soooo...i'm back? sorry for disappearing like that haha my bad guys 🤧writing a pt2 to the hyunjin yandere story since it was so widely requested. if you want to be tagged pls comment here cuz i forgot who was already part of the taglist lol
hi hi hi, hope you're doing good!! I just wanted to tell u that I really like your stories, I always felt like there's a shortage of skz yandere fics when I came across your blog haha.
Anyways, I just wanted to say that your writing is absolutely genius, love how you incorporated personal aspects of every member in their stories (like chan's habit of cleaning or hyunjin's art) I also loved how you portraited Chris as a more delusional partner with him wanting a child lol and Minho as a realistic yandere(? knowing that a child would be a mess haha. You absolutely nailed chanbing's conflicted behavior and hyunjin getting caught by y/n (that's soo him)
I also wanted to tell u that I'm looking forward to Han's storie (he's my bias lol) and I think he might fit into the chaotic and obsessive type of yandere, rather than the organized and controlling one (like Chris and Minho)
Anywayssss, love your writing, and whatever you decide to write it's gonna be a masterpiece, sending you lots of love ❤️❤️❤️
tysmmm :( <3 hannie is definitely not as put together as chris and minho lol. im sorry u had to wait so long, i promise im working on it!!!
Hey girl! will you be posting more of that kinda stuff after the yandere series is done?👀 and when can we expect it to end? It’s so good! You seriously have a talent for writing!🤭💗
by "that kinda stuff" are we taking about yandere skz content? or just darker content in general?
tbh idk when i'll finish the yandere series just cuz i actually have a main acc on here that im on more frequently than this one and i jump around between that and this one and also, writers block is hitting hard ngl. but i'm definitely trying to get back into the swing of things here so hopefully you dont have to wait too much longer!!
I just have to say, i think your writing is actually addictive. I just have to keep coming back and rereading each story, because each time it hits different, and each time I notice new things that I didn’t before.
bangchan’s? So unhinged and yet so HIM! The way he’s like, what happened is nothing you need to think about because I protect you, and then I’ll make you my baby mama??? Whoof!
Minho’s is an absolute masterclass! The subtle way you show how she falls apart because he made her need him? The way he makes her feel like she can’t do anything so that she’ll depend on him for everything?? So classic narcissist! It’s honestly so creepy in the very best way, not slamming you in the face with creepiness, but slowly crawling up your back. I love it.
changbin’s actually made me feel scared. Like that is proper psycho behavior. He out there breaking bones?? And he goes crazy on himself???? Also, I seriously loved the sec scene in this one, it felt so real and natural. And the story also was like, so normal and aww cute romance, and then BANG! We’re just staring in horror at where the cute boyfriend was just standing. Unforgettable!
hyunjin’s might actually be my favorite, honestly. It’s so hard to choose, because I have other favorite scenes, but the concept here is immaculate and the buildup is perfect! Tell me why I feel like I understand his feelings! Y/n just doesn’t understand how much she needs him and how much he loves her! It really feels like you know a lot about the psychology of stalking, which is so cool! I know that you said you were planning a series for OT8, but if you ever decide to write a second part to this, i would be allllll over it!
also, I don’t know if you’re still working on this series, but if so, I think seungmin has shown a couple times that he’s (possibly) the jealous type, and I think that could be fun if you wanted to incorporate that? Obviously you do what you want to do with your writing though!!!
also, if you ever want to post the members out of order if you’re having trouble writing one member, please feel free to!
your writing is absolutely fabulous and incredible, it draws me in so deeply! You think your fics should be hung in a museum written down by a calligrapher and put on display so everyone can experience your crazy good storytelling!! Thank you for writing, and thank you for sharing it with us!!!
and i just have to say that this ask is extremely addictive and that i keep coming back to reread it because it makes me feel so much more motivated to write 🥺🥺 i lowk don't even know what to say cuz i'm shit at taking compliments ahahaa 🙈🙈 but tysmm for reading and taking the time out of ur day to write this!! i actually have studied psychology for two years at uni before changing my major. and i also might actually take ur advice on writing the members out of order cuz ngl, i'm struggling rn
Omaygahd you write so well!!!! aaahhh i love ur yandere seriess it’s so well written 😭 please do moreeee (on ur spare time ofc no pressure idbsjemw) AAHHH U MY FAVE NOW
thank youuu this is so cute hahahaa. definitely working on jisung's rn which is a bit tricky ngl cuz i want it to match his personality well. pls look forward to it !! 💕💕
Hello love! first of all your writing might just be the best I’ve seen on this app like if you aren’t an author yet you should seriously consider it because the talent you have in creating such a vivid, detailed, and realistic scene through words alone is INSANE like reading your work feels like watching a movie instead of just reading words on a screen like you truly have a talent for bringing a scene to life and its incredible!!! and secondly are you taking requests? Totally fine if not I’m just curious bc I’ve never loved a writing style more -⏳
hellooo~ ashjsdj tysmmm. i've wanted to be an author since i was a kid haha but writing on here just feels so much easier for some reason. i definitely am taking requests rn but i miiight not get it out super quick just cuz i'm doing the yandere series. but if it inspires me enough i might get that out first 🤷🏻♀️
(Extremely heavy themes — read carefully)
⚠️ Contains explicit sexual content, voyeuristic masturbation, stalking, home invasion, obsessive/delusional behavior, physical violence, drugging/forced unconsciousness, kidnapping
he loves you. he loves you. why don't you understand?
You don’t know you’ve met him yet.
Late afternoon, grocery aisles humming soft with compressors and a radio that only plays choruses. The fluorescents bleach everything a little—your neck, the paper list you’ve folded in half, the peaches you press your thumb into to test for give. You move like you have somewhere to be. You always do.
He watches the way your mouth tucks when you read a label. The way your fingers worry a loose thread at the cuff of your sleeve. The way you never stand quite in the center of a space—always an inch to the left, as if you’re leaving room for someone else.
As if you were leaving room for him.
Hyunjin stands two aisles over with a basket he doesn’t need and a jar of honey he’ll never open. When you pause at the endcap of pasta, he ghosts past the reflection in the chrome paneling, raises his phone chest-high, clicks—just once. Your profile, the slope of your nose, the soft intent in your eyes. When you reach for linguine, he catches a second shot of your wrist, tendons shifting beneath skin. He breathes in through his mouth.
“Hello,” he says without speaking, lips barely moving. “You took so long today.”
You tilt your head toward the olive oil. In his head, you answer him. I had class.
He smiles. Of course. He knew that.
You don’t see him in the checkout line. He likes it like that. He wants you to feel safe, ordinary, the way he will keep you. Outside, you step into the wash of late sun and cross against the light with a little, impulsive jog. He takes the back route, two car-lengths behind, phone tucked into his sleeve now, camera peeking past the cuff. A blur of your braid. The inside of your elbow as you adjust your bag strap. Your shadow, long on the pavement, intersecting with his.
At the corner, you answer your phone. You laugh at something that doesn’t deserve it. He catalogues the sound.
He doesn’t follow you to your door. He stops three buildings before and watches you vanish. The air holds you for a second longer than the sight of you does; he inhales and tastes citrus and soap and the ghost of your shampoo, or the idea of it, which is the same thing.
Home is a studio stacked with paintings and one narrow bed. The table is scarred with old X-Acto cuts, dotted with ink stains and the white freckles of dried gesso. He dumps the honey on the counter, forgets it exists. Prints three of the newest photos on the little dye-sub printer he keeps for you: your wrist near the pasta, your reflection bent in the convex of a freezer door, the perfect oval of your mouth as you say “oh” to no one in particular.
He tapes them to the wall above the low stool where he sits to sketch. There are others already there—hundreds. A constellation of you in every imagined mood.
He flips open a fresh pad. The paper sighs.
“Hi,” he murmurs, pencil hovering, then touching, the first curve finding your cheekbone without effort. “I missed you.”
You’ve never been still for him—not the way you are in his head. But he knows how your lip will soften if he asks nicely, how your lashes will lower, how your breath will hitch when his fingers slide into your hair. The graphite catches all of it: the light under your eyes, the vulnerable line of your throat when you tilt your head back for him, the notch at the base of your neck where he will put his mouth when you let him.
He draws your mouth open.
The heat at the base of his spine climbs. He shifts on the stool, exhale turning shaky, sweat gathering in the hollows of his collarbones. He doesn’t touch himself yet. He never does until he’s done.
He draws your hand next, spread over your own ribs, fingers splayed the way he likes when he tells you to hold yourself open for him. He gives you his hoodie in the sketch and nothing else. Your knees press together, thighs glossy with the shine he puts there.
“Good girl,” he says softly, pencil working, the dull thud of his pulse in his ears. “You waited for me.”
When he finally reaches for himself, it’s with his left hand, the one that isn’t dusted in graphite. He palms himself over sweats, a light test that makes his head drop back against the wall. He’s already leaking, damp spot growing. He presses his thumb there and circles, slow, gathering the wet to make the fabric slide. The little gasp he lets out is embarrassed and purely delighted.
“Look at you,” he tells you. You’re all eyes, in his head, as if you’ve been watching patiently from the grocery store to here, as if you sat down cross-legged on the paint-splattered floor and waited for him to take the hint. “You wanted this all day.”
He pushes waistband down and frees himself, breath catching when the cooler air hits. He’s thick in his own fist, flushed dark at the crown, a slick bead clinging and threatening to fall. He blinks, slow. He won’t let it. He tips his hips and catches the bead with his thumb, smears it down the underside where he’s sensitive, the wet sound as obscene as a kiss in a church.
“Come closer,” he whispers, shifting the pad to his knee, angling the drawing so the mouth he made for you lines up with his line of sight. “Let me see you.”
His hand moves in a lazy stroke from base to tip, twisting just enough at the top to make his stomach jump. He breathes you in through his teeth and lets the exhale stutter out, again, again. His thighs tense; the stool creaks.
He doesn’t rush. The first few minutes are meditation—pressure, release, the greased slide of his fist, the way his body preens into the rhythm like a cat into a palm. He murmurs nonsense: thank you, there you are, keep your eyes on me—pleases, like you’re being good for him, like you could ever be anything else.
When he opens his eyes again, he’s already flushed, chest heaving lightly, a line of sweat at his hairline. He wipes it away with his wrist, leaves a smear of graphite across his temple. The drawing of your mouth looks wet now because he’s decided it is.
He leans forward.
He drags his next stroke slower, meaner, knuckles skimming the aching head, thumb pausing to circle the slit until his knees threaten to jerk. He squeezes the base, holds, breathes through it—a learned denial that brings the pleasure up tight and makes it burn brighter when he lets it move again.
“Shy today?” he asks, eyes on the cock-hard shine of the tip, on the twitch his own hand draws out of himself. “It’s okay. I’ll do the work.”
He spits into his palm—quick and efficient, a slick thread that strings to his fist and snaps. The sound he makes when he returns to himself is unguarded and low. He starts a steadier pace, each stroke long and deliberate, wrist flexing, fingers choking up just enough to pinch at the head without hurting. His hips answer. He pictures the way your tongue would flatten at the first taste, the way your throat would tense around him if he slid deeper, the surprised little cough when your nose kissed his abdomen.
His free hand drifts to the drawing without thought. His fingertips skim the paper where he darkened the corner of your smile. He rubs lightly, smudging the graphite so it looks like you’ve kissed back. His breath shakes.
“You’re so pretty,” he says, voice frayed. “You’re always—so—look at me, baby. You love me. You do.”
He edges himself and backs off, edges again. The second time, his eyes roll and his mouth goes open and soft; he holds at the base, counts heartbeat after heartbeat until the trembling settles into a clean ache. He’s slick now; even a whisper of pressure slips. He grips tighter, cruder, the heel of his palm pressing against himself in a way that makes his thighs jolt.
He looks up at the photographs. The freezer-door reflection catches him, that curve of your cheek, the shine over the stainless. He sees you seeing him. Relief floods him so hot he almost comes right there.
“Yeah,” he pants, smiling, not quite sane. “I know. I know. You’re so brave.”
He speeds up. The room narrows around the rhythm—the wet shuck of his hand, the small animal sounds he can’t stifle anymore, the tiny jerks of his hips as he fucks up into his fist. He tips his head to give the fantasy more room: you on your knees between his spread thighs on this stupid paint-splattered floor; your fingers splayed on his knees; your eyes patient and worship-bright, a string of spit falling from your lip to the head of him, breaking, reforming, breaking.
“Take me,” he whispers fiercely, and his pace turns ruthless. “C’mon, take me—don’t run, don’t run, open up—good girl—”
He can feel the heat sprinting up his spine now, a grabbed electrical wire of a feeling that climbs with every slide. He doesn’t fight it this time. He drops his head, braces his heel, fucks his fist like it can bruise him from the inside. The wet sound of his palm sliding across the length of him gets messy, slick, perfect.
When he breaks, he does it with a sound he’d be embarrassed to make anywhere else. It rips up from the bottom of him, a shocked, grateful thing, and his whole body locks. The first thick pulse hits his knuckles, hot enough to startle, and he drags his fist away just in time to paint the drawing.
It hits your mouth first—the one he drew—and then lower, a line of white across his hoodie he drew you in, a wet shine over the graphite shadow he put at your sternum. More follows, pulsing, spilling, striping the edge of one of the photos, catching the corner and bleeding into the paper like milk into coffee.
