karina. @lovingaphroditesworld - Tumblr Blog

⠀ CONTRACTUALLY YOURS ❤︎ 박종성

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎written for the heart’s mailroom event ! ༊

‎‎ ‎‎‎ ‎‎ ‎‎‎ 𝓦𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐈𝐍⠀‎ ✶ ⠀‎ when park jongseong, campus heartthrob, resident rich kid, and future arranged marriage victim, offers you an absurd amount of money to be his fake girlfriend, saying yes should be easy. all you have to do is hold his hand, smile for his parents, survive the rumors, and pretend none of it is real. fake dating was never supposed to be difficult — so why does following the one rule feel impossible? don’t fall in love. simple enough, right?

𝟑𝟏𝟐𝟏𝟕 🗯️ ✽ ─── ⏾ 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 park jongseong⠀‎x ⠀‎ 𝓯 ! rea ´ ꒳ ` 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 : fake dating ˒ university au ˒ slow burn ˒ mutual pining ˒ class differences ˒ friends-to-lovers ˒ emotional hurt and comfort ˒ a dash of angst somewhere ˒

𝔀𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 : explicit sexual content ⋮ 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀, 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 ✿ strong language ˒ emotional distress ˒ classism ˒ family conflict ˒ socioeconomic inequality ˒ mentions of financial struggles ˒ unprotected p in v ˒ first time sex ˒ dry humping ˒ fingering ˒ dirty talk ˒ creampie ˒

𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬⠀‎ ✶ ⠀‎ 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭

🗝️ 。 ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 𝐞𝐥’𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞 ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ one of my favorite event works so far !!! yes, i do pour my heart out whenever it comes to a jay fic <//3 a month later and here we are ˙𐃷˙ clearly got lazy in a bunch of parts so oops, let’s ignore that

"Me? You? Us? Date? What the fuck are you on about?!"

Your voice rang out through the private library study space, bouncing off the cream-colored walls and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined them.

The sound was sharp enough to make Jay flinch, just barely, a subtle jerk of his shoulders, but he didn't step back. He stood right where he was, planted across from you on the other side of the narrow study table, both his palms pressed flat against the polished wood surface, fingers splayed wide like he was bracing himself. Beside his right hand, just brushing against his pinky, sat a brown envelope, ordinary, unremarkable, the kind you'd use to mail documents or store receipts. Except it wasn't ordinary at all, and you both knew it.

You had already opened it. A few moments ago, when Jay had first slid it across the table toward you with a quiet, "Just look inside first," you'd given him a skeptical look, the same look you gave people who tried to cut the line at the campus café, and undone the metal clasp with one finger. The moment you peeled back the flap, your brain short-circuited. The envelope was filled with money. Not a few folded bills, not some chump-change twenties — filled, stuffed to the point where the paper bulged outward like it was struggling to contain what was inside. Bill after bill after bill, crisp and pressed together so tightly you could barely pry them apart with your fingertips. Your mouth had gone dry. You couldn't even count it properly mentally, not when your eyes were still trying to process the sheer volume of it. Four hundred dollars? Nine hundred? Maybe even a thousand? Every time you tried to land on a rough estimate, the number climbed higher, your mind fumbling with digits the way your hands fumbled with the bills. It was the first time in your life you'd seen so much money in one sitting, let alone held it, let alone had it sitting in front of you on a scratched-up library table like it was nothing.

"Please, Y/N—I swear it'll just be a quick one-time thing. You have to help me out," Jay said, and the desperation in his tone was so raw, so unguarded, that it almost caught you off guard. His voice dropped on the last sentence, going low and almost brittle, like the words themselves were fragile and he was afraid of crushing them. His eyes, dark brown, normally so composed and easy, were wide and searching, locked on yours with an intensity that made the air between you feel heavier.

You already knew it was absolute bullshit. The whole setup, the way he'd walked over to your usual study spot in the library's east wing where you always sat, third floor, back corner, the table beside the window that overlooked the quad, and hovered awkwardly by the empty chair across from you until you looked up from your notes. The way he'd said he had an important question to ask about a subject both of you shared, some elective you'd both wound up in because it fit your schedules. You'd told him to just ask right then and there, leaning back in your chair with your arms crossed because something about the way he was shifting his weight from foot to foot told you this wasn't about academics at all. He insisted on taking you to one of the private study rooms, the kind that required cash to book, the kind with a door you could lock and walls thick enough that sound didn't travel. You said no. Flat out, no, you had studying to do, you didn't have time for whatever cryptic thing he needed to say. He insisted again, his voice dropping lower, his hand rubbing the back of his neck in that restless way people do when they're wound tight. You said no a second time. He insisted a third, and by then a few passersby had slowed their pace, eyes sliding over to the two of you with that particular brand of campus curiosity, the kind that would be a rumor by dinner. You noticed the girl with the ponytail lingering near the shelf a few feet away, pretending to browse a book she was holding upside down. You noticed the guy at the next table suddenly very interested in his phone, which was facedown on the desk. You exhaled through your nose, muttered a curse under your breath, grabbed your bag, and followed Jay down the hall because the last thing you needed was an audience.

Yup, Jay — as in the Park Jongseong. People referred to him as Jay, and you never really knew the full reason as to why, but apparently it was his English name, one he'd had since childhood, and he preferred to be called that around university. He'd introduced himself that way on the first day of freshman orientation, and obviously, the student body didn't hesitate to comply. Jay was and still is the sheer epitome of the typical picture-perfect guy, the kind that seemed like he was drafted in a lab by someone trying to engineer the ideal male specimen. He was intelligent, effortlessly so, the kind of smart that didn't need to announce itself because it showed in the way he spoke, the way he could break down a complex concept in class without breaking a sweat, the way professors seemed to light up whenever he raised his hand. He came from an incredibly wealthy background — old money, the kind that didn't need to be flashy because it simply was, the kind that came with family estates and business empires and the quiet assurance that you'd never have to worry about a single thing in your life. He was the president of the music club, the lead guitarist of the university's band, and as if all of that wasn't enough, the campus heartthrob, a title he hadn't asked for but couldn't seem to shake off.

Every single girl was head over heels for him. That wasn't an exaggeration, it was a documented, observable, almost scientific phenomenon. You could swear you'd overheard your block mate laugh about how during one Valentine's Day, he was hiding in the music room for a whole day because people wouldn't stop chasing after him, shoving gifts and confessions and handwritten letters through the door crack until the floor looked like a paper avalanche. Another girl in your dorm had a Pinterest board dedicated to him, screenshots from his Instagram, candid photos people had taken during his performances, even a blurry shot of him eating at the cafeteria that she treated like some kind of holy relic. It was unhinged. It was also, admittedly, understandable.

Which is why it came to you as a surprise — no, not a surprise, a shock, a full-body, brain-stalling, what-the-fuck-is-happening shock — that he'd dragged your ass to a secluded, cash-only private study room on one breezy Tuesday afternoon with an envelope filled to the brim with cash, set it on the table between you, and asked if you could fake-date him.

You? Jay? Date? It had never crossed your mind. Not once. Not even in some passing, idle thought, the kind your brain produces at two in the morning when you're half-asleep and thinking about nothing in particular. Sure, he's attractive, anyone with functioning eyes could see that, the sharp jawline, the dark hair that always looked effortlessly styled even when he'd just woken up, the way his whole face seemed to carry this natural, easy confidence like he'd never had to second-guess a single thing about himself. But he was way out of your league, and more than that, you both never really batted an eye at each other. You existed in the same spaces, the same lecture halls, the same campus walkways, the same cafeteria, but you moved in entirely different orbits. Just so happened that both of you had taken up the same course, and even then, your interactions had been limited to the occasional "can I borrow a pen" or "did you catch what the professor said about the deadline." Nothing more. Nothing less. Two people who happened to share a lecture room and nothing else.

"Come on, cut me some slack. The girl your parents are arranging for you to marry can't be that bad," you had said, leaning back in your chair, crossing your arms over your chest, trying to sound casual even though your heart was still doing something strange and irregular from the sheer absurdity of this conversation.

"She is!"

"Show me a picture."

Jay let out an exhale, long, heavy, the kind that seemed to carry the weight of several sleepless nights, before fishing his phone from the pocket of his jacket. He unlocked it, his thumb moving quickly across the screen, scrolling through what looked like his mom's messages, then his DMs, his brow furrowed in concentration as he searched for a specific photo. You watched his face as he scrolled, the tightness in his jaw, the slight downward pull of his lips, and for a moment, the campus heartthrob facade fell away entirely, and he just looked like a guy who was stressed out of his mind. Then he found it, turned the phone toward you, and held it there.

You looked. You leaned in. Your eyes traveled across the screen, the girl in the photo was striking, genuinely stunning, the kind of beautiful that made you do a double-take. She had this effortless elegance about her, dressed in something that probably cost more than your entire semester's textbook budget, standing in what appeared to be the foyer of a home that looked like it belonged in an architecture magazine. Flawless. Immaculate. The type of person who looked like she'd never had a bad day in her life.

"Ooooh, she's bad as hell," you smiled — and you meant it, because damn, she really was, and you weren't about to pretend otherwise just to make Jay feel better about his predicament.

A beat. Jay looked at you dead in the eyes, his expression utterly flat, a picture of pure, unamused disbelief. And you just smiled back at him, wide, toothy, completely genuine, the kind of smile that said I know this isn't helping but I'm being honest here.

"Alright, that's enough! That's not the point, my point is I don't want to get married—"

"Then just tell your parents you're not yet ready, as simple as that." You cut him off, waving your hand like you were swatting away a fly. "Sit them down, look them in the eye, say 'hey, I'm twenty-something, I'm not doing this right now,' and call it a day."

"Fuck, I've tried and tried and tried, but they won't budge on their decision." Jay's voice cracked on the last word, just barely, a hairline fracture in his composure that he quickly sealed shut by pressing his lips together and looking away for a second. When he looked back, his eyes were harder, more urgent. "I'm way too young to be marrying at this age. Sure, some people our age are married, but I'm not them and they're not me! I have things I want to do, things I actually want, and being tied down to someone I didn't even choose isn't one of them." His hands curled into fists on the table, knuckles going pale. "Please, Y/N, just—this one big favor. This and nothing more, I'm begging."

He was begging. Park Jongseong, the guy who had the entire campus at his feet, was standing across from you in a dimly lit study room practically pleading with you like his life depended on it. And the worst part, the part that made your chest tighten slightly, the part that made your arms uncross and fall to your sides, was that it was real. You could see it in every line of his body, hear it in every syllable he pushed out. He wasn't being dramatic. He wasn't putting on a show. He was genuinely, desperately, sincerely asking you for help, and the vulnerability of it was staggering.

You had to admit, with his level of desperation, you were starting to feel real bad. You'd never seen someone be this desperate — not around you, not in your presence, not directed at you. Even your ex hadn't been this desperate for you, and they'd had actual reasons to be. This was the campus heartthrob, a guy who could snap his fingers and have a line of volunteers stretching from the library to the campus gates, and here he was, choosing you, asking you, practically on his knees in front of you. It didn't make sense. None of this made sense.

"I'm sorry you have to go through this, but no is no. That's final on my end." You said it as firmly as you could, chin lifted, voice steady. You meant it, or at least, you wanted to mean it, you were trying to mean it, because the logical part of your brain was screaming at you that this was insane, that fake-dating Jay was a terrible idea, that nothing good could come from entangling yourself in the mess of someone else's life, no matter how much money was in that envelope.

"Oh my god, please, I'll do anything, I'll even add more money to the—"

Money? Money.

Yup, as in the brown envelope filled with money. The envelope that was still sitting on the table between you, its mouth open, its contents spilling slightly outward, bills catching the overhead light. The first time you'd seen it, when Jay had first pushed it toward you, you thought he was going to bribe his way through you to get a yes, just straight-up purchase your agreement like you were a transaction, like your consent was a commodity he could afford. The thought had made your stomach turn. But then he'd clarified, hastily, almost tripping over his own words in his rush to explain, he'd just taken some money out of his card, he said, and to see it as a thank-you if ever. A gesture. No strings. No pressure. Just — here, this is what I can offer, if you're willing.

What an arrogant bitch, using daddy's money to get what he wanted. The thought surfaced sharp and bitter, and you let it sit there for a second, let yourself feel the sting of it, the unfairness, the casual way he could just produce this kind of cash like it was pocket change, like it was nothing, like it was the equivalent of buying someone a coffee. Though, you knew, and this was the part that made the thought dissolve as quickly as it had come — you knew you couldn't resist that much money. You couldn't. You were physically, financially, realistically incapable of turning away from what that envelope represented.

Truth is, in this prestigious university filled with students who spent their weekends drinking on yachts and flying home for holidays like commuting was a personality trait, you're the elephant in the room. The odd one out. The one who didn't belong, not because you weren't smart enough, not because you hadn't earned your place, but because you existed in a world that operated on an entirely different currency than the one everyone else was spending. You came from a less fortunate background compared to everyone here, and that was putting it gently. Your hometown was the kind of place people drove through without stopping, the kind of place where the biggest employer was the gas station on the highway and the most exciting thing that happened all year was the county fair. For your whole life, all you could do was study. That was it. That was the one lane you had, the one road available to you, and you ran it like your life depended on it — because it did. Get amazing marks, get recognized enough to be able to get somewhere nice in life, somewhere better, somewhere that didn't feel like a dead end with a nice view of nothing. All that effort paid off in the end, because here you were — admitted to this prestigious university, the kind with the manicured lawns, the stone buildings, and the reputation that opened doors before you even knocked, far from home, with a full 100% scholarship. Every penny covered. Tuition, housing, the works.

You didn't even know this was possible. When the acceptance letter came, when you'd read the words “full scholarship” and felt the ground tilt beneath you, you'd sat on the floor of your bedroom for ten minutes just breathing, because your brain couldn't process anything beyond the fact that something had finally, finally gone right. You were beyond thankful. You still were. Every single day you woke up in that dorm room, you felt it, the gratitude, the disbelief, the quiet, stubborn resolve to not waste a single second of this opportunity.

But gratitude didn't pay for groceries. And a full scholarship didn't cover the things that fell through the cracks, the meals you skipped because the dining hall was closed and the nearest affordable option was a twenty-minute walk off campus, the school supplies that weren't included in the textbook package, the toiletries and the laundry detergent and the occasional cup of coffee that kept you awake during exam week. So now, with Jay offering you an insane amount of money, more than your parents could scrape up for months of careful, pinching saving, more than you'd earn in an entire semester of your part-time job, just to be his fake girlfriend? You couldn't possibly resist. You were already somewhat struggling to keep up, the kind of struggling that was invisible to everyone around you because you'd gotten so good at making it look effortless. You worked part-time as a lab instructor in another department of the university — setting up equipment, walking students through procedures, cleaning up after sessions — and while the pay was something, it wasn't enough to breathe easy. You saved up quite frequently, hoarding every extra cent like a dragon guarding its treasure, to the point where you'd forget to eat at times because the cafeteria line was long and the off-campus options cost money and you'd already convinced yourself that skipping one meal wasn't that big of a deal. You were literally living in the damn trenches, grinding yourself down to the bone in an environment where the person sitting next to you in lecture was complaining about their dad's yacht needing repairs.

He was still yapping about whatever, something about how his parents were persistent, how the arrangement had been in the works for months, how he'd tried every angle he could think of and this was the only option left, when you'd finally snapped back to reality, the sound of his voice dissolving into white noise as your brain latched onto the single, crystalline truth sitting in front of you: that envelope, that money, that lifeline.

"Deal." You said it with your face blank. No smile, no hesitation, no dramatic pause. Just the word, clean and final, dropped onto the table between you like a card laid face-up.

You saw Jay's face change instantly — like a switch had been flipped, like sunlight breaking through clouds. His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, and then the most genuine smile you'd ever seen on another human being spread across his face, so bright and so unguarded that it almost looked out of place on someone you'd only ever seen looking composed and cool and collected.

"Oh my god really? Thank you, thank you so much, oh my god—" The words tumbled out of him in a rush, his voice climbing higher with each one, his hands coming off the table to gesture wildly in the air like he didn't know what to do with them. He looked, for a moment, like a kid who'd just been told he could have dessert before dinner, pure, unfiltered relief flooding every feature, softening every sharp edge you'd ever associated with him.

"Yeah, yeah, calm down before I change my mind." You retorted, but you were clearly amused at his enthusiasm, the corner of your mouth twitching despite your best effort to keep your expression neutral. There was something almost endearing about watching Jay, the campus heartthrob, the cool guy, the one everyone wanted, practically vibrate with gratitude right in front of you. It was humanizing in a way you hadn't expected.

"Yes, ma'am." He said it with a nod, still grinning, and there was something in the way he said it, the slight dip of his head, the warmth in his voice, that made your chest do that strange, irregular thing again.

So then there you and Jay were, officially "boyfriend and girlfriend." Just like that, in a dimly lit private study room that smelled like old paper and lemon-scented wood cleaner, with a brown envelope full of cash sitting between you and the campus heartthrob beaming at you like you'd just handed him the world. You never knew up until when the act would last, though — just be convincing for as long as possible, up to the point when Jay says it's over, he's free, and both of you could just go back to the way things were. Two people who happened to share a classroom and nothing else, the way it was always meant to be.

At least, that was the plan.

The first week of "dating" was surprisingly easy.

