GENTLEMAN!jungwon who couldn’t believe you agreed to go on a date with him so he makes an extra amount of effort to make the date perfect. he’s stalking all of your social media accounts to find what kind of food you like, he’s overthinking his outfit, getting ready 2 hours in advance, etc.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who picks you up with a shy smile and roses in his passenger’s seat. he settles for a simple arcade date with dinner after because he kept overthinking it.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who makes you ugly laugh after he gets over his shyness. you discover that once he’s comfortable, jungwon can be a little too charming. if you struggle at a certain game machine, he’s coming up right behind you and putting his hands over yours to help you win.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who gets extremely flirty once he realizes you’re biting your lip and tightening your grip on your purse every time he stands too close. and now all of a sudden he’s standing to your side with no space between you, his hand on the small of your back.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who leans down and pulls you into his chest whenever you need to tell him something. is it completely unnecessary? yes. is it hot as fuck? yes.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who you never even got to have a dinner date with because you couldn’t help but straddle him as soon as you two got into his car.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who thought he’d be too shy to even kiss you tonight, has you spread open in his passenger’s seat with his head between your thighs.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who was acting like such a gentleman at the arcade, is now giving light smacks to your pussy and whispering about how badly he’s wanted to fuck you since the both of you first met.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who takes you back to his apartment to fuck you properly because according to him, you’re “too special” to have your first time together be in his car.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who despite saying that, can’t keep his hands off of you until you two finally end up in his room. you end up not even being able to kiss him because of how hard he’s smiling at the vision of you in his bed.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who gives the best aftercare😫 he’s cleaning you up, telling you how well you did, rubbing your sore muscles, etc. jungwon also begs you to stay for dinner, which also meant stay for a shower, which turned into staying the night.
GENTLEMAN!jungwon who becomes the sweetest boyfriend you could possibly ask for. however, he’s also the filthiest, horniest, and straight up disgusting man you’ve ever been in bed with.
i feel like caleb is notorious for taking your leftover stuff. he’ll eat after you, he’ll drink after you. if you leave a cup of juice out on the counter, he’ll down it in one go before he puts it in the dishwasher. if you throw out your body wash a bit early and there’s still some left in the bottle, he’s stealing it, finishing it off, scraping the sides clean. he’s just always there to tidy your mess, to shoulder your burden—whether it’s one you created in earnest or one he orchestrated himself. he’s spoiled you for years, making it rare for you to clean up after yourself all the way—but it’s only so he can make use of what you leave behind.
somehow this got me thinking about bottom feeder fish caleb x angelfish mc, especially in that he debases himself while exalting her. he’s doomed to the darkness, only privy to remnants of her light, etc etc. or a less pleasing metaphor: he’s a scavenger animal, mc’s the carcass. he's picking at all the parts of you he can because those fleeting moments of unbridled access are all he has—he doesn't know when, or if, the next one will come
this work contains smut - minors please do not interact
pairing. dad!sunghoon x fem!reader
synopsis. Your alarmingly empty bank account forces you to find a last-minute summer job so that you can afford a trip with your friends. The extremely handsome customer that comes into the store just happens to be a young single dad who's renovating the old house next to yours. The tension that settles between the two of you as you start helping him fix up his house soon becomes unbearable, but it's all one-sided anyway, right?
(Spoiler: wrong.)
genre. DILF AUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!, neighbors au, s2l, summer au, slight age gap (reader is 21 and hoon 26), reader is so down bad over sunghoon its actually crazy but also extremely relatable cause this is sunghoon we're talking about, fluff and smut, sex gets freakyyy ngl
word count. 12.9k
a/n. hey sisters had no time to write anything this week so i am coming back (everybody boos) with a repost yayyy!!! i actually love this story idkw i just find it fun so i hope you guys will enjoy rereading / reading it !!!! as always let me know ur thoughts.. even if they're just incomprehensible screaming (bad or good).. im happy w anything ok bye!!!
You’ve always wondered about the ratio of cherry to pit. Such a big pit for so little flesh, isn’t it? Yet that’s never stopped you from biting into the small fruit, eating what you could and spitting out the unwanted part. You actually rather enjoy this whole process. Bite, eat, spit. You could repeat this with huge bowls of cherries at a time until they upset your stomach and you had to stop for your own good.
Bite, eat, spit is exactly what you’re doing when, with a trembling finger, you finally brave to open your banking app and check your balance. It’s the beginning of summer, and after two semesters of intense studying and too-much-coffee drinking, you think you deserve three long months of doing nothing but hanging out in your childhood bedroom and eating the food your parents buy and make. You’re especially looking forward to the vacation in Mexico you have planned with your friends at the end of August.
One look at your bank account and your dreams of white beaches and seas so blue you couldn’t tell them apart from the sky shatter around you, the sad, low numbers on the screen sneering at you mockingly. You were sure you had saved enough money from part-time jobs and generous relatives, but now you regret all of those night-outs and lazy takeaways. If you had cut down on those, maybe you wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of finding a summer job at the last minute, which you would definitely have to do if you wanted to eat something on that dear beach of yours and not just starve to death under the glaring sun.
That was it - tomorrow, you’d go and get a job. Today, however, you’d enjoy your last day of respite and eat some more cherries, or maybe make some jam and a pie so your parents wouldn’t chide you for eating them all, and then go pick some more from the three trees in your backyard. You’d sit outside, enjoying the warmth of the sun while you read or, if you couldn’t be asked, while you listened to the bustle of the old and worn-down house next door being renovated. You’re surprised someone had the courage to buy it and give it a new life, but you assume that’s the kind of courage that comes with having time and money.
Yesterday night, you’d heard a little girl playing outside until her mom called her in saying it was time to go, so you made up a story of your neighbors being newlyweds that had decided they’d had enough of the city and wanted to raise their daughter in a calmer town far from busy streets and loud honks. You could bring them some cherries, maybe in jam or pie form, as a housewarming gift.
Unfortunately, the day passed and you were too busy doing nothing to actually get around to baking, so you decided to do nothing some more and then go to bed, needing rest before your big job hunt.
You’d gravely overestimated the amount of job opportunities in your small hometown, only receiving apologetic looks from the store owners as they tell you they don’t need any help, or worse, already have someone. Damn those 16-year-olds who only get summer jobs so they can blow their whole pay in a couple weeks before school starts again. You, on the other hand, need that money for important things, like sipping on a cocktail at a bar with a seaview.
The local hardware store next to the train station is your saving grace. It looks quite small from the outside, but once you step inside, rows of lamps and mirrors in all shapes and sizes along with all kinds of household needs welcome you, followed by a section for gardening and pet caretaking. The basement is where all the paints and brushes were, as well as the more technical (technical to you, at least) products, like bolts and tools or kitchen and bathroom appliances.
A lot of people undertake renovations in their homes during their free time in the summer, so it’s important for the store to have their experts helping out customers in their dedicated aisles rather than working behind the till and restocking the shelves, which is what you will be doing for the next two months. The pay is slightly above minimum wage and with twenty-one hours of work a week, you’ll earn more than enough to enjoy your vacation. You start tomorrow.
Your co-workers are happy to welcome a new face into their team. They’re nice even if they have the tendency to drone on about different types of tools and the importance of choosing the right brush for the surface you’re painting, which you don’t particularly care about, but you think you might as well learn as much as you can during your time here; it might always come in handy later.
As you expected, it isn’t the most stimulating job ever, but you aren’t bored out of your mind either. You make small talk with customers as they explain their purchases, some more defensively than others, even if you didn’t ask. You make sure to restock the shelves correctly and sometimes ask for help when you feel your arms giving out after hours of carrying heavy stuff. When no one’s in, you like to rearrange the cute bathroom decorations so that they make a little rainbow of toothbrush and soap holders.
You were daydreaming about what you would do with your friends in Mexico and all the cherries you could eat there when a man so handsome you thought he was a part of your dream walks in. He doesn’t notice (or maybe he just ignores it, you’re not sure) your gawking and smiles at you, saying “hello” before turning his attention to the map which details where everything is stored at the entrance of the shop. You manage a small “h-hello” back that probably doesn’t even reach his ears, and you curse yourself for doing a poor job of greeting a customer just because said customer looks like he’s been pushed from the heavens above onto this unworthy earth by the other angels who were jealous of his beauty.
You stay put behind the counter the whole time he’s there to avoid the potential embarrassment of running into him in a random aisle and making a fool of yourself. There isn’t much to do anyway, so you rearrange the organic protein bars and chewing-gum at the counter and count all the money in the cash register to distract yourself. He doesn’t spend a very long time browsing and after twenty minutes, you see him approach with a cart full of the biggest cans of paint the store offers. It’s mostly white paint, but there are some browns and grays, and one of pink as well.
You thank God for those twenty minutes because they allowed you to get a hold of yourself so that you didn’t gape at him like a dead fish instead of scanning his articles, which is what you are very professionally and expertly doing. “That’s a lot of paint,” you comment lightheartedly, partly just to prove to yourself that you can also speak in front of this man.
“I know,” he chuckles, and it seems unfair that his voice should be just as attractive as his face. “The previous owners of the house I just bought had terrible taste in wallpaper and wall colors, so I have to repaint basically the whole house. Everything has to go, really. The floors, the furniture, the lights.”
“Sounds like you’re going to have a busy summer. That’ll be $132.76, please.”
“I’ll pay by card,” he says as he brings his wallet out from his back pocket and inserts his card into the reader, which allows you to look freely at his tanned arms and the veins that protrude here and there. He can’t be older than thirty, so there’s probably not that much of an age difference between the two of you, but damn does he look more mature in the sexiest way possible than all of the male college students you’re used to seeing on a daily basis. If anything, he reminds you of the hot young Linguistics professor your whole department likes to drool over.
The beep of the payment being accepted snaps you out of your daze. “And yeah, it’ll sure be a busy summer. I’ll need a lot of stuff from here, so you might have to get used to seeing me around,” he says with a smile that makes your heart skip a beat. There’s no way this walking Greek god of a man is actually flirting with you, but the glint in his eyes tells you it wasn’t just an off-hand comment.
“I could get used to that,” you surprise yourself by replying confidently, your smile mirroring his as pretty dimples appear on each side of his face.
You hand him the receipt and notice his eyes flickering down to your name tag before trapping yours in his gaze once again. You don’t think you ever want to look away. “I’ll see you around, Y/N,” he says and walks out with his cart and his tons of paint before you can say anything, lest ask his name, except for “see you.”
You take a deep breath in and another out when he’s out of sight, trying to calm your racing heart. You can’t wait to rave to the girls’ group chat about this, but one of your coworkers calls you for help and you have to put the handsome stranger to the back of your mind for a while.
—
That weekend, your parents ask you to do something about the cherries slowly starting to spoil in the fridge, so you put on your headphones and listen to an audiobook for entertainment, then get to pitting. It feels wrong to listen to The Kiss Quotient and its many smut scenes when your parents are coming and going out of the room, but what they don’t know won’t kill them; you just try to keep your reactions to a minimum during the extra spicy scenes.
Pitting cherries is an arduous task that always takes longer than you think it will, but you never complain about it. You’ve found the perfect technique of cutting them in half around the pit, turning the small fruit without squeezing it, extracting the stone and making sure it doesn’t get confused and end up in the bowl with the pitted cherries, all without tiring your wrists after ten minutes. A surprise pit in a cherry pie can add to the charm of a homemade dessert, but you’d rather not have to spit out five of them while trying to eat one slice.
You prepare a crumbly dough to make two classic American-style pies and fill four jars with cherry jam that you cook while the doughs rest. It’s almost offensive how small the cherries become as they cook, the amount that fills those four jars having filled eight before, but you decide there’s no reason to take it personally since the cherries don’t do it on purpose, and put the jars away to cool down. You roll out the first rested dough and despair for a bit when it keeps on falling apart, but it just makes it more satisfying once you have it perfectly thinly rolled out and covering the tin. The second one is a bit nicer to you and you only have to try rolling it out twice.
Two hours later, as the sun finally starts to relent and a cooler breeze flows through the air, the pies are all baked, cooled and ready to be eaten. You leave one for you and your parents to enjoy later, then head over to the next house to greet your new neighbors with the other pie. You knock and wait for a good thirty seconds before getting any sort of response, making you think no one’s in.
“Y/N?” a semi-familiar voice calls out, and your head whips in its direction. If this were a cartoon or a 2012 teen show, you’d probably drop the pie tin, but thankfully, your hands aren’t that sweaty, and the shock of the man from the other day at the store being your neighbor isn’t that great, because of course, of course he’s your neighbor. You’re Y/N, after all; the almighty gods above would never let you have a boring, uneventful summer. Of course the hot new man in town is your neighbor.
“Oh! Hi! Guess we’re neighbors. Ha,” you say with a clumsy smile, holding the tin over your forearm as your other hand shields your eyes from the sunlight so you can look at him without squinting your eyes.
“Neighbors?” he repeats as he joins you on the front porch, taking off his gloves dirtied by the mud and using the back of his hand to wipe off some sweat from his forehead. The sweat makes his hair stick to his face and there are small beads of it falling from his hairline down onto his white t-shirt. You detect the slightest of stubbles on his chin and upper lip, probably from not having shaved for just a day or two. He’s even tanner than when you saw him a few days ago, and his thick eyebrows form a straight line as he frowns in what you guess is tiredness and perhaps confusion from seeing you in regular clothes and holding a pie tin on his porch. For a second, you’re scared he might think you’re some kind of stalker, but you nod and tilt your head towards your house.
“Yep. That one just over there behind you.”
He turns his upper body to take a look at your house and nods slowly as he turns back around, gaze finding yours again like the other day at the store. You have no idea who this man is - hell, you don’t even know his name - but good lord are you attracted to him, especially when he gives you that unreadable smile that shows off his dimples.
“Huh. What a coincidence,” he says, and that could mean anything in the world, but you hope he means it in a good way. “I’m Sunghoon, by the way.” he adds, extending his hand for you to take, which you do, and the simple action of shaking his hand without eye contact ever breaking is enough to send shivers down your spine. Hopefully, this goes unnoticed by this Sunghoon.
A walking wet dream. That’s what this man is. He’s walked right out of your deepest Wattpad-induced fantasies and into the house next door. Probably doesn’t help that you’d been listening to literary porn just fifteen minutes prior.
“Is that pie?” he asks as he releases your hand.
“It is, cherry pie I made myself with cherries from our backyard. A housewarming gift, if you will. Here,” you reply, offering him the tin.
He takes it from your hands, the tips of his fingers slightly grazing yours, on purpose or not, you’re not sure. He lifts some of the aluminum covering the pie and peeks underneath, then hums appreciatively. “Thanks, it looks really good. I’ve been living off of ready-meals and casseroles from the neighbors, so this’ll be really nice.”