He rides it hard, chasing the last little flashes with a few shaky strokes that make him groan, softer, helpless. When it tapers off, he leans forward and lets his forehead thump to the table, breath coming like he’s been pulled out of deep water.
“God,” he laughs, wrecked and happy, the sound breaking into a sigh. “Good. So good.”
He opens his eyes, dazed. The drawing is ruined and holy.
He touches the wet at your mouth with two fingers. Spreads it a little. Makes a thumbprint on your cheek like a claim. He will not wipe this away. He will fix it with spray, let the gloss dry hard, catch light the way your skin does when you’ve just kissed him and you’re trying not to smile.
“Mine,” he says, tender, certain. He presses his lips to two knuckles. “You’re so good to me.”
He cleans his hand with an old shirt and forgets to throw it toward the laundry hamper. He props the sketchpad against the wall to dry, right in the line of sight from his pillow. The photos drip at the corners; he doesn’t mind the warping. It makes them more real.
On the bed, he lies on his back, one forearm over his eyes, his mouth tilted up like he’s still kissing you. Calm spreads out in him in slow, warm rings.
Tomorrow, he’ll sit two tables over at the café and you’ll check your messages and stir sugar into your drink and know, in the way that matters, that he is there. He’ll show you the newest page if you ask. He’ll hide it if you’re shy. He’ll wait, as long as you need, because waiting is the same as having when you already belong to him.
He falls asleep like that for a minute, lulled by the hum of the fridge and the faint paint-smell; when he wakes, he rolls to his side and looks at your mouth again. The gloss has begun to dry. It catches the evening light in a way that makes his chest ache.
“Soon,” he murmurs, eyes soft, the promise an easy, lethal thing. “I’ll bring you home soon.”
You talk to him for the first time a week later.
It’s nothing.
You’re at the crosswalk outside the art store he sometimes uses for brushes, juggling a tote bag and what looks like a portfolio tube. You’re trying to balance it all while you dig in your pocket for your headphones. The pedestrian signal chirps; people surge around you.
Someone bumps into you from behind. Your tube slips. The strap catches, jerking your shoulder.
“Sorry,” you say automatically, breathless.
The man grunts and moves on.
You don’t even look back.
Hyunjin does. The guy is twice his size and already halfway down the block. It takes everything in him not to follow, not to tap him on the shoulder and ask if he’s always so careless with priceless things.
“You okay?” he says under his breath, watching the way you shake your arm out, roll your shoulder once.
He imagines you saying, Yeah. I’m okay. I’ve got it.
The light changes. The crowd moves. You step forward, caught in the river of bodies.
Your portfolio tube slips again. This time, the strap snags the edge of your coat; you stumble, foot catching on the curb.
Hyunjin’s hand is on your elbow before he thinks about it.
It’s instinct. That’s what he tells himself later. Reflex.
You jerk, head whipping toward him. For one bright, shocked second, your eyes meet.
His world goes silent.
Up close, you’re all the specifics his drawings have been missing. Tiny freckle at the corner of your left eye. Faint line where your bottom lip is a bit drier than the rest. A tiny, irritated flush just beneath your jaw from the weight of the strap.
“I’ve got it,” you say, recovering your balance. Your voice is straighter than he expected, less soft. “Thanks.”
You pull your elbow free. He lets you. You don’t look at him longer than the courtesy demands; your gaze skips once over his face, uncomprehending, and then you’re angling away, crossing the street, phone already in your hand.
He stands on the curb, fingers tingling where your warmth was, heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s rattling his ribs.
You spoke to him.
You.
Spoke.
To him.
You thanked him.
You let him touch you.
You didn’t pull away until you were steady.
He replays all three seconds as you walk away, as you turn the corner, as you vanish. Every blink, every shift of your weight, every syllable.
“Thanks,” he mimics quietly.
You were nervous. That’s why you didn’t hold his gaze. That’s why your elbow twitched when he steadied you. You’re not used to being taken care of. You don’t know how to trust it yet.
You will.
He walks home in a daze.
That night, he doesn’t need photos.
He sits cross-legged on the floor instead, sketchbook braced on his thighs, lamp tilted low. He draws from memory: your shoulders hunched over the laptop, the deep fatigue carved under your eyes.
He redraws it differently.
In his version, your shoulders are still tired, but they’re wrapped in his clothes. Your jaw is soft because you’re half-asleep, cheek pressed to his thigh while he combs his fingers through your hair and tells you you’re not allowed to stay up all night alone anymore.
He jerks off once, slow and thorough, to the thought of your mouth slack and drooling a little on his leg while he talks on the phone about something that doesn’t matter. He finishes smeared over the curve of your cheek on the page. He laughs, breathless and fond, and writes mine over the stain before it dries.
The shift happens on a Wednesday.
You’re at the bookshop, tucked behind the register with a textbook open flat on the counter. It’s a slow hour; the bell above the door hasn’t chimed in thirty minutes. You chew the end of your pen and frown down at a paragraph, utterly unaware that the chewing is going to haunt him later.
He pretends to browse.
He’s good at it now, letting his fingers skate over spines he won’t remember, tilting covers to catch the light. He hovers two aisles away, close enough to watch you reflected in the little round mirror above the bargain table. Your eyes flit across the lines. Your knee bounces under the counter. You don’t look up.
He loves you so much he could scream.
The bell chimes.
He glances over in time to see a guy in a hoodie and ballcap walk in, head down, scrolling his phone. He’s about Hyunjin’s height, stockier, hands tucked into his pockets.
He goes straight to you.
You look up, startled, then smile when you recognize him. Hyunjin’s hand tightens automatically around the spine of a book.
“Hey,” you say. Your voice does a different little thing, lighter, sweeter. “You’re early.”
Hyunjin’s vision tunnels.
The guy leans on the counter, grinning. “Got out of practice quick. Coach wasn’t in the mood to torture us today.”
You laugh. “Can you get him to talk to my professors?”
“Please, your professors probably love you.”
“Debatable.”
The guy reaches across the counter and flicks your pen out of your hand. You grab for it, smack his wrist. You’re still smiling.
“Stop,” you say, mock-annoyed. “I’m trying to actually learn something for once.”
“You can learn after dinner,” he says. “I’m starving.”
“Then go eat,” you say. “I still have half an hour.”
He pouts. “Can’t we just go now? No one’s here.”
“I’m still on the clock,” you say. “My manager will murder me.”
“He won’t know,” he wheedles.
Hyunjin closes the book very carefully before he crushes the cover.
This is new.
This is wrong.
You don’t have a boyfriend. You don’t even flirt. He would know. He’s watched you for months. He’s heard every conversation, heard every phone call you’ve answered in public. There hasn’t been anyone.
Except now there is this.
“Seriously, go sit,” you say, jerking your chin toward the little café corner at the back. “I’ll be off in a bit. I’m not getting fired because you’re hungry.”
“Fine,” the guy sighs, but he’s smiling. He grabs your pen again, pockets it this time. “I’m stealing this.”
“No, you’re not,” you protest, reaching over the counter. He leans in and you end up half sprawled across the wood, laughing, fingers grappling with his.
“I’ll trade,” he says.
“For what?”
“For this.”
He dips in and kisses you.
It’s quick. Barely more than a brush of mouths. But you soften into it after the initial shock, hand fisting gently in the front of his hoodie. When he pulls back, you’re flushed in a way Hyunjin has never seen before.
“Idiot,” you mumble, but you’re smiling. You don’t ask for the pen back.
The guy ruffles your hair and retreats to the café with a last, soft look. Your eyes trail him for a second before you snap back to your textbook, face taut in a way that says you’ll overthink that kiss for the rest of the shift.
Hyunjin stands frozen in the aisle, hands empty.
There’s a high, whining sound in his ears.
No. No, this isn’t—this isn’t real. This is a blip. A trial run. People make mistakes. You’re tired. You’re overworked. You don’t mean it. This is a phase. A detail. A smudge he can rub out.
He could go home and draw this version: your hand tangled in someone else’s shirt. He could watch the line of your mouth curve for the wrong person and fix it on paper, erase the hoodie, replace the jaw, make it his.
He doesn’t.
But he does leave.
He doesn’t remember getting out of the shop, doesn’t remember the bell, doesn’t remember the air between the door and the sidewalk. He finds himself three blocks away, back pressed to a brick wall, hands shaking.
He laughs once, breathless and incredulous.
“Okay,” he whispers, more to the sky than to himself. “Okay. I get it. You’re mad at me.”
He’s been greedy. He knows that. Keeping you all to himself, hoarding your words, your images, your little quirks like they belong in his chest instead of your own life. Letting months pass without giving you the chance to meet him properly. It’s understandable that you’d… drift. That you’d be lonely. That you’d accept the first idiot who put his mouth on you like you were available.
His stomach rolls.
He presses his palms to his eyes until stars bloom.
“You don’t know,” he tells himself quietly. “You don’t know. You don’t know any better yet.”
The thought steadies him.
The real firsts don’t count when they’re with the wrong people. Everyone knows that. You’re practicing. That’s all. You’re killing time with some guy whose name he’ll forget as soon as this is fixed. You’ll look back from where you’re supposed to be—his bed, his arms, his life—and you’ll laugh at yourself, at how desperate you were back then to feel anything.
He peels off the wall and walks fast.
There’s only one place he wants to be now and that's with you. He has to make his move. Before it’s too late.
You don’t notice anything wrong at first.
You’re too tired, for one. The kind of tired that makes the hallway blur—the elevator ride a soft, humming blank between the bookshop and your floor. Your shoulder still remembers the weight of a hand that shouldn’t mean as much as it does. Your mouth still tingles where he kissed you.
Stupid, you think, as you dig for your keys. You’re going to overthink that for a week.
The hall outside your apartment is the same as always: ugly carpet, buzzing overhead light, someone’s package leaned against the wall waiting to be stolen. You shift your bag higher on your shoulder and fumble the key into the lock. It sticks, like it always does. You jiggle up then left. The deadbolt thunks back.
You push the door with your hip.
Darkness, at first. The familiar kind. Your curtains are closed; the city outside is a smear through cheap fabric. You toe your shoes off by muscle memory, one, two, heel pressed to heel. Your bag drops onto the little entry table with a tired thud. Keys in the dish. Phone on top of them.
You don’t turn the light on right away. You never do. You like the pause—the exhale in dimness before the apartment fully exists, before you see the dishes in the sink or the laundry you forgot or the emails you don’t want to open.
You stand there a second, listening to yourself breathe.
The quiet is wrong.
It takes your brain a beat to decide that.
The building’s noises are there—the distant plumbing, someone’s TV muffled through two walls—but your apartment has its own soundscape: the tick of the cheap clock over the stove, the faint hum of the fridge, the sigh of the old window when the wind hits just right.
You hear the fridge. You don’t hear the clock.
You left it running this morning. You remember complaining about it to yourself when you were hunting for your other shoe. You don’t remember… stopping it.
You frown into the dark, hand feeling for the light switch.
You don’t flip it.
Your fingers brush the plastic and then freeze, some animal part of you suddenly, painfully awake. The hair on your arms lifts. A current runs underneath your skin, a low electric hum that has nothing to do with the wiring.
If someone’s in here, you think, wild and flat at the same time, hitting the lights just tells them exactly where you are.
You swallow. Your mouth is dry.
“Hello?” you call.
It sounds stupid the second it leaves your lips. This is exactly what gets people killed in all those horror films you’ve watched.
The apartment doesn’t answer.
Your eyes start to adjust. Shapes resolve: the couch as a hulking rectangle, the cluttered low shelf under the TV, the half-full laundry basket by the hallway. Everything is where you left it and wrong anyway, like someone has picked your life up and put it down a centimeter to the left.
You step out of your shoes and onto the cool wood. Your feet are silent. Your heart is not.
“Okay,” you mutter, for yourself. “Okay. You’re being weird. It’s fine.”
You reach again for the switch.
A breath answers you.
Not yours.
It’s soft, caught, the kind someone makes when they forget to hide it. It comes from deeper in, not the main room. Somewhere down the short hallway that leads to your bathroom and bedroom.
Every muscle in your body locks.
You stand there, hand hovering over the switch, fingers shaking now.
“Who’s there?” you say.
This time your voice cracks. You hate that.
Silence again. Long enough that you start to doubt your own ears. Long enough that you think, hysterically, Maybe it was the building settling, maybe it was a pipe, maybe it was—
“Hey,” a voice says.
You jump.
It’s not loud. Not threatening. You know loud; you grew up in a house where anger broke the sound barrier. This is… gentle. A little hoarse, like its owner hasn’t used it in hours. The sound threads down the hall and into your chest.
“I didn’t want to scare you,” he adds.
You flick the light on.
The apartment snaps into being. Couch, shelf, laundry, your jacket thrown over the back of a chair. The cheap art print over the TV. The kitchen counter with two mugs by the sink, one clean, one not. Everything, everywhere, too bright.
There’s a man sitting on your couch.
You know two things at once: you have never seen him before in your life, and yet you have seen him a thousand times.
Long legs spread just enough to brace on the floor. Dark hair pulled back in a loose half-tie, a few strands falling around his face. Black jeans, black t-shirt speckled with what looks like old paint. Hands folded carefully between his knees, like he’s trying to look nonthreatening.
“Hi,” he says, almost shy. “You’re home.”
