Never Grow Up (gojo X You)

Never Grow Up (gojo x you)

summary: on the first night megumi is in gojo's care, you give the kid some things to help him sleep.

word count: 2k

cw/tags: friends to lovers, mild language, mentions of toji and satoru's fight with toji, mentions of food, fluffy fluffy fluff

note: i'm such a sucker for co-parenting megumi with satoru, that's it. hope you enjoy!

likes/reblogs/feedback is appreciated <3

“Surprise! Your favorite is here now!” A melodic voice rings out behind you in the courtyard, and you skeptically cross your arms in front of your chest as you turn to face him. He pouts at your serious expression, frowning down at you over the rim of his sunglasses. “Why the face?”

“Where’s the kid?” 

“I asked first, but he’s fine.” He draws out the last vowel, throwing his head to the side casually. You track his lanky, carefree movements with a narrow stare that Suguru would be proud of. “I put him in one of the spare rooms for the night.”

Your eyes widen in disbelief. “And then you just left him?” 

“Like I said, he’ll be fine. He’s a tough kid.” He gives you one of those heart-stuttering sly grins, but you’re too exasperated to dwell on how handsome he looked. 

“He’s four, Satoru, and fatherless. You’re not doing very well with this whole ‘mentor’ thing so far.” You shake your head, turning on your heel and heading for the dorms. Satoru falls into step next to you, still attempting to flirt some affection out of you, but you’re unbreakable. “Remind me his name again?”

“Fushiguro Megumi.” 

“And his dad–”

“Tried to kill me.”

“But you–”

“Killed his dad, and bought him from the Zenin clan to train here.” He finishes your sentences naturally and patiently, opening the door for you as you approach the boys’ dorms. “I put him in here,” Satoru says, guiding you through the halls to a room in the back corner of the building. 

“You really put him all by himself in the back?” Your chest hurt at the idea of a little elementary school boy alone in the dank halls of the building. 

“Nanami said he didn’t want to be bothered by a child all night.” Of course he did, and of course, Satoru listened. 

“Neither of you know how to handle children. Where’s his sister?”

“With relatives on his mom’s side. I’ll be in contact with them at some point.” You nod, reaching for the door handle when he stops you, slender fingers wrapping around your wrist. “Whatcha doing?” 

“I’m gonna talk to him, Satoru. Sorcerer or not, he’s probably terrified of being in a new place with people he doesn’t know.” A thoughtful look crosses Satoru’s face, and he reluctantly releases you. 

“Fine. But be warned; he’s not the most talkative kid.” He shrugs, leaning against the dead end of the hallway to wait.  

You find Megumi lying awake on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Spiky black hair falls around his face, and the blanket looks oversized for his small body. He sits up carefully when you open the door, pulling back the covers and sitting cross legged as you kneel in front of him.

“Hi, Megumi.” He’s silent, eyeing you warily with a guarded expression. You smile warmly and look at him as softly as possible. God knows how Satoru was acting with him before he came to you. You introduce yourself and watch his eyes twinkle when you mention that you’re a student at Jujutsu Tech. “I’m the same age as Satoru, that guy who brought you here.” 

“He’s weird.” 

You can’t help snickering, especially when you know that Satoru was probably eavesdropping from the other side of the wall. The scowl plastered across his face is probably very entertaining. “I know; he is pretty weird. But you’ll grow to like him, I promise. Are you hungry?” 

“No. He bought me McDonalds.” 

“I see. What’s your favorite thing at McDonalds?”

“I like chicken. He ate four burgers.” His voice stays relatively even, but the corner of his mouth quirks up when he describes the ungodly amount of Big Macs Satoru consumed.

“Yeah, he’s…like that. Well, I just wanted to check on you before you fell asleep, if you needed anything? A glass of water or something?” Megumi falls silent, eyes flicking around the room anxiously. He wrings his fingers, adjusting his seat on the bed and avoiding your gaze. He must have been nervous to be sleeping in a new place, in a bed he didn’t know and surrounded by strangers. 

You redirect your attention to the open air beside you, spreading your fingers and summoning a small black portal on the floor. “I have a few things for you, if you’d like them.” Despite his hesitancy, innocent eyes peek over the edge of the bed to the void on the floor, fascinated. You reach your hand into the portal, feeling the cold air on your forearm while you rummage around for Megumi’s gifts. Your fingers find faux-fur and you pull out a stuffed gray wolf with pointy ears in a sitting position. His mouth falls open in surprise, boyish and sweet. You reach back in again a few more times, retrieving a blanket, a toothbrush, and a nightlight that cast constellations on the ceiling. 

Megumi’s eyes zero in on the wolf, and you hold it out for him to take. His fingers delicately sink into the plush fur, and your heart feels a little lighter as he places it on his lap, leaning over the edge at the other goodies you’d pulled from your domain. Even if he was technically a Zenin child, to you, he was just a little boy whose curiosity got the better of him. As you continue to wordlessly hand him items, you see him visibly relax, examining the nightlight and fiddling with the corner of his blanket. 

You clear your throat, keeping your voice as gentle as possible. “I know you don’t know anything about techniques yet, but if my research is semi-correct, the first shikigami you’ll be able to summon are dogs. I picked this little guy up for you to have. If you don’t like it or don’t want it, I can get you something different–”

“I like it.” His soft voice quickly cuts you off, and he hugs the toy closer to his chest as if you were going to take it from him. “I want to keep it.”  

You smile at him, and he finally meets your gaze with less fear than minutes earlier. “Okay,” you nod. “I’m happy you like it.” 

He’s barely able to murmur a “thank you” before the door aggressively slides open and Satoru dramatically drapes himself in the doorway. You and Megumi stare at him, unentertained by his theatrics. “Alright, kid, that’s enough chit-chat. Time for bed.”

“I am in bed.” As Megumi fires off replies, you reach over and plug in his nightlight. Little stars scatter across the ceiling in different shades of yellow and blue. 

“You know what I mean. Time for you to go to sleep.” 

“You just want your friend back,” Megumi states boredly and you bite back a smirk at Satoru’s reddening face. The boy looks at you, down at his wolf, and back at Satoru. “I like them better than you.” 

You snort, and Satoru looks like he’s been shot, throwing a hand over his heart in agony. “Cast out by my own kin. How cruel fate is!” 

“I’m not related to you.” 

“That’s not the point, Megumi.”

“You said during dinner that was the whole point.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.” Children, you think. A child arguing with a taller child. 

Your hand reaches out to lightly ruffle Megumi’s hair and you rise from the floor. “Sorry, Satoru. You heard the kid– I’m his favorite.” You wink at Megumi, laying out the blanket and patting the pillow to encourage him to lie down. “Unfortunately, he’s right. It’s time for sleep. We’ll be around in the morning to get you, okay? And then maybe we can get some breakfast. How’s that sound?”

Megumi nods, curling his body around the stuffed wolf and letting you pull the covers over him. His eyes find the star-shaped projections on the ceiling and trace invisible shapes on them. Satoru’s arm naturally wraps around your shoulders as you make to exit the dorm, but before you step out, you hear Megumi’s tiny voice in the darkness. 

“Goodnight.” 

You can still slightly see him from the glow of the rising moon, and you smile over your shoulder. “Goodnight, Megumi.” 

As Satoru walks you back to your dorm, his arm doesn’t leave its place around your body. If anything, he pulls you closer, and you let him. He’s taken his sunglasses off, allowing the light of the stars to reflect off of his hair and his vibrantly blue eyes. You always thought Satoru looked most handsome at night, and tonight was no different. Allowing yourself to consider him like you were was walking a fine line between friends and more than friends, and you weren’t sure if you were ready to cross it. 

“I’m just irresistible tonight, aren’t I?” His teasing snaps you out of your love-struck daydream, grounding you back to the present. He must have caught you staring. 

“You’re definitely something, Satoru.” He hums smugly, and you look at him out of the corner of your eye. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Just find it cute that I rendered you without a spunky remark for the first time.” 

“You’re gonna get a lot more than a spunky remark if you keep looking like that, asshole.” You poke his side and he yelps, contorting away from you like one of those car dealership inflatables. You can’t help the giggle that falls from your lips and Satoru can definitely see the heart-eyes you were giving him. For once, the mutual flirting seemed that it might actually mean something tonight. You reach your dorm, and Satoru follows you in without invitation like he’d done hundreds of times before.  

“You’re really good with the kid.” His limbs stretch out as he flops onto the covers while you slip off your shoes. “How do you do it?”

You toss sleeping clothes on the bed, debating on aiming for the white-haired idiot on it. “I just pretend he’s you.” 

“That’s rude. Are you calling me a toddler?” 

“That’s exactly what I’m calling you, Satoru. This whole thing is a little kid taking care of a slightly smaller kid.” You stand between his legs with your hands on your hips, and he sits up to look at you. For once, he needed to look up at you, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t like it. 

“I’m not nervous, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Gojo Satoru doesn’t get nervous about anything, you know, but it was still a bold move to basically adopt a child right out of high school. Even for him. 

“You’re not?” He shakes his head confidently, peering up at you with those stupidly bright blue eyes. “How?”

“Because I have you.” Your stomach does a backflip. “I never get nervous because I have you.” His hand finds its way into yours, and you bring up your free hand to caress his cheek with your thumb. You guess tonight was the night to cross the line. 

“Did you just baby-trap me with a child that is neither of ours, Satoru?” Your hand cups his face, and he leans into your touch. 

“Oops.” You chuckle, letting him pull you closer until he’s able to press his lips up to yours. As he stands at his full height, his hand comes to tilt your chin upward while your arms slide around his neck. You stay there for a few moments, drowning in the overwhelming presence of his body. “I think we’re gonna be great at this whole parenting thing,” he murmurs against your lips when you pull back to breathe. 

“I can’t believe the way you ask to date me is with an orphan. That’s emotional manipulation.”

“I call it effective persuasion.” You shake your head at his antics, and he presses a feather-light kiss to your temple. You sigh, face falling in disappointment as you check the time. 

“Alright, get out.” Your hands reluctantly press against his chest to no avail. He never turned on Infinity around you, but he was immovable on his own. 

“Ouch, tired of me already?”

“That, and we’re taking Megumi to breakfast tomorrow. For all three of our sakes, you need to try to rest.” 

“Scared that I’m gonna die and adopt my murderer’s kid again?”

“Don’t even joke about that. You can’t just kiss me and then die. It’s not fair,” your mumbles trail off when Satoru kisses you tenderly one last time, nudging your nose with his. 

“You’re a menace.” 

“I know you love it.” 

“I guess I do.”   

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A Christmas Fix — 02 (m) | kth

⟶ Summary | One-night stands are supposed to be nothing more than just. It shouldn’t have involved seeing those two red lines looking back at you weeks later without a name or a contact number linking you back to your mystery man. Nothing more but his face. The unforgettable face that would sometimes appear in your dreams at night. So unforgettable that you immediately recognise him the moment he walks into your family home at Christmas, hand-in-hand with your older stepsister.

With special collab prompt: "the holidays aren't so bad with you around."

⟶ Title | A Christmas Fix

⟶ Pairings | Taehyung x female reader

⟶ Genre | Secret Baby!au, Second Chance!au, Strangers to Lovers!au

⟶ Ratings & Warnings | +18 / M for Mature; including: alcohol consumption, mentions of pregnancy, morning sickness, surprise babies, miscommunication, profanities/swearing, fake dating trope on the side, minor body insecurities (implied), fight scene, some family drama; involves multiple explicit sex scenes, including: sexual tension, one night stand, drunk sex (with clear consent), minor dom/sub dynamic, brat!reader, size kink, rough sex, light choking, restraint, hair pulling (M, F), protected & unprotected sex, pregnant sex, fingering (F), oral sex (F), clit play, breast play, stripping, biting, minor hand job/groping, grinding, masturbation (M, F), mutual masturbation, dirty talk, implied pain kink, praise kink, body worship, marking, multiple orgasms (M, F), overstimulation.

⟶ Word count | 29,410 words (of 54,773 words)

⟶ Story Notes | Part of the Jingle All the Way collaboration with @leahsfavefics, @kithtaehyung, @kpopfanfictrash, @cybrsan, and @sugaurora | Written in 2nd person POV (in case you’re new to my writing, I don’t use ‘y/n’ coding as all of my lead characters are considered as OCs) | Moodboard was done by me | Posted in: February 1st, 2024 by @yoonia

⟶ Author Notes | And we're finally at the end. Thank you so much for everyone who has read part 1, and those of you who have been so patient with me. I'm sorry I had to wait for a day to post this. I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the journey to see how this story ends :)

⟶ Jingle All the Way collab masterlist | A Christmas Fix: ⤎ previous chapter

⟶ Main Masterlist | Taglist | Feedback | Mailbox | Ko-fi

⟶ Read on AO3

The house has been quiet all morning. 

There is only one day left before Christmas Eve, and everyone has been busy for the past couple of days. Your mother and Honey are hosting the Christmas Eve’s family dinner this year, with close relatives from their side of the family joining in, so everyone has been busy going around and about to prepare for it. 

After days filled with all the bustling activities, it feels like you finally have some downtime. With both of your parents gone—your mother is out with Honey to shop for a couple of necessities needed for the event, and your stepfather out doing some errands, assisted by Taehyung in place of Hansol—it feels like you can finally breathe easy. 

While the pre-Christmas rush helped smother the loud thinking constantly happening inside your head, the silence that you are experiencing now feels comforting. The underlying tension that is also present, however, isn’t so much. 

When you agreed to stay home and help out with the rest of the Christmas baking still needed to be done, you didn’t expect that Alia had volunteered to stay behind and help too. So you have been using this silence as a protective shield. 

Almost an hour has passed since the two of you started getting busy in the kitchen. No meaningful conversation has been shared so far, aside from the times you had to talk through the recipes together or talking about passing things over. The only sounds that are keeping you company are the occasional sounds of kitchenware hitting the counter, the shuffling sounds coming from both you and Alia as you move around the kitchen, and the burning oven behind your back. 

Slowly, you are beginning to enjoy this routine, finding calmness in the steady rhythm of baking and cooking which helps quiet the voices in your head. Too bad it doesn’t last long enough for you to relish it when Alia suddenly speaks, bringing up something other than the task in your hand for a change. 

“I’ve been wondering for a while, but you look like you had a rough night. Is your stomach still bothering you?” she asks, breaking the silence. 

To say that you are caught off-guard seems like an understatement. And you have no idea how to respond to her question. For her to suddenly ask something personal is completely unexpected. 

It’s not that the two of you never had an actual conversation with one another like a pair of normal human beings. It’s just she never seemed to truly care or have any interest in getting to know about you other than the stories shared at family dinners with your parents around. 

It’s making it even harder to answer when you have this underlying guilt brewing inside you. A feeling that comes from hiding a secret that keeps getting heavier to carry. And you are afraid that the moment you open your mouth to speak, they will all come spilling out of you. 

You wish you could just lie to her face. Tell her that everything is fine so you can continue working in silence. 

But when you look up and actually look at her, she seems—genuine, in her concern, and almost as much with her curiosity. 

But there is no malice or pretence in her question that you find yourself reaching out to accept the olive branch that she is offering you and answer, “It’s—okay. I mean, it’s been pretty rough the past few nights. I think it’s because of the lack of sleep I’ve been getting.” 

And you’re not completely lying. Because the past couple of nights have been rough. But you couldn’t possibly explain to her why.

Alia scrunches her nose, oblivious to this. “I heard from Honey that you get this way when you’re stressed out. Has work been stressful for you lately? I mean, with your latest work promotion, I can only imagine that you’ve only gotten busier lately.” 

You purse your lips and avoid her gaze, once again biting back the secret that is threatening to slip out. 

“Maybe—” you start to answer, “I haven’t been eating well, and I’ve messed up my sleeping schedule so bad lately, that it’s been hard to fix it even when I’m home. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and I woke up with a headache this morning.” 

Alia frowns. “Have you been taking meds? I have some vitamins that may help you sleep better. I’ve been taking them lately to—” 

Thinking about taking vitamins makes you cringe. The doctor’s warnings come floating through your mind—reminding you that you should be wary of the medicines and vitamins to take, as they may not be safe enough for the baby in your belly, her warning about keeping your stress level low, and her reminder of watching over your diet at the beginning of your pregnancy. 

“No, it’s fine. I don’t usually take medicines or vitamins to help me sleep,” you gently refuse. Even without your doctor’s warnings, you know that nothing could really help you with your sleeping problems. 

Because the truth is, your nausea and ‘stomach bug‘ haven’t been the sole reason why you have been having trouble sleeping as of late. 

It was Taehyung. 

Ever since you came across Taehyung that night in the hallway, memories from the night of your wild hookup have been coming back to you. They have been haunting you at night, whether you were sitting in bed wide awake or when you were deep in your restless sleep. 

When sleep failed you, you would be left spending long hours recounting every action and every conversation that you could remember. Every single detail had been coming back to you in bits and pieces jumbling together, and you would spend the next long hours trying to piece everything together. You went through it all to answer the resounding questions that are still messing up with your mind. 

How many times did we do it that night? 

More than twice, for sure, you recall each time you try to look back. Was it three, or four times? 

You remember feeling sore and tired the next day, yet you were content enough to sleep the whole flight away towards your dream vacation with your whole body humming with the waning pleasure. And while you weren’t completely drunk that night, you were surely tipsy enough that you were unable to memorise every single moment with a clear mind. 

But the biggest question that you have yet to answer—

He really did wear condoms that night, didn’t he? 

You remember watching him roll the condom down the length of his impressive cock. It wasn’t really a memory that you could easily erase, no matter how tipsy-minded you were that night. Not when the way he did it left you completely transfixed. 

For some reason, everything about the first intercourse you had with him remains vivid in your memory. Because it was the first time for you to ever feel that kind of pleasure. To feel wanton and free with someone who was willing to help you open up a part of you which had been locked and sheltered during the long period of time you spent in your past relationship. 

The second time always seems a bit blurry. But you can still recall waking up to his sinful lips devouring your sore pussy in the middle of the night. 

He claimed it as a way to make up for the rough and dominating way he took you the first time and the lack of foreplay. So he spoiled you by giving you pleasure through his mouth and tongue and the work of his fingers, before he fucked you gently, slowly, until you were arching into him and crying out his name once again as he helped you embrace your slow rising climax. 

And the third time—

“Um, earth to ________.” 

Alia’s sharp voice pulls you out of your dark thoughts. Her curiosity seems to grow more palpable, and so does the concerned look you see on her face. 

“Are you okay? Seriously, you don’t look so well. You keep spacing out today and now it’s like you’re burning up or something.” 

With a gasp, you reach up and touch your cheeks, quickly realising that she is right. You are burning up. Except that instead of burning from a fever, your body is growing hot from the inside for a different kind of reason. 

You are burning from being drowned in your dirty thoughts and recounting all the pleasure that you felt back then. To be thinking about all the wanton things that you shared with—

Your eyes fall open as you draw a shocked gasp. Realising too late that you are thinking about your stepsister’s new boyfriend while she is sitting right in front of you. Guilt pierces through your chest right at that moment, and you quickly rise from your seat. 

“Excuse me, I think I need to cool down a little bit. I’ll be right back,” you quickly say to her before slipping away from the kitchen without waiting for her response. 

Needing distance from Alia, you rush to your bedroom upstairs, finding solace in your safe space as you lock yourself in it. The feeling of shame washes over you. You can’t believe that you had allowed yourself to think of dark, sultry thoughts while you were sitting right across your stepsister. 

Worse yet, that doing so made you feel aroused. 

The same thing always happens each time you think back about that night. As if your body has memorised what your mind has failed to remember. Each memory of his touch brings back sparks on your skin, reigniting the same reaction that he managed to draw from you then. 

By the time you lie down on your bed, the heat in your body has spread all over the place. Even to the places that you didn’t expect to be affected, as it spreads down between your legs. 

At the same time, your skin seems to be humming with need. There is a desire that has been awakened simply by reliving that night in your thoughts, which would be impossible to quench. 

You close your eyes, and immediately feel as though you are under a spell. Your hands begin to move on their own, searching for the source of the heat rushing within your body. They continue travelling their way down, following the pulses that you feel emerging from your core. 

You slip one hand down your pants, reaching down until you feel skin. A gasp threatens to come out when the tips of your fingers are met with dampened skin. Just as expected, thinking about that night and the things you did with Taehyung then has made you wet. 

Your fingers tremble, and your heart starts pounding like crazy as you continue touching yourself. Slipping your fingers across your slit, you make use of the slickness that has formed to slide back and forth, playing with yourself until you feel only pleasure. A shudder erupts through you as you stroke your clit. 

You shouldn’t be doing this. But before you can stop yourself, an image of his face hovering right above you comes to you. In that moment, you are back to the night when you were with him. 

The fingers that are touching your hot center are no longer yours. They may not be the same size as his fingers, and not as firm, but your memory easily replaces your dainty digits with Taehyung’s longer and wider ones as you push them into your throbbing core. 

There is a voice in your head that keeps telling you how wrong for you to be doing this. How inappropriate for you to be thinking naughty thoughts about someone who isn’t yours and pleasuring yourself with it. 

But your body wouldn’t listen. 

Your hand continues to move, pumping your fingers in and out of your pussy while your hips push back against them. The pleasure rises, increasing quickly the faster you move your hand, the more you ride your fingers like an animal in heat. 

And you don’t stop until your orgasm starts building. It keeps growing stronger, until everything within you snaps. 

As you fall into bliss, his face is all you see. His voice is the one you hear instead of the soft, muffled moans coming out of your lips, whispering to you the same sweet soothing voice that he gave you that night while you were succumbing to pleasure. 

“Good girl. You’re amazing, Red. Rest up, and we’ll play again once you’re ready.” 

“I suppose this is what people call a Christmas miracle.” 

You start to roll your eyes before you remember that Skye wouldn’t be able to see it. For the past hour, you have been on the phone with your roommate while you were hiding from your family. 

Locked in the safety of your bedroom for the second time today because you still couldn’t get over the mortification that has fallen upon you after this morning’s blunder. 

Having your arousal slowly pooling between your legs by the mere thought of Taehyung and the sinful deed you shared with him seemed scandalous. Allowing it to happen while you were sitting right in front of his girlfriend, someone closely related to you, made you feel as if you were more deserving to be burned in hell rather than sharing the joy and laughter of Christmas. 

And instead of brushing those nasty thoughts away, you took it one step further by seeking pleasure with the touch of your fingers. With your head filled with thoughts of Taehyung and while your stepsister was waiting downstairs for you to return. 

Shame and guilt plagued you once you were done. And you were also too sated and tired to even function. But you couldn’t hide in your bedroom for long. Doing so would only cause people to grow suspicious of your behaviour, and you already gained enough unsolicited attention to let it happen. 

So after cleaning yourself up and wiping off any remnants of your misdeed, you put your big girl pants on and went back downstairs to finish the Christmas baking with your stepsister. This time, you kept to yourself more, avoiding as much conversation with Alia while you continued to pretend that nothing happened while you were away. 

Thankfully, you didn’t have to be alone with her for far too long when everyone returned from their outing.

Masking your shame no longer became a struggle when you stopped being the main focus of the room. Everyone was busy with Christmas Eve’s preparation; your mother with the holiday decorations, your stepfather with his handiwork as he went out to fix the porch and the locks on the front door, while you and Alia remained in the kitchen to finish baking. 

Honey stayed nearby, as she sat at the kitchen counter, watching everyone doing their own thing while she was nursing a mug filled with steaming hot cocoa and sharing the most recent gossip about the old ladies living in her apartment complex. 

While all of this was happening around you, you were blessed with the absence of Taehyung, who was said to have gone back to the motel where he and Alia have been staying to finish some work before Christmas Day.

You didn’t question it, trying not to care too much about him and making use of him being gone to try and forget everything that had happened. 

But then lunchtime came, and he returned just in time to rejoin your family for the meal. Seeing his face again, hearing his voice, watching how your stepsister kept being all touchy feeling with her boyfriend and clinging to him all the time gave you an unpleasant feeling that you felt sick to the stomach. 

That was when you rushed back into your bedroom. You convinced yourself that you weren’t hiding from them. That you simply needed some time alone; alone with your thoughts, to gather your wits, and calm your nerves that had become unsettled during lunch while he was once again sitting right across the table, subtly watching you when others weren’t looking. 

But being alone with your thoughts hadn’t been quite helpful. 

Your mind kept wandering into places that you shouldn’t dare to visit. You needed someone to talk to. To vent and get everything out of your system. And Skye, who is currently on the other side of the country to be with her family, was the best option to call. 

And yet, after telling her everything that has happened and keeping her up to date with the latest developments, you are starting to regret calling her. 

“Do tell me why you, of all people, would call this catastrophe a miracle?” you ask her while pinching the bridge of your nose. Your head feels tense, although you are relieved that it has somehow stopped pounding after sharing all of the drama to your roommate through the phone call. 

You can hear the subtle sound of her humming to herself, contemplating her answer. “I mean, think about it. We already made an elaborate plan to track him down, to the point that we nearly booked a ticket to go back to the place where your flight made a stop for transit in case we can’t easily find him,” she says with the same no-nonsense tone of voice that she always uses when she is laying out all of the facts, “and then he suddenly appears, right at your family’s home, as if saying ‘Here I am, look no further’.” 

She laughs, and you can picture her shaking her head when she adds, “Tell me that’s not a miracle.” 

Instead of answering her, you only bite your lips. It does sound almost too good to be true. Except for the one simple fact that is impossible to ignore. “You’re forgetting the fact that he’s here as Alia’s plus one. I’d say it’s a curse, instead of a miracle.” 

You can her chuckling bitterly on the other side of the phone. “And once again, I’m going to say that I don’t envy you.” 

You let out a groan as you fall back on the bed. “This isn’t funny.” 

“I know, sweetie,” she says, comforting you with a sigh. “It’s just so absurd to think about all the coincidences happening around this baby business.” 

You close your eyes, hating the fact that she’s right. There are too many coincidences happening around you, and it’s astonishing to think that everything could come to this point. 

“Yeah, it does sound absurd.” 

“I’m just sad I’m not there to witness it,” she says, laughing, while you barely have the energy to scoff at her. 

For the longest time, Skye has always been the one you turn to whenever you need someone to vent about your ordeal with your stepsister. But compared to the other times you clashed against Alia, this one surely takes the cake.

“You haven’t told him about the baby, have you?” 

You wince. “No,” you answer with s sigh. “I can’t think of a way to do it.” 

And you have been avoiding being in the same room with him to even have the chance to talk about it. Not that you would have found that chance anyway if you did, as Alia has always been by his side. You suddenly remember the way Alia suddenly sidled to his side when he was alone at a time, making a complete show about her doting on him.

Grimacing, you shake the image out of your head. “I’ve thought of different scenarios involving me talking to him and revealing about my pregnancy, but everything has changed now that Alia is involved in this.” 

Skye grows silent for a moment. “Just tell him,” she says. Her voice softens, which only means that she is being serious about this. “The sooner the better, even more so because he is involved with Alia. It’s better to let him know now rather than later, once they’ve been dating longer and the baby is here.” 

You bite your lips again, refraining to tell her that you had thought about the same thing. “He did say he wanted to talk—” 

But he never made it clear what he wanted to talk about. What is there to talk about if he still has no clue about the baby? Is he trying to convince you again not to let Alia know about your past hookup? How would that work if you’re having a baby together from that hookup? 

You hate to admit it, but being kept as a secret feels—painful. 

