isa notes: @opiuons this is our wedding gift. i hope you like it. and i hope you like me enough to let me into your bedroom after. no pressure though. (pressure)
Jungwon addressing the fan chants and speaking on behalf of the members is something none of you guys should be hating on 😭 He’s setting boundaries and if you as a fan cannot continue to support enhypen, you shouldn’t be calling yourself an engene. I understand it all matters on perspective but he’s setting a very clear boundary and you guys should respect that.
Freshman center Yang Jungwon arrives at Blackwood University with one goal: play hockey at the highest level he can. Then he breaks the one rule his captain ever gave him — don’t touch my sister — and falls completely in love anyway. When the secret hookups turn into something real, and the team becomes accomplices, it’s only a matter of time before Jay finds out. And when he finally does, it blows up the team, the house, and the bond twins have shared their entire lives. On top of this it’s right before the biggest game of their season. Jay and Jungwon have to fight their way back to each other — on and off the ice — before the championship, and before it costs Jungwon the brother he never expected to gain.
pairings: brothersfriend!jungwon x sister!reader
word count… 36.6k (I’m so sorry)
CONTENT WARNINGS! explicit sexual content, fingering, oral sex, penetrative sex, praise kink, multiple orgasms, LOTS of sexual tension, secret relationship, betrayal of trust, family conflict (brief), emotional distance, alcohol use, arguing, brief physical altercation (not with reader), emotional angst, angst with happy ending ┃ PLAYLIST… Delicate by Taylor Swift , Fade Into You by Mazzy Star , Somebody Else by The 1975 , u + me = <3 by Olivia Rodrigo , Beaches by beabadoobee , Back in Love by Suki Waterhouse , Love Hangover by Jennie , Take Me Home by Cailin Russo
⋆。˚ lacey speaks!! so… this somehow went from the planned 25k to 36.6k words 😭 i genuinely have no idea how that happened but i got a little too attached to these idiots. thank you so much to everyone who reads, comments, leaves little reactions, or even just opens the fic. genuinely, it means more than you know. i read every comment and they always make my day. as always, please let me know your favourite scenes, your favourite lines because i LOVE hearing them. anyway… enjoy 36.6k words of hockey, mutual pining, denial, and two people making increasingly questionable life choices. happy reading <3
“IF I THROW UP ON THE ICE, YOU HAVE TO TELL PEOPLE I HAD FOOD POISONING.”
“You’re not going to throw up.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know my body, Jungwon. You don’t know what it’s capable of.” Jungwon didn’t look up from his skate laces. He’d learned in the four days since they’d moved into the Den that Riki narrated his anxiety the way other people breathed — constantly, without much say in the matter — and that the correct response was usually no response at all. “Tie your laces.”
“I am tying my laces. I’m tying them and panicking. Multitasking.” Riki yanked the lace tight enough that the eyelets groaned, then immediately loosened it again, frowning down at his own skate like it had personally wronged him. The locker room around them was already half full — upperclassmen moving with the unhurried, proprietary ease of guys who’d done this a hundred times, freshmen moving like they were trying not to be noticed taking up space. Jungwon recognized the difference in himself too. He was sitting very still. Still felt safer than fidgeting.
“You made first line at your old club team,” Jungwon said. “Twice.”
“That’s youth hockey. This is — “ Riki gestured vaguely at the room, at the Blackwood crest stenciled above the doorway, at the rows of stalls with nameplates that weren’t theirs yet. “This is the actual NCAA. This is Park Jongseong’s team. You know what happens to freshmen who embarrass themselves in front of Park Jongseong?”
Jungwon almost smiled. He didn’t, because smiling felt like it would let some of the pressure out of his chest that he was using, very deliberately, to keep himself focused. He’d wanted this — wanted it the specific, single-minded way he wanted most things, which was to say completely, with no real plan for what to do with himself if it didn’t happen. Three years of juniors hockey, two recruiting visits, one decision that had felt less like a choice and more like the only door that had ever made sense to walk through. And now here he was, lacing up in a locker room three thousand miles from anywhere that had ever felt like home, next to a guy who’d been his roommate for four days and already felt like the only stable thing in the building. “You’re quiet,” Riki said, which was rich, coming from him.
“I’m always quiet.”
“You’re quiet like you’re thinking too hard about something. There’s a difference.” Riki finally got both skates tied to his satisfaction and straightened up, rolling his shoulders. He’d filled out over the summer — they both had, the strength program had made sure of that — but he still moved like someone who hadn’t quite caught up to his own height yet, all elbows and momentum. “What are you thinking about?”
“Not throwing up.”
“Liar. You’ve never thrown up in your life. You’re, like, constitutionally incapable of it. It’s annoying, actually, now that I say it out loud.”
The door to the locker room swung open before Jungwon could answer, and the easy noise of the room dropped by half — not silence, just a recalibration, the particular hush that happens when the person who matters most walks in. Jungwon knew who it was before he turned his head. He’d watched enough Blackwood game tape over the summer to recognize the walk alone.
Park Jongseong didn’t look like he was trying to be intimidating. That was, Jungwon would come to understand, exactly what made him intimidating. He had a stick bag over one shoulder and a coffee in his other hand and he said “morning” to about six people on his way to his stall, easy, unbothered, like a guy who already knew exactly how good he was and had stopped needing to perform it. “That’s him,” Riki whispered, entirely unnecessarily.
“I know who it is.”
“I’m just saying. That’s him.”
Jay — Jungwon had heard it a dozen times already, never once heard anyone call him Jongseong outside of a coach’s clipboard — dropped his bag at the stall with his name already on it, the one with three years of tape residue on the nameplate, and finally let his eyes drift over the room. Cataloguing. Jungwon recognized the look because it was one he used himself, the assessment of who was solid and who was nervous and who might be a problem. His eyes landed on Jungwon and Riki for a second longer than anyone else. “You two. Yang and Nishimura?”
“Yes, captain,” Riki said, too fast.
Something flickered at the corner of Jay’s mouth — not quite a smile, the suggestion of one filed away for later use. “Heard a lot about you both this summer. Coach won’t stop talking about the center from the Japan program.” A nod at Jungwon. “We’ll see if it’s true on the ice.”
“It’s true,” Riki said, before Jungwon could decide whether to say anything at all. “He’s annoying about it. He’s, like, suspiciously good.”
“Suspiciously good freshmen are my favorite kind.” Jay’s gaze held on Jungwon another beat — not unkind, just thorough, the way you’d look at a piece of equipment you were deciding whether to trust. “Don’t let me down out there.”
“I won’t,” Jungwon said, and meant it more than he’d meant almost anything in his life. Jay moved on, already greeting someone else by name across the room, and Riki exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for the entire exchange. “Okay. Okay, that was — he seems normal. Chill, even. I was told there’d be a speech.”
“There will be,” said a voice from the next row of stalls, and a guy Jungwon recognized from the roster as Jake leaned around the partition, grinning. Sunghoon, beside him, didn’t look up from where he was meticulously taping his stick, but he was clearly listening. “The speech isn’t till tonight. Initiation.”
“What speech?”
“You’ll see.” Jake’s grin widened in a way that should have been more reassuring than it was. “It’s a Blackwood tradition. Captain gives the rookies the rules. Most of it’s normal stuff — don’t skip lifts, don’t talk to the football team unless you’re trying to start something, don’t be the reason we lose the Founders Cup.” He paused, and Jungwon had the distinct sense that the pause was load-bearing. “And then there’s the other rule.”
“What other rule?”
Sunghoon spoke without looking up. “You’ll see.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because it’s funnier this way,” Jake said, and went back to his own laces, whistling something tuneless, leaving Riki staring after him with the look of a man who’d just been told there was a trapdoor somewhere in the room and no further information.
Tryouts were, in the most literal sense, just hockey. Jungwon had played enough of it in enough rinks across enough countries that the ice itself never scared him — the cold air in his lungs, the particular silence of a puck gliding before the slap of someone’s stick broke it, the geometry of a give-and-go executed clean. That part of him was calm. Had always been calm. It was the only part of him that ever fully was. What he hadn’t expected was how fast Coach Anders moved them through drills clearly designed to see who flinched. Full-ice give-and-gos at speed, odd-man rushes with no warning who was getting the puck, a three-on-two read where half the freshmen visibly hesitated at the blue line and got benched for the rest of the rep without a word of explanation.
Jungwon didn’t hesitate. He’d decided somewhere over the summer — quietly, the way he decided most things — that hesitation was the one thing he could not afford to bring to this ice, because everyone here had a reason to think a freshman center didn’t belong on the top unit, and the only argument he had against that was the one he could make with his stick.
By the third hour, he’d noticed Jay watching him specifically. Not constantly. Just at the moments that mattered — the give-and-go where Jungwon held the puck a half-second longer than the drill called for, reading the lane instead of dumping it the way the play sheet suggested, and put it through a gap that hadn’t technically been there until he made it be there. Jay didn’t say anything. He just watched, and then skated to center ice for the next rep, and Jungwon understood that the watching was its own kind of conversation.
Riki, for his part, was finding his footing the louder way — a highlight-reel one-timer in the third drill that got a few sticks tapping the ice in approval, then immediately undercut by tripping over the blue line in the very next rep and going down hard enough that the whole rink heard it. “I’m fine,” he announced to no one, from the ice, before anyone asked.
“Nobody asked,” Jake called from the bench.
“I could feel the concern radiating off this rink and I wanted to address it.”
By the time Coach blew the final whistle, Jungwon’s legs were a kind of tired that felt less like exhaustion and more like proof of something. He skated to the bench beside Riki, who collapsed onto it like his skeleton had personally given up on him, and only then let himself look toward center ice, where Jay was talking to Coach with the easy, low-voiced confidence of someone who’d be reporting the freshman roster’s worth in about four sentences. “You. Center.” Coach’s voice cut across the rink, and Jungwon’s head came up before he’d even registered being addressed. “Yang. Get over here.”
Riki nudged him so hard he nearly went face-first into the boards. “Go, go, go—” Jungwon skated over, suddenly aware of his own pulse in a way he hadn’t been for three hours of actual hockey. Coach Anders had a clipboard he wasn’t looking at and an expression Jungwon couldn’t read, and Jay stood beside him with his arms crossed, unreadable in a different, more deliberate way.
“First line,” Coach said. “Center. You’ll be playing with Jongseong on your wing.” For a second the words didn’t fully land — not because Jungwon didn’t understand them, but because some part of him had been so braced for a different sentence that this one needed a moment to be believed. First line. As a freshman. He knew, distantly, the way you know a fact rather than feel it, that this didn’t happen. Not at a program like this. Not in week one. “Thank you, Coach,” he managed.
“Don’t thank me. Earn it every single day or I’ll pull you so fast you won’t see it coming.” Anders said it without heat, like a fact of weather, and walked off toward the next conversation he had to have. Which left Jungwon standing on the ice across from Jay, alone, in the particular quiet of a rink emptying out around them. Jay studied him for a second. “You know what this means.”
“That I don’t get to be bad at this.”
“That you don’t get to be bad at this,” Jay agreed, something almost like approval moving across his face. “I don’t care that you’re a freshman. I care that you’re good, and I think you’re about to be the best center this program’s had in four years, and I need to know if I can build a line around you that doesn’t fall apart in November.” He held out a glove. “Can I?” Jungwon looked at it for half a second longer than the gesture probably warranted, and then knocked his own glove against it. “Yeah. You can.”
“Good.” Jay’s mouth did the almost-smile thing again, fuller this time. “Welcome to the Wolves, Yang. Don’t make me regret this.” He skated off toward the tunnel, and Jungwon stood there a moment longer than he needed to, letting it settle — the ice under his skates, the weight of the line Jay had just put on him, the particular feeling of being trusted by someone whose trust clearly didn’t come cheap. He thought, with the small, private satisfaction of a goal he’d set for himself and quietly hit: I want him to keep thinking that about me.
The Den (the ice hockey frat) at seven that evening was unrecognizable from the version Jungwon had toured during his recruiting visit — that one had been clean, staged, every surface wiped down for parents. This one had thirty hockey players packed into a living room that smelled like body spray and old pizza, somebody’s portable speaker playing something with too much bass, and a framed photo on the wall by the staircase that Jungwon’s eyes kept catching on without quite knowing why. Two kids, maybe ten years old, matching gap-toothed grins, one of them holding a hockey stick taller than he was and the other holding nothing, hands on her hips like she was supervising. He recognized Jay immediately even at that age — something about the set of the jaw hadn’t changed at all. He didn’t know who the girl was. Didn’t think about it past a beat of mild curiosity before Riki elbowed him in the ribs and the room’s energy shifted, everyone finding a seat or a wall to lean against, because Jay had walked to the front of the room with the specific posture of a man about to give a speech he’d given many times before.
“Alright. Rookies, eyes up. Everyone else, you’ve heard this, shut up and let me say it anyway.” A ripple of laughter from the upperclassmen, like the joke was older than Jungwon’s time at Blackwood. Jay waited it out, unbothered, then continued. “Rule one. You do not skip lifts. I don’t care what your high school strength coach told you, you skip lifts here and you will feel it in February when you’re getting run over by a sophomore from BC who didn’t.”
“Rule two.” A few guys mouthed it along with him, clearly by memory. “You do not embarrass this program. Not at parties, not on campus, not on Twitter, God help you if it’s Twitter. What you do reflects on all of us, whether you like that or not.”
“Rule three. You do not start anything with the football team. I don’t care who started it actually, I don’t care who’s right, you walk away, because Coach has had that exact conversation with their coach four times already and I am tired of being there for it.”
The room had loosened by now, a low murmur of guys who’d heard this annually finishing his sentences under their breath, Jake outright mouthing along with theatrical solemnity like he was reciting a pledge. Jay let it happen for a second, something almost fond in it, before his expression shifted — not harder, exactly, but more deliberate. He turned, and Jungwon watched him look at the framed photo on the wall, then back at the room. “And the last one.” His voice didn’t get louder. If anything it got quieter, which made the whole room quiet down to match it. “You do not touch my sister.”
A groan went up from at least eight different directions, good-natured, well-worn. “Bro, we know,” Jake called out, not unkindly. “You say this every single year.”
“And I’ll keep saying it every single year,” Jay said, “until one of you proves me wrong by not needing to hear it.”
“It’s literally tattooed into our brains at this point,” Heeseung put in from somewhere near the back. “We could say it for you.”
“Then say it with me.” A few scattered, half-joking voices did, off-rhythm, and Jay let himself almost-smile at the chaos of it before his gaze swept the room one more time and landed, with what felt to Jungwon like unmistakable precision, on the freshmen. On him. On Riki.
“I mean it,” Jay said, and there was no joke left in his voice at all. “I don’t care how funny you think it is. I don’t care if you think it’s a bit. She’s not a joke, and she’s not available, and any of you who think you’re the exception are going to find out real fast that I am not.” Nobody laughed at that part.
Jungwon nodded along with the rest of the rookies, the universal gesture of understood, no problem, why would this ever be an issue — and meant it. He filed it next to the lifts and the football team and the Twitter rule. A reasonable ask from a captain who’d clearly built his entire program on trust, and Jungwon had just shaken that man’s hand on the ice four hours ago and told him he could be trusted with it.
—
The thing nobody told Jungwon about Blackwood — not the recruiters, not the campus tour, not the glossy athletics brochure with its drone shots of the rink at sunset — was how much of actual freshman life happened in the gaps between hockey. He’d pictured it, vaguely, as practice and class and sleep, in that order, on a loop. Nobody mentioned the part where the Den ran on its own gravity, where Tuesday afternoons meant six guys sprawled across two couches watching game tape with the volume too low to actually hear, where Heeseung had apparently appointed himself the unofficial keeper of a coffee machine he guarded like a dragon, and where Jake’s primary personality trait, three days in, appeared to be finding new and increasingly elaborate ways to make Riki regret saying anything out loud, ever. “I’m just saying,” Jake said, sprawled upside down across the arm of the couch in a way that looked actively bad for his spine, “if Coach moves you to second line because you keep tripping over blue lines, that’s not bullying. That’s documentation.”
“It happened once.”
“It’s happened twice. I have a list.”
“You don’t have a list.”
“I have a mental list. Mentally, it’s very organized.” Jungwon sat at the kitchen table with his economics textbook open to a page he’d read four times without absorbing a single word of, partly because the syllabus had assigned something genuinely dense for week one, and partly because he was distracted by the particular ease of the room around him — the way nobody here had to perform anything. He’d grown up around hockey locker rooms his whole life and they were rarely this loose this early. The Den had three years of inside jokes baked into its walls already and he and Riki were still learning the language, but nobody seemed to mind teaching it to them. “You’re doing the econ reading,” Heeseung observed, dropping into the chair across from him with his own mug. “On a Wednesday. Before it’s due.”
“Is that not normal?”
“It’s very not normal. Sunghoon hasn’t opened a textbook since orientation and he has a 3.7.”
“That’s a lie I haven’t fact-checked because it’s funnier to let it stand,” came Sunghoon’s voice from the doorway, where he’d appeared with the specific quiet menace of someone who could apparently materialize without anyone noticing the approach — Jungwon was starting to learn that about him, three days in. He had a bag of equipment over one shoulder, clearly back from a gear fitting, and he dropped it by the door without much ceremony. “Captain back yet?” Heeseung asked him.
“Nope. Said he’d be back for dinner. Something about—” The front door opened before Sunghoon finished the sentence, and for a second Jungwon assumed it was Jay, the way the whole kitchen’s attention shifted toward the sound the way it had in the locker room three days ago — that same recalibration. But the voice that came through wasn’t Jay’s.
“Whoever ate my leftovers from the fridge, I want you to know I saw the container in the recycling and I am not currently choosing violence, but I reserve the right to change my mind.” Jake, upside-down on the couch arm, didn’t even look over. “That was Heeseung.”
“It was not me—”
“It was absolutely you, you had pad thai breath for an hour.” You walked into the kitchen mid-argument with the easy, unbothered air of someone who’d clearly been doing this — walking into rooms full of hockey players bickering — for years, long enough that it had stopped registering as anything except background noise. You had a tote bag over one shoulder that looked like it weighed more than it should, your hair pulled back in a way that suggested you’d come straight from somewhere academic rather than anywhere that required effort, and you dropped the bag onto the counter with the same casual proprietary ease Jay had dropped his stick bag in the locker room three days before. Like this kitchen belonged to you too. Jungwon would learn, eventually, that it basically did.
Jake was off the couch before you’d even finished setting the bag down, crossing the kitchen in three long strides to throw an arm around your shoulders and steer you half a step sideways like you were a piece of furniture he was rearranging. “There she is. The menace. The legend.”
“Get off me, you’re sweaty.”
“I showered.”
“You did not shower, I can smell the rink on you from here.” You ducked out from under his arm without much real effort, swatting at his side, but there was no real heat behind it — just the specific, well-worn ease of two people who’d clearly done this exact bit more times than either of them could count. Jungwon filed the whole exchange away without quite meaning to: the easy physical familiarity, the way Jake could throw an arm around you without either of you thinking twice about it, the way you were so plainly, completely unbothered by him. The kid-sister treatment. He understood it the second he saw it, and understood, with slightly less clarity but no less certainty, that he did not want to be filed under the same category as Jake. “Rude. I carry that smell with pride. It’s eau de championship.”
“It’s eau de you skipped the showers because Sunghoon was hogging the good one.”
“That is also true.” Jake didn’t even pretend to be offended, dropping back onto the couch with the satisfied air of a man who’d gotten exactly the interaction he wanted. “Anyway. Heeseung ate your leftovers.”
“I did not—”
“You’re new,” you said, cutting clean through Heeseung’s protest, not turning around yet, like you’d clocked Jungwon in your peripheral vision the second you walked in and simply hadn’t gotten to him yet on your list of priorities. You opened the fridge, presumably to assess the damage to whatever container had survived the day. “I — yeah.” Smooth, Jungwon thought, distantly, unimpressed with himself. “Jungwon. Yang Jungwon.”
“The freshman center Coach won’t stop talking about.” You shut the fridge, finally turning fully, and Jungwon had approximately one second to decide what to do with his face before you were looking directly at him, and the decision he landed on was: nothing. Stay still. Don’t give anything away that you haven’t earned the right to see yet. “Jongseong mentioned you.”
“He did?”
“Mentioned might be generous. He said, and I’m quoting, ‘there’s a freshman who might actually be good,’ which from him is basically a sonnet.” You said it with the specific dry affection of someone who clearly adored your brother and found him slightly ridiculous in equal measure, and something about the way you talked about him — easy, unguarded, like there was no universe where loyalty to him was even a question — made Jungwon’s read on the whole Den click a little further into place. This wasn’t just the captain’s sister stopping by. This was someone who’d grown up in these rooms the way the rest of them had grown up on the ice. He noted, too, distantly, that you’d called him Jongseong. Nobody else in this house had used that name once in three days. To everyone here he was Jay, or Captain, or — on a bad day — Jongseong said with theatrical dread before someone got benched. You said it like it was just his name. Maybe, Jungwon thought, to you, it just was.
“I’ll try to live up to the sonnet.” That got something out of you — not quite a laugh, but the version of one that exists right before it, a flicker at the corner of your mouth that you seemed to decide not to fully commit to. “You’re better off not trying. He’ll find a new thing to be insufferable about within a week.” You looked past him, toward Riki, who’d gone very quiet on the couch in a way that suggested he was taking detailed mental notes for later interrogation. “You’re the other one. Nishimura.”
“Riki. You can call me Riki. Everyone does. It’s — yeah, Riki’s fine.” Riki, Jungwon noted with some private amusement, had apparently lost several IQ points in real time.
“Riki,” you repeated, like you were filing it. “Heads up — if Jongseong catches you eating my leftovers too, he’ll actually do something about it. I’ve made peace with these guys being lost causes.” A gesture at Jake and Heeseung, who both made identical offended noises. “Freshmen still have a chance at redemption.”
“Noted,” Riki managed. You grabbed something from the cabinet — crackers, Jungwon registered without really meaning to register it, the kind in the blue box, which felt like a stupidly specific detail to be cataloguing about someone he’d known for ninety seconds — and headed for the doorway, pausing there the way people do when they’re about to leave a room but haven’t quite committed to it yet. “Anyway. Welcome to the circus.” You said it to the room generally, but your eyes caught Jungwon’s for one more half-second on the way out, not lingering, not anything, just a normal goodbye glance that any of these guys would have gotten in your place. “Try not to let them ruin you too fast.”
And then you were gone, down the hall, the sound of a door somewhere upstairs — Jay’s room, Jungwon would learn — clicking shut behind you, and the kitchen exhaled back into its normal noise like nothing had happened at all. Nothing had happened. Jungwon was aware of that with total clarity. A girl had walked into a kitchen, made a joke about leftovers, learned his name, and left. This was, by any reasonable measure, the least significant interaction he’d had all week, several orders of magnitude less significant than making first line. He looked back down at his econ textbook. Read the same paragraph a fifth time. Still didn’t absorb a word of it. “Well,” Riki said, from the couch, in a voice pitched for exactly one listener. “That’s unfortunate.”
“What is.”
“Don’t.” Riki sat up properly for the first time in twenty minutes, fixing Jungwon with the specific look of someone who had just watched something happen and intended to make sure Jungwon knew he’d watched it. “I watched your whole face do a thing just now.”
“My face didn’t do anything.”
“Your face did several things. I counted at least three things.” Riki lowered his voice further, glancing toward the doorway like the danger might still be listening. “Jungwon. Buddy. My friend. My roommate, who I have grown to care about in four short days. That’s Jongseong’s sister.”
“I know whose sister she is.”
“You know whose sister she is and your face still did the thing.”
“There was no thing.”
“Heeseung,” Riki called out, not breaking eye contact with Jungwon, “did his face do a thing just now?”
“Absolutely it did,” Heeseung said, without looking up from his coffee, with the weary tone of a man who’d apparently already seen this exact movie play out at the Den before and knew exactly how it ended. “I give it two weeks before he’s carrying her bags.”
“I’m not carrying anyone’s bags.”
“Three days,” Jake corrected, from the couch, finally rolling himself upright. “I give it three days.” Jungwon closed his textbook with more force than the moment strictly required, ignoring all three of them with the particular dignity of a man who knew, somewhere underneath the irritation, that they weren’t wrong about anything, and that the worst part — the part he had absolutely no intention of admitting to a room that would never let him hear the end of it — was that some quiet, certain part of him had already decided three days wasn’t going to be nearly long enough to talk himself out of it.
He’d shaken Jay’s hand on the ice. Told him he could be trusted. He thought about the blue crackers. The flicker at the corner of your mouth. The door clicking shut down the hall. That’s unfortunate, he thought again, and didn’t disagree with himself even once.
—
“—and then he just left. Didn’t say bye, didn’t say see you later, nothing. Just picked up his gear bag like a man fleeing a crime scene and walked out of the gym.”
“Sunoo.”
“I’m not done.”
“You’ve been not-done for four blocks.”
“Because it’s a four-block story, Y/N, I don’t control the geography.” Sunoo hopped over a crack in the sidewalk without breaking stride, somehow managing to keep his energy at a near-constant boil despite the fact that they’d left your dorm twenty minutes ago and he hadn’t paused for breath since. The two of you had shared a floor since orientation week freshman year — adjacent rooms, actually, close enough that you’d learned to recognize each other’s footsteps in the hallway — and in that time you’d discovered that Sunoo processed his entire emotional life out loud, in real time, usually at a volume better suited to indoor voices. “So I’m in the gym. Minding my business. Doing my little cooldown stretches because I’m a responsible adult who stretches—”
“You stretch for ninety seconds and call it a cooldown.”
“It’s quality over quantity. And Sunghoon’s there finishing his lift, and he’s got his shirt half off because he’s toweling down, and I make eye contact with him for one — one — completely normal, completely platonic second, and the man turns the color of a fire alarm and leaves the building.”
“Maybe he had somewhere to be.”
“Y/N. He works out at the same gym at the same time every single day. He had nowhere to be. He had somewhere to flee.”
You laughed — you couldn’t help it, you’d been laughing on and off for four blocks — and adjusted the strap of your bag, the night air doing that early-fall thing where it hadn’t decided yet whether it wanted to be warm or cold, which meant you’d both left your jackets at the dorm and were now regretting it in real time, walking faster than necessary partly to get there and partly to generate body heat. The Den was eight minutes from campus if you cut through the quad, less if you didn’t care about getting grass stains on your shoes, which tonight, you decided, you didn’t. “Maybe,” you said, “and I’m just spitballing here, he likes you, and that’s why he ran away.”
“That tracks with literally zero of his behavior.”
“It tracks with all of his behavior. You just don’t want to hear it because then you’d have to do something about it instead of getting to complain to me for four blocks.” Sunoo opened his mouth to argue, visibly reconsidered, and closed it again, which from him was basically a confession. “Okay, fine, hypothetically, if that were true, what would I even — no. Don’t answer that. I don’t want strategy tonight. Tonight I want to dance and forget Sunghoon exists for at least ninety minutes, and you’re going to help me do that.”
“Deal.”
“What’s your goal for tonight?”
“My goal,” you said, with the specific, deliberate casualness of someone who had absolutely thought about this on the walk over, “is to get laid. That’s it. That’s the whole goal. Low bar, very achievable, I’m not trying to overcomplicate my life.”
“A woman with priorities. I respect it.” Sunoo glanced sideways at you, taking in — properly, for what felt like the first time since you’d left your room — what you were actually wearing, like the conversation had only just given him a reason to look. “Okay, and might I say, dressed for the occasion.” You’d put actual thought into it, more than you’d admit to him directly: a dress that hit exactly the right amount of effortless while having taken twenty-five minutes of very much not effortless decision-making in front of your mirror, dark and fitted in the way that did the most work with the least amount of obvious trying, paired with the kind of confidence that came from knowing you looked good and choosing not to make a big deal out of it. You weren’t dressing for anyone specific. You were dressing for the version of tonight where something interesting happened, which felt like a reasonable thing to dress for on a Friday. “I clean up alright.”
“You clean up like a public health hazard, is what I’m saying, someone’s going to need medical attention.” Sunoo bumped his shoulder against yours, grinning. “Jongseong’s gonna take one look at that dress and have an aneurysm.”
“Jongseong is not going to see this dress, because Jongseong is going to be busy being captain and yelling at freshmen about beer pong etiquette, and if he does see it, I will simply lie and say I’ve been wearing a cardigan all night.”
“Bold strategy.”
“It’s worked for four years.”
You could hear the party before you could see it — bass thudding low and steady through the walls of the Den a full block out, the specific texture of a hundred-plus people’s noise blending into one continuous hum, punctuated occasionally by something sharper, a shout, a laugh, the unmistakable crash of something glass that nobody seemed to care about. The porch light was on. Somebody had strung up actual string lights along the railing at some point this week, which felt like a Heeseung touch, the kind of small unnecessary effort he’d deny making if you asked him directly.
The front door was propped open with somebody’s shoe — a genuinely upsetting choice of doorstop that you chose not to think too hard about — and you and Sunoo stepped into the wall of heat and noise that was the Den at full party capacity, the living room packed wall to wall, the kitchen counter doing actual structural duty as a makeshift bar, someone’s questionable music choices blaring from the speaker Jake had clearly hooked his phone up to because nobody else picked songs this aggressively. “Y/N! Sunoo!” Jake’s voice cut through the noise before you’d even gotten three steps in, and he appeared out of the crowd with a red cup in each hand, already holding one out toward you like he’d been anticipating your arrival. “You look — okay, wow, you look like you’re trying to put me in an early grave, what is this.”
“It’s a dress, Jake.”
“It’s a weapon, is what it is. Does Jongseong know you own this?”
“Jongseong does not get a vote on my wardrobe.”
“Jongseong would absolutely like a vote on your wardrobe, that’s the whole — “ Jake gestured vaguely, encompassing, you assumed, the entire premise of his existence as Jay’s friend and teammate. “You know what, never mind, not my fight. Drink.” He pressed the cup into your hand without further ceremony, the same easy, brotherly overfamiliarity you’d gotten from him since you were eighteen, no different than if you were one of his actual sisters. “Sunoo, you too, don’t make this weird by refusing.”
“I wasn’t going to refuse, I was going to say thank you, but go off.”
“Where is he then?” you asked, scanning the crowd out of habit more than real interest — you didn’t actually need to find Jongseong, you knew he’d find you eventually, the way he always did at these things, materializing at your elbow within the first twenty minutes like a smoke detector going off. “Tell me he’s not doing the thing where he stands by the door checking IDs like he personally runs a liquor board.”
“He was doing that an hour ago, yes,” Jake confirmed, entirely too pleased about it. “Sunghoon talked him down. Mostly. He’s somewhere being captain at people. You’ll find him or he’ll find you, you know how it goes.”
“Tragically, I do.” You took a sip of whatever was in the cup — something fruity and far too strong, exactly the kind of drink this house specialized in and refused to ever improve upon — and let Sunoo tug you further into the crowd, already scanning for Sunghoon with the specific, badly-disguised intensity of someone who’d claimed thirty seconds ago that he didn’t want to think about him at all tonight.
That was when you felt it. The look. You’d grown up around enough hockey players to have a very specific radar for being looked at — the difference between the guys who’d known you since you were twelve and treated you like furniture and literally anyone else — and this one didn’t register as either. It wasn’t loud about it. It wasn’t a guy elbowing his friend to point you out. It was just — there, steady, from somewhere across the room, and when you turned your head to actually find it, you already half-knew, with the strange certainty of a feeling you hadn’t quite earned the right to yet, exactly whose eyes you were going to find.
Jungwon was leaning against the wall near the kitchen doorway with a cup he didn’t seem especially interested in drinking, half a conversation happening beside him that he clearly wasn’t fully present for, and when your eyes landed on his, he didn’t look away first. Didn’t do the thing most guys did — caught looking, quick recovery, pretend it never happened. He just held it, calm, unhurried, like he’d already decided there was no version of tonight where pretending made sense. You looked away first. You weren’t entirely sure why. “Okay,” Sunoo said, very close to your ear, having apparently clocked the entire exchange in the two seconds it took, “that’s new.”
“What’s new.”
“You know exactly what’s new. Freshman center, eleven o’clock, doing the eye thing.”
“There’s no eye thing.”
“There is extensive eye thing, I watched it happen, I have a front row seat to eye things, it’s basically my major.” Sunoo’s grin was doing something genuinely unholy now. “Go talk to him.”
“I came here to find a hookup, not start a whole — situation.”
“Maybe the hookup is the situation. Have you considered that the universe is just handing you a gift and you’re standing here arguing with the delivery guy.” You didn’t answer that, mostly because you didn’t have a good one ready, and let yourself get pulled deeper into the party instead — toward the dancing, toward whatever Heeseung and a sophomore defenseman were arguing about near the speaker, toward the specific chaos of a Friday at the Den that you’d witnessed probably two hundred times across four years and never once gotten tired of. You were aware, the entire time, of exactly where in the room he was standing.
“Absolutely not.” Jungwon said.
“Jungwon. Buddy. Best friend. Light of my life.” Riki had a hand wrapped around his wrist and was hauling him bodily toward the makeshift beer pong table set up at the end of the kitchen counter, where a sophomore defenseman Jungwon vaguely recognized from tape was loudly defending his table’s undefeated record to anyone who’d listen. “You cannot stand against this wall for the entire night doing your broody freshman thing. People will start asking questions.”
“I’m not doing a broody freshman thing.”
“You are doing the broodiest possible version of a freshman thing, you’ve had the same face on for forty minutes.” Riki deposited him at the end of the table with the satisfaction of a man completing a difficult task. “Play. Socialize. Be a person.” He played. He was, infuriatingly, good at beer pong too — some part of his brain that processed angles and trajectories for a living refused to turn off just because the stakes had dropped to a plastic cup — which meant by the fourth round he’d had more to drink than he’d planned on, that loose, warm, slightly-too-honest feeling starting to settle in behind his eyes, the kind where his usual careful filter on his own face got a little less reliable.
Which was, in retrospect, bad timing for the exact moment he looked up and found you across the room, talking to some guy he didn’t recognize — not a hockey player, built wrong for it, probably someone’s friend from another house — who’d planted himself directly in your space with the specific posture of a guy who thought he was being charming. You had your arms crossed, half-smiling in a way Jungwon was already learning to read as entertained, not interested, but the guy didn’t seem to be picking up on the distinction, leaning in another inch, saying something that made you roll your eyes.
Something hot and entirely unreasonable moved through Jungwon’s chest. He had no claim to that reaction. He knew that, even loose and warm and three cups in, some clear-eyed part of him filing the feeling under not yours to have even as it refused to go away. “Oh, this is good,” Riki said, following his line of sight, delighted. “Your face is doing the thing again. The thing’s back.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m not even mad, I just want to document it for later—”
“Sink it or pass the ball, Nishimura.”
Across the room, Jay had clocked the same conversation about four seconds before Jungwon had, and unlike Jungwon, Jay had absolutely zero hesitation about what to do with that information. He crossed the room with the unbothered, unhurried walk of a man who knew exactly how much weight his presence carried in this house, and inserted himself into the conversation with a hand clapped flat on the guy’s shoulder. “Hey, man. You go to Whitfield?” Jay’s voice was friendly. Jungwon, even from a distance, did not trust it for a single second.
“Uh — yeah, I’m here with—”
“Cool, cool. Hey, quick question, completely unrelated.” Jay’s hand was still on the guy’s shoulder, steering him a polite half-step back from you, the whole motion smooth enough to look almost accidental. “You know whose house this is?”
“…Yours?”
“Mine. And that’s my sister. So I’m gonna need you to go find your friends now, and I’m gonna need you to do it real fast, and we’re gonna both pretend this was a totally normal interaction. Sound good?” The guy looked between Jay and you for one confused second, visibly recalibrated his entire night, and excused himself with considerably less charm than he’d arrived with. “Jongseong.” You said it with the specific, long-suffering exhaustion of someone who’d watched this exact scene play out roughly forty times. “I was handling it.”
“You were handling it. I helped it get handled faster.”
“I didn’t need help.”
“Noted, for the record, and ignored, also for the record.” Jay dropped a kiss on the top of your head, entirely brotherly, entirely unbothered by your glare, and was gone again within seconds, already absorbed back into some conversation near the door, leaving you standing there with your arms still crossed, visibly debating whether being annoyed was worth the energy.
Jungwon watched the whole thing happen from the beer pong table with what he hoped looked like idle interest and definitely was not. He set his cup down. Told himself, with the particular conviction of a guy three drinks deep, that he was simply going to go say hello. Nothing more than that. A normal, low-stakes hello, the kind any teammate’s family member deserved. He was lying to himself and he knew it the entire walk across the room. “Your brother’s very committed to his bit,” he said, by way of greeting, and you turned, and something in your face shifted — not surprise exactly, more like you’d half-expected this, had maybe been tracking the same distance between you that he had.
“He’s been doing that since I was sixteen. I used to think it’d get old. It has not gotten old.” You studied him for a second, something assessing in it. “You’re not as drunk as Riki, but you’re not sober either.”
“Accurate.”
“Confident, though. Most freshmen don’t walk over here unprompted.” A small, deliberate pause. “Most freshmen don’t walk over here at all, actually. Jongseong’s speech tends to be memorable.”
“I remember the speech.” He held her gaze, steady, the warmth in his chest from earlier rearranging itself into something calmer and more certain now that he was actually standing in front of you. “I’m not doing anything the speech covers. We’re talking.”
“Just talking.”
“Just talking,” he agreed, and let the silence after that sit a beat longer than strictly comfortable, watching you decide what to do with it. You didn’t walk away. That, more than anything he’d noticed all night, told him something.
The conversation that followed wasn’t long — a few minutes, maybe, threaded between the noise of the party, you asking where he was from, him asking how long you’d lived in this exact chaos, the easy rhythm of two people figuring out they liked talking to each other more than either had planned on. But something underneath it had already shifted register, the air between you gone thick and obvious in the way that doesn’t need words to confirm it, and when you finally tipped your head toward the back hallway — toward the stairs, toward somewhere quieter — he didn’t hesitate even half a second before following.
The door to his room had barely clicked shut behind you before his hand found your jaw, tilting your face up to his, and he kissed you like he’d been thinking about it considerably longer than the twenty minutes you’d actually been talking — slow at first, testing, and then deeper when you made a small sound against his mouth that undid something careful in him. His tongue traced yours, unhurried despite the want clearly humming under his skin, like he had every intention of taking his time even though some other part of him was screaming to do anything but. “You sure about this?” he murmured, mouth dragging along your jaw, down the line of your throat.
“Jungwon.” Half a laugh, breathless already. “I dragged you up the stairs.”
“I know. Wanted to hear you say it anyway.”
He walked you back toward the bed with a hand splayed warm against the small of your back, and when the back of your knees hit the mattress he followed you down, settling his weight over you with a kind of deliberate control that made it very clear nothing about tonight was going to be rushed unless you wanted it to be. He kissed down the column of your throat, lingering at the spot where your pulse jumped under his mouth, and you felt the low sound that pulled out of you before you’d consciously decided to make it. “Pretty,” he said, against your skin, low, certain. “You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do this.”
