Rat Bastard - Part 14 - Final Chapter
Pairing: You x Kyungsoo
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 16,000
Warnings: There were too many beds, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Sexual Tension, Idiots to Lovers, Mature Sexual Situations.
Tag: @ilovemyapopbaby
Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14
Rat Bastard Masterlist
It had been the distance. It had been the longing. It was the two-week long absence of his kiss, his affections, the quiet sounds that slipped on up from the back of his throat, over his tongue into your mouth, his body’s warmth pressed up against your sticky humid skin.
But even more, more than all of those things combined, it was probably, really, mostly the alcohol.
The slow and careful kiss you placed on his pretty lips was allowed. Gently returned by his plump lips and the very tip of his warm, wet tongue. Returned, if a bit too restrained, you thought.
You could feel your own slip into madness. You wanted him too much. The rational side of your mind, the one that warned you about what was right and proper to do in public, with witnesses who gawked, crooned their necks and whispered, seemed to have drifted off into an alcohol stupor and all that was left of you, your primitive desires, the instincts, the lustful animal that usually lurked deep in your shadows didn’t have the vocabulary or desire to protest this.
Your hands roamed. You noticed his warm fingertips and palms had not once touched upon your needy skin, but your greedy hands roamed freely. Your once sound judgment had long ago been quieted down by the thrumming of your racing heartbeat that echoed inside of your ears.
Kyungsoo’s low voice called out a serious sounding warning in your ear — he groaned out the slippery sound of your name, and oh he was growling out in his sexy low timber. It must have held a warning but the sound of it made something else surge inside of you. Something needy. Something desperate. Something clouded by the alcohol and the want.
It made a sound come out of you, a whining protest. But — but — doesn’t he know how badly you have wanted him? Doesn't he know how lonely you have been without him? He felt very firm all over. A collection of well developed, firm muscles all clenched at once.
The tense clench of his thigh muscles just below your ass — this man’s strong thighs — he felt so strong here, bracing your weight on his lap. You’d ride his thighs for hours tonight. You’d ride him — your open palm snaked up his thigh, high inside his parted legs — for hours.
You hadn’t expected the strong hands that gripped roughly and quite suddenly around your wrists, pulling both of your hands off of his lap and raising them both up above your shoulders like this was a robbery and you were to hand over all of your cash and jewels. The suddenness of his movement made you gasp. It felt a bit like an overreaction. You only half registered the place between his legs that you’d touched but you fully registered the serious expression in his eyes that peered into yours. His lips parted to speak to you. Only to you. The movement was microscopic.
“Don’t,” he whispered just under an inhale, his eyelids slid halfway closed and he inhaled again, “Don’t you dare.” His eyes narrowed. “I can’t hide it like you can.”
He was right. He couldn’t hide it. You knew intimately how obvious this man looked when he was ready to fuck you. You watched his face and blinked your eyes slowly in response without saying anything outloud. The drunken petulance, you were sure he could pick up on that through those slow blinks of his.
The tight grip of his fingers around your wrists let up and his brown eyes slipped slowly over your face, sliding down to land heavy and telling upon your parted lips, still wet from his mouth. There it was again. The longing.
His own lips parted and he inhaled; pulling in a slow and careful breath. His chest rose as his lungs inflated and you wondered if his air tasted like you as it danced over his tongue. You didn’t dare say a word about it, not with his recent chastisement still fresh — his warm hands still held your wrists — his dark eyes memorizing the plump of your lips mere seconds after kissing him. You didn’t mention the heady desire you saw in the sinking of his eyelids or the grip of strong fingertips around your wrists that felt an awful lot like this man pinning you to the bed below his heavy naked body. You felt too trapped to mention any of it.
And then his weighty eyes set you free.
Kyungsoo looked somewhere else, somewhere behind you. It was the quickest glance but when you had him back again, his two eyebrows danced up over his eyes, his hands dropped your wrists entirely and his chin lifted, motioning once behind you.
“Your friends are here for you.”
You whipped your head to look behind you. He was right. You recognized their faces, their strained smiles atop of three sets of wide alarmed eyes. It was all of them. The close group of friends you often mingled with, commiserated often with, complained about that Rat Bastard Doh Kyungsoo to. They stood side by side, close enough to each other to make some sort of a human barrier. Dani on one side. Allie on the other. Ming at the center. Her arms crossed over her chest, smile wide but unconvincing with the sharp attitude you could hear in her voice as she called your name.
“Honey, can you come with us? We need you to help us with something, please?” Despite her surface level polite words, it didn’t sound at all like a request.
The three of them moved before you could answer. Before you could play along and ask what possible emergency they could be facing that warranted interrupting this. Their arms were on you. They pulled at you. There were multiples of them. You were lifted off of that man’s lap and he didn’t even make any moves to hold onto you, pull you back into his warmth, to keep them from kidnapping you under the guise of helping with some make believe crisis when you knew what they were actually here about. You knew what they were all thinking.
You knew that they all thought you were the real crisis.
“Sorry, Kyungsoo.
She’s just drunk.
We should have taken better care of her.”
Aw — what?
You?
Just drunk?
You weren’t anywhere near as drunk as you could have been. You’d been at least three times drunker when you nearly fell off the patio during that hurricane and that beautiful, good smelling, reliably handsome man swooped in, wrapped himself around you entirely and saved your life.
You looked into their disapproving faces, your own ears growing warm with the echoing tisking sounds coming out of their mouths and you opened your mouth to protest this, to protest them, their insanely inaccurate appraisal of what you had been doing on Doh Kyungsoo’s lap. Well, they were right about what you had been doing. The liberties you took with him. Running your lips and hands all over him. From their perspective though… their view was skewed. They would have seen him definitely not returning the passion. They didn’t know about the longing. They didn’t know about the sultry whispered promises of what he would do to you when he got you into his bed tonight he’d been secretly slipping into your ear all night long. They had no idea of the struggles that he must have been going through. The impressive restraint he had, even when a little bit drunk. They would have only seen him holding back. Him refusing to touch you other than to grip your wrists roughly so he could and pull you off of him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He just had much better self control that you did. He just knew better than to give even the slightest inch.
But he — and you — and then them —-
They wouldn't have known any of it.
Oh god.
This looked like an assault.
In their eyes they were defusing a situation right now. They were apologizing. All three of them mumbled some sort of pleading apology. In their eyes, they were keeping him from calling the police. Keeping you from having to register as a sex offender.
“No. Ming. I’m not drunk. Ming. He’s— we — we are …Allie, Dani,” you’d managed to dig your heels into the floor just enough for some resistance. The frantic words you squeaked out were ineffective and out of order. Lacking any significance that might explain any of this. They only pulled at you. They only shushed and chastised you.
They were all rather dainty girls and if you really wanted to you were certain you could take all three of them in a physical fight. If anything you were holding back right now. You were letting them pull you away from him. Hell, if you’d managed to locate Claire for backup you’d both easily wipe the floor with these girls. You’d freed one hand and motioned it between your chest and where Kyungsoo still sat uselessly, a troublesome expression of outright amusement now growing on his face, and you, speaking with as much earnestly as you could portray with as drunk as you, admittedly, although you’d be damned if your admit it, felt right now that you noticed the slight waviness of the fairy lights behind their heads.
“We are together. Ming, he’s my boyfriend.” You’d managed some more words. They sounded too desperate to be real. You wouldn’t have believed you.
Ming looked at your face for much too long, pushed her lips into a frown of genuine pity and shook her head back and forth. “Oh, honey,” she shook her head again, patting your back, “you’re going to be so embarrassed when you wake up tomorrow morning. Let’s hope you just don’t remember. You’re just lucky we stopped you before you did anything worse.”
You had, it seemed, lost all of your credibility. Your friends, once so soundly on your side, now their eyes were so full of doubt. Your lies, your faults, your crimes against that man had already been too great. There was no coming back from that. They didn’t believe you any more. At least in all matters Doh Kyungsoo related.
You felt a new sort of hopelessness the longer Ming looked at you like this, shaking her head at you. Allie and Dani wouldn’t even meet your pleading eyes for longer than 10 seconds at a time.
Your desperate eyes sought him out, swinging your head around to find him despite the forward progression as the three girls forced. You let them keep your legs moving to put some distance and hopefully some forgiveness between you, the perpetrator, and her favorite victim Doh Kyungsoo.
You found him watching your recent troubles with even more amusement. The man was outright laughing. His chest shook with his laughter, his smile illuminating his face, transforming him into some sort of luminous angel of a man, god he was beautiful when he laughed, and he stumbled to his feet, his hands lamely reaching forward to where you might have been standing five minutes ago had he only decided to move then instead of sitting there laughing at your misfortune. Of course his hands only waved through empty air.
“Kyungsoo,” you whined out pathetically. One of your captors squeezed tightly around your arm. A pinch. A rough twist. Shut up woman. Stop talking to him. Stop assaulting him. Stop sitting on his lap and kissing him when he obviously didn’t return the kiss. Their message was loud and clear and it stung in its wake.
