badly?”
You made a sound around him that meant yes and his head dropped back briefly before snapping back down to watch you.
“Desperate,” he said, like the word satisfied something in him. He pulled you off slowly — a string of saliva, your wrecked expression, the state of you on your knees — and he looked at you for a long moment.
“Up,” he said quietly.
He stood you between his knees and his hands moved over you efficiently — your top gone, your bra unclipped — and then he looked at you, really looked, and his hands came up and cupped your breasts with firm, claiming pressure before he groped them roughly, squeezing until you gasped, and then one sharp light slap that made you yelp and your thighs press together.
“Sir—”
“Too much?”
“No,” you breathed.
His hands smoothed over the sting immediately, palms warm and firm, and he pressed his mouth to the curve of your breast and then looked up at you through his lashes and the contrast — the roughness and then that — made your knees weak.
“Turn around,” he said. “Brace on the vanity.”
You turned. The mirror showed you both — him behind you, still mostly dressed, composed and controlled; you flushed and undone and waiting. His hands worked your skirt up and your underwear down and then his palm came down once, sharp, against the soft of your inner thigh and you jolted forward into the vanity.
“Stay still,” he said.
“Yes, sir—”
Another slap, lighter, directly against your centre and you made a sound you’d never made before in your life, broken and desperate. His hand smoothed over the heat immediately.
“Look at that,” he said, low and almost reverent. “Look how much you want it.” His fingers slipped through your folds and his exhale was rough. “You’re soaking. This is all for me?”
“All for you,” you managed. “Please—”
“Please what.”
“Please, sir, I need—”
“I know what you need.” He pressed two fingers inside you without ceremony and your head dropped forward and you watched his hand in the mirror, watched his expression — focused and dark and entirely in control. He worked you with the same precision he gave everything, and when you clenched around him his jaw tightened.
“Big,” he said quietly, like he was narrating. “You feel how big my fingers are?” He crooked them and you gasped. “You think you’re taking my cock after this?” He added a third finger and stretched you slowly, deliberately, and the slight burn of it made your eyes roll. “Going to have to work for it.”
“Please,” you said again. “Daddy, please—”
His fingers stilled.
The room went very quiet.
Then his free hand came around and gripped your jaw, tilting your face up to see him in the mirror, and his eyes were dark.
“Say that again,” he said.
Your heart was hammering. “Daddy.”
A slow exhale through his nose. “Good girl.” His fingers resumed. “You’ve been waiting three years to say that to me, haven’t you? Naughty girl.”
You hadn’t known you were. But yes.
He worked you open until you were shaking and barely holding yourself up on the vanity, and then he removed his fingers and positioned himself and pushed inside you and oh—
The stretch was immediate and overwhelming, the size of him splitting you open slowly, inch by inch, and your mouth fell open on a silent sound, fingers white-knuckling the table edge.
“Breathe,” he said, behind you. Watching your face in the mirror.
You breathed.
He pushed the rest of the way in and the sound you made was wrecked and undignified and he made a low satisfied sound against your neck.
“There,” he said. “There she is. You feel that? You feel how deep I am?”
“Yes, daddy, yes—”
“Good.” He pulled back and drove forward and your whole body rocked into the vanity. “Good. Watch the mirror. I want you to watch.”
You watched.
You watched him take you apart in real time — the roll of his hips ruthless and deep, the way your expression kept slipping further from coherent with every stroke, the way he watched your face instead of his own reflection, cataloguing every flicker. His hands gripped your hips hard enough to bruise and he didn’t apologize for it.
“Taking me so well,” he said roughly. “Look at you. Look at you, taking every inch like a good girl.” His hand came around to your throat, not squeezing, just resting — possessive and grounding. “You’re going to think about this every time you see my face on a poster.”
He drove into you harder and the sound that left you was embarrassingly loud. His hand muffled it, coming up to cover your mouth.
“Quiet,” he said against your ear, amused and merciless. “There are twenty-two other people just down the hall.”
When your legs stopped reliably functioning he moved you to the couch — lifting you with irritating ease, turning you, arranging you — and then your back was against the cushions and he hooked your legs up over his shoulders and looked down at you.
From this angle he was enormous.
“Daddy—”
“I know,” he said. He pushed inside and the angle made you see white. “I know. You’re okay.” His hand smoothed up your calf, almost gentle, while his hips set a pace that was anything but. “You’re so good. You’re taking it so well.”