“Well we’ve got tons of cherries, so feel free to ask whenever you want some,” you offer, and he nods. A small silence settles between the two of you and you’re about to excuse yourself so it doesn’t get awkward when he invites you in, asking if you’d like to have a piece with him.
“If you want to, I mean. I was gonna take a break anyway,” he says somewhat coyly, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. You’re surprised to see him being anything else other than confident and self-assured, but it only makes him look cuter in your eyes.
“Sure,” you accept with a smile, letting him lead you inside the house.
“Sorry, it smells like paint all over the house. That’s why I was outside, doing some gardening while I aired the house out,” he explains. “Let me just get some plates and a knife out. And something for us to drink. Do you want to drink something? I’ve got water, or some iced tea or lemonade. The grandma across the street made some for me,” he says all at once, and you suppress a giggle at his sudden nervous behavior.
“Sunghoon?”
“Yeah?” he responds almost immediately, turning to you just as you both reach the kitchen.
“Just water is fine.”
A shy smile makes his dimples appear once again as he nods. “Okay, sounds good.” You help him carry everything to the back porch and set down the glasses and a jug of water on a table with two chairs around it.
“The porches are the only parts I won’t have to fix up too much, for some reason.”
“You’re going to redo the whole house yourself?” you ask, surprised, as you pour two glasses of water and he serves you a slice of cherry pie (“there might be some stray cherry pits, so be careful,” you warn as he sets a slice on his plate).
“A lot of it, yeah, but I’ve also got some people to help out. My dad’s a carpenter so I know my way around these things, but I also know it’s better and faster to have more than one man on the job, so some guys he works with come a couple times a week.”
“Yeah, with the state this house is in, you’d need more than a summer if you did everything yourself,” you comment, and he chuckles, agreeing. “My friends and I used to make stories about how this place is haunted, you know,” you say jokingly.
“Please don’t jinx my house from the get-go,” he says, making you laugh.
“Sorry, sorry. It’ll be nice seeing it all fixed-up, actually.”
“Have you lived here long?” he asks, looking at you thoughtfully as he takes another bite of the pie. “This is really good, by the way.”
“Thanks. And yeah, my whole life. I go away when semester starts but come back for the holidays and the summer.”
“So you're a student?”
“Yeah, just at the state university a few hours away. Not too far away that it’s a hassle traveling back, but not too close that I go home every weekend. What about you, what do you do?”
You wait for his answer while he swallows his mouthful and take another bite yourself. “I teach,” he starts as he dabs the corners of his lips with a napkin. “Fifth graders, on the other side of town. I used to live in a small apartment near the school I work at but it’s nicer, having more space. I saved enough money to buy this house and fix it up, so here I am now,” he says, gesturing to the house and the garden with his arms.
You notice his use of the first person pronoun when he talks about where he used to live and his house now, which makes you wonder if it’s just him, even though you were sure you heard a woman and a young girl’s voices the other day. Surely, if he wasn’t single, he wouldn’t have invited you in or given you flirtatious looks, right? Or were you reading totally wrong into this and he was just an exceptionally friendly person?
You put these questions to the side and continue chatting with Sunghoon, letting the subject of his marital status come up on its own during your conversation. And indeed, you get your answer when he tells you about the different parts of the house he plans on having, one of them being a bedroom for his daughter.
“Oh, so you have a daughter? How old is she?” you ask as you take a sip of water, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. Considering his age, you expect that his child will be one, two years old max, so his answer makes you almost choke on your drink.
“She’s turning eight this summer.”
“Eight?” you repeat as you set your glass down, looking at him wide-eyed. So much for nonchalance. “But you’re so-”
“Young? Yeah, I know,” he interrupts with a knowing smile, probably used to this kind of reaction. “I’m 26,” he adds, then watches as you do the simple math in your head. When you turn to him with a surprised look, he answers your question before you’ve even asked it. “Yep, I had her when I was 18.”
“Wow,” is all you can say. “Can I ask what happened?”
“Sure. I mean, it’s nothing extraordinary or anything. I was in my last year of high school, and I got my girlfriend at the time pregnant. We’d only been dating four months but her parents wouldn’t let her get an abortion. They’re really religious. They took care of our baby, with the help of my parents, while I went to community college and she retook senior year since she had to drop out halfway through the year. No, we’re not together anymore, if you’re wondering,” he says, catching you off guard, as if he’d read your thoughts.
He chuckles before sighing and continues. “If none of this had happened, we’d probably have broken up before going off to college and proceeded to forget about each other. We started out living with her parents, then got that small apartment I told you about when she found a job. We’re not on bad terms by any means, but we’ve just not been in love since Chaeryeong turned 2, probably. We’ve been more roommates than a couple for the past six years. And you know, we kept on living together for Chaer mainly, but she’s found a new boyfriend and I wanted to have my own place. Which has led me here.”
You nod slowly, letting the whole story sink in. “You’re both handling this situation really maturely, it sounds like. I’ve heard of so many teenage parents fighting all the time and not taking care of their kids properly.”
“She’s already got a weird parental situation, it’s the least we can do for her to behave like adults, you know.”
“Right, of course,” you say, nodding again. Your hot new neighbor was actually a DILF, you realized a bit inappropriately, perhaps. Cherry on top.
He tells you a bit more about his daughter and you keep talking until your dad calls you, asking you why you’re not home at dinner time, and you only notice then how long you’ve been sitting there with Sunghoon, just talking. You tell him you feel bad for taking up so much of his time but he shakes your apologies off.
“It was my pleasure, really. And thanks again for the pie, I think Chaer will love it.”
He walks you to the front door and calls out your name after you’ve waved goodbye and started walking. You didn’t know you had been expecting him to do anything until you heard the hopeful tone in your own voice. “Yeah?”
“You any good with kids?” he asks, leaning against the doorway with crossed arms and a smirk that makes your heart flutter.
Although you’ve only got one older brother, you have younger cousins as well as older ones that have babies of their own, so you’re not a complete stranger to kids, but more importantly, you like them. They have the world to learn, but they say surprisingly smart things and have really cute faces.
“I’d say that I am, yeah,” you reply, a smile growing on your face, mirroring his expression.
“Good,” he says, and pauses a second for good measure. “I’ll see you later.”
“See you later, Sunghoon,” you say as you turn back and head to your house, letting him enjoy the view of you walking away.
On the short way home, you realize that you completely have the hots for your neighbor, although you probably knew that before. Is it twisted that you like him more now that you know he’s got a kid? Probably a little bit, but you’re not going to fight it. He’s single, after all. And not even thirty. A five-year gap isn’t unheard of.
Your parents ask you where you’ve been as you set the table and get ready for dinner. “Just over at our new neighbor’s house to give him some pie and say hi,” you say as you toss the salad in its bowl, spreading the dressing evenly.
“Ooh, the neighbor,” your mother echoes knowingly, wiggling her eyebrows, and steals a leaf of lettuce when it falls from the bowl because of your vigorous tossing. “We should have him over at some point, welcome him into the neighborhood. I’ve seen him a bit, you know. Out painting on his front porch or when he was in his garden the same time as me. He’s a very attractive young man,” she says, lowering her voice so your dad doesn’t hear even though he’s outside grilling the meat. “Do you know how old he is? Looks a bit young for a homeowner to me, but who knows what young people are up to these days.
“He’s twenty-six, and he’s saved a lot of money. Plus, I don’t think that house was very expensive. From what he’s told me, the renovations will basically cost as much as the house itself. He’s also got a kid.”
“Aw, must be a cute baby,” she says as your father walks in, carrying a tray of steaming barbecued steaks and potatoes.
“She’s eight,” you say bluntly, causing them both to look at you with wide eyes.
“Oh, right, then. Happens,” your mother says, bringing her glass of water to her lips and taking a sip from it. “Is he still with the mother?”
“They broke up a while ago, but they’re on good terms,” you say, and your mom nods slowly at the information.
“So, he’s single, huh?” she says, trying to hide her smile, earning herself a groan from your dad and a chuckle from you.
“C’mon, mom!”
“What? You can’t deny that he’s attractive, and he’s single. Plus, you two must get along well if you spent a couple hours talking. Sure, he’s got a kid, but you love those, don’t you?”
“Mom, you of all people would know kids aren’t pets. Dating someone with an eight-year-old isn’t the same as dating someone with a cat.
“No one’s asking you to be that girl’s mom,” she says, dishing out some meat for the three of you. “I’d go get that man, if I were you.”
Your dad shakes his head and you eat your food as you listen to them bickering with a smile. You think about what your mother said - should you go and get Sunghoon? Your heart says yes, but your brain is a bit more reluctant. Another part of your body, lower down there, is screaming ‘yes’ at you.
He does live right by, after all.
That night, you FaceTime your roommate and best friend from college and bring her up to date about ‘the hot man from the store the other day.’ She paints her toenails but listens intently as she always does when you talk about boys, humming and chuckling here and there.
“God, Y/N, I didn’t know you had daddy issues, of all things.”
You gasp fake-dramatically. “Excuse me, I do not! I was attracted to him before I knew he was a dad, I’ll let you know.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let me know when you guys actually hook up, I’m curious whether older men are actually better,” she says, making you scoff.
“I hope he is. I’m very much tired of those boys that don’t know where the clit is and use too much tongue.”
“You know, when I complain to my mom about guys, she always tells me to wait it out a few years. She says they get more mature and, well, she didn’t say that outright, but she very heavily implied that the sex is much, much better. Kinda gross hearing it from her, but it’s good information.”
You hum. “Well, he’s not that much older… But let’s hope that it still makes a difference,” you say, and then move on to another topic.
—
One thing that eating cherries has taught you is that if you want to enjoy eating the sweet flesh, you’ll need to deal with the pit as well. Ever the grand philosopher, you realized soon enough that this was applicable to real life and not just your favorite fruit. Wanna get a good grade on your test? Gotta study for it. Wanna go on holiday to Mexico? Gotta find a summer job and earn money.
Wanna make your way to Sunghoon’s bed? Gotta seduce him.
Over the following days, you stand behind the counter at the hardware store, elbow perched on the hard surface, head resting on your palm and vision fuzzy as you daydream about your next encounter with Sunghoon. More often than not, a customer will clear their throat to awkwardly let you know of their presence and you’ll have to exchange your imagined dialogue with Sunghoon for a quick apology and some pleasantries; more often than not, a coworker will call out your name for some help just as you get to the juicy part of your reverie. In those moments, you always feel like you’ve been caught red-handed watching softcore porn, even if no one knows the last thing about what goes on in your head, nor do they care.
Much like the first time he walked into the store, when he does again on a Thursday morning, you think your daydreams have just gone too far and you’re now hallucinating. But, lo and behold, this is the true Park Sunghoon in the flesh, and he smiles and waves at you as he strides in before disappearing behind one of the many aisles.
You spend the next fifteen minutes going over witty conversation starters that will surely make him fall for you, only for you to stutter out a “h-hi, Sunghoon,” when he finally reaches the counter.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he jokes, and you laugh a bit too hard for a comment that isn’t that funny.
“How are the renovations going?” you ask as you scan his articles - some more paint and brushes, lots of tile glue, a bunch of nails and two different sizes of turnscrews. He frowns in concentration at the snacks next to the counter until he caves in and gets a chocolate protein bar that’s more sugar than protein.
“Pretty okay,” he starts. “I’m in a bit of a rush, cause Chaer is already coming in two weeks and I need to have finished at least the interior by that time. My dad’s friends helped me get the roof done, so that’s good, but now they’re all busy with other sites so it's just me. Right now I’m redoing the tiles in the bathrooms. You need so much damn glue,” he says with a chuckle.
You think for a second, then timidly offer, “I could help out, you know. If you needed me to.”
He looks at you with raised eyebrows, halfway through getting his card out of his wallet. “Really?”
“I mean, I don’t have much experience with this kinda stuff, but I’ve picked up a few things here and there from working here. If it saves you time, I could do the easy things. This job isn’t particularly physically demanding so I’ve still got energy at the end of the day. That’s $78.96, please.”
A small smile appears on his face as he inserts his card into the reader. He punches in his code and then returns your gaze. “That could be nice, actually.”
And that’s how you find yourself over at Sunghoon’s house in denim shorts and your dad’s old t-shirts almost everyday for the next two weeks, helping him fix up the old two-storey home. He measures out the perfect length for wood planks or marble tiles that you assist him in fastening to the floors of different rooms and he fixes holes in walls that you paint over afterwards. Sometimes on your breaks, you share a bowl of cherries that you brought from your garden. (One morning, you tried to make cherry juice out of them, but when after almost two hours of pitting the liquid barely filled a glass, you decided that it was too much effort and that you’d keep on just eating them and baking the occasional pie.) You asked him to tell you what each of the rooms upstairs would be and you realized that the window of his room faced yours directly. The blinds were down as they had always been, so you hadn’t known what the room would be.
“I’ve been sleeping on the couch since I haven’t gotten around to fixing up this room yet. Guess I should get to it, though,” he says, giving you a look that blurs the meaning of his words so that you’re not sure what he’s implying, which happens a bit too often with Sunghoon.
And you’d think that spending the better part of two weeks with the current man of your dreams would be amazing, right?
Wrong. It’s unbearable.
Maybe that’s exaggerating it - it’s mostly fun, and sometimes unbearable. Usually, you’re an avid fan of sexual tension, especially with attractive men like Sunghoon. Lingering gazes, eye contacts when there shouldn’t be any, remarks with a deeper meaning that they let on, barely-there touches on the back of your hand or on your waist that manage to take your breath away. These are all very fine things that keep your heart bouncing and a blush on your cheeks, but they are supposed to amount to something more in the end. Maybe you’re impatient, but after two weeks of sending sex through your eyes to Sunghoon, you get the feeling that he doesn’t reciprocate your desire. One afternoon, you’d made sure to go and sunbathe in your bikini at the exact moment he was doing some work outside, and even then, he merely gave your body a one-over and disappeared a few minutes later inside his house. When he came back about ten minutes later, he could still barely look at you.
At the same time, there’s no way he doesn’t know what he’s doing when he stands close behind you, letting you feel the warmth of his chest against your back, big, rough hands enveloping yours as he demonstrates how to cut a plank of wood with the machine. There’s no way the way he smirks when the action turns you into a stammering mess is innocent, either.