“Well—” Skye hesitantly says, “It’s not like you’re planning to have an actual relationship with him, right?” 

Her question makes your stomach drop. Have you ever really had any hope of having a relationship with him, just because you are expecting a baby with him? 

Thinking back to the night of your hookup makes you look back and relive the emotions that you felt that night. You are sure that you felt a connection with him that night. A connection that you never felt before with anyone else. It felt real, yet you denied it simply because neither of you had been using your true identities when you climbed on that bed together. It had seemed to you that both of you had only wanted that night to be a one-time thing. 

The sparks you felt with him had also been real, and you are quite sure that you felt them again the last time you were alone with him in that hallway, when he confronted you after the first family dinner that you shared with him. Sometimes, you can also feel that same sparks coming back whenever he is in the room, no matter how far away you try to distance yourself from him.

Could it be that somewhere along the line, you had unknowingly harboured hope that you could be together again? When did this happen? 

Or did having his baby growing inside you make you think that you could somehow build something real with him, to develop the connection that you felt that night into something else entirely? 

Is that why seeing him with Alia has been bothering you so much? Not only because you are hiding this secret, but also because nothing can come out of it once you come clean to him? 

Not for the first time today, you feel like you’re about to throw up. 

You only had one night with him. You keep reminding yourself this, hoping that it will be able to snap you out of the silly illusion that you had allowed your mind to possess. 

“No, I just want him to know about the baby,” you answer weakly, hoping that voicing this promise out loud would help put an end to your wishful thinking. To stop it before it gets too far. 

“But having this baby with me while he’s dating my stepsister will complicate things. And things are already complicated between me and Alia.” 

“Right,” Skye sighs on the phone. Knowing exactly what you mean without you having to say it out loud. 

Over the years, Skye had both witnessed and heard every single spectacle that had become a major part of your relationship with Alia. You can tell that she understands what to expect once this thing blows up. 

“You’re right. I can’t imagine how she’ll react,” you hear her say, before releasing an overly dramatic sigh, and you immediately know where this is going. “Maybe she wouldn’t have hated you so much if you didn’t break that doll of hers when you were a kid.”

You scream into the pillows while she laughs historically on the phone. “Why do you have to bring that up?” you groan, hating yourself for sharing this with her during one of your late-night drinking fests. “Out of all the ludicrous things I shared with you, that’s the one crossing your mind right now?”

“Hey, you were the one who brought it up first. How would you know that it wasn’t true?” 

“How could you possibly remember that when I barely could?” you whine out loud. 

One drunken night was all it took for you to disclose the severity of your childhood crime. Even if you barely remember the details of it. Thankfully, your roommate had been the only witness to listen to your drunk confession. 

“It was an accident that happened ages ago, and I already told you that she couldn’t have possibly started resenting me for years because of that ugly doll.”

Because it sounds ridiculous if you think about it with a sober mind. And you refuse to believe the disdain that Alia has shown you for years had all stemmed from the small incident that happened when you were a child. 

At nine years old, your small family—originally consisting only of you, your mother, and your sweet grandmother, Honey—suddenly expanded. Everything changed for you the day your stepfather, Cliff, came into the picture. Not only did he fill the void that was left behind by your late father, but he also brought with him another girl, and you suddenly had an older sister to play with and to look up to. 

A few years older than you, Alia appeared in your eyes like the coolest kid you have ever met. Beautiful, smart, witty, though she could act a bit snobbish whenever you tried to play with her, yet she still shared her bedroom, her toys, and sometimes her collection of dolls. 

One sleepover, a pair of clumsy little hands, and a ripped old doll later, everything turned the other way around. It happened so long ago that you eventually forgot about it. As Alia entered high school, she rarely came to visit her father, and the incident was simply overlooked with all the other things happening in your life soon after.

The moment she came back into the picture, Alia began acting differently towards you and your relationship was quick to turn dreary. 

Forced smiles and tensed, courteous chats. The hard and solemn look coming through her eyes that she would always reserve for you when others weren’t looking, always at the times when you earned everyone’s attention or when you accomplished something good in life. Plotting schemes by arranging her own agendas to match the significant moments of your lifetime—graduation days, birthdays, anniversaries—oftentimes forcing Cliff to have to choose between being there for you or to be by his biological daughter’s side, while mostly finding excuses to miss out on your important dates altogether. 

After another incident where she caused another drama back home years ago, you came back to your apartment with an opened bottle of tequila and spent the night drunk-venting with Skye. 

Somehow, as you drunkenly wondered why your stepsister would treat you with so much disdain, that small incident from a long time ago came back to mind. And that moment, it seemed that your subconscious linked the incident with the way she treated you years after, and you let it slip to Skye for her to later make it a running joke between the two of you whenever you came to vent about your stepsister drama. 

But really now…all of that hate and drama over a doll?

As if that would justify the way she has been treating you for years. It also makes you wonder if last year’s incident had anything to do with that as well. 

Shaking your head, you hate to think of what kind of hell she will be giving you once she finds out that you are carrying a baby from the man she’s been flaunting around since the day she came home. 

You shudder at the mere thought of it. 

“You know that my offer still stands, right?” Skye suddenly questions you, much to your relief, as she changes the topic right before your head begins to ache again. “If things get too hard or if he wants nothing to do with the baby, or if he mistreats you at all after knowing that he got you pregnant, we can still run away and raise the baby together. Maybe Europe is a bit too far, and too cold for me, so how about Australia?” 

Unprepared to hear her comment, you immediately erupt into laughter. Like always, your best friend knows how to ease your mind. The tension that comes from the stress is lifted, and so are your worries. 

It doesn’t change the fact that you are still going to have to face the music the moment you are given the chance to, but at least you are starting to see some light waiting at the end of this. 

“Running away sounds awfully tempting right now, I’m not going to lie,” you murmur into the call, knowing that Skye can hear you perfectly. But she wouldn’t be able to see it as you rise from your bed and reach out to the beside table, picking up the sonogram which you had gotten right before you left for home. 

Running away does sound tempting. But it is not the choice that you can make. And you won’t. 

You are going to have that talk with Taehyung and tell him everything. Soon. You just need to be ready to face his reaction and the consequences of what the truth might bring. 

As much as you kept telling yourself to prioritise finding the chance to speak to Taehyung, all of your bravado simply vanished by the time you rejoined your family for dinner. 

Sitting down at dinner, once again taking the front row seat to watch Alia making a good show of being the doting girlfriend, as she kept clinging onto Taehyung while he was trying to keep his composure in front of you, you felt suffocated. 

And you couldn’t escape it. 

You had done it once, masking your discomfort with your sickness. And then doing it again a couple of more times under various excuses while everyone was spending time together.

Despite feeling like you wanted to run away, you were running out of excuses and there was nowhere for you to hide. Even once dinner is over, your attempt to escape unnoticed quickly fails when Taehyung finds you first. 

“What are you up to now?” you nearly snap at him as Taehyung slips into view, intercepting you when you are about to slip past the backdoor, hoping to get some fresh air. 

Pursing his lips, he hides his smile and shrugs. “Nothing, just trying to see what you’ve been up to.” 

You squint your eyes at him, finding him suspicious. “Does Alia even know you’re here? Cornering me instead of chaperoning her out there?” 

As you cross your arms over your chest, challenging him with your question, Taehyung simply stares at you with an amused look in his eyes. “You know, everyone is in the living room and they’re wondering where you are. Honey is about to make a show of making that rum cocktail that she was bragging about at dinner.” 

An overwhelming feeling of craving and queasiness comes over you as you picture Honey and her rum cocktails that you would normally enjoy during the holidays. You swallow the tightness in your throat and force a smile. “So you offered to look for me?” 

Taehyung grins, making it seem like he has no fault whatsoever for being where he shouldn’t be. “I’m currently free, so why not?” 

You scoff at him and shake your head when you fail to hide your smile. “Yeah, well. I doubt that they’ll be missing me.” 

There’s already Alia in the room with them to steal the show and everyone’s attention anyway, you silently wonder. 

And yours. 

Surprisingly, a frown forms on his face upon hearing this. “That’s where you’re wrong. Honey kept asking for you. Said something about making a special recipe for your, um…stomach bug,” he says with a small smile, and then lowers his voice to add, “and I also wondered why you weren’t there.” 

Your heart makes a sudden leap inside your chest. “Thank you for caring,” you say to him with a sarcastic tone of voice, trying not to look deeper into it or feel to happy about him looking for you. 

Having the flutter in your chest gives you more reason to walk away. “Please tell Honey I’m sorry that I can’t join her tonight. I’m not feeling up to it.” 

“Are you sure?” he asks before you can get away. “I remember that you enjoyed drinking sweet cocktails the last time we met. With how Honey kept bragging about it, I’m a bit curious to try the drinks she’s making. Don’t you? 

Of course, you would be interested, you wonder. But I can’t possibly drink whatever it is that Honey is concocting, even if I feel like I need a glass of whatever she is offering.

But he doesn’t need to know that yet—or should he? 

Suddenly, you start doubting yourself. You can feel the words hanging by the tip of your tongue already, the urge to spill everything to him right this moment grows so strongly as you look at his smug face. 

So what if he wanted to wait until the time is right to talk? When is the right time to talk about this? 

You take a quick glance around, noticing that you are all alone with him. This would be the perfect chance to tell him about the pregnancy, wouldn’t it?

“Maybe her cocktail can help you feel more at ease and less—tense,” he suddenly adds with a hint of a teasing tone in his voice that rubs you the wrong way, taking away every good will you ever have of talking to him properly about your ordeal. 

“Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve dinner. There’s going to be enough drinking then,” you say to him while gritting your teeth. But you know that it would be highly unlikely that you are going to drink even then. 

You realise that you will have to find more excuses tomorrow to avoid any alcoholic drinks being passed onto your hands. But you can figure that out later. You first need to figure out how to share him the news. 

“You should go back. Alia would be looking for you by now,” you say to him with a bite while avoiding his eyes as you try to walk around him, yet he stops you from running away again. 

This time, he isn’t using his words. 

Your entire body freezes as he catches your wrist. Once he knows that he has gotten you right where he wants you to, he starts pulling you gently back to him. You look up at his face, surprised that he would do something so daring when he was the one who had been so adamant about keeping your history with him a secret. 

“What are you doing?” you hiss at him, yet you don’t make a move to pull away. You throw a quick glance towards the hallway leading to the living room, worrying that someone might suddenly show up. “Are you crazy? What if someone comes here?” 

Taehyung steps closer until you can feel his warmth engulfing you. He only stops once his chest is merely a few inches away from yours. His move seems menacing, and so does the look in his eyes as he looks at your face. 

Those are the same eyes that had been looking back at you that night. You get to see the same look you saw then. Passionate. Enthralling. He grounds you with nowhere else to go even without having to restrain you to him, only refraining you from escaping him with nothing more but the look in his eyes. 

Suddenly, the room feels tight. As though there is not enough air in your chest for you to breathe, much less to speak. And he is getting too close for comfort. 

His hold on your wrist loosens, yet he doesn’t pull away. The dark look in his eyes also wanes, and he looks almost as if he is in pain when he leans down, getting even closer until your faces are almost touching each other. 

“Is it making you feel uneasy that I’m around? Is that why you keep running away from me when I’m there?” he questions you with a voice so soft that you would have missed it if he hasn’t been this close, with his lips hovering close to yours. 

So close that you can almost feel his kiss, even without touching. Each word he murmurs to you sends your skin shivering, while the cavities inside your chest seem to tighten on themselves when he whispers, “You might be able to ignore it and pretend nothing happened, but I can’t.” 

You take a sharp inhale of breath. What is he saying right now? 

Suddenly, you feel as if you have just walked into a dream. The same feeling that you had that night returns to you; all the sparks that seem to be floating in the air around you; the way your head seems to be in a haze, as if his entire presence is intoxicating you. 

And his words are making your head spin. 

Once again, you feel as if you are under his spell. But at the same time, you feel irritated at him for doing this. For choosing to act like this now, when he was just holding hands with your stepsister just moments ago.

While your irritation lights up, he rubs his thumb across your wrist, and the sparks explode around you like fireworks. “Tell me you’re not feeling it too.” 

And just like that, his voice snaps you right out of the spell that he placed on you. Closing your eyes, you suck a deep breath and try to compose yourself. 

“This isn’t right. Alia is in the next room,” you grit your teeth. You open your eyes and glare at him. “You were the one who told me not to tell Alia about us. Was that not your way of telling me to forget everything?” 

Taehyung’s eyes grow wide and he slowly pulls back. To his credit, his face is filled with shame when you remind him of his own words. 

Leaning closer, you whisper to him, doing your best to keep your voice from shaking when you question him, “Or do you make it a habit of jumping from one woman to another as long as it’s convenient for you?” 

He winces. Once again, he looks pained after hearing your accusation. “We’re going to talk. Once the time is right,” he whispers. He clenches his jaw, looking tense for a moment until he lets everything go with a sigh. “But you need to stop avoiding me.” 

You rear back, not expecting to find that he has noticed that you have been deliberately keeping your distance. 

How are you going to explain to him the reason why you can’t possibly stay in the same room with him? 

For you, the reason is quite obvious. You are still feeling it now, when your skin feels tight and your chest grows warm the longer you are in close proximity to him. Even when you entered a room once he left, you could still feel his presence lingering around you, and it was starting to drive you insane. 

And yes, seeing him with Alia bothers you so much that you can never bear being there to witness it.

After your last conversation where he made it seem like he wanted to move on and forget everything, you thought that he would only notice Alia and wouldn’t care to notice your predicament. But obviously, he isn’t completely oblivious to your turmoil. 

“I’m not avoiding you,” you insist. 

Taehyung raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure?” he questions you with an accusing tone. “I don’t think I imagined it when I saw you turning away and running out of the room whenever I came in.” 

He is right, and you find it impossible to lie about it when you barely tried to hide it.

Tired of holding out the truth, you finally admit to him with a small voice, “No, you’re not imagining things. Do you really think it’s fun for me to watch you both together with Alia getting all over you the entire time you’re here?” 

The light in his eyes dims. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—” he sighs, “I’ll talk to her so she can tone it down.”

You shake your head and chuckle bitterly. “Don’t bother. She’s your girlfriend. I’ll be out of here right after Christmas anyway.” 

This makes him frown. “Look, ______,” he starts, but you are too exhausted to deal with this right now to listen.

“I have to go,” you whisper as you pull your hand away. “We’ll have that talk—” 

Because there are a lot of things that I need to tell you.

“And then I’m gone and you can go back to Alia with her family thing on Christmas Day. But tomorrow night, we talk. Right after the family dinner.” 

Not bothering to wait for his response, you turn and walk away, once again leaving him behind in that dimly lit hallway as you search for solace, somewhere far, far away from him. 

Taehyung has been restless. 

He has been feeling uneasy for days. The truth is, it has been like this for him since the moment he stepped foot into Alia’s father’s house and saw you standing there. It has been a struggle to hide it and keep everything in. But last night, after talking to you again, the urge to speak to you about everything and explain himself has been growing even stronger. 

The look that you gave him when he first saw you has been haunting him, weighing him with guilt. Ever since that night six weeks ago, he has kept your smile deeply ingrained in his memory; the coy smile that you gave him as you flirted with him at the bar; the sultry look you wore when you clung onto him at the elevator while testing his limits with your lips tracing his neck; the content smile that he saw on your face the morning after the long, passionate night he shared with you before he took you again one last time. 

And yet, the smile that he kept wishing to see again for the past month was not there when he finally met you again. The expression that he has yearned to see had been replaced with shock, as you stood there looking like a deer caught in the headlights, while at the same time, you also seemed as if you had just witnessed someone kicking your puppy. 

Which was quite understandable, looking back at it now. It must have been a complete shock for you to see him entering your home, holding Alia’s hand and introducing himself as her boyfriend. Just as shocking it was for him to find out that you are Alia’s stepsister.

Fuck, how did things get so messed up?

”You’re not ready yet.”

Taehyung has been so out of it when he enters the motel’s bedroom that he fails to notice Alia watching him. Sitting right in front of the dressing table, she barely gives him a glance as she is busy putting on her makeup and doing her hair for the night. 

Normally, she doesn’t take this much time getting ready. But Taehyung understands that tonight is different. 

According to Alia, the family’s Christmas Eve dinner is a small annual gathering that is quite important for them. Held on behalf of Honey, who often spends the holiday with Cliff’s side of the family. It is when family members and second cousins would come to her Dad’s house to celebrate both the holidays and Honey’s good health. 

Ever since early this morning, Alia has been saying how she needs to look as her best self tonight—spoken in her own words—because she wants to make a good impression on her stepmother’s family. The only problem was that she also made it clear that she wanted Taehyung to play his role as her boyfriend perfectly, to continue to show that they have a great relationship right in front of everyone, just the same way he has been doing it for the past few days. 

It shouldn’t be bothering him so much that she would ask him to do this. Since that was the main reason why he is here in the first place. 

The original plan had been simple. All he had to do this holiday was to accompany Alia on her trip home to see her family. The family gathering from her mother’s side has always been so stressful, and he simply wanted to help her lessen the pressure so she could enjoy the holidays for once. 

Yet her mother’s special Christmas gathering tomorrow had not been the only thing that was bothering Alia before this holiday came around. Once Taehyung agreed to be her plus one, she extended her desperate plea for help by asking him to come with her as she spends Christmas and the upcoming days to it with her father’s family before heading to see her mother.  

He can’t remember well what Alia told him about having to be here. He understood the reason when it came to her mother, but he barely knew anything about her father’s family. He remembers her talking about something that had to do with clearing her name. Obviously, he should’ve paid more attention, and maybe he should’ve taken the time to know more about Cliff’s family. 

Not that it matters now. When he has travelled all the way here for this, and now he is stuck in this mess without having any clue how to fix it.   

“Taehyung?” 

Taehyung blinks. “What?” 

Alia doesn’t say a thing at first. For a moment, Taehyung wonders if she notices anything when she tilts her head at him, finally looking directly at him as if she is trying to read him. 

Yet he is proven wrong when Alia merely sighs. “I just said that you need to get ready,” Alia says, unaware of the battle happening inside Taehyung’s mind. Before he can say a thing, Alia averts her gaze and looks back at the mirror as if she is trying to solve a puzzle. “You need to look your best if you’re going to stay beside me and we’re going to be late if you’re not moving it.”  

Chuckling to himself, Taehyung walks over to stand right behind her. With his face appearing in the mirror, she has no choice but to look at him. “Should I wear my best suit tonight, then?” he taunts her as he leans down, breathing in her perfume that is a bit too extravagant to his liking. 

I was right, this perfume is nowhere near my taste, he says to himself, while he silently recalls breathing in your perfume and thinking just how much it suited you.

Alia looks up at him through the mirror and rolls her eyes. “You can wear whatever. A suit would be too much, since we’re having the dinner at home, not at some fancy and way too expensive restaurant like how my Mom would have it. You did bring your suit, didn’t you? Wear that at my Mom’s party tomorrow,” Alia instructs him, and for some reason, it doesn’t make him feel good about it.

Usually, he wouldn’t take it to heart and just laugh it off when she acts this bossy around him. Not this time, however. The entire situation has made him grow a bit resentful to her, something that he has been realising for a while now, even if it isn’t fair for her to be treated this way when it wasn’t really her fault. 

Alia keeps her eyes on the mirror when she continues to speak to him. “Wear that black jacket that you love so much. You always look good in it,” she says, flickering her gaze in a teasing way when she adds, “Even I would swoon when I see you wearing it, and that doesn’t happen a lot.” 

Taehyung scoffs at Alia and lowers his head to avoid her gaze. The black jacket brings back a lot of memories. He didn’t think much of it when he brought it with him on this trip, but maybe a part of him already felt that he would be needing it. 

Would it be okay to wear it tonight, right in front of her?

“Are you okay?” Alia’s voice snaps him out of his musings. As he looks up to meet her gaze through the mirror, she surprises him by not only softening her voice, but looking as if she is worried about him. “You know, you don’t seem like yourself lately.” 

How nice of you to notice, Taehyung wonders to himself but bites his tongue so he wouldn’t let those words slip. He has been wondering for a while now just how she could remain oblivious to everything that has been happening around her. 

If only she would notice how uncomfortable he feels whenever she clings to him, or how their act in front of her family bothers you so much. 

Maybe she does notice it, he muses. Maybe she’s been doing it on purpose by pushing it on him. Does it have to do with—

Before Taehyung could finish his own thoughts, Alia seems to have enough of his silence and turns on her seat to look at him straight in the eyes. 

“What is it? Spill.” 

Taehyung only continues to remain silent, having no idea how to answer that question or if he should try to. Even if he can explain himself, where should he even start? 

Is this the part where he needs to tell her that her stepsister—the reason why Alia decided to come to see her Dad after spending weeks complaining that she didn’t have any desire to, and also the reason why she is trying so damn hard to impress everyone this holiday, even to the point of bringing Taehyung home to meet her family—was his last sex partner? 

“You need to tell her.” 

Taehyung closes his eyes as your voice echoes through his head, as if you are the voice of his conscience. 

You were right. He needs to tell Alia about his connection to you. But knowing her mood swings, and the reason why she has been trying to be ‘perfect’ the entire time she was spending time with Cliff’s family, he was hoping that he could postpone talking to her about it until tonight’s big family dinner is done. 

An event that Alia claimed to be more important for her than her mother’s fancy family gathering. 

No, I need to talk to her first, he decides. Maybe we could figure something out once she knows everything. 

“Nothing. I’m just overwhelmed. You didn’t tell me—” he stops himself as he almost let it slip that it was your presence that bothers him. 

You didn’t tell me anything about your stepsister. 

He keeps those words to himself. But he makes a mental note to bring it up once he gets back to her again by the end of the night to have a different kind of conversation to the one he is having with you. “So, black jacket, huh? Got it.” 

“Good, now go get ready and make it quick. The trip from here back to Dad’s house will take some time,” Alia says with a sigh as she turns back to the mirror, her concern is quick to vanish as she proceeds to complain, “We could’ve spared that trip if you hadn’t insisted that we stay in this motel instead of using the guest room like me and my Dad suggested.” 

“I already told you,” Taehyung says with a deep chuckle, leaning back down again to whisper, “I’m a terrible actor.” 

He straightens up while looking pleased with himself for drawing a frown on Alia’s face. “And being in your Dad’s house the entire time we’re here would cost me too much work. The gig would’ve been up before you know it.” 

“Fine, whatever. Just go,” Alia waves him off. 

Taehyung nods and makes his way to the door. He stops before he opens it and asks her, “Remember what I asked earlier?” 

Once again, Alia rolls her eyes at him. “Yeah, yeah, tone it down with the clingy girlfriend act. I get it. Now go get ready, we’re going to be late.” 

Taehyung breathes a sigh of relief to hear it. He can’t seem to forget the way the light in your eyes seemed to dim when you talked about the way he kept putting on the new couple act in front of you. On top of this whole mess, the last thing he wants is to leave you feeling hurt by his actions, so he made a deal with Alia to tone it down, even if he couldn’t explain to her the reason why. 

Pleased to know that Alia is listening to him for once, and that he has at least one problem handled before tonight, Taehyung leaves Alia’s motel room, closing the door behind him with a click before he goes to his own room to get ready.

You turn to your side and have a good look at yourself in the mirror. On instinct, your hands run down your belly, pressing down gently at the spot where the baby should be. 

The knitted dress that you have chosen to wear tonight may not be the fanciest one, but it is the one that feels comfortable on your skin. It isn’t tight enough on your body to make you feel self-conscious about yourself and definitely not enough to show the changes happening in your body. 

With just over six weeks of gestation, the baby bump isn’t showing that much yet. But you can still feel the way your body is changing. Perhaps it is all happening in your mind, only from knowing that you are keeping a living being inside you, but you can almost see it when you look at yourself in the mirror that you cannot help but try to do anything you can to hide it from your family. 

For now, at least. Only until you are ready to reveal everything to them. 

Thinking about this only makes you grow more anxious. You have been feeling this way since morning, all for the thought of having to face Taehyung again, and to finally talk about everything that is needed to be said before the night ends. 

“Tonight,” you tell yourself as you straighten up to look at your reflection in the mirror for one last time. “I’m going to tell him about the baby tonight.” 

Tonight will be the only chance you will ever have to talk to him, after all.  

Tomorrow, Taehyung will join Alia to visit her birth mother. Alia’s mother has always held a massive luncheon or dinner event on Christmas Day that Alia would be required to attend, so you doubt that she would miss it this year, even if you had always overheard her complaining about it to your stepfather.  

Every year, Alia would always prioritise her mother’s family event over her father’s during the holiday season. Coming from a wealthy family, Alia’s mother had always appeared to you like a different breed. Her holiday parties had always been so fancy, almost too extravagant compared to your family’s simple ones. 

Every year, Alia would focus on preparing for those events, always stressing about it before going, and barely focusing on her days spent with her father and his family that it did come as a surprise to you when she came early this year to join your family and to even get herself involved. 

Perhaps that was the reason why she had decided to bring a date with her this time around, and to introduce her boyfriend to the family like you did with your ex. 

Shaking the thoughts of Alia out of your mind, you finish getting ready and walk over to your purse. With gentle fingers, you pull out the sonogram that you had printed during your latest trip to the doctor. 

Holding it up under the light, you brush your fingertips across the blurry image of your growing baby. Sometimes it is still hard for you to process the fact that you are carrying a human child within you. Even through the nausea, the cravings, the lethargy, and any other peculiar things that have become parts of your life as of late, you still have a hard time grasping this fact. 

But this sonogram shows you the undeniable proof that the baby is there. You had even gotten the chance to hear the baby’s faint heartbeat on your last appointment, making it clear that you are carrying a life inside you. 

A life that seems so fragile, that you have developed a strong urge to protect it from the world. Even from its father, if he ever tries to deny or reject it. 

“It’s going to be okay,” you whisper to yourself while brushing your fingers on the picture again, speaking of it like a mantra. At the same time, it also feels as if you are talking to your baby, soothing it like you would if the baby is here with you. “Everything’s going to be okay. Let’s just get through tonight first.” 

For a moment, you contemplate between carrying the sonogram with you or to leave it here. With no purse or a pocket to hide it in, you finally decide to leave it on top of the bedside table until you are ready to show it to Taehyung later tonight. 

With one last look at the mirror, you rub your palms down your dress and give yourself the final pep talk before heading out. “Let’s go,” you whisper to yourself as you walk out of your bedroom, strengthening your shoulders and keeping your chin up as you prepare yourself to face the inevitable.

It’s finally Christmas Eve. 

The holiday spirit hasn’t completely sunk in on you until you finally sat down at the table for the annual Christmas dinner, surrounded by your immediate family and the family members that you haven’t met for a period of time while you have been pursuing your dreams away in the city. 

Outside, the temperature has dropped down even lower than before. The layer of snow that your stepfather had spent hours shovelling away are piling up with fresh ones as snowflakes keep falling from the evening sky, while the windows would tremble once or twice with the flowing breeze that seemed to have picked up as the day turned into evening. 

Inside, however, the warmth of the festive season fills the air, as everyone gathers around the overflowing feast that has been set up on the table—your grandmother’s specially made ham and turkey with the additional main of lamb skewers and turkey meatballs, Aunt Dara’s potato bake and baked salmon, and Uncle Marco’s signature casseroles, with smaller bowls of side dishes set on the side. 

A couple of bowls of the fennel salad that you helped prepare are being passed around on the table. Once everyone is done with their meal, your home-made cinnamon bread rolls and your cousin June’s apple and caramel pie are ready to be served as desserts. 

