23 - aus🥱 - she/her - tpwk!!
back from vacation🌠currently lurking🙂↕️ feel free to look around ! probably thinking ab sum boys🎀 svt!nct!skz!treasure!ikon!
Christopher Bahng lives for the ring—the pain, the pressure, the promise of glory. You’re on the brink of losing someone you love to a fight they can't win. When your worlds collide, obsession meets resistance, and every round brings you closer to a choice: protect him, or watch him destroy himself. Because in boxing, no one leaves the ring untouched—and not every fight is fair.
taglist: open! (comment under masterpost to be added)
notes: i don't know anything about boxing or medical stuff so if anything's wrong here (highly likely) we're just gonna cough it up to be a fictional story 😄
masterpost | previous | next
The smell hit you before the noise did—beer gone sour in plastic cups, sweat baked into concrete, the tang of disinfectant half-heartedly sprayed over both. The venue was a hollowed-out rec center, its basketball hoops folded into the ceiling to make space for a ring that didn’t look half as sturdy as the men pacing inside it.
You tugged at your sleeve, already regretting letting Jisung talk you into this.
“C’mon,” he shouted over the roar of the crowd, his grin stretched wide and feral. “This is culture!”
“This is gross,” you muttered, eyeing the sticky floors, the crowd packed shoulder to shoulder with more enthusiasm than hygiene. A woman shoved past carrying nachos that looked like they’d dissolve plastic. Somewhere in the back, someone was chanting a name you didn’t know, their voice already hoarse.
Jisung only laughed, practically bouncing as he steered you closer to the ring. “Trust me, you’re gonna thank me later. You’ve never seen anything like him.”
“Like who?”
As if on cue, the crowd surged forward, a ripple of movement that dragged you with it. Jisung grabbed your wrist before you could dig your heels in, weaving through clusters of shouting fans until the barricade loomed just ahead, its metal bars vibrating under the force of palms slapping against them.
“Front row, baby!” he yelled, tugging you toward the opening where security stood planted like stone pillars.
“Absolutely not,” the guard barked, holding out a broad arm when Jisung tried to slip through.
Jisung grinned like this was all part of the plan. “Hey, hey, relax—I’m with him. I’m a friend of Chan’s.”
“Everyone’s a friend of Chan’s,” the guard deadpanned. “Pass?”
Jisung patted his pockets, then froze. “Ah.” His smile wavered. “Okay, so funny story—”
“Out of the way.” The guard didn’t budge, gaze already scanning the next group pushing forward.
You folded your arms, savoring his floundering. “Wow. Really living it up.”
“Shut up,” he hissed, still fumbling in his hoodie as if the pass might magically appear between his keys and crumpled gum wrappers.
The guard shifted, clearly seconds away from shoving you both back into the crowd. You were already imagining Jisung dragging you here only to get kicked out before you even saw anything, when a familiar voice cut through the din.
“They’re with me.”
You turned, relief washing through you when you spotted Minho stepping out from behind the barricade. His black jacket was unzipped, his expression carved from stone, but his eyes flicked briefly to yours—and softened.
“Hey,” he said, just for you, before facing the guard again. “They’re fine.”
The guard hesitated, but one look at Minho was apparently all it took. With a grunt, he dropped his arm and waved you both through.
Jisung let out a victorious whoop, nearly tripping over himself as he darted past. “Knew connections would come in handy!”
You snorted, brushing against Minho’s shoulder as you slipped in after him. “More like you knew Minho would bail you out. Again.”
Minho’s lips twitched, the closest he ever got to a smile in a place like this. “I should start charging him.”
“You’d be rich,” you say back, shifting closer to the barricade as the crowd heaved and shouted.
Minho leaned an elbow against the rail, his sharp eyes scanning the ring before flicking sideways to you. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Wouldn’t be,” you admitted, tugging at your sleeve again, “if he”—you jerked a thumb at Jisung, now bouncing on his toes like an overexcited kid—“hadn’t practically dragged me out of my apartment.”
Jisung only grinned, cheeks flushed with the thrill of noise and lights. But when your gaze turned back toward the ring, he and Minho exchanged a look over your head. A quick one, but heavy, wordless.
You didn’t notice. The roar of the announcer boomed through the speakers, and your eyes tracked the sudden sweep of spotlights slicing across the crowd, hunting for the fighter everyone was here to see.
The house lights dimmed all at once, plunging the rec center into a shadow buzzing with noise. A beat of silence stretched, broken only by the distant hiss of the smoke machine, before the speakers erupted with bass so heavy it rattled the metal barricade beneath your hands.
People screamed his name—Bang Chan! Bang Chan!—voices colliding into one messy chant as a figure appeared at the far end of the aisle.
He walked slow, deliberate, like he had all the time in the world. Gloves already on, hood pulled low over his face, the overhead lights painting his bare chest in sharp cuts of shadow and shine. His shoulders rolled, loose and easy, but there was a coil of something dangerous underneath—like a spring pulled taut.
The crowd went feral.
You leaned closer to Jisung, raising your voice over the chaos. “Wait—aren’t we kind of… close? What if he throws someone out of the ring? Or, I don’t know—” your eyes darted to the folding chairs stacked along the wall—“what if a chair comes flying at us?”
Both boys snapped their heads toward you at once.
Jisung looked like you’d just spat in holy water. “What—”
“—did you just say?” Minho finished, voice flat with disbelief.
You blinked. “What? Isn’t that what happens? With the—” you mimed swinging a chair half-heartedly.
Jisung’s mouth fell open in sheer horror. “You absolute heathen.”
Minho pinched the bridge of his nose like you’d given him a migraine. “This is boxing. Not WWE.”
“Oh.” You shifted your weight, heat creeping up your neck. “Well, how am I supposed to know the difference?”
“You have eyes,” Minho muttered.
“And no shame,” Jisung added, still looking wounded. “God, don’t say that again, we’re gonna get jumped.”
You huffed, crossing your arms, but the heat in your cheeks only deepened when the man at the center of the chaos reached the ring. He moved with a strange combination of swagger and calm, like the whole routine had been choreographed for him alone. The hood came off in a sharp tug, sweat-dark curls sticking to his temples, and suddenly his face was bare to the lights.
Bang Chan.
His grin was wolfish, teeth catching in the glare, and he bounced once on the soles of his feet like he couldn’t wait to tear someone apart. The referee beckoned him toward the center, where his opponent was already waiting—a bigger man, broader, the kind of build that made you wonder if Chan had wandered into the wrong weight class entirely.
“Holy shit,” you murmured. “He’s tiny compared to that guy.”
Minho’s eyes are trained on the ring. “Don’t underestimate him.”
“He doesn’t need height,” Jisung said, vibrating with pride. “He’s got speed. Watch. You’ll see.”
The two fighters stood face to face now, the referee rattling off rules you couldn’t hear over the crush of the crowd. Their gloves touched once, a mockery of respect, and then they separated.
The bell rang.
The room erupted like it had been waiting to explode, sound surging so loud you felt it in your ribs. Chan’s shoulders rolled, chin ducked, eyes narrowing as he advanced. There was nothing slow about him now—just quick, sharp steps, fists flashing in arcs of leather.
And for the first time all night, you stopped thinking about the sticky floors, or the smell, or the ridiculousness of being here at all.
You just watched.
Chan moved like he’d been waiting his whole life for it. Quick, sharp steps carried him forward, gloves up, head low. His opponent—easily a head taller, twice as wide—lurched into motion with heavy swings, but Chan slipped out of reach as if he’d already seen the punches coming.
The first connection was so loud you flinched. Leather on flesh, a brutal crack that sent sweat flying under the lights. The crowd howled.
“See that?” Jisung shouted, practically climbing the barricade. “Fast as hell—he makes people miss and then—boom!” He mimed an uppercut with so much enthusiasm he nearly elbowed you in the face.
Minho didn’t bother with commentary. He just leaned casually against the rail, lips curling in the faintest grin as his eyes tracked the fight. “Guy’s too slow,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Chan’ll eat him alive.”
You stared, caught between horror and awe. “Eat him alive? He’s getting hit!”
And Chan was—he didn’t dodge everything. Each time a fist grazed his jaw or slammed into his ribs, his body jolted with the impact. But then he was right back in, relentless, closing distance that should’ve kept him safe. Like pain wasn’t a warning—it was fuel.
Another crack echoed as Chan landed a hook clean against his opponent’s cheek. The man staggered, teeth bared, and the room erupted, stomping, screaming.
You pressed closer to the barricade before you realized you were doing it.
Minho chuckled, a low, satisfied sound. “Told you.”
“Yeah!” Jisung bellowed, fist pumping the air. “Get him, Channie!”
You couldn’t look away. The ring felt like a cage and a stage all at once, and inside it, Bang Chan looked like he belonged to both.
Chan came out southpaw, right foot forward, right glove flicking in quick little jabs to test the distance. It looked wrong to you—backwards somehow—but his body fit it like a second skin. His opponent, stockier and orthodox, squared up heavy, expecting him to lead with the left.
The first round was a dance. Chan didn’t throw much—just circled, light on his toes, eyes locked on the bigger man’s shoulders. He was watching, measuring. Every time a punch came, he slipped under it or rolled away, just close enough that you thought he’d be crushed, only to slide back in with a counter hook that snapped leather against cheekbone.
Jisung was vibrating beside you, half-shouting commentary that barely made sense. “That’s the angle—did you see that? He’s pulling him right where he wants him—oh my god, yes—”
Minho, calmer but no less invested, grinned as Chan landed a clean left cross that staggered the man backward. “He’s baiting him. Letting him think he’s slow. Idiot doesn’t know what’s coming.”
The bell ended the first round with the crowd roaring. Chan walked to his corner with a grin, chest heaving, while his opponent slumped onto his stool, already red in the face.
Second round started harder, faster. The big man came out swinging, frustrated, throwing wild rights meant to crush bone. One caught Chan high on the temple, snapping his head sideways. You gasped, stomach lurching—only for Chan to shake it off with a grim smile and dig a left uppercut straight into the man’s ribs. The thud echoed through the gym, and sweat sprayed in an arc.
“Holy shit,” you whispered.
“Body shots win fights,” Minho said, like he was teaching you something.
Chan kept pressing, southpaw stance confusing the rhythm, every step closing space the other man needed. He wasn’t just fighting—you realized, watching his eyes sharpen with each punch—he was solving a puzzle in real time. Testing, adjusting, punishing.
By the third round, his opponent was slower, gloves dropping an inch too low with every breath. Chan exploited every gap, slipping jabs through the guard, smashing hooks into the body. But it wasn’t clean. He was reckless, too, eating shots he didn’t need to, wincing when another right caught his jaw. His mouth bled, bright red against the white of his mouthguard.
And yet—he grinned through it.
The crowd screamed his name louder, stomping, chanting, the floor vibrating under your feet. You should’ve looked away, disgust curdling in your gut at the sight of blood, but you didn’t. You couldn’t.
Bang Chan was bleeding, battered, brilliant—and he looked alive in a way you’d never seen in anyone before.
The fourth round turned ugly.
Chan had been cruising—slipping jabs, darting in with that wicked left cross—but his opponent adjusted. The bigger man stopped chasing and planted his feet, letting Chan come to him. When Chan lunged in for another body shot, he walked straight into a right hook that cracked across his jaw.
You flinched so hard your teeth clacked together.
The crowd roared as Chan stumbled, gloves up too late to block the barrage that followed. His back hit the ropes, and for a full ten seconds it was nothing but fists thudding into flesh, the snap of leather on skin. His head jerked side to side, sweat and spit flying, until the ref darted in close, one hand half-raised to stop it.
“Come on, Channie!” Jisung bellowed, voice breaking.
“Keep your guard up,” Minho muttered through gritted teeth, though you could see his fingers white-knuckled against the barricade.
Chan’s gloves came high again at last. He bobbed, slipped one desperate shot, and spun out from the ropes. His chest heaved, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. But he was smiling—ragged, feral, alive.
The bell saved him.
When he sat on his stool, he spat red into a bucket, chest rising and falling like a drumbeat. His corner men barked instructions you couldn’t hear over the crowd. He just nodded, eyes fixed on his opponent like he was memorizing every twitch of muscle, every drop of sweat.
The fifth round began with a chant. At first it was a pocket of voices somewhere to your left, but then it spread, caught like fire on dry grass.
“South—paw! South—paw! South—paw!”
The name crashed in waves, dozens, then hundreds, until the whole gym shook with it.
Chan came alive under the sound. His feet lightened, his gloves flashing. He circled, southpaw stance carving new angles, his right hand peppering jabs while his left coiled and struck, vicious and precise. Every time it landed—thud to the ribs, snap to the chin—the chant grew louder.
By the sixth, his opponent was slower, his guard sagging. Chan ducked a clumsy hook, slipped inside, and drove an uppercut so clean it lifted the man’s head back like a puppet on strings. The crowd exploded.
“South—paw! South—paw!”
The seventh was punishment. Chan walked him down, jab after jab, until the bigger man’s knees wobbled. He tried one last desperate swing, but Chan slipped under it, coiled his whole body, and unleashed a left cross that detonated against his jaw.
The man crumpled.
The ref’s count blurred in your ears, drowned out by the frenzy of the crowd, by Jisung shaking the barricade and screaming himself hoarse, by Minho’s quiet, satisfied exhale.
Nine. Ten.
It was over.
Chan stood in the center of the ring, gloves raised high, blood smeared across his mouth and sweat dripping from his curls. The chant thundered around him like it had always belonged to him—
“South—paw! South—paw! South—paw!”
And through the haze of fists and lights and noise, you couldn’t look away.
The gym hadn’t stopped shaking by the time the fight ended. The chants still echoed in your bones as security pushed the crowd back, funneling people toward the exits while Chan disappeared down a narrow hallway at the side of the ring. His gloves were already off, one arm slung over his cutman’s shoulder, blood still bright on his lips.
You were shoved and jostled with the flood of people spilling out of the stands, half the crowd chanting his name, the other half arguing about what they’d just seen. Jisung was practically levitating, shouting “Did you SEE that?!” into the ear of a stranger who definitely hadn’t asked. Minho only hooked a hand through your elbow, guiding you through the crush with the efficiency of someone used to carving space.
Somehow, you ended up funneled into the narrow hallway that led behind the ring, the air thick with sweat, disinfectant, and the metallic sting of blood.
“Stick close,” Minho said.
“Where are we—” you started, but your words died as the crowd parted just enough to reveal him.
Bang Chan sat on a folding chair, gloves off now, chest slick with sweat, curls plastered to his forehead. A medic crouched in front of him, dabbing at the split along his mouth with clinical precision, checking his pupils with a penlight. His face was swollen in places—one cheekbone already purpling, lip split wide enough to sting—but he didn’t flinch. He just smiled through it, that same wide, bright grin he’d worn even with fists flying at him.
Up close, you realized something else too: he was beautiful. Not clean, not perfect—raw. His eyes caught the light, sharp and warm at once, and his whole body seemed to hum even while sitting still, like he hadn’t left the fight yet.
Chan’s head jerked up. The grin widened for half a second—until his gaze landed on you. His ears pinked almost instantly.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack!” Jisung barreled straight past the medic, throwing his arms around Chan’s shoulders so hard the poor man nearly toppled off the chair. “Do you even know what defense is?!”
“Get off,” the medic snapped, prying Jisung away. “He needs to be checked.”
Chan only laughed, low and rough, the kind of sound that still carried warmth and gestured vaguely toward Jisung. “He always gets dramatic when he’s worried.”
Minho leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, his grin cutting through the haze of voices and antiseptic. “And you always make him worry.”
You lingered half a step behind them, unsure if you belonged here, unsure if you even wanted to. But then Chan’s gaze found you again—pointed, curious—and held.
“And you brought someone,” he said, voice dipping a little like he was suddenly aware of how hoarse it sounded. His smile softened, crooked at the edges. “Hi.”
You opened your mouth, intending something casual, maybe something witty and cool, but all that came out was a useless: “Hi.”
Jisung clapped a hand on your shoulder before you could sink into the floor. “This is my friend. She doesn’t know shit about boxing. She thought there’d be flying chairs.”
The medic actually froze mid-swipe, eyes flicking between you and Chan like he’d misheard. Minho groaned quietly into his hand.
Chan blinked once. Then, to your horror and relief, he laughed—bright, unrestrained, the kind of laugh that lit his face despite the swelling. His ears went redder, his fingers tugging insistently at the lobe as if that could hide it.
“Wrestling, right?” he teased, amusement wrapped in exhaustion. “Don’t worry. No chairs here. Just fists.”
You felt your cheeks warm under the weight of his grin, your pulse betraying you even as the medic nudged his jaw to the side with brisk fingers. He keeps his eyes on you, even as his jaw is tilted. “I’m Chris. Christopher. Chan, whatever you wanna call me.”
“Southpaw?” You ask, unable to help yourself. Chan cracks a lopsided grin at that.
“Nah,” Chan said, voice dipping playful even as his lip split again when he smiled. “That’s just what they chant. Southpaw ‘cause I fight the wrong way ‘round.”
“Hold still,” the man muttered.
Chan obeyed, but his eyes flicked back to you once, twice—like he couldn’t help it. And you hated the way it twisted something low in your stomach, hated that after everything you’d just seen—blood, bruises, a man nearly beaten senseless—what you were thinking now was simple, undeniable:
He was attractive. Too attractive.
You were definitely attracted.
The medic prodded Chan’s split lip, muttering something about stitches, but your gaze drifted lower, tracing the swell of his ribs where sweat slicked his skin. The bruise there wasn’t just surface-deep. It rose hard and uneven, already blooming purple-black, and each time Chan inhaled, his chest stuttered in the faintest hitch.
You’d seen it before. Not in a ring, not under lights, but in textbooks, case studies, late nights memorizing diagrams until your eyes blurred. Broken ribs didn’t always show themselves right away. Sometimes they looked like nothing but hurt like hell—and sometimes, if ignored, they punctured lungs.
The medic’s hands skimmed past it, too focused on blood and bone above the neck. He didn’t even press there, didn’t notice how Chan’s shoulders tensed when the gauze brushed too close.
“Hold still,” the man repeated, tilting Chan’s chin to peer at his pupil with the penlight again.
You shifted, heat crawling up your throat.
“Um—” The word slipped out before you’d even decided to say it. All three men turned: Jisung, Minho, and Chan.
Your mouth went dry, but you forced it out. “His ribs.” You pointed before you lost your nerve. “He’s guarding on the right side. If it’s fractured and you miss it—” you swallowed, the memory of Seungmin’s too-thin chest, his too-shallow breaths flashing sharp in your mind—“it could collapse a lung.”
The medic frowned, following your gesture. He pressed carefully against the bruised skin, and Chan hissed, flinching despite himself.
“Shit,” the man muttered under his breath. He adjusted his kit, already pulling out tape. “Good eye. Didn’t clock that.”
Minho’s brows rose, a flicker of surprise breaking his usual composure. Jisung puffed up instantly, smacking your shoulder, making you stumble a bit, like see, told you she was smart.
Chan waved off the medic when he started towards him, but when he caught your eye again, he grinned like it was nothing. “It’s fine,” he said, voice rough, casual in a way that made your chest tighten. “I’ll get it checked out properly later. Right now I’ve gotta… y’know. Clean up. Get ready.”
“For what?” you asked before you could stop yourself.
“The afterparty.” His smile curved wider, lopsided and lazy, like he knew how ridiculous it sounded while his side was being strapped down. “Always an afterparty.”
Jisung perked up instantly. “Hell yeah, baby! I told you—you’ve never seen anything like him, and you’ve never partied like him either.”
Minho groaned under his breath. “You’re going to break something else before the night’s over.”
Chan only laughed, tugging absently at his ear as if he could pull the blush from it. Then, turning back to you, he tilted his head, curls falling into his eyes. “You should come. Both of you, yeah, but—” His gaze lingered, warm and disarming. “You too.”
Your stomach flipped, your brain short-circuiting between he’s injured, he’s reckless, this is insane and he’s looking right at me.
Your stomach flipped, but you kept your voice even. “I can’t.”
Chan’s smile didn’t fall so much as soften, like he’d been expecting that answer anyway. “Busy?”
“I have to go see Seu…I’ve got plans,” you said, the name catching a little at the back of your throat.
A brief silence nicked the edge of the room. Minho’s mouth flattened; a muscle flickered in his jaw. “Seungmin can wait,”
“He can’t,” you said simply.
Chan didn’t ask who Seungmin was. His gaze held yours a second longer, then slid away, respectful. The pink climbed his ears again; his fingers tugged at the lobe like he could pull the color back down.
“No pressure,” he said. “Another time.”
“Breathe in,” the medic interrupted, palms braced against Chan’s side. Chan inhaled; the hitch was small but there. Tape cinched around his ribs in neat white bands.
You stepped closer, automatic. “Ice twenty minutes on, twenty off when you get home. Sleep propped up. If you feel short of breath or dizzy, you need imaging.”
The medic shot you a quick, grateful look. Chan’s eyes didn’t leave your face. “Can I—uh.” His ears flared darker. “Can I call you if I forget all that?”
You could have said no. You could have drawn a line and walked away, let the night keep its echo of fists and chants and not add anything more to the tangle in your chest.
Instead, you tipped your chin toward his hand. “Give me your phone.”
He fumbled it out with raw knuckles, unlocked screen with a spider-web crack along the corner. You typed your number and handed it back.
Jisung practically levitated again. “She’s coming next time, though. I’ll drag her by her ankles.”
“Try it,” you said, and he made a show of zipping his mouth.
Minho pushed off the doorframe. “Common. I’ll drive you,” he said to you. To Chan: “Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’ll try,” Chan answered, which wasn’t a promise so much as a confession. He lifted his hand in a small wave that somehow made your pulse jump. “Goodnight.”
You nodded. “Goodnight, Christopher.”
His mouth twitched at the name like you’d clipped him under the chin. The medic nudged him again, and the room folded back into motion—gauze, tape, orders, the low hum of after-fight triage.
“Hey,” Chan called, and you glanced back.
He stood framed by the doorway, taped and bruised and unbearably alive. “Good eye,” he said, tapping his ribs lightly. “Thanks.”
You didn’t trust your voice, so you gave a small nod and turned away.
By the time Minho got you to the parking lot, your phone buzzed. An unknown number.
Unknown: text me when you get where you’re going? just to know you’re safe.
Then, as if he’d heard how that sounded:
Unknown: sorry—too much?
A beat.
Unknown: new at this.
You stared down at the messages, the ghost of the chant still pounding in your bones, and typed back before you could overthink it.
You: i’ll text.
Minho didn’t comment when you shoved your phone deep into your pocket, but you felt the weight of his glance anyway—quick, sharp, then gone again. He unlocked the car with a chirp, the rec center’s floodlights bleeding pale across the hood.
The drive was quiet at first, the kind of silence that wasn’t empty but full—of chants still echoing in your head, of tape pulled too tight around someone else’s ribs. The city blurred by in streaks of neon and exhaust.
“You don’t have to answer him,” Minho said at last, eyes on the road.
“I know.” You picked at a loose thread on your sleeve. “I just… said I would.”
“Mm.” He tapped the wheel once, twice, as if weighing whether to push. Then: “Seungmin’ll be upset you didn’t go to the party.”
That name landed differently in the quiet of the car. Not heavy exactly, but grounding. You swallowed, the earlier tightness in your throat returning. “He’s probably asleep already.”
“Doesn’t matter.” The streetlight painted Minho’s profile in pale gold as he turned down into quieter blocks. “He doesn’t want your life circling around him like a drain. You know that.”
Your hand tightened on your sleeve. “That’s why you won’t tell him.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” Minho said simply. “But he’ll figure it out anyway. He always does.”
You let the silence stretch after that, softer this time, filled only by the low hum of the engine. When Minho finally pulled up in front of Seungmin’s house, the porch light burned like a lighthouse beam, steady against the dark.
You unbuckled your seatbelt, fingers brushing your phone in your pocket. The ghost of the chant still pounded faintly through your bones, tangled with something you weren't quite sure you know how to name.
“Thanks for the ride,” you said.
Minho gave a short nod, eyes already on the road ahead. “Go on.”
You stepped out, the cool night air wrapping around you, the faint buzz of your phone in your pocket like a pulse you couldn’t ignore. The porch light burned steady ahead, but behind your eyes, the chant from the gym still throbbed—Southpaw, Southpaw, Southpaw—until it tangled with Seungmin’s name, and you weren’t sure which one was echoing louder.
脷 .ᐟ TONGUE. 2 in which, your ‘relationship’ with James couldn’t be messier, a situationship based on fights and low-key hookups, tearing at each other like it’s second nature—all sharp words, dirty looks, and the kind of tension that never really goes away. because the thing about james? he knows exactly how to hurt you—and you hurt him right back…
❛ 赵雨凡 𝑥 idol!reader ❜ 𓈒𓈒 based on my baby @tinygladiatorworm ‘s request 𖤼
⚠︎ MDNI ! smut, a LOT of angst~, multiple sexual scenes, denial, toxic dynamics, ghosting, avoidant behavior (?) situationship, idol hiatus, health problems, ethel cain mention, ( that’s a whole trigger warning ) social media posts,yearning nsfw : unprotected sex, missionary, multiple positions, crying during sex (angsty sex ) spooning sex, oral (fem receiving) body worshipping, semi-public foreplay, dry humping, shower sex, oral fixation, multiple orgasms.
𓏸 19k ╱ 𝓶. list. ♪♫ 𝑝laylist
TONGUE ࿇ part 1. part 2.
It was Mina who finally said the thing.
Of course it was Mina -she had the patience to wait until the moment was right and the precision to choose her words without excess, which meant that when she spoke it had the particular weight of something that had been considered thoroughly before being released.
It was a Sunday. Rare day off, or close to one- no company schedule, just a morning of your own before the final week of pre-release preparation began.
“It was the right thing,” you told her when she asked about the whole situation, less like a position being defended and more like something being confirmed to yourself. “I don’t regret it.”
“My body just-” you stopped. Started again. “I’ve been feeling off. You know that. And the doctor said the bloodwork is clean, so it’s just-” you shook your head. “Stress. The comeback. The schedule.”
Mina looked at you across the table, her coffee cup held in both hands in the unconscious mirror of yours, and her expression was so specifically careful- so precisely calibrated to the exact amount of honesty you could currently tolerate - that you understood she’d decided what she was about to say some time ago and had simply been waiting for the right Sunday morning.
“Your body,” she said, gently, “has been trying to tell you something for six weeks.”
“Mina.”
“I’m not saying it to make you feel bad,” she explained. “I’m saying it because you’re the most self-aware person I know in every direction except this one. You analyze everything. You see everything. And this-” she held your gaze, “-you’re looking directly at it and calling it stress.”
“It is stress.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is. And what’s causing the stress?”
The silence that followed had a specific texture -5he kind that existed when the answer was present and both people knew it but one of them wasn’t ready to say it out loud yet.
“The comeback,” you said.
Mina’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t push. She simply held the quiet with you, patient and immovable, and let the silence do what silences do when they’re given enough room -expand, and fill, and eventually reveal the shape of what was living in them.
The bathroom door opened. Hye-ri emerged in a cloud of steam and sheet mask, took one look at the kitchen table, and reversed direction with the swift social intelligence of someone who understood immediately that she had walked into a conversation that was not finished.
“I was never here,” she said, disappearing back down the hallway. “But I love you guys ! Fighting !”
The Sunday light moved across the table as you sketched out a small laugh. Your coffee was getting cold.
“I miss him,” you said. Very quietly. To your coffee cup, more than to Mina. The first time the words had existed outside your own head, and they sounded, out in the air, smaller than you’d expected and larger than you could manage simultaneously. “Which is stupid. I made the right call and I know I made the right call and I still-”
“It’s not stupid,” Mina said.
“It’s so counterproductive.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“I don’t wanna miss him,” you said, and heard the specific texture of your own voice saying it -the distinction that mattered, the difference between what was true and what you wanted to be true, the gap between them that you’d been living in for six weeks and calling by other names. “I want to be fine. I am fine. In every way that counts I made the right-”
“You can make the right decision,” Mina said softly, “and still grieve it.”
You performed the showcase the way you performed everything -completely and precisely.
The formation issues were resolved. The bridge transition was clean. Your body knew the choreography the way it knew breathing, and so it did what it did, and the lights were bright and the crowd was loud and for the duration of the set you were exactly and only what you were on stage -present, professional, the dance machine, all of it.