Yet nothing happens. The tension is thick enough to be cut with a knife, but maybe Sunghoon hasn’t bought cutlery yet. The air is already heavy from the heat and the relentlessness of the sun, but this thing between you and him makes it almost suffocating, in somehow the best yet worst way possible. You’re this close to simply throwing your naked body at him, and it doesn’t help that you see his flexing, working muscles and beads of sweat on his hairline everyday. On the days he wears shorts, which is most days, all you can think of is getting off on his thick thighs, of his hands holding you tightly by the waist, of the way he’d look at you, eyes clouded over, of the words he’d whisper in your-
Your phone buzzes, interrupting you in your horny downward spiral. It’s your dear mother telling you to come home for dinner. As you pick up your phone, a second buzz. Ask Sunghoon if he wants to eat with us.
You find him in his bedroom, adding the last touches to the walls. “I think I’ll be able to sleep here starting tomorrow night. I just need to go buy a bed,” he says when he sees your figure standing in the doorway.
“We can go together if you want,” you blurt before you can stop yourself. Hoping it’ll make you seem less weird, you add, “I’ve got really good taste in furniture.”
“Is that so?” he questions, turning to you with a smile. “I’d appreciate the second pair of eyes, actually. There’s a lot of things I need to get.”
“Yeah, I didn’t wanna comment on it, but I think you’ll end up needing more than a couch, a plastic dining table and two chairs,” you tease, making him roll his eyes lightheartedly. “We can go to that huge second-hand store they have just outside of town. You’ll be surprised how good - and cheap - the furniture is there.”
“Sounds good,” he nods, and checks his watch. “Are you going home?”
“I am. My mom’s invited you over for dinner, if you’d like,” you say, tilting your head at him.
He raises his eyebrows in delighted surprise. “I’d love to. Just need to shower first.”
“That’s fine. I’ll go home, just come over whenever you’re ready.” You exchange quick see you laters and you head home, taking a shower yourself and making sure to use your best-smelling body lotion.
Sunghoon arrives half an hour later with a bouquet of roses in his hands and an award-winning smile on his face. You let him in and he greets your parents, offering your mother the bouquet. “Sorry I took so much time getting here, I wanted to pick these out as a thank you.”
You can tell your mother is pleased to the heavens as she waves him off, leading him inside your house. “That’s awfully nice of you, Mr Park-”
“Call me Sunghoon, please,” he says with a warm smile.
“Right, Sunghoon. And no worries, you’re just on time. Please, sit.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Oh, no, you’re working all day fixing up that house, just sit and relax. We’re very happy to have you over, aren’t we?” your mother says, sending a very obvious smile your way, which makes you furrow your eyebrows and shake your head lightly at her, silently telling her to shut up. Sunghoon chuckles at the exchange but says nothing and you want to bury yourself and your mother ten feet underground.
Sunghoon sits across from you at the dinner table, which allows you to stare unabashedly at him as he works his charm on your parents. He’s the neighbor, so technically, he’s not a boyfriend you brought home to meet them, but still, you can’t help but compare him to those few boys that you did bring home. None of them were a disaster, but none of them went as smoothly as this, either. There were always some awkward silences and dry chuckles with your past boyfriends, but Sunghoon clearly knows how to make parents happy. Maybe because he lived with his ex’s parents for so long, or maybe because he’s a parent himself. Either way, it only adds to your desire to take all of his clothes and let him rail you into next week. Too bad he clearly doesn’t feel the same way, you remind yourself with an audible sigh, which makes him look curiously at you, but you brush it off with a smile.
You watch as he accepts a beer, compliments the food and the house, talks football with your dad, accepts another beer, and shares teaching anecdotes with your mom, who herself is an elementary school teacher. You jump in every now and then when you have something witty to add or someone asks your opinion on something, but most of the time, you sit back and enjoy, happy that everything is going well.
You bring out your infamous cherry pie that you’d baked the previous day along with some vanilla ice cream for dessert, and smile when Sunghoon tells you how much he’d been waiting to have some of it again, trying not to blush as his gaze stays focused on yours for a second too long. Thankfully, your parents don’t notice, too busy cutting themselves a slice.
He stays for another hour or so, until the sun has set and the streetlamps and the moonlight are the only things keeping the world visible. Your mom forces him to accept tupperwares full of leftovers from the night and makes him promise to come back with his daughter. Sneakily, she tells you to help him carry the tupperwares home even though he’s more than able to do it himself, then hugs him goodbye, hurrying you out of the door.
Sunghoon hasn’t yet changed the lightbulbs to more efficient ones, so his kitchen bathes in the faint glow of the overhead lighting as you put away the leftovers in his fridge. He stands a bit to your right close behind you, closer than needed to simply hand you the tupperwares he was holding. When everything is stored, you turn around, but you’re trapped between his body and his arm that holds the fridge door open. With his free hand, he takes you by the waist and pulls you gently towards him. “Careful,” he says so quietly, it’s almost a whisper, and closes the fridge door behind you.
He’s never been this forward with you, and even though you’ve fantasized many times about this exact moment, now that it’s really happening, you don’t know what to do except to search for an explanation in his eyes. His eyes that are looking right into yours and are a bit clouded over, from the alcohol or the proximity between the two of you or both, you don’t know, but that also have the twinkle of a smile in them.
His lips are close enough to kiss, you think, and as if on cue, his gaze drifts down to your slightly parted lips. “You’re very pretty, Y/N,” he says, before sealing your lips with his own. You respond immediately to his kiss - you’ve thought too much about it to stand there and do nothing - but it’s all so slow and so soft that you’re not sure if it’s actually happening, so dreamlike it all feels.
You’re called back to reality when his other hand finds your waist, your own hands coming up to his shoulders before one of them snakes its way to the nape of his neck, tugging lightly at his hair. This seems to change something in Sunghoon, who all of a sudden tightens his hold on your waist, his arms wrapping around it to bring you closer to him. His kiss gets faster and deeper too, and, to your surprise but not your distaste, a bit desperate. You’re happy if you have on him half of the power he has on you. You taste sweet vanilla ice cream and tangy beer on his tongue, and it’s not at all unpleasant. It makes you want to eat cherries together so you can then taste them in his kiss.
A lustful sigh escapes your lips and then the warmth disappears all at once. Sunghoon looks at you like you just woke him up from a deep slumber and takes a step back away from you. You call out for him worriedly and the sound of his name seems to make him think he did something terribly wrong.
“I-I’m sorry, Y/N, I don’t know what came over me. We shouldn’t do this, it’s not- I shouldn’t have done that,” he sighs, looking defeatedly at the ground.
“Why?” you ask quietly, almost inaudible.
“You should go home,” he snaps, then closes his eyes as if in pain, cringing at his harsh tone. “I’m sorry. I think you should go home, it’s getting late,” he repeats, softer this time, but the words still sting.
“O-okay,” you say to the floor, already feeling tears well up in your eyes. You feel like you just got rejected by your high school crush, and the humiliation makes you want to crawl into a hole and die.
Sunghoon sighs again. “I’ll let you know tomorrow about the furniture shopping, yeah? Chaeryeong is coming in the morning so we can go with her.”
“O-okay,” you repeat, surprised he still wants to do that with you. “Good night, Sunghoon,” you say without looking at him and scurry out of his house.
“Good night, Y/N,” Sunghoon answers to the emptiness after you’ve left, touching his lips with the tips of his fingers and feeling the ghost of your kiss there.
—
Truth be told, you haven’t always loved cherries. Because of a heinous lie your older brother had made you believe when you were just six years old, you hadn’t eaten cherries for two summers in a row. It was the summer your parents had finally allowed you to eat cherries as they came from the trees in your backyard - beforehand, they’d been too scared that you’d choke on the pit or swallow it unknowingly, and had always prepared purées or other forms that cherries can take for you to eat, so to be finally handed the small fruit and told “go ahead, try it,” felt like an honor.
A simple “don’t forget to spit out the pit” from your mother had sufficed for you to be careful, and yet, your brother had thought a fear tactic would be more effective. “If you swallow it, a tree will grow inside your belly and make you puke out cherries,” he’d lied when it was just the two of you at the outdoor table.
“Really?” you asked him in disbelief, horror written all over your face as you looked at the seemingly harmless yet deadly fruit in your hand. You’d already eaten two and were in the middle of eating a third; your brother nodding ‘yes’ in response was all it took for you to spit out the cherry furiously and immediately start sobbing, afraid you’d swallowed one even though all three pits were right there on the table, a guarantee that no unwanted flora would grow inside of you.
Your mother rushed outside at the sound of your wailing and quickly put two and two together when she saw your brother laughing uncontrollably while you hid your face in your hands, desolately imagining your future as a walking cherry tree. She held you tight in her arms as she told your brother off and reassured you that he was just playing a stupid prank on you. Still, the simple thought of swallowing a pit had terrified you and you were unable to eat cherries for the remainder of the summer and the one after that.
This is the story you tell Chaeryeong and her dad as the three of you sit outside together, making them laugh - although, a few minutes later, when Sunghoon is gone to the bathroom away, Chaer leans over the table and whispers, “It’s not true, is it?” so you reassure her that you’ve eaten cherries your whole life and have never had one single root take life in your tummy.
It’s been a bit over a week after you shared that kiss in his kitchen, and the awkward atmosphere is just starting to fade. You’re glad he didn’t ignore you after that night, even if pretending nothing happened when both of you are very aware that something did happen is only the slightly better alternative. It’s a refreshing change from boys that sleep with you and then act like you don’t exist, for sure.
The kiss hasn’t done anything to burst the tension; if anything, it’s made it even more electric. You catch him looking at your lips more than once and you wonder why he still acts the same way as before when he’s made it very clear he didn’t think kissing you was a good idea. Catching him shirtless one night in his bedroom doesn’t help, and neither does him catching you staring at him - you’d quickly shut the curtains, but it was too late, and he’d seen you ogling his toned chest and abs.
At least, the fact that Chaeryeong is here forces a bubbly atmosphere upon you, and you hope you’re not crazy when you notice him fondly looking at the both of you interacting. Chaer is an outgoing little girl and seems to have liked you as soon as you complimented the toy puppy in her hand, saying you used to have the same and it was your favorite.
The day you went food shopping was practically hell to get through. One evening, you were holding onto Sunghoon for dear life, finally kissing him, and the next afternoon, you were browsing through the endless aisles of your local IKEA, holding his daughter’s hand and pretending like you hadn’t kissed her daddy.
When it got to the bedroom part of the store, you and Chaer decided to try all the mattresses and find the most comfortable one. You usually were never one for seating and laying on random beds in stores, but there was a kid with you, so you were sure it’d be fine. When you found the one you liked most, you looked up at Sunghoon from your position and said, “This one’s pretty good, Sunghoon.” His immediately reddening cheeks told you everything you needed to know and you quickly sat up, clearing your throat. He tested the mattress by pushing his palm against it and muttered a “yeah, it’s pretty good” before scribbling down the number of the mattress onto the small sheet of paper customers use to remember which products they wanted.
Of course, now that Chaer is with him and most of the work in the house is done, save for some minor things that Sunghoon can finish up on his own, you spend a lot less time together. You hate that you miss him so much. You miss the way he makes you feel, like your whole body is on fire with just one look or one touch, the way his stupid jokes make you laugh or how endeared he looks when he talks about his daughter. Seeing him with her only adds to your stupid crush - he’s doting, protective and caring, makes sure she has everything to be happy and manages to treat her at once like the kid that she is but also like a human that has opinions and feelings. He’s a really good dad, and that does nothing whatsoever to stop your DILF fantasies, although now, it’s really Sunghoon that you want, and the fact that he’s a dad isn’t a dealbreaker, it just makes him that much better.
You hate that you miss him, and yet being with him is somehow worse, because you can’t do any of the things you want to do. You fall asleep one two many nights dreaming about his lips and how nice it’d be to feel them again - on your lips, on your neck, everywhere. You want to feel him everywhere, and this longing lust is starting to drive you crazy. You’d never wanted anyone this much.
He invites you over for dinner one night, and the look he gives you when he opens the door sends a shiver right down your spine. “Hi, Y/N.”
“Hi, Sunghoon.”
He leads you into the kitchen with a hand on your waist, even though you’ve been in his house many times before and need no assistance getting there. A small, horny voice at the back of your head tells you that tonight may be the night, but you quickly shut it down, not wanting to get your hopes up all on your own.
Sunghoon serves you a glass of red wine, and you ask him what the occasion is. “Just to celebrate the house being almost done,” he answers with a smile.
Dinner would have gone as usual if Sunghoon wasn’t practically staring you down the whole time, eyes full of something you can’t quite put your finger on and that drives you crazy. His gaze lingers on you every time you speak, and he punctuates the syllables of your name like he’s trying to get a feel for them on his tongue.
Your heart is pounding in your chest when the clock strikes nine p.m. and it’s time for Chaeryeong to go to bed - you don’t know if you’ll be able to handle being alone with Sunghoon, and you might have to make a run for it, Cinderella-style.
Chaer goes to the bathroom to wash up and change into her pajamas, and when she comes back, she asks - no, demands - that you’re the one who tucks her in, and who are you to say no to the cutest little girl on Earth? She holds you by the pinky as she drags you up the stairs to her room then buries herself in her covers, tapping on the bed next to her body for you to sit there. “Okay, now we can talk without Dad around,” she says all business-like.
She tells you about the boys at her school and the birthday party she went to last week and the latest drama with her friends. The both of you are too busy chatting and giggling to hear footsteps coming up the stairs and stopping at her door, hiding behind the wall. After ten minutes, she yawns loudly and says, “Can you call Dad? I think he’ll be sad if he doesn’t wish me good night.”
“Of course,” you reply and kiss her on the forehead, wishing her a good night yourself. You’re only half-surprised to find Sunghoon at the doorway, waiting for his cue.
“Wait up for me, yeah? I’ll just be a minute,” he says, that smile still on his lips, that smile that keeps you hoping.
“Okay,” you whisper, and head downstairs, nervously taking a sip from your wine glass as you wait for him on the living room couch.
He is indeed back in a very short time, too short a time for your nerves to settle, so when he sits down close to you on the couch, body turned towards yours, you can feel your heart in your throat. He traces the rim of his glass with the tip of his pointer finger and you both watch the slow movement for a bit, a heavy silence hanging over both of your heads. You wait for him to talk because you’re too scared of what you might say if you start the conversation.
“Y/N, I’ve been thinking,” he starts shakily, “about um, our kiss, the other day-”
“Oh, we don’t need to talk about that,” you quickly interrupt, waving your hand in dismissal at him. “You made it clear you didn’t like it-”
“No, that’s the thing-”
“And that you thought it was a bad idea-”
“No, just listen-”
“So let’s just forget about it, and-”
“Y/N,” Sunghoon says in a stern voice, raising his tone just enough to make you stop in your rambling.
