She’d do anything to keep him smiling. This includes burying her reservations, denying her hopes, freeing Saeyoung of any responsibility to care for her feelings.
- MC/707 friends with benefits AU where Saeyoung stayed at the agency and didn't end up with MC at the end of his route (no names or placeholders, she/her for MC)
read on ao3
(team i just wanted to write fwb angst like please don't take the AU logistics too seriously i am just a little guy with glasses on)
“This didn’t happen.” Saeyoung’s voice is breathy, his chest heaving as he comes back to Earth. He drapes a lead-heavy arm over her waist and negotiates her closer, pressing her back into his stomach, tangling their legs together. His next words fall in the shallow of her neck, heady and warm. “None of it happened.”
Part of her is still an hour behind the present moment, still thrilling at the way his hands melted into her waist as he bent down to kiss her for the first time. Things had moved quickly from that point. Once he knew that she wanted him, his hands had rushed from her waist to the hem of her dress and beneath. He’d touched her in the doorway, looking down at her reactions with unrepentant awe. The rest plays back in a blur—frantic, desperate.
It had happened almost accidentally. He’d texted her, annoyed and frustrated by work, needing a distraction. She’d invited him over with a text that used plausibly deniable suggestive language. The two of them had been on the precipice of something for long enough that the suggestion alone was enough. Before anything happened, though, they’d agreed that this would be strictly no strings attached.
She shifts against him, moving her hand to press against her own hip. She wonders if the tender spot there will bruise. This didn’t happen.
Saeyoung had spent the better part of the evening touching her, denying reciprocation at every turn. “All I want is you,” he’d said. “Let me have this.”
None of it happened.
He squeezes her against his chest, prompting a response. When she doesn’t answer, worry floods his voice. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“I’m fine, sorry.” She pushes his arm away just long enough to turn around and face him. She meets his eyes, lets herself sink into his warm honey gaze once more before she agrees, offering a soft smile. “None of it happened.”
Saeyoung breathes a sigh of relief, burying his face in her neck. She wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him impossibly closer, wordlessly begging him to stay.
Ever since uncovering Mint Eye, Saeyoung has been drowning in work. Even with help from everyone in the RFA—even with Jumin’s money and connections, a whole task force dedicated to the cause—the work is never-ending. Every moment of his limited free time is devoted to his brother. He’s been reintroducing himself to Saeran with the supervision of a full hospital staff and even that is risky. It isn’t hard to guess at the results by the way Saeyoung’s voice shakes every time his twin comes up in conversation.
Regardless of whether he wants one or not, Saeyoung doesn’t have the time to pursue a relationship. He doesn’t have the peace of mind, either. He’s always going, always on high alert. Figures from his past loom in the distance. Saeyoung has seemed to resign to the fact that he’ll never quite be free to live the life he wants.
Therefore, secrecy is understandable. Expected, even. The RFA members would ask questions, would push them toward pursuing something more rounded and wholesome. The last thing that Saeyoung needs is more expectations, more ties, more obligations.
She pushes a hand through his hair, gently teasing sticky curls away from his forehead with the pads of her fingers. Her nails scratching the back of his neck elicit a satisfied hum. She wonders whether she could get him to fall asleep with her. It would be nice to confirm with her own eyes that, for once, he’s getting a good night’s sleep.
“Stay with me,” she whispers. “Sleep here.”
For a moment, he considers it. He pulls back, locking eyes with her again. She watches his eyes trace the shape of her beneath the sheets, watches him linger on her lips, maybe thinking about kissing her again. She can see the exact moment that he pulls back into himself. His eyes darken, his brow furrows. He shakes his head and pushes himself away.
“I have to meet with Saeran’s doctors in the morning.” He stands at the end of the bed, quickly pulling on clothes. Just a moment later, he looks just like he did when he stepped in the door. None of it happened.
“Right.” She’s never felt more naked than she does in this moment. When he turns away to pick his jacket off the floor, she scrambles out of bed and into the bathroom to put on her bath robe.
He’ll probably go home and straight back to agency work. This is how he spends most of his nights, sacrificing as many of his sleeping hours as possible to the agency so that he can leave the day to Saeran and the RFA. She would admire his work ethic if she weren’t so fucking worried about him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, so quiet that she almost doesn’t hear it.
There is nothing to say, so she says nothing. This is exactly what she expected, exactly what she agreed to. When he called earlier that night, frustrated and angry and exhausted, she’d harbored no secret hopes in inviting him over. Still, she can’t help the lump that forms in the back of her throat.
Saeyoung frowns. Worry, again, evident in his furrowed brow. It’s impossible for her to keep from going to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek against his chest to hear his beating heart.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
He squeezes her back. When she looks up, he offers a soft smile. He repeats, “I’m sorry.”
She forces herself to smile back, swallowing her heart. “Don’t worry about me. Like you said, none of this happened.”
The next week is uneventful. Saeyoung is just as busy as always and no one in the RFA hears from him. He can be a ghost when he wants to be, completely missing in action, hidden away at the desk in his dark office.
She worries, thinks about calling, fantasizes about cooking a warm meal for him and bringing it over. None of these fantasies stick long enough for her to follow through with them. After all, she has her own responsibilities to attend to.
It’s not until the very end of the weekend, a rainy Sunday night, that she hears from him again. He appears on her doorstep in the dark, still dressed in a suit and tie befitting the C&R office, rain soaking through his trim jacket.
“Can I come in?” he asks, already halfway through the door.