Once everyone has filled the dining room, your mother’s Christmas decorations which you perviously thought was overdone no longer seemed as much. The twinkling lights and the fragrant pine garlands adorning the room are enough to rival the festive sweaters and bright-coloured dresses that everyone is wearing for the night. The scent of cinnamon and cloves wafts around you all the way from the kitchen, and it makes your head swim even without sipping on the champagne that are being passed around.

As everyone took their seats at the table, you stepfather stepped aside to let Honey take the head of the table as the matriarch of the family and the night’s host. The radiant smile on her face which never seems to wane sets the mood in the entire room, helping you to also forget about your personal troubles that no longer seem as dire as your mind had made them up to be. 

The laughter and chatter filling the room becomes the perfect distraction that you need to pay no heed to the unwavering gaze that Taehyung keeps stealing your way. Even as he chats with June who had sat down by his side, Taehyung continues to throw a few not-so-subtle glances your way, making you feel uneasy and self-conscious whenever you aren’t having your attention dragged away from your younger cousin, Maya, who is chattering right beside you while sipping her glass of champagne.

You turn your gaze at Alia, who had chosen to sit by Cliff’s brother, Kyle, who had decided to join your family this year. Too busy catching up with her uncle, she doesn’t seem to notice her own boyfriend’s wandering eyes. She doesn’t even seem to care as much as she should, you realise, as you have also noticed that she hasn’t been clinging or openly doting on Taehyung throughout the night since they had gotten back from the motel. 

It has given you a sense of relief, because you can finally have one night where your heart isn’t being crushed from watching them together, but also a twinge of guilt, knowing that your last conversation with Taehyung may have had something to do with it. She did appear tense when she first came in, and you never figured out why when it quickly faded the moment she saw her uncle in the room, and her stiff expression quickly turned into relief. 

The sounds of glasses clinking and the pouring champagne continues on as everyone is starting to finish their meal. Nursing the glass of fresh juice that you have had all through dinner, you hope that nobody notices that you have left the glass of champagne on your side mostly untouched—apart from the occasional raise of the glass when someone makes a toast or pressing your lips lightly on its rim to disguise the fact that you are not drinking any drop of it. 

Not too long, dinner is over, and everyone filters into the spacious living room to gather around the fireplace while the kids loiter around the Christmas tree to curiously shift through the wrapped presents to try and find which one of them would be theirs. 

There are a selective few that separate themselves to head out to the back porch to smoke and talk business—mostly your male cousins—while the others quickly follow Honey to where she has set up the minibar for her signature rum cocktails and act as the designated bartender for the night. 

As you follow to join everyone in the living room, the impending conversation that you are about to have with Taehyung keeps weighing you down, making you grow more anxious with each passing second. It makes you feel vulnerable, causing you to be hyper-aware of his presence inside the room even before you catch the sight of him mingling with your family. 

Moving one feet after the other without tripping feels like a struggle under the heat of his gaze. It bothers you to no end to notice that Taehyung seems to have disregarded any last bit of subtlety, when he is now openly staring at you even while he is chatting with someone else by the Christmas tree. 

You have no idea if anyone, especially Alia, has noticed it. You wouldn’t be surprised if someone has caught on, when he makes it so obvious that he is watching you from across the room. 

The only reprieve that you have to cover you from Taehyung’s gaze and the silent questions that may linger within any observant pair of eyes would be your grandmother, Honey, who steals most of the attention by running the show as she mixes her sweet cocktails and shares new stories about her friends back at her apartment complex and gossips that she heard recently from the neighbours here. 

“Congratulations.” 

A deep voice greets you, pulling you out of the stupor that you are in. You look over to see Kyle, your stepfather’s younger brother, coming to your side. 

It was a nice surprise to see him this year to join your family gathering, as your step-uncle has been working at another state for the past year and you haven’t seen each other since. Carrying a glass of wine with him—red, just the way he enjoys it—instead of a glass of cocktail, he gives you a warm smile that looks like a mirror image to his older brother. 

“I heard from your Dad that you just got another promotion. I’m guessing that this gathering is part of the celebration too?” he asks, while your skin warms at the mention of your stepfather. 

For as long as you could remember, you have been calling Cliff as ‘Dad’. You can no longer remember how it started, but ever since you were little, the only ‘Dad’ you have ever known has been Cliff, not the birth father who had been gone almost your entire life. He may not be your birth father, and there has been no talking about him adopting you yet, but he is the one and only Dad that you’ll ever know. 

Having someone else noticing and acknowledging it feels gratifying. Especially when it is coming from his side of the family. 

Nodding your head, you answer your step-uncle with a bashful smile. “Yeah, that’s what Honey said and she insisted that we host the annual dinner this year instead of Aunt Dara. But we all know that she’s the main star of the show,” you joke with him as you nod your chin to point at Honey, who is teasing your mother about dropping rum into her hot cocoa instead of taking one of her sweet cocktails. 

Kyle laughs with you as he watches the scene. “Still, you should be proud of yourself.” 

“Oh, I am proud,” you answer him with a smile. “I worked hard for it, but I’m feeling a bit guilty too since the busier I had gotten, the lesser I was able to make time to contact my parents.” 

Your step-uncle nods. “You can’t help it. That’s often the cost of building a career,” he says, understanding your situation, as he too has the same troubles of making time for his family with his busy life. 

“But your parents would understand. In fact, your Dad has been bragging about his girls quite a lot lately. One who keeps traveling across the globe to see the world, while the other who keeps climbing the corporate ladder, and I have to say—” he sighs, “I’m kind of jealous.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Has he now?” you chuckle a little, somehow feeling good about being your stepfather’s pride. “Oh, you shouldn’t be feeling too jealous of Dad. You know your kids are doing great too. They’re both in college now, aren’t they?”

At the mention of his children, Kyle’s eyes seem to grow brighter. He speaks with a voice full of pride as he talks about the two young boys who had just returned from the back porch and now huddling in front of the fireplace to warm up while bickering on their own. 

You stay to talk to him for a while longer, until your stepfather steals him away to share a bottle of a much stronger liquor in another room and you continue to mingle with the other family members that you haven’t met for a while. 

By the time you are done catching up, the object of your frustration—who is coincidentally also the father of your baby—forgotten, you are feeling drained and your legs are giving up from standing for too long that you unceremoniously collapse on the couch in the corner of the room without a single care. 

For a moment, you find calmness by sitting on your own, staying in the corner where you are mostly unnoticed. The festivities is still high around you, but you find freedom here, away from everyone’s attention. Too bad that you aren’t given the chance to savour it when someone decides to slide in and sit right next to you. 

“So—I suppose that aside from the cocktail tasting, the gift exchange is going to be the main part of the night’s event, huh?” 

A shudder rocks through your body. His deep, distinctive voice does that to you even when you hear it in your dreams. Taking a deep breath, you compose yourself before turning to him, hoping that you have enough strength to look at his face without feeling like your heart is about to burst. 

Slowly, you turn to look at him, and immediately, your entire body betrays you. Your heartbeat picks up, and the cavity in your chest is overflowing with gentle flutters, as if there are a thousand of butterfly wings inside you coming awake with just one look at his face. Taehyung lets his gaze linger on the children who are showing off their wrapped gifts to their parents before looking back at you. 

Your cheeks burn the moment your eyes meet each other, and you look away before it gets too much. “Yes, we’re exchanging gifts before the night ends, and then everyone will go on their merry way. Some drunk, while relying on their designated drivers or a cab, and some others to continue with their own thing back home,” you explain to him while trying to keep your voice calm. “It started mostly with Honey being the one giving out the gifts on the Eve, since it’s her thing to give something to everyone she cares about.” 

A smile is lifted on your face while you watch Honey handing out small wrapped boxes of gifts to the children first before the older ones get their turns. The cheerful laughter shared by everyone who has received Honey’s special gifts fills the room. Curious expressions that quickly turn into joy has always been the high point of these Christmas gatherings in your family. 

You should be there to join them, to enjoy the festivities, yet with everything that has been going on, you are feeling too overwhelmed to take part in it. “After a while, the relatives who are often invited to these things started joining in, bringing in their own gifts in addition to the plates of food that they bring for dinner.” 

“Sounds like so much fun,” Taehyung muses. “Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.” 

“Why are you sitting back here? Aren’t you supposed to be with Alia?” you question him as you wonder why he would be so daring to join you instead of staying by his girlfriend’s side and play his role as her plus one. “You could’ve asked Alia about these things.”

Taehyung grins. “She’s busy with her own thing. Besides, every time I ask her about these things, she would just brush it off and tell me to ask someone else.” 

Frowning, you find his comment to be odd. It isn’t something that you could expect to hear from a new couple such as them. Lest of all from one half of the couple that haven’t been shy with their constant public display of affection from the day they arrived. 

Once again avoiding Taehyung’s gaze as he looks at you again, you find Alia across the room, conversing with one of Kyle’s sons. Judging from the way she seems to be enjoying herself with the glass of cocktail in her hand, she doesn’t seem to care much about what her boyfriend is up to, much less to feel curious enough to find him. 

That’s odd, but it’s not really my problem, is it?  

You remind yourself and put your curiosity aside. “You could’ve asked Honey. You seem to have grown closer to her lately,” you tease Taehyung, pointing out how often he has been spending time with your grandmother whenever he isn’t busy helping others in the house or catering to Alia’s need for attention. 

Taehyung chuckles softly. “How could I bother the host of the party? Look at her enjoying herself. She’s the superstar tonight, so I’d rather not take her out of the spotlight just to be my guide.” 

Even without looking, you can hear the smile in his voice as he talks about your grandmother. And when you look ahead, you can obviously see that he isn’t completely wrong. 

Honey is clearly having the time of her life; whether it’s about watching the happy faces receiving her gifts or seeing people enjoying the drinks she is making. She may have lessened her own drinking habit—except for the occasional drop of rum that she sneaks into her hot drinks—but she still knows how to make amazing sweet and fruity cocktails for others to enjoy. 

That should explain why you have the penchant for sweet alcoholic drinks instead of the bitter ones whenever you feel like it.

“So,” you turn to Taehyung with a sly smile. “I guess that means I’ve earned the honour to answer your questions?” 

Taehyung seems surprised to see that you smiling back at him. His gaze softens, and so does his voice when he leans closer to say, “You’re the only person I know in this room.” 

Fuck. Your cheeks shouldn’t be getting warm just because he says something like this. You look away to hide it. “Is Alia the jealous type? Would it bother her to see us chatting as friendly as we do now?” 

Taehyung scoffs. “I don’t think she even bothers to notice. Not tonight, anyway.” 

“Yeah…she can be the least perceptive person in the room sometimes,” you sigh as you watch your stepsister joking with her cousin without a single glance at her boyfriend. Realising what you just said, you turn to Taehyung to apologise. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“It’s fine,” he scoffs. “Trust me, I know it full well from experience.” 

There is a sarcastic tone in his voice that should have made you wonder about his comment. Yet there is a bitterness that you feel inside after hearing those words. Of course, he would have enough experience dealing with Alia’s attitude. 

They are dating, after all. 

You look away and bite back that bitter taste in your tongue. “Right, of course.” 

Unlike Alia who can be completely insensitive to her surroundings, Taehyung notices your change of mood right away. You feel him sliding closer, just enough to allow him to speak in a low voice, but not enough to make people grow curious or suspicious that something is going on between the two of you. 

“You promised that we could talk,” he says, almost a whisper under the noises around you.  

Your stomach feels tight with nerves. It’s time. “I did, and we do,” you say to him while clenching your hands. You are beginning to wonder if you had made the right decision of leaving the sonogram behind. Maybe bringing him back to your bedroom wouldn’t be a good idea. “I have—something to tell you. Something important.” 

Taehyung nods. “Do you think we can slip out of the room unnoticed?” 

“You mean…now? You want to do it right now?” you hiss at him, glancing at Alia before looking back at him again. “Wouldn’t Alia be looking for you?” 

Taehyung merely scoffs. “Like I said, she’s busy. Once she gets a few more glasses of drink, she’ll be more focused on looking for a sofa to lie down on instead of noticing that I’m gone.” 

As if on cue, Alia’s laughter echoes through the room, and she turns away to joke with both of her male cousins now. You also notice that she has somehow gotten a fresh glass of cocktail in her hand, and she must have drank it halfway already by the looks of it. 

Looking around the room, you notice that the guests crowding the living room is slowly dwindling. Most of your relatives who had gotten enough of Honey’s cocktail and received their gifts are starting to bid their goodbyes, hoping that they could return home before it gets too late and preferably before each of their designated drivers join in with the drinking. Yet there are some family members who have yet to show any sign of leaving soon, still enjoying their chat with Honey by the Christmas tree. 

There will be no other chance, you tell yourself as you silently make a decision. The lesser people there are left, the more obvious it would be for everyone that you had gone missing from the room. 

And with whom you may have disappeared together. 

“Can you, uh—meet me in my room in about ten minutes, maybe less? I think we can get some privacy there and people don’t normally get upstairs unless they’re staying the night.” And because I left the sonogram there. 

That’s right, it would be easier to show the sonogram to him right away when you tell him everything, just as how you initially planned it, even if you haven’t been too sure about it. “I’ll have to mingle a bit more and make sure that Honey can see me before I disappear. She’ll be looking for me if I don’t join her even if for a minute.” 

“Yeah, I can do that,” Taehyung says as he straightens up, “You go ahead and talk to Honey, and I’ll sneak us out some drinks so we have something to do while we talk.”  

“Drinks. Right. Good idea,” you simply say to him, not bothering to try and turn down his offer, or to insist him to bring you the non-alcoholic ones. He’ll figure things out later once you are alone with him anyway. 

With a nod, Taehyung rises from his seat and walks over to June, your cousin who seems to have gotten along with Taehyung over dinner. You wait for a few more minutes before making your move. Honey seems to be busy as more and more relatives are preparing to leave. So you turn to Aunt Dara and have a quick chat with her, making sure that the two of you remain within Honey’s peripheral vision so she can still see you. 

Too restless to linger around and stay a bit longer, in not more than five minutes, you end your conversation and turn away from your aunt, hoping that you can slip away from the room before anyone notices your stealthy escape. Not even Honey. Because the moment you are caught by your grandmother, you know it would make it even harder for you to leave the room. 

But just as you slip through the guests, staying clear from your mother’s relatives who are crowding Honey, your grandmother catches the sight of you and calls out—

“______, there you are. We were just talking about you. Come over here,” she says, waving her hand so you can join her and the small group that still remains to accompany her after a couple of more relatives have left the party. 

Fuck. Too late. 

Forcing a smile, you slither towards her, practically dragging your feet. “What is it, Honey?” 

Honey leans against the minibar and picks up a small bottle. She continues mixing and pouring the drinks as she starts talking to you, “I was just talking to them about your recent promotion and how proud you made us. And then Jennie here shared that she is starting a new job and moving to the same city where you work. I told them that you have a big apartment that I love so much—” 

You roll your eyes and laugh. “Honey, I already told you. I don’t own the place, I rent it with a roommate.” 

“Anyway,” she brushes you off, “I wondered if you could be a dear and help Jennie out to find a nice apartment. You know people in the city can be a bit sneaky. We’ve heard stories of young girls getting scammed the first time they’ve gone into a big city, so obviously, I was worried.” 

Before you can say anything, Jennie raises her hand and cuts in, “I told Honey that I’ve already been looking up at a few places so—”

Jennie’s voice fades in and out and you can barely focus on what she is trying to tell you. Something about making arrangements with property agents to look up for a few affordable apartments not far from where you live. But your attention is being drawn elsewhere, as you notice from the corner of your eyes, that Taehyung is nodding at June and walking away, barely giving you a glance as he slides towards the small corner table filled with bottles of beer to grab the drinks he promised you. 

“You know what, why don’t you call me up once you start moving. Maybe you can crash at my place and use the couch while you’re looking. Then I’ll see if I can arrange my schedules to go with you when you’re looking into those apartments so you won’t have to go alone.” 

“That sounds great!” Jennie says, looking relieved, and you see it as a chance to also slip away so you can get to your bedroom before Taehyung could. 

“Honey, I—” 

“See? I told you that _____ is an angel,” Honey cuts you off before you can get a word out. Then she turns to you, handing you the glass of cocktail that she was mixing while you were chatting with your cousin. 

“Here, you should try this. I made this specially for you,” she says as she gives the drink a few more stirs. “I remember that you loved the rose scented drinks I bought you, so I ordered this infused—” 

You bite your lips, trying to hide away your revulsion as Honey raises the glass to you so you can take it from her. On reflect, you lift your hands to refuse. “No, thank you, Honey. I’m sorry, but I’m not in the mood for cocktails right now. I’ve just finished my hot chocolate, after all.” 

“That’s too bad. Well, I guess someone else has to taste this one for me.” She pouts, making you feel guilty for refusing her offer as she lowers her hand. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen you drinking tonight. In fact, I haven’t seen you drink any alcoholic drink at all this holiday. Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

Your stomach drops. An incredulous laugh leaves your lips. “W-what?” 

What did she say? You wonder. You must’ve heard her wrong. Right?

Honey shrugs as she puts away the rejected drink and places it on top of the minibar. “Seeing how you keep getting sick and avoiding alcoholic drinks since you got here, I would think that you’re secretly pregnant,” she says while laughing and looking proud, as if she was simply throwing her crude joke as she usually does without realising how spot on it was to the truth. “Are you carrying a child in that belly, dear?” 

The room falls into a rapt hush after Honey throws that comment into the room. You can feel everyone’s eyes on you, while Honey remains unfazed, still wearing her curious smile as if she hasn’t done anything wrong. 

“Honey? W-what are you saying?” you nervously ask her, while your sweet grandmother merely shrugs and innocently waves you off. 

“Oh, it’s nothing, sweetie. Just thinking out loud. It’s just that seeing you get sick every morning, and being so sensitive with certain smells reminds me a lot of myself when I was pregnant with your Mom. You haven’t even touched a drop of alcohol I offered since you got home, and I know that you barely touched your glass of champagne during dinner,” she says with a wicked chuckle. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t. You tried to hide it, but I knew. I have eyes, you know.” 

Fuck. I didn’t think she would notice. 

Gritting your teeth, you can only curse at yourself for acting such a fool. You thought you were being clever about it, but you must have been distracted by Taehyung’s presence at dinner that you failed to notice that Honey had kept her eyes on you all night. 

“I—” 

You try to speak, but words fail you. How do you respond? What do you say to this? 

Ever since from the moment you came back home, you had expected that Honey would be the one who is able to put the pieces together, being the perceptive person that she is, and she had been the reason why you have been extra careful in hiding it, especially when you were around her. 

Never once did you ever expect that she would so quick to draw up this conclusion and speak of it so nonchalantly with a few relatives are still around. 

“Mom, stop talking nonsense,” your mother gently chastises your grandmother while laughing nervously. She looks back and forth between you and her mother, her eyes flickering on your face, then to your belly, as if she is trying to find what she has been missing. “_____ can’t be pregnant. Right, sweetie?” 

Your tears begin to form. “I, uh—I don’t—” 

Your head starts spinning harder the more you try to speak up, to explain, knowing that it would be futile to lie. Not to Honey. And certainly not to your parents. 

Under the attention and distress, feeling the burden of having all eyes on you, all of them waiting for your answer, your hands move on their own, finding comfort in embracing the very spot where your growing baby is hidden as you press your palms on your barely-there bump. Noticing this, a collective gasp spreads through the room. Honey’s smile falters, while your mother’s eyes grow wide in shock. 

But the most devastating of all is to see your stepfather walking around his brother to get to you from across the room. “You’re pregnant?” Cliff asks you carefully as he slowly comes to your side. When you look up at is shock slowly turns into rage when he asks, “Is that why that prick left you? Did he get you pregnant and choose to walk away like a fucking coward?” 

“No, Dad. I—” 

While you are struggling to answer him, your stepfather’s voice continues to rise. “Tell me where he is and I’ll chase that fucker—” 

Everything moves in slow motion. Your stepfather who keeps cursing at your ex. Your Mom who keeps pulling him back to try and calm him down, and her pleading gaze silently asking you to explain. The whispering gasps and questions shared among the nervous glances that the guests are sending each other.

Everyone is talking at the same time, while you continue having a hard time to speak up. Your stomach feels tight. Even the touch of your hands no longer bring the calming warmth that your body needs. 

Gentle hands press down on your arms as you are slowly being pulled away from the chaos. You can only make out Jennie and Honey’s voices whispering to you, guiding you to breathe while helping you to sit down before you would pass out. 

Amidst the confusion, your eyes travel across the room, immediately finding Taehyung who is standing there in the corner with a frown on his face and a couple of bottles of drinks in his hands. As your eyes are locked with one another from the distance, you can see him processing through everything. His emotions are clearly written in his gaze; confusion, bewilderment, wonder. 

You have no idea what kind of look that he sees on your face, but slowly, you can tell that everything seems to sink in on him. A dawning realisation sparks through his eyes when he finally puts the pieces together, and his shoulders fall to slump.

He knows. 

And he isn’t the only one who is putting the pieces together. 

With a quick glance, you find Alia standing on the other side of the room, her eyes keep flickering between you and Taehyung, evidently noticing the silent exchange happening between the two of you. There is a clear sign of shock and hurt in her eyes that you get to see a glimpse of when she looks at you one last time, before she turns away and runs out of the room. 

“You need to rest. The stress wouldn’t be good for you.” 

Jennie’s voice sounds subdued, worrying. She has always been shy, but she seems particularly cautious as she looks at you. As if she is trying her best not to look down at your belly. But her presence here and her small, careful voice offers you comfort. Something that you need as you lean against the doorway to your bedroom, feeling a bit too weak to stand on your own. 

“I’m sorry you got entangled in all of this,” is all that you can say to her. You feel guilty for having your cousin and your aunt roped into this whole drama, all because they had been there to witness it when everything unfolded. 

While your step-uncle, Kyle, took over escorting the departing guests, and your mother is somewhere in the house to talk with your stepfather, Jennie had volunteered to help escort you back to your room. She becomes the calming force amidst the storm that helps clear your mind. 

“It’s fine,” she waves you off. “You’ll be paying me back once I’ve moved closer to you anyway. The couch is still available, right? You said I could crash until I’m settled.” 

That helps bring a smile to your face. “Yes, my door is always open. I’ll let my roommate know that you’re coming. She’s usually open to welcoming family who needs help anyway,” you say to her with full gratitude before adding, “Thank you for staying to help.” 

She nods and begins to turn away. “I better go check on Honey and see if my Mom is ready to go. I’ll see you soon.” 

Too exhausted to say anything else, you simply thank her one last time and watch her go down the hall before closing the door. Once again, the silence in your bedroom gives you the perfect solace. It does nothing to erase the weight in your chest, however, or give you the answer you need as you wonder how you are going to talk to Taehyung about the whole thing. 

You never expected that things would turn into such a mess, robbing any chance of you telling Taehyung about the baby properly, free of drama and uncertainty. 

Just as you start dragging your feet towards the bed, you hear a soft knocking on the door, pulling you back to it. Thinking it might be Jennie, you immediately open it. “Did you forget—” Your voice falls to a hush when you find Taehyung standing there instead, giving you a small smile that draws back all the slow flutters in your chest. 

“Oh, hi.”

“Hey,” he gently greets you. His smile is cautious, restrained, and his exhale of breath seems shaky. But he sounds calm when he speaks to you, “May I come in?” 

You prepare yourself to answer, but your eyes flicker out the hallway, searching, a gesture that he easily notices. “Alia is with your parents. They’re worried about you, but your Mom seemed a bit frantic because she didn’t see the signs. Alia probably won’t be looking for me until later. I wanted to talk to you first.” 

“Okay,” you answer him with a sigh of relief. “Come in,” you beckon him, stepping aside so he can enter your room. 

He steps deeper into your room while you take your time, gathering courage before you can turn to face him. His voice fills your room as he continues to talk, “I left our drinks downstairs. Things were so chaotic, so it slipped my mind—” 

“That’s okay, it’s—” you say in return, failing to notice that his voice has faded out into silence. When you finally turn to him, you find him standing in front of your bedside table, his eyes are locked on the tiny thing that he is holding up under the dim light of the bedroom. 

He found the sonogram. 

“How far along are you?” His voice seems quiet against your thundering heartbeat, drowning even in the silence surrounding you.

You draw an unsteady breath before speaking up. “Six weeks, give or take.” 

Taehyung remains silent for a moment longer before a sigh comes out of him. “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” he asks, still with his eyes on the sonogram. His expression is unreadable, something which you cannot fault him with, knowing that this must have come as a shock to him. 

“I’m sorry, I should’ve gone to you sooner,” you quickly apologise to him. A part of you wants to rush by his side, even if you cannot decide whether you want to calm and soothe him or rip that sonogram from his hand. Yet your legs seem frozen, and you are locked at one spot with no ability to move.  

“From the moment I found out, I was planning to find you and figure out how to share the news to you in person, but then you showed up here with Alia, and I got”—blindsided, aghast, confused, terrified—”I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.” 

“So, I was right. This baby is mine.” 

Just as he says those words, you finally understand the look that he is wearing on his face. Captivated. Entranced. Amused. As if this revelation is more fascinating to him rather than it is frightening. It brings a twinge of hope rising inside you, telling you that maybe you can both figure out on how to deal with this. 

But what about Alia? 

“It was from that night, wasn’t it?” he asks again, breaking you out of your thoughts—from thinking about Alia. And you can almost sure that you catch the corner of his lips lifting to a smile.

“Yeah,” you cautiously say to him. “It happened the night we got together. I’ve never been with anyone else since—” 

“What is this all about?” A deep voice bellows through your small bedroom, cutting through your words before you can finish talking. Both you and Taehyung turn to the door, noticing too late that your stepfather is standing there, watching the two of you with grief and horror in his eyes. 

“Dad—what you are doing here?” you ask him as your eyes flicker towards the door behind him. 

Crap. Distracted by your own nerves that had been affected by Taehyung’s arrival, you must have failed to shut the door tightly behind you. 

“I came to check on you and apologise for freaking out,” Cliff says, frown deepening, his voice and the expression you see on his face convey a mixture of anger and hurt. “But what is he doing in here?” he continues, pointing at Taehyung. “Why is he in your room, when he’s supposed to be with Alia?” 

The atmosphere grows heavier, yet Taehyung—the brave soul that he is—carefully steps forward to face your stepfather. “Cliff, I can explain—”

“And what did I just heard about the two of you being together? Is that baby—” Cliff turns to point at you, then back at Taehyung again while keeping his eyes on you, expecting you to answer him. “Was he the one responsible?” 

Still holding the sonogram in his hand, Taehyung straightens his shoulders and lifts his chin. And it seems to be enough to answer your stepfather’s question. But what it only does is to aggravate Cliff even more. The air crackles with his rage, and he moves so fast—too fast for your mind to comprehend—as he grabs the front of Taehyung’s shirt and starts dragging him out of your bedroom. 

“Dad, no!” 

The moment you see your stepfather dragging Taehyung out the door, that is when you snap out of it and start running to chase them. As you run out the door, you see Alia who was clearly on her way to your bedroom. Her eyes are wide with shock, and though you are unable to interpret the gloss in her eyes—whether they are tears of hurt or her tipsiness—you can tell that she has been standing there long enough before anyone noticed.

But was she there long enough to hear everything?  