“Yeah?” you look up at him, eyes wide open. Expecting, as always.
“I haven’t once stopped thinking about that kiss,” he says, sounding out-of-breath. “I handled it awfully, and I’m so sorry that I made you feel like I didn’t like it, because, God, I liked it. A lot,” he chuckles. “Maybe even too much.”
There they are, the words you’ve been dying to hear. Yet all you can say is a stupid “Oh.”
“I just… I was tipsy, and Chaeryeong was coming the next morning, and I panicked. I didn’t know what to do for the rest of the week, and you didn’t say anything, so I didn’t, either. But I can’t pretend like it isn’t there.”
“Like what isn’t there?” you echo, voice almost low as a whisper.
“You know… this,” he replies, voice as low as yours. Slowly, one of his hands comes up to trace your jawline. You release a shaky breath as you set your wine glass on the coffee table and rest your hand on his knee.
“Are you sure about this? ‘Cause if you tell me that you want me… then I’ll be all yours, Sunghoon,” you murmur, hands slowly sliding up his thigh. He takes you by the wrist and puts your hand right on top of his already growing erection, letting you know exactly how he feels about you.
“God, can’t you see what you do to me? I want you so bad, Y/N,” he almost growls, and with that, his lips are on yours, trapping you into a kiss far hungrier and more ferocious than the previous kiss, your mutual intentions finally laid out in front of you for you both to see.
Sunghoon wastes no time as he grabs you by the waist and brings you to his lap, sitting you on top of his crotch so that you can feel his hardening cock against your core. The kiss turns desperate in mere seconds, and you’re relieved to see that Sunghoon seems to have been waiting for this as long and with as much ardor as you have. Your hands are fisting his hair, tugging almost harshly, while his hands roam the expanse of your back until they settle on your ass, grabbing at it to press you closer to him. You can’t stop yourself from moaning into his mouth when his erection rubs over your core in just the right way, and he takes that opportunity to add tongue to the kiss, deepening it.
You start to grind yourself against him, which he helps you do by slightly rutting his hips into yours and bringing your ass closer at every movement. Quickly, you fall into a rhythm so perfect and that feels so good, you think you might explode right then and there. Forget riding his thigh, this is infinitely better.
Needing to catch your breath, you pull away from the kiss, but your lips find his jaw immediately and you start pressing wet, needy kisses there and down his neck, sucking in some spots so that light bruises appear. “Fuck, Y/N, that feels so nice,” he breathes, eyes shut closed. His scent drives you crazy, and his small praise makes you double down on your actions, almost biting the soft skin of his neck.
As you continue kissing him there, occasionally returning to his lips for more, his hands roam your thighs and then up your back, snaking themselves under your t-shirt and finding the clasp of your bra, quickly doing away with it. He pulls away just so he can help you out of your top and takes your bra off of you, hands caressing your sides as he admires your half-naked body in all its glory. You take his hands and bring them to your chest, resting your hands on top of his as you continue grinding onto him and let him play with your boobs. “You’re so fucking hot,” he practically moans, making you chuckle. You reach for the hem of his t-shirt, because it’s only fair that you get to see him too, and you bite back a moan when he uses the absence of your hands on his to pinch your nipples lightly, then takes one in his mouth, catching you off-guard. You forget all about your plan of undressing him as his tongue flicks at the perked bud, your hands finding his hair again as you moan unabashedly.
“S-Sunghoon,” you breathe, the combined feelings of his now fully hard cock pressing against your clothed but soaking cunt and of his warm mouth around your nipples really getting to your head and making you see stars, so that all you can say is his name. “Please,” you beg, you’re not sure what for. Mercy, perhaps. Or release.
“Please what, baby?” he asks, and the nickname goes straight to your core.
“I don’t- just, please, Sunghoon, please,” you say incoherently, making him chuckle.
“Okay,” he says as if he can read your mind, and you think he actually does when he lays you down on the couch, fingers finding the zipper of your shorts. He unbuttons them and slides them down your legs along with your soaked panties. He makes sure they’re fully off of your body before running his palms up both of your legs, from your ankles to your hips.
“Don’t tease, please,” you plead, too desperate for him to take his time.
“As you wish, princess,” he smirks, and brings a finger to your folds, sliding it down to gather some slick before pushing it inside your hole. Your back arches as an instant response to his touch and you let out a small whine, already craving for more. “Fuck, so wet, and all for me, yeah?” he questions, his eyes not once leaving your glistening pussy.
“Yes,” you breathe out, mind too fuzzy to produce a longer sentence.
“That’s a good girl,” he coos, and adds another finger, pushing all three of his knuckles in and massaging your sweet spot as soon as he finds it. When he’s found a rhythm for his motions, he finally looks up at you and curses himself for not having watched your face earlier. Head tilted back in pleasure, mouth agape as your breathing gets more and more irregular and eyebrows scrunched together, you look like the definition of sex, and it takes everything in Sunghoon to not start touching himself.
He forces himself to look away from you only to focus back on your pussy and notices your swollen clit that is begging for attention. He licks it tentatively, and when your back arches at the feeling of his tongue on you, he dives in completely, licking a stripe up your folds before wrapping his lips around the bud and sucking at it like he did with your nipples earlier. The pace at which his fingers are pumping out of you quickens and you’re pulling so hard at his hair, you think you might rip some strands off. You feel yourself getting close, and you’re reminded of all those frustrating encounters with college boys where they stopped right before you came, so you can’t stop yourself as you desperately chant “oh my God please don’t stop please don’t stop,” not even noticing the way you’re holding his head down against your clit and bucking your hips into his face.
Your orgasm hits you like a truck - this is probably the first one you’ve received from someone other than your own hand or your vibrator in the past year and a half. It takes your breath away, and you’re left gasping for air for a good thirty seconds, your mind reeling from the intensity of such pleasure. When you calm down, you lift your head to look at Sunghoon who’s already watching you with a grin on his face, your slick coating his chin and mouth.
You plop your head back down with a groan when realization hits you. “I’m sor-”
“Don’t even finish that sentence,” Sunghoon commands, hands rubbing your still-trembling thighs. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he marvels, and you can’t help but giggle.
“Really?”
“Really.”
After another couple of seconds, you sit up on the couch and send Sunghoon a mischievous look. My turn, you think, and if his smile is any indicator then he seems to have understood. “Let me thank you,” you say, gesturing at him to sit up himself as you lower yourself to your knees on the couch in front of him.
You look up at him from between his thighs then unclasp his belt and undo his jeans. He lets out a shaky breath and says, “You don’t need to do this, you know-”
“Don’t be a gentleman, Sunghoon. I want to do this and I know you want it too. It’s pretty obvious,” you tease as you run your hand over his erection, watching in delight as his eyebrows furrow and his eyes close. “Now help me get these off of you.” He nods and raises his hips so you can take his jeans and underwear off, imitating his actions from before as you take your time to get them over his ankles and caressing his legs until they reach his crotch, watching as he takes his t-shirt off as well so that you can finally see him entirely. You’d caught glimpse of him shirtless before as he worked in his garden, but the sight still manages to take your breath away. Taut muscles and sun-tanned skin, laid bare right before you. This is what they mean by sculpted like a Greek god, you think.
You haven’t done anything, yet his head is already laid back against the top of the couch, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he gulps in expectation and chest rising visibly at every intake of breath. You must’ve saved a thousand souls in your previous life to be deserving of such an image.
You spit in your palm before taking him, starting out by slowly moving your hand up and down his shaft, then rubbing small circles against his tip, the small moan-like sighs that leave his lips letting you know you’re doing a good job. You gather some saliva in your mouth and spit on his length to add some lubricant and smirk when he lets out a low fuck. You bring your head closer and lick his balls, taking one at a time in your mouth and sucking very gently, making the volume of his moans increase. “Just like- fuck, just like that, Y/N.”
You then lick a long stripe up his cock and swirl your tongue around his tip when you reach it, humming at the taste of precum there. Sunghoon gathers your hair in a makeshift ponytail so it doesn’t get in your way, and finally looks down at you, blown away by the beautiful sight of your flushed cheeks and your mouth around his cock. He groans when you take him deeper and unconsciously bucks his hips into your throat, making you gag around him. He loves that feeling but doesn’t want to hurt you so he grabs your face and makes you look up at him, lust and worry written all over his face as he apologizes, but you quickly stop him. “It’s okay, I like it. You can do it again,” you say, and smile before wrapping your lips around him once more.
“Fuck, are you sure?” he asks and you hum, sending vibrations all over his body.
“God, o-okay,” he says, in disbelief that you’re okay with him practically fucking your throat and even liking it. And you do like it - you love letting him use your mouth to get off, just like you had earlier with him. He must have amazing core strength because he’s able to buck his hips into your mouth rapidly as he holds your head tight in his hands. The way you keep coming back for more every time he lets you breathe is enough to drive him crazy, but after a couple minutes, he stops you from taking him in your mouth again.
“I can’t- I don’t wanna cum like this,” he breathes, looking just as fucked-out as you do.
“Where, then?” you ask, kissing him all over his thighs as he trails his fingers through your hair. “Inside?”
He groans at the offer but shakes his head, eyes shut as if trying to calm himself down. “I haven’t got any condoms.”
“I’m on the pill,” you tell him, still pressing kisses on his warm skin. You’re far too desperate to feel him inside you to let a lack of condom stop you, especially when you don’t even need one.
He lets out an umpteenth shaky breath and makes you look up at him. “Are you sure?”
“Sunghoon,” you say, looking him dead in the eyes, “I’ve never been more sure of anything.” You’re relieved when he smiles and nods, bending down to trap your lips in a heated kiss for good measure. Something about being in this position, kneeling in front of his spread thighs and having to look up at him, turns you on even more.
“Okay, then,” he says, still smiling as he pulls away, holding you gently by the chin. “I don’t think I’ll be able to last long, and I want to feel you cum around me. So, tell me, what’s your favorite position, princess?”
The question takes you aback but you answer it anyway, looking at the ground. “Reverse cowgirl…” you admit shyly, a small smile spreading on your lips.
“Reverse cowgirl, huh?” Sunghoon repeats, and you don’t need to look at him to know he’s smirking. “Come here, then,” he says, and helps you up, making you turn around so your back faces him and seats you down on top of him, keeping your hips raised. He takes his cock inside his hands, pumps it a few more times before guiding it to your entrance, pressing kisses to your shoulders and nape to make you relax.
You moan at the simple feeling of his tip teasing your entrance and Sunghoon whispers “I know, baby” against your skin. “Sit down for me,” he commands gently, and you oblige, lowering your hips slowly to feel all of him stretching you out, the both of you moaning in synchronization when he bottoms out.
Sunghoon wraps an arm around your middle and pulls you onto him so that your back rests against his chest and you can let your head hang back next to his. “Let me do all the work, yeah?” he murmurs into your ear, and you hum in response. He doesn’t move for a bit, roaming his large hands all over your body until he feels your walls relax around him. One of his hands finds your breasts, playing with each nipple in turn, while the other finds your clit. It’s all so much but so good that you’re already a moaning mess before he’s even started moving. “Ready?” he asks, but you’re too far gone to answer.
His pace starts out slow, but you’re impatient and whine as you try to move your hips against his to go faster, which makes him tut. “I told you I’d do the work, didn’t I?” he asks, pinching one of your nipples in reprimand. “So be good for me and stay still, Y/N. I promise I’ll make you feel good.” You whine again but stop moving, heeding his words.
“Perfect,” he whispers and kisses your neck before picking up the pace, shushing you when your moans get too loud.
“I’m sorry, just feels too good,” you manage to let out.
“I know, but you need to stay quiet, baby,” he says, yet gets rougher with his thrusts, which does not help in the slightest. His hand that was on your breasts comes up to cover your mouth, but he quickly decides to make you suck on two of his fingers instead, muffling your moans a bit.
His fingers on your clit haven’t relented this whole time and after just a few minutes, you feel that familiar knot tying itself again in your stomach and you know you’re mere moments away from it coming undone. Judging by his rapid but clumsy thrusts, Sunghoon must be close too. He pounds into you like you’ve been wanting him to ever since you first set eyes on him as he entered the hardware store, hitting your g-spot over and over again. Tears roll down your cheeks and you whimper around his fingers, biting down on them as your second orgasm hits you.
You’re practically sobbing as he helps you ride out your high, his movements sending your body into pleasant overstimulation until he reaches his high too, the feeling of your pussy clenching tightly around him pushing him over the edge. Ropes of his semen paint your walls white, and there’s enough of it for him to become a father of two. You whine as he pulls away, and feel his cum slipping out of you and onto the couch underneath you. Before you can catch your breath, he asks, “Baby, can I do something very dirty?” and you nod without thinking much. This man could do anything he wanted to you, and you’d thank him for it.
He settles you back down onto the couch, kneels on the floor, head level with your core, and sticks his tongue inside your hole, making you yelp in surprise and overstimulation. You don’t understand what he’s doing until he comes back up and makes you open your mouth with his thumb, then spits inside it, telling you to swallow. You do as he says and taste his cum, laughing in disbelief at what he just did - and at how much you liked it. “Fuck,” you giggle.
“Was that too much?”
“God, no,” you say, and he smiles. You open your arms, gesturing for him to get back on the couch. He rests his head between your breasts, the both of you sighing in contentment as he rubs small circles on your belly and you graze your fingers through his hair. He’s so silent that you think he’s fallen asleep, but he speaks up after a while, voice soft and calm like you’ve never heard before.
“We should go get cleaned up…” he says, and you hum in agreement, “...but it’s so nice here,” he finishes, making you giggle.
“If we get cleaned up quickly now, we can cuddle in bed right afterwards,” you argue.
“You’re right. Infallible logic. You’re so smart, you know that, Y/N?” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice.
“Of course I know that,” you joke. “Let’s go,” you say, kissing the top of his head.
You take a shower together, cleaning each other and leaving kisses here and there, or touching in places you shouldn’t touch and that maybe lead to more, right there in the shower. Now that you’ve had a taste, you’re insatiable, and you warn Sunghoon that the both of you are in for a very long night, to which he answers that he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Once you do fall asleep, (which isn’t until two rounds later, and you’re surprised either of you have this much energy), however, you’re holding each other tightly, the fan on high so that you don’t feel all sticky, being so close to each other. Even if you wake up here and there because he shuffled or he snored too loudly, it’s one of the best sleeps you’ve ever had.
—
You wake up the next morning by small giggles and snorts that come from none other than Park Chaeryeong herself, who’s buried herself between you and her dad, shaking her body to wake the two of you. You’re glad that you listened to Sunghoon when he told you to put on a t-shirt of his as well as some underwear so neither you or Chaer would have a fright when she came and woke you up as she liked to do every morning. “You had a sleepover!” she exclaims excitedly when she sees you’ve finally opened your eyes, looking at her with a sleepy expression and a smile.