Though, at that point of the week, nothing significant had happened yet. You guys were still somewhat awkward about the whole ordeal, like two people who'd signed a contract to perform in a play but hadn't yet rehearsed their scenes. No crazy public interactions, no dramatic cafeteria entrances, no hand-holding across the courtyard for all to see. You guys never even texted, not really, not in the way actual couples texted, with that constant low hum of conversation that never really stopped. Maybe you'd send Jay a horrendous reel about some funny skit, the kind that made you snort quietly to yourself in your dorm room at midnight, and caption it with something like "this is how i saw you in that study space" and he'd either just react with a haha emoji or reply with a laugh or be sassy in return, firing back with a reel of his own that somehow managed to be even more unhinged than yours. Sometimes he'd message you about an assignment assigned to a shared class, dry, practical stuff, "did prof say apa or mla" or "is the thing due friday or saturday,” the kind of texts that could've been sent to anyone, that carried no weight, that left no residue once they were answered. Just that, nothing more. Simple day-to-day interactions, the bare minimum of communication required to maintain the illusion that two people were in any kind of relationship at all. Honestly, you guys only interacted when you'd remember, perhaps like once every two days, maybe even less, the rhythm of it irregular and loose, like a heartbeat that kept skipping. Ya'll didn't even acknowledge each other in public. Not a wave, not a nod, not so much as a glance across a lecture hall. You'd walk past each other between classes with the same neutral, unseeing expression you'd give a stranger on the sidewalk, and it was fine, it was easier that way, simpler, less to explain, less to perform. The fake in fake-dating had never felt so appropriate.

The second week was when things had gotten a bit strange.

It was a regular Thursday afternoon, the kind of Thursday that felt like it had been stretching on for about six business days already, the kind where the week's exhaustion had settled into your bones like damp cold and you could practically feel your brain running on fumes. You were in the lab, packing up your things because your shift had finally finished — the last student had left twenty minutes ago, the equipment was wiped down and stored, the logbook was updated, and the only thing left to do was zip your bag and drag yourself back to the dorm for whatever sad dinner awaited. You were slipping your charger into the front pocket of your bag when your phone lit up on the counter, the screen glowing with a message notification.

Jongseong [6:13 PM]: hi! :) are you free right now?

Yeah, your contact name for him was Jongseong. Not Jay. Not "bf 💕" or whatever the hell a real girlfriend would save her boyfriend's name as. Jongseong. His Korean name, the one he didn't go by, the one most people on campus didn't even know. He didn't know you'd saved him that way, and he definitely didn't need to know. It just served as a little reminder, a quiet, private, almost superstitious reminder, that this whole thing was meant to be some stupid thing, some arrangement, some transaction dressed up in the costume of a relationship. You didn't know how exactly it'd help, calling him by a name he didn't use, keeping that tiny sliver of distance preserved in your phone's contacts list, but that's what you told yourself, and that was enough.

You stared at the message for a bit, your thumb hovering over the keyboard. What the hell could he possibly want now? You thought, your brow furrowing slightly. It had been days since your last actual exchange, a reel about a cat falling off a counter, three days ago, to which he'd responded with a skull emoji. And now, out of nowhere, on a random Thursday evening, a cheerful "hi! :)" and a question about your availability like you were being summoned for a meeting. You typed back a while later, after you'd zipped your bag and slung it onto your shoulder.

You [6:15 PM]: why? i'm at the lab rn

He saw the text almost immediately, the read receipt appeared within seconds, which told you he'd been staring at his phone waiting for your reply, which was somehow both endearing and mildly concerning.

Jongseong [6:15 PM]: oooh okay

Jongseong [6:15 PM]: do you wanna head out to this

Jongseong [6:15 PM]: new retro themed diner that opened up? 😅 it's a bit far from the university though, but i can drive you back and forth

Diner? Eat out? Goodness, you couldn't even afford to buy dinner on some days, and he was asking you to go to some trendy new spot that probably charged eighteen dollars for a milkshake and had a waitlist longer than the financial aid office. The thought alone made your wallet ache in sympathy.

I mean, you did have money, the one Jay had given you in that envelope, the one that was currently tucked inside the zippered pocket of your bag, still as full as the day he'd handed it to you. But you couldn't bring yourself to spend it yet. Not even for something this small, not even for a meal that your growling stomach was practically begging for. You had more priorities, bigger ones, heavier ones, the kind that didn't go away just because you were hungry. Sending some money back to your parents, for one, you'd already calculated how much you could afford to send without destabilizing your own fragile ecosystem, and the number was pitifully small but it was something, it was the least you could do when your mom and dad were back home stretching every paycheck until it tore. Your needs, too, the things that kept you functional, the toothpaste and the laundry soap and the replacement headphones because your current pair was held together with electrical tape and prayer. All the works. Every dollar in that envelope was already earmarked for something, already spoken for in the mental ledger you maintained with the obsessive precision of an accountant during tax season.

You [6:16 PM]: dude

You [6:16 PM]: i'd love to but i have no money

Jongseong [6:16 PM]: the envelope?

You [6:17 PM]: can't bring myself to spend it yet jay 🥲 i have lots of things i need to prioritize rather than some dinner

Jongseong [6:17 PM]: i understand

Jongseong [6:17 PM]: dinner's on me ☺️ i'll pick you up from the lab in a bit

Jongseong [6:17 PM]: just gonna grab my keys

Oh my god, this guy. You stared at your phone screen, your mouth slightly open, that familiar mixture of disbelief and reluctant warmth spreading through your chest. He'd just — announced it. Like it was obvious, like it was already decided, like your financial situation was a minor obstacle he could simply breeze past with the casual ease of someone who'd never had to think about the price of anything in his entire life. And the smiley face. The little ☺️ at the end of the message, so completely without guile, like he genuinely didn't see the big deal about paying for your dinner. You didn't know whether to be grateful or annoyed, so you settled for a weird combination of both that manifested as you pressing your palm against your forehead and exhaling slowly.

You [6:17 PM]: wait wait ok but what are we even gonna do at the diner

Jongseong [6:17 PM]: eat?

You [6:17 PM]: yeah what else 🫠 no way you're just doing this without some explanation

Jongseong [6:17 PM]: i'm just being a nice boyfriend, no?

Jongseong [6:17 PM]: but yes lol i have something i want to talk to you about

Something he wanted to talk about. That was vaguely ominous, or maybe it wasn't, maybe it was exactly what he said it was, a conversation, a discussion, something practical and straightforward. But the phrase "something I want to talk to you about" had a certain weight to it, the way phrases that start with "we need to talk" or "can I tell you something" always carried more gravity than their individual words suggested.

You [6:17 PM]: can't we just… do this over the phone?

He didn't answer. You stood there for a minute, your phone held loosely in your hand, waiting for the three dots to appear, waiting for the typing indicator, waiting for anything. None. The screen stayed still, the conversation hanging on your last message like an unanswered question mark. So you just continued on with your business, packing the rest of your things, double-checking that nothing was still plugged into the electrical sockets, a habit you'd developed after nearly starting a small fire during your first week on the job, closing the lights off in some areas. Then your phone vibrated in your hand, a sharp little pulse against your palm.

Jongseong [6:23 PM]: look at the door

You did. And there he was.

The lab doors were those awkward ones, the ones with a rectangular window set into the middle of the door, like a porthole, the glass slightly frosted but not enough to obscure whoever was standing on the other side. And Jay was right there, visible through that window, his face backlit by the hallway's amber light. He was tapping on the glass with his knuckles, waving at you with his other hand, and wearing this boyish smile, this wide, slightly crooked, utterly disarming smile, that made him look about five years younger and infinitely less like the campus heartthrob and more like some eager puppy that had shown up at your door expecting a walk.

You let out an exhausted exhale, the one that came from deep in your lungs and carried with it every ounce of resistance you'd been trying to maintain. And you flipped him off, just raised your middle finger casually, without heat, the way you'd flip off a friend who was being annoying but not annoying enough to actually be mad at. He just smiled wider, his eyes crinkling at the corners, clearly unfazed, then reached for the door handle, pushed it open, and walked in.

"Still busy?" he asked, his voice easy, light, like he hadn't just driven across campus to show up unannounced at your workplace like some kind of determined golden retriever.

"No, I'm done with everything already. Just—checking up on some things." You said, gesturing vaguely around the lab, your tone carrying that tired-but-not-unfriendly edge that had become your default around him.

"I'll help you," he muttered, already moving past you into the lab, his eyes scanning the room with a quick efficiency that surprised you. "It's getting dark already. We should get going before some ghost clings onto my girlfriend."

The word "girlfriend" hit you like a small, unexpected electric shock, a quick jolt that started in your stomach and radiated outward, making your fingers tingle and your breath catch for just a fraction of a second. A knot twisted in your stomach, tight and warm and deeply confusing, the kind of physical reaction you had zero authority over and absolutely no interest in analyzing. It was the first time he'd said it out loud, at least to your face, in a context that wasn't part of some rehearsed pitch, just dropped it into conversation like it was natural. You didn't even have the time to argue with him, to protest, to say don't call me that, it's weird, because he'd already started venturing through the lab, checking the sinks, unplugging a device you'd missed, verifying that the gas valves were shut off, his movements quick and competent and entirely too helpful for someone who'd probably never set foot in a science lab before today. You had just watched him, watched the way he moved through the space with an easy confidence, the way his sleeves were pushed up to his forearms revealing the subtle curve of muscle and the glint of a watch that probably cost more than your entire semester's living expenses, the way he double-checked things without being asked, the way he just helped, simply and without fanfare. When he was finally done, he walked back over to you, reached out, and pulled you gently by your wrist — not grabbing, not yanking, just a warm, steady pressure around your wrist that guided you forward, his fingers fitting loosely around the bone like a bracelet. With his other hand, he scooped your shoulder bag off the table where it had been sitting, slinging it over his own shoulder without a word, and then he looked at you.

"Ready? Didn't leave anything?" he asked gently, and the softness in his voice. the genuine, unhurried concern in it, made something in your chest shift, a tiny tectonic movement, barely perceptible but undeniable.

You looked at the table, then around you at the dim lab, then at him — at his face, at the way the hallway light caught the slope of his nose and the dark of his eyes, at the way he was standing there with your bag on his shoulder. "Nope, didn't leave anything." You said, and your voice came out quieter than you intended.

A smile tugged at his lips, small, warm, barely there but unmistakable, before he walked you out of the lab, his hand dropping from your wrist but the ghost of his touch lingering on your skin like a fading warmth you couldn't quite shake.

The diner was incredibly cute, wait, cute wouldn't even be able to do it justice. It was charming in the way that places only existed in movies or in the carefully curated feeds of lifestyle influencers, the kind of spot that seemed almost aggressively aesthetic, like it had been designed in a boardroom by someone with a Pinterest board titled "i miss being a kid" and an unlimited budget. Red vinyl booths with chrome trim, black-and-white checkered floors, vintage neon signs spelling out words like "EATS" and "SHAKES" in glowing pink cursive along the walls, a jukebox in the corner that actually played real records, its arm moving mechanically from song to song while a warm, crackling version of some fifties doo-wop track drifted through the speakers. There were framed posters of old films, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Rebel Without a Cause, Grease, and the air smelled like frying batter, vanilla, and that particular, indescribable scent of a place that took its desserts seriously. It looked exactly like how those influencers would post about, all warm lighting and curated messiness, exactly like how the social media pages would market it, except somehow better.

He chose to sit beside you. Which was — okay, crazy, genuinely unhinged behavior, because you guys were seated at a dining booth. The classic kind, the one with two seats facing each other, a table in the middle, the configuration designed so that two people could sit across from each other and have a face-to-face conversation like normal human beings. But no. Jay wanted to sit beside you. On the same side of the booth. Like an actual couple. Like people who wanted to share the same view, the same space, the same pocket of air. You didn't argue, you couldn't, actually, because by the time your brain had processed the audacity of his choice, he'd already slid into the seat next to yours, settling in with an easy sigh and draping one arm along the back of the booth behind you, not quite touching your shoulders but close enough that you could feel the warmth radiating off his arm like a space heater you hadn't asked for. The proximity was ridiculous. Your knees were inches from his. You could smell his cologne, something clean and faintly expensive, the kind of scent that probably had a French name and a price tag with too many zeros. You stared straight ahead at the empty seat across from you, hyperaware of every inch of space between your body and his, which wasn't very many inches at all.

He had told you, repeatedly on the drive over, in between navigating the streets and fiddling with the radio and making small talk about the weird billboard they'd passed, that he'd be the one paying, so don't hesitate to order anything you wanted to eat. He'd said it casually, like he was reminding you about the weather, like dropping forty or fifty or a hundred dollars on dinner was the equivalent of swiping a metro card. But that was hard on its own, wasn't it? You were used to the idea that whenever someone chipped in some of their money to buy you stuff, a meal, a drink, a ticket, you'd purposely pick one of the cheapest options so it wouldn't break a hole in their wallet. It was instinct, deeply ingrained, the kind of reflex you'd developed over years of being the person who couldn't afford to be treated and didn't want to be a burden. You'd scan the menu from the bottom up, looking for the lowest number, and you'd convince yourself that the cheapest thing was the thing you wanted anyway. But Jay wasn't having it. He insisted you get something that you actually wanted to try and eat, anything, desserts and drinks too, and he clearly wasn't in the mood to tolerate your bullshit.

"Jay, wait, I'm deadass. This one is pretty okay for me already—" You pointed at one of the cheaper items on the menu, a simple chicken sandwich that was reasonably priced and wouldn't make you feel like you were eating someone's weekly grocery budget.

"Pretty okay? Not the one that's 'I'd love this?' Come on, don't worry about the money please, don't worry about my money, just pick something you want to eat—" His voice was earnest, almost pleading, and he leaned slightly closer, his shoulder brushing yours, the contact light and brief but enough to make your breath hiccup.

"That is okay!"

"Okay doesn't necessarily mean that's what you want!" He shot back, and there was a frustrated edge to his tone — not anger, not even close, but something softer, something that sounded like he genuinely cared about whether you were settling for something instead of choosing something, as if the distinction between okay and I want this mattered to him more than the money it cost.

You both had spent about five minutes going back and forth over the menu, a delicate, ridiculous tug-of-war that probably looked insane from the outside. The waiter sitting by the table even seemed amused, their pen hovering over their notepad, watching the two of you bicker like an old married couple over whether you were allowed to order the thing you actually wanted. You eventually just gave up, the exhaustion of arguing with someone who had infinite money and infinite stubbornness was too much for your tired, post-shift brain, and settled for this incredibly gigantic cheeseburger with wedges on the side and a vanilla milkshake because Jay had insisted, pointing at it on the menu and telling the waiter before you could protest one last time. You couldn't even catch wind of what he'd ordered for himself, he'd rattled it off so quickly and smoothly that by the time you registered he'd stopped talking, the waiter was already walking away with a knowing smile.

When all you guys had to do was wait for your order, you leaned back in the booth, as much as the vinyl seat would allow, which wasn't much, not when Jay's arm was still draped along the back of it behind you, and started to speak.

"So, what thing did you want to talk to me about?" You said, turning your head toward him, and the motion brought your face closer to his than you'd anticipated, close enough that you could see the faint freckle below his left eye, close enough that you could count his eyelashes if you were the kind of person who counted things like that, which you absolutely were not.

"Oh my god, right. So, I kind of—I wanted to talk about the boundaries we should establish for this whole fake relationship thing." He said, and his tone shifted, still casual, still easy, but there was a note of seriousness underneath it.

Boundaries? For this fake relationship? You thought it was pretty self-explanatory already — the basic don't-fall-in-love type shit, the obvious don't-catch-feelings clause that went without saying, the unspoken agreement that this was a transaction and not a romance. But he wanted more depth, more clarity, more than the envelope and the unspoken assumptions that had carried you through the first week.

You both then spent a long time talking about the do's and don'ts. Even after your food had arrived, the cheeseburger towering on the plate like a small architectural marvel, the wedges golden and steaming, the milkshake thick and cold in its metal cup with the extra in the mixing tin beside it, both of you were still at it, the conversation flowing around bites and sips and the occasional pause to chew.

"No weird couple shit." You insisted, pointing a wedge at him for emphasis, a golden spear of potato that served as your gavel.

"What do you mean no weird couple shit? It has to be convincing!" He argued, leaning forward, his eyebrows raised in that way that said he thought you were being ridiculous, and the motion brought his shoulder pressing lightly against yours again, the warmth of it seeping through the fabric of your jacket.

"Yeah—but there are certain things we can do to make it convincing that doesn't involve doing weird stuff!" You shot back, and you could hear how unconvincing your own argument sounded, the vagueness of "weird stuff" hanging in the air between you like a question mark.

He raised his brow, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in that particular way that meant he was about to challenge you and he was already enjoying it. "Define weird for me then."

You did. No matching anything, no matching outfits, no matching phone cases, no matching profile pictures like those couples who treated their social media accounts as a joint enterprise. No pet names — absolutely no "babe" or "baby" or "honey" or any of those saccharine, tooth-rotting terms of endearment that real couples used like breathing. No holding hands unnecessarily, no leaning into each other for photos, no excessive physical contact beyond what was strictly required to sell the illusion. The works. You laid it all out like a lawyer presenting terms, and that only earned you another argument from Jay, who countered every single point with the kind of rhetorical precision that made you suspect he'd been on the debate team in high school. No matching? Then how would people know we're together? No pet names? What do you want me to call you in public, "my esteemed colleague"? No hand-holding? Then what do we do when someone's watching, stand six feet apart like we're at a COVID checkpoint?

