Surviving a week to Donghyuck's charms and jokes can't be so hard... Worst case scenario, you end up completely falling for your brother's best friend.
▪︎Pairing: brother's best friend!Hyuck x fem reader
▪︎Genres: poor attempt at rom com, fluff
▪︎Warnings: alcohol consumption, profanity, suggestive jokes, kissing, and some very light suggestive scenes.
▪︎Word count (part 2): 7721 words
playlist | extra content: mc's IG stories
Author's note: hi everyone :') sorry for being so absent and never posting the final part to 12-7 room. But hey, I finally got the motivation to do it. I've been also writing other things but I don't know when I'll finsih them or post them. Anyways, if you want to take a look, the other things I'm always working on are listed on my wips page. Once again, sorry for taking too long to post this and I hope someone can enjoy it anyway. Thank you so much for the love on part 1! Seriously, thank you. This isn't proof read so tell me if you find any mistakes, please and thank you. Enjoy!
Saturday, 08:37 p.m.
"I feel like we're betraying Mark."
"Why?"
"We're having a sleepover without him," you explain to Donghyuck while you extend your left hand to him, and he places his right hand over your palm, so you can continue painting his nails with a black polish. "You know, we're listening to Bruno Mars, eating watermelon–"
"Aren't we supposed to eat watermelon in the summer?" Donghyuck interrupts you to ask.
"Real watermelon enjoyers eat watermelon no matter what time of the year it is–Hyuck!" you scream after he makes a sudden move to grab a piece of fruit from the bowl and half his index finger ends up covered in black nail polish. "Stop moving your hand!"
"I'm sorry!"
He apologizes and stays still in front of your body, legs crossed and knees touching yours. Donghyuck is so close you can feel his breath in your hair, and even though you know it's impossible for him to hear your heart-rate increasing exponentially, you fear the closeness and the intimacy may give you away. Honestly, by this time you thought you might have figured it out: you had to either rethink your relationship and conclude that you were only going to be friends forever, or accept your feelings and confess to him, no matter what the outcome could be.
But you find yourself finishing Donghyuck's nails and looking up to him, who was–as more often as you thought–already looking at you. He smiles to you sweetly, no teeth on sight, and he looks ridiculous. Donghyuck is wearing a sheet mask with the form of a peach, yet you still find the sight in front of you incredibly endearing. The worst part about it is that you're looking as ridiculous as him, with the lemon-shaped sheet mask covering your face. You feel his thumb gently caress the back of your hand that he was still holding even long after you've finished. And as his soft features are illuminated by the warm dim lights of the lamp and the TV, as he holds your hand and looks at you as if you might be the prettiest lemon he has seen, you get that feeling again.
The comfort, the domesticity. The urge to be his companion, to share moments like this and many more. Every day.
Your phone buzzes as you set an alarm to take the masks off twenty minutes ago.
Donghyuck lets your hand go. He lets go of your heart too—but only for a second. He cradles your face, his soft fingertips pet your jaw, then your cheeks, and you can't hold his gaze anymore. You want to look down, drop your head before you start word-vomiting everything you're feeling and you've been feeling for him since the moment you met, since that first time he cooked ramen for you and you decided you wanted it to be your comfort food forever.
Donghyuck won't let you look down, though. He applies pressure with his fingers in the place where your neck and your jaw meet and with his thumbs on your cheeks. Your lips naturally pout under the pressure and you see it. Donghyuck. Your best friend. The guy you've liked forever now, looking at your lips for what you think it's been like the fourth time this weekend. And it's only been hours since the weekend started.
Is it really going to happen? Are you about to kiss Donghyuck right now? On the living room's couch on a saturday night in, under the dim lights, while Silk Sonic's Love's Train plays in the background and you're wearing fruit-shaped sheet masks?
It is fucking romantic.
Yet it never comes.
It doesn't happen.
Donghyuck just says: "It's time to take the masks off."
And you agree because, well, what the hell are you supposed to do? Just throw yourself all over him like you, maybe, have been imagining? Donghyuck takes your mask off your skin and you take his, that leaves his face looking the softest and smelling like sweet peaches. That definitely doesn't help your situation.
You're incredibly frustrated. Upset, even, like a kid who got denied his candy. (You wish Donghyuck was your candy.) You hate this sleepover now and even wish Mark was here to cock-block the entire situation. That would be less upsetting.
"And?" He asks once both of you have your masks off. "Do I look cuter now?"
Oh, so he's aware he's already incredibly cute.
You can't contain a smile. He's only centimeters away from you after he quickly moves back to look for his glasses. You feel the need to poke his cheeks that look as soft as marshmallows and smell like fucking peaches. Actually, you might feel the need to eat him.
But you don't dare say anything. Only trying to hide your smile looking down, as your face grows red, you let Donghyuck think of his own conclusions after your reaction.
Thing is, you're kind of a coward.
Donghyuck says it's time to netflix and chill, and you laugh because the statement is followed by a "Literally. Don't start thinking about something dirty."
He places himself on the mattress on the floor (the one you've been sleeping since you arrived), a bunch of pillows supporting his back, and makes room for you. He's cheeky enough to pat his stomach to tell you to lie there, between his legs and over his body. Just like that, as if you hadn't been melting before just by holding his hand in yours or having your knees touch. And now he wants you to lie on his stomach?
Are you really that close? If so, why isn't he your boyfriend yet?
You open your eyes wider and point a finger at yourself. "Me. Me?" Your voice comes out full of disbelief.
"Not you. Mark," he says with a roll of his eyes. "Of course it's you! Unless you don't want to lay together?"
"I mean…"
How do you make it sound not so desperate, not too obvious?
You just shrug and say, "Yeah, sure."
Aced it.
Donghyuck's body feels like the softest mattress you've ever laid on, like you could close your eyes and sleep trapped in his limbs forever. And because of the closeness, you can sense the vibrations of his voice traveling from his torso to your ears. His tone is quiet and gentle, talking about what to watch to no one in particular because, even though he's talking to you, you're too concentrated on opening your camera and capturing the moment in a video of the two of you.
"Look how cute," you say, moving your arm to his eye level to show him the video. "You talk in pout when you're really concentrated."
When you're conscious of the surroundings once again, you're sure you've replayed the video with a smile on your face like ten times.
"You should upload that."
"I've posted enough about you," you reply to his suggestion, going back and saving the video to your drafts. "People are gonna think you're my boyfriend or whatever…"
"Would that be so bad?" Donghyuck questions with his eyes fixed on the TV screen. When you move your head back to look up at him, he dares to connect eyes with you. "People thinking I'm your boyfriend?"
Sunday, 12:02 p.m.
Donghyuck had always been clingy.
Yet you didn't know he could be this clingy in the mornings.
Mark has been trying to get Donghyuck out of bed for like ten minutes now, but he won't get up. While your brother is pulling his arm out, Donghyuck pulls Mark's arm in, asking him to join him and sleep 'just a little more'.
Yes, your brother found you both sleeping on the mattress in the living room. No, you and Donghyuck were not clinging to each other (sadly). But Hyuck was for sure clinging to your brother now.
"Mark!" He protests in a sleepy tone. "What do you want if you won't come in?"
"We were supposed to have brunch together," your brother tells Donghyuck again, yet he must be too sleepy to process what's happening.
"I won't go." Donghyuck states and doesn't even open his eyes again. The living room is clear enough, as the winter sun has been hitting for hours now. But it isn't an impediment for him to curl up under the blankets like a burrito and go back to sleep.
Mark drops his shoulders and allows himself to sigh, finally defeated by his heavy-sleeper best friend. "I guess it's just you and me, y/n."
—
Fortunately for you, the weather has been amazing since you arrived in the city where your brother lives. Saturday was no different, with a clear blue sky above your heads despite it being winter, and the sun shining just the right amount to touch your skin and leave it warm. A little breeze messes with you and your brother's freshly dyed hair as you sit outside a coffee shop, brunch almost all devoured on the table. Mark hums to a familiar jazzy tune that plays all the way from inside the café.
And the atmosphere is beautifully calm. But you need to get something out of your chest. For once.
"So," you start and Mark moves eyes from his food to set them on you, expectant of your next words with a mouth full of pancakes and fruit. "I think I like Donghyuck."
Mark starts coughing after hearing you, and you wonder if it is because of the shock of your confession or because he really is that careless to get the food stuck in his throat.
"Yeah, I knew," he confirms once it's clear for him to speak again.
"The fuck you mean 'you knew'?"
"I mean, honestly, it's pretty obvious." Your brother can't hide a smile. He drops the fork to properly talk to you this time. "Like, you've always had some kind of thing… I don't know, I thought I had a special connection with Hyuck," he says pointing at himself, eyes wide with what could look like a little bit of shock. "But you two… You two are something else."
"Oh God," you cover your face in embarrassment even though after your brother's words there's no point in hiding anything anymore. "So you've been watching me acting like a fool in love around Donghyuck all this time, and you said nothing."
"I didn't say anything 'cuz I thought it had to come from you." He shrugs. "Wanted you to feel comfy enough to tell me, even though I had my suspicions, obviously."
"May I ask… Why," you hesitate a little before asking for a third-person perspective. "Why were you suspicious about it?"
"Dude, I don't know," a small laughter escapes him. "You just look like you'd be all over each other if you could."
You just groan in frustration hearing your brother saying you might have been way more obvious than you thought you were. Temperature rises to your cheeks coloring them a little red, and not because of the midday sun hitting right from above your head.
"And you can," Mark says, yet you don't get it, the tilting of your indicating he has to clarify. "Like, you can be all over each other. I don't know why nothing has happened between the two of you yet."
"'Cuz I don't know if he likes me?"
"How could you know if you don't try?"
Your gaze drops to your lap, and you realize you've been playing with the rings of your hands, taking them off and putting them on over and over, indicating the conversation is making you a little nervous.
Mark must notice, since he keeps talking. "Just tell him, dude. Best case scenario, he also likes you, you move out together and make me free from Donghyuck's ass."
The way he puts it makes you laugh, yet there's a slight weight to your eyes, as if tears could start falling down slowly at any time after holding your feelings in for so long. So you take a deep breath, blink a few times and look at the sun.
The sun, shining in its maximum splendor in the middle of the sky. And you wonder what he's doing right now. Donghyuck, or Haechan, as his mother used to call him when he was little. Full Sun, because he's always so bright and energetic, like a happy virus (Mark would also call him a pain in the ass, but you see, it depends on who you ask.)
"Worst case scenario, you remain as good friends," Mark continues. "C'mon, you know him, he's not a dick. You just gotta try talking to him."
You gulp and nod at him, now trying to make eye contact with a subtle smile on your face. Another deep breath. "You're right. Donghyuck won't hurt me, no matter what the outcome is."
Monday, 01:43 a.m.
On Mark's phone...
Meanwhile at the livingroom...
"Hyuck–wait. Can't we go slower?!"
"Look at that!" Donghyuck screams pointing at the TV screen, after taking the airpod off his right ear. You do the same with the one you were using, and the music from the game stops playing in your head. "I got a perfect score!" And he continues to do a silly victory dance, moving his hips from side to side with his arms in the air.
You really don't want to be mad at Donghyuck right now.
"This is so unfair," you tell him, stepping out of the frame and leaving the remote on top of the game console. "You didn't tell me you were this good. And you know I can't dance at all."
"You're right," Donghyuck says sincerely, a hand on his chest, right in front of his heart and all. "I didn't tell you I'm a dancing god and took advantage of your poor dancing skills to win the Just Dance."
You really don't want to get mad at him, but sometimes he makes it pretty much impossible.
"You." A hand comes in contact with Donghyuck's arm. Your hand. "Dirty." Another slap. "Bastard." And another one. "I hate you so much!"
"Hey!" He protests rubbing his arm after you slapped it. "Lying is a sin."
"I'm not lying," you say. "I hate you. You put on the fastest choreo to follow."
Donghyuck follows you around to the kitchen and watches your every move. He's right behind you, his eyes following your motions when you fill a glass with water, when you gulp it down, when you clean it and leave it back on the counter. He's hot on your heels when you come back to the common area and take the inflatable mattress out to get ready to sleep. He's still following your moves carefully when you put on the sheets and when you lay on it with the remote of the TV in hand. He only takes his eyes off your body when the Netflix logo appears on the screen and he notices you're about to watch the show you two started together.
You know he's dying for a word from you.
"You don't mean it," he says, now free of all mocking tones.
"I don't mean what?"
"You don't hate me."
You're pretty sure Donghyuck doesn't need you to confirm that you weren't serious. Naturally, he has always shown himself as a very self-assured and friendly person; It's not normal that people don't like Donghyuck. However, when you meet his eyes, wide and expectant of your response, and perhaps wet with a little insecurity, you understand that things are not always what they seem.
"How could I ever hate you, Hyuck?" you tell him to extend a hand in his direction, inviting him to lay on your side on the mattress.
Relief takes over his expression, and a wide smile is plastered on his face. He's quick to get comfortable (maybe too comfortable, not that you really mind) laying his head on your lap, and moving your left hand to his hair that looks like it's got longer over the days. You know he wants you to play with it—Donghyuck loves getting his hair played with. The fourth episode of My First First Love starts playing on the TV screen, and you hear Donghyuck sigh contentedly.
The subtle strokes at the hair on his nape get Donghyuck smiling again and exhaling deeper at your tranquil touch. And, not to be biased, but the colored lights coming from the TV highlight the softest, most beautiful face features you've seen in your life. In an act of courage, you move your fingertips from his hair, to his sharp jaw, to his cheekbones, gently caressing the warm skin.
Donghyuck moves his head on your lap until he's no longer watching TV. Neither are you. You're just staring at each other in silence. He's letting you stroke every part of skin until the tip of your fingers make it to his lips. His plump pink lips that have been tempting you more and more the past days. And he places a kiss there. On the tip of your fingers.
You freeze and grow red. Then he places another kiss, and another, making it three the times you've felt Donghyuck's lips on your skin.
It may be driving you crazy.
He's careful with his movements, so careful it turns almost painful watching him. Donghyuck grabs your wrist and gets up to sit beside your spot on the mattress. Doesn't let go of your hand—instead, he holds it tenderly, caresses the back of it with his thumb, then places another kiss there.
Four times you've felt Donghyuck's lips on your skin. Five. Six—he just placed a kiss on your palm. Wait, another on your wrist. That's seven kisses so far.
But it's not enough. Now you've felt his lips you want them everywhere, all the time. So when he gets your hand closer to keep kissing you there, you grab his face. Feel the skin there, of his jaw, of his neck, and it's really hot. You think you might even feel the rapid pace of his pulse when you press your fingers on his neck (but it could also be your own.) Lastly, you tangle your fingers in his hair that he has let grow during these weeks of winter break. You tug on it a little, just enough to let him know you want him close. Closer, please.
And Donghyuck sighs, more like he fucking moans.
You wonder if you should say something before moving forward. What about all the things you talked to Mark yesterday? Should you tell him about how you feel before kissing him? What does he want? And what would this be after you kiss?
The call of your name interrupts your torment of thoughts.
"Please," he begs in a whisper, eyes closed as your noses brush against each other. "I'll die if I don't kiss you right now."
A laugh comes out of you because he always has to be that exaggerated, but you decide to set all questions aside for a moment to just dive into him.
He starts off very gently, with his slightly parted lips pressing against yours. They are indeed as fleshy and soft as they look, and taste like a cherries lipbalm. Donghyuck repeatedly places small kisses on your lips until you open your mouth a little more, and he captures your lower lip, biting a bit there. It gets another little tug on his hair from you, a sigh of relief after tasting his mouth after years of longing, and everything becomes more needy.
Donghyuck grabs at both sides of your head to deepen the kiss, smashing lips together repeatedly and kissing you sloppily. When you allow him to, he pushes his tongue into your mouth and you push your body closer to his.
He grabs your wrist not neglecting your lips even a second, as if the both of you were magnetized, and places his palm on your waist inviting you to his lap. It makes you laugh out of nervousness, so Donghyuck opens his eyes to watch you straddle him and place yourself on top of him very carefully.
His touch travels from your waist to the sides of your torso, his right hand in a place that you're sure allows Donghyuck to feel your increased heart rate. Your hands cradle his neck, then tug at the hair of his nape as he observes you kind of mesmerized, inhaling deeply, smiling a little and wetting his lips before you're diving into each other once again.
You've lost count of the amount of times you've felt Donghyuck's sweet lips on you by now. But you're sure of one thing: you don't want it to be the last.
"In case you were still wondering," he breaks the kiss to talk to you. "I like you, kinda a lot."
His hair is slightly disheveled from all the pulling, his lips are shiny and swollen, and he looks a little agitated. In his incredibly dilated black pupils you can see the reflection of your smile.
"I also like you, Hyuck," you finally confess to him. "I like you like, a huge amount."
He lets out a sigh of relief, more like a scream, and you're quick to cover his mouth reminding him that your brother is supposed to be sleeping five meters away from you. Yet, you can't help but laugh at his reaction.
He presses your foreheads together as his hands caress your sides, from your knees, to your waist, and to your lower back. Both your thumbs stroke his cheeks gently before you move to place some smooches there, in each of Donghyuck's moles (that is all over his face.) You think of all the times you imagined doing exactly that and find it hard to believe there's a possibility you could have Donghyuck any time you want now.
You only have to talk it out and see how things could progress between the two of you in the future. In the meantime, you'll keep smooching the literal personification of the sun (that might be because he feels hot as fuck right now, or because his smile is bright as the sun, or maybe he could be both.)
(Still) Monday, 01:00 p.m.
Donghyuck has had his head over the clouds since last night. After a heavy make-out session with you and some cuddling, he went back to his shared bedroom to sleep at like four a.m., being the most quiet possible to not wake your brother up and maybe having him asking what the hell was Donghyuck doing with you in the living room until four in the morning. He can’t escape the knowing smile Mark gives him though, when he wakes up and sees Donghyuck already up and working at his desk.
Donghyuck pretends everything is normal, greeting Mark good morning as usual.
“Good morning, Melk.”
“You sound too happy,” Mark groans in response, still sitting on his bed only half awake.
Donghyuck checks the time on the corner of his computer; one p.m. during holidays is like eight a.m. to Mark. Your brother just sits there for a while and Donghyuck goes back to studying for amoment, until the silence of the room gets interrupted.
“Yo,” Mark calls to attract Donghyuck’s attention. “What you did last night was fucking nasty.”
“What–” Donghyuck tries asking, only to have Mark interrupting him.
“I heard you two going at it," he starts with a very serious expression that gets Donghyuck's blood completely drained from his face. What could've Mark possibly heard? "My sister was telling you to go slower and everything.'' Mark makes some gagging sounds to add to his point and Donghyuck grows as equally embarrassed and amused at your brother’s assumptions.
“You think we fucked?” Donghyuck asks in complete disbelief. An exaggerated nervous laugh follows the question. “With you in the house?” He points a finger at Mark.
“You didn’t?”
“Sorry to tell you what you heard was us playing Just Dance. The last choreo was too hard and y/n couldn’t follow it.”
Donghyuck watches his best friend rub the sleep off his eyes and get up from the bed while he denies with his head, looking kind of defeated. “You’re both the biggest losers I’ve ever known,” Mark says, referring to you and Donghyuck.
“Hey!” Donghyuck starts to defend himself, his eyes grow bigger as his brows go up, and the characteristic Donghyuck pout starts to show, like in every situation a discussion is involved. “It was fun! We had a good time, ask her.”
“Losers made for each other, I swear.” Mark emphasizes his point. “So you didn’t fuck.”
Donghyuck doesn't look up from his math notes to answer. There's no way in hell he's having this conversation looking at Mark in the face. “By now, I’m sure I might be a virgin again.”
“Dude, what the fuck,” Mark can’t contain a laugh, though. “That’s bad for your health. Get your dick wet already.”
“I’m just waiting for the right time with your sister.”
“Hey! You can’t joke like that anymore.” Donghyuck knows by Mark’s tone all the bickering has become dead-serious now. It has always been like this when it’s about you. First they joke a little about it, then Donghyuck reminds Mark how much he truly likes you, and lastly Mark tells Donghyuck to just confess to you already because he’s tired of hearing about it. “If you’re joking about my sister I’m gonna beat you up.” Mark reminds him.
“Sorry.” This time, Donghyuck is brave enough to face his best friend. It’s kind of hard for Donghyuck to believe it when Mark tells him he’s getting beated up, though, when Mark’s wearing the pajamas Johnny got him as a gift recently–some blue panty with a moose on the back that says ‘don’t moose with me’. “I’m not joking about her.”
“I know.” Mark covers the pajamas that distract his friend so much as he puts on his jeans. “You like each other so much it’s disgusting.”
Donghyuck can’t hide his smile after hearing that, and it reminds him of all the kisses you shared last night, which makes him grow red in the face. Nothing a little more bickering with your brother can’t hide.
“You’re sooo cruel to me, Markie.” Donghyuck tries to hug Mark before he’s leaving the room, but morning Mark has always been like a stray cat who doesn’t like affection (unless it comes from Yuta, which Donghyuck can’t comprehend very well but he supposes the japanese has something pretty magnetic.)
“Get off of me!”
“Only a lil’ kiss, pleaaase!”
They struggle at the door of the room and into the common area. Donghyuck with his lips millimeters from Mark's face while Mark tries with all his might to get away from Donghyuck, who can be like a tick. They're so caught up in their things neither of them has noticed you're there, observing the entire interaction.
“Why don’t you go and kiss y/n? I’m sure she’ll enjoy it,” you hear Mark say when he finally frees himself from Donghyuck.
It’s at this moment that you know you are hearing too much, so you clear your throat to let them know that you are there too. They both freeze after turning around and seeing you sitting at the kitchen island. Your brother Mark, the great opportunist and master at escaping from uncomfortable situations, greets you good morning and is off to work in a second, leaving you and Donghyuck alone in the apartment.
You watch Donghyuck get closer to where you’re sitting. He hasn’t changed from his sleeping shorts and the hoodie he was wearing last night–the same hoodie you pulled on as you kissed in the same mattress laying meters behind him. Yet you don’t know how to describe the sensation you’re feeling right now. After seeing the boy you like the most fighting your brother for a kiss, your stomach feels… weird? You know the kind of relationship they have–they’re best friends, they bicker and fight and make up all the time. They live based on Donghyuck love-bombing Mark and Mark denying the affection all the time. But they love each other in a brotherly way, it has always been like that.
It’s not like you expected Donghyuck to want to hug and kiss you and only you after what happened last night, but you kind of did expect it.
Were you jealous of Donghyuck’s best friend, your own brother Mark?
Donghyuck looks at you confused when you don't accept his hug right away. You stop his arms midway, and his eyes look defeated, full of worry. “Did something happen?”
You deny with your head. “I don’t know, that kind of felt weird,” you confess to him.
Donghyuck caresses your arms, feeling you relax from the defensive attitude from before, until he gets your hands together. “What felt weird?”
It’s ridiculous, you know it is and you’re embarrassed about what you’re about to say. Yet, you can’t help but:
“I think I got jealous,” you say and watch his brows furrowed together. “You know, when you were trying to kiss Mark…”
Donghyuck only bursts out laughing and hugs you tightly against his chest, leaving you no time to escape the sudden affection. He smells like fabric softener and feels comfortable like a pillow. And you hate that you love the way his laugh resonates through your entire body when he presses you to himself like that.
“You know I never want to kiss Mark seriously, right? That I only do it ‘cause I know he hates it,” he explains once he’s separated from you, still holding your hands in his and looking you in the eyes. “I don’t want to kiss anyone the way I want to kiss you.”
You look down hiding your smile, thinking he’s cute at first and processing his words then, which makes you laugh a little. Donghyuck realizes right away and starts to laugh too, leaving the seriousness behind.
“Was that too much?” He asks.
You nod in response. “But it’s good to know.”
“Good,” he says before planting a kiss on your cheek. He’s only millimeters away from your face when he speaks again. “No need to be jealous then.”
Donghyuck turns you around on the chair, so your back is pressing against the island and he can stand comfortably between your legs. He starts as he did last night, planting a kiss on your knuckles, then your wrist, but you don’t wanna waste any more time so you free yourself from his hands and start cradling his face. His lips look as tempting as always, maybe even more after you tasted them for the first time.
He notices your look so he gives you a lopsided, attractive smile that you desperately wanna rip off his face.
“How can you look this handsome in the morning?” You ask, admiring all his features.
“I mean, technically it’s past the morning.” he answers in a cocky tone.
“Shut up already.”
You don’t give him time to fight back as you’re sealing his lips with a kiss. It’s slow but deep, and his skin feels warm and soft under your fingertips, all the way from his sharp jaw to his cheekbones. When he bites your lip a little bit to get full access to your mouth, you worry about the breakfast you were having minutes ago, but Donghyuck doesn’t seem to mind:
“Mhmm,” he hums, breaking apart and licking his lips. “You taste like maple syrup.” And he steals another quick kiss from you.
“Yeah,” you say as you turn around to face the kitchen island again. “‘Cause you interrupted my breakfast.”
But despite you showing your back to him and trying to finish your food, Donghyuck won’t let you eat in peace. “Oh yeah,” he murmurs against the skin of your neck after he moves your hair to your left shoulder. He plants a soft kiss on your right side, sending shivers down your spine and making it hard to concentrate on your task. “I’m sooo sorry I interrupted you.” His tone is full of sarcasm as his kisses travel to your jaw and all the way down again. “And you hated it sooo much.”
The metallic sound of your fork falling off your hand and hitting the plate startles the both of you. Donghyuck stops sucking on your neck and you fall out of your trance. Your startled face might be somewhat funny, because Donghyuck starts giggling as you both realize you were enjoying his kisses a little too much.
“Let’s go on a date.”
“All of a sudden?”
He nods with a smile on his face. “It’s your last day here tomorrow. It’s not like we won’t see each other anymore but… I want to take you out before your last day here.”
“Okay,” you agree, matching his smile.
“Okay?” He asks once more and sighs contentedly when you nod your head yes. “I’ll go plan everything. Make sure you’re all mine this afternoon!” And he leaves the room after kissing your right cheek.
(The busiest) Monday, 07:37 p.m.
“Hyuck, come on, there’s seriously no way of winning with those machines.”
“Babe, just one more try. I wanna get something for you.”
Donghyuck has been fighting against a claw machine for what felt like half an hour now. Since none of you weren’t able to win any of the games you tried at the carnival, you really appreciate his determination to win a prize for you this way. Yet you arrived here at five p.m., and after two rounds of bumper cars, after testing your strength at Ring the Bell (and both of you failing embarrassingly), riding the teacups, getting scared to death in the haunted house, and going twice into the Ferris wheel (one time for the sightseeing and pics and another time for kissing at the top of it) your stomach growls with hunger.
“We could’ve paid dinner with all the money you spent on this machine-”
“Wait, I’m about to get it!”
“Let’s just go get dinner.”
“But I’m about to get it!”
And you see it forreal this time: the claw holding a big Pochacco plushie and it falling right into the hole.
“Hyuck, you got it!” You scream in disbelief, a big smile taking over your face (maybe because of the cute plushie or maybe because it meant you were finally going to have some food.)
You watch Donghyuck lose his arm through the hatch and get it back, this time with the stuffed animal in his hand. When he’s presenting it in front of you, the stuffed animal is so big that it blocks your view. You admire it for a second, and then take it into your arms to discover a Donghyuck wearing the biggest smile you've seen in a while. He’s all cozied up, his jacket and stuffed hat making him look like a real life teddy bear. Even so, the cold of the winter has caused the tip of his nose and his cheeks to turn red, somehow making him look even cuter.
“I got it for you!” He says, the excitement not leaving his body even for a second.
You can’t contain yourself and, as an impulse, grab him from the jacket with your free hand and pull forward until your lips are meeting his. Just a short peck as a way of saying thank you, I love it (you.)
Neither of you realizes the little crowd you've drawn around the machines, not until you hear the applause and cheering as you're breaking away from your kiss. You’ve never seen Donghyuck get shy when drawing people’s attention, so this might be your first time noticing him trying to hide under his hat and into your embrace. You laugh it off even when you're equally embarrassed, but thank him for the plushie and tell him to run away from there to get dinner.
—
“I think I’ve liked you from the start,” Donghyuck confesses all of a sudden.
Well, maybe not so all of a sudden. While you two were having your dinner, bottle of beer came after bottle of beer. At some point of the night, you thought it was a good idea to start having soju. Donghyuck said something like “it’s our last night together, we should celebrate and get wasted” to justify your decision. So it may be the full stomachs and the alcohol making you be honest with each other.