“We did!” you reply, trying to keep the same level of excitement.
“We did,” Sunghoon repeats, taking his daughter in her arms to hug her tightly and blows a raspberry in her neck to make her laugh.
“You didn’t invite me!” she shrieks when her dad’s left her alone.
“Sorry, sweetheart. It was just me and Y/N.”
“No fun,” she pouts, laying on her back and crossing over arms before turning back to her dad. “So, is Y/N my new mom?” she whispers even though you’re right there. You gasp at her question, making wide eyes at Sunghoon who just snorts, and you can’t tell if she’s genuinely asking or if she’s an eight-year-old with an advanced sense of irony.
“Of course not. Is Heeseung your new dad?” he asks, mentioning his ex’s new boyfriend. Chaer shakes her head.
“No. He’s Mommy’s boyfriend.”
“Exactly, and Y/N is Daddy’s girlfriend. Isn’t she?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at you, smirking.
“She is,” you reply, and Chaer turns back to you, giggling. She snuggles close to you, wrapping an arm around your middle, and you’re taken aback by the sheer cuteness of it all. You look at Sunghoon with a fake pained expression, and he smiles endearingly at the two of you before sighing and joining you in your hug. He rests his arms around you and his daughter, kissing the top of your heads in turn.
“My girls,” he mutters in your hair, and you smile peacefully.
There’s a lot of things you have to talk about with Sunghoon. You know your parents - especially your mom - will be okay with the two of you together, but will his parents be? And once semester starts again, what will happen? You’ll have to go back to campus and he’ll have to stay here - will a three-hour drive be a dealbreaker, or will you make it work?
The thing is, there’s no point in thinking about all of this at this moment. You’ve got the whole summer to figure things out. For now, you’ll eat cherries and spit out the pits, and everything will be perfect.
this is a one shot, there will not be a part two!
permanent taglist: @k-ingzo @bbujiikseu @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts (ask to be removed/added!)
/həˈmärdēə/ · noun
— a fatal flaw or crucial error that leads to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine.
"You had never asked for this, any of it; all you had asked for was love, and yet what you obtain in return is the suffocating burden of a kingdom amidst war threats and relationships that slip through your fingers with the cruel passage of time. Perhaps that was your hamartia—your hope, your longing, and your naivety that what you once shared with him could last even a moment past your coronation day."
{ a crown-heir!reader (they/them) and personal-knight!mc (she/her) au, featuring the lads men who walk the careful line between love & hate, life & death. }
ⓘ read: the post that started it all and a snippet of an ending
part i — nightmare.
part ii — loyalty.
personal-knight!xavier x crown-heir!reader
part iii — indifference.
royal-advisor!zayne x crown-heir!reader
part iv — caprice.
neighboring-crown-prince!caleb x crown-heir!reader
part v — daydream.
part vi — ambition.
marquess-turned-assassin!rafayel x crown-heir!reader
part vii — blasé.
foreign-betrothed-prince!sylus x crown-heir!reader
part viii — reality.
DISCLAIMER: this series is built upon layers of angst and will contain mentions as well as descriptions of: death, blood, violence, assassination, suicidal ideation, underlying themes of mental health issues, and more should the story call for it. you guys asked for this, so… reader discretion is advised. :P
NOTICE ABOUT UPDATES: i am a full-time undergrad and part-time grad student, who has two jobs & various extracurriculars. please be patient with me, as i want to do this world proper justice! my goal is to have this series done by the end of summer, 2026, latest.
Zayne frowns at you, gaze flicking between your face and the photo album you're holding, currently open to a page of him as a baby.
"I believe I was an average size at this age." He notes, flipping to the next page. Sure enough, there's another picture of his chubby cheeked toddler face smiling toothily at the camera. Immediately, you coo.
"You were such a fat baby! I could just eat you up." As if to satisfy said urge, you squeeze his hand tightly, eagerly flipping to the next page.
This photo is one of his earliest, only a few months old in his crib. He can admit that he does look quite chubby in this one. Apparently, he was a large baby. You make an odd noise, practically squealing as you suddenly grab his face, squeezing his no-longer-chubby cheeks.
"Look how cute you were! I hope our babies are this cute." You sigh, pulling away from him to once again admire the photos.
Zayne however, is thinking at a mile a minute.
You had said "our" babies. Did you want children with him? Of course, he knew the two of you were in a moderately serious relationship and having children was likely going to be a topic of conversation eventually but still...
"I hope they look like you." He murmurs, leaning closer to smell your sweet perfume. You smile softly, mirroring his actions to rest closer to him.
"For the sake of their cheeks, that would probably be best."
husband and wife, at the pinnacle of their love. on a night filled with wonders, you will know that he sees only you and everything that you are
genre/warnings:
18+ suggestive content—minors do not interact!—fluff, explicit smut: slightly rough & drunken sex, fingering, missionary. you and zayne have a daughter (her name is meirin!)
note:
god what have i written... the anniversary banner pv made me do it T^T anyhow, this is also a direct prequel to the upcoming angst fic in the name of love :))
“Whoa, so that’s Dr. Zayne and his wife...”
Soft whispers rippled through the crowd the moment you and your husband stepped into the pristine ballroom, all eyes subtly drawn to your arrival.
Tonight, you were accompanying Zayne to Akso Hospital’s anniversary dinner party. His sharp gaze and immaculate three-piece suit made a striking impression. Naturally, you matched his sophistication in every way—your flowing black dress accentuated your figure, while your hair styled into an elegant updo.
A sight for sore eyes, that was what the two of you were.
“Mind your step,” he murmured softly, his voice reassuring as the two of you gracefully ascended the stairs. His left arm wrapped around your shoulder, and you couldn’t help but notice the envious gazes of the ladies fixed on you.
“How does such a perfect couple even exist?”
“She’s so pretty… Of course, Dr. Zayne only wants the best.”
“Oh! And I’ve heard they already have a daughter too!”
A smile curled on your lips, a subtle boost of confidence washing over you as their murmurs reached your ears. You felt giddy too—on most days, you were a hunter in a life-and-death situations, rough and rugged. But tonight, draped in elegance and arm-in-arm with Zayne, you felt like a princess.
“Don’t smile that wide...” he suddenly whispered to your ears, a twinkle in his hazel eyes. “You’ll look like Meirin when she’s munching on her cookies.”
You shot him a frown. “Wha?”
“All those praises are going straight to your head.” Even in a prestigious event like this, Zayne couldn’t resist teasing you. “Sooner or later, it’ll get too big for me to handle.”
Fixing him with an unimpressed glare, you deadpanned, “Shush, you!”
When you reached the main hall, the buzz of conversation and clinking glasses filled the air, blending with the elegant music playing in the background. The hospital director, an elderly man with a warm smile, greeted you both along with his wife.
"Zayne, thank you for coming," he said, shaking your husband's hand and giving him a light pat on the shoulder. His gaze then turned to you. "Ah, this must be the stellar hunter wife of Dr. Zayne. You look absolutely radiant, madam."
"Ah, please don't call me that..." You mustered your most polished facade, supplying a soft, graceful laugh.
The director's wife grinned and added, "Why didn’t you bring your daughter here? Everyone’s looking forward to finally meet her already."
"She's a handful," Zayne immediately replied with a smile, his tone warm and affectionate. "And she gets fussy when her bedtime nears, so we decided to leave her with my in-laws tonight."
The director let out a hearty guffaw. "No matter how fussy she is, she must be really adorable with a mother this beautiful, eh?"
Throughout the night, it was a compliment you frequently heard. While you were flattered, a thought lingered in the back of your mind—what were your husband's true thoughts about all this attention to you?
Zayne was keenly aware of how captivating you were.
There was a surge of pride whenever he had you on his arm. Just like any man out there, he too wanted to show his hot wife off and flaunt her so everyone could see, as if saying: This is my woman.
But he too knew that it was in a human's nature to covet what they didn't have. And it was rightly proven when he stepped away for just a moment, only to return and find you engaged in conversation with a man.
The hospital director's son, no less.
"Miss, I've heard you're part of the Hunter Association?" he asked you inquisitively. "What a noble profession it is! Keeping all of us here safe on daily basis."
You responded demurely, "And those in Akso do the same, don’t they?"
Your conversation was harmless, and Zayne was a rational man, so he didn’t feel the need to intervene. He just made sure his gaze was on you every so often.
But when the director’s son began persistently offering you drinks, filling your glass time after time, Zayne's patience began to wear thin. The sight of the man’s insistence grated on him, stirring a possessive unease he couldn’t entirely ignore.
. . .
You could’ve sworn your vision swam a little after the third glass of alcohol. The warm buzz coursing through you also made everything seem a little brighter, and left you feeling just slightly off-balance.
"Miss, the white wine here is the best—" the man standing before you declared with a convincing grin, swirling the bottle in front of you. "Don't you want to try some?"
"Ah, no, sir..." you replied with a polite laugh, raising a hand in subtle refusal. "I've already had whiskey and gin just now—"
"Just a little! You really have to try it!"
You hesitated, heat creeping up your neck as the alcohol already coursing through your system made your cheeks flush. You didn’t even like alcohol much and only drank socially, but this was the very son of your husband's boss. Refusing outright seemed rude—
“Can you kindly not make her drink too much?”
Or so you thought, until your knight in three-piece suit suddenly stepped in and saved you from your plight.
Zayne’s tone was gentle yet firm, his words striking an authoritative balance. He flashed a placating smile. “My wife doesn’t have a very high tolerance.” Swiftly, he grabbed the glass from your hand and, without missing a beat, downed its contents in one go.
“If you’re looking for a drinking partner, let it be me instead.”
You knew better than anyone that your husband didn’t have a particularly high tolerance for alcohol either. Yet, for the next 30 minutes, you watched, equal parts impressed and concerned, as he matched the man drink for drink, deflecting further offers directed your way with a subtle, protective grace. Though Zayne’s words remained measured, you could see the flush creeping up his neck.
And soon, you’d witness just how far his limits had been pushed.
“Zayne! Are you alright?”
Worry laced your voice as you placed both hands on Zayne's cheeks, your brow furrowing in concern. Somehow or another you managed to drag your husband away and led him to the hotel room.
The warmth of his skin was unmistakable, and his face contorted in discomfort as the vertigo hit him full force. “Oh no, what have you done? Why did you even drink that much!?”
“I’m fine,” Zayne grumbled, his voice thick.
“You’re drunk!” You couldn't help but scold him as you started pulling off his coat and unbuttoning his shirt, trying to help him breathe easier. “You can’t even handle alcohol properly, and yet you’re trying to keep up with him...”
To Zayne, your voice somehow felt comforting. His mind was hazed, but your touch—your hand against his neck—felt like a cool splash of clarity.
His pretty wife... The dizziness was making it hard to stay upright, but the sight of you grounded him, and he instinctively leaned into you—
“Zayne—!”
You barely managed to catch his weight, instinctively wrapping your arms around him. He was so warm against you, his breath uneven, not to mention the slight tremor in his body. "Are you alright?!" you asked in a flurry. "Oh, let me get you some water—"
"You talk too much..." Zayne murmured, his words slurred as everything around him swayed.
Gripping your shoulder to steady himself, his unfocused gaze lingered on you, drawn to the curve of your lips, the delicate line of your neck, and the outline of your cleavage.
How can he have a wife this ravishing and do nothing?
And suddenly, he was sober. Very sober.
Or maybe not. It was simply just him finally giving in to his desires.
In one go, he seized your wrist, yanking you against him with sudden force— and with a quick tilt of your startled, precious face, he devoured your lips in heat.
"—!" It was like a spark igniting, burning through every thought. His mouth was urgent, demanding, as if he couldn’t wait another second to feel the rush of your closeness. His kiss was intoxicating—almost overwhelming—as he tangled his fingers in your hair, tilting your head to gain better access.
Zayne's hands moved to your back, pulling you into him, so close that the heat of his body pressed against yours. Then those sinful hands wandered to your hips, guiding you toward the desk. With reckless urgency, he swept everything off the surface, sending objects crashing to the floor with a sharp clang and made you sit on it.
"Ah, Zayne, you—!" You accidentally pushed him back, and he growled the moment your lips parted.
"Are you trying... to escape?" His gaze turned dark with lust, a dangerous glint flashing in his eyes. "Why? Isn't this exactly how you wanted me to be...?"
In that moment, you gulped as your heart thundered in your chest. What was even happening now? How did it escalate into this?
You stuttered, eyes widened, "Z-Zayne..."
But your husband had shed all traces of his usual composed self. In the haze of his muddled thoughts, he was driven purely by need. He swiftly removed his glasses, tossing them aside without a second thought, and this time—
His lips went straight for your neck, which, unbeknownst to you, had looked so enticing to him all evening.
"Hahh..." His breathy grunts were hot against your skin and his touch no longer gentle but firm and possessive. His mouth moved with a mix of hunger and desperation, and you struggled to contain the moans as his hands slipped inside your dress, and—
A shiver ran down your spine when he spread your legs, and you couldn’t help the titillating gasp that escaped when inserted his two of his fingers in you all at once, edging you.
"Ungh, ngh! Hah—" Your body jerked and you clung to him, your arms instinctively wrapping around his neck. Zayne wasn't usually this brash, but tonight it was as if a screw had come loose.
"Louder," he commanded in your ear, and your heart pounded at his authoritative voice. He pushed his digits deeper as if punishing you, that you yelped. "Do not hold back."
He lifted you by your waist, effortlessly pressing you against the small table by the window. You were on the 20th floor, the world below far out of sight, but the thought that anyone might catch a glimpse was somehow... thrilling.
"I-I'm close—" you stammered, and the moment you did, your husband vigorously moved his fingers inside your squelching folds, "A-ah!"
The room felt smaller, the air thicker. The way your walls took his fingers alone made your thoughts scatter, and when you came undone on him, you latched onto him, your head resting against his chest as your breaths came in shaky, uneven gasps. "Z-Zayne... please..."
He pulled out his fingers, looked at your cum coating them, and brought them to your lips. You, still trembling, sucked the essence off with teary eyes.
Sweaty, disheveled, lips swollen and cheeks flushed... how he had reduced you into this state was gratifying.
Zayne’s gaze darkened, his breath heavy as he stared down at you. "Are you ready to take me now?"
You nodded.
He gave you a small smirk, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw gently. "Good girl."
He lifted you over to the bed, and you gasped in surprise as he tossed you onto the soft sheets, the motion quick but not unkind. You barely had time to react before his intense gaze locked onto yours, his presence domineering above you.