You must admit, arguing with Jay was funny. Not frustrating-funny, not the kind of funny that makes you want to throw something. Actually, genuinely funny, the kind that makes your cheeks hurt from trying not to smile. He simply wouldn't back down on his argument, even if you'd already found five different loopholes in his logic, he'd manage to find another loophole to swing past through, pivoting and redirecting with the nimbleness of someone who was used to getting his way but was having too much fun trying to get it to just give up. His eyes would light up when he thought he'd cornered you, and then they'd narrow playfully when you'd slip out of his trap, and the whole thing felt less like a negotiation and more like a game, a game where nobody was keeping score and the point wasn't winning but just the pleasure of playing. You don't even remember where the debate had ended, it just started with you taking a potato wedge, he took a bite from his eggs and bacon, and eventually you both just started eating, the arguments dissolving into the rhythm of the meal, forks and voices rising and falling in alternating turns until the conversation had drifted so far from its original shore that you couldn't even see the starting point anymore. It strayed off somewhere, from favorite childhood memories (his involved a summer in his grandparents' countryside home, catching dragonflies by the creek; yours involved the single year your town had a carnival and you'd won a goldfish that lived for three miraculous days) to a professor Jay absolutely despised (a man whose grading system seemed to operate on spite and a coin flip) to a weird urban legend that had been circulating in the university since its foundation (something about a ghost in the old humanities building who only appeared during finals week, which, honestly, made sense because who wouldn't be haunted by the ghost of failed exams). And through all of it, you were aware, vaguely, persistently, like a low hum in the background, of how close he was. The heat of his arm behind you. The way his knee would occasionally brush against yours under the table and neither of you moved away. The way he'd turn toward you when he laughed and his shoulder would press into yours and it felt like something you didn't have a name for, something you weren't supposed to be cataloguing.

You thought you were done. Both of you were done, your plates were empty, the milkshake was nothing but residue and melting ice, the conversation had reached that natural lull that signaled it was time to go, time to head back to the dorms, time to put this strange, unexpectedly pleasant evening to bed. You were reaching for your bag when an unusually large banana split arrived at the table, a towering monument of ice cream and fruit and whipped cream and chocolate sauce, served in one of those long, boat-shaped glass dishes that seemed designed to be shared. It came with two spoons, placed neatly on either side, a quiet invitation. Jay took one spoon for himself, offered the other one to you, handle-first, and told you to eat.

You opened your mouth to talk more, to say you were full, to say you couldn't possibly, to deploy any of the dozen polite refusals you kept on standby for moments like this. He said he couldn't finish it alone, which was probably true, the thing was obscene, a three-scoop sundae with enough toppings to feed a small party, and you argued you were full, which was also true, your stomach was at capacity and your cheeseburger was sitting like a contented stone in your abdomen. And he just — shut you up. Reached over, took the spoon right out of your hand, your fingers stuttering on the cold metal as he plucked it away, took a scoop of the vanilla ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles, and shoved it in your mouth. Just like that. No warning, no ceremony, just the cold press of metal against your lips and then the sweetness flooding your tongue, vanilla and chocolate and the crunch of sprinkles, so sudden and so unexpected that you made a small sound of surprise, something between a yelp and a laugh, and your eyes went wide and Jay was grinning at you, grinning like he'd just won a prize, grinning like this was the most fun he'd had all week, and you couldn't be mad, you couldn't even pretend to be mad, because the ice cream was good and his smile was ridiculous and somehow, impossibly, this was your life now.

You both bickered even more after that, but this time, laughing and giggling, the kind of laughing that's hard to do with a mouth full of ice cream, the kind that makes you snort and almost choke and reach for a napkin while the other person just laughs harder at your suffering. The banana split was a mess within minutes, the neat architecture of scoops and toppings collapsing into a delicious, chaotic swirl as you both dug in from opposite ends, occasionally fighting over the same cherry, occasionally stealing the best bite from the other's side of the dish with zero remorse. The head chef, all the way from the kitchen, poked his head through the service window and was smiling at you both, this warm, knowing smile, the kind that said he'd seen a thousand couples share a banana split and knew exactly what he was looking at, even if you didn't.

Yet.

By the sixth week, that's when things got absolutely insane.

For the third week, you'd walk with Jay from one class to the other, not deliberately, not in some rehearsed couple-y way, just naturally, the way two people do when their schedules happen to overlap and the route to the next building is the same. Except it wasn't just the same route, because you'd find yourself slightly altering your path to match his, and he'd slow his pace without mentioning it, and somewhere between the science building and the humanities wing, your strides had synchronized without either of you acknowledging it. Totally not disappearing from your friends and the next time they'd see you was with Jay, walking beside him, your shoulder almost level with his, laughing at something he'd said about the professor's tie, while your friends stared from across the courtyard like you'd grown a second head.

Of course, some people caught wind of it and you'd heard some allegations being thrown at the both of you, whispers in the hallways, the kind that traveled fast and loose through a campus where everyone's business was everyone's entertainment. But since walking with someone from the opposite gender is completely normal, a lot of people brushed it off as the two of you being friends. Study buddies. Classmates who happened to share the same route. Nothing to write home about.

For the fourth week, a group of guys from the basketball team saw you and Jay studying together in the library. Of course, Jay wanted to get to know you more — more to the point he'd at least have something to say about you if someone asked, something beyond "she's in my class" or "we share a course," something that sounded like what a real boyfriend would know. Your favorite coffee order. The class you hated most. The way you tapped your pen against your notebook when you were thinking. He'd ask questions casually, sprinkled between textbook chapters, and you'd answer just as casually, and somewhere in the middle of explaining why you couldn't stand the smell of peppermint, you'd realize you'd been talking for an hour and neither of you had turned a page. You let him in, gradually, and he let you in too, small facts at first, then bigger ones, the kind of disclosures that built a portrait of a person stroke by stroke. Occasionally, he'd drag you back into the secluded study spaces if you mentioned, in passing, that the library was too noisy, "come on, I know a spot," he'd say, and you'd follow him down the familiar hallway to the same cash-only rooms where this whole thing started, except now the door stayed unlocked, the envelope nowhere in sight, and it just felt like two people who wanted to hear each other without the static of the world layered on top. The basketball guys obviously didn't care — one of them nodded at Jay on the way out, that was the extent of it. But the people at the tables nearby did, their heads turning as you disappeared behind a closed door. Both of you didn't really care.

For the fifth week, a professor that absolutely adored you both for being incredibly attentive in her class, she'd called you two her "favorite students" more than once, half-joking and half-completely serious, passed by the both of you when she was going to another professor's office to leave something, and both of you were heading back to the main space. As always, Jay picked you up from the lab, he was carrying your bag slung over one shoulder and a couple binders you'd also brought to the lab because you didn't have the time to run back to the dorms and leave them since your class from before had ended a little bit later. So you'd shown up to the lab with your bag, your binders, and your slightly breathless "I'm here, sorry," and Jay had shown up at 6:15 like clockwork and taken all of it from you without asking, the bag and the binders tucked against him like they weighed nothing, leaving you empty-handed and oddly weightless as you walked beside him through the corridor.

She saw you both, both of you saw her, both of you joyfully greeted her, a warm, simultaneous "hi, Professor!" that came out so in unison it was almost comedic, and she greeted you both back, her eyes flicking from you to Jay to your bag on his shoulder to the easy, close way you were walking, and she plastered a knowing smile on her lips, deliberate and impossibly smug, and said "both of you look good together" then walked off, her heels clicking down the hallway like a punctuation mark.

You laughed afterwards, short and bright and slightly too quick, because what else could you do? The knot in your stomach had pulled tighter and you didn't know what to do with that either.

By the sixth week, you were just eating lunch with your friends at the cafeteria. Yes, the public cafeteria filled with a bunch of people from different courses and different years, all mushed into one sprawling, echoing space — the kind of scene that felt like it belonged in a movie's wide shot, hundreds of bodies and trays and conversations layered into a wall of ambient noise. It wasn't cramped, it was huge even, but it was awkward with the amount of people present in the room, every table occupied, every seat filled, the kind of crowded that made you feel visible whether you wanted to be or not.

You were eating with your friends, mid-bite into your rice, explaining to them for the ninth time the step-by-step procedure for this one assignment, "no, you add the reagent after, not before, I swear I've said this eight times already,” when a hand just lightly tapped your shoulder. Just a tap, brief and warm, the kind of touch that was gentle enough to be a question rather than a demand.

You looked back, and oh my god, it was Jay. He was standing behind you with a bouquet of flowers, your favorite flowers rather — yellow and white lilies, the ones you'd mentioned once, just once, in passing, during one of those library study sessions weeks ago, a throwaway line about how your grandmother used to grow them in her garden and you'd always thought they were the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen. And he'd actually remembered, because here they were — yellow and white lilies, absolutely gorgeous, wrapped in craft paper and tied with a simple twine bow, the petals soft and slightly open. The whole function stopped what they were doing. You heard a fork drop in the distance, the clatter of metal on tile sharp and cartoonish. You heard a camera click from somewhere to your left. You heard the hushed murmurs of those nearby, a wave of whispers rippling outward from your table like the surface of a pond after a stone.

"What the hell is this?" you asked, but your voice came out steadier than your heart, which was doing backflips, literal backflips, acrobatics you didn't know it was capable of. This was the first time you'd ever received a bouquet of flowers from anyone, not from your ex, not from a friend, not from no one, let alone from the campus heartthrob himself, standing behind you in a crowded cafeteria on a regular weekday like this was something people just did.

"Who else would it be for aside from my absolutely lovely and gorgeous girlfriend?" he said, smiling, not smirking, not performing, just smiling, warm and bright and so unreasonably genuine that it made something behind your ribs stutter.

Fuck, even about a month later and the word "girlfriend" still made a knot in your stomach tighten, still sent that same small electric pulse through your system, still made you feel like the ground had shifted a fraction of an inch under your feet. He said it loud enough for everybody to hear it, loud enough for the tables nearby, for the camera that had clicked, for every pair of ears in this room that had been waiting for confirmation of whatever rumor they'd been spinning for weeks.

You accepted the bouquet, your fingers closing around the craft paper, the stems cool and slightly damp against your palm, and said thank you, and your voice was softer than you meant it to be, softer than the moment called for, because the lilies smelled like your grandmother's garden and you weren't prepared for that particular wave of nostalgia to crash into you in the middle of the cafeteria. He crouched down to meet you at eye-level, his face close to yours, close enough that you could see the way his eyes softened when he looked at you, and he whispered something to you, "you're doing great, by the way,” so quiet that only you could hear it, his breath warm against your ear, and then he pressed a feather-light kiss to your cheek. Just a brush, just a ghost of contact, his lips landing somewhere below your cheekbone and above your jaw, barely a second of touch, but it burned, a warm bloom spreading from the point of contact across your face, down your neck, and into your chest like a drop of red food coloring in a glass of water. You could feel yourself getting red, could feel the heat climbing your skin. After the whole ordeal, he just simply walked away — straightened up, gave you one last look, that same easy smile, and walked back toward the exit like he hadn't just detonated a small bomb in the middle of the lunch rush. You turned back to your friends like it was nothing, setting the bouquet down beside you on the bench, the lilies resting against your thigh.

Your friends were in absolute disbelief.

"Girl, what the fuck?! You have to fill us in! How did you pull the Park Jongseong?!" a friend asked, leaning across the table, her eyes wide, her voice climbing into a register that was part shriek and part interrogation.

"Even better, how did he pull you," another squealed in excitement, grabbing your arm, bouncing in her seat, the kind of giddy that was infectious even when you were trying very hard to be stoic.

None of them knew you were getting paid to do this though.

That same evening, in your dorm, the lights off except for the small lamp on your desk, you snapped a photo of the flowers, you'd found a cup large enough to hold them, filled it with water from the hallway fountain, and set them on your desk like a tiny, temporary garden. The photo came out warm, the lamplight catching the curve of the white petals, the yellow centers glowing like small suns. You sent it to Jay.

You [10:04 PM]: one image attached

You [10:04 PM]: thank you so much for the flowers wtf 🥹 i've never received a bouquet from anyone before

You [10:04 PM]: lilies are my absolute favorite oh my goodness

He replied almost instantly — the read receipt and the response arriving so close together it was like he'd been waiting.

Jongseong [10:04 PM]: you're always welcome ☺️

Jongseong [10:04 PM]: no thank you for the kiss?

Right, the kiss. The feather-light, cheek-grazing, face-reddening, cafeteria-witnessed kiss. The most physical you'd both agreed to was holding hands, or at least around that point, the boundary lines drawn during that diner conversation, the ones you'd insisted on, the ones he'd argued about, the ones you'd both silently been adjusting week by week without ever formally revising the contract. The kiss was uncalled for. The kiss was not part of the agreement.

You [10:04 PM]: dude hell no, we did not agree to that point 😹

Three dots. Appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again, like he was typing and deleting and typing and deleting, wrestling with the response like it was a decision that mattered.

Jongseong [10:05 PM]: mmmm

Jongseong [10:05 PM]: sure, but it did make us look convincing, right?

It definitely did. The whispers after he left, the stares, the camera click — convincing didn't even begin to cover it. The whole cafeteria had swallowed it whole, no questions asked.

Damn you, Park Jongseong.

The cafeteria occurrence didn't need a whole day for the entire university to figure it out.

By that evening, it was everywhere, the campus confessions page, the group chats, the study group threads, the comment sections of Jay's Instagram posts from three months ago that had nothing to do with you but suddenly had people tagging your handle underneath them. Literally everybody figured it out, and a lot of people were enthusiastic about the whole thing, the kind of enthusiastic that manifested as heart emojis in your DMs, strangers smiling at you in the hallway, and your lab students suddenly treating you with a reverence that had nothing to do with your teaching ability and everything to do with who you were allegedly sleeping with.

But of course, there were some who were incredibly salty about it. A few bad words directed to you here and there, muttered under breaths as you passed, the kind of venom that was just quiet enough to be deniable if you confronted it. Salty social media notes that were so painfully directed to you that it was almost comedic, the kind of anonymous posts that said things like "some people will do anything for attention" and "weird how the most popular guy on campus suddenly has a girlfriend nobody's ever heard of,” vague enough to maintain plausible deniability, specific enough that you could feel the crosshairs on your back. The whole package. But you couldn't care less. Imagine going crazy over a man who's "taken" but he's technically single? The irony wasn't lost on you. You were being paid to hold his hand, and people were tearing themselves apart over it. The absurdity of it was almost enough to make you laugh out loud in the middle of the hallway, but you didn't, because you had a reputation to maintain — however fabricated it was.

The word spread like wildfire, until it eventually reached Jay's parents. Yeah, he told you that personally, called you on a Wednesday night, his voice tense but not panicked, more like someone bracing for impact rather than already in the crash. Jay's parents were powerful people, powerful as in they had every single kind of connection to the school — administrators, board members, donors whose names were etched into the marble plaques on the walls of the newest buildings. The kind of people who could make a phone call and change a curriculum, who could lean on a dean's decision with nothing more than a raised eyebrow at a dinner function.

His mom had heard through the wife of a trustee, who'd heard through her daughter, who'd heard through the campus grapevine, which meant the news had traveled from students to parents in less than forty-eight hours. Jay had told them it was true, that he was seeing someone, that it was you, that it was serious. And they'd wanted to meet you. He'd managed to delay it somehow, told you not to worry about it yet, that he'd figure out the timing. You'd nodded, said okay, and pushed it to the back of your mind where it sat like a box you didn't want to open.

Those seconds turned into minutes, then minutes into days, then days to weeks, then weeks into months.

Then somewhere in the blur of all that time, somewhere between the walking, the studying, the cafeteria lunches, the quiet drives, and the late-night texts, you fell in love with him. Shit, you didn't even notice it happening. That was the thing. It wasn't a moment, wasn't a lightning strike, wasn't a cinematic realization set to swelling strings. It was slow, quiet, and insidious, the way morning light creeps across a room until you suddenly realize you can see everything clearly. It happened in the margins. In the spaces between the fake and the real, in the moments that weren't part of the performance, in the details that no contract could account for. By the time you recognized it for what it was, by the time you could put a name to the warmth that had taken up permanent residence in your chest, it was already too late, and you'd been living with it for so long that it felt less like a revelation and more like an admission of something you'd always known.

It was in the polaroid. The one in Jay's car. You'd noticed it one evening when he was driving you back from the diner, the second time you'd gone, or maybe the third, the visits had started blurring together into a single, warm continuum. The car had stopped at a red light, and you'd glanced at the dashboard, and there it was, tucked into the corner of the visor, held in place by the clip, a small polaroid photo of the two of you. You and Jay. In the photo, you were laughing, mouth open, eyes crinkled, mid-sentence or mid-laugh, caught in that unguarded space between expressions where you looked the most like yourself. And Jay was looking at you. Not at the camera, not smiling for the lens — looking at you, his head slightly tilted, a soft, almost wondering expression on his face, the kind of look that made your breath catch even through the distortion of polaroid film and faded light. When the hell did he even take this? No, when has someone taken this? You didn't remember a camera, didn't remember posing, didn't remember anything except the warmth of whatever moment it had captured.

"Is that us?" you'd asked, reaching for it.

Jay's hand had come up quickly, not roughly, but quickly, and gently guided your hand away, his fingers wrapping loosely around your wrist for just a second. "Don't touch, the lighting's perfect right there."

"You have a photo of us in your car," you said, and you were teasing but your voice came out strange, softer than you intended, with a wobble you couldn't quite control.

"Of course I do. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn't?" He'd said it lightly, easily, his eyes on the road, eventually the light turned green, and he drove off, the polaroid stayed where it was, and you spent the rest of the ride staring at it from the corner of your eye, this small, square proof that somewhere along the way, a moment between you had been important enough to preserve.

