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pairing: taehyung x f!reader | rating: 18+ | wc: 11,280 | warnings: here
genre: football AU, arrogant!tae, e2l, smut, unimpressed!reader
"must be nice"
"In which Taehyung’s body rejects every woman in Madrid, Y/N nearly kills him over barbecue pizza, and wanting her begins to look suspiciously like wanting a home."
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❥ author's note: Hello, beloved citizens. Today, I bring you family bonding, emotional repression, and Kim Taehyung committing crimes against a perfectly innocent piece of silicone.
Now, jokes aside for approximately thirty seconds: the way he comes in this chapter matters. A lot. It is not just, ‘wow, he finds her hot.’ His body only fully settles after giving in to the fantasy of her. The panic goes quiet. The release is unusually intense. Desire is starting to attach itself to relief, surrender, regulation, and safety—and I have been hinting at this in the warnings and author’s notes for a reason.
So, yes, this is your first proper taste of where this is headed psychologically and sexually, including some of the kinks and dynamics that will come with it. This is the door. I am opening it now. Please look at the door before walking through it and later acting shocked that there was, in fact, a room on the other side.
Also: read the warnings. I say this constantly because they are not decorative seasoning. They are there so you can decide whether this story is for you. If you skip them and later come to me with, ‘oh, I was blindsided,’ ‘ohhh, this is irresponsible,’ or ‘oooohhhhh, this is romanticized,’ I will dropkick you directly from heaven. Yes, heaven. That is where I belong. What do you mean? I am literally an angel.
And, for the love of God, depiction is not endorsement. My characters doing unhealthy, obsessive, manipulative, morally questionable, or downright deranged things does not mean I personally condone them. Fiction can explore something without handing it to you as relationship advice. Please keep that in mind, or I will be forced to smite every single one of you. Mwah.
Anyway, back to the important matters: Taehyung’s body has now formally rejected every woman in Madrid, Y/N continues to believe he is simply malfunctioning because she does not worship him, and the two of them nearly started a diplomatic incident beneath a family dinner table over barbecue chicken pizza.
Marta noticed everything. Eli sensed evil. Jesús noticed absolutely nothing. Taehyung nearly met God through socked-foot stimulation. But beneath all that degeneracy, he also discovered something much worse than wanting Y/N: wanting the warmth around her. He came for her attention and left wondering what it might feel like to belong somewhere.
Disgusting. Emotional development in my fuckboy comedy. Who authorized this?
Everything is going wonderfully. Nothing psychologically catastrophic will come from any of this. Trust me—I’m the author, which is exactly why you should not. <3
This is pathetic.
He knows it's pathetic. He is fully, completely, lucidly aware that what is happening right now—in this bed, in this room, in this apartment that costs a fucking lung—is the most pathetic thing he has ever done.
And Kim Taehyung has done some pathetic shit in his twenty-something years.
But this takes the crown.
He'd showered. That's the thing. He'd done the whole responsible-athlete night routine—shower, skin care, the eye cream he pretends is just water, teeth, the works. Pulled on boxers. Got into bed. Opened his laptop to the match footage he's supposed to review for Saturday because he is a professional and professionals review footage and he was going to do that.
He was going to sit here, in his bed, in his clean boxers, and analyze his defensive positioning for ninety minutes like a man with discipline and priorities and a brain that lives inside his skull.
Then there was an ad.
Some skincare thing. Thirty-second pre-roll he couldn't skip. A girl—blonde, irrelevant, forgettable—licking a lollipop in slow motion while some voiceover talked about hydration or collagen or whatever the fuck.
And his brain, his traitorous, disloyal, sex-poisoned brain, looked at that mouth and thought:
‘You know who has lips like that?’
You.
Your lips.
Your fucking lips.
Man.
And then it wasn't the ad anymore. It was you, in that storage closet, looking at him with those flat, unimpressed eyes, and your mouth—that mouth—shaping the words ’you wouldn't last long enough to get me to scratch you’.
His dick twitched.
He ignored it.
He is a professional. He was reviewing footage. He clicked past the ad, opened the match file, watched approximately forty-five seconds of his own defensive clearance before his cock twitched again—harder this time, insistent, the little bitch—and the footage started looking less like tactical analysis and more like meaningless pixels arranged in patterns that his brain refused to process because all of his blood was migrating south at an alarming and frankly inconvenient rate.
He'd adjusted himself.
That was the first mistake.
Because an adjustment turned into a palm pressing down through his boxers, and pressing turned into a slow drag of his hand along the shape of himself—half-hard already, thickening under his own fingers—and the drag turned into a grip. Loose. Barely there. Just his hand over the fabric, feeling himself fill out, and the footage was still playing on the laptop screen, some midfielder making a run he should be tracking, and he wasn't tracking shit.
He was thinking about your nails.
Four fingers and a thumb digging into his thigh hard enough that he'd groaned in a briefing room full of people. The bright, sudden pressure of it. The way it felt like you meant it—not playful, not teasing, but aggressive. Like you wanted to hurt him. Like hurting him was the point.
His hand had moved on its own. Over his boxers. Slow strokes that he told himself were nothing—just adjusting, just resettling, just dealing with a normal physical response that would pass if he ignored it—
And then he had groaned.
Out loud. Into his empty apartment. A sound that came from somewhere deeper than his throat, pulled out of him by the memory of your hand on his leg and the way your nails bit through polyester like it was paper.
He threw the phone aside. Tossed the laptop toward the foot of the bed. Pressed both hands over his face, palms digging into his eye sockets, and lay there.
He shouldn't have started doing this.
He should not be doing this.
He is a professional athlete who earns more money in a week than—he is not jacking off to the physio's daughter. That's a line. That's a hard, definitive, nonnegotiable line that he is not going to cross because he has standards and boundaries and a roster of women on his phone who would be here in ten minutes if he—
He turned onto his side.
And the pillow was there.
Look. If you've never had a dick, you can't understand what he's about to explain, so judgment needs to go on hold for a second.
The pillow was right there. Soft. Cool against his overheated skin. Positioned exactly where his hips ended up when he rolled over, and the contact—the accidental, completely unplanned friction of cotton against the front of his boxers—made his dick punch up so hard his thighs clenched.
He pressed into it. He’s only human.
A lazy, half-conscious roll of his hips, his cock grinding against the pillow through his boxers and the pressure had hit so fucking good that his breath had caught and his hand fisted in the sheets and he had thought ’okay, maybe just—‘
No.
Absolutely not.
But yes.
Pillow fucking. He was about to start pillow fucking.
When did he become a fucking loser, seriously.
He has options. That's the fucking thing. He has excellent options. He has an entire contact list full of options with names and faces and bodies that would put this pillow to shame.
But something about this—about the specific quality of need coiling behind his navel—didn't feel like a phone call. Didn't feel like company.
It felt private.
Hungry in a way that required his own hand and his own imagination and absolutely nothing else in the room.
He rolled flat on his back.
Stared at the ceiling.
The thing is—and this is the part he's annoyed about—Kim Taehyung does not jack off.
Kim Taehyung does not need to.
Kim Taehyung opens a contacts app. Kim Taehyung has, on rotation, a system designed by a younger and slightly stupider version of himself but functional in every measurable way. Hots for when he wants the lights off and his brain off and the whole thing handled in under an hour. Pretties for when he wants to be photographed walking into a restaurant first. Cutes for when his ego needs a sponge bath. And the Sexys—the rare ones, the ones who make him work—for when he wants to feel something with teeth in it.
Five minutes. Ten, tops. He could be balls deep in someone qualified.
He could call Agne.
He could text. She wouldn't text back, of course. She doesn't text first, she doesn't text second, she doesn't text. But if he sent a ‘hey’ she'd let him know what errand he had to run before she'd unlock her front door.
His dick does not respond.
His dick, which has been ten thousand percent online for the last forty-five minutes, just sits there. Hard and uninterested and insulted that he's even bringing other women up.
Huh.
Okay.
He could call Marina, then. Pretty 412, give or take. The one who lives off Castellana, the one with the laugh, the one who never asks where things are going because she already knows and that's the appeal—low-effort, low-stakes, low-aftermath, in and out, polite text in the morning, no follow-up.
Nothing.
His cock does not even flinch.
What the fuck.
Okay, fine. Kioba. Cute 209. Soft, pliant, openly impressed by absolutely everything he does. The one who looks at him like he invented sex. The one he could break down in twenty minutes flat just by murmuring ’good girl’ in the right register because she goes molten the second a man with abs maintains eye contact.
His brain recoils.
Recoils. Like he just suggested filing taxes.
He stares at the ceiling.
What is happening.
This is—seriously, what is this.
He's lying in his own bed with the kind of erection that could legally be classified as a public menace and his brain is rejecting every single woman on his roster like a fucked-up vending machine spitting bills back.
He scrolls through them mentally. Hots, Pretties, Cutes, Sexys—the whole color-coded apparatus he built precisely so this would never be a problem—and every face that appears gets immediately voted down by some part of him he doesn't have the energy to interrogate.
Inconvenient.
Deeply, profoundly, embarrassingly inconvenient.
He shoves his boxers down.
His cock springs free, slaps up against his stomach with enough force that it actually stings—that wet, heavy thwack of a man who's been hard for too long without doing something about it—and he makes a sound that's half a laugh and half a wince.
"Dude." He lifts his head, looks down at it, deeply unimpressed. "You're embarrassing both of us."
It twitches.
"Yeah," he mutters. "Same."
He drops his head back.
Stares at the ceiling some more.
He needs to have a serious sit-down with Taehyung Jr. at some point. Discuss boundaries. Maybe a HR-style intervention.
There's a roster. There's a system. The system was designed for exactly this kind of moment—hard at midnight, alone in bed, nothing to do—and the system has just gone on strike.
Solo work, then.
Fine.
Fine.
He reaches blindly for the nightstand drawer, fumbles past the watch box and the airpods case and the little pouch where he keeps the coke he's not touching tonight because he is, allegedly, a professional, and his fingers close around the thing he forgot he owned.
Marco's gift.
Marco gave it to him at the beginning of last season as a joke. Hamstring strain, two weeks off the pitch, two weeks off everything else by his physio's order, and Marco had walked into his apartment with a gift bag and that fucking smile and pulled out a top-shelf fleshlight like he was handing over a championship medal.
«For your suffering, brother.»
Taehyung had laughed. Thrown it in the drawer. Forgotten about it.
Until now.
He looks at it.
It looks back.
He sighs.
He sighs the sigh of a man whose ancestors are watching, whose contract is worth eight figures, whose face is on the side of three buildings in Madrid, and who is about to fuck a silicone tube because his brain has unilaterally decided that the only acceptable woman for tonight is the one woman he absolutely, categorically, professionally cannot have.
He spits in his palm. Coats his cock once, slow, top to base, and the slick drag of his own hand makes his hips jerk before he's even started.
Christ. He's leaking. Pre-cum already beading at the tip, smearing under his thumb, and he uses it—rubs it down the shaft, gets himself wet enough that when he positions the fleshlight and presses the head against the opening it's already stupidly easy, already too good before he's even in.
He sinks in.
The sound that comes out of him is somewhere between a hiss and a moan and he doesn't have the dignity to be embarrassed about it because fuck, this thing is tight, it's hot, it's slick, and his brain has already replaced what's happening to his cock with what he wants to be happening to his cock, which is you.
You.
Bent over for him. Underneath him. On top of him.
He doesn't care, he doesn't have the focus, but you.
Your mouth. Your hands. Your nails on his back the way they were on his thigh, but worse. Meaner.
Because he's the one who's earning them this time.
Because he's the one between your legs giving you a reason.
He starts moving.
Slow at first—long, deep strokes, hand at the base of the toy, working it down over himself like he's the one doing the fucking, like you're the one taking it—and his other hand goes up over his head, gripping the headboard, because he needs something to anchor against or he's going to lose the rhythm.
Fuck.
When did jacking off feel like this?
He doesn't remember it being this good. He's pretty sure it wasn't. He's pretty sure this is what people who jack off regularly are getting and nobody told him because if he'd known he wouldn't have spent the last six years booking room service for women he didn't want to share breakfast with.
He pumps faster.
His hips are starting to move on their own now, fucking up into it, and his brain is already deep into it, already past the part where he's pretending this is recreational and into the part where he's narrating, where he's running a track, where every thrust comes with a line he'd say if you were actually here.
‘Yeah?’
That's the first one. That's always the first one. Low, smug, just a syllable to make sure you're listening, his mouth at your jaw, his cock buried so deep you'd feel it in your stomach—
‘Yeah? That's it. There you go, Gomi.’
Christ. He's saying it in his head and his hand speeds up like his hand can hear him.
’What's that, hm?’
He's pushing into you. Splitting you open. Taking his time on the first stroke because you'd be tight, you'd be so fucking tight, of course you would, of course a girl who looks at him like he's a stain on her schedule would clamp down on his cock like she's trying to squeeze him to death. Even your pussy would be unimpressed. Even your pussy would be giving him the cold shoulder right up until the moment it wasn't.
’So unimpressed all the time, Gomi. Always so fucking bored. Always such a smart mouth. And then I stuff you full of dick and suddenly you can't talk, hm?’
He bites his lower lip. His eyes have closed without his permission. He can almost see it—your face, that face, the one you put on when you've decided he isn't worth processing, except now your eyes are wet and your mouth is open and there's nothing flat about the way you're looking at him because his cock has reorganized your priorities.
’Yeah. Suddenly real fucking impressed, aren't you, Gomi. Suddenly very fucking interested in my cock.’
Fuck. Fuck.
The toy is making sounds. Wet, obscene, slick noises that should be disgusting and aren't, that are making his thighs shake, and he's fucking up into it harder now, the headboard creaking under his grip, and somewhere in the back of his head a mastermind voice is going ’easy, slow it down, you'll come too fast’, and he is ignoring that voice as hard (ha) as he can.
He wants to come too fast.
He wants to come embarrassingly fast.
He wants you to laugh at him for it and then keep your nails dug into his back anyway.
His mouth is moving without sound, the fantasy running across the inside of his skull like a broadcast, and your lips are right there, your fucking lips, and in his head he's leaning down and biting the bottom one because he's wanted to bite it since the first day when you didn't bother to look up from your textbook, and you taste like cherry, you taste like the picotas you live off, you taste like that artificial sour-sweet sting that he's been craving horridly lately.
God. Your fucking lips.
He kisses you in his head. He kisses you so much in his head that his actual mouth opens into nothing, breath dragging, and his free hand has come down off the headboard and is gripping the meat of his own thigh hard enough to bruise.
He's chasing the feeling. The one your nails left. The one he's been thinking about every twelve minutes since the briefing room. He digs his own fingernails into his quad and rolls his hips up at the same time and his cock hits the back of the toy and it's so good he sees a flash of white.
‘That's it. That's it, Gomi. Take it. Look at me. Look at me when you take it.’
In his head you're shoving at his chest the way you shoved him in the elevator that morning, palms flat, two-handed, but it's a token because he's already balls deep, because your legs are already wrapped around his hips, because your nails are already pricking down his shoulder blades and starting to break skin.
You'd tell him to pull out, you absolutely would.
And in his head he just—
Doesn’t.
In his head he grins down at you, wrecked, sweating, and grabs your hip hard enough to bruise and grinds deeper and says ‘nope’ and fucking fills you up. Stuffs you. Floods you. Cums inside, even though you told him not to, because you told him not to, holding eye contact while it happens, watching your face do something new.
The orgasm hits him like a tackle.
His arm flies up and he clamps it over his mouth, biceps to lips, biting down into his own arm so hard he tastes copper because the sound that wants to come out of him is too big for the room, too big for the building, too big for the version of himself he’s allowed to be in public—and his cock pulses, and pulses, and he is dimly, distantly aware that he is cumming into the fleshlight in a quantity that has no precedent, that his hips are still jerking, that his thighs are quaking, that his whole body is convulsing through it in waves that seem to keep coming for an obscene amount of time.
His vision goes white.
White, then black, then static.
When he comes back down he’s panting against his own bicep, teeth still pressed to skin, his cock still buried in the toy, his free hand fisted so hard in the sheet that he’s gonna have to ice it tomorrow.
“Holy fuck.”
He says it into his arm.
His chest is heaving. His hairline is wet. The sheets under him are soaked through where his back hit them. He smells like sweat and sex and the salt-bright tang of his own cum, and his mouth is dry, and his lips are a little swollen from biting them, and his cock is still twitching weakly in the fleshlight like please can we go again.
He feels sick for exactly five seconds.
Sick like what the fuck. Sick like did that just happen. Sick like in what world did Kim Taehyung just have the biggest orgasm of his life from a fleshlight and a fantasy of the physio’s daughter telling him to pull out and him not pulling out.
In what world.
In which world.
Then the sick passes.