“Daddy? What are you doing?” Alia screams out, though she doesn’t make any move, seemingly in shock to see her father dragging Taehyung across the hallway. 

“Alia, you need to stop him!” 

Your scream snaps her out of her shock, and she quickly rushes to chase both men down the stairs. You try to follow them as fast as you can, but your heart is racing, your legs feel weak, you can barely manage to come down the stairs without tumbling down. 

“Careful!” Alia snaps at you in panic as she catches you at the final flight of stairs. You lift your head to thank her for helping you, only for her to give you no chance to as she turns away right after, chasing after her Dad who is now dragging her boyfriend out the yard. 

Once the both of you are out the house, you can hear your stepfather’s voice bellowing through the air. His accusations echo through the chilly night, his eyes are blazing with frustration and rage, and he still has his hand pulling at Taehyung’s shirt, nearly lifting him off the ground as he continues shouting profanities between his grievance. 

“—the fuck are you trying to pull?” he yells at Taehyung’s face, and you wince at how loud he is being against the silent night. 

The only relief you can savour is the fact that he hasn’t gone physical. No hits are thrown, and the only rough handling he has been doing is to shake Taehyung back and forth with his tight grip on his shirt as he demands the truth. An answer. Anything that could clear this whole misunderstanding.

Taehyung’s eyes dart over Cliff’s shoulder as he notices you and Alia coming. Your stepfather follows his gaze and is caught by surprised to see you chasing him. But as he looks at you, his gaze hardens as he pleads, “Tell me that it’s not true. Tell me that you weren’t sleeping with him while he’s seeing your sister.” 

No, it’s not true. They weren’t together. You remember hearing Taehyung denying it when you first questioned it, so it must’ve been the truth. Right?  

The night you hooked up with him flashes through your head. That night from six weeks ago, the shared moment that he claimed to be a time where he hadn’t gotten involved with Alia. You want to speak up, to deny that he was playing both you and Alia, that the only thing behind this whole mess had been mere coincidence. 

If only you could stop shaking. Get some words out. Anything. 

But your chest feels tight. You can barely breathe in air, much less to let your voice out. 

“Cliff, please! I told you, I can explain!” Taehyung tries to get your stepfather to listen. You see his hand reaching to grab Cliff’s wrist, though it doesn’t seem that the hold would budge no matter what he does to pull it off. His eyes turn to you, then to Alia, right before he screams out with fear in his eyes, “Alia!” 

“Don’t you dare say her name!” Cliff yells at him, and you force yourself to speak. 

“Sto—” you try once, failing when your chest tightens. “Stop,” you cry out again, “Dad, please—” 

Your voice comes out as nothing more than dried paper, a silent hush compared to the loud voices as Cliff and Taehyung continue to argue with each other at the center of the front yard. But Alia is standing close enough to you to hear it. Close enough to see your hands shaking, your face turning pale and sickly, and she quickly moves right in front of you, standing between you and the quarrelling men. 

“Daddy, stop yelling. You’re going to stress ______ out,” she yells at her Dad while pushing you behind her to keep you away from them, as if she is making sure you won’t get hurt.

She’s…defending me? 

Your head starts spinning harder. Everything is so confusing right now, and it makes you feel worse when you look at Alia, seeing her getting caught in the crossfire as she tries to separate the two while shielding you from the chaos. 

“And it’s not Taehyung’s fault!” she yells again, and this time, it seems to do the trick, because Cliff finally lets Taehyung go. 

Now free from your stepfather’s clutch, Taehyung steps back. He tries to catch his breath while fixing his shirt. You notice then that he is still holding your sonogram, surprising you when even amidst all the chaos, he is still gripping onto it protectively. 

“How is it not his fault?” Cliff snaps at your stepsister. “Why are you defending this asshole? He slept with your sister when he’s dating you, and he even dared to show his face at my—” 

“Because we’re not dating!” Alia cuts him off with a scream, and everything stops. Her scream even shuts the voices in your head, drawing a single question in their place—

What—? What did she just say? 

With all eyes on her, Alia begins to shake with nerves. And then the truth spills out of her mouth. “We, uh—Taehyung and I—we’re friends. I wasn’t planning to come this year but you kept calling me to come for Honey’s family dinner, and—” she says, stuttering as she points at her father, and then turns to face you to add, “I thought that your—I mean, Hansol. I thought he was going to come with you this year like he always did and I didn’t want you to think that—” 

Drawing a shaky breath, she pushes through her nerves and forces the rest of the truth to come out. “I asked Taehyung to come with me and pretend to be my boyfriend so you wouldn’t think that I was going to try to make a move on Hansol again.” 

“Wait—what?” Taehyung snaps at her. He seems confused, and it is evident in your eyes that he never got to hear this part of the ordeal from Alia when he signed up for—whatever it was that they had agreed upon. “What did you do?” 

Alia opens her mouth to continue, yet Cliff cuts her off before she could. “Enough,” he says, no longer yelling. His voice sounds drained, exasperated, and yet there is an eerie calmness underneath that makes your skin shiver with fear. His silent rage terrifies you more than his loud, raging voice does, while the defeated look in his eyes hurts you deeply. “Alia, get inside. And you—” he turns to point at Taehyung. “Get out of my sight.” 

“Dad, no—” you step forward to stop him, yet Cliff doesn’t even look at you when he calmly orders Alia to move. 

“Alia, get your sister back in her room,” he says as he turns away, making his way back into the house.  

Left with no other choice, and feeling like the fight has left you, you let Alia place her hands on your shoulders. “I’m sorry,” you turn to Taehyung one last time as she starts guiding you back to the house, but then your stomach drops when he remains silent. His eyes are cold, as if he is trying to mask his true emotions as he looks at you. Something twists in your gut as if he had pierced a knife deeply through it. “Tae, wait—” 

A small smile is lifted on his lips, though it seems closer to a sneer, something which doesn’t seem to reach the pained look in his eyes, and that is the only thing that he gives you before he turns away and leaves the property without saying a single word. 

Sleep, without a doubt, has become fruitless. 

All night, you have been tossing and turning in your bed. Even when you manage to close your eyes and doze off a little, your stepfather’s grievance and Taehyung’s bereft smile flash through your mind, sending you to an abrupt wake each time. 

At the very last time you find yourself being forcefully pulled away from your restless sleep, you glance out the window, its curtains left partly opened, you see the shadows of nightfall slowly shifting. A blush of hue in gradient colours of purple and grey is beginning to emerge amidst the dark, and you can feel it in your skin the awakening of dawn. 

Too anxious to remain still on your cold bed, adrenaline and stress still flowing violently through your body, you finally give up trying to rest and tiptoe your way downstairs. 

The stillness in the house at night has always been something that you have come so familiar with, but as you walk down the stairs and into the quiet kitchen, the house feels more eerie that it usually does. You can almost hear the creaking sound of the floors and the walls around you, as if they are whispering to you all the things that they have witnessed from the night before. 

The air feels unusually cold. You fight the temptation to light up the fireplace once more and huddle up right in front of it, resisting only to avoid waking everyone else up, and then walk into the kitchen in search for another source of warmth. 

You are just beginning to make yourself a cup of hot chocolate to warm up when a figure steps into the archway leading towards the hallway. You turn with a jump, realising with relief that it is Alia. 

Giving you a hesitant smile, she walks into the kitchen. With her arms wrapped around herself and a thick shawl cloaking her shoulders, you realise that you are not the only one struggling with the cold. 

“Can’t sleep? Or did you wake up too early?” she asks you with a soft whisper. 

“A little bit of both. How about you?” 

She stands by the kitchen counter to watch you work. “Tried to sleep, but I kept having nightmares. I was running downstairs to catch up with Dad, and it kept repeating over and over”—she visibly shudders—“and then I woke up with this crappy headache.” 

You give her a smile and tip your chin at the high stool right by the counter. “Take a seat. I’ll make more,” you offer her, which she accepts with a smile. 

Neither of you says a word for a moment, only breaking the silence once you are done pouring the hot drinks into two separate mugs and handing one to her while whispering, “Here you go,” to which she responds with a soft, sleepy murmur, “Thank you.” 

Taking the seat on one end of the counter with Alia sitting on the other, silence stretches between the two of you once again. There is an awkward tension in the air. You cannot remember when you have ever found yourself alone with Alia like this, deep in the night and with nothing else to do but to talk. Not since those many years ago when you were children. 

You remember how your parents made you share the same bedroom. It was their way of getting you to bond with your new stepsister at the time. Even then, you could tell that Alia wasn’t exactly thrilled by it, already so used to having her own bedroom before she had to split her time between spending the weekdays with her mother and then with her father on the weekends. 

But at least back then, the silence didn’t feel as stifling. And she had let you borrow her personal things to play with, as long as you got out of her way. And that included her books—so many of them, you remember—with her occasionally sitting right beside you so she could read you some of the hard ones to follow for a little child.  

Taking a sip of your hot cocoa, you decide that you have had enough of this silence. “So—” you breathe out a sigh. “You and Taehyung.” 

Alia groans and closes her eyes. “You heard me last night, didn’t you? I know I was drunk off my ass, but it’s true,” she says, scoffing as she glances sideways and meets your gaze when you do the same, “It’s stupid, I know.” 

You sip your drink before asking, “Why did you have to go make an entire scheme out of this?” 

“I don’t know,” she breathes out an exhausted sigh. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.” Her voice sounds wistful when she says this, and then she breaks out into a bitter chuckle. “But I guess, just like a ton of other bad decisions I’ve made my entire life, it only added to the long list of fuck-ups that have tainted most of my adult life.” 

You let out a snort, something that is so uncharacteristically you, but still comes out with all honesty. “At least you’re taking accountability of it,” you say to her almost teasingly, “I know some people who wouldn’t even admit that they fucked up and simply move on while everyone had to pick up the mess they left behind.”  

Alia laughs. You can see her eyes warming up. “When did you meet him? How did it all happen?” 

Your lips curl up to a smile. You drink your hot drink slowly before you begin telling her everything—the trip that you went to after your breakup, the frustrating debacle with your flight getting delayed and cancelled and meeting him at transit, the hookup, everything that you already shared with Skye the first time you revealed about your first promiscuous night abroad with the stranger, the agreement you both made about shedding your identities, which had lead to this whole mess, and more.

Surprisingly enough, Alia merely responds with a soft chuckle. As if this is something that is to be expected when it involves her friend. “That explains it,” she muses softly. She has this faraway look in her eyes for a moment, as if recalling something in the past—perhaps something that happened during that period of time. 

“He was going through some stuff when we got in contact again about a year after the last time we met. We lost contact again briefly during that time”—the time he went to take that trip, you tell yourself—”I think he said he was off to some sort of a business trip and was using it to ‘escape’ from everything. He never told me any of the details, though.” 

You are curious, wanting to know more. But you also know that it isn’t your place to pry. You can also tell that Alia may not answer if you try to ask her. Yet she then surprises you by adding, “Then he contacted me not too long ago and said something about needing my help. I thought it was a wild coincidence and decided to use the chance to get him to help me in return. One thing lead to another, and here we are now.” 

You both share a laugh, despite how pitiful the two of you seem at this moment.  

When you both grow quiet once more, each of you taking the moment to savour your drink and the silence that is starting to bring more comfort than the uneasiness you felt earlier, your mind wanders. You recall the events that have been happening for the past few days, to tonight, seeing everything with a new light now that the truth has come out. You also find that you no longer feel the weight of your secret shadowing you, allowing you to breathe easier. 

And then the conversation you had with Skye on the phone from a while ago comes back to you. 

“I’m sorry I broke your doll,” you suddenly blurt out, while Alia snaps her head to look over to you. 

“What? Which doll?” she asks, her face is filled with incomprehension, before her expression shifts into knowing, and then to shock. “Oh, that one? That was a long time ago!” 

You laugh at her reaction. “Yeah, but it feels like you started resenting me since then.” 

“No, I’m—” she shakes her head and scoffs at you. “It’s actually fine. I hated that doll. That was the ugliest piece of shit I’ve ever owned when I was a kid.” 

“What—?”  you let out an incredulous laugh. “But you made it look like I’ve ruined your entire world. All hell broke loose because of it so I thought—” 

Alia laughs, though she also looks somewhat guilty when she explains everything to you. “One of Dad’s ex-girlfriends bought it for me on my eighth birthday. I never liked any of the women he brought home and introduced me, but she was probably the sanest and most normal one of all,” she calmly tells you, quickly adding, “That was before your Mom came in, by the way.” 

That makes you smile. Especially when you notice that her eyes are filled with fondness as she talks about your mother. 

“Anyway, she gave me the doll as a gift after she went for a trip abroad, and maybe I did like it because it made me happy to know that she thought about me. But the older I got, the weirder it felt for me to keep it, but every time I wanted to get rid of the doll, it made me feel guilty for even considering it because of how sweet she was to me,” she winces as she recalls the past. “When you ruined the doll, I was actually relieved. But I couldn’t show it to Dad since he thought I loved the doll so much that he even went out on his way to help take care of the doll for a long time, so I made it seem like losing the doll made me sad.” 

Your jaw drops and you laugh again. “Damn, I can’t believe I was gaslighted and framed by a twelve year-old.” 

“Sucks to be you,” Alia laughs back at you as she sips her drink. “Sorry for causing you some childhood trauma or whatever.” 

“It wasn’t so much of a trauma,” you say to her while scoffing. But that incident did leave an impression on you, regardless. And it wasn’t a good one. Looking back on it now, it does seem ridiculous for you to let it haunt your memories for so long. 

You are just about to share your thoughts to Alia when she finally speaks again. 

“On your eleventh birthday, you started calling him Dad,” she says, her voice dull, but you can feel the weight of her words when you hear them. It takes a moment for it to sink in, until you finally realise— 

“Oh—” Oh. You swallow hard and take a deep breath, realising that she is talking about Cliff. “Did you, uh—were you worried that I might take him away from you?” 

Alia smiles bitterly. “I’m not sure. Maybe?” She shrugs. “As a kid, I may have harboured an unrealistic fantasy that one day, my Mom and Dad would make up, get back together, and everything would be back to how it used to be.” 

She looks at you with a small smile. “But then Daddy met your Mom, and my Mom became more unhinged after the divorce and dealing with the consequences of her affair that it was becoming more obvious Dad would have never taken her back, no matter what.” 

The more she speaks, sharing her deep, darkest secret, the more you are able to understand her. For all these years, you simply thought that Alia has resented you for childish reasons. You never knew that she had nurtured the heartbreak of an innocent child for so many years. Silently hurting without anyone else knowing. 

“But it was the day you began calling him Dad that finally broke me out of that fantasy and forced me to accept that they were never going back together,” she says, sighing deeply with a broken smile on her face, which only deepens the guilt that you feel for becoming a part of it. “Maybe—that was the moment I started seeing you differently.” 

“I—didn’t know,” you murmur, and then you begin to recall how Alia kept avoiding to spend time with her father on the weekends when she was a teenager. “You started to come by less and less by then.” 

Your parents had excused Alia’s absence at the time as her newfound need of being independent. But you know better now. 

Alia releases a sigh, as if opening to you is helping her relief some of her own weight. “Dad was so happy because you and your family welcomed him into your lives. I guess that was really important to him. The more I watched him having a new family that was a whole, the more I resented it. Seeing you with Daddy—” she stops with a sharp intake of breath, “I guess the child in me felt like I was being replaced and I couldn’t take it.” 

“Alia—” 

She cuts you off with one look, with a gaze that is surprisingly warm. “You know what’s worse?” she asks. 

“The way Dad keeps bragging about you in front of me and anyone from his side of the family whenever he has the chance to. You have always been smarter, you’ve gained everything you wanted in life with your own effort. You have a good job, a nice apartment and, for a time, you had a long-time boyfriend, while I’m still floating through life,” she says with a wistful tone of voice instead of a bitter one. “I have no steady job, and I’m still moving around instead of settling down, which left me with no chance to start any serious relationship to brag about in front of everyone. So I suppose that makes me feel inferior when I have to face you.” 

You have no idea what to say. Because you had no idea about any of this. Still, you feel guilty, even if none of this was your fault when all you ever did was live your life the way you wanted it to. 

“Last year, I think that’s when I came to my limit,” Alia adds with a chuckle. “I guess somewhere in my mind, I had this thought that since you already stole my Dad, maybe I could steal something that was yours for a change.” 

Once again, your jaw drops. You let out a gasp. “Hey, that’s fucked up!” 

She laughs at your reaction. “I know! And I’m sorry, alright?” she says, still laughing and lifting both of her hands at you. But she quickly sobers up, looking genuinely concerned when she asks, “Seriously, though. Did you break up—” 

You quickly shake your head. “No. He chose his career over our relationship,” you admit to her. “He has always been like that. He’s always so crazy about work, a perfectionist, and not only does he have a big ego, he also has big ambitions. I think he pushed me to match his pace, whether he realised it or not, which became the reason why I managed to gained everything I have now.” 

Looking back, you have to admit that your ex was the one who gave you the drive which helped you get where you are now. As much as you hate to admit it, you do owe him that much for your current life, despite everything. 

“In a way, he pushed and motivated me to constantly be a better version of myself. But, deep down, I was starting to get tired of it.” You recall all the fights, the arguments, the agony that you felt when he belittled you for your need to start going in your own pace instead of following his. “I never realised how exhausting it was with him until we broke up. He made me feel like I was on a race against him instead of in a relationship where we were both equals in life.” 

Alia slowly nods her head with a silent understanding. “What happened last year with your ex was also the reason why I asked Taehyung to come with me,” she confesses with a shy smile.

“I felt so bad for everything that happened, and I had no idea how to fix it. I thought that if I brought someone with me this year, not only would I be able to shut my Mom up about trying to hook me up with some snobby guy from her circle and pushing me into marriage”—she rolls her eyes—”I would also be able to show everyone here, and you, that I had no desire to steal your boyfriend from you.” 

You grin at her. “That explains why it was shocking for you to find out that I already broke up.” 

“Obviously,” she scoffs. “That thwarted all of my plans.” You laugh together while she continues to complain about it. How she had meticulously planned everything to clear her reputation and avoid adding more drama between you.  

“But I couldn’t give up the gig. I know that Dad still keeps in touch with my Mom once in a while because of me, and she would call him to check on me if she’d heard I was coming, so if I let everyone know that Taehyung and I aren’t actually dating, my Mom would sit me down next to any bachelor of the year that she had chosen for me at the family gathering with just a snap of her fingers,” she sneers, lifting her hand to snap her fingers in the same manner that you imagine her mother would do. 

“And, as always, I had to mess everything up too because of my stupid plans,” she heavily sighs. “Sorry, by the way.” 

Scoffing lightly, you simply wave her off. “It’s not your fault. If only Taehyung and I had talked when we had the chance,” you finally admit, realising that you are also to blame for avoiding to speak to him right away, “Or if he had told you about me when I asked him to, then maybe the three of us could have figured something out.” 

Alia nods her head in agreement, and then her lips rise to a slow smile. “I didn’t expect that Honey would be the one stirring the pot when it was already boiling.” 

That makes you laugh again. “Honestly? I had expected that Honey would be the first to notice. I just didn’t expect her to blast me right in front of the whole family.” 

Sipping her hot cocoa slowly, Alia hums. “Maybe it was meant to work that way. Or else, I feel like neither of us would find any chance to spill out the truth, as bitter and ridiculous it might sound to admit,” she says, and you cannot help but agree with her. Even with no resolution have yet to be made, you can feel some of the weight of your troubles being lifted from you. 

Everything may have gone messy, yet for some reason, the future doesn’t seem so bleak when you are looking at it one last time. Then Alia gently adds, further encouraging the hope that is slowly blooming inside you. 

“Taehyung—he won’t be joining me to see my Mom. He’s driving back home, either in the morning or before noon, I’m not sure. You should go see him and talk.” 

“I—” you swallow hard. “I want to. We do need to talk, but—” 

Alia stops you by shaking her head. “No buts. You have a baby on the way, and I’m sure—seeing his reaction last night—he would want to be a part of it. Only if you’d let him.” 

That immediately shuts you up, taking away all the excuses that you have to run away and avoid facing him. You still remember seeing the way he was clutching your sonogram possessively as if it was his lifeline, and you have yet to get the sonogram back from him when he left. 

“Even without the baby—” Alia continues, noticing how you are still deep in your thoughts. “The favour that I mentioned? I think it might have something to do with you. I’m not sure what it was though, because he hasn’t had the chance to say anything about it. He only said that it had something to do with what happened during his trip from that time.” 

You know that she is right. The only problem is mustering the courage to go and see him in person. After what your family had put him through last night, you have no idea how to face him, feeling too guilty that he got roped into so much mess because you couldn’t tell him the truth when you had the chance.

“Well, while you take your time considering it, I should go back to my room. I have another Christmas event that I would need to mentally prepare to,” Alia says as she steps out of her seat. You watch her walking around the counter to put away her empty mug before smiling at you. “Thanks for the nice chat, and the hot chocolate.”

You return her smile and nod. “So—are we good?” 

That makes her chuckle. She stops before going out into the hall and shrugs. “Yeah, you’re okay. I guess we are.” 

“Does that mean we’re friends now?” you tease her, drawing a scoff from her. 

“Ugh—don’t push your luck, kid. Don’t even think about us being sisters,” she says, pointing at you. 

“Never would’ve dreamed of it,” you respond with a chuckle. Still, you are overcome with relief now that the old tension between you are lifted. “Good luck with your Mom.” 

“Thanks. Good luck with—” she says, “well, everything.” She turns away, but not before giving you one final warning, “I’m serious. Go talk to him. Don’t worry about the others, or about how Daddy would react. I’ll hold down the fort and explain everything to them until you’re back.” 

Your grip on the steering wheel tightens just as your stomach tightens with churning doubt. 

The thought of seeing Taehyung, alone, seems nerve-racking. You have no idea what to expect once you get there, or what you are going to say, which only makes you even more nervous the further you are getting from home. 

Your thoughts are filled with worrying that things may not go as planned. Not that you really had any plan to go with other than to talk to him, stop him from leaving, and maybe find out what the future hold—if there is any hope there. 

The weather outside seems dreary, which is no help at all. Even under the winter sunlight that appears brighter than usual, the snow keeps falling thickly from the sky, the trees standing on either side of the streets are swaying dangerously towards various directions due to the intense wind. 

Weather does hate me, you wonder to yourself as you glance through the side mirror, wondering why these things keep happening to you during critical times such as this one.

Getting more impatient, the urge to press down on the accelerator feels so strong, yet you fight it the best you can, recalling the promise you made when you stepped out of the house. 

Honey was right, it was a bad idea to be driving out under this weather. She was the one who warned you about the weather when you were about to leave, which you simply ignored because the sky was bright, the wind was steady, and your intention to see Taehyung was strong. 

You should have learned from experience and took your time checking today’s weather forecast to find out just how quickly the weather could change. 

Looking at the fierce weather, it seems obvious that things are about to get even worse. A white jeep breezes past your tiny city car, causing your car to sway, and you feel a pull to match its speed. But then you see it nearly slipping on the road as the jeep makes a turn right ahead, and you heart stops. Your car slows as you start hearing Honey’s voice warning you about how easy the road becomes slippery on days like this. 

“Drive carefully. Even if you want to risk your life getting out there, at least think about that baby,” Honey’s voice echoes in your head, stopping you before you could even think of picking up speed again once the road clears up before you. 

“There’s nothing to worry about. With this weather, he couldn’t have left yet,” you convince yourself, though your doubt keeps pushing back nearly tenfold. 

He couldn’t just leave, right? 

Turning with reduced speed on the next intersection, you curse under your breath. It feels like it’s taking you forever to reach the motel, and when you still see no sign of getting any closer to the motel, you begin to wonder if you’ll manage to get there at all. 

“Damn it, Alia. Why did you have to choose that motel? There’s a bunch of them closer to home.” 

Obviously, there is nobody here to answer your question. So the only thing that you can do is to force yourself to calm down, focus on the road—and in not slipping or sending your car into a ditch—and find the motel as fast—and as safely—as you can. 

Quiet Peaks Motel. Room 1109. 

You almost laughed when Alia gave you the room number where Taehyung has been staying in. The irony of having those numbers shown to your face, reminding you of that night from six weeks ago. 

“I suppose this is what people call a Christmas miracle.” 

You let out a scoff as Skye’s words ring back to you. Christmas miracle my butt, you inwardly scoff at the notion. A queer coincidence, that’s what this is. 

Not too long, you are driving your car into the small parking lot of Quiet Peaks Motel. With your head covered under the hood of your coat, you challenge the cold to rush into the motel without taking a look around to see if his car is still here. Past the receptionist desk, you follow Alia’s guide to find Taehyung’s room. 

Room 1109. 

Shaking off the snow that has gotten all over your body, you take a deep breath, and knock on the door. A few seconds pass. 

No answer. 

Another knock, just a bit harder this time. And all you have in return is silence. No. No. No—

You raise your hand again, ready to give it another try while refusing to accept the possibility that he is no longer there, when finally—finally—you hear a click, and the door slowly opens. Taehyung appears before you, with wide, curious eyes and a smile slowly lifting on his lips, like a piece of a fantasy manifesting into something real. 

“You’re still here,” you breathe a sigh of relief, drawing a low chuckle from him. 

Taehyung crosses his arms over his chest as he hovers by the doorway, the small smile on his face unwavering. “Alia called. Warned me not to run away,” he gently says.

The thought of him driving off to leave town, running away before you could see him, feels like a bolt piercing through your heart. “Were you—trying to run?” 

“I felt the urge to,” he admit while lowering his gaze, briefly avoiding your eyes. “But I couldn’t.” 

You can hear the sound of your heartbeat. “Because of the blizzard happening outside?” 

Taehyung looks up, and his smile deepens when he steps aside. “Why don’t you come in? It’s getting colder. You can warm up inside.” There is a playful glint in his eyes which says the unspoken words—

With me. 

Drawn by the look in his eyes, your legs begin to move on their own. Your arm brushes against him as you walk past him, just barely, and your skin prickles warmly, as if the thick winter coat that you are wearing is nonexistent.  

Taehyung takes your coat, shaking the remaining snow that is still attached to it before hanging it on the coat rack by the door while you step out of your snow-coated boots, refusing to leave trails of snow and dirt on his floor as he pulls you inside. He guides you to take a seat on the edge of the bed while he takes the one-seater from the corner of the room and places it across from you. 

Sitting back, he wears a playful smile on his face. He seems giddy, with a twinge of wariness that is quite noticeable coming out of him—both feelings are something that you also share as you sit with your back straightened while your legs are shaking.

Sitting here like this allows you to get a good look at Taehyung. And for the first time, you notice the boyish charm in him that looks—adorable. You can see it better when he smiles, when he looks at you with an expectant look in his yes, and when he doesn’t seem to be able to remain calm. 

You have no idea why you had never seen this side of him before. Has he been hiding this part of him? Because, if you want to be honest with yourself, you like seeing this side of Taehyung, maybe even more than the side that he has allowed you to see before today. 

If comfort is a person, this side of him fits the picture, you wonder to yourself with a smile. 

Speaking of pictures—

Your eyes travel around the room, taking notice of the place where he has been staying at. The room is undoubtedly smaller than the suite that he booked back at the transit hotel, but not any smaller than your own bedroom back home. The bed that you are sitting on feels soft, with wooden bed frames that makes it seem sturdy. There is a single vanity table that stretches out on one wall, also functioning as a writing desk, an electric fireplace in the corner that is running with a soft hum, and a wall-mounted television that has been kept on with its volume lowered to fill the room with its white noise. 