It was in the condominium. The first time Jay had suggested you study at his place instead of the library, you'd hesitated. His place, as in the off-campus condominium his parents had bought for him, the one you'd heard about in passing from people who talked about Jay's lifestyle the way people talked about celebrity real estate. But the dorms were unbearable that week — to your right, the person in the next room wouldn't stop watching anime at full volume, the theme songs bleeding through the wall in an endless, tinny loop of Japanese pop that drilled into your skull every time you tried to focus on a paragraph. To your left, someone was constantly jamming — guitar riffs, the same four chords over and over, the kind of repetitive, enthusiastic mediocrity that made you want to open your window and throw your textbook into the quad. You'd mentioned it to Jay offhandedly, just venting, the way you'd mention bad weather, "I can't focus, my neighbors are insane,” and he'd said, simply, "Come to mine. It's quiet." You'd said no, that's too much, and he'd said, "It's literally just a place to study, Y/N, I'm not inviting you to a masquerade ball," you'd laughed despite yourself, and an hour later you were standing in the lobby of his condominium complex, looking around like you'd walked into the wrong building.

Because it looked and felt exactly like a hotel. The lobby had high ceilings and polished marble floors and a front desk with someone who actually greeted you by name. The elevator had more buttons than your dorm had floors, and the hallway to his unit was lined with expensive wood paneling and soft ambient lighting and the kind of silence that felt like a luxury. His unit itself was definitely something. It was everything you weren't used to. Hardwood floors that gleamed. Floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the city skyline. A kitchen with marble countertops and appliances that looked like they'd never been touched. Bookshelves made of dark, rich wood, actual wood, the kind that smelled like forests and money, stocked with novels, vinyl records, and a small collection of framed photos you didn't let yourself look at too closely. It was warm though, not sterile, not showroom-perfect, but lived-in in a way that surprised you. A throw blanket draped over the couch. A mug left on the counter from that morning's coffee. Sheet music scattered across the dining table, handwritten, his handwriting, notes and chords in pencil and pen. It smelled exactly like him, that same woody, clean cologne from the diner, but also coffee, detergent, and something underneath that was just so him, a scent you'd started associating with safety without realizing when.

You studied at his dining table. He studied on the couch. For the first hour, you worked in comfortable silence, the only sound was the scratch of your pen and the soft turn of his pages. Then he'd get up to refill his water, pause by your chair, lean down to read over your shoulder, and make some comment about your handwriting, "is that an 'a' or a tiny drawing of a fish?" and you'd swat at him and he'd dodge, grinning, and retreat back to the couch. This became the routine. You'd show up with your bag and your binders, he'd already have a drink waiting for you on the table, iced tea, the way you liked it, no sugar, extra ice, a detail he'd clocked without being told, and you'd study, and you'd bicker, and sometimes you'd order food and eat cross-legged on his living room floor with the TV on low, and sometimes he'd play something on his guitar. You'd listen from the table with your chin in your hand, your pen still, and your heart doing that thing it did whenever music came out of his hands, like the sound was traveling directly from the strings to your chest without bothering to go through your ears first.

It was in the jacket. During Jay's shows with his band, the university events, the seasonal showcases, the occasional gig at a bar off-campus that served overpriced drinks and undercooked nachos, you started showing up. Not every time, not at first, but enough that the people in the crowd began to recognize you as that girl, the one standing near the side of the stage with her hands in her pockets, watching the lead guitarist with an expression she couldn't quite control. And you wore his jacket. It started because the venue was cold, that was the practical reason, the one you told yourself, the bar had aggressive air conditioning and you'd worn a thin shirt and Jay had shrugged off his jacket without asking and draped it over your shoulders mid-conversation, the leather still warm from his body, the lining soft against the back of your neck. But then you kept wearing it. To every show. It was oversized on you, the sleeves falling past your wrists, the collar swallowing your shoulders, and it smelled like him. When you wrapped yourself in it, standing in the crowd with the bass vibrating through your ribs and the stage lights washing everything in amber and blue, you felt like you were wearing an embrace. Every single time he'd find you in the crowd mid-song, his eyes scanning the faces until they landed on yours, and he'd smile. Not the performance smile, not the heartthrob smile, not the smile he used for the audience. A different one, just for you.

It was in the food. Jay showing up to your dorm with takeout bags in his hands became so regular that your roommate stopped asking questions and started just setting an extra place at the desk. He'd knock, two quick taps, your rhythm, and you'd open the door, and he'd hold up the bag like a trophy and say something like "you skipped lunch again, didn't you" or "don't argue, I already bought it" or, once, memorably, "I got the spicy one because you lied last time about being able to handle mild." He'd sit on your bed, your narrow, creaky dorm bed that was approximately one-third the size of his king at the condo, and you'd sit cross-legged across from him, and you'd eat and talk and laugh. He'd tell you about band practice or something his mom texted or a song he was trying to learn, and you'd tell him about your shift or a grade you were stressed about or the weird noise the pipes in the hallway were making at 2 AM, then the food would get cold because you'd forget to eat while you were talking, and then he'd notice and say "eat your food" and you'd say "you eat your food" and he'd pick up a piece of whatever and hold it in front of your mouth until you took it, you'd both laugh, then the knot in your stomach would tighten, and you'd think: this isn't fake. This can't be fake. Nothing about this feels fake.

And it was in the words. Those two damn words. Whenever you were in public, walking across campus, leaving a building, saying goodbye at the car, parting ways at the cafeteria, Jay would look at you with that easy, warm expression and say, "Love you." Not "I love you." Just "love you." Two words, dropped casually, breezily, like they weighed nothing. But there was never an "I." Never the subject, never the declaration, never the full sentence that would turn it from a fragment into a statement. Just "love you,” light, effortless, and always accompanied by a smile or a wave or the brush of his hand against yours, and every time he said it, you felt the words land somewhere deep in your chest and settle there — warm, confusing, and impossible to parse. You told yourself it was part of the act. Convincing. Consistent. A boyfriend thing to say. But the absence of the "I" nagged at you, not because you needed it, but because its absence felt deliberate, like he was holding something back. "Love you" was a door he could walk through and close behind him and "I love you" was a door that didn't have a handle on the other side. You didn't ask about it. You were afraid of the answer. You were more afraid that there was no answer at all, that it was just habit, just performance, just two words that meant exactly as much as the envelope of cash they were attached to.

Months. Eleven months. You'd been fake-dating Jay for almost a year, and somewhere along the way, the fake had started flaking off like old paint, and what was underneath was something you didn't have the courage to name, something that felt too big for the arrangement you'd made, something that made you lie awake at night staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars your roommate had stuck on the ceiling freshman year and thinking fuck, fuck, fuck in a quiet, desperate loop. Because you knew that this had an expiration date, that one day Jay would sit you down and say it's over, he was free, his parents had backed off, and both of you could go back to the way things were. Two people who happened to share a classroom and nothing else. And you'd say yes, of course, sure, sounds good, and you'd smile.

You'd take whatever was left of the envelope money and you'd go back to your life and he'd go back to his. The polaroid would stay in his car, the jacket would go back in his closet, the lilies would wilt on your desk, the word "girlfriend" would stop making your stomach twist, and you'd be fine. You'd be fine. You'd absolutely, definitely, completely be fine.

You were at the convenience store near campus — the one that stayed open past midnight, sold rice balls and instant ramen, and the kind of cheap coffee that tasted a lot like regret but kept you awake during exam week. It was a Thursday, or maybe a Friday, the days had started running together, your brain fuzzy from a long shift at the lab and a longer afternoon of studying and the kind of bone-deep tiredness that made the lights of the store feel both too bright and strangely soothing. You were standing in the snack aisle, holding two different brands of shrimp chips and trying to decide which one was less of a mistake, when your phone buzzed in your pocket.

You pulled it out. The screen glowed.

Jongseong [11:47 PM]: come home with me next weekend

Jongseong [11:47 PM]: i'll introduce you to my parents :)

You stared at the screen. The shrimp chips hung limp in your other hand. The words on your phone sat there, stark and undeniable, and the knot in your stomach, the one that had been tightening for eleven months, the one you'd been pretending wasn't there, the one that felt exactly like love, pulled so tight you thought it might snap.

Jongseong [11:47 PM]: sound good?

You didn't type back. Not yet.

Shit, you were so, so damn screwed.

The drive was forty-five minutes of your heart attempting to exit your body through your throat. Jay's car hummed along the highway, city lights smearing past the windows, and you sat in the passenger seat with your hands folded in your lap and your pulse visible in your wrists.

You'd spent the entire morning getting ready, not for them, you told yourself, for you, because if you were going to walk into the Park family estate, you were going to walk in looking the part. Black kitten heels that clicked when you walked. A black satin maxi skirt that moved like water around your ankles. A white turtleneck top, it was baggy, the sleeves wide and draped, ending just below the elbow, the kind of silhouette that managed to look effortless and intentional at the same time. Gold jewelry, because your grandmother always said gold warmed the skin and you believed her. A gold bangle on your right wrist that caught the light every time you moved. Your favorite necklace, a gold chain with a heart locket, and inside that locket, a photograph of your grandmother, the one who'd gifted it to you when you were fourteen, her smile small, proud, and permanent behind the glass, and beside her photo, an empty space where a second picture could go, a blank rectangle of possibility you'd never filled. Gold teardrop earrings that swayed when you turned your head. Your hair was done out, wavy at the ends, falling over your shoulders the way you'd spent forty minutes and two YouTube tutorials perfecting.

When Jay had arrived at your dorm to pick you up, he'd knocked his usual two taps, and you'd opened the door, and he'd — stopped. His hand was still raised from the knock, his mouth slightly open, his eyes traveling from your hair to your earrings to the locket resting against your collarbone to the drape of the top to the sweep of the skirt to the kitten heels, and then back up again, slowly, the way someone reads a letter they weren't expecting. He didn't say anything. He just looked at you, and the silence stretched, and it wasn't the comfortable kind, it was the kind that had weight, the kind that pressed against your skin and made you acutely, almost painfully aware of every inch of yourself.

"Jay?" you said. "Do I have something on my face? Is my foundation cakey? Did I smudge my—" You touched your cheek, your hand moving instinctively, your confidence deflating by the second under the intensity of his stare.

He blinked. Then he swallowed. Then he said, quietly, almost to himself, "You look—" and stopped again, the word lodged somewhere in his throat, and he exhaled a small breath and ran his hand through his hair and tried again, his voice steadier but still carrying that undercurrent of something stunned and unguarded: "You look really beautiful, Y/N."

The knot in your stomach, yup, the same damn one you'd been ignoring for months, pulled tight enough to hurt.

Now you were here, walking through the front door of the Park family home, and the word home didn't even begin to cover it. The foyer was the size of your entire dorm floor. Dark hardwood, polished to a mirror shine. A double staircase curving upward. A chandelier that probably cost more than your parents' house. Fresh flowers on a console table, lilies, white ones, and you tried not to read into it but your hand drifted to your locket anyway. The house smelled like gardenias, furniture polish, and the kind of quiet that only enormous, expensive spaces could produce.

Dinner was served in a dining room that could have seated twenty and was currently set for four. Candles. Crystal glasses. Plates that probably had a heritage. You sat across from Mrs. Park and beside Jay, and the food was extraordinary and your appetite was nonexistent, but you ate, because that was what you did — you ate what was in front of you and you were grateful for it, because once upon a time there hadn't always been something on the plate.

"So, Y/N," Mr. Park began, his voice deep and measured, carrying the practiced warmth of a man who was accustomed to making people feel comfortable before he decided whether they deserved to stay that way. "Jongseong tells us you're on a full scholarship. That's quite impressive."

"Thank you, sir! It took a lot of work, but I'm grateful every day for the opportunity." You kept your voice steady, your posture straighter than it had ever been, your hands folded in your lap under the table where they wouldn't give you away.

"And what are you studying?"

You told him. He nodded. The conversation moved through the expected checkpoints, your coursework, your lab work, your plans after graduation, and you answered each question cleanly, precisely, the way you answered exam prompts, and Jay beside you was a quiet, steady presence, his hand occasionally brushing your knee under the table in a gesture that was either reassurance or reflex or both.

"She's the top of her class, actually," Jay said, and there was pride in his voice, real pride, not performance, the kind that couldn't be faked, or at least the kind that you chose to believe couldn't be. "She works as a lab instructor on top of her full course load. She's—she's really remarkable."

Mrs. Park smiled. It was a beautiful smile, technically. All the right muscles, all the right timing. But it didn't reach her eyes, which remained cool and assessing, two dark stones set in an otherwise immaculate face. "How lovely," she said. "You must be very dedicated."

"I try to be," you said.

"And your family—where are they based?" Mrs. Park asked, and the question landed softly, the way sharp things do when they're wrapped in silk.

You told her. The small town. The modest background. The distance. You didn't apologize for it, you wouldn't, but you felt the temperature of the room shift, felt it the way you feel a window crack open in winter: a thin, precise draft that changes everything without disturbing a single thing.

"How quaint," Mrs. Park said, and lifted her wine glass to her lips.

The rest of dinner passed in a rhythm that felt like walking across a frozen lake, each step measured, each sound checked for the groan of something giving way beneath you. Mr. Park asked about your interests, your hobbies, your opinions on a recent news story, and you answered, and he nodded. He seemed pleased, genuinely, which was more than you could say for the woman sitting across from you, whose silence had developed its own vocabulary. Every time you spoke, her gaze would drift, just slightly, to the locket at your collarbone, or the modest cut of your top, or the way you held your fork, cataloguing, calculating, placing each observation into a mental file labeled Not Enough.

After dinner, Mr. Park retreated to his study with a cordial "it was wonderful to meet you, Y/N," and Jay went to use the restroom, and Mrs. Park excused herself with a gracious smile and a hand on your shoulder that lingered one beat too long, and you were left standing in the hallway with the echo of crystal and the ghost of gardenias, unsure of what to do with your hands or your body or the evening that still stretched ahead of you.

So you wandered. Not with intention, just with the aimless, curious impulse of someone who'd never been in a house this size and couldn't quite fathom its dimensions. You found the kitchen. Or rather, the kitchen found you, you turned a corner and there it was, vast, gleaming, and staffed by two women in uniform who were clearing the dinner dishes with the quiet efficiency of people who had done this a thousand times and would do it a thousand more.

"Can I help?" you asked, and they looked at you the way you'd been looked at all evening, with surprise, though this time it was a different kind.

"Oh, no, miss, we've got it," the older one said, her hands already moving, stacking plates.

"Please, I insist. I'm not a guest who sits around," you said, and you were already reaching for a dish towel, and something in your voice or your hands or the way you said guest, like it was a costume you were wearing rather than a role you inhabited, made them pause, and then relent, and then smile, and before long you were standing beside them at the counter, wiping down plates and making small talk about the weather, the commute, and how long they'd worked here. It was easy, the easiest you'd felt all night, because you knew this rhythm, this work, this language of hands, tasks, and the quiet solidarity of people who kept things running while other people sat at tables and made decisions about their lives.

You helped sweep the kitchen floor, the broom familiar in your hands, the motion automatic — you'd done this before, after all. Not in a house like this, but in houses, other people's houses, back when you were young and your mom would clean for families in the next town over. You'd go with her on weekends because she couldn't afford a sitter, and you'd help because that was what you did, because your hands were small but they could hold a rag, because every extra pair of hands meant finishing earlier and going home sooner, and because the women who employed your mother sometimes slipped you a few bills at the end of the day. You'd hand them over and your mom would kiss your forehead and say “that's my girl.” The money would then disappear into the jar on top of the refrigerator that was saving for something you never quite reached.

"You're very kind," the younger maid said, watching you work. "Most of Mr. and Mrs. Park's guests don't—they don't really notice us."

"I notice you," you said simply, because you did, because you always had, because you'd been on the other side of that not-noticed wall your whole life and you'd promised yourself that if you ever ended up on this side, you wouldn't be the person who walked past.

After a while, you needed paper towels, you'd spilled a bit of water on the counter and the dish towel was already damp. The younger maid pointed you toward the supply closet down the hall, and you walked, your heels quiet on the hardwood, the hallway long and lit by sconces that cast amber pools on the walls, and you were rounding the corner when you heard your name.

Not your first name. Your full name. Spoken by a voice that was smooth, unhurried, and utterly without malice — which made the words it was producing all the more devastating.

"She's a sweet girl," Mrs. Park was saying, and her voice carried through the gap of a door that wasn't fully closed, a sliver of warm light falling across the hallway floor. "She's pretty, she's smart, she's polite. But she's poor, Jongseong, and we do not want that reputation clinging onto our family."

Your hand stopped on the wall. Your heels stopped on the floor. Your lungs stopped in your chest.

"I don't want other people figuring out that my son married a peasant."

Peasant. The word hit you like a slap — not sharp, not sudden, but deep, a bruise that formed instantly and throbbed with a pain that radiated outward into your jaw, your shoulders, your fingertips. Peasant. As if your grandmother's hands that raised you were dirt. As if your mother's back that bent over other people's floors was a stain. As if the scholarship you'd bled for was a charity case instead of a testimony. Peasant. You pressed your back against the hallway wall and the locket was cool against your collarbone, your grandmother's face was pressed against the glass inside it. You wanted to scream but your throat was made of stone.

"Mom, that's—" Jay's voice, strained, tight, a wire pulled to its limit.

"Jongseong, honey." Mrs. Park again, and her tone shifted — still smooth, still gentle, but with an edge underneath, the edge of someone who believed with absolute certainty that they were doing you a favor by telling you the truth. "I know what's best for you, and Y/N isn't what's best for you."

"Isn't it better that she comes from less?" Jay said, and you could hear him struggling, hear the syllables catching and tumbling, hear the way he was reaching for arguments and coming up with handfuls of air. "She's hard-working, she's independent, she's earned everything she has—like, she didn't just inherit it, she built it. Built it. Isn't that—isn't that worth something?"

