📬 ❤︎ juhoon 𝔁 hair stylist!gf!reader ─── ৻ꪆ he learns the physics of curly hair just to perfect the art of loving her.
❤︎ warnings+tags ─── ৻ꪆ reader has curly hair for plot purposes (it’s the entire plot 💀)
💌 ❤︎ notes ─── ৻ꪆ kisses for my complicatedly wavy or curly hair girlies <3
❤︎ wc ─── ৻ꪆ 2.6k
𝄞 𓏸 my cortispilledmasterlist »﹙合﹚
💌 ❤︎ part of the stylist!gf!reader oneshots series !
❝ tracklist ❞ ─── get you—kali uchis ❦ our room—yerin baek ❦ best part—daniel caesar ❦ focus—nct 127 ❦ sudden shower—eclipse ❦ darari—treasure
it wasn’t unusual for you to end up at the cortis dorms after work. in fact, the path from your university campus to their front door had practically become muscle memory.
officially, you were one of their hair styling interns, clocking in part-time around a demanding schedule to trim split ends and tame post-rehearsal frizz. unofficially, you were juhoon’s girlfriend, which meant the fine line between ‘visiting for a scheduled shift’ and ‘visiting because you practically lived there’ had long since blurred into complete nonexistence.
you already kept half your life stowed away in his dorm room anyway. there was a dedicated drawer in his dresser, a rotating collection of oversized hoodies that smelled faintly of his vanilla cologne, a tangled phone charger that never left his bedside outlet, and three pairs of fluffy socks that had somehow migrated into his laundry months ago and never found their way back. most importantly, there was an entire shelf in his bathroom solely dedicated to your curl products; a tactical necessity, really, because nobody wanted to witness the logistical nightmare of you hauling six different bottles of leave-in conditioner and curl-defining gel across the city every other day—least of all juhoon, who cherished his peaceful mornings.
the domestic routine you now took for granted had actually started during one particularly miserable evening a few months prior—the rain had arrived entirely out of nowhere, just as everyone was packing up to leave the company building. one second the sky had been a heavy grey, and the next, it looked as though somebody had unceremoniously emptied an entire ocean onto the streets of seoul.
you had stood underneath the concrete awning of the building, staring out at the torrential downpour with a sinking heart.
“my dorm is literally twenty minutes away,” you muttered, watching the water bounce violently off the tarmac.
martin, standing beside you with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, winced as a gust of wind sprayed mist over your shoes. “yeah, you’re not making it.”
“i’ll drown,” you said flatly.
“probably.”
you pointed an accusing, shivering finger at him. “thank you for the unwavering support.”
“anytime.”
the cortis dorms happened to be much closer, unfortunately. before you could even voice a protest or suggest waiting out the storm, five absolute idiots, and you, had collectively decided that sprinting headfirst through a literal deluge was somehow the most logical solution, which was how you found yourself hurtling down the slick pavement, your fingers locked in juhoon’s tight, protective grip while cold rainwater soaked through absolutely everything you wore.
the chaos around you was loud and entirely absurd. martin was yelling incomprehensible curses at the clouds; james was somehow laughing like a maniac, treating the storm like a water park ride; seonghyeon looked deeply, personally offended by the weather itself; and keonho nearly slipped into a dramatic faceplant twice, his arms flailing wildly. through it all, juhoon kept trying to position his broader frame to shield you from the wind, despite the glaring fact that he was already just as utterly drenched as you were.
by the time all six of you stumbled into the dry warmth of the dorm, everyone looked entirely ridiculous. water dripped in heavy puddles onto the heated floor, damp clothes clung uncomfortably to skin, and shoes squelched rhythmically with every step.
james looked down at his dripping shirt, peeling the fabric away from his chest with a grimace. “i think i absorbed a lake.”
“you look like a wet pigeon,” seonghyeon deadpanned, pulling a soggy piece of his hair away from his eyes.
“thank you, seonghyeon.”
“you’re welcome.”
you were already laughing so hard your chest ached, the sheer adrenaline of the run leaving you breathless. sensing your shivering, juhoon squeezed your hand, pulling you closer into his side. “just stay here tonight,” he murmured, his voice laced with quiet concern.
you looked up at him, water droplets still clinging to your eyelashes. “i don’t have any clothes, jju.”
he blinked down at you, an amused, knowing look softening his features. “you literally keep clothes in my wardrobe.”
“...right.”
“and your hair products.”
“...also right.”
“and your pyjamas.”
you opened your mouth, then closed it, entirely deflated.
“the only thing remaining is for you to start paying rent,” he teased softly.
from across the entryway, martin immediately pointed a finger at you. “i’ve been saying this for months! she practically lives here.”
“nobody asked you, martin,” juhoon called back without breaking eye contact with you.
“you have your own dedicated shelf in the fridge!” james shouted over his shoulder as he kicked off his wet trainers.
you gasped, feigning deep offense. “that is private, highly classified information!”
twenty minutes later, you had disappeared into the bathroom, peeling off your damp clothes quickly and stepping into a steaming shower. outside the door, you could hear the muffled, chaotic sounds of the boys drying themselves off with a mountain of towels and collectively making the questionable financial decision to order enough takeaway food to feed a small, starving village.
when you finally emerged into the living room, swamped in one of juhoon’s massive, oversized hoodies that fell past your thighs and one of his basketball shorts that reached below your knees, carrying a comical armful of plastic bottles, the room immediately fell dead silent.
keonho stopped mid-sentence, his gaze darting from the small mountain of tubes and tubs in your arms, then to your face, and then right back to the bottles. “...why are there so many?”
“because curly hair exists, keonho,” you explained patiently, adjusting your grip on a bottle of conditioner.
“that doesn’t answer my question in the slightest.”
you promptly ignored him, walking over to the table. juhoon, now dressed in clean grey sweatpants, looked over from the sofa. his eyes crinkled slightly at the edges. “what are those?”
you stared at him, incredulous. “my hair products.”
“all of them?”
“yes.”
“why?”
you stared harder, letting the silence stretch between you. “jju.”
“i’m just asking a genuine question.”
“you have pin-straight hair.”
“which is precisely why i’m asking.”
predictably, martin’s eyes lit up, and he immediately pulled out his phone, angling the camera toward the two of you. “oh, this is going to be absolutely gold. hold on.”
it was gold, mostly because juhoon—bless his heart—insisted on helping, and because you were utterly exhausted, entirely comfortable, and thoroughly entertained by the sheer, unearned confidence of a man who had absolutely no clue what he was doing, you actually allowed it.
it turned out to be the funniest decision of your entire life.
“okay,” you said, adopting your best professional instructor voice. “spray some water first to re-wet the sections.”
juhoon nodded seriously, his brow furrowing like a student receiving critical, life-saving information before an exam. he gripped the spray bottle, aimed, and immediately sprayed you directly in the face.
you burst out laughing, coughing slightly as the fine mist coated your cheeks. “not my eyes, dumbass!”
“i thought that was where the hair started!” he protested, his cheeks flushing a faint, endearing pink as he quickly wiped at your eyes with his sleeve.
“my eyeballs are not curls, jju.”
“that’s fair. my bad.”
from that point on, it only got worse. or better, depending entirely on whose perspective you were looking at it from. he used enough heavy curl cream to style a small horse. he completely forgot which sections he had already done, applying product twice to the same part of your hair. he accidentally scrunched your left ear twice. and somehow, through sheer lack of mechanical understanding, he managed to create a knot in the back that seemed physically impossible otherwise.
you were laughing so hard by the end of it that tears were actively streaming down your face, your stomach aching. martin was literally crying on the couch, his phone shaking violently as he recorded the disaster, while james had completely fallen onto the floor, clutching his stomach. even seonghyeon, usually the epitome of stoic calm, looked dangerously close to losing his composure, hiding a wide smirk behind his hand. keonho just watched you with sympathy while devouring an entire pizza.
meanwhile, juhoon sat there on the edge of the sofa, looking genuinely devastated as he stared at his sticky, product-coated hands. “i’m trying,” he mumbled, his lower lip putting on a microscopic, boyish pout.
“i know you are,” you gasped out between giggles, reaching up to pat his cheek.
“why is it so difficult?”
“because curls are complicated.”
“they shouldn’t be,” he grumbled, looking at a particularly unruly spiral. “it defies physics.”
“tell that to my dna.”
that night, once the laughter had died down and the food had been thoroughly demolished, by five hungry teenage boys mostly, you sat him down and taught him properly. with a patience born of genuine affection, you showed him how to neatly section the damp strands, how to detangle from the ends upward, rather than ripping from the roots, how to gently scrunch to encourage the natural pattern, how to evenly distribute the product, and—most importantly—how to avoid touching the curls too much afterwards so they wouldn’t frizz.
he listened with rapt attention and chimed in with questions as his earnest eyes locked onto your movements. you thought that was the beautiful, funny end of a chaotic rainy night.
it wasn’t.
what you didn’t know was that after you eventually left the next day after the rain died down, your boyfriend became fiercely determined to master the craft.
unfortunately for keonho, he happened to possess the closest thing to texture available in the entire cortis dorm, which apparently qualified him as the perfect training model, despite his endlessly loud objections.
“i don’t even have curly hair, juhoon!” keonho would yell from the bathroom stool, swatting weakly at a spray bottle.
“you have waves,” juhoon would reply flatly, forcing keonho’s head back down with a firm hand.
“that is not the same thing!”
“close enough.”
“it absolutely isn’t!”
“your hair bends,” juhoon reasoned, squeezing a dollop of leave-in conditioner into his palms.
“stop saying it bends!” keonho groaned, staring miserably into the mirror.
“no.”
“and stop taking actual notes, you massive nerd!”
“shut up,” juhoon muttered, scribbling something down on a damp piece of paper with a ball-point pen to prevent smudging. “this is important.”
weeks passed, turning seamlessly into months, and through sheer, stubborn repetition, juhoon actually learned.
you began to notice it gradually—the way he remembered the specific names of your products without looking at the labels, the way he instinctively knew the difference between a styling milk and a strong-hold gel, and the way he occasionally corrected your own sectioning technique, which was, frankly, funnily offensive considering you were literally a professional hair styling intern.
which brought you back to this exact afternoon—the sun filtered through the blinds, casting striped shadows across the wooden floorboards as you sat on the floor at the edge of his unmade bed, meticulously working through the latter half of your routine.
the room was quiet, save for the hum of the mini-fridge and the soft, rhythmic scratching of a pen against a notebook. juhoon moved to sit on the floor behind you, his back resting against the mattress, completely yielding to the gentle tug of your fingers before he suddenly paused, turning things around.
“let me,” he murmured softly, shifting.
the dorm was dead silent. the others were all out running errands or grabbing food, and a light, rhythmic rain had begun to tap softly against the windowpane, a gentle echo of the night it all started. juhoon’s hands moved through your curls with a calm, practiced confidence that felt entirely surreal. he carefully separated the damp sections, added just the right amount of product, and scrunched upward with a light, practiced touch, making sure everything sat precisely where it was supposed to.
you watched his reflection through the dark, blank screen of the television across the room. his brow was slightly furrowed, his tongue poking out just a millimetre at the corner of his lips in utter concentration—a microexpression you only ever caught when he was entirely invested in something.
“you’re actually really good at this now,” you murmured, shifting slightly to look at him.
his trademark smile appeared immediately, a bright, boyish flash of white teeth. “i know.”
you rolled your eyes. “humility is a very important trait, jju.”
“hey, i worked hard for this, okay,” he defended, his fingers gently parting another section near your temple. “i deserve the credit.”
“you tortured poor keonho for weeks. i heard it all from him.”
“he contributed to the cause.”
“against his will.”
“he still contributed,” he countered smoothly, a quiet chuckle vibrating low in his chest.
his fingers continued their steady, methodical work. they were remarkably gentle, patient, and focused, moving through your hair as if he had absolutely nowhere else in the entire world to be. the bright teal caps of your styling creams peeked out from the bathroom door like a vibrant coral reef invading his otherwise monochrome sanctuary, a visual testament to how much of you had woven into his space.
suddenly, his phone lit up on the nightstand beside him, the aggressive vibration rattling against the wood. the screen illuminated with martin’s name.
you immediately grinned, peering over his arm. “practice.”