Afterward, in the wings, you bent forward with your hands on your knees and breathed.
Hye-ri appeared beside you, still coming off stage herself, and put a hand briefly on your back. Said nothing. You straightened after a moment and smiled and it was real, because the performance high was real, because whatever else was happening in the background of your body -the stage still gave you the thing it had always given you -that clean, temporary, complete aliveness that nothing else quite replicated.
One more week, you told yourself. Get through the release week. Then you can be a person again.
You’d negotiated.
Release week was seven days -press appearances, music show performances, fan engagements, content shoots. Seven days of concentrated, high-visibility, high-demand activity that you had obligations to your members and your company and three years of work to see through.
Seven days.
You could manage seven days.
Your body, which had been listening to these negotiations with the patient skepticism of an entity that had been ignored for six weeks and was running low on goodwill, received this latest proposal in silence.
Release week arrived with the particular atmospheric pressure of something that had been building for months.
Monday was three back-to-back press interviews, a photo shoot for a digital magazine spread, and an evening fan live that ran an hour over schedule because the fans were in the specific mood of people who had been waiting for new music and were vibrating with it their energy coming through the screen with a warmth that you found genuinely moving even through the low-grade nausea that had showed up mid-afternoon.
You ate small amounts between schedules, drank water constantly, kept the antinausea prescription in your bag and used it twice on Monday and told no one.
Tuesday was the first music show performance.
You were in hair and makeup at five-thirty am, which meant your alarm had gone off at four forty-five, which meant you had woken at three am and not gone back to sleep, which was becoming its own subsidiary pattern that you were also not examining.
Ji-eun worked in focused silence, reading your tiredness in the particular way she had, and when she got to the outer corner of your right eye she paused for a fraction of a second.
“The lash is gonna be a pain,” she said.
“When has it ever not been,” you deadpanned.
She worked around it carefully, the way she always did, and the lash did what it always did- curled upward like a small rebellion, refusing to be corrected, the single detail that never quite cooperated regardless of technique or product or effort.
You looked at it in the mirror.
Did not think about the person who would have noticed it from forty feet away and said nothing and noticed it anyway.
Did not think about that. Definitely not.
“You look beautiful,” Ji-eun said, setting down her brush with the quiet satisfaction.
You looked at yourself in the mirror. The full construction of you -flawless and deliberate, the armor fully assembled, every surface of the public self precisely rendered. You looked exactly like what you were supposed to look like.
You looked, from the outside, completely fine.
“Thanks,” you said with a genuine smile, grateful in a way.
The performance on Tuesday was good.
Wednesday’s was better.
Thursday’s -the third music show, the one with the largest live audience component, the one that mattered most in terms of chart impact-Thursday’s was when it happened.
It happened the way most real things happened -inconveniently, incompletely, without regard for timing or audience or the seven cameras currently pointed at the stage.
You were in the second verse when you became aware of your body in a way that was distinct from the usual performance awareness -not the productive, kinetic consciousness of a dancer in the middle of choreography, but something else. Something underneath.
A quality of physical information arriving from a direction you’d been ignoring for weeks, insistent and escalating, like a notification you’d been swiping away finally demanding to be read.
You kept dancing.
You kept dancing because that was what you did, that was the thing you’d built your entire professional identity around -the capacity to keep going, to absorb and continue, to be present in your body as an instrument of the music regardless of what your body was privately communicating.
You made it to the end of the second chorus.
In the formation change before the bridge - James crossed your mind- or rather his eyes.
Your vision went briefly strange. Not dark exactly. More like the quality of the light changed, the stage brightness doing something it shouldn’t, the edges of your visual field making a decision you hadn’t authorized.
You corrected. Automatically, physically, the muscle memory doing its job while the rest of you registered what was happening with a calm that was less composure and more dissociation.
Hye-ri was two counts to your left. She caught the correction -you knew she did because you knew her, knew the micro-adjustment in her peripheral focus that meant she’d seen something. She held her formation. Kept going. Trusting you.
You got through the bridge.
And got through the final chorus.
You were in the last eight counts -the outro formation, stationary, the lights shifting to the end configuration- when your body made its final and non-negotiable statement on the subject of six weeks of negotiation.
You folded.
Not collapsed -not the dramatic buckle that the cameras would have made something of. A fold. A sitting down, essentially, your knees making contact with the stage floor in the last two counts of the song, graceful enough in the moment that two seconds passed before anyone in the audience understood it wasn’t choreography.
Hye-ri was beside you before the music stopped.
The next few hours had the quality of something experienced through broken glass.
The backstage area. The company doctor who had been on site for the broadcast. The cold pack at the back of your neck. Soeun’s face, the sleepiness entirely absent, replaced by something wide-eyed and young that you registered and felt guilty about in the dim practical way of someone running low on processing capacity.
Mina’s voice on the phone somewhere nearby, calm and authoritative, the big-sister register fully activated. Your manager’s face doing the thing it did when it was holding several difficult things simultaneously and not allowing any of them to surface.
“I’m fine,” you said, twice. Then stopped saying it, because even by your standards the evidence against it was fairly compelling at this point.
Dr. Yeon arrived. She’d been called while you were still on stage, apparently -someone had made that call in real time, which meant someone had been watching closely enough to see it coming.
She didn’t say I told you so, because she was a professional and a decent person. But she looked at you with the expression of someone who had said the relevant things two weeks ago and was now simply proceeding with the next appropriate steps.
“Hospital,” she said. Not a question.
“The schedule-” you started.
“Hospital,” she repeated, firmly
You looked at Mina.
Her eyes were very steady and very bright and she was holding herself with controlled stillness.
“Okay,” you said.
Mina took your hand and you let her.
ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ 눈,코,입(Eyes, Nose, Lips) - Taeyang ♫♬♪
The hospital room was quiet -a manufactured quiet, the absence of noise rather than the presence of peace, the hum of equipment filling the silence where silence would otherwise have lived.
The lighting was the kind that made everyone look like they needed to be in a hospital, which you supposed was appropriate given that you were, in fact, in a hospital, a fact that still carried a faint quality of unreality even as you lay in the bed with the IV line in your arm and the monitors doing their steady work.
Dehydration, primarily. That was the immediate clinical language for it.
Significant enough to require intravenous correction, combined with the weight loss and the disrupted sleep and the sustained nausea, presenting as a body that had been running on insufficient resources for an extended period and had reached the end of its reserves.
Not dangerous in the acute, alarming sense.
But real nonetheless, th kind of real that required a building and a bed and a machine tracking your fluid intake.
Your members were in the waiting area. Your manager was on the phone. The company’s PR team was, presumably, having a series of conversations that you’d deal with later, when you were in a position to deal with anything that wasn’t the IV line and the quiet room and the odd lightness of finally having been stopped.
You stared at the ceiling.
It was smooth. No cracks. No interesting imperfections. Nothing to read.
You thought: this is what I did.
Not accusatory. Not self-punishing. Just factual, in the way that things became when you ran out of energy to frame them otherwise.
This was what six weeks of not reading the thing had looked like, accumulated. This was the story your body had been writing while you called it stress and schedule and bibimbap and mild iron deficiency and all the other names that were true in the peripheral way and false in the central one.
The central one sat in the quiet hospital room with you.
You’d been grieving. You’d been missing an essential piece of you, while rehearsing and performing and doing press interviews.
Here you were.
Thinking that 3 years were easy to forget just like that.
And somewhere in the building with the practice rooms and the corner canteen table and the tape on the booking boards that no longer had your initials on it -James was, presumably, living his life. Existing in the spaces you’d removed yourself from.
You wondered if he’d already found someone else with wild lashes to point out. Wondered if he was noticing someone else’s weird traits-
The thought arrived without armor, which was the hospital room’s contribution in your defense.
You missed him.
Not the fights, exactly. Not the pattern, which had been the right thing to end and remained the right thing to have ended.
The specific him. The particular person underneath all of it.
The one who had said it’s not nothing in the dark with the armor completely down, then had made sure you know it had been, indeed, nothing.
James found out the way he found out most things he wasn’t supposed to know yet -too early, too suddenly, with no adequate preparation and no one to blame for the lack of it.
It was Keonho’s phone. They were in the dorm living room, the five of them -James on the floor with his back against the couch, Keonho on the couch itself, Martin in the kitchen doing something that involved more cabinet opening than was strictly necessary for whatever he claimed to be making.
A mug cake of some sort.
Keonho’s phone lit up. Then lit up again. Then produced the specific rapid-fire notification pattern of something spreading quickly.
“What,” Keonho said. Not a question -the flat observational what of someone reading something that was outpacing their ability to process it.
James didn’t look up from his own phone. “What.”
“There’s a- hang on.” his voice had shifted into the careful register of someone managing, which was the register that made James look up.
Keonho was watching something. His face had done the thing faces did when they received weird news.
“Keonho dude,” James said.
Keonho turned his phone around.
The video was forty-three seconds long.
It had been filmed from the audience -mid -distance, slightly angled, the kind of footage that existed in the age of everyone having a camera in their pocket and no one quite being able to stop themselves from pointing it at things.
The quality was decent.
Clear enough to see the full choreography of the outro formation. Clear enough to see the lights shifting to their end configuration. Clear enough to see, in the last two counts of the song, the moment your knees made contact with the stage floor.
James watched it once.
Then he took the phone from Keonho’s hand and watched it again, and the second time he watched it with focused attention of someone who knew the person on the screen in a way that the forty thousand people in that venue did not.
He handed the phone back without speaking.
Martin had appeared in the kitchen doorway at some point during the second viewing. The cabinet sounds had stopped. The three of them sat in the living room with the television still running its indifferent programming and the notification sounds still coming from Keonho’s phone, muffled now against the cushion where he’d placed it face-down.
“She okay?” Martin asked.
James said nothing.
He was looking at his own phone. His contacts. The entry that was no longer there -removed not by him but by the one-sided erasure that he’d understood immediately.
No error message, no bounce-back. Just the specific quality of a door that had been locked from the inside.
He’d counted the days. Not deliberately.
Twenty-three days since the last time your name had been accessible in his phone. Since the last time he could have said something if he’d had something adequate to say, which he hadn’t, which was its own separate problem.
“James,” Keonho said. Quiet. Not pushing.
“I saw it,” James said.
“Dude... How you feeling ?”
“I’m fine, why wouldn’t i be?”
Neither Keonho nor Martin said anything to that, which was the correct response.
He stood up. “I’m going to the studio.”
“It’s eleven bro,” Martin said.
“I know what time it is.”
He got his jacket from his room, his headphones, the specific small kit of things he brought when he went to the studio late -which was not infrequently.
It had become somewhat more frequent in the last months, which he was also not examining.
He passed back through the living room. His members were both looking at him with wide eyes.
At the door he stopped, and didn’t turn around.
“She’ll be fine,” he said. To the door, more than to them. “It’s not that bad.”
The walk was cold. October doing its thing, the air sharp the city running its quieter late-night version of itself. He walked with his headphones around his neck instead of on, which he didn’t notice until he was already at the building entrance.
He took the elevator to four, sat down at the board in the smaller suite, and opened a blank session.
For a few minutes he just sat there.
He was thinking about a morning six months ago, You’d been in his bed, after what he categorized as the best sex of his life.
It had started lazy and deep. You’d straddled him without a word, knees bracketing his hips, sinking down onto him inch by inch until he was buried completely inside you. No rush. Just that tight, wet heat gripping him as you rolled your hips in long, luxurious strokes. Your palms pressed flat against his chest, thumbs brushing over his nipples while you watched his face like you were studying every flicker of pleasure.
He remembered the way your breath hitched when he sat up to meet you, wrapping one arm around your back and pulling you closer so your breasts pressed against him. Skin on skin. Sweat already starting to slick between you. He’d taken one of your nipples into his mouth, sucking gently, then harder when you moaned and clenched around his cock. Your fingers threaded into his hair, tugging just hard enough to make his scalp sting in the best way.
At some point the pace changed. He flipped you onto your back, spreading your legs wide and driving into you deeper, slower, grinding against your clit with every thrust. You were so wet it was obscene -the sound of it filled the room every time he sank back in. Your hands roamed everywhere: down his back, nails digging into his ass to pull him harder into you, then up to cup his face so you could look him in the eyes while he fucked you.
That’d been the part that almost broke him.
The eye contact. The way you whispered his name like a secret, your thumb brushing his lower lip. He’d felt exposed, raw, like you were seeing straight through every wall he’d built. His thrusts grew rougher, more desperate, chasing that feeling of being completely known. You came first -back arching, thighs shaking around him, pussy pulsing so tightly he had to bury his face in your neck to keep from losing it right then.
He followed seconds later, groaning against your skin as he spilled deep inside you, hips stuttering, every muscle locked tight. You held him through it, stroking his back in those long, meaningful caresses that felt less like afterglow and more like absolution.
For a long time afterward you stayed connected, his cock softening inside you while your fingers traced patterns along his spine.
He’d almost cried then -something thick and unfamiliar rising in his throat -because no one had ever touched him like they actually wanted to keep him.
The statement dropped at nine the next morning.
He read it in the kitchen, standing, having not slept. The coffee was in his hand but he’d stopped drinking it without noticing.
He read through the official language to what it actually said. Indefinite hiatus. Immediate effect. Stable condition. He knew the translation of these words in context, had been in this industry long enough to understand what the gap between official statements and actual situations generally contained.
Then he got to your message. The part at the end, the one that was clearly yours and not a PR team’s -the rhythm of it, the specific direction of it, turning outward the way you always did.
Spend it on something that gives it back to you.
He read it several times.
Juhoon came in while James was still standing at the counter with the statement on his phone and the coffee going cold beside him.
He poured himself a cup, leaned back against the opposite counter, and looked at James the way he sometimes did -not pushing, just present, running his own quiet assessment.
“You saw it,” Juhoon said.
“Yeah.”
A pause. Juhoon drank his coffee.
“She okay?”
“Stable. That’s what it says. I don’t fucking know.”
Juhoon nodded slowly. Another pause, longer this time, the comfortable kind between two people who didn’t need to fill space. Then, in the register of someone who had decided to just say the thing: “Bro, you’ve been going to the studio until three in the morning since she blocked you. I’m not blind.”
James said nothing.
“Like I’m not trying to get in your business,” Juhoon continued, “but it’s been almost a month of you walking around like that. I think even the cleaning staff noticed.”
“I’m fine.”
That was a big fat lie wrapped with no caution tape.
“You said that yesterday. And the day before.” Juhoon set his cup down. “When’s the last time you actually ate a full meal that wasn’t vending machine stuff?”
James didn’t answer, which was its own answer.
Juhoon exhaled through his nose -not quite a laugh, not quite exasperation, somewhere between the two. “I knew it. I literally knew it.” He looked at James with the specific expression of a friend who had been watching something develop for a long time and had opinions about it that he’d been sitting on. “Can I ask you something honestly?”
“You’re going to anyway. Suit yourself.”
“Did you ever just -tell her? Like actually tell her, not the James version of telling her where you say half the thing and let her figure out the rest.”
James looked at the counter.
“That’s a no,” Juhoon said.
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s always complicated with you two, that’s like -that’s the whole thing. That’s been the whole thing for three years.” Juhoon picked his cup back up, shook his head slightly. “She’s not a mind reader, man. Like she’s smart, but there’s a difference between her noticing things and you actually saying them out loud.”
“I said things.”
“She blocked you.” Juhoon looked at him evenly. “I’m not trying to be harsh. I’m just - well dude she blocked you.”
James was quiet for a moment. “I know.”
“So.”
“So I know,” James said. “I know that. I’ve been aware of that.” He looked at the statement on his phone, still open, your line still sitting there. Spend it on something that gives it back to you. “I just didn’t think it was going to -I thought there was more time.”
Juhoon was quiet for a beat. Then, more gently: “Is she -do you actually…” he paused, choosing words with slightly more care than usual. “Like is this just the situation being unresolved or is it actually serious for you.”
James didn’t answer immediately, which was, for him, the most unambiguous answer available.
Juhoon absorbed this with a small nod, the kind that meant he’d suspected as much and was filing the confirmation away without making a production of it. “Okay,” he said simply.
“She’s in a hospital,” James said. “And I can’t reach her. And the last thing I said to her was-” he stopped.
“There’s nothing I can do right now.”
“No,” Juhoon said. “There really isn’t. Right now.” He let the right now sit there, intentional and specific. Then: “Go make something. You always think better when you’re making something. Go do that.”
James picked up his coffee. Drank it. Put the cup in the sink.
“And eat something,” Juhoon said, to his back. “Real food. Not the vending machine thing.”
James got his jacket.
“I mean it about the food,” Juhoon called from the kitchen.
The front door closed.
Juhoon stood alone in the kitchen for a moment, looking at the space where James had been standing, and then looked down at his own coffee and said quietly, to no one: “Three years, man, fucking insane.”
You’d spent the first month at your parents’ house, which had been Mina’s quiet suggestion and your manager’s logistical arrangement and your own eventual agreement, and which had turned out to be the right thing in the way that right things sometimes weren’t obvious until you were already inside them.
Your childhood bedroom with its slightly outdated posters and the window that overlooked the neighbor’s persimmon tree had been the right amount of small, the right amount of removed from everything.
Your mother had cooked things you hadn’t eaten since you were fifteen. Your father had asked very few questions and watched television with you in the evenings in the comfortable silence of a man who understood that presence was sometimes the whole offering.
You’d seen a therapist. Twice a week, then once, then when you needed it -Dr. Lim, who was in her fifties and had a direct manner that you’d initially found confrontational and had come to deeply appreciate. Who didn’t let you manage your way through sessions the way you’d managed your way through everything else, who had a particular talent for waiting until you ran out of other explanations before the real one surfaced.
You’d talked about the industry. About the particular machinery of it, the relentless forward momentum, the way it consumed the private self in increments small enough to miss until there wasn’t much of it left.
You’d talked about the members. About Mina’s Sunday morning kitchen and Hye-ri’s bathroom floor vigil and Soeun’s rice balls delivered with the matter-of-fact love of someone who didn’t know how to perform care and therefore simply performed it.
You’d talked about painful stuff.
About what it meant to make the right decision and still have it cost something real.
About the difference between ending something and being done with it, which were not - Dr. Lim had pointed out with characteristic directness-the same thing at all.
You’d talked about James approximately three times before you stopped needing to talk about him as a category and started being able to talk about him as a person -specific and complicated and genuinely, permanently significant in the architecture of who you were, which didn’t require resolution to be true.
You’d find out that talking about James was like talking about yourself, in the way that everything he’d done - or everything you’d let him do- reflected on who you were as a person.
You hadn’t contacted him.
He hadn’t contacted you -couldn’t, technically, the block still in place on your end for the better part of the year.
You’d thought about lifting it, in the way you thought about things you weren’t ready to do yet, turning the idea over occasionally to check its weight. It was lighter than it had been. Not weightless. Just lighter.
By month four you were dancing again, in the small studio your parents’ neighborhood had, a local place that smelled of old mirrors and someone’s forgotten lunch and that contained exactly zero professional-grade anything.
You’d gone in off-hours, alone, and run through things you already knew -old choreography, the muscle memory of three years intact and waiting patiently under the surface of everything that had happened.
The first time you’d danced through an entire piece without stopping to negotiate with your body about whether it was going to cooperate, you’d stood in the middle of the studio floor afterward and felt something so uncomplicated it had taken you a moment to identify it.
Relief. Just relief, plain and complete.
By month seven you were having conversations with your company about returning, careful ones, the kind that involved Dr. Lim and your physician and your manager and a degree of deliberateness that the old version of you would have found excessive and that the current version understood as simply necessary.
The company had been, to their considerable credit, patient in a way you hadn’t entirely expected. The hiatus had cost them something too, and they hadn’t weaponized it, which told you things about the relationship you filed away with appropriate gratitude.
R3SET would have a comeback in the spring. You’d be on it. That was the plan, still in its early stages, but real -the kind of real that existed on paper and in calendars and in the careful, forward-facing energy of people who had decided on a direction and were beginning to move in it.
The MC offer had come through a separate channel, a variety production company rather than HYBE, which was part of why it had landed differently -it wasn’t the return of the idol, the big-stage comeback announcement, the thing that required a full machine mobilization. It was smaller than that.
A weekly music show, live broadcast, the kind of hosting gig that required presence and personality and genuine knowledge of the industry rather than a specific performance mode.
Two co-hosts. Gyuvin, who you’d met twice at industry events and who had the particular gift of making any room feel like it had been waiting for him to arrive, and Dohoon, who was newer, quieter, with the specific attentiveness of someone still learning how everything worked and paying very close attention in the meantime.
Your manager had sent the offer on a Tuesday, which felt appropriate, and you’d read it twice and then gone for a walk and come back and said yes.
Not because it was safe -it wasn’t, exactly. Live television had its own demands, its own relationship with the unpredictable. But it was yours in a way that felt important. Something chosen, something that fit the shape of who you were returning as rather than who you’d been before, which was not the same person, which was fine, which was the point.
The announcement went out on a Thursday.
By Friday morning your name was trending again, for the first time in a year, and this time the feeling that came with it was different -not the hollow unreality of the hospital morning, not the dissociation of watching your own crisis unfold on someone else’s phone screen.
Just the particular warmth of people being glad to see you, which the industry could make you forget was real until it reminded you.
‘she’s back’ was everywhere. Fan edits assembled from old footage. The comments section of your old posts reactivating.
Hye-ri sent approximately forty messages in the group chat in the space of ten minutes, an escalating series that began with a string of capital letters and ended with a voice note that was mostly just screaming with some words in it.
Soeun sent a single photo: a rice ball, from a convenience store, with a small drawn heart on the wrapper in pen.
Mina sent nothing for two hours and then called, and when you picked up she said your name once in the way she sometimes said it -the full weight of years of knowing you in a single word -and then said “I’m so glad” and that was the whole call, thirty seconds, and it was exactly right.
You sat in your childhood bedroom with your phone warm in your hand and the persimmon tree doing its October thing outside the window and felt, with a completeness that had taken a year to arrive at: ready.
Not the performed version. Not the managed version assembled for public consumption. The actual thing -the quiet, solid, unglamorous readiness of the someone who had rested and repaired and done the work and was now genuinely, simply prepared to return.
You looked at your reflection in the old mirror on your bedroom wall. The slightly different person looking back -same face, same rebellious lash at the outer corner of the right eye doing its usual thing, same specific person. But the way you were sitting in yourself was different. Less braced. Less prepared for impact.
The lash curled upward in the mirror, faithful and unreformed.
You looked at it for a moment.
Let yourself think of him, briefly, with the lightness that a year of actual processing produced -not the sharp guilty thing, not the defended thing, not the named grief of the hospital ceiling.
Then you put your phone in your pocket and went downstairs, where your mother was cooking something that smelled like your childhood, and you sat at the kitchen table and let it be a good evening.
The first day of filming was a Tuesday in November.
The studio was a different building -not HYBE, a broadcast facility across the city, which had its own geography and its own particular smell of stage equipment and coffee from the production staff’s perpetual supply. You arrived with your manager and your stylist, the professional bubble reassembling itself around you with the practiced ease of a machine that had been waiting rather than dismantling.
Ji-eun was there. She looked at you when you sat down in the makeup chair -a full, genuine look, the kind between two people who had history -and then smiled and picked up her brush.
“You look good,” she said. And then, more quietly: “You look like yourself.”
“Getting there,” you said.
She worked in the comfortable silence you’d always had, and when she got to the outer corner of your right eye she paused for the traditional fraction of a second, and you both said nothing, and she worked around it the way she always had, and the lash did its thing, and you looked at yourself in the mirror when she was done and decided you were ready for whatever the day was.
Gyuvin found you at the craft table between the makeup suite and the studio floor, loading a cup with coffee at a speed that suggested he’d been awake since five and was not complaining about it.
“Okay so first of all,” he said, without preamble, turning around and seeing you and immediately operating at full social capacity, “I’m a huge R3SET fan and I’ve been trying to figure out how to say that without it being weird for approximately two weeks.”
You looked at him with an amused smile. “That was pretty weird.”
“Yeah, I know. But now it’s done and we can just be normal.” He extended a hand with the easy confidence of someone who’d decided how this interaction was going to go and was correct about it. “Gyuvin. I’m really glad you’re doing this.”
“I know who you are,” you said, shaking his hand. “I watched your show from the hospital. It was good.”
Something shifted briefly in his expression -not pity, just recognition, the acknowledgment of a real thing being mentioned without drama. “Thank you,” he said simply.
Then, pivoting with the smooth gear-change of someone who understood when to move forward: “Dohoon’s already on the floor running lines with the floor director. He gets nervous before live things, it’s actually very endearing, don’t tell him I said that.”
“I already heard that,” Dohoon said, appearing from around the craft table corner with the specific dignity of someone who had definitely heard it and was choosing grace.
He was younger than you’d expected in person - not young, just carrying the particular quality of someone still assembling their public self, not entirely sure yet how much space they were allowed to take up.
He bowed politely, straightforward and genuine.
“I watched your performances a lot,” he said. “When I was a trainee. The footwork in the second comeback stage-” he stopped himself, seemingly deciding this was too much. “Sorry. I just wanted to say I’m glad you’re back.”
You looked at him, at the earnest specific quality of it, and felt something warm and uncomplicated.
“Thank you,” you said. “Really.”
The floor director appeared and swept all three of you toward the studio, Gyuvin already talking at a pace that suggested the live broadcast format had found its correct person, Dohoon falling into step with the quiet attentiveness you’d already identified as characteristic.
You walked onto the studio floor under the lights -different lights, different stage, different version of the machine -and stood at the hosting position in front of the cameras and felt the room settle into its pre-broadcast hum around you.
The lights were warm. The floor was solid. The cameras were ready.
You were ready.
The floor director counted down.
Gyuvin straightened beside you, Dohoon on your other side, both of them finding their positions, and you found yours -natural, easy, inhabited rather than performed.
Five. Four. Three. Two.
You smiled. The real one, the one that lived in the corners of your eyes.
One.
The year had a shape to it, from James’s side.
Not a clean one.
Just the irregular, unglamorous shape of someone learning to carry an absence without drawing attention to the carrying.
He was good at it, technically. He’d had practice -not with this specifically, but with the general discipline of keeping interior things interior.
It was the skill he’d developed youngest and refined longest, and it served him here the way it always had, with the small additional cost that this time the underneath was doing considerably more than usual.
Nobody said anything directly. This was a Cortis characteristic -they had an unspoken agreement about the limits of intrusion, a collectively maintained understanding that presence was available without being forced.
Juhoon occasionally appeared with food or a suggestion to leave the studio at a reasonable hour.
Seonghyeon, who had the particular quality of someone who processed things by being physical, started dragging James to the gym in the early mornings, never explaining why, which meant they both knew why.
Martin sent memes at random hours, which was his version of checking in.
Keonho cooked elaborate meals approximately once a week and made enough for everyone without comment.
Nobody asked directly.
James was aware of this and grateful for it in the specific way he was grateful for things - privately, thoroughly, without saying so.
The song sat in a session file on his laptop.
He didn’t listen to it often. Once a week, maybe, in the first few months -not obsessively, not with the quality of picking a wound, but with the particular need to check that the thing existed somewhere outside of himself. That it was real, that the four studio nights had produced something actual rather than just the sensation of having produced something.
It existed. That was enough.
He didn’t release it. Didn’t show it to his label, didn’t bring it to any of the collaborative sessions that his schedule produced. It wasn’t for that.
It was for you to still have somewhere to live in him. It was entirely yours.
The fans noticed things anyway, during their performances. Or thought they did -the internet had a talent for reading things into performances that may or may not have been there, and he’d learned not to engage with the discourse.
He’d meant all of the words he’s sung. He always meant all of it. That was the thing about performing something you couldn’t say -the stage absorbed it, held it, gave it somewhere to go that the interior couldn’t contain indefinitely.
The second song on the Cortis comeback was not about you, technically. The lyrics were someone else’s, the concept was the team’s, the choreography was collaborative.
But something in the space between the notes had been filled with something that was his alone, and Juhoon had apparently felt the difference.
“Don’t say anything,” James had said, eventually.
“I wasn’t going to, motherfucker,” Juhoon said.
The R3SET comeback announcement came six weeks later.