Your eyes fall on the long table, on the small object that catches your attention.

“Would you like to drink?” Taehyung asks you as the silence stretches out for too long, and you look at him with a smile. 

“Sure, I’d love to.” 

Nodding, he rises from his seat to grab a drink from the corner cabinet, while you do the same. Drawn towards the small object that Taehyung had placed on the table like a precious jewel—your sonogram. 

“I didn’t mean to keep it with me. But throughout all the chaos happening last night—” you can hear his voice getting closer and closer, yet you do nothing to look his way. Holding up the sonogram between your fingers, your eyes are focused completely on it, fixated at the clear proof of your future. You still have your eyes on it as his warmth comes pressing on your back, his voice feels like a gentle brush on your skin as he whispers close—

“—I just couldn’t let it go. It felt surreal whenever I looked at it. It was almost as if—I was actually holding that baby in my hands, and I needed to protect it.” 

His words send your mind into a daze, even when you notice the tremble in his voice. Everything he does next seems like parts of a dream. You notice his hand reaching out beside you, placing two objects which seem to be bottles of fresh juice on top of the table. And his hand stays there, palm pressing on the edge of the desk while his other hand is resting on your other side, practically caging you in place. 

Slowly, you turn around to face him. The sudden closeness makes you feel dizzy, yet the feeling is incomparable to the way your body is reacting when you look into his eyes. 

His dark eyes somehow appear even darker from up close. You feel nothing carnal in the way he is looking at you, nor the way he is giving you no chance to escape. But there is the heat that you feel reaching out to you, vibrating through his chest together with his heavy breath. 

“We are—” he murmurs, stopping briefly with a deep exhale of breath. “We’re expecting a baby.” He speaks as if he is trying to rewire his brain into accepting reality.

Your heart starts racing when you hear his words. 

We. That word seals everything in. 

And you can feel that sense of acceptance coming from him. You can easily see it written all over his face; in his gaze that looks resolved and in his warm smile that seems inviting. And then you get to see it coming together when he takes you in, his eyes landing on your belly. Even though covered under your thick sweater, he looks at you as if he can see what is hidden underneath. 

“We’re expecting a baby,” you whisper with a smile. “It’s still early. Very early. Which is why you might not see any changes, like seeing the baby in its fully grown form, or find out the gender yet, but we can already hear the heartbeat. We can arrange so you can join me on my next appointment with the doctor. That is, if you’d like.”

Putting all of your hopes into words feels risky. But thinking about him being there puts a smile on your face. That smile fades for a brief moment when you realise that you are also putting your heart at risk of being broken—be it from him, or from life. 

“Anything could still happen,” you add with a wry smile. The sceptical part of you slowly sneaking its way into your mind to take control. “But if you’re willing to go through this with me and—” 

He doesn’t let you finish your sentence when he suddenly reaches out to touch you. He brushes your cheek with the gentle touch of his fingers, and wraps his other arm around your waist, pulling you gently to him until you are nearly pressed into his chest. You bring your palms up to his chest in reflex, pressing against him as a barrier, separating you from his overwhelming warmth. 

You can feel his heartbeat picking up under your palms, just as your own heartbeat starts thundering inside your chest. 

“Last night, Cliff stole my chance to figure out or express how I felt about this,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “I was in so much shock both from the news and then Cliff’s reaction that I couldn’t say a word about it. But the moment I left your home and spent the night alone in this room, I finally got the chance to process everything.”

He stops, shaking his head before pressing his lips on your temple. “Still, I can’t believe that this is happening. But this is our new reality right now and I have to face it. No matter at what cost,” he whispers with his lips hovering against your temple.

“What—what are you saying?” 

“I’m saying that I’m all in,” he says, pulling back so he can look at you. “I told you, didn’t I? You never really left my mind after that night. I’m not sure why, but waking up in the morning to see you gone back then got me curious and, well—” he chuckles. “It was all the reason why I got roped into Alia’s sneaky scheme, which I’m beginning to regret ever being a part of, but since we’re here anyway.” 

Taehyung lets out a dramatic sigh, drawing a curious smile to your face. 

His chest rises and falls as he exhales a deep breath. “Alia promised to help me once we’ve done the deal. And although I never told her specifically what I needed help with—” he grins, looking as if he is thinking back to the day he planned out this whole scheme with your stepsister. 

A scheme where he pretended to be dating her to trick your and Alia’s family. 

“Actually, I was already trying to find you. Alia has a lot of connections, gathered by traveling to different places and jumping between odd jobs, so I thought that maybe she would know how to solve that problem of mine,” he admits, and your skin flushes warmly when you realise that not only has he been thinking of you this whole time, but he had also thought of looking for you when you thought that he would have simply forgotten everything and moved on. 

“Things may have gone differently than I imagined, and not entirely in the right order. But technically speaking, she made it happen, just as promised,” he chuckles again, looking just amused at the situation as you are. “If I had known about the baby, I wouldn’t have asked you to hide from Alia that we got together at one point,” he grimaces. “I wasn’t sure what kind of situation Alia was in that would require her having a fake boyfriend, so I don’t know what telling her that we hooked up would do.” 

Frowning, you simply shake your head and murmur, “No, I should’ve told you right away. But like I said, I wasn’t prepared to see my baby’s daddy coming into my parents’ home holding hands with my stepsister.” 

Taehyung smiles and rubs his thumb across your cheek. “I’m sorry.” 

Your body shudders under his touch, but you cover it with a sigh. “Likewise,” you whisper. “But can we please stop talking about Alia right now?” 

He barks out a laugh. “Okay, if that’s what you want,” he says with a wide grin on his face. “Maybe you’ll be more interested in talking about something else, then?” 

You suck a deep breath as his eyes bore into yours. Even before he says it, you can somehow tell what he is thinking. There is something in his eyes that makes you feel hot inside. Something that feels intimidating, yet comforting at the same time, and it makes you want to dive into whatever it is that is offering you. 

As if he can read your mind, Taehyung starts staring at you the same way he did that night—with the same passion and hunger that are enough to engulf you as a whole. 

While you are captivated with his gaze, Taehyung leans in, stealing a kiss from your lips before you realise what is happening. He begins with a gentle, tentative kiss, as if he is testing to see how you are going to react. But with your emotion heightened, and relief warming your chest, the innocent kiss that he is giving you is already enough to send heat flushing through your body.

Your fingers sink into his sweater in a desperate clutch as you return his kiss, pressing your mouth onto his without any inhibitions. A sigh escapes from your throat, while he releases a deep grunt and begins to deepen the kiss. 

His tongue presses between the seams of your lips, penetrating into your mouth in seek of control. All the heat inside you starts swirling violently as he devours your lips, and it’s driving you crazy. Your thundering heartbeat presses against your chest and he keeps stealing your breath, leaving you gasping the moment he releases your lips. 

Yet Taehyung doesn’t stop. Giving you a few more pecks on your swollen lips, he then moves his kisses down the column of your throat, and your head falls back in an instant, helping him to travel lower until he rests his lips beneath your earlobe where he breathes out a sigh.  

“This wasn’t—” you gasp as he nips at your pulse, rocking your entire body at the touch of his teeth on your skin, “This wasn’t the reason why I came here for.” 

“Are you sure?” he hums against your skin. “We can stop if you want to. But you have to be the one to say the words.” His words make you swoon, but contrary to what he is saying to you, Taehyung continues to press his lips on your skin, making it hard for you to say a thing. “It’s been pure torture having to hold back, being in the same room with you but unable to do anything about it.” 

He leans back, looking at you with a deep gaze as he brushes his thumb across your swollen lips. “I kept seeing these lips and wishing I could kiss it.” 

Silently admitting that you feel the same way for him, your eyes move to his lips, noticing its swell, the faint crimson shade and the moisture that are left there after kissing you, and hazily blurt out, “Did you kiss Alia with that same mouth?”

“Fuck, no!” he says, making you laugh when he seems horrified at the thought of kissing your stepsister. “We’re friends, but not that close as friends to be smooching at each other.” 

The way he is scrunching his nose still makes you giggle. “Sorry, but—you know, I had to make sure.”

Taehyung snorts. “Of course you do,” he grumbles, although the mirth in his eyes turns, as he gives you an understanding look through them, now knowing what kind of relationship that you share with Alia. “There are a lot of things about your stepsister that you might not know about.” 

His words remind you of the short conversation that you had with your stepsister this morning. Deep down, you realise that he is right. With so many years spent harbouring a deep misunderstanding between one another, you realise that you never really knew her at all. Closing your eyes, you tell yourself that you can revisit this later. 

“Are you going to spend the rest of the day trying to butter me up so I can start being best friends with my stepsister, or are you going to kiss me again?” you question him with a grin on your face once you open your eyes again. 

He returns your grin with his own, showing you that same boyish charm that makes you swoon as he murmurs, “I think I like the second option a lot better.” 

Giggling, you release your grip on his sweater and move to wrap your arms around his neck, meeting him halfway just as he leans down to capture your lips again. “An excellent choice, Sir. I do like that option much better as well.”

Once his lips descend on yours once again, they don’t come down gently. They crash into yours, and you can feel his urgency, his hunger, everything that he had spent days withholding for the sake of the god-awful scheme. The kiss melts every cell in your body. It weakens your knees, leaving your arms as the only thing holding you up against him. 

His hands feel hot on your skin as he runs them down your waist, your hips, the heat penetrating through your thick sweater and jeans. You instinctively arch your chest against his, while your legs are moving, rubbing against each other when his touch sends your pulse rising, hot blood flowing down right between your legs. 

Fuck, why I am so sensitive? 

Right as you are wondering if your pregnancy has anything to do with the way your body is reacting, Taehyung folds his body and grabs the back of your thighs to lift you up. 

“Oh, God—” you pull away with a gasp, surprised with the sudden lost of balance. Tightening your arms around his neck, you hold on to him as he turns. His smile widens, looking as if he is proud of himself, and then he drops you onto the bed, gentle as he puts you down until you are lying on your back. 

You shift backwards until you are at the center of the bed with him following close behind. His gaze remains on your face as he starts crawling over the mattress, not stopping until he is hovering above you. He doesn’t settle his weight on top of you right away, but instead grabs a gentle hold at the hem of your sweater. With a quick work of his hands, the sweater is gone, tossed somewhere across the room. He doesn’t let you see where it went as he bends down, hovering close above you.  

“Doesn’t this make you think back about that night?” he asks, with a deep voice that has your entire body trembling. He ignites more reaction out of you with a gentle kiss at the crook of your neck. 

“Something is”—you gasp, shuddering under his kiss—“something is different, though.” 

His warm breath comes brushing on your skin with his deep chuckle. “You can tell, huh? I did some workout after that vacation,” he brags to you while wiggling his eyebrows, making you laugh. 

“I’d say you may have gotten your money’s worth. A little bit,” you tease him as you reach down between your bodies for his zipper. 

You can feel his hard cock pressing against your palm. Even while hidden under his pants, you can feel the heat coming from him as you rub your palm against his covered bulge, moving it back and forth until you feel him hardening under your touch. 

“Are you going to continue staring at me, or are you going to fuck me?” you whisper, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with how much you need him. 

And he is the only one to blame. When his sole existence stirs your every being. With one glance coming from his eyes, butterfly wings flutter inside your body, touching all the crevices that aren’t filled with past hurt and the baby’s presence and filling them with warmth. 

With one touch, your whole body comes alight, and you are feeling it now as he brushes his fingers along the expanse of your waist. As tough your blood is on fire as it runs through your veins, even with nothing more but a light graze on your skin. 

Taehyung licks his lips. His desire is written so clearly on his face. But then his gaze moves down your body, lingering on your stomach that is completely exposed now that you no longer have your sweater covering your skin. 

“Will it be okay?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned. His voice sounds tight, filled with worries, which gives your chest a tight pinch. 

When was the last time you had someone—other than your family—to be so concerned about your wellbeing? Granted, there is a baby that is involved in all of this, and it would be normal for him to care, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling like he is seeing right through you. 

“I think I read somewhere that the baby will be okay,” you look down at your stomach and start rubbing your hand gently over it. “Maybe we can go gentle. At least until we get to see the OB and ask more.” 

“Good idea,” he says with a smile, while you feel soft inside. But when his hand begins to move again, his thumb grazing down your exposed stomach, the heat rises back up and he is back in the game. 

His smouldering gaze feels like a complete opposite to the softness in his voice when he says, “Alright, I can do gentle. Just tell me if it gets too much, or you can lead the pace so I won’t make any mistake.” 

He wears the same wicked smile that stole your heart many nights ago as he lifts off from your body. You watch with your teeth nibbling at your bottom lip as he begins stripping himself. His sweater comes off, showing you his hard chest and filled arms which you haven’t had the chance to appreciate in the past. 

This time, you get to see everything with a clear mind. Instead of feeling hazy with intoxication, all you can feel now is the haze coming from your need for him.  

Reaching down to his pants, he pushes down his zipper. With a mocking grin, he makes a great gesture of pushing down his pants, only to stop once he hears your moan. 

“God, I missed hearing that sound coming out of your lips,“ he murmurs. He immediately returns to you and pushes your pants and panties down in one motion. Your bra comes off right before your butt comes back down on the bed. Having not an inch of your skin covered while you are lying there makes you feel exposed and vulnerable. Yet he keeps a gentle hold on your waist, holding you still while he takes you in. 

“I remember thinking that you were beautiful, but it beats seeing you in this kind of light to see what I didn’t get to see,” he murmurs, almost groaning as he takes you in. 

Licking your lips, you hold back, keeping your voice from trembling to answer, “We were both kinda drunk, so—” 

“Were we?” he chuckles softly and returns to you again, as if he can’t take being apart from you for too long. He presses his lips on your collarbone and whispers, “Good thing we get the chance to change that.” 

Your legs come up and wrap around his waist the moment he is back on top of you. The way his hard chest is pressing on your bare breasts feels heavenly. You can feel his heartbeat pounding against your chest, almost at the same rhythm as yours. But your attention is quickly drawn away once you try to move your hips to get comfortable beneath his weight, only to unintentionally rub yourself against his body.

You can feel his hard cock pressing against your thigh as you brush against him. Heat pools right at the depth of your core once you feel just how badly he wants you. It grows more intense as he pushes back into you, rubbing his covered cock against your center until you feel your wet arousal soiling the front of his pants. 

Yet still, the friction isn’t enough to satiate your needs. 

“Taehyung—” 

The moment he hears you calling his name—his real name—something dark and feral flashes through his gaze. As if saying his name in the heat of desire snaps something inside him that needs to be unleashed. 

His mouth comes down to capture yours just then, claiming you with a deep kiss. You writhe beneath him while he devours your lips, pressing against his center in a silent plea to have him striping himself off of the restricting pants and letting you feel him. 

Without saying a word, he understands what you are asking for and complies. With a reluctant sigh, he pulls back. He keeps his eyes on you the whole time as he pushes down his pants and boxer briefs until he is completely bare. His hard cock immediately springs free right before your eyes, drawing your attention towards it the same way it did the first night you were with him. 

“Say it again,” he says to you with a deep voice. A rough sigh escapes him as he wraps his hand around his girth and starts stroking himself, making himself hard and ready while he pleads with you, “Say my name.” 

“Taehyung,” you call him with a soft moan, and he lets go every last bit of his restrictions and covers your whole body with his. 

His mouth crashes down on yours, kissing you passionately until your body grows hot. A moan slips from you, and his tongue sweeps in between your parted lips, getting entangled with yours and you are immediately lost. You barely notice it when his hand moves down, slipping between your bodies to find the source of your heat. 

He flicks at your nether lips, drawing a gasp from your lips, and your hips rise up to welcome him. Then he slides a finger into your pulsing core, entering you until you are arching against his chest, overwhelmed with the sensation that he draws out of your body as he buries his finger deeper into your pussy. 

While he slides his finger in and out of you, his mouth remains pressed on yours, swallowing every sound you are making. Drowning every cries, every moans, while he continues devouring you as though you are his lifeline. 

The pleasure rises, and your body starts moving on its own before you can control it. You start grinding against his finger, needing more. It starts with a slow rock, but the more the pleasure climbs within your body, you continue grinding harder and harder onto his hand. This seems to amuse him, as you can feel his smile growing against his lips before he pulls away, freeing you from his searing kiss. 

Yet his hand continues to move, not resting until you can finally find release. “That’s it, ______. Give it to me, baby. Come for me,” he whispers with his deep voice like a spell. 

Under his encouraging words and his relentless strokes, you finally reach your orgasm. It feels so intense you can almost feel as if your body shatters in his hold, with your breath coming out in broken pants and your moans rising higher. 

With a gentle move, he pulls his finger out of you, leaving behind a series of small spasms inside your pussy from the climax. 

You immediately feel empty. But he doesn’t make you wait long as he positions himself between your parted legs, and his heavy hard-on comes right where his finger had been. His cock slides in between your slit, moving back and forth as he rocks his hips. The friction draws the slick sound of your release as he continues rubbing the entire length of his cock against your hot cunt. 

As your body continues to shudder beneath him, Taehyung lets out a deep groan. “Can’t wait, baby. Need to be inside you now.” 

“Yes, fuck me, Taehyung,” you cry out, and those exact words are the ones that draw him to move. 

You should have been prepared for it, yet your mind and body are somewhat occupied. Distracted by the blinding pleasure that he keeps pulling out of you, you are not ready when he slams his cock into you. You instantly cry out, and Taehyung stills inside you. 

You can feel your muscles clenching, pulsing around him in small spasms of pleasure at the sudden invasion. It draws a moan out of him, and he holds you in his arms to help soothe you through it until you are more accustomed to his width filling you up. 

“You okay, baby? I’m sorry,” he whispers with his lips pressing gently on your skin. Starting from your neck, your chin, and then he keeps making his way up to capture your parted lips. His kiss is soft, barely a flutter, but with every pulse rising in your body, you can feel the heat shooting right into your core. 

You wait just long enough until the pounding sound of your heartbeat eases before answering him, “I’m okay.” 

You start to wiggle under his weight, moving your hips to test if it’s going to hurt. When you feel that your muscles are no longer tense, and nothing but pleasure rushes through your body, you start moving your hips more. Grinding down his length, you can feel your hot walls contracting around his thick cock. It draws a sharp hiss out of his lips, and he jerks his hips against you, as though he is close to losing control. 

“Are you going to stay there the entire time we’re here”—you tease him while tightening your legs around his waist, your hands on his hard shoulders—”or are you going to fuck me?”  

Taehyung lets out a deep chuckle and begins to move. “So impatient. It’s been a while, so I’m only letting you act like a brat just this once,” he growls against your lips as he rocks his hips, moving in a slow pace. 

It feels so good. But you want more. You need more. 

With your heels pressing on his back, you rock back against him, grinding into his cock. He reacts with a groan, murmuring to you, “Fuck, that feels good. You want more?” 

The pleasure continues climbing. It starts to feel overwhelming that words fail you. The only thing you can give him is a nod. A sharp gasp comes out of your lips when he starts picking up his pace, going faster while pushing deeper with each thrust. 

“Tell me if it hurts,” he nearly begs, sounding desperate when you have yet to give him words in response to him. “Please, baby. Promise me. I’m barely holding on here, but I don’t want to hurt you or the baby.” 

His voice goes in and out of your senses, yet you still manage to hear what he is trying to say. “I’m fine, Taehyung. I won’t hide it, I promise.” 

He lets out a relieved sigh and smashes his lips on yours. “Good,” he groans against your lips. “Hang on tight then, baby.” 

Those words become the last warning as the force and speed of his thrusts escalate, hitting you deep and hard until your toes are curling and your throat feels tight with the urge to cry out in pleasure. Your chest rises in an arch at the sensations you are getting as your hard nipples are rubbing against his chest. 

But your mind is clear enough for you to do exactly what he asked of you. 

Your legs are pressing around him, not tight enough to make it hard for him to move, but enough to keep you attached to him. Your arms are around him, fingers running up to the nape of his neck and pulling at the back of his hair, while the other hand runs down his back, nails sinking into his skin as he takes you on a wild ride.  

Pleasure explodes through your body under his hard strokes. Your mouth falls open with a series of strained cries, calling his name. You wish he would lean down, to kiss you, to drown the sounds of pleasure that you are unable to hold in. Yet Taehyung chooses to pull back, allowing himself to keep his eyes on you as he continues with his relentless thrusts, making sure that he wouldn’t miss any sign of pain that may show on your face. 

But the pain that you had expected to come from his rough lovemaking only extends the pleasure. The wet sounds of his thrusts pushing deep inside you fills the room, growing intense by the minute. Your skin flushes warmly as blood pulses deep in your core, your pussy walls flutter around his girth, letting him know how close you are to reach the edge. 

“Are you close, baby? Do you want to come?” he whispers to you with a groan, and you find yourself crying out,

“Yes, Taehyung—I’m close. Please, let me cum. Please—” 

With his hands reaching down your hips, he lifts your bottom half slightly off the mattress, placing you in a new angle that allows him to reach deeper. Your whole body quakes once he finds your sweet spot, and as he repeatedly pushes his cock against that hidden spot inside you, you soon feel him pushing you over the edge, with him not slowing down even for just a moment. And you take it all while you continue clinging desperately to him with your nails sinking into the skin on his back. 

Pleasure flares through you like fireworks. A new wave of raw pleasure overcomes you, and your body erupts with the first wave of your orgasm. It flows smoothly through your body, but still intense enough to knock the air out of your chest. You cry out with a strained voice, your entire body shuddering beneath him. 

You heave as wave after wave of pleasure overcome your body, yet Taehyung shows no sign of stopping. Still not having enough, he still fills you up with long, deep strokes that rock your body and the entire bed together.

With every shake of your body, your nipples grow hard that they start to hurt as your skin keeps rubbing against his chest. Looking between you, Taehyung’s eyes turn darker with lust. You force yourself to watch him through your haze, feeling more than seeing it when he runs one hand down your belly. 

His big palm stays there, as if silently greeting the baby growing inside, before it continues to travel lower, finding home right where your bodies are joined. With his thumb and forefinger, he flicks at your engorged clit. Already throbbing and growing sensitive with the amount of frictions happening all at once, it sends your hips rising as another wave of pleasure rises from your core. 

Deep groans escape his lips as he savours the sight of you embracing the pleasure, and he continues playing with your clit—rubbing, flicking, pinching, drawing pain and pleasure over the constant thrusting of his cock. And just when you are feeling it building up once more from within, the telltale of your orgasm that you have been depraved of for so long, Taehyung leans down, capturing one taut nipple between his mouth and bites down. 

"Oh god. Oh god. I'm going to come again,” you cry out with your hips rising to meet each hard thrust that he is giving you.

“Yes, that’s it. Cum for me like a good girl," he croons against your skin, which sends you straight into the next round of climax while you are still riding the aftershock of your last one.

Your body shudders as another orgasm rocks your entire body, and your muscles clamp around his hard cock, sucking him with a tight clench as he thrusts in and out, pushing deep and sending your body shaking violently as you finally succumb into an earth-shattering orgasm that takes away the last drop of strength that you still have. 

And the force of your final orgasm is what sets him off. 

With a deep groan, and a rough tremble of his chest, Taehyung finally finds his release. You can feel his warmth filling your insides, his cock twitching and pumping between your spasming walls, and you are almost sure that the wicked sensation of him filling you up with his cum is enough to send you to a smaller, much more subtle climax. 

It takes a while for you to come down from the height of your release, and Taehyung is there, helping you to ride off your orgasm with the slow strokes of his cock and the gentle brush of his fingers as he slowly comes to halt. 

Once everything is done, your body is completely spent that you are unable to move. Your legs have turned languid as Taehyung gently drops them back onto the bed. The room is filled with the sound of deep breathing as both of you are fighting to catch your breaths. 

You can barely feel your arms moving, but essentially, he is freed from your tight hold, allowing him to pull out of you before dropping down beside you. 

The room no longer feels cold now that your entire body is burning hot. Seeing the thin sheet of sweat on his skin, you know that Taehyung is feeling the same heat, yet it doesn’t stop him from turning to his side and wrapping his arms around you to pull you close. 

The sound of your intense heartbeat makes it hard for you to listen to any other sounds. You feel so tired. The lack of sleep you had last night is making it hard for you to fight off the drowsiness that is coming over you. Feeling relieved and sated, you just want to give in to sleep. 

Your eyelids keep growing heavy, and once your breath is calm, you can feel Taehyung’s gentle kiss pressing on your temple. His voice is barely a whisper when he murmurs to you, “——sleep, rest for a while. It’s not like we’re in any rush to get anywhere, right?” 

You open your mouth to answer him, yet your body fights against it. His words seem to act like a spell, when you are soon taken deep into slumber, falling into a dreamless sleep with his arms wrapped around your body. 

When you finally come to, the soft light of the afternoon sun is slowly penetrating through the windows. 

It feels warm inside, especially now that you have a blanket covering your naked body and his heavy arm resting languidly around your waist, yet you know that the same cannot be said with the weather outside. Even without opening your eyes, you can still hear the sound of the fierce wind hitting the windows, and you doubt that the road would be safe enough for you to drive out of this place. 

You find yourself curling against Taehyung’s bare chest as you properly come to wake. His heartbeat is steady, and you can feel it when he starts waking up. 

“Hey, there—” you whisper, greeting him with a sleepy smile, which he returns with his goofy smile. “Was I asleep for a long time?” 

Taehyung shakes his head. “No, not long enough,” he whispers. “I also just woke up, though. So—” 

Chuckling softly, you stretch out next to him. Your muscles are lax, and while you still feel worn-out, the short nap has restored your energy some. It helps clear your mind, yet you still refuse to move a muscle. 

Glancing at Taehyung, you notice that he has a faraway look in his eyes. He keeps his gaze out the window, and you start wondering what he is thinking about. 

“Do you think we’re going to be okay?” Taehyung asks you with a gentle sigh.

You close your eyes briefly and sigh contently before answering, “With the baby? I mean, it might be a struggle at first. I know because I haven’t really grasp the fact that I’m carrying your baby, but—” 

“No, I’m not talking about this,” he says with his hand waving around your entangled bodies. “I’m talking about—” he waves his hand to point at the window. The muted light of the sun that you saw earlier is still looking bleak, more of a pale-grey than the usual golden, with the wild swirls of snow dropping from the sky and no sign of the blizzard letting up anytime soon. “That.” 

He sighs. “I feel like we’ve had strings of bad luck constantly following us.” 

Smiling against his chest, you know what he is trying to say. “We slept together twice, and both happened due to bad weather,” you deliberately deduce his thoughts with a hum. “Is that what you’re saying?” 

“Yeah,” he says with a delirious chuckle, finding it somewhat funny now that you have voiced his thoughts out loud. “Looks like we’re stranded together, again, until the wind starts letting up. They say it’s going to be soon, but I’m not sure.” 

You cannot stop smiling the more you think about it. “Funny how it keeps happening to us, huh? At least we can remember this day as the first Christmas morning we celebrated together,” you say this with a grin, as you pull back to rub at your stomach from over the blanket. “Just the three of us.”

Taehyung follows your gaze and scoffs. “Way to go for making me feel guilty about stealing you from your family on Christmas Day,” he grumbles, making you laugh. “And if we’re actually doing this, uh—this relationship, do you think it’ll be weird?” 

You look up to him, seeing the frown forming on his face. Before you can question what he means by it, Taehyung continues to explain, “Maybe I shouldn’t come to see your family again next Christmas, or anytime soon. At least until we’re settled and everyone has forgotten about everything.” 