He responded to your desperate pleas with an utterly useless full body shrug; he himself, a victim to his own giggles that had taken him over as you were ruthlessly dragged away.
You were pulled away and held whenever you’d tried to look back to him, and the last glimpse you caught was the man being converged upon by several of his friends, their faces ripe with excitement, ready to get to the bottom of this situation, this wacky and entirely unpredictable, unprovoked spectacle. This scene straight from a movie that their quiet, unassuming, tender-footed friend had seemingly stumbled into.
You had no time to imagine what sorts of things they might be asking him, or what sorts of things he might be answering because an observable shift was happening around you. You’d noticed the crowds had thinned and the once lively party had grown tired and stale. Faces and bodies were too drunk and too tired for much more dancing and the some party goers bade their farewells to friends and family members as others gathered what was left of their drunken counterparts to push them toward the exits.
You felt a flash of disappointment that it was over. The sentiment seemed to be mirrored in some of the discussions you heard around you and amongst your group of friends there was talk of an after party. But there was another group of people standing within earshot, contributing their own ideas about where festivities should continue in a much more relaxed atmosphere. That other group was the young and lively group of chefs, with your very own best friend Claire standing right smack in the middle of them all, and of course, your boyfriend stood on the outskirts with a much too attractively relaxed posture. He listened to the plans relayed, nodding his head along to ideas involving a quiet bar close by with a spacious and empty outdoor patio that the group could occupy.
The group was moving. Kyungsoo’s chef friends were noisy and lively and two in particular bookended your best friend as they all ushered each other like a flock of birds to a singular destination. The man to her left, quite tall and possibly the loudest of the group, had a hand out bracing up a rather drunk Claire as she walked two steps ahead of you. You watched his hands. Taking note of where on her body his hand dared to travel. You didn’t know who this guy was but he seemed only to brace a hand atop her shoulder, although he was so tall his long limbs could have easily reached well around shoulders twice, he seemed to be behaving himself. Still, you made a mental note to watch those hands of his.
A warm body fell into step beside you and you resisted the urge to fully turn to look at who it was, even if your body knew him instantly. Your nose knew his clean smell. Your skin knew the particular hot temperature of his body. Your ears recognized the sound of his gate and your eyes, even in your peripheral vision, knew his stature, hell, even the shadows that the street lamps cast of the shape of his round head in front of your stomping feet — you couldn’t quite reach it when your feet stepped down, that shifty shadow evaded each of your steps. You resisted the urge you felt to look at him, to touch him, to grab his hand and swing your hands together like a couple of fools in love. Your captors were still very close to you and seemed to be hypervigilant in watching every move you made. You didn’t want to be pinched again.
Still, the palms of your hands were itchy.
That warm body stepped closer. An arm brushed against you. The back of an index finger like a feather, tickled the back of your hand.
The air was brisk and the body heat from the man beside you felt so tempting. You could reach out for him, link your elbow into the crook of his and bury your cold nose into his bicep.
But as your eyes wandered around you noticed occasional glances in your direction. The more you paid attention the more you could see heads tilted toward each other, mouths wagging as whispers were exchanged and again, discrete glances toward you, toward him. Perhaps it was the falsely subtle, yet so damned obvious attention from all of them that made you pull your own hands together in front of you, intertwining your own fingers to warm your chilly hands some. Your steps grew more purposeful and you did not once deviate from the forward journey of this crowd.
The bar was dimly lit inside. A few pairs of patrons sat, heads tilted together in darker corners with most of the other tables unoccupied. As dim as it was, it didn't have an expected musky or damp smell and the music that played overhead was not too loud or too abrasive for a clandestine conversation with a secret lover over a set of drinks. Someone at the front of your group was loudly greeted by someone from the back of this place in a friendly and inviting way and the whole group was ushered through a back door that opened into a spectacular retreat, a rock covered patio with a central burning fire pit surrounded by cedar benches and chairs and between every other one, exiting cobblestone pathways wove in all directions through surrounding lush green gardens filled with thriving plants of all kinds.
What struck you instantly was that there was not an ornamental plant amongst the whole lot. Not a single rose. Not a peony, or tulip to be found. Everything in this garden was food and on the other side of these gardens was a plain glass door that led to the building next door. It was some sort of shared space between these two businesses and you wondered who managed to eat all of this food before it went bad. You couldn’t smell so much as a single overripe green onion.
You looked around in wonder, identifying what looked like a bouquet of broccoli with tiny yellow blossoms in between the tiny green bulbs. There were cabbages, heads of lettuce, big and small tomatoes growing yellow, green, brown, and striped red on vines, a wide assortment of chili peppers of all shapes and sizes, some big and full and others tiny spots of red on the ends of green stems. Most were planted right in the dirt, but a few select plants hung from overhead trellises, or were otherwise contained in raised flower beds strategically placed in between rows of chives and green onions.
One lonely potted plant sat in the center of one of the pathways and you curiously reached out a hand and touched a crisp almond shaped leaf of this lonely fellow, rubbing the leaf with light pressure between your fingers, coming back with a refreshing scent. You wondered with a frown about what crimes it had committed to deserve to be kept in isolation when it smelled so, so lovely.
You’d come with a group, so it was obvious to you that you weren’t alone in your explorations of this place, and when you felt the shadow of someone walking beside you here you mumbled curiously mostly to yourself before looking up to see if this was even someone you knew.
“Aww. Why’s this one all alone?”
A voice you didn’t recognize answered your question. His face was angled and attractive. You’d noticed all of Kyungsoo’s friends were quite attractive. “Ahh, gotta keep mint in check. Spreads like a damn bastard. This one’s been a real troublemaker. Junmyeon, the idiot, planted it in the beds, once, four years ago and we’ve been fighting it ever since. Still find mint in the sweet potatoes." His eyes wandered from your face and he lifted a slim finger to point to some other far off part of the garden to the left before his accusatory finger shifted and pointed toward the right, “and in the squashes.”
“Wow, what a whore. Those aren’t even herbs.”
This brought a laugh out of him. A quick, off guard chuckle escaped before he closed up his mouth and looked at you from the side of his eye. “You don’t seem that drunk.”
He said it about you but it somehow felt not entirely directed at you. He was thinking out loud and you were polite enough not to challenge it. You wondered silently about who he was comparing your drunkenness to, or perhaps what behavior he might have witnessed recently that had been attributed to it. As you looked in his eyes, you caught a shift in them. It was subtle and quick but whatever deliberating he had been doing was done and in its place was a look of understanding.
Your eyes wandered away, over the faces of people, your friends, his friends who would soon, as relationships often went, become your friends too. Friends like this one here who stood with you on the surface explaining his slutty mint problem while secretly working out puzzles in his head.
Claire and the tall man were huddled up close, giggling together. You’d learn what his deal was soon enough. You’d put faces to names and names to histories. Like this man who scrutinized you quite closely as you wandered through his gardens. Touching his mint leaves. Looking for his non-existent roses. Looking for just a glimpse of soft black hair being pushed back only to fall down over his forehead again and again. Looking for those big brown eyes that took your breath away with their beauty
“He went up to change,” this man offered without prompting and your focus fell back into his knowing brown eyes.
You stared at him, unmoving for a few seconds before you lifted your chin and hopped an eyebrow up. The face of a woman who didn’t have a clue who this ‘He’ could possibly be.
“The man you kissed tonight,” he said with a smirk and there was something about this man that irritated you just a little bit. You could tell with some people, they were just a little bit too good at reading in between the lines. What was he? A detective? He should leave you and your stolen kisses be.
“I was looking for the flowers. Like roses,” you said through a flippant shrug, plucking a mint leaf from its stem and piercing it with your thumbnail to release the fragrance, “or magnolias, or daffodils. A daisy or two.”
He shrugged and his eyes rolled just a little bit before they wandered around the outdoor space. “None of us care much for uselessly pretty things.”
“Except for maybe, Chanyeol.” His eyes landed over to where your best friend was standing with that tall man, who had gone from playful giggles to a light shoulder touch. No other people stood near them. Your alarm bells were ringing. Your vulnerable, slightly inebriated friend was being swayed by a bright and disarming smile and likely humor or wit in exchange for excessive height.
It took you no time to understand what this strange man was insinuating and you rolled your eyes thoroughly returning to glare at the mischievous smirk he now wore on his face.
“Claire’s definitely not interested in anything serious right now.”
“Perfect. Neither is Chanyeol.”
‘Baekhyun!’
A name was shouted in your direction and the smirk fell as he turned around. Someone holding a pair of barbecue tongs with a pretty face that seemed to be a trend amongst these men, and he was calling your conversation partner away.
“Baekhyun, the fire is ready!” Tongs man shouted once he had Baekhyun’s attention and the man in front of you nodded in response, shouting across the open outdoor space, over the sound of the pop music playing through the various speakers hidden in various corners of the gardens. You could tell the volume was louder close to the seated area. You could smell something
“Yeah, Junmyeon. Be right there.”