“I know I’ve liked you from the start.”
“Aaall the guys knew too…” He slurs his words a little when speaking. “I wouldn't shut up about you.”
You can't hide your drunken, enamored smile when hearing him. But something makes a little noise inside your head. “All the guys knew?” You ask and he nods quickly. “Even Mark?”
“Even Mark,” Donghyuck confirms. “I mean, we always kind of had this joke going around that I was always waiting for you.” He pours himself another drink. “But we both knew it wasn't a joke.”
“Oh god.” You cover your face, embarrassed. “My own brother lied to me,” you say and Donghyuck makes a confused sound, which makes you keep explaining. “He pretended to know nothing about your feelings when I confessed to him that I liked you.”
“I asked him not to say anything.”
“Huh?”
“I wanted to tell you myself how much I like you.”
“Oh god,” it's all you can repeat right now, all these confessions and the alcohol making you grow hot everywhere. “It's so hot inside this restaurant,” you say as you take your jacket off.
Donghyuck knows the red on your cheeks isn't only because of the heat inside the place.
“I like you sooo much,” he says as he watches you giggle out of nervousness. Donghyuck calls your name and holds your hand over the table to try to get you to look at him, but you only giggle and hide your face with your other hand. “I'm in love with you!”
“Okay, okay!” You're laughing by now, trying to cover his mouth to shut him up and not attract everyone's attention like you did at the carnival. “I'm in love with you too!”
“Good,” he says with an extremely pleased smile, that one that has always attracted you to him so much.
“Good?” you repeat and he nods.
Your phone screen lights up showing it's Mark calling you. You silently tell Donghyuck you're picking up and he lets go of your hand for you to do so.
“Yes?”
“Yo,” you hear Mark answer from the other side. “We're at Yuta's right now, we're working on some music with Taeil and TY so I think I'm just gonna crash here tonight.”
“Uhm, are you sure you don't wanna go back?” You ask and make eye contact with Donghyuck, who narrows his eyes and tilts his head to the side after your question. You only shrug to him as a response.
“Nah, I'll leave the apartment for the two of you so make good use of it.” Your brother answers convincingly.
“Okay, I'll see you in the morning.”
“All right bet, see you in the morning.” And he's quick to hang up.
You take the phone off your ear and look at it confused for a bit, until Donghyuck breaks the silence. “Everything all right with Mark?”
“Yeah,” you say as you put the phone down. “He said he's not going back home tonight.”
“Oh.”
You think of the words your brother said. “Leaving the apartment for the two of you,” and “making good use of it,” and it hits you. A little bit late, but it hits you.
“Oh…” you repeat, a surprised expression now taking over your face.
“Yeah, oh!” Donghyuck agrees. “We're having a real sleepover tonight!”
But by the excitement in Donghyuck's face, the one a little kid would show when told he's sleeping at a friend's, you aren't convinced he thought the same way you and Mark did.
(The last day at your brother's) Tuesday, 09:12 a.m.
The next morning, you wake up pretty confused. When you open your eyes, you're not sleeping at your usual spot. Your surroundings look very different from the living room where you've been sleeping every night. To your right, you spot Donghyuck's desk, filled with physics books, a pile of comics, and the typical empty Red Bull cans. The mattress also feels incredibly comfortable, soft but firm under you. But the most strange thing is the weight over your body, and a cologne you know very well and like very much flooding your senses. That's when you realize Donghyuck is laying all over you, stretched like a starfish.
You laugh and struggle to take your arms under him, and when you wrap them around the boy over you and squeeze, he starts to laugh too.
"Are the curtains open?" You ask in a voice still full of sleep.
He moves his head up to catch the smile on your face. "No?"
"Then why is the sun so bright in my face?"
The smile spreads on his face and he plants a chaste kiss on your lips. "You're so fucking cheesy." And he kisses you again.
“Get off,” you try to move him from over your face and your body. “I haven’t washed my mouth.”
“I don’t care,” he says, finally moving and sitting at the side of his bed, where you’re still laying in. “I’m not missing a chance to kiss you.”
“You’re sooo fucking cheesy,” you repeat his words.
“And you like me sooo much.” Donghyuck moves to the nightstand and grabs an aspirin and a can of Red Bull and brings them to your mouth. “Take, it’ll make you feel better after all we had last night.”
You sit up a little on the bed to do what he told you, and once you've swallowed the aspirin you let yourself fall back against his pillow. Donghyuck is still sitting on the edge of the bed, exchanging glances with you and holding your hand lovingly. He's wearing the Michael Jackson t-shirt that he likes so much and he's wearing his messy hair, just as you left it after pulling, fixing and messing it up while you kissed him countless times the night before.
You’re leaving today, and it’s like all the feelings you’ve accumulated these past years are hitting right now, all at once.
“I wish I could wake up like this everyday.”
“Hungover?”
“No, not hungover,” you laugh at his question. “With you.”
He smiles and squeezes your hand reassuringly. “We’ll figure it out.”
You sit up in the bed and search for the energy drink on the nightstand. After a few drinks, you’ve figured the morning breath can’t be so bad, so you move to face him properly and grab his face for a real kiss. Donghyuck doesn’t take long to reciprocate and start caressing your entire body. He’s always the first one to take the kisses to other places, so you take the lead this time. You discovered last night that Donghyuck can’t resist the kisses on his neck. You start placing soft kisses, then some licks until you suck a little and he fails to suppress a moan. He laughs it off and calls your name.
“I want to ask something important,” he says, looking you dead-serious in the eyes now, all the jokes and the desire aside. After you nod in response, telling he has your attention, he takes a big breath of courage. “It may seem a little rushed, but after all we’ve shared these years and after this week we’ve spent together, I don’t want you to leave without asking you to go out with me.”
You feel the temperature increase throughout your skin. Is he finally asking you to…
“Be my girlfriend?” As if he knew you from inside and out, he finishes your thoughts out loud.
Temperature reaches your face as well as probably the biggest smile you’ve worn since you got here. You cradle his face, squeeze his cheeks with your hands until a pout is showing and you can’t help but laugh—out of nervousness but also out of happiness, from having the sun in your hands and all for yourself.
“Lee Donghyuck,” you start. “That’d make me the happiest in the world, in the universe.”
“You’re sooo cheesy!” He starts the bickering once again, yet he’s sealing your deal with a kiss on your smile and, of course, you’re returning the affection.
(Later that) Tuesday, 03:30 p.m.
You’re standing in the building’s hallway while your brother struggles to lock the door to the 12-7 apartment. Donghyuck is patiently holding your suitcase, waiting for Mark to be done. They’re going to accompany you to the bus stop that’s coming at four p.m. so you can finally go home to the rest of your family and your normal life—you’ll be back studying and working in a few days, after spending Christmas with the family and Donghyuck, who promised to be there to join the Christmas lunch at your home and—maybe, if he doesn’t chicken out—present himself as your boyfriend to your parents.
“We need to change the door lock before y/n moves in here,” Mark says after finally locking it.
“What?” Donghyuck and you ask in unison. “Moving here?”
“You’re not moving in with Donghyuck? I thought I’d finally be free from him,” your brother answers, kind of disappointed, but not as disappointed as Donghyuck after noticing how bad your brother wants him out.
“But where will you go?” You ask him.
“I made plans to share the floor with Yuta.”
“That motherfucking japanese!” Donghyuck screams following Mark down the hallway, and you palm his back trying to reassure him, but your boyfriend won’t calm down. “I swear he wants to steal my best friend from me! He’s so jealous of my life!”
“What would he be jealous of, Donghyuck?” Your brother asks tiredly, and you know he’s rolling his eyes even if all you see is his back opening the building’s front door.
Hi Siyuan!! I hope you're doing well!! Do you happen to have goodies of your drawings? Because your last Doie 🥺💗🤲 I need him on a sticker so badly, it's too cute!
please omg i also wish i had goodies but i'm far too lazy to do that but now i'm sobbing bc i ALSO want a doie sticker like
i just photoshopped this and iT LOOKS SAUR CUUUTEEEEE
Even if I know I can go to your masterlist anytime to find pretty and beautiful and soft fics I will be still shamelessly asking for it.
Taeil soft hours? 🤗 pretty please. Look at him in a big ass t-shirt ❤ and cooking ❤ the cutest isn't he
taeil soft hours !!!!! masterchef moon !!!!
you buy him an apron with masterchef moon embroidered on it and he genuinely then begins to wear it around the entire house, even when he's not cooking (which is often lol). he loves it so much.
he's such a simple guy and his reaction to the gift is so understated you're not even sure he really likes it at first but when you find him butt ass naked in nothing but that apron just wandering around at 6:00am through the apartment you Know. (sorry taeil weird hours slipped in lol)
in an attempt to live up to the masterchef title he genuinely tries to learn how to cook your favourite dish but he gives up So fast because there are SO many instructions and why can't it just be simple like ramen? so he improvises and you end up with something that in no way resembles the original dish but the flavours are still pretty good anyway so you compliment him and he just BEAMS lol
genuinely i think living with him would be very easy. like he is just. a guy. he leaves his socks on the floor, and he never properly cleans the bathroom mirror, but he's always. There. stable and easy with open arms and a real eagerness and willingness to contribute to your life together in such a meaningful and positive way
Surviving a week to Donghyuck's charms and jokes can't be so hard... Worst case scenario, you end up completely falling for your brother's best friend.
▪︎Pairing: brother's best friend!Hyuck x fem reader
Author's note: Hi every1!!! The fluffy Hyuck fic is here, finally. I decided I'll be posting it in two parts because it ended up being way longer than I planned, and since it's written in the format of timestamps. It barely has any conflict, so I was afraid it would get boring or tedious if I posted everything in just one go. So, yeah, part 2 coming next week. Also, I changed Hyuck's major (it's physics now) for plot purposes lol I figured it would be easier for me to write him if we share majors. Also !! I didn´t proof read it but I will during the week lol sorry. Okay, tysm for all the support on the preview !!! enjoy the fic bye !!!!
Tuesday, 10:34 p.m.
Mark moves around the small apartment urgently cleaning up. He makes sure to pick up and throw into the garbage bag between his hands every empty Red Bull can that his roommate has left lying around. On the old sofa rests his guitar, and on the little table in the living room his lyrics notebooks and Donghyuck's physics notes.
"Mark," Donghyuck calls for him, to which the older one only responds with a small sound, indicating that he has his attention—partially, as he's still concentrating on his duty of getting all ready for your arrival—, "Your food is getting cold."
Mark lets out an exasperated sigh while getting all his belongings inside his backpack and his guitar in the case. "I'll just order something once I'm at the studio."
"Wait, you're leaving?"
"Yeah, I need to get some work done with TY. And y/n's arriving at any time so this place has to be tidy and clean and–" Mark stops all motions of arranging the mattress you're going to sleep on on the living room floor, to fix his eyes on his friend. "Hyuck, could you like, put on a t-shirt or something?"
Small drops of water fall from Donghyuck's wet hair onto his naked torso, fresh from the warm shower he just took. The young man does nothing but questions his best friend with a lopsided smile as he finishes his bowl of ramen, sitting at the counter in front of Mark's—that remains full and cold by now.
"What, you think y/n's gonna be scared of all this handsomeness?"
Mark's face is expressionless while looking at Donghyuck, who's feeling himself to add to the point. And Mark has missed you a lot, but he thinks that the faster he gets a break from his chaotic roommate, the better; he can't wait to have a week free of the jokes and headaches Donghyuck causes him because Donghyuck will have you to annoy. Even when he will still be working, to Mark, that sounds pretty much like a vacation.
"Nah, dude. It's fucking cold, you'll get sick."
"You will get sick if you don't get anything to eat as soon as you make it to work," Donghyuck answers back as he gets up from his chair and puts his favorite Michael Jackson t-shirt on. "Promise me you'll order."
"Yeah, I promise," Mark sounds sincere. After a quick hug and a few pats on each other's back, Mark is opening the front door ready to leave for a late-night music session. "Please receive y/n well for me–
"Y/n!"
Screams and laughs from both you and your brother fill the little apartment, as you greet and hug him after almost four months without seeing each other. Just in time, is what Donghyuck thinks while observing the cute interaction, and gently caressing his belly from underneath the t-shirt because, well, he is confident but—even though he has known you for years and you've shared many situations—, he's not confident enough around you to show himself with nothing on like that. At least not yet.
His face lights up as soon as he sees you extend your arms in his direction, and Donghyuck manages to squeeze you into a warm hug and spin you in the air while the both of you laugh.
Your brother says his goodbyes, and Donghyuck tells him there's a chance they could meet up at Johnny's later, in case he wants to join in after work.
"Alright, I'll get there with Taeyong later then."
He waves to both of you and closes the front door, leaving you alone with his roommate.
"Take a relax, bro," he offers you to sit at the counter and you laugh after hearing the famous line after months. You observe him filling a cup with water and placing it in front of you before speaking again. "Want some ramen?"
"Hell yeah. I'm starving."
"Let me heat it for you."
But he was already on it even before you answered. Donghyuck knows well he's very good at turning the simple dish into a delicious meal, and that it's one of your favorite things to share since you two met.
You wouldn't say it was love at first sight, but maybe adoration since the first encounter. Only weeks after your brother moved to start studying, he invited you over because he was missing home too much. And Donghyuck wouldn't be his apartment buddy until a year after, but they already frequented the same group of friends. The two of you were standing awkwardly in a corner at Taeyong's birthday party, and ended up at your brother's because you were hungry, eating ramen together: his secret recipe (that wasn't mysterious at all) that included tomatoes and scrambled eggs and that he only made for 'real special situations'.
Donghyuck sets the bowl in front of you, the tomato scrambled noodles and eggs making your mouth water and curve in a smile. A ray of sunshine gets on the chair beside you even though it's almost midnight, and makes you feel at home, warming you even though it's freezing outside.
"So, how's school?" You start talking with a mouth full of ramen, lips moisturized with its sauce that makes Donghyuck smile when he sets his eyes on them. His look makes you blush, but you blame it on the spiciness of the Hot Chicken Spicy x2 package of noodles that he prepared for you. "Hyuck, this is burning my mouth."
"Well, don't put so many noodles in your mouth at once!" Donghyuck brings the glass of water to your hands and you accept it immediately. Its freshness somehow makes you forget the mess that Hyuck's eyes on your filthy ramen lips could have caused.
Maybe surviving a week living with the guy you like (who is your brother's best friend, which makes things a lot more complicated) will be harder than you thought.
"School's been kicking my ass," the boy continues and you nod your head, sadly sharing the sentiment. "I started my winter break last Friday, but I have to take a final in two weeks so I'll be studying. And Mark doesn't get a winter break."
"Motherfucking TY, won't let him rest."
"That's what I say!" He agrees with you, his eyes widening and sighing in exasperation. "Both of them are workaholics. Won't stop working on their music even for a week."
"Yeah. And knowing Mark, he'll try to make the most of his time since he doesn't have to teach at school for two weeks."
You knew in advance that your brother wouldn't be home much despite your visit, however extraordinary it may be. He warned you about it, that he would be focusing 100% on Taeyong's album, but that he would definitely try to take advantage of the free time to go out with you, or just chill together at home. On the other hand, Mark assured you that Donghyuck would be very happy to spend the time he wouldn't be there with you. The idea gave you butterflies in your stomach when your brother texted it to you; some emojis of a mischievous smile followed the message but you didn't know how to interpret it, since Mark is terrible at texting and pretty much a boomer.
"But don't worry!" Donghyuck speaks after a brief pause. "I'll study early in the mornings while you sleep, then we'll have the afternoons to hang out, and Mark can join whenever he's free. He'll make time for it, I'm sure."
Somehow, the thought of Donghyuck getting up early during his break to have the afternoons free to spend time with you makes your heart melt a little. You lower your head, trying to hide the inevitable smile on your lips, but you fail wildly. You decide to adhere to Donghyuck's plan, nodding and showing the tight-lipped smile that spreads to his face.
"Good." He nods as well. "So, you wanna go to Johnny's later?" Donghyuck asks, his thumb pointing in the direction of the door.
"Yeah, sure." You get up from the kitchen table to start doing your dishes at the sink. "I'm excited to see the boys after so long."
"And we have some new additions to the group."
Donghyuck's voice reaches your ears from behind. You're quickly cleaning the single bowl and glass you used, so you finish and turn around to keep listening to him face-to-face. Donghyuck picks up on his monologue.
"There's Jungwoo. He's living with Jaehyun and Doyoung and he's about to finish doing vet in college. And it's funny, because he really looks and acts like a doggie, and he's doing vet," Donghyuck finishes the sentence, looking at you with an expression that suggests 'Can you believe that?'.
His silliness makes you laugh, which encourages Donghyuck to continue sharing his first impressions of his new friends. "Then there's Yuta. He came from Japan and opened a café on the first floor of the building where Johnny and Taeyong live, and that's how they met. He's a little cold with me," Donghyuck shrugs at it, yet you can tell in his expression how he gets discouraged when he thinks about that situation. "But he's not cold with Mark. And Mark is, I don't know, he's obsessed with Yuta." There is a brief silence in which Donghyuck only looks into your eyes with a super serious face. "I hate that."
And you burst into laughter. You don't need to ask Donghyuck if he's jealous, because you know for a fact that he very much is. As soon as he doesn't get all the attention, he gets annoying. Don't you dare not answer one of the silly cat reels he sends on Instagram or he will start texting you things like "Pay attention to me" or "Answer or I'll get sad." So you know how it can be. He doesn't get annoyed over the Baekhyun posts he shares with you because you always reply to them. Donghyuck might get jealous of Baekhyun too, but he won't show that to you.
"Don't worry, Hyuck." You circle the island to stand next to him and try to comfort him, one of your hands caressing circles on his back. He quickly seeks comfort by resting his head on your shoulder, and you can notice his slightly wet hair smells like green apple and cinnamon, like baby shampoo. "You're Mark's best friend. The things you've been through together, he won't get through again with anyone else. That's what's special about you two."
"You're right, y/n," he agrees while getting his head off your shoulder. "None of them will ever know Mark ran out of toilet paper at a party once and he sacrificed a sock to clean his-"
"Oh my fucking God" you cut him off before he can finish, not wanting to hear any of it. "Gross! Some things are better kept as a secret, Hyuck! I'll go change."
"But we are like a family!" he screams as you get out of the kitchen and into Donghyuck and Mark's room to get ready for Johnny's house. "Sharing those things helps us get closer!"
The walls are thin, so you don't bother answering Donghyuck from the room. "Honestly, Hyuck, I don't really care where my brother's butt has been or whatever. Let's get closer by sharing some drinks at Johnny's."
Wednesday, 01:47 a.m.
"So, how did you two meet?" Yuta asks, taking up the free space next to you on the couch and passing you two cans of beer. Exactly what you need after three rounds of karaoke with Johnny and Doyoung that are inexhaustible.
They're still going off strong in front of the TV, waiting for Mark to get back and join them in their madness.
"Oh, we're not together."
"Oh, that's for sure. I know you're not pulling any bitches, Hyuck."
Donghyuck laughs dryly at the Japanese boy, putting on his best expression of annoyance; tongue poking at his inside cheek and rolling his eyes, and he replies, "That's not true. I can pull anyone I want."
"Prove it," Yuta pushes him because he knows that Donghyuck is an easy-going person, and always a good target for a challenge.
Donghyuck quickly scans the room while you busy yourself taking a sip of your can, not wanting to get involved in Yuta's teasing, until he lands eyes on Jaehyun. He knows the boy loves him and is almost always up for some of his affection.
"Jaehyun's not an option," Yuta adds, the always good observant, and Donghyuck sighs very audibly before throwing his head back on the couch.
But he composes himself quickly to ask, turning slightly to you with his arm still firm around your shoulders. "Would you get with me? Hypothetically?"
“Are you asking me because I’m the only girl in the room?” you question him with a raise of your brows.
“Nah, you’re my first option,” he replies with a subtle smile, eyes closing slightly into the shape of two crescent moons.
You like to think he truly has no idea the effect his words have on you, and that he's just messing with Yuta, trying to prove a point. Yet, you can't help feel the heat rise to your cheeks. A deep breath is all it takes you to ignore the intern butterflies and follow the conversation, as if you're not already imagining the thousand scenarios where you and Donghyuck are an established couple living with two dogs (you would like a cat but he's allergic) and a hamster.
“But I thought your first option was Jaehyun–”
“Just answer the question, y/n.”
“Alright, jeez…”
You roll your eyes and give yourself a moment to think. Would you get together with Hyuck, hypothetically? Considering the four-year crush you've had on your brother's best friend since the moment you met him, no, you wouldn't.
You would get with him for real. All of your friends back home said it's time you brave up and just confess to him. You better come back with the signed marriage papers, your best friend’s voice resonates in your head.
"I mean… Yes?" you answer by looking at Yuta, trying to avoid Donghyuck's eyes that you know are set on the blushed skin of your face. "I guess Hyuck is not a bad match," you finish with a shy shrug, sinking yourself deeper on the couch and taking another long drink.
Donghyuck smiles contentedly at your answer, his chest filling with confidence, and kisses you wet with beer on the forehead that gets you squeezed up to his body for a second. By the time he's done, you rest your head on his shoulder to return the affection, trying not to throw up all the butterflies and not noticing Yuta's knowing stare.
"Keyword: hypothetically. And I said 'Prove it.'" Yuta pushes a little more.
"Bro, you're so annoying." Donghyuck gets up from the couch exasperated, and almost makes you spill all your beer while trying to get you up with him. "What, you want us to make out?"
Yuta nods, crossing his arms and spreading his legs on the couch that he has all for himself now, challenging the younger boy.
"Sorry dude, we're not into exhibitionism."
Donghyuck takes your hand to drag you away from the living room, but you can still hear Yuta's laugh and the words the two you would end up choosing to ignore for the rest of the night.
"This is not how you're getting some, Hyuck! Don't say I didn't try to help you!"
Donghyuck's hand holding yours (or rather dragging you into the kitchen) feels embarrassingly good. Worth blushing and having your heart fastening inside your chest. Damn Donghyuck for making you feel like a teenager who had just exchanged looks with their highschool crush. And just when you needed a break from that ridiculous wave of emotions…
“What are you wearing!?” You hear Johnny’s voice coming out of the speakers, as he’s still holding the mic to his mouth while the instrumentals of his most iconic karaoke performance play on the back, A Flying Butterfly by YB.
Mark and Taeyong have arrived at the apartment and they have caught everyone's attention because Taeyong is wearing an inflatable T-Rex costume. Jungwoo is the first one to get to Taeyong with his mouth open in astonishment, an expressión that is quickly replaced with amusement as soon as he gets to hug and squeeze the dinosaur in his hands.
“Jungwoo, stop squeezing my butt!” Taeyong’s voice comes a little distorted from inside the costume, but it’s clear enough for everyone to laugh at his comment. “You're going to make it deflate!”
Jungwoo keeps looking at Taeyong in the costume as if he was a kid who just saw Santa; hugging the dinosaur and saying it feels perfect for cuddling. This is the moment you understand what Donghyuck meant when he said Jungwoo looks just like an excited doggie.
“Taeyong saw it online and got it because it was on sale a couple weeks ago,” Mark starts explaining to no one in particular. “But then he ordered it and we completely forgot about it, until it arrived at the studio tonight.”
“I put it on inside the elevator so I could surprise you guys,” Taeyong adds with a happy smile, unzipping the costume just for his head to come out of it, somehow making it look all more ridiculous. Now the T-Rex looks like he has a floating head right above his stomach.
“Yeah… We had to stop the elevator for some more time because getting it inflated was way harder than I thought,” your brother says as he watches Taeyong and Jungwoo struggle with each other, because Jungwoo desperately wants to get inside the costume too but Taeyong doesn’t want to stop wearing it just yet.
Yuta only judges them from where he’s still sitting on the couch, arms crossed while shaking his head. “I can’t believe you really spent money on this.” Yet his comment is followed by a laugh. It’s not as intense as Doyoung and Taeil’s, though, who have been laughing since Taeyong crossed the door, and haven’t missed the chance to film and take pictures of him (and Jungwoo who still wouldn’t leave his side.)
"Alright so," Johnny says into the mic to attract everyone's attention. "Karaoke?"
The guys start to team up; some out of affinity or fun, others because they know they will definitely win the most points if they are grouped with certain people who hit all the notes on any song. Donghyuck, however, doesn't team up with anyone right away. He just stands in the middle of Johnny's and Taeyong's living room, watching Mark immediately cling to Yuta (who already had Jungwoo clinging to his other side.) He gestures towards your brother with arms crossed and a roll of his eyes. So, noticing his jealousy over your brother's recent preferences—jealousy that wasn't that hard to notice, he made it pretty obvious—and taking pity on your friend, you offer to team up with him.
"Wanna kick some ass together?" And you observe him playing hard to get. You're not a bad match for karaoke; you might not sing as well as Taeil or Doyoung, but you don't suck at it, and Donghyuck knows that very well. So when he starts doubting over his answer, you know he just wants to mess with you.
Suddenly Taeil is standing in front of the two of you, and Donghyuck, with an incredibly exaggerated face of astonishment, asks him:
"You wanna team up with us?!"
See, you knew he wasn't going to leave you out of his team.
Taeil only shrugs, as relaxed as always. "Sure."
Donghyuck squeezes his older friend in a hug that only gets a groan out of Taeil (and a little smile) before throwing an arm each on your shoulders, and screams to the rest. "Everybody, we got Moon Taeil!"
A punch from your fist to his ribs. A little groan followed by a laugh coming out of his mouth and a gentle squeeze on your shoulder. He's quick to correct himself.
"I got Moon Taeil and y/n! And we're gonna kick your butts!"
Thursday, 6:22 p.m.
It's been a long time since Donghyuck has had a girl in his room.
It's not like Yuta was right when he said he can't pull anyone, Donghyuck just hasn't had the time nor the energy. His break and free time to do whatever he wants just started. Even when Mark's not home most of the nights, it doesn't feel quite right to him to bring girls over to his shared bedroom when his roommate could come back at any time. And even if he had wished to bring any girls home during his break, he knew you would be here, so he didn't wanna do that either. (Not that he's bothered that he can't bring girls home because of you. Actually he'd rather have you inside his bedroom than anyone else.)
So when he's watching you laying on his bed, reading a silly high-school novel you got from your brother's library and quietly keeping him company while he studies, his heart-rate fastens and he feels his cheeks rise its temperature. He grows embarrassed when, after seeing you smile so sweetly at him when you catch his eyes on you, the only thing he can think of is leaving those stupid Relativity notes behind, running over to your spot and stealing a kiss from your lips.
Yet Donghyuck remains motionless at his desk. He inwardly curses when you get up and start walking toward him, and wishes you wouldn't ask why he's so red because he can't blame it on the weather—it's the middle of winter.
To his surprise, you're curious about a totally different thing.
"What are you doing with all these comics?" you ask, picking up one of his Flash comics and opening it to a spot that Donghyuck has marked with a post it.
"I'm taking a class about Quantum Physics and Relativity and catching up on some work," he starts explaining, all his romantic fantasies put on pause to focus on the second thing (after you) that occupies his mind the most these days: college.
He watches your eyes grow with interest after hearing the name of his class, and he can't deny he gets all excited thinking about the possibilities: of having a girlfriend that would hear him talk about what he's most passionate about all he wanted. Knowing how much you've always enjoyed hearing the new things he's learned and about his most recent investigations, and noticing his feelings for you have only increased since you came back, Donghyuck's mind wonders.
"You know in the comics Flash supposedly travels at speeds close to light, right?" He watches you nod. "And he throws this infinite mass punch… Well, in one of the comics Flash punches this villain, and his fist is so powerful the villain will fly all over the ocean and land in another continent," he keeps explaining. "What are the chances of this actually happening, analyzing it from the relativistic perspective? That's what I'm looking into."
"And have you arrived to any conclusions?"
"Yeah, I have actually." He stars searching for a specific piece of paper which displays a bunch of calculations and formulas that you don't understand at all, but they look awesome.
Donghyuck doesn't wait for a specific reaction, yet your response cracks him up a little.
"Could you explain this for me? Dummy level?" you ask wrinkling your nose. Donghyuck wants to kiss the confusion off your face.
Honestly, he might be looking for any excuses to kiss you at this point. But, to be fair, he's liked you since that first time he cooked ramen for you the night you met—that was like four years ago. The only reason he has never made a move on you is because you're his friend's sister.