The way he says it, and the way he looks when he did, makes you want to laugh. “I think we’re good. And you can always join us next year. Besides, the holidays aren’t so bad with you around. Not this year. It beats sitting down and listening to other people’s stories for once.” 

Hearing this, Taehyung raises his eyebrows at you. “Even with all the drama we had with your sister?” he asks, sounding doubtful. “In case you forgot, I almost had a brawl with your stepfather.” 

For the first time ever, you doesn’t feel any need to correct him by calling Alia as your stepsister. That thought makes you smile. But you keep it to yourself, and instead lean up to kiss his cheek to help ease his mind out of it. 

“What we had?” you question him with a teasing voice, “that’s nothing. You haven’t experienced having Aunt Janey around. Have you ever read or heard those Reddit stories about entitled aunts? She would have gotten all the trophies if anyone in the family has ever written anything about her online.” 

You smile as Taehyung listens to you with a chuckle, and you can feel his worries slowly being lifted. “And as for Dad—” you let out a sigh as you think about your protective stepfather, “let’s just hope that Alia manages to butter him up to let things go. You know that he’s weak when it comes to her. Or, you can buy him a drink the next time you see him.” 

Taehyung purses his lips as he considers this. For a moment, he doesn’t seem to believe your words, but he still nods his head either way. “Fine, I guess we can talk about that later. We’ll cross the bridge when we get there, I suppose?” he asks with a bashful smile. “Why don’t we focus on you for now, and the baby?” 

You prop yourself up on your elbow while holding up the blanket with the other arm to cover your nakedness from his hungry eyes. “Alright, what do you want to know?” 

“Everything,” he says with a grin as he sits up against the bed’s headrest. “Should we continue and maybe do this with a late lunch, though? I’m starving. I couldn’t eat anything at breakfast.” 

“Are you famished for food, or—” you tease him by leaning closer, “Do you have an appetite for another thing?

He groans. “If the second option has anything to do with you, then the answer would be both. But we need to get some food in our system if we want to get back into the other.” 

Laughing, you finally step out of the bed to call for the room service. You continue to spend the rest of the day with him, chatting over the meal, talking about your future plans and all the mundane things that you need to know about each other, before the heat between you picks up again and he pulls you back into bed.

Warmth envelopes you the entire time you are with him, regardless of the winter storm that is still happening outside of these walls. 

Author’s Note 2.0 | Thank you for reading this story! Any likes, kudos, comments, and feedbacks will be appreciated. See you in the next story :)

© All rights reserved. 2024 Yoonia — Unauthorized use and/or duplication of these works, including reposting, translating and modification in any form, is strictly prohibited. 

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Bf!Sukuna who sometimes calls you 'girlfriend' — and not in a flamboyant way

"Girlfriend, c'mere."

"What do you want, girlfriend?"

"Sure, girlfriend."

Bf!Sukuna who loves having your lips on his; he'll just randomly come up to you and slot his lips against yours without a word

Bf!Sukuna who walks around the house shirtless, and teases you by saying, "You should try it out," only to get a pillow thrown at his head

Bf!Sukuna who would pause his video game just for you

Bf!Sukuna who is actually super clingy, and cannot function without having you in a foot radius — but will never admit it

"I'm going to go get groceries now."

"I'll come with you," he said, immediately standing up from the couch.

"I thought you hated errands."

Sukuna shrugged, "'m bored."

Bf!Sukuna who spits in your food when you're not looking

Bf!Sukuna who, when he can't sleep, will just stare at you — a few times, you've woken up to his creepy crimson eyes staring back at you, and you socked him in the jaw

Bf!Sukuna who claims to hate your music, but whenever you two are in the car, he'll always let you handle the aux

Bf!Sukuna who purposely forgets to do your laundry so he can see you be forced to wear his clothes instead

Bf!Sukuna who is the king of keeping eye contact

Bf!Sukuna who'll hover around while you do your makeup and just ask random questions

"What does that do?"

"Why the fuck is it shaped like that?"

"It's almost as big as my dick."

Bf!Sukuna who steals your things and raises them above his head where you can't reach just to mess with you

Bf!Sukuna who never gets cold, and while that may seem like a good thing in the winter because you have a personal heat generator, it is the absolute worst during the summer — you have to ban cuddling because Sukuna is just too damn warm

Bf!Sukuna who doesn't help you bring in groceries, even if your hands are full

Bf!Sukuna who ignores you for the rest of the day if you forget to give him a good morning kiss, or good morning text (if you guys are temporarily apart)

Bf!Sukuna who is good at everything he touches

— a/n: kinda irrelevant if you ask me, but I just had to include this

Bf!Sukuna who pretends to forget if you guys have planned a date together

Bf!Sukuna who gets a hard-on when he sees your angry face; he loves having you pull on his ear and drag him away to a secluded area to hear you yell at him — he thinks you sound so sexy and look so hot

Bf!Sukuna who isn't above doing extreme pda when he sees someone staring at your ass

Bf!Sukuna who whines about going to work, claiming it's boring, but in reality: he just doesn't want to leave you — or vice versa: he doesn't want you to leave for work

Bf!Sukuna who swears up and down he doesn't want kids and hates children, but when he sees you taking care of his little brother Yuuji, he finds himself doing a mental 180°

Bf!Sukuna who goes into a trance staring at your ass

Bf!Sukuna who has no purpose for an Instagram account: you forced him to make one — he never posts on there, but when does, it's only pictures of you and occasionally him and you

Bf!Sukuna who has a drum set in your guys' shared apartment, but refuses to play it for anyone but you, and even then, he only plays to annoy you or wake you up from your nap

Bf!Sukuna who permanently quit smoking when he saw you plugging your nose near him

Bf!Sukuna who enjoys chasing you around the apartment, sometimes with a knife in hand just to make you extra scared

Taglist: @starlets-things @sad-darksoul @mochimoee @r0ckst4rjk (pls lmk if u only want to be tagged in my boy nextdoor series or all of my work) @lillycore

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being in a relationship was everything you expected it to be, it was fun, loving, and secure, at least on his end. of course for you, it was the same except for the secure, you weren't loyal, but it was for a very good reason.

“mmph, shoko slow down.” her hands sliding under your shirt trying to find your bra strap as her lips clashed with hers, both your tongues sliding over each others, her eyes fluttering trying to stay open so she can look at you a bit longer.

having her hands on you, with her smug expression and her tongue inside your mouth happened almost every day, at first you were amazed at how you both didn't get caught, but now you thought to yourself how oblivious everyone else was.

always leaving your office at the same time everyday just to see her, while she made excuses to leave the doctor's office just to see you, the thrill never went away, it was probably because the both of you were so into each other, but who could blame you guys.

shoko's eyes lighting up every time she sees you walking down the street with that same preppy step to see her, it made her heart jump and the butterflies in her stomach flutter, no one has ever made her feel the way you have, especially not when you looked at her like that.

five minutes into seeing each other you were always in her apartment sprawled out on her bed naked while she was arched in between your legs and licking up your thigh to your aching core, her eyes stuck on you, she could never take her eyes off of you, like you were going to disappear if she blinked for even a second.

you loved satoru, but you also loved shoko, and she knew that. she didn't want you to make a decision that could make you upset, so she let you do this, let you play both ends, because at the end of the day she wanted to see you happy.

her tongue sliding over your core then to your clit, the rhythm repeating as she slowly slides one of her fingers inside of you, curving it up and pushing deeper inside of you to find your sweet spot, your back arching ever so slightly as you let out a light moan, your eyes closing so you could submerge yourself in the pleasure.

shoko runs up her hand up your thigh to your breast, giving it a light squeeze then flicking over your nipples, your body jumping from the touch, she was the only one who knew how sensitive your nipples were.

“focus and look at me, i want to see how good i make you feel.” her eyes directly on yours as you open your eyes slowly, her tongue flicking over your clit again and her finger pushing into you again, making you moan, your pretty thighs spreading out more as she pushes her fingers in and out of you faster, her tongue slowly tracing over your clit.

she could feel you tightening around her as she keeps going, you were going to cum, you came so easily from her fingers, it felt amazing to have you laying there looking pretty as she ate you to the bone, your taste was amazing, she couldn't get enough.

he could never make you feel like this, never make you cum as easily as she did, he didn't pay attention to the small details to keep you goings, that's why you fell short, came to her, came on her. shoko was fine with it though, if anything she loved it, she loved that you loved her and could never let her go even if you wanted to.

in her head, the pussy she was currently eating, nose and finger deep in was hers and only hers, she could tell that you weren't completely satisfied with him, the look was plastered on your face all the time.

the look on your face when you finally came on her fingers was like no others, she knew what you wanted, and she was going to go through hell to give it to you, she needed you and only you. all she ever thinks about is you.

her eyes stuck on hers s her tongue keeps going, she never wanted to let you go, she wanted you all to herself.

---

❝﹝ ᝰ 𝐌𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄──★ ˙ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི.ᐟ﹞

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: Your boyfriend, who you loved more than anything, who was your will to live, broke up with you.

— 𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: Gojo Satoru x Female reader

— 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐄: angst

— 𝐂.𝐖: ex-boyfriend! Gojo satoru x depressed! female reader , Geto Suguru x female reader , dark themes , insecurity , mature themes , 16+ at least , no curses au.

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 [𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋]

@3zae-zae3 @sexeyess @silkija @dancinhhillary @musicarose @vanevafu @labelt-san @cl16void @feellaaya @animechick555 @nanmiik @ichikanu @cupidszvlvr @pinksaiyans @phoenix666stuff @coffeeluvr96 @alpha-mommy69 @isaacdaholi @xx-rfg-xx @3sodoney @ambalikadubeyy-blog @certainduckanchor @r0ckst4rjk @xxemmarldxx @starrylibras @lady-cryptstone @sparklydhokla @hoeforchoso @sweetlilhoshi @getou0309 @n8mareee @integers @colouringfrogssittinginleaves @skittleabyss @softnorth @maliakealoha @avalordream @dazaisfavgf @thebacksack @darkphoenix3432 @mwtsxri @nothisispatrick300 @andioopsworld @sup-hoes-its-me @yihona-san06 @s3r-en-d1p-ity @mandysfanfics @adanfore @rainydayssmokescreens @luvvmae @aquamarine001 @chilichopsticks @tinyjeo @adoretaylor @girlsvvish @misfits1a

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒

CHAP 1

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© fvsm4x do not repost, translate or copy!

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Trigger Finger Ready and Got Nowhere To Run To

Did you ever imagine your boyfriend would offer up your body to solve a yakuza dispute? No, but you aren't surprised.

✧˖*°࿐ : 18+ only, no minors.    ✧. ┊ yakuza!ryomen sukuna x f!reader x yakuza!toji fushiguro

Genre: filthy filthy porn with a plot Notes: biggest happy bday to the dilf of dilfs (and my husband of husbands), toji!! (++ sukuna bc they r both beefy n hot :3) Warnings: 18+, dub/noncon, mentions of violence/murder, toxic!relationship, free use ♡, manipulation, jealousy, fem!Uraume, degradation ♡, praise, no prep, oral fixation ♡, size!kink, daddy!kink, choking (hands + belt), slight breathplay, exhibitionism, spanking, dacryphilia ♡, dumbification, creampie(s), calls your pussy “she/her”, slight cucking, oral (m+f receiving), restraints, fingering ♡, pussy spanks, squirting ♡, multiple orgasms, double penetration!(one hole), brief anal mentioning, breeding ♡, belly bulge ♡, pet names (princess, brat, good girl, sweetheart). Words: 15.2k

You’re numb.

Only mentally, numb, to the word which you willingly leapt into. A world with bloodied rivers and bodies piled to the height of the highest mountains. None of it bothers you, not anymore.

Talks of murder and dismemberment barely reach your ears as you flip through the pages of your magazine. You aren’t sure why Sukuna insisted that you be here. He likes to show you off, you suppose. He likes to flaunt what he possesses, and his men never will.

“How much longer?” you whisper, eyes scanning the pages on the gossip mag in your hands. You’d rather be reading a copy of Vogue, but one of Sukuna’s idiotic subordinates picked up the wrong magazine in a hurry.

Actually… You haven’t seen him since.

“What have I told you?” your lover whispers back, he leans over to you. His head turns away from looking at the men in the room as the meeting goes on. But their boss sharing his attention with you rather than the subject at hand earns a few nosy onlookers watching you converse. “Be a brat in private, not here.”

You sigh, crossing one leg over the other as you carry on reading. Sukuna’s hand rests on your thigh before he scowls at the men who’d dare to look at him with an emotion other than fear in their eyes.

He stands up, staring down silently at everyone in the room. It even manages to get your attention. The dread he’s able to instill into his subordinates is more than just impressive to you. It’s exhilirating. Sukuna is a king, and not just to you. To his little brother sitting nearby as the meeting continues. To the subordinates he trusts and who hang on his every solitary breath. And to the public.

People know who you are, now.

You’re Sukuna’s girl.

You were nothing, until him.

He was quite fond of your big mouth and downright horrible attitude when you met. He liked that you didn’t know who he was, and you didn’t hold back when he accidentally bumped into you while shopping. You were wearing a white sundress that hugged every inch of your body, and the coffee in your hand turned the material murky and hideous.

The men surrounding him and ready to silence you for good weren’t even registered in your mind. You didn’t even notice they were there until the friend you were shopping with told you to shut up.

You insulted him, sure. But Sukuna was barely listening. He was too drawn to the way the liquid made your already tight dress cling and stick in all of the right places. Your decision to go braless became painfully obvious to anyone who’d dare let their eyeline drop to your chest.

He dismissed his men, earning a sigh of relief from you and your friend. You watched him carefully as he pulled out his wallet.

“I ruined your dress, huh? Let me buy you a new one, and a new coffee.” he told you. Your eyes bulged as you saw the fat wad of cash in his hand. He smirked, watching your hand hesitate back and forth as you were unsure whether to accept it.

Before him, you weren’t wealthy.

The opposite, really.

You were barely making ends meet and every penny you had was spent on living essentials and rent. The money he offered you was enough for more than that. He was handing you the option to live a little. But before you could take it, before you could fully grasp the bank notes in his hand, he flicked his wrist away.

“I want your number for the pleasure of this expensive meeting.” he grinned.

In hindsight, it was incredibly stupid to accept money from a yakuza man. It seemed like too good of an offer to turn down, though.

For the pleasure of knowing Sukuna and that chance meeting, there have been ups and downs. Everything you knew before Sukuna is your old life. You can’t remember the last time you saw those friends you had. You haven’t been back to your old apartment in over a year, though you know Sukuna still pays the rent on it.

It’s used for some kind of illegal activities, you’re sure. You don’t know why else he’d still pay for it otherwise.

Your old clothes weren’t good enough for you anymore. That’s how Sukuna felt. And with each extortionate purchase he made, you began to agree. You can no longer bear the thought of wearing some cheap, discounted item like you used to. Your entire wardrobe is designer, and you’re like a new woman.

If anyone from your past could see you now, they wouldn’t recognise you.

You don’t care, though. You’ve been poor and you’ve been miserable. What Sukuna gave you that day wasn’t just money, it was an opportunity to cast the old you aside. You’re glamorous, you’re taken care of.

But most importantly, you’re loved.

You’re an object, a doll for him to play with.

But he loves you.

It’s apparent in the way you are in private together. He can be so many things in so many ways. But you know that you are more loved by him than you’ve ever been in any other relationship. He loves you more than friends and family combined.

To Sukuna, you’re everything.

“Listen. Up.” he starts. You know he doesn’t mean you. He wouldn’t mind if you kept your nose buried in your tacky magazine for the entire day. And yet, you find yourself closing it and putting it down on the desk in front of you. Your sole focus is on him. “My wife and I have better things to be doing than sitting here listening to this shit. Figure out this territorial dispute, today, or I’m going to lose my patience.”

His wife.

Everyone’s eyes fall on you when he refers to you as such, and it takes every ounce of concentration and sheer will power to stop yourself from smiling. Your face remains straight and composed, but there are two men who know you enough to see through the façade.

Sukuna, and his brother.

The elder of the two looks down at you, only because he loves to see you squirm because of him. And he’s proud of you, oh so proud that you are well behaved and know that you should appear as strict as he is.

Yuuji, however, has to turn away so no one can see how much he wants to laugh. He’s always liked you; he likes that his brother likes you and he likes how nice you are when you warm up to people. People like him. He’s gotten to know you through being his brother’s second in command. If Sukuna can’t be by your side, Yuuji will be.

And he thinks it’s cute, really, how much you love his big brother. The big brother that most would see as nought more than a terrifying monster. A murderer and a fiend who can so easily ruin lives just because he feels like it.

Yuuji thinks it’s downright adorable.

He’s snapped out of his thoughts when his big brother whistles. He watches as you hurriedly stuff your magazine back into your handbag and follow him to the exit. Yuuji follows, too, after his brother gives him a commanding look.

“You shouldn’t lie.” you mutter, leaving the room and walking by Sukuna’s side as Yuuji trails behind you both. Sukuna turns his head sideways so he can look down at you. His tattooed hands remain in his pants pockets as you approach the exit of the building. You keep looking forwards, though. And he smirks.

It’s a cute little pout he recognises.

“You are my wife.” he tells you. “Don’t be a brat because I haven’t proposed, how droll.”

You scoff, finally looking at him, your full glossy lips seem to pout even harder when you actually face him.

“You know what happens when you get married for real, princess?” he asks. And you scoff, again, because you know what he’s going to say. He says the same thing every time you have this truly trite conversation. “Boring sex. And then, none at all. And I know you can’t live without this cock in you for too long.”

“You’re disgus—”

“Speaking of which,” he stops walking and turns to face you. It makes you laugh every time he talks about how boring your sex life would be if you got married. You aren’t sure how true it is, but it amuses you, nonetheless. He gets his wallet from his inner breast pocket and withdraws his credit card, handing it to you with a wide smile on his face. “That’s what you get when you’re a good girl. Thank you.” he grabs the crown of your head with a large palm and plants a sweet kiss on your forehead.

“I thought we were talking about sex, not money.” you speak, and he smiles. “Which do you think I prefer?”

“With me, sex. In general, money.” he tells you, and you suppose he’s right. “But with money, you can buy things for sex. Unless you want to be a brat, I can take back the card. Otherwise, buy a pretty set for daddy to fuck you in.”

He loves how your demeanour changes at the use of your favourite name for him when you’re alone. Yuuji is here, yes, but he knows the intricacies of your relationship so there’s no need to be concerned.

“Theeeere she is, daddy’s good girl.” he approaches you; his hand settles on your waist. A simple cue for Yuuji to know he doesn’t want to be here. He walks on ahead; and you both watch him walk by before focusing on each other again. He backs you up until your shoulder blades rest against the wall. You tilt your head to kiss him, but he pulls his head back to tease you. “Why aren’t you always a good girl for me?” he wonders.

You allow your head to loll back against the wall with a gentle thud. He watches you, intently, wondering what’s going on in that pretty head of yours. His eyes drop as your right hand gently traces over his crisp black dress shirt until you find his tie.

And you tug.

His body cages you in and you will never get over what a behemoth of a man he is. He’s so intimidatingly large. You’re like a little mouse about to be devoured by a viper. And yet, somehow, you’re in control. He gasps, albeit quietly, but there is pleasure behind it as you pull him closer.

“You’d be so bored if I was always good, daddy. And you fuck me better when I’m a brat for you.” you tell him, voice filled with lust as your sultry tones reach his ears. His cock twitches at your words, although he’s tired of you having the upper hand. One hand grabs your jaw, and you know if he wanted to, he could break it with ease. But you smile, willingly.

If you are to die, it would be an honour by his hand.

He kills you with a kiss, instead. Your thoughts dissipate as you allow your lips to lock and teeth to clash as you needily make out. His body presses into yours, uncaring for the place or potential audience that could find you at any moment. A soft, needy moan slips by your lips as you feel his hardening bulge grind between your legs. It makes him smile, smugly and proud as he steals continuous little noises from you.

“You only keep your fucking mouth shut when you’re getting this dick.” he comments, his tongue licks against yours before he suffocates your desperately mewling with heated kisses once again. He pulls away, whispering in your ear. “You’re nice ‘n wet for daddy, yeah? Want my cock, baby?”

“Mhmm…” you nod, raising your leg to rest on his hip. His fingers squeeze into the flesh of your thigh as he helps it settle in place. His kisses are barely there anymore. Soft pecks as he gradually pulls away until you’re whimpering and begging for more. “Please, daddy… please.”

“Awe,” he gives you one final kiss before looking over his shoulder to see some of the higher ranked members of his organisation approach. He pulls away, leaving you completely breathless. “Brats don’t decide when their holes get used. Their daddy’s do.” he reminds you.

You’re left panting with your hand on your chest as he walks away. He looks over his shoulder at you before giving you a self-satisfied smirk as he waves at you.

“Keep your cunt wet for daddy.” he tells you.

You scoff, fleeing the scene quickly as the humiliation of his words surges through you. The lack of respect and discretion should make you furious. And honestly, it does. But that feeling of anger and fury is overridden with pure, unadulterated lust.

“Hey, are you ready to go?” Yuuji asks as you walk through the double doors and out into the blaring summer sun. The heat is unbearable, you’re sure the sidewalk would steam if you poured water onto it. “Are you okay? Thirsty? Can I carry your jacket?” Yuuji wonders. And you nod.

“Thanks, Yuu.” you smile, taking off your coat for him to hold for you. “You’re taking care of me again, I guess.” you sigh, but try to remain optimistic. You both know you’d rather Sukuna be the one taking you shopping, but you don’t hate spending time with his brother.

“What are we shopping for today?” he asks, opening the door to his car for you to climb into. He puts your coat in the back and rushes around to driver’s seat. “You can go crazy since he won’t be there to stop you.” he winks. You giggle a little as he buckles himself in and starts the car. “Oh, he wanted you to get some lingerie, right?”

You go quiet, looking down at your hands as you nod quickly. It’s almost unnoticeable, but Yuuji knows. He starts driving to a boutique he knows you like, smiling to himself. You’re so brazen and loud most of the time. You can be so confident and fearless.

But he thinks it’s sweet that you get so shy about things like this.

“I’m not judging you, y’know.” he tells you, looking to the side to see if you’re listening. You raise your head to look at him, the slight anxiety you feel slowly leaves your body the longer you look at him. “You’re a good friend to me. I’m happy Sukuna met you, otherwise I wouldn’t know you.”

“Yuuji…” you respond, you can’t stop yourself from smiling as you hear his sweet words. It makes him laugh, though. He’s happy he managed to break you out of your nervous sulk. “I wonder sometimes… if I’m crazy.”

“You are.” he tells you. You lightly slap his arm, “Hey, I’m driving!” he laughs. “You have some kind of arrangement with my brother, right? That doesn’t matter. You love him, don’t you? I know he loves you too. He’s told me enough, and I can see it in his eyes. You’re crazy, but he is too.”

An arrangement.

You’re happy it’s a secret, even to Yuuji. If anyone from your past life knew what you agreed to with Sukuna, they’d be ashamed. You figure anyone would be, really. But you don’t care. Yuuji is right.

Sukuna is crazy.

But so are you.

“Thanks, Yuuji.” you smile, weakly. “You’re a good friend to me, too.”

Sukuna is possessive, he’s greedy.

But what Sukuna doesn’t know won’t hurt him. You model a few lingerie sets to his little brother. And Yuuji, of course, is a perfect gentleman about it. His eyes rake over your body, though you can detect a lack of lust in him. There’s another woman on his mind that you know to be the reason. He’s a lovesick puppy, and you are off limits. He isn’t stupid, but he’s happy to help you shop.

Sukuna should be the one here with you now, anyway. He should be the one watching you try on panties and bras and pretty baby dolls. And yet, he’s sent you away to give himself some peace while he works on whatever the hell it is he does all day. Threatening and being a general bastard to the city at large.

If he were here, you know you’d be getting fucked within an inch of your life in every pretty ensemble you try on.

“Yuuji, what is your brother doing today?” you ask him, pouting a little. It feels humiliating to have to ask. You should know where your boyfriend is and who he’s with. Even Yuuji looks taken aback. Does Sukuna often keep you in the dark? It’s not like what he does for a living is some big secret.

“… There’s a huge territorial dispute right now…” he starts, looking at the store clerks and urging them to walk away if they know what’s good for them. They do, giving you two the space to talk. “He and the other higher ups are having a follow up meeting to decide what to do.”

You huff and start to undress as you head back into the changing room.

“Uraume?” you wonder, already knowing the answer. “Is she there?”

“Well, she’s Sukuna’s right hand. After me, obviously.” he tells you, and it only earns another huff of annoyance from you.

You know what Sukuna will want is for you to pick a pretty lingerie set to wear under your clothes all day until he gets home. You’re not doing that, though, not now. Not when you know he’s with her. He’s lucky you’re even still buying any in the first place. Yuuji watches you as you tell the staff to ring you up, a look almost akin to sorrow lingering in his soft brown eyes.

“Nothing is going on between them, y’know.” he tries to assure you. All you can do is scoff. The notion of remaining silent dies as you begin to think about how many positions he’s probably fucking her in while you run around and play the role of the oblivious wife.

A wife without a ring, at that.

“No offence Yuuji, I’m not exactly going to take your word for it. He’s your brother.” you sigh. He grabs the shopping bags for you once you pay the extortionate price. Sukuna had told you to get a set, not several. But you think it’s the least you deserve after finding out he’s with Uraume instead of you. “I want some new jewellery, let’s go.”

You hold the door open for Yuuji before you walk side by side towards the nearest jewellery store. Sukuna’s feelings are the least of your concern, whether he’s frustrated with your purchases or not doesn’t matter to you. Not right now. You’re hellbent on giving his credit card a workout before you go home.

The air conditioning hits you as you enter. Yuuji finds a seat as you begin to browse, dumping your shopping bags by his feet. He keeps a watchful eye on you as you’re shown around at some pieces you might like. A necklace is calling your name, but new earrings would be nice, too. But with the way you’re feeling, you might just leave with everything that you take even the vaguest of interest in.

You hear Yuuji’s phone ring behind you, and it forces you to look at him expectantly. It’s embarrassing, really, how badly you’re hoping it’s Sukuna to ask for your location so he can be here with you. But his younger sibling shakes his head despondently, feeling sad that he’s letting you down.

“Shit, I have to go.” Yuuji tells you, and your brows furrow. You can’t remember the last time you’ve been left alone. What could be so important? He looks at you, eyes serious and almost desperate as he wills you to listen to him. “I won’t be long, please don’t leave. Sukuna will kill me if anything happens to you.”

“It’s fine, Yuu.” you nod, barely looking at him anymore as you admire the glimmering jewels in their glass display cases once more. “I’ll be here.”

He smiles, gratefully, and squeezes your shoulder. His speed is impressive, you’re surprised you haven’t been left with a dust cloud as he leaves your side and departs the store. You have no idea what’s happening, but it must be serious if Yuuji had to rush off like that.

The clerk assisting you can’t help but fawn over how gorgeous you look as he allows you to try on a diamond necklace that caught your eye. It’s simple, something you’d wear every day. It’s glamorous but not overstated.

“There are matching earrings, if you’re interested.” the clerk tells you, and you nod. “And there’s—”

“If it matches, I’ll take it all.” you smile. The clerk nods and takes the necklace from you. You watch for a few minutes as he wanders around and collects everything you’ve asked for, but you soon get bored and begin browsing again.