James found out on the same day as everyone else, which was how these things worked when you had no particular access to someone’s professional calendar anymore.
The concept photos dropped at midnight -the industry’s preferred timing for maximum impact- and by seven in the morning the internet had done what it did.
He didn’t see the photos immediately. He was in early practice, which he’d been doing more of since the year had given him the particular gift of understanding what mattered and what was noise, and his phone was in his bag.
Seonghyeon saw them first.
He appeared in the practice room doorway between run-throughs with his phone extended. “R3SET dropped their comeback concept photos,” he said. “Midnight release.”
James looked at the phone.
He processed them with the industry-reading part of his brain first. Clean aesthetic. Strong concept. Good styling choices. Blah blah blah.
That took approximately three seconds.
Then the other part engaged and the professional reflex became entirely irrelevant.
You were in the center frame of the main concept photo, which was where you belonged and always had, and you looked -
He stood there with Seonghyeon’s phone in his hand and took in the photograph and didn’t immediately have a word for it, which was unusual for him.
He was generally a person who had words for things. Precise ones, specific ones, the right ones rather than the approximate ones.
This required a moment.
You looked like yourself. That was the first thing, and it was not a small thing -a year ago, in the last months before everything, there had been something in the way you were presenting yourself publicly that he’d noticed and not been able to name, a quality of effort in the surface that suggested you were working harder than you should have needed to.
He’d noticed it and said nothing, which was its own entry in the running catalogue of things he’d noticed and said nothing about.
That quality was gone.
You looked settled inside yourself in a way that a year of actual repair produced and nothing else did. Not relaxed, not softened -you were still precisely, recognizably you, the same specific presence that had been stopping him mid-thought for years. But inhabited differently.
And within that -within the settled, familiar, three-years-known specificity of you- something that hit him in the chest with the particular force of things that had been managed at a distance for a year and were suddenly no longer distant.
You were devastating.
Not in the industry sense, not the calculated aesthetic impact of a well-executed concept photo, though it was that too.
Not in the safe, catalogued way beautiful women usually were- where you could admire the symmetry, the lighting, the careful construction of a concept shoot and then file it away under art or aspiration.
No. This was the other kind. The kind that reached into his chest, wrapped around his lungs, and squeezed hard.
His thumb hovered over the screen, trembling slightly.
Jesus Christ.
He felt it in his body before his mind could catch up: the sudden, stupid stillness in his chest. Lungs suspended mid-breath.
It was -in the specific and undefended privacy of the three seconds before he handed the phone back- a lot.
He handed the phone back.
“Good concept,” he said.
His voice came out normal. This was the skill, the one he’d been practicing the longest, and it served him.
“Yeah,” Seonghyeon said. “It is.”
They went back to practice.
The variety show offer arrived three weeks later.
His manager brought it to him in the standard way -scheduled meeting, proposal documents, the professional framing of something being pitched for consideration.
A cross-group variety program. Six episodes, a production company with a good track record, the kind of format that leaned into genuine chemistry rather than manufactured conflict.
“The full lineup,” his manager said, sliding the document across.
He read your name on the document with full composure.
“The production company reached out to both labels simultaneously,” his manager continued, professionally unaware of or professionally choosing not to read the room. “They’re pitching it as a legacy act collaboration -both groups debuted around the same period, different concepts but complementary. They think the chemistry is there.”
Chemistry, James thought. That was one word for it.
“The format?” he said.
“Episodic. Each episode has a different challenge structure -travel, cooking, outdoor activities. Very unscripted. They want the real dynamic.”
The real dynamic. Funny.
He looked at the document again. At the lineup. At your name next to his in the clean administrative language of a production proposal, as if the history contained in those two entries was simply information, simply text, simply names on a page.
“I need a few days,” he said. He didn’t.
“Of course,” his manager said.
He took the document home. Sat with it on the kitchen counter for an evening while the dorm did its weeknight business around him. Juhoon passed through once, saw the document, looked at James, and made the diplomatic decision to refill his water and leave without comment.
An hour later Juhoon appeared again. Leaned in the doorway.
“Is it the R3SET thing?” he said.
James looked up.
“Seonghyeon’s manager mentioned it,” Juhoon said. “The variety show.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
James looked at the document. At the lineup. At the specific administrative reality of six episodes, unscripted, real dynamic.
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
Juhoon nodded. Didn’t push. Stayed
“She’s doing well,” Juhoon said, eventually. “From everything I’ve heard. She’s back, she’s good. She sounds like herself again.”
James said nothing.
“That’s all I’m going to say,” Juhoon said. And left.
James sat with the document for another hour. He pulled the document toward him Read it again from the beginning. Six episodes. Unscripted. Real dynamic. He picked up his phone. Texted his manager two words.
I’m in.
Closed the document.
Went to bed.
Simple as that.
The variety show production schedule arrived on a Monday.
First meeting -all cast, production team, initial briefing on format and episode structure - Thursday, eleven am, the broadcast facility across the city. Standard pre-production stuff, the kind of meeting that existed to let everyone shake hands and establish a baseline before cameras were involved. His manager had forwarded the details with the administrative neutrality of someone who had learned not to editorialize.
James had read it. Put his phone down. Picked it up and read it again, which was becoming a recurring motif in his life whenever your name was involved in anything.
Thursday. Four days.
He slept adequately.
He was fine. just fine.
Thursday morning he woke up fine.
Got dressed fine -the particular care he took without appearing to take care, the version of himself he put together when something mattered without announcing that it mattered.
Dark jacket, clean lines, the kind of thing that required no comment. He’d stood in front of the mirror for approximately forty-five seconds longer than usual and then left the room before it became something.
Juhoon was in the kitchen. He looked at James in the way he sometimes looked at him.
“Eat something, hyung,” Juhoon said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat something anyway or you’re gonna bitch about how you’re hungry.”
James stood at the counter and ate half a piece of toast, which was apparently what fine looked like on Thursday morning.
The five of them took the van together -James, Juhoon, Seonghyeon, Martin, Keonho -which meant forty minutes of the particular Cortis energy, Martin talking at a pace that suggested he’d had too much coffee too early, Keonho asleep against the window with the enviable ease of someone whose nervous system had not received the Thursday morning memo.
Seonghyeon was on his phone. Juhoon sat beside James and said nothing, which was the most useful thing available.
ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ Strangers - Ethel Cain ♫♬♪
James looked out the window.
The city was doing its November thing -grey and particular, the trees stripped to their architecture, the light the flat specific quality of a season that had committed to itself. He watched it pass and thought about nothing deliberately and thought about everything anyway, which was how it worked when the thinking was below the level of decision.
He was fine.
He was going to walk into a room and you were going to be in it and he was going to be fine, because a year had passed and he had built something solid and equilibrium meant equilibrium, it meant the thing held under new conditions, it meant-
“We’re here,” Martin announced.
The broadcast facility had a different geography than HYBE -different smells, different light quality, different ambient sounds. James had been here before for other projects, knew the layout well enough to navigate without thinking.
The production team’s assistant met them in the lobby and took them up to the third floor meeting room, talking about the schedule in the bright, efficient way of production assistants everywhere.
The meeting room had a long table. Several production staff already seated. Coffee and water at intervals. A small catering spread that nobody was eating yet.
No R3SET.
James sat down -second from the end, which was where he sat in rooms like this, the position that gave him the widest sightline without being visibly strategic about it. Juhoon sat beside him. Martin immediately reached for the catering spread. Keonho poured water. Seonghyeon was already in conversation with someone from the production team about the episode structure.
Normal. All of it normal. The ordinary machinery of a pre-production meeting assembling itself around him.
He poured coffee. Drank it.
The door opened.
He heard you before he processed that it was you -a voice in the corridor, saying something to someone outside the room, the particular cadence of it landing somewhere in his chest before his brain had completed the identification.
Then you walked in.
And everything-
Everything single thing that James had spent a year building -the equilibrium, the organized weight, the solid carefully-constructed fine collapsed.
It proved insufficient. In the space between the door opening and you stepping through it.
The year was on you in the best way, in the way he’d seen in the photograph but hadn’t fully understood until now, until the actual specific physical reality of you was in the same room.
Your face, your sweet sweet face, your long hair draped over your chest, all of it significantly more than he had been prepared for despite believing he was prepared.
You were talking to Mina beside you, something low and quick, and you hadn’t seen him yet, and he had approximately three seconds of that -of watching you exist in a room without you knowing you were being watched.
And then something happened in his body that he hadn’t expected and didn’t have immediate language for.
It started in his chest. Not the metaphorical chest, not the poetic shorthand for emotional experience -the actual physical chest, a sensation that spread outward from somewhere behind his sternum with the slow insistent quality of something that had been waiting for the right conditions to make itself known. Down into his stomach, which turned over once, deliberately, like a held breath released in the wrong direction.
He set his coffee cup down. Carefully. Because his hands needed to do something specific and he needed to do it carefully.
This was not what equilibrium was supposed to feel like.
You crossed the room with Mina, talking to the production team lead who had come forward to greet you, and your eyes moved across the table in the natural survey of someone entering a room and orienting themselves.
They found him.
One second.
Something moved across your expression -too fast and too layered to read in full, a whole vocabulary of a year passing through your face.
You looked away first, or he looked away first, or it was simultaneous -he couldn’t reconstruct it afterward with any accuracy.
He looked at the table.
His hands were still.
His stomach was not.
Am I making you feel sick -the line arrived from somewhere, something he’d been listening to in the studio months ago, late and alone the way he did his best listening, Ethel Cain’s voice asking it with the specific quality of a question that already knew its own answer.
He was, in fact, feeling sick.
He hadn’t thought about the line in months. It arrived now with the precision of something that had been filed and was now being retrieved because the conditions finally matched.
He felt so sick indeed, that his stomach seemed to want to crawl out of its shell, and the space where you lived, in his ribcage stored there for comfort, was burning like thousands of fires.
It started without announcement.
He was looking at his folder -had looked away when you’d found him across the table, one second of eye contact and then back to his own folder, the professional management reflex executing itself automatically -and the production team lead was talking, and the room was doing its meeting thing, and James was sitting in his chair with his hands flat on the table on either side of the open folder.
And then his eyes were wet.
Not -it wasn’t a gradual thing. It wasn’t the dignified film version of emotion, the single meaningful tear navigating a composed face.
His eyes were wet and his throat had done something that he couldn’t reverse and his stomach had turned over with a violence that was nothing like the manageable discomfort of the morning.
This was different.
This was -he didn’t have a word for it and his mind was not currently in a condition to locate one, because his mind was busy with the overriding physical fact of his eyes being wet in a meeting room with eight other people in it and the production team lead still talking and Juhoon two feet to his left.
He pressed his thumb into the table edge.
Breathed.
The wetness didn’t stop.
Because you lived inside of his ribs, like a sickness.
He moved. He stood up, which required his body to cooperate and his body did cooperate, performing the physical action without the usual sense of decision preceding it.
He kept his head down -not dramatically, “Sorry,” he said. To the room, not to anyone specifically. His voice came out level. “One minute.”
He walked to the door and left.
He made it to the men’s bathroom twenty feet down the hall and through the door and to the sink and stood there with both hands braced on the porcelain and looked at himself in the mirror.
His eyes were wet and his face was doing something he didn’t have experience managing because he didn’t have experience with this, with the specific thing that was happening, which was apparently: crying.
Get a fucking grip, he thought.
His eyes stayed wet.
He turned the cold tap higher and pressed his hands against his face and stood there in the particular specific silence of a broadcast facility bathroom while somewhere down the hall a production team was running a meeting he had walked out of, and somewhere in that meeting room you were sitting at a table for the first time in a year, and his body had apparently decided that the year of careful construction was no longer relevant information.
One year. Twelve months, a couple hundred days, and it had taken approximately four seconds for you to fuck it up all over again.
It had just been you walking into a room, talking to Mina, your voice reaching him before he’d processed that it was you, landing somewhere in his chest with the accuracy of something that had always known where to go.
He pressed his thumb into the edge of the sink. The physical pressure of it grounding him in the present tense.
ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ Sparks - Coldplay ♫♬♪
A soft knock sounded on the door.
“James?” Your voice. “The staff… they need everyone back for the briefing. They sent me to-”
The door opened and you stepped inside.
And the second your eyes met his in the mirror, everything shattered all over again.
Your warm eyes met his, like you’d already known what position he occupied in the room without seeing him - the same navigational certainty that had always existed between you, the compass needle finding north before the map was even consulted.
For a moment neither of you moved. The tap running. The mirror holding you both.
Your lips started quivering first.
He watched it happen. Watched you try to stop it -the small visible effort of someone attempting to tuck something away for a more convenient moment, your jaw tightening, your teeth catching your lower lip.
The mental slap he could practically see you administering to yourself, the furious internal instruction to hold it together, to not be -this.
Not here. Not in front of him.
It made no sound. That was the thing that undid him entirely. No sound -just your tears spilling out of your eyes like fountains, you biting your lip so hard it hurt, just because you couldn't cry.
Because you'd spent months rebuilding yourself to be stronger, less naive.
It was a huge let down and betrayal to see that your body still recognized his to this level.
That it always would.
James turned around from the mirror.
His breath hitched violently. The sound of it involuntary, wrenched out of him by the sight of you standing at the door of a broadcast facility bathroom crying silently with your teeth in your lip -a sight that hit him somewhere below the level of thought, somewhere that didn’t have the option of management.
“Don’t-” he tried.
Too late.
His own tears spilled over. Hot and humiliating, sliding down his cheeks. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, the gesture instinctive and entirely useless, trying to hold in something that had already left the building.
Pride had lost.
It had never stood a chance. Not in this room. Not with you standing at the door looking like the last year had happened to you the same way it had happened to him -not cleanly, not neatly, and absolutely not with the resolved quality of someone who had made a right decision and been at peace with it.
You crossed the room.
Not all the way. You stopped a foot away from him and leaned against the wall beside the sink, close enough that the space between you was a chosen distance rather than an accidental one.
You pressed the back of your wrist to your own mouth in the same gesture he’d just used -both of you apparently sharing the same futile reflex- and looked at the ceiling in the way you did when you were deciding something about gravity.
You stared at the ceiling. He stared at the sink. The tap ran between you, filling the silence with something neutral and constant, and the year sat in the room between you like a third party that hadn’t been invited and wasn’t leaving.
Thirty seconds passed.
Maybe more.
“I’m not-” you started.
You stopped.
Pressed your wrist harder against your mouth and tried again. “I’m not going to be able to have a conversation right now,” you said. Your voice was wrecked at the edges, thin, the managed version completely gone. “is that okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
Another silence.
He reached over and turned the tap off and the quiet that followed was immediate and different -denser, the absence of the running water making everything else louder..
“I didn’t think it would-” you started again.
And he waited when you interrupted yourself.
“I told myself I was prepared,” you continued. To the ceiling. “I knew you were going to be here. I’ve known for weeks. I thought I’d-” a breath that was not quite steady, “- i don’t know why this is happening.”
He said nothing. What could he possibly say without crying like a goddamn pussy?
You lowered your gaze from the ceiling. Looked at the wall in front of you instead -the neutral middle ground of a tiled surface that required nothing from either of you.
“I’ve been fine,” you said. “This year. I want to say that clearly -I’ve been actually fine. And i hope you have been too.”
“I know,” he said, although it hurt him.
“So I don’t know why I’m-” you gestured vaguely at your own face, at the evidence currently decorating it, the gesture frustrated and slightly helpless. “I don’t know why my body is doing this.”
He looked at you sideways. “Yeah you do,” he said.
You pressed your lips together. “Don’t,” you said.
“Okay,” he concluded. “The hosting thing suits you,I’ve seen some of the-” he stopped himself. Recalibrated. “You seem good on it. Natural.”
“James,” you said, your bottom lip trembling.
“Yeah?” his voice trembled.
“Stop.”
He did.
The silence that followed was the longest one yet -not the comfortable silence you both already knew.
This was the silence of two avoidants standing a foot apart in a broadcast facility bathroom, both crying, both fully aware of approximately ten thousand things that needed to be said, and neither of them capable of saying any of them.
Your breathing had steadied slightly. His had too.
“I should go back,” you said. Not moving.
“Yeah,” he said, not moving either.
“The director’s going to send someone else,” you said.
“Probably Martin,” he said.
“Martin would make it worse,” you said.
“Definitely,” he agreed.
A silence. And then -almost against your will, by the sound of it -a small exhale that was almost, not quite, the ghost of a smile.
He felt it in his chest like a struck match.
“Okay,” you said, pushing off the wall. “Okay.”
You crossed to the sink. Ran cold water. Pressed it to your eyes with efficient composure, by necessity, because the day continued outside this room regardless of what had happened inside it.
Your reflection appeared in the mirror. You looked at it with the neutral assessment of a technician checking equipment. He stood behind you, a foot of space. The mirror showing you both.
You looked at your own face for a moment.
Then your eyes moved in the mirror -not to his face, not all the way there, but somewhere in the direction of his reflection. The almost-look. The periphery.
“You have-” you started. Gestured vaguely at your own eye. “Your-“
“I know,” he said.
He reached up and pressed the back of his fingers to his own cheekbone, clearing the evidence. The gesture rough and unsentimental.
“Okay,” you said again. The forward-motion word. You straightened your jacket, the small act of reassembly, the putting-back-on of the surface that the bathroom had temporarily removed.
You didn’t look at him when you walked to the door, hand on the handle, then you opened the door.
And in the space of the opening -in the moment between the door still closed and the door open enough for the corridor to enter the room -you said, to the handle, to the gap, to the space between staying and going:
“I don’t know what to do with you.”
You didn’t tell him that you didn’t know what to do without him. Because that was admitting a bunch of things you’d buried.
He didn’t answer so you walked out, not expecting more of him than what he’d always shown.
The remaining filming days were unbearable.
Charged, the way air was charged before weather, the way a room felt different when something had happened in it that hadn’t been resolved.
The production team was pleased. The director kept using words like authentic and natural chemistry in the debrief notes that circulated between episodes.
James read those words in a group message and looked at his phone for a long moment and put it face down on his desk.
Natural chemistry.
That’s one way to put it.
Episode four was a travel segment -a day trip to a coastal town two hours from the city, two vans, the cast split across them, and a loose itinerary that the production team described as go wherever feels right but had in fact been extensively scouted and mapped in advance.
You were in the first van.
He knew this before the vans departed, had registered the configuration with the awareness he’d developed over four filming days of knowing exactly where you were in any given space without appearing to track it.
The production team released them in loose pairs and small groups with cameras following at a distance, the unscripted format doing its job of making everything look accidental.
James walked with Juhoon along the harbor front for forty minutes. They talked about things that had nothing to do with anything -Juhoon had been reading something, had opinions about it, James listened and offered his own and the conversation moved forward with an easy momentum.
He was fine.
The show aired three weeks later.
Thursday night, eight episodes, released weekly -the standard format, the production company’s familiar rollout.
James watched the first episode alone in his studio on his laptop.
It was good television. He could see that clearly, the way it was easier to see things from the outside -the dynamic was compelling, the mixed-group chemistry genuinely worked.
Martin and Keonho’s energy balanced against the quieter members in a way that created natural contrast. Mina and Soeun had good interactions with Juhoon and Seonghyeon. Nothing that crossed any invisible lines.
He watched the table scene from episode one, the first interaction he had with you after the bathroom moment.
Forty seconds, forty seconds too much, so he closed the laptop.
By episode three the fan forums had developed a vocabulary.
It started, as these things started, with a clip - a background interaction that neither of you knew was being filmed, thirty seconds of the two of lof you sitting down at the set.
The comments assembled their case with the industry of people who had been watching both groups for years and now had, for the first time, sustained footage of them in the same frame.
The forums had moved past speculation into something more like excavation, going back through years of archived footage and industry events with the specific energy of people who had been handed a key and were now locating the lock.
Stage crossings at award shows. A single frame from a year-old behind-the-scenes video in which James was visible in the background of a shot that was ostensibly about someone else.
And in that background, barely in frame, he was looking in a direction that corresponded to where you had been standing. Something purely coincidental.
A fan-taken photograph from an industry dinner -both groups present, separate tables -in which you were mid-laugh and he was beside you, not looking at the camera, looking at you with an expression that the fan who’d taken the photo had captioned at the time : cute group moment - and that was now being screenshotted and analyzed with forensic intensity.
one commenter said : that’s not a ‘cute group moment’ expression. that is something else entirely.
I found the original post. this photo is from two years ago. TWO YEARS.
okay so this has been going on for at least two years possibly longer and they’ve both been just. existing in the same building. I need to sit down
The digging produced timelines. Cross-referenced schedules, corroborating fan accounts, a general industry consensus assembled from fragments -the kind of picture that was never complete but that was complete enough.
Nothing explicit, nothing confirmable, just the aggregate weight of years of small things that meant more in retrospect than they had in the moment.
Your name and his, trending adjacently for the first time, the fan shorthand assembling itself with the creative efficiency of a community that had been waiting no - dying- for a subject.
Then the end of the show aired.
The final episode -with a studio segment, a paired game, the forty seconds clip in the previously released episode that had already done its damage -generated the kind of response that production teams privately hoped.
The clips moved through the usual channels. The fan analysis assembled and reassembled itself with new material. The forty-seven thousand posts became a different, larger number.
And the specific four seconds from episode six- a paired game, a moment where the challenge had required James to catch something you’d thrown and he’d caught it without looking because apparently his hands had simply known where to be -became the new center of gravity.
he caught it without looking. without LOOKING. he didn’t even glance. his hands just knew. I’m sick.
I need everyone to understand what it means that his hands just knew.
three years. they’ve been in the same building for three years. I’m not okay.
someone who knows things please tell me there’s something there because I have invested emotionally and I need to know it’s real.
Your name and his, in that order or the reverse, everywhere.
“Unnie,”
Hye-ri put her phone down on the dorm kitchen table and looked at you across it with the expression of someone who had reached the end of something.
“I know what you’re gonna say,” you chuckled humorlessly. “This is getting weird. They need to stop over analyzing things. There’s nothing to analyze.”
“Have you really seen all of it?” she raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve seen enough”
“And? Thoughts? Prayers?”
You wrapped both hands around your mug. “And nothing,” you said. “There’s nothing to say. Though i’m really praying they drop this before i go crazy and start filing lawsuits”
“Unnie,” Hye-ri breathed. “I love you. You know I love you. But oh my god, you are so fucking stupid.”
Your eyes widened, surprised. “Huh?”
“I’ve been watching this for three years and then watching you be hospitalized and then watching you rebuild… and I have said almost nothing because it wasn’t my place and you weren’t ready.” She paused. “Are you ready yet? Because I’m watching thousands of people on the internet understand your life better than you’re allowing yourself to and it’s becoming genuinely freaking difficult to watch.”
You said nothing, still busy being shocked.
“Soeun has opinions,” Hye-ri said. “Soeun, who falls asleep mid-sentence, has opinions about this situation and has had to be physically restrained from expressing them.”
“Hye-ri-”
“What are you going to do,” Hye-ri asked quietly.
You looked at your mug. “I don’t know, i don’t even know what i’m feeling. I just don’t wanna be bothered with that. I just wanna do my job, and not be confronted with this all the time” you said. “because i don’t know if i have enough self control anymore.”
“I know it’s not an answer,” you continued. “I know.”
Hye-ri looked at you for a long moment. Then she picked up her phone, put it back in her pocket and reached across the table to cover your hand with her red-nailed one and said nothing.
The wrap event was at a venue the production company used regularly -a private room above a restaurant in the city, warm and low-lit, the kind of space that encouraged the end-of-project loosening that these events were designed to produce. The full cast, most of the production team, the ambient atmosphere of something finished and celebrated.
James arrived with Juhoon and Keonho, found the bar, acquired a drink, and began the social navigation of the room.
You were already there.
You were across the room with Hye-ri and the producer, saying something that made the producer laugh. Your hair was down, which was unusual enough that he noted it, and you were wearing something he hadn’t seen before, a black prada dress.
You looked so devastatingly beautiful that he had to look somewhere else.
The evening moved forward with its own momentum. Drinks, conversation, the genuine warmth of a cast that had spent weeks together and had produced something they were collectively proud of.
Martin gave an impromptu toast that was both entirely sincere and completely absurd, talking about how much fun he’d had, and about the cookies the staff gave away on set.
Soeun fell briefly asleep against Hye-ri’s shoulder - surprising- and was nudged back awake with fond efficiency.
James talked to the director for twenty minutes about the editing process, to Keonho about something unrelated to any of it, to a production assistant about the schedule for the release rollout. He was present and functional and socially competent and fine.
He was aware of where you were in the room the entire time.
An hour in, the room had loosened into its later-evening configuration -smaller clusters, people drifting, the formal structure dissolved.
James had found his way to the room’s edge, not antisocially but in the way he sometimes needed to at these events, a few feet of breathing room.
You appeared beside him.
Not like you’d sought him out - but like you’d been heading for the same breathing room and had arrived at the same edge by the same instinct.
The room moved and talked around you. Someone’s laugh carried from across it. The warm low light did its work but you were close enough that he was aware of the specific warmth of being in proximity to you, which was a thing his body had catalogued years ago and had not, apparently, stopped cataloguing.
He couldn’t, the weight of it pressing right between his heart and lungs like a hot stone.
There was no part of him that could stand with you, next to you and not feel like the whole world was shaking at his feet.
So James did what James did best. He grabbed his glass, aimed for the closest exit and started walking.
Because being the asshole in the story was easier than being the man who loved. Who yearned.
This had been something he’d come to terms with -although his brain and his heart were two completely opposite organs that didn’t seem to want to collaborate- somewhere in him, he knew that what he felt for you wasn’t pointless arousal, anger or attraction.
Surely he did feel all those things all at once, but a whole year of thinking had brought out a simple explanation out of him. James didn’t know how spell the word ‘love’, didn’t know what it was, what he knew though, was that he’d put everything on the line just to feel your wrath.
Whether you were angry, sad, disappointed or disgusted at him, it was you that he held on to.
That thought had taken a whole year to form, and he still didn’t know what to do with it.
He was only grateful he got to see you, to live in your small world.
So when you followed him into his own small world - when the door to the hallway he’d escaped to opened and you were standing in the frame of it, the warm light of the party behind you and the cooler light of the corridor finding your face, his breath caught in his throat.
The door fell shut behind you.
You looked at him across the corridor.
“Do I bother you that much?” you said. Your throat bobbed.
He wanted to tell you that you didn’t. In fact, he wanted to tell you so many things but he didn’t want it to feel like he’d started thinking them just because you had left.
Like absence had manufactured something that wasn’t already there.
“I think,” he said, and his voice came out wrong, too low and too careful, “I think you should go back.”
“Do I bother you that much?” you repeated, harder this time, like you wanted it to cut.
No. The answer was no, had always been no, the word bother doing almost none of the work required to describe what you did to him.
“Yes,” he said.
You stood your ground, because you knew James, and you knew that when his voice cracked like that, he was most likely lying.
“I don’t understand you. We were good-“ you looked down at your shoes, “we were back to normal just a day ago.”
“No we weren’t. We never were.” James spoke, voice constricted. “We were working.”
You looked up at him, taking a faithful step toward him. “You’re really gonna act this way? Even after everything? After a whole year?”
He looked at you.
You were closer now -the corridor was narrow, the private venue’s hallway not designed for that kind of distance,
ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ PURPLE RAIN - PRINCE ♫♬♪
“You don’t know what acting this way means,” he said. Quiet. The heat not in his voice yet, just the control that preceded it.
“I know exactly what it means,” you said. “It means you walked away. Again. Because something got too close and you needed the exit.” You looked at him with the directness that you got when you’d decided to stop managing the look. “I’ve been watching you find exits for so long James. I know the walk.”
“You also know how to leave,” he retaliated.
“Don’t do that,”
“You blocked me,” he said. “On everything. You were in a hospital and you had me blocked.”
“I was in a hospital because-” you stopped yourself again, the sentence running somewhere that cost too much, “-that’s not-” you shook your head. “I’m not doing this. I’m not standing in a hallway at a wrap party telling you about that-“
“You followed me in here,” he cut you.
“Because you walked away,” you said. “Again. You were standing next to me and you just-“
“I wasn’t walking away from you,” he denied.
“Then what were you doing.”
He said nothing.
“James.” Your voice lower now, the anger finding its quieter register, which was more dangerous than the louder one. “What were you doing.”
