Warnings: anxiety to the maximum, questioning of sexuality i guess, controlling parents, existential crisis mentions, sex mentions/implications but nothing too serious, bad influence Ten, mentions of cheating (though the couple doesn’t really care for each other anyways so🤷🏻♀️)
Author’s Note: I changed his mate like 10+ times before i actually wrote anything for him because i kept forgetting to write the story line down so cut me some slack on this one pls and thanks. Also let me know how you feel about a male reader. I created his personality after a nepobaby i knew growing up
Please remember that all of these chapters and the content within them are a work of fiction! They’re just for fun/entertainment!
Watch It All Burn Masterlist
The Confused One: Part 2
Mostly just anxiety. Not even 🥀 or 🤪. Just pure plain and simple nerves and butterflies all over the place with some sex talk
Bold= Korean Dialogue Italics= Thoughts Pink= Cantonese Red=Mandarin Green=English
Tag List-
You weren’t a partier. No, in fact you were rather a homebody. Most of the time, people couldn’t pay you to leave the comfort of your tiny studio apartment. So you weren’t really sure how you found yourself surrounded by a bunch of sweaty, smelly, drunken bodies flinging themselves around you on a makeshift dance floor.
Though you supposed that statement in itself was also inaccurate. You knew exactly why you found yourself in your current predicament. You just weren’t sure what possessed you to actually fall for another guy in the first place. Let alone a guy who was everything you swore never to be.
See you were the quiet type, some would even call you sheltered or protected. Not that you had really chosen that life or personality for yourself. No, your life and personality had been handcrafted for you in childhood by your overprotective parents.
You were the only son and child of a wealthy CEO and a successful plastic surgeon. You never wanted for anything. You never needed something they couldn’t provide. You were set for life since they had a set aside a huge trust fund for you to live on when you got older.
Truthfully, you didn’t even need to attend the university you were going to to gain a bachelors in your chosen major of biochemistry. But not going to university would’ve gone against the well thought out plan your parents had carefully laid out for you. They had all your future major life decisions mapped out for you. Whether it was the housing layout they decided you needed or something as simple as the color of the suit you’d wear at your wedding, everything was set up for you down to the last detail.
You just had to go through the motions and follow through with the plan using the extreme disciplinary measures and the self control techniques that had been drilled into your head when you were young. It seemed simple enough: Do what you were told and you’d live happily ever after.
There seemed to be no way you could possibly fuck it all up. But you did.
Though if someone looked at it from your perspective, there was no way you could be fully to blame for it.
Because the very university your parents picked out for you to attend was where you met him. The extracurricular they signed you up for, tutoring others, to boost your after college resume as high as it would go lead you to your first meeting with him.
The housing complex they had you living in was only down the street from the party spots he frequented. And the very future wife they had arranged for you since you’d practically been born seemed to be someone you had virtually no problem cheating on given that you eventually found yourself pressed up against his bedroom wall while he kissed down your neck and had his merry way with you.
-
It all started on a random Tuesday afternoon. You hadn’t originally felt any different. You woke up with your chosen girlfriend of 3 years beside you. You poured your usual cup of morning tea and made yourself a heart healthy breakfast. You drove to school an hour earlier than your intended class to start your typical tutoring session with a pupil of yours, Yangyang.
Only instead of his constant backpack for a companion sitting on the seat beside him as he waited for you to show, there sat an actual human being. And a rather cute one in your opinion at that.
“Hey Yangyang!” You cluelessly beamed at the younger boy while trying to sneak another glance at the boy next to him, “Who’s your friend?”
And instead of your dongsaeng replying with his usual goofy giggle, the raven haired male quickly stood to introduce himself.
“I’m Ten. You must be ____.” The boy, Ten apparently, smoothly reached his hand out for you to shake while staring at you with starry eyes.
Part of you wanted to run away in the opposite direction because of how frighteningly handsome he was. But the more rational part of you knew that would be very suspicious and strange and would probably lose you your tutoring student.
So you pulled up your metaphoric big boy pants and reached to shake his hand right back as quickly as your brain would allow you to as it began glitching.
Though, you couldn’t help the no doubt obvious gulp your body automatically let out as you attempted to gain your vocal footing again, “Y-Yep. That’s me.”
And as you felt your palm come into contact with the guy stationed in front of you’s hand, you felt a nonexistent fire spark up your skin.
“Yangyang here’s told us a lot about you and what a great tutor you are,” Ten spoke with an almost sinister grin, “and you must really be a pretty good one too cause i haven’t seen anyone else actually get him to do his homework.”
Then the stranger in front of you let out one of the most harmonious and beautiful laughs you’d ever heard as your student smacked his side out of embarrassment.
“That’s not true!” Yangyang insisted, “____ is a great tutor. But I can do my homework just fine without the extra motivation, thank you very much. I just need a little help with the teaching part sometimes is all. So don’t listen to him ___ hyung.”