You raise your head as you see two men with black hair enter. You unintentionally stare, but soon avert your gaze when another necklace catches your eyes. You hear the men discuss something about a sister, and you deduce they are likely here to purchase gifts. You feel your blood run cold as they become silent, and you feel them glaring at you.

You’ve gotten a sense of when people are sizing you up, now. Even if it’s something as tedious as being leered at. Being with Sukuna has taught you to sense danger, however small.

“I’d like this necklace as well, please.” you speak, hoping your confidence and signalling of the staff will get them to stop staring at you. The clerk nods and sends another member of staff to your side to aid you.

You look in the direction of the men. Truthfully, you aren’t sure if you had tried to warn them that you were onto them with a look their way. It seems like you’re more interested in scoping out a potential threat.

“It’ll suit you.” the younger one says. “Maybe we should get something like that for Tsumiki?”

The older man is silent.

Your skin tightens together, breaking out in goosebumps as his looming presence gets closer and closer to you. You clear your throat, hoping that it will be enough to tell him that you know he’s there and you don’t want him to be. It does little to dissuade him, though.

He stares at you, urging you to return it. There’s an uncomfortable yet palpable silence between the two of you as you look into each other’s eyes. His face is sculpted, yet damaged. And still, you find him beautiful. A scar stabs betwixt his lips, though it’s aged and healed.

It’s a warning, in itself, that you shouldn’t trust him.

But his gaze is serious and endearing all in one. His eyes are beautiful, just like the man he’s with. There’s no doubt, now, that they’re related. They’re like a copy of one another. Father and son, you suspect. Though they remind you of Sukuna and Yuuji. The man in front of your appears to be the same age as your lover, maybe a little older. Yuuji is around the same age at the young man accompanying him.

You find yourself lost in his eyes, an odd compulsion to figure out this man and his life story. Who is he and what could he want with you? Your guard has been lowered, despite it being unwise. You should be more alert, if anything.

But those eyes are—

“You’re staring, sweetheart.” he tells you, breaking his eyes away from you to look at the clerk behind you. He curls his finger, a simple instruction that you seem to miss until you see him holding the necklace in his hand. “May I?” he asks, acting before you even answer.

You turn around and make sure your hair isn’t in the way so he can put it on you. This isn’t right, you know it isn’t. You aren’t sure why you’re allowing him to do this. He’s so close that you can feel his breath on the back of your neck, the hairs stand on end when you realise.

He fastens the clasp behind your neck, and casually allows his hand to fall into the small of your back as he guides you to a nearby mirror.

“Suits you.” he tells you, tucking hair behind your ear so he can examine it further. You don’t miss the way his eyes drop to your cleavage, though, and you clear your throat again. It prompts him to slip back into his cool demeanour. “My daughter is around your age. Think she’d like it?”

“I don’t know your daughter. And I don’t know you.” you remind him, earning a soft chuckle from him. You watch him summon the man he brought with him, and now you’re sure he’s his son. After hearing him mention his sister, you manage to put the pieces together.

“I want two of these.” he announces, making sure everyone can hear. You aren’t sure if he’s instructing his son or the clerk beside you. Either way, he hands his credit card to the man he’s with in a similar way Sukuna does to you.

It’s almost… dismissive.

“Two?” you say, curiously.

“I’m buying yours.” he tells you. He shushes you when you go to protest. “You’re brave, hah? Big mouth, attitude, ‘n your pretty too. I like it.”

“I’m spoken for. And expensive things won’t—”

“I know.” he interrupts you, putting his hands in his pockets. He looks over to his son as he pays for the jewellery. You’re nervous, though it’s not entirely because of him. The thought of explaining this to Sukuna sends chills down your spine. “Girls like you are always spoken for. And he looks after you, yeah? Buys you nice things ‘n all that. Figures.”

“… Y-You didn’t tell me your name…” you say, meekly. It’s pathetic and wimpy, though that’s how you feel beneath his divine gaze. He smirks at the sound of your voice, maybe it’s the submission.

“Toji.” he replies, simply. His son approaches him with a single shopping bag, it’s black and sleek with the store logo on the side. It makes you excited and impatient to receive your own purchases. And after this, you have no desire to shop anymore. You want to get home where you know you’re safe. “We ought’a get goin’, Megs.” Toji tells his son, who nods in agreement.

Just as they’re about to leave, Yuuji returns.

He can’t say anything, not right away. If you were looking at him, though, you’d be able to see how much he wants to burst. There’s a vein bulging in his forehead as he looks between the men.

But your eyes are solely on Toji.

His hands remain firmly in his pockets as he walks away and towards the exit. And then he turns around again, fully, facing you head in to gift you with his parting words.

“Give Sukuna my regards, won’t you, sweetheart?” he smirks, leaving the store with his son in tow.

“Fushiguro!” Yuuji yells, though they pay him no mind. He faces you, now, intent on finding out what the hell is going on. “What was that all about? Are you stupid? Seriously stupid? I told you not to talk to anyone!”

“You didn’t, you told me not to leave.” you remind him, and he grunts. “Who were they, Yuuji? I’ve never seen either of them before.” you tell him. He just shakes his head and decides to ignore you. He’s furious, though you can’t figure out why.

Have you really done something so bad?

The fact that Toji seems to know who Sukuna is certainly doesn’t bode well. They’re from rival gangs, clearly. His and his son’s tattoos aren’t like Sukuna’s. His are brazen, confident. He was cocky enough to get them on his face, too. But the Fushiguro’s, as Yuuji had named them, must hide their markings beneath their shirts like most yakuza men tend to.

“Let’s go.” Yuuji speaks, anger lingering in his quiet words as he leads you out of the store and back to his car. “I’ll have to tell Sukuna about this…” he explains, making sure all of your shopping is secure safely in the trunk of his car. You get into the passenger seat and shrug, it makes no difference to you if he tells his brother about this.

You don’t even know what he’s telling him.

It gets later and later into the evening, with no signs of Sukuna returning any time soon.

And you’re ready for him.

You’re fully dressed, wearing the very same clothes you’d worn to go shopping hours earlier. But you had stripped briefly when you got to your room. The lingerie options were almost infinite as you peaked in each and every shopping bag you brought home from the boutique.

He’ll like the pink one most, you suspected.

So, you put it on.

“Where’s Sukuna?” your one and only true friend in this cutthroat world asks through the speaker of your phone. It snaps you from your daze as you recall how the pink lingerie fit your body like a God damn glove while you checked yourself out in the mirror. “You’re doing housewife shit while he’s out having fun?” Nobara continues, and it makes you scoff. There’s laughter in it, but your annoyance towards your lover is evident.

“He’s with Uraume.” you say, calmly, as you continue washing the mountains of dishes in the sink. You aren’t normally one to do chores, but you thought it would distract you from your worries. Even if only for a moment.

“Oh I hate her.”

“Me too.” you agree. Something tells you Nobara doesn’t feel as strongly as she’s making out, she’s just showing support. You appreciate it all the same, though. “There’s something going on… I know there is.”

“No way. You don’t know, you just think you do. But even I can see how much he worships you. He’d never cheat!” she says confidently, and you wish you could believe her. It’s not like you’d leave him, even if he was.

He’s conditioned you to need him, after all. How can you go back to your old apartment when it’s his, now? Your old, pathetically paying job won’t cut it, either. Sukuna has gotten you used to the finer things in life, things you don’t want to lose. Your friends, your family, it’s all gone and forgotten. All you have is him.

There’s no leaving him, now.

“… I don’t trust him, sometimes.” you confess, quietly. You aren’t even sure if she heard you over the sound of the gushing tap. “I don’t trust—”

The sound of a lock turning in the door stops you from speaking anymore. You look over your shoulder, and you finally see him. He doesn’t say a word as he comes in. He gives you a curt nod as he hangs up his jacket.

“Uh, Nobara, how’s your day been?” you ask, loudly, hoping she’ll get the hint and change the subject.

You tense up a little as you feel Sukuna’s presence looming closer and closer. You put down a plate as you feel him behind you. His body traps yours between his and the sink. You hold your eyes closed lightly as you feel him. Really feel him. You aren’t sure you’ll ever get over his domineering size.

Nobara begins to prattle on about nothing in particular, and relief flows through you. You manage to stifle a heavy breath as Sukuna begins to kiss your neck; though you almost falter as he takes your earlobe softly between his teeth.

“Sukuna, ‘m on the phone.” you angle your head to whisper, but he just silences you with a kiss instead. And instinctively, you’re smiling again. You’re so simple, maybe even stupid. It’s always so easy for him to placate you, even without knowing you’re upset with him.

“Don’t care,” he growls into your mouth, kissing you again. “You agreed, did you not?” he asks, feeling you up over your clothes. Your head droops back onto his shoulder as you feel him caress your tits through the fabric of your dress. His free hand roams between your legs, pushing the black material covering your thighs between them and dampening it with your slick.

“Mmpf,” you hum, lightly, biting your lip. You can’t help but wriggle and squirm beneath his touch. As much as you’d prefer to stop so you can wrap up what you’re doing first, you did agree to this when you started dating him.

“Anyway, I still don’t think Sukuna would fuck Uraume.” Nobara speaks, and you both freeze for a moment.

As she lists her reasons, in gratuitous detail, Sukuna’s hands move across your body. They’re slow, but with purpose. Your dress settles back into place once he moves his left hand away from your core. He wraps his arm around your midsection, tightly, giving you no chance to flee. His right hand moves a little quicker, fingers brush along your collarbone until he finds your neck. He somehow manages to choke you, slightly, while holding your jaw with his thumb and index finger.

And he makes you look at him.

He doesn’t speak, the sound of Nobara discussing everything you’ve told her about him and Uraume is the only sound either of you hear. His red eyes terrify you the longer it goes on. The longer he goes without speaking a word.

“’Kuna—”

“You’re jealous of Uraume?” he says, loud enough for Nobara to hear. She’s quiet. Uncharacteristically so. And then your heart plummets when you hear the beep that signifies the call has ended. “Still?”

“What do you— Sukuna!” you yell, feeling him pull your dress down your body. You try to scold him. You try to focus on finishing the dishes so you don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how desperately you crave him. But it’s all in vain as he spanks you upon seeing the pretty pink set hugging your body.

“Good girl.” he tells you, spanking you again.

The chore of washing cups and plates is soon abandoned as he yanks your hair by the roots. Your back arches gloriously, and he can’t help but slap your ass repeatedly until it stings. He wants to hurt you, just because he loves you.

He’s insulted that you think so little of him.

“What happened to you, princess?” he asks, spanking you again. “You never used to be so insecure. That’s what I liked about you.”

Liked?

“Don’t— c-care—”

“Oh?” he interrupts, “You really want to be a brat for me right now? I’m not in the mood, but you can test me if you’re feeling brave.” he warns you, and you manage to shake your head in defiance.

“Sukuna, I just— I don’t like her.” you tell him, you see an eyebrow raise out of the corner of your eye. It’s a curious look you can’t quite place. Maybe he hadn’t expected you to say something so honest, or maybe he just can’t put his finger on why you feel this way about her. “She has feelings for you… it’s so obvious.”

“And?” he speaks, his hand that had been around your throat moves to the bend of your knee. He effortlessly raises your leg so that it rests on the marble countertop. His breathing is heavy and stained with alcohol as it fans across your shoulder.

Your breath hitches as he hooks his finger into the seat of your panties, moving the pink material into the crease of your thigh. You shiver just slightly as the cool air of the air-conditioned room hits your folds, and he growls as he holds you tighter.

With one hand, he unbuckles his belt and manages to free his length from his trousers. You gasp as you feel him press his heavy tip between your folds, the tacky wet sound reverberates through the room. He isn’t targeting anywhere specific, but he snarls each time you mewl when he catches against your entrance.

“Unff— fu-uck!” you keen as he finally pushes into you.

“This,” he starts, slowly sinking inside of your welcoming slot. Your eyes roll over white with each agonising delve into your walls and towards your sweet spot. He spanks you once more, demanding your concentration as he tries to drill his words into your before he starts drilling his cock into you. “It’s all yours, y’hear me, princess?” he explains as he carefully rocks his hips, his chest swells with pride as he repeatedly nudges against your g-spot.

“S-Sukuna,” you pant. “Daddy, I love you.” you tell him, tears spill down your cheeks as you pathetically confess. He knows, of course he knows. But his ego will never tire of hearing those four precious words from the lips of his favourite girl.

“Yeah? Y’love daddy?” he asks, faux sympathy in his voice as he picks up the pace of his thrusts. “Hurts my feelings when you don’t trust me.” he lies.

“’m sorry,” you sob, “I trust you, daddy, ‘m sorry!” you continue, and you melt into his touch when you feel him softly kiss your cheek again and again as his thrusts get faster and faster and faster.

He’s so deep you can feel him in your throat. Your mind is churning, thoughts become liquid the harder and deeper he pounds into you. His teeth sink into your shoulder as he continues, and he shoves his fingers into your mouth to silence your cries.

You suck and lick and lave over them as if your life depended on it.

He forces your mouth open wide, strings of drool dribble from your lips and tongue as he repeatedly fingers dangerously close to your throat. He laughs maniacally when he flies to close to the sun, triggering your gag reflex.

“Oh, baby, got real tight for daddy like that.” he tells you. Your hands search for something, anything to grasp as he ruins you from the inside. “So fuckin’ tight for me, princess. Wanna cum?”

“Yes, yes please.” is what you’re hoping to say despite his fingers still invading your orifice. “Please daddy, n-need it.”

“Mmm, good fucking girl.” he praises you. “So needy, hah? I’ll be good to you this once. So cum.”

You brace yourself, twisting your torso so that you’re facing him. His fingers remain in your mouth, but your fixation on them has dies a slow, painful death the longer this encounter carries on. His fingering slows, but the spit leaking from your mouth still pools out and covers whatever it squelches on top of.

“Go on, cum for daddy.” he orders.

And you do.

You cream his length as you lose control of your entire body and give it to him. You’re crying so hard but you don’t know why. He licks your cheeks, though, getting off on the taste of the salt and sorrow you’re gifting him with. You convulse as you reach the peak of your orgasm, and he makes sure to keep a careful hold of you.

“Hate you being fucking jealous.” he explains as he chases his own high, the deafening sounds of your genitals meeting again is so sloppy and lewd. If you weren’t so tired, you’re sure your face would flush with heat from the embarrassment of it all. “You’re mine. I only fuck you. I only cum in this perfect cunt. Are you listening? Or did daddy fuck you too fucking stupid?”

“D-Daddy,” you mumble, “love you…” you trail off, exhaustion consuming you as you bargain with yourself to rest your eyes for just a minute.

“Daddy’s slutty girl, yeah?” he grunts, and he’s surprised that you manage to nod in response. “Only shut that big fucking mouth of yours when you’re getting this cock.” he speaks, he hopes you’re listening but he’s not so sure.

With only a few thrusts later, he’s cumming buckets into you. You hum at the sensation, the warmth of being gifted with your daddy’s load is a soothing feeling that makes you feel completely claimed. You’re safe, secure, like this. He plugs his cum inside of you for a while as he refuses to move.

You don’t want to think about the fact that you aren’t ever really going to know the truth. You won’t know if he’s just telling you what you want to hear while he’s out doing exactly what you’re worried about. You won’t truly feel safe unless Uraume goes.

But you know that will never happen.

He pulls out of you, watching as your pussy pulses while he splits open your lips on his fingers. His softening cock jumps at the sight of his sperm gushing out of you and splattering against the cold kitchen tiles below. He angles your body, again, so that he can plant a searing, messy kiss on your lips from behind.

He wipes his dick against your ass, doing a poor job of it before he tucks himself back into his grey trousers. He moves the gusset of your panties back where it belongs to stop anymore cum from dripping out of you.

“I should… clean up…” you say, wistfully as you look at the remaining dishes in the sink and the dollop of sperm on the ground beneath you.

“Don’t worry about it.” he tells you, walking towards your bedroom to find your shopping bags. “Show daddy what else you got today.”

You take a deep breath and stumble a little on unstable legs. He looks behind himself, reaching out to take your hand to support you. He leads you to your room, a little surprised by the amount of new shopping bags spread out.

He lifts you up and places you down carefully on the bed. You bite your lip as he helps you out of your high heels while he’s down on one knee. He watches, attentively, as you throw your head back as he kisses each of your legs.

“I don’t recall telling you to buy jewellery.” he speaks, knowing he didn’t say it at all. You only giggle, which makes his smile grow wider. He rests his body on his knuckles on either side of your thighs, his nose almost touching yours as he examines you. “That one is new, isn’t it?” he asks, reaching up to hold the pendant against his palm. You nod, and he hums.

He takes his time admiring everything as he looks through each and every bag. You’re silent as he searches, not sure what he’s actually looking to find. Sukuna seems pleased with the multitudes of lingerie you’ve returned home with, often looking between the material and yourself as he envisions it on your body.

Though soon enough, he’s looking through the jewellery. He’s full of flattery, for some reason. You can’t help wondering if it’s because of your very obvious insecurity.

Your heart sinks, however, when he picks up the receipt.

“W— uh, what are you doing?” you ask, cursing yourself for not playing it cool in the least.

He’s silent as he looks over each item and price. His eyes drift briefly to look at you before he’s fixated on the receipt again. “I’m checking how much having a bratty princess for a wife has cost me today.” he tells you, his voice almost monotone as he speaks. He picks up each piece of jewellery as he mentally checks it off of the list in his hand. And then his eyes zero in on you once more. Or specifically, the necklace you’re wearing. “Did you steal that?” he asks.

You shake your head.

If there’s one thing you’ve learnt from being with Sukuna, it will never serve you to lie. He knows more than you can possibly imagine. And what he doesn’t know, he figures out quickly.

“… I’m going to fucking kill him.” he speaks through gritted teeth, crumpling up the receipt in his hand. You have no idea who he’s talking about. He stands up, holding the necklace around your neck in a clenched fist. “Tell me, princess. Do you love this necklace? Or did you pick it impulsively?”

“Both,” you nod. “I was only looking at it because— b-but I love it, now.”

He lets go of the pendant, now warm against your skin after being in the palm of your lover despite it being brief. He smooths his hand over your hair and then strokes your cheek with his thumb.

“A lovely gift from a man trying to muscle in on my territory.”

You knew Toji must be yakuza, too. But you had no idea he was such a direct rival of Sukuna’s. It’s unsurprising, though. Maybe they’d been tailing you and Yuuji today. You’d assumed it was a coincidence that they wound up in the same store as you, but you’re no stranger to being naïve.

Sukuna’s territory…

Could he also be referring to you?

“Territorial disputes are standard practice in our line of work, Sukuna.” Uraume starts, trying her best to calm your boyfriend down as he seethes in yet another meeting. “Although she has certainly complicated things.” she speaks, looking at you as her tone becomes more calculated and vicious.

Of course to anyone else, it sounds like she’s just making a point.

But you know better.

“I didn’t complicate anything, thank you, Uraume. I went shopping as I was instructed to do and he just showed up.” you try to defend yourself maturely despite wanting to rip her hair from her scalp.

“No, this isn’t your fault.” Sukuna reassures you. “You shouldn’t have fucking left her you idiot!” he bellows, his voice booming through the room until it reaches his brothers ears. His words seem to echo the longer Yuuji remains silent. He doesn’t even get the chance to talk as Sukuna demands he be quiet. “More and more of them are doing shady shit in areas that I own. Making profit that should be mine. How do we—”

“Yuuji, you’re friendly with his son, right?” you ask. And he shrugs, passively. You’re sure there’s a story there. Perhaps they went to school together given that they’re the same age, but you don’t want to press it and risk him getting in deeper trouble with his sibling. “Do you have a phone number or anything for him?”

“Uh…” Yuuji pats down his body as he looks through his phone. Sukuna watches, everyone watches as he scrolls through his contacts. And finally, he nods.

“Call it.” Uraume orders, Sukuna looks at her and then nods at his brother in agreement.

The tension in the air can be cut with a knife as each ring passes. You feel sick to your stomach the longer it goes on.

Until finally—

“I was wondering when you’d call.” the younger Fushiguro answers, Yuuji places the phone down on the table and puts it on speaker. “My old man has an offer for your brother.”

“Megumi, Sukuna isn’t exactly the negotiating type.” Yuuji explains. “He wants you and your dad dead, to be honest. That shit you pulled at the jewellery store—”

“Is he listening?” Megumi asks. Yuuji looks up to his brother for permission to confirm or deny his presence. The silence lasts a beat too long, and Megumi figures it out for himself. “I’m with Toji, now.” there is a shuffling sound on the other end as he hands his phone over to his father. A large sigh rattles through the speaker, and then he finally speaks.

“Sukuna.” he starts.

“My brother is right, Zen’in, I don’t negotiate.” Sukuna speaks, announcing his presence to them finally. “There is no benefit to me letting you stake your claim on my territory. We’ve killed a few of your men already for your insolence and disrespect. You’ve no idea the lengths I will go to so that you will understand this threat isn’t empty. We won’t just be killing the small fry next time.”

He looks at Uraume, listening carefully as she warns him not to resort to threats of violence so soon. You look between them both, trying to gauge how he’ll respond. He only sighs, agreeing with her, before asking what the negotiation would entail.

“I want to fuck that little girlfriend of yours.” Toji says.

The room falls silent. Sukuna stares daggers at you for a few minutes as if it’s your fault he said something so outrageous. You look around uncomfortably, seeing everyone’s eyes have fallen on you.

You feel dirty.

You feel like a mere bargaining chip, an object for them to make a decision over.

“Everybody out.” Sukuna says, noticing your distress as you feel compelled to hang your head in shame. “NOW.”

Everyone scurries from the room, the only people that remain are yourself, Sukuna, his brother and Uraume. Your lover slams his palm, hard against the table before yelling down the phone at Toji.

“Are you FUCKING joking?” Sukuna shouts, Uraume tries to calm him down but it does little good. “In what world do you think I’d agree to something so stupid?”

You hear Toji chuckle, like he’s considering how to use his words and what he should say. He knows exactly what he wants to tell him in response, but he’s deciding if he wants to rile Sukuna up further or get straight to the point.

“I’ve heard rumours that you use her like a toy.” he starts, a smirk curls on his lip and his scar pulls along with it. You and Sukuna look at each other, wondering who could have found out about your lewd secret. “I’m not… unreasonable. If you comply, I’m willing to come to a binding agreement that we will keep clear of your turf.”

“… Hang up the phone.” Sukuna orders, and Yuuji immediately presses the big red button. Sukuna looks at you, eager to speak. And by his expression, whatever he wants to say seems fuelled by rage. But by a stroke of luck, Uraume intervenes.

“I think you should do it.” she starts. Sukuna directs his angry glare towards her, while you look at her in surprise. “We’ve all heard the rumours, it’s not a secret, Sir. I believe it’s called ‘free use’ yes?”

“Why is that relevant?” you ask.

“Well, you’re used to being used, no? Why is this any different. It would be for Sukuna, for all of us. I’m sure you’d be able to open your legs for a few minutes for the sake of peace.” she speaks, calmly, crossing one leg over the other as she leans back in her seat. You scoff, standing up to argue, but Sukuna splays out his hand and warns you to keep in line. “Sukuna, it’s just sex. You won’t have to pay them off, you won’t have to share your territory that we— that you have worked so hard for. A simple trade.”

He sighs as he looks between you both.

“It’s not that straightforward, at all.” Sukuna tells her. You hope he’ll elaborate but feel a little deflated when he opts to keep quiet instead. You feel comfortable with your so-called arrangement because you’re in love.

At least, that’s what you thought.

“A shame. You continue to be a useless disappointment in this organization.” she tells you. “If it were me, I’d do it.”

“Well, Uraume. It isn’t you. You know why?” you spit back, shoving by Sukuna with the intention of leaving when you’ve said your piece. “Because you are his subordinate. I am his wife.” and with that, you leave.

Uraume is unfazed, however, which would infuriate you more if you were around to see it. Instead you’re leaving with your handbag in tow. You’re stopped, however, when you reach the exit. Sukuna’s men are holding you hostage on his orders. He hasn’t followed you to see if you’re okay. He’s still talking to Yuuji and Uraume as you pace around an empty meeting room.

You’ve always hated this building. Every time you come for a meeting here you’re nauseated by an overwhelming mechanical smell. It’s the office supplies, you assume. The copy machines and printers whir all day and night, the perfect operation taking place to disguise Sukuna’s general misdeeds.

Around twenty minutes later, you’re no longer alone.

Sukuna enters the room and shuts the door behind himself. Your eyes water as you instantly read his expression. You know there’s another way, but he’s obviously made his decision. Uraume’s influence played a part, you don’t doubt.

“I don’t want to. I love you…” you cry. “She’s trying to—”

“Enough.” he silences you, curling his finger. A simple instruction for you to follow him. “I haven’t decided yet, come along.”

He brings you back to the meeting room where you were sitting earlier. He commands Uraume and Yuuji to leave, and they do, Yuuji leaves his phone behind so Sukuna can call Megumi’s phone again.

“I don’t want to share you.” he confesses, pulling you into his lap as he spins the phone in his hand. Each thud against the desk makes your anxiety spike. “Uraume is right, though. It’s a tempting offer for the sake of a few measly minutes.”

“I don’t want to fuck him, Sukuna.” you pout. “I can’t believe you’re even considering it! What if he’s lying and will keep asking to fuck me? I don’t want everyone to find out about it and think I’m some whore. Do you—” you stop, a large knot gets stuck in your throat as you try to remain composed. You feel sick to your stomach, and you hate that you even have to ask. “Do you even love me anymore… Sukuna…” you ask, lower lip trembling as you speak.

“I do, of course I still love you.” he tries to assure you, but it feels half-hearted at best. “I’d prefer you to make a decision; but I want it to be the right one. And remember, you agreed to let me use you. And I will use you for whatever purpose I desire, if that means letting other men use your cunt for the sake of peace… then…”

“’Kuna…”

“I’m talking now.” he stops you, grabbing your cheeks in his hand and squeezing until your lips pucker. “You better spread those pretty legs nice ‘n wide for daddy, I want you to make me proud.”

He lets go, slowly, and uses a single finger to call Megumi back.

It rings.

And it rings.

And it rings—

“You mull it over?” Toji answers, his cockiness radiating through the phone. “Who am I speaking to? Sukuna?”

“I’m here.” he answers, he bounces his thigh, a silent instruction for you to announce yourself. And, for him, you do. “We’ve thought about it.”

“And?” Toji speaks.

Sukuna looks up at you, expecting you to do the honours of answering. His face is stoic and it makes your heart sink. He really wants you to agree to this. This is the first time since you’ve been with him that’s he’s made you feel like the object you agreed to be, for him. You thought it was out of love. Maybe even respect.

You were a fool to think that, you see that now.

You take a deep breath, and your whole body shakes. Even the little breaths you take to steel yourself warble and you try and gain the confidence to tell Toji that you agree.

Sukuna agrees, you don’t.

“We’re not interested.” you tell him. Sukuna glares at you, and you swear you see flames licking through his pupils. You try to stand up, but you’re trapped. He holds you, tight, and you worry about what you’ve let yourself in for. “Sukuna, get off.” you try to warn him off quietly, but it only increases his grip.

He mutes the call, and fingers sink harshly into the fat of your hips as he lifts you up. You land on the large meeting table with a thud as he towers above you with a dangerous glint in his eye.