“I was-” he stopped. “I couldn’t stand next to you and-“ he stopped again. Started differently, because the first direction was the edge of the thing and he was so tired of the edge. “I couldn’t stand next to you and act like the last year didn’t happen and the three years before it didn’t happen and we’re just -two people at a party being normal about it.”
“Nobody asked you to be normal about it,” you retorted.
“Nobody had to ask,” he said. “The room is full of people. The cameras have been full of people for weeks. Everything is-” he exhaled, “-everything is happening in front of an audience and I don’t know how to-” he stopped.
“You don’t know how to what,” you said, bitterly.
The corridor was very quiet. The party sounds from behind the closed door -muffled, belonging to a different world.
Just the two of you, the amber light and the question.
“I don’t know how to be in the same space as you,” he said, “and not feel it.”
The sentence arrived quietly, like he just couldn’t hold it back.
“Feel what,” you said. The question not aggressive. Genuinely asking, the way you asked things when you needed to hear the actual word rather than the approximate one.
He held your gaze.
“All of it,” he said. “Everything. Take your pick.”
You were quiet for a moment. “That’s still evasive,” you said softly.
“I know,” he said. “I’m still learning.”
“James,” you said.
“I’m not-” you stopped. Started differently. “I’m not angry at you for walking away just now. I know why you did it. I know the walk because I have the same walk. I’ve been using mine for years, so it wouldn’t be fair to blame you.”
He looked at you.
“I’m angry at the amount of times,” you continued. “That’s what I’m angry at. Not you specifically. Just -the amount of times we did that.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. Low. “Me too.”
The corridor did what corridors did in these conversations -provide a container just barely large enough for the thing trying to exist inside it.
“The filming’s done,” you said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“So there’s no more-” you gestured vaguely at the concept of structured filming days and production schedules and the machine that had been providing the structure, “no more excuses for us to be in the same rooms. For now.”
“No,” he said.
“Which means- i’d like to end things maturely. I’d like you to know things i haven’t told you. So we can- so I can finally move on.”
It tasted cruel coming out of your mouth and he felt every bit of it.
End things? Why the fuck did this hurt so much when things were already over?
“I missed you.” you started, eyes already filling way too fast. “I missed being known. You knew things about me that i never told you. And nobody else has known me the way you did, cause no one was paying that kind of attention.” your voice went thin at the edges. “And then you weren’t here and I had to figure out how to- how to be, all over again.”
James’ jaw hung open just the tiniest bit, like he had never prepared himself to hear that today.
“God, i don’t want to be corny… i just want you to put it in your stupid head- i want you to know, cause i can’t keep this to myself James. I’m so tired and i don’t want to do this anymore.”
The water in your eyes started overflowing, tears falling down your cheeks with absolutely no consent. “And i know what you’re gonna say, that’s what everyone says. That i knew this wasn’t a relationship, that i knew we weren’t serious. But how can you expect me to not feel like this, when- when i spent 3 years of my life growing beside you, seeing you, knowing you. How can anyone fucking expect me to be chill about this?? Please tell me.”
“Because you cracked me open and you read me like a fucking book. And i- I could never be simple when it comes to this.”
His eyes started welling up uncontrollably, like they had the other day, insanely fast, cruel and mean.
“Y/n” his voice cracked.
“No- no, let me finish” you wiped your eyes almost aggressively, “You can’t tell me to shut up anymore. I’m done being a little immature bitch-im done looking for fights- just because fighting was the only way i knew how to get close to you without admitting I wanted to be close to you.
“I just wanna be the bigger person, i want you to know that even if we weren’t good for each other- i had never felt something so real and so fucking brutal.” your voice shook under the force of your tears, “And sometimes- god im so fucking stupid- sometimes i just feel like i don’t wanna be anywhere except with you.”
James couldn’t say anything, his voice was stuck in the depth of his throat- or down to his chest- he didn’t know, all he knew was that he wanted the tears to stop.
“y/n - please.” he looked at the ceiling, bottom lip quivering with restraint.
“What? Does it hurt? Does it hurt you knowing that i felt all of this ?” you got closer, invading the space he’d carefully guarded. “That you could never feel the same things for me? That you fucked me like you loved me for 3 fucking years even though you knew you couldn’t feel those things?”
James’ mouth opened, like he just couldn’t believe what you were saying. Like he wanted to scoop you up and put you in his head so you could feel -for one second- the way you undid him.
“What the- what the fuck are you even saying?” his voice trembled, eyes pouring, “you always think you know what’s going on in my head. Fuck. Y/n you don’t know shit.”
“Because you don’t let me, just for once, tell me. Tell me.” you got closer, chin tipping up to look at him.
James’ composure faltered, he erased the last of the space between you both and cupped your chin -grabbed it between his fingers with equally devotion and anger.
“You-” he swallowed his tears, “you know it. You know me, y/n. Do you want me to get down on my knees and tell you what i feel?”
Seeing him so close was like going back home, you thought. You couldn’t breathe anymore, something cruel squeezing your lungs.
“You’ve played the same games I played, so don’t act like you were a saint. We both fucked around, but this?” he pointed between the both of you. “It’s never been nothing.”
Your eyes were wide, shining with fresh tears. The black Prada dress suddenly felt too thin, the air between you charged like the seconds before lightning. He could smell your perfume, the faint salt of your tears, the warmth of your skin that had haunted his dreams for a year.
“We’ve never been ‘nothing’ y/n. You know it. You know there wasn’t a moment where i didn’t need you.”
James sounded like a totally different person, like the year had matured him maybe a tiny bit.
“So please love me again,” he continued, the words spilling out like they’d been waiting behind every exit he’d ever taken. His thumb brushed your lower lip, shaking. “Don’t leave me. Love me again and -and if you never did, you can start now.”
The confession hung there, raw and bleeding. His eyes were wet, spilling over without permission, tracking down his cheeks.
You made a small, broken sound and surged forward like you needed it in order to breathe.
He met you halfway.
The kiss was devastating. A year of absence crashed into the moment your mouths met -desperate, open, messy. His lips were urgent against yours, tasting salt from both your tears.
You gasped into him and he swallowed it, tongue sliding against yours like he was trying to memorize every texture again.
Your hands fisted in his shirt; his cupped your face, thumbs wiping at your tears even as more fell. You were both crying through it, foreheads pressed together between kisses, breaths hitching, noses bumping, teeth grazing in the need to get closer.
“I missed you,” he mumbled against your mouth, voice cracking. “Fuck, I missed you so much it felt like dying.”
You answered by kissing him harder, tongues tangling, bodies pressing flush. His hands roamed -down your sides, gripping your waist, pulling you against him so he could feel the heat of you through the thin fabric. You arched into him, and the groan he let out was pure yearning.
A broken sob escaped you and he swallowed it greedily, tilting his head to kiss you harder, deeper, like he could crawl inside you and never leave.
In the narrow hallway, your back met the wall with a soft thud and his mouth moved to your jaw, your neck, sucking lightly, then harder, like he needed to leave proof that this was real.
One of his thighs pushed between yours, pressing up against the heat between your legs, and you gasped into his mouth, grinding down instinctively. Your fingers pushed into his hair, tugging, and he shuddered, hands sliding under the hem of your dress, palms greedy on your thighs. His hands roamed lower, sliding down the curve of your ass, squeezing hard through the thin Prada fabric before hiking your dress up your thighs. Cool air hit your skin as his palms found bare flesh, groping, kneading, pulling you tighter against the hard line of his cock straining in his pants.
You moaned into the kiss, one leg hooking around his hip, opening yourself to the pressure. His hips rolled forward, grinding his erection against your core in slow, filthy drags that made you both shudder. The friction was electric, too much and not enough. Your fingers pushed into his hair, tugging sharply, and he growled, biting your lower lip before soothing it with his tongue.
“I missed this,” you whispered brokenly between kisses, tears slipping into your mouth. “Missed you -your hands, your mouth-”
He answered by shoving your dress higher, one hand slipping between your bodies to cup you over your panties. His fingers pressed firm circles against your clit through the damp fabric, and your head fell back against the wall with a whimper. He chased the movement, mouth latching onto your throat, sucking a mark just below your jaw while his fingers worked you relentlessly.
“James- we can’t- not here..”
“I don’t care,” he growled against your throat. “I need you. Now. Always.” And that was enough.
You touched him everywhere you could reach -chest, shoulders, the line of his jaw, the hard press of his cock already straining against his pants.
“Wet already,” he breathed against your skin, voice cracking with emotion and lust. “Always so fucking wet for me. Even after everything.”
You reached down, palming his cock through his pants, stroking the thick length with desperate need and he bucked into your hand with a choked groan, forehead pressed to yours, eyes locked even as tears blurred them.
The hallway was silent except for your ragged breaths, the wet sounds of kissing, the rustle of fabric.
His free hand shoved the neckline of your dress down, exposing one breast. He palmed it roughly, thumb flicking over your nipple, then bent to take it into his mouth -sucking, licking, teeth grazing while his fingers kept rubbing your clit faster.
You were panting, grinding shamelessly against his hand, so close already. “James -here -please-”
He switched to your other breast, sucking harder, hips thrusting against your thigh in time with his fingers. The tension coiled tighter, the risk of someone opening the door only heightening everything.
His cock throbbed under your palm; you squeezed him through the fabric and he moaned around your nipple, the vibration shooting straight to your core.
James straightened suddenly, crashing his mouth back to yours in a filthy, tongue-heavy kiss. Two of his fingers pushed your panties aside and slid into you without warning, your slickness making it so easy -deep, curling, stroking that spot that made your knees buckle.
You cried out into his mouth, clenching around him, tears pouring faster as the pleasure mixed with the overwhelming ache in your chest.
“I love you,” he gasped against your lips, fingers pumping steadily, thumb circling your clit. “I fucking love you-don’t leave me, please don’t-”
That was his leap of faith. He’d never said things so straightforwardly before and here he was, telling you just how much he adored you.
You were right there, teetering on the edge, when distant laughter from the party filtered through the door, shattering the moment just enough.
James pulled his hand back with a pained sound, but he didn’t let you go. He rested his forehead against yours, both of you breathing hard, bodies trembling, faces streaked with tears and flushed with need.
Your hand was still on his cock; his fingers were still glistening with you.
“We can’t -not here,” he rasped, but his hips twitched forward anyway, seeking more contact.
You nodded shakily, but kissed him once more- slow, deep, lingering. “Take me home.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He fixed your dress with shaking hands, you straightened his shirt, and then he grabbed your hand, lacing your fingers tightly like he was afraid you’d vanish.
You slipped out the side exit without a word to anyone, like you’d done so many times before.
Only this time you knew something different.
In the cab, you couldn’t keep your hands off each other.
The back seat was dark, the driver politely ignoring the heavy breathing and closing the backseat-front seat window.
James pulled you half into his lap, kissing you slow and deep, one hand under your dress stroking the slick mess between your thighs, the other tangled in your hair. You ground against him, whimpering, tears still slipping down your cheeks.
He kissed them away, murmuring, “I’ve got you. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
By the time you reached your dorm, you were both trembling with need.
The door to your dorm barely clicked shut behind you before James had you lifted in his arms, your legs wrapping instinctively around his waist.
The short cab ride had done nothing to cool the fire between you -only stoked it.
His mouth was on yours again, hungry and uncoordinated, as he carried you the few steps to the bed and laid you down like you might break.
Clothes came off in a desperate haze. He peeled the black dress from your body with shaking hands, kissing every inch of skin he revealed. Your bra and panties followed, then his shirt, pants, and boxers -until there was nothing between you but a year of aching absence.
He hovered over you for a moment, eyes drinking you in, tears still glistening on his lashes.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, voice thick with emotion. “I thought I remembered… but this-”
He leaned down, pressing open-mouthed kisses along your collarbones, the valley between your breasts, the soft plane of your stomach.
His hands mapped you reverently -cupping your breasts, thumbs brushing nipples until they tightened, sliding down your sides to grip your hips.
He sucked marks into the sensitive skin just above your hipbones, like he needed to claim you all over again.
When he finally settled between your thighs, spreading them wide with gentle but insistent hands, you were already dripping. He groaned at the sight, a low, wrecked sound that vibrated through you.
He started slow, almost worshipful -pressing soft, lingering kisses to the inside of your thighs, then higher. The first broad swipe of his tongue through your folds drew a broken sob from deep in your chest.
He licked you like a man starved, savoring every drop. His tongue was warm and velvet-soft, flattening to drag from your entrance up to your clit in long, deliberate strokes, then circling the swollen bud with precise, teasing flicks. He hummed against you, the vibration making your hips jerk.
“James-” Your fingers threaded into his hair, tugging as fresh tears slipped down your temples.
He didn’t answer with words.
Instead, he sealed his mouth around your clit and sucked gently, tongue fluttering rapidly against the underside while two thick fingers slid into you, curling upward to stroke that perfect spot inside. The wet, obscene sounds of his mouth filled the room- slick, hungry lapping mixed with his low, appreciative groans.
He was completely pussy-drunk, lost in the taste of you, the way your walls fluttered around his fingers, the way your thighs trembled against his ears.
You came the first time with a sharp cry, back arching off the bed, thighs clamping around his head.
He kept going -didn’t even slow- licking you through every pulse and aftershock, fingers pumping steadily. Tears streamed down your face from the intensity, mixing with the sweat on your skin.
He pulled back only long enough to look up at you, lips shiny and chin wet, eyes dark and glassy with tears of his own. “One more,” he rasped. “I need to taste you again. Please.” Then he dove back in, even more fervent.
This time he fucked you with his tongue- pushing it inside as deep as it would go, curling and thrusting while his nose rubbed against your clit.
His fingers replaced his tongue on your clit, rubbing tight, fast circles, the overstimulation had you whimpering, hips grinding against his face, but he held you down with one strong arm across your stomach, devouring you like he’d never get enough.
You came harder the second time, a full-body shudder that left you sobbing his name, gushing against his tongue as he drank every bit of it.
Only then did he crawl up your body, kissing a wet trail up your stomach, between your breasts, until his mouth found yours.
You tasted yourself on his tongue as he kissed you deeply, sharing the evidence of your pleasure.
You reached between you, wrapping your hand around his cock -thick, heavy, burning hot and leaking steadily at the tip. He groaned into your mouth, hips twitching, but when you tried to shift downward, he caught your wrist gently.
“No,” he whispered, eyes wet and earnest, voice cracking. “Not tonight- fuck -I need to be close to you. Inside you. Please, baby. Let me feel you.”
He settled between your legs, bracing on his forearms so he could watch your face.
The blunt head of his cock nudged at your entrance, slick and ready before he pushed in slowly -inch by inch- stretching you open with that perfect, burning fullness you’d missed for a year.
The sensation was overwhelming: the way your walls yielded and clenched around every ridge and vein, the heavy heat of him filling you completely until his hips pressed flush to yours.
You both gasped, foreheads touching, tears falling freely again.
“Fuck… you’re so tight,” he breathed, voice trembling. “So warm and wet and- fuck, I love you. I love you so much.”
He stayed buried deep for a long moment, just feeling you pulse around him, savoring the squeeze.
Then he began to move -slow, deep rolls of his hips that dragged his cock along every sensitive inch inside you. Each thrust was deliberate, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in to the hilt, grinding against your clit on every downstroke.
The wet, rhythmic slap of skin filled the room, mingled with your shared sobs and gasps.
You wrapped your legs around his waist, heels digging into his back, pulling him deeper. “Harder, James -please-”
He gave it to you, thrusts growing firmer, faster, but still so full of emotion.
His cock felt impossibly thick inside you, stretching you perfectly with every plunge, the head nudging against that spot that made sparks explode behind your eyes. When you clenched around him particularly hard, he moaned loudly, a raw, broken sound that vibrated through his chest.
“Yes- fuck, just like that. You feel so good, so so good baby.”
You switched positions naturally, rolling so he was spooned behind you, chest pressed tight to your back.
One of his arms banded around you, hand cupping and kneading your breast, the other sliding down to rub firm circles on your clit. He thrust up into you from behind -deep, grinding strokes that kept him buried as much as possible.
His mouth was at your neck, kissing, sucking, murmuring against your skin: “I missed this. Missed feeling you around me. Never letting you go again.”
Tears soaked the pillow beneath your cheek; his fell onto your shoulder. The emotion was devastating -relief, love, grief, desperation- all of it pouring out with every thrust.
You came first again, walls clamping down hard around his cock, pulsing and fluttering as pleasure tore through you with a shattered moan.
The sensation broke him. James groaned deep in his chest, hips stuttering as his orgasm hit. His cock throbbed violently inside you, swelling even thicker as he came hard -thick, hot ropes of cum flooding your walls in powerful pulses.
“Y/N -fuckfuckfuckfuck” He kept thrusting through it, shallow and desperate, drawing out every wave as your pussy milked him dry.
But even after he spilled everything, he didn’t stop. He stayed rock-hard, the overstimulation making him shake and whimper, but the feeling was too good.
“Don’t stop,” he begged hoarsely, still crying, voice wrecked. “Please, don’t let me pull out. It’s too much- too good. I can’t-”
You pushed back against him, meeting every thrust, and he kept moving -kept cumming in smaller, intense waves that made his whole body jerk. His cock pulsed again and again inside you, more cum leaking out with every thrust, making everything slicker, messier.
He buried his face in your neck, sobbing against your skin as another orgasm ripped progressively through him, hips grinding deep.
You turned your head for a messy, tear-soaked kiss, tongues sliding lazily as he kept fucking you slow and loving and frantic all at once.
The year apart dissolved completely in the heat, the tears, and the devastating certainty that this had never been nothing.
It had always been everything. Filled every single corner of every single room you’d been in.
And neither of you left.
The room was quiet except for the slowing rhythm of your breathing and the occasional sniffle as tears finally began to ease.
James stayed buried deep inside you from behind, his arm wrapped tightly around your waist, chest pressed flush to your back. His cock still twitched with aftershocks, warm and full inside your slick, cum-filled heat. Neither of you moved to separate.
You couldn’t. Not yet.
He pressed soft, lingering kisses to the nape of your neck, his breath shaky. “I’m not leaving,” he whispered, voice hoarse and raw. “Not tonight. Not ever again if you’ll have me.”
You turned your head just enough to meet his eyes over your shoulder. Fresh tears welled up. “I thought we were done. I really believed it this time.”
“I know.” His hand slid up to cup your cheek, thumb brushing away the wetness. “I was so fucking scared you’d never see me again.”
You squeezed around him instinctively, and he groaned softly, hips giving one lazy thrust before stilling again. “I was cruel too,” you admitted, voice small. “Blocking you. Pushing you away when I needed you most. I was hurting and I wanted you to hurt with me. But God, James… I never stopped loving you. Even when I hated you.”
His eyes shut tight, another tear slipping free. “I love you. I’m shit at saying it, shit at showing it the right way, but I do. So much it terrifies me. You’re the only person who’s ever seen all the ugly parts and still made me feel like I’m worth something.”
ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ Jealou$y - The Nbhd ♫♬♪
You stayed like that for a long while- tangled, joined, whispering truths you’d both buried for years. Soft confessions. Apologies. Promises. The kind of vulnerable honesty that only came after devastating sex and shared tears.
His hand stroked your stomach, your breasts, anywhere he could reach, grounding himself in your warmth.
Eventually the tenderness shifted. His cock, still half-hard inside you, began to thicken again. You felt it -slow, deliberate swelling that made you gasp. James kissed your shoulder, then your neck, teeth grazing.
“Again?” you whispered, a small, breathless laugh breaking through.
“I can’t help it,” he murmured, rolling his hips slowly, stirring the mess of cum and your arousal. “You feel too good. Being inside you again it’s fucking addictive.”
The heat built quickly. You pushed back against him, and he groaned, pulling out just long enough to turn you onto your back so he could kiss you properly -deep, slow, emotional. Then he was lifting you, carrying you toward the small en-suite bathroom on unsteady legs.
The shower was tiny, barely enough room for both of you, but that only made it better. He turned the water on hot, steam filling the space as you stepped in together. Water cascaded over your bodies, washing away sweat and tears but not the need.
James pressed you against the cool tiles, mouth devouring yours while his hands roamed -slick with water, sliding over your breasts, pinching nipples until you moaned into him.
You wrapped your arms around his neck, one leg hooking over his hip. His cock, fully hard again and flushed dark, slid against your stomach.
He lifted you effortlessly, pinning you to the wall. “Wrap your legs around me, yeah?”
You did, and he guided himself back inside you in one smooth, deep thrust. The stretch was even more intense after everything -your walls sensitive and swollen, still slick with his earlier release.
He groaned loudly, forehead pressed to yours as water poured over your joined bodies.
“Fuck, Y/N… so warm. So fucking tight even after I filled you up.” He started moving -deep, rolling thrusts that ground his pelvis against your clit with every stroke.
The wet slap of skin mixed with the sound of running water. His cock dragged along every ridge inside you, thick and veined, hitting that perfect spot over and over.
You cried out, nails digging into his shoulders. Tears mixed with shower water on your cheeks. “James -harder. I need you.”
He gave it to you. Thrusts turned punishing but loving -powerful snaps of his hips that lifted you higher against the tiles. One hand held your ass, the other braced beside your head. His mouth moved to your neck, sucking marks, then to your breasts, licking water from your nipples before biting gently.
You clenched around him deliberately and he moaned, deep and broken. “Yes -squeeze me just like that. Fuck… I feel everything. You’re gonna make me cum again too soon my pretty girl.”
The angle, the heat, the steam, the overwhelming emotion -it all built fast. You came first, walls pulsing hard around his cock, sobbing his name as pleasure crashed through you.
James followed right after, burying himself to the hilt with a guttural groan. His cock throbbed violently, pumping more thick ropes of cum deep inside you. He kept thrusting through it, shallow and desperate, whimpering against your neck as overstimulation made him shake.
But he didn’t pull out. Instead, he lowered you slightly, still buried deep, and reached between you to rub your clit with slick fingers while grinding slowly.
“One more,” he begged, greedy. “Please, baby. I need to feel you cum around me again.”
You were oversensitive, trembling, but the way he looked at you -eyes wet, desperate, full of love- made you nod. He fucked you through it, slower now but no less intense, water streaming between your bodies, until you shattered again with a broken cry.
Only then did he ease out, both of you boneless and clinging. He held you under the spray, kissing you softly as the water began to cool.
Voices suddenly filtered in from the main dorm area -your members returning home, laughing and calling your name.
James froze, then smiled against your lips, a little dazed and wicked. “Guess we made it just in time.”
You laughed breathlessly, pressing one last kiss to his mouth. “Stay the night anyway. We’ll figure it out.”
He nodded, eyes soft. “I’m not going anywhere.”
So he didn’t go anywhere.
He stayed.
Became the better man he always told himself he’d be once he found the courage.
The morning after the wrap party, you woke tangled in his arms, his face buried against your neck, breathing steady and warm. Neither of you spoke much at first. Just quiet touches, soft kisses, and the shared understanding that everything had shifted.
Your members teased you mercilessly when they saw him sneaking out later that day, but the smiles on their faces said they’d known this was coming.
A few days later, he showed up at your dorm with a ridiculously corny bouquet of red roses and a handwritten letter -actual pen and paper and no chat gpt involved, slightly crumpled from how many times he’d rewritten it.
The letter was long, rambling, equal parts apology and love confession, ending with: “Will you let me take you on a real date?”
You said yes, he kissed you right there in the doorway, slow and reverent, like he still couldn’t believe he was allowed.
Your first official date was simple but perfect: a late-night drive to a quiet beach outside the city, where no one would find you and snap photos, blankets in the trunk, cheap convenience store snacks, and hours of talking under the stars. He held your hand the entire way home.
That night, back at your place, the sex was different -less desperate hunger, more deep, aching worship. He laid you out on his bed and took his time again, licking and sucking between your thighs until you came twice on his tongue, then fucked you slow, eyes locked, whispering “I love you” with every thrust.
Over the next weeks, you rebuilt in quiet, beautiful ways. Brunch dates ( in your bedroom unfortunately - there was only so much fame allowed) where he stole bites from your plate. Late studio nights where he brought you coffee and rubbed your shoulders. Public outings were careful at first -disguises, quiet corners- but the the thrill of risking to be seen together, even subtly, felt like freedom.
As your career with R3SET soared -comeback stages under blinding lights, sold-out tours that took you across continents, and the quiet pride of watching your members shine beside you -he was there. Cheering the loudest from the wings, waiting with warm arms and quiet understanding after exhausting schedules.
“You’re always the best thing in any room you’re performing in,” he’d said one time, towel drying your sweat after a long show in Seoul.
One month in, he took you to a private listening of Cortis’ finished project. Sitting in the dark, his hand on your thigh, fingers tracing lazy circles, you listened to the song. He’d included his song in the album, the one he’d written about you.
And now you were certain, that by being honest, you’d gotten everything you wanted.
In the car afterward, you couldn’t wait -you rode him in the backseat, windows fogged, your dress hiked up, his hands gripping your ass as you bounced on his cock. He came so hard he saw stars, burying his face between your breasts and murmuring how perfect you felt squeezing him.
Two months later, he talked to the girls properly -nervous, respectful, and endearingly awkward. They approved. Not that you would’ve left him anyway.
That same night, back at your dorm while the others were out, he fucked you against the kitchen counter, then bent you over the couch, pounding deep from behind until you were sobbing his name. He loved pulling your hair just enough to tilt your head back for messy kisses, loved the way your pussy fluttered and milked him when you came.
Three months in, during a quiet weekend getaway to a cabin in the mountains, he told you he was in therapy -working on the exits, the fear and the walls. You cried in his arms, proud but also insanely full. Like you suddenly realized how fulfilled you were been at such a young age.
Six months later, you both got a secondary apartment to share. It was private but yours- filled with your combined chaos and growing collection of memories and polaroids.
The sex only got better with time: lazy morning blowjobs where he’d eventually pull you up and fuck you slow and deep; shower quickies that turned into long, steamy sessions against the tiles; nights where he’d edge you for an hour with his mouth and fingers before finally giving you his cock, making you cum so many times you lost count.
You read in his arms, learned more about yourself than you’d ever did anywhere else, learned how to love him correctly, appropriately, learned how to not be so addicted to the chaos.
Your story had never been nothing. It had always been tongue-tied and beautifully, spoken aloud.
In the end, it was always his tongue that undid you both. Not just the wicked, reverent way it worshipped between your thighs.
But the way it finally learned to speak the truth.
oh my shit fuck. I actually am so grateful for this request cause i fucking loved writing this. Idc if it’s ass and if some don’t like it. I loved it. 🤤 loved writing it.
hi <3 this fic was sent from the heavens in a delicate satin package with a dainty pink bow on it! i truly believe this is one of the best pieces of writing i've ever come across in my lifetime, its so emotionally charged in such a real way, i am so incredibly moved and in awe - i've been so absent and all over the place atm and reading this actually allowed me to lay my head to rest a bit, process all the emotions i'd been withholding (yes i cried); anyways this is an absolute gobsmacker, just like the rest of jie's work, but this in particular will stick w me for a very long time 🙂↕️🖤
Chan has gone mad, his inhibitors constantly lying to him. Whispering and begging him to flee, or to stay? He couldn't differentiate what's real and what's not anymore.
Stuck in this loop of reality against delusion.
That none of what he's felt, seen and heard were real. None of it.
It began during the filming of a SKZ code episode. The task was simple, enter a haunted house: cast members will jumpscare you, pretend to get scared and move on.
That's all, as sweet as sugar.
He was paired with Changbin, adventuring deeper into the pitch black corridors when he sensed a breath on his neck. Ignoring it, then it happened again. “Bro, stop.” he scolded Changbin, who in return knitted his brows in confusion.
“What'd I do?” he retorted, and Chan observed his face with the light of his torch. Licking his lips in faint discomfort at the sincerity of the latter's skepticism.
Probably the ventilation system, resuming in their exploration.
They're getting nowhere, running in circles when the room falls into sudden silence. The chatter from Changbin fading out, almost as if he was alone. “What's wrong–?” Chan meant to ask, aiming his light around to find Changbin gone.
Gone.
“Changbin?” he calls, looking past the corners for his friend—alas—there's nothing to be found. “Okay, cool.” he mumbles, shaking his head. He's left on his own, most likely part of the plot for today's episode that the staff failed to inform him of.