“Spread your legs.”
Was this man really your husband? Sometimes, you still struggled to reconcile the tender part of him and the man consumed by a unrestrained intensity before you now.
By now you had swallowed all shame and did so. You wanted to look away, but then unable to when the sight before you caught your breath—
All the while, he had his eyes on you. Zayne pulled at his tie with deliberate intent, then he shed his suit pieces, casting them to the floor with a casual abandon, before undoing the remaining buttons of his shirt, revealing his bare chest altogether.
Your husband looks so hot. The way he gazed at you throughout it all too...
He glanced at the space between your legs. “Wider.”
You complied, letting your face burn impossibly hotter, anticipating him.
He eased in slowly, starting with just the tip. You whimpered at the intrusion.
"Hurts?" he questioned with a frown.
"No," you refuted quickly, desire too burning in your gaze as you met his eyes. "I can take more."
You arched your back as Zayne sank deeper, his full length filling you. A moan tumbled from your lips as your walls clenched in response, and he pushed himself completely inside you.
"Hah..." You inhaled sharply, giving yourself a moment to adjust to his entire length, and seeing you like that, your husband cradled the side of your face with his palm.
"So beautiful..." Zayne whispered, his glazed gray-hazel eyes fixed on your spent face. His other hand clasped yours, pinning it beside your head. "My wife... is so incredibly beautiful."
It was heart-fluttering to know that your husband found you pretty. Everyone might compliment you the same way, but his were the only one that truly mattered. After seven years of marriage, your heart still skipped a beat every time he held your gaze like this.
Without warning, Zayne started to move his hips. Your moans got louder and unabashed as his movements were slow at first, before he picked up the pace and thrusted in and out of you with fervor.
"Ahhh!" You threw your head back as his thick cock messily dragged itself against your walls. In, out, in out— Stars began to blur your vision, your nails digging into his shoulder as you reached for him.
You could see that excited glint in his eyes, the lust exploding at the sight of you. He watched you intently, savoring the way unbound desire twisted your face, each mewl you made filling the air. Your thoughts turned into puzzle pieces—
Thrust. So full, you are.
Thrust. What if... this time— you become pregnant again?
Thrust. That would be... nice. You can call it “New Years’ baby.”
Everything was incoherent. Teetering on the edge of consciousness, each hit to that one spot sent waves of pleasure crashing through you, pushing you to the brink of tears and screams.
Then, unexpectedly, he reached his climax first. His cum shot through, filling your womb to the brim in spurts after spurts, and you cried, trembling beneath him. Your release followed suit though, and you went limp in the aftermath.
Zayne collapsed on top of you and you wrapped your arms around him, burying your head in the crook of his neck, his name still falling off your lips as a whisper in his ear, a gentle song laced within moans. He kissed your neck, your shoulder, panting heavily against you.
“I love you.”
The world outside seemed to fade, leaving only the two of you in a tangled web of desire.
The first thing he heard was your whimper.
With a groan, Zayne cracked his eyes open the morning after, instantly recognizing the dull ache in his head—it was a hangover. But before he could press his hands to his temples, his gaze fell on you, curled up in a blanket next to him.
And the whimper came again, and it tugged at something deep inside him.
“What’s... wrong?” he asked in a groggy voice, turning toward you, his hand instinctively reaching for you despite the pounding headache. “Are you alright...?”
You blinked up at him, a flicker of resentment in your gaze, and Zayne gathered you into his arms. The events of last night came back to him in fragments, and realization dawned on him.
“Are you... sore?” he murmured, concern edging his tone.
“I hate you,” you retorted in a scratchy voice, mushing your head in his shoulder. Zayne widened in slight surprise, pulling you closer into his embrace.
“Is that it...? I’m sorry...”
He gently patted your head and back, trying to soothe you. The sight of you—vulnerable and distressed—made his heart tighten with a pang of guilt. Just how rough had he been with you last night?
“There, there, it’ll pass...” he said quietly, brushing a stray strand of hair from your face. “It’s normal... because we went longer and more vigorous than usual... Probably just mild irritation in your—”
“Don’t pull medical facts on me,” you muttered sullenly, weakly punching his chest. A smile made its way to his face at your mini attack.
“But it’s true though?”
How endearing. He couldn’t help but feel a warmth in his chest, his heart softening at the sight of you, even in your grumpy state.
And in that moment, Zayne thought, nothing could've possibly ever shatter his world ever again.
You never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs) | part 1
PAIRING: Zayne x Non-MC Reader
SYNOPSIS: An arranged marriage built on silence unravels into a love loud enough to echo—where a repressed heart finally claims what was always his.
WORD COUNT: 6.5k
NOTES: so.. this ended up being way too angsty than the original blurb but oh well no regrets. fair warning, prepare some tissues! The tag list for this fic is CLOSED.
MASTERLIST | part 2
The day you chose to deliver the papers was grey. Not rainy. Not stormy. Just… grey.
A sky without conviction. Wind without bite. The kind of afternoon that felt as indecisive as you were pretending not to be.
You stood outside his office door for longer than you were proud of. Long enough to memorize the grain of the wood. Long enough to talk yourself into it, and then out of it, and then back in again.
You pushed the door open softly, already shrinking into yourself.
You weren’t sure what you expected when you came.
That he’d be behind his desk, maybe. Pen in hand, papers meticulously arranged in little towers like the ones he builds in your mind—precise, unreachable, always half-tilted toward something you’re not allowed to see.
You thought you might say something rehearsed but kind. A line you practiced in the mirror, gentle but final. You didn’t want to hurt him. You just wanted to end the slow bleeding before it became a hemorrhage.
But the office was empty.
The silence hit first.
Not a tranquil silence. Not the kind that invites rest.
This one was clinical. Dry. Like the room had forgotten how to hold a heartbeat.
Zayne wasn’t there.
Of course he wasn’t. He was rarely anywhere you were. You’d grown used to missing him like one grows used to an old injury—limping out of habit, not pain. Not anymore. Not really.
You stepped inside anyway, shutting the door behind you with a quiet click. The room smelled like him—mint and paper, a trace of cologne sharp as memory. The blinds were half-drawn, the light filtering in like a sigh through cracked ribs.
You walked to his desk and placed the envelope down.
Gently. As if it were made of glass.
As if the act itself might shatter something irreversibly.
Why stay in this marriage when the instigator is already dead? It wasn’t a cruel thought. Just… practical. Your mother had orchestrated it all, hadn’t she? Down to the embroidered napkins and the painfully bright chandelier you never wanted. She'd made you both promises you never consented to, and now she was gone, buried in roses and obligations.
That question had come to you in the silence after her funeral, when the guests were gone and the condolences had dried into something brittle. You weren’t looking for liberation. You weren’t angry. But there was a kind of clarity that only grief could offer—harsh, clean-edged clarity that cut deeper the more you looked at it.
You stood there, staring at the divorce papers. The ink still smelled fresh. The curve of your own signature stared back at you like a challenge.
You didn’t hate Zayne.
God, if you hated him, maybe this would be easier.
But love had never bloomed between you. Not really. It had been all frost and formality, glances across long tables, the occasional brush of his coat sleeve as he passed you in the hallway. You learned his silences. He learned your smiles. But you never learned each other.
And even if Zayne had been mostly absent, even if he’d buried himself in work and left you to wander the quiet halls of your shared home like a ghost—well.
You weren’t completely blameless either.
You’d withdrawn before he could reject you. You’d built your own walls, brick by brick. You told yourself you were protecting yourself. But the truth was messier than that.
Maybe you’d been waiting. Hoping.
And when hope dried up, you folded your longing into politeness. Into pleasantries. Into dinner set for one.
Your fingers grazed the edge of the envelope again. He’ll see it when he comes in, you told yourself. He’ll understand.
He was good at understanding, wasn’t he?
But the part of you that still ached—the part that hadn’t quite given up—wished you didn’t have to do this alone. Wished he’d been here so you could have said something. Anything. So you wouldn’t have to walk out with your heart still clenched, still wondering if this was mercy or cowardice.
You turned toward the door slowly, letting your eyes sweep over the room one last time.
His chair was slightly angled toward the window. A mug of coffee sat abandoned on the side table, still half full. A scarf hung on the back of the chair, the one you once bought for him because he never remembered to dress warm in winter. He never wore it in front of you.
Maybe he wore it when he was alone.
Maybe he missed you, in his own quiet, useless way.
Maybe this wasn’t what he wanted either.
Maybe it was.
You didn’t wait to find out.
You slipped out of his office as softly as you had come. No tears. No dramatics. Just the sound of your heels clicking against the tile, carrying you away from the life you tried to build without being given the tools.
Behind you, the envelope sat motionless on his desk.
It would be the first thing he saw when he returned.
Or the last thing he expected.
Either way, the decision was made.
You just hoped he’d understand that it wasn’t born out of resentment.
It was born out of surrender.
And surrender, after all, was the only way you’d ever been allowed to love him.
You go about your day.
Mechanically, precisely. Like if you move fast enough, you won’t feel the weight of what you just did. Like if you keep your hands busy, they won’t remember how they trembled when you left the envelope on his desk.
You have dinner at a high-end restaurant downtown. The kind with mood lighting and cutlery that costs more than your first paycheck. The waiter greets you by name. You’ve been here before. Enough times to build a familiarity that feels almost like comfort.
You order your usual. A glass of wine, a dish too delicate for hunger. You smile when the waiter makes small talk. You nod when he compliments your dress. You even laugh—soft, practiced, hollow.
Around you, couples lean close, forks clinking gently against china, knees brushing under tables. You sip your wine and pretend you don’t notice. Pretend you’re above it all. That you chose this. That you’re fine.
You leave a generous tip and walk out alone.
You stop at a shop on the way home.
There’s a window display with crystals and tiny gilded mirrors and perfume bottles shaped like hearts. Useless things. Luxuries. Trinkets that mean nothing and say everything. You buy a pair of earrings that you’ll never wear, a satin ribbon you don’t need, and a music box that plays a lullaby you didn’t realize you remembered.
It doesn’t help. But it gives your hands something to hold.
By the time you return home, night has long folded itself over the city. You step out of your heels and into the silence, your keys landing with a metallic sigh in the tray by the door.
The house is spotless. Sterile. Like no one lives here. Like no one ever did.
You draw yourself a bath. You pick out the bath salts your mother once gifted you—lavender and sandalwood, soft and laced with memory. The water fogs the mirror, curls against your skin. You sink in, hoping the heat will coax something loose. The ache. The numbness. The way you still listen, stupidly, for the sound of the door opening behind you.
But there’s nothing. No footsteps. No voice calling your name.
Only the slow drip of a tap and the echo of your own breath.
After, you do your skincare. Layer after layer. Toner. Serum. Cream. A ritual. A mask. You look at your face in the mirror and wonder when you started looking so tired. You wonder if Zayne ever noticed. You wonder if he’d care.
You go to bed.
The sheets are cool, tucked too tightly. You lay there, stiff as porcelain, your eyes wide in the dark. The ceiling offers no answers. The night holds no comfort.
Your fingers find the empty side of the bed.
And stay there.
Still.
Quiet.
You don’t cry. You don’t let yourself. Because you made this choice, didn’t you?
You left the papers.
You left him.
But as sleep evades you and the silence tightens like a noose, you wonder if he’ll notice the way your perfume still lingers on the pillow.
And if he does—
You wonder if he’ll miss you.
Or just the absence.
You wake in the dark, unsure what pulls you from sleep. There is no noise, not exactly—just the strange pressure of being watched, the weight of something pressing too hard against your ribs.
Your eyes blink open slowly.
The room is dim, only the amber spill of the hallway light trailing in like a whisper beneath the door. The sheets have tangled around your waist, your body curled in that way it always is when you sleep alone, when there's too much space and too little warmth.
And then you see him.
Zayne.
Kneeling at your bedside.
His head is bowed, his hands gripping yours like lifelines, like they’re the only thing tethering him to the earth. His shoulders are trembling. There are tear tracks on his cheeks—silent and luminous in the half-light. His palms are cold, clammy, too tight around your fingers, but you don’t pull away.
You can’t.
Because you’ve never seen him like this.
Not composed. Not distant. Not restrained behind the iron wall of manners and duty and that maddening, unreachable calm.
No. This is Zayne—undone.
“Please don’t leave me,” he breathes.
The words are so soft, they barely make it past his lips.
Your breath catches.
You stare at him, heart thudding with a terror you don’t understand. He’s not bleeding. Not wounded. Not dying.
But he looks like he is.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes, voice breaking like something rusted. “I’m so—God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how to be your husband. I didn’t even know if you wanted me to be. I thought—” His grip tightens, desperate. “I thought you were happier without me. I thought I was giving you space. I thought it was what you wanted.”
You try to sit up, but he’s still holding your hands, head bowed so low you can feel his breath against your skin. He presses his forehead to your knuckles like he’s praying. Or confessing.
“I saw the papers,” he says. “I came back and I saw them and—” A pause. A shudder. “I felt something inside me go still. Like the part of me that hoped you’d someday choose me… just stopped breathing.”
You swallow.
Your throat is dry. Your heart is loud. Your hands are still in his, small and warm and useless in the face of this.
Zayne’s never begged for anything. Not when you married. Not when you drifted. Not even when the silences stretched longer than the days.
But he’s begging now.
And it breaks something in you.
“I don’t care about the arrangement,” he says, lifting his eyes to yours for the first time, and—God. They’re red-rimmed and wet and unguarded in a way you’ve never seen. Not even when his mentor died. Not even when yours forced a ring onto your finger. Because that's exactly what she was—a mentor before a mother.
“I don’t care who started it. I care that I can’t sleep knowing you won’t be there. That I won’t see your shoes in the hallway. Your cup in the sink. Your voice in the morning. I know I’ve been gone—I know I made you feel alone. But I never stopped—”
He cuts himself off, like the words are too big for him to hold.
“Don’t leave me,” he says again, hoarse. “Please. Tell me it’s not too late. Tell me I can try. Tell me I can love you better.”
And then he says it.
“Because I do—”
Soft. Crushed. Almost drowned in breath.
“—I do love you.”
You sit frozen, trembling with something that isn’t shock but grief—but hope—but disbelief.
Because you’d spent months mourning something that had never bloomed.
And now here he was. On his knees. With all his walls gone.
Waiting for you.
His words echo in your chest like footsteps in an empty hall. They don’t settle. They don’t land. They just… circle. Hover. Haunt.
And yet—your hands stay in his.
You want to pull away. You should pull away. That would be easier, wouldn’t it?
But your fingers won’t listen. They're traitors. Trembling, but curled around his like they still remember how to hold on.