“You dare disobey me?” he starts. You flinch as he raises his hand, the rings on his fingers twinkle under the fluorescent lights in the room. He doesn’t hit you, and you can’t tell if that’s what he was considering. He’s never struck you before. But, thinking about it, you’ve never defied him before. He balls his hand into a fist, a singular finger breaking free as he points in your face. “I don’t think you understood me before. Did you get confused?” he asks, voice dripping with condescension as his eyes alternate between your shimmering eyes and tremoring lip.

You ignore him, you just stare at him as you wait for him to finish.

“Understand me now. You are mine. Your life, your clothes, the bed you sleep in? Mine. Your body is mine. Your cunt is barely yours, I own her.”

“You said the decision was mine to—”

“I said I want you to make the decision I’m telling you to make. I’m not giving you a choice, I was giving you the power to make the decision yourself. But I see now, you’re too dumb to make the right call without daddy’s help.”

You sniff, picking up the phone to your side and unmuting the call. You’re surprised Toji is still on the other end, perhaps he knew that you’d gone against orders and was waiting to hear your reconsideration. He doesn’t say a word, nor does Sukuna, as you continue to sniffle and gather your bearings.

“T-Toji?” you whimper, and you hear an amused breath on the other end.

“Yes, darlin’, I’m here.” he speaks. His voice is somewhat soothing given the circumstances. Your lovers fiery stare remains on you. He and your very own body are imploring you to make the decision he’s expecting of you. But your heart, your mind, tell you otherwise. If Sukuna kills you, so be it.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to sleep with you, I love Sukuna too m-much.” you whimper, tears cascade down your face as you look at him. Even after this, after how he’s spoken to you and what he’s trying to make you do, you can’t help but love him. Even his face softens as he hears your plea. Your utter devotion to him makes his heart skip a beat.

There may even be a slither of remorse behind his eyes.

“You’re a real good girl, aren’tcha? So loyal… It’s hard to find girls like you.” Toji responds, and it snaps Sukuna out of his daze. The looming anger returns as he realises you’ve ignored direct orders twice now. “Tell ya what… Sukuna, you still there?”

“… I’m here.” he responds, slouching down in the seat he’d been sitting in previously. It’s odd, looking down at him like this. He looks deflated, like he doesn’t know how to handle you. Maybe he does still love you, after all. He doesn’t want to hurt you or kill you, he’s wrestling with it. If you were like his subordinates you’d be dead already.

He doesn’t know what to do with you.

“Princess, would you feel better if Sukuna was there?” he asks. You both look at each other, unsure of what he’s getting at. The idea infuriates Sukuna. Why on earth would he want to sit like some cuck while one of his enemies rails his girlfriend? “I don’t need you to myself, I just want to fuck you.”

“Um… oh.” you speak, the penny finally dropping. “I like that better.” you confess.

“Mm, I’ll bet.” Toji smirks. “Alright, I’ll make arrangements.”

“Go find Yuuji and go home.” Sukuna whispers as Toji continues to speak. He barely looks at you as you slide off the desk. So you don’t even bother saying goodbye. You’re still so fucking angry at him for all of this. But, really, you can’t help but feel like he isn’t pulling the strings here.

Not really.

You find Yuuji outside vaping, and he chokes when he sees you. He desperately attempts to swat the plume of smoke away, but it’s too late. You take the device from his hand and drop it on the ground.

“Enough.” you tell him, crushing it beneath the chunky platform and heel of your boot while looking him dead in the eye. “Stop buying them.”

“Sorry.” he chuckles. “Want me to take you home?”

“Yes,” you sigh. “The long way… if you don’t mind.”

He nods, understandingly.

Maybe you chose the wrong Itadori to fall in love with.

You hadn’t realised how close Toji’s apartment is to yours and Sukuna’s. You never even knew he existed until a few days ago. And yet, now, you’re in the elevator on your way up to the penthouse suite.

The preparation into this night, which you’re sure will amount to a few grunts and thrusts from each of them before they’re panting and bored, has been substantial.

Sukuna agreed to let Toji cover the cost of everything, which surprised you. Sukuna is a proud man, he’s proud of himself and the money he makes. And he’s especially proud of his possessions.

Most of all, you.

You’ve been accompanied by Yuuji and Megumi for the last week everywhere you go. And they’ve bickered about everything.

As you were sitting in the hair salon earlier, Yuuji insisted upon how Sukuna would like your hair to look, whilst Megumi argued about what Toji would prefer.

They argued when they took you clothes shopping about what kind of outfit you should wear. They argued about what colour lingerie you should wear. Hell, they even argued about what perfume would be best.

You didn’t have the energy to intervene, however, not when it feels like your world is crumbling around you. You’ve lost Sukuna, you think. You aren’t sure how or when it happened, but you don’t see love in his eyes anymore. And it’s a fool’s gambit to try and force that love back.

Now, you’re just a toy he’s grown tired of.

The elevator stops with a ding as you reach the top. Your stomach is doing somersaults, and you’re a little taken aback as Sukuna takes your hand in his. The reassuring squeeze he offers calms you immensely as he leads you out directly into the apartment.

“Welcome.” Megumi greets you both. He gestures to a bottle champagne and three pre-poured flutes filled with the gorgeous, bubbly liquid. You don’t notice until you get closer that there’s even strawberries drowning in the glasses. “Make yourselves at home, he won’t be long.” Megumi speaks, gesturing to the modern staircase that leads upstairs.

And with that, he leaves. He enters the elevator and waves as the doors shut, taking him all of the way to the ground floor. You can’t help but wonder where he’s going. Maybe, despite all of the bickering, he and Yuuji are planning to go out and have fun together while their bosses are occupied.

You feel sick.

Everyone’s going to find out about this. Everyone is going to have you down as a slut who trades her body for the sake of gang disputes. The naïve nature within you is telling you that this is a one time thing. That you made the choice and you only made it because there is something so alluring about Toji.

But, really, after this… you fear that you may be better off dead.

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Toji speaks as he announces himself, slowly descending the stairs as he drinks you in. His shirt is open, revealing his glorious body beneath. Each move he makes is teasing, only subtly showing off his musculature that glistens beneath. “You look beautiful, sweetheart.” he tells you.

His hand settles on your hip as he kisses your cheek. It’s gentle, yet forceful, and it lasts a beat longer than you had expected. The feeling of his lips is cemented against your face, and it takes every ounce of willpower that you have to not hold your cheek longingly.

“Glad you could make it, both of you.” Toji expresses, looking at Sukuna briefly before focusing on you again. He can’t get enough of you. He can’t stop ogling your perfect body in the skintight, chocolate coloured dress you’re wearing. The way your breasts slightly spill over the bust, the way the plunge shows the perfect amount of cleavage, the way a huge slit down the side perfectly showcases one of your legs and teases the treasure at the apex of your thighs.

He picks up two glasses, handing them to you and Sukuna, before grabbing his own.

“To peace.” he smirks. Sukuna chuckles and repeats his sentiment, though you’re silent. You aren’t exactly proud of yourself for doing this for the sake of peace.

But at the very least, you might have a little fun. You take a small sip, while Sukuna and Toji’s glasses are bare. Toji tops them up, and they chat as if they’re old friends.

“I’m sure you didn’t invite us over just to make nice, Zen’in.” Sukuna comments, and Toji laughs but nods. Sukuna sets down his champagne flute, tilting your head up by your chin with two dominant fingers. “She won’t object to anything. Isn’t that right, princess?” he asks, and you nod.

Toji finishes his drink again, circling around you both to stand behind you. Sukuna sits down, already pouring his third drink of the evening as he watches how you choose to behave. You’re not going to defy again, though. Not when you agreed of your own accord.

Your gaze narrows as your eyelids become heavy from Toji’s presence behind you. He softly gropes and manhandles every inch of your body. And even the areas you wouldn’t normally consider sensitive have you shuddering under his touch.

He attacks your exposed thigh, dragging the back of his nails upwards towards your pussy as his teeth lightly graze your pulse point. You emit a vociferous moan as his fingers splay outward, his digits barely breaching the material of your dress and yet somehow stimulating your immediately drenched cunt.

“I think she likes me.” he sighs against your skin, maintaining complete eye contact with Sukuna as he feels you up. “This dress was made for you, baby.” he tells you, kissing softly behind your ear.

“Look,” Sukuna starts, standing up as he looms above you. He pulls down the bust, revealing the black mesh bra underneath. Your nipples are barely covered, perfectly visible to all eyes in the room. He cups your breasts, and his thumbs repeatedly swipe over the raised buds. “They’re so hard, princess. Is this exciting you?” he asks.

You nod, dumbly. He captures your lips in a deep kiss and you moan into it. Toji reaches forwards over your shoulder, grabbing a handful of your tit as he squeezes the flesh and lightly flicks the nipple. His other hand settles in the curve of your hip, and you yelp slightly into Sukuna’s mouth as he pulls you backwards against his body.

“Feel how hard you’re makin’ me already, darlin’?” he asks, sharp canines nipping lightly against your bare neck as he pants shallowly against your skin. “Haven’t even touched your pussy yet and I’m aching. Haven’t even seen your fuckin’ panties.”

“Strip her, go on.” Sukuna orders. He backs away as he allows Toji to move you wherever he desires.

You gasp as you feel him move you with ease until your bent over the countertop, your face turns to the side to face Sukuna and the bucket of champagne. You’re distracted by the water droplets slowly traversing down until you hear Toji gnarl against the nape of your neck.

You can’t help but whimper when you feel him repeatedly kiss your bare skin until he reaches the zip of your dress. Sukuna stares into your eyes. Watery, eager eyes that are still focused on him without him even touching you. The red irises that own you and your every move, Toji was right, you are a good loyal girl.

Toji takes the zip between his teeth and pulls downward until the dress shucks from your body, it starts to pool at your feet, but still clings to your waist. Sukuna helps yank it downwards, while Toji lands a harsh strike against your supple rear. He whistles at the sight of your flesh jiggling, repeating the action on the opposite cheek just to see it again.

“Do you know how to use that mouth, princess?” Toji asks, and you nod.

“She knows how to talk shit with it.” Sukuna informs him, and Toji smirks. “But she gives good head, too. Get on your knees.” Sukuna tells you.

And you drop like a stone in front of Toji, you’re sure your knees will be red raw from the uncomfortable landing. You watch Toji with complete focus as he unbuckles his belt. Your eyes stay on his, getting the perfect view of his defined abs and large pecs as you stare up at him. The metal of his belt echoes through the room as he throws it in Sukuna’s direction.

You’re awestruck when Toji’s length is revealed. He’s beautiful. You don’t even realise you’re drooling until the bubbly liquid drips down and splats against your hand. He’s huge. Sukuna is too, but Toji might have him slightly bested. His cock curves upwards, and you can’t help squirm as you think about it hitting all of the right spots inside of you.

His pubic hair is trimmed perfectly. You wonder if he usually keeps himself groomed or if he only did it for this occasion. His tip is gorgeous. A slightly more blush pink in comparison to the rest of his cock. And it’s oozing. It’s shimmering with pre, the tip is completely covered and some of his length below is coated too.

“I’m gonna kill you if you keep staring at his cock like that, princess.” Sukuna warns you. You look at him, worry stabbing through your eyes before Toji grabs your jaw and forces you to focus on him again. He bends down, his face dangerously close to yours.

“He might kill you later, but I’m gonna kill you now if you don’t hurry and put that pretty mouth to work.” he snarls. You nod, widening your mouth to accommodate his girth. He groans, passionately, as his tip hits against your restrictive throat. “Fuuuuuck, good girl.”

You hold his hips as you attempt to take him deeper and deeper into your mouth. Your jaw already hurts, you feel like you might need the ability to unhinge it like a snake just to take him. It’s a similar experience with Sukuna, though he doesn’t make you suck him off often. He prefers your cunt, he doesn’t like to waste time on foreplay normally.

Only if he’s particularly stressed.

“You’re right, she’s a good little cocksucker.” he tells Sukuna as he praises you. He lightly combs his fingers through your hair with one hand before he forcefully shoves you to take his full length. And you cry out, you sob, and he slightly pulls out before shoving back in. “Are you gonna sit and watch me face fuck your toy?” Toji asks, earning a scoff from Sukuna.

He bends down, picking up the belt Toji discarded as he approaches. “Watch.” he orders. You gasp as Toji sets you free so that you’re true lover can take over. He wraps Toji’s belt around your neck but doesn’t completely fasten it, giving them both the freedom to tug and choke you into submission if needs be.

Sukuna removes his own belt, handing it to Toji to do with whatever he pleases. You whimper as he pulls your wrists behind your back, tying them together with the uncomfortable leather binding.

He pulls out his cock, slapping you lightly across the face with it as you wait patiently with your tongue hanging out. You mewl at he taps his tip against your tastebuds, the taste of his pre instantly permeates your senses.

Two hands settle on either side of your skull as he sinks his cock into your drooling mouth. He throws his head back, groaning as he slots in comfortably. He wastes no time, thrusting into your mouth again and again until you’re sputtering and sobbing.

“She cries easily, huh?” Toji drawls as he strokes himself.

Sukuna nods, forcing you down all of the way to the base until you’re choking. You can’t even steady yourself anymore with your wrists being bound. You can’t breathe and you can’t push away. He pinches your nose when you remember you can breathe through it, suffocating you completely.

“Aw, what’s wrong darlin’? Not gonna break so soon, are ya?” Toji asks, grabbing the makeshift collar and leash around your neck as he softly pulls. But he lets go as Sukuna frees you from his malicious clutches.

They both laugh as you cough and sputter, collapsing into a heap on the ground as you try and get your breath back.

“What’s wrong? You don’t like it?” Sukuna asks. He picks you up with ease, and you’re soon bent over the counter again. But, this time, your feet don’t touch the ground. You’re left there, powerless to their touch with your ass perfectly raised while your feet and legs dangle helplessly over the edge.

Toji spreads your ass apart, and the stickiness sounding through the room is deafening. He sneers when it hits his ears. “She’s lying.” he spanks you, hard. And then his fingers toy between your pussy lips, making a complete and utter mess of your panties. “Do you like old men picking on you, hm? You must do. Can you feel how sloppy this cunt is, princess?” he asks.

You whimper out apologies, though they don’t seem to be interested. Toji picks you back up, throwing you over his shoulder as he carries you towards the stairs. Sukuna follows, a wicked grin on his face as he observes your tear-stricken face.

“Does she like anal?” Toji wonders.

“She likes whatever I tell her to like.” Sukuna laughs. “Would you like that, baby? Should we use both of your pretty holes?”

“Can’t wait to tear these fuckin’ panties off ya.” Toji explains. “Dunno why you bothered coming here with clothes on. Should have come bare, with a bow on your head.”

You enter Toji’s bedroom. And it’s gorgeous. It’s so sleek and stunning and there’s even a fireplace crackling away. The atmosphere is romantic, but this situation is hardly that.

Sukuna strokes your cheek, a subtle check to make sure you’re okay as he looks into your eyes. You nod, discreetly, before he slips his thumb between your teeth. You bite down, softly, and he can’t help but smile.

“Think this is the quietest she’s ever been,” Sukuna starts. He massages his thumb into your tongue, and you can’t help but instinctively suck. “Bein’ so good for daddy tonight.” he praises you.

“Daddy, huh?” Toji smirks, taking two fistfuls of your panties between his hands and tears them apart carelessly. “Hope you’ll call me that, sweetheart.”

You look to Sukuna for permission, and he nods. “Just this once.”

“Real pretty girl when you’re suckin’ on somethin’.” Toji comments. He sits on the bed beside you, lifting you up abruptly to sit on his lap. He unhooks your bra and Sukuna seamlessly breaks the straps between heavy fists, ripping it quickly from your body without undoing your bindings. “Suck ‘em while I play with this sweet little cunt.” Toji groans against you as he pulls your back flush against his chest.

Sukuna lightly slaps your tits before walking away. You watch him as he takes a seat in the corner of the room, and he’s become exactly what he hadn’t wanted to. He looks unfazed, though. He seems to be enjoying it if anything. He pulls a cigar from his inner breast pocket along with a lighter, he rests his ankle on his knee as he watches Toji toy with you.

“Watch him, want him to see how good I make you feel.” Toji whispers. He presses two fingers into your mouth slowly. The metal of his rings clang against your teeth, but you don’t care. You wish you could hold his hands as you suckle and lap at his digits. Though you’re broken from your efforts as he starts to circle your clit. “Mmm, such a messy pussy.” he comments.

You wriggle and squirm even with such little pressure applied to your clit. He runs his fingers through your folds, teasing your hole only slightly before he massages your swollen clit again and again.

“—addy!” you whine, unable to sit still as he torments you.

“Hear that? She called me daddy.” Toji chortles, looking at Sukuna. He smirks, but again seems more unfazed than anything. You almost screech around his fingers as he finally inserts his other digits inside of you. As if they weren’t already thick, more metallic rings seem determined to push your pussy to the limit. “You’re gonna make a mess f’me. Alright? Don’t fight me.”

He inserts a third finger between your lips, your mouth contorts and stretches uncomfortably, and still, you suck.

He digs around inside of you like he’s searching for something in particular. And when your legs begin to jolt and quiver, he deduces he’s found it quick enough. His ministrations are almost evil as he alternates between hard and slow fingering. It’s so intense, so excruciating that you can barely concentrate on his fingers in your mouth.

“Can’t see your face, baby. You still with us?” he asks, and you can only offer a barely intelligible response. Sukuna leans forward in his chair as he smokes, uncaring for where he flicks the ash. It’s the last thing on Toji’s mind, too. Especially when you’re already losing consciousness like this. “They’re just fingers, darlin’. Gonna go stupid for my cock if you can’t even handle this.” he laughs.

“Slap her cunt.” Sukuna tells him. And soon enough Toji is landing a hard enough spank to your puffy clit. You mewl, so he repeats it. Again and again. Harder and harder. “Finger her, I’ll do it.”

Toji puts his fingers back inside of your tight walls and finds that spot again. Sukuna lords above you, cigar resting between the gentle bite of his teeth as he spanks your cunt hard. It makes you dizzy, almost delirious. The conflicting feelings of pain and pleasure make your eyes water.

“Crying again.” he says as he spanks your pussy again. “Who knew two cocks would make you so obedient and submissive?”

“And we haven’t even fucked her yet.” Toji reminds him, and he smirks. “I should have invaded your turf a long time ago if I knew it would get us here.”

“Hm,” Sukuna hums. Your breath hitches, and he raises an eyebrow in suspicion. “She’s going to cum. Is she getting tight?”

“Like she’s gonna break my fingers.” Toji smirks. And with a few more spanks against your clit as Toji continuously batters his fingers into your g-spot, you’re cumming harder than you ever have in your life. Sukuna doesn’t move away as he feels you douse him with the thick stream shooting from your cunt. “Oh fuck. You’re a little squirter, huh. Or a big squirter, look at the fuckin’ mess you made of us, dirty girl. Told ya you would.” he teases you, not letting up on your insides as he tries to draw every last drop of your arousal from you.

It's not like it’s the first time you’ve squirted.

But you’ve never squirted that much before.

Your mouth is free as Toji pulls out his fingers, and you feel a chill as he wipes your saliva against the column of your spine. You’re surprised when you feel him undo the belt keeping your wrists together. And you’re even more surprised as he helps you straddle him properly.

He squeezes your ass as you begin to rut your hips against his cock, the tip catches against your hole as he holds cups your cheek and offers you a showstopping, tongue tangling kiss. You yelp as Sukuna yanks your hair until your vision is his face at an almost upside down angle. He spits in your mouth, crudely, before releasing your hair.

You don’t bother swallowing it as Toji brings you back to him and locks his lips with yours. He couldn’t care less that Sukuna had spat in your mouth. You’d already sucked his cock, what did it matter to him?

“You’re so well trained, princess.” he smirks. He stands up, and you instantly wrap your legs around his waist. He places you flat against the bed, nibbling on your collarbone before he nips and kisses downward. Further and further and further. “Let daddy taste you.” he demands, and you nod.

Sukuna holds your underarms and pulls you until your head droops backward, lolling over the edge of the mattress.

You wince as he slots his cock between your lips again, and he loosens the tightness of the belt still around your neck. The slight choking feeling is replaced with his hand, intent on feeling your throat bulge from the broadness of his cock.

Your legs cramp around Toji’s head as he gets to work feasting on your folds. If not for Sukuna’s length stuffing your throat, you’d be screaming at the way he suctions his lips around your clit. He licks and sucks again and again until your mind goes blank.

“That’s a good toy,” Sukuna chuckles darkly. “Stop thinking, now, we’ll do that for you.”

Toji can’t get enough of your taste. He can’t help but stroke himself as he pleasures you, and he grunts again and again against your heat. The fingers on his free hand sink into your doughy thighs. He’s doing all he can do to make sure you stay put. And he wants his face to be suffocated by your cunt.

Sukuna pulls out, determined not to cum this way. He’ll only cum if he’s doing so directly into your womb. He drops to his knees, helping you up a little so you can look down at the man about to give you your second orgasm of the evening. Your head sags against Sukuna’s broad shoulder, but you manage to look through barely open eyelids to see raven locks shaking and swaying as he lashes his tongue against your clit.

“’m gonna c-cum, daddy… fuck.” you mutter, unsure if you’re referring to Sukuna or Toji. Neither of them seem to care, though, they’re more focused on your wobbly thighs and spasming cunt. “Ngghh—!” you wail.

Toji slurps up your mess as you squirt all over his face. He laughs, scar pulling deliciously as he tries to catch your essence in his wide, smiling mouth. He sticks his tongue out before attaching his lips directly against the source again.

And even he’s panting when you’re finished. Completely satisfied from this alone.

Though his eyes and mind are full of desire as he fantasises about how close he is to feeling you wrapped around him.

“I want her pussy.” Toji insists, and Sukuna shrugs his shoulders.

Sukuna scoops you into his arms, and the two of them help position your near lifeless body between them. Though your pseudo-husband is the first to shove his cock into your drooling slot. Toji scowls, prepared to pull you away from him if needs be.

“I said—”

“And?” Sukuna responds. “Fuck her pussy, then.”

Toji is frozen, unsure of what he means. But they keep eye contact as Sukuna fully sheathes himself to the hilt. Toji’s gaze only falters when he hears you moan from the stretch. You look up at him, your sweet doe eyes absolutely sodden with tears. And still, you bite your lip as you lose yourself to the bliss of being an object.

“Oh, princess,” Toji smirks, kissing the tip of your nose before he lines his cock up with your hole. “Gonna have to break this little pussy, ‘cause your daddy’s so selfish.” he tells you.

He hisses as he breaches inside of you, and your head falls forward to rest on his chest. They both hush you and coo sweetly as their cocks tear you apart. You aren’t sure which of them he was calling selfish, but really, it’s both.

They could have taken turns if they both wanted you this way.

But they were hellbent on double stuffing you.

Their hips move in tandem, neither of them giving you a single moment to catch your breath as they bully their cocks into you again and again. You’re screaming out moans as they pummel your insides. You’re bound to be aching and bruised tomorrow. You don’t care, though, not right now. And they certainly don’t. Not when your tight little hole feels so Goddamn perfect.

“Fuck— fuck,” Toji grunts. “Don’t wanna pull out.”

“D—on’t.” you squeak out, and they both let out a little laugh each at your weak request.

“She’s a little cum slut, can’t get enough. Fill her up, fuck if I care. Want this little pussy bred, baby? Hm? Want your daddy’s to fuck you full’a kids?” Sukuna teases. And you nod, it’s weak, pathetic, but determined. “Goooood girl, ‘m close.”

“I’m close as well, I’m gonna fuckin’ lose it.” Toji announces, his thrusts becoming sloppier and more staggered.

The change in pace has you clenching, the third and final nail in your coffin as your pussy begins to gush for them both. They’re both a little embarrassed, flushing red in the face as your tightening hole leads to both of their mutual demise.

“That’s it, take it, little slut.” Sukuna commands as he empties his balls inside of you. Toji is no better, the obscene names seem like second nature to them both.

“Fuck, look at her stomach.” Toji snickers. Sukuna looks down to see your tummy swollen with their cocks and cum.

They both pull out, wholly beguiled as your body collapses onto the bed in a heap. You’re practically asleep as they position you onto your stomach and split your legs apart to see how their sperm leaks out of your twitching cunt.

“I want another go.” Toji smirks, unable to pull his eyes away from your glittering slit.

“Let her rest a little.” Sukuna tells him. “I’m not done with her, either.”

You’re tired.

You’re so tired of coming to these fucking meetings.

Sukuna walks through the building with you close by. His arm around you, protectively. Somehow, you think the encounter with his rival has made him love you more. He’s been clingier, lately, which isn’t like him. He never wants to let you out of his sight, or his grasp.

He’s been using you more too.

It’s like how things were in the beginning again.

You’re sure everyone knows what happened. Eyes are on you, and their full of judgement. It hurts, of course, but there’s nothing to be done. Sukuna was right: you agreed. You did it for him and yet out of the two men who were supposed to deal with this amongst themselves, you’re the only one paying the price.

Nobody cares if their boss had a threesome.

Everyone cares if his girlfriend got used like a slut though.

Mostly, you can’t bring yourself to care. As you sit down beside Sukuna, his hand rests on your thigh while you scan everyone’s shame-filled faces. You’d challenge any of them to care what others think of them after the night you had.

It was mind blowing.

To be dominated thoroughly by the two biggest men you’ve ever met like that is a feeling you can’t begin to describe. To feel so small and worthless in comparison to them. For your body to be used in whatever manner they see fit and for them to still allow you to cum despite your purpose being for their enjoyment…

You haven’t stopped thinking about it.

About them.

About him.

Sukuna’s hand leaves your thigh as he addresses the room. Explaining how Toji miraculously decided to back off after a firm warning. No one believes it, but everyone is happy enough. But there’s always going to be issues and problems when you’re involved in illegal activity. So despite your nose being buried in your phone, you can’t say you’re surprised when you hear Sukuna move onto the next issue.

Uraume sees you smirking as your fingers tap away at your keyboard. And it makes her smirk, too.

Toji insisted that you put your number in his phone when you spent the night. Sukuna was using the bathroom, and he forced his phone into your shaky fingers. You were panicking, but you typed fast.

You’ve been texting non-stop ever since.

Uraume thinks you’re a naïve fool.

She knows exactly what you’re doing because this is what she had envisioned from the very start. She orchestrated everything. She invited Toji’s foot soldiers to start operating their business on Sukuna’s turf; just like she is the one who informed Sukuna of the invasion with such haste and loyalty.

She is the one who hinted at where they might find you that day you were shopping with Yuuji. And she is the one who let slip to Toji what your arrangement with Sukuna is.

Sukuna respects Uraume, but he doesn’t give her nearly enough credit.

She has managed perfectly to drive a wedge between you that neither of you even know is there yet. His lack of respect for your body has driven you into the willing arms of another man. Only through texting, for now, but before long that won’t be enough for you. Sukuna’s jealousy and possessiveness have made him love you more, the scales have tipped the other way and it is all to benefit Uraume.

Sukuna will find out, she’ll make sure of that.

And whether he kills you or casts you aside, it matters not to her. Because his heart will be broken either way; and she will be there to pick up the pieces. Sukuna hates how jealous you are of Uraume. But neither of you have a single solitary clue that she’s thinking all of this through right now.

Uraume feels a little bad for you, your intuition is keen. But Sukuna will never suspect a thing. You’re just insecure, he thinks. But Uraume applauds you for having your guard up about her.

You were right to worry.

© 2023 rinhaler

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