Your body reacts before your brain catches up. You stumble back, shoulder slamming into the door. Your hand scrabbles blindly for the lock, the knob, anything.
“How the—” Your voice comes out thin. You swallow, try again. “Who are you? Get out. Get out or I’m calling the police.”
He flinches at police like other people flinch at gunshots. It’s small, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but you see it. His hands tighten once and then loosen again. He doesn’t stand.
“I know this looks bad,” he says.
You laugh. It’s a horrible sound, high and too loud. “You’re in my apartment.”
“I know.” He nods, earnest. “I was going to be gone before you got back, but you left work early and—” He breaks off, shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel unsafe.”
“You broke into my apartment,” you repeat, as if maybe he missed that part. “You’re in my apartment. There’s no version of this where I don’t feel unsafe.”
“I didn’t break anything,” he says quickly. “The lock’s cheap. It sticks if you push up, then left. You know that.”
Your stomach drops.
“How do you know that?” you whisper.
He blinks. For the first time, something like uncertainty ghosts across his expression. Like he thought you were further along in this conversation than you are.
“We can talk about that,” he says. “Just—can you close the door?”
The door is still cracked from when you slammed into it. A thin slice of hallway, empty and humming, shows through.
Every instinct you have screams to yank it open and run.
His eyes flick to the gap, then back to you.
If you turn and bolt, he’ll be on you. You know that without knowing how you know. He hasn’t moved, but there’s something in the line of his body, in the casual bend of his knees, that says coiled, ready.
You don’t move.
“I’ll scream,” you say instead. “My neighbors will hear.”
He nods like that’s reasonable. “Okay.”
He doesn’t sound worried.
You fumble for your phone on the table without taking your eyes off him. Your fingers close on empty wood.
Your keys are in the dish.
Your phone is not.
Cold slips down your spine, joint by joint.
“Looking for this?” he asks softly.
He lifts your phone from the cushion beside him, like a magician producing a rabbit. Your screen is dark. His thumb rests a hair’s breadth from the side button.
“I didn’t go through it,” he says. “I promised myself I wouldn’t. That felt like… too much. Like stealing. I’ve just been holding it.”
He says it like that should be a comfort.
You stare at the phone, then at him.
“Get out,” you say again. Your voice is steadier now. Anger is easier than fear; it gives your words weight. “Leave my phone and get out, or I swear to god—”
“Y/N.”
The sound of your name in his mouth almost knocks you over.
He says it gently, carefully, like he’s practiced getting the weight of the syllables right. Like he likes the shape of it.
Every nerve you have lights up.
“Don’t,” you say. It comes out too quiet. “Don’t call me that. You don’t know me.”
He smiles, small and bewildered, like you’ve said something mildly funny.
“I know you,” he says.
You shake your head. Your heart is a painful, frantic drum. “No. You don’t. I have never seen you before. How did you get in here?”
He exhales, a little sigh through his nose. You get the sense he’s having a different argument in his head and you’re losing it without even being told the rules.
“The super’s careless,” he says. “He leaves the spare keys in the office drawer with the door open. It took a while to figure out which one was yours, but…” His shoulders lift in a tiny shrug. “Worth it.”
Your stomach flips.
“How long,” you ask, each word measured, “have you been doing that?”
The smile fades.
“You were really stressed during midterms,” he says instead of answering. “You kept falling asleep at your desk. I hated that. Your neck is going to be a problem in ten years if you keep doing that.”
You feel nauseous.
You think about all the nights you’ve dragged yourself home, tossed your bag, face-planted into your textbooks. The mornings you woke up with a blanket over your shoulders you didn’t remember pulling down from the couch. The days you told yourself you just forgot you’d done that.
Your skin crawls.
“Oh my god,” you whisper. “Oh my god.”
He sees it land. His expression crumples in slow motion.
“No,” he says quickly. “No, don’t—hey, don’t look at me like that. I never hurt you. I would never—”
“You were here,” you snap. “In my apartment. While I was sleeping.”
“I was making sure you were okay,” he says, as if that should have been obvious. “You don’t take care of yourself. You forget to eat, you fall asleep sitting up, you walk home with your headphones in and your keys between your fingers like that would stop anyone—”
“You were watching me?” you say, voice rising. “How long?”
He hesitates.
“Hyunjin,” he says.
You blink. “What?”
“My name,” he says. “It’s Hyunjin.”
He says it like that answers anything.
“I don’t care what your name is,” you spit. “Get. Out.”
He winces, a quick, wounded flick around his eyes, but his body doesn’t move. If anything, he looks heavier in the room now, like the air has decided to arrange itself around him.
“I know you’re scared,” he says softly. “I know this is sudden. I thought we’d have more time. That’s on me. I waited too long.”
“You didn’t wait at all,” you say. “You—what, you just picked me and… and decided we’re what, friends? Dating? Is that it? Is that what this is?”
His eyes brighten like you’ve given him a gift.
“See?” he says quietly. “You do know.”
“I don’t know anything,” you snap. Your hand gropes along the wall behind you, searching for something, anything—a sharp edge, a heavy object—but there’s nothing within reach but the smooth paint and the useless little framed print you hung there sophomore year. “You’re a stranger. You are in my apartment. You need to leave.”
“No,” he says.
The word is still soft. It lands like a locked door.
Something in you frays.
“Then I’ll leave,” you say, pushing off the door. Your body wants to shake; you don’t let it. You put one foot in front of the other, edging toward the gap.
He stands.
It’s slow, unhurried, but somehow he’s taller than you thought he was when he does it. The room feels smaller with him upright. He doesn’t lunge. He doesn’t have to. Two steps and he’s between you and the door, hands loose at his sides, not touching you.
“Move,” you say.
“Just…” He swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs. “Can you sit down? Please? We can talk. You’ll feel better when you understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” you say. Your throat burns. “You’re a stalker and a freak and you broke into my home. That’s it. That’s all there is.”
He flinches at freak like you slapped him.
A flicker of something ugly slips through his expression and is gone so fast you almost think you imagined it.
“Don’t call me that,” he says, very quietly.
Your pulse stutters.
You press your back harder into the wall, as if you could sink through it. His body blocks the only exit. The window behind the couch is a death drop onto an alley. You think, distantly, about your neighbor across the hall, about whether she’s home, about how loud you would have to scream for her to knock.
Hyunjin takes a breath, lets it out slow.
“You’re tired,” he says. “You’ve had a long day. You’re upset about the boy from the shop—”
“Don’t,” you snap. “Don’t talk about him.”
“You’re not yourself right now,” he continues, as if you haven’t spoken. “You’re scared. I get it. I’d be scared too, if I thought I was alone and then I wasn’t. But you’ve never been alone, Y/N.”
Your name again, threaded through the sentence like an anchor.
You shake your head. “You need to stop saying my name like that.”
“Like what?” he asks, genuinely puzzled.
“Like you own it,” you choke.
He tilts his head. His gaze drags over your face, searching. Cataloguing. You feel it everywhere it touches, like fingers.
“It’s yours,” he says eventually. “I just… like holding it.”
You almost laugh. It comes out broken on the edges.
“You’re insane,” you say.
He thinks about that for a beat.
“Probably,” he says. “But I’m not wrong.”
You don’t know what to do with that.
“Move,” you say again, last try. “Please. Just—let me leave. You can stay here and be crazy or whatever, and I’ll go outside and call the cops and you can run, but I am not staying in here with you.”
His jaw tightens.
“You’re not calling the cops,” he says. There’s no bluster in it. No threat. Just certainty. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“I don’t even know you,” you say.
“You do,” he says. “You just haven’t caught up yet.”
You stare at each other.
You’ve been tired all day, but whatever fog you were walking around in has burned off, replaced with a sharp, painful clarity. Every sense is painfully open. You can smell the faint oil paint on his shirt, the trace of your own detergent in the room, the metallic tang of your own fear at the back of your tongue.
He looks at you like you’re a painting he’s been working on for months that finally came into focus.
“I’m going to scream,” you say.
His eyes soften, which is the last thing you expect.
“You can,” he says. “If you really want to. But then they’ll come, and you’ll have to explain why you didn’t notice any of the other times I was here. Why you didn’t wake up. Why you slept with the door unlocked that one week. Why you walked home alone in the dark so many nights after that. They’ll ask a lot of questions, and you’re so tired, baby. You don’t want that.”
Your stomach lurches at baby.
“I’ll tell them everything,” you say, forcing the words past the tightness in your throat. “I’ll tell them I didn’t know, because I didn’t, and they will drag you out of here in handcuffs and I will never have to see you again.”
His mouth curves, almost fond.
“You really think,” he says, quiet, “I’d let them take you away from me now?”
A pulse beats hard at your temple. You feel lightheaded.
“You mean take you away,” you say.
He shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “I meant what I said.”
He takes one slow step closer. You flatten against the wall. Your hands curl into fists at your sides to stop them from shaking.
“I love you,” he says.
It hits you like a blow.
The room tilts. You grab for air.
“You don’t even know my favorite color,” you say, because that’s what comes out, because your brain is doing triage with nonsense.
“Blue,” he answers, without hesitation. “Not the bright one, the soft one you wear in your hair sometimes. You drink iced coffee even when it’s cold. You hate leaving emails unread but do it anyway when they scare you. You only call your mom on Sundays because you need the mental buffer. You crack your knuckles when you’re about to lie. You think nobody notices.”
Your hands uncurl. Your knuckles ache.
“Stop,” you whisper.
“You apologize too much,” he says softly. “You cry at car commercials and then pretend you have something in your eye. You take naps with your mouth open. You drool. It’s cute. You hate being called cute.”
You feel sick.
“This isn’t love,” you say. “This is—this is you spying on me and pretending it’s a personality quiz. This is you building some fucked up little shrine and deciding I’m your main character.”
His gaze flicks, just once, to the hallway that leads to your bedroom.
“Yeah,” you say, voice shaking now. “Yeah, I know you’ve been in there. What did you do? Take photos? Steal my underwear? Go through my journal? Did you like the part where I wrote about wanting to claw my own skin off? Did that turn you on?”
He flinches like you slapped him.
“I would never read something you didn’t want me to,” he says, low. “I’m not a monster.”
You laugh, sharp and ugly.
“You’re in my apartment,” you say for the third time. “You let yourself in with my keys. You watched me sleep. You watched me shower? Did you? Did you stand in the hallway and listen—”
“No,” he snaps, sudden and sharp. Anger flashes bright across his face, then shutters. “No. I give you privacy. I’m not—” He cuts himself off, breath coming fast. “I just make sure you’re safe.”
“You’re the thing I need to be safe from,” you say.
He looks at you for a long moment.
Then he sighs.
“I knew you were going to say that,” he murmurs. “I was hoping we’d get there slower.”
He lifts your phone, turning it over in his hand once, twice. His thumb presses the side button. Your lock screen flares to life—time, missed notifications, the last photo you took at the café. He studies it, expression unreadable, then clicks it dark again.
“I’m not leaving,” he says. “And you’re not either.”
The words slot into place with all the quiet inevitability of gravity.
You realize, belatedly, that he hasn’t stepped between you and the door by accident. That he has your phone, your keys, your routine, your whole small life in his hands, and he honestly believes that’s the same thing as care.
Your heart hammers once, twice, like it’s trying to punch through your ribs.
The hallway behind him stretches toward your bedroom, where the window sticks and the fire escape is rusted and the lock is a joke. You don’t know yet which way you’re going to run.
You just know you’re done standing still.
You don’t decide so much as your body does.
One second you’re pinned in place by his stare, the next something in you snaps like an overstretched rubber band. Your vision tunnels; the edges of the room fuzz. Fight or flight stops being a theory and becomes a command.
You smile.
It feels wrong on your face. Too bright. Too sharp. But you watch his shoulders slip the tiniest fraction, something hopeful flickering at the corners of his mouth.
“Okay,” you say.
Your voice doesn’t sound like yours. It sounds higher, sweeter. You push your hands away from your sides, fingers uncurled, palms empty.
“Okay,” you repeat. “Fine. You want to… talk? We can talk. Just—” You force a little laugh. “Can we do it sitting down? My legs are killing me.”
He studies you.
You keep your gaze loose, your shoulders slouched, like the adrenaline isn’t making your fingertips tingle.
Please be stupid, you think. Please be exactly as stupid as you look.
Hyunjin’s head tips, birdlike. His eyes soften again.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah. That’s fair.”
He steps sideways, opening a slim corridor between you and the living room.
He doesn’t step far enough to clear the door.
You don’t go for the door.
You go left.
The kitchen is three strides away. You hit the tile too fast, socked feet sliding. Your hand shoots out for the counter to steady yourself; your hip clips the edge hard enough to bruise. You don’t feel it. You’re already reaching for the knife block.
There’s nothing in it.
Your fingers close on empty slots, wood smooth and mocking under your palm.
For a heartbeat, your brain just… blanks.
No. You did dishes yesterday. You put them back. You remember the clack of blade against wood, the way you shoved the biggest knife in too hard and had to wiggle it free and try again. You are not crazy. You are not misremembering.
You look at the block properly.
Every slot is empty.
Slowly, like you’re underwater, you turn your head.
Hyunjin is still by the doorway. He hasn’t moved. He just looks at you, expression almost apologetic.
“Knives are dangerous,” he says.
You throw the block.