There's a strange motive that forms at the bottom of his stomach, if he could call it a motive. A lingering thought, guiding him throughout the strangely empty rooms despite being told that they’d be filled with actors.
Find me.
He shivers, swearing having heard something. Someone. Brushing it off at first, but it happens again.
Left. I'm on the left.
He gulps, shifting to move to the right instead, however he has no control over his footings. His legs bring him left, snatching his sense of direction. The feeling is getting heavier, along with the tense atmosphere and his ragged breathing.
Unsure of what he's going to find when he abruptly knocks into something—his heart dropping—only to realise it was merely a vase. Shoulders dropping in relief, chuckling at himself for being so paranoid. This is a fake haunted house, remember?
Crouching down to retrieve the fallen object when he hears a light rustle, the swiping of fabric. Raising his torch, aiming it forward when something stares right at him. Agape eyes plastered on his face.
He jumps, falling back onto the decorative debris with a shriek. “Fuck,” he curses, the worry of cameras filming him suddenly not an issue. Limbs twitching from the crash, heaving upwards in a dull ache.
“Channie–?” The voice nearly has him throwing up from sudden stress, his gaze dropping to the flash from the opposite person. “Are you okay?” Jisung asks, slightly appalled himself.
“There is someone—” Chan replies, pointing to where he saw the thing with a trembling finger. Both him and Jisung look, only to find absolutely nothing.
Nothing, it's gone.
Just like that.
“No, there was someone. I promise–” Chan assures and Jisung shrugs.
“Probably an actor, why are you dwelling on it?”
“But where they'd go—”
“Secret escape, maybe?” he says, and it makes Chan feel stupid for stressing over it.
Right, that makes sense.
He nods, hesitant because it's still bothering him. It looked human, but not human enough. His nerves reacted to the uncanny, even in the brief interaction, screaming that this wasn't normal.
He bites on his cheek, following Jisung in hollow steps. It was most likely a really good actor. A really good actor.
—
But then, weird stuff started happening.
It began small, insignificant. A breeze here and there, ghosting on his neck; arm; face. Whatever that was appropriate and exposed. He had blamed it on the cracks on the window's frame, but the wind felt almost deliberate. Knowing exactly where to touch him to coax a grunt of confusion out of his lips.
Whenever he'd plop on his chair, left working for hours to end, his laptop would start crashing. A faint static altering the sound from his headphones, screen glitching. He sent it for repairs, just for the technician to claim that there was nothing wrong with the device.
He couldn't sleep either. Whenever he closed his eyes, he'd hear the voice again. I'm here. It'd told him, the mattress digging under an invisible pressure. His sides would be frozen, but his skin ablaze, numb with ants crawling underneath the layers of flesh. Waking up in cold sweats from unusual dreams, where he'd be lucid, he's always lucid in those dreams. There, he'd find a girl, standing in the distance, facing opposite to him.
No matter how much he tries to control the dreams, to no avail, the person wouldn't reveal herself to him.
Slowly, it felt like he was going crazy.
He's come to call it a you, since you're a constant in his home now. Pretty certain that you're the person he saw at the haunted house, and that you're undeniably a ghost.
It couldn't be a prank from the members, cause every time he'd bring it up— they brushed him off. “Hyung, have you been sleeping well?”
No, he hasn't.
Because he finds himself craving your identity further more. Digging in impossible research each white night, praying to god that you'd just appear before him already. Stupid, because why would god do that?
He couldn't care less, he needs to know that you exist. He needs existential proof. Dumb enough to install more house cameras, as if cameras could catch ghosts. Constantly checking on them on the app at the company, living in a paranoia that you'd appear when he isn't home.
Just once. Let him see you once again. To register the face of the one who's been the beginning of his nightmare, and the end of his dreams.
Unsure of what he'd actually do once he gets you on the spot, but he's found himself indulging into your presence. He's guilty, guilty how he doesn't resent you when your ghostly touches grow bolder. Guilty that he welcomes in the faint metallic smell you carry around, perhaps it's from dying. He wouldn't know. Guilty that he finds pleasure in the burning cold you provide.
He's going insane.
Coming home earlier than usual, he's worked his ass off today. For one reason only. To catch you with his own eyes unexpectedly. He even brought those transmitters, the type that lets you talk to the other side. Today is the day.
Shuffling with his keys, unlocking the door in a silent rush. He doesn't mean to scare you, his steps stealthy, taking his shoes off without a sound.
He explores the house despite knowing every corner. The device in hand, wandering it around ridiculously. He's pathetic, he's well aware of that, but that's not enough to stop him. Having gone through each room, he grows restless. “Where are you?” he mutters, rubbing his temple. “Please,” he begs, “show yourself. Let me see you.”
He should've known these electronics are a scam, or maybe it's his anxious mind. Body crippling in excitement masked as adrenaline. Hopeless when he drops his arm to his side, grip tightening on the device. Sighing deeply, it's no use.
You aren't here, it's paranoia, as the members claimed him to be. He sits on the edge of the bed, burying his face in his palms in a shaky exhale. Pulling his hands away to find himself crying. Fuck, no way he's crying over this.
But you've been tormenting him for weeks, that's the only coping mechanism he has left. Since you don't exist, it's his mind playing games on him. The frustrated tears flowing out, when the lights flicker for a bit.
On. Off. On.
His breath halts, blinking through the blur coating his vision. Something drops. A water bottle–
His eyes fall there in reflex, the lights going off once again. The familiar touch returns, the same as the uncomfortable feeling at the pit of his stomach. He knew he wasn't crazy! That's the most you've shown yourself so far—
But then– the touch grows firmer, somehow keeping a form of softness when you wipe his tears. Cradling his cheeks to have him face you in the pitch darkness.
The lights turn back on.
Maybe he had expected the one to torment him to be hideous, then he'd have ample reasons to leave this apartment and find somewhere else to reside under the company's help. Maybe he had expected fear to settle in.
Much unlike his expectations, he wasn't anticipating the ghost attached to him to be the girl of his dreams. Perhaps he did, he just thought it'd be a nightmare instead.
You tilt your head, eyes peeking at him as you take in his expression with much curiosity. As if you didn't know he could see you. Lips forming a small line, holding the side of his jaw, hand trailing to his hair so sweetly.
He tries to grab onto your wrist, and that's when realisation hits in for you. Your own eyes widening in surprise, making direct eye contact for the second time. Your conclusion gets confirmed when he follows your gaze. Your lips part, and in a glance—you're gone.
“No!” he panics, flailing desperate hands in the air to get a hold of you. To get you to come back.
Unfortunately, it's pointless.
He spends the rest of the night awake, like every other.
—
He hadn't told the members his suspicion was right.
No.
You're for his awareness only. His to know your existence. He stopped bringing it up to the others, and started acting normal once again. Pretending that none of his earlier rents even existed when somebody would bring up his, “ghost friend,” as a joke.
The ghost that is following Chan around. It might be the opposite now, he's the one following you. From the first confirmation, coming home has been something he looks more forward to now. Talking to empty spaces, acting out interactions on his own. Taking every little sign of response, twisting and distorting it till it fits to his narrative.
There must be a reason why you got attached to him and not the others. That's right, you must like him.
“I like you too,” he'd tell the spot next to him, leaving it comfortable and free for your invisible form to sit down. He assumes you're his love. His girlfriend. His ghost girlfriend.
There's nothing wrong with that?
What's wrong with him?
He's such a good boyfriend. So sweet how he brings you offerings, names you cute nicknames, tells you goodnight and goodmorning. He even made it a habit to come home early, just for you.
It's almost insane how whipped he is.
So, why don't you show yourself to him again?
“Please,” he begs, voice wrecked and low in the quiet room.
He's so fucking hard it hurts, cock leaking steadily over his fist as he strokes himself in shaky, uneven jerks. Your image burns behind his eyelids—that brief, perfect glimpse he got—it’s driving him insane.
He knows that you're here, the prickling on his skin growing in intensity. Your eyes bore into him enough to punch at his coiling stomach, abs flexing desperately with each grind of his hips into his fist.
Reality hits him for a second, shame itching the goosebumps on his body. Shit… what the hell is he doing? Putting on a show for a ghost—for you.
Weeks of biting back every twitch, every unwanted erection whenever the temperature dropped, or that metallic scent hit him. But now… now you're his. His girlfriend.
His.
So it's okay, right? Couples do this. They let each other see everything.
His hips jerk up into his hand, a broken moan slipping out. “So please— fuck, baby… just show yourself.” He squeezes the head, thumb smearing the mess, breath hitching. “I’m doing this for you. Come on… look at me. Let me see you while I fall apart.”
He whines. Ropes of hot cum flying out of his tip, landing on his fist to his stomach. Coating his abs to below his belly button. Chest heaving when he relaxes onto the sheets, lashes fluttering shut in abandon when a weird sensation travels up his abdomen. The feeling of a cold, wet tongue making contact with his skin.
He means to open his eyes, but he's unable to. A wet gag leaves his mouth in desperate frustration when you deny him from seeing you. “Why— why won't you let me– agh!” he cries out as you lick up his length, twitching back to life embarrassingly fast. Catching the strings of his splattered release, you grab on his wrist, bringing his palm to your mouth. Kissing and lapping it clean, his hips jolt upwards, needing you to do more.
When you crawl up his body, he feels every movement, his hunger rising in palpitations. Hands hovering, and you let him hold onto your hips. Breathing in a tremor when he's able to touch you; fully touch you. The softness of your loose dress taunts him, begging to open his eyes to take a peek at how it hangs off your body. Guiding his face like you did the last time, except that this time, your lips land on his.
Mewling into your mouth, his touch grows firmer. Rigid despite the shakiness of it. Scared that you'll evaporate if he releases you a centimeter too far. Your lips are exactly what he's been dreaming of, even better. To the texture, to the slight lingering taste of coins in your mouth.
Who would've known kissing entities would feel this good. Pleasure coursing through his legs to his stomach, swiping his tongue above your bottom lip, he could lick at your chin if you'd let him. Needy how he pry the tissues apart, the same tongue plunging inside, exploring the shape of your teeth to the size of your wet muscle. Engraving the shape of your mouth in his mind, his palms slide on your body. Groping at whatever he can find, just to feel the lining of you.
You gasp when he finds your breast, and his obsession digs deeper. Squeezing the bundle of flesh with his two hands shamelessly, grasping the opportunity to fuck into your agape mouth with his tongue. Shoving it as far as possible—preventing you from stealing air—if that was even necessary for you. “So good, more.” he pleads, able to open his eyes from your distracted daze. Nearly cumming untouched when he takes in your expression; face scrunched prettily, overwhelmed by his kiss and wandering hands alone. “Aww, baby you're so cute,” he compliments, forcing your lashes open. You start to panic, but he halts you.
Changing your positions in the blink of an eye, you barely have time to react before he pins your wrists above your head. Your head tilts upwards, taking in the restraint, brows curving into a pitiful line. “You must be timid…” he's still gasping, air hardly passing through his lungs in his disbelief that this is real. “I'll take care of you, will you let your Channie do it?”
Your fluster widens, avoiding fixing at his depraved gaze. He grins down, a large palm sprawled onto your ghostly stomach, playing with the fabric of your hanging dress. It adorns you so well, crude at how heavenly white it is. “You're pretty,” he comments, noticing how your eyes glint in hope at the praise. “You like it when I call you pretty?”
You gulp, nodding shyly. He has to bring himself together for a second, his entire being rumbling on the inside. Fuck. His cock is already fat and throbbing, leaking in a humiliating manner. Hiding his expression by nuzzling his face in the crevice of your neck, his nose tickles you when he bites down lightly. Wondering if you can get marked, if he could taint your skin, just as your soul with his disturbing fantasies about the two of you. “You're the prettiest thing I've ever seen, it'd be sad if I didn't sign this canvas. Hm?”
His kisses drive from your neck to your jaw, hot and needy lips dragging to the corner of your lips. Pecking you there adoringly, like the good boyfriend he is. You whine, plucking your lips forward for him to return the gesture.
He's scarce on self control, and here you are tempting him. Who is he to refuse?
Lips touching, this time in affection when he presses down, kissing at your bottom lip first then the above. You sigh into him, hands writhing in his grip, he gives you the choice. Hand loosening on your wrist, because he's certain that you won't escape now. That you need him as much as he needs you.
The hypothesis is proven true when you hold onto his wrist instead, guiding his palm to your tits. He moans, loud and pathetic. “You want me to do it again?”
You nod.
He wastes no time, squeezing your tit for him to latch on. Mouth wrapping around your nipple, unbothered about wetting the fabric of your dress. He's drooling, so much spit dripping out that the thin silk is rendered transparent. Biting and sucking dutifully, as if his life is on the line.
It might be, then he'd join you and have nothing else to worry about. You're squirming, embarrassed, yet you lean into him. Thighs quivering close from the heat pooling at your bottom.
He notices, of course he does. There isn't one thing he hasn't noticed about you since the second his eyes landed on you. Palm separating from your tits, snaking up your legs to ride your dress upwards, creasing it at your stomach. He sits upright, strings of saliva snapping from your cloth. Sketching this image to his memory when he rubs his thumbs over your exposed tummy, gaze shifting from your belly button to your cunt. He has to count his breaths, cursing in mutters; parting your thighs to access a better view.
“Baby…” his voice hitch, stuck in his throat. Thumb finding your core warm and wet, far exceeding his expectations. “Look at you,” he blabbers, and you can't. Blinking away in absolute shame, never in your living years has someone talked to you like this. He runs tentative fingers up your slit, finding your lips to part them with two digits. Your jaw slackens, drawing a quiet noise out of you when he circles your clit with his thumb. Eyes peeking at you, noting your every reaction.
Thighs threatening to close, though he doesn't allow you. Keeping himself comfortable in the middle, teasing you with fleeting touches. You pout, silently begging him to get on with it. He could cry, really. Overwhelmed from the thought of pleasuring you alone. He's trying to be patient, it's just so hard!
He's scared you'll flee if he's too rough, aiming for a gentler approach. But the more this needy expression finds your features, he can't help but be cruel. Proding at your entrance with the tip of his finger, only to pull away and swipe across your labia instead.
Huffing out a laugh as you try to roll your hips into him, frown wrinkling the space above your nose. “Sorry, I'll be good,” he apologies, your eyes getting glossy in frustration. He doesn't sound a hint of being sorry though, not when he gives in and plunges his finger inside. A sound leaves your throat, even if it's inaudible, your contorting face and the twitch in your bones is enough to tell him that he's doing well.
Leaning forward to catch your ear in his mouth, pressing on the sensitive flesh between his teeth, adding on another finger. It squelches, deafening. The noise bouncing off the walls, he moans by your ear, resulting in you clenching on his fingers harder. “You're taking it s'well. Channie's good girl,” his praises are all you hear, fingers driving in and out of you in obscene wet flaps. Adding a third because he felt like it, enjoying your squirming figure underneath him. Unraveling on his fingers alone, when he could give you better.
He curls them, having you breathe in shakily despite your unrequirement to do so. Hands clutching at his back, the muscles tensing with the dig of your nails onto his shirt. He sighs happily, nibbling on your earlobe, spreading his digits nicely, focusing on the sensation of them inside. You're dripping all over his hand, juices flowing out to his wrist. He ponders if you'd taste sweet, or the taste of coins would remain?
Just wanting to come down and eat you out kindly, but you're hugging him so tightly, he'd feel bad for leaving you hanging. Thumb circling your clit, the nerves shooting electricity up your body. Limbs twitching, dead muscles spasming from his proof of love. You're unable to talk, he thinks. But then he hears the faintest whimper of his name echoing in his head, just an enough warning to tell him that you're on the brink.
Tongue peeking out to lick at the shape of your ear, smothering pecks till he reaches right below. Attaching his lips where your pulse should be if you were alive. The difference between yours and his temperature is a five star meal on his tongue as he sucks on the skin harshly. Fingers speeding up inside, hitting that spot over and over again till you're left crying out with the lack of a voice.
Thighs twitch violently, arching onto him when you relent. Eyes squeezed shut, you release around him hard. Not allowing him to leave your addicting pussy, his eyes and mouth watering at the sight of your trembling figure. Finally, pulling his fingers out. Drenched, he brings them to his lips. Swirling his tongue around the liquid, whining at the taste as he sucks on the digits.
Ignoring your distressed expression, the flush in you is visible. Funny, because you're still cold as hell. He loves it. He loves you.
Holding your thighs together, he brings them up, gluing them when his heavy cock sheathes between the plushness of them.
JAW ON THE FLOOR JAW ON THE FLOOR JAW ON THE FLOOR 😍😍😍😍😍 this was soooooo sexy yet sweet and dainty and also arthouse in a way (?!) like i could picture this translated into a film really clearly - how beautiful wow sorry yeah still awestruck, i looooooved !!!!!!!
summary: you meet this creepy dude on the street, seungmin, and you’re such and angel that he just can’t stop stalking you after that. slowly becoming your friend, even. good thing you’re flexible and… survive when he tries to kill you?
warnings: non idol au, violence and mentions of gore, attempted murder, obsessive behavior, stalking, cursing, homicidal behavior/psychopathy, sexual content(unprotected p in v, pull out method, mentions of pubic hair, oral sex (f and m receiving), genuinely one(1) mention of a condom in the whole fic, cum eating once, one tiny little mention of a threesome that won’t happen), multiple sex scenes, felix as a dumb and annoying side character
word count: 18k
it’s a beautiful sunny spring day. everything’s soft. the air, the light, the breeze. flowers blooming. birds not shutting the fuck up.
you’re crouched on the sidewalk, cooing at a cat which is under a car. “hi baby… hi, oh my god, you’re so cute, c’mere, i won’t hurt you, promise.”
“it won’t come to you.” a man’s voice cuts in, beautiful.
you glance up.
the guy is standing next to you. hands in his pockets. expression blank. pretty, though. annoyingly so.
you squint up at him. “wow. okay. rude. we were making progress with the cat.”
“you weren’t.”
“i was.” you insist, turning back to the cat. “he’s just not in a mood for people right now.”
“it’s a cat.”
“and you’re a ray of sunshine, clearly.”
there’s a pause. then he crouches down next to you. not casual. not friendly.
he doesn’t look at you. just at the cat. “you’re too loud for it to come closer.”
“wow. okay. what’s your name?”
“…seungmin.”
“hi. i’m y/n.” you tuck your knees in closer, resting your chin on them, still watching the cat. “i had a shitty day, by the way. since we’re sharing.”
silence.
you continue anyway. “like, really shitty. my boss, oh my god, you would hate her. actually, maybe you’d like her. you both have that… terrifying energy.”
“i don’t like people.”
“yeah, i can tell.”
he doesn’t answer with anything. instead, he leans forward slightly. extends a hand toward the cat.
you expect it to bolt. it doesn’t. it actually steps forward. cautious, sure, but curious. it sniffs his fingers.
your mouth falls open.
the cat presses its head lightly against his knuckles.
“no way.” you whisper, betrayed. but take some time and look at seungmin. trying to read anything off him. “so do you, like… live around here?”
“…yeah.”
“same. like, a few streets over. i like this part, it’s so pretty. what about you? you go on walks around here or are you doing something?”
“…passing through.”
“mhm.“
the cat nudges his hand again, more insistent this time.
he looks down at it. then, he picks it up. just lifts it.
the cat doesn’t fight it.
you gasp.
he holds it awkwardly, like he’s not used to holding something that isn’t… whatever it is he usually deals with.
it curls against him anyway.
you lean closer, peering at the cat in his arms. “hi baby. remember me? i was kind to you first.”
the cat watches you with big eyes.
you sigh.
seungmin watches you do all of this. the dramatics. the way your face moves when you talk. how easily you shift from joking to soft and back again.
“…you live alone?” he asks suddenly.
you blink. “oh. uh—yeah. yeah, i do.”
you don’t hesitate. why would you?
“which street?”
“what?”
“you said a few streets over.”
“oh.” you shrug easily. “uh, near the little bakery? i think it’s pretty cute, so pink. around there. i just moved here like… two weeks ago? still getting lost. i walked in a circle yesterday for forty minutes. it was humiliating.”
“how?”
“i have no survival instincts, seungmin. if this were the wild, i’d be dead in an hour.”
“less.”
you snort. “why do you care?”
“just asking.”
“mhm. do you live alone?”
“…no.”
“oh? roommate?”
“yeah.”
“name?”
“felix.”
“felix?” you brighten instantly. “that’s such a cute name. is he cute?”
suddenly, seungmin wants to rip felix’s throat out.
“no.”
you smile. you’re beautiful. “you said that too fast. he’s definitely cute.”
“he’s not.”
“wow. okay.”
he looks at you now. his eyes are… dead. genuinely, not one spark of emotion in there. but the cat in his arms is full of life. you look down at the little guy too.
“you’re good with animals.” you say.
“they’re simple.”
“oh. i like them because they’re cute.”
“that too.”
tough crowd.
eventually, you sigh, stretching your legs. “i should probably go. i mean i loved being here with you but i have shit to do. i’m sure you have too.”
“okay.”
you stand, brushing off your clothes. “are you gonna keep him?” you nod at the cat.
“no.”
“you should. he clearly chose you.”
he looks down at the cat. then back at you. “you come here often?”
you laugh. “what is this, a pickup line?”
“no.”
“kinda sounded like one.”
“answer.”
you grin, rocking back on your heels. “i walk around a lot. i’ll probably pass by again.” you take a step back, then another. “would love to see you here more often, if you’re up for that. anyways, i really do have to go now. bye, seungmin.”
“…bye.”
you turn, walking off down the street, already pulling your phone out, already slipping back into your own little world like nothing about that interaction was unusual. and you don’t look back, you don’t see the way he watches you go. doesn’t move. doesn’t leave. just crouches there, the cat still in his arms, eyes fixed on you until you disappear around the corner.
he sets the cat back down eventually. it doesn’t want to leave him alone but he still steps over it. who the fuck cares about these furry little assholes. he only picked it up to show you he’s better.
so. seungmin wants to see you again.
and he will.
even if you… don’t quite know he’s seeing you.
not when you leave your building at inconsistent times because you don’t have a real schedule. not when you stop too long at places you don’t need to be, like bakery windows or random storefronts with your friends. typical girly shit.
he learns that you don’t check behind you.
ever.
it doesn’t occur to you that you should.
wrong.
you stop for animals. always. doesn’t matter if it’s a cat, a dog, something that looks like it might bite you. you’ll crouch down anyway, hand out, patient. you help people when they drop things. you hold doors. you smile at children. you give people privacy. you don’t like saying no. you’ll hesitate, soften it, wrap it in something easier to swallow.
you’re an angel.
seungmin notices all of it.
learning something new about you always makes the stalking more fun. and he always learns something new.
he also learned that you don’t notice repetition. that one matters. because it means you don’t notice him. not when he’s across the street one day. not when he’s behind you in line somewhere. not when you pass him again days later and don’t register that you’ve already seen that face.
it’s strange.
you’re strange.
but c’mon, for once in his life, he’s being nice!! (he’s not.) you live alone. you said that easily, without thinking. you hand information out like it’s nothing. someone should be aware of that. someone should be watching. he doesn’t really care but doesn’t have anything better to do, so he will do that for you, nice, right?
and for your part, you think about the guy with the cat sometimes. mostly because of how weird he was. how blunt. how he didn’t try to be likable at all. it stands out. but not enough. not enough to connect anything. not enough to notice that you’ve passed him more than once since then. not enough to realize that when you feel that brief, unexplainable sense of being watched, you’re not imagining it.
you just brush it off. every time. seungmin notices that too.
because he’s not complicated. never been. he kills because he can, because it’s easy, because he wants to. he doesn’t have one fucking reason to kill. he just purely wants to. and he does it well too.
he’s not completely empty, though. what he does feel, rarely, but consistently, is irritation.
felix is the main source of that.
felix is a horrible roommate.
their place isn’t big, and felix somehow manages to fill all of it with noise. keyboard clacking, chair rolling, random talking to himself or to his friends he’s calling while playing lol or something violent.
then there’s the mess.
felix doesn’t clean. felix leaves shit around. hoodie on the back of seungmin’s chair(WHEN did he go into seungmin’s room and WHY), glass on the floor next to the couch, headphones on the couch, keys in the bathroom sink(???), underwear on the bathroom floor.
seungmin will pick things up sometimes. not out of kindness. just because it’s inefficient to step over the same object more than once.
and then there’s the money felix has. felix has this habit, annoying, unnecessary, of buying things for seungmin. because he loves seungmin, actually, even though seungmin clearly doesn’t feel the same. so seungmin gets expensive things from felix. clothes, mostly. shoes. things seungmin would never go out of his way to get.
“saw it, thought of you.” felix will say, tossing something at him.
seungmin doesn’t ask for any of it, doesn’t need it. doesn’t want the implication behind it, either.
“…stop.” he said once, holding up a jacket that… i was gonna say unreasonably expensive but who the fuck cares it’s beautiful, seungmin just take it, please.
“what? you look good in it.”
“i didn’t ask.”
“yeah, i know. that’s why it’s a gift.”
“…waste of money.”
“i have money.”
“…still.”
seungmin does wear them though. not because he cares about the clothes, or how felix feels, but because throwing them out would be… pointless. and returning them would require a conversation. and killing felix over it, while tempting, is, objectively, an overreaction.
that’s the thing.
seungmin just wants to kill felix every second of the day.
easy solution, technically.
but he doesn’t. he won’t. because beneath all of that irritation, he trusts felix. not with words, they don’t talk like that. felix has no idea that seungmin slits throats in his past time, but with space. with proximity. with the fact that felix exists in his life and hasn’t been removed from it.
that’s rare.
felix is too much of a boy, honestly. too immature in ways that are exhausting, but not enough. not enough to outweigh the fact that felix is one of the only constants seungmin has.
so he tolerates him. keeps him around. wears the stupid expensive clothes. listens to the shouting from felix’s room, the complaints, the endless noise.
and you see, seungmin is a cold asshole. he really is.
but you, the sweetheart ever, got stuck in his head.
so he keeps stalking you.
he doesn’t follow you every day. that would be stupid. patterns get noticed, for fuck’s sake, no matter how bad you’re at it. instead, he rotates it. different times, different distances, different approaches. some days he’s across the street, hands in his pockets, blending in. some days he’s closer, behind you in a line, passing you in the opposite direction, sitting somewhere you happen to be.
you never clock it. not once.
he’s patient.
he learns things without asking now. which is funny, considering you would’ve just told him anyway.
but actually, he doesn’t give a fuck about you.
if someone asked him, directly, he’d say exactly that. you’re just a person.
seungmin really doesn’t care about you.
but his mind is different. his mind is developing a crush, but seungmin, as a person, does not give a a single fuck about you. like, no big deal. he’s had harder boners watching blood drip from a ceiling fan.
he doesn’t feel anything for you, only unconsciously. so he doesn’t know he’s feeling things.
what a weird guy he is.
and felix knows that too. one afternoon he’s(felix) walking around the apartment in nothing but boxers, hair a mess, energy drink in hand.
“dude.” felix says, staring at seungmin sitting on the couch, staring at his phone. it’s rare that either of these boys is out their rooms, by the way. both of them at once? this is unbelievable, actually. “you’ve been weird.”
“no.”
“yeah, man. yeah. you have. you’ve been like… quieter. which is insane, because you’re already basically a corpse.”
“i’m busy.”
“doing what? staring at walls harder than usual?”
seungmin doesn’t answer.
felix squints at him, takes a long sip of whatever radioactive liquid he’s drinking. “you getting laid?”
“no.”
“you should. might fix whatever the fuck this is. you don’t even look like someone who gets zero play. that’s what’s throwing me off.”
“i don’t care.”
“yeah, clearly.”
silence.
“…i’ve been following a girl around.”
felix freezes. just stands there, can halfway to his mouth, blinking. “…dude.” he sets the can down slowly. “you wanna maybe—i don’t know—rephrase that?”
“no?”
“but that’s not how you get laid.”
“i’m not trying to.”
“then why are you doing that?”
seungmin shrugs. “don’t know.”
“bro.” felix says, walking over and dropping onto the couch right next to him, way too close. “that’s like, your version of a crush.”
“no.”
“yes.”
“no.”
“you’re literally going out of your way to be near her. that’s it. that’s what that is.”
“…it’s not. i don’t care about her.”