The urgency in Junmyeon‘s voice felt familiar. You’d heard similar notes of make believe urgency when Kyungsoo was cooking something that had to be timed just right or the world might come to a screeching stop and the entirety of the Earth’s population would float out to space.
You expected that Baekhyun was also part of this chef's life and would break out in a sprint to answer to the urgency of time.
And his posture told you he was about to.
But before he left he turned back to you with a cheeky question. “No spinach and no raw alums of any kind, right?” He winked and smiled wide, not giving you even a second to respond or even acknowledge what he’d just said before he was off with a quick little jog to where Junmyeon stood clicking his tongs with that excited impatience emphasized in his wide eyes. “Where were you?” He mouthed the words ‘the fire is ready’.
You followed after him. More for the smells than for an explanation of what he meant when he said that, or of how he could possibly know that about you. That man was obviously some sort of an all seeing wizard and it was out of your hands. You knew when you were beat. But things were happening over there by that grill that smelled very delicious and you’d danced and sweated out so much energy at the wedding that those smells made your appetite come charging back.
Your steps halted right beside the flaming fire pit when you heard a low voice speaking up behind that grill. “Hey Baekhyun, where is the meat?” Kyungsoo asked in his low voice and from your view you could see the round of the top of his head, black hair falling over his forehead as he looked down at something he was preparing.
You hadn’t seen him come out and that voice struck inside of you deep enough to stop your forward steps, deep enough to make you stop entirely and look around for some other destination. You spotted Ming sitting with Dani and two others, their heads huddled together, caught up in a riveting conversation and you quickly pivoted, slipping into an empty seat beside the small group.
There was an energy shift when you joined the group. Not a single one would admit to it, but they all sat up just a little big straighter, closing up their mouths and one by one they took turns either sipping on their beverages or suddenly finding great interest in some plant growing behind them.
You’d have to have been an idiot not to have expected this. You knew your PDA faux pas with Kyungsoo would be the talk of the night but still, you felt just a little bit wounded that they’d all be so very stuck in their gossiping ways. More than annoyed that they were obviously talking about you, you were more irritated that they couldn’t have been better hiding it.
Maybe you were just grumpy because that food really did smell delicious and you were quite hungry now. Plus you had been cut off from having any more alcohol by an overprotective Ming and this bubbly seltzer water just wasn’t cutting it.
There was a commotion over by the grill. You heard a loud sizzling sound, smelled the undeniable smell of meat cooking, and heard a very loud chorus of men hooting, hollering, cheering loudly before letting out a low primal cry, repeating a word unison, ‘Beef! Beef! Beef! Beef!’
“And pork!” Someone shouted.
‘Pork! Beef! Pork! Beef and pork! Pork and beef!’ It was sloppy and disjointed sounding. You could hear the alcohol flowing through their chants like it must be flowing through their blood.
“If only there were a single word that covered everything,” Kyungsoo said, full sarcasm on display. He was walking out carrying a big tray with several plates of meat and placing them strategically on the big table that people were now pulling up to.
You did the same, grabbing a chair and sitting near the middle but purposefully a few spots away from the majority of your gossipy friends and strategically positioned so you could watch him rushing around bringing out plates of various things, some veggies, some spicy things and savory things.
He had changed his clothes. Gone was the fancy tuxedo, bow tie, and painful patent leather dress shoes. He now wore an ensemble that was arguably, unimaginably more attractive, a navy blue t-shirt, an insanely good color on him, and the fit, good lord, showed off his biceps, the strong muscles in his back, and then, just a pair of jeans, this particular pair made his ass look squeezable, and you might have to do that later. On his feet, simple unassuming black converse sneakers. The colors, the shades, the styling was an solutely perfect with his black hair and clear and bright complexion. The ultimate casual boyfriend look. He was missing the cozy hoodie but you were sure by the attractive pink you saw in his cheeks that he was too hot standing in front of the grill.
You might have been staring. The other pretty men were doing things too, sure, but nothing compared to the quick footed man who occasionally let his eyes slip right into yours and gave you the softest, quickest smile as he walked by.
Oh something was different in that smile. For once, for once in your history with him, he smiled at you out in the open. Without any secrecy, without any restraint and the effects on you were all consuming and glorious.
It wasn’t even like he was flaunting it, or making it stupidly obvious. The smiles were so quick. They were flashes of lightning in the distant sky, quick enough that if you blinked you might miss them. They were tiny. And they were only for you. You did your best not to melt into a puddle of girly giggles here in your seat with your hands fisted just over your mouth to hide your blushing face as much as possible and you waited for all of the dishes to be brought out and for everyone to find a seat at this beautiful spread.
The others around the table, both those who had been working hard and others like yourself who had been mingling and waiting for the late night second dinner of the night to be served. Kyungsoo was the last straggler, even later than tonight’s couple of honor who came through that bar’s back door to cheers and whistles from everyone at the table. Sam and Mari walked hand in hand, having changed out of their fancy digs into much more casual wear for the late night after party which, from the looks of the energetic faces of many of the people here could very well go into the wee hours of the morning.
The drinks were still flowing and now with such delicious food for the eating there was a bit of a second wind blowing in everyone’s face.
The tables were filled up. You curiously eyed one empty seat across from you and one seat over beside Chanyeol who had parked himself to your opposite, right next to Claire, of course. To your own left, directly across from Claire and right beside you was a spot that you had remained empty. You tried not to find that too suspicious. You also tried not to find it too alarming that most of the people at this table seemed to have developed the unusual habit of meeting your eyes and then quickly looking away.
The table full of old friends and new friends had some sort of energy building the moment Kyungsoo finally made his appearance.
Naturally, you watched him. You couldn’t help it. He was digging for something in an ice chest beside the grill.
“Kyungsoo! Let’s eat!” Chanyeol shouted. His voice was booming without even trying, the message was delivered clearly. It had its intended effect because Kyungsoo looked up, stopped digging and his hands emerged with two drinks. You easily recognized the twin cans of seltzer, alcoholic kinds with fruity flavors. The kind of drink you enjoyed often at parties such as this.
“Coming. Sorry. Everyone, please eat. Enjoy.” He lifted his hands that held those drinks and motioned that everyone at the table was free to begin eating the food.
The occupants of this table were slow on the uptake. You didn’t move, of course, you were too transfixed watching where he might go. Something about his trajectory did seem like he was headed toward you. From your peripherals, slight movements caught your attention and when you looked you could see a few hands slowly moving to grab some food. It felt stuttered and when you’d look to the next person, they sat frozen, their hands holding chopsticks extended but not actually eating anything, or someone else with their cups tilted toward their lips, but their eyes, all of their eyes and all of their attention was on Kyungsoo.
He didn’t walk quite as fast as he had been walking all evening while preparing the food but there was a moment, there was a deciding moment when he reached the end of this long table. He could have gone either way. It still could have been the seat across from you and one over. Next to Chanyeol. Far away from you and the whispers and gossip that had been flying through these ears and lips since you’d drunkenly sat on his lap and kissed him in front of everyone mere hours ago.
It only took a single step for you to know his destination. It only took that one step as he turned and made his way up your side of the table for you to know that the drink he sat down in front of your hand was meant for you. You heard the scrape as he pulled the chair out and you felt him move in right beside you at this table. You felt the warmth of him pull in close right beside you, no pretense of sitting here only for Claire, there was no doubt.
Kyungsoo reached beside you and opened your drink with a click and a hiss.
You might not have been breathing. Your frantic eyes looked around the table at their wide eyes, open mouths still empty of food. Their visible surprise. Everyone except for one face. Baekhyun just smiled, shook his head back and forth, and started actually eating the food in front of him.
Kyungsoo reached forward with his chopsticks in hand and plucked a piece of beef from a plate closest to you.
“Eat,” he whispered beside you, and placed the single piece of meat on top of your empty plate and someone somewhere on this table, perhaps more than one person audibly gasped. It was easily the most intimate thing he had done for you in front of witnesses. Even when you had kissed him, and he had allowed it, from the outside it still felt one-sided. Your heart was racing and you could feel your pulse pounding in your clenched fist that still covered over the bottom half of your face.
He wasn’t done. “This too,” he said, pulling a small scoop of another dish and placing it beside the meat. “Oh, and this. I made this one for you.”
This bit of food he held up in front of your face, his eyes and mouth urging you to open your lips and take this offering from him, this dish that he had made just for you; this dish that looked completely different from any of the other offerings that sat in front of any of the other people at this table, this dish that he waved and moved forward toward your mouth until you gave into him with a hopelessly awkward laugh and accepted from his chop sticks. Your head felt like it was on fire. He was calm, nonchalant and as cool a cucumber.
You weren’t sure you would be able to taste anything.
But when that pasta dish with the creamy, buttery, deep and woodsy flavored sauce hit your tongue you actually lifted your eyebrows in genuine surprise. You chewed and swallowed and looked down at it, looking up at him again. His eyes widened and he nodded his head in quick shallow bursts.