You don’t aim. You just swing your arm and let it fly, wood leaving your hand with more force than you knew you had. It hits the wall a foot to his left, bounces off, and clatters to the floor, one corner splintering.
He flinches, but he doesn’t duck. Doesn’t even raise a hand.
“Okay,” he says, voice thin now. “Okay. I deserved that.”
You’re already moving again.
Drawer. You yank it open. Forks, spoons, chopsticks. No knives. Next one—takeout menus, batteries, dead pens. Next—towels. You slam it so hard it bounces back an inch and nearly pinches your fingers.
“Looking for a weapon?” he asks, still too calm. “Baby, do you know how easy it is to hide that kind of thing?”
“Stop calling me that,” you snarl.
Your heart is pounding so hard your vision throbs with it. You need something. Anything. Heavy, sharp, breakable—
Your eyes land on the mug by the sink. The big one with the chip in the rim.
You grab it by the handle and hurl it.
This time, you aim.
Hyunjin is closer than he was. He takes a half-step back when your arm moves, but he’s not fast enough; the mug catches his shoulder and explodes against the wall. Ceramic shards skitter across the floor, one pinging off his jaw.
He grunts, actually staggering. A darker patch blooms on the black of his shirt, near the curve of his collarbone.
Good, you think, wild and vicious. Bleed.
You don’t wait to see how bad it is. You bolt.
You don’t go for the door now—he’s too close, his body still between you and the exit. You spin past the couch instead, shoes abandoned by the entry, purse spilled, sprinting down the short hall toward your bedroom.
“Y/N,” he calls.
You don’t hear what comes after your name. You’re already in the room, slamming the door, shoving your full weight against it. Your hands fumble for the tiny lock, thumb slipping twice before it finally clicks.
Your whole body is shaking. Your lungs burn.
Okay. Okay. Breathe. Window.
You stumble to it, yank the blinds up, fingers tangling in the cheap plastic cords. The sash is down; you grab and heave. It sticks, like it always does. You grunt, shoulders straining, nails scraping paint.
“Come on,” you hiss. “Come on, come on—”
The wood gives with a shudder and jumps up an inch. Cold air knifes in. You squirm your fingers under the frame, trying to drag it higher.
Something slams into the door.
The thin wood jumps. You do too.
“Open the door,” Hyunjin says. His voice is muffled, but you can hear the strain lining it now.
“Fuck you,” you snap.
Your arms shake. The window stutters up another inch, another, shrieking in protest. It’s barely high enough to fit your torso, but you don’t need graceful. You just need through.
You wedge a knee onto the sill.
The door rattles again, harder.
“Please,” he says. “You’re going to hurt yourself. The fire escape’s rusted, it’s not safe—”
He knows the fire escape.
Of course he knows the fire escape.
You drag one leg up, sideways, thump your thigh against the sill. The metal outside is slick with old rain and god knows what else. Three floors down, the alley yawns narrow and vertical, dumpsters hulking shapes in the dark.
Your window doesn’t have a safety bar. You’ve made jokes about that. You’ve been grateful for it in summer.
Right now, it feels like a design flaw you could kiss.
The door shudders, wood starting to splinter around the knob.
Your ankle scrapes the underside of the sash; pain flares, hot and thin. You ignore it. You get one leg out, foot searching blindly for purchase. Metal screeches under your sole.
The door cracks.
You don’t see it, but you hear it: that deep, sickening pop of cheap wood giving way around the lock. The next hit sends the frame juddering; the latch tears free. The door bursts inward, slamming into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster.
“Stop,” Hyunjin pants, in the doorway now.
You don’t look back.
You get your other knee on the sill, plant your palms, and start to push yourself through.
A hand clamps around your calf.
You scream. Loud. Raw. Your throat goes hot with it.
His fingers dig into your skin, hard enough to hurt. He yanks. Your shin slams into the frame; your hip hits the edge. White pain flares along your side.
“Let go!” you shriek, kicking back with your free leg. Your heel connects with something—his chest, his shoulder, you don’t know. He grunts, but his grip doesn’t loosen.
“I said stop,” he snarls.
The word is different this time. Deeper. Something feral rattles in it.
He pulls. You grab for the fire escape railing with both hands, fingers scrabbling against rust. For a half-second, there’s a horrible stretch—your arms up, your body half out, his weight hauling you back in. It feels like you’re going to split down the middle.
“You’re going to fall,” he says, choked. “You’re going to fall—”
“Good,” you spit. “Better than this.”
He swears. It hisses through his teeth, an ugly, bitten-off sound.
His grip shifts lower, around your ankle and the back of your knee. He uses the leverage.
He yanks you back into the room.
You lose your grip on the railing. Your knuckles strip on the metal as your hands slide off; you tumble backward, crash sideways onto the floor. Your shoulder hits first, then your hip, then the back of your head. The impact knocks the breath out of you. The world goes white around the edges, then gray, then snaps back in too bright.
You lie there, lungs spasming helplessly, mouth open on nothing.
Hyunjin is over you in an instant.
His face looms into view, pale and too close, hair falling around you both like a curtain. His eyes are huge.
“Don’t move,” he gasps. “Don’t, don’t—did you hit your head? Fuck, I shouldn’t have pulled that hard, I’m so sorry—”
You swing at him.
Your fist connects with his cheekbone. It’s a horrible, satisfying feeling—bone on bone, skin on skin. Pain shoots up your hand; his head snaps sideways.
He goes very, very still.
His hair falls forward, hiding his face. A drop of blood hits your forearm. You feel it slide.
For a terrible second, you think you’ve killed him.
Then he inhales.
It’s slow. Deep. His shoulders rise and fall with it.
When he looks back at you, there’s blood on his lip and a blooming red mark along his cheek. His eyes are shining.
“You hit me,” he says, almost wonderingly.
You bare your teeth. “I’ll do worse.”
He laughs.
“That’s good,” he says hoarsely. “That’s really… that’s good. You’re fighting.That’s better than giving up.”
“You’re fucking insane,” you rasp.
He nods. “Maybe.”
You try to scramble backward, heels skidding on the floor. Your shoulder throbs; your head rings. He moves with you, one hand catching your wrist, the other flattening on the floor by your hip, caging you without quite touching.
“Let go,” you snarl, twisting your arm. You manage to dig your nails into his skin; you feel them bite. You hope they leave marks. You hope they scar.
His fingers tighten around your wrist, not enough to break, but enough to hold.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. His voice is thin, pleading. “You keep— you keep making me choose between letting you go and letting you get hurt, and I can’t do either of those things. You understand that, right?”
You spit at him.
It lands on his chin, mixed with his own blood. He flinches, eyes squeezing shut, then opens them again, slower.
“You’re mad,” he says. “I get it. You’re allowed.”
He lets go of your wrist.
You don’t trust it. You try to jerk your hand away anyway, roll to your side, push up—
His weight hits your hips, pinning you.
He doesn’t straddle your waist. He sits lower, across your thighs, shins braced on either side of your legs. It’s an ugly, practical position, all leverage and no romance. His hands close around your wrists again and slam them above your head, into the floor.
You buck, hard. Pain screams down your bad shoulder. His grip doesn’t waver.
“Stop,” he says, breathless. “You’re going to dislocate something.”
“Good,” you bite out. “Then I can sue you.”
“Baby,” he says.
You snarl, writhing, trying to knee him, to twist your wrists out of his grip. He just leans more of his weight into you, not crushing, but enough. You feel how much stronger he is. All the adrenaline in the world can’t make up the difference.
“Don’t,” you gasp. “Don’t call me that—”
“Okay,” he says quickly. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m going too fast.”
He sounds sincere and wrecked and completely deranged.
“Let me go,” you say. Your voice breaks. You hate it.
“I can’t,” he says.
You look up at him. At the blood from the split in his lip—your doing. At the broken skin across his cheek where you hit him. At the smear of red on his shoulder from the mug. At the faint crescents beading on his wrist where your nails dug in.
He looks like a painting someone attacked.
And he still looks at you like you hung the fucking moon.
“Please,” you whisper.
Something in his expression crumples.
He lets go of one of your wrists.
Your brain barely has time to register the slack, to think this is my chance, before his free hand disappears briefly from your field of vision.
A second later, something cold bites into the skin of your wrist.
You jerk instinctively. Plastic scrapes; the sound is unmistakable.
Zip tie.
He threads it through the other one in a quick, practiced motion, cinching it tight. Your hands slam back together above your head. You twist, panic spiking hot and immediate; the plastic only digs deeper.
“What the— Hyunjin, what the fuck—”
“I told myself I wasn’t going to use these,” he says, more to himself than to you. “I really thought you’d listen. That’s on me. I keep overestimating how safe you feel.”
“You planned this,” you breathe.
He meets your eyes.
“Yes,” he says simply.
You laugh, high and wild. Tears burn behind your eyes, furious and humiliated. You blink them away; they just make everything swim.
“You brought zip ties to my apartment,” you say. “Do you hear yourself?”
“I brought them to the building,” he corrects. “I didn’t want to walk around with them in my hands. That would be weird.”
You stare at him.
“Oh,” you say faintly. “That would be weird.”
He winces again, like you’re twisting a knife in him without meaning to.
“I know how this looks,” he says.
“You keep saying that,” you snap. “And then it keeps looking worse.”
He shifts off your legs, careful, like he’s afraid of hurting you. Your knees feel weightless without him; pins and needles shoot down your calves. Your wrists burn where the plastic bites.
You try to sit up. He presses a hand, gentle but firm, to your shoulder.
“Don’t,” he says. “You’re going to make them cut into your skin.”
“They’re already cutting into my skin,” you hiss. “That’s what restraints do.”
He swallows.
“You’re shaking,” he says quietly. “You need to breathe.”
“I need you to get the fuck out of my apartment.”
He shakes his head.
He reaches into his back pocket and pulls something out—small, white, folded. For a second, your brain doesn’t name it. Then it does.
A cloth.
Your pulse slams.
“No,” you say.
He pauses. Looks down at it. Back at you.
“It’s just going to help you sleep,” he says softly. “You’re exhausted. You said so yourself. You’re not… thinking clearly. You’re going to hurt yourself trying to get away from me, and I can’t watch that.”
Your lungs seize.
“Hyunjin,” you say. “Hyunjin, don’t. Please. Please, don’t put anything on my face, I swear to god—”
He hesitates. For a heartbeat, for two, you think he might actually listen.
Then he looks at your wrists. At the angry red grooves there, skin already swelling around the plastic.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
You suck in a breath to scream.
His hand is faster.
The cloth covers your mouth and nose in one smooth, practiced motion. His palm presses over it, long fingers splayed across your cheek, holding you steady. One of his knees pins your hip; his other hand cradles the back of your head so it doesn’t slam the floor when you buck.
You thrash anyway.
Your legs kick uselessly against the floor. You try to twist your neck, to pull your face away, to catch his fingers with your teeth, but the angle is bad and he’s braced perfectly. You can’t get leverage. Your nails scrape his wrist; he doesn’t flinch.
The scent hits you.
Sharp. Chemical. Sweet around the edges.
You jerk, lungs spasming, instinct screaming not to breathe.
“Shh,” he murmurs. “I know. I know it’s scary. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
You try to hold your breath.
Dizziness blooms behind your eyes anyway, fueled by panic and the leftover hit to your head and the fact that you haven’t really breathed since you opened the door. Your chest burns. Your body betrays you.
You gasp.
It rushes in—thick and wrong, coating your throat, your nose. The burn in your lungs eases and gets worse at the same time. The room tilts. The edges of your vision fuzz.
“That’s it,” he whispers. “Good girl. Just breathe. Let me take care of it. Let me take care of you.”
You make some sound under the cloth, garbled and furious. Your kicks slow. Your arms feel heavy, the zip tie suddenly not so urgent, not so sharp.
Your thoughts smear.
This isn’t safe, you think, distantly. This is bad. This is—
“I’ve got you,” he says again, like a stuck record, like a prayer. His thumb strokes your cheekbone. “I’ve got you. I’ll never let you get hurt again.”
Your body feels far away. Your fingers tingle, then go numb. The ceiling swims, his face the only fixed point, pale and intent above you. His hair brushes your forehead. His eyes look almost wet.
“I love you,” he says.
You try to spit one last insult at him. It comes out as a mumble against the cloth.
Darkness folds in from the edges, slow and thick.
Your last clear thought, before it swallows you, is that you should have screamed louder. That the hallway light is still on outside. That your neighbor might step out to take the trash and see—
Nothing.
When the world goes, it goes all at once.
You don’t feel him lift you.
You don’t feel the way he shifts your weight carefully against his chest, grunting a little at the effort but smiling through it. You don’t hear him murmur, “There we go,” as your head falls against his shoulder, your wrists still bound, your ankles slack.
You don’t feel the night air bite your cheeks when he eases the bedroom window the rest of the way up and maneuvers you through, step by careful step, onto the groaning fire escape.
You don’t hear the small, relieved laugh he lets out when the metal holds.
You don’t see the hallway outside your front door, empty and indifferent, the overhead light buzzing quietly as the door hangs ajar.
You sleep through all of it.
Hyunjin does not.
Every second is bright and sharp for him—each stair on the fire escape, each shadow he slips through, each corner he takes wide to keep from jostling you. He moves like he’s carrying something sacred and breakable.
At the bottom, he looks up at your dark window one last time.
“Mine,” he says again, very softly.
Then he turns away from your building and walks you home.
Your writing is truly something else. Its next level and deserves all forms of praise. Thank you for sharing your work with this community. I cant wait to read future pieces <3
⚠️ Contains explicit sexual content, graphic violence, blood/gore, kidnapping. All sexual acts are consensual within a coercive, obsessive relationship dynamic.
he'll protect you no matter what. no matter the cost.
You don’t call it a date.
That’s important, somehow. It’s in the way you say it when you’re sitting on the blanket and he passes you a strawberry, in the way you keep your legs stretched out like you’re here to catch sun, not feelings.
“It’s not a date,” you remind him, lips brushing the fruit when you take it from his fingers. “You said, ‘Let’s hang out at the park.’ That’s a hangout.”
Changbin sprawls across from you on his elbows, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, shoulders already going warm from the afternoon. The plastic container of fruit is wedged by his ribcage, your tote bag is half open, and the picnic he packed looks like he robbed a deli.
“Right,” he agrees easily. “A hangout with sandwiches. And macarons. And that pasta salad you said you liked once, in March, and then never shut up about.”
You squint at him. “I mentioned it twice.”
“Three times.” He grins, unabashed. “First when you ate it. Second when you couldn’t find it again. Third when you said you were going to sue the grocery store for discontinuing it.”
“That was a joke.”
“Was it?” His mouth curves. “You looked very litigious.”
You try not to smile and mostly fail. The park hums around you—kids shrieking in the distance, dogs negotiating leashes, the faint rush of traffic at the edge of the green. The blanket is big enough that you’re not touching unless you mean to. He picked a spot under a tree, half-shade, half-sun, with enough space that no one’s too close.
You noticed that when you sat down. The way he scanned the grass and gently steered you away from the busier patches with a hand at the small of your back, like it was just chivalry.
“Eat another,” he says now, nudging the container closer. “You’ve had, like, four molecules of food.”
“I had breakfast.”
“You had coffee.” He says. “That doesn’t count.”
You snort and reach for a grape. His eyes drop, briefly, to your hand, then lower—to the hem of the sundress. Yellow, soft, loose enough to breathe in, short enough to keep his imagination running wild. The fabric has ridden up an inch on your thigh; the breeze toys with it when you move.
Changbin looks away so fast it’s almost funny. His ears go pink.
You pretend you don’t see that either.
“So,” you say, popping the grape into your mouth. “Is this, like, a Changbin-approved hangout? Five-star rating? Would you recommend this hangout to a friend?”
He rolls onto his side, propping his head on his hand. The motion makes his t-shirt pull tight over his chest; you try not to notice and do about as well as he did with the dress.
“I don’t know,” he muses. “The company’s a little mean.”
You gasp, affronted. “I am delightful.”
“You insulted my playlist on the way here.”
“You played four versions of the same song.”
“They’re different live arrangements.”
“Uh-huh.” You narrow your eyes. “And the part where you almost missed the exit because you were doing ad-libs?”
He laughs, quick and bright. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
The thing about Changbin is that he really is exactly how he seems. He laughs with his whole chest, talks with his hands, makes stupid little drum fills on his knees when he’s thinking. He listens when you talk about school and work like it’s interesting, even when you know it isn’t. He remembers what you like and the things you hate and how you take your coffee without ever making it feel like he’s keeping score.
Your friends adore him. Obviously.
“He’s so good for you,” one of them had said last week, in that tone that was half teasing and half gentle shove. “Like, actual boyfriend material? For once?”
You’d made a face, because the word boyfriend itches right now, like a sweater in too-hot weather.
“He’s nice,” you’d said. “And we’re… you know. Whatever we are. It’s fine.”
It is fine. Mostly. As long as you don’t look too closely at the places where his sweetness sharpens.
On the blanket, he reaches for the sunscreen and twirls it between his fingers. “Did you put any on your shoulders?”
“Yes, mom.”
He lifts his brows. “Show me.”
You roll your eyes, but you turn anyway, tugging the straps of the dress aside to bare the tops of your shoulders. The sun has already kissed your skin a little pink.
He exhales through his teeth. “You’ll burn.”
“I won’t. I tan.”
“You fry first,” he counters, flipping the cap. “I’ve seen it. You complain for three days and then pretend you didn’t.”
A cool line touches your skin. His fingers follow—warm, broad, smoothing the lotion into your shoulder with careful, circular strokes. You expect teasing, something obnoxious; instead he’s quiet, focused, thumb feathering along the edge of the strap.
His touch is gentle. It’s always gentle. That’s part of the problem.
“You know,” he says after a moment, voice softer, closer to your ear, “you don’t have to laugh when they make jokes like that.”
“Like what?” You keep your gaze on the tree in front of you.
“The ‘boyfriend material’ thing.” His fingers pause, then resume. “If you don’t want them to, you can just tell them to shut up.”
There’s something in his tone you can’t quite name. Not angry. Not hurt. Just… aware.
“It’s fine,” you say, shrugging a little. “They’re just talking.”
His hand settles on your shoulder, warm and solid. “They’re talking about you.”
You huff. “You’re taking this very personally for someone who keeps insisting he’s cool with us just… being what we are.”
“I am cool.” He sounds offended. “I’m the coolest.”
You glance back over your shoulder. His face is very close now, sunglasses forgotten on the blanket. His eyes flick down to your mouth and back up again.
“Yeah?” you say, trying to drag the conversation out of the weird depth it’s threatening to sink into. “You sure? No secret resentment? No hidden agenda?”
He smiles, slow and lopsided. “Oh, I have an agenda.”
You arch a brow. “Do I want to know?”
“Eat,” he says, tapping your nose with a sunscreen-slick finger. “And drink water. And maybe let me—” His jaw ticks, so fast you almost miss it. “Maybe let me look after you without acting like it’s a crime.”
You turn fully back to him, pulling your straps up. “Bin…”
“What?” He shrugs, light, as if he hasn’t just said the quiet part out loud. “I like taking care of you. It’s not that deep.”
You want to believe him. You mostly do.
Mostly.
The third time your dress flutters up in the breeze, his hand shoots out without thinking, flattening the fabric to your thigh. His fingers splay, firm. His eyes flick sideways, scanning the park, checking who might have seen.
You laugh, because that’s your first language with him. “Relax. I’ve got shorts under.”
He doesn’t move his hand for a beat too long. When he does, he clears his throat, like he’s embarrassed at himself. “I know. Just—” His jaw tightens again. “People look.”
“People look at everything.”
“They shouldn’t,” he says automatically, then winces like he heard himself. “I mean, they should—in a normal way. Not in a… creepy way.”
“Are you saying I’m hot enough to cause chaos in the park?”
“Shut up,” he groans, flopping onto his back to stare at the sky. “You know you are. That’s half the problem.”
Your heart does a stupid little flip it has no business doing. You lie there too, shoulder to shoulder now, sun polka-dotting your faces through the leaves.
“So what,” you say after a moment, eyes on the blue. “You want me to wear a sack next time?”
His fingers find yours where your hands rest between you. He hooks his pinky around yours, not quite holding, not quite not.
“No,” he says quietly. “I like this dress.”
You can feel him looking even without turning your head. Your cheeks heat in a way that has nothing to do with the sun.
The rest of the afternoon is easy. You throw crumbs at passing pigeons and argue about whether they’re cute or not. He tells you a story about his friend almost getting his head taken off by a stray frisbee; you’ve heard it before, but he embellishes it every time, adding sound effects and impressions until you’re doubled over.
He takes photos when you’re not paying attention. You know because you catch the click once, the little flash of guilty smile when you turn.
“Delete that,” you say, reaching for his phone.
“Nope.” He’s faster, holding it away. “For my private gallery.”
“Ew, that sounds creepy.”
“It’s literally just you eating grapes.”
“Changbin.”
“What? I like your face.” His tone goes briefly, startlingly sincere. “I don’t get to see it as much as I want.”
You pause at that, stomach doing something you don’t have a name for. He looks like he wishes he could pull the words back, but they’re out there now, soft and bare in the space between you.
You blow out a breath. “You see me all the time.”
“Not when you’re with other people.”
There it is again. That quick shadow. The sentence he doesn’t finish.
“Good thing I ditched them for you today,” you say lightly, trying to smooth it over.
He looks at you for a long moment, something easing marginally at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah,” he says. “Good thing.”
By the time the sun starts dipping, the blanket is a chaos of crumbs and empty containers, and you are comfortably full, pleasantly warm, and a little too aware of how close he’s sitting.
You’re shifting around to grab your cardigan when his hand closes around your ankle.
“Careful,” he says, thumb brushing a stray blade of grass from your skin. “You’re gonna flash the whole park.”
You glance down. The dress has ridden up again. His eyes are on your leg, but the look isn’t leering. It’s… intense. Focused. Like he’s memorizing.
“Bin,” you tease, “if you’re that stressed about my thighs, maybe you should’ve picked a less windy day.”
“I’m not stressed,” he says. “Just… aware.”
“Of my thighs?”
“Of the fact that other people have eyes,” he says, voice going rougher. “And no self-control.”
You open your mouth to make a joke and then shut it again, because the expression on his face has shifted. There’s a flush on his neck that wasn’t there a second ago. His grip on your ankle tightens, just a little.
“Changbin,” you say, suddenly too conscious of the little gap between his knees and your hips. “What are you—”
“Come here,” he says.
It’s not quite a question. It’s not quite an order either. It’s something in between, dipped in please.
You go.
He catches your waist as you crawl closer, steadying you like he’s afraid you’ll fall in a straight line. Your knees bracket his thigh, your dress bunching dangerously high. His breath stutters when you end up half in his lap.
“Oh,” he says faintly. “Okay.”
“You did this,” you point out, hand on his chest to keep your balance.
“Yeah,” he says, staring at your mouth now like he’s forgotten how English works. “I… yeah.”
The kiss isn’t new. You’ve kissed him before—on your couch, in his bed, against the back door of a bar when you were both too keyed up to bother with a cab yet. You know the way his mouth fits, the way he tastes when he’s had too to drink, the little sound he makes when you bite his lower lip.
It still knocks something loose in you every time.
His hands slide up your back, fingers spanning your ribcage like he’s afraid you’ll float away. You tilt your head, deepen the kiss, press closer; his breath hitches, chest rising against yours. The park blurs, noise dropping to a dull ache at the edges of your awareness.
He pulls back once, just enough to rest his forehead against yours. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide.
“We should go,” he says.
You blink, dazed. “Oh. Um—sure. It’s getting late.”
“I mean now,” he clarifies, voice low and a little wrecked. “Like… right now.”
“Why?” you ask, even though you already know. You can feel the answer pressed against the inside of your thigh.
“Because if I keep you here,” he says, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth, “I’m gonna be the guy who ruins a nice park for children.”
You snort, but your pulse is pounding. “Wow, so responsible.”
“I’m very responsible,” he says solemnly. Then his mouth tips. “I brought condoms.”
You choke on a laugh. “You—”
“Just in case,” he adds quickly. “Not, like, in a creepy way. I just—” He trails off, embarrassed. “You’re wearing this dress, and I have, like, two brain cells.”
You look at him—from the bright ears to the careful way his hands still hold you, like he’d let go if you even hinted at it.
“Car,” you say, feeling your own brain cells short-circuit. “Now.”
His relief is almost comical. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”
He helps you up, fussing unnecessarily with the hem of your dress, his body a shield between you and the rest of the park as if anyone is actually looking. He packs up the blanket with military efficiency, bags everything, checks twice that you didn’t forget your cardigan, your phone, your keys.
It’s sweet. It’s annoying. It’s him.
He hustles you to the car like he’s escorting royalty across a battlefield—basket thunked into the trunk, blanket balled under one arm, his other hand hovering at your lower back as if the wind might shove you somewhere without his permission. You’re still laughing when he opens the back door and the heat rolls out, summer trapped in the upholstery.
“Backseat?” you say, amused.
He swallows. “Unless you want me to crash us into a tree.”
“Responsible,” you tease, climbing in. “Very responsible.”
The door thuds shut. The world narrows. Sunlight stripes the seats, dust motes slow-dancing in the air. He slides in after you and pulls the door closed with a deliberate click, then hits the lock, then the child lock like a compulsion, like the doors themselves need to know you’re not to be disturbed.
“Tint’s good,” he says, mostly to himself, peering out and then back at you. His voice drops. “You look…”
“Like someone who’s going to ruin your day in a good way?” you offer, palms braced on his shoulders as you crawl into his lap again, your dress riding up and hitching at your thighs.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Exactly like that.”
He kisses you like he’s been holding his breath for an hour. You let him have you for a minute—mouth to mouth, teeth catching, the soft glide of his tongue when you open for him. His hands settle low on your hips, heavy and warm, but careful, always careful.
When you pull back, he chases you instinctively, a small, hungry sound catching in his throat.
“Bin,” You kiss the corner of his mouth, the line of his chin, the spot under his ear that makes his shoulders jump. “Let me.”
“Let you what,” he says, even though the way his eyes go dark when you slide to your knees between his spread thighs says he already knows.
You tug his jeans down just enough, knuckles grazing the hard line of him through cotton. He exhales something hoarse, head tipping back against the headrest, veins standing up along his throat.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” you remind him.
“I won’t,” he says too fast, then corrects himself, breath breaking on a laugh. “I mean— I’ll tell you. If I do. Promise.”