“yeah, and i don’t care about ranked, that’s why i scream at my monitor for six hours.”
seungmin doesn’t respond.
felix leans in slightly, poking his arm. “what’s she like?”
seungmin immediately wants to kill him. “move.”
“relax, we’ve lived together for how long? you’ve seen my dick. don’t act shy now.”
“put on clothes.”
“no.”
“is she hot?”
“…yeah.”
felix actually jumps up on the couch. like, that sitting jumping thing. then settles back down. “okay, wait, does she know?”
“no.”
“good. don’t tell her. that’ll ruin it.”
“i wasn’t going to.”
“yeah, no shit. you gotta talk to her. like a normal human being. none of this—” he makes a creeping motion with his fingers, “—lurking shit.”
silence. god he’s annoying.
“ask her out.” felix adds. “say something nice. compliment her.”
“no.”
“come on.”
“no.”
“mate.”
“no.”
“you cannot just do this forever.”
“watch me.”
“next time you see her, don’t be weird. just talk. chicks dig that. you’re hot, dude. she’ll like you, you just have to… actually make a move.”
“you got pepper sprayed the last time you talked to a woman.”
“yeah but i’m not as cute as you are, man.”
seungmin looks at him. unimpressed.
the next day he looks at you almost the same way, just from a bigger distance.
you’re coming out of your apartment building, slightly distracted, keys still in your hand, and you don’t look around. you never do.
you start walking, and within maybe twenty seconds, you drop your phone because your attention is somewhere else.
you stop. look down.
before you even fully bend, seungmin steps in, picks it up, and holds it out to you.
you blink. look at the phone. then at him. there’s a half second where your brain catches up, and then your face just lights up.
“seungmin!!”
and you immediately hug him, wrap your cute little arms around him. that’s a thing people are not allowed to do to him.
his body locks. completely. every muscle goes still.
you don’t notice because you’re already pulling back, smiling at him ear to ear. “oh my god, hi, i haven’t seen you since the cat, i thought you just like, hated me or something.”
“…no.”
you grab his elbow, his elbow, like you’ve known him long enough for that to be physical, and start walking, pulling him with you.
he lets you. which is its own kind of problem.
“i’m actually going to meet my friends.” you say, dragging him into your day. “we’re eating out, nothing fancy, just—i don’t know, i needed to get out of my apartment before i started talking to my plant again.”
“you do that?”
“it’s dying, i love to be there for it. i also tried to fix my sleep schedule, which obviously failed, because i decided reorganizing my kitchen at 2 am was a good idea. it wasn’t. i found things i don’t remember buying, which is concerning. but anyways—”
he knows. he knows because he watched your kitchen light turn on at 2 am.
“…you shouldn’t stay up that late.” he says.
“you might be right, because this morning i spilled water everywhere and i slipped a little, which was humiliating, but no one saw, so it’s fine. except i think my neighbor heard it, because there was like this weird pause in the hallway after—”
he knows. he was in the hallway. he knew you weren’t hurt before you even stood up again.
“be careful.” he says.
“i am careful. i’m just also… unlucky.”
that’s not true. you’re not unlucky, you’re just unguarded. there’s a difference. you don’t see it, but he does.
“that’s also proven by the fact that two days ago i totally spilled coffee all over myself, in public too. i was so embarrassed.”
he knows that too. he watched you walk out of the café, looking down at the stain, crossing your arms over your chest because your nipples were poking through.
you don’t notice the way he looks down at your chest.
“and the plant i just told you about is like… one leg in the grave already. i feel so bad for it.”
“you can water it.”
“i do water it.”
“…less.”
“wow. okay. plant expert now too.”
“it’s dying.”
“i know, don’t say it like that.”
he exhales quietly.
you reach the place eventually. you stop, turning to him, still smiling, beautiful.
“you should—i don’t know, you should come by again. like, the cat area. i think he lives there now.” you say.
“…maybe.”
“and like…you can say hi first, you know. i won’t bite.”
“i know.”
you nod, accepting.
then, oh you’re the sweetest ever, you lean in and press a small kiss to his cheek. light. quick. casual.
you pull back. “bye, seungmin.”
and then you’re turning, walking into the restaurant, already moving on to the next thing in your day. you don’t look back. you never do.
he stands there, exactly where you left him.
his mind is… quiet. processing. because that kiss did something to him. we’re not even talking about the immediate boner he got(annoyingly biological, so what?) but the way you never leave his mind after that through the day.
he hasn’t even killed anybody in a long time because he’s always thinking about you. maybe he should go out again to hunt somebody down. who knows.
he doesn’t like it. he doesn’t understand it. and that’s a clear fucking problem, because seungmin doesn’t operate well with things he doesn’t understand.
everything in his life fits into categories.
useful / not useful. threat / not a threat. relevant / irrelevant.
okay, wow, wait. from his perspective, it makes sense. you’ve crossed into a space you shouldn’t be in. you’ve created reactions he didn’t authorize. you’ve disrupted something that was functioning perfectly fine without you.
so you go.
that’s how it works. that’s how it’s always worked.
and seungmin doesn’t keep problems. he eliminates them. simple. clean. done. there we go, a solution to the thing you made in him. finally.
except, somewhere, deeper than he’s willing to look, his mind is doing something else entirely. holding onto the way you smiled. the way you talked. the way you touched him. building something out of it that doesn’t match the conclusion he just reached.
if he were capable of recognizing it, it would be obvious. but he’s not. so instead of seeing it for what it is, he turns it into something he knows how to handle. which is a target. a solution. an ending. because just like i said, his mind has a crush on you, seungmin doesn’t.
the next time you see him, you grab his hand. like, not his elbow, but his actual hand. you grab it like you’d grab a kid’s hand before crossing the street.
he lets it happen, even though his his brain is literally like this is a mistake, this is incorrect, remove your hand, remove her hand, remove something, and his body just doesn’t move.
you start walking, pulling him with you again like he’s on a leash he didn’t agree to but also isn’t resisting. what a pup.
“i was just gonna get coffee.” you’re saying. “you can come. or not. but you are, so.”
“okay.”
great contribution, seungmin. truly adding to the conversation.
and you keep talking, about your friends again, about how the dinner was, about how one of them almost got into an argument with a waiter, whatnot. you keep walking. he keeps letting you.
he has to kill you.
but also, your hand is in his.
seungmin baby, what the fuck are you doing. you have a crush, you just don’t know how to deal with it. and your big conclusion was murder. incredible. truly groundbreaking emotional intelligence.
you squeeze his hand slightly when you cross the street, not even thinking about it. just instinct, and he notices. he notices everything. the pressure, the warmth, the casual trust behind it.
you reach the coffee place, pushing the door open with your shoulder, still dragging him inside. “what do you want?” you ask, already stepping up to the counter.
“anything.”
“helping me out here real good.”
you order for both of you anyway. he doesn’t stop you. doesn’t care enough to. or maybe he just doesn’t care about anything except the fact that you’re still holding his hand.
he should kill you. he knows that, he really does, but right now, he’s with you, letting you drag him through your day again, listening to you talk, and… and he’s not doing a single thing about it.
so yeah, somehow, you two start developing a friendship. on your side, it’s very pure. suspiciously pure, actually. you just… include him. invite him into little pockets of your life because it’s totally normal to pick up a quiet, creepy guy off the street and keep him.
on seungmin’s side, there are definitely ulterior motives. very serious ulterior motives. technically murder related motives. but the problem is he also lets you drag him along anyway.
so from the outside, it looks like two people who hang out sometimes. you start spotting him more often. which makes sense because he’s literally there on purpose, but you don’t think like that. to you it’s just “oh hey seungmin again.” and then suddenly you’re walking somewhere together. again. and again.
your conversations are… one of a kind. you throw a lot at him. he throws back like… two words. sometimes three if he’s feeling wild.
but you don’t seem bothered by that. which confuses him. most people would get uncomfortable. silence freaks them out. they start filling it with nervous energy, asking questions that go into things he doesn’t want to answer. you don’t do that. you just… talk when you want to talk, and when he doesn’t answer much, you don’t take it personally.
you start inviting him places. coffee again, walking somewhere, once you dragged him into a bookstore because you “just needed to look for five minutes” which turned into forty five minutes of you picking up random books and summarizing them to him like he asked. he didn’t ask. he stood there, watching you. not the books. you. so creepy.
you keep inviting him up to your place too.
“you can come up if you want.” you said one day when you reached your building. “i made food earlier and there’s too much of it.”
he’s been inside your building before, just… not officially. but he knows the layout better than you think.
“okay.” he said.
and that’s how he ended up in your apartment for the first time. you’re just walking around, grabbing plates, talking about something completely unrelated while there is literally a man in your home who has spent multiple days observing you. following you around. and he’s just standing there, taking it in.
you fed him. he ate without a word. looked adorable doing it.
you’ll walk together, end up near your place, and you’ll go, “you wanna come up?” half the time he says yes.
and once, once, he almost invited you to his place. it happened by accident, you were walking again, same routine, talking about some random drama from work, and he realized you were getting close to his street.
“…you could come over.” he said.
you stopped. blinked at him. “oh?”
right there is when he remembered felix. felix, who walks around the apartment in boxers or just completely naked and seungmin has to kill himself when he sees that. felix, who hits on literally anything that breathes and has a personality. felix, who would absolutely look at you and try to get you to be his girlfriend.
so he just “…actually, no.”
you blinked again. “wow. okay.”
“…later.”
you narrowed your eyes slightly, but then shrugged. “sure.”
the truth is he doesn’t want felix hitting on you. which is… a whole thing. because again, seungmin, buddy. this is a crush.
and one day, when the two of you are together again, he makes the next step.
“you remember when i told you not to come over?” he asks.
you blink, thrown off. “oh—yeah?” you tilt your head at him. “you blue balled me emotionally, yeah. i remember.”
he ignores that. “i have another place.”
“oh? what kind of place?”
“a house. in the woods.”
“in the woods?” you repeat, a little more excited now. is seungmin actually telling you something about himself? “that’s so nice. do you go there a lot? or is it like a ‘when i need to disappear’ kind of thing?”
“sometimes.”
“that’s actually really cool.” you nod, already building a picture in your head. “i mean, i like the city, but it gets loud. too many people, too much going on. i feel like i’d think better somewhere like that.”
“you could come.” he says.
“really?”
“yeah.”
you smile. wide. warm. interested. “i’d like that.”
you don’t realize what you just agreed to. you just think nice. something different. something calm. he thinks this works. public places are unpredictable, but a house in the woods? that’s his. fully. no interruptions. no variables. no felix. (no felix walking around in boxers, no felix opening his mouth, no felix existing within a ten mile radius of you. honestly, the biggest win here is that felix is not involved.)
and not even days later, you’re in the passenger seat of seungmin’s car, and the drive has already been an hour and a half of you talking non stop. you tell him about everything.
“do you like driving?” you ask at one point, leaning your head against the window.
“it’s fine.”
“that’s such a non answer. do you like anything?”
“yeah.”
“name one thing.”
he doesn’t answer immediately.
you glance at him, squinting. “you don’t know, do you.”
“quiet.”
“yeah. i get that.”
you pull over at a tiny supermarket because you obviously need food. you drag him inside and he stands there, pushing the cart only when you physically shove it into his hands. the time you hold up two competing bags of gummies and ask his opinion he stares at the gummies for three full seconds, brain supplying an unhelpful image of you feeding him one while you both stand over an open grave. his dick gives a lazy interested twitch. he does not react outwardly, just nods at the sour worms. he hates how much he does not hate this.
he doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s having fun.
finally the car crunches up the long gravel driveway and the house comes into view. it is stupidly nice. like wtf. you actually gasp and say “what the fuck, seungmin.” and he just parks without comment.
he drops your bag inside and points upstairs. “pick any room.” he says.
you bounce off excitedly, completely missing the way he waits until your footsteps disappear before heading straight for the basement door.
in there, the corpse is exactly where he left it two days ago, wrapped in plastic on the metal table, starting to get that special perfume that only dead people can pull off. he checks the temperature, makes sure the tarp is still sealed, pokes the stiff shoulder. everything is fine. no leaks, no surprise bloating, no unexpected visitors. he adjusts himself through his pants with all the emotional investment of checking the oil in his car, then heads back upstairs like nothing happened.
you have already claimed the room with the biggest bed and the window overlooking the trees, and you are sprawled across the mattress testing the bounce when he appears in the doorway without a sound.
you sit up, cheeks still pink from the drive and the sugar rush, and grin at him. “this place is brutal. did you kill a rich guy or marry one?”
“neither.” he says, and stands there, watching the way you bounce once more on the bed.
“still. you have a nice place, seungmin.” you say, genuine. “really.”
“yeah.”
later that night you are both in the kitchen while you offer him a spoon covered in melted chocolate and say “open up.”
he actually opens his mouth. lets you feed him the spoon while you keep chattering about how pretty the woods are and how you bet there are deer or maybe serial killers hiding in them (ha)
you end up on the bed in the room you picked. you’re sitting with your legs half tucked under you, wearing an oversized shirt that keeps sliding off one shoulder and big, loose pants. the lamp on the nightstand throws warm light across everything. seungmin is sitting on the bed with you, he’s in a plain black t shirt, and sleep pants that sit low on his hips. you can tell he’s wearing boxers underneath because the outline is there if you look, which you definitely do not do on purpose. much.
looks cute on a man who probably counts bodies instead of sheep at night.
you tilt your head. “do you want the last of those sour worms? i was saving them for tomorrow but if you really want them i can go grab the bag right now. they are kind of addictive, right? do you want it?”
seungmin just looks at you. his pretty lips part slightly, then he catches the bottom one between his teeth, biting down in a way that should not be as hot as it is.
his eyes drop to your mouth for half a second before flicking back up, and the air in the room suddenly feels thicker than the bleach smell drifting faintly from downstairs.
you feel the shift, the way his silence is not empty anymore.
“do you want it, seungmin?”
the question is not about candy anymore and you both know it.
he keeps biting his lip, that small tell giving away more than any words could.
“yes.”
you lean in.
this was so supposed to happen. was in the air since the second you looked at him next to you on the street, since the cat.
your hand finds his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart under the thin t shirt, and you press your mouth to his in a kiss that starts deep.
you kiss him like you have been waiting for permission since the supermarket, since the coffee you got together, since that cat on the street. your tongue slides against his, tasting the faint sweetness of the sweet shit you had earlier, and he makes this low sound in the back of his throat that is not quite a moan but definitely not silence. finally, not silence. his hand comes up to the back of your neck to keep you there while he kisses back.
you pull back from the kiss, reach down, grab the hem of your shirt, and peel it up and over your head slowly.
wow, y/n, really going for it.
okay, who can blame you, this man has had you soaking wet from the second he picked that cat up.
the fabric is tossed somewhere toward the foot of the bed. cool air hits your bare chest and your nipples tighten instantly, colorful and pretty and right there in the lamplight.
seungmin’s eyes drop straight to them. first time seeing tits in the wild, actual living breathing ones, not the stiff cold kind he sometimes ends up with in the basement. his mouth parts, pretty lips still wet from your tongue. his cock gives a hard, appreciative twitch to your nipples inside his boxers.
your hands slide under the bottom of his shirt, palms flat against the warm, smooth skin of his stomach. he’s surprisingly soft there. you push the fabric up slowly, so gently, as if you are unwrapping something breakable even though he is the one who leaves bodies in plastic.
he lifts his arms(what an obedient babe) and you tug the shirt over his pretty head, messing up his hair in the process.
it lands on the floor.
you wrap your arms around his shoulders, fingers digging into the little muscle there, and swing one leg over until you are climbing right into his lap. settling chest to chest so your tits press warm and soft against the hard planes of his pecs. his skin is hotter than you expected.
his hands come up immediately. cups your tits, testing their weight, how nipples feel in his hands.
you lean in again and lick into his little mouth. it picked up a little triangle shape before you did that, you find that so cute. your tongue slides along between his lips first, tasting him, then pushes inside, stroking against his tongue in long, filthy drags that make wet, obscene sounds in the quiet room.
his fingers tighten on your tits, kneading them harder now, rolling your nipples between thumb and forefinger until they ache. you can feel the exact moment his cock jerks against your thigh.
skin to skin is overwhelming. your nipples drag against the warm texture of his chest with every small shift. his heartbeat is hammering under your palm where it rests on his shoulder, fast like he just finished a chase instead of sitting still on a bed.
you kiss him deeper, tongue fucking into his mouth in slow, rolling thrusts that mimic something filthier, and he starts to kiss back properly now, clumsy but eager, sucking on your tongue. his hands never stop kneading your tits, squeezing and releasing while your tongue licks into him. the heat between your bodies just builds, and builds, and builds, and oh he’s sure he could cum just from this.
you pull back just enough to look at him. his lips are red and shiny, bitten and slick from your mouth, and his eyes are half lidded, darker than his little soul.
“you like them?” you whisper, voice husky, pressing your chest forward so your tits push more into his hands.
seungmin just stares down at where your nipples are caught between his fingers, thumbs stroking them in slow, mesmerized circles, and nods once, honest. then he leans in and kisses you again, harder this time.
downstairs the corpse is probably getting stiff in the basement while upstairs seungmin is rock hard and kneading your tits, cock is leaking into his boxers, tongue chasing yours. rip dude.
he feels it. really feels it. something warm and heavy and stupidly deep starting to come alive, bloom right in the middle of his chest, spreading down into his stomach and lower, curling around his cock. it’s you. this whole ridiculous feeling is because of you. from your voice to the way you fed him chocolate off a spoon, it’s all you. it feels good. too good. deeply good, the kind of good that makes adrenaline pump through his fragile little veins, makes his arms feel full of energy and just wanting to crush you against him.
you plant hundreds of tiny little kisses on his mouth before you slide off his lap, slowly. you settle back against the pillows, legs stretching out, and hook your thumbs into the waistband of your pants. you push them down your hips, kicking them off the end of the bed.
no underwear. nothing. shaved. you came to his place completely shaved.
the lamplight catches every inch of you and seungmin’s eyes go wide, dark, hungry.
this is his first time seeing a naked woman that is not cold and stiff and wrapped in plastic. warm skin. soft curves. the color between your legs that actually moves when you shift. his mouth goes dry. his cock throbs so hard in his pants that it hurts.
he stays frozen for a second, just looking. then he gets up on his knees, climbs up the bed on his hands and knees until he’s hovering over you.
gaze drops straight to your tits again. they really are amazing. full and soft, nipples tight and dark from all the attention he gave them earlier.
he lowers his head, lips brushing the curve of one breast first, trying it out. then he opens his mouth and sucks one nipple between his lips, gentle at first, then harder, tongue swirling around the sensitive peak in slow, experimental circles. makes him want to fuck you more. when you give him a pretty sigh, he switches to the other one, so hard to choose because both are so pretty in his humble opinion, sucking harder this time, one hand coming up to knead the breast he is not currently devouring. he’s learning. tasting. letting himself be amazed.
after a long minute he pulls off with a wet pop, lips shiny, and climbs the rest of the way up your body until his face is level with yours and his mouth can crash into yours again. one of his hands stays on your breast, squeezing and rolling the nipple. his cock is rock hard and leaking against your thigh through his pants, the thin fabric doing nothing to hide how much he wants this.
skin to skin everywhere now. the heat of his chest against your tits, the manly weight of him pressing you into the mattress. it’s so human. so stupidly, beautifully human for a cold psycho who has never done this before with someone warm and willing and alive.
you spread your legs a little wider beneath him, giving yourself to him completely, bare and open and ready. seungmin breaks the kiss just long enough to look down between your bodies, eyes locked on your smooth pussy. his breathing is ragged. his hand trembles slightly when he reaches down and runs two fingers along your slit, feeling how wet you already are.
woah. suddenly, he thinks women are fascinating.
the touch is clumsy but you can tell there’s something happening inside of him, that his little brain gets this information as new and exciting, so you just enjoy the show while he tries it out for himself.
he presses one finger inside you, slow, just testing what it’s like at first, and the tight wet heat makes his cock jerk hard against your thigh.
and the way he’s looking at you says everything. the deep, heavy feeling in his chest, pulsing stronger with every beat of your heart under him. he turns his head back to you and sucks on your bottom lip, then your tongue, then goes back to your tits because he cannot help himself, licking and sucking and moving his head wild with it.
you are giving yourself to him, open and bare and hot, and he’s taking it. taking you, as much as he can. even though the first take in this situation was him taking you here to kill you(finally).
your hand slides down between your bodies, fingers hooking into the waistband of his pants. you tug gently, humming a sweet little sound.
“mm, these need to go.” you murmur.
of course he will get them off for you. he lifts his hips just enough, shoving the pants and boxers down, kicking them off the edge of the bed. his cock springs free, happy to see you, curving slightly upward. there is a wild thatch of dark pubes at the base, but why would you care?
you wrap your hand around him, fingers curling warmly around the hot, velvety length. he’s burning hot, skin silky, pulsing hard against your palm. you stroke him slowly from base to tip, thumb swiping over the slick head to spread the bead of precum, and seungmim lets out this cracked, quiet groan right into your mouth, hips jerking forward into your fist.
you pull back to look at him, your other hand coming up to caress his face, thumb brushing tenderly over his pretty bitten lip, then along his jaw, loving and gentle.
“put it in.” you whisper, voice sweet and husky, eyes locked on his. “just… pull out, okay?”
fucking fuck. he’s going to blow up from excitement.
instead just nods once.
this is seungmin’s first time feeling a warm, living hand on his cock that is not his own, first time seeing a naked woman spread open and wet for him instead of cold on a metal table. the contrast is so absurd it would be funny if he ever laughed. instead he just stares down between your bodies, watching the way your fingers look wrapped around him, the way your pussy glistens right below the head of his cock.
he feels that deep, heavy thing in his chest again, stronger now, pulsing with every stroke of your hand.
he braces one hand beside your head, the other still kneading your tit because he cannot seem to stop touching them, and lines himself up. the blunt, leaking head nudges against your slick folds, sliding through the wetness.
you keep caressing his face, thumb stroking his cheek, soft and encouraging while you guide him with your other hand. “that’s it.” you murmur sweetly, lifting your hips just a little to help.
he pushes forward slow, so fucking slow, the thick head breaching you, stretching you open inch by inch.
the heat is insane. tight, wet, living heat that clenches around him. seungmin’s breath stutters, forehead dropping to rest against your shoulder as he sinks deeper, feeling every ripple and flutter around his cock. your walls hug him perfectly, so slick, and the feeling is so overwhelming he has to pause halfway in.
your tits squish against his chest as his hips settle between your spread thighs, and there’s the light feeling of his pubes against your mound when he finally bottoms out. so human. so hot.
he has to swallow before moving, dragging his cock almost all the way out before sliding back in, savoring the wet drag and the way your tits bounce gently with every thrust.
you keep one hand on his face, loving, the other sliding down to grip his ass, pulling him deeper. wrapping your legs around his waist tight, ankles locking behind his back, and your arms end up sliding around his neck, pulling him down until there’s no space left between the two of you.
skin to skin, chest to chest, your amazing tits squished warm and soft against his pecs, nipples dragging with every breath. seungmin might have never been happier in his entire empty little life.
he sinks even deeper inside you from the angle, cock buried to the hilt in you, listening to how you start moaning loud and girly right into his ear.
“fuck, min, yes, just like that—”
he’s gonna cum just by the things you say, fuck.
all sweet and needy and completely unashamed. the noise fills the quiet bedroom, bouncing off the walls while downstairs the corpse is cooling.
seungmin moans too, real, cute, vulnerable little moans that crack out of his throat, so pretty, face buried in the crook of your shoulder, hot breath panting wet against your skin.
both his hands slide under your ass, big palms gripping the soft flesh, fingers digging in so he can pull you up into every thrust, spreading you wider, holding you exactly where he needs you. dumb sentence, he needs you everywhere.
his hips start to move faster, literally slamming into you. the wet slap of skin on skin turns rhythmic and obscene, your slick coating his cock and dripping down to soak the sheets and his heavy balls. every time he pulls back slow the drag is filthy, your pussy clinging to him, lips puffy and shiny around his thickness, then he slams back in hard enough that your tits bounce against his chest and your moans pitch higher, your nails scratch lightly down his back.
his pubes are soaked now, matted and dark, grinding against your clit with every roll of his hips, sending sharp sparks of pleasure shooting through you, making you cry out harder. the smell of it all is pure… mammal. sweat and sex and each other and the smell of the house.
take the way you’re both panting into each other’s mouths between kisses, tongues licking at each other lazily and deep, swapping spit while he fucks you harder. made for each other.
you clench around him on purpose, milking his cock on the upstroke, and he moans louder, face turning away from yours in pleasure, pressing into your neck, hips snapping faster now. pounding into you deep and fast, ass flexing under your heels, hands gripping your cheeks.
every thrust makes your pussy squelch wet and loud around him, the sound downright pornographic in the quiet room. your legs stay locked tight, pulling him impossibly closer. you always needed the man this close, just never acted on it. until now.
seungmin feels it all so deeply. that warm weird thing in his chest is on fire now, mixing with the raw pleasure shooting through his cock and balls. all of it is you. you’re the source of this, you’re why he feels, you’re why his balls slap wet against your ass on every stroke, heavy and full, the skin drawn tight, you’re why sweat is sliding down his spine, dripping onto your tits where they jiggle between your pressed bodies, you’re why he actually lives now.
you’re the why for everything.
the rhythm turns sloppy and desperate, hips snapping, the wet heat between you getting hotter and messier. your girly moans mix with his pretty ones, filling the room while his hands knead your ass harder, spreading you open so he can fuck even deeper, the blunt head of his cock bullying that spot inside you until your vision blurs.
you cry out for him, high and needy, whining and yelping and “seungmin—oh fuck, minnie, right there, please—” your legs stay locked tight around his waist, pulling him impossibly deeper while your arms cling around his neck, god just imagine how it looks from above. so hot. so human. you are babbling sweet and filthy because your brain has melted somewhere between the third and fourth time his cock kissed that perfect spot inside you. “you feel so good, fuck, you’re so deep—don’t stop, please don’t stop—i’m so wet for you, can you feel it? all for you—”
seungmin moans back into your shoulder, pretty little sounds that vibrate against your skin, face buried so close you can feel his eyelashes flutter every time your pussy clenches around him. his hands grip your ass harder, fingers holding the soft flesh as he yanks you up to meet every thrust, spreading you open so he can fuck you even filthier.
then he makes the mistake of pulling back just enough to look down. one last long look at your amazing tits, full, soft, bouncing with every slam of his hips, nipples dark and shiny from his earlier mouth.
his eyes lock on them, pupils blown wide, and he cums so sudden that the first thick rope of cum shoots deep into you.
“fuck—” he chokes out, a moan tearing from his throat as he barely, barely manages to pull out. hips jerk back at the last second, the rest of his load spilling across your stomach and the underside of your tits in heavy, pearly streaks. his whole body shakes with it, moans still spilling out pretty and helpless while his cock twitches and spits the last few pulses onto your skin.
he collapses next to you on the bed, chest heaving, face flushed, pretty lips parted as he tries to catch his breath.
you both are panting. looking at the ceiling. it’s stupidly cute.
eventually, you shift a little and slide two fingers down between your legs. push them into your soaked pussy, feeling around, then pull them out slowly.
you find that you were searching for. actual cum, thick and white, mixed with your own slick. coating your fingers in shiny strings.
you look at it, then at him. “you came inside me a little.” you say, voice still breathy from all the moaning. you don’t sound angry though. he did it so cutely you cannot stay upset.
before he can react you bring those two fingers up and shove them gently into his mouth. punishment, kind of.
seungmin’s eyes widen for half a second. his lips close around your fingers, tongue brushing against the salty bitter taste of his own cum mixed with your sweet wetness. he sucks slowly, curiously, eyes going back to half lidded as he processes it.
hm. not as disgusting as he thought it would be. quite pleasant, even.
his tongue swirls around your fingers, licking them clean with quiet, focused little sucks, the same attention he gives to wrapping bodies but sweeter.
the feeling in his chest pulses again, stronger now, mixing with the aftershocks still tingling in his cock.
you watch him with soft eyes as keeps sucking, until he finally lets your fingers slip from his mouth with a wet pop, lips shiny, and you lean in to kiss him.
it’s a softer kiss now. much more of a coming down kiss than a “dick me down” kiss. not even much tongue, just sucking on lips until you pull away with a happy little sigh, patting his chest once before rolling off the bed.
“okay, i’m starving.” you announce so cheerfully, already hunting for your discarded clothes. when you’re all dressed up again, you half throw a blanket over seungmin’s naked, sticky body before you pad out of the room, humming.
the blanket lands crooked across his chest and hips, leaving one leg and half his spent cock exposed to the cool air, but he doesn’t move to fix it right away.
seungmin lies there alone, staring up at the ceiling. the wooden beams above him are perfectly still. his chest rises and falls.
the feeling is you. the way you moaned his name all high and girly, the way your tits bounced when he fucked you fast and filthy, the way you shoved your cum coated fingers into his mouth.
he feels good. deeply good.
he processes. biology explains the hard on. biology explains the moaning. biology does not explain why his chest feels tight when you’re around. biology definitely does not explain why he wants to keep you breathing.
because he wants you here. wants your tits back in his hands. wants your moans in his ear while he fucks you again on the kitchen counter with sour worms stuck to your ass. he wants to keep you.
he sits up, swings his legs off the bed, and dresses back up. he thought of no boxers, easy access, his brain said, but he wears them anyway because he knows he’ll need it.
you’re in the kitchen when he comes down, standing at the counter with your back to him, rummaging through shit.
his hand reaches out behind you toward the knife block. his fingers close around the handle of one of the bigger blades, sliding it free without a sound. holds it loosely at his side, thumb brushing the flat of the blade once, eyes fixed on the back of your neck, on the way your hair falls against it, how you’re breathing.
you turn toward him. then, you step right into his space, rising up on your toes and wrapping both arms around his neck.
seungmin can feel your soft tits squishing against his chest through the shirt. you smell like sweat and sex and artificial watermelon, and he feels something inside of himself again. hm.
he wraps his arms around your waist. pulling you in tighter so your hips meet his. the knife is pointed upward behind your back, but you don’t know about it.
“that was really good.” you murmur
“hm.” that’s agreement from him, by the way.
you giggle, beautiful, and lean in to kiss him again. seungmin kisses back, slow, his left hand sliding around on your waist until his fingers slip just under the hem of your shirt to touch bare skin.
he moves the knife.
the blade slides up slow along your spine, the flat side first so you feel the cool steel through the fabric of your shirt. you freeze mid kiss, a tiny surprised sound catching in your throat. he keeps going, letting the edge press a bit now, trailing it higher until it reaches the back of your neck. then he circles it around, until the sharp point rests right against the side of your pretty throat, right where your pulse is hammering.
you pull back just enough to look at him, eyes wide but not panicked yet. “whoa.” you whisper, voice a little breathy. “is this… some kind of kink? like, knife play ooooorrr…?” you drag the last word out playfully, even though your heart is suddenly racing loud enough for both of you to hear.
“mm. i want to kill you.”
“oh. great.”
he presses the knife a little firmer, letting the sharp edge trace along the curve of your neck, then down to your collarbone, then back up again in slow circles.
your breathing gets harder, chest rising and falling faster, nipples tightening visibly through your shirt from the rush of fear and something else that feels stupidly close to arousal. every exhale comes out shaky and warm against his jaw. he likes the way your pulse jumps under the steel.
“you’re taking this very well.” he mutters.
you swallow carefully, feeling the blade move with the motion. “well… you did just fuck me really nicely upstairs. seems rude to complain now.”
seungmin tilts his head, considering. the knife presses harder. a tiny bead of blood wells up where the tip kisses your skin. you whine in pain. the new feeling in his chest twists uncomfortably.
you knee him straight in the crotch suddenly.
like, slamming right into his balls with all strength you have.
seungmin makes high pitched, surprised wheeze-squeak. the knife clatters to the floor as both his hands fly to his groin. he doubles over instantly, eyes watering, pretty face twisted in pure agony.
you bolt. barefoot, you sprint out the front door into the cool night air, gravel biting into your bare feet, heart hammering. into the woods.
seungmin stays on the kitchen floor for a solid thirty seconds, curled around his bruised balls, breathing through his teeth in short, pained hisses. fucking HELL.
“fuck.” he mutters, then forces himself upright, one hand still cupping his crotch protectively, and looks at the open front door.
he follows soon. walking. shoes on. balls recover quick on him too. knife’s blade cleaned on his shirt on the way out.
he is leading this situation completely. he knows these woods better than you ever could. he knows every trail, every dip, every place where the ground turns really bad for bare feet.
he follows the sound of your whimpers and the occasional “ow fuck” that drifts through the trees. it’s almost cute how loud you’re being. he could run and end this in minutes, but he does not. he lets you tire yourself out. lets the forest do half the work for him. smart.
you, on the other hand, are suffering. god, the forest barefoot hurts so much. like. you’re limping now. trying to favor the less injured foot, but it’s useless. a particularly evil root catches your toe and you yelp, nearly face planting into a bush. you catch yourself on a tree trunk, breathing hard, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from the pure, stupid pain. your feet are going to be shredded by morning. if you make it to morning.
“ow—fuck—ow—why did i not grab shoes—stupid, stupid—” you mutter breathlessly, hopping on one foot for a second when something particularly pointy buries itself in your feet.
every snap of a twig sounds like death. but he hasn’t caught you yet. so you keep moving, pushing deeper into the trees, trying to put more distance between you and the quiet footsteps you swear you can hear now and then.
seungmin spots a flash of your shirt through the trees ahead. he just alters his path slightly, cutting diagonally to herd you toward the thicker underbrush where bare feet will suffer even more. the knife stays ready in his hand, pointed down now, but ready to rise.
he can hear your whimpers getting closer, the little pained sounds you make every time you step on something sharp.
it should feel satisfying. instead it feels… bad.
you stumble again, biting back another yelp as a rock digs into your heel. “ow—motherfucker—why are there so many pointy things in one forest—” you hiss, hopping on one foot while trying to brush debris off the other one.
seungmin is in no rush. he knows exactly where this path leads. he knows you’re barefoot and hurting and slowing down whether you want to admit it or not.
the only real problem right now is your feet. god, they hurt so much.
just then, a hand wraps around your wrist one hard yank and you’re pulled backward, slamming spine first into the rough trunk of a thick tree. the impact knocks the air out of you. fuck. okay. that hurt. bark scrapes raw against your back through the thin shirt, and a fresh jolt shoots up your already destroyed feet as they skid across the forest floor.
seungmin grabs your hair, yanks on it to make sure your head hurts too before he lets you fall against the tree.
well, fuck.
“you run loud.” he says.
“…what?” you cough out.
“you stepped on everything.”
“yeah, that’s how the ground works, baby boy.”
you can’t even look at him, you’re too dizzy. off. but if you could, you’d see that he’s calm. so calm.
“you don’t think about your surroundings enough. you react, but you don’t plan ahead. you rely on instinct, but your instincts aren’t trained. it works in normal situations, but not here. not when someone is actively…” he gestures with the knife.
“trying to kill you.” you finish for him.
“yeah.”
“well excuse me for not having an experience with this. i’ve never been chased through the forest by a guy who just fucked me twenty minutes ago.” you shift a little, wincing as the wood digs deeper. “so… you do this a lot? the whole… chasing and knife thing?”
“i kill people.”
“…okay. wow.”
“regularly.”
“right.”
“it’s not difficult.”
“i believe you.”
“…i’ve also been watching you.” he adds.
oh. now that’s different.
“what? dude. for how long?”
“…since the cat.”
“that’s…” you let out a short breath, shaking your head a little. hurts so bad. “that’s a long time, seungmin.”
“yeah. i followed you home most nights. stood outside your building. or went inside. listened to you talk to yourself in your apartment sometimes. you laugh at your own jokes a lot.”
god, it hurts so much. “that is… deeply creepy, seungmin. and kind of flattering in the worst way possible. what, you liked my one woman comedy shows through the window?”
“they were not bad.”
you let out a chuckle-breath-deargodmyspinehurts. “that’s why you always ‘ran into me.’”
“yeah.”
“that’s insane.”
“it worked.”
“yeah. it did.” you cough once. twice. it hurts your lungs. your legs are shaking. you feel the warmth of blood running down your spine. “why? like, logistically, sure, whatever, but why me?”
“…you’re a problem.”
“am i?”
“yeah.”
“how?”
he’s thinking. “…you don’t fit.”
“into what?”
“anything.”
“jeez, thanks, dude.”
“you affect things.”
“things like?”
“…me.”
“…okay,” you say slowly. “that’s… interesting. you mean like—i annoy you? because that’s fair, i talk a lot—”
“no.”
“no?”
“not that.”
you tilt your head slightly, trying to get anything off his face. but it’s dark. your head hurts. you can barely focus from the pain in your body.
“i think you don’t know what to do with your feelings.” you mutter.
“…i don’t have them.”
“i don’t think that’s true.”
“it is.”
you shake your head slightly. okay, ow, fuck, why do you keep doing this if it hurts. “i think it’s easier for you to say that than to deal with them.”
“no.”
“okay. then explain this. you didn’t have to tell me any of this. you didn’t have to keep seeing me. you definitely didn’t have to talk to me like this.”
he watches you. that little mind is working, though.
“seungmin, i think you feel things. i just think you don’t recognize them.”
“…i don’t know what that means.”
“yeah. i figured. i think you have a crush.”
he goes still. completely. psycho little brain connecting the dots that felix said just the same thing. “…no.”
“yeah. yeah, you do.”
“no.”
“you’ve been following me for weeks. you let me drag you around everywhere, you came to my apartment, you didn’t kill me when you had like—so many chances—”
“that’s not—”
“and now you’re out here having a full conversation with me instead of just…” you gesture at the knife. “…doing your thing.”
silence.
“you kill people because you don’t feel anything about them. and you do feel something now, you just don’t know what to do with it.”
he shakes his pretty head. “no.” he drops to one knee in front of you, and the knife comes up to the side of your throat, pinning your head back against the tree.
you are breathing harder now. “and upstairs? when you were inside me? when you moaned into my shoulder and let me shove my fingers in your mouth? was that part of the not feeling too, or did your murder schedule get interrupted by an orgasm?”
his hand is shaking against your throat, but the knife doesn’t cut you. “both. i still wanted to kill you after. even more, maybe.”
“are you sure? because maybe you’re just not used to feeling things. or you don’t know how to process them. you’re gonna come again with the ‘i don’t feel things” but that’s not true. you feel irritation. you’ve told me that. you feel… something about me, or this wouldn’t be happening.”
he doesn’t respond.
“and i think that freaks you out.” you add. “because it’s not something you can control the same way.”
nothing moves. he stays kneeling in front of you, knife to your throat, body keeping you trapped against the tree. the only sounds are your ragged breathing and the distant rustle of leaves.
“so what now, minnie?” you whisper, looking down at him with wide eyes, bare feet throbbing, neck stinging, heart racing. “you gonna do it? or are we gonna keep having this extremely weird conversation until my feet fall off?”
he tilts the blade slightly, letting the sharp edge trace one slow, cold line along your skin. “i haven’t decided yet.”
and he really means it.
so.
if you hadn’t talked before, if you hadn’t told him what you thought about what he felt, this would’ve been over already. seungmin would have killed you without hesitation.
but you did talk. you did understand things.
and now, something is wrong.
not with you. with him. because now wanting to kill you doesn’t feel correct anymore. not at all.
he doesn’t want to kill you.
he doesn’t want to.
he never really did. not even a little. all of it, the stalking, the house, the sex, the knife has been one long, stupid, backwards way of wanting to keep you close. to keep you alive. to keep you.
he realizes what this is.
it has always been this.
took him long enough.
he pulls the knife away. lowers it to his side without looking at it. his shoulders drop the tension from them with a quiet breath. he stares at you for another long beat, then his gaze drifts down to your feet. they are an absolute disaster. dirty, bleeding in several places, pine needles and dirt and whatnot stuck to you, already swelling. and it’s dark. your state is so bad that he can see it in this darkness.
“do you want help with that?” he asks.
“…yeah.” you exhale. “i think i do.”
“hm.” is his answer before he slides the knife into the waistband of his pants, and comes closer. then he bends down and picks you up. gently. one arm under your knees, the other around your back, lifting you. as he gets up from his kneel with you, your ruined feet dangle safely away from the ground. your arms instinctively go around his neck again, and your face ends up tucked against his shoulder.
oh. okay. hello. wow.
the contrast is insane. thirty seconds ago he had a knife to your throat telling you he kills people regularly, and now he’s carrying you through the dark woods. even adjusts his hold slightly, making sure you’re stable and comfortable. (comfortable? jesus christ. that’s what we’re doing now.)
his arm tightens slightly around you, pulling you closer against his chest as he steps over a root that would have destroyed what was left of your feet.
you rest your cheek on his shoulder, exhausted and aching and stupidly safe in the arms of the man who just tried to kill you. “you’re confusing.” you murmur.
“i know.”
you stay tucked against his chest the whole way back, arms loosely around his neck, cheek resting on his shoulder. the silence feels… good. both of you need it right now. even though part of your brain whispers that this could still be a trap, that he might carry you inside, set you down, and finish what he started with the knife, you do not feel in danger. not really.
you accept it. if he decides to kill you after all, fine. not like you could have survived this.
but seungmin doesn’t want to hurt you anymore. he doesn’t understand it, but he doesn’t fight it either. he just realized it, and that’s fine. that’s fine with him.
and he does end up carrying you back to the house. through the left open door, through the kitchen where the bag of gummies still sits abandoned on the counter, and into the downstairs bathroom. sets you down gently on the wide edge of the bathtub, your ruined feet dangling over the porcelain into the tub. then he turns the water on, tests the temperature with his hand, and places the shower head into your palm without a word.
he sits on the floor right next to you, back against the tub, knees drawn up, silent as ever. usually, if you were someone normal(but still in the close to him range, let’s say you were felix’s annoying ass) he’d sit on the tub next to you. but he trusts you enough to be below you.
blood swirls pink down the drain when you get to work on yourself. your feet look even worse under the light, cuts, bruises, swollen whatnot, but the water is gentle and you take your time, rinsing carefully.
“you’re being weirdly nice.” you say.
“i’m fixing it.”
“fixing what?”
“damage.”
“…thanks. you’re doing well so far.”
he leans his head back so it rests lightly against your thigh. his eyes close. he’s actually feeling right now, there is something inside of him. he doesn’t want to kill you. he wants this, the quiet, the warm water, your skin, the fact that you are letting him sit here after everything.
you keep washing your legs slowly, letting the water soothe the aches, and for once you don’t fill the silence with chatter.
seungmin eventually stands up, gives you a towel, and takes care of your feet. yeah i won’t write this in detail because i don’t want it to seem like i’m into feet in that creepy way. anyways, he bandages what needs bandaging, smooths on some ointment, daddy knows how to take care of ruined skin, and that is that.
you get scooped up again. walked out of the bathroom. sat on the edge of the kitchen counter.
seungmin turns you gently by the shoulders so you are facing away from him, now you’re sitting cross legged on the counter. it’s stupidly cute and you both know it. he reaches around, grabs the hem of your shirt, and tugs it up and over your head(with the help of you lifting your tried arms up). places it down next to you softly. your back is a mess of red scrapes and blood and scratches from the tree bark, some already turning faint purple.
“tree got you.” he mutters.
he gets a bottle of antiseptic and a few cotton pads. you feel the cool swipe of the liquid across your upper back where the tree bark had scraped you raw. it stings sharply and you hiss, arching from the pain.
“easy.” he says, voice flat, as usual. his free hand rests lightly on your waist to keep you still, thumb brushing slow circles against your skin. could be an apology? he will never know how to apologize in words.
eventually, you decide to get to know this version, the real version of him, better. “why do you kill people?” you ask quietly.
seungmin keeps dabbing the antiseptic on a deeper scrape. the sting makes you hiss quietly but you stay still.
“because they piss me off.”
fun fact, felix once went into seungmin’s face just to take a picture of him and put his blank face in a pic, “ts pmo” written above it. anytime seungmin texts him to buy something on his way back, felix sends it to him. might be felix’s favorite reaction pic.
you nod. “when did you start?”
another swipe of antiseptic, this one lower on your ribs. his fingers are warm against your skin. you love how warm his body is, compared to how cold his heart is.
“fourteen.” he says. “first one was my neighbor. he used to kick his dog. one night i made him stop. felt right. after that i kept on doing it. sometimes people paid me. sometimes they didn’t.”
“how do you usually do it? knife? something else?”
“depends.” he says, moving to another scrape on your shoulder blade. “knife when i want control. hands when i want it personal. i have other tools in the basement here. don’t go down there. and i have a gun at home.” he finishes with that tiny part of your skin, then whispers: “felix almost found it once.”
wow. this needs processing for you. but actually, you have already accepted that this is the man you’re dealing with. this is the man you fucked. and this is the man you still want. you’ll sleep on it once and you’ll be fine.
“do you ever feel bad after?” you continue.
“no.”
you let out a small breath as he moves to another scratch. “do you enjoy it?”
he presses a fresh pad to your skin. “i do. it can get boring though. everything is boring compared to you.”
and wow. let’s take a moment to process how much this sentence means from him.
that makes you smile, even with the sting. you tilt your head a little, looking over your shoulder at him. “so stalking me was more interesting than murder?”
“yes.” he says it without hesitation, switching to the other side of your back. “you were never boring. not once.”
“aw. thank you. you’re really bad at having a crush though. most people just text.“
“i’m aware.” he mutters. he finishes with the antiseptic and reaches for the bandages, carefully placing them over the worst spots.
and you’re done.
you feet are done. your back is done. emotionally, you might need a break.
instead you get seungmin’s hands on your waist. not like you’re complaining though, you even tilt your head to the side, offering your mouth, and he leans down to kiss you.
you sigh into it, one hand reaching back to thread through his hair.
his arms slide around you from behind. his hands come up to cup your tits, fingers spreading over the softness, the weight. he squeezes gently at first, then a little firmer, fingers curling around your nipples.
it feels weirdly soothing, compared to the rest of the night so far. but you’re fine.
he keeps kissing you, tongue sliding against yours, while his hands knead and caress, fingers flicking until you ache sweetly.
you take his tongue into your mouth. your lips close around it, warm and wet, and you suck. seungmin’s hands freeze completely on your tits, fingers going still mid squeeze, hovering just above your nipples. it hits him so hard he forgets how to move.
you suck a little harder, hollowing your cheeks, then drag your teeth gently along the length of his tongue before soothing it with another slow, filthy lick. you kiss it too, soft open mouthed presses right on the slick muscle, like you’re making out with his tongue specifically.
he genuinely can’t believe that you’re this into him.
every bit of focus he has is pouring straight into his mouth. the wetness, the gentle scrape of your teeth, the way you suck and kiss and lick like you’re starving for the taste of him. it’s overwhelming.
you pull away for one second, lips shiny and swollen, a thin strand of spit still linking you to his mouth. then you twist on the counter, spinning to face him fully. your pretty legs come up and cage him in, ankles locking behind his back, heels pressing into the small of his spine to pull him closer. your arms wrap around his neck again, fingers threading into his hair, and you drag him in.
now that is making out.
wet. loud. the wet sounds of tongues and lips smacking fill the quiet kitchen, saliva dripping down your chins and onto your bare chest. you bite his lower lip, tug it between your teeth, then soothe it with your tongue before sucking it into your mouth again. he chases you, tongue thrusting deep, licking along the roof of your mouth, then pulling back so he can suck on yours instead.
he finally remembers he has those pretty hands. they slide up your ribs and cup your tits once more, fingers twisting your nipples even while he kisses you deeper, filthier. even catches some dripping saliva with his thumb and smears it over your nipple, putting it to good use.
you just suck his tongue deeper into your mouth, pulling it in, sucking that makes obscene little sounds echo in the quiet kitchen. plus the occasional helpless whimper from him when you bite his lower lip and tug. cutie.
his hands knead your tits harder, squeezing them together and pushing them up, sometimes dropping them right back into his palms so he can feel their weight while your tongues fuck each other in slow, nasty strokes.
then, seungmin pulls back from the kiss with a wet gasp. his pretty lips are swollen and shiny with spit. he goes back to you, but now, he starts kissing down your body, greedy and pathetic and loving.
your neck, sucking lightly at the tiny cut he left earlier. lower. he drags his mouth between your tits, licking up the mess of spit still glistening there, sucking one nipple hard into his mouth before moving to the other.
your back arches on the counter.
he keeps going, kissing down your stomach, tongue dipping into your belly button for half a second. testing how every part of you tastes.
his hands hook into the waistband of your pants. gets them down your hips and off your legs, more confident in himself now.
the cool air hits your soaked pussy and you shiver. seungmin stares for a long second, eyes dark and focused and big, then drops to his knees right there on the kitchen floor. holy shit.
he leans in and drags his tongue up your slit in one long, slow stripe.
fuck.
the first taste makes his eyes flutter. warm, slick, a little sweet, human, living and wet and a girl. he likes it. a lot. he licks again, deeper this time, spreading your folds with his tongue and savoring the you twitch against his mouth.
eating pussy is interesting, he thinks hazily. the soft, slippery texture on his tongue, the way your thighs are around his ears, the little movements that go through your whole body every time he flicks over your clit. it’s hot. weirdly, stupidly hot. his face is getting soaked and he doesn’t care, even.
he buries his tongue inside you, pushing in as deep as it will go, fucking you with slow strokes while his nose grinds against your clit. it sounds filthy. so fucking dirty and disgusting and obscene and so human. loud, obscene slurping and sucking.
your hands fly down to grip his hair, hips rolling against his face as cute little moans spill out of you. he moans right back into your pussy, the feeling making your toes curl inside the bandages.
he didn’t make you cum earlier. he knows that, he knew that. upstairs he had chased his own pleasure like a selfish animal, actually convinced he might kill you after so who the fuck cares. now this is different. this feels like making up for it.
he grips your thighs hard, spreading you wider, holding you open so he can lick and suck and devour and be a horrible man.
his cock is jealous of his tongue.
the same hands that wrap bodies in plastic are now spreading your pussy open so he can lick deeper, groaning at how good you taste, how warm and wet you are on his mouth.
he pulls back for half a second, lips shiny and chin dripping, just to look at how soaked and puffy you are, then dives back in. two fingers slide inside you, looking around while he presses his face harder against you, rubbing his nose and lips and tongue everywhere, coating himself in you. he wants to wear the smell for days. it’s… strangely tender?
he’s not stopping until you cum. not this time. but judging by the way you sound just so cute right now, it won’t be hard.
he had seen this exact act in porn before. plenty of times. women moaning around while some guy buried his face between their legs. he always watched with mild interest. it looked intriguing. he had thought about trying it once or twice, just to see what the fuss was about, but never enough to actually go find a living woman willing to spread her thighs for him.
now he’s on his knees in his own kitchen, face buried deep in your soaked pussy, and it’s so damn good he feels almost stupid for waiting this long.
every slow lick drags more of your wetness across his lips and chin. it’s hotter and softer and wetter than anything he imagined, and the smell of you is out of this world good. seungmin has truly just found happiness.
and he likes your reactions too. every tiny whimper, every shaky breath, every time your thighs tremble and squeeze around his ears, it makes his empty little heart throb.
he knows now.
he knows this feeling has nothing to do with biology or boredom or “having nothing better to do.” he wants this. your pleasure. your little sounds. your thighs shaking around his face while he drowns in your pussy. he finally found something worth kneeling for.
seungmin moans loudly into your cunt, and his fingers pump faster, curling and stroking while his tongue works your clit. he’s sloppy and eager and completely lost in it, chin dripping, nose buried against your mound, lips sucking and licking, trying to drink every drop of you.
he glances up(without stopping), watching the way your tits bounce as you writhe around or hump up against his face, the way your mouth falls open, the way your arm’s muscles flex as you hold yourself up.
he presses his face harder against you, rubbing his tongue and lips and chin everywhere, coating himself in your slick until it drips down his neck. the taste keeps getting better the wetter you get, and the little spasms in your pussy around his fingers make his own cock leak into his boxers. he has never wanted any good for anyone until now.
when you moan louder as his fingers curl upward inside you, he does it again, slower, then faster, learning the exact rhythm that you like. when you grind against his face and whimper as his tongue works quickly over your clit, he stays right there, pressing firmer, licking in quick strokes that make you moan louder.
he reacts to what you react to.
you like when he sucks your clit between his lips and flicks the tip of his tongue fast? he does it again immediately, sucking harder. you like when he shakes his head side to side with his mouth sealed over your pussy? he does that too, growling into your cunt so the vibrations go through you while his nose grinds against your clit. two fingers become three when your hips start chasing his hand, even.
the now three fingers curl faster, stroking the spot inside you he just discovered you like so much while his mouth seals over your clit again, sucking quickly and leaving little smooch and squelch and schlick sounds behind.
and boom. seungmin just gave the first orgasm to someone in his life.
and it’s so hot. how your pussy clamps down around his fingers, pulsing. how you cry out and make it known how good it feels. how your thighs lock around his head so tight he can barely breathe. his eyes stay open, watching the way your face twists in pleasure, the way your tits heave, the way your whole body shakes and jerks on his kitchen counter.
his face is soaked. his cock is aching. his chest feels so full it might crack.
he presses one last slow, open mouthed kiss to your sensitive clit, then rests his wet cheek against your inner thigh, breathing hard, eyes closed, completely dazed by how much he loved every second of it.
he does not want to kill you.
he wants to do this again.
and again.
and again.
even for you, this was… a lot to process. but who are you without your horrible decisions about this man? you slide your hands down to his pretty face now, palms cupping his wet cheeks and jaw, and you pull him up gently, guiding him from between your thighs until he’s standing between your spread legs again.
and you kiss him.
it’s such a mental, emotional fuck.
his lips and tongue are soaked with your taste, actually. his hands come up to rest on either side of you on the counter. let’s note that you’re completely naked in front of him, legs still loosely wrapped around his waist, tits pressed softly against his chest, pussy still pulsing and dripping onto the counter from what his mouth just did to you. and you trust him like this without a second thought.
seungmin’s tongue slides against yours. the feeling in his chest is so… alive, it almost hurts.
because you two fit together perfectly.
not just physically, though god, that too. your soft body molds against his harder one. your tits press warm against his chest, your thighs cradle his hips, your soaked pussy rests right against the bulge in his pants. but what i’m talking about is deeper than that.
because you need a fucked up boyfriend like him. someone cold and quiet and actually, really dangerous to other people. someone who is the opposite of your light but doesn’t even have the chance to dim it. someone who will carry you through the woods after trying to kill you and then eat your pussy on the kitchen counter.
and he needs a ray of sunshine like you. someone loud and kind and wild. someone who fills all the empty, silent spaces inside him.
his hands slide up your sides, cupping your tits again but way gentler this time, thumbs brushing over your nipples. this is worship, now.
he wants to keep you.
he wants to be kept by you.
you two are the perfect, disgusting little match.
because now that you got over this, seungmin is just a biiiiiig softie for you!!
like, for only you.
he still barely speaks to anyone else. cashiers at stores get grunts at best. strangers on the street get nothing. but with you, this baby(serial killer who deserves to rot) talks!! because he wants to.
after the… whatever happened in the woods, in that house, he doesn’t let you go just like that. he carries you when your feet hurt. he learns how you like his tongue on your clit. he watches you, your reactions to things so he knows if he needs to kill it or not. the same hands that have ended dozens of lives now hold your hand on the street. the same man who once thought about wrapping you in plastic now tucks blankets around you and makes sure the shower water is warm enough.
you need someone exactly like him.
because he will never be bored of you, because you are the first thing that ever made him feel. because he can handle you.
and he needs someone exactly like you.
because you make the idea of killing feel boring and pointless next to the idea of hearing you moan his name again.
you two fit like a lock.
i mean, he’s still a serial killer. still a horrible man. he will still disappear some nights, of course. but when he comes back to you he’s softer. gentler. his hands know how to hold instead of hurt. his mouth knows how to worship instead of stay silent.
you’ll mention once that you hate walking on cold floors, and suddenly he’s making sure you have something to wear on your feet whenever you’re at his place.
oh, yeah, his place. felix.
so. seungmin brings you over one day. which is already suspicious because he avoided this for so long.
felix is on the couch. shirtless. limbs spread around. just again, energy drink in one hand. he looks like he snorted something recently. did he?
felix looks at you. then at seungmin. then back at you.
“…dude.” he says, sitting.
“hi.” you mumble.
he stands up. approaches. too fast.
“holy shit.” he says, circling you slightly. “you’re the girl??”
“…i—yeah?”
“the one he was stalking??”
“…we’re gonna unpack that later.”
“he told you??” felix looks at seungmin, offended. “you never tell me shit like that.” then immediately turns back to you. “i’m felix, by the way. sorry in advance.”
then he gives you the biggest hug before you can even introduce yourself back.
seungmin is considering homicide again.
“so how’d you two meet?” felix asks, flopping back onto the couch.
“a cat. there was a cat. we… talked over the cat.”
“sick.”
he’s lowk respecting seungmin now because wdym he bagged you by being creepy. incredible. felix has been trying the opposite approach this whole time.
felix leans toward you slightly. “you know he’s weird, right?”
“i gathered.”
“like, really weird.”
“i know.”
“like, ‘i might die’ weird.”
“we’ve worked through that.”
“you’ve WHAT.”
so yeah. now you know felix. hang out sometimes too when seungmin leaves the house without telling either of you why. what a bitch. and a total babe, he’s so cute you can never be mad at him.
and felix can tell you’re good for seungmin. he’d like you even if there was no seungmin at all, genuinely, but if you make his bestest friend(guy who wants to skin him alive)(okay actually seungmin would kill for felix) happy, then you’re even better. he does sneak something into his prayers though. a tiny, tiny wish to god.
a threesome.
just one. or two. or seventeen. he’s not picky.
he just wants to hit. like, both of you are hot. mostly you. and now that we’re here yeah seungmin has this sexy aura. and felix likes having crushes. so please give him one fucking chance to tap that, or more like tap those, amen.
he knows it’s never going to happen. seungmin is possessive as fuck when it comes to you. but a man can dream. a man can pray.
but yeah, seungmin doesn’t like other people touching you in general. at all. you’ll hug a friend and he’ll just be standing there, still as fuck.
later: “you hug people a lot.”
“yeah.” you shrug. “i like people.”
“don’t.”
“that’s not how that works, baby.”
he likes getting called baby.
you kind of make it up though. you’re huge on physical touch. you lean on him, grab his arm, rest your head against his shoulder. and he lets you every time. he likes it just as much, trust.
psychologically it fucks seungmin. like with a big fat strap on that he was skeptical about first but ended up shooting ropes of cum across the sheets because it kept pounding into his prostate. okay weird metaphor but you get the point.
he starts questioning everything. why does his stomach feel weird when you fall asleep on him? why does the idea of hurting you now feel disgusting? why does killing other people start to feel… pointless?
some nights he comes home late, sleeves dark and wet, knuckles split, smelling faintly of blood.
you just sigh, grab a warm towel, and start cleaning his hands in the sink. you are such an angel about it that he almost feels guilty. almost.
he gets away with everything. you let him.
why, some would ask. seungmin is a serial killer, y/n. he’s an evil man. and your answer is, he’s just too cute.
y/n you crazy bitch.
okay, but really. he can be adorable. like, take, you’re lying on the couch scrolling on your phone. seungmin has his head resting on your tummy, face turned sideways, cheek pressed against your soft warm skin. his arms are loosely wrapped around your waist. not asleep. just being there, smelling you, listening to the faint sounds of your stomach and the tap of your nails on the screen.
you’re texting felix’s fuckass. he wants you to bring canned corn over the next time you go to their place. you will.
seungmin nuzzles closer, rubbing his face against your tummy.
only you get him like this.
you look down at him, phone still in hand, and gently stroke his cheek with your thumb. he closes his eyes.
you two are so stupidly made for each other.
you’re the only person in the world who is safe with him.
he’s still cold and mean to everyone else. felix once tried to hug him and seungmin just stared until felix backed away muttering “okay crazy bitch it’s like that then.” but with you he lets you crawl all over him. he lets you sit on his face for hours if you want. he lets you give him a full facial(with actual products, we’re talking casual now) while he rests his head on your thighs and almost falls asleep.
you are genuinely the dream girlfriend.
and you’re always just so needy for him.
it never stops. some days you just know you have a hot(ruthless psychopath) boyfriend and you’re content with it, other days you cannot keep your hands off him. you crawl into his lap while he’s cleaning his knives, pressing wet kisses along his neck and whispering “please, minnie, need you” or you wake him up in the middle of the night by sliding under the blankets and sucking his cock slowly until he wakes up moaning in that low, sleepy voice.
on his end, it feels so good to be needed like this.
seungmin has spent most of his life being feared or avoided. people look at him and… don’t want to. but you’re so down for him anytime. take the way you bite your lips when you need him, the way you whine and beg and rub yourself against his thigh like you cannot wait another second. it makes him feel wanted.
he loves seeing you like this.
he loves when you get all flushed and restless, when you can’t even form full sentences because you’re too busy trying to grind on his hand or his mouth or his cock. he loves the way you light up the second he walks through the door and immediately start pulling at his clothes, needy little sounds falling from your lips before he has even touched you. he loves how shameless you are about it, how you will drop to your knees in the middle of the kitchen, how you will ride his face until your thighs shake and your voice goes hoarse, how you beg so sweetly even when he’s already buried balls deep inside you.
he especially loves when you get greedy after he has been gone for a while. you will push him down onto the bed, climb on top, and ride him to the fucking afterlife. he actually saw the light once. but first saw your tits bouncing, hands on his chest, moaning around as you used his cock exactly how you needed it. he couldn’t deal with how hot you were.
genuinely, how did be get this lucky?
you’re unreal. there is no other woman like you.
so he gives you everything you need.
he lets you wake him up with your mouth. he lets you ride his face until you cry. he bends you over the kitchen counter and fucks you hard when you text him you’re aching for him. he kisses you while you cling to him, felix grinding some shit game next room and just hootin n hollerin around. and every single time, that new feeling in his body grows stronger.
you want him constantly. his hands, his mouth, his cock, his attention. all of it. and he’s always so fucking grateful to be the one you need.
and he still gets flustered sometimes. this is his first relationship. so when you beg him to fuck you harder while your nails dig into his back, his ears go pink and his breath catches like a virgin even though he’s balls deep inside you. it’s adorable and ridiculous on a man who kills people for mild irritation.
he’s a switch, through and through, and you bring both sides out of him.
some nights he pins you down on the bed or the kitchen counter or against the wall, desperately fucking you deep and ruthless. desperate is the key word, it’s more desperate here than dominant. this man is not a dom. again, switch, leaning towards bottom.
other nights he lets you take over, that might be even better for him.
he gets so flustered when you’re on top. pretty lips parted, cheeks flushed, hands gripping your thighs because he needs something to hold onto while you use him. you love telling him how good he feels, how perfect his cock is, how you need him to fill you up, and every word makes his breath hitch and his hips jerk and his heart react.
his heart never reacted to anything before. he’s always so overwhelmed now.
he can go from calmly telling you he killed someone three hours ago to blushing and whimpering because you called him a good boy while bouncing on his cock. he can hold a knife to your throat one night and the other night be on his knees with his face buried between your legs, letting you grind on his tongue until you soak his chin. he gives you everything. soft and rough. gentle and cruel. dominant and submissive. whatever you need, he becomes.
and you give him the one thing he never knew he was starving for, the feeling of being wanted so badly that someone crawls into his lap and begs for him.
seungmin is in fucking heaven.
he still doesn’t say soft words easily. but when you’re riding him slowly, whispering how much you need him, he will wrap his arms around you so tight it almost hurts, (actually, does most of the time, this man is skinny but strong) and bury his face in your neck. when you’re on your knees sucking him off and looking up at him with those needy eyes, he’ll stroke your hair with shaky fingers and let out these little sounds that make your pussy throb. when he’s fucking you from behind and you keep moaning that you’re his, he loses rhythm for a second because the feeling in his chest gets so violent it blinds him.
he’s addicted to being needed by you.
he’s soft for you and only you, even when he’s pounding you into the mattress so hard the bed creaks. especially then.
he would burn the world down for you. genuinely. but first he would get on his knees and let you use his face until you’re satisfied, because being needed by you is the best thing he has ever, ever felt.
yeah you two are real nasty. literally match each other’s freaks so perfectly.
you love giving handjobs. take, one afternoon you are both on the couch when you crawl into his lap, kiss him for a while, then slip your hand down into his sweatpants. just like that.
you wrap your fingers around his cock and stroke him lazily. the way seungmin’s chest rises is addictive, really. or how his breath catches every time your thumb swirls over the head, spreading the slick precum.
he stays mostly quiet but his hips twitch up into your fist and his pretty lips part. you rest your forehead against the side of his face, sometimes neck, sometimes moving to his temple, whispering how thick he feels, how much you love making him leak for you.
he cums with this quiet little manly sound, pulsing all over your fingers and his own stomach while you kiss the corner of his mouth. then take his mouth into yours, finding his tongue to biting on it.
he looks almost embarrassed afterward. what a babe.
another night at the murder house, as you two call it now, he comes up from the basement after a reeeaaaal long time spent down there. you know about the corpses there btw, you always have to throw up. anyways. you meet him at the door, and drop to your knees right there in the hallway.
you suck him off messily, so eager, moaning around his cock and all that, so into him.
he threads his fingers through your hair, lets you take what you want, knees buckling but managing to stay standing.
when he gets close he pulls you up, bends you over the back of the couch, and fucks you hard from behind.
just again, corpse rotting under the house.
or another, felix is in the next room screaming at his ranked games. like really screaming, calling people donkey fuckers and howling through the wall, controller smashing sounds following.
you and seungmin are in his bed, spooned, his chest pressed to your back. he has one arm wrapped around you, hand cupping your breast, slowly rolling your nipple while his cock slides in and out of your soaked pussy in these lazy thrusts. you have to stay quiet. every time he sinks in nice and slow you bite your lip hard, trying not to moan. he presses his face into the back of your neck, breathing against your skin. it’s so unbelievably intimate. more intimate if you think about the fact that this is a serial killer getting this treatment.
“fuck—yes—right there—” you whisper, barely audible, circling your clit yourself while seungmin drools onto your shoulder. felix screams again in the next room about other players and intergalactic skill issues and fucking someone’s mother.
or sometimes seungmin gets flustered and lets you take full control. like, tie his wrists to the headboard with one of his own belts type of full control. riding him so so so mean, grinding down on his cock while he stares up at you with pretty, hazy eyes and flushed cheeks. this brutal serial killer reduced to getting tied down and desperate little thrusts because his needy girlfriend wants to use him, straining against the belt with these frustrated, needy sounds.
it’s more exciting to fuck at their place when felix could hear, but it’s much more human when it’s just the two of you.
take a real early morning where seungmin wakes up before you hard and aching because you fell asleep naked and pressed against him. he slides down under the sheets without waking you, gently spreads your thighs, and starts licking slow stripes up your pussy.
you stir with a sleepy whimper, fingers threading into his hair as he eats you instead of breakfast. genuinely unhurried, savoring everything. everything. when you’re dripping and whining his name he crawls back up, slides inside you slowly, excited that you’re not making him wear a condom, and fucks you while you’re still half asleep and clinging to him.
clinging to him is an important part. it’s all so brutally intimate and the two of you.
no matter how you fuck, fast and filthy in the car, slow and sweet in the morning, desperate and quiet with felix yelling next door, or in the basement on the table he cuts people up, seungmin is always completely obsessed with your whole being.
and you’re always completely obsessed with how perfectly he gives you everything.
you two are so fucked up. and so stupidly, perfectly in love.
doesn’t help that sometimes he gets so excited about you that he acts just like a puppy!!
his version of wagging his tail is following you from room to room without saying anything. when you come home from work he’s already waiting by the door, not jumping or barking obviously, but his eyes light up in that tiny way that is fucking crazy coming from a psychopath who swims in human guts in his free time.
one evening you walk through the door and the second it clicks shut he’s on you. not in a sexual way (yet), just pressing his face into your neck and being a clingy little bitch. his arms wrap around your waist soooo tight and he lets out this tiny happy sound against your skin even.
you laugh and scratch the back of his neck and he leans into it harder, eyes half closed, completely relaxed. if he had a tail it would be thumping against the wall.
just again, likes stabbing people.
felix still calls him a “creepy quiet bitch” behind his back. strangers avoid him like the plague. but with you, he’s just the softest, most eager babe in existence. following you. nuzzling you. getting visibly happier the second you pay attention to him. letting you baby him and call him sweet things even though he would kill anyone else for trying.
he’s discovering his emotions just now. this is his first time feeling and being accepted for what he is, showing someone what he is.
and sure, you might have gotten over the fact that he stalked you, like, way too fast, but it’s just so hard to stay mad at him. when he discovered that he can lean into a kiss first, that he can initiate(which says a lot, because this man has never been this close to anyone in his life before and wanted to kill every single human being before you, still does just not you), it’s just adorable.
it does not help the puppy image at all that sometimes he literally looks like one when you get your hands on him.
like right now.
you have him sprawled on the bed, pants shoved down just enough. your hand is wrapped around his cock, stroking slowly while you sit between his spread thighs.
seungmin is already panting. tongue actually out a little, pink and wet, lips parted. every time your thumb swipes over the leaking head his hips twitch up and that invisible tail starts wagging harder. his cock swings with the motion, flushed, curving slightly, bouncing against your palm in little wet slaps.
he looks so stupidly eager. eyes half lidded, chest rising fast, tongue lolling just enough that a tiny string of spit threatens to drip down his chin.
this is new for him too. not just the handjob, but the way his emotions crash into the pleasure, it’s all such a mess inside of him. it feels like it’s going to spill out of him.
he’s discovering that sex can be soft and playful and safe. he’s discovering that he likes being looked at like this, naked, panting, cock swinging in your hand while you smile down at him. he’s discovering that the quiet after a kill used to feel like peace but now peace feels like curling up to you or your palm sliding slick over his shaft while you coo at him in that sweet voice.
it’s so hot. this whole context. a serial killer with a body count in the double digits is currently tongue out panting because his sunshine girlfriend is playing with his dick.
just what he deserves for having to live without this for so long. poor baby.
you squeeze a little firmer at the base and his tongue slips out further, moaning, even that little sound having a voice crack. the tail wagging metaphor is too perfect. he can’t help it. every good feeling you give him makes that invisible tail thump harder. he’s so excited about you, about this, about the fact that you’re here and naked and touching him, that his body just… reacts.
because you affected him so deeply it’s a whole new chapter in his life, basically.
seungmin used to be a void wearing human skin. and then you came, and he’s never been happier. (never been happy, first place)
he would rather die than let you go. ever.
he’d put a knife to his own throat before he lets something happen to you.
you are the only one for him.
he would kill for you. he would stop killing for you. he would do anything.
fucking hell, he’s starting to think about kids with you.
kim seungmin. the man who has hated every single shithead child he has ever encountered. screaming, sticky little parasites that ruin silence and leave mess everywhere.
he would not hesitate to kill a kid. genuinely. our only luck is that he hadn’t been in a situation yet that had it as an option.
he used to look at them and feel pure irritation. now he catches himself watching you play with some random kid and his heart is actually doing shit.
a kid with you. a little human that would be half you, half him. for the first time in his life the idea does not disgust him. it feels… nice. he imagines you round with his baby and his cock twitches and his chest clenches at the same time.
he would be soft with them too, probably. because they would be yours. because they would be proof that something good came out of all his… uselessness.
yeah, seungmin is pretty aware that he’s useless. genuinely just bad to society, not a piece of good in him. and he’s fine with that.
but he’s also got a lovely girlfriend now.
and he’s a boyfriend.
he never thought he would want any of this. but he’s so happy it’s disgusting. right now he’s lying with his head on your bare stomach again, arms wrapped loosely around your waist, eyes half closed while you play with his hair. your heartbeat is under his cheek. your breathing moves him gently up and down. he can smell your skin, feel your warmth, hear the faint tapping of your thumbs on your phone. and suddenly, all at once, he knows.
he feels.
he feels so much it almost hurts. love, fear, obsession, tenderness, possessiveness, gratitude, need. he has never felt before and now he feels everything.
his throat tightens. his adrenaline spikes. his arms squeeze you a little tighter. his invisible tail gives one slow, heavy wag against the sheets. he has to cry.
this is what it is to be alive.
he presses his face harder into your tummy, lips brushing your skin.
he would rather die than let you go. he would rather change every ugly part of himself than risk dimming your light. he would give you kids. he would give you everything.
you changed him so deeply that the old version of him is dead. the new version belongs to you completely.
it only takes you.
and seungmin, suddenly, feels.
author’s note: oh hello little senuigmn why are you trying to kill your crush even! 😭😭😭
ohohohohoho YES !😛🙂↕️ no because this is insane like yes absolutely please i’ll have one of those please yes that one hes coming home w me - dare i say this might be my fav seung fic to date ???? but seriously i am in LOVE w the way this was written thank you thank you thank you sweet writer i could kiss you!
*°࿐ cw: explicit sexual content, fingering, public/semi-public sexual activity, interruption/almost getting caught. mdni
in which chan can never leave you hanging, even when he's working.
*°࿐ notes: short little drabble because i remembered i promised to post other things while posting Lover of Mine and i have not done that mb. haven't wrote smut in a while so pls go easy on me guys this might suck (⸝⸝ ⚬ _ ⚬⸝⸝)
The thing about Chan is that he will never leave you hanging when you need him.
It’s the middle of the night and you’re craving something sweet? It’s at your door within the half-hour—sometimes him with it if he has the time to spare. Your body is aching and you need it soothed? If he can’t be there to massage it for you, an appointment at the highest rated wellness studio is booked. If you just need the pleasure of his company because you’re just feeling a little bit lonely, he’s cancelling whatever schedule he had that day to be by your side.
And if you’re feeling particularly needy and can’t wait till you get home while he’s busy at the studio and absolutely can’t get away from work?
Well…
“Chann–nnie–” You mewl, flat on your back on the studio couch, your pretty top wrinkled from being shoved up your waist hastily, shorts pulled down your thighs and two of Chan’s thick fingers buried in your quivering cunt.
He glances at the door over his Chrome Hearts glasses—making sure it’s locked for the hundredth time. When he looks back down at you, the corner of his lips turning upward in a little smile.
“You were really wound tight huh, baby?” He curls his fingers slightly inside of you, and your reply is quickly cut off by another strangled whine. “Shoulda told me, I would’ve taken care of you sooner.”
He glances back at the screen in front of him, his fingers—the one not busy at work with you that is—clicking away, adjusting whatever pitch it was he’s working on. Your hips chase his fingers shamelessly when he drags them out of you slowly. They catch in the overhead light of the studio, glistening with your juices before he pushes them back in.
“Didn’t wanna–” Your breath hitches slightly. “Didn’t wanna keep you away from work.”
He huffs out a laugh, headphones that are only over one of his ears falling slightly. “Lucky for you, I’m a great multitasker. Feel good baby? Ready for the third one?”
“Feels so fucking good,” You pant, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. “But it’s not enough, Channie. I wann’it. All of it.”
He grins, glancing back at you again. “You can have it when we get home. I’ll fuck you real nice and slow, just how you like it, yeah? Make due for now.” He taps your thigh with his pinky. “Spread, doll.”
You legs spread open instinctively and you feel the stretch of his third finger almost immediately. Your head tips back, shirt falling forward again when your hips buck up to meet it. “Ohh my Go-hnnm—”
“Yeahh,” His eyes are glued to where his fingers pump in and out of your slowly. “See? Good enough for now. Hold up your top f’me pretty, can’t see the view.”
You’re about to do just that, when the jangaling of the doorknob makes both of you jump.
“What the–” Jisung. “Chan, did you lock the door?”
You can’t help the small whine that leaves your lips when Chan withdraws his fingers from you completely. He leans over to tug your shirt down fully and when he moves to help you pull up your shorts, you lift your hips to help, albeit it half-heartedly.
“Sorry baby,” He kisses the corner of your lips soothingly. “Shouldn’t be much longer, I promise.”
“You said that ages ago,” You mumble, but fix your hair anyway. You’ve never hated Jisung more than you do now but you’d still rather not traumatize him. Especially after the last time he walked in on you two.
Chan walks over and swings the door open, smiling easily at Jisung. “Was the door locked?”
Jisung looks between you two suspiciously, the takeout he had left to get dangling from his fingers. “Obiviously. I know how to open a freaking door. What were you two doing?”
“Nothin’,” Chan makes a show of turning the knob a few times. “Huh. Weird. Must be the new auto-lock they installed yesterday.”
“They installed an auto-lock?” Jisung asks, incredulous as he settles on the chair Chan occupied mere moments ago. You smile at him as innocently as you can when he hands you the food. “That’s the shittest idea I ever heard.”
“Yeah, I told them that too.” Chan shrugs, letting go of the door knob. “I can tell them to change it back if you want.”
You squeeze your legs together slightly. Since when did you find liars this hot?
“Yeah, you do that.” Jisung squints at the screen. “What the fuck have you been doing, hyung? This looks almost exactly the same as when I left!”
Chan leans one hip against the desk, all easy shoulders and calm smile. “Creative process.”
“That is not a creative process,” Jisung says, deadpan. “That is a blank project file.”
You duck your head, pretending to be very interested in the food in your lap so neither of them can see your face. Heat is still crawling up your neck, your whole body thrumming with frustration, and Chan—absolute menace that he is—doesn’t even look remotely sorry.
He just shrugs. “Maybe I needed to think about it.”
Jisung narrows his eyes. “About what?”
Chan glances at you then, quick and sly, and there’s something in his mouth when it curves that makes your stomach flip. “Arrangement.”
Your fingers tighten around the takeout container.
Jisung, thankfully, only rolls his eyes. “You’re impossible. Anyway, they wanted me to tell you the draft from earlier still sounds weird in the bridge.”
“Mhm.” Chan pushes off the desk and steps closer, reaching over you for the drink you haven’t even opened yet. His knuckles brush your thigh in passing. Barely there. Entirely accidental-looking. Completely not accidental. “I’ll look at it.”
You shoot him a look.
He doesn’t react, just pops the straw into your drink and hands it to you like he’s the sweetest boyfriend alive.
You take it with a tight little smile. “Thanks.”
“Anything for you, baby.”
And then, because Jisung isn't looking and because he is absolutely sick, he raises the fingers that had just been buried in your sopping cunt mere moments ago, still soaked and sticky with your arousal and licked a broad strip up them, before shoving them into his mouth and sucking them clean.
Jisung be damned, you were going to jump Chan's bones right now.
He must see the slightly crazed look in your eyes because he grins, eyes crinkling and mouths, Don't worry. I'll take care of it.
You know he means it. Whether it's opening your drink for you or fingering you while he works just because you were feeling needy—Chan really is ready to do absolutely anything for you.
Which is how you know that every corner of your need would be fully explored and satisfied when you got home.
i honestly never thought i’d be saying this but life is a funny little thing - see you sometime my lovely lovely mark lee, the pair of lungs when i couldn’t breathe, you are so loved and ill support you anytime, anywhere and everywhere for you will always be my rockstar 💌
synopsis: Fate365™ is the newest matchmaking technology, impossibly successful and wildly popular. you call it a scam. campus fuckboy hyunjin calls it a trap. for once, you seem to agree on something. but one stupid bet at a stupid party later, you're both determined to prove you're not matchless. the good news is neither of you are destined for loneliness. the bad news is you're apparently destined for each other.
pairing: student!hwang hyunjin x student!fem reader
genre: college au, onesided enemies to lovers, fluff, minor angst, smut, scifi (lil bit this lil bit of that ass fic)
word count: est. 35k-40k
teaser word count: 0.7k
author's note: hi everyone <3 i'm finally nearing completion on this fic that has rko'd me 127 times atp. i had to completely change the pairing / characters (you may know if you saw my first post regarding this fic a few weeks ago) to finish it after what happened this week, which meant a good bit of editing and tweaking. but i so desperately wanted to get this out to you all soon. my goal is to have it completed and posted next weekend, if not sometime the week after. i feel like i've been a bit radio silent on here recently and this is partially why lol.
**if you would like to be tagged, please have your age visible on your account somewhere! this will have explicit content not suitable for minors**
“Do you plan on pointing out every little thing I’ve done wrong?” he says, harsher than intended. He can almost see you shrink, defiance shifting to defeat.
His voice is softer when he adds, “I’m sorry,” dragging a hand through his hair nervously.
An apology sounds odd falling from his lips. But it seems genuine, and that’s more unsettling than anything. You inhale sharply and straighten, ridding yourself of whatever weakness just passed through you.
“It’s whatever,” you force out casually.
The last bit of distance between you is gone, erased by another careful step forward. You’re about to step back—an instinct—when he dips his finger under your chin and tilts your head up. His expression is gentle but curious, and you can’t help but think that he’s pretty when his features aren’t painted with arrogance.
“Y/N,” he breathes out, “do you really hate me?”
Your face would betray you even if you tried to lie again. He awaits your answer intently, though he already knows what it will be.
“I don’t think so,” you whisper. Because it’s less vulnerable than “no.” Because you’re holding onto whatever dignity you have left. “But that doesn’t change anything,” you add quickly, handing his Eterna back to him, “this doesn’t change anything.”
You can accept that you don’t hate Hyunjin. You can’t accept that silly technology has fated you together.
Even if he’s pretty. Even if he’s making you feel weak just from his stare. Even if there’s a part of you that wants to know the Hyunjin in this room with you.
“I didn’t want it to,” he lies.
His finger still rests beneath your chin, and the space between you is still nonexistent. It grew dangerously close to comfortable, and the implications of that are worrisome. You step backward, his hand falling to his side, your skin burning with the memory of his touch.
And you miss it.
“I’ll send you the money if you want,” you offer.
Only he hasn’t thought about the money even once. He doesn’t care about it; he never really did. The one thought on his mind is you, an unfortunate constant these days.
And god how he wishes things would be different. All that time spent wondering what would happen if you were his match amounted to nothing.
It won’t change a thing. And why should it? He’s the one who called it nonsense and bullshit and every other synonym for stupid in the dictionary. Now he wants to take it as gospel?
Of course. Because he wants you. He wants you in a way he hasn’t wanted anyone in years.
He shakes his head softly, loose strands of hair falling on his forehead. “Keep it.”
“Okay,” you swallow. “So, we go back to our normal lives now, I guess.”
“Normal,” he repeats, the word feeling unfamiliar. "At least we can stop carrying these around.”
He tosses his Eterna onto his desk, right next to the sketchbook sprawled open. Something feels wrong about throwing it so carelessly, no longer a fixture of himself. Like his entire future remains in that device and he’s simply discarding it.
Reaching behind your ear, you trace your fingers over the node that’s become so familiar. “And we can take the stupid mindreaders out.”
“Forgot about those,” he laughs. You join in easily, giggles reverberating off the walls of his room.
Has his laugh always made you feel so warm?
Slowly, the laughter dies out, and silence sneaks back in like a shadow. It makes your thoughts too loud.
It’s not too late to go back. You can tell him you’d like to see where this takes you—to give “fate” a chance. You can take back every misconception you previously held and learn the real Hyunjin.
You consider it seriously for half a second. And then he’s clearing his throat, interrupting your internal debate. “I think we should go back down now,” he suggests. “Enjoy the rest of the party.”
A half-smile tugs the corners of his lips upwards, and you have to find it within yourself to bite your words and smile back.
The decision’s been made for you. Maybe that’s fate, too.
“Yeah, you too,” you say.
A party is the last place you want to be at after what’s just transpired. Still, you head for the door, hesitating once your hand reaches the doorknob. Turn around, something within you screams. Don’t leave it like this.
You turn the knob and welcome the music that immediately drums against your ears.
heyyyyyyy this is sooooo exciting !!!!!!!!!!! i can’t wait- synopsis sounds so interesting kinda feeding my brain 00s core somehow ??!??!!!! anyways IM PUMPED 🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️
literally no one speak to me for the next month i’ll be deep in thought…
[thinking abt: minho nd the one kid who kept coming back to his embrace, seung trying to take a chunk outta that baby’s head, hyun doing the same w his cheek, chris doing leg exercises w the kid on his calves, bin storyteller, ji and the crybaby bonding moments, lix crawling into frame to make sure they weren’t intimated by him — my absolute angels, there’s no one like you boys <3]
(note: feeling so insanely maternal not even like that but also like totally yes oh my god ill have your babies i’ll do anything for you uh huh uh huh! i’d be such a good mommy you know i would cmon please just for you uh huh! um what was that? yeah actually nvm next question :p)