“Good, right?” He smiled wide, clearly pleased by your reaction to his special dish — the dish he made just for you — the dish that everyone here now knew was made specially for you, his special dish person.
“I just have a question!!”
It made you jump. The interruption came out at a high volume and very abruptly. It sounded high pitched and panicked. It was poor Ming speaking up from a few spaces down on the other side of the table. You noticed her new boyfriend, Steven, who had rightfully picked up on this during the reception had already left for the evening, leaving her to absorb this alone. But Ming, she looked pink in the face like she hadn’t breathed once since Kyungsoo sat down and her hand was raised. It was raised at the shoulder, as raised as high as a hand could possibly get while someone was still sitting down. Faces looked over at Ming. Faces that had been outright gawking at the display between you and Kyungsoo and his special dish.
She inhaled a noisy breath. Her hand was still raised.
“What the hell is happening right now?”
Her hand moved, still up in the air, she pointed her index finger toward you. Like a periscope zeroing in on a target.
“You two hate each other. You two really, really hate each other. He was the devil, remember? Just like, like — like, last month he was the actual devil. And we all had to hear about it.” Ming’s hand finally dropped only to slap it passionately over her chest plate.
Several people at the table nodded their heads. Big dramatic ups and downs. Some people were adding in their memories of the hate, of the threats of violence. You heard the words Satan, and Bastard thrown out for good measure. The crowd on your side of the table was growing restless and heated. The crowd on Kyungsoo’s side, the chef’s and them were mostly just watching in amusement and eating their delicious food. Chanyeol fed something to Claire, and she smiled, chewed, and swallowed it.
You felt the urge to speak. You were still chewing and swallowing but you were rushing through it to explain. You were sure they all remembered your hasty apology for your past mistakes, but maybe they needed to hear it again. You weren't above groveling.
Kyungsoo got to it first. His voice sounded casual. He was eating something and talking with food in his mouth. “Well, we don't hate each other anymore.” He shrugged.
It wasn't powerful enough, you thought.
“I’m not the devil now, right?” Oh that smile was back when he turned to you and asked you this. It was disarming and it made you fight to hold back a smile. You had to bite down on your lips before quickly shaking your head.
“No, you’re not,” you relented.
“See.” He said in Ming, Allie, Dani, Insu, and Dohyun’’s direction, adding, “And she isn’t — wait, what did I call you?” His eyes squinted and he looked up for a few moments, likely landing right on the terrible words he’d said about you but deciding it was best not to repeat any of that again. He wisely shook his head. A sheepish smile preceded his, “I can't even remember anymore.” It was a pretty little lie and it made you actually giggle out loud. You had to cover your mouth to hide the food you had been chewing.
“Anyway, so that’s settled. Eat everyone.” Kyungsoo waved a hand toward the left half of this table, truly believing the matter had been completely settled and no further attention needed to be called to it. It was truly adorable how naive he could be about this.
“Eat,” he said softly to you, putting more food on top of your plate. He picked up a lettuce leaf and began filling it with various bits of food. You had a better view of the situation than he had. You knew these people well. You could see that while most of them were slowly eating, not a single face looked down at the food they were chewing and swallowing. There was not a single pair of eyes that didn’t touch into yours, and then bounce over to his face, before looking back at you again and again as they chewed and thought and stewed and pondered.
There was a storm of unrest brewing in these folks. It was about to boil over. They were far from done with the topic.
“So… what? You’re both just like — friends now?” Dani spoke up this time. Her voice full of hopeful questions.
Kyungsoo bit down on the big lettuce wrap you’d just watch him build — filled with four pieces of meat, sauce, veggies, spicy chilis, fresh garlic, all too big to wrap up in a single bite sized package and yet he had shoved the whole thing into his mouth. He struggled to fit it all in. Now he was being asked a question he was physically unable to respond to. You held back your snort of laughter.
“Kyungsoo doesn’t date his friends.” Someone from
The other side of the table spoke up with a bored sounding monotone. It was Baekhyun. Several of Kyungsoo’s chef buddies nodded their heads up and down in agreement. This was a known fact amongst this group.
Kyungsoo nodded his head, his mouth stuffed, his cheeks out puffed.
“Mmm-mm—mmm—mmrmm,” he said uselessly.
“Wait…date?” Mari asked from the left side of the table. “Did he say date?”
“I knew it. Something was weird about her at the wedding. Something was really fucking weird. I knew something was going on.” Her three hours old husband Sam piped up through mouthfuls of food. Sam was right. He definitely clocked it during the reception.
“Well, if you think about it, a boyfriend is kind of a friend, though. Right?” You offered lamely and there was a sound from the men. Disgruntled scoffs of disagreement. A whole chorus of them.
“Ehhh…no way.” One jeered.
“They’re completely different.” Another chimed in.
“Friends are friends. A boyfriend is a boyfriend. They aren’t remotely the same. The two cannot mix or everything breaks down. And being a friend when you want to be a boyfriend is friendship-suicide at best.” Junmyeon was quite passionately laying it all down.
“Boyfriend?” A chorus sounded out from the left. Echoing the word being heavily used.
Kyungsoo had made his way through most of the wrap. You worried he might choke on it and you reached for his drink, handing it to him.
He sipped and nodded his head.
“Mhm. Boyfriend.” He said matter of factly in his own voice, without any signs of duress or clues that maybe you’d tricked him or resorted to bribery to get this beautiful, talented, sexy man to make such a bold and confident declaration in front of all of your friends and all of his friends.
You couldn’t control your face. Your eyes, your cheeks, your mouth were all smiling. You were smiling against your will. Your cheeks were probably red. You felt sweaty. You had to lay your chilly palms over your face to try and cool down.
It took the group a genuine minute to absorb it. That minute was the last moment of silence you would get before the questions and demands began.
Surprisingly, the quiet Insu was the first to speak up.
“When did it start?,” he said. It was the loudest you’d ever heard him speak.
His one question lit a fire under everyone’s ass and they were all shouting over each other to get their questions out too.
“Wait, forget when — how did it start?”
“Kyungsoo, you haven’t even been in town for like months. You’re just gone and then poof the two of you are magically dating?”
“When did you stop hating each other?”
“When did the actual change happen?”
“Who kissed who first?”
“Everyone. Everyone.” Ming was standing up now. Her voice and her hands both raised. She was able to interrupt the rapid fire questions with a single request. “I believe I speak for everyone here when I say this. We deserve the whole story. We have suffered. We demand reparations. Tell us the story.”
She was looking at Kyungsoo when she said it and the people at this table agreed out loud. It was an insistent chorus that seemed impossible to deny. You felt a sort of angry mob with pitchforks kind of threat here. Claims of their suffering helped grease the wheels and after Kyungsoo didn’t immediately shut the idea down the entire group all leaned forward with their mouths, at last, closed and their eyebrows lifted in joint anticipation.
Kyungsoo’s eyes were wide. His lips were parted, hung open and he looked over at you with those wild panicking eyes for a moment before he looked back at the unfaltering group.
“Well,” he began cautiously, inhaling a breath and pushing his eyes upward toward the starry night sky as his thoughts and words sat aloft. He was obviously thinking. How to tell this story in a sentence or two so that this ravenous audience would accept the explanation and release the two of you of any further crimes against them.
His words came out stifled.
“Well, she and I, by complete coincidence, were quite literally trapped alone together on a deserted island for a week. There was a life threatening hurricane hitting the deserted island so we couldn’t leave and eventually we just kind of… made up.”
You groaned out loud. He left out all of the good shit. You inhaled to fix this boring, flaccid version of the story that he came up with.
“Well, no, Kyungsoo. It wasn’t deserted. We had Sara, the resort employee. Sara was pregnant, she’s already the baby now, she is sooo cute, isn’t she cute Kyungsoo? We face-time then sometimes. Anyway, there was Mr. Chen, the evil genius of the Shifting Sands Singles Retreat games they made us play for basic human necessities, and Javier the bartender whose sole job was to get me and you as drunk as physically possible and he was very good at his job. Roxy and Jun were there too, although they had to leave early due to the storm. But no, we weren't alone. Not at first anyway.”
Kyungsoo was staring at you. His face working through a myriad of emotions before finally landing on one of defeat.
“That’s too many details. They don’t need that many details.”
He sounded like he was getting worked up.
“Do you want to tell them what you did to my toothbrush too?” His eyes were wide.
Then his head swung around to face the group who all sat positively enthralled. “She cleaned her dirty foot with my toothbrush and didn’t tell me about it until after I’d used it. We were trapped in a hundreds years old abandoned army bunker that was filthy and covered in spiders and she cleaned her foot, between the toes, with my toothbrush — this was—” his hands that he’d raised during the toothbrush part were suddenly dropped and he rubbed his forehead roughly, “this was obviously before—before we made up. I’ve moved past it now. I’m not …still … upset about the toothbrush. You should just know what I was dealing with. She can be very…mean.”