“hm,” he hummed, not even looking up from a particularly stubborn curl near the nape of your neck.
the phone rang through to voicemail, stopped for a fraction of a second, and then immediately started vibrating again. martin. once more. you could practically hear the high-pitched, frantic frustration radiating through the screen.
juhoon finally glanced at it. he reached over with his left hand, his right hand still gently holding a section of your hair in place, and carelessly silenced the phone. without answering; without texting back a quick excuse; without even checking the stream of frantic messages surely flooding his lock screen.
then, he immediately returned his full, undivided attention to your hair.
you blinked, utterly stunned. “did you seriously just ignore martin?”
“yes.”
“he’s probably losing his mind at the studio right now.”
“he’ll survive.”
“baby, you have mandatory practice.”
“i’m busy.”
“with what?”
he paused, looking up at you with an expression of genuine, mild confusion, as if the answer should have been the most obvious thing in the universe. his fingers gently separated another delicate curl, treating it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for fragile glass.
“you.”
your heart did something embarrassingly soft, a warm, fluttering sensation expanding in your chest. because despite spending months meticulously learning complex techniques that had absolutely nothing to do with him—despite having perfectly completely straight hair, despite having no earthly reason whatsoever to know the difference between curl creams, leave-ins, and diffusing methods—he had learned every single detail anyway.
just because it mattered to you; just because he wanted to help; just because he loved you.
you smiled, the warmth spreading all the way to your eyes. “you’re so cute.”
his ears immediately turned a deep, telling shade of pink, and he quickly looked away, focusing entirely on a stray strand of hair. “don’t distract me.”
“why not?”
“because,” he mumbled, his voice dropping into a soft, gravelly register as he carefully patted a final section into place, “i’m trying to make these curls perfect.”
you laughed quietly, the sound swallowed up by the cozy warmth of the room. somewhere, martin was undoubtedly preparing a terrifying, hour-long lecture about punctuality and responsibility, but juhoon didn’t care.
not when making you smile felt infinitely more important than getting to practice on time.
SYNOPSIS: You were supposed to be his next job. He made you a deal instead.
TAGS/WARNINGS: assassin AU, made up family shi, semi-fluff and dry humor, action, slow burn, mutual pining, idiots to lovers, reader is a con artist/swindler, underground/Specialist world setting, the dates are a disaster and that's the point, Juhoon is oblivious, reader is running from their feelings professionally, one (1) kidnapping, tracker chip used as a love language apparently, i know this is marriage toxin inspired but i wanted it to be still different leave me alone
w.c: 5474
The thing about being a con artist is that you develop a very specific sense for danger.
Not the obvious kind—not the knife-behind-the-back, gun-to-your-temple kind. Anyone with functioning survival instincts could pick up on that. No, the kind you learn after years of slipping in and out of the underworld like water through fingers is the quiet kind of danger. The kind that sits across a café table from you and orders an Americano with no sugar, and looks at you with eyes so still and unreadable that something at the base of your spine starts whispering run.
You did not run.
Partly because you were a professional. Partly because there was a very expensive croissant in front of you that you had not yet finished. But mostly because Kim Juhoon had, very calmly, very politely, slid a photograph across the white tablecloth between you, and that photograph was of you, and underneath it was a contract that had your name printed at the top in neat, official font.
A kill order.
You picked up your coffee. Took a sip. Set it back down.
"Nice photo," you said. "I look good."
Juhoon blinked. Just once. It was, you would later understand, the equivalent of another person's jaw dropping. "You're not going to run?"
"Should I?" You tilted your head. "You haven't moved to stop me, which means you're not planning to do it here. Too public. And you ordered a coffee, which means you're planning to stay a while. So." You leaned back in your chair. "You want something."
A pause. He looked at you the way someone looks at a puzzle they didn't expect to be interesting.
"I want to make a deal," he said.
His name, you already knew. Kim Juhoon—eighteen years old, heir to the Kim Clan, one of the three great families of the so-called Specialist world. The Specialists were what polite society might call organized crime if organized crime had centuries of tradition, internal honor codes, and a frankly absurd variety of niche combat disciplines. The Kim Clan's specialty: poisons. Every kind, every application, every antidote. They had been the most feared name in the underworld for six generations.
Juhoon was the seventh.
He didn't look like someone who came from a lineage of professional killers. He looked like someone who might work at an art gallery and quietly judge your taste in prints. Dark eyes, defined yet gently tapering jaw, the kind of stillness that most people had to meditate for years to achieve. His hands were wrapped around his coffee cup with the careful, deliberate grip of someone who was always, always aware of where his hands were.
You had heard of him. You had, in your professional opinion, been doing a very good job of not crossing paths with him.
And then you'd made the mistake of conning the wrong person—specifically, the patriarch of a minor clan who had connections to the Kim family—and now here you were. Croissant half-eaten. Kill order on the table. Con artist instincts working overtime.
"A deal," you repeated. "What kind of deal?"
Juhoon was quiet for a moment. He turned his coffee cup a quarter rotation clockwise. Then back. It seemed involuntary, like a nervous habit he hadn't fully trained out of himself yet.
"I need your help," he said, "finding someone to marry."
The silence that followed was long enough that a server came by and refilled your water glass.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I thought you just said—"
"I need a marriage advisor." He said it the way someone might say I need a root canal—with the grim resignation of a person who has accepted that something deeply unpleasant is unavoidable. "Someone who understands people. Social dynamics. How to make a—a connection." A pause. The coffee cup rotated again. "I don't."
You stared at him.
Kim Juhoon, eighteen years old, heir to the most feared poison clan in the Specialist world, possibly the most dangerous person you had ever shared a pastry with, needed a dating coach.
"Why," you said carefully, "do you need to get married?"
The answer, delivered in the same flat, matter-of-fact tone he seemed to use for everything, was this: the Kim Clan's elder council had decided that Juhoon's continued bachelorhood was a liability. The clan needed an heir. Juhoon's younger cousin—sixteen years old, currently in her first year of university, completely uninvolved in Specialist life by her own deliberate choice—would be forced to take on the succession instead if Juhoon did not produce a marriage candidate within the year.
He was not going to let that happen.
"So," he finished, "I need to find someone. Legitimately. Someone I can build something real with." Another pause. "I don't know how to do that."
You looked at the kill order still sitting on the table between you.
"And if I help you," you said, "this goes away?"
"Yes."
"And the person who hired the hit on me?"
"I'll handle it."
You drummed your fingers on the table once, twice. The thing was—and you were very annoyed about this—it was actually a reasonable deal. The alternative was spending the next several months looking over your shoulder, and you had plans for the next several months that did not involve elaborate evasion tactics. Also, and you would take this to your grave, you were a little bit curious. Kim Juhoon, the most unreadable person you had ever met, apparently had no idea how to talk to people he was romantically interested in. Something about that was fascinating in a way you couldn't quite name.
"Alright," you said. You picked up the kill order, folded it once, and tucked it into your jacket pocket. Insurance. "I'll be your advisor."
He nodded. No visible relief, no smile. Just a single nod, like you'd confirmed a business transaction.
"One condition," you added.
He waited.
"You have to actually try. No shutting down, no one-word answers, no treating it like a mission briefing. If I'm doing this, you're doing it properly."
Something shifted in his expression. Almost imperceptible. Something that might, on anyone else's face, have been called apprehension.
"Fine," he said.
You picked up your croissant and took a bite.
This was either going to be very interesting, or very catastrophic.
Probably both.
——
The first attempt did not go well.
Her name was Park Sooyeon, she worked in event planning, and she had agreed to a coffee meeting after a mutual contact—you, wearing a different name and a very convincing smile—had described Juhoon as "quiet but thoughtful, the kind of person who remembers small things about people."
This was, you had decided, technically true. You just hadn't mentioned what kind of small things he tended to notice.
You sat two tables away with a book open in front of you, watching through your peripheral vision as Juhoon sat across from Park Sooyeon, who was bright and bubbly and doing most of the conversational heavy lifting. Juhoon was listening. That was good. He was very good at listening. The problem came when she asked him what he did for work.
There was a pause.
You had coached him on this. Import and export consulting, you had said. Specialized logistics. Easy. Vague. Unthreatening.
The date ended twenty minutes later when Sooyeon received a "very important work call" that required her immediate attention. You closed your book, walked over, and sat down in her vacated chair.
Juhoon looked at you.
"Threat assessment and elimination," you said.
"It's accurate."
"It's terrifying." You pressed two fingers to your temple. "What happened to specialized logistics?"
"It felt dishonest."
"You are literally a professional deceiver. You go undercover. You have fake identities."
"That's different. That's work." He picked up his coffee, which was still perfectly temperature-controlled because he had barely touched it. "I don't want to start something real with a lie."
You opened your mouth. Closed it. The frustrating thing was that this was, objectively, a decent principle to have. It was just spectacularly poorly timed.
"Okay," you said slowly. "We're going to work on degrees of honesty. There's a difference between lying and just… not leading with the most alarming possible truth."
"Like how you introduced yourself to me as a 'business consultant.'"
"Exactly like—wait, you knew?"
He gave you a look.
Right. Assassin. Of course he'd done research.
"Fine," you said, ignoring the heat crawling up the back of your neck at having been caught. "The point stands. We ease people in. We don't open with the existential dread."
Juhoon considered this with the gravity of a person being told to defuse a bomb. "Ease them in," he repeated.
"Yes."
"How."
"By being a person, Juhoon. By talking about things you like. Do you have hobbies?"
The pause was so long you briefly wondered if having hobbies was a foreign concept to him.
"I read," he said finally. "I play guitar. I—" Another pause, shorter this time, like he was deciding whether to say it. "I bake sometimes."
You stared at him. "You bake."
"Occasionally."
"Kim Juhoon, heir to the most feared poison clan in six generations, bakes."
Something crossed his face. It was so fast you almost missed it—a flicker of something self-conscious, quickly smoothed over. "It's a chemistry-adjacent skill."
"It's adorable is what it is—" You caught yourself. Cleared your throat. "It's a very relatable thing to mention on a first date. Lead with that next time."
He looked at you for a moment too long.
"What?" you said.
"Nothing," he said. He looked back down at his coffee. "Chemistry-adjacent."
"Don't push it."
——
Over the next six weeks, you met four more of Juhoon's potential matches.
There was the architect who liked hiking—this one ended when she asked if he'd ever been camping and he described a three-week solo survival situation in a mountain range in terms that made it sound less like recreation and more like a military operation.
There was the photographer who was perfectly lovely until she asked to take his picture and he automatically clocked three exit routes and assessed her camera bag for potential weapons.
There was the florist, who was actually going quite well right up until someone tried to rob the café you were all seated in and Juhoon had the would-be robber unconscious on the floor in four seconds flat, at which point the florist quietly paid her bill and left.
"That one wasn't your fault," you told him afterward, sitting on the steps outside because you both needed air.
"I could have been less efficient," he said.
"You really couldn't have." You leaned back on your hands. The night was cold, and your breath came out in small visible clouds. "Look, the problem isn't that you're—you. The problem is that the people we've been setting you up with aren't the right fit. They need someone uncomplicated. You are very, very complicated."
He was quiet for a moment. Sitting beside you on the steps, elbows on his knees, looking out at the street. In the ambient light he looked younger than he usually did. Less like an heir to anything and more like just—a person. A tired one.
"Is that a polite way of saying I'm not good at this?" he asked.
"It's an accurate way of saying the selection pool needs adjusting." You bumped his shoulder with yours without thinking about it. "You're fine. You're—you're actually really easy to be around, once you stop treating every social interaction like a threat assessment."
He looked at you sideways.
"Sometimes," you amended.
The corner of his mouth moved. Almost a smile. Almost.
It was around this time that you began to notice certain things.
Like the fact that Juhoon, who could sit in perfect stillness for hours, tended to shift slightly in your direction whenever you were talking—this subtle reorientation, like a plant moving toward light. Or the fact that he had started remembering things you mentioned offhandedly: the brand of tea you preferred, the fiction author you'd complained about, the cold case documentary you'd referenced once in passing and then arrived to find queued up the next time you used his apartment to debrief.