"Of course it's worth something, dear. Worth something to her," Mrs. Park said, and the distinction was precisely devastating. "Worth something to the life she comes from. But this family has a legacy, and that legacy requires a partner who can stand beside you at a charity gala and talk to the governor's wife about the yacht club without looking out of place. It requires someone who understands the world you're going to inherit."

"I understand the world I'm going to inherit," Jay said, but his voice was smaller now, less certain, and you realized with a slow, sickening clarity what was happening, he wasn't failing to defend you. He was drowning in something else entirely, something that was rising in him at the same time his mother was tearing you apart, and the two forces were colliding inside his chest and neither one was winning and you could hear it, you could hear the exact moment when the boy who'd handed you an envelope full of cash, begged you to save him realized that you'd saved him in a way money couldn't buy, and he couldn't speak because love, real, involuntary, and irreversible love, doesn't come with talking points.

"Your father agrees with me," Mrs. Park continued, and you heard Mr. Park's voice then, low and conciliatory, the voice of a man who'd already made his decision and was now merely softening its edges: "Jongseong, your mother and I only want what's best for you. You're the sole heir to the company. Everything we've built—the business, the reputation, the standing—all of it goes to you. And the person standing beside you determines how the world sees that legacy. It isn't about Y/N as a person, okay? It's about suitability."

Sole heir. The words registered somewhere beneath the devastation, filed away in the part of your brain that was still functioning, but they landed on numb ground. Of course he was. Of course the only son of this house, this dynasty, this gleaming empire of hardwood and chandeliers. Of course he was the one who'd carry it all. And of course they wanted someone suitable. Someone who knew what a yacht club was. Someone who didn't learn which fork to use by watching other people eat. Someone who wasn't you.

"Y/N is suitable," Jay said, and his voice cracked on the word suitable, cracked the way his voice had cracked in that study room ages ago when he'd said I'm begging, except this time the desperation wasn't about freedom from an arrangement. It was about you, specifically you, and the crack in his voice said everything his sentences couldn't: he loved you, that he'd been too late realizing it, that the realization was so big and so sudden and so consuming that it had stolen the language right out of his mouth, and his mother was still talking and he couldn't find the words to stop her because every word he reached for felt too small for what he was trying to say.

"Jongseong." Mrs. Park's voice again, patient, immovable, the voice of a woman who had been winning arguments in this house since before her son was born. "I'm not saying she's a bad person. I'm saying she's not our person. There's a difference, and you know it. You've known it your whole life."

Silence. The worst kind — the kind that isn't absence of sound but absence of response, the kind that means someone has opened their mouth and found nothing there, the kind that means the person you needed to fight for you is fighting something inside themselves instead and losing.

You pressed your palm flat against the hallway wall. The wallpaper was silk, you noticed. Actual silk. You noticed because noticing small, irrelevant things is what the body does when the large, relevant things are too heavy to carry. Your grandmother's face was warm against your collarbone. The empty space in the locket beside her was cold.

"Y/N, dear? The paper towels?" A voice from behind you, gentle, concerned, the younger maid, standing at the end of the hallway with a questioning tilt of her head, her eyes scanning your face and finding something there that made her expression shift from curiosity to caution. "Are you okay?"

You straightened. You smoothed the front of your skirt. You touched the locket once, quick, reflexive, like pressing a hand to a wound, and you smiled. A small smile. A functional one. The kind that holds a person together long enough to get to the bathroom where they can fall apart in private.

"Yup, coming!" you said, and your voice didn't crack, not even once, and that was the bravest thing you'd ever done.

An hour later, you still felt so sick to your stomach that you were genuinely surprised you hadn't thrown up.

The nausea sat low and persistent, a churning, acidic thing that had nothing to do with the food and everything to do with the word peasant reverberating through your skull on an endless loop, each repetition carving it a little deeper, making it a little more permanent, turning it from something someone had said into something you might always hear. Both of you had left the Park residence about ten minutes ago, you in the passenger seat, Jay behind the wheel, the glow of the dashboard illuminating his jaw, his hands, the side profile you'd memorized without meaning to. And his mother — his mother had the audacity, the sheer, staggering audacity, to pull you into a hug before you left. Right there in the foyer, in front of the gardenias and the chandelier, she'd wrapped her arms around you and pressed her cheek to yours and said, "It was so lovely to meet you, dear," and her perfume was expensive and her embrace was warm and every cell in your body was screaming you called me a peasant, you called me a peasant, you called me a peasant while your arms hung at your sides and your mouth said, "Thank you for having me, Mrs. Park," and you smiled, and she smiled, and the hug lasted exactly the right number of seconds for a woman who meant absolutely none of it. Absolutely disgusting.

You were upset for the whole ride, and you knew it was visible, you could feel it in the weight of your own silence, in the way your answers came out a half-beat too slow, in the faint, persistent tremor in your hands that you hid by keeping them folded in your lap. You were still talking to Jay, still responding to his questions, still maintaining the basic architecture of a conversation, but there was a layer of sadness underneath everything, thin and translucent but unmistakable, the way frost on a window doesn't block the view but changes the color of everything behind it. He'd asked if you had fun. You said yes. He'd asked if you thought dinner went well. You said it went fine. He'd asked if his mom was nice to you. You said she was very hospitable. Each answer was technically true and emotionally hollow, and the hollowness rang like a bell in the space between you.

Of course, Jay noticed. He noticed within the first three minutes, because Jay noticed everything about you, had been noticing for months, cataloguing your habits and your silences and the specific way your voice changed when you were trying very hard not to feel something, and this voice — this flat, careful, polite voice — was the one you used when you were hurting and refusing to admit it. He tried pushing you to answer why you were upset. Gently at first, "Hey, are you okay? You seem quiet,” and then with more intention, "Seriously, Y/N, talk to me. What's wrong?" and you wouldn't budge. You shook your head, you said nothing, you said you were just tired, you said it'd been a long evening, you said you were fine, and every "I'm fine" was a door you were closing in his face. He kept knocking, you kept closing, and the rhythm of it was making the air in the car thicker, heavier, and harder to breathe.

A few pushes later, rain started pouring. Somewhat heavy rain, the kind that arrived all at once, as if someone had turned a faucet, the sky splitting open and dumping sheets of water across the windshield so thick that the world outside became a blur of headlights, dark asphalt, and the ghostly shapes of trees bending under the weight of it. Predictable, you thought. You'd checked your weather app earlier, back at the dorms when you were still getting ready, and it had said it was going to rain around this hour. You'd even packed a small umbrella in your bag. Funny how the universe couldn't even be original about the timing. Eventually, that was all the conversation in the car was about while it was raining, Jay kept pushing and you just wouldn't give, the back-and-forth wearing down into something jagged and raw, his persistence meeting your silence like water against stone except the stone was starting to crack and the water kept coming and neither of you knew how to stop.

"Y/N, come on, you've been off since we left, just tell me—"

"I'm fine, Jay."

"You're not fine, you haven't been fine all night—"

"I said I'm fine."

"Would you stop saying that? You're clearly not—"

"There's nothing to talk about."

And then, finally the thread snapped. Jay's hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, his jaw clenched, and something broke loose in his chest, something that had been building for miles, and the words came out sharp, frustrated, and louder than he meant them to be, loud enough to cut through the rain drumming against the roof of the car, loud enough to make you flinch:

"Fuck, Y/N, you're acting like we're an actual couple!"

The car went quiet. Even the rain seemed to recede for a second, pulling back just enough to let the silence rush in and fill the space where the sound had been. Then your eyes burned. Just like that, without warning, without permission, the heat surged upward from somewhere deep in your chest, hit the backs of your eyes, your vision blurred, and the dashboard lights smeared into streaks of amber and white, and you couldn't even hold it anymore, couldn't keep the door closed, couldn't pretend the frost on the window wasn't there, and the tears came. Not the quiet, dignified kind. The kind that take everything with them. Your mascara and your eyeliner, the eyeliner you'd spent twenty minutes perfecting, the mascara that was supposed to be waterproof but clearly had not been road-tested against the specific devastation of hearing the boy you love tell you that your feelings were out of bounds, streamed down your cheeks in dark, inky rivers, tracing lines along your jaw, dripping off your chin onto the satin skirt you'd chosen so carefully, and you couldn't stop it, you couldn't even slow it down, you could only sit there in the passenger seat and sob silently, your shoulders barely moving, your mouth pressed shut, the only sound the wet, ragged catch of your breath trying to hold itself together and failing.

Jay just thought you'd gone radio silent, another refusal, another door, another round of the same fight. He glanced over once, briefly, saw you facing the window, and returned his eyes to the road, his jaw still tight, his hands still gripping the wheel, the frustration still hot in his veins. Then he glanced at the rearview mirror. And he saw you. Not the back of your head, your face, reflected in the glass, and the reflection showed mascara-streaked cheeks and red-rimmed eyes and a mouth trembling with the effort of not making a sound, and you were sobbing, silently, completely, the kind of crying that meant the person had decided long ago that their pain wasn't worth hearing and was holding it underwater with both hands. His heart broke. It broke the way glass breaks, suddenly, completely, into a thousand pieces that couldn't be reassembled, that could only be swept up and carried. He pulled over. No warning, no signal, just the car jerking to the right, the tires splashing through the puddle at the edge of the road, the vehicle settling onto the gravel shoulder of some neighborhood street, the houses dark, the streetlights haloed in rain, the world reduced to the sound of water and the ghost of your breathing.

"Y/N—" he started, and he reached over, his hand extending across the center console toward your shoulder, toward your arm, toward any part of you he could hold, because he couldn't think straight while driving and he couldn't think straight now and the only thing his body knew how to do was reach for you. But the moment his fingertips brushed the fabric of your sleeve, you moved, you unbuckled your seatbelt with a sharp click, yanked the door handle, and you were out, the door swinging open and the rain pouring in and you stepping out of the car and into the downpour like it was the only direction left.

You ran. Not far, not fast, your kitten heels slipped on the wet asphalt and you kicked them off without breaking stride, bare feet slapping against the puddles, the rain hitting your shoulders, your hair, your face, mixing with the tears until you couldn't tell which was falling from the sky and which was falling from you. You didn't know where you were going — just away, just forward, just anywhere that wasn't the passenger seat of that car where you'd heard those words.

You're acting like we're an actual couple.

Jay followed. He was out of the car before the door had fully closed behind you, his own door left open, the interior light on, and he was running, actually running, his shoes hitting the pavement, his shirt already soaked through, the rain flattening his hair against his forehead, and he was following you because one time, months ago, when you'd stepped out of your dorm without an umbrella on a cloudy day, your roommate had absentmindedly told him, told Jay, who'd been waiting in the hallway with takeout, that you were prone to sickness. Like, one raindrop and it was absolutely over. One drop and you were congested for a week. One chill and you were bedridden for three days. She'd said it casually, dismissively, the way people mention things that are just facts of life, and Jay had filed it away in the same mental cabinet where he stored your coffee order and your favorite flower and the sound of your laugh, and now you were standing in a downpour in with nothing but your dogs out and he was not about to let you catch your death on some stranger's sidewalk.

"Y/N, stop—please, just stop—"

You didn't stop. You walked faster, arms wrapped around yourself, the rain hammering your back, your skirt heavy with water and clinging to your legs, the gold earrings cold against your neck, the locket pressed to your chest like a shield that wasn't working. He caught up to you anyway, longer legs, less stubbornness, more desperation, and fell into step beside you, and you kept walking, and he kept pace, and the two of you moved down the wet sidewalk like two people who'd lost the map and couldn't agree on which way was home.

"Y/N—"

"I'm fine, Jay."

"You're not fine, you're standing in the rain without shoes—"

"I said I'm fine!"

And then you stopped. Not because you wanted to — because your legs gave out, not from weakness but from the sheer, crushing exhaustion of holding months of love inside a body that wasn't built to contain it. You stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, rain streaming down your face, your bare feet in a puddle, your mascara ruined and your hair ruined and your heart absolutely, irreparably ruined, and you turned to face him, and the dam broke.

"I feel so stupid," you said, and your voice cracked on stupid, cracked wide open, the word splitting into fragments that the rain carried away. "I feel so—god, I'm so stupid, Jay, because I—I heard what your mother and father said about me. I heard it. I was looking for paper towels and the door was open and I—I heard everything." A sob tore through your chest and you pressed your hand over your mouth and it did nothing, the sound still came, muffled and wet and broken. "They called me a peasant. Your mother called me a—she said peasant, Jay, and your dad—suitability, he said it's about—about suitability, and I—"

You were breaking down. Visibly, audibly, completely. The stoic, composed girl who'd walked into the Park residence was gone, and what was left was someone younger, someone rawer, someone who'd been holding herself together with thread, spit, and willpower, had finally run out of all three. Your sentences were stuttering, fragmenting, words tumbling over each other like people trying to escape a burning room.

"And I know—I know this is just—I know we're just—I know it's fake, I know that, I was the one who said no, I was the one who—who said no falling in love shit, I was the one who said no weird couple stuff, I drew the lines, I made the rules, and—" Your breath hitched, a sharp, involuntary gasp that bent you slightly forward, and the rain ran down your face, your shoulders shook, you were crying so hard you could barely form words but you kept going because it was all coming out now, all of it, everything you'd swallowed, buried, and denied for months, and it was messy, ugly, and exactly what the truth always sounds like when it finally gets permission to speak. "But fuck you, Jay! Bullshit—I actually love you. I love you so much it hurts, and I—I don't even recall when it started feeling less like some mutual agreement and more like—more like—"

You couldn't finish. The sob swallowed the rest of the sentence and you stood there, drenched and trembling, your hands balled into fists at your sides, your mascara in ruins, your grandmother's locket pressed cold and heavy against your sternum, and you'd said it, you'd finally said it, and the relief and the terror of it were indistinguishable, two rivers merging into the same flood.

Jay stared at you. Through the rain, through the dark, through the curtain of water that blurred the edges of everything, he stared at you, and the expression on his face was something you'd never seen before, not shock, not pity, not the practiced composure of the campus heartthrob, but something stripped and raw, a boy standing in the rain watching the girl he loved say the words he hadn't been able to find in his parents' study, the words that had been sitting in his throat for weeks, months, maybe since that first evening in the diner when she'd smiled at him with ice cream on her lips and he'd thought oh no.

He stepped closer. One step. Two. Three. Close enough that you could see the rain caught in his eyelashes, close enough that you could see his chest rising and falling with breaths that were faster than they should've been, close enough that you could see his hands shaking. He reached out and pulled you into a hug from behind, his arms wrapping around your shoulders, his chest pressing against your back, his chin dropping to the top of your wet, wavy hair, and the embrace was so sudden, so warm, and so tight that it knocked the remaining breath out of your lungs and a fresh sob out of your throat. You could feel his heart through his soaked shirt, hammering against your spine, and it was racing, racing the way yours was, the same tempo, the same desperation, two drums beating in the same storm.

Then he turned you. Gently, his hands on your shoulders, guiding you until you were facing him, and the rain was between you, on you, and everywhere. Your eyes were red, your face was a mess, and he looked at you the way he'd looked at you in that polaroid in his car, not at the camera, not at the performance, at you, just you, and there was nothing guarded in it, nothing held back, nothing fake.

"And even after all that," he said, his voice low and rough and thick with something that sounded like it had been drowning for months and had finally broken the surface, "you still feel like you're the one who broke the agreement?"

And then he kissed you.

Not a feather-light press. Not a convincing-for-the-crowd peck. Not a contractual obligation on a cafeteria cheek. He kissed you in the rain, on a sidewalk in a neighborhood neither of you knew, with your mascara running, his shirt soaked, your bare feet in a puddle, and his hands cupping your face like you were something precious and terrifyingly impossible to let go of. It was long — longer than any kiss you'd imagined, longer than any kiss in any movie, long enough that the rain had time to trace paths down both your faces and pool where your lips met, and the cold became irrelevant because his mouth was warm and his hands were warm and the whole world was cold and wet and none of it mattered, none of it existed. Nothing existed except the pressure of his lips, the steadiness of his grip, and the way your hands found the front of his shirt and held on the way you'd been wanting to hold on for months, fingers twisting into the wet fabric, pulling him closer, closer, because if this was the only real thing then you were going to make it as real as possible, you were going to press every ounce of everything you'd been carrying into the space between your mouths and hope it was enough.

When you broke apart, slowly, reluctantly, the way people separate when the air they share is more necessary than the air around them, he didn't go far. His forehead rested against yours, his breath warm and uneven on your rain-cold skin, his thumbs brushing the remnants of mascara from your cheeks with a gentleness that made your chest ache in a completely different way than it had been aching all night. Then he pressed a quick kiss to your forehead — a seal, a promise, a full stop on a sentence that had been running for months. Then he took your hand, raised it to his lips, and pressed a soft kiss to your palm, the kind of kiss that wasn't about passion but about tenderness, about treating a part of you that had swept floors, held rags, carried groceries, and typed lab reports as though it was worthy of being kissed.

"Let's head back now to the car," he said quietly, his voice still rough, still raw, but steadier now, anchored.

You looked down at yourself, drenched, barefoot, skirt heavy with water, hair plastered to your neck, and then at him, equally soaked, shirt clinging, shoes squelching, the both of you looking like you'd climbed out of a lake, and you let out a small, watery, almost-laugh. "We're both soaking wet, Jay."

He looked at you, and the corner of his mouth lifted, that same easy, warm, real smile, the one that was only yours, and he said, "It's okay. You're acting like I can't handle some wet ass car seat. It's all good."