He was still upset about the toothbrush. He would be forever. You’d accepted this part of him. What you couldn't stand was the sudden flashback all this bunker talk brought up of what an absolute competitive nightmare he turned into when he played board games. If he wanted to complain about you, you had plenty of material to play this game too.
You turned to the right side of the table for your next question. “Have any of you ever played Monopoly with him?”
The result was instant. And exactly as you’d expected.
“Oh my god! Never again.” Baekhyun shouted, holding his head in his hands.
“Absolutely fucking not.” Junmyeon said. “Insane. He’s a maniac.” All the other men exploded with groans and loud boos and Kyungsoo leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest with a smug look on his face.
“You’re all just bad at it. That game isn’t meant to be pretty. It’s not about friends. It’s about money. It’s about making money.”
“See what I mean?” You said with a knowing shrug.
“Wait, was monopoly before or after the toothbrush?” The question came from the left.
The story was coming out in the wrong order. You lifted your hand to count the major events so everyone could follow along.
“First they got us drunk. It was like a game to them. They wanted to get information out of us and it worked because Sara told me that you said I was beautiful.”
Kyungsoo moved and touched you, lifting a finger on your raised hand.
“Then, Javier told me you said I was strong and reliable and you liked a man like that.” The memory pulled a smile to your lips.
“But then, minutes later you told me you’d rather be dead than be stuck there with me.” Another finger was pulled up and your smile fell.
“So, I got so drunk I almost fell off a wall and died but you saved me even though I didn’t deserve it. You still called me an asshole for what I said, which I deserved but it still —” a small frown at the hurtful words landed on your lips. You had run out of fingers and were into finger 2 on your other hand.
“Then they cut me off so I went back to the barracks to sleep — you stayed behind and got so drunk that you accidentally kissed me that night when was I coming out of the shower —” You heard quiet gasps from the group and you added a much needed detail to emphasize how not ideal this whole situation actually was, “— the shower which had no doors by the way. Just army barracks style pipes coming out of the wall.”
Kyungsoo bit down on his bottom lip, his cheeks darkening at the memory. “I didn’t kiss you just because I was drunk. I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you.”
“That’s very sweet,” you said to him, patting his cheek lightly before swiftly turning toward the group for a fact check, “but he was very drunk. Very.”
Kyungsoo dropped his head and giggled. It shook his whole body.
“In the middle of the night, he was passed out on his bed and I came into the bathroom to a crime scene. A drunk crime scene. Toothpaste everywhere. I stepped in it. Cold. Squishy. Sticky. In the dark. In-between my toes. The only reason I didn’t scream was because I could smell the peppermint. I mean, it was everywhere. I did what I had to do to clean it up and my only tool just happened to be a green toothbrush that was left behind by some careless, kiss and run, drunken mess of a man.”
“She called me a rat bastard.”
“He called me a dog.”
“Monopoly happened. Then more games. But these games were criminally designed in such a way to force closeness. ” You rolled your eyes. “They were very crafty people.”
“Eventually we had to start working together if we were going to eat anything. I honestly tried so hard to make peace. But he — he didn’t even want to be my friend. Said it was the last thing in the world he wanted from me.” You half gasped, your breath caught in your throat with this sudden eye opening, once painful memory that you were seeing in brand new light.
You didn’t have to say it. Faces of people from the left side were looking at the men on the right who solemnly nodded their heads in understanding of why Kyungsoo would have shut down your friend offer so completely back then.
“Sara told me that you were in love with me,” Kyungsoo said in a soft, wistful whisper. “At first she said she could just tell. Eventually she said you told her yourself.”
“She had that habit. She also told me that you were in love with me.” You answered his whisper with one of your own. “She was right, of course. About me, at least.”
“Me too,” he quietly confessed.
“Sara is my hero,” Ming mumbled with a dreaminess in her voice, sighing a long sigh out loud as she rested her chin on the palm of her hand.
“When did you both realize?” Insu asked quietly.
Kyungsoo looked over at him, and then the others, his eyes roaming over each of their faces and after a few moments of pondering he turned to look at you with an inhale.
You knew when you realized it, but you were also curious about what he would answer.
You were primed to give your response as his lips were also opening.
“Ramen,” he said softly, “I knew I was in trouble when we had the ramen.”
“Ramen on the patio,” you said, and your voices echoed each other. In a different order, but the same words spoken in a shared breath.
Someone, maybe Mari, was squealing. You felt the table moving where Dani and Allie were shaking each other roughly. You were sure someone was hyperventilating with the sounds you heard from somewhere in that group.
“What happened next?” Dani squealed in between pulling Allie back and forth in her excitement. “Tell us what happened next.”
“God,” Kyungsoo closed his eyes, lifted his head as if he was reliving those moments inside that storm shelter. “God, after the ramen we watched that movie and —” Kyungsoo cleared his throat and stopped talking, looking over at you with questioning eyes. You’d noticed how he’d skipped over finding your 20 condoms, you climbing into his lap and falling into his eyes as time stopped entirely, the gentle conversations that followed. These bits were beginning to feel a little too private for this entire group's ears.
“I got scared during the movie,” you said, looking over at Claire who had been listening in stunned silence just as the rest of the group had been. Claire knew more than the rest but she didn’t have these morsels that added so much emotion and life to the truth.
“There were big spiders and it made me,” Claire nodded her head twice, closing up her eyes, a silent permission for you not to admit to your panic attacks that sometimes hit. “He held my hand, told me it was okay. Comforted me genuinely. No questions or judgement, just comfort.” You could hear a pin drop as silent as it had grown. You just kept talking though. Kyungsoo didn’t attempt to offer any more details outside of what you were comfortable sharing.
“Then Sara went into labor and they all had to leave. And suddenly we were there alone.”
“Gahhhh!” Ming squealed. “Oh my God you were alone — oh my God. Oh my God, it’s happening.” The girls all had a similar reaction. Even some of the men held their smiles pulled in tight between their teeth, knowing eyebrows wagging between the bunch.
“I asked her for a re-do — of our date. To try it again. The blind date from six months ago that derailed us. Resulted in such a disaster for us, a-and for you all too, I guess.”
His words slowed to a crawl. You felt every line inside your veins.
“She said yes.”
“Got all dressed up.”
“It felt — I felt both numb and tingly at the same time — she made everything just stop — like I was struck by lightning when I saw her standing there — for me.”
“Smiling at me.”
“Laughing with me.”
“Acting nervous and cute and silly and then brave — for me.”
Kyungsoo inhaled a long and deep breath and exhaled it slowly through his parted lips.
“And well,” Kyungsoo waved a hand out toward the group in attendance. “Well — we talked through it. Figured out it had all been a big misunderstanding and we forgave each other.”
He couldn’t say more. Not out loud. Those moments, those desperate moments in the storm, those moments of pain, of grief, of understanding and forgiveness, of comfort. Those moments after, everything after, in the shower, in his bed. Those were just for you and for him.
“The date was amazing. He cooked for me. He even let me crack the top of his crème brûlée,” you said with a wide smile.
“Now, that’s a euphemism I’ve never heard before.” Baekhyun’s quick quip pulled an unexpected laugh out of you. You lifted up a garlic clove and tossed it at him. He swatted it out of the air as he was giggling that mischievous little laugh that you were quickly growing very familiar with.
The thick and heavy tension that had settled over the table lifted instantly with his joke. That shared laughter hit everyone and took a while to settle down again before Kyungsoo inhaled to speak, his voice full of fondness and sincerity.
“Yeah, so, thank you, Claire, for the gift. The Shifting Sands Singles Retreat got a 5 star rating from me. I found my soulmate just like the brochures promised.”
You had a hard time looking at him for too long. Instead you took another bite of the pasta dish he made for you and carefully chewed and swallowed. You’d eat every single noodle.
You heard sniffling. Mari was grabbing a napkin from the table and dabbing at her eyes.
“Aww…you guys,” Dani whined, her voice also thick with emotion. You were pretty sure she was drunk.
The whole lot of these people looked rather wobbly, especially once the meal had finished and they’d settled into gentle conversations with no more reasons to stress about anything else. The wedding was done and so was all of that stress that went into preparing for and planning such a grand event. And it really had been grand. Mari and her Sam slinked away after the food, too tired and spent to delay starting a whole life together any longer.
It was during one of those gentle conversations you’d half been listening to that Kyungsoo leaned in to whisper into your ear.
“I have something for you.”
His sudden words pulled your eyes over to look at him, his big round eyes watched your face and the smallest smile touched his mouth.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged the smallest shrug, it hardly moved his face at all. “Picked something up in Ibiza — just…reminded me of you.”
This surprised you. You genuinely hadn’t expected him to bring you anything back from his trip, it wasn’t even a fun vacation trip, it was just work. He went on work trips all the time.
“You didn’t need to—” you began to say and his smile widened just a little bit as he broke the eye contact and looked away, shrugging purposefully now.
“Oh, I know.” He admitted. “Reminded me of you, is all.”
He said it as if this was a valid reason alone and you had to admit, your curiosity had built and grown all on its own with those two bashful little shrugs and his oh so quiet admittance. It was an odd excitement that built up inside. You felt it lift your voice up an octave and you lifted out your hand in front of it, palm up, fingers wagging at him.
“Well, gimme,” you said with a little giggle that you absolutely had no control over.
His eyes bounced over your outheld hand and up over to your face, an eye blinding smile flashing as quick as lightning but vanished just as quick. He opened his mouth and inhaled a quick breath, clearly about to tell you all about the gift he’d gotten you while he was away from you for two whole weeks. Two entire weeks of you missing him, at the very start of this brand new relationship that hardly even had time for the foundation to dry before he springboarded off if it to God knows where for something as silly as work.
That inhale of his came to nothing. His cheeks blushed and his mouth closed back up, an unintelligible mumble on his mouth now instead of explanations. Your upheld hand remained empty. It took the silly smile off of your face and you frowned a tiny playful frown.
“I,” he finally began, a wince in his face, “shit, this makes me sound like a creep. I don’t have it here.”
You dropped your hand, biting back the amusement you felt inside that gave away how much you enjoyed the embarrassed expression on his face right now, the adorable flustered way he was acting.
“It-it’s at my house. I was in a hurry to make it to the reception. My flight was delayed and I had to cut it close. Only had enough time to get home, shower and change and—” He was rambling. You chewed on your top lip and lifted an eyebrow. He was adorably full of excuses.
Gah,” he winced again, his eyes closing up tight; losing the nerve entirely. You watched him cave.
“I’m not saying you need to come home with me…I can always bring it by later, whenever I see you again…if you’re — tired or whatever…doesn’t even have to be tonight… just…nevermind I mentioned it. I don't have anything for you.” He’d talked himself into a big ol’ wandering circle and you’d yet to have said a single word. He kind of harumphed and leaned away from you.
You let a giggle slip. You’d forgotten this part of him. You’d forgotten that this soft and genuine man was just a little bit old fashioned and just a little bit shy and that this relationship, though very intense and all-consuming, was really brand speaking new to both of you. Kyungsoo was the kind of man, the kind of really good man that would sacrifice his wants for you. He would gladly take a rain check any day if you gave even a hint that you weren’t 100% on board with seeing him tonight, spending the night in his arms, holding him while he slept in your bed, or having him holding you while you slept in his bed. You let yourself have a laugh. You didn’t even try and hold it back and when you were done you reached a hand forward, the same one that had been futilely waiting for him to plop something pretty or something interesting or something meaningful from his recent trip inside.
“Let’s go to your place then. I want my present.” You reached down and grabbed his hand, pushing yourself to your feet in a single motion. You gave a tug against him, pulling hard so he stumbled to catch up and stand to his feet.
His eyes betrayed his surprise — sometimes too careful and proper for his own good. He really was a dummy sometimes.
Your exits were swift and uncontested. This crowd was too drunk to bother much with any of it. Even Claire, who had switched to water an hour ago and was looking much more like herself, only gave you both a nod and a wave and the two of you snuck in promises to text each other once you were back home safe; whenever that might be.
The short taxi ride home was oddly quiet. You couldn't explain why. Maybe you were both tired from the very busy day. Maybe it was something else. Something unspoken and agreed upon and inevitable that neither of you had the guts to say out loud.
The first tiny steps inside his still and quiet home — those first few steps through the threshold into his sanctuary were a culmination.
The lights were all off.
Your ears tuned into tiny sounds inside here.
The click of the front door closing and the jarring suffocating silence that followed.
Of course, there were gentle hums of appliances in the big kitchen to the right and a steady sweeping sound to your left — his hand running over the wall, fingertips searching for and easily finding a switch on the wall, the sweeping stopped and you knew he was touching it. You squinted your eyes, bracing for the lights to come on, your breath catching halfway in.
You could smell him. You’d sobered up long ago but you felt delirious on the smell of him. It was more than just the man standing in the dark in front of you lightly fingering his lightswitch but not pressing down hard enough to actually do anything, it was this place, his entire home smelled like he smelled; clean, crisp, familiar in some unnamable way; familiar in a way that was yours. It made each breath you took thick and sticky. It made each thump of your heartbeat seem like your only link to time and reality and the only thing keeping you inside of your own mind enough not to do something silly like float to the ceiling or drop to the floor.
You’d braced for the lights; held your breath for the lights. Instead you felt the subtle warmth of his skin as he moved in close, and time and everything you had once known about it stoppentirely. You smelled his exhale waft across your tongue, heard the smallest lowest groan and your eyes adjusted just enough to make out the shape of his lips, his slowly blinking eyes drinking you in, some faint light source far away, a street lamp across the street through a sheer curtain on the other side of the living room, or the moonlight itself seeking out a brilliant celestial body to reflect off of and finding the that beautiful face of his and deciding it worthy enough to shine up the night.
You had to agree with that silly, lost moon. If you possessed an ounce of the talent that a face like his deserved, you’d win awards for the sonnets you’d write of his beauty.
His eyelids sagged halfway closed and his adams apple bobbed when his lips parted; those dark eyes danced over your face and landed down on your lips.
But the light didn’t come on.
“You can’t imagine how I’ve missed you,” his whispered words lit up the darkness. The skin behind your ears puckered and that sensation spread quickly along your scalp up to the top of your head, seeking some outlet for this bundle of energy; sitting there tingling and burning when it found nowhere to go.
That energy found a new home when his soft fingertips made their first contact with your skin, you felt his hand trailing along your waist, then his palm touched down, hot and weighty through the thin fabric of your dress; igniting a fire inside of you and you knew you did not need any light at all. With the step he took into you he pressed your back against the cold wall of his entryway, crowded in entirely, he covered you from collarbones to hipbones with the warm length of his body — his hips and that rigid heat at the center of his hip bones, his other hand mirroring the first, fingers curved as they dug into your skin and he pulled you into him; possessed and claimed by this man; you felt the words his fingertips sent into your hip bone, ‘Mine. Mine. Mine.’ those curved fingertips said as they dug into your skin. His hot mouth was close enough to your lips to taste as he inhaled your exhale to whisper again, “how desperately I have missed you.”
You did not need a single lumin to know his movements; to see his destination; to feel his intentions, to know the entire length of his hard desperation pressing roughly into your belly.
The air you gasped in was warm and pulled from his open mouth. It tasted like him. He only gave you a half a breath before that same mouth opened over yours, covering over yours entirely, pulling your bottom lip between his own. Pushing his tongue inside, pulling yours into his mouth, sucking and biting, again and again. Kissing you deeply, too overcome with want to give mind to anything else such as your need for oxygen or his too strong fingertips that dug into your hip bones or his biting teeth that would surely leave bruises behind; on your lips, on your earlobe, all over your neck when he finally released your lips and moved lower, over the mounds of your breasts, desperately feasting on any unclothed bit of skin he managed to grasp in between his teeth.
You were nearly too affected, most definitely too consumed to do much more than react. He brought out whines and whimpering sounds from the back of your throat. Sounds that puckered your nipples, sent goosebumps flashing over your skin, and made the hollow between your legs swell and dampen and throb with a building need and seemed to feed the insatiable beast that lived inside of him that had clearly been chained up in the basement for much too long.
This Kyungsoo — this version of Doh Kyungsoo was the one you’d missed the most.
You’d had glimpses of him all night; the whispered memories of your desperate love-making in the shelter that he so rakishly pulled into your mind. The look of heady longing you’d caught watching you right before the kiss in front of everybody. And yet again and again he’d pulled it in, tightened the chains, and checked on the locks.
But this Kyungsoo no longer had anything to hide from anyone. His purposeful hands had found the zipper of your pretty little evening dress and your already sensitive skin puckered more when you felt the cool air on your bare thigh and stomach. The dress fell right here, not any further inside of his home than the entryway and it was quickly abandoned when his strong arms wrapped tightly around your thighs, lifting under your ass; you wrapped yourself around him as he pulled you up and you were moving, carried through the darkness through doorways that were unfamiliar.
The motion reminded of you the first time you’d had him like this; back in the storm shelter. Naked and wet and vulnerable when he carried you against his body and covered over you with his skin and slipped himself in between your parted thighs.
You felt the softness of his bed below your back. It smelled clean and felt warm and inviting but your skin felt too cold when he didn’t follow you into the bed immediately.
It was much darker in here. You couldn’t see his face in front of you nor was he anywhere in this bed with you. As desperate as you felt for him to touch you you couldn’t help the tiny flash of disappointment you felt about this room being so very dark. It’s just that it would be a shame if he didn’t get to see the brand new sexy bra and panty set you wore tonight, just for this, just for him. It was lace and black and not very comfortable but damn if it didn’t look good against your skin. Damn if it didn’t hug your breasts in just the right way.
“Kyungsoo, where did you—” his silence was making you just a little impatient.
You heard a shuffle, he moved, somewhere in the room and then another sound, a hinged squeak and a soft glow filled the room. He cracked the shutters and let in the moonlight.
A gentle glow of blue light cascaded over the room, over your entire body lying on his bed propped up on your elbows waiting for him.
“I need to see you,” he finished his thought but just barely. The sounds of his words cut off and his mouth hung empty and open, not offering any other words for you.
The light brought his eyes with it, and you watched his face shift as his focus was pulled from your face down the length of you.
It took him a minute. You let him have it, but still couldn’t help the self satisfied smile that he would have noticed had he been looking at your face.
His mouth opened and closed twice before any sounds came out. Then, he was moving before the words hit your ears.
“How are you this beautiful?”
His hand reached for you first, fingertips running up the bare skin of your belly, lightly trailing over your ribcage and kneading over the lacy cup of your bra, a knee landing beside your bare thigh on the bed, the other nudging in between your legs, working together to force your legs to part for him.
Your smile widened, pride floating up your chest. “Do you like them? I wore them for yo—“ your words cut off with a gasp when his mouth, hot and wet, opened over the mound of your breast; he pulled your lace covered nipple into the hollow of mouth, his tongue swirling around the sensitive tip. His teeth biting in between sucks. The sensations overwhelmed you and whatever you had been wanting to tell him simply vanished. Two weeks really had been too long. The way your body responded to him you doubted you’d be able to do anything except cave instantly under his touch.
“Mhmm,” he hummed out his response, the vibration from the back of his throat echoed through your flesh inside of his mouth and your back arched into him when you felt his other hand slipping between your legs, moving his thumb over the already soaked center of your panties, wasting no time. The time apart had been too much for both of you.
“Fuck. Princess, you are so wet.” A rounded fingertip slipped easily between your folds, bumping against your clit, making a jolt of arousal surge through you and you whined and lifted your hips into his touch. His fingers moved again purposefully, moving your panties aside.
“You missed me as much as I missed you?” He could feel the truth with every slip of his fingers; with every desperate whine from your lips and with the needy way your hips moved into his hand. But your distracted mind needed something from him to be able to answer his question.
He wore too many clothes. You reached forward, nodding as your answer, and you grabbed at his shirt, pulling it roughly and releasing it with a pop. You reached again, aiming lower to the center of the soft pants he wore. Hitting the jackpot easily here, you ran your palm over the rigid heat you felt, the length of him laying against his belly, standing up with the tip of him tucked behind the waistband of his pants. He was very hard. His eyes rolled, his brows furrowed and his wet lips parted with the quiet gasp he inhaled.
“Show me how much you missed me, Kyungsoo.”
It took a half a second for your words to sink into him and his dark eyes moved up the length of you, laying heavily into your eyes. Then his hands moved as he reached forward, his wet fingertips moving from in between your legs, from inside of you — slowly slipping up the outside of your hips, he grabbed the sides of your panties and pulled them down. You lifted your hips to help him at the same time propping up on an elbow so you could reach around to unclasp your bra. It had served its purpose; you needed the smooth warmth of him against your bare skin. His clothes were a quickly dealt-with afterthought and he stood before you naked, the evidence of his strong desire standing at attention and his chest heaving with the labored breaths that pushed through his parted lips.
He moved in like a tide — pulled by that radiant moonlight that laid stripes of gentle blue and silver across his pretty face. And like the tide his movement was steady, and unrelenting. You parted for him, felt his strong thighs anchor just below your parted legs, his strong arms wrapped around you at the waist and you gave in as you were lifted and moved higher, then moved into him as his grip around you tightened even further; pulling and pressing at the same time; your body against his, hips to hips, chest to chest, as close as he could possibly get to you while still keeping his face above yours; just enough to see you.
During the flood of him, his eyes kept hold deep inside of yours — in the first few moments when your bodies aligned perfectly and he pushed his dick fully inside of you, within your wetness, deep inside — inundating and all encompassing and all at once — you watched his face, your own likely mirroring the shock from the sudden fullness. His face — plump, wet lips falling open further, eyelids stuttering and his brows twitching and furrowing, his expression betraying how good it must feel to be inside of you at last, after weeks of imagining this, weeks of needing this, weeks of missing this. Of course, you felt overcome with how good this felt to you, but watching his face shift and change this close magnified those feelings.
The low moan that broke free from his chest as his hips pulled out halfway and quickly pushed in again — that moan betrayed the pleasure he felt from these first few pumps; better than the desperate late night phone calls, better than the whispered memories dredged up from the storm shelter, better than the soft moans and needy whines slipped into a phone from thousands of miles away as your own hands gave into each others’ desperate urgings.
The urgings right here, right now were changing. Between both of you, the primal more primitive needs quickly surfaced and you found yourself flipped over, face against a pillow, ass in the air, his knees pushing your legs so far apart your hips ached as he slammed roughly into you, unrelenting in his pace, taking what away little breath might be able to gasp through the bedding with way he used you, fucked you, his dick pounding against you inside, his balls slapping roughly against your swollen, oversensitive clit. Every movement and each one that followed cascaded and built, made you scream out, made your legs shake as it all built into something stronger than before.
It made you tremble all over, made you stiffen and your muscles seize and you felt the floor give out below you as you came, dripping in moisture down your thighs, undeniable, and all consuming. You were shaking from it. You were reeling from being fucked this way, this unforgivable way that took and took and took from you every little bit that he wanted to take.
Strong arms wrapped around your waist, keeping you up, and you could feel the change in him, you’d fucked him enough by now to know it. The stutter in his pace, the seconds worth of a change, and you heard the low warning sounds from deep within his chest. A strong desire surged up inside, something new, something you hadn’t done before but it felt just as strong and undeniable as that orgasm that just moved through you.
You moved then, feeling him slip out as you rolled and spun and you moved to take the tip of his wet dick inside of your mouth and those eyes of his, those dark eyes and heavy labored breaths moved down to watch you take him, still very wet with your wetness, fully inside of your mouth. You tasted the sex on your tongue and you sucked. It was a breath of time, mere seconds before you felt him stiffen and then you felt him react. You felt him push with his hips, inside of your mouth just enough to feel the smooth tip of him touch up against your soft palate. Oh, he was moaning; a madness surging up hot. Both of his hands landed on the side of your face and held onto you tightly as a ravenous look crested inside of his eyes and he pushed inside again, deeper this time, hitting the back of your throat. You felt tremors with your tongue all along the underside of his dick. You felt his release flutter up from his base and you tasted his hot, bitter cum hit the back of your throat as another desperately low throaty moan broke free from his chest and you sucked and swallowed every drop of him until he was shaking, until he sat back on his heels and you finally released the suction, letting him go with a little smirk of a smile your quick fingers wiping your lips.
“Fuck,” he cursed, his chest heaving with the heavy breaths. “Fuck,” he said again, the corners of his lips pulling into the smallest grin. “Like I need any more fucking things to fantastize about — fuck — you swallowing my cum after cumming all over my dick like that — it’s going to wake me up at night, Princess.”
“Well then you can just wake me up.” You said with an airy laugh. His smile pulled further just as the moonlight coming in from the outside seemed to brighten. Some clouds must have moved and that silly moon took its chance to touch its favorite face again.. He was so beautiful in this lighting, with the flush of his cheeks, swollen pink lips and that satisfied spent look in his eyes.
You raised a hand to touch his face. He was glowing. You were so in love with him.
“The moon loves you just as much as I do,” you said.
Kyungsoo looked into your eyes, his smile trembled just a little bit and his brows twitched.
“What the hell does that mean?” He whispered with a giggle. His giggle made you giggle too.
You offered no explanation and you only laughed harder when his face changed. ‘What?,’ he mouthed. He shook his head back and forth a little, pulling his lips into a confused grin, and then he was moving; reaching some sort of conclusion about your mental state based only on your silly giggles and vague crypticisms. Silly? Sure. Vague? Absolutely. But very romantic, really, if only he knew the backstory about the moon searching the universe for light years for a face as astounding as his. And the evidence — after billions of years searching, the moon had found a face to worship — moonlight now bouncing off its favorite, most beautiful, celestial body … and all that nonsense.
You said none of this out loud. You knew you couldn’t explain it to him. It wasn’t something for mere words. How does one explain the full magic and wonder of Christmas morning to the biggest gift?
“Okay time to get you to bed, moon lady.” It didn’t matter. He had decided you had lost it and needed to be put to bed before you got any weirder.
You were dragged into a warm shower with a beautiful man who scrubbed your back with some sort of soap that smelled so much like him you didn’t think you’d ever recover from this dream.
You were offered a selection of identical plain white t-shirts to sleep in and he even offered a pair of his loose boxer shorts which you declined. The shirt at least covered your ass.
Then you were handed an unwrapped toothbrush that had just been laying around all loose in some bathroom drawer.
You examined it very closely for any signs that this innocent-looking plastic orange thing might have been used for something nefarious before he gave it to you. He was still very hung up on some things from your past. Sure you were in love with each other now but who knows what kinds of things he might have gotten up to back then when he still hated you with a moment like this in mind. You held it up to the light, looking through the white bristles for any signs of contaminants, squinting and turning it this way and that. It seemed clean on the surface, but microbially…it was hard to tell what was happening with the microbes.
Kyungsoo scoffed. Then he unceremoniously gripped your hand to hold it still and squeezed a ball of toothpaste onto the bristles and then he just shoved the toothbrush right inside your surprised mouth.
“You gotta work on your memory, My Love. If either of us is going to start having trust issues it should be me.”
When you hadn’t started brushing right away he had the audacity to grab your hand again, moving the toothbrush in a little back and forth motion until you relented and just started brushing them yourself.
Why weren’t you allowed just one or two of your unfounded, imaginary trust issues? Sure, he had never crossed any lines with you; never even walked up to those lines. He was relentlessly polite to everyone, respectful and genuine, he was undeniably the ideal man and even better as a boyfriend. You couldn’t have imagined a better man than him; I mean, he was basically a man who was written by a woman.
But something was nagging at you now as you opened your mouth to brush your molars. Some recent, somewhat cloudy memory of something — something he had dangled in front of you, an innocent, naive, drunk girl blinded by love, enticed by something he had promised to give you. A ruse to get you to come home with him. An inveigling promise that was so enticing you were helpless to resist and yet he hadn’t delivered upon that promise.
Instead, the second he got you through his living room door, he’d fucked you senseless, even relished in some things you’d done in the heat of the moment, made you lose what was left of your delicate fragile mind and now that he’d gotten his way he was simply…headed off to bed? Sated and spent with no other thoughts in his head? No thoughts of his grand promises of a gift he’d promised to give you? He was probably already lying in bed dozing off to sleep.
Kyungsoo had finished his preparations before you did and you came out of the bathroom finding him exactly where you’d expected; in bed.
You walked up to the empty side. He’d pulled the covers away so you could climb in and the way he was positioned on his side with his arm outstretched and disappearing somewhere under your pillow — you were meant to rest your head here on his shoulder. You were meant to nestle your nose into his chest and smell him as you drifted off to sleep, he would kiss the top of your head and you could lift your face to capture the next kiss with your lips and his arms would tighten their hold around you entirely so there would be no escape. Kyungsoo’s eyes followed you up until the edge of this bed and after you stood for a second without jumping in, he lifted his palm and gave two tiny taps on his chest.
“Come here,” he whispered.
You melted. You were a puddle. No bones, no structure, definitely no backbone, just a jiggly lump of mush. And like mush, rather than purposefully climbing into that bed you sort of just sagged onto it, slipping your bare legs under the warm blankets and wrapping an arm tightly around his waist and yes even nestling yourself into his chest and inhaling deeply.
But, then you sought some genuine comfort in the bedding itself. And the moment your head hit the pillow, you felt something hard and rather uncomfortable bump against your temple. Was that his arm? You’d laid on his arm before, something weird was up with this pillow. What the hell?
You wiggled and felt around on top of the fluff. Something sat below it, or within in. Something blocky. What was up with this man’s pillows?
“What’s wrong?” He asked with his eyes half closed.
“Something is…poking me.” Your wandering hands felt for it again and you lifted your head and slipped a hand below the pillow, trying to find the pesky intruder that kept you from the comfortable sleep you sought.
“Sorry. It’s just because I like you so much,” he sleepily joked and you snorted out a laugh but kept your search up.
“No seriously, something is—” You had found it.
You had to prop up on your elbows and then you had to slip your hand inside of the pillowcase to find it, but there was an actual thing inside here, an actual box. It was small. It fit inside of your hand and you pulled it out feeling validated and vindicated at first.
That feeling changed in an instant when you saw the small, palm sized box in the light coming in through the window. A sudden flash of recognition, or rather, realization surged up fast inside of you.
This box, this was the kind of box that pretty jewelry came in. This was a delicate and possibly expensive jewelry box, the kind that would have come from some high-end boutique or hand crafted jewelry store. One might expect to find a small pair of earrings inside, it seemed too small for a necklace or a bracelet and you didn’t dare to go in the other direction. It was exactly as small as that other, extremely significant and meaningful item. It was much too early for something like that. The man would have to be insane.
You looked over at his face and his eyes watched you in the quiet darkness of his bed.
“What is this?” You asked quietly and he shrugged the smallest shrug. As if he was just handing you a pencil because you needed to write something down or had tossed you an unwrapped toothbrush that had been knocking around, all loose, inside of his bathroom drawer for who knows how long, maybe since his last girlfriend had spent the night years ago.
But this was different. This felt…dangerous. You held it in the center of your hand and looked down at this little thing, somehow unable to move despite the slight tremble you felt in your fingertips.
“I told you I got you something. Open it.”
“I’m,” you began, feeling altogether silly and nervous and anxious with this damned box sitting inside of your hand.
“I’m,” you said again.
“You’re what?” He asked after you didn’t move.
“I’m going to open it.” You said softly, to him but mostly to yourself. You were being silly. It would be a keychain that said something like, ‘My boyfriend abandoned me for two weeks for Ibiza, and all I got was this stupid keychain.’
The thought made you giggle all to yourself and you looked at his face as if he’d heard your stupid joke too.
“Is it a keychain?” You probed, feeling a little bit desperate for a clue as to what you were in for. His eyes stared at you and he didn’t laugh at the joke he hadn’t heard you say, nor did he nod his head or give you any clues about what he had been up to all on his lonesome on that island in the Mediterranean Sea with thoughts of you in his head and many a touristy shop vendor shouting their sales pitches in his ear.
You gave in and lifted the hinged top of this tiny box.
It was a ring.
Inside of this tiny box was a ring.
Kyungsoo, your boyfriend, the love of your life, the absolute maniac, had gotten you a ring.
It was a delicate thing, like something from a fairy tale, or something you’d see on the most delicate hand, exceedingly feminine, nearly royal in style, tiny intricate leafy curls in the metal with three stones in graduated sizes and color from a pretty shade of a light purple to lilac and the last and largest was a dazzlingly clear and sparkling diamond. Even in this dim lighting you saw the fire that shot off from it when you turned it about. It was easily the prettiest thing you'd ever held in your hands, aside from that man’s face who had gone silent and still beside you.
“Kyungsoo,” you whispered, unable to reconcile the beauty of this and what it really meant. “This is,” you couldn’t speak. What did this mean? Was it really just a passing impulse buy that reminded him of you and he bought it without any real meaning behind it?
“It’s beautiful.” You managed at last and you lifted the box, still not able to commit entirely without knowing what he really meant with this gift.
Kyungsoo moved then, the arm that had been resting under the pillow, the same arm that had hidden his box well inside your pillow case moved down and he rested his open hand below yours. His other arm moved over you and you let your elbow relax as you simply fell backwards into his arms, looking forward at both of his hands, both of your hands and that damned ring sitting there inside of the box in front of you.
“It has a name,” he said in his calm voice behind your head.
It had a name. The ring had a name. Why was he buying you something so significant to have a name? How much had he spent on this?
“Kyungsoo, but, it’s,” you began. The worries and protests sitting just on the tip of your tongue.
“I know. It’s … soon.” He didn’t sound too broken up to be acknowledging how early a gift like this was. If anything you could hear the laughter in his voice.
“I didn’t seek it out, I just … I was out, missing you, thinking about you. Flowers in the shop windows in your favorite colors. A song you like playing from the speakers on the sidewalk. The crème brûlée for dessert at dinner. The 1000 thread-count, super fluffy blankets in the fancy hotel. Ramen during a rain storm. For me, every little moment was you. Every single tiny thing was you.”
“And then I saw this.”
“It is called, ‘Yesterday, today, and tomorrow — I am forever changed,’
“And well…” The more he spoke, the thicker his words sounded. “I mean, I think, t-that’s my heart. That’s what my heart would say to you if it could speak.” he whispered.
Your breath sat like a lump inside of your chest.
He’d pulled the ring out of the box and he held it up between his thumb and index finger. You lifted your hand up, the left one, as seemed appropriate for a beautiful ring such as this. Such a meaningful thing with a name and everything, and the moment you lifted your hand he moved and he slipped the ring over your finger.
You felt remade. Transformed. Forever changed, actually. Maybe this ring did in fact have some kind of power in it.
You spun in place then, within his arms, within his smell, within his warmth and love and you wrapped your arms firmly around him, pulling him into you as tightly as you could stand, speaking right into his chest about how much you loved him, saying it out loud again and again until he was giggling and squeezing you just as tight.
It was so much, this love you felt for him. It filled and overspilled and threatened to swallow you entirely. And, really, you could find no reasons at all to resist it.
[The end.]
Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14
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