You noticed these things and you filed them away and you did not examine them closely because examining them closely would require you to also examine the way you felt when he laughed—rare, low, catching you off guard every time—or the way the room felt smaller and warmer when his attention was fully on you.
You were his advisor. That was the deal.
You kept reminding yourself of this.
——
The complication arrived on a Tuesday in the form of one Shin Dohyun, twenty-two, fencing champion, minor Specialist family, and apparently very interested in Kim Juhoon specifically.
"She's technically a suitable candidate," Juhoon said, setting the background file on your coffee table like it was a mission brief. Because to him, it probably was.
You picked it up. Flipped through it. Shin Dohyun was objectively impressive—accomplished, from a family that would make the Kim Clan elders happy, and according to mutual contacts, genuinely interested in building something with the right person.
"She sounds good," you said, and your voice came out perfectly even, which you were proud of. "Let's set up a meeting."
The meeting was at a gallery opening—neutral, cultural, low-pressure. You had coached Juhoon extensively. He had practiced three conversation openers. He had even, under extreme duress, agreed to smile at least twice.
You watched from across the gallery with a glass of sparkling water, and Shin Dohyun was charming and clearly interested, leaning toward Juhoon with the body language of someone who had already made up their mind, and Juhoon was—
Juhoon was being perfectly pleasant. Polite. Attentive. Saying all the right things.
And he kept glancing at you.
Not in a help me way. Not the subtle distress signal you'd agreed on if he needed an out. Just—looking. Every few minutes. Like checking that you were still there.
You looked away every time.
The gallery felt too warm.
After, walking back through the night streets because neither of you had called for a car, Juhoon was quiet in a different way than usual. His usual quiet was settled, comfortable. This was the quiet of someone thinking very hard about something they hadn't decided yet.
"He's a good person," Juhoon said finally.
"He is," you agreed.
"She asked to meet again."
"That's—good. That's great. Do you want to?"
Juhoon's hands were in his jacket pockets. He watched the pavement as he walked. "I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know? She's exactly what the elder council wants, she's clearly interested, she's—"
"I know what she is." Quiet but firm. "I said I don't know."
You looked at him. He wasn't looking at you.
"Juhoon."
"I kept looking at you," he said. Very simply. Like stating a fact about the weather. "During the meeting. I don't know why I kept doing that."
The night air was very cold. Your heart was doing something uncooperative.
"Habit," you said. "I'm usually the one giving you signals."
"There were no signals needed."
"Then you were just checking in—"
"I don't do things without a reason." He stopped walking. You stopped a half-step later and turned to face him. He was looking at you now, that still, careful gaze that you had spent weeks learning to read. "I notice things. About people. It's—trained into me. I notice when Seonghyeon is tired before he says anything. I notice when Martin is performing confidence vs actually feeling it. I notice—" A pause. "I notice everything you do. When you find something funny before you laugh at it. When you're running three steps ahead of the conversation. When you're trying not to show that something bothers you." Another pause. Shorter. "I notice all of it."
The street was empty around you. Somewhere distant, a car passed.
"That's called paying attention," you said, and your voice was impressively steady. You were very good at your job. "Some people call it being a good friend."
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite frustration. Something more careful than that.
"Right," he said, after a moment. "A friend."
He started walking again. You fell into step beside him.
The space between you felt different than it had an hour ago, and you both, by silent agreement, did not acknowledge why.
——
The problem with the Specialist world is that it doesn't stop just because you're having personal revelations.
Which was how you found yourself, on a rainy Thursday night, locked in a storage facility in the industrial district with your hands zip-tied behind your back, reconsidering a series of life choices.
It had started as routine information gathering. One of the minor clans—the Bae family, recently destabilized after their patriarch's arrest—had been making moves on Kim Clan territory, and you'd agreed to do some light reconnaissance because Juhoon had asked and you were apparently incapable of saying no to him anymore, which was its own problem to unpack later.
What it was not supposed to be was a trap.
And yet.
"You're the advisor," said the man sitting across from you. Bae Chunsik, mid-forties, heavyset, very annoyed-looking. He was the patriarch's younger brother and apparently harboring significant resentment about recent events. "Kim Juhoon's little helper."
"I prefer consultant," you said pleasantly, testing the zip ties without moving your arms. Tight, but not professional-grade. Someone had done these in a hurry.
"You're going to help us send a message." He leaned forward. "Tell us his schedule. His routines. His weaknesses."
You tilted your head. "He's an eighteen-year-old assassin from one of the three great families. His weakness is that he doesn't know how to flirt. I'm not sure that helps you."
Bae Chunsik did not find this funny.
The next hour was unpleasant in a variety of ways, though thankfully more threatening than actually harmful—they wanted information, not a scene, which meant they needed you intact. You kept your mouth shut, kept your breathing even, and worked steadily at the zip ties with a piece of metal edging you'd found on the chair with your fingertips.
You were three-quarters of the way through when the lights went out.
Not a power failure. Too sudden, too complete. Someone had cut them deliberately.
In the darkness, you heard the soft sound of movement—barely audible, the kind of footfall that took years of practice to produce—and then the sharp, efficient sounds of a confrontation that lasted approximately forty-five seconds.
Then nothing.
Then the lights came back on.
Juhoon was standing in the middle of the room. Three of Bae Chunsik's associates were on the floor in various states of unconsciousness. Bae Chunsik himself was against the wall with an expression that suggested he was rethinking all of his recent decisions.
Juhoon looked at you.
"You're late," you said.
"I was across the city." He crossed the room, crouched behind your chair, and had the zip ties dealt with in about four seconds. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine." You rolled your wrists out, wincing slightly. "How did you know where—"
"Tracker." He stood, and you turned to find him closer than expected, close enough that you had to tilt your chin up slightly to meet his eyes. His expression was doing something unfamiliar. Not the careful blankness he usually wore in professional situations. Something underneath it, pressed close to the surface. "I put it in your jacket lining two weeks ago. After the Windwheel incident."
You stared at him. "You tracked me?"
"Preventively."
"That is—you can't just—" You pressed your lips together. "We are going to have a very long conversation about consent and personal boundaries—"
"You were zip-tied to a chair."
"That is not the point—"
"Are you actually angry," he said, "or is this the thing you do when something scared you and you'd rather be angry about something adjacent?"
The silence that followed was very loud.
From across the room, Bae Chunsik made a small, inadvisable movement. Juhoon's gaze cut to him without his head moving, and Chunsik went extremely still.
You breathed out slowly. "I'm fine," you said, quieter. "I was fine. I had it handled."
"I know," Juhoon said. Back to looking at you. "I know you did."
"Then why do you look like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like—" You gestured vaguely at his face. "That."
His jaw tightened slightly. "We should leave."
"Juhoon—"
"We should leave," he said again, gently but with the absolute finality of someone who had decided that this was not the place. "Please."
You looked at him for a moment. Then you looked around at the unconscious bodies and the very scared Bae Chunsik and the flickering overhead lights.
"Fine," you said. "But we're talking. Tonight."
He nodded once. Reached out and, with a carefulness that felt deliberate, wrapped his hand around your wrist—not grabbing, just contact, just steadying—and led you toward the door.
Outside, the rain had gotten worse. Neither of you had an umbrella. You stood under the narrow overhang and Juhoon called for a car and you stood close enough that you could feel the warmth of him against your arm, and neither of you spoke, and the rain came down hard on the concrete around you.
"I saw the notification on my phone," he said suddenly, without preamble. "That the tracker had moved off your planned route. And I—" He stopped. Started again. "I've been in situations where I had to stay calm regardless of what I was feeling. I know how to do that. I've done it since I was a kid." A pause. The rain. "I couldn't do it tonight."
You turned to look at him. He was watching the rain, profile sharp in the low light.
"Juhoon," you said carefully.
"I know what it means," he said, quiet. "I'm not—I know I'm not good at this. But I know what it means when you can't stay calm because of one person specifically."
Your heart was being extremely unhelpful.
"You've been helping me find someone to be with," he continued, still not looking at you, with the measured tone of someone reading from a script he'd memorized but never said aloud. "And I have been. Trying. Genuinely. But every time I'm with someone else I'm—" Another stop. The muscle in his jaw moved. "I'm thinking about what you would say about them. What you'd notice. Whether you'd think they were right for me." He finally looked at you. "That's not how it's supposed to work, is it."
"No," you said, honestly. "It's really not."
Something in his expression shifted. Not quite hope—too cautious for that. Something more tentative than hope.
"The Shin Dohyun meeting," he said. "The reason I kept looking at you."
"I know," you said.
"You knew then?"
"I suspected." You looked down at the space between you, then back up. Rain was blowing sideways now, catching on the edge of the overhang. "I didn't want to assume. You'd just met her and she was—"
"She wasn't you."
The words landed simply. No drama in them. Just Juhoon, saying a true thing.
You stood in the rain-sound and the low light and felt very clearly and all at once that you had been doing what you always did—running the angles, thinking four steps ahead, managing the situation—except that somewhere along the way the situation had stopped being manageable in the way you were used to, and what you were actually doing was protecting yourself against something that scared you, and you were so tired of doing that.
"I'm your advisor," you said. One last attempt. "That's what we agreed."
"Yes," Juhoon said. Steady. Patient. "And I'm telling you that's not what I want anymore. I'm asking you what you want."
The car pulled up at the curb. Neither of you moved.
"This complicates things," you said.
"Everything about my life is complicated." Almost dry. Almost. "One more thing won't matter."
You laughed—short, genuine, surprised out of you—and his expression softened in a way you hadn't seen before, something warm and unguarded that he maybe didn't know he was showing.
"Ask me again," you said. "When we're not standing in the rain outside a building where you just knocked out six people."
He looked at you for a moment. "When, specifically."
"When you stop treating it like a mission objective and just—say it. Like a person."
Something shifted in his face—not quite a smile, but close enough to count. "I thought I just did."
"You're going to make this very difficult, aren't you."
"Probably."
——
Three days later, Juhoon showed up at your apartment at 9pm with a container of what turned out to be homemade red bean buns, and stood in your doorway with his hands in his jacket pockets and said, "I made too many."
You looked at the container. Looked at him.
"You made too many," you repeated.
"The recipe is hard to halve."
You stepped back to let him in.
He sat at your kitchen counter and you made tea—barley, because that was what you had in and also because he'd mentioned once that he liked it—and there was something different about the quiet between you now. Less like careful professionals maintaining neutral ground, more like—something that didn't have a clean name yet but felt, in the most inconvenient and undeniable way, like the beginning of something.
"I talked to the elder council," he said, warming his hands around the tea cup.
You looked up from your own.
"I told them the situation with my cousin is non-negotiable," he said. "She's not a contingency. She's a person." A pause. "They were—less receptive than I'd hoped. But I also told them that the matter of succession was one I intended to address. On my own timeline. With the person I choose."
You turned your cup in your hands. "How did that go over?"
"About as well as you'd expect." Dry. "I may have leveraged some information I've accumulated over the years regarding two of the elder council's less savory business arrangements."
"You blackmailed the clan elders."
"I prefer applied mutual pressure."
You stared at him. Then you started laughing, and after a moment Juhoon made a sound that was almost, almost a laugh too—low and a little incredulous, like he surprised himself.
"Your cousin?" you asked, when you'd recovered.
"Protected. For now." He looked at his cup. "I bought myself time. A year, maybe more. To do this—the marriage thing—properly. Not on their schedule. Legitimately." He glanced up. "I meant what I said. I want to find someone real. I don't want to manufacture something just to satisfy a council."
"I know," you said.
"I also meant the other thing I said."
"I know," you said, quieter.
The kitchen was warm and the rain had come back, softer tonight, against the windows. You had known, for most of those three days, what you were going to say. You'd been running cons for years—you knew exactly how to read a situation, how to spot the outcome before it arrived, how to see what was real underneath the surface of things. And what was real here, underneath the arrangement and the tracker and the six weeks of café meet-and-greets and the zip-tied chair and the rain outside the storage facility—what was real was that Kim Juhoon looked at you like you were a problem he found genuinely interesting, and he remembered every small thing you'd ever mentioned, and he had driven across the city on a wet Thursday night because a tracker on your phone had shown the wrong route, and you had been pretending this wasn't its own kind of answer for three days.
"The deal was that I'd help you find someone to marry," you said.
Juhoon watched you.
"I didn't specify it couldn't be me," you said.
A beat. Two.
Something in his expression changed—gradual and unmistakable, like a key fitting a lock. Not a smile exactly, but something that lived in the same neighborhood. Something warm and careful and a little bit wondering.
"You're still going to make this complicated," he said.
"Absolutely," you agreed. "I'm a con artist. Complexity is my natural habitat."
"I tracked you without your knowledge."
"We are still going to have that conversation."
"I know." He picked up a red bean bun and set it on the saucer in front of you like a small peace offering. "I'll accept whatever terms you add."
You looked at the bun. Looked at him.
"Lesson two," you said. "Better communication skills."
"Agreed."
"No more unilateral surveillance."
"Negotiable."
"Juhoon."
"Agreed," he said, after a pause that was approximately one second too long to be genuine.
You narrowed your eyes. He met your gaze with perfect serenity, and there it was again—that thing that lived just at the corner of his mouth, that almost-smile that you were beginning to understand was specifically yours to cause.
"You're going to be a nightmare," you said.
"Probably," he said. He sounded entirely unbothered. "Is that a problem?"
Outside, the rain fell soft and steady. The tea was warm in your hands. There was a red bean bun on your saucer and Kim Juhoon in your kitchen, and the deal you'd made in a sunlit café over a half-eaten croissant had, in the way that most deals seemed to when you were involved, become something else entirely.
"No," you said, and meant it. "It's really not."
——
Three months later, he still didn't smile easily in front of other people.
He still assessed every room he entered for exit routes and potential threats. He still asked you every two or three days what you wanted to eat, in the habit he'd developed in those early weeks and never quite dropped. He still went silent when he was thinking, that comfortable, settled quiet that you had learned—over six weeks as his advisor and three months as something else, something that didn't have a label yet but was moving toward one—to read like a second language.
He had, on exactly three occasions, showed up with baked goods under the pretense of having made too many.
You had stopped pretending to believe this after the first time.
Today he was sitting on your couch with a guitar, not playing it exactly—just running his thumb across the strings occasionally, the way some people fidget with pens. You were on the other end of the couch with a book open on your lap that you had not made meaningful progress on in forty minutes. His shoulder was warm where it pressed against yours.
"The elder council wants a meeting," he said.
"I know. You told me."
"I'll need—" He paused. The guitar strings. "I'd like you to come. If you want to."
You turned the page of your book. "As your advisor?"
A pause. Shorter than it would have been three months ago. He was getting better at this—at saying the things he meant without extensive preamble.
"As mine," he said simply.
You looked at him over the edge of your book. He was looking at the middle distance with the expression of someone who has said a true thing and is now waiting to see what the world does with it.
"Okay," you said.
He nodded once, with the gravity of someone accepting a significant strategic agreement.
"You know," you said, "normal people would maybe have led with dinner and a conversation, rather than assassination attempts and tracker chips."
"I'm aware our situation was unorthodox."
"That's one word for it."
"Would you have agreed to dinner," he asked, "if I'd just asked?"
You thought about it honestly. The café, the photograph, the kill order sliding across white linen. If he'd walked up to you one day, no leverage, no deal, just—asked.
"Probably not," you admitted. "I would have found you interesting and talked myself out of it."
He made a low sound that you had recently catalogued as I find this outcome satisfactory disguised as a non-committal noise.
"Don't," you warned.
"I didn't say anything."
"You thought it very loudly."
The corner of his mouth moved.
Outside, the city moved through its evening. Inside, the guitar strings hummed once, soft and low, and Juhoon shifted slightly—that subtle reorientation you'd noticed all those months ago, the one you'd spent so long pretending not to see—until his shoulder rested more fully against yours, and you let your book fall closed, and the quiet between you was the comfortable kind.
The deal had changed. You were still figuring out what you were building instead.
But you were, for the first time in a long time, not thinking four steps ahead.
You were just here.
And that, you thought, was a pretty good place to start.
juhoon bringing you red bean buns under the pretense of "making too many" is the most him thing i could think of and i will not be taking questions. 🐢
SYNOPSIS: You were supposed to be his next job. He made you a deal instead.
TAGS/WARNINGS: assassin AU, made up family shi, semi-fluff and dry humor, action, slow burn, mutual pining, idiots to lovers, reader is a con artist/swindler, underground/Specialist world setting, the dates are a disaster and that's the point, Juhoon is oblivious, reader is running from their feelings professionally, one (1) kidnapping, tracker chip used as a love language apparently, i know this is marriage toxin inspired but i wanted it to be still different leave me alone
w.c: 5474
The thing about being a con artist is that you develop a very specific sense for danger.
Not the obvious kind—not the knife-behind-the-back, gun-to-your-temple kind. Anyone with functioning survival instincts could pick up on that. No, the kind you learn after years of slipping in and out of the underworld like water through fingers is the quiet kind of danger. The kind that sits across a café table from you and orders an Americano with no sugar, and looks at you with eyes so still and unreadable that something at the base of your spine starts whispering run.
You did not run.
Partly because you were a professional. Partly because there was a very expensive croissant in front of you that you had not yet finished. But mostly because Kim Juhoon had, very calmly, very politely, slid a photograph across the white tablecloth between you, and that photograph was of you, and underneath it was a contract that had your name printed at the top in neat, official font.
A kill order.
You picked up your coffee. Took a sip. Set it back down.
"Nice photo," you said. "I look good."
Juhoon blinked. Just once. It was, you would later understand, the equivalent of another person's jaw dropping. "You're not going to run?"
"Should I?" You tilted your head. "You haven't moved to stop me, which means you're not planning to do it here. Too public. And you ordered a coffee, which means you're planning to stay a while. So." You leaned back in your chair. "You want something."
A pause. He looked at you the way someone looks at a puzzle they didn't expect to be interesting.
"I want to make a deal," he said.
His name, you already knew. Kim Juhoon—eighteen years old, heir to the Kim Clan, one of the three great families of the so-called Specialist world. The Specialists were what polite society might call organized crime if organized crime had centuries of tradition, internal honor codes, and a frankly absurd variety of niche combat disciplines. The Kim Clan's specialty: poisons. Every kind, every application, every antidote. They had been the most feared name in the underworld for six generations.
Juhoon was the seventh.
He didn't look like someone who came from a lineage of professional killers. He looked like someone who might work at an art gallery and quietly judge your taste in prints. Dark eyes, defined yet gently tapering jaw, the kind of stillness that most people had to meditate for years to achieve. His hands were wrapped around his coffee cup with the careful, deliberate grip of someone who was always, always aware of where his hands were.
You had heard of him. You had, in your professional opinion, been doing a very good job of not crossing paths with him.
And then you'd made the mistake of conning the wrong person—specifically, the patriarch of a minor clan who had connections to the Kim family—and now here you were. Croissant half-eaten. Kill order on the table. Con artist instincts working overtime.
"A deal," you repeated. "What kind of deal?"
Juhoon was quiet for a moment. He turned his coffee cup a quarter rotation clockwise. Then back. It seemed involuntary, like a nervous habit he hadn't fully trained out of himself yet.
"I need your help," he said, "finding someone to marry."
The silence that followed was long enough that a server came by and refilled your water glass.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I thought you just said—"
"I need a marriage advisor." He said it the way someone might say I need a root canal—with the grim resignation of a person who has accepted that something deeply unpleasant is unavoidable. "Someone who understands people. Social dynamics. How to make a—a connection." A pause. The coffee cup rotated again. "I don't."
You stared at him.
Kim Juhoon, eighteen years old, heir to the most feared poison clan in the Specialist world, possibly the most dangerous person you had ever shared a pastry with, needed a dating coach.
"Why," you said carefully, "do you need to get married?"
The answer, delivered in the same flat, matter-of-fact tone he seemed to use for everything, was this: the Kim Clan's elder council had decided that Juhoon's continued bachelorhood was a liability. The clan needed an heir. Juhoon's younger cousin—sixteen years old, currently in her first year of university, completely uninvolved in Specialist life by her own deliberate choice—would be forced to take on the succession instead if Juhoon did not produce a marriage candidate within the year.
He was not going to let that happen.
"So," he finished, "I need to find someone. Legitimately. Someone I can build something real with." Another pause. "I don't know how to do that."
You looked at the kill order still sitting on the table between you.
"And if I help you," you said, "this goes away?"
"Yes."
"And the person who hired the hit on me?"
"I'll handle it."
You drummed your fingers on the table once, twice. The thing was—and you were very annoyed about this—it was actually a reasonable deal. The alternative was spending the next several months looking over your shoulder, and you had plans for the next several months that did not involve elaborate evasion tactics. Also, and you would take this to your grave, you were a little bit curious. Kim Juhoon, the most unreadable person you had ever met, apparently had no idea how to talk to people he was romantically interested in. Something about that was fascinating in a way you couldn't quite name.
"Alright," you said. You picked up the kill order, folded it once, and tucked it into your jacket pocket. Insurance. "I'll be your advisor."
He nodded. No visible relief, no smile. Just a single nod, like you'd confirmed a business transaction.
"One condition," you added.
He waited.
"You have to actually try. No shutting down, no one-word answers, no treating it like a mission briefing. If I'm doing this, you're doing it properly."
Something shifted in his expression. Almost imperceptible. Something that might, on anyone else's face, have been called apprehension.
"Fine," he said.
You picked up your croissant and took a bite.
This was either going to be very interesting, or very catastrophic.
Probably both.
——
The first attempt did not go well.
Her name was Park Sooyeon, she worked in event planning, and she had agreed to a coffee meeting after a mutual contact—you, wearing a different name and a very convincing smile—had described Juhoon as "quiet but thoughtful, the kind of person who remembers small things about people."
This was, you had decided, technically true. You just hadn't mentioned what kind of small things he tended to notice.
You sat two tables away with a book open in front of you, watching through your peripheral vision as Juhoon sat across from Park Sooyeon, who was bright and bubbly and doing most of the conversational heavy lifting. Juhoon was listening. That was good. He was very good at listening. The problem came when she asked him what he did for work.
There was a pause.
You had coached him on this. Import and export consulting, you had said. Specialized logistics. Easy. Vague. Unthreatening.
The date ended twenty minutes later when Sooyeon received a "very important work call" that required her immediate attention. You closed your book, walked over, and sat down in her vacated chair.
Juhoon looked at you.
"Threat assessment and elimination," you said.
"It's accurate."
"It's terrifying." You pressed two fingers to your temple. "What happened to specialized logistics?"
"It felt dishonest."
"You are literally a professional deceiver. You go undercover. You have fake identities."
"That's different. That's work." He picked up his coffee, which was still perfectly temperature-controlled because he had barely touched it. "I don't want to start something real with a lie."
You opened your mouth. Closed it. The frustrating thing was that this was, objectively, a decent principle to have. It was just spectacularly poorly timed.
"Okay," you said slowly. "We're going to work on degrees of honesty. There's a difference between lying and just… not leading with the most alarming possible truth."
"Like how you introduced yourself to me as a 'business consultant.'"
"Exactly like—wait, you knew?"
He gave you a look.
Right. Assassin. Of course he'd done research.
"Fine," you said, ignoring the heat crawling up the back of your neck at having been caught. "The point stands. We ease people in. We don't open with the existential dread."
Juhoon considered this with the gravity of a person being told to defuse a bomb. "Ease them in," he repeated.
"Yes."
"How."
"By being a person, Juhoon. By talking about things you like. Do you have hobbies?"
The pause was so long you briefly wondered if having hobbies was a foreign concept to him.
"I read," he said finally. "I play guitar. I—" Another pause, shorter this time, like he was deciding whether to say it. "I bake sometimes."
You stared at him. "You bake."
"Occasionally."
"Kim Juhoon, heir to the most feared poison clan in six generations, bakes."
Something crossed his face. It was so fast you almost missed it—a flicker of something self-conscious, quickly smoothed over. "It's a chemistry-adjacent skill."
"It's adorable is what it is—" You caught yourself. Cleared your throat. "It's a very relatable thing to mention on a first date. Lead with that next time."
He looked at you for a moment too long.
"What?" you said.
"Nothing," he said. He looked back down at his coffee. "Chemistry-adjacent."
"Don't push it."
——
Over the next six weeks, you met four more of Juhoon's potential matches.
There was the architect who liked hiking—this one ended when she asked if he'd ever been camping and he described a three-week solo survival situation in a mountain range in terms that made it sound less like recreation and more like a military operation.
There was the photographer who was perfectly lovely until she asked to take his picture and he automatically clocked three exit routes and assessed her camera bag for potential weapons.
There was the florist, who was actually going quite well right up until someone tried to rob the café you were all seated in and Juhoon had the would-be robber unconscious on the floor in four seconds flat, at which point the florist quietly paid her bill and left.
"That one wasn't your fault," you told him afterward, sitting on the steps outside because you both needed air.
"I could have been less efficient," he said.
"You really couldn't have." You leaned back on your hands. The night was cold, and your breath came out in small visible clouds. "Look, the problem isn't that you're—you. The problem is that the people we've been setting you up with aren't the right fit. They need someone uncomplicated. You are very, very complicated."
He was quiet for a moment. Sitting beside you on the steps, elbows on his knees, looking out at the street. In the ambient light he looked younger than he usually did. Less like an heir to anything and more like just—a person. A tired one.
"Is that a polite way of saying I'm not good at this?" he asked.
"It's an accurate way of saying the selection pool needs adjusting." You bumped his shoulder with yours without thinking about it. "You're fine. You're—you're actually really easy to be around, once you stop treating every social interaction like a threat assessment."
He looked at you sideways.
"Sometimes," you amended.
The corner of his mouth moved. Almost a smile. Almost.
It was around this time that you began to notice certain things.
Like the fact that Juhoon, who could sit in perfect stillness for hours, tended to shift slightly in your direction whenever you were talking—this subtle reorientation, like a plant moving toward light. Or the fact that he had started remembering things you mentioned offhandedly: the brand of tea you preferred, the fiction author you'd complained about, the cold case documentary you'd referenced once in passing and then arrived to find queued up the next time you used his apartment to debrief.
You noticed these things and you filed them away and you did not examine them closely because examining them closely would require you to also examine the way you felt when he laughed—rare, low, catching you off guard every time—or the way the room felt smaller and warmer when his attention was fully on you.
You were his advisor. That was the deal.
You kept reminding yourself of this.
——
The complication arrived on a Tuesday in the form of one Shin Dohyun, twenty-two, fencing champion, minor Specialist family, and apparently very interested in Kim Juhoon specifically.
"She's technically a suitable candidate," Juhoon said, setting the background file on your coffee table like it was a mission brief. Because to him, it probably was.
You picked it up. Flipped through it. Shin Dohyun was objectively impressive—accomplished, from a family that would make the Kim Clan elders happy, and according to mutual contacts, genuinely interested in building something with the right person.
"She sounds good," you said, and your voice came out perfectly even, which you were proud of. "Let's set up a meeting."
The meeting was at a gallery opening—neutral, cultural, low-pressure. You had coached Juhoon extensively. He had practiced three conversation openers. He had even, under extreme duress, agreed to smile at least twice.
You watched from across the gallery with a glass of sparkling water, and Shin Dohyun was charming and clearly interested, leaning toward Juhoon with the body language of someone who had already made up their mind, and Juhoon was—
Juhoon was being perfectly pleasant. Polite. Attentive. Saying all the right things.
And he kept glancing at you.
Not in a help me way. Not the subtle distress signal you'd agreed on if he needed an out. Just—looking. Every few minutes. Like checking that you were still there.
You looked away every time.
The gallery felt too warm.
After, walking back through the night streets because neither of you had called for a car, Juhoon was quiet in a different way than usual. His usual quiet was settled, comfortable. This was the quiet of someone thinking very hard about something they hadn't decided yet.
"He's a good person," Juhoon said finally.
"He is," you agreed.
"She asked to meet again."
"That's—good. That's great. Do you want to?"
Juhoon's hands were in his jacket pockets. He watched the pavement as he walked. "I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know? She's exactly what the elder council wants, she's clearly interested, she's—"
"I know what she is." Quiet but firm. "I said I don't know."
You looked at him. He wasn't looking at you.
"Juhoon."
"I kept looking at you," he said. Very simply. Like stating a fact about the weather. "During the meeting. I don't know why I kept doing that."
The night air was very cold. Your heart was doing something uncooperative.
"Habit," you said. "I'm usually the one giving you signals."
"There were no signals needed."
"Then you were just checking in—"
"I don't do things without a reason." He stopped walking. You stopped a half-step later and turned to face him. He was looking at you now, that still, careful gaze that you had spent weeks learning to read. "I notice things. About people. It's—trained into me. I notice when Seonghyeon is tired before he says anything. I notice when Martin is performing confidence vs actually feeling it. I notice—" A pause. "I notice everything you do. When you find something funny before you laugh at it. When you're running three steps ahead of the conversation. When you're trying not to show that something bothers you." Another pause. Shorter. "I notice all of it."
The street was empty around you. Somewhere distant, a car passed.
"That's called paying attention," you said, and your voice was impressively steady. You were very good at your job. "Some people call it being a good friend."
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite frustration. Something more careful than that.
"Right," he said, after a moment. "A friend."
He started walking again. You fell into step beside him.
The space between you felt different than it had an hour ago, and you both, by silent agreement, did not acknowledge why.
——
The problem with the Specialist world is that it doesn't stop just because you're having personal revelations.
Which was how you found yourself, on a rainy Thursday night, locked in a storage facility in the industrial district with your hands zip-tied behind your back, reconsidering a series of life choices.
It had started as routine information gathering. One of the minor clans—the Bae family, recently destabilized after their patriarch's arrest—had been making moves on Kim Clan territory, and you'd agreed to do some light reconnaissance because Juhoon had asked and you were apparently incapable of saying no to him anymore, which was its own problem to unpack later.
What it was not supposed to be was a trap.
And yet.
"You're the advisor," said the man sitting across from you. Bae Chunsik, mid-forties, heavyset, very annoyed-looking. He was the patriarch's younger brother and apparently harboring significant resentment about recent events. "Kim Juhoon's little helper."
"I prefer consultant," you said pleasantly, testing the zip ties without moving your arms. Tight, but not professional-grade. Someone had done these in a hurry.
"You're going to help us send a message." He leaned forward. "Tell us his schedule. His routines. His weaknesses."
You tilted your head. "He's an eighteen-year-old assassin from one of the three great families. His weakness is that he doesn't know how to flirt. I'm not sure that helps you."
Bae Chunsik did not find this funny.
The next hour was unpleasant in a variety of ways, though thankfully more threatening than actually harmful—they wanted information, not a scene, which meant they needed you intact. You kept your mouth shut, kept your breathing even, and worked steadily at the zip ties with a piece of metal edging you'd found on the chair with your fingertips.
You were three-quarters of the way through when the lights went out.
Not a power failure. Too sudden, too complete. Someone had cut them deliberately.
In the darkness, you heard the soft sound of movement—barely audible, the kind of footfall that took years of practice to produce—and then the sharp, efficient sounds of a confrontation that lasted approximately forty-five seconds.
Then nothing.
Then the lights came back on.
Juhoon was standing in the middle of the room. Three of Bae Chunsik's associates were on the floor in various states of unconsciousness. Bae Chunsik himself was against the wall with an expression that suggested he was rethinking all of his recent decisions.
Juhoon looked at you.
"You're late," you said.
"I was across the city." He crossed the room, crouched behind your chair, and had the zip ties dealt with in about four seconds. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine." You rolled your wrists out, wincing slightly. "How did you know where—"
"Tracker." He stood, and you turned to find him closer than expected, close enough that you had to tilt your chin up slightly to meet his eyes. His expression was doing something unfamiliar. Not the careful blankness he usually wore in professional situations. Something underneath it, pressed close to the surface. "I put it in your jacket lining two weeks ago. After the Windwheel incident."
You stared at him. "You tracked me?"
"Preventively."
"That is—you can't just—" You pressed your lips together. "We are going to have a very long conversation about consent and personal boundaries—"
"You were zip-tied to a chair."
"That is not the point—"
"Are you actually angry," he said, "or is this the thing you do when something scared you and you'd rather be angry about something adjacent?"
The silence that followed was very loud.
From across the room, Bae Chunsik made a small, inadvisable movement. Juhoon's gaze cut to him without his head moving, and Chunsik went extremely still.
You breathed out slowly. "I'm fine," you said, quieter. "I was fine. I had it handled."
"I know," Juhoon said. Back to looking at you. "I know you did."
"Then why do you look like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like—" You gestured vaguely at his face. "That."
His jaw tightened slightly. "We should leave."
"Juhoon—"
"We should leave," he said again, gently but with the absolute finality of someone who had decided that this was not the place. "Please."
You looked at him for a moment. Then you looked around at the unconscious bodies and the very scared Bae Chunsik and the flickering overhead lights.
"Fine," you said. "But we're talking. Tonight."
He nodded once. Reached out and, with a carefulness that felt deliberate, wrapped his hand around your wrist—not grabbing, just contact, just steadying—and led you toward the door.
Outside, the rain had gotten worse. Neither of you had an umbrella. You stood under the narrow overhang and Juhoon called for a car and you stood close enough that you could feel the warmth of him against your arm, and neither of you spoke, and the rain came down hard on the concrete around you.
"I saw the notification on my phone," he said suddenly, without preamble. "That the tracker had moved off your planned route. And I—" He stopped. Started again. "I've been in situations where I had to stay calm regardless of what I was feeling. I know how to do that. I've done it since I was a kid." A pause. The rain. "I couldn't do it tonight."
You turned to look at him. He was watching the rain, profile sharp in the low light.
"Juhoon," you said carefully.
"I know what it means," he said, quiet. "I'm not—I know I'm not good at this. But I know what it means when you can't stay calm because of one person specifically."
Your heart was being extremely unhelpful.
"You've been helping me find someone to be with," he continued, still not looking at you, with the measured tone of someone reading from a script he'd memorized but never said aloud. "And I have been. Trying. Genuinely. But every time I'm with someone else I'm—" Another stop. The muscle in his jaw moved. "I'm thinking about what you would say about them. What you'd notice. Whether you'd think they were right for me." He finally looked at you. "That's not how it's supposed to work, is it."
"No," you said, honestly. "It's really not."
Something in his expression shifted. Not quite hope—too cautious for that. Something more tentative than hope.
"The Shin Dohyun meeting," he said. "The reason I kept looking at you."
"I know," you said.
"You knew then?"
"I suspected." You looked down at the space between you, then back up. Rain was blowing sideways now, catching on the edge of the overhang. "I didn't want to assume. You'd just met her and she was—"
"She wasn't you."
The words landed simply. No drama in them. Just Juhoon, saying a true thing.
You stood in the rain-sound and the low light and felt very clearly and all at once that you had been doing what you always did—running the angles, thinking four steps ahead, managing the situation—except that somewhere along the way the situation had stopped being manageable in the way you were used to, and what you were actually doing was protecting yourself against something that scared you, and you were so tired of doing that.
"I'm your advisor," you said. One last attempt. "That's what we agreed."
"Yes," Juhoon said. Steady. Patient. "And I'm telling you that's not what I want anymore. I'm asking you what you want."
The car pulled up at the curb. Neither of you moved.
"This complicates things," you said.
"Everything about my life is complicated." Almost dry. Almost. "One more thing won't matter."
You laughed—short, genuine, surprised out of you—and his expression softened in a way you hadn't seen before, something warm and unguarded that he maybe didn't know he was showing.
"Ask me again," you said. "When we're not standing in the rain outside a building where you just knocked out six people."
He looked at you for a moment. "When, specifically."
"When you stop treating it like a mission objective and just—say it. Like a person."
Something shifted in his face—not quite a smile, but close enough to count. "I thought I just did."
"You're going to make this very difficult, aren't you."
"Probably."
——
Three days later, Juhoon showed up at your apartment at 9pm with a container of what turned out to be homemade red bean buns, and stood in your doorway with his hands in his jacket pockets and said, "I made too many."
You looked at the container. Looked at him.
"You made too many," you repeated.
"The recipe is hard to halve."
You stepped back to let him in.
He sat at your kitchen counter and you made tea—barley, because that was what you had in and also because he'd mentioned once that he liked it—and there was something different about the quiet between you now. Less like careful professionals maintaining neutral ground, more like—something that didn't have a clean name yet but felt, in the most inconvenient and undeniable way, like the beginning of something.
"I talked to the elder council," he said, warming his hands around the tea cup.
You looked up from your own.
"I told them the situation with my cousin is non-negotiable," he said. "She's not a contingency. She's a person." A pause. "They were—less receptive than I'd hoped. But I also told them that the matter of succession was one I intended to address. On my own timeline. With the person I choose."
You turned your cup in your hands. "How did that go over?"
"About as well as you'd expect." Dry. "I may have leveraged some information I've accumulated over the years regarding two of the elder council's less savory business arrangements."
"You blackmailed the clan elders."
"I prefer applied mutual pressure."
You stared at him. Then you started laughing, and after a moment Juhoon made a sound that was almost, almost a laugh too—low and a little incredulous, like he surprised himself.
"Your cousin?" you asked, when you'd recovered.
"Protected. For now." He looked at his cup. "I bought myself time. A year, maybe more. To do this—the marriage thing—properly. Not on their schedule. Legitimately." He glanced up. "I meant what I said. I want to find someone real. I don't want to manufacture something just to satisfy a council."
"I know," you said.
"I also meant the other thing I said."
"I know," you said, quieter.
The kitchen was warm and the rain had come back, softer tonight, against the windows. You had known, for most of those three days, what you were going to say. You'd been running cons for years—you knew exactly how to read a situation, how to spot the outcome before it arrived, how to see what was real underneath the surface of things. And what was real here, underneath the arrangement and the tracker and the six weeks of café meet-and-greets and the zip-tied chair and the rain outside the storage facility—what was real was that Kim Juhoon looked at you like you were a problem he found genuinely interesting, and he remembered every small thing you'd ever mentioned, and he had driven across the city on a wet Thursday night because a tracker on your phone had shown the wrong route, and you had been pretending this wasn't its own kind of answer for three days.
"The deal was that I'd help you find someone to marry," you said.
Juhoon watched you.
"I didn't specify it couldn't be me," you said.
A beat. Two.
Something in his expression changed—gradual and unmistakable, like a key fitting a lock. Not a smile exactly, but something that lived in the same neighborhood. Something warm and careful and a little bit wondering.
"You're still going to make this complicated," he said.
"Absolutely," you agreed. "I'm a con artist. Complexity is my natural habitat."
"I tracked you without your knowledge."
"We are still going to have that conversation."
"I know." He picked up a red bean bun and set it on the saucer in front of you like a small peace offering. "I'll accept whatever terms you add."
You looked at the bun. Looked at him.
"Lesson two," you said. "Better communication skills."
"Agreed."
"No more unilateral surveillance."
"Negotiable."
"Juhoon."
"Agreed," he said, after a pause that was approximately one second too long to be genuine.
You narrowed your eyes. He met your gaze with perfect serenity, and there it was again—that thing that lived just at the corner of his mouth, that almost-smile that you were beginning to understand was specifically yours to cause.
"You're going to be a nightmare," you said.
"Probably," he said. He sounded entirely unbothered. "Is that a problem?"
Outside, the rain fell soft and steady. The tea was warm in your hands. There was a red bean bun on your saucer and Kim Juhoon in your kitchen, and the deal you'd made in a sunlit café over a half-eaten croissant had, in the way that most deals seemed to when you were involved, become something else entirely.
"No," you said, and meant it. "It's really not."
——
Three months later, he still didn't smile easily in front of other people.
He still assessed every room he entered for exit routes and potential threats. He still asked you every two or three days what you wanted to eat, in the habit he'd developed in those early weeks and never quite dropped. He still went silent when he was thinking, that comfortable, settled quiet that you had learned—over six weeks as his advisor and three months as something else, something that didn't have a label yet but was moving toward one—to read like a second language.
He had, on exactly three occasions, showed up with baked goods under the pretense of having made too many.
You had stopped pretending to believe this after the first time.
Today he was sitting on your couch with a guitar, not playing it exactly—just running his thumb across the strings occasionally, the way some people fidget with pens. You were on the other end of the couch with a book open on your lap that you had not made meaningful progress on in forty minutes. His shoulder was warm where it pressed against yours.
"The elder council wants a meeting," he said.
"I know. You told me."
"I'll need—" He paused. The guitar strings. "I'd like you to come. If you want to."
You turned the page of your book. "As your advisor?"
A pause. Shorter than it would have been three months ago. He was getting better at this—at saying the things he meant without extensive preamble.
"As mine," he said simply.
You looked at him over the edge of your book. He was looking at the middle distance with the expression of someone who has said a true thing and is now waiting to see what the world does with it.
"Okay," you said.
He nodded once, with the gravity of someone accepting a significant strategic agreement.
"You know," you said, "normal people would maybe have led with dinner and a conversation, rather than assassination attempts and tracker chips."
"I'm aware our situation was unorthodox."
"That's one word for it."
"Would you have agreed to dinner," he asked, "if I'd just asked?"
You thought about it honestly. The café, the photograph, the kill order sliding across white linen. If he'd walked up to you one day, no leverage, no deal, just—asked.
"Probably not," you admitted. "I would have found you interesting and talked myself out of it."
He made a low sound that you had recently catalogued as I find this outcome satisfactory disguised as a non-committal noise.
"Don't," you warned.
"I didn't say anything."
"You thought it very loudly."
The corner of his mouth moved.
Outside, the city moved through its evening. Inside, the guitar strings hummed once, soft and low, and Juhoon shifted slightly—that subtle reorientation you'd noticed all those months ago, the one you'd spent so long pretending not to see—until his shoulder rested more fully against yours, and you let your book fall closed, and the quiet between you was the comfortable kind.
The deal had changed. You were still figuring out what you were building instead.
But you were, for the first time in a long time, not thinking four steps ahead.
You were just here.
And that, you thought, was a pretty good place to start.
juhoon bringing you red bean buns under the pretense of "making too many" is the most him thing i could think of and i will not be taking questions. 🐢
𝖢𝖮𝖭𝖳𝖠𝖨𝖭𝖲 ' ─── smau fluff lots of reaction images tinyy bit of cursing petnames ( baby , wife , princess ) martin lowk downbad ' ( daily clickk ) like and reblogg pls cuties 🥹
𝖺𝗋𝗅𝖾𝗇𝖾 ' 𝗌 𝗇𝗈𝗍𝖾𝗌 ! ─── back w another banger 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️ sorry to the anon who requested this a while back.. i was supposed to post this in june but oh well 🤷🏽♀️
anon req:
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pushed my love aside, ooh, hopelessly devoted (to you)
˙✦ z. yufan x f!reader
alternatively titled: “life of a party girl.”
&&. where you are a bit sick from alcohol and james is a lot sick from love <3 fluff. intoxicated reader. yearner best friend!james. pre-relationship. college au.
james was never really one to go out. he’d make an appearance at the occasional party — mostly when you dragged him out — but for the most part he was content to spend his friday nights getting dinner with friends and then turning in semi-early to watch k-dramas with his family when he was home for the weekend or read a book in the peace and quiet of his dorm on campus — which was exactly what he was doing when his doorbell rang about two minutes ago.
now, he’s standing at the door watching your friends giggle and hold each other up. you’re at the center, like always, and barely able to stand on your own two feet or wipe that grin off your face.
his arms open immediately without a second thought when they gently nudge you forward, wrapping around you with careful but firm strength as he props you up against his body.
“couldn’t get her home,” they manage through drunken giggles, “she didn’t wanna go ‘nywhere else.”
your friends begin to imitate the way you’d drunkenly chirped his name earlier, their giggles escalate to raucous laughter that has james feeling sympathy for his neighbors who surely hate him right about now.
“thanks for bringing her back safe,” he says, ever the gentleman even if he’s cringing a bit internally at the interactions that are sure to await him tomorrow. still, even at his neighbors’ expense, it’s better you’re here safe than waking up alone in your dorm extremely hungover.
your friends linger another moment and james stands there, waiting with you in his arms. his eyebrows raise in the slightest, but they just giggle some more and smile at him knowingly without saying a word. he’s sure there’s some reason for it, but at that exact moment you begin to lean forward against him as your legs start to falter from exhaustion. as much as he’d love to find out what the big secret was, he has bigger things to worry about — like keeping you from falling over.
james flashes an apologetic smile. “ah, sorry, i gotta get her to bed. you guys get home safe, okay?”
he waits another moment, just until they’re safely on their way, to close the door and half-lead, half-carry you to his bedroom.
he listens to you yap on about your night while he sits you down on the bed to remove your makeup and clean up your face. he waits patiently with his back turned to let you change haphazardly into the pajamas he’d lent you so many times before (his old, faded blur shirt and sweatpants he’d outgrown). and by then your eyes are barely open and your yawns are stretching your flushed face and the entire time he has to bite his lip to keep from beaming at how, even falling-over-drunk, you are definitively the most adorable person he’s ever known.
you’re already laying back against his plush pillows when he turns back around after you’re done. james huffs out a fond laugh as he leans over you to tuck the duvet up to cover you.
“went a little overboard, huh?”
you shake your head, nuzzling your face further into the pillow.
“mm-mm.”
“no?” he teases. “you couldn’t even get home.”
“didn’t wanna. missed you the whole time i was out.”
you yawn again and james thinks he could die from how cute you are. he settles in on your other side, leaning back against the headboard. you gravitate to him like a magnet, burrowing into his side with your head practically in his lap. he sweeps the hair from your eyes, touch lingering on your face. your skin is warm under his fingers.
your eyes are closed now. james thinks you’ve fallen asleep until you murmur the softest, barely-there, “love you, jjami.”
god, if only you knew.
james is your best friend. james has also been in love with you for probably the majority of the time he’s been your best friend. but for now, he’s content to sit by you and brush his fingers through your hair while you fall asleep in his lap, having you safe here in his bed resting easy beside him.
he’ll tell you another time. (perhaps one when you weren’t half-asleep and too many drinks in). right now, this is enough. you are enough for him, always.
tumblr user mytwinsung try not to post james chao every day challenge level impossible 🌝 <3
pushed my love aside, ooh, hopelessly devoted (to you)
˙✦ z. yufan x f!reader
alternatively titled: “life of a party girl.”
&&. where you are a bit sick from alcohol and james is a lot sick from love <3 fluff. intoxicated reader. yearner best friend!james. pre-relationship. college au.
james was never really one to go out. he’d make an appearance at the occasional party — mostly when you dragged him out — but for the most part he was content to spend his friday nights getting dinner with friends and then turning in semi-early to watch k-dramas with his family when he was home for the weekend or read a book in the peace and quiet of his dorm on campus — which was exactly what he was doing when his doorbell rang about two minutes ago.
now, he’s standing at the door watching your friends giggle and hold each other up. you’re at the center, like always, and barely able to stand on your own two feet or wipe that grin off your face.
his arms open immediately without a second thought when they gently nudge you forward, wrapping around you with careful but firm strength as he props you up against his body.
“couldn’t get her home,” they manage through drunken giggles, “she didn’t wanna go ‘nywhere else.”
your friends begin to imitate the way you’d drunkenly chirped his name earlier, their giggles escalate to raucous laughter that has james feeling sympathy for his neighbors who surely hate him right about now.
“thanks for bringing her back safe,” he says, ever the gentleman even if he’s cringing a bit internally at the interactions that are sure to await him tomorrow. still, even at his neighbors’ expense, it’s better you’re here safe than waking up alone in your dorm extremely hungover.
your friends linger another moment and james stands there, waiting with you in his arms. his eyebrows raise in the slightest, but they just giggle some more and smile at him knowingly without saying a word. he’s sure there’s some reason for it, but at that exact moment you begin to lean forward against him as your legs start to falter from exhaustion. as much as he’d love to find out what the big secret was, he has bigger things to worry about — like keeping you from falling over.
james flashes an apologetic smile. “ah, sorry, i gotta get her to bed. you guys get home safe, okay?”
he waits another moment, just until they’re safely on their way, to close the door and half-lead, half-carry you to his bedroom.
he listens to you yap on about your night while he sits you down on the bed to remove your makeup and clean up your face. he waits patiently with his back turned to let you change haphazardly into the pajamas he’d lent you so many times before (his old, faded blur shirt and sweatpants he’d outgrown). and by then your eyes are barely open and your yawns are stretching your flushed face and the entire time he has to bite his lip to keep from beaming at how, even falling-over-drunk, you are definitively the most adorable person he’s ever known.
you’re already laying back against his plush pillows when he turns back around after you’re done. james huffs out a fond laugh as he leans over you to tuck the duvet up to cover you.
“went a little overboard, huh?”
you shake your head, nuzzling your face further into the pillow.
“mm-mm.”
“no?” he teases. “you couldn’t even get home.”
“didn’t wanna. missed you the whole time i was out.”
you yawn again and james thinks he could die from how cute you are. he settles in on your other side, leaning back against the headboard. you gravitate to him like a magnet, burrowing into his side with your head practically in his lap. he sweeps the hair from your eyes, touch lingering on your face. your skin is warm under his fingers.
your eyes are closed now. james thinks you’ve fallen asleep until you murmur the softest, barely-there, “love you, jjami.”
god, if only you knew.
james is your best friend. james has also been in love with you for probably the majority of the time he’s been your best friend. but for now, he’s content to sit by you and brush his fingers through your hair while you fall asleep in his lap, having you safe here in his bed resting easy beside him.
he’ll tell you another time. (perhaps one when you weren’t half-asleep and too many drinks in). right now, this is enough. you are enough for him, always.
tumblr user mytwinsung try not to post james chao every day challenge level impossible 🌝 <3
synopsis ; You and Martin were inseparable as kids. but ever since he got a girlfriend, you decide to put your feelings aside and cut him off, focusing on your own idol career.
But now that he's also debuted—meaning that you'll be seeing him often in the building, Martin refuses to stop bugging you he finally finds out why you ghosted him in the first place.
ss count ; 12 pictures
warnings ; suicidal jokes
taglist ; open ! (comment on the masterlist)
MASTERLIST | PROLOGUE. | OO1. | OO2.
idk why the hell im getting pissed at martin re-reading this like i wasn't the one who literally wrote these messages bru 🥀
synopsis ; You and Martin were inseparable as kids. but ever since he got a girlfriend, you decide to put your feelings aside and cut him off, focusing on your own idol career.
But now that he's also debuted—meaning that you'll be seeing him often in the building, Martin refuses to stop bugging you he finally finds out why you ghosted him in the first place.
ss count ; 19 pictures
word count ; 640+ words
warnings ; profanity
taglist ; open ! (comment on the masterlist)
MASTERLIST | OO1. | OO2. | OO3.
D-Day came (codeword for Thursday), and you were thankful to find out that the way they plan is to give the script individually before practicing together after an hour.
That gave you a momentary respite from you lowkey hyperventilating in the van, with you trying to lie to your manager that it was just first-time jitters (well, true—but not necessarily why).
He walked into the same empty dance room you were in after an hour, exchanging an awkward greeting with as he called you 'sunbaenim'.
"Ugh, don't call me that," you grimace, your body surprisingly not giving a horrid reaction when he sat next to you on the plush couch, a small distance apart. "Makes me feel old as hell, dude."
He huffed out a laugh, shrugging, "Sorry, gotta be respectful to my seniors, y'know?"
You shook your head in disbelief, a grin trying to fight its way to make itself visible.
As much as you thought you'd hurl from how nervous you'd be, you were pleasantly surprised to experience that it just felt like old times.
You guys practiced the lines for the Music Bank interview, with your heartbeat unstable from the unfamiliarity, but it seemed all your anxiety kept melting away bit by bit whenever Martin took a chance at joking around with you.
And just like nothing had ever happened, you laughed and joked around even more.
Like nothing ever happened.
But there was this one moment before it was time for you to go your separate ways that day.
Practicing a joke bit in the interview, Martin would introduce himself as a 'king of charisma', before you butt in and say that would never work.
He sighs out at your reluctance to agree, before calling out your name, "Do you want me to show you how much of a charismatic Idol I can be?" he says, tilting his head as he read the script, before looking at you.
"Sure, hit me with your best shot, Martin." you shrug nonchalantly, reading the words on paper like it was second nature.
He dramatically shakes himself up, exaggerating himself as he warms up his throat before facing you. "You know, I think you're a nine out of ten for me."
"Really? Not a ten out of ten, Martin-ssi? What happened to the one?"
"No," he lets out a faux yawn, before stretching his arms.
That wasn't planned.
And then his arm hooks around your neck, pulling you close.
Now THAT was definitely not planned.
"That's because I'm the one for you." his voice vibrates near your ear as he got close, your body involuntarily shivering at the sudden contact, before you duck your head away from his arm, as you quickly stand up and step back.
In the script, you were supposed to remain calm and unfazed. But if he was going to start doing things like that out of pocket, with no warning at all, you can't help but react naturally, which was with outburst.
"Yah!" you call out in red-eared fury. You're just thankful that your hair was down so he couldn't point out how flushed they were. "The fuck was that?"
"What? It's improv." he leans back on the couch, tilting his head slightly like he isn't sure what he did, when you know damn well that he knew exactly what he was doing.
You scoff at his quote unquote 'innocence', like he didn't know the effects of what he just did.
"You've gotten real insufferable the last time I met you, Edwards."
He lets a huff out through his nose, "Well, it was great seeing you again as well, L/N."
Your stomach flipped hearing him say your last name again.
Suddenly, CORTIS' manager knocked on the see-through door, before coming in.
"Martin? We need to go. Your group still has an episode recording planned in an hour."
early post because i feel like my part 1 was a little too short! i lowkey understand soojin being pissed but at the same time i don't oof. . .
idol!juhoon x illit!reader ; crack + fluff + angst if you squint ; exes to lovers au ; swearing ; use of y/n
juhoon and reader were in a relationship way before debuting, but they slowly faded away from eachother thinking the other fell out of love when in reality they were both busy preparing their debuts. unexpectedly, they meet again at a concert of both their favourite singer.
part 1 , part 2
a/n: this is the 2nd part but can be read as a standalone! also how do you make moots on this app.. (anyone moot me pls 🥺)
idol!juhoon x illit!reader ; crack + fluff + angst if you squint ; exes to lovers au ; swearing ; use of y/n
juhoon and reader were in a relationship way before debuting, but they slowly faded away from eachother thinking the other fell out of love when in reality they were both busy preparing their debuts. unexpectedly, they meet again at a concert of both their favourite singer.
part 1 , part 2
a/n: this is the 2nd part but can be read as a standalone! also how do you make moots on this app.. (anyone moot me pls 🥺)
EX!cortis member! keonho X EX! katseye member! reader
synopsis: as members of two of the biggest idol groups in the industry, their relationship was falling apart. no matter how packed her schedule was as a KATSEYE member, y/n always made time for him. yet every time she needed him, he was too busy, too distracted, or simply not there. after months of feeling unloved and forgotten, y/n finally reached her breaking point and ended their relationship. keonho was left devastated, by the time he realized how much he had taken her for granted, it was already too late. now, with y/n keeping her distance and their careers constantly putting them in each other's orbit, keonho is determined to get his girl back.
PROLOGUE
AUTHORS NOTE- hi guys! I told y'all id be back with more ficsss, hopefully you guys liked my martin fic, I worked really hard on it! if you guys have any ideas or recommendations to help this new story grow and keep it alive (since I high-key get writers block) feel free to comment your ideas! same goes for any new stories as-well that you guys want me to write! thank you for the support❣️
synopsis; what starts as a quiet after-school piano lesson quickly spirals into a sweet, dizzying string of stolen kisses as the sheet music is completely forgotten
tags; nonidol!martin x reader highschool au fluff drabble 1553 words
notes; got this idea on the way home from school — arghh i really need to get back into playing piano
the afternoon sun was filtering through the blinds of martin’s bedroom, casting long, golden stripes across the polished wood of his upright piano. it was a completely ordinary tuesday. you were just a normal student trying not to fail your music elective, and martin was just the quiet guy from your grade who happened to be good enough to help you pass.
"no, wait, your thumb goes on middle c for this chord," martin muttered softly, his voice low and steady in the quiet room.
he was sitting right next to you on the narrow wooden bench. there really wasn't much space, meaning every time you shifted or took a breath, your shoulders brushed. martin wasn't smooth, and he wasn't trying to be. he was just focused on the sheet music, his neatly rolled-up sleeves revealing his forearms as his fingers hovered over the keys.
but because he didn't really spend time around girls, the proximity felt heavy. you could smell the faint, clean scent of his laundry detergent, and whenever you accidentally messed up a note, you could see the slight jump in his jawline.
"like this?" you asked, pressing the keys down. a sharp, discordant sound echoed through the room.
martin let out a small, breathless huff that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. "not quite. look."
he leaned in a little closer to demonstrate. his left hand brushed against your thigh as he braced himself on the bench, while his right hand gently covered yours, his warm fingers guiding your hand into the correct position. the sudden heat of his skin against yours made your breath hitch. you stopped looking at the piano entirely, your eyes tracking the slope of his nose, the serious concentration in his eyes, and the way his lower lip was tucked slightly between his teeth.
martin pressed the keys down, the perfect chord echoing and then fading into the silence of the room. he didn't pull his hand away.
slowly, he turned his head. because he was already leaning in, your faces were only inches apart. up close, you could see the exact moment his professional tutor filter completely dissolved. his chest rose and fell in a shallow breath, his eyes darting down to your lips before locking back onto yours. he looked incredibly human, a little vulnerable, and completely captivated.
"martin," you whispered, the sound barely carrying in the quiet space between you.
"yeah?" he murmured back, his voice suddenly rougher, losing all its academic stiffness.
he didn't say anything else. he didn't need to. martin closed the remaining distance between you, his hand sliding from your fingers up to the side of your neck, his thumb resting gently against your jawline.
the kiss was hesitant at first, a soft, questioning press of his lips against yours that made your heart do a sudden flip. but as you melted into it, hands gripping the edge of the wooden bench to keep your balance, martin let out a quiet sigh against your mouth. the kiss deepened, turning sweet and slow, completely untangled from the rest of the world. his fingers tangled slightly in your hair, pulling you just a fraction closer, until the piano elective and the sheet music were completely forgotten.
when he finally pulled away, his lips parted slightly as he caught his breath, his thumb still resting on your jaw. his cheeks were flushed a pretty pink, and he looked a little dazed, as if he couldn't quite believe he had actually just done that.
"sorry," he whispered automatically, his usual polite, quiet nature kicking back in, though his eyes were still incredibly dark and focused entirely on you. "i... i shouldn't have distracted you from the lesson."
you couldn't help but smile at how endearing he was, even right after kissing you. "martin, i think i was already pretty distracted."
a small, relieved smile broke across his face, melting away the last bit of his nervousness. he didn't move away. instead, his eyes drifted back down to your mouth, his gaze lingering there for a second before he leaned back in.
this second kiss was different. it wasn't hesitant at all. it was warmer, more confident, his lips sliding over yours with a soft, natural rhythm that felt like they belonged there. your hands moved from the bench to rest against his chest, feeling the steady, rapid thumping of his heart beneath his shirt. martin let out another quiet sigh, tilting his head to deepen the kiss, his other hand coming up to rest gently on your waist, pulling you just a little bit tighter against him on the narrow bench.
when you both finally parted for air again, your foreheads rested together. you were both smiling, breathing a little heavily in the quiet room.
martin let out a small, breathless laugh, his fingers gently tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. "we are definitely not finishing this chapter today," he murmured, his thumb trailing down your cheek.
"is that a problem, teacher?" you teased softly, looking up at him through your eyelashes.
martin stared at you for a heartbeat, his heart skipping a beat at your tone. the absolute lack of his usual restraint was almost dizzying. "not at all," he whispered.
he didn't waste any more time talking. martin leaned down and claimed your lips for a third time, a sweet, lingering kiss that tasted like the quiet safety of his bedroom and the fading afternoon sun. it was slow and deep, a silent promise that things were changing between you.
eventually, the golden hour started to fade into dusk, and the reality of the clock meant you actually had to leave. you packed your notebook and your heavy sheet music into your bag while martin stood by his desk, awkwardly running a hand through his hair, suddenly looking like the quiet, polite guy from school again—except his lips were slightly redder and his eyes followed your every move.
he insisted on walking you out, carrying your heavy backpack for you down the stairs and through the quiet hallway of his house.
when he opened the front door, the cool evening air hit you both. you stepped out onto the paved driveway, the streetlamps just starting to flicker to life. martin stopped near the edge of the lawn, handing your bag back to you. he looked a little anxious, probably wondering how to say goodbye after everything that had happened on that piano bench.
"so," you said, slipping the backpack straps over your shoulders. you looked up at him, a playful smile tugging at the corners of your lips. "thanks for the lesson, martin. i think i really learned a lot today."
martin’s cheeks flushed pink in the dimming light. "yeah. um. anytime. we can do the next chapter on thursday." He cleared his throat, looking down at you expectantly, his posture leaning in just a fraction, clearly hoping for one last real kiss before you left.
instead, you decided to tease him.
you went up on your tiptoes, making him lean down slightly, but instead of finding his lips, you shifted at the last second. you pressed a soft, lingering kiss right against his cheek, right on his warm cheekbone.
"see you on thursday," you whispered right against his skin.
you pulled back, gave him a sweet, innocent wave, and turned around to start walking down the driveway toward the sidewalk, feeling incredibly proud of yourself when you heard his breath hitch in surprise.
you only made it three steps.
suddenly, a hand caught your wrist. it wasn't rough, but it was firm and deliberate. before you could even register it, martin gently but quickly pulled you back toward him. your back flushed against his chest for a split second before he spun you around to face him.
all of his shy, quiet tutor energy was completely gone.
"not so fast," martin murmured, his voice incredibly low, a dark spark of confidence in his eyes that made your stomach completely drop in the best way possible.
before you could even laugh or say anything about his sudden boldness, he cupped the back of your head with his hand, his fingers tangling securely in your hair, and brought his lips down onto yours right there in the middle of his driveway.
this kiss was deep, breathless, and utterly dizzying. it was the kind of kiss that made your knees feel weak, completely wiping the teasing smile right off your face as you instantly wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him down to you. he kissed you with a quiet intensity, his other hand gripping your waist tightly, pulling you so close there was absolutely no space left between you. the cool evening air around you didn't even matter anymore; all you could feel was the warmth of his mouth and the frantic, heavy beat of his heart.
when he finally broke the kiss, he didn't let you go right away. he stayed close, his thumb gently stroking your jawline as you both caught your breath in the twilight.
martin looked down at you, a small, knowing smirk finally breaking across his face as he noticed how flushed and speechless you suddenly were.
"now you can go," he whispered softly, his voice full of affection. "see you on thursday."
“papa, go— agh!” lucian squeaks like a chew toy when sylus squeezes him tighter in his arms.
kyros relishes in the feeling, chest gently tucked beneath the weight of his father’s forearm.
“go, out! time t’sleep!” lucian insists, pressing his palms against sylus’s jaw. they are met with little pecks and kisses from the stubborn dragon. “my race car bed!”
kyros is already half asleep.
“lucian, i thought we talked about sharing.” sylus titters, eyes closed. he rubs salt in the child’s woes when he snuggles further into the pillows.
sylus doesn’t budge even a little. “shh, your brother is asleep.”
“hmph!” having given up, lucian wriggles out of his big lizard papa’s embrace, takes his blanket and his worn out stuffed dragon, juice, and trudges out of the bedroom.
“lucian!” sylus calls, but makes no movement to follow.
he grumbles. it looks like he’s upset two of his family members today.
⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆
you don’t turn when the door to your bedroom swings open. still brewing in the upset your husband has caused you after an extended mission held him back from coming home early.
it was the no contact that got you. and while it was technically no fault of his own, it still ticked on your nerves how he came back all cavalier and cool, acting as if he’d just gone on vacation instead of this life threatening affair.
and while he tried to appease you and apologize for his behavior, you are already too far gone and want nothing to do with him— for maybe about twenty minutes.
well, now it’s been fifteen, and he’s surely come back to make up again.
you’ll chew his ear out for coming back prematurely— you had five minutes left to sulk, after all— but thats mostly for the drama at this point.
but your tongue freezes in place when the shock of white hair that you open your eyes to is not of sylus’s, but lucian’s.
“baby?” you wonder, pulling him close when he successfully gets his little feet under the covers and cuddles up angrily to his dragon. “woosi, what are you doing here?”
“papa take my race car bed, hmph!” he huffs. if you hadn’t been this close, you would have missed the smoke that puffs from his nose when he does. “and—and kee-ro sleepin’ there too.”
you gasp lightly. peppering his forehead with kisses to make him feel better. sympathy coats your voice. “no space for you?”
“no more space for woosian!” he thumps his heel against the mattress and pouts into your cheek. as if ashamed of his tantrum.
your heart gives way for his pain. gently nudging yours aside for the meantime, you realize this is partly your doing. sylus has always sought comfort immediately from you after fights and quarrels, but since the boys, he’d found also that going to them can make his own sorrows cease if only for a little while.
“sorry, angel.” you sigh, brushing back his hair from his teary eyes. “this is my fault. papa made me mad so i asked him for space.”
“papa made mama mad?” he frowns, brow creasing like sylus’s does.
“yes, but i’m okay now.” you sit up. straightening your back, you take him up by the armpits and give him a squeeze. “i’ll go call papa and you can have your race car bed back. how’s that sound?”
you get as far as pushing the covers off before lucian is pulling them back on.
“papa sleepin’ now.” he tells you. eyes big and round full of processing emotions and quiet understanding. “not nice to wakey.”
“oh?”
“woosian have space here.” he tells you, crawling off your lap and back in place where you plucked him from. where juice patiently waits for his return. “woosian stay with mama.”
you swallow down your own building tears.
because how could such a little heart have so much space for you and your feelings?
how could he possibly understand?
and yet, here he is. blinking, waiting for you. respecting the five minutes left of distance between you and his father by giving up his own right to his own bed.
“lucian…” you coo, propping his head up your arm and kissing his nose. “your heart is pure as gold.”
“my heart have blood.” he says, eyes screwed shut. his childish way of putting himself to sleep and acting nonchalant about it all. “mistoo waf says that in skoo.”
“yes,” you giggle, already feeling better. “but mama says your heart is gold, and i’m your best friend and also! i made you.”
“in your belly?” he asks.
“in my belly.” you affirm.
“we best fwends in your belly?” he opens his eyes, the concept exciting him.
“yes.” you grin.
“i like dat.” he giggles, shy into your shoulder. you gift him another kiss on the cheek before drifting off to sleep.
⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆
later, sylus will come, kyros dangling off his arm like a stretchy kitten, and find that he has no space on his big red bed.
in his place, the wife he’s wronged is curled around his hatchling that he has also betrayed, foreheads touching as they sleep.
he can’t help the pride that surges in his chest at the sight. and the fact that his son had come in to offer you comfort when he could not.
he places kyros down under the covers beside his brother, and leans over to feather a kiss on your forehead.
on his way, he pets lucian’s hair. “good job, angel.”
only eyes as keen as his could have caught the plump of the cheeks that form into a small smile.
“papa, go— agh!” lucian squeaks like a chew toy when sylus squeezes him tighter in his arms.
kyros relishes in the feeling, chest gently tucked beneath the weight of his father’s forearm.
“go, out! time t’sleep!” lucian insists, pressing his palms against sylus’s jaw. they are met with little pecks and kisses from the stubborn dragon. “my race car bed!”
kyros is already half asleep.
“lucian, i thought we talked about sharing.” sylus titters, eyes closed. he rubs salt in the child’s woes when he snuggles further into the pillows.
sylus doesn’t budge even a little. “shh, your brother is asleep.”
“hmph!” having given up, lucian wriggles out of his big lizard papa’s embrace, takes his blanket and his worn out stuffed dragon, juice, and trudges out of the bedroom.
“lucian!” sylus calls, but makes no movement to follow.
he grumbles. it looks like he’s upset two of his family members today.
⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆
you don’t turn when the door to your bedroom swings open. still brewing in the upset your husband has caused you after an extended mission held him back from coming home early.
it was the no contact that got you. and while it was technically no fault of his own, it still ticked on your nerves how he came back all cavalier and cool, acting as if he’d just gone on vacation instead of this life threatening affair.
and while he tried to appease you and apologize for his behavior, you are already too far gone and want nothing to do with him— for maybe about twenty minutes.
well, now it’s been fifteen, and he’s surely come back to make up again.
you’ll chew his ear out for coming back prematurely— you had five minutes left to sulk, after all— but thats mostly for the drama at this point.
but your tongue freezes in place when the shock of white hair that you open your eyes to is not of sylus’s, but lucian’s.
“baby?” you wonder, pulling him close when he successfully gets his little feet under the covers and cuddles up angrily to his dragon. “woosi, what are you doing here?”
“papa take my race car bed, hmph!” he huffs. if you hadn’t been this close, you would have missed the smoke that puffs from his nose when he does. “and—and kee-ro sleepin’ there too.”
you gasp lightly. peppering his forehead with kisses to make him feel better. sympathy coats your voice. “no space for you?”
“no more space for woosian!” he thumps his heel against the mattress and pouts into your cheek. as if ashamed of his tantrum.
your heart gives way for his pain. gently nudging yours aside for the meantime, you realize this is partly your doing. sylus has always sought comfort immediately from you after fights and quarrels, but since the boys, he’d found also that going to them can make his own sorrows cease if only for a little while.
“sorry, angel.” you sigh, brushing back his hair from his teary eyes. “this is my fault. papa made me mad so i asked him for space.”
“papa made mama mad?” he frowns, brow creasing like sylus’s does.
“yes, but i’m okay now.” you sit up. straightening your back, you take him up by the armpits and give him a squeeze. “i’ll go call papa and you can have your race car bed back. how’s that sound?”
you get as far as pushing the covers off before lucian is pulling them back on.
“papa sleepin’ now.” he tells you. eyes big and round full of processing emotions and quiet understanding. “not nice to wakey.”
“oh?”
“woosian have space here.” he tells you, crawling off your lap and back in place where you plucked him from. where juice patiently waits for his return. “woosian stay with mama.”
you swallow down your own building tears.
because how could such a little heart have so much space for you and your feelings?
how could he possibly understand?
and yet, here he is. blinking, waiting for you. respecting the five minutes left of distance between you and his father by giving up his own right to his own bed.
“lucian…” you coo, propping his head up your arm and kissing his nose. “your heart is pure as gold.”
“my heart have blood.” he says, eyes screwed shut. his childish way of putting himself to sleep and acting nonchalant about it all. “mistoo waf says that in skoo.”
“yes,” you giggle, already feeling better. “but mama says your heart is gold, and i’m your best friend and also! i made you.”
“in your belly?” he asks.
“in my belly.” you affirm.
“we best fwends in your belly?” he opens his eyes, the concept exciting him.
“yes.” you grin.
“i like dat.” he giggles, shy into your shoulder. you gift him another kiss on the cheek before drifting off to sleep.
⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆
later, sylus will come, kyros dangling off his arm like a stretchy kitten, and find that he has no space on his big red bed.
in his place, the wife he’s wronged is curled around his hatchling that he has also betrayed, foreheads touching as they sleep.
he can’t help the pride that surges in his chest at the sight. and the fact that his son had come in to offer you comfort when he could not.
he places kyros down under the covers beside his brother, and leans over to feather a kiss on your forehead.
on his way, he pets lucian’s hair. “good job, angel.”
only eyes as keen as his could have caught the plump of the cheeks that form into a small smile.
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