"Yeah, yeah I can do that." He lets out a breathy laugh, shaking these ideas out of his head once more. "Basically, that the mass of his punch is 'infinite' is a consequence of the relativistic effects of travelling at speeds near to light." He points at a calculation on the paper. "And if Flash punches you on the face he won't send you flying to another continent."
This time, Donghyuck watches the disappointment take over your features; smile and shoulders dropping at the same time. "He won't?"
Donghyuck denies with his head. "You would disintegrate in an instant. The energy of his punch is 750,000 times greater than the energy released by an atomic bomb exploding in your face."
You're not saying anything. You're just looking right into his eyes and it's making Donghyuck considerably nervous. Thankfully, he's been sitting all this time, because considering how close you're standing in front of him he's sure his knees would've given up on him a while ago.
He gulps. "I did the maths."
"You're a fucking genious."
Donghyuck melts hearing you praise his work.
“Okay. I’m ready,” Mark says as he waits for you at the room’s door.
Right, you and your brother were scheduled to have dinner together.
Donghyuck doesn't want you to go just yet, he doesn't want to stop chatting with you about irrelevant-to-the-society stuff like this, but he understands this is one of the few moments you’ll get to hang out with Mark alone, so he doesn’t tag alone when Mark offers him to.
“I’ll just have a light dinner and study a little bit more,” he politely declines. Then, he’s looking into your eyes once again. “Wanna chill together when you’re done with your brother?”
“You wanna watch Oppenheimer?”
Does he want to spend three hours watching a movie about an international bunch of nerds who just argue for more than two thirds of the plot, and some awfully awkward scenes of Mr. Oppenheimer flirting using physics that he definitely didn’t think of replicating with you? Again?
Donghyuck thinks you might be the love of his life.
“Of-fucking-course I wanna watch Oppenheimer.” He thinks this might be a better answer, rather than confessing his undying love to you (in front of his best friend) (that is your brother.)
“Nobody’s gonna ask me if I want to watch Oppenheimer?” Mark questions with arms crossed and narrowed eyes.
“Mark, you were snoring inside the movie theater when we went to watch it together.”
“I had a long day, dude!”
“You literally came out of the theater and said ‘this was fucking boring for a World War Two movie’!”
“Well, I mean yeah–” Mark starts trying to defend himself but gets interrupted by you, when you start pushing him towards the door saying you’re hungry, and reminding him how most of the times they argue he can never win against Donghyuck. “But you gotta accept it was missing a little action, man.”
Donghyuck throws his head back, and then looks at your brother with his eyes squinted and a fake smile. “They were scientists, Mark, not soldiers–”
“Whatever!” you say when you’ve managed to get your brother out of the room. “We’re leaving. Hyuck–” Donghyuck notices his eyebrows relax, and the frown he had while arguing with Mark is gone as soon as you’re calling his name with a smile on your lips. “Looking forward to movie night.”
“I’ll get some beers for us,” Donghyuck adds, to which you agree excitedly.
Mark sighs once you’re on your way out of the apartment. “I swear to God,” he starts. “You two are like made for each other.”
You just punch his shoulder as a defense mechanism, not knowing how to react or manage your emotions when it comes to Donghyuck. And you definitely don't know Donghyuck catches a glimpse of your smile and your reddened cheeks before you close the front door.
That simple thing, maybe gives Donghyuck a little hope.
Friday, 11:13 a.m.
You can't believe you're jealous of a dog.
You watch the video play over and over on your phone screen. Donghyuck was literally rubbing his face on the little fur ball, using it as some kind of cotton pad, then showering the dog with kisses all over her little face.
Chenle's friends with the boys and he recently got a dog that he named Daegal. Today, Chenle and Mark were going to be working together since early and Chenle didn't want to leave the dog alone. Apparently, Donghyuck and Daegal love each other, and that's the reason why you're currently at Chenle's, at fucking eleven in the morning during your break.
Donghyuck and you were the designated babysitters of the dog.
You wonder over the video on your phone a little more, thinking of what to put as a caption to share it on your story. Maybe some emojis? Some angry emojis because Donghyuck won't even look at you now that he's with the doggie? Maybe cute emojis… Something like a sun, a heart, and a dog. Maybe the caption boyfriend material, or something in the lines of pay attention to me followed by some exclamation points.
You decide to post it with the text 'taking good care of the baby' and tagging Donghyuck and Chenle's account. It doesn't take long for two notifications to arrive. One is from Donghyuck, who just re-uploaded your story, and the other is a reply from Chenle. 'Who's the baby? Donghyuck or Daegal?' followed by a cracking up emoji.
A smile takes over your face reading it, and it stays there when you get your head up and your eyes meet Donghyuck, who's laying relaxed on the couch with the little fur ball on top of his belly. He has his cute transparent glasses on, and he's wearing some comfy pants and a hoodie that makes him look incredibly cozy and huggable.
His eyes find yours, and an arm extends in your direction, inviting you to join him on the couch with a pat besides his spot. His body radiates an enveloping heat that makes you forget it's winter, but it seems that it's not enough for Donghyuck, who grabs one of the soft blankets laying around the couch and puts it over the three of you.
The characteristic sound of Netflix reaches your ears and then Donghyuck is looking for the drama that you started watching together a couple of weeks ago, from your homes and when you both had some free time through Netflix Party. The third episode of My First True Love starts playing on the TV screen while you wait for the food you ordered earlier, and you feel content. Everything about the situation is too domestic and feels familiar, and you're not surprised when you think that you wouldn't mind getting used to this.
What is a surprise is when Donghyuck puts his arm over your head and offers you to get closer to him, resting a little more on his body.
"This is nice." You hear him say, almost in a whisper. The midday sun illuminates almost as much as his smile when you look up at him.
"It is," you agree, focusing once again at the TV (because looking at him was making you melt inside.)
"We could do it more often."
And by the increasing rate of his heart and the soft caresses in your hair, you knew he didn't mean just babysitting Daegal.
(Still) Friday, 04:02 p.m.
Donghyuck wakes up from his nap on the couch to the smell of coffee and missing the warmth from his two personal heaters, Daegal and you, who he remembers were still with him before he fell asleep. He sits and stretches in his place before moving towards the kitchen, where he already visualized your figure in front of the counter, with your back to him. You don't seem to notice him, so as he walks into the kitchen, he makes sure to greet you with a little hello.
You just look over your right shoulder at him, but you have to raise your head because Donghyuck is closer than expected. You greet him in the same way, but with a sweet smile on your face. "Hi, Hyuck."
Now that Donghyuck is so close, he can notice that the smell of coffee is coming from the machine in front of you that is filling two mugs with particular writings: one says 'best dad in the world', and the other says 'MARK' in big colorful letters (someone also took it upon themselves to print a photo of Mark holding a watermelon on it.)
"Chenle's mugs are fucking weird, don't you think?"
Donghyuck laughs hearing your question and decides to explain. "These are part of an inside joke. Chenle always says someone like Mark would be his ideal son, so your brother got these made for Chenle for last year's fathers' day." He finishes standing against the counter by your side, and thanks you when you handle him a warm home-made latte.
Donghyuck can't take coffee so well since most of the time it makes his stomach hurt, and you know this.
"You don't have to drink it. I remember you're not good with coffee," you tell him, but it's too late when Donghyuck's already sipping the first drink.
Yeah, he might have to use Chenle's bathroom later, but he's willing to face a shit rather than miss out on the opportunity to share a coffee made by you, on a winter afternoon where it's just the two of you and the sun filtering through the kitchen window falling on your face.
"I just thought it would've been disrespectful not making you one too."
You finish your sentence but smile watching him enjoying the coffee anyway, and Donghyuck thinks that maybe, just maybe, he's a little in love with you.
So he takes a deep breath, takes a lot of courage, and sets out to do what works best for him when it comes to you: pretend he's joking when in reality he's only on the verge of confessing his feelings. "Do I have something in my lips?"
"You do, actually," you answer his question pointing at your own upper lip with your finger to make him understand. "A little bit of foam around here–"
"Please do the Secret Garden scene."
"What?"
He's not hesitant to repeat it. Donghyuck internally questions himself though, wondering where all this confidence has come from. Because, yes, Donghyuck is very confident, naturally. But not when it comes to you. His knees go weak and his stomach starts to ache with nerves when he thinks of things like kissing you. In that sense, he will not waste this sudden confidence-rush.
"Please do the Secret Garden with me."
And this time around he can confirm you understood 100% what he means because your laugh and your punch on his arm indicate it. He notices it might be a reflex act of yours—punching people in the arm when you get nervous or don't know what to retort. He's glad he won't have to worry about punching mean guys when he makes you his girlfriend, though; you'll probably take care of that yourself.
Donghyuck still catches you staring at his lips the moment he gets rid of the foam with his tongue. And when you snap out of your trance, your eyes meet Donghyuck's and his eyebrows that move up and down, just to tease you a little more. A mischievous smile is also adorning his face.
He only watches you shake your head while your cheeks grow red, even when you try to hide it behind that big mug with the picture of your brother holding the watermelon.
"Anyway," he decides it will be better to change subjects. "Where's Daegal?"
"I thought she was sleeping with you?" You ask before you start looking around the place for the little fur ball.
"I mean, she was as long as I remember." Donghyuck watches you leave the kitchen and move around the living room, checking every corner for the dog you two were supposed to sacrifice your life for if needed (that's how Chenle described the seriousness of the duty). "You were too…" But you're far enough not to hear the disappointment in Donghyuck's voice after waking up all alone.
"She wasn't here when you woke up?" you ask, standing in front of the couch.
Donghyuck shakes his head no. You start picking up the tangle of blankets and throwing them in the direction of Donghyuck, who hardly catches them in his arms. It's confirmed that Daegal hasn't been trapped under the blankets and at least she hasn't suffocated to death. Although that doesn't give any of you any comfort; the doggie still is nowhere around.
"Oh my fucking god," you say, trapping your head in your hands. "We lost Chenle's dog."
"She has to be somewhere around."
"We lost Chenle's dog and we didn't even go out with her," he hears you repeat all the way from Chenle's bedroom, where Donghyuck checks if the little dog is hiding. He looks under the bed, inside the closet, and inside the bathroom, only to find nothing. "We must be the dumbest babysitters in the world," you finish when he's back in the living room.
He looks down at the watch on his wrist and notices it's almost four thirty, which makes him start to sweat from the nerves. "Chenle's about to come back. We need to find this dog right now."
"Chenle's gonna kill us."
"y/n, just look for the dog."
"He will find out and probably hire a contract killer to deal with us for losing his baby." Donghyuck sees your desperation and calls your name once more, but you don't listen to him. "I'll never see Baekhyun live again!"
And the doorbell rings, followed by a knock on the door and Chenle's screams coming from outside, telling you to let him in.
"Fuck my life," Donghyuck mutters and goes to open the door.
"Hyuck!" you hiss while following him closely. "What are you gonna tell him?"
He silences you, looking back at you and placing his index finger over his lips. Donghyuck takes a deep breath, puts his hand on the handle, sweats a little more despite fighting to calm his nerves, and finally opens the door. Mark is the first to enter, anyway, and he doesn't greet any of you; he simply calls for Daegal, and Donghyuck knows that this is the moment where he should start begging Chenle to let him keep his life and promise him that he will find another dog that looks exactly like–
"Daegal!"
Like the little white ball of fur in your brother's arms.
Donghyuck looks back at you once more, his eyes and mouth wide open in astonishment, and you return an equally astonished look.
"Thanks guys for taking good care of the baby," Chenle says once he's done greeting his dog, who appeared literally out of nowhere and left you and Donghyuck stressed enough for probably three or four months. "She didn't give you any problem, right?"
"Oh, no. Definitely, no." Donghyuck and you are quick to deny at the same time, which might sound a little suspicious as Chenle looks at both of you with narrowed eyes.
Then, he's moving his head to focus his gaze on the mess you left behind when you were rummaging through the couch and the blankets, looking for the dog. "Alright, lovebirds. Then I hope that disaster isn't because you two fucked on my couch while I was gone."
You didn't yet see my worth, so you try to play me. But I was so in love that I just got a little bit too complicated.
▪︎ Summary: A chaotic New Year's party makes you rethink the kind of relationship you've been having with Donghyuck for the past few months. He is a player, but you love the game.
▪︎ Pairing: Lee Donghyuck x female reader
▪︎ Genres: friends with benefits, smut, angst
▪︎ Word count: 7.4k (I'm so sorry.)
▪︎ Warnings: explicit sexual content, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT; profanity; substance consumption; toxic behavior. (Please let me know if I missed something.)
Listen to the playlist here. | Click to see Hyuck's moodboard.
Author's note: This is my secret santa gift for @neochan as part of the event hosted by @neowritingsnet . Hey Sam, I was your secret santa! Happy holidays and I hope you can enjoy the fic :) Didn't have the time to get it proof read so I'm really sorry about that.
Lolo.
1. Forget about it, forget about him
"How are you surviving the New Year's party?"
Your question takes Rina by surprise, since you see her get a little scared when she hears your voice from behind. But, seeing that it's only you, it doesn't take long for that beautiful smile that characterizes her to reappear.
"It's going really well, I think." She answers by returning her gaze to the front, where your group of friends is preparing for the main event of the night.
It's exactly two minutes to midnight. You know this not only because of the gigantic TV screen in the living room of the mansion—that has been broadcasting the countdown to the new year in different parts of the world since you arrived at the boys' house— but because you can also feel it in the air.
Aeri is helping Mia bring the glasses into the living room and set them ready for the cocktail party. Donghyuck is arguing with Jaemin because he's not helping Jisung with the Champagne bottles he's too scared to open. Chenle's laughter can be heard from the kitchen followed by some groans, and Mark telling him "it's not funny at all". You only find out what the mess is about when Jeno comes and lights up the room with his eye smile, telling the guys that Mark splashed his own eyes cutting the lime for the margaritas, and now he can't see anything.
You and Renjun share a cigarette on the balcony, now with Rina on your side.
"You know things are about to get weird, right?" Renjun asks the girl.
"Yeah, the other girls warned me you have this tradition going on," she starts. "No one leaves without a kiss from your New Year's parties." And her face flushes red as he finishes the sentence with his eyes locked on Donghyuck, who is finally pouring the champagne into the glasses with a smirk, looking as handsome as ever.
The action doesn't go unnoticed by you or Renjun, so you decide to push the new girl a little more. "You've got someone in mind?"
"Well…" She laughs, and without taking her eyes off him, she drops it: "I might go for Donghyuck."
The clock strikes midnight and the cheers are heard, both inside the mansion and outside in the street. As you approach inside to celebrate and drink the champagne together with your friends, you are surprised and intercepted by your friend Aeri, who plants a quick New Year's kiss on your lips before throwing herself into her boyfriend's arms and doing the same with him. You just laugh it off and empty the drink in your glass to set your eyes on a different pair meters away from you.
Rina had been the newest addition to the group, and obviously, before inviting her to the mansion and one of the chaotic New Year's Eve parties, someone had to warn her how things were. It was only fair that Rina was aware of an agreement made years ago between you and your friends: everyone gets at least one midnight kiss during the new year celebration. She was told just enough to try to survive the night.
The mansion is the boys' rented house and private studio. All of them have been making good amounts of money in the music industry lately, gaining popularity really fast, and it's a privilege that she isn't paying anymore to enter a party in the mansion.
It wasn't her fault that no one told her that something has been going on between you and Donghyuck for months, and that you were hoping that he wouldn't kiss anyone but you that night. When you didn't tell Rina anything as soon as she said she wanted to go for him, you were only waiting to test Donghyuck.
Because if you think about the situation, it was all his fault, honestly.
Everyone in your friend group knows Donghyuck and you have been exclusively seeing each other for months now. Your girl friends know very well he isn't afraid to fill your ears with sweet things and words of affection when you are alone. Yet, he won't show you around and would act like you're no more than friends when there's someone else.
You still don't know what his problem is, but you are growing sick and tired of crying for nights because he won't talk to you. Instead, he would have you thinking you did something wrong to upset him or that he doesn't care about you anymore, to then come and act like he didn't just ignore you for days. But you aren't going to take your anger on Rina.
You are going to do it on Donghyuck later, definitely.
Lee Donghyuck, or one of the most recognized and well paid r&b artists from this new movement of kids coming up in the industry, making some of the best music of the continent independently. But for the ones who know him privately, he’s just a kid wasting a lot of talent and potential, who's only got a big ton of pressure on his shoulders and stacks of money he doesn't know how to spend more than on parties, alcohol, and drugs.
He’s also the boy you've been chasing and trying to get with for years. And now that you have him, you can't lose him just like that.
If he kisses Rina right in front of you and everyone else when he refuses to do that with you, that's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
The white lights go down until it is only the colored lights hanging from the tall ceiling, and the Christmas lights taped on the wall that illuminate the room very dimly. You can appreciate some of your best friends still exchanging their midnight kisses. You can also spot Jaemin in one corner pouring out one margarita after another, and Donghyuck with Rina huddled against the wall in the other corner of the room. The millisecond he makes eye contact with you and smiles all the way from there, then returning his attention to Rina is actually what sets you on fire. Not in the way you would want to, though.
You don't need to stay there to know Donghyuck's gonna try and play you dirty. And you won't give him the satisfaction of standing there alone, watching him kiss with someone else.
You should have listened to your friends when they told you over and over again that Donghyuck is and always will be a player, not worth all your tears. You should have also heard your other side of consciousness telling you "don't do it, don't go there." But it's too late to regret it when you take the cup from Jaemin's hands and drink all of its contents, then grab the bottle of tequila and Jaemin's hand and drag him with you to the kitchen.
You know Donghyuck like the palm of your hand. You could try and play his games too.
When you set the tequila bottle on the kitchen counter and sit yourself on it to grab Jaemin by the collar and put him between your parted legs, the mischief reaches his eyes and reflects on the smirk of his mouth.
"I feel like we're not here for more margaritas," he says looking into your eyes and placing his hands on your thighs.
You give the bottle one last swallow before confirming his suspicions.
"You're right. Happy New Year."
Kissing Jaemin has always been a pleasure, in every sense of the word. His kisses are as lazy as he is, and feel as full of affection as if you were in love with each other, which makes you think about how there is no doubt why everyone falls in love with him so easily.
His lips taste like salt and lime, and explore yours sweetly until he opens his way to the inside of your mouth. There, the salty taste is replaced by a sweetness that contrasts with the rest of his movements. His hands caress your legs, look to get you closer to his body, squeezing your thighs and butt and making you approach the edge of the counter, but never completely losing that calm that characterizes him. Jaemin is the perfect definition of a tease.
"Thought we wouldn't be doing this anymore." You feel the vibrations of his vocal chords under your lips that leave his neck wet with kisses. When you don't answer him, he cups your face separating you from his skin, and makes you look him in the eyes. "Aren't you and Hyuck together?"
Well, that's a hard question. Because it seems like it depends on the situation and the mood. When Donghyuck feels like treating you like his girlfriend, you really feel like the luckiest girl in the world. He's sweet, caring, and funny. He comes to your home to share dinner with your family and spend the night, and you do the same at his. He even let you spend the entire Christmas day at the mansion—and you know that's something reserved for the couples only. You had morning sex, breakfast together, opened presents, and even cuddled while watching movies until it was dark outside.
You could say you are together only when he's feeling like giving you his attention. The rest of the time, you only try to figure out his feelings: when he will disappear for an entire day, won't talk to you for a week or will get mad if you go partying without him, but then flirt with other girls right in front of you.
Following that line of thought:
"No, we are not together." You finally tell Jaemin.
He only clicks his tongue and shakes his head, before moving closer to your ear to whisper. "That's a shame, because I think this would be much hotter if you were."
It sends a shiver down your spine and settles a strange feeling in your stomach at the same time. It's kind of frustrating, the way no matter how much you want to get Donghyuck out of your head and just have a good time with other boys, you can't get yourself to do it.
Donghyuck doesn't need to know, but it's not the first time you try forgetting you're mad at him with a little help from others. And that's the thing about it: that you only ever get to try, because the guilt takes over you despite how he has neglected and hurt you, and you end up going back to him over and over.
That unsettling feeling washes over you like a bucket of cold water, so you have to separate Jaemin from your lips before apologizing and rushing out of the kitchen to find your friends.
2. I think I wanna kiss you, right here in front of everybody
"You know what's your problem? You're always being too nice." Mia leans on the balcony railing with a joint between his lips, and stretches an open hand to you. The lighter lands on her palm and she's quickly lighting up the rolled paper, passing it to you after a couple of deep puffs.
"Well," you start exhaling the smoke. "That depends on who's saying it."
"You just need to fuck someone else, not letting remorse or sad feelings get in between. Just to know if you really wanna stop seeing Hyuck after it or not."
"But you don't understand," the lump in your throat can be noticed through your shaky voice, and the tears begin to threaten to fall from your eyes so Aeri—who has positioned herself in front of you and is covering you from the rest of the people inside the party—takes your hand and gives it a little comforting squeeze. "I've liked him for so long. I really, really only want to be with him."
"You really want to be with someone who's been making you cry for months now? I remember you having more sad than happy nights," Mia points out once again. You quickly dry your tears with your hands before they keep falling. "Even on fucking New Year's. New Year's party and you're crying over this dickhead." She says in disbelief.
"Must be some reaaally good dick if it got you this down bad."
The three of you manage to laugh at Aeri's comment, thankfully. You maintain the order of the round and pass the joint back to Aeri.
"It is," you confess, blowing out the smoke. "He really is that good."
"Does he at least make you cum?"
"Not all the time—"
"Then you have to leave him, sister." Mia interrupts. There's a smile on her face now that indicates she's just half-joking.
"But he's seriously so good!" You shake your head in frustration followed by an exasperated sigh. It's embarrassing to say it out loud, but your friends had known you for years, and they know that this talk and all the shed tears won't change a thing. "You know I'm not leaving him."
"Yeah, I know this conversation is fucking pointless." Mia's face is illuminated by the light from her cell phone when she takes it out ready to play one of her latest obsessions. Cats Café, a new game that locks her up in your bathroom for hours, playing seated on your toilet and leaving you and Aeri hanging out in the living room of your house, just the two of you during girls' nights. "Just please, try to keep in mind how bad you've had it the last few days the next time he tries to sugarcoat you with his words."
"You wouldn't be having such a bad time if you were going out with me, instead of him."
"Aeri, you literally have a boyfriend." You tell her with a roll of your eyes.
"And you literally took my midnight kiss in front of him, with no complains," she replies to you. "And Mark told me he wouldn't care if I ever wanna try something with a girl!"
"Wait," you observe Mia pause his game and look up at your other friend with furrowed eyebrows. "You mean as in a threesome?"
"Who's having a threesome?" Donghyuck asks throwing his arm around Aeri's shoulders, and taking the drink out of her hands to empty it down his throat.
"The three of us," she answers looking at Donghyuck with a smile, and doing a circular motion with her hand pointing at you, Mia, and herself.
His eyes open up in astonishment when you laugh hearing Aeri's words, but an amused smile takes over his face at the same time. "That's extremely unfair, don't you think?"
"Want me to film it for you? So you don’t miss out." You ask him in return.
"I'd rather film you and me, alone." He says in a teasing tone.
"Okaaaaaay," Mia gets up from her place to shove her phone down her jean pockets and starts walking back inside. "Can't a girl play Cats Café in peace without having to listen to you being some horny motherfuckers all the time?!"
"Go get fucked, Mia." Donghyuck tells your friend and you get to punch him in the arm when he comes to stand to your left, which gets him laughing and complaining.
Mia only points her middle finger at him and yells something like “I'll ask your brother.” Next thing you know, Mark has joined Aeri on the balcony after communicating that Mia and Jeno have, in fact, taken over his room to do God knows what, and you are lighting up the second joint of the night with Donghyuck standing very close to your side.
The four of you smoke in silence until there are only a few puffs left before it goes out. When the stub comes back to you, you light it again sure you'll be the one to finish it off.
Donghyuck watches you exhale the smoke from your lungs and then looks down at the joint between your fingers. He's not going to ask for it, so you raise your hand to the level of his mouth and position the end of it between his lips—which feel as soft as ever, and he leaves a little tempting kiss on your fingertips.
A few meters away from you the party is still going on. Sweaty bodies, blinding colored lights, and wet tongues that move to the rhythm of an ear-piercing song played by Renjun. He is a genius, the best of them all when it comes to producing music, and it shows in the way he makes you feel like your heart is gonna come out of your chest when he plays with the console.
It could be the music, the weed, the alcohol, the boy in front of you—who is looking into your eyes like you're the only one at the party, as if you were his favorite and he hadn't had multiple girls hitting on him all night—or a mix of all that, but you start to believe he got you hypnotized. You know you could have anyone else too, but it's never enough if they aren't Donghyuck.
He takes a hit making it burn until he hurts your fingers, so you have to move them away from his lips. However, the pain isn't enough to bring you back to reality, and a little touch on his lips doesn't calm the incessant desire you have to kiss him—it shows in the dilated pupils of your eyes that look for his gaze, in your agitated breathing, and in his sly smile as if he was reading all your thoughts.
What does it take to break Lee Donghyuck?
The tension can be felt in the air, so your friends are quick to leave the two of you alone in the balcony, maybe hoping you would sort your feelings out.
"Kiss me? Please, kiss me."
After throwing the end of the joint to the floor, he gently caresses your face with his nose and hugs your waist to get you closer, forcing you to cross your arms behind his neck.
You continue begging in his ear. "No more hiding, Hyuck."
His nose reaches your neck where you feel him plant a subtle wet kiss and then leave an intense bite. His teeth scraping your skin while his two hands squeeze your butt, drawing you firmly into his body. One last suck to your neck that you're sure will be leaving a mark, and then he's getting off you, staring down as if nothing just happened.
"Just came here to tell you we'll be leaving to Yangyang's."
Donghyuck lights up a cigarette and goes back inside without another word, probably hoping you'll go after him since that's what you've gotten him used to; you can't deny it.
You often feel like his babysitter and his mother at the same time: making sure that he won't make stupid decisions when he's out and intoxicated, that he won't miss any important schedules, that he can communicate himself better with his friends and family. You've been Donghyuck's unconditional support from the day you met, but since he's shown nothing in return it has started to feel like a burden. Like trying to make an already grown man grow. You know that it isn't your responsibility, though, and that he isn't likely to change for good.
You can't break Lee Donghyuck, but you still like to try.
3. Tell her sweet lies
A quick stop before heading to the after-party at Yangyang's has Donghyuck's car sitting in the McDonald's parking lot, while he and Rina order takeout after you said you were feeling extremely hungry. It's you and Mia waiting inside, sitting on the heated seats with music blasting from the stereo.
You've made sure to make the ride awkward enough for Rina after you saw her with Donghyuck, caressing the nape of his neck and hair and squeezing his thigh as he drove in front of her. You know it's not an idea that Donghyuck likes too much, but the anger caused by his rejection combined with the desinhibition caused by the weed has you making bad decisions.
Donghyuck has left his phone unlocked for you to be able to change the music while he's gone. So you take the opportunity to enter his text messages and look for you and Mia's names through the chats.
Multiple results from the times you have been mentioned appear instantly. Some are funny ones, some are the result of important conversations in your group chat, and others are part of the private chats between Donghyuck and some of the boys.
"Did you know Yangyang talks about you to Donghyuck?" You ask Mia with a smirk.
"Oh my god!" She rips the phone out of your hands before you can get to read what it's about. "You're not reading that out loud."
Her pupils narrow when she brings the light of the screen closer to his eyes, to read the conversations between her "best friend" and Donghyuck. You immediately think that there can't be anything wrong with it because of the smile that Mia can't contain while she scrolls down the screen.
Mia throws the phone back at you and hides her blushed face on her hands before you can make fun at her.
"What is it?" You ask laughing. “Are you ever gonna stop messing around with other boys and confess to him?”
"I think he likes me," she says now looking at you, her cheeks still red from the temperature.
"Yeah, I think so too. I think he fucks you for a reason."
"Shut up! What does it say about you?"
You laugh once more and grab the phone, making sure to touch the screen before it locks up. The first mention of your name is from a chat from tonight, in which Donghyuck asked you if you wanted him to pick you up to go to the mansion. A few more meaningless mentions in your private conversation with him here and there. Some pictures and messages that you exchange that there's no chance to reveal. Lastly, you find several mentions of you in a private chat with Jaemin, which makes you curious so you open it to read the full conversations.
"There's something off here," you tell Mia with a furrow of your brows.