Zayne’s eyes are still on you—pleading, ruined, impossibly gentle. And you hate him for it. You hate him for coming to you like this now, when your chest is raw and bandaged over with resignation, when your heart has learned to live with its hollow space.
You don’t know what to say.
You’ve always known what to say. You’ve always had something ready. A laugh, a line, a quiet deflection. You were raised to survive with poise, to never let the cracks show.
But now?
You don’t know how to speak through the knot lodged in your throat.
“I…” Your voice barely comes out. It sounds foreign. Bruised. “Zayne, I don’t—I don’t know.”
His brows draw together.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” you whisper. “You didn’t want me. You wanted peace. You wanted quiet. I gave you that.”
You’re breathing faster now, not from panic—but from all the things you’ve never let yourself say aloud.
“You weren’t there,” you murmur, looking somewhere past his shoulder. “Not when I waited for you to come home. Not when I made tea and poured two cups out of habit. Not when I cried so quietly I thought I’d go mad from the silence.”
He’s shaking his head, tears falling again.
“I didn’t know,” he breathes. “I didn’t know you felt—”
“Because I didn’t tell you,” you say sharply. “Because I thought I didn’t have the right to want more. We weren’t in love. We were just… two people honoring a contract.”
Zayne looks like he’s in pain.
Real pain.
The kind that doesn’t bleed, just bruises the soul until everything aches.
“I’m not saying this to punish you,” you whisper. “I just—I need you to understand. I don’t know how to believe you now. I don’t know how to trust what you’re offering me, when all I’ve ever known is how to be alone in this marriage.”
He closes his eyes like he’s been struck.
“I’m not whole,” you add, voice cracking. “And I don’t know if I even know how to be loved anymore.”
There’s a pause.
A long, trembling pause.
Then, quietly—softly—Zayne presses your hands to his lips.
He kisses your knuckles like he’s asking permission to breathe.
“I don’t expect you to believe me right now,” he whispers. “Or tomorrow. Or the day after. I just want you to know—I’m not leaving. I won’t run from this again. From you. Even if you don’t forgive me. Even if you never say those words back.”
You stare at him.
Still unsure. Still aching. Still raw.
But something inside you shifts.
Not healed.
Not certain.
Just—listening.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
He stays kneeling for a long time.
Even after your fingers loosen in his grip. Even after your breathing slows and your eyes drop from his face to the twisted bedsheet between you. Even after the tears stop falling from both of you.
He stays. Like a man rooted. Like he’s afraid that if he moves, you’ll disappear.
Eventually, you whisper, “Get off the floor.”
It comes out hoarse. Less command, more tired breath. The words of someone too wrung out to carry this moment any further, but too tender to let it close alone.
He looks up at you, cautious. But the moment has passed for confessions. He knows it.
So he rises slowly, joints stiff, fabric creased and damp from where his knees met the floor. You shift aside, just a little—enough to make room without saying it aloud.
He doesn’t assume.
He stands for a beat longer than necessary. Hands fidgeting. Shoulders tense. And then he moves—quiet as snow—and slips beneath the covers, staying on top of them at first, as though unwilling to cross some unseen line.
The bed dips with his weight. You both lie there, backs half-turned, inches away and aching with silence again—but not the old kind. Not the lonely, echoing kind.
This one is... full. Thick with things unsaid but understood.
His shoulder brushes yours. He doesn't move. Neither do you.
You let your eyes close, but sleep doesn’t come.
Your mind is loud in the hush. Not with words. With fragments. Ghosts. That night at the wedding when your mother held your hand too tightly and whispered that love is just a fantasy. The first time you saw Zayne sleeping at his desk, collar loose, lashes brushing his cheek, more beautiful than anything you were allowed to say. The moment your fingers twitched toward him once, and you stopped yourself. Every almost. Every if.
You feel him shift beside you. Just a fraction.
Then his hand—a single scarred hand—moves slowly across the space between you. Hovers. Waits.
You don’t open your eyes. You don’t breathe.
And then, as gently as anything you’ve ever known, he rests his fingers on your wrist.
Barely a touch.
Just a presence.
I'm here, it says.
You don’t move. You don’t speak.
But you let him stay.
The sheets rustle as he slides down slightly, mirroring your position. His forehead brushes your shoulder. His breath warms the back of your arm. His hand stays wrapped around your wrist like an apology without words.
Minutes pass. Maybe hours.
You fall asleep like that.
Not in his arms. Not pressed close. Not healed.
Just… not alone.
For the longest time, your mother dictated the weather of your world.
She didn’t just control the room—she was the room. Her presence seeped into the walls, into the silence, into the decisions you hadn’t even made yet. She knew what you’d wear before you opened your closet. She could recite your schedule before you checked your calendar. She didn’t raise a daughter—she built a reflection.
And she expected that reflection to obey.
At first, it was subtle. Childhood rules disguised as safety.
“Don’t play in the sun, you’ll get too dark.”
“Keep your voice down, good girls don’t shout.”
“Smile when guests are around, don’t embarrass me.”
But over time, the rules turned into walls. And the walls became a prison. You learned to swallow words before they formed. To weigh your tone. To apologize for breathing too loudly.
It didn’t matter what you wanted. What mattered was what she thought you should want.
And then Zayne entered the picture.
A calm man. A blank page. A voice with the temperature of winter mornings—cool, crisp, distant. You hadn’t even fallen for him. You’d simply watched as your mother’s attention pivoted from micromanaging your life to orchestrating your marriage.
He was her dream son-in-law. A doctor. Unshakeable. Mannered. From a family she couldn’t nitpick.
She didn’t ask if you liked him.
She didn’t need to.
She assumed you would be grateful.
And in some ways, you were.
Because Zayne—unavailable as he was, emotionally constipated and always at the hospital—did one thing your mother never did.
He left you alone.
There was no suffocating presence. No list of expectations folded into every meal. He didn’t demand you dress a certain way. Didn’t police your volume, your mood, your silences. He didn’t ask much of you at all.
And in that eerie vacuum, you found something terrifyingly precious.
Autonomy.
Even if he barely spoke to you, even if he barely saw you, Zayne gave you the one thing you craved more than affection.
Freedom.
At home, your mother would barge into your room with unsolicited opinions. In Zayne’s apartment, you had a key to your own space. At home, your mother would correct you mid-sentence in front of relatives. Zayne would barely notice if you said something silly, let alone make you feel small for it.
He didn’t tether you.
And while that coldness carved an ache in your chest during sleepless nights, it also came with a strange sense of safety.
He was distant, yes.
But he was not cruel.
When your mother visited your new house for the first time after your wedding, you saw her try it—try to step into your space like she still owned it. She scanned your kitchen with sharp eyes, criticizing how you stored the spices. She told you you were putting on weight. That you needed to stop being lazy, that Zayne would leave you if you didn’t “keep up appearances.”
She said it lightly, like a joke.
Zayne was standing by the coffee machine.
He looked up, his gaze ice-cold.
“I didn’t marry her for appearances,” he said, voice clipped, face unreadable. “And if you’re done insulting my wife, you can go.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
You remembered the way your mother blinked. Like someone had thrown cold water on her. She huffed, lips pursed, and left without another word. She didn’t even say goodbye.
And you…
You’d looked at him like he was a foreign language.
He didn’t look at you. Just poured his coffee and left for work without a second glance.
But you had stood there, rooted to the floor, hands shaking.
Because for the first time in your life, someone chose you.
Zayne had drawn a line in the sand.
And your mother had been on the wrong side of it.
You hadn’t cried then. Not even when the door slammed shut and silence filled the apartment again. But you remembered the tightness in your chest. The way you stared at the floor like you were thirteen again, except this time you weren’t helpless.
Because someone—your husband—had made it clear you were not to be messed with.
You still think about that moment. More than you probably should.
Because Zayne never brought it up again. Never mentioned her. Never asked how it made you feel.
But he didn’t apologize for defending you.
He didn’t make you feel like you owed him for it either.
And somehow, in his detachment, there was a kind of tenderness your mother had never offered you.
He gave you space.
He gave you a shield.
And somewhere in the folds of that cold, quiet marriage, you started seeing him not just as the stranger you were legally tied to—but the man who, even in silence, stood between you and the woman who broke your voice.
He might not have held your hand.
But he kept your name safe in a house that was finally your own.
And maybe that didn’t look like love in the way you were raised to recognize it.
But it was protection.
And for someone like you—raised to feel like a burden—that meant something.
You wake before the sun.
The room is still steeped in the heavy blue of early dawn, where everything looks softer than it really is. Blurred at the edges, like grief.
There’s a moment, a breath, where you forget. Where you wake as if from a dream and all is suspended. The air is cold against your cheek. The sheets heavy with the imprint of two. And there’s warmth behind you. A weight.
Zayne.
Not a memory. Not a phantom. Not another figment of wishful thinking conjured up by your loneliness.
He's still here.
The realization sinks in slowly, like tea bleeding into water. At some point in the night, he must’ve shifted closer. One of his arms is draped around your waist, tentative but real. His chest rises and falls against your back, the rhythm steady, anchoring. And his face—God, his face is tucked into your shoulder like it’s the only home he’s ever known.
You don’t move.
You just lie there, blinking up at the ceiling, your body stiff with exhaustion and the kind of grief that has no name. You're not sure what it is you’re mourning. Only that it’s something vast. Something invisible. A version of this marriage you never got to live. A thousand versions of yourself you never got to be—with him, beside him, for him.
There’s a heaviness in your chest that isn’t pain. Not sharp, not sudden. Just... present. Like fog. Like longing left too long in the cold.
You think about the envelope still sitting on his desk. Signed. Final. As binding as a scar.
You think about how easy it would be to slip out from under his arm. Walk away before the sun catches you both in this quiet trespass. Before the ache turns into expectation. Before kindness gets mistaken for forgiveness.
And yet—you stay.
Not because anything has been resolved. Not because his whispered apology last night has undone the loneliness you watered for so long it grew roots inside you. But because you're tired. And his breath is warm. And for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, you’re not waking up to a silence that only belongs to you.
He shifts slightly, his hand tightening instinctively on your waist. Just a twitch. Just enough to remind you: he feels you there.
The tears come before you can stop them.
Slow. Silent. The kind you don’t sob out loud. The kind you let slip into the pillow because you’re too proud to make a sound.
You wish you could hate him.
You wish he’d never said anything at all. That he hadn’t come into your room like that. That he’d left the papers on the desk and let the story end quietly.
Because now there’s a crack.
A crack in the coffin you tried to bury this marriage in.
And through it, something stirs.
Not hope. Not yet.
Just the unbearable truth that he’s still in there, somewhere—beneath all that absence. That maybe he always was. That maybe, just maybe, he had been mourning it too, all along, but in his own cold, closed, unreadable way.
Zayne breathes in deeply, then exhales with a small, uneven sigh. Still asleep.
You glance down at the hand around your waist. His fingers twitch once, like he’s dreaming of holding you tighter but doesn’t quite know how.
It hurts.
Not because he’s touching you—but because of how long you’ve wanted him to. Because of how gentle it is. Because tenderness, after all this time, feels like both a balm and a blade.
You close your eyes again.
You don’t move.
You don’t wake him.
There is a funeral between your ribs and a heartbeat beside you, and both feel sacred.
And maybe—just for this morning—that’s enough.
The eggs are overcooked.
Zayne stares down at the pan like it offended him personally, the browned edges curling up as if mocking the silence that’s wrapped itself around the kitchen. The yolks aren’t runny the way you like them. He used the wrong kind of salt. The tea might be too bitter. Everything’s a little off today.
Or maybe he is.
Zayne places the plate gently on the table, careful not to make too much noise. You’re sitting across from him, wrapped in your robe, a thin line between your brows as you butter your toast like it’s a task that requires precision. You haven’t spoken much. Not since waking up to find him still there, hovering in the doorway with eyes swollen from a night spent begging the universe to turn back time.
He watches you through the soft steam rising from the tea.
And he aches.
Not with longing, though that’s part of it.
No, this ache is older. Rooted in something he thought he buried years ago, back on that cursed mountain where blood froze faster than it could pool, and lives ended mid-sentence.
He shouldn’t be thinking about that morning—not here, not with you sitting across from him—but he is.
Because the divorce papers, the ones still waiting on his desk like an open grave, reminded him exactly how it felt to lose something you didn’t know how to hold.
That night on Mt. Eternal… years have passed since then, but the cold never really left his bones.
He still sees William’s face sometimes. In dreams. In the flicker of a hallway light. In the space between one breath and the next, when memory has no mercy.
He hadn’t known the man for long—barely a few months, a blip in the timeline of his tightly folded life—but William had burned bright. Reckless, brilliant, infuriatingly intuitive. He had a way of making people feel seen. A way of cutting through Zayne’s silence with nothing but presence.
And then—
Zayne remembers pressing his hand to William’s chest, trying to keep the life in. His own blood mixing with his friend’s. He remembers the way the air smelled—like frost and iron and finality.
He remembers thinking, If I survive this, I will never love anything fragile again.
And then he met you.
He looks up.
You’re chewing slowly, eyes unfocused. Lost in your own world of unspoken grief.
You hadn’t said anything last night after he fell asleep against your shoulder. You hadn’t moved away. But you hadn’t touched him, either.
Zayne doesn’t blame you.
He doesn’t know what to make of your silence—whether it’s resignation, or fear, or kindness. Whether he’s been forgiven, or whether you’re still too tired to fight.
He wishes he knew how to ask.
He wishes he were the kind of man who could reach across the table and take your hand, just to show you he's still here. That he finally wants to be here. But he isn't that man. Not yet.
And you deserve better than half-formed promises from someone still trying to dig his heart out from beneath layers of protocol and loss.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, almost without realizing it. The words come out hushed. Fragile.
You glance up.
Your eyes meet.
There’s no anger in them. But there’s no relief, either. Just tiredness. And something that looks too much like a mirror of his own sorrow.
Zayne swallows.
He wants to tell you everything. About the nightmares. About the way guilt has hardened in his chest like a scar tissue. About how hard it is to come home to a soft, warm bed after you've learned to sleep beside death. About how sometimes, when you smiled at him, he looked away not because he didn’t care—but because it hurt too much to hope.
But he doesn’t say any of it.
He takes a sip of tea. It’s scalding. Bitter. His throat burns.
He watches you spread jam on toast with careful, robotic movements before you casually reach over and add two spoonfuls of sugar into his tea, and thinks—I should’ve told her sooner. I should’ve told her everything.
But he didn’t. And now, here you both are. Sitting in the ruins. Pretending it's breakfast.