And underneath it, under the immediate horror of it, there is—
Oh.
Oh, that’s bad.
There is purring satisfaction.
His whole body feels soft, and sluggish, the usual sensation that comes after a good meal, a good match, a good fight, that says that was the right thing, that says do that again, that says we found it. His chest is loose. His shoulders, which have been knotted up around his ears for weeks, are flat against the mattress for the first time in he doesn’t know how long.
He blinks at the ceiling.
The ceiling, again, has nothing to say.
“Okay,” he mutters, to nobody. “Okay. We’re not unpacking that. We’re not unpacking any of that.”
He pulls the fleshlight off.
“Jesus.”
The amount of cum inside it is, frankly, unreasonable.
Like, medically. Like, he should be hydrating. Like, where did all of that come from, when did his body manufacture all of that, what is happening to him.
He sets the toy aside on the nightstand to deal with later, falls back against the pillows, drags an arm over his face.
His heartbeat is slowing. His breathing is evening out. There’s a low, content rumble behind his sternum that feels suspicious but feels too good to interrogate.
He just had the biggest fucking orgasm of his life imagining a girl who has never once, in the recorded history of his interactions with her, told him she wants him.
He should be losing his mind right now.
He’s not losing his mind.
He’s smiling. Tiny. Stupid. Into the crook of his own elbow.
“Okay,” he mumbles, mostly to the ceiling, partially to his cock, partially to himself. “Okay. We’re not gonna make this a thing.”
His cock, soft and spent and thoroughly drained, doesn’t even twitch.
“Cool. Glad we agree.”
His eyes are heavy. The kind of heavy that means his body has decided the day is over now whether he likes it or not.
He turns his head. The pillow is right there—the same pillow he was about to disrespect twenty minutes ago.
He pulls it under his cheek.
His last thought, before the dark takes him, is that the cotton smells faintly like his own skin, faintly like lemon detergent, and—weirdly, stupidly, traitorously—he wonders, just for a half-second, what your pillow smells like.
Picotas, probably.
His mouth twitches.
He’s out before he can finish the thought.
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚛𝚘 𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚘𝚊 <small> (i want bbq) </small>
You stare at the WhatsApp notification blinking from the corner of your laptop screen and let out a breath through your nose that’s maybe 40% sigh and 60% resignation.
You minimize it.
Miss Díaz is at the front of the lecture hall drawing a diagram on the whiteboard that looks like she’s planning a murder—angles and dotted lines converging on a kneecap. The Q-angle. Quadriceps line of pull relative to the patellar tendon’s insertion at the tibial tuberosity.
Good. Fine. Paying attention. Being a student. Absorbing knowledge like a functional adult who came to university to learn and not to babysit a—
A soft snore ripples from your left.
Your pen stops.
The sound has a signature: wet, nasal, slightly whistling on the inhale, like a golden retriever sleeping in a patch of sun. You’ve sat next to this sound for exactly eleven days of shared lectures and you could pick it out of a police lineup.
You drive your elbow sideways into his ribs.
Namjoon jolts upright so fast his pen launches off the desk, clatters across the floor, rolls under the chair of the girl in front of you who doesn’t even flinch because this is the third time it’s happened this week. His hand slaps the notebook. His eyes snap wide open like someone who has definitely been awake this entire time and was simply resting his eyelids in a meditative state.
“Patellar maltracking,” he says instantly. Loud enough that two heads turn.
You blink at him.
He blinks back.
“…Right?” he adds, quieter.
“You were snoring.”
“I was breathing heavily.”
“Through your mouth. With sound effects.”
He groans—low, theatrical, a groan that belongs in a hospital ward honestly and not a biomechanics lecture—and folds forward onto the desk, forearms flat, face buried. The collar of his hoodie bunches up around his ears.
“I can’t do this today,” he mumbles into the laminate.
“It’s eleven AM.”
“Time is a construct and I’m in crisis.” He turns his face sideways so one eye is visible, blinking up at you like a fish on a dock. “She hasn’t texted me back.”
You tap your pen against your notebook twice. “Marta?”
He lifts his head. Looks at you. The betrayal in his expression could be framed.
“Huh? What? No—Marta left me on read three days ago and I decided that meant she hates me. I’m talking about Leia. Keep up, Y/N. Come on.” He props his chin on his forearms, wounded. “I’m sharing my trauma with you.”
“How many girls are you texting.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It feels like the point.”
“The point,” he says, pressing a palm flat against his chest like he’s about to recite the Constitution, “is that I sent Leia a meme—a great meme, by the way, A-tier, certified—and she opened it and just. Nothing. Twelve hours. Not a ha-ha. Not a reaction. Not even a pity-tap on the like button. Just seen.”
“Maybe she didn’t find it funny.”
“It was objectively funny.”
“Maybe her standards are higher than yours.”
“Maybe you’re dead inside.”
You write another line in your notebook.
Miss Díaz has moved on. The diagram now has arrows pointing in four directions like a weather map of knee dysfunction.
“Namjoon.”
“Mm.”
“Why are you even in this class.”
He goes very still.
“Aren’t you in the year above me.”
Stiller.
“I’m sharing my trauma with you,” he says, lifting his head fully now, betrayed. “I’m peeling back the layers. I’m being vulnerable. And you decide this is the moment to dig into the gaping wound of my academic record.”
“I’m just curious.”
“You’re cruel. You’re so cruel. You walk around looking like a normal person and inside you’re a Bond villain.” He bemoans it with his whole torso, shoulders rounding, but keeps going anyway. “I failed the unit in Seoul, ’kay? The system was different. The grading was different. The professor had vendettas.”
“Mhm.”
“And I’m here on a transfer credit situation that requires me to retake biomech in the host country’s curriculum, which, by the way, is taught in English, which is also not my first language, even though I’m fluent, but there’s a difference between fluent and pelvis-girdle-dynamic-stabilization-during-gait fluent—”
“Sure.”
“—and you’re sitting there like, ‘aren’t you in the year above’, like you didn’t catch me on the kindest possible day to mention that to me.”
“I’m catching you on the day you drooled on yourself and got dumped by Leia.”
“I didn’t get dumped. We weren’t—”
“On read for twelve hours. From a meme.”
He lowers his head back down to the desk. Soft thud. Same spot.
“Mean woman,” he says into his arm. “Mean, mean woman.”
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚊𝚢 𝚝𝚎𝚝𝚊 𝚗𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚜 𝚊𝚜𝚒 <small> (ugh sis don’t be like that) </small>
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚑𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚜 𝚚𝚞𝚎 𝚗𝚘 𝚖𝚎 𝚟𝚎𝚜 <small> (it’s been months since you last saw me) </small>
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚗𝚘 𝚖 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚍𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚘𝚜? <small> (don’t you miss me?) </small>
Technically true.
He’s been in Madrid longer than you have—came up for uni a year and a half ago, got a girlfriend, got a flat in Malasaña, got himself a whole little life with Marta and exposed brick and a vintage poster you’re sure he thinks makes him interesting.
Before dad’s contract, the only way you saw each other was Eli taking the train down to Barcelona for a weekend, eating everything in the fridge, sleeping on the couch, and leaving behind three mismatched socks like some kind of textile poltergeist.
Now you and dad live twenty minutes away and he still hasn’t come by. Busy man. Cohabiting life. Girlfriend. Supposedly school, though you’re sceptical about the ratio of FIFA to actual coursework happening in that flat.
𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚗𝚘
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚃𝙴𝚃𝙰???? <small> (SIS????) </small>
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚒𝚋𝚕𝚎 <small> (unbelievable) </small>
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚖𝚎 𝚍𝚊 𝚒𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚕 𝚟𝚘𝚢 𝚒𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚎 <small> (i don’t care i’m coming anyway) </small>
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚍𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚊 𝚙𝚊𝚙𝚒 𝚚 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚎𝚕 𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚘 𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚊 𝚗𝚘𝚌𝚑𝚎 <small> (tell dad to prep the oven for tonight) </small>
You close the app.
Namjoon hasn’t moved. Still face-down on the desk. Miss Díaz has progressed to rehabilitation protocols for patellofemoral pain syndrome, which means there’s maybe ten minutes left, and you’ve lost the thread of your notes somewhere between Q-angles and your brother’s inability to take no for an answer, which is genetic, probably. Inherited trait.
The entire family runs on stubbornness and selective hearing.
“Who’s texting you?” Namjoon mumbles, one eye cracked open.
“My brother.”
“Didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Consider yourself still in the dark.”
“Mean,” he says again, but softer this time, almost fond, and closes his eye.
Suddenly Miss Díaz caps her marker. “Chapters nine through eleven for Monday’s seminar. I want case study analysis, not summaries. If you hand me a summary, I will hand it back.”
Chairs scrape. Laptops close. Zippers, coughs, the collective exhale of people freed from academic torture.
Namjoon peels himself off the desk like a sticker that’s been left in the sun too long. There’s a faint red mark on his forehead from the wood grain. His pen is still on the ground.
“Got plans tonight?” He yawns into his fist, patting his pockets for his phone. “It’s Friday.”
“My brother’s coming over.”
“The brother you won’t tell me about?”
“That one.”
“Cool. Love the transparency. Very healthy friendship dynamic we’re building.”
You tuck your laptop into your bag, zip it shut. “He wants barbecue pizza and attention. In that order.”
“See, that’s a detail. That’s characterization. I’m learning things about you against your will and I want you to know I appreciate that.”
You shoulder your bag and head for the door. He follows, because he always follows—not in a weird way, just in a Namjoon way, like a current that doesn’t know it’s moving.
You take the corridor toward the south exit, the one that spits you out near the quad where Sofia usually waits after her sports psych lecture.
Your phone’s been buzzing intermittently. You pull it out while walking, expecting Eli, but your thumb catches on a push notification from a sports gossip account you forgot to mute.
MadridGossip 🔴 Real Madrid’s Kim Taehyung spotted leaving Tatel with Brazilian model Daiane Souza for third time this month, are they official? Sources say the pair have been ‘inseparable’ since…
You click your tongue. Lock the screen.
Namjoon glances over. His peripheral vision is annoyingly functional for someone who was comatose four minutes ago.
“Oh, right.” He adjusts his bag strap. “By the way. What’s up with you and him?”
“Huh?”
“Taehyung.”
You keep walking. Same pace. “Nothing. Literally.”
“I mean—” He scratches the back of his neck, choosing his words with seeming care. “The way he was all… ‘Is that your boyfriend?’ And the whole ‘you better watch her’ thing across a room full of people. That was—”
“That was him being a footballer.”
“That was him being something.”
“You know how they are.” You push through the glass doors into the quad. The October sun hits your face, still warm enough to feel like a lie. “They see something shiny and they want it. That’s the whole personality. Training, winning, acquiring.” You squint against the light. “I’m probably his first real interaction with a woman who doesn’t worship him and he’s just—malfunctioning. Like a cat with a laser pointer. The second it stops moving, he’ll get bored.”
Namjoon hums. Not convinced, not pushing. Just filing it.
“A cat,” he repeats.
“A very expensive, very stupid cat.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” you echo, and that’s the end of that.
Sofia’s already on the bench near the fountain, cross-legged, sunglasses pushed up into her blue hair like a headband, typing furiously on her phone with both thumbs.
She looks up when you approach and her face does that thing—the one where she’s holding a secret so big it’s physically distorting her features.
“Hi,” she says. Too bright. Way too bright.
“What did you do,” you say.
“Nothing! God. Can’t a girl just be happy on a Friday?”
Namjoon drops onto the bench beside her, groaning. “Nobody’s happy on a Friday after class.”
“I am. Because—” She locks her phone, holds it against her chest like a prayer book. “Jackson’s coming to pick me up.”
Namjoon hovers above the bench at an angle that can’t be good for his lower back, one hand still on his bag strap, mouth open.
“Jackson,” he says.
“Mhm.”
“Jackson as in Jackson Wang.”
Sofia’s grin could power a small municipality. “Mhm.”
“Jackson Wang. The Jackson Wang. Rapper. Producer. He is coming to pick you up. From university. In his car.”
“I mean, it’s easy to assume he has a car—” you start, and Namjoon’s head swivels to you so fast you hear his neck crack.
“You knew?”
You shift your bag to the other shoulder. “Knew is a strong word.”
“She knew?!” He points at you, looking at Sofia. Then points at Sofia, looking at you. His finger swings between you like a broken compass. “How long has—when did—what?”
“Oh my god.” Sofia clasps her hands together, vibrating. “She hasn’t told you.”
“Told me what?”
“Namjoon.” Sofia grabs his forearm with both hands. Her nails are painted a deep teal that matches absolutely nothing she’s wearing. “I have to tell you everything. From the beginning. From Café Luna.”
“What happened at Café Luna.”
“So Jackson and his brother Hoseok—you know Nomad, right? Obviously you know Nomad, everyone knows Nomad—they were at Café Luna, just sitting there, and Jackson literally stood up in the middle of the café and announced a party to the entire room—”
“He did not.”
“He did. Ask her. She was there.” Sofia jabs a thumb at you. “Tell him.”
“He stood up.”
“He was standing. On the floor. Being iconic.” Sofia waves you off and refocuses on Namjoon, who looks like he’s processing the existence of a new primary colour. “So there was a party. Villa Cereza. And we went. And he was there. And we talked. And then we talked more. And then—”
“Define ‘more.’”
“Namjoon, I’m getting to that part, let me build the narrative—”
You lean against the back of the bench and let them go. Sofia’s hands are moving at the speed of her mouth, which is considerable, and Namjoon keeps making sounds—small, strangled, vowel-heavy sounds—at every new piece of information, like a man watching a nature documentary about something that shouldn’t biologically exist.
Your phone buzzes.
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚝𝚎𝚝𝚊 𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚟𝚘 𝚊 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚊 𝚝𝚊𝚖𝚋𝚒𝚎𝚗 𝚗𝚘? <small>
(sis i’m bringing marta too right?) </small>
Sofia’s saying something about Jackson’s playlist in the car and how he played her a track he hadn’t released yet, and Namjoon is gripping the bench slats like he’s on a rollercoaster, and the sun is doing that thing where it sits low and gold and makes everything look warmer than it is.
You pocket your phone and let out a sigh.
At least you’re free from Kim Taehyung’s existence today.
Eli entered the house an hour ago like a human battering ram.
Front door slamming open, keys jangling—he still has his copy, the one dad gave him when you moved, the one he swore he’d only use ‘in emergencies’ which apparently now includes ‘I want pizza’ and ‘I haven’t seen you in two months and I missed you but I’ll die before I say that out loud’—and then seventy-eight kilos of younger brother crashing into you in the hallway with the force of someone who has not learned, in his entire life, that affection doesn’t require a running start.
“¡TETA!” <small> (SIS!) </small>
He’d picked you up. Actually picked you up. Spun you half a rotation before you got an elbow into his ribs and he dropped you, cackling, and you’d hit him with the dish towel and he’d hit you back and then you were swatting at each other in the hallway like feral children while Marta stepped through the door behind him, bag on her shoulder, watching the two of you.
“Hola, guapa,” (Hey, gorgeous) she’d said to you, over his shoulder, while he had you in a loose headlock.
“Hola, Marta,” you’d managed, muffled, one hand flat on his face trying to push him off. “Dile a tu novio que me suelte.” (Tell your boyfriend to let me go.)
“Eli, suéltala.” (Eli, let her go.)
“No quiero.” (Don’t want to.)
“Eli.”
“Vale, vale.” (Fine, fine.)
He let go. You fixed your hair. He grinned—that wide, unregulated, full-face grin that makes him look exactly like your mother and makes your chest do a thing you will never, under any circumstances, acknowledge—and pulled the Barça beanie off his head and dropped it on yours.
“Te queda mejor a ti.” (Looks better on you.)
“Todo me queda mejor que a ti.” (Everything looks better on me than on you.)
“Eso es verdad,” (That’s true) Marta said from the kitchen, already finding the stools.
That was an hour ago.
He hasn’t separated from you since, been orbiting you like a satellite with separation anxiety—leaning on the counter while you pulled ingredients out, stealing mozzarella straight from the bag, getting his hand slapped, stealing more, narrating every single thing you’re doing like a sports commentator, saying stuff like “y la teta abre el horno, señoras y señores, con una técnica impecable—” <small> (and sis opens the oven, ladies and gentlemen, with impeccable technique—) </small>, getting hip-checked into the fridge, bouncing back, continuing.
He’s wearing a Ronaldinho ‘03 retro jersey. Obviously. The faded one with the cracked badge and the slightly wrong shade of blue that means it’s real, not reproduction, because Eli would rather eat glass than wear a fake kit. He’s still wearing the thin gold chain that your uncle gave him, the one he never takes off, the one that matches the E on his wrist, the one that matches yours on your ankle.
You’re both pretending you haven’t noticed how the kitchen smells like the old flat when you cook.
“Que le pongas más queso, teta.” (Put more cheese on it, sis.)
“Tiene suficiente queso.” (It has enough cheese.)
“No tiene suficiente queso. Nunca tiene suficiente queso. ¿Verdad, Marta?” (It doesn’t have enough cheese. It never has enough cheese. Right, Marta?)
Marta’s perched on the kitchen stool with her chin in her hand, dark hair tucked behind one ear, watching the two of you with a smile.
“A mí no me metáis en esto,” (Don’t drag me into this) she says, but her eyes are warm, and you like her so much it’s almost annoying.
You like that she doesn’t try to be part of the sibling thing.
She just sits in the warmth of it and lets it exist.
“¿A qué hora viene papá?” (What time is dad coming?) Eli asks, peering into the oven through the glass like the pizza is going to stand up and dance.
“Dijo que a las ocho.” (He said eight.)
“Son las ocho y cuarto.” (It’s eight fifteen.)
“Pues llegará a las ocho y cuarto, ¿no?” (Then he’ll get here at eight fifteen, won’t he?)
“Qué borde eres, teta.” (You’re so rude, sis.)
You bump him with your hip. He bumps you back.
Then the front door opens.
“¡Papi!” Eli is already moving, abandoning you mid-sentence, crossing the kitchen in three strides toward the hallway.
You hear it—the familiar shuffle of your dad’s shoes on the tile, the soft “hombre, Eli, qué alegría” (hey, Eli, what a joy) and the sound of a hug happening.
“¿Y Marta? ¿Ha venido?” (And Marta? Did she come?)
“Aquí estoy, Jesús.” (I’m here, Jesús.) Marta raises a hand from the stool.
Your dad crosses to kiss both her cheeks.
“Qué guapa estás, hija.” (How pretty you look, sweetheart.)
“Gracias, Jesús.” (Thank you, Jesús.)
“¡A ella le dice guapa y a mí ni me mira!” (He calls her pretty and doesn’t even look at me!) Eli protests, spreading his arms.
“A ti te veo todos los días por videollamada, payaso.” (I see you every day on video call, clown.)
Warm. It’s warm.
The kitchen is full and the oven is on and your brother is here and your dad is here and Marta is here and this is the closest the house has felt to home since the moving boxes were unpacked—
“Also,” your dad says, switching to a tone you recognize, the one he uses when he’s about to deliver information he knows won’t land well, “me he encontrado a alguien en el camino.” (I ran into someone on the way.)
Your hands stop on the oven mitt.
Someone steps out from behind your dad in the hallway.
Leans a shoulder against the kitchen doorframe. Raises one hand in a wave—lazy, loose-wristed, the kind of wave that says sup without any of the social awareness required to recognize that ‘sup’ is not the appropriate energy for walking into someone else’s home on a Friday night uninvited.
“Hey, Gomi.”
So much for Kim Taehyung’s existence not bothering you today.
There he fucking is.
In your kitchen. In your house.
God, why is he everywhere?
He’s in sweats and a black tee that’s doing nothing to disguise the chain at his neck or the width of his shoulders or the fact that he looks like he drove near here on purpose and is now pretending he didn’t. His hair is damp at the temples. Post-practice. That lemon-and-soap thing clinging to the air around him, already seeping into the kitchen, already colonizing the rosemary.
Your death glare could strip paint.
“Tiene partido mañana,” your dad says quickly, reading your face as expected of the man who has survived twenty-plus years of parenting you. “Necesita que le revise la espalda. Me lo encontré de camino.” (He has a match tomorrow. Needs me to check his back. I ran into him on the way.)
You are absolutely certain Kim Taehyung did not ‘run into’ your father.
You are certain of this the way you are about gravity, photosynthesis, and the fact that Marco probably helped coordinate whatever GPS-timed interception manoeuvre got him into your dad’s car.
He rant into Taehyung on his way.
Sure. And pigs fly.
Your eyes haven’t left Taehyung.
The fucker is reeling, clearly pleased with himself—the jaw is doing a slight clench-unclench of suppressed satisfaction, and his eyes are touring your kitchen, landing on the oven, the island, you. As if knowingly proud of having just gained access to a restricted area and thus cataloguing everything before security notices.
Eli, who had been mid-sentence to your dad, has gone quiet.
He tracks from Taehyung’s face to his chest to the black Nike swoosh on his tee to the general aura of Real Madrid that clings to him like cologne, and his expression undergoes a transformation that you can only describe as allergic reaction.
“Qué tal.” (What’s up.)
Taehyung nods. “Hey. Good to meet you.”
English. Predictably.
Eli turns to you. His eyebrows say everything his mouth doesn’t, but his mouth says it anyway.
“Un crack.” He gestures vaguely at Taehyung with his whole hand. “Una década en el país y no habla español.” (A whole prodigy. A decade in the country and he doesn’t speak Spanish.)
“Elías,” your dad says, in the ‘please behave’ voice.
Eli raises both palms. Surrendering. Not surrendering. Performing surrender while his jaw stays tight and his eyes stay on Taehyung with the warmth of a border patrol checkpoint.
Marta, for her part, takes a quiet sip of her water. Says nothing.
Taehyung lets his eyes do a slow scan of his on the whole length of you. Then settles on your face, and whatever he finds there makes the corner of his mouth twitch.
Fucker.
“Nice place,” he says.
“Like you haven’t been here before,” you mutter between gritted teeth.
Taehyung tilts his head. “Have I?”
“¿Ha estado aquí?” (He’s been here?) Eli whips around so fast his chain swings. His eyes snap between you and Taehyung. “¿Qué dices, teta? ¿Cuándo ha estado aquí?” (What are you saying, sis? When was he here?)
“Eli, para.” (Eli, stop.)
“No, no, no—¿cómo que para? ¿El número dos del Real Madrid ha estado en esta casa y nadie me lo ha—” (No no no—what do you mean stop? Real Madrid’s number two has been in this house and nobody told me—)
“En inglés, Eli.” (In English, Eli.) Your dad places a hand on Eli’s shoulder and squeezes once. “Si hay alguien que no habla español, hablamos en inglés. Queremos que nuestros invitados se sientan cómodos.” (If there’s someone who doesn’t speak Spanish, we speak English. We want our guests to feel comfortable.)
Eli’s jaw works sideways. He looks at your dad. Looks at Taehyung. Looks at you. Back to Taehyung.
“Guests,” he repeats, in English, like the word has a flavor and he’s not enjoying it.
“Yeah.” He funally takes a step into the kitchen. “We got real acquainted last time. Didn’t we, Gomi.”
Fucker, fucker, fucker.
Something in your peripheral vision moves. Eli. Leaning forward. Radar fully online.
“Why does he call you Gomi?” Eli asks, tone as if he was a detective who’s just found a second set of fingerprints at the crime scene. “Teta. Why does he call you that.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, it’s a nickname. People don’t just—”
“It’s short for Gominola,” Taehyung offers, helpfully, because he has never in his life read a room and chosen silence. “She’s always eating those cherry things. Picotas?”
“I know what picotas are,” Eli says. “I’m from Barcelona.”
The temperature in the kitchen shifts about four degrees. Your dad clears his throat.
“Well.” Your dad claps his hands once, the universal father signal for ‘we are moving past this.’ “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since two. So let’s have dinner first, and then later we’ll do the treatment, right, Taehyung? Can’t work on an empty stomach.”
Taehyung nods with a scornful smirk.
Dad gestures at the oven. “Are the pizzas ready?”
They are. You grab the oven mitt. Eli materializes at your elbow to help because he hasn’t stopped orbiting you since he arrived and he’s clearly decided that the orbit now includes surveillance duties.
Taehyung settles into the dining area like it’s a press lounge. Pulls out a chair—the one closest to the kitchen pass-through, the one with the best sightline to you—and sits. Doesn’t ask.
“You’re not eating?” your dad asks him, already cutting into his slice.
“Already ate. Pre-match protocol—can’t mess with the macros.”
“Right. The regime.” Your dad nods, professional. Respects it. Doesn’t push.
So Taehyung sits there. At your family dinner table.
Watching you.
You sit, placing the pizzas in the center of the table. Eli drops into the chair to your left—the one he always takes, the one that was his at every table in the Barcelona flat too. Marta’s across from him. Your dad’s at the head. And Taehyung is in front of you, not eating, one arm draped over the back of his own chair, legs spread under the table the way men who’ve never been told to take up less space sit.
His knee is six inches from yours.
Fine. This is fine. You’re eating pizza in your own home with your family and there is a professional footballer watching you chew and it is fine.
You bite into the barbecue chicken pizza. It’s good. Eli’s recipe was right—barbecue base, chicken, red onion, extra mozzarella. Got the crust perfect, the way he always does, thin and just charred enough at the edges, the way mom liked it.
Something nudges your foot, slow press of a socked foot against the inside of your ankle, sliding up half an inch, settling there.
You choke.
The pizza—specifically a piece of chicken the size of a euro coin—lodges sideways in your throat, and you cough, hard, eyes watering, hand to your mouth, and the entire table turns to look at you.
Taehyung reaches across. Picks up the water glass in front of you—your glass, the one with the lemon slice you dropped in twenty minutes ago—and holds it out.
“Careful, Gomi.” His voice is low. Almost gentle. Almost concerned. “Don’t choke on big things.” He tilts the glass toward you. “Need to start with smaller ones.”
You take the water. Drink. Set it down. Wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.
“I’m fine,” you say. Hoarse.
“You sure?” The mock concern is still there, sitting on his face like a mask someone ironed on too perfectly.
He knows what he’s doing. He knows what ‘choke’ sounds like when he says it. He knows what it all sounds like. The innuendo of it.
And he knows you know.
And he is having the time of his life.
“Positive.”
Eli’s hand is suspended between his plate and his mouth at a forty-five-degree angle that suggests he stopped mid-chew and hasn’t resumed.
His eyes move from Taehyung’s face to yours. Back. Forth.
Taehyung’s foot finds yours again before you’ve even swallowed the last bite.
Bold. Stupidly bold, considering there’s a table full of people three feet away who’d lose their minds if they knew what was happening under it.
You don’t look up. You will not give him the satisfaction of a flinch.
But yeah, that’s definitely his socked foot—which means the fucker took his shoe off. Under your family’s dinner table, mid-pizza, with your father one seat over discussing his back like a normal human professional athlete, Kim Taehyung removed a shoe.
You want to break every toe on that foot. Individually. With ceremony.
The foot creeps higher. Calf. Back of your knee. Settles there like it’s allowed, like it pays rent.
Okay. No. Absolutely not.
You reach down, just adjusting your flip flop like a woman who definitely isn’t plotting violence—and then you go for it. Quick jab, aimed at his knee, the kind of move that should make him yelp and retreat and reconsider every choice that led him to this table.
He doesn’t yelp. He catches it.
Hand closing around your ankle before your foot even lands, fast enough that you don’t have time to process it as a threat before it’s already happening—and then he’s pulling, dragging your foot forward, and pressing it flat against—
Oh.
Oh, this absolute piece of shit—
His dick is hard. Unmistakably, inconveniently, table-cloth-be-damned hard, and your foot is currently resting against the proof of it because he just put it there, like that’s a normal thing to do at a family dinner.
He looks at you through his lashes. Doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of himself—just settles deeper into the chair, spreads his knees a little wider under the table like he’s getting comfortable, and the motion drags your foot with it, presses it in harder.
His smirk pulls wider.
He rolls his hips. Barely—an inch, maybe less, just enough that you feel it, just enough that it could pass as a man shifting his weight in a chair that’s slightly too small for him, if you didn’t know exactly what you were currently in contact with.
The absolute audacity. The sheer, unhinged audacity of doing this.
“Comfortable?” you say, so flat it should end this.
“Very.” He says it like he’s talking about the chair, like his voice isn’t doing that low, rough thing underneath the word. “Good seat.”
“Mm.”
You hold his gaze. He holds yours.
Somewhere in your chest something is doing aerobics it has no business doing, and you shut it down, lock it in the same drawer where you keep every other inconvenient thing you refuse to look at directly.
Under the table, your foot stays exactly where it is because he’s trapped it.
He bucks again. Slight. A man enjoying himself entirely too much for someone currently risking his kneecaps in enemy territory.
Cool. Fine.
Fine.
If he wants a game, you’ll play the game. You’ll play it so well he’ll regret inventing it.
You plant your heel on the edge of the chair between his thighs, brace, and roll the arch of your foot firmly along the length of his cock through the sweats.
He chokes.
Actually chokes.
His body jerks forward, spine bowing off the back of the chair, one hand flying up to the edge of the table to catch himself. The wood gives a tiny thud under his palm. His lips part around a sound that doesn’t quite make it out.
Eyebrows shoot up. Pleasure, not surprise.
Well. Both.
It hits him before he can fake it, and you see it in real time—muscles going tight under his shirt, jaw going slack, that first raw flinch when a man goes from ‘I’m in control of this’ to ‘oh, fuck.’
Good.
You feel his cock kick hard in response, thick and hot and so fucking there that for a second it’s all you can feel—the ridge of his shaft, the blunt weight of the head catching under the ball of your foot when you drag back.
This is the part where a sane person backs off. Pulls away. Reconsiders his life choices, maybe apologizes with his eyes, lets the foot go and pretends none of it happened.
Taehyung, as expected, is no sane person.
Instead, his eyes come up to you.
Bright, way too fucking bright. There’s a flush high on his cheekbones now, pink climbing out from under his skin like someone turned the saturation up.
The look in his eyes is worse, though. You’d expect guilty, or caught—but instead it’s feral. A perverted little gleam like you’ve just handed him front-row tickets to his own favourite show.
“You good?” your dad asks, mid-bite, not even looking up.
“Yeah.” Taehyung’s voice comes out rougher than the word should require. He clears his throat. Tries again. “Yeah, just—cramp. Leg cramp.”
“Drink more water,” your dad says, sage, unaware, savage in his obliviousness. “Dehydration. You boys never hydrate properly.”
“Right.” Taehyung’s eyes haven’t left you. “Dehydrated. That’s it.”
You arch a brow at him. Blank. Unbothered. The exact face you’d give a vending machine that ate your euro.
He bites his bottom lip—actually bites it, teeth catching the curve of it like he’s holding something back by force—and under the table his hips shift, just slightly, just enough that you feel the slow roll of it against the sole of your foot, full of intention now, not hiding it anymore.
Oh, he likes this.
He likes this entirely too much. The bastard’s two seconds from grinding himself into a footjob in your father’s dining room and somehow still looking like he’s the one in control of the situation, like this was always where the night was headed, like he planned every single second of it from the moment he pulled his shoe off.
Eli’s saying something to Marta about the crust. You catch maybe a third of it. The rest of your attention is locked on the way Taehyung’s eyes darken.
“Eat your pizza,” you tell him.
“Not really hungry for pizza right now.” His voice has dropped, low enough that it’s only for you, threaded with something rough at the edges.
The implication sits there. Heavy. Obvious.
You refuse to acknowledge it with anything beyond a slow, unimpressed blink.
Instead, your toes curl and his lip goes white under his teeth.
You can’t deny the satisfaction that curls in your low abdomen. Because if Kim Taehyung embarrasses himself in his own sweatpants over a foot, that's not your problem. That's a him problem. A very public, very avoidable him problem.
His knuckles have gone bloodless on the table edge.
You almost feel bad.
You don't.
"¿Alguien quiere más?" (Anyone want more?) Eli holds up the last slice, oblivious, gesturing with it like a tiny greasy trophy.
"No, gracias." (No, thanks.)
Taehyung doesn't answer. Taehyung is currently incapable of language, a muscle working overtime somewhere near his ear, and you watch the slow, helpless roll of his hips stutter—once—like his body forgot it was supposed to be subtle.
Your dad pushes his chair back.
"Bueno." He stretches, the particular groan of a man who's eaten too fast after a long day. "Eli, cariño, ¿recoges con tu hermana? Yo voy a revisar a Taehyung." (Alright. Eli, love, can you clean up with your sister? I'm going to check on Taehyung.)
The world resumes.
You cough. Loud. Theatrical. Retract your foot so fast you nearly take his shoe with you.
Taehyung makes a sound like he's been unplugged.
"Taehyung." Your dad's already up, rolling his shoulders, all business. "Coming through for the session?"
"Yeah." He clears his throat, tries again, lands somewhere closer to human. "Yeah. Just—one sec."
He doesn't move. Doesn't stand. Sits very still, like a man calculating the structural integrity of his own sweatpants.
"Need to check something. Carlos sent a few messages." He pulls his phone out of his pocket way too quickly to be casual, never wanted a prop more in his life. Doesn't look at it. "You can start prepping. I'll be there in a minute."
Your dad nods, unbothered, already halfway to the hallway. "Vale. No tardes." (Okay. Don't take long.)
He doesn't.
Taehyung waits exactly until your dad's back is turned to look at you.
That look.
The one with absolutely zero apology in it. Brows up, mouth doing something that wants to be a smirk and is currently too busy being strangled by his own self-control.
"Carlos," you say, flat. "Right."
"Carlos," he agrees. Voice still not fully recovered. "Big update. Urgent."
"Mhm."
He shifts again. Longer this time. You watch him breathe out slow through his nose like he's doing math, like he's reciting the back four, like he's doing literally anything except sitting at a dinner table half-hard because the physio's daughter ground her foot into him over barbecue chicken pizza.
Eli's gathering plates two feet away, blessedly absorbed in his own monologue about crust ratios.
You stand. Stack your own plate on top of Marta's, who gives you a look over the rim of her water glass—small, knowing, entirely too perceptive for someone who said nothing the whole meal.
You ignore it.
Taehyung's still got the phone up, thumb not moving, screen probably black, the world's least convincing performance of a man checking urgent texts.
"Take your time," you tell him, sweet as arsenic. "Wouldn't want you walking into a treatment room compromised."
His lips do something—wiggle, fight a smile, lose. Hold it back the way you'd hold back a sneeze. Badly.
"Gonna take a longer time if you keep looking at me like that."
"Like what."
"Like that. With disdain."
"You're sick in the head."
"And you're hot as fuck when you wanna murder me."
You blink. Once. Slow. The blink that's killed lesser men.
"Congratulations." You shift the plates higher on your forearm. "Should I get you a sticker."
"I'd rather have your foot back."
"Seek help."
"You're making it worse."
"For you?"
"For Taehyung Junior." He points down, helpfully, in case you'd forgotten where the problem lives.
"Ew."
"Yeah, that." He points at you next. Same finger. "Hot as fuck."
He stands. One hand slides into the pocket of his sweats, casual as breathing, and he adjusts himself through the fabric with the unbothered ease of a man fixing his collar. No shame.
It's somehow the most obscene thing he's done all night, and he didn't even try.
"You good?" you ask, flat, nodding at his hand like you're inquiring about the weather.
"Getting there."
"Devastating update for everyone."
"You're welcome to check." He glances down at his crotch, then back up at you through his lashes, slow. "Professional opinion. Physio's daughter and all."
"I'd rather eat glass."
"Kinky."
"Go."
Your dad's voice carries down the hall. "Tae?"
He straightens. Snaps into something resembling business posture, which on him just means his shoulders square and his face does a thing that's supposed to read as composed.
"Coming."
Two fingers point at you. Lazy V. Not a salute. Not a peace sign. Something dumber than both.
"Try not to miss me too hard."
You look at him with the flattest expression available to the human face.
"Dream big, Zero."
That grin again. Quick. Insufferably pleased, for a man who has several things to be ashamed of tonight.
He turns. Heads down the hallway. One more discreet adjustment before he disappears through the treatment room door.
Fucker.
Taehyung looks absentminded after the treatment, which shouldn’t be weird because you were already questioning his lack of braincells before this.
You don’t linger on it too much, just watching your dad strip off the latex gloves at the sink in the treatment room and give Taehyung's back one last practiced glance like he's running through the checklist in his head.
"Should be fine for tomorrow," he says. "Bit of tightness, nothing dramatic. Ice tonight. Mobility work in the morning. And no stupid heroics if something pulls."
Taehyung nods from the edge of the table, shirt already back on, chain catching the light when he lowers his chin.
"Got it."
No joke. No ‘yes, sir.’
Your dad notices. Of course he notices. He notices everything except sexual tension in his own dining room, apparently, but muscles and mood shifts? Elite-level radar.
"You good?" he asks.
"Yeah." Taehyung rubs a hand over the back of his neck. "Just tired."
"Then go sleep." Your dad points toward the hall with the same authority he uses on multimillion-euro men and stubborn hamstrings. "And you—"
He turns to you.
"Can you see him out, cariño? Eli's massacring the kitchen and I don't trust him alone with the leftovers."
From the kitchen, right on cue: "¡Te he oído!" (I heard that!)
Your dad doesn't even raise his voice. "Perfecto." (Perfect.)
You push off the doorframe.
"Yeah. Fine."
Taehyung slides off the table. Slower than usual, but not because of pain. More like he's remembering where his limbs are one at a time. His phone's in his hand. He checks it without seeing it. Pockets it. Then immediately takes it back out again like the gesture needs somewhere to live.
Yeah. Almost like he’s not here.
Unsettling, honestly.
You lead him down the hallway, past the framed print your mum chose years ago, past the console table with Eli's keys dumped on it in a shining little pile of disrespect, past the warm atmosphere of your brother and his girlfriend cuddling on the couch.
Normally, this is where he'd start.
A comment. A jab. Something specifically calibrated to be annoying enough that you'd spend the next hour composing murder charges in your head. He usually cannot shut up around you. It's one of his worst qualities. Competitive field, but still.
Tonight he's quiet.
His thumb taps once against his thigh.
Stops.
Starts again.
You reach the front door and turn, hand on the latch. He nearly walks into you.
"Careful," you say.
"Right." He steps back half a pace. Blinks. "Sorry."
You stare at him.
Sorry.
Interesting. Disturbing. Maybe contagious. You should disinfect the hallway later.
"You concussed?" you ask.
That gets the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, but even that looks distracted. Incomplete. Like the thought had to travel farther than usual to reach his face.
"No."
"Then what's with the haunted-house energy."
He looks at you then. Properly. Not at your mouth, not at your hands, not down the line of your body like he's choosing where to be obnoxious next. Your face.
It's weird enough that you immediately dislike it.
"What?" you inquire.
He leans one shoulder against the wall by the door. Drops his gaze to the floorboards. His thumb starts that tapping thing again, steady and quiet against his thigh. Some internal metronome. You clock it because of course you do. You clock stupid details like it's a job.
Then, out of nowhere—
"What's it like, having a little brother?"
You actually laugh. Not because it's funny. Because what the fuck kind of question is that.
You look at him for the first time since leaving the treatment room. Really look.
He's not doing a bit.
There’s no grin tucked behind it, not a hint of smugness, not even a smudge of bait set neatly in the middle of the sentence.
There’s simply… That tapping thumb and that slightly pinched line between his brows that shows up when he's thinking something he doesn't want to be caught thinking.
"He's my brother," you say, like that should explain it.
"Yeah." His thumb stops. Starts again. "Must be nice."
You squint at him.
"You don't have one?"
"Nah."
He finally crouches for his shoes by the door. Doesn't look up while he says it. Just reaches for the laces, fingers quick and methodical now that they have a job to do.
"Only kid."
You fold your arms.
"Lonely only-child energy. Explains the ego."
It's supposed to land clean. Same as always. Reflex. Efficient. In, out, done. A neat little flick to the forehead of his personality.
He doesn't throw one back.
Just laces one shoe. Then the other.
Pulls the knot tight.
And the silence after it is so unhelpfully unguarded that it sits there between you like you said something wrong, which is irritating because you're fairly sure you didn't.
Eli laughs too loudly at something Marta says. The sound travels down the hall warm and easy and stupidly familiar.
Taehyung hears it too.
It looks like he smiles.
"Eli's annoying," you say, because apparently you're doing community outreach now. "Shows up uninvited. Eats my food. Asks questions like he's deposing me."
"Sounds great."
The answer comes quick enough that you glance at him again.
Still crouched. Still tying the other shoe like his life depends on symmetrical lacing. Still not looking at you.
You almost laugh.
Don't.
"It is," you say Quieter than intended. Enough truth in it to be embarrassing. "Most of the time."
He nods once.
You shift your weight.
This is why you don't do these little detours. This is why the man should stay in his natural habitat—shirtless in corridors, being unbearable, saying things that deserve prosecution. Much easier to deal with when he's acting like himself.
Or the version of himself he prefers to hand out.
He clears his throat. Shoulders come back up. Jaw settles.
"Anyway." He straightens, nods at the door. "I should let you get back to your exhausting brother."
"Mm."
"Tell him I said he's got good taste in jerseys. Ronaldinho's a legend."
You snort before you can stop yourself.
"He'll hate that you noticed."
"I know."
The grin comes back—not full wattage, but enough to be him again. Eighty percent restored. Still under maintenance.
"That's why I said it."
Of course.
You open the door. Cold air slides in at ankle level, October-thin and clean, carrying the smell of someone's grill running too late and wet pavement from a sprinkler two houses over.
He steps through it. Doesn't linger. Doesn't throw a parting line over his shoulder the way he usually does, the kind designed to live in your head for the next six hours whether you want it there or not.
You shut the door. Lock it. Stand there for a second longer than you mean to, hand still on the latch, replaying a sentence that had no business landing the way it did.
Must be nice.
What the fuck was that.
if you liked this chapter, please consider buying me a coffee!! subs get early access to chapters 1-4 weeks before they go public, depending on my work life and editing process!: ♥'ﻌ'♥
pairing: taehyung x f!reader | rating: 18+ | wc: 11,280 | warnings: here
genre: football AU, arrogant!tae, e2l, smut, unimpressed!reader
"must be nice"
"In which Taehyung’s body rejects every woman in Madrid, Y/N nearly kills him over barbecue pizza, and wanting her begins to look suspiciously like wanting a home."
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❥ author's note: Hello, beloved citizens. Today, I bring you family bonding, emotional repression, and Kim Taehyung committing crimes against a perfectly innocent piece of silicone.
Now, jokes aside for approximately thirty seconds: the way he comes in this chapter matters. A lot. It is not just, ‘wow, he finds her hot.’ His body only fully settles after giving in to the fantasy of her. The panic goes quiet. The release is unusually intense. Desire is starting to attach itself to relief, surrender, regulation, and safety—and I have been hinting at this in the warnings and author’s notes for a reason.
So, yes, this is your first proper taste of where this is headed psychologically and sexually, including some of the kinks and dynamics that will come with it. This is the door. I am opening it now. Please look at the door before walking through it and later acting shocked that there was, in fact, a room on the other side.
Also: read the warnings. I say this constantly because they are not decorative seasoning. They are there so you can decide whether this story is for you. If you skip them and later come to me with, ‘oh, I was blindsided,’ ‘ohhh, this is irresponsible,’ or ‘oooohhhhh, this is romanticized,’ I will dropkick you directly from heaven. Yes, heaven. That is where I belong. What do you mean? I am literally an angel.
And, for the love of God, depiction is not endorsement. My characters doing unhealthy, obsessive, manipulative, morally questionable, or downright deranged things does not mean I personally condone them. Fiction can explore something without handing it to you as relationship advice. Please keep that in mind, or I will be forced to smite every single one of you. Mwah.
Anyway, back to the important matters: Taehyung’s body has now formally rejected every woman in Madrid, Y/N continues to believe he is simply malfunctioning because she does not worship him, and the two of them nearly started a diplomatic incident beneath a family dinner table over barbecue chicken pizza.
Marta noticed everything. Eli sensed evil. Jesús noticed absolutely nothing. Taehyung nearly met God through socked-foot stimulation. But beneath all that degeneracy, he also discovered something much worse than wanting Y/N: wanting the warmth around her. He came for her attention and left wondering what it might feel like to belong somewhere.
Disgusting. Emotional development in my fuckboy comedy. Who authorized this?
Everything is going wonderfully. Nothing psychologically catastrophic will come from any of this. Trust me—I’m the author, which is exactly why you should not. <3
This is pathetic.
He knows it's pathetic. He is fully, completely, lucidly aware that what is happening right now—in this bed, in this room, in this apartment that costs a fucking lung—is the most pathetic thing he has ever done.
And Kim Taehyung has done some pathetic shit in his twenty-something years.
But this takes the crown.
He'd showered. That's the thing. He'd done the whole responsible-athlete night routine—shower, skin care, the eye cream he pretends is just water, teeth, the works. Pulled on boxers. Got into bed. Opened his laptop to the match footage he's supposed to review for Saturday because he is a professional and professionals review footage and he was going to do that.
He was going to sit here, in his bed, in his clean boxers, and analyze his defensive positioning for ninety minutes like a man with discipline and priorities and a brain that lives inside his skull.
Then there was an ad.
Some skincare thing. Thirty-second pre-roll he couldn't skip. A girl—blonde, irrelevant, forgettable—licking a lollipop in slow motion while some voiceover talked about hydration or collagen or whatever the fuck.
And his brain, his traitorous, disloyal, sex-poisoned brain, looked at that mouth and thought:
‘You know who has lips like that?’
You.
Your lips.
Your fucking lips.
Man.
And then it wasn't the ad anymore. It was you, in that storage closet, looking at him with those flat, unimpressed eyes, and your mouth—that mouth—shaping the words ’you wouldn't last long enough to get me to scratch you’.
His dick twitched.
He ignored it.
He is a professional. He was reviewing footage. He clicked past the ad, opened the match file, watched approximately forty-five seconds of his own defensive clearance before his cock twitched again—harder this time, insistent, the little bitch—and the footage started looking less like tactical analysis and more like meaningless pixels arranged in patterns that his brain refused to process because all of his blood was migrating south at an alarming and frankly inconvenient rate.
He'd adjusted himself.
That was the first mistake.
Because an adjustment turned into a palm pressing down through his boxers, and pressing turned into a slow drag of his hand along the shape of himself—half-hard already, thickening under his own fingers—and the drag turned into a grip. Loose. Barely there. Just his hand over the fabric, feeling himself fill out, and the footage was still playing on the laptop screen, some midfielder making a run he should be tracking, and he wasn't tracking shit.
He was thinking about your nails.
Four fingers and a thumb digging into his thigh hard enough that he'd groaned in a briefing room full of people. The bright, sudden pressure of it. The way it felt like you meant it—not playful, not teasing, but aggressive. Like you wanted to hurt him. Like hurting him was the point.
His hand had moved on its own. Over his boxers. Slow strokes that he told himself were nothing—just adjusting, just resettling, just dealing with a normal physical response that would pass if he ignored it—
And then he had groaned.
Out loud. Into his empty apartment. A sound that came from somewhere deeper than his throat, pulled out of him by the memory of your hand on his leg and the way your nails bit through polyester like it was paper.
He threw the phone aside. Tossed the laptop toward the foot of the bed. Pressed both hands over his face, palms digging into his eye sockets, and lay there.
He shouldn't have started doing this.
He should not be doing this.
He is a professional athlete who earns more money in a week than—he is not jacking off to the physio's daughter. That's a line. That's a hard, definitive, nonnegotiable line that he is not going to cross because he has standards and boundaries and a roster of women on his phone who would be here in ten minutes if he—
He turned onto his side.
And the pillow was there.
Look. If you've never had a dick, you can't understand what he's about to explain, so judgment needs to go on hold for a second.
The pillow was right there. Soft. Cool against his overheated skin. Positioned exactly where his hips ended up when he rolled over, and the contact—the accidental, completely unplanned friction of cotton against the front of his boxers—made his dick punch up so hard his thighs clenched.
He pressed into it. He’s only human.
A lazy, half-conscious roll of his hips, his cock grinding against the pillow through his boxers and the pressure had hit so fucking good that his breath had caught and his hand fisted in the sheets and he had thought ’okay, maybe just—‘
No.
Absolutely not.
But yes.
Pillow fucking. He was about to start pillow fucking.
When did he become a fucking loser, seriously.
He has options. That's the fucking thing. He has excellent options. He has an entire contact list full of options with names and faces and bodies that would put this pillow to shame.
But something about this—about the specific quality of need coiling behind his navel—didn't feel like a phone call. Didn't feel like company.
It felt private.
Hungry in a way that required his own hand and his own imagination and absolutely nothing else in the room.
He rolled flat on his back.
Stared at the ceiling.
The thing is—and this is the part he's annoyed about—Kim Taehyung does not jack off.
Kim Taehyung does not need to.
Kim Taehyung opens a contacts app. Kim Taehyung has, on rotation, a system designed by a younger and slightly stupider version of himself but functional in every measurable way. Hots for when he wants the lights off and his brain off and the whole thing handled in under an hour. Pretties for when he wants to be photographed walking into a restaurant first. Cutes for when his ego needs a sponge bath. And the Sexys—the rare ones, the ones who make him work—for when he wants to feel something with teeth in it.
Five minutes. Ten, tops. He could be balls deep in someone qualified.
He could call Agne.
He could text. She wouldn't text back, of course. She doesn't text first, she doesn't text second, she doesn't text. But if he sent a ‘hey’ she'd let him know what errand he had to run before she'd unlock her front door.
His dick does not respond.
His dick, which has been ten thousand percent online for the last forty-five minutes, just sits there. Hard and uninterested and insulted that he's even bringing other women up.
Huh.
Okay.
He could call Marina, then. Pretty 412, give or take. The one who lives off Castellana, the one with the laugh, the one who never asks where things are going because she already knows and that's the appeal—low-effort, low-stakes, low-aftermath, in and out, polite text in the morning, no follow-up.
Nothing.
His cock does not even flinch.
What the fuck.
Okay, fine. Kioba. Cute 209. Soft, pliant, openly impressed by absolutely everything he does. The one who looks at him like he invented sex. The one he could break down in twenty minutes flat just by murmuring ’good girl’ in the right register because she goes molten the second a man with abs maintains eye contact.
His brain recoils.
Recoils. Like he just suggested filing taxes.
He stares at the ceiling.
What is happening.
This is—seriously, what is this.
He's lying in his own bed with the kind of erection that could legally be classified as a public menace and his brain is rejecting every single woman on his roster like a fucked-up vending machine spitting bills back.
He scrolls through them mentally. Hots, Pretties, Cutes, Sexys—the whole color-coded apparatus he built precisely so this would never be a problem—and every face that appears gets immediately voted down by some part of him he doesn't have the energy to interrogate.
Inconvenient.
Deeply, profoundly, embarrassingly inconvenient.
He shoves his boxers down.
His cock springs free, slaps up against his stomach with enough force that it actually stings—that wet, heavy thwack of a man who's been hard for too long without doing something about it—and he makes a sound that's half a laugh and half a wince.
"Dude." He lifts his head, looks down at it, deeply unimpressed. "You're embarrassing both of us."
It twitches.
"Yeah," he mutters. "Same."
He drops his head back.
Stares at the ceiling some more.
He needs to have a serious sit-down with Taehyung Jr. at some point. Discuss boundaries. Maybe a HR-style intervention.
There's a roster. There's a system. The system was designed for exactly this kind of moment—hard at midnight, alone in bed, nothing to do—and the system has just gone on strike.
Solo work, then.
Fine.
Fine.
He reaches blindly for the nightstand drawer, fumbles past the watch box and the airpods case and the little pouch where he keeps the coke he's not touching tonight because he is, allegedly, a professional, and his fingers close around the thing he forgot he owned.
Marco's gift.
Marco gave it to him at the beginning of last season as a joke. Hamstring strain, two weeks off the pitch, two weeks off everything else by his physio's order, and Marco had walked into his apartment with a gift bag and that fucking smile and pulled out a top-shelf fleshlight like he was handing over a championship medal.
«For your suffering, brother.»
Taehyung had laughed. Thrown it in the drawer. Forgotten about it.
Until now.
He looks at it.
It looks back.
He sighs.
He sighs the sigh of a man whose ancestors are watching, whose contract is worth eight figures, whose face is on the side of three buildings in Madrid, and who is about to fuck a silicone tube because his brain has unilaterally decided that the only acceptable woman for tonight is the one woman he absolutely, categorically, professionally cannot have.
He spits in his palm. Coats his cock once, slow, top to base, and the slick drag of his own hand makes his hips jerk before he's even started.
Christ. He's leaking. Pre-cum already beading at the tip, smearing under his thumb, and he uses it—rubs it down the shaft, gets himself wet enough that when he positions the fleshlight and presses the head against the opening it's already stupidly easy, already too good before he's even in.
He sinks in.
The sound that comes out of him is somewhere between a hiss and a moan and he doesn't have the dignity to be embarrassed about it because fuck, this thing is tight, it's hot, it's slick, and his brain has already replaced what's happening to his cock with what he wants to be happening to his cock, which is you.
You.
Bent over for him. Underneath him. On top of him.
He doesn't care, he doesn't have the focus, but you.
Your mouth. Your hands. Your nails on his back the way they were on his thigh, but worse. Meaner.
Because he's the one who's earning them this time.
Because he's the one between your legs giving you a reason.
He starts moving.
Slow at first—long, deep strokes, hand at the base of the toy, working it down over himself like he's the one doing the fucking, like you're the one taking it—and his other hand goes up over his head, gripping the headboard, because he needs something to anchor against or he's going to lose the rhythm.
Fuck.
When did jacking off feel like this?
He doesn't remember it being this good. He's pretty sure it wasn't. He's pretty sure this is what people who jack off regularly are getting and nobody told him because if he'd known he wouldn't have spent the last six years booking room service for women he didn't want to share breakfast with.
He pumps faster.
His hips are starting to move on their own now, fucking up into it, and his brain is already deep into it, already past the part where he's pretending this is recreational and into the part where he's narrating, where he's running a track, where every thrust comes with a line he'd say if you were actually here.
‘Yeah?’
That's the first one. That's always the first one. Low, smug, just a syllable to make sure you're listening, his mouth at your jaw, his cock buried so deep you'd feel it in your stomach—
‘Yeah? That's it. There you go, Gomi.’
Christ. He's saying it in his head and his hand speeds up like his hand can hear him.
’What's that, hm?’
He's pushing into you. Splitting you open. Taking his time on the first stroke because you'd be tight, you'd be so fucking tight, of course you would, of course a girl who looks at him like he's a stain on her schedule would clamp down on his cock like she's trying to squeeze him to death. Even your pussy would be unimpressed. Even your pussy would be giving him the cold shoulder right up until the moment it wasn't.
’So unimpressed all the time, Gomi. Always so fucking bored. Always such a smart mouth. And then I stuff you full of dick and suddenly you can't talk, hm?’
He bites his lower lip. His eyes have closed without his permission. He can almost see it—your face, that face, the one you put on when you've decided he isn't worth processing, except now your eyes are wet and your mouth is open and there's nothing flat about the way you're looking at him because his cock has reorganized your priorities.
’Yeah. Suddenly real fucking impressed, aren't you, Gomi. Suddenly very fucking interested in my cock.’
Fuck. Fuck.
The toy is making sounds. Wet, obscene, slick noises that should be disgusting and aren't, that are making his thighs shake, and he's fucking up into it harder now, the headboard creaking under his grip, and somewhere in the back of his head a mastermind voice is going ’easy, slow it down, you'll come too fast’, and he is ignoring that voice as hard (ha) as he can.
He wants to come too fast.
He wants to come embarrassingly fast.
He wants you to laugh at him for it and then keep your nails dug into his back anyway.
His mouth is moving without sound, the fantasy running across the inside of his skull like a broadcast, and your lips are right there, your fucking lips, and in his head he's leaning down and biting the bottom one because he's wanted to bite it since the first day when you didn't bother to look up from your textbook, and you taste like cherry, you taste like the picotas you live off, you taste like that artificial sour-sweet sting that he's been craving horridly lately.
God. Your fucking lips.
He kisses you in his head. He kisses you so much in his head that his actual mouth opens into nothing, breath dragging, and his free hand has come down off the headboard and is gripping the meat of his own thigh hard enough to bruise.
He's chasing the feeling. The one your nails left. The one he's been thinking about every twelve minutes since the briefing room. He digs his own fingernails into his quad and rolls his hips up at the same time and his cock hits the back of the toy and it's so good he sees a flash of white.
‘That's it. That's it, Gomi. Take it. Look at me. Look at me when you take it.’
In his head you're shoving at his chest the way you shoved him in the elevator that morning, palms flat, two-handed, but it's a token because he's already balls deep, because your legs are already wrapped around his hips, because your nails are already pricking down his shoulder blades and starting to break skin.
You'd tell him to pull out, you absolutely would.
And in his head he just—
Doesn’t.
In his head he grins down at you, wrecked, sweating, and grabs your hip hard enough to bruise and grinds deeper and says ‘nope’ and fucking fills you up. Stuffs you. Floods you. Cums inside, even though you told him not to, because you told him not to, holding eye contact while it happens, watching your face do something new.
The orgasm hits him like a tackle.
His arm flies up and he clamps it over his mouth, biceps to lips, biting down into his own arm so hard he tastes copper because the sound that wants to come out of him is too big for the room, too big for the building, too big for the version of himself he’s allowed to be in public—and his cock pulses, and pulses, and he is dimly, distantly aware that he is cumming into the fleshlight in a quantity that has no precedent, that his hips are still jerking, that his thighs are quaking, that his whole body is convulsing through it in waves that seem to keep coming for an obscene amount of time.
His vision goes white.
White, then black, then static.
When he comes back down he’s panting against his own bicep, teeth still pressed to skin, his cock still buried in the toy, his free hand fisted so hard in the sheet that he’s gonna have to ice it tomorrow.
“Holy fuck.”
He says it into his arm.
His chest is heaving. His hairline is wet. The sheets under him are soaked through where his back hit them. He smells like sweat and sex and the salt-bright tang of his own cum, and his mouth is dry, and his lips are a little swollen from biting them, and his cock is still twitching weakly in the fleshlight like please can we go again.
He feels sick for exactly five seconds.
Sick like what the fuck. Sick like did that just happen. Sick like in what world did Kim Taehyung just have the biggest orgasm of his life from a fleshlight and a fantasy of the physio’s daughter telling him to pull out and him not pulling out.
In what world.
In which world.
Then the sick passes.
And underneath it, under the immediate horror of it, there is—
Oh.
Oh, that’s bad.
There is purring satisfaction.
His whole body feels soft, and sluggish, the usual sensation that comes after a good meal, a good match, a good fight, that says that was the right thing, that says do that again, that says we found it. His chest is loose. His shoulders, which have been knotted up around his ears for weeks, are flat against the mattress for the first time in he doesn’t know how long.
He blinks at the ceiling.
The ceiling, again, has nothing to say.
“Okay,” he mutters, to nobody. “Okay. We’re not unpacking that. We’re not unpacking any of that.”
He pulls the fleshlight off.
“Jesus.”
The amount of cum inside it is, frankly, unreasonable.
Like, medically. Like, he should be hydrating. Like, where did all of that come from, when did his body manufacture all of that, what is happening to him.
He sets the toy aside on the nightstand to deal with later, falls back against the pillows, drags an arm over his face.
His heartbeat is slowing. His breathing is evening out. There’s a low, content rumble behind his sternum that feels suspicious but feels too good to interrogate.
He just had the biggest fucking orgasm of his life imagining a girl who has never once, in the recorded history of his interactions with her, told him she wants him.
He should be losing his mind right now.
He’s not losing his mind.
He’s smiling. Tiny. Stupid. Into the crook of his own elbow.
“Okay,” he mumbles, mostly to the ceiling, partially to his cock, partially to himself. “Okay. We’re not gonna make this a thing.”
His cock, soft and spent and thoroughly drained, doesn’t even twitch.
“Cool. Glad we agree.”
His eyes are heavy. The kind of heavy that means his body has decided the day is over now whether he likes it or not.
He turns his head. The pillow is right there—the same pillow he was about to disrespect twenty minutes ago.
He pulls it under his cheek.
His last thought, before the dark takes him, is that the cotton smells faintly like his own skin, faintly like lemon detergent, and—weirdly, stupidly, traitorously—he wonders, just for a half-second, what your pillow smells like.
Picotas, probably.
His mouth twitches.
He’s out before he can finish the thought.
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚛𝚘 𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚘𝚊 (i want bbq)
You stare at the WhatsApp notification blinking from the corner of your laptop screen and let out a breath through your nose that’s maybe 40% sigh and 60% resignation.
You minimize it.
Miss Díaz is at the front of the lecture hall drawing a diagram on the whiteboard that looks like she’s planning a murder—angles and dotted lines converging on a kneecap. The Q-angle. Quadriceps line of pull relative to the patellar tendon’s insertion at the tibial tuberosity.
Good. Fine. Paying attention. Being a student. Absorbing knowledge like a functional adult who came to university to learn and not to babysit a—
A soft snore ripples from your left.
Your pen stops.
The sound has a signature: wet, nasal, slightly whistling on the inhale, like a golden retriever sleeping in a patch of sun. You’ve sat next to this sound for exactly eleven days of shared lectures and you could pick it out of a police lineup.
You drive your elbow sideways into his ribs.
Namjoon jolts upright so fast his pen launches off the desk, clatters across the floor, rolls under the chair of the girl in front of you who doesn’t even flinch because this is the third time it’s happened this week. His hand slaps the notebook. His eyes snap wide open like someone who has definitely been awake this entire time and was simply resting his eyelids in a meditative state.
“Patellar maltracking,” he says instantly. Loud enough that two heads turn.
You blink at him.
He blinks back.
“…Right?” he adds, quieter.
“You were snoring.”
“I was breathing heavily.”
“Through your mouth. With sound effects.”
He groans—low, theatrical, a groan that belongs in a hospital ward honestly and not a biomechanics lecture—and folds forward onto the desk, forearms flat, face buried. The collar of his hoodie bunches up around his ears.
“I can’t do this today,” he mumbles into the laminate.
“It’s eleven AM.”
“Time is a construct and I’m in crisis.” He turns his face sideways so one eye is visible, blinking up at you like a fish on a dock. “She hasn’t texted me back.”
You tap your pen against your notebook twice. “Marta?”
He lifts his head. Looks at you. The betrayal in his expression could be framed.
“Huh? What? No—Marta left me on read three days ago and I decided that meant she hates me. I’m talking about Leia. Keep up, Y/N. Come on.” He props his chin on his forearms, wounded. “I’m sharing my trauma with you.”
“How many girls are you texting.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It feels like the point.”
“The point,” he says, pressing a palm flat against his chest like he’s about to recite the Constitution, “is that I sent Leia a meme—a great meme, by the way, A-tier, certified—and she opened it and just. Nothing. Twelve hours. Not a ha-ha. Not a reaction. Not even a pity-tap on the like button. Just seen.”
“Maybe she didn’t find it funny.”
“It was objectively funny.”
“Maybe her standards are higher than yours.”
“Maybe you’re dead inside.”
You write another line in your notebook.
Miss Díaz has moved on. The diagram now has arrows pointing in four directions like a weather map of knee dysfunction.
“Namjoon.”
“Mm.”
“Why are you even in this class.”
He goes very still.
“Aren’t you in the year above me.”
Stiller.
“I’m sharing my trauma with you,” he says, lifting his head fully now, betrayed. “I’m peeling back the layers. I’m being vulnerable. And you decide this is the moment to dig into the gaping wound of my academic record.”
“I’m just curious.”
“You’re cruel. You’re so cruel. You walk around looking like a normal person and inside you’re a Bond villain.” He bemoans it with his whole torso, shoulders rounding, but keeps going anyway. “I failed the unit in Seoul, ’kay? The system was different. The grading was different. The professor had vendettas.”
“Mhm.”
“And I’m here on a transfer credit situation that requires me to retake biomech in the host country’s curriculum, which, by the way, is taught in English, which is also not my first language, even though I’m fluent, but there’s a difference between fluent and pelvis-girdle-dynamic-stabilization-during-gait fluent—”
“Sure.”
“—and you’re sitting there like, ‘aren’t you in the year above’, like you didn’t catch me on the kindest possible day to mention that to me.”
“I’m catching you on the day you drooled on yourself and got dumped by Leia.”
“I didn’t get dumped. We weren’t—”
“On read for twelve hours. From a meme.”
He lowers his head back down to the desk. Soft thud. Same spot.
“Mean woman,” he says into his arm. “Mean, mean woman.”
𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚢 𝚎𝚗 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚎 (i’m in class)
𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊 (stop)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚟𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚘 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚛𝚘 𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚘𝚊 (ok but i want barbecue)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚘𝚊 𝚍𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚣𝚣𝚊 (barbecue as in pizza)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚕𝚊 𝚍𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚎𝚖𝚙𝚛𝚎 (the usual)
You feel the corner of your mouth twitch. You kill it before it becomes anything.
𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚊 𝚗𝚘𝚌𝚑𝚎? (you’re coming over tonight?)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚙𝚘𝚜 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚘 (of course)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚟𝚘𝚢 (coming)
𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚗𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚎 𝚝𝚎 𝚑𝚊 𝚒𝚗𝚟𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚍𝚘 𝚎𝚕𝚒 (nobody invited you eli)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚊𝚢 𝚝𝚎𝚝𝚊 𝚗𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚜 𝚊𝚜𝚒 (ugh sis don’t be like that)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚑𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚜 𝚚𝚞𝚎 𝚗𝚘 𝚖𝚎 𝚟𝚎𝚜 (it’s been months since you last saw me)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚗𝚘 𝚖 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚍𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚘𝚜? (don’t you miss me?)
Technically true.
He’s been in Madrid longer than you have—came up for uni a year and a half ago, got a girlfriend, got a flat in Malasaña, got himself a whole little life with Marta and exposed brick and a vintage poster you’re sure he thinks makes him interesting.
Before dad’s contract, the only way you saw each other was Eli taking the train down to Barcelona for a weekend, eating everything in the fridge, sleeping on the couch, and leaving behind three mismatched socks like some kind of textile poltergeist.
Now you and dad live twenty minutes away and he still hasn’t come by. Busy man. Cohabiting life. Girlfriend. Supposedly school, though you’re sceptical about the ratio of FIFA to actual coursework happening in that flat.
𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚗𝚘
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚃𝙴𝚃𝙰???? (SIS????)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚒𝚋𝚕𝚎 (unbelievable)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚖𝚎 𝚍𝚊 𝚒𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚕 𝚟𝚘𝚢 𝚒𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚎 (i don’t care i’m coming anyway)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚍𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚊 𝚙𝚊𝚙𝚒 𝚚 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚎𝚕 𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚘 𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚊 𝚗𝚘𝚌𝚑𝚎 (tell dad to prep the oven for tonight)
You close the app.
Namjoon hasn’t moved. Still face-down on the desk. Miss Díaz has progressed to rehabilitation protocols for patellofemoral pain syndrome, which means there’s maybe ten minutes left, and you’ve lost the thread of your notes somewhere between Q-angles and your brother’s inability to take no for an answer, which is genetic, probably. Inherited trait.
The entire family runs on stubbornness and selective hearing.
“Who’s texting you?” Namjoon mumbles, one eye cracked open.
“My brother.”
“Didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Consider yourself still in the dark.”
“Mean,” he says again, but softer this time, almost fond, and closes his eye.
Suddenly Miss Díaz caps her marker. “Chapters nine through eleven for Monday’s seminar. I want case study analysis, not summaries. If you hand me a summary, I will hand it back.”
Chairs scrape. Laptops close. Zippers, coughs, the collective exhale of people freed from academic torture.
Namjoon peels himself off the desk like a sticker that’s been left in the sun too long. There’s a faint red mark on his forehead from the wood grain. His pen is still on the ground.
“Got plans tonight?” He yawns into his fist, patting his pockets for his phone. “It’s Friday.”
“My brother’s coming over.”
“The brother you won’t tell me about?”
“That one.”
“Cool. Love the transparency. Very healthy friendship dynamic we’re building.”
You tuck your laptop into your bag, zip it shut. “He wants barbecue pizza and attention. In that order.”
“See, that’s a detail. That’s characterization. I’m learning things about you against your will and I want you to know I appreciate that.”
You shoulder your bag and head for the door. He follows, because he always follows—not in a weird way, just in a Namjoon way, like a current that doesn’t know it’s moving.
You take the corridor toward the south exit, the one that spits you out near the quad where Sofia usually waits after her sports psych lecture.
Your phone’s been buzzing intermittently. You pull it out while walking, expecting Eli, but your thumb catches on a push notification from a sports gossip account you forgot to mute.
MadridGossip 🔴 Real Madrid’s Kim Taehyung spotted leaving Tatel with Brazilian model Daiane Souza for third time this month, are they official? Sources say the pair have been ‘inseparable’ since…
You click your tongue. Lock the screen.
Namjoon glances over. His peripheral vision is annoyingly functional for someone who was comatose four minutes ago.
“Oh, right.” He adjusts his bag strap. “By the way. What’s up with you and him?”
“Huh?”
“Taehyung.”
You keep walking. Same pace. “Nothing. Literally.”
“I mean—” He scratches the back of his neck, choosing his words with seeming care. “The way he was all… ‘Is that your boyfriend?’ And the whole ‘you better watch her’ thing across a room full of people. That was—”
“That was him being a footballer.”
“That was him being something.”
“You know how they are.” You push through the glass doors into the quad. The October sun hits your face, still warm enough to feel like a lie. “They see something shiny and they want it. That’s the whole personality. Training, winning, acquiring.” You squint against the light. “I’m probably his first real interaction with a woman who doesn’t worship him and he’s just—malfunctioning. Like a cat with a laser pointer. The second it stops moving, he’ll get bored.”
Namjoon hums. Not convinced, not pushing. Just filing it.
“A cat,” he repeats.
“A very expensive, very stupid cat.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” you echo, and that’s the end of that.
Sofia’s already on the bench near the fountain, cross-legged, sunglasses pushed up into her blue hair like a headband, typing furiously on her phone with both thumbs.
She looks up when you approach and her face does that thing—the one where she’s holding a secret so big it’s physically distorting her features.
“Hi,” she says. Too bright. Way too bright.
“What did you do,” you say.
“Nothing! God. Can’t a girl just be happy on a Friday?”
Namjoon drops onto the bench beside her, groaning. “Nobody’s happy on a Friday after class.”
“I am. Because—” She locks her phone, holds it against her chest like a prayer book. “Jackson’s coming to pick me up.”
Namjoon hovers above the bench at an angle that can’t be good for his lower back, one hand still on his bag strap, mouth open.
“Jackson,” he says.
“Mhm.”
“Jackson as in Jackson Wang.”
Sofia’s grin could power a small municipality. “Mhm.”
“Jackson Wang. The Jackson Wang. Rapper. Producer. He is coming to pick you up. From university. In his car.”
“I mean, it’s easy to assume he has a car—” you start, and Namjoon’s head swivels to you so fast you hear his neck crack.
“You knew?”
You shift your bag to the other shoulder. “Knew is a strong word.”
“She knew?!” He points at you, looking at Sofia. Then points at Sofia, looking at you. His finger swings between you like a broken compass. “How long has—when did—what?”
“Oh my god.” Sofia clasps her hands together, vibrating. “She hasn’t told you.”
“Told me what?”
“Namjoon.” Sofia grabs his forearm with both hands. Her nails are painted a deep teal that matches absolutely nothing she’s wearing. “I have to tell you everything. From the beginning. From Café Luna.”
“What happened at Café Luna.”
“So Jackson and his brother Hoseok—you know Nomad, right? Obviously you know Nomad, everyone knows Nomad—they were at Café Luna, just sitting there, and Jackson literally stood up in the middle of the café and announced a party to the entire room—”
“He did not.”
“He did. Ask her. She was there.” Sofia jabs a thumb at you. “Tell him.”
“He stood up.”
“He was standing. On the floor. Being iconic.” Sofia waves you off and refocuses on Namjoon, who looks like he’s processing the existence of a new primary colour. “So there was a party. Villa Cereza. And we went. And he was there. And we talked. And then we talked more. And then—”
“Define ‘more.’”
“Namjoon, I’m getting to that part, let me build the narrative—”
You lean against the back of the bench and let them go. Sofia’s hands are moving at the speed of her mouth, which is considerable, and Namjoon keeps making sounds—small, strangled, vowel-heavy sounds—at every new piece of information, like a man watching a nature documentary about something that shouldn’t biologically exist.
Your phone buzzes.
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚝𝚎𝚝𝚊 𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚟𝚘 𝚊 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚊 𝚝𝚊𝚖𝚋𝚒𝚎𝚗 𝚗𝚘?
(sis i’m bringing marta too right?)
𝐄𝐥𝐢 🫠: 𝚍𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚚 𝚜𝚒 𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚏𝚊 (say yes pls)
𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚎𝚕𝚊 (bring her)
Sofia’s saying something about Jackson’s playlist in the car and how he played her a track he hadn’t released yet, and Namjoon is gripping the bench slats like he’s on a rollercoaster, and the sun is doing that thing where it sits low and gold and makes everything look warmer than it is.
You pocket your phone and let out a sigh.
At least you’re free from Kim Taehyung’s existence today.
Eli entered the house an hour ago like a human battering ram.
Front door slamming open, keys jangling—he still has his copy, the one dad gave him when you moved, the one he swore he’d only use ‘in emergencies’ which apparently now includes ‘I want pizza’ and ‘I haven’t seen you in two months and I missed you but I’ll die before I say that out loud’—and then seventy-eight kilos of younger brother crashing into you in the hallway with the force of someone who has not learned, in his entire life, that affection doesn’t require a running start.
“¡TETA!” (SIS!)
He’d picked you up. Actually picked you up. Spun you half a rotation before you got an elbow into his ribs and he dropped you, cackling, and you’d hit him with the dish towel and he’d hit you back and then you were swatting at each other in the hallway like feral children while Marta stepped through the door behind him, bag on her shoulder, watching the two of you.
“Hola, guapa,” (Hey, gorgeous) she’d said to you, over his shoulder, while he had you in a loose headlock.
“Hola, Marta,” you’d managed, muffled, one hand flat on his face trying to push him off. “Dile a tu novio que me suelte.” (Tell your boyfriend to let me go.)
“Eli, suéltala.” (Eli, let her go.)
“No quiero.” (Don’t want to.)
“Eli.”
“Vale, vale.” (Fine, fine.)
He let go. You fixed your hair. He grinned—that wide, unregulated, full-face grin that makes him look exactly like your mother and makes your chest do a thing you will never, under any circumstances, acknowledge—and pulled the Barça beanie off his head and dropped it on yours.
“Te queda mejor a ti.” (Looks better on you.)
“Todo me queda mejor que a ti.” (Everything looks better on me than on you.)
“Eso es verdad,” (That’s true) Marta said from the kitchen, already finding the stools.
That was an hour ago.
He hasn’t separated from you since, been orbiting you like a satellite with separation anxiety—leaning on the counter while you pulled ingredients out, stealing mozzarella straight from the bag, getting his hand slapped, stealing more, narrating every single thing you’re doing like a sports commentator, saying stuff like “y la teta abre el horno, señoras y señores, con una técnica impecable—” (and sis opens the oven, ladies and gentlemen, with impeccable technique—) , getting hip-checked into the fridge, bouncing back, continuing.
He’s wearing a Ronaldinho ‘03 retro jersey. Obviously. The faded one with the cracked badge and the slightly wrong shade of blue that means it’s real, not reproduction, because Eli would rather eat glass than wear a fake kit. He’s still wearing the thin gold chain that your uncle gave him, the one he never takes off, the one that matches the E on his wrist, the one that matches yours on your ankle.
You’re both pretending you haven’t noticed how the kitchen smells like the old flat when you cook.
“Que le pongas más queso, teta.” (Put more cheese on it, sis.)
“Tiene suficiente queso.” (It has enough cheese.)
“No tiene suficiente queso. Nunca tiene suficiente queso. ¿Verdad, Marta?” (It doesn’t have enough cheese. It never has enough cheese. Right, Marta?)
Marta’s perched on the kitchen stool with her chin in her hand, dark hair tucked behind one ear, watching the two of you with a smile.
“A mí no me metáis en esto,” (Don’t drag me into this) she says, but her eyes are warm, and you like her so much it’s almost annoying.
You like that she doesn’t try to be part of the sibling thing.
She just sits in the warmth of it and lets it exist.
“¿A qué hora viene papá?” (What time is dad coming?) Eli asks, peering into the oven through the glass like the pizza is going to stand up and dance.
“Dijo que a las ocho.” (He said eight.)
“Son las ocho y cuarto.” (It’s eight fifteen.)
“Pues llegará a las ocho y cuarto, ¿no?” (Then he’ll get here at eight fifteen, won’t he?)
“Qué borde eres, teta.” (You’re so rude, sis.)
You bump him with your hip. He bumps you back.
Then the front door opens.
“¡Papi!” Eli is already moving, abandoning you mid-sentence, crossing the kitchen in three strides toward the hallway.
You hear it—the familiar shuffle of your dad’s shoes on the tile, the soft “hombre, Eli, qué alegría” (hey, Eli, what a joy) and the sound of a hug happening.
“¿Y Marta? ¿Ha venido?” (And Marta? Did she come?)
“Aquí estoy, Jesús.” (I’m here, Jesús.) Marta raises a hand from the stool.
Your dad crosses to kiss both her cheeks.
“Qué guapa estás, hija.” (How pretty you look, sweetheart.)
“Gracias, Jesús.” (Thank you, Jesús.)
“¡A ella le dice guapa y a mí ni me mira!” (He calls her pretty and doesn’t even look at me!) Eli protests, spreading his arms.
“A ti te veo todos los días por videollamada, payaso.” (I see you every day on video call, clown.)
Warm. It’s warm.
The kitchen is full and the oven is on and your brother is here and your dad is here and Marta is here and this is the closest the house has felt to home since the moving boxes were unpacked—
“Also,” your dad says, switching to a tone you recognize, the one he uses when he’s about to deliver information he knows won’t land well, “me he encontrado a alguien en el camino.” (I ran into someone on the way.)
Your hands stop on the oven mitt.
Someone steps out from behind your dad in the hallway.
Leans a shoulder against the kitchen doorframe. Raises one hand in a wave—lazy, loose-wristed, the kind of wave that says sup without any of the social awareness required to recognize that ‘sup’ is not the appropriate energy for walking into someone else’s home on a Friday night uninvited.
“Hey, Gomi.”
So much for Kim Taehyung’s existence not bothering you today.
There he fucking is.
In your kitchen. In your house.
God, why is he everywhere?
He’s in sweats and a black tee that’s doing nothing to disguise the chain at his neck or the width of his shoulders or the fact that he looks like he drove near here on purpose and is now pretending he didn’t. His hair is damp at the temples. Post-practice. That lemon-and-soap thing clinging to the air around him, already seeping into the kitchen, already colonizing the rosemary.
Your death glare could strip paint.
“Tiene partido mañana,” your dad says quickly, reading your face as expected of the man who has survived twenty-plus years of parenting you. “Necesita que le revise la espalda. Me lo encontré de camino.” (He has a match tomorrow. Needs me to check his back. I ran into him on the way.)
You are absolutely certain Kim Taehyung did not ‘run into’ your father.
You are certain of this the way you are about gravity, photosynthesis, and the fact that Marco probably helped coordinate whatever GPS-timed interception manoeuvre got him into your dad’s car.
He rant into Taehyung on his way.
Sure. And pigs fly.
Your eyes haven’t left Taehyung.
The fucker is reeling, clearly pleased with himself—the jaw is doing a slight clench-unclench of suppressed satisfaction, and his eyes are touring your kitchen, landing on the oven, the island, you. As if knowingly proud of having just gained access to a restricted area and thus cataloguing everything before security notices.
Eli, who had been mid-sentence to your dad, has gone quiet.
He tracks from Taehyung’s face to his chest to the black Nike swoosh on his tee to the general aura of Real Madrid that clings to him like cologne, and his expression undergoes a transformation that you can only describe as allergic reaction.
“Qué tal.” (What’s up.)
Taehyung nods. “Hey. Good to meet you.”
English. Predictably.
Eli turns to you. His eyebrows say everything his mouth doesn’t, but his mouth says it anyway.
“Un crack.” He gestures vaguely at Taehyung with his whole hand. “Una década en el país y no habla español.” (A whole prodigy. A decade in the country and he doesn’t speak Spanish.)
“Elías,” your dad says, in the ‘please behave’ voice.
Eli raises both palms. Surrendering. Not surrendering. Performing surrender while his jaw stays tight and his eyes stay on Taehyung with the warmth of a border patrol checkpoint.
Marta, for her part, takes a quiet sip of her water. Says nothing.
Taehyung lets his eyes do a slow scan of his on the whole length of you. Then settles on your face, and whatever he finds there makes the corner of his mouth twitch.
Fucker.
“Nice place,” he says.
“Like you haven’t been here before,” you mutter between gritted teeth.
Taehyung tilts his head. “Have I?”
“¿Ha estado aquí?” (He’s been here?) Eli whips around so fast his chain swings. His eyes snap between you and Taehyung. “¿Qué dices, teta? ¿Cuándo ha estado aquí?” (What are you saying, sis? When was he here?)
“Eli, para.” (Eli, stop.)
“No, no, no—¿cómo que para? ¿El número dos del Real Madrid ha estado en esta casa y nadie me lo ha—” (No no no—what do you mean stop? Real Madrid’s number two has been in this house and nobody told me—)
“En inglés, Eli.” (In English, Eli.) Your dad places a hand on Eli’s shoulder and squeezes once. “Si hay alguien que no habla español, hablamos en inglés. Queremos que nuestros invitados se sientan cómodos.” (If there’s someone who doesn’t speak Spanish, we speak English. We want our guests to feel comfortable.)
Eli’s jaw works sideways. He looks at your dad. Looks at Taehyung. Looks at you. Back to Taehyung.
“Guests,” he repeats, in English, like the word has a flavor and he’s not enjoying it.
“Yeah.” He funally takes a step into the kitchen. “We got real acquainted last time. Didn’t we, Gomi.”
Fucker, fucker, fucker.
Something in your peripheral vision moves. Eli. Leaning forward. Radar fully online.
“Why does he call you Gomi?” Eli asks, tone as if he was a detective who’s just found a second set of fingerprints at the crime scene. “Teta. Why does he call you that.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, it’s a nickname. People don’t just—”
“It’s short for Gominola,” Taehyung offers, helpfully, because he has never in his life read a room and chosen silence. “She’s always eating those cherry things. Picotas?”
“I know what picotas are,” Eli says. “I’m from Barcelona.”
The temperature in the kitchen shifts about four degrees. Your dad clears his throat.
“Well.” Your dad claps his hands once, the universal father signal for ‘we are moving past this.’ “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since two. So let’s have dinner first, and then later we’ll do the treatment, right, Taehyung? Can’t work on an empty stomach.”
Taehyung nods with a scornful smirk.
Dad gestures at the oven. “Are the pizzas ready?”
They are. You grab the oven mitt. Eli materializes at your elbow to help because he hasn’t stopped orbiting you since he arrived and he’s clearly decided that the orbit now includes surveillance duties.
Taehyung settles into the dining area like it’s a press lounge. Pulls out a chair—the one closest to the kitchen pass-through, the one with the best sightline to you—and sits. Doesn’t ask.
“You’re not eating?” your dad asks him, already cutting into his slice.
“Already ate. Pre-match protocol—can’t mess with the macros.”
“Right. The regime.” Your dad nods, professional. Respects it. Doesn’t push.
So Taehyung sits there. At your family dinner table.
Watching you.
You sit, placing the pizzas in the center of the table. Eli drops into the chair to your left—the one he always takes, the one that was his at every table in the Barcelona flat too. Marta’s across from him. Your dad’s at the head. And Taehyung is in front of you, not eating, one arm draped over the back of his own chair, legs spread under the table the way men who’ve never been told to take up less space sit.
His knee is six inches from yours.
Fine. This is fine. You’re eating pizza in your own home with your family and there is a professional footballer watching you chew and it is fine.
You bite into the barbecue chicken pizza. It’s good. Eli’s recipe was right—barbecue base, chicken, red onion, extra mozzarella. Got the crust perfect, the way he always does, thin and just charred enough at the edges, the way mom liked it.
Something nudges your foot, slow press of a socked foot against the inside of your ankle, sliding up half an inch, settling there.
You choke.
The pizza—specifically a piece of chicken the size of a euro coin—lodges sideways in your throat, and you cough, hard, eyes watering, hand to your mouth, and the entire table turns to look at you.
Taehyung reaches across. Picks up the water glass in front of you—your glass, the one with the lemon slice you dropped in twenty minutes ago—and holds it out.
“Careful, Gomi.” His voice is low. Almost gentle. Almost concerned. “Don’t choke on big things.” He tilts the glass toward you. “Need to start with smaller ones.”
You take the water. Drink. Set it down. Wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.
“I’m fine,” you say. Hoarse.
“You sure?” The mock concern is still there, sitting on his face like a mask someone ironed on too perfectly.
He knows what he’s doing. He knows what ‘choke’ sounds like when he says it. He knows what it all sounds like. The innuendo of it.
And he knows you know.
And he is having the time of his life.
“Positive.”
Eli’s hand is suspended between his plate and his mouth at a forty-five-degree angle that suggests he stopped mid-chew and hasn’t resumed.
His eyes move from Taehyung’s face to yours. Back. Forth.
Taehyung’s foot finds yours again before you’ve even swallowed the last bite.
Bold. Stupidly bold, considering there’s a table full of people three feet away who’d lose their minds if they knew what was happening under it.
You don’t look up. You will not give him the satisfaction of a flinch.
But yeah, that’s definitely his socked foot—which means the fucker took his shoe off. Under your family’s dinner table, mid-pizza, with your father one seat over discussing his back like a normal human professional athlete, Kim Taehyung removed a shoe.
You want to break every toe on that foot. Individually. With ceremony.
The foot creeps higher. Calf. Back of your knee. Settles there like it’s allowed, like it pays rent.
Okay. No. Absolutely not.
You reach down, just adjusting your flip flop like a woman who definitely isn’t plotting violence—and then you go for it. Quick jab, aimed at his knee, the kind of move that should make him yelp and retreat and reconsider every choice that led him to this table.
He doesn’t yelp. He catches it.
Hand closing around your ankle before your foot even lands, fast enough that you don’t have time to process it as a threat before it’s already happening—and then he’s pulling, dragging your foot forward, and pressing it flat against—
Oh.
Oh, this absolute piece of shit—
His dick is hard. Unmistakably, inconveniently, table-cloth-be-damned hard, and your foot is currently resting against the proof of it because he just put it there, like that’s a normal thing to do at a family dinner.
He looks at you through his lashes. Doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of himself—just settles deeper into the chair, spreads his knees a little wider under the table like he’s getting comfortable, and the motion drags your foot with it, presses it in harder.
His smirk pulls wider.
He rolls his hips. Barely—an inch, maybe less, just enough that you feel it, just enough that it could pass as a man shifting his weight in a chair that’s slightly too small for him, if you didn’t know exactly what you were currently in contact with.
The absolute audacity. The sheer, unhinged audacity of doing this.
“Comfortable?” you say, so flat it should end this.
“Very.” He says it like he’s talking about the chair, like his voice isn’t doing that low, rough thing underneath the word. “Good seat.”
“Mm.”
You hold his gaze. He holds yours.
Somewhere in your chest something is doing aerobics it has no business doing, and you shut it down, lock it in the same drawer where you keep every other inconvenient thing you refuse to look at directly.
Under the table, your foot stays exactly where it is because he’s trapped it.
He bucks again. Slight. A man enjoying himself entirely too much for someone currently risking his kneecaps in enemy territory.
Cool. Fine.
Fine.
If he wants a game, you’ll play the game. You’ll play it so well he’ll regret inventing it.
You plant your heel on the edge of the chair between his thighs, brace, and roll the arch of your foot firmly along the length of his cock through the sweats.
He chokes.
Actually chokes.
His body jerks forward, spine bowing off the back of the chair, one hand flying up to the edge of the table to catch himself. The wood gives a tiny thud under his palm. His lips part around a sound that doesn’t quite make it out.
Eyebrows shoot up. Pleasure, not surprise.
Well. Both.
It hits him before he can fake it, and you see it in real time—muscles going tight under his shirt, jaw going slack, that first raw flinch when a man goes from ‘I’m in control of this’ to ‘oh, fuck.’
Good.
You feel his cock kick hard in response, thick and hot and so fucking there that for a second it’s all you can feel—the ridge of his shaft, the blunt weight of the head catching under the ball of your foot when you drag back.
This is the part where a sane person backs off. Pulls away. Reconsiders his life choices, maybe apologizes with his eyes, lets the foot go and pretends none of it happened.
Taehyung, as expected, is no sane person.
Instead, his eyes come up to you.
Bright, way too fucking bright. There’s a flush high on his cheekbones now, pink climbing out from under his skin like someone turned the saturation up.
The look in his eyes is worse, though. You’d expect guilty, or caught—but instead it’s feral. A perverted little gleam like you’ve just handed him front-row tickets to his own favourite show.
“You good?” your dad asks, mid-bite, not even looking up.
“Yeah.” Taehyung’s voice comes out rougher than the word should require. He clears his throat. Tries again. “Yeah, just—cramp. Leg cramp.”
“Drink more water,” your dad says, sage, unaware, savage in his obliviousness. “Dehydration. You boys never hydrate properly.”
“Right.” Taehyung’s eyes haven’t left you. “Dehydrated. That’s it.”
You arch a brow at him. Blank. Unbothered. The exact face you’d give a vending machine that ate your euro.
He bites his bottom lip—actually bites it, teeth catching the curve of it like he’s holding something back by force—and under the table his hips shift, just slightly, just enough that you feel the slow roll of it against the sole of your foot, full of intention now, not hiding it anymore.
Oh, he likes this.
He likes this entirely too much. The bastard’s two seconds from grinding himself into a footjob in your father’s dining room and somehow still looking like he’s the one in control of the situation, like this was always where the night was headed, like he planned every single second of it from the moment he pulled his shoe off.
Eli’s saying something to Marta about the crust. You catch maybe a third of it. The rest of your attention is locked on the way Taehyung’s eyes darken.
“Eat your pizza,” you tell him.
“Not really hungry for pizza right now.” His voice has dropped, low enough that it’s only for you, threaded with something rough at the edges.
The implication sits there. Heavy. Obvious.
You refuse to acknowledge it with anything beyond a slow, unimpressed blink.
Instead, your toes curl and his lip goes white under his teeth.
You can’t deny the satisfaction that curls in your low abdomen. Because if Kim Taehyung embarrasses himself in his own sweatpants over a foot, that's not your problem. That's a him problem. A very public, very avoidable him problem.
His knuckles have gone bloodless on the table edge.
You almost feel bad.
You don't.
"¿Alguien quiere más?" (Anyone want more?) Eli holds up the last slice, oblivious, gesturing with it like a tiny greasy trophy.
"No, gracias." (No, thanks.)
Taehyung doesn't answer. Taehyung is currently incapable of language, a muscle working overtime somewhere near his ear, and you watch the slow, helpless roll of his hips stutter—once—like his body forgot it was supposed to be subtle.
Your dad pushes his chair back.
"Bueno." He stretches, the particular groan of a man who's eaten too fast after a long day. "Eli, cariño, ¿recoges con tu hermana? Yo voy a revisar a Taehyung." (Alright. Eli, love, can you clean up with your sister? I'm going to check on Taehyung.)
The world resumes.
You cough. Loud. Theatrical. Retract your foot so fast you nearly take his shoe with you.
Taehyung makes a sound like he's been unplugged.
"Taehyung." Your dad's already up, rolling his shoulders, all business. "Coming through for the session?"
"Yeah." He clears his throat, tries again, lands somewhere closer to human. "Yeah. Just—one sec."
He doesn't move. Doesn't stand. Sits very still, like a man calculating the structural integrity of his own sweatpants.
"Need to check something. Carlos sent a few messages." He pulls his phone out of his pocket way too quickly to be casual, never wanted a prop more in his life. Doesn't look at it. "You can start prepping. I'll be there in a minute."
Your dad nods, unbothered, already halfway to the hallway. "Vale. No tardes." (Okay. Don't take long.)
He doesn't.
Taehyung waits exactly until your dad's back is turned to look at you.
That look.
The one with absolutely zero apology in it. Brows up, mouth doing something that wants to be a smirk and is currently too busy being strangled by his own self-control.
"Carlos," you say, flat. "Right."
"Carlos," he agrees. Voice still not fully recovered. "Big update. Urgent."
"Mhm."
He shifts again. Longer this time. You watch him breathe out slow through his nose like he's doing math, like he's reciting the back four, like he's doing literally anything except sitting at a dinner table half-hard because the physio's daughter ground her foot into him over barbecue chicken pizza.
Eli's gathering plates two feet away, blessedly absorbed in his own monologue about crust ratios.
You stand. Stack your own plate on top of Marta's, who gives you a look over the rim of her water glass—small, knowing, entirely too perceptive for someone who said nothing the whole meal.
You ignore it.
Taehyung's still got the phone up, thumb not moving, screen probably black, the world's least convincing performance of a man checking urgent texts.
"Take your time," you tell him, sweet as arsenic. "Wouldn't want you walking into a treatment room compromised."
His lips do something—wiggle, fight a smile, lose. Hold it back the way you'd hold back a sneeze. Badly.
"Gonna take a longer time if you keep looking at me like that."
"Like what."
"Like that. With disdain."
"You're sick in the head."
"And you're hot as fuck when you wanna murder me."
You blink. Once. Slow. The blink that's killed lesser men.
"Congratulations." You shift the plates higher on your forearm. "Should I get you a sticker."
"I'd rather have your foot back."
"Seek help."
"You're making it worse."
"For you?"
"For Taehyung Junior." He points down, helpfully, in case you'd forgotten where the problem lives.
"Ew."
"Yeah, that." He points at you next. Same finger. "Hot as fuck."
He stands. One hand slides into the pocket of his sweats, casual as breathing, and he adjusts himself through the fabric with the unbothered ease of a man fixing his collar. No shame.
It's somehow the most obscene thing he's done all night, and he didn't even try.
"You good?" you ask, flat, nodding at his hand like you're inquiring about the weather.
"Getting there."
"Devastating update for everyone."
"You're welcome to check." He glances down at his crotch, then back up at you through his lashes, slow. "Professional opinion. Physio's daughter and all."
"I'd rather eat glass."
"Kinky."
"Go."
Your dad's voice carries down the hall. "Tae?"
He straightens. Snaps into something resembling business posture, which on him just means his shoulders square and his face does a thing that's supposed to read as composed.
"Coming."
Two fingers point at you. Lazy V. Not a salute. Not a peace sign. Something dumber than both.
"Try not to miss me too hard."
You look at him with the flattest expression available to the human face.
"Dream big, Zero."
That grin again. Quick. Insufferably pleased, for a man who has several things to be ashamed of tonight.
He turns. Heads down the hallway. One more discreet adjustment before he disappears through the treatment room door.
Fucker.
Taehyung looks absentminded after the treatment, which shouldn’t be weird because you were already questioning his lack of braincells before this.
You don’t linger on it too much, just watching your dad strip off the latex gloves at the sink in the treatment room and give Taehyung's back one last practiced glance like he's running through the checklist in his head.
"Should be fine for tomorrow," he says. "Bit of tightness, nothing dramatic. Ice tonight. Mobility work in the morning. And no stupid heroics if something pulls."
Taehyung nods from the edge of the table, shirt already back on, chain catching the light when he lowers his chin.
"Got it."
No joke. No ‘yes, sir.’
Your dad notices. Of course he notices. He notices everything except sexual tension in his own dining room, apparently, but muscles and mood shifts? Elite-level radar.
"You good?" he asks.
"Yeah." Taehyung rubs a hand over the back of his neck. "Just tired."
"Then go sleep." Your dad points toward the hall with the same authority he uses on multimillion-euro men and stubborn hamstrings. "And you—"
He turns to you.
"Can you see him out, cariño? Eli's massacring the kitchen and I don't trust him alone with the leftovers."
From the kitchen, right on cue: "¡Te he oído!" (I heard that!)
Your dad doesn't even raise his voice. "Perfecto." (Perfect.)
You push off the doorframe.
"Yeah. Fine."
Taehyung slides off the table. Slower than usual, but not because of pain. More like he's remembering where his limbs are one at a time. His phone's in his hand. He checks it without seeing it. Pockets it. Then immediately takes it back out again like the gesture needs somewhere to live.
Yeah. Almost like he’s not here.
Unsettling, honestly.
You lead him down the hallway, past the framed print your mum chose years ago, past the console table with Eli's keys dumped on it in a shining little pile of disrespect, past the warm atmosphere of your brother and his girlfriend cuddling on the couch.
Normally, this is where he'd start.
A comment. A jab. Something specifically calibrated to be annoying enough that you'd spend the next hour composing murder charges in your head. He usually cannot shut up around you. It's one of his worst qualities. Competitive field, but still.
Tonight he's quiet.
His thumb taps once against his thigh.
Stops.
Starts again.
You reach the front door and turn, hand on the latch. He nearly walks into you.
"Careful," you say.
"Right." He steps back half a pace. Blinks. "Sorry."
You stare at him.
Sorry.
Interesting. Disturbing. Maybe contagious. You should disinfect the hallway later.
"You concussed?" you ask.
That gets the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, but even that looks distracted. Incomplete. Like the thought had to travel farther than usual to reach his face.
"No."
"Then what's with the haunted-house energy."
He looks at you then. Properly. Not at your mouth, not at your hands, not down the line of your body like he's choosing where to be obnoxious next. Your face.
It's weird enough that you immediately dislike it.
"What?" you inquire.
He leans one shoulder against the wall by the door. Drops his gaze to the floorboards. His thumb starts that tapping thing again, steady and quiet against his thigh. Some internal metronome. You clock it because of course you do. You clock stupid details like it's a job.
Then, out of nowhere—
"What's it like, having a little brother?"
You actually laugh. Not because it's funny. Because what the fuck kind of question is that.
You look at him for the first time since leaving the treatment room. Really look.
He's not doing a bit.
There’s no grin tucked behind it, not a hint of smugness, not even a smudge of bait set neatly in the middle of the sentence.
There’s simply… That tapping thumb and that slightly pinched line between his brows that shows up when he's thinking something he doesn't want to be caught thinking.
"He's my brother," you say, like that should explain it.
"Yeah." His thumb stops. Starts again. "Must be nice."
You squint at him.
"You don't have one?"
"Nah."
He finally crouches for his shoes by the door. Doesn't look up while he says it. Just reaches for the laces, fingers quick and methodical now that they have a job to do.
"Only kid."
You fold your arms.
"Lonely only-child energy. Explains the ego."
It's supposed to land clean. Same as always. Reflex. Efficient. In, out, done. A neat little flick to the forehead of his personality.
He doesn't throw one back.
Just laces one shoe. Then the other.
Pulls the knot tight.
And the silence after it is so unhelpfully unguarded that it sits there between you like you said something wrong, which is irritating because you're fairly sure you didn't.
Eli laughs too loudly at something Marta says. The sound travels down the hall warm and easy and stupidly familiar.
Taehyung hears it too.
It looks like he smiles.
"Eli's annoying," you say, because apparently you're doing community outreach now. "Shows up uninvited. Eats my food. Asks questions like he's deposing me."
"Sounds great."
The answer comes quick enough that you glance at him again.
Still crouched. Still tying the other shoe like his life depends on symmetrical lacing. Still not looking at you.
You almost laugh.
Don't.
"It is," you say Quieter than intended. Enough truth in it to be embarrassing. "Most of the time."
He nods once.
You shift your weight.
This is why you don't do these little detours. This is why the man should stay in his natural habitat—shirtless in corridors, being unbearable, saying things that deserve prosecution. Much easier to deal with when he's acting like himself.
Or the version of himself he prefers to hand out.
He clears his throat. Shoulders come back up. Jaw settles.
"Anyway." He straightens, nods at the door. "I should let you get back to your exhausting brother."
"Mm."
"Tell him I said he's got good taste in jerseys. Ronaldinho's a legend."
You snort before you can stop yourself.
"He'll hate that you noticed."
"I know."
The grin comes back—not full wattage, but enough to be him again. Eighty percent restored. Still under maintenance.
"That's why I said it."
Of course.
You open the door. Cold air slides in at ankle level, October-thin and clean, carrying the smell of someone's grill running too late and wet pavement from a sprinkler two houses over.
He steps through it. Doesn't linger. Doesn't throw a parting line over his shoulder the way he usually does, the kind designed to live in your head for the next six hours whether you want it there or not.
You shut the door. Lock it. Stand there for a second longer than you mean to, hand still on the latch, replaying a sentence that had no business landing the way it did.
Must be nice.
What the fuck was that.
if you liked this chapter, please consider buying me a coffee!! subs get early access to chapters 1-4 weeks before they go public, depending on my work life and editing process!: ♥'ﻌ'♥
Hii KIKI I have been eyeing 25H for so long , when is it going to finish , I love to read everything in one go . And which fic are you planning on completing first so I'll start reading that one .
Hii love! Unfortunately I write a lot of fics at the same time because I have ADHD, and forcing myself to focus only on one project kills all my joy—so I need to distract myself with different AUs to keep the engine running! Which means 25H won’t be finishing anytime soon. You can check how many chapters I aim to have for each fic in their masterpost. If I’m not mistaken, 25H was estimated around 50 total—and we are only on chapter 17, so you can see what I mean! If you want to be a kikizen you have to get used to supporting ongoing WIPs I fear hahahaha. I’m sorry!
As for what fic I’m finishing next—ASW! I have written all chapters already, I just need to do the editing pass and hopefully I’ll be able to publish weekly by September. :)
My current finished stories are Off Labels (Hoseok short fic) and KGP (Jungkook series, book 1 of a trilogy) if you’re curious! I also have multiple finished drabbles / mini-series and one-shots on my side-blog @kikiskook
i saw that you posted that fmu chap 35 is 25k words long which WOAH! im curious though, would you ever post an unedited chapter along with or after the edited chapter so we can learn more about your writing process! it would be super cool!!!
Hi baby!! I have posted some raw / non polished drafts on Ko-fi, usually early access features the first editing pass—and then the post that goes public sometimes gets edited a second time. So you should be able to compare those two if you’re curious, across different chapters and fics!
Besides that, I have several writing and editing videos where I ramble explain my thought process in depth, under #kiki-writes in my discord server! If you’re curious about those, you can join the director’s cut tier on Ko-fi and unlock all those videos. I juuuust posted my editing process for the beginning of FMU 35 with some commentary, now that you mentioned it! <3
Little reminder that everyone who joins the director’s cut or muse seat tiers before August 5 enters a giveaway raffle to win a small drabble. :) <3
✧ main story ✧ wc: 9,1k ✧ pairing: namjoon x f!reader ✧ rating: 18+
✧ genre: dystopian, smut, alien planet, enemies to lovers, heat cycles
💚 rundown ;
“You wish the name Kim Namjoon didn’t make bile rise up your throat so violently. Especially when 100% matches have perfect sexual compatibility—and combat pheromones don’t quite care about hatred.”
“Excuse me?” you say.
“You heard it.”
“No, I want to make sure I’ve got this right.” Bare feet planted, arms loose, and there it is—the thing that makes you actually dangerous. Not the training. The appetite. “You’re going to stand there and tell me what my own body is doing. That’s where we are.”
“Apparently one of us has to, since your diagnostic method is denial and your treatment plan is spite.”
“It’s bruises and a gravity headache—”
“I can smell you.”
The corridor goes very quiet.
He watches your breath catch. Watches you decide not to let it.
“I have your baseline, Cipher.” Low now. Measured, because measurement is the last discipline still answering him. “Every corridor, every meal, every night four meters of floor apart. Bonfire char and salt and that stubborn sweet underlayer you’d deny owning if I put it in front of you—I know your baseline better than the medbay’s sensor array does, and I know what arousal smells like on you. Much to my demise, I know it precisely. And I know what I smelled on that training mat. That wasn’t exertion. That wasn’t anger. Your body opened a channel and broadcast, and the response you got—”
Nein. Halt—
Too late. The sentence has momentum and you’re already inside his guard, eyes narrowing, going for the gap the way you go for every gap.
“The response I got,” you repeat. “Finish it.”
“The growl. Wrist to wrist. Marker to marker. That sound was not a decision, Cipher. That was my biology answering yours on an open frequency, without routing through me at any point. I was informed of my own response after the fact. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I have trained since pre-adolescence to hold sovereignty over that channel, my tolerances test three deviations above sector standard, and your body bypassed all of it in under a second of skin contact.”
“Then that’s your problem—”
“It is our problem, because the storm is going to hit whether you like it or not, and we are going to have consequences whether you like it or not, because we are a hundred percent matched whether you fucking like it or not.”
➜ Coming: Soon- <3
Don’t forget to vote ⭐️ last chapter on wattpad!
Early access (read now) available on Ko-fi.
why are you launching another long form fic like too sweet when you already have so much on your plate? Like didn't you say that new fics means new audience and that means more pressure and less focus on existing fics?
Hi hi baby! I think you’re confused? Too Sweet is a one-shot not a longfic, and you’re 100% right, which is why I plan to finish ASW first soon before taking any new longfic projects! 🫶🏻💖
I’ve always done drabbles / one-shots / mini-series sporadically on my side-blog, so this isn’t news! I live for longfics, but sometimes inspiration hits and I want to exploit a random idea—that’s why @kikiskook was created. ♡´･ᴗ･`♡
“Seokjin has never thought himself immune to sweet treats—and you, his best friend’s sister, are the sweetest treat of them all.”
"Don't do this to me," he says, muffled against your skin. “You know we shouldn't."
His breath drags in, drags out. You can likely feel it, hot on your chest, the words landing where he refuses to put his mouth.
“You know—God. You know exactly what you're—"
He stops. Swallows. His hands work behind the chair, uselessly, fingers opening and closing on air.
"I have been good," he says, and the word cracks down the middle, cracks like it has been holding weight for years and only now discovered it. "Two years. I have been— you have no idea what it—"
And your hand comes up to the back of his neck, resting there, palm curved to his nape, fingers slipping up into the short hair at the base of his skull, and you begin to soothe him—slow strokes, down and up, the way one gentles something at the edge of bolting.
The gesture alone undoes him more completely than anything else you have done all evening.
He shudders. Full-length. His forehead presses harder against your chest and a sound leaves him that he will deny until he dies, and your fingers keep moving, kind in a way that your mouth has never once been.
"I know," you say softly, above him.
His breath hitches.
"Shh." Your nails trace up his nape, back down. "I know you have."
“Seokjin has never thought himself immune to sweet treats—and you, his best friend’s sister, are the sweetest treat of them all.”
You are cruel, and that should, in theory, help his case.
You are cruel in that particular way of women who learned young that they were pretty and decided to make a weapon of it—sweet on the surface, sugar-voiced, calling him ‘Professor’ across a dinner table with your chin propped on your hand and your eyes bright with the knowledge it blooms a bruise somewhere in him.
You are spoiled. You are unkind about people who are not present. You are the rotten last piece of fruit in the bowl.
Yet, none of it helps. That is what he cannot get past—he has waited two years for the cruelty to do its work and put him off you and it has only done the opposite.
Because a mean thing said sweetly is still sweet, and Seokjin has never in his life been able to leave sweetness alone.
The nail in the coffin is the fact that you smell like strawberries, and that alone is unfair to the point of malice.
Some shampoo, some lotion, some small feminine article he does not know the name of, and it means that when you lean past him at the counter he has to hold his mouth away from the side of your neck like desert holding an oasis away from a man dying of thirst.
“Seokjin has never thought himself immune to sweet treats—and you, his best friend’s sister, are the sweetest treat of them all.”
↝ 𝒔𝒚𝒏𝒐𝒑𝒔𝒊𝒔:
Professor Kim Seokjin takes his coffee bitter, his mornings early, and his promises seriously. Especially the one he made to your brother, laughing, years ago: you’re off-limits. Obviously.
But you’re not kids in the backseat anymore.
And you’ve always wondered what it would take to ruin a disciplined man’s palate.
↝ 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆: smut ↝ 𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈: explicit (18+)
↝ 𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈: professor!seokjin x f!reader
↝ 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒔: upcoming | one-shot | wc: tbd.
↝ 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔: brother’s best friend / best friend’s little sister trope, forbidden relationship, professor!jin (reader is a grad student but has NEVER been his student, calm down), age gap (23/28), reader being a spoiled little brat, repression olympics gold medalist kim seokjin, title kink (‘professor’ used as a weapon), guilt as foreplay, loyalty as a cage, strawberry candy motif that will hurt you, oral (m. receiving), handcuffs, unprotected penetrative sex, praise, quiet-man-finally-breaking, desperate & guilt-ridden sex, marking. warnings updated as i write. <3
➥𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 | ➥ comment/reblog for taglist | ➥ 𝒕𝒂𝒈: #ts
↠ tbp
❅ a/n: well hello. who ordered more filth from your resident filth provider? don’t answer, i know it was all of you. this time i’ve dragged kim seokjin onto the examination table because hozier would NOT stop singing ‘too sweet’ directly into my inner ear and now we have a fully developed professor kink situation on our hands. i take no responsibility. i am merely the vessel.
housekeeping before anyone clutches pearls: yes there’s an age gap (23/28), because what is a professor fantasy without one. no, she’s not his student. never has been, never will be, the man triple-checked the enrollment records himself (canon). but you know me. proximity alone wasn’t enough suffering, so i made him her brother’s best friend too—guilt upon guilt, layered like a trifle, we love to see it. and here’s where it gets fun: she knows he finds her attractive. she’s known for a while. she is a spoiled little menace about it, and he is a man whose entire personality is a restraint kink, so what we’re building toward is brat!reader systematically dismantling one (1) desperate, white-knuckled professor kim seokjin—possibly handcuffed, definitely begging—until all that famous discipline crumbles like the sugarless little liar he is. brace accordingly.
am i emotionally torturing my characters for sport? perhaps. do i regret it? no. it’s jin’s fault for having a sweet tooth.
as always, reblog or comment for the taglist. <3 mwah
hi Kiki I’m new here! Stumbled across your writing a couple days ago (riding that spideykoo agenda ngl) and I’ve enjoyed everything a lot. I’m just a bit confused about your navi…
So I saw your long fic Masterlist, do you write any drabbles? If so. Where exactly do I find them. I cannot navigate tumblr for the life of me. I also read thru your side blog, too. I’m just a little bit dumb :( pls help
Hi! No problem baby; all social medias are different and it can be very confusing to figure out how things work at first, you’re fine!
So, for starters—hi! My name is Kiki and I mainly write long fanfics with a lot of trauma and psychological depth because I’m mentally unwell. Welcome to the pond, fellow gremlin! Most of what you will find in my masterlist is indeed long fanfics! If you want to read one-shots, mini-series and drabbles not connected to any of my AUs, that’s all @kikiskook territory!
Now if you’re specifically looking for drabbles / one-shots related to one of my AUs (so fragments / memories and usually short texts to expand on lore or let you know more about other characters); you’ll have to go to that fic’s specific index and scroll down to the very end. All the drabbles created for that AU will be listed there, under the drabbles section, in the index!
Hope that clarifies things a little bit for you. <3 Enjoy your stay here!
✧ main story ✧ wc: 11,2k ✧ pairing: taehyung x f!reader ✧ rating: 18+
✧ genre: football AU, arrogant!tae, smut, slow burn, enemies to lovers
⚽︎ rundown ;
"You don't flirt back. You don't fold. And Taehyung is running out of rules left to break."
“Comfortable?” you say, so flat it should end this.
“Very.” He says it like he’s talking about the chair, like his voice isn’t doing that low, rough thing underneath the word. “Good seat.”
“Mm.”
You hold his gaze. He holds yours.
Somewhere in your chest something is doing aerobics it has no business doing, and you shut it down, lock it in the same drawer where you keep every other inconvenient thing you refuse to look at directly.
Under the table, your foot stays exactly where it is because he’s trapped it.
He bucks again. Slight. A man enjoying himself entirely too much for someone currently risking his kneecaps in enemy territory.
Cool. Fine.
Fine.
If he wants a game, you’ll play the game. You’ll play it so well he’ll regret inventing it.
You plant your heel on the edge of the chair between his thighs, brace, and roll the arch of your foot firmly along the length of his cock through the sweats.
He chokes.
Actually chokes.
His body jerks forward, spine bowing off the back of the chair, one hand flying up to the edge of the table to catch himself. The wood gives a tiny thud under his palm. His lips part around a sound that doesn’t quite make it out.
Eyebrows shoot up. Pleasure, not surprise.
Well. Both.
It hits him before he can fake it, and you see it in real time—muscles going tight under his shirt, jaw going slack, that first raw flinch when a man goes from ‘I’m in control of this’ to ‘oh, fuck.’
Good.
You feel his cock kick hard in response, thick and hot and so fucking there that for a second it’s all you can feel—the ridge of his shaft, the blunt weight of the head catching under the ball of your foot when you drag back.
This is the part where a sane person backs off. Pulls away. Reconsiders his life choices, maybe apologizes with his eyes, lets the foot go and pretends none of it happened.
Altars crumble faster in shallow water. But he still knelt like it was sacred. No one ever warned you that worship could look like love—or that love could look like drowning.
plot; You've been dancing your whole life, but you've never felt truly seen until a pair of dark eyes begins watching you from behind the studio mirror. He's nothing like the men who usually want you—this one treats your presence like a privilege he doesn't deserve. The power is intoxicating. The way he crumbles when you acknowledge him is even better. So you keep dancing for him. You keep him kneeling. And you tell yourself you're the one in control—right up until you start needing him to watch.
new here? start with chapter one — 15 minutes, no commitment ♡
latest chapter | ao3 | wattpad
THE FANTASY
stalker!taehyung × ballerina!reader • mutual obsession • femdom • submissive taehyung • voyeurism • slow burn
↪︎ genre: dark romance • psychological thriller • erotic drama
↪︎ pairing: taehyung × female!reader
↪︎ rating: explicit
↪︎ status: ongoing • 18/32 chapters
↪︎ word count: 114k+ • approximately 10h 26m
↪︎ updates: by September, every week after WP goals are achieved ♡
↪︎ warnings: read the full content guide
↪︎ links: begin on tumblr | read on ao3 | read on wattpad
↪︎ community: join the taglist | send an ask
chapter index
★ = explicit sexual content | word counts are rounded | times are casual reading pace
drabbles
◎ the offering: pressed flowers and secrets
◎ l'heure bleue: late-night shifts
extras
✦ official playlist
✦ moodboard
✦ fic asks and discussions
✦ ask the disasters
✦ POV reversals and drabble requests: open through asks
what readers are saying
“[I just want to say I am an absolute SUCKER for psychological fics, just like alters in shallow waters. I can’t even count how many fics and series I’ve read across the years, but that one has to be my favourite of all time!]” — anon 🩷
disclaimer: BTS members are used solely as visual references. All characterization and events are fictional, and this work is written for entertainment purposes.
after you finish asw what do you hope to finish next?
WGU! I intend for it to be 30 chapters long, so somewhere around 200k ish words like ASW. Though knowing me, it’ll likely get closer to 300k… But I really need to hold myself back from creating 500k+ word monsters or I’ll never finish a single project. KGPGY as a saga will likely be 800k-1M words, and FMU is for sure gonna pass the 600k word mark at this point… Do you know how crazy that is? Hahahahaha. I didn’t even know until someone told me the entire Harry Potter saga is 1M words!!! 🤠
So to put it in perspective… ASW and WGU will be like the first 3 books of Harry Potter in length. KGP already is… And FMU is that + 1/4th of the fourth book… Crazy!