A little bit of concern is shown in her voice after watching your expression. "Huh? What is it?"
"He's been talking to Jaemin… And Jaemin asked if we've fucked." You tell your friend without stopping from scrolling through Donghyuck's phone, a deeper frown taking over your face the more you read his conversations with Jaemin that involve you.
"What did Hyuck say?"
"'I fucked her so good she won't go looking for you or any other guy ever again.'" You read Donghyuck's reply to Jaemin out loud. So that means he knew about you and Jaemin all this time. "'She gets so desperate for me it makes me sick, you can't imagine how much she cums when she's riding me–"
"I think that's enough." Mia scratches the phone from your hands and blocks it to prevent you from reading any more texts. A short silence falls between the two of you before she's speaking again. "I saw them kiss at midnight."
"Who?"
"Donghyuck and Rina."
Disgust quickly takes over your face and you feel like throwing up, the hunger you felt earlier leaving your body in an instant. It's been too much in such a short period of time.
The atmosphere in the car becomes awkward once more, a heavy trap base being the only sound filling the space. You don't really want to turn to look at the backseat where Mia sits because your teary eyes would give you away. You have known her long enough to be sure she won't hesitate destroying Donghyuck's car with a bat this time if she ever sees you crying because of him, again. And once you finally have such a good and stable group of friends, you don't want to ruin it just because you wanted to get involved with one of them and it turned out wrong.
You also knew who you were messing with since the start, but you still decided to ignore everything that Hyuck is and fall into lust and believe in his promises.
"He also said he doesn't really like me."
"Now that's ridiculous." Mia lets out a scoff.
You shrug, "It's what it said. That I’m only a good fuck."
"Hyuck has been seeing you for months, and you are going to believe what a silly text message says?" You feel Mia place her torso between the two front seats to try to meet your gaze while questioning you. "You know Hyuck becomes an asshole when he's with Jaemin," she continues. "He would say whatever bullshit to try to look cool–"
"But we haven't been doing so well lately."
"He likes you," she still tries to reassure you.
"Mia, it's fine. I don't care." You cut her off, crossing your arms and sulking in the passenger's seat. That tense silence keeps falling between both of you until she decides to speak.
"You can be sad about it, you know, he was being an asshole." She tells you in a much calmer tone, placing a hand on your left shoulder.
"I said it's fine." You turn to look at her the moment Donghyuck makes it back to the car with Rina, and takes his seat behind the steering wheel, passing the bags of takeout to Mia and placing yours in the middle of the car. Your eyes never meet Mia or Rina though, falling on Donghyuck's subtle smile, and getting lost in his glazed up eyes until you decide to lie to yourself for the millionth time that night. "I don't like him anyway."
Donghyuck looks a little lost as his eyes start wondering from you to Mia after hearing that last sentence. "Who's this guy we don't like?" You only smile in return, and ask him to take you home because you are too tired and intoxicated. He's quick to comply with your request, answering in a sweet and even more intoxicating tone than every other substance you had that night. "Of course, baby."
The car ride is awfully quiet when Donghyuck drops Mia and Rina at Yangyang's and, after a weird exchange of looks between Hyuck and the boys, the two of you continue your way to your house.
The night has gone from bad to terribly bad, and you're not sure how much longer you can take. After reflecting on every conversation you had with your friends tonight, you finally decide to speak.
"I think we should quit it."
He stops the car at the door of your house and looks at you with a crooked eyebrow. "What?" The disgust is evident in the tone of his voice.
"I just–" you struggle to take the words out. You aren't sure if you should tell him how hurt it made you that he talks like that about you with his friends, without shame or respect for your privacy. You aren't sure if you can reproach him for having been with other girls when you have also done it, when he has made clear you two are nothing more than fuck buddies, and when you agreed on it. "I know we'll never be in a real relationship, but I don't think you're treating me right, okay?"
Donghyuck lets out a scoff and his hands fall off the steering wheel like dead-weight. An expression on his face that tells you he's already done with this conversation. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"That it feels like I'm a game to you? That you only want me around when your dick is in need or whatever?"
"I just spent like a hundred on food for you and your friends. Again, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"And I don't want your fucking food, okay? I don't care how much money you spend on me," you say looking at him with teary eyes at this point. "What if I just want a hug, a kiss, a little affection, huh? Just that you care for me all the time, you know?"
"Baby," Donghyuck looks for your hands and you let him intertwine your fingers over the middle of the car. "But I show you my affection all the time," he says with a sweeter tone now.
"But not in front of others," you shake your head. He squeezes your hands and his thumbs caress the back of your hands, making it even harder to contain all your emotions. "It's like you're scared of others finding out, like you're ashamed. When literally everyone knows we're seeing each other."
"We've kissed in front of others multiple times."
"Yeah, but all those times you've been drunk off your ass and high as a kite. Like I'm just a random girl for you to hook-up at parties."
Donghyuck bites his lower lip to contain a smile, and gets closer to you to speak in your ear. "What if I told you you make me nervous when I'm sober?"
"Get off, you're ridiculous."
"But you know you are the only one I really like."
That's what makes you stop fighting him to search for his eyes. You know it isn't the best option, that he always tricks you into thinking whatever he wants when he looks at you oh so sweetly, even if he makes no sense, but you are hoping to finally find the truth somehow.
"Some things tell me otherwise. Mia told me–"
"Your friends are lying to you, might be trying to fuck up what we have."
“She told me you kissed Rina.”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I swear I didn’t. Nothing happened between me and her.”
His gaze is cold and his lips a straight line devoid of emotion, while he still holds you by the arms preventing you from getting out of the car. And that sentence feels like it's enough to ruin all the good things you've been through together. He keeps lying, talking about your intimacies with his friends, ignoring your feelings, and pretending that he really cares about you.
You open the car door and get out to slam it again, pretty sure it might leave the lock damaged. Outside the temperature is very low despite the fact that it is about to dawn, the sky turning purple and slowly turning off the stars. So you rush to open the door of your house before freezing outside, but especially because you hear Donghyuck get out of the car too and call your name closer and closer, indicating that he has no intention of ending the talk yet.
4. She knows what I am, and she loves and evades what I am
"I'm staying over." He says making his way through your door, shutting it and blocking it once the two of you are inside.
"No you're not." The walk down to your room gets constantly interrupted by him trying to reach for you and stopping you from moving any more. He grabs your arms to get you to look at him, so when he finally makes you turn around and you see his face, you break down. "Fuck you, Donghyuck! I told you you're not staying."
"Yeah, I am. And I'mma fuck you silly."
"No you're fucking not."
"Gonna take all that anger out of you."
"Fuck you, asshole." You almost spit in his face trying to talk to him at his same height.
"Is that what you want?" He asks, grabbing your jaw with one hand and forcing you to keep the eye contact, the other hand placing you flush from his body. "Fuck you so good you don't even understand why you got so mad in the first place?"
Your eyes fall to his gripped teeth and to his lips, wet with spit from all the previous arguing looking more tempting than usual.
You have to admit that, if you really think about it, it didn't make much sense why you got so mad at him. He already made it clear to you that absolutely nothing happened between him and Rina or anyone else all night while you, instead, jumped to conclusions and went looking for unwarranted revenge.
Maybe you and Mia thought he was being an asshole and was making fun of you when, in reality, that isn't much like Hyuck. What if it really was just a stupid conversation between boys? What if it was his way of showing off, of presuming to Jaemin about your relationship because he felt proud of you?
Because if he supposedly gets as sick of you as he said in the text messages, then why would he decide to be with you again?
A gasp comes out from your open mouth when you feel his hand squeezing on your ass and pushing you even closer to him.
"I just want you to be honest with me." You reply in a whisper. The smile that gets over his features is wicked, and his left hand tightens his grip around your face one last time before he shoves you to the bed.
An airy laugh comes out of him. "Silly girl gets angry and if I fuck her she calms down."
He gets over you placing both hands on the sides of your head and looks into your eyes once more. But there's something different this time. His look is so soft and tender it makes you want to tear up a little. It might show, because Donghyuck pouts lightly before opening his mouth to swear to you: "You know I'd never hurt you on purpose."
It's hard to trust him. But it's also hard to believe he would dare lie to you while looking at you in the eyes that way. So you only grab his locks and pull to give him a kiss full of emotion. There's passion, there's anger, there's pain and there's so much obsession it could be mistaken for love.
His palm travels up and down from your sides, caressing and squeezing firmly, to your back under your top until he unties the straps and gets it out of the way. His fingers explore and touch all the newly exposed skin sending shivers down your spine. He kisses you back aggressively, making you pull on his hair like you know he likes and feeling him grow hard above you.
His hands start to undo the buttons of your jeans and he slides his fingers under it and over your skin, massaging your ass, grinding on you even more.
Small whimpers leave from you and mix with the sighs coming out from his mouth. You take a moment to remove your pants completely, tossing them to the side and quickly starting to get Donghyuck out of his.
When his hands move up again, he gets them under the straps of your panties and moves them down, freeing you from the fabric, parting your legs and giving your clit direct contact with his boxers.
It's always too easy when he's alone with you. He knows perfectly when to kiss you and where to touch you to make you want more of him—an expert of your body, always looking for you to have the best time.
Guilt takes over you for the second time tonight, remembering how selfish you were earlier when you went looking out for his friend, and then getting mad at him when Donghyuck has really been nothing but the sweetest when it's just the two of you.
What was the problem with keeping things private? What was your obsession with him showing you off? You never considered he’s a public figure and he might like his privacy, to keep things on the low because of his fans, the paparazzi and the media who’s never got anything nice to say about him and your friends.
When you get away from him all of a sudden, there's a remaining blush on his cheeks as his lustful but confused eyes follow you, until you get on the floor and land on your knees in between his legs. His pupils expand as you tug on his boxer, grab his semi-hard cock and lick the tip of it. As soon as you repeatedly run your tongue around it, you hear him groan deeply. Not much time passes until he is fully hard while you keep moving your hand along his dick, squeezing and passing your thumb over the tip making Donghyuck hiss, and he pushes your head down to make you wrap your mouth around him one more time.
"Fuuuck baby," he groans one more time before grabbing your shoulders and pushing you away.
You look at him with shiny eyes, your lips red and moisturized with his pre-cum. And because of the way his chest moves up and down from the heavy breathing and the look he's giving you, you think Donghyuck might come just at the sight of you.
He doesn't waste another second to attach your mouths in a desperate kiss, leading you to lay on top of the bed once again. His weight on your body maintains your back pressed against the mattress, and he makes room between your legs. You're sure he's more than ready for you, but you know he always wants to make sure you are fully ready for him. His digits tease your entry and you whine in desperation to just have him.
"Hyuck," you can't help but cry his name.
"What?" He asks as his fingers keep going in and out of you. The feeling of his lips on yours help you momentarily stop from moaning and complaining.
When he finally breaks the kiss to breathe, you manage to speak. "Quit teasing and fuck me."
He only grins at you and you can finally feel the head of his cock replacing his fingers in your pussy. But he doesn't push in yet. Instead, his fingers coated in your juices come in contact with your lips and somehow you know what he wants.
"Did you have fun playing the angry girlfriend with me?" He comes closer and whispers in your ear as you open your mouth and suck them for him. "Silly girl. Look at you, you are so beautiful." Donghyuck talks in between wet kisses that move from your cheeks to your neck. "How could you believe what your friends say?"
A moan escapes you—whether because of his actions or his words, it doesn't matter too much, because he slams his dick into you, taking away all the air from your lungs.
The oxygen only reaches your blood again once he slightly pulls off to bottom out immediately after, setting a steady pace. You are restricted from making any sounds, as his fingers are still on your mouth while he keeps pleasuring you, obliging you to suck and bite at them because he just feels too good.
Once again, you think every doubt you ever had about him before was dumb, as there isn't a possibility he would want to make you feel this good if he didn't like you at all.
His girth is perfectly adjustable to you and quick to form a knot on the low of your stomach. It would suddenly disappear when he completely pulls out of you and grabs your hips to turn you around, making you stand on your elbows and knees. With your head down on the mattress and ass up in the air, Donghyuck doesn't waste another second and gets inside you.
His thrusts are slow and deep, way too deep. This position allows him perfectly to play with your clit and to squeeze your breasts at the same time, quickly sending you over the edge in a minute, then stopping completely, then stimulating you to the limit over again.
When he finally gets his hands off your body completely, you start to accelerate the pace on your own, fucking yourself on his dick before Donghyuck interrupts suggesting you move to straddle him.
He's quick to get himself sitting with his back against the bed frame, then dragging you to sit comfortably on top of him. Hyuck rubs the head of his dick back and forth between your folds, reaching your clit repeatedly and spreading your wetness all over him, making you whine in the process.
"Hyuck, please." You are a panting mess on top of him, moving yourself to keep the friction stimulating you and sighing dreamily.
He lets you grind and stimulate your clit through his length for a bit, taking his shirt off in the process and going back to massaging your boobs. You whimper when he manages to sink you down on him without a warning, which makes you fall forward and rest the side of your head on his chest, your ear right above where his heart should be.
His arms embrace your body and press you against his chest that is warm, allowing you to hear the rhythm of his heart, slow and controlled, like you could find all the right answers by just listening to it.
"I would make love to you," he whispers, "but you made me mad with your little scene."
"Hyuck, don't be like that." Your eyes fall shut trying to hold back the tears, when at the same time you desperately want to see his satisfied smile hearing you cry and moan his name as he rolls his hips, stretching your walls again and again without having started to move back and forth again. "Hyuck, fucking move!" You ask desperately, sitting and trying to bounce on him but his hands on your waist keep you in place, glued to his torturing hips.
A strong smack on your right ass cheek makes another filthy sound escape from your lips right before you hear his voice. "Talk to me nicely," he warned.
"Do that again."
Your plea makes him smile and move your ass up a bit to give you the first thrust after a while. His palm violently comes in contact with your cheek one more time and you fall even forward, hiding your face on his neck and whispering all the praises you could think of in his ear.
"That's it," he says as he continues hitting all the right spots inside you.
When his hand slides between your bodies and finds your clit you can't contain yourself anymore and fully sit on top of him to take a little bit of control, riding him while you chase your orgasm.
Even when you start begging for it over and over, he doesn't say a thing at your tireless plea. He knows you are once again at the verge of it by the way your inner walls clench around him. Instead, he keeps stimulating your clit while squeezing and sucking your boobs. Sitting in the middle of his bed with his dick buried inside you, he makes you work for it until you are coming all over him.
You keep moving, supporting yourself with your arms wrapped around his neck and riding out your orgasm until you feel the cold air hit your nipples, wet with the warmth of Hyuck's mouth before he was moaning out his own orgasm.
"Love you," he places a kiss at the top of your head, and caresses you gently along your back down to your thighs. "You're so, so beautiful."
You open your eyes and take a look at your surroundings while still hiding your face on Donghyuck's neck. Things look blurry and you feel a little dizzy. You're breathing heavily, but not only because of the amazing angry-make up sex you two just had. You're coming back to your senses, and your chest hurts and your eyes sting from holding on the tears; it's everything that happened this night taking over you all at once.
A sip from your nose is what gives you away and makes Donghyuck laugh.
"Aw, baby," he says with a squeeze on your asscheek. "Fucked you so good I got you crying?" Donghyuck takes your face in his hands and forces you to look into his eyes. His thumbs wipe away the thick tears that fall down your cheeks with care, and he kisses the pout on your lips over and over again, until they form a straight line. "Shh, it's okay baby. I know you didn't mean to get mad at me."
You shake your head and open your mouth, determined to speak, to tell him that things can no longer work like this, but you are interrupted by his lips and his hands making you start to move again on his dick, still buried deep inside you.
"I love you," he repeats in between kisses, and you moan. "I love you. Happy New Year."
And this time you shake your head in agreement, up and down in the same way that Donghyuck starts to move your body on him, hoping he would just shut up and stop lying for once. But you try to convince yourself that if you do it all again, that if you choose to keep seeing him, there will be just lust. No playing games, no believing in promises, no loving him, but lust. Because you can't let him go just like that.
Happy holidays everyone! If you liked this fic, please let me know. Feedback is always appreciated.
▪︎Genres: angst, romance, street racing au, friends with benefits trope
▪︎Warnings: graphic descriptions and mentions of death, blood, violence, drug use, and depression; profanity; sexual and suggestive content. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. Contains spoilers of previous parts of the series.
▪︎Word count: 12.6k words
playlist | Pictures taken by Taeyong | Drifting series
Hi everyone! New installment of my Drifting series is up :) This is Mark's part and happens right after Haechan's story, so it's filled with spoilers (if you haven't read that one yet.) I don't really think you need to read Haechan's part to understand what happens around here, but if you want, please go check 'We ridin'' that's also liked in my masterlist. Also, this fic is pretty graphic so please read warnings and don´t proceed if you feel uncomfy with any of the themes treated here. Without much more to say, I hope you enjoy this story!
0. That's a pretty big trunk on my Lincoln Town Car, ain't it?
No matter how much weight he pulls off of his car, Mark can't get to drive freely around anymore. The backseats are gone, and the truck is empty before he starts the race. And you are waiting for him at the end of the road when he makes it first to the finish line, a big smile plastered on your face while looking at him. Everybody quickly starts cheering for him and throwing money to his face. And he tries hard. He tries so hard to enjoy it and be happy behind the steering wheel like he used to do, but he can't find to be able to.
Don't they see it too?
The car's trunk filled with bodies like a Hearse. The steering wheel bleeding, painting Mark's shaky hands in red. His swollen eyes wet with tears. All those scattered pieces on the pavement… And he can never get rid of the weight because he is the one carrying all that heaviness that won't let him breathe, no matter how empty he wants to leave the car.
He rubs his face up and down in frustration, mixing the blood and the tears until he turns, looking back at the destroyed vehicle. Hanging off the open trunk it's his head, open and misshapen, covered in blood, exactly as Mark had last seen him. It feels like a nightmare. He prays and begs to God for it to be a nightmare, please let it be a nightmare.
Your smile dissipates as soon as you lock eyes with him. Mark blinks once to let the tears roll down his cheeks and wet your hands that cup his face. When he realizes it wasn't a nightmare but a distorted memory of reality, the uncontrollably sobs come. So you hold him in your arms in the middle of messy bed sheets, trying to deal with the melancholy of another sleepless night taking care of your hurt best friend.
Mark's memories haunt him. Ever since the accident happened, you're sure he hasn't got a full night of sleep, and you hardly remember the last time you did. If he's not racing or partying until the sun comes out early in the morning, he's constantly trying to fall asleep and repeatedly being awakened by these nightmares, these horrible memories being manifested in his dreams, and getting scared by only closing his eyes in the dark.
The yellow light on the old nightstand illuminates very dimly the small hotel room where Mark has been living for the last time, and where you have found yourself returning more often than usual. Everything is messy and dirty. Mark's clothes sit piled up in a mountain on a chair in the corner of the room, and the tabletop cannot be seen due to the number of boxes and empty fast food packages left behind, not being cleaned for months now. To your left, the nightstand is littered with boxes of twenty Marlboro cigarettes, empty as well; broken lighters, and a dirty glass pipe with traces of a substance you haven't quite figured out yet and are afraid to do so.
Your best friend won't talk much to you despite having you coming back to his bed every night, but you don't need that to believe he's depressed.
You remember how it started. How you got yourself into the same hole.
—
Inside the small apartment the air felt thick and humid. The dim colored lights coming from the speaker did a poor job of outlining a tall silhouette in front of you. Your body was sweaty, your feet ached from standing for so many hours, and your heart beat faster than normal. Maybe it was tiredness. Maybe it was because of the sound vibrations of fast electronic music resonating with the movement of your heart muscle. Or maybe it was because of the joint that Yuta left between your fingers after exhaling all the smoke in your face, and you didn't hesitate to repeat his actions.
You couldn't wait to leave. You also couldn't allow yourself to touch any kind of surface because you knew that as soon as you leaned against a wall or an armchair, you wouldn't be able to get up again. It might not have been the smartest decision at the time to grab the glass of vodka Yuta was holding in his hands and finish it in one gulp, but you would have done anything to make the time go by faster.
And it worked, actually. It's hard to even remember the kind of music that started playing after that moment. What you remember exactly, however, something you can't erase from your memories of that night is what Mark looked like.
The color in his electric blue hair had already begun to fade, and his bangs clung to his forehead from all the humidity. Even with his unkempt appearance and the sleeves of his t-shirt rolled up to his shoulders, revealing toned arms that glistened under a fine sheen of sweat. None of it took away from his undeniable appeal. None of that mess was meant to make you walk away from him and forget how he felt that night. Like being drunk on Mark. As if all your senses were reduced to perceiving him, and only him. When did he even appear on your side?
"You're all wet."
"It's from all the dancing," Mark said, moving his face away from yours, just enough to keep supporting your waist with one hand, and wipe the sweat that had transferred from his cheek to yours with the other.
His closeness allowed you to perceive the smell of alcohol and cigarettes that emanated from his body. Firm muscles under his clothes that you couldn't have failed to notice all night, couldn't help but feel at that moment under your touch. An innocent enough tact, with intentions to keep dancing to whatever was playing. He couldn't know how much you liked him. You were best friends for fuck's sake. And no matter how many times you imagined it, there would never be another reality where you could be more than best friends. Furthermore, you were both too intoxicated to cross the line and then be able to return to your comfort zone. You knew you wouldn't be able to come back once you allowed yourself to get to know Mark in any other way.
"You know what's missing tonight?"
Mark had won the race that night. Five grand that were going straight to his wallet and his pride. That had Yuta celebrating and patting at Mark's back when he made it out of the car with a smile on his face to wrap him in a tight hug. A victory that would give Mark a moment of reassurance, that would distract him only for a second from all the horrible things that were actually going on in his life.
Despite all fears of ending up alone and punished by all his friends, life showed Mark everyday that he was wrong. Yuta chose to keep in contact with him even after the accident and after Johnny got mad at Mark. You were still around him too. And he was still a successful street racer that made thousands per night and allowed himself to have fun with a bunch of pretty girls. So yeah, you would've never guessed the words that came out of Mark Lee's mouth after that. You would've never imagined that what that night was missing was–
"A kiss from you," he answered himself, letting out a heavy breath and leaning dead-weight on you. "Just one kiss?"
That simple line was all it took to take your breath away. He was that powerful, and you kind of hated yourself for allowing him. You thanked in silence for the lack of lights in the living room, because your temperature rising and getting your face all red would've given you away.
"I don't know." You were honest with him. It was kind of ironic inside of your head, how much you wanted him yet you couldn't decide if you wanted to act on that desire. There were pros and cons.
On one hand, you would've done anything for Mark to feel better, to let him out of that dark void you saw him getting in, deeper every day. Anything for him. On the other hand, you knew how the story goes, from your friends and because you saw it in enough movies; casualty never works when there's feelings involved. You didn't have to experience it to know it wouldn't mean just a drunken kiss to you, just a little fun. It was gonna end up hurting, dragging you in like a cult, a bad religion.
It felt like years, the time you were thinking about what to say to him. "I really don't know."
"C'mon," he was persistent, getting his head off the crook of your neck and staring right into your eyes, then dropped the sight to your lips. And he left it there while he kept mumbling. "One lil' kiss."
How many things could ruin a silly, drunken kiss between friends at a party?
Your eyes met Yuta for a brief moment, before you saw him raise his eyebrows at you, an expression that said 'Are you really doing this?' on his face, and then saw him leave the room.
The thing is, you had liked Yuta since the very first moment you saw him and had been fooling around ever since. He's a true gentleman. He's fun to be around but centered enough to give you all the calmness you might need at the end of a stressful day. He's good enough to give you some of the best fucks of your life as well. He has a good job, no bad habits, and he gives you enough space. Anyone could say Yuta is the perfect candidate. If Mark wouldn't even look at you but happened that Yuta proposed to you, you would probably agree to be his girlfriend in a second.
You wanted to tell Mark no. You truly wanted to be faithful to whatever you had with Yuta. But you had loved Mark since forever. And that was different.
Now you believe you would've never had to accept that kiss from Mark Lee that night because, spoiler: after one kiss, you weren't able to stop.
So it happened one, two, three, four, five, countless times until you finally found the solution to Mark's sleeping situation. Sometimes it required a lot of alcohol, sometimes it required him to have something to smoke. But what never changed was that it had to start with a kiss and follow with a lot of your attention. It always ended with you and him, skin to skin to his bed sheets. He gets a night's full sleep, and you usually get a headache from all the overthinking.
—
When you feel that his breathing has become heavy again and his grip around your torso loosens, you confirm that Mark has gone back to sleep. The clock on the wall above the window reads 05:02 in the morning, and if Mark doesn't have another nightmare in the next hour, he may be able to sleep until the sun comes up.
Carefully and almost moving in slow motion, you slip from his grasp to get up from the bed. Your friend has been feeling exhausted for months now, and no matter how many hours he sleeps, he never manages to recover. That's what he tells you all the time: that he's exhausted from being exhausted, from wanting to rest and not being able to. So when you finally get him to drift off to sleep, the last thing you want is to wake him up.
You grab your pillow and place it filling the space that your body occupied between his arms, so he doesn't feel alone. You're not going anywhere but to sit on the dirty old couch in the next room. Mark's room and the space functioning as the entrance to the motel room are only separated by a thin wall of wood and plaster, and a curtain. If he happens to wake up again in the next few hours, you will be able to listen to him without any problem and return to him immediately.
When you turn on the yellow light in the gloomy bathroom—which door is broken so you won't even bother trying to close it—, the scene at the entrance lights up and you spot the figure laying on the couch. You wait for the glass to fill with water to turn off the tap in the sink and turn off the light, plunging the room into darkness again. The water runs hot and is of little help in quenching your thirst, but that's all you have for now until the convenience store near the motel opens.
Despite the darkness, you can see a large pair of eyes watching your every move carefully. He must have woken up because of Mark's nightmare, just like you. Coincidentally, in the small couch there is a space where you know you fit perfectly, so you take it and lie down next to him. The sides of your bodies rub against each other because it's a small couch afterall, and even when you can start to feel the heat of the morning you would like to get closer, snuggle into him, to wrap yourself in his arms and sleep together forever. But you're not going to do anything because Mark is only a curtain away. Also, because you were pretty sure he didn't want you anymore, not after you practically stopped seeing him the moment you started fucking Mark.
"Have you talked to Johnny?"
You turn your head to set your eyes on Yuta, lying on the couch still with all his clothes on, one arm acting as a pillow under his head. His long lashes brush his cheeks every time he blinks, and his chest rises and falls in a calm, controlled breath. Just looking at him gives you all the peace you are missing, making you sleepy. And you want to sleep, oh how you want to sleep for endless hours.
He shakes his head no.
"I feel like… I don't know, Mark really needs him right now."
There is a long silence in which you roll onto your side to keep looking at him. His eyes, now closed, make you think he has fallen asleep until he finally opens his mouth to speak.
"Johnny doesn't want to know anything about Mark." Yuta turns his head to look at you this time. His gaze is soft but holds all the truths you don't like to think of, so you can't do much more than moving your head down with a frown in your brows, and keep listening to him. "What he did to Haechan was stupid, put all of us in danger."
Memories of that night are fresh in your brain for two reasons. The first one, is that you interacted with Yuta for the first time that night, and things just escalated between the two of you from there. The second reason has to do with the fact that, all that happened back then, was Mark's breaking point.
1. You hit them stones and you broke your home
At the center of the closed road, the pavement was already painted with traces of burnt tires forming circular patterns. As the candy-colored cars drifted and slided and had all the people filming and celebrating around them, you really couldn't think of a worse way to waste your tires. It's a passion they seem to have, that you yet have to get to understand.
You observed Mark work frantically on his car, making you feel like there wasn't enough time. All his movements were too rushed, and his eyes moved around the crowd with a paranoid look. The rest of the team was counting the money, looking for someone to flag, taking the seats out of the car to make it as light as possible, moving the people from the middle of the street. You could already hear some sirens far in the distance, getting closer and closer.
"Mark, hurry up!"
Getting off an orange car with the windows all black, a voice rushed Mark to start the race. He had that spine-chilling look despite his totally relaxed walk, looking like he owned the streets. He was the protagonist of a bunch of stories Mark had told you about his friends. And you knew Mark admired and respected Johnny a lot. But Yuta... Yuta has always been something else to Mark. Something like his weakness, and it showed in the way he talked about him and behaved around him. "I can show you some pics, but you can't like him more than me," was how he always ended conversations about him.