“Whatever you say kid,” Ten tauntingly reassured him as he turned to you as if he was privately conversing with you via eye contact.
But just when you finally got the courage to look the pretty guy directly in the eye, you could’ve sworn you saw some color in them that was definitely not a natural eye color surrounding his pupils.
Though before you could ask any questions, Yangyang nudged him in the arm to gain his attention. And whatever was said their private little conversation they had in what you could only assume was Yangyang’ native mandarin, Ten jolted in place and politely excused himself with the excuse of needing to get going and not wanting to interrupt your session any further.
And before you could even say your goodbye pleasantries back, he dashed off towards the library doors with a quick ‘nice to meet you’ being thrown over his shoulder.
Once the initial awkwardness of the interaction wore off, you quickly went to work and began your usual tutoring session with the Taiwanese boy as promised. But in the back of your mind throughout the whole hour you had laid aside for your teaching, you couldn’t help but wonder when you’d get to see his lovely friend again.
The wonder confused you for a multitude of reasons, the first being you had never actually been attracted to anyone before, let alone some random guy you had quite literally just met. And the second reason was because having a weird guy crush on the boy wasn’t part of your programming.
You weren’t allowed to go outside of the plan that had been put in place far before your birth was anticipated. Your mother and father would have simultaneous heart attacks if they thought you entertained the idea for even a split second.
But some unhinged part of you just couldn’t stop thinking about the mysteriously handsome stranger.
-
“Boy do you look lost,” Ten managed to chuckle out as he stepped foot in the kitchen you found yourself hiding out from the other party goers in.
He easily maneuvered his way over to your place on the counter after pulling a beer out of the friend he seemed so familiar with.
You let out a nervous laugh back out of embarrassment and the small proximity between you both, “Yeah I um- was supposed to be meeting a friend here but they uh… made themselves known a little later than expected.”
Flirting was never your thing either. You were bad at it, anyone who even looked at you could tell based on your naturally shy demeanor.
But you had a drink and you felt the liquid courage flowing through your veins and decided to try it out, even though you knew it was a bad idea.
“Oh,” Ten slyly smirked at you while leaning in dangerously close to your lips, “Is that all I am to you? A friend?“
And once again, the alcohol running through your body made you feel brave enough to do a stupid, stupid thing.
You quickly let out a breathy ‘no’ and finally brought the painful tension between the two of you to an end by fully closing the small gap between the both of your lips.
-
Normally, Ten didn’t go with Yangyang to his actual study sessions since he figured the kid was old enough to handle it himself. But after finding out how much his younger brother was struggling to come to terms with having to share his little sister with another one of their packmates, he figured checking up on him every once and a while couldn’t hurt.
So he offered to come into the library of their shared university to help get him situated under the false pretense of ‘having too many books to carry’ instead of just dropping him off at the double doors and waiting for his own classes to start about half an hour later.
However, once Ten got inside, he could tell the younger boy was feeling a bit nervous. It was the first time seeing his tutor after their school’s break and he could only guess the boy must’ve been stressing out over the amount of work he was gonna be given to make up for lost time. So he decided to stay and sit with him until his tutor got there to be sure the guy knew who he was dealing with to help put him at ease.
But what he wasn’t expecting when you walked through the door was to have the entire world instantly fall away from him, leaving you as the only thing keeping him chained to the earth. And you were unbelievably perfect.
Your perfectly buttoned nose made him want to melt to the floor. Your uncallused hands and geekish clothing showed him you probably hadn’t once done anything other than be the bookworm he already knew you were from his conversations with Yangyang that were centered around you. Your disheveled hair and cherry red lips told him you were already flustered to the max after having only just made your tutoring session with him on time.
Ten wasn’t sure he ever really understood, or even wanted for that matter, what a mate really was. Sure he knew all his brothers had imprinted. And of course he knew they were real because of the multiple sisters he had gained over his time with the pack. But he had never expected to find one for himself.
He was a partier. The wild child most parents told their kids was a perfect example of what not to be. So long as it was the weekend and he didn’t have to be a responsible student or loving kindergarten teacher, he did pretty much whatever he wanted (or whoever he wanted for that matter) whenever he wanted with little regard for anything else other than to have a good time.
He drank, did the occasional recreational drug if he felt like it, dressed in dark sharp clothing to fit his nightlife, and slept around for as long as he could remember as often as he could. He figured having a mate just wasn’t in the cards for him because of the lifestyle he chose to have, which was something he had come to terms with long ago.
But here you were, living breathing proof that he was wrong, dead wrong.
The only problem was, he was sure he was gonna mess it up. He was probably someone you considered scary by your own set of personal standards. You were a goody goody with a long term girlfriend and were set to be your graduating year’s valedictorian. Your grades were as straight as you were and your lifestyle was so far from his own, he was sure you’d mini vomit in your mouth at the sight of him in the same vicinity as you. You’d never go for a guy like him.
Still, you were his mate. And that fact was easily confirmed by his ever racing heart speeding up tenfold the closer you got to them, which was something the young maknae was quick to pick up on.
Whether Ten thought he had a real shot with you or not, he was gonna try. Sure he’d never thought he’d get you, but he had to attempt to after all. He’d literally die without you.
So when you finally reached the table where you’d be doing your studying, he figured what better way to try to show you he was interested in you than a little bit of flattery. He introduced himself with a handshake and tried his best to keep his cool even though the minimal skin to skin contact he had with you for those few seconds set a bonfire alight inside him.
Then he tried to break the ice a little by mentioning something about you being a great tutor to Yangyang, which would end up being a mistake. Because if the small touch to your delicate hand had made his inner wolf crazy, the light blush that appeared across your face at the small compliment made him want to jump on you and smear kisses all over you, which was something he obviously could not just do having just met you.
But before he could say anything else, Yangyang gave him a little nudge to his side. When Ten turned his attention to the boy he saw that he was raising his eyebrows up and down, a silent signal used by most in the pack to let another know they had started to burn through their colored contacts that hid their true nature.
It made Ten panic internally. Of course he knew you’d eventually find out his secret, but he didn’t want it to be in the middle of the university library surrounded by a bunch of strangers simply because he couldn't control himself.
So he hurriedly let out a goodbye and dashed out the door, careful to keep his eyes fixated on the ground as much as he could till he got to his car and could go home.
Sure the interaction wasn’t everything he had hoped for, but it was enough to get the conversation started. Which was all he could ask for given the circumstances.
-
Little by little, he started seeing you more. He’d rearranged his schedule so he could catch a glimpse of you on campus more often. He’d always have his ear to the ground listening for someone mentioning you or your girlfriends name so he could keep tabs on you both. He’d even gone so far as to actually befriending your girlfriend, who, much to his surprise, wasn’t nearly as horrible as he’d thought she’d be.
Sure she was a stickler for the rules and always had to keep up her own appearances with her naturally styled makeup and ironed prep school girl clothes, but she actually was… pretty cool.
Ten had already known who she was and knew of her activities on campus simply because he shared a few classes with her. She was a psych major and he was majoring in early childhood development, so their paths crossed a lot.
He already knew your girlfriend didn’t like to talk to anyone she didn’t think was worth her time based on how seriously she took her class schedule. So when she responded to him in their shared psychology class when he asked her to explain what the teacher’s lecture answer meant in an attempt to get her to speak to him, he was pleasantly caught off guard with her willingness to help him out. She knew he was a foreigner and she didn’t want him to unjustly suffer in his class just because he might not be 100% fluent in current like she was as a native.
That’s how he got her talking to him and soon enough, they almost became sort of… friends. Ten definitely knew her other friends didn’t like that she was associating with someone as ‘lowly’ as himself, but she didn’t seem to care. In fact, she didn’t seem to care much at all about what anyone thought of her.
As the days passed, he learned that she was someone who stood up for others a lot more than standing up for herself. Ten watched over and over as her friends seemed to make decisions that hurt her personally, but she never said anything to them. Yet when she saw one of her friends make fun of a student with less money, Ten watched from the sidelines as she had to practically be held back from slapping said friend for being so rude to an innocent stranger. Unlike many in your world, your girlfriend wasn’t one to judge others based on looks but rather how they treated others.
Ten also figured out rather quickly that she too tutored others in her spare time like you, something he asked her to help him with to gain more knowledge about you and what your lives looked like together. Except unlike you, she did it because she wanted to, not because her parents forced her to.
But that didn’t mean her parents didn’t force other things on her, like you.
According to her ranting during one of his study sessions with her, neither of you had wanted to be together in the first place. It was something your parents had decided when you were both young without consulting either one of you, but you were both too quiet and timid to say anything against it.
Though, you’d both worked out a harmonious way of living together by the time you had started college and had become good friends to try and cope with your situation. And that’s how you found yourselves practically silently engaged in the present.
It turned out your girlfriend was quite a nice girl who was just playing a part she had been assigned since she’d been born. He almost felt sort of bad that he had imprinted on her boyfriend and was using her to get an in with you. But what else could he do? You were his mate and you were both clearly miserable with the life that had been shoved on you. He figured he would just be doing you both a favor by trying to split you up and get you to be with him.
And once that thought process had been established in his mind, he decided to up the stakes.
-
Ten had started to drop Yangyang off to every tutoring session so he could speak with you for a few spare moments, even if it made him late to his own classes. He wanted to get to know you personally, not just from the odd little snippets of information he’d get from your girlfriend.
He figured he’d just make some sweet small talk to get more familiar with you. Then after he’d done that for an appropriate amount of times, he’d eventually move to becoming friendly enough to ask for your number and get you comfortable being around him alone. Finally, he’d eventually make his move, at least that was his plan originally. But when he saw you walk in with what was almost certainly bed head and yesterday's clothes from what was no doubt a long night of cramming for your biology exam Yangyang had mentioned you would have as soon as his tutoring was done, that idea went out the window.
As you came and rushed up to the table with a hurried apology for not being on time once more and said your pleasantries, Ten could barely comprehend the two of you were even in the same building. He was in total awe of you, he figured he was probably even staring at you like some sort of love struck idiot. But he couldn’t help it. You just looked so cute.
Your soft and messy hair only accentuated your already chiseled and perfect features. Your clothes hung even closer to your body than they had the day before because they hadn’t been properly washed or ironed and seemed to lay over every crease of your delicate body. And to top it off, you smelt even more like the scent that had recently become his favorite thing in the whole world after having met you, old books and cinnamon, because you were probably trying to overcompensate for the lack of fresh clothes by coating yourself in your cologne.
So when your next set of worried words about potentially failing your upcoming exam left him an opening, no one could really blame Ten for what he did next.
“Well if your exam doesn’t go so well, I know of a few ways to help lessen the blow.” Ten sleekly smiled up at you, much to your and Yangyang’s sudden shock.
You had to clear the nervous spit that had lodged itself in your throat before you asked him what he meant.
“I just mean there’s a few… unconventional ways of relieving stress and frustration that you’re probably not used to.” The button nosed boy finished joking just in time for his younger packmate to nudge him in the side as a warning to tread carefully.
-
If the statement the attractive guy said hadn’t lit your cheeks on fire, then him having you unlock your phone so he could put his contact information in surely did.
“Call me if you need to vent out your frustration from your test you’re sure you’ll fail by hitting up a party sometime. Or if you ever just want to go to one really. One might help you loosen up a little and forget everything troubling you ____.” He winked before handing you your phone back with a flare and leaving you and his friend to get to your tutoring session.
Not that that was ever gonna be easy after you had the interaction you had. You weren’t the best at interacting with people who weren’t as bland as they were dull, so you weren’t really sure what to make of the little conversation.
Was he just trying to get you to quit yammering about how worried you were about your exam? Was he flirting with you? Or was he simply trying to be nice and help you out?
It seemed like a thousand things and possibilities were running through your mind every second. You couldn’t focus, something you were sure was evident to the younger boy you were trying to teach, though he was at least kind enough not to comment on your lack of awareness.
After what felt like forever, your tutoring ended and your exam began, something that also felt like it took forever to accomplish, but you finished.
However, now you were left with a choice, one you weren’t sure if you should even be considering: Message Ten that you want to party or don’t and pretend the conversation never happened.
You weren’t sure of his intentions, you didn’t understand what he had meant by his sudden invitation to contact him. And you weren’t sure why you were having such a difficult time deciding whether or not to take him up on his offer. You could go to the party and most likely have nothing happen, you could not go and have your usual routine continue. Or, maybe… just maybe, you could go and have something you’d secretly been dreaming of happen.
Which was stupid of you to think. You were in a relationship, you were committed to your plan. However, it seemed like each time you saw Ten, you were becoming more and more attracted to him. More attracted than you had ever been to your sort of fiance/future wife.
You liked to consider yourself a loyal guy, one who would never willingly hurt someone else, and a good person. So you couldn’t really explain why you had suddenly pulled your phone out of your pocket, or why you found yourself quickly unlocking it and clicking on Ten’s contact.
But what you really couldn’t understand was why you started messaging him telling him you had failed your exam and needed to let loose.
-
You had gotten a 96% on your exam. So you weren’t sure what you were thinking. It was a bad idea. A very very bad idea that had your head spinning in all sorts of directions and made your heart yearn in a way you weren’t sure it ever had.
When he touched you, it felt like the whole world lit itself on fire. When he kissed you, you felt all the oxygen being sucked out of your lungs. You knew it was a bad decision to go to the party. Of course you knew that. But if being bad meant you were able to feel as good as Ten made you feel, you never wanted to be good again.
-
He knew he should feel guilty, in his head he knew that. No good person would try to breakup a relationship just to get with another person. Ten did know that. And if you were genuinely happy with your life the way it was, he’d leave well enough allow and not bother trying to get with you to keep you happy. But you were miserable in your life. You had to have been.
You had a girlfriend you didn’t love, a major you loathed, and a social life you hated. How could he not do what he could to try and get you to be happy by potentially being with him? He couldn’t live with himself if he let you stay stagnant. You deserved better than that.
And that’s exactly what he planned on showing you as he made you cry out his name all night long.