There’s no music. No birdsong. Just the soft clink of ceramic and the breathing of two people who don’t know how to mourn what never had a name.
He looks at your hands—those same hands he held last night like a prayer—and wishes he could rewind time.
Just one month. One year. One heartbeat.
But he can’t.
So he lifts his fork. Cuts into the eggs. Forces himself to chew.
Because this is what it looks like, sometimes, when you try to make amends:
Burnt breakfast.
Too many silences.
A table full of ghosts.
And you—still here.
Not forgiving.
Not forgetting.
But here.
And for Zayne—for a man who’s only ever learned to grieve in private—that is a beginning worth mourning, too.
His phone vibrates against the table.
He flinches—guilt, maybe, or just the startle of being dragged out of a thought you didn’t want to leave.
You don't look up, still quietly chewing, lost in that dreamless place where sorrow goes to sleep in you like a second skin. But Zayne reaches for the phone, thumb swiping across the screen, half-expecting some emergency at the hospital. A late case. A consult. Another impossible situation to fix so he doesn’t have to fix himself.
But it’s a text from Greyson.
"You still coming to the charity gala? Need someone to block Dr. Malik from hijacking the auction with his ugly vintage duck paintings again."
He exhales—one short breath, barely a sound. The message is simple. Banter, really. Nothing urgent. Nothing pressing.
He hasn’t replied to Greyson in weeks.
He hasn't thought about the gala either. Usually an excuse for donors to parade their goodwill in overpriced suits, for surgeons to trade horror stories over cocktails, for the hospital to raise enough funds to keep the rural outreach programs going another year.
Zayne’s gaze flickers upward.
You’re sipping your tea now. Still quiet. Still careful. But you’re here. Still in this kitchen. Still in his orbit.
Zayne lets a thought settle in his chest—tentative, unsteady, like a flame in high wind:
Perhaps not all is lost.
Maybe not everything has calcified into endings. Maybe not every door has shut. Maybe there's still a sliver of future that hasn’t collapsed beneath the weight of what went unsaid. You hadn’t kicked him out last night. You hadn't pulled your hand away when he clutched it like a lifeline in the dark.
And now, this. A small, ridiculous gala. The softest suggestion of routine, of life continuing.
He looks back at the message, thumb hovering over the reply field.
Maybe… maybe he could take you.
The thought startles him with its tenderness.
Would you even want to go? Would it feel like a poor excuse to make up for everything? A bandage over a bullet wound? Would you dress up just to stand beside a man who once vanished when you needed him most?
Zayne’s thumb lowers.
He doesn’t reply.
Instead, he watches you butter another piece of toast with slow, mechanical grace. He memorizes the way your lashes cast shadows down your cheeks. The way your hand trembles just slightly, like you’re barely holding yourself together.
You were so strong, always. And he—he let himself believe you didn’t need him. That your strength meant he could keep hiding inside his cold logic and call it love.
He knows better now.
Maybe it's too late to be the man you needed back then. But maybe… maybe he can still learn to be someone you don't have to heal from.
He slips the phone screen-down on the table.
Then, with hesitant hands, he reaches across the table and nudges the jar of jam closer to you. A quiet offering.
You glance at it.
He meets your eyes again.
And in that fleeting glance, something moves. The first light in a room long sealed shut.
The moment passes too quickly.
Your eyes lower again, lashes shuttering the fragile connection. You spread the jam he offered, slow and deliberate, as if trying not to let your hands betray you. Zayne watches the knife tremble ever so slightly in your grip. Not enough for someone else to notice. But he does. Of course he does.
He’s used to studying tremors for a living—on monitors, in pupils, in dying pulses beneath his palm.
And now, you.
You, trembling under all that quiet.
He clears his throat.
It’s not a loud sound, but it slices through the morning hush with a clean, surgical precision. You blink up at him, guarded again. As if waiting for him to say something devastating, or worse—dismissive.
Zayne presses his palms against the edge of the table. He doesn’t lean forward, doesn’t crowd you. He keeps his voice level. Gentle. Low.
“I, ah…” he starts, and immediately hates how uncertain he sounds.
You set your knife down.
Zayne exhales softly through his nose, schooling himself into coherence. He can do this. He speaks to grieving families, for God’s sake. Tells them about cardiac arrests and brain deaths and the final moments of their loved ones. He can string a sentence together.
But this—this is harder.
“The hospital is hosting its annual charity gala this weekend,” he finally says. “Greyson asked if I was coming.”
You tilt your head. Neutral. You say nothing, but he thinks you’re waiting. Letting him go on.
Zayne looks down at his mug, watching the swirl of steam curl like a vanishing thought.
“I was thinking,” he says carefully, “maybe you'd like to come with me.”
There.
He doesn’t look up immediately. He can’t. He doesn’t want to see your hesitation, your polite refusal, the way you’ll swallow your discomfort and say maybe next time when you know there won’t be one.
But then—
“Why?”
Your voice is not sharp. Not cruel. Just… tired.
Zayne looks up.
You’re watching him now, one brow faintly raised, lips parted slightly—not in expectation, but confusion. Sincere confusion. And something deeper beneath it—wariness, perhaps. The kind that comes from being wounded too many times in the same place.
He leans back in his chair. Not retreating. Just trying not to suffocate you with the closeness of his yearning.
“Because…” he begins, but the rest of the sentence gets tangled somewhere in his chest.
Because I want to be seen with you.Because I want to try again.Because I miss being beside you even when we weren’t really together.Because I can’t bear the thought of showing up alone and being reminded of what I let die between us.Because I want to be yours.
Instead, what comes out is softer. Smaller.
“Because I’d like you to be there.”
You don’t answer.
Instead, your eyes move over him—like you’re taking stock of the man across from you. Not the doctor. Not the public figure. Not the version of Zayne that the world sees. But him.
You study the way his hands are folded, the way his jaw is clenched not with arrogance but restraint. The hair still damp from his morning shower. The sleeves of his dress shirt slightly creased because he didn’t take the time to iron them.
He’s not posturing. Not performing.
He’s just… here. Holding out a hand through the quiet wreckage.
And finally—finally—your lips part.
“Is it black tie?” you ask, like you’re still testing the water, still waiting to see if this is real.
Zayne blinks.
Then breathes.
“Yes,” he says. “Full formal.”
You nod. Just once. A small thing. A quiet gesture that still manages to bloom something in his chest that almost feels like hope.
“Then I’ll need a new dress,” you murmur.
And Zayne doesn’t smile. Not fully. But something in his expression softens, loosens. The beginning of light behind stormclouds.
He knows it’s not forgiveness. But maybe, maybe—it’s the start of returning home.
Zayne finishes his tea in silence.
And as he stands to leave, brushing past your chair to take the dishes to the sink, he lets the faintest hope settle into the hollowness of his ribs.
Of course, you can't help but take note of this. So when you're shopping, you figure there's no harm in picking up a few backless tops.
Maybe more than a few.
When you come home with multiple shopping bags, Zayne simply raises a brow in questioning. He watches as you set the bags down, beginning to pull the clothes out of the bag and show them to him.
He notices a theme, because of course he does. So he very innocently suggests you try them on. He expects you to agree. What he's not expecting is for you to pull off your shirt in the middle of the living room and pull on a red silk top that leaves practically all of your back exposed.
When you turn so he can adjust the thin strap at your waist, he simply stares for a minute.
"Is something wrong?" You ask, glancing over your shoulder to find Zayne's ears flushed red.
"Nothing's wrong. How about you try on the black one next?"
By the time you've tried on every top, Zayne is practically sweating. He adjusts at the neck of his shirt as you turn in front of him, pulling on your normal, fully backed shirt.
Zayne usually always had some on him, the perks of working in a hospital with an endless supply of free condoms. But you figured the responsible girlfriend thing to do was to keep a box at your place, just in case. But maybe you hadn't thought that plan out entirely.
You almost feel a sense of kinship with men who've been sent to buy menstrual products, staring at an aisle of items you really don't know much about. So, you call the person you always call when you have a question.
"Hello?" Zayne's voice comes through after the first ring, because of course.
"What size is your dick?" You ask, thankful there's no one around to hear you.
"I'm sorry?" He sounds incredulous, though you know he heard you.
"Well, when you're hard. For the condoms. I'm kind of flying blind here. There's not exactly a size chart on these things." You inspect the back of a box just to be certain before putting it back. Cherry flavoured? Yuck.
"Oh. Well you'll have to grab a large. But it's not entirely necessary, I can pick up more at the hospital."
"If Yvonne sees you grabbing anymore condoms, she's gonna think we're sex addicts or something" It takes a minutes for the words to process, as you're busy scanning the boxes, trying to avoid things like "ribbed" and "glow in the dark."
"Wait...you're a large?" You hear him scoff almost incredulously.
"I'll try not to be offended by your surprise." He says, his tone flat as you laugh.
"Well, I'm just saying. Lucky me huh?" He sighs loudly, and you're sure he's pinching the bridge of his nose. Finally, you find a pack that looks good enough.
"Okay, these look good enough! Hopefully they fit you. If not, we'll probably have to do it raw." You say, relishing the choked noise you hear from the other side of the phone.
"You know what, I believe I'm mistaken. Get the small size."
Your husband looks cool on the surface, yes. but inside, he’s in a whirlpool of countless thoughts just pulling him deeper. And that won’t do.
“my love, did you take your multivitamin—” before he can complete the sentence, you make a sprint towards him and place a gentle kiss on his lips.
he’s startled. And then melts into a puddle of goo as he giggles softly. He brushes his nose against yours and places a kiss on the cool tip of it.
he doesn’t think much of it until he finally catches on when you keep interrupting him with kisses.
“don’t forget to—” kiss. “I’m serious here, y—” kiss kiss. He admits defeat with a sigh and pink ears.
“have you eaten yo—” kiss. “I understand what you’re attempting here but—” wet kiss. And then two more.
——
“mmh—” your head falls on his shoulder as his lips find your temple to stifle a moan. His cock splits you open as you bounce on it. He’s putty under you.
His palm runs over your back, settling at the back of your neck, cradling your head while you take him to the hilt.
Gravity forces his tip to kiss your cervix each time his cock is pummeled into you. his brows furrow, another thought bubbling. you were hell-bent on fucking each one out.
“you sho—” you pull back to kiss him messy now, before he finishes his thought—drinking up his words. “nghh i—” his jaw clenches.
“hush, my sweet.” you murmur. His hands slide low, gripping your hips as he swallows back sounds that erupt as deep grunts. How could he be quiet when your pussy has him in such a deliciously syrupy grip.
His finger finds your clit, pinching it once. “hah—! s’deep nghh—” your head lolls back, eyes fluttering shut. But he doesn’t let you. he grips your chin, pulling you into a greedy kiss. Spit and tongue and teeth.
His hips move below you, plowing into you deeper and deeper and deeper—
“m’cu—cumming! Your voice cracks. One more thrust, one more kiss to your womb and he’s finishing in you.
You pull his face closer, calming your breath as you come down from your high—nose to nose.
He lets out a breathy chuckle.
“If the punishment feels this good, my love, I’m doomed to repeat the crime.”
zayne introducing you as his wife (based on this ask)
"my wife gifted me this watch for our monthly anniversary."
"greyson, would you like to have this flavoured tea? my wife prefers coffee."
"i'll discuss it with my wife and let you know."
the entire hospital knew one thing by now: dr zayne had a wife who was responsible for half his vocabulary. but who?
at the rest station, someone finally blurts the question out.
zayne simply gestures to you and that alone invites exaggerated gasps. more so upon learning that you were a nephrology specialist. did no one know you were married...?
"were you even friends before?" greyson addresses the matter like he's witnessing a medical anomaly. oh so it's worse.
...which is insulting because you literally arrived together this morning and routinely shared lunch. how obvious could you make it?
"perhaps we should hold hands more often." he solemnly suggests.
"not obvious enough." you scoff. "we should kiss more often."
his ears turn pink. "i'm afraid i wouldn't be able to let you go if we did." zayne offers you a shy yet mischievous smile.
"then we should practice at home." you smirk, taking his hand in yours as you finally arrive at your car.
"after you, my wife." his cheeks are already tomato red.
listen i may take 4 weeks to write a 3k word chapter, and i may take 45 minutes to decide whether i should use “laugh” or “chuckle”, but at least i don’t use ai and whatever you’re getting is pure chaos from a human brain
cw: dirty talk (lots of), oral (f!rec), dry humping, mentions of pregnancy, cheating, older reader, reader being called noona
you know he’s younger than you and he doesn't care about it, all sharp confidence and bright eyes that never look away, shameless in how he says your name like it already belongs to him. jungwon doesn’t whisper his want, he announces it, telling you your boyfriend doesn’t see you the way he does, telling you he would never hesitate the way you do.
he’s obsessed and vocal and reckless about it, about you, daring you to choose, daring you to fall, daring you to admit that when he pulls you along, your feet keep moving even while your heart protests, even while you tell yourself this is wrong and feel yourself wanting him anyway.
"where's your boyfriend now to make you feel good"
"never heard you make these cute sounds when you were with him.. tell me noona, has anyone ever made you feel this way?"
he's pressed down on you, chest to chest... taking your hand away from his hair.. "no touching, noona... have a schedule later.." and he kisses the inside of the wrist, kissing down your arm.. "can you keep your hands to yourself? I know you're a desperate little slut for me, but just tonight.. no touching me"
"do you think if I put a baby in you, he will think it's his? wanna test it?"
him flipping you over on to your stomach, you're wearing your boyfriend's shirt and some cotton shorts, no panties and no bra
him having you on your stomach flat, lying on top of you, his hands on yours, intertwining fingers, him in his boxers and a loose shirt, rutting into you, dry humping you like a dog in heat, those breathy moans of his
"fuck, noona.. need to be in your cunt so bad but... shit, can't stop moving, feels.. so... shit, you're gonna make me cum like this"
him cumming in his pants, a stain on his crotch and your shorts all wet and sticky, getting off from you, manhandling you that your ass is in the air, knees on the mattress, back arched
"look at you... fuck, you're so horny for me? so dirty..." spanking your pussy, the squelch of your wet shorts coming in contact with his hand, grabbing your crotch and massaging it harshly before bringing his mouth to your covered wet sticky cunt and licking around your hole before diving in over your shorts
"can't believe you've been keeping this pussy from me... fuck, I'm so jealous of that bastard getting to taste this whenever he wants"
leaning over your pussy, collecting spit in his mouth before dribbling it down, the glob landing on your cunt and trickling down but before it drops off, he brings his index and middle finger, spreading it all over your crotch, the fabric getting more slick and dark
"is your cunnie getting all tingly? I can take care of it... of you... just say the word"