You really tried to listen to your friend. You really tried not to get interested in the handsome guy giving him the last directions before the first race of the night. But you had to know him personally, had to get close to him. You wished it would have been under different circumstances, though.
A few minutes later, everything was ready for the race to start. Mark had to drive a few miles straight down the road, take an impromptu hairpin turn, and be back in front of your eyes safe and sound.
After the accident he got into with his friend Taeyong, everyone thought Mark would be too scared to drive again, at least for a while. But it was the complete opposite; he got careless and more reckless. Mark was sad and mad, and he used the races as a coping mechanism, among other things.
You, however, were worried and scared for him.
"I don't know why I agreed to come with you," you spoke with your arms crossed as you saw Mark walking towards you. He was wearing a subtle smile, and you could see how his face got rid of all that paranoia as soon as he found your eyes.
He wrapped you in a hug that forced you to uncross your arms to join them behind his head, reciprocating the gesture. "Thank you for coming," Mark told you so only you could hear him, and tightened the grip of his arms around your torso. "But you don't have to stay if you don't like it. I can ask one of the guys to get you home."
You took a look around separating yourself from him, and thought about his offer for a second. Johnny seemed busy dealing with all the bets for that night's race, so you doubted he could take you home. Jaehyun was racing too, so neither him or Mark were gonna drive you. Johnny's sister didn't own a car, so she wasn't an option. The only one who seemed like he wasn't occupied was Yuta, who was looking at the two of you with an unreadable expression, sitting on top of his car hood, probably just waiting for Mark to stop delaying the race.
You kinda, definitely wanted Yuta to take you home, to ride together and maybe chat a little on the way. To finally get to know him—and maybe exchange a kiss or two before you would come out of his car and walk to your door.
But that wasn't happening that night.
"No fucking way."
The crowd went silent. The only sound traveling through the thick summer atmosphere was the sound of the engines. No one needed him to get out of the bright yellow car to know who he was. Nonetheless, he got the audacity to do it.
"Didn't I fucking tell you," Johnny's voice was filled with rage, speaking directly to him, "that I don't want to see you around ever again?"
"I'm gonna fucking kill him." You heard Mark whisper in front of you.
"You're not doing shit." You grabbed Mark's jaw trying to get him to look at you, but his eyes were locked on Haechan. His hands left your waist to become fists at his sides, ready to attack if you weren't holding him back and speaking in his ear, trying to maintain your composure. "If you do anything to him, we're not gonna see the end of it."
But the truth was you wanted to beat him to pieces probably as much as Mark wanted to.
"Just one race!" Haechan got off his car speaking to Johnny with open arms, palms facing the night sky. "For the old times?"
"But…" Mark rested his eyes on you again, and you could almost see yourself reflected in the accumulation of tears that threatened to fall at any moment. He spoke only for you, "Taeyong is dead because of him."
People went crazy after hearing Haechan ask for a race. Three months had passed since the accident and, since then, neither Haechan nor the Lees had dared to roam the same streets as the Suhs and his friends. Of course, people like watching other people fight, they enjoy the gossip and the problems, so it didn't take long for the crowd to start betting on Haechan as the winner of that night. Johnny had no choice but to get his team to race against the Lees, to remind them again that he didn't want them around, and that it was just a one time thing.
"Listen," Johnny held Mark's face in his hands and spoke directly to his eyes, "you're gonna race and you're gonna make it to the finish line intact. I don't give a fuck about who's winning. I just want you to finish, so he can get the fuck out of here before I lose my mind and rip his face off."
Mark nodded quickly a few times. It was clear he was nervous—from the way he grabbed and squeezed the steering wheel with his hands, and settled back and forth in the seat, impatient for the race to end when it hadn't even started.
"Don't you–" a bit of embarrassment creeped into his voice and cut him half way into the sentence, making him gulp dry before proceeding. "Don't you have something for me? I'm just feeling a little low," he finished asking, his narrowed eyes barely daring to look at his older brother.
Johnny let out a heavy sigh and moved his head to look above Mark's car, into the racing scene, and pondered on it for a moment. Honestly, he never thought he could be the best leader or the best older brother, but he managed to convince himself he was doing pretty fine, until the Donghyuck thing happened. Not that Donghyuck thing, the one that had to do with his sister and later with Taeyong. But the Donghyuck thing that made the big family they all were before break apart, and split into two rival groups. Something happened in that moment that Johnny felt made him fall apart; he lost all that confidence he once had. It only got worse when Donghyuck got with his sister, though, and he took Taeyong with him too, and now he felt like he was losing Mark as well.
Johnny reached into the front pocket of his jeans and held the small bag there for a few seconds, while debating whose fault it was, and thinking about how he could stop ruining his family. Back then, he had no clear answer. He felt like Mark was fucked up enough already. And because he loves him unconditionally, he just did what he thought was best for Mark at the time.
He ended up taking the small bag from his front pocket and tossing it to Mark, who quickly grabbed it with both hands and didn't even thank Johnny before he was closing his tinted windows on his friend's face.
Johnny thought that even if it was the wrong thing to do, he himself would help Mark sober up later, because he couldn't dare lose any more brothers.
You watched the entire exchange from afar. From Mark positioning himself in line with Jaehyun, Haechan and another boy's cars at his sides, until Johnny and Yuta joined you with the same worried look that your eyes wore.
There was a constricting sensation in your chest, a pressure watching that scene unfold that made your voice tremble. "I have a bad feeling about this."
You know what they say, that there are friends with whom you live certain things, and friends with whom you are part of other things. Haechan, Mark and you were all good friends once, way back in high school, but after they parted ways you decided not to get involved in their illegal activities. You barely knew this side of Mark's life, most of it since he loved his friends so much and always told you everything about them. He tried to integrate you as much as possible when situations called for it: birthdays, casual meetings at Johnny's garage, and parties. But all that pretty far from the street racing scene, that being the first time he actually invited you to go watch him race after years.
"Don't worry," Johnny said to you at the same time his sister was positioning herself at the middle of the starting line, ready to give them the direction. "They know what they have to do very well.
And as soon as she lowered her arms, the cars sped off, leaving a huge cloud of smoke in front of you that obstructed your view for a few seconds.
"They will be driving in a straight line for about a kilometer," he continued. "Then they will reach a crossroads and must take the path to the right, we will lose sight of them at that moment."
"But if they do everything right and don't cause any trouble, we'll see them come out of that other corner." Yuta pointed at a corner a few blocks from you with a blinking yellow traffic light while explaining to you. "And someone will make it right here first. The winner."
You assumed that you managed to make him feel your intense gaze on him, and that made his eyes meet yours. His arms crossed while still leaning on the hood of his car. He noticed your nervousness.
"Relax," his voice was soft while speaking to you. A smile adorned his face when he invited you to sit with him, right beside his body on top of the orange hood. "Let's root for our team."
You nodded with your head at him and chose to remain silent. While you waited to see your friend return, you reached in the back pocket of your pants for the small box and the lighter, and lit a cigarette. It was the best thing you could think of to pass the time.
"You're a smokestack."
Your eyes widened hearing that. You didn't take it as an insult, since when you turned around and saw Yuta's face you only found a playful smile. But you still decided to take a long drag on the cigarette, blow out all the smoke, and then ask him in an offended tone.
"Excuse me?"
"You smoke too much," he said nonchalantly, jumping off the car and standing right in front of you.
His eyes traveled from your legs hanging off his hood, to your hand holding the cigarette, to your chest and lastly your face in a matter of milliseconds. A quick check out that awakened a whole new rush of adrenaline and nervousness to your body. A stare that only sent shivers down your spine, so you tried to play it cool and straighten your back, wanting to reach the level of his face.
"And how would you know?"
You made an effort not to let the conversation die. Ever since Mark told you about them and showed you photos of his friends, you had wanted to meet Yuta. Walking across him at Johnny's house or at random parties had never been enough. Firstly, because Yuta was rarely alone. And secondly, because when he was alone you would never have thought of being the first to approach him and talk to him.
Because you weren't expecting it from Yuta—the only friend of Mark that was quiet and mysterious enough that you had never struck up a conversation with—it took you a couple of seconds to process the words that came out of his mouth.
"I've been watching you." Yuta took your hand that was holding the cigarette and held it very gently in between his. Enough to notice how yours trembled.
Yuta definitely didn't have to do that to notice how anxious you were. But then you would understand how powerful his energy is and how physical contact becomes completely necessary and inevitable when he is around. That you didn't even need to say a word for him to notice you were attracted to him—you were painfully obvious around Yuta. It became ridiculous the way you lost yourself watching him talk and just mind his business. Yuta loved every second of it.
He would finally return all that attention to you later.
"You may fancy me." He took the cigarette off your hand and took a puff. "But you really, really love Mark."
You sighed deeply and looked down as you felt the heat rise and tint your cheeks. You didn't dare look at him when you spoke again. "I'm seriously that obvious?"
Yuta muttered positively and you could hear him smiling. That attractive teasing smile he always wore but paired with the softest looking eyes, that you knew could mean no harm.
"The problem is… I like Mark."
You couldn't help but laugh when you heard him, since you definitely weren't expecting that outcome. He only smiled while seeing you laugh.
"But he won't pay enough attention to me," he continued with a shrug. "So I thought, maybe you wanna do something with me after this?"
"So, I'm the second choice," you established, crossing your arms and putting on a straight face.
Yuta shook his head, still wearing his little attractive smile. "No, I was just joking," he reassured you. "I think you're interesting, and you're hot, so I wanna know you."
The cigarette came back to your hands right before Yuta was blowing all the smoke he had inhaled on your face. He was being pretty clear, you had no doubt at that point.
So you filled yourself up with a little courage, smiled big, took a puff of that nicotine and said, "Alright, we're going to mine."
"Sounds lovely."
Is the unexpected screeching of tires locking up what deafens your ears, bringing you and Yuta out of your little bubble to find another cloud of smoke blocking your view. Only seconds pass after the smoke clears into the air, and Mark's car comes to rest in line with Haechan's, giving your friend second place in the race.
It all happened way too quickly. One moment Mark was getting out of his car, violently closing its door and getting every person out of his way. The next moment he was above Haechan's body on the street, beating the life out of him.
Mark seemed uncontrollable, out of his mind. It took not only Johnny and Yuta to separate him from Haechan's bleeding face, but Jaehyun had to get out of his car and intervene as well. It was him trying to restrain Haechan's friends from coming and beating Mark, while Johnny's sister cried and screamed besides her lover, who wore that typical wicked, cynical smile on his bloody-dripping mouth. It was absolute chaos.
"I'm going to kill you! I swear to God, you won't mess with any of my friends ever again because I'll fucking kill you!"
After a lot of struggling and missed punches (that almost ended in yours and the boys' faces) coming from an extremely euphoric Mark, they managed to lock him in the back seat of Yuta's car. Johnny ordered Yuta to take him away, and that he didn't want to see his face in the neighborhood until the situation calmed down. It was a little cruel, the way he kicked Mark out of the house they shared, but you understood. Mark was still too hurt and resentful of Taeyong's death, but Johnny knew that trying to get revenge on the Lees would only start an endless war. Or maybe cause an ending that would badly hurt them again, and Johnny was tired of losing brothers.
A tall boy with a thin face and raven hair pointed to Mark, and that same index finger he rested on the skin of his neck moved across, from right to left. You're dead, but Mark wouldn't listen to it, still sitting in the back seat of the car.
"Jeno, let's leave this shitty place," Haechan said once he was back on his feet, blood spitting, staining his shirt and even the ground.
Haechan and his friends (including Johnny's sister) left with a promise to come back for them.
Johnny was on his right to get extremely mad at Mark. Because that was the exact reason he didn't do anything to Haechan in the first place, that one night he had him at gunpoint in the rain. He could've ended him right there, but he knew what would've come. And that was the difference between the Lees and the Suhs: Johnny cared for his people—because yes, Haechan was his people once, just as Taeyong was when he was alive. He didn't want anyone to get even more hurt.
So now they have to deal with the fear of the Lees coming for them, because they know the gang has become weak. Johnny doesn't have his sister anymore, he doesn't have Taeyong, he doesn't have Mark, and Yuta is barely there because he spends most of the time with you or Mark. And that guilt is eating your best friend alive.
It was dawn by the time you and Yuta tossed an exhausted Mark into the motel bed where he would spend the next few months. While he passed out as soon as he touched the mattress, you came down from the adrenaline rush in the form of shaking and crying.
That same night you brought Mark to the motel, after you put him to sleep, Yuta and you drank and smoked until you calmed down and then made out until any of you had energy to go on. You liked him and wanted everything with him. But Yuta was a very patient and understanding person. He made that clear from the very first moment you met properly.
You may fancy me, but you love Mark.
And yes, maybe fucking around with Yuta was fun from time to time, until that guilt started eating you alive.
Now you look at Yuta, laying on the motel couch centimeters from you, yet he feels like he's miles away. You think you miss him, his security and the sense of stability you had when you were with him. These days he comes to check on Mark, make sure you're both not starving, maybe share a beer or a cigarette with you, and he leaves. He still does all that even after you dropped him to fuck your best friend, that is one of his best friends too.
But when Yuta leaves you're back to your miserable hole, praying that Mark won't die from an overdose tonight, or that won't leave and come back hours later with some other girl, kicking you out so he can fuck because he's suddenly tired of the routine, then calling you at ungodly hours because he can't sleep without you.
The japanese boy calls your name. A fine film of sweat covers his smooth skin and is visible in the dim light of dawn, which filters through the hideous lace curtains. His eyes tell you that he's about to reveal that truth that you don't want to hear, but he's going to be brutally honest anyway.
"You need to get out of here."
2. I'm talking fear, fear of missing out on you and me/I don't think I could find a way to make it on this earth
Mark had always been very careful. The most careful of all, in fact—not just when it came to racing, but in every aspect of his life. When he drove, when he served customers in Johnny's garage, when he would go out with the boys and have to take care of a drunk Taeyong, he was the most careful. You know he was always very careful in the way he treated girls too, because Mark did everything with love.
It isn't fair what happened to him. It made him start doing things with fear. Fear of missing out on things, fear of losing, fear of hurting people, fear of God. You can taste the fear in him, because lately everytime you connect your lips it feels like he's kissing you for the last time ever.
He holds your face and steals a long, soft kiss from your lips. Eyes squeezed shut while he deepens it and gets his tongue to explore inside your mouth. None of it is rushed nor violent, in contrast with how he usually ends up fucking you. And you like this side of Mark, the one that kinda feels like he's doing it to you with love instead of fear, but you know you can't get too attached to it.
Or at least more attached than you already are.
Mark moves his hands from your face to your back, and caresses the skin there for a moment, before hugging the middle of your torso and pushing you flush against his. Your naked breasts collide with his equally naked chest, and his skin burns yours. He's restricting you from moving now, so he angles his hips pressing his feet on the mattress and starts thrusting up into you. It's a gentle pace, but all the alcohol and the weed in your system only make you feel him ten times intensified, ten times deeper. You tug on his long hair, bite and suck on his neck trying to contain all the sounds that want to escape from your mouth, yet the pleasure is too much and more than one manages to slip and mix with Mark's whines.
You're kinda embarrassed when you come after what feels like only five minutes that passed since you sat on top of Mark.
He feels you clench and become tight around him, so he stops his movements for a moment until you catch your breath. You know he's not done with you, just trying not to hurt you from the overstimulation. After one intense orgasm heavily loaded with feelings, you're exhausted. But this has always been about him. You need to make sure he will go back to sleeping peacefully. So you get off him and lay beside his body, before Mark takes position between your legs and buries himself inside you one more time.
He doesn't need to do much, doesn't need to say anything at all. You and him have gotten to explore each other's bodies for months now, you both know damn well that you're gonna come again, and after that you're gonna let him finish making a mess all over you.
What Mark would've never expected was seeing those thick tears run down your face, that you quickly tried to swipe off before he could ask anything about it. Even if sometimes it doesn't show, Mark loves and cares for you, so he's gonna ask anyway.
"Love," he calls for you and stops his movements. You open your eyes, lashes feeling heavy with the weight of the tears on them, and see his worried face right on top of yours. His hair is messy, his neck sweats and a silver necklace with a couple of charms hangs from it, somehow making Mark look even more attractive than usual. "I didn't hurt you, right?" A deep frown takes over his features.
You feel bad for ruining such a moment like this. You answer, shaking your head no.
"Please tell me the truth."
You shake your head no once again, wrapping your arms around him to tug and make him collapse his weight on you.
Love. The pet name replays in your head like a scratched CD and you wish you could turn it off to finally go to sleep. Mark calls your name and props himself up in his arms to look at you. He's still waiting for an explicit reply to his question.
How could you tell him that you were crying because you never felt so much love for someone in your entire life, without scaring him away? How could you explain to him that you understand it was all in your head, because you know he is too broken to even love to that same extent?
"I'm fine," you finally tell him and grab his face to give his lips one last, deep kiss. "Crying 'cause it's too good."
He shows a subtle smile and makes an effort to observe how the morning light illuminates your skin, with his eyes full of sleep, drunk on alcohol and your body and barely open. It's an image he wants to remember because, for some reason, it also feels to him like it could be the last time he gets to be with you like this.
"You sure?"
You nod and smile subtly in response, and move his fingers to make him touch you, in hope you can overcome the pain of loving too hard with the pleasure.
"Wanna give me one more?" His lips get your neck and collarbones all wet while he works on bringing you to the edge. His name manages to come out of your mouth in between gasps. "The last one?"
After both of you finally finish, Mark collapses on your side, half of his body still curled up to you, and calls your name softly. You hear his voice getting filled with fatigue.
"Mhm?"
"Thank you," he says in a whisper. Next thing you know, his breathing has become heavy again and his little snores can be heard in the silent motel room.
The story repeats itself, and you curse yourself and despair for not being able to even shut your eyes closed when you're exhausted. You're overthinking again. Hours go by with barely a couple of hours of sleep, and soon you have to get up to leave food ready for Mark and continue with your life outside these four walls.
3. Permission to crash, collecting damages, boy
The metal stairs creak under your shoes as you go up to the motel room, carefully not to slip because of the night's drizzle. The walk to the room where Mark has been staying feels longer than usual, maybe because you're extremely tired, and don't even remember the last time you got to sleep for an entire night by now, always interrupted by something—if it isn't because of Mark's nightmares, it's because you're either out with him and friends or catching up with missed work instead of sleeping. You can't wait to make it through his door, find him sleeping (with a little luck) and pass out on his bed beside him.
That old clock hanging on the wall indicates 10:27 p.m.. Inside, the room is extremely quiet. If it weren't for the mess around every surface, and the image of Mark's legs knocked out on the bed that you can perceive through a thin curtain separating the bedroom and the common area, you would believe the space is completely empty, abandoned.
The small table that Mark uses to eat is almost imperceptible for all the garbage that has accumulated there. Empty beer bottles, packs with leftover food, cigarettes, dirty napkins, his car keys and even some clothes cover the surface. You wonder how Mark continues to use the table when you're not there, or if he's just using it to leave stuff .
The delivery bags will serve to collect all the waste and clean up the environment a bit. Your friend has been going through a difficult time for a while now, and of course it's hard for him to do simple tasks like keeping the place where he lives clean and tidy. You don't even think about it much when you propose yourself to give him a helping hand while he sleeps; throwing everything that seems useless and dirty into the bags, and leaving it in the bins on the street. You hope Mark will feel more uplifted when he wakes up, finding himself in a slightly nicer, more livable place.
He's in a deep sleep leaning on his side, and watching him breaks your heart. You like it when Mark sleeps naturally. Even when he passes out from being extremely exhausted, you prefer it instead of when he goes to sleep after injecting that destructive drug right into his veins. On his bedside table is the glass syringe, the lighter, the aluminum foil. On the floor, in the space between the rickety bed and the little table, a plate with lines of half-consumed cocaine and the belt of his pants.
He doesn't even care enough to hide it anymore. It breaks your heart some more.
In an impulsive act, you grab whatever is there that has been destroying him, Yuta and you. Everything that has been making life difficult for everyone, ever since Taeyong left, since Johnny kicked Mark out, and your friend fell even harder into that pit.
You flush it down the toilet. Tears run down your cheeks, and the sound of the water taking everything down the drain mixes with your sobs. At the same time, the lights from the garbage truck outside the motel come in through the bedroom window, blinding your view a bit. Nothing is left.
With shaky hands, you open the window and light up a cigarette, in hope of calming down a little. Every day that passes is becoming harder to understand how you made it this far. You can't imagine how worse it could be if you weren't there for him, or if Yuta wasn't with Mark too.
One cigarette is consumed after another, until the ashtray is almost full and you stop because your chest starts to hurt. Mark's voice is present in the room; he calls your name dragging it full of confusion.
Here begins the story of how everything you two once were ended in a few minutes, too fast. Or perhaps the fall was anticipated, but no one knew how to cushion it.
"What happened here?" he asks hoarsely, clearly struggling to fully open his eyes, despite the place being subtly illuminated by the street lights peeking through the windows.
"Just did a little cleaning," you answer, letting the smoke out of your lungs. You said to yourself it would be the last one of the night, but something about the situation is making you slightly anxious.
Mark only nods in response and keeps turning around in his place, taking everything in. He ruffles his head in a poor attempt at fixing the bed hair, scratches the back of neck down to his arm. It's nerve-wracking—seeing him act so natural after having passed out for you don't know how many hours, at the risk of overdosing and dying alone, choking on his own vomit.
It fills you with rage inside how inconsiderate he's been lately, but you're exhausted and don't plan on fighting tonight.
"You coming back to bed?"
"No, sorry," he says when you're already on your way to the bedroom. The clarity in his voice tone indicates to you he's wide awake now. "I have a race in like an hour or so."
You sit on his side of the bed to finally take your shoes off and start undressing. A heavy sigh unconsciously escapes you, and you have to ask him. You've been thinking for a couple weeks now that it would be good for him if he just left the racing scene, only for a while until he fully recovers from all the pain he's gone through. If it all started with it, the answer should be there too, ending it.
"Why do you do that?" You watch his figure enter the room. "Why do you keep racing?" Your questions come out a little exasperated, the tiredness getting the worst out of you even when you don't mean to sound rude.
"Why do I keep racing? How do you think I'm paying for the fucking expenses right here?"
His tone disorients you for a moment, making you believe that your question may, in fact, have been inappropriate. "Sorry, I just- I just thought you could get a job that makes you feel a little more normal, you know?" you propose, almost as if you're afraid of how he might react. "Give you a routine, make you feel better."
"No," he answers quickly, shaking his head low. "Racing is the only thing that makes me feel alive right now. That, and"– he doesn't finish his sentence. Instead, he gulps dryly and keeps his thoughts only for himself.
You know it's better not to push it. Because he's not good with words, and because you don't think you're capable of dealing with whatever other emotions Mark could be going through right now.
You love Mark endlessly. You're sure the only thing that's wrong right now is that work drained you. You could have this conversation in the morning.
"And you? Why do you do it?" he decides to ask without looking you in the eye.
"What do you mean?"
"Why do you keep playing with Yuta and me at the same time?"
The question makes your heart stop and your stomach turn, but you try not to show it.
"That's seriously the last thing I needed to hear today."
You finish saying the sentence and move to the bathroom to quickly brush your teeth, ignoring the eyes of Mark following you from his spot in the bedroom. Too familiar with his look on you only wearing your underwear. Too used to Mark's bad mood after putting substances into his body until he falls unconscious. Too guilty because, in fact, you've been feeling confused about the two boys.
"I know you like him. I– I can feel it. I saw you laying so close early, saw the way you looked at him."
It makes your head hurt, and you squeeze your eyes shut trying to, somehow, ease the pain away. Yes, of course there has always been something about Yuta. Something about the calmness and security you feel when you're together. Something about the love you see he has for Mark that you wish someone had for you. Something about his kisses and touches and the look in his eyes that feel safe. Because Mark was your best friend once, your unconditional support; you were each other's until you weren't anymore. You just started to take care of him and to fall for him harder, and harder. You only became his while you lost him and he lost himself in the process. But Yuta somehow was there to make it easier for you, and numb a little part of the pain away.
You still love Mark endlessly, but he's not good for you. You don't love Yuta, but he feels like the right one for you. And you know their brotherhood might come before your friendship—with any of them. You can't ruin that for them only because you can't decide between the two boys.
It's always been easier to ignore all that.
"Can we just– not have this conversation?"
"Are you fucking him too?"
"I'm not." You look up to him as you accommodate yourself on the bed once again, rage filling your insides for the second time that night. "And what the fuck do you care, huh? The fuck do you care about me?"
"I care because I thought you were with me?" he asks, a tone of disbelief in his voice.
"Mark, we never agreed on being exclusive. We didn't even talk this out. We just started fucking because you were too fucking selfish and couldn't even notice what actually happens here"– you get interrupted by him calling your name.
His eyes are fixed on the nightstand that you emptied while he was passed out. And you swallow dryly, afraid to say a word. You can't imagine what he's going to say to you but, from his look, you can be sure it's not nice at all.
"You did a little cleaning," he repeats.
The room stays quiet. Mark starts looking for something around the nightstand—over it, behind it, under the little furniture and in the space around it. Frantically. And calls your name again. This time his voice is shaky, and when he looks at you he's at the verge of tearing up.
You imagined throwing all his drugs away would be hard for him. A risky move. All kinds of reactions were expected.
"Where is Taeyong's necklace?"
"Huh?" discomposure shows in your tone.
"Taeyong's necklace! It was right here, on the nightstand."
You remain quiet while observing him starting to look around the entire motel room. His body has got all tensed up and began shaking in consequence. He empties the drawers, the bags with his clothes, takes the bedsheets off, makes you move to turn the bed and the pillows upside down and checks inside the bathroom too. There's only curses coming out of his mouth and his voice breaks more and more, starting to sob like a little kid in front of your eyes when he realizes the object he's looking for is nowhere around.
He yells your name to get your attention but it only scares you even more. You're terrified of telling him, because you know you've really screwed up this time.
Meeting his teary eyes, yours fill with tears too.
"Mark," you call for him but he's already looking at you, waiting for an explanation.
You remember it now. It had been standing over the little table since you got here for the first time, but you never paid much mind to it—a silver chain that ended in a small cross and a rose, Chrome Hearts style. And that was Taeyong's favorite brand. Mark rarely wears jewelry, yet you have a vague memory of it hanging off his neck the last time you were together. It takes you a second to put two and two together; your heart finally ends up breaking into two pieces.
"I'm sorry." The tears reach your chin. "I took all the trash out."
Mark follows your finger pointing to the window, from which you can see the large garbage containers on the side of the street. Then he turns his head to the left, in the direction of the clock that reads almost twelve at night. He knows that the truck comes around eleven at night to collect all the bags, and he almost always misses it because he's sleeping and ends up accumulating all the trash in the room. Both you and him know everything is gone by the time, including Mark's memory of Taeyong.
He breaks into a desperate cry, which pierces the air and makes your ears and chest ache with his grief. It's so full of anguish, like you've never seen him before, not even when you were burying his friend together.
It takes him to the ground and makes him roll and move, tug at his clothes and his hair violently like he's trying to take the pain off his body, trying to escape the misery. You try to reach out to him to try and comfort him, still a bit in shock since you were the one that caused him this pain. But he doesn't want you near him; he lets you know by slapping you away from his body and throwing everything he finds around him in your direction.
So you step back, clearly afraid he might hurt you in this state. Mark can sense the fear, and the last thing he wants in the world is to hurt you and put you away from him too. Losing you like it happened with his childhood best friend Donghyuck, like it happened with Taeyong, like it happened with Johnny. But he can't tell you. Nothing can come out of his mouth more than those uncontrollably sobs and screams of pain. He can't clear his mind right now.
"I'm sorry," you keep saying while you get dressed and start picking up your things in a rush. "I'm sorry, please forgive me."
He's sitting on the floor, legs curled up to his chest, back to the end of the bed while his arms hang limb to his sides, defeated and body drained from all its energy. His entire face is wet with sweat and tears, and he cries looking at the dirty ceiling.
When you've already left and find yourself in the open corridor, a few room's down from Mark's, guilt washes over your body: you too left him alone, just like you know he's scared of. You manage to take your phone out of your pocket and dial the first number on your recents list with shaky hands.
The need to cry only increases when you hear his voice on the other side of the phone.