You laughed. An actual laugh, small, broken, wet, and still trembling with the aftershocks of everything, but real, and he smiled wider, and he kept your hand in his as he walked you back to the car through the rain, and the car seat did get wet, but it didn't matter at all.

Jay drove you back to his condominium unit. He didn't ask, he just told you. The car was still humming with the aftershocks of everything that had just happened on that sidewalk, the rain still hammering the windshield, your bare feet still cold and your skirt still heavy and the taste of him still faint and electric on your lips, when he glanced at you and said, simply, "You're staying at mine tonight." Not a question. Not an offer. A statement, delivered with the same quiet certainty he used when he told you to order what you actually wanted at the diner, the same certainty he used when he picked up your bag without asking, the same certainty that had been steadily, silently eroding every wall you'd built since the day you'd said deal in that study room.

"Jay, I—"

"You're wet. You're barefoot. Your roommate went home for the weekend, right?" He already knew the answer, you'd mentioned it earlier in the week, in passing, one of those small facts that Jay collected and stored and retrieved at exactly the moment they became relevant. "I'm not letting you walk back to an empty dorm soaking wet in the rain. You'll get sick. End of discussion."

You wanted to argue. Some part of you, the stubborn, self-sufficient part that had raised itself on the principle that you didn't need anyone to take care of you, wanted to say I'm fine, I can handle it, I've handled worse. But that part was small and tired and waterlogged, and the part of you that had just said I love you out loud for the first time was larger and louder and didn't have the energy to pretend anymore. So you nodded, a small, quiet nod, and you pulled your knees up onto the seat, looking out the window and you let him drive you home.

His home. The word didn't feel as foreign as it should have.

The journey up to his unit was funny, in the way that things are funny when they're happening to you and you're too exhausted to feel embarrassed about them yet. The lobby of his condominium was quiet at this hour, late enough that the ambient music had been turned down to a whisper and the marble floors reflected only the warm glow of the recessed lighting and the silence had that particular, hushed quality of spaces that were usually full but were currently holding their breath. You walked in behind Jay, your bare feet leaving wet prints on the polished floor, your ruined satin skirt dripping a small trail behind you like a sad, glamorous snail, your mascara still smeared under your eyes in a way that made you look vaguely like a raccoon who'd had a very bad night. Jay was no better, his shirt was plastered to his torso, his hair was flattened against his forehead in dark, wet spikes, and his shoes made a squelching sound with every step that echoed through the lobby like someone repeatedly stepping on a sponge.

The woman behind the front desk, the same one who'd greeted you with "Welcome back, Mr. Park, and guest" all those months ago, looked up as you both passed. Her eyes traveled from Jay's soaked shirt to your bare feet to the dark mascara tracks on your cheeks to the way Jay's hand was resting on the small of your back, and her expression underwent a very specific, very readable journey: first confusion, then assessment, then a slow, knowing crinkle at the corners of her eyes, and finally a smile, warm, private, the kind of smile people reserve for things they find genuinely endearing. She didn't say anything to you, but as you passed the desk, you heard her mutter under her breath, quiet enough that she probably thought you couldn't hear but you could, you absolutely could: "Lovebirds, how cute." And then a small, fond exhale, the way someone sighs at a movie scene that hits a little too close to home.

Jay didn't hear it. He was already guiding you toward the elevator, his hand still warm against your back even through the wet fabric. But you heard it, and something about it, the casual certainty of it, the way this stranger looked at the two of you, dripping, ruined, and walking through a lobby at midnight, and saw love before she saw mess, made your throat tighten in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

You showered first. Jay handed you a towel and pointed you toward the bathroom and said "take your time, the water pressure's ridiculous" and you stood under the shower for longer than you needed to, letting the hot water undo what the cold rain had done, watching the mascara swirl down the drain in grey and black ribbons, pressing your forehead against the tile and breathing and breathing and breathing. When you turned the water off and reached for the towel, you realized the problem. Your undergarments. Your bra, your underwear, the ones you'd worn under, the ones you'd chosen specifically because they didn't show lines, were wet. Soaking, thoroughly, irreversibly wet, the rain having penetrated every layer you'd been wearing, and you hadn't brought a change of clothes because you'd come to Jay’s house to have dinner with his parents, not to sleep over, not to plan for a rain-soaked confession and a kiss on a stranger's sidewalk and a night that had gone so far off-script that the script was now a distant memory. You wrapped the towel around yourself and cracked the bathroom door open and called out, "Jay?"

He appeared a moment later, still damp, having changed into dry sweats and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up in that way it did when he'd toweled it off without looking in a mirror. "Yeah?"

"I, um. I don't have—my undergarments are wet. Everything's wet. I didn't exactly pack an overnight bag."

He stared at you for a second, then his face did something, a quick flicker of oh followed by that familiar, faint flush that crept along his cheekbones whenever the conversation veered into territory that reminded him you were, in fact, a person with a body, and that that body currently existed on the other side of a towel. He cleared his throat. "Right. Yeah. Of course. Hold on."

He disappeared and came back with his arms full, an oversized grey hoodie, soft and worn from many washes, the kind of hoodie that had lived in his closet long enough to carry the shape of his shoulders; a pair of red plaid boxers, clean, folded, the fabric soft and slightly faded; a pair of thick socks, the kind meant for hardwood floors in winter; and a pair of slippers he handed you with a slightly sheepish expression. "These are a little big. I never really wear them—they were a gift, my aunt bought them thinking I'd use them around the unit but they don't fit right and I keep forgetting to throw them out. They're clean, though. I promise."

You took the pile from him, and the hoodie was warm from being in a drawer near the heating vent, and it smelled like his laundry detergent, that same clean, woody scent that his whole condominium carried, the scent that meant safe before your brain had consciously decided it meant anything at all. You closed the bathroom door, dropped the towel, and put everything on. The hoodie hung past your hips, the sleeves falling well beyond your wrists, the neckline wide enough that it slipped slightly off one shoulder. The boxers sat loose around your waist, the plaid pattern absurd and comfortable. The socks were thick and warm and the slippers were, as promised, a little big, your feet sliding slightly when you walked, and you looked at yourself in the bathroom mirror, mascara-free, hair wet, drowning in a grey hoodie and red plaid boxers that belonged to the boy you loved, who loved you back, and you thought: this is the most myself I've ever looked.

When you opened the bathroom door, the steam followed you out into the hallway. Jay was standing right there, waiting, a towel draped over his shoulder and a smaller one in his hand, the hair towel, you realized, when he gestured for you to come closer.

"Come here," he said, and you did, walking toward him in your oversized slippers, and he guided you to sit on the edge of the couch, and then he stood behind you and began drying your hair with the smaller towel, his hands working the fabric through your damp strands with a gentleness that made your eyes prickle. You'd never had anyone dry your hair before. It was such a small thing, a nothing thing, a functional thing, and yet the intimacy of it was staggering, the careful way his fingers moved through the wet, the way he'd occasionally pause to squeeze a section between the towel and his palm, the way he'd brush a strand away from your neck and his fingertips would graze your skin and send a small, involuntary shiver down your spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

"My eyes still hurt," you whined, pressing the heels of your palms against your closed eyelids, and the whine came out small and childish and genuinely pitiful because they did hurt, you'd cried so hard on that sidewalk that your eyelids were swollen and raw and every blink felt like sandpaper. "They're all puffy and gross."

Jay giggled, a bright, surprised sound, the kind that escaped him before he could catch it, and you could hear the smile in it, the unguarded warmth of it, and you wanted to be annoyed that he was laughing at your suffering but the sound was so genuinely, infectiously happy that you couldn't even muster the indignation.

"They're not gross," he said, still working the towel through your hair, his voice soft with amusement. "You're just having a reaction to being dramatically beautiful in the rain for ten minutes. It's a known side effect."

"Dramatically beautiful?" You lifted your head slightly. "I looked like a swamp creature."

"Mm, a very pretty swamp creature," he corrected, and you could hear the grin, and you groaned and slumped back against his abdomen and he laughed again, and the sound of it traveled through his chest and into your spine and settled there, warm and constant, and you thought: I could live in this sound.

He finished drying your hair after a few more minutes, the dampness reduced to a soft, manageable weight that would air-dry the rest of the way. He gave your shoulder a gentle squeeze. "I'm gonna go wash up. Make yourself comfortable, there's water in the fridge, extra blankets in the closet, and the TV remote is—somewhere under the couch cushions, I always lose it."

You nodded, and he disappeared down the hallway toward the bathroom, and you heard the shower turn on, and then you were alone. The condominium was quiet, that rich, expensive quiet that big spaces produced, the kind that felt like being wrapped in something soft. You sat on the couch for a moment, your knees pulled up to your chest inside the oversized hoodie, the slippers half-off your feet, the towel still draped over your shoulders.

Then you got up. You didn't mean to go looking for him, you were just restless, your body still humming with the residual electricity of the evening, your skin still remembering the rain, the kiss, and his hands on your face, and walking felt like the only thing to do with all that leftover voltage. You padded down the hallway in your too-big slippers, past the kitchen, past the closet with the extra blankets, past the bathroom where the shower was still running, and you found his bedroom.

The door was open. The room was dim, just the lamp on the nightstand, a warm amber glow that made the bed and the bookshelf and the guitar propped in the corner look like they belonged in a painting rather than a real person's life. And there was Jay, seated in the comfortable lounge chair in the corner, the one with the deep cushion and the angled back that faced the window, the one you'd seen him sit in before when he was reading or thinking or absentmindedly strumming chords on his guitar without plugging it in. He was still in his sweats and t-shirt, his own hair damp and finger-combed back, his legs stretched out, his phone abandoned on the armrest, and he looked up when you appeared in the doorway, and the look on his face, open, warm, a little tired, completely yours, made your breath catch.

You walked in. Your slippers made a soft, shuffling sound on the hardwood. You didn't say anything, you didn't know what to say, your voice having apparently used up its entire vocabulary on that sidewalk and now sitting empty and quiet in your throat. You just walked toward him, slowly, your hands finding the front pocket of the hoodie and burying themselves inside it, and you stopped a few feet from the chair, and you looked at him, and he looked at you, and the air in the room felt thick and warm and charged with something neither of you had named yet but both of you could feel pressing against your skin.

Then, without warning, without a word, without a question, without anything except the quiet, certain movement of his hands, Jay reached out and pulled you onto his lap.

It was smooth, the kind of movement that looked effortless but required a specific kind of confidence, a specific kind of certainty that the person being pulled wanted to be there. His hands found your waist inside the hoodie, his fingers closing around the fabric and the warmth underneath, and he drew you forward and down until you were settled across his thighs, your knees on either side of his hips, the hoodie riding up slightly where his hands gripped it, the red plaid boxers hidden beneath the grey fabric. Your hands landed on his shoulders, the only place they could go, and you were close, closer than ever before because this was a different kind of closeness, the kind that wasn't born from desperation or confession but from choice, from the simple, deliberate act of being exactly where you wanted to be.

His hands stayed on your waist. His eyes stayed on yours. The lamp cast shadows across his face, highlighting the slope of his nose and the sharpness of his jaw and the way his pupils had darkened, blown wide, the amber glow reflected in them like small fires. Neither of you spoke. The room was quiet except for the sound of your breathing and his breathing and the distant, low hum of the city beyond the window, and the silence wasn't awkward, heavy, or uncertain — it was full, the way silence is full when it's holding something that words would only diminish.

You sat there, on his lap, in his hoodie, in his boxers, in his slippers that had fallen off your feet somewhere between the doorway and the chair, and his hands were warm through the fabric, and his heart was beating fast against your chest, and the night was still raining outside, and you were exactly where you were supposed to be.

"If there's something horrendous on my face you should tell me and stop staring like that."

The words came out softer than you intended, barely more than a whisper, because the way Jay was looking at you right now made it difficult to breathe properly, let alone speak at full volume. His eyes were dark, not the warm amber-brown they'd been over dinner or the soft, fond shade they'd taken on while drying your hair, but something deeper, something hungrier, the color of burnt honey held over a flame, and they were fixed on you with an intensity that made your pulse stutter and your thighs press instinctively tighter around his hips.

He didn't answer right away. His thumbs, which had been resting idle against your waist, began to move — slow, deliberate strokes along the curve of your hips through the hoodie, his fingers pressing into the fabric just hard enough that you could feel the warmth of each individual fingertip through the worn cotton, and every point of contact lit up like a switch being flipped somewhere beneath your skin.

"There's nothing horrendous on your face," he said finally, and his voice had dropped, lower than you'd ever heard it, a rough, quiet thing that seemed to vibrate through the pads of his fingers and into your bones. "I'm staring because you're in my clothes and it's making me lose my mind."

A startled laugh escaped you, breathy and nervous. "It's just a hoodie—"

"It's not just a hoodie." His grip tightened fractionally, his fingers curling into the fabric at your hips, and the slight, possessive pressure of it sent a sharp thrill skating down your spine. "You're sitting on my lap in my clothes, smelling like me, looking like that, and you're asking me why I'm staring?" He exhaled, a short, almost-laugh that was more breath than sound. "You're killing me."

The laugh that had been building in your throat dissolved into something else, something warmer and less certain, and you became acutely aware of how close his face was to yours, close enough that you could see the faint water droplets still clinging to the ends of his hair, close enough that you could feel the warmth of his exhale ghosting across your chin, close enough that the distance between his mouth and yours had become a question that neither of you had asked yet but both of you were waiting to answer.

You answered it.

It wasn't planned. It wasn't a decision made by the rational, thinking part of your brain. It was gravity, pure and simple, the same force that had pulled you into his lap and pulled you to this condominium and pulled those three words out of your mouth on a rain-soaked sidewalk, your body leaning forward, your fingers tightening on his shoulders, and your mouth finding his with a certainty that surprised you both.

Jay made a sound against your lips, a low, sharp inhale through his nose, and then his hands were sliding from your waist to the small of your back, pressing you forward, pressing you closer, and he was kissing you back with a fervor that made the kiss on the sidewalk feel like a prelude, a rough draft, a sketch compared to this, the final, full-color rendering, all the detail and depth and texture filled in at once. His mouth was warm, sure, and unhurried despite the urgency thrumming beneath it, his lips moving against yours with a precision that suggested he'd been thinking about this exact thing for longer than he'd ever admit, mapping out the pressure, the angle, and the way his lower lip fit between yours, and the deliberateness of it, the care of it, was so fundamentally him that it made something in your chest crack open and spill warmth through your entire body.

Your fingers climbed from his shoulders into his hair, threading through the damp strands, and the sound he made in response, a muted, rough “fuck” breathed against your mouth, sent a jolt of electricity straight down your center. You tugged lightly, experimentally, and his head tilted back. His breath stuttered and his fingers dug into your back through the hoodie hard enough that you knew his fingerprints would be embedded onto your skin, and the thought of that, of wearing his fingerprints beneath his hoodie, made you press into him harder, made the kiss deeper, made your tongue slide against his with a desperation that surprised you.

He responded instantly. One hand left your back and came up to cup the side of your face, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw, tilting your head just slightly, and the new angle made everything sharper, more intense, the slide of his tongue against yours sending sparks skittering down your nerve endings like lit matches dropped on dry kindling. His other hand stayed pressed into the small of your back, keeping you flush against him, and you could feel his heart hammering against your chest, or maybe that was yours, or maybe it was both of them beating in tandem like they'd been doing it forever and were only now acknowledging the rhythm.

You shifted on his lap, adjusting your weight, your knees tightening against the outside of his thighs, and the movement pressed your hips down against his in a way that made you both freeze. The sound that escaped you was small and involuntary, a half-swallowed whimper that vibrated against his lips, and the sound he made was worse, or better, depending on perspective — a low, guttural groan that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest and traveled through his body into yours like a seismic event.

"Don't—" His voice was fractured, barely coherent, his forehead dropping against yours, his breath coming ragged and hot against your swollen lips. "Don't move like that if you're not—fuck—if you're not planning to follow through, because I—"

You moved again. Deliberately this time, not an adjustment but a choice, your hips rolling forward in a slow, deliberate grind that pressed the heat between your thighs against the unmistakable hardness that had developed beneath the fabric of his sweats. The friction, the pressure, the feeling of him solid and insistent against you even through layers of clothing, pulled a moan from your throat that you didn't recognize as your own voice.

"Shit—" Jay's head fell back against the chair, his neck corded, his jaw clenched, his eyes squeezed shut for a single, trembling moment before they opened again and fixed on you with a look so raw, so unguarded, so full of want that it made your stomach clench and your breath come short. His hands slid down from your back to your hips, fingers spread wide, and he held you there, held you against him, and he didn't stop you when you moved again.

The dry grinding started slowly, almost tentatively, your hips finding a rhythm against his that was more instinct than experience, more feeling than technique. The seam of the boxers you were wearing, his boxers, dragged against you in a way that sent sharp, stuttering pulses of pleasure through your core with every movement, and the angle of it, the way his body was positioned beneath you, meant that every roll of your hips pressed you directly against the length of him, hard, thick, and impossible to ignore through the thin cotton of his sweats. You could feel the shape of him, the heat of him, and the knowledge that you were doing that, that you were the reason the campus heartthrob was hard, breathless, and gripping your hips like you were the only solid thing in a spinning room, sent a fresh wave of arousal pooling between your thighs so quickly it almost embarrassed you.

"Jay—" His name came out broken, half-moaned, and you didn't even know what you were asking for, only that the friction wasn't enough anymore, only that the fabric between you was a barrier that your body was increasingly desperate to dissolve.

"I know," he breathed, and his hands flexed on your hips, guiding you, easing you into a slower, deeper grind that made you both gasp. "I know, baby, I know."

Baby. The word hit you like a physical thing, warm and weighted, and the way he said it, rough and reverent, like it had been sitting on his tongue for weeks waiting for permission to come out, made your hips stutter and your fingers tighten in the fabric of his t-shirt and a small, needy sound escape your lips that you couldn't have stopped if you'd tried.

"You feel so good," you whispered, and the admission came easier than it should have, your inhibitions eroded by the haze of sensation and the certainty that the boy beneath you was someone who would catch every vulnerable thing you dropped. "Mmgh, Jay, you feel—god, you feel so big."

A strangled sound escaped him, half-laugh, half-groan, and his hands slid from your hips to your ass, palms covering the curve of you through the hoodie, fingers pressing into the plush softness with a grip that made your breath hitch and your spine arch. "You can't just—fuck—you can't just say things like that to me—"

"It's true," you breathed, rolling your hips again, slower, feeling every inch of him against you, and the words tumbled out without permission, fueled by the way his fingers were kneading your ass through the fabric with a desperation that matched your own. "You're so hard, Jay, I can feel all of you and you're so—"

He kissed you to shut you up, or maybe because he couldn't not kiss you, his mouth crashing into yours with a hunger that made the previous kisses feel like polite suggestions, his tongue sliding against yours with a slick, dirty insistence that made your toes curl and your hips grind down harder and your thoughts dissolve into a warm, wanting blur. His hands were everywhere on your lower half, squeezing, gripping, pulling you against him with each roll of your hips, and the wet sounds of your kissing and the muted creak of the chair beneath you and the broken, shared breathing filled the quiet room like a symphony composed in the key of desperation.

When he pulled back, just enough to breathe, his lips were swollen and wet. His eyes were nearly black, the amber swallowed entirely by the blown-wide pupils, his chest was rising and falling with a heaviness that made you feel powerful and wrecked in equal measure. His right hand stayed on your ass, fingers digging into the flesh hard enough to dimple the fabric, but his left hand moved, traveled from your hip to the front of the hoodie, fingertips tracing up your stomach through the soft cotton, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake, until his hand reached the hem of the hoodie where it bunched at your waist, and his fingers slipped beneath it.

The first touch of his bare fingers against the skin of your stomach made you shiver violently, a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with the way his hand was warm, moving downward with a slowness that was almost cruel. His fingertips traced the line of your waistband, his waistband, the plaid boxers, the fabric you were wearing because everything you owned was soaked through, ruined, and the only thing standing between his hand and the place you needed it most was a thin, faded layer of cotton that he'd bought at a store months ago and never thought would be worn by anyone but himself.

"Can I?" His voice was barely a whisper, rough and low, his forehead pressed against yours, his breath mixing with yours in the small space between your faces. His hand had stilled just above the hem of the boxers, his fingertips resting against the bare skin of your lower belly, and the question was so gentle, so Jay, even now, even with his other hand still gripping your ass, his hardness still pressing against you, and his breathing still ragged with want, he was still asking, still making sure, still putting your comfort above his own desperation, and the tenderness of it made your eyes sting, your heart clench, and your hips can’t forward into his palm in an answer that was more honest than words could ever be.

"Yes," you breathed. "Please, yes."

His hand slipped beneath the waistband.

The first brush of his fingers against you made a sharp, keening sound rip from your throat that you'd never made before, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than your lungs, somewhere primal and wanting and utterly unguarded. Jay groaned in response, a low, broken sound, and his fingers pressed more firmly against the damp fabric, feeling the wetness that had nothing to do with rain, and the heel of his palm ground against you and fuck—

"You're so wet," he breathed against your mouth, and the words were reverent and ragged and almost disbelieving, like he couldn't quite comprehend that he was the cause of this, that the girl on his lap was this affected by him, by his hands and his mouth and the sound of his voice saying baby like it was the only word that mattered. "God, you're so wet for me already and I've barely touched you."

"You've been touching me," you managed, and your voice was unsteady, cracked down the middle by the slow, deliberate circles his fingers were drawing against you through the thin cotton. "You've been—ah—touching me this whole time, your hands on my—on my hips, on my ass, you've been—"

"Been driving you crazy?" he finished, and there was a smile in his voice, that same quiet, knowing confidence that made you want to kiss him and kill him in equal measure, and his fingers chose that moment to hook around the elastic of your underwear and tug it aside, the first touch of his bare fingers against your bare skin made every thought in your head evaporate like mist.

He explored you slowly at first, which was somehow worse than if he'd just plunged in and gotten to it, because his fingertips traced along the slick, swollen edges of you with a meticulous attention that felt like study, like he was memorizing you, learning you, cataloging every fold and every flutter and every place that made your breath catch or your hips jerk or your fingers dig harder into his shoulders. His middle finger slid through your wetness, gathering it, spreading it, and the obscene, slick sound of it combined with the feeling of his finger moving so close to where you needed it most and yet not quite there, not quite inside, was a form of torture so exquisite you almost sobbed.

"Jay, please—"

"Please what?" His voice was silk and gravel, his finger still drawing lazy, maddening patterns along your entrance, dipping just barely inside before retreating, a cruel, tantalizing hint of what was to come. "Use that pretty mouth for me, baby."

"I want—I want your fingers inside me, please, I need—"

He gave you what you wanted.

One finger slid inside, slow and deep and deliberate, and the stretch of it, the intrusion, the feeling of him entering you for the first time in any capacity, made your mouth fall open, your eyes squeeze shut, and a sound escape your throat that was somewhere between a moan and a cry. He was inside you, his finger, just one, but the girth of it, the length, the way it curled slightly as it pressed to the hilt, was enough to make your walls clench around him reflexively and your hips grind down against his hand seeking more, more, because one wasn't enough, not when you could feel how much more he had to give.

"Mmgh, that's it, baby," he groaned against your jaw, his lips brushing the skin there, his breath hot and unsteady. "Clench around me like the good girl you are."

The phrase hit you like a freight train. Good girl. Two words, spoken in that low, rough voice, with his finger inside you and his other hand still gripping your ass like he owned it, and you felt a fresh pulse of wetness coat his finger and your walls clamp down around him so hard that he hissed through his teeth and his own hips bucked up involuntarily beneath you.

"You like that," he observed, and it wasn't a question, and the quiet certainty in his voice, the way he'd clocked exactly what those words did to you and filed it away for future use, made you whine high and needy in the back of your throat. "You like when I tell you how good you're being for me."

"I like—I like everything you do," you gasped, and it was the most honest thing you'd ever said, because his finger was moving inside you now, curling and pressing and finding a spot that made your vision white out at the edges, your thighs tremble against his, and his thumb had found your clit and was drawing tight, devastating circles around it that made coherent thought impossible. "I like—oh god—I like you, I like your hands, I like—"

"Mm, like my fingers inside you?" His voice was filth, pure filth, spoken against the shell of your ear, and the warmth of his breath, the obscenity of the words, and the feeling of a second finger joining the first made your whole body seize and arch and press into his hand with a desperation that bordered on mindless.

Two fingers. The stretch was significant now, the girth of two of his fingers pressing into you, spreading you open, and the fullness of it, the pressure, the way his fingers moved in tandem, curling, thrusting, grinding against the spot inside you that made stars scatter behind your eyelids, was so overwhelmingly good that the sounds you were making weren't even words anymore, just a stream of whimpers and moans and broken syllables that spilled from your lips without your permission or your awareness. Your tongue was out, just slightly, your mouth open, your breathing ragged and wet and audible, and you were riding his hand now, your hips moving of their own accord, grinding down against his fingers, chasing the pleasure, and every roll of your hips pressed your ass into the grip of his other hand, which was squeezing and pulling you apart with a fervor that made you feel desired in a way you'd never felt before, like you were something precious, filthy, and his.

"You're so wet and so tight," he groaned, his fingers pumping into you with a steadiness that contradicted the tremor in his voice, the crack in his composure. "Squeeze me tight, baby, just like that—fuck—just like that, you're doing so good, you feel so fucking good—"

"I feel—you feel—" You couldn't finish the sentence, your brain unable to string together enough words to express the overwhelming, consuming, devastating pleasure of his fingers inside you, his thumb on your clit, his other hand on your ass, and his voice in your ear saying things that would make your past self combust with embarrassment and your present self drip with more arousal onto his already-soaked fingers. "Jay—ugh—Jay, please, I need—I need more, I need you, I need—"

"You need me?" His fingers slowed, just slightly, and his forehead pressed against yours, his eyes finding yours, and the look in them was so intense, so burning, so full of love and lust and something fierce and protective that it stole the air from your lungs. "You need me where, baby? Tell me."

"Inside me," you whispered, and the words came out trembling and true and stripped of every layer of pretense you'd ever worn. "Not your fingers. I need—I need your cock inside me. Please."

Something in Jay's expression fractured. You watched it happen, watched the last thread of his restraint snap like a guitar string pulled too tight, watched his jaw clench and his nostrils flare and his eyes darken to something feral and desperate, and then his fingers withdrew from you, dragging through your wetness, leaving you empty and aching. Both hands came to your hips, gripping hard, steadying you, and he stood up from the chair in one fluid motion, lifting you with him, your legs wrapping around his waist, your arms locking around his neck, and he carried you the four steps to the bed and laid you down on the mattress with a gentleness that was almost incongruous with the hunger in his eyes.

He stood over you for a moment, just looking, his chest heaving, his hair falling across his forehead in damp, messy strands, his sweats tented obscenely, and the visual of him, this boy, this man, who you'd watched from across lecture halls and sat beside in study rooms and fake-dated for months, looking down at you like you were the only thing in the world worth seeing, made you reach for him with both hands, your fingers closing around the hem of his t-shirt and tugging.

"Come here," you said, and your voice was wrecked and breathless.

He came. He stripped his t-shirt over his head in one swift motion and dropped it somewhere — floor, chair, another dimension, you didn't care, couldn't care, because his chest was bare, his abdomen was lean and toned, his skin was glowing warm in the lamplight, and then he was climbing over you, his knees bracketing your hips, his hands on either side of your head, and he was kissing you again, deep and dirty and consuming, his bare chest pressing against the hoodie, and you could feel his heart pounding against yours, or yours against his, or both, both, both.

"Wait," he said against your mouth, and he pulled back just enough to look down at you, at the hoodie, at his hoodie stretched across your body, the fabric that carried his scent and his shape and now you inside of it, and something in his expression went soft and hungry and utterly undone. "You have no idea what you look like right now."

"I look like I'm wearing your clothes—"

"You look like you're mine," he said, and the word came out rough and low and proprietary in a way that should have made your feminist sensibilities bristle but instead made lava flood through your veins and pool molten and insistent between your legs. "You look like you belong to me, and I've never—god—I've never been so horny for anyone the way I am for you right now. The way I've been for you this whole time. Every time you wore my jacket, every time you pulled it around yourself and it swallowed you whole and you looked at me from inside it like you were safe there—I wanted to put you on every flat surface I could find and—"

"Then do it," you interrupted, breathless, bold, your hands sliding down his bare chest, feeling the heat and the firmness and the slight tremor of his muscles beneath your palms. "Stop telling me and show me."

His breath hitched. His eyes searched yours for a single, electric second, and then he was kissing you again, and his hands were on the hoodie, pushing it up, his fingers sliding beneath the fabric and finding your bare waist and climbing higher, higher, until his palms covered your breasts, the feeling of his warm, slightly rough hands cupping you, squeezing gently, his thumbs tracing the swell of you above the cups, made you arch into his touch with a whine that vibrated against his lips.

"Off," he said against your mouth, and it took you a confused moment to realize he was talking about the hoodie, and then his hands were gripping the hem and pulling it up, and you lifted your arms and let him peel it off you, the soft grey fabric sliding over your head and your arms and joining his t-shirt on the floor, and the cool air of the room hit your bare skin for exactly one second before his mouth was on you, his lips pressing to your collarbone, your chest, your breasts, and his hands were everywhere, warm and big and eager, kneading and caressing and exploring the territory they'd been denied for months with a thoroughness that left you gasping and trembling and threading your fingers through his hair and holding on.

"Loved you in the hoodie," he murmured against your sternum, his breath hot and damp, his lips dragging across your skin between words. "Love you out of it, too. Love you every way you come. I want you every way you'll let me have you."

"Have me," you breathed. "All of me. Every—ah—every way."

His hands were on your bare breasts, palming them, cupping them, his thumbs dragging across your nipples with a slow, firm pressure that sent lightning bolts of pleasure shooting straight down your body to the place where you were wet and swollen and desperate and aching, and you were making sounds again. You couldn't stop making sounds, couldn't stop the whimpers and the moans and the small, keening ah, ah, ahs that fell from your lips every time his thumbs circled or his fingers squeezed or his mouth dipped down to press hot, open-mouthed kisses to the curve of your breast. Your back was arched, your hips were grinding against nothing, seeking friction, seeking him, and the desperation of it, the mindlessness of it, would have embarrassed you if you had any capacity for embarrassment left, but you didn't, you'd left it on that sidewalk in the rain along with every wall you'd ever built.

"Jay, please," you gasped, your hands fumbling with the waistband of his sweats, your fingers clumsy and urgent and trembling. "I need you, I need you inside me, I can't—please—"

He pulled back just enough to look at you, and the sight of you, bare from the waist up, your chest heaving, your lips swollen, your eyes glazed with want, wearing nothing but his red plaid boxers, made him exhale shakily and press his forehead against yours and whisper, "You're going to be the death of me, you know that?"

"Then die happy," you managed, and he laughed, even in the middle of this, even with his cock straining against his sweats, his hands on your bare breasts, your fingers in his waistband, and the sound was so warm and so him that it made your heart ache even as your body burned.

He stood, just for a moment, and pushed his sweats and boxers down in one motion, and then he was bare before you, fully bare, and the sight of him, all of him, the lean lines of his hips and the firm planes of his abdomen and his cock, hard and thick and curving slightly upward toward his stomach, the tip flushed and glistening, made your mouth go dry and your breath catch and a single, overwhelmed thought crystallize in the haze of your desire: who knew the campus heartthrob had such a big dick?

You'd imagined, of course. You were only human, and Jay was — well, Jay, and the rumors that circulated through campus gossip were as persistent as they were impossible to verify, and you'd filed them away under "things that were none of your business" even during the weeks when your business and his had become increasingly entangled. But the reality of him, the generous length, the substantial girth, and the way it twitched under your gaze, the tip leaking a bead of moisture that caught the amber lamplight, it exceeded every rumor, every imagined scenario, every late-night thought you'd dismissed as wishful thinking the morning after.

"You're staring," he said, and there was a smile in his voice, that same quiet, confident smile, but there was vulnerability underneath it too, the vulnerability of someone exposing himself, in every sense, to the person whose opinion mattered most.

"I'm appreciating," you corrected, and your voice was hoarse and your eyes were still fixed on him, and you reached out, your fingers wrapping around him, and the sound he made, a sharp, strangled gasp, his hips jerking forward involuntarily into your grip, was the single most intoxicating thing you'd ever heard. "You're—mm, Jay, you're really—you're so—"

"Stop," he breathed, but it wasn't a command, it was a plea, his jaw clenched and his eyes squeezed shut and his hands gripping the edge of the mattress on either side of your hips like he was holding on for dear life. "If you keep talking and touching me like that I'm not going to last long enough to—"

"Then don't make me wait," you whispered, and you released him and reached for him instead, your hands finding his shoulders and pulling him down toward you, and he came willingly, eagerly, his body covering yours, his weight settling between your thighs, his mouth finding yours in a kiss that was gentler than the moment called for, slower, like he was trying to memorize the shape of your lips the same way he'd memorized everything else about you.

He shifted your positions then, his hands on your hips, guiding you, and you understood without being told, he wanted you on top. He settled back against the pillows, his head on the cushioned headboard, his hands on your waist, and he looked up at you with those dark, burning eyes and said, "I want to see you. I want to watch you. I want you to take what you need."

Your heart stuttered. Your hands were trembling as you straddled him, your knees on either side of his hips, the red plaid boxers still loose around your thighs, and you hooked your thumbs under the elastic of both, his boxers and yours, and tugged them down just enough, just far enough, and the cool air hit the slick, swollen heat of you and you shivered. Then you were positioned above him, the tip of his cock pressing against your entrance, and the anticipation of it, the size of it, made your breath come short and your fingers dig into his shoulders.

"Slow," he said, his hands steady on your hips, steadying you, grounding you. "As slow as you need. I've got you."

You sank down.

The first inch made you both gasp, you at the stretch, the overwhelming fullness of him pressing into you, the girth spreading you open wider than his fingers had prepared you for; him at the wet, tight heat of you wrapping around the most sensitive part of him, the clench of your walls drawing a broken, guttural “fuck” from his throat that seemed to come from the soles of his feet. You paused, breathing through it, adjusting, and his hands rubbed slow circles into your hips, his thumbs tracing the crease where your thighs met your hips, so patient even though you could see the strain in his jaw and the tendons in his neck and the way his knuckles were white with the effort of not grabbing you and pulling you down the rest of the way.

"More," you breathed, and you lowered yourself another inch, and another, and the stretch was intense, almost too much, the kind of fullness that bordered on pain and pleasure in equal measure, and your face must have shown it because Jay's hand came up to your face, his thumb brushing your cheekbone, his voice coming out soft and concerned beneath the raw need.

"You okay? We can stop, we can—"

"Don’t stop," you said fiercely, and you dropped your hips the rest of the way, taking all of him, and the sound that ripped from your throat was something between a scream and a moan, loud, broken, and utterly beyond your control, and the sound that echoed from his was its mirror — a raw, shuddering groan that vibrated through his chest and into yours, his head thrown back against the headboard, his fingers digging into your hips hard enough that you knew there would be bruises shaped like his hands tomorrow, and you would press each one in the mirror and remember this moment.

Full. You were so full, impossibly, overwhelmingly full, stretched to your limit around him, and he was big, bigger than you'd even thought from looking, because looking and feeling were two entirely different universes of experience, and the feeling of him inside you, the heat and the hardness and the way your walls clenched and fluttered and tried to accommodate the intrusion, was so much, too much, exactly enough. You stayed still for a moment, both of you breathing, both of you adjusting, both of you existing in the space between anticipation and motion where the world narrows to a single point of connection.

Then you moved.

You lifted your hips, slow, feeling every inch of him sliding against your inner walls, the drag of him exquisite and maddening, and then you sank back down, and the angle pressed him against that spot inside you, that spot, the one his fingers had found earlier, the one that made your eyes roll and your breath stutter and a high, keening whine escape your lips, and the pleasure was so sharp, so blinding, so sudden that your body acted before your brain could intervene. You bounced again, faster, harder, chasing that feeling, and the sound of your bodies meeting, the slick, wet slap of skin against skin, the obscene squelch of him moving inside your wetness, filled the room alongside the symphony of your shared moans.

"Fuck—" Jay's voice was shattered, breathless, his hands gripping your hips but letting you set the pace, letting you ride him, letting you use him for your pleasure, and the sight of you above him, bare and lost in it, your head thrown back, your lips parted, your breasts bouncing with every movement, was unraveling him from the inside out. "You feel so fucking good, you're so—god, you're so tight, you're squeezing me so hard, baby—"

"I can't help it," you gasped, and you couldn't, your walls were clenching around him involuntarily with every thrust, every grind, every time he hit that spot that made your brain short-circuit, and the clenching made him groan and the groaning made you clench harder and the feedback loop of it was driving you both toward an edge that was coming too fast and not fast enough. "You're so—you're so big, Jay, I can feel you so deep, you're hitting—ah—you're hitting right there, right there, don't stop, please don't—"

"I'm not stopping," he growled, and his hands moved from your hips to your breasts, palming them, squeezing them, his thumbs dragging across your nipples with a firm, deliberate pressure that sent shockwaves of pleasure cascading through your body, converging with the pleasure building between your thighs, and the combined sensation was so overwhelming that you barely registered the shift in his posture until his arm was around your neck.

Not choking, never choking, you trusted him with your life and your body and every fragile thing you'd ever held, but holding, his bicep curling around the side of your neck, his forearm resting along your collarbone, his hand coming to cup the opposite shoulder, and the position, the possessiveness of it, the intimacy of it, the way it pressed your body flush against his chest and kept you close and controlled and his, made something wild, needy, and desperate claw its way up from the pit of your stomach and out through your mouth in a long, shuddering whine that you muffled against the side of his neck.

"I've got you," he murmured against your ear, his breath hot and damp, his voice a low, devastating rumble that you felt in your bones, and his hips snapped up to meet yours, and the new angle, the new depth, the new force of him driving into you from below made you sob against his skin. "I've got you, baby, I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere—you feel so good wrapped around me like this, so fucking good, taking me so well—"

"Jay—" His name was a plea and the only word left in your vocabulary, repeated over and over against the warm skin of his neck between wet, open-mouthed kisses and whimpers and the small, helpless sounds that were being fucked out of you with every thrust. "Jay, Jay, Jay—you feel so good, you make me feel so good, I've never—I've never felt like this, you're so deep, you're so—oh god—you're so big, how are you so—fuck—"

"Yeah?" His voice was gravel and fire against your ear, and his arm tightened fractionally around your neck, just enough to make your head spin and your body sing, and his hips pistoned up into you with a rhythm that was losing its steadiness, becoming rougher, more desperate, more animal. "You like how big I am? You like feeling me deep inside this tight little pussy? Squeezing me so good, baby, fuck—you're gonna make me come if you keep making those sounds—"

"What sounds—" you tried to ask, but the question dissolved into a moan so filthy and so loud that you would have been mortified if you had any mortification left, but you didn't, it was all gone, burned away by the heat of him and the grip of him and the relentless, devastating pleasure of him hitting that spot inside you over and over and over until your vision was blurring. Your thighs were trembling, your fingers were clawing at his back, and your sounds — the whimpers, the moans, the broken ah ah ahs, the way your tongue was out and your mouth was open and you were practically drooling with the overwhelming, consuming, ruinous pleasure of it, were filling the room and his ear and his consciousness until there was nothing else in the world but you and him and this.

"Those sounds," he answered, his voice fractured, wrecked, barely recognizable as the composed, collected boy who'd charmed an entire campus without trying. "Those—fuck—those sweet little whines, the way you're moaning my name, the way you can't even—you can't even talk, can you? Too full of me to think, aren't you, baby?"

"Yes—" It came out as a sob, honest and raw, your forehead pressed against his neck, your body bouncing on his cock with a desperation that had abandoned all rhythm and restraint, your hips moving faster, harder, chasing the peak that was building inside you like a wave pulling away from shore, gathering size and force and inevitability. "Yes, I can't—I can't think, you feel too good, you're too —god—you're too big, you're so deep, I'm—Jay, I'm close, I'm so close—"

"Me too," he breathed, and his arm around your neck shifted, his hand moving to the back of your head, his fingers threading through your hair, and he held you against him, your face pressed to the junction of his neck and shoulder, his face pressed to the crown of your head, the way he was holding you like something precious even while his hips were driving into you with an intensity that bordered on savage, made your chest crack open wider than it already was, made the pleasure in your body merge with the love in your heart until they were the same thing, the same overwhelming, consuming, impossible force, and you were crying again, you realized distantly, not from sadness but from fullness, from too much, from the impossible, miraculous reality of being loved, fucked, and held all at once by the same person, by the person you loved, by the person who loved you back.

"Jay—" you whined, high and desperate. Your walls were clenching around him in rapid, involuntary pulses that signaled the approaching edge, and his hips were stuttering, his rhythm falling apart, his breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps against your hair. "Jay, I'm—I'm gonna—"

"Me too, baby, me too," he gasped, and his hand tightened in your hair, and his other arm wrapped around your waist, pressing you impossibly closer, deeper, his cock buried to the hilt inside you and his hips grinding up against you in tight, desperate circles that pressed against your clit with every movement. "Come for me, I've got you, come on my cock, let me feel you—"

And then, just before the wave broke, just before the edge crumbled beneath you, just before your orgasm crashed through you like a storm making landfall, he whispered it.

"I love you."

Oh my god.

Not love you. Not the shorthand version he'd been using for months, the lazy, abbreviated thing that let him say it without really saying it, that kept the I out of it, that kept the confession at arm's length where it was safe and deniable and less terrifying than the full, unedited truth. I love you. With the I. For the first time. The most important word in the sentence, the word that made it a declaration instead of a throwaway, the word that turned it from something you could brush off into something you had to catch and hold and carry with you for the rest of your life, and he said it right there, right then, with his cock inside you and his arms around you and your body on the edge of the most intense pleasure you'd ever felt, and the shock of it, the staggering, breathtaking gift of it, was what pushed you over.

You came with a cry that broke in the middle, his name and a sob tangled together into a sound that was neither and both, and your walls clenched around him in rhythmic, devastating waves that pulled and squeezed and milked him with an intensity that ripped a sound from from his chest that you'd never heard before, raw, loud, unrestrained, his head thrown back, his jaw clenched and his entire body rigid beneath you and inside you and around you, and then he was coming too, his hips jerking up into yours in erratic, desperate thrusts, his cock pulsing inside you, thick and hot and filling, and the feeling of him coming inside you, the warmth of it spreading through you, the intimacy of it, no barrier, no distance, nothing between you but skin and the shared, shuddering aftermath of something that had changed you both, made your orgasm intensify rather than fade, a second wave cresting on the heels of the first, and you were both gasping, trembling, and holding onto each other with a ferocity that suggested letting go would mean falling off the edge of the earth.

The aftershocks rolled through you in diminishing pulses, your walls still fluttering around him, his cock still twitching inside you, your bodies still pressed together from chest to hip, neither of you willing to create even an inch of distance. The room was quiet except for your breathing and the rain against the window, which had never stopped, which had been the soundtrack to the entire night from sidewalk to confession to this, this moment, this bed, this body against yours, this love made physical and undeniable and real.

He was still inside you. Softening, but still there, still filling you, still connected, and the warmth of him inside you, the physical proof of what had just happened, made you squeeze around him reflexively and him hiss in oversensitive response, and the small exchange was so intimate, so coupled, that it made you press your face into his neck and breathe him in and whisper, against his pulse, "I love you too. With the I. I love y—wait, no. I love you more."

His arms tightened around you. His chest expanded with a breath that seemed to fill him entirely, a breath that had been waiting, maybe, since the first time he'd said those words without the I and wondered if you noticed the omission, and the exhale that followed was warm and slow and carried with it a tension you hadn't realized he'd been holding until it was gone.

"Mm, good," he murmured into your hair, and his voice was hoarse and raw and smiling, and the hand in your hair stroked gently, absently, the way you'd stroke something you'd been terrified of losing and were now learning you could hold. "Good. I meant it, by the way. Every time I said it before, I meant it. I just—I wasn't brave enough to include myself in the sentence."

You woke up to the smell of butter.

Not perfume-butter, not the artificial, movie-theater approximation of butter, but real butter, the kind that sizzled and popped and went golden-brown in a pan, the kind that meant someone was cooking something that would be terrible for you and perfect in every other way. Your face was pressed into a pillow, the sheets were tangled around your bare legs, and the space beside you on the mattress was empty but still warm. The amber lamp had been turned off at some point during the night and replaced by the grey-white morning light filtering through the curtains, and you lay there for a long, suspended moment with your eyes closed and your cheek against the pillowcase, breathing in, breathing out, letting the reality of the night before settle over you like a second skin.

Then the smell of butter intensified, and your stomach growled loud enough that it echoed off the headboard, and you opened your eyes.

The bedroom was soft in the morning light, quieter and less cinematic than it had been in the amber glow of the lamp, but somehow more real for it. The chair in the corner where it had all started was just a chair again. The bed was just a bed, albeit one with rumpled sheets and the clear evidence of two people who had spent the night learning each other in ways that went far beyond the physical. Your clothes, his clothes, the grey hoodie and the red plaid boxers, were folded neatly on the nightstand, and next to them was a fresh glass of water, two Advil, and a small sticky note with handwriting that made your chest ache:

Eyepatch for the puffy eyes is in the bathroom cabinet. Left side, second shelf. Take the pills. Come find me when you're ready ❤︎

You took the pills. You found the eyepatch, which turned out to be under-eye gel patches, not a pirate costume, and you pressed them under your eyes and stared at yourself in the bathroom mirror and looked exactly like what you were: a girl who had cried in the rain, confessed her love, had incredible sex, and slept in the bed of the boy who loved her back, in that order. The gel patches were cold, soothing, and you left them on while you pulled the hoodie over your head and stepped into the boxers and padded barefoot down the hallway toward the smell of butter and the sound of something sizzling.

Jay was at the stove.

He was shirtless, still in his sweats, his hair doing that thing it did in the mornings where it stuck up in the back at an angle that defied physics and dignity in equal measure, and he was holding a spatula and frowning at a pan with the concentrated intensity of someone performing neurosurgery rather than making a sandwich. The kitchen was warm and golden with natural light, and the butter was crackling, and there were two plates on the counter and a pot of tomato soup simmering on the back burner, and the scene was so unexpectedly, devastatingly domestic that you stopped in the hallway entrance and pressed your palm flat against your sternum as if you could physically hold your heart in place.

He hadn't seen you yet. He was focused on the sandwich, lifting the edge with the spatula to check the browning on the bottom, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like come on, come on, don't burn, don't you dare, and the tenderness of it, the sight of this boy, the one the entire campus tripped over themselves to get close to, standing shirtless in his kitchen at ten in the morning carefully monitoring a grilled cheese sandwich as if it were the most important task he'd ever undertaken, made something bloom in your chest so suddenly and so fully that you were moving before you decided to move.

You crossed the kitchen in five quick steps on your bare feet, rose up on your tip-toes, and pressed a kiss to the corner of his jaw.

He was actually startled, the spatula jerking, his shoulder jumping, a small whoa escaping him, and then he turned his head and saw you and the startled expression dissolved into something so warm, so open, so unguardedly happy that you rose up on your tip-toes again and kissed him properly, on the mouth, soft, slow, tasting like nothing at all except morning and him and the quiet, unbelievable joy of getting to do this.

"Hi," you said against his lips.

"Hi," he said back, and he was smiling, you could feel it, the curve of his mouth against yours, and his free hand, the one not holding the spatula, came to rest on your hip over the hoodie, his thumb tracing a small, absent circle against the fabric. "You slept late."

"You wore me out," you said, and the words came out without thinking, and then the meaning of them caught up with you and you felt the heat rush to your cheeks, and Jay's smile widened against your mouth and he pressed another kiss to the corner of your lips and said, "Nice," with such quiet, satisfied certainty that you had to bury your face in his bare shoulder to hide the fact that you were grinning like an idiot.

He finished the grilled cheese, two of them, golden, crispy, and oozing cheese from the edges, cut diagonally because, as he informed you when you raised an eyebrow, "diagonal is the correct cut, this isn't a negotiation,” and poured the tomato soup into two mugs, and you carried everything to the couch and settled into the cushions with your legs folded beneath you. The hoodie pooled around your thighs, the warm mug between your palms, and Jay sat close enough that your knees overlapped and his arm rested along the back of the couch behind you, not quite around you but undeniably there, a warm, steady presence that made the couch feel smaller and safer and more like home than any piece of furniture had a right to.

You ate. The sandwich was perfect — buttery, crunchy, the cheese pulling in long strings when you bit into it, the soup warm and rich and exactly the right thing for a morning when your body was sore in unfamiliar places, your eyes were still slightly swollen, and your heart was so full it felt like it might bruise your ribs from the inside. Jay ate his sandwich in three bites, which was both impressive and horrifying, and then he stole one of your untouched halves and ate that too, and you let him because you were too full, too content, and too busy watching the way the morning light caught the line of his jaw to summon the energy for indignation.

The TV was on but the volume was low, some morning show neither of you were watching, and Jay picked up the remote and navigated to Netflix and handed you the remote with a look that said your pick, and you scrolled. You scrolled through the usual suspects, the true crime documentaries you'd been meaning to watch, the romantic comedy that kept appearing in your recommendations with an algorithmic stubbornness that felt almost personal, the K-drama Jay pretended not to be interested in but always watched over your shoulder when you put it on, the nature documentary with the dramatic voiceover, the animated series, the cooking competition, the vintage sitcom, the new release with the ominous thumbnail, and the sheer, absurd abundance of it, the endless scroll of options that you'd never have time to watch, became its own form of entertainment, the two of you debating the merits of each option with the lazy, low-stakes passion of people who had nowhere to be and no one to impress and all the time in the world to decide.

You'd narrowed it down to three candidates when Jay's phone buzzed.

The sound was sharp and specific, the particular vibration pattern he'd set for family messages, and it cut through the comfortable haze of the morning like a pin through a soap bubble. Jay reached for the phone on the coffee table, swiped it open, and you watched his expression change, the easy, post-sleep warmth in his eyes sharpening into something more focused, his brow furrowing as he read, his jaw setting in a way you'd come to recognize as his tell for something he didn't want to deal with.

"Oh my god, you have to be kidding me," he muttered, and there was a note in his voice — not anger, exactly, but something adjacent to it, the exasperation of a person who'd just been handed an obligation he hadn't asked for and couldn't refuse.

"What's wrong?" You lowered the remote, the Netflix menu forgotten, the three candidate movies suddenly the least important thing in the world.

He turned the screen toward you.

The message was from his mother — you recognized the contact name, the formal Mom with no emoji, no affectionate modifier, just the word itself, clean and unadorned, the way Jay said she preferred most things. The text read:

Mom [10:49 AM]: Jongseong, bring Y/N to the summer estate in two weeks time. Your uncle can't make it this weekend.

And then, directly beneath it, as if the first sentence were merely logistical preamble to the real point:

Mom [10:49 AM]: If you're so serious about her, it's time the entire family met her.

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 : @simsimluver @maishee @grdientlips @yejisair777 @kristynaaah @heesroses @vmpiricou @seungiesdoll @malibluess @stwryun @hooniluhv @rikisn @hazeheart12 @exclipszz @melancholatte @bluepains @gojopolo @jasmineeeee1009 @ming1luvr @ni-k1ttie @enzsstuff01 @willothewispbf @emvss @simjaeyunslut @luvlyjaemin @kikizzz0 @ilovhoonie @prettygirlthings-world @jaesim @luv4dani @perristar @bkatarina @fialtorelle @slutforaz @adoreade | send an ask if you’d like to be added ˙𐃷˙

🎹 ⊹ ࣪ ˖ ഒ i like me better by lauv

𝐞𝐥’𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 : hi again hoonguin nation !!! unfortunately i did grow attached to this fic somewhere along the way & there are still so so so many things i have yet to put 🙁 no i didn’t put them here because too much would’ve been happening already . . there’ll definitely be a part two soon because i don’t leave you guys hanging 😘

✷ NOTE : thank you all so, so much for reading ! i hope you enjoyed this little world for a while ♡ all of this is purely a work of fiction & doesn’t reflect reality at all . . likes, reblogs, and feedback are deeply cherished and very, very appreciated on here !

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