Clothes came off between kisses, unhurried despite the heat building under both your skins — his shirt first, then yours, his mouth finding your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, lower, until his lips closed around one nipple and you arched up into him with a gasp that made him hum, pleased, against your chest. “There you go,” he murmured, glancing up at you through dark lashes, taking in the way your breath had gone shallow. “That’s it.” Your hands come up to him without thinking, sliding into his hair, pulling him closer, and that’s all it takes for the control he’s holding onto to slip just slightly. His mouth moves again, up your neck, along your jaw, back to your lips, kissing you deeper this time, less careful, more intent.His hands come up to your tits without hesitation, cupping them fully, thumbs dragging over your nipples, slow at first, like he’s testing, like he’s figuring out what you’ll do. You arch into him immediately. That’s all he needs. “There you go,” he says, softer now, watching your face. His mouth follows his hands, closing around one nipple, his tongue circling before he sucks, harder than you expect, and you gasp, your fingers tightening in his hair. He hums against you pleased. “That’s it,” he murmurs, pulling back just enough to look at you, his eyes darker now, focused in a way that makes your stomach flip. “Yeah— keep doing that—”
His hand slid down the length of your body, slow, deliberate, mapping you like he intended to remember every inch of it, until his fingers found your folds, already slick, and the broken little sound you made at the first slow drag of his fingers through your heat seemed to do something to him — his own breath catching, jaw tight. “Fuck,” he breathed, almost reverent, watching your face. “You’re so wet already.”
He worked you open slow, one finger and then a second, the slick drag of his fingers against your walls drawing soft, breathy moans out of you that he seemed determined to collect one by one, his thumb finding your clit and circling it in slow, deliberate pressure that had your hips rolling up against his hand before you could stop them. “Good girl,” he murmured, watching you fall apart under his hand with open, undisguised satisfaction. “Just like that. Let me hear you.” His fingers moving inside, not fast or rough — just steady, curling slightly inside you, hitting deeper and deeper, his thumb keeping that same pressure on your clit that makes your whole body tighten.
When he finally settled between your thighs, cock thick and aching, he paused at your entrance just long enough to catch your eyes, checking, certain even now. You nodded, breathless, and he sank into you slow, inch by inch, a low groan tearing out of his throat at the way your walls stretched tight and slick around him as he bottoms out. “Christ — “ His forehead dropped to your shoulder for a second, composure visibly fraying. “You feel — fuck, you feel so good.” His hand tightens on your hip. “Okay?”
“Yes,” you say, breathless. “Keep going—” He started slow, deep, grinding his hips into yours with a kind of controlled, deliberate rhythm that had you gasping his name within minutes, his lips finding your neck again, sucking a mark into the skin there like he wanted proof of tonight to last past morning. His hand found yours, lacing your fingers together against the sheets, and the gesture was somehow more intimate than anything else he’d done so far. “Look at me,” he said, voice rough, and when you did, his rhythm picked up, the tip of him dragging against that spot inside you that made your back arch off the mattress, his name falling out of you again, broken this time.
“That’s it,” he breathed, watching your face with a hunger that had nothing detached about it. “You’re doing so good. So good for me.” The praise undid you faster than anything else he’d done, your moans coming quicker, breathier, his own breathing gone ragged above you as he chased the same building heat, until you tipped over the edge with a cry muffled against his shoulder, your walls clenching tight around him. He groans against your neck when he feels it, his rhythm breaking, then turning rougher for a second, chasing it, hips stuttering as he spills into you, slow and shaking through the last of it.
For a long moment afterward, neither of you moved — his weight braced over you, both your chests heaving, his thumb tracing absent, unhurried circles against your hip like he wasn’t quite ready to stop touching you yet. “Okay,” you managed, eventually, into the quiet. “That was — “
“Yeah,” he said, and even breathless, even wrecked, there was something steady in his voice that you didn’t examine too closely. “Yeah. That was.”
You woke up in your own bed the next morning, which felt important somehow — you’d made a point of it, pulling your dress back on at some indecent hour and walking the eight minutes back to your dorm rather than staying the night, because staying the night implied something you weren’t ready to imply, even to yourself, even in the privacy of your own head. Sunoo had texted you four times between 1 AM and 8 AM, the last one just reading wake up I need details with three eyes emojis, and you lay there for a solid ten minutes staring at your ceiling before you worked up the nerve to open the thread.
sunoo: WAKE UP
sunoo: I saw you disappear with him
sunoo: Y/N I need details or I will actually die
You typed nothing happened and deleted it, because Sunoo had literally watched you walk up the stairs together and would know immediately you were lying, which somehow felt worse than just telling him the truth. you: ok don’t be weird about this
sunoo: I’m always weird about things. specify.
you: jungwon and I hooked up
sunoo: I KNEW IT I CALLED IT LAST NIGHT
you: it was a one time thing
sunoo: sure…
you: I’m serious. it doesn’t mean anything. he’s jongseong’s freshman, it literally cannot happen again
sunoo: ok but did he?? was he??
you: I’m not doing this with you over text
sunoo: COFFEE. TEN MINUTES. I NEED TO LOOK AT YOUR FACE WHEN YOU TELL ME
You did, eventually, tell him — over coffee, in the dining hall, with Sunoo leaning so far across the table that he nearly knocked over both your cups twice — and true to form, he listened to the entire thing with his chin in his hands and his eyes getting progressively wider, and at the end of it, instead of the appropriately scandalized reaction you’d been braced for, he just said, “okay, but you’re going to see him again.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re literally going to see him constantly, Y/N, he lives in the house you’re at four times a week. This isn’t a guy you can ghost. This is a guy who’s going to be physically present in your life on a near-daily basis.” You hadn’t fully thought that part through, if you were being honest. “It can just be normal. It happened, it was — fine, it was good, it was really good, actually, but it happened, and now we move on like adults.”
“Sure,” Sunoo said, in the tone of someone who did not believe a single word of that sentence but had decided it would be more fun to watch it fail than to argue with it now.
It took exactly four days for the first text to arrive, and you spent an embarrassing amount of those four days checking your phone more than you’d ever admit out loud, which you told yourself was just curiosity and nothing else.
jungwon: hope the exam went okay
You stared at the message for a solid thirty seconds before you fully placed what he meant — you’d mentioned, in passing, during some entirely unrelated moment that night at the party, something about a stats midterm you’d been stressed about, a single throwaway sentence buried in twenty minutes of conversation that had ended in considerably less conversation. You hadn’t expected him to remember it. You definitely hadn’t expected him to remember the date of it well enough to text four days later asking how it went.
you: it was fine. how did you remember that?
jungwon: you mentioned it
you: I mentioned it once. for like a second.
jungwon: I have a good memory
You looked at that for longer than it deserved, turning it over, trying to decide what it actually meant, before landing — deliberately, with the specific effort of someone building a case — on the explanation that required the least amount of feeling anything. He’s probably like this with everyone. Some guys are just attentive. It doesn’t mean anything specific about you. You’d seen guys remember small details about people they were trying to sleep with before; it was, in your admittedly limited experience, a fairly standard move. You typed back something easy, noncommittal, and didn’t think about it again. You thought about it again almost immediately.
The second time you saw him wasn’t planned, exactly, though you’d go on to realize much later that very little involving Jungwon ever was as unplanned as it looked in the moment. You’d come by the Den on a Tuesday to drop off a textbook Heeseung had borrowed weeks ago and conveniently never returned, and you found Jungwon at the kitchen table again, same spot as your first meeting, a laptop open in front of him and the specific glazed look of someone three hours into a problem set he hated. “Stats?” you asked, dropping into the chair across from him out of habit before you’d consciously decided to stay.
“Econ. Worse.” He didn’t look up right away, but something in his posture shifted, settled, like your presence had registered before he’d even confirmed it with his eyes. “How’d the exam actually go? You gave me a one-word answer over text and I don’t trust one-word answers.”
“It was fine. Genuinely. I got a 91.”
“That’s not fine, that’s good.” He finally looked up, and something about his face doing that — actual interest, actual attention, like your stats midterm was a real piece of information he wanted rather than small talk he was performing — made you feel exposed in a way you weren’t prepared for at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday. “What was the part you were stressed about?”
“The regression stuff. I always mess up the regression stuff.”
“Did you mess it up?”
“No, actually.”
“See.” Something flickered at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile, the same controlled almost-version of one you were starting to recognize as just how he looked when he was pleased about something he didn’t feel like performing loudly. “Told you you’d be fine.”
“You didn’t tell me anything, you texted me a four-word message four days after the fact.”
“I thought about it before that. I just didn’t text you about it before that.” You didn’t have an immediate response to that, which annoyed you more than the comment itself did, and you covered the gap by pulling Heeseung’s textbook out of your bag and setting it on the table with more force than necessary. “Anyway. This is Heeseung’s. Tell him I want it back faster next time, or I’m telling Coach he’s been using my notes to pass his sports psych class.”
“He’s been using your notes?”
“For two years. It’s our arrangement. I write good notes, he owes me eternal favors he never actually does.”
“I could text him for you. Tell him you stopped by.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to.” Jungwon said it simply, like the distinction mattered to him — not obligation, just preference — and went back to his laptop like the conversation had cost him nothing at all, which was somehow the part that unsettled you most as you let yourself back out the front door a few minutes later. He’s just like that, you told yourself, walking back across the quad. Considerate. It’s probably just a personality thing. You almost believed it.
It kept happening. That was the part you hadn’t planned for — not one specific moment you could point to and say this is when it became something, but an accumulation of small things that individually meant nothing and collectively meant something you weren’t ready to name. He started showing up. Not obviously, not in a way anyone could call out directly — he was just, increasingly, there, in the places you already were. You mentioned, once, in passing, that you liked the coffee place two blocks off campus better than the one on it, and the next time you walked into the campus one out of habit, you found him already in line, and when you raised an eyebrow he just said, “needed caffeine,” like that fully explained why a freshman hockey player with a packed practice schedule had wandered three blocks out of his way to a coffee shop you’d mentioned exactly once.
You came out of your Thursday lecture one week to find him leaning against the building’s brick exterior, hands in his pockets, looking entirely unbothered, like this was a totally normal place for him to be standing. “What are you doing here?”
“Was in the area.”
“Jungwon. This building is nowhere near the rink, nowhere near the Den, and nowhere near anything you have a reasonable excuse to be near. You don’t even have classes on this side of campus.”
“I have a class two buildings over.”
“At what time?”
“…Later.”
“How much later.”
“An hour and a half.” You’d laughed at that, properly laughed, the kind that surprised you because you hadn’t planned on finding it as funny as you did, and he’d just shrugged, unbothered by being caught, and walked you back toward the Den anyway like the ninety minutes he didn’t need to spend doing it were nothing at all to him.
You built explanations for every single one of these. He was nice. He was thoughtful with everyone — you’d seen him carry Riki’s gear bag without being asked, seen him remember Heeseung’s coffee order, seen him hold doors and notice things and generally exist as the kind of person who paid attention because that was simply who he was, not because of anything specific to you. He’s just like that, you told Sunoo, more than once, with increasing defensiveness each time. He’d do this for anyone. “Would he,” Sunoo said, unconvinced, the third time you tried the line on him. “Yes.”
“Has he stood outside any other girl’s lecture hall for ninety minutes?”
“I don’t know his entire schedule, Sunoo, I’m not his — I don’t track that.”
“You’re tracking it right now. You just told me it was a Thursday lecture and gave me a building name.” You hadn’t had a good answer for that one. You hadn’t really had a good answer for any of it, if you were honest, but being honest about it felt like opening a door you weren’t sure you’d be able to close again, so instead you kept doing the thing you’d apparently decided was easier: cataloguing every kind, attentive, specific thing Jungwon did, filing it carefully under that’s just him, and trying very hard not to notice how thin that file was getting to support the weight of what was actually piling up inside it.
—
The locker room before a game had a different texture than the locker room before practice, and Jungwon had learned the difference inside his first two weeks at Blackwood — practice was loose, chatter, somebody’s bad playlist. Game day was quiet in a way that wasn’t tense exactly, more like everyone in the room had individually decided to go somewhere internal for twenty minutes and would be back shortly. Jay sat at his stall with his eyes closed, headphones in, doing the same pregame ritual Jungwon had already watched him do four times now — three slow breaths, a fist against his own chest twice, then up and moving like a switch had been flipped. “You good?” Riki asked, low, from the next stall over, taping his stick with more focus than the task strictly required.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look good. You look like you’re about to throw up, which is hilarious, because you’ve told me multiple times you’re constitutionally incapable of that.”
“I’m not going to throw up.”
“Your face is doing a concerning thing.” Jungwon didn’t answer that, because Riki wasn’t entirely wrong — there was a specific, low-grade hum under his skin that hadn’t been there during any of the scrimmages or exhibition games, and he understood, finally and completely, the difference between playing well and playing well in front of a packed home arena on opening night with your name on the first line for the first time in program history as a true freshman. Coach had confirmed the lines an hour ago. Jungwon centering Jay and a senior winger named Sunoo’s roommate situation he hadn’t fully sorted out yet — no, that wasn’t right, he corrected himself, shaking the thought loose, focus — centering Jay. First line. Opening night.
He looked up once, scanning the stands through the tunnel as the team filed out for warmups, and found you almost immediately, three rows up behind the glass, exactly where you always sat — he’d clocked that without meaning to, the specific seat you and Sunoo claimed for every home game, close enough to see faces, far enough back to avoid getting hit by anything errant. You weren’t looking at him. You were looking at Jay, the way you always did first, tracking your brother onto the ice with the specific, unconscious attention of someone who’d been doing it your whole life. Then your eyes moved, found Jungwon’s, and something in your face did a small, private thing that he was almost certain nobody else in that stadium would have caught.
He scored his first collegiate goal eleven minutes into the second period — a give-and-go off Jay’s stick that he buried top shelf before the goalie had finished moving — and the arena went up around him in a wall of sound that he barely registered, because the only thing he was actually aware of, skating back toward the bench with his gloves up and his teammates slamming into him in celebration, was the specific spot three rows up where you were on your feet, both hands pressed over your mouth, looking at him like you’d forgotten, for one unguarded second, to look like you weren’t supposed to be looking at him like that at all. Jay slammed into him on the bench a second later, helmet knocking his, grinning wide and unrestrained in a way Jungwon hadn’t seen off him yet. “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Lucky bounce.”
“That was not a lucky bounce, that was you reading a play I didn’t even know was there yet.” Jay clapped him hard on the shoulder, something genuinely proud in it that Jungwon felt land somewhere uncomfortable in his chest, given everything else currently happening in his life that Jay had absolutely no idea about. “Coach was right about you. I’m gonna hate saying that out loud as often as I’m clearly about to have to.”
Blackwood won 4–1. The Den that night was its own kind of chaos — a post-win party that started before half the team had even fully showered, Jake commandeering the speaker again, somebody’s questionable decision to bring home a literal cardboard cutout of the team mascot from God knows where. Jungwon found himself in the middle of it, still riding the particular high of a first goal in a packed building, fielding congratulations from upperclassmen who’d barely spoken to him three weeks ago and now seemed entirely willing to consider him a real part of the program.
You found him near midnight, in the kitchen, away from the worst of the noise, where he’d retreated with a water bottle and the specific overstimulated quiet of someone whose adrenaline had finally started to crash. “Hey, scorer.” You leaned against the counter beside him, close enough that he could smell whatever you were wearing, something warm underneath the general party smell of the house. “Good game.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. I’ve watched Jongseong play with a lot of centers. You two looked like you’d been playing together for years, not weeks.”
“It helped that he kept finding me.”
“He doesn’t do that for just anyone.” You said it simply, like a fact, and something about the specific weight you put on it — he doesn’t do that for just anyone, echoing right back at the same private logic you’d been using to talk yourself out of every single thing Jungwon had done for weeks — made you go quiet for a second too long, like you’d heard yourself say it and immediately regretted the implication. Jungwon didn’t push it. He’d learned, in three weeks of watching you build and rebuild the same careful argument, that pushing only ever made you retreat faster. “You disappeared fast after the game,” you said instead, recovering. “I thought you’d stick around for the chaos longer.”
“Needed air.”
“You’re standing in a kitchen.”
“It’s quieter air than the living room.” A small, almost-smile. “You found me, though.”
“I was looking for water. This is incidental.”
“Sure.” You rolled your eyes, but you didn’t move away, and the space between you had gone thin and obvious in the same way it had three weeks ago at the party — except this time there was no excuse of being drunk, no Sunoo dragging you anywhere, just the two of you standing in a kitchen at midnight with three weeks of careful, deniable, he’s just like that tension sitting heavy in the air between you. You were the one who closed the distance this time. You’d think about that later — the fact that you’d made the decision, hadn’t waited for him to make the first move the way he had at the party — and you’d wonder what that meant about how far gone you already were without having admitted it to yourself yet.
You kissed him first, one hand fisting lightly in the front of his shirt, and he made a low, surprised sound against your mouth before his hands found your waist, steadying, like he needed a second to confirm this was actually happening before he let himself fully lean into it. “Thought this was a one-time thing,” he murmured, lips barely leaving yours.
“Shut up.”
“Just confirming the terms.”
“Jungwon.”
“Right. Shutting up.” He didn’t, not entirely — he kissed you again, slower this time, deliberate, walking you back until you hit the counter’s edge, hands braced either side of you like he had every intention of keeping you exactly there. “Upstairs,” he said, against your jaw, somewhere between a question and a statement. “If you want.” You did.
His room was darker this time, the party noise muffled down to a low thrum through the floor, and there was something different in the way he undressed you now — less the controlled, deliberate unhurriedness of someone proving a point, more the quiet hunger of someone who’d spent three weeks pretending he hadn’t been thinking about exactly this. “You moved first,” he said, mouth at your throat, hands sliding the strap of your top down your shoulder. “Didn’t expect that.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“Not making it weird. Just noticing.” He pulled back far enough to look at you properly, something steady and a little too searching in his eyes for a hookup either of you was still insisting this was. “I like that you did.” You didn’t have a response for that that wouldn’t have meant admitting something, so you kissed him again instead, and let that be the answer.
He laid you back against the sheets with the same deliberate care as the first time, mouth trailing down your throat, your collarbone, lower, his hands mapping you like he was confirming something he already knew rather than learning it fresh. When his fingers finally find your folds, already slick, he exhales sharply at the feel of you, his head dipping, his forehead briefly pressing to your stomach like he needs a second.“Every time,” he murmured, almost to himself. “You’re like this every time.”
“Don’t get smug about it.”
“Wasn’t being smug. Was being honest.” His thumb found your clit, slow, deliberate circles that pull your breath out of you almost immediately, your hips shifting up into his hand before you can stop them. He notices. Of course he does. His eyes flick back to your face and stay there, watching everything — the way your mouth parts, the way your breathing changes, the way your body responds to him.“You gonna let me hear you tonight, or are you still trying to be quiet for the house.”
You let out a breath that turns into something softer, more broken as his thumb presses a little firmer. “The house is currently hosting forty drunk hockey players, Jungwon, nobody’s listening.”
“Good.” Something low and pleased in his voice. “Then don’t hold back.” His fingers slide through you again, slower this time, spreading the slickness, feeling you properly before he presses one finger into you, easing it in without rushing, letting you feel the stretch. You gasp. Your hands find his shoulders. He doesn’t stop, instead adds a second finger, deeper this time, the drag of them against your walls slow and deliberate, pulling soft sounds out of you that start low, breathy, and only get louder the longer he keeps going.Your breath breaks, your thighs tightening around his arm, your body reacting faster, harder.“Good,” he says softly. “You look so good like this—” His fingers curl slightly inside you, hitting deeper, and the sound you make this time is louder, less controlled.
When he finally settled over you, lining himself up, he paused just long enough to press his forehead to yours. “Look at me,” he said, the same thing he’d said the first time, like it mattered to him every time, and when you did, he sank into you slow, a rough exhale tearing out of his throat at the tight, slick give of your walls around him. “Fuck — there you go.” His hips found a slow, grinding rhythm almost immediately, deep, deliberate, his mouth finding your neck, sucking another mark into skin that hadn’t quite finished healing from the last one.
“You take me so well. Every damn time.” The praise pulled a moan out of you that you didn’t bother muffling this time, and he made a rough, satisfied sound at the back of his throat in response, picking up the pace, the tip of him dragging against that spot that had your hips rolling up to meet his own. “That’s it,” he breathed, voice fraying at the edges. “That’s it, just like that — you sound so good.” Your hand found his, lacing fingers against the sheet the way it had the first time, and something about the repetition of that small gesture — the fact that he’d done it again, unprompted, like it was simply part of how he touched you now — undid you faster than anything else, your moans climbing breathless and unguarded until you tipped over with his name broken on your lips, walls clenching tight around him. He followed seconds later, groaning into your hair, hips stuttering through the last of it.
Neither of you moved for a long minute afterward, his weight braced careful above you, both of you breathing hard. “Okay,” you managed eventually, the exact same word you’d used the first time, like your brain hadn’t come up with anything new in three weeks. “That was — “
“Yeah.” He pressed a kiss to your temple, unhurried, lingering half a second longer than a one-time thing required. “That was.”
You walked back to your dorm alone again that night, the same as before, and lay awake afterward turning over the same tired argument — he’s just like that, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just convenient, you’re both just convenient for each other — except this time, for the first time, the argument didn’t quite hold its shape all the way through to morning. Good note — this is exactly the right instinct, you want the “everyone notices” chapter to land on a foundation that’s actually been built, not implied. A montage of small, accumulating moments before the bigger social-fallout chapter. Building that now.
It became a pattern made entirely of small things, none of which felt significant on their own and all of which, stacked together, were starting to feel like a life you hadn’t quite agreed to but weren’t fighting either. He texted first more often now. Not every day — Jungwon wasn’t a constant-texter, never had been, but the texts that did come were specific in a way that always undid your he’s just like that theory a little further.
jungwon: what time’s your lecture end today
you: 2:15 why
jungwon: no reason
There was always a reason. You walked out of your 2:15 that Thursday and found him sitting on the low wall outside the building, gear bag at his feet like he’d come straight from the gym, scrolling his phone with the studied casualness of someone who’d been there longer than “no reason” implied.
“You weren’t even supposed to have a free period right now.”
“I moved my lift.”
“You moved your lift.”
“Coach lets me have some flexibility.” He stood, falling into step beside you without asking if that was the plan, like it had simply stopped being a question between you. “How was the lecture.”
“Boring. You moved your lift for a boring lecture you weren’t even in.”
“I moved my lift to walk you back. The lecture being boring is just a fact you told me, unrelated.” You didn’t have a comeback for that, mostly because you didn’t want one — you wanted to keep walking next to him in the cold with his shoulder bumping yours every few steps, which was its own small, uncomfortable piece of evidence you kept choosing not to look at directly.
You started going to more practices than you used to. You told yourself it was because the season was getting good, because Jongseong’s line was clicking in a way that made it genuinely fun to watch, and that was even mostly true — but you also couldn’t deny, standing at the glass with your arms crossed against the cold of the rink, that your eyes found a specific number on the ice before they found your own brother’s. After one particular Thursday practice — closed to the public, technically, but the rink doors were never actually locked and you’d been sneaking in to watch since before you could legally drive — you waited until most of the team had filtered toward the locker room tunnel, until it was just a few stragglers and Coach Anders gathering up cones at center ice, and caught Jungwon’s eye across the rink with a small tilt of your head toward the narrow service corridor that ran behind the home bench.
He peeled off from the group without a word, gear bag over one shoulder, and found you in the dim, concrete-smelling hallway two minutes later, still in his practice jersey, hair damp with sweat, breathing a little hard from the skate. “That’s disgusting, by the way,” you said, wrinkling your nose as he got close. “You smell like a locker room.”
“You wanted me back here.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to be close to the smell.” He laughed, low, and backed you gently against the cool concrete wall anyway, one hand braced beside your head, and you let him, because apparently you’d stopped pretending the smell was actually a deterrent somewhere around hookup number one. “Well done today,” you murmured, against his mouth, an echo of the thing you said after every good game, except this was just a Thursday practice nobody else was watching, and you’d said it anyway, like it mattered to you whether he heard it. “It was just a drill.”
“You still looked good doing it.”
“Yeah?” Something pleased and a little smug crept into his voice, and you kissed him before he could lean too hard into it, his hand coming up to cup your jaw, the kiss going slower, deeper, his tongue tracing yours unhurried even though you both knew Coach was thirty feet away and any one of the team could walk down this corridor in the next ninety seconds. “We’re going to get caught one of these days,” you said, when you finally broke apart, breathless, his forehead dropping to rest against yours.
“Not today.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know nobody comes down this hallway. I checked.” He said it so simply, so practically, like he’d actually scouted the corridor in advance for exactly this purpose, that you laughed again, helpless, and he caught the sound with another kiss before you could finish it.
You let him walk you back out a side door a few minutes later, his hoodie — Blackwood Hockey, his last name on the back, YANG in block lettering you definitely hadn’t memorized the shape of — somehow ending up over your shoulders, because you’d complained once about the cold and he’d simply taken it off and handed it to you without making it a whole thing, the same easy, unbothered way he did most things for you now. You meant to give it back. You told yourself that every single time. The pile of his hoodies steadily accumulating at the back of your closet would suggest otherwise, if anyone had thought to look. Sunoo noticed the hoodies before he noticed almost anything else, mostly because he had unrestricted access to your closet and the world’s least subtle eye for detail. “Okay, why do you own four of the same hoodie.”
“I don’t own four of the same hoodie.”
“You own four hoodies that all say YANG on the back, Y/N, I’m not colorblind, I can see the consistent theme.” Sunoo held one up by the shoulders, inspecting it like evidence at a trial. “This is not subtle. This is, in fact, the opposite of subtle. This is a paper trail.”
“They’re comfortable.”
“I’m sure they are. I’m sure that’s the only reason.” He folded it back into the pile with exaggerated care, like he was handling something fragile and emotionally significant, which, you supposed, it currently was. “You know I’m rooting for you. I just think you should know that your closet has officially ratted you out, in case you were under the impression you were being subtle about any of this.”
“I never said I was being subtle.”
“You implied it heavily by insisting nothing’s going on, repeatedly, for over a month.” You didn’t have a defense for that one either. You were running out of defenses generally, you’d noticed — the file you’d been keeping, he’s just like that, it doesn’t mean anything, had gotten so thin and so unconvincing that you’d basically stopped pulling it out except as a reflex, a thing you said because you’d been saying it so long it had become muscle memory rather than something you actually believed.
The one bright spot in all of it, weirdly, was Sunoo’s own slow-motion disaster running in parallel — because somewhere in the same stretch of weeks, Sunghoon had apparently decided that ignoring Sunoo at the gym wasn’t a sustainable long-term strategy, and had started, with the same painful, visible effort it took him to do anything emotionally honest, showing up around him on purpose. “He asked me to get food,” Sunoo reported one night, vibrating with it, sprawled dramatically across your bed while you tried to study. “Just the two of us. No team. No excuse. He said, and I’m going to quote this exactly because I’ve already memorized it, ‘do you want to get food sometime, just us, like, as a thing, if you want it to be a thing, no pressure if not.’”
“That’s so awkward.”
“It’s the most romantic sentence anyone’s ever said to me, don’t ruin this for me.”
“I’m not ruining it, I think it’s sweet that he’s bad at it.”
“He’s so bad at it. He practiced that sentence, Y/N, I could tell, there was a cadence to it like he’d said it in his bathroom mirror forty times.” Sunoo rolled onto his stomach, propping his chin on his hands, grinning at you with the specific delight of someone who’d finally gotten what he wanted and couldn’t quite believe it. “Anyway. We’re getting food Friday. As a thing. I said yes so fast I think I scared him a little.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“I’m happy for you too, even though you keep insisting there’s nothing to be happy about, which, by the way, four identical hoodies.”
“Drop the hoodies.”
“I will never drop the hoodies.” Underneath all of it — the texts, the corridor, the hoodies steadily migrating into your closet, Sunoo’s slow, awkward, delighted thing with Sunghoon humming along beside yours like a quieter mirror of the same feeling — there was a song you’d started playing on repeat without quite noticing you’d started doing it, something low and aching and a little too on the nose, the kind of song that made you feel caught out by your own playlist. You didn’t examine that too closely either. You’d gotten good, lately, at not examining things too closely. It wasn’t sustainable. You knew that, somewhere underneath the part of you still insisting otherwise. You just weren’t ready yet to be the one who said it out loud first.
Riki had a theory, and the problem with Riki’s theories was that he refused to keep them to himself until he’d fully confirmed them, which meant Jungwon spent most of a Tuesday afternoon practice getting side-eyed across the locker room like he was a crime scene Riki hadn’t finished processing yet. “You smell like her perfume,” Riki said, apropos of nothing, while they were both lacing up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do laundry next to you, Jungwon. I know what your detergent smells like. I also now know what her perfume smells like, because it’s been showing up on your hoodies for three weeks, and those are two very different smells, and you are currently covered in the second one.”
“That’s not — “ Jungwon stopped, recalibrated, decided the better strategy was not engaging at all. “Tie your skates.”
“I’m just saying. For a guy who insists nothing’s going on, you sure do smell like a specific person an awful lot.” He wasn’t wrong, which was the most annoying part. Jungwon had gotten careless — not about the actual secret, he was still careful about that, still made sure nobody saw anything that would actually confirm it — but about the smaller tells. He’d started checking his phone faster than he used to. Started angling his laptop screen away from the kitchen table on instinct whenever someone walked by, even when all he was looking at was a stats reading. Riki, sharing a room with him for six weeks now, had apparently built up a working database of Jungwon’s baseline behavior and was running constant diffs against it. “You also disappear,” Riki added, undeterred by the silence. “At parties. You’re there, then you’re not there, and then forty minutes later you’re back like nothing happened, except your hair’s different and you’ve got this look.”
“What look.”
“The look. The one you’re doing right now, where you’re trying very hard to have no look at all, which is itself a look.” Jungwon gave up entirely on the laces and just stared at him. “What do you actually think is happening, Riki.”
“Honestly?” Riki considered it, head tilted, with the specific seriousness of a man about to deliver a verdict. “I think you’ve got a hookup situation going with someone you really, really don’t want anyone to know about, and I think it’s someone close enough to this house that the secrecy isn’t paranoia, it’s necessary.” That was, Jungwon thought, uncomfortably close to the actual truth for someone who didn’t have the full picture. “And I think,” Riki continued, clearly enjoying himself now, “that if I had to bet money on exactly one specific person, I would bet on—”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not gonna say it. I respect the game too much to just say it out loud. I’m gonna let you have this.” Riki finally bent down to actually tie his skates, infuriatingly satisfied with himself. “I just want it on record that I noticed first. When this eventually comes out — and it will, things like this always come out — I want full credit for calling it in week three.”
“There’s nothing to call.”
“Sure, buddy.”
Jake noticed differently, and later, and by accident — which was, in retrospect, the way most of the house ended up noticing things, because Jake’s primary skill was being in the wrong room at the right time and immediately understanding the significance of whatever he’d walked into. It happened on a Thursday, three weeks after the home opener, when you’d come by the Den to return Heeseung’s textbook for the second time — a running bit at this point, since Heeseung kept “forgetting” to give it back specifically so you’d keep coming by, a fact you had not yet clocked and that the rest of the house found hilarious — and Jungwon had intercepted you in the front hallway before you’d even made it to the kitchen. “He’s not even here,” Jungwon said, leaning against the doorframe like he’d been waiting, which — Jake would think later, replaying it — he absolutely had been. “Practice ran late for the d-men. You can just leave it.”
“I know I can just leave it, I was going to leave it on the kitchen table—”
“I’ll make sure he gets it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” The same line he’d used weeks ago, delivered with the same easy certainty, and something about the rhythm of it — the fact that you both seemed to already know this bit, already had a shorthand for it — was what actually caught Jake’s attention as he came down the stairs, gear bag over one shoulder, mid-text to someone else entirely.
He stopped on the landing. Didn’t say anything yet. Just watched for a second longer than either of you noticed him watching, taking in the specific quality of the space between you — not friendly-easy, not stranger-polite, something with more weight in it, the kind of familiarity that took longer than six weeks to build unless something had sped the process up considerably. You handed Jungwon the textbook. Your fingers brushed his on the handoff, the kind of accidental contact two people lingered on a half-second longer than accidental contact usually got, and neither of you seemed to register that you’d done it at all. “I’ll see you around,” you said, already turning for the door.
“Yeah.” Jungwon’s voice did something on that one syllable that Jake had genuinely never heard out of him before — not at practice, not at games, not in six weeks of living down the hall from the guy. Something soft. Something that had no business being attached to a sentence that short. Jake waited until the front door clicked shut behind you before he came the rest of the way down the stairs, eyebrows already halfway up his forehead. “So,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t even say anything yet.”
“You were about to say something.”
“I was about to say so, and then I was going to let the so do a lot of heavy lifting, and you just confirmed everything the so was going to imply by getting defensive about it before I finished.” Jake dropped his gear bag by the stairs, grinning now, delighted in the specific way he got delighted about things that promised future entertainment value. “Bro.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You said ‘yeah’ to her like it cost you something to say it. I’ve known you six weeks and I’ve genuinely never heard your voice do that.” Jungwon didn’t have a response that wasn’t a lie, and Jake — to his credit, Jungwon would think later — didn’t push for one. Just clapped him once on the shoulder, the universal gesture of a man choosing not to make something someone else’s problem yet, and headed for the kitchen. “I’m not gonna say anything,” Jake said, over his shoulder. “Mostly because I don’t actually know anything, I just watched a vibe happen. But for the record? If I’m right about what that vibe was — and I think I’m right — you’ve picked the single most complicated person on this entire campus to have feelings about.”
“I don’t—”
“Jungwon.” Jake stopped in the kitchen doorway, looking back at him with something almost gentle underneath the usual bit. “I’ve watched Jongseong run off guys at parties for less than what I just saw happen in that hallway. I’m not saying don’t. I’m saying be careful. That’s all. That’s the whole speech.” He disappeared into the kitchen, already calling out to Heeseung about something unrelated, and Jungwon stood alone in the hallway for a long moment, the textbook still in his hands, thinking that be careful was advice he’d needed about six weeks ago, and was currently far too late to actually take.
Heeseung found out the most boring way possible, which fit him — he was the kind of person who noticed things quietly and decided what to do with the information later, rather than announcing his discoveries the way Jake did. He’d simply started noticing that you knew things about Jungwon’s schedule that you had no obvious way of knowing — texting Sunghoon once to ask if practice was running over because Jungwon mentioned it might, a detail that hadn’t come from anyone but Jungwon himself.
He didn’t say anything about it. He just started covering, automatically, the way he’d cover for any of his teammates without needing to be asked — vague answers when Jay asked where Jungwon was, a deliberate slowness in mentioning that you’d stopped by when you clearly hadn’t wanted it mentioned. He never confirmed anything out loud to anyone. He just quietly became part of the machinery keeping the secret intact, the same unbothered, low-key way he did most things, and never once brought it up to Jungwon directly. Jungwon noticed the covering before he ever figured out Heeseung had clocked anything. By the time he put it together — weeks later, in the middle of an entirely unrelated conversation, when Heeseung said something that only made sense if he already knew — it didn’t even feel like a confrontation. Just a quiet, unspoken acknowledgment between two people who’d both decided silence was easier than the alternative.
Sunghoon noticed last, mostly because Sunghoon’s attention was almost entirely occupied that semester by his own slow-motion crisis regarding a specific person on the other side of campus, and he genuinely had very little processing power left over for anyone else’s romantic developments. When he finally did clock it — weeks later, watching Jungwon hover a half-second too long near the door whenever you were expected — his only reaction was a flat, “oh, that’s happening too?” like the house had simply hit its quota for secret entanglements and he was mildly annoyed there’d be two simultaneous storylines to keep track of.
By the time the home stretch of the semester hit, the entire house knew something — not the full shape of it, not how far back it went or how much it had already become, but enough to start quietly rearranging themselves around it. Cover stories appeared without being requested. Jay’s questions about Jungwon’s whereabouts got answered just vaguely enough to be technically true. Nobody said anything to Jay directly, because nobody wanted to be the one to set off whatever they all correctly suspected would be a genuinely bad reaction, and because — if anyone had asked them, which nobody did — most of them had quietly decided, somewhere along the way, that they liked watching Jungwon be like this. Soft. Distracted. Obviously, hopelessly gone for someone, in a way none of them had ever seen out of him before. It was, Jake said once, to Heeseung, the two of them watching Jungwon check his phone for the fourth time in ten minutes during a film session, “honestly kind of nice. Watching the guy be a disaster for once. Makes him feel human.”
“Jay’s gonna lose his mind when he finds out.”
“Yeah.” Jake didn’t sound especially worried about it, in the moment, in the specific way nobody in that house was worried about anything yet, because the bad part hadn’t happened. “But that’s a future problem.”
—
It was Sunghoon who spotted the hickey, and he didn’t even mean to — it was just there, dark and obvious, riding the curve of Jungwon’s neck above his collar when he peeled his shirt off before practice, and Sunghoon, mid-conversation with Heeseung about something entirely unrelated, simply stopped talking and stared. “Okay, what.”
“What?” Jungwon, lacing his skates, didn’t look up.
“Your neck.”
“What about it.”
“It’s got a — “ Sunghoon gestured, vaguely, at the general vicinity of his own throat, like the word itself was too much effort. “There’s a whole situation happening there.” Heeseung leaned over to look, and to his credit, didn’t say anything immediately — just took it in with the resigned, weary calm of a man who already had a working theory about its origins and didn’t need it confirmed out loud. Jake, three stalls down, had no such restraint. “OH my god.” He was up and crossing the room before Jungwon could even reach for his collar to cover it, grabbing his jaw and tilting his head sideways with zero regard for personal space. “That is not subtle. That is genuinely the least subtle hickey I have ever seen on a human neck, who did this to you, I need a name—”
“Get off.” Jungwon shoved him away, yanking his collar up with more force than the gesture required, ears going faintly red in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the locker room. “You’re blushing! He’s blushing, everyone look, Yang Jungwon is blushing—”
“I will end you, Jake.”
“You can’t end me, I’m a senior, I have seniority over your blushing.” Jake was delighted in a way that was going to make the entire practice session unbearable, Jungwon could already tell, and the fact that Riki had gone suspiciously, deliberately quiet in the corner — not even looking up, very pointedly minding his own business in a way that screamed I know exactly whose mouth did that and I am choosing not to say it out loud right now — only made it worse.
“Coach is gonna notice,” Heeseung said, mildly, like he was doing Jungwon a genuine favor by flagging it rather than just enjoying the chaos. “Coach notices everything,” Sunghoon added. “He noticed I changed deodorant brands once. Mid-practice. Pulled me aside specifically to ask if I was sick.”
“It’s a hickey, not a medical emergency, can we move on—”
“We absolutely cannot move on, this is the most interesting thing that’s happened in this locker room all semester.” Jay walked in midway through, gear bag over his shoulder, and the entire room — Jake included, for once — went quiet fast enough that it was almost funnier than the joke itself. Jay glanced around at the sudden silence, mildly suspicious, the universal expression of a captain who’d clearly walked into the middle of something and didn’t yet know what. “What.”
“Nothing,” six people said, at almost exactly the same time, in a unison so synchronized it was its own kind of confession. Jay’s eyes narrowed, scanning the room, landing — inevitably, because Jungwon still had his hand half-cupped over his own neck like that wasn’t going to draw more attention than just leaving it alone — directly on him. “You good, Yang?”
“Yeah. Fine. Just — cold. In here. Cold room.”
“It’s not cold in here.” Jay frowned, looking around at the room generally, like he was trying to locate whatever joke he’d clearly missed, and then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth the time, the way captains learn to triage which mysteries are actually worth solving. “Whatever. Get your skates on, Coach wants us on the ice in five.” The second he turned away, Jake mouthed “cold room” at Jungwon with such exaggerated disbelief that Jungwon had to physically look away to keep from laughing, which, in retrospect, was its own kind of tell, but at least Jay had already left the room.
Jay, for his part, had started noticing something else entirely — not the hickey, he genuinely never clocked that one, too distracted by practice logistics to connect dots that weren’t directly in front of him — but the simple, accumulating fact that you’d been at the Den constantly lately. More than usual, and his version of usual was already pretty high, since you’d basically grown up treating the place like a second home. “You’re here a lot,” he said one evening, finding you on the couch with your laptop, a half-finished essay open and very obviously not being worked on. “I’m always here.”
“You’re here more. I counted. You’ve been here five out of the last seven days.”
“Wow. Tracking my movements. Very normal brother behavior.”
“I’m not tracking your movements, I just notice things, it’s a captain instinct, it doesn’t turn off.” He dropped onto the couch beside you, stealing a chip from the bag balanced on the armrest without asking, the same easy, thoughtless intimacy you’d had your whole lives. “Is everything okay? With you? Is this an avoiding-your-dorm thing, or a missing-your-favorite-brother thing?”
“You’re my only brother.”
“Which makes me the favorite by default. Don’t dodge the question.”
“Everything’s fine, Jongseong. I just like it here.” You said it lightly, easily, and it wasn’t even technically a lie, which made it easier to say without flinching — you did like it here, more than you’d let yourself examine the actual reasons for lately. “Can’t a girl enjoy her brother’s questionable life choices in frat-house form without it being a whole investigation?”
“I guess.” He didn’t look fully convinced, but he let it go, the way he generally let things go when you used that exact tone — easy, unbothered, nothing here worth the energy of pushing — and went back to stealing your chips instead, and you let yourself exhale, slow and quiet, grateful that the version of you he’d known your whole life was apparently still convincing enough to hold up under a few extra questions. You weren’t sure how much longer that was going to keep being true. You didn’t let yourself think about it too hard.
The “team bonding” thing happened on a Friday Jay had scheduled weeks in advance — mandatory, his words, no exceptions, an entire evening at some axe-throwing place across town that he’d decided the team needed for “chemistry,” which had become a running joke all week because nobody fully believed Jay actually thought axe-throwing built chemistry so much as he just wanted an excuse to make everyone do something together that wasn’t hockey. Jungwon went. Obviously. Mandatory was mandatory, and he was still new enough to the program that skipping a captain’s event wasn’t a card he could play yet. He lasted two hours — long enough to throw a genuinely embarrassing number of axes into the wall instead of the target, long enough for Jake to declare him “tragically bad at exactly one physical activity, finally, some humility” — before he found a moment between rounds, phone in hand, thumb already moving before he’d fully decided to send it.
jungwon: team bonding. axe throwing. I’m terrible at it you: send proof jungwon: no you: that bad? jungwon: jake has been narrating my failures for forty minutes. it’s a whole bit now. you: I want to see it jungwon: absolutely not jungwon: what are you doing tonight you: nothing. sunoo’s out with sunghoon. apparently it’s becoming an actual thing thing. jungwon: good for them you: you’re going to be at this for hours, jongseong’s not letting anyone leave early jungwon: probably jungwon: unless I’m not. You’d read that last text three times before you fully understood what he was implying, and by the time you’d typed back don’t you dare get in trouble for this, he’d already left it on read, which — you’d learn, later, watching him recount it with a kind of sheepish pride — meant he’d already made the decision somewhere around the second eyeroll Jake gave him for missing yet another axe throw, and had simply waited for the right moment to slip out the side door while Jay was mid-story about last season’s playoff run.
He didn’t call an Uber to your dorm. He texted you instead, come open your window, which felt like an unnecessarily dramatic instruction until you actually looked outside and found him three stories down, standing in the grass below your window with his hands in his pockets like climbing buildings was a totally normal Friday activity for him. “You cannot be serious.”
“There’s a drainpipe. It’s very stable.”
“It is not — Jungwon, that is not a stable anything, that is a liability, get away from it—” He was already climbing by the time you finished the sentence, infuriatingly competent at it in a way that suggested either an athletic background doing something useful for once or a genuinely concerning lack of risk assessment, and you spent the entire ascent with your heart somewhere in your throat, half ready to call campus security and half ready to laugh, until he finally hauled himself up onto your windowsill and dropped into your room with significantly less grace than the climb itself had suggested, nearly taking out your desk lamp on the way down. “You’re insane.”
“I missed you.” He said it so simply, breathless from the climb, hair messed up, grinning in a way you rarely got to see fully unguarded, that you didn’t even have a comeback ready. “Jongseong’s gonna do the speech about attendance tomorrow. Worth it.”
“You’re going to get in actual trouble.”
“Probably.” He didn’t seem remotely concerned about that, already crossing the small space of your dorm room toward you, hands finding your waist. “Worth that too.” You kissed him before you could think better of it, and it had a different texture than usual — none of the unhurried, deliberate pacing of the first two times, something hungrier in it, both of you a little reckless off the adrenaline of him literally having climbed a building to get here. “You climbed three stories,” you murmured against his mouth, “to do this.”
“Wasn’t going to wait until tomorrow.”
“You could’ve just waited.”
“Didn’t want to.” He walked you back toward your bed, mouth at your jaw, your throat, hands already working at the hem of your shirt with considerably less patience than usual. “Wanted you tonight.” Clothes came off faster this time, less ceremony, more want, and when he finally got you under him, bare skin against bare skin, his mouth found yours again, deep, insistent, tongue sliding against yours with none of the careful restraint from before. “You’re in a hurry,” you breathed, when he finally pulled back enough to look at you.
“I am not in a hurry.” He pressed a kiss to your collarbone, lower, his hand sliding between your thighs to find you already slick, and the rough sound he made at that told you exactly how much restraint he currently had left. “I’m just very motivated.” His fingers worked you open quick, sure, two fingers curling against your walls in a way that had your back arching off the mattress almost immediately, his thumb finding your clit and pressing tight, deliberate circles that pulled a breathy moan out of you before you could think to muffle it against anything. “That’s it,” he murmured, low, watching your face with the same hungry attention he always gave you. “God, you’re so wet for me already.”
“Jungwon—”
“I know. I know, I’ve got you.” He kissed you again, hard, swallowing the next sound you made, and when he finally settled between your thighs and pushed into you, there was nothing slow about it this time — a long, rough slide that had you both groaning at once, his forehead dropping to your shoulder. “Fuck — “ His hips found a rhythm fast, deep, grinding into you with a kind of urgency that had your nails dragging down his back. “You feel so good, every single time, I swear—” The pace built quick, his mouth at your neck sucking another mark into skin that already had a fading one from days before, his hand finding yours and lacing your fingers together against the sheets the same way it always did, like even rushed, even reckless, that small piece of tenderness was non-negotiable to him.
“Look at me,” he said, rough, and when your eyes met his, something in his rhythm shifted, deepened, the tip of him dragging against that spot inside you that had your moans climbing breathless and unguarded. “You’re so good,” he breathed, voice fraying. “So good, taking me like this — gonna make you cum so hard you forget your own name.” The praise tipped you faster than usual, your walls clenching tight around him as you came apart with a cry you pressed into his shoulder to muffle, and he followed almost immediately after, a rough groan torn out of him as he spilled into you, hips stuttering through the last of it before he collapsed half his weight onto you, both of you breathing hard in the quiet of your dorm room.
“Worth the drainpipe?” you managed, eventually, into the dark. “Worth the drainpipe.” He pressed a lazy kiss to your temple, still catching his breath. “Worth Jongseong’s speech tomorrow too, honestly.”
“He’s actually going to kill you.”
“He’s gonna yell about attendance. He’s not gonna kill me.” Jungwon settled beside you, pulling you in against his chest with an easy, unthinking familiarity that you both noticed and didn’t comment on — the fact that he hadn’t left yet, hadn’t started the usual post-hookup routine of finding his clothes in the dark. “Can I stay a while?” You should have said no. You’d been saying no to exactly this for weeks, the staying, the parts that made it feel like something with a future instead of something contained. “Yeah,” you said instead, quiet, already half-asleep against him. “Yeah, you can stay.” Neither of you said anything else about what that meant. You didn’t have to. You both already knew.
—
The qualifier had been circled on the team calendar since August — win, and Blackwood was through to the regional bracket that fed straight into the Founders Cup; lose, and the season’s best version of itself ended in a building three hours from campus with nothing to show for it. Coach Anders had been quieter than usual all week, which everyone had learned meant he was more nervous than usual, and Jay had been running pregame meetings with the specific intensity of a captain who’d been to this exact game twice before and lost it. “Eyes up,” he said, in the locker room, voice pitched low and even in the way it got before something mattered. “We’ve done the work. We know this team. We know their power play, we know their breakout, we know their goalie cheats low on his glove side.” A pause, scanning the room, landing — same as always — on the freshmen for half a second longer than anyone else. “Tonight’s not about being perfect. It’s about being the team that wants it more for sixty minutes straight. I need that from everyone. Especially my first line.” His eyes found Jungwon’s. Held there. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” Jungwon said, and meant it the way he meant most things — completely, with no real plan for what came after if it didn’t go his way. It went his way. It went the whole team’s way, in the end, but it was close enough for most of the third period that the entire arena had been on its feet for the last six minutes of regulation, the score knotted at two, both benches screaming themselves hoarse at every faceoff. Jungwon won the draw with ninety seconds left, fed it back to the point, and when the rebound came loose in the slot it was Jay who buried it — top corner, glove side, exactly where Jungwon had told him all week the goalie wouldn’t expect it — and the arena came apart at the seams.
Jay found him first in the pile, both of them screaming something at each other that wasn’t even words anymore, helmets knocking, the whole bench spilling over the boards to bury them both. Riki got there a half-second later, half-sobbing with the specific delirious exhaustion of a freshman who’d just played the biggest sixty minutes of his life, and for a long, loud, glorious minute none of it had anything to do with secrets or rules or anyone’s sister. It was just hockey, the purest version of it, the kind Jungwon had signed up for in the first place. “THAT’S MY CENTER,” Jay was shouting, at no one, at everyone, dragging Jungwon into a headlock that was technically a celebration and technically also just Jay needing somewhere to put the sheer volume of feeling currently moving through him. “That’s my guy! I called it week one, I told Coach, I told him—”
“You told him nothing, you were terrified of me in week one—”
“I was never terrified, I was strategic—”
The bus ride home was loud the whole way, somebody’s phone playing the win highlight on a loop until everyone had watched Jay’s goal from six different angles, and by the time they pulled up outside the Den, the entire street already had cars parked along it that didn’t belong to anyone in the house — word traveled fast on a qualifier night, and half the campus seemed to already know there’d be a party going by the time the team actually walked in the door.
Riki covered for him for the first time that night, and it happened almost by accident, in the sense that Riki didn’t plan the lie in advance so much as produce it instantly, under pressure, with the specific improvisational skill of someone who’d apparently been quietly preparing for this exact moment without telling anyone, including himself. It was maybe forty minutes into the party, the living room already a wall of noise, when Jay turned around mid-conversation and said, to no one in particular, “where’d Jungwon go?” Riki, standing two feet away with a cup in his hand, didn’t even blink. “Bathroom.”
“He’s been gone a while.”
“Stomach thing. Pregame nerves, probably hit him late.” Riki said it with such total, unbothered conviction that even he seemed mildly impressed with himself afterward, recounting it later to Jungwon like he’d just pulled off a heist. “Should probably give him some privacy, honestly. Not a great scene in there right now, I’d imagine.” Jay made a face. “Gross. Okay. Tell him to drink water.”
“Will do, Captain.” The second Jay turned away, Riki allowed himself exactly one slow exhale of relief before pulling his phone out and typing, with the gravity of a man reporting from the field: covered for you. stomach thing. you owe me forever. Jungwon — who was, in fact, not in the bathroom at all, but in the kitchen with you, half-hidden behind the open refrigerator door under the thin cover story of getting a drink — read the text and laughed out loud, which made you ask what was funny, which made him show you, which made you laugh too, the two of you ducking further behind the fridge door like that added any real concealment at all. “He’s never going to let this go,” Jungwon said. “He’s never going to let what go specifically — the lie, or the leverage?”
“Both. Definitely both.”
Near midnight a freshman approached and flirted with Jungwon, a girl from his econ discussion section who’d apparently decided that a qualifier win was the right occasion to finally act on whatever interest she’d been nursing since week one, and she found him by the drinks table with a confidence that suggested she had no idea — none at all — what she was walking into. “You were so good tonight,” she said, hand finding his forearm, easy and familiar in a way that made something in your chest go tight and hot the second you spotted it from across the room. “Like, genuinely incredible. I didn’t know freshmen could even play like that.”
“Thanks.” Jungwon’s voice was polite, a little distant, the specific tone of someone being friendly without encouraging anything, but he wasn’t pulling his arm away either, too caught up in the general adrenaline of the night to fully register what was happening. You watched for exactly eleven seconds before you decided you’d watched enough. “Hey.” You inserted yourself into the conversation with more edge than you meant to, hooking a hand into Jungwon’s other arm like it was the most natural thing in the world, which — to anyone watching, you reminded yourself, it absolutely had to look like, since nobody here knew. “Jongseong’s looking for you. Something about the highlight reel.”
“Oh — yeah, I should—” Jungwon, to his credit, picked up on the temperature shift immediately, even half a beer in, and extracted himself from the girl’s hand with an easy, “good game tonight, good luck on the econ midterm,” before letting you steer him away by the arm without any real resistance. The second you’d put enough distance between yourselves and the drinks table, he was already grinning. “Are you mad?”
“I’m not mad.”
“You’re a little mad.”
“I am not — Jongseong does not actually want you, that was a lie, I made that up.” You let go of his arm like you’d only just realized you were still holding it, crossing your own instead, which did nothing to disguise how transparent you currently were. “I just didn’t feel like watching that.”
“Watching what.”
“You know what.”
“I genuinely don’t, you’re going to have to use words.” He was enjoying this far too much, falling into step beside you toward the stairs, something delighted and a little smug working at the corner of his mouth. “Say it.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Say it or I go back and ask her what the econ midterm’s actually about, since you brought it up.”
“Fine.” You stopped on the stairs, turning to face him, irritated mostly at yourself now for how easily he’d gotten this out of you. “I didn’t like watching some girl touch your arm and call you incredible. There. Happy?”
“Very happy.” He said it so simply, so plainly delighted, that some of your irritation softened into something else despite your best efforts. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous, I’m — annoyed. On principle.”
“That’s jealous with extra steps.” He caught your hand, tugging you the rest of the way up the stairs toward his room, the party noise dropping away behind the closing door. “I like it, for the record. Watching your whole face do that.”
“Don’t make this a thing.”
“Too late,” he said, against your mouth, already kissing you. “It’s already a thing.” You shoved him back onto the bed with more force than the moment strictly required, and he went easily, laughing low under his breath, hands finding your waist as you climbed over him, straddling his hips before either of you had bothered with much in the way of preamble. “Still jealous?” he murmured, hands sliding up your sides under your shirt.
“Shut up.”
“That’s not a no.”
“Jungwon.” You pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it somewhere you didn’t bother tracking, and the sight of him underneath you — flushed, win-high, looking at you like you were the only thing that had happened all night that actually mattered — undid the last of your patience. “Less talking.”
“Yes, ma’am.” You worked his belt open with quick, certain hands, and he watched you do it with his jaw tight, breath already gone uneven, hands gripping your hips like he was holding himself back from taking over entirely. When you finally freed him, hard and already aching, he let out a low, rough groan that you felt all the way down. “Tell me you want this,” he breathed, even now, even like this, the same checking he always did. “I’m on top of you right now. What does it look like.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I want this. I want you.” The honesty of it surprised you a little, coming out unguarded, but you didn’t take it back. You sank down onto him slow, both of you groaning at the slick, tight slide of it, and for a second you just stayed there, adjusting, his hands flexing against your hips like he was fighting every instinct to thrust up into you before you were ready. “Fuck — you feel — “ He cut himself off with a sharp exhale as you started to move, slow at first, finding a rhythm, his head tipping back against the pillow, throat working.
“This okay?” you asked, breathless, already rolling your hips again. “More than okay. God, look at you.” His hands slid up to your tits, thumbs brushing your nipples until you gasped, your rhythm faltering for a second before you found it again, faster now, chasing the building heat low in your stomach. “That’s it,” he groaned, hips finally rising to meet yours, the drag of him inside you hitting deeper at this angle, dragging a moan out of you that you didn’t bother muffling. “Ride me just like that — fuck, you’re so good, you have no idea—”
“Jungwon—”
“I know. I’ve got you.” His hand found your clit, thumb pressing tight, deliberate circles in time with your movement, and the combination had your moans climbing fast, breathless, your nails dragging down his chest. “You looked so good tonight,” you breathed, barely coherent, rolling your hips faster. “On the ice. I couldn’t stop watching you.”
“Yeah?” Something in his voice cracked open at that, rougher, more desperate. “Tell me again.”
“You were incredible.” You said it again, deliberately, watching the way it undid him, hips snapping up harder to meet yours. “Best on the ice. Better than anyone.”
“Fuck — “ His grip on your hips tightened, guiding your pace faster, deeper, the tip of him dragging against that spot inside you that had your vision sparking white at the edges. “Say it again—”
“Best player out there,” you gasped, close now, every word coming apart at the edges. “Mine — “ That seemed to do something to him entirely, a rough, broken sound tearing out of his throat as his thrusts turned faster, less controlled, chasing the same edge you were chasing, and when you finally tipped over it was with his name breaking out of you, walls clenching tight around him as he followed seconds later, spilling into you with a groan he pressed into your collarbone, hips stuttering through the last of it.
You collapsed against his chest, both of you breathing hard, his arms coming up around you loose and unhurried, like he had no intention of letting go anytime soon. “Hey,” you said, eventually, into the quiet, your cheek still pressed against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow back down. “I’m proud of you. For tonight. For real, not just — “ you gestured vaguely at the bed, the obvious aftermath of it. “For the game. You were really, genuinely incredible out there.” Jungwon went quiet for a second, his hand stilling where it had been tracing slow, idle patterns against your back, and when he finally spoke, his voice had lost all of its earlier teasing. “Nobody’s said that to me tonight. Not like that.” A pause. “Jongseong said it loud, in front of everyone. Riki said it because he’s my best friend and he has to. You’re the first person who said it just to me. Quiet. Like you meant it specifically.”
“I did mean it specifically.”
“I know.” He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, settling you further into his chest, his fingers finding yours and lacing them together against his stomach, slow and easy, the most unhurried, domestic gesture either of you had managed yet. “I like this part. After. Just this.”
“Yeah,” you admitted, quiet, letting yourself mean it without flinching for once. “Me too.” Neither of you said the word that was sitting in the room with you, obvious and unspoken, but you both heard it anyway, in the silence, in the way his heartbeat hadn’t gone all the way back to normal yet, in the way you’d stopped pretending, even to yourself, that this was still just convenient.
The team’s covering operation had, by this point in the season, developed an almost professional structure to it, and Jake — somewhat to his own surprise — had ended up running point on the version of it that covered for you specifically, rather than Jungwon, in a way that felt less like keeping a secret and more like something closer to actual brotherly instinct kicking in where Jay’s couldn’t. It started small. Jay would ask, casually, where you’d gotten to after a party, and Jake would have an answer ready before the question had even fully landed — “she left with Sunoo,” or “she said she was tired, headed back to the dorm early,” delivered with such easy, bored conviction that Jay never once thought to push further. It wasn’t even really lying, most of the time, just a careful management of which true things got said out loud and which got quietly left out, and Jake did it with the same instinctive ease he’d cover for any of his actual teammates, except this time the teammate he was protecting was you. “You don’t have to do that,” you told him once, catching him right after he’d smoothly redirected Jay away from asking why you’d been at the Den three nights running. “I know I don’t have to.” Jake shrugged, like it cost him nothing, which — Jake being Jake — it probably genuinely didn’t. “I’ve watched you get treated like property by every guy who’s ever looked at you twice on this campus, Y/N. Watching Jungwon actually be good to you, and good for you, is the first time I’ve actually wanted to help one of these situations instead of running it off.” He bumped your shoulder, easy, the same brotherly affection he’d had for you since you were sixteen. “Plus he climbed a drainpipe for you. I respect the commitment.”
“You heard about the drainpipe?”
“Everyone heard about the drainpipe. Riki couldn’t keep that one to himself for more than six hours.”
The sloppiness crept in gradually, the way it always does — not one specific reckless decision but a slow accumulation of smaller ones, each individually defensible, collectively a problem. You stopped checking the hallway before leaving Jungwon’s room. He stopped waiting the full ten minutes before following you down to a party. You held his hand under the kitchen table once during a group dinner and didn’t notice you’d done it until Heeseung’s eyes flicked down and back up again, saying nothing, filing it away with the same quiet discretion he applied to everything.
Riki, increasingly, found himself in the position of full-time alibi generator, a role he’d apparently decided to take seriously enough to develop a rotating cast of excuses so he wouldn’t repeat himself in front of Jay. “Stomach thing again?” Jungwon asked once, amused, after overhearing Riki deploy it for the third time that month. “I can’t keep using stomach thing, Jay’s gonna think you have a chronic illness.” Riki looked genuinely affronted at the suggestion. “I’ve diversified. Library. Equipment fitting. One time I said you were ‘processing the loss emotionally’ after a game we won, which in retrospect was a mistake, because Jay actually came to check on you and I had to improvise an entire secondary lie on the spot.”
“You told him I was sad after a win?”
“I panicked! You were not in the building, Jungwon, I needed something fast!”
It was Heeseung, in the end, with his usual quiet bluntness, who said the thing that pushed you both toward an actual conversation about what exactly you were doing. “You two are being sloppy,” he said, apropos of nothing, while you were both in the kitchen at the same time for once without any real cover story prepared, his voice pitched low enough that it wasn’t a public confrontation, just an observation meant for the two of you. “Not in a ‘someone definitely knows’ way yet. In a ‘it’s only a matter of time’ way.”
“We’re being careful,” Jungwon said, automatically, though even he didn’t sound especially convinced. “You held her hand under the table on Tuesday. I watched it happen. Jay was four feet away.” Heeseung took a sip of his coffee, unbothered, delivering the rest like a weather report rather than an accusation. “I’m not telling you to stop. I’m telling you that whatever you’re doing right now isn’t a secret thing anymore, it’s a secret-shaped thing that everyone already knows the shape of. The only person who doesn’t know is Jay, and that’s getting harder to maintain every single week.” Neither of you had a response to that. Heeseung, satisfied he’d made his point, simply finished his coffee and left the room, and the silence he left behind sat heavy enough that you finally looked at each other and both understood, without saying it yet, that something needed to actually be decided.
It happened that same night, quieter than either of you expected — no big declaration, no dramatic setup, just the two of you lying in his bed in the dark, his fingers tracing slow shapes against your bare shoulder, the kind of stillness that made honesty easier than it usually was. “Can I ask you something,” Jungwon said, into the quiet. “Mm.”
“What are we doing.” You didn’t answer right away, not because you didn’t have one, but because you’d been avoiding the question so deliberately for so long that actually hearing it out loud felt strange, like a word you’d practiced saying in private finally being spoken in front of someone else. “I don’t know what we’re calling it.”
“I know what I want to call it.” He said it simply, no hesitation in it at all, the same steady certainty he’d had since the very first night, since before you’d even properly known his name. “I haven’t been seeing anyone else. I haven’t wanted to. I don’t want some random freshman from your econ section thinking she has a shot, and I really don’t want some guy at a party thinking he does either.” A small pause. “I want this to actually be something. Not just — convenient. Not just a secret. I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine, even if nobody else gets to know that yet.” You let that sit for a second, feeling the actual weight of it land somewhere real in your chest, and then you turned to face him fully in the dark. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. Exclusive. Just us.” You felt something loosen in your chest as you said it, like a held breath finally let go. “I haven’t wanted anyone else either, if that wasn’t obvious from the jealousy thing.”
“It was very obvious.” He was smiling, you could hear it even without seeing it clearly. “I liked the jealousy thing a lot, for the record.”
“I know you did. You’re insufferable about it.”
“I’m allowed to be insufferable. My girlfriend’s jealous over me. That’s a good day.” He tried the word out like he was testing the weight of it, girlfriend, and something about the easy way he landed on it — like he’d been holding it ready for weeks, waiting for permission to use it — made you press closer into him, burying the small, helpless smile against his chest before he could see the full shape of it. “Don’t get used to saying that out loud,” you murmured. “Not yet. Not where anyone can hear.”
“I know.” Some of the lightness faded out of his voice, the reality of the actual logistics settling back in. “Soon, though. Right? We’re not doing this forever.”
“Soon,” you agreed, and didn’t let yourself think too hard about how soon soon actually needed to be, or what it would cost when it finally happened.
Sunghoon came out to the team on an entirely unrelated Tuesday, with none of the ceremony he’d apparently been bracing for, during a postpractice stretch session that had devolved, as most of them did, into nonsense. “I’m gonna say something and I need everyone to not make it weird,” he announced, to the room generally, mid-stretch, with the specific tension of someone who’d clearly rehearsed the moment and chosen the most low-stakes possible setting to finally do it. “Oh god, are you quitting hockey,” Jake said immediately. “Don’t quit hockey, we need you for the power play—”
“I’m not quitting hockey. I’m gay.” The room went quiet for exactly one second. “Okay,” Heeseung said, easily, already going back to his own stretch like Sunghoon had just announced the weather. “Cool.”
“That’s — that’s it? That’s the reaction?”
“What reaction did you want?” Jake looked genuinely confused. “Bro, we know. We’ve known. You’ve been weird about Sunoo for two months, you think we didn’t clock that?”
“I — okay, I knew you guys clocked the Sunoo thing, but I meant, like, generally—”
“We know generally too,” Riki put in, helpfully unhelpful. “I think Heeseung called it back in like September.”
“I called it the first week,” Heeseung corrected, mildly offended at the underselling of his own detective work. “It’s not, like, a thing, man,” Jake said, more gently now, sitting up properly to actually look at Sunghoon instead of just talking past him. “You’re still you. You’re still the guy who’s weirdly competitive about stretching and once cried during a dog food commercial—”
“That was one time and the dog was sick in the commercial, that’s a valid reaction—”
“You’re still our guy. That’s the whole thing. Nothing about that changes because you said the actual words out loud instead of us just all politely knowing.” Jake grinned, the tension fully gone from the room now. “Although I will say, the Sunoo thing makes a lot more sense now in terms of timeline. I thought you were just developing a coffee addiction for a while there.”
“I don’t even like coffee.”
“I KNOW, that’s what tipped me off, you kept buying it and not drinking it, it was clearly a Sunoo-adjacent purchase—” Sunghoon, somewhere in the middle of the room’s easy, immediate, unbothered acceptance, looked like a man who’d spent considerably longer bracing for this moment than the actual moment had required, and Jungwon — watching from across the room, his own secret still folded carefully out of sight — felt something complicated move through his chest. Relief, for Sunghoon, that this house was exactly the kind of place where something like that could land soft. And underneath it, quieter, a feeling he didn’t examine too closely: the knowledge that his own reveal, whenever it finally came, was not going to land anywhere near this gently. He thought about you, across the room and thought, not for the first time, that soon was a word doing a lot of work to put off something that was eventually going to come due no matter how careful you both stayed.
—
The quarterfinal landed on October 12th, which Jay had been complaining about since the schedule first dropped over the summer — “of course it’s on our actual birthday, of course the conference hates me specifically” — though the complaining had always had a performative edge to it, since everyone in the house knew Jay would rather play a quarterfinal on his birthday than not play one at all. You’d been planning the surprise party for two weeks, in increments small enough that nobody outside the inner circle had noticed: a quiet text chain with Heeseung about decorations, a grocery run with Riki that he’d disguised as “team snacks” when Jay asked, a cake order picked up that morning and hidden in the trunk of Sunoo’s car like contraband. The whole house had folded into the conspiracy with an enthusiasm that surprised even you — Sunghoon handling the lights, Jake in charge of the playlist, Heeseung quietly making sure there was enough food to feed forty hockey players without it looking suspicious in the fridge beforehand.
Jungwon’s job was the hardest one, and you’d given it to him on purpose: keep Jay distracted enough after the game that nobody had to rush the setup. “You’re sure he won’t notice anything’s off,” Jungwon asked, the night before, lying beside you with his chin propped on his hand. “He’s terrible at noticing things that aren’t directly related to hockey or me. You’ve watched him miss four separate hints about his own surprise party already. He thinks we’re doing dinner. A small dinner. That’s it.”
“And the call thing?”
“My job. I’ll handle my job. You handle yours — keep him in the locker room long enough, talk hockey at him, whatever it takes.”
“I can talk hockey at him for hours. That part’s not hard.” He pressed a kiss to your temple, easy, settling further into the pillow. “Happy almost-birthday, by the way. Twenty-one’s a big one.”
“Don’t remind me. I feel ancient.”
“You’re the same age as your brother, you’ve always been this age relative to him, nothing’s changing.”
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
Blackwood won the quarterfinal 5–2, Jay scoring twice and assisting on a third, playing like a man who’d decided his birthday came with an obligation to be the best version of himself on the ice, and the locker room afterward was loud with the specific giddy exhaustion of a team that knew it was one step closer to the Cup. Jungwon found Jay by his stall, still half in his gear, and did exactly what he’d promised — kept him there, breaking down the third goal frame by frame, asking deliberately long questions about reads and lane choices that he already understood perfectly well, buying every minute he could.
Across the room, you were on the phone, your voice pitched loud enough to carry. “Mom wants to FaceTime him the second he’s out of the shower, she’s been texting me nonstop, she says happy birthday like four times already and wants to actually see his face—” It worked exactly as planned. By the time Jay finally extracted himself from Jungwon’s increasingly elaborate hockey questions and took the call from your parents in the hallway outside the locker room — your mother’s voice audible even through the phone, your father in the background insisting on singing the first two lines of happy birthday badly, on purpose, the way he had every year since you were both kids — the entire team had already loaded into cars and beaten you both back to the Den, where Heeseung’s lights were up, Jake’s playlist was queued, and Sunoo had the cake set up on the kitchen counter with twenty-one candles that had taken Riki three attempts to actually light because the lighter kept giving out.
You walked Jay through the front door fifteen minutes later, phone call wrapped up, still mid-sentence about something your mom had said, and the entire house erupted at once — lights up, music starting, a chorus of “SURPRISE” loud enough that Jay actually flinched, one hand flying to his chest like his heart had genuinely stopped for a second. “You—” He turned on you immediately, half-laughing, half-betrayed. “The FaceTime was a setup.”
“The FaceTime was real, Mom does want to call you later, I just needed you distracted for twenty minutes.”
“I can’t believe you used our parents as a smokescreen—”
“I can’t believe it worked this well, honestly, you’re shockingly easy to fool.” He pulled you into a hug before you’d finished the sentence, the kind that lifted you half off your feet, laughing into your hair. “Happy birthday to you too, by the way. We’re the same age, idiot, this is also your party.”
“I know. Co-birthday king and queen. I expect a toast.”
“You’ll get several toasts. Jake’s already written something, I can see it on his face, he’s been holding it in all night.” He had, in fact, written something, and it was exactly as unhinged as advertised — a toast that started sincere, devolved into a list of increasingly embarrassing stories about Jay from freshman year, and ended with Jake actually getting a little emotional about “the best captain and the most tolerant sister a team’s ever been lucky enough to share a house with,” which got a genuine cheer from the room and a swat to the back of the head from Jay, who was visibly moved and trying very hard not to show it.
The party ran late, the good kind of late, the kind where nobody’s watching the clock because nobody wants the night to end — cake, then dancing, then somebody’s questionable decision to bring out the karaoke machine that lived in the Den’s basement for occasions exactly like this one, Jay and Jake butchering a duet so badly that Heeseung had to leave the room to compose himself. You danced with your brother for one whole song, the two of you doing the same ridiculous, half-choreographed bit you’d been doing at every birthday since you were fourteen, and across the room you caught Jungwon watching, something soft and unguarded on his face that he didn’t bother hiding for once, since nobody was paying close enough attention to notice. By two in the morning, the house had finally gone quiet — bodies passed out across couches, Jay asleep sitting up in an armchair with cake frosting still on his collar, Riki face-down on the floor for reasons nobody had bothered to investigate, Sunoo and Sunghoon curled into each other on the porch swing outside, low voices and easy laughter drifting in through the screen door. The kind of ending a good party earns. “Come on,” Jungwon said quietly, finding you in the kitchen surveying the wreckage of cake and cups. “I’ll walk you back.”
The campus at two in the morning had a particular hush to it, streetlights doing most of the work, your footsteps the loudest sound for blocks. Jungwon had his hands in his pockets, walking close enough that his shoulder brushed yours every few steps, neither of you in any real hurry to get where you were going. “Good birthday?” he asked. “Best one in years, honestly. Jongseong cried a little during Jake’s toast and he’s going to deny it forever, so that alone made the whole night worth it.”
“I have something for you. For your actual birthday, not the team thing.” He pulled a small, carefully wrapped box out of his jacket pocket — he’d clearly been carrying it all night, waiting for a quiet moment that wasn’t surrounded by forty other people — and held it out, a little sheepish in a way you rarely got to see on him. “It’s not much. I wanted to give it to you without an audience.” You unwrapped it slowly, under the streetlight outside your dorm, and found a thin silver chain inside, a small charm hanging from it shaped like a tiny hockey puck, and on the back, when you turned it over, your birthday engraved in careful, small lettering alongside a single date you recognized immediately — the night of the party, three months ago, when this whole impossible thing had started. “Jungwon.”
“I know it’s a weird thing to commemorate. I just—” He rubbed the back of his neck, the first genuinely nervous gesture you’d seen out of him in weeks. “I wanted something that was just ours. Something nobody else would know the meaning of if they saw it. You could wear it and nobody would ever know what it actually means, except you. Except us.” You didn’t say anything for a second, just looked at it, the weight of how much thought had clearly gone into something this small landing somewhere soft and unguarded in your chest, and when you looked back up at him, he was watching you with the specific, quiet hope of someone who genuinely wasn’t sure how the gift would be received. “I love it,” you said, finally. “I love it so much.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You let him fasten it around your neck right there under the streetlight, his fingers careful at the clasp, and when he was done you turned and kissed him — slow, unhurried, none of the urgency from earlier in the semester, just the easy, settled kind of kiss that came from three months of knowing exactly how this felt and not being in any rush to stop feeling it. “Best birthday gift I’ve gotten in years,” you murmured, against his mouth. “Good. That was the goal.” He kissed you again, lingering, his hand coming up to rest against the curve of your jaw. “Happy birthday.”
“Hey,” you said, pulling back just far enough to look at him properly, an idea you’d been sitting on for a week finally finding its moment. “There’s a festival next weekend. Off campus, like an hour out — Sunoo’s been talking about it for weeks, lights and music and the whole thing. I want you to come with me.”
“An hour off campus.” Something in his face shifted, considering it properly. “That’s far enough that nobody from the team would just stumble into us.”
“That’s the point.”
“You’re asking me on an actual date. A real one. Outside the Den, outside parties, outside all of this.” He said it slowly, like he was turning the idea over, savoring it a little. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me something like that since September.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s the easiest yes I’ve ever given anyone.” He pulled you back in, forehead resting against yours, both of you smiling too wide for the hour, for how tired you should have been, for how much you still had left to figure out about the rest of this. “I’d go anywhere with you. An hour’s nothing.” You stood there a while longer under the streetlight, in no hurry at all, the small silver puck resting warm against your collarbone, neither of you saying out loud the thing you were both clearly thinking — that a real date, an hour off campus, away from anyone who might recognize either of you, felt like the first real crack of daylight after months spent entirely in the dark. Like maybe, soon, you wouldn’t have to keep choosing between him and the rest of your life.
The week leading up to the festival passed in a way that felt almost suspiciously easy, and Jungwon noticed it more than once — the specific, unguarded lightness of just being happy, without the usual undercurrent of calculation running underneath it. He caught himself smiling at nothing during an econ lecture. Caught Riki noticing him do it. “You’ve been weird all week,” Riki said, eyeing him over a stats problem set neither of them were actually working on. “Weird good, though. Like, suspiciously content. It’s unsettling, honestly, I’m used to you having at least one low-grade crisis going at all times.”
“I don’t have crises.”
“You have constant crises, you just hide them well. This week you’ve had zero. I noticed.” Riki narrowed his eyes. “Something’s happening this weekend. You’ve got a bag packed already and it’s Tuesday.”
“We’re going to a festival.”
“You’re going somewhere overnight with a bag packed four days early for a day festival. Those numbers don’t add up, my friend.”
Jungwon didn’t dignify that with an answer, mostly because Riki wasn’t wrong, and the not-answering was its own kind of confirmation that Riki accepted with a satisfied, knowing nod and went back to his problem set, humming something annoyingly pleased with himself under his breath.
You’d booked the hotel two weeks in advance, a small, unfussy place near the festival grounds that you’d found mostly because it was far enough out that nobody from Blackwood would plausibly be staying there too, and you’d told Jungwon all of it with the same deliberate, slightly nervous energy of someone planning something that mattered more to her than she wanted to admit out loud.
“Friday to Sunday,” you’d said, showing him the booking on your phone. “Festival’s Friday, but I figured — we never get an actual weekend. Just us. No covering for anyone, no checking the hallway first.”
“Friday to Sunday,” he’d repeated, something settling and pleased moving across his face. “I like that math a lot.”
Sunoo and Sunghoon were going too — officially, publicly, the easiest couple in the entire group now that Sunghoon’s coming out had cleared whatever quiet tension used to sit underneath their dynamic — and the four of you drove out together Friday afternoon, windows down, Sunoo controlling the music with the same merciless authority he applied to most things, Sunghoon driving with one hand permanently finding Sunoo’s knee whenever a song he liked came on. “This is so much better than sneaking around,” Sunoo announced, from the front seat, twisting around to grin at the two of you in the back. “You two get to have, like, a real weekend. With us. As an actual couple thing. Double date energy. I’ve been waiting for this since September.”
“We’re not technically a public couple yet,” you reminded him.
“You’re public to us. That’s basically the same thing, just smaller scale.”
The festival itself was everything Sunoo had promised — string lights strung between food trucks, a stage at the far end of the field playing through a lineup of bands neither of you fully recognized, the whole grounds lit gold as the sun went down. And for the first time since the party back in September, you got to just be a couple in public — Jungwon’s hand finding yours without either of you checking who might be watching first, his arm slung easy around your shoulders while you waited in line for festival food, both of you laughing at something stupid Sunoo said without the automatic, practiced half-second of distance you usually kept in case anyone from the Den happened to be nearby. “This is so weird,” you admitted, leaning into his side as the two of you watched some local band finish their set. “Good weird. I keep waiting for the part where I have to let go of your hand.”
“You don’t have to let go of my hand.” He squeezed it, like he was making the point physically as well as out loud. “Not here. Not this weekend.”
“I know. It’s just — new. Being normal about it.”
“I could get used to normal.” He pressed a kiss to your temple, easy, unhurried, the kind of casual public affection that would’ve sent your heart into your throat back at the Den and here just felt like exhaling. “We should do this more.”
“We will. Eventually. Just — not yet.” He didn’t push on the not yet, the way he’d stopped pushing on it weeks ago, content for now with the version of normal a weekend an hour outside of everyone’s orbit could actually offer. Sunghoon bought Sunoo a ridiculous oversized stuffed animal from one of the carnival games after missing the target six times and finally landing it on the seventh, to a level of triumphant celebration that drew the attention of half the surrounding crowd, and Sunoo carried it around for the rest of the night like a trophy, occasionally hitting Sunghoon with it when he said something he found insufficiently romantic.
You got back to the hotel late, well past midnight, festival dust still on your shoes, and the second the door clicked shut behind you, Jungwon had you pressed gently back against it, his mouth finding yours unhurried but certain. “Good night?” he murmured, against your lips. “Best one in a while.” You let your hands slide up under his shirt, the festival heat and the long day and months of careful waiting all collapsing into one slow, building want. “Come to bed.”
He undressed you slow, the same deliberate care he’d had since the very first night, like the weekend stretching ahead of you had taken away any reason to rush. He laid you back against the hotel sheets, mouth tracing the same patient path down your throat, your chest, lower, and when his fingers finally found your folds, already slick from the whole night of anticipation, he groaned low against your skin. “We’ve got all weekend,” he said, glancing up at you, something dark and unhurried in his eyes. “No reason to rush any of it.”
He took his time proving that, working you open with slow, deliberate fingers until you were gasping his name into the quiet of the room, and when he finally settled over you and pushed in, the rhythm he found was slow and grinding, deep, drawing soft, breathy moans out of you that built steadily rather than rushing toward anything. “Look at you,” he breathed, watching your face with open, unguarded want. “We’ve got two more nights of this. I’m not in a hurry tonight.” He kept that promise. The first time was slow, drawn-out, both of you trading low praise and his name and yours back and forth until you came apart around him with a soft, broken sound, his own release following unhurried moments later. The second time, near dawn, was slower still, lazier, half-asleep limbs and unhurried kisses until neither of you could tell anymore where the festival ended and the rest of the weekend began.
Saturday morning arrived late, neither of you bothering to leave the bed until room service knocked, and you spent a solid hour tangled in the sheets eating pancakes off the same plate, his fingers occasionally stealing bites off your fork just to watch you swat at him. “This is what I want,” you said at one point, syrup-sticky and entirely unguarded, watching him steal another piece of bacon. “Just this. Mornings like this, except not just on a weekend an hour from campus.”
“Soon,” he said, the word that had become something like a promise between you over the last few weeks, and this time it landed differently — closer, more real, like the gap between soon and now had finally started to close.
You spent Saturday afternoon wandering the small downtown near the hotel, ducking into shops mostly for the fun of it, Jungwon buying you a ridiculous pair of sunglasses you’d tried on as a joke and then genuinely loved, you talking him into a soft, oversized sweater he swore he’d never wear outside this trip and absolutely would, in fact, wear constantly once you got back. Sunoo texted updates from his and Sunghoon’s parallel afternoon — we got matching bracelets I’m going to cry — and you sent back a photo of Jungwon in his new sweater with the caption we’re matching in spirit. By Saturday night you were both too sun-tired and festival-worn to do much more than order room service again and fall asleep tangled together by ten, and Sunday morning came too fast, the drive back to campus quieter than the drive out had been, all four of you a little subdued at the idea of stepping back into a world where this version of things — easy, public, unguarded — had to fold itself small again.
“I don’t want to go back to hiding it,” you said quietly, somewhere on the drive, your head against Jungwon’s shoulder, watching the festival grounds disappear behind you through the back window. “I know.” His arm tightened around you, his voice low enough that it was just for you, even with Sunoo and Sunghoon talking quietly up front. “We won’t have to. Not forever.”
The drive back from the festival had the particular quiet of a good weekend ending — not sad, exactly, just settling, everyone a little sun-worn and content, Sunoo’s playlist gone soft and slow for the last hour of the trip in a way that matched the mood better than anything from Friday’s drive out. Sunghoon dropped you and Sunoo off first, your dorm closer to the highway exit than the Den, and the goodbye had its own small chaos — Sunoo hugging you so hard you nearly lost your footing, already texting in the group chat about “the best weekend of my entire life, I’m emotional, don’t talk to me,” Sunghoon leaning out the driver’s window to tell Jungwon something about practice schedules that was really just an excuse to keep the car parked a few extra minutes.
You climbed out last, your bag over one shoulder, and Jungwon got out too, rounding the car to walk you the short distance to the dorm entrance even though it was barely twenty feet, because apparently three days of being an actual couple in public had made him reluctant to let the smallest goodbye go un-marked. “This was the best weekend I’ve had in years,” you told him, under the dorm’s overhead light, voice still a little rough with the particular exhaustion that comes from too much sun and too little sleep and exactly the right amount of everything else. “Best one I’ve ever had.” He said it simply, with no exaggeration in it at all, like he’d actually run the comparison in his head and landed on the truth of it. “I don’t want to go back to checking hallways.”
“I know. We won’t, soon.”
“Soon,” he agreed, and pulled you in for a last kiss right there under the light, slow and unhurried despite Sunghoon’s car idling at the curb, his hand coming up to cup your jaw the same way it had the very first night, except nothing about this kiss carried any of that night’s uncertainty. This one knew exactly what it was. “Go,” you murmured, eventually, laughing against his mouth. “Sunghoon’s going to start honking.”
“Let him.”
“Jungwon.”
“Fine. Going.” He kissed you once more, quick, like he couldn’t quite help himself, then backed away toward the car with obvious reluctance, already calling over his shoulder, “text me when you’re inside.”
“I’m twenty feet from the door.”
“Text me anyway.” You watched the car pull away before you went in, and true to his word, your phone buzzed before you’d even gotten your key in the lock.
jungwon: best weekend of my life. thank you for asking me.
you: thank you for climbing through my window in september. none of this happens without that.
jungwon: worth every inch of that drainpipe
The car ride to the Den was quieter, Sunghoon driving, Jungwon in the passenger seat with his phone still warm in his hand, the particular loose, contented quiet of someone who’d spent three days being exactly who he wanted to be without having to manage it. “You good?” Sunghoon asked, eyes on the road. “You’ve got a face.”
“What face.”
“The face you’ve had all weekend. The one where you look like someone hit you with a happiness truck and you haven’t fully recovered.” Sunghoon said it without judgment, mostly amused. “It’s a good look on you. Different from the usual broody thing.”
“I don’t do a broody thing.”
“You do an extensive broody thing, it’s just been on pause for three days.” Sunghoon pulled up outside the Den, cutting the engine. “You ready for the readjustment? Back to hallway-checking and stomach-thing alibis?”
“Not really.”
“Yeah. Figured.”
Jay was in the kitchen when they walked in, mid-conversation with Heeseung about something on his laptop, and he looked up the second the door opened with the easy, automatic attention of a captain checking who’d come home. “There he is. Where’ve you been all weekend? Riki said something about a festival, but he was being weird and cagey about it, which usually means he’s covering for somebody.” Jungwon felt the question land exactly where he’d known it would eventually land, and answered it the way he’d practiced in his head somewhere around hour two of the drive home, voice easy, unbothered, the specific calm he’d built a habit of deploying for exactly this purpose. “Went with Sunghoon. Sunoo wanted to go to that festival thing out near the lake, dragged us both along, figured it’d be good to get off campus for a weekend before the semester gets worse.” A small shrug, casual, nothing in it worth a second look. “Needed the break, honestly. Been a heavy few weeks.”
“Yeah, you’ve earned a weekend off.” Jay nodded, easy, already moving past it, no reason in his world yet to ask a follow-up question, because nothing about the answer had given him one. “Glad you went. You’ve looked tired lately, this is the first time in weeks you’ve looked like you actually slept.”
“I slept a lot.”
“Good. Need you sharp, we’ve got the semifinal in two weeks, I’m not losing my center to burnout right before that.” Jay clapped him once on the shoulder on his way past, the same easy, trusting gesture he’d been giving Jungwon since week one, completely unaware of how much weight that trust was currently carrying without his knowledge. “Go unpack. We’ll talk lines tomorrow.” Jungwon watched him go, the lie sitting easy and practiced in his chest, and felt — not for the first time, but more sharply than usual, the festival’s three days of honesty still warm in his memory — exactly how much it cost him to do this so smoothly. He was good at it. That had stopped feeling like something to be proud of weeks ago.
Sunghoon, beside him, didn’t say anything, just exhaled slow through his nose, the universal sound of someone watching a friend get better and better at something that was eventually going to catch up to him. “You’re really good at that,” Sunghoon said, finally, quiet, once Jay was out of earshot. “Yeah,” Jungwon said, and didn’t sound proud of it at all. “I know.”
Coach Anders had decided, with the semifinal now exactly two weeks out, that the only acceptable response to that fact was to make practice considerably worse for everyone involved, and Jay had taken to that decision with the specific zeal of a captain who agreed with it completely and intended to make sure the rest of the team did too. “Again,” Jay called, for what had to be the eighth time, as the line reset at the blue line. “We’re not running this drill again because it was bad. We’re running it again because it needs to be automatic. You shouldn’t have to think about this read by week fourteen of the season.”
“My legs are gone,” Jake announced, from somewhere near the bench, draped over the boards like a man who’d given up on dignity entirely.
“Good. That means it’s working.” Jay didn’t even look over, already skating back to center ice. “Yang, Riki, line up. Same read, full speed this time.”
Practice ran nearly forty minutes long that day, and longer the day after that, Coach standing at the bench with his arms crossed and his expression unreadable in the particular way that meant he was satisfied without wanting anyone to know it yet. Jungwon’s legs felt like they belonged to someone else by the time they finally got let off the ice, the good kind of exhausted, the kind that meant the work was actually sinking in.
Jay gathered them at center ice before letting anyone head for the showers, voice pitched in the low, even register he used when he meant something seriously. “Two weeks,” he said. “I know everyone’s tired. I’m tired. I don’t care. We’ve worked too hard this season to lose in the semis because we got comfortable in October.” His eyes moved across the group, the same way they always did, landing for half a second longer on his first line. “I need everyone locked in. No distractions. No slipping. We’ve got one shot at this and I’m not watching it fall apart over something stupid.” Jungwon felt that land somewhere uncomfortable in his chest, the word slipping hitting closer than Jay could possibly know he meant it.
You came by the Den that evening with a folder of notes Jay had texted you about twenty times asking for — something he’d left at your apartment after a study session weeks ago that he apparently needed for a presentation he’d been putting off — and you found the house in its usual post-practice wind-down, the smell of someone’s attempt at dinner drifting from the kitchen, the low murmur of a TV nobody was actually watching. “Finally,” Jay said, intercepting you in the front hallway before you’d even made it past the framed photo on the wall, snatching the folder out of your hands with the particular gracelessness of an exhausted older brother. “You’re a lifesaver. I would’ve actually failed this presentation.”
“You’re welcome. Next time, don’t leave your stuff at my place for three weeks before remembering you need it.”
“Noted. Ignored, probably, but noted.” He flipped through the folder to confirm everything was there, and in the process of doing so, his eyes caught on something at your collarbone, the small silver chain that had become such a constant fixture you’d genuinely forgotten, in this exact moment, that it was something worth noticing. “That’s new,” Jay said, tilting his head, studying the little charm hanging from it. “The necklace. I haven’t seen that before.” Your stomach did a slow, cold drop, the kind that came from being caught flat-footed by a question you should have seen coming and hadn’t prepared an answer for. “Oh — yeah. Just something I picked up.”
“Where? It’s cute. Looks expensive for a ‘picked up’ kind of thing.” He leaned in slightly, squinting at the small engraved charm without actually reaching for it, which was the only mercy currently available to you. “Is that a date on the back?”
“It’s — just a birthday thing. From myself. Treated myself.” The lie came out faster than you’d planned it, stacking itself on top of the truth so quickly you almost believed it yourself for a second. “You know. Twenty-one. Felt like an occasion.”
“Huh.” Jay studied it a beat longer, and for one suspended second you were certain he was going to ask the obvious next question — why would you buy yourself a hockey puck charm, you don’t even like hockey jewelry, you’ve made fun of mine for years — but exhaustion and a folder full of overdue coursework apparently won out over curiosity, and he just shrugged, already turning back toward the stairs. “Cute, though. Looks good on you.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell Sunoo I said hi. And tell Sunghoon he owes me ten bucks from the bet last week.”
“What bet?”
“Doesn’t matter, just tell him.” Jay was already halfway up the stairs, folder under his arm, the conversation closed in his mind as completely as it had opened.
You stood there for a long moment after he disappeared, your hand coming up unconsciously to touch the small charm at your collarbone, feeling the particular vertigo of having walked right up to the edge of something and stepped back from it by pure luck rather than any actual skill. Across the room, in the kitchen doorway, Jungwon had gone very still, having caught the entire exchange from a few feet away, and when your eyes finally met his, you both understood, without saying anything, exactly how close that had just been. “That was too close,” you said quietly, once you’d both retreated to the relative privacy of the back porch. “I know.” Jungwon’s jaw was tight, his eyes still on the doorway like Jay might reappear any second. “He was right there. One more second of looking at it and he would’ve asked the question that actually matters.”
“He didn’t, though.”
“This time.” Jungwon ran a hand through his hair, something frayed at the edges of his usual calm. “We’ve been doing this for four months. We just got lucky in there. That’s not the same as being careful.” You didn’t have a good response to that, mostly because he was right, and the two of you stood there in the cold evening air, the necklace warm and suddenly heavy against your skin, both quietly aware that the margin you’d been operating in had just gotten visibly thinner, and that luck, eventually, the way it always does, was going to run out.
—
You went to Jungwons to study and the studying had been real, at first — that was the part that would seem darkly funny to Jungwon later, in the version of this night he’d replay for weeks afterward, the fact that the thing that finally got them caught had started as something genuinely, boringly innocent. You’d come over with your laptop and a stack of flashcards for a psych exam, and Jungwon had his own econ readings spread across the bed because his desk was buried under hockey equipment he kept forgetting to put away, and the two of you had actually studied, properly, for almost an hour — quizzing each other, him stealing glances at your flashcards and making fun of your handwriting, you threatening to revoke his snack privileges if he kept distracting you.
The studying had stopped being the point somewhere around the time he’d leaned over to correct an answer on your flashcard and you’d turned your head at exactly the wrong — or right — moment, and what started as a normal, domestic kind of closeness had tipped, slow and easy and entirely without either of you deciding it on purpose, into something else. Flashcards forgotten on the floor. His laptop pushed aside. The particular unhurried quiet of two people who’d done this enough times now that there was no nervousness left in it at all, just familiarity, comfort, the specific ease of being completely known by someone.
Neither of you heard the door.
Jay had knocked — he’d insist on that later, loudly, repeatedly, as if it mattered — but the knock had landed in a gap between two things that weren’t paying attention to anything outside the room, and when nobody answered, he’d done what he always did at the Den, what he’d done a hundred times before without a second thought, because it was his team’s house and these were his guys and there had never, not once in three years, been a reason to think twice about opening a door that wasn’t locked.
“Hey, Jungwon, I need to ask you something about the line rush tomorrow—” The sentence didn’t finish. It just stopped, mid-air, the way a record stops when someone lifts the needle, and the silence that replaced it was the loudest sound Jungwon had ever heard in his life.
For one full second nobody moved. Jay stood frozen in the doorway, hand still on the handle, his expression doing something complicated and fast — confusion first, the brain’s split-second refusal to process what it was looking at, and then, almost instantly, the confusion burning off into something else entirely, something that didn’t have a soft landing anywhere underneath it.
Jungwon didn’t scramble. That would come a second later, the reflexive grab for a shirt, the half-formed motion of putting himself between you and the door, but in that very first second he just froze too, eye to eye with Jay across the room, and some old, certain part of him understood with total clarity that there was no version of the next ten seconds that ended anywhere good. “Get out,” Jay said. Flat. Quiet. Worse than yelling. He wasn’t talking to you. He couldn’t look at you.
His eyes were locked on Jungwon, and his voice, when it came again, had dropped even lower, which somehow made it land harder than volume would have. “Get dressed. Get downstairs. Now.” He turned and left before either of you could say a single word, the door left hanging open behind him, and the sound of his footsteps on the stairs was the sound of something detonating in slow motion, the blast wave still traveling, the real damage still about thirty seconds out.
By the time Jungwon made it down to the common room — shirt yanked on inside out, hands not quite steady, you two steps behind him with your own clothes hastily fixed, both of you moving on the kind of adrenaline that doesn’t leave room for thinking — the house had already started gathering, drawn by the sound of Jay’s voice carrying from the kitchen where he stood with his hands braced flat on the counter, head down, breathing like a man trying very hard not to put his fist through something.
Riki was already there, having apparently come downstairs to investigate the noise, and the look on his face when he caught sight of Jungwon was somewhere between sympathy and pure dread. Jake appeared from the den a second later, take-out container still in hand, taking in the scene with rapidly dawning horror. “Jongseong,” you started, “let me explain—”
“Explain what.” Jay’s head came up, and his voice cracked across the room loud enough that it didn’t matter anymore who heard it. “Explain how long this has been going on? Explain how many times I’ve asked where you were and gotten a lie back? Explain how every single person in this house apparently knew except me?” Nobody answered that. Jake’s eyes dropped to the floor. Riki’s jaw tightened. The silence itself was an answer, and Jay heard it land, his face going through something raw and furious all at once.
“You all knew.” He looked around the room, voice climbing now, no longer flat, no longer quiet. “You knew, and none of you said a word to me. I trusted every single one of you—”
“It wasn’t our secret to tell,” Heeseung said, low, the only person brave enough to say anything at all. “Don’t.” Jay’s voice cracked on the word. “Don’t you dare stand there and tell me about whose secret it was. She’s my sister.” He turned back to Jungwon, and whatever had been simmering under the flat, quiet anger from upstairs finally broke loose entirely. “I had one rule. One. I told you on day one, I told you to your face, and you shook my hand on the ice an hour later and let me believe you actually meant it.”
“Jongseong, I—”
“How long.” Jay was closing the distance now, chest heaving, and Jungwon — to his credit, to the credit of the discipline that made him good at everything he did — didn’t back away from it. “How long has this been happening. Don’t lie to me again, you’ve done enough of that already.”
“Since September.” Something in Jay’s face actually broke at that, the math of it landing visibly — four months, nearly the entire season, every single practice, every single game, every locker room conversation happening underneath something he’d had no idea about — and the breaking turned immediately back into rage because rage was easier to hold than the alternative. “Four months.” He shoved Jungwon, hard, both hands flat against his chest, hard enough that Jungwon actually stumbled back a step. “Four months of you standing next to me on the ice, four months of me trusting you with line calls, with the C someday, with everything, while you—”
“Jongseong, stop—” you tried to get between them, hand on your brother’s arm, but he shook you off, not violently, just completely focused on Jungwon now, advancing again. “You don’t get to touch her.” His voice had gone rough, half-wrecked. “You don’t get to look at me every single day at practice like nothing’s wrong while you’re—”
He shoved again, and this time Jungwon’s back hit the counter, and for a second it looked like it might actually become something neither of them could walk back from — Jay’s fist closing, his whole body coiled toward throwing the punch that had clearly been building since the second he opened that door — and that was when Jake and Heeseung both moved at once, Jake’s arms locking around Jay’s middle and hauling him back bodily, Heeseung grabbing his arm, both of them talking over each other, fast, low, hey, hey, not like this, not here—
Jungwon didn’t fight back. Didn’t even raise his hands to defend himself, just stood there and took the shove, which seemed to make something in Jay even angrier — like some part of him had wanted Jungwon to fight back, needed somewhere to put all of this that wasn’t just him screaming into a room that wouldn’t push back. “GET OFF ME—” Jay wrenched against Jake’s grip, and that’s when you stepped fully between them, voice cutting through everything else in the room, loud enough and furious enough that it actually stopped him.
“Stop it. STOP. Look at me.” Your voice broke on the last word, but you didn’t back down, standing your ground directly in the space between your brother and the boy he was trying to put a fist into. “You want to be mad? Be mad at me too, then, because I made every single one of these choices right alongside him. He doesn’t get to decide who I love.” Your voice cracked again, and you let it. “And neither do you.” The room went dead silent. Even Jay, still half-restrained by Jake’s grip, stopped pulling.
“He doesn’t get to decide who I love,” you said again, quieter now, but no less furious, “and you don’t either, Jongseong. I am not a rule on your team. I’m not something you get to protect by deciding for me. I’m twenty-one years old and I fell in love with someone, and I don’t care whose name was on a list you made up three years ago.”
Jay stared at you, chest still heaving, something in his face caving in around the edges in a way the anger hadn’t managed to do yet. “You’re in love with him.” It wasn’t really a question. It came out flat, hollowed out, like he was hearing the actual shape of what he’d walked in on for the first time, underneath all the rage. You didn’t answer. You didn’t have to. The answer was already all over your face, and Jay saw it, and something about seeing it confirmed broke whatever had still been holding the anger together.
He went quiet. Genuinely quiet, the fight draining out of him all at once, Jake’s grip loosening because there was nothing left to restrain. He looked at Jungwon one more time — not with rage now, something worse, something flatter and more wounded. “I trusted you, Jungwon.” His voice had gone rough, almost gentle, which somehow landed harder than anything he’d shouted. “Out of everyone on this team. You.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and walked out, past all of them, out the front door into the night, and nobody followed him, because nobody in that room had any idea what they’d even say if they did.
The house didn’t go back to normal noise after that. It just sort of held its breath, everyone scattering into smaller, quieter clusters, nobody quite looking at you or Jungwon directly, the weight of the last five minutes still hanging thick in every room.
You found Jungwon upstairs, sitting on the edge of his bed exactly where the two of you had been studying an hour before, flashcards still scattered across the floor like nothing had happened, like the whole world hadn’t just come apart downstairs. He had his elbows on his knees, head down, and when you sat beside him he didn’t look up right away. “Hey.” You put a hand on his back, careful. “Look at me.”
When he finally did, his eyes were wet, and the sight of it — Jungwon, who never cried, who’d taken a shove to the chest downstairs without flinching — undid something in you faster than the whole fight had. “I ruined it,” he said, voice cracking. “The one thing he ever actually trusted me with. I told him I wouldn’t touch you and I — I broke it anyway, and I’d do it again, and I hate that about myself, I hate that I’m not even sorry—”
“Hey.” You pulled him into you, his head dropping against your shoulder, his arms finally coming around you like he needed something solid to hold onto. “I’m not sorry either. I can’t be sorry about you.” He cried quietly into your shoulder for a long time after that, and you just held him, neither of you saying anything else, because there wasn’t anything left to say that would fix what had just happened downstairs.
Blackwood played the semifinal four days later, and somehow, despite everything, despite a locker room that had gone quiet and brittle in a way Coach Anders clocked within the first five minutes of the first practice after, they won — 3–2, in overtime, a deflection off Jake’s stick that barely crossed the line before the horn sounded. It should have felt like the best night of the season. Instead it felt like survival. Jay hadn’t passed to Jungwon all night. Not once, not even when the lane was wide open, not even in overtime when every read on the ice screamed for it. Jungwon had noticed. The whole bench had noticed. Coach noticed most of all, and in the chaos of the locker room afterward, amid the relief and the exhaustion and the muted, uncertain celebration, he pulled both of them aside before anyone could even get their gear half off. “Park. Yang. My office. Now.”
The door clicked shut behind the three of them, and Coach Anders didn’t sit down, just stood there with his arms crossed, looking at both of them like a man who’d run out of patience an entire period ago and had only just now gotten the chance to say so. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, and frankly, I don’t want the details.” His voice was level, but there was steel under it. “What I do know is that I watched my captain refuse to pass to his center for sixty minutes of playoff hockey tonight, and I watched us nearly lose a game we should have won by two goals because of it.” Neither of them said anything.
“We have the regional final in nine days. Whatever this is — and don’t tell me it’s nothing, I’ve coached long enough to know what a broken line looks like — you two figure it out. I don’t care how. I don’t care if you hate each other off the ice.” Coach’s jaw tightened. “But if you skate like that again next week, I will bench one of you myself, captain or not, and I will not lose sleep over it. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Coach,” Jungwon said, quiet. Jay didn’t answer at all. He just nodded once, jaw tight, and walked out without looking at either of them, and Jungwon stood there in the sudden quiet of the office, understanding with total clarity that the hardest part of all of this hadn’t even started yet.
The thing nobody had warned either of them about — because nobody had ever needed to before, in twenty-one years of being twins who occasionally fought and always, always talked it back out within a day — was how loud silence could actually be. Jay didn’t yell anymore after the night in the kitchen. That part, somehow, made it worse. He simply stopped. Stopped texting back. Stopped answering calls, then stopped letting them ring through at all, your name going straight to voicemail within the first week. Stopped looking at you when you were in the same room, which happened less and less because you’d quietly, painfully started avoiding the Den altogether, the one place that had felt like a second home for twenty-one years suddenly feeling like somewhere you weren’t welcome.
You tried, the first few days. Texts that got delivered but never answered. A voicemail you left, voice cracking halfway through, asking him to just call you back, just to talk, you didn’t even care if he yelled at you again as long as he said something. Nothing came back. Not a word. Not even the dismissive, irritated kind of nothing that meant he was still paying attention. Just an absence, total and deliberate, the kind that told you he’d made a decision and intended to hold it. “He’s never done this before,” you told Sunoo, one night, curled up on your dorm room floor with your phone face-down beside you because you couldn’t stand looking at the unanswered thread anymore. “Not once. Not ever. We’ve fought — God, we’ve fought about stupid stuff our whole lives, but it’s never lasted more than a day. We don’t know how to not talk to each other. I don’t know how to be a person without him answering when I call.”
“He’s hurting,” Sunoo said, careful, sitting beside you with a hand rubbing slow circles on your back. “That doesn’t make it okay that he’s doing this to you. But I don’t think this is really about punishing you. I think he genuinely doesn’t know what he’d say if he opened his mouth, so he’s choosing not to open it at all.”
“That doesn’t make it hurt less.”
“I know. I’m not saying it does.”
You didn’t tell Sunoo the rest of it — how you’d started reaching for your phone out of pure instinct a dozen times a day to send Jay something stupid, a meme, a complaint about a professor, the small constant traffic of two people who’d shared a womb and then a childhood and then this whole strange, public college life, and how every single time you caught yourself doing it, the realization that you couldn’t landed like a physical thing, a small fresh cut reopening in the same spot.
Jay wasn’t unaffected. He’d never have admitted that to anyone, least of all himself, but the proof of it sat in small, private moments nobody saw — him staring at your contact in his phone some nights, thumb hovering over the call button for whole minutes before he locked the screen and set it face-down on his desk. Once, badly, at three in the morning, he’d actually started typing something — I don’t know what to say to you right now but — before deleting it letter by letter and throwing the phone across his bed instead. He told himself it wasn’t about punishing you. He told himself a lot of things that week that he didn’t fully believe.
What he couldn’t tell himself a way out of was practice. He and Jungwon were still first line. Still had to be, with the regional final nine days out and Coach having made it unmistakably clear there was no alternative on the table. So they skated together, every single day, in a silence that had nothing companionable in it at all — Jay calling line changes and breakout patterns in the flattest voice anyone had ever heard out of him, never once including Jungwon’s name in anything that wasn’t strictly necessary.
He passed to everyone else. That was the part the whole team had clocked within the first practice back, and nobody said anything about it out loud because nobody knew how to say it without making things worse. Three-on-twos where Jungwon was the better read, and Jay sent it wide instead. Breakouts where the play sheet called for a direct feed up the middle, and Jay dumped it to the boards instead, conceding possession rather than putting the puck on his center’s stick. “Jongseong, why didn’t you pass?” Coach called out, the third time it happened in one practice, his patience visibly fraying.
“Saw a better option,” Jay said, flat, already skating back to the faceoff dot. “The better option was standing in open ice on the opposite side of the rink from where you actually shot it.” Jay didn’t answer that at all. He just lined up for the next drill, jaw locked, and ran it exactly the same way again.
The only time he spoke to Jungwon directly anymore was to yell — sharp, clipped corrections mid-drill, none of the easy back-and-forth they’d built over a season of trust, just you’re late on that read or cover the weak side, that’s basic positioning delivered in a voice that had nothing left in it of the guy who’d fist-bumped Jungwon at center ice in September and said welcome to the Wolves. Jungwon took every single one of them without arguing back, jaw tight, because arguing felt like it would only confirm to Jay that he’d never deserved the trust in the first place. “He’s doing this on purpose,” Riki said quietly to Heeseung, watching from the bench as Jay sent another pass wide of an open Jungwon. “He knows exactly what he’s costing us. He doesn’t care right now. That’s how mad he still is.”
“He cares,” Heeseung said. “That’s actually the whole problem. He cares so much it’s easier to be furious than to feel any of the rest of it.”
The locker room had gone strange too, the easy noise of September curdled into something careful and over-managed, everyone monitoring their own jokes for anything that might land near the wound. Jake had tried, once, to lighten things with a comment that would’ve killed in October and instead landed in dead silence, Jay’s face shutting down entirely, and Jake hadn’t tried again since. Jungwon noticed the way the team had started, almost unconsciously, dividing its attention between the two of them — careful not to seem too friendly with him in front of Jay, careful not to seem like they were taking sides, the whole house caught in a kind of low, exhausting diplomatic tension that hadn’t existed a month ago. He hated that he’d done that to them. He hated, more than anything, the particular shape of Jay’s silence — not the screaming from that first night, which had at least been something he could push back against, but this. The total absence. The refusal to even grant him the dignity of being yelled at like he mattered enough to yell at.
He found you most nights now at your dorm rather than the Den, both of you retreating to the one space that didn’t have Jay’s silence sitting in every room of it. “He looked right through me today,” Jungwon told you, one night, staring at the ceiling instead of you, like saying it out loud while looking at something else made it easier. “Not even with anger anymore. Just — through me. Like I’m not even worth being mad at.”
“He’s mad at me too. He won’t even do me that.”
“At least he’s saying things to me. Even if it’s just to yell about a read.” Jungwon’s voice cracked slightly. “I keep thinking if I just play perfectly enough, eventually he’ll have to say something else to me. Something that isn’t a correction. And then I realize how stupid that is, because this was never actually about hockey.” You reached over and laced your fingers through his, the same gesture he always did to you, except this time it was you reaching for him, and he held on like it was the only steady thing left in his whole week. “We’re going to fix this,” you said, with more certainty than you actually felt. “I don’t know how yet. But we are.”
Neither of you believed it fully, not that week, with the regional final closing in and Jay’s silence showing no signs of cracking and the whole team holding its breath around a fracture none of them knew how to heal. But you said it anyway, because saying it out loud felt like the only thing keeping either of you from drowning in how bad it had actually gotten.
Jake snapped on a Tuesday, in the most unlikely place for it to happen — not at the Den, not somewhere private, but right there in the locker room twenty minutes before practice, with half the team already in their gear and the rest filtering in around them.
It started small. Jay said something clipped to Jungwon about positioning on the upcoming power play, the same flat, correction-only tone he’d been using for a week and a half, and Jungwon nodded along the way he always did now, jaw tight, taking it without pushing back — and something about that exact exchange, the smallness and the sadness of it, the way two guys who used to actually talk to each other had been reduced to this, finally broke whatever restraint Jake had been holding onto. “Okay, I’m done.” He said it loud enough that the whole room turned, his gear bag dropping to the floor with a thud. “I am actually done watching this.”
“Jake—” Heeseung started, already sensing where this was going. “No, shut up, I’ve been quiet for a week and a half and I’m not doing it anymore.” Jake rounded on Jay first, finger pointed, and the sight of it — Jake, who was never the serious one, never the one who got genuinely heated about anything, standing there with real fire in his face — stopped the whole room cold. “You’re acting like Jungwon committed an actual crime. He didn’t murder anyone, man, he fell in love with your sister, and I’m sorry, but that’s not the same thing, and you have been treating him like it for two weeks.”
“Jake, this isn’t—”
“It is my business, actually, because I’m watching our first line fall apart nine days before the most important game of the season, and I’m watching my captain — who I respect more than almost anyone on this team — turn into someone I genuinely don’t recognize.” Jake’s voice cracked slightly, more emotional than anyone had ever heard him. “You taught me what it means to be a captain on this team. You taught all of us. And right now you’re teaching us that the second something actually hurts, the move is to go cold and silent and pretend the person doesn’t exist. Is that the lesson? Because if it is, I don’t want it.”
He turned on Jungwon next, and his voice didn’t soften much. “And you. You’re walking around like you’re being sentenced to life in prison. Take the hit, man. You broke the rule, fine, you knew what you were doing, but you don’t get to just curl up and accept being treated like nothing either. You love her. Act like it actually means something instead of apologizing with your whole body language every single day.”
Nobody said anything for a second. Riki had gone very still by his stall. Heeseung’s eyes were on the floor. Even Sunghoon, usually unreadable, looked like he didn’t know where to put his face. Jay was the one who finally broke the silence, and his voice, when it came, didn’t have any of the cold flatness from the last week and a half in it anymore. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing? You think I like feeling like this?”
“I think you’re so far up in your own anger that you forgot we’re all still here,” Jake said, quieter now, the heat draining out into something more tired. “I think you forgot Jungwon’s not just the guy who broke your rule. He’s also the guy who’s centered your line for an entire season and made you look like the best captain this program’s ever had. Both things are true. You’re acting like only one of them is.”
Jay’s jaw worked, something complicated moving across his face, and for a long moment the whole room just watched, waiting, nobody quite breathing. “Everyone out,” Jay said finally, low. “Except him.” A nod toward Jungwon. “Give us the room.” The team filed out slowly, Jake last, clapping Jay once on the shoulder on his way past — not quite forgiveness, not quite anything, just contact, the kind two people who actually cared about each other still managed even mid-argument — and the door shut, leaving Jay and Jungwon alone in the locker room for the first time since the night everything broke.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Jay sat down heavily on the bench, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor, and Jungwon stayed standing, not sure if sitting down uninvited was a privilege he still had. “Jake’s right,” Jay said finally, quiet, not looking up. “About all of it. I hate that he’s right.”
“I’m not going to pretend I didn’t break the rule,” Jungwon said. “I did. On purpose, eventually, even if it didn’t start that way. I’m not going to stand here and tell you I’m sorry about loving her, because I’m not, and I think you’d see right through it if I tried.”
“I know you’re not sorry about that part.” Jay’s voice was rough. “I think that’s actually what made it worse. If you’d looked guilty about loving her, I think I could’ve hated you clean. But you didn’t. You looked like a guy who’d do it again in a heartbeat, and I didn’t know what to do with that.”
“I would do it again. I’m sorry it cost you what it did. I’m not sorry I did it.” Jay finally looked up at that, and something raw and exhausted passed over his face. “I trusted you more than anyone on this team. That’s still true, even now. That’s what made this hurt the way it did — it wasn’t just the rule, Jungwon, it’s that I actually thought I knew you. I was already talking to Coach about making you assistant captain next year. I thought you were the one guy who’d never make me regret trusting him.”
“I know. I heard about that, after. It made everything worse, knowing that.”
“Good. It should.” But there wasn’t much heat left in it. They sat in silence for a while, the kind that had a little more give in it than the silence of the last two weeks, and finally Jay let out a long breath, something in his shoulders loosening for the first time since the night he’d opened that door. “I’m still mad,” he said. “I know.”
“I’m not gonna be okay with this overnight. I don’t know how to just turn that off.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Jungwon’s voice cracked slightly. “I just — I miss you, man. Not just as my captain. You were the first person here who actually made me feel like I belonged on this team, not just on the ice but in the house, in everything. I miss that. I know I don’t get to just ask for it back right now. I just wanted you to know I miss it.” Jay stood up slowly, and for a second neither of them moved, and then he closed the distance and pulled Jungwon into a hug — quick, a little stiff, the kind two guys give each other when they’re not sure the moment’s fully earned yet but need the contact anyway — a hard clap on the back, the kind of bro-hug that said more than either of them were ready to say out loud. “We’re not good,” Jay said, pulling back, voice rough. “I want to be really clear about that. We are not good yet.”
“I know.”
“But I can’t keep doing this on the ice. Jake’s right, I’m costing us the season out of spite, and that’s not who I want to be as a captain.” He exhaled, something almost like a laugh escaping despite everything. “God, I hate that Jake was the one who had to say all that to my face. He’s never serious about anything.”
“He was pretty serious about that.”
“Yeah. Scared the hell out of me, honestly.” Jay actually laughed then, short and surprised, like the sound had snuck out before he’d given it permission, and Jungwon found himself laughing too, the first time in two weeks either of them had laughed about anything, the sound strange and rusty but real. It faded into quiet again, but a different kind this time, something a little more bearable.
“I love your sister, man,” Jungwon said, finally, simply, no longer something he was confessing so much as just stating, plain and certain. “I know that’s the whole problem. But it’s true, and it’s not going away, and I needed you to hear it from me like that, not in the middle of a fight.” Jay was quiet for a second, looking at him steady. “Yeah,” he said, eventually, something tired and a little wrecked in his voice. “Yeah, I know.” He paused at the door on his way out, looking back at Jungwon for a long moment. “Would’ve been good,” he said, quiet, almost too quiet to catch, “having you as an actual brother. If this had all gone differently.” He left before Jungwon could answer, but the words sat warm in the room behind him, the first real crack of something other than anger in two weeks.
Jay showed up at your dorm that night after, no text first, just a knock you almost didn’t answer because you’d stopped expecting anyone good to be on the other side of your door lately. When you opened it and saw him standing there, hands in his pockets, looking exhausted in a way that went deeper than just practice, you didn’t say anything at all — just stepped back to let him in, the way you always had, the way you hoped you always would. “I’m not okay,” he said, sitting on the edge of your bed, not looking at you yet. “I want to be clear about that before we do this. I’m still hurt. I’m still figuring out how to be around either of you without it costing me something.”
“Okay.”
“But I can’t keep not talking to you. I tried. I’m not built for it, apparently. I kept reaching for my phone to tell you something stupid and then remembering I wasn’t allowed to, and it felt like missing a limb.” He finally looked up, and his eyes were wet, and yours were too, the two of you mirroring each other the way you always had, even now. “We’ve never gone this long without talking. I hated every single day of it.”
“Me too.” Your voice broke. “I know I hurt you. I know hiding it for four months made it so much worse than if I’d just told you. I’m sorry for that part, even if I’m not sorry for him.”
“I know.” Jay’s voice was rough. “I heard basically that same sentence from him a few hours ago. Word for word, almost.” A short, tired laugh. “You two are annoyingly aligned on this.”
“Are you going to be okay? With him? Eventually?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. He’s — “ Jay stopped, considering. “He’s a good guy. I always thought that. That’s actually most of why this hurt so much, if I’m honest. It would’ve been so much easier if he was someone I didn’t already respect.” You moved to sit beside him, and after a second, he let his head drop onto your shoulder, the same way he had a hundred times before across twenty-one years, every fight, every bad day, every moment either of you needed the only other person who’d been there from the very beginning. “We’re not okay yet,” he said quietly. “I need you to know that. This is going to take a while.”
“I know.”
“But we’re better than we were yesterday.”
“Yeah.” You let yourself lean into him, the two of you sitting there in the quiet of your dorm room, bruised and tired and still not fully mended, but closer to it than you’d been in two weeks. “We’re better.” It wasn’t fixed. Not all the way, not yet. But for the first time since that night in the kitchen, it felt like something that could actually be fixed, eventually, by two people who’d never once, in their whole lives, managed to stay broken with each other for very long.
The weeks following something in the Den shifted back toward warmth so gradually that nobody quite noticed the exact moment it happened — only that by Wednesday, Jay was sitting across from Jungwon at the kitchen table going over breakout patterns like nothing had ever broken between them, and by Friday, the two of them had fallen into an easy rhythm on the ice that made Coach Anders actually smile during a drill for the first time in three weeks. It wasn’t instant. Jay was still careful in ways he hadn’t been before — a half-second pause before he passed to Jungwon that hadn’t existed in September, a watchfulness in his eyes when you and Jungwon were in the same room that read less like suspicion now and more like a brother recalibrating, slowly, what he was allowed to feel okay about. But the silence was gone. That was the part that mattered most. He talked to Jungwon again — really talked, not just corrections barked mid-drill — and the first time Jungwon made a joke and Jay actually laughed at it, properly, the whole bench seemed to exhale at once, like the entire team had been holding its breath for weeks without realizing it.
You started coming to the Den again too, openly, without the old careful choreography of checking who was in which room first. The first time Jungwon kissed you goodbye in front of everyone — quick, easy, right there in the kitchen doorway, his hand finding your jaw the way it always did — Jay made a sound like he’d swallowed something unpleasant. “I’m gonna need a warning before you do that,” he said, not looking up from his cereal. “Some kind of system. A bell.”
“You walked in on considerably worse than a kitchen kiss, Jongseong, I think you can survive this.”
“That’s exactly my point. I have a very low tolerance left for surprises involving you two.” But there was no real heat in it anymore, just the particular, well-worn grumbling of an older brother performing discomfort he didn’t fully feel, and when Jungwon came back through twenty minutes later to grab his gear bag and kissed you again on his way out the door — bye, love you, back after lift — Jay just groaned into his cereal bowl. “Gross,” he announced, to the room generally. “Both of you. Disgusting. I’m eating.”
“You’ll live.”
“Barely.” But he was almost smiling when he said it, and that almost-smile told you more about how far you’d actually come than any amount of words could have.
The necklace sat against your collarbone every single day now, no longer something you had to explain away with a half-true lie about treating yourself — Jay knew exactly what it was and who’d given it to you, had asked about it directly one evening with none of the old danger in the question, just genuine, easy curiosity. He give you that? And when you’d said yes, he’d just nodded, looked at it a second longer, and said, it’s nice. He’s got good taste, in a tone that wasn’t quite forgiveness yet but was something moving steadily toward it.
The regional final was scheduled for a Saturday night, home ice, the biggest game Blackwood had hosted in four years, and the week leading into it had the specific, charged intensity that comes when an entire program understands exactly what’s at stake. Coach Anders ran practices longer and harder than he had all season, the kind of two-a-days that left everyone’s legs feeling like wet sand by Thursday, and Jay led every single one of them with a focus that had fully returned to its old, easy command, no longer fractured by anything sitting underneath it.
“This is it,” he told the team, the night before, gathered in the Den’s living room in a rare moment of total quiet, no music, no chaos, just thirty guys who’d spent a whole season building toward exactly this. “Four years I’ve waited for a shot at this. I’m not gonna stand up here and give you some big speech, because you already know what this means to all of us.” His eyes moved across the room, the way they always did, landing on Jungwon for a beat — not the wary, careful look from a few weeks ago, but something warmer, something closer to trust fully restored. “We’ve been through a lot this season. On the ice and off it. I think that actually makes us better for tomorrow, not worse. We know how to fight for each other now. Let’s go show everyone else what that looks like.”
The room broke into noise after that, the easy, electric kind, and later that night, after most of the house had gone quiet, you found Jungwon out on the back porch alone, staring out at nothing in particular, the cold air doing nothing to cut the obvious nervous energy radiating off him. “Hey.” You wrapped your arms around him from behind, chin resting between his shoulder blades. “You’re thinking too loud. I can hear it from inside.”
“Biggest game of my life tomorrow.” He turned to face you, pulling you properly into him, his forehead dropping to rest against yours. “I keep running through every possible way it could go wrong.”
“It’s not going to go wrong.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. I’ve watched you all season. I’ve watched you and Jongseong figure out how to be brothers again in like two weeks after the worst fight either of you have ever had. You two can do anything when you’re actually trying together.” You kissed him, slow, certain. “I love you. I need you to actually hear that tonight, not just as a thing I say after games. I love you, and I’m so proud of everything you’ve become this season, on the ice and off it, and tomorrow doesn’t change any of that no matter how it goes.” Something in his face went soft and open at that, all the nervous energy settling for a moment into something quieter. “I love you too,” he said, and it landed the same way it always did between you now — easy, certain, no longer something either of you had to hide in a kitchen at midnight or whisper behind a closed door. “I love you so much it scares me sometimes, how much this season’s actually been worth it because of you, even with everything that happened.”
“Tomorrow’s going to be good.”
“Yeah.” He kissed you again, lingering, the cold night air around you both finally feeling less like a threat and more like just weather. “Yeah, I think it actually will be.”
The arena on Saturday night was packed beyond anything Jungwon had played in front of all season — every seat filled, students standing in the aisles, the kind of noise that hit you physically the second you stepped out for warmups, a wall of sound that hadn’t fully let up by the time the puck dropped for the first period. You sat in your usual seat, three rows up behind the glass, except tonight you weren’t in your normal clothes — you were in his jersey, YANG stitched across the back in block lettering, his number stretched over your shoulders, and you hadn’t hidden it from a single person walking in, hadn’t thought twice about who might see. Sunoo sat beside you in a Blackwood shirt of his own, practically vibrating with nervous energy, occasionally grabbing your arm hard enough to bruise every time the play got close to either net.
The first period was tight, both teams playing tense, controlled hockey, neither side willing to make the first real mistake. Jay’s line — Jungwon centering, Jay and a senior winger flanking him — controlled most of the offensive zone time but couldn’t find the back of the net, hitting a post once that sent the whole arena into a held-breath gasp before the horn sounded for intermission still scoreless.
The second period broke the dam. Blackwood’s opponent struck first on a power play seven minutes in, a wrist shot through a screen that the goalie never saw, and the home crowd’s noise dropped into a tense, anxious murmur. You watched Jay’s face on the bench during the next shift — jaw locked, eyes scanning the ice with total focus — and when his line went back out, something in the way he and Jungwon moved together looked different than it had all season, sharper, more locked in, like the deficit had snapped something into perfect alignment between them instead of rattling it apart.
Jungwon tied it up with four minutes left in the second — a give-and-go off Jay’s stick that mirrored almost exactly the play from his very first collegiate goal back in October, except this time when he buried it, Jay was the first one to slam into him in celebration, both of them screaming something wordless into each other’s face masks, the whole bench spilling over in noise. “THAT’S MY GUY,” Jay was shouting, dragging Jungwon into a headlock that had nothing restrained about it. “THAT’S MY CENTER!” You were on your feet with the rest of the arena, Sunoo screaming directly into your ear in a way that was going to leave you half-deaf, both your hands pressed against your chest like you could physically hold your own heart in place.
The third period was the longest twenty minutes of your entire life. Both teams traded chances, the goaltending on both ends going from good to borderline miraculous, the clock ticking down with a kind of cruelty that made every single shift feel like it might be the one that decided everything. With six minutes left, Blackwood’s opponent hit the post on a breakaway that made the entire arena gasp in unison and then exhale just as loud when it rang off harmlessly. With ninety seconds left, Jay blocked a shot with his own body that had the whole bench up on its feet, limping briefly before shaking it off and getting back into position like it had cost him nothing at all.
And then, with thirty-one seconds left on the clock, it happened. Jungwon won the offensive zone faceoff clean, the puck sliding back to the point, worked low, and when it came back out to the slot it found Jay’s stick exactly where Jungwon had read it would be all night — the same instinct, the same trust, rebuilt and somehow stronger than it had been before everything broke. Jay’s shot beat the goalie clean, top corner, far side, and the horn that followed wasn’t even fully necessary because the entire arena had already exploded before the puck had finished crossing the line. 3–1. Twenty-nine seconds left. The building came apart.
The final horn sounded like the loudest thing you’d ever heard in your life, and the ice turned into total chaos within seconds — gloves and sticks flying, the entire bench pouring over the boards, players piling on top of each other near center ice in a scrum of padding and screaming and pure, uncut joy. You were over the glass and through the gate before you’d even consciously decided to move, Sunoo right behind you, security barely bothering to stop the wave of people flooding toward the ice because there was no stopping it tonight, not for this.
You found Jungwon in the chaos near the blue line, and the second he saw you coming he dropped his stick and gloves and just opened his arms, and you ran straight into them, the momentum spinning both of you in a full circle, his arms locking tight around you, lifting you half off the ice entirely. “You did it,” you were saying, half-laughing, half-crying, his face buried in your neck. “You actually did it—”
“We did it.” He pulled back just far enough to kiss you, right there in the middle of the ice, in front of the entire arena, in front of every single camera and every single person who might have once whispered about whose sister you were — none of that mattered anymore, none of it had ever mattered less. “I love you. I love you so much, you have no idea—”
“I love you too.” You kissed him again, laughing into it, both of you spinning slightly on unsteady skates and unsteady legs, the whole world around you a blur of noise and lights and bodies celebrating. Jay found you both seconds later, breathless, helmet already off, and for one suspended moment you weren’t sure what he was going to do — and then he just pulled both of you into him at once, one arm around each of your necks, dragging you both into a hug that nearly took all three of you down onto the ice. “WE WON,” he was screaming, not really to either of you specifically, just into the air, just because the feeling needed somewhere to go. “We actually won—”
He pulled back enough to look between the two of you, something in his face gone fully soft for the first time in months, no wariness left in it at all. “I’m happy for you two,” he said, breathless, genuine, loud enough that you both heard it clearly even over the noise of the whole arena. “I mean that. I’m actually happy.”
“Jongseong—”
“Don’t make this weird, I already feel weird saying it.” But he was grinning, fully, easily, pulling Jungwon into a separate hug, a real one this time, no stiffness left in it at all, clapping him hard on the back. “You’re a hell of a center, Yang. Best one this program’s had in years. Maybe ever.”
“Means a lot, coming from you.”
“It should.” Jay pulled back, studying him for a second, something decided and certain settling into his face. “I talked to Coach last week. Before tonight, actually — wanted to wait and see how things played out between us first, didn’t want it to feel like I was just handing it to you out of guilt.” He took a breath. “You’re gonna be assistant captain next year. I already told him that’s what I want. You earned it. On the ice, and — yeah. Off it too, eventually. I see that now.” Jungwon stared at him for a second, something overwhelmed moving across his face, and then he just laughed, short and disbelieving and entirely happy. “Good,” he said, simply, because there wasn’t really a bigger word that could hold everything underneath it. “Good,” Jay agreed, grinning, and pulled him into one more hug, and over his shoulder his eyes found yours, warm, settled, twenty-one years of being twins finally feeling whole again underneath all of it.
The ice stayed full of celebration for a long time after that — Jake hoisting the game puck over his head like a trophy, Riki crying openly and loudly and without a single ounce of shame about it, Sunghoon finding Sunoo at the glass and kissing him in front of the entire arena with none of his old hesitation left, Heeseung quietly recording all of it on his phone because someone, he kept saying, needed to actually remember this properly. You stood at the center of it all in Jungwon’s jersey, his arm around your shoulders, your brother laughing somewhere beside you, and let yourself feel, fully and without reservation, exactly how far all of you had come to get here — through secrets and silence and the worst fight any of you had ever had, into something that finally, finally, felt whole.
“Soon,” Jungwon murmured, against your temple, echoing the word you’d both used all season as a promise for later. “Remember when we kept saying soon?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not soon anymore.” He kissed your temple, easy, certain, home. “It’s just now. It’s just us. For real, finally, out loud, in front of everyone.”
“Yeah,” you said again, smiling so wide it ached, watching the chaos of the best night of the entire season swirl around you both. “Yeah. It really is.”
⋆。˚ lacey speaks!! that’s a wrap! thank you so much for giving this fic your time. i hope you loved these characters as much as i loved writing them. don’t forget to leave a comment if you enjoyed it—it always makes me so happy to read them. 🤍
⊱SYNOPSIS: when a casual compliment during a livestream sends the internet into meltdown, nobody expects it to be the start of K-pop’s newest obsession.
❤︎ Idol AU social media AU ENHAOT7 KASTEYEOT6 y/n is in KATSEYE
note!! next parttt im so happy yall like this thehe this is a little bit written so I hope it actually hits lol pls enjoy!!!
004. can’t speak with you watching previous…next
Jake woke at 7 a.m that morning, which was strange in itself — he never woke before 9. In his defense, the meeting was at 10, and he told himself he needed to prepare.
It’s nerves. That’s all it is. Definitely not because of you. Absolutely not.
At 9:15 he stopped by the coffee shop, his regular one, where he knew the barista by heart.
“Hey Jake,” said Yuna. “The usual?”
“Yes please.”
She went to prepare his flat white with an extra espresso shot. Jake liked this café — he’d been coming here since his trainee days. Yuna was kind, and didn’t care that he was Jake of ENHYPEN; she treated him like a normal person.
“Here it is,” she said, setting it on the counter, already reaching for the card reader. Jake spoke up before she could ring it through.
“Uh, actually, Yuna—”
She looked at him as he rubbed the back of his neck. Why am I nervous asking for coffee?
“I need another flat white, extra shot.”
He smiled his classic grin. Yuna raised an eyebrow.
“For a girl? Is Jake finally seeing someone?” She looked genuinely happy at the thought, which was unfortunate, because Jake could only dream of you being his. Is that a weird thing to think? He hasn’t even met you properly.
“Uh, yeah — it’s for a girl. Well, a woman, actually. She’s a pretty woman.” God, he was fumbling.
Yuna smiled. “Yeah, sure, whatever you say. I’ll get this second one made for the ‘pretty woman.’”
Jake left the café with two coffees in hand, heat radiating into his already sweaty palms.
You were in the HYBE lobby by 9:30, too nervous to be late. The girls had been texting, but you couldn’t bring yourself to answer, too nervous. Why am I nervous? He’s just a guy. I haven’t even spoken to him yet.
Jake came through the doors with two coffees. When he spotted you, he smiled — the kind of smile you’d only ever seen through screens, somehow even nicer in person.
“Hey, Y/N.”
“Hi.”
God, it’s so awkward.
Jake handed you a cup. “I got your coffee. And me too.” He held up his own. “I hope it’s good — well, I know it’s good, it’s from my usual place.”
You took a sip, and it was like heaven in your mouth. “It’s amazing, thank you.”
He smiled. Why did this feel intimate? Normal people get each other coffee and remember their orders, especially when it’s the same as their own.
You glanced at him. “So.”
“So,” he echoed.
“We’re hosting MAMA.”
“Apparently.”
“Terrifying.”
“Extremely.”
You stared at him for a second too long.
“You really are nervous,” you said.
“I told you I was.”
“I thought you were lying.”
“Wow.”
“Sorry.” You laughed, a little guilty.
Jake laughed too, and suddenly the awkwardness disappeared — just like that, like they’d skipped three steps straight to comfortable.
Jake nodded toward the stairs, and you ascended together, chatting like normal people do. Jake was definitely not staring at your lips, or the line of your jaw, or the way you pushed a stray strand of hair off your forehead.
When you arrived at Room B4, the lights were still out, so it was just the two of you again.
“How’s comeback prep?” he asked.
“Busy. We’re filming everything right now.”
“Sounds painful.”
“It is painful.”
“Fair.”
“What about you? Tour planning, right?”
“Yeah. Stressful.”
“You make everything sound stressful.”
“Because it is.”
You laughed, and Jake immediately decided that was his new favorite sound. Not that he’d ever admit that. Ever.
Yuki and Lee arrived shortly after followed by an army of directors, writers and stylists.
The director clapped her hands from the doorway. “Okay! MAMA rehearsal, day one. I want energy, I want chemistry, and I want you two—” she pointed between you and Jake, “—to act like you’ve met before today. Convincingly.”
Jake choked on nothing. You elbowed him.
“We have met before today,” you said.
“A fews hours ago doesn’t count, sweetheart,” the director said without looking up from her clipboard, and half the room snickered.
Yuki caught Jake’s eye from across the room.
“Positions,” the director called. “Run-through in five.”
Jake fell into step beside you as you both moved toward your marks, and you could tell — the way his jaw was doing that thing — that he wanted to say something. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.
“For the record,” he said, “I didn’t tell Yuki to make it weird.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“It’s just — the coffee thing. It’s not weird that I remembered your usual. I think you’re—” He stopped. Visibly recalculated. “I think you’re really easy to remember things about. Which sounds — that sounds insane, forget I said that.”
You blinked. “You think I’m easy to remember things about?”
“That’s not — I meant it as a compliment.” His ears were red. “I’m going to stop talking now.”
“Please,” you said, before you could stop yourself, and immediately felt your own face go warm.
Rehearsal, it turned out, mostly meant standing under bright lights while someone fed you cue cards and a director yelled “from the top” more times than either of you could count.
“And introducing — for the first time ever — co-hosting MAMA this year, ENHYPEN’s Jake and KATSEYE’s Y/N!”
You both stepped forward on cue, matching grins plastered on, and Jake’s hand found the small of your back for exactly the choreographed half-second before dropping away.
“Cut—good, good,” the director said, scribbling something. “Jake, your line.”
Jake cleared his throat, slipping into the easy, practiced charm he used on stage. “Welcome, everyone, to a night we’ve all been—” he glanced at the cue card, then at you, and grinned, “—a night we’ve all been waiting for.”
“Smooth,” you murmured, just for him.
“I have my moments.”
The run-through dragged on — intros, transition lines, a bit where you were supposed to banter about nominees that made the writers laugh from the side of the room, a moment where Jake forgot his cue entirely because he was watching you instead of his cards, which earned him a flicked clipboard from the director and a “focus, Jake” that made you laugh so hard you had to turn away from the cameras.
By the time they called it for the day, the sun outside had dropped low enough to turn the parking lot gold through the windows.
“I’ll walk you out,” Jake said, already falling into step beside you before you could answer.
Neither of you said much on the way down — comfortable, easy quiet, the kind you didn’t realize you’d been craving until you had it. He held the door for you at the bottom, because apparently that was just a Jake thing, and you both stepped out into the warm evening air.
Your car was idling at the curb, driver already waiting.
Jake rocked back on his heels. “We should hang out again. Like — outside of, you know. This.”
“Jake. We have rehearsal again tomorrow.”
“Right.” He laughed at himself, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, no, I knew that, I just—”
He didn’t get to finish, because that was the exact moment his members spilled out of the building behind him, loud and unbothered, mid-conversation about dinner.
Sunghoon spotted him first. “Why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Flustered,” Jay said, grinning. “You look extremely flustered.”
Jake didn’t even turn around. He just lifted one hand and flipped them off over his shoulder without breaking eye contact with you, which only made them laugh harder as they ambled back toward the building, already ranking him on a scale of “whipped” you weren’t supposed to hear.
“Ignore them,” Jake said.
“I wasn’t planning on doing anything else.”
He smiled — the screen smile, except softer, except just for you. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Y/N.”
IN WHICH. . . tired of getting dumped by one guy after another, you decided to give dating apps a try. ittle do you know, you ended up matching with one of your classmates: nishimura riki. he's supposed to be a nerd, supposed to be someone who isn't worth looking at. but what you didn't expect was for him to have a strong dick game and most importntly, he's hiding something from you...something you didn't expect at all.
⏔⏔⏔ boarding school au ♪♪ smau + written nerd +camboy nishimura riki x fem! reader 𐧘 explicit mature content, classmates to lovers, poor attempt at humour, fluff if you squint, angst with comfort, ignore timestamps..
playlist: touch myself - kwn, cyber sex - doja cat, when did you get hot - sabrina carpenter, how do i make you love me - the weekend.
from author: ladies and gentlemen, swipe right is now officially finished. thank you for reading this smau and thank you if you've been here from the start. i didn't want to drag this any longer so yeah. doing smau is more draining than writing full fics tbh...
To say Riki is nervous would be an understatement.
He arrived at the agreed meetup spot—the cafe in your neighborhood thirty minutes earlier. Thankfully, there wasn't a lot of customers in the cafe, due to the fact that it's the weekday.
Both of you didn't have any scheduled class for the day, which was why he assumed you chose today. He grabbed a table, unable to focus on anything while bouncing his leg on the spot. He didn't have the heart to check his phone too, absentmindedly tracing the edge of it with his right index finger.
Every time someone walked past or entered the cafe, his eyes darted to the door's direction instinctively. He couldn't helped but feel a pang of disappointment when the person wasn't you but rather, a random stranger. After what felt like forever, you finally arrived. Riki can sense your presence the moment the door was pushed open.
He watched, breath hitching in his throat as your eyes scanned the cafe, searching for him. It took all of him to not outright flinch when they landed on him.
He saw the way you pursed your lips, an unreadable expression on your face as you approached him until you sat opposite of him. For the first few seconds, it was awkward. None of you said a word—Riki avoiding eye contact while your gaze was boring holes into his head.
He wasn't surprised when you made your first move, having known you're the brave and confrontational type.
"So?" You asked, arms crossed and arched an brow while cocking your head to the side, "are you planning to talk or what?"
Riki chewed on his bottom lip. "…I'm sorry."
You scoffed under your breath, the sound barely audible but not to Riki. Not when he had paid close attention to you ever since he first saw you.
"Sorry for?" You echoed.
He swallowed, eyes focused on a random spot of the table. "..For lying to you. I know the general stereotypes of people doing… this kind of jobs. Some people is fine with it while some isn't. I didn't dare to tell anyone about this side job, other than my two friends. If the school were to find out, everyone will view me differently. They won't see me just as Riki. They'll see me as Riki, the student who's a fucking cam boy."
A brief silence.
At least, that's what he thought.
Seconds bleed into minutes until Riki was certain it's been a solid five minutes of awkward and tense silence. He plucked up his remaining courage, lifting his head to look at you. He expected all form of reactions—anger, disappointment or even worse, nothing. What he didn't expect however, was how you were—
"..Why are you smiling at me?" He asked, the words slipping before he could stopped himself.
You chuckled. "Why not? Did you expect me to be mad or something?"
He blinked owlishly. "Uh, yea? I mean, I did lie to you and any normal human will be angry or disappointed."
You shrugged your shoulders. "I'm not normal in the first place. Look at me, I have a long record of dating questionable men with questionable behaviors. You being a cam boy is the least of my worries. It's not like you're committing a crime."
He blinked once. Twice and one more time, to ensure he wasn't hearing things. When it's clear you weren't going to lash out at him or do something violent, his shoulders sagged with relief. The boy even heaved a long and heavy sigh. It's the kind of sigh that spoke volume. Heck, he could even feel the weight on his shoulders significantly decreasing too.
"Thank god, you have no idea how worried I was for a moment. I thought you were planning to kill me," he joked.
You flashed him a closed-eye smile and Riki sworn he felt the temperature of the cafe dropping an notch. "Oh, I might do that if you do this again."
He swallowed, his palms starting to sweat. "Yes, mam."
"I'm serious, Riki. This is the only second chance you're getting. Don't screw this up," you continued in a rare serious tone.
He stretched his hand across the table, placing it over yours and gave it a reassuring squeeze. To his relief, you didn't pull away or showed any negative reaction to his touch.
He smiled, all soft and genuine. "I won't screw us up again, trust me."
You snorted but returned the action, squeezing his hand back. "You better remember what you said, Nishimura Riki."
IN WHICH. . . tired of getting dumped by one guy after another, you decided to give dating apps a try. ittle do you know, you ended up matching with one of your classmates: nishimura riki. he's supposed to be a nerd, supposed to be someone who isn't worth looking at. but what you didn't expect was for him to have a strong dick game and most importntly, he's hiding something from you...something you didn't expect at all.
⏔⏔⏔ boarding school au ♪♪ smau + written nerd +camboy nishimura riki x fem! reader 𐧘 explicit mature content, classmates to lovers, poor attempt at humour, fluff if you squint, angst with comfort, ignore timestamps.
playlist: touch myself - kwn, cyber sex - doja cat, when did you get hot - sabrina carpenter, how do i make you love me - the weekend.
The last time you texted Riki or Ki was three weeks. Three weeks since his last message was 'I understand, take as much time as you need. I'll be here waiting for you.'
A part of you wished he wasn't this nice, so you can hate on him without feeling guilty. But despite all of that—being lied straight to your face, getting played like a complete fool, you couldn't find yourself hating on him.
Not when he hasn't done anything as bad as compared to your exes—flaunting their branded items and their always full wallet, being self-centered and the list goes on. In fact, when you think about it, the only bad thing (although it isn't even bad) was him being a cam boy.
And honestly, you had spent the last three weeks juggling between spending quality time with Soobin and Ningning while working on the project. Sure, you didn't want to talk to Riki but that doesn't mean you're giving up on it, not when it's either you ace or flunk the module. The last thing you wanted was having to retake it from scratch, which will be a waste of time.
As it's a group project, communication is required to ensure you and Riki are on the same page. You treated him like he's your group partner and not your boyfriend.
Your messages was simple and polite—a huge contrast to how you used to be with him. Riki did the same too, but you can imagined him hesitating here and there, with how he replied a few minutes later, like he's rethinking every message he sent.
"So, are you planning on doing anything yet?" Soobin asked, breaking the silence. He yelped when Ningning elbowed him roughly.
The three of you were at Ningning's home with a random cringe-worthy movie playing in the background, acting as white noise. The coffee table was covered with empty Chinese takeaway containers along with a few empty bottles of soju.
"What the hell's wrong with you? You know it's a sore topic," she chided and proceeded to jab him continuously at his sides.
Each jab growing more aggressive than the next until the poor boy kept squirming about, trying to move away from her relentless attack.
You rolled your eyes, taking another swing of the Peach flavored soju from your paper cup. "It's fine, Ning. I've thought about it."
Your words piqued your friends' attention and they immediately turned to you, filled with anticipation.
"I'm gonna talk to him, give him a chance to explain and redeem himself. Depending on his answer, I'll make my decision," you stated.
"What are your options?" Ningning inquired, curious.
You shrugged your shoulders, finger tracing the rim of the cup. "Either forgive or ghost him."
Soobin blinked. "Wait, but I thought he had already told you his reasons via text?"
You shot him a look. "He only explained because he got caught rather than him willingly admitting the truth. There's a difference here, Soobin. And besides, I want to hear what else he has to say."
Ningning hummed, looking thoughtful. "That make sense. Whatever decision you end up making, just know we got your back."
Soobin nodded in agreement. "Yeah."
Your features softened and you flashed them a grateful smile. "Thanks, you two. Seriously, I wouldn't have know what to do without you."
"Yeah, you should be grateful for us to stick with you despite your horrible taste in men."
IN WHICH. . . You're a vampire hunter, efficient and always getting the job done. You've ended lives without remorse, knowing vampires wear many, many faces. However, you never expected one of them to wear your husband's face. Park Jongseong is a vampire with the rare ability to possess human bodies, slipping into your husband's skin and stealing his place in your home, bed and life. You're hunter, someone meant to kill him. Loving a vampire is forbidden. But loving one who wears your husband's face is unforgivable. And when the time comes, do you have the heart to point your weapon at him?
23.1k wc⠀❀⠀vampire & vampire hunters au ♪♪ vamp! park jongseong x fem! reader 𐧘 explicit mature content, set in the early 20s, small town au, slight horror settings, cameos of other members as vampires, unprotected sex, bonnie and clyde ending, degrading, cunnunlingus, riding. lmk if i miss anything else.
perm tag list [always open] : @lolliloopsy, @kristynaaah, @lac4ygal, @sacrificemuraa, @strawberrywonnie, @hoonguin, @enhaxlhs,
The city was deep asleep at the late hours of the morning, with you being the exception.
The streetlights lined on both sides were dimly lit. Some were broken, due to the maintenance team lacking the equipment to fix them, causing some parts of the streets to be dark. Your black and tight suit clung onto your body, almost like it wanted to blend in.
Splash. Splash. Splash.
Every step you took sent the rainwater covering the black, rectangular-tiled ground to splash about. You didn't cared that your hair was now soaked due to how it was raining cats and dogs. Your weapon—a blade that was covered in black bloodstains after delivering a severe stab to your target's chest, only for him to make his escape.
But he wasn't moving at his usual speed, due to how weakened he already was. Which only made the hunt all the more easier for you—a vampire hunter.
And now, your position had been flipped—with you being the predator as you stalked your prey—the pathetic, trembling and frightened vampire who was half-crawling and half-dragging himself across the damp floor, on his elbows and knees. This chasing game went on until there was no strength left in his body, leaving him uselessly laying on the moist ground, his clothes soaking the rainwater and dirt.
Eventually, you stopped, standing with your figure hovering over him. The vampire looked over his shoulder, with wide, quivering and fearful eyes. The sight almost made you laughed—dark and humorless.
"P-Please.. let me go. I didn't mean for this to happen," he begged.
You didn't blink, merely cocking your head to the side. "Why should I? Your victims said the same thing too but you didn't," you paused briefly, raising your blade and pierced it through the vampire's right shoulderblade, drawing a pained and monstrous-like roar from the creature.
You watched with no remorse as he squirmed and wriggled about beneath you, trying to free himself from your blade but his efforts was futile. You drove it deeper, earning a series of satisfying pained grunts and moans from the vampire. Thick, black liquid trickled down his mouth as it rolled down his chin.
You rested your right foot on the vampire's stomach, purposely moving it left to right—treating him like he was dirt. Below and beneath you, a mere human being.
"Vampires like you don't get the right to beg for mercy," you hissed, pulling the blade out, not blinking even when some of his black blood landed on your face.
"No—wait!" The vampire exclaimed but it was too late.
You dove the blade neatly through his opened mouth until the end of your weapon popped through his head. The vampire immediately went still, eyes dimming and his limbs went pliant. You pulled your weapon out, flipping it to get rid of the blood as it landed on the ground, only to be washed away by the rain.
The vampire's body gradually disaggregated into dust until he was gone, like he was never there in the first place.
"Damn, you're ruthless, you know?" A familiar laid-back voice said, interrupting the brief silence as they stopped beside you, sheltering you with an umbrella.
You turned to your co-worker and friend—Xander looking at you with an impressed look, left eyebrow raised and lips curled up in a faint smile. You rolled your eyes as you accepted the umbrella while sheathing your blade in a fluid, smooth movement.
"Shut up, they don't deserve to—"
"—to live after what they had done to your parents. Yeah yeah, I get it. I've heard you retold your background way too many times that I can say it again with my eyes closed," he cuts you off.
You scoffed but the way your eyes glimmered in amusement said otherwise. "Shut up. Did you managed to kill your target?"
Xander nodded, readjusting his grip on the umbrella. "Yeah, it was easy. We should head back, gotta report to headquarters and then we can go home and sleep. What about that husband of yours? Think he's awake waiting for you?"
You let him lead the way, easily matching his pace as the two of you walked side by side in the rain. "Nah, he's asleep. I told him to stop waiting for me but he refused to listen."
Your friend chuckled. "God forbid a man from wanting to wake for his wife to come home."
"…Do you ever shut up?"
"Nah, pissing you off is my hobby—woah, no need to pull out your weapon."
~
The journey back to the headquarters took you thirty minutes. The two of you left the drenched umbrellas by the main entrance so it could dry off, placing them with the other umbrellas as you entered the main building. Even though it was close to three in the morning, there were many hunters around you. All of them—be it male or female, were dressed in the same black attire from head to toe, armed with a different variety of weapons—swords, dual blades and so on.
You nodded your head to hunters who walked past you, acknowledging their presences while returning the unspoken greeting to them. Xander inched closer until your shoulders brushed against one another, hands shoved into the pockets of his black pants.
"You wanna change first or just get this done and over with?" He asked, gesturing at your soaked outfit.
"It's fine. The sooner we get this done and over with, the sooner I can go home and cuddle with my husband," you answered, shrugging off his question.
Xander let out a sigh. "Must be nice to be married."
You sent him a playful smirk. "Hey, you know you have a fan club, right? Just pick someone and marry them. Easy."
Your friend shot you a judgemental look. "I'm not marrying someone who I barely know, no thank you."
"Loser."
"Fuck off."
The two of you continued chatting—well, bickering would be the more accurate word here as you headed to the directors' office. Xander and you go way back. The two of you met one another in Squad 54—one of the many squads out there after passing the entrance test of becoming a vampire hunter. You were only eighteen years old back then, while Xander was twenty-one, with a three years age difference.
He treated you like a younger sister—always guiding you and giving you advice whenever you were stuck. Xander was always there for you, listening when you told him the reason why you became a hunter—to avenge your parents who died during an incident. The details weren't revealed to you but all you knew was that a vampire had killed them.
And to you, that was enough reason for you to become a hunter.
Xander, on the other hand, chose this path because he loved the thrill of fighting. The adrenaline pumping through his veins and how he could act as a protector of the town you lived in. You remembered teasing him when he told you his reason, calling it 'cliche' and 'too noble for his own good'. But despite his words, you actually respect him.
Not that you'd say it out loud, for his ego would rise till no end.
Eventually, you arrived at the director's office. You glanced at one another, nodding in unison and you stepped forward, raising your right hand that was curled into a fist and knocked twice, each sound firm and resolute.
Knock knock.
"Come in."
The doors were opened from the inside, with two guards opening on each end. The director room was a stark contrast to the rest of the building—quieter and heavier, like sound itself knew better than to linger too long.
Dark wooden panels lined the walls, polished to a dull sheen, only to be interrupted by framed marks marked with red pins and handwritten annotations that tracked vampire actives across the city. A massive desk dominated the center of the room, carved from old oak and scarred with years of usage.
The surface was cluttered with neatly stacked files and a single lamp that casts a warm and low glow. The air faintly smelled of ink and something metallic—blood, perhaps, soaked into the history of the place.
The Director—a man in his late forties sat by his desk. You could feel his presence the moment you stepped foot into the room, causing your shoulders to tense as your body instinctively entered fight mode, even though there was no form of danger.
Your boots echoed softly against the floor with Xander falling into stride beside you with complete ease. His posture was relaxed, almost careless too but you could recognized the tension behind it. The doors closed behind you with a heavy and loud thud, sealing the room off from the rest of the building.
"Hunter (Name) and Hunter Xander, report," the Director ordered, voice firm and authoritative.
Xander took a step forward, hands now resting by his sides as he goes first. "Sir, I have managed to eliminate my target without causing a scene. The vampire didn't get to kill anyone else once I arrived at the scene."
The Director curtly nodded, eyes flicking to you. "Good. And what about you, Hunter (Name)?"
You did the same as Xander, raising your chin slightly higher. "Sir, I have eliminate my target as well without causing a scene."
"Good, as expected from the both of you. Hunter Xander, you may leave but," he paused for a second as he pointed at you. It took all of you to not flinched, "Hunter (Name), I need you to stay for a while. There is something important I wished to discuss with you."
Xander spared you a curious glance as he bowed, turning to walk to the door. The guards opened it for him and closed once he was gone, leaving you alone with the Director. You remained where you were, watching as he pulled out a folder from the drawer beneath his desk. It was only at his signal—a simple nod of his head, was when you approached him to pick up the folder.
You flipped it opened to see details handwritten in black ink by someone:
Name: Park Jongseong (Jay).
Species: Vampire.
Birthday: Unknown.
Ability: Able to possess bodies.
Strengths: Unknown.
Weaknesses: Unknown.
You flipped to the next page, expecting to see a sketch of how he looked like—which was the standard procedure.
But it was blank.
You furrowed your eyebrows and raised your head, noting how the Director had been observing your reaction for the past few minutes.
"Sir, what is the meaning of this?" You inquired.
He let out a sigh, leaning back into his comfortable, oak brown chair. "I have sent many capable hunters after him but none of them were able to come back to me alive. As far as I am aware, this vampire is highly dangerous."
You stiffened, knowing where this was going. "You mean he is classified under Code Red?"
Code Red meant vampires that are extremely hostile and dangerous. Only a small percentage of hunters have the skills to go against them. Of course, you are part of the said percentage.
The Director nodded. "Yes, which is why I'm assigning this mission to you, Hunter (Name). I have never seen a vampire as ruthless as he is. I do not have that much information on him but I had collated them into the folder you are holding now. I hoped it will be helpful for you."
You closed the folder and bowed from waist-level, at a sharp ninety degrees. "Understood, I will not disappoint you, Sir."
You turned, heading to the doors and the guards opened it. You were about to step out when you stopped at the Director calling out to you.
"Hunter (Name)."
You looked over your shoulder, peering at him from the corner of your eyes. "Yes, Sir?"
"Please, be careful. This vampire is not like the others you had faced before," he warned you.
If you were to hear closely, you could detect the faint concern in his voice. That shocked you. As far as you were aware, the Director was someone who rarely showed emotions. There were baseless rumors, whispers and gossips among the many, faceless hunters—wondering if he was a robot or worse: a human being born without a heart.
Whatever or whoever he was, you didn't cared. To you, he was someone who had gave you the chance to seek revenge for your deceased parents.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Your eyes lingered longer than usual on the Director's face, trying to find something behind those cold eyes but there was nothing. You merely nodded and finally stepped out of the room, the guards closing the door behind you, leaving you alone in the long, still and quiet hallway. You glanced down at the folder and sighed as you ran a hand through your hair.
"First thing first, I need a shower," you muttered as you left headquarters, ready to go home and changed out of your wet clothes.
~
You returned to a dark and quiet small house located North of the headquarters. You carefully closed and locked the door behind you, not wanting to wake your husband, who was fast asleep a long time ago. With how dark it was, you could barely see anything further than your hands stretched out before you, leaving you to blindly navigate your way through the dark.
THUD!
"Ow! What the fu—"
You hissed, barely managing to contain yourself as you stubbed your right socked foot against one of the sofa's legs. Bending over, you rubbed at your poor foot until the pain gradually subsided until you could walked again.
To your relief, your husband wasn't awaken by your clumsiness. You wasted no time in hopping into the bathroom, finally able to peel off your heavy clothes as you took a quick but refreshing shower.
When you were done, you changed into a more comfortable and breathable set of clothes—a loose sleeping gown and threw on a pair of pants, due to the cool weather. Instead of going to sleep, you sneak past the bedroom, only pausing for a few seconds to peak inside—making out the silhouette of your husband's sleeping figure before you headed to the dining table, where the folder was located.
You lit candlestand placed on the dining table as poured yourself a cup of warm water before sitting down on the nearest chair. As much as you wanted to sleep, curiosity got the better of you. You were intrigued to know more about your newly assigned target. This was something you always do at the start of every mission—collecting and digging for information.
The more information you have, the higher the advantage you have should you encounter them.
During your past five years as a vampire hunter, you had encountered different vampires. Some were easy to handle. Some required a decent amount of effort. Some, on the other hand, were leagues above the rest. They were smart, cunning and sly. Like they knew how to blend in with humans, making them almost invisible to the naked eye.
The thought of a vampire being able to pull off as a human sent shivers down your spine. You pulled the candlestand close enough until you could see the content. Flipping open the folder, you skipped the first two pages, landing on the third page where an ex-hunter had written an report:
To whoever is reading this in the future, I hope this report will be useful to you.
I had spent the past one week trailing after the target. I'm no longer in town and had ventured somewhere far from home. Until now, the target has not noticed me yet. But, I suspect he knew I had been following him the entire time. I don't know why he didn't kill me. It's like he wanted me to follow him, like he wanted to show me something.
Here I am, hiding in my temporary base as I quickly write down what I managed to find out. He is not working alone, that is a fact and not an assumption. He has accomplices and there are a total of seven of them. All of them are vampires. Nothing is known about the rest of them, except for the fact that they have a leader—someone who they listened and followed orders from.
My target's name is Park Jongseong or Jay, according to how the other vampires addressed him as. I don't know what his ability is as I have yet to witness it with my own eyes. I will write when I gather more details.
The report ended there and you knew what had became of the hunter as there was nothing else after that. Sighing, you flipped to the next page, showing another report. But this time, the handwriting was more italic, like the person used to be an author before switching to becoming a hunter:
It had been four days since I was assigned to this mission. I had decided to take whatever free time I have to write this down, hoping it will be useful to someone in the future. I have discovered something shocking and why the hunters before me failed to eliminate him.
He is different from the others. He has the rare ability to possess a body. It can be anyone's body—be it a human or a vampire. I don't know the exact details of how it worked but one moment, one of my teammates was with me. The next moment, he started attacking the rest of us, blindly swinging his weapon about, like he was on a rampage.
I was the only one who managed to escape from him. Barely alive but still in one piece, for now. I don't know how it or when it happened but I hope this information will be useful.
You paused, staring at the report with your lips pursed in a thin line with your head resting on the palm of your left hand. Based on the two reports you read, you still didn't know enough about Jay and as much as you wanted to continue reading, your eyelids were growing heavier as every second passed. Your head was also slipping from your palm and you nearly banged your head against the edge of the table.
"(Name)?"
You visibly flinched from your chair, startled when a sleepy voice broke through the silence of the night. Or morning. You swiveled your head over your shoulder, to see it was none other than your husband standing at the doorway. His hair was messed up and his eyes were barely opened as he squinted at you.
"What are you doing? Don't tell me you're still working," he lets out an exasperated sigh.
Hearing the faint frustration in his voice made your left eyebrow twitched. "And what if I am? What does it matter to you? You were the one who told me that we'll mind our own business in this marriage."
You couldn't help but spat at him, throwing the words he directed to you back at him without hesitation. Something unreadable flickered in your husband's face before his shoulders tensed, the remains drowsiness leaving his body as anger started pouring in.
"Why do you always do this? Turn a normal conversation into an argument?" He fired back.
You stood up from your seat, not caring how the chair's legs scrapped loudly against the floor at your action. "Me? Oh, that's rich, coming from someone who treats this marriage like a partnership!"
You didn't cared that you were raising your voice at the late or early hours of the morning and how your neighbors will be knocking on your door when they woke up. You clenched and unclenched your fists, letting your nails dig into your palms to ground yourself.
"We're married for three years and not once did you looked or treated me like your wife. You treated me like I was invisible, some sort of ghost while all you do is keep to yourself!" You continued, letting out your pent-up frustration and annoyance.
Your husband opened his mouth and for a moment, you thought he had changed. You thought he would fight back, finally telling you the real reason but then—
"…Forget it, it's useless trying to talk to you when all you're doing is screaming and yelping like an animal. I'm going back to bed," he said, retreating to the bedroom without sparing you a second glance, leaving you standing there, seething with rage and heartbreak.
~
"Are you sure this is a good idea?"
A tall man dressed in black from head to toe asked as he stood beside another man, whose cat-like eyes were watching a pair of vampires arguing among themselves, behaving like immature children despite the fact that they had lived for centuries. The shorter of the two hummed in acknowledgment as he stared at the papers messily scattered across the long table before him.
"What is?"
Riki sighed and jutted his chin to where the two vampires are. "I'm talking about those two idiots over there. Are you sure assigning the mission to them is a good idea? I bet Jay's gonna get exposed once he finds out the human doesn't know how to cook."
Jungwon snorted under his breath, resting both hands on the desk as he stared down at the papers, trying to connect the dots of the clues presented before him. "Oh, I'm sure that'd happen without doubt. But, I need the two of them to work together on this mission. It's crucial for our goal and besides."
The leader paused for a moment, leaning over to grab a particular piece of document that had a female face on it, along with her personal information. Jungwon's eyes lingered with an unreadable look on his face.
"Besides what?" Riki prodded, curious.
Jungwon slowly and deliberately smiled, something unsettling, dark and knowing hidden behind it. "Besides, we need someone to get close to her and that annoying boss of hers. The sooner they are dead, the sooner we can go home."
The taller sighed, eyes drifting towards Jay and Sunghoon—who had finally stop fighting. Instead, they were now laughing as they chatted gleefully, pretending like they weren't going at going at one another's throat a few seconds ago.
"I hope you know what you're doing, hyung. Because unlike the rest of us, Jay has a fragile heart," Riki pointed out, hands shoved into the pockets of his black, long coat that had a silhouette of a snake on his broad, strong back.
Jungwon chuckled, the sound humorless and dark. "Doesn't matter. When the time comes, I'll test his loyalty. I only hope he knows which to pick."
~
You spent the next two to three weeks juggling between your newly-assigned missions while digging for more information about your target. You went to the library located in the South building of the headquarters, hoping the large collection of books would be able to provide more clues than the reports you had read multiple times.
But to your annoyance and disappointment, there was nothing.
You couldn't find anything about Jay or his accomplices stated in the reports. You couldn't stopped thinking about how there was no sketch of his appearance. That was something rare, something you had never encountered in your five years of being a vampire hunter.
It's like no one had seen his true appearance before. That thought alone made something akin to unease settled in the depths of your stomach.
"…llo? Is anyone still there?"
"Ow!"
You yelped when something light but sharp hit your forehead, snapping you back to reality. You raised your head, rubbing at the now sore spot as you glared at Xander, who couldn't hold back the grin that stretched across his face.
"Did you just flick me?" You deadpanned, dropping your hand.
"Hey, I was calling out to you for the past six minutes but you weren't answering me. So I had to resort to physical force," he shrugged his shoulders, letting out a dramatic, pained cry when you jabbed at his side, causing him to jump on the spot.
"What was that for!?" He exclaimed, steering his horse slightly away from yours, not wanting to get jabbed the second time.
You rolled your eyes at his reaction but your lips curved upward. "That was for flicking my forehead, dumbass. Now come on, we have a vampire to catch."
The two of you were sent out on another mission—nothing new or nothing you haven't seen before. The details was simple—a small group of vampires were on the rise recently. They were reported moving from one village to another, sucking the villagers' blood dry—be it elderly, children, men or women.
Should this were to continue, there was a chance they might grow stronger as they gradually get closer to the town you're living in. The last sighting of them was reported to be in a village located far from town. Traveling there by horse would required at least a day. You had packed light—some food, water, a medical kit and some emergency supplies.
Better to be safe than sorry.
Xander looked up to the gradually dimming sky. "You wanna camp out here tonight or keep pushing forward?" He asked, waiting for your decision.
You hummed, eyes looking forward. "Let's keep going. Any second we waste means more innocent people are going to die."
"Got it, boss."
"Don't call me that."
~
After about forty-five minutes to an hour, the two of you finally arrived at your destination. It seemed like you had made the right choice as the village was in chaos. Villagers were screaming at the top of their lungs as they fled, not wanting to the next victim. You squinted your eyes, managing to locate a fast-moving silhouette chasing after a young girl. You didn't wait for permission, instantly leaping off your horse and unsheathed your blade.
"(Name)!" Xander called out to you but you ignored him.
Right now, you were focused on saving the girl before she became the vampire's prey.
You dashed across the field at breakneck speed, getting close enough to see something strange and inhumane.
His hands—nails, to be exact, grew long until they were slightly curved at the end and is silver in color, glowing under the moonlight as it shone down on it. He raised his left hand, throwing it out and the curved nails flew towards the girl, who was defenseless and vulnerable.
You jumped into action.
Gathering enough strength in your legs, you closed the distance between you and the girl in a blink of an eye, moving at a speed that was hard for the naked eye to follow. You stood between the girl and the vampire, easily deflecting the incoming barrage of attack.
Shink, shink, shink!
Every deflect made a 'shink' sound as you sent it flying in different directions. You didn't dared to look behind to find the girl, only praying that Xander was quick enough to escort her to safety. You had a mini staring contest with the vampire, who hasn't moved an inch from where he stood. Instead, he eyed you with poorly concealed interest, like you were fascinating to him.
"Oh, it's you," he breathed out, sounding in awe.
You frowned. "Do I know you?"
The vampire blinked then chuckled. "No, you don't. But it doesn't matter."
"..What the hell are you yapping about?" You snapped, patience growing thinner as every second passed.
The other tilted his head to the side. "You'll find out in due time. But for now, you've let my prey ran away. How are you planning on making it up to me?"
"You can go to hell," you hissed.
He smirked, ready to jump on you when he stopped, like he was listening to something you couldn't hear. Whatever it was, he seemed to listen as he clicked his tongue, not bothering to hide his dissatisfaction and straightened himself. His long nails shrunk until it was gone, making him looked human.
"You're lucky you get to walk away. See you next time," he casually bid you farewell, like the two of you are friends. He was about to walk away when he paused, remembering something and looked at you over his shoulder, giving you a knowing and uneasy smile that doesn't meet the look in his eyes.
"Oh, and a word of advice for you, human. Don't put too much trust in the people around you."
"Wha—"
You didn't get to finish your sentence as his body was split into bats. You watched from where you stood, your sword slightly lowered as you watched the bats flew away. Their wings flapped nonstop until they were out of your sight, leaving you behind to dwell on the sentence that felt more like a warning rather than a threat.
A warning, but for what?
"(Name)! Thank god you're safe!" Xander called out as he rushed towards you, scanning you from head to toe and heaved out a sigh of relief when there was no signs of injuries.
"You nearly gave me a heart attack! You need to stop rushing into fights like that! Have you forgotten what we had learned!?" He exclaimed.
You scoffed, trying to ignore the vampire's sentence that was now lingering in the back of his mind. "Oh, sorry for not asking for permission, mom. I'd be sure to do that next time."
Xander lightly whacked your shoulder, making you let out a pained yelp as you held onto your left shoulder, looking at him with betrayal and an incredulous look on your face.
"Did you just hit a woman?" You gaped.
Your friend shot you a deadpan look. "Not funny."
You sighed, dropping the act as you sheathed your sword. "Fine, I got it. I'll be more careful. I promise."
Xander eyed you, looking like he wanted to say something but ended up sighing with a final shook of his head. He reached out to ruffle your hair, making you scowled as you slapped his hand away.
"Seriously, someone needs to keep an eye on you. Won't want your husband to come after me for letting his pretty wife's face get scarred," he joked.
You knew he didn't meant anything behind it, how he was merely joking and wanted to make you feel better. But you couldn't helped the faint ache in your heart. How he was oblivious to the truth—how your marriage was nothing more than a facade, simply something to make your parents happy, knowing that should anything happened to them, you will not have to spend the rest of your life alone.
What Xander and your parents didn't know was how the marriage was anything but happy. It felt more like a contract, like you and your husband were nothing more than strangers, treating one another like strangers who were forced to sleep under the same roof. Your husband worked as a hardware store manager.
His personality at work is very different when he's at home. At work, he's more friendly, warm and approachable. Heck, you had even witnessed him laughing at a joke one of his co-workers told him. But when he came home, it's like the life was suck out of him. He became cold and distant, always sticking to himself.
You couldn't remembered the last time you had a meal together, held his hand or even share those small, little romantic displays like quick and chaste pecks on your cheeks. There were times when you envied the couples you see on the streets, watching as they were so lovey-dovey with one another that it physically pained you.
You wanted what they had. But how could you, when your husband refused to look you in the eyes?
~
What was supposed to be a quick mission ended up with you and Xander helping the villagers in rebuilding their homes. They even cooked up a feast for the two of you, ignoring your rejections as they stubbornly insisted for you to have their food. To them, you were their savior and it was only right for them to provide a feast for someone who had saved their lives.
Xander being Xander, wasted no time in diving in, shoving food down his throat, acting like a famished beast, much to your utter embarrassment. Thankfully, the villagers didn't laughed at him as they merely refiled his plate, making him on cloud nine.
You ended up joining him but unlike him, you had the basic manners to eat properly and without making a mess.
Once your stomachs were full and both of you were feeling the food coma gradually setting in, it was time for you to sleep. You didn't brought a extra pair of clothes, which made you groaned as you mentally prepared yourself for the stench you'd wake up to tomorrow morning.
The villagers were generous enough to provide a house that wasn't knocked down during the sudden vampire ambush for you and Xander. There were two separate beds placed vertically against the two walls. You made yourself comfortable, not bothering to pull the thin blanket up as you weren't feeling cold.
You rested your head on your arms as you stared at the ceiling above you. On your left, Xander had knocked out the moment his head hit the thin pillow and was already snoring, like he was in the comfort and softness of his bed at home. Sighing, you got up and stealthily stepped out, deciding to take a walk to clear your mind.
"Oh, and a word of advice for you, human. Don't put too much trust in the people around you."
"Who was he referring to? What did he meant by the people around me?" You mumbled to yourself as you walked through the quiet village where the villagers were peacefully asleep.
Everyone except for you.
What was more important was how none of the reports stated that vampires had the ability to grow certain body parts. As far as you were, whoever that vampire was, you suspect he must be in the same league with Jay.
You groaned, running a hand through your hair in frustration. "Fuck, this isn't good. I can't even find him in the first place. How am I supposed to kill a target I can't see?"
You shook your head rapidly to get rid of the thought, not wanting to further distract yourself. You let your feet aimlessly led you around as you stayed within the village, not wanting to get lost or even worse, die due to vampires lurking in the shadows. When your feet were starting to ache, you took that as your sign to return to the house.
Xander had turned onto his left, his back facing you as he slept soundly. This time however, he wasn't snoring anymore.
You removed your combat boots, placing them at the end of the bed. This time, you pulled the thin blanket up when you felt a gentle gust of wind, making you involuntarily shivered. Despite taking a walk to clear your mind, you felt even more troubled than before.
It was safe to say you didn't get any sleep that night.
When morning came, you were beyond exhausted but you didn't let it show on your face. You woke Xander up by repeatedly whacking him with your pillow, drawing a groan from him as he attempted to go back to sleep. But you continued whacking him until he has had enough. Both of you washed up to the best of your abilities with whatever was provided and headed to where your horses were resting—in a small stable.
You led your horse out as Xander does the same with his.
"Wait!"
You had jumped onto your horse, ready to leave when a young girl's voice stopped you. Looking down, you recognized the girl from yesterday. It was the girl who you managed to save and she was holding a folded piece of paper. Curious, you got down, bending so you were eye-level with her and you flashed her a smile.
"Hi sweetie, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with your parents?" You asked.
She giggled and handed you the paper, a wide smile stretching across her round, cute face. "I wanted to give you this, to show my thanks for saving me!"
You felt touched by her words as you accepted it, unfolding the paper to see it was a hand drawn art of a woman—who you assumed was you, protecting a girl from a vampire. Xander looked over your shoulder, only to cough to hide his laughter when he saw it.
"Damn, you look kinda hideous—!" He didn't finished his sentence as you sharply elbowed him in the stomach without looking behind you, making him let out a pained wheeze as he bent over while clutching at his sides.
You turned to the girl with the smile still on your face, pointedly ignoring Xander's pained groans in the background. "Thank you, sweetie. You're really talented in your drawing. You should head back to your parents now."
She pouted but nodded nonetheless. "Alright.. please come and visit us someday, Miss! Byebye!" She cheerfully waved before skipping back home, leaving you there as you stood up while pocketing the paper into your breast pocket.
"If only she knew how much of a violent person you are," Xander complained as he hopped onto his horse with you doing the same.
"Shut up. You deserved that," you retorted, flicking the reins and your horse began galloping. The village gradually grew smaller and smaller until it was out of your sight as you headed back town—back to where home was.
~
Xander chose to report to the Director, stating how you were "close to falling asleep on your feet" and you didn't had the energy to argue with him. Not when he was right. You bid him farewell as you headed back home, leaving your horse under Xander's care as he brought it back to the headquarters while you walked back. You didn't expect anything and had zero thoughts about your husband.
Which was why you were surprised when you saw him preparing lunch for you in the kitchen.
A fresh and strong fragrance of creamy mushroom soup filled your senses, making your stomach grumbled out loud. You stood at the doorway, looking like an idiot with how shocked you were at the sight before you. From where you were, you could see your husband standing before the stove in the kitchen, with his back facing you as he hummed something under his breath.
Like this was normal.
"Ah, you're back already. How did the mission go? Well, I hope," your husband spoke up, acknowledging your presence.
His question snapped you out of your daze as you entered, closing the door behind you while slipping off your boots, placing them neatly against the door. You blinked when you saw how his shoes were neatly placed near the door—something he never does in your three years of marriage. But you didn't questioned it, not when you were close to falling asleep right there and then.
"…It was fine, we managed to save the villagers before the vampires could get to them," you replied as you headed to the dining table, ungracefully collapsing into the nearest chair.
Your husband hummed, raising the ladle to his lips to test taste the soup and when it was to his satisfaction, he turned off the stove. He grabbed a bowl he had taken out beforehand, scooped a generous amount of soup into the bowl and placed it on a tray before stepping out of the kitchen.
He placed it before you, looking down at you and then, he does something so unexpected that it made your breath hitched in your throat.
He leaned down to kiss your forehead.
Your body stilled, like you didn't know how to react to the sudden display of affection. Your head robotically snapped up to him, noting how he was still looking at you with a warm and loving smile on his face.
"Y-You… What are you doing?" You asked, stuttering over your words.
"Hm? I don't know what you're talking about," he smoothly answered but you weren't dumb.
"You're acting weird. Why are you doing all of this?" You asked, widely gesturing to your surroundings.
"You're supposed to be at work and not at home. You don't even care about what I do or whether I get killed one day when I'm out on a mission. So, why are you doing this?" You asked, hating how your voice trembled at the end of your question, hating how weak you sounded as you looked at him, furiously blinking to get rid of tears threatening to slip.
Your husband's features softened and guilt flicked across his face. He rested a hand above yours where it was placed on the table.
"I know I haven't been the best husband for the past three years. I neglected you, didn't see you as a equal and my wife. No words can let me make up for my mistake so please, give me a chance? I want to prove to you that you didn't made the wrong choice. Let me prove to you that marrying me isn't something you should regret," he said, utmost sincerity evident in his voice.
You were taken aback by how genuine he was. You never thought he was capable of feeling, with how cold and distant he had treated you. You didn't know what to say, rendered speechless. Seeing your reaction, your husband chuckled as he reached out to pat your head, like you were some kind of stray dog he stumbled upon on the streets.
"And how do you planned on doing that?" You asked, finally regaining your composure.
He pursed his lips as he moved away from you. You pointedly ignored how your heart was aching, wanting him to come back as he sat opposite of you.
"Well, first thing first, I'm taking you out on a date," he said, raising one finger, like he had planned this out and had even made a list in his mind.
"Secondly, I'll make sure to pamper you, giving you the love and attention you deserved," he continued. You swore you felt your cheeks turning warm at the implications behind his words as you picked up the spoon, taking your first sip of the soup.
Your eyes widened at how flavorful and creamy the mushroom soup was. Your eyes flicked between your husband's expectant look and the soup, noting how he was eagerly waiting for your reaction. Clearing your throat, you schooled your expression, although it was too late for that.
"This is really good," you complimented him, trying not to cringe at how awkward you sound. One would think this was your first time learning how to praise someone.
Thankfully, your husband didn't point it out. He smiled, somewhat satisfied and pleased with your words. Nodding his head, he leaned back in his chair as he stretched his arms above his head, revealing the rolled-up sleeves that had his lower arms exposed. You hated how your eyes moved to the newly exposed areas, acting like a Victorian man seeing an ankle for the first time.
If you choked on your soup when he cracked his fingers, then that's only for you to know.
At least, that's what you think, unaware that your husband's unusually sharp hearing caught it. He had to stifle urge to grin, not wanting to get his cover blown. He stood up and headed to the kitchen, giving him the much-needed privacy to let him smile.
All he needed to do was to maintain this facade while playing the role of your loving husband and soon, he and the other vampires will be able to return home.
~
For the next few days, you found it awkward and hard to adjust to the drastic change of your husband's behavior. Your previous quiet and gloomy home was now more lively, more brighter and more… comfortable. Never in your life would you found yourself living the life you desperately wanted. The life of being treated as an equal, as someone's wife and more importantly, with utter love and devotion.
Your previous routine to get ready for work was quick and efficient—you get dressed. After ensuring your weapons are sharpened enough to your liking, you were out of the house, without bothering to bid your husband farewell. After all, he wasn't home most of the times.
But it's different this time.
"You're leaving for work already?"
You looked up in the midst of cleaning your weapon, already dressed as you sat on the couch in the small living room, to see your husband approaching you with a slight frown on his face. You blinked when you registered the rectangular, thinly-framed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, feeling your mind malfunctioning on the spot.
Your husband, on the other hand, paid you no mind. Or maybe he didn't voiced it out loud. Whichever it was, you were grateful. You watched as he stood before you and then, sank to his knees. Heat crept up the back of your neck, feeling both flustered and mortified at what he wanted to do—
Only for him to help you tie the shoelaces for your combat boots.
You couldn't moved, staring down at him with wide eyes, parted lips with your hands awkwardly frozen in mid-action from cleaning your weapon. You remained in that position until he was done tying your shoelaces but he didn't made any move to stand. Instead, he remained there—kneeling between your legs as he eyed you with an unreadable expression on his face.
Somehow, the way he looked at you made you felt small. Like he had you right where he wanted you to be. Your breath caught in your throat as he rose until he was bent at waist level and he leaned in, one hand braced against the back of the couch while the other rested on your right, fingers dangerously close to touching your left knee.
"..What are you doing?" You asked, mentally wincing at how your voice shook at the end.
The way your husband knowingly smirked sent shivers down your spine and the all-too familiar sensation of heat pooling in your stomach. You could only prayed he couldn't hear how your heart was beating rapidly against your chest.
You leaned back, wanting to maintain distance between the two of you but he merely followed, until you're pinned against the couch with his hands blocking off any forms of exit.
"Nothing, just wanted to admire my pretty wife," he murmured, voice low and raspy, making you unconsciously clenched and rubbed your thighs together.
His eyes darted down, the left corner of his lips tugged upward in a faint, amused smirk. Like he knows the effect he has on you. Like he could read your mind, venturing into the deep, deep corners of your mind. Your breath stuttered when he leaned in closer, tethering between the lines of teasing and making you begged for it.
He saw the way your eyes flicked down to his lips, to how you were fighting against yourself to not give in to the temptation. Your husband chuckled, choosing to push you further by now resting his right knee between your legs, on the edge of the couch. If he were to move it higher, he could have it pressed directly against your clothed and soaked pussy.
"You look like you want something," he pointed out, feigning innocence despite how he was the one responsible for starting this in the first place.
You nervously swallowed, unable to find it in yourself to use your voice. "I…"
"Go on. Use your words and tell me, sweetheart," he purred, voice lowering an octave.
The sudden usage of a nickname made you let out an involuntarily whimper before you could swallowed it down. He took that as a sign of victory, lips parted and was about to say something when—
Knock knock.
"(Name)? You in there?" Xander called out, his muffled voice heard through the door as he stood outside, oblivious to what was happening on the other side.
You flinched, accidentally lurching forward and roughly knocked your forehead against your husband's, who was way too close for your comfort. The two of you let out a pained yell at the same time, clutching your heads as you groaned while rubbing the now sore spot. You were the first to recover, shooting up from the couch the moment the pain faded away.
You quickly grabbed your weapon, sheathed it and fled from your husband, like your life depends on it. You stepped out, slamming the door shut behind you and Xander stood a few feet away, owlishly blinking his eyes at you when he saw your flushed face and how you were gasping for air.
"You alright? You look like you've ran a marathon," he commented.
Running a hand through your hair as you slung your weapon by your waist, ignoring how your hands were borderline shaking, you cleared your throat.
"I'm fine, don't worry about it," you replied, thankful that your voice was steady.
But Xander had known you long enough to read through your flimsy and futile attempts of pretending. "You're clearly not fine, if your hands are shaking like you're about to take your first exam. Come on, tell me."
The last two words made your body stiffened. Your mind reacted before your body did—bringing you back to the way you were pinned against the couch a few minutes ago. To how your husband looked at you, like he was about to kiss you and the way he said it, like he was seducing you. Before you could stopped yourself, thoughts started running through your mind at the speed of light.
What would happened if Xander didn't knocked on the door? Would he had kissed you? Would you have let him? Would the kiss lead to something more—
"…llo? (Name)?"
"H-Huh?"
You blinked, snapping back to reality when Xander waved his hand in front of your face. The man sighed as he dropped his hand, stepping back to give you distance.
"You didn't heard a single word I said, did you?" He dryly asked, not bothering to wait for your response with how you opened and closed your mouth, struggling to formulate a sentence.
"Never mind, we should get going. The Director said he wanted to talk to us and it's urgent," he said.
You nodded as you walked down the street with him, unaware that a certain group were already making their first move in the cover of the shadows.
After all, the human eye can't see things that are visible to a certain species.
~
"Hyung, what the hell was that? Were you about to kiss or kill her?"
Jay closed his eyes, letting out a long and heavy sigh as he felt the familiar surge of frustration when Riki's voice echoed in his mind. He could hear the annoying, rapid and nonstop multiple tapping on the window. He already knew who was behind it without looking in their direction. The vampire moved through the house like he had lived here for a long time.
Wrong.
He only 'moved in' a few days ago, seizing his chance after trailing the oblivious man. Jay spent the past few days watching him while hiding in the shadows, using the night to conceal his presence. He wanted to make sure he found the perfect target—not because he doesn't trust Jungwon's judgment, but because he wanted to ensure that everything was moving according to plan.
Should they failed a mere, minor step, they could say goodbye to returning home.
"Shut up, Riki. Why are you here in the first place? Shouldn't you be helping Sunghoon?" Jay sighed, heading to the window as he opened it, allowing the youngest to fly in as he settled on Jay's right shoulder.
The bat—Riki, cocked his head to the side while looking at him. Jay won't admit it out loud but seeing the youngest vampire like this—small and cute, gives him cuteness aggression. But he knew Riki won't like to be babied, which was why he kept the comment to himself.
"Sunghoon hyung's fine. Sunoo's with him and you know how those two are when they work together."
Jay only made a face at that. "Unfortunately, I do. So, are you here to help or bother me?"
Riki flapped his tiny wings and if he was in his human form, Jay could perfectly visualized the playful grin on his face. "Why I'm here to bother you! Watching you trying to act like a human is fun."
"Piss off."
Jay rolled his eyes but made no move to flick him off his shoulder, letting Riki sit on it as he headed to the master bedroom. The vampire wasted no time in digging through your things, trying to find what he was looking for. But, it seemed like it wasn't as easy as he thought. No matter where he searched—left and right, up and down, he couldn't find it.
At some point, Riki had returned to his human form, dressed in black from head to toe. "Hyung, do you know what you're looking for? It's—"
"The fragments," Jay cut in, voice low but edged with steel. He slammed the drawer shut, harder than necessary. The sound echoed too loudly in the bedroom.
"And one of them has to be here."
He paused, breathing out slowly through his noise, as if reining himself in. The master bedroom felt wrong—too intimate and too lived-in. Your things surrounded him—folded clothes that still carried your scent, trinkets placed with careful intention. All of these doesn't belonged to him.
A life he was only borrowing and already staining with his mere presence.
Jay moved again, slower and more deliberate this time. He knelt beside the bed, fingers brushing along the frame as he narrowed his eyes. "They aren't just pieces of a map. Each fragment is part of a compass—seven shards etched with old blood and ancient magic."
Individually, they were meaningless. But together, they formed a mechanism older than this world with its needle forged to seek only one thing—the way home. When aligned, the compass will turn on its own, dragging the bearer toward the hidden threshold—a secret door carved into the bones of the earth.
It's invisible to humans, sealed by blood no longer spoken and spells long forgotten. But to the vampires, it was their only form of escape and salvation. They had gathered four fragments and were only missing three. The sooner they could find it, the sooner they will be able to go home.
"She wouldn't hide them somewhere obvious," Jay continued, forcing himself to move as he kept searching. "But she wouldn't risk losing them either. This is her safe place."
His fingers pressed against the mattress seam, eyes sharp and narrowed. "If she kept it close, they'd be somewhere she touches without thinking."
His jaw tightened.
"We can't leave without all three. Without them, the compass stays broken. Without the compass, the door remains sealed," his voice dropped as he clenched his fist.
"And without that door, all seven of us are trapped here—rotting in a world that was never meant to be ours."
~
"Sir, you called for us," Xander said, announcing his arrival as the doors were slowly opened from inside as the two of you entered the room.
"What I'm about to tell you is not a new mission," he started.
You frowned and Xander shuffled his feet on the spot.
"It is a failure that this organization and every hunter before you, had been trying to bury," he continued.
He reached into a locked drawer and withdrew a file—thicker than most, its edges worn as if it had been handled far too often. When he opened it, you caught sight of diagrams sketched in dark ink—fractured shapes, incomplete circles and seven shapes that looked as though they were meant to fit together—but never had.
"Seven fragments. They were never meant to exist separately. Long ago, we were tasked with destroying them. All of them."
Xander crossed his arms, pursing his lips in a thin line. "Let me guess, that didn't happen."
The Director shook his head. "No. We couldn't destroyed them The vampires were too strong for the ex-hunters to handle. And now that they have four of it, they only need three more before it's completed."
He paused.
"The remaining three were… lost. Hidden and protected. Every attempt to locate and destroy them failed."
You were more confused than anything else. "Then why tell us now? What does this have to do with us?"
"Because, you, are already involved. One of the remaining fragments is hidden in your house."
Silence.
Xander snapped his head towards you. "Your house?" He echoed, disbelief seeping into his voice.
The Director nodded. "It was placed there years ago, long before either of you knew where it was. Hidden in plain sight, passed off as something mundane. You lived over it and slept beside it while never knowing what it truly was."
Your nails dug into your palms. A thousand images rushed through your mind—drawers, shelves and keepsakes you had never questioned as you kept them. And yet, all this time…
"Which means you are no longer just a hunter. You are a variable. A walking target."
Xander swore under his breath. "So the vampires aren't just searching the town. They're searching for her as well."
"Yes, and one of those vampires is her target," the Director paused, eyes flicking to your direction, "Jay's ability to possess human bodies…"
He lets the sentence trailed off, the implication settling heavily between you. Your stomach twisted, already knowing what he meant to say despite the words not being spoken out loud.
"You are to return home immediately," the Director said. "You and Xander will locate the fragment and destroy it. No delays and no mistakes."
"Wait, but we don't know how it looks like," Xander protested.
The Director's eyes turned cold. "I am afraid I cannot help you with that. The fragments varies in shapes, sizes and appearances. All I know is they all respond to proximity—blood, intent and magic. It may not look like a weapon or an artifact. It could be anything. A trinket. A keepsake. Something personal."
His gaze lingered on you. "Which is why it has remained hidden for so long."
Xander uncrossed his arms. 'We'll find it."
"You have to," the Director sharply said. "Destroy it before Jay finds it. If he found it, they are one step closer to completing the compass. One step to the door opening for them. One step to them making their escape."
As you took the file and left the room with Xander beside you, the weight of the mission settled into your bones—not as duty but as dread. Your home. Your life. Every familiar corner now felt compromised.
And to make matters worse, you still haven't found Jay and he was already moving.
Or worst, he might have already made his move, without you knowing.
~
You returned home with your mind full of clouded thoughts. Your husband was nowhere to be seen and you assumed that he must have gone to work, giving you the much-needed alone time for you to wrap your mind around the huge chunk of information that was dumped on you without warning. You changed out of your clothes, plopping down on the couch—sitting on the very same spot where it happened this morning.
The nearly kiss. The things he made you felt with how close he was and most importantly, the look in his eyes. Raw, unfiltered and desire.
Just thinking about it made your cheeks flushed as you leaned forward, placing the file on the coffee table situated before you as you flipped through it, wanting to take the chance and time to look through whatever information you have. The sooner you get started, the sooner you would be able to figure out where the fragment was located in your house.
You didn't know how much time had passed. It could had been minutes or hours. You were so engrossed in trying to understand just what the hell you were looking at, that you didn't hear the sound of the door opening and closing, followed by a pair of footsteps heading your way from behind, slow and steady, like they were about to ambush you from your blind spot.
However, you weren't vulnerable even without your weapon.
The moment you felt someone near you, you instantly whirled around. Your hands shot out, grabbed their wrist and upper shoulder. With an incredible display of strength, you flipped them over your shoulder with ease, like they weighed nothing to you. Your abrupt action drew a startled, human-like yelp. The sound of it was enough for you to blink, eyes refocusing, only for you to let out a horrified gasp.
"Oh fuck, I'm so sorry! I didn't know it was you!" You exclaimed, frantically flailing your arms about before you bent over at waist level as you helped your husband up to his feet.
He allowed you to help him up as he groaned, holding his back while the other was still holding onto your hand.
"Damn, I know you're strong but isn't a bit too much to throw your defenseless husband over the shoulder?" He joked, only to grimace when he attempted to straighten his back.
You let out a weak chuckle as you helped him to the couch, gently coaxing him to sit down. "I'm really sorry. I acted without thinking and besides, it's also your fault. Why were you sneaking up on me like that?" You scowled, delivering a light but sharp smack to his shoulder, making him yelped in pain.
"I called out your name but you weren't listening. You were too busy staring at…" His voice trailed off as his eyes drifted over your shoulder to the coffee table that thankfully, was still in one piece after you flipped him over.
That's when you saw it—the way he stilled for a fraction, the way his eyes lingered on the two pages that were showing seven different fragments required to fix the compass. You observed his reaction, playing it off as you checking him for any physical sign of injuries. The Director's sentence echoed in your mind, especially the sentence where he mentioned Jay's ability to possess human bodies.
Could the person sitting right before you is not who you thought it was?
You didn't know what to think. You didn't want to jump to conclusions, not wanting to look like those wives who doesn't trust or fully know her husbands well. And for the first time as a vampire hunter, doubt gradually begin creeping in. It wasn't major but you could feel it slowly implanting itself in the back of your mind.
And with a life like yours, doubt can be wielded like a double-edged sword.
Clearing your throat, you feigned what you hoped was a believable smile, leaning forward slightly to gain his attention. "You alright? You spaced out for a moment."
Your husband blinked, tearing his eyes away from the coffee table as he turned to you. "Huh? Oh, I'm fine. Just let me rest a little. You're lucky I didn't sprained my back."
You light-heatedly rolled your eyes as you sat beside him while leaving some distance between the two of you. But you were close enough for you to feel the heat emitted from his body.
"If you're so eager to sprain your back, that can be arranged," you replied.
Your husband stared at you with an incredulous look on his face. "…You're scary, have I ever told you that?"
No. You never bothered talking to me for the past three years.
Swallowing the bitter words threatening to slip from the tip of your tongue, you merely chuckled. You didn't said anything else, choosing to resume your previous task—which was to examine the file the Director had gave you. None of you said a word for the next fifteen minutes or so. You sat there with your husband near you, who was stoning as he stared into space.
It was quiet and comfortable, with the both of you enjoying one another's presence until—
"Mind telling me what you're looking at? It looks interesting."
Your husband spoke up, voice soft but gentle, in a rare way that it caught you off-guard.
You glanced at him before back to the two opened pages—the very same pages you were at for the past thirty minutes or an hour. You quickly closed it, messily shoving them into the folder, not caring that you had messed the papers up during the process.
"Work," you automatically replied, which wasn't wrong.
He hummed, leaning closer until his forearm brushed against yours. "I didn't know work involved whatever that is. Those symbols don't looked like your standard reports."
His eyes lingered on the folder, not pushy but observant. Too observant for your liking.
Your fingers tightened around the file. "It's classified information."
"Since when has that stopped you from venting to me?" He asked lightly, a small smile tugging at his lips as he looked at you. There was no mockery behind it—only genuine interest. "You've been frowning at the pages for the past fifteen minutes."
You hesitated. Something about the way he said it—so soft and patient felt unfamiliar. Your husband has never paid attention to you or your work like this before. Never noticed your expressions and never cared enough to ask.
Maybe this was what he meant when he wanted to amend things…
"They're… fragments," you finally said, choosing your words carefully. "Pieces of something dangerous."
His eyes flickered—just for a second before settling into that calm, attentive gaze. "Fragments of what?"
"A compass," you answered, your gaze dropping to the file despite yourself. "Seven pieces. When they are assembled, they point to something that should never be opened."
"…And someone's looking for all seven of them?" He asked after a brief moment.
You shook your head. "No, there's only three left. The other four is already in their hands."
He leaned back against the couch, thoughtful. "Sounds important."
"It is."
His fingers brushed against the edge of the folder, light and almost absentminded. "And do they know here the three remaining fragments are?"
You swallowed. "No."
A pause.
"Well, I hope you find it before they do," he said and flashed you a smile, smiling in a way that made your chest ached for reasons you couldn't explained.
You nodded, unaware of the way his gaze lingered on the file long after you closed it again. His gaze was sharp, calculative and far too knowing for someone who was supposed to be nothing more than an innocent bystander and someone who was supposed to be left in the dark, unaware of what was about to happen soon.
~
Now that you were branded as a walking target, the Director had removed you from missions, which meant you weren't allowed to take on anymore missions. Instead, he gave your missions to Xander, who was being worked to the bone. You were furious when you found out but you couldn't do anything. You couldn't go against the Director's order as that itself was the same as eagerly seeking for death itself.
In your work, the Director's words must be obeyed, no matter how unreasonable it was.
Which brought you to your current situation. Since you couldn't stepped out of the house, it was up to your husband to continue working to support the two of you. All you could do at home was to laze around, stare at the documents in the folder for hours or busied yourself by doing some chores.
You were in the kitchen, deciding to make dinner for the both of you. You were in the middle of slicing the vegetables when your ears registered the familiar sound of the door opening and closing, followed by what sounded like a long, heavy and exhausted sigh.
"I'm home," your husband called out, announcing his return as he padded to the kitchen, leaning against the counter-top, observing you moving like you owned the place.
"What are you making?" He asked, curious.
You hummed, not turning to face him as you dumped the now sliced vegetables into the pan. "Just some simple dishes. Don't expect too much from me, though. I'm not a chef."
He snorted, pushing himself off the counter he was leaning on and looked at it over your shoulder. "I think it looks fine. You might want to flip them before they turned brown," he pointed out.
You were quick to do as he says, hating how your heart skipped a beat at the way he chuckled, no doubt amused with your flustered reaction. You shooed him out of the kitchen, threatening to whack him on the head if he doesn't take a shower. Thankfully, he obliged as he leave, his footsteps gradually getting softer until you couldn't hear him anymore.
You made two more dishes—sweet and sour chicken and scrambled eggs with onion and dinner was done. You set the table, scooping rice onto the two plates and took your seat. At that moment, your husband had came down after taking his shower. You glanced up, only for your breath to hitch in your throat at how… handsome he looked.
Just like you, he had changed out of his work clothes and was now dressed more comfortably—a plain, black long-sleeves shirt and a pair of gray loose pants. Your eyes lingered longer than usual on the pair of glasses he wore—the very same glasses he wore this morning. You instantly looked to the side, not wanting to get caught red-handed as he pulled out the chair and sat opposite of you.
"These look good," he commented, eyes jumping from one dish to another and they twinkled with mischief, "hopefully they taste as good as they look too."
You couldn't help the offended gasp you let out as you played along. "Hey! I'd have you know that I'm a decent cook!"
The man arched an eyebrow in skeptical. "Right," he drawled, slowly nodding his head and picked up his utensils. "Just because I complimented you doesn't give you the right to act like you're the better cook here."
You scowled as you copied him, digging into the food. "Unlike you, who takes ages to cook, I prefer efficiency over unnecessary theatrics."
He let out a short laugh, clearly unbothered, taking his first bite with exaggerated care. "Theatrics? It's called craft. You rush everything like the world's about to end."
"Because something it is. Some of us don't have the luxury of standing around waiting for flavors to develop," you shot back, pointing your fork at him.
He hummed thoughtfully then swallowed. "And yet, you still managed to make this edible. Impressive."
"Edible?" You sputtered. "I will poison your plate next time."
"That would defeat the purpose of dinner," he calmly replied as he took another bite. "Besides, if you really wanted to posion me, you'd have done it by now."
You narrowed your eyes. "You sound awfully confident for someone who just insulted the cook."
He flashed you a smile—soft, teasing and far too charming. "I trust you."
The words caught you off-guard, lingering longer than they should have. You cleared your throat and focused on your food. "Well, don't get used to it. Because next time, you're cooking."
His eyes gleamed. "Deal. But when I do, you're not allowed to complain how long it takes."
"No promises."
He chuckled, reaching for his glass of water. "Marriage is all about compromise, is it not?"
You rolled your eyes but there was a small smile tugging at your lips as the two of you continued eating—friendly bickering between the two of you as you ate, the easy rhythm of domestic banter settling in.
For a moment, everything felt… normal. Like this was how your life was supposed to be—warm, domestic and simple.
What neither of you noticed however, was how dangerously natural it felt to be like this. Once dinner was over, you stood to clear the dishes, already holding the short pile in your hands. But your husband merely took them from you, drawing a confused look from you.
"You can go and shower. I'll wash the plates," he softly said, resting his free hand on your back to guide you away from the kitchen.
You blinked, looking at him with even more confusion. "Wha— No, it's fine. You don't have to do this," you protested but he merely shook his head.
"No, I insist. Just go and shower," he said, voice firm and leaving no room for objections.
You sighed, nodding your head and headed up the flight of stairs.
~
The moment you were gone, a bat revealed himself from his hiding spot—behind the couch as the small creature landed on Jay's right shoulder.
"Didn't know you're the type to play house with humans," Jungwon's voice echoed in his mind as he looked around his surroundings.
The older vampire rolled his eyes, entering the kitchen and pulled the sleeves up to his elbows before placing the dirtied plates in the sink. "Shut up. You know I'm only doing this to avoid any detections from her. She's not like the other humans. She's strong."
Jungwon snorted. "Yeah, but you're stronger than her, hyung. You were the one who willingly let her flipped you over. You're lucky Riki didn't seen it or you won't hear the end of it."
Jay merely sighed, knowing the leader was right. If Riki was here, he would have done nothing but merely laughed at his misery. He turned the tap handle to the right and began washing the plate while keeping an alert so you won't come down to see your beloved husband not being who he normally was.
"Is there any progress?" Jungwon questioned, slipping into his leader mode now that they were talking about business.
Jay clicked his tongue, eyes focused on the task as he scrubbed the plate clean. "Not much. But I do know that Director of hers have given her the file that has information about the fragments. She's trying to understand it and judging from the look on her face, she's just as clueless as I am."
Jungwon hummed as he raised his left wing, head cocked to the side. "You need to hurry, hyung. We can't wait here forever."
Jay let out a long, frustrated sigh. "I know, Jungwon. I know."
"What will you do once she found it?"
Jay glanced at the leader, furrowing his eyebrows. "What do you mean? Obviously I'm leaving and going home."
If Jungwon was in his human form, he would had rolled his eyes at his response. "No, that's not what i meant. Will you kill her?"
Jay stilled, one of the plates still held in his damp and soap-covered hands. "…I don't know."
He confessed, voice going all soft and uncertain. Hearing this, Jungwon hopped off his shoulder and shifted back into his human form. The younger narrowed his feline-like eyes, lips pursed in a thin line with disapproval written all over his face.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Jungwon asked, voice now colder as he stepped forward. The moment he does, Jay swore he felt the temperature in the room dropped.
"Don't tell me you're falling for her," he continued.
Jay flinched like a cat that got splashed with water. He snapped his head to the other's direction, eyes widening to the point that it might popped out of its sockets. He spluttered, actively and openly fumbling over his words, like this was his first time speaking.
"Wha- I—n-no! Of course not! Why would I fall for her?" He protested defensively, adding more when Jungwon merely arched an eyebrow.
"B-Besides, I'm only doing this so I can find the fragment!" He added.
Jungwon didn't say anything, choosing to continue eyeing him with that signature, unreadable gaze of his. It was times like these where Jay gets reminded that despite the fact he was older than the leader by a few hundred years, Jungwon wasn't afraid of being firm while still being respectful to the other older vampires.
In the end, Jungwon let out a sigh with his shoulders dropping along with the action. "I believe you, hyung. But I'm warning you: don't fall for her. If you know what's good for you, you need to end this before you get attached."
He paused briefly, letting his words sink in before he continued, saying something that made Jay felt like he got punched in the stomach.
"Unless you want history to repeat itself."
The moment he finished speaking, brief images flashed in Jay's mind before he could stopped himself from spiraling. He could see it—him roughly pressed into the damp ground with strong, firm hands as he watched his home burned, how a frantic voice was calling out his name, screaming for help but he couldn't moved. There was nothing he could do, not when he was forced to lie on his stomach, dirt smudged on his left cheek.
Jay's shoulders tensed, the grip on the plate tightened until there was a soft but audible crack sound.
"Are you threatening me?" He asked, voice low and eerily steady.
Jungwon cocked his head to the side, boldly meeting his eyes and accepting the challenge. "If I have to, then yes. I am threatening you. I'm doing this for your own good, hyung. Just remember that."
He glanced behind him, his enhanced hearing picking up the sound of your footsteps climbing down the flight of stairs. Jungwon took that as his chance to shift into his bat form, flying out of the house through the window—a small gap that was barely noticeable. He left just in the nick of time for you to reappear, completely oblivious to what happened when you were showering.
A towel was draped around your shoulders with your hair still wet, water droplets dripping from the damp strands. You frowned when you saw your husband standing there—in the middle of the kitchen with the tap still running behind him, holding a plate in his hands.
"You alright?" You called out to him.
Jay looked at you, like really looked at you and he noticed things he hasn't noticed before. The way you furrowed your eyebrows. The way you looked at him with raw, unfiltered concern and love. His eyes unconsciously followed the movement of a singular water droplet, watching as it slid down your hair and landed on the hem of your shirt, leaving a small, round water stain behind in its wake.
His eyes moved up and up, until it landed on your lips. How they were slightly parted and glossy. Jay assumed you must have applied lip-balm. He faintly remembered you mentioning how you had to apply lip-balm every night after dinner, due to you having dry and chapped lips. The vampire didn't thought much of it back then.
But now? Now your lips is distracting him.
He couldn't think straight, eyes focused on them. He felt something shifted in his chest when your tongue darted out, just the tip of it to wet your lips and that was it.
Crash!
The plate fell to the floor with a loud crash, instantly shattering into pieces the moment it touched the floor. Your eyes widened in horror, ready to call him out but Jay easily closed the distance in two strides. His hands shot out—one cupping the back of your neck while the other gently gripped your chin as he tilted your head to the side.
"Wha—!?"
You didn't get to finish your sentence, your voice dying down in your throat as he kissed you. The feeling of his lips against your own—soft and pillowy, made him groaned. The sound was low and guttural, sending shivers down your spine and heat pooling in your stomach. You let out a startled gasp—the sound swallowed by Jay as the man backed you up until you were pressed against the nearest wall surface.
The kiss was desperate and intense. It didn't felt like a kiss. It felt like you were getting devoured, like you had been caught and there was no room for escape. Jay's mind was spinning, with how impossibly soft your lips was. Your knees buckled at how his tongue slid out, sensually running it along the seam of your lips.
"W-Wait—"
You whimpered at something sharp and pointy nipping at your bottom lip. The pain was stinging, like you were getting stung from a bee. Something warm and metallic dripped into your mouth. Before your mind could processed anything, your husband forcefully parted your lips, tongue slipping in to get a taste of your blood.
Invisible alarm bells rang off in your mind. Your body instinctively tensed up, shoulders and muscles tight. You reached out, blindly and repeatedly whacking him in the chest, shoulder or anywhere that's part of his body. But it was like your husband was possessed. He didn't react or acknowledged your futile attempts of pushing him away.
Shivers ran down your spine at a particular harsh suck on your tongue, drawing a muffled moan from the depths of your throat. Saliva trickled down the corners of your mouth. The kiss was filthy and at this point, it was becoming one-sided. You couldn't taste anything else other than the bitter taste of your blood.
An idea hit you and you wasted no time in putting your plan into action. You raised your right knee and kneed him right in the stomach, hard. Hard enough for your husband to break the kiss, letting out a pained groan as he bent over, hands instinctively clutching his stomach. You raised your left foot, kicking him and sent him tumbling to the ground.
You didn't give him the time to recover, straddling his lap and used your weight to force him down. You pulled out the small pocket knife that was hidden underneath the barricades of your clothes, pointing the sharp tip at his chin. Your husband gulped at the sight of the weapon, jerking his head away from it, trying to put as much distance as he could.
"You're not my husband. Who or what are you?" You snarled, pure hostility dripping into your voice.
The man paused for a second and something flickered in his eyes but it was gone when he blinked. Instead, he let out a shaky laugh.
"I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. I think there's a misunderstanding here," he attempted to lie but you merely narrowed your eyes in response.
You moved the pocket knife closer to his chin, gently resting the blunt edge against his skin. "You're lying. I heard you talking to someone."
You paused, letting your words sink in and how realization hit him with how his eyes widened momentarily before you continued, lips curled up in a faint, sly smile.
"What was it about again? Ah right. It has something to do with you and your fellow vampires friends wanting to go home. You're also searching for the fragment, aren't you, Park Jongseong?"
With how close you are, you had the front-row seat of watching horror that flickered across his face. For a split second, Park Jongseong vanished and in his place was something ancient, calculative and very, very cornered.
He moved.
The shift was sudden and violent. His hand shot up, knocking the pocket knife aside as he lunged for your wrist, strength far beyond human. You knew what his intention was—wanting to put as much distance as he could between the two of you.
But you didn't gave him the chance.
Years of training took over. You drove your knee into his other side, forcing the air out from his lungs and slammed him back down against the floor before he could recover. You managed to grab your pocket knife, this time with the sharp edge pressed flat against his throat—not enough to cut but enough to foreshadow what would happen if he pushed you further.
"Don't," you warned, breath steady despite the adrenaline surging through you. "You won't make it out alive."
His chest rose and fell rapidly, eyes faintly glowing in the dim light of the kitchen before they returned to its usual color again. Slowly and deliberately, his hands lifted in mock surrender.
"You're fast," he muttered, voice no longer carrying your husband's familiar edge. There was something else now—older, smoother and more honest.
Silence stretched between the two of you, thick and dangerous.
"You should've killed me already. You had lots of chances," Jay said after a moment, gaze flicking down to the blade at his throat.
You tightened your grip in response. "Not yet. I'm still deciding."
A faint bitter smile tugged at his lips. "Figures."
You studied him—really studied him. The way he held himself, tense but restrained. The way his eyes tracked every movement, not with fear, but with calculation. This wasn't a monster scrambling for survival. No, this was someone who knew when to stop fighting.
"Let my husband go. You're borrowing his body and I want him back," you spoke up, breaking the silence.
Jay barked out a humorless laugh. "You sure? After the way he treated you and you still want him back?"
His harsh words struck something in you and you flinched. You knew he was right but you pushed forward, not wanting him to get into your head, swaying your mind.
Your knife pressed in closer, ready to draw blood. "Then give me one good reason why I shouldn't end this now."
He swallowed. "Because killing me won't save him."
You stilled.
"If I die while being bound to him, his body dies with me. The possession is too deep. You'd be killing him too," the vampire continued, voice low and careful.
Your pulse thudded violently in your ears.
"And the fragments?"
Jay hesitated then sighed, shoulders sagging just slightly. "We're just trying to go home. That's all. No conquest. No slaughter. Just… leaving. Your organization never wanted that. They wanted us killed."
You scoffed. "Convenient story. Didn't know vampires know how to lie."
"I'm telling the truth and it's up to you to believe it or not," he replied.
Another stretch of silence.
"You know one of the fragments is here. In this house," he said quietly.
You scowled. "And you know I'm supposed to destroy it. Before you get it."
"Yes."
"And yet, here you are."
"I had to," he said simply but his response was vague.
You searched his face for any signs of deceit, that he was playing with you but there was none. Only desperation wrapped in restraint.
"…A temporary truce," you finally said.
Jay blinked, bemused. "What?"
"We can have a truce until we find the fragment. But on my terms. First, you don't touch it without me. Second, you don't hurt anyone in this house and town. Third, when all of this over and your people are safe, you leave my husband alive," you listed.
Jay closed his eyes, as if he's weighing centuries against seconds and then, he nodded.
"Fine, I agree to it," he nodded.
"A truce. Until one of us breaks it."
~
After that agreement, things were different. But you weren't sure if it was in a good or bad way. Unlike before when you were painfully oblivious to the fact that your husband was possessed, you took this seriously. You slept lightly, your weapon always within reach, instincts sharp even in the late hours of the night. You watched him the way hunters were taught to—tracking patterns, waiting for mistakes and cataloguing every movements for signs of betrayal.
But Jay made it difficult.
He still treated you the same like before—attentive to your needs, caring while respecting the terms you laid out for him. He followed the terms without complaints. Never crossed a boundary without asking. Never touched or made any attempt of searching for the fragment, even though you knew he can sense it, could feel its pull somewhere hidden in the house, beating like a second heartbeat.
You weren't sure what to think, that he actually kept to his words with an almost maddening patience, like time had stopped being precious to him centuries ago.
And there was also the little things.
You knew Jay's a talented cook, with how he was able to make a simple dish like the Mushroom Soup a few days ago, only for you to feel like you were floating with how flavorful it was. You came home one late night, after having a five hours meeting with the Director and Xander to discuss about the progress or any new information you had interpreted that would aid in the mission.
You expected to come home to a quiet home but the kitchen lights was still on. Jay stood at the stove, sleeves rolled up as he was stirring something in the pot. He wasn't surprised when you entered, already sensing your presence way before you walked through the door. Instead, he simply glanced at you over his shoulder and smiled.
"I wasn't sure when you'd be back, so I kept it warm," he said.
It was a simple but comforting meal—rice and soup. Your husband used to complain when he came home to no dinner left on the table, despite how you weren't home during dinnertime and how you didn't had the time to prepare. But Jay, on the other hand, waited for you.
You told yourself it meant nothing. That he was merely doing whatever he needed to do—keeping you alive while cooperating with you to find the fragment.
Days like that passed until you lost track. Quietly. Domestic in a way that almost felt too dangerous for your liking. Jay learned your routines faster than you liked, knowing when you preferred complete silence, when you needed noise to clear your mind full of thoughts and which mug you reached for without looking.
He never asked questions about your work, even lending a helping hand when he sees you struggling. He never made fun of you. Never dismissed you entirely. Never made you felt invisible. One time when you couldn't take it anymore—feeling the pent-up stress and frustration gradually building up, one by one, you broke down in front of him without warning.
At first, the vampire froze, staring at you with shock as warm and fat tears droplets trickled down your cheeks. He didn't moved, remaining where he was in his seat by the dining table. It was only when your sobbing grew louder was when Jay finally moved. He was instantly by your side, wasting no time and hesitation in pulling you into his strong, firm chest.
He didn't questioned you, letting you cry until your tears dried up, not caring that his shirt was getting soaked in your tears. The vampire held you in his arms, his chin resting on top of your head while he whispered reassuring words to you, telling you that everything will be alright. Jay didn't moved an inch the entire time. He even tucked you in when you fell asleep, exhausted from crying your heart out.
His behavior deeply unsettled you.
Your husband had been many things—sharp-tongued, dismissive and distant. Wanting affection from him was nearly mission impossible, even for someone who's both strong and skillful like you. For him, affection always came with conditions, warmth rationed out like a privilege you had to work for.
But when it comes to Jay, he offered it freely, without expectation and without keeping score.
Too freely.
You caught yourself watching him when he wasn't looking. The way he moved through the house carefully, like he doesn't want to disrupt the peaceful atmosphere you had worked so hard to create. The way he flinched—not from you, but from the thought of hurting you. How he thanked you for things no one else ever had before. How he apologized even when he took up space.
It doesn't make any sense.
One evening, you confronted him about it.
"This is an act," you said, arms crossed as he set a tea cup down in front of you. "Whatever you're doing, you're trying to get me to lower my guard. I know vampires like you."
Jay blinked, not even looking offended with your baseless and sudden statement. Instead, he was amused. "Vampires like me? Mind elaborating on that?"
You narrowed your eyes. "You're putting on this kind act and will proceed to turn your back on me once my guard's completely lowered. You're playing the waiting game."
The vampire chuckled, like you had made a joke. "If I wanted to manipulate you, I'd have done it a long time ago."
You scowled, hating how he was right. "So, what is this then? You decided to play nice and attempt to make my heart sway because you're living someone else's life?"
He didn't took the bait, steadily meeting your gaze. His expression was open in a way that felt far too vulnerable for someone wearing another man's face. "I'm trying to co-exist. You're not my enemy. You never were."
You didn't know what to do with that, hating how your heart fluttered at his words.
That very same night, you laid on your back as you stared at the ceiling with him beside you, leaving a respectful distance between the two of you. You wondered just when has the house stopped feeling like a battlefield. When the tension shifted from fear to something quieter and heavier.
Sometimes, you forget. Forget that the man beside you wasn't your husband. Or maybe you had forgotten who your husband had been to you at all.
That was the part that scared you the most. Because when Jay smiled at you—soft, genuine and warm, you felt something twist in your chest. And you could no longer tell whether was it because of him wearing a familiar face or because for the first time, someone was choosing to treat you with care—something you had been yearning for, a very long, long time.
And you were already hesitating, the seeds of doubts implanted in your mind starting to take its roots. If this was enough to make you hesitate and think twice, you didn't know what to do anymore.
~
The whole truce went on for what felt like nearly two months. Two months of stealing secretive glances at one another when you assumed the other party wasn't looking. Two months of refusing to acknowledge that both of you were more willing to spend time together, automatically moving towards one another the moment you're in the same room. Two months of playing a wild, reckless game—a game that you will be paying the price for in the future.
You could see the small but visible signs Jay was starting to lose his cool and collected composure. With how his eyes followed your movements, with how they lingered longer than usual on your lips whenever you applied lip-balm every night before you sleep, talking, chewing or doing anything.
With how he had to forcefully forced his fangs to retreat when you accidentally cut yourself on your finger when the two of you were preparing dinner.
The smell of your blood made his senses flared up instantly without warning. His eyes glowed bright red and the grip on the knife he was holding tightened until his knuckles were turning white. If you were sane, you would had done what anyone would had done—immediately finding something to stop the bleeding, like a tissue paper or something.
If there's one thing about you, it's the fact you love to play fire with fire.
Pushing yourself off the counter you were leaning on, you approached Jay slowly, not wanting to scare or startle him. The vampire inched backward, knowing what you intend to do. Only for his back to be pressed against the firm surface of the counter-top with shelves just behind his head level.
"What are you doing?" He rasped out, shoulders rising and falling unevenly. His breathing was already ragged.
The way he leaned against the counter, almost like he wanted to blend into it and the way he looked at you, eyes flicking between red and his usual colors made you realized that in this current situation, you have the advantage. The thought of you, a mere human, being able to overpower him, not in terms of strength, makes you feel… alive.
You slowly smiled, coy and sly. "What? I'm just walking towards you."
Jay narrowed his eyes, his jaw tightening as he was actively fighting against his thinning self-control and restraint. His hands was holding onto the edge of the counter-top, nails digging into it to ground himself.
"You know damn well what you're doing," he snarled, wincing at the all-too familiar feeling of his fangs peaking out before he could stopped it.
It had been a while since he fed, especially after he possessed your husband's body. But now, with your bleeding finger and you standing before him, it was hard for him to control himself. To not do something he may or may not regret. However, you were pushing him over the edge, with how you drew closer and closer.
Until you were now standing so close to him that he could smell nothing but the blood dripping from your index finger. Jay couldn't looked away from the hypnotizing sight of the thick, crimson liquid dripping from the small wound. His tongue darted out, licking and wetting his lips.
You saw it. Of course you did.
"Want it, hm? Want a taste of my blood?" You purred, unable to hide the snicker that left your lips at how he scowled, looking more like a black cat hissing at you when he does it.
"Stop," he hissed.
But you merely mockingly shook your head. "No. Don't tell me you're scared and you're all bark and no bite."
That was it.
In a blink of an eye, your positions was swapped—with you now being pinned against the counter as Jay rested his hands on both sides of you, cornering you off. You watched, breath hitching in your throat as he grabbed your hand, bringing your index finger to his lips and he sucked on it, like a child sucking on a lollipop.
Except in this case, it's more obscene.
Heat pooled in the lower depths of your stomach at how he hollowed his cheek, pulling your finger deeper into his mouth until you're sure you were hitting the depth of his throat. His small and cute lips were covered in red from your blood. Your legs threatened to give way when he hummed, eyes fluttering closed, like he was satisfied with how your blood taste.
You should do something, anything. Push him away or tell him to stop but you didn't. However, you let him, hating how you were getting aroused from the sight. Your heart was practically pounding against your chest and it was your turn to grip onto the counter edge so you won't fall. After what felt like an eternity, Jay pulled away with an audible "pop" sound.
Your eyes instantly zoned in on the thin, visible strand of saliva that snapped into half when he moved his head back. The pink tip of his tongue peaked out, licking up the bloodstains on his lips, his glowing red eyes never leaving your face. Heat crept up the back of your neck, making you feel unusually warm out of a sudden.
"What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?" Jay taunts, knowing what kind of thoughts was flowing through your mind.
Your limbs moved before your mind could catch up. You caught the brief and first signs of surprise on his face when your fingers curled into the front of his shirt, only for it to vanish when you tugged him forward, meeting him in the middle by crashing your lips against his. The vampire stilled for a few seconds but snapped back to his senses, eagerly reciprocating the kiss.
It was messy and filthy, with the remains of your blood lewdly exchanged. Shivers ran down your spine. It felt like he was claiming you, marking you as his. And somehow, the thought of belonging to Jay doesn't sound like a bad idea. He leaned forward until your chests were pressed against one another, forcing you to tilt your head back without breaking the kiss as he held a hand at the back of your neck, supporting your weight.
Your muffled moans and whimpers was swallowed by him, treating them like sweet nectar from a flower. His free hand rested on your waist, easily bypassing the barricade of your clothes. Jay smirked against your lips at the startled gasp you let out when you felt his cold hand against your warm skin. He moved to your spine, tracing the outline of it as he moved it up and up, until your shirt was being brunched up, revealing your stomach and the hem of your bra peaking out.
"Fuck, you drive me insane," he groaned against your lips, the sound drawing a whimper from you.
You couldn't speak or breathe, letting the vampire—your supposedly enemy, kissed you until your mind was spinning. You could feel your panties getting stuck against your pussy. And judging from the amused, knowing chuckle he let out, you knew he could sensed it. What you didn't expect was for him to boldly cupped your soaking cunt through the fabrics of your pants and panties, drawing a high-pitched moan from you.
Your hips instinctively canted forward, craving more friction but Jay clicked his tongue, withdrawing his hand from between your legs. His action made you whine in protest as he broke the kiss, mockingly raising an eyebrow when you chased after him.
"Ah ah, I didn't say you could move, did I?" He tutted, treating you like you're beneath him. Like he's better than you.
You shouldn't find it attractive but the condescending tone he used only made you whimpered. You attempted to cross your legs but Jay was faster. He slid one muscular thigh between yours, purposely angling his thigh just right for him to be directly pressed up against your core. Much to your utter embarrassment, he could feel how wet you were as he noticed the area near his knee had a stain on it.
"What's this? You're already dripping just from a little kiss? Pathetic. Are all hunters just like you, hm?" He cooed, faux mockery seeping into his voice.
Once again, you attempted to rock your hips forward but it seemed like you had pushed him to the limits. With a snarl, Jay's hand moved to grab your throat. He didn't squeezed it, merely letting his fingers rest against the side of your throat—letting your imagination run wild. If he could and desired, he could snapped your neck into half, way faster than you could even blinked.
The thought of that made you involuntarily shivered. The vampire smirked, noting how you were pliant in his grip. He leaned in so he could whisper into your left ear, purposely letting the sharp tip of his fang brush against your earlobe.
"You like that, don't you? Like the fact that your life's in my hands. All I need to do is to snap your neck and you'd die," he purred, getting the front-row seat of watching and hearing your breathing growing ragged.
Heck, he could even detect your heart beating faster, blood pumping through your veins and most importantly, how insanely sweet you smelled down there. His mouth watered, wanting to get a taste of you. Not wasting another second, Jay wrapped an arm around your waist while releasing his grip on your throat.
You didn't get any warning. One moment you were in the kitchen. The next moment, you're in the bedroom, with you laying on the clean sheets while he situated himself between your legs, spreading you apart. Your cheeks heat up when you knew what he wanted to do but you made no move to stop him. You raised your hips slightly, allowing him to slide off your clothes and tossed them to the floor without looking where they landed.
Now that your lower body was revealed and completely bare, Jay paused to take in the sight before him. Your puffy, glistening folds. Your cute clit peaking out from the hood. Your cunt begging to be stuffed full of his cock. He glanced up, noting how you had averted your eyes to the side, all flustered and shy to look at him. Wanting to change that, the vampire threw your right leg over his shoulder and dived in.
He ate you out like he's starving, like he hasn't feasted on anything for months. The tip of his sharp nose brushed against your clit as he gave flat and long stripes up with his tongue, occasionally using the tip to spread your slick around your cunt. Your back arched off the bed, one hand kneading and twisting the pillow beneath your head while the other managed to grab a fistful of the vampire's pitch-black hair.
You weren't even aware that you started rocking against his mouth as a series of melodic sounds endlessly spilled from your lips. You didn't know that he was planning something devilish, for your eyes were already squeezed shut as you found yourself drowning in the world of pleasure you were getting.
And then, you felt it—the sharp but stinging pain of something sharp and pointy nipping at your folds. Sharp enough to break through the thin barrier, drawing blood from the small, nearly invisible wound. Jay moaned, the sound making you clenched around nothing. He spread your fat pussy lips apart with two fingers, tongue sliding into your entrance.
You felt blood trickling down your pussy, some getting onto the tip of Jay's tongue as he slurped it up while some landed on the sheets, leaving small, red dots behind. The sounds making your ears turned red at how lewd it sounds. You squirmed about on the sheets, uncertain if you wanted to move towards or away from him.
Sensing this, Jay made the decision for you. He let out a low, desperate growl that sounded more like a warning than anything else, both hands tightening its grip around your legs. You squeaked when he tugged you forward, until your head had left the pillow as he buried himself deeper into your cunt, like he couldn't get enough of how intoxicating you taste and smell.
The combination of your sweet slick and metallic taste of blood made Jay felt like he was floating. If he was still human, he knew his heart would still be beating rapidly, like he had ran a marathon. You felt the tightening sensation forming in your stomach as your body starts to tense up.
"J-Jay, fuck, g-gonna cum—" You moaned, throwing all ounce of shame out of the window. Not that you had any left in the first place. You were so close to tipping over the edge, thighs borderline trembling—
And he pulled away.
You let out what was probably the most humiliating sound in your entire life. Whatever it was, you seemed to have done something right with the low chuckle he let out, no doubt pleased with how needy you became. Jay pushed himself up, using his elbows to support his weight. Your eyes noticed how his lips was practically glowing and covered in the lightest shade of red, along with the bottom half of his face covered in nothing but your slick.
The sight was downright filthy, something shot straight out of a cheap pornographic movie but it still managed to have an effect on you, with the high-pitched and desperate keen you let out. You moved your hand down but Jay grabbed it like your hand had personally offended him, effortlessly pinning it down on your side without blinking.
"You're such a disobeying brat, aren't you? Since when did I say you can touch yourself?" He snarled, his fangs now freely protruding from his upper lip, not bothering to hide it anymore.
You whined. "P-Please…"
Jay cocked his head to the side and arched an eyebrow. "Please what? C'mon, use your words and tell me, pretty girl."
And fuck, the sudden usage of the nickname from someone who wasn't even your husband—for someone who was merely borrowing his body, voice and face, hearing it falling from another man's lips shouldn't have made your mind spin. Shouldn't have made you craved for more. Shouldn't have made you craved for the sudden and rising need of wanting Jay to call you as his.
"Please, just do something," you begged.
Jay hummed, pondering over your words. "Not good enough. Be more specific."
Now, you knew you were playing with fire with what you were about to say but at this rate, you couldn't care less anymore. You could feel the lingering, uncomfortable and persistent ache between your legs—acting as a constant reminder of your denied orgasm. A reminder of the fact that between the two of you, Jay has the upper hand now.
Despite all of that, a small part of you still wants to push him further. Just a tiny bit to see how he would react when he loses his composure.
"If you don't fuck me right now, I'll find someone else," you retorted.
Silence.
You saw the way the vampire stilled, letting your words sink in before he let out a low, dark laugh. It had no ounce of humor behind it, sending shivers down your spine. The laugh was cold and maniac-like, making him looked like a villain in a movie. His eyes glowed a bright shade of red as he traced his tongue along the outline of his fangs, lips pulled back to reveal the rest of his fangs, curling up into a feral grin.
Jay flipped your positions over, until he ended up leaning against the headboard with you seated on his lap, his cold hands resting on your hips. You let him manhandled you until you were in his desired position—your cores touching one another, through the fabric of his pants. You gulped when you felt the outline of his cock.
You've never had sex with your husband before but you knew that he wasn't this…. big. It made you wondered whether you could take him. Sensing your hesitation, the vampire chuckled, something akin to smugness gleamed in his eyes.
"Don't tell me you're scared and already regretting your words, sweetheart. Think you can take it, huh?" He taunts.
If there's one thing about you, it's that you will never backed down from a challenge.
You scowled, hands making quick work of his pants, tugging his boxers down enough to free his cock. You had to control yourself, not letting the surprise you felt when your fingers were barely touching as you wrapped a hand around his cock, drawing a hiss and the faint jerk of his hips at the mere contact. With your mind still fuzzy and light-headed, you lifted yourself up, aligning him against your entrance and sank down.
Both of you let out moans in unison as you were split apart on his cock, welcoming the stinging and burning sensation as your walls struggled to accommodate to the sudden invasion. You could barely breathed, feeling like his cock was so deep in that you could feel him hitting the back of your throat. You haven't moved yet but your thighs were already shaking as you rested your hands on his chest, with his shirt still on.
"Go on, pretty. Ride me like you mean it," he purred, voice low and velvety smooth. It was clear Jay has no intention of helping you, choosing to sit back and enjoy the private show you put up for him instead.
With a shaky exhale, you readjusted your hands so that you were now holding his shoulders and he lets you, eyes trailing down, watching the erotic and mesmerizing sight of his cock being revealed, inch by inch as you raised yourself up and up, until only the tip was still inside you. You slammed yourself down, your back arching at how huge he felt.
You continued the movement, although it was shallow and messy. You even ensured to move your hips in a clockwise motion every time you sank down, moaning at how he was able to hit spots where you thought it was impossible to. Jay absentmindedly chewed on his bottom lip, watching as his cock appear and disappear in your gaping pussy, with how well you were taking him.
"Shit, you're made for me, aren't you? Look at you, bouncin' on my cock like you're desperate for it," he sneered, reaching out his hand to roll your clit, grinning at how you whined at his action.
"Can your husband please you better than I can, hm? Does he know how much of a slut his wife is? Fucking a vampire when you're supposed to be killing them," he cooed, his free hand grabbing a fistful of your shirt and ripped it into shreds.
The sound echoed in the bedroom, seemingly loud. Jay tugged your bra down, freeing your breasts as he watched them bounced every time your hips slammed down against his. He kneaded one with his bare hand, alternating between flicking and pressing down on your already hardened nipple with the rough pad of his finger.
"Ngh, oh f-fuck, y-you're too big," you moaned, unaware of the effect of your words on him.
Jay sharply inhaled under his breath, eyes darkening a shade. He couldn't take it anymore, easily flipping the two of you around, returning you to your previous position—with you laying on your back as he towered over you. He didn't gave you time to regain your bearings, throwing both of your legs over his shoulders as he bent you into half, putting you in a mating-press position.
He thrusted into you at a ruthless and merciless pace, showing no signs of mercy, his heavy balls slapping against your inner thighs with every thrust. You tilted your head back, revealing your neck and it was only right for Jay to indulge himself, ducking to leave hickeys behind—a physical possession to show that you belonged to him.
A series of breathless moans and whimpers split from your lips, eyes rolling up to the back of your head as his cock kept abusing that one spongy spot sandwiched between your gummy walls. It's like he's rearranging your insides to fit the shape and outline of his cock.
"Too big, you say? But you're taking me so well," he cooed, hand snaking up to wrap itself around the base of your throat. He gave it a gentle squeeze, the implication of his action well understood.
You mewled, mind too far gone to even comprehend what you were saying. You could only faintly registered you saying something like "please", "more more more" and the chanting of his name, like he was a God when he was far from that.
Jay smirked at how gone you were, too cock-drunk to think straight. He continued fucking into you with new found vigor. All it took was one final sharp and long thrust as he buried himself deep inside you for you to reach your climax. Shivers ran down the entire length of your body, back fully arched off the bed as stars exploded behind your vision with his name falling from your parted lips.
The man was quick to follow suit, spilling deep inside of you as he painted your walls in the shade of his cum. You groaned at how full you felt. Vampires are truly different from humans, both on the inside and outside. Your body went slack against the now stained sheets, sweat covering you in a thin layer as you wheezed, gasping for breath.
However, Jay wasn't done.
"Wha—!?"
You gasped out when your vision was flipped upside down until you were forced onto your hands and knees, back arched as he pressed you into the mattress. Jay leaned over you, his bigger frame covering yours as he rested his chin on your left shoulder. It was then you realized that he didn't pulled out, cock still buried inside of you as cum trickled down the paths of your inner thighs.
"Don't think we're done yet, sweetheart. Need to prove that I'm better than that shitty husband of yours," he purred.
Hearing that, you could only pray for your legs and body…
~
Once again, things had shifted between you and Jay but this time, it was for the better. Jay was still the same—treating you with nothing but utter care, like how a proper husband should treat his wife. But when the two of you are in the bedroom, the demeanor was gone, only to be replaced by his real, vampire self. Not that you were complaining, with the numerous times of him making you cum from either by his tongue, fingers or a combination of both.
You knew by a fact that vampires do have insane stamina but experiencing it first-hand blew your mind away.
Literally and figuratively.
It's like you had unlocked something insane in him. Jay couldn't kept his hands off of you. Clothes weren't required anymore and with how often he had you moaning for him, you might as well walked around the house naked. Sometimes when he was needy enough for you, he would make you cockwarm him while you looked through the folder. Only for you to give in ten minutes later when he kept teasing you with light thrusts, resulting in you going at it like animals.
This went on for the next three to four weeks, until one day, you found the fragment.
You found it by accident. It wasn't hidden behind wards or locked away in some impossible place. It was in a small wooden box at the back of the hall closet, tucked beneath a stack of old photographs and documents you haven't touched or looked at in years. Things you had kept without remembering the reasons behind it.
Your fingers brushed against the cold metal the moment you lifted the lid and the air around you shifted. It was subtle but you felt it, like a breath had finally been released. Like it was relieved that it had finally been found.
The fragment was no larger than a compass needle, etched with symbols so fine they seemed to move when you weren't looking. Darkened grooves traced the surface. It was stained with something so old and alive. The moment you touched it, heat bloomed up your arm, followed by what felt like a magnetic pull.
Recognition.
Your knees nearly gave out from the weight of the pull and something else. From the harsh, unwanted reality that was gradually settling in.
"You found it."
Jay's voice was quiet. Too quiet for your liking.
You slowly turned, only to find him as he stood by the doorway, his expression remained impassive and unreadable. However, he wasn't looking at you. Instead, he was staring at the fragment held in your hand. For a moment, none of you moved. The house felt smaller out of a sudden, walls closing in around the truth you had been avoiding.
"This is it," you spoke up, "once it's destroyed, your compass remains broken forever."
"Yes," he said.
That one singular word should have brought relief but it didn't.
You dryly swallowed, reality crashing down on you, hard and unforgiving. The nights you spent together. The meals. The laughter you didn't realized you were craving for. The soft, adoring look in his eyes whenever he looked at you. The way he held you like you're precious to him. Someone worth loving.
All of it was temporary. Simply borrowed time stolen from an unavoidable ending.
"…I won't destroy it. You'll go home. That was always the plan," you said, more to yourself than him.
Jay didn't answered you immediately.
When he did, his voice was steady but there was something fractured beneath it. Something raw and human.
"I don't want to."
Your head snapped to him, eyes widening and lips parted in shock.
Jay stepped forward, never breaking eye contact with you. "I've lived centuries fighting to return to a place that doesn't exist anymore. This world was never meant to be permanent. Neither was this body and you."
The words hurt more than you expected but he pressed on, features softening.
"And yet, this is the first place that truly felt like home," he continued in a softer tone.
"Jay—"
The fragment trembled in your hand. Before you could respond, the lights flickered. The air shifted violently—pressure slamming into the room like a sudden storm. You spun around as two figures materialized out of thin air, shadows bleeding into forms.
Recognition hit you when you saw a familiar face among the two of them.
"You," you breathed out, staring at the taller man—vampire, as he casually leaned against the wall, arms crossed but his gaze was anything but relaxed.
"Oh? Looks like you failed to take my advice," he grinned, the tips of his fangs visible when his lips pulled back, eyes darting between you and Jay.
You didn't get the chance to question him as the other stepped forward, focused on Jay.
"I had enough of this. Make your decision, now," he said, voice firm and authoritative.
He must be the leader.
Jay stiffened before he narrowed his eyes. "You shouldn't be here, Jungwon."
"And you shouldn't be hesitating. The third piece is found and your mission's over. Why are you hesitating?" Jungwon snarled, stepping forward as his eyes glowed red—a warning.
Jay's jaw tightened as he shifted until he was standing between you and his two other friends. You caught the way they froze, surprise flickering across their faces at his action.
"I'm not going back."
Jungwon's eyes widened. "What?"
"I'm done running. I'm done chasing after a door that only leads backward. I'm choosing this world. I'm choosing to stay."
The temperature in the room dropped a notch. Jungwon's shoulders tightened, jaw tightening as he stepped forward, on the verge of losing his composure.
"Your words doesn't matter, hyung! There's seven of us and all of us are going, whether you like it or not," Jungwon fired back, forcefully jabbing his finger against Jay's chest.
The other vampire, who had been silent the entire time, spoke up as he pushed himself off the wall. "Make up your mind, hyung."
The room felt like it was splitting into two. You stood there, behind Jay with the fragment clutched tightly in your fist. You were caught between duty and desire, watching the man you were supposed to kill was now arguing against a fate he had been chasing for centuries. For as long as he was alive.
Jungwon didn't wait for an answer, fueled by his impatience and frustration. He surged forward, throwing his right hand—that was clenched into a fist, out, aiming it at Jay's face. The taller didn't dodged, letting the leader punched him on his right cheek. You couldn't help but let out a horrified gasp at the sight.
You hated how your heart tightened at the way he simply stood there and took the hit, not bothering to even defend himself.
"So that's your answer?" Jungwon snarled, eyes glowing an unnatural crimson as sigils burned into existence around his wrists. "You'd rather play house than remember who you are?"
Jay wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb and laughed—a sharp and humorless sound. "You always hated when I chose for myself. You never change, Jungwon-ah."
He lunged.
The air between them warped as blood magic surged, thick and suffocating. Jungwon blocked off Jay's attacks by shielding himself with his arms. But when it comes to a showdown of pure strength, Jay has the advantage. He grabbed the leader by the collar and drove him straight into the wall. Cracks spiderwebbed outward with plaster raining down.
Jungwon grunted and then smiled—slow and cruel. "There you are. About time you stop hiding."
He twisted—a feature impressive with how nimble he can be. He drove his knee into Jay's ribs hard enough to make something snap. Jay hissed but didn't let go, further pushing Jungwon into the wall, causing more cracks to form until it was on the verge of collapsing.
"You don't get to drag me back just because you're afraid of being left behind," Jay snapped.
Jungwon's left eyebrow twitched, managing to free himself from the older vampire's vice-like grip as he shoved Jay away. "Left behind? We survived together. We planned together. And now you're throwing it away for—"
"For a life," Jay interrupted, eyes blazing with fury. "Not an escape."
They collided again in another battle, the impact rattling the entire house. The floor groaned beneath their feet as they clashed—centuries of loyalty and resentment exploding in every blow exchanged. Jungwon fought with precision, calculated strikes meant to disable and kill. Jay, on the other hand, fought like a man who had already decided what he was willing to lose.
You didn't get to remain as a spectator any longer as something black and blonde shifted into your vision.
You felt him before you saw him. You spun around, just in time to see him lunged at you, claws slicing through the space where your throat had been a heartbeat earlier. Your back hit the cabinet as you managed to raise your arm to block off his follow-up strike.
"Don't take this personally. You're just in the way," he said, eyes glowing red.
"Funny. That's exactly what my enemies usually say," you sneered.
You ducked under his next swing, snatching the hidden knife you hide in the cabinet and slashed at his side. He twisted away at the very last second, causing your sharp blade to graze fabric instead of drawing blood. His elbow slammed into your ribs, hard enough to knock the air out from your lungs as you let out a pained wheeze.
You staggered backwards, back roughly hitting the wall. You ducked when the vampire swung at your head, letting his blade hit nothing but thin air. Your feet shot out, kicking at his to throw him off-balance but he was faster. He grabbed your wrist, strength easily overwhelming yours as he tried to disarm you.
You reacted on instinct, driving your knee into his stomach. He barely flinched but you felt the grip loosened. That alone was enough. You wrenched free and roughly shoved him back. The fragment burned hot against your palm, making you hissed as it reacted violently to his presence.
The vampire noticed it, eyes snapping to your hand—right where the fragment was. "Ah. There it is."
One second he was in front of you and the next second, he was behind you.
Pain flared up as he slammed you into the wall, forearm digging into your throat. The fragment slipped from your grip, clattering to the floor as it skidded a feet away from the two of you. Your vision blurred as pressure gradually built up. Stars burst behind your eyes and black spots were forming.
Over the vampire's left shoulder, you could make-out Jay and Jungwon. The two vampires were still going at one another.
"You really should've handed it over," the vampire before you muttered.
Your fingers closed around your blade and with the remains of your strength, you drove it upward.
"FUCK!"
He hissed as the enchanted steel from your blade dug into his shoulder. He recoiled instantly, tearing away with a sharp curse as pitch-black smoke curled from the wound. He grasped onto the newly-created wound while scowling at you, like a ferocious puma.
"You humans never fail to surprise me," he sneered, words dripping with evident disdain as his eyes flicked down to the blade.
You sucked in a breath, pushing yourself off the wall despite the pain and your limbs screaming through your body. "You'd be surprised what humans can do when they are cornered."
The fragment laid between the two of you and you moved at once. The vampire was the first to grab it. But the moment he does so, the room screamed. Symbols ignited across the floor, burning red-hot as it violently rejected him. He cried out, dropping it as more heavy smoke poured from his palm, the scent of scorched flesh filling the air.
"Damn it!" He snarled, clutching his hand with his eyebrows furrowed, clearly in pain.
You didn't hesitate, slamming your entire body weight into him to drive him back with everything you had. He caught you mid-strike, throwing you aside. But you rolled, coming up onto your knees with the blade pointed straight at his chest.
"Stay down," you warned, voice shaking but firm.
He froze. Not because he couldn't moved, but because he chose not to. He looked over his shoulder and you followed his gaze.
"…He's serious. He's really staying," the vampire murmured, sounding amazed.
Jay's angered roar cut through the room as he slammed Jungwon against the wall again. "I'm done following your orders. Done being your way out."
Jungwon laughed, breathless and broken. "Then choose right now. Make your decision."
Jay didn't hesitate. "I choose her."
For a split second, no one breathed. Jungwon's expression twisted, not with surprise but with fury. Pure, unrestrained rage flooded across his face and features. His eyes glowed brighter and brighter until they were the brightest shade of crimson you had seen in your life.
"You don't get to choose," he snarled, voice not even human anymore, making him sound like the true monster he is.
He surged forward again, crashing into Jay. The two of them slammed into what remained of the wall. At this rate, the house was on the verge of collapsing as blood sigils was ignited midair—a sign of Jungwon using his ability.
"After everything we sacrificed?" Jungwon hollered, driving his forearm into Jay's neck. "After centuries of running—this is what breaks you? Falling in love with a human?"
Jay grabbed Jungwon's wrist, veins glowing beneath his skin as he fights back against Jungwon's strength. "No. This is what ends it."
Jungwon laughed—sharp and broken. "Then be prepared to die with it."
You didn't wait to see who would win. Your gaze dropped to the fragment in your hand. It continued to pulse violently now, reacting to the clash of blood and magic. Somehow, you could feel it screaming to be completed, to be used. That's when the truth hit you at once, cold and merciless.
This will be the end of whatever fragile peace you had been living in. This will be the end of him staying—unless you make a choice.
Your grip tightened, fingers curled around the fragment.
"No," you whispered under your breath.
Before anyone could react or even blinked, you raised the fragment and smashed it onto the floor. The reaction was immediate. The house screamed. Ancient symbols carved deep into the long-hidden foundation ignited in blinding red. Veins of old blood and magic tore through the ground. The fragment shattered on impact, splintering into ash and lifeless metal as a violent shockwave was blasted outward.
Jungwon was thrown back, slamming hard into the opposite wall. Jay staggered, barely keeping his footing but managed to regain his balance in the nick of time.
And just like that, there was only two pieces of the fragments left with one destroyed. The compass remained broken. The path home collapsed in on itself, screaming like it had died.
Jungwon was the first to move, slowly pushing himself upright. He stared with wide eyes at the remains of the fragment scattered across the floor before moving to you at a slow pace, his mind struggling to catch up.
"You… You destroyed it," he said with a hoarse voice.
The vampire who attacked you froze, eyes flickering as he felt it—the severed bond and the absence of direction. "Without it, there's no way back now."
Jungwon's gaze lifted to Jay. "If you stay, you stay for good. You'd be considered a traitor forever," he said quietly, all the rage drained from his voice, leaving something hollow behind.
Jay didn't looked away or hesitate. "I know."
Jungwon closed his eyes as he slowly exhaled, like something inside him had finally broken into small, unrecoverable pieces. "…Then we're done here."
He vanished on the spot, leaving nothing behind. The other vampire, on the other hand, lingered a moment longer. His eyes returned to its usual color, flicking between you and Jay before he scoffed softly.
"Humans. Always ruining destinies."
Then, he vanished as well and the house was engulfed by nothing but silence. Jay turned to you, expression unreadable as it holds a mixture of emotions—fear, relief, guilt and something else. Something that was dangerously close to devotion tangled together. He approached you slowly, as if he was afraid you might changed your mind.
"You destroyed it, which means I'm not allowed to go home anymore," he pointed out in a quiet voice.
You nodded, looking at him with a tired expression. "I know. I did my job but you're stuck here now."
Jay shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, I'm not complaining. I get to be stuck here with you and that's all that matters."
Your face flushed as you reached out, delivering a light but fleeting smack on his shoulder. The vampire yelped, rubbing the same spot where you had just hit him.
"Ow! What was that for!?" He exclaimed.
"We barely came out alive after fighting your friends and you chose to be cheesy now?" You let out an exasperated sigh.
Jay chuckled, stepping even closer to wrap an arm around your waist as he pulled you towards him. "Well, call it a post-battle celebration or whatever you humans call it."
"You're weird," you teased and that's when it hit you, causing your smile to drop. "Wait, so what happens to you?"
"What do you mean?"
You gestured to him. "Well, you're still possessing a body and this isn't your true body."
Jay hummed, nodding. "You're right. Possession was only a means to survive, to blend in and to search."
"Then what happens when—"
"—when I leave it?" He finished gently.
"He'll live. Still human and whole. But he won't remember me. Just fragments of it. Headaches. Awkward gaps in time and dreams he won't understand."
Your throat went dry. "And what about you?"
Jay smiled. "That depends on how much time you give me."
Before you could respond, he stook a few steps back and the air shifted. Blood sigils bloomed beneath his feet, faint and trembling—nothing like what you had witnessed before. This was careful and controlled. He exhaled slowly and for a moment, you thought nothing was happening—
Then, his body went slack.
You quickly rushed forward as your husband collapsed, catching him before he hits the floor. His weight was real, human and most importantly, alive. His chest rose and fell steadily, face peaceful in a way you haven't seen in years.
"Hey."
You whirled around.
There he stood—a few feet away, no longer caged to borrowed flesh. His true form was different, not monstrous or frightening. It was simply just… him. Paler, edges slightly blurred, like the world hasn't fully decided to let him stay. His eyes were still the same though—warm and familiar.
"You okay?" He asked, acting like you were the one who had shifted out of a borrowed body when it was him.
Tears burned the corners of your eyes and they rolled down your face before you could stopped them. "You're still here."
"For now. But not in this town. Not when there's hunters watching. And definitely not with him waking up to questions we can't answer," he replied.
You looked down at your husband one last time, the man who treated you like nothing. As much as you loathed him, he deserved a quiet life. One that was untouched by fragments, vampires and blood.
And the same goes for you. You placed your husband on the bed, not bothering to tuck him in and took Jay's hand.
"Then we run. Run until we're out of breath. Run until they could no longer find us. Run until we reach the end of the world," you said.
His fingers tightened around yours, like he was afraid you might disappear. "I was hoping you'd say that."
After that, you didn't went back to headquarters, didn't filed the report or gave your required report to the Director. You didn't informed anyone about your whereabouts. The lesser the people knew, the better it was for the two of you.
By dawn, the road had swallowed you whole—two fugitives with no map, no fragments and no way home except each other. The two of you stood at a mountain that granted you an overview of the town from where you were. A gentle gust of wind blew past, lightly kissing your cheeks as you stared down at him.
"You gonna miss your home?" Jay murmured, squeezing your hand.
You turned to him, flashing him a smile as you returned the gesture. "Nah, home isn't a place anymore. It's whoever I choose to stand with and in this case, it's you."
The vampire's eyes widened slightly, taken aback at your words before he laughed, carefree and joyful. "And you call me the cheesy one. Well then, shall we get going then?" He asked.
You spared the town one final glance and nodded, turning so your back was facing it. So you wouldn't looked back again.
"We shall. Let's go."
And just like that, the two of you were gone as you headed into the unknown future, having nothing but one another, which was more than enough for you.
it was every so often vivianne felt like, maybe, the world was really out to get her.
wishing for a miracle but receiving coal in return.
waking up on christmas day, and instead of receiving a small gift, any gift, her father surprised her with a better mechanic.
or her birthday graced with something similar.
vivianne was thankful, but god forbid she wanted more.
god forbid she wanted to learn more about herself than what her father had taught her to know.
vivianne had a thing for one direction. a very particular, secret thing for one direction.
she had mentioned them once, an accidental yet hopeful confession of self-expression.
her father, then, made it very clear that there was no time to waste on things as insignificant as boy groups.
'they aren't real men' as if he had any right to judge who was and wasn't one, for he had no qualities that made a real man.
aggression and control were no qualities of real men.
so vivianne quietly endorsed one direction. silently. slowly. in her own time when he wasn't around, and her mother would pretend to not know, or maybe she really hadn't known.
except one day, when they had been walking past a shop's window, and front and center was cardboard cutout of a group photo.
vivianne had no time to stop, but she did a double take.
slight hesitation to keep walking forward.
her mother noticed, looked back into the shop, and looked down at her.
an acknowledgment of self-expression.
she leaned down, whispering into 13 year-old vivianne's ear.
"i like the one further to the left"
harry, obviously.
vivianne smiled, and her mother noticed, yet breathed with the inconsitency of someone who wanted their child to accept their attempt at being honest.
"me too"
and it was never brought up again.
so now, turning and lifting slowly out of her seat to stare down the voice behind her, she was sure this day was much like one of her birthdays.
heeseung looked up at her, feigning the innocence of someone who surely had known she wouldn't be staying much longer in montreal.
she hadn't even noticed him walking to his seat, let alone settling his stuff in the upper compartment.
heeseung, on the other hand, had noticed her right away.
she was already comfortable in her seat, but her face was gloomy, frame compressed.
a shape he'd learned to memorize quickly.
vivianne wasn't short by any means, in fact, she was about five foot eight, but he'd always find a smaller version of herself in rooms she didn't know the walls of.
he'd find a smaller version of herself in situations she'd lose sleep for.
most importantly, he'd find a smaller version of herself when she was shuffling through her own thoughts, which is why he made himself comfortable in his seat and only now decided to say something about it.
"why are you here?"
heeseung blinked, every word he'd spent the last 30 minutes rehearsing completely falling out of his conscious stream.
"you following me?"
he blinked some more, entirely unsure of what to say, given the fact that no matter what, she probably wouldn't believe it.
so he settled for a much more direct response.
"no"
vivianne scoffed. her knees were firm into her seat and her arms were draped over the divider, covering his TV.
he hesitated, gripping his phone tighter than before, and looked out his window.
the odds of vivianne and heeseung leaving montreal the same day were very small, the odds of them leaving at the same time even smaller, but the odds of them both preferring window seating were somehow smaller.
they were so alike in this way, it made him happy. honest to god happy. like a child finding another child with their exact same interests, except, this child was not a child at all. just a very reserved, mean, but beautiful woman.
not that it mattered. vivianne had given heeseung no reason to care. yet, a part of him still texted last night, and a part of him was all the more eager for an answer.
"did you.." he paused, pursing his lips.
"get my texts?"
he looked up at her, a moment so vulnerable you'd think he'd just asked her out on a date. he expected dismissal, or the signature eye roll he'd gotten very tired of as of late. instead, she looked taken aback.
vivianne blinked rapidly, shifting back slightly enough to tuck a strand of hair behind her ears.
it was wavy this morning, with a tighter pattern progressing towards the back of her hair, a sight he'd rarely ever gotten to see.
vivianne always kept her dark hair as straight as a pin, a mirror of the way she'd chosen to reveal herself in minute portions. if vivianne had known very little about herself, it was only consequential that she'd create an image unlike the rest of her. for it was much easier to lie, than be comfortable with someone you'd never had the chance of accepting.
so vivianne straightened her hair, without fail, every day.
except today.
and heeseung was there. looking at her. a version of her he too had never had the chance of accepting. the truth was vivianne hadn't allowed him to accept any version of her, and it was straining their relationship. straining their teamwork. getting in the way of his career. his rookie career.
heeseung was young, but not for formula one. he was turning 24 in october, and when you race for an industry that rewards young talent, it's no longer impressive to be 24 years old. unlike vivianne, who was 20 when she started racing in formula one, and he knew that. acknowledged that. thought about it late at night when he'd been running through one of their arguments.
so whatever she was going through. whatever she had gone through. something so unsettling inside him felt like it had everything to do with him. all of a sudden, vivianne was no longer young talent, but rather a scared girl who had sacrificed everything to get here. and heeseung only assumed she did. because vivianne was the best.
vivianne cleared her throat.
"um. yeah, i did" she spoke softly, attempting to avoid eye contact.
heeseung hadn't known how to follow up. she was so hard to entertain, and in return she'd release a hook with no bait. there was absolutely nothing to work with.
"alright." he said, looking down at his lap. could this go any worse?
"yeah. well. i appreciate it"
"okay, cool."
it could. it really could.
"cause i meant it" he added, slightly frightened.
"i know."
heeseung looked up, finally, in hopes of sharing brief eye contact--but vivianne was already comfortable in her seat, so her long hair and frustrated complexion imprinted his mind for the next eight hours.
-- -- --
austria was six hours ahead of montreal, which meant that it was now midnight.
there was something so comforting about late nights in the city. it's true that cities never sleep, but there was nothing more quiet than this.
the bright lights of graz's airport lulled vivianne to sleep in a way she'd never be able to explain. maybe it was a combination of the specific smell airports had, and the smooth floors she'd love to walk through, or maybe it was because airports represented steady motion--which for vivianne was a concept she'd grew to know too well.
people-watching was a way she lived vicariously. a leap into the lives of others she'd never meet, never know, never share dinner with. maybe the idea of that was grounding for her, a reminder that you have the power to decide your own destiny.
she hadn't slept on the plane. she watched a movie she'd never watched before, and thought it was okay at best--too long for her liking, and then tried to read a book she had convinced herself to buy.
something about wanting to get into reading.
when that didn't work she thought she'd sit there and listen to music instead, but after a while the stream of noise got exhausting and she gave up entirely.
which led her to fiddle her thumbs on some game she had installed to kill time, but one game filtered into another, and another, and nothing satisfied the restlessness that came with flying. a big reason why she opted for first class seats when she flew. she knew to avoid flying economy. flying economy was probably one of the closest things to hell on earth.
so now, under the weight of the airport's embrace, vivianne was finally sleepy.
she hadn't even bothered to notice the steps to her left synchronized to hers.
she blinked, brows furrowed, and looked up with drowsy eyes.
for some reason, unbeknownst to her, heeseung decided he wanted to walk with her. as in side-by-side. as in, if someone saw us right now they could assume we're a couple.
she blinked a couple more times, and decided if she'd just keep staring at him maybe he'd go away. a trick of the light, if you will.
he noticed.
he looked down at her but kept walking. he blinked as well. his eyes darted around the surrounding airport, yet she wouldn't give. so, he looked away and focused on getting to baggage claim. after about five minutes, she was still staring.
the many signs finally led them to baggage claim, and even then, vivianne had not stopped staring.
it was unsettling. the ruthless drive of an exhausted woman.
he sighed, put his phone back into his pocket, and looked back at her. blinked a couple times, continued to stare, then blinked again.
during this time, vivianne, in all her glory, had been attempting to point out every imperfection she could think of that heeseung had. she looked, and she looked hard, but all she could find was a long, steady nose, gracious eyelashes, and full, arched lips.
there was a certain benefit that came with being an attractive man in athletics. you could be complete dog-shit but still have a seat where it mattered. either that, or you were a nepo baby, both came with an arguable lack of talent.
of course, her father would preach it like a bell, every new hour.
"too many attractive drivers nowadays."
"notice how there are no ugly drivers nowadays?"
"they don't sign ugly drivers, it's all about popularity nowadays!"
despite this, vivianne's father trained her the traditional way. don't get too confident, he'd say. don't get comfortable, he'd say. media is a waste of time, he'd say. there was always something more worth while for him.
but she knew that it mattered. a good face always mattered.
so here she was now.
maybe it was a coincidence that her teammate was stupidly good-looking, because the talent spoke for itself.
"can i help you?"
even then, she hadn't looked away. no. she raised her chin, squinted her eyes, and skimmed his entire body head-to-toe.
"do you get off on following young, vulnerable women?"
heeseung chocked on his own spit and began coughing uncontrollably. seeing him doubled over in his own miserable state, vivianne couldn't help but laugh dramatically. she looked around the quiet airport, only to find the group at the belt eyeing them in obvious discomfort.
she stopped laughing then, clearing her throat lightly.
she looked back towards heeseung, who was now fully recovered but jarred nonetheless.
"i mean, seriously. why did you leave montreal so early? team booking isn't until next week".
"i could ask you the same thing" he looked at her quietly, eyes round, lips slightly parted. his voice was quiet in comparison to the volume of before.
vivianne looked away.
at that exact moment, her luggage arrived with a timing so miraculous, it was probably the only good thing set to happen to her for the rest of the week.
she rushed over, helped her luggage out of the belt, and settled beside heeseung once more.
she grinned up at him.
"i asked you first".
with that, she walked away, leaving him alone with nothing but the sound of steady motion.
maybe one day he'd be able to get her alone for more than 10 minutes.
a/n: HIIIII!!! sorry this took forever bye. more vivianne and heeseung i guess????? i lowkey hate this chapter BYE
Freshman center Yang Jungwon arrives at Blackwood University with one goal: play hockey at the highest level he can. Then he breaks the one rule his captain ever gave him — don’t touch my sister — and falls completely in love anyway. When the secret hookups turn into something real, and the team becomes accomplices, it’s only a matter of time before Jay finds out. And when he finally does, it blows up the team, the house, and the bond twins have shared their entire lives. On top of this it’s right before the biggest game of their season. Jay and Jungwon have to fight their way back to each other — on and off the ice — before the championship, and before it costs Jungwon the brother he never expected to gain.
pairings: brothersfriend!jungwon x sister!reader
estimated word count… 25k? (I’m not really sure)
genre… college hockey au, forbidden, secret relationship, slow burn, fluff, smut, friend (of jays) to lovers, angst with happy ending
current playlist… Delicate by Taylor Swift , Fade Into You by Mazzy Star , Somebody Else by The 1975 , u + me = <3 by Olivia Rodrigo , Beaches by beabadoobee , Back in Love by Suki Waterhouse , Love Hangover by Jennie , Take Me Home by Cailin Russo
⋆。˚ lacey speaks!! okay so. i’m working on something 👀 freshman hockey star x captain’s twin sister, the ONE rule he was told never to break, and obviously he breaks it anyway bc that’s just what we do here. should be out soon!! still working on it but i’m genuinely so excited for you guys to read this one comment below if you want in on the tag list!!🤍🤍
IN WHICH. . . tired of getting dumped by one guy after another, you decided to give dating apps a try. ittle do you know, you ended up matching with one of your classmates: nishimura riki. he's supposed to be a nerd, supposed to be someone who isn't worth looking at. but what you didn't expect was for him to have a strong dick game and most importntly, he's hiding something from you...something you didn't expect at all.
⏔⏔⏔ boarding school au ♪♪ smau + written nerd +camboy nishimura riki x fem! reader 𐧘 explicit mature content, classmates to lovers, poor attempt at humour, riki has piercings & tattoos here, unprotected sex, recording during sex, oral sex (m and f receiving), masturbation, fluff if you squint, angst with comfort, ignore timestamps.
playlist: touch myself - kwn, cyber sex - doja cat, when did you get hot - sabrina carpenter, how do i make you love me - the weekend.
from author: they kissed! but at what cost... please don't hate me from what im about to pull in this chapter gulps.
Knock knock.
At eleven in the morning sharp, someone knocked on your door twice, each sound as firm and resolute. It's embarrassing with how quick you shot up from the couch, tripping over your feet as you stumbled your way over to the door. Thankfully, you didn't face-plant and managed to open it, only for your mind to blank out at the sight before you.
There he stood—Nishimura Riki, in all of his glory. For a moment, you thought you had ascended to heaven with how fine he looked. Your eyes trailed his figure from head to toe, scanning every inch of him.
He worn a low-cut white shirt with some words scribbled on the front that has a black shirt with sleeves reaching his elbows over it. The buttons were left unbuttoned, except for one in the middle, which seemed to be hanging on for dear life.
A plain black pants further accentuated his already long, model-like legs. Riki went further by adding his own touch in the form of silver rings on his fingers, a bracelet wrapped around his wrists and a tight, chain-like necklace hanging against his collarbones. You swallowed dryly, unable to articulate a response.
"Uh, hello? Earth to (Name)?"
You blinked. "H-Huh?"
Riki chuckled, cocking his head to the side and arched an brow knowingly. "You were staring. Take a picture. It'd last longer."
Your face heat up, turning as red as a tomato. "I wasn't staring."
"Sure, you weren't," he nodded and it's obvious he doesn't believed you, "oh right, this is for you."
You watched as he revealed something hidden behind his back, unable to hold back the gasp that left your lips when you realized he bought a bouquet of flowers. You glanced up, noting the mild shyness in his eyes, how he looked to the side and how his ears were covered in a light shade of reddish-pink.
You fought back the urge to smile, accepting the flowers and brought it to your nose, taking a experimental whiff. You can feel Riki's eyes locked on your face, the poor boy struggling to hide his nervousness while waiting for your reaction.
"I like it, it smells nice. Thank you, Riki," you thanked him and you sworn you saw the boy's face turning extremely red in the span of five seconds that you were impressed.
He scratched the back of his neck with a sheepish and flustered look on his face. "You're welcome, I'm glad you like it."
Cute.
"Do you wanna come in and sit down first? I need to place the flowers in a vase," you offered, catching how he hesitated and you prod further, giving him a gentle push, "it's alright. I don't mind."
He wordlessly nodded, removing his shoes and placed them neatly by the side, stepping into your home with socked feet. You closed the door, walking around him as you moved to the kitchen, leaving him standing awkwardly in your living room. It's a comical sight, to see a boy who has the height of six feet something, taking in everything with wide, boba-like eyes and a seemingly awed expression carved on his face.
You were quick to set the flowers in an empty vase, placing it on the coffee table in the living room. "Alright, I'm done. Shall we get going?"
Riki blinked, snapping out of his staring trance. "Oh, uh, sure. Your place is really nice. It's cozy and…"
"And?" You asked, stepping closer and tilted your head to the side.
He tucked his hands into his pants' pockets, rocking back and forth on the spot. "And very you."
Silence.
Your eyes widened slightly, surprised by his sheer honesty. He didn't need to say much, didn't have to flaunt his expensive-looking clothes or pull any big, dramatic and over-the-top moves and you can already feel you're falling for him. Unlike your long history of dating red flags (your friends' words, not yours), you've never felt like this before.
And you didn't hate it.
You cleared your throat, averting your gaze and raised your hand, wanting to tuck a few strands of hair behind your left ear. But Riki was faster. He closed the remaining distance in one large stride, standing dangerously close to your invisible personal line, close enough for your heart to flutter. You watched with bated breath and wide eyes as he reached out, moving your hair behind your ear as he tucked them behind neatly.
Such a simple, mindless action that anyone could've done and you wouldn't have bat an eye. But when it comes to Riki, it's like you've forgotten how to breathe or function like a normal human being. He didn't withdraw his hand, letting his fingers grazed against the shell of your ear. You could feel the heat emitted from his hand, with how close it was.
The air engulfed around you practically cackled with tension that thickened until one can sliced it apart with a mere butter knife. It's a scene straight out of a Kdrama, with the two main leads looking at one another while everything else around them was slowed down along with the romantic music playing in the background.
Your breath audibly stuttered, heart nearly leaping out of your throat as you caught Riki doing the iconic Triangle method—how he glanced at your eyes before down to your parted lips and then back up again. It was quick and fleeting but you saw it, getting a front-row seat of how his eyes darkened a shade before it was gone when he blinked.
"We should go or we'll be late for our reservation," he said, taking a step back and turned, heading to slip his shoes back on, leaving your mind reeling, trying to wrap your head around what just happened.
You followed him out and to your surprise, he opened the passenger door of his car for you, even placing a hand on top to prevent you from knocking your head against it. The thought and meaning behind his actions didn't fail to make your heart skipped a beat. It felt like he's actually taking care of you, treating you with equal respect and well, how you had long dreamed of since young.
Riki closed the door, walked round the car and hopped into the driver's seat. The interior of the car was sleek and polished. You could smell something woody and sandy in the air, the fragrance calming you down as you leaned into the leather seat. He was about to drive off when he turned to you, raising an eyebrow.
"Seatbelt," he said, one hand on the steering wheel while the other rested on his lap.
"Oh, right, so—"
Your voice died down in your throat embarrassingly fast when he leaned over the console, reaching out his long arm to grab the seatbelt on the left side of your head. All you could see was his bare, honey-toned skin with his veins being visible, leaving you nervously swallowing as you looked out of the window, mentally swatting the indecent thoughts out of your mind like your life depends on it.
Riki chuckled, the sound sinfully low, deep and throaty. You can feel his hot breath kissing the area below your ear, enough for your body to break out into shivers. You didn't have to look at him to know he's smirking, most likely catching your reaction to his mere presence.
"What's wrong, princess? Don't go all quiet and shy on me now," he murmured.
You inhaled, curling your fingers into fists, nails digging into your palms. "..Don't you think you're a little too close?" You managed to stammer out, your voice borderline trembling at the end of your question.
"Really? I think I'm perfectly fine with where I am. What about you?"
Curse him and his stupid good looks and his stupid hot voice.
You made the mistake of turning to him, nearly flinching on the spot when your noses brushed against one another. He's so close, close enough for you to see every single detail of his eyes—how they were clouded with lust. Every time you inhaled, the strong and intoxicating fragrance of his cologne invaded your senses.
Unlike from before, back in the living room, there's nowhere for you to flee. You were hopelessly pinned against the seat with Riki bracing one hand against the window now after he had buckled your seatbelt (since when has he done that?). He swallowed, cupping your face, his long and slender fingers easily clasped around your chin.
He waited patiently, a huge contrast to how his eyes kept flicking between your face and lips.
You could tell he's holding himself back by sheer will and how he's losing bits of his sanity as every second passed. You nodded and he leaned in, his other hand smoothly supporting your neck. He tilted your head to the side slightly, to avoid knocking your heads together and kissed you, capturing your lips with his.
The moment he does so, your body automatically went pliant in his grip.
You let out a bliss sigh, a sound that Riki greedily swallowed without hesitation. He groaned into your mouth, the sound needy and low, drawing a muffled whimper from you.
Something wet traced itself along the seam of your lips, the sensation enough for you to rub your thighs together. You tangled your fingers through his neatly-made hair, tugging on the strands.
"Fuck, keep doing that," he moaned, voice raspy and already wrecked. All from him being finally able to kiss you.
He continued kissing you until you're breathless, struggling to breathe and keep up with his pace while matching the intensity behind it. The hand that was on your neck trailed down, tracing your silhouette through the fabric of your clothes, leaving goosebumps and lingering heat behind in his wake.
You reached down, wanting to unbuckle the seatbelt but he quickly stopped you, placing a hand over yours. Riki broke the kiss, resting his forehead against yours.
"Why.." You asked, only for him to kiss the corner of your lips.
"Because if you unbuckle it, I won't stop," he confessed, like he's confessing to his sins in a church.
"Oh."
That was all you could say, cheeks flushed, unsure of how to reply to that.
He chuckled, moving to plant a sweet and soft kiss squarely on your lips. "We're really gonna be late."
Despite his words, he made no move to pull back, now planting sweet little kisses on every inch of your face as he held you in place. You giggled, squirming about on the seat with your hands on his shoulders.
"Riki, stop. You're gonna ruin my make-up," you protested.
Riki ignored your words, engrossed in kissing you everywhere until you're nothing but a giggling and joyful mess. It was only when you repeatedly tugged on his hair was when he finally got the measure, leaning back with his lips unconsciously jutted out in a pout. He made a soft, cooing noise while pinching your right cheek, drawing a pained yelp from you.
"Riki!"
"Sorry, can't help it. Let's go, shall we?" He said, moving back to the driver's seat.
You nodded, unable to stop yourself from grinning like an idiot, butterflies flying about in your stomach.
"…What the hell are you two doing?"
Riki deadpanned, crossing his arms as he stared down at the two boys, who shared the same guilty looks, caught red-handed. You, on the other hand, stood beside Riki and watched with amusement from the sidelines. The boy who has features that resemblance a cat, jerked violently from his seat, opening and closing his mouth.
"Uh, I told you we'll be following you during your date," he pointed out.
The glare Riki shot him was bone-chilling cold. If looks could kill, the poor boy would've dropped dead right there and then, in the cafe. You covered your mouth with your left hand, stiffing the urge to burst out laughing at the comical scene unfolding right before you. The other boy, who was quiet the entire time, spoke up with a loud and heavy sigh.
"Ignore him, Riki. Mind introducing us to your girlfriend?" He asked, eyes flicking to your face.
Girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
Your eyes widened when you heard that word. You looked to the side, avoiding eye contact with Riki, who had gone unusually silent. Seeing this, his friends were confused, only for the boy who called you his girlfriend to connect the dots almost immediately.
"..Wait, you haven't ask her to be your girlfriend yet?" He asked slowly, like he's talking to a child.
Riki pointedly coughed, the tips of his ears and cheeks turning red. "Sunoo hyung, can you not."
The boy, who goes by Sunoo, threw his hands up in the air in annoyance. "No, I'm not doing this anymore. I've tolerated your stupid ramblings about her," he paused to point at you before he continued, "talking about how pretty she looks when she's taking down notes. How nice her handwriting is. How her perfume smells and blah blah blah."
"Oh my god," Riki murmured under his breath, shrinking like he wants to make himself as small as possible.
"Well, that's interesting. I didn't know you're very passionate about me," you teased, elbowing him from the side.
The tall boy shot you a betrayed look. "You're supposed to take my side!"
"Oh yeah? And where's the fun in that?"
His eyes widened, taken aback by your words. You couldn't take it anymore, bursting out into a fit of laughter while clutching the sides of your stomach, practically wheezing and heaving for breath. Your sudden outburst gained the other people's attention but you paid them no mind, not when you were having the time of your life.
"Wow, I can't believe this. My girlfriend has turned her back on me and chose to side with my friends instead," he deadpanned, "this is like, the same level of betrayal Scaramouche had."
You stopped, your laughter fading down and whipped your head to him. Riki blinked, surprised by the abrupt change of your behavior.
"What's wrong?" He asked, worried and stepped closer.
"You said it," you murmured.
"Huh?"
"You called me your girlfriend," you said.
Riki froze, going as still as a statue. You watched as realization hit him—how he had said it without knowing and most importantly, how natural it felt, like it's his third speaking language. He rapidly blinked his eyes. You can tell he's starting to panic, with how he's struggling to find the correct words to defuse the situation but you being you, decide to take the leap of faith.
You smiled, all soft and genuine. "It's fine, I don't mind being seen and called as your girlfriend."
His breath hitched, staring at you with wide, stunned eyes. "…Really?"
You nodded. "Yeah, if you'd have me, that is."
His features softened, lips curling up in a lovesick smile. "Idiot, of course I want you. I've been in love with you for six months."
Cough cough.
"This is sweet and all, but please, we're in a public space," Sunoo complained. Jungwon was quick to kick him in the shins but the mood was already ruined.
You laughed, stepping closer to Riki—your boyfriend, hooking your arm through his. "So, how about we continue our date? And you can properly introduce your friends to me."
He sighed, the sound itself fond and whipped. "Fine, whatever you say. But I have to warn you, they aren't really that likeable with their horrible personalities. Especially Jungwon, he's weird."
⊱SYNOPSIS: when a casual compliment during a livestream sends the internet into meltdown, nobody expects it to be the start of K-pop’s newest obsession.
❤︎ Idol AU social media AU ENHAOT7 KASTEYEOT6 y/n is in KATSEYE
note!! chapter threeeee I work fast when I’m needed 🫡🫡 thank u for reading yall and pls ignore the spelling mistakes jake is kinda fumbling but it’s working???? also i was thinking maybe a written part next if that’s okay??? anyway enjoy!!
everyone shut up and put down whatever ur doing to greet the loml, my prettiest angel, the essence of warm sunlight in human form, kim sunoo, a happy birthday!!
⊱SYNOPSIS: when a casual compliment during a livestream sends the internet into meltdown, nobody expects it to be the start of K-pop’s newest obsession.
❤︎ Idol AU social media AU ENHAOT7 KASTEYEOT6 y/n is in KATSEYE
note!! welcome to my Jake Sim x KATSEYE!Y/N SMAU this is a fictional idol AU filled with fake tweets, chaotic group chats and fan theories. please remember this is purely fictional and made for fun! idk how frequent I’ll be updating so probs whenever I feel like it. enjoy the drama, the delusion, and the slow burn 🦢🦮✨
chapters as follow
001. the name
002. surely that’s her…
003. lurking
004. can’t speak with you watching
005. a team dinner??
more to come…
current fic taglist: just comment for a tag on any post or under this masterlist!
⊱SYNOPSIS: when a casual compliment during a livestream sends the internet into meltdown, nobody expects it to be the start of K-pop’s newest obsession.
❤︎ Idol AU social media AU ENHAOT7 KASTEYEOT6 y/n is in KATSEYE
note!! I know I posted chapter one like kit a few hours ago but I had to keep going this is still my bad humour and sorry for spelling mistakes also I’ll probs make a masterlist for this so comment below if u want tagged! hope yall enjoy!!
stormborns
yousharknotpass
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
areudirty
origamiaround