"Can you please come by Mark's? Please?" You cover your mouth with one hand trying to hold back the sobs. "I can't deal with this anymore, Yuta. I'm sorry. It's–Mark and I are never gonna work out. It's out of control–"
"Take your car and come home," his voice is soft and calm, despite the rushing sounds in the background. You know he's dropping everything to go where Mark is staying. "Come home and wait for me here, no matter how long it takes."
You nod in response, even when Yuta can't see you through the call.
"And don't worry about Mark, I got him."
4. Gotta let you go/Since you've been gone I've been having withdrawal
The dead had to be visited when they were alive, was what your mother used to say when you were little. The cemetery was never a place that she liked very much, for she never took you to visit and leave flowers for your old, dead uncles and grandparents.
You believe your mother's rejection of the dead had to do with the fear of death itself. The refusal to accept the inevitable: we will all end up right here one day. Under different circumstances, ones having lived longer than others, but dead at last. Even though you believed you had no problem accepting this, entering the place on this spring morning was becoming incredibly difficult. While it's normal to have grandparents dead when you grow up, it never feels normal to lose someone so close to your age.
You can't expect to meet anyone in particular, but you know that at least the vast majority of his friends will be there. It's the anniversary of Taeyong's death, and the morning is fresh. The sun is shining and the roses planted in the park have bloomed, as if they knew they were his favorites. This should be reason enough to walk through the gates and go lay out some flowers for him, as a way of saying thank you for such a splendid day.
The walk up to the place is quiet enough to boggle your mind a bit. The last couple of months you've been working on yourself, trying to stop overthinking things and rebuilding your self-esteem little by little. Mark and you haven't seen each other again after that big fight and after you left the place he was staying. Yuta did God's work that night, and you know Johnny and the rest of the guys helped him the following days—and months. You just stayed out of it. No one really wanted it, no one agreed to it. But it naturally happened, because deep down both of you knew it was the best outcome. Mark understood you had to go away in order for both of you to heal.
It wasn't an easy process.
"Am I a bad person for doing this to him?"
"Well, it's hard to tell what's good or bad, because it depends on who's saying it," the therapist replied.
You looked down as soon as he started talking to you, avoiding his eyes. You remember that you thought you were not going to cry in your first session, that it was going to be difficult to let go and talk about everything that had been hurting you lately. However, as soon as you sat down on his couch, tears began to roll down your cheeks.
"But how do your decisions make you feel?"
"I feel selfish."
It took you a while to learn that looking after yourself wasn't a selfish thing to do, but a completely valid way to maintain your sanity. That you needed to set boundaries with the people you love the most, because even they might hurt you, and because you might end up hurting yourself. It doesn't necessarily mean they are bad people that want to cause you pain, but humans that make mistakes and that are constantly learning how to deal with each other.
Pain is needed. Boundaries are needed. Communication is needed. Self-love is needed. We learn some of the most valuable things of life from all that.
Johnny is the first one to see you arrive. He receives you in silence, with a small smile and a hug. The next to repeat his actions is Jaehyun. Finally, Yuta presses you against his torso and you stay like that for a little longer. The soft skin of his arms envelops you; it's warm and he feels just as safe as you remember. His scent is an odd combination of cotton softener, a manly scent of pine, and cigarettes.
You will be the most grateful to Yuta, forever. He knew where you belonged from the beginning, and helped you clarify your mind to come here and speak to Mark. Not expecting anything, but knowing that whatever would result from that talk should be the best for the two of you.
You can perceive his heart is beating fast, but definitely not as fast as yours when Yuta breaks the hug, looks into your eyes and then to Mark, who is still sitting in front of Taeyong's grave and oblivious to everything that is happening behind him.
The concrete of the bench feels considerably cold compared to the rest of the environment when you sit next to him. There's a moment when you just dedicate yourself to reading Taeyong's name, over and over again on the plate.
It hasn't been easy and it will never be. It makes you rethink things. Decisions, habits, vices, relations. Coming to terms with the death of someone so close to your age. It could be any of you at any moment, so you guess your mother was right: spend time with your loved ones as much as you can while they're alive.
Mark's eyes grow heavy on your profile and you are forced to meet them. He definitely looks healthier. He has recovered some weight, his dark circles have almost completely disappeared, and his hair is back to its natural color, sporting a fresh undercut.
Most impressive, however, is the way he smiles at you and proceeds to lay his head on your shoulder. He lets out a sigh and somehow you feel relieved—he's not mad at you. In fact, he seems to feel fine, comfortable enough to approach you like that. You can't help but let out a deep sigh as well.
He's the first one to talk since you arrived.
"Hi."
"Hi," you reply, almost in a whisper. As if you were to raise your voice, all that harmony would dissipate in an instant.
"I wasn't expecting you." You feel Mark's voice vibrate through your body and reach your ears. It sends a shiver down your spine.
You have missed him so much. The past months have truly been a torture, but you didnt realize how much you needed to feel him this close, to listen to his voice, until this very moment.
"I was hesitant to come."
Mark lifts his head from your shoulder and stares at you for what seems like a minute or two. In a profound way, as if he was looking for something in your eyes, but as if he was gathering the courage to open his mouth and break your heart once and for all, giving this story a true closure. Perhaps about to do what should have happened a long time ago.
He just nods and says, "I'm sorry."
And you wait for it to come. For him to tell you that he's fully recovered now, that he doesn't need you, that you can go and live your life freely with whoever you want and that he will do the same.
"You know that night… The night we had the fight."
"Yes?"
"I said racing was the only thing making me feel alive."
You don't remember it so clearly at first. That night was quite traumatic, so you have to recapitulate and swallow the lump that forms in your throat remembering the events, and how everything about your relationship with Mark exploded in your face.
"I lied," he continues after a pause. "It was being with you. And I was afraid of hurting you and losing you, and I didn't want to lose you because you were the most important thing I had. But that's what ended up happening and–"
Mark can't finish his sentence, so he takes a deep breath. A cigarette appears between his lips, and it's when he struggles to light it up when you notice how abstained he is and how hard he's fighting it, by the incessant shaking of his hands and his sweating. He lets the smoke out of his lungs looking at the grave, remaining silent until he decides he's calmed down enough.
"I really loved you at that time," Mark says and shares the cigarette with you. "I–I still do. I really, seriously don't need you to take care of me anymore. But I want you to be with me."
He says this last sentence reconnecting with your eyes, looking at you the same way he did earlier, when you expected him to break your heart for good. He turns over his shoulder and looks at the boys one by one, who have been watching your exchange in silence until now.
"All of you," and he finishes.
Johnny pats Mark's shoulder and smiles fondly at him, giving him a little squeeze of comfort. "You'll always have us, no matter what happens."
5. Loving you almost feels like something
"And with this," Johnny starts as he places the last box at the entry of your apartment, "I get closer to being completely free for once."
"Dude," Mark tries and fails to sound upset, "can you not be so happy about me leaving your place? You're making me hurt. Like, you could at least lie about you being sad or missing me."
"But I never lie."
Jaehyun's deep laugh is present next to Johnny and he decides to speak, looking at Mark who is now hung up on you, more and more affectionate with you in front of the boys since you formalized your relationship.
"Baby's leaving the nest. Now it's just you and me, Johnny."
Since Mark was moving in with you and Yuta was leaving for Japan, it only left Jaehyun and Johnny at the Suhs' old house. The oldest was happy, because it meant he wouldn't have other three boys going in and out of the place carelessly every time he tries to bring other people home. Johnny loved the boys enormously, but they were all grown now. Maybe it was time they all found their own place to live and just do whatever they want. Jaehyun, however, seems like has no plans of leaving Johnny alone, at least for a little longer.
"Maybe we should become a married couple."
Johnny questions Jaehyun with his eyes for a couple seconds, but after what seemed like the gears of his brain working at full speed, he ends up agreeing. "That could be pretty convenient, actually. Would you cook for me?"
"You know I don't cook."
"Then forget about it."
You and Mark watch the exchange from the outside and can't help but laugh, because they're basically acting like an old married couple already.
"Alright guys," Mark claps his hands to get the boys' attention. "Thank you so much for your help, but I'll be kicking you out now to go celebrate with my girl. You know, all that boyfriend and girlfriend stuff…" He accompanied them with gestures, telling them to walk through the front door.
"Yes, we get it Mark," Johnny answered in a mocking tone. "You've got a girlfriend and you're fucking on every surface of this apartment. And I'm leaving with Jae, and we're getting stoned and going to sleep at seven. So much fun."
"Fuck you, John. Mark, work tomorrow, seven in the morning." Is all Jaehyun says as he leaves your apartment, only to keep bickering with Johnny all the way to the car.
As the afternoon sun falls and filters through the balcony door, the aroma of onion and tomatoes fills the small kitchen and your nostrils, making your stomach rumble a little. The melody of a guitar reaches your ears; it sounds soft and melancholic, the scratching of the fingers against the strings only gives it a rawer tone. You decide to leave the sauce finishing simmering, and you approach the room that you will now be sharing with Mark. You find him sitting there, on the bed, guitar in hand, facing the window with his back to the door. His subtle singing accompanies the chords on the guitar.
You can't remember when was the last time you saw Mark like this. So calm and relaxed. Music has always been his passion, ever since you met him in high school, so seeing him take up the hobby he loves so much and enjoy it brings tears to your eyes.
The words that come out of his mouth form a lump in your throat.
When no ones around me, you lost and found me
I was surrounded
With open arms
He keeps playing and singing softly, without noticing your presence.
Even though it's only been a couple of hours since you finished moving, he's already made your room a bit of his own. It seems that he has stopped in the middle of the task, that he amused himself with the guitar because most of the boxes of clothes are unpacked, the side of the wardrobe that you freed for him with only a couple of blue jeans and t-shirts in place.
On the night table rests Mark's perfume, an ashtray along with his cigarette box, and a couple of books under it. There are two sets of matching keys besides the table now—you had to make a copy for him, since it's his house too. His shoes are at the front door, and they will remain there every day. And Mark's slippers are on the edge of the bed you'll share, next to an open shoe box that catches your eye.
"What is this?"
Mark turns around to look at your face, then at the film camera and a bunch of developed pictures in your hands. A fond smile takes over his mouth.
"Taeyong was a romantic," he says, coming to stand next to you and starting to inspect the pictures. "You know, when he left we decided to divide the things that were important to Taeyong," Mark kept explaining to you. "We gotta fulfill his dreams, keep him alive that way."
"And what are you doing for Taeyong?"
"I'm dropping everything for love. For a calm and happy life."
The answer takes you by surprise, you can't hide it. The tears that had begun to accumulate since you heard Mark sing on the guitar come to the edge of your eyelids, uncontrollable, and threaten to fall at any moment.
"You know Taeyong loved danger and drama… But he really wanted to settle down with someone at some point," he continues speaking immediately. "And I kept these.
Mark takes all the developed films from your hands and starts looking at them with you. Shortly after, he says, "He loved to document the happy moments.
The pictures show various scenarios and all the boys are in there. In some pics it's just Johnny smiling under the sun, in others it's just Mark and Taeyong on a night's out, in others there's Jaehyun having breakfast with Taeyong, or Yuta and Mark acting foolish, totally like Yuta and Mark.
"But if you notice, it's just us living life together," he finishes the idea, melancholy invading his face, and his eyes also fill with tears.
However, you are sure that none of you are really sad. In fact, the horizon has never looked so bright for the two of you. There is no more fear, no more guilt, no more uncertainty.
"I think this is a happy moment," you say, picking up the camera and turning it on. "You and me together, settling down for a good life. You think Taeyong would've documented this?"
Mark smiles big and nods.
"Yeah, I think he would have."
After focusing on Mark in front of the camera, and with the evening light behind him painting the whole room a warm orange, you press the shutter. A not very powerful flash comes out of the camera, but it does its work illuminating those parts the warm light won't reach, and it indicates that the photo has been taken. Mark asks for the camera and does the exact same for you.
"I'm sure he's happy, and really proud of you, Mark," you say as you wrap your arms around his body.
Your ear on his chest even allows you to hear his heartbeat, which is unusually fast. Mark takes a big breath of air that moves his entire body and yours, also trapped in his arms. A warm feeling invades you, embraces your heart and awakens butterflies in your stomach. His heartbeat becomes softer, and his voice, smooth but full of honesty and pride, resonates throughout your body.
"Thank you. Thank you so much."
Mark was once the most careful of all. An incredibly strong and humble young man that thought could have the world in his hands. He had to completely lose control over everything he knew once to know fear, to know grief, to know guilt, to finally find healthy love and forgiveness. To others, but most important to himself.
"But, babe," Mark breaks the hug to raise his head and sniff in the direction of the kitchen. "Don't you think something is burning?"
"Shit!" you exclaim and bolt for the kitchen. "The tomato sauce!"
"Yeah, that's why I didn't take Taeyong's dream to pursue cooking." He crosses his arms and rests his body in the doorway, while you fight to save a burnt, almost brown colored tomato sauce by adding a little more puree and water. "I can't cook either."
You quit trying to deal with the sauce. It looks irreparable anyway. "Yeah… Sorry about that, baby."
"We will survive." Mark shrugs, then comes to kiss you affectionately on the cheek. "Wanna order some pizza?"
Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed my work, please leave a like, reblog or some feedback. I'd love to read your thoughts!
In a hostile environment or in a sequence of unpleasant situations, an oasis provides pleasure.
▪︎Pairing: vampire!Doyoung x club dancer!fem reader x vampire!Johnny
▪︎Genres: supernatural, horror, smut, romance if you want to call it like that (it's not).
▪︎Warnings: mature themes; explicit sexual content, drugs and alcohol involved, guns, violence, death scenes and mentions of it, and some gore scenes. MINORS PLEASE DO NOT INTERACT!
▪︎Wordcount for Part 1: ~16.8k words.
Author's note: hey everyone 👀 it's been ages. Writing this fic got out of hand lol so I split it into parts. This is all plot building 😭 more is coming. Also, the characters are sick to their heads so none of this is alright ofc and it's a twisted fic so if you are uncomfy don't read it! I rlly don't wanna bother anyone. Read pairings, genre and warnings before proceeding. And enjoy this first part! More is coming your way. Here's a playlist to kinda set the mood if you'd like. Tysm!!! 🖤
Who sees them walking around the city if they are all blind? They hold hands; something speaks between their fingers, sweet tongues lick the moist palm, run through the phalanges, and above is the night full of eyes.
01: words that will satisfy me
Lightning split the sky as the rain lashed the roof of the old bus, the drops seeping through the leaks, wetting the worn leather of its seats and spreading on the floor. You were lucky that public transportation was running that night and under those conditions, even more so considering that you had to be on time for your show at the casino—you couldn't afford to lose another night of work to torrential rains, even if it meant walking for forty minutes under the water from your house to the luxurious building.
The dirty streets of Seoul were already empty by the time you got off the bus, except for the old man you couldn't escape from even a single night arriving at the casino. While he wasn't inside, spending what was probably his last life savings on alcohol, drugs, and women (like most of the men you saw every night), he was living on the outskirts; under the big billboard of neon lights and on the fine and cold marble of the entrance serving as his refuge, along with a bed made of cardboard and an old, dirty mattress. Yuta kicked him out every night, especially the moment you arrived and he remembered the old man's presence due to the nasty comments he would give you, as you started up the stairs and toward the big golden doors.
Tonight was no different. Yuta left his position at the entrance as fast as he saw you coming and felt the old man open his mouth—although he didn't have a chance to say anything. As if Yuta could guess his intentions, he was in charge of throwing him in the hands of two high-security guards to the street and under that torrential rain; the homeless man's few belongings getting completely drenched, and causing the man to wail as he wandered off in search of a different place to spend the night. Only a series of what you assumed were complaints and curses came out of Yuta's mouth, in his native tongue.
Yuta lit a cigarette and didn't bother to return to his position. A quick wave of his hands was enough to have another man replace him, while he smoked under the cover of the water, resting momentarily from another night enriching his pockets in the largest casino in the city.
The look he gave you as you waited for this other man to read your work card was hostile as if Yuta could guess your intentions too. And he put you on alert for a moment.
He opened his mouth to speak. A cold ran through your whole body at the same time that lightning struck right on the building across the street, highlighting the silhouette of the Japanese above the violent discharge. He squeezed then opened his eyes, already too irritated by all the interruption, to continue:
"Go upstairs. Dry yourself up and put on some other clothes. Doyoung wants to see you."
"But my show starts at two o'clock."
"Just do as I say."
When the man at the entrance returned your card indicating that you could now enter, you hurried to walk on the red carpet, passing between round tables and banquettes padded with burgundy velvet. The smell of alcohol mingled with that of fine perfumes and that of the money, scattered on each table among glasses, cards, and chips, and also kept in the pockets and wallets of the rich.
The back pocket of your black imitation of leather pants buzzed, so you reached for an old phone, its broken screen showing a message from Soyeon where she attached a picture of a ladder; the red neon lights of a "V.I.P." sign shone above it. You wondered why she was at the entrance to the third floor—an exclusive place that humans like you and Soyeon rarely frequented. So you quickly typed a message questioning what that photo meant before going downstairs.
The club was located below the casino and just above the parking lot. The stairs were marked with neon green arrows indicating floor -1 if you went down—your designated place of work. It was a very different world from the casino. While above the gold metal-edged bars gleamed in the warm light of huge chandeliers, below the place could barely be defined; cigarette smoke obscured what little vision the red lights dangling from the ceiling provided, and the confines of the club were lost in darkness, making it easy to get lost in that dive for hours.
The floor was slippery from the amount of alcohol that had already been spilled throughout the night, and you had to be careful not to trip or injure yourself on a dropped glass bottle. It was hard to move through the bodies that wouldn't stop dancing and pushing and gasping for breath as the club got more and more crowded. But still, you made it backstage and to the dressing rooms where you and the dancers were getting ready for the shows every night.
You got inside in a hurry, making one of the boys that shared the stage with you get up from an old black leather couch and offer his help. "Girl, you need me to do something for you?"
"Please," you begged while looking at him through the mirror. "Can you get my suit and my boots?"
Without wasting a second, you started working on your makeup. Red and black eyeshadow that accentuated your gaze, and a lipstick that was about to run out after so many nights of shared use—bloody red is what said on the side of its cover.
The boy returned shortly after with your clothes in one hand and a glass of liquor in the other. He lit a cigarette inside the small space while you changed, his eyes following your every move. Only the music coming from the club filled your ears until you opened the door ready to go out and he questioned you.
"Where are you going? There's still five until the show starts."
"Yeah, I know but…" you hesitated on telling him. It wasn't a secret amongst the human workers that you and Doyoung kind of had a thing—they knew you fucked from time to time, but you had no clue why he wanted to see you at that moment.
Doyoung managed everything and everyone at the club and knew your schedule like the palm of his hand. Work had always been his top priority as well, so you knew for sure he wasn't going to make you show up late on stage. Still, you didn't want to raise suspicions about anything, didn't want people to talk too much.
The boy—that was named Ten and was the second nicest person you knew as soon as you started working at the club—raised his brows at you, growing impatient, making gestures with both his hands for you to keep talking.
"Doyoung wants to see me," you finally concluded. "I don't know what he wants, but it'll be quick."
Ten only hummed and reached inside of his platforms, taking out a small blade and putting it in front of your face. His breath, which smelled like mint and whiskey, brushed your face while he talked. "Be careful." And he hid the blade inside one of your boots.
Ten had been working at the club for years and knew vampires very well. Even though none of the vamps in charge had ever harmed him, he couldn't say the same for the customers who came from the outside. For this reason, he didn't trust them, and he always reminded you to handle yourself with special care, especially when he found out about you and Doyoung.
You gave him a nod along with a sympathetic smile and closed the door behind you on your way to Doyoung's office.
A long corridor connected the backstage dressing room to a mezzanine at the other end of the club. Suspended in the air from one side to the other, its tinted glass walls stretched to the roof of the club. Doyoung kept his office lit to a minimum, and the red lights outside it blocked all vision through the glass and into his office. This allowed him to have absolute control of everything that happened in his club, and to give orders without even having to get up from his chair.
You knocked on his door and looked above, at the corner of the corridor, letting the camera focus on your face. The door buzzed, indicating you were good to come inside.
Doyoung was sitting in his green velvet upholstered chair, facing the glass walls. A suit almost as pale as his skin accentuated his defined figure, even in that position. He turned to you, a welcoming smile adorning his face, and extended his left hand, the one not occupied with a glass feeding his vampire tendencies, inviting you to get closer.
He called your name before holding your hand and bringing it to his lips. A soft kiss on your knuckles, which left them stained with a slightly thick red liquid. "I'll be brief since I don't want to delay us in our tasks, but I had to tell you this in person."
He set his glass down on his desk and moved you even closer, positioning yourself between his legs. He looked over your body with his gaze and dared to open the fine, shiny cloth robe that covered it. He caressed the curves of your hip and passed the palms of his hands over the micro tulle that covered your abdomen until he stopped below your breasts.
"You will dance on the third-floor stage tonight, along with Soyeon," he finally said, his clear eyes piercing your dark gaze. "Whatever happens there, you must tell me. Don't forget who you work for."
You swallowed dry. So Soyeon was at the entrance to the third floor because the two of you would be working there that night. Dancing for the vampires. Anxiety quickly took over your body, and you felt your hands and feet start to sweat. You were lucky Doyoung couldn't notice that temperature change, or he would have given you away.
"Won't you be there with the rest of them?"
This was not going according to your plan.
He denied it with his head. His hands began to move again, caressing your back and reaching the edge of your see-through dress. He lifted it, you felt the cold on your skin, and he squeezed both buttcheeks, awakening the lust within you.
He took a breath of air that inflated his chest, causing the emeralds that hung rimmed in gold around his neck to rise and fall. He moved you at his will until you were sitting on top of him, your sex barely covered by a thong that resembled black leather in contact with his bulge, and you had to make an enormous effort not to forget the plan and take him right then and there. Getting rid of Doyoung would be much more difficult than you had imagined.
"Don't forget who you must be loyal to."
02: this is not a threat
It is important to create eye contact with the audience when you are performing. That was never a problem at the club, with its stage right in front of Doyoung's office. And while you couldn't see him from your place, you knew that he was always watching you from above, so your gaze was directed most of the time towards his tinted windows. He helped your concentration and allowed you to focus on the dance. On the third floor stage, however, you felt quite lost; too many things happened there.
In the club, just a large group of mortals huddled under the smoke and red lights, paying little attention to what was happening onstage. In the vampires' cave, distractions were everywhere. The white lights that illuminated the stage blinded you from time to time but still allowed you to make out the scenes. Vampires sipping drinks at the bars, smoking around a game of poker, passing through heavy velvet curtains, going in and out of small cabins with humans who had a job other than yours. Some came staggering out of there, like drunk on something and wiping their lips, while others just came out arranging their clothes to resume their activities around a table or on the small dance floor.
But despite everything that was distracting, you were forced to make eye contact. You felt a presence, someone's gaze heavy on your figure, hidden in a dark corner of that exclusive area. The lights spun illuminating him for a split second, but it was long enough for his amber eyes to finally find yours. From that moment on, you felt attracted to the man as if you were magnets. You went down the stairs of the stage and walked between the chairs and tables, making some of the vampires who hadn't paid attention to you yet turn to look at you. Not for a second could you lower your gaze from his or focus on anything other than dancing for that man.
He was sitting in the middle of the round table smoking a cigarette, looking a little too relaxed for your liking. His white shirt was slightly ripped, revealing a barbed wire tattoo that stretched from clavicle to clavicle on his chest; below, on his right pectoral, a spider tattoo. Resting the weight of his body on a semi-extended arm holding a cane, looking too vampire-like under your eyes. His tattoos seemed to end on his hands: a floral engraving on the back that contrasted with the phrase on his fingers: be afraid.
You got on that rounded table on your hands and knees, not caring about whatever game was going on between the rest of the men and the women who sat with him. You wanted to seduce him, that you knew. And he didn't seem to mind, because when a tall, blonde guy got up to protest, this man silenced him with a simple gesture of his hand. You thought it had to be a common thing amongst these vampires—they held so much power they didn't even need to use many words. So you danced the rest of your choreography for him, felt and touched your body as if your hands were his until the music ended and the lights turned on again.
Reality came down to you as if you were descending from the sky at miles per hour, and you landed on the ground in your black platforms after getting off the table. You felt incredibly out of place, yet an incessant throbbing between your naked legs and this man's gaze on you was sending your mind into a spiral. You had no idea what just had happened.
His deep voice cut through the air in that cave—like lightning from the storm outside the casino. A chill ran down your back for the second time that night.
"No one tells Doyoung about this."
But he didn't mean it for the rest of the people seated with him—he knew they would remain silent.
He meant it for you.
Soyeon appeared next to you with her hands full of bills, and she began to push you in the opposite direction while addressing this man very politely.
"Please excuse us, sir." But it sounded highly strange to you, she didn't talk like that to any of the vampires, not even to Doyoung. "Thank you very much, sir. Ladies, gentlemen." She bowed and you followed automatically before the two of you started walking behind the stage.
"Who was that?" you asked once the two of you were alone, inside the luxurious dressing room of the third floor.
"Are you out of your mind?"
You saw her undress hurriedly and change into her regular clothes, leaving the little dress–the same one you were wearing—inside her backpack, then starting whipping out all her makeup to re-do it into something different, more relaxed.
"I kinda felt like it, yeah," you finally replied, after processing how you unashamedly danced in front of that man and all of his friends, being so evident that you wanted him—as if you didn't have a thing with Doyoung. As if you weren't the little dumb human fucking the man in charge and everyone knew about it. "Who was that man?" you insisted.
"Seo Youngho," she hissed and looked at you with narrowed eyes as if it weren't obvious. "He owns the casino. He owns like, ninety percent of the clubs left in Seoul, actually. Friends call him Johnny."
Your plan was to become one of them, then kill them all and keep the fortune. Survive the fate that seemed inevitable. Defeat the decay of the world and humanity through that eternal immortality, as the vampires had done through each of the crises in history.
You were shocked, your face losing all color and your legs almost giving out when you realized that all this time you were after the wrong man.
When Doyoung hired you, he made it seem like he was the real leader. And everything seemed to indicate that he was. Because you knew Yuta, you knew how the rest treated that vampire—but it wasn't half the respect they had for Doyoung. From the countless nights you'd spent with him and been woken by his phone at any hour of the morning, you knew that most of the responsibilities fell on him as well. The fact that it was the first time you were hearing about this Seo Youngho after almost half a year working at the casino only made the situation more unbelievable.
"And you danced for him," Soyeon continued, her expression between a mixture of shock and amusement. "Holy shit. You literally felt all of yourself in front of his eyes."
"I know," you recognized with difficulty, taking your head in your hands while you sat in the chair; soft and padded compared to the garbage where you sat every night, in the dressing room on floor -1 "Please stop reminding me, it was embarrassing."
"It wasn't embarrassing!" she contradicted, "It was fucking hot. You never do that shit when we dance at the club."
"Of course not!" You straightened your back to look at her and denied with a disgusted face. "I don't want to seduce any of the bodies that frequent the club. Those are disgusting."
"Right, you want to seduce vampires." She pointed one of her makeup brushes at you, and golden dust flew across the room. A complicit smile adorned her face. "You want to seduce handsome, sexy, and rich vampires. You'll be collecting them? I know you have one already."
There wasn't any malice in her voice, none that you could notice. She left it there and went back to stand in front of the mirror to apply a clear lip gloss that made her face even more attractive. She wasn't looking for an explicit answer. Even if she only wanted to mess with you, you still weren't convinced you could trust her—or anyone inside that casino.
And that's why you were scared. Scared to death that she or anyone else could tell Doyoung what happened earlier. Because yes, he wasn't the most powerful of them, yet he could still do whatever he wanted to you and no one would even go looking after you. That's how the dynamic worked. That's why it could be a vampire's world.
Youngho's words resonated inside your head as if he was whispering in your ear.
"Youngho said something when our number ended," you decided to confess. Maybe out of fear, to test your luck and try moving in this new direction, or to risk your plan along with your life. Soyeon turned around and raised his brows at you, expectant of your next words. "He said not to tell Doyoung."
A knock on the door exalted the both of you. Soyeon looked in the direction of the sound, then down at you, same spot on the couch. She smiled with her lips sealed together, the tips of her thumb and forefinger joined and moving from left to right over her smile. She winked at you after walking to open the dressing room's door.
A rather young man leaned out from the other side, a bottle of champagne in a cooler and two glasses in hand. His bright red eyes quickly scanned the room and settled on your figure. "Youngho wants you at his table," he said. "Both of you." And he moved his eyes to Soyeon, who quickly looked at you with an excited smile, then turned back to the boy. "He also sends this. Says to enjoy yourself and get there whenever you feel ready."