“Good boy,” you say without thinking.
His hands flex on the seat, a full-body shiver rippling through him. “Fuck.”
You curl your fingers under the waistband and free him, heavy and already flushed, the tip slick and shining. He’s so hard it looks like it hurts; you wrap your hand around him just to ease the ache a little and he groans, hips jerking once, the sound punched out of him like you took his air.
“Eyes on me,” you say, because he told you that on the blanket and because you like the way it lands now—command and gift in one.
He drags his gaze down and locks it, obedient. His mouth is parted. His ears are pink even though he’s had you like this a dozen times before.
You stroke him slow at first, learning him again, thumb smoothing over the bead of slick until he’s slippery in your fist. The car ticks as the engine cools; somewhere outside, a dog barks. In here, there’s only the wet slide of your hand and the shaky way he breathes, each inhale stumbleing over your name.
“Is this why you wanted to leave the park?” you ask, feigning innocence, and squeeze a little harder.
“Hng— I wanted to— I—” He shuts his eyes for a beat, then forces them open like you told him. “I wanted you somewhere… ours.”
“Ours,” you echo, and lower your mouth.
His hand shoots to your hair, stopping an inch before he touches, hovering, shaking with the effort not to guide you. You take the head into your mouth and he whimpers, whimpers, the sound strangled like he’s embarrassed by it.
“Shit—baby—” He bites his lip, breath sawing. “You—feel so—”
You sink a little deeper, cheeks hollowing, your tongue teasing the underside where you know he’s sensitive. His thighs tense under your palms. You breathe through your nose, steady, and let the pace find itself: up, down, twist, flick—listen to the way his sounds change and chase the ones that make him fall apart.
When you look up, he’s staring like you’ve turned into religion personified—knuckles white on the seat, chest heaving, pupils blown. The possessiveness he tries to hide crackles at the edges of his expression, but it’s tempered by awe, by the way he keeps checking your face for any hint of no.
“Tap me if you need me to stop,” he manages, voice shredded, a beat late but still there. “Or— or pull off. Just—mmh—don’t hurt your throat for me.”
“Who says it’s for you?” you murmur around him, and take him deeper.
His head thumps the glass with a soft, helpless sound. “Oh my— god. Okay. Okay, shit.”
You breathe, relax, let him slide along the warm press of your tongue until your eyes sting a little. He tastes like heat and salt and summer. You keep one hand curled around the base, anchoring yourself, and the other on his stomach to feel how hard he’s trying not to thrust.
Outside, voices drift past, too far to be real, too close for his comfort. You feel the moment he hears them—the way every muscle in his body coils, the way his palm finally settles, careful, at the back of your head like a shield. His jaw ticks; his nostrils flare. His eyes cut toward the window, then back to you, guilt and greed warring in the look.
“Windows are tinted,” you whisper, letting him slip free with a wet pop just long enough to speak. “No one’s seeing anything.”
“They better not,” he grits out, then swallows hard when you lick him slow from base to tip, lazy, like you’ve got all day. His voice breaks. “Ffff–uck you’re trying to kill me.”
You smile and take him in again, faster now, your hand working in tandem. He starts to unravel—little choked-off curses, breath hitching into rough, desperate sounds. His thighs tremble under your palms; his hips stutter despite how obviously he’s fighting for control.
“Please,” he says, and the word ruins you a little, all gravel and need. His fingers finally thread into your hair—not forcing, just holding, shaking. “I’m— I’m close, I’m gonna— tell me where, tell me—”
You pull back just enough to speak, stroking him with your slick fist. “In my mouth.”
He makes a sound you’ve never heard, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Baby—”
“You’ve been good,” you add, because he has, because he’s trying so hard not to be everything he is all at once. “Let me have it.”
His eyes squeeze shut, like the words hit a switch. The next time you take him deep, he breaks—hips jerking, breath catching on your name like a prayer torn in half: “—fuckfuck, ___—”
You hold him through it, swallowing, letting him shudder apart under your hands. He spills hot and messy over your tongue, a helpless, wrecked groan rolling out of him, head thrown back against the headrest, tendons standing out in his throat. His grip on your hair never tightens past careful. He shakes like he’s been electrocuted and then goes boneless, trembling, a disbelieving laugh fleeing him on the exhale.
You ease off slowly, kiss the softening head just to be cruel, and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, smug.
He looks down at you like you’ve personally rewritten his DNA.
“Come here,” he says, voice rough, reaching for you. You crawl back into his lap and he hauls you in, kissing you like he needs proof you’re real. He tastes himself on your tongue and groans, deep and filthy. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“You say that like it’s a complaint.” You nudge his nose with yours, pleased with yourself and not bothering to hide it.
He laughs, breathless, palm spreading over your lower back, big and warm. Then the laugh fades into something softer. He tips your chin up with two fingers, studying your mouth, your eyes, like he’s cataloging you again molecule by molecule.
“You okay?” he asks, and the sincerity there is pure, no edges. “Jaw, throat… anything?”
“I’m good,” you say honestly. “Very proud of my work, actually.”
His mouth tilts. “Employee of the month.”
“Unionizing for better benefits.”
“Oh?” His hand slips lower, thumb rubbing slow where your thigh meets your hip. His pupils track your hemline like a magnet. “Name your demands.”
“I want you,” you say, dragging the words against his lower lip. “Now.”
He grins, wrecked and pleased, already shifting like he’s going to slide down the seat. “Then let me—”
You catch his jaw in your fingers and shake your head. “Later. I want you to fuck me.”
Whatever he was about to say dies in his throat. The look that hits his face is pure, starving yes. He gets his hands under your skirt like he’s been waiting all afternoon—palms hot, urgent, pushing the fabric to your waist. The air hits your thighs; he swears, low and reverent.
“Scooch,” you murmur, reaching behind you to shove the headrest down a notch. “No time.”
He doesn’t argue. You straddle him facing forward, knees planted, the dress bunched around your hips like a belt, panties tugged to the side with a quick, decisive hook of your thumb. He drags his mouth up your shoulder through the thin cotton, teeth catching on a strap, breath going rough when he gets eyes on exactly how wet you are for him.
“Fuck,” he says softly, almost a laugh. “Look at you.”
You reach down and wrap your fingers around him again—still thick, still heavy, already slick from your mouth. A glossy string stretches when you lift him and it snaps hot against your skin. He jerks under you.
“Stop teasing,” you say, sliding the head along your slit, letting him drag through everything you’ve made for him. “I want it.”
He plants his feet, spreads his thighs, hands branding your hips. You hover, grind, let the weight of him nudge against your clit until your legs shake. He can’t help it; his hips push up once, hard, like a reflex he can’t swallow.
“Impulsive,” you gasp, biting back a smile.
“Starving,” he mutters, voice shredded. “Sit, baby.”
You do. Slow, then less slow because patience snaps like a cheap hair tie; the blunt head finds you and you push down, stretch around him, take the thick heat in one long, stuttering glide that punches a sound out of both of you. Your hands slap against the fogging window to brace yourself. He’s swearing into your shoulder, jaw clenched, every muscle in his thighs strung tight as wire so he doesn’t ruin you in one thrust.
“Fuck—” you breathe, dizzy, full. “Bin.”
“That’s it,” he hisses, fingers digging into the soft just above your hips as you sink the rest of the way. “Take it. Take all of me, baby.”
You bottom out and stay there because his hands hold you there, because your body pulses around him, greedy, and you want to feel him—every inch, every heartbeat—before you move. He groans, low and animal, head falling back, throat bared, sweat shining along his collarbone. The car ticks again, heat pressed close; the glass is already blurred with your breaths.
You rock first: forward, back, small mean circles that drag him against every nerve you want burning. He counters without thinking, a hungry lift of his hips that punches you up and down his lap, makes the seat creak, makes the belt buckle clack against the door. The pace sets itself—messy, needy, your body chasing pressure like you’ve been wound tight all day and he’s the only thing that fits.
“Look at you,” he groans, palms sliding up to your waist and then higher to cup your breasts through the dress, thumbs brushing over the thin cotton until your nipples harden under his touch. “Bouncing on me in a fucking sundress. I knew this was going to make me crazy.”
“You are crazy,” you pant, leaning forward, hands fisted in the headrest, dress strap slipping down your arm as you slam back onto him. “Give it to me.”
He does. Whatever restraint he had burns off. He braces his feet wider on the floor, one hand cinched at your waist to drag you down, the other spread low on your belly like he wants to feel himself every time you swallow him. The noises are obscene—wet, hot, the sticky clap of skin on skin, the little punched sounds falling out of you when he catches the right angle and hammers into it. He curses into your shoulder, into your hair, into the crook where your neck meets your jaw, filthy and sweet at once.
“Mine,” he mumbles against your skin between thrusts, like he can’t help it. “My pretty girl—fuck—look at how you take me, look at it, you hear yourself? So messy for me, so sweet—”
You grind down hard and he breaks off with a helpless noise, eyes rolling. Your clit drags against the base of him with every drop; the pleasure spikes hot and mean, building at a cruel, perfect pace. He finds it too, the exact angle that wrings those breathless little yelps out of your chest, and chases it like a man who’s tasted water after a week in the sun.
“Right there,” you gasp, snapping your hips down, not even pretending at patience now. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.”
He snarls a laugh, delirious. “Try me.”
The car becomes a metronome: your body, his body, the creak, the slap, the breath, the string of fuck, fuck, fuck that you don’t realize you’re saying until he answers with a wrecked yes, that’s it, give it to me, take it, take it. His hand slides from your stomach to your throat, thumb under your chin to tilt your head back so he can see your face when you fall apart.
“You’re so pretty like this,” he says, eyes wild, reverent. “Ruined and cock-drunk, all for me.”
“Shut up,” you moan, because the words go straight to your spine. “Shut up and make me come.”
He obeys like it’s the only order he’s ever wanted. Hips piston, relentless, mean in the exact way you like, every thrust punching the whine out of your lungs. Your thighs are shaking; your calves cramp; your vision blurs at the edges. It hits fast and hard—everything in you winding tight, tighter, then snapping, pleasure tearing through you in hot, rolling waves that make your back arch and your voice break on his name.
He feels it. Of course he does. You clamp down around him and he loses what little composure he had left, a guttural sound ripped out of him as he drives up into you like he can’t not. “Fuck—fuck, that’s it—good girl—milk me, baby—don’t stop—”
You don’t. You ride it, ride him, grinding through the oversensitive aftershocks until he’s the one falling apart, until he’s swearing into your mouth and grabbing at your hips like a drowning man. His thrusts go ragged, deep, wrecked; he pulls you down hard, buries himself, holds you flush while his whole body locks and he spills hot inside you with a broken, disbelieving groan.
You stay there, shaking, both of you panting in the dense, humid air, the windows gone completely opaque. His forehead rests between your shoulder blades; his arms band around your waist, crushed close, like he’s anchoring himself in your body because he doesn’t trust gravity. You can feel him throb once, twice, inside, the lazy afterpulses making your breath catch.
“Holy—” he laughs, raw and stunned, mouth against your skin. “Jesus.”
You smile, spent and smug, and lick your thumb, dragging it through the spit-slick mess at the corner of your mouth like you’re thinking about round two already. His fingers tighten on your waist, as if the thought alone might short out his brain.
“Don’t move yet,” he mutters, voice low and possessive, hands strong at your hips. “Stay right there.”
You press down just to hear him curse, savoring the sticky ache, the way you fit together too well in the too-small space.
“Not a date,” you murmur, catching your breath, watching a bead of sweat roll down the fogged glass and cut a clear path through your reflection.
His laugh is wrecked and satisfied against your shoulder. “Whatever you say.” His palm smooths over your belly again, broad and protective, like he can keep you and every piece of this inside you just by wanting it enough.
Three days later, it’s an ordinary afternoon until it isn’t.
You’re downtown, heat bouncing off glass and concrete, the city in that in-between mood where people are half-rushing, half-lingering. You and Changbin have been drifting in and out of shops, arguing about ugly sneakers, sharing sips of iced coffee. Your bag is on his arm even though you’ve tried to take it back twice.
“Stop,” he says, batting your hand away for the third time. “I got it.”
“I’m capable,” you remind him.
“I know.” He glances at you, mouth soft. “I like doing it anyway.”
You roll your eyes, but it pulls something warm through you. You’re used to that with him now—the way the sweetness sits just on the right side of too much. He walks closer to the street side of the sidewalk. He shifts you around puddles that dried hours ago. He stands a half-step behind you in every doorway.
It’s protective. It’s thoughtful. It’s a little intense, sometimes, if you look straight at it.
“Wait here a second,” he says, stopping outside a cramped electronics store that smells like plastic and dust every time you pass. “I need to grab something.”
“What thing?” You eye him. “If you buy more headphones, Bin, I’m starting a support group.”
“For who? The headphones?” His mouth twitches. “It’s not headphones. Just… some stuff I ordered for the studio.”
“Wow. Clarifying.”
He steps closer, fingers briefly adjusting the strap of your dress where it’s slipped down your shoulder, the motion quick and familiar. “Just stay right here, okay? Two minutes.”
“Changbin—”
“Please.” His eyes hold yours, the word threaded with something you can’t quite shrug off. “I’ll be fast.”
You could argue. You don’t, because he’s already halfway to the door, bell chiming when he pushes it open. He looks back once, like he’s checking you’re where he left you. Then he’s gone, swallowed by fluorescent light and shelves.
You check your phone. Scroll through notifications. The plaza around you hums—students with backpacks, someone on a bike weaving through too fast, cars idling at the light.
“Excuse me?”
You look up.
He’s young. College sweatshirt, strap of a backpack cutting across his chest, hair in that permanent mid-flop that says he ran a hand through it a lot on the walk here.
“Yeah?” you say.
“Do you… know where East Hall is?” he asks. His smile is apologetic, already bracing for rejection. “I thought it was this direction but then Maps glitched and now I’m just—” He breaks off, grimacing. “Lost. In public.”
You huff a little laugh, glancing past him. “Yeah, you’re close. Two blocks down, then left at the light. See that café with the blue awning?” You point. He leans in to follow your line of sight. “You pass that, it’s the big brick building behind it. Sort of ugly, can’t miss it.”
His shoulders drop with visible relief. “Oh my god. Thank you.”
You shrug. “Yeah, no problem.”
He pauses. You see the moment he registers you: dress, hair, the whole picture. His ears go pink. “Uh—sorry, this is— you’re just… really pretty.”
You blink. “Thanks.”
He shifts his weight, fingers drumming once against his phone. He looks as if he’s already decided not to say what he says next.
“Can I—” He winces. “This is probably weird. Forget it.”
You tilt your head. “You’ve already committed. Might as well finish the sentence.”
He laughs, nervous. “Okay, yeah, fair. Um. Could I maybe… get your number? If you wanted. If you don’t, that’s totally fine, like, absolutely no pressure, ‘stranger danger,’ all good.”
He’s so obviously ready to be turned down that you find it kind of adorable.
“I’m flattered,” you say, and you mean it. “But I’m not really in a place for that kind of thing right now.”
“Oh.” He blinks, then nods quickly, the embarrassment immediate but not ugly. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Sorry. I shouldn’t have— I mean, you helped me with directions, I’m not entitled to your phone number. That’s—sorry.”
You smile. “You’re fine. Really.”
He backs away a step. “Have a good day.”
“You too,” you say.
He turns to go. He’s still looking back at you when his foot catches the uneven edge of the curb. It happens fast—he goes sideways with a startled curse, backpack dragging his balance. You barely have time to react before his full weight lurches into you.
You grunt, stumbling back into the wall, your shoulder hitting brick. His hand clamps around your upper arm, fingers digging in reflexively as he tries to keep both of you upright.
“Shit,” he gasps, faces close enough that you can see the panicked flecks in his eyes. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry—are you okay? I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” you start, pushing off the wall, shaking out the arm he grabbed. “Really, I’m—”
“What the fuck.”
The voice ghosts over your skin before it hits your ear, cold enough to raise the tiny hairs on your neck.
You don’t recognize it at first. It’s too flat. Too empty.
Then you turn and see him.
Changbin is already moving, cutting through the milling bodies like they’re shadows. His jaw is locked, his eyes gone dark and sharp, none of the usual lazy warmth or crooked amusement anywhere on his face. There’s nothing soft about him now. He is straight lines and hard edges and intent.
“Bin—” you start, instinctively putting a hand out.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing,” he says, not to you, voice ironed smooth and deadly.
The kid’s gaze rockets between you and Changbin, horror dawning in real time. His fingers drop from your arm like he’s burned himself.
“I—nothing, I swear,” he stammers, hands lifting. “I tripped, I just— I fell—”
Changbin’s hand hits his chest.
It’s not a punch. Not yet. Open palm, a shove—but he puts his whole weight behind it. The boy slams back into the wall hard enough that you hear his skull crack against brick. The sound is sharp, nauseating.
“Changbin!” you yell. “Stop—”
He doesn’t even flinch.
“You think you can put your hands on her?” he asks, stepping in, crowding the boy’s space until there’s nowhere left to go. His voice is soft. Awful. “You think you can grab her like that and walk away?”
The kid’s eyes are wide, already glassy. “I didn’t— I wasn’t—ask her, I just—”
He doesn’t get to finish.
Changbin draws back and hits him.
You’ve seen him at the gym. You know what his body can do with a bag that doesn’t hit back. This is that same force, all that power, compressed into the short distance between his fist and another person’s face.
Knuckles meet cheekbone with a sick, dull crack. The boy’s head whips sideways; his cheek blooms red almost instantly. His knees sag. Only Changbin’s grip on his shirt keeps him upright.
The little world of the sidewalk contracts. Sound gets weird, distant and sharp at once. Someone gasps. Someone else swears. A phone is already in a stranger’s hand, camera up.
“Changbin, stop it!” you shout, lunging forward, fingers closing around his arm. “He didn’t—”
He shakes you off with a violent jerk that doesn’t quite shove you, but it’s close. His eyes don’t even flick to you.
“He put his hands on you,” he snarls, hauling the boy closer. Spit flies; his breath is hot and fast. “I saw him.”
“It was an accident!” the kid sobs, blood starting to slick his lip. “I swear, I tripped—”
Another punch. This one splits his mouth. Red spatters the concrete, the front of his sweatshirt, Changbin’s knuckles.
Your stomach lurches.
“Bin—Bin, stop, you’re going to—”
He hits him again. And again. And again.
The boy’s protests dissolve into wet, choked sounds. His head lolls, neck snapping back with every blow, body gone slack in Changbin’s grip. His face is a mess of swelling and blood now, but Changbin’s expression doesn’t change. There’s no flare of remorse, no flicker of humanity. Just focus. Just an ugly, bright satisfaction like something in him has decided this is justice and is intent on carrying it out to the end.
A woman’s voice somewhere behind you is high and panicked. “Oh my god, somebody call the police—”
The words cut through the buzzing in your ears.
“Changbin!” Your voice cracks. “He’s done, he’s unconscious—stop, stop, stop—”
“Should’ve thought about that before he touched you,” Changbin says, not even winded yet. His arm pistons, fist thudding into the boy’s ribs. “Before he decided he could put his fucking hands—”
“Bin!”
Your body moves before your brain finishes the thought.
You shove yourself into the space between them, wedging your shoulders against Changbin’s chest, arms flung out to cover what’s left of the boy crumpled against the wall. You’re not tall enough to be much of a barrier, but you’re all that’s there.
“Stop,” you scream. “Stop, I mean it—”
He’s already mid-swing.
You feel, rather than see, the split-second where recognition slams into him. His fist, all momentum and intent, is a breath away from your face
He twists.
The punch collapses into an open hand, but physics doesn’t care. All that force has to go somewhere. It arcs through his arm, his palm connecting with the side of your face in a brutal, ringing slap.
Pain explodes along your cheekbone. Your head snaps sideways; white light bursts behind your eyes. The world tilts. Your knees go loose and you slam against the wall, shoulder scraping brick, one hand flying up too late to shield yourself.
For a second, everything is soundless.
Then it roars back in—blood rushing in your ears, people shouting, a distant siren building and winding closer.
You taste copper. Your vision doubles, then stutters back into one.
“Shit.” It’s Changbin’s voice, raw. Hands grab your arms, trying to steady you. “Fuck—baby—shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
You jerk away like his touch burns.
The boy slumped against the wall doesn’t move. His chest rises in shallow, fluttering breaths. One eye is already swelling shut; blood runs from his nose in a steady trickle, down his chin, onto his shirt.
“Is he breathing?” someone asks.
“We need to keep him upright—no, don’t move his neck—”
“Ambulance is on its way,” another voice says. “They said two minutes.”
Two minutes.
Blue flash reflects off glass at the far end of the street, still distant but coming.
You’re shaking. Your cheek throbs with a hot, spreading ache; when you touch the corner of your mouth, your fingers come away smeared red.
Changbin’s face is too close, eyes blown wide, his breathing ragged for the first time. His knuckles are split and wet. There’s blood on his forearm, his shirt, a fleck on his jawline. It doesn’t feel real.
“Hey.” His hand hovers, then tries to settle at your elbow again. “We need to go.”
His hand hovers, then lands on your elbow, fingers careful like he’s afraid you’ll shatter. The same hand that split someone’s face open three feet away.
You stare at it. At the blood drying in the cracks of his knuckles. At the way his thumb rubs over your skin like he’s soothing you, not steering you.
“Don’t touch me,” you say, but he just grabs your wrist and pulls you away.
You stumble after him because you don’t have a choice, heels scraping on the pavement. He cuts along the edge of the forming crowd and down the nearest side alley, ducking between a dumpster and a fire escape. The noise from the street dulls slightly, replaced by the drip of some unseen pipe and the buzz of a flickering light.
“Let me go,” you say, yanking at your arm.
He does, immediately. Your hand slips free and you wrench yourself backwards, putting two steps of dirty concrete between you. The brick at your back is cold through your dress. The air smells like old grease and damp cardboard.
For a second, all that terrible focus flickers. The blank rage drains out of his face, leaving something rawer underneath. He looks…lost. Like he just woke up in the middle of a nightmare scene and isn’t entirely sure how he got there.
“Baby,” he says, voice cracking around the word. “Your face.”
You reach up on reflex. The left side of your cheekbone throbs under your fingertips. Your skin’s already tender, swelling under the touch. You can feel the heat radiating off it, the sting.
He watches your fingers hit the bruise like he’s watching himself get kicked.
“I hit you,” he whispers, horror blooming slow and huge in his eyes. “I hit you. Fuck—”
“You think?” you snap.
The siren is closer now, the wail bouncing off glass. People are still clustered around the boy on the ground. You catch a glimpse of paramedics pushing through the crowd, kneeling, gloved hands moving fast.
Changbin steps in, like he wants to shield you from the view. Like that’s the problem.
“Come with me,” he says. “Please. Just—come on.”
He reaches for you again and you flinch back before he makes contact. His fingers curl on empty air.
Something in his face caves in.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” you say. Your voice isn’t loud, but it’s steady. “You just almost killed somebody.”
“He grabbed you,” he says automatically, like that single fact is supposed to clear him of all sin. “He put his hands on you, I saw—”
“He tripped,” you cut in. “He tripped, he grabbed me so he didn’t crush me, and you didn’t even give him half a second to explain before you started swinging.”
“He had you against the wall,” Changbin grits out. “I come out and you’re pinned, his hands on you, and I’m supposed to what, stand there and ask for a fucking thesis statement?”
“He was apologizing,” you say. “You know, like normal people do when they bump into someone. And you—”
You gesture at the mess behind him, at the smear of blood drying on the brick.
Your throat closes.
“—you did that.”
His gaze follows your hand, lands on the boy. The paramedics have him on his side now, someone holding his neck steady. There’s too much red on his shirt. One of the medics is talking to him, voice slow and clear. You can’t hear his answers.
Changbin’s jaw locks. For a moment, he looks like he might argue with that reality too.
Then his eyes come back to you and it’s like watching a building collapse in slow motion.
“I never meant to hit you,” he says. It sounds like confession, like a prayer. “I swear to god, I saw you at the last second, I turned my hand, I would’ve knocked you out if I hadn’t—”
“You almost killed someone,” you say. “That’s the only part that matters to me.”
He staggers back a step like you’ve physically hit him in return. His hand comes up, fingers covering his mouth. He’s breathing too fast now, little uneven inhales that don’t seem to get all the way in.
“I hurt you,” he says, muffled. “I hurt you. I hurt you.”
You don’t know if he’s talking to you or himself.
The siren hiccups as it cuts off. Doors slam. Voices sharpen somewhere to your right—firm, authoritative. The police have arrived.
You straighten.
“I’m going to talk to them,” you say.
His hand drops. “No.”
“I saw what happened,” you insist. “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.”
“You’re in shock,” he says quickly. The words spilling out. “You’re scared, you’re not thinking straight. Later, when you calm down, you’ll regret saying anything, and we can’t take it back if—”
“You,” you say, “can’t take it back. That’s your problem. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
His eyes flash. “You stepped in front of my fist.”
“To stop you from beating a kid to death!”
“He deserved—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” you say. Your hands are shaking again. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
He stops.
For a heartbeat, you just stand there, looking at each other. The city moves around you in tilted, blurry pieces. Somewhere, an officer is asking people to step back. Someone says they caught some of it on video. Someone else mentions your name—“the girl he grabbed”—but the words don’t stick.
All of your attention is on Changbin.
On the way he’s starting to sway on his feet like he’s standing on the edge of something very high and very steep.
“Bin,” you say quietly. “You need help.”
“I need you,” he says without missing a beat. No hesitation, no doubt. It comes out like fact. “I just need you.”
The simplicity of it makes your stomach turn.
He takes a slow step closer. You hold your ground this time. If he’s going to get in your space, he’s going to have to do it while you’re watching.
When he’s close enough, he lifts his hands in front of his chest, palms out like he’s showing you something.
“This is what hurt you,” he says, voice thin. “Right?”
“Yeah,” you say warily. “Your hands. And your choices.”
He looks down at them like they’re a foreign object.
Then, before you can process the change in his expression, he turns and drives his right hand into the brick wall.
The sound is awful—bone on stone, a wet crunch layered under the thud. He grunts through his teeth, eyes squeezing shut, but he doesn’t pull back. His knuckles tear open, fresh blood smearing across the already stained wall.
“What the hell are you doing?” you choke.
He doesn’t answer. He stares at his hand instead, chest heaving, like he’s checking to make sure it hurt enough. Something wild and lit flickers in his eyes.
“This is what hurt you,” he repeats, more to himself than to you. “So it needs to hurt more.”
“Changbin, stop,” you say. “This isn’t—”
He grips his own index finger in the other hand.
You realize what he’s about to do half a second before he does it.
“Bin, don’t—”
He wrenches.
The finger snaps sideways with a sharp, wet pop. His breath explodes out of him in a strangled sound, knees buckling. He leans his shoulder into the wall, jaw clenched so hard you can see the muscle jumping, eyes blown wide and unfocused for a moment.
“Oh my god,” you whisper. “What is wrong with you?”
“One,” he rasps. His voice is shredded, barely there. “That’s one.”
He grabs the next finger.
You lunge. “Stop it, what the fuck—”
He twists.
Pop.
This sound is worse because you see it clearly—the way the bone dislocates, the finger bends at a wrong angle, the skin blanches then floods with red. He shudders, a full-body tremor riding up his spine.
“I hurt you,” he gasps. “I can’t— I can’t just walk away from that.”
“There are other ways to be sorry than breaking your own bones!” you shout, grabbing at his wrists. “Are you insane?”
“Yes,” he says simply.
He says it like it’s not even worth arguing.
Tears are forming at the corners of his eyes now, from pain or whatever the hell else is happening behind them. He finally lets you catch his hands, but even then he tries to wrench free, like he’s not done, like there are more fingers, more joints, more parts of him he can ruin in penance.
“Look at me,” you snap.
He drags his gaze up, pupils blown, breathing ragged.
“You’re hurting yourself for what?” you demand. “To prove what, exactly? That you feel bad?”
“It’s not enough to say it,” he says. His voice is shaking like his bones. “Words don’t fix anything. I did this.” His eyes flick to your bruised cheek, the smear of red at the corner of your mouth. He makes a soft, broken noise. “If I hurt you, I hurt me. That’s how this works.”
“That’s not how anything works,” you say. “That’s not romantic, Changbin, it’s fucked up.”
“Romantic,” he repeats, and laughs once, hoarse. “You think this is about being romantic?”
“What else would it be about?”
“It’s about the fact that you’re it for me,” he says, like he’s stating the weather. Rain. Sun. You. “There isn’t a world where someone touches you and walks away smiling. There isn’t a world where I hit you and don’t pay for it. I can’t live in that version. I won’t.”
You stare at him. At the two fingers on his right hand already swelling, twisted at ugly angles. At the way he’s still, even now, trying to lean toward you, trying to close the gap you’re desperately keeping.
“You can’t keep doing this,” you say. “Hurting other people, hurting yourself, calling it protection. Calling it love.”
“It is love,” he says, absolutely sure. “You think I’d break my own fucking hand if it wasn’t?”
“That’s not love,” you say. “That’s obsession. Control. Whatever nightmare stew is boiling in your head, it’s not love.”
“It feels like love,” he says quietly. “It feels like the only thing that’s ever been real.”
You can see the red-and-blue flicker reflecting off his face when he half-turns, listening.
Voices echo down the alley: “…witnesses said he ran this way…”
Your stomach drops.
You tighten your grip on his wrists before he can bolt deeper into the shadows.
“I’m going to tell them everything,” you say.
His head snaps back to you.
“What?”
“I’m going to tell them what you did,” you repeat. “To that boy. To me. All of it.”
For a heartbeat, there’s nothing in his expression.
Then something sharp and ugly slices through it.
“You’re upset,” he says, too calmly. “You’re scared. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“The fact that you keep trying to gaslight me into thinking I’m hysterical is really not helping your case,” you say. “I know exactly what I saw.”
His eyes narrow. “You’re going to hand me to them.”
“I’m going to tell the truth,” you say. “Whatever they do with that is out of my hands.”
His lip curls, just a little. “You think they’re going to help you?”
“This isn’t about me,” you say. “It’s about the kid you beat half to death because he asked for directions.”
“He touched you,” he repeats, as if you hadn’t spoken.
“You touched me too,” you say. “You hit me. I’m including that.”
He goes utterly still.
“…no,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You’re not telling them that.” There’s no heat in the words now, just flat certainty. “You’re not telling them anything about us.”
“And you don’t get to decide that.”
His gaze slides over your face like he’s cataloging every freckle, every tiny tremor. Then he steps closer, slowly, like you might bolt if he moves too fast. The broken fingers on his right hand hang at odd angles; his left comes up, hovering near your cheek.
“Can I…?” he starts, then just does it—his thumb brushing feather-light under the bruise, skimming the edge of your jaw. He’s so gentle you barely feel it.
You let him. You don’t know why.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, voice rough.
“Yes,” you say.
His throat works. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I am so fucking sorry, baby. I’d rather they cut my hands off than feel you flinch from me like that again.”
“Then maybe stop giving me reasons to flinch,” you say.
His eyes close briefly, lashes wet. When he opens them again, they’re brighter. Clearer. That awful calm has returned, but it sits differently now, like a decision has settled in his bones.
“You’re going to tell them,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And then what?” he asks. “You think we’re done? You think you walk away, I go to jail, and you… what? Pretend none of this happened? Pretend I don’t exist?”
“I think I don’t see you again,” you say. “That’s the plan.”
He laughs. It’s a small, disbelieving sound with no humor in it.
“You really don’t get it,” he says.
“Enlighten me.”
“I love you,” he says.
It lands like a stone. No fanfare, no build-up. Just there, suddenly, undeniable.
Your breath catches.
He sees it. His mouth softens, almost fond.
“I love you,” he repeats, like he’s savoring it. “Not the way your friends mean when they say they ‘love’ your outfit. Not the way you ‘love’ that stupid pasta salad. I mean… I love you like there isn’t a version of my life without you in it. Like if you’re not in the picture, the whole thing might as well burn.”
“Bin—”
“I love you,” he says over you, stubborn. “I love you when you’re laughing at me, and when you’re ignoring my texts, and when you’re asleep drooling on my chest, and when you’re pissed off and pretending you’re not. I love you when you wear that dress and I can’t think straight. I love you when you’re in my car with my dick in your throat, and I love you when you’re yelling at me in an alley because you think I went too far.”
“Because you did,” you snap.
He nods easily. “Yeah. I did. And I’d do it again.”
You stare at him.
“You’re insane.”
He smiles faintly. “For you? Yeah.”
“This isn’t healthy,” you say. “Or normal, or safe. You can’t just confess and think that cancels out literally everything else.”
“I don’t want it to cancel anything,” he says. “I want you to understand. This is what it looks like. This is what I am. And you’re still mine.”
“I am not yours,” you say, each word sharp and separate. “We are not together. We weren’t together before this, and we’re definitely not together after.”
He tilts his head, studying you like you’re saying something fascinating and slightly wrong.
“You can say that,” he agrees. “You can think it. You can pack your things and never answer my calls and pretend I’m just some guy you fucked a few times. But it doesn’t change reality.”
“What reality?”
“That you’re mine,” he says simply. “And I’m yours, whether you want me or not. It’s not a choice I can un-choose.”
Your skin crawls.
“I’m going to the police,” you say again, more to yourself now than to him. “And then I’m going home. Alone. If you show up at my door, I’m calling them again. If you text me, I’m blocking you. If you come near me or any of my friends—”
“Baby,” he says.
His voice is soft, but something in it makes you stop.
At the mouth of the alley, two officers move past at a trot, scanning the side street. One glances in but doesn’t clock you properly, eyes bouncing over the shadowed space and back to the brighter sidewalk. “Check the other side,” his partner says. Their footsteps fade.
Changbin waits until they’re gone.
Then he exhales.
“I’m not letting you tell them,” he says.
You smile, brittle. “You don’t—you can’t stop me.”
“Of course I can,” he says, like you’ve just suggested gravity is optional.
He looks at his ruined right hand, flexes it once. The broken fingers spasm. Pain flashes across his face, but it’s distant now, filed away, irrelevant.
Then he moves.
It’s not a wild grab this time. There’s nothing sloppy about it. He steps into your space and hooks an arm around your waist in one smooth motion, dragging you into him so your back hits his chest. His other hand—bloody, shaking—covers your mouth before you can scream.
You thrash on instinct, nails digging into his forearm, heel slamming into the toe of his sneaker. He grunts but doesn’t let go. He’s not even breathing hard.
“Shh,” he murmurs in your ear, like you’re just startled, like he’s comforting you after a nightmare. “Don’t fight me. You’re going to make it worse for yourself.”
You try to bite his hand. He just adjusts his grip, thumb pressing your jaw up, fingers bruisingly tight on your cheeks.
“Easy,” he says. “I know you’re mad.”
Mad. That would be funny if you could breathe.
“Listen to me,” he continues, voice threaded with that same awful patience he used when teaching you how to deadlift. “If you walk out there, you’re not just telling them about me. You’re walking into cameras and statements and court dates and a hundred strangers saying your name. They’re going to drag you through it. They’re going to make you repeat every detail. They’re going to ask what you were wearing, why you were talking to a stranger, why you didn’t move faster when he grabbed you.”
You shake your head, trying to get free, but his arm is an iron bar across your ribs.
“They won’t protect you,” he says. “They never do. They’ll protect themselves. And they’ll take you away from me. I can’t let that happen.”
You manage to wrench your mouth away enough to gasp, “I’d rather be anywhere than here with you.”
He flinches. You feel it, a tiny jerk against your back.
Then he laughs, low and almost fond.
“I know you think that right now,” he says. “You’re scared and you’re hurt, and you’re looking at me like I’m the monster in the story.”
“Because you are,” you spit.
His grip tightens.
“No,” he says calmly. “I’m the only one who’s actually on your side.”
You open your mouth to scream again. His hand clamps down, cutting it off. He spins you, half-carrying, half-dragging, deeper into the alley, away from the open street.
“Bin—Bin, stop, stop—” The words are a muffled mess against his palm.
He doesn’t answer. He’s focused, efficient, like all the jittery panic burned out of him the second he decided on a course of action. He shoulders through a dented metal door you didn’t even notice before—some service entrance propped almost-closed. It gives under his weight with a groan, spilling you both into a dim back corridor that smells like cleaning chemicals and old grease.
The door swings shut behind you, cutting off the hum of the city, the buzz of police radios.
It’s suddenly very quiet.
He lets go of your mouth long enough to slam the bolt.
You suck in air so fast you choke on it, stumbling away from him, hand flying to your throat.
“What are you doing?” you rasp. “You can’t—you can’t just—”
“Kidnap you?” he supplies.
The word sits there, heavy and real.
He doesn’t look ashamed.
“Yeah,” he says. “I can.”
You stare at him.
“Changbin,” you say carefully. “If you walk out there right now, this is still… fixable. You can tell them you lost it, you can get a lawyer, you can get therapy, you can—”
He steps closer. You back into a stack of crates.
“I don’t care about them,” he says. “I don’t care about ‘fixable.’ I care about you.” His gaze drags over your face, lingering on the bruise, the fear in your eyes. He winces like it physically hurts him. “I know you hate me right now. I can live with that.”
“You can’t keep me here,” you say. “I’ll scream.”
“And then what?” he asks. “You can never get away from me, baby. I’ll always find you.”
You open your mouth.
He cups your cheek with his left hand, gentle, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth where your skin is split.
“I am so sorry I hurt you,” he says. His voice shakes. “I will spend the rest of my life making up for that. I will break every bone in my body if that’s what it takes.”
“Try starting with leaving me alone,” you snarl.
A small, broken smile ghosts over his mouth.
“Can’t,” he says. “You’re mine.”
“I’m not,” you snap.
“You can say that until your throat bleeds,” he says softly. “It won’t make it true.”
You feel your eyes sting. Not from his fingers, not from the ache in your jaw. From the realization that he believes this. Absolutely. Unshakably.
“I’m going to hate you,” you whisper. “If you do this, I am going to hate you forever.”
His expression cracks, just for a second.
Then he leans in, presses his forehead to yours like he did in the car, when everything was still sweet and stupid and easy.
“If that’s the price,” he murmurs, “I’ll pay it.”
His breath is warm on your lips. His broken fingers hover near your neck, not quite touching, trembling.
“Because even if you hate me,” he says, “you’ll be alive. You’ll be here. You’ll be mine.”
You try to shove him away.
He’s ready for it. His arms close around you again, unyielding, pulling you into his chest—into his dark, echoing orbit where his love and his violence are the same thing.
Outside, faint through the walls, a siren wails and then fades.
not a request but just wanted to check in and hope your doing well!!! love your writing and hope your not too busy and get some breaks and rest <3
hi, i'm sorry i did take a long break from this acc just because writing changbin as a yandere was rlly hard for some reason. i had like, four different versions before i was finally (semi)satisfied. but i'm hopefully back and now and already writing hyunjins!! this was so sweet tho, ty <3
Omg I’m obsessed with your Chan piece!! Your writing is so beautiful and atmospheric I’ve re-read it sooooo many times
Love love love how you took his penchant for cleaning and made him clean reader up from his, how you say, mess. Like it’s such a little detail but it’s SOOOOO good (and a bit unsettling but in the best way!) Hope you’re having a lovely day!
it makes me so happy to see that you've caught that i thought no one did lol. ofc the story and character traits of the boys are all fully fictional but i try to match it to their personalities as much as possible so it's as immersive as possible
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