This time, she’s the first to touch him. All the regret and worry of the past week floods her in an instant, so she distracts the feeling by wrapping her hands around his tie and pulling him down to her height.
He responds quickly, grasping at her waist and kissing her back. He kisses her like he wants to eat her alive. Desperate, frantic.
“Is everything okay?” she asks in-between kisses.
“Please,” he groans, “just you.” He grabs two handfuls of her thighs, pressing her against him like his ultimate goal is complete fusion of the atoms that make them up. “It’s been such a long week… I just want you.”
She breaks the kiss and falls to her knees in front of him, gratified by how he squirms and blushes at her undoing his belt. “Is this okay?” She takes him in her hand, pumps slowly.
He gives a breathless laugh, truly caught off guard. “Please don’t ask silly questions.”
The sound he makes when she takes him into her mouth sends a thrill up her spine. She quickens her pace, coaxing more sounds from him. He threads his hands through her hair, rewarding her efforts with gentle tugging at her scalp. When it’s too much, he pulls her away.
“Please,” he begs, “if you keep going, I’m not going to be able to do what I came here to.”
She releases him, looking up with a smile, and he pulls her to her feet and into his arms. He carries her to the bed in a rush, then tosses her onto it.
This time, he is not so thorough in exploring her. He helps her out of her pajamas, then hooks his hands under her knees and pulls her to the edge of the bed.
“You’re so beautiful.” He palms her breasts with calloused hands as he leans down to kiss her again. “Seriously, men kill for this.” He chuckles at his own hyperbole. One hand ventures further down, splaying against her stomach before finding its place between her thighs. “I’d be one of the men in question if it came to that.”
Her laugh is smothered by a sigh as Saeyoung pushes inside her. When she looks up at him, she can see a once-familiar humor on his face. He looks like he’s trying to produce another joke and coming up short. She takes in his smile and the scrunch of his nose and the warmth of his eyes as if she is seeing him for the first or last time.
Saeyoung pouts. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He lets out a breath, pushing into her again. He leans forward, leveraging himself so that he can go faster without breaking eye contact. “Like…” He grunts. “Like I’ve got something on my face?”
“I think you’re beautiful,” she admits, her hands finding his face and holding him steady while he fucks her, “especially when you’re like this.”
When they’re like this, his shoulders are light, his eyes sparkle. She remembers what things were like when they first met.
Somehow, things were simpler when there was a nameless hacker and a secret agency and a mysterious cult. Now, the complications are in the specifics. Saeyoung has to care for his brother, he has more work for the agency, he’s been betrayed by his friends and threatened by his family. The RFA members occasionally wring their hands and worry for him but, for the most part, they go about their lives while Saeyoung drowns. Here, now, everything fades away. Saeyoung is able to laugh like he used to.
“What do you mean ‘especially?’” He chuckles. “You think I’m prettier naked?”
“No.” She reaches out for him, pressing a hand against his stomach and tracing the muscles there. “I mean, when you’re not worried about anything.”
“You think this is me not worrying?” He thrusts again, harder.
“Isn’t it?” She frowns. Her eyes find his and it causes his hips to stutter.
Saeyoung pulls back and flips her onto her stomach with one swift hand. He crawls into bed on top of her and pushes into her again. Closer, harder. The thread of their attempt at conversation is momentarily lost, then forgotten entirely.
When they’re finished, Saeyoung bends at the elbows, pressing his full weight into her for just a moment. His lips graze her shoulder—a half-hearted attempt at a kiss—as he rolls over to lay on his back.
“Don’t you know that being with you terrifies me?” he asks, voice sounding far away. “Just because I’m having fun doesn’t mean I’m not worried.”
She stays on her stomach. Something in her knows that it’s easier for him to admit this when he doesn’t have to look her in the eyes. That’s what all of this is, isn’t it? Closeness without any of the vulnerability. She pushes up onto her knees. Below her, Saeyoung’s face is stuck in a soft smile, even though he’s still catching his breath. His curls are mussed, sticking up in every direction, and for the first time she notices the galaxy of freckles on his chest.
Gently, as if Saeyoung is the most fragile thing in the world, she ghosts one finger over his torso, tracing a line from one freckle to another on the path to a full constellation.
“Are you terrified even if it, um—“ She swallows, trying to find the words. Her finger keeps on its path and Saeyoung’s breath hitches when she stops at a mole at the base of his neck. “—if it’s just this?” If it’s like it never happened. If no one finds out. If they aren’t attached.
He catches her hand in his and clutches it against his chest. “Weren’t you listening?” Again, there’s a flicker of his old humor in his eyes. “Just because I’m having fun doesn’t mean I’m not worried.”
Her first thought is one that she stifles. What is the point of all the secrecy and avoidance if it’s only going to worry him anyway? She frees her hand to trace the corner of his smile. She’d do anything to keep him smiling. This includes burying her reservations, denying her hopes, freeing Saeyoung of any responsibility to care for her feelings.
“There’s no reason to worry. None of this matters, right?” She reaches down to kiss him, her hair falling to form a curtain around their faces. For just a moment, the whole world consists of only the two of them.
Saeyoung pulls back from the kiss, his eyes darkening. He seems to remember himself, pushing up into a seated position and smoothing his hair back into place.
“You’re right.” When he speaks, his voice sounds uncharacteristically bitter.
He dresses quickly and a distinct feeling of déjà vu overtakes the girl watching. Just like the first time, he sheds all traces of her from himself with remarkable ease. In moments, he is dressed again. Soon after, he is out the door.