The young vampire left the champagne and the glasses in Soyeon's hands after she greeted him with a polite 'thank you', and closed the door.
"Very good," she turned to you, ready to open the bottle. "I also want to go hunting for some handsome, sexy, and rich vampires."
—
Sitting on the velvety cushions and sharing a table with the vampires you learned that everything you thought you knew about them was actually nothing. Only two of them were the most talkative: Donghyuck, the young vampire they sent with the champagne bottle to get you and your friend, and Taeyong, a slightly older-looking vampire you often saw with Yuta or Doyoung. While Donghyuck concentrated mostly in annoying his superiors and catching Soyeon's attention, Taeyong was surprisingly kind to you, trying to engage conversation about various topics.
"I was studying in Tokyo to be a designer when I met Yuta," Taeyong said while pouring himself another glass of blood. "We met at a fashion exhibition. I remember he was wearing a three piece suit that looked very expensive. He introduced himself, Nakamoto Yuta," Taeyong made his own impression of the Japanese vampire you knew from greeting him every day at the casino's entrance. And it was on point, his deep voice and accent rolling out of Taeyong's lips as if he had been observing the vampire for an eternity now. "He liked my work and said he wanted to support me financially. You can imagine what I thought it was about."
"Thought he was offering to be some kind of sugar daddy?" You asked him, taking a drag from a joint and passing it back to Taeyong.
Taeyong nodded his head. "I thought I had to sacrifice my body for it," he said, then paused for a moment to reflect on his words. "I mean, it's not like I didn't like him. He was actually really hot," he finished in a whisper meant for your human ears only.
The white haired vampire laughed it off, looking a bit nervous after such a confession. Yet Taeyong's laugh was adorable and contagious, much so that it distracted you from his red-stained lips and teeth every time you saw his mouth open to a big smile.
"But I was really, really wrong about him–"
"I could hear you talking shit about me all the way from the first floor."
That deep voice characteristic of Yuta cut off Taeyong's story. His eyes found the Japanese approaching the vampire table, behind your field of vision. However, his presence sent a shiver down your spine—the idea that any of them could be listening to what you were talking about when you least expected it horrified you, and it was enough to bring you back to reality.
You weren't there because they were nice and wanted you to know more about them, to become close. They must have been using you somehow, and you had to find out their true intentions as quickly as possible so that they couldn't take advantage of you, but you could take advantage of them.
"Yuta, you're so nosy!" Taeyong accused him, pointing his index finger at him and then crossing his arms, half indignant. "I was just telling my new friend the story of how I met you and the guys."
The Japanese vampire collapsed into the free space on Taeyong's other side. He sighed heavily and ran his hand through his long red hair before fixing his gaze on you: his brow furrowed, and his eyes full of judgment on your figure at the table. "Doyoung's human?" he asked, sounding slightly confused.
Taeyong opened his mouth to reply, yet it wasn't his voice that gave the answer to Yuta's question.
"She's my new favorite."
It was Youngho's.
He got up from his place and walked around the table until he was positioned next to your figure. He bent down until he could whisper in your ear—a proposition to come back with him, to his apartment, right in front of everyone but especially in front of Yuta, who was still judging you from afar with those furrowed brows.
You feared Yuta didn't trust you like the rest of the vampires seemed to do. You feared he could smell your true intentions, somehow get in your head and know you were doubting every move, every decision. You were ashamed because you knew he could definitely hear your conversation with your boss and his leader even if you were whispering to each other. And you were expecting he wouldn't tell Doyoung you actually said yes to Youngho, that you'd love to go back to his apartment that night.
The night at the vampires cave seemed to come to an end when you found yourself in the passenger seat of Youngho's luxury car. Since your friend Soyeon and Donghyuck left in his own car seconds before, it was only you and Taeyong in the private parking lot, waiting for his boyfriend, for Yuta, and Youngho to get in.
Contrary to your experience with Doyoung or even with Yuta, you never had the pleasure of getting to know Taeyong in depth, and that was because you didn't really have a chance to interact despite a formal greeting when you passed him in the casino. But you were left both alone and drunk on many substances in the car, and you found out you definitely enjoyed his presence way more when he's not wearing a serious and intimidating expression, and when his huge eyes turn bright and he laughs at everything you say.
Taeyong made you feel like, if you were given the chance, you could form a beautiful friendship.
"You don't seem like the other girls."
"What do you mean?" You asked Taeyong, who was sitting behind and across from the passenger seat, stretching your neck to the side and resting it on the headrest so you could face him more comfortably.
"Every girl Johnny has been with has only wanted one thing," Taeyong answered. He took a deep breath and there was again, the serious, almost scary expression on his face that you knew him from. You gulped dryly, hoping it could go unnoticed before he continued. "To take advantage of him and what he owns. And my friend is a good guy, he really just wants to love someone before the end of this fucking cursed world, so he just lets them in, you know?"
The sensation of being exposed drained your face from all its blood, probably making you look pale even under a thick layer of makeup. You felt embarrassed thinking Taeyong had read you and figured you out perfectly, so much that you couldn't look him in the eye anymore. Nonetheless, Taeyong kept telling you how good he felt around you while you tried to believe that he was being honest with you, and not actually trying to induce you in some sort of manipulative game.
When fighting against an organized group, you don't need to attack them nor defeat them all at once. It will take one of the parts—only one of them to be the weakest and the beginning of their own downfall.
You wanted to believe Taeyong was the weakness.
Beneath all the beauty and luxuries that Taeyong carried around, his hard expressions but also his sparkling eyes, and most importantly all the substances that were dancing inside his body that night, your drunken mind considered there could be a soft heart that spoke the truth. And you didn't want to get carried away with that sweet, biased best friend talk and forget about what you really planned to do tonight—which was for sure not to fall for any vampire.
So as much as he would let you get closer to them, you would let him believe your connection was genuine.
"I don’t want you to do the same to my friend." He smiled at you.
You were about to reply, to reassure him you're not like the rest of the girls, when he turned his head to the window at the sight of a tall and very handsome guy walking in your direction, followed by Yuta and Youngho. Taeyong's smile didn't fade. In fact, it only grew bigger when the tall boy opened the door, ready to climb into the back of the car.
"Please don't get scared if you see my boyfriend or any of my friends snorting a line in front of you," Taeyong turned to warn you. "They're just weird like that."
"Tae, we don't do that in Johnny's car," the guy scolded him as the car was getting crowded. He held a bottle of vodka in his hand that he hurriedly wanted to finish before you got on the road and to Youngho's place. A long drink and he tossed it to Taeyong, who took a sip, squeezing his eyes shut at the burning feeling down his throat and then he handed it to you.
"It's fine with me, anyway," you inform Taeyong, accepting the bottle with a subtle smile. "It's what I usually see around the club…"
"Yeah, of course she's fine with it." The tall guy laughed and gave Taeyong a knowing look that you caught through the rear view mirror. "Stop putting on an act, Tae."
"Shut up, Jaehyun! You're the one acting. I just don't want to scare her away, I like her!"
"You won't like her more than you like me, though." The tall guy—who's name you learned was Jaehyun—got a serious expression sending Taeyong that warning, with only a small hint of mischief in his tone, very hard to catch if you didn't pay enough attention.
But Taeyong must have known him very well, because he laughed awkwardly at Jaehyun's comment which made him smile pretty lovingly, dimples showing and eyes going into the shape of two crescent moons in Taeyong's direction.
"You two make me want to throw up," Yuta said as he closed the door, squeezing Taeyong, Jaehyun, and himself up in the backseat and only confirming Jaehyun had to be the boyfriend Taeyong was talking about earlier.
"It's not us what makes you want to throw up, Yuta." You heard Jaehyun's voice while he spoke facing the windshield. "It's all the blood you mixed up and drank tonight."
The bottle of vodka was almost empty in your hands when Youngho arrived, occupying the last empty space behind the steering wheel. One second he was turning on the engines, and the other you were tasting the iron of a quick, chaste kiss he planted on your lips and in front of everyone inside the car. He bit your lip before breaking the contact, and your blood mixed with the remains of what Youngho had been sipping all night that managed to transfer to your mouth. Then he turned around to ask, "Are we all continuing this at mine?"
"Drop me near my place on your way," Yuta was the only one to speak, his tone colder than his looks and the lack of temperature around the vampires. "I don't want to be part of any of this."
03: chaos
Soyeon and Donghyuck didn't waste a second from the moment they walked through the front door of that luxurious apartment. Kissing violently and obstructing their way into what seemed like a room, they moved without separating from each other to breathe, attached as if they were feeding on each other. In contrast, Taeyong and Jaehyun walked in completely relaxed; Taeyong with his arm around Jaehyun's shoulders, and intertwining their fingers in a way that almost moved you. You remembered Taeyong's words in the parking lot and wondered if love could really exist inside such cursed creatures.
Youngho looked tired after collapsing into the big leather couch in the living room, bottle of whiskey in hand. He opened it and poured four glasses, which you took as an invitation to join him and circle around the small table, along with the other couple.
There was a golden tray covered in white dust that looked ready to be used at any time. The first was Taeyong. He set up the line, brought his face close to the tray, and you heard him inhale the cocaine. After that, it didn't take more than a split second for him to finish his glass of whiskey in one gulp. And even though you knew it took a lot to intoxicate a vampire or alter their senses with some mundane substance made for human consumption, you were surprised how Taeyong didn't even flinch; not a sign of a slight dizziness, nothing. Jaehyun asked Youngho for a refill for his glass, and when he finished it, he and Taeyong said a hearty goodbye before retiring to the second floor.
Youngho was a man of few words, you had learned in the hours you had spent with him that night—even though you had already lost track of time. Your old cell phone had been left behind in the dressing room at the club, long before you saw Doyoung, and long before you met Youngho and your whole plan was completely ruined. Looking outside couldn't give you any clues as to what time it was either, since the sun hadn't shone in weeks.
The sound of the incessant storm was barely drowned out by the music from a vinyl that Youngho had just put on. He returned to your side on the couch and, again, he didn't need to say much: the vampire handed you the tray of cocaine, you inhaled a line, and he finished the whiskey straight from the bottle. That tired expression he wore before was suddenly gone; as he watched you recover from the dizziness, it had been replaced by one that could be mistaken for euphoria, or maybe desire.
Your head felt extremely light, and your body was on the verge of losing control and letting yourself be carried away by the melody playing in the common area of that huge, cold, and dark apartment.
As if Youngho had been reading your thoughts, he asked:
"Dance for me."
His throat, probably irritated by all the alcohol consumed, made his voice reach your ears deep and attractive, awakening chills throughout all your skin. And you obeyed, of course—it was your job, and he was your actual boss. On top of all that, there was the possibility of desperately wanting to dance for Youngho once again.
Youngho pushed the small wooden table away, moving it with his leather boot on it without a care, making room for you to dance right in front of where he was sitting. Arms and legs outstretched as if he were in paradise, Youngho made you feel that if looks could kill you would probably already be dead—eaten alive, drained from all your blood. And in some twisted way, you couldn't help but enjoying it: the feeling that even though they could have whoever they wanted, there were two the vampires who continued to choose you over the others—who had you as the object of their desires. Doyoung did it regularly. And you had to find a way to make Youngho want to do it too without getting killed.
You could hear the sound of the fire burning the paper that wraps the tobacco, and the room quickly filled with its white smoke coming out of Youngho's lungs. The music that was making you dance wasn't particularly sensual—the melody and the sounds made the situation of being in the vampire's house even more macabre. Still, you tried your best to impress Youngho, who was huffing and running his hand through his hair restlessly, as he watched you with the same eyes that had mesmerized you in the casino. They looked brown, normal one second, and bloodshot red the next. You thought it was a consequence of your drunken state that it altered your perception of things, or of the desire that you felt existed between you.
Your outfit that night left nothing to the imagination. You were still wearing your performing clothes—a see-through dress and the set of faux-leather underwear that you assumed had been tempting the vampire in front of you all night. He wasn't leaving much to the imagination either. The tent on his dressing pants were giving you enough confidence to take it a step further.
You turned around, trying to follow the beat of the music. The hem of your dress rolled up the curve of your ass when you squatted down in front of him. You heard him groan over the music, and the sound of ruffling against the black leather couch. It made you smile when you turned your head to the side and saw him out of the corner of your eye, struggling a little with his hard-on. So you got your knees and the side of your head to touch the cold, white marbled floor, while maintaining that eye contact that was so mesmerizing to you. You opened your knees and broke your back to have your ass moving up and down in front of Youngho a couple of times, then straightened your back to finally get rid of the thin and shiny tulle that caressed your skin.
It was when Youngho lost it, grabbing you by the arm and turning your body around to sit you on his lap. "Keep dancing," his voice came out raspy and desperate.
The tension, the strange beat of the music and all the smoke accumulated in the room squeezed your chest, making it difficult for you to breathe, and if something didn't happen in the next few seconds you felt like your heart might explode. Even when you tried to remind yourself to not fully give in to him and lose control, you couldn't really concentrate on what you were actually there for. You felt like you had accepted leaving with Youngho for a different reason, far, very far away from fucking him. Nonetheless, that seemed like the only thing you could really think of at that moment.
A whine came out from your mouth when you felt his hands touching you for the first time and pushing you even closer to him. And when he squeezed your ass to place your clothed sex right above his bulge you gasped, your lungs purified with clean air, as if something had been restricting them all this time.
It was that feeling again—a downforce pulling your body down, feeling as if you were descending from the sky at miles per hour, and your brain processing reality way too fast for your drunken state. An incessant throbbing between your legs, extremely turned on by the vampire under you, and you having no clue of how you actually ended up in that position.
Because yes, of course you remember what happened that night. You remember going to talk to them at their table, then getting into one of their cars and talking with Taeyong, accepting the drugs from Youngho and wanting to dance for him… But you didn't work like this. You've never worked like this. Every move and interaction had to be absolutely thought out and premeditated and this—it just felt totally wild, like you were out of it when you were in front of Youngho. Just the way you felt when you saw him at the vampires cave, back at the casino.
Despite looking the most young and fresh above the majority of them, given his position amongst the vampires at the club, you assumed Youngho was probably one of the oldest, if not the oldest of them all. You wondered if he was really that powerful; there was the possibility that he was messing with your head, you'd read older vampires were able to do so even to humans.
You thought he was absolutely insane when you felt the cold air hit your nipples and then his warm mouth attached to them. He let you grind on top of him, while you tried to contain your moans and to concentrate on what you actually had to do, that was getting out of there before you were food for vampires.
Your plan was screwed. Youngho being the leader of them changed everything you had been working on for months, even before you got your job at the strip club. You thought you had him, but there was a high chance that he was just using you to benefit from you somehow. Either it was getting on Doyoung's nerves, feeding from you, or just to get his dick wet—this wasn't about you. You needed to make it about you.
You needed to have control over the situation again. Change the plan and keep moving as soon as possible, without being suspicious. But Doyoung was already too involved and, fuck—he wasn't the vampire you had to get with, and you knew he was already kind of attached. You could said he had feelings, you knew that was possible for immature vampires, so you had to deal with that too and–
"Care to explain what this is for?"
You felt the blade pressing into the skin of your neck, threatening to cut just above your jugular if you made even the slightest movement. Youngho shook your head and tightened his grip on the nape of your neck even more, the force he exerted there beginning to ache and the sharpness of the weapon demanding a response from you more than the fear and adrenaline you knew were giving you away, no matter how hard you tried to stay calm.
You closed your eyes and silently cursed Ten for giving you the stupid razor, and yourself for accepting it even when you knew a little blade would be a waste of time when it came to vampires. You cursed yourself for being so careless after months working to get to this point—not in the way you really wanted, though.
"Five seconds to explain yourself before I kill you," he talked from under you once again.
Your eyes met his, no longer changing from brown to red but fully bloodshot now, and looking more scary than ever. You gulped one time and decided to speak—it's not like you had another choice anyway.
"It's because I work at the club," you managed to get your voice out. "I'm not sure if you know, but most of the men there are nasty." The words came out as fast as you could, but the anger on his face was telling you he wasn't having any of your bullshit. You concluded your lie struggling to maintain eye contact. "Wouldn't be the first time someone has to defend themselves from them."
Youngho loosened his grip on the back of your head and lowered the razor from your neck, only to caress your body with its sharp tip, tickling your skin as he ran it across your chest, the curve of your breasts, and your abdomen.
"Nobody dares to enter my house with weapons, you know that?" He applied more force to the blade against your skin. "Who the fuck you think you are?"
"It wasn't to hurt you," you dared to say, chest breathing heavy under the movement of the blade. "I swear I'd never think of using it on anyone. It's just to scare the guys from the club away if things get ugly."
The blade stopped on the flesh above your left clavicle, right besides where a scar was placed. Doyoung wasn't used to feeding on you, saying he didn't like it and that it wasn't what your relationship was about. But sometimes you would let him, when the moment would get too intense and you noticed that he was fighting too hard to control his tendencies. He was happy getting drunk on your blood from time to time, and he rewarded you with amazing sex and aftercare. All that was left was a little scar in that spot. Youngho laughed looking at it, and you felt the sting of the edge cutting the skin, then his tongue licking the blood that emanated from the superficial cut.
He hummed satisfied after getting a taste from you, and his fangs rubbled the zone before he spoke.
"I don't believe shit you're saying, my darling."
Even though you had imagined a moment like this before, with the most important vampire of all making you his in every way, you prepared yourself for the worst outcome. There was no chance you were getting out of there the way you wanted it.
Yet the surprise of a door being opened violently interrupted Youngho, who was about to open your chest in two, and his gaze focused on a scene behind you. His face deformed rapidly, and his expressions were no longer covered with desire and hunger but full of fury and anger. Even though you had no idea what was going on at your back, you were internally grateful that you weren't the cause of the sudden outburst of the vampire.
"Johnny, I think I messed up."
Donghyuck's voice managed to get to your ears when Youngho got you off his lap and shoved you to the other side of the couch. He got up in a rage, and you took care of calming your breathing in silence before he could remember that he was literally about to kill you. You heard Youngho start to mutter to Donghyuck, but you were too busy checking the small cut on your skin that kept bleeding, staining your fingertips every time you touched it.
"The fuck have you done?!" You heard the older vampire scream this time, and when you looked up he was pushing a Donghyuck completely covered in red back, causing the boy to hit the wall and become unbalanced. "You know we don't do this here, it's strictly forbidden."
Donghyuck stood outside the room he locked himself up earlier. Barefoot, only wearing a pair of briefs and the blood dripping from his mouth, painting his neck and chest a deep red. He was trying to explain something to Youngho, yet your mind couldn't concentrate on anything different than the scene inside of the bedroom.
Soyeon's body was on the bed. Her neck hanging off the edge with her eyes open, a terrified look penetrating right into yours. She must have been full of fear, is what you thought as you saw the fresh blood covering her neck and the champagne-colored bed sheets—now stained in red. An open wound on its left side that had stopped bleeding. Donghyuck must have sucked her dry.
"I damn Mia for turning you, Donghyuck, I really do. You're nothing more than a pain in the ass," Youngho said, and you watched him start to dial a phone number from your place on the couch.
Donghyuck seemed like he didn't care much as he started heading towards where you were sitting. You tried to move back even further in place by drawing your legs to your chest, clearly scared of what he might do to you. This was not the way you thought you'd die. But he simply stopped at the small wooden table and took out a cigarette.
"Relax, I'm not going to do anything to you," his mouth barely opened to speak, as he tried to hold the cigarette between his lips. He lit it up, inhaled all the tobacco smoke, then let it out to mix with the heavy, tense atmosphere. His lips left the filter painted with your co-worker's blood. "Yet." He finished talking with a macabre smile, and even dared to wink at you.
He quickly scanned you up and down, suddenly reminding you of the situation you were in with Youngho before he showed up and making you feel utterly exposed, so you crossed your arms over your chest in the best attempt to shield yourself from the hungry eyes of the young vampire.
"You're not doing shit more than taking care of this mess," Youngho spoke to Donghyuck as approached the scene. "I called Mia, you'll do it together. And be fucking reasonable while doing it. I don't want to see her on the news tomorrow because she was found laying in an alley."
"And what do we do about her?" Donghyuck asked while pointing at you with the cigarette. "Can't you make her forget? 'Cause I doubt you really wanna deal with another dead body."
Youngho stared at your body for a few seconds, thinking. Donghyuck waited for an answer, shifting his gaze from his boss to you, and you could feel Soyeon's eyes, dead but full of fear on you all the way from inside the bedroom. The smell of blood emanating from there and from Donghyuck's dripping mouth was beginning to be nauseating and the music playing from the vinyl threatened to drive you crazy.
"She doesn't need to forget," he finally said. Then he pulled your blade out of the back pocket of his pants and threw it forward, the little weapon landing on the couch right next to you. "You don't fuck with vampires. Consider this a lesson."
04: through the storm
Check the window. Watch the raindrops fall. Take your hand out and feel the water in your skin. Wipe the humidity with your clothes. Check the time—it's been twenty-six hours and thirteen minutes since you left Youngho's house; twenty-five hours and two minutes since you left Kun's apartment with your hands stained with blood. And try not to lose your mind. Check the time only one more time just to make sure you're not disconnecting from reality.
Not even a minute had passed since the last time you unlocked your phone to do that.
The wind from the storm that had been going on for days suddenly became more violent, whipping your face and forcing you to close the windows of the house, leaving you in the dark after the candles have gone out. The dim firelight between your trembling hands lighting cigarette after cigarette was the only tangible evidence of your emotions at that moment. The room quickly filled with smoke as the wax burned back onto the table, and that poor light allowed you to summarize what you were doing.
Your eyes scanned the thick paper, reading the information that had been kept from you over and over again. National Intelligence Service, printed in blue ink, and a 'classified' red stamp just below it.
Serial 090295-127. Name: Seo Youngho - Alias "Johnny".
A voice resonated inside your head, almost torturing you, and you feared closing your eyes in case you'd be reminded of the events of the past hours.
"Did you really think you'd be able to do this alone? Are you that naive?"
Address: Unknown.
Jurisdiction: Seoul.
Additional info/scars/tattoos/weapons/etc.: tattoos of a barbed wire on his chest; hummingbird, beast, and wild leaves on his left shoulder (colored), spider on his right pectoral, flower arrangement in his right hand, letters on his fingers. Master hand-to-hand combatant. Masters various supernatural powers (includes supernatural strength, speed, super bionic hearing and vision, telekinesis, mind control.)
Two checked boxes under that information:
Suspect. Previously arrested.
The rage would make you tremble and break a cold sweat that dropped down the sides of your body. You closed the blue folder violently and you piled it on top of the rest of the documents carelessly. Yuta's, Taeyong's, Jaehyun's, Doyoung's—all of them—and tossed them across the room to somehow deal with the irritation. The papers that keep track of the vampire organization's crimes up to a year ago, before Qian Kun was fired for not agreeing to stop investigating them, flew through the air and landed next to the pile of clothes you took off just a couple of hours ago. The candlelight hardly reached that area of the house. Still, it was enough to illuminate the red stains on your white fur coat, and remind you of the scene you left behind at the retired cop's house.
You can't really say that it was premeditated, although you can't really say that you simply acted out of a violent impulse, or a nervous one, or whatever. You wanted to finish off the bastard, just not under those circumstances. After finding out that he had only been lying to you and using you to catch the vampires first, and that by hiding information as important as who their true leader is, he ruined the whole damn plan you were carrying out. You thought the bastard deserved nothing more than to die right away.
Kun's apartment, in a crumbling building just a couple of streets from the casino, had become an exact replica of the Seoul police investigation office after he was kicked out. Target pictures pasted on the walls, phone numbers, bank account aliases, contacts from all around the world, photos from outside and inside the casino—you name it. The man studied the vampires who ruled the casino day and night.
When Kun arrived in Korea from China, he was a newly recruited police officer hungry for justice in a dirty, corrupt, and dying world. He had followed the vampires who had their illegal businesses in China and, frustrated by all the obstacles the authorities put to judge them, he decided to go in search of the root of the problem. Kim Doyoung, was what he told you the night you met him in the old bar where you worked and where Kun often went to drown his sorrows.
Kim Doyoung was supposedly the man in charge of the biggest chain of clubs and casinos in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, Tokyo and, of course, Seoul. Kim Doyoung, a rich, powerful, attractive, timeless man. A vampire. Someone who would survive the supposed last of humanity's crises, filling his pockets exponentially and living peacefully for all eternity. Absolutely everything you were looking for.
You were going to kill Kun after you had become what you wanted and rid yourself of the vampires, but that evening he left you no choice.
The morning after the night you met Youngho and your life suddenly got upside down, you went to Kun's apartment for explanations.
You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to keep the memory from creeping into your mind.
"I didn't lie to you," he had the nerve to say. "I just kept information from you, for your own safety."
"Bullshit!" you almost spit in his face. All the anger generated by the situation you found yourself in with Youngho, Soyeon's unnecessary death, and Doyoung's strange attitudes, you were unloading on the police officer. If your plan took a one hundred and eighty degrees turn it was his fault, and you were going to let him know. "If you cared about my safety you would've told me the truth from the start. And I would've been dealing with the right vampire from the beginning. Wouldn't have gotten my mind fucked, maybe my co-worker wouldn't be fucking dead!"
"You could never have dealt with the situation on your own."
"I would have planned it differently! I thought I had Doyoung eating from the palm of my hand."
"You have Doyoung eating from your hands, though," he shot back, maintaining an incredibly calm composure even though you had been yelling at him for about ten minutes.
"But he's not the right guy, for fuck's sake!"
Kun left the room leaving you shaken, your chest rising and falling rapidly, and your throat closing more and more in response to all your accumulated anger. After a couple of seconds he returned with a file box in his hands and begun to search inside it, until he pulled out a blue folder and opened it with the intention of reading its contents to you.
"Okay, listen. This is how we're going to proceed."
"Hell no. I'm not doing this with you anymore." Your face contorted in disgust as you looked at him, and you pointed an accusing finger at him to speak, "You think I can trust you after you lied like this to me?"
"Did you really think you'd be able to do this alone?" Kun asked once more, but this time with a much more incredulous tone, his eyes narrowed and a nasty smirk on his lips. "Are you that naive? Look at you."
He motioned to you with his head and you followed his gaze all the way down to your own self. You were still wearing your outfit of the previous night—your performance clothes, only covered by a fur coat you managed to take before leaving the casino that barely reached your thighs. You hadn't had the energy to shower nor change clothes since you came back from Youngho's apartment, so your makeup from the previous night was trying to survive the water from the bathroom sink and the rain, almost completely smudged off your face now. To be quite honest, you were a disaster.
"You're nothing more than a whore who makes men horny for fucking money, and you're going to die as that, nothing else," he stated disgustingly. "There's no chance you can fool Youngho and run away with his money. It's not happening. Be fucking realistic."
You felt your eyes burn and fill with tears. A lump settled in your throat, and you couldn't warn him at all. When Kun turned around and had his back to you, you just saw the perfect opportunity to vent all your pent up rage.
The knife you were hiding in your boots felt incredibly heavy in your right hand. Kun's hair was soft to the touch as you took hold of him to angle his neck to the edge of the blade. A clean cut from left to right was all it took for your skin to feel the heat of his blood, and the floor began to turn red—a dark and stinking red, like the one you often see Doyoung drink from his fine glass bottles.
You let out a cry of exhaustion watching the body fall limp to the wooden floor and hearing the retired officer struggle to maintain his life.
"¡Fuuuuuck! ¡Fuck, fuck, fucking shit!"
The pool of blood didn't manage to reach the sole of your shoes, as you walked away and busied yourself with taking the file box that Kun had just revealed to you, along with some other photographs and bank account numbers. You didn't take all the items that were hanging on his walls, because whoever entered, found his lifeless dead body, and then saw how he had been following the vampires for years, would only think that the crime was their own doing—that they discovered him and wanted him out of the way. Nobody would ever suspect you, because you always made sure there were no traces left of your relationship with Kun that could incriminate you. There was a high chance that the case wouldn't even get investigated, as no one dared to touch the vampire organization and Kun didn't have family in Seoul that could worry about him, anyway.
The old plan to get to the vampires was completely screwed, so you needed to think about a new one as soon as possible.
You opened your eyes and you found yourself sitting at home again, by candlelight, this time with a joint in your hands. You turned it on, took a puff, checked the time through the broken screen of your phone. Only a minute had passed since you last did the same, but in your head it felt like an hour.