He watched your face go slack with the focused intensity of someone studying something important. When your eyes started to lose focus he made a rough sound of satisfaction.
“There she is,” he said quietly. “There she is. Going dumb on my cock.” His hand came to your face, tilting it up so he could see you clearly. “Look at me. Stay with me.”
You tried. You genuinely tried.
“Daddy,” you slurred.
“I’m here.” Deep stroke. You whimpered. “I’m right here.” Another. “Good girl.”
His thumb found your clit and worked it in tight circles and the sound you made against his palm was desperate and high and he drove into you deep and held there pressing against something inside you that made your whole body shake.
“Come for me,” he said. Low and certain. Like a decision you both knew you were making. “Right now. Give it to me.”
You did. Completely. Your whole body clenching around him in waves, his name and daddy tangled together and leaving you in a wreck, tears at the corners of your eyes again that he wiped away with his thumb — that same tender gesture against all the roughness.
He worked you through every tremor and then his pace picked up — chasing his own now, losing some of that ironclad control for the first time, hips driving into you with a desperation he hadn’t shown yet.
“God,” he breathed, rough and low. “I want to — I should—”
“Inside,” you managed. “Please, daddy, inside—”
“You’re sure—”
“Please—”
He buried himself deep and the groan that left him was quiet and wrecked and entirely real — nothing performed about it — and you felt the warmth of him and your body clenched around him again drawing it out and he shuddered against you.
The room went very still.
His forehead dropped to yours. Both of you breathing. His hands, which had been so controlled, were shaking slightly where they braced beside your head.
He looked down at you — at the state of you, thoroughly undone — and something softened in his expression. His thumb stroked your cheekbone.
“You good?” he asked quietly.
“Extraordinarily good,” you managed.
His mouth curved. That real one — small and genuine and slightly tired. He pressed a brief, unexpected kiss to your forehead and then pushed up, straightening, the composure already resettling around him like a coat.
He fixed himself. Helped you find your footing when you stood, steadying you with a hand at your elbow when your knees expressed their opinions about the evening.
He looked at you. You looked at him.
“You were extraordinary tonight, by the way,” you said, and you meant the same thing you’d meant before, in the room full of people. “The almost doesn’t define it.”
He held your gaze for a long moment.
“Come back,” he said. “To the next show.”
“Are you giving me tickets?”
“I’m giving you my number,” he said. “The tickets come after.”
Pairing : emperor sunghoon x empress wife reader
Genre : fluff, arranged mariage, mean concubines, jealousy, sunghoon realizes he loves his wife (idiot)
Synopsis : As emperor, Sunghoon took a wife and concubines. However, when jealousy made his wife bitter, he changed wives, preferring to repudiate her rather than his concubines. Then, when his third wife, Y/N, stirred up the palace with her calm and gentle authority, Sunghoon quickly realized that he loved his wife (big idiot).
If there was one emperor that no one wanted to be part of his life, it was Emperor Sunghoon. Yes, he ruled his kingdom with an iron fist and offered his people security and harvests, but he tended to have too great an appetite for women.
He was handsome, that was certain, no one could deny it. And his council had pressured him to take concubines in addition to a wife to conceive an heir as quickly as possible and secure his lineage. It wasn't something that bothered him, so he took a wife and concubines to live at court.
However, it always degenerated and ended badly. His wife couldn't stand him spending so much time in his concubines' chambers and would end up throwing a fit, jealous and bitter towards the concubines. Sunghoon couldn't stand the shouting and would end up dismissing his wife or worse…
So yeah, no one wanted to get too close to the emperor's private life, especially since after six years, no heir was yet in sight. After two wives, Sunghoon decided to take a third, making Y/N, the eldest daughter of the great Y/L/N family, his wife. When the announcement was made, her mother had long wept over her daughter's departure, not wanting to see her married to the man, but protesting would do nothing.
Y/N hadn't flinched and had bid farewell to her family before climbing into the carriage that took her directly to the royal palace. Servants immediately took her to her private quarters in the East Wing, preparing her for the ceremony.
Dressed in her long red robe, the young woman didn't look up at her husband until the priest asked them to exchange their vows before pronouncing them husband and wife. She had to admit, Sunghoon was a very attractive man, and she could fall for him. But she won't.
The emperor gazed at her, appreciating the woman before him. Sunghoon gently took her hand in his and placed a kiss on it, Y/N gave a small curtsy. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the concubines whispering among themselves, betting on how long she would last against them.
"I will await you in my quarters, husband," Y/N declared, looking Sunghoon straight in the eye and speaking loudly enough for all to hear. "Come or not, I don't care." Sunghoon's eyes widened, not expecting such an affront. His wife bowed to greet him, then turned away, her ladies-in-waiting bowed awkwardly before trotting after her.
Arriving in her room, Y/N immediately removed the hairpins that were pulling her hair, placing them on small velvet cushions. Her ladies-in-waiting exchanged glances, not used to the calm of the emperor's wives. "Empress…"
"Have my suitcases arrived ?" Y/N asked.
"Yes, Empress."
"Can you put my things away ?" she asked, looking at two women. "Lay out my robes by color and put my books in the library, please." They nodded and quickly got to work while the other two helped her remove her robe. "I'd like to take a bath. I haven't been able to wash after that long journey, I had to go straight to my wedding."
"I'll heat some water right away, Empress."
"Take your time, I'm in no hurry." In her silk robe, the new empress stretched out on a sofa, her legs delicately folded, a book in her hand. Her attendants worked in silence, throwing her sideways glances. Her bath finally ready, Y/N removed her robe and entered the tub, immersing herself in the water.
The hot water relaxed her, and she closed her eyes, resting her head against the edge of the basin. She could feel her ladies-in-waiting's stares and sighed. "Speak, I can feel your stares from across the room."
They stepped forward cautiously, as if expecting a fit of nerves instead of calm. "Your predecessors met unfortunate fates, Empress."
"Yes, I heard that. Except I'm not here to play lovey-dovey with Sunghoon. I only want to live, and above all, survive the three hags who serve as his concubines. If they're expecting fits of jealousy, shouting, and tears, they'll soon realize that the only circus here is them."
The ladies-in-waiting visibly relaxed, sporting timid smiles. "We are happy to hear that, Empress. I am Hina. And this is Jiya, Suha, and Sunwoo."
"There's no need to call me 'Empress' when we're alone, Lady Y/N will suffice."
"Alright, Lady." Y/N got out of the tub and grabbed the towel handed to her to wrap herself in. She dried off and put on her nightgown.
"You may retire, I'll manage until tomorrow morning." The women bowed and left the room, the door closing softly behind her. Y/N sighed, finally enjoying the silence of her own company.
She slipped under the sheets and opened her book, reading a few pages by candlelight. She didn't expect Sunghoon to join her for their wedding night and therefore wasn't disappointed not to see him arrive. Y/N placed her book on the nightstand and blew out the candle to extinguish it. Tomorrow is another day.
Y/N didn't avoid Sunghoon, at least, she didn't try to. She simply didn't care where he might be or with whom, so her daily life was quite peaceful. Everyone at the palace expected the new empress to be as jealous as the other two, but seeing her lack of reaction and her calm disconcerted them all. But a little peace at the palace was also welcome.
Y/N was actually closer to the palace staff than to her own husband. It wasn't unusual for her to stop by the kitchen to greet the cooks or to stroll through the gardens talking to the gardeners. She was well-liked at the palace.
The young woman also fulfilled her role as empress by attending all of her husband's councils with the advisors and ministers, even if it meant sitting for hours listening to them talk about uninteresting things.
Y/N was sitting on her throne next to Sunghoon's, upright with her legs elegantly folded. Her dark red robe draped over her curves like a delicious caress, her fingers tapping the armrests of her throne to distract herself.
"If winter arrives before we can bring enough resources to the capital, we'll have to tighten our belts until spring returns !" a minister declared, once again raising the issue of winter provisions. She rolled her eyes, having heard this dozens of times since her arrival at the palace without any solution being proposed. "You know very well that merchants can only reach the capital through the mountains in winter, but the snow makes the crossing too difficult !"
She scoffed, exasperated by all these words said for nothing. To her right, Sunghoon glanced at her, contemplating her bored face. "Something to say, wife ?"
Silence fell over the throne room. Gazes slowly turned to Y/N, who wasn't surprised by her husband's call, looking at him without blinking. "Your ministers are useless, husband."
Sunghoon raised an eyebrow, his mouth curving upward. "Excuse me ?"
She ignored him and rose from her throne, descending the steps to approach the table around which the ministers and advisors stood, maps and parchments covering it. Y/N fixed her gaze on the minister who had first stated the problem. "This is the fifth council I've attended, and you keep repeating this provision problem over and over. You keep complaining without ever proposing solutions."
"Empress, I…"
"Did I say you could talk ?" The man closed his mouth without a word. "It's all well and good to talk, but if no action is ever taken, we might as well dissolve this council right now. The problem isn't knowing whether we can transport enough food for the winter here, but how to ensure we can still have some even when snow makes the mountain crossing impossible. It's not that the merchants don't want to cross it, it's that they don't have time to do it in one day and are afraid of getting stuck in the mountains. You want a solution ? Here's one. You have four months before the first snows arrive, use the remaining funds from the last taxes to build several shelter chalets and inns in the mountains to accommodate the merchants. Thus, they can make the crossing without fear of freezing to death or their mounts breaking their legs. It doesn't matter if they take an extra week as long as we have the provisions in the end. You complain about all the problems you have to solve without ever considering the origin first."
Y/N turned to Sunghoon, who was watching her with a smirk, and placed a hand on her hip.
"So yes, I think your ministers shouldn't be ministers if they can't use their brains, unless the origin of the problem here is that they don't have any at all."
She turned on her heel, having heard enough for the whole day, and left the throne room, her personal guards on her heels. She wasn't going to put her ladies-in-waiting through those long useless hours. "God, these ministers are all incompetent !" Her ladies-in-waiting rose at her arrival, bowing.
"Lady, would you like some tea ?" Jiya suggested.
"Yes, good idea." The woman busied herself preparing tea while Y/N settled onto the sofa.
"You should stop attending councils if they put you in this state, Lady."
"And have people say behind my back that I'm not doing what's expected of me ? No way. I was just hoping that Sunghoon surrounded himself with smarter people." Y/N took the cup of tea Jiya handed her and took a long sip of the fruity liquid that relaxed her. She finished her drink in no time, then stood up. "Let's take a walk in the gardens, Ladies. Let's enjoy the sun."
She linked her arm with Suha's and emerged from the room. Walking through the palace, the women entered the gardens, the bushes perfectly trimmed and the flowers aligned. It was definitely Y/N's favorite place in the palace. It was always peaceful and problem-free.
"Well, well, well." Y/N turned and stifled a sigh as she saw the concubines coming toward them, waving their fans.
"If it isn't our great Empress taking a stroll in the gardens." They giggled, and Y/N stared at them wearily.
"If you had learned good manners like ladies, you would know that you should bow before your Empress," she said, turning her gaze toward the roses.
"You little…" The first concubine was held back by another. "You won't last here ! We are the emperor's true companions ! All these women they marry meet the same fate ! Death or exile !"
Y/N chuckled, her fingers tracing the flower petals. "How cute that you think you'll live here forever. You, low-born girls who only serve as cock warmers for my husband."
"At least we can enjoy his presence ! Unlike you, who have never shared his bed !"
"What's going on here ? We could hear you screaming from the other end of the garden." All the women turned to see Sunghoon and his Lord friends joining them, their hands clasped behind their backs. Immediately, the concubines took their victim stance and threw themselves at the emperor to complain.
"My love ! The Empress insulted us !"
"Yes, she called us low-born girls ! Even though we are royal concubines !"
Sunghoon looked up at his wife, who didn't care what the concubines could complain about, preferring to focus her attention on the flowers, which were decidedly more interesting. "The roses are magnificent at this time of year," she said to her ladies-in-waiting. "We must enjoy them before winter makes them fall."
"Yes, Empress," Suha smiled. "Let us ask the gardeners to make several bouquets for your apartments." Y/N smiled tenderly at the youngest of her servants, caressing her cheek.
The Emperor couldn't take his eyes off her, having never seen a smile light up her face since their marriage, at least not in his presence. And her gaze turned cold again when Y/N looked at him.
"Husband, you'd better put leashes on your dogs. Regardless of the deplorable taste you have in women you want to sleep with, I would appreciate it if you would train them. Bowing in the presence of the Empress and speaking only when invited is a golden rule at court."
"See, she's insulting us !" But Sunghoon was far from listening to their lamentations.
"If you think I'm jealous, think again and don't dream. I only expect the respect I deserve in this palace. They may be your concubines, but they are only whores you chose for a little fun."
Y/N fixed her gaze on the concubines and smirked. "And these little mice would do well to remember that I am the only daughter of the greatest house after the royal family, and if something serious were to happen to me, my father, the General, would be happy to hunt down those responsible." The women swallowed.
The Empress inclined her head. "Husband. My Lords." She rolled her eyes at the concubines. "Whores."
Her ladies-in-waiting giggled as they walked away beside her, Y/N sporting a satisfied smirk. Sunghoon followed her with his eyes until they disappeared into the palace, and his concubines rushed at him. "My love ! Do something !"
"Punish her ! Have her whipped so she learns her lesson !"
Sunghoon snapped out of his contemplation and turned his gaze to her, scoffed, and pushed them away with his arm. "I have better things to do than start conflicts with my wife. Go complain to whoever will listen and don't bother me."
He walked away with his Lords, the concubines fuming because they had never been treated like this. And the Empress would pay for it.
The following days were very strange. Even though Y/N and Sunghoon still weren't speaking to each other, he was more observant of his wife and discovered her in a new light. He had learned more about her, what she liked and what she hated, and found that she might not be so bad after all.
Y/N stared at Sunwoo when her lady-in-waiting returned carrying a cat in her arms. The white-furred animal looked around the room curiously. "What is that ?"
"It's a gift from the Emperor, Lady. He gave you this cat to entertain you, hoping you wouldn't be too bored."
"Sunghoon gave me this cat ?"
"Lady, it's so romantic," Hina cooed, looking up from her embroidery. "The Emperor has never given any gifts to his previous wives ! Perhaps he's beginning to like you !"
"Don't be ridiculous, Hina." Y/N took the cat from the woman's arms and stroked its head. The cat began to purr, and she found herself smiling. "I suppose I can accept this gift. But don't tell him."
Her servants giggled but nodded. Y/N named him Snowflake, and he definitely loved his new mistress, spending hours lying across her lap or on her bed. It wasn't uncommon to see the cat follow the Empress through the palace as if he were her bodyguard.
Y/N was returning from the library, carrying Snowflake in her arms, when a small body collided with her. She looked down to see a little boy who had fallen on his bottom and leaned down to help him up. "Sorry, E-Empress," he stammered, missing one of his front teeth. "I didn't mean to…"
"Don't worry, it's alright. Are you lost ?"
"Y-Yes. I'm looking for my mom, she works at the palace."
"I'll help you find her. What's her name ?"
"Sun-nia."
"She's one of the cooks, if I'm not mistaken. Your mom makes the best cakes I've ever eaten." The boy nodded, knowing his mother's talent for baking.
"Dear wife."
The young woman turned to find Sunghoon in front of her, flanked by two guards. "Husband." The boy hid behind her when he saw the terrifying emperor.
"Who is this ?"
"The son of one of the cooks. He got lost looking for his mother, so I was going to walk him there." Y/N patted the boy's head, he moved away from her. "Come on. Don't worry, he's not going to eat you." The child quickly bowed before hiding behind her again, making her smile.
Something made Sunghoon's heart beat a little faster as he looked down at the cat in her arms. "I see you accepted my gift."
"Indeed. I thank you, I really like cats. Alright, I'll see you later if you wish."
He nodded, and Y/N took the boy's hand to lead him toward the kitchens, the emperor watched them leave. A child among them would be so nice, something he had wanted for a long time…
"Seon-jun." One of the guards stepped forward. "Have my quarters moved to the East Wing where my wife is, not to the West Wing of the concubines. Let them have only guest privileges, not those of the royal family."
"Yes, Emperor." The soldiers exchanged relieved looks. The emperor was finally coming to his senses, they couldn't take those mistresses anymore.
Y/N was sleeping peacefully, Snowflake curled up at her feet, when she felt the blanket being pulled back and a body slipping into her bed. Her fingers closed around the handle of the knife she hides under her pillow, and she turned to press the blade against the person's throat.
"Jesus Christ, woman ! It's me !" Sunghoon whispered. She sighed and lowered her knife, putting it back in its safe place. "Why do you have a weapon under your pillow ?"
"You never know who might slip into my bed in the middle of the night," she mocked, giving him a weary look over her shoulder. "Like you, husband." She pulled the blanket over herself to go back to sleep, closing her eyes. "Why are you here, anyway ?"
"I settled into the adjacent room. I'm your new neighbor."
"I don't want you as a neighbor."
"Why ?"
"I don't want to hear you snore."
"I don't snore," Sunghoon defended himself.
"Yeah, right." Y/N gave Snowflake a stroke as he came to lie down beside her, giving her husband a threatening look. It made him smile as she kissed the top of his head, resting her head on her pillow.
Sleep soon overcame her again, while Sunghoon remained wide awake, watching her back, her chest rising and falling at the regular rhythm of her breathing. He couldn't fall asleep, his mind was racing in all directions, preventing him from finding rest.
The young woman woke up a few hours later, thirsty, getting out of bed to approach the table where the carafe rested. She filled herself a glass of water, bringing it to her lips and emptying it. She walked toward the window to observe the landscape bathed in moonlight.
Stifling a yawn, Y/N closed the curtain and turned toward the bed, startled to find Sunghoon watching her. "You scared me ! Did I wake you ?"
"No, I wasn't sleeping." She frowned, turning back to lie down and pulling the duvet over herself.
"Why ?"
"I have insomnia. And I can't stop thinking."
"That's bad." She lay back down, breathing deeply as her body relaxed. The young woman froze when she felt Sunghoon's body press against hers and his arm wrap around her waist.
"Is this okay ?" he asked.
"Yes." Happy with her answer, Sunghoon pressed his chest to her back, nestling his face in the crook of her neck. His eyes closed, he was finally feeling sleep overtake him when he heard her voice.
"Sunghoon ?"
Say my name again…
"Mmm ?"
"If you intend to play the husband at night when no one is watching, you can go fuck yourself. I will not be the secretly loved wife. And I certainly will not be another woman you repudiate. Do you want me ? Then show it to everyone. Do you want to sleep in my bed ? Fine, but don't go warming others' anymore. Be my husband, and I'll be the wife at your side."
"You would be the Empress at my side, and I would be your husband." Satisfied, Y/N nodded and let herself be lulled by his warmth to fall back asleep. Sunghoon listened to her breathing, his fingers tracing small circles on her waist, and her presence granting him the comfort he had so hoped for.
The change didn't happen overnight, but gradually, the servants and guards began to notice the Emperor's attentions toward his wife. Asking for her favorite pastries to be served during long councils or sending her herbal tea in the evening. He joined her more regularly at meals and was often caught watching her.
Of course, Y/N was satisfied to see that Sunghoon kept his promise, and if he continued like this, she would be ready to give him a chance. After all, she wanted to have a pleasant life with her husband if that was also what he desired.
The biggest shock was that Sunghoon hadn't visited his concubines' chambers for several weeks, which had never happened before. And the women were outraged to see that the Emperor had succumbed to his wife and no longer paid them any attention.
Sunghoon was coming out of his office accompanied by Lords Jay and Jake when his concubines approached him, dressed lightly enough to seduce him. "Hello, my love."
"Hi, Lords, we hope we're not bothering you." The young man nodded slightly to invite them to speak, which gave them courage.
"Why wouldn't you come to our chambers tonight ? You've had so much to do lately, we could help you relax."
He looked at them without a word. Before, he would have accepted without hesitation, seeking the pleasure that would ease his thoughts, but now, only the image of his wife came to mind.
"Thank you, but I will spend the night with my wife. Find yourselves lovers if you need someone."
They blushed with anger as they walked away, throwing a fit. Jake elbowed his friend, who turned his head toward him. "So, it seems your little wife pleases you."
"She is my wife, of course she pleases me," Sunghoon said, rolling his eyes.
"Yeah, but you killed the others," Jay mocked.
"Stop it with that ! Those are just rumors ! I never killed anyone, and you know it, I just sent them back to their families with a large compensation. I'm sure it was Heeseung hyung who started those rumors."
"He's capable of it," Jake chuckled. "But what's different about her ?"
Sunghoon turned his gaze to the gardens, where Y/N was sitting on a bench, Snowflake on her lap, reading a book. The sun's rays reflected off her loose hair, and his eyes were drawn to her lips as she ran her tongue over them.
"Wow, we've lost him," Jay laughed. "God help us." The Emperor snapped out of his contemplation and bumped into them, muttering, as they snickered.
Y/N wasn't surprised to see Sunghoon join her at nightfall, which he now did every day. He slipped under the sheets, burying his face in the pillow. She gave him an amused glance. "Hard day, husband ?"
His voice was muffled by the pillow as he nodded. She set her book down on the nightstand before kneeling on the mattress, taking advantage of his bare chest to slide her hands along his back, massaging his tense muscles up to his shoulders.
Sunghoon groaned as he felt his muscles relax under her massage, the sensation of her fingers massaging his skin sent shivers down his spine. He turned his head to the side, his arms crossed under his chin. "This is divine, wife."
"I'm glad to hear it."
He rolled onto his back and pulled her into his arms, Y/N sprawled across his chest. Her cheek pressed against his chest over his heart, she could hear it beating fast. Sunghoon nestled his face in her hair, closing his eyes. "Thank you for giving me a chance."
"You kept your promise, you deserve it." He smiled and kissed her forehead.
Y/N soon fell asleep, Sunghoon didn't really sleep, only dozing due to his insomnia. His wife's presence beside him relaxed him, although sleep took a while to find him. That's why he heard the bedroom door open and the first floorboard creak.
He frowned, his eyes opening in the darkness to see two silhouettes slipping through the shadows. Without a sound, he slid his hand under Y/N's pillow to grab the knife she kept there.
He waited for the intruders to advance far enough, their shadows projected onto the bed, before pouncing. He crashed to the floor with one of the men, the sudden movement pulled Y/N from her sleep. She saw Sunghoon fighting on the ground with one of the intruders, the second one aiming for her.
The young woman jumped to her feet, grabbing one of the swords that served as decoration below the headboard but was just as deadly. She parried the man's blade, he grabbed her ankle and pulled her toward him. She stumbled out of bed, and they both staggered on the floor.
Her sword slipped from her grip in her fall, allowing the man to pin her to the ground, his hands closing around her throat. Y/N grabbed his wrists to try to force him to let go, in vain. Sunghoon saw his wife in a bad position, seeing red.
"Don't fucking touch my wife !"
He plunged the dagger into the side of the one attacking him before throwing himself at his wife's assailant, knocking him out with an uppercut, as the guards rushed into the room due to the commotion.
"Y/N !" He rushed to her, lifting her in his arms to set her on the bed. His gaze hardened when he saw the finger marks around her throat as she coughed, struggling to catch her breath. "You alright, baby ?"
She nodded, bringing the glass of water he handed her to her lips. The Emperor turned to the soldiers who had arrested the two intruders, clenching his fists when he saw their armor, confirming they worked at the palace. "Who gave you the order ? Was I the target of this assassination attempt ?"
They didn't answer, and Sunghoon grabbed one by the collar, lifting him off the ground. "Answer me ! And perhaps I will be lenient !"
"We were supposed to kill the Empress…"
"Why ? Under whose orders ?!" Sunghoon released the man after getting his answer, fixing his gaze on his wife.
He approached the bed and took her face in his hands to place a kiss on her forehead. "No one will hurt you again, I promise you." He turned to the soldiers. "Take these two to the dungeons, let them await their sentence."
The guards nodded and left the room. Sunghoon lay back down beside Y/N, holding her in his arms. Neither of them managed to find sleep until sunrise, remaining in each other's arms.
The Emperor called an emergency council to discuss the night's attack, the strangulation marks were still fresh on Y/N's neck despite the makeup applied by her ladies-in-waiting.
The couple sat on their thrones, the advisors and ministers facing them. "Did they talk ? Did you manage to get them to confess the culprit ?"
"Yes, it wasn't difficult. They will be executed at sunset, along with the instigators of this attack."
"Who are they ?" Sunghoon waved his hand, and soldiers returned with his three concubines in chains.
"Using your favors to manipulate soldiers and order them to kill the Empress was not clever," the young man declared. "They will be killed with the two soldiers tonight."
"You can't kill us ! You don't have the right !"
"Silence !" Sunghoon thundered, slamming his fist on the armrest of his throne. "When you attack my wife, your Empress, you must expect consequences ! This is treason !"
"How can you prefer her to us ?! She is useless !"
Sunghoon fumed, Y/N placed her hand on his arm to urge him to keep his calm. "In fact, their complaints annoy me. Take them to the courtyard and execute them now."
The women begged, cried, and screamed for mercy, but Sunghoon only turned his eyes to his wife. Y/N smiled at him, approving his decision, and he squeezed her hand in his, promising himself that no one would ever lay their hands on her again.
Except him, of course. Because she was his favorite wife. Only his.