Nothing coherent would emerge under that state of mind, so finally, after approximately more than thirty-five hours awake, you went to sleep trying to convince yourself that you were not losing your sanity.
05: every splendid thing gathered as if to tempt me
You weren't asked to go to the vampire's cave again after what happened with Soyeon. When you went back to work at the club alone though, Ten was the first to suspect something had happened either when you were there or after. He asked if you knew the reason why she was absent, but you weren't gonna tell him the truth–you couldn't imagine what would happen if your coworkers found out their bosses didn't mind killing his employees only because they couldn't control their thirst for human blood. You were afraid that, if you said a word, they'd find out and get you killed too.
Your answer did not convince Ten at all, who questioned you, crossing his arms and frowning.
"You think she's sick?"
You just shrugged, looking at him through the reflection in the mirror of the club's dressing room.
"It's been a week since she's absent," he remarked. "You think she's gonna miss a week of work, considering how shitty the pay is, just because she's sick? She doesn't have any more income."
You swallowed dryly and couldn't stand his gaze any longer. If Ten noticed how guilt took over your senses, he chose not to say anything about it. Only his footsteps could be heard, the sole of his white platforms sinking into the wood as he walked away from you to collapse on the old leather couch.
Your phone vibrated and the screen turned on, showing a text indicating to be at the private parking lot in five minutes. Doyoung explained he had a busy week and that he couldn't make much time to contact you, but that he admired you from his office every night that you were dancing at the club's stage, and it made him miss you even more. He wanted to compensate you for all the time you couldn't be together.
"Doyoung might know something," you finally tried to reassure Ten, even though you knew Doyoung wouldn't have a clue . "I could ask him about her."
His long, thin legs crossed while he lit a cigarette up and drank whiskey as if it were water. "Please do," he said, exhaling a large cloud of smoke. "I'm worried sick about her."
—
You thought it would be easier to deal with the situation, however the image of Soyeon dead in Youngho's bed haunted you day and night, just like the tail of your lies. The sound of the flush filled the bathroom right after the conversation with Ten made your stomach turn. You opened the sink, rinsed your mouth, touched up the red color of your lipstick and bit into a mint.
Five minutes later, you found Doyoung waiting for you at the side of his white sports car. He was busy on his phone, a frown on his brows as he discussed with someone in a low tone you couldn't catch anything of what he was saying. Even though he looked frustrated, his eyes relaxed as soon as he saw you approaching his spot. He did that characteristic gesture of him, extending his arm to you to get you closer, and you intertwined your fingers as he ended his call on the phone.
"I'll have an answer tonight, Johnny."
Your stomach flipped for the second time that day as soon as you heard the name leave Doyoung's lips. He frowned once again, maybe sensing a change in your mood, but only smiled at you and caressed the back of your palm with his thumb. You thought Doyoung might not have known what happened, but somehow he could've been trying to comfort you.
"Alright, see you tomorrow." Doyoung ended the call.
He cupped your face with his hands locking eyes with you. He had a tender look, and it made you wonder if Doyoung might see it through you—all the sleepless hours, the crying, the fear, the stains of blood, the lies. Yet he only pushed your head closer to his, locking your mouths with a soft kiss. His lips were cold to the touch, but after what felt like the most chaotic and stressful days of your entire life, you found some kind of comfort in them. His gentle manners disconnected you from reality, so you stuck to that kiss like your life depended on it, deepening it more and more as time passed.
You tugged Doyoung closer, his perfectly white shirt wrinkling in your fists while you felt his body adapt perfectly to yours and his expensive cologne filled your senses. It reminded you of the reason why you started seeing Doyoung in the first place—you liked him. You liked his body, you liked his face and the way it seemed like he only had eyes for you. You loved how he smelled, how he always kissed your cheeks, how his silk shirts felt on your skin after he got you naked. Then you got used to the rides on his expensive cars, the delicious meals and the comfort of the king sized beds he would fuck you over everytime you were together.
Maybe you liked all that a little too much, got ambitious, wanted it all only for you. And you wanted it forever.
He broke the kiss and laughed when he saw you chasing his lips for more. His hands moved up to hug your waist and you opened your eyes to find his slightly bloodshot red, his irises slowly going back to its normal yellowish as you both struggled with your breath.
A lopsided smile was plastered on his face.
"Let's go home."
And maybe, only this last time, you didn't want to think of following plans, of keeping secrets and fearing betrayals. Maybe you wanted to have a moment with Doyoung, only a moment, like it was when it all started.
After weeks of torrential rains, all that was left in Seoul was empty streets under an eternal starry night. The wind that entered through the apartment’s open windows made the black curtains dance around a king-sized bed where Doyoung laid naked. Through the gold-ornamented mirror he observed you fix your hair, then put your panties on and add some more lipstick after it transferred all to your lover’s skin.
Against popular belief, you were able to catch his silhouette through the reflection coming close to you. His body was illuminated by the moonlight only, yet it was enough to admire all the muscle and the ink that adorned his body. It was just as they described it on the documents you got from Kun’s house, each tattoo placed in the exact place, and it made you wonder if those previous investigators had gotten the information the same way. How many lovers could Doyoung and the rest of the vampires possibly have had that were not their lovers, but some desperate humans trying to make something out of this miserable world? How many other girls have touched Doyoung’s velvety skin under the moonlight, over those same sheets, and how many more would if you’re not the last one?
His touch was cold over your shoulders, even when he placed his soft lips on your naked skin it felt terribly cold. From behind you, his right hand traveled past your navel until it reached the only trace of fabric you were wearing. The other hand over your neck applied the right amount of pressure to get your entire body pressed to his, and he whispered in your ear.
“There’s something you need to understand very clearly, my dear.”
The coldness reached your insides. Doyoung started rubbing on your sex very gently, enough for you to pay attention to what he was saying.
“Even if you start dancing occasionally for other vampires at the cave, you’re my human.”
He added a finger as he finished the sentence, making you throw your head back over his shoulder.
“You can’t be with anyone else.” When he sensed you were ready, a second finger came in alongside a tight grip on your neck. “Understood?”
But a moan got caught in your throat. You had to open your eyes to check your reflection in the mirror because you couldn’t believe what your ears heard.
That wasn’t Doyoung’s voice asking the question, nor was it his figure behind you and with his hand between your pussy.
It was Johnny’s.
The older vampire let go of the grip on your neck before putting your panties down in one go. The contact on your skin no longer felt cold, but it was incredibly hot, almost burning the places he was grabbing you from. With both hands behind your back locked between his, he started fucking you. You looked for Doyoung around the room, wondering where had he gone and if he was okay with it. It was hard to understand how one second he was telling you you’re his, and the other he was letting his superior have his way with you.
“What are you doing?!” You asked the vampire behind you, while he was restlessly going in and out of you and you were fighting not to scream his name.
“This is lesson number two,” Johnny said between breaths. “You can’t play both ends.”
It’s hard to explain what truly happened that night, because you couldn’t decipher it yourself.
When you started to fight the pleasure, he seemed to have no other option than to let you go. After quickly putting all your clothes on and apparently coming down from the high, you ran out of Doyoung’s room, full of embarrassment and in fear of encountering him and got him questioning your state.
But you couldn’t avoid him.
His hand on your forearm stopped you from getting through the front door.
“What happened?” He asked a little out of breath, only wearing a pair of briefs and a confused expression.
“Where is he?”
“Where’s who?” Doyoung returned the question.
“Sorry, I'm sorry,” you apologized as you fought to get rid of his grip, rotating your gaze wildly between his body and the bedroom door, hoping that Johnny would simply disappear from there. “I just need to go.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No, no.”
“Did you not like it?”
And what were you supposed to say? You couldn’t quite wrap your head around the idea of Doyoung letting Johnny fuck you. In his own house, right after himself. It just wasn’t part of Doyoung’s nature, you knew that. So, to say you were extremely confused once again, was an understatement. Doyoung was still looking at you expecting an answer.
The problem was, you liked what Johnny did to you a little too much.
“Are you scared of me?” Doyoung asked after not getting a word from you. “Is this because of Soyeon?”
“No.” You furrowed your brows. Doyoung knew something and was clearly keeping it from you. But how much did he know was the real problem; he better not have an idea you were with Johnny the night she died, or it would be all screwed. Doyoung simply couldn’t know you saw his boss, or you would lose your job and contact with the casino, completely. That’s why you got a little defensive and started questioning him, even when you already got all the answers. “What does she have to do with this?”
“Uhm, no, it doesn't have to do anything–”
“What do you know, Doyoung?” You demanded with a firmer tone. He remained silent, perhaps debating whether to confess or not. So you feigned a little more concern.
“She’s missing! Don’t act all dumb Doyoung, I know something happened to her!”
“One of the vampires of the cave, Donghyuck,” he finally started. “Well, he can’t control his impulses too well.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“He’s young! Like, very recently turned and… Apparently he impulsively sucked all the blood out of her–”
But it was impossible for him to finish the sentence because you started gagging. Not because of what he was saying, but because of the mental image you had of Soyeon’s dead body, and Donghyuck all covered in her blood in front of you. You even remember the nauseous smell, and your eyes filled up with tears because of the disgust.
“I know she was your friend. I’m sorry for not telling you, I just didn’t want to scare you.” His voice came out desperate as his touch sought to comfort you, through caresses on your arms and your cheeks. “I know I get possesive sometimes telling you you’re just mine, but it’s because I’m afraid you might get involved with them and end up like that.”
“I already got involved with you. What makes you different?” You countered a little defensively, dodging his hands.
Doyoung had always been very respectful of your boundaries and your emotions, so you weren't surprised when he brought his hands to his chest, guarding himself against the desire to come into contact with you after you avoided it. His murmur still echoed in that huge, dark living room of his apartment.
“That I… I really care for you. You’re more than a good fuck to me. You know that, right?”
The empty look of a defeated body was all you gave back to him, as if you no longer had the strength to deal with the situation.
He approached you very slowly, still in a state of alert that you could feel. “I care for you.” He repeated. “A lot.”
“You vampires can’t develop feelings and shit,” you finally spoke. “Don’t try to lie to me.”
The vampire shrugged with his head down, an attitude you have never witnessed before. That level of vulnerability he was showing was completely new; deeper than the sex, even deeper than sharing your blood with him.
“I can,” he confessed, looking back into your eyes. “I’m not that old, you know? To completely dissociate myself from my feelings.”
While you remained silent, you let him close the space between the two of you once again. Doyoung’s fingertips were soft caressing your cheeks, yet his lips felt even softer. He wore yellow clear eyes full of worry, far from those arrogant or lustful looks he gave you most of the time. On his naked chest, right above where his heart should’ve been beating, a perfect shape of your lips in the color of red.
The gears were turning inside your head trying to think of how to use this to your advantage and put the plan into motion with Johnny.
“I need some time alone to process all this.”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Doyoung was quick to reassure you. “Whatever you need, you know I’m just one call away.”
You nodded your head yes and were out of the vampire’s place.
Once on the street, you searched your small bag for the cigarettes you had taken from Doyoung's nightstand and lit one. In a reflex act, you looked up in the direction of his balcony, where its black curtains still fluttered due to the unusual wind and blended with the darkness of the night in a decaying Seoul. Suddenly, the windows closed. You exhaled the smoke from your cigarette smiling.
"Stupid vampires."
And you stopped the bus that would take you back to the Oasis.
06: tell me how you want to keep me for eternity
Multiple murmurs from came to your ears as you opened the doors to the red room. The waitresses opened bottles of champagne and filled the mortals’ glasses as the vampires sucked on their blood cocktails. There was some jazz playing in the back while you were opening your way to that particular table that caught your attention so much on the first day you were at the vampire’s cave.
That night, however, you noticed there were a few missing faces as you performed on the stage.
When you encountered Yuta at the casino’s main entrance and he told you you were back at the third floor, of course you were expecting to dance for Johnny. Yet he was nowhere to be seen. You didn’t even feel his presence like you did the first time you were there, and you thought it was strange. Why would he call you to dance if he wasn’t going to be watching? And why would you bother dancing if you were going to do it for other people?
The call of your name startled you, making you realize you had already walked by the vampire’s designated table during your train of thought. Taeyong's friendly tone made it quite difficult to hide the reality that you weren't interested in stopping at the table unless Johnny was there.
“Come have a drink with us.”
You nodded your head politely and sat down at the rounded table. Taeyong and his boyfriend were attached at the hips as in every situation you had shared with them. On their side, a rather young looking man with a perfectly defined nose and plump lips with an unnatural red. The remains on his glass made you think you couldn't make up his age based on his looks because he was also drinking from the blood cocktail. Between him and Yuta, some girls you had never seen before. Lastly, Donghyuck was sitting on your side with a cocky smile that you started to think was characteristic of him.
“You and the dancers were amazing tonight,” Taeyong said as he offered you a bubbly glass that you drowned in one go.
“It was a new show,” you responded with a smile. “A different one we haven’t presented in the club, so we didn’t have much rehearsal before this.”
“You work at the club?” One of the girls asked, arching a brow and getting a laugh out of her friend.
You confirmed with a nod of your head and a slightly embarrassed smile, yet the rage was already bubbling up inside you. She only added, “Must be hard dealing with all the shit that goes down there.”
That made both of them laugh and you scoffed in response.
“Why don’t you go down there and see if you can deal with it,” your face frowned as you challenged them with the same impudence. “I’m sure you won’t act all tough once you’re outside your little privileged bubble.”
Yuta was the only one that dared to show a reaction to your response. He laughed and poured another glass of champagne before handing it to you as some kind of reward. “You won’t want to mess with this one, girls,” the japanese said and he got up in his place, not looking them in the eyes even once but rather concentrated in the rest of the cave, as if looking for someone.
“Yeah, I can see,” the girl that remained silent and only laughing until then, spoke. “You can’t hide where you come from. It always shows.”
And with that they left the table, leaving you alone with the vampires.
“I think you’re one of our best dancers,” Jaehyun said. “But not the best.”
As the sensual tone of an electric guitar came to your senses, he stood up and asked his boyfriend for his hand. “Would the best dancer in the building give me the honour of sharing this piece?”
Taeyong laughed out of nervousness, asking ‘what?’ as he laced his fingers between his lover’s. But his expression turned quickly as he recognized the song. “Wait, is this our song?” He asked getting up.
“I paid the musicians to play it for us.”
Jaehyun dragged his partner to the center of the dance floor, attracting everyone's attention except for one person. It seemed like Yuta had finally found what he was looking for, and you saw him smile for what you think was the first time in your life. A genuine smile formed on his lips and forced him to leave the table in search of an infernal woman who was entering the cave. He kissed her knuckles almost hidden by a huge fur coat, and the tip of her stilettos echoed across the floor as they both left through the red curtains she had just entered.
A few seconds passed by with Jaehyun and Taeyong swinging to the music, before you were startled by the last person setting at the table with you.
“Just you and me, huh?” Donghyuck asked and you hummed. “Should we go dance too?”
“No, thanks.”
“What?” He laughed, sounding like he was a little shocked by the quick denial. “I thought you enjoyed dancing for the vampires a little too much,” he added with a disgusting tone eyeing you up and down.
His wandering looks you caught from the corner of your eye obliged you to cover up a little, uncomfortable. But it wasn't enough for Donghyuck to catch the signal, or maybe he decided he couldn't care less, hence the young vampire moved his right hand to your knee and started squeezing there, feeling your skin through the red stockings you were wearing.
“Red’s my favorite colour,” he whispered getting closer to your side.
Your trembly hands tried to pour another glass of champagne but failed once you noticed the bottle was empty. Beyond Donghyuck’s spot on the table there was a bottle of whiskey, so you tried to reach for it but couldn’t when you felt his hand go further up your knee.
You stopped him right there and looked him in his blood-shot eyes. A wicked smile took over his features and he licked his lips after squeezing your thight once more. “What?” He asked after your silence.
From his being emanated a mix of whiskey and that nauseating smell that reminded you of the night Donghyuck had appeared before you covered in blood, and of the floor of Kun's apartment covered in the same red.
“You scared of me?” Donghyuck whispers once again. “Scared you might end up like that pretty friend of yours?”
You held your breath, trying to endure the nausea that the young man caused you. You knew he meant you were scared of ending up dead.
“Trying to be fucked by you?” A laugh made your entire body shake. “Not even in your wildest dreams,” you finished to get his hand off your skin and up from the table.
As the loverboys still danced slowly at the center of the floor and in front of the musicians, you fixed your clothes and went a little over him to finally reach for the bottle of Black Label.
“I need to go see your boss.”
—
“Ten,” you called his name as soon as you heard the boy on the other side of the phone.
Since Soyeon wasn’t around anymore, you decided you had to trust someone else. You had been working at the casino for a few months only, so it was needed to keep in contact with someone who knew the interns and could give you quick information.
Ten showed himself trustworthy since the very first moment you met. He was the nicest coworker you had too, along with Soyeon. During your first rehearsal at the club it was only him and you; he spent hours teaching you all the choreographies and showing you around so you wouldn’t feel so lost on your first day of shows. Later that same day, after he drowned glass of whiskey after glass of whiskey, the confessions came to you while you two sat on the rusty couch of the changing room.
“I fell for them too,” he said, head thrown back on the couch, getting his eyes lost on the dirt of the ceiling.
You rolled the tobacco between your fingers with some difficulty and passed it to Ten. “How did that happen?”
“Honestly,” the boy lit the tobacco up and it struggled to burn due to your poor arming skills, but he didn’t seem to mind. “They’re intriguing, I don’t know. And they’re handsome and hot despite all that coldness they carry around. But there was this particularly nice vampire that came to the club one night,” he confessed while pouring another two glasses of liquor and passing one to you. “That’s unusual. You’ll never see them around here, not even Doyoung, he’s always observing but only up from his office.
But this one was there. He came to see the show and then I encountered him in the bathroom.”
“In the bathroom?”
“He was doing coke,” Ten laughed in disbelief. “But he was so nice,” a sigh came out of him remembering the moment. “The most defined jaw I’ve seen in my life, nose and lips carved by the Gods, a soft pastel pink hair that reminded me of how the beautiful afternoon sky looked before all this world went to shit.”
That made you wonder. Ten looked ratherly young, maybe around your age or just a couple of years older, yet you had no memories of how the initial world was. You had only lived during the beginning of the end. “How long have you been around here, Ten?”
“Many years,” he said, calling your name. He stood up from his place and went to look in front of the changing room’s mirror. “I got beside him like this, only looking at him through the mirror but I could see him eyeing me up and down with a dopey smile.”
It looked like nostalgia took over his body, a sad smile adorning his face when he turned around to finish his sentence.
“Taeyong has always been easy like that.”
“You fell in love with one of them?”
“Mhm.” Ten walked on his platforms until he was sitting on your side once again. He put the tobacco down in the ashtray and took the black, thick choker he was wearing around his neck. “We got close like this.”
A slightly visible scar of what looked like a pair of fangs was there on his skin.
“I think it can happen to most of us.” Ten searched for something in between his tight clothes until he took out a tiny bag of powder. “I do wish to feel that high again, everyday of my life.” Opened it, collected a little on the inside of his long nails and inhaled. “But I don’t wish for anyone else to experience it at the same time.”
“Girl,” he said through the line. “You good? Are you done with your number?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” you replied and hesitated for a moment on asking what you really wanted to know. “Do you know where I can find Johnny?”
A moment of silence, then Ten’s voice finally came back to your ears. “Last floor. His office is the only room you’ll find there.”
—
A gold painted door read Seo Youngho in front of your eyes. Under your black platforms, a petrol-colored carpet that combined perfectly with the dark walls of the hallway. You knocked on the door and checked above it and around the corners of the hallway to see if there were any cameras announcing your arrival, but opposite what you were used to in Doyoung’s office, there wasn’t a single one. You only heard a disturbed ‘come in’ from inside, and the voice made your stomach turn upside down.
The room behind the golden door was giant, covered in dark wood and black-out windows that reached the meters-long ceiling. Adorned in a typical gothic style, the office of your boss was what you would call a vampire's refuge, with thick blue curtains, and ornate armchairs sporting matching velvet. To your left, shelves that covered the walls full of books and boxes with files. To the right, a giant frame holding the most horrible canvas you've ever seen of Saturn devouring his son.
The voice of the boss himself made you turn your head to the center of the room.
Far from where you were, towards the end of the room and sitting behind a huge wooden desk covered in papers and candle wax was Johnny. He called your name a little surprised and made you feel stupid with a half empty whiskey bottle in your hand.
“Seems like you finally made a choice,” he said standing up from his place and coming in front of the desk.
You smiled with your lips sealed and started walking towards him. It was only a few steps, yet it felt like eternity. The room was incredibly cold, so much so that it gave you goosebumps and you had to fight a shiver once you were in front of the vampire. He looked down at you and laughed, taking the bottle out of your hand to pour two glasses of the liquor.
“The right one,” Johnny finished clinking his glass with yours.
The vampire went back to his place behind the desk, placing himself on his big wooden chair and inviting you to sit in front of him. “What brings you here?”
He was acting extremely weird, as if he wasn’t moved by your presence despite the initial surprise, not even after he fucked you in Doyoung’s bedroom what felt like hours ago. And when you saw him manspread as he lit up a cigarette, all you could think of was those same furrowed brows while he took you from behind in front of the mirror. You couldn't take him off of your mind. But he was unfazed.
“I expected to see you at the cave today.”
“I had a lot of work to do, as you can see.” He extended a hand showing you all the papers on his desk. “But luckily for you, I'm almost done.” That sparkled something inside you. A little bit of interest shown, enough for you to squeeze your legs together in excitement. Johnny looked down to your red stockings and lace and gifted you a lopsided smile. “I suppose you're still interested in seeing me?”
He took out another cigarette and lit it up, its black end burning while he handed the golden filter in your direction. When you put it between your lips, it was slightly humid.
“Yeah. Yes, of course.”
“Good then. I just need to go run some errands. It's gonna be quick. You can come with and then we’ll be heading home.”
It made you smile inevitably. You let the smoke come out of your mouth before agreeing to the plan. “Sounds perfect to me.”
Johnny stopped the car in front of a building you were too familiar with. It wasn’t your apartment, nor it was too far the casino to be Doyoung’s place. It was the entrance to Kun’s rusty apartment what made your blood run cold. He didn’t come out of the car immediately, only looking through the driver's window until two figures appeared through the front door. It was Yuta and that stunning female you saw him leave with earlier in the cave.
“What are we doing here?” You tried not to show the desperation in your voice.
“You stay in the car.”
The harsh sound of the closing door surprised you as Johnny went out to his encounter with Yuta and the female. You didn’t want to look suspicious, but you were dying to know what they were talking about and what they were doing in front of the building where the man you killed days ago used to live. So you tried your best to at least read the lips of the vampires and make out a little of what they were talking about. But it was all in vain, with Johnny showing his back to you and covering the figure of this intriguing female.
Shortly after, an old man came through the front door and greeted the vampires. His black suit and the police ID hanging from his neck left you frozen. They exchanged a few more words, an incredibly serious expression never leaving Yuta's face–the only one you could really see from your angle–, and then they parted ways.
Yuta and the female in the fur coat walked right in front of Johnny's car, and the japanese didn't miss the chance to suck the soul out of your body with his look. It took you back to what he said to the people sitting in the cave with you. You won't want to mess with this one.
What did he mean by that? What did Yuta know about you and how much did Johnny?
The closing of the driver’s door catched your attention and Johnny was sitting behind the steering wheel once again. Like a habit, the vampire caught your lips in a quick kiss after starting the car engine.
He looked at you fondly through his red irises. “Pretty little girls like you shouldn’t be playin’ with dead things, huh?” He asked with a smile. “Yet here we are.”
—
Johnny’s place looked nothing like the first and last time you were here, not with the curtains open and the dim lights of the streets finding their way through the windows. You checked the time on your phone screen and it was almost six in the morning. The sun was supposed to be showing behind the horizon already and warming up the world, but that was a scenario that didn’t take place anymore, and you had grown accustomed to it, to the darkness and the cold that surrounded and followed you every step since you had use of reason. You also noticed on top of your screen there was no service inside there.
You thought, in case something happened to you, at least Ten knew Johnny was the last person you were meant to see from that call you had with him earlier.
It was incredibly warm inside Johnny's house, and all the previous hours you had spent sleep deprived began to hit you one by one. You let out a big yawn as your arms relaxed on each side of your body, surrendered and exhausted.
A pair of lips came in contact with your cheek as your view got completely blocked by a tall and defined figure. Johnny kissed your skin softly while he caressed your arms up and down.
You couldn't help but think about how similar it felt to Doyoung's touch, and you avoided closing your eyes in fear that something strange would happen again. At that moment, you were suspicious of your desires, which seemed to confuse you to the point of imagining things.
“You’re pretty tired,” he noticed. “The boys told me you did really great today.”
“I really wanted you to see the new show.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be there.”
You nodded with a smile yet chased for his lips, what made Johnny laugh a little. “I’ll run a bath for the both of us.” Then he took your hand in his and started dragging you towards the bathroom.
Unsurprisingly, the room was painted in all dark colors and adorned in gold pieces. A wall decorated with what looked like figures of religious hearts was what caught the most attention. At its feet, a magnificent bathtub that could definitely fit more than two people, which Johnny quickly set about filling with hot water, and the image of the bathroom began to dissipate due to the steam. Among all that cloud, his hands invited you to take off his clothes, and he did the same to you with delicacy.
Johnny's body was incredible, even more toned than Doyoung's. Soft to the touch but firm under your grab, it made you want to tangle yourself between his arms and legs forever. And as if he was reading your mind, he put a foot inside the bathtub and extended a hand to you, inviting you in. The vampire laid his back to the end of it and placed your body between his long legs. You got so close to him that you were sure that, if he happened to be alive, you’d feel his heartbeat through his chest.
You allowed yourself to relax into his caresses as you fought to keep sleep from completely taking over you.
He massaged your scalp with shampoo, then moved his hands to release some of the tension in your shoulders. A sigh escaped your lips out of the satisfaction, and Johnny’s laugh resonated throughout your entire body due to the contact. His touch was quick but careful to explore the rest of your body, and when you felt it reaching the end of your stomach you had to make a confession.
“Johnny.”
He hummed at your call, so you continued talking.
“I don’t think I can fight it any more.”
“Fight what?” A curious tone reached your ears.
Then you felt his right hand traveling further down, and further down. The sensation of his fingers between your lips made you spread your legs wider and lay even more on his chest. And he started rubbing there, carefully, with no rush in his movements.
The stimulation of your clit made you moan out in pleasure and you heard him ask again.
“Fight what?”
You were wet and warm just like all the bathwater that surrounded you two, so it wasn’t difficult when he introduced one of his fingers to you. In fact, it felt so good you were no longer fighting the sleep that was taking over you a minute ago. What you actually meant earlier was that you couldn’t keep awake anymore, the bath becoming too relaxing for your exhausted self. But as you felt Johnny grow hard against your back you also felt all the sleepiness going away.
“Johnny,” you said once again between agitated breaths. Not once did he stop his finger from going in and out of you and from making you moan along with his movements.
“What?” He laughed as you kept calling his name and telling nothing to him. “Want another one?”
So he did introduce another finger without waiting for an answer. The steam from the water combined with the heat your body was radiating started to suffocate you, but it wasn’t enough for you to get out of there. You were finally having what you wanted, after all. Johnny grabbed one of your tits to alternate between squeezing and pinching on your nipple, as his fingers kept stimulating you all the way from your clit to deep inside your hole.
You clenched around his fingers as you felt the pleasure build up every second it passed. His long strands of hair, humid in your hand when you brought one of your arms up to pull on them. And you couldn’t wait to finally have Johnny inside of you once again. At that point, after experiencing how good he was with his hands only, you were dying to sit on top of him and to be under his body for hours and hours.
As your hand reached for him behind your back and you felt all the worries leave your mind, you finally spoke to him. “I want you, hurry up.”
“Hey, no need to rush,” he said while leaving sweet kisses on your neck and getting your hand out of the way. You were getting closer and closer, feeling like you were either about to explode or pass out once you were done.
All worries gone, except one.
The problem was that you felt like you had your days counted before something bad happened to you. You needed a vampire to turn you, to get the fuck out of Seoul with a ton of money as soon as possible, and you had been expecting that vampire to be Johnny. But once again, he didn’t seem to mind.
Johnny ignored your plea as he whispered in your ear: